Year Of The Ox 4707
13 May 2009 AD
Wednesday, 0937 hrs. CST
Stormcrow Ranch
Boone, IA
USA
"Squirrel Corn Capital of The World"
"Banking should not be exciting. If banking is exciting there is something wrong with it."
~~Clay Ewing, president of German American Bancorp, a community bank in Jasper, Ind.
~~quoted from The New York Times, 11 May 2009
When I was in Oklahoma, I had the opportunity—for once—to pay a bill in a timely manner. I stepped up to the counter with a c-note in my long-fingered hand and attempted to pay the tab for my cellphone.
“You are from Iowa, sir?”
“Yes ma’am. Land of cow and corn. Maybe you’ve heard of it. Nice place northeast of here. Just south of where Laverne Johnson’s barn burned down thirty years ago.”
“Uh huh. And you have an account with us?”
“Yeeesss.” I sensed trouble, but continued.
“Do you have a credit card?”
“No. It is illegal for me to use one. Some kind of federal thingy. Big guys in dark suits, that kind of stuff.”
“Uh huh. Sir, you can’t use that.”
“I beg your pardon. What?”
“We don’t accept cash for your account.”
“What?”
“It’s out of state.”
“What?”
“Credit card, debit card, money order, cashier’s check, or bank draft. Also only a local check with three forms of ID,” she recited.
“What?”
“ID? Identification. Passport, driver’s license, gun permit, fishing license, voter registration, social security card, AARP membership card, eBay PayPal account….”
“Wait. No. What?”
“AARP? At your age, there are certain benefits….”
“No. No. That other thing you said, the first part.”
She sighed. “No cash.”
I stepped back. “Kay. Sorry about the Iowa joke. Let’s start over: I’d like to pay my bill, please, and here is a one hundred dollar bill. I’d like my change in tens, if you would be so kind. I….”
“I can’t help you sir.”
“This is a hundred dollars! I worked ten hours to earn it! Okay Okay. Granted. I took a long lunch that one day… but this is still a hundred dollars! American money. Cherished by drug cartels, hemorrhaged by Congress, currently worth 83% of its original value…”
“Sir, no cash…”(And then, the killer): “It’s policy.”
“This is money! Cash money. Moolah! Cabbage! Scratch! Big coin!”
“I’m sorry sir. We do not accept cash for accounts based out of state. It’s policy.”
I stormed out, seething.
I stormed back in. “I’m only 46 I’ll have you know!”
I stormed out again (Well, almost—I ran into the doorjamb. Woulda been pretty cool otherwise. Very dramatic).
It was right about here I had a stroke, I think. My brain turned to small-curd cottage cheese—not the good kind; the cheap stuff that always smells like it’s about 30 seconds from expiration:
I stormed back in again, shaking a raised fist. “Canadia!” I shouted. “Radishes! Tiny, biting weasels!! Duc l’orange! The capital of South Dakota is Pierre! Bacon…!” Ooh, and I meant it too. Every damn word. Man, I was hot.
I stormed back out again in a stomping rage.
The police arrived shortly after I left, I guess. There was an account in The Lincoln County News (OK) later that week. Something about a crazed terrorist with dyslexic aphasia and a goofy haircut. ‘I think he was Cajun,’ reported one witness. ‘He spoke French with a weird accent. Didn’t understand English. Mighta been Norwegian.’
The police report no leads at this time, but the investigation is continuing.
"Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men's protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, 'Account overdrawn.'"
~~ Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged.
For years I’ve had problems with--and been troubled by—banks not accepting other banks’ checks. I sorta understand this: it takes a lot of work to enter the MICR code, those numbers at the bottom of checks, and exorbitant fees need to be applied. Especially, since very expensive machines do all the work. Said machines managed and maintained by whole teams of well-paid individuals who also have trouble cashing their checks at ‘alien’ banks
But then, about three years ago, I started having trouble with stores not accepting money orders unless it was one of their own. This makes no sense. I always considered money orders to be between cash and personal checks but more honest, in a way, since they were backed by cash rather than the creative financing all of us practice in our Hello Kitty embossed personal checkbooks (Uh, not that I had one. Mine was, er, ‘Super Heroes.’ Yeah. Super Heroes)
I got over that, and learned to work around it, spending cash only, or shopping only at places where I had bought the MO’s to begin with some weeks prior (I admit. I do have a certain penchant for spending cash, and since, due to legal issues I’d just soon not discuss, I really can’t maintain a checking account. But I do have the presence of mind to plan ahead, and money orders were a way to keep cash out of my pocket while still holding money in reserve).
Then this cash thing. It was my first experience, and not a good one. Nothing like my first St. Pauli Girl beer, tell-you-what. Since when did using money become like herding squirrels--all crazed, and rabid, and fraught with untold headaches and hassles? It’s American money spent in America! Shouldn’t it all be the same?! After all, isn’t a U.S. driver’s license legal in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.? Same country, and the same laws. Shouldn’t our national currency be the same?
