What's Your Damage?

Friday Editorial at Cynical Sarah:

What's Your Damage?

Glassholes

Friday Editorial at Cynical Sarah:

Glassholes

Hello, Creepy Stranger!

Friday Editorial at Cynical Sarah:

Hello, Creepy Stranger!

Property Values Continue to Plummet

Permanently Checked Out

Friday Editorial at Cynical Sarah:

Permanently Checked Out

Snookie's Avenger

Friday Editorial at Cynical Sarah:

Snookie's Avenger

This Is Not a Threat

Doesn’t the Second Amendment Cover This?

Oh the shame and humiliation of making the national news. I would rather some whackjob had tried to blow up the Chandler Home Depot again. But no. We have to face public humiliation for having the world’s dumbest school administrators. They work at Payne Junior High, which is part of Chandler Unified School District.

Last week a 13 year-old student of Payne Junior High was suspended for 5 days as the result of doodling a gun on an assignment. According to the school he violated their “No Tolerance” gun policy. Parents of the child spoke with administrators, who agreed to reduce the sentence to 3 days.

Paula Mosteller, mother of the child, cannot believe that her son was suspended for sketching a gun. She said, "I just can't believe that there wasn't another way to resolve this." Administrators have filed the sketch of the gun in her child’s Permanent Record. They would not release it, even for the ogling pleasure of public. They also declined to explain why the sketch was viewed as a threat.

My theory is that the Principal of Payne Junior High, who is ultimately responsible for the 3-day suspension, upon accepting her position stuffed a knitting needle up her nose and scrambled her brains until the resulting bloody gray goo ran out onto her sensible 1-inch pumps. That is the only possible explanation for absentmindedly handing down suspensions in the name of “No Tolerance.”

The school administration is not commenting on the story. There might be a piece of the missing puzzle. But why then, would administrators not have told the Mostellers, who appear to be baffled by the overreaction of the school to what can’t possibly be the first gun sketch to enter its hallowed halls.

If it were my kid, I’d have school administrators in court faster than they could say ACLU. Perfectly normal, nice children draw pictures of guns and tanks and Serbian Death Squads. These violent drawings are not indicative of a child’s intention to commit violence. They are indicative of a gun-obsessed culture and the highly impressionable nature of children.

Incidentally, the East Valley also contains the world’s dumbest news team. ABC affiliate, KNXV, told viewers that a child was suspended for “drawing a gun.” They neglected to add “on a piece of paper,” until about 30 seconds into the story.

If You Really Loved Those Cats, They'd Live In Your House

Rich Mouse, Poor Mouse

When I moved to Chandler, I was surprised by the diversity of the neighborhoods. There are palatial mansions within a few blocks of dumpy trailer parks. The impoverished pockets of tiny, poorly insulated houses and sad discount stores are a glaring contrast to the gated subdivisions and posh strip malls.

Chandler’s proximity to Phoenix made it attractive to a lot of people during the housing boom in the Valley. The economically challenged were here when the financially enhanced showed up. There doesn’t seem to be any noise about weeding out trailer parks and scaring discount grocery stores and cash advance businesses out of town. Or if there is, it can’t be heard above the shouts to keep out a chemical company that employs animal testing or the demands to keep a waste transfer station from being built next to a public park.

On the other side of the Valley, plans to build a transitional housing facility are provoking objections from local residents. The Phoenix City Council approved plans for the Southwest Leadership Foundation’s proposed transitional housing to assist homeless families in acquiring employment and establishing a residence. In an area already beleaguered by crime, residents worry that the influx of poor single mothers and their children will increase problems.

Similarly disinclined to sharing the neighborhood with those struggling to make a living, Disneyland is suing Anaheim over a proposed complex of subsidized apartments. Disney pays hundreds of park employees so little that the majority of them must commute, because they can’t afford to live in Anaheim. Disney has set their attack lawyers on the city to stop the development that would certainly benefit some of their so-called “cast members.” They claim that any housing development would be inappropriate for the area, which had to be rezoned. It used to be zoned for tourism-related business.

