Last Chance Cafe

Sometimes you enjoy things you really shouldn't. About ten minutes ago I got off the phone with a rep from the local Coca Cola distributor wherein I told him why he wasn't getting my business. It was quite satisfying. Two weeks ago my better half called on Coke to order one of their machines for our new soda (Spanish for 'little food stand') and got nothing but grief.

We want a machine like you see at McDonalds or Burger King, one that dispenses ice and soda. They said they wanted to give us a small refrigerator to stock with cans or bottles. Our setup is an assembly line deal selling chilidogs where you follow down the line to choose what kind of toppings you want. At the end we have the cash register where the employee will ask pointedly "which kind of drink does the customer care for?" Every time.

We're located in 'The Pueblo' in the middle of San Jose, which more than anything else is a collection of about twenty or thirty bars, discos and nightclubs of various sizes with a few tchotchki shops thrown in for the tourists. After a night of drinking, contrary to one might think, you're thirsty- as alcohol dries out the mouth. If you're standing there with a (quite spicy) chilidog in your mitt, staring at the soda machine, it's likely you're going to take one. At least that's the idea.

Problem is, the local distributor makes more money per drink selling us cans or bottles. We make more money selling out of cups with ice, and it's easier to push the sale at the register. After a week of runaround, they finally tell us they don't have the machine we want; which means buying our own ice, our own ice dispenser and a freezer to keep the ice in. Plus we need to have an employee climb up on a stepstool with a heavy bag to refill the dispenser, maybe when we have a rush of customers.

Called Pepsi. They have the machine that makes its own ice, have already been out to the location, and tomorrow they are sending the tech guy out to see what parts they'll need to install it. Plus they give us 8 days to pay as opposed to Coke, which wants the money up front- if they would deign to give us the machine in the first place.

The main problem is that business people (men and women alike) tend not to take women seriously, even though there are lots of women small businesses owners here. The manager of one of the clubs in the Pueblo actually suggested to my girlfriend that because she was pretty she could make good money working the clubs in Guanacaste (big gringo locale on the west coast), i.e., as a prostitute. This, as she was in the middle of organizing a show with the club owner- at the same club- for a weekly Brazilian Carnival night, as well as putting together the soda (she's a professional Sambista, or Samba dancer, with a thousand dollar costume).

That event was pretty quickly cancelled, and I actually met the idiot manager last night. He straightened up quick and became quite humble and professional while I was there. Typical.

As we speak she's on her way to drag the contractor out of his house to go to work or he's fired as well (as of yesterday his phone was disconnected- I don't see how this can be a good thing). I then get to build and wire the place myself, which I probably should have done in the first place.

Posted by petefredbob at 12:22 PM | Permalink

Barney Frank is Quoted in the Financial Times today about the need for an international umpire for financial regulatory situations. "Financial regulators on both sides of the Atlantic may not be able to resolve policy disputes through co-operation and the creation of a global regulator should be considered, according to Barney Frank, the senior Democratic congressman."

Well thanks Frank. So much for people looking out for their own interests. This is typical Democratic philosophy and what we can look forward to if Democrats take power again. The Dems really don't think people can make their own decisions and want to put institutions in place to make those decisions for them. So what's the 'news?':

This co-operation is seen as necessary as exchanges consolidate beyond regional borders, moves highlighted by the proposed New York Stock Exchange merger with Euronext.

Well, in contracts the tiebreaker is determined beforehand, usually by selecting an arbitration situation. If none is determined it goes to court, and the court is the tiebreaker. Not to mention, each country involved has their own interests to care for. Europe's interests don't always mesh with that of the United States, and vise versa. Not to mention that something on the order of a merger between two stock exchanges would be scrutinized to the last detail by both the relevant European and American regulatory institutions before such a thing would be allowed. So where's the beef?

“Doesn’t that sound like fun,” Mr. Frank said of such co-operation. “Joint action is theoretically [good] but what does that mean? In American baseball, if the runner and the ball arrive at the base at the same time, the tie goes to the fielder. Who breaks a tie if there is a disagreement over policy between the SEC and FSA?”

