WIP: Terrorism and Border Security

Hezbollah Suicide BombersThe novel I’m currently writing connects the problem if Islamic terrorism with border security. It explores how radical Islamofacists could exploit Mexican drug- and human-smuggling routes to attack Americans in border states.

Sound far-fetched?

Not according to the compelling evidence that Mexican drug cartels are already actively working with terrorist organizations like Hezbollah.

According to a recent indictment in US court:

Ayman Joumaa, 47, was accused in absentia of conspiring to smuggle over 90,000 tons of cocaine into America and laundering over $250 million for the cartels.

… The indictment asserts that Joumaa made millions through his money-laundering operation, receiving between an 8- and 14-percent cut for his services.

… Joumaa is also “known to Israeli intelligence”, having allegedly been in contact with a member of Hezbollah’s elite 1,800 Unit that coordinates attacks against Israeli targets, and who, in turn, “worked for a senior operative who the Israelis believed handled Hezbollah’s drug operations.”

This certainly contradicts the Obama administration’s laughable stance that the US-Mexico border is “more secure than ever.” On one hand, it gives me lots to work with as I write my novel. But on the other hand, it makes me even angrier at our federal government for refusing to do what’s necessary to protect American citizens from the growing violence that is spilling across the border.

And, of course, it disgusts me that the Obama justice department has sued my own state for trying to do the job that the feds refuse to do.

Worst Christmas Songs Ever?

Christmas: Not Listening, la la laIt’s always dangerous to create a Letterman-esque “Top Ten” list that includes the word “ever” in the title. There may well be some even worse songs than the ones I picked for this list, but if there are, I haven’t heard them lately. (Thank the Lord!)

During Christmas time (which begins the day after Thanksgiving and stretches until New Year’s Eve, thank you very much) our family used to listen to the local radio station that switches to an all-holiday format sometime around Labor Day. But it got so we just couldn’t do this any more. Too many of the songs they play (over and over and over and over) are just pure dreck. They’re either just really bad songs, or they’re good songs butchered by so-called “artists” who have no business singing outside of their chosen genre.

So, without further ado, here is my list of songs I would gladly opt to never hear again as long as I live.


10. “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” by John Lennon and Yoko (1971)

Have you ever sat and watched helpless as somebody walked up to a chalkboard, doggedly preparing to scrape his or her fingers down it just to make you squirm? That’s what this song is like to me. After the oh-so-artsy whispered intro, “Happy Xmas” starts out with John singing the first refrains. And it’s not too bad. You to yourself, “Hey, I could survive this thing. This song isn’t so terrible.” Then he sings “The near and the dear ones, the old and the young,” and you just think to yourself, “Crap, here it comes.”

At this point Yoko enters the song with her paint-peeling, flower-wilting warble and you think, Holy hell, that woman has an awful voice. It’s a testament to how much John loved her that he allowed himself to be a laughingstock of the recording industry by making an album with her. Of course, the two hippies were so inseparable he basically wore her as a hat, so she would have been in the studio anyway, whether he wanted her there or not.

Then John and Yoko go off on their anti-war rant. All I can say is these two were OWS before OWS was cool … or something. Big “down twinkles” for this awful song (that somehow still gets plenty of air time every Christmas season).


9. “Christmastime” by The Smashing Pumpkins (1997)

It wouldn’t be Christmastime without a healthy dose of poser emo angst. If it weren’t for the singing, this really wouldn’t be a bad song. The product that results from Billy Corgan attempting a serious Christmas carol is about the same as what you’d get if Richard Simmons attempted to dance The Nutcracker. (There’s a joke in there, but I’ll leave it alone.)

Some performers should stick to more comfortable topics such as sex, drugs and neurotic self-mutilation instead of trying to tackle serious holiday nostalgia music.


8. “Please, Daddy (Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas)” by John Denver (1975)

When Christmas rolls around, I’m sure our minds all turn to substance abuse and spousal battery. I know I do. I don’t know what Mr. Rocky Mountain High was high on when he recorded this one. Poking fun at alcoholics and dysfunctional families around the country … that seems like an odd choice for the clean-cut guy who based his career on being a nice-guy friend to muppets everywhere.

