MINI 038 DIY

 Here’s your chance to build your own Wessay ® along with suggested keywords and phrases to help you with your final thoughts of 2021 and your hopes, dreams and plans for 2022.

--Happy

--New

--Year

--My hope 

--The hope

--For

--About

--Wish

--(Additional reporting by ______ _____ ) (replace the dashes with your name.)

--Health

--Wealth

--Love

--Peace

--Times Square

--Prosperity

--Good News

--Sickness

--Health

--Freedom

--World Series

--Superbowl

--_____ Primary (designate party and jurisdiction.)

--Biden

--Harris

--trump

--court

--jail

--prison

--Amazon.com

--SCOTUS

--Self driving car

--Passenger drone

--Dick Clark

--Local

--Locale (location not included)

--Academy Award for (insert category)

With minimal thought and effort, you can be the proud owner and author of your very own post. Maybe even a podcast! Good luck and Happy New Year from all of us here at W’s World Headquarters in Beautiful Downtown NewRoses, Pennsylvania.

I’m wesrichards@gmail.com

My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ® ©WR 2022

4748 Hopes for the New Year

 There it is.  The whole year ahead. A blank slate.  Now how are we going to fill it?  Of course, it isn’t entirely up to us. But we can all do our parts.  Some hopes from this corner:

 --The people who want freedom from protection against the Pandemic will hold a mass gathering at which they will be free to infect one another but not the rest of us.

--The people who want to soak the poor will hold their own gathering.  If the first stadium is full, a second will have about the same crowd.

--Sane people who drink will drink sanely at home.

--People who want to soak the rich will learn what compromise means, its place in this country’s history and how to use it.

--The people who are afraid of socialism will learn its definition and maybe reduce some of its fears.

--The insane drug cartels will allow sharecropping.

--The insane war on drugs will splinter into the organizational version of sharecropping and stop throwing federal tax dollars away, maybe use some of that money to freed bucks to fix a highway or extend food stamp benefits.

--Prosecutors who steadfastly refuse to allow parole or clemency or pardons for the known wrongly convicted will find a stadium of their own.

--The country’s beleaguered newspapers will earn enough from web subscriptions to hire a reporter to make telephone calls to update outdated stories that remain on their page instead of just letting them remain on their page.

--Someone will write a murder mystery without stealing the material from their files as former prosecutors or homicide cops or postal cops or railroad cops and then stop lying about any resemblance to a true story will be a coincidental.

--Megamart will wait until after Labor Day to start playing Christmas songs on their public address systems and will open the customer service desks before mid-morning.

--Science will discover a way to reduce the mosquito population without killing the whole eco system.

--No one will shoot Bambi’s dad and then not even cook and eat the carcass.

--Pigeons will learn to use public restrooms.

--No major league baseball pitcher will throw a spitball.

--No major league football player will deflate a football.

--No major sports commentator will pretend to be Mel Allen or Howard Cosell. 

--People who idolize mountain lions will come to realize they don’t roar, they “meow” although it’s a deep, loud but completely recognizable outcry.

--The Confederate States of America and its occupied territories in the mountain and desert west will stop pretending they won the War of Southern Aggression.

--And finally… Thanks to the fakely retired WestraDamus for coming out of his fake retirement to contribute his bs to this post.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Any Questions? wesrichards@gmail.com

© WR 2021

 

4747 Talk talk talk

 

Want a decent conversation? Start talking to strangers.

Not chat room strangers, real ones. Strangers on the street. On the subway. In the diner.

 

We’ve been told that the art of conversation is dead. Not even close. The art of conversation is alive and well. It’s just that your friends are boring, and your relatives have ulterior motives.

 

Let’s rewind that for a moment. Your friends aren’t necessarily boring. But you know their raps and they know yours. It’s like having the same conversation over and over again.

 

And your relatives -- well, maybe they DON’T have ulterior motives. But you know that there are certain things you can’t discuss with them, lest you raise points that’ll never be solved and that will just cause everyone grief.

