The Lists; The Truck

(60) The Lists; The Truck

From God's To Do list:
--Shop.
--Peace in the Middle East.
--Oil the Pearly Gates.
--Review Open Enrolment Policy.
--Give the Devil his Due.
--Bury Pat Robertson with Faint Praise.
--Get the blind spots out of the Ford Taurus.
--Pay off the Visa card.
--Get Jerry Seinfeld back on TV.
--Note to St. Paul about over enthusiasm.
--Tune harp.
--
From Satan's To Do List:

--Shop.
--Promotion for Robertson.
--Move Taurus visibility director to GM.
--Furnace cleaning.
--Check on Nail Keg order with Sears, call UPS about shipping to N. Ireland.
--Birthday card to Adolf.
--Plant more anti-Prozac items in the press.
--Bagpipe lesson.
--

Silverberg is worried. There's just been a notice put up on the bulletin board at Duffy Carting, and it says that during the summer, the dress code is relaxed, and people can come in wearing casual clothing. Silverberg works truck number "738," which is called “Barbara Ann.” And he dresses casually all year long because of the nature of his work, which is picking up stuff in big black plastic bags, left along the sidewalks, and putting them into 738's roto-gate on the back.
Silverberg is going to ask Mrs. Silverberg who is Sheila whether she has kept any of his old uniforms, because he would like to keep in step with the rest of his co-workers. But Sheila probably threw them out years -- and pounds ago.
Silverberg is doing this work because he enjoys it. It gets him home early, it pays well, and sometimes you find good stuff. Big Silverberg, his father, who is Irv, says this is not work for an educated man. But Silverberg does it any way because it gets him home before Sheila, and he can have a beer or watch the ballgame or read or nap before she starts in.
Sheila took her mother on a trip to Vilnius last spring, and it was the quietest two weeks Silverberg has had in 16 years. But in the last day or so before she came home, he had a lot of work to do. Dishes, making sure the toilet seat was down, two weeks of laundry.

This is a guy who's worked the truck for 20 years with never so much as a bruise or a pulled muscle. But getting the laundry done, he wrenched his back which then was out for a month.
This made Duffy unhappy. It made Sheila unhappy, and it made Silverberg unhappy. Gotta watch that laundry-- it's dangerous.
One night, during Sheila’s trip, Silverberg was on the computer, looking at the "personals" ads, and there were things in there he could not understand or figure out.
He wants to know what does "short term" mean. Maybe an hour? A night? Six months? If you're 85, which he is not, that could mean 30 years. How about "other relationship." What's that mean? You do something with inflatable objects? You have an exchange of shoes or other articles of clothing?
Silverberg is learning to skip the ads that are made up of letters that don't form words. "BBF, WC sks SWCM or SWDM 4 LWITH." "Huh?"

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.™

©wjr 1999, 2006

Steal My Identity Crisis

(59) Steal My Identity Crisis

Regular listeners/readers/viewers will by now have noticed that these tirades never are written in the first person singular. This will be the exception, and, with any luck, the only exception.

Why avoid the “I” word? Well, first, it’s gauche. Who cares about “I?” Second, it’s still gauche. Third: it’s amateurish. No one worthy writes about himself directly.

But this time, it’s about identity. And speaking about that in the first person plural or the third person would be tough.

So, here goes.

My parents, Max and Pearl Rotholz named me Wesley Ion. I think that was a misspelling of Ian. When the male Parental Unit declared he wanted to change his name to Mark Richards (didn’t want to have to buy new belt buckles, so he kept the same initials) I was given a choice of middle names and chose “Jon.” It was exotic in my ten year old mind. And it maintained the reference to my mother’s father, whose American name was John, whose Russian name was Ivan, whose Yiddish name (and that was probably the real one,) Yitsach. So I have three birth certificates: Wesley Ion Rotholz, Wesley Ian Richards and Wesley Jon Richards.

Somehow, the passport office read “Jon” as “Jan,” so my passport says “Wesley Jan Richards.”

When I applied for Social Security retirement, that office had me as “Wesley Jim Richards/”

What?

My oldest child and older son, Wesley Jon Richards, Jr. and I are often confused in credit reporting, though our Social Security numbers are nowhere near each other. Jewish men don’t often name their kids after themselves. It happened in this case because my former wife and I could not come up with a compromise name.

But whither Jim? Social Security does not want to know from changes.

And whither Jan? The passport department does not want to know from changes.

My younger son and youngest child, Charles Richards has taken to calling me “Jimbo.”

And Max/Mark always called me “Johann.”

I am very confused.

