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.
Friday, November 17, 2006
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.
Saturday, August 05, 2006
USS Landfill
What we need today, are more aircraft carriers.
We could all use our own aircraft carrier.
I know I could.
When things go wrong, at home or abroad, an aircraft carrier is the perfect place to end the day, on a positive note.
Right now, if I am in a bad mood, or am arguing with my wife, I go to the dump: I find whatever trash is available, bag it up with as much noise as possible, and announce loudly that I am going to the dump.
“Where are you going,” Mary still asks me, turning her head sideways, and giving me that ‘whatever you say I’m not buying it look’. To which I reply, proudly, “to the dump.”
Don’t get me wrong, the dump is nice: there are always a few other unappreciated husbands there, to commiserate with. The dump is a place where men are men, with no apologies.
But I can’t help thinking how much better it could be, if I could take my trash and troubles and make a perfect landing on the deck of a large aircraft carrier a few miles offshore, in Cape Cod Bay, preferably to the cheers of hundreds of unappreciated husbands.
Of course I don’t have an aircraft carrier at my disposal – that’s just a fantasy.
But George does.
George has a dozen or so aircraft carriers, standing by, awaiting his instructions.
But he needs to get moving.
That’s one of the big differences between the dump and, say, the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. At the dump, as long as it’s a weekend, or a day beginning with T, you know you can just drive on in – no questions asked.
But you can’t just come cruising onto an aircraft with your bags of trash, anytime you want.
You have to let people know, in advance, that you’re coming.
They have to get the carrier turned into the wind, so that the deck won’t be rolling all about, and so you can’t smell the trash that other politicians have dumped.
You have to have a band, photographers, and a speech ready to go.
And Lord knows, you have to have something important to say when you get there.
When I go to the dump I ask, ‘where do I put this cardboard,”, or “do you take old Commodore computers”, or “hey, are you really throwing that thing away?”
But that kind of banter won’t wash, on a carrier.
On the carrier, you’ve got to have something important to claim: something that will fit on a 100 foot banner, such as:
“Mission Accomplished,” or
“You’re doing a great job, Brownie”, or
“If someone in my administration is leaking information, I want to know”.
Poor George: three years ago, when he made that dramatic ‘tail-hook’ landing in San Diego harbor, he was really onto something.
Imagine how different things would have been, if he had made more dramatic landings on aircraft carriers.
Since that big day however, the best he has been able to do is a few low passes, in Air Force 1, dumping re-election leaflets over the half-baked crowd at the Daytona 500: talk about ‘preaching to the choir!’
If I were Karl Rove, I would have had all the Presidential Press Conferences on aircraft carriers.
You fly in, shake a few hands, proclaim some kind of great victory, and then “sorry, no time to answer questions, got to fly!”
And if the press tries to follow, rudely yelling out their questions, whoops: there’s a little thing called the ocean in the way.
Poor Israel: they could use their own aircraft carrier now too, big time.
Word is that the plan was all set for Elmud Olmert , the Israeli Prime Minister, to do just that about three weeks ago.
Olmert was going to leave Israel on a Tuesday morning – announcing to his family (and the press) that he was just going to take the trash to the dump, and then secretly fly to San Diego. There he was going to join President Bush for another dramatic landing on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln – commemorating the third anniversary of the end of the Iraq War.
Instead of “Mission Accomplished,” in honor of the Israeli victory in Lebanon the big banner was supposed to read, “A Lasting Solution” (courtesy of Condoleeza Rice).
Everything was in place: the banner was printed, Olmert had his own flight suit, and it looked like Hezbollah was on the run.
But where was the aircraft carrier?
Turns out the USS Abraham Lincoln was in the Persian Gulf, because things were getting a little out of hand there.
No problem: we have dozens of aircraft carriers, right? Well, yes and no.
We’ve got the carriers, but they are otherwise occupied.
The USS Nimitz was in the ‘theater’, as they say, but was busy watching Kim Jong Il in North Korea.
The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower was stuck in the mud of the Rio Grande River, serving as the headquarters for the border patrol.
The USS Carl Vinson (he was the guy who sang ‘Blue Suede Shoes, right?) was still in New Orleans, serving as a hotel for homeless victims of Hurricane Katrina.
The USS Theodore Roosevelt was booked for a Congressional Cruise and Barbeque.
The USS George Washington was on an extended cruise in the Arctic Ocean, still looking for proof that Global Warming is left-wing propaganda.
The USS Ronald Reagan was a few miles off San Francisco, protecting Americans from gay marriage.
The USS Harry Truman was in the Mediterranean, keeping a close eye on just about everyone in the MidEast.
And the USS Enterprise had somehow made its way up the Mississippi and was keeping a close eye on all of us.
Turns out that all 12 of our aircraft carriers were busy elsewhere.
Like I said, you can never have too many aircraft carriers.
Poor George, I can sympathize with him.
When the press is after him, asking what his plans are, what’s going on in Iraq, without an aircraft carrier there’s only one thing he can do, one place left to go to get away from it all.
And they’ll even take all of George’s stuff there: the old plastic banners, the paper speeches, the old “W” decals, even the old flight suits.
I just hope he remembered to get his new sticker.
We could all use our own aircraft carrier.
I know I could.
When things go wrong, at home or abroad, an aircraft carrier is the perfect place to end the day, on a positive note.
Right now, if I am in a bad mood, or am arguing with my wife, I go to the dump: I find whatever trash is available, bag it up with as much noise as possible, and announce loudly that I am going to the dump.
“Where are you going,” Mary still asks me, turning her head sideways, and giving me that ‘whatever you say I’m not buying it look’. To which I reply, proudly, “to the dump.”
Don’t get me wrong, the dump is nice: there are always a few other unappreciated husbands there, to commiserate with. The dump is a place where men are men, with no apologies.
But I can’t help thinking how much better it could be, if I could take my trash and troubles and make a perfect landing on the deck of a large aircraft carrier a few miles offshore, in Cape Cod Bay, preferably to the cheers of hundreds of unappreciated husbands.
Of course I don’t have an aircraft carrier at my disposal – that’s just a fantasy.
But George does.
George has a dozen or so aircraft carriers, standing by, awaiting his instructions.
But he needs to get moving.
That’s one of the big differences between the dump and, say, the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. At the dump, as long as it’s a weekend, or a day beginning with T, you know you can just drive on in – no questions asked.
But you can’t just come cruising onto an aircraft with your bags of trash, anytime you want.
You have to let people know, in advance, that you’re coming.
They have to get the carrier turned into the wind, so that the deck won’t be rolling all about, and so you can’t smell the trash that other politicians have dumped.
You have to have a band, photographers, and a speech ready to go.
And Lord knows, you have to have something important to say when you get there.
When I go to the dump I ask, ‘where do I put this cardboard,”, or “do you take old Commodore computers”, or “hey, are you really throwing that thing away?”
But that kind of banter won’t wash, on a carrier.
On the carrier, you’ve got to have something important to claim: something that will fit on a 100 foot banner, such as:
“Mission Accomplished,” or
“You’re doing a great job, Brownie”, or
“If someone in my administration is leaking information, I want to know”.
Poor George: three years ago, when he made that dramatic ‘tail-hook’ landing in San Diego harbor, he was really onto something.
Imagine how different things would have been, if he had made more dramatic landings on aircraft carriers.
Since that big day however, the best he has been able to do is a few low passes, in Air Force 1, dumping re-election leaflets over the half-baked crowd at the Daytona 500: talk about ‘preaching to the choir!’
If I were Karl Rove, I would have had all the Presidential Press Conferences on aircraft carriers.
You fly in, shake a few hands, proclaim some kind of great victory, and then “sorry, no time to answer questions, got to fly!”
And if the press tries to follow, rudely yelling out their questions, whoops: there’s a little thing called the ocean in the way.
Poor Israel: they could use their own aircraft carrier now too, big time.
Word is that the plan was all set for Elmud Olmert , the Israeli Prime Minister, to do just that about three weeks ago.
Olmert was going to leave Israel on a Tuesday morning – announcing to his family (and the press) that he was just going to take the trash to the dump, and then secretly fly to San Diego. There he was going to join President Bush for another dramatic landing on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln – commemorating the third anniversary of the end of the Iraq War.
Instead of “Mission Accomplished,” in honor of the Israeli victory in Lebanon the big banner was supposed to read, “A Lasting Solution” (courtesy of Condoleeza Rice).
Everything was in place: the banner was printed, Olmert had his own flight suit, and it looked like Hezbollah was on the run.
But where was the aircraft carrier?
Turns out the USS Abraham Lincoln was in the Persian Gulf, because things were getting a little out of hand there.
No problem: we have dozens of aircraft carriers, right? Well, yes and no.
We’ve got the carriers, but they are otherwise occupied.
The USS Nimitz was in the ‘theater’, as they say, but was busy watching Kim Jong Il in North Korea.
The USS Dwight D. Eisenhower was stuck in the mud of the Rio Grande River, serving as the headquarters for the border patrol.
The USS Carl Vinson (he was the guy who sang ‘Blue Suede Shoes, right?) was still in New Orleans, serving as a hotel for homeless victims of Hurricane Katrina.
The USS Theodore Roosevelt was booked for a Congressional Cruise and Barbeque.
The USS George Washington was on an extended cruise in the Arctic Ocean, still looking for proof that Global Warming is left-wing propaganda.
The USS Ronald Reagan was a few miles off San Francisco, protecting Americans from gay marriage.
The USS Harry Truman was in the Mediterranean, keeping a close eye on just about everyone in the MidEast.
And the USS Enterprise had somehow made its way up the Mississippi and was keeping a close eye on all of us.
Turns out that all 12 of our aircraft carriers were busy elsewhere.
Like I said, you can never have too many aircraft carriers.
Poor George, I can sympathize with him.
When the press is after him, asking what his plans are, what’s going on in Iraq, without an aircraft carrier there’s only one thing he can do, one place left to go to get away from it all.
And they’ll even take all of George’s stuff there: the old plastic banners, the paper speeches, the old “W” decals, even the old flight suits.
I just hope he remembered to get his new sticker.
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Confessions of a.. Space Explorer
Confessions of a.. Space Explorer
I met this alien online – at least she said she was an alien, and she invited me to visit her secret landing place in the Azores for.. well, to be perfectly honest, space exploration.
I was a little concerned: I don’t normally trust people who claim they are aliens, online. I mean, come on: anyone can claim to be anything, online.
But Buzzra –her user name, reassured me of her alienity –if that’s the right word, and sent me some pics of her which, as far as I could tell, were the real McCoy.
To be perfectly frank, from what I could tell she was naked in those pics, though nakedness in alien terms is not nakedness in human terms.
I mean pets are naked, aren’t they?
You can’t get in trouble for looking at pictures of naked pets, can you?
Naked aliens?
Still, to be safe, I sent her pictures of me that weren’t – me that is. In fact, I sent her pictures of my dog Altoona, an Irish Wolfhound/Chihuahua mix (giant body, teeny little head).
She was incredulous.
That’s not you, she wrote (actually, she typed “LOL, pull the other one!”)
Yes it is, I typed back.
How can you type so well, with paws, she asked?
You’d be surprised, I bluffed.
I love your tiny head, she confessed.
So we IMmed back and forth and eventually, made plans to meet. She sent me detailed directions to the landing spot in the Azores and, to make a long story short, it was a sting.
Not your usual DA running for re-election saving the world from aliens make a big splash in the newspaper type of sting, but a real sting.
I mean to say that Buzzra was an actual alien, but not like her picture at all.
She wasn’t harmless mass of fur and chocolate jimmies – but, instead, a giant wasp-like alien that preyed on large animals, sucking the life force from them through their tiny snouts.
From my picture –which was actually Altoona, she thought I was the perfect prey: lots of life force, tiny little snout.
So when I showed at the appointed time and place, though she was angry, she was mainly disappointed.
Without a snout into which she could insert her prehensile sucker apparatus, she had no use for me – so she just left me there, with about a dozen other guys and girls who had pretended to have snouts, and blasted off for an uncharted solar system.
End of story?
Of course not.
When I got there - at the prearranged meeting spot in the Azores, besides the actual humans, there were already dozens of dismembered pets strewn about.
Even in the Azores this attracted a lot of attention.
I was one of seventeen who were arrested and charged with a wide variety of odd offenses.
Of course the press got wind of this too: except from public officials, there is no more appealing subject than one of their own in trouble. Soon my face, and that of my completely innocent (though obviously naked) pet Altoona, were quickly splashed across the front pages of several local newspapers.
My defense? Simple.
There is no law against stupidity – though the fines are very large indeed.
I am in deep doodoo, but I didn’t do anything illegal.
The worst that can be said is that I gave in to the national temptation: personal space exploration.
And it wasn’t as if I went out of my way to find Buzzra: she was online, advertising her alienity, and personally invited me to explore.
It’s a clear case of entrapment.
There isn’t a human I know that doesn’t fantasize about space travel.
If the police came to your door today, can you honestly say that your hard drive wouldn’t have a few pics of glowing nebulae or twin giants?
There are other, personal issues of course.
Why an otherwise regular guy –with a wife and family, and a nice home and three cars, and a self-propelled lawn mower would still feel the need to explore space is a question that needs to be answered.
But I have already paid a high price for my ‘indiscretion’: I have had to turn over my entire collection of Star Trek memorabilia to the local authorities; I have been asked to resign my position with the Immigration and Naturalization Service: I have had to trade in my Ford Explorer for a Subaru Forester, for appearances sake.
In many ways my life –at least my life on earth, has been turned upside down.
And from that perspective I have learned something very important about myself, which was probably obvious to everybody but me: I am attracted to aliens.
Now I am coming out of the ‘hangar’, so to speak: admitting to myself that this is who I am.
I may not have fur, or a spout, or an ounce of common sense, but at least I am at peace with my.. fantasy life.
Sad to say, ever since the Azores, Altoona has never been same.
I met this alien online – at least she said she was an alien, and she invited me to visit her secret landing place in the Azores for.. well, to be perfectly honest, space exploration.
I was a little concerned: I don’t normally trust people who claim they are aliens, online. I mean, come on: anyone can claim to be anything, online.
But Buzzra –her user name, reassured me of her alienity –if that’s the right word, and sent me some pics of her which, as far as I could tell, were the real McCoy.
To be perfectly frank, from what I could tell she was naked in those pics, though nakedness in alien terms is not nakedness in human terms.
I mean pets are naked, aren’t they?
You can’t get in trouble for looking at pictures of naked pets, can you?
Naked aliens?
Still, to be safe, I sent her pictures of me that weren’t – me that is. In fact, I sent her pictures of my dog Altoona, an Irish Wolfhound/Chihuahua mix (giant body, teeny little head).
She was incredulous.
That’s not you, she wrote (actually, she typed “LOL, pull the other one!”)
Yes it is, I typed back.
How can you type so well, with paws, she asked?
You’d be surprised, I bluffed.
I love your tiny head, she confessed.
So we IMmed back and forth and eventually, made plans to meet. She sent me detailed directions to the landing spot in the Azores and, to make a long story short, it was a sting.
Not your usual DA running for re-election saving the world from aliens make a big splash in the newspaper type of sting, but a real sting.
I mean to say that Buzzra was an actual alien, but not like her picture at all.
She wasn’t harmless mass of fur and chocolate jimmies – but, instead, a giant wasp-like alien that preyed on large animals, sucking the life force from them through their tiny snouts.
From my picture –which was actually Altoona, she thought I was the perfect prey: lots of life force, tiny little snout.
So when I showed at the appointed time and place, though she was angry, she was mainly disappointed.
Without a snout into which she could insert her prehensile sucker apparatus, she had no use for me – so she just left me there, with about a dozen other guys and girls who had pretended to have snouts, and blasted off for an uncharted solar system.
End of story?
Of course not.
When I got there - at the prearranged meeting spot in the Azores, besides the actual humans, there were already dozens of dismembered pets strewn about.
Even in the Azores this attracted a lot of attention.
I was one of seventeen who were arrested and charged with a wide variety of odd offenses.
Of course the press got wind of this too: except from public officials, there is no more appealing subject than one of their own in trouble. Soon my face, and that of my completely innocent (though obviously naked) pet Altoona, were quickly splashed across the front pages of several local newspapers.
My defense? Simple.
There is no law against stupidity – though the fines are very large indeed.
I am in deep doodoo, but I didn’t do anything illegal.
The worst that can be said is that I gave in to the national temptation: personal space exploration.
And it wasn’t as if I went out of my way to find Buzzra: she was online, advertising her alienity, and personally invited me to explore.
It’s a clear case of entrapment.
There isn’t a human I know that doesn’t fantasize about space travel.
If the police came to your door today, can you honestly say that your hard drive wouldn’t have a few pics of glowing nebulae or twin giants?
There are other, personal issues of course.
Why an otherwise regular guy –with a wife and family, and a nice home and three cars, and a self-propelled lawn mower would still feel the need to explore space is a question that needs to be answered.
But I have already paid a high price for my ‘indiscretion’: I have had to turn over my entire collection of Star Trek memorabilia to the local authorities; I have been asked to resign my position with the Immigration and Naturalization Service: I have had to trade in my Ford Explorer for a Subaru Forester, for appearances sake.
In many ways my life –at least my life on earth, has been turned upside down.
And from that perspective I have learned something very important about myself, which was probably obvious to everybody but me: I am attracted to aliens.
Now I am coming out of the ‘hangar’, so to speak: admitting to myself that this is who I am.
I may not have fur, or a spout, or an ounce of common sense, but at least I am at peace with my.. fantasy life.
Sad to say, ever since the Azores, Altoona has never been same.
Expanding the Strike Zone
The Strike Zone Enlargeth
Normally..
No, that’s not right.
There is no normal: leastways not in this vicinity.