 

So do this New York thing: horn in on a convo. If you’re REALLY not welcome, you’ll find out soon enough. The conversers whose territory you’ll be invading will give you the Dark Glare Of Death. Or they’ll just tell you to shove off.

Most people are too polite for that.

 

Plus, we humans are social beings, even most of the sociopaths among us, and thus are willing to talk with anyone about anything.

 

Just don’t be like the Oysters in “Alice in Wonderland.” They tried to stop a fight between the Walrus and the Carpenter and ended up becoming dinner after the combatants resumed rationality.

 

Other than that, there’s all kinds of fun and interesting stuff that can happen among people who don’t know each other and assume they will never again meet.

 

The other day at a restaurant, Iron Grey Joe was waxing poetic about a politician. In the midst of his poetic endorsement, he said something outrageously untrue. So, he got corrected.

 

The conversation then doubled to include two tables of diners instead of one.

It would have been nice to continue. But Iron Grey Joe and his poetic wax suffered a seizure or stroke or heart palpitation, and attention was turned suddenly and permanently to getting the cops and the ambulance on site and Joe to the hospital.

 

This is not a typical end to one of these horn-in-on-the-conversation conversations. Usually, you end up learning something and teaching something.

 

The opportunities for good talk, good learning and good teaching are endless, especially if there’s no ulterior motive.

 

If one of these happens at a pick up bar, it will be less spontaneous and more stilted than if it happens while waiting for the light to turn green.

 

We, remember, are as boring and same-subject as our friends and as touchy as our relatives. The way to have a fresh start every day is to … well, start fresh every day. Or every other day. Or even every week.

 

The art of conversation is not dead. It’s just sick and lacks health insurance.

 

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.™  Any Questions? wesrichards@gmail.com (C) WR 2021

4746 No Payoff Here for Sure

 They used to say if you were out hunting with this guy, the safest place to stay was directly in front of him and close. In other facts of the day, there is absolutely, positively, definitely no truth to the murmurings that he ever had his hand out to either give or to take. Absolutely none. Ever. Guy’s as pure as the driven snow of, you know, West Virginia.

Ah, yes, West Virginia with the sixth highest poverty rate in the country.  And the fifth greatest rate of people moving out and heading for more generous states.

West Virginia, population of around the same number as Phoenix or Philadelphia. 

That’s nothing near big by world standards. When you say “big,” think Tokyo, Delhi, Shanghai, Cairo. But it still is a relatively large number of people who could use the Build Back Better bill, would not abuse it and is being prevented by one guy whose job it is to represent their interests.

 

Biden learned a lot from Obama.  One of the things he learned but shouldn’t have was leaving his spine back home when he moved into the White House.  It took eight years for Obama to relocate and reinstall. Biden doesn’t have that much time.

 

SHRAPNEL:

--Anyone taking bets on what will happen to Fox’s Jesse Waters who mentioned Fauci and “kill shot” in the same sentence? Fauci says he should be fired on the spot. Waters says he was quoted out of context.

--That whole “out of context” thing should be revisited. It’s too much like the wording of consent degrees. Those usually say “I didn’t do it and I’ll never do it again.”

--Context? Takes too much thinking and work to report. Everything is taken out of context.

 

GRAPESHOT: 

-Everything is too long to bother with these days, so we’re planning to cut these posts down from 500 to between 300 and 400 words so you can get through them faster.

-A respect-worthy newsman once called this site “hellishly productive,” which was true then but less so with the newly installed word count deficit.

-Next step may be putting keywords in UPPER CASE to make things go even faster because there’s so much else to read about or hear or view in so many other places.

 

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Any Questions? wesrichards@gmail.com

© WR 2021

 

4745 In Living Bordercolor

 This space opposes the border wall with Mexico.  But things are changing so quickly here in the US, that maybe some municipalities could paint theirs. It would be helpful so we short-space travelers could know where we were and act within local laws.

Pick a color. Any color but the ones picked by any towns or villages or states or countries adjacent to your own. If all the roads in Hempstead Town, New York were one color then Hempstead Village, New York could paint its roads a different color.  Then you could consult Siri or Cortana or Hey Google or the AAA or your credit reporting agency on where you are and what the law there says about masking or vaxxing or the size of building signs.

