With the election over, Thanksgiving around the corner, and the weather turning a bit nippy, I’ve decided to take care of some important household chores: to defrost the refrigerator, winterize the sillcocks, and empty out my file of old lies.
Most people don’t understand the importance of getting rid of old lies. Most think that a lie forgotten is a lie forgiven. Wrong!
You may not have paid full price for a lie, at the time you acquired it, but sooner or later you’re going to have to pay – with interest.
Lies are a kind of emotional cholesterol.
You know that it’s bad to let ice build up in the refrigerator, right?
You know that if you don’t turn off the water before the first big freeze, your pipes could burst, right?
But for some reason most of us think that we can carry around an endless supply of lies, without similar consequences.
They don’t even have to be your own lies to do you harm: holding on to the lies of others is just as dangerous to your well being.
That guy that won’t get off your butt on the highway: chances are he’s got a fat wad of old lies just behind his eyes, giving him an awful headache.
The woman screaming at the cashier at the donut shop, because he put cream in her coffee and she takes it black – yep, another case of a build-up of old lies.
When I went ballistic last week, tossing things about my son’s room as I lectured him about neatness, it was definitely another case of old lies that needed to be bagged and trashed.
Don’t worry, I’m not advocating honesty – heck no: unfettered honesty is a one-way street, and the honest person is usually going the wrong way.
No, I’m simply arguing for a small degree of intellectual clarity.
You can still be a pompous ass, as long as you admit it.
By the way, let me state here for the record that I am a pompous ass.
(Oooh, that felt good!)
All you really have to do to get rid of old lies is admit that they are lies, to yourself. But of course that’s harder than it sounds.
Self-delusion is a magic trick that most of us master at an early age.
It is easier in the winter though.
When the trees are shedding their leaves, it’s easier to shed our own illusions.
When we are forced to move inside, and live with other people, it’s hard to pretend we are perfect.
So okay, I am going to drag out some old lies now and leave them on the curb: if you see any you like, be my guest.
But before you consider my lies, maybe you should go through your own stuff, and get rid of some of the older ones.
A Partial List of My Lies
Lie #1: Everybody loves me. Somehow this one grows back every year, like a wart on my elbow. I know right now that there are quite few people out there who don’t like me at all. But by the spring my indestructible ego will burst through the dirt like a cheap tulip.
Lie #2: Any moment now my genius will be discovered. (Do you see a pattern developing here?)
Lie #3: President Bush was going to get rid of Rumsfeld, no matter what happened on Election Day.
Lie #4: I only had one beer when I went out with my brothers-in-law to get the pizza the other night. (I actually didn’t have any beers. I had a few shots of whisky though, or several, whichever is more.)
Lie #5: The price of gas had nothing to do with the election.
Lie #6: Honest honey, I don’t mind at all when you come home late and flutter your eyelashes at me while asking if I would mind going out and filling up the tank which you have miraculously managed to empty of all but the last vapors of gasoline.
Lie #7: I think we should give Selectman Sean (no, my name is not Charles) Dodgson his day in court before judging him.
Lie #8: I love Winter.
Lie #9: If I just lose a couple of pounds I will be at my wedding weight.
Lie #10: I knew what a sillcock was before I wrote this.
Sure, I’ve got many more, and some juicy ones at that: but I don’t get paid enough to give those up, here and now.
Besides, as I said before, this isn’t about honesty, it’s about self-preservation: it’s about heading into a long cold winter without too much excess baggage; it’s about shedding lies like leaves that, while they might have helped keep me warm during the months ahead, would have weighed me down once the snows began to fall.
The election’s over. The summer’s long past. The nights are getting longer so I am lightening up.
Friday, November 17, 2006
Heathen Heart
Leave it to me to find the cloud in the silver lining.
It was a perfect night for it though, wasn’t it: the waxing moon flitting between snatches of tattered cloud; the air crisp and surprisingly warm; the dry pavement decorous with construction-paper leaves.
Or rather it could have been a perfect night, if it had been accompanied by a suitably mischievous celebration.
From a distance there seemed to be all the ingredients: witches and demons, pouting teenagers, an endless array of meticulously carved pumpkins just waiting for dismemberment and, the chief component - complacent well-meaning adults.
But up close it was clear, all the boos were bordering on boring.
No, actually, to be honest, this past Halloween night crossed that border, and was firmly entrenched in the actually boring.
Where once homeowners offered bowls of eyeballs, inflatable pumpkins noisily reigned.
Where once slightly berserk fathers lay breathless in cardboard coffins for minutes - just for a chance to strike fear in a five year old, spray-can cobwebs were all that could be seen.
Of course it might all have been a function –as the scientists say, of the setting.
Has our neighborhood matured to the point where Halloween has lost its potency?
Are we missing one or more of the components that give this special evening its edge?
Yes, yes, and yes again.
It’s not that everyone did not do, play, or dress up, for their part.
It’s that Halloween – at least in my neighborhood, seems to have lost its heathen heart.
About the worst thing I can say about the behavior of the locals on this autumn evening, was that they drove a bit fast. Or perhaps the worse thing I can say is that there is nothing really bad I can say about the spooks in my neighborhood.
Of course Trick or Treating is effected by, among many other things, the day of the week on which it falls.
A Tuesday night Halloween probably tends to be tamer than, say, the same holiday when it falls on a Friday.
But again, I sense that the final effect was more than just the sum of those particular parts. I sense that Halloween has passed a certain cultural milepost, and will never be the same.
Part of the problem is that Halloween has become like Valentine’s Day: an economic obligation with very little connection to the myths and compulsions that were once at the center of all of our holidays.
And few can resist the socio-economic sales pressure.
No matter how life is progressing, how the job is going, or what horrible calamities have occurred around the world and been reported in gloomy, gory, CSI-specific detail, when Valentine’s day arrives, otherwise sane men drag themselves to the convenience store for a box of dark chocolate remorse.
Halloween has become just such an obligation: an unholy day of obligation.
And that’s no fun.
And then there are the treats.
There was a time, in the not too distant past, when the treats were as much of a trick as the tricks are today treats. That is, there was a time, long ago it seems, that when you got home and spilled the contents of your grocery bag on to the kitchen table you could expect the unexpected.
I’m not talking about the urban myths of razor blades in apples, or needles in gum, jellied fingers, candied rats, or anything that melodramatic. I’m simply recalling that neighbors found a wide variety of interesting, sometimes odd ways to define the treats that they were expected to provide.
You might receive a candy apple, or a sweetened popcorn ball, a foil-wrapped brownie, or a slice of cake. Or you might uncover sticks of gum, Turkish Taffy, Mary Janes, even pencils and erasers.
Candy bars were the exception: diamonds in the rough.
This past Halloween night though, the take was decidedly corporate – decidedly uniform, completely predictable, remarkably bland.
Of the 97 treats acquired by a certain eighty-pound eight year old, over 75% came from three mighty corporate confection makers.
These three corporate giants – Hershey, Mars, and Nestles, together have a net worth of 279 billion dollars, or something like that.
These three corporate giants use enough sugar every year to create a Pluto-sized piece of taffy that, properly gummed by a million hyperactive children, could stretch to the Sun and back again.
And what are they doing with all that sticky money? Are they creating Willie Wonka-like fantasies, magical gum drops, building castles out of cotton candy or anything imaginative at all?
Apparently not.
Just more of the same.
28 varieties of Peanut Butter Cup.
17 different ways of packaging M&Ms.
Boring.
Bland.
Predictable.
Like Halloween.
At the bottom of our 8-year olds pillow case, I did manage to find a smattering of Smarties, a handful of Double Bubble, and a single ‘cream soda’ Dum Dum.
The Smarties, it turns out, are manufactured in Canada.
The Double Bubble – whose full brand name is “America’s Original Double Bubble”, is manufactured in Canada
The Dum Dums, what do you know, were actually made in America.
No popcorn balls though, or chocolate chip cookies.
All of the fathers well behaved.
Even the moon just a bit too perfect.
Boo just a prefix.
Boo-ring: horribly, frighteningly, monstrously boring.
Halloween Night in Corporate America.
It was a perfect night for it though, wasn’t it: the waxing moon flitting between snatches of tattered cloud; the air crisp and surprisingly warm; the dry pavement decorous with construction-paper leaves.
Or rather it could have been a perfect night, if it had been accompanied by a suitably mischievous celebration.
From a distance there seemed to be all the ingredients: witches and demons, pouting teenagers, an endless array of meticulously carved pumpkins just waiting for dismemberment and, the chief component - complacent well-meaning adults.
But up close it was clear, all the boos were bordering on boring.
No, actually, to be honest, this past Halloween night crossed that border, and was firmly entrenched in the actually boring.
Where once homeowners offered bowls of eyeballs, inflatable pumpkins noisily reigned.
Where once slightly berserk fathers lay breathless in cardboard coffins for minutes - just for a chance to strike fear in a five year old, spray-can cobwebs were all that could be seen.
Of course it might all have been a function –as the scientists say, of the setting.
Has our neighborhood matured to the point where Halloween has lost its potency?
Are we missing one or more of the components that give this special evening its edge?
Yes, yes, and yes again.
It’s not that everyone did not do, play, or dress up, for their part.
It’s that Halloween – at least in my neighborhood, seems to have lost its heathen heart.
About the worst thing I can say about the behavior of the locals on this autumn evening, was that they drove a bit fast. Or perhaps the worse thing I can say is that there is nothing really bad I can say about the spooks in my neighborhood.
Of course Trick or Treating is effected by, among many other things, the day of the week on which it falls.
A Tuesday night Halloween probably tends to be tamer than, say, the same holiday when it falls on a Friday.
But again, I sense that the final effect was more than just the sum of those particular parts. I sense that Halloween has passed a certain cultural milepost, and will never be the same.
Part of the problem is that Halloween has become like Valentine’s Day: an economic obligation with very little connection to the myths and compulsions that were once at the center of all of our holidays.
And few can resist the socio-economic sales pressure.
No matter how life is progressing, how the job is going, or what horrible calamities have occurred around the world and been reported in gloomy, gory, CSI-specific detail, when Valentine’s day arrives, otherwise sane men drag themselves to the convenience store for a box of dark chocolate remorse.
Halloween has become just such an obligation: an unholy day of obligation.
And that’s no fun.
And then there are the treats.
There was a time, in the not too distant past, when the treats were as much of a trick as the tricks are today treats. That is, there was a time, long ago it seems, that when you got home and spilled the contents of your grocery bag on to the kitchen table you could expect the unexpected.
I’m not talking about the urban myths of razor blades in apples, or needles in gum, jellied fingers, candied rats, or anything that melodramatic. I’m simply recalling that neighbors found a wide variety of interesting, sometimes odd ways to define the treats that they were expected to provide.
You might receive a candy apple, or a sweetened popcorn ball, a foil-wrapped brownie, or a slice of cake. Or you might uncover sticks of gum, Turkish Taffy, Mary Janes, even pencils and erasers.
Candy bars were the exception: diamonds in the rough.
This past Halloween night though, the take was decidedly corporate – decidedly uniform, completely predictable, remarkably bland.
Of the 97 treats acquired by a certain eighty-pound eight year old, over 75% came from three mighty corporate confection makers.
These three corporate giants – Hershey, Mars, and Nestles, together have a net worth of 279 billion dollars, or something like that.
These three corporate giants use enough sugar every year to create a Pluto-sized piece of taffy that, properly gummed by a million hyperactive children, could stretch to the Sun and back again.
And what are they doing with all that sticky money? Are they creating Willie Wonka-like fantasies, magical gum drops, building castles out of cotton candy or anything imaginative at all?
Apparently not.
Just more of the same.
28 varieties of Peanut Butter Cup.
17 different ways of packaging M&Ms.
Boring.
Bland.
Predictable.
Like Halloween.
At the bottom of our 8-year olds pillow case, I did manage to find a smattering of Smarties, a handful of Double Bubble, and a single ‘cream soda’ Dum Dum.
The Smarties, it turns out, are manufactured in Canada.
The Double Bubble – whose full brand name is “America’s Original Double Bubble”, is manufactured in Canada
The Dum Dums, what do you know, were actually made in America.
No popcorn balls though, or chocolate chip cookies.
All of the fathers well behaved.
Even the moon just a bit too perfect.
Boo just a prefix.
Boo-ring: horribly, frighteningly, monstrously boring.
Halloween Night in Corporate America.
Scariest Night of the Year
What are you going to dress up as this year?
Something scary?
Who are you going to vote for?
They’re the same thing stupid.
Or haven’t you been listening to our own Lieutenant Governor, Fairly Sleezy?
Oh, I am sorry, did I mispronounce her name?
My son asked if we would buy him some heelies. No, we said, they leave marks on the floor.
Well, then, can I at least vote for a Heelie, he asked?
That’s the spirit: if you can’t beat them, scare them.
Speaking of spooks, did you see the film of Rush Limbaugh revealing that Michael J. Fox was faking his Parkinsons’ symptoms for political effect?
What a laugh: Rush was flapping his arms and rolling back and forth, tilting his head one way and then the other.
And then he did his imitation of Fox.
Watching Rush I was reminded of the Wizard of Oz, and thinking that if Rush had been behind the screen, that wimpy, mincing Scarecrow would never have been elected Mayor of Emerald City.
Rush knows all, sees all.
For example, Rush knows all about faking medical symptoms in order to qualify for those real good pharmaceuticals.
Funny though, I went all over town and I couldn’t find a Rush costume for rent. The closest I could come, was The Thing.
Maybe I’ll dress up as Michael J. Fox this year: Lord knows he scares a lot of people.
Rush used to scare a lot of people too: now they just grimace.
It’s getting harder and harder to scare people, in my opinion.
But that doesn’t stop them from trying.
Congressional Republicans say that if a sixty year old grandmother from San Francisco becomes the Speaker of the House, the end is near.
They don’t specify which ‘end’ they are talking about though: the end of free golf in Guam courtesy of Jack Abramoff; the end of free beer at the annual Conservative Caucus Polka Party and Prayer Meeeting; or the end of the world?
They’re not too concerned about Osama running around free in the mountains of Afghanistan, but that senior citizen from San Fran has them really worried.
