A new Oklahoma industry...shipbuilding! Crank 'em out at $4 billion a ship the govt will pay!3/23/2016
 Good morning everybody! Welcome to the Tuesday edition of CCB coming to you live from the far reaches of a Walmart parking lot in Frisco, Colorado.
Today will mark our second full day in Colorado where we’re working to be ready when the production crew arrives and begin filming episodes for our new reality show, The Bigfoot: Naked and Untamed. I think today, we’ll split our forces. Cousin Fred and Friend Lamont will be working this area trying to find locals willing to take their clothes off and hike up and down the mountains and through the forests around here in search of The Bigfoot. Me? I’m headed into Montezuma (the meanest town in America) to negotiate parking space on private land. I know, you’re thinking…now why on Earth would that be a priority? Surely, they can find parking in Montezuma. Eh, not so fast Pilgrim. They don’t allow anyone but city residents to park on the mean streets of Montezuma. We’ll have the entire production crew here for a few weeks. There’s also our rig which includes Friend Lamont’s big-ass RV with Hellkat One’s trailer in tow. I didn’t expect to be welcome in the Walmart parking lot forever, but now, after yesterday, it looks as though we’ll be having to move along even more quickly than I anticipated. Cousin Fred yesterday gets the bright idea that he could get the reality show “stars” to come to him. That sort of philosophy has its own charm I suppose especially if you prefer to spend your days…everyday…conducting happy “hour”. From Hellkat One’s trailer he produced an A-frame sign that he put in front of the door of the RV. It was very bright and colorful and told people exactly what it was that we were looking for. It read: Hollywood Comes to Frisco! Now Auditioning Parts for a TV Reality Show. Need 10 Women and 6 Men. Must be Willing to get Naked and Chase The Bigfoot! Interested? Inquire Within! If you’re thinking that seems pretty reasonable, you’re wrong. Oh, so wrong. Have you ever seen the folks who hang out at the far edge of the Walmart parking lot? Seriously? You’ve never seen the Powerpoint slide shows that go around the internet, “People of Walmart” or ”More People of Walmart” or ”Walmart is a Freakin’ Freak Parade” or, my personal favorite, “Holidays at Walmart are Decadent and Depraved”? It isn’t pretty people! And, we soon discovered that everyone thinks they’re a reality show star! Imagine! I had nearly convinced Cousin Fred to put the sign away, when the store manager paid a visit and announced he was calling the police. Cousin Fred gave him $50 and immediately stowed the sign. That seemed to pacify the store manager, though he told us we need to switch sides of the far end of the parking lot daily. Walmart policy apparently doesn’t allow RVs to sit more than 24 hours in one place. Today, Cousin Fred and Friend Lamont will head to a nearby community college where they plan to set up a table on the campus commons and put the sign back out. What can go wrong? According to Cousin Fred there’s a weird Colorado law about bringing live goats onto college campuses, so I guess I’m stuck with Lassie the barking goat. Eh, that’s okay. I rented a small SUV yesterday to make the trip to Montezuma, at least he’ll be comfortable. I figure I’ll start with The Bowie Knife Guy that Cousin Fred and I encountered last November. He looked like a guy with more land than he knows what to do with. I’ll stop at a sporting goods store and buy a new knife to present to him as a token of my esteem before asking if he’ll let us use some of his land. Again, what could go wrong? And, speaking of things going terribly wrong (again with the crappy segues) did you hear the one about the $4.4 billion ship that took the Navy 20 years to develop and build…and now, it’s essentially obsolete? Not to mention, the thing is butt-ugly. The planes on the ship are at weird angles which supposedly makes it harder for radar to detect. Uh huh. When I left the Navy nearly 20 years ago, they were pushing this beast (in the early development stages) as “a stealth ship.” Honestly, the thing looks like a giant WWII German U-boat that can’t submerge. Critics have concerns that the hull shape leaves it vulnerable to rollover under certain conditions. Surface radars have improved, calling into question just how stealthy it really is. AND, given that we’ve waged war in deserts for the past 15 years, do we really need multiples of a $4.4 billion ship? It’s only redeeming value is that it will be named for a great Naval officer, Elmo Zumwalt. That’s the kindest thing I can say about it. But, as I said, I’ve been out of Uncle Sam’s Kite and Canoe Club for a long time, so I guess I shouldn’t be making statements about stuff. Besides, I have to find a leash for Lassie. Later.  Good Tuesday morning to all of you dedicated blog readers of CCB (all twelve of you, by last count – not including the Tuesday Afternoon Sunshine-Sunrise-Sunflower Social and Pinochle Club which reads the posts to its membership…every Tuesday afternoon).
