FLEET ENEMA

Am I alone on this or does Fleet Bank totally "Sucks Ass?" No I’m sure I’m not alone on this, because whenever I mention Fleet Bank to anyone they roll their eyes and say, "Jesus. That Bank Totally SUCKS ASS."

Case and point(s).

    About 7 months ago my wife and I go in to a Fleet Bank branch in Exeter, NH with nearly 50 percent cash down on a construction loan. After the all-knowing loan originator offers us unwelcome advice on waiting a year to build because we remind her of her son and his wife and that’s what she told them to do. I could give a flying squirrel about her son’s financial situation. I had researched this project to death and did not need anyone who had not done an ounce of research telling me to wait.

    Over the preceding 3 months I had come to the following realizations...

• We are now enjoying some of the lowest interest rates in 20 years.
• Framing lumber is at one of it's lowest prices 10 years due to the ailing Asian markets.
• I managed to get a General Contractor, do-it-yourselfers (like myself) dream of.

    After a week, we dropped Fleet Bank because they totally suck ass. Our phone conversation went a little like this...

Fleet Bank Boob- "Oh I was just going to call you Mr. Barker, you’re loan will be going through at 11% APR."

Me- "With a rate like that, why don't I just pay for the construction with my VISA card."

    Which brings me to my next bushel of proof that Fleet Bank "Totally SUCKS ASS."

    While in the process of moving, some bills got shuffled and misplaced. Not a biggy. But I happened to locate my Fleet VISA bill on the day it was due. 11/17. I immediately cut a check to pay the minimum and an extra $250. just for good measure. The very next week… declined in the check out isle. 11/23.
    I call Fleet, aware that they totally suck ass, and am put on hold for no less than 20 minutes or the exact amount of time you’d expect a bank that Totally Sucks Ass to keep you waiting. Finally getting a human on the phone, she tells me she’ll correct the problem, only to put me back on hold for another 10 minutes. After returning from her coffee break she tells me they have to wait for the check to clear because it’s over 250 dollars. I tell her I have draft protection to avoid situations like bounced checks. She puts me on hold again, but returns well within 5 minutes. "I’m sorry. That’s our policy. If a check is received that’s over 250 dollars we must wait for it to be cleared. But the good news is we’ll have your Fleet VISA card up and running by Thanksgiving."
    I ask to see this (supposed) policy in writing. She says, "Fine. We can put it in today’s mail for you." "Just FAX it to me now," I tell her. "We can’t do that. The rules are in another part of the world. 
    At this point my hand is gripping the phone a little tighter in a symbolic gesture of my desire to strangle the life out of my... phone. I tell her, "By the time you send it to me the issue of your (dumb-ass) policy on checks over $250, and how they effect my account, will be moot." She admits to this predicament, and I told her to cancel my account.

   Which brings me to this, my friends....

    When in the world did we, as a culture allow service industries to start treating us like crap... Like Fleet Bank treats most of it’s customers? I have very close relatives that love Fleet Bank, but bankers love deep pockets. Unfortunately most of the world is made up of people with moderately sized pockets. Does this give Fleet Bank the right to treat them all like second rate citizens? I would appreciate hearing your experiences with Fleet Bank. Use the Email link at the bottom of this page.

    I will forever boycott this bank as I do Bournival Motors of Portsmouth. They are pure crap on my shoes and are doing everything they can to prove that Bigger is not better… it TOTALLY SUCKS ASS!

Next time we will return to the trials and tribulations of building a home. Keep your checkbook fully loaded and set to full power.

A Moving Experience

When we last touched base with Mr. Gripe He was all filled to the brim with stories of the trials and tribulations of building a house…. All the while, forgetting that his house was about to be sold from right underneath him.

To be sure, moving-it-yourself is not for the faint of heart. Psychiatrist place moving a home on the Top Ten most stressful things experienced in life. It’s right up there with the loss of a loved one, divorce and making a wrong turn in Brooklyn.

So... You Want To Build A house?

    Between now and (hopefuly December '97) "Stan's Gripes of Wrath" will divert from it's usual "Angry Young Man" format and focus on my experiences with building a new home. I believe this will provide regular visitors with something new to read on a regular basis, as well as give insightful information to look for and avoid when attempting this sort of monumental undertaking.

So let's saddle up... it's time to answer the rhetorical question...
"So... you want to build a house?"

    It's now been about 8 months since we started this home building project. It's also time I started writing about this stuff. 8 months is by no means an indication that the project is nearing completion. In fact, we just broke ground last week. I can actually hear the reverse beepers of the backhoes as I'm writing this.
    History Lesson: In December of 1997 my wife and I became aware of a nice piece of land less than a mile from our current home. It's on a dead end road of young homes, all with underground utilities, young families... the whole package. The lot consists of some 7.5+ acres, a large field, a line of trees and some old stone walls. 3 of the acres make up the field on top of a lovely southern sloping hill. This is where the house is to be built. The remaining 4-5 acres is mostly wooded with an access path leading to 500 feet on a river named after one of God's ugliest aquatic creatures... the Lamprey eel.
    After securing the land directly from the owner, we started looking around for a builder. One that would allow a certain level of owner "Sweat Equity" without rolling his eyes. One that would keep us abreast of the latest advances in construction technology. But most of all... one that would work for FREE!!! This one we never found. Most importantly we needed one we could trust. The best way to find someone you can trust is to ask friends (the ones you trust) about builders they trust. It's "Trust by Association." We spread the net far and wide and came up with 6... whittled it down to 3 and grilled the last ones on everything from cost/square foot to past projects and references. We ran their names past the Better Business Bureau and talked with the owners of the homes they'd already built. You should consider this a minimal amount of investigation. At last, we found a General Contractor who's name I will keep to myself until we're through. Suffice it to say... so far, so good.
    Unless you have extremely deep pockets, we found it can help smooth things out if you finance the construction. Look for a bank that specializes in construction loans. These banks usually have programs designed to make it easy for the builder to get disbursements rapidly. The faster the builder gets his money for work done, the faster the whole project should move along. On your end, a bank that handles a lot of construction loans also may have a plan that will allow for a single closing. They close on the construction loan first then convert to a traditional mortgage upon satisfactory completion of the project. I won't "slam" the first bank we went to because they are huge and can use their fleet of powerful money brokers to financially cripple New Hampshire in order to get back at me for trashing their service. Let me just say their enormous size and requisite bureaucracy makes the process of getting cash disbursements to slow and strict. I will, however, let you know that our relationship with First Essex has been a good one. They are friendly, courteous and will work the numbers every which-way possible to get you the amount you need.
    Plans! What about the plans? Many things go on simultaneously. Like; before securing the land, find out about any protective covenants. These are the developer's neighborhood "Pre-Nup." Depending on the town, the development or your neighbors, they could be more restrictive than you're willing to handle. They can also drive up the cost of your home. Protective covenants can require you to pave your driveway, restrict the use of vinyl or T-111 siding. Depending on the neighborhood they can impact everything from the type and size of home you can build to what kind of farm animals you're allowed to keep, satellite dishes, boats, unregistered cars, home business... even whether or not you're allowed to hang laundry in sight of a neighboring property. They are called "Restrictive" for a reason.      They exist largely to protect the developer's and eventually your investments.
At some point in the process you're gonna have to start looking at house plans. We looked at no less that 6000 of them. It helped to have over 5000 of them on a CD ROM. A helpful trick to remember is....

