TIPPING PRACTICES: SENSE, CENTS ANDF SCENTS

As the worldwide economy sways, customs should readjust - Ya' think? For a while it made sense to think that dollars spent like pennies. Tipping dollars - rounding off percentage amounts - ignoring the pennies...leaving a bit more than double the tax tip at a cafe or minimum twenty percent tip at a fancy eatery made your presence smell sweet. That was common practice then.

Have you readjusted? Do you do the same thing now? Will an unpleasant odor linger after you're gone if you readjust tipping habits?

Servers are memory savants when it comes to putting face and tip together. Can you halve your tip to fifty cents a round at the neighborhood pub? Nah, don't think! Although it's senseless to leave a dollar each time the bartender puts a $2.00 beer in front of you, ya' gotta' do it. If you don't want to be too noticed - verbally embarrassed - or be ignored when you need something, don't attempt to readjust your tipping habits to the changed worldwide economy with waiters, waitresses, bartenders and taxi drivers: They're underpaid intentionally and taxed on minimum wage because tips are considered by employers and the IRS to be salary. Tips are expected for good reason. You're sure to get this information loud and clear if you alter their accustomed tipping practice next taxi ride or visit to a pub or eatery.

However, there's reason to spend a dollar as if it was one hundred pennies. Remember that with only 99 cents you cannot get on a bus that costs a dollar. so, it's not okay to round off a percentage tip to the nearest dollar. You may need that penny or two the next day for another tip.

You do leave an unpleasant scent that is long remembered by food and beverage servers, if you do not leave the accustomed - anticipated - expected tip. However, servers have sensitive sniffers; you leave the same evil odor when you foolishly over-tip.

Can customs readjust because petty-cash is king - cents are no longer the inferior number card...and, in a few situations the expected gratuity " to insure promptness" is the foolish jester who makes no sense? Reasons for tipping - like an extra gratuity for services that fulfill the minimum job requirements should be reevaluated. With the many scale-downs that are in process as we readjust to less income and depleted home security, let's be sure we use common sense and watch our pennies.

Sensible, penny changes when purchasing "extras", can bring on the sweet smell of budgeting success.

WHOSE GOT THE ENERGY?

Freedom gives us the ability to fight fair but whose got the extra energy to fight yet another an-other's fight?

Watching fair competition between participants from many nations, on the Wimbledon juicy green tennis courts, energizes faith and hope - and , calms my instinct to scream "it's not a fair election" when Iran dryly admits "poll irregularities." Do ya' think?

Squelching Iranian voters voices with soldiers and guns on the streets that run red with blood. is unbalanced. I can follow Wimbledon balanced statistics. Iranian record keeping is shifty - illogical. If you have more votes than people voting there must be a botch.

A Wimbledon "botch" is an upset due to a stumble or emotional jitters. At this trying time, it's great to have Wimbledon for a few weeks. It's honest and logical competition - a war of professional athlete against professional athlete - to watch and turn to for calm. In the streets of Iran we see naive, untrained for war, competitors. I watch and rage at news reports of how desperately Iranian's struggle.

Although, Iranian freedom is not our fight since as a nation we've been there - done that - we can emphasize and sympathize and wish there were only jitters creating this upset.

With the stock market sliding, thirteen killed in Baghdad and two in Afghanistan just before our troops withdraw from Iraq, housing prices lowering and sharp job loss increases reported again, just managing to maintain personal freedom is a chore. Whose got the energy to take on another battle?

HERE COMES THE CAVALRY = SUSAN SAVED?

Super Manager to the stars like U2, Ossie Kilkerry has been hired to manage Susan Boyle and fans can only hope that he takes her Mother-induced dreams of success and personality limitations into consideration. In previous blogs, this numerologist explained that Susan Boyle needed unconditional love. Her numerology chart Challenges indicate extreme self-absorption and super sensitivity that results in emotional excesses and chronic physical slowdowns. To keep her feeling loved...Ossie you're in charge

Susan's a #7 overall, an intelligent perfectionist who wants a perfect world. However, her Destiny #2 and her three Challenges to fulfilling her Destiny are the same #2. When Challenge numbers are the same as any major numbers in a numerology chart, problems in specific areas are predictable. It is clear that Susan meets people and experiences in her Destiny that trigger extreme emotional reactions and...

