I Dare You.

We've talked before about Gaucho Ranch.  It is located at 7201 NE 4th Avenue.  If you drive south on NE 2nd Avenue, and take a left on 71st St, very shortly after the railroad track, you will take a hard left onto NE 4th Avenue.  If you drive south on Biscayne Boulevard, you'll take a right onto 71st St, then the right onto NE 4th Avenue.  There's a strip of retail and other outlets, and Gaucho Ranch is the first one you'll see.

Gaucho Ranch specializes in meat, although they also sell wine, cheese, tea, and various kinds of grilling hardware, and their product is meat from purely pasture-raised animals.  They sell more beef than anything else, but they sell other meats, too.  Many of them come from South America, especially Uruguay.

Over the years, Gaucho Ranch has had occasional (a few a year) evenings, where patrons paid a flat rate, and ate all the meats (several cuts were served), and salads, and cheeses, and related comestibles they wanted.  On some of these evenings, wine was included.  On others, it was BYO.

But Gaucho Ranch has a new program.  They, like everyone else, are trying to emerge from the pandemic, and either to increase their business, or to let their regular customers know they're there, and it's OK to come shop.

So, now, starting today, Gaucho Ranch has begun every Friday lunch gatherings.  The time listed is noon to 3:00.  Each Friday, a different cut of beef will be served.  Bread is included.  There is NO CHARGE.  They just want you to know they're there, and/or they want you back.  You can have as much as you like, and they'd certainly be happy if you enjoyed your lunch so much that you wanted to buy something.

Today, they served flatiron steak.  It was a bit tough, but it was very tasty.  By the way, Gaucho Ranch's owner, Pablo Liberato, appears to have an uncanny knack for finding exceptional grillmasters.  Today's grill operator was previously unknown to me, and his name is Fernando.  He grills a perfect steak.  I stayed for a little while -- enough time to get a nice lunch -- and at the end of my time, they brought out a new and somehow improved (I didn't think it could get any better) version of their marinated strip steak.  Unbelievable.  And that's their main menu item for next Friday.

I already know BrambleWitch can resist this, because she told me she has restricted to a vegetarian diet for decades.  But it's hard to imagine anyone else can resist.  Unless they're just not in the area between noon and 3:00 PM on Fridays.  And if you like what you can eat for free, then you can go right into the shop and buy some more for another time.  Or you can buy anything else that appeals to you, which I would guess a lot of things will.

Fernando, the grillmaster, told me an interesting story.  This has to be considered anecdotal, and it wouldn't be anyone's medical advice.  He told me about one Gaucho Ranch customer who buys $400 a week's worth of meat.  Because meat is the one and only thing he eats.  And his blood pressure is low, as are his cholesterol and lipids.  What's particularly curious about this is that Freddy Kaufmann, who, with his wife, owns Proper Sausages on NE 2nd Avenue at about 97th St, told me the same thing about himself.  He did an experiement, and for a year, he ate almost all meat.  (Freddy/Proper Sausages specializes in pork more than beef.)  He had the same experience: lowered cholesterol and lipids on a high red meat diet.

It would be irresponsible of me not to encourage you to go to Gaucho Ranch for lunch on Fridays.  And frankly, I dare you not to.

A Deficiency That Keeps Coming Back to Bite Us.

Mention of this problem was first made recently in this blog regarding traffic problems, and car accidents, on 6th Avenue.  Whether it was speed, distraction (my guess was mobile phones), or various causes of carelessness, it seemed we weren't enforcing enough.  And "enough" really has two operational indicators.  By definition, we weren't enforcing "enough" to prevent all the accidents.  But even as a Village theme, and a historical one, we weren't enforcing as much as we used to, when we told everyone, and were known for it, "Don't Even Think About Speeding."  Our ticket-writing statistics proved we meant it.  (Art Gonzalez dug up statistics to show how drastically our enforcement fell apart in recent years.). In the old enforcement days, if drivers did the next thing after thinking about speeding -- they sped -- they got ticketed.  And not only did they get a ticket, but they also got the message.

Now, we're talking about one particular issue, which is the driveways and swales Ordinance (update), and we're again noting some requirements that are not new, but also not followed.  They haven't been followed on some properties for several or many decades.  They're not followed, because we don't enforce even the Ordinance we already have.

There are some long time Village residents who will tell you that failure to follow rules, and lack of enforcement of those rules, has noteworthy consequences for how the Village looks.