What I've learned:

    Duh #1; House plans usually give you the "Livable" square footage of the home. Your builder will estimate costs using the "Total" square footage, including basement, garage and attic.
To figure out whether or not you can afford the place and avoid your first big "Duh", you need to base your budget on your builder's "Cost per square foot" times the "total" square feet of your plans. For example; You migh think a house plan with 2400sf of living space and a builder charging $75/sf will cost you around $180,000... but you'd be wrong. The square footage of the basement, garage and attic can run you up into the mid $200,000's. The "livable" (heated, wired and finished) square footage is good for estimating what your property taxes may be. It seems like a "Duh" but it brought our first estimate in at a whopping $50,000.00 over budget. What we did and sacrificed to bring it in line with our budget and keep (roughly) the same plans is the subject of a future issue.

    If you're also selling your current home (as we are), you can enjoy letting complete strangers into you home on a regular basis. Always make sure your entire place is within 45 minutes of "clean...." Unless the immutable laws of "Messy Office. Genius at work" apply. Since I work from my home, I know good and well it would take 3 hours to clean the office, but it would be back to it's original state within 45 minutes. Thus, requiring yet another 3 hours to clean. This means the office is always more than 45 minutes from being neat, thus eliminating it from the possibility of being included in the time we've allotted to cleaning the entire home.
    So... now we're the proud owners of a field of dirt piles, colored survey ribbons, and little DigSafe flags eluding to the existence of underground utilities. As this adventure unfolds you will be privy to our HIGH and _low points. Some of which will unquestionably cover:

1). "What? We sold the house and have to move where... by when?"
2). "Which box is my office in?"
3). "Did you remember to pack Duke?"

    These, as well as, a collection of potential scenarios I dare not commit to print for fear they may come true are what future offerings at this site will attempt to grapple with. Whatever this adventure holds for us... you can be sure to find it here.

The Seabrook Nuclear Disaster

This close to tax-time you might expect me to start spouting off about the fiduciary reaming New Hampshire's property owners must endure every year. It, however, pales in comparison to how I feel about the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant and PSNH. I am not anti-nuke, I am simply anti-sleaze.

    Let me take you back to the early 80's. A time when anti-nuclear sentiment was running at an all time high, not only in The Granite "Live Free Or Not" State, but around the country. The Clamshell Alliance was busy organizing regular protests complete with tree hugging, granola packing neo-hippies from area colleges and directly from the 60's. Their goal was to simply impede the development of a Nuclear power plant in Seabrook, New Hampshire. This was to be achieved through endless chanting and the holding of hands. As "the alliance" grew so did their impact. They successfully began using the courts and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's guidelines to hinder development with issues that would have not been coincided issues had it not been for the alliance.

    The first angle was to protest the fact that resident crustaceans would grow thinner shells due to the artificially heated water being emitted from the huge cooling aqueducts. Thinner shells would make them more susceptible to "disease and crustaceal pneumonia" from the normally frigid Northern Atlantic waters. Then they struck a chord when they brought the NRC in to question the plant's evacuation plans. With only 11 miles of Atlantic seacoast for the entire state of NH to enjoy the beach areas endure a swollen population period between Memorial Day and Labor Day. The initial evacuation plans for Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant used population numbers based upon residential statistics, not the actual summer population. Eventually the alliance was able to prove that, in case of a nuclear booboo, "Evacuation from the area surrounding Seabrook would be impossible." In spite of this clear violation of NRC safety regulations, the plant still went on-line.

    When first proposed, PSNH (Public Service Company of New Hampshire) was promising to offer cheap, readily available energy from the plant. Energy that would support the state's growing population and corporate infrastructure. It would cost us less than 3 cents a KW, 2 cents a KW... pennies!!! At the very same time, Canada was over producing Hydro-Electrically generated power at about that same price. The rub, as far as politics goes, was that all of PSNH's revenue would be be going out of the country.

    As the protests continued and the Clamshell Alliance succeeded in holding up construction in the courts with a fresh batch of creative environmental, and evacuation concerns, "skilled" union workers were getting paid anywhere from $60 to $150 and more per hour. The cost of completing the plant was running deeply into the red. This was driving the value of the Municipal Bonds the state was floating to finance this venture through the floor. This was making a pack of state politicians and influential stuffed shirts very nervous.... and the beat goes on.

    Let me break from the current train of thought to give you an idea of how "skilled" these union and non-union employees were. At the time PSNH was building the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant, I knew someone who couldn't pass Freshman English because he was usually so stoned he'd forget he was at college. Eventually he flunked out, moved to the seacoast and was hired at $60/hr. to work Security at Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant. At the time I was working at Juniors Ice Cream for 4.25/hr. This person would relate stories to me about what a great job he scooped at "The Plant." If he just happened to show up at Seabrook baked (a likely situation), the previous Security Guard on Duty would first ask him if he'd want a dog that "Did" or "Didn't." This meant that some security dogs had been trained in narcotics detection and would rip a stoned security guard to shreds and others had been de-sensitized through a rigorous schedule of attending wild "Refer Madness" type parties after hours. If he showed up high (which was most of the time) he would ask for a dog that didn't.

       Now... (question time) If you're working security at a Nuclear Power Plant that is quite often not under construction, and currently has no hazardous nuclear materials for Middle Eastern terrorists to pilfer... how much security are you gonna have to perform for your $60/hr.? The truth is... most of the time he told me they just sat on their asses, drinking beer and tossing the empty cans into the cement containment tower foundation molds, to avoid being caught with incriminating evidence. Like I said... this had all been related to me by someone who's name has fortunately been erased from memory.