Nancy Pelosi Halloween masks are selling briskly in the Congressional Gift Shop, but across the country they aren’t too much in demand.
Now Dick Cheney masks, those are scary: expensive too, with the shotgun.
Surprisingly, George W. Bush masks don’t sell very well either: not scary enough.
I think it’s the ‘Boy Who Cried Wolf’ effect. He was scary when he threatened us with compassionate conservatism. He was scary when he told us that Brownie was on the job down New Orleans. He was even scary when he showed us charts and satellite photos that proved that Saddam had specially outfitted Hummers in which he could pop substantial amounts of Kettle Corn and sell it below market prices.
But he went to that well once too often.
Admit it, when you hear him say ‘cut and run’, or ‘stay the course’, or ‘if my Generals need more kettle corn, they’ll get more kettle corn,’ you can’t help but snicker, just a little.
So sales of ‘W’ masks are way down.
In fact, from what I am hearing sales of all the traditional fright masks – from vampires to former Presidents, are way down this year.
Evil is down, but Humor is up.
So I think that I am going to stick with my original idea.
Two friends and I are going door to door as Moe, Larry, and Curly – the Axis of Evil.
We’ve only got one big plastic nuke, but we’re going to pass it back and forth, and while we do, we’re going to yell out, ‘Moe, Larry, the Cheese, Moe, Larry, the Cheese!’.
I understand George W. is a big Stooges fan too.
If he doesn’t have another costume picked out, we’d be willing to let him go poll to poll with us: he can be the fourth Stooge, Curly George.
We’ve got a big night planned.
First we’re going to TP (toilet paper) Saddam’s house in Houston, then call in fake exit polling data to CBS, then build a big wall out of fishing lure along the Mexican border and laugh as the unsuspecting Walmart employees run smack into it in the dark.
It’s the one night of the year when you can get away with these things.
No, not Halloween.
Election night.
Boo!
Something scary?
Who are you going to vote for?
They’re the same thing stupid.
Or haven’t you been listening to our own Lieutenant Governor, Fairly Sleezy?
Oh, I am sorry, did I mispronounce her name?
My son asked if we would buy him some heelies. No, we said, they leave marks on the floor.
Well, then, can I at least vote for a Heelie, he asked?
That’s the spirit: if you can’t beat them, scare them.
Speaking of spooks, did you see the film of Rush Limbaugh revealing that Michael J. Fox was faking his Parkinsons’ symptoms for political effect?
What a laugh: Rush was flapping his arms and rolling back and forth, tilting his head one way and then the other.
And then he did his imitation of Fox.
Watching Rush I was reminded of the Wizard of Oz, and thinking that if Rush had been behind the screen, that wimpy, mincing Scarecrow would never have been elected Mayor of Emerald City.
Rush knows all, sees all.
For example, Rush knows all about faking medical symptoms in order to qualify for those real good pharmaceuticals.
Funny though, I went all over town and I couldn’t find a Rush costume for rent. The closest I could come, was The Thing.
Maybe I’ll dress up as Michael J. Fox this year: Lord knows he scares a lot of people.
Rush used to scare a lot of people too: now they just grimace.
It’s getting harder and harder to scare people, in my opinion.
But that doesn’t stop them from trying.
Congressional Republicans say that if a sixty year old grandmother from San Francisco becomes the Speaker of the House, the end is near.
They don’t specify which ‘end’ they are talking about though: the end of free golf in Guam courtesy of Jack Abramoff; the end of free beer at the annual Conservative Caucus Polka Party and Prayer Meeeting; or the end of the world?
They’re not too concerned about Osama running around free in the mountains of Afghanistan, but that senior citizen from San Fran has them really worried.
Nancy Pelosi Halloween masks are selling briskly in the Congressional Gift Shop, but across the country they aren’t too much in demand.
Now Dick Cheney masks, those are scary: expensive too, with the shotgun.
Surprisingly, George W. Bush masks don’t sell very well either: not scary enough.
I think it’s the ‘Boy Who Cried Wolf’ effect. He was scary when he threatened us with compassionate conservatism. He was scary when he told us that Brownie was on the job down New Orleans. He was even scary when he showed us charts and satellite photos that proved that Saddam had specially outfitted Hummers in which he could pop substantial amounts of Kettle Corn and sell it below market prices.
But he went to that well once too often.
Admit it, when you hear him say ‘cut and run’, or ‘stay the course’, or ‘if my Generals need more kettle corn, they’ll get more kettle corn,’ you can’t help but snicker, just a little.
So sales of ‘W’ masks are way down.
In fact, from what I am hearing sales of all the traditional fright masks – from vampires to former Presidents, are way down this year.
Evil is down, but Humor is up.
So I think that I am going to stick with my original idea.
Two friends and I are going door to door as Moe, Larry, and Curly – the Axis of Evil.
We’ve only got one big plastic nuke, but we’re going to pass it back and forth, and while we do, we’re going to yell out, ‘Moe, Larry, the Cheese, Moe, Larry, the Cheese!’.
I understand George W. is a big Stooges fan too.
If he doesn’t have another costume picked out, we’d be willing to let him go poll to poll with us: he can be the fourth Stooge, Curly George.
We’ve got a big night planned.
First we’re going to TP (toilet paper) Saddam’s house in Houston, then call in fake exit polling data to CBS, then build a big wall out of fishing lure along the Mexican border and laugh as the unsuspecting Walmart employees run smack into it in the dark.
It’s the one night of the year when you can get away with these things.
No, not Halloween.
Election night.
Boo!
The Latest Version
Wouldn’t you think that by version 9.0 you would have a product that works, consistently, permanently?
What if you bought a new house, but you had to wait for version 2.0 before it had a roof?
Version 3.0, now with working toilets!
Version 4.0, now with electricity!
That’s the high tech approach it seems: build something that doesn’t work, and then brazenly announce each new ‘version’ as if you were giving the poor saps that bought the earlier versions a big break.
And get this; you get to pay more for the mistakes they made with the original product!
Along similar lines, I don’t get it when the cable television company announces new technology and asks you to pay for it.
You are already paying a monthly fee, which allows them to run a profitable business, so where do they get off asking you to pay more for improvements to the service you are already paying them to provide?
Digital cable? Digital bull!
That high tech approach is starting to infect the rest of the world too.
What is the Big Dig, but the high-tech, no-fault approach to highway construction.
Ten years into the project and they haven’t figured out how to do what they were hired to do in the first place.
I’ve lost count, but I think we’re up to Big Dig 7.0, with no relief in sight.
The Space Shuttle Program is another example of the ‘don’t worry, we can charge the consumer more for it later’ approach to technological innovation.
Decades into the program and they’ve got astronauts acting like auto mechanics in space, floating around with glue guns and ceramic tiles.
The next ‘specialist’ to go up in the Space Shuttle will be the guy who does the flooring demos Saturday afternoons at Home Depot. After which he’ll show the astronauts how to build a deck on the Space Station.
Or maybe they’ll load those faulty Big Dig tunnels on to the Space Shuttle, and have the Home Depot guys do the repairs in space.
I always thought that engineers were people who figured out exactly how to do something, before the work began.
I always thought that simplicity was one of the characteristics of design excellence.
NASA seems to have a new breed of engineers: Engineers. 8.0
When I was a kid, I first heard the term ‘planned obsolescence’: the notion that companies like Ford and General Motors deliberately designed their vehicles to last ‘only so long’, so people would have to buy more cars.
I know Ford and GM have had their problems in the last few years, but I didn’t realize all their best engineers had been scooped up by NASA.
Of course the real masters, perhaps even the originators of modern, high-tech, no-fault, ain’t life grand engineering, are the folks from Microsoft.
They began with Windows, already an imitation of the Apple operating system, and have been wallpapering over their mistakes ever since.
They don’t even bother to come out with a new version every year anymore. And when they finally do, they don’t worry about it working. As long as it has a few new features that don’t work, a cool new name, a new box, and a new price, they’re good to go!
Of course it takes a year or so just to figure out what they should call the new operating system: the first rule of high tech engineering is ‘market first, figure it out later’.
I think they should work out a deal with one of the big bandage companies, maybe call the next version, Band-Aid-Brand Windows, because as soon it is released it requires ‘patches’. Patches are mini versions of various elements of the new operating system, that don’t work like they’re supposed to.
You usually don’t have to pay for the patches, they come free with the operating system.
A computer operating system is like a toll highway: once you are on, you can’t get off without paying the toll.
I think that they should take $5 off for every patch you have to install.
Maybe they should give money back on toll highways too, if the roads are in bad shape, and construction slows your travel time.
Which brings me to the Bush Administration’s ‘operating system’.
What version of the Iraq War are we on now: I’ve lost count?
They rushed to release the first version – Iraq:WMD, and they’ve been chasing their tails ever since.
They didn’t realize that the public had wised up over the years, and figured out how to get by without buying new versions of computers, or televisions, or wars.
So when the Pentagon released Iraq War Version 2.0: Fledgling Democracy, a lot of Republicans didn’t bother to rush out and buy it, they just stuck with the original.
Then they released Version 3.0: Stay the Course, and it was not compatible with either previous version.
Version 4.0: The Insurgency, soon followed, then 5.0, and soon the war between the various versions of the war was as violent as the war between the actual versions of the war, and the actual soldiers, and insurgents, and the rest.
Yeah, it’s a high tech mess: but I don’t let it get me down.
Whenever I run into these ‘compatibility’ issues, and my PC locks up and a message comes on the screen saying I need to get the latest security patch, I think back to simpler times: days when everything was Version 1.0 - take it or leave it!
The Edsel never made it Version 3.0
That guy with the wooden wings that jumped off the bridge, never got a chance to show us his newer, improved version.
I could buy a #2 lead pencil, but it was just the same as #1, as far as I could tell.
You could add a fancy seat, or put baseball cards on your spokes, but a bike was just a bike.
And the Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich: how can you improve on that?
What if you bought a new house, but you had to wait for version 2.0 before it had a roof?
Version 3.0, now with working toilets!
Version 4.0, now with electricity!
That’s the high tech approach it seems: build something that doesn’t work, and then brazenly announce each new ‘version’ as if you were giving the poor saps that bought the earlier versions a big break.
And get this; you get to pay more for the mistakes they made with the original product!
Along similar lines, I don’t get it when the cable television company announces new technology and asks you to pay for it.
You are already paying a monthly fee, which allows them to run a profitable business, so where do they get off asking you to pay more for improvements to the service you are already paying them to provide?
Digital cable? Digital bull!
That high tech approach is starting to infect the rest of the world too.
What is the Big Dig, but the high-tech, no-fault approach to highway construction.
Ten years into the project and they haven’t figured out how to do what they were hired to do in the first place.
I’ve lost count, but I think we’re up to Big Dig 7.0, with no relief in sight.
The Space Shuttle Program is another example of the ‘don’t worry, we can charge the consumer more for it later’ approach to technological innovation.
Decades into the program and they’ve got astronauts acting like auto mechanics in space, floating around with glue guns and ceramic tiles.
The next ‘specialist’ to go up in the Space Shuttle will be the guy who does the flooring demos Saturday afternoons at Home Depot. After which he’ll show the astronauts how to build a deck on the Space Station.
Or maybe they’ll load those faulty Big Dig tunnels on to the Space Shuttle, and have the Home Depot guys do the repairs in space.
I always thought that engineers were people who figured out exactly how to do something, before the work began.
I always thought that simplicity was one of the characteristics of design excellence.
NASA seems to have a new breed of engineers: Engineers. 8.0
When I was a kid, I first heard the term ‘planned obsolescence’: the notion that companies like Ford and General Motors deliberately designed their vehicles to last ‘only so long’, so people would have to buy more cars.
I know Ford and GM have had their problems in the last few years, but I didn’t realize all their best engineers had been scooped up by NASA.
Of course the real masters, perhaps even the originators of modern, high-tech, no-fault, ain’t life grand engineering, are the folks from Microsoft.
They began with Windows, already an imitation of the Apple operating system, and have been wallpapering over their mistakes ever since.
They don’t even bother to come out with a new version every year anymore. And when they finally do, they don’t worry about it working. As long as it has a few new features that don’t work, a cool new name, a new box, and a new price, they’re good to go!
Of course it takes a year or so just to figure out what they should call the new operating system: the first rule of high tech engineering is ‘market first, figure it out later’.
I think they should work out a deal with one of the big bandage companies, maybe call the next version, Band-Aid-Brand Windows, because as soon it is released it requires ‘patches’. Patches are mini versions of various elements of the new operating system, that don’t work like they’re supposed to.
You usually don’t have to pay for the patches, they come free with the operating system.
A computer operating system is like a toll highway: once you are on, you can’t get off without paying the toll.
I think that they should take $5 off for every patch you have to install.
Maybe they should give money back on toll highways too, if the roads are in bad shape, and construction slows your travel time.
Which brings me to the Bush Administration’s ‘operating system’.
What version of the Iraq War are we on now: I’ve lost count?
They rushed to release the first version – Iraq:WMD, and they’ve been chasing their tails ever since.
They didn’t realize that the public had wised up over the years, and figured out how to get by without buying new versions of computers, or televisions, or wars.
So when the Pentagon released Iraq War Version 2.0: Fledgling Democracy, a lot of Republicans didn’t bother to rush out and buy it, they just stuck with the original.
Then they released Version 3.0: Stay the Course, and it was not compatible with either previous version.
Version 4.0: The Insurgency, soon followed, then 5.0, and soon the war between the various versions of the war was as violent as the war between the actual versions of the war, and the actual soldiers, and insurgents, and the rest.
Yeah, it’s a high tech mess: but I don’t let it get me down.
Whenever I run into these ‘compatibility’ issues, and my PC locks up and a message comes on the screen saying I need to get the latest security patch, I think back to simpler times: days when everything was Version 1.0 - take it or leave it!
The Edsel never made it Version 3.0
That guy with the wooden wings that jumped off the bridge, never got a chance to show us his newer, improved version.
I could buy a #2 lead pencil, but it was just the same as #1, as far as I could tell.
You could add a fancy seat, or put baseball cards on your spokes, but a bike was just a bike.
And the Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich: how can you improve on that?
