The Omnipotent Poobah Speaks!

At dinner last night, one of my dining companions said he was in a quandary. The quandary? What advice he should give a young man he once coached in baseball and who wanted to join the Army.

It’s not an uncommon quandary these days. Parents, friends, and families struggle with the desires of young men and women projected against the backdrop of a grossly unpopular war they detest and disagree with. What do you tell an 18-year old with little experience making important decisions, especially when the decision could lead to or injury?

I’m a veteran, but I should point out that I had an atypical military experience 30 years ago. .When I joined the Air Force, I’d already been on my own for five years. I also had several years of college under my belt and most importantly, the US wasn’t engaged in a shooting war at the time. I was among the first recruits in the all-volunteer military. For four years, I spent most of my time flying humanitarian missions and practicing for a war with the Soviet Union that never came. I traveled to every continent except Antarctica - 25 countries in all. I was as close as I could come to being my own boss. It was a lucky existence that resembled the image recruiting advertisements were touting at the time. But, I also parent an 18-year old daughter, so I can easily imagine facing such a tough choice.

Independence is a Good Thing
My wife and I raised our daughter to be independent and make her own decisions. She often asks for advice, but we rarely impose our will if she chooses to differ from it. In this case, my wife and I disagree on how we’d handle this question. She’s as adamantly opposed to our daughter enlisting as I am in favor of letting her make her own decision based on a careful research.

I have no bias against the military nor the fact your ultimate purpose is to fight wars. Whether you only practice as I did or find yourself parked on some desert sandlot with the bullets flying, it’s important to make sure you know what you’re getting into.

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O?, Oh, O. Uh oh - The woman big enough to leave a titanic wake in the gene pool of pop culture. She needs no other introduction. So here, ladies and gentlemen, I present O!

Keep Yer Frickin’ Legs Closed You Bint! - Over the top? Is anything over the top any more?

Designer Karl Lagerfeld is Ridiculous - Yeah, I’d have to go with them on that.

They Plump When You Cook ‘Em - Wouldn’t installing a valve stem and earthmover inner tube be easier and cheaper?

Who Moved My Cheesy Motivation? - I usually bound out of my bed every morning at 2 am and rush to get to work because I just love it so much - NOT! Here’s why.

‘Church Marketing Sucks’ - And your point is? How can you defend this? This? This sells.

Rocky Rocks Cops - A Sly Stone/Rocky wannabe stuns cops because they can’t stun him.

Passenger Flies Into a Sticky Situation - The airlines can afford to offer in-flight porn, but can’t scrape up some peanuts and a flat Diet Coke? What the hell is the world cumming to?

R.I.P Inspector Gadget - You’d think with all that knowledge the poor old dude could have found a length of rope or something.

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What has 23 acres, an 8000 sq. ft. house with two wings, a guest home, three cottages, a gym, a 5-acre lake, two waterfalls, two bridges, and hundreds of mature cherry and maple trees planted among 1000 redwoods pines and oaks?

The $200 million estate of Larry Ellison, the $25 billion, 12th-ranking member on the Fortune 500 list of world’s richest asswipes. The one that had his aptly-named Octopus Holding company buy it from him in 1995 for a deflated $12 million. The one that just “earned” him a $3 million property tax cut based on a professed 60% decline in the home’s value vs. the 6.3% for an average home. An average home - the ones not being foreclosed on anyway - that is being over-assessed because the neighbors can’t pay their mortgages down at Loan Shark Larry’s Savings and Loan.

And the rationale for the cut? It’s even richer than Larry (and apparently God) himself.

According to his tax appeal, the behemoth bungalow in his private redwood grove suffers from “significant functional obsolescence” because there apparently isn’t much of a market for $200 million pimp cribs. He also says the 16th century Japanese architecture, “over improvements”, and “excessive landscaping” are too costly for mere millionaire to maintains, so gee he’d appreciate it if just give him a break willya?

The Woodside White Elephant
In other words, Larry builds a Japanese-bred white elephant that no one can afford to buy, maintain, or want to live in so the taxpayers now owe him $3 million for his foresight in building such an opulent slum. Or as a consumer watchdog group puts into perspective, “Three million dollars to Larry Ellison is the equivalent of $300 to the average home owner.” Oh, and just so you know we aren’t picking on poor beleaguered Larry, Bill Gates did the same thing several years ago with his Redmond, WA-based monument to ostentation, avarice, and greed.

It makes you really admire modest billionaires like Warren Buffett, who actually pay taxes.

But Woodside, CA town manager Susan George says the deal is on the up and up. “It shouldn’t make any difference how much money he has if the process is fair. We’ll miss the money. We always have good things to do with it.”

True enough, but that’s relatively easy for George to say. Cash-flush Woodside is usually the top or near-top median income ZIP code in the country. The rest of relatively affluent - but still within human understandingly affluent - San Mateo County isn’t so lucky. They have people who can’t afford to claim their E. Palo Alto, cockroach-infested apartment is worthless because it’s “significantly functionally obsolete” with a leaking roof and broken plumbing. BTW, East Palo Alto is the other Palo Alto, the one that’s not home to multiple multi-millionaires and Stanford University. The folks in E. Palo Alto suffer from a crippling crime rate and crumbling housing over there on the wrong side of the freeway - the side that isn’t protected by sound fencing like the gracious folks across the road.

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