    Eventually the courts won and the bite went out of the Clamshell Alliance, but they did succeed in one small and bitter victory. By holding up construction in the courts, they drove up the cost of completing just one of two proposed generators, up higher than any other nuclear facility in history. The cost of completion ran into the BILLIONS. The value of the bonds was somewhere closer to... JUNK. Investors in PSNH where about to lose their stuffed shirts. And they would have, had it not been for the worst case of judicial Jerry-rigging I've ever seen at a state level.

    The state agreed to pass some kind of law that protected the investors of PSNH from going under. The law must have read something like "because investments in state municipal bonds are in the public interest, investors are exempt from the possibility of these stocks becoming worthless." Sure, it sounds like a pile of crap... because it is. I always was lead to believe that investments are an educated gamble. If a stock or bond fails, you run the risk of losing everything you've invested in it. The fact that they altered the playing field to favor a bunch of political mucky-mucks that made a poor investment choice sickens me. You know they'll never allow regular investors such a safety net.

    Now it's 1998 and New Hampshire (New England in general) has the dubious honor of paying the highest energy costs in the country... thanks to a bunch of tree hugging, granola packing neo-hippies, sleazy politicians that should be rotting in a jail cell right now, and a nuclear power plant that ended up providing cheap energy that costs 5 times what it was supposed to in the first place.

    A final note: PSNH is currently fighting a law that would allow other electrical utilities to compete for PSNH customers. The current laws prohibits competition giving PSNH a virtual monopoly in NH. Since monopolies are illegal, PSNH is up to it's old tricks trying to block the passing of this law for they know that would surely deal a fatal blow to the utility. This possibility was tested and proven by those of us lucky enough to have had a chance to participate in the PSNH pilot program. It allowed a limited number of registrants to purchase their electricity from whoever pitched it to them. Admittedly our monthly savings have not equaled enough to channel into anything more expensive than a 12 pack of good beer, but nobody enjoys sitting back with a cool brew and watching sleazy politicians attempt to squirm their way around the constitution... and hopefully fail, more than I.

Don't Mess With The Mouse

   We’ll, we’re back from the big Florida vacation. My first visit to the sunshine state. You might think that after 6 days of relaxation and copious amounts of theme park stimuli that I’d have nothing to gripe about; but you’d be WRONG!
   Aside from the simple things that go hand in hand with travel, like Florida’s minimalist approach to providing adequate amounts of directional information to highway travelers. Within 3 miles of the airport I noticed an almost complete lack of lane reduction signs, but numerous lanes reductions.
   As far as car rentals are concerned... If you've ever tried to find a white car with Florida plates while traveling in Florida, you can relate. Most of the theme park parking lots are equal (in size) to many 3rd world countries. As Florida is home to over 95% of all white vehicles ever manufactured, finding yours is like finding a golf ball in a snow storm. Most folks from New Hampshire don’t like white cars for this very reason. Dark cars or even rust colored cars are becoming more popular every year.
   The heat. Jimmy Buffett may be "Umbilicaly connected to the temperate zone," but I find the combination of relentless heat and humidity one notch shy of unbearable. Heat is such a constant in Florida that automobile air conditioners are set to come on by default. If this were done in New England they’d find winter tourists from Florida frozen solid in their seats at Logan Airport. The constant change in temperatures (from indoors to out) confused my body. Every car, every store, every ride and exhibit was air conditioned. Outdoor temperatures hovered close to 90 degrees and the humididity was always between 90 and 100 percent. I felt like steamed cabbage. Great weather... IF YOU'RE A FERN!
   I also discovered that central Florida is the largest consumer of smog machines in the world. These things crank out voluminous amounts of manufactured mist that does little to relieve the heat but contributes shamelessly to the humidity. As if the natural humidity was not enough to destroy the hairdos of an entire New Jersey bride’s wedding party, Florida’s theme parks, restaurants, hotel lobbies, grocery stores, and newspaper vending machines all use the mystical marketing powers of colored lights and SMOG!
   One night, while in line for the famed "Rain Forest Cafe" it appeared as if something had gone horribly wrong with the central smog control doohicky, causing the smog machines to all go into turbo-overdrive... By the time we’d made it to the primary check-in gate we, and all those we had eventually discovered were around us had become literally soaked to the bone. Even the computerized check-in controller thing was acting up. But the food was great and I recommend the Rain Forest Cafe to anyone with allergies. Pollen doesn't stand a chance around this place.
   Disney and all the Disney-ettes have their pre-boarding rap pretty well figured out. They are masters of "queuing" thousands of people up and getting them into and through a ride or exhibit usually without incident. The standard rap goes something like..."Yatta, yatta, yatta... before boarding we ask that all people with back, neck, spinal, or mental injuries please find some other way of getting your thrills... and for the enjoyment of everyone, please refrain from using flash photography, video camera lights, and no eating, drinking or smoking." AND YET, you always find some dip(&*^!)stick on the ride that blatantly ignores the rules just so that they can bring home "the magic" for their friends and family to watch on the 12 inch, pre-Perestroika black and white TV. One such Dippity Duo was apparently visiting the Magic Kingdom from Germany and was choosing to ignore the pre-boarding rap for the classic ride through the Haunted Mansion. They just didn’t seem to understand that one of the more important ingredients required for the Mansion to appear "Haunted" is darkness. Their 60,000 candle-watt, sodium vapor stadium light attached to the top of their video camera not only rendered all the holograms useless, it blinded the other tourists and bleached out most of the black costumes. Shortly after getting off the ride, My wife and I took matters into our own hands and gave them an example of what it feels like to extremely horrified and frightened of real-live, pissed-off tourists. That was a bonus ride they'll be able to relive every time they play-back the video tape without editing out our poignant cameos.
   In conclusion, my point is this; When traveling in another land, you'd better play by the rules, or I'll trash your video tape.

Paul's Bunions

This new gripe has actually been in the works for several years, but it wasn’t until climbing up to the base of Tuckerman’s Ravine on New Hampshire’s Mt. Washington (my first since the break) last weekend that I came to realize the true scope of this idiocy. Yes! I’m talking about that one thing that divides true hikers from the millions of peons that chose to leave the relative comfort of their "land yachts" and campers and hastily take to the trails of Mountains without a clue. I’m talking about the poster slobs for the Coronary Institute that just finished watching the Outdoor Life channel and pry their 300 pound butt off the sofa to take to the hills without a trail map, water, matches, Snickers bar, alternative layers of clothing and worst of all, brings his idiot family along, including his wife; who’s choice of hiking footwear is a new pair of sandals.