Usually, for the most part, during the so-called regular season, the strike zone is from your knees to your armpits: but in the summer it’s suddenly bigger, much bigger, preposterously large.
Purists will complain, but there is a good reason for this change.
Don’t ask me to explain.
The important thing to remember is that July is slip-sliding away, August is almost upon us, and before you know it you’ll be gassing up the snow-hurler.
So, as the coach says, ‘be up there swinging’.
Are we talking baseball, here?
Well, sort of.
The philosophy of summer can apply to baseball.
Our seven year old son is in a so-called Summer League, and the teams are made up of mixed ages and skill levels. Most of the kids have never pitched before, so genuine by the book, right down the middle, what do you want ‘eggs in your beer’ stee-rikes are few and far between.
Just pick out one you like and give it a ride!
But don’t be too picky.
In fact, you don’t have to like it: just hit the darn thing.
That goes for the adults too.
The coaches in this ‘league’ often have to wear several hats: there’s the official coaches hat, the hat of the father of a player, the umpires little black cap, physician, counselor, field crew and snack bar attendant.
They don’t tell you about these other responsibilities when you sign up to coach at this level. Many of the coaches have never done this before.
“What do I do?” they ask the grizzled little league veteran.
“Have fun”, they are told, with a wink: “It’s a big strike zone.
You’ve got to take your cuts.”
The games go long, very long, and are often called due to darkness.
Or is that the days go long, very long, and are often called due to baseball?
Whatever: when it’s over it’s too late to go home and make dinner – and too easy to give in: so you stop at Gellars for hamburgers and ice cream.
What flavor?
You read them all, out loud.
Choco-Mocha-Java-Banana-Haha-Butter-Crunch.
You never knew they had so many flavors.
Did you ever notice the flavors taste better when you read them out loud?
In the summer flavors you never knew existed, sound mighty tempting.
Then you sit there, in the parking lot, carefully tending to your cone of Mint Cookie Dough Daiquiri, and watch the traffic race by: everybody seems to be in such a hurry.
We spend most of the year chasing time, but when the summer comes around the relationship changes – or should.
Summer time is all about getting a hold of time.
No, that’s too easy: you don’t just get a hold of it; you sit on it, put in a headlock, hit it with a pillow, and make it cry uncle.
My personal approach is flattery.
“Say”, I say to the Summer seconds: “what a beautiful ticking sound you make”.
“Whoa”, I say to the minutes: “sixty is such a sexy number”.
“My my”, I say to the hours: I never noticed how beautiful you ‘hour’, ha ha”.
Most people don’t realize that time has a great sense of humor
We talk, and laugh, and before you know it, time forgets where it was going.
Those cool breezes in the trees – why, that’s time sighing.
Even time needs to take a break, once in a while.
As the coach says, “You have to relax to be ready.”
When you’re in the ‘ready position’ you’re relaxed.
Now where were we?
Oh, right: tending to the cone.
Here’s the windup, here’s the pitch. It’s a soft line drive, lazily arcing toward your mouth…
Eating an ice cream cone can take hours, if it’s done right.
Eventually you finish, get home and, for once, get to bed early and get a good night’s sleep.
For the first time in months you wake up before the alarm, early again, and notice right away – it looks like it’s going to be a nice day: not too humid, partly cloudy.
“Say, why don’t we drive to Sturbridge Village today?”
Or take a ride to nowhere.
Or go to the beach.
A cookout?
More ice cream?
You’re in the zone, the summer zone.
When you’re in the zone everything moves so slowly: the ball looks as big as a grapefruit; the sun is soft and cheery; you’re getting 100 miles to the gallon; the clouds are shaped like untidy French Poodles off their leash.
Somewhere, at the back of your head, you hear your own parents cheering you on, though that hasn’t happened for a very long time.
The car moves down the highway like a soft line drive, arcing toward the horizon, just out of the reach of the shortstop.
It falls into the thick outfield grass.
You round the bases with your tongue hanging out of the side of your mouth, the infield dirt crunching pleasantly under your tires.
You drive into second, go into your slide, and then just lie there, waiting for the call.
You wait so long you forget you’re waiting.
The light fades.
The stands empty out.
The sound of the game, the noise of the day, fades away.
Above you, lightning bugs audition for one another.
Soon you can’t tell the lightning bugs from the stars.
Soon the strike zone is as wide as the Milky Way.
It’s a short season.
Be up there swinging.
Normally..
No, that’s not right.
There is no normal: leastways not in this vicinity.
Usually, for the most part, during the so-called regular season, the strike zone is from your knees to your armpits: but in the summer it’s suddenly bigger, much bigger, preposterously large.
Purists will complain, but there is a good reason for this change.
Don’t ask me to explain.
The important thing to remember is that July is slip-sliding away, August is almost upon us, and before you know it you’ll be gassing up the snow-hurler.
So, as the coach says, ‘be up there swinging’.
Are we talking baseball, here?
Well, sort of.
The philosophy of summer can apply to baseball.
Our seven year old son is in a so-called Summer League, and the teams are made up of mixed ages and skill levels. Most of the kids have never pitched before, so genuine by the book, right down the middle, what do you want ‘eggs in your beer’ stee-rikes are few and far between.
Just pick out one you like and give it a ride!
But don’t be too picky.
In fact, you don’t have to like it: just hit the darn thing.
That goes for the adults too.
The coaches in this ‘league’ often have to wear several hats: there’s the official coaches hat, the hat of the father of a player, the umpires little black cap, physician, counselor, field crew and snack bar attendant.
They don’t tell you about these other responsibilities when you sign up to coach at this level. Many of the coaches have never done this before.
“What do I do?” they ask the grizzled little league veteran.
“Have fun”, they are told, with a wink: “It’s a big strike zone.
You’ve got to take your cuts.”
The games go long, very long, and are often called due to darkness.
Or is that the days go long, very long, and are often called due to baseball?
Whatever: when it’s over it’s too late to go home and make dinner – and too easy to give in: so you stop at Gellars for hamburgers and ice cream.
What flavor?
You read them all, out loud.
Choco-Mocha-Java-Banana-Haha-Butter-Crunch.
You never knew they had so many flavors.
Did you ever notice the flavors taste better when you read them out loud?
In the summer flavors you never knew existed, sound mighty tempting.
Then you sit there, in the parking lot, carefully tending to your cone of Mint Cookie Dough Daiquiri, and watch the traffic race by: everybody seems to be in such a hurry.
We spend most of the year chasing time, but when the summer comes around the relationship changes – or should.
Summer time is all about getting a hold of time.
No, that’s too easy: you don’t just get a hold of it; you sit on it, put in a headlock, hit it with a pillow, and make it cry uncle.
My personal approach is flattery.
“Say”, I say to the Summer seconds: “what a beautiful ticking sound you make”.
“Whoa”, I say to the minutes: “sixty is such a sexy number”.
“My my”, I say to the hours: I never noticed how beautiful you ‘hour’, ha ha”.
Most people don’t realize that time has a great sense of humor
We talk, and laugh, and before you know it, time forgets where it was going.
Those cool breezes in the trees – why, that’s time sighing.
Even time needs to take a break, once in a while.
As the coach says, “You have to relax to be ready.”
When you’re in the ‘ready position’ you’re relaxed.
Now where were we?
Oh, right: tending to the cone.
Here’s the windup, here’s the pitch. It’s a soft line drive, lazily arcing toward your mouth…
Eating an ice cream cone can take hours, if it’s done right.
Eventually you finish, get home and, for once, get to bed early and get a good night’s sleep.
For the first time in months you wake up before the alarm, early again, and notice right away – it looks like it’s going to be a nice day: not too humid, partly cloudy.
“Say, why don’t we drive to Sturbridge Village today?”
Or take a ride to nowhere.
Or go to the beach.
A cookout?
More ice cream?
You’re in the zone, the summer zone.
When you’re in the zone everything moves so slowly: the ball looks as big as a grapefruit; the sun is soft and cheery; you’re getting 100 miles to the gallon; the clouds are shaped like untidy French Poodles off their leash.
Somewhere, at the back of your head, you hear your own parents cheering you on, though that hasn’t happened for a very long time.
The car moves down the highway like a soft line drive, arcing toward the horizon, just out of the reach of the shortstop.
It falls into the thick outfield grass.
You round the bases with your tongue hanging out of the side of your mouth, the infield dirt crunching pleasantly under your tires.
You drive into second, go into your slide, and then just lie there, waiting for the call.
You wait so long you forget you’re waiting.
The light fades.
The stands empty out.
The sound of the game, the noise of the day, fades away.
Above you, lightning bugs audition for one another.
Soon you can’t tell the lightning bugs from the stars.
Soon the strike zone is as wide as the Milky Way.
It’s a short season.
Be up there swinging.
Bum Steer Seer
BumSteerClearSeer.com
Would you be surprised to learn that –besides my many obvious talents and skills, I also possess a certain ‘sixth sense’?
Yep, I’m a psychic.
That’s ‘ic’, not ‘o’.
Or are you surprised that every one you know doesn’t claim psychic abilities?
It certainly does seem that psychic power is on the rise.
Downtown Plymouth is awash in psychic tours.
The local cable access channel offers regular shows on the spiritual side of town: you know, the two or three blocks from Cherry Street south, to Savery Avenue.
My spiritual talents are however, limited: or perhaps I should say focused, in one particular area.
I can’t predict the future.
I can’t talk to the dead.
But when I go out to eat I know, long before I order, that the meal I am going to get is going to be a big disappointment.
Call me a ‘spiritual waiter’.
“Hello, my name is Frank, and I am going to be your spiritual server tonight. Especially bad this evening is the Papi Lopez Shrimp: a pathetic chorus line of previously frozen, miniature Chilean shrimp that have been bathed in cheap tequila before being steamed into submission and then dunked into an indeterminate amount of spice.”
It never fails: as soon as I get within ten yards of one of Plymouth’s plethora of post-modernist shoebox chain restaurants I begin receiving visions, accompanied by disturbing aromas, culminating in a painful throbbing emanating from my wallet.
It happened again, last Friday night, when I foolishly accompanied a group of friends to one of the newest of the town’s poor excuses for a night out: The Blue Elvis.
The décor said ‘fifties nostalgia’, but the menu said ‘the Over-priced Eighties’.
I was with friends though, so I tried to shut my inner voice down with a 32 ounce glass of Heffenreffer Lager Especiale: I may be a psychic, but that doesn’t mean I’m no fun.
So I grinned and swallowed, though I knew what was coming: a ten dollar Big Mac with all the fries you can eat.
And it’s not just these new chains that are haunted by bad food.
Some of the town’s older, more established restaurants have to overcome not only their own frightening menus, but the ghosts of thousands of bad meals that came before them.
It’s not always their fault: almost every downtown restaurant today occupies a building that dozens of restaurants have used over the centuries. So what you are often served is not just the result of the present-day cook’s incompetence, but the residue of particularly horrendous meals cooked centuries before.
That is probably the case at Maya Mayo’s – the town’s favorite Italian restaurant.
Most town residents will swear by Maya Mayo’s food, but I can’t walk by their front door without being assailed by the vision of a giant plate of pasta that was left in the pot for days: each noodle bloated to the width of an octopus’ tentacle.
Is there anything more frightening than waterlogged pasta?
Then there’s the sad story of the Crustacean Shack.
Years ago the building where the ‘Crust’ - as locals refer to it, now sits, was the dockside berth of the Augosta family’s two lobster boats: the Claw and the Tentacle.
The two boats were family owned, and captained by the family’s two oldest boys – Giuseppe and Guido. The boys were always fighting about the business, threatening to go their separate ways.
One day, after a particularly vicious argument between the two captains, as the Claw set out to sea Guido cried out, cursing his brother, saying he would never sell another lobster in Plymouth.
Giuseppe and the crew of The Claw disappeared that day, and for the rest of the year the lobster catch went down and down, the prices up and up. Many lobstermen lost their boats to the bank that season, and the Augosta family sold out to a developer with plans for a big seafood restaurant.
And that explains why, when you order a lobster roll at ‘The Crust’ today, it often arrives at your table with almost no trace of lobster at all: it’s spooky!
Yes, I have the power, but it’s a burden too: every weekend I wrestle with the All-American urge to go out to eat, knowing, in advance, just how disappointed I am going to feel in the end.
I don’t even get to enjoy the illusion, or share in the innocent excitement that everyone feels before they decide what to order.
My only solace is in the pre-meal gratuities I receive from grateful diners who consult me – by phone or on the web, before heading out with their own families for that obligatory weekend restaurant meal.
The usual rate is 5%, and whether you deduct that from the tip you normally give to your actual waiter, or add it to the total cost of your meal, if I help you avoid a piece of scary sushi, or advise you to stay clear of a bum steer steak (or is that ‘steer clear of a bum steer’?), I know you will find it was money well spent.
Visit me at BumSteerClearSeer.com
Would you be surprised to learn that –besides my many obvious talents and skills, I also possess a certain ‘sixth sense’?
Yep, I’m a psychic.
That’s ‘ic’, not ‘o’.
Or are you surprised that every one you know doesn’t claim psychic abilities?
It certainly does seem that psychic power is on the rise.
Downtown Plymouth is awash in psychic tours.
The local cable access channel offers regular shows on the spiritual side of town: you know, the two or three blocks from Cherry Street south, to Savery Avenue.
My spiritual talents are however, limited: or perhaps I should say focused, in one particular area.
I can’t predict the future.
I can’t talk to the dead.
But when I go out to eat I know, long before I order, that the meal I am going to get is going to be a big disappointment.
Call me a ‘spiritual waiter’.
“Hello, my name is Frank, and I am going to be your spiritual server tonight. Especially bad this evening is the Papi Lopez Shrimp: a pathetic chorus line of previously frozen, miniature Chilean shrimp that have been bathed in cheap tequila before being steamed into submission and then dunked into an indeterminate amount of spice.”
It never fails: as soon as I get within ten yards of one of Plymouth’s plethora of post-modernist shoebox chain restaurants I begin receiving visions, accompanied by disturbing aromas, culminating in a painful throbbing emanating from my wallet.
It happened again, last Friday night, when I foolishly accompanied a group of friends to one of the newest of the town’s poor excuses for a night out: The Blue Elvis.
The décor said ‘fifties nostalgia’, but the menu said ‘the Over-priced Eighties’.
I was with friends though, so I tried to shut my inner voice down with a 32 ounce glass of Heffenreffer Lager Especiale: I may be a psychic, but that doesn’t mean I’m no fun.
So I grinned and swallowed, though I knew what was coming: a ten dollar Big Mac with all the fries you can eat.
And it’s not just these new chains that are haunted by bad food.
Some of the town’s older, more established restaurants have to overcome not only their own frightening menus, but the ghosts of thousands of bad meals that came before them.
It’s not always their fault: almost every downtown restaurant today occupies a building that dozens of restaurants have used over the centuries. So what you are often served is not just the result of the present-day cook’s incompetence, but the residue of particularly horrendous meals cooked centuries before.
That is probably the case at Maya Mayo’s – the town’s favorite Italian restaurant.
Most town residents will swear by Maya Mayo’s food, but I can’t walk by their front door without being assailed by the vision of a giant plate of pasta that was left in the pot for days: each noodle bloated to the width of an octopus’ tentacle.
Is there anything more frightening than waterlogged pasta?
Then there’s the sad story of the Crustacean Shack.
Years ago the building where the ‘Crust’ - as locals refer to it, now sits, was the dockside berth of the Augosta family’s two lobster boats: the Claw and the Tentacle.
The two boats were family owned, and captained by the family’s two oldest boys – Giuseppe and Guido. The boys were always fighting about the business, threatening to go their separate ways.
One day, after a particularly vicious argument between the two captains, as the Claw set out to sea Guido cried out, cursing his brother, saying he would never sell another lobster in Plymouth.
Giuseppe and the crew of The Claw disappeared that day, and for the rest of the year the lobster catch went down and down, the prices up and up. Many lobstermen lost their boats to the bank that season, and the Augosta family sold out to a developer with plans for a big seafood restaurant.
And that explains why, when you order a lobster roll at ‘The Crust’ today, it often arrives at your table with almost no trace of lobster at all: it’s spooky!
Yes, I have the power, but it’s a burden too: every weekend I wrestle with the All-American urge to go out to eat, knowing, in advance, just how disappointed I am going to feel in the end.
I don’t even get to enjoy the illusion, or share in the innocent excitement that everyone feels before they decide what to order.
My only solace is in the pre-meal gratuities I receive from grateful diners who consult me – by phone or on the web, before heading out with their own families for that obligatory weekend restaurant meal.
The usual rate is 5%, and whether you deduct that from the tip you normally give to your actual waiter, or add it to the total cost of your meal, if I help you avoid a piece of scary sushi, or advise you to stay clear of a bum steer steak (or is that ‘steer clear of a bum steer’?), I know you will find it was money well spent.
Visit me at BumSteerClearSeer.com
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
History of the Cell Phone: Part 1
386 years ago, half way over, Winslow, with his cell phone, makes a rather bad connection to his friend Zeke back in jolly old, and –in a hoarse whisper, gives him an earful about the captain and crew.
“Don’t get me wrong, they’re a nice enough group, but they couldn’t navigate their way out of a paper bag.”
Sure enough, they stumble across the Atlantic and end up a good thousand miles off course, finally dropping anchor in a shallow, mosquito-infested harbor where they are watched by a group of very wary natives.
One, known in his native tongue as Verizon, gives his wife a call.
“Hey”, he says when she answers.
“Wassup” she responds, somewhat blandly.
“Nothing,” he says: “just thought I’d call. I’m heading back in the bark soon: got a few nice stripers. I may be a little late though.”
“So why’d you call: just to tell me that?”
“Well, no: I mean” he says, “well, there’s another one of those big boats in the harbor, you know, with the overdressed white people. I’m going to hang a bit, see what they’re up to.”