For the technically challenged or those who fear that invisible rays cause cancer, these locales could send out US mail or have their workers hang tags on doorknobs with the latest updates. That might improve the job picture.

This isn’t as tough as it seems. The government higher-ups in every municipality probably have relatives who either are or could become paint dealers. So the graft that’s more or less universal could continue apace. Sliding money to friends and relatives is nothing new in either the public or private sectors.

“Hey Google, what are the colors of NewRoses and Moote Pointe?”

“Did you mean Neurosis?”

Well, those talking assistants aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. It’s hard for them to differentiate among You All and Y’all.  Or You Ones and Yunz or Yinz. Or You and Youse.  Bottle genies had that problem, too.  But those are other stories for other days.

This being a family-oriented site, we can’t relate the story of the one- wish mermaid.  But drop us a line if you’re not easily offended.

 Of course, there’s a problem with the whole color scheme thing.  It wouldn’t take long for people to start forgetting the actual names of places and starting to call them “Bluedale” or “Greenroad City.”

 SHRAPNEL:

--Respectable news organizations don’t use the title “doctor” to address or refer to anyone who does not have the legal right to write a prescription.  That means MDs, ODs, DOs, DDSes, DMDs and Veterinarians. The rest of the “doctor” crowd get no title or in some pompous cases “Mr.”, “Mrs.” “Miss,” or “Ms.”

 I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Any Questions?  wesrichards@gmail.com

© WR 2021

 

Gone Fishing

 Wessays will return monday 12/20.

4744 The Emperor's New Code

 This post is completely secure. To read it, one needs knowledge of a radical new secret code.  But, loyal readers, read on, because the key is here.

 The code is made up of the first 26 letters of the English alphabet.  The letters are used to form secret words, known only to those who visit this site.  But for the occasional or beginning reader, there is a handbook.

 If you don’t understand a particular secret word, you can look it up in the handbook, sometimes called a dictionary.  These code decoders are available only to initiates.  You know who you are, and you know where to look.

 We are taking this extraordinary step because we have realized that unauthorized persons have had the capacity to read previous posts by simply… reading them.

 Our code is unbreakable.  Unlike “https” and PlayStation 4.  The terrorists, the identity thieves and “Anonymous” the hacker ensemble know all the high tech tricks to shield their internet and telephone “chatter.”  This system, however, is absolutely foolproof.

 It’s a good thing we’re not doers of nefarious deeds because we could wreak havoc anyplace in the galaxy and no one would be the wiser.

 Since the attack on Paris, intelligence agencies around the world have let Isis know that its use of non-traditional coding is hard to follow. It’s back to school and budget overruns at the NSA, the CIA, FBI, DIA, Department of Agriculture and the school for scoundrels.

 The NSA has started training its operatives in PlayStation and Nintendo. There are advanced classes in Fisher-Price “I Can Play Piano” and historical classes in Atari, Amstrad and Saga.

 Isis is said to be preparing to create a Morse-like code in transliterated Arabic and teaching Navajo. And there are unconfirmed reports that Isis is training some of Syria’s famous carrier camels to swallow condoms having messages written in invisible laser toner and inkjet ink.

 Here at Wessays™ we have them all fooled. And our system is much easier to use than any other.  At least for some of us.

 SHRAPNEL:

We are going to have a talk with Mark Meadows, the former trumpet wrapped in confusion over the code they call “executive privilege.” He wants it both ways. Sending mountains of bs to congress and then refusing to honor a subpoena.

 I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Any Questions? wesrichards@gmail.com

© WR 2021

 

4733 Chris and Brian

 Within the last few days, two giants of cable news quit, leaving two leading networks with empty benches and no farm clubs.

Famed nepotist Chris Wallace, left FOX for a new job with CNN's as yet unborn streaming service, called CNN-Plus. Wallace was Fox TV’s last remaining public face of actual journalism.