What's unfortunate, and perhaps moreso now, as values/assessments and prices are climbing, is that some people chose to live in BP, because it was cheaper to buy a house here than it would have been to buy one in, let's say, Miami Shores.  And it was cheaper to buy a house here, because BP is not as nice a municipality as is the Shores, because we don't enforce enough to make it nicer.  Those people presumably didn't want to have to follow rules, and pay the cost of following them.  So, the people who are spending more now are living in a municipality that isn't as nice as it should be, because we don't bother to follow, or enforce, our own rules.  We don't do it on 6th Avenue, and we don't do it anywhere.  (It's true the speed limit on 6th Avenue isn't our own rule, but if we had had our way, the limit would be lower than it is, and we would still not be enforcing it.  At the cost of cars, physical health of drivers, and security of people who live on 6th Avenue.)

It's maybe not entirely clear whose fault this is.   In theory, it's the manager's fault, since the manager controls the police chief, and the police chief controls the police.  And the manager also controls the Code Compliance Officer.  But the Commission exerts very important control over the manager, including choosing which manager candidate to hire (and what to tell him or her is really important to us), and whether or not to retain the hired manager, so maybe it's the Commission's fault, too.

In any event, we seem to be sort of globally falling down on the job of enforcement, about most things in BP.  We still pay property taxes, though, so there's a disturbing disconnect somewhere.  To put it one way, we're not getting what we're paying for.

Some Good News. And Some That's Not Quite So Good.

Yesterday, Commissioner Mac Kennedy sent out the following e-mail to many of us on his general Village circulation:

SELECT “HOT DRIVEWAY TOPICS”

IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER OR RANKING OF IMPORTANCE

1. All properties must provide off-street parking. That parking must be on private property rather than on “swales” or the public right of way along the street. The driveway must include an “approach” across the right of way. (This is not new.) Separate parking in the swale/ROW is allowed to an extent and addressed in a different part of the code, which we have just started working on to tighten that up, too.
2. All driveways must be permitted and approved by the village and PZ. Never start work on a driveway before your permit is approved and a physical copy issued to you, which must be posted on your property. (This is not new.)
3. No driveway may cover more than 40% of your front yard, regardless of the material you use. The rest of the front yard must be landscaped or green space. (This is new.)
4. January 2, 2023, is the deadline for all properties to include an approved driveway per the new code. After that date, Code can cite you. (This is new.) In several places in the new code, you'll see that the village is giving owners a full year to comply.
5. Properties with driveways that are not compliant with this new code may remain until they need 50% or more repaired. If any non-conforming driveway is added onto, it must be made fully compliant to the new code. (This is not new.) Existing driveways that need repairs of 50% or more now also have until January 2, 2023, to become fully compliant. That includes having an approach that reaches to the street, which is designed to match the driveway itself.
6. The required number of off-street parking spaces (plus separate off-street visitor parking) is determined by the number of bedrooms. A table is included in the code. (This is not new, but it has been updated to include larger homes.) Driveways with inadequate parking spaces are grandfathered in until they are replaced or substantially repaired. However, all vehicles must be parked on approved surfaces. No vehicles may be parked on grass on private property. (This is not new.)
7. All driveways must be of one material (list provided) or of one uniform design, all of which must be approved by the PZ before a permit is issued. Driveways may never be installed or replaced without a permit. (This has not changed substantially.)
8. Milled asphalt, crushed limestone and grass/sod are no longer approved driveway materials. (This is new.)
9. Gravel driveways must also be approved and permitted, and they must include a border. You may not simply dump gravel and spread it around and call it a driveway. (This is not new.)
10. Concrete driveways may be stained or painted, but the color must be approved by PZ first. (This is new, but the palette has not been finalized by PZ, and it must then be approved by the commission. As of right now, no concrete driveways may be painted or stained until the commission approves the palette.)
11. Edges along driveways must be relandscaped after installation. No bare soil, sand or gravel allowed along edges. (This is new.)
12. No raised driveways or edges are allowed. (This is new.)
13. Wheelstops have been determined to be a commercial application that is not allowed at single family homes or duplexes. Those are the concrete barriers commonly used in commercial parking lots. They will need to be removed. (This is new.)
14. Driveways may not drain water onto adjoining properties or public properties including the right of way (streets). (This is new.)
15. All driveways must be properly maintained, which includes sealing asphalt.
16. If you replace or repair 50% or more of a driveway, you must replace the entire thing. (This is new.)
17. If any part of a driveway is removed, it must be relandscaped or resodded.

https://legistarweb-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/attachment/pdf/1186640/Proposed_Ordinance_Amending_Off_Street_Parking_requirements_-_Second_Reading_-_changes_from_12.7.21.pdf

This is the current Commission's effort to redo the driveways and swales Code.  Mac correctly pointed out that some Commissions have honed and reformed this Code, but that none had reached what it considered an end point.  And of course, from the end of 2016 until now, no Commission (represented by a majority that can cause anything to happen) has really worked on anything.

