December 30, 2007

Jackson Press - Back from home remodeling hell!

We're back! 

What?  You were gone, you ask?

Yes, dear reader, there was no Civil Servitude for Thursday, December 27 (for those of you keeping score).  This past week was just far too hectic and I was far too obsessed to put out an episode.

Obsessed, you ask?  Hectic, you query?  What could possibly be going on at Jackson Press, you wonder aloud. 

Well, we heard you wondering aloud and here's the answer - we've been busy making some major home improvements here at Jackson Acre.  Major, major home improvements. 

Well, we're not fixing the drainage problem in Jackson Swamp or anything major like that.  Nothing requiring heavy excavation equipment and civil engineers.  No, nothing that major.

Call it a light demolition and reconstruction project.  This week we undertook a bathroom renovation.  It was finally time to remove the 30 year old fiberglass one-piece tub-shower surround and replace it with something modern and nice, or at least something that wasn't stained or smelled funny. 

It was to be a simple bathtub and tile wall surround project.  A project well within my skill level and something do-able within four or five days.  But nothing here at Jackson Acre is simple.

We started demolition on Wednesday, December 26.  The one-piece fiberglass tub/shower surround was surgically removed in seven pieces with a reciprocating saw in under two hours.  Off to a great start!

Then we had to reroute plumbing.  I've done an identical plumbing job in my other bathroom in three hours.  This bathroom took two days.  Fortunately, I didn't burn down the house with my propane torch.

Next came the tub.  It wasn't the same size as the fiberglass unit, so I had to fabricate a ledge to take up extra space.  More complication - added another four hours to the project.

Concrete backboard went up as planned on days two and three and we finally started tiling yesterday, day four.  Tiling only took eleven hours, most of that time spent measuring, re-measuring, cutting tile, cursing like a sailor, re-re-measuring, cutting more tile, finally laying tile.  Do you still lay tile when you put it on the wall? 

Cutting tile seemed to take the most time to do.  Out of 128 total tiles (not counting the decorative trim tile), we had to cut 52 tiles.  That may not sound like much, but, trust me, it was.  Cutting 52 tiles was about 38 tiles more than I originally planned to cut!

In fact, I enlisted my wife's help in the tiling endeavor, mainly to insure that my tile lines were straight and everything was even.  God bless her, she was a trooper and helped til the very end, at 3:30 this morning, when the last tile was finally laid!

Today we rested, as God recommends.

New Year's Day I'll grout everything and, with a little luck, my kids will be able to use their new shower after only a week-and-a-half of non-showering while daddy demolished their bathtub.  Fortunately, all of us were on vacation, so none of us really needed to shower, since we weren't going out in public. 

Me, that was all the excuse I needed to not shave for five days nor shower for three, like I need an excuse to not shower or shave.

So, we're finally back from home remodeling hell, fairly unscathed, with the exception of dry, rough hands and various cuts and scrapes.

There's a new Civil Servitude for your reading pleasure.  Enjoy and thanks for letting me vent.  I'll post pics of the old/new shower later this week.


Sweating the small stuff while sweating the plumbing!

December 23, 2007

Jackson Press - Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays!

No long diatribe in this dispatch from Jackson Press today.

Just want to wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas, a very Happy Holidays if you don't observe Christmas, and a very Happy New Year, unless you're Chinese, in which case we will wish you a Happy New Year of the Rat in about six weeks.

See what Miller's "other" job is and remember, he's just trying to spread holiday cheer the best way he knows how!


We know if you've been bad or good!!!

December 19, 2007

Jackson Press - Retirement Envy!

I'm getting envious of the baby boomers and their retirements.  They're like dandelions after a summer shower - popping up all over, having retirement parties, then leaving like little fuzzy dandelion seeds floating on a July breeze, leaving us younger folk to carry on with their work, sort of.  Seems like everyone's either retired, retiring, or working on their second career!

Me - I'm just having trouble imagining myself retiring in another twelve years.  I can't imagine spending THIRTY years working for the same organization!  And yet I'm over halfway there!  Working for government is an elegant trap, where time subtly ropes you in and lulls you into a false sense of security and success.

Speaking of government, there was a fire Wednesday in Vice President Dick Cheney's suite of offices in the historic Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House.  Makes me wonder what was going on in there.  It also inspired a new Civil Servitude Editorial cartoon with my theory of what was going on.

As usual, thanks for reading and enjoy!

Get that burning match away from my CIA files!!!

December 16, 2007

Jackson Press - Ever Expanding Your Vocabulary!

We're at it again, here at Jackson Press! 

With all this snowy weather keeping us stuck in the house (and carefully watching the sump pumps), we've decided to work on expanding your vocabulary with more words completely useless for normal conversations.

Today's cartoon was inspired by the word "miasma".  

This word was first introduced to me by a dear friend and part-time muse (Kathy knows who she is) about eight years ago during one of our normal conversations about the bane of working for government.  I was instantly smitten with the word's pronunciation and it's interesting definition, applicable to so many different government situations.

For those of you unfamiliar with the lovely word miasma, here's a link to Merriam-Webster's online dictionary.  In reviewing miasma's similarities at Thesaurus.com, none of the related words has quite the same feel or bite as miasma itself.  Sure, there's fetor, pollution, and stench, but none of them are quite as applicable to a vacuous organization that sucks the life from it's workers and returns nothing positive, be it governmental or private industry. 

As usual, thanks for reading and enjoy!

Coming to you from the frozen, snowy miasma that is Central Ohio in winter!

December 12, 2007

Not much to say here at Jackson Press.  It's becoming another typical winter, with a basement that threatens to turn into an indoor pool with the first power outage and a backyard that makes me feel like I'm living on lake-front property. 

But here's an interesting morsel of scientific knowledge - scientists have found that men with lower pitched voices tend to have more children than men with higher pitched voices.  The study, from McMaster University, also suggests that reproductive-minded women favor men with lower voices.

In previous studies, researchers found that women find deeper male voices more attractive and consider those men to be more dominant, older, healthier, and more masculine.  Men tend to prefer women with higher-pitched voices.

I wonder how much that study cost?  Do university's really spend gobs of money funding studies that simply confirm what most of us already know as common knowledge, generally realized through common sense?  Or is common sense really becoming so rare that we have to spend tens (hundreds?) of thousands of dollars on outlandish studies like this because so many of us have trouble realizing those things on our own?  Doesn't everyone just naturally know that Barry White truly had the sexiest male voice on the planet? 

Perhaps we'll soon see a study confirming that common sense really does only exist in 12% of the human population, so it's being renamed to "aberrant knowledge," since it's become so uncommon.

Rest assured there's no common sense at work in Bluff City city hall!  We're talking about government here - common sense goes out the window as soon as the elections are over. 

