Needles To Say, This Was A Bad Idea

I grew up in San Francisco and spent a lot of time hanging out in Golden Gate Park. This is the City’s little sister to New York’s Central Park. I used to feed squirrels there as a kid and have found memories of my mother taking me out there several times a week during the summers.

It has always been to me a place of paddleboats and serenity, of dream-like walks and blooming flowers. It is where I rode my bike when my training wheels first came off.

Now you can add the syringes of drug addicts as part of the landscape.

Thanks once more to the foolish policies of City Hall, Golden Gate Park has become a dumping ground for junkies.

San Francisco, like many “progressive” cities, supports needle exchanges for drug addicts. The theory is that to slow the spread of AIDS and other diseases, junkies should be encouraged to use clean needles instead of swapping them back and forth with each other.

I won’t even argue my points AGAINST needle exchange programs today. Let’s focus instead on the City not having the foresight to realize that these bums in the park would be littering needles the way they would litter their lunch…wherever they felt like it.

Now there are syringes all over this beautiful park. As if parents didn’t have enough to worry about with predators and street crime, now they can add accidental needle pricking to the list. Just another element that makes San Francisco even more unfriendly to families.

Last year, San Francisco spent $800,000 handing out 2 million needles. Now needles are being pulled out of the park by the HUNDREDS on any given day!

The same Board of Supervisors passed a city ordinance that allows anyone over 18 to buy up to 10 needles at a time at a local pharmacy—no questions asked. Meanwhile I have to sit there and fill out a form, show a driver’s license, and waste time just to get some cold medicine.

Isn’t it lovely how the progressive mind works sometimes?

Life, Liberty, and Text Messaging!

I hate it when reckless, irresponsible people ruin it for the rest of us. Remember when you were a kid? When Johnny kept talking in class or eating when he wasn’t supposed to? And what happened sometimes? EVERYONE got punished. No one had an extra recess. No one got to bring snacks to class anymore. All because of JOHNNY!!

Maybe the answer should have been to make Johnny the outcast and leave the rest of the class alone. Besides, we all ended up hating Johnny for blacklisting the whole lot of us.

This happens all the time in America at large.

I often talk about how a city in Northern California passed a Safe & Sane Fireworks ban that affected hundreds of thousands of people—all because of the reckless actions of TWO irresponsible and thoughtless youths. Why not punish THEM as severely as humanly possible and let the rest of us enjoy our Piccolo Petes and Cherry Blossoms?

We see the same sort of knee jerk reaction when it comes to driving while under the influence of a cell phone…and now text messaging is the latest whipping boy of politicians so eager to take something away from us.

We just talked on Fox Across America about how it was determined that the teen driver who got into that fatal crash last month in WesternNew York was apparently text messaging at the time of the accident. 5 people died. Why? Because of text messaging? No! Because of reckless driving. The driver was too inexperienced. She was driving too fast on a dark and winding two lane road. AND she was paying more attention to her phone than to the road.

THAT is where she made her fatal errors! I text message ALL the time. Much of that texting takes place while I am driving my car. And I have never gotten into an accident because of it. Not even a close call. Why?? Because I pay more attention to the ROAD than to the PHONE.

That driver could have been fumbling with her satellite radio. She could have been looking for a CD that fell to the floor. She could have been sharing jokes with her passengers. Any NUMBER of things could have distracted her. Time to ban vehicular channel surfing and joke telling??

One of the top “Nanny State” politicians around, New York Assemblyman Felix Ortiz (a favorite of ours to interview on Fox Across America) has joined forces with a Republican New York Senator to sponsor a bill that would outlaw…drum roll please…text messaging while driving. Ortiz is already responsible for taking hand held cell phones away from New York drivers. Now he wants to go after text messaging.

All because of a tragedy that could very well have happened whether the driver was texting or not.

So now millions of people might have yet ANOTHER thing taken away from them. A tool that can be used for closing business deals or telling loved ones who much you miss them.

Thank goodness you probably aren’t reading this blog while driving. I wouldn’t want to have blogs taken away because you got into a wreck.

Spinning the Bottle

Bottled water is causing global warming. At least President Bush isn't to blame this time. Unless we find that he owns stocks in the bottled water industry. You know Cheney MUST, right?

