Under Full Sale

What I've always loved about American commerce is that it just does not stop.  Grocery stores are open all night long, so in case you need Mrs Fanning's Bread and Butter Pickles at three in the yawning, you can just throw on a hoodie and slide on over to the Stop, Slop and Shop and get a Valu-Size jar of briney cucumbers.  7-11 should have changed their name to 24-7 years ago.  And should you feel like getting the car lubed and waxed early on a Sunday morning, you can be sure that some friendly shop will be glad to take your car in and show you to a nice seat in their luxuriously-appointed waiting room.

So it's only natural that televised commerce ceases not for any purpose.  QVC, which is a channel for people who can't be bothered to go to a mall when they need flannel sheets, is another fountain of sales, and when a pitchman notices that his sidekick is suddenly indisposed, well, by golly, he's just bound to ignore that and keep on selling tablets.

The other day on QVC, Dan Hughes was on air along with Cassie Slane, and Cassie suddenly lapsed into silence, clutching her chest.  Instead of being Gallant about it, Dan went all Goofus, rattling off his spiel while someone else summoned help for his colleague.

He hopes they did, I guess.

Turns out, Cassie had a blood sugar issue that resulted in a fainting spell, but Dan showed what mattered most in a time of medical emergency.

Keep on selling those fake iPads, there, Dan.  Commerce takes no holiday for the ill and the weak.

I think I'll change the name of this blog to "What the Hell IS it with people?"

Oh! THAT Wib Davenport!

Down in Virginia, if you want to drive away from a certain Chevrolet dealer, you should know this: they really drive a hard bargain!

Danny Sawyer, 40, bought a black Chevy Traverse from Priority Chevrolet back in May, but woke up the next day wishing he had bought a blue one.  He drove back to the dealership and found a blue one that caught his fancy, and that's where things go crazy.

The blue one must have had some optional equipment that the black SUV lacked, because after Sawyer swapped cars, went on vacation and came home, he came home to many frantic messages from the car lot and its sales manager, whose name is Wib Davenport.  We've all known someone named "Wib," haven't we?  The car Sawyer wound up with cost $5,600 more than the original one, and how would he like to pay for that, was the point of all the messages.

All this turmoil over this?

He wouldn't like to pay for that.  Sawyer says no one told him that the blue car cost more, and even though the dealership says they told him that it did, there still seems to be a matter of him not signing anything additional to attest to the switcheroo.

Completely disregarding the basic tenet of good customer service (Never have your customers thrown in jail, since it's hard to buy a car from there) the dealership called the local cops, who mistook a civil matter for a crime, and ushered Sawyer into a cell for four hours.

Dennis Ellmer, president of Priority Chevrolet, has decided to be adorable about the whole thing and says Sawyer can keep the blue car for the price of the black one, and hey!  How about a free tire rotation, buddy boy?

Ironically enough, Sawyer rotated those tires himself, driving over to the office of a lawyer, upon whose sage advice he has filed two lawsuits against the dealer, accusing the business of malicious prosecution, slander, defamation and abuse of process. He'll need a total of $2.2 million in damages, plus attorney fees before he feels better about the whole doggone thing.

We used to have a Chevy dealer in Baltimore who advertised that his dealership, at the corner of York and Bellona, was "the best place to become a Chevrolet ownah!" 

Priority Chevrolet can now claim proudly that they offer a car buyer the chance to "come on down and get a Chevy on sale - and if we don't like you, we'll throw you in jail!"

It's not a movie. It's real life!

For everyone who tells me that it is always a good idea to have a gun in case someone is prowling around outside...read this, please.  We'll discuss...

 

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — An attorney for a Connecticut man who fatally shot his 15-year-old son, thinking he was an intruder, said that state police want access to a computer and phone used by the teen to try to determine why he was out at night wearing a ski mask and armed with a knife.

Gene Zingaro said his client Jeffrey Giuliano is cooperating with the request because he and his wife want the same answers.

Police say Giuliano went outside with a gun around 1 a.m. on Sept. 27 when his sister called to say someone was trying to break into her house next door in New Fairfield. Authorities say Giuliano saw a masked person holding a shiny object come toward him in a threatening manner and shot him. He later was told the person he killed was his son Tyler. Police said the weapon was a knife.

Police are investigating the shooting and declined to comment on details. No charges have been filed.
State police plan to view the family computer, probably this week. Atty. Zingaro said they want to see any emails, posts to social media and visits to websites made by the boy.

"In my opinion, the focus of the investigation has shifted from what happened on the night of the shooting to why Tyler was where he was and what he was doing, what his intentions were," Zingaro said.
He said he believes his client fired at least four shots but is not sure how many hit the boy. Police have said Tyler died of multiple gunshot wounds.

At the time, Giuliano thought the masked person had a gun, Zingaro said. "My client felt like his life was in imminent danger at the time he fired," he said. "In my opinion, Jeff Giuliano had a fear of being shot at the time he fired his weapon."

Zingaro said he does not expect any charges to be filed against Giuliano. Police spent about six hours interviewing him in his attorney's office and have not asked to re-interview him, Zingaro said.

Zingaro said Giuliano had shouted several commands before the shooting, but he would not disclose what his client said. Asked if Tyler responded, he said, "not audibly."

When I read this, I thought of that jerk in Florida who took advantage of that state's crazy "stand your ground" law to shoot a door-to-door meat salesman, who had the temerity to walk up the shooter's driveway.  From his front porch, the man saw another man approaching, and what choice did he have but to shoot him and then declare that he was in fear for his life?

Son and father

In this Connecticut case, we have a man who got a call from his sister that something was afoot outside.  Instead of either of these adults calling the police to have them do their job, he grabbed the old sidearm and headed out to shoot his son to death.  For the love of Pete, he even said his son didn't reply "audibly" when challenged.  

Shoot first, wait to hear the answers later.

One question for the gun advocates:  do you think that Guiliano might regret his actions, and recommend a different course of action to someone else in his situation?  You know he does, and would, and before you say, well it's easy to judge the situation in retrospect...can we remember that he put himself in the situation in the first place?

