Expensive Consultants

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Another inspired editorial cartoon! Click here to enjoy.
So we’ve got more idiotic government employees in the news again. And this time, it’s a doozy of a story!! Booze, babes, language that’d make a sailor blush! Click here for the story in our own local Columbus Dispatch.

According to the Dispatch, Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann’s office cultivated an atmosphere that sounds very similar to the environment one sees in the movie “Animal House”, with “… staff members in adjacent work areas shouting obscenities toward each other …” and “… a casual work environment that often extends into alcohol-lubricated evenings in which work and personal lives blur.“

Evidently Marc Dann has a potty-mouth and he encourages those who work with/for him to also have potty-mouths in the workplace. As stated in the Dispatch, “Dann’s defenders said the occasional use of profanity is typical for any office environment and that the attorney general is trying to encourage freewheeling dialogue.“

Freewheeling dialogue, people, in the same vein as an Eddie Murphy stand-up monolog back when Eddie was beyond profane and still very funny! Click here for an extremely R-rated clip of Murphy talking about his family cookout. WARNING – ADULT CONTENT (and VERY FUNNY).

And, as one would suspect, this free-wheeling, profanity-laced environment just further illustrates the problems we have when certain morons get into office and abuse their power. As if government’s reputation isn’t bad enough already – not factoring in the whole nepotism thing, which can sometimes help government – we have Marc Dann hiring his buddy, Anthony Gutierrez, as Dann’s general services director.

And evidently Gutierrez likes his booze. So much so that he allegedly came in to work one morning after a rough night of drinking and “… reeked of booze and vomit and boogers or vomit were hanging from his nose.” I solemnly swear I will never allow myself to get into a situation where I have hangover boogers or vomit dangling from my nose in public! Gutierrez told a coworker “… that he had been ’so drunk the night before at Easton that on his way home he must have fallen asleep and when he hit the state Suburban on a guardrail, that’s when he woke up.‘ ” Again, from today’s Dispatch.

Now let me remind you Ohio taxpayers that this exemplary government employee is on PAID suspension while a sexual harassment complaint is investigated. Is anyone surprised that sexual harassment charges came forth from such a “freewheeling” workplace?

The sad thing is that this mess just reinforces my sour view of government employees. And, yes, I am a government employee – I speak from experience here people!

You see, I believe that government tends to attract and retain the most mediocre of workers, because anyone with talent and skill and ambition will eventually tire of the BS one must put up with to get anything done in government and will eventually leave government to find real jobs! Yes, I believe I am a fantastically mediocre employee! In fact, I try to excel in my mediocrity!

But Marc Dann and his minions have taken government employee worthlessness to a whole new level! We’ve gone well beyond mediocrity here, beyond asininity, beyond laziness! We’ve reached a new plateau!

What shall we call it?

Let’s call it Gutierrez-anity!

Boozin’ And Swearin’ With The Best of ‘Em!!

Gold-Plated Toilets

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“Ghost Hunters” is back on the air! Yay!

Just when you thought television was dead (with the exception of “Battlestar Galactica” and “Friday Night Lights”), back comes “Ghost Hunters”, further reinforcing our belief in ghosts here at Jackson Acre.

n fact, the wife and I think we had our own personal encounter with a ghost here at Jackson Acre the other night. The kids were in bed and we were in the family room watching “American Idol” when we both heard what sounded like a kitchen chair scraping across the floor, as if someone – or something – had bumped into it and moved it out of their way.

“Did you hear that?”

“Yeah, what was it? Is one of the kids up?”

I looked into the kitchen, waiting for one of my children to come into view, probably wanting a drink of juice or a cookie or something. You know, something sugary right after brushing one’s teeth right before bed.

No children stepped into view.

I got up and walked into the kitchen, checking to see if a child was hiding next to the fridge, screwing with their parents. Nothing. So then I tried to figure out which chair I thought I heard move. We have six chairs and all of them made the same chair-leg-on-floor scraping noise. So much for that theory.

