Monthly Archives: August 2013

Long ago and far away…

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Anyone who knew me in high school will probably attest that I wasn’t one of the kids that was going to show up at a party. Frankly, I’m still not one of the kids who shows up at parties. As a general rule lots of people and lots of noise makes me nervous and jerky. As usual, though, that’s not my point. My point (this time) is that I was a late sacwbloomer in the world of alcohol. I don’t think I had my first “serious” drink until I was 18 or 19. At that point my illicit underage drinking budget mostly allowed for such libations as “Mad Dog” 20/20, Milwaukee’s Best, Red Dog, and Honey Brown if it was a McPayday.

That all changed late in the summer of 1997. That’s when I met Sam Adams Cherry Wheat for the first time and realized that beer didn’t have to taste like ass. Unfortunately, you do have to pay a premium for non-skunky beer, but that summer opened my eyes to the idea that tasty adult beverages could be about more than drinking until you fall down. Sure, I still managed to do plenty of that during the last three years of my academic career (Hello quarts at Hi-Way, dime drafts at Repub, and the serve-all-comers dive in the basement of the Gunter Hotel), but the seed was planted.

My palate has widened considerably from it’s humble beginnings with Sam’s Cherry Wheat, but on days like today, when the humidity is up and sitting out in sun is the order of the day, it’s still my go to beverage of choice. There are surely better cherry brewed beers out there these days, but none of them will ever take the place of beer I fell in love with long ago and far away.

Sex ed…

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My employer has a problem. As hard as it is to believe the testosterone fueled echelons of our institution have a problem with sexual assault, it’s apparently a fact. I know it’s a fact because I spent the better part of three hours watching a movie about it this afternoon. That’s added to the standard yearly on hour Sexual Assault is Bad training, and the special 57 slide PowerPoint briefing about the ways in which sexual Firing Squadassault is bad, and the incredibly awkward conversation with the boss about sexual assault.

Know what? I got the message loud and clear. Actually I got the message before anyone related to my job bothered to mention that “Hey Jeff, you know sexual assault is bad right?” It feels like something that should be pretty common knowledge… and even if it weren’t common knowledge, you’re not likely to convince someone not to do it by blinding them with PowerPoint charts.

It seems to me that if senior leaders have a problem keeping their peckers in their pants or disciplining their subordinates who have that problem, the best possible way to send a message is to convene a firing squad in the Pentagon courtyard and beam the execution live via satellite to every camp, post, FOB, depot, and station on the net. Make it a mandatory participation event so every Joe and Jane, every civilian and contractor can see that it really is a “zero tolerance” policy.

You can show movies, give briefings, and have heart-to-heart talks until you’re blue in the face, but not a damn thing is going to change until you prove that echelons higher than reality are willing to do more than talk the talk. Otherwise we’re just wasting everyone’s time pretending to give a damn.

Jeffreytharp.com vs. Mike Hayden…

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According to former Director of the CIA and NSA, because I’m an advocate for electronic privacy, I should think of myself as part of a collective of “nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous twentysomethings who haven’t talked to the opposite sex in five or six years.”

I usually try to keep this place about halfway family friendly, but the only response I can come up with is: Fuck You, Mike Hayden. I swore an oath awfully close to the one you swore as a Air Force officer. We both swore to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Check that again. Foreign and domestic.

This republic has endured two centuries of revolution, invasion, civil war, trench warfare, sneak attacks, and terrorism. Our foundations are too strong to be brought down so easily from the enemies at the gate. If it is to falter, fail, or fall it will be from the domestic advocates who are willing to cut down every protection guaranteed by our Constitution to prove their point or press their agenda. Once that happens, I don’t know what the hell we’re bothering to fight for anyway.

Defining “normal”…

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I’m glad I’ve got this backlog of old posts to work through on Sunday mornings, because quite frankly I’m nowhere near caffeinated enough yet to be all that coherent. Loading you up with old posts from MySpace is a convenient crutch for a brain that’s probably an hour or two from firing on all cylinders. That won’t last forever, but I’ll lean on it as long as possible.

This week’s archive selections feature posts originally made in February and March 2008, a time when I was contemplating getting a dog and changing career trajectory. Honestly it’s so far from today’s “normal” that it doesn’t even feel like the same life… and of course that leads to the inevitable questions about if life five years ago was so different, how different will life be five year from now. It’s a fun question in theory, but let’s just say I’m not ready to spend alot of time pondering 2018 and life after 40 just yet. I’m not sure there’s enough caffein in the country to get me to go there yet.

Enjoy this morning’s archive posts and I’ll be back with a “live” tomorrow for your reading pleasure.

A trip to Walmart (or Barbarians at the gates)…

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When it comes to grocery shopping in southern Cecil County, Walmart represents the least objectionable of three craptastic choices. Right off the bat that should tell you everything you need to know about the grocery situation here in the northeastern corner of Maryland. I would seriously consider selling a kidney if someone would build a Giant, a Safeway, or a Kroger somewhere closer than the current 90 minute round trip drive to get to any one of those options.