Keith and Me, Up a Tree
Is Keith still up a tree?
In my ‘yoot’ I had time to follow the exciting adventures of Keith Richards –Rock Star, but not anymore.
Some months back though, I believe I heard that Keith was up a tree, and had another of his famous adventures.
Actually, what I heard was that Keith was up a tree, in Tahiti, and came tumbling down. And all the King of Tahiti’s surgeons, and some in New Zealand as well, were trying to put Keith back together again.
They must have succeeded.
The only bigger news about Keith Richards that there could be - apart from his regular misadventures, would be his long anticipated death: and having not heard that news, I assume that he has recovered.
Weren’t the Stones at Gillette Stadium a few weeks back? I must have missed that one.
Though I am clearly slowing down, in many ways I still mark the passages of my life by the lives of Rock Stars.
I am of an age that saw the golden age of rock and roll, in its prime, in mine.
My first rock concert was a triple bill at a dinner theatre in Gaithersburg, Maryland, featuring Joe Cocker’s Grease Band, Savoy Brown, and the Small Faces (with a singer named Rod Stewart).
The ticket, I remember it well, was priced at $3.50.
But I digress.
I actually never saw the Stones until much later, when they played RFK Stadium (where the Washington Nationals play baseball today), with Stevie Wonder as their opening act.
It was 1972, and Jagger came on to the stage dressed in a colonial outfit with a three-cornered hat. It was the tour in support of their power blues’ double-album ‘Exiles on Main Street’, and so the band included a full horn section, Billy Preston on organ, a half dozen back-up singers, and more.
But, though I didn’t admit it at the time, it was a bad show, in oh so many ways: beginning with the so-called festival seating (no reserved seats), which meant a death-defying queue outside the stadium followed by a mad dash for the grass, hours in the sun waiting for the show to start and then – (probably smart considering the circumstances) the Stones in and out in less than an hour.
But it was also my first in-person look at Keith, looking then like a character from Fritz the Cat: deathly pale, bad shag haircut, frilly shirt, and the ghost of a cigarette – completely turned to ash, miraculously hanging from his smirking lip.
Deathly pale, I said, but that does a disservice to death. Death was rosy by comparison.
Keith was Nosferatu, the undead, and this was 34 years ago!
Age and the occasional functioning credit card have given me the chance to see Keith and Co. many times since, and he has looked, despite advancing years, healthier each time.
Maybe it’s me, my age, and the crap that I have gone through over the last decade or so. Whatever it is, more and more everyday I see the value of survival.
As you get older life starts feeling more and more like a simple child’s game: we’re all sitting cross-legged on the ground, holding hands, and trouble comes skipping up from behind and taps us on the shoulder.
It’s a race.
If trouble beats you round the circle it takes your place in the circle.
It’s that simple.
If you lose the game is over.
If you win, well, there’s the difference: when you are a child if you win you smile, shrug, and move on to the next thing on your schedule.
But as you get older you take a little more pleasure in each of those victories, and in compiling a winning record. And you realize that every time you beat back trouble, you shouldn’t just move on to the next thing on your schedule, you should celebrate.
That’s what Keith means to me, I think, and many others: a celebration of survival.
Everyone jokes about the life he’s lead, the way that life has carved crudely into his once smooth skin, but most also seem to realize that he has a valiant spirit.
That may be the underlying appeal of the music of my generation: that spirit, that fight, that independence. Whatever it is, no one person exemplifies that spirit more than Keith.
Sure, Mick Jagger is an ageless wonder: but there are always exceptions, always the exceptional. That’s Mick.
Keith seems more a regular bloke, blessed with an indomitable spirit.
Mick is like most of us, aware of the time slipping away and, unlike most of us, doing everything he can to forestall it.
But Keith has let life take its shots.
Shot after shot after shot, much of it self-inflicted.
To cite another rock legend - who didn’t survive, Keith’s been “driven by the wind, bitten by the snow, had his head stoved in, but he’s still on his feet and he’s still…willin.”
Keith will be up that tree, with a coconut in one hand, and a guitar in the other, until the end.
I think that’s the way we’d all like to go, up a tree singing ‘Satisfaction’.
In my ‘yoot’ I had time to follow the exciting adventures of Keith Richards –Rock Star, but not anymore.
Some months back though, I believe I heard that Keith was up a tree, and had another of his famous adventures.
Actually, what I heard was that Keith was up a tree, in Tahiti, and came tumbling down. And all the King of Tahiti’s surgeons, and some in New Zealand as well, were trying to put Keith back together again.
They must have succeeded.
The only bigger news about Keith Richards that there could be - apart from his regular misadventures, would be his long anticipated death: and having not heard that news, I assume that he has recovered.
Weren’t the Stones at Gillette Stadium a few weeks back? I must have missed that one.
Though I am clearly slowing down, in many ways I still mark the passages of my life by the lives of Rock Stars.
I am of an age that saw the golden age of rock and roll, in its prime, in mine.
My first rock concert was a triple bill at a dinner theatre in Gaithersburg, Maryland, featuring Joe Cocker’s Grease Band, Savoy Brown, and the Small Faces (with a singer named Rod Stewart).
The ticket, I remember it well, was priced at $3.50.
But I digress.
I actually never saw the Stones until much later, when they played RFK Stadium (where the Washington Nationals play baseball today), with Stevie Wonder as their opening act.
It was 1972, and Jagger came on to the stage dressed in a colonial outfit with a three-cornered hat. It was the tour in support of their power blues’ double-album ‘Exiles on Main Street’, and so the band included a full horn section, Billy Preston on organ, a half dozen back-up singers, and more.
But, though I didn’t admit it at the time, it was a bad show, in oh so many ways: beginning with the so-called festival seating (no reserved seats), which meant a death-defying queue outside the stadium followed by a mad dash for the grass, hours in the sun waiting for the show to start and then – (probably smart considering the circumstances) the Stones in and out in less than an hour.
But it was also my first in-person look at Keith, looking then like a character from Fritz the Cat: deathly pale, bad shag haircut, frilly shirt, and the ghost of a cigarette – completely turned to ash, miraculously hanging from his smirking lip.
Deathly pale, I said, but that does a disservice to death. Death was rosy by comparison.
Keith was Nosferatu, the undead, and this was 34 years ago!
Age and the occasional functioning credit card have given me the chance to see Keith and Co. many times since, and he has looked, despite advancing years, healthier each time.
Maybe it’s me, my age, and the crap that I have gone through over the last decade or so. Whatever it is, more and more everyday I see the value of survival.
As you get older life starts feeling more and more like a simple child’s game: we’re all sitting cross-legged on the ground, holding hands, and trouble comes skipping up from behind and taps us on the shoulder.
It’s a race.
If trouble beats you round the circle it takes your place in the circle.
It’s that simple.
If you lose the game is over.
If you win, well, there’s the difference: when you are a child if you win you smile, shrug, and move on to the next thing on your schedule.
But as you get older you take a little more pleasure in each of those victories, and in compiling a winning record. And you realize that every time you beat back trouble, you shouldn’t just move on to the next thing on your schedule, you should celebrate.
That’s what Keith means to me, I think, and many others: a celebration of survival.
Everyone jokes about the life he’s lead, the way that life has carved crudely into his once smooth skin, but most also seem to realize that he has a valiant spirit.
That may be the underlying appeal of the music of my generation: that spirit, that fight, that independence. Whatever it is, no one person exemplifies that spirit more than Keith.
Sure, Mick Jagger is an ageless wonder: but there are always exceptions, always the exceptional. That’s Mick.
Keith seems more a regular bloke, blessed with an indomitable spirit.
Mick is like most of us, aware of the time slipping away and, unlike most of us, doing everything he can to forestall it.
But Keith has let life take its shots.
Shot after shot after shot, much of it self-inflicted.
To cite another rock legend - who didn’t survive, Keith’s been “driven by the wind, bitten by the snow, had his head stoved in, but he’s still on his feet and he’s still…willin.”
Keith will be up that tree, with a coconut in one hand, and a guitar in the other, until the end.
I think that’s the way we’d all like to go, up a tree singing ‘Satisfaction’.
ReHab for the Rest of Us
What’s the difference between ‘Rehab’ and prison?
About a million dollars?
I’m asking.
I seriously want to know.
Seriously!
Well, maybe I have my personal reasons for inquiring.
Not that I am anticipating a stay at the institution of my choice, anytime soon, but the news of late has piqued my curiosity.
I am curious where – for example, we draw the line: what kinds of high crimes and misdemeanors can be offset by a stint at rehab?
Can you, for example, run someone over with your lawnmower and simply check into a lawn care rehab clinic?
If you are admitted to rehab quickly enough, is every shooting accidental?
Certainly drunk driving is on the list of rehab-able offenses.
It seems if you add the prefix ‘drunk’ to a wide variety of crimes or offenses, the rehabs welcome you with open arms, and law enforcement hesitates.
Drunk Driving? Come on down!
Drunk Racism? Wilkommen.
Drunk Lewdness? Naughty, naughty!
Drunk Writing? Well, with my luck that’s probably where they draw the line. We just can’t tolerate misplaced modifiers, can we?
It seems that the rehabs are available to anyone, whatever their faux pas, as long as they arrive with checkbook in hand.
Or, that they have made previous arrangements: there are probably insurance policies that the moderately well-to-do can purchase and which provide the policy owner with a limousine, a press release, and an experienced specialist to represent you on the tube.
How else can you explain all these quick getaways?
Whatever they have done, give them credit for having a plan in place.
One moment the star is stumbling about, cursing at the police while the cameras roll, and the next (alakazam, alakazee) they have disappeared - like Alice, down a velvet lined rabbit hole.
I imagine the rehab world is like the little island in the classic television show, “The Prisoner”: everybody in their own little numbered bungalow, with plenty to read, brass bands playing in the gazebo, the trees full of paparazzi-shaped fruit.
With such a world waiting, it is not surprising that those who can afford it seem to visit so often.
And it’s a fact that, for many in the entertainment industry, a well-publicized weekend stay at a clinic actually increases their chances of getting a plum part, or at least getting their picture in TV Guide.
They call it human interest, but it’s really something a bit tawdrier.
Aw, who am I fooling: I’m more than curious about the lifestyles of the rich and rehabbed, I’m jealous.
I‘m pouting because I don’t think it’s fair that the rich and famous (or the well insured) can have such an easy time of it when they screw up.
I’m not saying that the rich should pay a bigger price for their indiscretions, but rather, that there should be some kind of rehab for the rest of us.
Let me hear it:
Rehab for the rest of us!
Rehab for the rest of us!
Rehab for the rest of us!
I won’t ever need rehab for driving my Lamborghini through the lobby of the Hard Rock Hotel, but there have been many times when I could have used a combination elaborate excuse and weekend getaway for lesser crimes.
When I forgot to pay the bus fee for my eight year old – for example, and someone had to drive him to school for a week or so.
Would it have been too much to ask that, when my wife wanted to confront me with that ‘brain cramp’, I was suddenly unavailable for comment and, rumor has it, holed up in a single room at the Radisson?
Who among us regular folk hasn’t forgotten to take Old Ironsides to the auto repair shop before the inspection sticker expired?
But do you think just once – instead of getting pulled over in the neighborhood by a local cop with his lights flashing, I could instead disappear from the scene and one of the hosts of The Good, Bad and the Uugly could, moments later, read a statement on live cable access television saying I had been admitted to the Barney Fife Rehabilitation Center?
While the rich and famous have well-dressed spokespeople who offer second-hand confessions about addictions to painkillers, alcoholism, or former membership in the Klu Klux Klan, my spokesperson would reveal a “long-time habit of falling asleep in front of the TV”.
“15 years ago”, my spokesperson would continue, “Mr. Mand was treated for a failure to properly balance his checkbook, resulting in the electricity being shut off. Last Saturday morning he suffered a relapse and has been admitted to his cousin’s until his wife chills out”.
When it comes right down to it, rehab is just one heck of a great excuse.
It’s a stomach ache before the big test.
The one thing that Mel Gibson and I have in common is that neither of us ever wants to admit to screwing up.
What is so damned special about admitting a mistake, anyway?
Does it change things? No.
Does it make us better people?
Maybe the Pilgrims had the right idea.
Spend a weekend with your head and arms in the ‘stocks’ downtown, and you were good to go.
But that’s not going to happen, at least not to Mel or MAF53, or Congressman Kennedy.
No, those guys are going to rehab – the kind with the bungalows and the breakfast buffet, and complementary terrycloth robes. But for the average schmo, like you and me, I am afraid that the best we can hope for is to see our names in the Police Log, spend a night on the couch, and put up with smirks on the faces of our friends and neighbors.
Life is just not fair.
About a million dollars?
I’m asking.
I seriously want to know.
Seriously!
Well, maybe I have my personal reasons for inquiring.
Not that I am anticipating a stay at the institution of my choice, anytime soon, but the news of late has piqued my curiosity.
I am curious where – for example, we draw the line: what kinds of high crimes and misdemeanors can be offset by a stint at rehab?
Can you, for example, run someone over with your lawnmower and simply check into a lawn care rehab clinic?
If you are admitted to rehab quickly enough, is every shooting accidental?
Certainly drunk driving is on the list of rehab-able offenses.
It seems if you add the prefix ‘drunk’ to a wide variety of crimes or offenses, the rehabs welcome you with open arms, and law enforcement hesitates.
Drunk Driving? Come on down!
Drunk Racism? Wilkommen.
Drunk Lewdness? Naughty, naughty!
Drunk Writing? Well, with my luck that’s probably where they draw the line. We just can’t tolerate misplaced modifiers, can we?
It seems that the rehabs are available to anyone, whatever their faux pas, as long as they arrive with checkbook in hand.
Or, that they have made previous arrangements: there are probably insurance policies that the moderately well-to-do can purchase and which provide the policy owner with a limousine, a press release, and an experienced specialist to represent you on the tube.
How else can you explain all these quick getaways?
Whatever they have done, give them credit for having a plan in place.
One moment the star is stumbling about, cursing at the police while the cameras roll, and the next (alakazam, alakazee) they have disappeared - like Alice, down a velvet lined rabbit hole.
