495 Man Without a Blackberry

495 Man Without a Blackberry

Is there anyone else out there without a Blackberry?  Seems everyone from Barack Obama on down has one and is constantly using it to accomplish all the world's important business.  People say they live and die on the thing and they love it.  They've trained their thumbs, fat and skinny, to operate that teeeny tiiiiiny keyboard.  And they spend all day every day writing solutions to the world's problems, making laundry lists, to-do lists, reading e-mail, cruising the internet and Facebook and My Space and You Tube and all that other critical material.

Makes a fella feel left out.

Half the time, the Blackberriers are faking it, of course.  There are tens of thousands of people with nothing to say and no reason to say it, and these are the pretenders.  They've set the device to ring all by itself periodically so they can pull it off their belt or out of their briefcase or purse and stare at it in wide-eyed wonderment and thumb furiously in response to something that isn't there.  A real self-esteem builder, this machine.  Makes you feel wanted, needed, appreciated and busy.  Makes others think you're oh so important.

A neighbor pretends to be a commodities trader and he's always pacing around outside, cigarette in hand, drawling at the top of his lungs for all to hear.  Is there anyone on the other end of the phone?  Probably not.  But he's designated himself as Mister Importante.  And in a way he IS.   He's a pioneer.  He's among the first to fake electronic communication.  Without Importante, people wouldn't yet be faking messages on their Blackberrys (or is it Blackberries or Blacksberry?)

Here's another pioneer, a woman, a stranger.  We are pedestrians waiting for the red light to change.  I am talking to myself.  She is on a cell phone.  She takes it from her ear and asks me "do you have a cell phone?"  I say "yes."  She says "if you turn it off and put it to your ear you can talk to yourself without looking like you're nuts.  That's what I'm doing."

Lesson learned.  Lesson spread.  Stranger woman had the concept.  Mister Importante raised the art to a new level.  Blackberry fakers have taken this art to its highest form.

Is this an important tool?  Or is it merely another way the phone company can squeeze another few bucks from you?

Shrapnel:

--All those marketing calls have stopped, at last.  Or most of them.  They were infuriating, but now it's lonely without them.

--Calendars don't record appointments, they produce them.  Think about it.  Now that you have your 09 PDA or appointment book set up, you put in stuff you never would have written down otherwise and don't need to.

--If a cough drop prevents or cures coughing, why doesn't a gum drop prevent or cure gum disease?  Maybe some day they will.  But this is like waiting for the other shoe to drop.

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

©WJR 2009

494 Just a Second

494 Just a  Second

A new social movement is developing worldwide at this very second.  Well, maybe not at this very second, but at the second that WOULD be this very second if they hadn't started fooling with the clock the last day of 2008.  

We heard it explained this way by clock maven Bobby "Mainspring" O'Brian at his shop on Queens Boulevard, somewhere around Woodside.  Mainspring says the clocks had to have one second added because the earth is slowing down -- "...like the rest of us."  Mainspring says it drove him absolutely nuts to adjust all the watches and clocks and such he has for sale.  "I get this bulletin from some guy in the middle of a  mountain somewhere out west, and he says they have to change everything around.  I wasn't going to do it.  Who would know?  But I knuckled under.  Every damn watch and clock.  One second more.  And I had to do it on New Year's Eve, to boot!"

Some of the rest of us haven't knuckled under.  We steadfastly hold to the old clock.  We are Old Clock.  Orthodox Clock. Clock Purists.  No fiddling with time here.  

A second here, a second there, and before you know it, you're dealing with minutes.  Nope.  We are working on convincing you to repeal the change if you made it.  Working on a website (Mainspring, feeling guilty about his wimpish behavior on New Year's Eve,  has offered his computer, but doesn't want anyone to know it.  "Can't risk being thought of as a subversive.  Not in THIS neighborhood.")

Next, they'll want to add and subtract all kinds of things.  They'll want do overs for all kinds of events that can't be done over.  If you can do over 7pm, you'll soon be able to do over, say, June.  Whatever happened to the March of Time?  It's not a march?  It's a halting amble, with a second removed here and inserted there?  Whatever happened to "Time On My Hands?"  Not on your second hands.  And who thought we'd be taking the song "Turn Back the Hands of Time" literally.

