The Wizardry of Oz

Down in Miami, Fla, the owner of the Florida Marlins baseball team, Jeffrey Loria, came up with an idea to increase fan interest and attendance (and revenue)!  Let's change the name of the team to the MIAMI Marlins, let's build a stadium in the Little Havana section of town, and let's try to appeal to the many Cuban-Americans here, who love baseball.

Yes, they love baseball in Miami. And they hate Fidel Castro.

So Mr Loria gets the former mayor of Miami to back his plan for a taxpayer-supported stadium, which cost the mayor his job in the last election.  And he goes out and hires Ozzie Guillen as his manager.  Perfect fit, he figures.  48 years of age, a Venezuelan by birth, and the sort of colorful character that baseball loves.  A good manager, winner of a World Series with the White Sox a couple of years ago, and a box-office draw all at once.  Pay him 2.5 million a year, and watch the fans stream in!

So they opened the stadium last week. They played one game there, and then the Marlins went on the road, during which time both The NEW YORKER and TIME magazines ran articles about the new-look team, new name, new $634 million ballpark, new manager.  And TIME quotes Ozzie as saying he loves and respects Fidel Castro. “You know why?” he said. “A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last sixty years, but that son of a bitch is still here.”

Well, Oz, a lot of people have hated a lot of murderous dictators for a long time, but don't allow that hate to be confused with love or respect.  The upshot of it is, of course, a major controversy, mad apologies from Ozzie and the team, pickets, placards, the whole deal.  Ozzie gets suspended by the team for five games, and the owner, Loria, must be kicking himself all over home plate for spending so much money - his and the public's - to put on a big show, only to hire a big show-off to manage the team.

Since Ozzie does acknowledge no love for Hugo Chavez, the dictator of his native land, you have to wonder if he only said what he said just to have something to say, as when he made homophobic remarks about a sportswriter in Chi a few years back.  As in the lovely way he told his son that he planned to celebrate his wedding anniversary (I'll let you read that in the New Yorker so I don't have to quote such a distasteful remark.)

Yes, Ozzie likes to speak and talk and say things, and the press gathers around and records his every utterance like young seminarians clustering around a bishop.  And some in South Florida are questioning the need for punishment, saying that to punish Oz is to take away his freedom of speech, which is what Castro did to Cubans.

Ozzie, with mouth closed for once

To set the record straight:  every person in this country has the absolute right to free speech.  Smart people in this country realize that when you are being paid two and half million a year to promote a product, the one thing you cannot do is extol the virtues of the one thing that is anathema to the potential users of the product.

It's like being hired as a spokesperson for McDonald's and showing up with a Whopper. 

Pick a winner

Several weeks ago, all of Maryland and most of the rest of the nation was in a high state of consternation when a woman named Mirlande Wilson claimed to have a winning ticket in the 640 million dollar lottery, but then she said she left the ticket at the McDonald's where she worked and then she said she lost it and then a lot of people with whom she used to work said, Say what?

It seems that she never did have the winning ticket or anything like it.  A few days into all this silliness, she called a press conference at the office of an attorney in Baltimore, the purpose of the meeting being to bring all the media together so that she could ask the media to leave her alone.

The media pretty much leaves me alone, except for the guy who sells subscriptions to the Sunpaper from a little kiosk at the Giant Food store.  He never seems to want to take my word for it when I tell him I already get the paper delivered.  If I don't look like a newspaper subscriber, well, who does?  But my point is, no reporters chase after me, nor do camera crews camp out on my lawn waiting for me to make an early morning appearance.  That's because I don't call the New York POST and claim to have won a lottery that I didn't win. 

So Ms Wilson fades back into the oblivion of obscurity, soon to inherit that nether region between yesterday's news and the inevitable "where are they now?" story in a couple of years.

In the meantime, the real winners came forward, and it turns out that they were chortling all along at Ms Wilson, since they had the winning ducat all along.
Matter of fact, the money will be split among three Maryland educators (who have requested anonymity).  Each of them will wind up stashing 35 million post-tax dollars in their bank accounts.  The trio, two women and a man calling themselves "The Three Amigos" are a special education teacher, an elementary school teacher and a school administrator who all worked multiple jobs to cover their bills.
A spokesperson for the Maryland Lottery said they
planned to buy new homes, travel to Europe and help their own children pay for college, but they couldn't stand to leave their schools. "They were so clearly committed to their kids," he said of the teachers. "They both said, 'Yes, I can't give up my kids.'"

One lottery, and so many different stories.  The woman who claimed to win never returned to her job at McDonald's and was, in fact, barred from the restaurant when she showed up (media in tow!) to "search for the winning ticket inside."  She never had the winner any more than you or I did.  Meanwhile, the three who did pool their money and happen to buy the winning ticket met with advisors and financial planners before showing up at the lottery offices.  And they said they are keeping their jobs.

It's interesting to think what we all would have done. I don't think I know anyone who would claim to have the winner while not having it, but I wonder how many of us love our jobs so much that 35 million bucks wouldn't be enough to make us leave them.

What, me worry?

We were just leaving my sister's house on Easter Sunday, after a lovely family gathering, and Peggy and I were taking Mom back to the retirement palace when Mom said, "Watch out for deer running out of the woods! That's all I worry about."

OK.  A, that's not ALL she worries about by a country mile.  As a child of the Great Depression in this country, Mom can take a forecast of "20% chance of showers on Sunday evening" and turn that into "They said it's going to rain all weekend."  And as someone who was around as I roared through adolescence, she never knew which teacher or school administrator was going to be on the phone next, complaining of some transgression that was totally not my fault, if you'd just stop and look at the whole picture.

And B, I learned something a long time ago. (Not in school.)  It was from that Dr Wayne Dyer guy, who wrote a book called, as I recall, "Don't Worry About It" (or something close to that) and has since shuffled the words of that first best-seller a couple of dozen times to produce other books, called, it seems to me, "I Wouldn't Worry About It If I Were You," "Don't Even Worry About It At All," and "About It, Don't Worry."  Dr Dyer has this one message that he brings home every time he rewrites his book or appears on public tv during beg-a-thons, wearing beach apparel and sandals:  Worry changes nothing, does no good, and is worthless.

He asks one simple question, and here it is:  Can you name a time that sitting around fretting about something actually helped?

Of course not. If you know it's going to rain, why sit and worry about the rain getting in the windows? Just get up and close the windows! Instead of worrying about running out of gas on the way home, stop and get some gas.  Do what you can do about things, and then, don't worry.

I found out all about this just over a year ago.  On my way home from the x-ray place, I was sitting in my truck, stopped at a red light.  My seat belt was on. I was not on the cell phone. I was paying full attention to the task of driving.  And then a guy with low blood sugar ran smack dab into a woman sitting in a Honda, who ran into a woman ahead of her, also waiting for the light to change in a Toyota.  Who rammed into me, totaling my truck and ruining my day.

