Games People Play

Bill and Vince matching wits over the counter at the Jiffy.
A chessboard between them wouldn't be out of place.

  Last Saturday, Kathy and I took Baxter and Daisy to the Jiffy at 5am as we normally do but after getting my coffee and heading to the counter to pull the beef sticks out of the display and pay Vince I got to sit around for ten minutes while customer Bill paid Vince the Jiffy night shift clerk $8.19 for his pack of cigarettes and Mountain Dew in quarters, nickels, dimes, and pennies after he exhausted his supply of wrinkled dollar bills. It may not have taken ten minutes, but since there were numerous restarts of counting on the parts of both Bill and Vince it may have taken a lot longer.

  While the counting was going on, there wasn’t much I could do to speed things up except leave without the beef sticks and risk the wrath of the beagles and there was still the matter of the unpaid coffee in my travel cup. I had my camera so I took a picture in an attempt to speed things along but it went unnoticed in the debate over whether 80 or 85 came after 75 when counting by fives, which took a detour when Bill or Vince (it was five in the morning and I wasn’t fully awake) claimed that one of the nickels was counted twice and that's why in this one case 85 did come after 75 when counting by fives.

  Instead of just starting the count over, Bill and Vince were equally determined to win this argument and I got to thinking about how important winning is to most people. At the chess camp that I had last week, we finished up with a ‘bughouse’ tournament. Bughouse is a chess variant where teams of two players square off against each other and when one player captures a piece, they pass it along to their partner who can place it on their board instead of making a move. I don’t get bughouse, I don’t care for bughouse, but I don’t deny the appeal it has for most young players and many older players as well and it makes for a fun way to let the kids finish the camp. Most of the campers were angling around for partners to help them be successful. The Spence brothers paired up and communicated in Spanish, which led to accusations of an unfair advantage. I disallowed those claims in order to spare me from having to monitor every conversation in the tournament for secret code words.

Bughouse chess

  Once all the players had made their teams, only Shirlin was left without a partner so I paired her with Frank, the 7th grade state champion who helped me with the camp by giving a lesson and helping out with the kids. I thought I was all set and then the youngest camper, 5 year old Jacob came up and asked who his partner was. I could have paired him with Shirlin but she already had a partner, there was something not right to me about pairing the two players who didn’t have partners, and I had 15 teams and 16 is the perfect number for a tournament so I pressed Bethany Carson into service as Jacob’s partner. Bethany was a camp instructor and loves to play bughouse but even so I was concerned how she would react to playing with a partner who was the least skilled player in the camp.

  I needn’t have worried. Bethany showed Jacob exactly what he needed to do to be a successful bughouse partner and they finished in third place among the 16 teams, while Frank and Shirlin finished first. I’ve played bughouse a few times at club and while I like to win, if my team loses I don’t get upset about it (except the time I got very upset when I told my partner not to move because I had a forced checkmate and my opponent had 30 seconds only to have my partner get checkmated ten seconds later, telling me afterwards ‘I just felt like moving’) and I've never concerned myself with the teamwork aspects of the game. But not Bethany and Frank! They found a way to be successful even though they were paired with the players no one else wanted as a partner. You don’t have to be a psychologist or even have stayed in a Holiday Inn Express to know that these two want to excel at whatever they do and that is very likely what makes them champion chess players.

  Eventually Vince and Bill forgot about their argument and managed to agree that the fourth dollar in change did add up to a dollar. They started on dollar number 5 but got sidetracked when Vince spied a wheat leaf penny (printed from 1909 to 1959) in the pile of change and tried to count the pennies before the dimes and nickels. Bill thought Vince was trying to pull a fast one and they proceeded to argue about the correctness of counting pennies before dimes and nickels and another argument ensued.

  The legendary football coach Vince Lombardi has had a couple of quotes attributed to winning 1) ‘Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing!’ and 2) ‘Winning isn’t everything – but wanting to win is’. I don’t know if he really believed this but they are the sort of manly quotes that get attributed to winning football coaches. I very rarely get into the mood where wanting to win is everything over the chessboard – I work off the assumption that being in the proper mindset to play well will lead to victories more than any deep seated desire to win. I wonder what Lombardi thought of the game of chess when the combatants can agree to a tie game at any point in the contest. Even with attempts by tournament organizers to get the players to not offer draws via the so called ‘Sofia Rules’ does not prevent players from taking the occasional quick draw via one of the many known openings where best play is a repetition of position.

