Wessays ™

971 Voting In Church

2012-01-27T06:53:00.003-05:00

971 Voting in Church

We’re having a vigorous discussion about the local polling place, three of us. It centers on whether it’s constitutional to hold voting in a church or whether that violates of the prohibition against establishing a state religion.

So far, two say no, one says yes. The outvoted proposes two tests. Let’s all go to the Board of Elections office and hold a prayer meeting. Silent, if necessary. Then let’s see what the population would think if the polling place were a mosque.

That second one is only icing on the cake. And you know what an uproar that would cause.

But the first one has possibilities. No regalia. No rings to kiss. No confessional. No music. Just someone sitting there looking clerical, surrounded by devout looking people with their heads bowed.

If the board people notice at all, their first move will be to come over and ask what’s going on. “Oh, ma’am, we’re just here praying because our polling place is in a church and we have nowhere else to go right now.”

“You can’t hold religious services here, this is a Government Office!” And maybe “You are trespassing.”

Maybe we should have a few boxes of neatly folded, clean but out of date clothing at hand in case someone with a need comes along. Nice to be ready. After all, what’s a church without a thrift shop or bazaar?

How about a pot luck lunch? We’d have to break any silence to say grace. But it would be over with before the clerk could awaken and waddle over to our little gathering.

Hymn singing, though, would be out. After all, that would be inappropriate use of a government facility, and probably a constitutional violation.

On the other hand, taking over a municipal office isn’t such an evil idea. After all, they do it to the church, even if the church volunteers its space.

It’s tough to vote your conscience with Jesus looking over your shoulder.

Shrapnel:

--If you put the four remaining Republican presidential wannabes together in one person, you’d get the perfect teenage girl. There’s Newt, fighting a weight problem but trying to look feminine while wearing a tutu, the hormonal Mitt, the cruel bully Little Ricky and the “I want everything” Ron. Newt needs Weight Watchers, Mitt needs a “time-out” room, Little Ricky needs the crap beaten out of him and Ron needs a gift card from Macy’s or Bloomie’s.

--The “Republican response” to the State of the Union message brings up an old unanswered question. When is an address by an officeholder informational and when is it a campaign appearance? With the broadcasting of a “response,” the answer seems to be “all speeches are campaign speeches.”

Have you noticed? There are almost as many ads for weight loss programs and products as there are for sleazy lawyers and car insurance companies on TV these days?

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012
Read only as directed. Possible side effects include nausea, constipation and bloating. Rare cases of liver disease, some fatal, have been reported.

971 Voting In Church

2012-01-27T06:53:00.001-05:00

970 The Running

2012-01-25T05:10:00.001-05:00

970 The Running and the Tweet

Back in ancient times, news types working for the wire services wrote what was called a “running.” We sat down before a speech or a ball game and wrote stuff as it happened, and they sent it over the wire. No one knows anyone on the receiving end who ever used these. But here they are again.

When everyone got cable and the wire services became fully computerized, there no longer was a need for this -- if there ever was one -- and they were unceremoniously dropped. Unceremoniously and unannounced. We just stopped doing them.

But they were fun to write, especially when something unexpected happened, especially if it was a close ball game or an unusual speech.

A favorite took place on Sunday, November 18th, 1973 when President Nixon went to Disney World in Orlando to address the Associated Press Managing Editors Association meeting. An apt place for both the speaker and the audience, by the way.

Among the things he said as Watergate boiled around him was “...I have never obstructed justice...” The phone rings. It’s the main editor at what we called the “General Desk.” “Did he really say that?”

“Yes, he really said that.”

Then he said “I am not a crook.” A mild statement by today’s standards but shocking language from a sitting president in ‘73, especially from a stiff like Nixon.

The phone rings.

“C’mon, you made that up. He couldn’t have said that!”

Yes he could and yes he did.

So from the everything old is new again department, comes the 21st century version of “the running,” which is Twitter.

For the three people in America who are not watching an event as it unfolds, reporters now “tweet” live from someplace... a court hearing or a speech or a space shot.

And does anyone actually read these things as they’re sent? Or even afterwards when they’re aggregated and printed or posted?

Hard to tell. There aren’t any known surveys.

The tweets, though, serve the same purpose as the runnings. They show anyone who is interested that “we’re here, we’re live, we’re sending out stuff. We’re better than the other guys. Or faster.”

Sometimes, though, speed kills.

Shrapnel:

--So, do we have this straight? Clinton’s philandering mattered, but Gingrich’s doesn’t? Explanation, anyone?

--Did you learn anything new from the State of the Union Address? Or did it just reinforce your already well worn but true notion that in election years all of a sudden we get better economic figures than we had previously? What a nice campaign speech.

--There are plenty of cooking shows and cooking channels on television, but there’s an important one missing, the Frozen Food Channel. How else will we learn how and for how long celebrity chefs thaw frozen meat or how to boil water for your spinach in land that’s below sea level? And while we’re at it, what about a Canned Food Channel?

Have You Noticed? Fresh fruit is available all the time and no longer needs seasons but bath soap fragrances and gasoline formulas do?

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012

969 Joe Paterno

2012-01-22T14:29:00.002-05:00

Sunday, 1/22/12
969 Joe Paterno

(STATE COLLEGE Pa.) -- Listen to the cheap buffoons and hypocrites with their handwringing tributes to the man they killed. Joe Paterno died this weekend. He was 85 and until recently, considered the great man around here. The winningest this and the longest serving that. Win games, but win ‘em with honor. More of his boys graduated than those of any other coach in college football history. Blah blah blah.

Then, all of a sudden comes along a little boy sex scandal centered on one of his former underlings and Joe is forced into a corner. He did the legal thing, reporting what little he knew to his boss. (His boss? Who are you kidding! He had no boss.) But, said the people who killed him, he hadn’t done the “moral” thing. What do these people know about morals? So they fired him and he died. And they not only fired him with a phone call, but they forced him to place the call. Cowards.

Now come the tributes. Four hundred nine wins. Thirty seven bowl games. Two national championships. Success with sportsmanship. His fans have been outraged all along, and they should have been. In 2012, you don’t can a guy who has been on your payroll since 1950, who has made your low rent little Ag school into a national academic and athletic center of gravity while you went ahead and turned it into a national joke.

The tributes are like saying “Okay, Joe... all is forgiven” when there was little or nothing to forgive. Sure “JoePa” as they called him overstayed his prime. That can happen anywhere. And sure, he might have had too much power. But you don’t pay tributes like those being so glibly spouted now when you wronged the guy in the first place and he’s not around to hear them. Like so much else about this town, it’s all about salving and saving oneself.

The JoePa statue outside the huge and ugly stadium here is the only tribute worth remembering: “Educator, Coach, Humanitarian” says the accompanying wall. The statue was put up in 2001. It weighs 900 pounds and was sculpted by Angelo DiMaria. You can drop him a thank you note at box 4071, Reading PA 19606. A thank you note? Yes, because it’s set in bronze and even the guys running the show at Penn State wouldn’t dare tear it down when their inner glee and outer hypocrisy reached full force. And they certainly won’t now.

And probably they’ll re-name the place Paterno Stadium, something he always said he didn’t want.

Fond hope: that the funeral will be small and private. And the inevitable memorial service will be huge and that no one named Paterno will attend. Would serve them right.

Joe’s immediate cause of death was lung cancer. But this was a homicide.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012

968 Cruisin'

2012-01-20T05:12:00.003-05:00

S968 Cruisin’

First off, those cruise ships are not ships, they’re gaudy floating amusement parks with motors. Second, why would anyone get on one when you can join 4,000 of your closest friends anywhere on dry land at a huge saving?

You can overeat at Burger King for three percent of the price of the cruise and no one’s ever gotten e-coli there. Plus no worries about dirty silverware or leering waiters or chintzy lounge acts that can’t make it in Vegas or Atlantic City.

You can inhale industrial waste in Detroit and not have to worry about Legionnaire's disease. Better yet, you can smoke and chances are your health insurance will cover most of the cost of treatment and you won’t risk drowning.

Can you imagine the captain of the Titanic or the Lusitania or the General Slocum or the Edmund Fitzgerald saying “I tripped and fell 17 stories right into a lifeboat and am directing the evacuation of the Costa Concordia from there”? Half the lifeboats didn’t deploy, but the captain and his lifeboat did.

Can you imagine the Coast Guard having to shout down the Captain of the Andrea Doria or the Dona Paz having to be told not to leave his ship until everyone else was off?

At this writing, we don’t yet know how many people died because a waiter asked the captain to turn off the autopilot and cruise closer to his on-shore home. And we don’t know what passes for “Captain” on some of these amusement floats.

The worst recorded shipwreck was the Dona Paz (the “n” in Dona should have a “tilde” over it, making it pronounced “DON-ya.”) Four thousand people died. The Titanic: 1517 lives. The Slocum: 1021. The Andrea Doria: 43 right away, a few more soon after and 14 trying to salvage the wreck. The Edmund Fitzgerald: 29.

Perspective: Even if the death toll reaches 50, this is far from the worst in history, unless, of course, it’s your loved ones who died. But it could be one of the stupidest.

Shrapnel:

--Betty White was really pretty as a young woman. And now, at 90, she’s still pretty. And talented.

--Newt Gingrich came out of the closet in South Carolina. If ever you doubted he was a racist, you now have your proof. The other guys are better at keeping secrets like that.

--If Romney wins in SC and in FL, the rest of the dwarfs should give up, because they don’t have a chance. And Mitt will likely win the election. A good thing, since America has had such good luck with businessman presidents -- like G.W. Bush and H. Hoover.

Have You Noticed? The world didn’t collapse when Wikipedia blacked itself out for a day in protest against proposed legislation to put much of the internet in private corporate hands, but a second day of that might have done the trick.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012

967 Martin and Ludwig

2012-01-18T04:26:00.002-05:00

967 Martin and Ludwig

(Note to readers: Since Monday, 1/16/12, I have received a pound and a half of e-mails asking where my annual Martin Luther King rant was this year. Most said my Shrapnel reference and link to a four year old post was inadequate. So here’s what I have to say this year, reluctantly.)

Martin Luther King, Jr. has been fossilized by a culture which doesn’t know him and doesn’t understand him. This space regularly and annually makes two points about Dr. King:

1. You can’t put words in his mouth or thoughts in his head and therefore anything anyone says about what “Martin would think” today is guesswork, if not wrong by definition.

2. Dr. King preached thousands of sermons and gave thousands of speeches in his lifetime and we remember only four words of one syllable each.

That said, those are four mighty words. Four sounds in a particular order that resonates as widely and with as many are the opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.

“I have a dream” and “da da da daaaa.” have the same rhythm. Yet they’re just about all that’s remembered.

The Fifth is not generally considered Beethoven’s best. But when you get past the corny and over used da da da daaa... there’s some mighty good music there.

And when you get past the over used “I have a dream...” there’s some mighty good vision and insight and advocacy there.

So, some day when you have the time, listen to the whole of each all the way through. But also, you can find plenty else that Martin said. And most of it is as timely today and as powerful as it was when he said it.

Shrapnel:

--Here’s something to remember, especially if you’re in the supermarket without your glasses: there’s a difference between “Benefiber” and “Beneful.” The former is a food additive and the latter is a dog food. (What happens to your dog if you combine them in one bowl -- or to you?)

--Shame on you, GEICO, for crossing over and running what may be the most annoying ad in television history. This company’s advertising is usually top notch... funny, entertaining and informative. But the one with the little piggy squealing “wee wee wee” all the way home makes you want to go out, find a Gecko and stomp on it.

--Careful what you say and believe. There is no truth to the rumor that in the interest of transparency and clarity, Bain Capital is going to change its name to Bane Capital. Did the guys who founded Cerberus Capital know that Cerberus is the three headed dog who stands guard (and presumably admits new comers or at least checks invitations) at the gates of hell?

Have You Noticed? Guys who commit two murders and get two life sentences never have to serve the second one.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012

966 Death Knell for the Clicker

2012-01-16T06:42:00.001-05:00

966 Death Knell for the Clicker

The bloated Pennsylvania legislature has finally gotten around to outlawing directional signals, joining 23 other states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam. But some law breaking Pennsylvanians haven’t gotten the message and continue to use them, probably out of habit. That said, these criminal drivers have to be brought to heel. Or justice. Or something.

We salute the law abiding and alert citizens who obey and we urge everyone else to join. After all, using signals takes all of the mystery out of driving, leaving it just another mundane chore.

This progressive move to put more of the unexpected, the intrigue and excitement into driving started in Northern California and has moved slowly east like a weather system. It is the good citizens of San Francisco who first realized that directional signals were an annoyance, a distraction and no one believed them, anyway.

The Sacramento legislature acted quickly and long ago to get rid of those annoying clicker things. In fact, California has the strictest laws in the nation against the use of signals and cars built to California’s emission standards don’t even have signals any longer. A few old fashioned drivers have re-learned hand signals or purchased after-market directional signal add-ons, which also are illegal in California.

Now, once again, Pennsylvania is dragged kicking and screaming into the present day. What a disgrace! You’re on the turnpike or maybe Route 80 doing a good clip and some schmuck is parallel pacing you... you know he’s trying to move into your lane, so you slow a bit and let him in. What’s wrong with that? The guy has to flash his blinker at you before you’ll show him how courteous you can be? Nonsense!

