JamesSlusher.com

Losing things drives me nuts.  I absolutely hate losing things, so it’s lucky that I’m really good at finding them.  I have a system which involves backtracking over the last place I remember actually having it and then retracing my steps after that point, taking into account certain proclivities towards where I lay things down and the immediate environment.  If that fails, I start searching areas one by one and sealing them off as I finish with them.  I try to do it as thoroughly as possible and my guess is that I have close to a 99% success rate.  I tell Marilyn whenever I find something she has misplaced, “I am the finder of lost things“.  I say it in a real official voice (thus the bold font), so it makes it all the more impressive.

This system falls apart at the point when it is not contained to one area (my house for example) AND has been a lengthy span since I last remember having it.  This is the case with my video camera.  I haven’t thought about it for several months and can’t for the life of me remember where I had it last.  It could be in storage (in any number of boxes), it could be in the old house (doubtful, I looked where I thought it should be and it wasn’t there, but possible), it could be at my in-laws, it could be in the trunk of Marilyn’s car or even possibly in another unknown location.  I remember taking it somewhere for some reason, but can’t put my finger on it.  I remember talking to Robert Lee about another camera that was in the same case, but why and when and where escapes me.  It’s really upsetting, one because I want my camera and two because I begged for that particular, somewhat expensive video camera.  Just losing it like it was a Wal-Mart receipt is unacceptable.

Eureka!  As I typed that last sentence, I remembered where Robert and I had that conversation.  I jumped up and went to the living room (I’m at my in-laws) and sure enough, the case was in the corner.  Everyone at ease, this was only a test.

Ahem.

I am the finder of lost things.

If I ever became a bigwig in which I could invite powerful people to a party at my house, The Clintons would never be on the guest list.  I’ve watched them in action since 1992 and I can guarantee that when you invite them to your party they are gonna insult half the guests, be boorish and arrogant, and stay well past their welcome.

Nah, I’m inviting Republicans.  They always have a bunch of hookers and coke.

I watched I Am Legend with my lovely wife the other night.  LAME.  It had the feel of a much longer and much better movie that got edited into goofiness.  I think to have done it well it would have had to have been a trilogy.  I guess Will Smith doesn’t do trilogies.

The internal inconsistencies jumped out right away and distracted me from the otherwise cool premise.  I have to admit that I have always had a thing for the “last man on Earth” style stories.  I just wish they had done a better job of this one.  The transition points, the points that the direction of the story changed, were too pat, too easy.  And the ending was teh suck.  Any time you have a character doing a voice over at the end to explain wtf just happened, the ending sucks.  If that character were narrating all along (like in 300), that’s one thing.  Any other time, LAME.

I had been anticipating seeing this movie for quite some time and had never gotten around to it.  Now I wish I hadn’t, because my anticipation was much superior to the actual thing.

I worked for a private club during The Masters golf tournament.  Marilyn had worked for this same club last year and the guy who is in charge of the valet operation (Joe) had invited me to work this year, so I figured I would give it a try.

Wow.

It opened my eyes about The Masters, that is for sure. I knew there was money to be made, but I had no clue just how much is involved.  It was incredible.

The valets were an incredibly cool group of guys. There were 6 each day but only 3 worked all seven days and I was one of them. We only had one shift, which was all day.  And by “all day” I mean 6 A.M to midnight.  All day.  

The spot we parked the cars was actually over half a mile away from the club itself, so we had a shuttle van that would follow us down when we parked the cars that would carry us back up to the club for the next round.  We ragged that van out in a week.  It only had 8 miles on it when it was rented and it had 850+ at the end of the week.  That’s a bunch of 1.2 mile round trips.  The grey interior turned to a red clay color fairly early on despite my efforts to vacuum it out and keep it respectable.

The gelling of the team was pretty amazing.  We became tight-knit really fast, partly out of necessity to get the job done and partly because our personalities clicked.  The guy in the team I liked the least I really liked, making the job and it’s stresses much easier to bear.  There was plenty of stress to be had.  The 18 hour days are hard enough, but fighting traffic could be a bear (both pedestrian and vehicular)¹.  So the jokes and the willingness to help out/fill in/do what it takes made the whole thing much easier.  We shared our tips and starved together (the food from the kitchen was good, but getting it was a fight we often lost).  Hopefully I made a few new friends.

All-in-all it was a good experience and given the opportunity, I would be happy to do it again.

 ¹People must think that getting run over in Augusta is a not big deal, because moving vehicles on a busy street didn’t deter them from sauntering across any time they felt like it.

Playing a freeroll on Full Tilt Poker is like watching a kid with Down’s Syndrome beat up a bunch of paraplegics.

Mike Hampton is without a doubt the most worthless piece of human excrement ever to sully Major League Baseball and the Braves roster.  All these ailments cannot possibly be real. He is either a lying hypochondriac or the biggest wimp ever.  Perhaps both.  The Braves would be doing themselves a favor just to assign him to Triple A and hope that the indignity of it makes him retire early.

What a piece of crap.

My brother is shutting down the box that has been hosting this blog for some years now.  That means that I had to go out and get a new home.  The good news is that I get a fancy new version of WordPress.  The bad news is that I now own a bunch of buttons that aren’t linked to anything in a theme I’m not familiar with.  I will, however, be sorting all that out over the next few days.  And with the new version comes new features, so some cool things might be coming this way soon.

Or it could still be lame.  You never know.

Dear World:

Let me just put this out there now so no one is surprised by any future action I might take. The next person who, either directly or indirectly, suggests to me that the only reason I support Barack Obama for president is because “I like black people better” is getting the teeth knocked out of their mouth. Man, woman or child, friend, foe or family, it doesn’t matter. It’s happened 3 times now and I will not tolerate it a 4th.

The anger that this evokes from me has almost nothing to do with my views on race. What pisses me off to the highest level of pissivity, is the accusation of prejudice. That somehow, all things being equal, I’m going with the black people. And you know what? I might. But my views on the subject don’t deserve to be demeaned with a casual “he fancies black chicks” sort of condescension.

My wife is black. My in-laws (whom I currently live with and am deeply indebted to) are black. My kids are bi-racial. My best friend since high school and her daughter (who is my goddaughter) are black. So, yes, I love Black people.

Every single person I have been in a fight with since adulthood (if I recall correctly) is black. Every bully I have dealt with since 1984 is black. The only person who has ever spit on me is black. I have had Black men who I don’t know from Adam scream the most racially offensive stuff you can imagine at me on the street. So, yeah, I hate Black people.

The people who told those bullies to back off are black. The people who dusted me off after the fights are black. The girl who wiped the spit off me is black. The guys who screamed back at those men with me are black. So, indeed, I like Black people.

My experiences within the Black community are as wide and diverse as the people themselves. Which is to say, they run the gamut. Which is precisely my view of White people. Saying that I only like Barack Obama because he is black insults me as much as a Clinton (or McCain) supporter would be insulted by charges of racism in regards to their support.

Let’s recap: I like Barack Obama for his stances, for his policies and for his leadership abilities. If you insist that I only like him because he is black, I am going to SYFPH for you. In fact, it might not be much of a FPH once I’m done.

Thanks for your attention,

James