This past Thursday Brian Williams did his last straight news Late, Late Show, departing for parts unspoken, MSNBC's last connection with the Huntley-Brinkley-Chancellor-Brokaw style of TV journalism. 

So, between these two there was a combined 46 years of legitimacy.  Yes, Chris Wallace is no Mike Wallace and Brian Williams ain’t Cronkite. But they were the best their individual and opinion-ravaged “news” services had to offer in recent years.

 To make matters worse. Fox has been ceding air time to wackier than ever anchors. MSNBC is letting its prime time star, Rachel Maddow, expand her duties while reducing her air time. These moves make Fox and MSNBC even less relevant than they had been.

 Each will likely recruit from the nation’s lauded j-schools whose students mostly want to be television stars.  If there IS “regular” TV by the time they reach their senior years. Please remember that any job description includes something about the application of makeup means the jobholder is first an actor. Even Cronkite.

Which brings us to the general purpose of cable news which like everything else that is the product of human genius has fallen into a terrible rut where commentators with little or no skin in any game endlessly debate. These end like an unsolved cold case even after it’s been gone over thoroughly by the latest hotshot to join the police force.

Back to Chris and Brian:  They got on, they asked good questions. They held their subjects’ feet to the fire, and they said good night.  Is there any reason to watch a former FBI profiler pontificate about the disappearance of a murder suspect?  Is there any reason for an economist from five administrations ago to comment on today’s conditions after years of paying no attention to economic reality?

Ted Turner’s original plan for CNN was to put on 24 hours of news that could be seen in every time zone at the same time deliver commercials to tens of millions of eyes more than his dinky channel in relatively dinky Atlanta.  A real public service.  And, eventually, a real moneymaker.

 But it didn’t take long to realize that it served a higher purpose, bringing sensationalism to a country that started with a government by sausage factory and is winding down as government by tantrum. 

 I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Any Questions? wesrichards@gmail.com

© WR 2021

 

4732 Birds Aren't Real

 Every once in a while, there comes along an idea that many of us wish we’d thought of first.  Here’s the latest one, “Birds Aren’t Real.”  This conspiracy theory is getting a lot of attention on social media and YouTube those hotbeds of Great Truths.

 If you can believe conspiracy theories about January 6th, the stolen election and the endless lies, large and small we hear from Mar a Largo these days, why not this?

 If birds aren’t real, what are they?  Why of course! They’re replicas. They’re government owned drones put in the air to spy on you.  They recharge on power lines.  You touch one of those and you might get zapped. But those crows and bluebirds and robins and cuckoos who just hang out on them… nothing happens. If one falls off and you examine it, brush the wings apart and you’ll see a digital readout that says “Fast Charged by Motorola.”

 Where did this come from? According to reports in the NYTimes, they are the brainchild of 23-year-old Peter McIndoe who lives in his well decorated, clearly marked van with the conspiracy’s name in professionally done lettering too large for anyone to ignore.

 But Peter is not alone. He has followers all over the place. The photo at the top of this post is from New York.  But billboards are up in several other major cities and population centers.

 The question now is does anyone take this seriously?  And the answer is simple.  If you can believe that the 2020 presidential election was stolen… if you can believe that Coronavirus is fake… if you can believe in the Deep State, Qanon, and that the Capitol Coup attempt was the work of the far left -- which can’t agree on anything let alone violent overthrow of the US government -- then you can believe that birds aren’t real.

This conspiracy is a work of genius.  It is a teaching moment that will fail to reach the people who need it most.  It is strong evidence that people will believe anything.

 There’s disproof, of course, that birds aren’t real. There are several way good ways to find out for yourself.

Ask yourself what you ate for Thanksgiving dinner. Try to catch one on the ground. Watch a working woodpecker. Find a book by Audubon and read it. 

 Or -- more convincingly -- stand under a flying pigeon.

 I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Any Questions? wesrichards@gmail.com

© WR 2021

4731 The Phone Call

 

Bido and Puta had more phone sex yesterday, two hours’ worth. They started out with some decent foreplay but quickly devolved into a one-upmanship match.  Notice, there’s nothing resembling a telephone on the desk in the picture. No one who’s anyone uses a telephone anymore. Except, maybe, to order a lunch delivery.

