Wall Street is a mess. Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch are just a few of the disasters. However, the Walmart of the financial industry is rising like the armies of Alexander the Great to gobble up the failing players. Bank of America’s purchase of Countrywide mortgages months ago was a strong positioning of a top five Bank into the residential mortgage market. Now, BofA is sucking up the stock brokerage abilities of one of our nation’s most successful investment houses. Merrill Lynch’s stock brokers will ultimately be absorbed into BofA’ s massive branch locations. For you Star Trek fans you can understand Bank of America’s manuevers if you have seen the episodes about the Borg. For failing investment banks and failing national banks resistance is futile. Bank of America is emerging as the only sound financial institution in the marketplace. Watch, listen and learn. This drama is going to provide a lot of lessons on how 21st century American capitalism works.AH 

• Let us continue from yesterday. Feel free to leave your comments.

1. Taking the last of the sheets of toilet paper and not replacing it. If you don’t check before you are sitting down you have some choices to make. Some of these choices are as follows:

a. can I reach under the cabinet from the toilet?  

b. if  I reach too far will I fall off the toilet?

c. can I run into the hallway sans pants to retrieve the toilet paper without anyone seeing me?

d. how many rolls of toilet paper are in the house?

e. can I yell at someone from inside the bathroom to retrieve the toilet paper or are they too far away to hear me?

f. finally, can I risk not even using toilet paper? (I know but we must look at the option)

 2 . People who get out of the shower or tub tracking water on the floor so when you walk in with your socks on the socks get wet thereby dominating your freewill by forcing you to change them when you are already late for work. Even my description is annoying. I am annoyed at myself for even writing about this annoyance. 3.  Planning to get a late night bowl of cereal or a morning bowl of cereal only to realize that some milk thief has used the last of it and returned the container. The agony of pouring nothing into your bowl of frosted flakes is nothing short of a snack tragedy. Yes, you do look in the container as if the milk is hiding and you are going to see it and scream, “There you are now get out of there and into my bowl.”  I probably get angrier at this than anything in the world because I love cereal. The anticipation of sneaking downstairs wearing only my underwear in the middle of the night to molest a bowl of frosted flakes in the dark while I am watching Conan Obrien or the colon detox infomercial is dashed against the rocks of the empty carton. 4. I will refer to them as soap thieves and/or shampoo thieves. These are the people that use the bathroom before you and take your soap or shampoo because they are out but do not return it to your shower.  Thus, you are standing under the shower head ready to wash your hair and you turn to discover empty fiberglass staring at you. Then you have to get out of the shower like a naked Indiana Jones searching for your shampoo artifact unwittingly creating annoyance number 2. Therefore annoyance number 4 creates annoyance number 2 and ironically you have contributed to your own annoyances and because of this cruel Waiting for Godot moment you decide to kill yourself in the bathroom wearing only knee high black dress socks and an ill-fitting towel.  5. Taking one bite out of a doughnut and putting the defiled doughnut back in the box. I will confess my guilt of doing this. My reasoning is simply I want the pride of saying I did not eat another doughnut. Now that I write about it, I realize this egregious act is extremely annoying especially if it is the last doughnut. My wife and girls discovered this recently and they blamed each other. I eventually confessed but the whole scene was so Machiavellian that I relished in my secret doughnut sniper hit. You should also know that my wife’s keen desire for chocolate doughnuts was not deterred by the bite. She quickly deduced that it must have been one of the other three people in the house and she was willing to take the germ risk for that succulent treat. 6. Bloggers who write about annoyances on the blog.AH 

Every person gets annoyed by things. Human beings have expectations about the way things should be and the things ought to be. Most of these things are opinion but some are universal. I observed a couple of these this week and I wanted to share them.

1. Check writing in the check out line. Completely and utterly annoying. My wife still does this and I can only imagine the annoyance of a long line at the grocery store when she writes a 1.35 check for gum.