So all the worrying in the world would not have prevented this happening.  My advice would be, if you're driving, always do your best, keep an eye out for deer, and still expect to be crashulated by a fool. There is nothing you can do about it, and only a fool would  worry about it in advance.

I feel waffle about it all

I happen to love it when two great cultural forces join forces to bring double greatness to the nation.

Here's news from Georgia, from the AP:

Shots fired in Facebook fight at Ga. Waffle House

The Associated Press

10:31 a.m. Friday, April 6, 2012 AUGUSTA, Ga. — Authorities say an argument over a Facebook posting led to gunfire as two groups of women clashed at a Waffle House in Georgia. No injuries were reported.

Investigators tell WRDW-TV (http://bit.ly/Hjt1eD) they took one woman into custody after they say she fired four shots in the air outside the restaurant in Augusta around 5 a.m. Friday.

Sheriff's deputies were called to the scene. They said one group was inside the restaurant when another group approached and started an argument. They say the verbal fight was carried outside where one woman fired with a handgun.

Investigators say they think the argument stemmed from a post on Facebook that involved someone's relationship status. There were no more details.

Several hundred years from now, in a world we can scarcely imagine, a young person will find this story in an old discarded thumb drive and demand that one of his parental units define the terms "waffle" and "Facebook."

Let us hope that the mom or dad is wise enough to tell their child of a long-ago world where people had nothing better to do at 5 o'clock in the morning than to fire pistol shots skyward because someone said something about someone else's hookup.

I've been around long enough to dispense this advice: unless you work the midnight or very early morning shift, you should be in (your own) bed at 5 in the morning, not shooting your pistol outside a Waffle House.  Try it for 30 days, and see if your life doesn't feel better!

Oh what a tangled web

OK, here we go.  From the wires of the Associated Press:

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Bobby Petrino's image of perfection has come to a sudden and surprising end at Arkansas.

The Razorbacks coach was put on paid administrative leave Thursday night less than seven hours after his boss, athletic director Jeff Long, learned Petrino had failed to disclose he had been riding with a female employee half his age when his motorcycle skidded off the road over the weekend.

Petrino said he had been concerned about protecting his family and keeping an "inappropriate relationship from becoming public."

It was a stunning revelation for a highly successful coach who prides himself on complete control and intense privacy in his personal life. Petrino will now wait out his fate while Long conducts a review.

"I will fully cooperate with the university throughout this process and my hope is to repair my relationships with my family, my athletic director, the Razorback Nation and remain the head coach of the Razorbacks," he said in a statement issued by the university.

Long announced the decision to put Petrino on leave at a late-night news conference, one that was reminiscent of when the former Atlanta Falcons coach was hired by the Razorbacks on Dec. 11, 2007. Long said he had no timeline in determining Petrino's future with the Razorbacks.

In other words: blustery football coach is caught with his hands in the nookie jar, and now he hopes to repair his relationships with his wife, his kids, his supervisors, and anyone else who might raise an opprobrious eyebrow at a man caught lying about being with a woman less than 1/2 his age (I did the math.)

Yeah, she looks right for him

He's described as an experienced motorcycle rider, but the state police blame the wreck, which left the coach with four broken ribs, a cracked neck vertebra, and what's sure to be a really angry wife, on "sun" and "wind."  Whatever it was that he told the wife he was going to do on Saturday, he seems to have forgotten to mention his friend Jessica Dorrell, a former volleyball player at the university who - how about this? - just got hired on Mar. 28 as an employee of the football program.

How convenient!

Look, Petrino is not the first man entering middle age to find the need to make an ass of himself over a young woman, so he treats her to an afternoon of maladroit motorcycling and goes flying off the road.  When he spun the yarn for his bosses and the police, he said there was no other person involved, and that a woman had happened to come along to wave down a passing vehicle for help.

He didn't mention that she happened to come along because she had just been on the motorcycle with him.

For all we know, they are just friends; he and his wife like the young lady and welcome her to the U of Arkansas athletic department, and look forward to many more nights of fun together making fudge, popping corn, and playing Sorry!

Tell the truth and it will set you free, coach. 

Sunday Rerun: I'm Private Practical, not Capt. Bringdown

Last summer, Peggy and I were going to visit a friend at a hospital located outside of Ellicott City, MD, which is one of those towns that just oozes quaintness and tiny stores and coffee shops and "divine" bakeries.  Off the main street (Main Street) we turned left and went up a hill, on serpentine roads around a wistful vista that wound back and forth and went all over the place, much like John Boehner's tax reduction policies.  There were dozens of houses located up there along the road leading to the hospital, and Peggy was so taken with the picturesque setting and the wonderfulness of being so close to the old mill town.  In a word, she was enchanted with the area.

Not to be Captain Bringdown, but I had to point out that residents along that long and winding road would be well-served to follow a strict program of fire prevention, because I think the local fire company would really play hell getting a ladder truck up that path, not to mention how hard it would be getting in or out of that neighborhood following a big blizzard like the one we had two of last winter.

Maybe that's why Peggy and I blend so well.  She sees the pure beauty of people feeding birds and squirrels; I envision the squirrel's second cousins, the rats and mice, chowing down at a public trough.  She sees someone's lovely front yard full of maples and oaks in a gracefully sloping sylvan wonderland; I wonder how long it takes to plow the long curving 45° angle driveway.  And my heavens, how my wonderful Peggy loves seeing deer along the road or in a distant field!  I see deer as large heavy objects that are always running out of the woods, crashing into cars and trucks. 

Peggy sees the lilting, tedious melodies of Enya and Yanni as the pinnacle of musical accomplishment, and yet she can't understand my devotion to Frank Zappa's songs.  And her favorite poems usually read like this:

The Swan  by Mary Oliver


Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?

Whereas, my kind of poetry reads and looks like a poem, instead of an unpunctuated essay:

The Boy and His Nuts  by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The boy stood on the burning deck,
Eating peanuts by the peck.
His mother called; he would not go,
because he loved those peanuts so.

No one is right or wrong, and I love the differences.  But if you had to guess which one of us giggles and guffaws over words such as, say, "Wadsworth" and "Longfellow,"  whom would you pick?

Giggidy.

Here we go!

Baltimore Orioles baseball season opened yesterday, and I'm writing this yesterday (see how that works?) so as I type, I have no idea how the game came out.  There will be 161 more games between now and the end of the season.

Chances are, the O's will lose more than 1/2 of those games... a lot more than 1/2.

