1239 Swiming Upstream

1239 Swimming Upstream

(STATE COLLEGE PA) --  You can’t get there from here.  It was Homecoming Weekend at sprawling Pennsylvania State University, famous for being well known, for an overblown man-boy “love” scandal and for the world’s worst sport, football.

The game is at Big Ugly, officially known as Beaver Stadium, a name you can’t say out loud without kind of snickering.  Big Ug holds close to 108-thousand people and the game was a sellout.  The parking lots hold 60-thousand cars and they were mostly full -- both the cars and the lots.  

There were a lot of RVs … enough to house the entire off season population here.  The tailgate areas were jammed with people under blue and white tents, showing their Penn State colors.

The roads around here are narrow, poorly lighted, badly banked and shaped like a string of “s”s.  So what they do on game day is turn the bigger streets around the stadium into one way for the duration.

This means everything leads to Big Ugly before the game and everything leads away afterward.

So getting to the stadium pre game is relatively easy.  If it’s a round trip, the trip back is more or less impossible.

But getting to the building after the game is absolutely impossible.  Unless you lie.

The mission this Saturday night was to pick up the stepson who was working as a security guard at one of the larger parking fields.

He was left with instructions to call when the shift was over and to walk out of his patrol area and to a traffic light and stay there.   But adventurous youth doesn’t much know about following directions.  So he gets lost and calls and says “hey, I’m lost.”

Beautiful.

Okay, where are you?  Lost.

Is there a landmark?

Yes, I’m on a street called “Hospital Drive.”

Good.  That’s easy to find.

But not easy to get to.

We head up the street to hang a left, then hang a right.  Except at the end of the game you’re not allowed to hang that first left.

Traffic Brownie:  You have to head this way. (points to his right.)

Driver: But I have to go to the hospital (said with a desperate facial expression that has taken years of practice to fake convincingly.)

It’s a lie.  But it’s only a little one.  Kind of a technical lie.

Once there, getting back onto a main road is another project.

Fortunately it took no interaction with the temporary Great Dictators of Traffic Patterns. Just a lot of slow-to-un moving cars.

Another lie wouldn’t work.  “I have to go away from the hospital” doesn’t carry nearly the impact of “I have to go to the hospital” no matter how convincingly put.

Worst can happen, we go in the wrong direction and have to cross first the Pacific and then the North American continent to get to the house which is under seven miles from Big Ug.

Great opportunity for bonding. Greater opportunity for murder.

Veteran New York area drivers will understand that this was like home.  It was midtown Manhattan to the Queens Midtown Tunnel to the Long Island Expressway on a Friday afternoon in the summer.

Except most of the drivers who go from midtown Manhattan to the Queens Midtown Tunnel to the Long Island Expressway know where they’re going, know which lane they should be in and how to get there.  And these people don’t.

Plus New York has streetlights that actually throw some light -- not enough, but at least some.

The Penn State football team had not played at home in awhile.  Some away games and a bye week. So there was a lot of pent up demand to see large young men beat each other senseless.  A drought of violence that needed to be sated with the entrance of the gladiators fueled and lubricated by pre and post game attempted alcohol poisonings.

It was homecoming. And it was Michigan which came into the game 5 and 0 and left 5 and 1.  And it was two games for the price of one, which is good, because the price of one is outrageous.

Penn State won 43-40 in quadruple overtime.   That’s like a baseball doubleheader. Eight quarters. It’s like a heavyweight championship fight that goes 30 rounds or that famed auto race the Indianapolis 1000.

(Note for nitpickers: Yes, it’s true the game clock doesn’t run and the play clock does in OT, so technically they’re not extra quarters.  But it’s still eight periods of play instead of four.)

Who was it that used to say “getting there is half the fun”?  Cunard?  Getting there was no fun, but uneventful.  Getting back was a great experiment.

You can duplicate the results of that experiment if you wish.  But you shouldn’t wish.

----

Recommended reading:  John W. Gibson tells a chilling tale of 1930s small town politics turning violent and uses it to explain what’s going on in Washington today. Click here.

