It's got to get better!

His defense was that he is a "loud New Yorker," and that's not going too well for other people right now either, is it?  

Out on his asterisk

We're speaking of Howard County (Maryland) Sheriff James F. Fitzgerald, who resigned under pressure last week.  He was said to have used bigoted language and harassed employees with all sorts of slurs, and county officials said that those employees who didn't support his re-election paid the price of his retaliation with revamped work schedules and assignments.   

"I think it's a good thing for the citizens of Howard County," said County Executive Allan Kittleman. "I want to commend everyone in the community for standing up when they learned about the sheriff's actions and his comments. I think it was because of our total community coming together ... that led to this day."

The charges against Fitzgerald came in a 48-page report put out by the county's Office of Human Rights. It said that he called African-Americans the "n" word, and referred to former County Executive Ken Ulman as "little Kenny Jew-boy."

The report alleged the sheriff told one employee: "African-American deputies are not too smart, but they get the job done."

And that he told a black deputy at a banquet that there was no watermelon for him.

So his list of offenses pretty much covers the entire panoply of filthy disgusting awfulness. It was clearly time for him to go, and he leaves after a career as a county cop before being elected sheriff ten years ago. (In Howard, and many other Maryland counties, the sheriff's office is not the county's primary law enforcement agency, but, rather, provides courthouse security, serves warrants, transports prisoners and handles  landlord-tenant disputes.)

Credit for removing this blight (and make no mistake: Fitzgerald is a Democrat and the current county exec is Republican) goes to Howard County Council Chairman Calvin Ball, who persuaded the sheriff that it was best for all concerned that he take his pension and vamoose.  Also, Deputy Charles Gable, who likened Fitzgerald's management to a "reign of terror," and quit his job during the investigation, will be reinstated with $58,350 in back pay.

When I was in ninth grade (1966) at the now-destroyed (not by me) Towsontown Junior High School, we were ushered into the cafeteria one warm spring afternoon to hear a talk by the Baltimore County State's Attorney, one Samuel Green, an alumnus of our citadel of middle education.  He went on for a period, speaking of how hard work and honesty and diligence and Doing The Right Thing propelled him to be the county's top prosecutor. And the teachers all cheered and reminded us that one of us could someday aspire to be as great as Sam Green.

In 1974, as the investigations into corruption in our fair county hit pay dirt, it turned out that Green helped to cover up a bribe from some dude who wanted to clear his arrest record, cheated on his expense account, agreed to fix a case in exchange for sex, threatened to kill a former deputy, hired women strictly for their sexual skills (his personal assistant listed "hat check girl" under "previous training and experience"), cheated a client for whom he served as legal guardian out of $235,000, and forced people at his lurid sex parties into "individual acts of perversion SO profound and disgusting that decorum prohibits listing them here," as Doug Niedermeyer would have said.

But here I am, thinking that nonsense like this ended years ago. Here's to a fresh start in Howard County.

"I ran so fast, my breath came in short pants"

All I know about human biology is that men ♂ and women ♀ are different. 

And that's more than I know about calculus!

But I saw a gaggle of teenaged guys the other day, traipsing through BuySumMor in that 15-year-old manner, which means picking up every item not fastened down, examining it for 1.2 seconds, and putting it back down with a chuckle.

You see, 15-year-old boys do that because 15-year-old girls look them over for less than 1.2 seconds before putting them down and running off with college guys.

It's been tough being 15 since Adam was 15.  But Adam wore a loincloth or something, not pants.

The worst thing about being a male of 15 was always that your back-to-school pants, which fit so perfectly in August when you stood there in Sears wearing long pants for the first time in two months, are climbing up your legs.  

By Thanksgiving, all those pants that were so perfect on Labor Day are useless unless you have a little brother or something. "Growing pains," kindly old Dr Pratt said, as I looked around the office for a fresh copy of "Highlights."



I learned all the tricks when I was coming up. If I had pants with cuffs, I could always turn them down for an extra inch or so of pantness, but that sort of looked like something The Darling Family would do when they came to Mayberry, so I just wound up hitting the family treasury for some new khakis.

For a while, I was concerned, because I wasn't seeing so many young guys with calf-pants, but then I came to realize that the fashion world hath decreed that ALL men should dress like Pee-Wee Herman now in ill-fitting itty-bitty suits, so there's another problem solved.

The ill-clad man at left is probably the manager of a hedge fund valued in the billions, and yet, I wouldn't go out front and trim the hedges dressed like that.  

Bad to the Bone

I really thought that the most awful thing we would find out about Ken Bone, days after he soared to worldwide fame and acclaim by asking a question of the candidates at the town hall debate on Sunday last, was that the only reason he was wearing that quarter-zip red sweater was that he was wearing an olive suit, but the pants split when he went to get in the car and drive to the televised brouhaha.

I know that people will write the story this way, that we Americans love to build someone up, someone from clear out of the blue, and then we love to tear them down for no apparent reason.  