Now, I enjoy winning as much as anyone, which is why the results of the last presidential election were so pleasing to me.  But when it comes to baseball, I am an Oriole rooter and a fan of the game itself. Football is more reliant on speed and physical brutality (especially in New Orleans), basketball has more to do with height than strategy, and hockey is all about the ability to slam a guy in the face with a stick while simultaneously ice skating.  Baseball is a game of thought and nuance, to me.

Again, I'd like it if the Orioles won more games, but as someone who had to learn to live without a pro football team for a long time, I would rather have a not-so-great team to root for than a team that moved to Indianapolis or something.

It pains me to see people, or, more specifically, hear people who proclaim that they would know better how to perform if they found themselves in another box: either the batter's box or the owner's.  Relax, let these people do what they do, and enjoy the game!

Master of the Souse

As Alton Benes

If you remember the Seinfeld episode called "The Jacket" (Jerry has a "fabulous" new suede jacket; he's wearing it when he and George meet up with Elaine and her father Alton Benes for dinner...) then you remember the tough-guy actor Lawrence Tierney, who played Alton.

As Sam Wild in Born to Kill

Lawrence Tierney (1919-2002) was a Brooklyn-born actor who was either too busy playing the tough guy for real in his real life to make his career work out, or maybe he couldn't separate the gangster thug roles he played from reality.  The difference is, in the movies he was in, such as "Born To Kill" and "The Devil Thumbs A Ride," when he got locked up, the director hollered "CUT" and they opened the cell door right away.  In real life, in the jails he was in, it didn't happen that easily.  Tierney was arrested over a dozen times, for fighting and/or drunkenness, and he didn't give up the booze until 1992, following a stroke.

The cast and crew of "Seinfeld" said that Tierney certainly would have been brought back for further appearances as Elaine's gruff Dad, but the cast and crew were scared of him.  He tried to steal a kitchen knife from Seinfeld's apartment set.

As Don Brodka

He was also on "The Simpsons" as security guard Don Brodka, who caught Bart trying to rip off a copy of the video game "Bonestorm" from the Try-N-Save discount store.  Reports are that he intimidated and threatened people at the recording of that episode (called "Marge Be Not Proud" from December, 1995.)

The thing is, we saw that "Jacket" episode the other night.  George kept singing bits from that "Master of the House" song and Alton told him to "knock it off, chorus boy" and then on his way back home (to Maryland - remember, Elaine was from Towson!) old Alton couldn't get that "M of the H" song out of his mind.

And now, neither can I.

Master of the house
Doling out the charm
Ready with a handshake
And an open palm...

How it all works out

Baseball fans, please pop the name "Brien Taylor" into your personal Google and see if you remember this man.

Then

In 1991, the Yankees, who suck, had the first pick in the major league draft, and they used it to hire Brien Taylor, 19, out of Beaufort, NC, to throw baseballs for them.  He was a great high-school pitcher, and scout after scout was sure that he would have an outstanding career after some seasoning in the minor leagues.

He had finished his second minor-league season and was seemingly bound for glory when, in December 1993, he got into a fight with the brother of a girl that his brother was dating.  And then, when Brien Taylor went to throw a haymaker at his opponent, he missed him, and the can't-miss prospect was standing there with a damaged left arm - the arm that he used to throw baseballs.  Medically, it would have been better for that punch to land.  As his left arm sailed through the night, connecting with nothing but air, a capsule and a labrum were torn, and the best orthopedic surgeons in the world could not put him together again, not, at least, well enough to throw baseballs at 99 mph anymore.

Now

We've heard similar stories, and that business about Taylor was the last I heard about him, except for the inevitable release from the Yankees, who really do suck, and fruitless tryouts with the Mariners and Indians.

So it was a little sad this week to see that Brien Taylor, who still lives at home with his parents and works with his Dad as a mason, his dreams of glory long since faded into dust, has been involved in the drug trade, so authorities say.  You can see it here in the Jacksonville NC Daily News online. His apparent descent into crime was even bigger news down there than "Man Charged With Having Sex With Dog."

They don't even mention what he was supposed to make of his life.  That's the tough part - it isn't what you might do, or what you are given the talent to do.

 
It's what you do that counts.

When EF5 speaks...people don't listen

Here in mid-Atlantic coastal Maryland, we don't deal with too many tornadoes (although one could be too many, I understand.)  It's not at the top of our weather problem list.  Thunderstorms with lightning, hailstorms, blizzards and floods are ahead of it.

In the midwest, tornadoes are not to be messed with, which is why every prudent resident owns and operates a weather emergency radio.  These devices are tuned to the NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) radio system, which is capable of emitting tones that cause the radios to wail and yelp as a warning when severe weather is about to strike.

Ah, you say. Wise homeowner goes to bed, radio is set, and then when the alert comes, tones  are broadcast to alert him, his wife, their kids and Uncle Glenn, who is bunking in the spare room until he can settle things down with Aunt Edna, to run for cover.  Head to the basement, or at least get under a sturdy door frame in the center of the house, or go to your designated safe place!  And then, the storm can come along and do what it will, but the wise homeowner and his kith and kin are safe, and that's all that matters, right?

Oh, if only.  Because, what they are finding out is that people don't respond to terminology.  Even people who have lived in Tornado Alley forever don't get the connection between "EF5 tornado" and "Run for your life!"  They hear the alert, shrug, and roll over. So the weather people have a new plan, and they will test it in Kansas and Missouri, where people like to be shown things anyway.

The new system will not use codes such as "EF5" to warn the populace.  Instead, they will use plain English to tell people to run for it. "Mass devastation," "unsurvivable" and "catastrophic" will be at the top of the list.

They don't say what they will use for the less-troubling storms.  "Troublesome" might do for the medium kind of storm, and getting down to the least of all, they might broadcast that the storm bearing down on your neighborhood is going to be "annoying."

I'm all for anything that helps people deal with emergencies.  Perhaps they could come on every so often and remind folks to stock up on flashlight batteries, meals-ready-to eat,  and drinkable water - before the storms of summer bear down on us.

I TOLD you, homeboy!

Last Friday, the nation paused from celebrating Lotto fever to sing 50 Happy Birthdays to Stanley Kirk Burrell, who is better known as MC Hammer.

As a youth growing up in Oakland CA, young Stanley hung around the Oakland Alameda County Coliseum, befriending members of the Oakland A's, and selling stray baseballs and dancing for money on the parking lot.  The owner of the A's, Charles O. Finley, one of those men to whom the tag "colorful" is invariably applied, hired young Stan as a batboy, clubhouse assistant and "pipeline."  As "pipeline," his job was to stay on the phone with the Chicago-based owner and give him a play-by-play rundown on the progress of the ballgames.

Because he looked like the young Hank Aaron, the slugger whose nickname was "Hammering Hank," the players started calling Stan "Little Hammer," or just plain "Hammer."