“You heard a chair move, right?”

“Yeah, is one of the kids up?”

“No.”

“Hmmm, must be Ace.”

And with that, my wife pins our entire supernatural personal experience on the ghost of our sixteen-year-old border collie mix, Ace, who died two years ago. And as he got older and feebler, Ace occasionally bumped into furniture, like kitchen chairs. And being a border collie, which is a herding breed used to herd sheep, cattle, children (you know, anything that herds), Ace always had this intense need to keep track of everyone in the house. So he’d cruise from room to room, making sure he knew where everyone was at, keeping track of his herd.

I guess Ace’s still here, keeping an eye on us.

At least that’s what we told the kids. The ghost of old Ace isn’t quite as scary as the ghost of some stranger who died in your home at some point in the past.

Yeah, that’s a pretty freaky thought!

Wondering if ghosts count as dependants on my taxes …

Consultants!

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This weekend was about Spring prep at Jackson Acre, which mostly consists of oil changes in the various tools and toys I possess. And by tools, I mainly mean my lawn mower, lawn tractor, and generator. The only toy I have left is my latest motorcycle, but all require oil’s lifeblood to function!

So I took a freshly charged battery out to the tractor in the shed, fully expecting my “well maintained” 24-year-old John Deere 111 lawn tractor to fire right up, which it did. And since this particular beast was not “well maintained” by its previous owners, the former residents of our acre before it became Jackson Acre, I consider it a gift from God every time that old tractor decides to start up and run.

Well, the tractor started up on the first try (thank you God!).

I then shift into reverse to back out of the shed and see the flat front tire. So I turn the tractor off and march up to the house to fetch the tire pump. After six minutes of pumping I see no noticeable change, other than my elevated heartbeat and increased perspiration. Aren’t these signs of a heart attack?! That’s when I realized the tire is tubeless and I have no idea how to properly inflate a tubeless tire.

So back up to the house to Google “How to inflate a tubeless tire”. Thanks to the miracle of the internet, I find instructions that tell me you can’t inflate a tubeless tire with a hand pump. Really?! So I fetch the generator and my compressor and lug them both – separately – from the house to the shed. Ten minutes later I get the tire inflated in twenty seconds. Now we’re good to go!

Then it starts raining.

Exactly 54 minutes after starting the tractor for the first time this year, I finally drive it into the garage for it’s oil change. Then five hours and a half-quart of spilled oil on the garage floor later, I’ve got fresh oil in the tractor, generator, lawn mower, and motorcycle. I even got to use my $12 angle grinder to sharpen the tractor mower blades!

All in all, a very manly day spent doing manly garage-type stuff. But I still haven’t cut my grass!

On a related note – we’re finalizing plans for the 40th Birthday Bash at Jackson Acre. It will be Saturday, May 10 and e-vites will be emailed out this week. Relax, you’re probably on the list.

Wondering how many goats it would take to keep my grass cut …

Counter’s Closed

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No grand essay on deep thoughts or asinine human activities in this dispatch. I’d like to just get me duties done and sip a glass of scotch before going to bed.

I’m watching something on Sumo wrestlers on the National Geographic channel as I wait for Ghost Hunters to come on. At the time of this show’s taping (it’s funny that I use the word “taping” even though I’m quite sure that most television is shot on digital video) there were an unprecedented two yokozunas, or sumo grand champions, in Japan.

The rank of yokozuna is determined by the total number of tournament wins and rarely has there ever been two yokozuna at the same time. Click here for everything you never wanted to know about sumo wrestling, which is actually a rather fascinating sport when you really sit down and study it. Rest assured, sumo wrestlers are athletes and the yokozuna are the cream of the crop, quick powerhouses who possess amazing strength and surprising quickness, important factors in a sport whose matches usually last less than twenty seconds.

The two yokozuna weigh around 325 pounds each. To achieve and maintain that mass, the average sumo consumes 10,000 calories a day! Yes, you read that right – 10,000 (10K) calories PER DAY!!!!