So, to the extent that Mac is right to say that the Commission has somehow come together to finish whatever adjustments were the ambition of this Commission, and possibly some former ones, this is good news.  To say that some of the adjustments proposed are improvements over the previous Code is also good news.

There are a number of entries that Mac says are "not new."  This means that we have had these parts of the Code already on the books, but we just haven't enforced them.  There is no reason we shouldn't have enforced them.  Because they have been part of the Code sometimes for decades, and we haven't enforced them (for who knows what reasons), there is no reason to assume we will enforce them now.  So this is not quite so good news.

And it's worth noting that some of the particulars that Mac says are new are in fact not new.  Items 3 and 16 are like that.  And item 5 disqualifies the deadline in item 4, so that's not great news, either.

And we have still not disallowed impervious parking surfaces, which in my opinion, is not good news.  For example, item 14 prohibits homeowners from designing parking surfaces that will drain into the street.  If the surface is impermeable, where would it drain water?  I realize this is an assertive stance for the Village to take, but it's the job of leadership to take assertive stances.  And it's what the Village needs.

Other than that, it's a good and progressive move for the Village if we tighten up the driveways and swales Code.  I hope we do it.  And whether we remember the requirements that are not new, or impose requirements that are new, if we don't enforce them, then we've accomplished nothing.

"Anonymous," Let Me Tell You a Story

Some years ago, I participated in a website for doctors.  The reason I joined was that they were looking for, among other things, psychiatrists who could author posts about things like depression, and bipolar disorder, and other psychiatric topics.  That's what they said they wanted.  So, my assumption, seemingly naturally, was that this site was for doctors who wanted to communicate with each other about medical topics.

What I soon enough discovered was first, that many other topics were discussed -- like about politics, and other things that had nothing to do with medicine -- and second, that many or probably most doctors who were members of this site used aliases, or what the site and the doctors/members bizarrely, and self-inflatedly, called "avatars."  Some of the doctors/participants were very well known in American medicine, and probably most were not generally known at all. 

The vast majority of my posts were medical, but once, I posted something to stimulate discussion of this peculiar preference many doctors had to be...anonymous.  I was curious why anyone would want to hide him- or herself that way.  (I didn't conceal my identity.)

Some of the responses (this discussion stimulated an unusually high number of comments) were interesting, in that some respondents acknowledged that they wanted to be able to say things they wouldn't say if anyone knew who they were.  To be clear, the comments they wanted to be "anonymous" were infantile and moronic rants, commonly with a predominantly ad hominem theme, and more or less always unrelated to the topic of discussion.  (Sound familiar?)  In other words, some people wanted to be able to say things they would not say, or would be too ashamed to say, if they could be identified.  My thinking, which I stated, was that if someone thought to say something they would be too ashamed to say if they could be identified, then they shouldn't say it at all.  And I advocated for the site to require open identification of members, at least to reduce the amount of dumb cracks.

As I have told you, you are not welcome to participate in any way in the Village Voice blog, and as soon as I see you have commented, I delete your comment without reading it.  You have nothing to offer, seemingly because you have no relevant thought process.  And you're infantile and moronic, and seem to want to use the opportunity you temporarily create for yourself to make irrelevant ad hominem rants, often of a grossly immature or scatalogical nature.

It is still beyond me why you waste your time and trouble, most certainly let alone the time and trouble of anyone else, to release your excrement as you do, but clearly, you're not interested in explaining this (nor probably capable yourself of understanding it).

So, apparently, you will continue to vomit your pathetic nonsense as you do, and I will continue to delete it as the meaningless drivel it is.  And I assume you will continue to feel very great relief that no one knows the identity of the loser who produces this foolishness.

"No Time To Die?" Way Past Time to Kill This Off.