Sunday Rerun: Don't take that tone with me

In a public setting, people are often startled to hear my cell tone ringing.  I think they are surprised that I have friends, or at least friends with unrestricted access to a phone.  

They take their bands seriously down South

Or maybe it's my ring tone.  It's "Yea Alabama," the fight song of the University of Alabama, a school with which I have no affiliation besides this obsession with their football team.  I can't explain where that came from, but I love the ring tone.  

Like the bumperstickers hanging off the back of the Fairlane, and the t-shirts we sport, our ring tones say a lot about us. A lot of people go for the various free ones that come with the phone, and that's cool, but then they are limited to what they can use.

I was in a police supply store and a City officer came in, apparently on his way home from a ceremonial function.  I mean, this guy was decked out in his finery, with the leather belts and badges and pins.  And he was looking at a new sidearm when someone from somewhere decided to call him on his cell.

And the cell said: "I like big butts and I cannot lie; You other brothers can't deny..."

And there was snickering all around.  

Another entire category of ring tones would be Songs That Are Currently Popular But I Never Heard Of Them.  Ofttimes, I'll turn to Peggy when someone's tone comes crashing into our silence to find out what song that was, and she'll say, "Oh, that's 'For the Sweet Love of God, Will You Stop Breaking My Heart' by 3 Random Wurdz."

Oh.  

Funny sound effects, or sunny found effects, are both good to hear on the phone.  Just get one of those sound effects CDs and soon, your every call will ring with the merriment of "Cross-Cut Saw," "Crowd Noise," or "Fire Engine and Ambulance Sirens."

Of course, if you really want to stir things up, most phones have a tone option called something like "Old Fashioned Phone Bell."  Use that one, and watch the heads spin - people don't even know what it is.

 

Saturday rerun: Old Uncle Mark's Book of Recipes

My boyish figure is the envy of dozens; well, maybe the envy of two or three.  But there's no secret, I like to eat and I like to cook and I like to share recipes.  

Recently, I stumbled over two new ways to whip up old favorites.  And I thought, as soon as I get over the resultant contusions and abrasions, I'd write them down so that others might share.  One's for breakfast and one is for dinner.  Lunch, you're on your own, although Peggy will make you a wonderful PB & J if you like.

If you like a nice omelet for breakfast, but you can't stand all the flipping and the flapping, here's a nice way to make a French Country Omelet.  Oh, now, like you, I found the name daunting.  French Country?  What's that, Monsieur Porter Wagoner et Les Wagonmasters, eh?  But it's good and easy.

Let's begin by finding that large cast-iron skillet .  Heaven knows where that is.  Did Edna bring it back after she took it to the pancake breakfast that time?  Once you find it, heat it up on the stovetop and throw in some olive oil, and then bacon, mushrooms, potatoes and onions, as you see fit.  Let it all fry up nice and brown.  While it's frying, turn the oven on to 350° and break four or five eggs into a suitable bowl, whisking them just ever so with just a schkosh of milk.  When everything is fried up to a turn, dump in the eggs right over everything, toss on a little grated cheddar if you wish and definitely shake some chives over it all, put it in the oven for 6 - 7 minutes, and, like the old Esskay commercial used to say, "Put it on the table and stand back out of the way!"

It's gooooooooooooooooooood!

Everyone loves pulled pork barbecue, and yet it's hard to find a good pork puller up in these parts.  Is that what's troubling you, friend?  Are you tired of driving all the way to China Grove, NC, to get a mess of barbecue from Gary's place?  'Cause if that's what's been making you toss and turn in fitful bursts of sleep all night, your problems are over.

Grab yourself a pork shoulder roast over at the Try 'N' Save, a bottle of beer and a bottle of cider vinegar.  Toss the pork into your Crock Pot with some garlic and onions, and then fill the crock up over the pork shoulder's shoulder with some water - about a 1/3 of the way - and fill the rest with vinegar.  Turn on the Crock Pot to LOW and go find something to do for the next 7 hours.  Hint: that's what the beer is for...

Ok, so you put it in the crock at 9 in the yawning.  At 4 that afternoon, get a big bowl down from the cupboard - the big yellow one where you used to soak Navy beans all night until the Air Force started to complain.  With tongs, take the roast out of the crockpot.  The bone will tenderly fall right out.  Take two serving forks and go to town on that roast, shreddin' and pullin'.  Once it's all torn to bits, put it back in the crock, cover it with decent barbecue sauce, stir it all, and let it go on LOW for another hour.

Then at 5, get your cole slaw and your Miller High Life and gather the family around, 'cause you're fixing to love your dinner!

Lest Ye Be Judged

Considering that only one person I know is in perfect physical condition (and you know who you are, don't you!?) I guess it's fair to say that most of us who slog along life's pathways are not doing that slogging in the best of shape.

So there is a female news anchor named Jennifer Livingston in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, who is, in the eyes of Mr Kenneth Krause, also known as The World's Most Perfect Human Being, a bit on the chubby side.  He emailed her a bitchogram in which he said she is not a suitable example for the young kids out there watching the news...all 17 of them.

Mr Perfect

So what if she is?  As we used to say on the playground, this is a conversation between A and B, so can you C your way out of it?  In more mature terms (to which I rarely resort) this is not an area in which Mr Krause needs to share his opinion.  If Ms Livingston went on TV and said that Rhode Island is the biggest state or announced that Tim Tebow was the Republican candidate for president, then yes, write to her and point out that she erred.  Her weight is not the business of Mr Krause.  If he doesn't like to watch her do the news (and in his nasty note to her, he says he doesn't watch her anyway) then he can go watch workout videos or something.

Ms Livingston

We saw Ms Livingston on the morning shows yesterday; she is a pleasant, well-spoken woman.  Mr Krause, in the picture we see of him posing with his mountain bike, displaying his many pads, his helmet, his tank top and his bicep tattoo, looks like a man who rides a bike more than anything else, if you catch my drift.

If you're wondering why he sat right down and wrote that nasty letter, well, so am I, except that I'm guessing that he is part of the group that feels qualified to pass judgement on others.  That's usually a bad idea, especially for someone less than perfect.

