Eclectica by William J Reynolds

Comma Comment

2012-01-29T10:31:00.001-06:00

Last night I was flipping through my son’s English book as we discussed his needing to select from it a poem for a class project. The book contained many of my favorites, including The Lamb, The Second Coming, Ozymandius (which I memorized when I was even younger than my son is now, for a class project), and several by good old Robert Frost, including this:

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between the woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake

To ask if there is some mistake.

The only other sound’s the sweep

Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost

New Hampshire, 1923

Recalling a discussion of the poem in an English class back in college, I shared with my son the subtextual meaning of “the woods,” and privately reflected, not for the first time, on the first line of the last stanza:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

Not long ago I fell into a Facebook “conversation” about the serial comma, aka the Oxford comma. I have always used it, finding it more logical and clear than the newspaper style, which omits the comma before “and” or “or”: Snap, Crackle, and Pop clearly refers to three entities; Snap, Crackle and Pop could refer to three, or to two (Snap + [Crackle and Pop]), depending on context.

With the serial-comma conversation fairly fresh in mind, I recalled my English professor’s comment on the punctuation of that line:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep says something quite different from The woods are lovely, dark, and deep.

Frost isn’t saying the woods are lovely and dark and deep; he is saying they are lovely (because they are) dark and deep. Dark and deep is a single expression, as is lovely.

But if you don’t habitually employ the serial comma you may well lose that distinction, for its absence in the poem would go unnoticed. Lovely, dark and deep would be like Snap, Crackle and Pop—maybe two ideas, maybe three, and probably unnoticed.

Even by its absence, the serial comma does important work.

If it's Worth Doing, it's Worth Doing Well!

2012-01-21T15:58:00.000-06:00

Readers of these sporadic chronicles know that I am a fan of well-done, creative spam, as well as a harsh critic of slipshod, half-baked spam.

Two fairly recent examples of spam that could have been so much more:

Two minutes on the United States Postal Service’s website could produce a copy of the USPS logo, the addition of which would have given this spam some much needed verisimilitude.

But it seems unlikely that as much as two minutes was spent on developing this message. How could it be that so many people sent packages on January 11 that could not be delivered because of an erroneous address? (And see my previous post in re the BCC field.) Why would I need to print a “shipment label" and collect the package at their unspecified “office"? Why wouldn’t they simply return the package to me as undeliverable?

Oh, yeah—and why the hell would the postal service be sending me e-mail, considering that e-mail is popularly considered to be a cause of the postal service’s recent financial crisis?

To appreciate sSpam requires a certain suspension of disbelief, so let us for a moment sent aside the fact that I don’t even know what an “ACH transfer" is, let alone have instigated one. And let’s ignore the likely fact that e-mail purportedly from NACHA would most likely indicate same in the sender’s field, not just “Dick Richmond." And we’ll grimace a little and try not to think about how spending a couple of seconds at NACHA’s website would have produced a company logo (see above in re verisimilitude). Just set all of that aside, and focus your attention on the link that the spammers wish me to activate for whatever nefarious purpose they may have in mind.

unclewillysfamily.com.

Yeah. That sounds like a URL that the Electronic Payments Association would use. unclewillysfamily.com.

I suppose that would be Dick Richmond’s Uncle Willy.

Really, does no one take any pride in his work anymore?

And This Is Why God Gave Us the BCC Field

2012-01-21T15:17:00.000-06:00

The header from e-mail that arrived this past week. I get a lot of e-mail from this sender, and it always begins the same:

Naturally, a distressing number of recipients choose to reply to these messages by clicking “reply all,” generating messages of staggering length until you get to the latest entry, which generally is something like, “Do you still need help with that?”

Similarly, a distressing number of e-mailers out there seem not to know how to un-select their caps lock key.

How long has e-mail been around by now?

Old Words for a New Year

2012-01-02T10:11:00.000-06:00

By way of New Year’s greetings, here is another smattering of quotations that I collect here, there, and everywhere on the vast and boundless internet.

“Let this ending of a year, and the beginning of a new year be a time to consider what is really important in life.” —Jonathan Huie

“The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.” —Charles Bukowski

“Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.” —Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)

“Information is the currency of democracy.” —Thomas Jefferson

“Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.” —Da Vinci

“Men shout to avoid listening to one another.” —Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936)

“Creationists make it sound like a ‘theory’ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.” —Isaac Asimov

“Religious freedom should work two ways: we should be free to practice the religion of our choice, but we must also be free from having someone else’s religion practiced on us.” —John Irving

“The history of intellectual progress is written in the lives of infidels.” —Robert Green Ingersoll

“It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.” —Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)

“Of all forms of tyranny the least attractive and the most vulgar is the tyranny of mere wealth — the tyranny of plutocracy.” Theodore Roosevelt

“Today the world changes so quickly that in growing up we take leave not just of youth but of the world we were young in” —Peter Medawar

“No one ever goes into battle thinking God is on the other side.” —Terry Goodkind

“Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?” —Epicurus, philosopher (c. 341-270 BCE)

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.” —Marcus Aurelius, philosopher and writer (121-180)

Too Early? Too Late? - A Hodgepodge

2011-12-20T21:36:00.000-06:00

Here we are at that time of year when, more than any other time, I witness in my work a strange phenomenon.

Well, strange to me, at least. Maybe there’s some sense to it that I’ve yet to divine.

The strangeness is this: I will receive various items for publication in the various sources for which I’m responsible in which the author would inform the reader that such-and-such event will take place on, say, January 6. And for good, albeit strange, measure, he or she will almost invariably tack on “2012.”

Who knows how many 2012s I have lopped off the past four to six weeks? Who knows how many more I will lop off in the next four to six weeks—for the strangeness will continue at least that long.

Not counting those folks who simply cannot write a date without putting the year on it, no matter how far into the year we’ve already come.

I’ve tried to figure out how and why a person might develop such a habit, and I confess to being stumped. Certainly if I am in December 2011 writing about an event that will occur on January 6, I can rely on my reader to understand that I mean the January 6 that will be popping up in a few weeks here, not the January 6 that happened almost a year ago, nor the January 6 that will be happening a little more than a year hence.

Can’t I?

Even keeping in mind what H.L. Mencken had to say about the intelligence of the American public, I am confident that all of the 2012s I blithely fling into the virtual wastebasket will cause no undue distress.

Watch this space in case I turn out to be wrong. I’ll report if someone shows up for any of the events in question a year late. And I’ll certainly report if anyone shows up for something a year early.

Believe me, I’d love for that to happen.

¶ ¶ ¶

On the subject of numbers and people’s odd quirks regarding them:

My late father could never, it seems, write a number without expressing it in both words and numerals. He would never have written, “Grandma went to the store three times last week”; he would instead have written “Grandma went to the store three (3) times last week.”

In his case, I suspect he either developed the habit as a young man climbing the corporate ladder at what was Northwestern Bell Telephone Company, then USWest, then Qwest, now CenturyLink. (Yes, you see a trend there: each name is even less descriptive of the business than the previous name was. CenturyLink is particular is a dumb name, and I’m a little glad Dad didn’t live to see its advent. In fact, CenturyLink sounds like something I would use if I wanted to show up for an event a year too early.) I wouldn’t be too surprised to learn that, in his early days there, he and his cohorts were taught that This Is The Way It’s Done, and he never deviated from that path, strange though it seems to me.

Dad also would never use an exclamation point when three (3) could be used. I’m not kidding!!! If he felt inclined toward exclamation, which he often would in his pr/marketing days, he invariably tripled the order. He never used two (2); he never used four (4); he sure as hell never used one (1). It was always and inevitably three (3)!!!

Which may go a ways toward explaining my habit of eschewing them in my own work!!!

¶ ¶ ¶

Back to the subject of dumb names:

This week I received from the Board of Pensions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (in which I still have a few dollars, since they limit the amount one may remove in a calendar year...which reminds me, I have only a few days in which to remove this year’s allotment. So enjoy being restricted from accessing my own money) that it will henceforth no longer be known as the Board of Pensions but rather by the new and exciting name...Portico Benefit Services.

Portico.

I looked it up, and it has no definition other than the usual one, viz., a covered entrance. A porch.

Yet somehow, according to the letter, whoever comes up with such things believes that “a new name will help people better understand what we do as this church’s provider of health, retirement, disability and survivor benefits and related services.”

Well, it’s possible that “a new name” might do all those things. But “Portico” ain’t it. “Portico” says nothing, at least nothing related to benefits. Unless it has to do with the benefits division of an architectural firm.

It’s curious to me, too, that the new name hops on board what I perceive to be a trend of sorts, namely, obscuring the relationship of a given entity to its religious organization, in this case the ELCA. Nothing in “Portico Benefit Services” points to it being at all connected with any religious body, and certainly not the body it is in fact connected with.

I imagine someone decided that “ELCA Board of Pensions” was a limiting name. Maybe so. To be sure, it handles more than pensions per se. Well, then, how about “ELCA Board of Pensions and Benefits”? Or “ELCA Benefit Services”? Either of those—or any of a dozen other possibilities—would be more descriptive of the entity’s function and purpose than “Portico.”

It seems that there’s some desire to dissociate the agency from its church. I can’t think why, unless there’s a belief that down the road it will serve more than just its church body. Something along the lines of my credit union recently merging with another credit union and adopting a new, unmemorable name (indeed, I would have to go look it up) that seems intentionally designed to separate it from its telephone-industry history.

The ELCA did the same thing some years ago with its now-defunct radio ministry, Lutheran Vespers. Someone decided that, after who knows how many decades, “vespers” had become inaccurate since most radio stations ran it in the pre-dawn hours on Sunday mornings rather than at the close of the day. Okay-fine. They cranked up the task forces, committees, focus groups, and God knows what all else and came up with an exciting new name: Grace Matters. Which, as I said at the time, sounded like an ’80s sitcom starring someone named Grace, if Amazing Grace was already being used.

Again, there seemed a concerted effort to dissociate it from its own history. I never understood why. And keep in mind, I had no dog in the fight, nor have I one now in the Portico fight.

But money, yes. So I need Portico to avoid the fate of Grace Matters for at least another year.

To avoid confusion, that would be December 20, 2012!!!

From the Junk Mail Folder

2011-12-07T12:07:00.000-06:00

As I’ve mentioned before (“Did I say ‘no one’? I meant ‘hardly anyone’”), pretty much every day my office e-mail is graced with a Rapture and End Times message from, appropriately enough, RaptureandEndtimes.com. They claim it’s “because you have expressed an interest in Rapture and End Times,” but that’s only one of the falsehoods their messages typically contain. I’ve expressed no such interest, nor have I visited their website. (What would be the point?) I rather suspect I receive it because I work at a church office; several of my colleagues have reported receiving it as well, and for no other apparent reason.

Although I seldom read their messages (again, what would be the point?), I have noticed that they changed their Gmail address earlier this month. It had always been kingdomofheavenin2011; as of this week it’s the much less poetic raptureandendtimes.

Which I take to be their tacit acknowledgement that the rapture is unlikely to take place within the next 3½ weeks.

Still, points for sticktuitiveness. Earlier this autumn, they were pretty sure that everything would hit the fan during Rosh Hashanah. Which began at sunset on September 28 and ended at sunset on September 30. Indeed, on September 29 they sent out a message with the subject line “Your Last Chance.” That message I did read, of course, or at least the first couple of paragraphs:

We have finally made it to the end! If you have been following our messages, you know that we expect the Rapture to occur during the Jewish Feast of Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah). The Feast started on Wednesday 28th at about sunset Jerusalem time, and will run through for two days ending on the 30th. So we don’t know the exact day and hour!

In our first messages and on the website, we determined the “season” of the Rapture by exploring the Holy Bible, the customs of the Jewish people and the history of the nation of Israel. The Jewish wedding ceremony revealed the theme and model of the Rapture, and helped determine the sequence of events. We focused on comparing Matthew chapter 24 and Revelation chapter 6 to comprehend the Tribulation period. The reestablishment of Israel as a nation, the definition of a Biblical generation, the Jewish feasts and the Feast of Trumpets guided us to the possible year of the Rapture. This brought us to the dates of September 29-30, 2011 as a likely time for the Lord to return to snatch away His bride.

I was struck by the clever way in which they squirmed around the troublesome fact that Jesus himself is given to say that no one knows when the Second Coming will occur, viz., “Well, we think it’ll be sometime this weekend...so, you see, we don’t claim to know the day or the hour. Just, you know, the time frame.” Nice.

As near as I could tell, the rapture did not occur at any time that weekend. It is true that the office was a little underpopulated that Monday morning...but it always is on a Monday morning. Eventually everybody turned up. And keep in mind that I work with churchy people--certainly one or two of them would have been “snatched up,” were any snatching-up going on.

Although there was no Rapture and End Times message in my inbox that morning.

Indeed, the last message from them had been the “Your Last Chance” message on September 29.

You don’t suppose...

But no. On Tuesday, October 4, they were back in business again, with nary a mention of the Rosh Hashanah weekend, a tack that I cannot think about without the word chutzpah leaping to mind. The rapture having stubbornly refused to occur, they were obligied to fall back on vagueness:

If you have been following our messages, you know that we show that the Rapture “window of time” is closing rapidly. We know this because the Lord gave Christians very specific signs to look for.

He also kind of told us to not bother looking for said signs, but everybody needs a hobby.

They also included this rather puzzling instruction:

Caution: The Lord is sovereign and can take us whenever He wants. In the Bible we can see many examples of the Lord delaying judgement or changing His plans. The book of Jonah has a perfect example of this. But if the Rapture does happen shortly, this is your last chance - to prepare your heart and to reach out to your family and friends.

So in other words: The rapture’s a-comin’. Unless it isn’t. But if it is, you gotta be ready. You know, as ready as you can be for something that may or may not be a-comin’. Did we mention this is your last chance?

And now they seem to have abandoned the whole idea that their much-anticipated rapture will take place yet this calendar year. Which makes me a little sad, in fact. For them. I put no more stock in their prognostications than I do in the statements of those who insist the Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world next year. But clearly they do, and it’s kind of sad to watch them squirm and struggle around the fact that they really don’t have any idea, and neither does anybody else.

Well, fun’s fun, but I think I’ll stick to my longtime plan, namely, live the life, try to be decent toward people and small animals, and let the universe take care of itself.

So far so good, I might add.

Maybe, but...

2011-12-03T19:19:00.000-06:00

I’ll come clean: I have seen neither The Help nor After Armageddon. So perhaps the two are more alike than I suspect. That said, I was somewhat surprised to encounter this earlier today at DeepDiscount.com:

To be fair, it doesn’t tell me that my interest in The Help causes the folds at DeepDiscount.com to think I’d be interested in After Armageddon (”What have past acts of destruction taught us about what will happen to mankind after the apocalypse?” Well, probably that I’d rather not be around to find out)—it merely says “You might also be interested in”, as if they’re just pulling an idea out of the air. Sort of like those odd promos on AMC that are along the lines of “If you’re enjoying Back to the Future, stay tuned for Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

Or maybe DeepDiscount.com’s recommendations are based on one of their people saying, “Hey, what do you think we should recommend to this guy?” and someone else saying, “I bet he has pretty eclectic tastes. If he’s interested in The Help, maybe he’d like Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” and someone else says, “Nah, The Help is based on a best-selling novel; he’d want something highbrow like After Armageddon,” and someone else says, “After Armageddon is highbrow?” and the other guy says, “It was on The History Channel!” and the other other guy says, “So what? So is Ax Men,” and the first guy says, “Okay, done, I just recommended After Armageddon. Hey, this lady’s looking at The Singing Nun, what else should we recommend to her?” And so on.

Anyhow, I ordered two DVDs today, and After Armageddon wasn’t one of them.

Helloooo, Senior Discount!

2011-12-02T14:07:00.002-06:00

I see it’s been awhile (again) since I’ve attended to these pages. November was pretty intense, although mostly in a good way. And now it’s gone.

The arrival of December means I’m barely three weeks away from the anniversary of my birth, and this year’s anniversary marks the arrival of the long-awaited, Much-Coveted Senior Discount.

I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone would be shy or embarrassed or offended by reaching the age of 55, or, as I like to think of it, The Midpoint. Just boxes on the calendar, I always say, and if this box is worth a couple of pennies to me, why, so much the better!

Even as I approach my double nickels, I find hilarious the greeting card we (by which I mean Jackie, on behalf of our office staff) got for my former boss on the occasion of her 55th some years ago. The front of the card is your typical American restaurant breakfast: Eggs, bacon, toast, hash browns, pancakes, coffee, juice, etc., all spread out on the table. Inside the card: “Helloooo, Senior Discount!”

I’m not sure our leader was that amused, however. Her comment upon opening the card: “Oh. My.”

At the time, I did sort of wonder if the humor of the card would fade as I approached my own double nickels. It hasn’t. Indeed, I searched online for a copy of the card, with no luck. You’ll have to make do with Clint Eastwood.

Actually, I have now twice received the Much-Coveted Senior Discount. The first was at a marching-band event this past summer. My wife, being a few months older than me, already enjoys the rights and privileges attendant to the MCSD—but of course the age at which the discount is given differs from one establishment to the next. So, at said marching-band competition, she inquired about the age at which the MCSD was offered, and told it was the magical age 55. She averred that she qualified...and when we reached our seats we realized the girl had given us both the discount. I made no objection: Since my teenage years, people have tended to assume I’m older than I am. (It predates grayness, baldness, and fatness.) It worked to my advantage then (almost never got carded at bars), and it seems to be working to my advantage again.

If that occasion was presumptive, the second occasion, last night, was purely generosity. As we were paying for our dinner, I mentioned to the cashier that my wife was entitled to the discount, and that I should return in three weeks when I would qualify, to which she responded, “I’ll just give it to you now.” Early birthday present. Score!!

Mind you, I don’t for a second think the MCSD is anything to which I am entitled, given that “entitlement” has somehow become a dirty word. There’s no particular skill in managing to go 55 years without dying, not when you live in Middle America, at least. A little caution, a little luck, you should be able to muddle along. But I do see the MCSD as something I’ve been helping to subsidize for several decades now, and I have no objection whatsoever to taking a little payback on it now.

But, that said—phooey on those establishments that won’t give the MCSD till age 65. Cheapskates! When I turn 65, I’m going to quit patronizing your joint.

Vote Early and Often!

2011-11-08T08:55:00.000-06:00

I’ll bet I’m not the first person to ask this question, if only because I’ve been asking it for nearly four decades now, but here it is: Why must I vote at “my” polling place and only my polling place?