And the best part?? After ingesting each huge meal, they immediately take a nap to insure none of the calories is burned off! Every meal is just like Thanksgiving Dinner, over and over – eat a tremendously huge meal packed with tons of calories, then curl up on the couch for a nice nap. Maybe watch a little football as you wait for the tryptophan to kick in so you can doze off.

To put the 10,000 calories into perspective, the average American consumes between 2,500 and 3,800 calories per day. And, trust me on this, we Americans eat well, so you can be sure that a healthy number of calories for the average American is going to be under 2,500.

Another interesting show making its rounds on National Geographic channel? Check out “The Human Footprint“, which gives you a very visible and understandable accounting of the average natural resources that an average American consumes in his or her lifetime. Americans are natural resource hogs and there is no physical way the Earth can provide enough natural resources to sustain this lifestyle.

So, suffice it to say, I’m worried that my kids adult lives won’t be as comfortable as their parents. And don’t even get me started on our slavish dependence on foreign oil!!!

Waiting For Hydrogen-Powered Flying Cars and Algae Farming To Cure All Our Problems!!!

Easy Decisions

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Tall Tales From Texas!

I posted some pictures from my Texas trip. Click here to reach our super-secret-eyes-only “Extras” pictures page.

The first picture (top left) was taken at the Big Bend National Park entrance the morning we arrived. The second picture (top right) was taken somewhere on the river between Castolon and Boquillas. The third picture (bottom left) was taken on the U.S. side of Mariscal canyon, which rises around 3,000 feet above the Rio Grande river and runs along for almost ten miles . Beautiful and rugged country! On that particular hike, up on the canyon rim trail, we ran across lots of “poo”, little pockets of brown pellets left behind by what I can only assume were Texas jackrabbits, which are considerably bigger and scrawnier than our own fat and fluffy Ohio rabbits.

How do I know it was poo, you may ask. Good question (as always).

Well, being the avid outdoorsman that I am, someone always curious about the natural world around me, especially the foreign and exotic world of southern Texas, I did what any good naturalist would do. I picked up the poo, squished it between my fingertips, and smelled it. No, I didn’t taste it. When squished (it was very dry, as one would expect in a desert environment), it was composed of grass fibers and it smelled like the bottom of my lawnmower at the end of summer.

The last picture (bottom right) was taken on the Mexican side of the river somewhere along the Sierra San Vincente ridge, about 2,000 feet above the river and our last campsite.

Poo seemed to be a recurring theme on this trip, as there were countless poo jokes, especially whenever someone would borrow a trowel (click here if you don’t know what a trowel is used for when camping in the backcountry) and wander off into whatever brush they could find for privacy. The poo theme reached new heights on our last evening on the river when we tried to burn horse poo.

Horse poo? you ask. What were you thinking? you ask. I would have to counter with “Is it not obvious?!!”

Think about it – people in developing countries the world over burn cow and horse poo for warmth and cooking (yeah, I know – yuck). These kinds of poo are primarily made up of dried grasses, which are a great fuel source. And since our last campsite was littered with small piles of donkey and horse poo, evidence that we’d picked some kind of local equine hotspot, and it was a particularly cool evening with temps in the low-50s, someone made a joke about burning poo for warmth. That little joke then prompted someone else to try lighting the poo, which prompted me to run off and get my camcorder so I could record the event for posterity (or defense in case of potential prosecution)!

When I got back to the group they were assembled around a selected small pile of poo. Someone then lit the poo and it started burning with a good sized flame. It was working! It was burning! It was very exciting (which says tons about how easily entertained one is after not seeing television for a week)! It smelled like burning grass and sulfur.

Then everyone laughed and someone confessed that they’d poured stove fuel on the poo to get it to burn like that. The joke was on me. But, joke or not, that poo continued to smolder steadily for another twenty-five minutes after the fuel burned off, a valid proof of concept. After careful contemplation, we decided that the poo’s moisture content was just a little too high to burn properly. Then the sun began to set and everyone commented on the beautiful sunset and we all went to bed, sad that it would be our last night sleeping along the Rio Grande.