But I think it's a bit different with this fellow.  True, last Sunday evening was the first time 99% of us ever saw him, and he seemed like an earnest enough fellow, if a little...uncool, in that cool way of being uncool.

But by Thursday evening, he had shown himself to be a little...weird, in that uncool way of being weird.

He did what they call an "AMA" (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit, using his sobriquet "StanGibson18" (Stan Gibson is a character in the Marvel comics, you see, and this handle indicates that there are at least 17 others assuming that fake identity, in that same sad way you used to get emails from "FlockOfSeagullsFan21204").  And this revealed some disturbing thoughts and notions that run through the Bone brain.  

To wit:

• He called the shooting death of Trayvon Martin "justified." Ho states that shooter George Zimmerman seems like "a big ole s--t bird." but synopsizes the shooting of an unarmed teenager as "Bad guy legally kills kid in self-defense. Sucks for everybody, including us due to the media f---ery."

He went on a site that you don't want your boss or anyone else with a shred of decency to see - "PreggoPorn" - and goes on about how he finds pregnant women to be a prurient thrill.  He calls them "beautiful human submarines." 

In what can only called a benefit for the human race, he extols the virtues of having a vasectomy. But it's not about the birth control for him; he doesn't mention depriving the world of future Bones as yet unborn.  In graphic detail, he describes the coital supremacy accruing to men following the procedure: "I had mine done 2 years ago. Sexual satisfaction is way up. My wife loves it too…Can’t recommend it enough."

Bone, who recently struck a deal to endorse the Uber car service, says he forged insurance papers to make it appear that he was covered...so that he could keep a pizza delivery job. "I forged documents to make it look like I had car insurance so I wouldn’t get fired. Can’t say how I did them, I don’t know how long the statute of limitations is on that."

So little was known of the Bone when he stood to ask his question on television.  But within a week, we found out that he supports gunning down teenagers for no reason, he has some bizarre fetishes, he is willing to cruise the streets of his town driving pizzas to people without insuring his car (and is now urging us to hire non-taxis to taxi us around).

But at least we know his wife is one satisfied customer, so there's that.
 

Sunday Rerun: He was the only one of us who "knew too much"

This is a real true story about a real guy. That's as far as the facts go. I know only this - and I 'm going to be as vague as Sarah Palin on a geography final exam, because, well, because.

This guy came to work with us in the early 80's. He had been some sort of bookkeeper for some wise guys, and he knew too much. It's never wise to know too much about wise guys. He went over to the Feds and testified about what he knew. Then the Feds put him in the Witness Protection program, and called our boss to say that he would be starting work with us on midnight shift the following Monday, and had been given a new name and Social Security number.

We could tell they were real FBI guys from out of town because they said "Social Security" number, instead of the way people from here say it ("Soshacurity") with a trail of expletives preceding it when they try to drive through the traffic jam engendered by that federal behemoth on the west side. ("Wesside").

I also wondered if there was a Federal office in charge of making up new names for these protectees. Did some guy in a fedora look at them for a while and say, " 'Joe.' You look like a 'Joe' to me"?

Anyway. The guy shows up for work, does pretty well at it, and every now and again the Feds would call the boss and say that he would be picked up at such-and-such a time, to be transported to some distant city to testify against men with flamboyant nicknames. Oh, and he was to be marked "present" for any days he missed, and paid just as if he were at work.

And every now and again he would leave work at 7 AM and drive straight up to New York to get his bagel on, or however they say that sort of thing now. He went up there to get bagels, because they make the best ones up there; how's that sound? And that night he would present his shift with a dazzling array of bagels, bialys, schmears with the cream cheese, lox, whitefish, pickled herring...the only way it could have been more New York would have been if he had taken everyone to Central Park and had them mugged.

Then one day he got sick and then sicker and eventually died. Or not. There still exists a lively debate about that. No one actually saw him; all contact came from phone calls toward the end, and then someone got a message that he was gone and had left instructions about who was to get what of his personal effects. I don't know and I guess I never will. I did once ask him if he thought it was ok for me to go by the mob nickname of "Marky the Existentialist" and he said he'd have to check with Paulie Bananas or Vinny Bagodonuts or one of his other contacts.

And that's all I know, Your Honor.

The Saturday Picture Show, October 15, 2016

As of now, they no longer sell beer in cans at the home ballpark of the Toronto Blue Jays, so this can o' suds tossed at Oriole outfielder Hyun Soo Kim was the last ever to be thrown at a ballplayer there.  The city and the team have apologized to the Orioles and their fans, and Kim is probably back home in Korea for the winter, wondering what sort of people live in the Occident.

I always felt sorry for the Charlie Brown Great Pumpkin Halloween show, as it will forever be the poor stepbrother to the Peanuts Christmas show. If only it had music in it...a song like "Trick or treat is here..."