And that's all of us.

In which I quote from Matthew

You might not recognize the name Amanda Clayton, but you probably remember her as the woman from Michigan who won a million semolians in the Lottery out there in 2011 - and then continued to collect welfare ($5500 in food stamps and other benefits.)

It broke down like this: Clayton chose the lump sum payout of $735,000, and then half of that went to taxes.  With two kids to support and two houses to maintain, and no job, she figured that as long as those benefits came her way, she was not going to complain about them.  A TV station in Detroit found out about this and confronted her; she pleaded no contest to fraud in June and was given six months' probation.

She didn't live to see the end of the probation.  She died over the past weekend at a friend's house; the cops suspect a drug overdose.  Once again, the riches of the world got all dusty.

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

^{That's from the Bible, friends, and while I'm no Bible scholar, I know that verse by heart.  You see, back when I was a kid, my Dad bought a wooden shipping crate for 50 cents and then decorated it as you see here.  That hand painting, that calligraphy: all his.  It was my toy chest as a kid and it's our blanket chest now.  So, I've seen this scripture just about every day of my life, and I commend it to your attention for contemplation.}

Orville and Wilbur Wrong

Drunks on the plane (drunks flying the plane.)  Flight attendants going berserk and then deploying the emergency evacuation chute, and then sliding down that chute on their way to unemployment.  TSA people who check you out on the way to the plane stealing laptops and iPads and anything else they can get their sticky fingers on.  Lost luggage.  Stolen luggage. Landing gear comes down, but backward.  Air traffic controllers are sound asleep in the middle of the day and fail to notice that two gigantic airliners are about to come within 10 yards of each other in the sky over the airport.  It rains in Chi or Atlanta, so your flight from Baltimore to Boston is delayed until Tuesday.  United Air Lines has a computer glitch that knocks out ticketing and boarding operations all across the nation. A flight attendant argues with another flight attendant over whether the second will turn off her cell phone, resulting in a FOUR-HOUR delay.  Alec Baldwin holds up a planeload of fellow travelers while he completes an exciting game of Words With Friends with his friend.

For these and many other reasons, the only way in hell that I will take a plane will be if Capt Sully Sullenberger comes out of retirement to fly it.  Otherwise, you go ahead and try to fly, and wave to me if you ever get off the ground!

Snow problem

Here it is, October the second, and already the ads for snow blowers are blowing up the radio. 

"Don't be caught without a Sno-No-Mo' Snow Evacuator this winter!"

"They're calling for the worst winter since 2010, and you remember the twin blizzards!"

"If you don't get a snow blower now, you won't be able to drive over to Joe's Snow Hut with three feet of snow on the ground.  Buy one now, for the sweet love of all that's good and holy!"

These are the words we hear, and they are enough to put the fear of Snow into anyone so foolhardy as to allow his family to be marooned in their house for up to 20 minutes when The Big One hits this winter.  The betting is that since we hardly had any decent snow last year, and what we did get came on Halloween, we are overdue for a good dose of White Hell.

Friends, we've had major blizzards many times since I was a youngster, and each and every one of them was followed by hot sticky snow-meltin' weather within a few days.  Panic not! 

Last time, when we had the twin blizzards, we all got our driveways shoveled out and blown out and bulldozed clear, and then who was going anywhere?  The main roads were still clogged, everyone's work was closed, so why get all dressed up for a shindig that's not going to happen?

My advice is to get a snowblower if you really feel that you must, but don't give into the panic yet.  Wait until Columbus Day for that, please!

New laws affect many

Welcome to October in Maryland, when new laws take effect.  This year's grab bag of laws we are only now just hearing about includes laws that cut costs for patients undergoing oral chemotherapy, make it ok to win cash prizes in online fantasy football tournaments and give prisoners a break: they don't have to pay child support while in the hoosegow.

Also, children under 8 years old will have to do their squirming in a booster seat or child seat until they reach a certain height.  Used to be that if little Abercrombie was a bit of a beefy lad, he could roam the back seat at will, but no more. 

And this will be a big surprise to many people who no longer are allowed to drive a car in this state and have gone out and gotten motor scooters or mopeds.  As of right this minute,  motor scooter and moped operators and riders have to wear a helmet and eye protection, and those scootulators and mopeds have to be titled and insured.

So, look for a huge increase in horse sales all across Maryland, followed by a slight increase in purchases of shovels and buckets.

Same old stuff, different fiscal year.

Sunday rerun: Name Blame

Funny how things can slip your mind for years and years, and then pop up, isn't it?  

I had forgotten this for a long time until the other day, when I was recounting the time a cop I knew was sitting in a nondescript police car, wearing nondescript plainclothes, at a shopping center on the county's east side.  A guy came darting over and said, "Hey buddy, can you give me a lift outta here? I just robbed Kresge's!"  The guy and his bag o' loot plopped down in the car, and got a free ride outta there and right to the local precinct, where he and his bag o' loot were unceremoniously separated.  For all I know, it might have been ceremonious, but I'm certain the guy didn't get to keep the loot when he moved to the license plate factory.

Kresge's was where the fake clock tower is now.

But on that same shopping center parking lot several years later, a guy who had the same name as I - not the WWII general, or the slain Black Panther leader  or the onetime major league pitcher, to name some other examples of people with my moniker - killed himself and his family, blowing them up in his Ford Taurus station wagon.

 I heard the story on the morning news and had the usual reaction to suicide, which is that I feel bad for whatever lunacy would drive a person to miss even one day of this wonderful world that unfolds daily, but mainly really being mad that other people -his wife and kids - had to go with him.  The line from Neil Young always comes up: "There's one more kid who will never go to school, never get to fall in love, never get to be cool."

But then the curious thing started happening.  No one called to see if I was a) a general in WWII b) a Chicago militant  or c) a Chicago Cub,  as the aforementioned Marks were, but people we hadn't heard from for years called (this was pre-email, for crying out loud!) to say...how are you?  Or they'd call Peggy and say...is everything ok?  No one called and said, I was just making sure you weren't the guy who blew up his family at Middlesex...