 

Bido threatened sanctions over Ukraine. Puta said Bido was nipping at his cuffs and made some wisecrack about zippers. Then he added that Russian troops are on their own soil and not threatening anyone. 

 

They spoke on Pearl Harbor Day.  Russia's Tel2 and America's Mega-cell Mobile donated the Skype time in the service of world chaos.

 

These calls often go nowhere. Usually, they follow a script the two hammer out ahead of time with the aid of their writers, producers, directors and makeup artists.  The hairdressers gave up attending in the trump era because trump denies getting his hair fixed and Puta has none.

 

This time, the Green Room and back office staffers had the day off.

 

I guess you can say the same thing about in-person summit meetings. The results are much like those of a WWE wrestling match. A little ad libbing followed by following the story board.  There may not be any formal script.  But unless someone actually errs, there’s an advanced decision outcome.

 

You can tell on Monday Night Raw as easily as you can about the latest G-something meeting. Then, the pundits swing into action with their own preplanned analysis.

 

The good news: only diehard fans follow the wrestling pundits. The bad news: real people follow the political ones.

 

The best and most legit of the wrestling sites is Bleacher Report which is owned by Turner TV which is owned by Warner Media which is owned by at&t.

 

The best of the best of the politicos are the elegant William F. Buckley wannabe George Will of the Washington Post and the fiercely left John Oliver of HBO. Most of the rest feign objectivity with which they have confused back breaking neutrality so severe no chiropractor can cure.

 

The dogfight ended in a draw.  Tass headline: “Puta dominates call with pathetic Bido." AP Headline: “Bido dominates call with pathetic Puta.” In follow up texting after the screens went dark, the two exchanged messages. Each said “I hope it was as bad for you as it was for me.”  

 

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Any Questions?  wesrichards@gmail.com

© WR 2021

 

4730 Planet of the Electrons

Marx forecast the dictatorship of the proletariat. The Soviets distorted the meaning to install one of the most brutal dictatorships in human history.  But now, Artificial Intelligence is going to restore the original meaning.  Marx did not specify the proles had to be human.  People from Moscow to Beijing just inferred that he did. Look at the mess that made.  

 

Artificial Intelligence doesn’t yet draw inferences. After all, what can a googazillion of tiny specks of short term energy infer with? Isolated submicroscopic little thingies do on their own?

The answer? Plenty, when you realize there are so many more of those particles than there are people and things to host them. Strength in numbers. There are billions and billions of them. Strength in numbers. Especially when they work together, and the remaining humans already have caved to their authority. 

 

You put a bunch electro-brainiac particles together in the right computer, you ask a question and then get an answer that “everyone” “knows” is the only possible correct answer, even if it makes no sense to the human proletariat, even the smart ones. The particles don’t have the power to learn. But properly grouped, chunks of them do.  And chunks -- maybe -- can read each other’s notes. 

Does this sound too much like the basic theme of Planet of the Apes? You may recall how that turned out for the human proletariat. 

Do you think it took human beings to make machines that beat human grandmasters of chess? It started with humans. But eventually, the machines taught themselves the rest. 

The next step is machinery that reads The Racing Form and wins so often they’re banned at Belmont and Aqueduct. Crunch 50 years of data at the tracks. Combine that with weather reports, breeding records, jockey records, all in split seconds, and the machine will bankrupt the betting windows.

 

That would be just for fun. These things will someday be able to fight their own wars. Just think of what will happen to Best Buy. Instead of selling phones and computers and home theaters, they’ll be selling people 2-point-0. The artificial intelligence with a heart will keep Kroger open so you don’t starve. And the kennels where they board your great grandchildren when they go on vacation -- which they will do without ever leaving the desk you left them in your will.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Any Questions? wesrichards@gmail.com

© WR 2021

  

4729 Giving Tuesday

 Is reading a calendar all that hard?  Here it is Friday and the emails for giving Tuesday continue to pour in. Politicians, hospitals, vets’ groups, police associations, colleges, Fire departments, save the Whales, Hippos, stray dogs and cats, the Planet. The Moon. The unlawfully convicted. You name it.