A handy comparison chart for your pencil-buying assistance. Oh give me a dozen 8Bs and I'll be happy!

Speaking of Halloween, how about this guy, all dressed up?

In Japan, there is a practice of the entire office taking a 15-minute nap every afternoon, to help them focus and come back rested. Many offices I worked in punctuated their day-long snoozefests to focus on work for fifteen minutes at a time.

I admit it...the best way for me to treat myself to the occasional carb splurge is veal parmesan...with a side of angelhair pasta, please.

Check out this old map of the eastern US.  A lot of cities have changed their names since then, presumably to make themselves more attractive to the tourist dollar.  A good example would be Mosquito Lagoon, Florida.

If I were a real estate person, could I even be so bold as to call this a "Handyman's special," a "cozy cottage in need of TLC"?

Get Rich or Try Dying

If you look around, fascinating people and their fascinating lives are everywhere! Take Robert Morin of New Hampshire.  A 1963 graduate of the University of New Hampshire, he worked as a cataloger in the university’s Dimond Library for almost 50 years. You have to think that a job like that would pay a decent wage, certainly nothing too lavish, and you might not expect him to have left a pile of money behind when he passed away last year.

But you would be looking past the legacy of flinty thrifty New England bachelors, the ones whose motto is always "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without." 

Robert Morin left 4 million US dollars to his alma mater.  

$4,000,000.00.

Now Morin had his habits, beside thrift.  No health fanatic, he broke his fast with Fritos and Coca-Cola every morning.  A movie fanatic, he watched 22,000 movies between 1979 and 1997 - that averages out to 3 per day every day.  

And my favorite Morin legend is that he read EVERY book published in the US between 1930 and 1938 (except textbooks, children’s books and cookbooks.)  I assume he did a lot of his reading while watching some really bad movies.

So, he lives like a miser and racks up a huge bank acct. and bequeaths it to his alma mater/employer and that's the end of the story, right?  See you tomorrow.

No.

Turns out the U of NH is just like the rest of us...they took that gift horse and looked it right in the mouth.  Here's what happened: $100,000 of the 4 mil was set aside for the library where he worked. There is now a bench outside that building with his name on it, so that others can sit a spell and maybe smoke a pipeful or two, as he used to do.

The school is going to spend $2.5 million to beef up their student career center. And here's what's setting off a lot of howling...$1 million will go toward a video scoreboard at the school’s Wildcat Stadium.

Robt. Morin

It all fits in...during his last years in an assisted living center, Morin became obsessed with football, watching game after game and memorizing team rosters and mastering the rules of the game. So the new video scoreboard would seem a fitting way to invest part of his gift, but others are all worked up about it. 


“The university clearly seems to think that it makes sense for the sports department to receive ten times the amount that Morin’s own department is receiving, even after spending $25 million on a stadium renovation,” UNH graduate Claire Cortese said.

Others joined in the nay-saying chorus.  I look at it as 4 million semolians the school didn't have before Morin left it to them, and I also hasten to point out that you can't please everyone, even if you die trying to.

Call it morning driving thru the sound and in and out the valley

Aerial view

Where we live, we are about as close to stuff (malls, restaurants, roiling mob scenes) in the next county up the road as we are to events in our own county seat, so we find it easy to scoot up Harford Rd (MD 147) or Belair Rd to get to Bel Air, in Harford County.  We are not alone in doing so, obviously.  Lots of people take Harford Rd to go north and south. The problem comes in when people on an east-west road, such as Mount Vista Rd, want to go home or go shopping by getting on Harford Rd.  There's no signal light at the intersection, so they often have to sit for what seems like hours on end to make a left or right turn.

So the state of Maryland is going to spend 3.7 million tax dollars to built a roundabout at the intersection.

A roundabout is defined as "a type of looping junction in which road traffic travels in one direction around a central island and priority is given to the circulating flow. Signs usually direct traffic entering the circle to slow and to give way to traffic already on it."

It's very simple.  You approach the circle, and you don't do a doggone thing until there is a break in the traffic, and then you get in the flow, and get off where you need to.

The state says that they have been putting in traffic roundabouts since 1994 with "zero intersection-related fatalities" since.

The Towson Traffic Tsunami

On the other hand...I'm certain my late mom, in the autumn of her driving years, was not the only person who would drive to from Baltimore to Cleveland to avoid using the traffic roundabout in Towson. That's a wild one, like a mini-Beltway, actually, with two lanes spinning clockwise and someone always trying to get off from the wrong lane.  There really should be Xanax dispensers at the entrances.  

The work on the roads will take until late next summer, but motorists who dislike roundabouts are advised to start panicking about using the circle now.  

And for those pondering what the heck the title "Call it morning driving thru the sound and in and out the valley" means...click here!

The entire point of golf is to play as little golf as possible

Don't feel too bad if you don't know what the Ryder Cup is.  I thought it was a free coffee mug you got for renting a truck. 