Because he often served as master of ceremonies at local events, Stan added "M.C." to "Hammer," and a show-biz identity was born.  After high school, he joined the Navy, and came out of the service to record such tender ballads as "U Can't Touch This" from the album "Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em."

And roughly 77% of the stop signs in the greater Baltimore area bear the postscript seen above.

There came a time that Mr Hammer and I were standing side by side.  In 1996, I went to an Orioles/A's game at Kramden Yards, and Hammer was there to root for his team.  The City police, not knowing that his star had long since faded right after people stopped wearing Zubaz pants, surrounded him with a security delegation rivaling the size of the one that the president takes to the UN.  I was wondering what all the buzz was, and then all of a sudden, the cops stopped forming a human wedge around Hammer when the realization that he was not about to be mobbed by anyone dawned on them like the time Bush figured out he got us into the wrong war! And while the police argued among themselves (no gunplay) as to what the next move was to be in order to guard this visiting dignitary, the man himself was standing next to me, so I said, "Whaddya say, Hammer?" and received a "Glad to see ya" in return.

I'm pretty sure he wouldn't remember our brief encounter, but I've got my memories, and no one can touch them.  Break it down!

Monday Rerun: What Makes Peggy Laugh

From 2008:

In my private life, I often tell a joke that is, in all modesty, hilarious. No need for me even to be modest about it...I got the joke from Jackie "The Jokeman" Martling, former gagwriter for Howard Stern. I have been asked not to tell the joke at certain events requiring an element of gravitas: funerals, felony trials, the opening of a new Angelina Jolie thriller. But, here's the joke, and you will have to picture me with my google-eyed comic delivery and fake Cockney accent:


A guy is hitchhiking...he has three eyes, no arms, and one leg. Picture that...three eyes, no arms, one leg. Anyway, an Englishman pulls up next to him in his little sports car...the hitchhiker is standing there balanced on his leg, hitchhiking...the Englishman has the plaid wool scarf and one of those newsboy caps...he looks the hitchhiker up and down and says, "Ay ay ay! You look 'armless! 'op in!"

Killer stuff. It never fails to make me laugh like Dick Cheney at a peace rally, although for different reasons. Of course, come 2009, I will be celebrating 35 years of happy laughing at "Hi, this is Jerry Ford, Sales Manager at Dick Nixon Ford! Dick's gone crazy, and he's making deals like you never saw before!" That was on the National Lampoon Radio Hour right after Nixon resigned, and yet I laugh even still.

Peggy, on the other hand, registers no expression at either of these mirth-makers, except for a slight furrowing of the brow (indicating wonder), a barely perceptible shake of the head (indicating exasperation) and a tiny tiny sigh (indicating 35 years of agony.) From time to time, she will fetch my oxygen, if either of these gags lives up to its literal name. But laugh? Nah.

We found ourselves in Wegman's not long ago, in search of chipotle sauce. (Enough of that on a turkey burger makes you forget it's a turkey burger.) Wegman's is a grocery store like M & T Bank Stadium is a vacant lot where kids play pickup football. They don't have aisle numbers; they have zip codes. It's huge. It could beat the crap out of Rhode Island in a war (sorry, little tribute to Arthur the movie there). (I like Rhode Island.) The young woman who works at Wegmans as the Mayor of Cheesetown told us to look in the Mexican section and pointed 25- 30 miles from where she stood, surrounded by Gruyere, Emmenthaler and Royal Blue Stilton. I saw a sign lettered "Latin American" and pointed it out to Peggy, who immediately found herself seized by such violent paroxysms of laughter that one of the fullsize medic units that prowl the aisles of Wegman's was dispatched to her aid. All she could manage to say was that she found the term "Latin American" a bit old-stuffy. It does conjure the image of Cesar Romero in a guayabera shirt with a ceiling fan going oh-so-slowly as Katy Jurado insinuates her way across the cafe floor. When Peggy regained consciousness, we agreed that 'Hispanic' would be more appropriate nowadays.

It's been days. I swear to you, I just called out, "Hey Peggy! 'Latin American'! " and she is doubled over, gasping for air.

Anyone who can explain this will be given his or her own space in this blog!

Check the calendar

Sunday, the first of April, 2012:

What makes a good April Fool's joke?  As a young man, I did some groundbreaking work in the field of switching the salt and the sugar in my parents' kitchen, which resulted in getting hollered at and having to switch them back.

In high school, I was that guy who would sign his name "Dick Hertz" on the class roster for a substitute teacher, as well as getting other guys to roll me up in a wrestling mat so that I could be secreted into the girls' locker room.

Later in life, doing an entire DJ show using the names of other DJs seemed to fill the bill.  And when the computer age came along, well, I don't know how to explain this, or how someone ever discovered it, but typing C C H #  on a certain computer system caused the unsuspecting user to log him or herself off with the very next key stroke.

But over the years, people have become far more cunning in their use of practical jokes in the furtherance of hi-jinx.   Take Rick S., from Pennsylvania, who goes around telling people that the existence of birth control measures makes people think about having sex! 

When we all know that the existence of air and water and sunshine make people think about having sex.

Then there are the movie theaters selling stale popcorn for more per ounce than filet mignon is going for down at Beefsteak O'Hoolahan's, and the modern version of the old wallet-on-a-string gag: brand name aspirin, acetaminophen and ibuprofen.

The best pranks used to be the goodnatured stuff we pulled on each other.  Nowadays, it's the big corporations pulling stuff on us, and I do wish they would let go!

Saturday rerun: People I'd rather not be

Everyone doing their own thing, that's what we like to see.  But there are people that I see doing their own things, and while I give them as wide a berth as they need to do so, I can't be like:

• those guys who take their wives to the Try 'n' Shop and then stand in the parking lot doing their auto maintenance.  Gladys goes in the store, up goes the hood, and they do everything short of overhauling their transmissions right on the lot.  I also see this at work, when men who bring their wives in for meetings or counseling or whatever are out there.  Betcha if someone left a hose out there, a lot of the cars would get washed, too.
• that mom behind me in line at the grocery store. She was with her high-school age daughter.  She told the cashier, loudly, "I'm going to the rest room and leaving my daughter here with the groceries!  I can't wait! I have to go now!"  This told the world that a) she must feel that her daughter needs help purchasing groceries and b) she feels that we all need to know about her frequency of bathroom use. Ma'am, you embarrassed your daughter in public. Please don't do that any more.
• those married couples who can sit and eat an entire meal in a restaurant without so much as a word to each other.  Come on now; you must have something to say to her, mister! Even if it's only about how firm your grits are.  And madam, I know it's an unappealing view you are being offered, the top of his head as she shovels peas into his maw, but you could say something! Right?
• those Bluetooth-equipped people who can't go anywhere in public without making a phone call, topic: nothing.  We don't need to know that your brother-in-law didn't come home until 5 in the morning, or that you couldn't get your meringue to rise for the pie.  
• those people who say they don't like the holidays and then try to wreck yours with their reasons!  
• people who are proud of not knowing things, of not reading, of being willfully uninformed.
• people who turn 60 and decide they are over the hill and might as well just get measured for the final blue suit and the casket this week
• people who turn 60 and decide this is the time to dress like they're 20 and act like they're 30.  

