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When they fall during the week, somebody has to work to put a paper out for the following day.

So much for the 4th of July barbecue.

Actually, the boss gave me as senior reporter a choice - work the 4th of July on Friday or Labor Day in September

I chose neither

It didn’t fly.

So here are my choices. I can work the 4th of July and drive to Norwood for their big-time parade and festivities at the Firemen’s Field, snap a few pictures, talk to a few folks about oh what fun it is, head back to the office and write.

Or I can work on Labor Day and cover Massena’s granddaddy of Labor Day parades, featuring every member of labor you’d ever want to see - and plenty of politicians tagging along to show their support for organized labor and maybe campaign a little bit to keep their elected position. And since this is an election year, there’s sure to be tons of politicians already in office or wannabes who hope to be in office marching along the parade route. Hell, the governor even came one year.

And then when the parade’s over, all the labor dudes head down to Springs Park for the free beer and hot dogs and beer and hamburgers and beer - along with the politicians, who as a newspaper reporter, we have an obligation to interview to find out (1) why they’re running again, or (2) why they want to run in the first place. And we get to talk to all the organized labor bigwigs to find out why labor is so important. Well, they always say, without labor no work would get done.

And then we head back to the office and write the myriad of stories and then check in at the Knights of Columbus to see how Jerry’s Kids are faring during this year’s Massena telethon. And when all is said and done, we’ve written more in one day than we’d normally write in a week.

So let’s look at the big picture.

Independence Day. Parade. Fireworks. Fun events.

Labor Day. Parade. Politicians. Free food and beer.

Free beer at Springs Park or not, I’m choosing the lesser of two evils and working on Friday. Somebody else can have the politicians, thankyouvermuch.

I am, however getting a day off Thursday.

I just have to write my ass off today to get the day off.

Don’t you just love taking time off? You work endlessly to catch up on everything before you leave and you work endlessly when you get back to catch up on everything that’s landed on your desk while you were gone.

There’s no happy medium.

It almost makes it senseless to take time off.

But I’m doing it anyway. The cupboards are getting bare and need to be restocked. The hair’s getting a little shaggy and I need to visit Bob the Barber. The garden needs to be weeded. The house needs to be cleaned.

Maybe I should just call Thursday Labor Day.

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But seriously, I’m wondering, “Where have all the squirrels gone?”

They’re normally bouncing around the neighborhood no matter where you look - darting in front of you on the road, climbing up your trees or your bird feeder, attacking the fake hairpiece you’re sporting on top of your head.

But I haven’t seen one in ages.

It’s like they’ve vanished from the face of the earth.

Is there like this shortage of squirrels this year?

Or did the long hard winter wear them out so much that they’re sleeping it off in some remote location?

Or have they all been smashed under the front tires of the neighbor’s Chevy Tahoe?

I don’t know.

I’d ask them if I saw one. But they’re nowhere to be found.

In years past they’ve shimmied up the bird feeder and eaten more food than the birds themselves. This year the pigeons and the crows have the feeder all to themselves.

And the rest of the birds have the trees all to themselves.

And there’s nary a squirrel to be seen.

It’s eerie.

You know, maybe it really would make for a good horror story now that I think about it.

I’ll have to put it among the other million and a half things on my “to do” list.

And God help anybody who says, “Hey that sounds like a great idea. I think I’ll do it myself.”

I’d better not see it on NBC’s “Fear Itself” anytime soon.

If you haven’t checked out that program (10 p.m. Thursdays), might I make a recommendation that you tune in. I’m not a big television fan, but I really like the concept with a different big-name director sharing his or her tale of horror each week.

Sure beats all that crappola that involves (1) has-been stars making idiots of themselves in something like a circus; or (2) average American Joes and Janes auditioning for something or other on national television (how many more of those friggin’ American Idol-style programs do we need).

We also don’t need any more reality shows that involve people doing nothing (if I wanted to see that, I’d tune in to a reality show about the day in the life of a kitty), or the resurgence of game shows that were boring to begin with like Password or Family Feud.