The Cosmic City Blog is coming to you live from the Walmart parking lot in Frisco, Colorado. We’re about 9 miles from Montezuma (America’s Meanest Town), our ultimate shoot location, but if we were to park on the mean streets of Montezuma, we’d likely be ticketed, towed and/or arrested so we’ll camp here in Frisco. It didn’t really occur to us when we put this traveling show on the road that our rig is too long for just about any place that would have us. The RV with Hellkat One’s trailer attached makes us just a bit longer than most tractor-trailer combos going down the road. It’s 3:30AM here in Frisco. The rest of my traveling party, Cousin Fred, Friend Lamont, and Lassie the barking goat are still sound asleep. We had a long day getting up here. It’s normally a nine hour trip from the Cosmic City any way you drive it. I insisted that we come through the Panhandle and then up into SE Colorado. I wanted to stop in Lamar to see my old friend, The Mayor, who has long been asking me to visit there and receive the grand tour. Truth be told, The Mayor also owns a BBQ catering business on the side and I was hoping we would get a free lunch. He apparently told people in town that there were big-shot Hollywood reality show producers coming to town. The local Cadillac dealership showed up with three of those $80,000 CTS-V sedans at the Ports to Plains Truck Plaza where they met us. Each car had a magnetic sign on the side that read, “Big-shot Reality Show Producers form Hollywood”. Cadillac Calvin looked a little startled when he saw Lassie the barking goat come out from inside the RV and jump into the back of one of the waiting cars, but he chuckled and muttered something about, “Oooh, these Hollwood types” and went along with the program. The first stop on the tour was the Port to Plains Truck Plaza where they picked us up. They drove us around the building at least three times with Cadillac Calvin narrating, “And now, when we come back around the north side of the truck plaza, you’ll note that my cousin Jimmy who works here as the chief deputy assistant mechanic hasn’t moved since the last time we came around. He’s a good boy, son of my Aunt Virginia. We were all so proud when he got this job. I don’t mind tellin’ you, I had to pull some strings to make that happen.” Next stop was the Happy Lilly of the Valley Funeral Home and Furnace Repair Shop. Here we got out of the cars and went inside for a behind-the-scenes tour of the not only the funeral home side, but the furnace repair shop as well. The business is owned by a guy named Ben, but my pal, The Mayor, told me that his lodge brothers prefer to call him Bennie the Ghoul. The mood turned a bit dark when Cousin Fred asked The Mayor if the tour of the city would include any retail marijuana outlets. The Mayor assured him there weren’t any in Lamar. Finally, it was off to The Mayor’s place of business where a sumptuous repast of BBQ pork and beef awaited. I was getting a little nervous when The Mayor’s two chefs kept looking at Lassie the barking goat. We were presented with a key to the City of Lamar. It hadn’t occurred to me to bring anything along to give my friend, but fortunately, Cousin Fred had stashed one of the bottles of Mezcal in a bag he carried with him, so we handed that off to The Mayor. He seemed pleased. Friends, tell me…do I seem prescient? Because I’m feeling very prescient. I could have told you this would happen…Almost a year ago to this date, I told you about a bill moving through Congress that would make it illegal for Federal employees to watch porn while they were at work. The blog post that day was “E Pluribus Vice”. In that post, I told why something like this wouldn’t really work. Guess what? That bill and various versions of it are STILL floating through the Congress. Imagine that. A year later and they still can’t get it done. Dumbasses. Every time it starts moving through one committee or another, it gets watered down…diluted to the point that there’s…well, no point. Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) sent a letter to the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee which was attempting to include the prohibition against porn at work in the government’s Omnibus Spending Bill. The language put restrictions on government agencies receiving their Federal funding unless they could essentially prove they were porn free. What could go wrong? The letter read in part, “We applaud you for including this funding restriction for many parts of the government. However, we are deeply troubled that it was not included for all the Federal government. In particular, it was not included for several agencies including the EPA, the SEC, and the Department of the Interior, which have been the subject of high profile media stories about their employees surfing porn at work.” Guess that makes CCB one of those high profile media outlets! We've arrived, at the Greyhound bus station of life! Jones cited examples from inspector general reports on the EPA which found multiple cases of EPA employees watching porn at work for as long as 6 hours of every day. Wow…now those are Federal employees with too much time on their hands. The upshot here (if there is one) is that when CCB first reported this last year, the Feds have finally figured out how to fire employees viewing porn during work without fear of being sued. Porn six hours a day at work? I’m not even sure Cousin Fred could do that. The real problem here is, as I pointed out a year ago, this is all show business. I guarantee you that for every filter, roadblock, and/or firewall the USG puts in place, if its deranged loser civil servants want to view porn at work, they’ll figure out a way. And, who in the Congress is slowing this thing down? Now, those are the people they need to be looking at…just sayin’.  Monday morning 4AM and this rolling frat party is once again…well, rolling. Cousin Fred, Friend Lamont, and I…oh, and Lassie the barking goat…are on the road again. Destination is somewhere in the vicinity of Montezuma, Colorado (aka, America’s meanest town). Montezuma is the only place I’ve ever heard of where they throw people in jail for parking on the streets and where the mayor of the city is suing every resident of the city for one thing or another while the residents counter-sue the mayor and city council. I can think of no better place to turn a bunch of naked people loose in search of The Bigfoot for our new reality show “The Bigfoot: Naked and Untamed”.
We’re in Friend Lamont’s RV with Hellkat One’s mini-palace in tow, careening through the Panhandle on our way to Colorado’s “High Country” (new state motto) in search of a beast that seems to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. What could go wrong? We have four cases of cheap red wine, three cases of Mezcal (with worms - protein), one twelve-pack of beer (we’ll wait to stock up on beer until we get to CO, where you can buy “real” beer), 3 dozen frozen corndogs, several bottles of mustard, 60 bags of Cheetos (Lassie is rather fond of fried cheese puffs), and several packs of gummy worms (Cousin Fred says they’re an important source of low-fat fiber). That should hold us until we get to Colorado. I just asked Siri for directions to the nearest Starbucks, but it’s trying to send us to California so I guess we’ll just stop at the next gas station/convenience store. I need coffee in the worst way. Cousin Fred keeps yammering about where he plans to find reality “stars” to use in our reality show…read as, people willing to get naked on national television and prowl through the woods in search of (dare, I say?) a mythical monster. He keeps turning the pages on a legal pad that he’s been “writing” all over. I don’t think there’s anything intelligible on that pad. Friend Lamont is concentrating on the driving. Hellkat One’s trailer is kind of whipping in the wind, so Friend Lamont currently has his hands full. Lassie the barking goat has already found the stash of Cheetos and has a powdery cheese goatee around his mouth. Like I said, I desperately need coffee. The Wife, once she realized that we were all leaving this morning, really pitched in to help with packing the RV and Hellkat One’s mini-palace on wheels yesterday. She even came outside this morning as we were getting ready to start down the road. There was a filterless Pall-Mall dangling from her lips and a double barrel shotgun in her hands. I asked about the gun. She said it was to ensure we actually got moving toward Colorado. Friend Lamont is a very socially-conscious type person. He takes great pains to ensure his RV is up to date on its maintenance so that he is not unnecessarily polluting the Earth as we roll down the highway. Inside there are even multiple containers for trash. There’s one for trash-trash, a recyclables container for paper, another for cans, another for plastics, and still another for bottles. I kind of like to see that. There is no recycling in Cosmic City, of course. I guess you have to have more population to