And don't fret if you don't know the names Danny Willett, or P.J. Willett. These are not the guys who hand you a mug after you lease a big GMC truck to haul your belongings to your new house in Chrischristie, New Jersey.

Danny is a British golfer who won the Masters tournament, and P.J. is his brother who has a lot to say.  So he wrote on a site called NationalClubGolfer.com, a British website that seems to take golf quite seriously.  

The Ryder Cup is a golf competition between American and English golfers, held biennially, or every two years, whichever comes first.  This year, as if to prove that golf is not a sport on a level with NFL football or big-league baseball, a 30-year-old insurance salesman from America was heckling some golfers across the pond for missing a 12-foot putt, and, challenged to do better, sank it beautifully!  And he had to dodge around the windmill to hit it!

Anyhow, old P.J. is steamed because Americans fail to pay proper reverence to golf.  I always think of a baseball player, in a ballpark with 47,000 screaming fans and organ music and trumpets blaring and the scoreboards doing their psychedelic thing and a guy 60' 6" away throwing a ball at them at around 100 miles an hour. 

Compare that to golf, where a guy in funny pants takes 20 minutes to lean over a ball that isn't even moving and tap it into a hole 4 feet away.  And the crowd has to be silent, for crying out loud. Or not.  Woe unto he who sneezes while Rory McIlory is concentrating on his next bogey.

P.J. said that American fans are a "baying mob of imbeciles."  And he feels that something should be done to "silence the pudgy, basement-dwelling, irritants, stuffed on cookie dough and pissy beer, pausing between mouthfuls of hotdog so they can scream 'Baba booey' until their jelly faces turn red. They need to stun the angry, unwashed, Make America Great Again swarm, desperately gripping their concealed-carry compensators ...They need to smash the obnoxious dads, with their shiny teeth, Lego man hair, medicated ex-wives, and resentful children. Squeezed into their cargo shorts and boating shoes, they'll bellow 'get in the hole' whilst high-fiving all the other members of the Dentists' Big Game Hunt Society."

He said a lot, did he not?  I love the Baba Booey reference, along with the compensator.  But it really chafes my cargo shorts to hear the demands for people to be stock-still while watching people play golf. The reverence is so undeserved.  It's a free country!  Talk to the people around you while someone lines up his shot.

If Joe Flacco can get his business done with three or four beefy individuals all up in his grille, golfers can play with their putters on a noisy day.

European captain Darren Clarke called the piece "very disappointing ... that is not the way we view things."

Ferrous Sulfate's Day Off

I have to be honest before I say another word about the ad above. I am a male and therefore know nothing about menstrual cramps and the pain and discomfort they bring. I am not a doctor or chemist, so I don't know if taking ferrous sulfate (which is the main ingredient in this menstrual/menopause medicine) is any good for anyone.  

Interesting fact: until the Pure Food And Drug Act of 1906 made them stop, the makers of this nostrum claimed that it was "A sure cure for PROLAPSUS UTERI, or falling of the womb and all FEMALE WEAKNESSES including leucorrhoea, irregular and painful menstruation, inflammation and ulceration of the womb, flooding,...for all weaknesses of the generative organs of either sex, it is second to no remedy that has ever been before the public, and for all diseases of the kidneys it is the GREATEST REMEDY IN THE WORLD."

And they failed to point out that it contained somewhere between 15 - 20% alcohol! So OF COURSE it made people feel better!

Nope, none of my beeswax (which would probably help cure a host of ailments, for what it's worth.)  I just remain aghast at the ads I see that showed the complete home address of women who wrote to the Pinkham company and gave full details about how much better they and their daughters were doing since they introduced Lydia E. Pinkham into their daily pharmacological menu.

"I have a daughter seventeen years old. She was irregular, nervous, and tired."  So she started taking your tablets and now look how happy she is!  And we're sure none of the guys she goes to school with will ever read this ad and/or tease her about it.

And for women at the other end of the change-of-life cycle, well, here are a few more satisfied customers...

Again, I don't have any way to judge the efficacy of this product, but I do worry that Lucille Hoeck was tormented unmercifully by the boys in her school.  I hope she got over it. Maybe Mrs Pinkham had a cure for embarrassment in her bag o' tricks.

On the other hand, a dime still works as a make-do screwdriver

I'm not going to mention the name of the guy or his YouTube channel, but you may have heard about him already.

Apparently, he's a guy who dishes out technical advice to thousands of adherents, some of whom seem to need to adhere to a bottle of common sense instead.  

You've heard the commotion about the new version of the iPhone not having a standard headset jack, which forces the user to use bluetooth wireless earbuds ($149) which might fall out of their ear and need to be replaced ($149).  So Mr YouTuber puts out a video showing him drilling a 4mm hole into the bottom of his phone, 14 mm from the bottom left edge.  He tells people that there is a jack in there, accessible beneath the metal shell of the phone, and that's just not true. The video has racked up more than 7.5 million views in two weeks, and more than 81,000 dislikes.  

