While it is generally the policy of your friendly fake consultant to avoid direct contact with the American legal system, contact is sometimes unavoidable, which is why we have recently spent a couple of days as a guest of the King County, Washington, Superior Court...and came about as close as a non-criminal can get to being compelled to remain longer.

That’s right, it was time for Jury Duty—and if my mind wasn’t so oddly warped I’d be going back tomorrow to hear testimony...but it is, and I’m not.

All of that explained; a few words about the similarities between this process and flying, and then finally a few kind words for a handy espresso shop and we should have a complete story for today...and a couple things to discuss tomorrow.

So let’s get to it.

There is something magical about Costco.

It is magical to me that for the price of a small can of tomato sauce, they sell a giant can. That they manage to make nice things available for what others charge for ordinary things.

And then of course, there’s the hot dog.
Mr. Sinegal doesn’t know it, but we met in a previous life...more than once...and we actually had a conversation about the hot dogs one evening.

I told him that the soon-to-be-built Qwest Field would be a better place with Costco hot dog carts instead of the “normal” stadium food, and he told me that the hot dog is at the philosophical core of what he does for a living...a simple thing of high quality, a good value—and a good price.

But today’s story isn’t about really great hot dogs.
It’s about really great cinema.

We began a story this week that describes how poor clinical practice in a State-operated healthcare facility holds the potential to cause great injury and death to those vulnerable adults living in the facility, the workers charged with their care—and to members of the public who have never even set foot in the facility.

You might say it’s a bit of a “canary in a coal mine” situation, with pandemic flu hovering on the horizon and all. You also might say that since MRSA kills as many people in the US every year as six 9/11s the pandemic is already here.

So in today’s second installment, we’ll look a bit further: into facility management that now contends they are not required to follow guidelines that the Centers for Disease Control says “apply to all patients, regardless of suspected or confirmed infection status, in any setting in which healthcare is delivered”…into the concept that where your care is delivered should determine what protective equipment workers might require…and into a “magic ambulance” that apparently has the power to make you hazardous to some people--but not to others.

It has been the practice of your friendly fake consultant to keep my personal life separate from the stories you see in this space; and where exceptions have been made it has been because I felt it necessary to tell a larger story.

The story we will begin to tell today must be offered with my own life deeply intertwined in the narrative.

Sadly, it will not just be me that will be affected by the events we will here discuss. Instead, the list of victims will include some of Washington State’s most vulnerable citizens—those developmentally disabled individuals who reside in the State’s “Residential Habilitation Centers”--and the workers who care for them…one of whom is my very own spouse.

We have within the tale all the usual suspects: a lack of safety equipment, managers who fail to do their jobs, a system that’s failing to protect either its own or those who can’t care for themselves…and now, just to give things a twist, pharmaceutical soap, little orange pills, and color-safe bleach.

In the beginning, there was darkness.

But then unto the world can Edward R. Murrow, who begat Walter Cronkite…and then there came to pass Huntley and Brinkley.

And it was good, and we were happy.

But then before Pharaoh came Ted Turner, who cried: “Let my people go!”…and thus was CNN brought forth upon the Earth.

For some it was a miracle…but for others the endless repetition of the same stories over and over represents a new 40 years of wandering in the desert.

Can the cycle be broken?
Can an oasis in this desert be found?
Can our thirst for more useful insight be sated?

Those are the questions we pose today…and before we’re done, I’ll offer one potential answer.

Texas.

To think about the place is to consider the duality of Tao.

A State with a dramatic duality of geography—the trees and rolling hills of East Texas compare starkly to the Panhandle...or Corpus Christi, for that matter.

The duality extends to politics as well.

Consider today’s “Madness of King George”, the weird nexus between Conservative politics and State governance as practiced by Rick “Leadership by Coiffure” Perry, and the perennially wacky antics of the Lege and the unique personalities who find there safe harbor.

Balanced against that are the “aw shucks” kinda folks who have truly made Texas great: Jim Hightower, Ann Richards, and Molly Ivins being three examples who between them represent just a tiny scratch on the deeply carved surface of the big picnic table upon which the BBQ of Texas society is served.

Duality factors into today’s conversation as well; as we intertwine thoughts of West Berlin, succession, and a mini-review of one of the world’s preeminent music festivals: SXSW.

Intrigued?
Then let’s get to it.

The brain has been full of thoughts of nuclear war this past week, and as a result we’re taking another “lazy day” before we return to that most challenging topic.