McMaster University, Home of the Fighting McMuffins!

December 9, 2007

Painful World Records.

There's a Guinness World Record of "Greatest Distance Thrown in a Car Accident".   It's currently held by Matthew McKnight of Connellsville, Pennsylvania, who was thrown 118 feet after getting hit by a car traveling 70 mph.  The story's here.

A volunteer firefighter, McKnight was trying to help accident victims along Interstate 376 when he was hit.  He was not on duty when he got hit. 

He suffered two dislocated shoulders and a broken shoulder, pelvis, leg, and tailbone.  He spent two weeks in the hospital and 80 days in rehab before he returned to work.

And now he's the world record holder for "Greatest Distance Thrown in a Car Accident".  So what whacko's going out to beat that record?

Our latest Civil Servitude is available for your reading pleasure.  Mayor Percy heard about Spurburt's cost savings plan and he's excited!  Then again, Mayor Percy is pretty easily excited.

World Record Holder for Most World Records Ignored!

December 5, 2007

December 5 is Day of the Ninja! 

Happy Ninja Day to you.  I'm observing Day of the Ninja by sitting here in my ninja mask as I type this message to you.  No one can see me because I blend into the shadows so completely.  I also type very quietly when wearing my ninja mask, so no one in my house even knows I'm sitting here doing this.  It's very liberating!

For those of you unfamiliar with ninjas and their very important place in the world, please go to Ask A Ninja (www.askaninja.com).  There you will find the answer to all questions ninja, answered by a fat, pasty white guy in a black ninja suit.  Very funny stuff.  I'm jealous that I didn't think of it first.

My current favorite episode has The Ninja discussing the problems with the current Writer's Guild Strike.  Click here to enjoy it.   The Ninja makes many valid points about the strike, things that any striking organization should take to heart, not that I'm condoning going on strike.  But I do completely agree with the idea of putting Vikings on the picket line.

Our latest Civil Servitude doesn't deal with ninjas or strikes, but it does have a great idea for the mayor's cost savings program!  Burt Spurburt is brilliant!

Dragon Claw Fire Horde!

December 2, 2007

I actually giggled to myself whilst planning our latest Civil Servitude episode and November's Mayor's Memo. 

Mayor Percy's insane notion of joyous celebration with his beloved electorate has reached a new climax.  And Bluff City Park will never be quite the same.

Maybe Mayor Percy can turn Bluff City Park into an athletic center with softball diamonds and soccer fields?  Goodness knows they will certainly have a lot of open space there once everything stops smoldering!

This is also our first foray into posting a color Civil Servitude!!!  Just like the old MGM Technicolor movies of old, we bring this Civil Servitude to you in rich, full, life-like color!  I think it enlivens the strip dramatically.  Hopefully you'll enjoy it all the more.

Mayor Percy's November Mayor's Memo is also available for your reading pleasure and is a MUST READ after this episode.  See how the consummate politician spins this asinine tragedy into a positive!

Feelin' the burn!

November 28, 2007

We'll try to be brief in this dispatch.  We might even be amusing, too.

Did you know that Alex Trebek, host of Jeopardy, is Canadian?  You can't tell form his accent (he doesn't say "Eh" or "Aboot").  In several recent Jeopardy episodes there have been categories featuring Canadian facts.  Needless to say, the contestants did not do well in the Canuck categories. 

Alex was a little riled about this and teasingly chided the idiot American contestants for not knowing more aboot his native land.  I've seen him do this from time to time and I consider Trebek to be a bit condescending at times, as if a contestant is a complete moron for not knowing that Glenfiddich is the answer to "Meaning "The Valley of the Deer", it's a type of rose, or a single malt scotch whiskey." 

How many of you knew that answer?  Heck, I enjoy a good single malt scotch and I didn't know that!  I've never had Glenfiddich; I prefer The Macallan.

No, this wasn't the usual Trebek sneering superciliousness.  Rather, it was one more glaring example of just how oblivious Americans are to the world beyond their borders, a global sin I am also guilty of.  And maybe it's because we just don't care about the world outside.  Maybe that's not a bad thing, maybe it is. 

Here's a fine example of the outside world:

A 54-year-old British teacher in Sudan is facing 40 lashes with a whip for allowing her class of 7-year-olds to name a stuffed teddy bear Muhammad.  Story here. 

Now I'm not Islamic, so I wouldn't know that naming a teddy bear Muhammad is a cardinal sin against that religion.  But the fricking students picked the name, not the teacher!!  Are they going to lash the seven-year-olds, too?!!  Granted, there have been times I've wanted to swat my seven-year-old's bottom, but come on!

Personally, I find this situation extreme and idiotic, a feeling which I find myself acquainting to the Muslim religion more and more these days.  It makes these people look small-minded and primitive.  But maybe if I read the world news section of the paper (instead of looking for future Civil Servitude tidbits in the Local Section) I would be more aware of cultural sensitivities like this. 

But being aware doesn't mean I'd be any more sensitive, since I tend to find religious zealots like this something to be laughed at anyway.  I mean, come on, anyone with a lick of common sense can see that this was done without malice or intent to defame the Muslim religion.

Here's what I think is going on - I suspect it was just a quiet week in Sudan, with no thefts or adultery reported, so the Khartoum north prosecution unit didn't have any hands to chop off or people to stone.  And while I'm sure the Khartoum north prosecution unit would prefer to perform a lively chopping or stoning if they could find someone guilty of such sins, I'm sure they'd settle for a simple lashing to kill the time.  I know I would!

Want to know where I dug up that Jeopardy question?  And yes, it is a real question from the 7/12/2000 episode of Jeopardy.  I found it here, from the J! - Archive, concrete proof that some people have waaaayyyyy too much passion and waaaayyyyy too much time on their hands!

Some people probably say that about Civil Servitude.  And they're probably right.  Enjoy!


Doing our best to increase your vocabulary!

November 25, 2007

Been a busy weekend here at Jackson Press!  While I enjoyed a four-day weekend, these last two days were filled with work!  Between yesterday and today I accomplished the following:

- raked leaves (no small chore on Jackson Acre!)
- stacked a cord of firewood
- put up Christmas lights outside
- dragged the Christmas tree up from the basement
- fixed turkey soup
- fixed dinner tonite (steak and burgers)
- took care of the recycling
- edited some family video

Naturally, I've been thinking about work as today's essay topic.

In an effort to teach my children something about the value of work and the rewards of a job well done, I enlisted their help in raking leaves and stacking firewood.  They're trying to raise money to buy a video game, so I told them I'd pay them an allowance for their help.