I imagine the rehab world is like the little island in the classic television show, “The Prisoner”: everybody in their own little numbered bungalow, with plenty to read, brass bands playing in the gazebo, the trees full of paparazzi-shaped fruit.
With such a world waiting, it is not surprising that those who can afford it seem to visit so often.
And it’s a fact that, for many in the entertainment industry, a well-publicized weekend stay at a clinic actually increases their chances of getting a plum part, or at least getting their picture in TV Guide.
They call it human interest, but it’s really something a bit tawdrier.
Aw, who am I fooling: I’m more than curious about the lifestyles of the rich and rehabbed, I’m jealous.
I‘m pouting because I don’t think it’s fair that the rich and famous (or the well insured) can have such an easy time of it when they screw up.
I’m not saying that the rich should pay a bigger price for their indiscretions, but rather, that there should be some kind of rehab for the rest of us.
Let me hear it:
Rehab for the rest of us!
Rehab for the rest of us!
Rehab for the rest of us!
I won’t ever need rehab for driving my Lamborghini through the lobby of the Hard Rock Hotel, but there have been many times when I could have used a combination elaborate excuse and weekend getaway for lesser crimes.
When I forgot to pay the bus fee for my eight year old – for example, and someone had to drive him to school for a week or so.
Would it have been too much to ask that, when my wife wanted to confront me with that ‘brain cramp’, I was suddenly unavailable for comment and, rumor has it, holed up in a single room at the Radisson?
Who among us regular folk hasn’t forgotten to take Old Ironsides to the auto repair shop before the inspection sticker expired?
But do you think just once – instead of getting pulled over in the neighborhood by a local cop with his lights flashing, I could instead disappear from the scene and one of the hosts of The Good, Bad and the Uugly could, moments later, read a statement on live cable access television saying I had been admitted to the Barney Fife Rehabilitation Center?
While the rich and famous have well-dressed spokespeople who offer second-hand confessions about addictions to painkillers, alcoholism, or former membership in the Klu Klux Klan, my spokesperson would reveal a “long-time habit of falling asleep in front of the TV”.
“15 years ago”, my spokesperson would continue, “Mr. Mand was treated for a failure to properly balance his checkbook, resulting in the electricity being shut off. Last Saturday morning he suffered a relapse and has been admitted to his cousin’s until his wife chills out”.
When it comes right down to it, rehab is just one heck of a great excuse.
It’s a stomach ache before the big test.
The one thing that Mel Gibson and I have in common is that neither of us ever wants to admit to screwing up.
What is so damned special about admitting a mistake, anyway?
Does it change things? No.
Does it make us better people?
Maybe the Pilgrims had the right idea.
Spend a weekend with your head and arms in the ‘stocks’ downtown, and you were good to go.
But that’s not going to happen, at least not to Mel or MAF53, or Congressman Kennedy.
No, those guys are going to rehab – the kind with the bungalows and the breakfast buffet, and complementary terrycloth robes. But for the average schmo, like you and me, I am afraid that the best we can hope for is to see our names in the Police Log, spend a night on the couch, and put up with smirks on the faces of our friends and neighbors.
Life is just not fair.
Who Loves Ya Baby?
What loves ya baby?
From what I am hearing, that’s a good question.
You can’t go anywhere these days without some expert telling you that your friends and family are up to no good.
If anyone should know these people, it’s you: they’re your family.
Not so fast, the experts say: statistics don’t lie. Three out of every two wives, one third of all pets, and 200% of all characters in the ‘soaps’ will break your freakin heart if you give them half the chance.
Wise up, the wise guys say, or you’re going to wake up in the poor house, wearing nothing but tire tracks.
Look at poor Sir Paul McCartney: he married a one-legged girl and – after a polite pause, even she ran off.
Relationships, it seems, are just another form of communicable disease.
To be forewarned is to be forearmed.
And to be forewarned is to know the signs.
According to the folks at Hanky Panky Services, Inc., Sign #1 is a clean shirt
If your significant other suddenly changes their shirt, or their shoes, or the pants that they told you just the other day were a bit too tight, look in the phone book under liar, liar, pants on fire.
Sign #2: Sudden Weight Loss
If your close companion uncharacteristically passes up a third helping of Hamburger Helper, then winks at you, and pats their stomach to acknowledge that they are, in fact, a bit overweight – check EBAY for a deal on miniature cameras.
Sign #3: Secret Vacation Spot
If you come across paperwork indicating that your better half has bought a vacation home with a Jacuzzi, a sauna, and a master bedroom overlooking the Danube, oil up your collection of authentic Incan machetes.
Sign #4: Overtime
If your confidante suddenly starts to put in extra hours at work, extra time at the gym, runs for office, takes up fishing, or goes out to mow the lawn before you even ask, who’s fooling whom?
Sign #5: Advice
If your ‘best bud’ surprises you by seriously contemplating all the free advice being dispensed on the television, something’s rotten on Denmark Drive.
That last one’s the key.
It all starts, I would argue, with listening to all this unsolicited advice.
When did you ever get any unsolicited advice, that wasn’t asking you to be afraid?
Unsolicited advice comes generally originates with individuals who have personal experience taking the wrong advice.
The best psychiatrists are psychotic.
Or to put it more plainly, its human nature: once you get screwed, you want everyone else to feel as bad.
Misery loves company – especially if the company is willing to pay cash for that advice.
And that’s where I really draw the line. Or perhaps I should admit that’s where the line has been drawn for me: because sooner or later, the people giving out all that free advice will want to be paid.
And I just can’t afford it.
Maybe that’s what gives me not only the right, but the ability to ignore all that good advice: because I’m too poor.
Without the cash, I can’t afford to buy the new shirt that might make my wife suspicious, or the new pants that might make me just that much more appealing to the hovering home wreckers out there.
Without a big bankroll I can’t afford the Lean Cuisines and Fat Free Salad Dressing, or the Laughing Cow cheese, or the Steak and Grapefruit Diet, all of which might make me a far more appealing specimen to begin with.
I certainly can’t afford a secret hideaway, or even a weekend at the Cuddles and Bubbles Suite at the Codpiece Motel in Hanson. And there are not many women out there willing to drive to the mountains and put up a pup tent for love. Hell, there aren’t too many married women who are willing to sleep in a tent for a night, whatever the excuse...
As far as free advice goes, well you know me: I’d much rather give it out than take it in. And after a long day of playing the know-it-all, I have absolute no patience for Oprah or any of her friends.
Coincidentally, the wife just loves the Oprah.
She doesn’t get to see her show though: she usually doesn’t make it home until 5:30 or so. Some nights she’s much later than that because, to be honest about it, she’s the banker in this family.
Last week she went on this special ‘Financial Planning Weekend’, at some Inn up in New Hampshire, with some of her friends from her work.
We laughed about how we were really taking those financial advisers for a ride, considering we had no money to invest. But I was still glad to see her get a little time away from work and the kids.
I tell you, for all the stress she’s under, at work and at home, I am amazed how relaxed she seems.
When I ask her how she does it, she just winks and say, ‘that’s my little secret’.
If I didn’t know better…
You want some free advice?
Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself: that and the bill from the lawyers.
From what I am hearing, that’s a good question.
You can’t go anywhere these days without some expert telling you that your friends and family are up to no good.
If anyone should know these people, it’s you: they’re your family.
Not so fast, the experts say: statistics don’t lie. Three out of every two wives, one third of all pets, and 200% of all characters in the ‘soaps’ will break your freakin heart if you give them half the chance.
Wise up, the wise guys say, or you’re going to wake up in the poor house, wearing nothing but tire tracks.
Look at poor Sir Paul McCartney: he married a one-legged girl and – after a polite pause, even she ran off.
Relationships, it seems, are just another form of communicable disease.
To be forewarned is to be forearmed.
And to be forewarned is to know the signs.
According to the folks at Hanky Panky Services, Inc., Sign #1 is a clean shirt
If your significant other suddenly changes their shirt, or their shoes, or the pants that they told you just the other day were a bit too tight, look in the phone book under liar, liar, pants on fire.
Sign #2: Sudden Weight Loss
If your close companion uncharacteristically passes up a third helping of Hamburger Helper, then winks at you, and pats their stomach to acknowledge that they are, in fact, a bit overweight – check EBAY for a deal on miniature cameras.
Sign #3: Secret Vacation Spot
If you come across paperwork indicating that your better half has bought a vacation home with a Jacuzzi, a sauna, and a master bedroom overlooking the Danube, oil up your collection of authentic Incan machetes.
Sign #4: Overtime
If your confidante suddenly starts to put in extra hours at work, extra time at the gym, runs for office, takes up fishing, or goes out to mow the lawn before you even ask, who’s fooling whom?
Sign #5: Advice
If your ‘best bud’ surprises you by seriously contemplating all the free advice being dispensed on the television, something’s rotten on Denmark Drive.
That last one’s the key.
It all starts, I would argue, with listening to all this unsolicited advice.
When did you ever get any unsolicited advice, that wasn’t asking you to be afraid?
Unsolicited advice comes generally originates with individuals who have personal experience taking the wrong advice.
The best psychiatrists are psychotic.
Or to put it more plainly, its human nature: once you get screwed, you want everyone else to feel as bad.
Misery loves company – especially if the company is willing to pay cash for that advice.
And that’s where I really draw the line. Or perhaps I should admit that’s where the line has been drawn for me: because sooner or later, the people giving out all that free advice will want to be paid.
And I just can’t afford it.
Maybe that’s what gives me not only the right, but the ability to ignore all that good advice: because I’m too poor.
Without the cash, I can’t afford to buy the new shirt that might make my wife suspicious, or the new pants that might make me just that much more appealing to the hovering home wreckers out there.
Without a big bankroll I can’t afford the Lean Cuisines and Fat Free Salad Dressing, or the Laughing Cow cheese, or the Steak and Grapefruit Diet, all of which might make me a far more appealing specimen to begin with.
I certainly can’t afford a secret hideaway, or even a weekend at the Cuddles and Bubbles Suite at the Codpiece Motel in Hanson. And there are not many women out there willing to drive to the mountains and put up a pup tent for love. Hell, there aren’t too many married women who are willing to sleep in a tent for a night, whatever the excuse...
As far as free advice goes, well you know me: I’d much rather give it out than take it in. And after a long day of playing the know-it-all, I have absolute no patience for Oprah or any of her friends.
Coincidentally, the wife just loves the Oprah.
She doesn’t get to see her show though: she usually doesn’t make it home until 5:30 or so. Some nights she’s much later than that because, to be honest about it, she’s the banker in this family.
Last week she went on this special ‘Financial Planning Weekend’, at some Inn up in New Hampshire, with some of her friends from her work.
We laughed about how we were really taking those financial advisers for a ride, considering we had no money to invest. But I was still glad to see her get a little time away from work and the kids.
I tell you, for all the stress she’s under, at work and at home, I am amazed how relaxed she seems.
When I ask her how she does it, she just winks and say, ‘that’s my little secret’.
If I didn’t know better…
You want some free advice?
Don’t bite the hand that feeds you.
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself: that and the bill from the lawyers.
A Day at the Polls (Apologies to the Marx Brothers)
You missed a big opportunity last week.
While the polls were open I stood on Bourne Road, practically saying ‘Here I am, take your best shot!’
I was doing ‘visibility’, for the candidate of my choice.
In this day and age it seems silly to think that you can affect the outcome of an election by holding a sign and doing the Queen Elizabeth.
You’d think they’d have come up with something a little more high-tech by now.
Then again, Chris Gabrieli spent $8,000,000.00 on television ads, and he lost. He could have used a few more people holding signs, and grinning foolishly.
So there I was on Election Day, outside of the South Elementary, all by my lonesome, watching the cars closely, ready to duck the occasional soft-boiled egg.
But for the first 30 minutes it was just me, and my son.
He stayed with me until the buses started to arrive, and then just walked up the access road to school. For him it was an adventure, a real break from his routine: for me, a bit boring at first.
I brought a walkman and headphones, and was planning on listening to a recording of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” as I stood there.
Who would know?
‘Visibility’ is a lot like a long vacation drive: the only thing between you and your destination is boredom.
I brought a chair too, but thought better of sitting down. The headphones were fine – but sitting down on the job would be a tacit admission that my heart was not really in it.
But my heart was not really in it.
I strongly support my candidate, and have done a variety of things to support his election, but I’m too old to hold a sign and grin at passing strangers.
So I grinned, and held on to consciousness, instead.
And then the competition started to arrive.
How could I sit down when the opposition’s volunteers remained standing, waving, and looking so damned enthusiastic?
There was a good chance, I thought, that seeing me with my sign would convince voters to choose the opposition.
But it didn’t seem to matter, early on: apart from an early morning rush the voters were few and far between.
So I grinned at the street.
And stared into the cloudless sky.
And I held my sign up for the early birds: mostly the landscape crews who seemed surprised to see us there.
By 8:30 a.m. or so, across from me in a patch of grass and shade there were several other volunteers: a Reilly sign holder; a Sullivan sign holder; and the better part of two families waving a collection of placards, signs and banners urging people to vote Yes on Question One.
Now that was some serious ‘Visibility’.
Without being overtly sexist, let me say that the Vote Yes families were far more pleasant to look at than yours truly.
They turned their visibility assignment into a picnic.
They sat down – on beach chairs, or on blankets in the grass.
Embarrassed, I remained standing.
They had youth, fashionable clothes, cute kids, and juice boxes.
I had age, old jeans, and a lukewarm bottle of water.
Thank goodness my candidate wasn’t up against them.
When people finished voting and drove past our area again, most seemed to deliberately turn away from me as they drove by.
But when the same cars passed the Vote Yes Float they slowed, smiled, waved, threw kisses, posed for pictures, or helped with the barbeque.
I am joking about the float, but not much else
One of their supporters even had a bull horn that played show tunes.
And they didn’t have just one lone volunteer, squinting into the sun and casting furtive glances down at his watch.
They had groups of mothers with hordes of children, working 3 or 4-hour shifts, who gave way to identical looking and equally enthusiastic replacements.
It may have been the sun, but I got the feeling that Plymouth was changing, evolving, right before my eyes: from a small, parochial, somewhat slow-moving blue-collar town, to an energetic, gas-guzzling homes along the fairway kind of community.