Almost every time I go on a hike I come across some fool or an entire flock of them, half way up the mountain with no idea what they’re in for. I’ve seen Top Siders at 3600 feet. Sweat saturated Bon Jovi "T-shirts" at 5000 feet, with 37 degree temperatures and 25 MPH winds. I’ve seen one guy and his wife wearing canvas sneakers, attempting to bring their 2 small children up "The Precipice Trail" on Mt. Dessert Island near Bar Harbor Maine. For those who don’t know this trail, it is classified as a "non technical" climbing trail. This means iron rods have been drilled and hammered into the stone faces that you must climb to help you avoid falling 300 feet down. Though, usually not straight down. Most fall, then bounce a little, then fall some more before reaching the full 300 feet. This trail is so dangerous rock slides have kept it closed more summers than open in the past 10 years. People fall, bounce and die on a pretty regular basis here and yet Mr. and Mrs. Converse think it’s just another ride at Disney.

On to Mt. Washington. The first time I climbed up to Tuckerman’s Ravine was about 4 or 5 years ago. It was early spring and my friend, Jeff Hemmet and I were not quite ready to put our skis away just yet. The bowl traditionally keeps it’s snow into late June or early July. Although, this year it will keep it’s snow into the next winter (see photos). All I recall from the hike up was the excitement I felt about skiing the famous Ravine (a 75 to 80 degree pitch. no joke). Even then, I saw some guy wearing his ski boots from the parking lot and hiking in them all the way to the ravine… some 3600 to 4000 feet… in ski boots. To make a ('nother) long story short… We skied, watched many people cart-wheeling down from the headwall, their skis clicking and bones cracking across the boilerplate ice to the left... and after about 3 or 4 runs we skied all the way down to our car in the parking lot.

Back to Tuckerman’s ’97. On the way down from the ravine, my wife (Janet) noticed a family of "Yikers" (Yahoos on a hike) that stood out like soar thumbs. The husband was huge, wearing about 6 pounds of gold chains and breathing heavily as he groped his shirt pocket for another cigarette. His wife was a frail woman with a New Jersey Princess doo. The kind that, in one 6 can session, depletes the ozone layer by an amount equal to the damage caused by all automobile exhaust for one month. She was the one wearing the sandals.

In one respect, these people provide a valuable "real-world" element that our EMT’s and National Park Rescue Service Departments need to stay sharp. This way the theoretical skills and knowledge they learn from practice dummies can be put to the test on real-life dummies on the trail. Though I, myself have been on the receiving end of the Ski Patrol EMT’s of Cannon Mt., (reference; My Big Break) I assure you, I was not wearing sandals at the time.

In conclusion, though I find mankind’s folly into stupidity amusing from a spectators point of view, I am embarrassed to share genetic lineage of any kind with much of it.

My Big Break

On Saturday, February 7th I finally got my "big break." Unfortunately it wasn't the one my Mother has always hoped for. In fact it was 3 breaks to the lower left leg. The kind of breaks that can sideline one's expectations of enjoying a full season on the slopes and trails of New England's ski areas.

You might think that my broken leg is what I have to gripe about, but you'd be wrong. I received a heroic rescue from the friends I was with, the Cannon Mt. Ski Patrol and "The Michelangelo of Plaster Casts," Dr. Caswell of Littleton Hospital. Rather, my gripe is directed at the "minimalist" approach to pain control most hospitals seem to be taking these days. I'm sure it's possible it's just another fiscally responsible reaction to insurance companies and lawyers over-charging or suing hospitals for improper care, using whatever definition of "improper" suits their needs. Too much medication. Not enough. They are released too early. They are held too long. It's all crap.

Over my >36 years, I have spent a good deal of time in and out of hospitals. I'm not really accident prone, I just had quite a few medical mishaps through my teen years. I know pain like it was my next of kin. I know good pain, bad pain, and those around me who are either being a pain, or not doing all they can to reduce my pain. This is where I focus my latest Gripe.

First, allow me to bring you up to speed by lay'n the story on ya. Two Saturdays (or should I call it "shatterday") ago I was having a great time with many of my closest friends. Many of them I've skied with for a dozen years or more. Our host Mt? Cannon, in Franconia Notch, NH. For those who were skiing back in the 60's, Cannon Mt. had a quaint sister hill located next door called Mittersill. For those "in the know," portions of 2 of Mittersill's slopes are still accessible via a short hike along a ridge. We had already skied Barron's Run, which runs out at the bottom of Cannon's bunny hill. The conditions where as good as I've ever seen them. Soft bumps, covered in fluffy powder. After a quick lunch we thought it best to do our Tuckerbrook run before we got too tired. Once you start down Tuckerbrook, you are committed for there are no lifts at the bottom. You have to have someone meet you there or park and pray your vehicle doesn't get towed.

We headed down a favorite "out-of-bounds" trail called Tuckerbrook (aka; 13 Turns). It's arguably the longest vertical run in all of New England. I'd skied it 2 years before, as it only opens when we have some good storms.

About three quarters of the way down... way past the tough stuff, I turned left and my left ski stopped. Unfortunately my body had other plans. It kept moving forward, destroying my tibia, fibula and pretty much the rest of the weekend. Still about a mile out from trails end, we had a situation to deal with. I knew something was up when X-roomie, Scott was helping me wrench my ski boot off. I wrapped my hands around the shin and felt the bones grinding. I love my $600 racing boots for the same reasons I hated them at that moment. The other guys started to make their way to the scene and began working on splints. Being engineers they went through a few medieval looking prototypes and came up with a pretty good splint that did what a splint is supposed to do -- Stabilize.

Getting down the hill was the next challenge. We had a cell phone and called for Ski Patrol, but there was no telling when they'd be able to get there. It was, after all, "out-of-bounds." We rigged up a pair of skis for me to sit on like a swing and placed two guys on either side to hold and stabilize the ride. We made it another 200 feet or so with only a few places where the splint legs would get jabbed into the snow. That hurt. Brian was the first ski patrol on the scene. He liked the makeshift splint so much that he just started wrapping it up in bandages. Then Bob shoed up with a sled and something I would soon grow to hate. The Johnson Splint.

This contraption has a padded half-circle that catches you under your crotch and behind the butt. Being such a nice day and having a little time on our hands before the United States Air Force would show up, Bob cut off all the bandages and chucked the McGyver Splint. Wrapping my ankle in gauze several times, Bob ran a loop under the soft part of my foot and attached the other end to a wooden dowel about the same size as a Stella Doro bread stick. Then he said, I don't know what to tell ya buddy, this is gonna hurt like hell, so feel free to scream a lot." So he pulled like hell, I grunted, screamed, cracked a few jokes, and held on to by buddies in a Vulcan attempt at transferring the pain to them through osmosis. Then two Air Force Warthog planes flew right over us and we all looked up and said... "overkill!" That's why I love these guys, we all have the same sense of timing and humor.