Friday started out with two unheard-of, and very complicating, events.  One was that my alarm clock didn't work, for the first time ever, and the other was that I slept late, which I more or less never do.  The result of these two almost unheard-of things, that happened at the same time, was that I missed my 5:10 AM flight to Massachusetts.  I took off for the parking lot to get the shuttle to the airport anyway, and called jetBlue, to see if anything could be done, and before I passed 826, I realized I forgot something, so I had to go back home.  But the jetBlue agent set me up with another flight at 11:00 AM, so I had time to go home, get what I forgot, get to the parking, and get to the airport in plenty of time.

I got myself settled, and was waiting for the flight to board, when I noticed a woman wearing a teeshirt with the old/original New England Patriots logo.  I asked her if it was a really old shirt, or were they still printing them with the old logos, and she said they had stopped for a while, but resumed (presumably because there are a lot of people who very much dislike the new logo as much as this woman does, and I do).  She and I agreed that people just like to change things, and she agreed with me that most often, when someone changes or "improves" something, it makes it worse.  Anyway, this wouldn't be a very relevant conversation if it were not an introduction to something else during the flight.

The featured movie was "No Time to Die," which is a 2021 James Bond movie starring Daniel Craig.  I had never before seen this movie, but I had flight time to kill, so, since watching the movie was free, I thought I'd go for it.

There have been several actors who have played James Bond.  I have never heard of anyone who disputed that the first -- Sean Connery -- was by far the best.  Connery was magnificent as Bond.  I think I may have seen some of the others, but they don't hold a candle to Connery.  Daniel Craig has played Bond in the last few Bond movies, and I saw him in "Casino Royale."  It's frankly boring to watch James Bond movies with anyone but Connery playing Bond.  I thought boring was as bad as it got.

"No Time to Die" was, I would have to say, as bad as it gets.  It's probably as bad as it could get.  Craig was awful, and the script was not good.  The soul of James Bond was missing from this movie.  Bond is inept.  He actually falls in love.  There was the bevy of "Bond girls," of course, but they were moving, and substituting, so fast, that it was hard to keep track of them.  Bond fathers a daughter with one of them.  But he dies in the end.  (I really hope this means the James Bond catalogue will be historical, and no one will feel a need to resurrect Bond, as BrambleWitch and I agreed Guy Ritchie should not have felt a need to resurrect Sherlock Holmes.  Although Holmes didn't die.  Well, he did, but Doyle himself killed him and resurrected him,  as only Doyle had a right to do.)  But Bond?  No.  He must now be laid to rest.

There were so many things wrong with this movie that there was almost nothing right with it.  It turned out that Bond/Craig had retired, or somehow been replaced, and in the spirit of political correctness, 007 was no longer a "white guy."  007 was now a black woman.  So, there were sort of two 007s in this movie.  It was hard to tell if they were competing or cooperating.  They seemed ultimately to be on the same track, except that Bond/Craig died at the end, and the black woman didn't.

How could that possibly not have been the worst of it?  The second named lead in this movie (after Craig) was Rami Malek.  I saw Malek in the Freddie Mercury movie, and I thought he did a good job.  In this movie, he could not have been worse.  It may have been the worst job of acting I have ever seen.  And if the evil organization was called Spectre, Malek himself looked like a spectre.  He was pale, vacant, had some sort of weird accent, and was as ghostly as he was ghastly.  He ought to have been more evil, and threatening.  Even the actor who played the series-long (25 Bond movies, the last five starring Craig: I looked it up) Ernst Stavro Blofeld was empty.

And now, they had some strange character called Q, who was some sort of techie nerd, and who somehow couldn't keep up with what Bond was doing, even though his job was to guide Bond.  His place in this movie made no sense.  The movie seemed to try to make its living on special effects and CGI.

At the beginning of the movie, some young girl is present when her mother is shot to death by a guy (Rami Malek, as it later turns out) with a machine gun.  The girl runs away, over a frozen lake, on which the ice is cracking.  Malek comes after her.  Somehow (who on earth knows how), she has a gun, too, and she shoots him repeatedly until he falls.  Dead?  It seems so, but he then gets up, and resumes following her over ice that's too thin to hold her, but apparently not too thin to hold him.  (Oh, please.) She falls through the ice (he doesn't), and he starts shooting at her.  With his machine gun.  Repeatedly.  But she somehow doesn't die.  But now, she's under the ice, in frozen water, not having been shot by the machine gun (who knows how), and the next thing we know, she's back as an adult whose only problem is that her mother was killed.  There's some question as to whether she, too, is working for Spectre, but I couldn't figure out if she was, or she wasn't.