“Don’t get too close to them.”
“Maybe they’ve got some barrels of beer.”
“Oh, so now we’re getting to it,” she says, somewhat sarcastically. Then, concerned: “Well, don’t stay too long. And don’t get in the bark if you’ve had any beer.”
“I won’t,” he says, sounding offended.
“Right,” she answers.
Ten years later, on a hunting trip, Isaac Allerton calls home, and his wife answers.
“Hi. It’s me.”
“Yeah, me. So?”
“I forget: what kind of wild game did you say you wanted for the thanksgiving?”
“I told you to write it down.”
“Well I didn’t. So just tell me.”
“I said venison, if it’s available. You know how those natives eat. And if you can’t get venison, turkey, at least two big ones.”
“What about beer?”
“You’re going to shoot some beer?”
“No, you know what I mean: how are we fixed for beer?”
“Well, it sounds like you’re fixed for beer. Besides, where are you going to get more beer? You can’t just brew it up in a day.”
“Well, there’s this bunch of Dutch fishermen, a little off course. I thought maybe we could trade some venison for more beer: if we need it, that is.”
“You do what you want: you’re going to anyway, regardless of what I say. Only do me a favor: after you make the trade, let someone else steer the shallop!”
A hundred and twenty-five years later.
“Hey, guess where I am?”
“I know where you are supposed to be.”
“No, seriously, where are you now?”
“I’m where I am supposed to be. You?”
“Are you outside?”
“Yes.”
“Look across the harbor, toward Boston. Do you see the smoke, the flare of the cannons?”
“I see something”.
“Okay, okay, I’m going to wave my flag now. Do you see it? Do you see it?”
“See what?”
“Oh, damn: the British are coming. I’ll call you later.”
Two Hundred Thirty-One years later, at the ball field.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“So, did you get the beer?”
“What beer?”
“For the cookout.”
“I got that yesterday, remember?”
“Oh yeah.”
“So where are you? I thought you were taking Katie to her ballgame.”
“I was, I mean I am. I’m there now.”
“How’s she doing?”
“What do you mean? She’s fine.”
“You’re not even watching!”
“She’s fine. She’s fine. She’s… well, she’s playing in the dirt.”
“On the field?”
“Hey, it’s Tee Ball. Half of the kids are playing in the dirt.”
“And the other half are talking on their cell phones.”
“Listen, it was you who wanted to sign her up. If you are so damned eager to see her learn the fine points of the game, then you take her to the games.”
“What, and let you do the shopping?”
“I can shop.”
“Yeah, when you do the shopping you buy the beer, and then you forget what else it is you were supposed to get.”
“So what: if I forget, I call. That’s what cell phones are for!”
“Thank God: I don’t know what we would do without cell phones.”
“Don’t get me wrong, they’re a nice enough group, but they couldn’t navigate their way out of a paper bag.”
Sure enough, they stumble across the Atlantic and end up a good thousand miles off course, finally dropping anchor in a shallow, mosquito-infested harbor where they are watched by a group of very wary natives.
One, known in his native tongue as Verizon, gives his wife a call.
“Hey”, he says when she answers.
“Wassup” she responds, somewhat blandly.
“Nothing,” he says: “just thought I’d call. I’m heading back in the bark soon: got a few nice stripers. I may be a little late though.”
“So why’d you call: just to tell me that?”
“Well, no: I mean” he says, “well, there’s another one of those big boats in the harbor, you know, with the overdressed white people. I’m going to hang a bit, see what they’re up to.”
“Don’t get too close to them.”
“Maybe they’ve got some barrels of beer.”
“Oh, so now we’re getting to it,” she says, somewhat sarcastically. Then, concerned: “Well, don’t stay too long. And don’t get in the bark if you’ve had any beer.”
“I won’t,” he says, sounding offended.
“Right,” she answers.
Ten years later, on a hunting trip, Isaac Allerton calls home, and his wife answers.
“Hi. It’s me.”
“Yeah, me. So?”
“I forget: what kind of wild game did you say you wanted for the thanksgiving?”
“I told you to write it down.”
“Well I didn’t. So just tell me.”
“I said venison, if it’s available. You know how those natives eat. And if you can’t get venison, turkey, at least two big ones.”
“What about beer?”
“You’re going to shoot some beer?”
“No, you know what I mean: how are we fixed for beer?”
“Well, it sounds like you’re fixed for beer. Besides, where are you going to get more beer? You can’t just brew it up in a day.”
“Well, there’s this bunch of Dutch fishermen, a little off course. I thought maybe we could trade some venison for more beer: if we need it, that is.”
“You do what you want: you’re going to anyway, regardless of what I say. Only do me a favor: after you make the trade, let someone else steer the shallop!”
A hundred and twenty-five years later.
“Hey, guess where I am?”
“I know where you are supposed to be.”
“No, seriously, where are you now?”
“I’m where I am supposed to be. You?”
“Are you outside?”
“Yes.”
“Look across the harbor, toward Boston. Do you see the smoke, the flare of the cannons?”
“I see something”.
“Okay, okay, I’m going to wave my flag now. Do you see it? Do you see it?”
“See what?”
“Oh, damn: the British are coming. I’ll call you later.”
Two Hundred Thirty-One years later, at the ball field.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“So, did you get the beer?”
“What beer?”
“For the cookout.”
“I got that yesterday, remember?”
“Oh yeah.”
“So where are you? I thought you were taking Katie to her ballgame.”
“I was, I mean I am. I’m there now.”
“How’s she doing?”
“What do you mean? She’s fine.”
“You’re not even watching!”
“She’s fine. She’s fine. She’s… well, she’s playing in the dirt.”
“On the field?”
“Hey, it’s Tee Ball. Half of the kids are playing in the dirt.”
“And the other half are talking on their cell phones.”
“Listen, it was you who wanted to sign her up. If you are so damned eager to see her learn the fine points of the game, then you take her to the games.”
“What, and let you do the shopping?”
“I can shop.”
“Yeah, when you do the shopping you buy the beer, and then you forget what else it is you were supposed to get.”
“So what: if I forget, I call. That’s what cell phones are for!”
“Thank God: I don’t know what we would do without cell phones.”
NSA Junior
Knock, knock.
I knew who it was even before I opened the door.
Mary scurried upstairs into Patrick’s room, trying to divert his attention.
We have one of those steel front doors, painted to appear as if it’s a traditional wooden door.
The door bell hasn’t worked since, well, it must be over ten years now –but we’ve gotten along without it.
We don’t get many surprise visits.
If someone decides to maneuver up our long, twisted driveway –that we affectionately call ‘Lake Woebegone’, endangering their axles on the washed-out gravel surface, risking their side-view mirrors to the encroaching trees, by the time they get to the front door they’re not exactly a surprise.
Somehow though, when this knock came – a dull, almost undetectable rap against the metal surface, we didn’t hear it coming.
I had heard something – a bird playing in the driveway’s standing water I thought: definitely not a car.
The truth is, we’ve done all we can to keep visitors away, especially these kind.
We were attracted to this house, at first, by how far back from the road it was situated.
The driveway’s subtle twists are just enough so that you cannot get a clear view of the house from the road.
At the end of the driveway, three tall, spindly trees completely obscure the front door.
To those obstacles we have added ivy bushes that, as expected, grew out of control, and a lawn whose grass is the spindly, clumpy variety the appearance of which is not improved by mowing.
Then we seasoned the lot with the odd junk car or two, so that visitors can never be sure if anyone is home, or if the place has been deserted for years.
And of course, we chose a lifestyle that works against getting to know your neighbors, or making friends: we both work and are rarely home at the same time.
All told, it’s not the kind of house that strangers will approach on a whim.
It’s more of the kind of house that gets a reputation for being haunted, or having a mean dog, or simply a place that you think twice about approaching and, if you do, you are devising an escape route with each step forward.
But kids are unpredictable: for them an unkempt lawn is not an impediment to play; for them a driveway that is usually under water is a water sports park; for them a junk car is a Spanish Galleon bound for the Galapagos.
So we knew this day had to come.
We could feel it approaching.
Patrick is, after all, seven now: he can throw a ball, swing a bat, ride a bike, and he knows that at the end of our driveway – the other end, is a world of adventure.
Without anyone else nearby to play with, it was easy to say, ‘don’t go any farther than the end of the driveway’.
On special occasions we’d take his bike to a playground, so he could ride over the tar and, occasionally, into the empty parking areas.
Were we overly protective? Of course we were.
Were we stingy with our time? Perhaps.
As I got off the couch and moved toward the door I saw their bikes, kick-stands down, parked in the dirt.
There were two of them: Ben and Raymond.
They didn’t look evil. In fact, they looked almost exactly like kids.
I noticed where the muddy waters of Lake Woebegone had spattered their shorts as they sped up the driveway.
Maybe, I hoped, they were selling something: candy bars, candles, magazine subscriptions.
They soon dashed my hopes.
“Can Patrick come over to my house,” Ben asked, before the door was fully opened?
I wanted to say, oh right, just over to your house: is that all? Don’t you mean can Patrick leave the safety of his home, ride his bike on the dangerous streets, disappear from our sight, and have a life of his own?
But I didn’t want to frighten them.
Before I could formulate a plausible excuse though, I heard the muffled gasp of my wife, and the tell-tale thud of Patrick’s feet on the stairs.
I think he asked. I think I answered. I think he grabbed his helmet. But I can’t be sure.
I do know that Before Mary could get all the way down the stairs all three bikes had disappeared round the bend in the driveway, the water still roiled from their spinning wheels.
“It’s a good thing” I told Mary, seeing the panic in her eyes. “Summer is almost here, and we don’t want him moping around the house, waiting for us to give him something to do”
“Besides, he’s almost eight. There’s nothing we can do.”
But we both knew that wasn’t true.
There was a brief moment of awkward silence.
Could we? Should we?
We didn’t speak, but we knew what the other was thinking.
We waited a reasonable time – about 30 seconds, and then we took a little drive.
Our parenting philosophy is modeled after the NSA: do everything you can to guard you borders but, when all else fails, spy!
And we’re thinking of putting up a gate at the end of the driveway too.
I knew who it was even before I opened the door.
Mary scurried upstairs into Patrick’s room, trying to divert his attention.
We have one of those steel front doors, painted to appear as if it’s a traditional wooden door.
The door bell hasn’t worked since, well, it must be over ten years now –but we’ve gotten along without it.
We don’t get many surprise visits.
If someone decides to maneuver up our long, twisted driveway –that we affectionately call ‘Lake Woebegone’, endangering their axles on the washed-out gravel surface, risking their side-view mirrors to the encroaching trees, by the time they get to the front door they’re not exactly a surprise.
Somehow though, when this knock came – a dull, almost undetectable rap against the metal surface, we didn’t hear it coming.
I had heard something – a bird playing in the driveway’s standing water I thought: definitely not a car.
The truth is, we’ve done all we can to keep visitors away, especially these kind.
We were attracted to this house, at first, by how far back from the road it was situated.
The driveway’s subtle twists are just enough so that you cannot get a clear view of the house from the road.
At the end of the driveway, three tall, spindly trees completely obscure the front door.
To those obstacles we have added ivy bushes that, as expected, grew out of control, and a lawn whose grass is the spindly, clumpy variety the appearance of which is not improved by mowing.
Then we seasoned the lot with the odd junk car or two, so that visitors can never be sure if anyone is home, or if the place has been deserted for years.
And of course, we chose a lifestyle that works against getting to know your neighbors, or making friends: we both work and are rarely home at the same time.
All told, it’s not the kind of house that strangers will approach on a whim.
It’s more of the kind of house that gets a reputation for being haunted, or having a mean dog, or simply a place that you think twice about approaching and, if you do, you are devising an escape route with each step forward.
But kids are unpredictable: for them an unkempt lawn is not an impediment to play; for them a driveway that is usually under water is a water sports park; for them a junk car is a Spanish Galleon bound for the Galapagos.
So we knew this day had to come.
We could feel it approaching.
Patrick is, after all, seven now: he can throw a ball, swing a bat, ride a bike, and he knows that at the end of our driveway – the other end, is a world of adventure.
Without anyone else nearby to play with, it was easy to say, ‘don’t go any farther than the end of the driveway’.
On special occasions we’d take his bike to a playground, so he could ride over the tar and, occasionally, into the empty parking areas.
Were we overly protective? Of course we were.
Were we stingy with our time? Perhaps.
As I got off the couch and moved toward the door I saw their bikes, kick-stands down, parked in the dirt.
There were two of them: Ben and Raymond.
They didn’t look evil. In fact, they looked almost exactly like kids.
I noticed where the muddy waters of Lake Woebegone had spattered their shorts as they sped up the driveway.
Maybe, I hoped, they were selling something: candy bars, candles, magazine subscriptions.
They soon dashed my hopes.
“Can Patrick come over to my house,” Ben asked, before the door was fully opened?
I wanted to say, oh right, just over to your house: is that all? Don’t you mean can Patrick leave the safety of his home, ride his bike on the dangerous streets, disappear from our sight, and have a life of his own?
But I didn’t want to frighten them.
Before I could formulate a plausible excuse though, I heard the muffled gasp of my wife, and the tell-tale thud of Patrick’s feet on the stairs.
I think he asked. I think I answered. I think he grabbed his helmet. But I can’t be sure.
I do know that Before Mary could get all the way down the stairs all three bikes had disappeared round the bend in the driveway, the water still roiled from their spinning wheels.
“It’s a good thing” I told Mary, seeing the panic in her eyes. “Summer is almost here, and we don’t want him moping around the house, waiting for us to give him something to do”
“Besides, he’s almost eight. There’s nothing we can do.”
But we both knew that wasn’t true.
There was a brief moment of awkward silence.
Could we? Should we?
We didn’t speak, but we knew what the other was thinking.
We waited a reasonable time – about 30 seconds, and then we took a little drive.
Our parenting philosophy is modeled after the NSA: do everything you can to guard you borders but, when all else fails, spy!
And we’re thinking of putting up a gate at the end of the driveway too.
Clint Eastwood Lawn Care Company
Give it up.
Admit that for five weeks in the spring, the caterpillar is King!
Besides, you can’t in good conscience put another five gallons of Killzallothion on your lawn, can you?
As it is you’ve already absorbed enough through the soles of those ratty sneakers to qualify for official X-Man status.
Your neighbor’s dog has sprouted wings.
Mr. Welch across the street paid for one of those forest fire planes to douse his yard with bug killer - but they missed and filled up the Mr. Carter’s pool instead.
Mr. Carter tried swimming in it, but found he could only bounce on the surface: at night it gives off a freaky glow, like a giant vat of Sterno.
He’s planning on having a pig roast – as soon as he figures out how to suspend the pig over the pool.
The police stopped a van sneaking over the Carver line, and found that it was full of illegal migrant caterpillar picking laborers.
They let them go.
Have you noticed that you haven’t seen many wild turkeys lately? That seems a shame because turkeys love to eat caterpillars. But the truth is that they’ve eaten so many already that they can’t move: they’re all somewhere in the woods, lying on the ground, fast asleep.
Science fact: caterpillars are full of a chemical that makes you sleepy if you eat them.
Have you noticed that you haven’t seen many coyotes lately?
Science fact: turkeys are full of a chemical that makes you sleepy if you eat them.
This is a perfect time to rethink your landscaping strategy.
21 years ago, when I first moved in to my home, I had 1000 square feet of sod, 10 hardy shrubs, and a long gravel driveway that sloped slightly downhill from the front of the house toward the road.
I’m thinking now of a more natural, green approach.
I’m going to let the forest take the driveway.
I am going to let the wildflowers take the lawn.
I am going to let the caterpillars have what’s left.
Have you seen my son Patrick? He went out last night to collect some specimens –so cute, with his little mason jar with the holes punched in the lid, but he never came back in.
There was a note, of sorts –full of nibbled letters, but we couldn’t make it out. Something about ‘if ou wan to see yo-r sn again, leaf frshly potted delish fern on bck deck..’
Someone told me that if you listen carefully at night, you can hear millions of caterpillars munching on leaves.
We used to tell my older son Robert that he chewed like he had rocks in his mouth: if he ate ice cream he sounded as if he was chewing on rocks; if he ate cereal he sounded as if he was chewing on rocks; if he ate soup.. Well, you get the picture.
So I listened the other night, and I really don’t think what I was hearing was the sound of tiny mouths chewing. I think, instead, it was the sound of digested bits of leave falling from the trees.
My car is now mocha colored.
The lawn is mocha colored.
The streets are a patchwork of goo spots.
Of course where you are it might be very different. Our house is set back a ways, into the woods, surrounded on all sides by raggedy scrub oak. Or, what used to be raggedy scrub oak.
I am not sure but I think the trees are surrendering.
This natural phenomenon is not doing anything to help fight the obesity epidemic amongst children either.
Society once used caterpillars as an example of patience and humility: the poor, ugly caterpillar goes to bed one night - an outcast among the more attractive of God’s creatures, and wakes up the next morning a beautiful butterfly.
But these caterpillars have no humility whatsoever.
These caterpillars must know what lies ahead for them, because they’re partying to beat the band.
They’re like a fat teenager whose parents have promised them stomach stapling surgery for their sixteenth birthday.
They’re setting a very bad example.
Oh, what the hell: go ahead and spray them again.
Admit that for five weeks in the spring, the caterpillar is King!
Besides, you can’t in good conscience put another five gallons of Killzallothion on your lawn, can you?
As it is you’ve already absorbed enough through the soles of those ratty sneakers to qualify for official X-Man status.
Your neighbor’s dog has sprouted wings.
Mr. Welch across the street paid for one of those forest fire planes to douse his yard with bug killer - but they missed and filled up the Mr. Carter’s pool instead.
Mr. Carter tried swimming in it, but found he could only bounce on the surface: at night it gives off a freaky glow, like a giant vat of Sterno.
