Smart Car, Dummkopf

#331 Smart Car? Dummkopf!

Dr. Z, Dieter Zetsche, fresh from his triumphal reign at Chrysler, is back with a car so small he could have imported it to the US by putting it on his back and swimming the Atlantic, and hardly gotten is moustache wet. A comical looking guy, with a comical looking car.

The Smart Car, they call it. Or, if that's too hard to remember, or you're not smart enough, simply "the Smart." It's a pocket car you can park anywhere. It carries two people, if they're not to big. It has no trunk, it has no back seat, and it barely has an engine. This engine-lessness can be an advantage. Helps with the gas milage. Under the hood is a little teeny gasoline powered sewing machine. Handy, if you rip your jacket squeezing into the "passenger" seat. Forty miles per gallon, city. Highway? Don't know. No one's ever dared drive this thing on a highway. Zero to 60 in 20 seconds. If there's a tailwind. And if the thing'll actually DO 60.

This is Germany's Great Automotive Hope. The car's a big hit in Berlin and in Paris. It will not be anything of the kind over here.

Fifteen, 16 grand for a two seater? We're not talking Miata, here.

To get an idea of how small this thing is, take eight steps from your wall. That's how big it is -- or isn't.

The grille is in the shape of a smile. It is more cartoonish than even the ultra cartoonish Mini Cooper. And it makes the Toyota Yaris (which gets just about the same milage but seats four and has room for a suitcase or two) look like a limo. Not a STRETCH limo, of course. But a limo nonetheless.

Wait until some eco-conscious celeb drives one of these things into a wall at ten miles an hour and dies. Wait for some Gomer to take this thing out on the Interstate and has a set-to with a Peterbuilt and ends up like a piece of aluminum foil with blood coming out. Bring on the lawsuits.

Somewhere in the back of Dr. Z's mind must be the idea that this will be the next Volkswagen Beetle. Good milage. Small. Cute. German. Wrong.

The original Beetle (a design collaboration between Ferry Porsche and Adoof Schicklgruber) was solid, easy to fix, cheap to buy, cheap to run. This (obviously designed by a German committee,) is none of that.

It's really designed for use in cities. This will place it in the company of, say, New York City taxis, UPS trucks, and fire fighting apparatus. You don't have a chance, got it?

You can get a Yaris or a Cobalt or the smallest Honda for the same price, and actually get a few bucks back if you live long enough to trade it in, which, chances are, you will.

It's hard to whip up sympathy for the sad sacks at Daimler. But in this case, you have to feel for them. They've put a ton of money into a toy that has one advantage and one only.

If you're in one and get hit, the lights'll go out fast and you won't feel a thing.

Splat!

I'm Wes Richards, my opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.
©2007 WJR

Death Knell For Newspapers

#330 Death Knell for Newspapers


Paulie always said there'd always be newspapers because you can't take the computer into the bathroom. Paulie was wrong. Just ask him. He's got this mini computer, weighs maybe a pound and a half and has wireless internet. Now, his big worry is getting electrocuted. But he just shrugs: "how much electric can there be in that little battery. No worries."

He's right. You can take the computer into the john. You can take the computer on the line in the supermarket and read all about it without getting ink all over your hands.

This, says Paulie, is the end of the newspaper. "I paid 350 bucks for this thing. A year away, I've made it back by not buying the Post." Rupert Murdoch should worry. When Paulie says stuff like that, it's time to sell your stock in Ink-O-Rama and National Newsprint and Tribune Company. That's because Paulie is always the last guy to latch on to the latest.

If he could have kept it going, he'd still have his '48 DeSoto on the road. As it is, he made it last longer than anyone else. The Last DeSoto.

Paulie isn't overjoyed with its replacement, a 1966 Oldsmobile. And he isn't overjoyed with the mini computer, either. But he's a man of his word and now that he can read it on the throne he's doing it. Even though the typing keys are much to small for his stubby, arthritic fingers. Even though you have to remember to charge up the battery at night. Even though the screen is only seven inches, which means there's some squinting involved. He's not complaining because he doesn't need the keys all that often, and he has to squint at the paper these days, anyway.

Paulie's particular interest in the newspaper centers around the stuff that's really important in this life. The racing and sports pages, the TV listings and the obituaries. He doesn't pay a whole lot of attention to the other stuff. And he recently got a geeky schoolkid to see if there's a way to make the box scores a little bigger on the page.
There isn't. But maybe the kid can figure something out.

