Guinness

209 Guinness

We are fast approaching St. Patrick’s Day, when everyone’s Irish and everyone who drinks will drink Guinness. It’s an acquired taste and some of us have spent decades rigorously and regularly acquiring it, or trying to.

It’s bitter stuff. But it’s you’re patriotic duty to have at least one on or about March 17^th every year. Ordinarily, that line would read “…to have at least a pint on or about March 17^th.” But, taking a tip from us much smarter American marketing geniuses, they have reduced the size of the can to 11-point-something ounces. This would be a matter of national shame in Dublin (or even Belfast,) but here, it’s just another US-style “improvement.”

Do they think we’re going to have just one of these? It brings new meaning to the phrase micro brew.

The people who make this stuff have also made a series of very funny television ads about drinking responsibly. Well, how about a little responsibility over there, people! If you want us to just have one, then give us a full one, not some skimpy shadow of a real brew.

The Germans, the British, the Canadians, the Austrlians (ESPECIALLY the Australians) even the American beer monoliths still make 12 and 16 ounce cans and bottles. What’s with you stingies? You maybe think leprechauns are all of a sudden too small to lift a full can? (No self respecting leprechaun would drink the stuff out of ANY size can or bottle. On tap is the only way. But you get the picture.)

Further, they’re sticking these little nitrogen releasing pills in each of the cans and bottles now. Supposedly it makes it taste better. (Earth to the brewery: It tastes lousy no matter what you do to it. It’s supposed to. It’s like the bitter herbs at Passover. Reminds you of the tough times. Only unlike the herbs, after a few cans, you don’t care anymore.) The little nitrogen pills take up room. Room that could be used for more stout.

These pills are called “widgets.” Widget used to be a generic term. Many people applied it to many different things. Now, Guinness is trying to expropriate the term. Another shameful act.

You may be interested in knowing that they have not removed any strings from the harp logo at the same time they removed part of an ounce from the can. At least they respect SOME traditions.

Nevertheless, they should go to their “book of world records” department (it’s probably in the same building) and enter this cheap trick into it under “record stingy beer tricks.”

And if they don’t have that category (along with the world’s biggest zucchini and the highest number of university students to cram into an English phone booth) they should.

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

(c) 2007 WJR

Anna Nicole Smith & The Warren Comission

208 Anna Nicole Smith & The Warren Commission

Disclaimer: If you were a big fan of Anna Nicole Smith and are squeamish skip reading this. For the rest of you, who love to make tasteless and juvenile light of the plight of celebrities, please read on.

That’s the Jake Warren Commission. Jake runs the candy store at the train station and he’s decided to form a blue ribbon panel to investigate the death of Hollywood’s Anna Nicole Smith, which as of this writing remains a mystery.

There have, after all, been all those theories floating around, and Jake thinks it’s time they are put to rest.

These include:

SUICIDE: She just had enough of all the hassle, the marriage and the court fight that followed, the fights with her stepchildren, the death of her son and the paternity status of her daughter, the fatherhood of whom has been claimed by about two thirds of all males between the ages of 14 and 90.

THE UNDERWORLD: She was pretty palsy with some pretty shady types. Maybe she went to a shark for money to cover her expenses during the lawsuit over her late husband, and couldn’t keep up with the vig, so they bumped her off.

THE CUBANS: She died in South Florida, right? What more evidence do you need?

PENTHOUSE MAGAZINE: Playboy rival maybe got tired of all that free publicity every time anyone mentioned Smith.

IMPLANTS: Some of her friends said her implants were painful, causing her to take large quantities of painkillers which ultimately did her in.

FORTUNE TELLER PROPHESY: a “seer” once told Smith she wouldn’t live past 40. Since she was 39 at the time of her death, maybe the fortune teller did it.

THE CIA, THE NSA, THE DIA, THE FBI: gutted by the Homeland security bureaucracy. No way they have the resources to do this.

It’s hard to imagine that a single pill slipped into her medicine bottle was the work of a lone individual. Ballistic tests on Vicodin, Oxycontin, Prozac, Zoloft, Valium and Trim Spa show that no single dose can kill.

Regular firers of all these were closely questioned by experts and each swore that one pill or even half a bottle won’t do it.

The preliminary report of the Warren Commission shows that this was an accidental death due to an undetermined combination of factors and apparently the work of a lone medicine taker, that there was no connection to any mobsters, Cubans, magazine publishers, implant makers fortune tellers or any intelligence or law enforcement agency.