He’s planning on having a pig roast – as soon as he figures out how to suspend the pig over the pool.
The police stopped a van sneaking over the Carver line, and found that it was full of illegal migrant caterpillar picking laborers.
They let them go.
Have you noticed that you haven’t seen many wild turkeys lately? That seems a shame because turkeys love to eat caterpillars. But the truth is that they’ve eaten so many already that they can’t move: they’re all somewhere in the woods, lying on the ground, fast asleep.
Science fact: caterpillars are full of a chemical that makes you sleepy if you eat them.
Have you noticed that you haven’t seen many coyotes lately?
Science fact: turkeys are full of a chemical that makes you sleepy if you eat them.
This is a perfect time to rethink your landscaping strategy.
21 years ago, when I first moved in to my home, I had 1000 square feet of sod, 10 hardy shrubs, and a long gravel driveway that sloped slightly downhill from the front of the house toward the road.
I’m thinking now of a more natural, green approach.
I’m going to let the forest take the driveway.
I am going to let the wildflowers take the lawn.
I am going to let the caterpillars have what’s left.
Have you seen my son Patrick? He went out last night to collect some specimens –so cute, with his little mason jar with the holes punched in the lid, but he never came back in.
There was a note, of sorts –full of nibbled letters, but we couldn’t make it out. Something about ‘if ou wan to see yo-r sn again, leaf frshly potted delish fern on bck deck..’
Someone told me that if you listen carefully at night, you can hear millions of caterpillars munching on leaves.
We used to tell my older son Robert that he chewed like he had rocks in his mouth: if he ate ice cream he sounded as if he was chewing on rocks; if he ate cereal he sounded as if he was chewing on rocks; if he ate soup.. Well, you get the picture.
So I listened the other night, and I really don’t think what I was hearing was the sound of tiny mouths chewing. I think, instead, it was the sound of digested bits of leave falling from the trees.
My car is now mocha colored.
The lawn is mocha colored.
The streets are a patchwork of goo spots.
Of course where you are it might be very different. Our house is set back a ways, into the woods, surrounded on all sides by raggedy scrub oak. Or, what used to be raggedy scrub oak.
I am not sure but I think the trees are surrendering.
This natural phenomenon is not doing anything to help fight the obesity epidemic amongst children either.
Society once used caterpillars as an example of patience and humility: the poor, ugly caterpillar goes to bed one night - an outcast among the more attractive of God’s creatures, and wakes up the next morning a beautiful butterfly.
But these caterpillars have no humility whatsoever.
These caterpillars must know what lies ahead for them, because they’re partying to beat the band.
They’re like a fat teenager whose parents have promised them stomach stapling surgery for their sixteenth birthday.
They’re setting a very bad example.
Oh, what the hell: go ahead and spray them again.
The Decider
According to The Decider, freedom is on the march in Iraq, but back here in Plymouth some gay guy is threatening to sneak into your home and pencil in a new definition of marriage.
This is no laughing matter.
This guy has a sharpened No. 2 Pencil!
And history has shown, time and time again, that reality is based on Websters’s New Texas Dictionary, Volume 27.
Today that dictionary defines marriage as “a ceremony in which a Republican Senator kisses the arse of a symbolic right-wing voter, then takes a free flight to Tahiti to speak at a conference on the power of golf to preserve the traditional family unit.”
If we don’t pass a Constititutional Amendment preserving the present definition of marriage – The Decider warns, Senators from any party would be free to kiss the arses of right wing voters, or the arses of left wing voters, or maybe even the arses of wild animals.
It boggles the mind.
What we are really doing here, The Decider says, is protecting the will of the people against the will of other people who don’t agree with their definition of the will of the people.
And those other people –whoever they are, are scared: scared that what they are afraid of, will be shown to be not so scary after all: thereby eliminating a large portion of the rationale for voting for The Decider and his golfing buddies.
And if the people aren’t scared, there will be less reason for them to stay married, and fewer married people could mean that more people on the street will have their own No. 2 pencils, and the freedom to go around putting moustaches on pictures of Der Decider – further eroding the place of golf in a free society.
Actually, to be fair, The Decider is not a big golfer: he’s more a brush-burning kind of guy.
But The Decider has always respected the right of golfers to golf with whomever they wished, and to keep the coloreds and the gays and the women from joining their Country Club.
No, that’s not exactly right: let me erase that last statement and pencil in a new one.
When you golf, you carry your own scorecard, and one of those cute little pencils that they give out at the clubhouse.
If you want to cheat – who is going to stop you?
If you want to shave off a stroke here, forget a bad shot there, it’s between you and your Decider.
That is, until there is money on the line.
As soon as there is money on the line, the rules must be strictly enforced.
And that’s kind of what’s going on with the fight to preserve the definition of marriage.
Nobody wants to tell anybody else what to do with their lives, but if a politician wants to be re-elected (or keep his poll numbers up) he’s got to get out his No. 2 pencil and rewrite the rules (to fit those with whom he regularly golfs or goes pheasant hunting (or burns brush) with).
It’s kind of like that famous word-guessing game.
You take turns making up something to fear: but you never ever tell the other person exactly what it is, that they should be afraid of.
They take guesses, and every time they miss, you draw a leg or an arm, a head, then a face and - in the end, someone’s always left hanging.
Do we really need a Constitutional Amendment for that?
This is no laughing matter.
This guy has a sharpened No. 2 Pencil!
And history has shown, time and time again, that reality is based on Websters’s New Texas Dictionary, Volume 27.
Today that dictionary defines marriage as “a ceremony in which a Republican Senator kisses the arse of a symbolic right-wing voter, then takes a free flight to Tahiti to speak at a conference on the power of golf to preserve the traditional family unit.”
If we don’t pass a Constititutional Amendment preserving the present definition of marriage – The Decider warns, Senators from any party would be free to kiss the arses of right wing voters, or the arses of left wing voters, or maybe even the arses of wild animals.
It boggles the mind.
What we are really doing here, The Decider says, is protecting the will of the people against the will of other people who don’t agree with their definition of the will of the people.
And those other people –whoever they are, are scared: scared that what they are afraid of, will be shown to be not so scary after all: thereby eliminating a large portion of the rationale for voting for The Decider and his golfing buddies.
And if the people aren’t scared, there will be less reason for them to stay married, and fewer married people could mean that more people on the street will have their own No. 2 pencils, and the freedom to go around putting moustaches on pictures of Der Decider – further eroding the place of golf in a free society.
Actually, to be fair, The Decider is not a big golfer: he’s more a brush-burning kind of guy.
But The Decider has always respected the right of golfers to golf with whomever they wished, and to keep the coloreds and the gays and the women from joining their Country Club.
No, that’s not exactly right: let me erase that last statement and pencil in a new one.
When you golf, you carry your own scorecard, and one of those cute little pencils that they give out at the clubhouse.
If you want to cheat – who is going to stop you?
If you want to shave off a stroke here, forget a bad shot there, it’s between you and your Decider.
That is, until there is money on the line.
As soon as there is money on the line, the rules must be strictly enforced.
And that’s kind of what’s going on with the fight to preserve the definition of marriage.
Nobody wants to tell anybody else what to do with their lives, but if a politician wants to be re-elected (or keep his poll numbers up) he’s got to get out his No. 2 pencil and rewrite the rules (to fit those with whom he regularly golfs or goes pheasant hunting (or burns brush) with).
It’s kind of like that famous word-guessing game.
You take turns making up something to fear: but you never ever tell the other person exactly what it is, that they should be afraid of.
They take guesses, and every time they miss, you draw a leg or an arm, a head, then a face and - in the end, someone’s always left hanging.
Do we really need a Constitutional Amendment for that?
Put the Lime in the Democrats
You can relax; I took care of that nagging State Democratic Convention thingee.
You don’t have to pretend with me: I know you were nervous, a bit confused, and conflicted by your desire to give your family what it wants (the second in a series of 15 consecutive weekend barbeques) and your sense of personal responsibility to be the most active and involved citizen you can be.
So while you stayed home and barbequed in the rain, I spent my weekend in the DCU Center in Worcester, representing your political interests.
No, don’t ask: of course I got you a tee-shirt.
I made it a point to get every one of you at least one tee – in every color of the rainbow.
For those that either don’t vote, or wander into the polls and vote for the person whose name they last heard on a television advertisement, I got one of the Chris Gabrielli shirts: a nice white tee with lettering meant to evoke a Red Sox shirt, and on the back the number 15 (for the percentage of vote he needed to be on the September primary).
These are expensive tee-shirts.
Leading up to the convention Gabrielli spent about 2 million dollars for his 650 votes –which works out to about $3000 per tee shirt.
Wear it and be proud. (Dry Clean only!)
For those of you that like your politics the old fashioned way, I got you a Reilly Tee, in a choice of a lovely burnt orange or bright yellow color.
Well, maybe lovely is not exactly the right word. The Reilly Tees are the color of the lights on a tow-truck: that flashy, cuts through the rain, beware of broken glass, there’s been a horrible accident up ahead, kind of color.
Ever since Attorney Tom General Reilly formally announced his candidacy for Governor he‘s had all the momentum of an avalanche, taking trees and boulders (and much of the Democratic establishment) with him as he fell downhill - so the safety orange color is not only fitting, it’s necessary.
There was a lot of other stuff too, and I brought back a whole suitcase full of it.
One of the 17 Tim’s running for state office was giving out this expensive button that had a built-in little red light that continuously flashed.
At one point, after they first distributed them on Friday night, there was this almost demonic look to the convention center – with a thousand little red eyes blinking madly.
I’m not sure what message you were supposed to get from this souped-up button: maybe, vote for Tim, his flash bulb is always ready; or vote for Tim, you can locate him in a crowd; or vote for Tim, he’ll give you some cool stuff if you do?
Maybe it hummed a subliminal message with every flash of its demonic eye? Vote for Tim, Vote for Tim, Vote for Tim..
Traffic was slowed by the heavy rain that fell as I drove home after the convention ended last Saturday evening –so I just stuck a half-dozen of those little demon-eyed buttons on the dashboard and - like magic, I had the high-speed lane all to myself.
I know I’ve been talking about everything I got you, but you’re right: I got myself a little something too.
Nothing very special, though I know that when I wear it I will be making a statement.
I got myself a Deval Patrick tee.
They only had them in one size, Large.
I tried it on when I got home and, as I thought, it was too small.
I’m a Larger.
But I’m going to keep it.
In fact, I think it’s going to be the motivation for a diet – personal and political.
I’m going to try to lose some weight, and a little rhetoric as well.
The Deval Patrick Tee is a bright, lime green color.
At first I just tolerated that: with Reilly’s orange, and Gabrielli’s white, Galvin’s baby blue, and so on, I told myself that Patrick needed a color that stood out.
Lime Green certainly stands out.
But then, trying it on, I was reminded of the old pop song that goes, “you put the lime in the coconut.”
I always wondered what that song meant. How do you get lime in the coconut?
Trying to get a progressive, grassroots candidate – who isn’t bound to the state’s power structure, elected to a state office, is a bit like squeezing yourself into a shirt one size too small (or squeezing a lime into a coconut).
But ahh, when you do, the feeling is sublime.
You should try it.
Technically, as your representative in Worcester, you already have. In fact, you should know that the twelve elected members of the Plymouth Democratic delegation to the convention, all voted for Patrick.
And he won!
So now you’re wondering, where’s your Deval Patrick stuff?
Sorry: I don’t have any extra Deval Patrick tees.
Deval is not your typical flashing light, cash-rich, tee-shirts for everybody candidate.
Deval isn’t offering the usual one-size fits all, whatever you want to hear, politics as usual Massachusetts Democratic message.
If you want the Deval Tee, you’re going to have to lose some of your old fat, abandon some of your old rhetoric, and add a little color to your wardrobe.
You’re going to have to squeeze the lime in to the Democrats.
Otherwise, on Election Day in November, Ambulance Orange could be the color of the day for Democrats, once again.
You don’t have to pretend with me: I know you were nervous, a bit confused, and conflicted by your desire to give your family what it wants (the second in a series of 15 consecutive weekend barbeques) and your sense of personal responsibility to be the most active and involved citizen you can be.
So while you stayed home and barbequed in the rain, I spent my weekend in the DCU Center in Worcester, representing your political interests.
No, don’t ask: of course I got you a tee-shirt.
I made it a point to get every one of you at least one tee – in every color of the rainbow.
For those that either don’t vote, or wander into the polls and vote for the person whose name they last heard on a television advertisement, I got one of the Chris Gabrielli shirts: a nice white tee with lettering meant to evoke a Red Sox shirt, and on the back the number 15 (for the percentage of vote he needed to be on the September primary).
These are expensive tee-shirts.
Leading up to the convention Gabrielli spent about 2 million dollars for his 650 votes –which works out to about $3000 per tee shirt.
Wear it and be proud. (Dry Clean only!)
For those of you that like your politics the old fashioned way, I got you a Reilly Tee, in a choice of a lovely burnt orange or bright yellow color.
Well, maybe lovely is not exactly the right word. The Reilly Tees are the color of the lights on a tow-truck: that flashy, cuts through the rain, beware of broken glass, there’s been a horrible accident up ahead, kind of color.
Ever since Attorney Tom General Reilly formally announced his candidacy for Governor he‘s had all the momentum of an avalanche, taking trees and boulders (and much of the Democratic establishment) with him as he fell downhill - so the safety orange color is not only fitting, it’s necessary.
There was a lot of other stuff too, and I brought back a whole suitcase full of it.
One of the 17 Tim’s running for state office was giving out this expensive button that had a built-in little red light that continuously flashed.
At one point, after they first distributed them on Friday night, there was this almost demonic look to the convention center – with a thousand little red eyes blinking madly.
I’m not sure what message you were supposed to get from this souped-up button: maybe, vote for Tim, his flash bulb is always ready; or vote for Tim, you can locate him in a crowd; or vote for Tim, he’ll give you some cool stuff if you do?
Maybe it hummed a subliminal message with every flash of its demonic eye? Vote for Tim, Vote for Tim, Vote for Tim..
Traffic was slowed by the heavy rain that fell as I drove home after the convention ended last Saturday evening –so I just stuck a half-dozen of those little demon-eyed buttons on the dashboard and - like magic, I had the high-speed lane all to myself.
I know I’ve been talking about everything I got you, but you’re right: I got myself a little something too.
Nothing very special, though I know that when I wear it I will be making a statement.
I got myself a Deval Patrick tee.
They only had them in one size, Large.
I tried it on when I got home and, as I thought, it was too small.
I’m a Larger.
But I’m going to keep it.
In fact, I think it’s going to be the motivation for a diet – personal and political.
I’m going to try to lose some weight, and a little rhetoric as well.
The Deval Patrick Tee is a bright, lime green color.
At first I just tolerated that: with Reilly’s orange, and Gabrielli’s white, Galvin’s baby blue, and so on, I told myself that Patrick needed a color that stood out.
Lime Green certainly stands out.
But then, trying it on, I was reminded of the old pop song that goes, “you put the lime in the coconut.”
I always wondered what that song meant. How do you get lime in the coconut?
Trying to get a progressive, grassroots candidate – who isn’t bound to the state’s power structure, elected to a state office, is a bit like squeezing yourself into a shirt one size too small (or squeezing a lime into a coconut).
But ahh, when you do, the feeling is sublime.
You should try it.
Technically, as your representative in Worcester, you already have. In fact, you should know that the twelve elected members of the Plymouth Democratic delegation to the convention, all voted for Patrick.
And he won!
So now you’re wondering, where’s your Deval Patrick stuff?
Sorry: I don’t have any extra Deval Patrick tees.
Deval is not your typical flashing light, cash-rich, tee-shirts for everybody candidate.
Deval isn’t offering the usual one-size fits all, whatever you want to hear, politics as usual Massachusetts Democratic message.
If you want the Deval Tee, you’re going to have to lose some of your old fat, abandon some of your old rhetoric, and add a little color to your wardrobe.
You’re going to have to squeeze the lime in to the Democrats.
Otherwise, on Election Day in November, Ambulance Orange could be the color of the day for Democrats, once again.
I Shave, Therefore, I Am
I’m trying to come up with a convincing argument for shaving with a razor: not the electric kind, but the old fashioned kind – a stick with a sharpened piece of steel on the end.
I’ve been shaving that way for thirty years, and I don’t want to change: but it’s just not that easy anymore.
It’s still kind of macho though, isn’t it?
Every day, without fail, I take at least one slice out of my pathetic excuse for a face.
Shaving with this sharpened stick shows I can take it. Right?
I don’t have a massive, gleaming, $40,000 pick-up truck, or my own personal back-hoe, or a faded tattoo on my bicep, so the razor is my only way of proving my manhood.
Right?
Besides, it’s required by my religion.
I belong to a little known offshoot of the Mandonites: we’re allowed to use most modern machinery like cars and computers, but are strictly forbidden from using certain unnecessary luxury items – like an electric toothbrush, or an automatic dishwasher, or a cordless beard trimmer.
Shaving with a real blade makes me feel like Harrison Ford in ‘Witness’: my clothes are not fashionable, but those little flecks of dried blood on my lip and chin make me one sexy, God-fearing, knows-how-to-handle-a-hammer kind of guy.
You buying that?
Then there’s Conservation.
In my thirty years of shaving I have saved a lot of electricity.
Five minutes a day, times 365 days a year, times 30 years, times 5 kHz per use, works out to about a barrel and a half of imported oil.
If it were not for my disposable razor we might have invaded Berzerkistan too.
Then again, a disposable razor a week, times 50 weeks, times 30 years, equals a big lump of oil-based plastic that could take 100 years to decompose up there on Mt. Manomet.
Then there’s Gillette, or I guess I should say, Procter & Gamble – one humongous corporation that probably sells a billion little blue razors a day.
