The Bosque

How often am I at a loss for words? Not very...but that's the kind of week it has been thus far.

Life in Sycamoreland is about as good as it can be right now. I'm making my way through one of the local police departments for a civilian job...took one test today, may be taking another one later in the week. I guess that's good...we'll see...I'm hopeful, but not super-optimistic.

April is still sans job, but may be going back to school in June. I don't want to say much about it, because she doesn't want to jinx herself. It's a good thing, though...and it's a good time for a career change, with the fucked up economy and all.

Speaking of...I must say that I'm concerned about the actions that the Obama administration has been taking in recent weeks. I applaud the fact that he is trying to do something, but I'm so leery of too much government. And yes, I'm still a true blue liberal, but I have a healthy fear of government...the road to hell is paved with good intentions and all that.

So, there you have it and there you are. More fun stuff tomorrow.

...bring in the Nomecam!

The fact that someone still drives a Renault Alliance:



Or the fact that they put the stupid fucking spoiler on it:



Tim took these photos Friday while delivering.

This is the big show...the CD release party. It is going to rule, and will not suck.

From MSNBC: The Freedom Tower is out. One World Trade Center is in.

The agency that owns the site says that the signature 1,776-foot skyscraper replacing the towers destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, will be known as One World Trade Center.

I'm surprised this isn't the lead story at Fox News...they have the same AP story posted on their website, halfway down the page. MSNBC has it about a quarter of the page down. Guess Fox really isn't as conservative as it's made out to be.

*removes his tongue from his cheek*

I went to the Best Buy in South County this morning in search of Pearl Jam's remastered Ten CD...it came out Tuesday. There are 4 editions of the re-release, and I wanted the simplest one: the 2-CD set (the original CD remastered and the remixed version). I threatened to quit going to Best Buy over a year ago, but like a stupid little bitch, there I am in a fucking Best Buy buying a CD.

After carefully looking around, the only new version I saw was the die-hard $125 box set. I'll pay $90 for Depeche Mode, but not $125 for Pearl Jam. An employee came up to me and asked me those magic words...

"You finding everything alright?"

I told him no, and explained to him specifically what I wanted to buy.

He responded, "Yeah, we sold a lot of those this week." He then half-heartedly looked through part of the Pearl Jam stock in front of us, then turned back to me and said, "Yeah, sorry. We're out."

Way way way back in the day--like around 1994 and 1995--the people that worked there seemed to want to work there, and they seemed to know what the fuck they were talking about. Looking for a certain CD? They'd actually go look for you...on the shelves, on the computer and in back. Wanted a car stereo? They wouldn't oversell you because they didn't earn commissions. And you could make an appointment to have your stereo installed. Ah...those were the days!

Apparently, Best Buy's earnings for their last quarter were better than expected. Good for them...perhaps they could take some of those profits and put them into better customer service. Fuckers.

For the first time in a week, I feel like my old self again.

My doctor decided to try and modify my meds last week, in part to see if we could control my appetite. Well, let me tell ya...it was a fit-throwing hell ride week, my friends! I was ready to whoop some ass followed by crying jags...it was like I had PMS. Not pretty! By Monday night, I felt like the Morrissey song I posted yesterday and barely slept. Without a doubt, Monday was one of the worst days I've ever had...I felt so out of control.

So the doc had me come back in yesterday, and I'm basically on what I was before, only at a higher dosage. It probably won't control my appetite as well, and I'll be sleepy again, but I'll take that over extreme emotions any day!

I'm doing very well
I can block out the present and the past now
I know by now you think I should have straightened myself out
Thank you...drop dead

Oh, something is squeezing my skull
Something I can barely describe
There is no love in modern life

I'm doing very well
It's a miracle I've even made it this far
The motion of taxis excites me
When you feel it, but then bite me

Oh, something is squeezing my skull
Something I can barely describe
There is no hope in modern life

Oh, something is squeezing my skull
Something I can't fight
No true friends in modern life

Diazapam
That's Valium
Tarmazepam
Lithium
HRT
ECT
How long must I stay on this stuff?

