First, I want to say that there is no way to defend what the owner of the Clippers did. Not just the recent release of his comments, but the years of what seems like over the top treatment of minorities in many ways. What I wonder about is the response to the revelation. One great response was from Kareem Abdul Jabber. His comments asked where the outrage has been since this guy has had a pattern of treating people badly for years.  What I like about this question is it is truly intelligent. He is outraged, he is upset but he is using his brain to create a discourse which is the way we can really work to stop these kinds of things from happening. Those calling for a lynching or the creation of an all black basketball league are just perpetuating the problem. If we can’t talk about the issues that separate us, discuss them passionately but respectfully we will not get to a solution. We have seemed to lost the ability in this country to disagree. Everyone cries some sort of outrage instead of skillfully and intelligently state their case. We need to regain our right to disagree but do it in a way that respects each other, if we can’t these issues will never go away

I just saw a news story on Amazon. They had a bad earnings report this week and the stock is getting hammered. They said the reason was they spent a lot of money on infrastructure so expenses were way up. I don’t know anything about the stock or their actual business model, but what I can tell you is that over the past few years there is no other company which I have spent more money at. I am an Amazon serial buyer, I will see something at a local store or even somewhere else online and I will go find it on Amazon and buy it. Simple purchasing and prime delivery are like my online crack. I went to another site which made me click-through window after window to get my purchase done which I abandoned due to the hassle. I have gotten so bad that if something isn’t available on Amazon I might just abandon my purchase altogether. What other company has me that hooked? Maybe Apple computers but I won’t buy their stuff in the Apple store, I buy it on Amazon. I had to buy a microwave the other day at Walmart and I used Amazon reviews to pick the one I wanted. The stock may have reasons to be down and I wouldn’t know if they are a good stock to buy or not. I just know that if I see something I want this week, odds are good they are going to make a dollar from me!

How bad does your wedding have to be for you to shoot your niece at the after party? That is what happened back east. Apparently the two argued over who would drive until the bride used her new husband’s gun. A few things are baffling about this story, first was the reception at a bar? Or was this the party after the party. After my wedding reception my wife and I took off for our honeymoon. Were they sticking around or just going to get a few more drinks before driving to the Poconos?  It said they argued over who was going to drive, which means they probably both had way too much to drink, (shocking right?) which means the right answer was neither one should have driven. And finally, did shooting a family member solve the problem? I can’t say congratulations on getting married but I think you are going to have to wait ten years to life for the honeymoon. Hopefully your new husband will stick with you for that long; I guess it depends on if he married you for love or for your looks, because I know it wasn’t for the brains.

One of my pet peeves is when people schedule a meeting during lunch. Some folks abuse the fact that I am free during that time but that should be free time. If I want to sit at my desk and get work done or relax and eat it should be my choice. It is extra annoying when they don’t even feed everyone.  Too many times the meeting doesn’t even accomplish anything, you walk away like from so many meetings wondering why you even showed up? Blah, Blah, Blah! Most times it sounds like a bunch of sheep making noise but not much is being said. Can you tell this really annoys me? The other problem is me sitting here in this meeting, writing this while they all discuss how we should do things better. If they ask me a question they are really not going to get a good answer. Maybe I should have a better attitude but my stomach is not happy. Wait, pizza just showed up, maybe this will be a better meeting than I thought. Where is the meat lovers?

I have to say ahead of time sorry women but sometimes it is great to be a guy! When we do dumb things like hooking up a rocket to our kid’s loose tooth to pull it people applaud. When we take a perfectly good vehicle and turn it into some monstrosity with giant tires and engines people smile. When women do dumb things people must expect better because they usually shake their heads in a knowing sort of way. It is like they expect women to know better while guys are given a pass when the outrageous stunt fails. I have not seen women attempt to jump the snake canyon or seen YouTube videos of women bicyclist falling off of a railing and injuring reproductive organs. This is not to say they have not tried these things but when woman fail at these things it must not look as funny. I know that woman can accomplish just about anything a guy can do, and frankly they can do something’s way better. I just think that we guys are better at failing, because it very rarely stops us from trying the ridiculous again and most of the time our fellow men will still applaud or at least laugh.

