Skip to main content

Just Another Sunny Day In Camp Jeff


Weather you will or whether you won't?

If you live in Northeastern Wisconsin, mark this date on your calendar (1/27/18). When I logged the morning temperature, it was above freezing (32 Degree F.) Morning temperature? I usually log some time between 6:00 - 7:00 am. It was the first day in 2018 that this has happened.

Lucy, our dog, marked the event by peeing on the pavement. Note, she usually prefers the trash between the garage and the neighbor's fence. I was able to monitor her while I was wearing an open zip-up fleece jacket (no lining). It was too early in the morning for sunglasses, but the conditions look good, and I will prepare for that later in the day. Ah, paradise!

The sound of an old man bitching about what things cost these days

My wife turned down the possibility of seeing James Taylor and Bonnie Rait perform in Green Bay. Seeing that the tickets started at $175 and went to over $400, she had a decision to make. Maria decided that even if I started to cut my prescription tablets in half, we skipped pizza night from Poppa Murpheys and (this one killed it for sure) she stopped having her nails done for a month, we wouldn't be able to fit it into the budget. I guess asking her for $5000 for a ticket to the Super Bowl is out of the question. Moving on.

Economics 1.0
Is everything to expense now? I guess that inflation is a concept that is more relevant to me now that I'm older. This is in spite of the raise I got from Social Security this year and the anticipated lowering of our income tax bill because of the new "Tax cut" for the middle class. Oh, and then there is that lottery ticket I think might net me $25 or the possibility Publishers Clearing House might drop by next week. I can't wait for the balloons. Call me sentimental, but those balloons make me think of all of the helium I've inhaled to make my voice sound funny.

So, Inflation? To think when I was young I thought that meant blowing up my car or bicycle tires. Or later on in life the size of my gut.

In wonky economic science terms, inflation is defined as the money you earn buys less and the price of things you need is higher.

Or, you screwed unless you have one of the new jobs where your friends are on the board of directors of a huge Corporation. They give you the job of running the company. For this, they pay you more money than everyone else that actually works at the company makes. And I mean everyone's total income.

Now besides this, they guarantee if they are ever forced to fire you for, say you have unwanted sexual relations with one of the employees they can't buy off, they will give you more money than you could ever spend as a parting gift. It's called a "Golden Parachute," but don't worry you'll never have to jump out of a plane to use it.

Now along with this exit strategy comes a small ask. You will be assigned to sit on other Boards of Directors, where you will hire same friends that hired you and give them pre-packaged parachutes.

Oh, and you will receive significant raises for a well-intentioned promise to make the company money, pay dividends to the stockholders (The same people who gave you the job and a shitload of money) and deprive the people who actually do the work of any kind of a life outside of their jobs.

Always remember the Golden Rule

The Golden Rule for CEO's
workers + pay raise = golden parachute deploys

That's more than enough moaning and groaning about stuff, from Camp Jeff
Until next week, when all of this will be on the exam, Poppa Jeff is dropping the mike



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ring The Bell

 It appears there is a tradition in the radiology department at Ascension Hospital that patients, upon completing their course of treatment, ring a bell. ( We know not for whom this bell tolls.) Ring the Bell with My Sweetheart Jeanne. Jeanne drove me to all but two of the appointments. Pam Frautchi took me to the other two. Today, after being zapped thirty-two times, I rang the bell. This begins a roughly one-month recovery period where the effects of the radiation abate and, I'm assured, a return to normalcy occurs. In my case, I anticipate more energy and greater awareness. Books, Books, & More Books I am simultaneously celebrating the end of the third year of volunteering for the All Saints Hunger Book Sale. Next week, we will wrap up the preparation for the sale and open our doors on August 3 for the public. I ran into this humourous but quite accurate cartoon on a T-Shirt that shows most of the volunteer's sentiments at this point. If you think the printed and bound p...
One of my latest efforts. Sketch: The Lady Is Blue Gouache 9 X 12 Reporting: I enjoyed a pleasant evening with my friend Michelle Mooney. I took her out for dinner to celebrate her birthday and to thank her for the many first-rate haircuts she's given me. We were surprised at the number of people who dined alfresco in the balmy night air. Whatever we've done to please Mother Nature, she had deemed acceptable by giving us a shot of summer just when late fall weather was wrapping her fingers around our throat. If I have one complaint about the friendly confines of The County Claire, it's the noise level that makes it difficult to converse. The rumble is an acoustical problem with the customers speaking in normal conversational tones. This is without audible TV showing some game or background music selected by a dance DJ.  I know! We should have eaten outside, where the only noise is the occasional 14 bus snorting by.   Maybe It's Me Since my two soccer teams are not doing...

It's time again.

It started in 2004 when we moved to our condo off Downer in Milwaukee. Then we mover to the Westside of Milwaukee when we rented from Ken Karr, the former landlord, now a current friend on Highland and 29th St. Then we moved to Mandeville Louisiana for a little less than a year. Returning to The Fox River Valley, we rented a home in Fox Crossing, formerly The Town of Menasha. When the tree fell on the roof, and the landlord felt no urgency to fix it, we moved to W. Commercial in Appleton. Here is a shocker. Are you sitting down? We are moving. No, I don't mean off the couch and out to the patio. There are too many damn mosquitoes for that to happen. No, we are packing our stuff, or at least the stuff we unpacked from the last move and moving to a home Maria purchased on Mason and Glendale in Appleton. Let me unpack that last sentence (pun planned for). We are moving at approximately the end of September to a house. The house has been in t...