The day began full of potential. Like most mondays a crowded agenda presented itself for me to edit and render reasonable. One thing that had come to the top of the priority list was to dump the DISH and here's why, thousand dollar a year piece of shit. Which leaves another thouish a year for piece of shit phone and internet, but thanks to cyber anarchists everywhere one can pretty much milk the web for entertainment with impunity. It got to the point where I kept the DISH up to add the golf channel which i thought would have me more actively engaged with this goliath of boredom. When I called, it turned out that I should have had golf channel all along (like years). They said oops and sent a guy up to install another receiver so I could get to see 'em tee it up and, or watch Tin Cup. Over it. So I call and I wade through the phone tree, choose the appropriate number, refuse to participate in a survey and am put on hold with the usual blah blah about how very important or muy importante I am to "them". In this case, however there is an annoying ad about how easily your DISH service travels if you should choose to relocate. Adrenalin levels increasing. Next a human comes on the line whose English I understand except for the tinitis that makes some of the words solicit a "say again". When I tell him what I want, there is a stunned silence after which he looks at his records and tells me, to the day and hour how long I've been a valued DISH customer, which is over eleven years. Tempus Fugit. He asks me what's the beef and I tells him that I've just been watching less and less t.v. cause, no need. Tell him its costing a grand a year which could happily go to scotch and flowers for loved ones. He finally accepts the notion that I'm serious about wanting to drop the service and tells me that he will start the download process which will take "awhile". Now, in alternating cadence, he begins to tell me what percentage of the data mining has past while reading from the script of puckering up to a "valued" customer by making offers designed to prevent refusal and keep the valued customer in his or her place. "Twenty eight percent", he said "and by the way we'll give you half price for a whole year without a contract. Just sayin'" Thirty six percent done and he's gonna throw in some premier package 'cause, the Love. When he gets to forty five percent I tell him that I realize he has to read from a script and do his best to keep me in the thrall of his heartfelt plea to keep me from wandering astray. I told him I wasn't in a hurry and that we could just wait it out in silence. Turns out we couldn't. His final offer was actually hard to refuse. I was officially declared a "tough nut to crack" and informed that my service would be terminated at the end of the current pay period. At this point I said, "here's a suggestion. Why not install some program on your system that spits out customers who have passed the ten year loyalty test and automatically send them, not an offer, but a gift of half price for a year, or NFL channel recently purchased by Playboy, or a genuine heart felt thanks in the form of a box of cookies instead of waiting for them to fucking dump you before pretending you really dig them?" There was a bit of an unscripted silence, after which he said, " I'm gonna walk that idea upstairs and probably get a promotion." Through the looking glass people...... A case of common sense gone missing in a steaming pile of profit driven, void of empathy Ppoooooop. This won't change until the Big Divestiture begins. And now for a shortish rant on Glycine wightii. Or more correctly Fucking Glycine wightii. I believe that's the full botanical nomenclature. Looking into the history, the introduction of this innocuous looking vine was the brain child of the soil conservation service in conjunction with ranchers suffering soil erosion by virtue of "grazing" cud chewing bovines eating everything whose roots tend to hold the soil together and trap moisture. Nice choice. Virtues of Glycine: breaks up soil with root penetration allowing more moisture in and less soil wash out. Good pasture fodder (soybean relative) and long term soil "creator". Vices of Glycine: Goes rampant, impossible to eradicate without serious herbicide use, work load in wet times increased by thirty percent along with fuel cost and man, woman hours. Will choke out and drown out untended plants and trees, sends tendrils into my house to steal money and uses it to buy cocaine. The fact that not so much as an apology has been issued to those of us who now suffer the unintended consequences of this mistake typifies the action of government everywhere. "What, baddah you?" It also points out the lack of concern for the small sustainable farms that do not have any real recourse to reconciliation through legal channels. So we live with the fact that the contagion of bone headedness from which we all suffer has stifled our collective ability to move forward. In spite of this it is still my fervent belief that each and every moment offers the promise of the possibility of a chance that we'll be slightly less bone headed tomorrow. We have welcomed nurse Kristen to the Rancho. Only one thing to say: Off the scale. Week in brief: 'nuther birthday, oh well. Wondering if we can push enough joy around to balance the strange. Doing our best........ The more you show, the more we'll grow. Peace, Jp