The often-asked question (I live in a state and a city that seem to hold an awful lot of elections, “special” and otherwise) arose again this morning as I dropped my son off at his high school. Having had some difficulty getting him in a fully upright position, I observed, as he exited the car, that it was 8:08. Since my work hours are pretty flexible, it wouldn’t ordinarily matter if I took a few minutes to double back to Longfellow Elementary, “my” polling place, cast a quick vote (secure in the knowledge that there would be no lines of voters to worry about), and be to the office in good form. However, on Tuesdays I like to have proofs on the conference table for the 8:30 worship-planning meeting, and even though the points of the high school-polling place-office triangle are literally only a couple of miles apart, I wasn’t sure I could exercise my franchise and still have the proofs on the table.

(Sure, I could have called work and asked Stella to break into my office and transport the proofs from my desk to the conference table, but I like to save favors like that for real emergencies.)

And then a couple of things occur to me:

1. My son’s high school is a polling place, and

My workplace is a polling place

Yes, that’s right: A few minutes ago I walked past several empty voting booths to get to my office, but they were of no use to me. And the age-old question resurfaces: How come?

Certainly in our great technological age there must be some mechanism by which my signing in to vote at my workplace, or my son’s school, or anyplace else would lock me out of voting at any other polls in town, no?

But of course, though the technology surely exists, I overlook the fact that we live in an age in which dark forces conspire to make voting more difficult, not less, and to deprive whole segments of the population (those who traditionally vote for the “wrong” party) of their right to vote at all. And I’ve no reason to believe those forces would not use such technology to shut out those whose votes they cannot claim honestly.

So perhaps it’s best to leave well enough alone.

It Came from the Mail Servers!

2011-10-06T20:06:00.000-05:00

Odd things show up in my inboxes, very odd things. Sure, there’s plenty of spam to go around, and readers of these posts know that I truly enjoy a well-crafted bit of spam (probably because it’s so rare), but a lot of the really weird stuff isn’t spam at all; it’s just...weird. For instance? Well—

I can’t afford to pay $5,000 a week for the rest of my life, so I figured I'd better open it right away. God only knows how Publishers Clearing House would know whether I opened it or not, but I suppose they must have their ways. Better to be safe.

Honestly, I can’t think of anybody who wouldn't want to save DISCOUNT on ITEMNAME. Needless to say I went a little crazy and really stocked up on ITEMNAME. You just never know, and, again, better to be safe.

A range?? How big do they think my house is?

And speaking of houses: I have absolutely no idea what a “worm out” floor is, but it sounds like something I wouldn’t want to have—especially in the bathroom! Honestly, though, you’d think maybe the manufacturer would get the worms out before sending the flooring over, but evidently not.

This is from a survey, not e-mail per se...although the come-on to take the survey came via e-mail:

Isn’t that really just a yes-or-no question?

And finally, where would we be without some good old spam?

Yes, that’s right—really important special correspondence from INTERPOL! Try to contain your jealousy. As you see, I have been given some pretty good news from INTERPOL SPECIAL INVESTIGATION AGENT MR. SCOTT L. EVERSON AND ASSOCIATE. And associate? You’d think Mr. Scott L. Everson, being a Special Investigation Agent and all, would be able to ferret out the name of his associate. But then I really have no idea how INTERPOL does things. Perhaps Mr. Everson has been distracted by “some little investigation” into my case. Certainly he seems too distracted to form cogent sentences. Frankly, I always thought INTERPOL was a classier operation than seems to be the case. Budget cuts, I suppose. Probably why Special Investigation Agent Everson uses a Yahoo e-mail account.

Oddly enough, despite it having been more than a month now since I received his notice, Special Investigation Agent Everson has yet to e-mail or call me, as he said he would. And I figure if Publishers Clearing House knows whether or not I’ve opened their e-mail, INTERPOL should be able to see that I have, right? It’s possible Special Investigation Agent Everson, or his unknown associate, also know that I obviously did not “keep away this message from any other person around you, because we have decided to conclude this issue with you alone” and are punishing me for it.

Which is a drag. I could really use the $6.4 million that Mr. Everson has mysteriously parked in Malaysia for me. Especially if Publishers Clearing House starts charging me that five grand a week.

Some Quotations, and Some Observations

2011-09-30T11:24:00.000-05:00

“Maybe our favourite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we’re quoting.” – John Green

I see that I have neglected this poor little blog for some time, and likewise have neglected the various quotations that I collect from hither and thither across the vast and endless internet. This past summer is but a blur, and autumn is shaping up to be no less busy. Are you ever given to thinking that after such-and-such event or season or box on the calendar things will slow down or get back to some kind of vague, unknowable “normal”? Certainly I am. And I’m almost always wrong. Nothing ever slows down, and I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing as “normal.”

“There is more to life than increasing its speed.” – Mohandas Gandhi

Both Gandhi and I are wrong. Computers certainly slow down over time. I had that fact driven home again this past week when, after just over a year of struggling with an ungodly slow, ancient Windows POS computer at the office, a shiny new one arrived on my desk this past week. (Actually, it arrived under my desk, but let’s not quibble.) Where computers are concerned, there is not more to life than increasing its speed!

Still Windows, alas, but at least I don’t have to shovel coal into a chute on the side as I did with the former machine. One of those cases when you knew that a situation was bad, but really had no idea how bad it was until you got out of it.

Had a job like that once, but that’s neither here nor there.

“The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern.” – Proverbs 29:7

That one’s been resonating with me a great deal in recent weeks. In modern America, we blame and revile the poor, and insist on making them absolutely destitute before we will bring ourselves to throw them the smallest, most stale scraps. Why? Because we’re a “Christian nation,” of course! Jesus himself gave the parable of the Samaritan who, encountering a man along the road who was beaten and left for dead by robbers, wrinkled his nose in disgust and hied on along the road, muttering to himself that it was the man’s own fault for being on that road in the first place, that the noblest act of civilized society is to allow people to fail, and that it’s morally wrong to help anybody except through “the church.”

At least, I gather that’s the parable, given how quickly and gleefully the “Christian” right pull the rug out from the less fortunate. Query: What would Jesus do?

“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names.” – Chinese Proverb

Indeed. We continue to call them “conservatives,” as they themselves do. In fact they are not. If any genuine conservatives still exist, they are small in number and quite quiet. Those who are called such today might more accurately be described as “regressives,” since they obviously wish not to conserve anything but rather to dismantle everything and regress to their Hobbesian, Randian, dog-eat-dog ideal.

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” – George Orwell

We live in a time of universal deceit. The constant repetition of lies, courtesy of Fox, Beck, Limbaugh, Coulter, and the rest of the regressives’ propaganda machine, becomes “truth” to those who lack the moral or intellectual fiber to question what they are show and told, to peer through the opium smoke, to think and see for themselves.

“Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” – John F. Kennedy

Here are more. Some are heavy, some are frothy. There’s more where that came from.

“You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.” – Eric Hoffer

“The greatest enemy of truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth- persistent and persuasive.” – John F. Kennedy

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.” – Ray Bradbury

“Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.” – Mark Twain

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.” – Louis L’Amour (1908 – 1988)

“Give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day; Give him a religion, and he’ll starve to death while praying for a fish.” – Anonymous

“Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.” – Albert Einstein

“To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.” – Leonard Bernstein

“Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.” – William James

“Forget all the rules. Forget about being published. Write for yourself and celebrate writing.” – Melinda Haynes

“What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.” – Charles Bukowski

“Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.” – Arthur C. Clarke

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” – Mohandas Gandhi

Important message from Interpol!

2011-09-05T09:53:00.000-05:00

Wow! This message “From Special Investigation Agent, United Kingdom !!” sure is exciting. Somehow, though, I always thought Interpol agents would be a little more, I dunno...literate or something. But whatever. Seems I’m about to come into six and a half million dollars, which puts me half a million dollars ahead of Col. Steve Austin, so there!

All I can say is, it’s a good thing I routinely check my spam folder, or I might have missed out on this entirely! Whew!

"Did I say 'no one'? I meant 'hardly anyone'."

2011-08-29T14:45:00.000-05:00

Every day the junk mail folder in my office e-mail receives a new “Rapture and End Times” message from someone with the catchy e-mail address kingdomofheavenin2011@gmail.com.

Curiously, the one message that I’ve glanced at begins by quoting Matthew 24:36 (“No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father”)...and then proceeds to negate that quotation by explaining how the owner of that catchy e-mail address—evidently being smarter than Jesus himself, not to mention all the angels—has figured out when heaven and earth shall pass away. (Hint: It will be before “kingdomofheavenin2011” has to be replaced by an address that doesn’t rhyme.)

Guess Jesus was just kidding with all that “No one knows about that day or hour” stuff.

Invaluable E-mail!

2011-08-17T17:31:00.000-05:00

A local camera shop e-mailed me info about its upcoming “Tent Sale & Cash For Cameras Event!” Having a couple of older cameras—two of them film cameras!—collecting dust around the house, I read on:

KEH will be on site to evaluate and purchase working, used camera equipment for CASH!*

Ah, but of course: an asterisk, universal shorthand for “Not really.” Ordinarily one expects to see an asterisk after the word free, where its function is to transform the meaning of the word to “not free,” so naturally I wandered down to the excruciatingly fine print at the bottom of the message:

*Cash for cameras items subject to appraisal and may not be purchased if deemed invaluable.

I confess to a momentary confusion there. Invaluable, after all, means valuable—in fact, it means really, really valuable. If my camera were “deemed invaluable,” why would the Tent Sale & Cash For Cameras Event! people not want to purchase it? You’d think they’d want to snap it right up!

The solution to this mystery might lie in this definition of invaluable that I found at merriam-webster.com:

invaluable assistance]

An invaluable camera? Or a valueless one?

Well, there you have it! If my 30-year-old completely manual Canon TX should prove to be “deemed invaluable,” of course the Tent Sale & Cash For Cameras Event! people would have to decline to purchase it, since there is no way to estimate a fair price on something whose value is beyond estimation. It’s all so logical. Truly an invaluable piece of e-mail! Asterisk.

Who's on First?

2011-08-05T11:33:00.000-05:00

Just finished watching a nice video of Adam West talking about, of course, Batman. Having been a kid during the 1960s Batmania, I have a fondness for West as Batman, even if I find the old shows difficult to watch today. But as a comic-book geek of some duration, and perhaps something of a purist, I always cringe when I see West referred to as "the original Batman," because he was in fact the third actor to portray Batman on film.

Here's a photo of the first Batman, Lewis Wilson, in the 1943 serial Batman:

And here's a photo of the second Batman, Robert Lowery, in the sequel serial Batman and Robin, 1949:

And of course here's Adam West in the mid-1960s:

The Batman serials are, by today's standards, pretty slow-paced; and given that they were released on a weekly basis, awfully repetitious to watch back-to-back. (Sort of like reading collections of daily newspaper comic strips with continuing story lines.) But they're worth watching, and readily available on DVD.

Oh, and for the record, here's the first filmic James Bond, Barry Nelson, in a 1954 TV adaptation of Casino Royale. However, purist though I may be, I am prepared to make allowances for the fact that Nelson's version of Bond was Americanized, and referred to as "Jimmy Bond." Thus I object only slightly if at all to Sean Connery's being called the first James Bond.

Major Bother

2011-06-29T18:13:00.000-05:00

Here is a screen grab of the sign-in page for Mail.com from a little while ago:

As you can see, Mail.com follows the lead of many other free e-mail services by dangling before me various “news” items that they for some reason think I will want to read on my way to getting my mail. They are almost always wrong. But this particular item caught my eye for one simple reason: The headline is about Charlie Sheen. But the photo, from the movie Major League, features Corbin Bernsen and Tom Berenger.

And, I’m thinking, maybe the top of Sheen’s head there at the bottom of the frame.

That struck me as a little odd, but having never seen Major League, I thought perhaps it’s not easy to find a photo of Sheen from that movie.

So I did a Google image search for Major League +Charlie Sheen. And got this (.21 second later, if you must know):

Conclusion: Laziness at Mail.com. My guess is that photos are automatically cropped to fit the display window, and no one could be bothered to manually crop the photo so that the subject of the story would in fact be shown in the photo.

Meanwhile, what exactly is there in a story about Charlie Sheen taking drugs while making a movie more than a decade ago that qualifies it as “breaking news”?

Things that Give Sober Men Pause

2011-06-22T21:02:00.000-05:00

E-mail and the interweb are big sources of entertainment...and I’m not talking about cat videos, entertaining as those are. No, I mean the regular stuff that lands in my inbox or otherwise drifts across my monitor. Like what, you ask? Why, I just happen to have some examples!

First, another item for our Did Nobody Read This Before it Got Sent Out? category (previous entries may be found here, here, and here:

As you will not, even though the authors of this survey did not, all of their age categories overlap. It so happens that I am 54: do I chose 45-54. which includes my age, or 54-60, which...um, includes my age? Even though I am a few days past the halfway mark to my next birthday, I decided to chose 45-54, as you see. But had someone taken two seconds to think about it, he or she would have edited out the overlaps.

Now here’s this handy “Helps and Hints” box from a student aid form that we filled out last weekend:

Ah, I see: When it asks for “student’s first name,” we must “enter the student’s first name.” My, that is helpful to know! But “Helps and Hints” doesn’t tell us what to do if we happened to have given our child a name that doesn’t “contain only letters (A-Z), numbers (0-9), periods (.), or blanks (spaces)”—you know, if we named our kids J@net or £loyd or something. Apparently “Helps and Hints” only take you so far.

The strangeness of Twitter—and the whole social networking arena—is practically without limit, but this notice that landed in my inbox a day or two ago is the most intriguing one I’ve seen in quite some time. And by “intriguing,” I of course mean “strange”:

So this very attractive young woman (if in fact it is a woman, or young. The person in the picture is both of those things, but you’ll have to take my word for it, and one has no way of knowing whether various profile photos are legit or scanned from a magazine) wants to meet “anyone in the Baltimore area,” even though she seems to live in Indianapolis. Huh. Well, she does say she’s new to “the area,” so maybe she just landed in Baltimore and hasn’t yet changed her profile to reflect that. Okay. But here’s the next puzzler: As of the day this arrived in my mailbox, she had posted a grand total of two, count ’em, two tweets...and yet she somehow has 107 followers! I get that there’s a whole contingent of Twitterers for whom the object of the game is to amass as many followers as possible, no matter what (quantity trumps quality, evidently), and that supposedly there is a bizarre etiquette (to which I do not subscribe: see here) that says if someone follows you you are honor bound to follow back. But why would I be the least bit interested in following someone who doesn’t seem to tweet anything? I don’t get it at all.

But I bet by now she has twice as many followers.

Seeking Advice from the Vast Interweb

2011-06-20T21:26:00.000-05:00

All right, let’s see how good this whole social networking thing really is:

For the first time ever, I am going to put forward an actual, honest-to-goodness request for advice, and see where it gets me. If anywhere. I plan to publish this request via Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and will let you know what happens.

I’m looking for direction regarding a DVR.

Background: A few years ago, for very little money, I purchased from Geeks.com a Lite-On DVR, not unlike that which is pictured here. It has a TV tuner (not a very good one, but it does have it) but no hard drive. It records directly to disc—DVD+RW, DVD-RW, DVD-R, and DVD+R, and maybe other formats I’ve forgotten and never used. Or at least it used to: About three weeks ago it suddenly lost its ability to recognize anything except a pre-recorded commercial DVD, which it plays like a charm. But it will not recognize the presence of any other disc, whether recorded or blank. One hears the mechanism working away for several minutes, after which it just gives up and pretends it doesn’t know what you’re talking about.

So I wish to replace it, and with something better. Which is where you come in, perhaps.

I don’t think I’m interested in TiVo: I’m not wild about the idea of adding another monthly fee into the mix. (Someone told me that there’s a no-service TiVo option, but if so I can’t find anything about it on their website.)

Here is what I want:

• A set-top DVR;

• with a built-in TV tuner;

• and a hard drive;

and

Naturally, if the purchase price doesn’t require me to take out a second mortgage, that would be okay too.

Some models I’ve seen online also include a VCR and the option to record either from disc to tape or tape to disc. That would be nice, but it’s not an essential feature.

So there. If you have a model you’d like to recommend, or warn me against, have at it. You can use the “comment” link here, e-mail me, or contact me on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, as applicable. I appreciate your time and expertise.

Pictures of Fathers for Father's Day

2011-06-19T10:48:00.000-05:00

(I still think it should be Fathers’ Day, but clearly I once again am swimming against the tide.)

Here’s a little something I cobbled together this morning: On the left we have a photo of my dad and his dad, Paul B. Reynolds, taken around 1967 at my grandfather’s house in Omaha. At top right, a photo of my mother’s dad, Carmine C. Caliendo, taken at his house in Omaha in, I would guess, the early 1960s. And at lower right, a photo of my dad’s grandfather, Samuel S. Reynolds, from a studio portrait made of his entire family in the early 1920s (judging from how young my grandfather looks in the same photo).

Somewhere in the mountains of photos I’ve lugged home from my parents’ house (and which, as Bob is my witless, I am going to get scanned and organized, somehow) I must have a photo of my dad’s other grandfather, William F. McGrail, and from my childhood I seem to recall a photo of my mom’s grandfather, Martino Caliendo, floating around, though I haven’t found it recently.

Anyhow, thanks, dads!

A Familiar Conundrum

2011-06-17T22:13:00.001-05:00

Familiar to me, at least. Maybe you’re more fortunate.

Here’s the set-up: Someone you know, and like, and perhaps are related to (maybe by marriage, maybe by blood) helpfully forwards to you yet another idiotic, had-you-taken-two-seconds-to-think-before-you-hit-send-you’d-have-realized-this-is-bullshit piece of...e-mail. And you are torn between setting the record straight and preserving the friendship.

Add into the mix that the e-mail in question is an ancient bit of balderdash that is endlessly recirculated as a slander against the current President of the United States, to wit, a baseless claim that “Obama made a policy that NO U.S. SERVICEMAN CAN SPEAK AT ANY FAITH-BASED PUBLIC EVENTS ANYMORE,” supposedly originating with one “Retired Vice Admiral Bob Scarborough, of Arlington , Va” (all punctuation oddities sic).

It is, of course, malarkey. As indicated above, anyone with a nickel’s worth of skepticism would catch the fragrance of horse crap, and either delete the thing immediately or take two and a half minutes to check it out. Snopes.com points out that the incident alluded to in the slanderous e-mail, in which an Army Green Beret was scheduled and then un-scheduled to speak at a Catch-A-Dream Foundation event, was in fact the result of an existing Department of Defense policy and “was NOT a function of any influence or directive from the President, nor was it a change in policy,” according to a statement from the Catch-a-Dream executive director, who added, “It is my understanding that the decision was based upon strict interpretation of an existing policy regarding involvement of military personnel in ‘fund-raising‘ activities.”