Radical environmentalists are now going after that bottled water you were about to take a sip out of. You see, it requires so much energy to MAKE those bottles. A spokesman for a Washington D.C. based environmental group claims that an estimated 47 million gallons of oil are used to make all those bottled waters Americans consume. And they end up clogging up our landfills, too. Wow. All these stats are making me thirty. Excuse me as I twist off the cap to my nice, cold BOTTLED water.

Snobby restaurants from San Francisco to Manhattan have put bottled water on ice. Tap water is the new reverse trend, kind of like paying extra for clothes that have tears in them already. Messed up hair is the new cool hairdo. Go figure.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has banned bottled water from city agencies. Los Angeles won't allow city money to buy bottled water.
You have to laugh when cities like San Francisco claim it saves millions of dollars a year, considering the City wants tax payers to pay for SEX CHANGES for city employees!! This from the City where child molesters and stalkers are allowed to march around as if they are the annointed ones. UNREAL.

Where are all the pro-choicers NOW?? I can't drink a bottle of water now without being looked at like I am raping the planet?? Where is the protection of MY choices??

Thank goodness the bottled water industry is fighting back against this stupidity. The Bottled Water Information Office claims that 727 million plastic bottles were recylced in American in 2004. Bottles are made out of plastic and glass, some of the most common recyled materials.

I don't WANT to drink tap water. I LIKE my bottled water. And last time I checked, I am still living in what appears on most days to be the United States of America.
So spin the bottle and pass me a glass full of ice, please. It's time for me to destroy the known universe. Gulp. Aaaaahhhhhh. Good stuff.

Please Don’t Hurt My Doggy!

Please Don’t Hurt My Doggy!

By Spencer Hughes

9 July 2007

I am having rage issues lately. Doggy rage issues.

We just moved into a new house and the neighbors all seem pretty cool. At least the human neighbors are nice.

But there is one neighbor the size of a six pack of beer that is threatening to give me a nervous breakdown. A Chihuahua. At least I THINK that’s the kind of dog it is. Looks more like a rat than anything else. A barking rat. A barking rat that keeps getting into our backyard.

Its owner keeps patching the holes it digs under our shared fence. And I do the same. Gravel. Sand. ROCKS. BIGGER rocks. NO GOOD. Nothing works.

This dog is trying to break me. Not only does it dig and get into the yard, it just walks up to our dog and yaps at it. YAP. YAP. YAP YAP. It is THE most annoying dog I have ever encountered.

I have tried to befriend it. Every morning when I take out the garbage, there it is. Standing on OUR lawn, yapping at ME! I talk to it. Try to pet it. I even offered snacks to try to get him to crack. NOTHING.

We are having a pool built and they dug the big hole this past weekend. I told the neighbor it would be a safety issue for his dog. He didn’t seem too concerned. Maybe he hates the dog as much as I do. So this morning, there it was…yapping away at the giant hole in the middle of our yard. Excuse me. HIS yard. He has done everything but erect a giant Chihuahua flag in the middle of our yard.

I feel run over and beat down. By a dog. And a little, yappy dog to boot. I actually had a dream that the little pooch had a construction accident when it got in the way of the plumbers. It disappeared for a few days and I was happy. That’s awful, isn’t it?

Well, not if you knew this dog.

And it’s owner doesn’t seem so nice to me anymore, either.

Is That a Bluetooth In Your Ear or Are You Just Talking To Yourself?

Remember the days when you saw someone talking up a storm to themselves in a car and the only conclusion you could make was that they were stark raving MAD?

Ah yes. The days before Bluetooth. It's hard to believe that in the not so distant past humans roamed the earth without little tacky devices hanging out of their ears. But that was then.

Now they are everywhere. And they drive me crazy. Just this morning I thought I identified a crazy driver. She was laughing and chatting and apparently entertaining just herself. But of course, that was not the case. As I passed her I saw her bionic ear blinking away.

I can't get myself to go down the Bluetooth route. Not yet. Not until they can make them as small as they make other technological gizmos. I mean, REALLY...do they HAVE to be so big and gaudy? Nope. My father has hearing aids (sorry Dad, I meant hearing "amplifiers") that are so tiny they can hardly be seen even close up. My theory is that the Bluetooth crowd WANTS to be seen.

glued to your head, I do NOT understand why so many people keep them on all the time. Wearing a Bluetooth in a restaurant should be as looked down upon as baseball caps used to be. SHOW SOME RESPECT, for goodness sakes. You are eating a meal, not sitting through the company's quarterly meeting.

