One of those amazing little truths about the human animal is that we never stop learning. Granted, most of us tend to learn things the hard way (it's not a good idea to try and fix your DVD player by yourself) but we are still learning. The old saying that you can't teach an old dog new tricks is just rubbish. Of course, sometimes it TAKES a little longer to learn those new tricks, but they can be learned.
Yesterday we learned two new items. The first is pretty damn funny. The second is a bit creepy when you think about it.
CC and I were laying in bed, watching TV. She's been in one of her floating food craving moods so every time she sees something on TV she wants it. She decided last night that what she wanted was pickles. So she goes out into the kitchen, gets some pickle chips, comes back, sits down, eats. Then she decides that these tasted SO well, she wants more so she goes back out and is gone for a little longer; I figured she was just browsing through the fridge. At the commercial break I go out into the kitchen myself and she's standing there reading the back of the pickle jar. "Did you know pickles are cucumbers?" she asks me, in all seriousness.
[pause]
I ask her, "Well, what did you THINK they were?" She rolls her eyes and says "Oh I'm so stupid. You're going to think I'm so stupid. I thought there was some sort of pickle plant."
[pause]
Pickle plant. Simply amazing :-) Now, there may be some folks out there who are wanting to cut my darling wife a little slack here based on the cultural differences between Filipinos and Americans. To you I would point out that there have been pickles in Asia longer than there have been Europeans in America. I've read plenty of older Chinese and Japanese literature in which they make clear reference to eating pickles with their rice. Clearly they've known about pickling to preserve crops for a long time.
It actually comes down to just a lack of curiousity. She never had occasion to wonder what a pickle really was made of. And let's face it, at some point in our lives we all had to learn that raisins were just dried up grapes and that prunes were dried up plums. Admit it, you thought there was a prune plant didn't you :-)
The other item we learned isn't quite as harmless and humorous. Seems folks have been using a new phishing technique. Phishing is that act in which dishonest folks will send you e-mail (for example) claiming to be from your bank and wanting personal information because your account has been violated. In truth, there's nothing wrong with your account. They just want your personal information so you can use it themselves. If I am to believe my e-mail, my eBay account is corrupted twice a week or more.
Well, yesterday, and again today, we've received an automated call from Capital One. This call wants us to punch in account information. Sounds pretty damn authentic. Says they're trying to track down fraudulant charges. The problem is, for them anyway, that I check my credit card accounts on a regular basis. If someone was charging things to my account, I'd know right away. Secondly, I've had that happen before. I once had a credit card simply not show up when it was due to be renewed. It was intercepted in the mail. When Capital One got suspicious, they actually called me. A living person called me, not an automated system. Same is true for Exxon. They were a little concerned when I suddenly was charging lots of gas down in Texas (went there on vacation). Again, live people, not recordings.
So, beware the scam artists out there. They've found a new way to try and separate you from your money.
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You know, if I were one of those folks down there from New Orleans I'd really be wondering now who I pissed off. Imagine, you're a NO resident. Your city gets leveled by Katrina. You hop on a bus and head over to Houston. A few weeks later, here comes Rita!
Actually they say Rita is heading more towards Galveston, which is a little further south but the way these storms behave, it wouldn't really be a great shock if it turned a little and went in further north.
Already you've got evacuations going on. What's funny though, a lot of these news types are saying that this is just people being paranoid from Katrina's hit on NO. Now, I lived in Texas for a good long time. I've seen a few hurricanes come in and hit the Gulf Coast. In every case, they evactuate, or at least most folks do. Like Florida, you've always got a die hard core of people who just won't be moved.
The difference? Folks in Texas, especially those of us who went through the Texas public school system, know about the 1900 hurricane that pretty much wiped out Galveston. It's a big moment in Texas history. The storm came in, put the whole island under water and wiped out the bridge to the mainland. To date, it's still the most lethal hurricane to hit the US (though that may change once the body count from Katrina is in).
So keep that in mind when you see coverage of Rita's hit on Texas and the inevitable comparisons to Katrina. Texas, despite whatever faults you may have with it, is a whole lot better at dealing with these things than Louisiana. And let's also remember, the NO city government is a whole lot less honest than the average.
Guess we got us another weekend of hurricane coverage coming up. Good luck to the folks down there in my adoped home state. I may not have been born in Texas, I may not die in Texas but I will always BE a Texan no matter where I go :-)
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