If it were not for my regular purchase of five disposable razors a week over the last three decades, two or three hard-working employees of Humongous Inc. would probably have been laid off back in 1983.
Without their union jobs those guys would not have been able to send their kids to college.
At least one of them would probably have buckled under the pressure, taken to the bottle, rented the house across from me, and knocked over my mailbox one night coming home from Karaoke Night at the Wannabee Bar & Grille.
Look, I am going to going to do what I have to, to save the electricity and oil, maintain my masculinity, and keep American jobs in America: but I am going to need a little help.
When I started shaving they had these little devices that popped open so you could slide one single, super-sharp metal blade on to the device.
When the blade was firmly affixed, you simply dragged the razor back and forth over your face until the pain was unbearable or you were finished shaving.
Those blades were fierce. Medicine cabinets in new homes and in hotels were equipped with little slots in the back wall, so you could dispose of the blades between the walls and not risk injury to you, a family member, or a sanitation worker.
Today, I have to admit, shaving is a far less dangerous proposition. Today, the worst that can happen is that you nick yourself a bit, here and there.
But it’s just getting too darn complex.
One blade turned into two, turned into three, turned into four –with no end in sight!
As I understand it, the first blade teases the hair into thinking its going to be cut, so it responds defensively, becoming sullen and unresponsive.
The second blade hops right over that first hair though, and takes a quick hack at the second hair, causing it to become unresponsive as well.
The third blade pretends to negotiate in good faith with the first two hairs, while a fourth blade actually sneaks up from behind and cuts a third hair.
A fifth blade then arrives and, like an old fashion scythe, cuts a broad swath of hair.
A sixth blade makes sure that first hair is cut.
Then you lather and repeat (or is that for shampoo?)
In order to do the job right, and give each of the six blades an opportunity to participate in your morning ritual, requires about 45 minutes.
According to the DVD that comes with each razor, there are ways to reduce the total shaving time - but they advise against it.
There is a button that allows you to use only the blades you want to use (not all six), but that’s a tricky proposition. Which blades are you going to use: the Negotiators, the Scythe, the Hopper?
If you don’t choose the right blades for your follicle condition you risk voiding the conditional guarantee.
I want to keep using my cheap, manly, blade razor, but it’s just getting too complex for me.
I just want a shave, not an engineering degree.
I’m thinking of growing a beard.
Can you blame me?
I’ve been shaving that way for thirty years, and I don’t want to change: but it’s just not that easy anymore.
It’s still kind of macho though, isn’t it?
Every day, without fail, I take at least one slice out of my pathetic excuse for a face.
Shaving with this sharpened stick shows I can take it. Right?
I don’t have a massive, gleaming, $40,000 pick-up truck, or my own personal back-hoe, or a faded tattoo on my bicep, so the razor is my only way of proving my manhood.
Right?
Besides, it’s required by my religion.
I belong to a little known offshoot of the Mandonites: we’re allowed to use most modern machinery like cars and computers, but are strictly forbidden from using certain unnecessary luxury items – like an electric toothbrush, or an automatic dishwasher, or a cordless beard trimmer.
Shaving with a real blade makes me feel like Harrison Ford in ‘Witness’: my clothes are not fashionable, but those little flecks of dried blood on my lip and chin make me one sexy, God-fearing, knows-how-to-handle-a-hammer kind of guy.
You buying that?
Then there’s Conservation.
In my thirty years of shaving I have saved a lot of electricity.
Five minutes a day, times 365 days a year, times 30 years, times 5 kHz per use, works out to about a barrel and a half of imported oil.
If it were not for my disposable razor we might have invaded Berzerkistan too.
Then again, a disposable razor a week, times 50 weeks, times 30 years, equals a big lump of oil-based plastic that could take 100 years to decompose up there on Mt. Manomet.
Then there’s Gillette, or I guess I should say, Procter & Gamble – one humongous corporation that probably sells a billion little blue razors a day.
If it were not for my regular purchase of five disposable razors a week over the last three decades, two or three hard-working employees of Humongous Inc. would probably have been laid off back in 1983.
Without their union jobs those guys would not have been able to send their kids to college.
At least one of them would probably have buckled under the pressure, taken to the bottle, rented the house across from me, and knocked over my mailbox one night coming home from Karaoke Night at the Wannabee Bar & Grille.
Look, I am going to going to do what I have to, to save the electricity and oil, maintain my masculinity, and keep American jobs in America: but I am going to need a little help.
When I started shaving they had these little devices that popped open so you could slide one single, super-sharp metal blade on to the device.
When the blade was firmly affixed, you simply dragged the razor back and forth over your face until the pain was unbearable or you were finished shaving.
Those blades were fierce. Medicine cabinets in new homes and in hotels were equipped with little slots in the back wall, so you could dispose of the blades between the walls and not risk injury to you, a family member, or a sanitation worker.
Today, I have to admit, shaving is a far less dangerous proposition. Today, the worst that can happen is that you nick yourself a bit, here and there.
But it’s just getting too darn complex.
One blade turned into two, turned into three, turned into four –with no end in sight!
As I understand it, the first blade teases the hair into thinking its going to be cut, so it responds defensively, becoming sullen and unresponsive.
The second blade hops right over that first hair though, and takes a quick hack at the second hair, causing it to become unresponsive as well.
The third blade pretends to negotiate in good faith with the first two hairs, while a fourth blade actually sneaks up from behind and cuts a third hair.
A fifth blade then arrives and, like an old fashion scythe, cuts a broad swath of hair.
A sixth blade makes sure that first hair is cut.
Then you lather and repeat (or is that for shampoo?)
In order to do the job right, and give each of the six blades an opportunity to participate in your morning ritual, requires about 45 minutes.
According to the DVD that comes with each razor, there are ways to reduce the total shaving time - but they advise against it.
There is a button that allows you to use only the blades you want to use (not all six), but that’s a tricky proposition. Which blades are you going to use: the Negotiators, the Scythe, the Hopper?
If you don’t choose the right blades for your follicle condition you risk voiding the conditional guarantee.
I want to keep using my cheap, manly, blade razor, but it’s just getting too complex for me.
I just want a shave, not an engineering degree.
I’m thinking of growing a beard.
Can you blame me?
Confessions of a Political Junkie
I’m going on the wagon, politically speaking.
I’m swearing off the hard-stuff.
I’m going to attend my first meeting of PJA –Political Junkies Anonymous. They have a twelve-step method that’s practically foolproof.
Good morning: my name is Frank Mand and I am a politicoholic. It has been three hours since I last yelled at the guys on Fox News.
That’s the first step: admitting publicly that you have a problem.
The second step is apologizing to everyone who you made feel stupid, just because they weren’t as obsessed with politics as you were.
Dear reader, please accept my apology.
To my wife who has had to endure me constantly switching the channel in the midst of “Lost” or “Survivor” so I could watch “Hardball”, I apologize.
To my seven year old son, Patrick, who I wouldn’t let watch Saturday morning cartoons so that I could watch reruns of “Hardball”, I apologize.
To owners of SUVs bigger than my first apartment, I apologize.
To all the employees of Wal-Mart, the folks at NSTAR, the President of Mobil Oil, and the Uuugly Twins, I apologize.
Heck, to the entire Republican Party, I apologize.
Speaking of politics, I was bemused by Karen Buechs’ recent announcement that, as a newly elected member of the town’s Charter Review Commission, she felt she had to resign her position as a Town Meeting Member to avoid a conflict of interest.
Will she now also resign her membership on PAC-TV, to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest there?
Will she and her husband stop producing an endless variety of cable television shows which advocate a Mayoral form of government, and attack those with different opinions on that issue, at least until after the commission finishes its business?
Oops! I slipped.
Hello, my name is Frank Mand, and I am a politicoholic. It has been 90 words since my last outburst.
Step Three is admitting that not everything is related to politics.
Putting referendum articles about gay marriage or abortion or immigration on election ballots, is not necessarily a cynical political ploy to increase conservative voter turnout.
Opposing stem-cell research is not necessarily a cynical political ploy to curry favor with conservative religious voters.
Sending troops to Afghanistan, Iraq, Florida, New Orleans, and now the entire border with Mexico, is not necessarily a pathetic attempt to hide the fact that you were not prepared for terrorist attacks, hurricanes, floods, or floods of immigrants.
Will Bush send troops to battle Bird Flu?
Is that a slip?
Darn!
I apologize.
My name is Frank Mand, and I am a politicoholic.
The fourth step is giving away the stuff. You can’t separate yourself from politics if you don’t cleanse your home of all the stuff.
Like my blue wrist band that I got at the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston.
Or my button showing Dick Cheney wearing the Bush hand-puppet.
The posters and the pamphlets, banners and signs, buttons and pins.
My Move-On Bake Sale for Democracy T-Shirt.
I just can’t throw that stuff away.
Maybe I could have a political yard sale? All the funds raised could be donated to a non-political cause, like medical research. Only it can’t be the medical value of marijuana. And it can’t be medical research into the ‘morning after’ pill. And it can’t be medical research into stem cells.
Is there a disease out there that has not been politicized?
Maybe I’ll just have a bonfire and barbeque, instead?
Step Five is finding a hobby that will give you an excuse, as to why you can’t participate in any political events.
Hello, my name is Frank Mand, and I haven’t got the time to help you out with your campaign because… I have to tend to my bees?
Which is worse, I wonder: A backyard full of bees, or a front yard covered in political signs?
I think my wife would rather have me run for mayor than have bees.
Winnie the Pooh famously said, ‘you can never tell, with bees’: and the same may hold true for politicians. They all promise a hive full of honey, but it’s almost impossible to collect without getting stung a few times.
But maybe that makes beekeeping the perfect hobby for the politicoholic: a few hives of buzzing bees would probably keep away the politicians.
And bees are not swayed by rhetoric, however flowery. Given a choice, bees will always choose real flower nectar over dry, unsweetened words.
Maybe that’s what I really need to do: shut up for a while and enjoy actual life. Smell the flowers. Taste the rain. Mow the lawn (as soon as it dries out). Get back into the everyday and let the politicians have politics all to themselves.
In other words, get a life.
I’m going to give it a shot.
Wish me luck.
But just in case, I apologize.
I’m swearing off the hard-stuff.
I’m going to attend my first meeting of PJA –Political Junkies Anonymous. They have a twelve-step method that’s practically foolproof.
Good morning: my name is Frank Mand and I am a politicoholic. It has been three hours since I last yelled at the guys on Fox News.
That’s the first step: admitting publicly that you have a problem.
The second step is apologizing to everyone who you made feel stupid, just because they weren’t as obsessed with politics as you were.
Dear reader, please accept my apology.
To my wife who has had to endure me constantly switching the channel in the midst of “Lost” or “Survivor” so I could watch “Hardball”, I apologize.
To my seven year old son, Patrick, who I wouldn’t let watch Saturday morning cartoons so that I could watch reruns of “Hardball”, I apologize.
To owners of SUVs bigger than my first apartment, I apologize.
To all the employees of Wal-Mart, the folks at NSTAR, the President of Mobil Oil, and the Uuugly Twins, I apologize.
Heck, to the entire Republican Party, I apologize.
Speaking of politics, I was bemused by Karen Buechs’ recent announcement that, as a newly elected member of the town’s Charter Review Commission, she felt she had to resign her position as a Town Meeting Member to avoid a conflict of interest.
Will she now also resign her membership on PAC-TV, to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest there?
Will she and her husband stop producing an endless variety of cable television shows which advocate a Mayoral form of government, and attack those with different opinions on that issue, at least until after the commission finishes its business?
Oops! I slipped.
Hello, my name is Frank Mand, and I am a politicoholic. It has been 90 words since my last outburst.
Step Three is admitting that not everything is related to politics.
Putting referendum articles about gay marriage or abortion or immigration on election ballots, is not necessarily a cynical political ploy to increase conservative voter turnout.
Opposing stem-cell research is not necessarily a cynical political ploy to curry favor with conservative religious voters.
Sending troops to Afghanistan, Iraq, Florida, New Orleans, and now the entire border with Mexico, is not necessarily a pathetic attempt to hide the fact that you were not prepared for terrorist attacks, hurricanes, floods, or floods of immigrants.
Will Bush send troops to battle Bird Flu?
Is that a slip?
Darn!
I apologize.
My name is Frank Mand, and I am a politicoholic.
The fourth step is giving away the stuff. You can’t separate yourself from politics if you don’t cleanse your home of all the stuff.
Like my blue wrist band that I got at the 2004 Democratic Convention in Boston.
Or my button showing Dick Cheney wearing the Bush hand-puppet.
The posters and the pamphlets, banners and signs, buttons and pins.
My Move-On Bake Sale for Democracy T-Shirt.
I just can’t throw that stuff away.
Maybe I could have a political yard sale? All the funds raised could be donated to a non-political cause, like medical research. Only it can’t be the medical value of marijuana. And it can’t be medical research into the ‘morning after’ pill. And it can’t be medical research into stem cells.
Is there a disease out there that has not been politicized?
Maybe I’ll just have a bonfire and barbeque, instead?
Step Five is finding a hobby that will give you an excuse, as to why you can’t participate in any political events.
Hello, my name is Frank Mand, and I haven’t got the time to help you out with your campaign because… I have to tend to my bees?
Which is worse, I wonder: A backyard full of bees, or a front yard covered in political signs?
I think my wife would rather have me run for mayor than have bees.
Winnie the Pooh famously said, ‘you can never tell, with bees’: and the same may hold true for politicians. They all promise a hive full of honey, but it’s almost impossible to collect without getting stung a few times.
But maybe that makes beekeeping the perfect hobby for the politicoholic: a few hives of buzzing bees would probably keep away the politicians.
And bees are not swayed by rhetoric, however flowery. Given a choice, bees will always choose real flower nectar over dry, unsweetened words.
Maybe that’s what I really need to do: shut up for a while and enjoy actual life. Smell the flowers. Taste the rain. Mow the lawn (as soon as it dries out). Get back into the everyday and let the politicians have politics all to themselves.
In other words, get a life.
I’m going to give it a shot.
Wish me luck.
But just in case, I apologize.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
I'd Vote for That!
Forget it.
If you think I can explain this past Saturday’s town election results, think again.
I haven’t been this confused since I was fourteen years old and trying to understand my inability to succeed with the opposite sex.
The same excuses apply.
Hormones.
Acne.
Peer Pressure.
Elections in Plymouth are like Junior High dances, only not as well attended.
Both sides in the charter revision debate have the opportunity to claim victory –and I expect that they will.
The Mayor for Plymouth slate can say that charter revision received overwhelming support.
The OPEN Slate can boast that their candidates won eight of the nine seats on the charter review commission.
The Thatched Roof Party can once again claim to have kept their people at home, on ladders, doing some emergency thatching to keep the rain out.
From one perspective the numbers suggest that the people are asking for a completely different kind of government, that residents don’t have to participate in, but with the same people in charge every year.
The government model that this brings to mind is Monaco or, more officially, the Principality of Monaco.
We could do worse.
They’ve got it all in Monaco: no taxes, gambling casinos, a rich and randy monarch, and their own Grand Prix auto race (not necessarily in that order).
And the success of that form of government is not based on silly things like tax rates or MCAS results or whether your street gets plowed, but instead by how many times your leaders are featured in People Magazine or on Access Hollywood.
Granted, Karen Buechs is no Grace Kelly, but we could fix her up with a handsome Prince and go from there.
But like I said, I really have no clue what the recent election numbers are saying.
I am a parent though, and I know what I do when I am worried that I am losing control of my seven year old: I send the kid to his room.
In the case of the race for Selectman many voters may have simply exercised their parental right to be arbitrary and capricious.
How else can you explain voters who take the time to pick through 23 charter commission candidates, give a vote of confidence to a group of nine who have been attacked as representing the ‘status quo’ and then, on the same ballot, throw out an incumbent who is arguably the most capable elected official in the whole town?
Ken Tavares, go to your room: and don’t come down until you are ready to apologize!
On the other side, there has got to be some joy in Mudville: the Mayor for Plymouth forces have been trying for years to unseat Tavares or to place one of their own on the Board of Selectmen.
The mud-slingers have accused him of being an elitist, of conducting back-room negotiations, of placing his self-interest above the best interests of the town, of not caring, and of putting Ketchup on his hot dog.
I don’t think they convinced anyone that Tavares was from the dark side though: I just think that if you throw enough mud (or Ketchup), some of it is bound to stick.
But while Tavares was being pelted Saturday, the mudslingers were nowhere to be found: their names barely registering at the polls.
The numbers for the Uugly twins - Frank Paoluccio and Charles Checkley, were really ugly, placing them at the bottom of the charter commission candidate list.
Michael Jones continued his downward political spiral, going from national prominence as a spokesperson for the 2000 Florida Presidential debacle, to a failed run for Congress, to a failed run for Mayor.
What’s next for Jones: perhaps a run for town meeting member?
I’m just flailing away in the fog though: I’m really not sure what happened, or why.
About the only thing that this past election clarified, for me at least, was the power of the media. We have none.
We in the print media however, do take some comfort in the fact that other mediums may have even less power than we do.
Like Cable Access Television.
The five most prominent faces on local cable access television during the recent political campaign -Charles Checkley, Frank Paoluccio, Michael Hogan, Loring Tripp, and Michael Jones, were all defeated at the polls.
That may be the one sure way to lose an election in Plymouth: get your own cable access television show!
Of course if Plymouth now becomes a hereditary principality ruled by a movie-star Prince, with its own gambling casino and Formula-1 race cars hurtling down Water Street, the authorities may not allow just anyone to produce their own television show.
I’d vote for that.
If you think I can explain this past Saturday’s town election results, think again.
I haven’t been this confused since I was fourteen years old and trying to understand my inability to succeed with the opposite sex.