The winners seem to come in fleets of pastel SUVs with matching baby seats driven by blonde mothers in Capri pants.
Standing all day at Precinct 9, at the entrance to the school, you got the impression that there was a world-wide shortage of men.
The school buses were driven, for the most part, by women.
The teachers were predominantly female.
And most of the volunteers were women as well...
From where I stood it seemed that women were out-voting the men 2-1.
But then again, I probably took more notice of the women.
And I am not sure how clear I was thinking as the day progressed.
From my position on Bourne Road, I faced directly into the sun. I felt my cheeks beginning to burn just after noon, but I had to grin and bear it.
I had anticipated an overcast day, with cool temperatures, and so was dressed accordingly.
Instead it was almost a cloudless day, near 80 degrees
I remained vigilant, and would have probably taken a seat after the sun went down and the voting slowed, but that didn’t happen. When the sun went down the voting intensified.
In the end, as you know, my sense that YES women were dominating the process and would swamp the opposition, was a bit off the mark. I’ve learned that at other precincts there were many YES men too. In Precinct 9, where I stood all day, it turns out there were slightly more “NO” votes overall..
Town-wide though, the Soccer Moms won a big victory.
My guy won too, no thanks to me.
It also seemed a big (though probably temporary) victory over apathy, as the turnout approached 50%.
The only big losers were those who would have liked to give me a piece of their mind, or a fresh tomato.
Better luck next time.
While the polls were open I stood on Bourne Road, practically saying ‘Here I am, take your best shot!’
I was doing ‘visibility’, for the candidate of my choice.
In this day and age it seems silly to think that you can affect the outcome of an election by holding a sign and doing the Queen Elizabeth.
You’d think they’d have come up with something a little more high-tech by now.
Then again, Chris Gabrieli spent $8,000,000.00 on television ads, and he lost. He could have used a few more people holding signs, and grinning foolishly.
So there I was on Election Day, outside of the South Elementary, all by my lonesome, watching the cars closely, ready to duck the occasional soft-boiled egg.
But for the first 30 minutes it was just me, and my son.
He stayed with me until the buses started to arrive, and then just walked up the access road to school. For him it was an adventure, a real break from his routine: for me, a bit boring at first.
I brought a walkman and headphones, and was planning on listening to a recording of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” as I stood there.
Who would know?
‘Visibility’ is a lot like a long vacation drive: the only thing between you and your destination is boredom.
I brought a chair too, but thought better of sitting down. The headphones were fine – but sitting down on the job would be a tacit admission that my heart was not really in it.
But my heart was not really in it.
I strongly support my candidate, and have done a variety of things to support his election, but I’m too old to hold a sign and grin at passing strangers.
So I grinned, and held on to consciousness, instead.
And then the competition started to arrive.
How could I sit down when the opposition’s volunteers remained standing, waving, and looking so damned enthusiastic?
There was a good chance, I thought, that seeing me with my sign would convince voters to choose the opposition.
But it didn’t seem to matter, early on: apart from an early morning rush the voters were few and far between.
So I grinned at the street.
And stared into the cloudless sky.
And I held my sign up for the early birds: mostly the landscape crews who seemed surprised to see us there.
By 8:30 a.m. or so, across from me in a patch of grass and shade there were several other volunteers: a Reilly sign holder; a Sullivan sign holder; and the better part of two families waving a collection of placards, signs and banners urging people to vote Yes on Question One.
Now that was some serious ‘Visibility’.
Without being overtly sexist, let me say that the Vote Yes families were far more pleasant to look at than yours truly.
They turned their visibility assignment into a picnic.
They sat down – on beach chairs, or on blankets in the grass.
Embarrassed, I remained standing.
They had youth, fashionable clothes, cute kids, and juice boxes.
I had age, old jeans, and a lukewarm bottle of water.
Thank goodness my candidate wasn’t up against them.
When people finished voting and drove past our area again, most seemed to deliberately turn away from me as they drove by.
But when the same cars passed the Vote Yes Float they slowed, smiled, waved, threw kisses, posed for pictures, or helped with the barbeque.
I am joking about the float, but not much else
One of their supporters even had a bull horn that played show tunes.
And they didn’t have just one lone volunteer, squinting into the sun and casting furtive glances down at his watch.
They had groups of mothers with hordes of children, working 3 or 4-hour shifts, who gave way to identical looking and equally enthusiastic replacements.
It may have been the sun, but I got the feeling that Plymouth was changing, evolving, right before my eyes: from a small, parochial, somewhat slow-moving blue-collar town, to an energetic, gas-guzzling homes along the fairway kind of community.
The winners seem to come in fleets of pastel SUVs with matching baby seats driven by blonde mothers in Capri pants.
Standing all day at Precinct 9, at the entrance to the school, you got the impression that there was a world-wide shortage of men.
The school buses were driven, for the most part, by women.
The teachers were predominantly female.
And most of the volunteers were women as well...
From where I stood it seemed that women were out-voting the men 2-1.
But then again, I probably took more notice of the women.
And I am not sure how clear I was thinking as the day progressed.
From my position on Bourne Road, I faced directly into the sun. I felt my cheeks beginning to burn just after noon, but I had to grin and bear it.
I had anticipated an overcast day, with cool temperatures, and so was dressed accordingly.
Instead it was almost a cloudless day, near 80 degrees
I remained vigilant, and would have probably taken a seat after the sun went down and the voting slowed, but that didn’t happen. When the sun went down the voting intensified.
In the end, as you know, my sense that YES women were dominating the process and would swamp the opposition, was a bit off the mark. I’ve learned that at other precincts there were many YES men too. In Precinct 9, where I stood all day, it turns out there were slightly more “NO” votes overall..
Town-wide though, the Soccer Moms won a big victory.
My guy won too, no thanks to me.
It also seemed a big (though probably temporary) victory over apathy, as the turnout approached 50%.
The only big losers were those who would have liked to give me a piece of their mind, or a fresh tomato.
Better luck next time.
Short and Sweet?
Did you miss me?
I wasn’t here last week.
Actually I was here, but my words were not.
Actually they were, but there were too many of them.
Too many words.
It was a small paper, due to the holiday, and they didn’t have enough space for the long column I submitted.
I take full responsibility.
I admit freely that I went on a bit long, even for me.
That’s one of the more difficult aspects of writing a regular column – getting the number of words right.
It’s easy to come up with ideas, but hard to get those ideas to fit. Sometimes I have to coax them out of their shell. Sometimes I have to suck a few back into my mouth. Sometimes, though rarely, I get just the right amount.
I’m not complaining: I’m philosophizing.
I guess if I were a better writer I could get along with fewer words. Longer is not necessarily better.
Brevity, the saying goes, is the soul of wit, and I do so want to be witty. I think sometimes that when I am after wit, but go on too long, I end up with silly.
But perhaps wit without a sufficient number of words could be the definition of sarcasm.
Words are one of the few things that cannot be adequately assessed by quantity.
Most of what we desire in life is improved by quantity: money, love, gas mileage. It is not how many words however: it is which words, and how they are arranged, that matters.
There is a magic that occurs when what you want to say comes out the perfect length.
Not that I have ever created such magic, but I know what it looks like: I know it when I read it..
Saying something with just the right amount of words – no more and no less, might be the definition of poetry. Then again, poetry also requires the right words – but perhaps that goes without saying.
I think one of the reasons that there is so little poetry – or perhaps, so little appreciation of poetry these days, is that we have so much space to fill.
Poetry does not make good filler.
There are great long poems, but they were not created to take up space. There are great short poems, and they can fill a concert hall with their music.
But today we have a great deal more space – a great many more long, empty corridors to wander: a million recordings, ten million stations, a billion Internet pages.
Faced with these great, empty intellectual caverns, the inclination is to talk and talk and talk, without concern for spelling, grammar, and certainly not for brevity.
We chatter on and on, nervously: whistling ourselves passed the graveyard of the unspoken.
So it is difficult for all of us, particularly these days I believe, to think in terms of the right amount of words.
At least that’s my excuse.
I’ll try to do better next time.
497, 498, 499, 500!
I wasn’t here last week.
Actually I was here, but my words were not.
Actually they were, but there were too many of them.
Too many words.
It was a small paper, due to the holiday, and they didn’t have enough space for the long column I submitted.
I take full responsibility.
I admit freely that I went on a bit long, even for me.
That’s one of the more difficult aspects of writing a regular column – getting the number of words right.
It’s easy to come up with ideas, but hard to get those ideas to fit. Sometimes I have to coax them out of their shell. Sometimes I have to suck a few back into my mouth. Sometimes, though rarely, I get just the right amount.
I’m not complaining: I’m philosophizing.
I guess if I were a better writer I could get along with fewer words. Longer is not necessarily better.
Brevity, the saying goes, is the soul of wit, and I do so want to be witty. I think sometimes that when I am after wit, but go on too long, I end up with silly.
But perhaps wit without a sufficient number of words could be the definition of sarcasm.
Words are one of the few things that cannot be adequately assessed by quantity.
Most of what we desire in life is improved by quantity: money, love, gas mileage. It is not how many words however: it is which words, and how they are arranged, that matters.
There is a magic that occurs when what you want to say comes out the perfect length.
Not that I have ever created such magic, but I know what it looks like: I know it when I read it..
Saying something with just the right amount of words – no more and no less, might be the definition of poetry. Then again, poetry also requires the right words – but perhaps that goes without saying.
I think one of the reasons that there is so little poetry – or perhaps, so little appreciation of poetry these days, is that we have so much space to fill.
Poetry does not make good filler.
There are great long poems, but they were not created to take up space. There are great short poems, and they can fill a concert hall with their music.
But today we have a great deal more space – a great many more long, empty corridors to wander: a million recordings, ten million stations, a billion Internet pages.
Faced with these great, empty intellectual caverns, the inclination is to talk and talk and talk, without concern for spelling, grammar, and certainly not for brevity.
We chatter on and on, nervously: whistling ourselves passed the graveyard of the unspoken.
So it is difficult for all of us, particularly these days I believe, to think in terms of the right amount of words.
At least that’s my excuse.
I’ll try to do better next time.
497, 498, 499, 500!
Pluto Traded for Utility Infielder
A planet is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit.
I am very worried about the recent demotion of Pluto, from full planet to ‘dwarf’.
And I am outraged that a group of scientists think that they had the right to do this in the first place.
If these so called ‘astronomers’ wanted to get together in Prague – at their own expense, have a few beers after a long day of postulating and argue among themselves as to what makes a planet a planet, that would be fine.
And that is exactly why Prague was established.
Above the Danube, atop the famous Pilsnerkirch in Prague, is a solid gold statue created by an anonymous 14th century artisan, depicting a drunken astronomer holding a beer stein in one hand, and a telescope in the other.
Astronomy and beer have gone hand in hand for 600 years.
Like beer and sports.
It’s perfectly alright for Red Sox fans to hang out at the local pub, arguing about Manny, or Papi, making outrageous statements, proposing ridiculous trades.
But you don’t see sports fans traveling to far off places and issuing scientific proclamations.
Astronomers are the planet’s biggest fans, and they are entitled to their opinions: but they shouldn’t be allowed to make roster changes.
That’s anarchy!
The only people that should be allowed to change Pluto’s status, are the Plutonians themselves.
This is the kind of thing that got us into trouble in Iraq.
It’s neo-colonialism, on a larger scale.
Just because Pluto’s orbit is not as symmetrical as Neptune’s, or able to generate sufficient gravity, these know-it-all astronomers think they can just issue a statement and, poof, the universe has been changed.
This is planetary racism.
Who’s to say Pluto isn’t a planet, and Earth is?
I’ve known a lot of celestial bodies that didn’t have sufficient mass for their own self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that they assume a hydrostatic equilibrium or - nearly round shape, but they had good hearts.
Does every celestial body in this, and any solar system, have to conform to the fashion of the day?
If so, there are going to be a lot of bulimic planets, making a big show of chowing down at the cosmic buffet, but then sneaking off to the outer reaches of their orbit and spewing all sorts of debris into that porcelain space called the Milky Way.
Is that how we want our planets to behave?
We’ve got to break free of celestial stereotypes.
It doesn’t matter if you have an atmosphere, oceans, or mountains made of molten magma: what matters is how you treat other planets.
Pluto is a far cooler name, for a planet.
Earth sounds like, well, like dirt: doesn’t it?
Venus is a bit old-fashioned, but I still like ‘venutian’.
If I had a house in Prague overlooking the Danube I’d cover my windows with Venutian Blinds – in honor of the role astronomy has played in its history.
Jupiter, is a bit pompous sounding, but then, it’s a pompous kind of planet.
Heck, you know, while we’re at it we might as well rename the planets.
Or sell them off.
Nike is both a classical name, and a corporation that could afford to sponsor a whole planet: I think they’d probably want Saturn though, and would do their best turn the rings into a nice big ‘swoosh’.
Mercury would have been great for Ford, but the automaker’s stock is falling fast so, what about a planet called Old Navy, circled by the twin moons of Cargo Pants and Fleece Sweaters?
Wal-Mart would be a natural, but I think the other planets would object to a Wal-Mart in their part of the solar system. And you wouldn’t want to let them have a planet and, just a few years later, discover they are moving to a bigger planet, abandoning the old one.
I’m being a bit flip here, I know, but only to make the point that by tampering with Pluto we are messing with some serious stuff.
We have an entire generation that has been raised on Pluto being the ninth and final planet in our solar system.
My father is a member of that generation. He was eight years old when Pluto was first formally elected a planet. He’s had to endure some shocking changes in his eighty-plus years, but I don’t think it’s fair to take one of his planets away.
My Very Excellent Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pizzas
That’s the ‘mnemonic’ dad was taught as a child, to help him remember the number and order of the planets.
Most Venusians Eat Martian Jalapenos Seared Using Napalm
And that’s the new mnemonic proposed by the Union of Concerned Brewers and Astronomers.
Dad doesn’t trust the Internet. And after this, I fear he won’t trust our solar system either.
And that’s hitting close to home.
I guess that’s my point. You can’t willy-nilly change anything in this world, or on any other world, and think that there won’t be repercussions, ramifications, unexpected outcomes, unintended consequences.