You can read the whole deal here. The message that was forwarded to me seems identical to the one quoted by snopes.com. Except mine came with a racist subject line—“FW: thats our boy”—so we should be under no illusions about the leanings of the message’s originator.

In most circumstances, I would be inclined to do one of two things, depending on the particulars of the case. I might send off a gently, even humorously corrective message. Or I might send off a more strongly worded corrective measure. The former is something I employ when someone sends something stupid but harmless, like hotel key cards contain your credit card account information and other vital statistics, or Al Gore is going to start charging you for every e-mail you send. (I’ve previously written about the nice old lady who was accustomed to sending such balderdash to a whole long list of recipients, including my previous workplace address. I would gently set her straight. She would send more balderdash. Repeat. Eventually she quit sending them, but I suspect that all she did was remove me from her list.)

The latter approach, which usually involved the phrase “anyone with half a brain” at some point, is what I use when there’s an actual slanderous lie in play, as is the case with the current e-mail.

But the problem is, the forwarder of the message, as indicated, is someone I like, and I’m having trouble coming up with a way to correct his stupidity without making him feel, you know, stupid, which, I find, is the sort of thing that strains friendships.

I suppose I could send an e-mail burst to everyone who received the message, which would include my friend as well as the jerk who first passed it along (from a business address, which, along with the inability to correctly render the contraction of “that is,” and the inability to put recipients’ addresses in the BCC field, shows us exactly how sharp a cookie we’re dealing with here). But it’s a tough call.

And in the end I am plagued also with the knowledge that people who share such slanders aren’t interested in the truth anyway. We see it all the time. Hell, a bunch of them are running after the GOP presidential nomination even as we speak, and a bunch more are cheering them on.

Meantime, I can’t pretend that I don’t feel less fond of my friend now. I’ve always known he tilts toward the right, but I always thought he was more fair-minded than appears to be the case. I’ll try to convince myself that he’s merely gullible and not the least bit mean-spirited, racist, or sladerous.

Yeah, that should work.

A Fistful of Quotations

2011-06-15T21:58:00.001-05:00

Blimey, it’s been awhile since I last posted some of the quotations I’m forever collecting here and there on the interwebs. Must make up for lost time!

“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.” —Mark Twain

“A great democracy has got to be progressive or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy.” —Theodore Roosevelt

“A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted.” —Jules Renard, author (1864-1910)

“Perhaps contradictions are not impediments to the spiritual life but an integral part of it.” —Parker J. Palmer

“Whenever there is some silence around you — listen to it.” —Eckhart Tolle

“Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.” —Melody Beattie

“Today we may not fully appreciate the workplace as a laboratory where matters of soul are worked out.” —Thomas Moore

“Belief is more complicated than either the believers or the disbelievers among us are usually willing to admit.” —Rabbi Brad Hirschfield

“Many are the connections, it seems to me, between learning and healing.” —Laurent A. Daloz

“Boredom is the feeling that everything is a waste of time; serenity, that nothing is.” —Thomas Szasz, author, professor of psychiatry (b. 1920)

“Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.” —George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” —Confucius

“Hope is the dream of a waking man.” —Aristotle

“A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.” —Victor Hugo

It's Good to Have Choices. I Guess.

2011-06-14T21:30:00.000-05:00

A couple of things that came on my radar screen of late, and which for one reason or other amused.

First up, this from Outback Steakhouse, asking me to select my “favorite Outback location.” This will be easy:

On the other hand, sometimes you can have too many choices. Or a couple of choices that leave you scratching your head a bit:

“Best describes.” Also, “Select one answer.” I don’t know why, but something about that just seems wrong.

I get that the Outback “choice” is the result of one-size-fits all programming. But the gender question--which comes from one of the online surveys that I take fewer and fewer of all the time, and this is one of the reasons—is just the result of not taking the time to have someone else read it over and say, “You know, this sounds kind of weird.”

Which is why it’s pleasant, in my current gig, to have a boss who understand the importance of good writing and who is a pretty decent editor himself, as well as a volunteer who comes in every week to proofread for me before I send publications to press—and who also knows what she's doing, having worked as a proofreader before her retirement.

Even so, the bugaboos will slip through. Sometimes, I’m the only one who notices them. I hate those the most.

A Blind Octopus

2011-06-09T18:09:00.001-05:00

Seems like only yesterday I was reporting on being pestered by creditors who obviously have lost track of one of their debtors—specifically, a Wendy J. Reynolds, who, as I have to keep telling people

a. Does not live at this address

b. Never has lived at this address¹

c. Is in no way related to or known by me

d. So quit calling me and sending me mail in regard to this person

In fact, I see that it’s been nearly three months (“Guesswork,” posted March 12, 2011), which I suppose is about all I can expect in that various collection agencies are flailing about like blind octopi trying to find their deadbeat. As indicated in “Guesswork,” I assume they decided to start picking on me because I have the same initials as their debtor, which, after all, is pretty conclusive.

Today’s mail brought the latest blind-octopus attempt, this time from an outfit calling itself Asset Acceptance, LLC, of Warren, Michigan. (A company that a lot of people seem to be unhappy with, as a quick Google search reveals, but I suppose that’s neither here nor there.

The infamous Wendy seems to owe Xcel Energy around $300. (In fact, the letter refers to “Xcel Energy dba Northern States Power Company Minnesota,” which intrigues me, for the very simple reason that I don’t live in Minnesota. Is it possible that these creditors and their minions not only have lost Wendy but are in fact looking for her in the wrong state? Well, sure it is. Given the obvious fact that these collections outfits are plainly guessing their way along, and sharing erroneous information about their debtors’ whereabouts as they do so, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to discover that the elusive Wendy not only has never lived at my address but has never even lived in my Area Code.) Actually, Asset Acceptance, LLC, is making Wendy a pretty sweet offer, willing to settle for half what they say she owes, less one cent.

Makes me feel kind of like a chump for paying my bills in full all the time.

Anyhow, the letter included a toll-free number and the extension’0’of a “Christi Wright, Debt Collector” (points for honesty: a couple of years ago I received a letter for Wendy from an outfit that claimed to be able to put her in touch with money that she was owed, which I thought was a halfway clever approach), so I dialed.

First thing: The welcoming recording tells me that if I know my party’s four-digit extension, I should enter that now followed by the pound key. Although I am virtually certain that 0 is only one digit, I enter it anyway, and the pound key. And am told by the recording that if I know my party’s four-digit extension number, I should enter that now followed by the pound key.

Yeah. Good. I’ll just wait.

By and by a nice bloke comes on the line and asks how he can help me. And I tell him I’ve received this letter (latest in the series. Collect them all) for a Wendy J. Reynolds, who

a. Does not live at this address

b. Never has lived at this address

c. Is in no way related to or known by me

d. So quit sending me mail in regard to this person

And he says, “Let me look that up,” and then tells me that they sent it to such-and-such address, which I already knew ’cause it’s my address, and kind of the point of the exercise here is to inform them that my address is, you know, wrong, and they should remove it from their database.

Which he promises they will.

And you know what? I believe him. Just as I believed the guy back in March who left a note on my door because he wanted to serve papers on the mysterious Wendy, and just as I believed the woman a couple of years ago who really really wanted to help Wendy retrieve all this money that was owed her.

I believe each of them was sincere in telling me that they’d take my address or phone number off their list. And I believe it won’t do a damn bit of good, because The System now has it in its far-flung listing that Wendy J. Reynolds is associated with my address and phone number, and good luck ever getting that expunged completely. At some future point, some other outfit will go looking for her, and my address will pop up, like the villain at the end of a James Bond movie.

So we’ll see how long before the sequel comes around.

In the meantime, I leave you with this thought: As previously indicated, it’s been plain to me for some time that these creditors and collection agencies, having lost their quarry, are just guessing as to her whereabouts. That might make some sense if, say, she had run up credit-card debt and then skipped town. But you will recall that this latest letter is on behalf of Xcel Energy, which is a provider of electricity. Electricity, in my experience, is something that must be delivered to a particular location. You don’t go to the mall and buy a bunch of electricity and then skip out on the bill.

By necessity, the electric company must know where you live.

And, in this instance, for that woman, it ain’t here.

Which means that these guys are guessing even more blindly than I had previously thought!

_____

¹We bought our current house, some 16 years ago, from friends who had lived here as tenants and eventually owners for nearly 40 years previous to that. So I can state with authority that no Wendy Reynolds has lived here in the past 50-plus years or so, which in my book is as close to “never” as it needs to be.

Unplugged

2011-06-06T09:42:00.004-05:00

For reasons as yet still mysterious, my office computer, a clunky Windows POS of indeterminate age, refuses to go online today. (I tend to blame my coworkers who, when I wasn’t here on Friday, decided to move “my” PC to another location. If they’re going to do that, I wish they’d forget to bring it back. But that’s another story for another day.)

As it happens, I am converting the weekend’s DVDs to MP4s, also on another PC (one that handles the chore in a less glacial fashion than the ancient, steam-powered model in my office), and from that PC I was able to make the web updates. But the rest of it simply lies idle for the nonce.

It is astounding how much work a person can’t get done when he can’t go online! I had intended to make some website changes...nope. E-mail? Hah. I can’t even work on publications, since the files are on the network shared drive, and the drive is inaccessible on my PC. Such is the nature of my work that I literally have no other task with which to occupy myself until the tech guy shows up. And so I find myself at the “other” PC, watching Handbrake do its thing in one window and Vimeo Uploader do its thing in the other. Forced idleness is a terrible thing.

Update: Turns out I was right to blame my coworkers.

The Best Google Doodles Ever!

2011-06-05T08:28:00.000-05:00

Today’s Google Doodles commemorate the birthday of the great Richard Scarry (1919-1994). The kids and I had a lot of fun with his wonderful books back in the day.

Here’s the main Doodle:

And here's a “mini-Doodle” featuring Lowly Worm:

These are certainly The Best Google Doodles Ever!

The News That Fits

2011-06-04T19:33:00.001-05:00

Spent a couple of minutes this evening with Paper.li, creating a paper that I have dubbed Eclectica: News That Fits. So far it’s built only on my Twitter account (@wjreynolds); we’ll see what transpires into the future.

The following, I think, is intended to appear among all the clutter at the left of this column. I’m after thinking that more clutter is not what the left side of this page needs, but I was curious to see how it looked, so here it is:

The News That Fits is, of course, a play on The New York Times’s motto, “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” But for me it goes back to my adolescence and a Mad magazine parody (I think. Maybe it was Cracked; maybe National Lampoon—it’s been a few months), with a newspaper proudly displaying the motto “All the News That Fits, We Print.” Under current circumstances it seemed, well, fitting.

Give Eclectica: News That Fits a once-over, if you’re so inclined. Pointers from veteran Paper.li users is always appreciated. As are anonymous cash donations, but I hold out scant hope.

Born to Loose

2011-06-02T20:12:00.001-05:00

Just got this great tweet on (well, of course) Twitter:

Hi there, gain muscle quickly and loose fat easily with these secret techniques: http://tinyurl.com/zzzzzzz

I love messages like this, which is a good thing since I seem to get plenty of them on Twitter these days. Even with no more than 140 characters to deal with, you can still find a lot of fun in them.

For instance, “secret techniques. ” Sad to say, fellow Twitterer, but the mere fact that you are promulgating these techniques across the vast landscape of social media kind of blows the whole “secrecy ” thing. I suggest you go with “these anything-but-secret techniques. ”

And then there’s the fat. While I think it would be a good idea to lose some fat, I can’t get on board with the push to “loose fat easily, ” or any other way, since it seems manifestly unfair for me to “loose” fat on the world. Also, it sounds gross.

Some people, I’ve noticed, play fast and loose with the word lose.

I enjoy Twitter a lot, and it’s fun to get new followers and, sometimes, follow same, but I’ve long since given up on “following back ” everyone who follows me. For one thing, a certain number of them, on close examination, prove to be right-wingnuts, birthers, and racist slanderers of POTUS. I can’t for the life of me figure out why they’d want to read my tweets, and I know for a fact that I have no interest in reading theirs. (Don’t for a second delude yourself into thinking maybe they’re interested in a wide spectrum of political opinions. Their tweets give the lie to that idea.)

There’s another bunch—although their numbers seem to have dropped off, at least in my little corner of the Twitterverse—who have opened an account, are following perhaps 100 or more tweeters, but have yet to tweet or retweet a single item. Obviously everyone has to start from zero, but you would think there’d be some effort to quickly bring that into positive numbers—how else are people to decide whether a given person is worth following?

Lately I’m starting to get followed by a lot of local businesses and services...local, that is, to some other part of the country. I’m not going to follow back a carpet cleaning service in Tuscaloosa or someplace, unless the majority of their tweets are of general interest—and interesting general interest—as opposed to their great Memorial Day specials. I state clearly in my Twitter profile where I live, and it’s nowhere near Tuscaloosa. I get that for some Twitterers the object of the game is to get as many followers as possible, but, really, people, qualify the list a little bit first!

The ones who really fascinate me, though, are the ones who are removed from Twitter before I even have a chance to view their profile upon receiving e-mail telling me they’re following me. I assume they’ve committed some sort of blatant TOS violation, but wow. What on earth did they do to be closed down almost instantly?

Perhaps they loosed fat on an innocent world. Or the Twitter offices.

How Low Can You Go?

2011-06-01T21:18:00.000-05:00

Those who know me know that I am at least a quasi misanthrope at the best of times. But occasions such as that which occurred just this evening serve to solidify my longstanding motto, Populus es haud damno bonus (“People Are No Damn Good”).

My wife and I are just back from our cemetery tour, first watering the planters at my parents’ grave, then heading out of town a ways to the little country-church cemetery where my wife’s grandparents and great aunt repose. At the latter venue we discovered that the planter of flowers that my wife and her mother had put together and placed for Memorial Day is nowhere to be seen.

While we were marveling at this turn of events, a couple who had been driving slowly through the small cemetery stopped and struck up conversation. Seems their family’s grave had been looted as well, with a couple of hanging pots of plants appropriated from shepherd’s hooks.

Charming.

I can easily excuse a starving man who steals a loaf of bread—or money to purchase a loaf of bread. In the grand scheme of things, that’s an awfully petty offense. But to steal plants and flowers from graves? That is a crime of near-complete depravity. Not depraved as in murder or child molestation or other heinous crimes, obviously, but depraved in the sense that it is a completely pointless crime. Nobody needs a planter of flowers. There’s no black market on which to sell them. It’s just stealing for the sake of stealing.

Much of the drive back to town was spent pondering exactly how low a person must be to steal from a grave. I think such an act ranks below even stealing from the church poor-box. It may not be the lowest act of theft, but I’m hard pressed to think of anything worse offhand.

Mostly what I think are the immortal words of Daffy Duck:

“You’re despicable.”

Paging Mrs. Malaprop!

2011-06-01T08:45:00.000-05:00

As is so often the case, the comments on various articles and news items are at least as entertaining as the articles themselves. Here’s a new (to me) malapropism that I came upon in a comments section just this morning:

“Here is the crust of the problem...”

The author has some other problems, too, besides his crust—the apparent lack of a ? key on his keyboard, an inability to unravel the subtle nuances between your and you’re, and so on—but none is as unique or interesting as the crust of his problem.

This looks like a job for Malaprop Man!

One wonders if the crux of the problem in such cases might not be hearing related. I read once that Norm Crosby, “King of the Malaprop,” came to his hilarious wordplay by virtue of an undiagnosed hearing problem that caused him, in childhood, to understand words almost correctly—drinking decapitated coffee, requesting a cold one from the beertender, and so on.

Sometimes, I know, it’s just a matter of misunderstanding a given expression or colloquialism. I knew a fellow in college who was wont to “get down to brass tactics”...and in the years since I’ve known probably half a dozen others who have shared his desire.

Not really a malapropism but still funny is the wildly off-base expression employed by a parish priest of my acquaintance several decades ago. Obviously he had come upon the expression “fly in the ointment,” but misunderstood “fly” to be the verb form. Thus it was that his homilies occasionally would refer to this or that action of Jesus that “flew in the ointment” of the religious leaders of the day. Makes me wonder if he knew what “ointment” is.

Washington, Oregon, Whatever

2011-05-24T19:40:00.001-05:00

I have no idea what is going on at The Daily Beast these days. Not that I ever did. But in yesterday's "Cheat Sheet," as indicated here, they had the president "chugging" Guinness at an Irish pub, when the referenced article in fact indicates he drank about two thirds of a pint. ("Chugging" implies downing an entire drink at one go). And today, well, today they have this:

Not sure what good it will do Mr. Kucinich that there are openings in Oregon when, it appears, he may be moving to Washington. But, as the saying goes, whatever.

By this evening, I observe, the Cheat Sheet section of the Daily Beast's website has been corrected. That's the beauty of the internet.

Here's another beautiful thing: At the same time that the Daily Beast seems to have forgotten all about accuracy, proofreading, and junk like that, here's their current front page, proving that irony is far from dead.

Never Let Accuracy Get in the Way of a Headline

2011-05-23T17:38:00.000-05:00

This from today’s “Afternoon Scoop” from The Daily Beast:

Really. The President of the United States “chugs” a Guinness. Huh.

Well, for one thing, being of Irish background Mr. Obama certainly knows, instinctively, that one does not “chug,” “slam,” or “throw back” a Guinness. One sips it, so as to be able to enjoy the complexity of flavors that make Guinness the exemplar of all beers. At most, one quaffs it. But sipping is recommended. On this point I am unanimous.

Then there’s the little matter of the story itself. Click through to the article at National Journal, and you will read this (which, apparently, the staff of The Daily Beast had no time for):

When he finished talking, Obama said, “And with that, let me have a pint.” After being cheered for taking the first swig of his pint of Guinness, Obama announced, “I just want you to know the president pays.” The normal price of a pint of Guinness is 3.75 euros. He finished at least three quarters of the pint.

Not having been there, I cannot comment on the use of the word “swig,” except to reference my comment above in re sipping. But given that the standard definition of “chug” means to down a drink at one go, without stopping for air, but the National Journal indicates that the president finished “at least three quarters of the pint,” I think it safe to conclude that “chug” was a pretty poor choice of verb.

But I have observed over time that The Daily Beast is little concerned with accuracy where its “Cheat Sheet” headlines are concerned. Provocative trumps precise every time.

Yes, This Sounds Familiar

2011-05-11T09:17:00.000-05:00

This comes from Clients from Hell. I have had similar conversations with people.

Me: “How can I help you today, ma’am?”

Client: “Is e-mail internet”?

Me: “I beg your pardon?”