The snowmobile arrived and it was time to leave the natural surroundings of the White Mt. National Forest for a ride in a sled, ambulance and stretcher.

.....And so begins my GRIPE!

Once in the hospital, I thought for sure my pain would soon be ending. Morphine, Demerol, "Painadrine".... ANYTHING was what I needed!!!! Nothing. Was what I got. I break my leg in 3 places at 1:30 and after more than 4 hours of traction, rescue and transportation... I wanted SOMETHING...ANYTHING!!! All I got was excuses. "We have to wait for Xrays. We have to wait for the doctor to look at the Xrays. We have to make sure you're coherent enough to approve surgery, if needed." As far as me and my pain are concerned... it's all bullshit.

Eventually I did convince them to give me 4mg's of morphine. Which I normally have before breakfast everyday... so that was about 8mg's too little. I wanted 4mg's per break. I don't know when hospitals started taking the minimalist approach to pain relief, or who's calling the shots, but it was not fast enough and it wasn't enough, enough.

So, my advice to those who just naturally wear a brave face in the presence of extreme pain..... "SCREAM YOUR ASS OFF," 'til you get what you need. No one knows your pain or how you express it, better than you. Relate that pain to your caretakers in the most convincing way you can muster.

Holiday Hell

You may be wondering how in the world I could let a stress-filled holiday season go by without a single gripe to share with my equally stressed-out readers. Worse than that... the "Mothership Meltown" gripe has been gathering cyber-dust since Halloween! Has there been nothing to gripe about? Has Stan gone happy and content on us? Can we no longer find a bastion of irrelevant dilemmas, described to us with an impassioned level of creative loquaciousness... (look it up)? Nay.. NAY!!! I say! For I am truly pissed off! Inspired to be so by the recent holidays and what they have become.

And so begins my next gripe.

For reasons I can not fully commit to print, I found myself a bit "strapped" for Christmas funds. Being self employed sometimes means being rich in accounts receivable, and poor in reality. Unfortunately you must pay for most things with some form of currency that exists somewhere in...reality. To make matters worse, Christmas was to occur not once, but 3 times this year. Once in Connecticut with my side of the family, once again in New Hampshire with just my wife and I, and finally in New Hampshire with my new family (commonly referred to as in-laws).

Though the actual participation in the gift giving ritual is enjoyable, the preparation is something I will dedicate the rest of my living days trying to remedy. Traditionally, going to the mall any day between Thanksgiving and the first week of the New Year is something you must prepare for, mentally and physically. I failed on both points. Even using my special (for people in the "know") secret mall entrance proved useless under the chaotic river rapids of humanity flowing, churning and crashing through the mall corridor.

I stood at the edge of the river, preparing to jump in at the first sign of available space. Once in the flow I had to move with it or die trying to glance at products in the windows, trampled to death by the deluge of holiday shoppers driven to the edge of insanity by their children's wishes for a Tickle-Me Elmo doll. The store windows were all smudged by people trying to grab hold of anything that could pull them to safety, even if it meant buying scented bath products for the guys in the football pool. From this description you might think I shopped after 5, or on the weekends... but you'd be wrong. It was a Wednesday at 10am.

Though I'd love to be one of those people that has all their Christmas shopping taken care of by Thanksgiving...or taken care of by someone else all-together, I'm usually left too shell-shocked by January for any form of commerce whatsoever. The thought of shopping for anything at all sends me into an agoraphobic coma. I find myself viewing mega-doses of Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain and The Tick, in an attempt to rid myself of the vile apathy which courses throughout my cerebrum.

The question of whether or not Christmas has become too commercialized is moot. We let ourselves become victimized by pressures from all sides, commercial, personal and social. The ads tell us we have to shop, "it's the most wonderful time of the year... to do so." These ads often make the difference between survival and bankruptcy. Most of the time they work wonders for those selling products and services who rely on the Christmas season for their survival. Trust me. I know this. I'm the bum who writes them all.

There are as many personal reasons for feeling pressured to shop and spend beyond our means, as there are people with a past. Torn between the pressure to provide a gift as substitute for how much you think of love or friendship, and your ability to afford the gift that portrays those feelings adequately, is especially difficult. The social reasons for feeling pressured to shop beyond your means stem from simple acceptance amongst peers.

So, if you've had enough of sociology 101, let's get back to the gripe.... shall we?

I'm sick of feeling victimized by the holiday season. If you feel the same way... we only have ourselves to blame. We enable the holiday season to take advantage of our propensity to stay in our tried and true routine... our comfort zone. My solution? Disable the forced buying at the end of the year by getting one gift for one person on your list every month. True, you may have more than 12 gifts to get, but at least you'll have 12 gifts all set to go by the time everyone else is just preparing their list.

Christmas is too special to let the petty pleas of merchants vying for a buck ruin it. If there is one gift I'd like to give all my readers for the holidays, it would be that of a simple truth. Because whether you're Christian, Jewish, Catholic or Atheist the holiday season should be a time to enjoy with friends and family. A time to reflect on the past year and wonder about what the new one might hold. So, the next time you get caught up in the spin and flow or Ho Ho Ho, remember... I told ya so.

MotherShip Meltdown

For those who have never experienced a meltdown, or who own Mac's, it's the kind of crippling problem that renders you and your beloved PC searching for ways to get going again. Regardless of where the blame is to be laid... the story remains the same.

I was simply installing the latest and greatest version of MS Publisher '97. So new is this program that the year of it's "being" has not even come around yet. Truly the future of simplified Desk Top Publishing was at hand. I loaded the CD ROM and started the "Setup Wizard" per the instructions. Soon I would be Desktop Publishing my way into the DTPer's Hall of Fame. "Creating High-Impact Publications in a Few Easy Steps." Hundreds upon thousands of new Clip art Images would be at my beckon click. As my percentage complete meter approached it's 100 percent complete level, my creative juices where already starting to flow.... BUT WAIT! A window had appeared offering to help me register my new MS Publisher '97 electronically over the World Wide Web. At the click of a button all my registration information that I had filled out would be magically encrypted... sub-communications program would activate my 28.8bps modem which would automatically dial out to a undisclosed number that would activate a sophisticated WEB Server in the Microsoft wing of the Pentagon, that would, in-turn, initialize the Global YoYoNet Satellite DTP Registration Service to beam my classified registration information into space where it would then bounce off the Mir Space Station toward Pluto, where the Hubble telescope would (eventually) identify the existence of carbon-based life forms in Peapack New Jersey, and send back another encrypted response via The Milky Way, which would cause my computer to have digital aneurysm. In retrospect filling out the little "We are looking for the most important person.... yatta yatta" card that comes with MS products, would have saved me a lot of time and headaches... and the universe a lot of pointless satellite attenuation.