Leap second, they call it.  Mainspring says he thought a leap second was what you called the guy in the corner when he bolted over the top rope and stopped the boxing match.

Time is supposed to be precise.  This is downright sloppy.

Shrapnel:

--The Montague County Jail of Fort Worth, Texas has been closed and its inmates transferred elsewhere.  It wasn't so much that the jailbirds had reclining chairs and curtains in the cells.  What finally did it was the discovery that the cell doors locked from the inside.

--New year, new statistics.  They're always ga-ga about the first birth of the year.  But you rarely hear about the first death.

--Pinch yourself.  You are not dreaming.  We really DID elect Barack Obama President, probably the highlight of what turned out to be a nightmare of a year.

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

(C) WJR 2009

493 WestraDamus Predictions for Last Year

493 Westradamus' Predictions For the Past year - 2008

This is the 20th anniversary of the Westrdamus predictions, presented each January for the year gone by and generally wrong.  'Damus started as a parody of the Astrological predictions in the supermarket tabloids, almost always wrong and never acknowledged as such.  But the non-prophet has grown into an American institution, like the Smithsonian, the National Institutes of Health, NOAA Weather and hedge funds.

2008 is an election year and the winner of the Presidential race will be former media mogul and present New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, an independent.  Mike campaigns on a platform of universal health care, stem cell research and overpopulating Westchester.  His Democratic opponent, Ed Koch concedes before election day and his Republican opponent, Newt Gingrich has yet to admit defeat.

In the middle east, the Palestinians will admit they don't exist and return the Stolen Territories to Israel.

The price of crude oil will hit $67, causing a spike in the price of gasoline, heating oil, cooking oil and WD-40.  Rival entrepreneurs will retaliate by buying silicon futures, thus driving up the price of all spray products, General Electric stock and snake oil.

The governor of Illinois and a financial wizard, Bernie Madoff, will be arrested, the former for trying to sell his state's third US Senate seat and the latter for cheating his honest investors, guys who deal in hedge funds, derivatives, gold futures and Amway soap.

O.J. Simpson will be cleared of wrongdoing in a motel break-in after the former football great, actor and non-murderer explains to a sympathetic Nevada jury that he was "...only trying to get my stuff back."

Britney Spears, on court order, will purchase underwear from her local J.C. Dowdy's.  Los Angeles police officers will be assigned to a daily "pants check."  Tough duty, but some one's gotta do it.

But the big story of the year will be the economy.  General Motors will surpass Toyota as the number one in car sales, sending its stock through the roof.  Lower interest rates will free credit, sending American business into yet another borrowing binge.  New banks and bank holding companies will spring up to meet the demand, proving once again that the spirit of entrepreneurship remains vibrant.

Notable deaths in 2008: Josef Stalin, Gertrude Berg, Adam Clayton Powell, and the guy next door - the one who plays Salsa records at top volume at 3 a.m. None of these people actually will DIE in '08, but their earlier deaths will remain notable.

People you thought were dead, but aren't, include former New York Governor Hugh Carey, actor Peter Falk, Yoko Ono, NPR's Carl Castle and Howard Stern.

And finally, you will win the lottery.

This blog will be available all year long at Westradamus.com on the internet.  But why would you want to read it again?  In fact, why did you read it this time?

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

(C) WJR 2009

492 Next Post Facto

492 Next Post?  Facto

This posting has been going on for a little over three years.  But it's actually an extension of a project started at Bloomberg Radio in March of 2000, which means it's really something like nine years old in its present form, or close thereto.

If we can rely on the statistics, readership -- or at least visitorship has grown exponentially in recent years and now is all the way up to small.  Small is beautiful.  And I feel as if I know each of you personally.  In point of fact, I probably DO know most, if not all of you personally.  But that doesn't stop me from (a) continuing or (b) thanking you for being here.