Yeah, Hollywood, you’ve made television really interesting.

I’d rather have five nights a week of “Fear Itself” instead of one night a month of “Who Wants To Be A Nashville Star?”

If you don’t have time on Thursday night to check out “Fear Itself,” no big deal. Just go over to my entertainment links, click on NBC Television on Demand and check it out on the Internet. The full program, not some measly two-minute snippet.

Thanks from the bottom of my heart, NBC, for making it available on the Internet. It’s a great move for some of us who are still toiling away at work when the program’s on and don’t have DVR capability.

We do have a VCR that we haven’t learned to program yet and it makes funny sounds when we stick a tape in - yes, VHS tapes still exist.

Did I say funny sounds?

Hmm, maybe that’s where the squirrels are hiding.

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Now don’t get yourself in a hurry to get older so you can drink and get married and have babies and all that good stuff.

Enjoy life while you can.

It only goes downhill from here:

As you get older, it’s always good to get more frequent eye exams.

Here’s ours…

Are the patterns moving, ever so slightly? Or are they perfectly still??

The patterns are used to test the level of stress a person can handle. The slower the pictures move, the better your ability of handling stress. Alleged criminals that were tested see them spinning around madly. However, senior citizens and kids see them standing still. None of these images are animated - they are perfectly still. How did you do with the test? If you did NOT see any movement in the patterns, look closely at the following photo.

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Senior citizens … If you don’t see movement in this photo…Call 911!

Ready for another?

Check out these “potholes” to keep drivers from speeding.

And finally today comes this entry from the files of “That’s one big honkin’ fish!”

FYI: This Sturgeon is still alive, just worn out from the fight. They turned him loose after the photo. This Sturgeon was caught on the Willamette River just below Oregon City. It weighed out at over 1,000 lbs and measured out at 11′1′. It was 56′ around the girth and took over 6 1/2 hours - and 4 dozen beers - for the four guys taking turns at reeling it in. Any Sturgeon OVER about five feet has to be released unharmed and cannot be removed from the water. They are brood / breeding stock and probably older than most of us.

OK, so now maybe I don’t feel so old…

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But they don’t have to act like one.

Just ran across this at Danger Democrat’s blog.

You’ve got to check it out for yourself.

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Well…. I wasn’t done.

You’re never gonna please Bob, no matter how hard you try.

So, in no particular order, here’s some more things that have been sticking to my craw lately.

E-Mail

In a nutshell, I’m tired of spam.

I’m tired of the e-mails that tell me “update your penis.” What the hell does that mean?

I’m tired of the e-mails that tell me “you look stupid bbeckstd@ogd.com.” Not stupid enough to click the link the e-mail carries, no doubt to download a virus onto my computer.

I’m tired of the e-mails that tell me I can make millions by processing rebates at home. If the job is so lucrative, why isn’t the world full of millionaires processing rebates at home?

I’m tired of the e-mails that want to sell me Vicodin when I’ve been put on the drug before and it’s done absolutely nothing for me, so why would I want to put any more into my system?

I’m tired of the e-mails that tell me they’re going to close my Wells Fargo Bank Account if I don’t update my information when I’ve never been near a Wells Fargo Bank in my entire 48 years of existence and wouldn’t know one if it bit me in the ass.

I’m tired of the e-mails that have a picture of some chick who’s telling me, “Hello. I am so tired tonight. Won’t you please write me at xxxx@xxxx.com. Well, if you’re so tired, why are you up sending e-mails?

I’m tired of the e-mails that tell me this is the second notice that I’ve been awarded a gift certificate for Bloomingdales when (1) I’m not traveling hundreds of miles to New York City to visit Bloomingdales, and (2) I never received the first notice or the third, fourth, fifth, sixth or even seventh - so please give your gift certificate to somebody who gives a shit.

Yeah, I’m tired of the whole kit and kaboodle, but I have to sift through the crap day after day after day, wasting an hour of my time to get to real messages.