But you know, they just had to be sure.  

And just for the record, I ain't this one, either!

Saturday rerun: Back when she was Young

It always amuses me to hear people wistfully going on about the "good old days" when "people were honest and did the right thing" and were "good Americans, especially them actors and all, 'cause up til this Jane Fonda, they were people you could look up to."

Until you knew the truth, and then you'd find out that people have always been pretty much the way they are.  Ever heard of Judy Lewis?

Judy Lewis passed away last week, but she was born in 1935 to actress Loretta Young, just back from spending eight months hiding out in touring Europe.  No one was to know that Loretta Young had given birth, you see.  For one thing, she was a VERY Religious Young Lady and for another thing, her baby daddy was jug-eared hambone actor Clark Gable, who was a VERY married man at the time. They fell in love while making a movie called "The Call Of The Wild" (indeed!) and they acted like two telegraph keys: they just didit, didit, didit. And all this without a condom or at least some sort of rhythm!

So what they did was, Loretta had the baby, put her in the bullpen of foster care, and then  - because she felt the same maternal urges that so many single women with burgeoning careers have - she told everyone she adopted the little jug-eared baby who looked more like Clark Gable than Gable himself.

They operated on the child's ears at the age of 7, for the love of Pete, to pull them a little closer to her head.

We don't know why Clark Gable, once free of his marriage, didn't marry Loretta.  Maybe he found her a little too deceptive.  Or maybe he was busy banging 1/2 of Hollywood.  But Loretta married a guy named Tom Lewis, and they had two children, while continuing to claim that Judy was "adopted."

Gee, you wouldn't think that would mess up a person's head, would you, to find out from the guy you are about to marry at age 23 that your father is a bad actor in movies and the woman you had always been told had adopted you as an infant was your birth mother? “It was very difficult for me as a little girl not to be accepted or acknowledged by my mother, who, to this day, will not publicly acknowledge that I am her biological child,” she said in an interview in 1994, when her inevitable tell-all book came out.

For  heaven's sake, COVER THOSE EARS!

Her mother, saint that she was, responded by not speaking to Judy for three years.  By that time, Judy had given up her career as a soap opera actress and had become a licensed family and child counselor, a job to which she must have brought a great deal of empathy.  Perhaps she could understand her mother.  I don't.  Loretta never came clean about all this when she was alive, which she stopped being in 2000, and then her tell-all posthumous autobiography told it all. 

Here's what the old girl told her daughter when she finally admitted what she did:  “And why shouldn’t I be unhappy? Wouldn’t you be if you were a movie star and the father of your child was a movie star and you couldn’t have an abortion because it was a mortal sin?” 

Loretta Lynn, noted country singer, was named for Loretta Young.  A picture of Ms Young hung on the wall of the Webb family home in Butcher Holler KY, and her mother liked the name.   I just thought I'd end this on a happier note.  Loretta Lynn has brought pleasure to millions.  Loretta Young couldn't be honest with one.

Status quo?

Shortly after the time of dinosaurs roaming the earth, I worked at Baltimore County 911, and one of the things that the calltakers - the amazing people who answer the 911 phones and find out what people need and enter information into the computer - always had to remember was that they usually knew more about what was going to happen than the caller did.

For example, let's say a man calls, and says that a) someone is breaking into his house and b) this has upset his wife to the extent that she, at 38 weeks, is going into labor and both of them notice that c) the kitchen is on fire because the burglar knocked over a patchouli candle burning on the window sill as he clambered in through the window.

And this scenario unfolds more often than you might think, and IN YOUR OWN NEIGHBORHOOD, for crying out loud!  Be vigilant!

But the calltaker remains cool and on point all through this.  He or she will get all the information into the computer, indicate that the police, fire, and EMS forces need to respond, and gives those responders all the info they will need.  And, just as important, the operator will tell the person what to do until the help arrives and makes sure they know that help is on the way.  That sort of communication is vital.

All of this leads me to a minor, teeny, little bitty request that I am asking of the 835,525,280 Facebook subscribers worldwide, and that would be this, if I might humbly ask...


Please don't write Facebook updates that scare and upset the people who care about you by giving only a little bit of information.  Such as...

"Sitting here in the ER waiting to be seen...doesn't look good..."

"I really don't know if I can go on dragging this broken heart around any longer.  I never knew anything could hurt me this bad."

"Fred called and said it looks like the transplant might take...thanks for your prayers!"

And so forth like that.  And meanwhile, those of us who care about the person who writes these things are frantically back-pedaling through their previous statuses, but there is nothing to even mention possible illness, heartache or organ transplant.

So remember, at those moments when you really need a friend, let a friend know what you've got going on, please!

Banned on the run

No wonder people in other countries scoff at us.  Here in America, we seem to have so much free time that there is always time for this Mark Harvey fellow to don some sort of wacky outfit and dart around on the playing field where athletes are trying to ply their trades.

In April, he jumped onto the baseball diamond at Oriole Park at Camden Yards and ran around in his Batman outfit, before being caught and banned from the ballpark for life.

On Sunday night, in the second quarter of the Ravens/Patriots game, he was on the football field, darting about in Batman shorts and a cape, with some sort of "Don't be a bully, be a superhero" slogan written on his chest.

He says that he did all this in the cause of stopping bullying.  That's funny.  For one thing, he is just jumping on a worthy cause espoused by Ray Rice and other people who have legitimate reason to run along the gridiron at M&T Bank Stadium.  Bullying is a nefarious trend, and should be stopped.

For another thing, you can't tell me that this clown from Anne Arundel County cares one whit about bullying.  No.  Not at all.  What he does care about is bullying a crowd of 71,000 football fans, a nationwide television audience and, most tragically, Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth, into being denied their football game while he cavorts childishly.

He's now banned for life from the football stadium as well.  I would suggest that he try running barefoot on some hockey rink next.  Unless he's afraid that he'd get cold feet.

Once, around the track...

It's that wonderful time of the year, when we can actually go outside for more than 30 seconds and not fear melting onto the asphalt.  It's just lovely weather this week in Baltimore: low humidity, temps in the 70s, pure blue skies without clouds.  Just fantastic for those of us who shun the infernal heat and stickiness of summer.  And fall has just begun!



