The Oppenheimer Report - 4/30/12

With all the mild weather of the past several months, I got spoiled and I think my blood thinned out as well. As I begin this report on Tuesday morning, the snow is blowing horizontally across our lake and the temperature hovers stubbornly at 32F. There go the perennials. Of course, this is typical April weather up here in the GWN, but with the anomalous Spring we are experiencing, I figured I’d be boating by now. Looks like we’ll be sucking up a little more propane before the heating season takes its last gasp. That’s what I love about Spring in the Great White North; you get teased into thinking it has arrived just in time for that surprise snowstorm.

I walked into the local hardware store this weekend and bumped into my pal Harvey, our snowplow guy. Harvey is presently having a mouse problem and was looking for mousetraps. One summer, early in our construction process, perhaps 2007, we had a major mouse problem up here in the GWN. At the time we were living in a camper trailer and there were plenty of access holes for little critters. Jasper went nuts, because she could hear them scampering around in the duct work. I killed at least sixty mice that summer, mostly in the kitchen. There’s nothing like pouring some corn flakes into a bowl and having a dead mouse drop out. Puts you right off cereal. I hope Harvey’s weekend purchase is not an early warning for Mouse-aggeddon - Season Two. I’ll say this, mouse trap technology has come a long way since those crappy hard-to-set wooden ones. I only had one trap but I was a mouse killing machine. We’ve only had one mouse since we moved in to the new house, but it’s amazing what one little mouse can do. Somehow this thing got into our furnace duct work and ended up blocking the condensation vent pipe, eventually destroying the fan motor and costing us a lot of money.

Speaking of pesky rodents, the other day, I put in my order for a Yard Sentinel, an electronic pest control device which emit’s an adjustable high frequency sound apparently bothersome to pests. I can adjust the frequency it emits based on the pest we are targeting. I am told it will not bother Jasper, but I think it probably will. From the same company I also bought a device which plugs into a wall socket and then uses the wiring in the house to emit a similar onerous high frequency. That particular device is advertised as a bug repellant as well. Wouldn’t that be something? Reviews are mixed on these ultrasonic pest control devices, but two people, including the squirrel consultant we hired said they had some success with them. My friend Doug from Chicago said it was the only thing that worked for him. At this point I’m willing to try anything and we are going to attack this squirrel problem from several different directions. One of the problems with our house is that we don’t have an attic, only a 12” airspace under the roof deck. About half that space is filled in with spray foam insulation, which of course the squirrels dig out for their nests. It‘s proving tough to get the buggers out once they‘re in. On second thought, perhaps the flame thrower is a good idea.

In the news, beloved Royals Will and Kate have been married a year, and still no baby. George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer accused of the unjustified shooting Trayvon Martin, is out on $150,000 bail, and whatever it cost him for the flak vest. He and Casey Anthony should get a room together at the Grey Bar Hilton; that might be the only place they’ll be safe. Who needs a trial, we’ll just judge everyone in the court of public opinion.

Today is tax deadline day in Canada, perhaps it’s time I start thinking about filing my return, I only have a few hours left.

　

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 4/23/12

Last week we called in a professional consultant for our squirrel problem. I was not aware that there were squirrel consultants, but apparently they exist. This gentleman confirmed our worst fears about the size of the problem and the difficulty in eradicating it. The issues are twofold. One, we must ensure all the little bastards are out of the roof before we seal, and two, we must figure out how to seal up some of the more inaccessible access points. One crevice in particular we will need a Houdini to fit into. To complicate matters, we have three kinds of rodents: black squirrels, flying squirrels, and possibly (likely) bats. The fact that two of these are nocturnal is not helpful. I am quite sure I heard some wing fwapping noises in there amongst the other unnatural sounds. Now that we’ve actually seen the flying squirrels screwing, and noting that the gestation period for these rodents is rather short, and further having been informed that mommy squirrels will chew through metal to get to their litter once pups are born, this is looking like a bigger problem than originally anticipated. Our squirrel consultant was less than enthusiastic about taking our job and I think he quoted high for his service. We must devise our plan of attack. Any way we slice it, it will be expensive. I’m inclined to go with flame throwers, and the RPGs, but automatic weapons may be called for as well. Thank goodness neither the Burk’s Falls Fire Dept. nor the Humane Society reads this blog. By the way, as I suspected, it is somewhat illegal to kill squirrels. The red ones are apparently used as fur liners. Not exactly top of the line fur, more of your Wal-Mart fur, but subject to regulations nonetheless.

