Six Great States

Okay, I mean, I get what the holiday is all about.  But for the life of me, I will NEVER understand why anyone would want to go out to the Esplanade in Boston for the festivities.  It’s crowded, you have to get there before the butt-crack of dawn in order to snag a good place to sit, and then you’re stuck there all day.  You have to take turns with anyone who is with you to get food and go to the bathroom (which consists of those nasty porta-potties), so maybe taking some diet pills ahead of time might not be such a bad idea.

The going to the bathroom thing is a big issue with us.  When we go to ball games, I ALWAYS get seats on the aisle, so we can get to the bathroom without wating for people to get up and move so that we can get by.  Me, I’m gettiing old and when I gotta go, I gotta go, and that’s that.  With Mike, he is on diuretics for a heart condition, and they like to say *hello* a lot.

So basically, we can’t go anywhere where there are not any easy to get to restrooms with little to no lines.

And getting home…FUHGEDDABOUT IT!  The MBTA has to be a nightmare!

I’ve never been to a 4th of July at the Esplanade.  But I have been to one, years ago, at the National Mall in Washington DC.  It was a crazy mob scene getting home.  I remember having to pee while waiting to get into a Metro station.  I had to pee so bad, it wasn’t funny.  There was a McDonalds outside the station, so I went in there to use the restroom.  In DC, usually they are strict about restrooms being for customers only, but the place was so packed, no one cared.  When I got into a stall, it was gross, the toilet was stopped up and all.  And there was no paper.  But I either had to pee there or in my pants, what else could I do?  It was disgusting, but any port in a storm.

The fireworks had ended at about 1o:30 PM.  I did not get home until 3 AM.  Even during rush hour, this was normally no more than a 20-30 minute trip on the train and then the bus.

And that, my friends, is why we’ll NEVER do the Esplanade thing!

We’ll just be watching it on TV…coverage is local all day, but I think it goes national at 9 or 10 PM, with Craig Ferguson hosting.  Tune into your local CBS affiliate to see the show, and the mob scene I speak of here.

Hell, we get the best seats in the house, we can see and hear everything, we don’t have to deal with idiots invading our space, we can eat our own food, drink our own beer, and pee in our own bathroom whenever we want.  And no worrying about how long it will take to get home.  We get tired, we just go to sleep!

We’ll still get to see live fireworks, anyway…we’re going to the New Hampshire Fisher Cats game on Sunday night, and they are featuring one of their Atlas Fireworks spectaculars after the game.  This is a much better place to see fireworks, less mobbed, and they have lots of bathrooms!

However you celebrate the 4th, have fun and stay safe!

I knew that you could!

I don’t get it.  Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick goes on and on about how he wants to bring businesses into Massachusetts.  Then he signs the bill to raise the sales tax.  Yeah, that’s gonna really reel ‘em in, isn’t it?  If I had a retail business in Massachusetts, I’d serious consider relocating it to New Hampshire.  That’s where many MA residents will go to shop, anyway.  They’ve been doing this for years already, as NH has no state sales tax.  But with this ridiculous sales tax increase, we’re just going to see more and more of this, especially for big ticket items.

I wish I could smack Deval Patrick upside the head with one of those large outdoor pillows…bought over the internest or in NH, tax-free, of course.

But I hope that he realizes that this move has probably already cost him a second term.  People are tired of having to struggle to pay day-to-day exdpenses, only to have more and more tax burdens thrust upon us.  And for all of this tax money, what do we get?  Not much.

Why don’t they clean up their own house up on Beacon Hill, before sticking their grubby paws out to us for more and more?

I wonder what Deval will do when he loses the election in 2011.  Senator Ted Kennedy’s seat will be up for grabs in 2012.  Kennedy has brain cancer, and will be leaving the Senate when his current term is up (unless he dies before that).  I wonder if Deval will have the balls to run for that seat.

Well, if he does, whoever is running against him will win  It seems that the people of Massachusetts are so pissed off at Deval now, they wouldn’t even vote for him for dog-catcher.

Hey, but don’t blame me for any of this…I didn’t vote for the guy!

In the Six Great States, it seems you can’t swing a dead Y***** fan without hitting a 99 Restaurant.  They also have locations beyond New England, as well.

Anyhoo, if you like to eat there…as we do from time to time, you should join their email club to get coupons and stuff.  But if you haven’t done so yet, fear not, as I have a couple of coupons for you.  Click here to get them.

Remember, don’t be cheap and stiff your server.  Tippage should be based on the full value of the meal BEFORE the coupon is applied.

Enjoy!

Last October, the city of Malden, MA, without bothering to ask any of its residents, instituted a trash bag tax.  In order to have our trash picked up, we must buy either trash bags that hold up to 35 pounds, for $20 for a bag of ten, or 15 pound capacity bags for $10 for ten bags.  We can only use those bags, if we use any others, we get ticketed and fined.

Well, one man, Bob Miller, didn’t sit back and take it.  He formed a group called Malden Taxpayers For Accountability.  They created a petition against this unfair tax, which Mike and I both signed last November.

Now they officially have enough signatures in order to force this to be placed on the ballot this November.  And so it will be.

But the battle to eliminate this ridiculous tax is far from over.  The problem?  This election year is kind of a boring one, especially after last year.  No big elections, no Senators, Congressman, governor, etc are running for any office.  And as such, too many people decide not to bother to hit the polls.  I confess that I’ve been guilty of this myself.

Not this year, though.  Not only will Mike and I be at the polls on November 3, to vote in favor of the repeal of PAYT (Pay As You Throw), but we will also be voting against every single incumbent city councilor we can who voted in favor of this nonsense in the first place.  Is the mayor running for re-election this year?  I hope so, so we can vote against him, too.

So that’s the task that MTFA has ahead of them this summer.  If you live in Malden, please do what you can to help spread the word, to get people to come out and vote on November 3.

Maybe I will design some flyers to post and hand out…do I have enough computer memory left for that? Probably, but I could afford more if I didn’t have to keep buying ridiculously expensive garbage bags every week!

This issue has even made the Boston Globe – article here!

C’mon, Maldonians…let’s all help fight the good fight!

And lazy bus drivers and commuter rail conductors who don’t collect the proper fares?  Yet, as I said in this post, the MBTA is broke, and it is not much of a mystery as to why.  Yet they want to raise fares this fall…AGAIN.  When will it ever end?

Well, probably thanks to that post, I was found on Twitter by RideFare.org.  Their Twitter page is located at http://twitter.com/ridefare.  They are also on Facebook.

Thanks to RideFare, you now have a forum to fight back.  If you see fare evaders and the like, you can Tweet what you saw to @RideFare.  This will show up on Twitter for the whole world to see.  You can also use the form on their website to report any fare evasions and such that you observe.  This is good when it’s more than 140 characters, or your cell phone loses its signal in the subway tunnels, as mine often does.

I hope that if enough people complain ahbout what they see being done wrong, the T will listen, crack down on fare collections, and avoid the upcoming fare increase.

Good to see people out there fighting the good fight!