The contested area adjoins property that Disney owns and plans to build its third Anaheim attraction on. Apparently, the poor are good enough to go through the service entrance to operate park rides, assemble chilidogs and scrape gum off the sidewalk. But they are not good enough to be neighbors. Heaven forbid someone who spends the day wearing a 60-pound mouse costume in the relentless California sun should have a short commute.

In related news regarding disdain for the socioeconomic underclass, early Thursday morning Paris Hilton was released from prison and allowed to finish the remainder of her sentence under house arrest, due to an undisclosed medical condition. Because there are plenty of people with serious medical conditions in jail, my money is on a rare and debilitating allergy to poor people.

Despite a theoretical increase in crime or a possible allergic reaction, I would trade subsided housing for a waste transfer station as a neighbor faster than a celebrity heiress can say “Ankle bracelet.” These examples of shunning the fiscally depleted and the residentially challenged and deficient are stifling the very efforts meant to give them a boost. The attitude that the homeless and those living below the poverty line will go away if you don’t feed them is about as insightful and realistic as trying to keep illegal immigrants out of the U.S. with 2,000 miles of steel fence. Especially when we could easily get rid of poor neighbors by helping them prosper.

Toasted

On March 9th a Chandler man drove to a nearby Wal-Mart to purchase a fire extinguisher because his toaster oven was on fire. The man set his toaster oven on fire while drying the Methamphetamines he was manufacturing.

The man attempted to douse the flames with water and was unsuccessful. Presumably the 19 year-old did not want to bring the authorities in the matter, as he was whipping up a batch of Meth and also in possession of marijuana.

While the man was absent from his endangered condo the sprinkler system was triggered and stifled the flames. Altering the authorities to the fire, and making him the lucky winner of a fabulous vacation in a concrete cell without a view, courtesy of Maricopa County.

Part of the punishment for crimes like this one should be sterilization. This man shouldn’t be responsible for the care of a Chia Pet let alone a human being.

Tune in Wednesday for a special Cursed Tongue Guide to Surviving a Toaster Oven Fire.

Chalking

Dear Neighbor,

All Drecked Out

Friday Editorial at Cynical Sarah:

All Drecked Out

Revenge of the Cursed Agave

Friday Editorial at Cynical Sarah:

Revenge of the Cursed Agave

"Hit Me Baby One More Time."

Chandler made national news when police arrested a couple on possession and sale of marijuana, which they allegedly used to reward their 11 and 12-year-old boys. Their buzz kill four-year-old daughter was apparently still to young to light up with Mom and Dad for putting her toys away. (I think the last time we were so famous is when Ali "Whack-job" Warrayat attempted to blow up our Home Depot.)

Chandler, AZ is a strange place. A blend of the middle class and wealthy interspersed with stark pockets of economic distress. Trailer parks and housing that only a government could build pop up here and there among the lavish strip malls. Some of the houses in the “old” section of town are so poorly insulated the occupants have resorted to opaque aluminum foil window tint. These homes contrast with a handful of very pretty fire stations, ostentatious gated communities, an expansive, showy downtown library and plans for a citywide wireless network. It’s a jarring contrast, and one that I believe should not exist in the richest country in the world. (No, I don't think we should deport all of the poor people.)

When I brought up the satellite image of the block where Betty "Magic-brownies" Crocker,^* and family reside, I was fully expecting to see one of the grungy pockets of town. But instead, I found it was a relatively new neighborhood, where the houses are going for around $250 thousand. In addition, the neighborhood is spitting distance from Hamilton High School--so conveniently located for contributing to the delinquency of minors.

It will be interesting to see if the stoner parents use the Britney Spears defense. In an interview scheduled to air on the “Today” show on Thursday, Spears spoke with Matt Lauer about the time a vicious mob of scary paparazzi made her flee in her SUV (her Frappuccino and un-captured soul intact) with mini K-Fed on her lap. "I did it with my Dad. I'd sit on his lap and I drive…We're country." Sorry, honey, that’s not country. That’s just stupid. And so is sharing your stash with your kids, no matter how good they are.


* Not her real name.

Going Postal: A Cursed Customer Service Misadventure

Way back on the 11^th of March, Sweetface and I mailed off our Illinois state tax return. We sent them Certified Mail, so we would be able to track our tax return. We also sent another, unrelated letter on the same day to Pittsburgh, PA. (Short, boring story, which I won’t go into here.) The taxes had to get from lovely downtown Chandler, Arizona to the gloriously in the middle-of-no-where capital of Illinois: Springfield. It didn’t have to travel across most of the entire U.S. to get from the Southwest to the North Eastern part of the country.

