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Why I’m not participating in Bank Transfer Day

Today is Bank Transfer Day, a day when millions of folks promised to transfer their accounts from big commercial banks to smaller banks or credit unions. I’m not participating in this… and here’s why:

My birthday is in March. The August after I turned 21, my best friend Rich and I went to my parent’s beach condo in Florida for a short vacation. Shortly after arrival, we went to the grocery store to stock up on grub for the week, and there I got a 6-pack of Bass Ale. The beer had a flyer attached offering six pint glasses and a glass pitcher with cool retro Bass logos for $19.99 plus shipping. Since I was still in my “I’M 21! I CAN DRINK, THEREFORE I AM A BADASS!!!” phase, I decided to get the set. So as soon as I got back to Atlanta I sent them a check and promptly forgot about it.

Fast forward from that August to the following May. I was at work one Tuesday, and my mom called me in a panic. “Wachovia called! They said you bounced a check! What’s going on with your finances, son? Should we bring your dad in on this?”

STRIKE ONE: Although I lived at home, I was now 22 years-old, fully an adult, and neither of my parents were “co-signers” (or anything else) on my account. But some Wachovia drone felt it was perfectly OK to talk to my mom about my private financial matters.
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Simon’s Picks – Week 9

SimonHey, ya’ll! Simon here! I went 9-4 last week, for a total of 25-14 on the season. Who knew the Rams would beat the Saints? I’m glad to have missed one of those games though: I picked New England over Pittsburgh, and when the boys from Steel City won my daddy jumped up and down and hollered like a mad man! It made me happy to see him happy! Let’s see what we have this week!

New York Jets at Buffalo: You know it’s a strange world when Buffalo is sharing the lead in the AFC East with New England! I tell you what though, I wouldn’t mind playing a few rounds of “Simon Says” with that handsome Ryan Fitzpatrick! Talk about ball control! OH SNAP! Now, ya’ll know I love my sexy Latin mens, but Duuurty Sanchez just won’t be take to beat Buffalo at home this year! Take the Bills in this game, honey!

Seattle at Dallas: That poor Tony Romo. The little boy tries so hard to be a great quarterback, yet he throws picks at exactly the wrong time… or muffs the snap or handoff. That’s OK, though. After the spankin’ the Philly Birds gave them last week, the ‘Boys will be out for blood… and the Sea Chickens will be able to provide it for them! Look for Romo to throw his balls wherever, and the sexy duo of Miles Austin and Jason Witten will “rise to the occasion”, if you know what I mean. The Cowboys will win this one easily!

Atlanta at Indianapolis: Speakin’ of sexy Latin mens, you know who’s gonna run all over the hapless Colts this week? That Dominican Adonis, Tony Gonzalez, that’s who! That lil’ tight end is gonna be all over the field, as well my lil’ cup o’ hot chocolate Michael Turner. Watch the Falcons run up the score… and the Dolts remain winless after this game.

Miami at Kansas City: Well, as ya’ll know, Miami is my favorite team, thanks to those sexy costumes! But they’re just not that good this year. To be fair, no one thought much of the Chiefs, either… at least I didn’t until Monday night, when my lil’ lover Matt Cassel hung in there and stole a win away from those awful Chargers! In a normal year, I’d pick the Dolphins. But this year I’m going with the Chiefs!

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-10-30

  • Ack! TV overload: #Underbelly #WildBoys #Dexter #BoardwalkEmpire #TheWalkingDead #Spooks #PanAm .. What did I miss? #
  • It should have been canceled four years ago, but the #spooks finale still made me sad. 🙁 #
  • @JackBox It's NEVER too early to talk about cheeseburgers! 🙂 #
  • Come on, #Jags #
  • YES! YES! YES! #Jags beat the #Ratbirds on MNF! And the AFC North race is tied! #GoSteelers #
  • Check that… the Steelers are in 1st place in the AFC North! ESPN's on-screen standings already took the loss into account. #
  • @katyperry HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GIRL! Hope you have the best b-day ever! #
  • "I just got a new HP laptop running XP for work. Between it and Lotus Notes, the tech in me silently weeps at the tyranny of enterprise." #
  • Plaza Midwood is doing the Halloween thing again this year. Maybe the Penguin can do a "Ghosts of Cool Restaurants Past" exhibit? #
  • TUESDAY TRIVIA: Only two artists have had five #1 US singles from one single album. Name them. #
  • HEADS-UP EVERYBODY: Duran Duran will be on "The Late Show with Craig Ferguson" tonight! Set your DVRs! 🙂 #
  • OMG! GO JACKETS! #
  • I wanna hear some Pixies dammit! #

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Guess Who?