Something that we like to do at this time of the year is go down to the high school and walk around the track that rings the football field.  As young guys bust out their football moves and run, tackle, pass and catch, there's a dedicated pack of people of all ages doin' the track.

You'll find young, fit people who apparently intend to stay that way.  Lord help them, though, to take all this just a littttttttle bit less seriously!  Hot a-mighty, the looks on their faces as they zip around the track, all intent and sweaty.  These are the people with significant investments in lite-weight athletic gear, made just for the purpose of running in circles.

A more mid-range group of tracksters are the moms and/or dads with kids.  Sometimes, the parents want to fit into group "a" above, and leave their kids panting along after them, their stubby little legs trying so hard to keep up!  And, more pleasant to see, some parents actually jogwalk along with their kids and have a good time, without bringing that annoying sense of competition into it all.

Now and again you will see people who make me think of those old movies where someone has to lose ten more lbs. overnight to get into stewardess school or something, so they get into one of those white boxy contraptions that look like top loading Maytag washers, but are really sweat boxes.  They only work in movies and 50's sitcoms, you understand.  But sometimes on a Friday, you'll see someone who has to shoehorn him or herself into some sort of fancy duds for a gala that weekend, and they figure that if they strut around the track very intently, they can leave that excess avoirdupois right on the high school track.  I wish them the best with that!

And look at who's last here!  The seniors - here we are!  Sauntering along at our own sweet pace, doing four laps to make a mile of it, and wondering why everyone else is in such a doggone hurry.

Words can hurt

You have to wonder what in the devil is going on in this world when you read stories like this.  I read this yesterday, and it saddened me for hours to think that a fellow traveler here on Spaceship Earth could be this mean, this cold of heart.

This person - we'll just call her Katie - is a big fan of the New England Patriots football team, especially of their all-Pro quarterback, Tom Brady.  So, the other night when the local eleven beat the Patriots in the big Sunday Night Football game, Katie lashed out in the most vicious way one could imagine.

The hero for the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday was Torrey Smith, a second-year player fast becoming a fan favorite in Baltimore for his pleasant personality and his knack of running a long way down a football field and catching a ball thrown his way.  He scored two touchdowns and gained over 100 yards in the game, and it was all the more remarkable in that a lot of people wouldn't even have played.

At two in the morning on Sunday, Smith left the team's hotel downtown, after advising Coach John Harbaugh that he had received word that his younger brother Tevin had been killed in a late Saturday motorcycle wreck.  He headed for his family home in Virginia with Harbaugh's blessing, told to come back only if he cared to or felt able to play in the game that night. 

With what must have been an unbelievably heavy heart, he went out and played his game on Sunday, and because every once in a while, life is more like a movie, things turned out the way they did, and Torrey Smith smiled for the first time that day leaving the field.

Tevin and Torrey

Katie's heart must have been heavy too, and so she got out her phone or computer and twittered a tweet so vile that I'll not repeat it here, referring to Smith contacting his brother about the game.  I mean, her team lost, so let's not give credit to the winners!  Let's hurt them and try to drag them into the same gutter in which Katie's heart dwells.

So, you can go to the article and read her filthy words, but it won't cheer you up any to realize she might ride the same bus as you do one day. 

Meanwhile, people are contacting her employer, the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.  Hopkins is a world-renowned teaching hospital.  People from every corner of the globe come here seeking medical assistance and healing. 

And deep within the halls of that medical school works a woman whose heart beats with naught but malice and hatred toward a man whose only sin to her was to be on the winning side in a football game.

I wish her all the healing that her sick soul so clearly needs. 

A football game, for God's sake.

Election projection

With just a month and a half, more or less, until the election, I figure that most people have made up their minds how they are going to vote.  And IF they are going to vote.  Any turnout less than 100% disappoints me.

The only big thing in the MD election would seem to be the referendum over building a new gambling palace.  Proponents are running TV ads about how great it would be to have more More MORE gambling in the state, and they say that we will all benefit from the loot pulled in by slot machines and so forth.  Opponents say it's not a good deal for the state, but then it turns out that the money for the ads in opposition to the gambling dens is coming from the people who operate gambling dens in neighboring states.  Obviously, Marylanders wouldn't flock across state lines to gamble so much if they didn't have to. And so that goes.

There doesn't seem to be much interest in the congressional races, and here and there someone with about as much chance as a Lutheran running for Pope tries to unseat an incumbent, spending a lot of money for very few votes.

And here's what I'm thinking.  Nothing I say is going to change anyone's mind about whom they support for president, and for doggone sure, nothing anyone sends me is going to change my mind about my chosen candidate.

So I hereby pledge that I am not going to post, or write, or circulate anything about the candidates until after the election.  No need to dive into a well of nastiness when we all know who's going to win anyway.

Don't worry, I'll have plenty of other stuff to talk about.  Replacement referees, the price of steak, my annual Spring Fashion Preview:  all just ahead!

Sunday Rerun: Humans Race

Two people still in their early 20s -a couple, a girl and a guy who once had their entire lives ahead of them to do with as they pleased - are dead now because over the weekend, they were among the crowd of onlookers at the scene of a drag race on the west side of the county. Mary-Kathryn Michele Abernathy, 21, from Columbia, was pronounced dead at the scene, as was her boyfriend, Jonathan Robert Henderson, 20, of La Plata.

According to the local papers, this all happened on Sunday morning at 3 am. People had pulled their cars off to the side of the road - and not just any old country road; they were on I-70, a main superslab that takes one West. Or not. It would seem that most in the crowd were there to watch, and then a police car came along, and everyone was hot-footin' it out of there, and a car that may or may not have been racing slammed into a parked car, seriously injuring the parked car's driver, who was standing alongside his vehicle. It was that vehicle that ran into Ms Abernathy and Mr Henderson, two more of the crowd gathered to watch other people drive too fast.

You have to wonder about a society that has a segment - no matter how small - of people who are so into their cars and how fast they can make them go that they decide to appropriate several lanes of an interstate highway to serve as their drag strip.