For one thing, Frank is conflating the players with the umpires, and he's behaving as if international mergers and resolution agreements don't currently exist. Cooperation is the basis for all agreements, without which contracts would cease to exist. Cooperation, according to Frank, is overrated. But his greatest sin is in not knowing that there are no 'ties' in baseball. Beside the fact that I grew up "knowing" that the tie goes to the runner, the rules state simply that the runner must "beat the ball to the base." In close calls the umpire makes the decision whether or not that happened.

Barney Frank: wrong on international relations, wrong on baseball.

Posted by petefredbob at 06:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sunday, sitting here alone in the store listening to the Dandy Warhols. Yesterday was the biggest day we've had since we opened, and though I'd much rather have been selling at full retail, the sale sure has gotten the kids in the door.

The morning was all about gathering up the hangers and sensor tags, filling in stock and just puttering around with the displays. I've got some items that still need to be re-hung and the place needs a good cleaning but, by George that's why I pay my employees more than minimum wage. As a matter of fact tomorrow is the scheduled ninety-day raise for my two originals, which puts them at 150,000 colones a month. Minus 9% to the government- plus my 26% on top to the same corrupt idiots.

That's a whopping $265 each right in their pockets. It's still more money than anybody but the hookers, boiler room phone operators and casino workers bring home- unless you work for the government or a protected industry. Plus I pay for their State medical and retirement insurance, unlike 50% or more of the native employers. My guard's last job was a twelve-hour overnight shift; seven days a week, and his employer paid zilch as far as taxes and insurance went. I think his wife and kids are happier now, but I could be wrong. We've got a sweet employee discount too.

The big news is that I'm in talks with a prospective investor. When you move out of the country, after a while you forget about what you missed in the States. What we would consider a normal selection of goods and a spiffy place to go and buy them is pretty rare around these parts (the bakery around the corner has had an old empty display case and construction materials laying about on the floor since at least July, and about a tenth of the goods that you'd find in any Main Street USA bakery. I go there because they have Coke in the old glass bottles).

The investor is a gringo on the ground here for 13 years or so and managed to make his money locally. He's also my first or second best customer. He likes to come in, have a coffee, buy stuff for his daughter and listen to the music. I think the Violent Femmes pushed him over the edge.

September is the end of the fiscal year here and my accountant has had my books for the last three weeks. I'll be chasing him down this week (probably literally) so I can cut the deal, finally ransom my car back and focus on the new clothing line for Christmas. The old lady's 'Rio Dog' hot dog stand is due to open later next week as well. Iffy though, maybe the week after.

Posted by petefredbob at 11:17 AM | Permalink

One of the things that rankles some folk about the Reuters news service is how it will occasionally editorialize within a 'news' item. For years organizations had slanted the news by not including items relevant to what's being presented. They by and large got away with this because no one interested had a sufficiently equal soapbox to challenge them.

That Reuters and other news outlets have begun in recent years to add 'editorial' content seems kind of a stupid move, as the advent of the internet has made pointing out this bogus commentary as easy as taking candy from a baby.

But the habit of omitting relevant facts and context continues apace along with the opinion peddling. Today's item is one that would seem to be missing context, if not humor:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Friday that Cuban leader Fidel Castro was walking about and making nocturnal trips outside Havana, countering rumors the ailing 80-year-old was dead.

"He is walking about and goes out at night to visit the countryside, villages and towns."

Now, Fidel's shade may be making nocturnal visits to the countryside, perhaps to good naturedly scare the children as Halloween creeps up on us, but that Hugo's words are reported without irony seems to indicate that Reuters has been sniffing the same brand of Voodoo dust as the leading Venezuelan.

What the heck. While we're at it here's another Reuters 'news' story, this one with selected context and editorial.

It's ostensibly about the success of a test of a Military Laser that will be mounted on a 747 and used to shoot down ICBMs like the ones Korea is fixing to aim at us. Swell. Here's the 'context':

But the Pentagon's former top weapons tester cast doubt on project, calling it far from militarily effective and perhaps easily defeated by a simple countermeasure…snip…

Philip Coyle, the Pentagon's chief weapons tester under former President Bill Clinton and now at the private Center for Defense Information, said in an e-mail reply to Reuters that its real effectiveness appeared doubtful….snip…..

