2064 ADVANCE FOR FRIDAY 3/15/19 Conversation with Spinach

2064 Conversation with My Spinach

Down at the A&P the other day, we bought a bag of frozen steamable chopped spinach.  That night, we plopped it into the microwave, carefully making sure the proper side of the bag faced up. Four minutes later, a plate of our favorite vegetable.

A little salt and pepper, a touch of butter-like substance and we brought the plate to a tray table ready to enjoy while binge watching old Popeye cartoons on television.

Suddenly, a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder and the power goes out.  No Popeye binge.

Silence.

Then a voice: “Well, dummy, are you going to just sit there and wait for the electric company to guess what happened, or are you going to pick up your smartphone and call them?”

Wait a minute. I’m the only one home.  So where’s that voice coming from?

“From your plate, you hockey puck.”

I think: my spinach can talk?

“Yes, I can.  And I can read your every thought. How else would I know you were thinking your question?  And while I’m at it, can you put less salt on me?  You’re using too much and that’s not healthy for either of us.”

Did I fall asleep and dream a dream of talking spinach?

“You are not asleep.”

A dream of talking, mind-reading spinach?

I pick up the phone and call the electric company.

“Atta boy,” says my plate.

Soon the power is restored and Popeye reappears on the TV set.

“Do you see that cartoon guy?” asks the spinach.

Yes, I do.

“He’s has been trying to give vegetables a good name and this year is Popeye’s 100th birthday.  Does it do any good?”

Not if you lecture us about it. Anyway… I’m going to eat you up and you’ll be gone.

“Oh, do I have a surprise for you, punk.”

I eat a fork full.

Then, in stereo: “You can’t get rid of me just by chewing.”

One channel comes from the plate, the other from my esophagus.  

“Being consumed is our job and we love it. But, hey, treat us with a little respect!  Do you know what a carrot feels like when you peel it?  Carrots have feelings.  So do onions -- especially the purple ones -- and peas… and beans. Whatever happened to humane slaughter of lettuce and tomato?”

The esophagus channel has gone lower in my digestive tract and its volume is starting to fade.  I quickly finish the remaining spinach, turn the TV to a John Wayne movie and promptly fall asleep.

But face it… you talk to vegetables every day. You just don’t realize that that’s what they are.

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

Reporting contributed by Don Rickles

Comments? Send to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2019

2063 Expiration Dates

Some expiration dates are absolutely clear. Take this one from "Mission Impossible:" "This tape will self destruct in five seconds."

Five seconds later, poof, the tape is gone in a small flame and Jim Phelps tosses the tape player in a wastebasket in the park or a dumpster in an ally, and that's that.

Most everything else... it gets vague.

The cottage cheese container says "Sell by March 13, 2019." Implicit here is that the stuff will self destruct pretty quickly thereafter and let's make sure the customer isn’t stuck with the rancid, green cheese or milk or what have you. So, this is a warning for the merchant rather than the shopper. And even for the merchant it's vague. What TIME on 3/13/19? If the store is open 24 hours, do they send people scurrying around at 11:45 pm on the 12th, hunting for things to remove 15 minutes later?

Vaguest of all is "Best if used by so and so date." What does that mean? Does it mean the can or box or package won't explode? Or does it mean the stuff will gradually deteriorate until, when you open it a week later whatever's inside will have shrunk or shriveled or begun to turn to powder, but won't kill you outright?

A side note on a new version of "Sale ends December 28th." Instead of saying that, they say "Prices good until December 28th." What happens on the 29th? Do the prices turn "bad?" Or maybe they turn "excellent." Probably, they rise. But that's not what the sentence says.

Of course, there are "sell by" and "use by" and "best by" dates that are a bit more significant than those for cheese or milk or the big holiday sale. If you're in doubt about a can of soup's viability, you can throw it out.

But you can't throw out a war. The Korean war started in 1950 and an armistice was declared in 1953. Sixty-six years later, American troops remain on the Korean peninsula. Not only that, but North Korea just withdrew from the armistice, so the war goes on. At least technically. So July 27, 1953 was the armistice's "best if used by" date. But not an expiration.

Now, what's kind of date have we attached in Afghanistan or Syria and does anyone believe it?

Shrapnel:

--The charities that used to send sheets of labels with your name and address seem to have stopped doing that, or at least cut back. They were, of course, expecting donations in return -- and may not have gotten many. So you probably are down to your last 5,000 stickers.

--That's not the only thing that's disappearing. What ever happened to contests where you could win something by giving the best answer in 25 words or less? No one can say anything in 25 words anymore, including this piece of shrapnel which runs 45 words.