You have to wonder about the fragility of life. On the one hand, no one should be out at 3 o'clock in the morning without some useful purpose, and watching other people race their cars is not counted among such purposes. On the other hand, the injured man and the fatally injured couple were just watching, not participating, from all appearances, so the argument can be made that it was just bad luck and wrong-place, wrong-time. You hear all the time about people doing really risky things and living long and fruitful lives, and someone else makes one small mistake and they're gone. And can you even count it as a mistake, just to be a spectator at someone else's risky action?

This is something to think about, but don't expect to know the answer on this earth. That's why I look forward to getting to heaven, so all these answers will be made clear. Why are some taken so soon? Why is a Hitler, a Pol Pot, a Pinochet, allowed to inflict such enormity?

I want to know these answers, but then again, I'm not in any hurry to get them.

Saturday rerun: Get the picture?

Yesterday, I had to get a new printer/scanner/copier/toaster/deep fryer for the computer. I think I told you this: Windows Vista is all snobbish and everything, and regarded my 2002-model scanner and printer as being relics of the Pleistocene era, if not earlier.

So we got a new one - birthday gift from Peggy to me - and I go to hook it up and what do I find in place of written, clear, step-by-step instructions? The deadliest form of information to me: the pictograph.

You know what? I think that if all Adam had to go on was a pictograph, you and I never would have been born. I for one need words!

Take fig. "A" here: this is an instruction sheet - an thumbnail sketch, if you will, from IKEA, showing how a man can upturn a bar stool and trim his thumbnail, using a screwdriver. Or, it's showing how to loosen the seat part so that the noisy guy from his office will take a laughable pratfall at the next office happy hour at O'Herlihy's Ye Olde Ale House, which will be followed by a sternly-worded memo from the big boss on the following Monday.

Fig. "B" is an ancient Sumerian hieroglyph, showing how best to plant a tree, using one's hand, a rake, and some Hot Pockets ®. If you think this led to successful crops, well, have you had any postcards from Sumeria lately?

Anthropologists have finally decided, after years of fierce bickering, that fig. "C" is an Egyptian guy's shopping list. It would appear that he needed to stop off at the Nile-O-Rama and pick up some asterisks, eye drops, a fish for dinner, toothpicks and gummy worms. He didn't get to the store after all, as he suffered a rupture trying to carry a stone tablet around in his toga. Toga. Toga!

I finally got the printer printing and scanning but it took longer than it should have. Words might have helped. A thousand of them would have saved me from looking at the picture of where the print cartridges went, or was that a picture of the filtration system at Grand Coolee Dam?

Dam if I know.

A little slip of paper

It's going to be hard to decide what is true and what is simple conjecture, but as if there isn't enough confusion in our lives, along comes Karen King from the Harvard Divinity School, and she says that she has a piece of paper suggesting that Jesus Christ was a married man.

Lookie, I will admit that I am hardly a biblical scholar, having spent many a squirmy youthful morning in Sunday School planning activities for later on Sunday that were not exactly divine.  But I don't remember anyone even suggesting that Jesus had a wife.  This little piece of papyrus, alleged to be authentic, contain phrases in which Jesus mentions a wife and says that she will be able to be a disciple.

The papyrus

We think that's what it says.  What we don't know is whether the person who wrote these words knew what he or she was talking about.  There was a lot of debate back in the early days as to whether Christians ought to be married or have sex.  Or either.  This hardly solves anything conclusively.

But scholars, biblical or otherwise, can all agree on one thing.  If Jesus did indeed have a wife, she was, like my wonderful wife, a saint.

A Genuine Star

If you happened to see Kellie Pickler on the the "Ellen" show the other day, you saw a woman I consider to be a unique American performer.  We have followed her career from the days when she was an "American Idol" contestant, and she did very well on that show, and now is very popular in the country music field.

She is attractive, no question about it, and she sings well too.  The thing that I think makes her very special is that she is not interested in being anyone but herself.  Even back in the Idol days, she told everyone that her family was not exactly Mom and Dad Apple Pie.  Her folks were in and out of jail and in and out of Kellie's life, and so she was raised by her grandparents, finished high school and was working at a Sonic drive in while getting ready to go compete on "Idol."  She is a humorous and good-natured personality when appearing on talk shows and the like, and seems genuinely appreciative of the good fortune that her talent and hard work have brought her.

Now, she finds her best friend, Summer Holt Miller, fighting breast cancer.  Kellie thinks it's important to have a cancer buddy when facing that awful disease, and so she buzzcut her hair right off to match up to her friend.

A lot of people would have hemmed and hawed and said, I'm right here for you, buddy.

Kellie told Ellen, "It's just hair!" and she made the commitment to help her friend.

As noted country music lover Ben Franklin once said, "A good example is the best sermon."

 

Tomato Soup

They call this kid "The Flying Tomato" because he has red hair...and redneck ways.

Shaun White is his name.  Apparently, he is a hero to those who are into skateboarding, snowboarding, bicycles, and video games in which an animated figure rides a skateboard, snowboard, or bike.

He's no hero to the Nashville Police Department, which had to respond to his overnight activities at 2 in the yawning this past Sunday.  Mr F. Tomato, apparently intoxicated, had busted up a hotel phone at the swanky Loews Vanderbilt, then pulled a fire alarm, requiring every other decent person in the hotel to get out of bed and go outside in their underwear because a 26-year-old who makes millions playing childish games just had to be childish.

In all the commotion, White tried to get away in a cab, only to be stopped by a hotel guest who told the driver police had been called. White kicked at the man before running away, say the cops, who also report that the man chased White.  It seems that the skateboarder's face had a slight collision with the other guy's fist.  His legendary sense of balance lost to the alcohol, White fell back and hit his head against a fence, police said.

Down at headquarters, this pillar of society was gracious enough to pose for a mugshot, displaying his newly-decorated mug.

Is White the first or last young, rich kid to make a fool of himself in public at 2 AM?  No. But let's hope this is the last time for him. 