The same excuses apply.
Hormones.
Acne.
Peer Pressure.
Elections in Plymouth are like Junior High dances, only not as well attended.
Both sides in the charter revision debate have the opportunity to claim victory –and I expect that they will.
The Mayor for Plymouth slate can say that charter revision received overwhelming support.
The OPEN Slate can boast that their candidates won eight of the nine seats on the charter review commission.
The Thatched Roof Party can once again claim to have kept their people at home, on ladders, doing some emergency thatching to keep the rain out.
From one perspective the numbers suggest that the people are asking for a completely different kind of government, that residents don’t have to participate in, but with the same people in charge every year.
The government model that this brings to mind is Monaco or, more officially, the Principality of Monaco.
We could do worse.
They’ve got it all in Monaco: no taxes, gambling casinos, a rich and randy monarch, and their own Grand Prix auto race (not necessarily in that order).
And the success of that form of government is not based on silly things like tax rates or MCAS results or whether your street gets plowed, but instead by how many times your leaders are featured in People Magazine or on Access Hollywood.
Granted, Karen Buechs is no Grace Kelly, but we could fix her up with a handsome Prince and go from there.
But like I said, I really have no clue what the recent election numbers are saying.
I am a parent though, and I know what I do when I am worried that I am losing control of my seven year old: I send the kid to his room.
In the case of the race for Selectman many voters may have simply exercised their parental right to be arbitrary and capricious.
How else can you explain voters who take the time to pick through 23 charter commission candidates, give a vote of confidence to a group of nine who have been attacked as representing the ‘status quo’ and then, on the same ballot, throw out an incumbent who is arguably the most capable elected official in the whole town?
Ken Tavares, go to your room: and don’t come down until you are ready to apologize!
On the other side, there has got to be some joy in Mudville: the Mayor for Plymouth forces have been trying for years to unseat Tavares or to place one of their own on the Board of Selectmen.
The mud-slingers have accused him of being an elitist, of conducting back-room negotiations, of placing his self-interest above the best interests of the town, of not caring, and of putting Ketchup on his hot dog.
I don’t think they convinced anyone that Tavares was from the dark side though: I just think that if you throw enough mud (or Ketchup), some of it is bound to stick.
But while Tavares was being pelted Saturday, the mudslingers were nowhere to be found: their names barely registering at the polls.
The numbers for the Uugly twins - Frank Paoluccio and Charles Checkley, were really ugly, placing them at the bottom of the charter commission candidate list.
Michael Jones continued his downward political spiral, going from national prominence as a spokesperson for the 2000 Florida Presidential debacle, to a failed run for Congress, to a failed run for Mayor.
What’s next for Jones: perhaps a run for town meeting member?
I’m just flailing away in the fog though: I’m really not sure what happened, or why.
About the only thing that this past election clarified, for me at least, was the power of the media. We have none.
We in the print media however, do take some comfort in the fact that other mediums may have even less power than we do.
Like Cable Access Television.
The five most prominent faces on local cable access television during the recent political campaign -Charles Checkley, Frank Paoluccio, Michael Hogan, Loring Tripp, and Michael Jones, were all defeated at the polls.
That may be the one sure way to lose an election in Plymouth: get your own cable access television show!
Of course if Plymouth now becomes a hereditary principality ruled by a movie-star Prince, with its own gambling casino and Formula-1 race cars hurtling down Water Street, the authorities may not allow just anyone to produce their own television show.
I’d vote for that.
Friday, May 12, 2006
His Most Transparent Exalted Regular Joe-ness?
Mad Max, that’s the one I’d go with.
If we’re talking about someone who’s mad as hell, and not going to take it anymore, why not give him the title to go with the attitude?
As the three million or so Assistant Vice Presidents, the 27 million Administrative Assistants, and the 102 million Wal-Mart Associates will tell you, titles are important.
They’re what we hang our hats on, when the other indicators of success are not forthcoming. You know: ‘we can’t give you a raise but, how about this coool title?’
Like ‘columnist’, instead of local crank.
It’s a badge, a trophy, stripes on your sleeve: it may not mean anything in the real world, but it makes for a heck of a first impression.
Mayor?
I don’t think so.
When I hear ‘mayor’, I think of old guys in Fedoras, waving to the photographers as they board the boat for Alcatraz; or smoke-filled rooms where deals are sealed with a hand-shake and a fat envelope of cash.
Sure, I know that’s not fair, not all mayors are crooks: but if what we are looking for is someone to take names and kick butts, than mayor doesn’t cut it, for me at least.
So I went through my big book of pompous, helium-filled titles the other day, and I came up with some likely contenders.
Margrave.
The Margrave of Plymouth?
I had never heard that title before. Turns out a Margrave ranks somewhere between a Count and an Earl, and was originally a noble in charge of the marches (the border regions) where territorial disputes were common.
A Margrave has the kind of special powers that our President claims for himself today – arguing that, ‘in times of war’, just about anything goes.
If we were having daily skirmishes on our borders with Carver or Kingston, Margrave might be the perfect title for our new leader.
One of my personal favorites is Archduke – it has a John Wayne flavor to it, a high degree of inherent pomposity, and the suggestion that if things go wrong, all hell will break loose.
Archduke Jones has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
I don’t think it will sell though: it’s hard enough trying to go from a democratic form of government to a monarchy. But going from Selectperson to Archduke, may be asking too much.
Burgermeister should be in the running, don’t you think: it’s just the German word for mayor, but it sounds much more prosperous.
If we were looking for a guy in black leather ‘lederhosen’ to lead the Oompah Band at our annual Oktoberfest, or someone to officiate at the opening of the new Entergy Energy Mall, a Burgermeister would seem the perfect title.
Actually, I don’t think the leaders of the Mayor for Plymouth campaign would find any of the titles I have mentioned so far, acceptable: they want something that encompasses almost all of the qualities I have listed, and more.
They want a title that comes with its own brass-buttoned uniform, that suggests the power to declare martial law, that implies the ability to sing German drinking songs, and, at the same time, is as welcoming as Mr. Rogers.
Grand Poobah?
High Hokeefenokee?
They want the body of agent Jack Bauer, Harrison Ford’s head, Sponge Bob’s voice, Bill Clinton’s earnest eyes, and the salesmanship of that guy who convinces people that adding a drop of orange juice to just about any liquid will clean, brighten, and digest better than anything you have ever tried before.
But wait, there’s more.
They also want a title that implies sacrificial lamb: someone who, if they don’t appease the mob, will eagerly walk the plank.
Have you ever heard of such a thing: a full-time politician that, once elected, will willingly acknowledge his failures and resign with a smile? Still, that’s what they want.
So the big Hottentot must –like the Tin Man, take on wicked witches and flying monkeys and yet, after exposing ‘the man’ behind the curtain, take his heart-shaped watch and go into retirement without a fight.
Then, after the Tin Man or the Margrave or whatever title we thought we gave the job to, steps down, the real mayor can step forward from behind the curtain and proclaim, “I am the great and powerful Oz!”
He may be a snake oil salesman from a traveling carnival, but at least he’ll have a heck of a title.
If we’re talking about someone who’s mad as hell, and not going to take it anymore, why not give him the title to go with the attitude?
As the three million or so Assistant Vice Presidents, the 27 million Administrative Assistants, and the 102 million Wal-Mart Associates will tell you, titles are important.
They’re what we hang our hats on, when the other indicators of success are not forthcoming. You know: ‘we can’t give you a raise but, how about this coool title?’
Like ‘columnist’, instead of local crank.
It’s a badge, a trophy, stripes on your sleeve: it may not mean anything in the real world, but it makes for a heck of a first impression.
Mayor?
I don’t think so.
When I hear ‘mayor’, I think of old guys in Fedoras, waving to the photographers as they board the boat for Alcatraz; or smoke-filled rooms where deals are sealed with a hand-shake and a fat envelope of cash.
Sure, I know that’s not fair, not all mayors are crooks: but if what we are looking for is someone to take names and kick butts, than mayor doesn’t cut it, for me at least.
So I went through my big book of pompous, helium-filled titles the other day, and I came up with some likely contenders.
Margrave.
The Margrave of Plymouth?
I had never heard that title before. Turns out a Margrave ranks somewhere between a Count and an Earl, and was originally a noble in charge of the marches (the border regions) where territorial disputes were common.
A Margrave has the kind of special powers that our President claims for himself today – arguing that, ‘in times of war’, just about anything goes.
If we were having daily skirmishes on our borders with Carver or Kingston, Margrave might be the perfect title for our new leader.
One of my personal favorites is Archduke – it has a John Wayne flavor to it, a high degree of inherent pomposity, and the suggestion that if things go wrong, all hell will break loose.
Archduke Jones has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
I don’t think it will sell though: it’s hard enough trying to go from a democratic form of government to a monarchy. But going from Selectperson to Archduke, may be asking too much.
Burgermeister should be in the running, don’t you think: it’s just the German word for mayor, but it sounds much more prosperous.
If we were looking for a guy in black leather ‘lederhosen’ to lead the Oompah Band at our annual Oktoberfest, or someone to officiate at the opening of the new Entergy Energy Mall, a Burgermeister would seem the perfect title.
Actually, I don’t think the leaders of the Mayor for Plymouth campaign would find any of the titles I have mentioned so far, acceptable: they want something that encompasses almost all of the qualities I have listed, and more.
They want a title that comes with its own brass-buttoned uniform, that suggests the power to declare martial law, that implies the ability to sing German drinking songs, and, at the same time, is as welcoming as Mr. Rogers.
Grand Poobah?
High Hokeefenokee?
They want the body of agent Jack Bauer, Harrison Ford’s head, Sponge Bob’s voice, Bill Clinton’s earnest eyes, and the salesmanship of that guy who convinces people that adding a drop of orange juice to just about any liquid will clean, brighten, and digest better than anything you have ever tried before.
But wait, there’s more.
They also want a title that implies sacrificial lamb: someone who, if they don’t appease the mob, will eagerly walk the plank.
Have you ever heard of such a thing: a full-time politician that, once elected, will willingly acknowledge his failures and resign with a smile? Still, that’s what they want.
So the big Hottentot must –like the Tin Man, take on wicked witches and flying monkeys and yet, after exposing ‘the man’ behind the curtain, take his heart-shaped watch and go into retirement without a fight.
Then, after the Tin Man or the Margrave or whatever title we thought we gave the job to, steps down, the real mayor can step forward from behind the curtain and proclaim, “I am the great and powerful Oz!”
He may be a snake oil salesman from a traveling carnival, but at least he’ll have a heck of a title.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Do-It-Yourself Energy Policy
I haven’t got a lot of energy, haven’t for a while. You might say I’m a trend-setter.
Not that I know anything about what’s going on in the energy field: just that I’m used to making do without it.
‘Young man’, my father used to say, “you can’t just coast through life”.
Oh yes I can – and I get great mileage too.
But I don’t think it’s fair.
The rich are the only ones that can afford beach-front property, and now they’re going to let them build wind farms there.
That’s like having a house in an oil field.
They call them ‘wind farms; but they don’t grow the wind there. Maybe they should call them ‘wind slaughterhouses’?
Actually, they don’t kill the wind there either; they just package it, for re-sale.
And that just about does it: I mean, is there anything in the world that they haven’t figured out how to charge us for using it?
What about air?
You know - the wind that just sits there: otherwise known as our energy reserves
We can still breathe fee-free, but give them another five or ten years and you’ll be tickled pink to be able to order your air online, and save the cost of driving to Wal-Mart for a six-pack of Oxy.
Or, if you’re reasonably well off, they’ll pump it to your house.
Towns will charge a betterments fee to homeowners for running oxygen lines down the street.
Cars will be equipped to load up on gas, water, and air.
They’ll be grades of air: regular, for the air in malls and to inflate basketballs; Super, for everyday home consumption; and Premium, for a hot date.
You won’t have to get out of your car.
You won’t be able to get out of your car.
You won’t want to get out of your car.
And the ideological conservatives out there are probably crying out now –like a pack of crows, ‘negative, negative, negative’.
Yes, yes, we liberals are so darn negative.
We can’t see the forest for the fees.
We can’t see the opportunities that will arise out of these so-called temporary setbacks.
Instead of whining about gas fees and air fees and the latest energy crisis, we should be hard at work exploiting the situation: that’s the American Way!
Real Americans have already made a substantial investment in bus companies!
After all, our senior citizens have fixed incomes, and can’t absorb the sudden rise in the cost of gasoline.
The only way they’ll be able to afford regular trips to Foxwoods is by bus!
Brilliant!
Then again, let’s really think outside of the tank.
Buses use up quite a lot of fuel: why not take carpooling to the next level?
Instead of everybody getting on the bus, let’s designate one super gambler to go to Foxwoods, while the rest of the folks from the Nursing Home watch a live web cast of the event.
Yes, I know: this is no laughing matter.
What’s to become of historic Plymouth when the hysteric public decides to save the cost of a tank of gas and get their history at home?
Do I hear opportunity knocking, again?
If they won’t come to the Rock, we will take the Rock to them!
For the price of a tank of gas and a weekend in a chain hotel, you can have an inflatable Mayflower Moonwalk delivered to their door by a teenager in a three-cornered hat, and throw in a can of B&M Brown Bread at no extra cost!
You’ll be selling them air, history, and ‘gas’ (if you know what I mean) in one sweet, educational package!
Hey, I’m beginning to get the hang of this ‘Morning in America’ approach to economic and environmental disaster.
And that goes for you owners of Ford Expletives too.
So I’m not going to do the expected and excoriate you for wasting an entire Mesozoic era’s worth of fossil fuels just so you can look good at the Little League field: no sirree!
Instead, I am going to appeal to your vanity –and your pocketbook, in one fell swoop!
I’m going to push for the re-installation of the trolley lines that used to run all over the South Shore, only, instead of those funky old trolley cars, we’re going to run a fleet of modified Humminah Hummers on the tracks.
Imagine the looks on your friends faces when you pull up to the domed Little League field in your eco-friendly Hummer?
That’s the genius of America: we don’t need to prepare for anything.
We’re the best in the world when it comes to figuring out a way to make cash out of our screw-ups.
Iraq may be a military disaster, but it’s a construction boom!
New Orleans may still be as soggy as a microwaved hamburger bun, but there’s gold in them thar swamps.
The present administration has intentionally declined to prepare for just about every eventuality, making it necessary to spend far more money to recover than we ever would have spent being prepared.
Brilliant!
And to think people were calling the ‘Big Dig’ a colossal waste of taxpayer’s money.
The problem with the Big Dig is not that it cost so much, it’s that we committed to spending the money first, and so we’re restricted as to how much money the taxpayers have allowed us to spend.
If we’d followed the new Bush II Pre-Emptive Disaster Economic Playbook, we would have just waited a few years until the bridges into the city were collapsing on their own, and then pleaded for the government to bail us out.
There’s hope though: if we can just elect just one more brush-burning, Enron-loving, ‘nucular’ LaLouche, we may still be able to delay any serious response to Global Warming for another four years, by which time the polar ice caps will have melted, most of our coastline will be flooded (except for New Orleans), and..
Well, you know: when it comes to energy sales, the sky’s the limit!
Not that I know anything about what’s going on in the energy field: just that I’m used to making do without it.
‘Young man’, my father used to say, “you can’t just coast through life”.
Oh yes I can – and I get great mileage too.
But I don’t think it’s fair.
The rich are the only ones that can afford beach-front property, and now they’re going to let them build wind farms there.
That’s like having a house in an oil field.
They call them ‘wind farms; but they don’t grow the wind there. Maybe they should call them ‘wind slaughterhouses’?
Actually, they don’t kill the wind there either; they just package it, for re-sale.
And that just about does it: I mean, is there anything in the world that they haven’t figured out how to charge us for using it?
What about air?
You know - the wind that just sits there: otherwise known as our energy reserves
We can still breathe fee-free, but give them another five or ten years and you’ll be tickled pink to be able to order your air online, and save the cost of driving to Wal-Mart for a six-pack of Oxy.
Or, if you’re reasonably well off, they’ll pump it to your house.
Towns will charge a betterments fee to homeowners for running oxygen lines down the street.
Cars will be equipped to load up on gas, water, and air.
They’ll be grades of air: regular, for the air in malls and to inflate basketballs; Super, for everyday home consumption; and Premium, for a hot date.
You won’t have to get out of your car.
You won’t be able to get out of your car.
You won’t want to get out of your car.
And the ideological conservatives out there are probably crying out now –like a pack of crows, ‘negative, negative, negative’.
Yes, yes, we liberals are so darn negative.
We can’t see the forest for the fees.
We can’t see the opportunities that will arise out of these so-called temporary setbacks.
Instead of whining about gas fees and air fees and the latest energy crisis, we should be hard at work exploiting the situation: that’s the American Way!
Real Americans have already made a substantial investment in bus companies!
After all, our senior citizens have fixed incomes, and can’t absorb the sudden rise in the cost of gasoline.
The only way they’ll be able to afford regular trips to Foxwoods is by bus!
Brilliant!
Then again, let’s really think outside of the tank.
Buses use up quite a lot of fuel: why not take carpooling to the next level?
Instead of everybody getting on the bus, let’s designate one super gambler to go to Foxwoods, while the rest of the folks from the Nursing Home watch a live web cast of the event.
Yes, I know: this is no laughing matter.
What’s to become of historic Plymouth when the hysteric public decides to save the cost of a tank of gas and get their history at home?
Do I hear opportunity knocking, again?
If they won’t come to the Rock, we will take the Rock to them!
For the price of a tank of gas and a weekend in a chain hotel, you can have an inflatable Mayflower Moonwalk delivered to their door by a teenager in a three-cornered hat, and throw in a can of B&M Brown Bread at no extra cost!
You’ll be selling them air, history, and ‘gas’ (if you know what I mean) in one sweet, educational package!