(Used by permission of the author)

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2013

1238 Blowing Bubbles

1238  Blowing  Bubbles

What’s next?  We had the internet bubble, the housing bubble, right now we’re having the stock bubble.  Everyone’s having conniptions because the market is generally cooling, maybe in response to the Kindergarten Congress or any number of other factors. Oh, it has its irrationally depressive down days along with its irrationally exuberant days, to paraphrase Greenspan.  But it is on the down, overall.

The Fed said it missed seeing some aspects of the internet situation.  Okay, fine.  In the Clinton era the government was running  a strong surplus and the economy was vigorous enough digest the bursting and slowly move it back toward normal.

There was the gold bubble in which scaremongering right wing radio hosts kept pushing the price up.  Even some people with good brains caught gold fever, late lamented friend Jim Kingsland among them.

Then, there’s the housing bubble.  That’s someone no one with a brain could have missed.  Even this lowly blog pointed that out that inventing and selling arcane financial instruments couldn’t end well, especially when they were backed with nothing but hot air and hope.

So -- again -- what’s next?  The personal injury/ailment lawyer bubble?  How many times have you seen this older guy pop up on your TV screen and heard him say “My name is Doug and I have mesothelioma?”  We’re all sorry for Doug and hope he and others they receive “large monetary settlements” through the good offices of the law firm that represents him.  But enough Doug, already.

You have to think bubble when you see all those ads for auto insurance.  They each have the lowest prices, the best features and the best service.  But as Mac down the block says “If I ever meet that Geico lizard I’m going to crush him under the heel of my boot.”

The companies are battling one another for your business and you have to wonder why.  What’s going on behind the scenes that have produced the now years’-long flood tide of advertising and promotion.

Back to bubbles.  At one point, the Hunt Bros. tried to dominate the silver market.  What that could do is manufacture a silver bubble, which is both better than and less effective than a silver bullet.

That bubble was burst by (shudder!) regulation and prosecution.  But, again, what is it that we’re not yet seeing?

The next bubble? Count on this: the banks and the brokers will make out like the bandits they are.  And you will not.

Shrapnel:

--Those of us who admit to membership in the Jewish cabal to take over the world should be pleased with President Obama’s choice for Fed Chair, Janet Yellen.  If the Senate remains on its meds and confirms her, she will be the third consecutive Jew to hold the job. But we still have to ask her “What’s a smart Brooklyn girl like you doing in a dump like Washington?”

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2013

1237 The Long Island Iced Tea Party

1237 The Long Island Ice Tea Party

This started kind of a “use up the bottles with very little in them” arrangement at Long Island’s late and somewhat lamented Oak Beach Inn. The Bartender, Rosebud, thus created the most important product from the region since the clam.  The basic ingredients are vodka, gin, rum and tequila with a touch of fruit juice or cola.  But, really, anything with drinkable alcohol will do.

Now, we connoisseurs of this fine upstanding and now-venerable drink have formed a political organization, kind of riding on Michele Bachmann’s coattails.  

But fear not.  You needn’t be a Long Islander to join, nor even a drinker of alcoholic beverages.  And in fact the only thing you have to do is say you're a member.  We’re kind of like the actual current Tea Party except we don’t have any big right wing money behind us. In fact, we have no money at all.

To be an active member, you have to drink.  And we sure could use some Koch or Scaife money because LI Iced Tea ain’t cheap.  But passive members are welcome.

We support some important propositions, especially after a couple or three king size glasses.  We want to drop the drinking age to 11.  We want to abolish the Department of Education.  We want to abolish labor unions except for the Teamsters whose valiant drivers bring the Vodka and other stuff to our bars.

We want to raise the DUI/DWI blood alcohol level from the present 0.08% to 25%.

We oppose spending more than we take in, especially when we’re pie-faced drunk, which happens quickly and subtly and often with our “signature” beverage.

But we love the pentagon and the CIA, the NSA and the Sheriff of Mayberry.  In fact, we want congress to increase spending for law enforcement to the point that Sheriff Andy can bypass Sarah the Mayberry Switchboard operator and listen in to everyone’s phone calls --except ours-- directly.