You'd think there would be a lot more dislikes.  But people seem to know this won't work...

And that doesn't stop people from doing it!  And then they are so surprised that their $700 phone is now a paperweight, or at best a reminder of how people will take anything they see online as the "gossipal truth."  Remember when the first iPad came out, and someone told people that there was a scale built in, and then weightwatchers started standing on their tablet to see what they weighed...?

I often wonder how people can go for these wild nonsense stories and then I remember, it's an election year.

Sunday Rerun: Brakin' the Law

Hello, there. I'm the guy you glare at, because I get to the intersection of Northern Parkway and The Alameda at about 7:05 AM, and the sign says "No right turn on red, 7 AM - 4 PM, so I don't turn right on the red light.

So honk at me all you will and give me all the fingers you need to. I don't like to break the law. For a liberal, I take a most illiberal stance on breaking the law.

I don't even like to patronize the farm stands who break the law. In our county, farmers are allowed to pack up their produce in the ol' pick-'em-up truck and sell it along the streets and roads, as long as they keep moving. Setting up a permanent roadside sales venue is not allowed, because it's not fair to the guy who built a brick-and-mortar produce stand or grocery store and has to pay taxes and so forth. But on the other hand, I'm not the one breaking the law if I stop where the farmer has pulled her pickup over on Putty Hill Avenue (if you're reading this in Kankakee or Keokuk, do you think we have oddly-named streets?) to get some sweet corn and tomatoes. I just hope that if the police dept. sends around their undercover Produce Squad, I don't get busted and wind up with my name in the newspaper ("....also being held at the Towson Precinct and charged with patronizing an illegal roadside stand, and violating the Taft-Hartley Act, was...") because they always put in your mug shot and I don't look my best in this heat.

I didn't look so great in the cold last winter either, if you want to know the truth.

But I am really on my high horse about this thing, this Stretch Spelling. When I first heard of this, I thought it must refer to Tori Spelling's really tall younger brother, for surely we know that there is no way to strrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeettttttttttttcccccccccccchhhhhhhhhhhh the correct spelling of a word. Click on that website and find out what they are saying...stretch spelling is inventive spelling, Kid spelling, phonetic spelling, temporary spelling. Now this really rankles me, the more I read about it. I keep reading this sentence over and over, and still, I am rankled. Stick with me for a second:

"As children are encouraged to express their thoughts and ideas on paper, stretch spelling allows children to experiment with written language without feeling the restraints of the correct rules of punctuation, capitalization, and spelling." 

Oh for the sweet love of all that is good and holy! The words of Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats, Byron, even Mickey Spillane and, heaven forbid, Vachel Lindsay are to be cast aside so that the class can learn more about how young Marmaduke or Mildred feel. Good-bye, Ernest Hemingway! Farewell, Garrison Keillor! Ave atque vale, John Milton! We have entered that Brave New World! Orwell, we knew it was coming. Written language is now a place to experiment. If you don't feel like spelling words correctly, pheel phree 2 mayk upp ur oan wayz too wright. Wee R pleezed 2 hav a chantz 2 cher ur pheelings. And punctuation? Why bother? Capitalization, sorry, go join spelling and pronunciation on the unemployment line. And be quick about it so that wee Wilberforce here can give us his thoughts on this one time when he went to the meadow and there was this cal and the hoarse chased the cal and we went for a hey ride.

Ring Lardner wrote like that as a parody, to show how the unlettered would express themselves. He did not mean for people to start writing like that for real!

Kids, if you are within the sound of my voice, run as fast as your little legs will carry you away from this madness. One day you will leave school and be out in a world in which people will expect you to punctuate, capitalize and spell properly. There is no stretching here in the real world; there is only the right way to punctuate, capitalize and spell. If you fall short of these standards, your words will be regarded as those of lesser import.

And I don't even blame the kids. They are the unwitting victims of a society that has forgotten what made it great. We worked, we learned, we earned the right to use the English language that was our inheritance from our forefathers. I was encouraged to express myself in writing (people seemed to prefer it to hearing from me vocally). But no teacher of mine ever encouraged me to use creativity in punctuation, spelling, grammar or pronunciation.

Ask your teacher, if he or she says it's ok to spell things wrong as long as you're expressing yourself, if it's all right to say that 4 times 5 is 19. Really, how close can you get?

The Saturday Picture Show, October 8, 2016

From my friend Trish Mayhugh...a picture that reminds me why I love Autumn so much...because I love orange things and pumpkins and falling leaves and playoff baseball and college football!

This is the old control room at WHBQ in Memphis, which is famous for being the radio station where, on July 8, 1954, dj Dewey Phillips played 19-year-old Elvis Presley's record of "That’s All Right Mama." That made Phillips's show, "Red Hot & Blue," the first to play a record by the King.  As the record played, Elvis's parents Gladys and Vernon rushed to the Suzore theater, where E was watching a movie, and told him to go to the radio station, that Mr Phillips wanted to interview him. And that's where it all began.