Don't give me any more
Don't give me any more
Don't give me any more
Don't give me any more

Please don't give me any more
Don't give me any more
Don't give me any more

You swore you would not give me any more
Don't give me any more
Don't give me any more
Don't give me any more

Please don't give me any more
Don't give me any more
Don't give me any more

You swore you would not give me any more
Don't give me any more
Don't give me any more
Don't give me any more
Give me any more
Give me any more
Give me any more
Give me any more
Give me any more
Give me any more
Give me any more

You swore
You swore
You swore
You swore you would not give me any more
Give me any more
Give me any more
Give me any more
Give me any more
Give me any more
Give me any more
Give me any more

written by Morrissey and Alain Whyte

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Navigating St. Louis soon will become a daily struggle for thousands who depend on public transportation.

Metro, the region's largest transit agency, will dramatically scale back the reach of its bus system - wiping out two dozen bus routes and modifying others. Beginning March 30, service will be suspended to 2,300 of the 9,000 bus stops and bus shelters in the Missouri half of Metro's system.

And MetroLink light-rail trains will run less often on both sides of the Mississippi River during times when commuters need them the most: rush hour.

As much as I hate to see this happen, I'm curious to see what kind of effects these cuts are truly going to have.

Taken at Straub's on N. Kingshighway 2 weeks ago:



Too bad I couldn't get a picture of the big neon orange outdoor sign they had out in the days leading up to the sale...it was so awesome.

Here's the one and only photo I took of Rufus, just after I got him. Before he was joined by Hodges, he hung out on top of my steering column.



I miss him.

From MSNBC: The auditor of Crocs Inc. says it has "substantial doubt" about the shoe company’s ability to stay in business amid falling revenue.

Crocs disclosed the opinion of Deloitte & Touche LLP in an annual report filed Tuesday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"It’s a really serious sign the company has some financial difficulties ahead," said Chris Hughen, associate professor of finance at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business. Still, he didn’t expect the company would die. "If they can right-size the company, the company will survive," he said.

I'm not surprised by this at all.

On an elevator at a doctor's office on N. Taylor near the shop:



This is an elevator that opens on both sides, and the side with the sign is for use only by employees. But I'm sure you can see why I found humor in the sign.

I miss our old apartment and neighborhood, but it was time to go. And our next place will be even better.

"It's green. It's here. It's a great excuse to drink beer. It only arrives once a year."
--Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO), via Twitter

I don't know if she made that up herself or stole it from someone else, but it's beautiful and Claire rules...God, I love her!

I don't know if this bothers other guys as much as it does me, but it is one of the weirdest feelings that I think a guy will ever experience...it drives me nuts!

And it has to do with nuts...my right testicle fell asleep a little while ago.

It doesn't happen a lot. This is probably the first time it's happened in at least a year...maybe longer. But when it happens, it almost makes my skin crawl. It feels like a typical body part falling asleep combined with the sensation of hitting your funny bone...gyah! Very unpleasant!

And I apologize if this Manifesto was very unpleasant to read...but sometimes, you just gotta talk about these kinds of things!

From the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer will roll off the presses for the last time Tuesday.

The Hearst Corp. announced Monday that it would stop publishing the 146-year old newspaper, Seattle's oldest business, and cease delivery to more than 117,600 weekday readers.

The company, however, said it would maintain seattlepi.com, making it the nation's largest daily newspaper to shift to an entirely digital news product.

We really haven't been a 2-paper town since 1983, when the Globe-Democrat first shut down. It sucks, but why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free these days?

This is going to take some time out of your day to watch all 3 parts of this interview...about 23 minutes total.







To be honest, I think Stewart pins too much of CNBC's issues on Jim Cramer, though Cramer is one of the biggest faces there (if not the biggest). But I love it when Stewart gets all serious like he does in this interview...the motherfucker is smart as hell, and when he gets serious, he can totally disarm his guests.