vs. Robert Vance

  At June’s Time Odds Blitz, I had one of the worst days I’ve had in years. After playing a couple of good games, I gave away my queen in one game and my bishop in another. I wondered how I could have made two big blunders within a half hour of each other and the only reason I could come up with was that since the apples I brought along to eat turned out to be rotten, I didn’t eat anything all day and just wore out. I brought some PowerAde along with some non-rotten apples to the July tournament but I forgot that I scheduled the tournament to start at 12:45 and started it at 12:30 instead. I only realized when I sat down to play the first round and the mother of a ‘late’ arriving player reminded me to look at the flyer. I gave up my place to the ‘late’ arriving player and ended up missing the first round. I won my second round game and in the third round was paired against Robert Vance, the truck driver/chess teacher I played against in last May’s CyChess tournament. I was White but only had four minutes against Robert’s eight. I won a pawn and reached a king and pawn ending with two minutes on the clock vs. Robert’s four. My extra pawn was crippled and we shuffled our kings back and forth on the same squares four or five times when I offered Robert a draw.

  Robert didn’t say a word and kept shuffling his king back and forth along with me. He either didn’t hear my draw offer or was content to use his time advantage to win if I insisted on shuffling my king back and forth. I pushed a pawn on the far side of the board to attack one of Robert’s. Robert had a choice of trading pawns, advancing his attacked pawn and locking the structure, or moving his king over to recapture the pawn I was attacking. Robert advanced his pawn instantaneously which gave my king an entrance and an easy win. I don’t know if the two alternatives were any better but I know they would have made me spend more time on getting my king into his side of the board. Three moves later, Robert said ‘It’s my turn to offer a draw’ but I was winning so I just said ‘No thanks’ and he resigned a few moves later. I offered a draw because I was too lazy to work out the win, but Robert forced me to figure it out and offered me the draw only when he was lost. I wondered if he thought I thought was lost when I offered the draw.

and Tim Crouse

and Seth from Marshalltown

  Sometimes a draw is the proper outcome of a well-played game. The round after I played Robert, I took on Tim Crouse in our first over the board meeting since he beat me ten years ago in the most stinging loss I ever suffered over a chessboard. It was a great back and forth struggle where Tim was attacking my king while I was barely holding on and counterattacking on the queenside. I managed to trade queens and then the game transformed into a wildly imbalanced Rook and Pawn ending. When the dust settled, I had a Rook and Pawn vs. Rook in a drawn endgame but while I had two of my original eight minutes left, Tim had only 13 seconds of his seven minutes remaining. I looked at the clocks and offered Tim a draw, which he took. Would Tim have offered me a draw had the situation been reversed? I don’t think so but that’s not because I’m a better sport than he is – it’s because winning is more important to him than me. I was happy to have played a smart tough game and once I feel I’ve played well the result doesn’t matter as much.

and Edin (not Eddie)

  At this point I was brought back to the present when Vince managed to win the argument about whether he could count the pennies before the nickels and dimes by telling Bill that he was the clerk on duty so he could count the change any way he wanted. I don’t think Bill was in the mood to head a half mile north to Casey’s to get his Dew and cigarettes so he acquiesced and the counting proceeded apace and I was free to resume my daydreams. In the next to last round of the time odds blitz, I managed to checkmate Seth with seven seconds of my two minutes left (Seth started 3-0 but faded towards the end) and I got to play Edin from Croatia in the last round. I used to call him Eddie but I’ve recently been informed that he prefers to be called Edin. I never thought to ask my brother if he prefers to be called Edward (or Ed or even Edin) instead of Eddie but I may have to now. Edin had won his first six games and already clinched first place while I found myself in sole second place with 4.5 out of six points (including the first game that I didn’t play). I had white and played a delayed Boris against Edin, waiting a few moves to throw my f pawn up the board against his King’s Indian. I got the pawn all the way to f5 and traded it for the g6 pawn when Edin offered me a draw. I thought about it for a minute and decided that since I couldn’t finish first I’d like to ensure a tie for second so I accepted his offer. It wasn’t unlike my draw offer to John Herr last May to clinch a first place tie at a tournament. Would Edin have made the offer if he needed to win to finish first? Absolutely not! I don’t think there is anything Edin likes better than winning at chess, but having first place clinched probably dulled his competitive spirit. Frank (my camp helper) won his last game to tie me for second place and we each collected $7.50 so I guess you could say I either cost myself $7.50 by agreeing to the draw (in case I had won) or made myself $7.50 (in case I would have lost). I used the $7.50 to get myself a value meal at a fast food restaurant and victory (even a second place victory) never tasted better!