--The above word count is accurate only under certain circumstances, though it is certified both manually and by Google Documents' word count feature. The rub comes thus: Is "--" a word and are 25 and 46 one word each, or two? The actual count could be as high as 49.

GRAPESHOT:

-Why was it never 25 words or fewer?

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

Correspondence here: wesrichards@gmail.com

©2019 WJR

2062 Tractor Pull and a Drug called "SUX."

Note to readers: Wessays ® knows nothing of the politics of particular tractor manufacturing companies and has picked the following sides at random:

Okay, folks, let’s have a tractor pull.  A what? A tractor pull. That’s when farmer Smith and farmer Jones tie their John Deeres or Caterpillars back to back and see who can drag the other over the finish line. It’s like a tug-of-war but with heavy duty farm machinery.

In this corner, wearing John Deere Green and Yellow is the far right.  In THIS corner, wearing bright yellow is Caterpillar.

This is what’s going on in American politics today.

Except today’s contenders don’t create anything. They are politicians of the left and right.  And while they’re both often wrong, they are real.  Historically, most of these tractor pull events end in a tie and the sides compromise their way out of paralysis. But we’ve recently forgotten compromise -- a key but unwritten characteristic of our constitution.

So get ready for a dose of “SUX,” or Succinylcholine Chloride, the drug you sometimes get on the operating table to paralyze you while they cut.  Thing is, this drug doesn’t put you to sleep first.  It just stops you from breathing and other muscle-dependent activities.  It both acts and wears off quickly and they ventilate you to keep you alive. But if you’re given enough and fast enough it’s fatal.

So how much is pumped into the political system?  Plenty.

With a tractor pull, sometimes there’s a winner.  With this drug, you can count on destruction, at least with the politicians are involved.

The 2020 presidential election shouldn’t be first on our minds in the first quarter of 2019.  But it is.  Border “crises,” inflation worries, recession worries, an economy that’s like a half-frozen lake where you can walk until you reach the otherwise undetectable thin spot when you fall through and freezing and drowning compete for your vote.

And let’s not forget the Great Socialist Scare

And the Antisemites and people driving (or breathing) while black and minimumwageism and soaking the rich and Medicareforallism, freecollegeforallism.

There’s no wiggle room when you're frozen in amber or knocked out with SUX.  And no one seems ready to agree on anything except the lame congressional act that says Hate Is Naughty, an idea that shouldn’t require legislation or even a second thought.

What we need is a regard for our allies and a wall against our enemies, not against a bunch of Latin Americans yearning to be free. Also: a decently paced economic plan that muscles evil doers out of the system while vaccinating the rest of us against relapse. And we need a president who doesn’t pick his advisers, cabinet members and other peoples not plucked from the ranks of unindicted conspirators.

And while we’re writing a wish list, a decent environmental policy that doesn’t consider climate change a hoax or a prank.

What we don’t need is an injection of political SUX.

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

Comments? Wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2019

2061 Michael Jackson

2061 Michael Jackson

Some former colleagues -- radio disc jockeys -- asked for impressions of “Leaving Neverland.” The HBO film revives all the old stories about how Michael Jackson um… treated young boys at his ranch.  It wasn’t pretty when we first heard all this. It’s even less pretty now.

Jackson isn’t around to defend himself.  But that’s not what you came here to look for, either, is it?

We live in an age of self-created and audience-created monsters. The president of the United States is chief among them.  At least Michael Jackson never had the nuclear codes.

The grievances against Jackson are not earth-shaking, though, of course, if you were one of his “boys,” it certainly has shaken your own world. And if you are a professional public moralizer you have every right to every vertical inch of your high dudgeon.  

What can victims do about it now?  Probably not much except keep the warnings lights flashing.  Maybe the next groomer of young children and their parents, the next phony good guy who “loves children” can be stopped before he starts.

It’s usually a “he,” though every once in a while you’ll find a woman teacher “loving” a high school sophomore boy.

Maybe some places will enact extended or even limitless statutes of limitation for these crimes.  But just to remind… you can’t do it retroactively.  Might be a good deterrent for planners of future abuse.

Radio stations in several countries are banning Jackson’s music and you have to think that America’s corporatized radio monoliths are at least thinking of that.  Variety the trade newspaper tried to survey the US majors.  The closest they got were limp replies about how whether to play a particular artist is a local decision left up to the individual program directors in their various markets.