Unfortunately, there’s no record of the events immediately before her collapse in that hotel room. There were no security cams in her room (at least none that anyone will admit to,)

So, one of the lingering questions remains: Abe Zapruder, where were you when we needed you?

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

(c) 2007 WJR

More Retail Delights

207 More Retail Delights

Sears is sending a part for the stove. It’s the bottom panel for inside the oven. The original has aluminum foil baked onto it. It is not covered by the warranty because in the book, allegedly, is a phrase akin to “do not put aluminum foil on the bottom panel of the stove because it bakes on and you’re screwed. Plus we do not cover owner lunacy or failure to follow directions.

The Sears help line lady says it’s in the book. It may be. So far, it remains un-found. She gives this number for parts: 1-800-242-4485. It is the wrong number. It’s in this Wessay because it is an unlisted direct line where the repair guys who work for Sears call for help and information. It is nowhere else to be found. So now, you have it, for what it’s worth, and no one else who shouldn’t does.

The actual number to order parts is well publicized, so it won’t appear here. If you need it (fool) you can find it yourself.

Once in touch with parts central, after giving the guy the model number, the part number, the “division number” (whatever that is) and the “PLS number” (whatever THAT is,) I’m told that the part will cost $38, but with shipping and taxes it’s $52,

And the piece de resistance? The letter of confirmation is scheduled to arrive AFTER the part is scheduled to arrive.

Why? Because “…that comes from another place.”

This does not strike the guy as an odd sequence.

Then, there’s Macy’s. We’ve been downgraded from two “Platinum” accounts to one “gold” and one lowely “Red Star” accounts. This means Macy’s thinks we aren’t spending enough money with them to warrant continuation of our coveted and exclusive “Platinum” accounts. No free services. Smaller “rewards,” a demotion.

A combined 110 years of shopping at Macy’s has done us no good. “What have you done for us lately?” is what they’re asking.

Well, earth to Federated Department Stores: The local Macy’s is kind of like a 7-11 with no coffee but some clothing. There’s nothing worth buying in the joint. Thirty-fourth Street? Sure. Roosevelt Field? Sure. But Moote Pointe PA? Nah.

This calls for some deep reflection. Do we keep the inferior status or do we cut up the new cards and send them back? This is the kind of decision that causes people to go over the edge.

TJ Maxx:

Customer: “may we have the hangers along with the shirts?”

Clerk (an old guy): “No, we’re running low. We need to keep them. We have a policy against giving away hangers.”

One week later:

Customer “may we have the hangers along with the jacket and sweater?

Other Clerk (a young woman): “Oh, of course. We have these things coming out of our ears. I just threw 200 of them into the dumpster. Happy to have you take them.”

There was a temptation to ask for a look at the company’s policy book to double check the previous clerk’s citation.

Giant Supermarket, Wal-Mart, Lowe’s, Home Despot: Lose those self-checkout machines. Or at least take down the signs that say “fast lane.”

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

(c) 2007 WJR

Again Chrysler

206 Again, Chrysler

Calling Walter Chrysler. Come back home. All is forgiven. Oh. Wait. He’s dead. And so is the company he founded. Walter knew enough to lie down. The company doesn’t. And it’s gone through at least seven of its prospective nine lives.

If ever there was a company that escaped the grave more often and better than this outfit, someone please write or call and be heard. This outfit was in financial hot water from the get go. Walter had worked for Alco, Willys and Buick before striking out on his own.

To do that, he bought the maker of Maxwell cars and killed the brand. Always in the forefront of engineering, the company came up with all kinds of improvements we take for granted today. In style…. Well, WHAT style. That is until one of their near-death financial experiences led them to the tail fin look of the 1950s, at which no one out dazzled them.

Since then, they’ve gone through two takeover attempts, both of which were fended off and one “merger of equals” in which they replaced “Benz” as the last name in Daimler-Benz, which is now DaimlerChrysler. If you remove the last three letters of “Daimler” and the first four letters of Chrysler, you get what they’ve become.

Jerry Flint of Forbes Magazine called the new American Division of Daimler “Occupied Chrysler.” Which probably landed him in trouble with the PC police. Anyway, he’s stopped using the term.

The last guy anyone remembers running the company was Lee Iacocca, who is best known for (a) appearing in commercials and for (b) the statement “you can’t succeed if all you ship is crap.”

We had the comical “Dr. Z” in the commercials for awhile, but people couldn’t relate and they pulled the ads. Plus “Dr. Z,” Dieter Zetsche, has bigger knockwursts to fry. Like solving what the automotive press genteelly calls “quality issues” with the Mercedes.

