Given my recent experiences with bone-headed sociopaths who like to mess with other people’s property, I found this video of a would-be vandal failing to think through all the possible consequences of his actions amazingly satisfying:

Oh, and here are a couple of other things that went down while I was back east:

• One of my co-workers crashed his bicycle on Saturday during a race or a marathon or something and has spent several days in the hospital suffering from a severe concussion.
• And my corporate overlords started replacing those Flavia coffee machines on every floor with these nifty gadgets from Starbucks that actually grind fresh beans on demand for every cup they brew. I’m not the biggest fan of Starbucks, but my lord, this stuff is such an improvement over that vile “astronaut coffee” I’ve been suffering with for three years. I no longer have to leave the office to get a decent cup o’ joe.
  Of course, the downside is that I no longer have to leave the office to get a decent cup o’ joe… hm.

In any event, you see what happens when you leave town for a couple of days? Good thing I wasn’t gone four days; we’d have cats and dogs living together, mass chaos!

Back in my pre-online days, I bought a lot of books via good old-fashioned mail-order catalogs, and even though this habit ended long ago, I still get quite a few book-related mailings in my daily allotment of recycling fodder. Sometimes this can lead to situations that I find perversely amusing. Yesterday, for example, I received a flyer advertising a new biography of the late president of the LDS Church, Gordon B. Hinckley. This on the same day that I also received a fat, full-color catalog from a company that specializes in, among other things, volumes of pin-up art and nude photography.

I can’t imagine what my poor mail carrier must think…

TO: The young lady at the sandwich shop where I purchased lunch today

FROM: The poor schmuck whose only crime is having a pair of eyes and a Y chromosome

SUBJECT: Your impressive assets and the ornamentation thereof

Miss:

When you (a) have been generously endowed by nature; (b) accent said enhancement by wearing a form-fitting t-shirt with a deep scoop neckline; and (c) further call attention to the situation by getting tattoos in the shape of lightning bolts that plunge directly into the middle of your cleavage, please do not become alarmed when you actually receive admiring glances from any men you may encounter in your daily activities.

To wit, our brief encounter when you took my order for a BLT sandwich. I try really hard not to be that guy… you know, the skeezy dude who can carry on a conversation with a woman for ten minutes and never once make eye contact with her. Most of the time, I think I do reasonably well with that. But I am male, and I do like the female form, and, well… you have freakin’ lightning-bolt tattoos on your cleavage, so how is it that I can possibly deserve the dirty look you gave me when I actually had the temerity to follow my hardwired biological imperative and your body-art encouragement to take a little peek? Did you really think no one would check out your bolts this morning when you picked out that particular shirt? And it’s not like I was staring… sheesh. Either lighten up or or buy some regular crew necks, will you?

Regards,

An all-right guy who can’t help but appreciate what’s in the shop window… especially when the window is open…

I got a pretty good chuckle out of this:

Not enough of one to actually want to drink one of those yucky energy drinks, of course, but a laugh regardless…

I grew up in a place — Riverton, Utah — that, up until the late ’80s or so, was very much like the stereotypical small town you see in movies and old TV sitcoms. I lived on a pleasant road lined (at that time) with big shade trees; there was a single grocery store whose staff knew my mother by name; and my dad did a lot of barter work with the neighbors, trading his mechanical knowledge for labor to help build our barn, among other things. But even then, Riverton’s small-town atmosphere was something of a fading illusion — traffic along that tree-lined road grew heavier with each passing year, and tract houses were quietly springing up like mushrooms after the rain.

The community to the south of Riverton, however, a place called Bluffdale… well, that really was a small town. Bluffdale didn’t even have its own grocery store, or a school for its children, or much of anything really except alfalfa fields and cows and pick-up trucks. Bluffdale old-timers still refer to driving the three miles over to Riverton for groceries as “going to town,” as if they were trekking in from the Outback to the Big City. This is where my lovely Anne, a.k.a. The Girlfriend, grew up, playing with the neighbor kids that were her age, babysitting the ones that were younger, being watched over herself by the ones that were older.