"If a laser can be developed with enough power to penetrate the atmosphere and still be lethal once it reaches a target, an enemy would only need to put a reflective coating on the outside of its missiles to bounce off the laser beam, making it harmless," he said.

"The Romans could have done the same thing in the myth about Archimedes. Any grade schooler knows that you can set a dry leaf on fire with a magnifying glass. The challenge is to achieve militarily effective damage," he added.

Neither Boeing nor the Missile Defense Agency responded immediately to an offer to rebut Coyle's comments.

Did they really mean immediately? Kind of like a "when did you stop beating your wife?" deal. Hey gee fellas, this guy from the Clinton administration, which by the way pulled the plug on Missile Defense research for eight years, said your big new weapon is a piece of crap, care to respond? Times up! Publish.

Did Coyle really mean to say that the Missile Defense Agency consists of a bunch of "grade schoolers?" Here is the military component of the next Democratic administration. Still want to stay home and not vote?

The Center For Defense Information also includes on its roster former General Anthony C. Zinni, also not a fan of the current administration.

On staff at the CDI at the top of the page is one Bruce G. Blair, who is touted as the President of the World Security Institute. Blair seems to be famous for pushing the idea that the world is living under a "nuclear hair trigger. He's mentioned as a main source in this article from the Manchester Guardian circa June 15, 2002 titled "The Secrets Are Unveiled Of America's Nuclear Madness":

We know this thanks to insiders breaking cover, principally Bruce G Blair, for 25 years a specialist in strategic operations, who was once a missile launch officer in Strategic Air Command. He published classified details from the war plan in the New York Times this week [June 2000], following a Senate speech, drawing on his research, by Senator Robert Kerrey in the week Clinton met Putin: a meeting designed among other things to persuade Putin to modify the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty and pave the way for the latest American venture into global instability, a national missile defence system.

Hmmm. A guy that's against the Missile Defense System. Coincidence? I wonder.

His famous paper seems to be " Hair-Trigger Missiles Risk Catastrophic Terrorism," which you can find here at counterpunch or here in Word format.

There are more members to investigate here.

So what am I complaining about? A foreign press agency publishes a straight news article about the success of a military laser system, fishes for commentary from a hostile left wing anti-administration source, then immediately publishes said commentary without waiting for a response.

Reuters: About as anti-American as they come.

Posted by petefredbob at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I had forgotten that Pete Townsend had a blog on Blogspot, of course it's gone now, but he still keeps a diary of sorts on his new(ish) web page that I ran into this morning coming from a news article.

It reminded me anew of how the internet and blogging in particular can be intimate in ways we never thought. The following is a quote from Pete's diary as he's talking about aging as a rocker and his new 'opera.'

…..rock is not dead. Neither is it right. Or wrong. Or a new religion. Or an answer. Or even a question. It’s a process. An island. Walk on, walk off. The kids in my imaginary band The Glass Household in Wire & Glass describe the process as breathing, exploding, imploding, climbing a stairway to a door made from a mirror, and walking through, expecting oblivion in a Black Hole, instead finding a slow after-show party.

I feel as though I’m walking out of the sleepy party, back through the door, down the stairway, to the stage. There’s some cleaning up to do down there before I can go back up and chit-chat about past lives.

Pete is one of the heroes of my misspent youth (verily, in teenage wasteland), and as I chase my adolescent icons into old age (the ones that have survived) it's nice to catch up on the conversation started so long ago.

Posted by petefredbob at 09:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I watched the CNN sniper video today. I'm not as upset about it as a lot of people are, mainly because I believe the MainStream Media do more damage on a daily basis just yakking. The average person is still way under informed, and one of my employees here in still-rainy Costa Rica hadn't a clue about the 72 raisin, er, virgin deal. The other two probably don't have a clue either but I'm not about to indoctrinate them at the moment.

Yeah, CNN are asses and deserve scorn for being used like a cheap whore by the Islamists, but what are you going to do? Drag your ass out of bed, hold your nose and vote Republican. Or, you can go to the sniper's official website and make fun of him and his fellow posters in a thoroughly juvenile way- like this:

Hey Juba,

When are you going to upgrade to suicide bomber? Don't want to miss any of those tasty virgins, eh? Just kidding. You da bomb. Just don't get in the wrong car trunk.