Client: “Is e-mail on the internet? I have no internet, can I still read my e-mail?”

Me: “Well yes, you must be able to get online to view your e-mail.”

Client: “Oh, dear. I can’t see my e-mail.”

Me: “Well, let’s see. Can you open up Internet Explorer for me and tell me what you see?”

Client: “Open what?”

Me: “Your browser, can you open up your browser?”

Client: “My…my…?”

Me: “What you click on when you want to browse the internet?”

Client: “I don’t use anything, I just turn my computer on, and it’s there.”

Me: “Okay. Do you see the little blue ‘e’ icon on your desktop?”

Client: “You mean I have to start writing letters again?”

Me: “I’m…what, I’m sorry?”

Client: “I don’t have any pens at my desk. I just want my e-mail again.”

Me: “No, ma’am, your desktop, on your computer screen. Can you click on the little blue ‘e’ on your computer screen for me?”

Client: “Oh, this is too much work. I’m too upset. Just send me my e-mail. Can’t you send me my e-mail?”

Me: “We…okay, ma’am. Can you tell me what color the lights are on your router right now?”

Client: “My what?”

Me: “The little box with green or possibly a couple of red lights on it right now - it’s most likely near your computer?”

Client: “Lights and boxes, boxes and lights, just get my e-mail for me.

Me: “My test is showing that you should be able to get online right now. Can you tell me what you’re seeing on your computer screen?”

Client: “It’s been the same thing for the last two hours.”

Me: “An error message?”

Client: “No, just stars. It’s black and moving stars.”

Me: “…Do you see your mouse next to your keyboard?”

Client: “Yes.”

Me: “Move it for me.”

Client: “Move it?”

Me: “Yes. Move it.”

Client: “My e-mail!”

Why I Quit Taking Surveys

2011-05-06T16:31:00.000-05:00

Readers of this page will know that I used to take a lot of online surveys. They were kind of fun, and put me into the running to win prizes that I never won or to earn points that expired before I could amass enough to acquire that nifty looking ballpoint pen or some other glitzy trinket. I stopped doing them, for the most part, because they had become repetitious, as well as...well, here’s this:

Perhaps you see the problem. The correct answer to the question is, in fact, zero. But zero is not an option, nor is the question optional. Because the originators of the survey failed to sufficiently think through their design, I am left with two choices:

1. Lie

2. Quit

I chose the latter, not only because of my legendary devotion to total honesty (made that up) but also because if the survey writers make a boneheaded mistake like this at the beginning of the process, the odds are not good that the rest of the undertaking will be any better.

Besides, I suddenly remembered why I had quit taking so many surveys.

And Still They Say

2011-05-06T15:19:00.000-05:00

Some more quotations. Once upon a time, nearly all of the quotations that I shared in these pages came from the wonderful newsletter A Word a Day, but now—thanks to the astounding power of Twitter—they come from all over this great land of ours. Better than e-mailed cartoons, even. Or pretty close.

“A witty saying proves nothing.” —Voltaire

“Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time.” —Chinese Proverbs

“In youth we feel richer for every new illusion; in maturer years, for every one we lose.” —Madame Anne Sophie Swetchine, mystic (1782-1857)

“There is only one success—to be able to spend your life in your own way.” —Christopher Morley

“Gentleness in every kind of behavior: that is the praise of the wise man.” —Egyptian Proverb

“Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.” —George Bernard Shaw

“I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.” —Gerry Spence

“A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.” —Henrik Ibsen

“An expert is someone called in at the last minute to share the blame.” —Unknown

“It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer.” —Albert Einstein

“My life has a superb cast but I can’t figure out the plot. —Ashleigh Brilliant.

“We may have filled our lives so full of other things that we have no room to receive our blessings.” —Rachel Naomi Remen, My Grandfather’s Blessings

“Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together.” —Carl Zwanzig

“It’s not good to make sentimental journeys. You see the differences instead of the sameness.” —Mary Astor

“More people have been brought into the church by the kindness of real Christian love than by all of the theological arguments in the world, and more people have been driven from church by the hardness and ugliness of so-called Christianity than by all of the doubts in the world.” —William Barclay, theologian (1907-1978)

“Neuroscientists, developmental biologists, psychologists, social scientists, and researchers from every point of the scientific compass now know that play is a profound biological process.” —Stuart Brown, MD

“Every conversation is a form of jazz. The activity of instantaneous creation is as ordinary to us as breathing.” —Stephen Nachmanovitch

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” —Oscar Wilde, writer (1854-1900)

“Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.” —Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“Care of the soul is a continuous process that concerns itself not so much with ‘fixing’ a central flaw as with attending to the small details of everyday life, as well as to major decisions and changes.” —Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul : A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life

Amusing. Also True.

2011-05-02T10:43:00.000-05:00

Someone else posted this on Facebook. Not sure of its origins. Amusing enough, but it does tend to underscore the fact that there is real, serious stuff going on in the world, despite the tomfoolery of GOP presidential hopefuls, Faux News pundits, and the Great Unhinged.

And Where Was the News?

2011-05-02T06:38:00.000-05:00

Like millions of Americans (I presume), I was in front of the television set late last night awaiting the president's comments on the death of Osama bin Laden. After a certain amount of channel surfing, in which we saw a lot of talking heads all saying pretty much the same things, we ended up on CBS.

As I waited for the president, I also had Twitter running on my phone. Tellingly, it was Twitter that first brought me the news of bin Laden's demise. (Actually, it was my wife calling down from upstairs shortly before 10:00 p.m. CDT that a friend of our son had just texted him the news, prompting me to check Twitter. It would be several minutes before my e-mail started popping with news alerts from various sources.) By and by, tweets began to appear describing scenes of celebrating crowds that had gathered in front of the White House, cheering, chanting, and singing the national anthem.

And then CBS's White House bloke interrupts himself to say that his producer had just stepped outside and reported back that crowds had gathered, cheering, chanting, etc.

And my thought was, Where was the news?

Here we have a guy standing in front of a sign saying CBS News White House, and reporting that his producer ran outside to see what was going on. But where were the pictures? It seems to me that even two or three years ago, the reporter would have interrupted himself to throw to another reporter out on Pennsylvania Avenue, showing us the cheering, chanting, singing crowds. But that costs money, I suppose, so instead we have a talking head telling us what is going on outside the building.

I might as well have been listening on the radio.

Or reading it on Twitter.

Damn! Forgot the Camera Again!

2011-04-30T16:49:00.003-05:00

As will sometimes happen, local daily had an interesting letter in it this morning:

Where were the women and children?

In the Voices section of the April 23 Argus Leader was a picture of the Last Supper. The picture was a good one, but what it portrayed was completely inaccurate. Where were the women and children?

Everywhere that Jesus went, he was accompanied by women and children. He loved them. He cared for them. He always had them near.

Most biblical stories are about men. Two thousand-plus years ago, the roles of women were much restricted, and women were treated as inferior to men. The role of women in Christianity and Judaism was as if they were invisible, which resulted in men being all there was when the Bible was written. And, of course, we need to remember that the Bible was written by men.

In biblical usage the term “disciple” often means “student,” someone who believes in a person’s message and who tries to follow that person’s values and teachings. “Apostle” means “one who is sent forth as a messenger.” Using such definitions, all female and male followers of Jesus could be considered his disciples.

According to Wikipedia, there are at least 53 named women who were disciples and/or apostles of Jesus.

Not much has changed in the past 2,000-plus years. Women still are restricted and treated as inferior to men. If Jesus was physically here with us now, he would be appalled. It is past time that the good old boys woke up to the fact that without women, there would be “nothing” and “no one.”

I hope that the next time I see a picture of the Last Supper, I won’t have to ask, “Where are the women and children?”

Rev. Ed D. Crowson

Pierre

Letters such as this always provoke in me a chuckle. “The picture was a good one, but what it portrayed was completely inaccurate.”

Really? Completely inaccurate?

Am I to conclude, then, that the letter’s author was there?

No one, apparently, had the presence of mind to bring a camera to the Last Supper, so it’s hard to say who, precisely, was there.

The biblical accounts reference “the twelve,” but they don’t say “the twelve and nobody else,” nor do they say “the twelve and a bunch of women and children and two puppy dogs,” so that’s all up in the air.

Note that I am not quibbling with the Reverend’s comments on the sexist nature of the Bible, since I happen to agree with him on that score, for the most part. Nor am I arguing about whether any or all portions of the Bible actually happened, for that is irrelevant to the matter at hand.

Which is the claim made about the portrayal of the Last Supper. Viz., “completely inaccurate.”

Completely inaccurate?

Well, let’s see. Anyone reading the biblical record (the only source) would have to conclude that, for one, Jesus was there, and the twelve disciples, too—so that much of it must be accurate enough. Perhaps the picture is incomplete and other people, unmentioned for whatever reason or no reason at all, were indeed present. But to say that the rendition is “completely inaccurate” is...yep, completely inaccurate.

What Does it Mean When You Pose the Question and Then Don't Answer it?

2011-04-25T16:30:00.000-05:00

I’ve received notice from my credit union that its board has decided to merge with another local credit union. I’m not keen on the idea—my experience has been that when credit unions decide they need to be bigger, service suffers—and I think it should have been put to a vote of the members (evidently the other credit union’s members get to vote, but not ours), but what really caught my attention in the “information” packet I received in the mail was how little real information it contained. And what a dandy job its creators did of dancing around questions...even though they were the ones posing the questions!

Take this example, for, um, example:

Okay, good to know...but tell me: How much is the merger going to cost??

Sort of never gets around to saying. And much of what little id does say makes no sense. “...instead of two computer systems, we will operate on just one.” Uh-huh. Well, I can tell you how much money that will save the current members of my credit union: Precisely nothing at all. See, my credit union currently operates one computer system. The other credit union, a competitor, operates its own, as does every other credit union in town. What they do is not an expense to me or my fellow members, just as what wedo is not an expense for them. The same goes for “combining facilities, our insurance bond, card programs, and much more”—these are not duplicated expenditures, as implied, since currently the two businesses are completely separate. The idea that merging two independent businesses cuts duplicated expenses is ludicrous. It’s tantamount to saying that if I double my expenses, then cut them, I’ve “saved” money.

And while there may be “cost savings” in the future—real cost savings, I mean, not sleight-of-hand “savings”—it bothers me that not even ballpark guesstimates are being put forward. Absent any figures, it’s impossible to judge whether the board is indeed accurate in claiming that bigger will in fact be any better for the members.

Looks like I might have to drag myself to one of the “informational meetings,” even though it feels like a waste of time. We don’t get to vote, and it’s obvious where the big shots weigh in on the deal. Still, my longstanding motto is You have to make your own fun, so perhaps I’ll turn up and ask some salient questions.

Like, How much is the $!#@&% merger going to cost??

Maybe Sex Sells After All!

2011-04-25T09:58:00.000-05:00

I mentioned in passing nearly a month ago (“Catching My Eye,” March 26, that USA Today’s Tech Briefing had been touting for several weeks already the article “Free porn on ‘tube sites’ puts a big dent in industry”—and I expressed my wish that I had been keeping track from the beginning so I could report on exactly how many months now they’ve been plumping this patently salacious headline.

However, I can report that USA Today has yet to give up on it: Here’s a screenshot of this morning’s Tech Briefing e-mail, with the porn headline still enjoying its place of honor. I assume it’s there after all this time because it continues to generate clicks, so maybe it is indeed true that sex sells.

Let’s not fool ourselves: I’m not particularly prudish, as anyone who’s read one or more of my detective novels can attest. My issue here is with the blatantly prurient intent attached to running this same link day after day, week after week, for well over a month now. Enough, already!

Even in the 21st Century!

2011-04-22T11:48:00.000-05:00

Shocking, just shocking!

I was in a local supermarket last evening when I espied this sign in an area being remodeled:

I would have hoped that by this point in the 21st century we might be beyond such blatant discrimination, but apparently not!

No, I did not venture over to the north side of the building. The thought of those poor Chinese people crammed into one corner of the place was too sad for me to bear.

To make the discrimination even more odious, the supermarket seems to have done away with its Chinese deli, which used to be located where the sign now is! Odd.

A Prepositional Bee in the Syntactical Bonnet

2011-04-19T07:06:00.000-05:00

Here’s an excerpt from the excerpt in today’s Delanceyplace.com e-mail, “The precision and clarity of Latin.” Given my profession and my inclinations, I’ve read many things about the strange histories of English language “rules,” but I’d never come across this anecdote before:

“Why is it ‘wrong’ to end a sentence with a preposition? ... Who, upon seeing a cake in the office break room, says, ‘For whom is this cake?’ instead of ‘Who’s the cake for?’ Where did this rule come from?

“The answer will surprise even most English teachers: John Dryden, the seventeenth-century poet less well known as an early, influential stickler. In a 1672 essay, he criticized his literary predecessor Ben Jonson for writing ‘The bodies that these souls were frightened from.’ Why the prepositional bee in Dryden’s syntactical bonnet? This pseudo-rule probably springs from the same source many others do: the classical languages. Dryden said he liked to compose in Latin and translate into English, as he valued the precision and clarity he believed Latin required of writers. The preposition-final construction is impossible in Latin. Hence: it is impossible in English. Confused by his logic? Linguists remain so to this day. But once Dryden proclaimed the rule, it made its way into the first generation of English usage books roughly a century later and thence into the minds of two hundred years of English teachers and copy editors.

“The rule has no basis in clarity (‘Who’s that cake for?’ is perfectly clear); history (it was made up from whole cloth); literary tradition (Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Samuel Johnson, Lord Byron, Henry Adams, Lewis Carroll, James Joyce, and dozens of other great writers have violated it); or purity (it isn’t native to English but probably stolen from Latin; clause-final prepositions exist in English’s cousin languages such as Danish and Icelandic). Many people know that the Dryden rule is nonsense. From the great usage-book writer Henry Fowler in the early twentieth century, usage experts began to caution readers io ignore it. The New York Times flouts it. The ‘rule’ should be put to death, but it may never be. Even those who know it is ridiculous observe it for fear of annoying others.”

This excerpt is from the book You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws, and the Politics of Identity by Robert Lane Greene. Read the entire excerpt at Delanceyplace.com.

The Candidate Candidate

2011-04-18T18:52:00.000-05:00

Recently I have been musing upon the notion that there is a new (in my lifetime, at least) breed of presidential candidate—for want of a better word—stalking the land. We have had in the past the Comic Candidate (e.g., Pat Paulsen), the Goofball Candidate (e.g., Lyndon LaRouche), the Once Relevant Candidate (e.g., Harold Stassen), the Irrelevant Candidate (e.g., Ralph Nader)...but to my knowledge we have not had until recently what I’ve come to think of as the Candidate Candidate.


Harvey Dunn, The Harvest Orator, South Dakota Art Museum.

Like someone who is “famous for being famous,” the Candidate Candidate is a candidate for no other reason than to be a candidate. He or she may or may not be serious about wanting to be president, but they seem to have little desire to do the actual work necessary to become president.

I suspect that Fred Dalton Thompson may have been the first Candidate Candidate. He seemed to want to be president, all right, but for no reason other than to be president. He stood for nothing, nothing that I could discern, at least. Early on there were some vague Reaganesque pronouncements and comparisons, but they never went anywhere—largely, I imagine, because Thompson had no depth. Perhaps the expectation was that the ghost of Reagan would cast some sort of aura around him that would propel him into the Oval Office. Guess not.

The consummate Candidate Candidate has got to be Sarah Palin, of course. Some might say she belongs in the Once Relevant Candidate category, but I dispute that she ever was relevant. No doubt those who, inexplicably, shoved her onto McCain’s ticket must have felt she had relevancy, but I believe they were sadly mistaken. And I believe history has shown me to be correct in my belief. Harold Stassen, who was, alas, something of a joke when I was a kid—this old guy from Minnesota who sought the Republican nomination every four years even though he had no chance at all of coming anywhere near the ticket—but he had a distinguished and important career in public service, not the least as a district attorney and three-time governor of Minnesota. (Yeah, he resigned midway through his third term, in 1943...but he did so in order to go on active duty with the Naval Reserve, not to have a half-baked TV series and go collect speaking fees.) Stassen was once relevant, and big time; Palin not so much.

But now a new contender emerges: Donald Trump. Why is he running? What does he hope to gain? Is it a publicity stunt? A circus act? Is he serious—and, if so, about what?

The man puts me in mind of a Fred Dalton Thompson with deep pockets. He may well want to be President...but beyond that, well, what is he? He seems only to be a Candidate Candidate—on the hustings for the sake of being on the hustings, apparently with no other agenda in mind. Eventually there will be a book deal, of course. Maybe another television show. But beyond that...as Gertrude Stein once said of her childhood hometown, “There is no there there.” So it is with Trump, to date. There is no him there.

It’s easy, and fun, to look upon Candidate Candidates as harmless buffoons, as a sideshow, to use the term most frequently applied to Trump. But there’s the real danger that one of them could catch fire, could in in fact end up in a position where he or she could do some real and lasting damage. “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people,” said H.L. Mencken, and he was and is right. You get enough people to believe that so-and-so is “one of us” or “tells it like it is” or whatever the sound bite of the day may be, and trouble will follow. In fact, you don’t actually need people so much, thanks to the likes of Fox Noise and the Koch Brothers.

Where’s Harold Stassen now that we need him. Hell, where’s Pat Paulsen?

You Mean I Have to Share the Road with THIS Jerk??

2011-04-16T08:27:00.000-05:00

This photo hardly does justice to the subject, but as you can tell, the circumstances were far from ideal: It was 7:29 this morning, there was a misty-drizzly action going on, and the light at 37th and Minnesota had just changed to green, meaning that the driver of the Volkswagen Beetle in front of me was compelled to floor it in order to, I dunno, get ahead of all the Saturday morning 7:29 a.m. traffic you see here.

Nor is the angle as advantageous as I would like, but perhaps it’s enough to set the scene: A few blocks farther south, this Beetle came flying past me in the right-hand lane. The speed limit at that point is 35; this driver was doing at least 40, maybe 45. Which is fine, except that the driver had to be about as blind as a blindfolded bat. You see the condition of the car’s back window? Well, except for a porthole scratched out in the side window and another on the driver’s side of the windshield, all of the car’s windows were in like condition.

Annoyingly, a few blocks north we encountered a southbound police car, but there was no joy there: The officer seemed not to notice that the driver’s field of vision was seriously compromised (a fancy way of saying nonexistent), and that he or she was continuing to drive in the 40-to-45-miles-per-hour range when the posted speed limit in this stretch is a mere 30 miles per hour.

Upon some reflection, I think I’d rather take my chances with a texting driver than this one.

Or Second. Or Third. Or So.