Hey, I’m beginning to get the hang of this ‘Morning in America’ approach to economic and environmental disaster.
And that goes for you owners of Ford Expletives too.
So I’m not going to do the expected and excoriate you for wasting an entire Mesozoic era’s worth of fossil fuels just so you can look good at the Little League field: no sirree!
Instead, I am going to appeal to your vanity –and your pocketbook, in one fell swoop!
I’m going to push for the re-installation of the trolley lines that used to run all over the South Shore, only, instead of those funky old trolley cars, we’re going to run a fleet of modified Humminah Hummers on the tracks.
Imagine the looks on your friends faces when you pull up to the domed Little League field in your eco-friendly Hummer?
That’s the genius of America: we don’t need to prepare for anything.
We’re the best in the world when it comes to figuring out a way to make cash out of our screw-ups.
Iraq may be a military disaster, but it’s a construction boom!
New Orleans may still be as soggy as a microwaved hamburger bun, but there’s gold in them thar swamps.
The present administration has intentionally declined to prepare for just about every eventuality, making it necessary to spend far more money to recover than we ever would have spent being prepared.
Brilliant!
And to think people were calling the ‘Big Dig’ a colossal waste of taxpayer’s money.
The problem with the Big Dig is not that it cost so much, it’s that we committed to spending the money first, and so we’re restricted as to how much money the taxpayers have allowed us to spend.
If we’d followed the new Bush II Pre-Emptive Disaster Economic Playbook, we would have just waited a few years until the bridges into the city were collapsing on their own, and then pleaded for the government to bail us out.
There’s hope though: if we can just elect just one more brush-burning, Enron-loving, ‘nucular’ LaLouche, we may still be able to delay any serious response to Global Warming for another four years, by which time the polar ice caps will have melted, most of our coastline will be flooded (except for New Orleans), and..
Well, you know: when it comes to energy sales, the sky’s the limit!
Friday, April 28, 2006
Darfur Vigil, April 30
For years, many of us have read reports of the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, and wondered why world leaders have failed to step in. As many as 400,000 civilians have died and over 2 million have been driven from their homes, and yet the United States and other leading nations won't intervene and stop the killing.
This week, we may have the best chance since the genocide began to capture national media attention and give our leaders a mandate to act. On Sunday, April 30th, tens of thousands of concerned Americans, organized by the Save Darfur coalition, will gather in Washington to demand a real multi-national peacekeeping force to protect civilians in Darfur and end the genocide—now.
To support this urgent call, we're launching a "virtual march" to end the genocide in Darfur. We'll announce the total number of virtual marchers and read some of your comments at the big rally in DC (with the national media looking on) and then we'll deliver every signature to Congress and the President. We're aiming to sign up 100,000 virtual marchers in time for the rally—can you help us get there?
You can join the virtual march against genocide by clicking here:
http://political.moveon.org/darfur?id=7381-5663936-kax4yUXWT2jf340FzBzapA&t=2
This week, we may have the best chance since the genocide began to capture national media attention and give our leaders a mandate to act. On Sunday, April 30th, tens of thousands of concerned Americans, organized by the Save Darfur coalition, will gather in Washington to demand a real multi-national peacekeeping force to protect civilians in Darfur and end the genocide—now.
To support this urgent call, we're launching a "virtual march" to end the genocide in Darfur. We'll announce the total number of virtual marchers and read some of your comments at the big rally in DC (with the national media looking on) and then we'll deliver every signature to Congress and the President. We're aiming to sign up 100,000 virtual marchers in time for the rally—can you help us get there?
You can join the virtual march against genocide by clicking here:
http://political.moveon.org/darfur?id=7381-5663936-kax4yUXWT2jf340FzBzapA&t=2
Sunday, April 23, 2006
A Celebration of Community Involvement
Friend and Fellow Activists:
Next Saturday evening there will be an event in Plymouth called “A Celebration of Community Involvement”, which I hope you can attend.
It’s a party of sorts –with food and live entertainment, co-sponsored by the community groups FORT and OPEN, and celebrating what these groups, and many more in our town, have in common: a belief in the power of the individual citizen.
My personal take on these two groups, is as follows:
FORT is the grassroots organization that is trying to establish a permanent citizens organization dedicated to improving the quality of community services, especially schools, in Plymouth. They don’t want to have to re-invent such an organization every time there is a school funding crisis.
OPEN is a group of residents who are concerned that, under the guise of reforming the historic structure of our town government, a group which thinks we can do without many important town services is making a grab for power.
OPEN is committed to looking at every possible structure or modification to the town’s charter that could make it more responsive to citizens, and more effective overall.
You don’t have to believe that our existing form of government is perfect to support OPEN –only that more involvement by citizens, not less, should be one guiding principal of all allegedly democratic institutions.
You don’t have to believe that increased funding will necessarily improve Plymouth’s schools to support FORT –but you should believe that without quality schools our town will never reach its potential, no matter what form of government we have.
We are less than three weeks away from one of most important town elections in Plymouth’s history: a day which will impact the future of our community in a hundred different ways.
On April 29th, from 7-11 p.m. you can meet members of FORT and OPEN, enjoy the camaraderie of some of your community’s grassroots leaders, have a bite, take a breath, and go forward with confidence that Plymouth is not only growing larger, it is growing wiser.
Frank Mand,
Parent, Little League Umpire, Deval Patrick Delegate, MoveOn Organizer, Yellow Journalist, and Taxpayer (not necessarily in that order)
A Celebration of Community Involvement
Saturday, April 29, 7 P.M.
Quintals Warehouse, Scobee Drive, Plymouth Industrial Park
Directions to the Event
Next Saturday evening there will be an event in Plymouth called “A Celebration of Community Involvement”, which I hope you can attend.
It’s a party of sorts –with food and live entertainment, co-sponsored by the community groups FORT and OPEN, and celebrating what these groups, and many more in our town, have in common: a belief in the power of the individual citizen.
My personal take on these two groups, is as follows:
FORT is the grassroots organization that is trying to establish a permanent citizens organization dedicated to improving the quality of community services, especially schools, in Plymouth. They don’t want to have to re-invent such an organization every time there is a school funding crisis.
OPEN is a group of residents who are concerned that, under the guise of reforming the historic structure of our town government, a group which thinks we can do without many important town services is making a grab for power.
OPEN is committed to looking at every possible structure or modification to the town’s charter that could make it more responsive to citizens, and more effective overall.
You don’t have to believe that our existing form of government is perfect to support OPEN –only that more involvement by citizens, not less, should be one guiding principal of all allegedly democratic institutions.
You don’t have to believe that increased funding will necessarily improve Plymouth’s schools to support FORT –but you should believe that without quality schools our town will never reach its potential, no matter what form of government we have.
We are less than three weeks away from one of most important town elections in Plymouth’s history: a day which will impact the future of our community in a hundred different ways.
On April 29th, from 7-11 p.m. you can meet members of FORT and OPEN, enjoy the camaraderie of some of your community’s grassroots leaders, have a bite, take a breath, and go forward with confidence that Plymouth is not only growing larger, it is growing wiser.
Frank Mand,
Parent, Little League Umpire, Deval Patrick Delegate, MoveOn Organizer, Yellow Journalist, and Taxpayer (not necessarily in that order)
A Celebration of Community Involvement
Saturday, April 29, 7 P.M.
Quintals Warehouse, Scobee Drive, Plymouth Industrial Park
Directions to the Event
Things I Would Never Do in Private For Some Reason I Will Do If I Get on TV Day
I don’t want to give up my vacation days, gosh no: but if wishes were fishes I’d sure to like to know what or why I was celebrating every once in a blue moon.
This week will serve as a perfect example of the mixed metaphors, religious myths, ancient history and artificial patriotism that supposedly serve as inspiration for our so-called modern holidays.
First you had the odd mix of colonial commemoration that just concluded –a mélange of Patriots Day and Evacuation Day, Minuteman Minute, and George Bush’s Mission Accomplishment of the Month – none of which stirs my blood.
Then, before you can take down the bunting and plant your daffodils, along comes the so-called hip-hop Easter Bunny – an individual of indeterminate sex, eccentric habit, and suspicious hours who, according to informed sources, was last seen offering chocolates to a six year old.
Then there’s Passover and Easter Sunday – important religious holidays that, if we’re honest with ourselves, don’t get the press that the Marathon receives in these parts.
Yes, yes, yes, I understand the significance of these holidays but, again, I am not sure that they get nearly the attendance that the Red Sox did this past Monday.
And we can’t forget this holy week, as tens of thousands of devout New Englanders migrate to Tampa or St. Pete to worship the trinity of Mickey, Minnie, and Jose Cuervo.
The point again, is not to denigrate the ancient roots of our modern holidays or diminish the value of religion, but rather to ask, rhetorically, ‘can’t we come up with something a little closer to home’?
Though the harvest and the moon and the movement of the stars no longer affect our lives, we still need holidays that underline our everyday existence
What about PC Day?
Imagine the crowds that would gather spontaneously at the mall, and the sales incentives we might find, for a holiday that celebrates the day when owners of personal computers first threw off their shackles and demanded a machine that didn’t need to be rebooted every time you tried to actually use it for the fabled ‘multimedia’?
So what that this famous uprising never actually took place: there is no Easter Bunny, but that hasn’t hurt chocolate sales.
Or how about a three-day weekend holiday in honor of SPAM? Not the lard-entombed mystery meat of old, but the never-ending river of useless, profane, emails and pop-up messages that somehow can sing, dance, and do all the things that the software you paid big bucks for cannot?
King George, Caesar, Sadie Hawkins, Columbus and Abe Lincoln himself –while still worthy of serious study, don’t hold the interest of the average man in the modern world: while Johnny Damon, Donald Trump, Monty Python, Paris Hilton, and Brittney Spears are sure to draw a crowd wherever they appear (as long as you throw in free samples of Lite Beer and a wet corporate logo contest).
How would you feel about a National I Hate Celebrities Day, in which everyone dresses up as the famous person they least admire but would most like to be?
Or how about an ‘I Feel Stupid Having Spent So Much Money for this Hummer Day’, on which owners of Yellow Hummers with tinted windows drive their vehicles into their above ground pools while playing old disco music on their massive subwoofers?
I just feel very strongly that, while it is nice to have a break from our every day routines, whatever the excuse, it would be much more satisfying if at the same time we acknowledged the demons and delights of our age –not relics of the past.
National I Got Laid Off Again Week, would really be a winner, I think, and would give executives of the two remaining corporations in America an annual opportunity to express their appreciation to the tireless temps who keep buying the excuse that as soon as the corporation cuts its costs and gets on a level playing field with its foreign competition the layoffs will end.
(Whew! That sentence was its own three-day weekend!)
It’s Those Damn Illegal Immigrants Again Day would be a great excuse for people who already have trailers, to drive their mobile homes to the closest border and protect us against people willing to stand all day and gut fish for $10 an hour.
Please don’t argue that there aren’t enough Mondays in the year to accommodate all the new holidays I am proposing: a country that can order people to save daylight, and then give it back again, on cue, can certainly decree that certain Tuesdays are Monday too, if needed.
And if the Tivo subscribers out there raise too much of a stink about us throwing off their recording schedules, we can consolidate: is it really necessary to give separate holidays to Flag Day, Veterans Day, Memorial Day, and Armed Forces Day?
Don’t worry: I am not preaching anarchy.
You will still have your precious three-day weekends, your school vacations, religious holidays and the occasional Fertility Friday.
But let’s make room for Diet of the Week Day, Corporate Malfeasance Week, Outsource a Friend’s Job Month, Mortgage Deduction Day, and Things I Would Never Do in Private For Some Reason I Will Do If I Get on TV Day.
Let’s celebrate this life, this age, this week’s guests on Oprah. They may not be especially meaningful, but at least they will be our holidays.
This week will serve as a perfect example of the mixed metaphors, religious myths, ancient history and artificial patriotism that supposedly serve as inspiration for our so-called modern holidays.
First you had the odd mix of colonial commemoration that just concluded –a mélange of Patriots Day and Evacuation Day, Minuteman Minute, and George Bush’s Mission Accomplishment of the Month – none of which stirs my blood.
Then, before you can take down the bunting and plant your daffodils, along comes the so-called hip-hop Easter Bunny – an individual of indeterminate sex, eccentric habit, and suspicious hours who, according to informed sources, was last seen offering chocolates to a six year old.
Then there’s Passover and Easter Sunday – important religious holidays that, if we’re honest with ourselves, don’t get the press that the Marathon receives in these parts.
Yes, yes, yes, I understand the significance of these holidays but, again, I am not sure that they get nearly the attendance that the Red Sox did this past Monday.
And we can’t forget this holy week, as tens of thousands of devout New Englanders migrate to Tampa or St. Pete to worship the trinity of Mickey, Minnie, and Jose Cuervo.
The point again, is not to denigrate the ancient roots of our modern holidays or diminish the value of religion, but rather to ask, rhetorically, ‘can’t we come up with something a little closer to home’?
Though the harvest and the moon and the movement of the stars no longer affect our lives, we still need holidays that underline our everyday existence
What about PC Day?
Imagine the crowds that would gather spontaneously at the mall, and the sales incentives we might find, for a holiday that celebrates the day when owners of personal computers first threw off their shackles and demanded a machine that didn’t need to be rebooted every time you tried to actually use it for the fabled ‘multimedia’?
So what that this famous uprising never actually took place: there is no Easter Bunny, but that hasn’t hurt chocolate sales.
Or how about a three-day weekend holiday in honor of SPAM? Not the lard-entombed mystery meat of old, but the never-ending river of useless, profane, emails and pop-up messages that somehow can sing, dance, and do all the things that the software you paid big bucks for cannot?
King George, Caesar, Sadie Hawkins, Columbus and Abe Lincoln himself –while still worthy of serious study, don’t hold the interest of the average man in the modern world: while Johnny Damon, Donald Trump, Monty Python, Paris Hilton, and Brittney Spears are sure to draw a crowd wherever they appear (as long as you throw in free samples of Lite Beer and a wet corporate logo contest).
How would you feel about a National I Hate Celebrities Day, in which everyone dresses up as the famous person they least admire but would most like to be?
Or how about an ‘I Feel Stupid Having Spent So Much Money for this Hummer Day’, on which owners of Yellow Hummers with tinted windows drive their vehicles into their above ground pools while playing old disco music on their massive subwoofers?
I just feel very strongly that, while it is nice to have a break from our every day routines, whatever the excuse, it would be much more satisfying if at the same time we acknowledged the demons and delights of our age –not relics of the past.
National I Got Laid Off Again Week, would really be a winner, I think, and would give executives of the two remaining corporations in America an annual opportunity to express their appreciation to the tireless temps who keep buying the excuse that as soon as the corporation cuts its costs and gets on a level playing field with its foreign competition the layoffs will end.
(Whew! That sentence was its own three-day weekend!)
It’s Those Damn Illegal Immigrants Again Day would be a great excuse for people who already have trailers, to drive their mobile homes to the closest border and protect us against people willing to stand all day and gut fish for $10 an hour.
Please don’t argue that there aren’t enough Mondays in the year to accommodate all the new holidays I am proposing: a country that can order people to save daylight, and then give it back again, on cue, can certainly decree that certain Tuesdays are Monday too, if needed.
And if the Tivo subscribers out there raise too much of a stink about us throwing off their recording schedules, we can consolidate: is it really necessary to give separate holidays to Flag Day, Veterans Day, Memorial Day, and Armed Forces Day?
Don’t worry: I am not preaching anarchy.
You will still have your precious three-day weekends, your school vacations, religious holidays and the occasional Fertility Friday.
But let’s make room for Diet of the Week Day, Corporate Malfeasance Week, Outsource a Friend’s Job Month, Mortgage Deduction Day, and Things I Would Never Do in Private For Some Reason I Will Do If I Get on TV Day.
Let’s celebrate this life, this age, this week’s guests on Oprah. They may not be especially meaningful, but at least they will be our holidays.
Thursday, April 13, 2006
Fun in the Tub
When you make a mistake, Richard Nixon said to his close friend Millie, admit it: just don’t tell anyone about it.
That’s essentially what I want to do now – not admit that I made a mistake when, about a year ago, I impulsively suggested that Karl Rove had something to do with the Valerie Plame ‘leak’.
Actually I want to do a bit more than simply not admit to something.
In the spirit of modern, existential political honesty, I am not only not going to admit to making a mistake, I am going to suggest that what I did not do was not illegal.
Not that anyone has accused me of doing something illegal: just that if they do, what I did not do, was not illegal.
(Politics and good grammar do not mix.)
We’re dealing in hypotheticals here: I wasn’t around when the White House sprang a leak, so I can’t personally attest to the facts surrounding this famous drip.
We do have the written reports from those that were there – and Grand Jury testimony and, coincidentally, those reports have now been retroactively declassified, allowing me to share what others knew to be leaks, at the time, without being accused of leaking myself.
According to those reports, Karl Rove had nothing to do with the leaks at the White House.
In fact, Karl turns out to have been a victim of those leaks. Or perhaps I should put it a different way.
When the leaks first appeared (and leaks are like trees that fall in the forest, if you’re not there to see them, they don’t exist) Karl was the one called in to the fix them.
Karl was essentially - the declassified, insignificant, politics as usual, facts now seem to suggest, a plumber.
Now I don’t want you to think (wink wink, nudge nudge) that by using the word ‘plumber’ I am in any way suggesting any similarities to the way that Karl Rove functioned in the White House, and the way the infamous Watergate ‘plumbers’ functioned.
No: they are very different.
Karl has his plumber’s license, and Nixon’s plumbers were undocumented aliens that the White House hired to save a few bucks.
Poor Karl, he was just a hired hand, called in to fix a few leaks.
You know how it goes: you see a little water damage on the ceiling, a few drips, and so to be safe you call for the plumber.