After spending about 4 hours over 2 days on the phone with Washington's finest techy's... I was left with a Pentium 133Mhz, 1.2Gig, 32Meg o'RAM OTTOMAN... complete with a CD ROM/drink holder.

Somehow the program's registration wizard had wiped my Windows initialization files, court marshaled my "KERNAL," and immortally wounded my "General Protection Fault." Since my tape backup software requires Windows to function my attempts at restoration via my tape backup were fruitless. My only hope was to try and backup as many files and directories as I could find through DOS. Remember good o'l DOS? Unfortunately all my Email addresses, favorite WEB sites and personally customized program configurations that made life before October 2nd so wonderful, were lost forever in some sub-directory of a sub-directory of a of a sub-directory of an encrypted file.

If what does not kill us only serves to make us stronger, then what results from wiping the hard drive clean and starting from scratch must also make for a more stable file and directory structure. I no longer trust the Windows default to load programs within it's own "Programs" directory. If the operating system fails... the programs (and more importantly... there data) are lost. It's also much easier to find data when it's located under the directory of the program that uses it.

Windows takes a lot of flack at the hands of Mac lovers. I've had the privilege of working on both formats. I don't understand the Mac Operating System, and that scares me. WYSIWYG HTML Editors scare me. Often when things are over-simplified for the masses, the program throws code around and creates temp files like there's no tomorrow. Today most main stream computer operating systems have a "Hidden Agenda." They learned it from Uncle Bill. The products are easy to live with and the economy is fine... but beware of what's going on behind the digital walls of your computer before you allow any wizard to do the work for you.

Carefree Highway

It's just too damn easy to get your driver's license in this country.

The state D.M.V. continues spitting out driver's licenses like some bureaucratic Pez Dispenser working for the auto industry. The fact is there are far too many people on the road that just don't get it. They lack the necessary gene that enables modern human beings to become "one" with their machine -- the same gene that helps one know and understand a vehicle's potentials and limitations. These are the same people who just can't seem to parallel park, drive with one foot on the brake and one on the gas at the same time, read while driving or drive with their chest pressed up to the steering wheel. These poor driving characteristics could be because they were never taught how to drive correctly or they just don't have enough confidence in themselves or the craft they are piloting to operate it in a safe manner. Let's start where it all begins. Long before Drivers Ed... long before a son or daughter asks a parent to borrow the car, there exists basic "Rules of the Road." Granted there still are some states that require you to stop a vehicle at an intersection, fire a gun shot, ring a bell and honk the horn 3 times before proceeding, but for the sake of argument, any state where the livestock consistently scores higher on the SAT's than the populace, must be left out of our model. The rules of the road are best taught to humans through constant testing by the parents while taxiing the future drivers of America around. At every intersection, every traffic circle and every crosswalk the simple rules of conduct must be drilled into the subconscious mind. This can only be accomplished by repetition. "Top of Mind Awareness" is a term used in radio to describe when an advertisement has achieved its goal of becoming recognized at both a conscious and subconscious level. This is a tried and effective method of programming the mind through repetition and frequency. Programming minds is not some evil brainwashing experiment designed to control the masses, it is a way that we can teach ourselves to do relatively complex tasks automatically, freeing up the conscious mind to carry on a conversation. You may notice that some people (myself included) turn down the radio when it's time to start negotiating a tough traffic situation or find a parking space at a Buffett concert. This act reduces the flow of extraneous information into the senses and allows the brain to process information faster. Anyone trying to run Windows 95 on 4Megs of RAM can relate to this. When it comes to programming, I personally have found myself using my indicator lights to signal my intent to turn left into my driveway at 3:00 in the morning... when there probably isn't another moving vehicle with 5 miles. This might be extreme, but I do it subconsciously and that's my point. By the time a student gets to enroll in a Driver's Ed course the curriculum should be tailored to match the conditions and climate of the region in which the driver is going to be driving. So, if there is snow and ice (as in most of the planet above the 23rd parallel) then the Driver's Ed student should be required to test their abilities under those conditions. Why teach someone how to handle a deadly weapon in a artificial environment, then send them out into hostile, real-world situations completely unprepared to handle them? If it snows where you live, you should not be allowed to get a license until you learn how to drive in the snow and ice. Mechanical aptitude. Not everyone has it. Driving a 2 ton vehicle requires it. A simple motor response test can be developed to determine whether or not your reaction times fall within acceptable limits. If you can't pass the test you should not be driving. This would take about 25 percent of America's crappy drivers off the road immediately. It would also reduce the amount of insurance claims from accidents caused by poor judgment and reaction. How will this large chunk of the population get around? By developing a system that matches a person's mechanical ability to a particular vehicle size and power range. Sure, many people would never get to drive anything more powerful than a motor scooter, but if they can't handle that, the only person they'd be hurting is themselves. As a person's need to upgrade to a vehicle with 4 wheels, heat, a roof and windows especially popular during the winter months) they have a big incentive to get their act together and pass the "Mechanical Coordination Test." I am not writing this from the position of being the world's greatest thing to ever get behind the wheel. On the contrary. My past includes more than my fair share of violations. I estimate that my rough road to becoming the driver I am today has cost me over $20,000 in fines and lost revenue over a 15 year period. Fortunately the only person I hurt was myself. Have I learned my lesson? Perhaps, but I'm sure there are a few more to learn before I start looking for a chauffer. I hope that I will live to see the day when a 16 year old girl will let a lit cigarette burn a hole in her mother's car, rather than reach for it, punch the accelerator, swerve out of control, drag her friend out the door for two blocks before spinning into someone's living room. It's just too damn easy to get your driver's license in this country.