There seem to be two ways of pronouncing "Arkansas," but up until now, I thought there was only one way to spell it.

You think you have it bad when you see a sea nettle in the ocean?

It's almost time for Ralphie to find his one big gift!

I had not known why bald eagles are also photographed from the side.  Now I know why.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the world's largest wok, and as soon as we get it heated up, we are going to make the largest order of Moo Shu Pork you ever saw!

Ladies and Gentlemen: This is Baltimore.  This is supper.  This is a crab fluff - a crabcake dipped in beer batter and deep fried - with chips and coleslaw.  This is how we roll!

Make it look natural!

I worked until I didn't have to anymore, and ran for the door with my retirement paperwork trailing behind me like the white cloth that trails down the middle aisle at a wedding.

But in my days as a volunteer firefighter, grocery clerk, radio disc jockey and news guy, broadcasting school director, 911 supervisor, Health Dept facilities manager and public information specialist, I learned a thing or two about getting through a day of work without too many contusions or abrasions.

Two of them came to mind the other day when I was listening to the radio documentary The History Of Howard Stern, and I thought I would share them for the benefit of people just starting out in the world of work.

Norris, Dell'Abate, and Stern 

In the documentary, Stern show producer Gary "Baba Booey" Dell'Abate is describing how he and Stern sidekick Fred Norris had to retrieve Howard's tapes and old scripts from WNBC radio after The King Of All Media was fired there in 1985.  They went back to the station late one night and were hauling stuff out in box after box on a handcart when, on the last trip down the elevator, a security guard walking through the loading area yelled "Hey!" at them.  They were sure he was up to busting them for everything but the Teapot Dome scandal, but decided to play it straight, and as it turned out, he was only looking for change for a twenty.  

They worried for nothing!


Lesson To The Young: No matter WHAT you're doing in the workplace, as long as you make it look like it's what you're SUPPOSED to be doing, no one will call you on it.  I mean this. You can walk into the office of the CEO (Chief Embezzlement Officer) in your firm and start carrying out his fire extinguisher, Keurig machine and potted ferns.  If someone says anything, just say you're there to "take 'em out for PM," which is the inside term for preventive maintenance.  But those magic words are the golden key. Just look like you're supposed to be there, and no one will question a thing.

Especially if you're carrying a clipboard, and quite ostentatiously making big check marks on a piece of paper for every item you haul away.

Folder + furrow = freedom

Bonus lesson to the young: Let's say it's late in the day on a Friday, and you want to get out early.  At lunchtime, you take your lunchbag and jacket and leave them at the reception area in the lobby, and then, long about 3:30, you pick up a manila file folder stuffed with many papers and storm down the hall with a firm grip on the folder and a furrowed brow.  Be sure to say, "Man, things are all screwed up in Accounts Payable.  I'll be back..." and then make a beeline for the door.

See you Monday!

Son of a pitch

Ahhhh.  Sports! We love sports!  We go to the ballparks and stadia and croquet courts and watch people who have honed their athletic talents into highly-paid skills.  They hit balls and kick balls and throw balls, and then...

In just the space of two days here, in the Baltimore Ravens' palatial M&T Bank Stadium, a purple pleasure palace built for NFL football, and in rickety Rogers Centre, the Toronto baseball park with a hole in the roof like a '94 Hyundai Sonata Sunroof with squeaky brakes and a shot suspension, have been the scenes of inappropriate things being thrown in an inappropriate manner.

Sunday past, the Ravens played the Oakland Los Angeles Oakland Raiders in a game of football. During the game, a Baltimore fan incurred the wrath of two Raiders fans from New York through the heinous act of allowing a woman to cut in the concession stand line.  One thing led to another, and on the way out after the game, the Baltimore fan threw a beer can at the New Yorkers, who responded by knocking his head into the cement walkway, and he is still in Shock Trauma with severe head injuries.

Then on Tuesday, the only thing that got hurt when a fan of the Toronto BJs threw a full can of beer at Oriole outfielder Hyun Soo Kim while Kim was fielding a fly ball was the last shred of respect some fans had for the brawling Canadians who sat there while the man pictured here heaved his Molson at our guy. I mean, really! To throw something at someone who is actively involved in a ball game...where is this guy's head? And no one saw a thing, and he got away... But I have no doubt that the man will be brought to justice...because we always hear that Mounties "always get their man!"  From his photograph, he appears mentally defective, so they should be careful in apprehending him. 

Baltimore City Police arrested the two New Yorkers and they are expected back for a hearing at the end of the month.

Meanwhile, it might be good to just go and watch the games, and leave the throwing to those paid to do so!