I don't watch Mad Money that often, but it seems to me that he was going along with the Wall Street bullshit, and based on this interview, now he wants to be the guy that leads the cleanup. What crap! Having said that, Cramer deserves props for coming on to The Daily Show and taking it like a man.

Yep...it's Pi Day, folks!

Pi (π), as you may recall from grade school, is the Greek letter that is also the mathematical constant used in determining the circumference of a circle. The actual number to 50 decimal places is 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510. This website figures it out to a million places...that's insane!

Today is also Genius Day and the birthday of Albert Einstein.

Notice that I had this post at 1:59am, so it's 3/14 and 1:59...Pi to five decimal places is 3.14159. Yep...I'm a fucking nerd. Wait until March 14, 2015 at 9:26am...see where I'm going with this? Yep...still a fucking nerd.

I've been in the pizza delivery business for quite a while now. I've dealt with some pretty stupid people and some pretty stupid situations...yesterday took the fucking cake though.

BJC Healthcare is one of the largest private employers in the State of Missouri. They run several hospitals in the St. Louis area, including their two flagships near our shop: Barnes-Jewish Hospital and St. Louis Children's Hospital (which happens to be April's former employer). BJC is affiliated with the Washington University School of Medicine, and the two entities take up a huge chunk of real estate near our shop. They've always been big dogs in the Central West End, but in the past 20 years, they've gotten ginormous. And I would estimate that 20-30% of our overall business comes from them.

I may take up to 4 or 5 deliveries in a shift over to the complex...and this is usually how such a delivery goes:

--I call the customer when the order is ready: "Hi, this is Terry from Imo's. I'm on my way over with your order. Where should I bring the order?"

--The customer usually responds by saying, "The main entrance by the parking garage" or "The Queeny Tower entrance." If they try to get us to bring it to their room or their particular location, we let them know that we can't/don't go into the hospital due to time constraints and security concerns.

--The customer meets us at the agreed-upon location.

And most of the time, it works well. Sometimes we have to make another phone call or there is confusion on where to meet, but recently, that hasn't been an issue for me.

But then there was yesterday...

It was a big order: 8 extra large pizzas and 6 2-liter bottles of soda...about $165. This type of order will require at least two or three people to carry it back...it took me three trips to put it in my car. I called the guy listed on the receipt and started my shtick. And that was where the fun started.

"Yeah, we need that brought up to the ICU conference room."

Okay...first off, I don't even know where the ICU is at Barnes. And I think there are multiple ICUs there. And you think security is going to just let me waltz on up there?! Oh hell no! But they did order a lot of food. I'm willing to work with a customer in that type of situation. But I knew I was gonna need some help bringing the food up...the 2-liters alone were 25 pounds.

I told the guy that someone was going to need to meet me downstairs, given that we cannot park in front of the main entrance (which apparently was the best spot for accessing the ICU) and that a cart would be ideal, given the amount of food ordered. The guy started waffling...apparently, he just paid for it and wasn't actually picking it up, plus he was told that we would just bring it upstairs. I looked at the name of the person that took the order...there was no way in hell that she told him that. He then said that he'd try to get a hold of someone to meet me and that he'd call me back.

He called me back 2 minutes later and told me that someone would meet me downstairs...at the main entrance. At this point, I didn't want to argue with the guy...I already had a feeling about how this delivery was going to go. After waiting almost 10 minutes, the person hadn't yet arrived. I called the guy back and he gave me the woman's direct cell number. I then called her...and she was already downstairs...waiting inside by the front desk. Apparently, she either didn't want to come outside or wasn't told to meet me outside. And she had no cart and no other helpers.

She told me where we had to go back to...the Southwest Tower, which is in another part of the hospital. Oh wow...this is getting better and better. I told her that I would have to leave the food with her while I parked my car down by Queeny Tower (where they actually have delivery driver parking). So I unloaded the food and took Cleo down to Queeny, then walked back to the main entrance.

Hey look! A map so you can follow along!