Oh?  Local program directors all have to call corporate headquarters any time they need a major decision.  Like whether to fire the morning DJ, play Michael Jackson records and where and what to order for lunch.  And some have to call for hall passes when they need to use the restroom.

These kinds of bans don’t happen often. And when they do, they’re usually short term.  But if you were a fan, what do you think now.

Some comments: Well, the guy and his music and dance were two different things.  If you like it, fine.  If you keep liking it, fine. If you don’t want to help Neverland rebuild the fortune Jackson drained from it, by all means, download the MP3s.

But if you think this guy -- even in death -- doesn’t rate your attention, you know what to do.

SHRAPNEL:

--Former fixer Michael Cohen is taking the trump disorganization to court. In court papers, Cohen says the company stiffed him for almost $2 million in legal fees.  Where have we heard about this outfit declining to pay its bills before?

--And now our semiannual word rant.  Clocks go forward this weekend as we observe Daylight Saving Time.  Saving, not savingS.

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

Comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2019

2060 Home Phones and Inboxes

The home phone is there for only one reason. It catches the calls from charity scams, “survey” takers, computer scams, telemarketers, fake IRS agents and wrong numbers.

Computer Scammer: We have noticed irregular activity on your account. Please call us for more information.

Phone: rrrrring. “Hello, this is Microsoft. How can I help you?

Collee: you called me and told me my computer is at risk.

Caller: Would you allow us to log on to your computer to look at the specifics?

Me: Sure. But I’m home now and my computer is at work.

Caller:  Can you get to work and call us back?

Me; I don’t think so. We have 11 inches of snow on the ground and I work 54 miles from home.

Caller: That doesn’t matter. We still can log in.

Me: I have to get there and turn it on.

Caller: Well, please get there as fast as you can. This is important.

Me: I will get there as soon as I can.

Next day, Caller: We didn’t hear from you yesterday. We worried.

Me: no reply.

Me: you should worry. I was in a terrible accident on my way to work in eleven inches of snow, and I’m now hospitalized with all manner of broken bones.

Caller: I’m so sorry, but please log on so we can fix your machine. We’re offering our $400 fix it program for only $350.

Click.

Inbox:

Boston Globe: Scolfano pleads guilty to sex charges.

Me: Who? What Sex charges?

New York Times: your Wednesday Briefing.

Me: I read you every morning. Why would I need more?

Extendo.com: Enlarge your whois. Guaranteed!

Me: Zap.

Vermont Country Store:  Maple sugar mummy replicas…

Me: Zap.

We are just inundated with unwanted junk email and robocalls. The average day here brings 100 of the former and three or four of the latter.

Telling senders and callers to stop is futile. It just encourages them because when you respond, they know there’s a live body at the other end of the line and they step up their onslaughts.

Good advice: Trash unwanted emails and never EVER click on “unsubscribe.”  And don’t answer the phone unless caller ID tells you it’s your doctor, lawyer, funeral director or wedding planner.

Phone: brrrring!! Hello, I am special agent so-and-so from the Internal Revenue Service. You owe us $4,820.73 cents in taxes, penalties and interest. Send us a Barnes & Noble gift card in that amount or we’ll be over to arrest you.

Me: Oh, you found me.  Okay. I want to turn myself in.

Alternative Answer: I am the Northeast Regional Director of the IRS Fraud division. Please give me the case number so I can look it up for myself.

Phone: Click.

SHRAPNEL:

--Mike Bloomberg has decided not to run for the Democratic presidential nomination.  Probable reason: It’s more fun being Mike than being president. Other probable reason: he can do more good for the country from the sidelines.

Note: my arch enemy, Grammarly, wanted to change “do more good” to “do more better.”  I did not make this up.

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

Comments: wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2019

2059 Run for Your Lives it's the Socialist Nightmare

 

Aw, c’mon, donny boy. You wouldn’t know a socialist if one grabbed by the p*sssy and kissed you on the lips. But you handed a good laugh to several categories of people when you tried to instill fear of “the socialist nightmare” during a speech in Maryland this past weekend.

The first of these categories is real socialists. People who want the government to own and control everything.  Their laughter has a kind of face-of-a-clown vibe.  They know their dream of a peoples’ utopia has no chance of success here.

The second category: Anyone whose net worth is over a couple of million dollars.  They are laughing because they operate under the cover of your fear and will be better able to hide the dirty doings while your followers (it’s still followers, plural, right?) will dither and palpitate and pay even less attention to the obvious pickpocketing they endure.

The guy in the picture above is Daniel DeLeon, a founder of the Socialist Labor Party, college professor (Columbia) and union organizer.  He also was the last true American socialist and he’s been dead since 1914.

