In My America

In My America - a reading (on YouTube)

Flat tax. I like this idea. In my America all men were created equal. No one should have to pay more. Let's see, $3.6 Trillion/330 million. That's only $11,000 each person in this country owes each year. A bargain at twice the  price. That's every man, woman and child. No exceptions, no deductions. Add another $3000 a year and we'll eliminate the debt in 12 years. That's only $56,000 a year for the average family of four.

But Ed, I can't afford that. It's way too much. Ok, just for you, citizen, let's see what we can do.

In my America, we don't support freeloaders. Let's cut out all that Other Mandatory spending. I don't know what it pays for anyway (Welfare, Food Stamps, Congressional pay, Military pensions, VA benefits, etc). That saves us each $1400 a year. Every hand to the wheel and nose to the grindstone.

In my America, we believe in smaller government. We don't need all that Discretionary spending (EPA, FDA, State Dept., Justice, FAA, CDC, NASA, Parks, etc.). Sounds like an alphabet soup of subsidies and job killing regulation. There's another $2000 a year we each just saved.

In my America, healthcare is a privilege, not a right. It's time to say goodbye to Medicare and Medicaid. Though I'd put that $2500 a year you save under a mattress, because when you're old and sick it will cost you an order of magnitude more. Though maybe you could just die sooner. That sure would keep medical costs down for the rest of us.

In my America, we take personal responsibility for our own retirement. No more Social Security or Disability. Though I'd invest that $2200 a year wisely, perhaps in something with a lot of growth potential. I'm thinking a mortgage derivative fund.

In my America, the Founding Fathers never intended for us to keep a standing army. If you love this country, you'll truly volunteer. And bring your own gun (because in my America, we take the 2nd Amendment seriously). Your civic-mindedness will save your fellow citizens another $2100 a year. The Minutemen are doing a bang-up job of holding down the border in Arizona.

What's that leave us? Oh, right, just the interest payments on the debt. A paltry $700 a year. Plus you still owe that $3000 a year for the next three Administrations. But we can't eliminate either of those. Because in my America, we always pay our debts.

But Ed, what will we do with the people who can't or won't pay (all those pesky poor, elderly, disabled, and, oh yeah, the children)? In my America, we'll punish them like God intended: Debtor's Prison, to the seventh generation if necessary. Hell, I'm from the South: we know how to get our money out of prisoners by putting them to work. And we don't coddle anybody. That'll solve the unemployment problem in one throw. Two birds, one stone.

The more I think about it, the more I like it. Fair's fair, right? I'll stroke my check tomorrow.


© 2012 Edward P. Morgan III

Feeling Fay

Or is that fey? After this weekend, I get the two confused.

I am waiting here to see what this storm will do, where she eventually decides to go, left, right, near, far, dead-ahead, engines full, damn the torpedoes, full stop. The models are making me dizzy. And does anyone else lie awake at 2 a.m. in mortal fear of being wiped out by the middle name of a notorious tele-evangelist's wife so desperately in need of an ironic queer eye intervention?

For all the blogs I've read, all the models I've studied, and all the analysis and discussion to which I've listened, I've found the experts seem to have missed the most telling predictive statistic of all: the perishable to comfort food ratio.

Before I explain, a full disclosure: This is a personal tracking model, not meant to guide anyone but FEMA and the criminally insane in whatever passes for their emergency storm preparations. This is one in a long line of models I've found to be mildly predictive only to be discarded for an unspecified draft choice at a later date, as I'm sure this one will become early Wednesday morning.