2. Cell phone usage in public places. I am guilty of this more than anyone so in the hopes of being fair I thought I would include this in the list. Now I don’t see anything wrong with speaking to someone who is with in public but for some reason if I am speaking to someone telephonically that breaches social etiquette.

3. Public Restroom conversation. I am fairly unsure about the rules around this for the ladies restroom but I know I am completely annoyed when I am standing at a urinal and some creepy old man starts discussing something with me.

4. Fireman filling boots in the intersection. I mean come on, your trapped in your car and although you have given money the past thirty times you went through that intersection you have no way to avoid looking like a completely jerk if you don’t give money everytime.

AH

Thursday morning at 8:37am, I was sitting in the parking lot with my daughters. We were waiting for the time to go into school listening to This American Life. Their school is located in a retail shopping area. A strip mall yet the retail development has a large walkway in front of each store so the walkway is about 8 feet in front of the store fronts. While we were waiting, a man approximately 65 years of age was walking west to east on the sidewalk in front of the stores. No big deal right? From about 100 feet away I could determine that he was walking with a cane in his left hand yet he did not walk with any type of limp or impediment. Curious. He was wearing navy blue jeans, brown birckenstocks with white socks. His brown belt had a silver clasp disguised under a protruding beer belly. His dark navy blue t-shirt was tucked in neatly. No blousing needed because his center girth filled the front of the t-shirt into the shape of an 9 month mother to be. Everything seemed in order and I assumed that he was waiting for the LabCorp to open for obvious blood work for some type of circulatory or heart condition. At first I thought he was lost because he kept looking up at the signs. He passed the Royal Thai Bangkok Restaurant, Copeland Christian Bookstore and as he came near I noted that there was writing on the front of his t-shirt. I non-chalantly read the shirt which was quite easy to read because his girth allowed the maximum pressure on the shirt to provide a panel almost like one of those sandwich boards from a 1930’s movie. The following is an exact quote of what was printed on this proudly displayed t-shirt worn by this 65 year old caucasion male: “DIP ME IN HONEY AND THROW ME TO THE LESBIANS.” Unfortunately I am not making this up. This is a true story.  As a protective father of two and a father concerned with my daughters innate curiosity, I attempted to distract them while mentally shooing this individual into a quick u-turn. Two things were thrust to the front of my mind. Why honey? and Was this person for real? I quickly performed the equation to obtain the honey answer. I had to laugh because I thought about the absurdity of this individual. Maybe he was blind and someone gave him this shirt as a joke witholding the printed information or telling him that it said something like, “BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF EMERGENCY.” Thinking it through I determine that is something I would do to my wife if she lost her sight. I would give her all of these inappriopriate t-shirts to wear and then tell her that they said something completely different just so I could shrug my shoulders at the scowling pedestrians reading her shirt. While they were reading, I would yell at them and say, “hey why don’t you take a picture it lasts longer, she is blind isn’t that enough or do you have to stare at her too!!!” When my wife asked what was happening I would say nothing just some ignorant person who has never seen someone with a disability. I would tell her that the Virginia Beach boardwalk is very crowded and we should leave laughing under my breath. She would feel like I was her knight in shining armor protecting her from the hurt of the world while she wore a shirt that said, “I danced my way through college. JB’s Gallery of Girls” or something similarly innappropriate. She would sit in the car none the wiser that the public was creating a mental images of her dancing to Aerosmith music in some creepy bar off of George Washington Highway. Back to the story. The man turned around and waltzed into Labcorp to get his blood drawn. Luckily, my daughters were still waking up for school or day dreaming but they missed the Dateline Chris Hansen contestant. I don’t want to sound old fashion but let me sound old fashion. That is completely inappropriate for a 65 year old or a 25 year old. Parents should not be forced to breach subjects with their kids that they are not ready to breach. Innocence should not be shattered by some old guy with a honey fetish. Frankly I don’t know what bothered me more the printing on the t shirt or the fact that he was wearing sandals with white socks and his t shirt was tucked in. Either way, I was certain that later in the day he would be sitting at a counter looking at a plate of cookies while Chris Hansen introduced himself as a reporter from Dateline’s show to catch a predator. After my girls were safely in the school I went to work thinking about the different shirts I could get my wife to wear if she was blind. The last phrase I came up with before my ADHD took over was, “This Cougar is on the Prowl!” I thought that was funny.AH 