Paulie doesn't quite trust the machine, so he hasn't canceled his subscription to the Racing Form yet. But he's come over to the tech side of life, and is ever discovering new things. Like e-mail ("these guys want to lend me money? Send me coupons? Enlarge my, um... well, you know.") And...

"Hey, did you know you can play solitaire on this thing? AND you can cheat?"

The only thing that'll change his mind about the machine is if it lands in the sink when he's washing his hands afterward. And so far, he's been pretty careful. And he's invented his own security system for the thing. No one else who knows where it's been will touch it.



I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them. © 2007

#329a Granny's Cranky Today, Let's Make Her a Zombie

#329a Granny’s Cranky. Let’s Make Her a Zombie

The papers say a lot of nursing homes are giving psycho drugs to men and women who don’t need them because they’re “distruptive.” That turns them into head-bobbing, drooling, sleepy, creepy docile people.

Many more people get psychotropic drugs than have the matching psychoses, says the Wall Street Journal, which is not given to slighting profit-grabbing psychos of another kind, the kind that make money for their stockholders and, not incidentally, for themselves.

So if the Journal says this is happening, it’s probably happening because they don’t do anti-business stories without extreme provocation, like when an editor’s mother gets an overdose of Thorazine because she bit an attendant who wanted to steal her 150-year old family heirloom necklace, or her teeth.

They’re turning your grandparents into zombies so they don’t fuss about the food, the dirty laundry, the dirty floors or the stink. They’re turning your grandparents into zombies because they complain about the lousy food and the bad lighting and the cheap cable TV service – cheap, but not inexpensive.

They’re turning your grandparents into zombies so they won’t call for help while the floor nurse and the resident MD are doing the nasty in the pantry and don’t want to be distracted.

They’re turning your grandparents into zombies so they won’t notice that no one’s made the bed in four days and the eggs at breakfast are cold, the prescribed medicine isn’t being given or is being over-given and the sink and toilet don’t work.

But this isn’t anything new. Anti psychotic drugs get dolled out like samples at a Fuller Brush sales pitch and always have. What’s new is the latest incarnations of the drugs themselves.

They’re so effective the victims don’t know they’re under the influence. Unless, of course, they try to pilot those rusty wheel chairs into some area where no chair has gone before – like the sex pantry.

These drugs have black box warnings. A black box warning, says Phil Metcalfe of the Citizens Against Drugs Work-Group, is one that’s so important they put a black box around it so you won’t think it’s just another anti-tobacco spiel.

These drugs, says Phil, are so powerful the people who are forced fed them have no memory of the crime, and bob and drool as if they’d done it all their lives.

Time to go ‘round the wards at the nursing homes, collect this stuff and give it to people who really need it. Bush, Cheney, Rice, Gates, and all the comic cand-id-ates.

If we’re going to zombify anyone, it should be the people who got us into the social, tactical and economic messes we’re in now. Let them sit around the oval offce and the the various campaign headquarters and drool and bob their heads.

Psychotropics and anti-psychotics will help them forget who they are, which will benefit us and, to an extent, them.

Meantime, someone give Zombie Grannie a wake up call and a new set of teeth.

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

(c) 2007 WJR

An Olive Branch From The Mega Church

#328 An Olive Branch from the Mega Church

The bishops of Bentburg must be feeling ecumenical. Either that, or business must stink.

A year ago in this space we complained that the stores here in Stonewall County omitted Chanukah decorations, foods, candles and music. No need, they said. Too few Jews.

This year, it’s different. Walking through Mega Church Super Store the other day, along with the Bing Crosby cliché music, and the Best of the Saccharine Singers, was an actual Chanukah song. Right there on the loudspeaker system between the Brand-X overalls and the Museum of Pre Historic Vegetables.

If you still think Mega Mart is a department store and haven’t yet realized that it’s a church, you’d better wander the aisles with your eyes and ears open. A church and a way of life. Check out what passes for clothing and jewelry styles. Check out what passes for the book section. Check out what ISN’T in the music department.

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall when the Council of Elders planned this year’s December holiday merchandising?

They got some letters of complaint about the lack of ecumenical stuff last year. They didn’t answer. Maybe that one song is the answer.