Progress at last. Putting the mystery back into the romance of vehicular transportation.

Plus outlawing blinker signals makes you more alert. You never know what the guy in the next lane or approaching the next corner is going to do until he does it. But what fun it is to guess!

Shrapnel:

--Say it isn’t so! The maker of Hostess Twinkies and Wonder Bread has declared Ch. 11 bankruptcy, blaming -- who else -- the unions. But can you imagine a world without this stuff?

Today is Martin Luther King Day, and usually, we devote a full post to cautioning against trying to co-opt Dr. King’s mind and putting words in his mouth, trying to second guess what he would have said about anything. There’s nothing new to say about the subject. But since this is a presidential election year, you might want to see what was said in the previous presidential election year, 2008.

Have You Noticed...? When TV promotes a program that isn’t a repeat it’s described as “all new” as opposed to... what... a partially new Law & Order SVU … or a mostly or somewhat new... or sort-of new Dateline?

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012

965 Bulb Hunt

2012-01-13T04:25:00.000-05:00

965 Bulb Hunt

This is good training. It’s getting a small number of people ready for the onset of the vanishing lightbulb.

The small number of people in mind here have antique floor lamps. Many of these use what’s called a “mogul” base bulb. A mogul base is just like an ordinary base, only bigger. Much bigger. And, yes, they still make these bulbs. But just try to find one!

Generally, these are energy gulping three-ways -- usually 100-200-300 watts. They run hot. And usually when you put in a new one, one of the elements burns out immediately. They are hard to come by. Yes, you can get them on the internet. But shipping something this fragile is risky. Could be, when you screw it in it’ll be DOA.

And yes, some specialty lighting stores sell them. At a price as big as a mogul base. Often on special order.

Inspection of three local big box stores brought comments like “A mogul bulb? What’s that?” Or “I haven’t seen one of those since my great grandmother died.” Or “Not only do we not carry those, but we don’t carry the little adapters so you can use regular bulbs in your mogul lamp.”

So those of us with mogul floor lamps have a distinct advantage over you poor peasants who have ordinary bulbs. We have gotten early training in not being able to get what we need. When you go out scouring the stores for ordinary 60s and 75s and 100s, we will look at you with benevolence, sympathy and knowing nods.

We are pioneers in privation. And we hope that our effort, our searching serves future generations of light bulb hunters. Learn from our sacrifices!

Some days, it just doesn’t pay to be a mogul.

Shrapnel:
--The Romneys: like father like son. George was “brainwashed” and Willard “likes to fire people.” When these guys make a public mistake, it’s a MISTAKE.

--Your tax dollars at work: the TSA confiscated a Massachusetts woman’s cupcake as she went through the screening at Las Vegas. It was in a jar partly filled with extra icing, which is considered a gel and therefore prohibited. Gotta watch those cupcake wielding New England terrorists.

--This space has long hated Buffalo NY radio station WWKB (Nee WKBW) for bigfooting the signal of the much smaller WTHE (Nee WFYI and WKIT, Mineola and WKBS, Oyster Bay) and preventing people from hearing it. But now, “KB” has started broadcasting a progressive/liberal talk format. And after almost 50 years, Buffalonians, all is forgiven (and yes, the signal reaches central Pennsylvania.)

Have you noticed...? When the TV says “we’ll be back after these messages,” some people get actual messages ranging from “your prescription is ready for pickup” to “forget the meds, go out and kill random strangers because they’re evil and out to get you.”

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012

964 An Open Letter to Keith Olbermann

2012-01-11T05:14:00.002-05:00

964 An Open Letter to Keith Olbermann

Dear Keith,
C’mon, buddy, give it a rest. Sit down and do the show that no one watches and everyone should. You are giving the rest of us cranky, childish and entitled commentators a bad name.

We who worked at NBC understand how tough things were for you at MSNBC (twice)... and at Fox and at CNN and at ESPN. But enough, already. How long did it take before you started acting up at Current TV? Three months? Four? Those of us who once worked with its new president, David Bohrman generally have trouble feeling sorry for him under any circumstances. But you’re changing that with your churlishness and expectations that a shoestring operation will look as slick as the big boys after only a few months.

You are probably the best and funniest and most insightful of the current pack of television’s politically liberal analysts and that’s a high compliment with Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert in the stew. But stop with the foot stomp, already.

The papers report you don’t talk to your own company except through your agent or your lawyer. That’s crazy. They’re paying you a fortune to do stuff you’d probably do for free, given the opportunity. Complaints about little crap that plague start up networks without big corporate parents are part of the game. Refusing to participate in primary election coverage is nuts. Throwing a hissy fit when your show is preempted for that coverage is equally nuts. And we understand the New York building you picked for your studio and headquarters is a dog. So do what any New Yorker would do under the circumstances, break the lease and move or put the rent in an escrow account until they fix the place up.

In an era dominated by the likes of Ron Paul and Rick Santorum and Willard Romney, a guy like you is more than necessary. Get with the program, Keith.

Shrapnel:

--A move in Greece maybe raises the hopes of the Penn State crowd. Greece has added pedophilia, exhibitionism and kleptomania to the list of official disabilities and is offering pedophiles, exhibitionists and kleptomaniacs disability pay. The only question is this: if you have all three “disabilities,” do you get paid triple?

--Home schooling -- often home indoctrination -- denies the student social interaction by experience, reinforces dependence on the teaching parent and implicitly tells the kid others are not important. It limits the child to one authoritative source of information and opinion and leaves many of them unprepared for life. And as the fad expands, you can figure it’ll soon spread to higher education, where potential employers are likely to be unimpressed by that sheepskin from the University of Mommy.

Have You Noticed... The merchants of America were almost as quick and early in removing holiday decoration items as they were in putting them up and that if you were looking for a bargain artificial tree or decorations and waited until the first week of January, you couldn’t find any?

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012

963 Reunion Fatigue

2012-01-09T06:22:00.002-05:00

963 Reunion Fatigue

The seed was planted in 1958. Since then it has spread like kudzu or Zoysia Grass, covering everything in its path and choking out all other forms of life.

‘58 was when they announced plans for the following year’s 20th high school reunion. Then they started reuning every couple of years, but somehow skipped the 50th. Maybe they had reunion fatigue. Maybe the organizers decided that if they didn’t like us then, why would they like us now? Maybe there just weren’t enough of us still alive to make renting a hall worthwhile -- or possible.

But fear not. There are plenty of other reunions. Defunct or moribund radio stations, networks and other companies have them all the time. ALL the time. At any given moment, there’s a reunion going on somewhere.

Even if you liked your classmates or your co-workers, it gets tiresome. You’ve heard all the stories before and have become an authority on them. Or maybe you lived them. Either way, it’s education-through-immersion. And it’s a glorification of days that didn’t seem terribly glorious at the time.

Bad food doesn’t negate good company. But there are limits.

Recently, a card arrived from a well known but quirky institution of higher education. It said “we missed you at the reunion!” And then it prattled on about how a wonderful time “was had by all.” WHAT reunion?

The invitation, evidently, got lost in the mail. A letter to the alumni liaison person drew a response along these lines: Yeah, we missed telling quite a few people. But lucky you, you’re now on our mailing list (again) and we already are planning another one for this year. Oh, goodie!

How about we hold some of these via video conference? These days, everyone has a web cam.

Shrapnel:

--The far right’s current slur against journalism that doesn’t toe the party line is “mainstream media,” (as opposed to what, ex-treme media?) So if they’re against the mainstream media, are they therefore against the main stream where most of us live? Yeah, guess so.

--Still more on Lipitor: Pfizer has sent that precious discount coupon that they said they would and then said they couldn't. Anyone who thinks corporations are more efficient than government is just plain wrong. PS: the co-payment for the new generic version is five times smaller than the co-payment for the original.

--The smart phone is getting dumber. It tracks down your location. And then it gives you a weather forecast for someplace you’re not.

Have You Noticed... Sometimes, your anti-virus program jams up your computer and you have to do a “hard restart” and when it restarts it asks you if you want safe mode and you don’t know what the hell safe mode is but once you’re in it you can’t get out of it and everything you need is behind some electronic condom?

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012

962 There Is No Sanity Clause (With apologies to Groucho Marx

2012-01-06T05:10:00.002-05:00

962 There Is No Sanity Clause (With apologies to Groucho Marx)

The title is a line from “A Night at the Opera.” And Groucho wasn’t talking about our present soap opera, the run-up to a presidential election. Groucho also said “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”

The cast of the soap opera should be required to sign a sanity pledge if not a clause. In which case, the only candidate for the nomination now would be … no one.

It’s nearly a given that Obama will be the Democratic Party’s nominee unless he pulls an LBJ and quits the race. The Republican contest is a fun gathering of refugees from the padded rooms of Bellevue. And anyone who takes any of them seriously should join them back at the padding, where surely they will land after the white-coated men with the armored trucks and the huge butterfly nets track them down.

We’ve had crazies in office. We HAVE crazies in office, and not just the president. But this year’s crop is exceptional... a vintage year.

Let’s see if we can break them down...

1. The delusional: Gingrich, who plays the part of The Smartest Guy in the Room. Paul, who is living in a dream world and wants you to join him.

2. The goofy: Huntsman, who seems to think he’s Peter Pan. Perry, who doesn’t think anything and is always striking poses along the old Chisholm Trail.

3. The Kleptomaniac: Normally a guy who steals your clothes from the dorm room you two share. Romney steals (and discards) ideas, personalities and hair-dos. And his plastic sincerity is fake.

4. The Just Plain Nuts: Santorum.

Lock ‘em back up and this time, make sure the straitjackets fit better.

Shrapnel:

--Here’s why Bachmann dropped out of the Republican presidential primaries after the drubbing in Iowa and Perry didn’t. His campaign has a few million to fritter away yet and hers doesn’t. Obviously, her lack of support is an anti-woman thing and has nothing to do with her standing in on the sanity scale, because what would Iowans know about that?

--Happy Birthday, Stephen Hawking, the British physicist who will turn 70 on Sunday, January 8th. Seventy isn’t considered very old these days, but for a guy who has had Lou Gehrig’s disease for about 50 years, he’s amazing.

--Sunday is also the 198th anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans, which took place two weeks after the end of the war of 1812. Word hadn’t gotten down to either side, so they fought... believing the war was still on. Where were Twitter and Facebook when you needed them?

Song for this coming Sunday

Have You Noticed... ATT charges a 15% “recharge fee” if you add minutes to your calling card by calling them, and they don’t disclose this anywhere in the reams of fine print on the back of the card?

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012

961 12 (blink) 12 (blink) 12 (blink)

2012-01-04T06:12:00.003-05:00

961 12 (blink) 12 (blink) 12 (blink)

No, that’s not the ancient VCR in your attic come back to life to taunt you anew about your inability to set its clock. It’s a practice exercise for those among us who still pay their bills by check.

Take a pen or pencil and a piece of paper and write the number a dozen or so times. That may put your mind into gear for the next dozen or so checks you write and prevent you from having to void checks because you put the wrong year in the date line.

Of course, you don’t have to scrap the check. You can cross out the date and write in the correct year and initial the correction. Or you can sneakily change the final 1 in 11 by putting a little curlicue at the top of it and a little “__” on the bottom.

But wouldn’t it be fun for once to get it right the first time? Fun, and smug satisfaction. Imagine how superior you’ll feel to your neighbors and even to yourself if you write 1/15/12 on that check!

Without this little exercise you’re likely to get the year wrong. And you’re almost as likely to get the month wrong. And if you’re an unconscious check writer, you may find you’ve written 12/15/11 when you meant 1/15/12.

On the other hand, the check will probably go through even with the wrong date on it. No one reads those things. It’s all done by optical scanning and the only thing that counts is that the amount on the amount-number line matches the amount on the amount-in-words line. If it doesn’t, the bank can choose whichever line it wants. That’s a change. Used to be the “words” line was what they’d pay. Now they can use either.

How do you find out about such things? By reading the fine print the bank sends you. You know, the little booklet that you glance at and toss? The one they sent out with your 12/11 bill, but dated 1/1/12?

Shrapnel:

--Even the thugs aren’t what they used to be. The New Year’s Day firebombs in Queens were packed in glass Starbucks bottles which are mighty tough to break. Can’t do much damage with thick glass, but at least these guys stole their bottles from an upscale recycling bin... and do they serve lattes at Rikers?.

--The win in the Iowa Republican caucuses doesn’t amount to much and doesn’t predict anything, either. So now it’s on to greener pastures... or at least different pastures of equal insignificance. Note: this was written the day before the event, proving again that there need be no facts in a news item.

--Spell check in Google Docs doesn’t recognize many contractions and Microsoft Word doesn’t allow most punctuation in subject lines. Time for some little revisions, programming geniuses. We’re all trained from birth to use contractions and punctuation marks.

Have You Noticed... that the life expectancy in New York City is 82, which is five years higher than the national average?

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012, 12, 12

960 This is the First Month of the Rest of Your Year

2012-01-02T04:11:00.002-05:00

960 This Is the First Month of the Rest of Your Year

You’d think that after 40 failed years of sloganeering the Hallmark-y cutsie pop-psych self improvement types would reassess, realize they are passing gas in the ocean and stop. But no. The Life-As-Fortune-Cookie crowd may not be raking in the moolah it once did. But members are taking their own advice, and keeping at it. Some favorites:

Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining: Yeah, except the one over you. It’s lined with rain or snow and you’re going to get flippin’ soaked! Especially if you paid for the book in which this nonsense first appeared.