We are in many ways just like the non Long Island Iced tea party, except we have more fun more often.

We are seeking joiners and we are seeking the support of patriotic American members of Congress to back our demands and squeeze that Socialist African Muslim President of ours into a corner.

But unlike the butt-heads now in Congress, we plan to seduce rather than declare war.  How?  Well, once your congressman tastes our drink, he’s ours!

Shrapnel:

--Windows 8 requires a password.  It doesn’t give you a “forgot your password?” link on which to click.  So you can lock yourself out and the only hope of getting back in is committing a crime and letting warrant-armed forensic cops open it for you.

--This could affect the 911 emergency system.  “What is your emergency, sir…  being locked out of your computer is not an emergency.”  Enough calls like that and response to real emergencies could be delayed or even lost.

--It also could affect your social life.  Locked out of your computer you might be forced into having a face to face conversation with an actual human being.  And that’s SOOOO old fashioned.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2013

1236 One Size Fits All

1236 One Size Fits All

Sales are brisk.  Just look at the newspaper or the TV or listen to the radio if there’s a station in range that still does news.

Ever wonder what happens when two opposing chapeauporators meet?

That’s what happened at the Capitol the other day.  This young woman, Miriam Carey, who got messages that he never sent from President Obama was cut down in the prime of her disturbed life by police officers who may or may not have received shoot-to-kill orders through *their* tin hats.  Now a pretty young woman with a one year old baby is dead for no reason.

(AP Photo)

She look dangerous?  Didn’t think so. She’s said to have had serious mental problems… postpartum depression among them. We used to confine people -- warehouse them, really -- like that.  Now we shoot them?

So this blurry minded woman and the equally blurry minded cops have a shootout. And since she doesn’t have guns and they do, she loses.

But the paranormal messages and messengers are not limited to either.

The Teabags are getting some input from their tinfoil hats too.

First, a clarification:  A friend objects to the use here of the word “Teabags.”  The inference is that we’re being derogatory.  Yes, it’s derogatory in the same way that when the Teabags refer to the opposition, they call it the “Democrat Party” instead of the Democratic Party. Just politics.

OK, so the teabags are getting their messages through their antennae either from God or from each other.  They refuse to compromise and then accuse the president of refusal to compromise.

They refuse to negotiate and then accuse the president of refusing to negotiate.

They take a quirk of Robert’s Rules of Order and hundreds of years of congressional tradition and attach other-worldly amendments to basic legislation, thus forcing the executive branch into a corner.

The Teas keep putting up moving targets.  First they say they won’t raise the debt ceiling.  Then Boehner comes along and says he won’t let the US default.  Then, still later, he comes along again and says there will be no raising of the debt ceiling without “concessions.”

What does he mean?  He means no straightforward vote on the debt ceiling.  He means he’s going to tack on the usual irrelevancies.   

What will the bill look like in final form?  Well, it’ll raise the debt ceiling allowing us to pay our bills.  But then there will be the usual adds: defund the Affordable Care Act, make the first Monday in May National Dalmatian Day, build a couple of bridges to nowhere in Arizona or Wyoming.

So you’ll say Boehner isn’t a member of the Teabags, he’s a moderate Republican working to help the country.

Oh, really!

Someone help this guy tune his hat.

Shrapnel:

--Maybe we should get Putin to help Washington.  He seems to have wiggled us out of the Syria crisis of the moment.  Or maybe Kim Jong Un if he isn’t busy… because that crisis seems also to have calmed.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2013

The 99.99%

1235 The 99.99%

No, it’s not about THAT 99.99%, you know, those of us who aren’t billionaires.  It’s about the hand sanitizers that claim to kill 99.99% of “germs.”

You want to be germ free?  Use soap and water.  Oh. Wait.  That’s WORK.  Why work when you can squirt on a chemical, in two seconds you’re germ-free -- well, almost -- and you don’t even have to dry your hands.  

The wonders of modern science leading you to a healthy life? Except they aren’t.  What the explosion in the use of this stuff has done is Darwinized the world of microbes.   Survival of the fittest.

That tiny sliver of a percentage of the germs that the chemicals don’t kill are the ones posing the danger.  They’re the fittest.  And the most deadly.