Things ARE tough in retail today, and that’s how the Mega Church makes its money, except for tithes.

Maybe they had a “analyst” or a “consultant” on board.

Maybe he (it would have to be a “he,” because they learned their lesson about women executives earlier this year) said, look we all know about these complaining customers. Let’s do what we do with everyone else and play to their habits. Can’t hurt business, might even bring in a few extra bucks “…which y’all can certainly use.”

Okay, says the consultant, let’s look at how we think about these complainers.

1. They’re cheap. Okay, so are we. There’s potential here.

2. They’re clannish. Yes, and even though there aren’t many of them, they stick together and talk among themselves and we really can’t risk alienating these guys because….

3. They control the media and the banking industry, and while we don’t need the banks – at least not right now – we don’t want any more bad press than we already get just by being who we are and doing what we do.

It could have happened that way. But only the Mega Church Bishops know for sure.

Cheese Cake

#327 Cheese Cake

It’s come to this. We bought a cheese cake from Home Shopping Television. A big, gooey, high-calorie, high-fat, high-cholesterol, three layer, cracker crust three pound cheese cake.

Sacrilege.

Every restaurant, supermarket, convenience store, inconvenience store and –if they had any here in the sticks – bakery offers “New York Style” cheesecake. And “New York strip steaks” and “New York bagels and New York pizza, and it’s all lies. Lies, lies, lies.

A recent posting here decried New York of 2007 as Jalalabad On the Hudson. And it is. But these things – OUR things – haven’t changed and can’t be exported.

The only people who believe in the offerings of New York cheesecake, steak, bagels or pizza have never had New York cheesecake, steak, bagels or pizza, or at least haven’t in so long, they’ve forgotten.

There is no hope for pizza or bagels where they have water like they have here in Stonewall County. It’s hard. Big business around here is selling water softening machines, which you buy as soon as you realize the water is putting fairly permanent white spots on utensils that should never have fairly permanent white spots.

That water can’t make a bagel or a pizza crust worthy of the name. Understand, the stuff’s not BAD, it’s just not authentic. New York had its own water problem decades ago. Most of the good local beers were made across the river in Newark. Newark had water that today you’d get fined or even jailed for pumping. When Newark water got “better,” the beer tasted like water. And away went Piels, Knickerbocker, Rheingold and Ballentine’s – they crumpled like an aluminum beer can. And, yes, some of that stuff started in Brooklyn, but they all hit their stride with New Jersey water, or whatever that stuff was came out of the taps of Essex County.

But the bagel water and the pizza water – that was delicious once you let a glass of it settle for awhile. New York City water is cloudy, almost carbonated. That’s not because it’s unsafe, it’s because of pressure in the lines.

The steak… well, that’s just a matter of buying what the New York restaurants buy and where they buy it. Anyone can make a decent New York Strip Steak, all it takes is some decent research,

But cheesecake, that’s a different story. It’s more than the water. It’s the ingredients (some of which you can’t pronounce, let alone spell.) It’s about texture and sweetness and temperature. And it can’t be duplicated.

Here in town, they have FancyMan’s Supermarket, which fancies itself a gourmet palace, which in many ways it is. They have their own special “New York” cheesecake. Feh!

At Magic Mart supermarket, the working family’s friend, they have a white, brittle, sweet entity that’s called “New York Cheesecake.” Nope.

And at the Intermediate Shop, they have “Italian Style New York Cheesecake.” You know before you buy it you’re being lied to. Real Italian cheesecake is so heavy you can’t life a whole one alone. Not this stuff. It’s also supposed to be drier than “regular” cheesecake, without sacrificing tape. They got it half right. It crumbles.

So, we order through the mail and hope that whatever comes (and it ain’t cheap,) both tastes and feels like the real thing.

Home Shopping Television disappoints more than it satisfied. But what harm could a little optimism do?

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





(c) 2007 WJR

Credit Crunch From the Black Lagoon

#326 Credit Crunch From the Black Lagoon

Banks were hit by a credit crunch or meltdown or crisis. It’s like a flying saucer from Mars landed here and disgorged this previously unknown life form.

Or maybe it wandered out from the primordial ooze of the Black Lagoon.

At least that’s the way we’re thinking of it and being told about it.