It’s Always Darkest Before the Dawn: No it isn’t.

What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Stronger. No it doesn’t.

The Glass is Half Full, Not Half Empty: The glass is holding 50% of its capacity.

Every day in every way, I’m getting better and better. Oh, yeah?

The older the violin, the sweeter the music. If the violin was junk to begin with, it ain’t going to turn into a Stradivarius because it’s old.

How about this one from Dr. Joyce “I’m a Ditz” Brothers: “If you want to be a success, start thinking of yourself as a success.” Sure, and be sure to spruce up that refrigerator box you live in while you’re at it.

Then there’s this one from Michael Jordan: “If you put in the work, the results will come.” So don’t lose those dreams of NBA stardom, all you 5’6” uncoordinated nearsighted guys.

Let bygones be bygones. That’s no fun.

Sleep with dogs, arise with fleas. Only if you’re juicer than the dog.

You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. As Barack Obama said in ‘08 Yes We Can.”

And the ultimate from 19th-20th century self help guru Napoleon Hill: If you can conceive it and believe it, you can achieve it. Except if you’re a 5’6” uncoordinated nearsighted guy trying to be Michael Jordan.

So look at yourself in the mirror this morning and tell yourself you’re beautiful, you deserve love, you deserve prosperity. (Are you? Do you?) And remind yourself that this is the first month of the rest of your year.

Shrapnel:
--Thanks for all the comments on WestraDamus-2011. Each year we consider dropping the feature. But each year things get so preposterous it’s impossible to stop.

--It took Verizon Wireless only about a day to drop the proposed $2 fee for paying our bills on line. Huge customer backlash. We were all getting ready to show them what happens when WE drop the calls.

--This is being posted on 1/2/12. How many of your resolutions have you already broken? How many will you break today?

Have You Noticed... almost all people who go on TV and say they’ve had interactions with spirits and ghosts are morbidly obese middle aged women from small towns?

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2012

959 WestraDamus 2011

2011-12-30T04:42:00.000-05:00

959 WestraDamus 2011
This duplicates what was posted on the Westradamus.com website on 12/29/11. If you have seen that, then you have seen this.

With 2012 upon us, we offer the 23rd anniversary edition of the WestraDamus predictions, presented each December or January for the year gone by and generally wrong. 'Damus started as a parody of the forward looking Astrological year-enders appearing in the supermarket tabloids, almost always wrong and never acknowledged as such. But the Non-Prophet has grown into an American institution, like the Smithsonian, the Jerry Lewis Telethon, concealed handguns, the Kardashians and the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. And so, we continue...

TOP OF THE YEAR:
This year, we are under the most intense pressure ever. Another non-prophet has crept upon the scene and made a false prediction so outrageous as to make us look absolutely sane. The end of the world, originally scheduled first for May and then for October of 2011 will not happen. Shows you gotta stick with the original, WestraDamus!

Among the big things set to happen last year is the resignation of President McCain who said he wants to spend more time with his family and pursue other interests. Chief Justice Thomas is to swear in Vice President Palin who says she doesn’t plan to run for election.

The political movement Occupy Main Street will gain momentum after a slow start at midyear. The Conservative-backed protests have spread to many of the nation’s more prosperous suburbs from its beginnings in Shaker Heights, Ohio.

Occupy Great Neck, Occupy Woodmere, Occupy Palo Alto, Occupy Scarsdale, Occupy Greenwich have all attracted members of the nation’s richest one percent. Many camp out by putting their tour buses and recreational vehicles in public parking lots. Police in all these towns say “as long as they’re not breaking any laws, we’re not going to try to stop them from exercising their first amendment rights.” Demonstrators and Protesters carry signs with slogans like “After all we’ve done for you!” and “Lower Taxes, make jobs.”

In Orlando, homemaker Casey Anthony will become the first Florida death row inmate executed in ages after she was charged and convicted of killing her toddler daughter. Anthony was arrested at her neighborhood church where police found her conducting a meeting of the Christmas Cookie Club, which she has chaired for the past two years.

Michael Jackson’s Doctor, Conrad “Needles” Murray will face murder charges, but will walk.

And late in the year, an obscure former assistant football coach in an obscure northeastern town will be honored for decades of dedicated charity work with young boys, but will decline the honor, saying he was only “doing the right thing.”

Now, the Month-By-Month in Non-Prophecy

JANUARY:
A giant tornado will deposit thousands of dead birds on Arkansas. Former Governor Mike Huckster will declare it God’s way of providing food for hungry Arkansans. He’ll say “See, the Lord has provided and even started food prep!”

A similar story will take place in Russia, where hundreds of people are stuck on boats trapped in the ice. Officials say this will provide freeze dried nutrition for the people starving in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

China will halt production of the Black Eagle jet fighter because lead paint in the fuselage will harm people on the ground when the planes crash.

FEBRUARY:
Egyptian dissidents will descend on the royal palace in an effort to de-throne King Farouk.

The rock band White Stripes will announce it is breaking up. The general reaction will be “who?”

Japan will deny that Sumo wrestling matches are fixed. Hulk Hogan will be unavailable for comment because he’s on location filming ads for Rent-A-Center.

Somali pirates will grant political asylum to Egypt’s King Farouk in return for a king’s ransom, but the Bank of Egypt will have frozen his accounts.

Congress will pass legislation opposing the imposition of a leap-day, Feb. 29, 2012. Republican leaders will laud “one day less of taxation.” Democratic leaders will laud “the end of a pernicious special interest.”

MARCH:
ATT will offer to buy T-Mobil as part of its plan to make every call in America drop.

The US will impose a no-fly zone over every airport that connects with any major place.

APRIL:
The federal government will shut down because of congress’ inability to agree on a budget. But certain important agencies will be spared and keep running: the IRS, the Supreme Court, and the FHA.

A giant earthquake will devastate parts of Japan, but Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Suzuki, Subaru, Sony, Panasonic and Toshiba will be spared.

MAY:
Saudi diplomat Osama Bin Ladin will be assassinated while vacationing at his summer villa in Pakistan. Members of his social club, Al-Qaeda, will claim it is part of a worldwide movement to abolish the Muslim faith. Lexicographers will say he deserved to die because he refused to put “u” after “Q.” And conspiracy theorists will speculate that Bin Ladin’s murder was similar to Apollo 11’s moon landing... faked.

JUNE:
The entire state of Iowa will be washed away in a flood. Authorities will quickly try to restore the area in time for the caucuses scheduled for the first week in January, 2012, but subject to reschedule for some time in 2009, to maintain their status as “earliest.”

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney declares he will not run for president, choosing instead to return to the world of venture capital where he can help more people escape from jobs.

JULY:
Greece will seek Chapter 11 protection from creditors, becoming the first member of the European Union to declare bankruptcy.

AUGUST:
Hurricane Irene will cause mass transit systems up and down the east coast to shut down, bringing heaps of praise to government leaders in the area for showing foresight in protecting residents by having emergency plans in place and using them.

Agencies threaten to lower the credit rating on US debt, but later relent and say “it was only a joke, folks.”

SEPTEMBER:
One of the Republican candidates for the party’s presidential nomination, Herman Cain, will promise free pizza to every American if he wins. He’s joined on the platform for the announcement by his wife and two lovers.

The Homeland Security Dept. will announce it has foiled a 9/11 terrorist attack on Parsippany, NJ by a cell of freedom fighters from Luxembourg.

The Palestinian Authority will request UN membership, causing a walkout by delegations from Taiwan, Kosovo, Vatican City, and the Confederate States of America.

OCTOBER:
Greece’s Bankruptcy will end months of labor unrest. Qaddafi of Libya will resign to take a job with the World Bank, but only after writing a long letter to his fellow African, Herman Cain, briefly explaining his country’s 24-hundred year history.

An earthquake in Turkey will also hit Turkish Cypress, but leave the Greek part untouched because Greece already has enough problems.

NOVEMBER:
Occupy Main Street Protesters, reacting to the onset of winter-like weather, will take their demonstrations indoors, renting the otherwise useless Madison Square Garden for three months. Eight protesters will be arrested for illegally parking their RVs at Penn Station. The owners of two BMWs and a Bentley will see this and move their cars to a paid lot during the arrests.

DECEMBER:
As expected, Christmas will take place on December 25th again this year despite efforts to move it to the nearest Monday.

Your spouse and your lover will become involved in a fender bender, realize they love each other and sail off into the sunset together.

A Brooklyn judge will release an arrested crackhead wanted for a North Carolina shooting, only to see him later re-arrested and charged with the murder of an NYPD cop. Mayor Bloomberg will go ballistic and people will support him because of the fine job he did in August’s devastating hurricane and besides, it will not have snowed yet this winter.

Israel’s stealth takeover of North Korea will become public knowledge when it is disclosed that founding president Kim Il Sung was Jewish and had changed his name from Sammy Kimmel in the late 1940s.

AND A DECEMBER APOLOGY:
For some time now, WestraDamus has been predicting that Sears/K-Mart would be closing stores and selling off real estate. Late in December, that became a reality. Our apologies for being right.

QUICKIES:

The US unemployment rate for the year will even out at about four percent, matching the inflation rate... the Dow Jones Industrial Average will top out at 5867.56, led by tech stocks and manufacturing... a shortage of toilet paper will cause the sales of handi-wipes and large size post-it notes to skyrocket... The FDA will define “organic” as anything edible and everything else as inorganic... Anti abortion activists will campaign for an end to prohibition, believing even a small constitutional victory will encourage contributions...

I’m WestraDamus, the Non-prophet. My opinions are my own but you're welcome to them.®
©WJR 2011
This rant will be available throughout 2012 at http://westradamus.com/

958 Art Imitates Art

2011-12-28T05:26:00.002-05:00

958 Art Imitates Art
I. Is this what they mean by “playbook?”

Have you heard of the video game, “Hitman”? It’s been around a long time. It pits a seemingly invincible secret agent/hired killer against a slew and a half of enemies. They battle each other on TV or computer screens, getting into armed conflict using such things as guns, knives and ordinary household items with super powers.

Typical game: violent, brilliant animation, no visible connection to reality.

Now, comes the book, “Hitman --Enemy Within” terribly written by Terrible Writer William C. Dietz, of whom you’ve probably never heard and with good reason.

The book follows the action you’d normally see on the game console except there are no elements of either skill or luck. Reading the book is like watching others play the game only quieter.

But like the game, the book is filled with unrealistic violence, unrealistic characters, an unrealistic plot and no theme.

A book based on a video game. Three hundred- plus pages of phantasmagorical gore. For the one out of 14 gamers who can actually read.

II.
WWMS
If you don’t consider video games an art form, you haven’t seen enough video games. But how about fashion design? Specifically shoe design.

Nike is out with a new retro version of the “Air Jordan” sneaker, kind of an imitation of its own original. When they introduced it last week, shoppers lined up to plunk down $180 a pair. In some cases -- Seattle, Atlanta, Jersey City, they plunked down each to secure their places on line. Police used pepper spray. No one was killed. But there were several injuries in each city.

So not only are the cops imitating the performance art they perfected at the 1968 Democratic national convention in Chicago and various “Occupy” demonstrations more recently, but the accommodating civilians are re-creating their own performance art. And What Would Michael Say?

III. Insurance Ads
Then there are those cutsie insurance ads. Advertising always has been a copycat industry, but now we’re inundated with Gecko wannabes.

GEICO’s computer-generated cartoon gecko is part of a large arsenal of cutsie commercial weapons the company fields. There also are ads featuring cave men in business attire and a Rod Serling impersonator played by actor Mike McGlone.

Next to climb on this bandwagon was Allstate. They, too, realize if you advertise heavily, you need variety. So they feature benevolent, fatherly tough guy actor Dennis Haysbert of “24” TV fame as their spokesman, with a sprinkling of spots featuring actor Dean Winters playing “Mayhem” and causing crashes.

Progressive has the cartoonish “Flo” the checkout clerk, played by comedienne Stephanie Courtney. She’s ever present and ever tiring.

State Farm has started using car and home destroying giant robots.

And General Insurance has a midget computer generated army general driving buses and cars and driving you nuts.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

957 More On Lipitor

2011-12-26T06:37:00.001-05:00

957 More On Lipitor

Let’s start with this tidbit from Wessay™ 955:

Lipitor $4 Co-pay:
With the patent expired and generics available, the maker of this drug wants you to buy it through its own mail order pharmacy/partner which won’t let you if you’re on Medicare or a Medicare advantage plan... and this is not clear on the application.

Now we add:

But wait, there’s more!

Lipitor is expensive. The co-pay is $200 for a three month supply. So, Pfizer has started advertising the four dollar co-payment plan. Apply, and maybe get on this cholesterol lowering gravy train (theirs, not yours,) and pay as little for it as you would for the generic now that the patent has expired.

They put you through application hoops, and the last one is “Leave your phone number and we’ll call you back in the next 48 hours” to confirm all the stuff you’ve said.” And they do.

And then they tell you that Medicare Advantage insurance disqualifies you for this program.

Final words to the operator: “If you would make that clear on the application, you wouldn’t be wasting my time and yours.”
SLAM!

Okay, deed done.

But wait! There’s STILL more.

