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Last weekend I saw something at Jerry’s Pistol & Pawn Shop that sparked my interest. The occasion was our 15th anniversary and I was looking for a little something extra for my wife Debbie. What I came across was a 100,000-volt, pocket/purse-sized taser. The effects of the taser were supposed to be short lived, with no long-term adverse affect on your assailant, allowing her adequate time to retreat to safety….??

WAY TOO COOL! Long story short, I bought the device and brought it home. I loaded two AAA batteries in the darn thing and pushed the button. Nothing! I was disappointed. I learned, however, that if I pushed the button AND pressed it against a metal surface at the same time; I’d get the blue arc of electricity darting back and forth between the prongs. AWESOME!!!

Unfortunately, I have yet to explain to Debbie what that burn spot is on the face of her microwave.

Okay, so I was home alone with this new toy, thinking to myself that it couldn’t be all that bad with only two triple-A batteries, right? There I sat in my recliner, my cat Samantha looking on intently (trusting little soul) while I was reading the directions and thinking that I really needed to try this thing out on a flesh & blood moving target.

I must admit I thought about zapping Samantha (for a fraction of a second) and thought better of it. She is such a sweet cat. But, if I was going to give this thing to my wife to protect herself against a mugger, I did want some assurance that it would work as advertised. Am I wrong?

So, there I sat in a pair of shorts and a tank top with my reading glasses perched delicately on the bridge of my nose, directions in one hand, and taser in another.  The directions said that a one-second burst would shock and disorient your assailant; a two-second burst was supposed to cause muscle spasms and a major loss of bodily control; a three-second burst would purportedly make your assailant flop on the ground like a fish out of water. Any burst longer than three seconds would be wasting the batteries. All the while I’m looking at this little device measuring about 5′ long, less than 3/4 inch in diameter; pretty cute really and (loaded with two itsy, bitsy triple-A batteries) thinking to myself, ‘no possible way!’

What happened next is almost beyond description, but I’ll do my best…

I’m sitting there alone, Samantha looking on with her head cocked to one side as to say, ‘don’t do it, dipshit,’ reasoning that a one second burst from such a tiny little ole thing couldn’t hurt all that bad. I decided to give myself a one second burst just for heck of it.  I touched the prongs to my naked thigh, pushed the button, and . .. HOLY MOTHER OF GOD . . . WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION . . . WHAT THE HECK!!!

I’m pretty sure Jessie Ventura ran in through the side door, picked me up in the recliner, then body slammed us both on the carpet, over and over and over again. I vaguely recall waking up on my side in the fetal position, with tears in my eyes, body soaking wet, both nipples on fire, testicles nowhere to be found, with my left arm tucked under my body in the oddest position, and tingling in my legs.

The cat was making meowing sounds I had never heard before, clinging to a picture frame hanging above the fireplace, obviously in an attempt to avoid getting slammed by my body flopping all over the living room.

Note: If you ever feel compelled to ‘mug’ yourself with a taser, one note of caution: there is no such thing as a one second burst when you zap yourself! You will not let go of that thing until it is dislodged from your hand by a violent thrashing about on the floor. A three second burst would be considered conservative?

SON-OF-A-GUN, THAT HURT LIKE HECK!!!

A minute or so later (I can’t be sure, as time was a relative thing at that point), I collected my wits (what little I had left), sat up and surveyed the landscape. My bent reading glasses were on the mantel of the fireplace. The recliner was upside down and about 8 feet or so from where it originally was. My triceps, right thigh and both nipples were still twitching. My face felt like it had been shot up with Novocain, and my bottom lip weighed 88 lbs. I had no control over the drooling. Apparrently I shit myself, but was too numb to know for sure and my sense of smell was gone. I saw a faint smoke cloud above my head which I believe came from my hair. I’m still looking for my nuts and I’m offering a significant reward for their safe return!!

P. S. My wife loved the gift, and now regularly threatens me with it!

If you think Education is expensive, try being stupid.

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Probably a good thing he didn’t get her a gun…..

In view of what seems to be happening internationally with banks at the moment, I was wondering if you could advise me.