...Susan's Destiny opportunities are all too often mishandled. Due to choosing the wrong options or the inability to do anything at all life takes difficult turns. With #2 Challenges, personal slights are exaggerated. Self-pity reigns...Susan's emotions run-amok. She took public adoration and media criticism to heart. Losing wasn't an option for her.

It is a pity that judge and recording mogul, Simon Cowell had a delayed flash of comprehension when he saw Susan's face when she learned she did not have the first place win during the ":Britain's Got Talent finals. He now says he realized she did not conceive of losing. To Cowell's credit, he immediately reminded her that his recording contract for late Fall album release was still on. Apparently, that good news did not stop Susan from physically exhausting emotional suffering that put her in a publicly embarrassing "blue funk" and curtails her public appearances.

Although, talent judge, Piers Morgan, says she's fine, Susan has missed four performances out of nine of the twenty-five planned "Britain's Got Talent" finalists tour. She'll disappoint fans again and again until her handlers get it right.

Simon Cowell's plan to make Susan a recording star is very do-able. There's no public pressure until it's time for promotions, media can be screened and appearances can be planned for "time-outs" for Susan. If new Boyle manager, Ossie Kilkenny, charges-in to save the day there's little chance of a Boyle career massacre. As a devoted fan, I hope recording sales in millions give Susan the unconditional love her sensitive emotions demand. As a numerologist, I know she's gonna' get hit by a few arrows, be saved by the Cavalry, lead a long, charmed life after 2015 and die a very rich "Mommy's Girl."

THE BUSINESS OF SHOWING

So you want to be a star but can you handle the business that shows everything? Susan Boyle's mother encouraged her to "go for the gold." although she knew her daughter was delicate, sensitive and spent her childhood through mid-life shielded from public close scrutiny. Boyle cancelled four performances on her "Britain Has Talent Tour." She needs rest. Her Mom's passed on but her managers should know that her capacities to perform in public consistently are limited by her emotions that deplete her physical energy. Susan just cannot handle "the business" and it shows.

Cher wears anything to attract attention, Does she really want to make an adjustment to her daughter's sex change in public? Sarah Jessica Parker and husband, Matthew Broderick have grown up in the limelight. Do they want their inability to conceive children to be kitchen table conversation? It requires a lot to make it big and staying there demands even more.

Hollywood/s latest "handsomest man in the world", Robert Pattison, got hit by a taxi in NYC while surrounded by five security guards, when chased by screaming teenagers during a film shoot on city streets. He's twenty-young, and brushed off his hip injury as his security people yelled, 'see what you did!" at the uncaring fans. Ya' gotta be young, agile and determined to come away unscathed.

Consider the Princess Diana paparazzi chase that cost her life and revealed too much about her private life...too much information about a beloved icon. The reports of her uncomfortable adjustments, emotional and physical problems - having her private life public property - wasn't handled very well by the empathetic teen who married a spoiled prince.

From Obama's duffer golf scores and attempts to keep a dating relationship with his wife to Liz Taylor's seven marriages and obsession with diamonds - media earns their bread in the business of showing the warts and the beauty marks on the backs of "wannabees.". So, if ya' wanna' be a star Susan, you'll need to make management adjustments - find an agent that cares - before you begin belting-out, "There's No Business Like Show Business" night after night.

RATS SHOW THERE'S HOPE FOR GAMBLING ADDICTS

Palin gambled...she threw a ""hate Letterman" party and nobody came. Bad choice Sarah. However, there's hope for you.

Its takes a rat to to prove that there's hope for overly-ambitious-salivating-for-power politicos and compulsive gamblers. The University of British Columbia has a study in motion that tests rats ability to use winning strategy and play the odds. There's hope for obsessive Wall Street high rollers, political strategists and me.