The end of this movie was the destruction, by rocket-bombing, of some bizarre post-apocalyptic hatchery/farming operation, that produced what I think was chemical weapons.  But it was really hard to tell.

It was way too much stuff -- way too many disconnected stories -- executed exquisitely poorly, and with no real coherent theme.  At one point, Bond and M (Ralph Fiennes) were talking about how good things used to be.  In the past.  Yeah, they were sure right about that.  If people really roll in their graves, I'm sure that's what Ian Fleming and Sean Connery are doing.

Movies, and the Two Reasons Not to Dislike Brad Pitt.

We talked about it, so I watched it again.  It's hard to know whether to say "Breakfast on Pluto" is magnificent, but crazy, or magnificent because crazy.  But it is most certainly both.  "Breakfast on Pluto" is a movie that couldn't be anything but good, or great, because it's a Neil Jordan movie.  Setting that aside, here's what's extremely intriguing about "Breakfast on Pluto."  The star is Cillian Murphy, on whom BrambleWitch already told us she has or had a crush.  The Wikipedia entry for Murphy says that his role in "Breakfast on Pluto" was as a "trans."  It was not.  He was a transvestite, and seeming homosexual, but he corrected at least one other character who said he was a girl.  He said he was a boy. Murphy was already married at the time of this movie (and he still is, almost 15 years later), and his first child was born the year the movie came out.  He did an unbelievable job of making himself (very highly) effeminate for this role.  And for what it's worth, every other actor in this movie was also spectacular.  As far as I know, Neil Jordan does not make movies which Susie Figgis does not cast, and her casting was perfect.  It always is.  BrambleWitch and Mac Kennedy will both highly recommend this movie, and so will I.

In my opinion, Brad Pitt is almost always an uninteresting stiff as an actor.  I haven't seen all of his movies, because I wouldn't want to, but he's almost always the same uninspired actor who walks through his parts all the time.  His appeal seems to be his looks, sort of like Tom Cruise, but the latter at least has a trademark smile.  Which he flashes until the viewer is sick of looking at it.  But Pitt found himself in two exceptionally good movies, and did a magnificent job with two exceptionally good roles.  One movie was Guy Ritchie's "Snatch," in which Pitt played an Irish gyspy with a special talent for boxing.  "Snatch" is weirdly one of my favorite movies.  It includes a couple of the things I very much dislike in movies -- like violence and a lot of swearing -- but I love it anyway.  And Pitt, I was told or read, worked for scale, even though he was already a big star at the time.  The other movie, which I rewatched recently, was one of the many spectacular Terry Gilliam productions.  Terry Gilliam first came to my attention in the late '60s or early '70s when he was one of the members of Monty Python's Flying Circus (he created very strange cartoons, but rarely acted in skits), and then, he became a movie director.  All of his movies, and his Python contributions, are wild fantasies.  The movie that included Brad Pitt was "12 Monkeys."  Pitt was alternately an out-of-control patient on a psychiatric ward, and the still clearly "not all there" son of Christopher Plummer, who managed a good enough American southern accent (Plummer, not Pitt).  Pitt's acting in both movies ("Snatch" and "12 Monkeys") was excellent.  It raises the question of why he appeared as he did in his other movies.  Were they easy parts that didn't demand anything of him?  Did someone just offer him a lot of money, and he couldn't say no?  Did he portray carefully crafted downplaying?  ("Meet Joe Black" and "The Mexican" are examples.)  The bigger star in "12 Monkeys" was Bruce Willis, who for me, also does not impress.  Watching Willis in a movie is watching Willis, not the character.  In "12 Monkeys," he was trying way too hard.

Between one thing and another, I've wound up with a little too much time on my hands, and this is how I take my breaks.

As always, if you have a DVD player, feel free to borrow.  I just want them back.

Oh, Good. I'm Getting Back My Last $100.

The Foundation had big plans.  The Village had big plans.  We did a huge renovation of the log cabin, and we built an administration building.  Very big stuff.

And then, the Foundation had the idea of selling brick pavers, to be arrayed in the east entrance path to the log cabin, as a fundraiser.  You know what I'm talking about.  You've seen exactly this in many places.  They have loads of them around the Arsht Center, which has special "historic" designation, because the architects preserved a corner of the old Sears Building that was on the site.  It's a great idea.  It provides a better walking surface than some others, and it raises money.  Not to be too indelicate here, but most people would call an idea like this a "no-brainer."  Because it, you know, doesn't really take any brains to come up with a plan like this.  It's obvious.  It's simple.  Or, you could call it a "win-win" scheme.  The Village wins, and the people who buy the brick pavers win.  No one loses.  This is in part because there's nothing to lose.