I’m waiting for someone to steal my identity so I can change my name again. Maybe “Joe Doaks” or “Joe Dokes” or Jonjimjanjohann.

I have provoked thieves, taunted them, lured them for years. This, by not shredding financial records or changing my Social Security number when the card was stolen along with the rest of my wallet. I have a listed telephone number, a listed address and I don’t regularly take the mail out of the mail box. My computer doesn’t have spyware or no-phishing ware.

Just my luck, no one wants my name. Or the Identity crisis that goes with it.

I'm Wes Richards or something like that. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.™

©wjr 2006

McAvoy The Unifier

(58) McAvoy The Unifier

Seamus McAvoy is the last living white guy in the Hoover Houses in Manhattan, New York County, New York City, New York.

He has unified the two big factions at Hoover, the African Americans and the Spanish speakers,

Seamus is the only white guy left in The Project. He’s been here since the buildings went up in 1957. Four generations of welfare and food stamp recipients. McAvoy among the first of them.

He’s married, which makes it okay in the eyes of the Church that he’s living with his wife and child, but not okay in the eyes of the Housing Authority, hence he’s never quite gotten around to telling them.

He owns a house (location unknown, but somewhere in the Bronx.) He rents it out and pays taxes on both the building and the income, which makes it okay in the eyes of the IRS, but not okay in the eyes of the Housing Authority, hence he’s never quite gotten around to telling them.

When McAvoy got into the Hoovers, he and the other white guys would snarl at each other in the elevator (on those days the elevator worked) and in the lobby around the mail boxes. Gradually the white guys got snarled out of the place.

Then came the Spanish. So the black guys and the Spanish guys would snarl at each other in the elevator (on those days the elevator worked) and in the lobby around the mail boxes. The Spanish guys wouldn’t get snarled out of the place. They stay to this day.

After awhile, snarling wasn’t enough and they started getting into cold stares and hot fists.

The Housing Authority doesn’t stop it. Can’t. Gave up years ago.

The cops can’t stop it. Can’t. Hardly respond to calls from the address anymore.

But all this stops, when McAvoy The Unifier comes into view. No more snarls, cold stares or hot fists. The action stops.

How does he do it?

He becomes the common enemy, just by being who he is.

Parts the waters, he does.

Seamus is getting old now. You get old fast in the Hoover Houses. But even if you didn’t, Seamus would, because he’s lived a lot of years, and that’s what happens when you live a lot of years – you get old.

Mostly, it’s just snarls and stares for Seamus. But one year, on St. Patrick’s Day, they had to call the cops and the cops actually showed up for this one: two groups of kids had surrounded McAvoy and were about to set upon him.

Detectives Johnson and Torres and a bunch of uniforms separated all of this and asked why.

The answer: at the Hoover Houses, when you wear green, you’re wearing gang colors.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.™

©wjr 2006

The Ultimate Apprentice/American Idol

(57) The Ultimate Apprentice/American Idol

Hey, Jughead, you’re fired! Donald Trump’s not around to say the words, and there are no NBC cameras handy to record the event. But that’s okay, because this is no TV show, this is midterm election time, and you’re a stone around everyone’s neck. Even candidates of your own party. Especially candidates of your own party.

Christmas, man! Did you ever think that baloney about Iraq would fly once people caught on to your act?

How about that port giveaway? It took us awhile to wise up to that one, Porgey. Thanks for making it tough. If you had approved (or turned a blind eye toward) a deal with some of our other friends – North Korea, Syria, Iran or maybe Pakistan, we would have caught on to that Texas style pile of horse manure much faster.

Jughead! Trump would have canned your sorry butt long before we will.

Maybe “The Apprentice” is the wrong TV show. Maybe American Idol would be better. And more democratic. With a small “d.”

People watching Fox are more likely to like you than people watching NBC. But even THEY wouldn’t take this long to figure you out. Call 1888 IDOL 01 and vote “No!”

Tax refunds? Tax reductions? That’s bribery, and you got us cheap, those of us inclined to vote.

You’re there in Washington and (even more often, it seems) in Texas nattering about globalism and Islamic fundamentalism and Christianic fundamentalism (you see a adifference. Many others don’t. Except the muslim bombs actually work most of the time and the bombers have the good sense to take themselves out of the picture. We still have YOUR best bomber, Pat Robertson, who, as you, doesn’t have the grace to go down with his sinking ship, to mix a metaphor.)

And while you’re doing all that, your right hand man/puppetmaster is off getting drunk and shooting people for real, and lining the pockets of his former employer.

And what a deal THEY got. A name-brand CEO followed by a windfall of perfectly legal free money.