(Left to Right): Me, Edin, and Frank. Here's to the winners! If only Vince could have joined us...

  I woke up from my reverie when I heard Vince say “Beef sticks and coffee, Hank?” The counting was over and Bill was gone to drink his Mountain Dew, smoke his cigarettes, and do whatever the Bills of the world do at five in the morning after a Sunday trip to the Jiffy. I gave Vince my $2.06 in exact change and Vince took it while chortling about how he got a 1920's wheat leaf penny out of all that change counting. I was going to ask him if winning the coin or the argument was more important, but I had Kathy and two hungry beagles waiting outside and in the end it really didn’t make a difference because after all 'Winning isn't everything...'

The Best Day Ever (for a certain pair of beagles)

  Hi Everyone! It’s Daisy and Baxter filling in with another guest blog for Hank. Hank’s lucky we’re doing any blogs for him since he made us miss our half birthday writing about Okoboji (We wrote about it here). I know, Daisy…no one sent us any beef sticks or any other presents for our half birthday. I was so sad…but then we had such a great Fourth of July that we needed to tell all our readers about it! Fourth of July started at 4:30 in the morning like always when we woke up but instead of Hank walking us a few blocks and Kathy going out for an hour… They both took us to Jiffy for some beef sticks!! YUM!!! I knew we would be getting some when Hank only put on his weekend clothes instead of what he wears when he leaves for the whole day. But what neither of us could know at the time was that July 4th was going to be the day we got four beef sticks each AND we would be doing our 2013 beef stick review of all the stores we go to for beef sticks.

First stop : Jiffy at 5:00 am!!

  Since it was a Thursday, Dot was at the Jiffy and not Vince or Cody. The Jiffy serves the Jack Links brand of beef sticks. When we go to the Jiffy during the day and it’s really hot, Hank gets us a cup of ice with water to help keep us cool. The Jiffy has ice cubes which are hard to eat. I prefer crushed ice myself. Most of the time Hank gets a cup of coffee but since it has been so hot, he got a soda for himself along with our beef sticks. Just like always, the Jack Links from the Jiffy are very solid and sometimes they are a little dried out. But on the day of our taste test, they tasted great!! YUM!! I agree that the Jack Links beef sticks have been excellent lately, but I’ve been very disappointed with the Jiffy Parking lot because there’s hardly any vomit or garbage to scrounge lately. Between that and the ice cubes I’m giving the Jiffy 3 paws. I always thought getting garbage or vomit was a bonus but now that I think about it we really should get a little something extra out of our longest walk and this past Saturday morning the Jiffy didn’t have ANY beef sticks so I’m giving the Jiffy 3 paws also.

Jiffy – 3 paws 

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Beef sticks and ice cold water go together perfectly at Kum & Go.

When we got back home, Kathy took a nap and Hank played with his computer while we slept. At 9am, we took our normal walk with Kathy over to the cemetery and back but since Hank came with us, instead he heading back when we got to the cemetery, we kept walking along the cemetery until we got to the Kum & Go. The Kum & Go also has Jack Links beef sticks and they never run out of them. When we got there, Hank got us 2 beef sticks, a 79 cent twenty ounce soda for himself and a big cup of ice water for us! When it’s hot out there’s nothing as good as a big cup of ice and water to go along with our beef sticks! YUM!! I love beef sticks and ice water. Kum & Go beef sticks are the Jacks Links brand just like the Jiffy but since they are busier their beef sticks are always fresh and best of all Kum & Go gives us crushed ice!! Crushed ice is easier for me to chew than the ice cubes we get at the Jiffy and that and the ice water really cools me down on a hot day. I’m giving the Kum & Go 4 paws. I like the crushed ice too and since the beef sticks are always so fresh I’m giving the Kum & Go 4 paws too. I’d give them 5 paws if I could!

Kum & Go – 4 paws 

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Casey's General Store has a wide selection of cold drinks and Old Wisconsin beef sticks!!