Here's hoping the new White House can fix the last eight years of wrongdoing, negligence, malfeasance, misfeasance.  This is a reasonable New Year's wish.  Here are some that are not so: that GM and Chrysler should survive, that Gov. Blago of Illinois will go to jail, that the Jewish faith should recognize the existence of Hell, if only for co-coreligionist  Bernie Madoff, that the Christian faith should recognize that there are others of equal sincerity out there, that some high profile leaders in the middle east should recognize that there's more to life than explosives, that the people who keep yamming about the joys of free market capitalism be forced to live under it, and the same for the twelve remaining doctrinaire Marxists.

Thank you for reading and for listening.

Next post will be Friday, 1/2/09.  And that's a fact-o.

Shrapnel:

--Hats off to MNSNBC's Rachel Maddow.  She picked up on that bank story the other day and took it one step ahead.  She wants her show to turn into a bank, a "very bad bank," that can win a federal bailout by filling out little more than the name, address and telephone number.

--Hats on to the rest of the media which did nothing much with the bank story. Hats on is the opposite of hats off.  Especially to what passes for the business press these days when business is a real story.

--The Irish rock star Bono and his investment group are buying a big chunk of the business behind the Palm Pilot, which ain't doing all that well.  Great idea, Bono.  If you can revive that outfit, you can offset some of the losses you're bound to take eventually, for your investment in the publishers of Forbes Magazine.

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

(C) WJR 2008

491 It's the Money

491 It's the Money

Time was you walked into a bank to get change of a 20 and you walked out with change of a 20,  a cup of free coffee, a souvenir ball point pen, a couple of pieces of hard candy and a mortgage loan.  Heady days.  Money flowed freely.  Well, not freely, but cheaply.

We thought those days were over, but they aren't.  Well, maybe for YOU they are.  But not for everyone.

Today, when you go into a bank to break a 20, you come out with $19.90 after they deduct the service charge.  If you want a loan, they'll likely ask you things like your ability to pay it back (they'll check what you say,) and they'll want to know why you want the money -- how long you think you're going to need it and, "oh, by the way, it would be helpful if you moved your no-interest checking account to us."

The good old days are gone for you -- but not for your bank.  It's just gotten a boatload of your tax money to keep itself stable.  But, as in the good old days, it's not telling you how able it is to repay it, and it's not telling you how it's spending your money.

News reporters have been questioning the banks which received bailout money and none is replying.  Things like "we don't do dollar-in-dollar-out accounting" and "we're haven't made that public and we won't,"  fill the reporters' reports.  Maybe we peasants have to do things like that.  But not the banks.  Say what?  You're using public money but not telling the public where it's going -- or not going?  

Do we really need to know how every penny is spent, and would we know what to do with the information if we had it?  Yes and yes.  Do we want to know whether the money is being lent or hoarded or used to pay dividends to stockholders or bonuses to the CEO?  You bet we do.

It's not the principle of the thing, it's the money.

Shrapnel:

--Columnist/professor Paul Krugman has an interesting take on the Madoff scandal.  He says Madoff isn't that much different from many of the other over-paid, money-losing investment bankers and managers.  But, he says, Bernie just skipped a couple of intermediate steps -- like actually investing.

--The malls were jumping during this last weekend before Christmas and Hanukkah. And some people are carrying what appear to be purchases in store-logo shopping bags.  But maybe they just brought them into the malls from home so they'd look prosperous to the other non-buyers.

--After a day of malling, what could be better than a little gathering for drinks and snacks at the employers' house?  This:  a little gathering for drinks and snacks at the employers' house followed by a nap on their living room couch.

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

(C)WJR 2008

490 More On Chrysler

490 More On Chrysler

Chrysler is the soap opera of the car business.  It's my favorite drama.  Those of us in the busness press have been writing its obituary since 1925, the year it was founded, the year Buick executive Walter Chrysler decided there was a market for a new car not built by GM or Ford.  The automotive press has been writing this company's obituary for more than 70 years.  Maybe they've turned up right this time.

The company's owner, Cerberus Capital surely bit off more than it can chew when it bought 80% of Daimler's 100% interest.  Now, the Cerbies want their cake and to eat it, too.  they want the government to give it money in return for making a bunch of mediocre cars that no one wants to buy.  Thousands of jobs are at stake.  So are two venerable brands, Dodge and Chrysler.  You know you love the Chrysler 300 -- not the current model, but the one from the 1950s.  You know you want the Plymouth Duster and the New Yorker and the Imperial.  Or the mini van.  Or the Sebring.  Or the Viper.

