Well Excuuuuuuuse Me!

I'm back on the bridge, Sailors. This morning, I showed up at the Federal Courthouse and got myself prepared for jury duty. Turns out, it was a civil case involving a contract between a consulting firm and a software provider. By coincidence, I happen to be a shareholder in the software company that was involved, and the next thing I knew they had selected a jury of peers without my old carcass on the panel. Excused! Duty served, and I'm grateful because I had a lot of work piled up that I didn't want to leave for my shipmates to have to cover. The funny part for me was after getting out of the courthouse and coming in to work, I was walking across the parking lot when in between cars stepped a harbinger of bad news. At least, that's what legend says. There I was strolling up to the gangway, and a black cat jumped right out in front of my path, and looked me straight in the eye. I just smiled and said "Yer too late, little fella. They've already let me go!" And so it was that I now have time to share the rest of the day with you.

On the news front, everyone is aware of the tragedy in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) over the weekend. Today, the US State Department officially listed a warning for Americans, against traveling to India until further notice. Kind of goes without saying, but they said it and now I'm reporting it. Also in the news, the "Nautica" from Oceania Cruises was sailing in the Gulf of Aden earlier today, and came under attack by pirates, most likely from Somalia. The Captain noticed 2 small skiffs approaching, and immediately powered up to maximum speed and took evasive maneuvers. One of the small vessels made it within 300 yards, and Nautica took on approximately 8 rifle shots, before outrunning the pirates. I know cruise lines hate altering their itineraries, but right now I don't think anybody should be anywhere near Somalia without armed protection. Yes, they outran 'em today. And they might tomorrow. But these guys have become so brazen, if you give them enough opportunity to do damage, somebody will get lucky (or unlucky, when it comes to passengers), and you'll have a full-blown International incident unlike anything we've ever seen before. I think eventually the world community will get together and take some kind of decisive action...maybe setting up traps with armed vessels, to either take these guys down or blow them out of the water. Obviously the Somali government either can't or won't do anything about this. For the moment, my tug is going to stay about half a planet away from them, and the only pirate I'll see will be Johnny Depp on the big screen.

Well, the news from Black Friday weekend shocked all the experts. Bad economy, but somehow sales were up more than 7 percent over last year. Sounds good, doesn't it? Yeah, the geniuses on Wall Street felt so good about it they crashed 680 points off the Stock Market today. Is it just me, or don't you feel like there are some chumps up there just playing with our lives? And our livelihoods? It just about makes me wanna bump some heads together, I'll tell you. Good news breeds bad, bad news breeds good. Mates, I consider myself a not-completely-ignorant Cap'n, but when it comes to the way these eggs are treating us and our money, I flat out don't get it. You can't even vote 'em out, either. They're just in there rooting around to see how much trouble they can stick us in. When they hit the Pearly Gates, I hope there's a special heated room for them to reflect on for, oh, say, eternity....

You know what those guys remind me of? Merle Sorensen. Yep. Merle for sure. You don't know him? Well, Mr. Sorenson is from Quincy, Washington, and in October he had to be rescued from the Columbia River. He had nearly drowned after driving his Humvee off of a boat launch. He told rescuers that he was trying to clean his tires in the river, and wanted to see how far he could drive the vehicle into the water, before he was unable to back out. Guess what, Merle...you found out. That's about what those Wall Street dingbats are doing, seeing how far they can drive us in the river. Makes me wanna spit.

Here's a California classic. Facing a State budget crisis in July, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger fired 10,000 temporary and part-time workers, and ordered the 200,000 permanent employees to be paid the minimum wage of $6.55 an hour. That was to last until the legislature passed a crisis-solving budget. A bit extreme, maybe, but it got worse for the "Governator." One week later, State Controller John Chiang pointed out that state payroll records could not be changed to accommodate the cut, because they were written in the antiquated COBOL computer language. None of the full-time State computer wizards knew how to operate the system, to fix it so the government could continue operation. Who did know the system, you ask? The only people who knew the code were some of the part-time workers, who Gov. Schwarzenegger had just fired. Yikes (I mean "I'll Be Back").

OK, one last note from your Gub'mint in action. This time it's the United States Patent Office, who recently approved a product design that had been submitted back in 2007. Apparently a Plainfield, Illinois company has patented a bra, whose cups could function as an air filtration system, in case of chemical attack. And someone felt that idea warranted an official government sanction. Although I'm tempted to give them an F, I'll give those cups a D.