Political campaigns are shining examples of self-delusion. The phrase keeping “it real” does not apply to political conventions. Most of the time it is spin and advertising, the cultural marketing of an idea of the candidate. Realistically, if the American people were grown ups we would acknowledge that most candidates are flawed because people are flawed. Expecting anything else would be a mystery and a lie. But choosing to believe a lie is a powerful political tool. The hypocrisy that follows conservatives and liberals alike when it comes to engaging in an objective conversation is overwhelming. Conservatives want to embrace the idea that a superwoman is possible even in light of life challenges that require sacrificial energy, time and effort. Liberals want to believe that the candidates are of the people by the people even if the candidate has left behind populace concerns years ago. We want to believe that people can remain rooted and above the influence of money, power and prestige. We want to believe that our system allows people to rise to power purely lacking the stench of special interests and compromise. We want to be blind to the reality that with purity comes sacrifice. We want to sift the circumstances presented hopefully retaining the philosophical agreements and tossing the conflicts.  Reality is different. Our circumstances require sight not blindness. Our future generations will need leadership that looks in the face of circumstances and does the right thing not everything. Let us wake up from the slumber of self-delusion thinking that we can do everything and that our candidates can do everything for everybody.  

I love being at home. My wife is a free spirit. She would love to have adventures everyday go here fly there drink up the experiences around her. I attribute that to her artistic side which repels the harsh reality of finances and pragmatism. She attracts me because I would only live in a world of dreary pragmatism. Her life and smile are lifelines that fish me out of the water of despair and hopelessness that I swim in most of the time. She chides me to get out of the house and drink up life. If it was not for her, I would atrophy amidst books and radio programs fit for someone thirty years older. Many times my desire to be home with everyone is not selfish. I am waiting to hear the joyous sounds of my daughters laughing. Their laughter, unhindered and gutteral, floats throughout the house like emotional cotton candy smelling of hope and freedom. It forms clouds above my dry concerns of life and rains down joy and purpose on my desecated mind.  I think I can remember a time when I lived without them but my mind has removed any empty space where their laughter did not fill up dark corners of my heart and mind. Laugh a little today, love someone today, and birth a new hope that did not exist yesterday. AH 

My wife’s grandfather is fighting for his life in Norfolk’s heart hospital. His heart needs kick starting and on top of that he is fighting cancer that was discovered last month. NICE! Here is the inspirational part. Most people would be, “woe is me! why is this happening to me? I have done the best I can do I don’t deserve this!” Not him. When I saw him on Saturday, he told me that, “God always has a purpose for me when I come into the hospital.” From my vantage point, the machines and monitors hid that purpose from me. He is 89 years old today. He has lived a full and incredible life dedicated to the care and support of less fortunate people. I love him because he loves people. He never tires of giving a kind word of encouragement to one of his family or to a stranger even in the midst of personal struggle. He accepts people as they come to him without judgment or arrogance. His words of advice do not come with the usual side of spiritual “Know it all” common with most preachers. He dispenses the medicine of correction and subtle admonishment like a country doctor slipping you a candy bar hiding the bitter pill of truth.  You willingly accept the medicine even when you don’t want to hear it. I have known him for 21 years and for all intents and purposes he has been my grandfather too! He has run the race, He has kept the faith. In a world filled with spoiled hopes, tainted dreams, and failed aspirations he beckons us to keep our heads up, stay the course and seek the Lord. There is no greater tribute to someone than a life well lived. Thanks Grandaddy for loving us when we did not meet expectations, potential and goals. Your love for us keeps us afloat when our boat is sinking and the world around us tells us to give up.AH