And then came the catastrophe that was the Commission election at the end of 2016.  The brick paver scheme crashed, and so did most other Village functioning.  We exchanged someone who would likely have been a great manager for a terrible one.  And then, things...deteriorated.  It's hard to imagine they could have gotten worse, but they did.  Not only did we suffer increasing consequences from our shockingly horrible judgment at the voting booth at the end of 2016, but we never corrected our disastrous course.  It's true we temporarily elected Roxy Ross to finish some loser's term, after that person (mercifully) jumped ship, but Roxy was still in a minority.  Later than that, we elected Mac Kennedy, but he's an army of one, so that isn't going anywhere, either.  And we have been entirely unwavering about engaging one useless manager after another.  We have one now.  Look, I made a mistake.  I flinched.  My understanding of things at the time led me to protect Milt Hunter at the expense of Heidi Siegel.  I was wrong.  The only consolation for me, and for Heidi Siegel, is that the Commissioners elected at the end of 2016 would have made up some excuse to replace her anyway.  And the last time we had to hire a manager, I reached out to Heidi.  I apologized for my mistake.  I asked her if she would be willing to apply for the job.  She wouldn't touch us with a 10-foot pole. I don't blame her.

So, back to the pavers.  The plan died.  It has never been revived.  The current (mis)manager, Mario Diaz, has come up with some collection of excuses not to move forward.  I had paid $900 for a group of pavers.  To pressure Mario, as if he could care less, I told him that if he did not move this forward, I was taking my money back.  But since he couldn't care less, he did nothing but ignore the matter, so I took back $800 of the $900.

Now, I'm told that some group of disinterested people who have no agenda, don't want anything, and have no vision or sense of esthetics (including the Parks and Parkways Board), have decided that etched pavers, providing a stable walking surface that is not dead leaves and dirt, and are light-colored and easily visible (which the dark-colored dead leaves and dirt are not), and which would generate a nice piece of income for the Village, are a bad idea, and those people, with Mario Diaz's enthusiastic support, have decided we're not going to have a beautiful and income-generating path.  The whole plan, the whole vision, is dead.  So now, I get back my last $100.

It's very hard for me to find a way to agree with Bryan Cooper and Noah Jacobs, that we're a two-bit pseudomunicipality that doesn't deserve to exist independently, but I've about run out of arguments to counter them.  The good news is that I can buy something with $100 I thought was in my rear view mirror.

Not Funny!

All day, every day, I get requests to review medical records so I can testify in hearings.  They come from all over the country, and they're all connected to the Social Security Administration (SSA) and in the context of people who considered themselves disabled from work, applied for benefits, were denied (at multiple levels) and are appealing to Social Security's highest level, which is in a hearing with a judge.  Those judges have the discretion of requesting the input of what SSA calls a "Medical Expert," and that's what I am.

This morning, very early, I got an e-mail (they often come by e-mail) from some scheduler in Missouri about a hearing in San Diego.  She wrote: "Good Morning, Dr Jonas.  Happy New Year!!!  We have a hearing scheduled..." blah, blah, blah.  And the question is whether or not I'm available then (April 7 at 12:15 PM ET), and whether or not I feel like taking the hearing.

So I wrote back to say "You can tell me what's happy about it some other time," and that yes, I would agree to take that hearing.

The scheduler then wrote back to me "I'm trying to speak it into existence, Dr Jonas.  So far, no dice.  LOL."

So I wrote back "I agree with you.  Your very best efforts don't seem to be paying off.  But I'm rooting hard for you."  And I added "Not only are you more than welcome to call me Fred, but I wish you would.  You and I are co-workers. For now."  [Although we've never met, and I have no idea who this person is, apart from her name.  I do know that she's connected to the St Louis "National Customer Service Center," so I assume she lives in Missouri.]  And then, I added "Every time I think I've been pushed as far as SSA can push me, they push me a little harder.  If I live long enough, I'm going to quit at some point."

And then, she wrote back: "Well, Fred, I must ask you to take me with you when you go 'cause I'm so nearing that point as well.  It's getting harder to make a difference when the outcome remains the same."  (Emphasis mine.)