I knew this didn’t necessarily mean that our state tax return would reach Illinois before the letter to Pittsburgh. But six business days passed and still, the tracking number didn’t bring up the comforting message: “Arrived safely in Springfield so now you will not have to worry about possible jail time for not filing a return for a measly $13 refund.” Since it took Sweetface and me four days to drive from Naperville, IL (A good four hours North of Springfield) to the lovely Phoenix area, I thought for certain that our tax return would take 6 days at the longest.

After clicking my way through the slightly user-friendly United States Postal Service (USPS) web site, I found an 800 number for tracking. I was pleasantly surprised to get an automatic prompt requesting me to answer verbally. I love the verbal response menus, because I get the satisfaction of yelling at someone, without ever hurting anyone’s feelings. Pounding the buttons on the handset to provoke strident beeeeeeps and boooops, is nice, but sometimes the tracking or account numbers don’t record correctly if I have too much fun taking out my anger.

And usually, the recorded voice is annoyingly cheerful, which makes it all the more enjoyable to yell. Oh, I know that my conversation may be recorded for quality assurance, and that it is even possible that they’re tracking the tones of people’s voices to weed out the crazies, but I figure most systems probably aren’t that fancy yet, and if they are I might be routed to the customer service agents that are good at handling confrontation, which probably means they are good at their jobs.

So, after yelling “Customer Service” three times, I was invited to press one to be connected to Customer Service. I immediately got Mary, who told me there was nothing they could do until the 28^th of March. I reasoned that by then, at least we’d still have two weeks to resend if they’d lost it. At another cost of $4.88, which would never be refunded if they recovered the first tax return. (That would be a total of $9.76 to the Post Office, which is 75% of a $13 refund.)

The 28^th of March rolls around and I call the USPS 800 number again and Chuck tells me that he’s putting in a claim on the lost tax return and tomorrow I’ll get a call from a representative. He even makes me feel all fuzzy warm and secure by giving me a confirmation number. The next day I am out checking the mail—it’s as if they had the box wired with a sensor—and I get a call from Jerry. When I get home Jerry tells me, via the answering machine, that there’s nothing they can do about my lost mail at the moment and I have to wait 15 days before they can do anything. And does Mr. Jerry Smart Guy Postal Carrier leave so much as one digit of a contact number? No!

Thank goodness for caller ID. I called what turned out to be my local Post Office, and find out that it wasn’t Jerry who called me, it was Bill. How he made Bill sound like Jerry, I still haven’t figured out. I assumed the local Post Office was confused about the date I sent my tax return, but I was partially mistaken. James, my bestest postal buddy in whole wide world, told me that I had to wait a full 30 days before I could put a claim on my tax return.

Flabbergasted that he would call Mary and Chuck, two of his hard-working colleagues liars, I reiterated my ordeal thus far. James stood by his claim that I needed to wait 30 days before any Postal employee would lift so much as a pen chained to a counter to search for my lonely lost tax return, chock full of personal financial information. I repeated, “So, Chuck was jerking my chain yesterday when he told me that I could file a claim? And there’s absolutely nothing the post office can do to find my letter?”

Silence. Followed by, “Well, I guess you could file a Form 1510 Mail Loss/Rifling Report.” That was followed by “Oh good, you found your last undamaged brain cell.” Which I only thought, because I knew I might still need his help. “We hardly ever loose Certified Mail,” he comforted. He then recommended that I call the Post Office in Springfield.

I tried to call Springfield about five times in a half-hour period and kept getting a busy signal, despite my heartfelt prayers to Ma Bell. So I decided to call the USPS 800 number again. I got Shirley. Who proceeded to tell me that the same thing happened to her last year. “You know those white, plastic tubs that the Post Office uses?”

“Sure,” I replied, for the sake of getting her explanation on the road.