I remember when the Red Sox traded pitcher Bill ‘The Spaceman’ Lee to Montreal, for Stan Papi. Lee was a 17-game winner, and a lefty to boot, but he really didn’t fit in to what was then a very conservative baseball culture, or get along with then Red Sox Manager Don ‘The Gerbil’ Zimmer (who always had sufficient mass to assume a nearly round shape).
In a way, Lee was our Pluto: out there at the edge of the solar system, on a not quite elliptical orbit, and yet still an important part of the team: one of the nine.
We never should have traded the Spaceman. He may be the only one who knows how Pluto really feels.
I am very worried about the recent demotion of Pluto, from full planet to ‘dwarf’.
And I am outraged that a group of scientists think that they had the right to do this in the first place.
If these so called ‘astronomers’ wanted to get together in Prague – at their own expense, have a few beers after a long day of postulating and argue among themselves as to what makes a planet a planet, that would be fine.
And that is exactly why Prague was established.
Above the Danube, atop the famous Pilsnerkirch in Prague, is a solid gold statue created by an anonymous 14th century artisan, depicting a drunken astronomer holding a beer stein in one hand, and a telescope in the other.
Astronomy and beer have gone hand in hand for 600 years.
Like beer and sports.
It’s perfectly alright for Red Sox fans to hang out at the local pub, arguing about Manny, or Papi, making outrageous statements, proposing ridiculous trades.
But you don’t see sports fans traveling to far off places and issuing scientific proclamations.
Astronomers are the planet’s biggest fans, and they are entitled to their opinions: but they shouldn’t be allowed to make roster changes.
That’s anarchy!
The only people that should be allowed to change Pluto’s status, are the Plutonians themselves.
This is the kind of thing that got us into trouble in Iraq.
It’s neo-colonialism, on a larger scale.
Just because Pluto’s orbit is not as symmetrical as Neptune’s, or able to generate sufficient gravity, these know-it-all astronomers think they can just issue a statement and, poof, the universe has been changed.
This is planetary racism.
Who’s to say Pluto isn’t a planet, and Earth is?
I’ve known a lot of celestial bodies that didn’t have sufficient mass for their own self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that they assume a hydrostatic equilibrium or - nearly round shape, but they had good hearts.
Does every celestial body in this, and any solar system, have to conform to the fashion of the day?
If so, there are going to be a lot of bulimic planets, making a big show of chowing down at the cosmic buffet, but then sneaking off to the outer reaches of their orbit and spewing all sorts of debris into that porcelain space called the Milky Way.
Is that how we want our planets to behave?
We’ve got to break free of celestial stereotypes.
It doesn’t matter if you have an atmosphere, oceans, or mountains made of molten magma: what matters is how you treat other planets.
Pluto is a far cooler name, for a planet.
Earth sounds like, well, like dirt: doesn’t it?
Venus is a bit old-fashioned, but I still like ‘venutian’.
If I had a house in Prague overlooking the Danube I’d cover my windows with Venutian Blinds – in honor of the role astronomy has played in its history.
Jupiter, is a bit pompous sounding, but then, it’s a pompous kind of planet.
Heck, you know, while we’re at it we might as well rename the planets.
Or sell them off.
Nike is both a classical name, and a corporation that could afford to sponsor a whole planet: I think they’d probably want Saturn though, and would do their best turn the rings into a nice big ‘swoosh’.
Mercury would have been great for Ford, but the automaker’s stock is falling fast so, what about a planet called Old Navy, circled by the twin moons of Cargo Pants and Fleece Sweaters?
Wal-Mart would be a natural, but I think the other planets would object to a Wal-Mart in their part of the solar system. And you wouldn’t want to let them have a planet and, just a few years later, discover they are moving to a bigger planet, abandoning the old one.
I’m being a bit flip here, I know, but only to make the point that by tampering with Pluto we are messing with some serious stuff.
We have an entire generation that has been raised on Pluto being the ninth and final planet in our solar system.
My father is a member of that generation. He was eight years old when Pluto was first formally elected a planet. He’s had to endure some shocking changes in his eighty-plus years, but I don’t think it’s fair to take one of his planets away.
My Very Excellent Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pizzas
That’s the ‘mnemonic’ dad was taught as a child, to help him remember the number and order of the planets.
Most Venusians Eat Martian Jalapenos Seared Using Napalm
And that’s the new mnemonic proposed by the Union of Concerned Brewers and Astronomers.
Dad doesn’t trust the Internet. And after this, I fear he won’t trust our solar system either.
And that’s hitting close to home.
I guess that’s my point. You can’t willy-nilly change anything in this world, or on any other world, and think that there won’t be repercussions, ramifications, unexpected outcomes, unintended consequences.
I remember when the Red Sox traded pitcher Bill ‘The Spaceman’ Lee to Montreal, for Stan Papi. Lee was a 17-game winner, and a lefty to boot, but he really didn’t fit in to what was then a very conservative baseball culture, or get along with then Red Sox Manager Don ‘The Gerbil’ Zimmer (who always had sufficient mass to assume a nearly round shape).
In a way, Lee was our Pluto: out there at the edge of the solar system, on a not quite elliptical orbit, and yet still an important part of the team: one of the nine.
We never should have traded the Spaceman. He may be the only one who knows how Pluto really feels.
Here and Now
I visited Old Sturbridge Village this summer and, as much as I enjoyed being transported back to colonial New England, it was the shabbiness of Sturbridge, Massachusetts, 2006, that stuck in my mind as we drove away.
When it was first opened to visitors in 1946, OSV, as they call it, was only a few generations removed from the era that it sought to preserve and celebrate.
And in 1946 the area around Sturbridge –and down old Stagecoach Road (Route 20), still retained a great deal of its colonial past.
You didn’t have to go into OSV to find little villages built around a ‘common’, working blacksmiths, or Quaker meeting houses.
Why pay a $1 admission fee (the cost in 1946) when most of what OSV seemed to offer, was free to anyone with a car and an adventurous spirit.
Today though – surrounded by fast food restaurants, cheap motels, and a variety of other tourist-based businesses that seem to be barely hanging on to their patch of crumbling concrete and tar, Old Sturbridge Village itself is now an oasis of organized history in a desert of decrepit modernity.
When I first moved to Plymouth in 1984 I had a little ‘routine’ that I experimented with in conversation at parties, or over a beer at the local pub: I would passionately argue the theoretical benefits of the Disney Corporation acquiring the entire downtown area of Plymouth – perhaps by eminent domain.
I meant to provoke friends and acquaintances, but I fully believed that drastic measures were needed to improve the appeal of the downtown area.
The simple idea was that Plymouth’s historical impact –especially for tourists, would be greatly enhanced by a single owner that could, if they wished, decree that everything from Court Street, east to Water Street must be historically accurate, at least in terms of its architecture.
For a town with Plymouth’s historical significance it seemed a shame that so little of its historic structures had survived, and that in their place so many modern monstrosities had been constructed.
In my routine I would cite the charm of Duxbury’s Washington Street, the mixture of hip and history in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and its ‘Strawberry Banke’, or the total commitment of Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia.
Compared to any of these historic communities, I argued –in terms of overall aesthetic appeal, Plymouth came up short.
I recognized that there was an element of snobbery in this opinion, and that I was placing an inherent value on the ancient occupants of the community - whatever their occupations or behavior, while at the same time belittling the small businesses that had succeeded them – however hard they struggled for profitability.
It could be the case I would admit, somewhat facetiously, that in 100 years or so there could be an Olde Plimoth Strip Mall where visitors would gladly pay to experience the drive-thru fast food experience, or to sit in molded plastic chairs, or to sift through tubs of 99 cent historic kitsch.
Perhaps the most glaring examples of the waterfronts’ decay - the pseudo-colonial hotels on Water Street, the plaster of Paris head of John Alden that sat on the roof of one waterfront business, and the decaying row boat and yellow slickered fishermen that looked over the town pier from another building, perhaps they would become historic landmarks, like Boston’s flashing CITGO sign.
But I doubted it.
But things have changed, a bit, since then.
John Alden’s plaster head has disappeared, and I have changed my mind about the obvious benefits of Disnefication.
I have come to realize, or perhaps remember that – as much as I shudder at the faux colonialism and “Ye Olde Five and Dime”, I am equally opposed to the Disney or even the Williamsburg version of the past.
I have come to believe that where we go wrong is not in our urge to preserve – but in the effort to forget, or disguise. Faux colonial architecture is a poor lie, but so is Art Deco, in Plymouth.
What I look for now, is not architectural consistency or unblemished uniformity - but instead, a certain native vitality: that is what I think is often missing from the museum experience, and also what is conspicuously absent from construction and commerce which does not reflect, in some manner, the history that lies within, or beneath.
Even though the Old Sturbridge Village that lies within the fences is a marvel of historical re-creation, the experience could be vastly improved if the real town in which the ‘park’ is located embraced the past and the present.
I remember the apartment where my wife and I lived, when were first married –on First Street (just off Washington) in Quincy.
Though not particular notable for its design, the setting was deliberately fantastical: a small, pristine, six unit brick structure built by a sister and brother who lived in a little brick bungalow on the other side of our private parking lot.
That particular area of Quincy was a bit tawdry, in those days, and so to justify the rental price the owners wanted I believe, they hid it away.
From the back windows of the building you looked out at a new fence.
From the front and side windows, you looked out on a private parking lot, and the indifferent rear ends of other structures.
Everything was new and clean –from the glassed-in entrance foyer, to the grout in the tiles in our shower: quite a contrast from the odd assortment of structures that surrounded.
In the morning I would take a half-mile jog, literally around the block – and leaving our isolated unit I would pass a jumble of structures and scenery that seemed notable, at first, only for their differences.
For several weeks I jogged passed those structures and scenery without taking any real notice.
But one crisp fall evening Mary and I decided to take a walk – in the ‘gloaming’ as they used to say, and in that wonderful time between day and night I was suddenly struck by the vibrancy of this awkward mixture of businesses, residences, agriculture and abandoned lots.
It seemed a kind of living archaeology.
Rising above the remnants of the old orchard was the neon sign for Wonderbowl, the bowling alley. Alongside the bowling alley was a restaurant named for a famous Italian tower, with its own giant, hollow faux tower. Steps away from our modern apartment was a river where the foundation of what I took to be an ancient grist mill could still be seen.
It was hardly a pretty scene, in the conventional sense, but the area around our first apartment contained that peculiarly appealing American mix of the old and the new, the ruin and the restoration, the crassly commercial and poetically pastoral.
It was as if I had discovered a collection of old photographs, showing several generations of one family: each face different, and yet each easily identifiable as ‘kin’. Each sure of their own individuality, and yet each excited to see the thread that led backward, ever backward.
In much of the central and western portions of America it is far easier to ‘dispose’ of the past, to bulldoze it under, or level the uneven parts.
In much of this country abundant space allows for developments that emphasize conformity and a kind of permanent ahistoricity.
But in New England it is more difficult to escape what came – five, ten, or even a hundred years, before – because it is still all here: either just beneath the surface, or sticking out like broken glass in the weeds.
When we were looking for our first home in the Plymouth area, I remarked to my wife that it seemed like every lot or home the realtors showed us was either next to a graveyard or under a power line.
What am I saying?
Maybe I am simply saying that I now see a certain beauty in both the well preserved past, and the confused, untidy present – and a special power in the places that seem – like a stop-animation creature rising out of the dust, to remake themselves right before our eyes.
I’d still like to see the Plymouth waterfront display a little more respect for its historic and aesthetic heritage. But I’m starting to see - however raw and unfinished that it may be, the eloquence and energy of the American here and now.
When it was first opened to visitors in 1946, OSV, as they call it, was only a few generations removed from the era that it sought to preserve and celebrate.
And in 1946 the area around Sturbridge –and down old Stagecoach Road (Route 20), still retained a great deal of its colonial past.
You didn’t have to go into OSV to find little villages built around a ‘common’, working blacksmiths, or Quaker meeting houses.
Why pay a $1 admission fee (the cost in 1946) when most of what OSV seemed to offer, was free to anyone with a car and an adventurous spirit.
Today though – surrounded by fast food restaurants, cheap motels, and a variety of other tourist-based businesses that seem to be barely hanging on to their patch of crumbling concrete and tar, Old Sturbridge Village itself is now an oasis of organized history in a desert of decrepit modernity.
When I first moved to Plymouth in 1984 I had a little ‘routine’ that I experimented with in conversation at parties, or over a beer at the local pub: I would passionately argue the theoretical benefits of the Disney Corporation acquiring the entire downtown area of Plymouth – perhaps by eminent domain.
I meant to provoke friends and acquaintances, but I fully believed that drastic measures were needed to improve the appeal of the downtown area.
The simple idea was that Plymouth’s historical impact –especially for tourists, would be greatly enhanced by a single owner that could, if they wished, decree that everything from Court Street, east to Water Street must be historically accurate, at least in terms of its architecture.
For a town with Plymouth’s historical significance it seemed a shame that so little of its historic structures had survived, and that in their place so many modern monstrosities had been constructed.
In my routine I would cite the charm of Duxbury’s Washington Street, the mixture of hip and history in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and its ‘Strawberry Banke’, or the total commitment of Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia.
Compared to any of these historic communities, I argued –in terms of overall aesthetic appeal, Plymouth came up short.
I recognized that there was an element of snobbery in this opinion, and that I was placing an inherent value on the ancient occupants of the community - whatever their occupations or behavior, while at the same time belittling the small businesses that had succeeded them – however hard they struggled for profitability.
It could be the case I would admit, somewhat facetiously, that in 100 years or so there could be an Olde Plimoth Strip Mall where visitors would gladly pay to experience the drive-thru fast food experience, or to sit in molded plastic chairs, or to sift through tubs of 99 cent historic kitsch.
Perhaps the most glaring examples of the waterfronts’ decay - the pseudo-colonial hotels on Water Street, the plaster of Paris head of John Alden that sat on the roof of one waterfront business, and the decaying row boat and yellow slickered fishermen that looked over the town pier from another building, perhaps they would become historic landmarks, like Boston’s flashing CITGO sign.