Heeeeeee Haw, Heeeeeee Haw, Haw, Haw, Haw!

The angry donkey began complaining loudly about 2 AM, in the bushes thirty feet from our camp. Donkey was evidently miffed that we’d decided to sleep in the middle of his favorite late night snack spot.

Heeeeeee Haw, Heeeeeee Haw, Haw, Haw, Haw!

He kept that up for the next two hours, quietly circling our camp then complaining loudly every twenty minutes when he couldn’t find anyplace to dine.

Heeeeeee Haw, Heeeeeee Haw, Haw, Haw, Haw!

I do believe I was more afraid of the pissed-off hungry donkey than I was the coyotes!

So, Señor Jackson. Tell us how you burned Mexico down!

Customer Service 3

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I’m going to be 40 years old in less than a month.

And I think I’m taking it pretty well.

For example, I went to Texas in March and spent five days paddling a kayak down the Rio Grande river. We covered 75 miles in those five days. And by day five, I was paddling stronger than a lot of the guys ten years my junior. Who says being 40 means you have to be slower or weaker than the young guys? I say it means being wise enough (from your advanced age) to know how to pace yourself.

It’s like that one Bowflex commercial, where the guy is working out on his Bowflex saying how he’s 40 and in the best shape of his life. And that he’s in a rock and roll band, living the life of his dreams! Then he flexes for the camera and grins through his cheesy goatee, saying how his body “is a Bowflex body!” Yeah, I think being 40 is like that, only without the cheesy goatee or Bowflex.

Here’s another example.

Today I put a deposit down on my next tattoo (this will be my second tat). I’m getting it done the week before my birthday. It’s a design that I’ve been carrying around in my wallet for the last five or six years, something I made up myself. It represents three stylized H’s, for my wife and daughters. (It’ll actually be bigger than that).

I told myself I’d get it before I was 40. The clock’s ticking.

And what about all those other things I said I’d do when I had time, or when I had money? A lot of them are still waiting to be done. It seems that rarely does anyone ever have enough time AND money at the same time.

We’re thinking about throwing a party here at Jackson Acre, to celebrate Spring, and maybe kick off my 40th year of existence with a bang. It’ll be an Open House kind of affair, BYOB (bring your own beverage), with maybe some brats and burgers on the grill for those who show up at the right time.

Yes, this could be your opportunity to actually visit Jackson Acre and take in the sights. Imagine it! You could actually see the scummy pond that is our back yard! Or admire the tile work in the bathroom (maybe even take a shower)! And meet the dog! My eldest child suggested having a Civil Servitude prize giveaway for all our guests. I’ll have to see if we have any more of those Made In China coffee mugs left.

More details on the Open House at Jackson Acre to follow. In the meantime, please enjoy the further adventures of Miller.

Wondering If My Tattoos Will Eventually Sag …

Customer Service 2

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Whew! What a crazy month March was! We’ve been gone so long that I almost forgot how to draw Miller! And I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing!!

But rest assured that we here at Jackson Press are rested, relaxed, and ready to roll! And we’ve got all kinds of interesting adventures and misadventures to share with you over the next several dispatches, as we try to settle back into our cartoon routine here at Jackson Acre.

And we’ve worked hard on that cartoon routine, carefully honing it over the last two years of Sunday mornings, sitting in our office here at Jackson Acre, sitting in our Civil Servitude jammies, drinking coffee from our Civil Servitude mug, drawing these ridiculous little funnies. It was an exercise that I actually looked forward to, a way to relax and unwind, easing into the start of a new week, filling the time with simple humor shared with you, our dear readers.

But things are changing. We’ve discovered religion here at Jackson Press. No, we’re not shaving our heads, donning saffron robes, and trading flowers for donations at the airport. Nothing quite that exciting. And no Scientology, either (Tom Cruise did NOT do anything to help that religion!). No, we’re simply trying to attend – with some regularity not requiring bran muffins – a local non-denominational church here in town. It’s been entertaining and educational and our children are finally learning about people like Noah and Moses and Jonah.

