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I heard on the news yestrday that the same person that shot the man on the motorcycle also lost her cool at a basketball game at a YWCA where her child was playing in a game, and argued with a fan and finally hit the person in the forehead with the heel of her hand! This girl has a serious anger problem! That must have been before she got her gun.She has a trail of victims! Do you think Apex can top this?

When you have little casual exachanges with other people, strangers you meet in the grocery line, at the gas pump, sitting next to you at the ball game, and various other places it's a good thing. Conversation snippets like, "I hope the rains stop. I think I left my windows up." I had to run out to the grocery before breakfast, I'm out of milk." "How about those Cards? :Wildcats?" "Shamrocks"? (Depending on what logo they are wearing) You are less likely to be harmed by those people because by your casual remarks you become 'real' to them. If people are not 'real 'to each other they are dangerous to each other. I read that somewhere and I sorta believe it to be true. Now, it won't always work, like if you say, " I think your wig is on crooked." or "Wow, what size shirt do you wear?" or other tactless little snippets ,you may well expect to be hurt.

We do need to be more civil to our fellow men and women. The other day I came out of the grocery store and it was raining really hard. I have a pop up umbrella and my hands were very cold and blue and numb, I could not press hard enough on the button to get the umbrella up. I struggled with it for a few minutes and finally I asked the woman standing next to me if she could help me out. She was very gratious and popped it open for me. She had no umbrella so I asked if she would like me to walk her to her car. She was so surprised and thankful for the offer. There we were exchanging little pieces of humanity!

Speaking of which, I read an article in the paper this morning that pointed out to us that, " We live in dangerous times." A company spokesman for Occidental Petroleum Corp. said "Executives from oil-and-gas companies have been threatened and abducted." So, because of this they spent $774,756 last year on home-alarm systems and around-the-clock security guards to keep their CEO Ray R. Irani safe. (Name sounds phony to me.)

Directors of Valero Energy Corp, a rival oil concern with more than four times Occidental's revenue, aren't as worried. Their spending on security for CEO William R. Klesse last year totaled just $239 for a home-alarm monitoring service,that was a perk recently extended to all Valero workers. What can I say?