Norwegian nut job Anders Breivik, accused of killing 77 people, 69 of them by hunting them down and shooting them, is claiming self defense. Apparently he is not a fan of multi-culturalism and feels threatened by the infusion of Islamic influence in his country. He wants to be declared sane, because he feels his message will be de-legitimized if he is deemed incompetent. He said we need to differentiate between political extremism and insanity. Kind of a grey area if you ask me. If convicted, Breivik faces Norway’s harshest sentence; a year in jail and no TV for a month.

Da French are presently in the middle of a presidential election and incumbent Nicholas Sarkozy faces some formidable opposition from socialist candidate Francois Hollande. It would be the first commie in a while for France. The first round has Hollande leading by a small margin, and now the two candidates will face each other in a bug-eating contest and a sing off, after which there will be a final vote on May 6^th. Text your vote.  Hollande wouldn’t have even been a contender had his predecessor, that hound dog Dominic Strauss Kahn kept his pants on.

It’s snowing up here in the Great White North as I finish this report, and the timing is perfect. I just put the dock down and both Shauna and I just had the winter tires taken off our cars. Do you think we’ve jumped the gun on Spring?

　

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 4/16/12

I get emails from friends all over the country, and some are funny, some are sad. One came the other day that I really was not expecting. We became friends with the stone mason who did all the stone work on our house, and we kept in touch with him and his wife Rachael after they moved back out to Calgary, Alberta. They’d had great difficulty conceiving but finally had a healthy baby boy just before they left Ontario. We heard that Rachael was pregnant again, due sometime this month, and the other day we got an email message from Mark saying he was looking for a rebate from the midwife. Apparently, last week, Rachael went into labor prematurely and before the midwife could be summoned, Mark was charged with the task of delivering their baby girl. By the time he called the midwife, the baby was crowning. Talk about stepping up! The description of the experience was unbelievable. The email came with a picture of the swaddled newborn nestled safely in Mom’s arms, with the family dog at her side mugging for the camera. These people are serious outdoorsmen and have already planned their first camping trip with the newborn, probably in a few weeks. Call me when those kids can skin a rabbit.

With my fancy schmancy new phone I can allegedly send photo attachments along with my text messages, something I’ve never done before. Today I tried it out for the first time. I sent a picture to my niece and nephew of me giving my old Bell phone the finger. An hour later it’s still trying to send the message. We live in an area with limited cell service and I imagine that a picture file might be impossible to send from here. Oh well. My message was in response to a message they’d sent me. It included cute picture of their little girl catching her first fish with her genuine pink Bass Pro Barbie fishing pole. I still maintain that Barbie would never fish. Maybe Barbie’s lesbian girl friend Scooter would fish, but not Barbie. She could break a nail. Cute picture nonetheless.

 
Veteran newsman Mike Wallace passed away last week at the age of 93 and I watched the 60 Minutes tribute last night. Confronting Johnny Carson about his drinking problems, calling Iran’s Ayatolla Khomeini a lunatic on camera, and making Barbara Streisand cry, Wallace was the king of the in-your-face interview. Whether he was questioning crooks, movie stars, or CEOs, Wallace had a gift for asking the tough questions, and we all enjoyed watching the respondents squirm. My favorite clip that they aired was of Wallace when he interviewed John Ehrlichman. Wallace went through a laundry list of illegal acts committed by the Nixon administration, and Ehrlichman just looked at him blankly and asked, “Is there a question in there?”