When I was young my siblings and I got together and bought our parents a microwave for their anniversary. This was when they first came out and nobody really knew what they were good for. It was a massive meal and one thing, you could fit three casserole dishes in it, but as we all know making dinner in the microwave doesn’t always work out so well so we after a few failed experiments it was really used to reheat leftovers. Last night I went to reheat some leftovers in our microwave and realized after ten minutes of trying that it wasn’t working anymore. Am I going to try to fix it? No, for fewer than one hundred dollars I am going to go to Walmart and pick up a new one after work. That thing we bought our parents was expensive and we kept it for years, well past what should have been its lifetime. It took up most of the counter and probably was nuking all of us in the whole house. Now I will get one that fits on the shelf and will zap my food to molten lava in under a minute. House hold electronics and small appliances have become disposable for the most part. The cost of labor to fix them is more than the cost of Chinese children building them so off to the landfill they go. I just hope that they don’t ever put brains in them smart enough to realize that once they get to the landfill they will have unlimited parts to build themselves into giant robots and take over the world. Maybe I should cut back on the syfi channel watching for a while.

I was really blown away this weekend by the contrast I saw in Colorado! Watching the news I saw two very different types of events being celebrated yesterday, Easter Sunday and 4/20 marijuana gatherings. Easter is all about the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ on our behalf, the other about being able to indulge oneself recreationally with marijuana. I am not going to argue why marijuana should or should not be legal, or whether you believe Christ died and was resurrected. Rather I saw yesterday as a picture of what I see happening in our country as a whole. Our past has been many things but one of the themes of our history has been the sacrifice of many for the good of the whole. The revolution and World War II as just examples of people giving everything to give us the freedoms we enjoy. These sacrifices came from a belief system which says that the greatest gift anyone can give is to lay down their life for others. As Christians we are taught this and we believe it was demonstrated for us by God himself. That was what was being celebrated at our church yesterday. The funny thing is that those sacrifices gave the right for those indulging in 4/20 to celebrate what they believe in.  My fear is that we as a country have become more and more about ourselves and less and less about others. If this trend continues it will be harder and harder to defend what we have because no one will be willing to give anything for anyone else. I am not calling for anyone to die for anyone else, but being all about ourselves can’t become the law of the land if we are to survive.

How is it that people in charge of large corporations can make such horrible business decision? I know that hind sight is 20/20 but these are people with post-graduate degrees in business. Many times they have run or held potions at other companies successfully. Yet somehow they make a choice that either totally destroys the company or sets them back decades. Some of these companies collapse some stagger on or get bought by someone else. I think of Apple bringing in the guy from Pepsi to run the company or JC Penny bringing in the guy from Apple. I think of even large non-profits who brought in new leaders who are making horrible decisions which will have lasting consequences. We see it from the outside; I just wonder what they see on the inside. What are the people around them saying?  I don’t think the choices they make are bad on purpose; they take the best information they have and are trying to do the right thing. I just wonder what they are using as a filter to figure out what is good information and what is bad. Maybe it is some internal compass or maybe they are just flying by the seat of their pants. Some of it seems like they using a magic eight ball to decide what to do. Whether those companies survive might have to do with how quickly they figure out the error in judgment, I really don’t know but my eight ball is telling me to check back later.

In the last five years my eyesight has gone from pretty good to blind as a bat. The eye doctor kindly told me “you’re just getting old”. Thanks for the update doc, I wasn’t aware that something’s aren’t working like they used to. For example my kids make fun of me because my ankle clicks when I walk. I broke it a long time ago and now to makes a clicking noise when I walk. Another thing when I bend down to pick things up I make old man noises on the way up. I never thought the word “oy” would be used in such colorful ways. Thou more and more things I do sound like I am old man I haven’t moved completely to the old folks home. I still listen to loud music but it is on the “classic rock” station. I haven’t yelled at anyone to get off my lawn and my dogs are still in the ninety pound range so I can still claim to be somewhere in the middle. The problem seems to be that if my life is a level, the bubble is leaning a little to the left and I don’t see it ever getting back to the other side.

Tax day, yep it is here again! Every year we get to moan and groan about this day and what it means to our pocket-book. Last night in discussing the potential job my son is interviewing for I mentioned that in round figures he could minus forty percent of that starting salary for the governments cut! He was blown away at that figure, it might be a little high for an estimate but I told him that once you took out social security (had to throw in that he will probably never get any of that) state and federal he would be a few dollars lighter. It is funny when you read about the first income tax being four percent and how back then they thought people would revolt if the taxes went over ten. Heck look at the revolution and why we fought for independence, it was for a lot less than what we are doing to ourselves today! I mentioned a flat tax to a friend and he reminded me that the whole industry would be out of jobs if that happened. Changing how taxes are done today would mean an entire shift in our country away from the complicated system which employs so many. The question is not if we could do it. It is a matter of whether we have the intestinal fortitude to ride out the storm it would create.