To make matters worse, I understand that Alan Jackson has recorded a cover version of this awful song. The circle is unbroken. Somebody … break it please!


7. “Millennium Prayer” by Cliff Richard (1999)

Set to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne,” this song is a stilted recasting of the Lord’s Prayer that (according to Wikipedia) Cliff Richards’ long-time label just didn’t want to release. Unfortunately, he managed to find someone else who would give it the green light. The song is big, it’s bold, and it’s awful. In my opinion, of course.

The video is equally awful, by the way. Think Greg Kinnear in his As Good As It Gets mode emulating a televangelist and you’ll get the general idea. Notice his self-righteous preening when he sings about “forgive our sins” while the screen behind him shows video of a nuclear explosion and World War II concentration camps. Apparently Richards missed the same memo that skipped John and Yoko and the “Band Aid” do-gooders. It’s just bad form to portray yourself in a Christmas song as some kind of “Santa Cause.”


6. “Jingle Bell Rock” by Billy Idol (2006)

There’s nothing more sad (or more common) than a washed-up 80’s “artist” trying to cash in on his or her name with a lousy Christmas album. In spite of copious makeup, Mr. Idol looks downright cadaverous in the video for this song. Since it was recorded in 2006, it’s important to note that AutoTune was available when this was recorded. Unfortunately (and you won’t hear me say this very often) it went sadly unused. It’s as if Billy told his producer, “No time for any engineering or any of that lot, mate. Wrap it up and release the bloody record–Daddy needs a few pounds for whiskey and cigarettes!”

I was an Idol fan as a kid, and he used to have a pretty good voice for a pop singer. Nowadays? Not so much.


5. “Christmas Conga” by Cyndi Lauper (2004)

Speaking of washed-up 80’s artists, here’s the Material Girl herself. No, wait, that was Madonna, wasn’t it? So this is the “So Unusual” Girl, I guess, doing what she always did best: making absolutely no sense at all.

I’m sure William Wordsworth and Dylan Thomas would be heartbroken to find that they both missed out on the monumental opportunity to tackle this important subject in verse. How can you argue with the aesthetic excellence of lyrics such as, “Bonga bonga bonga, do the Christmas conga”? Pure poetry.


4. “Do They Know It’s Christmas” by Band Aid (1984)

Show this to the kids and you’ll find out the longevity of most pop singers. They’ll watch it all the way through and won’t recognize a single person in there. The scary thing is, you’ll probably know most of them. “Man, Sting looks young! And there’s Boy George! Hey, it’s Simon Le Bon! Look–it’s that pervert from Wham!” Unfortunately , unlike Billy Idol’s masterpiece above, this song was recorded well before AutoTune was available in any recording studio. Missed it by a couple of decades.

The one good thing I can say about the video is that at least Bob Geldoff isn’t shaving off his nipples during this one. It’s a Festivus miracle!


3. “It Must Be Santa” by Bob Dylan (2009)

Now we’re getting down into the really rotten ones. It’s entirely possible that you’ve never heard this one before. If so, count your blessings and move on. If you’re a real masochist, through the magic of YouTube you too can marvel in its craptistic awesomeness. This song must be actually experienced to appreciate the true depth of its awfulicity. I won’t say anything more, because it’s already been thoroughly (and expertly) panned by the good folks at Hate By Numbers.


2. “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” by Bruce Springsteen (1981)

Nothing quite says “Christmas” like testosterone-fueled vocal abuse. Springsteen’s brand of scream-singing might work just fine for “Born in the USA” or “Glory Days,” but there is no joy in the world or peace on earth when he’s shouting out this awful rendition.

I truly believe that the world would be a better place without Springsteen’s version of this song. All copies should be burned, all pirated audio files deleted. And that, my friends, is not a matter of opinion. It’s a fact.


1. “Wonderful Christmastime” by Paul McCartney (1979)

This song has the dubious honor of being both the worst Paul McCartney and the worst Christmas song of all time. From its sappy, sophomoric intro to the most annoying refrain in recording history, this song is pure and unadulterated crap. (Actually, it might be adulterated crap, but you’d never be able to hear the truly adulterated parts over that awful synthesizer background.)