Buttheads8/15/96

Picture this.... you're driving down your favorite road at night. The windows are open and the warm summer air smacks of Balsam trees and fragrant dew. You think that the driver and passengers in the car in front of you must share your feelings of appreciation for the natural smells of a summer's night in New England. That is... until you see them toss a lit cigarette butt from the window. It hits the pavement like a mini phosphorous bomb, bursting into sparks. Embryonic fire starters with the potential of begriming a flaming chain reaction that could destroy thousands of acres of Balsams, homes, and hay fields (the staple diet of millions of livestock). Fortunately a large percentage of these minuscule missiles of destruction have a relative disaster ratio similar to that of the Iraqi Scuds. Although statistically they have been connected with several hundred small roadside fires and perhaps a half a dozen actual forest fires, the bottom line is... it's littering. Pure and simple. Multiply this scenario with every individual who chucks a butt out a car window onto the streets and roads of America and you've got illegal dumping of global proportions. Personally I would like to see a law that fines everybody who commits this crime. A stiff penalty that can be administered without any proof other than someone calling it in and willing to testify that they saw a butt fly out of the car's window at such and such a time, on this day, on this road. The only requirement would be that the reporting party must submit the license plate number of the car to the proper authorities. The defendants might say that it wasn't me driving, or smoking, or doing the butt tossing. Too bad! Then get the money from the prick who was! OK. So you say this crime is just too small to give attention to. It's actually at the heart of the whole "don't give a shit" attitude of many people--especially many smokers. Why target smokers? Because I see them littering on a daily basis. I know that the real issue is people who actually throw trash from their windows, but they'll all die a slow and painful death for their actions anyway. About a year ago, my wife and I went for a walk down our street to some horse trails. We found enough trash within 2 miles to fill six 33 gallon trash bags. We decided to pull it all out onto the edge of the street, come back and clean it up. We felt great for doing such a wonderful thing, but a bit selfish for just doing it on a street near our home where we like to walk. Within one week after the clean up we found cases of beer, and possibly another 6 bags of trash right back on the street. So how does this big trash relate to those who toss butts out their car window? If someone lacks enough respect for the environment to litter with even the tiniest of cigarettes, they probably won't think twice about tossing a finished Happy Meal or six pack. There's no question that I will turn in anyone I see littering trash. I've narc ed on the scum before and I'll do it again, and if it ever becomes possible to start targeting Buttheads that use our streets and highways as their own personal ashtray, I'll be writing their plates down and relishing the small victory every time I smell the Balsam forests of New England.

Destination Death 6/6/96

If youth is wasted on the young, wisdom is wasted on the old. Let me begin by complimenting the many traveling musicians of the Furthur Festival. The show itself was very entertaining even if the sound sucked for most of it. Blaming the musicians for a bad mix is like blaming a waiter for burning your lunch. Having heard many shows at O.O.B. I know it's a great venue with the potential for excellent sound. However, this team of crack sound engineers only seemed to find the sweet spot about 40 percent of the time.

"There's no concert like a Dead Concert." Now that the ashes of the Grateful Dead's Demigod are scattered about several of the planet's great rivers and oceans the "we are one big family" feel that one might have felt at Grateful Dead shows of the past is also scattered. If you are going to a Furthur Festival to find what is forever lost you will come up short handed and disappointed. Just a few short days before I had dealt a fatal blow to my ant population (which only lasted about 2 weeks) I had an opportunity to join my good friend Scott (AKA Mr. "T") at a Furthur Festival in the Old Orchard Beach Ball Park just South of Portland Maine.

Death by stupidity! Although by comparison I would be considered a neophyte by the (former) faithful "Die Hard" Grateful Dead followers, with at least a half dozen Dead shows and some 30-40 outdoor concerts of one kind or another under my bandana, I have seen enough to know when I have seen to much. On July 8th some unfortunate Furthur Fester from New York was pronounced dead shortly after the show. This person was seated about 20 feet behind us and was probably dead long before the lights came on. After Bob Weir's requisite "all-hands-on-stage" encore (a frustrating demonstration in organizational chaos and musical entropy), the stadium lights came on and several thousand cheering fans staggered to their feet and began composing some discernable form of reality. Hundreds of muddy, bile-drenched girls and boys who where lucky enough to vomit on themselves before needing medical attention, cast their crystalline glazed eyes at the rainbow waterfall hallucinations cascading from the sodium vapor lights. The second the lights came on the shouting began. Eric! Eric!! Eric!!! Nobody around us had a clue who Eric was, or why his friends insisted on calling his name over and over again. After what seemed like minutes it became obvious that this group of fans was not calling for their buddy Eric, but shouting out a genuine, bone fide cry for a medic. Medic! Medic!! What ever happened to Help? Help!! Why didn't someone with a predisposition to shouting loud and clear handle the broadcasting, while someone prone to running through mud and vomit-soaked bodies handled the delivery of the vital information in person. There's somebody dying up here!!!

The truth is... this guy's lights probably went out long before the stadium lights came on. With several dozen people in various stages of death throughout the venue, who's to say that this person was not just taking a comma-like rest. After 5 minutes had gone by, their cries for Eric where decoded, some park staffers that seemed to know CPR made superhuman leaps from the field to the steps, where the limp body of John (Wharf Rat) Doe lay sprawled out on the cement steps. The staffers immediately began administering CPR, attempting to pump life back into someone who decided July 8th was as good a day as any to go dance outside the circle of life. This kid did not need to die at an outdoor concert. There are plenty of other, more glamorous and valiant ways to waste a perfectly good life. This was neither glamorous nor valiant... it was just a waste.

Don't get me wrong. I love outdoor concerts. I far prefer them to indoor shows. The fresh air, the people, the vendors and other attractions (nudge, nudge) add the festival experience. As far as consumption goes, I saw people at The Furthur Festival going way, way over the top. If you're going to jump in the pool know how to swim. If you want to see what's on the bottom, know how long you can hold you breath. If you're going to consume a chem lab full of various hallucinogens... know your limits. Don't go to a show and join the other idiots on the road to see Jerry. He's dead! His life's work may have been a gift for all to enjoy, but his passing was no more glorious than John Doe's. No matter what it is that drugs give people - - freedom of expression, altered reality or clarity of creative vision - - eventually they take it all back in the end.

Following the leader. People have always gravitated to be like their musical icons. The truth is, only a small handful of famous musicians have been fortunate enough to have danced on both sides of the tracks and lived to tell about it. So where's the gripe? My gripe is this; If you don't know what your limitations are, don't go to a outdoor concert to discover them. It ruins it for the rest of us... those who found them and learned to respect them. It's why we're still alive to see another great outdoor concert some other day. Most of us are all, in some way, lost somewhere between the recklessness of youth and the wisdom of old age. One day older... another day wiser.