Pariah Carry

I heard on the news the other day that a former Secretary of State had his emails hacked and that he had referred to a certain presidential aspirant as a "piranha."

That sounded fishy to me.  I think the newsreader meant to say "pariah," but whatever.

The fact that a former general and high-ranking government official's email account was easily penetrated by some geek with a Dell (or some geek with Adele, I can't say) means that we are all possible victims of the horror of having our most private emails, texts, and grocery lists exposed online to the readers of websites devoted to such.

I am taking the preemptive action, then, and releasing here the most controversial emails and texts on my phone, before some wise guy who lives with his mother and likes to sit in a bathtub filled with vanilla pudding breaks my password (MYPASSWORD) and reveals all:

from Peggy:  "I love you."
to Peggy: "I love you too. How about KFC for dinner?"
from Peggy: "Don't forget your senior discount."

from the place where we buy cars: "We called you this afternoon to confirm your service appointment but you did not answer. Therefore, we are canceling your appointment scheduled for 10/7. Please do not reply to this message."

From the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: "It is not possible to predict how leaving your bedroom window open, with the house air conditioner running, will cause there to be a frontal occlusion when the warm outside air meets the cool air inside. Therefore, your plan to create an indoor thunderstorm cannot be supported by this agency."


To the guy in the drive-thru window at KFC: "Eight-piece box, chicken only, extra crispy, Senior Discount."

To Autumn:  "Where are you, anyway?"

To Brad Pitt: "The darkest hour is just before the dawn, buddy. Hold on.  There will be someone new."

To AARP: "I know you think I'm old but I don't want to read your monthly magazine, chock full o' recipes, cautions about not being ripped off in internet schemes, and interviews with other people my age and even older. In my mind, I'm still 17, and that means I must be out of my mind."

To: my thought file: "Where would we be if, suddenly, magnetic force stopped working? Imagine all the debris in front of refrigerators!"

To SiriusXM radio: "Please notify me when you are no longer broadcasting the Garth Brooks channel (Channel 55.)  There is no good reason for making people listen to him.  I suggest a Cheap Trick channel, a Johnny Paycheck channel, or a Marching String Band channel instead."

To Kiefer Sutherland: "Career suggestion - maybe a show that doesn't concern itself with apocalyptic disaster would be a nice move...a sitcom, maybe called "Kiefer and His Pa" would be the ticket."

To every roadway flagperson in the world: "What in the world do you do all long to stop from losing your mind?" 

From the Baltimore County School Board: "We are unable to grant your request to turn in a project for the 1964 Science Fair at this time. What's more, your plan to run a gasoline automobile on discarded salad bar leftovers seems destined to fail anyway."

To "Jack the Chimney Jack" - "Are you the same Jack as in Pepper Jack Cheese?"

From Jumbo Paintings Inc: "We are sorry to inform you that, even if you hire us to produce a six-foot painting of yourself for display in your palatial suburban home known as Mark-a-Lago, it will still not be lifesize, as you are well over six feet in height. For a slight additional fee, we can add another half a foot to accommodate your head or feet."

So you see, nothing is to be gained by hacking a hack such as I! (Actual password not used. Your mileage may vary. Castles Made of Sand is not the same company as BGE, a regulated utility.) 

It's About Time

One of the really great things about Life In These United States is that when we feel that the government is being unreasonable, or just plain wrong about something, we can entreat our public servants and request redress.

A nice red dress always makes a nice look, but anyway.

The good people of Anne Arundel County, Maryland, home of some 555,743 good citizens (as of 2013) felt that having high school students put down their soggy Eggos and saunter into a classroom to soak up grammar and math by 7:17 AM is much too ask of people who stayed up until 3:17 AM to send each other pictures of their uvulae.  

Breaking news: you could have school open from noon 'til 12:30 and kids still wouldn't want to be there.

But, enough parents raised enough objections to this horrible early start time that the county brass finally was moved to action. 

"This has been a long process for us. We formed a task force in 2014 that looked at this issue that involved community members, parents, and students and folks from across the school system," said Bob Mosier, school district spokesperson.

Two years' work by a fifteen people on a task force led to a vote the other night, and the Anne Arundel County Board of Education voted 6-2 to shift school start and close times for the next school year.

Before I tell you the outcome of all this time and effort, let me tell you that they will have to buy 10 more school buses and spend an additional $618,000, which they folded into the operating budget.  

And here is the payoff:

Instead of high schools starting at 7:17 AM, they will now open at 7:30 AM.

And they will stay open for 13 more minutes in the afternoon.

13 minutes is 780 seconds.  And that's how much more sleep they'll be getting down in Glen Burnie, Arnold, Riva and Shadyside.

13 minutes is not even enough time to listen to the long version of "Do You Feel Like We Do?" but, really, just go on sleeping...

No Foolin'

It "happened" in Maryland, and in several Southern states as well.

Suddenly, 911 switchboards were lit up by people calling to report encounters with clowns (and not the type that wears blue suits and red ties).

