I am saddened

As I wander about the Internet, I visit all sorts of places on the Left and on the Right. I find a constant theme from those on the Left that reminds me of the sentiments I heard back in the 60's. America as the source of evil in the world. I don't quite understand how our own citizens can develop that attitude. I can understand someone in another country having that point of view. I wouldn't expect anyone to put a foreign country above their own, or even on an equal level, but why would you dislike your own country's culture and history?

Yes, the U.S. has done some unsavory things in its past. Forcing Mexico to sell us the southwest and California was one. We fought a war and installed a puppet government to get that done. Oddly, even though we essentially controlled Mexico we still paid for the territory we stole. I don't know of any other conquering nation that has done that.

We have slavery in our history. It's shameful but I cannot think of a nation that didn't have it in one form or another in its history. Racism knows no territorial boundaries, either. We have no sole ownership of such evils.

We mistreated and lied to the First Americans, the American Indians. No more so than the Spanish or the French but we continued it after they were no longer in the picture.

But are we really oppressors? We have territories in the Pacific and the Caribbean. We offer them plebiscites so their peoples can determine their own status. All they have to do is petition for them. Gather support for independence and then bring it to a vote. We once owned Cuba and the Philippines. Puerto Rico has voted three times on the question in recent decades and each time has remained a commonwealth under our protection. Guam seems comfortable with being a territory.

No territory is forced to stay under our flag. This is totally unlike any past imperial power. It is anything but imperialist in nature. Yet I hear and read accusations by some of our own citizens that we are imperialistic. I am perplexed. I am puzzled. But, most of all, I am saddened when I read or hear such things.

It is true that we do "invade" other countries economically. And people in those countries feel we are displacing their native cultures. That I understand. But we do not do this at the point of a gun. It is a side effect of being the world's primary economy. It is done by the people of these countries. They bought the things we made. Now, we aren't making as much so we have less to sell. And we buy more from other countries. We have trade deficits. These deficits reduce our power and influence.

In spite of our image as an imperialistic power, as is often alleged, we are called upon to be the world's peacekeeper, to mediate conflicts just about anywhere in the world. We are called first when there is a disaster somewhere in the world. We are met with anger if we do not respond with speed, supplies, and money. Even when we do, complaints about our “heavy-handedness” are rampant soon after.

With the unrest in the Middle East, we are blamed for the existence of petty dictators who oppress their people because we support them, because we do not support their opposition. Yet, where do (such as Cuba), we are blamed for their troubles.

I am afraid I do not understand those who think the U.S. Is the cause of the world's troubles. I am especially saddened by those who live here, in the U.S., who feel that way.

That pain is all in your knee

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That's what I first thought to post. Then I decided against it. After all, I would miss out on a fine opportunity to bore you readers to tears. The real purpose of this blog is to improve your opinion of all the other blogs. I hope they appreciate that.

The surgery went so well yesterday and there was no pain... until about 8 PM. Even then the pain was mild and limited to the incision points. For about 15 minutes. Until I stood up. And then my old friend Excruciating Agony came to visit. And stayed.

Pain medication these days does little for me. A friend who also misspent his youth on drugs and alcohol suggests that we have higher drug effect thresholds than the average human. It's a plausible theory. We are paying the price for our youthful indiscretions.

In any event, the knee hurts. Analyzing it, as I am wont to do, I believe it is entirely the after-effects of the poking and probing the doc had to do to remove the wires. It will pass in a couple of days. One hopes.

But I have the wires as souvenirs.

Knee-ding some work done

If I make less sense than usual, blame the drugs. This morning I went for some outpatient surgery. When the doc put my kneecap together, he used some wires to bind it up while it healed. The hope was that these would not have to come out. Unfortunately, hope just isn't enough sometimes. About 3 months ago, the healing seemed to stop and new pain started in. I put up with it for awhile but it really hurt sometimes, especially when getting into or out of the car. So I decided that we should have the wires removed.


Those are not scribbles on the X-rays, they are the wires. A little arthroscopic surgery to remove them was in order. The toughest part was getting up at 5 in the morning to go to the outpatient surgery center. And then waiting for the doc to show up. He didn't look hungover so I figured my odds were 50-50 that things would go right. And, according to all those who stayed awake, it did.

Now maybe, just maybe, I will get a much more usable knee joint out of it. A bit of rest and I should be just fine. Or not.

They did ruin a pair of shorts for me when they bathed the knee in Betadine and it, of course, ran down the back of my leg. They weren't my best pair and I have a dozen pairs so no great loss.

Nurses have a great sense of humor. They crack jokes while you're in pain but somehow it doesn't come across as rude or uncaring. Doctors make jokes too but those always make me nervous. I prefer my doctors to be serious when they are about to cut holes in me.

I think the anesthetic is starting to wear off now so it is time to go lay down and elevate the leg.

Let's go for a drive!

I get regular emails from various web sites. They generally (and wrongly, I think) call them “newsletters”. One of them comes to me from Rasmussen Reports, a polling company. Polls are interesting to me because they are supposed to reveal how the public thinks and identify trends. Whether they do or don't, I have no real idea. I could examine the polls in detail (the questions, the statistics, the modality, etc) but I have no background in statistical data gathering. I tend to take poll results as “implied truth” and subject to interpretation.