And that’s the primary factor in attending church – my embarrassment over the fact that my children had no idea who Noah, Jonah, or Moses were. So I’m giving them a religious foundation to start from, a first religion for them to either embrace or reject once they get old enough to start asking the tough questions of “why do we believe this?” and “how does this fit in my life?”.

This church has contemporary singing, which bugs the hell out of me. It’s nice enough music, but it just doesn’t feel like real church without a few choruses of “Old Rugged Cross” or “Rock of Ages”. And my adult appreciation for those old hymns surprises me, especially because when I was a kid I always hated trying to sing in the same weird, falsetto keys that the blue-haired old ladies in the front rows were belting out. It’s like the old hymns were written just for little old ladies to sing – loudly.

And this new reintroduction has me asking some fundamental questions, yet again in my life. Here’s the biggest one currently vexing me – why is it that God has to be male? Why is the Creator of All Things (sounds like a title from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, doesn’t it?) a man? Shouldn’t the Creator of All Things be a woman? A female Giver of Life and Deliverer of Existence? Is the Bible sexist??

Please, no hate mail over my questions. I’m sure there’s a perfectly medieval explanation somewhere in the Bible; I just have to find it. I only hope that my questions aren’t considered blasphemy by some ultra-conservative, right-wing religious zealots. God know those folks over in the whacko Scientology camp are already gunning for me!

But, yes, we here at Jackson Press are back at work! The presses are again rolling and new episodes of the misadventures in Bluff City city hall are once again churning out by the boatload (or ark-load, if you will, although my children had no bloody idea what an ark was, nor why it was full of animals).

Still Trying To Recover From The Month of March!!

Customer Service

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I think we’re going to take a break during the month of March. Yes, that sounds like a good plan – take some time off, concentrate on preparing for the March floods, maybe take a trip somewhere warm and sunny.

That settles it then.

We’re taking March off from Civil Servitude. We’ll be gone to Texas during the middle of March, so there won’t be any new strips then, so we figure why not just take the whole miserable month off? Isn’t March one of the crappiest months to live through, anyway? Cold, rainy, snowy, icy, gray, windy – it’s hard to be funny in March, even though it’s probably the month when we need humor the most! But March certainly makes one appreciate April all the more!

Tomorrow we move out of our old office and into new digs at work. Our department is consolidating personnel into a new facility. I consider it to be more like moving from one prison to another, only the new prison doesn’t have a nice view and the cell’s smaller. Or, maybe it’s more like being moved from solitary confinement into the general population.

I’m trying to be optimistic about the move. They’re giving us all new office furniture, out there in the cubicle farms! That’s never happened before! We were always happy just to get third-hand furniture that didn’t smell like old farts or have stuffing falling out of it! I’ll also get to interact with people I’ve never really worked with before. We mostly just see each other in meetings, so it’ll be interesting to see how some of these people act when they’re not seated around a conference table.

And I’ll get to park in the lot next to the building, versus parking a mile away like I do now. But I will miss the walk in to work every day. Most times it’s a nice walk, down along the river front, observing the occasional sharp-shinned hawk or coot or mallard duck. It’s a nice way to decompress from work, or to gear up for the problems that await in the office.

And despite what you might think, I really enjoy walking most of the year. Except for driving rain and 100 degree/100% humidity summer days, it’s a pleasant form of light exercise. I honestly believe that walk has helped me stay in shape and retain my shapely figure.

But tomorrow’s move marks the end of an era. I’ll be moving into unknown territory, wandering into suspect terrain. We’re talking new dynamics here, with different social circles and pre-existing cliques that make me the “outsider”. I’m sure I’ll feel just like a freshman starting high school all over again.

And rest assured, my ungainly social awkwardness amongst this new cubicle hell will translate into future episodes of Civil Servitude. But not until after March!

Trying To Figure Out Who The Cool Kids Are!