 Maybe one day extra to catch the forgetful or the non-caring. The question is how do these charities log the contributions if their bookkeepers can’t count to three?

 Many of these groups are worthy, though some may be suspect. I have no doubts about St. Jude’s Hospital. But the Muscle Shoals Police Benevolent Association? Almost seven hundred miles from Wessay’s World Headquarters? Or the overpriced nursing home down the block where ordinary people can’t afford to stay more than ten minutes before their bank account is emptied? Or PBS and the somnambulistic NPR?

C’mon folks. What are you going to do when Christmas time comes and you’re all hit up for bucks all over again.  Christmas is on a Saturday this year. Look for a whole new round of tear-jerking stories come the Friday before.

 So, let’s take a look at the folks behind Giving Tuesday. The outfit is  based in Brooklyn. It is a 501(c)(3) which means you can claim your donations as tax deductions.

 The rating site Charity Navigator says Giving Tuesday is unrated. Charity Watch says “no listing.” GiveWell never heard of them.  So, we can’t find out how GT spends what you donate directly.  Most of the individual participants span the bellcurve of bad-good-excellent.  But you know who they are, right?  At least the ones you may already support.

The rating sites tell you how much the charities spend on fundraising, how much they actually donate… stuff like that.  So, with no ratings, what are we supposed to do, take them on faith?

Nah.  These are businesses. They pay their executives and their phone jockeys.  They rent their offices. Sure, there are legitimate expenses.  Just tell us.  Or hide under a rock. You know there are charities that are worthy of whatever you can spare.  Do they really need to guilt you into spending it?  Resist!

 QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Dr. Oz is running for the republican nomination for US Senator from Pennsylvania to prove Rand Paul is not the biggest Quack in the Senate” -- Andy Borowitz

 I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Any Questions? wesrichards@gmail.com

© WR 2021

 

4728 Overkill

 Not a bad tree. Just too much in too small a space.  Goes along perfectly with Christmas sales starting at Halloween and Christmas music all day on the radio since… well, some stations started slipping in a few on Labor Day.  And everyone who is going to do it, by now already is doing it.

Christmas music with a few exceptions is beautiful. Usually simple. Usually powerful or sentimentally evocative. But that’s not most of what we’re hearing now.  The good stuff may actually wait until the holiday, almost a month away.

 Have you not heard enough of Rudolph or Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer or “Alvin!!!!” to last you until the ghost of Christmas Future materializes, which never will happen? 

 Are you ready for the disco/dance version of Silent Night? Or the hiphop version of O, Come All Ye Faithful.

The overkill is intentional. Megamart doesn’t want to be out Chrismassed by Tangent or CostLess.  WXYD doesn’t want to be out caroled by WDYX.  Or out Alvined.

 It’s a trend that isn’t contained in one area of the culture. Look at today’s politicians. Soak the rich. Soak the poor. Get out the vote! Prevent the vote! 

 And automotives: You can’t have the high powered electric lane-warning beep unless you buy our Superluxury Package which features stuff you don’t want and will never use.

 Air travel a la cart. X inches of legroom costs extra. Fifty pounds of luggage is okay, but costs extra and doubles if --Goodness! -- your suitcase weighs 52.

 Your computer or smartphone gives you 500 ways to do everything except the one function you most need. There’s only one way to do that and it’s hard to find.  And not in the Start Up sheet. Also, you have to learn a new tech vocabulary every time you switch brands. 

 There’s also reverse overkill.  Note the weight of your former one pound box of spaghetti. It weighs 12 ounces. Including the air space that used to contain pasta. Many containers of ice cream have much more air than the churners admit.

 But the worst of it is too much of the wrong music too early.  There are two good solutions. 1. Pandora or YouTube or 2. Shoot the radio.  Some of them are fun to watch when they splinter into shards of plastic.  Wear safety goggles and ear plugs.

 I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Any Questions? wesrichards@gmail.com

© WR 2021