If one of my checks is returned marked ‘Insufficient Funds’, is this referring to me or to you?

Sincerely;

Concerned Depositor

James Madison, Speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 16, 1788

I kinda wish I’d said that…..    

Zombie debt. It’s the latest thing in debt collection. Dig up a ‘portfolio’ of old (sometimes really old!) consumer debt, blow the dust and cobwebs off it, and start harrassing consumers to pay you for it. Maybe not the smartest business model, but it’s lucrative as all hell.

It’s legal, so it’s not exactly a scam.

Joe A. Consumer gets a credit card. He runs up a tab for a hundred bucks, then defaults on the payments. The account goes to collection, then is eventually charged off. Down the road, that charged-off account gets sold to a junk debt buyer for perhaps 20 cents on the dollar. Those collectors tack on an extra twenty bucks in fees, penalties, and interest. Then they take a crack at it, to no avail. So the account either sits, or is sold to yet another collector for, perhaps, a nickel on the dollar. Those guys take a shot, and so on down the line.

Fast forward ten or fifteen years: That old tab of Joe’s is still out there someplace, gathering dust. The statute of limitations has long since died of old age, so whoever the last buyer of Joe’s old account is, he’s stuck. He sells it one more time, to a company so sleazy as to defy description, for points. That’s tenths of a cent on the dollar of face value. The debt’s been sold and resold several times, and along the way it’s lost it’s supporting documents and most of the rest of it’s history. So nobody knows who tacked on what charges, or why.

That bunch tacks on more charges and such, and has the collectors at their outsourced call center in India take a swing at it. The total amount is up around $500.00 by now. So they feed all the information they have into their skip-tracing software. It churns a while, and coughs up a match! So the collectors leap into action. They call Joe T. Consumer relentlessly. Shower him with all manner of threats and abuse, trying to get him to pay up.

Finally, Joe T. makes them a deal, just to stop the harrassment. He agrees to pay the bloodsuckers fifty bucks to settle the account, even though he doesn’t think it’s his (it’s not!) He ain’t real happy about it, either. But hey, it’s only a tenth of what they wanted, and the matter’s over and done, right? Would that it were…

Unknown to poor unsuspecting Joe T., this turkey’s been reported on his credit report with the dates changed, even though it wasn’t his account to begin with. That’s caused his FICO score to drop like a paralyzed eagle. And it’s costing him real money on everything from credit card rates to car insurance. And a few months later, he gets another envelope from that last collector. Inside is an IRS Form 1099-C, reporting the $450.00 the collectors ‘forgave’ as taxable income. So Joe gets to pay income tax on that $450, just as though he’d won the lottery. Some prize, huh?

So Joe T.’s out the money, and the junk debt buyers are laughing all the way to the bank. They collected fifty bucks on an account that cost them about thirty-five cents. A pretty fair profit, in anybody’s book. Plus they get to report the ‘forgiven’ $450 as a bad debt loss on their balance sheet, generating even more profit by lowering their taxable bottom line.

Is it any wonder that the junk debt industry is growing by leaps and bounds? Forbes did an article on zombie debt that makes enlightening reading. Check it out here.

Bush did it! He’s in league with the devil!!!

Come on! Nobody actually believes that crap. Well, maybe a really rabid Bush-hater might. But it’s just not the case. Ya see, most of the current mess can be traced back to some Really Bad Ideas that first crawled out of the woodwork back during the Carter administration. You might just want to read up on the Community Reinvestment Act before you let the Democrats get you all twisted up over it. While you’re at it, drop a ‘thank you’ note to Senator Christopher Dodd (D – CT) and Rep. Barney Frank (D – MA). They were major instigators in this, too.

While you’re at it, thank your tireless champion Rep. Frank for weakening the Federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. That’s the Federal law that limits and defines what debt collectors are allowed to do when pursuing payments. I wonder who Frank and Dodd actually represent? Sure as hell it’s not the poor dupes who voted them into office…

Cha-ching!  $$$

I’ll be using this space to share my thoughts on things that matter to me. Consumer issues, motorcycles, computers, politics, civil rights… You just never know, unless you read.