Today we discuss the potential opportunities offered by imposing mandates, a curious advertising opportunity as yet unused, and although I usually don’t do breaking news, it appears today we’ll also be discussing an Emperor who had an opportunity to see a Governor who had no clothes.

For the past couple of years Microsoft has pursued Yahoo!; and over the past week the news has been full of discussion regarding Microsoft’s (now rejected) $44 billion takeover offer. Rumors suggest Yahoo! might seek as much as $56 billion.

The company that put Bill Gates on the map reports that the intent of merging the two is to create an online community and search service that could rival Google, and to develop new services that will turn that online community into a new form of online cash register down the road.

As a fake consultant, it’s my real fake job to offer advice on these sorts of deals; and since Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, does not appear to have been well served by his “real” consultants, today’s discussion is, literally, advice from a fake consultant.

It’s time that you and I had a little talk, my dear reader, about a subject your Mom and Dad never really explained that well. It’s gotten to a point where it is affecting your daily life, and you probably don’t even know why.

They didn’t cover it well in school, either, and if they had it likely would have just been one of those things you make jokes about later in the locker room.

That’s right…it’s time we discussed bond insurance, collateralized debt obligations…and how all of this is hitting you right in the wallet—and some comments about what’s coming next.

In other words, complicated economics, simply explained.

Just a couple days ago we discussed some practical tips for making extended power outages much more bearable; and in response to the story reader (and also writer, as it turns out) Halcyon commented that I should write an emergency cookbook.

Seeing how the weather from the American Midwest is arriving on the East Coast’s front door this morning….well, let’s just say that it might be a good time to take a request.

So here’s what we’re going to do: I will go through my fridge and freezer, just as though my power had just gone out; and we’ll have a practical conversation about not just eating—but eating well.

Oh, and just for fun---quotes from the movies I’m watching as I write.

So you’re sitting at home, riding out the big storm, and the next thing you know the power goes out.

It’s not just you, either. Tens of thousands of your neighbors are out as well, and you immediately know power won’t be restored for days.

This can be an utter disaster...or not that big a deal...depending on the things you did before the storm.

Because I’m watching Mae West movies as I write this, we have today a most unusual story: serious tips that can help improve the disaster experience greatly; and Mae West’s snappiest quotes to add just a spoonful of sugar to the medicine those tips represent.

It is reported that 2/3 of the world’s population have never seen snow-and there are times when I wish I belonged to that group.

There is great variety to be found in the accursed stuff, however, which is why the Yup’ik, in their wanderings around Southwestern Alaska, express the conditions of the snow that surrounds them in so many different ways.

For a writer who lives in the world of the Yup’ik (or for that matter, anywhere along the North American Pacific coast south to more or less Coos Bay, Oregon), there’s also a great similarity between the storms that mark daily existence and the writing process itself.

If you’ve never seen snow...or the flooding that can follow a storm...if you’re all too familiar...or if you just wondered what the heck a lexeme is...today’s conversation is for you.

There is no doubt the landscape is forever changing for those who wish to create and distribute “new media”-and for those who wish to profit from that creation.

In a scene reminiscent of the breakup of the Hollywood studio system, the “old media” gatekeepers are falling by the wayside…and the economic changes that have rocked the worlds of film exhibition, newspapers, network television, and the music industry in turn have now descended upon Hollywood’s content creation community in the form of the Writer’s Guild of America strike.

What’s the strike about, what sort of solutions might emerge…and what if the ubiquity of digital content distribution makes it impossible to earn money with the current economic model? Those are the subjects we’ll look at today.

The survival of the honeybee, perhaps the world’s largest matriarchy, has been a matter of real concern since the announcement of Colony Collapse Disorder earlier this year.

As we discussed in an April story (On Bees, Or, An Apple A Day May Be A Thing Of The Past), the pathogenic loading seen in the few recovered bees was so dramatic and of such a great variety that it was assumed there was more than one cause for the troubles.

Recent news reports from Spain have suggested the answer may be at hand...but apparently nothing in life is that easy. We’ll talk more about the bad news-and the good-as we go on.

I love to explore.
I’m the kind of person who loves to take a new road, or hear a new song, or consider a point of view different than my own.

It leads me to read a lot of foreign blogs, as well, and that’s how we get to today’s story.

I’m a member of the Blogpower community of bloggers, the majority of whom are located in countries of the British Commonwealth, including Onyx Stone, who blogs from the UK; and it was in the course of visiting his blog that I found a story of do-it-yourself space exploration that deserves to be retold.