Friday, February 20, 2009

It's A DayQuil Kind od Day!

After a fun-filled three days in Las Vegas, the most unreal town in America, I have have to do routine work. I did have a desultory epiphany or two there. 1) As much fun as the water show was to observe at the Bellagio, I had to wonder how the nature spirits of the desert really like having such egregious disregard for their home. I mean a water wonderland in the desert? How fitting! and I observed this with fellow water and wastewater operators, so we all walked away going "ooh" and later realized we were all thinking how many psi the pumps had to develop to get that height, what type of solenoid valves are being used to withstand the pressure and such. In fact, I was relieved that I was not the only nerd/geek wondering that. The questions came up as we relaxed in the bar afterwards.

2) Had dinner and drinks in Margaritaville. It is amazing that flip flops, shorts and hawaiian shirts (oh yes, and booze--no one mentions weed, or other drugs even though there are LOUD videos of Buffet and other jambands being pumped out continually. No one smokes weed at a String Ceese show) have been turned into a glorified life style, which attracts so many people for a brief drunken break into their routine lives. combine that with mediocre food and more booze and a floor show with men on stilts, a pirate captain and a bikini clad babe whose arms were better developed than mine--the show repeats every X amount of minutes and the babe changes her bikini, fake blonde hair still the same. Part of the floor show is to raise your drinks and chug. Imagine a bar that features ritualized drinking. what a great business plan.

More honest than Hooters, home the great wings! and I read Penthouse for the articles.

Well, I dive through life today in a Dayquil haze and try my best at mitigating the fines of a sewage overflow my firm had nothing to do with--a city broke a sewer line and fixed it themselves, did not tell us and the County and EPA found out about it and asked us. Boy, did we look honest when we said "What?" We really did not know.

Before I go through that maze, I have to comment on the Swiss Bank and the scandal brewing there. They had code words for country of currency origin, animal names for denominations, really cool superspy stuff. But now the FBI wants them to turn over to the IRS the names of investors to see who was evading taxes in fake corporations that they set up. They made no bones about setting up fake corporations for tax-free investment for offshore profits.

Wait, wasn't that Phil Gramm's (McCain's economic advisor) bank and employer?

Kind of makes you wonder who invested in off shore accounts and tried to dodge taxes? Democrats or Republicans? Middle class (I know everyone in my family has a swiss bank account, how about yours?) How many of each? Upper class, lower class or Bush's base (upper 0.5 of 1%, as he joked). So who is using what are called the commons (defense, roads, subsidy for Post Office, etc.) in a disproportionate way as they try to escape taxes that pay for them? Another way of putting it more bluntly, who hates America and really is unpatriotic by being a greedy bastard and not paying their fair share? the lower classes or the mega rich? Yes, these are class generalizations and many in lower classes would do this if they could and many rich folk set up great trusts and things, but....

I hope they make the unpatriotic bastards serve time for tax evasion during a time of war!!!!!!!!!!

rojo

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