Big dog Spike

We took another nap until around noon while Hank and Kathy watched TV and at noon we took our normal walk that is two square blocks southeast past Spike the big dog, but this time Hank and Matt came with us! When Hank comes with us on our noon time walk that means we’re probably going to slip another block east to…Casey’s General Store! We don’t go to the Casey’s very often. We tried to go to it last year and they didn’t have any beef sticks. I was so sad that day. We didn’t even try to go to the Casey’s for a long time but earlier this year we gave them another chance and they haven’t been out of beef sticks since. Casey’s has a big parking lot so we can stay out of the way of the traffic and they have Old Wisconsin beef sticks. Old Wisconsin beef sticks have more water than Jack Links. That makes them less chewy and greasier tasting than the Jack Links beef sticks, but they are still really good. And when it’s hot, Casey’s has cups of crushed ice just like the Kum & Go. I’m going to give the Casey’s four paws. I like Jack Links beef sticks better than Old Wisconsin so I’m going to give Casey’s three paws, but I do appreciate the crushed ice.

Casey's – 3½ paws 

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The Depot's beef sticks are tiny, but as taste testers we were obligated to carry out our duties!!

Our friends Marilyn and Bill.

When we got home from Casey’s we took another nap and at 3pm we got ready for another walk. When Hank isn’t home we just go around the block and when he is home we take the same walk that we go on when Hank works all day. On this day we went to visit our friends down the block: Bill, Marilyn, Becky; their dog Abby; and their neighbor Mary. I sit next to Bill and Marilyn so they can pet me and then I fall asleep. After we got done with our visit, we continued down Center Street but this day we stopped at the Liquor Depot for more beef sticks! We get beef sticks at the Depot occasionally. They only have small greasy Slim Jims and now instead of two small beef sticks for a dollar, they are selling even smaller beef sticks at three for a dollar. The new Slim Jims are even smaller and greasier than before and the Depot doesn’t have any cups of ice for us either. If they weren’t the closest place with beef sticks we would never go there. I don’t want to give them a whole paw but since even a small greasy beef stick is still a beef stick I’ll give them half a paw. I can’t give them a whole paw either. I’ll give them half a paw also. All three Slim Jims combined are smaller than even one of the beef sticks we get from the Jiffy, Casey’s, or Kum & Go.

Liquor Depot – ½ paw 

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So even though the last beef stick of July 4th was the worst, it was still the best day ever because we got to go on four beef stick walks for the Fourth of July. We were hoping that we would make five beef stick trips for the fifth of July but Hank had to go to work and we didn’t get any beef sticks at all. It was a great Fourth of July and we should congratulate Kum & Go for being our 2013 Daisy and Baxter convenience store winner. Yes, Baxter I agree. The Fourth of July is my favorite holiday. Kum & Go has done a great job all year long and Jiffy will have to step it up in order to reclaim their crown after a disappointing third place finish.

Through a PRISM darkly

Meet Vince, who will be collecting my $2.06 coffee and beef stick tab for the foreseeable future.

  After almost three months since I reported that Cody was leaving his position as the Jiffy night shift weekend clerk, a replacement has been found. The new weekend clerk is Vincent, who is the son of weekday overnight clerk Dot. Vincent trained for two weeks and had his first solo shifts this past weekend. So far the reviews are stellar: the coffee was hot and the beef stick hopper was well stocked. No one knows what the future will bring, but it looks as if Vincent is settling in a for a long run as Daisy and Baxter’s new beef stick contact at the Jiffy.

  After Edward Snowden quit his $120,000 job as a technical contractor for the National Security Agency, he may have given Vincent some competition for the position at the Jiffy but instead Snowden leaked the details of the United States secret surveillance program code named PRISM and is holed up in Moscow trying to escape being extradited to the United States and tried as a traitor under the 1917 Espionage Act. The PRISM program is run by the National Security Administration and intercepts internet and phone traffic that is routed through the Unites States, which is scoured by NSA analysts to gather emails and phone calls to help locate foreign terrorists and foil their terrorist plots.

  I don’t think very many people were surprised the government is monitoring phone and internet traffic, but the scope of the PRISM program surprised everyone. On a daily basis, Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T turn over data concerning all its customers’ phone calls and Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, Skype, and Apple are among the many participants in the PRISM program providing data to the NSA about who is going to what internet site and the emails that are received and sent. Credit card information is also collected. The NSA has every bit of everyone’s electronic footprint at its beck and call.