That's the problem, and she's being optimistic.  Often enough, the outcome doesn't remain the same.  It gets worse.  Either it's "improvements" that complicate things, and make them less reliable, and more expensive, or just someone who's trying to figure out how to get your money for themselves.  (Do you remember "planned obsolescence?")

And it's in no way just something like SSA, either.  Everything is like this.  The government, on its bad days, is like this.  The private sector is always like this, because that's the job of the private sector: take as much as they can get, and give as little as is necessary.  And of course, there's the "pure culture," which is the thieves/criminals.

It hasn't been a good time, at least for me.  Although I'm fully vaccinated, and "boosted," I got COVID.  So I couldn't spend a very important week with my family in Massachusetts.  My daughter said that if I tested negative by today (10 days from the first positive test), she could really use me up there this coming weekend.  I tested myself.  I'm more glaringly positive today than I was 10 days ago.  I have to see everyone "virtually" now, since I can't let people in my house.  ("Virtual" psychiatry sessions are not what anyone would prefer.  And as bad as they are with individuals, they're much worse with couples.)  I can't socialize.  I'm still waiting for propane, so I can at least make tea, and reheat the pizza I had delivered a couple of days ago.  (I'm told they'll come today to refill my tank.  And no doubt overcharge me for it.  This is why I have to switch back to electric appliances.)  And I still have SSA making mischief.  Where are they going with this?  They pay next to nothing, and they work us very hard.  What'll I do when I quit?  Take up solitaire?  Or go meet my co-worker in Missouri, and whisk her away, since she's had enough, too.

Well, That's a Helluva Way to Start the New Year.

This story actually starts a very long time ago.  Do you know the saying "Now you're cooking with gas?"  That's me.  I like cooking with gas.  So, when I moved into this house in 2005, and I somehow decided to do some renovations (I'm still not sure why I decided to do this), I decided to switch a number of my electric appliances (range, clothes dryer, water heater) from electric to gas.  I thought burning gas was cleaner than burning whatever FPL burns to make electricity, and I prefer cooking with gas anyway, so I switched.

I could have contracted with Teco, but the closest Teco natural gas line runs down 9th Avenue, and it was going to cost me a few thousand dollars to get them to extend three doors to my house on 119th St.  So, instead of that, I decided to use propane.  I contracted with a local company that has many national franchises: Suburban Propane.  The cost wasn't bad at first, but it increased over the years.  Now, it's a distinct annoyance.

Suburban Propane seems to have a selection of ways to decide when their customers probably need their tanks filled.  Since I'm by myself, and I don't actually use all that much gas, I chose the least frequent schedule, which, as best I recall, was refills once or twice a year.

I never had to think about it, because Suburban Propane would contact me when it was time, except on occasion, they would contact me to say their truck was in my area, they wanted to refill my tank, and my gate was locked.  Yes, of course it was locked, because on those occasions, they didn't contact me in advance to let me know what day and what time to expect them, and the gate is always locked, unless I have a reason to unlock it.  So, there were those glitches, and they were generally resolved by Suburban Propane's confirming with me some other time I would be home, so I could unlock the gate, and they could fill my tank.

I really haven't thought about Suburban Propane for a long time.  I like it that way.  That's what I also like about online banking: I set something up to be dealt with, and I then don't have to be bothered with it.  I have enough to think about.  When was the last time Suburban Propane was at my house to fill my tank?  How should I know?  As I said, I don't think about it.  When they're ready, they'll call.

Last night, I admit I was surprised that the time it took for me to wash my face before I went to sleep was not enough time for the hot water to come on.  Frankly, it always is.  I start with cold water, and by the time I'm ready to rinse off the soap, the water is hot.  But I figured I was just faster than usual.

This morning, I intended to do what I do every morning: boil water, to make myself a pot of tea.  A pot of tea produces about five cups, and it takes me the morning, or sometimes most of the day, to finish it.  But my gas stove never ignited.  It appears I'm out of gas.  And it's Sunday, so Suburban Propane is closed.  I'll have to call them tomorrow, and hope they're willing to fill my tank tomorrow.  Until they do, I have no hot water, no range, and I can't dry laundry.

So then, I got to thinking that maybe I've reached a stage that I should change everything around anyway.  For almost two years, I've been getting electric bills of $10.05 a month, every month of the year, including the summers.  Until this past month, when I got a credit of $23.23.  If my solar panels are doing me that much of a favor, I'm now thinking maybe I should exchange the range, the water heater, and the clothes dryer for electric.  I won't be cooking with gas any more, and that's not preferable, but it may be a better way of living, including so that I don't have to depend on the apparently undependable Suburban Propane.