2011-04-05T17:04:00.000-05:00

This evening I happened to catch this ad for Law and Order: LA (a show which, just a couple of weeks ago I wondered aloud about the continued existence of...obviously having been mesmerized by the one and only episode of it I watched last fall).

What struck me was the apparent ignorance of the network, or the producers, or an advertising agency, or whoever wrote and approved these lines:

For the first time in twenty years, a Law and Order detective will fall.

Oh? Really?

If by “fall” they mean “will die,” then they obviously have forgotten the very first L&O lead detective, Sgt. Max Greevey, who was murdered in the 1991 episode “Confession.”

I imagine they would argue that Capt. Danny Ross, who was killed at the beginning of the ninth season of Law and Order: Criminal Intent does not qualify as a “detective”--but the fact that he was killed while working undercover sure makes it feel like he was another L&O detective to “fall.”

Perhaps there have been others as well--I don’t follow Law and Order: Special Victims Unit--but in any event, I’m thinking it’s not exactly accurate to portray this apparent killing-off of a Law and Order franchise detective as a “first.” More of a “second” or even “third.”

But, who's counting?

Still Standing. For Now

2011-04-04T20:50:00.000-05:00

So I typed in my address and got this map, indicating the state of the bridges within 10 miles of my house.

I presume the green icons represent bridges that are in decent shape (a helpful graphic should have a complete legend); the red ones, obviously, are not. Although the green icons, thankfully, outnumber the red ones, there's still a distressing number on red ones. Doesn’t fill a guy with a lot of confidence … especially since the red icon right next to the “pin” on the map is a bridge I use several times a week.

Amuse and/or frighten yourself by visiting http://t4america.org/resources/bridges/.

Random Unhelpfulness

2011-04-01T15:57:00.000-05:00

The other day I was reminded of a sign that used to be on a door at a past place of employment:

OPEN CAREFULLY, AS IF YOU WERE ON OTHER SIDE!

What idiotic advice. If I were on the other side, I wouldn’t need to open the door!

When I was a kid, you used to see little cards and tokens and whatnot that Catholics were encouraged to carry on them in case they were involved in a serious accident. My dad used to have one that sounded like the set=up for a bad joke:

I AM A CATHOLIC. PLEASE CALL ME A PRIEST.

Okay, you're a priest!

Filling out some forms, I came to this question:

NUMBER TO CALL IN CASE OF EMERGENCY

Well, 911, of course!

What He Said

2011-03-26T17:21:00.000-05:00

Previous visitors will know that I collect quotations from here and there in my travels. Some I disperse via Facebook and Twitter (too many quotations require more than 140 characters!); most I amass and then gang up here. Herewith, the latest batch:

“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.” —Susan B. Anthony

“What the world needs is more geniuses with humility; there are so few of us left.” Oscar Levant

“An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.” —Mohandas Gandhi

“Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.” —George Bernard Shaw

“Isn’t it ironic that in the continuing Atheist/Religious war the only side to have tortured and killed is the religious side.” —Baron von Knifty

“Several excuses are always less convincing than one.” —Aldous Huxley

“Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness.” —Jim Rohn

“Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.” —Tennessee Williams

“The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.” —Friedrich Nietzsche

“We ... must have a period in which we lie fallow, and restore our souls.” —Wayne Muller

“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.” —John Cage

“It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little.” —Sydney Smith

Catching My Eye

2011-03-26T12:13:00.001-05:00

A few recent things from the inbox that caught my eye. Click on the pictures for larger views.

It’s not just me: Thanksgiving does come earlier every year.

Is “No-Charge Shipping” different than “Free Shipping”? If so, how? If not, why not call it “Free Shipping”?

Sure, I’ve heard of ham steak. But ham from Omaha Steaks? That’s just wrong.

It’s good to have choices. Even when one of them kind of freaks me out.

USA Today’s Tech Briefing has been running this item for weeks now. Wish I had been keeping track from the beginning. The word “prurient” comes to mind.

Maybe It’s Not God’s Fault

2011-03-19T11:01:00.001-05:00

Yesterday on Facebook, Cathy Lynn Grossman posted an interesting little item from her Faith & Reason column at USA Today, “Japan’s suffering raises eternal question: Where’s God?” Many of the early comments (I haven’t looked at them since yesterday afternoon) were fairly predictable—from “Man let evil into the world, that’s why bad things happen” to “Well, that just proves there is no God”—but in instances such as this I’m always a little surprised that there seems to be nobody putting forward a third possibility: Maybe our expectations are wrong.

Well, nobody but me, at least.

Here was my comment on the Facebook post:

Or it could be that our notion of the nature of God and the role he may or may not play is mistaken.

(It came in the middle of a string of other comments, thus the “or.”)

Assuming for the sake of argument that there is indeed a entity behind creation—“God,” for simplicity’s sake—it seems to me that we have to ask ourselves what we know of the entity’s personality and behavior, and where we come by that knowledge. Most people will immediately point to the Bible. But of course the Bible is a human invention, and it hardly portrays a single cohesive portrait of God. I would not be the first to point out that the God of the Old Testament seems to be a completely different entity than the God of the New Testament. Some have put forward the idea that the former is a vengeful, ill-tempered God who ultimately was defeated by a loving, nurturing God.

It’s an interesting notion, and only serves to underscore my belief that what we profess to “know” about God has been invented by human beings—ourselves, and our ancient ancestors—and so when God fails to live up to our expectations, is it not in fact our fault and not God’s?

Perhaps—and again I acknowledge that I am hardly the first to come up with the idea—God’s role is to create a then step back and see what happens. In that context, the answer to the question of why bad things happen in the world is simply, That’s just how it goes. Storms roll in. Earthquakes occur. Trains derail. Illnesses take hold. People get hit by buses.

In short: Shit happens.

And we, in our hubris (and, I suspect, fear) say with unfounded certainty, “God is X, Y, and Z.” And when God instead seems to be Q or even M, we wring our hands and moan and wonder why God has “failed.” Why God has failed? Seriously?

Seems to me we have spent thousands of years setting God up to fail.

I know that scholars and theologians will object, and talk about that which has been “revealed” in texts and traditions. Maybe so. But it’s always looked like these “revelations” are the product of human endeavors. And humans get things wrong, humans have ulterior motives, humans are hidebound by their traditions and superstitions, humans are, well, only human.

All I’m saying is, maybe it’s time for God’s people to cut him a little slack.

Guesswork

2011-03-12T18:24:00.001-06:00

I don’t know about anyone else, but whenever I have taken out a loan or made any kind of major purchase, I have been required to provide name, rank, and serial number; thirty-two forms of identification; references from priests, pastors, rabbis, and a Scoutmaster; a pint of blood; and copies of my income-tax returns dating back to three years before I was born. All of which have left me with the distinct impression that any attempt on my part to skip out on payments will decidedly fall under the category You Can Run but You Can’t Hide. They have more than enough information to track me down no matter where I may flee.

But I wonder if I haven’t been giving The Establishment too much credit.

Off and on for the past two or three years, I have received letters and phone calls from various sources—collection agencies, mostly, several of whom work awfully hard to appear to be anything but a collection agency—looking for a Wendy J. Reynolds. It’s pretty apparent from the letters, many of which are conveying the “good” news that this or that creditor is willing to settle for a lesser amount if she steps up immediately, that Wendy owes a lot of people a lot of money.

And they’ve lost her.

Cast your memory back to my first paragraph, where I express all of the various hoops one traditionally must leap through in order to qualify for car loans, mortgages, etc. At the very least, every loan application I have ever made requires my Social Security Number, and triggers a credit check. You would think that between those two, no one could long elude The Establishment as it seeks repayment.

But you would, apparently, be mistaken.

Not only does it seem that this Wendy person has skipped, it also seems that her creditors and their minions have no idea at all where she’s gone to...nor where she’s come from. As I have explained multiple times (as recently as 20 minutes ago: read on), there is no such person at my address or phone number. Nor has there ever been. There is no member of my family named Wendy, and outside of my nuclear family there is no other Reynolds in town—or indeed the entire state—to whom I am related.

Leaving us with the question: Why are they bothering me?

And the answer: They’re guessing.

Having completely lost track of their quarry, they have in effect picked up the phone book and stuck a pin in the R section.

“Hey, Murray, this guy has the same initials as that dame we’re looking for!”

“Great Scott, Clarence, you’re right! Why, this has to be her hiding place!”

And so on.

And obviously as soon as one bright bulb came up with that idea, my address went into The System and—presto!—became Wendy’s address, an error that perpetuates itself ad infinitum.

For a brief interval, after a long run of letters and phone calls for Wendy, I thought I had perhaps made my case. I spoke with a nice woman who claimed that her company helped people locate missing money or some silliness, and implied that they were looking for Wendy in order to reunite her with long-lost funds. (It was, no doubt, a fun-house mirror version of the actual story. They undoubtedly do help people locate missing money, viz., they help their clients find debtors who’ve skipped. And they wanted to find Wendy in oder to reunite her with her creditors.) Anyhow, I explained the whole business to this nice woman, after which it seemed we were getting no more mail or calls for Wendy. I allowed myself to think that maybe the word had gone out on collection agencies’ network that my tree was not the right one to be barking up.

Hahahaha!

The other day as I left the house, I noted a small bit of yellow paper in a puddle on the sidewalk. Picked it up and read that some unnamed someone had “an URGENT delivery”—yes, that’s right, so urgent that “urgent“ was rendered in caps and boldface and was underscored—“for ___________________”—on which line was written a name that was scratched out and “Wendy Reynolds” inserted. It asked that one “please call” a number “as soon as possible for prompt delivery.” Yep, I thought, prompt delivery of a summons, and shoved the paper in my pocket, muttering a mild curse.

Well, another one appeared on the doorstep this afternoon, so I spent a couple of minutes with Google and to my complete lack of surprise discovered that the number belongs to a local process server.

So I called, and in what I hope was a polite but firm voice explained—yet again!—that there is no such person at my address, in my family, or anywhere at all in my orbit, and that I have grown mighty tired of constantly being harassed by the various entities looking for this woman. She is gone, friends, gone; she has eluded you completely; somehow she has gone so far off the grid that not even having her Social Security Number is of any use to you. It is as if she never existed at all. Time to admit defeat and stop hassling innocent bystanders.

Or maybe it’s time to call my own lawyer. Certainly that’s looking like the next step.

Education Is the Future

2011-03-05T10:39:00.000-06:00

I took a few moments yesterday to dash off notes to the Governor of South Dakota and my elected representatives from District 13. The governor, to address a budget crisis that, as a candidate while still lieutenant governor, he told us did not exist, has proposed a ten-percent across-the-board cut in the state budget. This would have the effect of eviscerating public education, in a state that already ranks at or near dead last in what it invests in its students. (And a state where one hears much wailing and gnashing of teeth because a great many of its young people pack up and leave to seek opportunity elsewhere. The two are not unconnected.)

Although probably a waste of time, there are instances in which it is good to be on the record on a given topic, and this is one of them. Here's what I sent to the governor; the sentiment if not the phrasing, was the same in the messages I sent to my legislators.

Dear Governor Daugaard,

I am writing to urge you to support and invest in the future of our state by working with the legislature to avoid crippling cuts to K-12 education that are under consideration in Pierre.

My fear is that in haste to balance the books we lose track of the inarguable fact that the future progress and prosperity of South Dakota depends on its children receiving a top-notch education, and that deep cuts today will have a negative effect on the quality of education for years into the future. I am sure you will agree that sacrifice the future of our state -- and of our children -- on the altar of austerity is false economy.

For the record, the proposed cuts would have virtually no effect on my family, since our youngest is only a year away from high-school graduation. My concern is for the generations of South Dakota children who follow, and for the continued advancement of our state into the future.

Thank you for supporting the future of South Dakota.

Sincerely,

William J Reynolds

One seriously doubts that even these glittering and well-reasoned sentences will change anyone's mind. But at least, in years to come, I can say with honesty that I did not sit silently while a Republican governor and Republican legislators gutted public education.

Buy Some Insurance, You Lowlife!

2011-03-03T11:55:00.000-06:00

This fax arrived at the office yesterday morning, proving once again that word placement does matter, and it’s always a good idea to have someone else read yoaur stuff over before you unleash it upon a world full of sarcastic editors:

Which is not to say that lowlifes don’t need insurance. In fact, they may need insurance more than anyone else.

A Brief Update from Egypt

2011-01-29T10:16:00.002-06:00

Here’s the latest we have from Egypt:

1. At 2:30 this morning (U.S. Central Time), we received a text message from Meredith informing us that texting, at least, was working again. She said everyone there is well and safe, and advised against putting too much stock in TV news reports. Apparently things there are indeed bad, but not as bad nor as widespread as the news makes it seem.

2. She texted again around 7:30 a.m. with this bulletin:

“Dude, they have Justice League in Arabic on TV!”

3. Cheered by this good news, we then inquired about her well-being, and she replied: "Good. Just chilling for the time being. They’re keeping us within the hotel/airport/airport mall complex until midnight, when my group will be bused to the international terminal.”

(Midnight in Cairo is 4:00 p.m. U.S. Central Time.)

So far, so good. More news as there is news.

Update to "Is LinkedIn Blocking References to Egypt? And Why?"

2011-01-28T09:50:00.000-06:00

After three attempts, LinkedIn accepted my posting of my previous blog entry, “Is LinkedIn Blocking References to Egypt? And Why?” But it still will not allow me to post the link to the original newspaper article. Curious.

Is LinkedIn Blocking References to Egypt? And Why?

2011-01-28T09:38:00.000-06:00

This is interesting: My daughter is quoted in an article that appeared in this morning’s local paper, “Augustana College band plays on amid turmoil in Egypt,” which, naturally enough, I decided to share with various friends and acquaintances. I posted a link to the article on Facebook and on Twitter with no problem, but when I attempted to share it on LinkedIn, I got this message—repeatedly, on several attempts over the course of a half-hour or so:

So I went on about my business, and later returned to LinkedIn. Same results. But in reading articles online about the Egyptian government’s cutting off internet and cellphone service (which our daughter notified us about this morning, calling from a pay phone in Cairo), something suddenly crossed my suspicious little mind.

I went back to LinkedIn and tried the post again. Same “something unexpected happened” non-result.

Then I attempted to post a link to a New York Times editorial about the curious case of the Arthur Conan Doyle estate authorizing a new Sherlock Holmes novel (“The Authorized Sleuth,” if you must know;), and seconds later there was the link, in all its glory, on my LinkedIn page or wall or feed or whatever they want to call it.

So I tried the Augustana Band link again...and “something unexpected happened” again. Only by now it wasn’t unexpected, at least not by me.

One hates to be the Boy Who Cried “Censorship!”—but one does come away with the distinct impression that the minds behind LinkedIn have decided to block the posting of items that pertain to or even merely mention Egypt, regardless of said items’ content. Since I habitually cross-post these little blog items to LinkedIn, it will be interesting to see if that link is allowed.

I may or may not try the Augie Band link again, omitting “Egypt” from the headline, and see if that passes LinkedIn’s watchdogs.

If indeed LinkedIn is practicing this sort of mindless, blanket censoring of its members’ posts, I predict I will be utilizing it a great deal less than has been my habit in the recent past. Which I’m sure must strike fear into its corporate heart. But if in fact that’s what’s going on here, it points to a corporate culture that I find completely odious, not to mention stupid, and one with which I would chose not to associate.

Stay tuned.

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign

2011-01-13T15:44:00.002-06:00

What I don’t know about the zodiac is only slightly less than how much I care about the zodiac, but this makes no sense to me.

According to Gawker.com, citing the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star-Tribune, astronomers have divined how the ancient Babylonians intended the zodiac to be “by recalculating the dates that correspond with each sign to accommodate millennia of subtle shifts in the Earth’s axis.” So far so good. But here is that “corrected” zodiac, “with the dates corresponding to the times of the year that the sun is actually in each constellation’s ‘house’”—whatever that means—“according to the Minnesota Planetarium Society’s Parke Kunkle”:

Capricorn: Jan. 20-Feb. 16.

Aquarius: Feb. 16-March 11.

Pisces: March 11-April 18.

Aries: April 18-May 13.

Taurus: May 13-June 21.

Gemini: June 21-July 20.

Cancer: July 20-Aug. 10.

Leo: Aug. 10-Sept. 16.

Virgo: Sept. 16-Oct. 30.

Libra: Oct. 30-Nov. 23.

Scorpio: Nov. 23-29.

Ophiuchus:* Nov. 29-Dec. 17.

Sagittarius: Dec. 17-Jan. 20.

* Discarded by the Babylonians because they wanted 12 signs per year.
Fine by me, but here’s the deal: I was born on December 17; used to be I was a Sagittarius. And maybe I still am...it’s hard to tell, since the list says Ophiuchus covers November 29-December 17, and Sagittarius covers December 17-January 20. (Indeed, all of the signs overlap on dates that way.) Is that a misprint, or is there a particular time of day at work here? Born before noon, you’re an Ophiuchus, born after noon, you’re a Sagittarius...something like that? Some astrological type help me out here.

I see that Ophiuchus means “serpent-bearer,” which is cool enough, but it would be good to know which “house” or lean-to or whatever I was born in. Yes, it’s been a good 30 years since anyone began a conversation by asking me what my sign is. But you never know, and a guy likes to be prepared.

Meanwhile, there's this from Five Man Electrical Band, which asks if I can’t read the sign. Which, obviously, I can't.

Whose Crimes?

2010-12-31T16:59:00.000-06:00

I’m guessing that ABC News means that Gov. Richardson cited the crimes of Billy the Kid and not any that the governor himself may have committed...but that’s not in fact what the blurb says:

Looks like your sixth-grade English teacher was right: Modifiers do matter.

They Do Understand it's Just a Comic Book, Right?

2010-12-22T07:36:00.000-06:00

Although I read Marvel Comics’ Thor comic book back in the day—the heyday, I should say, the late 1960s and early 1970s when it was being rendered with a good deal of over-the-top pseudo-mythological seriousness by the great team of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and the often-maligned Vince Coletta—I wasn’t that big a fan. (Big enough to note that the actual title of the book was The Mighty Thor, since in those days nearly all Marvel heroes had an official adjective: The Amazing Spider-Man; The Incredible Hulk; The Invincible Iron Man. And a big enough fan to note that, early on, the book was titled Journey into Mystery, and so by the time I came along the cover line was, confusingly, Journey into Mystery with The Mighty Thor. So maybe I was a biggish fan.)

Anyhow, I have noted with some interest the development of a Major Motion Picture based on Marvel’s Thor...including this interesting tidbit from from Right Wing Watch:

Council of Conservative Citizens To Boycott "Thor" Over Casting of Black Actor

Well, of course. Who wouldn’t?