So I asked the woman to grab two of the bags with the pizzas and I grab another pizza bag and the soda. She seemed put off by this, but what the hell is she gonna do, ya know? We trudged for what seemed like forever, got over to Southwest Tower, up the elevator and barely made it into the conference room. And surprise! There were a group of people in there waiting for the food and for the woman to start speaking.

We unloaded the pizzas and I had her sign the credit card receipt. When I pulled out the credit card receipt for her to sign, I noticed that the person that placed the order had already put the tip on there...$10.

$10...that's not even 10%, which is a reasonable tip for a delivery in general. And for all the bullshit I went through? Are you fucking kidding me?! And what should have taken maybe 10 minutes took a half-hour? Yeah...fuck you! At least there is now a notation in that guy's account that says we cannot go into the building anymore.

Apparently, another driver had a related delivery going to Barnes around the same time as mine. And he got stiffed on a $125 order. Wow...bastards!

They don't get much better than that...that was mighty impressive! At least I made decent money overall yesterday.

We are sad to announce that we are canceling the "Tame" single release.

Unfortunately, we learned last week that in order to legally release the song, we need to license it. Given the current state of affairs in the music industry, we want to do this the right way. It actually doesn't cost that much to license the song (less than $100), but if we are going to pay to license the song, we want to make it worth our while.

We will indeed finish recording and release "Tame," but it will most likely be as part of an EP sometime this year. In the meantime, we are working on new stuff that we hope to get to you real soon...promise.

We're sorry to spoil the awesomeness of "Tame," but it'll be that much more awesome when we can finally release it.

Thank you,
Sycamore Information Service

This is from last week and I meant to put it up then, but forgot. Just checked the newswire, though...nothing new since this article. I'm posting the whole article because it's a short one.

From MSNBC: An arsonist is apparently on the prowl for green Ford Escorts from the 1990s. Three of them have been burned in recent weeks, a series of acts that Medford police Sgt. Mike Budreau described as "pretty bizarre."

A 1995 green Ford Escort was destroyed by flames early Sunday morning after someone broke a window and poured flammable liquid into it. A similar fire was set in a 1993 green Ford Escort parked in a driveway on Feb. 22.

Investigators have also uncovered a Feb. 2 case of a 1992 green Ford Escort damaged by a plastic container filled with flammable liquid placed next to a tire that burned without setting the car afire.

Budreau told the Mail Tribune newspaper in Medford, "I think this person really doesn't like Ford Escorts."

I loved every Escort I owned or drove...too bad their engines were pieces of shit.

Jon Stewart and the staff at The Daily Show rule! This is one of those shows that I should watch every day, but don't.

Maybe...Jon Stewart and the Daily Show rip CNBC a new asshole or 20:

In my car, I have two small Beanie Babies cats...well, I used to.

I got Rufus not long after I got my car. Rufus originally came with McDonald's Happy Meals back in 1999...his original name was Chip. But that sounded like a dumb name for a cat, so I gave him a cool name...and so, he became Rufus.



After April left her job at the Hospital in October, he was joined by Hodges, which I had bought her as a gift for her office the previous year:



Rufus and Hodges happily tagged along with Cleo and me during our daily jaunts around the Central West End, delivering pizzas to the masses. They usually stayed up on the dashboard, though they would always inevitably fall off. All was well...until Wednesday.

Somehow, I misplaced Rufus while I was cleaning the inside of my car at work. Either I accidentally threw him away or he fell out of the car and got scooped up by someone else. I searched high and low for him in my car and on our parking lot Wednesday night and Thursday morning...he was nowhere to be found.

This makes me incredibly sad...losing a stuffed animal shouldn't upset a 33-year-old man, but it does. I think I'm more upset about this than when my shit got stolen last summer...probably because of the sentimental value attached. Rufus isn't really replaceable. I could easily buy another Chip the Cat...but that wouldn't be Rufus.

Hopefully Rufus is happy in his new home and with his new life...wherever he is.

Syc is having a guys' night so he asked me to post a little manifesto in his absence.

Since T is out, my friend Missy and I decided to do dinner at a new bar in the area - The Bleeding Deacon. It's located in South City on Chippewa near Gravois (next door to Simple Pleasures Adult Boutique, nice). The place has been getting a lot of write ups lately so we thought we'd see what all the fuss was about....not much apparently.