Since it’s the lesser of the local evils, that’s were I end up most weekends. I was there yesterday and here are my studied observations on the experience:

walmart1. There are approximately 237 billion parking spots surrounding Walmart, yet nine times out of ten I end up pulling down the lane behind someone who will sit and wait for the family of six to load their two carts of groceries, buckle the kids into their seats, adjust their mirrors, turn on their GPS and select the “home” option, back halfway out of the spot, stop for no apparent reason for 30 seconds, back the rest of the way out into the lane, spend 20 seconds trying to shift into drive, stall out, restart the car, and then drift away at approximately .175 miles per hour. All of this might even be acceptable if it were midnight on the day after Thanksgiving, but it’s 11AM on a Friday. There are acres of open spots as far as the eye can see, but the douchtard in front of me wants this exact spot for some reason. Well, congratulations. You got it. You saved yourself at least 15 extra steps you’d have had to take from one of the already available spots. This trip is not going well and I haven’t even gotten out of the truck yet.

2. There are three carts inside the door. One filled with some combination of leaves, trash, and possibly a diaper, one that has apparently hosted a seagull convention, and the third and final option… That one apparently doesn’t have any bearings in one of its wheels, so I get to spend the next 40 minutes wiping bird shit off my hands or listening to THUNK, THUNK, RATTLE, THUNK, THUNK, RATTLE, THUNK, THUNK, RATTLE, THUNK, THUNK, RATTLE every time I take a step. I don’t know if there’s a hell or not, but If there is, I’m absolutely convinced the background noise is THUNK, THUNK, RATTLE.

3. Walked by the ammunition case. No ammo. Or more specifically no ammo for guns that anyone actually owns or uses on a regular basis. Can’t blame Walmart for that one, really. It’s just another disappointing part of this little voyage of the damned.

4. Milk, eggs, bread… Even Walmart cant screw up the staples too badly. Just when I thought things might be turning a corner a three year old girl came charging out of nowhere and flung herself at my cart. Looking up to see what she probably expected to be the face her theoretically loving parent, what she got was a surly look from an unknown middle aged guy with a goatee. Clearly this was not what she was anticipating as the result was a yelp that I can only equate with what happens when you step on a dog’s paw and the child attempting to sprint away and running directly into a bottled water display set up in the middle of the aisle. It seems that with enough momentum, one can really bounce off the side of a few pallets of bottled water. Who knew, right? The last thing I saw was her theoretically loving parent showing up from the next aisle over and clearly wondering why her little darling was lying flat out on Walmart’s floor.

4. I wanted to make a roast on Sunday. Roast beef was a regular fixture at Sunday dinner at my grandmother’s house and about once a month I pull out the stops and make one with all the trimmings. I have found decent cuts of beef at Walmart from time to time, but they’re few and far between… as you might expect, this trip was not one of the exceptions to the rule. It looks like I’ll be partaking in the much more recent family tradition of Taco Sunday again this week.

5. I walked up to a checkout counter that had just cleared its last customer. Not waiting in line to checkout is practically unheard of here at my local Walmart and I thought maybe I was going to get a break here at the end of this test of my endurance. Of course it wasn’t. The cashier was apparently engrossed in her conversation with the last customer. After unloading my cart onto the belt, she was still engrossed. I pushed the cart forward so I was standing directly in front of her and she was still engrossed. I’m pretty sure if I hadn’t started adding my two cents to their conversation, she would probably still be engrossed. Look lady, I don’t need you to be happy to be there. I don’t even need you to be pleasant. All I need you to do is slide my crap across the little scanner thingy, take my money, and let me get on with the rest of my day. The sooner that happens the happier we can all be.

Basically, the only good thing I can ever really say about a trip to Walmart is that no one has yet set my truck on fire in the parking lot. That’s probably only a matter of time, though, because truly the barbarians are at the gates.

Today’s post is the latest installment of “By Request,” where the readers pick the topic and I rant about it.

What I Did on My Furlough Friday (Part 6 of 6)…

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I feel like we’ve reached the end of an era together. Now that I’m sitting here writing at the tail end of Furlough 2013, I’d love to say I’m sorry to see it go… but in the perpetual war between free time and spending money, money has won out yet again. It’s just as well that next week will bring back the standard 5-day work week. Another five of six weeks of being a part time worker would have probably ruined me completely for ever having a full time job again. If you haven’t had the experience in your adult life, a 4-on, 3-off schedule is pretty damned easy to get use to.

Being philosophical doesn’t really tell you much about how I used my final scheduled off-Friday for the immediate future. The answer to that one is simple: I did all the stuff I would have otherwise done on Saturday – grocery shopping, banking, stopping by the post office, and enjoying a late lunch at Chiplote just to top off the day. Now I’m back home writing, editing, and trying to remember that English is my first language and I should really know how to use it. All things considered, it’s been a successful Furlough Friday… I just hope it’ the last time I have to use those two words together in a sentence. Somehow I can’t shake the feeling that it’s just an operational pause before we reach a whole new level of stupid when the new year kicks off on October 1st.