White Trash 6/25/96

You'll never guess what I ran into at the town dump today... WHITE TRASH! You know, the kind that just sticks in your mind like some maggot you just found foraging in your 3 year old tube of Quaker Oats. OK. Maybe I'm not getting enough fiber, but this guy deserves to be the subject of this week's "Gripes of Wrath."

Our little town dump employs a sweet old guy named Mario. With an accent that betrays his first generation connection to "The Motherland" (wherever that is), Mario still seems to maintain his ear to ear smile and a friendly greeting whenever you see him at the dump. The work stinks as he has to deal with regular maggots on a daily basis. As I'm doing my regular recycling ritual; placing clear, green/blue and brown glass with kin in the bin, and segregating aluminum from tin...this jack booted thug in a white T-shirt and crew cut, driving a beat-up red and white Ford Bronco (license plate available upon request) starts unloading a trailer filled with trash from the last 3 years.

Recycling 101

For those who are (for whatever reason) not enlightened to joys of recycling etiquette, there are a few simple rules to follow.

1. Place clear, green/blue and brown glass with kin in the bin.
2. Segregate tin and aluminum.
3. Remove caps from plastic milk containers and soda bottles
4. ....and be nice to Mario.

This "white trash" apparently didn't understand these simple rules and just started stuffing 400 rancid milk containers on a string into a plastic bag. Mario mentioned to Mr. Trash that he must first remove the string before placing the jugs in the bin. I can only guess that the entire Trash family had spent the last three years creating this "Milk Jug Garland" and would have been unable to deal with the rejection to their collective artistic endeavors. True to form, Mario just smiled. Even after Mr. Trash responded to Mario's kind suggestions with a typical Red Neck open ended threat, "Back-off! You don't want to mess with me...." as well as several other comments directed at Mario.

I know that some people react to warm weather with hot tempers. I know that those who lack enough education to know better might believe they're passing down a long legacy of bravado onto their offspring; but c'mon... Mario was just doing his job at the recycling center in Lee, New Hampshire.

Perhaps some day we'll never have to deal with people like Mr. Trash, and the ignorant masses will be held accountable for the way they treat others, and the prejudice and poison they spread from generation to generation will be remembered only as an historical maggot in the Quaker Oats of time.
OK. OK!!! I know I was supposed to write about my battle with the Ants... but if "The Tick" can disappear without warning from Fox's Saturday morning cartoon line-up, so can my story about other 6 legged pests.

ANTS 7/11/96

About a month and a half ago, I set forth to deal an early, and potentially fatal blow to the prevailing ant problem. While working on my latest theory of time, I happened upon a black oil slick close to the driveway. It was too far from any car to have come from a dripping crankcase, so I thought it might have dropped from the sky, compliments of some passing Value Jet. As I began to approach the slick I noticed it had a lifelike quality. Alternating peaks and valleys like some British Airways commercial for flights to Zimbabwe might look. Much to my horror, it was alive. A living oil slick of perhaps 10,000,000 new hatchling ants.

Having dealt with the likes of this tribe before, I began rummaging through the high security area of our home (aka area 50/50). I rifled through years upon years of insect killing chemicals and devices. Under the usual magnifying glasses of various sizes and death potency, beyond the can of Dad's lighter fluid with the special high velocity DP47 dispersion nozzle, I found exactly what I needed to gain the upper hand in this battle. Anticipating a few moments of primal entertainment at the ants expense, I made my way to the festival near the driveway. There mangled and charred exoskeletons would serve as a potent and somehow fitting deterrent to any others of their kind, who dare trod near the home again.

According to some relatively unknown, but widely experienced, immutable law of nature, known as B.B.B.B. (or 4B), when you kill one breed of tiny, creeping, crawling invertebrate, you unleash the Big Bug Baby Boom. Little did I know but for some reason, my localized genocide of little oil slick (type) ants had paved the way for an even bigger boom of big Godless, genderless, drones.

At one point these ants would silently scale the sides of the house and enter the property through a network of highly sophisticated, hidden passageways. Their purpose? To provide job security for the employees of Raid, Combat and Johnson Wax. While sleeping one night, without notice a fat scout who failed the introductory course on climbing upside down, slipped and plunged 70,000 ant feet (or 6.3 human) onto my sleeping right arm, which was at the time wrapped ever so gently over my sleeping wife.

For those who have experienced the shear panic of a late night encounter of the 6 legged kind, you now know that it is possible for humans to levitate and move faster than the speed of light. In most cases the levitation part only lasts for a split second, but without knowledge of ever actually pushing off the bed, I somehow made it across the room, hit the switch to the 56,000 watt halogen floor lamp, went back across the room, grabbed a 3 month old issue of ADWEEK, and swatted my wife into boil.... all before the light came on. Our little pudgy scout ant, mortally wounded in the ensuing brawl, was treated to the traditional ceremonial tissue toss.

After thwarting their initial assault on our sleep chamber I began breaking out the heavy artillery. Given the government's existing moratorium on the use of napalm for combating residential ant militia, I was forced to default to the use of the most powerful form I could get at my local hardware, drug and grocery store. DIAZENONUTRICHOLORTRIMETON. My own mix of commercially available Diazenon Flakes (.05%), Nutrasweet and an over-the-counter antihistamine. This stuff lures them in with a non-fat sweetener, sends them home with a terminal dose of nerve gas, and clears any sinus congestion they might experience during the hay fever season.

Grabbing my trusty Maxwell House can filled with crystalline Armageddon, I set out to hit their secret military installations. During my first tour I engaged the enemy on several fronts that our reconnaissance operatives had informed us of. Before I could complete the deployment of an impenetrable barrier around the property... I had unwittingly discovered one of their top secret access locations. By this time the yard had reached an optimum ant activity temperature of 106 degrees. As I rounded the house, I noticed the back wall was teaming with ants. They had mastered the art of scaling walls and were making their way toward the attic vent where the Awards For Valiant Wall Scaling banquet was taking place. The first recipient, Little Pudgy Scout Ant, was to receive honors posthumously. The workaholics had created an ant thruway into the house via the attic vent. The average attic temperature being a blistering 160 plus degrees, I deduced that this was their equivalent of going to Florida for the summer. Never having been to the sunshine state, I cut off their main access road and traced their multi lane highway deep into the woods, spreading my trusty DIAZENONUTRICHOLORTRIMETON all the way.

Which brings us to the present day, July 11th, 1996. My wife, our house mates and I just helped push Independence Day (the movie) over the $100,000,000 mark for it's first week. After bearing witness to alien's attempting to take over Earth through annihilation and colonization, I am filled with a renewed sense of patriotic conviction toward ridding ourselves from the goals of residential ant military factions.