The next day arrives in the e-mail a downloadable, printable $4 Lipitor discount card.

Okay. So who’s right, the phone lady or the e-mail?

Let’s call the help line.

The help line is automated. Really automated. No human contact. Okay. Let’s call the financial aid line. The financial aid line says “oh, we don’t cover that. I’ll give you a number where you can call a live operator to ask your question.”

For reference, here it is: 1-877-234-3050. Save it. You may need it. It’s unlisted.

First thing happens is the live operator -- sounding like Lily Tomlin’s “Ernestine” starts reading a pitch for Lipitor.

Customer: “Please stop reading the pitch. I know all that stuff. But I have a question.”
Operator: “...and when you take Lipitor you will...”
C: “Ma’am, please!”
O: Oh. Okay, what’s your question?
C: “Why was I turned down for a card and then you sent me a card? And who is right, the lady who rejected me or the e-mail?”
O: “Oh, that must have been sent by someone other than us. A local doctor or pharmacy...”
C: “Ma’am, no local doctor or pharmacy has an e-mail that ends in “pfizer.com.”
O: “... must have been sent by a local doctor or …”
C: “Madam, it was sent by Pfizer. Who is right, the live operator or the e-mail?”
O: “...pharmacy. Uh... the live operator.”
C: “Thank you. Have a nice day.”
SEMI-SLAM.

Should bill them for time spent.

Shrapnel:

--Lynn Samuels has died. One of the loudest and least predictable progressive radio hosts, she had no problem taking on president Obama along in addition to the right wing army that dominates and imperils this country. Samuels was 69 and from Woodside, Queens -- which was unmistakable in her sound if not her views.

--Most phone call dialogues on this site end in “CLICK.” These deserved “SLAM.” And thanks to William A. Musser for teaching that the satisfying, phone-smashing “SLAM” can’t be heard by the party who is being SLAMmed.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

956 What Killed Danny Chen?

2011-12-23T06:22:00.004-05:00

956 What Killed Danny Chen?

This is the kind of war story that gets lost at a time when the focus is soldiers coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, surprising their children at school band concerts or on the tarmacs of airports in their home towns.

Danny Chen was a casualty of the war in Afghanistan. He wasn’t the victim of a roadside bomb or a Taliban attack. He wasn’t the victim of friendly fire or an accident. Eventually the army will figure out whether he put a gun beneath his chin and pulled the trigger or someone else did that for him or to him. He is most certainly dead. But he didn’t kill himself.

They held a funeral in October, in New York’s Chinatown, where Chen lived and his parents live in public housing, and there, read his letters home out loud.

Here’s part of one of them, as quoted by the NBC New York website:
"Feb. 27, 2011: Since I am the only Chinese person here, everyone knows me by Chen” "They ask if I'm from China a few times a day... They also call out my name Chen in a goat-like voice sometimes for no reason."
"People crack jokes about Chinese people all the time. I'm running out of jokes to come back at them."

Pvt. Chen was 19 years old and in a guard tower in Kandahar when the shot rang out. He was on duty with the 3rd Battalion, 21st Infantry Regiment, 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team of the 25th Infantry Division. And now, eight of his fellow American soldiers have been charged in his death.

Would they have been charged without pressure from Chen’s mother, Su Zhen Chen? His father? His neighbors?

So, now come accusations out of the law books and the Uniform Code of Military Justice: dereliction of duty. Telling lies to the MPs. Assault. Manslaughter.

What was Danny Chen’s crime, something that would provoke the kind of treatment he is said to have received from his fellow soldiers? Well, he was a Chinese American and that’s a start. One night he forgot to turn the water heater off after taking his shower. So others, apparently including some of his superiors, dragged him out of bed and showered him with physical abuse and racial slurs. Can’t let a switch in the “on” position go unpunished, no way!

But there were other instances in which Chen was singled out, some of them undisclosed as of now. The army is trying to figure out what, if anything, to do and who do it to.

One thing they haven’t done and maybe won’t do is release the soldier’s diary, possibly a careful record of what went on over there. But they promise a thorough investigation, whatever that means. Maybe we’ll eventually know if one of the eight charged men pulled the trigger or put Danny in to position to pull it himself. And maybe we won’t.

But it’s pretty safe to say these are eight guys -- no, make that nine guys -- who shouldn’t have been together, or maybe shouldn’t be in the army at all.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them.
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

955 Some Very Short Takes

2011-12-21T06:50:00.002-05:00

955 Some Very Short Takes:

North Korea:
The new leader will usher in a new era in Pyongyang as soon as his babysitter gives the okay.

Candidates for the Republican presidential nomination:
-Romney is a 14 year old girl.
-Paul is the cranky old neighbor known for "get your dog off my lawn," and who wants to do the 14 year old girl.
-Gingrich is the community college professor who resents that no four-year school would hire him, when he “just knows” he belongs at Harvard.
-Perry is a life size John Wayne action figure, only dumber.
-Huntsman is Rick Perry with a brain which is turned off.
-Little Ricky Sanatorium is Romney after too many diet pills.
-Bachmann is the home-schooling soccer mom driving an SUV with a "baby on board" placard who careens around you to steal the last parking space.

And if Cain were still in the contest: Mr. Magoo with one of those four hour erections the Viagra ads keep warning about.

Democratic Presidential Candidate:
Will there be one?

Jerry Sandusky:
“I met him once and immediately felt like taking a shower; good thing I didn’t.” --Anonymous.

Speaking of Penn State:
Some students can’t count higher than nine so when you order the ten piece at the local KFC, open the bucket and count before leaving the counter.

Checkout counters:
Why can’t they make them with extra room at the end so the guy who has to carefully fold his receipt and enter his purchase in the checkbook or count the change for the coffee he bought with a $100 bill doesn’t hold up the line?

Lowe’s:
“I never liked them, anyway.” -- Mahmoud al-Abouzavala bin Salamoudouz, freelance chemist and student pilot, Windsor, Ont.

Piers Morgan:
“I never liked him, anyway.” -- Larry King.

T-Mobil:
Jilted under appropriate pressure by suitor at&t, but keeps the dowry and has no plans to stop advertising its 4-G network in jingles that make it sound like they’re singing “orgy network.”

General Electric:
Finally gets its 100 year old wish to fully get out from under Thomas Edison by ending American production of incandescent lightbulbs, decades after ending its production of phonograph records.

The Ed Koch Bridge:
No one ever calls it that and no one ever will and did you expect any different?

Lipitor $4 Co-pay:
With the patent expired and generics available, the maker of this drug wants you to buy it through its own mail order pharmacy/partner which won’t let you if you’re on Medicare or a medicare advantage plan... and this is not clear on the application.

WestraDamus 2012 Update:
Plans to scrap the website have been scrapped and 2011 in Non Prophecy will be available at http://westradamus.com/ after all. Eventually.

Reader Comment:
This from John Gibson of State College, PA. and refers #954, The Fountains of Russia:

It is a common misunderstanding that Santa Claus lives at the North Pole of Planet Earth. In fact he is from the North Pole of Planet Xyurk, in another solar system. He travels by UFO till he reaches Earth's atmosphere, then switches to sleigh and reindeer for the local travel.
He also serves 82 quadrillion other solar systems, which makes for a busy night each year.
It is another error to believe that he is Greek. Does he look Greek to you?
Nor is he a Christian saint, as is commonly supposed. Ever see him visit a church? He represents a kind of paganism native to his native planet. It advises being good but otherwise doesn't tell people what to do.

Reader Question:
If there’s a war on Christmas why is there no war on Hanukkah? Answer: There can’t be until everyone agrees on one spelling -- then you can go to war.

Holiday Shopping Tip:
It’s December 21st. If you haven’t finished your gift list yet, you’re beyond help. The stores are all open from very very early to very very late. Some are open 24 hours. Get cracking! If you have finished, congrats. Don’t forget, the big post-Christmas sales start on 12/26.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

954 The Fountains of Russia

2011-12-19T06:48:00.001-05:00

954 The Fountains of Russia

Ah, Moscow in winter! The snow on St. Basil’s. Throngs of holiday shoppers flocking to Gum. Putin and Medvedev ready to switch jobs. But fountains? For that you have to move a little to the northeast. Well, more than a little.

These fountains are under the Arctic Ocean, and apparently there are hundreds of them, where there used to be just a few. And they are huge. It’s not easy to make a working fountain when surrounded by water. So those innovative, crafty Russians use methane.
Can’t wait for the cruise ads. “Come to the Arctic in Winter... toss coins into the methane fountains. It’s good luck.”

Um... these fountains are stalking horses (stalking fish?) for climate change. The Arctic shelf is melting. Methane spews are a sign of that. And apparently these lovely plumes throw tons of warm gas into the atmosphere.

The big worry, especially at this time of year, is Santa, his elves and his reindeer. If the area’s melting, what happens to the workshop?

St. Nicholas may be Greek, but look where he moved. And given the current economic situation in Greece, it’s no surprise he left. But now what?

Rest assured that he has things under control. After all, he’s a saint! And who knows better how to handle crises?

Two things have happened: First, Santa has outsourced much of his work to China. You can prove that for yourself by reading the labels of the stuff he puts under your tree this year.

Second, he has established an outpost at the South Pole, which apparently is free of methane fountains, and will re-locate his headquarters there. Better air, too.

He has dispatched his Chief Deputy Elf to supervise the construction personally. He also has dispatched several others to establish a flying school for penguins and will hold a worldwide contest to name the 12 or 15 required to pull the sleigh. (Penguins aren’t as strong as reindeer, so he’ll have more mouths to feed.)

Santa’s workshop and mass transit system will remain intact in a new, larger and less poisonous location.

So while the Arctic may soon be gone, it’ll be business as usual for Christmases to come. If there are Christmases to come.

(This post is based on information from and an idea first formed and suggested by Carole Mol.)

Shrapnel:
--As part of the budget deal, the Senate has put off the execution of the most famous resident of death row, the incandescent light bulb. You’ll now be able to buy them right through October of 2012. We had some thoughts on that issue in October 2006 and they haven’t changed.

Holiday Shopping Tip:
Give the gift of lightbulbs! Now’s the time to stock up. Beat the September, 2012 rush. They make great presents and the recipients will be ever so grateful. Sixties, 100s, 40s, 25s for the chandelier and the bathroom mirror, soft white, cool white, plain glass, full spectrum. Any kind will do. And don’t forget yourself, this holiday season.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

953 The Holiday Card

2011-12-16T05:27:00.002-05:00

953 The Holiday Card

Sometimes sending a holiday card takes more preparation and thought than buying a car or deciding which college to apply to.

The card in question is going overseas. The recipient is on in years and though highly intelligent, cultured and literate, though his English is limited. Also he doesn’t celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday. So step one is finding a card that conveys a warm wish without a lot of words or that has pictures of decorated pine trees, crosses, Santas, snow- covered churches, and in this particular case, white people.

That’s a lot easier than it used to be in large urban areas. Not so much in the sticks. But it’s still possible, especially if you’re paying list price at Hallmark instead of buying the same card in, say, Wal-Mart or the 99-cent store.

Okay, so you have the card. What about postage? The Postal Service website can help you there. First, wade through a dozen pages and find the list of countries. Then pick the kind of mail you want to use. In this case, it was “flat envelope with something stiff inside,” which is not the same as a letter of the same dimensions. The e-z calculator reports this item will go to its destination for $2.47.

Then, what about stamps? Christmas? Holiday? American flag? Liberty Bell? If you have current stamps, how many do you need to make $2.47? The answer is 5.632. Since the postal service won’t take “.632” that makes six stamps unless you have a supply of one or five cent stamps handy, which most of us don’t. Then it’s eight stamps at minimum. But you have to put the address on the envelope in two languages, one they can read here and one they can read on the receiving end. Too many stamps and you can’t fit everything on the envelope. Solution: take it to the post office, where they have stamps of higher denominations.

Then, there is the return address label. Use one with Santa’s face? No. Too Christmassy. How about one with a puppy’s face? Nah. Too cute. One that advocates a cause? Inappropriate. One that gives only one name instead of “The so-and-so family?” Too impersonal. Hand written return address wins the contest even though there are 80 varieties of stickers in the drawer.

At the post office, the clerk says “that’ll be 98 cents, sir.” Wait a minute. Ninety eight cents? What happened to $2.47? “I don’t know what you’re talking about. This card costs 98 cents to mail.”

That would have meant three stamps and we could have thrown the thing in the outgoing mail and not stood on line half an hour at the post office.

Shrapnel (Fashion Statement Edition):
--Sometimes when you don’t remember what you’re wearing, questions can be startling. Like when the checker outer at the supermarket asks “are you wearing high heels?” No, but I was wearing my official "High Heels Hot Flashes" hat and had forgotten.

--People who work very early in the morning and dress in the dark are prone to this: A black shoe on one foot and a brown on the other. Gotta get some night vision goggles to solve that one. Oh, but wait... don’t they make everything look green?

--There are two men’s clothing items tied for the ugliest-possible-garment award. They are the Polo shirt and the tie. Good taste can mitigate the effect of the latter. But the former is irredeemable.