Since then, a parade of The Scared and the Colorless have run the company into its present position. If Ford weren’t so pathetic, Chrysler would look like a homeless guy sitting on the curb and drinking from half a bottle of Listerine.

In efforts to stay afloat, Chrysler has killed the Plymouth and DeSoto brands and turned Dodge into a Chrysler clone with no real existence on its own. It has taken the Jeep brand and turned it into just another SUV, for the most part.

They’re firing a gazillion workers, and they are for sale. Who wants ‘em? A bunch of people are kicking the tires. The main contender as of February, 2007 is General Motors, which has made some multi-boneheaded decisions lately, like selling off its parts division and most of its profitable financial subsidiary.

Two losers rarely make a winner. What Chrysler needs is new faces. It’s just grand that they’ve revived the 300 and the Dodge Charger. But its not enough.

Whoever ends up buying this thing will want to suck out the cash reserves, close factories and slap the name on a Korean or Chinese built tin can.

The humane thing would have been to shoot this thing and put it out of its misery sometime in the 1940s.

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

(c) 2007 WJR

Ace and the Dollar Coin

205 Ace and The Dollar Coin

Ace Farmer runs the little coffee cart on the corner of Park and 59^th. It used to be a busy corner and he used to not be Ace Farmer.

It’s no longer busy as it used to be because the new tenants at 499 Park and at 110 E.59^th are not as coffee and danish conscious as the previous ones were. The Bloomberg News and Data types spent big bucks with Ace.

Ace Farmer became Ace Farmer on September 12^th, 2001. Sometimes he calls himself Al Farmer. But he never calls himself by his previous name, Achmed Farouk.

Ace rolls up in a van each morning about 4:30, detaches the coffee cart and sets it up on the street, loads it with the breakfast stuff, drives off to find a legal parking space, then runs – RUNS – back to the cart to open for business.

After work, about eleven, Ace hooks up the cart and before he heads for the garage in Queens where he keeps it, he stops off at the bank which is right outside Grand Central on the Lexington Avenue side. It’s eleven and there’s a big crowd. What’s going on? Ace aces his way nearer and he’s horrified.

There are the guys from the US Mint and they’re showing how dumb they can be. They are doing this by displaying and selling the new US Dollar coin.

Ace, who doesn’t have a mean bone in his body has developed a major hatred of Susan B. Anthony and Princess Sacagawea. His English is good. His spelling is okay. But he can neither say nor spell Sacagawea. Who can blame him? And who can do better.

Ace makes change in the pre-dawn hours and now he’s got another dollar coin to worry about. When the Princess coin came out, he put a sign on the cart: “No Dollar Coins, Please.” No problem. No one used ‘em. (He wasn’t here when the Susan coin was introduced.)

He won’t put the sign up this time, having learned well before the Mint that no one’s going to use the new one. The Mint hasn’t learned that yet. It will.

Canada is laughing at us. They – and every other country that has tried to fob off a high-value coin on its population has learned that the only way people will use the coins is if they can’t get the bills.

That’s a pretty big focus group, guys. Three hundred million residents of the United States, and millions more around the world. Dollar coins don’t work. We don’t want ‘em. The two previous editions are sitting in dresser drawers or in piggy banks (those with slots big enough,) and in cigar boxes.

They weigh us down. They tear holes in purse and pocket.

You’d figure two huge and recent failures would have taught them what we want and what we don’t. But, no.

Earth to Mint: We want money to burn holes in our pockets, not rip them.

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

(c) 2007 WJR

Two New York Stories

204a Two New York Stories

(2/14/07)

Here are two Valentine ’s Day stories from New York. To save you time, they’ve been jumbled together.

As you may know, the Department of Health gives out condoms. It’s been doing that for years. Today, though, they are using what the manufacturing industry calls a “new distribution channel.”

Specially marked packets of condoms are being given out in the subways. They have subway decorations on the outside of the pack. The health department says this is so they can track who received which. People on the G train got G train condoms, people on the 7 train got 7 train condoms and so on.

It’s an exciting concept for the advertising business. Think of the slogans. “Prevent STD on the BMT,” Or “Get your lay on the Uptown A.”

The IRT comes in numbers. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7. Those are route designations, guys, not inches.

For the rest of the routes:

B: Be careful, boys and girls. Use these.

C: Conception? Not today.

D: Defense against clap and babies.

E: Escape the burdens of premature parenthood.