Like the woman from Nigeria whose husband passed away and she wants me to have his $50 million.

Verizon

I railed on Verizon yesterday for taking away my newsgroups and I’ll rail on them again today.

Who the hell is calculating their phone bills?

It’s amazing that I could have the slimmest of phone services - essentially a dial tone - and the $29.95 bill for my Verizon DSL and still have a bill that hovers around $100.

Are dial tones that friggin’ expensive these days?

I can’t figure it out because there’s so much gobbledygook in the list of “charges” that your head swims.

I may have to call them.

But then again, you can never get a human when you call your own phone company.

Isn’t technology wonderful?

The Weather

Is it just me or does anyone else wonder why, whenever it pours like hell and you have to close every window in the house, the temperature is like 95 degrees. And when you can finally open your windows on sunny days, it’s 50 degrees and you don’t need to open them to begin with.

Phone Redialers

It gets a little annoying at night when I’m at work slaving away on stories trying to meet the deadline and the phone rings and I have to answer it and I get some idiot who says, “Yeah, your number was on my Caller ID. Did someone there try to call me?

Listen dude, do you know how many people work at our newspaper plant?

I don’t know you and I don’t know who called you and I don’t have the time to find out who called you and I really don’t give a shit who called you because if it was important enough obviously they would have left you a friggin’ message.

Alright, I think by now you get the general idea.

Life sucks the big one these days.

Maybe I will take that company up on its offer of Vicodin.

I could use a few happy pills right about now.

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If you catch my drift.

At least for yours truly.

You know it’s not gonna be good when you get up Monday and read your horrorscope and it tells you, “Go ahead and slit your wrists now - and don’t say we didn’t warn you.”

The other alternative would be to stay in bed all day for the next few days.

You know it’s bad when….

No matter what type of food you buy for the cats, they throw their nose up in the air and walk away and you realize you’ve just spent a good portion of your check for something that’s going to end up in the trash anyway. Why not just go ahead and throw the money in the dumpster straight from the get-go instead of waiting in line at P&C to buy the damned stuff.

And this one is for the birds - literally.

You know it’s going to be bad when…

You decide to help out the homeless, the starving birds of the neighborhood - who all happen to be big-assed old black crows or pigeons who could probably eat me alive if they so chose - so you buy some food for the feeder.

So far so good.

You take the cover off the feeder and start pouring.

So far so good.

And then you see the tidal wave of food plummeting to the ground on the other side of the feeder.

Not so good.

Apparently there’s a big honkin’ hole on the other side that I failed to notice, so the more I poured, the more I watered the lawn with bird feed.

I tried to fix it with Duck Tape today. We’ll see how that goes.

Friggin’ birds.

And it that wasn’t enough, now there appears to be a somewhat injured bird near the feeder. He’s not laying on the ground like a normal bird. His wings are outstretched and he looks like he’s having trouble flapping them. But he can still fly apparently, so maybe it’s not as bad as I think.

Yup, the hits just keep on coming.

And people say I should smile.

You know it’s going to be bad when….

You start doing the hot sync between your computer and your Palm Pilot to keep things, well, in sync.

And the Palm Pilot goes nutso.

Overload, it says. You’re out of space. Delete some files, the warning message says.

But you can’t.

Because it keeps rebooting and rebooting and rebooting and it goes on until either the batteries die or you do a hard reset that puts it back in the original condition it was when you bought it at OfficeMax.

I didn’t have any choice.

Bye-bye games, bye-bye mileage tracker and grocery shopping list and the program that tells me I’ve worked an 80-hour week but can only get paid for 40.

All gone with the wind.

But at least I had the back-up on my computer for my calendar and contacts.

Those survived.

But now I have to spend a few days rebuilding the rest of the programs I had.

So much for my number one ranking in the Palm Pilot tennis circuit.

And you know it’s really going to be bad when…

You say bye-bye to binary newsgroups, courtesy of Verizon.

What’s a binary newsgroup, you ask?