make it worthwhile. Still, it’s kind of a shame that a lot of stuff that could be recycled is just being buried in that landfill. Still, I suppose there are some things that definitely belong in the landfill rather than a recycle bin. Take, for instance, a story that I read on the Huffington Post web site over the weekend about a bomb scare in Modena, Italy. A resident there called police when she heard a strange buzzing coming from inside one of several roadside recycling bins. Police arrived on scene and determined that it was probably a bomb and immediately evacuated everyone within a 200 meter range of the site. Hmmmm…I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of a bomb buzzing. I’ve heard of BuzzBombs of course. That’s a particular type of firework that makes a buzzing sound as it launches and before it blows itself to hell. After the bomb squad shows up and the guy dressed in all of the protective gear goes dumpster diving, guess what he comes up with? Go on, guess. A vibrating sex toy. Yep, someone dropped their plastic “Guido Gigantesco” into the plastic recycle bin. Well meaning, I’m sure, but it raises a number of questions. First of all, only the shell of Guido is plastic. There’s a motor and batteries still attached. There are separate recycling bins for batteries. Also, I’m not even sure that Guido’s shell belonged in a plastic recycling bin. Seems to me that should probably have been in a bin for biohazardous waste. Just sayin’. And finally, Guido is obviously still on the job. Why throw him away? I could spend the rest of the week speculating about that, but will let it go. So there you have it gentle blog readers. Go forth and recycle well.  Happy Friday, everyone! Things have been very busy here at The Compound. The better part of the day was spent preparing for the one-year CCB Gala this evening. In fact, so much actual work went into preparing for this evening’s Gala that I failed to post to the blog.
Also, Happy (belated) St. Patrick’s Day…we could use a little of St. Patrick here at The Compound as spring comes on and snakes emerge from their winter quarters…yeesh. Instead, it’s just St. (sic) Robin with a .410 blasting holes in the ground while dancing an Irish jig in German lederhosen. Also, Happy (belated) CCB Day! Woo hoo! Who knew that when I started this modest little blog one year ago (yesterday) that it would grow into the fiasco it has become. So, in honor of our one-year of operation, we’ll have pizza and drinks here at The Compound until I fall asleep at 7:30…Wiley Piemore and His Prairie Dawgs are expected to take the stage at some point. It’s a Gala, people…let’s celebrate. It’s rare that I’m able to focus attention on anything for more than a year! Just ask any of my ex-wives…hahaha. Oh, if you come…bring pizza and alcohol. Oh, and those filterless Pall Malls for The Wife…it makes her happy. Oh, AND if you’re a big time agent searching for a blog to syndicate, bring a contract and your checkbook…I’ll work for cheap. Just ask that daily periodical that won’t allow me to mention their name in this blog. While I was out yesterday buying cheap party decorations from the dollar stores in Cosmic City, Friend Lamont and Cousin Fred were busy packing Friend Lamont’s RV for our journey to Colorado on Monday to begin our pre-production boondoggle…er, work…in connection with our new reality show “The Bigfoot: Naked and Untamed”. The boys have packed so much crap that we decided to take Cousin Fred’s abode, which is of course Hellkat One’s former travel trailer, aptly named the Governess. That gives us more space to store supplies and room for Lassie the barking goat when she and/or Cousin Fred gets to smelling funky. But enough of that until Monday. Friends, have you ever lied to the police? Sure you have, we all have on some level I suppose. Hopefully, you weren’t Tased for your trouble. And, if you were, hopefully, you lapsed into a coma and didn’t feel the pain as you writhed on the ground with Officer Sadistic standing over you screaming, “So, who’s in charge now, huh Writhing Boy?” As your favorite blogger, my advice to you (and, yes, you’ve heard me say this before) is to never lie to the po-po. They get lied to all the time. They can literally smell a lie from a 100 meters. Oh, sure, you may get lucky and draw a Barney Fife who will believe your tale. Most won’t. Trust me on that. What made me think of all of this is that I was looking through the stories on the KFOR-TV web site this morning and came across