But I doubted it.
But things have changed, a bit, since then.
John Alden’s plaster head has disappeared, and I have changed my mind about the obvious benefits of Disnefication.
I have come to realize, or perhaps remember that – as much as I shudder at the faux colonialism and “Ye Olde Five and Dime”, I am equally opposed to the Disney or even the Williamsburg version of the past.
I have come to believe that where we go wrong is not in our urge to preserve – but in the effort to forget, or disguise. Faux colonial architecture is a poor lie, but so is Art Deco, in Plymouth.
What I look for now, is not architectural consistency or unblemished uniformity - but instead, a certain native vitality: that is what I think is often missing from the museum experience, and also what is conspicuously absent from construction and commerce which does not reflect, in some manner, the history that lies within, or beneath.
Even though the Old Sturbridge Village that lies within the fences is a marvel of historical re-creation, the experience could be vastly improved if the real town in which the ‘park’ is located embraced the past and the present.
I remember the apartment where my wife and I lived, when were first married –on First Street (just off Washington) in Quincy.
Though not particular notable for its design, the setting was deliberately fantastical: a small, pristine, six unit brick structure built by a sister and brother who lived in a little brick bungalow on the other side of our private parking lot.
That particular area of Quincy was a bit tawdry, in those days, and so to justify the rental price the owners wanted I believe, they hid it away.
From the back windows of the building you looked out at a new fence.
From the front and side windows, you looked out on a private parking lot, and the indifferent rear ends of other structures.
Everything was new and clean –from the glassed-in entrance foyer, to the grout in the tiles in our shower: quite a contrast from the odd assortment of structures that surrounded.
In the morning I would take a half-mile jog, literally around the block – and leaving our isolated unit I would pass a jumble of structures and scenery that seemed notable, at first, only for their differences.
For several weeks I jogged passed those structures and scenery without taking any real notice.
But one crisp fall evening Mary and I decided to take a walk – in the ‘gloaming’ as they used to say, and in that wonderful time between day and night I was suddenly struck by the vibrancy of this awkward mixture of businesses, residences, agriculture and abandoned lots.
It seemed a kind of living archaeology.
Rising above the remnants of the old orchard was the neon sign for Wonderbowl, the bowling alley. Alongside the bowling alley was a restaurant named for a famous Italian tower, with its own giant, hollow faux tower. Steps away from our modern apartment was a river where the foundation of what I took to be an ancient grist mill could still be seen.
It was hardly a pretty scene, in the conventional sense, but the area around our first apartment contained that peculiarly appealing American mix of the old and the new, the ruin and the restoration, the crassly commercial and poetically pastoral.
It was as if I had discovered a collection of old photographs, showing several generations of one family: each face different, and yet each easily identifiable as ‘kin’. Each sure of their own individuality, and yet each excited to see the thread that led backward, ever backward.
In much of the central and western portions of America it is far easier to ‘dispose’ of the past, to bulldoze it under, or level the uneven parts.
In much of this country abundant space allows for developments that emphasize conformity and a kind of permanent ahistoricity.
But in New England it is more difficult to escape what came – five, ten, or even a hundred years, before – because it is still all here: either just beneath the surface, or sticking out like broken glass in the weeds.
When we were looking for our first home in the Plymouth area, I remarked to my wife that it seemed like every lot or home the realtors showed us was either next to a graveyard or under a power line.
What am I saying?
Maybe I am simply saying that I now see a certain beauty in both the well preserved past, and the confused, untidy present – and a special power in the places that seem – like a stop-animation creature rising out of the dust, to remake themselves right before our eyes.
I’d still like to see the Plymouth waterfront display a little more respect for its historic and aesthetic heritage. But I’m starting to see - however raw and unfinished that it may be, the eloquence and energy of the American here and now.
Mr. Potato Head
Mr. Potato Head
Take a good look at me, at my picture I mean: the one just above this line of text showing me smiling, looking out at an imaginary crowd of worshipful fans.
Would you believe, that’s not really me.
The only part that I can really claim to be 100% me in the picture, is my right ear lobe.
I’ve always loved my ear lobes: they’re plump, yet no overly so; they dangle a bit, but don’t sway in the wind; they’re fleshy without being lewd or suggestive.
The rest of me though – to put it carefully, has been borrowed from other sources.
The eyes are Tom Cruises: my own are not nearly so inviting.
The nose is Karl Malden’s.
The moustache is from Tom Selleck’s Magnum P.I. period, obviously.
And the chin is, I am sure you know by now – Winston Churchill’s.
You didn’t really think that the picture they show every week in the paper, is actually me, did you?
It was not a hard decision.
When they told me that I could provide the picture that goes with my column, I looked at it this way: if I was going to allow them to print my honest, unvarnished opinion about politics, friends and family, every week, where anybody could read it, I’d be crazy to let anyone know what I really look like.
I have to live in this town.
I have to shop in this town.
I have to be able to mouth certain profanities directly into my rear view mirror, at the guy tailgating me on the highway, without him knowing who I am and where I live.
Besides, who I am is, well – from a visual perspective, rather lumpy.
I have a kind of Mr. Potato face.
Some say I am Mr. Potato all over.
So why not take advantage of the latest technology, I reasoned, and at least for those two or three people who read my column regularly – besides my therapist, present a more appealing image.
Am I wrong or am I wrong?
No, you’re right: I’m wrong.
There is nothing more dangerous in the world today, than the fact that no one feels that they can trust what they see anymore.
It used to be an issue of trusting what you read. But now, to paraphrase a famous old saying, there are three kinds of lies:
Lies,
Damned Lies,
and Photography.
It doesn’t matter what end of the political spectrum you are on.
In the last few weeks the conservative blogosphere has expressed outraged at the revelation that respected news photographers have staged pictures of bomb destruction in Beirut, or ‘enhanced’ scenes of destruction in Lebanon by darkening clouds of dust and smoke.
Liberal pundits have been equally incensed by the strange tale of the YouTube.com animation that lampoons former Vice President Al Gore’s book and film, “An Inconvenient Truth”.
At first that video was applauded for its droll satire of Gore, which pictures him as an animated, oversized penguin, ambling about the world spouting eco-platitudes.
But then, when the generally conservative Wall Street Journal went looking for the creator of the video – ostensibly to pat him on the back, they found he was not who, or what, he was supposed to be.
Instead of a 29-year old citizen who had expressed his opinion in a creative way, HE, it turned out, was a large Public Relations firm with ties to the Republican party and a corporate client list that includes that well-known friend of the environment, Exxon-Mobil.
Get the picture?
No, of course you don’t.
And that’s the problem.
The problem is that the pictures you are allowed to see have been tampered with, modified, enhanced, Photoshopped, irradiated, trimmed, modified to fit, edited for content, shortened and otherwise adjusted for an audience who cares more about ‘Mike Boogie’ on Big Brother than the Hezbollah in Beirut.
The world is complicated enough already, without having to second guess your eyes.
But cynicism may be our best defense.
It’s not just a question of the corporate world maximizing profits however.
It’s also a matter of individuals making adjustments to their personal ‘reality’.
There are cameras that can be set to produce thinner images for the weight-conscious.
You can automatically eliminate red-eye, straighten teeth, add inches to your bust and take inches from your butt with a click of your mouse.
In a society that spends more and more of its time indoors, talking to strangers, it’s easy to be somebody else.
It’s easy to put other people’s words in your ‘mouth’.
No one is who they were, or are.
No where is where it is supposed to be.
Even the setting sun can be put on pause or fast-forwarded..
And the moon is not all that it’s chalked up to be.
And the stars up above… (sorry, I slipped into an old song there)
But I’m serious.
Or, rather this is serious.
And I am living proof.
Look at me.
No, really, at me (up there!).
Mr. Potato Head.
Would you buy a car – or an argument, from someone who looks like Mr. Potato Head?
Would you elect a guy who looks like a Penguin?
It may go against everything you’ve been taught to believe but you may have to.
Making the right decision has become like a game of pin the tail on the donkey (get it, ‘donkey”).
You’re already working in the dark, so just wait for your head to stop spinning, and trust your instincts.
Besides, ear lobes like mine don’t lie.
Take a good look at me, at my picture I mean: the one just above this line of text showing me smiling, looking out at an imaginary crowd of worshipful fans.
Would you believe, that’s not really me.
The only part that I can really claim to be 100% me in the picture, is my right ear lobe.
I’ve always loved my ear lobes: they’re plump, yet no overly so; they dangle a bit, but don’t sway in the wind; they’re fleshy without being lewd or suggestive.
The rest of me though – to put it carefully, has been borrowed from other sources.
The eyes are Tom Cruises: my own are not nearly so inviting.
The nose is Karl Malden’s.
The moustache is from Tom Selleck’s Magnum P.I. period, obviously.
And the chin is, I am sure you know by now – Winston Churchill’s.
You didn’t really think that the picture they show every week in the paper, is actually me, did you?
It was not a hard decision.
When they told me that I could provide the picture that goes with my column, I looked at it this way: if I was going to allow them to print my honest, unvarnished opinion about politics, friends and family, every week, where anybody could read it, I’d be crazy to let anyone know what I really look like.
I have to live in this town.
I have to shop in this town.
I have to be able to mouth certain profanities directly into my rear view mirror, at the guy tailgating me on the highway, without him knowing who I am and where I live.
Besides, who I am is, well – from a visual perspective, rather lumpy.
I have a kind of Mr. Potato face.
Some say I am Mr. Potato all over.
So why not take advantage of the latest technology, I reasoned, and at least for those two or three people who read my column regularly – besides my therapist, present a more appealing image.
Am I wrong or am I wrong?
No, you’re right: I’m wrong.
There is nothing more dangerous in the world today, than the fact that no one feels that they can trust what they see anymore.
It used to be an issue of trusting what you read. But now, to paraphrase a famous old saying, there are three kinds of lies:
Lies,
Damned Lies,
and Photography.
It doesn’t matter what end of the political spectrum you are on.
In the last few weeks the conservative blogosphere has expressed outraged at the revelation that respected news photographers have staged pictures of bomb destruction in Beirut, or ‘enhanced’ scenes of destruction in Lebanon by darkening clouds of dust and smoke.
Liberal pundits have been equally incensed by the strange tale of the YouTube.com animation that lampoons former Vice President Al Gore’s book and film, “An Inconvenient Truth”.
At first that video was applauded for its droll satire of Gore, which pictures him as an animated, oversized penguin, ambling about the world spouting eco-platitudes.
But then, when the generally conservative Wall Street Journal went looking for the creator of the video – ostensibly to pat him on the back, they found he was not who, or what, he was supposed to be.
Instead of a 29-year old citizen who had expressed his opinion in a creative way, HE, it turned out, was a large Public Relations firm with ties to the Republican party and a corporate client list that includes that well-known friend of the environment, Exxon-Mobil.
Get the picture?
No, of course you don’t.
And that’s the problem.
The problem is that the pictures you are allowed to see have been tampered with, modified, enhanced, Photoshopped, irradiated, trimmed, modified to fit, edited for content, shortened and otherwise adjusted for an audience who cares more about ‘Mike Boogie’ on Big Brother than the Hezbollah in Beirut.
The world is complicated enough already, without having to second guess your eyes.
But cynicism may be our best defense.
It’s not just a question of the corporate world maximizing profits however.
It’s also a matter of individuals making adjustments to their personal ‘reality’.
There are cameras that can be set to produce thinner images for the weight-conscious.
You can automatically eliminate red-eye, straighten teeth, add inches to your bust and take inches from your butt with a click of your mouse.
In a society that spends more and more of its time indoors, talking to strangers, it’s easy to be somebody else.
It’s easy to put other people’s words in your ‘mouth’.
No one is who they were, or are.
No where is where it is supposed to be.
Even the setting sun can be put on pause or fast-forwarded..
And the moon is not all that it’s chalked up to be.
And the stars up above… (sorry, I slipped into an old song there)
But I’m serious.
Or, rather this is serious.
And I am living proof.
Look at me.
No, really, at me (up there!).
Mr. Potato Head.
Would you buy a car – or an argument, from someone who looks like Mr. Potato Head?
Would you elect a guy who looks like a Penguin?
It may go against everything you’ve been taught to believe but you may have to.
Making the right decision has become like a game of pin the tail on the donkey (get it, ‘donkey”).
You’re already working in the dark, so just wait for your head to stop spinning, and trust your instincts.
Besides, ear lobes like mine don’t lie.
I Can't Bear to Watch
I’m a fairly conservative guy.
No, really.
I’m almost embarrassed to admit it, but I’m still on my first wife.
I’ve only got two children – that I know of.
And, up to now at least, I’ve only owned two televisions.
No, really, just two televisions!
The second – the Sony, has been with us for nearly fifteen years now.
Cable TV was just an interesting idea when we first brought her home. Televisions still came with those things they called ‘antenna’, and there were only a handful of stations that you could ‘get’.
But the old Sony is fading fast now, and I have to plan for that, well, that eventuality, as they say.
It’s not easy.
We’ve become accustomed to its face, its dials: the feel of its remote control in the hand.
Or maybe it’s more like a window, looking out onto a well-manicured lawn, shaded by trees.
It’s as if, one day we looked out that window and the grass had browned, overnight; or as if a large oak tree had toppled, exposing its roots, disrupting the scenery. At least that’s what we fear.
Right now, the changes are gentler, more subtle.
The colors have faded.
It takes longer, in the morning, for the screen to awaken.
Sometimes it does strange, unexpected things: makes little pops, fades in and out, hisses and hums.
We pretend not to notice.
If it catches us staring, we smile, awkwardly, and look away.
We wonder if we should just unplug it, put it out of its misery. But that would open up a Pandora’s Box of questions and critical decisions.
I guess you’d have to say, we’re in denial.
On a good day, at someone else’s house, as we watch the Red Sox or a DVD, we are full of hope.
A new television, it seems obvious, could add so much more to our lives, than the old Sony.
Color. More color.
Right now the scenes of bodies being pulled from the bombed-out buildings in Beirut are drab, lifeless: almost like sketches of reality.
A new, LCD flat panel display would make the killing life-like!