“Well, the post office fills them and then they out to the Department of Revenue to be processed and then they go back to the Post Office to be scanned in.” One of my flaws is a faith in people, an inner belief that everyone makes sense. I requested clarification from Shirley, but was still unable to grasp the convoluted compost she shoveled at my feet. So after three choruses of an absurd story that, if I remember correctly, involved a Certified Public Accountant, a ball-peen hammer and a leprechaun in a white, plastic tub, I thanked Shirley for her help, and then immediately called back, hoping that crazy wouldn’t strike twice.

Sensible and wise Pat was next up at bat in the Customer Service cue. She reaffirmed the importance of Form 1510. Seeing as that must be the usual course for people with lost mail, and feeling much better now that sanity had been restored, I thanked Pat in earnest, and not just because if I had to talk to her any longer I was going to have to be medicated.

I tried Springfield three more times, and after lighting a candle for Ma Bell, I finally heard the blessed sound of ringing. Barbara answered, and I explained my impending charges of tax evasion. She said they might be backlogged. The letter may have been scanned in and not yet shown up in the system. Nevermind that once a Certified letter is physically scanned in, the tracking system is entirely electronic after that. Then I got her tax time speech, which was probably typed on a three by five card, taped to her desk. “We have thousands of letters for the Illinois Department of Revenue come through here every day at this time every year. It takes time to scan everything in.”

Of course it takes time to scan in a barcode on a letter. Why, it must take three whole seconds to scan in each letter. And of course, the Springfield Post Office that serves the IL Department of Revenue gets swamped every year before tax time. It’s not as if they could anticipate that the volume of mail will increase every March and could go by the Henson Robinson Zoo in Springfield and pick up a truckload of monkeys to help. (Okay, so it would make more sense to go to Dominicks and the Jewel to hire scanning professionals part-time, but it’s not as if the Post Office needs a posse of neurosurgeons on short notice.)

So I awaited my Form 1510, and copied the copies of my tax return and prepared a new letter to send out on the weekend. I woke up in a cold sweat and recounted nightmares of being in prison with repeat offender shoplifters, drug-addicts, single mothers and prostitutes, and Sweetface said, “Don’t worry, tax evasion is a white-collar crime.”

Then on the 31^st I went to the USPS web site and typed in the tracking number I have memorized. It’s almost too bad the tracking number is 30 digits long. If it were shorter it could be a new pin number. The following message appeared on the screen:

Status: Delivered

Your item was delivered at 11:42 am on March 31, 2006 in SPRINGFIELD, IL 62702.

I suppose now I can put down my latest craft project, which I think is in this month’s Martha Stewart’s Living: “With out of proportion, irrational worry and hours of cell phone use, you too can knit your own brain tumor.”

Cursed Tongue’s Favorite Winter-time Activities in Arizona

Ah, Arizona in the winter. Where a walk to the mailbox doesn’t require any of the same equipment as a North Pole expedition. Here’s a list of my favorite things about winter in my new state:

• Forgetting my jacket and then realizing it doesn’t matter because it’s 70 degrees outside
• Sand angels
• No extra yoga because of snow shoveling related back injuries
  
• Gardening (or it will be, after I pick a landscaper)
• Pina Coladas on the verandah
• Sunbathing (or it would be, if I wanted a set of matched alligator skin luggage for my 35th birthday)
• Watching the national weather forecast and laughing at predictions for snow
• Inviting relatives in colder climes to visit
• Frappachinos anytime

Disgruntled Depot

It has recently come to my attention that a massive whack-job wreaking havoc in my very own community has escaped under the radar of most of the self-involved U.S. Apparently, a Home Depot employee drove through the doors at the front of the Chandler, AZ branch of that home improvement store, nearly hitting a colleague. Ali Warrayat then turned down the aisle and drove to his old station at the paint department where he set either the car or the paint on fire in the hopes that the entire store would go up in flames. He fled the store, but then waited for the police at the curb, probably next to the Snack Shack of Questionable Cleanliness. He was hoping to be either killed or deported, according to news articles.

Reports conflict on whether the man is “a Jordan native” or “originally from Kuwait,” and despite claims that he is probably from somewhere in the general vicinity of the Middle East, there was little talk of terrorism. It made me wonder if this was the act of someone from a terrorist group. The local authorities stated that he was not part of a bigger conspiracy to shut down the home improvement industry in the U.S., but who is to say that there wasn’t a shady government cover-up? As suggested by someone who obviously knows from crazy, Joseph Farah.