The big banks were just going about their business, making loans, taking in deposits, issuing credit cards, maybe renting out a safe deposit box or two. Then, along comes this monster from outer space or from the deep. No one was expecting such a monster. No one had even heard of one.

The geneticists were puzzled. So were the astro-biologists. A new creature. Even a new form of being. And nasty. This critter went right for the Scrooge McDuck safes and with mighty jaws devoured some of the largest and most respected banks and brokerages in the world.

Fortunately for Allstate and Geico, they dodged the bullet of destruction that claims from those the credit crunch (maybe it should be written “Credit Crunsh.” Grammarians have yet to decide) hit would have caused.

And where is this monster now? No one knows. The Federal Reserve and the European Central Bankers sprayed like exterminators in a locust plague. But not knowing the creature’s biology, there’s no assurance it’s just flattened on the canvas and not really dead.

So, we think of the Credit Crunch as something not of our own making. But we’re wrong.

It’s time to learn from our friends in the street lending business about how to vet a potential customer. These are the boys who taught us about credit card interest rates, formerly known as vigorish, a term borrowed (at no interest) from the Yiddish word for winnings.

No self respecting loan shark would have tossed a spare nickel at half the people who got the loans that put the rest of everyone in a money cage. And if one did, he would know how to collect.

With banks easing restrictions to anyone with a pulse – even an erratic one, street loans were harder to come by for the last few years than a nice little adjustable rate mortgage from the stickup artists in suits at their desk at Citi or most of its smaller kin.

Can you imagine Gotti or Lansky or Costello or any of those guys putting money into the hands of the people who “qualified” for legal loans from these banks? Not on your life. Or theirs.

If the bank boys had worked for the big boys, they’d be wearing cement shoes beneath the Hudson River.

And the customers? They’re lining up at the major appliance stores. After all, it’s the holiday season and refrigerator cartons suitable for families of three are on sale cheap.

The Credit Crunch from the Black Lagoon shows no mercy.

At least the mob supplies groceries and some rent to the widows.

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

(c) 2007 WJR

The Pushers

#325a The Pushers

They’re trying to hook us. And it’s a grand tradition they’re following.

Video games! They want older people to play video games, and that’s not happening. We have our own silly diversions. We have Classic TV and Classic Coke Cola. We have tobacco. We have TV dinners, and sometimes the TVs to go with them.

Now they want us to try some new addictions. Okay, we went along with the computer, and learned to love it. We went along with having seatbelts in the car. We went along with gasoline that’s more expensive than Gin. The cell phone. All that good stuff.

But that wasn’t good enough for the pushers. Now they want us to play video games.

And they’re not shy about it. They have the young looking old people in the commercials and they forget someone’s name or look dull-eyed at the camera and say silly stuff.

Then Mister Announcer comes on and tells us that we don’t have to lose our minds. We should exercise them using xyz video game that makes our eyes and our brains work out, just like the treadmill makes our bodies work out.

And we are trained to obey Mister Announcer. (Many of us in radio got our first taste of authority while BEING Mister Announcer. That, too is an addiction.)

Clever devils. This is only a test.

If this advertising campaign works, zillions of elderzombies will march obediently down to MegaMart and buy these things. We don’t want to lose our minds, after all. And if this machine works, why – Viagra for the brain. But cheaper.

And if we do, what’s next? Madison Avenue has always ignored anyone over 50. But times are tough and business is slow. And the old arguments “People over 50 don’t respond to ads,” and “People over 50 are too set in their ways to try anything new.” Have to be re-tested.

At the moment, we only get ads for medicine (have you ever read those full page disclaimers? You wouldn’t take anything resembling a pill for any condition afterward.)

Now, we’re getting ads for video games. A whole untapped market to tap. It could be the start of something big.

Yes, we’ve exploited every other domestic demographic. We’ve exploited every foreign market. And still, sales are slow. So let’s start selling to SENIORS. What a concept.

But we already know which toothpaste, denture glue, automobile, cold remedy, joint pain remedy, gasoline and hamburger stand to use. So, give us something NEW.

Like those brain building video games. Maybe adult tinker toys. Do what you do for all the other generations: appeal to our weaknesses.

Like, say, reading. This generation reads for fun. And works when it isn’t being “aged out.”

Tune in, turn on, drop in. And don’t trust anyone under 50.

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

(c) 2007 WJR