I'm thinking you're not the religious type though- and you speak English- maybe Daddy worked for Sodom (sic)? Where is he now, working at the Baghdad Starbucks?

For what it's worth, at least you know enough to shoot at Americans and not your fellow countrymen, but maybe you could get those other Iraqi idiots to stop killing each other and we could all go home. Then you could join Dad working for tips. Just a thought.

Posted by petefredbob at 04:25 PM | Permalink

From the 'you can't make this stuff up' department via Best of the Web:

A Toronto professor wants to smoke his prescription pot at the university where he works and is refusing to step onto campus until he can. York University professor Brian MacLean says he has clearance from Health Canada for medical marijuana use for an undisclosed illness, but there is no place at work where he can smoke it.

"I have to medicate a lot," he says. "There's no issue here, well, can I restrain my medication on campus? No, I can't."

Well boo fucking hoo. He wants the university to build him a special ventilated room where he can go so nobody can see him smoke. Or smell him. "MacLean says he tries to be discreet by rolling the marijuana to make it look like regular filtered cigarettes and walking to the edges of campus to smoke. But that's a problem, he says, because there is little privacy and he feels that passersby are passing moral judgment on him."

In a classic cannabis paranoiac haze Professor Duh goes on to whine,

"Students come to class and smell it. They are not going to say anything to me but they are going to talk to other people about it.

"So there are damages to my reputation which I can't specify and I don't know how the university plans to deal with that, but they are going to have to."

Well I can specifically say this big international news article is going to have a lot of people talking about 'him,' and I think now he's going to have to "deal with it."

"So like, dude, if my (younger, college-aged) cohort happened to be a part of your class we'd post somebody right outside that special room to smile and say "Hi Perfesser!" every time you ducked in for a toke. It's called a 'goof.' By the time we were done with you you'd have a different kind of special room, a nice soft one to go with your new special jacket."

There's so much wrong with this I recommend you read this yourself. One more tidbit- you might think Prof. MacLean was teaching some touchy feely subject like "How men can be more like women" or something.

Until his medical need is accommodated, MacLean is refusing to step onto campus and is holding all of his classes on policing elsewhere.

Emphasis mine. Sort of buried the lede.

Posted by petefredbob at 04:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's been three months of crap and this last week full of flake-o-rama screwing around with the web site, but finally it's up. Still needs work but I'm happy with it for today, as today is the first day of our big 50% off sale. As of Friday I fired the last-est designer and had some guy I didn't know come in on Saturday as a last ditch effort. He built it overnight, I paid him, he bought a pair of creepers.

Posted by petefredbob at 04:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I say, give them what they want and pull out our troops from South Korea, as they are principally responsible for this. Follow John Bolton's lead and let Ban Ki-Moon have the U.N.

Give the Japanese anything they want and send a few choice warships and subs to keep them company. Let the South Koreans and the Chinese deal with it and focus on watching the Euros screw up the Iranian deal

Once the Iranians test a bomb we unleash Clinton style with a barrage of cruise missiles and see if they can shoot them down.

Any better ideas are welcome in the comments.

Posted by petefredbob at 01:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Yeah, so I should be doing some work right about now, but I'm going through the interview article I linked as an update in the last post and playing with Google Earth. I love Google Earth. I'm in Cuba at GTMO and looking at the detention facilities.

In the interview the psychiatric nurse says he can't describe the location of the detention facilities but mentions that he was on a winding road coming from the docks as he approached them. GTMO isn't really that big as you may imagine, so following one of the available roads across the mountains I came to the facilities, which are on the beach. Guantanamo Bay is on the southeast end of Cuba.

As of the time the interviewee left the island in May the Camp 6 maximum-security area was under construction. It now appears to be completed, as it would have to be, to house our newest muy peligroso guests. I'm thinking it's the asterisk or star shaped facility within the pentagon-looking wall to the east of the earlier facilities. Looks pretty hardcore. These guys ain't going anywhere for a while.

If you want to experience the same creepy feeling that I am, go to 19º54'08.40" N by 75º06'05.72" W, which should put you smack dab in the middle of the 'Wire.' Have fun.