  The government from top to bottom has gone into a frantic spin control mode to make everyone knows that a) collecting the data in the national interest (Deputy press secretary John Earnest – “a critical tool in preventing the nation from terror threats”); b) that is subject to rigorous oversight (Senator Diane Feinstein - “As far as I know, this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been in place for the past seven years…This renewal is carried out by the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] under the business records section of the PATRIOT Act. Therefore, it is lawful. It has been briefed to Congress; c) No one really cares (Senator Saxby Chambliss - “To my knowledge, there has not been any citizen who has registered a complaint”) and that it only involves foreigners (President Barack Obama - “do not involve listening to people’s phone calls, do not involve reading the e-mails of U.S. citizens or U.S. residents, absent further action by a federal court, that is entirely consistent with what we would do, for example, in a criminal investigation.” And that is all true. The program keeps getting renewed and permissions for all this surveillance must be obtained from something called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court which has denied exactly 11 warrant requests in almost 35 years!

  While the news that the government is spying on the electronic movements of its own citizens was met with outrage from the predictable sources, the outcry from the government over Snowden’s extradition to the United States from Moscow and Hong Kong was what made the revelations front page news. Without that outrage, there would have been some embarrassment over our government not only doing the same sort of civilian spying that we accuse Russia and China of doing to their civilian population but also the citizens of our allies. Once the politicians stopped talking about Snowden, he all but disappeared from the news.

  Sales of George Orwell’s novel 1984 have spiked since the NSA revelations and the PRISM program does contain elements of a government scrutinizing its own citizens in the name of protecting them against the unseen enemy. Even if the government analysts or their hired subcontractors aren’t supposed to read or listen to private email and phone calls unless they are 51% sure that it involves a foreigner, any communication that involves a criminal inquiry is fair game, domestic or foreign, and no one can have any confidence that anything they think is private is private.

  Two months ago IRS has recently admitted to targeting groups with the name ‘Patriot’ and ‘Tea Party’ for extra scrutiny. At first it was blamed on a couple of rogue agents but the admitted abuses kept on growing and more and more higher level IRS officials resigned and finally the latest IRS commissioner said the abuses were more widespread than previously disclosed. In decades past liberal groups like ACORN were singled out for special attention from the IRS. Criticism from politicians of all stripes (except the specific groups affected) have always been muted because both ‘parties’ want to be able to abuse the system when they are in power. If everyone’s emails, phone conversations, and Internet usage are kept on file, how could any political entity be trusted not to abuse this information if it’s available? The secretly taped remarks made by Mitt Romney about the 47% of the people who would never vote for him was very damaging to his presidential campaign last year. Imagine a politician running for office and two days before the election having to explain why they had the Al Jazeera cable network on TV every night or received 6 emails of support from Paula Deen?

  While the 1984 comparisons to the PRISM program have much merit, it reminds me more of the ‘Matrix’ movies where the computers run the world or the ‘Skynet’ program from the Terminator films. Even all this top secret information at PRISM’s disposal couldn’t stop the bombing at the Boston Marathon and it is a sure thing that amongst the ELEVEN MILLION undocumented immigrants or illegal aliens or insert your own buzzword there are at least a few terrorists. So it is only a small leap of logic to have a computer put in charge of the PRISM program not only to keep the information from prying eyes but also to efficiently target our enemies. AND since we are our own worst enemy, we will all soon be the targets as the computers run everything for our benefit.

  It’s not a given that a computer takeover will necessarily be an apocalyptic event; it may be a boon to society. Last week at work I needed to find an email from a customer but couldn’t find the folder it was in. It would have been so nice to be able to just dial 1-800-MYY-PRISM and have a copy of the email sent directly to me. And when I lost my thumb drive and was looking frantically for it yesterday, PRISM could have come to the rescue and let me know where I left it (it was in the bottom of my chess box but THEY already knew that). And maybe someday, before we take Daisy and Baxter out for beef stick treats, PRISM can tell us whether Vince has the beef stick hopper stocked.

Thumbs Up and Down

  I am dedicating this edition of the Broken Pawn to the memory of Roger Ebert, the well-known movie reviewer who passed away last week. In the classic George Orwell book ‘1984’, the government of Oceania attempts to condense the English language to ‘newspeak’ which consists of the single word ‘good’ which can be decorated by a limited amount of adornments (‘doubleplusungood’ or ‘goodthinkful’). Despite his erudite and thought provoking movie reviews, Ebert’s (and his first TV partner Gene Siskel) main contribution to society as we hurtle towards the totalitarian future that 1984 portends was to reduce hundreds and thousands of words of movie reviews to the simple phrases ‘Two Thumbs Up’(good) and ‘Two Thumbs Down’ (ungood):

“A Farewell To Cody” – 2 Thumbs Up

Cody the Jiffy night shift clerk has to deal with meth heads, winos cashing in their dirty cans for a six pack, drunks who go nuts because they can't get another 24 pack after 2am, and this crazy couple that takes their pet beagles out for beef stick treats at five in the morning, but Cody handles it all with a good humor and aplomb that makes most of the so-called professionals I've ever met suffer in comparison.