Here’s a great picture of one of my all-time favorite TV hotties – former Wipeout and Teen Wolf star Jill Wagner – in high school:

jw_hs
(click to enlarge)

Talk about “late bloomer”! And what about those clothes? hehehehe!

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Simon’s Picks – Week 8

SimonHey, ya’ll! Simon here again! What a WILD weekend for the NFL! My daddy’s still jumping up and down about how the Jags beat the Ravens, and the Football Feline is still trying to figure out how Cleveland had 298 yards of total offense and had the ball for 42:56 but only managed 6 points! Your favorite kitty went 7-6 last week, for a total of 16-10. Let’s see if I can do a little better this week!

Colts at Titans: Wow… what more can you say about the Colts? Without my handsome Peyton Manning, they’re as limp as Jimmy Johnson without his ExtenZe! Even though the Titans have had their own troubles with getting it up, I think they’ll be able to handle the Colts easily. Take Tennessee for the win!

Saints at Rams: Ummmm-umm-ummmmm! Girl, that hawt Drew Brees just threw the Colts down on the floor and had his way with them on Sunday, didn’t he? His strong, sexy arms just flung that pigskin anywhere he wanted, and he had someone there to receive that hot load every time, didn’t he? Whew! Simon’s getting a bit overheated! [Simon fans himself and sips an appletini]. OK, girls, the Rams are gonna get their cute tight-ends rammed relentlessly this weekend! Take New Orleans to easily walk away with this one!

Dolphins at Giants: Poor Dolphins! Such pretty costumes, and such lovely mens… but what an awful football team! Simon sincerely wants the pretty boys in aqua and coral to win a game, but the Football Feline is pretty sure the Giants are gonna slap them around like a back-alley rent boy this week! Take New York to win this one at home!

Vikings at Panthers: My handsome Cam Newton really looked good last week, didn’t he? And lemme tell you girls, nothin’ gets me more excited that seein’ Steve Smith getting a few catches and getting pumped up and into a groove! Steve, I can pump you up and get you into my groove any ol’ time! Anyway, although the Vikings have the second best costumes in football (next to my ‘Fins, that is) and although I loooove their mascot (who wouldn’t want to be ravaged by 53 sexy Vikings?), I’m going to go with my hometown kitties on this one! The Carolina Cats looked pretty good against this ‘Skins, so my pick on this one is Carolina.

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Quote of the Day

“It was easy for all of us to disappear. My house was in my mother-in-law’s name. My cars were registered to my wife. My Social Security cards and driver’s licenses were phonies. I never voted. I never paid taxes. My birth certificate and my arrest sheet, that’s all you’d ever have to know I was alive. See, the hardest thing for me was leaving the life. I still love the life. And we were treated like movie stars with muscle. We had it all, just for the asking. Our wives, mothers, kids, everybody rode along. I had paper bags filled with jewelry stashed in the kitchen. I had a sugar bowl full of coke next to the bed. Anything I wanted was a phone call away. Free cars. The keys to a dozen hide out flats all over the city. I bet twenty, thirty grand over a weekend and then I’d either blow the winnings in a week or go to the sharks to pay back the bookies. Didn’t matter. It didn’t mean anything. When I was broke I would go out and rob some more. We ran everything. We paid off cops. We paid off lawyers. We paid off judges. Everybody had their hands out. Everything was for the taking. And now it’s all over. That’s the hardest part. Today everything is different. There’s no action. I have to wait around like everyone else. Can’t even get decent food. Right after I got here I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I’m an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.”