Warrayat allegedly set the fire because he was upset at the latest plan to solve the illegal immigration problem, which is to build a really, really long wall on our Southern border. I like to call the juvenile attempt to defend our country by excluding new sources of cheap labor the Chicken Wire Curtain. The contractor with the honor of building the Chicken Wire Curtain (if the plan passes through Congress like so many other legislative turds) will certainly be the one that bids the lowest, and will probably be using illegal immigrants for the installation of said immigrant exclusion filter. Talk about letting the chickens guard the hen house! Of course, that wasn’t the sole reason that Ali Warrayat decided that it was a good idea to burn down Home Depot, also, he was upset that he didn’t get a big enough raise. Which begs the question, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

I believe the answer lies in the fact that no terrorist organization stepped forward to claim Warrayat as their own, and to denounce the Home Depot as a bastion of capitalist excess and infidel repairs. Also, he struck before the store was opened, so obviously he was unconcerned with taking a large number of godless Americans with him. Although he was allegedly hoping for a massive explosion, it seems that Warrayat was just a lone crazy. Need more proof than that? It seems that this quiet, hard worker was supposedly planning he revenge on Home Depot for a few days, and without the help of anyone who might be even a little sane. He packed his car for the trip down Crackpot Lane with items that included a Palestinian flag, a copy of the Koran, a cat and his uncle’s pit bull. Apparently, he attempted to put the pit bull into the trunk with the Koran, and it didn’t want to go into the trunk it was because dogs are filthy animals (according to the beliefs of Islam) and it didn’t want to be near the Koran. Otherwise, I’m sure the pit bull would have been happy to go into the trunk. You might be wondering, what’s with the dog and cat? I believe the only answer available is: See, *crazy.* Once arrested, Warrayat called a press conference, at which he answered no questions, choosing instead to make faces and grunt at the camera.

Sweetface and I were in our local Home Depot a meager three days after the incident. We planned to buy blinds so I could take down our lovely modular packing paper curtains. There seemed to be a door missing, and the merchandise was disorganized, with ceiling fans on the floor in a blocked off aisle, but otherwise the Home Depot appeared to be pretty much the way it had been. The paint department didn’t look as if it had been ground zero.

To our dismay, there was no one in the window treatment department, and upon asking someone in the kitchen cabinet department we found out that the only one who could operate the blind cutter had not shown up for work, or even called. Perhaps it isn’t fair for me to judge, but the police have the Chicken-Wire-Fence-hating, caught-on-video-surveillance, alleged arsonist in custody so there was no reason not to be there to cut our vertical blinds to order. We had to return to our new favorite place to shop in the whole wide world the next day and watch Home Depot Barbie receive training in blind-cutting. Which goes to show that Barbie really can do anything, alleged act of terrorism or no.

Toting Guns in the Streets

There’s a section of Chandler that makes me think the City Council sat down one day and decided that there aren’t enough Street names that invoke the Old West in this town. So they threw out some ideas, Lasso and Spur and probably some other equally Old Western, benign suggestions. Then someone, probably a Republican, card-carrying member of the NRA decided that the history of the gun was too intertwined with the Old West not to have gun street names. Thus was born Derringer Way, Winchester Place, and AK-47 Lane.

Okay, I know six shooters supposedly tamed the Old West, but do you really want to live in the section of town where most of the streets are named after guns? Does a responsible City Council invite Old West sensibilities into the fair City of Chandler? Do we have to be worried about the NRA and NAR collaborating? Is Ocean Street really that bad of a choice for a desert city?

I’m not saying we should bury the link between Cowboys and guns. Though frankly, it would have been nice to have found child-friendly images when I wanted to buy Cowboy stickers for my 3-year-old cousin. (I’m sure he knows that Cowboys have guns, but I don’t want to be the bad influence auntie.) Instead, I found Cowboys wielding some serious weaponry--not one with a lasso, or even a skillet. I’m sure that whitewashing history is not the answer, but there is so much more to the Old West than bleeding to death from internal injuries and infection caused by inept shooting and barbaric weaponry.