  Of all the clerks at the Jiffy convenience store I’ve met in many years of taking Queenie, Tuffy, Baxter, and Daisy there on early morning walks for beef stick treats, the current weekend clerk Cody is my favorite. My least favorite was Bob, a 50ish chain smoking bear of a guy. One Easter Sunday, I was getting my coffee and beef stick treats when a guy walked in with a hundred dollar bill that Bob couldn’t break and asked me if I could. I pulled 5 twenties out of my pocket and gave them to Bob, who proceeded to put a 20 in his pocket and tell me I only gave him 4 twenties!! He still had the hundred and I knew arguing wasn’t going to get me anywhere so I gave him another 20 and chalked it off to experience. I got my revenge when a few weeks later I only had a twenty and when I used it to pay my 1.79 coffee and beef stick bill. Bob moaned and groaned so much as he pulled each one, five, and ten out of his change drawer to make my change that I thought the act of counting out the change was causing him physical and psychic suffering. So every time after that when I took my dogs to the Jiffy, I made sure I had a twenty to give to Bob and every time he would moan and groan as he counted out my change. One time I pulled a dollar and some change out of my pocket and started counting but then put it all back and gave Bob another twenty. After six months of this, Bob asked me exasperatedly “How come you always give me a twenty?” and I answered “Because I know you love my twenties….ESPECIALLY AFTER YOU STOLE A TWENTY FROM ME ON EASTER!” Bob pretended he didn’t know what I was talking about and I kept giving twenties until he got emphysema and had to go to the nursing home (no I didn’t get him a get well card).

  After Bob ‘retired’, there were a few non-descript types that covered the weekend shift for a number of years. My favorite was Dot, the mom of a chess player who came to my club, but none of these clerks were able to make sure there was fresh coffee or an ample supply of beef sticks. Once Dot told me they were out of beef sticks and wouldn’t get any until the truck came, but when I stopped by after church for a cup of coffee the hopper of beef sticks was full. I asked the day clerk (the owner’s son) and he told me there were plenty of beef sticks but they were stored on the top shelf and the night clerks were too lazy to get the ladder out to get them. Last year an older guy who I nicknamed ‘Slappy’ came on the night shift. Slappy was on top of his game and always had fresh coffee and beef sticks, his only quirk being that he always had the bathroom locked with an ‘out of order’ sign. But other than that Slappy was a good guy who liked Daisy and Baxter and would give them some extra treats from time to time.

  After Slappy left, Cody took over the night shift. Cody is a young guy who has a fiancé and a couple of kids at home that he is working to support. He does roofing during the week and Jiffy on the weekends. He always has fresh coffee, an ample supply of beef sticks, and the bathroom is never out of order. He comes out for a cigarette when he can to pet Daisy and Baxter. I like Cody because not only is he a hard worker, he has a good humor about him. Lots of times I head into the Jiffy and there is some crack addict begging Cody to use his phone or borrow his coat or loan a dollar or two and Cody almost always does it because he is just a good guy. One time he loaned his coat to an addict to go have a smoke outside and she left and took his coat. Cody doesn’t have a car and had freeze his way home. Speaking of Easter, if that isn’t Christ-like to give your only coat away on a freezing cold day, I don’t know what is.

  Cody’s fiancé got a promotion at her job that is going to keep her working late on weekend nights so Cody is giving up his Jiffy job and going to try to get some handyman work on weekend days so he can be with the kids at night. I wish Cody the best of luck because he is too good of guy and too hard of a worker to be a weekend convenience store clerk, but I know I’m going to miss him a lot the first time I walk through a garbage-strewn Jiffy lot (Cody always has the lot swept up) to get a cold stale cup of coffee and have to give Daisy and Baxter some Slim Jims when the new clerk tells me they are out of beef stick treats.