Yesterday morning we raked leaves, and they did a great job helping me, worthy of the $8 each I paid them.  It originally started out as $5 each, but Hannah's a hard-bargainer and she convinced me to pay them more.

Yesterday afternoon we then stacked firewood.  I buy a cord of wood every year; to give you an idea of how much wood that is, it would fill up a small dump truck.  My kids helped me stack for 30 minutes, pestering me every two minutes by asking how much they were making for this job.  We finally agreed that I would pay them each $3 more.  I shortchanged them a little on the firewood because I think I overpaid them on the leaves.  Guess I'll also need to teach them about the value of money and how little minimum wage really pays!

Yesterday I stumbled upon an interesting article that mentioned something interesting about work.  The article, on Slate.com, was about LARPing, or Live Action Role Playing.  This is where grown people dress up in homemade armor and fight each other with swords as they play a game called Darkon that revolves around a make-believe medieval society.  Kind of like real action Dungeons & Dragons.

The interesting thing about this article is what the author says about work.  The author, Grady Hendrix, writes:

We measure our worth by our jobs, but what happens when there are fewer and fewer meaningful jobs? Many of the Darkon players are trapped in the classic nerd conundrum: They don't find the corporate track fulfilling, and so they wind up working as Starbucks baristas and office administrators. At the same time, they're smart enough to know that being called a Starbucks "team member" is just a nicer way of being called a Starbucks slave. "Everything is gone," Andrew of Laconia says. "Everything that was once noble and good in this world is gone and it's been replaced by Wal-Mart. And McDonald's. And Burger King. Some people just want more. They're tired of working their ass off for material goods. You could just stay home and watch TV, or you could work for adventure, you know?"

I find this immensely disheartening, because I know how true it is.  Our society measures us by our "work", and most of our "work" revolves around a job at some organization doing something that is sometimes not what we consider rewarding.  It's a job, not a calling.  It pays the bills.

Getting back to my children and those fatherly life lessons I try to teach, I realize I'm not the best example of someone who finds reward and meaning in their job.  But I honestly believe we all can find some "calling" in our lives that is rewarding and meaningful, even if it's not our job.  Especially if it’s not our job!  I believe we have a duty to ourselves to find whatever our "calling" is, something we find rewarding that hopefully makes the world a better place.

To me, Civil Servitude is my rewarding work.  My job is just a job, but writing and drawing a cartoon about Bluff City is my calling.  To say I'm making the world a better place through Civil Servitude is probably a stretch, but if we make even one person laugh and think about something in a slightly different way, what more could one ask for?  Besides a million bucks, that is.

This episode was inspired by leaf raking this weekend.  Thanks for reading and enjoy!

Everybody's Workin' For The Weekend!

November 22, 2007

It's Thanksgiving!  Happy Thanksgiving! 

Those of us who don't have to work today should be very thankful!  Those of us who also don't have to fix Thanksgiving dinner should be doubly thankful!

Me, I'm thankful for everyone who reads my inane (and sometimes insane) little cartoon every week.  I'm also thankful for those of you who tolerate my little diatribes here in the News From Jackson Press.  It's a very cathartic act and I am most thankful for having this internet outlet.

And - as much as it pains me to admit - I am thankful for my job.  As much as I may hate my job, at least I have a job.  And my job does provide much of the fodder that finds it's way into Civil Servitude.  It's quickly becoming my golden goose.

And I do like goose meat.  When grilled properly, it tastes just like a good steak.  Trust me, you don't fix wild Canadian goose meat like fowl.  They're just like flying cows that eat corn and grass and must be prepared with the same love and care you'd show a good beef steak.

Anyway, I digress (and am suddenly hungry for a goose steak!).  Happy Thanksgiving!  Our latest episode is not a holiday episode.  

Also, we've got a bit of Civil Servitude product placement casually thrown in to this episode.  Can you find it? Enjoy!


Please Pass the Pumpkin Pie!!

November 18, 2007

Well, it's finally happened.  The Tooth Fairy has finally been killed.  She died a quiet little death last weekend at the hands of my wife.  And it was probably time, but I was completely unprepared.  In fact, no one bothered to even tell me until long after the poor little sprite was cold and buried.

It started with my eldest losing another tooth a week and a half ago. Tucking the tooth under her pillow, the Tooth Fairy forgot to leave her any money that night!    Now this is a cardinal fairy sin and grounds for termination from the Tooth Fairy Corps, so we assured Haley that the Tooth Fairy would probably stop by the next night.  After all, her job was on the line!

Well, the next night came and went and still no tooth extortion payment.  Haley reported this to us at breakfast the following morning.  She wasn't bothered by it; just kind of perplexed.

"Impossible!" I cried as I jumped up from the table.  "There's no way the Tooth Fairy forgot two nights in a row!  The money must've fallen under your bed or something!" 

At this point I was concerned for my daughter's childhood innocence!  Belief in Tooth Fairies is a benchmark for childhood - disbelief in such magical creatures marks a major turning point in growth and maturity!  I wasn't ready for such a turning point.

So I slipped back to her bedroom and tossed a five dollar bill under her bed (yes, five dollars is the going tooth rate at my house).  I figured she'd find it later and all would be good.

Well, later came and went with no exclamation of the lost Tooth Fairy money.  And then later that same day my youngest finally extracted a wiggly tooth she'd been saving (she hates pulling out loose teeth).  It seems her mother made her a deal where, if she pulled out her wiggly tooth, her mother would give her twenty bucks(!).  Twenty dollars is big money to my eight-year-old and she pulled that tooth post-haste!

I told Hannah, "You know, the Tooth Fairy probably won't bring you any money, since your mom is giving you twenty bucks for that tooth."  Hannah gave me a weird look, like I had a third eye or something.

Realizing Haley hadn't said anything about her lost Fairy money, I asked her if she ever checked under her bed.  She said "No", so I suggested she check again.  A minute later she came back smiling and holding a five dollar bill.

"See," I said. "It must've fallen off the bed while you were sleeping."  Haley rolled her eyes and also gave me a weird look.

Curious about the weird looks from my daughters, I mentioned it to my wife that night after the kids were in bed.  "Oh, the girls know.  Haley told me she knew and Hannah suspected, so I told them." 

I was astonished.  Evidently this confession happened after the first missed Tooth Fairy deposit, but no one bothered to tell me.  And here I was, sneaking about trying to salvage the Tooth Fairy's precious reputation when the truth was already out there, the sacred parental secret exposed!

So now I sit here wondering who's next - Santa Claus?  The Easter Bunny?  The Halloween Candy Fairy?  World Peace?  I thought I had more time, but Haley's ten and reaching the end of those gullible years.  And Hannah will follow right behind, the curse of being the younger sibling.