Holiday Shopping Tip:
Pay for gift wrap if the service is available. The store will do a better job than you will and do it faster. The nominal fee is worth the expense because when you arrive home with the gifts after a day at the mall, the last thing you’ll want to do is haul out the paper and the tape and the tag and stick-on bows and start fooling with all that stuff when you want to be having dinner and vegging in front of the tube or computer for the evening. Putting it off until tomorrow doesn’t help. Tomorrow arrives and you still have to do all that stuff. Throw a pad of sticky notes in your pocket or purse and use one for each wrapped box to make sure you remember who gets what.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

952 Move Along, Folks, There's Nothing to See

2011-12-14T06:39:00.000-05:00

952 Move Along, Folks, There’s Nothing to See

(BELLEFONTE, Pa.) -- Baby, it’s cold outside, maybe 20 degrees. And it’s dark. The Dairy Queen is open early and doing a brisk business, trying to keep up with the demand for coffee. Diagonally across the street is the Centre County, Pennsylvania courthouse, lit up by a forest of TV lights. Streets leading to it are closed. You can’t get there from here. Not by car, anyway.

If you landed here from Mars this morning, you’d think the only motor vehicles they use on earth are big trucks with satellite dishes sticking up from them because that’s all you can see. That and patrol cars with their rooftop bubble gum flashing red, white and blue.

This crowd was here to report on or to watch the accused rapist of little boys, Jerry Sandusky, the former assistant football coach at nearby Penn State and founder of a little kid charity, the Second Mile. But there is to be no appearance, other than a cameo. This was to be a preliminary hearing. Everyone who is anyone from the media is here. Any big name TV company, newspaper, magazine. Even some lowly bloggers.

But Sandusky declined his right to today’s hearing. His lawyer says that decision was made only last night.

Move along, folks. There’s nothing to see.

Sandusky’s accusers thus won’t be questioned. Not until the trial, if there is one. A leading indicator that there won’t be: both defense and prosecution are swearing by all that’s holy that there has been “no talk of a plea deal.” Which usually means they’re talking plea deal.

The non-hearing has an advantage for the prosecution. It doesn’t have to present one of its star witnesses, whose testimony has sustained considerable erosion due to its apparent changing every few days. Everyone wins. Well, almost everyone. There are those former little boys, for example, the ones the prosecution calls victims and the defense calls accusers.

Then there are all those TV reporters and their crews. Their companies spent tens of thousands of dollars sending them here, getting them hotel rooms, feeding them and fueling their trucks.

What’ll they all do? Easy. They’ll stand up in front of the courthouse where all those lights are... and they’ll guess. They’ll analyze. They’ll interview experts. They’ll interview men and women on the street. In other words, nothing.

Move along, folks. There’s nothing to see.

Shrapnel:

--Everyone following this case is familiar with the slick, maybe too slick defense attorney Amendola, but today was a first meeting with the prosecutor, Costanzo. If he actually tries the case, he’ll be a subtle asset for the defense. Costanzo has that same stilted, artificial, mechanical courtesy of the cop who pulls you over for running a stop sign or speeding, and the same underlying, dead-eye threat that goes with it.

--You have to feel at least a little sorry for Joe Paterno, who fell at home and fractured his pelvis soon after a diagnosis of lung cancer. His doctor is quoted as saying he expects a full recovery from both. Then with a finger aside of his nose, and giving a nod, up the chimney doc rose.

Holiday Shopping Tip:

Back before Seinfeld made him famous, mail order merchant J. Peterman included shipping charges in the price of his goods so he could say “We don’t charge for shipping and handling, and we don’t even know what handling is.” Since then, he’s learned. So like almost everyone else, he now has a chart for how much shipping and handling comes to. But he doesn’t tell us about his discovery: the definition of handling.

Other merchants have caught on to the original Peterman “hide the shipping cost” template. LL Bean isn’t charging -- at least so’s you’d notice. Lands’ End has free shipping offers almost as often as it issues catalogues. Even some of the major department stores include this in the price of the goods. But careful on those: often you have to spend a certain amount before shipping becomes “free.”

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

951 New International Call Centers

2011-12-12T06:44:00.002-05:00

951 New International Call Centers

We all know that talking to a call center in India is like having a conversation with a chicken. The ones in Indonesia and the Philippines are a little better. At least the chickens are lower pitched and talk slower. But what if American business started using call centers elsewhere?

(Accents removed for clarity most times):

Germany:
Operator: Hello, this is Fritz. How may I be of service?
Customer: Good morning, Fritz, this is Bob. I’m having trouble assembling my Black & Decker polyvinyl tool cabinet.
O: Good morgen to you, Bop, first give me the model number.
C: It’s BD 402a.
O: Guut. Now, the serial number, if you please.
C: Serial number? I don’t seem to have that.
O: It’s on page 272 of the instruction book.
C: This one didn’t have an instruction book.
O: I’m sorry, I can’t help you unless your papers are in order.
CLICK.
---
Saudi Arabia:
Recording: Allāhu Akbar. Welcome to Customer Service. If you are a Saudi subject, press one. All others, pleased to press 2.
“Beep.”
Recording: You pressed one, indicating you are a Saudi subject. If you are male, please press 1 for a male operator. If you are (pause) female, please press 2 for a female operator.
“Beep Beep.”
Recording: You pressed two for female. If you cover, please press 1. If not, please press 2.
“Beep Beep.”
CLICK.
---
Israel:
Operator: Now what?
Customer: I took the rotary blades out of my electric shaver to clean them and now I can’t get them back together.
O: What are you, stupid? You put one in each little circle on the cover, put the little schmitchik in to lock them in place and you’re good to go.
C: Well, I tried that, but...
O: Look, you’re wasting my time. You can’t put the thing back together, you shouldn’t have taken it apart. Bring it back to Wal-Mart.
CLICK.
---
Mexico:
Recording: Hola! Welcome to Customer Service. Siesta is each day from 1pm to 3:30pm central time. Please call back after 3:45.
CLICK.

England:
Operator: “Are you there?”
Customer: Yes, thank you. I’m having a problem with my Mini Cooper.
O: Terribly sorry, sir, what seems to be the trouble?
C: It won’t start.
O: Oh, dear, that IS a problem, now, isn’t it? Do you have petrol in the tank?
C: Yes, the tank is full. But when I turn the key, the engine just cranks but won’t catch.
O: Well, we’ll be happy to take care of that for you. Please give me your name and address and I’ll gladly send you a return label and authorization number. All you have to do is drop the car in the post and we’ll take care of the problem for you.
C: The mailbox? It’s an automobile!
O: Oh, you may have to push a little. But it’ll fit.
CLICK.

It’s enough to make you crave the talking chickens of Bhopal and Patna.

Holiday Shopping Tip: Vinyl records haven’t died, they’ve just faded away, but not completely. You still can get them at websites like Best Buy, Amazon, Soundstagedirect and others. And if you type “vinyl” into the search block on Facebook, you’ll find a bunch of other sources. Caution: the discs are pricey. Sometimes pricier than the machinery to play them (which also remains available.) Why bother with 33s in the age of MP3s? Because they sound wonderful, pops, clicks, scratches and all.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments thus: For English: wesrichards@gmail.com all others: custservice@helpfordummies.net.
© WJR 2011

950 O Tannen Bummed

2011-12-09T05:26:00.002-05:00

O Tannen Bummed

Here it is early December and the radio has been pumping out the usual Christmas hits since Thanksgiving. Sometimes earlier. By Christmas Eve, you’ll have had it up to here with this stuff, even if you love the music and the season.

How many times can you hear “Rudolph” or “White Christmas” or “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer?” Or “Santa Claus is Coming to Town?” Can you take any more of Burl Ives and Brenda Lee and even Bing?

There must be 500 different versions of “The Little Drummer Boy,” and all but the original are getting hard to listen to, and getting harder by the year.

Some of the more serious stuff, lovely as it may be, gets worn thin early.

Christmas music overkill diminishes the beauty of the music and the beauty of the season.

Here are some hints to avoid that. Turn off the radio. Wear ear plugs to the mall (just be sure you take them out before you start driving home. Put a post it note reminder on the dashboard if you have to.) Play only the stuff you like on your iPod or home stereo. Don’t click on the links in this post. like this one or even this other one.

Or you can just grit your teeth and take it.

Shrapnel:

--You have to wonder if the animal rights moguls and the real estate moguls of New York are in cahoots. There’s a new push to eliminate the hansom cabs in Central Park. The excuse is having a horse pull a cart is cruel, but the real reason is all that land the stables take up on the west side and which could be sold at a huge profit, even in today’s depressed market.

--The Challenger Explosion Syndrome strikes again with another example of how we get the high tech stuff right and the low tech stuff wrong. Some Chevy “Volts” have caught fire. The problem has been traced not to its fancy electro-mechanical engine, not to its amazing battery, but to an ordinary coolant leak in an ordinary coolant pipe that’s been manufactured and used the same way for 100 years.

--Harry Morgan was one of those actors who you noticed most when he wasn’t there. M*A*S*H or Dragnet would have been far less without him and so would the 100 movies he made. Morgan was 96 when he died this week.

Holiday Shopping Tip: Pay attention to the negative reviews on the internet shopping sites. They’ll often praise the product, backstopping what the seller says in its ad. But it will add things the seller won’t tell you: Sure that hand vac is powerful enough to lift a bowling ball, but will the plastic accessories hold up? Sure, the Tanzanite pendant sparkles, but does the back of it scratch your skin? That kind of thing. The sites are pretty open about reviews. It’s the low-star comments that count.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011
(Harry Simeone Chorale “Little Drummer Boy” awaiting expected permission from 20th Century Fox Records. Rob Thomas “New York City Christmas” courtesy NBC. John Rutter & Cambridge Singers “Joy to the World” courtesy Collegium Records.)

949 The Postman Always Rings Twice (But Later Than Usual)

2011-12-07T06:42:00.001-05:00

949 The Postman Always Rings Twice (But Later Than Usual)

You mail a letter from, say, Moote Pointe NY to North Moote Pointe, a distance of two miles. The letter then goes to the Moote Pointe post office to the mail sorting center in Hicksville, ten miles. Then from Hicksville, it goes to North Moote Pointe’s post office. So another ten miles. And finally, it’s delivered. Running time: two days, maybe three. Mileage, 22.

Under the new system, just announced by the US Postal Service, the route changes. It goes from Moote Pointe to Bowdie, South Dakota, where half the population of 500 is employed by a mail outsourcing service. From Bowdie, the letter goes to the Winter Mail Warmer Home in Ocean Ridge, Florida where it warms up. Finally, it goes to the North Moote Pointe post office where it is ignored for a week.

The recipient gets the letter 27 days after you sent it … unless, of course, you mailed it on a Sunday when there’s no pickup. One mile, 27 days. Forty four cents.

Used to be you sent your checks out maybe five days before the bills were due. Lately, ten days has become the norm. After the post office makes the changes it has announced, two weeks is pushing it.

What’ll happen? More people will pay using the internet and the post office will be in deeper financial yogurt than it is now. Deliveries of your mail order meds will be slower. You’ll get your Time or Newsweek the day after it expires.

Anyone else remember when you could mail a letter at 10 in the morning and it would be delivered a mile away later that afternoon? And at the time, first class postage was three cents? And the Post Office turned a profit?

Shrapnel:

--Is credit card debt killing you? Maybe you should let it. The Wall St. Journal reports in many cases, if you don’t have a co-signer or a card-sharer, if you die, the banks can’t collect even though they try.

--Guitar players often get endorsement deals from makers... Chet Atkins and Gretsch, Les Paul and Gibson, everyone else with either Martin or Fender or Ovation. But you don’t see this with other instruments. Where’s the Arthur Rubenstein Steinway, the Benny Goodman Selmer, the Charlie Parker Conn sax or the Tuba Gooding Sousaphone?

Holiday Shopping Tip:
Avoid the early bird specials unless you are a natural early bird yourself. These come-ons rarely save much and often you hear “I’m sorry, ma’am, headquarters only supplied us with one of those $25 iPods, and we’ve already sold it.” The early opening sales are designed to increase foot traffic at what are usually off-hours. The hope is to increase impulse buying. But remember, in order to open at 4 or 5 in the morning, the store’s staff costs are going to go up and they have to compensate for that, and will.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

948 Cain's Bane

2011-12-05T06:10:00.002-05:00

948 Cain’s Bane

It’s taken about a month for Herman Cain to self destruct. Back then, it was his “blond/blonde” problem. Now, it’s L’non-affaire Ginger White, the woman Cain called a “good friend,” and to whom he supplied money, and who calls Cain her on and off lover for more than a dozen years.

Cain suspended his campaign after “prayer and soul searching.” Translation: once he got home from the current campaign tour, wife Gloria beat the living daylights out of him.

Suspending is not the same as ending, at least legally. Suspending means he still can raise and spend money and he says he plans to do both. Ending means he can’t. But the suspend-idate says he will “soon make an endorsement.” That kind of sounds like “I quit and I’ll pass along my robots to the robot collection of” one of the other GOP nutcases seeking the party’s presidential nomination.

Meantime, keep those bucks coming in.

Can he use this money in the divorce settlement? Or will he just find some other deserving woman whose bills he wants to pay? Or maybe he can pay off some of that credit card debt, or his mortgage or his auto loan.

Cain is no more of a freak than his competitors, just dumber than all of them (except Rick Perry,) only slightly more delusional than they are (except Gingrich) when it comes to estimating the smarts of the average voter and more doctrinaire (except Santorum.)