You see, Mr. Tomato, when you pull a fire alarm, a signal is sent to the Fire Department and they send men and women running to the location to provide aid.  Sometimes, they are involved in a horrible accident on the way, and people are killed or injured.  Sometimes, other people in other locations really do need the help of the people who are tied up playing their part in your foolishness.

Did he have to say this?

What I had in my hand

I went into a grocery store yesterday (big surprise, eh?) and I saw a manager-type guy speaking to a cashier.  I was waiting to pay, my nuts in my hand, and I heard this...

He said, "Oh? Have you heard the news yet?"

She said, "No, what's going on?"

He said, "You'll probably be hearing about it later...."

She said, (voice rising slightly with panic setting in) "Is the store closing or something???"

He said, "Well, I shouldn't say anything more...you'll find out soon enough..."


Well, now, that was pleasant, wasn't it? It's dangerous to play amateur psychologist, especially when I am so busy of late playing amateur electrician.  I know it's dangerous to read too much into things, but I think that the manager displayed what is most likely a type of passive-aggressive behavior.  At least, that's what we laypersons refer to as passive-aggressive behavior.   He darted into the garden of the young lady's thoughts, sowed the seeds of doubt and fear, and then, rather than sharing the truth as he knew it, withdrew into the shady corners, probably looking to find the dairy guy or a seafood clerk to rile up. 

I once heard the term "abrasive negavitism" and that's surely what this man was pulling.  The young woman was upset and sad after the man slithered away.  No one likes to be told that their job is about to be yanked out from under them, and to do that halfway is twice as bad, leaving her in such doubt.

Maybe this man has had a lot of bad news dumped on him over the years.  If that's the case, I'm sorry, but for the love of Pete, try not to spread the misery around like that.  There's enough worrying and fretting already going on around here.

Queen's Greatest Hits

 From the Associated Press:

LONDON — A French magazine on Friday published what appeared to be photos of Prince William's wife Kate sunbathing topless at a private house in southern France, prompting a strong condemnation from the royal family.

Officials said the royal family was considering legal action for a "grotesque and totally unjustifiable" invasion of privacy in the same country where William's mother Princess Diana died while fleeing paparazzi.

The couple was "saddened" by the use of the photos, which appear genuine, royal officials said.

The revealing pictures of Kate in Closer, a popular gossip magazine, were blurry and shot from a distance. The publication claimed they were taken on a guesthouse terrace in France where the couple vacationed earlier this month.

"Their Royal Highnesses had every expectation of privacy in the remote house. It is unthinkable that anyone should take such photographs, let alone publish them," a St. James's Palace official in London said. "The incident is reminiscent of the worst excesses of the press and paparazzi during the life of Diana, Princess of Wales, and all the more upsetting to the Duke and Duchess for being so."

The palace official said representatives of the couple were consulting with lawyers. "We feel a line has been crossed with their publication," the official added.

William and Kate, now formally known as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, were touring the Far East and South Pacific to mark Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee when the photos were published.
No major British publication carried the photos, including Rupert Murdoch's top-selling U.K. tabloid The Sun, which last month ran photos of a naked Prince Harry cavorting in a Las Vegas hotel room.

Well, the rest of the story is that a guy claiming to be Prince William, Sir Duke of Cambridge (he said it in an English accent) called me to ask for security advice.

"There must be some way to stop people from printing topless pictures of my wife," he hollered. "We can't 'ave every bloke seeing where she has "Touch of Class" tattooed on her sternum, can we now?"

I pondered the topic for a fortnight, as we say across the pond, and then it came to me.  I called Willie back.

"Cheerio, Willie," I said.  "I say, old man, how about this:  if you and your wife don't want naughty pictures of yourselves without any clothes on being taken and published...how about...don't go outside without any clothes on?"

I'll not soon forget what Wills said then.  He paused for a moment and then he said, "Oh. Simple, that. Ay ay ay."

William then asked if I had any ideas about how to stop people from taking pictures of his daffy brother, the Duke of Daffy, from parading around nekkid in Las Vegas hotel rooms.

I said to check back in a fortnight.  This one has me stumped. 

Sunday rerun: A lovely neighborhood called Audrey Meadows

Yesterday’s entry used the word “tawdry,” and I had heard the word had an interesting etymology, so what I did was, I looked it up. The story reads like “The Princess Bride,” or something from the Brothers Grimm.Around 640, there lived an English princess named Ethelreda, better known as Audrey. ( Perhaps she did not wish to be confused with Ethel Mertz.) She married a guy to help her father, King Anna (listen! I’m not making these names up!) but hubby #1 bought the farm within three years, and in all that time, they had never got around to consummating the marriage. Even though she had taken a vow of virginity, she got married again, when her Uncle Ethelwold (!) thought it would be a great idea if she tied the knot with Egfrid, son of King Oswy of Northumberland. Old Egfrid wouldn’t go along with the chastity pledge, being married and everything, and so he started making moves on her, to no avail. He attempted to bribe the local bishop, Saint Wilfrid of York, to release Audrey from her vows. Saint Wilfrid refused, and helped Audrey get away. She fled south, with her husband right on her heels. They reached a promontory known as Colbert's Head(sorry - wrong picture!) (there it is!) and it was there that suddenly the waters started to rise, and for seven days Egfrid had to cool his own heels in the muddy waters.(I am going to pause here to tell you that this Colbert's Head is near Dover, and to remind you if you ever go to England and have someone ask you if you saw the White Cliffs of Dover upon your return, the only possible answer is "See them? I had dinner with them on Thursday!"). I mean, "E" was only a man, and he wasn‘t going to hang around forever without his connubials, so he took off and married someone with a more conventional view of marriage. Audrey, taking a conventional view herself, moved to a convent, and went on to build an abbey.
Now here’s where the story takes an interesting turn. Audrey was to die of an huge tumor on her neck, and thought this was visited upon her because, in her youth, she liked to wear many necklaces. But, prior to her death, she had become enormously popular in her area, owing to her many good deeds and steadfast faith, so throughout the Middle Ages, a festival, "St. Audrey's Fair", was held in her town of Ely on her feast day. People, as they will, bought all sorts of cheesy merchandise at these fairs, and the necklaces and neckerchiefs for sale in her honor were considered low-grade, but still, they were dedicated “to Audrey,” and that became corrupted to the present-day word “tawdry.“

Still no explanation on why her father’s name was Anna. This is all true, I’m telling ya!