It's a brave new world we're entering, stoic and logical.  No more fairies, no more jolly old Christmas elves, no more magic. 

And I'm afraid the Motorcycle Fairy is next, fearful of that day when Holly quietly puts her arm around my shoulder and tells me that I'm not getting that new motorcycle, no matter how many nights I sleep with a picture of a 2005 Honda Super Hawk under my pillow.

I still believe in benevolent fairies!
(Muttered repeatedly before going to bed)

November 14, 2007

Another Wednesday dispatch from Jackson Press.  We've got to stop meeting like this.

I'm munching on a bit of string cheese as I type this and my dog is giving me those "puppy dog" eyes, a cute and subtle canine method of begging that appeals to your heart.  Those sad eyes make you just want to give the dog everything on your plate because they're just so gosh-darn cute.  And she'll just watch you forever, a canine with the patience of Job.  Must be the hunting dog in her.

Now our old dog, Ace (his official name was Stroker Ace and, no, we didn't name him.  But I do love Burt Reynolds's body of work as an actor!), was quite the opposite when it came to begging.  He was more like the bum on the street who aggressively panhandles by getting right up in your personal space and repeatedly asking you for change.   Ace would sit a centimeter from your thigh while you were seated at the dinner table and he'd just stare at you and pant, his hot doggy breath forming a liver-scented dew on your pants leg, if you were wearing pants.  What?!!  Doesn't everybody like to eat dinner in the nude??!!

After about a minute of this polite begging, Ace would start incessantly bumping your thigh with his nose, right on the wet spot caused by his breath.  Bump, bump.  He must've thought we'd forgotten about him down there, since he was being so good and quiet.  Enough of the "nice" dog crap; he decided to ratchet it up a couple notches. 

Bump, bump, bump.  Sometimes, if you weren't expecting him (like, say, you were a guest at our table and didn't know our dog was so forward), he could nudge you across the seat of the chair with his nose bumps.  This was especially dangerous if the chair seat was slippery.  Then there were the incidents when someone would wear shorts and his cold, wet nose contacted bare skin.  Ace caused many a shriek among the women-folk, and not a few fast heartbeats!

Ace would finally triumph in getting a bite simply because you'd get tired of him panting on you and bruising your thigh.  Like a mobster shaking down a shop keeper for protection money, you'd flip Ace a nibble of something just to make him go away.  And he would, sidling up to the next person as he made his way around the table.

Boy, he was a great dog!  Sometimes I really miss that furry little insistent bastard (sniffles a little sadly).

Back to Ginger: I actually bought this cheese for her, since tomorrow is the first of four dog shows here in Columbus and my wife uses the cheese as a reward for looking pretty.  I believe the technique was initially discovered in use by contestants in the Miss America contest.  Worked for them, should also work for canine bitches, right? (didn't you see that one coming?)  

Ginger  keeps sticking her nose in my lap and snuffling harshly as she tries to determine whether I've eaten all the cheese myself.  Reminds me of Ace and I begin to wonder if the old bastard isn't channeling himself thru her.  I give her the last bite but make her work for it by having her sit, stay, and lay down.  Satisfied, she trots off for a drink and is back a minute later, still sniffing around.  She smells the wrappers on my desk.

"All gone," I tell her.  She just looks at me, smiling like a pretty foreign girl who doesn't understand what I'm saying but thinks I'm saying something nice.  Ginger doesn't yet know what "All Gone" means.  Ace, on the other hand, knew this phrase well, for it was his keyword to go pester someone else who had food. 

I tell Ginger to "scram" and she leaves.  That one she knows.

Speaking of dogs, there's more Bucky the Beaver hi-jinx in this episode!  But rest assured, Bucky's days at Bluff City city hall are numbered.

Gotta run - Ghost Hunters is on!

Bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, bump ...

November 11, 2007

So Saturday at Jackson Press was spent tooling around Jackson Acre on the official Jackson Press Lawn Tractor mulching leaves.  Here's why that sucked ...

First, there are many silver maples on the properties surrounding Jackson Acre.  While silver maples can be nice trees to look at, they are what my neighbor Gordon calls "dirty trees".  Silver maples have this annoying tendency to grow many leaves, all of which will eventually fall.  And in a high wind they will shed broken branches like a dog shaking off water after a bath.  Lot's of tree litter, hence the "dirty tree" moniker.

My neighbor to the west, Dave, has four or five mature silver maple trees.  I also have four or five.  Since Dave's property is west of mine, and the prevailing winds blow from west to east, many, if not all, of his leaves end up in my yard.  One upside of this easterly-blowing prevailing wind is that many, but rarely most and never all, of my leaves end up in the yard of my eastern neighbor, Gordon.  So the lesson here is to make sure you live in the western-most yard, so all of your leaves blow into your easterly neighbor's yard for them to clean up! 

This year I decided to use the official Jackson Press Lawn Tractor to mulch the leaves, rather than waste my time actually raking the leaves.  Besides the obvious physical reason against raking (laziness), past autumns have demonstrated that disposing of our leaves is no small task, as there are not that many places to stash huge piles of leaves on Jackson Acre and we're not supposed to burn them.  This is very large dilemma my dirty trees leave me with. 

So this year we're just chopping everything up.  So far it's working well, although I suspect what's really happening is that my leaves, chopped into smaller pieces, are easier to blow into Gordon's yard.

Now when I cut the grass at Jackson Acre, I cut it in the highest gear my tractor has, which is fifth gear.  That usually propels me along at about 7 MPH.  Trust me, that is not as fast as it may sound.  When mulching leaves, however, I have to slow down to third gear to insure the blades have time to properly chop things up into small pieces.  Third gear zips us along at about 3 MPH.  Trust me, that is as slow as it sounds.  Painfully slow, in fact, when you're used to flying along at 7 MPH.

So Saturday found Gordon and I mulching.  I donned a surgical mask, since I'm allergic to leaves, and this reminded me of all the Asians who wore surgical masks as they tried not to catch SARS.  I'm sure Gordon thinks I'm crazy, but I consider wearing the surgical mask as practice for the upcoming bird flu.

As I trundled through my yard I noticed Gordon had at least twice as many leaves as me, thus supporting my "live to the west" theory.  Surprisingly enough, Gordon was still done mulching long before me and with very little leaf litter residue.  This is further proof that my tractor is frighteningly slow and that I should demand a new tractor for Jackson Press from my boss. 

The only problem is that I'd rather waste my money on a new motorcycle.  I can enjoy a new motorcycle - I would not enjoy a new tractor.  Besides, the boss would just say "No".  Or - more likely - she would say "Yes" but I would have to buy her a diamond ring before I could buy either the tractor or motorcycle.  You're laughing at this notion, but there is precedence to this - it happened in 2001, when I bought my third motorcycle.  That bike's long gone, but the wife still has the ring.  I'm not sure what that says about me ...