Shrapnel:

--(STATE COLLEGE, Pa) -- accused boy-lover Jerry Sandusky is again on the campaign trail giving the New York Times a four hour, two day interview, in which he said more or less the same thing he told Brian Williams’ NBC magazine program: he’s just a poor, misunderstood father figure, not a child molester. Which proves that even a football guy can swing at and hit softballs. And that a great investigative newspaper can throw them.

--Anyone else have this problem? The “Shockwave” multimedia program crashes Google Chrome regularly, requiring you to close the browser and reopen it, and possibly losing unsaved work. There seems no fix yet, among the pages and pages of “Why don’t you try ‘this:” followed by steps no layman can understand and which, according to feedback, don’t work anyway.

Holiday Shopping Tip:
Careful of that alleged price cut, it might not be real, even though the “cut” price may still be a bargain. In order to claim an item is “50%” off “regular price,” it has to have been sold at regular price. Sometimes that “regular price” never makes it all the way from the stockroom to the sales floor at all. Sometimes it’s regular price for one day and then it’s cut for the rest of the season. Be even more careful of “compare at” or “comparable value.” Those phrases have more rubber in them than a carton of balloons or all five of your car’s tires.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

947 A Letter From the Airline

2011-12-02T05:48:00.001-05:00

947 A Letter From the Airline

From: Farkluct Airways
To: Farkluct Frequent Flyer Mile Members
Re: Our Bankruptcy Filing

Dear Frequent Flyer: As you know, we filed for reorganization under Chapter 11 this week and we are writing to assure you that your Farkluct Frequent Flyer Miles are safe and that we will honor them as well as all tickets to all of our destinations throughout this proceeding.

We want to assure you that we will continue to provide you with normal flight schedules, reservations, refunds, and all of our other services and that the 80-thousand employees here at Farkluct are happy to see you and happy to help you on your journey.

When we emerge from reorganization, we expect to make several improvements. Among the things you can look forward to is our new in-flight fitness program. We plan to remove 28 percent of the seats on each plane and install subway-style polls and straps so you can improve circulation and muscle tone while standing for the duration of your flight.

Your FFFMiles can be used to upgrade you to a half time, three quarter time or full time seat (Times do not include runway waits or other on-ground delays.Other restrictions may apply.)

Farther along, we plan to reduce personnel overhead, keeping your costs low. Among our innovations will be our new fleet of Airbus FarkluctDrone aircraft. Be assured that your safety is our first concern. An experienced Farkluct Pilot will be at ground controls at all times to assure a safe and smooth trip for no more than five aircraft at one time.

Farkluct will also make flying more economical by rescinding baggage handling fees. As we expect to downsize our contingent of baggage handlers by 100%, we will be inviting all passengers to place their own baggage in the cargo hold before takeoff and retrieving it should the flight reach its destination. We believe this new efficiency will reduce boarding and deplaning times by at least 52%.

As always, we will be providing the world class service for which we have become renowned. And thank you for flying Farkluct.

Shrapnel:

--Romney, supposed grown-up among the Republican candidates for the party’s presidential nomination, has an ad in which a quote from Obama is twisted 180 degrees to seem like he means the opposite of what he said. This is something you’d expect from a Bachmann or a Newt. Giving Mitt the benefit of the doubt in which one assumes he wasn’t aware of the misquote... the guy needs to pay more attention to what his ads say in his behalf, especially when they don’t withdraw the ad when outed.

Holiday Shopping Tip: Watch batteries don’t last forever and getting them replaced is becoming something of a chore. First, you try it yourself. Usually you can’t get the back open. So you bring it to the nearest big box store because jewelers charge a bundle. But the big box stores tend not to change batteries in watches when they don’t sell the brand and many no longer change batteries at all. The toughest of the tough is Fossil, which is a shame because they make so much nice stuff. Getting a battery changed in a Fossil watch is harder than getting a battery changed in a Prius.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

946 Soak the Poor

2011-11-30T07:46:00.002-05:00

946 Soak the Poor

These flaming liberals have it all wrong. Soak the poor, not the rich! And the old. Boomers? Punks, every one of them. Think the world owes them a living. And the REAL old? They’re even worse.

Look at the assets these creeps absorb. Medicare. Medicaid. Social Security. Disability. Food stamps! Pouring money down the sewer. In the meantime we job creators and hard working small business owners are being pushed around like a bunch of geese by a border collie.

It’s time to stand up for our rights as free Americans! The poor, the old, the disabled --ingrates-- are stealing from the rest of us. They don’t understand how much we’ve done for them.

You say the poor have nothing to tax? Baloney! Every one of them has hidden assets. Let them sell their trailers and their assisted living condos or at least stop using subsidized heating fuel. Let ‘em burn grass clippings or leaves if they’re not too lazy to rake them up and save them. Get their hidden money out of their offshore bank accounts and their bug-infested mattresses.

They have cars and trucks. Sell ‘em for scrap and let the owners ride the bus and the subway. Take away their flat screens and sell ‘em.

The homeless? What’s REALLY in those stolen shopping carts they all seem to push around! And while we’re at it, let’s sterilize those single mothers. Sluts! Can’t keep their legs closed! They keep pumping out litters for more welfare.

And if you can’t eliminate welfare, tax it, too.

Damned commies! They’re taking over.

Holiday Season Shopping Tip:

If you’re a CVS customer, be cautious of those “Extra Bucks” deals. First, ads for products with “Extra Bucks” rebates are misleading if you only glance at them, provoking many to believe advertised prices are lower than they really are. Second, “Extra Bucks” have short shelf lives, are easy to forget and easy to misplace.
Third: If you’re buying a lot of stuff at the same time, split the purchase. Get the “Extra Bucks” item or items paid for first, and then use the rebates on the rest of the stuff you’re buying. This doesn’t work for single item purchases.

Shrapnel:

--When will newspapers learn that no one much cares and fewer are influenced by their endorsements? Latest example is the recent full-width-front-page editorial in the Manchester NH Union Leader backing Gingrich. The only New Hampsherites who want Newt are democrats because he’s easier to beat in the general election than Romney will be.

--Ford says it’s ending production of the Crown Victoria sedan, which means every police department still using it will have to look elsewhere. The Crown Vic had authority; gravitas; the ability to instill fear when you got pulled over. Can you imagine Smokey being as intimidating in, say, a Kia?

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

945 Low Battery

2011-11-28T06:54:00.001-05:00

945 Low Battery

ATT’s acquisition of T-Mobile isn’t dead, but it might well be any day now. And it couldn’t happen to a nicer outfit, ATT, which will be forced to pay Deutsche Telkom billions if the present low battery runs completely out of juice. How’s THAT for an early termination fee!

The Justice Department doesn’t much care for this corporate maneuver. The Federal Communications Commission ain’t overjoyed either.

And the companies have withdrawn their request for FCC approval. They need that because wireless phone carriers are licensed broadcasters who use radio transmission to get the signal from phone to phone by way of the cell towers.

Both companies insist the deal is still on. So why would they rescind their license applications? Easy. Because once the FCC starts to act on the paperwork, information that’s now secret becomes public.

And what’s in those secret filings? No one knows for sure, but you can bet on this: whatever’s there contradicts statements everyone’s been making in public.

ATT has been advertising the benefits of the acquisition. More jobs. Better service. Blah blah blah. Do the secret filings contradict any or all of that? We don’t know. But insiders in both companies do. So what are they hiding?

Meantime, T-Mobile is talking about closing retail stores that are too near ATT equivalents (more jobs?) And it’s probably not keeping up with the perpetually changing hardware market. How can they buy the latest stuff if they expect to be taken over?

ATT insists in public that this deal will improve service. That’s probably true, given the stinking coverage and call dropping they offer.

Deregulation was supposed to increase competition. How does one giant devouring another affect that? Take a look at the airlines, the broadcast industry in general, the NBC/Comcast deal, any of the zombie banks.

Bailout for telco down the road? AT&Too Big To Fail, anyone? An acquisition of T-Mobile by, say, poor, beleaguered Sprint might make more sense. Sprint needs all the help it can get if it’s going to compete with the other big guys and the throwaway phones and the Jitterbug Phones, the AARP phones and land lines and calling cards and wrapping notes around bricks and sending them sailing through windows.

The whole deal centers on ATT wanting to be bigger than Verizon, once itself a baby bell. What would be the advantage in that, besides bragging rights?

This battery isn’t holding its charge. But don’t worry, guys, we’ll be glad to supply new ones in return for a new two-year contract.

Shrapnel (mergers and acquisitions edition):

--There’s almost no such thing as a merger. It’s almost always a takeover. And this is nothing new, it goes back to the earliest days of commerce in this country.

--So why use the term “merger?” Because it’s prettier than “devour,” and it fools a lot of people. Fooling a lot of people is one of the major goals of corporations with something to hide.

--All this goes back at least two thousand years. Was the merger of the New Testament into the Bible a merger? Or was it a takeover that used the original name, kind of like when Chemical Bank took over Chase and called itself by the better-known Chase name?

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

944 Black Friday

2011-11-25T07:42:00.001-05:00

944 Black Friday

This is that day. This tough- to- understand and awkward phrase applies to the Friday after Thanksgiving when retailers say they stop using red ink and start using black on their ledgers (do any of them use ink, or have ledgers for that matter?) Seems hard to imagine that they have to go well into the eleventh month of any given year to turn a buck. But that’s what they claim.

Here are some store reviews and comments, a little something to read on line as you wait to check out of MegaMart:

What hurts Best Buy: diminished customer service. Diminished need for and availability of expert floor help as people become more knowledgeable about electronics and shift to Costco and its siblings and to Amazon.com, Tiger.com and Newegg. BBY is not always competitive on major appliance prices or selection.

Radio Shack: probably gets a boost from its recently renewed affiliation with Verizon, especially where their other cell phone carriers (A&TT, Sprint) have inferior signals. But overall, they're in trouble from the same competitors as BBY and because there's almost no margin in some of the small stuff they sell.

What hurts mall Jewelers (Kay, Gordon’s, etc.) overpriced, complex conditions in their warranties. Increased competition from TV shopping channels (primarily the smaller ones, JTV and ShopNBC.)

Macy's: the last traditional national mid-price full line department store chain standing. They have a pricing policy that seems completely unrelated to their costs, which means some things there have to be overpriced to make up for all the cutting they do in clothing and accessories. They've recently ended their contract with the outfit that leased the better jewelry department and have started running it themselves, an improvement.

Look for a reasonably good holiday results from the high-end chains, Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s, Saks, Lord & Taylor, Neiman Marcus. Saks just was hit with a pretty big price-per-foot increase at its Fifth Avenue flagship store. You know who’s going to pay for that.

What hurts Wal-Mart: bad front ends. Checking out is slower than almost anywhere else on earth. (City and suburban CVS, Rite-Aid, Walgreen and Duane Reade locations are worse.) Wal-Mart is a store of last resort.

Sam’s Club, the Wal-Mart- owned answer to the unfortunately-named B.J.’s Wholesale Club and Costco suffers from the same slow checkout and carries less stuff than its competitors.

Costco benefits from consistently good Consumer Reports Magazine ratings of its house brands.

Target: trying to promote itself as low priced and fashionable non-Wal-Mart Wal-Mart. People are attracted to logical displays and decent checkout. Target is going big into groceries, an iffy, low-margin, high shrinkage area.

TJMaxx & Marshalls: TJs are better run than jointly owned Marshalls, and both are more upscale than prime competitor, Ross.

Bed Bath: overpriced, and a bad stop for claustrophobic shoppers. Sloppy front end.

Sears: Eddie Lampert hasn't killed it yet. But wait until there's a rebound in real estate and they and K-mart are gone with the wind. Sears-owned Lands' End probably will survive because of its huge loyal customer base. But it’s being hurt, by year-round free shipping from LL Bean, and smart merchandising from the other Eddie, Bauer. Sears still is a good place to buy tools and major appliances. Consumer Reports loves their Kenmore brand. Some Kenmore owners and repair people don’t and shouldn’t. They sell plenty of good name brands alongside their own.

Furniture: Buy floor models or stuff that’s in the warehouse and that you’ve personally inspected. Don’t order anything from anybody. Period. Inspect your purchase before it leaves the truck and if unacceptable, don’t accept delivery.

Craft stores: You want to solve the terrorism problem? Lock the suspects up in one of these places for a couple of hours and they’ll confess to anything. No water board required (or included.)

Not recommended: K-Mart (prices, quality,) Lowe’s (limited selection in all but the largest units,) Old Navy (unless you’re looking for wear-once-throw-away,) Dollar General (see K-Mart.) Pay-Less Shoes (see Dollar General,) GNC (same kind of stuff is available at the big box discounters or any drug store and comes with a whole lot less theatrical b.s. plus you’ll pay much less.) Any candle shop, Pier One, Bath & Body Works (see “Air,” below.)

Air: Newer stores and many malls are generally badly ventilated, reason enough to stay away and shop on line unless you don’t mind breathing stale air and fabric particles. Many also are overheated and alternately over-cooled. Some older buildings share this problem, but not all of them.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

943 Arthritis of the Whosis

2011-11-23T07:33:00.001-05:00

943 Arthritis of the Whosis

When you do something stupid, you pay for it. But sometimes when you don’t do something stupid, you still pay for it.

A long time ago a twisted knee turned into arthritis and a torn “whosis.” (Whosis is one of those “un-official” and crypto-technical medical terms for something no one can spell or pronounce.) This was from an act of stupidity.