Okay, so you use the stuff when you’re in a hurry. Maybe a hand wipe towelette when a public restroom isn’t handy or after a restaurant meal.

That’s not a problem.  But these sanitizers are in EVERYTHING these days.  They’re even working on an ingestible version so you can be assured that that banana doesn’t give you some foul condition.

It’s in hand lotion.  It’s in dishwashing liquid. It’s in laundry detergent.  The wipes are available free at supermarkets so you can “sanitize” the push handle on a shopping cart.

It’s in household sprays that claim to make your garbage smell like a Yankee Candle display.  The stuff is cheap and effective, so everyone buys it.  And eventually it’s going to do us wrong.

Think of it this way: there are a billion germs in a few square inches of your kitchen countertop.  You pour on a little cleanup stuff and 99.99% are executed.  That leaves a few square inches of counter space with only the few that survived your attack.

They have a family reunion.  They welcome old friends they haven’t seen in forever.  And you know how germs are. One thing leads to another and all of a sudden, they’re having babies.  

A day later you have another billion germs in the counter space.  Only these are the mean and nasty kind that the 99.99% kept separate from each other and kept from multiplying.

These hoodlum germs have organization, numbers and powers and they’ve put out mob style hit contracts on Mr. Clean.  And you.

Shrapnel:

--Is Boehner showing some spine after all?  He vows he will not let the country default.  He can do that, but likely at the expense of his job.

--The teabags, however remain the spineless hotheads they always were.  If they wanted to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act or delay it, they could have put that to a direct vote instead of as an irrelevant amendment to important legislation.  Oh, wait… they did that around 40 times and failed each 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 2013

1234 It's a Conspiracy!

1234 It’s a Conspiracy!

Yes, it is.  The impending death of the Blackberry smartphone resulted from a conspiracy, make no mistake about it.

The fact that their systems went down more often than your elevator had nothing to do with their financial troubles.  Neither did their lame efforts at keeping up with the iPhone and Android, met with a yawn by even their most die-hard fans.

It was none of that.

The damage was done by a secret cabal of people with nimble fingers, fingers that can type on those on-screen “keyboards” and not have their messages come out in no recognizable language.

You’d think people who finger pick guitars and banjos and who type with ten fingers could adapt to the on-screenies. But most of us haven’t.  We need actual keys to press.  Yes, they make the phones heavier and take a lot of getting used to but eventually, we can type without too many mistakes.

“Why don’t you just suck it up and get used to the screens?” the conspirators ask.  That’s not always possible.  The Americans with Disabilities folks should look into this.

Digressions:

1. Ten finger typing is a misnomer.  It’s really nine finger typing because generally you use only one thumb.  But it’s really really eight finger typing because your thumbs are not fingers.

2. Being bad-fingered is not really a disability.  But classifying it thus would bring less shame to the stricken than the kind of typing we do on screen.  If it were really a disability, the pharmaceutical companies would by now have come up with a drug to cure it, advertise it direct to users who would be prompted to “ask your doctor if AccuFinger is right for you,” followed by a list of side effects, outcue: “may result in serious illness or death.”

Okay, you can’t type on screen.  What about voice commands.  At this, iPhone’s Siri is a bit more accurate than Android’s un-named synthesized female-ish voice.  But as often as not, speaking into your phone turns “Dear Aunt Lovina” into “Deer and the Antelope.”

Blackberry keyboards are squinty little things that force you to hit the wrong key often.  But at least they are physical keyboards. And if this company goes belly up -- and “any day now” is a better bet than “never” -- our choices will be few and will subject us to laughter from both the conspirators and the salespeople at the cell phone stores.

It looks like BlackB will go private.  The people planning to buy it don’t care about your fingers.  They care about the billions worth of patents the company owns.

And watch the prices on eBay skyrocket.

Shrapnel:

--Although WestraDamus generally only antedicts the past, he certainly was right in predicting the first day’s activity at the Health Insurance online Marketplace.  It was swamped and overloaded and probably will be for awhile.  After the traffic jam, you’ll have no trouble getting through.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2013