One downside to mulching our leaves is that we don't have any big leaf piles for the kids to jump into.  That's actually the only time my kids willingly rake leaves without being forced or cajoled.  They rake up huge piles of leaves that they then spend hours playing in.  Then the piles sit there for weeks at a time, killing the grass underneath and turning so moldy that I can't get within ten feet of the pile without sneezing my britches off.

Yeah, mulching's a much better idea.

The Giant Beaver adventure continues.  Thanks for reading and enjoy!


Trundling thru life in second gear ...

November 7, 2007

I've been on a Civil Servitude tear this week!  Cranked out three strips this week and even have a new Editorial cartoon for your enjoyment! 

We here at Jackson Press are eagerly awaiting tonite's Ghost Hunters episode, where they reveal the results of their live Halloween investigation of the definitely haunted Waverly Hills Sanitorium in Kentucky.

Well, the kids are fussing.  They can't seem to get their teeth brushed without quibbling with each other.  Time to go in and restore order.  It's going to be a long winter.

Bringing order to childish chaos!

November 4, 2007

Autumn's almost over (sigh).  My favorite season, it also seems like it's always the shortest one.

We had our first fire in the fireplace Friday night.  And we spent this weekend battening down the hatches here at Jackson Press.  We trimmed various shrubs, caulked various gaps, and used the lawn tractor to mulch the various piles of leaves our glorious trees have given us.  Oh, the joys of autumn!

This Halloween was generous to my children.  We've had candy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the last three days!  I figure we've got another twenty-two days of candy left to eat, if we keep up at this pace.  And we have to eat the candy as soon as possible - the sooner it's gone, the sooner I can get back on my diet!

So I'm sitting here, in my office at Jackson Press, watching my trees leave me more leaves (I wonder if that's the origin of the word "leaf"?) and half paying attention to the movie "Tombstone" that's on TV.  Val Kilmer's best role was in this movie, playing the drunk and consumed Doc Holliday.  It's one of my favorite cowboy flicks, along with "Unforgiven", "The Outlaw Josey Wales", "The Shootist", and  "Blazing Saddles."  Can't have a favorite cowboy movie list without at least one John Wayne and one Clint Eastwood movie.

Thanks for reading!

I'm Your Huckleberry.

October 31, 2007

Definitely gonna be real quick tonight.  Not like the last two times where I said this would be quick and it really wasn't because I droned on and on and eventually thought of something either funny or interesting to say (or not - depending on your sense of humor) by the very end.

No, tonite will definitely be quick.  Why, you may ask?

Good question.  And here's the quick answer - It's Beggar's Night!!!!

And I am out Trick-or-Treating with my kids!  In costume and all! I'm actually writing this the night before, because I know I will be too geeked out on sugar and candy to bother messing with this on Beggar's Night.

If you're lucky, maybe I'll have someone snap a picture of me in costume to put under the Extra Stuff feature of our intrepid little web site here.

Rest assured, however, that Civil Servitude chugs onward with another new episode, trotted out from the "Secret Extra Episodes" archive for use in special occasions such as this.

Remember to brush your teeth after eating all that candy and Enjoy!

So what are you supposed to be?

October 28, 2007

This will be a quick and painless Civil Servitude "blog".  I promise.

It's been a long, action-packed weekend!  And we've just gotten back home this Sunday evening form a day full of travel and adventure! 

I'm currently watching my newly clean dog lick herself dry.

I'm trying to help my youngest child write a "reading reaction" bit of homework for the book she's reading.

I smell like campfire smoke, which is a good thing.

I just realized that I mixed up the word "from" with the word "form".  I do this all the time.

I just helped my wife flip our swedish massage super relaxing extra deep sleep space shuttle foam mattress.  Partially because my side is getting lumpy, but mainly because said newly clean dog barfed up a half-eaten, partially digested sock onto the super space foam mattress at 5:22 this morning.

My super intelligent, hyper aware alarm clock is supposed to handle daylight savings time all by itself, which it did this morning, completely unaware that big brother changed daylight savings time to next weekend.

So I woke up at 9:00 this morning, thinking I had all this time to eat breakfast, have some coffee, then go cut the grass, which has not been cut in a week and a half.  Then I realized the oven clock said it was 10:25 and that my super intelligent, hyper aware alarm clock was stupid and wrong and I just lost the first hour of my day!

Needless to say, the grass didn't get cut.  If I wait long enough all the leaf fall form all the beautiful mature trees here on Jackson Acre will just from a nice carpet of dead leaves over my lawn and kill all the grass and I won't have to worry about cutting anything.

So, tonight we trot out one of our old back-up strips.  Older, but still funny.   

October 24, 2007

Gotta be quick tonight.  I got my new eBay purchased video game in the mail today and have spent too much time playing it tonight, so I'm rushed to get this all out.

You know, I find it weird to see an actor who played, say, a really sleazy bad guy on one of my favorite television shows suddenly turn up in another show as a nice guy.  The actor is question went from being the really crooked Secret Service Special Agent Kellerman on "Prison Break" to being a doctor on some doctor show called "Private Practice". 

I don't ever watch "Private Practice"; it's just on now because the television remote is across the room and I'm in the zone and don't want to get up to fetch it to change the channel. Plus, I'm lazy.

So here I sit, befuddled as to why Special Agent Kellerman isn't just gunning down everyone in this doctor's office as he fights to capture Michael Scofield.  Then I remind myself that I'm not watching "Prison Break" and that this guy isn't Agent Kellerman.  I doubt there are too many gunfights on "Private Practice".

Oh, well.  You'll never have to worry about us switching actors in Civil Servitude!  These folks have the parts for life; kinda like those people who act on soap operas!

October 21, 2007

Civil Servitude and Fuzzy Caterpillars

What a beautiful weekend!  Hopefully you got outside to enjoy the fall weather and didn't waste this gorgeous opportunity.

Me, I spent most of yesterday morning and afternoon working on my motorcycle – again!  I was supposed to be riding my motorcycle; but the 23-year-old contraption, being the older bike that it is, decided to leak gasoline from one of its carburetors instead.  I should've been thankful nothing caught fire, but I wasn't.  At least I would’ve gotten the insurance money if it had burned up.  Although with my luck, it probably would’ve burned the house down!

So I spent five hours on Saturday tearing the bloody thing apart twice (because the first repair using vasoline didn't work - don't ask).  And while I was fixing stuff I figured, “What the heck, I may as well reassemble our newly repaired basketball backboard while I’m out here working.  It’s such a beautiful day!”  So I did that, too.  Nice weather appears to make me feel like fixing things.