It was the sort of upbringing that leaves deep and lasting roots. Many of Anne’s “old gang” still live right there in the old neighborhood, and the ones who have moved on in search of greener pastures — or any kind of pastures, considering that Bluffdale is now “developing” just like its big brother Riverton — seem to keep in better touch with their childhood friends than most. When something bad happens to one of them, the word gets around. And people do what they can to help.

A while back, Anne got the word that something very bad indeed had happened to one of the old gang. A guy named Nate Pemberton lost his wife Jenni and their unborn fourth child to something called an “amniotic embolism,” a rare and not-very-well-understood complication of pregnancy that kills nearly 80 percent of the women it afflicts. Just to make things more interesting, the couple didn’t have any health insurance. So now, in addition to trying to deal with his grief and raise their other three kids alone, Nate has to find a way, somehow, to cover a bundle of very large medical bills.

To try to help Nate, the old gang and the larger community of Bluffdale old-timers have set up a fund in the name of Jennifer M. Pemberton at Zions Bank to collect donations. (If you live out of state, there’s also a PayPal account that will feed into the same fund). More impressively, they’re mounting a benefit concert headlined by local country-western performer J. Marc Bailey. Now, I’m not a big fan of country music, but I have seen Marc perform — I’ve also met him via a mutual acquaintance — and I can attest that he puts on a good show. He’s had some rock ‘n’ roll influences and his music isn’t strictly country. This ought to be a decent night’s entertainment, and of course it’s for a good cause. If you’re interested either in contributing or attending the concert, you can find the details on this memorial blog or e-mail me and I’ll make sure you get the facts you need.

I have to confess that I don’t actually know Nate. I knew who the Pembertons were back in the day, but due to a quirk of timing they were all either ahead of me or behind me in school, so I never actually got acquainted with them. However, Anne knows them and the news about Nate’s troubles shook her. Shook me a little, too, to be honest. The word “tragedy” gets thrown around pretty easily these days, but if this story doesn’t qualify as a genuine tragedy, I don’t know what would. I don’t want to taint this noble cause with politics, but it seems to me the story of Jenni and Nate Pemberton is a damn good example of why we need to get serious about renovating our healthcare system in this country. It’s absolute nonsense that a country that calls itself the “richest nation on Earth” can’t set up something so good working people from small towns don’t have to worry about bill collectors pounding on their doors during the worst year of their lives. Stories like Nate’s are pretty common, and the injustice of them always makes me angry. The Europeans consider access to healthcare a basic human right, and they never have to worry about losing their homes when something unexpected happens. So why can’t we Americans, who used to lead the world in just about every way you can think of but lately seem to be sitting on the sidelines, say the same thing?

Forgive the mini-rant. As I said, these stories get my dander up. Anyway, if anyone reading this knows the Pembertons or lives in the Salt Lake/Provo area and wants to see a good concert, or even if you’re a total stranger who’s just looking for a way to spend some of that free money George W. is sending to us this month, please check out that blog I mentioned and throw a couple of dollars into the hat. It’s a good cause. And it’s a way to keep that small-town atmosphere alive just a little while longer…

Here’s a weird little novelty, courtesy of Lileks. No introduction from me would really do it justice, so just watch:

Remember when everyone thought the future was going to be, well, futuristic? We’ve lowered our sights in so many ways. Sigh… at least they haven’t de-wrinkled our prunes yet. (Um, wouldn’t a smooth prune just be a plum? Duh, guys.)

Since I seem to wallowing in stereotypically masculine interests today anyhow, what with the airplanes and all, I thought I’d throw this up, too:

That’s the eternally yummy Raquel Welch, circa mid-1960s or so. I have no idea if this is a still from a movie or a modeling gig or what. But… it’s Raquel Welch… in a serape and a gun belt… mmmmm…

Oh, come on, it’s Friday afternoon! What better time for a big ol’ slice of cheesecake? Stop looking at me like that…