In Annapolis, Maryland, a couple of weeks ago, kids were calling the cops with specific information about alleged sighting of people dressed as clowns. They added that the clowns were trying to lure children into a wooded area.

Of course, it was not so.

And what followed was that kids from one school told kids from another school, and then, night after night, the police were busy driving near the woods, looking for an insane clown with a posse.

And then, of course, because we love to make fantasy become truth, some older kids in Pennsylvania put on some clowny outfits and drove around, hopping out of the bed of a pickup to scare the bejabbers out of kids.  And all because of nothing.

If you're a parent, you might want to take Abercrombie or Hortense aside for a minute and tell them that urban rumors and legends and hoaxes, while amusing in the cafeteria, are serious matters. No matter how unlikely, the police have to investigate these reports, and that takes their attention away from real crimes and police matters.  

Arrests have been made in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for people filing false reports about having seen clowns where no clowns really were.

Why do people fear clowns?  I mean, besides the fact that they are simply not funny, except for that circus bit where 27 of them pile out of a tiny compact car?  After all, they are supposed to amuse and entertain us.  I don't have the fear, but I understand that some people do.  Here's an article that explains this, this whole thing called coulphobia.

This time next year, it'll be something else.  But for now, we are beset by a scourge of clowns.  Do you understand how someone can want to get out of bed and daub that paint on their face?

If you do, you're the only one.

Sunday Rerun: Doin' that right thing

Not so long ago, when I was just out of the walker and starting to get around on a cane, I stopped at my local Giant grocery store for just a couple of items.  I tried going cane-free, figuring that the cart would help me get around, but by the time I rounded up what I needed and got to the front of the store, I was plumb tuckered out.  A young lady who was there to assist people at the self-checkout lines saw me dragging, and beckoned to me to come over.  She opened her register, got me rung up and on the way, and I appreciated it so much that I went on the Giant website and sent the honchos an email about how much I appreciated her help.  After all, she could have just looked the other way and ignored me. 

Well, the other day I was in the Giant again, and she saw me up by the registers, and she thanked me, because the Giant had apparently made a little fuss over her, printed out my email and posted it, and placed a copy in her folder.  She said, "You really didn't have to go to the trouble of sending an email - all I was doing was doing my job."

In one of the rare moments of cranial celerity that come my way, I said, "Yes, but don't you know how special you are just because you do your job!?"

That being a rhetorical question, she answered with a smile and a thanks again.  But ever since, I have been thinking about how well things go when we just do what we're supposed to do.

And, as with the woman we talked about yesterday who bemoaned the crime-ridden status of her neighborhood, I thought about how well things go when we DON'T do the things we're not supposed to do!

We all want a cookie.

Chris Rock used to do a bit about a guy who bragged that he hadn't been to jail and that he took care of his kids!  In that inimitable Chris Rock voice, he followed that with, "You're not supposed to go to jail, you dumb (expletives deleted)!!!"  And about taking care of the kids: "You're SUPPOSED to take care of your kids!  What do you want, a cookie?"

I guess it is true; life is simple when we follow simple rules. Such as: don't rob banks, don't sell narcotics, don't shoot other people on the street, don't drive 87 mph on a suburban road, don't get all liquored up and drive anything anywhere, don't shoplift, don't lie.

On the other hand, if you have a job, go do it, as you're supposed to.  Be on time, be properly groomed and attired, be pleasant and cooperative.  Treat people kindly and fairly.  If you're married or in a committed relationship, don't have sex with people other than your significant other.  Keep your property decent looking, try to be a good neighbor, don't let your dog run all over the neighborhood leaving poop on other people's yards.  If you're a member of a neighborhood watch group, don't confuse yourself with Dirty Harry and go chasing people down, leading to fatal consequences.

Do what you know is right and things will be better!  I know I'm going to try. 

The Saturday Picture Show, October 1, 2016

Like most Marylanders, I am crazy about the design of our state flag, which gets its black and gold design from the family crest of Cecil Calvert, the second Lord Baltimore. The red and white design belongs to the Crossland family (Lord B's mother's family). Win big bucks by betting the guy on the next stool how many state flags contain no blue at all. (Maryland, Alabama, California and New Mexico).

I love this old ad because I love old pickup trucks.  Ever notice how, in commercials and TV movies, when a guy shows up with some tools to fix the back steps, he always drives an old pickup, never a new one?  I also like the line "Your used truck may and probably will make the down payment."  Interesting sentence.

Seagrass, fall leaves...

It just dawned on me that the manufacturers of rubber rain slickers for kids decided to make them all yellow because yellow is the color of ducks.

Apple Cider time! And here's an interesting way to serve it.

Casa D'Amore!  House of Love!  I love pizza, so why not?

The new Samsung dryers are out!

The inset picture shows the gym in use, back before Detroit closed up Cass Technical High School.  How things used to be...