The place kind of fits the stereotypical "urban cool kid" shtick...black walls, posters of Billy Idol in the bathroom, PBR on draft, and lots of tattoos and piercings on clientele. But the waitress was incredibly friendly, so I was hopeful.

The menu was somewhat limited, with only 3 or 4 main entrees. We both decided on the meatloaf, I mean who can mess up meatloaf?! For $10 the portion was smallish - 4 one inch cubes surrounded by a PILE of mashed potatoes and a mound of green beans. The only thing we tasted in the mashed potatoes were garlic salt, and lots of it! The green beans, which were pan fried in butter and salt, were almost burnt. And the meatloaf was seasoned so much it was almost overwhelming. Whatever spices they used dried out every ounce of saliva in my mouth. I had to take a drink of water after each bite. My biggest complaint when dining out is restaurants that under season their food. This place is NOT guilty of that!

Aside from the food, the place was actually pretty nice. It's a casual place that's great to people watch. And the bar's not very smoky, which is a plus. I'd definitely go back for drinks....but I'll eat dinner first before I go : )

- Mrs. Syc

...kill everything off but Chevy and Cadillac, because those are the two brands that will almost always make money for GM.

From CBC News: Vince Li has been found not criminally responsible for the unprovoked killing and beheading of fellow passenger Timothy McLean on a Greyhound bus last summer.

Manitoba Court of Queen's Bench Judge John Scurfield said Thursday that Li, 40, could not be found guilty of murder and is not criminally responsible for the crime because he was mentally ill at the time of the killing.

Oh yeah...this guy is 31 different flavors of crazy.

The one thing I don't understand is why the RCMP waited 5 hours to take this guy down...he had already attacked and killed McLean. Why not kill or subdue him sooner?

From today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Mayor Francis Slay took a giant step closer to re-election Tuesday, easily winning his party's nomination in the primary election.

Despite less than formidable competition, Slay - seeking to join only a handful of St. Louis mayors to serve three terms - raised more than $2.8 million and launched an intense field campaign.

The work paid off: Slay scored about 60 percent of the vote in the Democratic contest, surpassing former Alderman Irene Smith and attorney Denise Watson-Wesley Coleman by broad margins.

...

For Slay, though, a tougher challenge may await. To stay in office, the mayor must still defeat another Coleman - former state Sen. Maida Coleman - in the April 7 general election.

...

Turnout was only 15 percent - meaning more than eight out of 10 registered voters stayed home. In November, the last time polls opened citywide, voters waited in line for hours in an election that generated a 72 percent turnout rate.

I'm sure my brother and his fellow Slay minions campaign workers are pleased with the results.

The Democratic primary is usually the end of the race, but not this go-round. Maida Coleman decided to run as an independent...there have been suggestions that Denise Coleman was a stalking horse put into the race by Slay. I thought Irene Smith would give Slay a better run for his money, but I was mistaken...that makes me wonder whether Maida has a snowball's chance in hell.

Slay must be given props for helping make this city better over the past decade...he's done more in 8 years than the previous 4 mayors did in 24 years. However, his tactics can be pretty asinine, and I'm starting to really dislike politicians that want to stay in office for more than 8 years.

I dunno...I think the real winner in this election was apathy. 15 percent turnout...that's impressive! April and I didn't vote...of course, we haven't changed our registration to our new address yet. Still...I didn't feel a real desire to vote anyway. I figured Slay would win, and none of the other candidates appealed to me, so...fuck it.

3/3/9...though I write the year as two digits.

7 years and change until the next one...4/4/16.

shhhhhhhhhh...

I used to listen to Paul Harvey on KTRS when I worked in Bridgeton and used to be on the road early. I also remember hearing him on occasion when I was a kid. It was hard not to like him, even if you didn't agree with his commentaries. There aren't many guys like him left, and people like him made terrestrial radio still worth listening to.

Rest in peace...