What's Life Without Bureaucracy

     

Tucson Weather Today

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Bureaucracy is a giant mechanism operated by pygmies.
--Honore de Balzac

A SOMEWHAT SAD STORY

It's been two weeks since I filed an online temporary change of address with the United States Postal Service and I have not yet received any forwarded mail. By the way, they charge your credit card $20 now for the temporary change of address service.

The telephone here is out of order, so yesterday I had a cab take me to my apartment at Toscana Cove to pick up my accumulated mail. The round-trip cab ride cost me $35. Here's the sad part. When I got there I found my Mail Box empty of mail.

So I figured my mail is piling up at the local post office. I can't call the P.O. because the phone here is out of order, and I didn't call from my apartment because the cab's meter was running. And besides, the USPS customer service online info page says that I must always include my confirmation number in all telephone calls, which I do not have. It is printed at the top of the printed out and signed application for service that I gave to my mail carrier two weeks ago.

So I sent an email to the USPS Customer Service department with the sad story and requested a reply via email. It said, "Thank you for using the USPS - you should receive a response in one or two days."

Time will tell.

I guess a lot of wasted time, energy, and frustration would have been avoided if I had only allowed myself to have one of those consarned cell phones.

Oh well . . .  I'll get it all straightened out sooner or later. Don't get much mail that amounts to a hill of beans anyway.


It rained hard last night from about 7 o'clock till after I went to bed at 9:00. Rain pounded down, thunder thundered, lightning flickered and flashed again and again. and Eva lay quietly on the carpet right at my feet the whole time.

She does not like thunderstorms.

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Did You Know . . .?

A robot named HitchBot traveled all the way across Canada in a month, relying on rides from strangers and tweeting photos and status updates for the entire journey.

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HISTORICAL EVENT

On this day in 1975, President Gerald R. Ford survived an attempt on his life in Sacramento, California. The assailant, a petite, red haired, freckle-faced young woman named Lynette Fromme approached the president while he was walking near the California Capitol and raised a .45 caliber handgun toward him. Before she was able to fire off a shot, Secret Service agents tackled her and wrestled her to the ground. Seventeen days later, another woman, Sarah Jane Moore, a mentally unstable accountant, tried to assassinate Ford while he was in San Francisco. Her attempt was thwarted by a bystander who instinctively grabbed Moore's arm when she raised the gun. Although she fired one shot, it did not find its target. The bystander, a former Marine and Vietnam veteran named Oliver Sipple, was publicly thanked by Ford three days later.

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WORD FOR TODAY

bureaucracy
noun
1. government by many bureaus, administrators, and petty officials.
2. the body of officials and administrators, especially of a government or government department.
3. excessive multiplication of, and concentration of power in, administrative bureaus or administrators.
4. administration characterized by excessive red tape and routine.

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CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS

Michael Keaton

(born September 5, 1951)

Michael Keaton is an American actor who became popular for his early comedic film roles, most notably his performance as the title character of Tim Burton's Beetlejuice, and later gained international fame for his dramatic portrayal of Bruce Wayne / Batman in Tim Burton's Batman and Batman Returns. He has appeared in various other films, including Night Shift, Mr. Mom, Clean and Sober, Pacific Heights, The Other Guys and Jackie Brown, and has also provided voicework for Pixar's Cars and Toy Story.

Raquel Welch

(born September 5, 1940)

Raquel Welch is an American actress. She first won attention for her role in Fantastic Voyage (1966), after which she won a contract with 20th Century-Fox. They loaned her to a British studio where she made One Million Years B.C. (1966). Although she had only three lines in the film, the doe-skin bikini she wore became a best-selling poster that turned her into an iconic sex symbol and catapulted her to stardom.

George Robert "Bob" Newhart

(born September 5, 1929)

Bob Newhart is an American stand-up comedian and actor. Noted for his deadpan and slightly stammering delivery, Newhart came to prominence in the 1960s when his album of comedic monologues The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart was a worldwide bestseller and reached number one on the Billboard pop album chart -- it remains the 20th best-selling comedy album in history.

Newhart later went into acting, starring in two long-running and award-winning situation comedies, first as psychologist Dr. Robert "Bob" Hartley on the 1970s sitcom The Bob Newhart Show and then as innkeeper Dick Loudon on the 1980s sitcom Newhart. In 2004 he played the library head Judson in The Librarian and in 2013 he guest starred in three episodes of The Big Bang Theory.

Katerina Alexandre Hartford "Kat" Graham

(born September 5, 1989)

Kat Graham is a Swiss-born American actress, model, singer, and dancer. She is best known for her role of Bonnie Bennett on The CW television series The Vampire Diaries.

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Bureaucracy is like a fungus that contaminates everything.
--Jaime Lerner

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