Naturally, having never heard of the Council of Conservative Citizens before, I hied on over to the right-wingnut organization’s website to see what it was that had them so worked up. And, well, who could blame them? It seems that Marvel Comics—my beloved Marvel Comics of old—has declared war on the gods of Asgard! By Odin’s beard!

From the Council’s website:

Marvel Studios declares war on Norse mythology

Norse mythology gets a multi-cultural remake in the upcoming movie titled “Thor,” by Marvel studios. It’s not enough that Marvel attacks conservative values and promotes the left-wing, now mythological Gods must be re-invented with black skin.

It seems that Marvel Studios believes that white people should have nothing that is unique to themselves. An upcoming movie, based on the comic book Thor, will give Norse mythology an insulting multi-cultural make-over. One of the Gods will be played by Hip Hop DJ Idris Elba.

Setting aside for the moment the interesting fact that the Council chooses to capitalize “God” in reference to mythological gods—a practice that I would expect Conservative Citizens to decry, leading me to conclude they must of course be anti-Christian Conservative Citizens, since they obviously uphold other gods besides the God of Abraham—I’m left with one single burning question:

Don’t they know that Thor is a movie based on a comic book?

Which is to say, it is not a movie about Norse mythology. The producers have not gone to ancient source materials for a rollicking retelling of the legends of Odin, Thor, Baldr, Heimdall, and the rest of that jolly crew. It’s a movie based on a comic book that pulls some characters, places, and themes from the mythos and recasts them in a superhero mold. (Indeed, in the early days Thor had a secret identity and everything—including an interesting slant on the old Clark Kent-Lois Lane-Superman triangle, in which Thor’s love interest thought that his human alter-ego, Donald Blake, was a dreamboat and didn’t really seem to give two hoots about Thor.)

Given that, the moronic objection to Heimdall being portrayed by a black actor obviously isn’t so much about protecting Norse mythology as it is complaining about the casting of an actor who is...well, not white.

Racist claptrap, in other words. These clowns are “insulted” because a movie studio cast a black man to play-act in a flick based on a comic book.

As my wife commented when I shared this, The Most Idiotic Thing I’ve Read all Week, with her: “Some people need to get jobs.”

Naturally, the wingnuts have begun a campaign to boycott the movie. I wasn’t too sure I’d bother to see Thor in a theatre—you know how it is: sometimes you just wait for the DVD to appear—but now I’m pretty sure I’ll spring for a ticket, just on principle.

Should Have Consulted a Nerd

2010-12-19T08:30:00.000-06:00

This from today's Salon.com e-mail:

One doesn't need to be much of a science fiction nerd to know that the character in question is Mister Spock, not Doctor Spock. I haven't heard him misidentified in that fashion since, probably, the early 1970s. Is it possible that my father has been reincarnated and is working at Salon.com?

What to Get for the Man Who's always Offended?

2010-12-14T07:00:00.002-06:00

This started out as a letter to the editor of my local rag, in response to a spectacularly idiotic letter published in the edition of 12/12/10. The letter went like this:

“Happy holidays” is offensive

It’s “Merry Christmas” - not “Happy holidays” - and yes, it’s a religious holiday.

Some undoubtedly will argue that there are people who don’t celebrate Christmas, which is absolutely fine. Yet they take the holiday pay and the time off from work.

If you are that opposed to Christmas, then volunteer to work in place of those who do celebrate it and turn down the holiday pay universally associated with Christmas.

In a world of withering political correctness, “Happy holidays” is an offensive phrase to those of us who celebrate Christmas.

So “Merry Christmas” to all of you.

Usually such inanity merely makes me chuckle and/or shake my head in wonderment, not so much at people’s boundless bone-headedness but also at their willingness, nay, eagerness to put said bone-headedness on public display.

But this time around, rather than just move on to the next page, I found myself musing on the reason (if “reason” is the right word) someone would take offense at being greeted with “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” And so it was that I drafted a quick letter to the editor...which turned out to be about twice as long as the paper claims to want them to be (although I note that they violate their guidelines pretty frequently), and which I decided not to cleave to the bone to satisfy somebody’s arbitrary word count. So here’s my take, in all its verbose glory:

chi

Christ

why

many

So why take offense at what is obviously such an innocent greeting?

As a fan of irony, I enjoy how this “I am offended” mentality is so completely at odds with the message of Christmas—peace, goodwill, that sort of thing—and indeed so contrary to the teachings of him who the “offended” profess to follow—you know, the fellow who proposed people turn the other cheek, love their neighbor, forgive their brother “until seventy times seven,” etc. Nowhere in the Bible does Jesus admonish his followers to take up arms if our neighbor wishes us “Happy Holidays” or a local ad touts its “Xmas” sale.

it’s not all about you!

you

Relax, for goodness’ sake. Enjoy the holidays a little!

Yes, By All Means, Be Specific!

2010-12-10T20:54:00.000-06:00

A screenshot from a survey I took awhile back. Still trying to figure out how I could not have been specific, given the instructions.

Advertising...What, Exactly?

2010-11-14T10:01:00.000-06:00

The column "Q. and A. with Stuart Elliott" in the New York Times this week featured a question from a reader who wondered what the theme music from Magnum, P.I. was doing in a make-up commercial--specifically, a spot for Maybelline's oddly named Falsies mascara.

Elliott quotes a spokeswoman for Maybelline's ad agency saying that the spot features three "women on a mission" a la Charlie's Angels, but the theme from that show didn't "feel right with the flow of the spot," so they went with the Magnum, P.I. theme instead. (The column is online here.)

That's all well and good, I guess, but I know that back in my ad-agency days I'd have never taken such an idea to a client, and if the client came up with it on his own I'd've strongly argued against it. Why? Because iconic music such as the Magnum, P.I. theme or (even more inexplicably) the theme from The Andy Griffith Show, which has been used in a recent minivan commercial, or the theme from Bewitched, used in commercials for a brand of kitchen appliances, has the effect of distracting the viewer from the product being advertised and pulling his or her attention to the familiar music and the TV series with which it's associated. All of a sudden I'm thinking about Darrin and Samantha Stevens, Endora, Dr. Bombay, and the Kravitzes--notthe fabulous kitchen appliances I'm supposed to be thinking about.

No doubt advertising has changed a great deal these past 20-odd years (we were shocked back then when a rival agency put together a spot for a local video-store chain titled--on screen, no less!--"Video Junkies," since any reference to addiction in such contexts was considered taboo; now it's commonplace, to the point where the local cable company built a whole campaign around urging people to "Get Hooked"), but I can hardly believe that its central objective is no longer to sell product.

Seven Years On

2010-11-07T11:40:00.000-06:00

Seven years ago this morning, my dad called me in a panic because he couldn’t wake Mom. We had had a similar episode a couple of months earlier (as if she was in a very deep slumber from which she could not be awoken, for reasons no one ever was able to explain), and I expected it to be a repeat. But by the time I alerted the kids to what was up (they were still abed, having no school that way) and got over to my folks’, it was all done. “She’s gone, Bill,” my father said, and that was that.

As I said to my wife this morning, in some ways it seems impossible that it’s already been seven years since Mom died, but in other ways it seems impossible that it’s been only seven years. That is, I guess, the nature of things.

Here’s a great snapshot that I scanned some time back. I suspect it’s from my parents’ dating days, putting it around 1953 or so.

Back row, from left: Mom’s brother, my uncle Tom Bosco; Mom’s father, Carmine Caliendo; Sarah Bosco, Tom’s wife; Mom’s sister, Joan Caliendo; my cousin Connie Bosco, Tom and Sarah’s daughter.

Front row, from left: My cousin Freddy Bosco, Tom and Sarah’s son; Mom and Dad; unknown (I think her name was Sharon); Mom’s brother, Martin Caliendo; Mom’s sister, my aunt Tina Bosco.

Halloween 2003

2010-10-31T14:32:00.000-05:00

It was on this date seven years ago that I saw my mother alive for the last time.

We had taken the kids trick-or-treating around our neighborhood and, as was our custom, then piled into the car to trick-or-treat at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Mom had had a rough summer and autumn: An aortic aneurysm (her second) had been detected in July, and she was flown to Mayo for emergency surgery; the surgery went well, but seemed to trigger respiratory problems that saw her in and out of the hospital for the rest of the summer, culminating with a month's stay at a nursing home for respiratory therapy that didn't seem to accomplish much. Still, she had been home for about a week when Halloween rolled around, and in fact was feeling, looking, and sounding much better. We would later say that we thought she had turned a corner, but didn't realize which corner; one week later she died.

Here is one of my favorite photos of my parents, from their dating days, which would make it around 1953. It always makes me smile.

Just Open the Attachment!

2010-10-28T14:45:00.001-05:00

It's been awhile since I've received any good spam. (Regular readers will know that I am always appreciative of well-done, thoughtful spamming, spoofing, or phishing, and disdainful of the slapdash, half-hearted efforts that seem to clog my inbox these days. Does no one take pride in his work anymore? See here and here for past expositions on the subject.)

What came today isn't especially good, spam-wise, but it earns points in the Chutzpah category, for coming right out and suggesting I download an attachment to the e-mail. ("Hey, you know all that stuff about never downloading anything from someone you don't know? Nevermind.")

Anyhow, here's the missive, carrying the provocative subject line "Your account was accesed by a third party" and purportedly coming from HSBC Bank plc. (alert@hsbc-online.co.uk) (one of my numerous European bank accounts, no doubt. So numerous that I lose track of them all the time):

Dear Customer,

We detected irregular activity on your HSBC

Internet banking account on 26/10/2010.

For your protection, you must verify this

activity before you can continue using your

account.

Please download the document attached to this

email to review your account activity.

We will review the activity on your account

with you and upon verification,

and we will remove any restrictions placed on

your account.

If you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choise

but to temporaly suspend your account.

We ask that you allow at least 72 hours for the case to be

investigated and we strongly recommend to verefy (sic) your

account in that time.

Best Regards,

Colette Nugent

Head of Customer Communications

The attachment (which I somehow have not gotten around to downloading) is cleverly called "Verify.html." Seems a little odd to me that an alleged review of my account activity would be in an html document. But then it seems a little odd that they would e-mail me such a thing in the first place. Considering I'm not a customer or anything.

Another oddity: The (sic) in the above message, after the misspelled "verefy"? They put that there! I have no idea why. Nor do I know why they failed to add (sic) after the equally misspelled "choise."

In general, however, this is a pretty average bit of flummery...no graphics, no seemingly legit links, nothing really of interest at all except the damn-the-torpedoes suggestion that I just go right ahead and click on that attachment right there. Hey, what's the worst that can happen, right?

Making it Work

2010-10-07T14:37:00.002-05:00

With a little surprise, I observe that it’s been nearly a month since my latest post. (Well, in fact, it’s been only a few minutes since my latest post, a little froth that I whipped up based on Yet Another Strange Internet Observation this morning. I mean it’s been several weeks since my last post before, er, my latest post.)

I shouldn’t be surprised, though. About five weeks ago I started a new job several months after being downsized from my previous employment of nearly a decade (“Gainful Employment”, September 10, 2010), and it’s been pretty hectic with learning new responsibilities, new personalities, new routines, a new corporate culture, and so on.

And of course at the same time a guy still has all “the usual” going on—you know, life and stuff. Even after only eight months I’d forgotten how much formal employment cuts into one’s day.

While this is going on in my little corner of the world, I have a couple of friends whose employment situations are less shiny. One probably won’t be in that situation much longer, thanks to various external forces; the other shouldn’t be, since the situation is completely untenable and intolerable, to the point of creating some pretty alarming health issues.

Pondering my friends’ cases and contrasting it with my own recent good fortune, I reflected again on the value of being valued in one’s employment—a feeling I had all but forgotten in the waning days of my previous employment. “You’re a real asset to the office, that’s why we’re throwing you under the wheels” strikes one as something of a discrepancy, and does little to foster a sense of worth or value to the undertaking. Add to that the fact that a sizable percentage of what I had dedicated myself to for the better part of a decade simply went away when I left, and one comes away with the nagging feeling that he’s wasted a considerable amount of time and energy for no lasting good. Having now come into a workplace where it seemed from the get-go, and still seems, that my contribution is welcomed and appreciated, I see how much I had missed that before. And how important it is to one’s well-being and self-esteem.

I’ve reflected too on how much employment is like a personal relationship. You have to put yourself out there, expose yourself, make yourself vulnerable, at least to an extent. Maybe you’ll be accepted, maybe you’ll be rejected. It’s a little like asking for a date. Then there’s that whole getting-o-know-you phase, during which time you start to see the cracks a little. And you don’t know—and probably won’t for awhile, and maybe not ever—how long it will last, how real it will be, how compatible you’ll prove to be, how much you or they will or will not change.

Just like real life.

As in a personal relationship, our relationship to our work, and our workplace, can be a source of affirmation, contentment, even joy. Or it can be a living hell. Or, I suppose, all of the above.

So far so good, for me. I like what I’m doing, I like the people I’m working with, I like the conditions and the culture. (Office gets a little hot in the afternoon, but I’ve decided to wait and see how it is in the dead of winter before I start to whine about it.) But I have to say that I feel bad for my aforementioned friends, and a couple of others, who aren’t experiencing that sort of contentment or affirmation in their work or work environment. It’s a real shame. It’s a real shame for everybody in that position. We spend so much time and invest so much of ourselves in our work; it should be worth more than just a paycheck. (Even though a paycheck is indeed what brought me to my current engagement. I’m not against paychecks, mind!) Certainly it should not be soul- and psyche-crushing.

I think of that every time I hear some deep thinker profess that “any job is a good job.” Naturally, they’re always talking about someone else when they say things like that.

And they’re wrong.

For must of us, employment is necessary. But it shouldn’t be a necessary evil.

How Mysterious the Internet Is

2010-10-07T13:46:00.000-05:00

Okay, so I’m reading this article from this morning's USA Today...

...and somehow, based on that, USA Today or the great and powerful internet or, I don’t know, God himself concludes that I might be interested in these other articles as well:

But of course. One logically would conclude that anyone who’s interested in a topic such as, say, the nature of the God of All Creation, the Ground of All Being, the Omniscient Omnipotent Alpha and Omega will likewise be interest in “Celebrity Birthdays” or “Surprising Origins of Everyday Phrases.”

I mean, what else?

But Can You Believe It?

2010-09-12T16:07:00.001-05:00

As will surprise no one even noddingly acquainted with this little blog, I am a fan of quotations. Always have been. In high school I had a small black binder in which I compulsively jotted interesting quotations that I came upon. Today I’m more efficient though no less geeky: I find and share them via the internet, including this blog.

Lately I’ve been encountering and sharing a fair number of quotations via Twitter--in fact, it occurred to me not long ago that I need to quit following so many whose tweets consist only of quotations, since my Twitter page (@wjreynolds; see all my fun tweets over to the left there) is getting pretty clogged up with quotations, many of which are tweeted and retweeted and re-retweeted to a disturbing extent--by the original tweeter, I mean, which gets to be a little old.

One of the things I’ve noted about the quotations I see on Twitter is that the vast majority of them are intended to be “inspirational.” Which is fine. We can all use a little inspiration, a little motivation, a little boost to get us over life’s speed bumps.

What we don’t need, however, is to be lied to about life.

And I’m afraid there’s a subset of “inspirational” quotes that does precisely that.

All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them—Walt Disney

Sorry, Walt, but that’s simply not true. All of our dreams? Nonsense. People die every day having had dreams that never came true. I hope they died having had dreams that did come true, too, of course, but the idea that every dream can come true if we work hard enough or never give up or, oddly, have sufficient “courage,” is, I’m afraid, only a dream. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pursue our dreams; definitely we should! But the notion that pursuit guarantees success is silly.

Any person who contributes to prosperity must prosper in turn. —E. Nightingale

That’s a great sentiment and I endorse it wholeheartedly...except for the words “must” and “prosper.” Lots of people contribute to prosperity and get swindled--if we’re using “prosperity” in a concrete, dollars-and-cents way. If we’re talking about prospering spiritually or morally by contributing to the overall prosperity of our fellow human beings, then I have no issue with it. But if we mean monetarily, then no. Anyone who has been paying any attention to the war on the American middle class has to know that Mr. Nightingale’s comment is noble but untrue. Change “must” to “should,” though, and I’m on board!

We can change our lives. We can do, have, and be exactly what we wish. —Tony Robbins

Ooh--started off great there, Tony, and then botched it. It’s the Disney Fallacy again: You can (and should) pursue your dreams, but there is no guarantee--none, whatsoever, in any shape or form, ever--that so doing will make them happen. For instance, I would like to be six feet tall and have a full head of wavy black hair. But it is quite impossible. Doesn’t matter how hard I try, how positively I think, how many motivational quotations I memorize. Ain’t gonna happen. Ever.

Better I should concentrate on what can or may happen rather than delude myself into thinking that anything is achievable.

Anything you really want, you can attain, if you really go after it. —Wayne Dyer

More of the same. I realize that I receive and then transmit these quotations out of whatever their original context might be. It’s possible that the speaker or writer went on to elucidate more clearly their meaning, and delineated the obvious stumbling blocks and outright barriers that stand in the way of their supposed “achieve everything” message. But I contend that the stock in trade of motivational speakers and writers is that “sound bite,” that pithy, telegraphic message that resonates with people, and sometimes falls under the heading of telling people what they want to hear. Dr. Dyer’s quotation above seems to fit that category. Truth is, you cannot attain anything you “really want” if you “really go after it.” You can attain some things, but not “anything.” Not everything in life is under our control, or bendable to our will. To believe that it is borders on delusion.

The escape clause in many of these quotations lies in the phrasing: Oh, when I said “you can achieve anything” I meant “can” in the sense of “it’s possible.” Ah. I guess “you might” or “you could” is less catchy than “you can.” I said you can attain things you really want if you really try. If you don’t attain them, you must not have wanted or tried enough. Oh, I assure you: I really want to be six feet tall and have a full head of wavy black hair. Won’t happen.

So it is that I prefer and find more inspiration in quotations that speak to what life is and what life may be, and how we should live our lives.

The reality you experience is a reflection of what you believe is most possible. —Bashar

A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed. —Henrik Ibsen

Duct tape is like the force. It has a light side, a dark side, and it holds the universe together. —Carl Zwanzig

Okay, that last one was just for fun. I like those too.

And I especially like this one, which I think most accurately reflects reality:

Hold fast to your dreams, for without them life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly. —Langston Hughes

Now that is inspirational!