Be sure to tune in here tomorrow for “My Trip to Walmart…”, a Post By Request coming to you whenever I get around to turning it in to actual sentences based on the notes I took while shopping for groceries this afternoon. With a plug like that, how can you not want to come back and check it out?

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. The Bank. From time to time I have to physically walk into a bank branch. Every time I do, I’m reminded why I do as much banking as humanly possible online. That would be because online, I don’t have to stand in a line five deep while one teller window is open for business and two other tellers stand behind the counter looking at the fire extinguisher. I know I couldn’t do a job that required direct interaction with the public, but if you’re going to have one, maybe you should try, you know, interacting with the public.

2. Adulthood. Aside from waking up with the occasional ache or pain, the bills, and other assorted responsibilities, I feel pretty much like I’m waking up at approximately age 17. Society might be able to make me put on pants and give the appearance of being a responsible adult, but I’m mostly just faking it and hoping nobody notices. You might be able to make me be serious and responsible, but you can’t make me want to… and you certainly can’t make me like it.

3. Lists. I start every day with a list. Most weekdays the list I started the day with looks disturbingly like the one I end the day with. I would be easy to assume that means I wasn’t doing much during the day, but more often than not it means that whatever I planned on doing got overwhelmed by whatever crisis-of-the-day cropped up and needed complete and undivided attention. The problem with having the list is that no matter what crisis you manhandled into submission, some jackass is going to come along and ask why the stuff on the list didn’t get done too. I’m pretty sure the lesson here is to either not make lists, or stop having expectations. Possibly both.

Blink…

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I’ve been staring at this blank screen for the better part of the last hour. The only interruption was watching the cursor. Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink. BlinkBlinkBlinkBlink. There is no more infernal form of torture for someone who pretends to be a writer on the side than a blinking cursor, an empty page, and a brain that refuses to give up even the barest of thoughts about what should be there.

The fact is my brain turned to mush sometime around 1:30 this afternoon and I haven’t had much luck at making sense using the written word since then. It’ll pass. It always does. A cold beer, a good night’s sleep, and hopefully less of an assault on my editorial abilities during the day tomorrow and maybe I’ll be able to string a few coherent words together. Maybe. That’s how it’s always worked in the past, so I’m taking it as an article of faith that the ability to be snarky in print doesn’t just evaporate in an afternoon.

I guess we’ll find out around this time tomorrow.

The art and science of the commute…

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I think of myself as a fairly seasoned driver. I cut my commuting teeth on the DC beltway, it’s safe to assume there isn’t much traffic can throw at me that I haven’t experienced before. A 90 minute delay because the drawbridge was open? Check. Snow-induced gridlock on 95? Done it. Five hour office to home drives because a tractor trailer hauling gasoline fell off an overpass? Yep. Run a line of red lights at 5 AM on Pennsylvania Avenue in Southeast because certain unsavory characters got a little too close? Did that too. Snow, sleet, hail, rain, wind, all manner of natural factors have conspired against my daily commute at one point or another and I’ve bested all of them.

It’s been a long time since I’ve run the beltway gauntlet and you’d think that living in the backwoods of Ceciltucky would leave me free of most of the urban and suburban commuting hazards I faced while fighting my way into and away from the District every day. Commuting is an art and a science, but the one thing making the drive down 95 every morning prepared me for was the complete asshattery of the people who stop in the middle of the road during a driving rain storm. I don’t mean that they slow to a crawl. I mean they come to a full and complete stop right there in the travel lane as if nothing could have prepared them for the sight of liquid falling from the sky.

Look, if you need to pull off to the side and wait it out, good on ya. God bless. But for the love of Pete can we at least agree that stopping in the middle of the road, when by your own actions you’re admitting that visibility is less than ideal, is a very bad idea? And if, for some unknown reason, you do feel compelled to stop in the middle of the road, how about cutting the rest of use a break and flipping on your hazard lights so we have a fighting chance of seeing you before your cute little toy car becomes my hood ornament. Yeah. That would be just great.

Oh. And I had to drive over a tree today. A tree. Right there in the middle of the road. That was a first in 19 years of being a licensed driver. Surely that adds something to my cachet as a recognized power commuter… like earning my “Rural Living” merit badge.

Some days leaving the house serves no purpose other than reminding me why I do it as little as possible.

Kick in the junk…

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Today is the last installment of Furlough Monday for the time being. One of the things I learned from the furlough experience is that regular three day weekends sound a hell of a lot better in theory than they are in practice. For the duration of the furlough, Mondays have been all about pain – trying to keep up with all the demands with less than half the people is not a recipe for good times. I can only expect the experience was similar for those who showed up on Fridays. From my admittedly limited observations, what you end up with is a few people doing a lot of things and not doing any of them particularly well. I’m fairly sure the technical description is penny wise and pound foolish… but that’s a point for another rant.

Tonight’s point is that the end is in sight… and I’ve never been more excited about the prospect of a five day work week (or a full week’s pay). Thank God the Labor Day holiday is coming up so we can ease back into the routine with a short week. These short weeks have been like a kick in the junk… but I wonder if the long weeks will be any better.