First I had the George W. Bush a.k.a. "Bring 'em on" model. In that one, the probability of landfall is inversely proportional to the individual desire of me and my friends to see what would happen if it did. I highly recommend this model to renters, the very young and anyone who has an evacuation room on retainer and speed-dial in the Atlanta Marriott Marquis and is already on the way. Oh, and the more than adequately insured, if that endangered species hasn't been entirely snuffed out by the good hands of Allstate around their neck as our good neighbors at State Farm enthusiastically cheer them on. This model worked really well at keeping the storms at bay in Florida through the seventies and eighties, at least until they did the transgender surgery that transformed half the hurricanes into him-icanes and David left me without power for ten solid days. Though that did teach me the powerful lesson of doing laundry BEFORE landfall. Key safety tip, half a score of sultry days in un-air conditioned as the natives and settlers experienced it Florida really leaves one wanting for a fresh and clean change of underwear each morning.

Next came the Fools and Small Children a.k.a. "Where Angels Fear to Tread" model. Ok, I never tested this one on hurricanes specifically. But initial results seemed quite promising as I listened at the back door a few months after we'd bought our first home as a freight train rolled one hundred yards behind the house around tree-top level before slamming down into the power substation half a mile away and sending pretty green and pink fireballs reflecting off the low and looming clouds, one of seven tornadoes that spun through the county that day. But once I saw the custom modifications to the house I'd just moved out of with its cinderblock wall bowed out as though following a French curve, and its garage to sliding glass door through the living room now a breezeway with its porch still intact and screened, I set this one aside with a full field testing. Scares me and I'm fearless.

Now I've settled on a new predictive tool, the perishable to comfort food ratio, a corollary of the preparation to paralysis principle. It works like this. You see a storm develop in the basin, so after a few days of constant panic on every station you watch you start tuning in to see where the weather experts think it might go. Or, if you're really lucky, an expert you know nails an e-mail to your electronic door every few hours when you've just convinced yourself after the last one that if you ignore it, perhaps Ms. Martin Luther and her hurricane reformation will eventually go away. It worked for a few generations of popes, didn't it? As you watch the black center line dance just left and right of your current coordinates in a personal cone of uncertainly over the one weekend you'd hoped to kick back and relax before the other four bowling balls you have in the air simultaneously come crashing down on your head, you think, hmm maybe I should do something to prepare. The problem is, you know the more you do, the less likely the storm is to actually affect your location.

This is a model rich in irony. Flood insurance due to kick in next Friday? Oow, three points toward landfall. Hurricane windows ordered but not installed? That's a five point deduction, mister. Have all your wood and shutters pre-cut though buried under the pile of donations to Friends of Strays in your garage, that's one point in your favor. Full tank of gas that you didn't have to wait four hours in line as they raised the prices ten times at twenty-five cents a pop while the state price-gouging inspector topped off his personal fleet of SUVs at a discount? Another point. Larder stocked with military-grade surplus rations designed to survive the nuclear winter? One more against landfall. Have enough camping equipment and shotgun ammo stockpiled in the back closet to turn an Army Ranger green with envy and send Dick Cheney's logistics officer to note your precise location for a midnight raid to restock the Vice President's secret bunker? Sure, take another point. A whole house generator that you had to fight off a pack of eight other rabid homeowners from a co-op and their children Florentine-style with only a bonsai potting spade and a cast-iron garden rake during a hurricane-preparation tax holiday weekend? That's two more to your running total. Finally, spending two hours pulling all the brick-a-brack, whirligigs and potted plants from your porch and yard then digging out your pre-cut shutters from the detritus you've buried them beneath since 2004 instead of watching Olympic sports you didn't know had been invented but are suddenly consumed with a burning desire to see the medal ceremony for just so that you can hear what the National Anthem of Balukhastan actually sounds like nets the same three points you will lose by sitting on the couch until midnight to see if the Tamil True Hollywood Story athlete gains the first ever synchronized shuffleboard bronze for his country in Olympic history despite being afflicted with dengue fever and the overwhelming case of steroid-induced munchies that caused the diplomatic incident with the prime minister elect of India during the opening ceremony that has now led to the inexplicable civil war in nearby Myanmar.