Therapies to treat pathological risk takers depend upon adjusting dopamine and serotonin in the brain. It's working on four legged rats and altering their ability to make good decisions. The rats make choices...when tempted with instant gratification of large amounts of treats that end in a "time-out" punishment, after a few blunders, the rats decide to choose less treats at one time and get to go after treats again. Rats can learn that long term satisfaction wins over immediate gratification.

If two-legged habitual gamblers could learn to choose the long term pleasure and fore-go the immediate thrill of a 'big kill", with therapy, Wall Street wheeler dealers would be less likely to tempt customers with risky buys, Obama's far-seeing health care and banking reforms would attract more supporters and I would not be tempted to hit the casinos.

So as Smuckers Jams and Jellies report unexpected higher earnings (probably because we're substituting sweets for the sour situation we're in) - the Stock Market slithers up today and jobless claims drop a smidgen, the un-therapied gambler in me is making even odds that the "rat test" results will not have doctors treating obsessives tomorrow. A fast application of this test is a "long-shot." The non-gambler wheels of the AMA turn slowly.

However, if you identify with the rats, there's hope. If rats can benefit from dopamine and serotonin brain therapy and learn to make profitable choices based upon negative and positive experiences, so can the compulsive money moguls, pathologically slow moving Senate bill-passers, you and me.

LET THE "GOOD TEARS" ROLL

There's a stock market slump, prices higher at the pump and my throat's got a lump! It's a "bad tears" day and I'm gonna' put these droplets in reverse. Gonna' listen to a Susan Boyle video, let the "good tears" roll and release magical moments.

There are tears of joy that go on automatic when Scotland's most famous spinster, Susan Boyle lilts of promise and dreams her dream...and I remember repeated tear sightings when obese and single, Kate Smith sang, "God Bless America" with the USA at war, in the 1940's. Skinny Sinatra's, "New York, New York" brings back, "my old neighborhood" tears and matronly Ethel Merman's, ":Everything's Comin' Up Roses" is a lifter that evokes "good tears." When the blues are catching, and dreams are touching there's nothing like a good cry.

Slow droplets on the face grow dreams of promise . A dream is magical soil that produces blossoms in daylight. . In times of emotional reactions to public crisis, it seems that unusually uplifting performers and unconditionally inspiring songs appear that change an emotional down-slump into a visual up-bump.

Broad figured women, Susan Boyle and Kate Smith are beauties who are attractive to the heart. Kate Smith suffered sweet indignities late in her career. Before a hockey game, fans yelled with love, "it can't begin til the fat lady sings." On Susan Boyle's initial performance on "Britain's Got Talent", she was ridiculed and that indignity turned into a public love affair too. Ti's said, "What you see is what you get." Bring on the "bad tears" 'cause you can't believe everything you see. Now, bring on the "good tears", 'cause you often get more than you imagine.

With my "bad tears" in reverse, I realize It's not how you look, it's the way that you do it in these teary times. So, let the good tears roll-in from dreams and belief in America...with them come the the magical moments.

ENOUGH SARAH! DAVE EARNED HIS JACKET.

Letterman lives up to his name. He has met a specific level of participation in his performance and is elite in his craft....he earned his jacket. In the other corner, Palin took her jackets without paying her dues or apologizing for her inappropriate behavior.

David Letterman's public apology to Sarah Palin and her daughters is an explanation - a defense of his inappropriate words and is an act of remorse for something judged by others to be wrong. Honest realists judge taking expensive clothes paid for with public donations without paying for them or returning them as "wrong." Representing yourself as a foreign affairs expert because you can see Russia from your front yard is an insult to the intelligence of the public. You've made more public blunders in occasional public appearances and a short [period of time than Letterman has night after night for many years. You've embarrassed yourself more times than space allows. So, Sarah shouldn't you step down? Where is your remorse? Where's the public apology?

Enough Sarah! Your ongoing accusations, refusal to accept Letterman's apology and organizing GOP supporters to get Letterman fired is a boomerang that reminds the public of your often inept behavior, asinine words and dishonest deeds. It's time to remember, Letterman earned his jacket. Your symbols of achievement pale-in comparison.