Earlier this week came word that the company would halt all US production for a month.  Stopping some or all of the lines at this time of year is fairly common in the car biz.  Usually it's a week or ten days.  A month is rare if not unique.  At the same time, Ford announced a shutdown, and GM stopped construction on a new factory for the Chevy Volt, a car that -- if they ever really make it -- could put them into the black in less than a year.  And (leak, leak,) talks may have resumed with Chrysler on a merger or partial merger of some kind.

Used to be Chrysler could pull a rabbit out of a hat.  A new model that left car freaks tongues hanging out.  But the previous majority owner (and current minority owner,) Daimler cut off that avenue.  Development money?  Foggettaboudit.

When a financial outfit like Ceberus takes over a company in an industry of which it has limited knowledge and experience, the first thing they tend to do is lard up the executive suite with marquee name officials who face steep learning curves with widely varying abilities to steer.  Enter Bob Nardelli, who made a good name for himself at General Electric and then erased a good part of it as he went to and then golden-parachuted from The Home Depot.  What, there were no car guys at Chrysler who knew how to build a set of wheels people wanted to buy?

Today's Chrysler is living in the world of "practically irrelevant."  And it wasn't the UAW that put it there.  Or the potential buyers of cars and trucks.

Shrapnel:

--Portions of today's blog were sponsored by Madoff Financial Services.  Reminding you that we've Mad(e) Off with your finances.  Each office independently owned and operated and for an office near you, call 1800- MY PONZI.

--Note: the above 800 number does not actually work from either the 814 or 516 area codes.  But who knows?  It may work from where you are.

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

(C)WJR 2008

489 Spy On Yourself

489 Spy On Yourself

Phone taps, computer monitoring, sneaky and underhanded spying on Americans? Some of us who aren't targets feel left out. No one thinks we're part of the Evil Empire or the terrorists who are hiding behind every rock -- except ours. It makes those few of us who aren't spied upon or who THINK we aren't being spied upon feeling we're second class citizens.

Here's the solution. Spy on yourself. Install security cams in your house -- every room. Tap your own phone and listen to the wiretaps to make sure you aren't secretly saying or doing anythingterroristic . Maybe have a trusted friend or neighbor in to review the transcripts you make. After all, you may be evil without even knowing it. Then, get a keystroke monitor for your computer. You never know which sites you'll be visiting.

Don't make those cameras too obvious, though. Hide them in flowerpots or behind wall hangings. Maybe a hidden microphone in a lamp or two or in a fruit bowl on the dining room table. In an extreme case, you can go outside and peep into your own windows to make sure you're not doing anything dangerous -- except maybe risking arrest as a peeping tom.

And then there's your car. Better get a global positioning system if you don't already have one. You want to know where you've been, after all. Oh... and make sure your cell phone's always on. If you play your cards right, you can track yourself and know everywhere you've made phone calls.

The government may or may not be spying on you. If it isn't, it's because the resources aren't there. But remember, the government doesn't trust you and you shouldn't either.

Economic times are tough. The government can't afford to spy on absolutely everyone. If you're one of the Americans whose been cut out of the domestic spy program or (good heavens!) too insignificant to be in on it, you can muster some good old fashioned American get-up-and-go and spy on yourself. It's your patriotic duty.


Shrapnel:

--Bernie Madoff is a giant in his crooked field. The schemer and Ponzi artist is the stuff of which legends are made. But when you look at the damage he's done with his fake investment scheme, which robbed the rich and the children, you have to wonder what his genius might have accomplished if rightly channeled.

--Payback: The car companies are just like you when you go for a car loan. They're sitting in the finance office, waiting to see whether their loans are approved. And they're trying to control their bowels and urinary tracts while they wait -- just like you do.

--To make a statement, Khrushchev pounded his shoe on the podium at the UN. The middle east reporter who threw his shoes at President Bush also was trying to make a statement. Neither meant anything real, but remember that shoes are something more than what was in Imelda Marcos' closet.

I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.(sm)
(C)WJR 2008