Not that I know anyone who does any of this, you understand!!! I'm just observing...

Words fail us

expletive: a (usually profane) exclamation
epithet: a disparaging word or phrase
epaulet: a decoration on a shirt's shoulder
epitaph: words on a tomb or gravestone

From these four words, Americans, always linguistically inventive, have coined a new word which we call "epitet."

We have decided to put the four words in a blender and use the result when we want to say, for instance, "The man used an ethnic epithet to describe his new neighbors."  Instead, we say he used an epitet.

It started with spelling; I understand that a certain segment of the teaching profession encourages their young followers to spell creatively now, fearing that asking young Beauregard to spell words correctly would crimp his sense of self-worth.

And then we started allowing mispronunciations, and probably became probly, and Social Security became SoShecurity, and February became Febyooary.  This is at least the "fith or sixt" time I have hollered about the way TV health reporters warn us of "respitory" infections.

So we find ourselves just making up new words, and you might as well tell Beau's math teacher that 6 times 8 equals 57, because he feels it should be.

I could just screen.

Ballots and Butthead

Yesterday I had the afternoon free, to go with the morning and evening.  I headed over to the local rec center to vote in the Maryland Primary, which will officially be held on April 3, but you can vote early to avoid the rush.

I parked and began to ankle into the building.  Two men were outside handing out leaflets and they asked, more or less in unison, "Democrat or Republican?" (Apparently they never met me before.) I said I was a Democrat, and the nicer of the two handed me a brochure explaining the reasons why I should vote for Senator Ben Cardin, who is really the only candidate on the bill of fare with even nomimal opposition.

But before I could even tell the man to save the brochure for someone with a less made-up mind, the Republican guy piped up and said, "You're making a big mistake!"

Really, buddy boy?  This is your contribution to democracy in action, to stand and criticize?  I don't know that he is making any friends for his candidate, Rick Santorum, who curses in public, like a galoot.

I don't go to the voting booth to hear guff from some guy.   I am more than willing to discuss politics in a reasonable forum, such as Facebook or emails, but not to be verbally suckerpunched on a rec center parking lot by a representative of a candidate who "almost wanted to throw up" after listening to President John F. Kennedy's speech on religious tolerance, and called President Barack Obama a snob for wanting people to be able to attend college.  See, religious tolerance is no good, and that there education, why that just turns one into one of them liberal know-it-all fellers who just want to come in and vote and all that.

I was around when birth control became available to millions of relieved Americans, and even then, bluenoses like this guy were harping on how licentious a nation we would become.  Even then, I figured everyone ought to worry more about what they're up to and a lot less about everyone else.  It's a lot easier that way.

Education marches on

According to our local Patch, the high schoolers over at Perry Hall High School are becoming truculent.  It seems that because school policy forbids kids from hooving on their Marlboro Lights on school property, they stand on the property of other people and get their nico-teen fixes.

I'm sure that if all they did was stand on the lawn, enjoy a leisurely cigarette and move on quietly, there would be no problem.

But that wouldn't be like most teenagers you know, would it?

So the other day, the lady who lives at the house that the students have turned into a smoking area came out and confronted them over it, only to be smacked in the face by a female student, whose parents must be awfully proud of her today.

Read the article and see what you think!

I like the part that says that the school has made many announcements urging the kids to behave.  They couldn't have really thought that was worth the effort, could they?

I will keep an eye on this case, since I have the time now to spend on such things.  Maybe I'll even go to District Court and see the young lady stand trial. I would hope to see her parents apologize to Ms Levin.

I would hope for that.  At the very least, we have to wonder how this whole thing came to blows.

What is wrong with people that they can't leave each other, and each other's property, alone?

Ralph Lauren's real name is Ralph Lifshitz

I'm the happiest guy in the world when I can find a bargain!  And now that wearing a polo shirt is about as dressed up as I'm going to be, barring someone being married or buried, the ubiquitous sport shirt is a menu staple for me.

I wear mine without the smirk

In fact, let's take the staples out, just so I don't get stuck, shall we?

I generally find my polos at JC Penney, or online at Eddie Bauer.  But there is a store up in Harford County called Gabriel Brothers  - one of those discount operations that buys up last year's styles and colors before the ritzy Marshall's and swanky TJ Maxx can get ahold of them - that I like to prowl through when we're up that way, and the other night, what did I find there but an entire rack of JC Penney polos.  Many were in my size, which happens to be a notch or two above "medium."  For fifteen semolians, I strutted out of there with three brand-new shirts - in the fashionable pistachio, ruby, and sea green colors.

Flour power

What's great about a $4.95 polo shirt is, you can feel all nice about wearing it, and even if you get barbecue sauce all over it or something, you're only out $4.95 if the stain remover doesn't work.  And if a fur protester tosses flour all over you, as just happened to Kim Kardashian, well, you just throw it in the laundry and away you go.

I have reached out to Kim in solidarity, but she demanded to know what solidarity was.

I'm exhausted

I read that the big auto manufacturers are tearing their hair out, and having meetings and doing research, because young people are just not that interested in cars anymore. 

For one thing, you have to have a lot of training if you want to do anything in the way of auto maintenance that's more complicated than changing the oil or the radio station presets. 

For another, people today aren't even all that interested in driving, let alone buying a new car to do it in.  The price of gas, and tolls, and constraints on our time have put an end to cruising, Sunday rides in the country, and bombing around for the heck of it.  Today, we have a purpose when we get behind the wheel and strap in, and our GPS tells us when and where to turn, and we doggone well better do as the voice says, or catch hell.

Vroooooooom.

 

We can all recall the days when a guy would get an old Chevy, drop a really hot engine in it, and tear up the local roads and highways going really fast. Today, what few guys fool with their cars at all seem to concentrate only on the exhaust system, so that a four-door Hyundai sedan pulling up next to you sounds like it's going to be going really fast as soon as the light changes...and then it doesn't.

It just sounds really fast. That hot exhaust sure gets lots of admiring glances, and the driver can soak them all up, since he's only going about 38 miles an hour!

Trash talk

Friday morning, I took Peggy to work so that I could round her up later to go to the annual Smith College Used Book Sale out at the fairgrounds, an event we never miss.

