The Oppenheimer Report 5/6/13

The other day I was in the retail wonderland which is Canadian Tire, or as some Canadians call it “Crappy Tire”, and I decided to buy our dog Jasper a new toy. She is enamored of a stuffed, multi-colored fish with a rope loop attached at each end, which we have dubbed “fishy rope”. We are now on fishy rope #2, but try as I might I have not found an exact replica of this toy in over five years. Jasper has a pile of toys but she only really plays with four or five of them. The rest of them she simply takes out of her toy bin and distributes around the house in such a way as to be the greatest tripping hazard. Fishy rope and “froggie” the croaking stuffed frog are her top two, and if either of these two goes missing, she falls into a spiritual decline. Fishy rope is getting pretty disgusting, and although it has been washed numerous times, it is rapidly decomposing like spoiled fruit. So, the other day I found what I thought would be a suitable replacement (I’d purchased fishy ropes 1 and 2 at Canadian Tire as well), and I thought I was buying a stuffed beaver with rope loops. What better toy for a Canadian dog than a stuffed beaver, right? When I showed it to Shauna later she started to laugh, because what I had in fact purchased was a stuffed flying squirrel. After all the problems we have had with flying squirrels, perhaps this is some kind of karmic retribution. Of course Jasper loves it and it has taken a place of honor among the other top five.

I heard a disturbing fact reported on the news the other night: 38000 people committed suicide last year America, an all time record. Men are reported to be four times more likely than women to kill themselves, and it is becoming a public health crisis. Also notable in this statistic is the alarming increase in recent veterans who are committing suicide. Perhaps this escalation is due to the recent financial crisis, or maybe it’s just getting harder for people to cope with the stress of day to day life. I’d be interested to see if there has been a rise in this statistic in countries where the quality of life is much lower. In America. people throw hissy fits when their internet service is disrupted for a day, or the lights go off during the Superbowl. Juxtapose that with a woman in Afghanistan who simply wants to avoid being raped and beaten by men who still believe the earth is flat.

And speaking of things I should not complain about but do (because I live in a free country and am spoiled rotten), I mentioned a few weeks ago that I recently purchased a new laptop, loaded with Windows 8. Once again Microsoft has produced a bad operating system, and there are entire websites dealing with complaints about Windows 8. I am now awaiting some kind of quick fix by my computer friend, who strongly recommended that switch back to the much more reliable Windows 7, a system that worked just fine for me. One of the problems, according to my guy, is that Windows 8 was designed with touch screens in mind, and if one‘s computer does not have one, it is not user friendly. Ya gotta love advancing technology. I got so sick of trying to work with the new computer that I am writing this on my old computer with the damaged keyboard. I went out and bought a wireless keyboard for twenty bucks to and now I’m back in business. The thing that irks me the most about all of this is the pathetic customer service Microsoft offers. I needed to load a word processing software onto the new computer, because for the first time ever Windows did not provide it. This is when I learned that one cannot purchase a software disk anymore - everything is downloaded from the internet. This can be a problem if, like I do, one lives in a remote area with limited internet access. Downloading 2 gigabytes of software can take forever, and in my case, after four hours of trying, I got an error message indicating that those fours hours were wasted. My internet provider charges me according to the amount of data I download, so this was a lose, lose for me. Good luck trying to get a satisfactory result from the Microsoft order taker in Pakistan. I finally cancelled my order.

Singer songwriter George “No Show” Jones passed away recently and was commemorated at the Grand Ol Opry last week. The guy wrote some great songs, and one of his friends made the point that Jones was a country song. In other words, he’d lived the songs he wrote. Before he sobered up, Jones got the nickname “No Show” because he drank a lot and was notorious for missing his gigs. 11 ½ years after 9-11 new World Trade center presently under construction was topped off last week, making it (I believe) the tallest building in the western hemisphere. Finally, it is that time of year when the bugs come out and the scratching begins. I bought a Skeeter Vac a few years ago, and that helps. Someone suggested burning Neem seed oil as an effective way to kill mosquitoes, so I‘m trying that. I also bought one of those clip on mosquito repellants made by Off. If anyone figure out how to eradicate black flies, I’m all ears. I do not like wearing netting over my head.

Jasper … go kill the flying squirrel!

-Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED