It looks like Bush is using the Walmart model for the nation's security. Instead of hiring fulltime workers and giving them benefits, Walmart hires part time workers, gives them crazy alternating schedules (to prevent them from taking a second job) and does not give them benefits. Bush seems to hold the National Guard to the same type of business model. Instead of sending a large number of standing, full-time military members to Iraq, he understaffs and sends part-timers out there. Instead of hiring specially trained, fulltime border patrol agents, he grabs part-timers and throws them into the breach for unspecified periods of time.

This seems to be the new model everywhere. I have worked in hospitals which delberately understaff and hire "traveling" nurses... part-timers who don't get fulltime benefits and who work for a 6 month schedule; then their contracts are terminated. Want to know how well that is doing? Take a look at the skyrocketing number of accidental hospital deaths and at how many hospitals are closing. One of the first hospitals I knew of that switched over to this model was just torn down to make way for high priced condos.

Boy, we've got some real business geniuses out there. And now we've got a Decider in Chief who is using this disasterous model of skelton staffing with a deliberately irregular workforce for our national security. People used to know that the bottom line isn't always money. Bush knows with regard to his inner circle - the bottom line is loyalty. If you give workers a decent salary, adequately compensate for some of the more detrimental workplace environments and benefits that help make their lives a little better, they'll stay, focus and do a good job. If you don't, they'll say "Fuck you" and cheat you whenever they can.

Oh, and I didn't forget about the contractors. In this modern business world you don't hire your own maintenance staff. You contract out to others. They will also rob you blind, but hey, it keeps the economy chugging along.

Led Zep was heavily influenced by the band Spirit, too. So influenced that they lifted whole sections of the band's 1967 song "Taurus" and turned them into "Stairway to Heaven." I was just listening to Spirit today in my car, "Topanga Windows" and "The Great Canyon Fire." OK, so it's a differnt canyon. But Topanga claims Joni Mitchell too, as well as Neil Young and Jim Morrison.

I'm a near middle-aged new driver and I just hit a curb and blew a tire. I wasn't driving recklessly, I was driving inexperienced. It's hard to judge distances and speed when you first start driving. The kid is only 17, how much experience does he have as a driver? The sane thing to do was to tell him he has to pay for half the cost for the tire. I felt like a fucking idiot when I hit that curb, moreso because the other drivers on the road could see I wasn't a teenager and the guy who came to change the tire assumed I was drunk or something, since nobody where I live is a new driver at my age (I recently moved out of NYC). I imagine Sam felt like a moron when he hit the curb (even if he pretended he didn't) and that his first thought was "Shit. I am so screwed."

Be grateful he didn't wrap himself around a tree. He's feeling sorry for himself - teenagers do that. Instead of being so unmitigatedly bitchy, tell him that you are concerned for his safety and concerned about the cost of repairs. Make a schedule for him to pay you back, and as punishment, tell him he has to go driving with you and he will practice slowing down while coming to curbs. Make him do it with you in the car for an hour. That's punishment enough, believe me.

Their naivete didn't really do them in except in the sense that we're all naive when we're young. Those people were in their 20s at the time, a time when most young Americans are socializing with friends, sans kids. They all grew up. Most got married and had kids and the ones who weren't completely irresponsible took on family obligations. It's hard to sit around smoking pot and listening to music with your friends when you have a family. Then the later years come on - parents become ill, people get divorced, neighbors move elsewhere, friendships wax and wane depending on where your friends are in regards to family-raising and intimate relationships that need most of their time. Hell, Micky Dolenz was my neighbor when he was on his third wife; having two or three families makes someone soooo very not who they were when they were in their 20s. Like the Beatles, everybody grew up and had to move away from their large circle of friends and into a smaller, more intimate family life.

That isn't necessarily a cultural failure....