So, Here's the Problem With "Elementary."

I've now watched (forced myself through) about four episodes.  They're very consistent, and I feel sure I get it.

Sherlock Holmes was unique in detective fiction, because he was the first detective who relied on clues, and "deductive reasoning."  He didn't just guess right.  He figured things out, and Doyle (mostly 1890s) let the reader know how he did it.  All of the Holmes iterations have been like that.

The other essential feature of Sherlock Holmes is how attentive and dispassionate he was in evaluating crime scenes and the dynamics behind them.  The Sherlock Holmes of the Doyle stories was intent/intense.  He had little interest in politeness, and he delegated Watson, who was a retired doctor, to something like helper status.  But what underlay this was Holmes' cold observation, reasoning, and deduction.

Jumping ahead to the Rathbone years (1940s), Holmes could be charming, and he was very attentive to others' reactions.  But he was still intent, and Rathbone played him as someone who just didn't ever miss anything.  Neither did Doyle's Holmes.

By the time we get to Cumberbatch, Holmes even declares himself as somehow pathological.  When someone calls Cumberbatch's Holmes a "psychopath," Cumberbatch corrects the insult, and declares himself a "high-functioning sociopath."  He still doesn't miss anything, and he still always gets it right, but now, there's actually something wrong with him.  Apart from the substance abuse, that was in the Doyle stories, the first Rathbone movie (which ends with Holmes leaving the room after the crime is solved, and telling Watson "the needle"), and which was replaced almost entirely by nicotine in the Cumberbatch movies.  Except Cumberbatch's Holmes no longer smoked.  He just thought and talked about it all the time, and he wore nicotine patches.

Once we get to Jonny Lee Miller ("Elementary"), all hell has broken loose.  Yes, Holmes has a history of substance abuse, which is why Watson (who was a surgeon, but quit because a patient died, and is now "Ms Watson") is imposed on Holmes' life by Holmes' father.  But two other things have happened.  Holmes has minimal ability to get along with anyone (Watson included), and he seems much more autistic than he ever did before.  And he starts to get things wrong.  He's out of control, autistic and hyperverbal (all the time), and he can't contain himself.  He's still Sherlock Holmes, so he still has his range of skills and his mental approach to things, but he's unrestrained.  He insults and offends people as Doyle's Holmes wouldn't, and Rathbone didn't, and Cumberbatch sort of only did strategically, and Watson has to rein him in as much as she monitors him to make sure he doesn't relapse.  (That's still the theory and the device as to what Watson is doing there.)  Although "Elementary's" Watson is better than Rathbone's Watson, because Nigel Bruce played Watson as sort of an incompetent and bumbling idiot.  I'm reasonably sure that wasn't Bruce's idea, but that's how that Watson was written.  And Bruce's Watson was not even a good doctor.  (We assume Doyle's Watson was a good doctor, Cumberbatch's Watson was clearly a good doctor, and we can make assumptions about "Elementary's" Watson, who shrank away from medicine because she had one bad outcome.)  There was one Rathbone episode where a very strong person was killing other people by breaking their backs.  Rathbone asks Watson to examine the corpse, and he suggests that the cause of death was a broken lumbar vertebra.  Watson confirms that it was the third lumbar vertebra.  That's not going to kill anyone.  The correct conclusion was that it would have been a cervical vertebra.  Clearly, this was the writer's fault, but someone should have picked this up.

Anyway, it's hard, bordering on painful, to watch "Elementary."  Miller/Holmes is too manic, things move so quickly that it's hard to appreciate the process of deduction, Watson (Lucy Liu) should not have been demoted (or demoted herself), and should still be Dr Watson, and proud of it, as all the Watsons were), and Holmes is not engaging.  He's not likeable.  He's closer to pathetic and annoying.  (Jeremy Brett was annoying, too, but he was not at all pathetic.)  His only identifiable area of self-control is that he hasn't relapsed (yet, in the four episodes I watched), and frankly, considering his history of substance abuse/addiction, and his restraint with respect to relapsing (which he frequently reassures he has no intention of doing), you wonder why he doesn't have more control in other areas.  Unless someone (the writers) want to make him more flagrantly autistic, in which case he's doing the best he can.  So how is he so sure he won't relapse?

I've seen as much of this series as I can bear.