Mars Hopper

I'm not sure why I was thinking about the guy, he's pretty much been gone for quite a while.

He got cut up in a robbery. Back then, many of the Dodge Diplomats had cloth seats. I got to drive the cab with his blood all over the cloth seat for months. I never liked it, but the company couldn't care less, so there was no point in complaining.

How would you like driving a cab with your friends blood staining the drivers seat? Not a trivial amount either, a lot of blood.

The bagel incident

For the first year, I cringed every time anything happened. I was sure I'd get in trouble. People play this too. If I had ten bucks for every time some random stranger told me they were going to have my job, or otherwise hurt me significantly, and do it over just about nothing, I'd go and put a down payment on a house.

There used to be a regular Saturday morning delivery that went from Bagels Forever to someplace, and I liked doing it because I could get some cream cheese and bagels for me too. Bagels is on a little rise around a slight curve. Meaning? It's parking lot is a dangerous one to pull into and out of.

I parked in a marked parking place. It would have been possible to veer off University ave., up into the lot and broadside the cab, but anybody doing so would have gotten a ticket. I'm waiting inside for bagels, and this guy comes charging through the door and demands, "Who is driving that cab."

I told him I was. He shrieked, "Do you know what you're doing to traffic patterns out there?"

I replied that I was a cab driver, and didn't care what I was doing to cab patterns.

This guy was one of the very first people to call up and demand that I be fired. Henceforth, I was a little cagier about what I said, but his problem was he needed to scream at somebody on a Saturday morning, and I happened to be available. Since I didn't ask if I could lick the toe of his shoe, he decided he needed more, and come Monday morning, he had to take 10 minutes away from playing solitaire on the computer on his desk to see if he could get one of his inferiors injured.

Why wasn't he in the middle of that earthquake the other day....... Gee, there is no justice.

I'm glad I found a note I wrote to myself about this one.

The capital, politics, and a really great quote

It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from it's government.

Thomas Paine

Lately, the state capital has been a very public circus. I didn't care too much who got elected when the election for Governor happened. Most of us here in Wisconsin didn't care too much. We've had a few really popular republicans, Tommy Thompson was soooooo popular. People liked Dreyfus. Most of us here in Wisconsin didn't know much about Walker, so a lot of us didn't show up at the polls to vote against him. Vote against him? Yeah, pathetic isn't it?

So now, Mr. Walker is a national figure in less than 6 months. Did he do this for us, the people of Wisconsin? No. He did it so he can run for Senator, or President. Particularly President. Obama isn't that popular, and the world has "issues", so a bunch of republicans are thinking about who's going to beat him in the election coming up.

Do I want someone who did 'this' to the state of Wisconsin, just so he could make his bones as a national political figure, in the White House? No. Hopefully, the rest of America will think of it the same way and come to the same conclusion. Regrettably, this would mean we'd be stuck with that jerk for an open ended period of time, but for America, this patriot could live with him rather than see him screw up the entire country for his own personal gain.