the story of a woman in Tuttle, OK who was pulled over by the police. At first she gave Officer McTuttle a fake name. When that began to fall apart, she announced that was actually an FBI informant trying to bring down the Irish mob and he (the officer) was horning in on her action. Irish mob? In Tuttle, Oklahoma? Seriously? Pretty sure you have to go to Tulsa for that kind of action. Maybe if she had told McTuttle she was trying to bring down a pack of .410-wielding snake shooters, he would have bought it. When the FBI informant story fell through. She was like, “Okay, okay, truth be told, I’m really working undercover for DEA.” Okay, now that sounds more credibly Oklahoman than Feebs after Irish mob. She could have said that she was after Mr. Big who is running a mobile meth lab somewhere in the vicinity. But, alas, our intrepid Officer McTuttle didn’t buy into the whole DEA thing either. What’s a girl to do? One last shot. She told him that she was actually working undercover for the Moore Police Dept. and she wasn't lying this time. Really. All of this gave McTuttle an entrée (not the frozen meal kind) into her vehicle where he found: 1) a bag full of someone else’s mail, 2) software for making your own checks, and, 3) checks that she printed for herself. There’s more investigating going on, but our hapless mob-chaser sits in the Grady Co. jail. Let this be a lesson to you budding felons. If you’re going to lie to the po-po, for goodness sakes make up something that can’t be checked. Try telling them you’re working for CIA. If they call CIA and ask if you work there, they’ll always get the same answer…”We’re not at liberty to discuss this or any other person who may or may not have been at any point in time in the employ of the Center for Information in America. Good bye.” Happy birthday, CCB!  Whew…happy post-Super Tuesday 3 Wednesday. Glad that’s over…well, almost over. As of this writing (4:30AM), only North Carolina and the Marianas Islands had counted all their votes. The others were at 99% votes counted.
Although some of the races are really close, CNN (among others) were declaring The Trump and The Queen of the Unindicted, the big winners. This may be it for Uncle Bernie, though he says he’ll trudge on until the convention. Same goes for Rubio…though if he throws his weight to one of the remaining Republicans it would mix things up a bit. As of right now, it looks as though we’re going to be left with The Trump and The Queen of the Unindicted. A pompous, arrogant loudmouth with an ego the size of Alaska versus an evilly ambitious elitist lawyer with more baggage than a passenger train can haul. It’s going to be a wild ride into November, folks. Better strap in! The fat’s in the fire now! The goose is cooked…well, cooking! Need to break out my book of political clichés! How about, it ain’t over til the fat lady sings! Here at The Compound last night, Friend Lamont, Cousin Fred and I stayed up all night watching the returns. Any more of these Super Tuesdays and Wolf Blitzer’s giant melon head is going to split open…now, that would be great TV! Was it just me, or did anyone else notice how those “exit poll” results shifted remarkably once the actual votes began being counted? Makes me wonder if people are purposely saying something to pollsters that differs from what they’re voting. After switching through channels I noticed that the exit poll numbers among the various networks were even different…not a lot, but different. Imagine being a voter at a particular polling place where outside you had to run a gauntlet of poll takers…CNN morons, Fox News whores, CNBC snoozers, ABC wannabes (we’ll always have Dick Clark – doh!), NBC liars, CBS Kenneth freaks (freqs)…and you give a different answer to each one. It’s the American way! So, we weren’t pussyfooting around last night with the danged exit polls. No sir, we waited for poll results. The real results. Counted by machines that likely date back to Nixon days. I can tell you that here at The Compound, we consumed 47 bags of Cheetos, 10 bags of reheated Chicharones (must get statins…STAT), 20 three-bean burritos, and two cases of cheap, stale beer. Cousin Fred in between snores is farting yellow Cheetos dust. With all of the alleged violence surrounding the Trump campaign so far, it’ll be interesting to see what will happen beyond the conventions and into the slide toward November. It won’t be peaceful, I’m betting. Curiously, the Republican Party’s leadership in the past week has made rather