“Economy Speak” - 2 Thumbs Down
  In case you think I was joking with the “hurtling towards the totalitarian future that 1984 portends” line let’s check out some of the recent news out of the government and how up becomes down and left becomes right and the stock market just keeps reaching new highs because all the talking heads say the economy is improving. On Friday, the monthly jobs report revealed that while the economy added 88,000 jobs (less than the 125,000 needs to keep up with population growth) the unemployment rate declined to 7.6% from 7.7%. The decline in the unemployment rate was attributed to HALF A MILLION PEOPLE deciding to stop looking for work. Now these people didn’t disappear, get jobs, or win the lottery: they just stopped looking for jobs and THAT brings the unemployment rate down. Also on Friday, President Obama unveiled a plan to reduce the deficit by 1.8 TRILLION DOLLARS over ten years by increasing taxes and reducing the growth in entitlement programs like Social Security by coming up with a new formula to calculate the annual cost of living adjustments. This is more government ‘newspeak’: Instead of saying benefits will be cut or raised at .75 or the normal adjustment, the formula will be ‘adjusted’. And it’s not really a deficit reduction: There just won’t be as much deficit as before. This is as much a reduction as your overweight co-worker cutting back to 6,000 calories a day from 8,000 and claiming to reduce their weight when in fact they will only be gaining an extra 30 pounds a year instead of 40. The President’s proposal would have a chance of passing the Republican House if he can find a way to call the tax increase something else like when Reagan called higher taxes ‘revenue enhancement’in the 1980’s.

“Coconuts (NO - NOT THE MARX BROTHERS MOVIE)” – 2 Thumbs up

Some of the many coconut and other juices available at the Asia Grocery Store on N Center St.
in Marshalltown, Iowa along with last Sunday's haul on the right.

  When I was a kid growing up in Hillside, New Jersey there were a lot of Irish and Italian mom and pop grocery stores that would make sandwiches and sell a few grocery items, fruits and vegetables that were in season, and soda and candy for the kids. The mom would run the counter and the pop would cut meat if needed and run numbers and the card game in the back. The supermarkets put all these mom and pop stores out of business by the late 1970s but over the last ten years in Marshalltown there’s been a resurgence of small ethnic grocery stores. They’re not Irish or Italian stores, they’re mostly Mexican and don’t seem to have card games in the back, but a few months ago an Asian grocery store (the owners are from Myanmar – formerly Burma) opened 4 blocks down the street from my house.

  After walking past the store a dozens of times on walks with Daisy and Baxter and seeing all the different kinds of 50 pound sacks of rice in the front of the store I noticed some coconut juice in the cooler by the register. I’ve written before about my positive experience with coconut water (with pulp) at the Big Money Blitz tournament in Ankeny in 2011 so a couple of months ago I walked in and got a 17.6 ounce can of coconut juice (with pulp).

  The coconut juice was much better than I remembered the coconut water being and I experimented with some of the other coconut juice varieties on sale. I didn’t care for the Roasted Coconut Juice at all and found the Young Coconut Juice too sweet so I’ve stuck with the plain old coconut juice. Once a week or so, I’ll stop by on our walk and pick up 3 cans at $1.29 each. One day I decided to explore around the store to see all the different vegetables and canned goods. I saw a bag of coconut candies and bought them. The candies are chock full of sugar (50 calories each!), but they have a great coconut taste and are almost as good as my favorite all time candy ‘ZotZ’. Now I’m buying coconut candies in addition to coconut juice and you could say I’m a coconut addict, but I’ll hold off on that judgment until I start loading up my car with coconut juice and candy and start selling them to support my habit.

“The Road to North Liberty” - 1 Thumb up/ 1 Thumb Down
  After spending 17 of the past 19 years commuting to Des Moines form Marshalltown (100 to 105 mile round trip), I have finally found the secret to making the drive seem short: get an assignment where you have to drive a 165 mile round trip. For the foreseeable future I am driving to far-away North Liberty IA a few days a week to perform an assignment on site for a customer. The reason I’m not giving this assignment two thumbs down is that I am paid for my travel time and also receive a generous mileage stipend from my company (when I commute to the office in Des Moines I receive no stipend nor get paid for my drive time). On the other hand, driving 83 miles into the sun is tortuous and after doing this drive Monday and Tuesday last week, I was exhausted and irritable the entire week. Since the company I work for has an office with programmers just a few miles from North Liberty, I may be the best programmer in the world…or I am getting a subtler kind of message.