In any event, I signed up to get these updates from Rasmussen. Primarily because the free updates are informative enough.

I received one the other day which polled people on car buying and usage. The headline grabbed my attention: For 53% of Adults, Driving is Strictly for Getting Around.

Following the link, I learned that 43% really enjoy driving. And, broken down by sex (which I have been from time to time... but I digress), it turns out that 53% of men like to drive and 59% of women don't.

The survey didn't get into that aspect so much but I thought the reason behind it might be that men like to be in control while women do not. I would not have guessed the above is true based upon personal experience. I have known many girls and women who loved to drive and who liked the fact that they were in control while doing so. I have also known many men and boys who would just as soon someone else drove.

I am not one who easily cedes that control which comes from being the driver. I am a terrible passenger though I do try to keep my mouth shut and my whimpering to a minimum. I am not always successful. I know people who can sleep while someone else drives. I cannot do that. That I blame on a specific trip I took with my then brother-in-law when I was 17. He cured me of sleeping by going off the road twice in less than 15 minutes while I nodded off against the passenger side window.

I have loved to drive ever since I learned how. I would take my old beat up `52 Studebaker and wander around for hours on various roads. Gas was cheap then. I never got lost because I never had a destination in mind. This willingness to just roam was likely initiated by the Sunday drives my father would take us on. He never seemed to have any destination in mind either. We'd wander all over Long Island, it seemed, much of which was quite rural in those days.

Getting back to that survey, I thought you might be interested in the questions asked. They are:


1- How likely are you to buy or lease a car in the next year?

2- (Answered only by those who are at least somewhat likely to buy a car in the next year - 250 Adults) Will you get a new car or a used car?

3- (Answered only by those who are at least somewhat likely to buy a car in the next year - 250 Adults) How likely are you to consider buying a car from the Ford Motor Company?

4- (Answered only by those who are at least somewhat likely to buy a car in the next year - 250 Adults) How likely are you to consider buying a car from General Motors?

5- (Answered only by those who are at least somewhat likely to buy a car in the next year - 250 Adults) How likely are you to consider buying a car from Chrysler?

6- When you purchase your next automobile, how likely is it that you will buy a hybrid car?

7* How likely is it that you will buy an electric car within the next decade?

8* Are you more likely to buy an electric car because it’s good for the environment or because of high gas prices?

9* Is driving a car something you really enjoy or just something you do to get from one place to another?

Seems to me that the headline wasn't an accurate description.

Your call is very important to us (snicker)

I subscribe to a number of things online. I am a sucker for free things so I tend to not so carefully sign up for various newsletters and notifications while surfing the Net. It isn't really “surfing”, you know. I would rather call it “perusing”. The other term doesn't match up. I know, I used to do the actual surfing when I was a young man of 18 and 19. That would be riding waves along the ocean shore, not wandering through porn sites.

There are some similarities. If you are not careful, you could end up bruised a bit in either situation. But that's about as far as the comparison goes. Maybe we could add in that each induces you to say stupid things. But the dangers in real surfing are physical as opposed to the financial dangers in careless Net surfing. And I don't get the great rush of adrenalin or the pleasant zen like Nirvana from the Net that I once enjoyed at the beach. Not to mention I felt much cleaner emerging from the water than I do withdrawing from the Net.

Anyway, this isn't about surfing of either type. It's about customer service calls. A rather poor segue but bear with me. One of the subscriptions I collected along the way was a Miami Herald offer to send me Dave Barry columns. If you do not know who Dave Barry is, click the link that is his name. A quick explanation is that Dave is what so many of us Bloggers want to be (or think we are). The most recent offering from the Miami Herald was a column Dave wrote back in 2000 (I did not realize when I signed up that Dave no longer did columns for the Herald and that these would be “vintage” columns) about waiting on the phone for customer service.

The column inspired a few comments from readers; only a few of which actually realized they were reading a column written ten years ago. More than a few thought their comments should (or did) equal Dave's humor. And that is where the telemarketers come into play. Most comments concerned telemarketing rather than customer service.

Like Dave, I hate calling customer service. I am sure you do as well. The only thing making such calls tolerable for me is the speakerphone button on my cordless handset. Since I only have one good ear, I risk damaging that by holding the phone to it for the seemingly infinite wait for a customer service representative who is probably on break or dealing with some other angry and abusive caller. So, as soon as I hear the “Your call is very important to us...your wait time is...”, I punch the speakerphone button and set the phone down next to me and go back to whatever mindless game I was playing on the computer, my one good ear all a-twitch waiting for the allegedly live voice of the representative. This way I do not have to actually listen to the recycled elevator music that is being played and interrupted at irregular intervals with the “Your call is important, please stay on the line” announcements which are at least 100 decibels above the music.

I would not make these calls at all if I could find a decent alternative. Sometimes I can just email tech support with a question but I find these rarely result in anything positive. Mostly they deteriorate into my explaining the problem in different ways in a series of emails in a vain attempt to get the recipient to understand the actual problem and why everything he has offered as a “fix” has already been tried and failed. Which is how the phone calls go once I finally get through, now that I think about it.

It is much like the old Complaint Department (now also called “Customer Service”) desks in department stores. The main purpose of which was to fool the customer into believing that anyone remotely connected to the store cared at all.

And they wonder why our landfills are overflowing...