I just don’t get what happened to Paul McCartney after he left The Beatles. Maybe, like John, he can be excused because he was under the influence of a domineering, talentless woman. Whatever the reason, Western Civilization as we know it took a huge hit when Paul and Company recorded this song. For some reason, Christmas radio stations continue to play it — assumedly because it has the name of an ex-Beatle attached to it.

Follow the link and listen at your own peril. Once this song gets in your head, the only way to get it out is with a bullet.

Rewriting Christmas Carols

Last Friday night, the kids and I (plus my mom and mother-in-law) went to hear my wife Melanie sing with the Sonoran Desert Chorale in their annual Christmas concert. One one hand, it was nice to hear an actual Christmas concert. There was no obligatory nod to Hannukah (not that this would have been a bad thing). There was also no attempt to evangelize Kwanzaa or Las Posadas or any other so-called “traditions” that 99 percent of the Christian world wouldn’t even know about if we without comprehensive brainwashing by public school indoctrinators regarding how important these non-events are in our communities of diversity.

That said, I was disappointed that they didn’t honor my own heritage with a Festvus song or two. How dare?

Anyway, one of the best parts about the SDC’s Christmas concerts are the sing-alongs they always have near the end. They print the lyrics in the program and everybody stands up and gets into the action. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when I discovered that whoever put together the program had decided that certain Christmas carols were not quite politically correct enough for modern sensibilities.

The most eggregious changes were during “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” Interesting historical note: the lyrics of this traditional carol were written by Charles Wesley (1707-1788), the brother of John Wesley, who founded the Methodist church. (That’s why they’re called Wesleyans, in case you’re curious.) The music, on the off-chance that you care, was written by Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847).

The concert was held in Mesa’s First United Methodist Church, although I have a sneaking suspicion that this particular facility might not be the really actual honest-to-goodness first United Methodist Church. Anyway, I thought it was ironic that the lyrics written by the brother of Mr. Methodism had been changed for a performance in a Methodist house of worship.

Two altered lines in the program caught my eye:

Traditional: “born that man no more may die”
Rewritten: “born that we no more may die”

Traditional: “born to raise the sons of earth, born to give us second birth”
Rewritten: “born to raise us from the earth, born to give them second birth.”

I was ready for the changes because I had actually noticed them in the program during intermission. I was totally ready to conform to the weaselly changes (I know, I know), but then a wonderful thing happened. Almost everybody in the audience ignored the changes and just sang the traditional lyrics anyway. It was Whoville all over again, though I don’t know whether the Grinch who rewrote “Hark!” was paying attention from up there on Mount Crumpit.

Here’s a little suggestion to people who want to make changes to the lyrics of our favorite carols in the name of political correctness. Before you do this, first look up at the top of the sheet music to where it lists the lyricist and/or composer. If the person listed has been dead for over 100 years, don’t change the lyrics. If, instead of a person’s name, it says something like “TRADITIONAL,” that’s a pretty good hint that the song is a traditional one. Don’t mess with it!

Lund Rant Goes Viral

Back in September, before I began this blog, I posted a note on my Facebook page that detailed my three extremely unhappy three months working for John Lund over at Lund Cadillac.

I originally composed my story as an explanation for the Arizona Department of Economic Security, to detail exactly why I no longer worked at Lund Cadillac. Technically I was “dismissed,” and if you get dismissed “for cause,” you’re apparently not eligible for the negligible weekly payments that the state sends to people who don’t have a steady gig.

They told me I had some ‘splaining to do, so I ‘splained … at length. In fact, I’m fairly certain that I gave them waaaaaayyy more detail than they really wanted. But I wasn’t going to let some state bureaucrats crimp my cathartic buzz. The result? I was not dismissed “for cause” so I was eligible for benefits.

Word was getting around that I was no longer working at Lund Cadillac, so I cleaned up the text and posted the edited-down version of my story as a note on my Facebook page. I got some public comments from friends, and even more comments sent directly to my in-box. And I thought that was the end of it.

I should point out that I have my privacy settings set on Facebook so that only friends (and not friends of friends or anyone outside my network) can see my posts. That’s just how I roll.