Rick Santorum, the man once characterized in a Google search as a disgusting by-product of gay sex, and the unwitting barometer for how out far to the right a disturbing number of Americans are leaning, bowed out of the Republican race last week. Gingrich (sounds like gum disease to me) is also reportedly out of money and on the ropes, leaving Mitt Romney the projected winner of the Republican nod. Lucky him. Now that the other bozos have jumped off the bus shortly before it glides off a cliff, Romney can now go down with his ship. Sorry about the mixed metaphor, but …

Speaking of sinking ships, last week marked the 100^th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, and what better way to commemorate the event than to have director James Cameron come out with a 3D version of his award winning movie Titanic. Luddite that I am, I have yet to see a 3D movie. George Zimmerman will be criminally charged in the murder of Trayvon Martin, but since the best witness is dead, and other eyewitnesses give conflicting, unreliable accounts, there’s a good chance he will go free. If Zimmerman is acquitted, watch out America. And finally, here’s a fun fact: probably due to the economic crisis, suicides are way up in Western Europe. From 2007 -2009  they're up 24% in Greece, and up 50% from 2005-2010 in Italy. How is it that an individual can go to jail for cheating on his or her taxes, but governments routinely squander fortunes in horribly irresponsible ways and it’s the taxpayer who always suffers? Twalk amongst yusselves.



Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 4/8/12

Last week, before heading down to Buffalo for the final push, I bit the byte and reluctantly procured a new LG Droid smart phone. As anyone who follows this blog knows, I do not willingly embrace new technology, but my 6 year old flip phone became unreliable and needed to be replaced. To complicate matters, my coverage plan is no longer offered, and the new plans typically offer features I don’t want. Heavens to Betsy there are a lot of plans! Do I want unlimited texting, and free weekends and evening calling? Do I want 500MB of data, or more, so I can read the NY Times on a 4 inch screen? Do I need 150 or 500 “anytime” minutes? And there are “apps” for everything. My Droid came loaded with 50 of them, none which I anticipate using. The other day I read that there is an app to let you know if you are too drunk to drive. Just plug in how many drinks you’ve had, your size and weight, within what time frame, and your phone will beep at you when you’re good to drive. Amazing. All those science fiction stories about the robots and computers taking over … as far as I can tell, it’s already happening. And I’m not sure why they call them smart phones, because they make me feel stupid. This new one certainly is more complicated than my old flip phone, and too big to comfortably fit in my pocket. I changed my cell phone carrier as well and am now one of Sir Richard Branson’s bitches. Within the next year or so I expect to be able to operate this new phone, but for now I’m a bit lost. I downloaded the 72 page phone book of instructions from the internet, and there are four pages devoted to safe cell phone use (i.e. if you develop a brain tumor, don’t call us … especially on your cell phone) but some of the most basic features are poorly explained. For instance, there is no proper description of how to enter contact information, an important feature for me. In fact I fooled around with the new phone for hours before I figured out how to move from one data field to another, or how to make a new entry. I’m sure that the nineteen year nose-bejeweled-skateboard-junkie-with-the-attention-span-of-a-Golden-Retriever writer of said manual assumed I was smarter or more intuitive than I am. That said, I have now joined the legions of the incessantly pre-occupied. Soon I will be a texting maniac. You will likely read about me in the newspaper when, completely oblivious, I step off a curb into heavy traffic, only to get squashed like a possum, probably while attempting to text someone some pearl of wisdom such as “R U O.K? Real ironic, huh?

I am writing this on Good Friday, or for us Jews, the first night of Pesach. Tonight we head down to Toronto to have our first night Seder supper with Shauna’s parents. Essentially, my side of the family is disintegrating, the glue holding us together having finally dissolved. Without “American” Thanksgiving to bring the Oppenheimer side together in Buffalo, I doubt there will be any future gatherings. I do have cousins, nieces and nephews scattered around the globe, many of whom I am fond, but in step with the relentless march of time, most of them have jobs, and lives, and families, and perfectly legitimate excuses not to keep in touch. One of the reasons I write this report is to send out the beacon that I’m still here, if anyone wants to know. Lately, I’ve been reaching out to more of my friends and relatives, sending them pertinent family photos or mementoes I salvaged from the Chapin clean out. I’m probably a more frequent correspondent that most people I know, and I still practice the ancient art of writing (in full sentences). I got that from my dad; he wrote wonderful letters. It used to bother me that only a handful of my recipients reciprocate, but it doesn’t so much anymore. I write because I love to write. That’s why I write songs. It's certainly not for a listening audience from whom I feel increasingly estranged. I’ve learned that communication is in and of itself a destination, and I suppose it gives me a sense of meaning at a time when I desperately need to find some.