Gainful Employment

2010-09-10T21:09:00.001-05:00

This past week I started a new job, just a week shy of the eight-month anniversary of my having been "downsized" from my previous gig of nearly a decade.

The new job continues a pattern that runs through my entire employment history: Only once have I landed a job that I saw advertised and then pursued; the rest have all been the result of the phone ringing and my answering it.

It's not what you know, and, it turns out, it's not who you know, either. It's who knows you.

I am back on the religion beat, and back among my Lutheran chums. After being thrown down the stairs in my previous position, I commented that I would not be in too big a hurry to work for a religious organization again. It was true eight or nine months ago, and I'd be kidding if I didn't say I approached what is now my current position with some wariness. Once bitten, and so on.

But it was nice to be thought of, and the interview went very well (you can always tell they're going well when you get offered the job on the spot), and the old exchequer acted like it could use some positive cash flow again, so...

The week has been exhausting, as I always find the first couple of weeks in a new job to be. But the people I am working with all seem very nice--more to the point, genuinely nice, since "nice" is a pretty cheap commodity, I've discovered, and although the week was colossally hectic (everyone kept telling me it isn't usually like that; sure hope so), I never had the feeling that I was in the crosshairs, which was a pretty constant feeling in the old job.

There is, of course, a great satisfaction in gainful employment, especially in an area in which one is experiences, which one likes, and which one can do reasonably well (specifically, communication: Publications and website, mostly). But there is a deeper satisfaction, it develops, in being in a setting in which one's contribution seems to be valued, where one's co-workers appear to respect and appreciate whatever expertise and experience one may bring to the table--even though one is still a virtual stranger to them. I'm only four days into the job, yes, but I have gotten the feeling from every single one of my colleagues--the top guns as well as my fellow staffers--that they are glad to have me on board and appreciate my contribution.

I felt that occasionally, and from certain individuals, in my previous assignment, but for the most part I felt that my role was viewed as merely another interchangeable cog in the machine, just some quasi-anonymous someone pulling one of the oars. That feeling was driven home rather keenly when I was informed that my reward for nearly a decade of loyal service would be the privilege of being the first to be thrown overboard when revenue grew tight. Nothing personal, of course, but we've decided we can get along nicely without your invaluable contribution. This way to the plank...

So it is refreshing--and, I must say, surprising--to feel that my work actually counts for something, actually has value in the eyes of someone other than myself alone, and to have that sentiment expressed in attitudes and demeanor rather than in platitudes that ring hollow since they come while one is simultaneously being given the bum's rush.

Yes, I realize that I am still in that golden "honeymoon" phase. But that hardly diminishes the pleasantness of it all.

Work should be about more than just a paycheck. This feels like work that could be that. Time will tell.

In the meantime, I'm very glad that my phone rang. Glad I answered it. And glad that, despite my recent sour experience, I did not dismiss the current opportunity out of hand.

Email: A Love-Hate Relationship?

2010-09-06T12:54:00.001-05:00

I just got through glancing at yet another article that purports to tell me how to Get More Stuff Done, and which, as seems to be de rigueur these days, includes the advice to check e-mail only once a day.

Without question, e-mail can be a huge time-sink, but I am surprised by the number of people who still treat it as some sort of outside influence, a thief whose only purpose is to steal time. One may also waste a great deal of time on the telephone—in fact, it’s my opinion that e-mail is a more efficient way of communicating that telephone, in most instances— but I have yet to see anyone advise that telephone messages should be returned only once per day. It would be bad advice indeed to say that one should begin his or her workday by returning any messages that may be found in voicemail and then unplug the phone for the duration of the day. Seems pretty unlikely that customers, clients, co-workers, or employers would appreciate much all of the time I’m “saving” by having only one set time during the day in which I “do” telephone.

Why would anyone think that e-mail is any different?

The beauty of e-mail, in my experience, is that I can e-mail you when it’s convenient for me and you can reply when it’s convenient for you. There’s no pas de deux in which we play telephone tag while trying, perhaps in vain, to connect in real time. Talk about time-wasters!

Naturally, there’s a lot of junk and distraction to be found in e-mail, but anyone with a lick of sense quickly learns how to filter that out as he or she scans the inbox list, deleting that which clearly is unworthy and leaving for later that which may be interesting or noteworthy, but not important at the moment.

And anyone without a lick of sense will find other distractions to waste time with.

The other efficiency that e-mail offers is to allow both the sender and recipient to get to the point! For instance, I returned to my home office the other week to a phone message from an acquaintance. His message basically told me who he was and that he wished to talk to me, and his office number. No idea what he wanted to talk about, so no way to prepare for the conversation, if preparation was indicated. I returned his call and left a message; he called back and we connected. We discussed the reason for his call, and set up a time to meet. All of which could have been handled in two e-mail messages.

But that requires that one monitors his or her e-mail just as one monitors his or her phone messages. I would never return from lunch, or a meeting, or any other adventure away from my desk without checking for messages; why would I not do the same with my e-mail messages? The idea is absurd to me.

Yet I am aware of some people’s love-hate relationship with e-mail. Sometimes it has to do with a greater technophobia, but just as often it seems rooted in that attitude I referred to above, in which e-mail— perhaps the computer itself— is still viewed as some kind of “outsider” in the workplace. These people, I find, tend to put off “doing” e-mail for as long as possible, which only means that it is a bigger and more daunting chore when finally they undertake it.

Which is another reason I think the once-per-day “rule” is bad advice: It only means that the inbox will be teeming with messages the next time you check it. To visit it periodically throughout the day and weed out the debris is much more efficient.

Some time back I worked with a woman who, well, hated e-mail. It was a chore, a burden, a distraction. She viewed it as something that took her away from her work rather than a communication medium that was as much a part of her work as the telephone or a written letter. She tended to avoid “doing” e-mail, with the result indicated above: When she forced herself to look at it, she had literally hundreds of messages! Worse, many of the were messages that required action— yet another reason the once-per-day advocates are steering you wrong. Which made the process an even bigger chore, which meant she avoided it all the more, and on and on. The snowball effect.

I recall one day in which she complained— partly in jest, but of course partly in seriousness— that she had spent the entire morning “doing” e-mail. She had replied to one particular message, and then moved down the list...until she got a reply from the person she had just replied to! And she was a little put out by that. “Don’t people have anything better to do than e-mail all day?” she railed— again, only partly in jest.

To me, that attitude was and is bizarre. Would she have felt the same about a telephone exchange? Let’s say she came in to work and had voicemail from a person. She returns the call, gets his voicemail, and leaves a reply. Two minutes later the guy calls her back with a follow-up question or comment. Would she complain that people have nothing better to do than telephone all day? Seems unlikely.

It occurs to me as well that “wasting” time is largely in the eye of the beholder. What you may view as my waste of time may be to me a legitimate undertaking— indeed, even a time-saving undertaking, since we all know that there are many instances in which an investment in time is required now in the hope of streamlining a process later.

Almost everyone agrees that the best way to tackle a large chore is to break it down into smaller pieces than can be handled one at a time. Why, then, would anyone advise one to let e-mail pile up until it becomes a large and onerous chore? I suggest it’s because the would-be adviser has issues with e-mail; and my advice would be to ignore that advice!

Let It Be Said

2010-09-06T11:54:00.000-05:00

I see that it's been a good while since I last pieced together a selection of the quotations I like to collect, which is kind of a bad thing in that I've been collecting even more than before since I've been following (and am being followed by) a bunch of folks on Twitter who are into quotations as well. So here's a small batch from my file, amassed from a variety of sources and covering a variety of subjects:

“The gov’t of the US is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion. The United States of America should have a foundation free from the influence of clergy.” —George Washington

“The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.” –George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)

“I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt

“A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.” —Albert Einstein

“The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.” —Edith Sitwell (1887–1964)

“Literature is the language of society, as speech is the language of man.” —Louis de Bonald, philosopher and politician (1754-1840)

“Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.” —Mark Twain

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.” —Bertrand Russell

“I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.” —John Stuart Mill

“A conservative believes nothing should be done for the first time.” —Lynwood L. Giacomini

“The yearning to be heard is a yearning to escape our isolation and bridge the space that separates us.” —Michael P. Nichols

“An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied.” —Arnold Glasow

“If cash comes with fame, come fame; if cash comes without fame, come cash.” —Jack London

“A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.” —Jack London

“I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.” —Mark Twain

“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” –Blaise Pascal

“Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.” —Oscar Wilde

Still Waiting for the "Smart" Part

2010-08-27T18:47:00.001-05:00

Having had my BlackBerry Tour crash this afternoon, and then reboot with, oh, pretty much everything gone (last backup two months ago. Note to self: Do better at that), I am in the process of re-installing and re-creating the device. This requires me to input a certain amount of data, including ZIP Codes a couple of times and phone number at least once.

My "smart" phone doesn't seem to be smart enough to automatically insert numerals in fields that ask me for numeric information.

So I'm asked for my ZIP Code, which emerges as dzw0d. Actually not my ZIP Code, as it happens.

I know that apps can make that intuitive leap without my having to depress the alt key repeatedly, because I've seen 'em do it. So why don't all apps? I know there must be a reason, and I suspect they come down to time (lack of), energy (lack of), and interest (lack of).

A minor nuisance, but a nuisance nonetheless--and I've had quite enough nuisance the past couple-three days, thanks very much.

So Everybody Else Can Just Hang it Up for the Next 79 Years

2010-08-24T09:49:00.000-05:00

Caught this review headline at the online edition of The Guardian:

Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom: the novel of the century

From the review itself, and other buzz, it sounds like Freedom will indeed be something to read.

But “novel of the century”?

Aren’t we still a bit early in the century for anyone to be pronouncing anything as the (fill in the blank) of the century? Not wanting to get into any heavy discussion of when a century actually begins and ends (but, for the record, the current century began January 1, 2001), is it not safe to say that we have something in the neighborhood of, I dunno, three-quarters of it left to go?

And if the “novel of the century” has already been written, well, crap, what are the rest of us supposed to do? Are there any runner-up positions? Is there a literary equivalent of Miss Congeniality? Is there a bronze medal? Pewter? Shiny plastic?

Perhaps I might content myself with writing the novel of the week. Top of the bestseller list among my family and friends. (Reynolds’s Maxim: You find out who your real friends are when they’re called upon to shell out twenty-five bucks for your latest book.)

One Product, One Vendor, Two Puzzling Ads

2010-08-23T15:30:00.000-05:00

One of the disadvantages of having as many e-mail addresses as I have is that you tend to get a lot of duplicate mail, especially advertising.

But that can sometimes make for an interesting experience.

Witness ye this ad from Smith Micro Software, which arrived in one of my inboxes this past Friday, August 20:

Yes, I can purchase Roxio Easy VHS to DVD for just $49.99, ten dollars off the "regular" price of $59.99. In fact, I had contemplated purchasing that very product.

Now I'm not so sure.

Direct your attention, if you will, to this ad, which came to another of my multiple accounts this very afternoon:

Yes, if I respond to this offer, I can purchase Roxio Easy VHS to DVD for a mere twenty dollars more than in the other ad: $69.99...which Smith Micro still would have me believe is, yep, ten dollars off the "regular" price, which they now say is $79.99.

I have a couple-three mailboxes that I haven't checked today. If one or more of them contains a Smith Micro ad for Roxio Easy VHS to DVD, is it your guess that the "regular" price will be higher than the two "regular" prices indicated in these ads, or lower?

Doesn't exactly make a fellow want to whip out his credit card, does it?

The One Thing Your Blog Must Do

2010-08-19T16:39:00.002-05:00

I see a lot of postings, linked from Twitter and elsewhere, about the Five Things Your Blog Must Do or the Twelve Things Your Blog Must Contain or the Ninety-Eight-Point-Six Things that Every Blog Must Have. The ones I’ve read are not bad advice per se, but I find that every single one of them misses what I consider to be the sine qua non, the raison d’être, the single absolute imperative that simply must be reflected in your blog and in every post you make to it:

It’s Gotta
Make You Happy.

That’s it. That’s the single thing that your blog must do.

It may do other things, too—inform, entertain, infuriate, I don’t care. But, again, whatever other things it might do all point back to the prime directive: It has to please you.

Everything I read on the subject of blogging is geared toward maximizing the number of readers—or, more correctly, hits. It’s all about traffic; it’s all about counting beans, or eyeballs. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that—and let’s not kid ourselves: visits to this little blog of mine typically number in the double digits, every so often in the low triples, and I’ve never made a dime from it, so if a big fan base and/or money is your blogging goal, we may well be talking past each other here. But I have always maintained, in the books and stories I have written as well as my various fledgling online excursions, that, well, it’s all about me. If I like what I’m doing, there’s a better than even chance that someone else will, too.

But if I don’t like what I’m doing—if I’m writing for The Market or The Demographic or The Least Common Denominator—I’m convinced that that always shows through and that the reader will pick up on the cynicism of it, sooner or later (probably sooner), at which point he or she will prove to have exactly the same low level of interest in the undertaking as you have, and move along.

The great John D. MacDonald once said, “My purpose is to entertain myself first and other people secondly.” In my previous house, I had that quotation pinned over my writing desk. I consider it the single most important piece of writing advice I’ve ever encountered.

I would rather be read by a smaller number of people who enjoy what I’m doing (for the most part: they can’t all be gems) because they know that I enjoy it.

But of course that’s just me, and I have never claimed to march to any well-known drum beat.

I recommend you find your own beat and march to that. Some will follow, some not. But I think you’ll find the march more enriching.

What to Do, What to Do...

2010-08-18T18:06:00.000-05:00

Is it just me, or does it seem like these messages might be spam?

Not to Be Confused with Medication Mistakes You WANT to Make

2010-08-18T18:03:00.000-05:00

Credit Is Due. In More Ways than One.

2010-08-16T19:12:00.000-05:00

Since I seldom hesitate to complain about the various slings and arrows that life shoves at us (actually, that's not true: I hesitate quite a bit. But then I usually plunge on), I try also to give equal time to praise-singing. The former, I find, comes pretty easily; the latter requires more volition.

(Aside: When I was in the advertising game 20-some years ago, we used to share with clients an important bit of information: The ordinary citizen, if pleased with goods, services, or experiences, will share that news with two people, on average. If displeased, he or she will share the news with an average of eleven people. Here endeth the aside.)

Last month, before the kids jetted off to Europe, we spent upwards of an hour at a local Verizon store trying to arrange things so that the kids could call us via our son's Blackberry, which has international capabilities or whatever they called it. So the people at Verizon, after a certain amount of confabbing among themselves as to the best way to make our wishes come true, decided that we needed to sign up for some Global Something-or-Other (which required the extraction of the SIM card from our son's phone--no easy feat) and give Verizon money, and then get set up with a Skype account, and give them money. The kids then would be able to call back here via Skype, which would be cheaper per minute.

I am here reminded of the line from Disney's adaptation of The Wind in the Willows: "There was only one thing wrong with Rat's plan: It didn't work."

Every time the kids tried the Skype trick, they were informed that international calls could not be placed with Skype on the Verizon network.

So yesterday I sent e-mail to Skype's customer service informing them that, like Rat's plan, Verizon's didn't work, and inquiring about getting a refund on the Skype Credits I'd purchased.

To my surprise, I had a nice reply yesterday evening already--Sunday, mind you--apologizing for my troubles and requesting some additional information. I sent off the info this morning and--again to my surprise--received in short order another nice note from someone at Skype, again apologizing for the inconvenience and informing me that my credit card would be credited the full amount.

I imagine it says something about the state of customer "service" these days that I find it remarkable that a company

1. Does the right thing

2. Does it right away

3. Does it without having to be cajoled, threatened, or blackmailed

4. Does it in a polite, even friendly fashion

but that's precisely my experience with Skype. In a word: Wow.

Not that I wouldn't have liked it better had the Skype trick worked. I've had a peek at the next cellphone bill. Not pretty. But worth it to be able to stay in touch with the travelers.

Perhaps needless to say, I'd be more than willing to give the Skype thing another go next time I want to be in touch with someone traveling abroad, or if I find myself in that situation. Certainly I'd recommend Skype.

Indeed, it seems I just have.

Famous? Writers?

2010-08-16T18:43:00.000-05:00

Via Twitter this morning I came upon a link--at Online University Reviews, which strikes me as an odd home for it--to "100 Famous Writers You Can Follow on Twitter." For some reason I was expecting a list of, you know, famous writers that I could follow on Twitter. Guys like Neil Gaiman, for instance, whom I have followed for some little time. Instead I got a list of more or less "famous" people, some of whom can legitimately be said to be writers, others who... Well, some of them aren't even people. Here's one:

16. Threadless: "This a community of t-shirt designers who often write odd, yet inspiring messages on clothing. Follow them to read the latest shirts or find out how to add your own."

Hmm. Call me a snob, but Threadless hardly meets my definition of "famous writer." Likewise (snobbishly, maybe), I am perplexed that the section of "Famous Book Writers You Can Follow on Twitter" comes sixth on the list, after "Famous Political Writers You Can Follow on Twitter," "Famous Inspirational Writers You Can Follow on Twitter," "Famous Actor/Writers You Can Follow on Twitter," and "Famous Music Writers You Can Follow on Twitter." We're up to #48 on the list of "writers" before we get to book authors!

At least book authors manage to get in there ahead of "Famous Internet Writers You Can Follow on Twitter," "Famous Screenwriters You Can Follow on Twitter," "Famous Comic Book Writers You Can Follow on Twitter," and "Famous Gossip Writers You Can Follow on Twitter," to say nothing of the oddball category "Best Collection Of Writers To Follow On Twitter" (sorry, but neither "Fox News" nor "CNN" qualifies as "a writer").

To be fair, some of the other categories feature individuals who can properly be said to be book authors--Barack Obama, Al Gore, John McCain and others who appear in the "Political Writers" list, for instance. None of those three, by the way, strikes me as a "political writer," but the point probably is open to debate.

The list is especially shaky--and sketchy--when it comes to the "Actor/Writers" and "Music Writers" sections. For instance,

27. David Henrie: This young actor is best known for his role on “The Wizards of Waverly Place.” He often responds to his fans tweets and lets them know what is going on with him.

Well, he sounds like a nice young man. The reason he appears on a list of famous writers, though, eludes me.

The list of "Music Writers" is especially off-point. Where one might expect a list of people who write about music, one instead gets a list of musicians and even bands. Not even writers of music, based on some of the descriptions:

40. Ashlee Simpson Wentz: Married to the above and a recent mother, Ashlee is best known for her hit “Pieces of Me” and her controversial performance on “Saturday Night Live.” Get baby pics, love notes to her husband, and random thoughts.

I have plenty of random thoughts of my own, thanks. For instance: What makes Ashlee Simpson Wentz a "famous writer"? Singer, sure; actress, okay; celebrity, yep. But "famous writer"? Nope.