conciliatory gestures toward The Trump (no, not those kinds of gestures). Saying that the entire GOP will stand behind whoever comes out on top at the convention. Guess the leadership is finally starting to get it. Your party membership is pissed off and wants something new...The Trump certainly fits the bill there. Not better necessarily, but definitely new. As I was running through web sites last night trying to get the latest updates on numbers (CNN wouldn’t update their results while Wolf Blitzer was talking…dude never shuts the f*** up), I came across an article on the Huffington Post web site that caught my eye. It was about some guy in Florida who has been showing up at The Trump’s rallies wearing a penis costume and a The Trump mask. He says that the penis cock-stume is a tribute to comments The Trump made about the size of his penis during the televised debate in Detroit on March 1 (I’ll bet he was just trying to impress Megan Kelly). He says he is also on a mission to protect and preserve freedom of speech and religion…in a penis outfit? Well, he has guts…or balls…I’ll give him that. So far, he’s been attacked at nearly every The Trump rally he’s attended. Guess the Trumpeteers don’t have much of a sense of humor about…well, anything. Not to worry though. Our intrepid dickhead tool in Florida says he bought every penis costume he could find so he has plenty of back-ups. It’s the end of civilization as we know it, I’m telling you!  Happy Tuesday to everyone…it’s our second day back from our altogether too brief official hiatus. Our readership numbers for yesterday were way down. Guess it takes a while for people to find us on here, or perhaps it was simply the Monday morning blues.
Just realized it’s the Ides of March…guess I’d better wear my knife proof toga today. Et tu, Brute? Still, there were several people who hit me up yesterday about whether or not we at CCB are planning a huge one year anniversary blowout on the 17th. The short answer is probably not…it’s also St. Patrick’s Day, so there will be enough blowingout going on without a stupid…er, the Best Little Blog in Oklahoma (trademarked) adding to the din. Cousin Fred, Friend Lamont and I are preparing to head up to the “high country” (Colorado’s new state motto) to begin advance work for our new reality series, “The Bigfoot: Naked and Untamed”. The production crew should arrive in early April. Truth be told, we’re still looking for reality actors, so if you are interested please drop me a line. Actually, I could have sent Friend Lamont and Cousin Fred up to Colorado for the advance work, but I figure it’s a good time for me to duck out…the Wife is getting surly. I saw her rooting around in drawers the other day, trying to find where I hid her filterless Pall-Malls. I was hoping we would be able to leave Lassie the barking goat with her, but whenever I bring it up, she mutters something dropping “that damned beast into the ground and cook her.” Like I don’t have enough to worry about! They’re just thrilled at the daily periodical that won’t allow me to mention their name in this blog about my taking a sabbatical to run off to Colorado in search of the Bigfoot. I offered to send daily dispatches from the mountain, but the Editor muttered something about needing someone to cover the Cedar Heights Elementary production of “Henry V” followed by “I hate Shakespeare!”…or words to that effect. Regardless, I can’t have the Wife cooking the goat since Lassie is our canary in the coal mine, as it were. She starts barking as soon as she senses the Bigfoot nearby. At least she did last time, right before she took off down the trail and off the mountain. She left a trail of little goat poo that a blind man could have followed off that mountain. I may ask one of my lodge brothers of the Pathetic Order of the Jackrabbit – Original Chapter (POJOC) to look after him. Though that bunch would be the first to drop her in the ground with lit coals and cover her with palm branches to cook. Something tells me that Lassie is coming with us. (Spoiler alert – here comes the segue) And, speaking of a trail of poo that someone could follow… There was an article on the Huffington Post web site this morning about some poor dumb bastard in Florida who first thought he could outwit the police…then he thought he could outrun the police…and finally, he thought he found a way to get even with the police (hint, I think he did). There are two things I taught my daughter years ago. The first was to never lie to the police. They