If this week’s report seems a bit philosophical, or worse yet, self-justifying, my apologies. I kind of melted down last week, and had I not had the unfailing support of my wife and a few close friends, it might have turned ugly. All the grief I have staved off these past few years, subliminally repressed in my relentless drive to “do the right thing” has come welling up like a tidal wave of emotion, and now I cry like a baby at the drop of a hat. Here’s my shout out to all of my missing-in-action friends and relatives. I’m not much of a phone guy. You will not likely be receiving copious texts from me, nor can you expect a cell phone call, unless perhaps you live in Canada, or you call me (I no longer have the “North America Plan” ). I’m not a big Facebook user, I don’t tweet, and I’m not interesting enough to write a decent book. But to all twelve of you out there, I’ve been spilling my guts in this report weekly for over twenty years, and when cell phones become obsolete, I will likely still be doing this; that is, sending my inane thoughts out into the vacuum of cyberspace as if I am the last man on earth.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Oppenheimer Report - 4/2/12

A belated April Fools Day to my twelve loyal readers. Last year I recounted some of the legendary April Fool’s jokes, but what about simple ones? Personally, I like the tie-the-dollar-to-the-fishing-line-and-hide-in-the-bushes trick. Did any of you see that Betty White show with the codgers playing practical jokes? Some of them were pretty funny.

Because I was not clear in my last report, and with reference to the Trayvon Martin killing a few weeks ago, I am not defending Zimmerman’s behavior; I think it was deplorable. It’s looking more and more like this was an unjust murder, and perhaps it was racially motivated. Three out of four Americans think that Zimmerman should have been charged with murder by the police. I don’t know what really happened here but I know profiling and racial injustice are a big problem in the United States. My only point was that celebrities and even the President jumped on this and threw gas on the fire. It sure looks like someone dropped the ball here, or the justice system failed, and the mere fact that vigilante rage was unleashed nationwide is evidence that this is a big and perhaps growing problem. It doesn’t help matters that Florida is an NRA sanctuary, one of the shoot-first-ask-questions-later states, and the “Stand Your Ground” law, while intended to give victims a chance to fight back, seems like it has serious potential to be misinterpreted. Kill whomever you want and then claim it was self defense. We go back to the ever-present gun debate: if guns are outlawed then only criminals will have guns vs. the right to bear arms is obsolete and not meant to provide justification for 300 Million Americans to carry assault rifles. I want to believe that Zimmerman’s dubious claim of self defense can be discredited in a court of law, if he’s even charged, but if not, then perhaps it’s time to change this problematic law. I understand the rage and indignation, but that doesn’t mean we should turn the killer over to a bunch of anti-Semitic vigilantes like The New Black Panther Party. That mob justice is no more civilized than what Zimmerman was accused of doing. I also don’t think Obama weighing in on this was at all helpful. It’s divisive and just what the Democrats would argue they are not. It also begs the question, do we want politicians acting as our moral compass? Seems oxymoronic to me.

Beach combers be on the look out. An unmanned Japanese fishing trawler was recently spotted off the West Coast of North America, over a year after the earthquake and tsunami devastated Japan, suggesting that the impending debris field is a little ahead of schedule. The philandering Tiger Woods won his first PGA tournament since 2009, and I’m so happy for him. Speaking of philanderers, last week former IMF hound dog Dominic Strauss-Kahn was charged with “aggravated pimping,” (hee hee) and I wasn’t even aware he drove a 1975 Monte Carlo with the “continental kit” and the genuine fake fur steering wheel. Of course he denied the charges, claiming he had no idea the pretty young girls at that party were paid to please. Sounds like a political smear campaign to me. Lots of pretty young girls prefer arrogant shriveled up old men to handsome younger men.

Tonight will be the last night I spend in my family home of 53 years. Tomorrow I head north and the next time I visit Buffalo, we will likely stay in a hotel. The closing is scheduled to be some time next week. Within several days the rest of the remaining items in the house will be cleared away and we will leave the new owners with an empty, “broom clean” house. Tabula Rasa. So many of my peers are now facing (or have already faced) the journey I have just completed. It was a long, emotional grind. I suppose it wouldn’t have been as hard had I not had such wonderful parents. On to the next leg of my journey.