But on the way home, I had to deal with traffic going the other way, and when I got close to home there was a slight backup because of the presence of the trash truck on Summit Avenue.

The guy who rides the back of the truck was grabbing the bags and cans, tossing garbage into the giant maw of the truck, while at the same time trying to direct traffic around it!  He was giving another driver the "Come on!" wave, and a woman driving a Volvo wagon was reluctant to heed his advice.  So she sat and we all sat, and finally the guy  - still working all along - turned back to her and began giving the same sort of signals that a third base coach gives to a runner rounding the bag and heading for home.  At last emboldened, she drove along, and the traffic began to flow again.

Because I seem unable to refrain from commenting on everything anymore, I put my window down and said to the guy, "People need to listen to what you're trying to tell them!"

And he said, "People don't want to listen to me; I'm just a trash man."

Just a trash man?  Can you imagine the howling that would have ensued if just once he and his coworkers decided not to show up for work, and when citizens called up the County howling that their bags and cans were still sitting by the curb, they were told there would be no "trash man" for them that day?

I don't think we should look down on anyone doing any honest work. I think that neighborhood watch groups should be set up to keep an eye on crooks like the people at Goldman Sachs.  They are the people who should feel our disdain, not a guy who's out there slinging the Heftys and trying to help people drive around the truck.

Ladies and gentlemen, I submit that the following people could take off and fly beyond the moon without their absence affecting the quality of our lives one iota:

Any cast member of any "Real Housewives" show.  Arnold Schwarzenegger. Harold Camping. Any Kardashian.  Julie Chen. The inventor of pink slime. Hank Williams, Jr. Sean Hannity. Ann Coulter. Adam Lambert.

In fact, we could get along without any singers, dancers, actors or entertainers, but try going a few weeks without people who pick up the trash, plow the streets (if it ever snows again), ride the fire engines and medic units, enforce the laws, and heal the sick and the disenchanted.

I once lived in a place with no trash pickup.  Every week, everyone had to go to the County Dump and toss their garbage. No one liked it. I don't recommend it. 

The people who gather our garbage deserve a thanks now and then. On the hottest day of summer, I like to leave them a disposable foam cooler iced down with six chillers for later.

I have never left a can of beer where Sean Hannity could get to it, even though it might improve his delivery and his consciousness.

No Good Reason

Martin (l), Zimmerman (r)

The tragedy of what happened to young Trayvon Martin in Sanford FL is the sad result of several bad concepts.  By now you have heard the story - after a run to the 7-11, Trayvon was heading back to his father's house with a bag of Skittles and an Arizona Iced Tea when a guy from a neighborhood watch challenged his right to walk down a public street in America and, unsatisfied with Trayvon's continuing to mind his own business, shot the youth dead.

George Zimmerman is the bully who did this despicable deed.  You can hear the tapes of his calls to 911 here. What we have here is a case in which this Zimmerman, self-appointed as the eyes and ears of the cops,  decides he's Dirty Harry or something.  You can hear him on the phone to 911 and he uses horrible language to describe Trayvon.  You hear the gunshot. You can hear in the voices of others calling 911 the terror brought to the neighborhood by this heinous act.

Zimmerman, Super Fake Cop, had no business stalking around out there with a gun.  When he calls 911 he starts off talking about how there have been break-ins in the area and he sees this "suspicious" subject - a thin young man walking around with his Skittles and his iced tea, for the love of God. These neighborhood watch programs can be beneficial IF and only IF they serve as the eyes and ears of the real police.  Clearly, they can be the worst thing possible if they go around shooting people on the street.  There is no reason for fake cops to be running around with real bullets, and what happened here is the sad proof.

The city of Sanford FL chose not to prosecute Zimmerman.  For one reason, they said he had a "squeaky clean record" (their words to Trayvon's mother), which apparently is in conflict with Zimmerman having been arrested in 2005 on charges of resisting arrest with violence and battery on a law enforcement officer, charges that were later dropped.

For another reason, the state of Florida has a dumb law on the books called the "stand your ground" law. It states that you can shoot a guy if you feel your personal safety is in jeopardy.  Surely the wise framers of this law might have looked down the road and seen that it would be someday be used as a blanket to cover up the sick stupid deed of a gozzlehead like this Zimmerman, who shot a young man for no good reason and is since in hiding behind a law that exists for no good reason.

Gun lovers, here is your chance to explain to me why a man like this is allowed to walk around carrying a gun so that he, in the name of some vigilante posse organization, is allowed to kill with it.  Come on, tell me and tell Trayvon's family why you think the US Constitution really meant to give to this ass a weapon, since his militia was clearly not well regulated.  Come on and tell me how you love them guns, now.

Robert DeNiro's Waning

I've never been a huge fan of Robert DeNiro.  I don't tend to see a lot of his movies, and I think his whole image of "I'm the greatest actor in the world" is sort of off-putting.  And I don't think he ever said that he is the greatest actor, although I've little doubt that he feels that way.

I did enjoy the song that Bananarama did in his honor, though.

I'm not sure just what it takes to be the greatest actor in the world.  I guess it has something to do with making the audience suspend their knowledge of who the person on the stage (or the screen, large or small) really is.  For instance, the Meryl Streep that we see on talk shows, self-effacing and modest, is far from the person we see portraying Yolanda Johnson in the "A Prairie Home Companion" movie, and that persona is not easily confused with her characterization of Margaret Thatcher in "The Iron Lady."  But in every Robert DeNiro movie, you always expect him to say, "You talkin' to me?"  Judging from the clips I've seen.

Another thing I don't care for about him is his supercilious attitude toward things he regards as being beneath him, such as appearing on Letterman to beat the drum for a movie in which he acts. Clearly he regards the medium of television to be beneath him. Case in point: in 2010, when "Little Fockers" was coming out, he and co-star Dustin Hoffman showed up on "Late Night" late one night and DeNiro made an absolute patootie of himself.  He dripped with disdain, like syrup off a short stack at IHOP. He slouched on Dave's sofa, acted like he was forced at gunpoint to be there, and mumbled stupid answers.  Hoffman tried to act like a professional but, being in awe of DeNiro's superiority in all things show-biz, sat and giggled at his buddy's ignorance.

Well then.  All this scorn I feel for DeNiro came a bubblin' up this week because he acted like a patootie again at an appearance before our first lady, when he said, "Do you think America is ready for a white first lady?"

Bob.  Bobby. Robert.  Whatever it is that you like to be called...for your information, the rest of us are trying to move past that form of identification.  It's 2012 now and we don't refer to people as "that black third baseman" or "that white guy who works at Safeway" or "that black president."  In fact, it's a little odd to say, but when my right-leaning friends refer to the president as a "radical Muslim socialist fascist neo-Nazi who wants to turn this country into another failed Euro-style autocracy," even though they are wrong six ways from Sunday, at least they aren't making it about his race.