In November, I was contacted by a former co-worker asking me about the “rant” he’d been hearing about. It didn’t take long to figure out what he was talking about. I did a quick copy-and-paste job and sent it to him via e-mail, since he’s not an active Facebook user. Since then I have been contacted by five or six former co-workers, each of them remarking on how perfectly I described the working conditions at Lund Cadillac, and how well I captured the essence of John Lund, his personality and his treatment of his employees.

Last Friday I got a call from a former co-worker about a completely unrelated matter and just about the first thing he said was, “By the way, I loved your rant!” On Saturday I chatted briefly online with another Lund current guy and he said he had been talking to someone in the service department and was asked, “By the way, have you seen that rant?” Then today, I was in McDonald’s working on my new novel and I ran into one of John’s supervisors. The first thing he said, after saying hello, was “So-and-so showed me your rant and it was awesome!”

This guy was one of my favorite folks at Lund Cadillac. He was wise beyond his years, and one of the most “service-oriented” people I have ever met. He sat with me and we chatted for a while, and he gave me his own summation of the whole situation over there. “I just think John is completely out of place in the regular world. He grew up rich, he never had a family, so he has no concept of what it’s like to have children, to struggle, to actually make your own way. Everything he has has been given to him, and that defines his character.”

My own summation: “John is a selfish, insane prick who shouldn’t be allowed around people.” I may not be clinically qualified to comment on the “insane” part, but the other Lund people seem to be in agreement with my assessment.

So I think it’s funny that my story has gone viral in the one place I actually didn’t plan it to get to. I guess the truth will out, and all that.

Here, for the benefit of those who haven’t read it yet, is my “Lund Cadillac Story.”


 My “Lund Cadillac Story

I was hired in early May to be the Marketing Director of Lund Cadillac. John Lund, the owner of the dealership, made it very clear what he expected of me, and it looked like I would have no trouble getting things done once I got there. Little did I know what I was in for as I started the new position.

First of all, I discovered early on that John liked to be very involved with the people who worked for him. He wanted to discuss every decision, every bit of text, every pixel of artwork. He loved nothing more than to chew over everything ad nauseum, to the point where it was literally impossible to get much done. He began every day at 7:00 a.m. with a manager’s meeting, and sometimes those meetings would literally not end until 5:30 p.m. or later. The only time I ever really got to do my actual job was when he was in his office trying to do somebody’s else’s job. I would hurriedly try to get something done while he was distracted. It didn’t seem to occur to him that the all-day meetings and endless discussions had anything to do with the lack of productivity.

After a few weeks, I began to see signs of what I would consider abuse at the dealership. John would call somebody in and literally spend half an hour screaming at them, spitting out horrible language and personal insults. He used foul language in his day-to-day speech (even when he wasn’t ripping somebody to shreds), but it was definitely worse when he was yelling at someone. My work space was literally outside John’s office, so I was often forced to listen in on these screaming sessions. When I asked other dealership employees about the owner’s temper, they just shrugged and told me, “That’s just how he is. His name is on the building, so everybody just deals with it.”

During the times I wasn’t held hostage in one of the owner’s marathon meetings, I tried diligently to perform my job functions. I had initially been led to believe that this would be a standard 8:00 to 5:00 job, Monday through Friday. But it quickly turned into a 7:00 to 5:30 or 5:45 to 6:00 job. In addition, I was required to work full days on several weekends. It wouldn’t have been bad if I thought the time I was investing in the dealership was being put to good use.

Here’s a great example. I was working on a basic redesign of the Lund Cadillac website. John wanted a banner that explained a particular service that the dealership offered (but had rarely ever been provided to a customer). I had created the banner with a composite graphic that included a wide area with a treeline and a grassy field. This area was specifically put together so the text on the tiny banner would sit on a relatively neutral background.

John didn’t like the grassy field. He didn’t think it looked Arizona enough. So we spent three and a half hours in his office (I kid you not) searching through Google images looking for a more deserty image to drop into the graphic. Remember: this was a 300×60 banner and the area was blurred out and desaturated to serve as a background for text. He kept me an hour and a half later than normal, and somehow (in his micro-manager’s brain) he must of justified the time spent both by him and me looking for a tiny little stretch of pixels.