And you can blow that hedge simply by going to the grocery store for a few last minute food stocks, and loading up instead on five pounds of fresh Alaskan sockeye salmon on sale for a tragically deep discount while thinking, what are the odds that we lose power for more than two days like we did after every storm in the 2004 season, even the ones in the Pacific? That type of catastrophic maneuver is only fractionally compensated for by the two jumbo cans of Hormel chunk chicken-flavored meat-like product and the last box of stale Triscuits whose seal is broken that you purchased anyway, you know, just in case.

But the real test comes when you get home with your largess and weigh out the total amount of perishables in your freezer, with double points for steak and any fish for which you paid over $10 a pound, against all the cookies, cupcakes and chocolate you splurged on and started sampling on the drive home to comfort you through the coming multi-day power outage that inevitably comes with any rain more severe than an afternoon thunderstorm, and, you know, to keep your energy up for the ensuing couch potato marathon as you wait. You may add to that the half-gallon of ice cream you just have to eat before the Florida Flash and Flicker melts it to the consistency of coffee creamer perfectly convenient for your cold morning cup of instant Joe from your overflowing supply closet. Bet you didn't know that Starbucks made an organic, free-trade, free-range, freeze-dried blend specifically for the Pentagon, did you?

I'm sad to say that alcohol consumption actually weighs in on the non-hurricane provision side of the equation. The more you drink pre-storm, the more likely it is you will need to stay frosty as the roof peels back from your only retirement investment and your neighbor's garden gnome slams through your front picture window to raid your dwindling supply of D-cell batteries. Though, oddly, the more you've consumed, the more likely you are to survive the Wizard-of-Oz-esque, we're-not-in-Kansas-anymore-but-I-sure-wish-I-was-wearing-ruby-slippers-anyway tornadic event only to be rescued by the Coast Guard three miles out in the Gulf drifting on your neighbor's stained and sagging mattress in your wife's anniversary-only, special black lace underwear with the local Geraldo clone from Fox News covering the event live from Chopper 5 for Bill O'Reilly the full national feed. But that's a whole other formula.

And there lies both the beauty and bliss of this particular model. The more you do, the less likely you are to need it. But count on that, and, Wha-Bam, the next thing you will remember is waking up with Katie Couric interviewing your neighbor's garden gnome who has miraculously carved someone else's insurance claim number into your suddenly overgrown and weed-infested lawn with pruning shears in a crop circle reminiscent of "Signs" while you sleep under a lean-to constructed from the last intact piece of your roof sheathing within one thousand yards until the postal carrier wakes you to sign for the return-receipt final-notice bill from FEMA enforceable by Homeland Security for the truck-load of ice, gasoline and generators they dropped off to your neighbor three doors down who proceeded to black market it at prices that would shame a rogue Halliburton buying agent in the Green Zone under your name.

Yeah, that will probably be me you see in my fifteen minutes of fame next weekend.


© 2008 Edward P. Morgan III

Trash Migration

Trash Migration - a reading (on YouTube)

Here at the house, our trash gets collected twice each week, Monday and Thursday. While we're lucky if we put out one barrel once a week, our neighbors are much more prolific in their trash generation. Every Sunday and Wednesday, we are privileged to witness the rare trash migration that occurs next door.

It starts before dawn with us waking to find one trash can perched like a pillar at the edge of the curb. It stands as a lone sentry for most of the morning, a kind of bellwether guardian to ensure the remainder of the herd will be safe as they approach. One by one over the course of the next several hours, individual cans cluster around their leader until, by evening, three to four well-stuffed barrels have colonized the banks of the asphalt stream. Only then does the young, less contained trash of the herd, the miscellaneous boxes, bags and household detritus, feel safe enough to emerge from hiding and cling to the handles of their elders. Once weekly, they are joined by their low, squat cousins, the recycling bins, always arriving in pairs, usually after a heavy feeding. Some days, they bring snacks of bundled yard waste to see them through the long, dark night until collection the next morning.