Learn from them, Robert, Robbie, Mr D, whatever.

This is hard to swallow

Twilight of the Odds

I'm sort of happy to see a new fad among the Youth Of America that does not involve permanent skin markings, drug consumption, or reading books about vampires who have girlfriends and really great hair.

Back in the day, college kids swallowed live goldfish, and no, we're not talking about the ones from Pepperidge Farm here.   And they tried to cram a couple of dozen of themselves into a Volkswagen or a phone booth, or they participated in marathon dances, or they wore zoot suits or raced slot cars.  

And these people became parents and forgot about having any fun!

Today's generation seems to be learning some things. Teenage smoking (cigarettes) is down in many places and high school graduation rates are up. And it's good that the kids stay in school so they can find out about the Cinnamon Challenge.

The cinnamon challenge is a fad that gets people to dare each other to get a spoonful of cinnamon down their necks in a minute - without the use of any liquid.  'Tain't as it easy as it might seem!

If you click on the link above, Wikipedia will tell you that it's hard to get the cinnamon down the gullet because it dries the mouth right on out, and there stands the poor participant, with a mouthful of spice and a cloud of reddish coughing forming in front of him...just as the girl he's been trying to impress ankles up on the scene.  That's one reason not to take this dare; the other is even worse than looking like a goober in the hallway outside the chem lab.  You might choke or give yourself liver damage, or wind up in the hospital like a kid in Michigan did, with an infection and a collapsed lung. 

 

^{So all of a sudden, cramming into a VW Beetle or swallowing a goldfish seems a like a lot better idea, huh?}

What's the point?

It's the mark of a good wordsmith to be able to say a lot in just a few words.  This is why I am not a good wordsmith, because I do go on and on and on. But at least I try to avoid talking or writing or texting or semaphoring in jargon such as...

"The price point on this car is just over 29K."

This means that the price of the car in question is over $29,000.  This price point business - it's cropping up all over the place. People are saying it in automobile showrooms, real estate offices, and a woman showing a line of cosmetics used it the other morning on "Good Morning America." 

At first I thought, maybe I missed something, and this term means something more than just the word "price." Or, maybe there was a new beach down in Southern Maryland called Price Point.  I didn't know, so I went to Wikipedia and found a scholarly treatise about it:

Price points are prices at which demand for a given product is supposed to stay relatively high.
Introductory microeconomics depicts a demand curve as downward-sloping to the right and either linear or gently convex to the origin. The downwards slope generally holds, but the model of the curve is only piecewise true, as price surveys indicate that demand for a product is not a linear function of its price and not even a smooth function. Demand curves resemble a series of waves rather than a straight line.

They even had a little graph to illustrate this point, but frankly, you and I know exactly what that paragraph meant, don't we?  I mean, from our deep involvement in introductory microeconomics, we know that the downward slope generally holds, and also that the knee bone is connected to the shin bone.

So I called a lifeline and asked a buddy just what the dickens all that meant.  Speaking very slowly and carefully, as he would when reminding a nine-year-old not to stick a fork into an electrical outlet, he told me that it's all about how much a seller can raise the price before people stop shelling out for what they're selling.  As in, I notice that Breyer's Ice Cream is now as much as $6.19 for what's not even a half-gallon any longer.  And yet, at this very moment, cows are being milked and that cream is being churned and vanilla farmers are hauling beans to market and the nation's fudge mines are being stripmined because people will pay $6.19 for a carton of Vanilla Fudge Chunk.

That's your price point, right there.  If they try to get $6.49 for the ice cream, people might switch to Blue Bunny or Hershey's, leaving Breyer's out in the cold, so to speak.

Our friends over at the Urban Dictionary, far less prolix, define price point as "BS talk for price... to emphasize a limited vocabulary." 

Remember, we all might wind up like Eddie Murphy in that movie he has coming out in which he is limited to a certain amount of words before he kicks the bucket.  Save your words!  Don't call a store a "brick-and-mortar store," or the guy who brings the mail to your office an "information promulgator"!

No means no

There came a time in my former employment that the County saw fit to make me a supervisor, and we both learned a lot from that experience.

Not everyone learns.

When the topic turns to sexual harassment prevention, and how the training is conducted, it would pay for more people to sit up and pay attention.  The point that the instructors keep trying to make is that it really doesn't matter if the things you say or do or exhibit are things that you don't consider offensive.  It's what the recipient thinks, and that's as it should be.

Consider this case out in LA. This firefighter had already suffered enough by being the victim of sexual abuse as a child.  When it became public knowledge that he had been a victim, clearly making jokes about it was stupid...and wrong...and illegal. 

And it gets even worse when someone comes to their supervisor and reports harassment on the job.  Failure to act on the part of the supervisor will cost many people in many ways.  Apparently, this firefighter did that and nothing was done about it, and now the taxpayers will have to shell out beacoup dolares to settle a matter that should have been nipped in the bud.

The standard case is, a female comes to work in a hitherto all-male workplace.  She is offended by Playboy centerfolds displayed publicly, by being called untoward names and by being given the raw deal in other ways.  It's bad enough when her coworkers are behaving so crudely, but when she reports their actions to the supervisor, it is incumbent upon that person to take corrective action.

The interesting point here is that this is also reflected in other parts of society.  "Majority rules" is the policy in elections, but it's not how we set rules.  This is why public schools can no longer endorse a certain religion. It doesn't matter if 99 students out of 100 are of that persuasion.  If it makes someone feel excluded or diminished, it's not going to be permitted.

In my time, I have seen the days when people of different races, sexual orientations, faiths, and national origins have been brutalized - physically and emotionally - and to make it even worse, it was permissible by law.  Not so any longer, and for that, we thank the progressive movement, which continues to bring America out of the past and into a brighter future.

As Easter approaches...

Here's a sad story right off the Google:

COLORADO SPRINGS - The annual Old Colorado City Easter Egg Hunt has been canceled because organizers say parents were getting too aggressive.Organizer Dave VanNess said the event has been held for a decade, but it has grown so big and parents were getting so aggressive he cancelled it.

VanNess said the event was creating more hard feelings instead of the fun they've always intended.

According to KKTV-TV, parents were supposed to stay behind a rope, but many broke that rule making things overcrowded and chaotic.

Parents?  What's up??  Are you all so hyperinvolved with your progeny that you can't stand behind a rope line and watch them cavort happily for Easter eggs?  Must you helicopter over them 24-7-366 (Leap Year!) to snoopervise every aspect of their lives?  Is there nothing that can be left to the childrens' devices?