This particular “whosis” is in the left knee. The knee has been a traveling companion for almost 70 years. The banged up, twisted, torn whosis has only been around for a few years.

It was an act of stupidity that produced it. But most of the time, it’s tamed. Housebroken, if you will. Sometimes, though, it asserts itself for no obvious reason. Like now. And that’s not from an act of stupidity.

When your whosis flares infrequently, you forget what you’ve been taught about treating it. So... let’s buy a heating pad. Here’s one that says you feel heat in 30 seconds. Made of a plushy kind of fabric you can hand wash. Electronic controls. Six levels of heat. Mmmmm … feels goood.

But it doesn’t do much for the pain.

Wait, don’t they say try ice? Yes! But ice is too cold. So how about rubber banding a refrigerated water bottle to the knee. Not quite as cold as ice. But cold enough. And the grooves in the bottled water bottle prevent it from slipping out of the rubber band and forcing you to pick it up, which you can’t because when the knee goes, everything else in the body compensates and you get aches where you never knew there was anything to ache.

There are disadvantages. For example, the imbecile in the parking lot who says “Hey, Mack, you know you have a water bottle on your knee?” “Oh, really? Wow, you’re right. Hey, how’d that get there?”

Water bottle on the knee is a lot better that water on the knee.

The orthopedists tell you ice the knee for 20 minutes at a time. Who has 20 minutes to sit there and hold an ice pack? The rubber banded water bottle is a nice compromise. Maybe wearing it in public isn’t the brightest idea. Or even the coldest. But it beats sitting there for 20 minutes at a clip, cooling your heels … or your whosis.

Is there a waiting list for prospective whosis transplants? Is this part of the organ donor program?

Shrapnel:

--You can’t make this stuff up: a breast cancer awareness cement truck. Really. All pink -- cab, doors, roof, trailer -- everything except the big cylinder that actually holds the cement... and that has a huge pink “awareness” ribbon decal on the side.

--Think they’ll come up with a waterproof Kindle? Might not be a bad idea considering how much reading is done in the bathroom. Brings a whole new meaning to the term “dirty books.”

--Martha Stewart taught us all (again) the other night how to cook a turkey. Hers came out picture perfect. Makes you wonder how many re-takes they did to get that segment right and that turkey as perfect as a Norman Rockwell painting... and what they did with the eight or nine turkeys that turned out like most of ours usually do, and that you didn’t get to see.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

42 Dramatis Personae

2011-11-21T05:43:00.000-05:00

942 Dramatis Personae

(State College, Pa.) -- The situation here is getting so complicated, you need a scorecard. Kind of appropriate for what is at least marginally a football story. Unfortunately, the players don’t wear jerseys with their names on their backs, a Penn State tradition. But these guys don’t even wear numbers. So, starting at the top, here are the big ten:

1. Joe Paterno: He’s the Kellogg’s of college football. Kellogg’s is a giant maker of breakfast cereal. It’s universally loved, has been around forever, and is of generally of high quality. But every once in awhile, there’s a recall because some evil stink gets into the boxes. No worries. It’s only a breakfast cereal. There are plenty of others.

Paterno is a giant among football coaches. He’s been around forever, was until now universally loved and was generally of high quality. He too has been recalled for a stink. But it’s only football. He isn’t charged with doing anything wrong. In fact, he did almost nothing at all.

(Paterno’s diagnosis of a “treatable form of lung cancer” is unfortunate, but that doesn’t change the Sandusky affair. We wish him recovery; think the university trustees acted in too hastily in firing him. But that doesn’t change the Sandusky case, either.)

2. Graham Spanier: Former president of Penn State University. He is the General Motors of college presidents. A big wheel, around forever, a lot of people buy the stuff even though it’s often second rate.

Spanier was among the longest serving of American college presidents, and as with GM there are what car guys call “quality issues.” Like the bottom feeder Chevy Aveo. He does magic tricks and plays washboard in a folk music band. Like the Aveo, he’s been discontinued. But really he’s only another corporate honcho who fell off the roof, replaced by his second in command, a guy whose only virtue is he’s not Spanier.

3. Jerry Sandusky: The retired former defensive coordinator of the Penn State football team, a Paterno pal, at least at one time; founder of a charity for at risk little kids, “The Second Mile,” accused of child molesting and kid rape, and issuing regular claims of innocence.

Behind his back, they call him the Second Mile Pedo-phile. Gave off a vibe that makes you want to shower even before all the current events. Sandusky’s Penn State pension is $59-thousand a year.

4. Joseph Amendola: Sandusky’s lawyer. He gets a lot of the highest profile cases around here and is the king of plea bargains. He also gives off an iffy vibe that gets even iffier when you learn that at the age of about 50 he had an affair with a 16 year old girl he represented, fathered a kid with her when she was 17 and married her, not necessarily in that order. They are no longer together.

Amendola may or may not be expecting a big payday out of all this. But you can bet a case like this ain’t bad for business. Digression: the age of consent in PA is 16, so there was nothing illegal about sex with that kid. Further digression: Sandusky is entitled to a lawyer.

5. Tom Corbett: The pudgy faced governor of Pennsylvania, a member of sorts of the Penn State board of trustees which ridded the school of Paterno, Spanier and a few others. Corbett was Attorney General for much of the time the case against Sandusky was building and mounted an anemic CYA investigation that led nowhere and now says law enforcement didn’t act aggressively enough at the time. Huh?

6. Mike McQueary: on administrative leave as an assistant football coach and former graduate assistant to Paterno. McQueary either did or didn’t witness a Sandusky boy rape, either did or didn’t stop it when he either did or didn’t see it; did or didn’t talk to the cops afterward.

7. Franco Harris: Washed up NFL hall of famer, ex Nittany Lion All-American football star and head of a Pittsburgh charity who came riding into town seeking publicity by inviting newly promoted university higher ups to a diner where, presumably, they would genuflect and then explain to him why they fired his idol, Paterno.

As a result, the mayor of Pittsburgh asked Harris to resign from the charity and the Meadows Racetrack and Casino told him not to show up for his day job which is something between greeter and spokesman.

8. Tim Curley: Penn State Athletic Director put on paid “administrative leave” and supposedly Paterno’s boss. Paterno’s boss? Who are you kidding. Only when it came time for Joe to kick what he knew up the chain of command. Curley faces perjury charges, of which his university-paid lawyer says he’s innocent.

9. Gary Schultz: Former Penn State official whose duties included supervision of the university police. The Patriot-News newspaper of Harrisburg says he received a lump sum of $422,000 when he retired in 2009 and whose yearly pension is $330,000. Schultz came out of retirement to become vice president for finance. He has since re-retired, now faces perjury charges and claims through his university-paid attorney that he is innocent.

10. Jack Raykovitz: recently resigned CEO of Sandusky’s charity, in which he worked for 28 years. The resignation was sudden, unexpected and unexplained. But the charity is reported preparing to disband and shopping its programs around to other organizations in hopes of keeping some of its work alive which Second Mile officials deny. Sort of.

11. Leslie Dutchcot: Local judge who set relatively low bail for Sandusky without disclosing her ties to his charity, which remain unclear. Judge Dutchcot has been removed from the case.

12. Kenneth Frazier: Penn State grad, Penn State trustee, head of the school’s internal investigation, CEO of the pharmaceutical maker Merck. While general counsel for the drug company led the company’s defense of Vioxx which was said to increase the risk of stroke and heart attacks.

Note that this list was billed as the “Big Ten” and there are 12 names. Well, if the Big Ten college football conference can have 12 teams, this list of ten can have 12 names.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

941 Free Lunch

2011-11-18T06:20:00.000-05:00

941 Free Lunch

One of the supermarket tabloids reported this, so it must be at least as true as the space alien baby kidnappers and the ghosts in the attic: You can get a decent meal out of a dumpster and never get your hands dirty.

Well, almost never.

The paper says that under cover of darkness, you can stalk the dumpsters of the fanciest restaurants around and come up with discarded food, often carefully packaged and sealed against whatever else lives in the dumpster. Same with fast food joints like Starbucks, whose franchise agreements demand owners throw out perfectly good stuff at the end of the day.

Save a bundle on groceries that way.

Restaurants don’t donate this stuff to food pantries because they fear law suits that result from someone eating something contaminated. Same with supermarkets which discard packaged food with “sell by” dates that have passed by only several hours.

A recent exploration found a dozen packages of salad, some neatly wrapped onions a few boxes of soup mix and a few pounds of chopped beef in a dumpster. All were expired by something like five hours. In cold weather, that’s like taking the stuff home and leaving it in the refrigerator a day or two beyond the “sell by” date.

Required tools for your own Operation Dumpster: a box of disposable gloves, a roll of paper towels, a stepladder, a flashlight and a supply of decent garbage bags. Put on the gloves, climb up the ladder, shine the light in the dumpster, fish around a bit, take what you see, wipe it down with the paper towels and, presto, free lunch.

Is this stealing? Probably. Will you get caught? Maybe. Will you be prosecuted? Probably not. Will you be sickened? Also, probably not. Something you’ve retrieved raise questions? Do what many sport fishermen do: catch and release.

Shrapnel (Penn State Update Edition):

--Defrocked Penn State president Graham “I knew nothing” Spanier, it turns out, isn’t fully defrocked. A local news website reports he remains a tenured professor. We love it when a guy in trouble lands on his feet.

--You really have to feel sorry for the poor schlump who is the announcer for the Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League. He is being pounded by phone calls and hate mail. That’s because he has the misfortune of being named... Gerry Sandusky (no relation.)

--The Vienna Boys Choir has scheduled a concert at an on-campus venue for next month. Careful in the showers around here, kleine jungen. And lawyers, lock up your innocent clients.

Note to readers: I promised that I wouldn’t write any more than the previous posts about the situation at Penn State in state college. I lied. Mostly to myself. There are so many details, so much speculation, so much wringing of hands and so much salacious nonsense associated with this story that it begs for additional perspective from someone outside the community but who lives there.

Until something happens in court -- if ever it really gets beyond the preliminaries -- this is the point on the story’s two-way time line that observers focus on minutia. And so will we in the coming days, following right along with gory details that may be of interest to other outsiders, which most readers here are. Monday, 11/2: An introduction to the cast of this soap opera. Stay tuned, as we used to say before radio died.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

940 A Visit To The Doctor

2011-11-16T06:04:00.000-05:00

940 A Visit To The Doctor

White coat syndrome, my foot. Your blood pressure goes up when you visit the doctor because no doctor keeps appointments on time. Which is why you should always try to get the first appointment of the day. It’s hard to be half an hour or 45 minutes late -- to be behind schedule -- when you’re just starting the day. Hard, but not impossible.

In any event, this “visit” could have been done by telephone. But the co-payment’s only ten bucks, and the office is right around the corner in a storefront, conveniently located next to a Petco and just down the block from a vacant former Circuit City store.

Cause of the visit? The meds were getting confused and mixed up and changing in effectiveness, so maybe a face to face sitdown would be better.

Doc bustles into the treatment room, takes the blood pressure reading. We talk. We get the meds straightened out. She’s on her way to the next patient in no time. Well, not really “no” time. But under ten minutes.

A week or so latter, comes a letter from Blue Cross. It’s headlined “Important information about your appeal rights.” Standard stuff on the back of which is “THIS IS NOT A BILL” followed by a rundown of who paid what for that ten minute chat.

Patient paid $10. Blue Cross paid $90.60. That makes the visit worth $100.60. Ten bucks a minute. $600 an hour. $636 an hour, if you want to get technical.

But, as they say on the flimsy gizmo TV pitches, “Wait! There’s more!”

Doc’s medical factory --er, practice -- billed Blue Cross for $306.00!

Also on the billing statement is “Note K05.” Note K05 stipulates “This Participating Provider has agreed not to bill you for the difference between the Total Charge and the Allowable.” Well, that’s a relief. (Someone should talk to the billing department about the use of capital letters.)

This is the medical practice version of throw all your mud against the wall and see what sticks. Bill three hundred bucks, get one hundred back. Since everyone has to know that stuff like this goes on all the time, why not just skip the nonsense, bill the actual cost and be done with it?

Shrapnel:

--How pure sounding of Log Cabin to put this in big letters on the front of the bottles: “NO HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP.” Here’s the ingredient list from the back of the bottle: “Corn syrup, liquid sugar (Natural sugar, water,) water, salt, natural and artificial flavor (Lactic acid, Sodium Hexametaphosphate, preservatives (sodium benzoate, sorbic acid), caramel color, phosphoric acid.” Ah, but none of that nasty high fructose corn syrup.

--There is no truth to the rumor. Quaint and historic Sandusky, Ohio is NOT going to change its name. Known for its dullness, its trees and as the home of the late, lamented Lyman Boat Works, this “city” on Lake Erie says it’s fine with keeping the name, blackened though it has become.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments and fake bills to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

939 It's An "Urban Problem"

2011-11-14T07:29:00.000-05:00

939 It’s An “Urban Problem.”

(STATE COLLEGE, Pa.) -- Some guys here have the sense to keep their mouths shut. There were callers to the Wessays™ radio program, comment writers to this site and to the local newspaper who speak in code. They call any crime committed here “an urban problem.” One likes to blame everything that goes wrong here -- and that can be plenty -- on the region’s continuing importation of “urban people.”