Well, they hearken back to the earlier days of the Internet and, at least in my case, they’re used to share different types of files. For instance, many years ago I got hooked on alt.binaries.screensavers, a newsgroup that was dedicated to creating and sharing computer screensavers. Met a lot of great folks and shared a lot of great home-made screensavers.

But now Verizon says I can’t do it anymore because they’ve ripped alt.binaries.screensavers and every other binary newsgroup out from under the feet of their customers.

I found out this week when I went to download the latest posts in the screensavers newsgroup and got a message saying, “Verizon does not carry this newsgroup.”

Funny thing, it did the day before.

So I tried another newsgroup.

“Verizon does not carry this newsgroup.”

And another.

Same message.

They were all gone.

Because of child porn.

Huh?

Here’s the short version of a long story. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo made an agreement with Verizon and Time Warner and some other Internet providers to get rid of newsgroups that Cuomo says promoted child pornography. Great, I thought. No problem with that. When you’ve got a newsgroup like alt.binaries.childporn, that’s a pretty good sign something’s not right in that particular group.

Here’s the problem. Cumo says his office went through the newsgroups and claimed to find child porn on 88 newsgroups - out of roughly 100,000 newsgroups that exist. And Verizon saw this as a golden opportunity. They said, “Sure, we’ll take those newsgroups down,” and I applaud them for their actions.

But then they went a step farther and said, “Well hell, as long as we’re at it, why not close down all the binary newsgroups because you never know when child porn might be posted in alt.binaries.fishing.”

And they did - and they saved themselves some money in the end because they no longer had to financially absorb the cost of providing the newsgroups.

But cheer up, Verizon says, we won’t stop you from subscribing to pay newsgroup servers. We’re really nice people. We have no problem with you forking over more money for a service we said we would provide.

And, oh by the way, hell no we’re not going to reduce your bill because we deleted a part of the service that we agreed to provide.

How’s that for fair?

Great job, Verizon. Pack your bags and get the hell out of my house because I’m finding another service provider that treats it’s customers with a little more respect. You didn’t even have the decency to send me a letter or e-mail telling me of the service change even though I’ve been a loyal customer for years. I had to find out when I got your stupid message that said “Verizon does not carry this newsgroup.”

So now I’ll probably look for a pay newsgroup provider when the budget allows for it.

If only I’d ever get my stimulus check from the government.

Oh yeah, it’s one of those weeks.

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Again.

I always begin to lament about my age whenever this time of year rolls around.

It’s been 31 years since I walked across the stage of the Massena Arena to receive my diploma.

The kids graduating this year - OK, they’re not kids anymore - were in second grade when I started at the newspaper. A couple more years and I’ll have covered them through their entire school career.

You know what else makes me feel like a geezer? My co-worker wasn’t even born - or even a gleam in her parents’ eyes - the year I graduated from Massena Central High School.

Yup, I’m officially an “old fart.”

Pass the Geritol, will ya, and pull up the chair and we’ll watch some Lawrence Welk together.

A one and a two and a…

On a serious note, RIP George Carlin, one of the comics I grew up loving.

It’s only fitting today that in this clip he talks about the dangers of education.

Enjoy.

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You can see the video of Zach’s draft selection here.

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Rain.

Thunderstorms.

Right now it’s raining in barrels and the sky is black and the only way not to stub your toe on furniture in the house is to turn the lights on because it’s so dark - at 11:30 in the morning.

And I’m sick.

I don’t know what bug has bitten me this time around, but it’s not good.

I went into work yesterday for a 2 p.m. photo shoot that got canceled, and I left right after that because my stomach is so torn up right now.

Today’s not any better.

Maybe it’s the weather, or not eating right, or not eating at all, or maybe the stress of the job, or maybe not getting enough sleep because my internal alarm clock has been getting me up at all hours of the night lately.

Whatever the case, I’m miserably sick.

But I’ll try work again today.

If it doesn’t pan out, well, the house is only a hop and a skip away and I’ll come right back home and toss myself into bed again like I did yesterday.

Sick sucks.

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