Posted by petefredbob at 09:40 PM | Permalink

I've been busy as usual and not motivated to opine on this week's lurid sex scandal. Sorry. Yeah, I know, ignore the Republican problems and bash the Democrats. Hey, what can I say? He's a perv and would fit right in at any Gay Pride Parade. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But I am finally inspired to write about the latest, again on Drudge, that the Guantanamo guards are "bragging" that they 'beat' our honored terrorist guests. I know I got a crocodile tear in here somewhere if I could just find it, but this is what got me going:

The lawyer sent the statement on behalf of a paralegal who said men she met on Sept. 23 at a bar on the base identified themselves to her as guards. The woman, whose name was blacked out, said she spent about an hour talking with them. No one was in uniform, she said.

The headline and tease:

AP Learns Gitmo Guards Brag of Beatings

The two-page statement was sent Wednesday to the Inspector General at the Department of Defense by a high-ranking Marine Corps defense lawyer.

So let's see if we have this right. Some chick at a bar meets a couple of guys who tell tall tales and back each other up. Chick reports this (I'm guessing none of the guys got lucky that night, but I could be wrong). Authorities make the required report. A "high-ranking" lawyer sends report in. What, are we supposed to think this is important because the Marine lawyer who 'sent a report' had a 'high' rank?

Spin me silly, but hearsay at a bar does not rise to the level of "news." What really galls me is that this story will likely lead to somebody dying at the hands of some offended Muslim. I hope Mr. Thomas Watson and his editors feel good about that when it happens. Idiots.

Update: Here is a link to someone working at Gitmo interviewed by Patterico. Sorry, not drinking buddies though.

Posted by petefredbob at 02:58 PM | Permalink

This kind of makes me sick.

I've been advertising a book over on the sidebar for some time now called "Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures." It's a memoir of three UN employees, (all former now, I think) and tells stories of stupidity whilst working for the United Nations. It's a book all working people can recognize as ringing true, as many of us have taken bad jobs that we thought in the beginning would be just great. How much more so would it suck were the job involved be working for the premier human rights organization in the world? Let's just say they were disappointed at the end.

The above linked article is to The Times Online (British version) and is about their boss, Kofi Annan. Along with mentioning in passing workaday scandal and abuse, it specifically mentions three failings of the outgoing Secretary General that you might be slightly aware of. I say "slightly" because the press has been miserable about reporting them, and as I said in the beginning, I'm kind of sick about it. Not sick because Annan is responsible, hell I've known this for some time, but sick that a big international newspaper has taken this long to write such an article when this information has been available for years.

The last of the three situations reported by The Times continues today. It is going on in Darfur and a rather large quantity of human beings continues to be slaughtered. Just this past week the UN guy specifically in charge of this mess said in effect, "Sorry, can't do anything about it Old Chap, as the people in charge of the slaughtering won't give us permission." To paraphrase the late great Texan Ann Richards, "Where is Kofi?"

Kofi is on a farewell tour at the moment basking in the glow of affection emitted by dictators and leftists the world over. This is entirely understandable as the body count so far on Annan's watch rates well over 800,000 and the numbers are rising dizzily. In this context it's clear to me that the authors of the above article do not at all understand their subject as they write such things as:

He steps down in December after a decade as secretary-general. His retirement will be marked by plaudits. But behind the honorifics and the accolades lies a darker story: of incompetence, mismanagement and worse. Annan was the head of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) between March 1993 and December 1996.

These charges of 'incompetence' and 'mismanagement' are wholly out of context. I for one don't believe them. Kofi Annan did not find himself in the Secretariat because of his incompetence and lack of management skills; he got there because of his skill at "worse." As you may clearly surmise from the above quote, Srebrenica (8,000 bodies in 1995), and Rwanda (800,000 bodies in 1994) both happened 'before' he was 'promoted.' The incompetence and mismanagement charges lay at the feet of our own mealy-mouthed protectors here in the West: the media.

These blowhards have spent the last ten years licking Annan's boots instead of beating this dog on the snout as he deserved. To come and thrill us now with tales of murder and rape in exotic locales after the fact, blaming mismanagement no less, is the ultimate treason. For how much longer do we want to be lied to?

Update: Here's Austin Bay on Kofi, the UN and the current Darfur situation.

Posted by petefredbob at 07:03 AM | Permalink