We all know what that means. Well, maybe not “we all.” For those who don’t, it means people with dark skin. It’s an insult to Americans of African or Caribbean heritage, people from the Indian subcontinent, people from the Middle East and, yes, even to us city born and raised people with white skin and light eyes. We’re “urban,” too.

These racists and ruralists have gone to ground now in the face of what may be the worst man-made thing to happen in his region since Pennsylvania’s 18th century home-grown murder sprees. Turns out our little boy rape and cover-up machine is the work of local rural white people. Oh, yeah, defrocked football saint Joe Paterno is from Brooklyn. And he’s of Italian extraction which makes him almost black by the standards of the “urban problem” crowd. But he’s been here longer than most of the born-here racist slime have been alive.

The defrocked university president, Graham Spanier, is from Cape Town, South Africa and is white and Jewish. And the locals, if they know this, don’t know what to make of it. He looks like Leslie Nielsen (a lot of bigwigs around here do, including the governor, and that’s close enough to survivalist-woodsman libertarian country boy enough for them.

The Pennsylvania State University has appointed a panel to investigate the henhouse. The fox-in-chief, a fellow named Kenneth Frazier, is a member of the board of trustees who also is CEO of Merck, the pharmaceutical giant. He was a Philadelphia lawyer, turns 57 years old next month, and is a graduate of Penn State and Harvard Law. And he is... um... Urban. In fact, he’s the first Urban-American to become chief executive of a major drug company. Previously as the company’s general counsel, he was a leader if not the leader of Merck’s Vioxx defense. Now he’s leader of the investigation here. That’s almost poetic. Almost.

The point of all this? Urban, suburban, rural, white, black, whatever. Shameful crime is shameful crime. And anyone here who knew about this stuff or saw this stuff and did nothing or did the legal minimum to stop it is guilty to some degree.

Shrapnel:

--Can the accused boy-lover, Jerry Sandusky get a fair trial in Centre County, Pennsylvania? Probably not here or anywhere nearer here than Neptune. The inclination is to say “so what?” but that would be unamericanly unjust to the defendant, as if anyone here cares or should.

--There’s a pretty good chance these cases won’t go to trial. It’s hard to conceive of it all not ending in some kind of plea bargain, if only to protect the victims. Sandusky is still saying he’s innocent, but that’s what they all say.

--Paterno has hired a high powered Washington lawyer, apparently anticipating suit filings against who-knows-how-many. What does that tell us? And what does that indicate that Joe might know that we don’t yet?

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com (even if you’re part of the “urban problem.)
© WJR 2011

938 Herman Cain's Blond/Blonde Problem

2011-11-11T05:24:00.002-05:00

938 Herman Cain’s Blond/Blonde Problem

Someone’s lying. Either that, or someone’s a total blond (as opposed to a total blonde, the distinction, originating with the Associated Press, the New York Times and other news organizations which dictate that their writers use “blonde” for women and “blond” for men.)

Herman Cain, who often acts as if he’s a stereotypical blond, says he can’t ever remember meeting one of the blonde women who accuse him of improper sexual behavior. That’s the kind of statement you expect from, say, Goldie Hawn or Judy Holiday or Marie Wilson who gained fame and fortune for decades playing dumb blondes, but who were anything but dumb (and possibly not blondes.)

It’s the kind of statement you get from accused mobsters in court and on the witness stand. “Do you remember when So-and-so walked into your office, pulled out a gun and demanded that you forgive his loan?” “I do not recall that.”

So Cain likes women. Good. So he maybe makes “improper” advances. Not so good, but not the end of the world. The question is who is lying. Cain either does or doesn’t remember the woman. Paratroop lawyer Gloria Allred, the Al Sharpton of women’s rights, who drops behind enemy lines to defend damsels in distress, thinks Cain’s un-truthing.

Maybe. Maybe not. Cain blames his troubles on either his foes in the Republican Presidential primaries or Democrats who fear his candidacy or black liberals who can’t abide a black conservative. And he makes a pretty clear statement about what he says “never happened.” Okay. Maybe he’s just a “blond.”

Trouble is, this woman isn’t the only one. And she’s not the only blonde. Here’s where we can get into the whole racist baloney about black men and white women. Save it. This isn’t that. This is just a probable case of horn-dog-wants-to-be-president-and-can’t-keep-his-zipper closed. We’ve had that before. He may not remember the accuser, but at least he can remember three consecutive things he’s advocated.

Cain says he’ll take a lie detector test if “there is a reason.” You can, too. And there are countless websites that explain the shortcomings of polygraphy and how to beat a test. If you don’t want to read up, pop a Valium first and you’ll pass.

Note to readers: Comments on Wessay™ #937 The Fall of St. Joseph were fast in coming and there were many. They were fairly evenly divided between favorable and unfavorable, with about 30% of the total originating in Central PA.

There were two suggestions that there should be an apology to readers, and one demand for one. There were two death threats, one suggestion that I attempt an anatomically impossible sex act, a few “good job”s or “it’s about time someone said this stuff.” There were several recommending an end to college football. There were two from people who felt they had been previously maligned and sympathized with the plight of Coach Paterno, fired Wednesday evening in a phone call. But most of them were variations of “what a sad way to wind down a glorious career.”

Six or seven people wrote to say the real villain of this story is either circumstance or president Spanier of Penn State, also fired. Another handful said Jerry Sandusky is being convicted in the media before he gets his day in court. Still others say he should be run out of town on a rail.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments and death threats to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

937 The Fall of St. Joseph

2011-11-09T06:06:00.002-05:00

937 The Fall of St. Joseph

(STATE COLLEGE, Pa.) -- Joe Paterno is the biggest Big Man on Campus, and one way or another, he’s washed up. JoPa, as they call him in this quaint university town in the middle of the state, surrounded by lovely small mountains and farms, and bloated by an undeserved and unearned sense of self importance, is a football coach.

But he’s not just any football coach. He’s “winning-est” "this" and the “longest lasting” "that" and the “legendary” "the-other-thing." And he is caught on the edges of a sex scandal he might have prevented if he lived up to the press releases and other publicity that made him the most moral of moral authorities in America.

He didn’t. So now, at Penn State University, they have a former Paterno assistant and so-called pillar of the community and founder of a respected (until now) charity to aid at-risk kids who is charged with 15 years worth of raping and otherwise sexually abusing boys aged ten through 16. His name is Jerry Sandusky, 67, a 30- year friend of Paterno who is 84 and has been at Penn State since the Bronze Age.

Paterno was told about all this, apparently more than a decade ago. He reported it to his nominal boss, the president of the school, one Graham Spanier, and no one did anything. Joe isn’t facing charges, or at least is not a target of the grand jury investigation that eventually yawned around to indicting Sandusky. But if we are to believe those press releases the school has been issuing about JoPa, he should have done more.

Two other BMOCs are facing perjury and cover-up charges. They are the athletic director Tim Curley and the school’s business vice president, Gary Schultz whose responsibilities include running the police force -- whose members are trained sworn officers with guns and not square-badge mall cops.

Everyone’s innocent, if you ask them or their lawyers (paid for by the university in the cases of Curley and Schultz.) Sandusky’s “charity” apparently was a source of candidates for his proclivities although it has some wiggle room about what it knew and when.

The president, Spanier, got up and made headlines by supporting Curley and Schultz “unequivocally.” Polish up your resume. You won’t be around long enough to watch the donations stop coming in. He called the charges disturbing. Not nearly as disturbing as standing up for the good old boys instead of the vulnerable young boys.

Of the community pillar, Sandusky: Did he do it? That’s for a jury or for plea-bargainers to decide. Sandusky now is banned from campus where he’s been in emeritus status for a good stretch, still had an office and brought some of his “at risk” boys to the gym for some “horseplay” in the showers.

There are witnesses. It looks like an open and shut case. But we’re not the jury or juries or the plea bargainers.

Terrible swan song for St. Joseph (R-Brooklyn) and one he could have prevented. The most charitable end for his storied career would be to let him finish out the season and then put his feet up and his chin up -- proud, for all but one of his accomplishments.

And Sandusky? At the request of his daughter-in-law, the court has barred him from being alone with his grandchildren.

Shrapnel (Penn State Edition):

-- The school is what’s called here a “state related university,” which is not part of the state university system but receives a good chunk of public funding. So, PSU is a private school when the fancy strikes it but a public school the rest of the time. There are four such colleges in the state.

--PSU is the economic engine of the region and brings some economic and employment stability to it. But it is the athletic program in general and the football program in particular that is the economic engine of the economic engine. This-all will not affect attendance at the games, which almost always attract at least 100-thousand attendees and countless other radio listeners and television viewers. It should.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

936 Free Idea & Andy Rooney

2011-11-07T06:32:00.002-05:00

936 Free Idea & Remembering Rooney

Here’s a free idea that’s worth gazillions of dollars. It’s for the companies that make electrostatic cleaning cloths, like Swiffer and its competitors.

Make socks out of the fabric. Put them on and waltz around the floor and that’s the end of dusty floors. Make them either disposable or washable and you’ll start a revolution.

These cloths work because the polyester fibers they’re made of take on an electrostatic charge when rubbed. The charge picks up the dust which becomes entrapped in the cloth’s little ridges. Eventually, the whole thing blackens, and you put a new one in your little broom or mop or whatever those things attached to the handles are called.

But why bother with a mop or handle when all you have to do is walk around the house. It’s even easier if you have one bad leg. Lead with the good foot, drag the second behind you. Effort: zero. Cost: minimal.

Actually, they could make gloves out of the stuff, too. That means all you would have to do is caress your furniture now and then.

In our disposables-dominated society it would be just one more thing to buy and use and throw away. But these cloths are so thin they take up almost no room in the land fill. Or, if it’s still too much waste, you could go to your secret hideout and just burn them. Polyester melts into tiny globs and no one would be the wiser.

In the mean time, the dusty among us wouldn’t have to be and the clean freaks among us could waste their time more profitably.

II. Andy Rooney 1919 - 2011

All of us in the cranky and occasionally humorous commentary business owe a debt to Andy Rooney who died only a about a month after retiring from CBS News’ “60 Minutes” at the age of 92. His popularity and acclaim opened doors for us lesser lights with smaller platforms and made it legitimate once again to elevate ordinary subjects to national prominence in new ways, following in the traditions of Mark Twain and Robert Benchley.

Shrapnel:

--Corzine followup: He quit as head of MF Global, which continues to hunt for a missing half billion in customers’ money. That wasn’t his fault, since it vanished over much more time than he spent there. But he did the right thing.

--Others who need to do the right thing: Ray Kelly, George Papandreou, Conan O’Brien and the owners of every NBA team. The reasons vary and none amount to thievery. The world would just be a better place without these guys.

--Joblessness, what joblessness? The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the federal payroll has expanded 12% since the start of the recession, while the private workforce has shrunk by about five percent in the same period. Ask your congressional representative about that, if you can find him or her.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011

935 A Long Way From Brooklyn

2011-11-04T05:29:00.002-04:00

935 A Long Way From Brooklyn

So, the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team is for sale. That’ll teach ‘em. They never should have left Brooklyn. It was bad luck. Sometimes “what goes around comes around” takes a long time. Maybe the Dodger bankruptcy was the work of the ghosts of that other turncoat team, now known as the San Francisco Giants.

The oldest rivalry in major league baseball, they say. The Dodgers pre-date the National League of which it is a member. And the name “Dodgers” comes from the days when people ducked out of the way of trolleys on the streets of Brooklyn.

Anyone got a spare billion to buy these losers? Actually, yes. They’re lining up. How did things get this way? How did this storied and overrated team get so deep into the hole?

Lousy management = lousy baseball. Lavish owner lifestyles and overspending. Stupidity?

We have long said that when the real contest is in the front office, the team can’t win the game on the field.

So, you want some prime real estate in southern California? It’s there. You want a legendary team, the team of Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella, Sandy Koufax and Duke Snyder, Don Drysdale and Pee Wee Reese? Take a number.

Of course, the Dodgers are not the only team in trouble. There’s the hapless expansion team from Flushing, the New York Mets, created in part to fill the void when the Dodgers and Giants left home for the west coast.

The Mets are in financial hot water, too. They ran smack into super scammer Bernie Madoff, who made-off with a lot of money the team needed and still needs. Even though the Mets always have been a clown club there’s some heritage there, too.

Joan Whitney Payson was no one to sneeze at. Neither was Nelson Doubleday. Fred Wilpon? He’s another story.

Maybe Fred and the Dodgers’ Frank McCort can go into partnership. Try for the hot dog and beer concession at Dodger Stadium and Citi Field.
Meantime, minor league baseball is worth the ticket price. Especially for teams that aren’t affiliated with Major League Baseball, that aren’t farm clubs for the majors. Go LI Ducks!

Shrapnel:

--MS Word still refuses to accept punctuation in its title lines. Hence, no apostrophes or dashes. It’s nice to see that they’ve kept something in reserve for the Next Big Revision.

--What’s the most common phrase on shopping television? “You get...” or “You’ll get.” You had a nickel for every time anyone says that, you could pay all the bloated shipping and handling charges without noticing.

--A third alleged victim has accused Herman Cain of sexual misconduct. That’s important but not nearly so much as his misconduct in finance and his idiotic notion that he or anyone else is a “self made man.” The only self made men are the homeless, and not all of them, either.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2011