The plumber would be just as happy tightening up a few screws, adding a nut and bolt here and there, and getting his $250. But when Karl arrived, it was immediately apparent that there was a hidden leak, the source of which had to be found, or else.
So Karl got out his tools and started looking.
He dug through the ceiling of his office, and into the office of Scooter Libby: though he found a big pool of water there, the source was still hidden.
So he dug through the wall of Libby’s office and into the Vice President’s office: though the water was a lot deeper, the leak did not originate there.
So he dug through the floor of the Vice President’s office and, finally, he found the source.
There was the President himself, taking a bath: laughing and splashing about, playing with his GI Joes, and unknowingly causing a little water to cascade over the tub and onto the floor and.. well, you know the rest.
Nothing illegal there.
Just a lot of good clean fun, and a little innocent, inadvertent leaking.
Or course Karl and Scooter and Dick couldn’t talk about the President taking a bath. The press would have had a field day with the image of the President and his GI Joes.
So they protected him.
The President did not even know that he was the one responsible for the leak. He couldn’t imagine anyone would care about his bathing habits.
So when days later, he told the plumbing press that he would not tolerate any leaks in the White House, he meant it.
Informed sources at the White House have now told me, on condition of anonymity, that he is very sorry for all the trouble that he has caused, however inadvertently.
The President has now had all the tubs in the White House removed, replacing them with enclosed shower stalls.
And just to be safe, the President has issued a secret order that all classified information that is inadvertently leaked, for any reason, is to be considered declassified as soon as it is revealed.
So okay, I will admit that when I leaked the story of Karl Rove leaking the story I was not exactly leaking the truth.
I didn’t know the truth, at the time.
But now that the truth has changed, I stand by my story.
That’s essentially what I want to do now – not admit that I made a mistake when, about a year ago, I impulsively suggested that Karl Rove had something to do with the Valerie Plame ‘leak’.
Actually I want to do a bit more than simply not admit to something.
In the spirit of modern, existential political honesty, I am not only not going to admit to making a mistake, I am going to suggest that what I did not do was not illegal.
Not that anyone has accused me of doing something illegal: just that if they do, what I did not do, was not illegal.
(Politics and good grammar do not mix.)
We’re dealing in hypotheticals here: I wasn’t around when the White House sprang a leak, so I can’t personally attest to the facts surrounding this famous drip.
We do have the written reports from those that were there – and Grand Jury testimony and, coincidentally, those reports have now been retroactively declassified, allowing me to share what others knew to be leaks, at the time, without being accused of leaking myself.
According to those reports, Karl Rove had nothing to do with the leaks at the White House.
In fact, Karl turns out to have been a victim of those leaks. Or perhaps I should put it a different way.
When the leaks first appeared (and leaks are like trees that fall in the forest, if you’re not there to see them, they don’t exist) Karl was the one called in to the fix them.
Karl was essentially - the declassified, insignificant, politics as usual, facts now seem to suggest, a plumber.
Now I don’t want you to think (wink wink, nudge nudge) that by using the word ‘plumber’ I am in any way suggesting any similarities to the way that Karl Rove functioned in the White House, and the way the infamous Watergate ‘plumbers’ functioned.
No: they are very different.
Karl has his plumber’s license, and Nixon’s plumbers were undocumented aliens that the White House hired to save a few bucks.
Poor Karl, he was just a hired hand, called in to fix a few leaks.
You know how it goes: you see a little water damage on the ceiling, a few drips, and so to be safe you call for the plumber.
The plumber would be just as happy tightening up a few screws, adding a nut and bolt here and there, and getting his $250. But when Karl arrived, it was immediately apparent that there was a hidden leak, the source of which had to be found, or else.
So Karl got out his tools and started looking.
He dug through the ceiling of his office, and into the office of Scooter Libby: though he found a big pool of water there, the source was still hidden.
So he dug through the wall of Libby’s office and into the Vice President’s office: though the water was a lot deeper, the leak did not originate there.
So he dug through the floor of the Vice President’s office and, finally, he found the source.
There was the President himself, taking a bath: laughing and splashing about, playing with his GI Joes, and unknowingly causing a little water to cascade over the tub and onto the floor and.. well, you know the rest.
Nothing illegal there.
Just a lot of good clean fun, and a little innocent, inadvertent leaking.
Or course Karl and Scooter and Dick couldn’t talk about the President taking a bath. The press would have had a field day with the image of the President and his GI Joes.
So they protected him.
The President did not even know that he was the one responsible for the leak. He couldn’t imagine anyone would care about his bathing habits.
So when days later, he told the plumbing press that he would not tolerate any leaks in the White House, he meant it.
Informed sources at the White House have now told me, on condition of anonymity, that he is very sorry for all the trouble that he has caused, however inadvertently.
The President has now had all the tubs in the White House removed, replacing them with enclosed shower stalls.
And just to be safe, the President has issued a secret order that all classified information that is inadvertently leaked, for any reason, is to be considered declassified as soon as it is revealed.
So okay, I will admit that when I leaked the story of Karl Rove leaking the story I was not exactly leaking the truth.
I didn’t know the truth, at the time.
But now that the truth has changed, I stand by my story.
Hovercraft
My timing was good this past week.
On Wednesday I drove to Leominster to help my older son, Robert, celebrate his 21st birthday.
We had dinner, drinks, and now his name is going on the wall of the restaurant because he was able to down a double-shot of tequila, worm and all.
My sister-in-law, I have heard, was appalled by my participation in those festivities.
I understand her concern, but I don’t think I was encouraging bad behavior: I actually thought I was making quite the opposite statement.
The best we can do, I have always said, is to not make things worse.
Whatever you do, I love to quote Camus in “The Plague”, just don’t spread the microbe.
Besides, I wanted him to know that I was impressed that he had made it this far, relatively unscathed.
On Friday we bought a new bike for my 7 year old son.
By the weekend the weather had warmed considerably, and the seven year old was able to stay out for hour after hour, riding his new bike.
By the mid-afternoon he already had a few tricks to show me: first balancing his feet on the back of the bike and rolling down the hill, and then putting his feet up against the front and, again, balancing as the bike rolled along.
Be prepared, I told my wife, with bandages and first aid cream.
But what are we supposed to do – forbid him from attempting any tricks, taking any risks? You all know what comes of that.
So instead, seeing he was big enough for the 20” bike, we took him to the street, give him the bike, and let him ride.
Maybe it’s all about balance.
You have to let your children learn to walk on their own, otherwise when they needed to get something from the refrigerator they would fall right over.
It’s hard to strike the right balance yourself, as a parent: if you hold on too tightly, you’re both going to crash. If you let go too quickly, well, they’re still going to fall.
So what you do is hover.
You practice the fine art of hovering, of subtle support: you mix praise with fear and sneak laughter into the lecture.
This past week was a triumph of hovering.
God knows it ain’t easy.
To hover in Leominster I had to drive two hours, eat some mediocre Mexican food, and down a few shots of tequila myself.
Then it was on to Worcester –where Robert was sure to get carded, for more drinks (his, not mine) and bad karaoke.
Then a two hour drive home, interrupted just before I turned into the driveway by a call from my son –closing down the bar with his goodhearted (and sober) girlfriend.
“Yes’ I told him, “I had a great time too. Sorry I had to leave so early, but I have some more hovering to do with your little brother.”
Hovering around a seven year-old is just as tough as hovering around a 21 year-old –maybe tougher.
First of all, at my age, drinking a shot of tequila is far easier than keeping up with a seven year old.
And if the 21 year-old screws up, at least you can say that he should know better. The seven year-old still has the youth excuse.
There is very little difference though, in how much help they will ask for.
The younger son will actually ask for help, at first, for about 30 seconds: then he wants you out of the way.
The seven year old is, at least, not as good as hiding their desire for your approval, and will beam at praise.
The 21 year old will only ask for help after they have screwed up: but be careful not to think that your help gives you the right to lecture.
The 21 year old bristles at the offer of any advice from his father. He occasionally needs help, not advice, which usually translates in to cash.
So you hover: half way between the ground and the air, between praise and advice, between fear and laughter.
You need to have great balance.
You need to have great timing.
It was just one of those weeks, when everything that could go wrong, didn’t.
The sun was out, the wind was just right, and I managed to just hover in mid-air, like a dad is supposed to do.
On Wednesday I drove to Leominster to help my older son, Robert, celebrate his 21st birthday.
We had dinner, drinks, and now his name is going on the wall of the restaurant because he was able to down a double-shot of tequila, worm and all.
My sister-in-law, I have heard, was appalled by my participation in those festivities.
I understand her concern, but I don’t think I was encouraging bad behavior: I actually thought I was making quite the opposite statement.
The best we can do, I have always said, is to not make things worse.
Whatever you do, I love to quote Camus in “The Plague”, just don’t spread the microbe.
Besides, I wanted him to know that I was impressed that he had made it this far, relatively unscathed.
On Friday we bought a new bike for my 7 year old son.
By the weekend the weather had warmed considerably, and the seven year old was able to stay out for hour after hour, riding his new bike.
By the mid-afternoon he already had a few tricks to show me: first balancing his feet on the back of the bike and rolling down the hill, and then putting his feet up against the front and, again, balancing as the bike rolled along.
Be prepared, I told my wife, with bandages and first aid cream.
But what are we supposed to do – forbid him from attempting any tricks, taking any risks? You all know what comes of that.
So instead, seeing he was big enough for the 20” bike, we took him to the street, give him the bike, and let him ride.
Maybe it’s all about balance.
You have to let your children learn to walk on their own, otherwise when they needed to get something from the refrigerator they would fall right over.
It’s hard to strike the right balance yourself, as a parent: if you hold on too tightly, you’re both going to crash. If you let go too quickly, well, they’re still going to fall.
So what you do is hover.
You practice the fine art of hovering, of subtle support: you mix praise with fear and sneak laughter into the lecture.
This past week was a triumph of hovering.
God knows it ain’t easy.
To hover in Leominster I had to drive two hours, eat some mediocre Mexican food, and down a few shots of tequila myself.
Then it was on to Worcester –where Robert was sure to get carded, for more drinks (his, not mine) and bad karaoke.
Then a two hour drive home, interrupted just before I turned into the driveway by a call from my son –closing down the bar with his goodhearted (and sober) girlfriend.
“Yes’ I told him, “I had a great time too. Sorry I had to leave so early, but I have some more hovering to do with your little brother.”
Hovering around a seven year-old is just as tough as hovering around a 21 year-old –maybe tougher.
First of all, at my age, drinking a shot of tequila is far easier than keeping up with a seven year old.
And if the 21 year-old screws up, at least you can say that he should know better. The seven year-old still has the youth excuse.
There is very little difference though, in how much help they will ask for.
The younger son will actually ask for help, at first, for about 30 seconds: then he wants you out of the way.
The seven year old is, at least, not as good as hiding their desire for your approval, and will beam at praise.
The 21 year old will only ask for help after they have screwed up: but be careful not to think that your help gives you the right to lecture.
The 21 year old bristles at the offer of any advice from his father. He occasionally needs help, not advice, which usually translates in to cash.
So you hover: half way between the ground and the air, between praise and advice, between fear and laughter.
You need to have great balance.
You need to have great timing.
It was just one of those weeks, when everything that could go wrong, didn’t.
The sun was out, the wind was just right, and I managed to just hover in mid-air, like a dad is supposed to do.
All the Marbles
I’ve lost my marbles.
At least it feels that way.
I loved marbles, as a kid: it was such a simple ‘sport’, so easily understood, so effortless to play.
Nowadays things are a bit more complex, a bit more demanding..
Nowadays you need a graduate degree just to read the Sports section of the newspaper.
But even with the proper education, you still need to regularly devote at least two hours a day to studying rosters, compiling statistics, and memorizing the names of mascots, just to stay competitive.
Not competitive in the actual sport, of course: no, you need all that education and ongoing research just to compete in the Fantasy Leagues.
The Fantasy Leagues!
You know what they are, don’t you?
The one thing the Fantasy Leagues are not, is a fantasy. They are all about real athletes, actual performance, player drafts, and piles and piles of statistics.
It takes weeks of intense preparation to be competitive in a Fantasy sport.
Don’t get involved in a Fantasy sports league if you are inclined to fantasize. Don’t get involved in a Fantasy sports league if you have a real life –unless of course you are willing to make the Fantasy Leagues your real life.
And please, don’t get involved in Fantasy Sports Leagues if you are only looking to have some fun.
You want fun, try marbles.
But as I said at the start, I have lost my marbles.
I succumbed to the alleged fun of March Madness and now, perhaps mercifully, I am already out of it.
Again, I am not talking about the real games, the actual basketball: no, of course not.
What I am talking about is Bracketmania.
All across the country millions of Americans put their chores aside, rescheduled medical appointments, postponed bachelor parties, and otherwise put their lives on hold so they could predict the outcome of 59 basketball games in three weeks.
You probably have a better chance of winning the Powerball game, but that hasn’t stopped hordes of people from filling out their brackets, putting down their cash, and staying up past their bedtime to find out if the Rootabaga Giants from the MidSouthern Conference upset Altoona’s Laughing Cows, or the Humpbacked Whales of Miller State managed to eek out a win against perennial powerhouse Anthracite State.
Are you following this?
Who’s fooling whom?
I’d never even heard of Arkansas Central Christian, and yet I was fairly confident that they’d advance to the second round.
I couldn’t tell you which side of the Alabash River the campus was located on, but I confidently predicted Whoozits U. would surprise St. Juleps of Naomi.
I never stood a chance.
Of course, hope springs eternal: before the first game of the first round I stood atop the leader board (tied with everyone else at zero points), full of potential, sure of victory.
I had even filled out the tie-breaker sheet, predicting the total amount of points that would be scored in the championship game.
Then they played that first game and I plummeted down through the standings, like the Knights without Roy Hobbs.
After two rounds I was still in the top 30% of all participants, which placed me ahead of over 100,000, but behind 37,105.
I took some solace in the fact that there were so many pathetic losers behind me in the standings, at that point –and even scoffed at those who purported to know what they were talking about.
I, on the other hand, never had a clue.
Marbles, as I said, are more my speed.
In marbles, you have your Clearies, your Snotties, your Purees and your Agates.
You draw a big ring in the dirt, and then you take turns with one opponent, dropping marbles into the circle.
Then you take turns shooting at the marbles.
If you knock them out of the ring, you keep them.
I still have a bag of Purees, mementoes of my days as 2nd grade champion of St. Johns Elementary in Bangor.
The last time I looked at my March Madness bracket, I was in 89,473rd place, with that number growing faster than the national debt.
At least it feels that way.
I loved marbles, as a kid: it was such a simple ‘sport’, so easily understood, so effortless to play.
Nowadays things are a bit more complex, a bit more demanding..
Nowadays you need a graduate degree just to read the Sports section of the newspaper.
But even with the proper education, you still need to regularly devote at least two hours a day to studying rosters, compiling statistics, and memorizing the names of mascots, just to stay competitive.
Not competitive in the actual sport, of course: no, you need all that education and ongoing research just to compete in the Fantasy Leagues.
The Fantasy Leagues!
You know what they are, don’t you?
The one thing the Fantasy Leagues are not, is a fantasy. They are all about real athletes, actual performance, player drafts, and piles and piles of statistics.
It takes weeks of intense preparation to be competitive in a Fantasy sport.
Don’t get involved in a Fantasy sports league if you are inclined to fantasize. Don’t get involved in a Fantasy sports league if you have a real life –unless of course you are willing to make the Fantasy Leagues your real life.
And please, don’t get involved in Fantasy Sports Leagues if you are only looking to have some fun.
You want fun, try marbles.
But as I said at the start, I have lost my marbles.
I succumbed to the alleged fun of March Madness and now, perhaps mercifully, I am already out of it.
Again, I am not talking about the real games, the actual basketball: no, of course not.
What I am talking about is Bracketmania.
All across the country millions of Americans put their chores aside, rescheduled medical appointments, postponed bachelor parties, and otherwise put their lives on hold so they could predict the outcome of 59 basketball games in three weeks.
You probably have a better chance of winning the Powerball game, but that hasn’t stopped hordes of people from filling out their brackets, putting down their cash, and staying up past their bedtime to find out if the Rootabaga Giants from the MidSouthern Conference upset Altoona’s Laughing Cows, or the Humpbacked Whales of Miller State managed to eek out a win against perennial powerhouse Anthracite State.
Are you following this?
Who’s fooling whom?
I’d never even heard of Arkansas Central Christian, and yet I was fairly confident that they’d advance to the second round.
I couldn’t tell you which side of the Alabash River the campus was located on, but I confidently predicted Whoozits U. would surprise St. Juleps of Naomi.
I never stood a chance.
Of course, hope springs eternal: before the first game of the first round I stood atop the leader board (tied with everyone else at zero points), full of potential, sure of victory.
I had even filled out the tie-breaker sheet, predicting the total amount of points that would be scored in the championship game.
Then they played that first game and I plummeted down through the standings, like the Knights without Roy Hobbs.
After two rounds I was still in the top 30% of all participants, which placed me ahead of over 100,000, but behind 37,105.
I took some solace in the fact that there were so many pathetic losers behind me in the standings, at that point –and even scoffed at those who purported to know what they were talking about.
I, on the other hand, never had a clue.
Marbles, as I said, are more my speed.
In marbles, you have your Clearies, your Snotties, your Purees and your Agates.
You draw a big ring in the dirt, and then you take turns with one opponent, dropping marbles into the circle.
Then you take turns shooting at the marbles.
If you knock them out of the ring, you keep them.
I still have a bag of Purees, mementoes of my days as 2nd grade champion of St. Johns Elementary in Bangor.
The last time I looked at my March Madness bracket, I was in 89,473rd place, with that number growing faster than the national debt.
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