Right now reality television has all the appeal of an I Love Lucy re-run: a new 50 inch wall of television would bring that parade of egotistical, vain, posturing ‘real’ people right into our home.
Right now our expanding collection of DVDs of films that only lasted in theatres a week or less, are hardly worth watching on the old set.
With a new wall-mounted flat panel TV with a four-speaker surround sound audio system, the same level of disappointment felt by those who spent $9 for a ticket to see these films at the mall, could be experienced by us, in the privacy of our own living room!
That’s the nature of television today: it specializes in pain, anguish, disappointment and disillusionment. And those kinds of emotions can only be fully experienced - safely and without fear of any real involvement, by utilizing the latest technology
This could be a life re-arranging experience.
We might have to move furniture.
We’ll probably experience an extended period of mild neck pain, as we try to adjust to the new sight-lines between the couch and our new TV.
We may, finally, be forced to install curtains in the living room so that the neighborhood kids don’t turn our lawn into an open-air theatre.
We may never venture out into the real world again.
That is, as soon as you know who, goes you know where.
It’s an ethical crisis.
Last week I woke up early, came downstairs, and found the old Sony still on.
Her screen was hot to the touch.
Nobody admitted doing it, but there were guilty looks all around.
A few days later I found her original remote on the carpet: its batteries scattered about like broken bones.
We really should be treating her differently, fighting to extend her life – though the warranty has long since expired.
In other cultures – the Japanese for example, they would have long ago put her on a wooden raft and let her drift into the ocean. The Japanese are not sentimental about technology.
There are, of course, other options.
For a small fee the landfill would take her.
There’s an avant-garde artist in Kansas, who is hanging old tube TVs from tree branches along old Route 66. He hopes to ‘string-up’ over a million between Chicago and Skylark, New Mexico.
I’d like to be part of an art installation, when I go.
Part of the problem is that we don’t really know what the old Sony wants. She still seems to have some life in her, some will to televise left, but she is having trouble communicating.
I’ve checked the set-up menu, but I can’t seem to access her inner programming.
Some days it seems as if her colors have brightened, that she’s regained some of that old Trinitron personality.
We can and do make adjustments to the color – on a program by program basis: tinkering with the tone, the brightness and contrast, and that seems to work, for a time. But then a sporting event comes on and the grass is orange, the sky green, the players blurs of light as they move about the field.
When we’re at the big electronics store, looking at the rows of screens, the talking heads bobbing up and down like a giant chorus line, we find ourselves nodding along with them, becoming hypnotized by high-definition, dazzled by the bright colors, overwhelmed by each and every fabulous got-to-have-it feature.
But then we drive back home and, there she is: so sweet, so trusting. Even her cataract-misted screen – with its washed out colors, seems comforting.
I just can’t bring myself to turn the switch.
I’m just going to have to pay a little extra, and have the delivery guys haul her away.
It’s the least we can do, for an old friend.
No, really.
I’m almost embarrassed to admit it, but I’m still on my first wife.
I’ve only got two children – that I know of.
And, up to now at least, I’ve only owned two televisions.
No, really, just two televisions!
The second – the Sony, has been with us for nearly fifteen years now.
Cable TV was just an interesting idea when we first brought her home. Televisions still came with those things they called ‘antenna’, and there were only a handful of stations that you could ‘get’.
But the old Sony is fading fast now, and I have to plan for that, well, that eventuality, as they say.
It’s not easy.
We’ve become accustomed to its face, its dials: the feel of its remote control in the hand.
Or maybe it’s more like a window, looking out onto a well-manicured lawn, shaded by trees.
It’s as if, one day we looked out that window and the grass had browned, overnight; or as if a large oak tree had toppled, exposing its roots, disrupting the scenery. At least that’s what we fear.
Right now, the changes are gentler, more subtle.
The colors have faded.
It takes longer, in the morning, for the screen to awaken.
Sometimes it does strange, unexpected things: makes little pops, fades in and out, hisses and hums.
We pretend not to notice.
If it catches us staring, we smile, awkwardly, and look away.
We wonder if we should just unplug it, put it out of its misery. But that would open up a Pandora’s Box of questions and critical decisions.
I guess you’d have to say, we’re in denial.
On a good day, at someone else’s house, as we watch the Red Sox or a DVD, we are full of hope.
A new television, it seems obvious, could add so much more to our lives, than the old Sony.
Color. More color.
Right now the scenes of bodies being pulled from the bombed-out buildings in Beirut are drab, lifeless: almost like sketches of reality.
A new, LCD flat panel display would make the killing life-like!
Right now reality television has all the appeal of an I Love Lucy re-run: a new 50 inch wall of television would bring that parade of egotistical, vain, posturing ‘real’ people right into our home.
Right now our expanding collection of DVDs of films that only lasted in theatres a week or less, are hardly worth watching on the old set.
With a new wall-mounted flat panel TV with a four-speaker surround sound audio system, the same level of disappointment felt by those who spent $9 for a ticket to see these films at the mall, could be experienced by us, in the privacy of our own living room!
That’s the nature of television today: it specializes in pain, anguish, disappointment and disillusionment. And those kinds of emotions can only be fully experienced - safely and without fear of any real involvement, by utilizing the latest technology
This could be a life re-arranging experience.
We might have to move furniture.
We’ll probably experience an extended period of mild neck pain, as we try to adjust to the new sight-lines between the couch and our new TV.
We may, finally, be forced to install curtains in the living room so that the neighborhood kids don’t turn our lawn into an open-air theatre.
We may never venture out into the real world again.
That is, as soon as you know who, goes you know where.
It’s an ethical crisis.
Last week I woke up early, came downstairs, and found the old Sony still on.
Her screen was hot to the touch.
Nobody admitted doing it, but there were guilty looks all around.
A few days later I found her original remote on the carpet: its batteries scattered about like broken bones.
We really should be treating her differently, fighting to extend her life – though the warranty has long since expired.
In other cultures – the Japanese for example, they would have long ago put her on a wooden raft and let her drift into the ocean. The Japanese are not sentimental about technology.
There are, of course, other options.
For a small fee the landfill would take her.
There’s an avant-garde artist in Kansas, who is hanging old tube TVs from tree branches along old Route 66. He hopes to ‘string-up’ over a million between Chicago and Skylark, New Mexico.
I’d like to be part of an art installation, when I go.
Part of the problem is that we don’t really know what the old Sony wants. She still seems to have some life in her, some will to televise left, but she is having trouble communicating.
I’ve checked the set-up menu, but I can’t seem to access her inner programming.
Some days it seems as if her colors have brightened, that she’s regained some of that old Trinitron personality.
We can and do make adjustments to the color – on a program by program basis: tinkering with the tone, the brightness and contrast, and that seems to work, for a time. But then a sporting event comes on and the grass is orange, the sky green, the players blurs of light as they move about the field.
When we’re at the big electronics store, looking at the rows of screens, the talking heads bobbing up and down like a giant chorus line, we find ourselves nodding along with them, becoming hypnotized by high-definition, dazzled by the bright colors, overwhelmed by each and every fabulous got-to-have-it feature.
But then we drive back home and, there she is: so sweet, so trusting. Even her cataract-misted screen – with its washed out colors, seems comforting.
I just can’t bring myself to turn the switch.
I’m just going to have to pay a little extra, and have the delivery guys haul her away.
It’s the least we can do, for an old friend.
Here's Your Hat
You know what I think? I think anyone in this town that doesn’t want to have the best schools possible, should just pack their bags and move on down the line.
Quality schools are not a luxury, they are a necessity.
You can argue about what constitutes quality – facilities, range of academic offerings, effective teachers, but you can’t be against all three and still claim you’re for quality schools.
Come on admit it: you know who you are. You know that when it comes to schools, it’s the cheaper the better as far as you are concerned.
You’re the kind of person that waxes eloquent about the good old days: days of one room school houses and teachers who were allowed to ‘discipline’ students.
You’re the same people who, when the town was contemplating building new recreation fields about a decade ago, rose up on Town Meeting floor to talk about the good old days when you played with ‘cow flaps’ in the fields.
You’re the kind of person who thinks teachers are overpaid, under worked, and ineffective – and that’s on a good day.
You constantly complain about a wide variety of ‘other people’, who you say have a sense of entitlement: but what you are really complaining about are people you think are taking what belongs to you.
And that’s a big list, because, from what I can tell:
It’s your country.
It’s your town.
And they are all your tax dollars.
And if things don’t go as you think they should, you move out anyway (or threaten to do so).
So here’s your hat, what’s your hurry.
It’s all gotten very simple for you: you just want to live in a place where you will be left alone.
So who’s stopping you?
For all of your complaining, that house you bought twenty years ago is now worth four times what you paid for it.
So what are you waiting for – cash in your chips.
Just an hour to the north is the ‘Live Free or Die’ state: you better hurry if you want some of both (and they have plenty of cow flaps to play with, too).
No, I can’t tell you that the hundreds of millions that the town is planning to spend on schools over the next decade or so will guarantee a better quality of education.
But I can say that the lack of proper funding of schools over the last 25 years has really hurt this town.
At one point, not too long ago, we had one of the largest middle schools (in terms of enrollment) this side of the Mississippi. Faced with the prospect of sending my first son to that school, we bit the bullet and sent him to Sacred Heart in Kingston.
We struggled to pay for it, but the benefits were clear.
Now my youngest son is enrolled in the public schools and, if things do not improve, we fully intend to explore our options.
When my older son was at Sacred Heart, my taxes were no different than any other residents. I didn’t get a rebate – nor did I think I should. Like most town residents I was willing to do my part. And like most town residents, I knew that schools were an investment in community.
I am all in favor of doing whatever I can to foster a sense of community in this town –from paying reasonable taxes, to supporting community organizations, to being involved in local government.
I personally would favor a plan to recruit and retain the best teachers in the country for Plymouth.
I personally am offended that our existing teachers have to spend so much of their valuable time begging for donations of monies and materials.
I personally object to paying extra to have a bus take my child to school, and extra to have the opportunity to have a full-day kindergarten.
I think that there is no better investment for a town, than an investment in better schools.
If it has a reputation for good schools, good things happen to a town.
If a town has a reputation for overcrowded, deteriorating schools, than new people may move in for the cheap housing, but they don’t stay. Of if they stay, they resent having to pay for mediocre schools.
I fully recognize that the majority of the town’s home-owners are not in a position to simply move out. And to them I say – don’t be penny-wise, and school-foolish.
And to the others I say, be positive: soon you may be free to put your money where you mouth is – somewhere else where the gates are locked, the children all go to private school, and you get everything you think you are entitled to.
I believe though that community is not an entitlement: it is an obligation.
If the Job Lot approach to schools wins out again, do you think at least you could stop whining for a week or two?
If, on the other hand, town’s voters approve the plan to rebuild North and enlarge South High School, don’t take it to heart – take it on the road.
Quality schools are not a luxury, they are a necessity.
You can argue about what constitutes quality – facilities, range of academic offerings, effective teachers, but you can’t be against all three and still claim you’re for quality schools.
Come on admit it: you know who you are. You know that when it comes to schools, it’s the cheaper the better as far as you are concerned.
You’re the kind of person that waxes eloquent about the good old days: days of one room school houses and teachers who were allowed to ‘discipline’ students.
You’re the same people who, when the town was contemplating building new recreation fields about a decade ago, rose up on Town Meeting floor to talk about the good old days when you played with ‘cow flaps’ in the fields.
You’re the kind of person who thinks teachers are overpaid, under worked, and ineffective – and that’s on a good day.
You constantly complain about a wide variety of ‘other people’, who you say have a sense of entitlement: but what you are really complaining about are people you think are taking what belongs to you.
And that’s a big list, because, from what I can tell:
It’s your country.
It’s your town.
And they are all your tax dollars.
And if things don’t go as you think they should, you move out anyway (or threaten to do so).
So here’s your hat, what’s your hurry.
It’s all gotten very simple for you: you just want to live in a place where you will be left alone.
So who’s stopping you?
For all of your complaining, that house you bought twenty years ago is now worth four times what you paid for it.
So what are you waiting for – cash in your chips.
Just an hour to the north is the ‘Live Free or Die’ state: you better hurry if you want some of both (and they have plenty of cow flaps to play with, too).
No, I can’t tell you that the hundreds of millions that the town is planning to spend on schools over the next decade or so will guarantee a better quality of education.
But I can say that the lack of proper funding of schools over the last 25 years has really hurt this town.
At one point, not too long ago, we had one of the largest middle schools (in terms of enrollment) this side of the Mississippi. Faced with the prospect of sending my first son to that school, we bit the bullet and sent him to Sacred Heart in Kingston.
We struggled to pay for it, but the benefits were clear.
Now my youngest son is enrolled in the public schools and, if things do not improve, we fully intend to explore our options.
When my older son was at Sacred Heart, my taxes were no different than any other residents. I didn’t get a rebate – nor did I think I should. Like most town residents I was willing to do my part. And like most town residents, I knew that schools were an investment in community.
I am all in favor of doing whatever I can to foster a sense of community in this town –from paying reasonable taxes, to supporting community organizations, to being involved in local government.
I personally would favor a plan to recruit and retain the best teachers in the country for Plymouth.
I personally am offended that our existing teachers have to spend so much of their valuable time begging for donations of monies and materials.
I personally object to paying extra to have a bus take my child to school, and extra to have the opportunity to have a full-day kindergarten.
I think that there is no better investment for a town, than an investment in better schools.
If it has a reputation for good schools, good things happen to a town.
If a town has a reputation for overcrowded, deteriorating schools, than new people may move in for the cheap housing, but they don’t stay. Of if they stay, they resent having to pay for mediocre schools.
I fully recognize that the majority of the town’s home-owners are not in a position to simply move out. And to them I say – don’t be penny-wise, and school-foolish.
And to the others I say, be positive: soon you may be free to put your money where you mouth is – somewhere else where the gates are locked, the children all go to private school, and you get everything you think you are entitled to.
I believe though that community is not an entitlement: it is an obligation.
If the Job Lot approach to schools wins out again, do you think at least you could stop whining for a week or two?
If, on the other hand, town’s voters approve the plan to rebuild North and enlarge South High School, don’t take it to heart – take it on the road.
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