The best known American Socialist, Norman Thomas, was a third carbon copy of De Leon. He ran for President a bunch of times.  He got ten votes in each election.

The party?  It’s five old guys who moved from New York to the west coast when they finally realized no one else was in that thought balloon with them.

DeLeon’s Big Idea was creation of a universal industrial union.  Every worker. Every job.  That wasn’t likely in the early 20th century and it’s even less likely now.

That’s kind of hard to work. It would mean, for example, that when the steelworkers went on strike, so might the entire worldwide staff of Starbucks, Exxon and Microsoft.

If you think the most recent government shutdown was bad, just think of what it would be like if the repair folks at the natural gas company struck because of those Starbucks workers.

This is not an argument to disband unions. If anything, it’s a call to strengthen them so that when the Steelworkers strike, their needs can be met and you can still get a gas leak fixed before your house blows up.

Is Medicare “socialism?”  Some lumps masquerading as humans thought so before they started using it.  How about Social Security?  Social security would be flush if congress didn’t keep siphoning so much off the top to pay for their bloated staffs and bloated projects.  C’mon, boys and girls, take your money from your real bosses on K street.

SHRAPNEL:

--We note with sadness the passing of Ogden Reid, former editor/owner of the New York Herald Tribune newspaper and former congressman. Reid was 93 and the kind of Republican who believed in the founding principles of his party, unlike the shrill knee jerk trump worshiping collection of walking dead it has become. He ran a great paper and he was the kind of Republican many a Democrat could embrace and vote for, the kind we could use a few hundred more of today.

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

Comments?: wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2019

2058 Unsafe at Any Crossing

2058 Unsafe at Any Crossing

New York Times

HICKSVILLE, NY (Wessays ® Wire) -- You can’t cure stupid.  Especially when it’s mixed with the aftermath of a few hours in a bar.

In Westbury on New York’s Long Island the other day, three men left a bar, then drove to the ground level Long Island Railroad crossing, drove around the lowered gates where big red lights were blinking and bells were ringing. These warnings are “impossible” to miss. While on the tracks, two trains, one heading east and the other heading west hit the car and killed the people in it.

In Westbury, you say?  But the dateline says “Hicksville.”

Well, yes. In 1965 a similar accident took place there.  There were many more ground level crossings then.  A still-green radio reporter dispatched to that scene all those years ago arrived to find the remains of five teenagers on the ground, their convertible mashed on the track.  Some of the bodies were… incomplete.

It convinced the reporter to remain indoors.

The point here is that these things happen a lot.  Even now, with much of the railroad “scheduled” for elevation by the dysfunctional, cash strapped money downspout called the Metropolitan Transportation Agency, the MTA.

To a layman, the fault here was obviously with the driver and his passengers.  But there’s a bigger issue:  If Long Island were one municipality, it would be the second largest city in the country. Seven-point-five million people in the four existing geographic counties, about half that if you don’t count the parts technically within New York City limits.  A lot of people.

And you can’t run trains at 80 mph at ground level and not have a lot of accidents.  The LIRR is 185 years old.  When the various smaller railroads that comprise it were built, much of the area was vacant. Putting the whole thing above ground seemed ridiculous.  But as the population boomed after World War II, it began to dawn on the then-owners, the Pennsylvania Railroad that crossings had to be elevated.

That’s a forever process as they courted the dozens of municipalities whose lives would be disrupted by construction and who’s widely varying building codes had to be met. And it’s expensive. New rolling stock, new switches, signals, platforms and power lines.  The state took it over in 1965.

No passenger railroad makes money.  No subway. No municipal bus line. No monorail. None, zero. And no owner wants to spend a penny more than the minimum to keep the wheels (and mag-lifts) going.

Long Island is a 110-mile-long sand bar, a glacial dump from the end of the most recent ice age.  That’s a lot of railroad crossings. That’s the bad news. The good news is the railroad is in such poor condition that they can’t push many of those trains at speeds that would kill a slow moving dog or cat let alone destroy an automobile.  But “not many” doesn’t mean “every.”

The best way to fund the rest of the elevation is to cut the jobs held by the cousins, uncles, aunts, wives, husbands, friends and other hangers-on who populate the political system and use that money to save the lives of the morons who drive past the closed gates and ignore the warning lights and bells that work most of the time at most of the crossings.

Note to those who live in territory served by the LIRR’s sister railroad, Metro-North.  Yeah, you have the same troubles.  But this latest execution took place just this past week.

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

Correspondence to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2019