If I were a clinician, I would say that John Lund exhibited signs of ADHD, OCD and bipolar disorder–all at the same time. His standard practice was that once I got close to accomplishing something, he would change the scope of the work. I could cite numerous several examples, but two will be sufficient.

One task I was given was to get the dealership “back on the air,” securing radio air time for advertising, which had expired just as I arrived on the job. I put together a proposed buy to get us through the first couple of months, but was told to go back and do additional research on the stations that I had selected. So I spent a week or so getting the required information, performing the analyses, and producing yet another set of recommendations. At this point, Mr. Lund told me it still wasn’t enough: he wanted me to compare the rates of the stations I had chosen with the rates of all other stations in the Phoenix Metro area–a nearly impossible task, at least on a tight deadline. While I began to do this, he criticized me soundly for not having a plan in place yet, enough though he himself had changed the requirements twice in the process.

Another difficulty was that John specifically asked me to lie as I collected this information. He didn’t want me to contact radio stations directly, identifying myself as a representative of the dealership. He was so paranoid that the stations would not give us “their best deal” that he specifically asked me to use my personal cell phone and e-mail address and say that I was from an agency and had a “client” that wanted to get information about advertising. He thought we could get “agency rates” that way, and would end up spending less on air time. I informed him that I didn’t feel comfortable telling lies in this way, but he made it very clear that this was what he wanted.

A bigger issue actually came earlier in my tenure. The dealership had a huge amount of data–almost 25 years of customer records, including both car sales and service. Lots of the data was old, and hadn’t been updated in a long time. I had worked in the past with a company that provides a “fill in the blanks” service. They take a company’s customer list and supplement it with their own data in order make sure your information is all updated. Because of the requirements of their own data sources, they will only provide this data for a company’s own customers. In fact, they require you to certify that the list you’re sending is an active customer list.

When John found out we could “data mine” on the dealership’s customers, he got dollar signs in his eyes. He immediately went out and began buying wholesale prospect lists. His goal was to have me send the prospect data and have the data vendor fill in all of the blanks so we could market directly to these non-customers. It didn’t seem to bother him that my name was on the contract, and by sending them non-customers I would be committing fraud. It was just a means to an end with him, and he didn’t really care that it was (A) unethical or (B) illegal.

Another big challenge in working for John were the constantly shifting reporting requirements. When I was hired, there was little or no reporting on any marketing activity that had been done in the past. He gave me his requirement: a simple report that could go out to the sales managers once a week to give them an idea of what was happening in terms of generating business. I did as he asked (twice, actually), and then he informed me he actually didn’t want a report for the sales managers after all. He created a new reporting format that he wanted me to use, and so I began building something that would fit into this format.

One decision I made was to collect daily data, when possible, so that it could be aggregated either weekly or monthly using the same core data set. With 7-day weeks and months of different length, the two time frames never matched up neatly with each other. If I had daily data, I could create daily, weekly or monthly reports. John initially didn’t think this was necessary, but eventually he began to appreciate the flexibility that daily data gave the business, in reporting terms.

The problem was, several of our data sources wouldn’t provide information on a daily basis. One of these was AutoTrader.com, which was one of the dealership’s primary sources for leads and web traffic. AutoTrader only provided its reporting on a month-to-date basis, which didn’t help for daily reporting. After trying for several weeks to get AutoTrader to provide the information directly, I suggested that I could have a programmer put together an automated system to “scrape” the data from AutoTrader every night and send it to me in e-mail form so I could compile it. This took some time to set up, but eventually it was accomplished.

Around this time, I witnessed one of John’s worst rages yet, this time directed at one of the dealerships longest-serving and highest-ranking employees. The woman in charge of hiring a new receptionist had brought in a candidate and John hadn’t liked the looks of the girl. (In spite of her actual qualifications, John made it clear he wanted a skinny blonde with big breasts, and came absolutely unglued when he saw that the applicant was a bit dumpy and Hispanic.) I was actually in John’s office when John lost his temper with this employee, a very nice woman in her 60’s. Mr. Lund screamed at her for more than 20 minutes, using the foulest language possible … all while the receptionist candidate sat right outside the door. After he sent his employee away, he vented to the others in the room: “What a stupid bitch–I just can’t take that fucking female logic.” He made several other derogatory comments about this nice woman who had worked for the dealership for over 20 years, and those in the room simply sat and nodded along.