Every paper note printed in the United States has these words on it: “THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE.” Now, unless the definition of ‘all’ has changed and I missed that memo from Harvard School of Law, and the up-date from Merriam-Webster Universal Dictionary of English, Unabridged on-line, with said contract (and it is, by definition, a contract), I should have been able to pay my bill with that Franklin.
(Sigh). I suppose I could pursue this: Hire lawyers, subpoena bank records, arbitrate in some class-action torts involving payments in nickels and pennies, but really, it comes to this: It’s your life; choose who controls it.
“The laws of science do not distinguish between the past and the future. Yet, there is a big difference between past and future in ordinary life….
The increase of disorder or entropy is what distinguishes the past from the future, giving a direction in time.”
~~Dr. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History Of Time
I’m looking at the lone ten-dollar bill I have in my possession at the moment. Hamilton looks toward the future apparently, just to my left. On the reverse is a very nice engraving of the U.S. Treasury--that big empty building near the East Coast--and inscribed above that are these words: ‘In God We Trust.’
I think I’ll just go with that—a very strange and juxtaposing, oxymoronic image. Seems oddly appropriate, given this day and age.
But I’m still going to,
Rage, rage,…
~~Hob
Year Of The Ox 4707
May 9th, 2009 AD
Saturday, 2124 hrs. CST
Stormcrow Ranch
Boone, IA
USA
"Squirrel Corn Capital of The World"
I have been away, but those miles are behind me now, and I will speak of my adventures in a later post.
Today is dedicated to words. And a lesson on listening.
The lesson first: I said some months ago that the national debt would get about so far out of range, it would be hard to contemplate. I wasn't wrong, was I? For once, I am not sorry to say 'I told you so.' Like many of you, I chose to believe in a change, in a better way. I did not vote for President Obama, though I had high hopes he might make government honest again when he did win. And I did not vote for Senator McCain either. To me, he was not 'strong' enough to be president. No, my vote went elsewhere. And that is my business, and my opinion only.
I made a choice, and somewhere, somehow it was noted, in one of the things which politicians note and track('Hob, red-head, given to proclivities, monstrous in his habits, a credit rating lower than his cholesterol reading; likes to read, writes like a third-grade hack, cooks with real butter, secretly enjoys the smell of lilacs, cinnamon and cardamon, harasses and harangues telephone solicitors for fun, a bit over-weight and has a weak chin. Hates morons and Congress, or self-same. Favorite salad dressing is Italian, blood type A+. A Person Of Interest, and currently on The No-Fly List to points East of Omaha, NE and points west of Tulsa, OK. Also a registered Republican'). I think I was grouped in the Undecided/Independent category exit polls. Hard to tell. Numbers don't lie but people do.
Aany-waay, what was saying was this: Pay attention to stuff; listen and learn. There is so much out here to just blithely walk toward the Oblivion. Be right wing, be left-wing, be an umbrella, or bark like a monkeydog---whatever, but please know your world.
Thus ends the lesson.
Now, to words. These have been in the press a lot lately, and I too needed to look them up. I used the Universal Dictionary published by American Standard Publishing, circa 1938. The starred items are my, ahem, additions( my lexicon is a bit more...flexible, shall we say).
Nepotism(n): the act of hiring one's family or those close to one's self; specifically for financial or political gain. *See also cronies/cronyism. *See also, lobbyist(s).
Malefience(n) a). harmfulness, hurtfulness; b). criminal, evil
Corruption(n): *See also Congress. *See also Dodd, Murther, UAW, et al.
Atrocity(n): montrously awful
To be fair, I'll allow nineteen hours for rebuttal--the same allowed for Republican and Independent Congressman to read the 1100 pages of the TARP Legislation. Aaand....go.
Look. Bottom line? I live in the greatest nation on earth and in the history of mankind. I am tired of the thieves and liars, of it being a given that all politicians are corrupt greedheads. I cannot--and do not--whole-heartedly adhere to the ideas put forth by the Tea Party crowds( in many ways it looked to me like a political Woodstock--some were just there for the show {aside: I predict a baby-boom in nine months}), but I do believe in what they were saying, which Dr. Suess put so eloquently in Horton Hears A Who: 'We are here!' and reiterated in the movie, Network: 'I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!!'
That's all. Seems simple enough. A fair wage for a good day's work? You bet. Cool. Happy to do it. Need a loan? Sure. Okay, but don't waste it, pay it back, and never ask again.
But when 'render unto Caesar,...' becomes 'render unto Caesar so Caesar can rob Paul to pay Peter to render unto Caesar,' well, that is just so wrong on so many levels it makes my teeth hurt and sounds like the plot of a Jerry Springer show.
It is little wonder I always,
Rage, rage,...
~Hob