Each week, they remain quite cautious. In my twenty years of observation, I've never seen the herd rush the curb en masse. Perhaps the subtropical heat holds them to a slower pace. Perhaps it's their natural shyness or an instinct for self-preservation against the packs of salvage scavengers and rogue recyclers that circle the neighborhood. Perhaps only one or two ever make the migration at all and breed at the curb in some unwitnessed mating ritual or asexual budding. I'm not sure we'll know unless we set up a scent-masked blind with a motion-sensing, night-vision camera to monitor their diurnal rhythms in this their natural habitat.

But we must be quick or by morning all we'll find are their empty carcasses. The grunting, grinding predator that roams the asphalt river is large and its appetite nearly insatiable.

© 2011 Edward P. Morgan III

Squirrel Conclave

Squirrel Conclave - a reading (on YouTube)

Yesterday, as I was looking out the office window, I saw the neighbor's cat go tearing across the front yard, chasing after something out of sight. One of our cats, on the bookshelf behind me, was suddenly very interested. So I went to another window, and sure enough, there was the neighbor's cat with a squirrel in his mouth. I headed for the door, hoping for a rescue, but by the time I got outside, the cat and squirrel were nowhere in sight. I looked around, but saw no sign. Once I got back to the driveway, I heard a squirrel in one of the front oaks screeching a warning like they do, only somewhat off-key. To me, it sounded mournful.

This morning, I look out the office window and see three small squirrels playing in the grass. Tentatively, they chase one another up one of the front oaks. Two more join them. The five of them run down and across the street. Another two cross from the neighbor's yard. Ok, that's seven squirrels. They chase each other up the neighbor's palm tree, and back down, still friendly. Then they sit in a three-by-three foot area, most up on their hind legs as if posing for a picture. Another crosses the street to join them, and, finally, two more. That makes a total of ten squirrels that I can see.

Uh, oh, this doesn't look good. I've never seen this many squirrels in one small space before. Maybe there's some sort of conclave going on. Maybe it's a mass migration. Maybe they think the neighborhood has gone downhill. Or maybe they're plotting revenge against the neighbor's cat. I'd better keep our own off the porch today, just in case.

Now, without ever seeing any squirrels cross back, I've got a normal compliment in the front yard again, eating the hibiscus flowers, drinking from the birdbath, romping in the oaks. All the ones across the street have vanished. One or two more cross, but by then the congregation has dispersed. The conclave is over. Maybe they've selected a new leader. Or elected a new pope. I don't see any white smoke. Just gray tails swishing in the breeze.

Ok, maybe I should go lie down. It's been a rather strange morning.

© 2011 Edward P. Morgan III

Der Panzer Toaster

Der Panzer Toaster - a reading (on YouTube)

On Saturday we went shopping for a new microwave to replace our 21 year-old model which had started to emit more and more of ozone each time we turned it on. While in Bed, Bath & Beyond, I contracted a serious case of techno-lust and felt compelled to check in on an old friend in the small appliance section, Der Panzer Toaster.

I spotted this beast a few years ago. It's a toaster-oven made by Krups, a name reminiscent of the German arms manufacturer during WWII, though an entirely different company as I understand it. This is one serious device. It has solid, German construction, blocky and heavy. It has digital controls, the high-tech communications package of toaster ovens. It has an ultra-modern, matte black, baked on stealth-style enamel coating. Behind the door it has six quartz heating elements, three top, three bottom, that draw more power than the average microwave oven, a whopping 1.6 kW. It has a Teflon coated drip-pan liner. It has enough room inside to swallow a frozen pizza or a house a bevy of Cornish game hens.

If you were to put this machine on treads, it would roam the counter at night and demand the surrender of other kitchen electronics, forcing the small appliances into forming alliances to oppose it. First, it would incorporate the coffee maker into its empire, which the Braun bean grinder would likely betray. Then, the crock pot, the bread machine and the blender would dig in, forming a ceramic, glass and steel Maginot Line. But they, too, would fall when it outflanked their defenses through the forest of oregano and basil in the spice countries. The garbage disposal would resist valiantly but soon shut down, leaving the dishwasher in an untenable position.