When I was in 9th grade, two rumors swept the student population at dear old Towsontown Junior High. One was that an aspirin tablet dropped into a Coca-Cola would induce such an aphrodisiac effect on an unwitting female as to make any member of that gender "ours" at any party, dance or supermarket opening.  The other one turned out to be untrue as well; it claimed that on a certain Friday morning, Martians were coming to Earth to take all of us young people back to their far-off planet and allow us to grow up in peace.  That never happened, and it's just as well: many of us planned to give Martian women coke 'n' aspirin cocktails to see if we could get intergalactically lucky.  And you know that would have turned out not so well.

But the idea of the second rumor has some validity to those who see how some people act around their kids. Many friends have told me that parents can be insufferable at Little League or rec soccer games.  They hurl both epithets and drink containers at the umpire or referee, they belittle their own children, they howl at a decision that goes against "them," and they have been known to attack physically opponent children and parents.

And that's all in the name of modeling good behavior as they raise little Bud or Sis.

So, let's try to make 2012 The Year That Parents Let Kids Be Kids, and maybe Old Colorado City can have their Easter egg hunt again in 2013.

Sunday rerun: High School Consequential

High school teachers, please don't think I'm grinding on you here.  I think my concern is more with our culture overall.  

You see, the other day I was talking with a man of about 30; he was a graduate of one of our local private high schools, and I asked him if he knew that the school was located right across the street from the house occupied by Spiro T. Agnew back in the day.

"I've never heard of Spiro Agnew," he pointed out.

"What kind of education excludes learning about Nixon/Agnew/Watergate, etc?" I asked myself.  I've long since learned that people don't really appreciate these questions, no matter how valid I find them.

I get into this all the time with Peggy, and her point is that people don't tend to learn about things that occur before their birth.   My rejoinder is that if that were true, no one would know much about the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution and the Monroe Doctrine.

Her rejoinder is that no one really does.

So, teachers, why not?  We've argued about the way schools teach math these days, with less reliance on basic arithmetical principle and more concentration on just how all those digits make up a Facebook status change.  We've been all over English.  I mean that in every sense of the word; I believe that each and every day, our lovely language is dragged down to the town square and beaten to within an inch of its life by television hosts, athletes, and the people who write commercials for television hosts and athletes to read. How a person can sit there and read aloud "A portion of all the donations go to charity in your area" without decrying the lack of subject-verb agreement is beyond me.  How a person can fail to comprehend basic English words is also beyond me.  And how the schools can hand a diploma to someone who cannot write a simple declarative sentence is so far beyond me, it would take extra postage to get me there.  


But history?  Don't we want the children to know about how we got to where we are? "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," said George Santayana, to which I can only add, "How can one remember the past if one's school focused their curriculum on the teaching of tone poems and performance art?"

Just for those unfamiliar, Spiro T. "Spiro" Agnew was a local politician here who took sacks full of money from paving contractors while in several high-ranking offices, was chosen by Richard M. "Dick" Nixon to be his vice-president because "No assassin in his right mind would kill me, because then they'd get Agnew as president" (as Nixon was quoted by felon John Ehrlichman) and then Agnew resigned the office in disgrace when the Feds finally brought him down on tax evasion charges, and later Agnew wrote an autobiography which implied that Alexander Haig told him to "go quietly...or else" when the G-Men showed up with the papers.

That's a story worthy of repeating, so that today's youth will learn not to repeat it.  Or something.

My question

Good Morning America had a story the other day about a man who broke into a house occupied by several female college students.  The hook on the story was that while he roamed the house, binding the women's hands, another of the U of Washington students was on the phone to 911, and the cops were sent to round the guy up and send him off to the bing for a long, long time.  No one was assaulted or injured during the invasion, a fact that is bound to be brought up by whichever member of the legal profession gets to defend the man in court.  His name is Robert Douglas Hitt. 

You can't blame the 5-0 for being a little tired of hauling this criminal into court.  After all, the guy just got out of the hoosegow in January after serving 10 years for first degree rape.

My question is, why was he out?

Remember the kid down the street when you were growing up, the one whose mom said "All right, Larry: no more TV for one month for you!" right after he got caught jumping off the garage using a sheet of plywood to aid in his descent.  And then, next morning before homeroom, he'd be talking about how funny it was the night before on "Green Acres" when Eb and Lisa fooled Oliver into showing up for his surprise birthday party.

Obviously, his mother's punishment sure meant a lot.

Now, Hitt moved to the Big House in 2002 and was released, as we say, this past January.  I guess they figured that he was all rehabilitated and everything, so why keep him locked up when he clearly deserved to return to his place in society.  Why, only last Thursday, he finished a sex-offender treatment program!

This makes me heterodox with - at odds with - my usual liberal outlook on things, but I can't understand the thought processes of the people who run the jails and prisons.   This Hitt raped a woman in 2001!  He should not be out on the streets in 2012, or 2032.  To me, you commit an unforgivable sin, you stay where the other unforgivables are: behind bars.

Not enough room in prison?  Close down the libraries and the gymnasia. Let them sleep in shifts, like on a World War II Navy ship, and while they're not sleeping, they can be making license tags or weaving blankets or picking up trash from the highway.

Call me old-fashioned, but someone should have told this guy a long time ago that we as a society do not approve of rape and breaking-and-entering and binding women at knifepoint.  He had his punishment and a second chance that I never would have let him have.  Should there be a third chance?

Corporations are peepholes, my friend

Did you see the story where a guy who was a derivatives vice-president at Goldman Sachs says that he resigned (after making a fortune there for 12 years) because he suddenly found that all the people there were interested in making money, and did not put their clients first?  His name is Greg Smith and he wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times this week about how evil his coworkers were.

Imagine the shock!  A company is out to make a buck, well, several million bucks a minute.  Goldman Sachs is the honorable firm that had the honor of a paying a $550 million dollar fine a couple of years ago for misleading the investors, and now, hold the presses! They're in business to make money off people who invest their money to make more money than people who just put their money in the bank, or a mayonnaise jar.

I await the fallout.  Next thing you know, leading executives at McDonald's will quit because they came to realize that the Golden Arches are selling beef.  Bigwigs at Wendy's will blurt that Wendy's hair was not really red.  Baskin will reveal that he never could stand Robbins, and General Motors will finally have to quit making Buicks, thereby depriving the over-80 set of their favorite ride.

Corporations are people, my friend.  A very wise man said that last summer at the Iowa State Fair.  Corporations are people, and heaven knows, people have their problems. I am certain that Mr Greg Smith will be giving away his vast fortune, all accrued during his time at Goldman Sachs, as he shudders to see the ill-gotten gains that now sadden him so.

Mr Smith, could you write me a check?  I want to help you feel better!