get lied to all the time and can smell a lie from 75 meters. The second was always to be cooperative if you get pulled over. For instance, at night I’ll always turn on the dome light and place my hands on the steering wheel. It’s not that I’m being particularly courteous…I just don’t want to get shot. So it seems that our subject in Florida had never learned Robin’s rules for dealing with the fuzz. First of all, he was flying down a Florida highway at 75mph in a 55 zone. Now, for you legal neophytes, that’s felony reckless in most states. Though generally, if you haven’t done anything stupid in the last 18 months, they’ll lower the charge and bang you for 19 over the speed limit. It seems that Speedy McSpeed told the officer who pulled him over that he was in a hurry to get home because needed “to go No. 2.” Hey we’ve all been there, right? Now, under most circumstances, the cop would likely have written the ticket and told Speedy to slow down, but noooooo. It seems that Officer Friendly had the nose of a bloodhound. He sticks his head inside the window and told Speedy that he could smell “unburnt” marijuana. Hmmmmmm. Maybe Speedy had the trunk packed with poorly packed contraband…maybe he was wearing his new essence, Eau de Skunk Weed…maybe, just maybe Officer Friendly wanted a trip through the vehicle. Who knows? He asked Speedy to step out of the car…several times. But, Speedy refused citing his urgent need to go No. 2. Finally, Speedy locked his door and sped away with Officer Friendly in hot pursuit. Play theme from Dragnet here… The Po-Po chased soon to be Captain Poo-Poo all the way to his home. There he emerged from his vehicle on a dead run for the bathroom inside. Now, here’s another Robin rule for avoiding being shot by the cops…when engaged in a foot pursuit, wherein you are the pursuee, whatever you do, don’t reach for the waistband of your trousers. I’m sure Capt. Poo-Poo was merely trying to unbuckle his Levi’s to save a little time when he got to the bathroom. The Po-Po thought he was going for a weapon and fired a Taser into his back and then still had to wrestle Capt. Poo-Poo to the ground. And, guess what? They only found a small stash of weed in the car. That’s some nose Officer Friendly has. He should be sniffing out bags at the airport or something. On the way to county jail, Capt. Poo-Poo couldn’t hold it any longer and let loose in his pants and the back seat of the cruiser. Oh, just for good measure he peed too. The sheriff’s spokesman commented that the damage was confined to man hours spent trying to clean the mess out of the backseat. Let that be a lesson to you! For what exactly, I have no idea. Move along…nothing to see here!  Hey, everybody! Following the official hiatus, CCB is back with a vengeance. Oh sure, we missed a lot, but we’ll more than make up for it in the coming weeks. Besides, we were only gone for a bit over two weeks.
Curiously, in the time we were gone, there was a lot of people banging on the door. So I opened the site back up so readers could peruse the archives. We were able to maintain a decent level of traffic after that. As you more loyal readers probably already know, we’re coming up on the one year anniversary of CCB. One year, feels like ten. Haha…just kidding. I actually enjoy getting up at 3:30AM every morning to ensure you have fresh (no hormones added) stuff to read. You can thank me later. Those of you more astute readers will notice that we’ve changed the look of the site. Web site theme trends shift every now and then and I figure I’ll try to keep up. If you have any problems navigating the site, please let me know. Okay enough with the Monday morning homily… Friends, have you ever heard the old Johnny Cash tune, “One Piece at a Time”? Of course you have. Just in case you’re a heathen unfamiliar with Cash’s catalogue of music, I would strongly encourage you to give it a listen. Great tuneage in there. I think the song in question was released sometime in the early 70’s. It’s about a guy who left home in Kentucky and moved to Detroit where he finds work on the Cadillac assembly line. His idea is to start sneaking an entire Caddy out the door one piece at a time. In fact, the hook in the song is “I’d get it one piece at a time, And it didn’t cost me a dime…” Problem was, after sneaking parts out one piece at a time over decades, when he decided to put it together, nothing was an exact fit. In fact, I guess he got more than he bargained for because he said that the title weighed sixty