– Ray Liotta as
Henry Hill in
Goodfellas

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-10-23

  • @LarryJMiller Happy belated birthday, Larry! #
  • A web developer walked into a bar… but quickly left when he saw the table layout. #
  • I have just created a new list titled 'Sports' using TweetDeck, follow it here: @jimcofer/sports #
  • Saw a pic of Kelly Clarkson; thought it was Elton John. Ooops! #
  • Anyone else just want to punch @piersmorgan in his smug, condescending face? #
  • @1outside Well, Weaving played a misunderstood cannibal in #Rake #
  • Wow… Wells Fargo's new signs look like Win 3.1's "Hot Dog Stand" theme: http://t.co/WIViKFTN #
  • Lisa won porn bingo! I'm so proud! #

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The Three Governors

Back when I was a political science major in college, I fell in love with a quote attributed to Aristotle that went something like “politics is the most important of all the sciences, since it’s through politics that we define ourselves”. I haven’t been able to find a source for the quote, and am pretty sure that Aristotle never said any such thing. But the quote has always stuck with me, because it’s totally right, yet totally wrong, too.

It’s right because we put our values into our laws, laws that prevent children from being sent to sweatshops, or debtors from being sent to prison, or the elderly from being swindled, or pets from being beaten and abandoned. Laws that say that those who have more income should pay a higher share of their income in taxes. Laws that say that discriminating against someone for their race or religion are wrong. In fact, our entire legal system is built on the notion of right and wrong.

But it’s wrong because, well… our laws can sometimes go horribly wrong. Slavery, Jim Crow, anti-immigration or anti-Catholic laws are just a few examples of that.

And it’s not just the laws that can go wrong. The political process itself can sometimes go off the rails. Sure, it sometimes shows human behavior at its best (“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”) and at its worst (the recent budget impasse). But fewer incidents show human political behavior at its silliest than the time that Georgia had not one, not two, but three governors.

*     *     *

Eugene Talmadge was the perfect old-school Southern politician. Born in the small town of Forsyth, Georgia on September 23, 1884, Talmadge attended, and received a law degree from, the University [sic] of Georgia in 1907. After graduating, Talmadge moved to Atlanta, where he practiced law with little success. He then moved to the small town of Aisley, in Montgomery County in southeast Georgia. His law practice did a little better there, but Talmadge had to become a part-time livestock trader to make ends meet.

In Aisley, Talmadge lived in a boarding house owned by a widow named Matilda Peterson. Peterson was fairly well off, as she also owned a large farm, and was the town’s railroad agent and telegraph operator. She also sold livestock, which gave the two something in common. Talmadge began courting her, and the couple soon married. They then moved to Telfair County, where they bought a large farm on Sugar Creek. Matilda then purchased another large farm, leaving Eugene in charge of the first one.

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A Worthy Upgrade

“Hi, my name’s Jim, and I have a flashlight fetish.”

It sounds strange, but it’s true. Every time the missus and I go to Lowe’s or Home Depot, I have to check out two things – the spray paint aisle, and the flashlight aisle. I’m fascinated by all the different types of spray paint they have these days (I’m sooo tempted to paint my desk with the chalkboard spray paint!). I’m also fascinated by all the different types of flashlights.

It might seem odd, then, that I currently only own two flashlights.

The first is an Inova X5 LED flashlight I got for Christmas a few years back. It’s pretty boss. It’s made out of “aircraft aluminum” and is almost indestructible. And its multiple LEDs are bright as hell. The downside is that it uses odd size batteries (123, if you’re curious). These are relatively expensive at the few places that carry them (Energizer brand 123s are around $10/pair at Walmart and Lowe’s, although Lowe’s also carries the Sure Fire brand that are only around $4.75/pair). So I’m somewhat loathe to use the flashlight for an extended period of time, given that I’d have to find a store that carries a range of camera batteries to get replacements.

My other flashlight is an old AA Maglite. Maglites need no introduction; I’m sure there are few Americans who haven’t at least seen one, if not own one. They’re built like tanks and are reliable as hell. I don’t even remember when I got my Maglite, but I know I’ve had it for at least 15 years. But while it’s cool that the Maglite takes common, easy to find AA batteries, the light it puts out seems kind of wimpy compared to today’s LED lights.

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