That night I went home, updated my resume, and begun quietly submitting applications to other companies.

A week and a half later, at month’s end, I compiled the data I have been receiving for a week from the AutoTrader scraper program. Something didn’t look right, so I called up my contract programmer to find out what was going on. He looked through the code again, and everything seemed to check out. The problem was, the numbers that I had been receiving didn’t match the numbers at the end of the month (this is the month-to-date reporting that had caused the issues in the first place). I was still trying to locate the source of the discrepancy early the next week–in between calling radio stations all around the Valley–when John asked me whether I had updated the numbers in the daily report.

I told Mr. Lund that the data was all up-to-date, except that I was still having problems with the AutoTrader numbers because the month-end data wasn’t matching the numbers that had been coming in from the automatic scraper. It didn’t make sense, and I was working with the programmer to get to the bottom of things. John was apparently having yet another one of his “rage” days, because he was instantly furious.

As veins popped on his forehead, he said, “David, how long have I given you to get this straightened out?” I tried to explain that the scraper program had only been sending numbers for about a week, and it was only after I compared the numbers from the final days of the month with the full-month summary from July that I noticed that the figures weren’t matching. Suddenly, the daily numbers (which hadn’t been important to John the month before) were the most important thing in the world.

He said, “Why don’t you just pull the numbers manually every morning at 7:00? Then you’d for sure have the correct numbers and we wouldn’t have to go through this again?”

This was debatable, because that was essentially what the scraper had been doing, though that process ran every night at midnight. I told John, “That’s fine for weekdays, but it wouldn’t work on Saturdays and Sundays.”

John gave me a disgusted look. “David, how much am I paying you?”

Trying to diffuse the situation, I said jokingly, “Not enough for me to get up every Saturday and Sunday at 7:00 to pull a manual report.”

John flew into an instant rage. He stood up and got in my face, his own face bright red and contorted. “That’s it,” he screamed. “You’re done. You are totally fucking finished here! You get the fuck out! Just get the fuck out now!”

I didn’t say another word, seriously concerned about what else he would say or do–and what I would say or do if he upped the ante. I quietly walked outside John’s office, gathered up my things and left the dealership. I wasn’t even sure whether I still worked there or not. I’d heard plenty of stories from co-workers about John going ballistic and firing a person one day, only to call up and beg them to come back the next. So I stayed at home the next day, wondering whether he would call. As it turned out, he didn’t, and I was relieved.

I worked for Lund Cadillac for just three months. During that time, I saw my work hours gradually made longer and longer. I was denied adequate time and resources to do my job. I heard 50 F-bombs before 10:00 every morning, was verbally abused and saw others abused, insulted and berated. I was assigned dozens of tasks, only to have the scope changed before I could even complete them. More seriously, I was asked to lie and commit fraud as a condition of my continuing employment.

I didn’t even like the guy, and yet he asked me to do things that could result in jail time. I guess that’s the “Lund Cadillac Advantage.”

Getting Over the Hump

It’s been a rough couple of weeks for my novel in progress, though I have made considerable progress in working to finish up my other writing project.

However, it felt great to see that I have just passed the 60,000-word mark on the novel I’m working on. (That works out to about 210 pages in the manuscript format I’m using.) Work always tends to go in fits and spurts, and I had been pretty productive for several weeks before hitting a solid wall with the narrative.

Part of it has been not really knowing where a particular subplot was headed. As always, I had a pretty solid understanding of where it was headed, but I couldn’t quite figure out how to get it there. This subplot involves a drug/human trafficker who is integral to the story. Since I’m not in the business of smuggling people or drugs into the country, I’ve had to rely on secondary sources for information about what happens in the underworld of the cartels.

Luckily, a recent book has given me a new glimpse into that world. I managed to get the Kindle version of El Narco: Inside Mexico’s Criminal Insurgency. In this book, author Ioan Grillo has done the work for me–interviewing the drug mafia bosses, drug producers, assassins, mules and other cogs in the wheel so I didn’t have to. Immersing myself in this book proved to be the solution to my block, and now I’m back on track and making progress.

Next stop: 120,000 words!