You have accomplished much to date.
You’ve passed all the exams,
You were never late.
There remains one final test.
It’s been called unfair by some,
But it’s really for the best.
Before you perform your first exam,
One important detail remains.
So your patients don’t scram.
Quickly now! We shall not linger.
We merely check the length and width.
Please present your index finger.
Many ships have casinos.
Casinos help cruises make money.
Cruises need to make money
Since everything else is so cheap.
You can play the slots alone.
Watching your money fade away.
After losing alone gets boring,
You can join a slot pull.
A slot pull is a group of people
Taking turns on the same machine.
A slot pull is actually a triumph
Of peer pressure.
You don’t make money on slots.
You have the receipts to show.
Slot pullers all know you don’t
Make money playing slots.
So, let’s pool our money,
And we’ll all get rich!
It’s actually a fun way
Spending time with new friends.
If you win,
You share the riches.
When you lose,
You share the blame.
Plus, you can wander off
To get another drink.
But turning $20 into $7
Is not really getting rich.
Even if you did spend
An hour playing slots.
Writer’s Block.
It starts early this year.
I have nothing to say.
My wife shed a tear.
Not.
This Spring, there are rats.
They run around my yard.
I know that I can’t chase them.
It’s really, really hard.
Mom called some guy.
He put little boxes around.
I don’t know what’s in them.
They don’t make a sound.
I want to taste the boxes.
I think they have some treats.
Dad won’t let me sniff them.
That means it may be sweets.
There’s a rat on the porch.
I think he’s playing dead.
I thought he tasted funny,
When I crunched his little head.
Dad made me drop the rat.
“Leave it!”, he squawks.
I think the rat smelled funny.
He smelled like the little box.
April now is underway.
The Spring is sprung.
Bugs are out to play.
Alas, it must be getting near.
To complete the forms.
To shed a tear.
It’s soon will be the filing date.
Receipts and bills.
It’s getting late.
I started out late last year.
I did what I could.
I waited here.
Every year, it seems the same.
January fifth, I’m almost done.
April tenth, I’m quite insane.
April fourteenth, I will announce,
“I’ve sent the damn thing in!”
Hope the check won’t bounce.
It’s time to write another poem.
It’s another year,
In the same old home.
I need to travel for inspiration.
Just need to avoid the beach,
It causes perspiration.
Late Friday afternoon.
A speaker brought me to my knees.
It’s 2:59pm.
He just said, “Next slide, please.”
It came to me in a dream
On a bus trip in Nepal,
I was feeling very small.
I asked the monk beside me
His advice.
He pondered for awhile,
Then he smiled a toothless smile,
He whispered to me,
“Consider rice.”
“Rice grains are sands of time.
And when they all align,
Sometimes you get risotto,
And sometimes beer.”
He drifted back to sleep.
I thought, “That’s pretty deep.”
I vowed to find the secrets
In the grains of rice.
It was getting pretty late,
So I tried to meditate.
Can a toothless grin
Still really be a smile?
Then I thought about the rice,
I guessed you roll the dice.
Sometimes you get risotto,
Sometimes beer.
Maybe the rice were nations,
Not just our daily rations,
And all of us have our jobs
To fulfill the world.
I let out a little groan,
My mind was fully blown.
The sleeping monk’s rice
Was a universal truth.
As I drifted off to sleep,
A little doubt did creep.
What if the smiling monk
Just wanted to be left alone?
At sunrise’s early glow,
I guessed I’d never know.
Sometimes deep thoughts
Aren’t really that profound.
There’s a beer store in the Himalayas.
In the clouds up in the sky.
But no-one ever goes there,
Since they’re already very high.
Just leave me a message.
Under the tree,
I smell pee,
I think it’s me.
In the morning dew,
I smell poo,
I think that’s you.
The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article this week on AirBNB, and some of the rather extravagant fees some owners (“hosts”) are charging. Apparently, some have learned from hotels that you can charge for random things and if you hide it (say, not disclose it until after the reservation is made), you have an extra revenue stream. The comments are even more illuminating than the article.
Hotels are not allowed to charge random fees without disclosing them first, which is why you know ahead of time that your inner-city lower-rung hotel has a “resort fee.”
We booked an AirBNB once, because it was right down the street from our kids and we were going to visit for the first time in a couple of years. We usually stayed in the one hotel in town, but it was fully booked, so we decided to be adventurous.
We were not charged any additional fees. This is because a couple of weeks before our stay, I received a note from our host that said her kids were moving back to town and she needed the space, so she was very sorry, but she was canceling our reservation.
We found a Hampton Inn one town over to replace it. I have never had a Hampton Inn manager tell me he needed my room for his kids. (I almost said “loser kids”, but for all I know, her son may have just finished his residency at the Mayo Clinic and was starting a practice in rural Ohio.)
To me, our cancelation summed up the issues with AirBNB. It’s not a company, it’s a booking platform. They have some standards, but the reality is that the hosts run their own business, and they can do what they want, until enough people complain. Some hosts are better at business than others.
I’m all for “family first”, but if you’re running a business, canceling on a first-time guest to accommodate family is not a good business practice.
A selling point for hotel chains is “consistency.” The exception is Best Western, which is not a chain, it’s a marketing organization of independent hotels. AirBNB is not even a marketing organization – it’s a bunch of homeowners who decided to rent their extra rooms and meet the bare minimums that AirBNB requires.
So, some are great, some suck, most are in-between somewhere. Some have the host living next door, some have the host with a number of units in one town and he lives three States over.
Some cancel because they need the space.
At my age, I need consistency. So, I think that was one and done for AirBNB.
Unfiltered Thoughts 