Now I’m going to look up why I’ve never met a girl named “Jackie” (or any alternative spelling thereof) who wasn’t a heck of a lot of fun to be around.

Saturday rerun: The Show Must Go On...Right After This

I'm going to open the floor to suggestions from the audience on this one (pause for laughter.) I just don't know what to think, so I ask for your thoughts. I'll give them right back.

My mother lives in a senior high-rise; she is in the independent living area. There are also assisted living and nursing care components where she lives. There is also entertainment galore. A movie every Saturday night, concerts and musicales, book clubs, lectures, all sorts of things to do.

But she told me about some odd entertainment that took place the other night. A local man - a professional, not some goober who just rode in on a turnip truck - showed up to sing a program of show tunes. And he is not a guy who lives there, although any regular visitor to most of the malls in this area would recognize his surname. Accompanied by a buddy on piano, he warbled his way through the usual "Send In the Clowns," "If I Loved You," and "Shipoopi."

And so then, his cell phone rang.

And he takes the cell phone out of his pocket and takes the call!

And holds a personal conversation, while the audience sits puzzled and somewhat restive (several people got up and walked out.)

At length, the man's wife - if she really was his wife - came up on the stage and mildly upbraided him for wasting everyone's time. She told him to end the call and get on with the show.

And then he says, "Time for an intermission, folks," and sticks his cell up by ear and makes a call.

And then when he was finished with this call, he closed the phone, put it back in his pants, and went on with the show.

Now, again, this man is not under treatment that we know about, is not a resident of the home, and in fact continues to ply his profession here in town.

I think this leads to only two possibilities:

a) he is about the most rude entertainer ever, completely self-involved, with not a whit of interest in his audience or

2) it was all some sort of post-Andy Kaufman latter-day Dadaistic performance art concept piece.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I await your verdict.

Betting on a number

Everybody loves to watch cop shows and rescue shows and a certain amount of people devote time to listening to scanners, so they can hear about what the real police and fire/EMS people are up to in their town.

And outside of grabbing the garden hose when the neighbor's grill sets the hollyhocks on fire, most people can't know the thrill of putting out a fire.  Of course they can join a volunteer fire company...

And for very good reason, we don't allow each other to pretend to be police.  But  - here's a way you can put yourself in the shoes of a first responder, on his or her way to your house for an emergency call.  It could be a prowler, a medical issue, an oven on fire. 

They've been dispatched by the good folks at 911 and they hit your street and go to find the correct house...and your house number isn't marked!  Or it's in small brass numbers up above the front door, or someplace else equally invisible.

Here's what you do...next time you're pulling up at the old hacienda with a car full of groceries, pretend you don't know which house is yours.  And all you know is the street and the numericals.  Is the number clearly posted, so the responders don't have to waste time figuring out which house is yours?


Seconds count.  So, please make sure.

Stuck on you

Paul Harvey used to call them "bumper snickers," but that was in the day when cars and trucks had real bumpers.  You'd drive along and the guy ahead of you had "I LIKE IKE" or "84 LUMBER" on his rear bumper, and you got the message (whether or not you wanted to.)

Then they took to covering the bumpers with some sort of plastic, so there is no chrome to which to affix your sentiments.  And without a clear target, we've gone crazy.  Bumper stickers are all over the back of the car, the side of the car, sometimes all over the entire car.

If you'd like to, google "images" "bumper sticker" and see the 53,200,000 results.  It's a stunning photo array.

There's a theme here, but I'm not sure I get it.

Anyway, cars are now covered with slogans, mottoes, salutes and suggestions.  We use magnets too, and only recently have we found that these magnets, after a couple of years of baking and freezing to the metal, are harder to remove than the stickers. 

My question is, why do we go out and pay $30,000 for a new Excommunicator XL350, and then gum it up with "My kid skateboards better than your honor student"?   I see people babying their cars at the car wash, lovingly swabbing the hood and roof with baby shampoo and a real chamois, and then toweling it off with imported cotton diapers, finishing it off with a carnauba paste wax, buffed to a high sheen with a brush made of gnats' eyelashes.  And then they run down to Aut-O-Mart and get a sticker that says,"HORN BROKE - WATCH FOR FINGER"

Listen to ALL of the words

We all did this at one time in our teenaged years - a parent said, "You can go to the movies if you make your bed, clean up your room and cut the grass," and all we hear is, "You can go to the movies."

I don't want to belabor the point, but on July 13, the president of the United States was speaking on the topic of how cooperation is vital in all enterprises, and how any and all business concerns in the nation get a boost from government-sponsored education, infrastructure and research, and here is what he said:

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.
The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.
So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together. That’s how we funded the GI Bill. That’s how we created the middle class. That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam. That’s how we invented the Internet. That’s how we sent a man to the moon. We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that’s the reason I’m running for President — because I still believe in that idea. You’re not on your own, we’re in this together.

And if you listen to FOX News, and other misguided interpretations, you think that all he said was,"You didn't build that."

I know a lot of this is deliberate obtuseness.  It's easier to deny what the man says, if you happen to support his opponent. And even Mr Obama said he might have improved his syntax in stating his point, that we are all in this together, and there is not one person with a business who is not part of a group that helped.

But I'll sit right here and wait for someone to show me a business that exists without government - that couldn't count on the police to come if there was a crime, or the Fire Dept to respond to fire or EMS emergency, or any of hundreds of government services, or a business that survives in a total vacuum.

People like to point to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, people to whom we are in great debt for their technological wizardry.  These men built their businesses upon advancements made by others.  Which is not to gainsay their amazing ideas and production, but since computers go back to the days of the abacus in using digital technology, you have to say that others were involved.

How about, for those of you hollering, "He said I didn't build this!!!!!," could you just say," I don't like him!!!!" instead, just in the interest of accuracy?

By the way, I didn't build this blog by myself. And someone else taught you how to read it.