I saw one guy that took the cake recently. He was at his son's FIRST COMMUNION...and he STILL couldn't find it in himself to take the darned cyborg impant off. Not even for an HOUR on a Sunday in church. I bet he wears it in the shower, too. And to bed.

So I am resisting the Bluetooth onslaught. Call me old fashioned, but I would rather have a phone to my head than a metallic blue slug dripping off my ear lobes.

It's a Dirty Job, But Someone Has to Doo It

At a time when politicians keep telling us about all the jobs Americans just won't do, it's refreshing to read about a job that apparently some Americans ARE doing. Take a guess. Nope. Try again. Not even close. Give up?

How about dog poop scooper. Yes, it's true.

Think about it. If you have a dog, you have a mess. Either in the yard, the front lawn, the garage, or dog run. There WILL be doggie stuff. And who wants to deal with that? And everyone who has a dog knows that if you miss even one day, the piles begin to grow out of control. Never mind if you miss a few days or more.

So instead of putting on the gloves or grabbing the doggie bags, some people are hiring out and PAYING people to do this dirty deed.

And some people are more than willing to do it. Hey, if I had a little more time on my hands, I would consider it myself. Why not? Customers are paying between $10 and $20 a week for this service. That's chump change, you might say. But not if you have 10 customers. Or 20. Or 100. Depending on your free time and your determination to get the word out, you could make yourself some nice vacation or play money.

I HATE doing it myself. Or at least, I hate the THOUGHT of doing it. But I have to admit, once I get into the groove, it isn't so bad. It really IS almost like putting golf balls , as one employee described it. What's the big deal? Put on thick rubber gloves, grab the scooper and the hefty bag, and make some money doing a job you wouldn't dream Americans would do. But they ARE doing them. Because Americans are the most innovative entrepreneurs on earth, in my opinion.

This is the most clever business idea since the lemonade stand. Although I admit, not as appealing on a hot day as a nice tall cold one.

So don't be surprised if you see an ad one day for "Hughes Removes: K-9 Waste Removal Services".

Why not?

Woof woof.

Give Me a Signal…I BEG You!

My family and I just went through the move from Hell. The whole process was riddled with frustration, stupidity, and terrible customer service. And now that we are in our new, wonderful home…the angst continues.

Our cell phone coverage has gone from barely adequate to non-existent. It is so bad that all of our calls go straight to voice mail. We have to walk out of our house and into an empty field to get even ONE bar of signal strength.

We did not move to Mount Everest. Hundreds of families are moving into this booming community. Many have already lived here for YEARS. There is NO excuse to not have the area blanketed with cell coverage.

So what does the cell phone provider tell me? That the MAP shows we have great service! That the MAP shows we have great signal strength. Excuse me, but I don’t care what the stinking map says…we get NOTHING. Nothing but a mountain of dropped call and missed call carcasses.

Then I needed to call AAA because my car battery died.

When I complained AGAIN to the provider…the customer service agent got testy with me and told me to “let her finish and not interrupt”. Oh man, did I go crazy on her THEN.

“No, YOU don’t interrupt ME. I am the reason you have this job. I am the person who is paying your wages. You don’t talk to me like that. You talk to your customers with RESPECT. I have been a loyal, paying customer for several years.”

CLICK.

Um…excuse me?? Did she just HANG UP on me?!?! She did. I was LIVID. I called RIGHT back and reported her unbelievably rude and unacceptable behavior. The next agent was much nicer and promised me that she would report the other employee’s misconduct. They can play her back on the recorded call and hear for themselves.

Oh, did I mention that we have no service on our HOME telephone, either? Yep. Looks like the phone company not only didn’t install our phone line when they ensured us they would, they aren’t even bothering to call us BACK to EXPLAIN or RESCHEDULE. They just aren’t calling us back for some mysterious and infuriating reason.

I feel like Bruce Willis in THE SIXTH SENSE…I keep talking but people act like I’m not even there. Maybe I am starring in the sequel and nobody told me.

I am now convinced that we will make contact with intelligent extra terrestrial life before I get a signal from my home or a call back from the phone company. Oh wait…I think I see the mothership now.