Sunday, however, I did finally get to go riding.  And the bike seems to be running better now - just in time to get it ready for winter storage!

On Sunday's trip, I saw nine fuzzy caterpillars crossing the road, all going from left to right, but not all together.  If they were all together, that would’ve been really weird.  As it was, seeing all nine going left to right was kinda odd.  Makes me wonder if it has something to do with the earth’s magnetic fields or ozone levels or maybe gradient pavement temperatures.  Or maybe it’s just like the old chicken joke – they’re just trying to get to the other side.

Needless to say, I didn’t run over them.

I also saw (smelled) two dead skunks on my ride.  Oddly enough, neither of them appeared to make it across the road. 

I noticed that the trees along the river were very colorful, with sycamores, elms, and maples in bright orange and red, leaves falling like a ticker-tape parade as I rode along the Scioto River.  A couple of times I panicked, thinking a falling leaf was a squirrel scampering across the road.  While I’ve really got no problem running over a squirrel, per say, I do fear that doing so would cause me to wreck my bike.  And I’ve spent too many hours tearing this thing apart to let a squirrel wreck it all!

I also zipped through a couple of leaf tornadoes swirling in the road.  I did this for my eldest daughter, who saw a leaf tornado spin across our driveway yesterday.  This inspired her so much that she spent fifteen minutes raking together a large pile of leaves on our driveway so she could ride her bike through them when the wind came through again and turned it into a leaf tornado.  

Sadly, it never happened, although I believe a coyote or raccoon slept in the leaf pile last night, since it was such a lovely nest!

These are the kinds of things I notice when I ride.  I think it’s because of the Zen-like state that motorcycling puts me into.  It’s like mobile meditation.  It’s a sanity check for all the crappy things which will come up this week at work, things which will cause me to grumble and grouse and swear and wish people were dead. 

But those are also the things that drive me to write Civil Servitude!  They are the Yin to my Yang, or something like that.  As Buddha would probably say (not that I’m a Buddhist or anything), you have to make lemonade from your lemons.

Here's hoping you enjoy our latest pitcher of lemonade!

October 17, 2007

So I watched part of this new reality show, "Kid Nation,” where a bunch of kids run a town populated only by kids.  No adults.  The premise evidently being that kids might just be mature enough to take care of things, maybe even better than adults (that wouldn't be hard).

The kids are having an election to elect a town council.  One of the boys has ripped down the election poster of his female opponent, thrown it on the ground, and is bouncing on the poster with a pogo stick.  When did pogo sticks come back into the toy lexicon?  I haven’t seen one for thirty years! 

Anyway, the girl is very upset and crying.  This is to be understood.  A lot of work went into those posters, with all the colors and sparklie things.  The girl is wailing now.  She sounds a lot like my girls did when they were three or four and didn't get their way, only this girl is maybe 11 or 12.

While it's an interesting idea for a show, don't these show producers have their own children?  I mean, the reality of things in my household is that my kids run things from time to time.  I mean, we're constantly helping them with homework, shuttling them off to piano lessons and basketball or softball practice, picking them up after unicycling practice, fixing dinners that they’ll eat, taking them out for ice cream and movies - you know, parenting stuff.

Isn't parenting sometimes synonymous with "doing what your kid wants (or needs)"?

Don't get me wrong: it's not like my kids are running the house and having cake for breakfast or staying up watching cartoons (or Ghost Hunter) till three AM or playing video games when they should be doing homework.  No, nothing quite like that.

But children do have a very large influence on the daily routines of our lives.  As a parent, we do all we can to help them become well-rounded people, by cultivating their interests and staying involved in their lives.    You know – parenting and stuff like that.

And sometimes we take them out for ice cream, because children really, really like ice cream.

No ice cream for me, thank you.  I'm an adult.

October 14, 2007

The latest Civil Servitude is now available for your reading enjoyment!  Or maybe just some slight "reading humor", should you not find it all that funny, only mildly humorous.

This episode finds Burt Spurburt, P.E. once again in the midst of the action as our intrepid city engineer is called into the field!  Being the desk jockey that many engineers are, Spurburt is understandably excited for a chance to get out in the field!

Being a desk jockey myself, I fondly remember those days when I had to head out to the field for some kind of serious sewer assessment (yes, I started off my civil service career working for the sewer department - that's how I knew so much about drainage problems when I bought our current house!).  Oh, the pleasant memories of donning my steel-toed work boots, jumping into a Suburban, and roaring off to action!

Although most of the action I saw consisted of examining catch basins and checking out detention ponds, with maybe an occasional impervious area review throw in to mix things up!

Yay, Spurburt's back! Thanks for reading and enjoy!

October 10, 2007

Ghost Hunters  

Ghost Hunters is probably one of the best, eeriest, creepiest, most entertaining shows I'm watching these days (it's on the Sci-Fi channel, but don't let that dissuade you from watching!).  These guys are hunting for ghosts - and it's all for real!  The best of reality TV! 

Ghost Hunters consist of Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson and their team members of The Atlantic Paranormal Society, or TAPS.  But trust me -  these aren't just a bunch of whackos running around chasing ghosts.  No, Jason and Grant are plumbers by trade (RotoRooter), normal guys working normal jobs with an unusual hobby. 

And it is this normalcy that makes the show so interesting.  They base the success of their investigations on gathering physical evidence, video and audio, and they always do their best to debunk whatever ghost story they're investigating. 

And it is in this evidence that the show gets surreal, eerie, and creepy.  There's nothing as scary as a good EVP (Electronic Voice Phenomena), the disembodied voice of "something" captured on audio media, often times never even heard by the investigators at the time of the recording!  The scariest EVPs were from the investigation of the house located next to where the Manson Murders happened.  If you ever get a chance to see THAT episode, it's worth the fright!

So if you're looking for something entertaining, Ghost Hunters is definitely worth a look.  Who knows?  It might even convince you that ghosts really do exist.  It certainly makes me wonder what lies beyond this physical world. 

Along those same lines is the John Edwards Show.  Here's a man with a seemingly accurate ability to communicate with those who have passed on.  Edwards seems eerily convincing and the two shows have me believing there's more here than meets the eye! 

Thanks for reading and enjoy!

October 7, 2007

Tomorrow is Columbus Day.  

Or today is Columbus Day if you're reading this tomorrow.  And you're probably at work.

Me, I work for the City of Columbus, so I get the day off.  I used to think we were special, being employees of Columbus, and that working for the City of Columbus was the reason we got Columbus Day off.  Turns out most other government agencies also get the day off, even though they don't work for the namesake of that intrepid explorer.

So I guess you could call Columbus Day a government worker holiday, since it's really only observed by government agencies.