Emboldened, Der Panzer Toaster would cross the sink unopposed. One by one, it would conquer the mini-chopper, the hand mixer, and finally the stick blender. With the digital scale and the kitchen timer under siege, only the microwave could hold out on its own for long, and only because it occupies a separate island on a separate circuit breaker. Ultimately, even it would fail unless the refrigerator revoked its neutrality and brought its technological prowess to bear quickly, first by exploiting Der Panzer Toaster's one known weakness and coating the linoleum in a frozen, arctic tundra, followed by opening a second front across the channel to the butcher-block that houses the kitchen knives. Even then, it would be a long, hard slog to liberate the appliances that had fallen under Der Panzer Toaster's shadow. And who knows what cold war might ensue should the conventional oven decide to pursue an independent strategy and occupy its own client states.

As much as I admire that kind of innovative technological initiative, that's not the behavior I'm looking for in a small kitchen appliance. So I left it on the shelf, purring like a Bengal tiger as it dreamed of stainless steel, gourmet glory in someone else's kitchen.

© 2011 Edward P. Morgan III

Morgans 2, Ginger 1

Morgans 2, Ginger 1 - a reading (on YouTube)

And now, your sports update: In the final round of the best-of-three competition, the wild ginger in the Morgans' backyard has been eliminated from the tournament on aggregate, 2-1.

You may remember the quick growing vegetation scored an easy win in the first round of play by deploying an often seen but difficult to counter surprise "mold defense" effectively neutralizing half the Morgan team. With no substitutes available, they were forced to play shorthanded the remainder of the match. Wild ginger took a bit of a mauling, but nothing it couldn't recover from given time.

In round two the Morgans came in prepared and dug out the invasive weed's visible defense in a hard day's hacking and sawing. Though team Morgan tried to soften up team Ginger for the next match with their newly acquired striker, Roundup, the weedy herb shrugged off his spray of shots. But the Morgans held onto their early goal for an eventual, but not decisive victory.

In the weeks leading up to this final confrontation, both sides rested their key players. Team Ginger's training regimen included digging in under the six-inch gap between the chainlink and wood fencing bordering the pitch, possibly thinking it had found a home-field advantage having detected a weakness in the Morgans' previous attacks.

In round three both teams pulled out all the stops. Team Ginger hunkered down in a bunker defense, while team Morgan pondered their best strategy for an attack. The wild root deployed mildly effective carpenter ant midfield formation, followed by a quick counterattack from a ringer on loan from team Wolf Spider, sending half of team Morgan into her screaming wiggly dance (sometimes confused with her victory celebration). She toppled into the remaining Roundup, effectively sidelining him for the remainder of the game. By halftime, team Ginger had once again fended of countless shots from the Morgans' heavy-handed, ax-wielding strikers. Team Morgan seemed on the brink of collapse from exhaustion and the heat.

After what can only be described as an amazing motivational speech from their coach, team Morgan returned to the pitch reinvigorated and with a novel new strategy. Dropping back some 6000 years, they employed a formation that at first team Ginger didn't recognize but soon realized it couldn't counter unless team Morgan's fitness gave out once again in the noontime heat. But that was not to be. Hamstrung in its earlier attempt at digging in by the groundskeeper's overnight undercutting, the wild ginger could find little purchase on the pitch in the second half. Just before penalty kicks would have decided the final outcome, the Morgans' rediscovered formation (nicknamed "The Lever") finally carried the day.

Next up for team Morgan: a classic matchup with their cross-yard rival, team Sprinkler. This one promises to be a long, muddy slog of a campaign.

And that's your sports update.

© 2011 Edward P. Morgan III