All posts by Flim Flam

Social Philosophy

Immature Love = Economic Disaster!

Leave a comment

Blog-Icon---Social

Immature love leads to economic disaster — by FlimFlam

In my long life I have often run across high school sophomore girls who are madly in love with “Billy Bob” who is a senior in the same high school. The hormone level is completely out of control and has totally immobilized the reason part of the brain. She just has to get married regardless of the wishes of her parents, his parents, and the rest of their family. She knows that she will be able to have the American dream as part of her life, have two or three or more children and live in a white house with a picket fence around it.

Billy Bob was then forced to drop out of high school before he had learned how to balance his bank account or to acquire employment that would be sufficient to support a family. “Caitlin” was even further behind on the educational ladder, and had absolutely no employment skills. Billy Bob got a job as an oilfield roughneck, or as an apprentice welder, working out of town. It wasn’t long before the lure of the neon beer signs enabled him to meet more experienced girls than Caitlin, dressed up and wearing makeup, and ever ready to party. Soon Caitlin was forgotten and Billy Bob had moved on.

Caitlin was now left at home, two small children on her hip, no education and no chance of landing a decent paying job. So she moved back in with mama, who was willing to babysit her babies while she went out and worked a nighttime job as a waitress in a greasy spoon café or cleaning motel rooms at the local Motel 6.

Times change but the situation seems pretty static even today. The main difference is that today we don’t even start out with Billy Bob and Caitlin getting married. The young couple just decide to hook up, and as a result of the lack of any sort of commitment, romance, or belief that a marriage will result, we wind up with a series of babydaddies, a complete lack of responsibility on the part of the Caitlins of today, and an even greater lack of responsibility on the part of the Billy Bobs. So after multiple appearances on Maury Povich’s TV show or Paternity Court, we let a DNA lab sort out who committed the dirty deed.

The Caitlin’s of today are flipping burgers at McDonald’s, Burger King, or Wendy’s, unless they have managed to get a job making pizzas at Papa John’s or slicing roast beef at Arby’s. These are the jobs that people with no education or job sets, and not much opportunity to change their situation wind up with.

But (and herein lies a massively HUGE problem) now they believe that they are entitled to earn a comfortable living while doing a job that could possibly be done by trained chimpanzees. They demand that their employer pay them at a rate of $15 per hour for scut labor.  Their supervisors don’t make that. Many teachers don’t earn that, even with a college degree.

Ridiculous!

 

Political Philosophy

Tick tock Let’s end this insanity!

1 Comment

Blog-Icon---Political

by FlimFlam —

Wonderful Daylight Saving Time

Ahhh, it’s here again, that wonderful time when we throw our body’s natural rythms out of kilter and risk a heart attack to build the bottom financial line for the charcoal manufacturers and golf course managers.

 

But wait, you say, there are valuable reasons why we should have DST. Here are a few.

  1. It was created for the farmers.

FALSE – It was invented by Nazi Germany during World War II to save coal for military purposes. We aren’t at war with Germany and haven’t been since 1945.

 

  1. Farmers want it so they have more daylight to work in the summer.

FALSE – Farmers work from dawn till dark. They don’t care when that is on a clock,

 

  1. The cows are more contented to be milked in daylight.

FALSE – They liked being milked when their udders are full, whether it is daylight or not.

 

  1. It reduces accidents, because people are less likely to be driving in the dark.

FALSE – They just have those accidents in the morning. And Texas has raised the speed limits because the new headlights are so much brighter and reduce accidents.

 

  1. It saves energy, because people don’t use their lights as much in the evening.

ALSO FALSE – Recent studies have shown that energy use increases 1% overall when people have dark mornings.

 

So, who really benefits from this artificial aberration known as Daylight Saving Time? The answer can be found in the sport of golf. One expert says it is “the most important reason we’re still doing and expanding the period of daylight saving time.”

“For people who don’t play golf, they should care a lot about the fact that daylight savings time creates additional opportunities for people to play golf,” says Steve Mona, CEO of the World Golf Foundation. “From an economic standpoint, golf on a national level creates almost $70 billion a year in economic impact. It employs almost 2 million Americans, it generates almost $4 billion in charitable giving, almost all of which goes to causes outside of golf. In addition to that, golf facilities are small businesses and they’re usually among the most stable employers and source of revenue for local suppliers than any other business.”

So did the sports lobby alone create the false myths about farmers and school kids to make sure daylight saving time stays a reality? According to Downing, the effort to roll the clocks ahead is also an initiative pushed by the business community.

“Since 1915, the principal supporter of daylight saving in the United States has been the Chamber of Commerce on behalf of small business and retailers,” says Downing. “The Chamber understood that if you give workers more sunlight at the end of the day they’ll stop and shop on their way home. It’s not just golf—the barbecue industry loves daylight savings, so do the home good stores because people tend to go out of their houses, see that their roofs need replacing and buy more shingles. It’s a really important part of niche marketing for the retail industry.”

Really?

Let’s write our Congressmen in Austin to join the Southwest push to end D S T!

Entertainment

Little Orphan Annie

1 Comment

Blog-Icon---Entertainment-1

O.K. boys and girls, get out your Little Orphan Annie decoder ring and follow along as we head toward the Oscar awards. Claims have been made that the Academy Awards are racist and do not reflect on the talents or abilities of African-American performers.

The case in point is little black Annie, the third or maybe fourth takeoff of the story of Little orphan Annie, who was created August 5, 1924 in the New York Daily News. Poor little Annie was raised in a very dickensenian orphanage. It wasn’t a group home. She was rescued from that horrible place by a multimillionaire World War One munitions profiteer named Oliver Warbucks. By no stretch of the imagination was he a cell phone manufacturer running for mayor.

Unfortunately it was the third movie remake of a cartoon character. It’s hard to see, in more ways than one, how this particular story would be Oscar caliber. I can’t see it and neither could Little orphan Annie, Oliver Warbucks, Punjab or the Asp (Warbucks’ bodyguards and assassins) or even the cute little dog Sandy, because Harold Gray, the cartoon strip’s creator, neglected to put pupils in the eyes of any of his characters.

It did when a particular award however. It won the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-off or Sequel and Cameron Diaz was nominated for Worst Supporting Actress.

So why would the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences give this turkey an Academy award? Maybe the voters were still repulsed by the constant and endless repetition of the song “Tomorrow” by a decade of “Toddlers In Tiaras”