When you owned a baseball team, something else you did badly, you wouldn’t have kept a pitcher with a record like yours.

Even YOU would have spotted a guy like that and canned him, Jughead.

So, get out of town, Jug. And take Brownie and Condie and Dennis and Dick and Rummy and Tony Ducks Scalia and Silent Clarence and all those other drones with you.

How the hell are we going to stop Hillary when you keep lining her path from Westchester to the White House with rose petals?

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.

(c) 2006 WJR

Flato's Guitar and the Underground Satellite

(56) Flato’s Guitar and the Underground Satellites

Flato bought a cheap guitar and an expensive amplifier and he plays those old timey songs like angels were humming, and no one understands how he can get such music out of such a cheap guitar even though the amplifier is expensive, although not the most expensive one you can buy.
Flato explains it by saying that the music is in his head and in his hands and not in the cheap guitar or even the expensive guitar. He wants to know if you think Les Paul or Chet Atkins or Wes Montgomery sounded lousy when THEY had cheap guitars. The answer he gives is "no." What about Segovia, Julian Bream, Trio Los Panchos and Tony Motolla? Same answer.
The people at the Big Guitar Company don't like this answer. They are in the business of selling expensive guitars.
The people at the Collectors' Guitars Mega Center do not like this either, because they are in the businss of selling OLD expensive guitars. This is very very bad for business. They are trying to silence Flato with bribery. They say they will have a "Flato's Choice" corner at the Collectors' Guitar Mega Center, where they can charge high prices for cheap guitars that Flato recommends. Make a 1967 Harmony flat top, now selling for $75 go for ten, maybe 15 times that. Flato says no.
The people at the Big Guitar Company want to make a "Flato signature model," from their bottom of the line series and charge ten or maybe 15 times what it's worth because it has Flato's name on it. Nope.
Flato's just going to keep making angelic music from cheap instruments, even though he's not getting a lot of work, and the Big Guitar Company and the Collectors' Guitar Mega Center can go to hell.
But Flato is not taking any chances. If you see a guy with a cheap guitar, and an expensive amplifier on the street and there is a bulge in his pocket and a rear view mirror on his amp, that's Flato.
================================================================================
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They are now figuring out how to use TeraLites, which are underground satellites that are much easier to catch when they fall out of the sky, because they don't fall out of the sky, because they're never IN the sky. So, they've stuck a few of these things belowground here and there and they're trying to get signals into and out of them, and so far it is not working.
Hiring a crew to kind of dig trenches between them has worked. But trench placement is a tricky business, and right now, TelTerra, the company behind all this is negotiating with the Archdiocese of New York for the right to dig a trench under St. Patrick's Cathedral to feed a TeraLite signal from its headquarters on 6th Avenue to the patrons of the Palace Hotel, which is to the east of the Cathedral, across Madison.
So far, the negotiations are stalled. TelTerra has offered free service to the Cardinal's house, and even to the Cathedral itself, but the Archdiocese Real Estate Advisory Board says that's not enough to let dig holes under the buildings.
The Palace is getting a little impatient as well. It wants service pretty soon, or it is going to stick an antenna on the roof and just bring the signals in for free, and too bad about the TelTerra Traffic Channel, which they were offered as a free extra bonus because it was taking more time than expected to dig a trench under the Church.

==============================================================================

Hannigan figures Drug O Rama is a clean shop, which is not mobbed up. This is because you can't buy a stick of gum in under 20 minutes. Hanningan walks into the Drug O Rama on 7th at 38th, and he's after a few small items: some shaving cream, a tube of toothpaste, just a few small things. So he goes into the store and picks up the stuff and there's one open register and there's a crowed up around the checkout.
First woman has big stuff: a Giant Economy Size Woolite, a Giant Economy Size Listerine (mint flavor,) a package of Pampers, a box of Malomars, and a bunch of little things that you can't see because you are too far back, and you need hawk eyes at that distance.
The checker-outer can't get the scanner to pick up the bar code on the Giant Economy Size Woolite, and keeps rubbing it on the thing that's supposed to do the reading.
Stuff keeps falling down among the gum and breath mints in front of the register. Behind her is a guy with nothing. Probably wants a pack of Marlboro or maybe a Hershey Bar.
In back of him are a man and a woman having a big fight about where to go for lunch. Hannigan wonders if they'll get out of here before lunchtime.
Then there's Hannigan with his stuff.
Hannigan thinks if the mob ran this joint there'd be five checker-outers, and a lot less big stuff.
And someone would have cleaned the scanner glass before leaving yesterday.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.™

©wjr 1999, 2006

Irwin's Umbrella Stand

(55) Irwin’s Umbrella Stand

Irwin ran the discount department store out east. Busy place in its day. But that was before all of the world became indoor malls.