Franklin D. Roosevelt made Columbus Day a federal holiday, although it was celebrated in America as early as 1792 in New York City, which enjoys a proud tradition of Columbus Day celebrations and is generally considered by everyone within New York City to be the center of the known universe. 

Of course, we all know that Columbus didn't really discover America - it was here long before he found stumbled across it.  He did, however, open the door to its conquest by the more intelligent Europeans, who also brought the world the Crusades, the Black Plague,  and Catholicism.  Said Europeans then proceeded to swarm into the Americas to rape and pillage its bounty, in keeping with European colonial traditions of the day. 

Interestingly enough, Columbus Day is not celebrated in the state of Minnesota, which is very close to Canada, a point that will become even more important in a few more seconds.  South Dakota observes the day as "Native American Day", not Columbus Day and Columbus Day is not considered a legal holiday in Nevada, so prostitutes do not get the day off with pay.

Even more interesting is the fact that Columbus Day in the United States is also Thanksgiving Day for our good neighbors to the north in Canada.  I wonder, do they eat Canadian bacon instead of turkey?  And what are they really thankful "aboot"?  Hockey?  Molson beer?  Socialized medicine?

Thus ends this brief exploration of world culture by Jackson Press.

Thanks for reading and enjoy!

October 3, 2007

When I Grow Up ...

I'm sitting in a project meeting writing this.  I'm not a project manager and it's not my project.  I just kinda fell into it.  It comes with the territory, this job that I love to hate.  This job that I just kinda fell into, with the non-existent career path (government career is an oxymoron).

Falling into things has kinda been the MO for my entire "career" for the last seventeen years.  Oh, sure, I have something resembling job security and the pay is decent.  But there's very little reward and I have no real love for what I do.  I do like (some of) the people I work with (and I'm assuming you all know who you are) and my office has nice big windows and a decent view - lots of natural light.

Where am I going with this, you ask?  You always seem to be asking me that, now that I think of it. 

Well, all this thinking about my career has got me wondering what my daughters will be when they grow up.  That's very important to me, this idea of insuring that that they have all the freedom, opportunity, and support they need to become the women they wish to be, doing whatever it is they decide they wish to do when they grow up.

So that's a big question, isn't it?  What do you want to be when you grow up?

It's not really a rhetorical question.  What did you want to be when you grew up?  Are you doing what you said you wanted to do when you grew up?  Have you grown up?

Me - the answer is most definitely and resoundingly "NO"!  When I grow up I want to be a writer, an illustrator (or cartoonist!), a graphic designer, a product designer, maybe an architect.  Why I never became any of those, I don't really know.  I'm sure I have many good reasons.  I could blame it on the necessities of daily life, lack of imagination, lack of planning, lack of focus and self-discipline.  Seems like a lot of lack going on here.

I've always envied those people who always knew what they wanted to do with their lives and had the focus to pursue their dreams.  I'm not one of those people.  But I've started down a path here, with Civil Servitude, and it's leading me back towards doing what I should've been doing all along - treating you to more zaniness that is Civil Servitude. 

As always, thanks for reading and enjoy!

Imma be a cartoonist when I grow up!

September 30, 2007

Motor Oil Police

I'm thinking about synthetic motor oil right now.  Just saw a commercial for it on TV, so that's why I'm thinking about it.  It's not like I think about synthetic motor oil all the time.  No, I'm a normal guy, so I think about sex, cars, and money all the time. I only think about synthetic motor oil some of the time.

Anyway, I use synthetic motor oil in my Miata and in my motorcycles.  And I change my own oil in those vehicles, so I usually always have some used synthetic motor oil sitting around in the garage to recycle. 

The last time I took my motor oil for recycling, I realized I had all synthetic motor oil.  And I wondered if they'd take all synthetic motor oil.  So I asked the kid at Super Auto World if they recycled synthetic motor oil differently than regular motor oil.  You know, I figured "Hey, it's synthetic motor oil, so they must treat it differently, since it's not 'real' motor oil."

Right?

The kid looks at me like I've got a third eye.  "It's all motor oil," he said.  "Just pour it in there with the rest of the oil.  It's all going to the same place." 

That's what my dad used to say when I'd complain about the peas and beans and broccoli mixing with each other on my dinner plate.  It's all going to the same place.

So I pour my synthetic motor oil into the big vat and put my concerns behind me.  I don't care.  It's not my used motor oil vat that's getting tainted by synthetic oil.  I figure this kid'll be the one who gets in trouble if the oil police realize there's synthetic mixed in with the real stuff.  How the oil police can tell fake oil from real, I'll never know.

In fact, I'm not even sure what they make synthetic motor oil out of.  It sure looks and smells like real oil.  How can one even tell the difference, besides price (synthetic is usually two to three times higher than real motor oil)?

I finish pouring in my oil and I still feel like a criminal, like I've committed some misdemeanor offense by mixing oils.  The kid hands me a clipboard so I can sign my name and address.  For the oil police, I think.

I write "Stan Stanlovski, Bluff City, OH" on the sheet and scurry out of there as fast as possible.

As always, thanks for reading and enjoy!

September 26, 2007

The latest episode has been pulled from my "Extra Episode" archive, for those days when I just don't feel like drawing, like tonite.  It’s an old one and it really shows how far my particular drawing style has evolved in the last year and a half.  Somewhere between Homo erectus and Homo neanderthalensis and not quite Homo sapiens.

So I'm sitting here writing you, slacking off, copying Roy Orbison's All Time Greatest Hits cd, and "Sweet Dreams" comes on.  I'm suddenly hungry for chocolate.  Isn't some company using that song for a chocolate candy commercial?  Shows how effective music can be when it comes to selling stuff.

Sadly, I couldn't tell you what specific brand of chocolate candy is associating itself with Mr. Orbison's classic.  Maybe they should name the candy "Sweet Dreams" and have his song quietly playing from a little sound chip embedded in each bag.  Then I'd know for sure which candy likes Roy Orbison and wouldn't accidentally buy the competition's candy!

Unrelated item - this has been the longest work year of my life.  By "work year", I mean that sense of time that I have related specifically to being at work.  It seems like last October was three years ago.

This observation hit me hard the other day while the wife was discussing Halloween with our children.  She doesn't want to go trick-or-treating with them this year and would rather pass out candy.  Her reason is because she went out with them last year, so it's my turn this year.

"But I took them out last year," I argue.

"No, you didn't," the wife counters.  "You were late getting home from work because you got stuck in traffic on your way home from that work retreat thing, remember?" 

And she’s right (again).  I completely missed trick-or-treat.  I wasn't very happy about it.  My work is not that important that I should miss trick-or-treating with my children.  I would argue that most of our jobs are not that important.