F: Censored.

G: Get together safely.

And so on.

So, the promise was for two stories. Here’s the second:

While subway riders were receiving condoms, little kids who don’t usually use the subways alone were using the subways alone. Ten year olds.

Why? Because the geniuses that run this joint hired a “consultant” to “improve” school bus service and make it more economical.

The outfit has somewhat less than a stellar reputation. But they have pretty brochures, so, natch, they were hired.

Their first step was to manufacture a problem: “too many routes, too many buses.”

Okay. Change or consolidate some of the routes and eliminate some of them and some of the buses. And don’t forget to tell the parents about the changes.

Well, they did the first stuff, but not the “tell the parents” part.

So there’s the snow and the ice and the wind and the cold. And there are clots of kids standing out in this stuff, waiting for buses that never show up.

It gets better. Joey and Janie go to the same school and on the same schedule, but are in different grades. For years (remember, these are LITTLE kids,) they rode together and watched out for each other. Now they have to take two different buses. Progress.

The Board of Ed didn’t leave its lunatic ways behind when they closed 110 Livingston St. and moved into the Tweed building. Their explanation: It’s an improvement. You’ll learn to love it.

The NYC school system doesn’t have enough trouble without this? They saved how much? The consultant cost how many millions?

As usual, the people doing the work are people who have to use what’s being worked on.

But at least the elementary school kids riding the subway alone this morning had access to free condoms decorated with Transit Authority logos and route designations.

When twelve year old Lizzy drops her backpack on the living room floor and the contents spill and mom sees the W-train condom and asks “Elizabeth! Where did you get this!?” She should say “A guy on the subway gave it to me.”

That’ll make mom happy.

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

(c) 2007 WJR

Why We Love The Government

203 Why We Love The Government

A form arrives in the mail from something called “the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Instructions include stuff like “answer the questions in black pen or pencil because a computer will read your response.”

What IS the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services? A phone call to its toll free number leads one to believe it’s a government agency and not some identity thief seeking personal information.

Why does it seem so? Because the voicemail menu is longer than the food menu over the counter at McDonald’s. And because said menu is barely comprehensible.

After a long wait, a guy comes on and when asked whether he’s a faker says “no,” which is what you’d expect any faker to say. Why is there “real postage” on the envelope with the forms instead of the “we’re the gov’t, we don’t pay postage” labels that you see on mail from other agencies? Mr. Centers doesn’t know.

Why does Medicare need personal information AFTER it issues the card? “Just routine.” That’s the same answer a cop gives you when you ask why he wants to know where you were at about 9:30 night before last when your neighbor got whacked.

There are no answers forthcoming. But based on its behavior, it appears this is a real agency, with no known purpose. Wouldn’t be the first. So at least the fraud and faker issue is settled. The form will be filled, using a special black pencil that only a computer can read (take them at their word.)

Someone designed the form. Someone arranged for its printing. Someone arranged for its distribution. Some machine has to be in house in order to read the reply. Someone has to be around to field questions from Medicare customers who think they might be being duped. Heavens! We could send another 20-thousand boys and girls to Iraq for that kind of money, and not have to go still further into debt.

Here in Moote Pointe, we have two apparently good public high schools across the street from each other, and both pretty new. The school board wants to tear them down, build one giant high school and turn the existing second school into athletic fields at a cost of something like $100 million.

The giant new school would not have more capacity than the combination of the present two, but would, says the board, “increase a sense of community.” Assuming that this is built and that it is the first public works project in American history to come in on budget, that’s an awful lot of money to spend on a “sense of community,” and doesn’t take into account the cost of disruption (which can’t be measured in dollars,) or the future needs of the area (into which scads of kiddies are expected to move in the next decade or so.)

You have to love the folks who insist that local government has it all over federal government. They’re the same animal, just different spots.

California and Pennsylvania are considering universal health care. The medical insurance establishment is up in arms. “A lot of uninsured people just don’t WANT the insurance,” they tell us. And it will cost too much.

Washington can help. Mostly by eliminating the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Maybe send 10-thousand extra people to Iraq and with the money that would have covered the rest of the 20-thousand proposed earlier, would buy some aspirin or chemo for uninsured sick people.

We have long made the point that government is not a business, it’s an infrastructure. It’s still true despite what the hard right wingers shout from within their imaginary worlds. However, the infrastructure is not fully sound.

If the present regimes were in power in 1940, we’d all be speaking German today.

The bridge needs more than a paint job.

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

(c) 2007 WJR