This was a stand-alone. Today, we’d call it a big box store. But there were no Wal-Marts or K marts or any other kind of marts. And malls were called shopping centers and didn’t have roofs or mall rats or senior citizens using them as power walk tracks.

So, here’s Irwin. Big, well dressed. Not dumb, but he left you with that impression. Nice, though. Worked his way up in the company from stock boy to Managing Director of this fairly prominent Medium Box Store.

He’s loaded with energy. Stalks and paces the aisles, works the register when it gets too crowded, which it often did around the holidays and in good weather.

Rain? No roof on the parking lot. No customers.

This does not keep Irwin down.

He’s Managing Director. He wears a SUIT. A good suit, at that. He knows what to do.

He gathers up Ted and Dominic and two captains of security, each named Bill and they go to the back of the place and push the umbrella display, a huge thing with a zillion umbrellas in it, up to the front door.

Brilliant, just brilliant.

Bound to attract customers like iron filings to a magnet.

Well, maybe not.

The store had many more employees than customers on days like that.

Moving the umbrella display did not change that.

But Irwin had nothing to managing direct. And captains Bill had no shoplifters to catch (except the employees, and they had to filter in and out through the back door.) And Ted who ran the menswear department almost never had anything to do, except maybe Saturdays. And Dominic who was in charge of all soft goods (we called clothing soft goods in those days, since there was no softWEAR) had nothing to do. So it gave them something to report to the Big Bosses At Union Square, and justified their paychecks.

Or maybe, for Irwin, it was once a stockboy, always a stockboy. And stockboys don’t worry about whether there are customers. They just do stockboy things. Like moving umbrella displays to attract iron filings.

The rest of us hid out, or hung out in the lunch room, where Dirty Sandy presided over the worst food on earth. Or we mixed cocktails using cheap Pepsis from the machine with miltowns or cough syrup with codeine, which in those days was over-the-counter.

But retail is the toughest division of show business and these guys had to do something to fill the seats. So they did what they knew how to do, which was shuffle the deck.

Today, we are all much more sophisticated. Today, we play musical chairs with people and assignments instead of store displays. Has the same effect.

Nothing.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.™

©wjr 2006

Your Signature Signature

(54) Your Signature Signature

Pity the poor signature. It used to mean what was left on the paper after you signed your name.

Now it’s become one of those words thrown in the heap of those with definitions so rubberized we don’t know the meaning.

Creeping Signaturism.

Everything’s a signature. Chrysler has a couple of “signature models,” which have facsimiles of Walter P. Chrysler’s signature on the outside. This is almost a proper use, although Wally would probably wretch at what his name goes on these days.

Ford has an Eddie Bauer Signature SUV. Think Eddie knows that? Think he signed off on the plans for his signature car?

Some fast food joint has a signature coffee. That’s what it’s called. Do you think the new coffee blend at McDonald’s is a forgery?

A hair care products company recently started advertising your signature hair. Those of us who don’t have much feel left out, because what’s left of our hair is too short and too grey to sign anything.

“Signature” has fallen on the same scrapheap as “solution” and “premium” and a whole lot of other words that once meant something and now mean nothing.

A salute to the people who have not fallen on this same scrapheap: Kellogg’s could call its cornflakes its signature cereal, but hasn’t.

The New York City Council (which has its own slogan problem, i.e. “the Big Apple,” a horror unto itself,) could call itself America’s Signature City, but hasn’t. Plus Atlanta would probably sue them for infringement of bad ideas.

The President could reach into his bag of tricks and pull out any number of imbecile slogans and call them his signature lies. But he hasn’t.

Bic is really missing out on a huge opportunity to call itself the world’s Signature Pen. Same story with Alcatraz – signature pen.

You COULD have a signature signature. A “real” one, like for your checks and contracts. And then you could have a non-signature signature. Like for when you sign your expense account, or maybe just put a large magnetic version on your car.

Maybe it’s this kind of draining-the-swamp of content that makes English the world’s most verbose language. We have more than any other language, by 50 percent.

And maybe it’s for this reason that no one understands us – and we don’t understand ourselves and each other.

Or not.

This Wessay was written over the course of two days at the Atherton Hotel in State College, PA, which is not in the running for America’s signature city or town or whatever it is.

At this place, half the time, they don’t even want your signature signature at checkout time.

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.

(c) 2006 WJR