Let's be clear: I am not commenting on the legitimacy of different kinds of writing. Well, except to say that tweeting, which I have done a certain amount of, is not "writing." I don't view screenwriters or comic-book writers as better or worse than book authors. Alan Moore, who is on the list, is indeed a famous writer; his work just happens to be in the comic book/graphic novel medium. No, what I'm commenting on is the validity of the list, which is pretty low.

I'd rather see a list of famous writers who are in fact writers--not just celebrities on Twitter.

Shoot, I'd be equally happy with a list of non-famous writers.

Google News Has No Idea Where South Dakota Is

2010-08-14T16:42:00.000-05:00

Which, granted, puts them in plentiful if not good company, but still:

Believe me, I am used to people assuming that South Dakota is in the south, but I have yet to encounter this strange assumption that it is in Africa...and northeastern Africa at that!

As a public service, I present this handy map that shows the location of South Dakota in relation to Sudan. However, I pulled the illustration from Google Maps, so who knows how much we can trust it.

HuffPo Goes Provocative

2010-08-14T16:24:00.001-05:00

I'm no prude--shoot, my CV includes a novel called The Naked Eye--but I find deliberately suggestive come-ons such as this from the Huffington Post to be a little disingenuous:

Obviously, the "teaser" could have read Teri Hatcher Without Makeup just as easily...but that would have been less of a tease.

Nor am I entertaining in the least the notion that the line break after PICS: Teri Hatcher Naked is at all coincidental.

Interestingly, the item itself carries the far less innuendo-laden headline
Teri Hatcher Goes Makeup Free To Prove No Botox & No Surgery.

Still, more than a little tacky.

The Boycott and Me

2010-08-03T19:26:00.000-05:00

Here's a nice drawing of Charles Cunningham Boycott, which, Wikipedia assures me, is in the public domain:

I am in mind of Captain Boycott these days since his name is much in the news. Well, not so much his name as the activity that his name has come to represent: the boycott, of course, the idea of which gets flung up with astonishing regularity whenever someone is unhappy with someone or something.

Most recently, of course, it's Target that we're being called upon to boycott. A few weeks ago it was BP. And Arizona. Walmart is pretty well ensconced on the boycott list. I'm sure there are dozens of others at the moment that I'm unaware of.

Well, I've signed a couple of petitions calling on Target to quit supporting the right-wing Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, who opposes gay marriage. I think corporations should stay out of elections, and I particularly think that corporations who don't--now that the Supreme Court has granted corporations "personhood" and allowed them to make unlimited contributions to buy elections--should be made to realize that some people are paying attention, and that we will make our decisions as consumers based in part on their decisions as corporations.

Certainly, news of the $150,000 Target contribution to Emmer's campaign has made me unenthusiastic about spending money at Target, which once was one of my favorite retailers. But boycott? Hmm.

In my youth, I was quick to boycott anything and anyone. Poor service? Boycott 'em! Lousy product? Boycott 'em! Odious social or political position? You guessed it.

Truth to tell, I never quite understood the difference between my self-righteous boycotts and simply no longer frequenting a restaurant or otherwise doing business with a given entity, but boycott sounds pretty damn impressive, I guess.

Now the problem I have with boycotts is trying to figure out who's really going to get hurt.

And I conclude that it's almost never the people whom I intend to hurt.

Let's take Target. It would be very easy for me to quit spending money there; in fact, my household's visits to Target had declined to practically nil until the corporation opened a store on "our" side of town a few months back. We've been frequenting it fairly often since then, but it would be pretty easy to drop back. They have nothing that we can't get elsewhere, and for probably about the same price.

Obviously no one at Target will notice one way or the other if I cut them off. Which is why we're all supposed to boycott them. And, to be sure, they would notice if significant numbers of Target shoppers stayed away in droves.

But what would be the most immediate effect? Upon noting a decline in sales, would the board of directors resign? Would the CEO be replaced? Would there be massive layoffs in the executive suite at Target Corp.?

Seems unlikely. Seems more likely that a bunch of minimum-wage clerks at various Target stores would be canned. Or, worst case, stores would be closed and they'd all get canned.

Not quite sure how my getting some high-school kid working part-time at Target thrown overboard translates into my bold and noble stand against the faceless corporation.

Ditto with BP. Early on, the call went up to boycott BP. Certainly my sentiments were in that direction, but there was the practical consideration: How the hell do I do that? In my environs, BP is represented by a local convenience store with a handful of locations around town. Easy enough to boycott them--not that they'd notice, since I seldom gas up there anyhow. But, again, the question is who's getting hurt? BP? Not much. The local store owner? Yeah, a little. What's his reaction apt to be? Dissociate from BP? Probably not. More likely that he will, yes, throw some part-time employee over the edge.

But I am still left with the fact that I am severely disappointed in Target, sorely ticked off at BP, and just generally leery of Walmart. What do I do?

As in every corner of existence, it's a question of balance. As is my wont with Walmart (I counted awhile back, and discovered that I have shopped at Walmart a grand total of five times in my life), I will think twice about parting with money at Target--and most of the time I imagine I will find an alternate route. But I don't know that "never" will be a big part of the vocabulary.

I would prefer that the bad publicity about their support of a candidate who expressly opposes fundamental rights for gay people will cause someone at Target HQ to wise up. It could happen--even if experience indicates that the more likely response is to dig in heels and weather the storm.

And then of course you always have the chip-on-shoulder contingent, which always can be counted on to say something bright like, "I don't like gays so I'm gonna shop at Target all the time now." Those people I'd like to find a way to boycott.

Back to the Bat Cave!

2010-07-26T18:52:00.000-05:00

Looking back, I see that it's just over a year since my last encounter with Myotis lucifugus, aka the little brown bat, which, Wikipedia assures me, is "one of the most common bats of North America." Certainly it's getting to be pretty common around our house. This is our third confirmed encounter with M. lucifugus; we likely had a member of the species in the attic a few years ago, but left the attic door closed in the hope--apparently realized--that whatever was up there would find his way back out again. (See last year's adventure, "Waking with the...Bats?")

Today's encounter was strange, and mysterious. As befits bats, I suppose. My wife came upstairs as I was working late this afternoon to inform me that she had done a load of laundry and that as the water drained from the laundry sink (it's an old house, 90-some years old, and the basement floor drain is too small to handle the output of a draining washing machine, so we have the washing machine drain into a laundry sink whence gravity takes it away at a pace that prevents backing up into the laundry room) she could see "someone" in the water--someone small, with round little ears, who may or may not still be among the living.

I investigated, and found a waterlogged little bat in the corner of the near-empty sink.

As previously expressed, I actually find the critters kind of cute. Outside. After all, that's where they best can do their insect-devouring thing, which I appreciate. So I scooped this little guy up into a small box that my wife provided, the better to take him out to a shady corner of the yard, where he either would recover from his ordeal or, you know, not. He did scrabble around a bit in the box as I headed outside, so he had some life in him at least. And he nudged himself around a little when I tipped him out under some leafy bushes, so perhaps all is not lost for the little guy. I did my Francis of Assisi bit; the rest is up to him.

Having left my Blackberry on the desk upstairs, I was unable to grab a picture of the small intruder. So I'll recycle the one I found online when I last wrote about the critters:

We are left with the small mystery of what the little bloke was doing in the basement. Previous episodes saw them gaining entry through the attic, which is logical. Last year's encounter, in our first-floor bedroom, seemed likely to have been facilitated by an ill-fitting window screen. But the basement. To be sure, the little brown bat is pretty darn little and can slip through an impossibly tiny-looking crack, so maybe this adventurous fellow wormed into the basement and couldn't find his way back out again. Or maybe he came in via the chimney. Or the furnace exhaust pipe. It's possible that he made his way from the attic to the basement, but I suspect we--the human beings who occupy the house, or the felines--would have been aware of his travels in that case.

And yet, who knows? All kinds of stuff can go on in your own house while you're sound asleep.

However he may have ended up there, I suspect that he was in the sink and not in the washing machine. For one thing, if he had somehow managed to get into the washing machine, I imagine the various wash-rinse-spin cycles would probably have done him in. And, tiny as he is, I think he might still have been too big for the drain outlet. So I'm guessing he either was in the sink and got caught in the deluge or, since my wife did not notice him there as she was loading the machine, he might have climbed up into the curved pipe that carries water from the washing machine to the sink, in which case he'd've been rudely flushed out of the pipe as soon as the machine started to drain, and obviously unable to fly or climb away.

Poor guy. I hope he lives. Mostly so he can tell his fellow bats to stay the heck out of the house!

The Limits of Good Advice

2010-07-20T18:48:00.001-05:00

Readers of these virtual pages know that I am fond of quotations. I collect same, and share them with others (see here and here for proof); lately I observe that many of the tweets I receive on Twitter are quotations, too. (Sometimes the same ones, posted over and over again by the same people. Come on, guys. Just because there are tools to automate your tweets doesn't mean you have to use them.)

To be sure, not every quotation is worth sharing. I get an awful lot of them that seem to me more suited to a greeting card than anything else. And I get an awful lot that don't quite hang together. Here, for instance, is one that I grabbed off of Twitter a few minutes ago:

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. —Harold R. McAlindon

A little research indicates that this quotation also has been attributed to Emerson, among others.

Regardless of its ownership, it strikes me as a quotation that sounds better than it really is. I mean, yes, of course, the blaze-your-own-trail angle is much beloved by quotation-crafters, and with good reason. And yet, if you look at the McAlindon quotation closely, you see where it unravels: Quite simply, if everyone followed the advice, it wouldn't matter how many trails you left because no one would be following any established trails.

The moral of the story, if there is one: The world needs followers, too.

Bringing Grandpa Back to Life

2010-07-13T21:55:00.000-05:00

Ha-ha, not really, of course. I mean, I'm good, but there are limits. I think.

Some weeks ago I came upon an old (circa 1954) snapshot of my paternal grandfather, Paul B. Reynolds. Since it was in an envelope with a letter he had sent to my dad stationed in Japan just after the Korean conflict, and since said letter reposed with scores of others in a box beneath Dad's workbench, where it probably had resided for the past 40 or 50 years, I was surprised at how faded and yellowed the snapshot was:

Clear enough for me to make out that it's the old gent, gone now nearly 23 years, and I know that it was taken at the gas station he owned on Saddle Creek Road in Omaha, Nebraska (Paul's "66" Service, which he subsequently sold, opening a small-engine shop on Center Street in the early 1960s), but not a very satisfying family relic. It may be that Dad had had it on display in a sunny location at Camp Eta Jima before putting it back in its envelope. Or it may just be that the chemicals are breaking down after half a century, without any help from the sun. In any event, I wished it could be better, and I wanted to share it with my brother. So I scanned it and slung it into Photoshop, and after a little bit of digital jiggery-poke here's what I walked away with:

A bit improved, I think, and far less likely to disintegrate before my eyes. Not a lot of detail, especially in the face, but despite what you see on the various crime and spy shows on TV, you really can't conjure up details that aren't in the original.

In my memory, my grandfather is always wearing either dark-green tweed work clothes like those he wears in this photo, or similar beige work duds. But never a cap like the one he's holding. Just the beat up old pith helmet he used to wear when he was working in his yard, but that's another story for another day.

I Write Like...

2010-07-13T21:14:00.001-05:00

Well, this was eye-opening.

In a roundabout fashion (from Twitter to the LA Times and then to the site in question) I came upon the website I Write Like, which invites one to enter a few paragraphs of writing, which then are analyzed and from which a proclamation is made.

I pasted in the first three paragraphs of my sixth novel, Drive-By, and was rewarded with this:

I write like
Stephen King

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Interesting, since I've read very little of King's work. I don't dislike him, I've just never gotten into him much. I picked up The Shining ages ago when it was all the rage, and never finished it. It just didn't grab me.

Hope that doesn't mean I'm not interested in my own work...

Just for kicks, I copied four paragraphs from the beginning of a later chapter in Drive-By (chapter 31, if you must know), ran them through I Write Like, and got this bit of information:

I write like
Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Also very intriguing, since I have read less of Brown's stuff than I have of King's! Evidently I write like writers I've never really read, which should defuse any potential plagiarism suits.

Just for kicks (as if the exercise had any other point) I grabbed another selection from the midpoint of the same book (chapter 22) and ran it through the grinder. Dan Brown again.

I might have to start reading this guy.

Maybe I can figure out why his stuff sells in the bazillions while mine sells in the thousands.

Back to the Cave

2010-07-08T11:00:00.000-05:00

In the course of my seemingly interminable archeological excavations at my parents' basement, I recently unearthed a forgotten treasure that I am now listening to: Batman Theme & 11 Hefti Bat Songs, the sort-of original soundtrack from the Batman television series of the mid-1960s, composed and conducted by Neal Hefti.

Not only had I forgotten the album, I had forgotten how good it is.

Looking past the camp titles of some of the cuts--"Holy Diploma, Batman--Straight A's"; "My Fine Feathered Finks"--and concentrating on the music itself, one discovers a pleasant, blues-infused jazz album that is simultaneously a product of its time and completely listenable-to today.

Even the much maligned and much parodied "Batman Theme" itself is surprisingly complex and pleasantly smooth. In its long form on the album, sans the biff! and pow! sound effects that punctuated the much shorter TV-opening version, the theme is a tight, bluesy number, and somehow the vocal repetition of the word "Batman" is less comic-bookish than in the short version, and even has an edge of danger to it.

It's not often one pulls out something from his childhood and finds it as good as he remembered. It's virtually unprecedented that he revisits something from those days and finds it better than he remembered.

When Patience Was a Virtue

2010-07-06T09:20:00.000-05:00

Here's today's entry from Delancyplace, "a brief daily email with an excerpt or quote we view as interesting or noteworthy, offered with commentary to provide context." Subscribe here.

I'm not a Sports Illustrated fan, but I cut my teeth, professionally speaking, in the magazine world, so accounts such as the following always interest me. What struck me most, however, is the fact that Sports Illustrated, although successful from the start ("Circulation exceeded five hundred thousand in every issue in 1954, rose to six hundred thousand the following year..."), did not turn a profit until a decade later.

I repeat: A decade later.

It is inconceivable that a magazine publisher today would be willing to wait ten years for his or her investment to begin to pay out. Even if he or she had deep enough pockets to do so.

When I was in the magazine business, the standard litany was that a start-up would take three to five years to break even...with luck. And most publishers were pretty impatient with that time span. I can't even imagine what expectations are today. Chances are they want to see a profit from issue number one. (Well, who wouldn't?)

Ten years. One wonders if any magazines launched in 2010 will even be around in 2020. Let alone making money.

In today's excerpt - Sports Illustrated. Time, Inc. founder Henry Luce launched the new magazine in 1954, an era in which the biggest change in American life was the rapid growth of leisure and entertainment. The writing was superb - William Faulkner wrote an account of the 1955 Kentucky Derby - but it did not produce a profit until its tenth year:

"By the spring of 1953 Luce was once again in what [employee John Shaw] Billings called 'an empire-building mood,' which usually meant launching a new magazine. And even though Luce had never been very much interested in sports or wilderness activities himself, he began to imagine a "sporting- magazine" that would capture what he believed was a growing market for leisure, and thus for sports. ... Some of his colleagues were aghast at the idea, convinced that a sports magazine would degrade the Time Inc. brand by focusing on trivial and consumer-driven activities. ... Other colleagues were similarly dubious about the project, and many of them told Luce bluntly that he was making a dangerous error. He was not impervious to these criticisms, and at times he wavered in his commitment. ...

"Throughout the development stage of the magazine, the working title was 'Sport.' There was, however, already a magazine using that name, which had offered to sell itself to Time Inc. for $ 250,000, more than Luce was willing to pay. In May, with the publication date approaching, Harry Phillips, the Time Inc. publisher of the as yet unnamed magazine, ran into a friend in a restaurant who offered an alternative. The friend owned the title of a defunct magazine, Sports Illustrated. Everyone involved was immediately enthusiastic, and the company purchased the name for five thousand dollars. ...

"From the start Luce expected Sports Illustrated to be unprecedented. It would not be a 'fan' magazine, filled with gossip, adulation, and over-the-top language. It would not compete with the daily newspaper coverage of sports. It would not focus too much on what had happened in the previous week. ... It would look at sports not just as fun but, Luce wrote, as something that was 'deeply inherent ... in the human spirit.' ...

"The first issue of Sports Illustrated was published on August 16, 1954, a few days after issues actually appeared on newsstands. It sold out quickly. ... The first story in this first issue, 'The Duel of the Four-Minute Men,' chronicled the classic rivalry between Roger Bannister and John Landy, the first two men to run a four-minute mile. It also illustrated how unconventional a sports magazine it intended to be. 'The art of running the mile consists, in essence, of reaching the threshold of unconsciousness at the instant of breasting the tape,' the Sports Illustrated writer Paul O'Neil began:

" 'It is not an easy process ... for the body rebels against such agonizing usage and must be disciplined by the spirit and the mind. ... Few events in sport offer so ultimate a test of human courage and human will and human ability to dare and endure for the simple sake of struggle.'

"This elegant and sophisticated language was a sign of what Sports Illustrated aspired to be, and often accomplished-a magazine that would elevate the world of sports from being 'just a game' to being a powerful metaphor for the human condition. ... On February 21, 1955, the magazine ran a cover of a smiling young woman in an unrevealing swimsuit (part of a feature on sports fashion) - an augury of one of the magazine's most popular and sometimes controversial features of later decades.

"Luce took particular pride in the quality of the writers he could attract to Sports Illustrated. The revered New Yorker writer A. J. Liebling submitted an elegant essay on Stillman's Gymnasium in New York City, where many notable boxers were trained. Wallace Stegner wrote an elegy to Yosemite National Park. Budd Schulberg wrote a sympathetic story about an aging prizefighter who was finally making it big. John Steinbeck insisted he could not write for Sports Illustrated because 'my interests are too scattered and too unorthodox.' But he wrote a long letter on his eclectic interest in sports that the magazine published anyway. And William Faulkner wrote an extraordinary (and predictably unorthodox) account of the 1955 Kentucky Derby. ...

"Circulation exceeded five hundred thousand in every issue in 1954, rose to six hundred thousand the following year, and climbed steadily through most of its history (to more than three million a week in 2009). It quickly established itself as by far the most famous and influential sports magazine ever published in the United States. ... Not until 1964, however, ten years after its first issue, did Sports Illustrated produce its first profit."

Author: Alan Brinkley
Title: The Publisher
Publisher: Knopf
Date: Copyright 2010 by Alan Brinkley
Pages: 397-405
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