pounds. But, I digress. Beyond inspiring greedy, ambitious employer theft with a big supposedly big payoff in the end, I guess it also points to being careful what you wish for because you’ll likely wind up with a pain in the ass…now how’s that for a Monday morning moral? I came across an article on the Huffington Post web site yesterday that made that song pop into my head. It seems there was this fellow who worked for Brinks – you know, the armored car and facility security guys. He was with their Birmingham, Alabama office, which handles and stores coins for the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta. Our criminal idiot of the day, we’ll call him “Spare Change McCoin”, was Brinks’ process money manager, which meant he was in charge of counting coinage. And you think your job sucks? At this point, I should tell you that he is facing Federal time for stealing $196,000 in quarters from the U.S. Govt. There’s a lot we don’t know about this story, likely because the USG doesn’t want other coin entrepreneurs to get any bigger ideas, but the facts that are known follow. And, by the way, the Assistant U.S. Attorney who announced the charge of bank theft against Spare Change last Monday deserves an award for the most cringe-worthy clichés outside of this blog. In commenting on Spare Change’s crime, she was quoted as saying that he must have thought he’d made quite a haul stealing $196,000 in quarters, but that he “now carries a greater load.” Or, the one that followed in which she said that what poor ol’ Spare Change (bless his heart), must have “thought was a nickel and dime theft was, in the end, a major bank theft.” What do you bet Ms. U.S. Attorney had an intern writing her stuff for her? Apparently, quarters are stored in huge ballistic bags (containing $50,000 worth of frigging quarters each) that are on “skids”. You have to have some means (presumably the skids) for moving the damned bags, because by my calculations each of those $50,000 bags of quarters weighs in a 2,500 pounds. Stay with me here… So Spare Change decides it’s time to leave Brinks and move on to bigger and better things. In mid-February 2014, he steals four empty ballistic bags and skids. He returns the stolen bags with beads (really?) inside and to cover his numismatic scheme he placed $1,000 in quarters in the neck of the bags so that they would pass a visual inspection. And then somehow he managed to get 10,000 pounds of quarters out of the building…that’s the part that has me stumped. What did he do, back a Brinks armored truck up to the loading dock and drive away with the loot? That’s some secure facility there, I’m telling ya! In April of 2014, during an audit of quarters at Brinks, the theft was discovered. What we don’t know is why it took so darned long to track down Spare Change McCoin as the crook. What an idiot. What a numbskull. What a maroon! And no, I’m not talking about the U.S. Attorney this time… First of all, what the hell do you do with that many quarters? It’s not like you can dump them on the counter at the bank announcing that your great aunt passed away leaving you her quarter collection. Someone is going to get suspicious! Maybe he planned to open a coin-op laundry or car wash and was looking for something to fill the coin changer machines with. Nah…Spare Change isn’t that smart. Seriously…how the hell do you get rid of 784,000 quarters? This is the stuff of which nightmares are made! Now here are some things that we don’t know. Brinks, upon discovery of the theft, promptly paid the USG for the missing loot…$196,000. As part of his plea deal, Spare Change has to provide restitution to Brinks in the amount of $196,000, which hints that Spare Change’s purloined coins are gone. How do you get rid of that much $$$ in quarters? Oh, in addition to paying restitution to Brinks, he has to pay a $250,000 find to the Federal govt and is facing a 10 year sentence. Nothing in the plea deal about fixing the hernia he undoubtedly got moving five tons of coins. Yet another example of how crime does not pay! Me personally, I would have driven a large U-Haul truck to Vegas, Baby and put it all in quarter slots…but, that’s just me. You can be assured that since CCB is back from official hiatus now, we’ll be on this case. We’re deploying a team of investigators (okay, probably just Cousin Fred) with metal detectors to Birmingham…the loot is there somewhere, we’ll find it. And then, it’s on to Vegas, Baby! |
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