Me, I like to go trick-or-treating with the kids!  I get to wear my glow-in-the-dark skeleton t-shirt (worn only on Beggar’s Night), my glow-in-the-dark skeleton hand gloves, and my non-glowing skeleton mask, maybe throw a cowboy hat on top of the mask!  Sometimes I'll help myself to a piece of their candy when they’re not looking.  It’s a great time!

Sadly, last year I missed it entirely. 

Even sadder still, I thought that was two years ago.  Just goes to show how much like work my work has become this past year.  This is truly the busiest I’ve been in my seventeen years of gainful government employment.  Rarely have time for lunch.  Barely have time to jot down notes for future episodes of Civil Servitude!  It’s become an awful job with too much to do and very little semblance of accomplishment or reward.

But that, dear reader, is what fuels this effort!   Enjoy!  I'm off to watch the inaugural episode of "The Bionic Woman"!

September 24, 2007

It's officially autumn (as of 5:51 AM EDT)!

That means the days will start getting cooler and shorter (fast!) and spiders will start sneaking into the dark corners of Jackson Press to weave their final webs.

Me, I'm a spider kind of guy.  They're such beneficial insects.  In fact, I wish I had more spiders around Jackson Press to eat the hordes of mosquitoes that seem to have hatched overnight!  I hate mosquitoes and I have no problem squashing a mosquito, especially if the little bugger has sunk it's proboscis into my body!  

But I'll go out of my way to not kill spiders.  Maybe it's got something to do with reading too many Spiderman comic books or watching "Charlotte's Web" as a kid.  Or maybe it's a karma thing. 

Speaking of karma, I saved the same spider from drowning in my bathtub three days in a row last week.  Well, I'm pretty sure it was the same spider, although it's hard to say.  They all kinda look the same; one of those slender, tiny-bodied house spiders that typically hide in dark, dusty corners and eat unseen insects, generally keeping to themselves.  

You know, everything a good neighbor should be!

Except this spider liked my bathroom and it somehow kept falling into my bathtub, day after day.  My bathtub seems to be too slippery to climb out of, even for a spider.  So I saved this spider two days in a row, fishing it out of my bathtub, and on the third day I found it curled up in a ball, stuck in a small drop of water.  This time I figured the little bug was probably dead and drowned, but I fished it out anyway. 

Much to my surprise, the spider uncurled itself and started crawling up the tube of hair care product I'd used to rescue it!  What tenacity!  What a survivor!  Who knew house spiders could swim!  

That was the last time I saw the spider.  I can only hope it's tucked itself into some comfy, dark corner of my house and is happily munching away on mosquitoes as it lays it's eggs for next year's brood.

And who knows, maybe this winter I'll find a spider web in my basement with the words "Thanks, dude" woven into the silky strands. 

Thanks for reading and enjoy!

September 19, 2007

I stepped through my ceiling this past weekend!

Well, not actually through it.  More like onto it. 

No, my foot didn't actually go through the ceiling, but I did manage to leave a nice four foot long crack in the ceiling in the hallway.

What was I doing in the attic (yet again), you ask?  Very good question, dear reader.  And I have a good answer.  No, I wasn't adding yet another overhead light or ceiling fan.  No, we've finally got overhead lighting in all the rooms!  Woo hoo, welcome to the twentieth century!

No, this time I was in the attic looking for mold.

Mold.  The very sound of it stops potential home buyers dead in their tracks and sends them scurrying hysterically for the door, unless, of course, there's also mold on the door handle. 

So, Saturday found me trying to determine if I had mold in my attic.  And, no, that's not a euphemism for anything.  You see, I have two bathroom vent fans that don't actually vent.  They just blow directly into the insulation sitting up in my attic.  Hot, moist air straight from the shower blowing directly into my attic.  Sounds just like a recipe for making mold, doesn't it?

So I decided to add some ductwork onto the fans to route the air up above the insulation and out the gable vent.  It took me about an hour and a half to do so, during which time I swore profusely, sweated out twenty-two liters of fluid, got extremely itchy, and teetered on the edge of dehydration and insanity.

So weak was I from lack of water that I took one slight misstep, missed the roof truss, and planted my foot firmly on the ceiling drywall.  There was a slight crunch, but I didn't fall thru.  No gaping hole appeared to swallow me up.  The insulation didn't avalanche down into the hallway below.  I figured I was safe.  I couldn't actually see down into the hallway below me, so the crunch must've been my dehydrated imagination.

Then I heard my eldest child, the curious being she is, ask, "Hey, who took a black marker and drew that long line on the ceiling in the hallway?" 

Never did she ask why anyone would draw a jagged black line on the ceiling.  No, she wanted to know who drew it.  Guess that means my children are a bit used to their father doing odd things to the house in the name of home improvement.

The wife then repeated the question.  After a minute or two she came to her senses, figured out that the crack wasn't wasn't drawn on, and proceeded to yell at me.  "Hey, there's a crack in the ceiling.  What are you doing up there?"

"Putting cracks in the ceiling, what the hell do you think I'm doing up here?"  Seemed like a dumb question to me.  I had already briefed her on my hare-brained scheme to vent the bathroom fans above the insulation.  And who intentionally cracks their ceiling?

But, just like every other project undertaken here at Jackson Press, I attempt to fix one thing and wind up breaking something else.  And for the ninety minutes I invested in ducting my fans in the attic, I will probably spend three hours fixing that stupid crack.

Does anyone know a good, cheap handyman?

September 16, 2007

Monopoly Economics 101

My wife is teaching my children to play Monopoly.  I'd be playing, too, except that I'm working on the latest episode of Civil Servitude, just for you, dear reader.

I'm having as much fun listening to the game as I would actually playing it.  My children, ages 10 and 8.75, have only a rough concept of the value of money and no notion of wealth.  When it comes to purchasing auctioned properties (a new feature in the Speed Monopoly rules, evidently created to make the games shorter), my eldest child blurts out "$500!!!" for Vermont Avenue, which is worth $100 Monopoly dollars.  The bidding goes erratic from there, first a "$500", then Hannah counters with "$150", then Haley counters with "$250".  Holly explains the general rules of auction bidding and the Vermont Avenue finally goes for $150 to Hannah. 

The dollar amounts are surprisingly low to my children, given today's economy.  The idea of buying any property for $100 is exciting even to them (me, too!).  Evidently in response to inflation, there's a new Monopoly game with modern properties and correspondingly higher prices.  But I believe it's better to teach the kids with the classic version.  The dollar amounts are more manageable, making it easier to focus on game play and strategy. 

And it makes collecting $50 in rent still feel exciting!

I always liked being the Battleship piece when we played as kids, spending cold, rainy, dreary Octob