1435 Martin and the Oysters

The Martin Luther King holiday is upon us.

In “Through the Looking Glass” (Or maybe it’s in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”) The Walrus and the Carpenter are forever fighting.  They oysters try to get them to the bargaining table and they succeed. The Walrus and the Carpenter agree to eat the oysters.

All of which brings us to the annual rant about not second guessing King, but with a slight difference.  For many years, we’ve been saying it’s an insult to co-opt his name and insert what we think he would say about current conditions.  But things have gotten so bad, we have to step back from that. Because what he’d likely be today is appalled.

Income inequality.  Certainly he would have something to say about that.  But unlike the hard left it probably wouldn’t be a Robin Hood solution, take from the rich and give to the poor.

Nor would it be the right wing solution: cut benefits, end the safety net and let them all become entrepreneurs.

If there’s a middle solution, it’s silent. Let’s hear it.

Race relations.  They’re in horrible tatters.  And it’s not just in Chicago and Ferguson, Missouri and Cleveland and in New York.

The left’s position, expressed by police brutality victim Rodney King, “Why can’t we all get along?” doesn’t work.

The right’s position: Racism is a form of collectivism we would all get along if instead of black or white we’d all think green.  Green as in money, not as in environmental protection.

If there’s a middle position it’s silent.  Speak up.

Homeland Security.  King was a fighter for human rights. The Patriot act does as much or more to restrict American freedoms since “separate but equal.”  But “separate” was right out front where you could fight it.  Now, we have secret courts and we frisk little old ladies in wheelchairs, tap phones, read emails, track your websites and maybe have secret prisons.

That he’d oppose the idea of increased security is in doubt and speculative.  That he’d oppose the mechanics practiced today is not.

What about Charlie Hebdo?  Probably, Martin would rail against singling out Muslims for persecution.  What he’d say about the bloodshed is an easy guess: he’d oppose violence.  That he did while still alive.

King family dysfunction.  He’d probably try to get the feuding family members together.  But, then, if he were alive, he not they would decide where his assets and intellectual property would go.

He’d probably think little of the tea party freak show or the congressional freak show or the NRA freak show or the Citizens United freak show.  

He might or might not support the Al Sharptons of the world, those small men who now stand on his grave and his memory.

But one thing he surely wouldn’t be: the oysters.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1434 Switzerland's Pizza Problem

First some background.  

1. There is no such thing as a bad pizza, even if it’s an English muffin with ketchup and American cheese cooked in one of those toy ovens that use lightbulbs for heat.
2. Some pizzas are better than others.
3. New York is the only place in the known universe you’ll find a *GREAT* pizza… just ask anyone who has eaten a slice.
4. German pizza is closer to the toy oven muffins than it is to Ray’s Original, Original Ray’s, Famous Ray’s, Ray Barri’s, DiFara’s, Roberta’s, Patsy’s, Motorino’s or any of the others you can find on almost any block.
5. German Pizza costs less than Swiss pizza.
6. Until recently, pizza deliverers didn’t have to go through customs.

Note, “Until recently.” Now they do.  

Pizza joints on the German side of the border had special deals for customers who paid in Swiss francs for delivered food.

Not only that, but going through customs takes time.  And time is the enemy of hot pizza.

There are some among us who like our pizza cool or even cold.  But the majority want a hot pie.  So the ever- neutral Swiss have declared war on German pizza.

Germany says it has no plans to retaliate by, say, establishing numbered bank accounts.  But Conservative province alderman Heinz Haberschlammerrung proposes plans to establish those secret bank accounts despite the national government’s refusal.

Haberschlammerrung says he’d attract customers from high and middle income earners by using the secrets of the Swiss and the 1970s marketing plans of  American banks.

These include giving away prizes like toasters and blenders, offering free checking, high introductory interest rates and convenient no-fee ATMs scattered throughout Switzerland.

“And for the real high rollers,” said Haberschlammerrung, “toaster ovens just big enough for a large swiss cheese and Braunschweiger two-sauce pizza that got cold on the trip across the border.”

You have to watch the Swiss.

Shrapnel:

--Meantime, the Swiss franc is soaring against the Euro in a complicated set of events that is forcing stock prices in Zurich sharply lower.  This has to do with the European and Russian economies and nothing to do with cross border pizza.  But it devalues everything else from candy to watches to cheese to cuckoo clocks.

--At the same time, some in Switzerland are moving toward loosening the bank secrecy laws.  About time. And an invitation to Germany, Austria, Italy and France to get in on the numbered account action.

--Newspaper publisher Belo and others are to test drones to deliver newspapers to the 324 people who still read the print editions.  Fewer tips.  But don’t worry, the papers will still land on your roof, in your shrubs and in your neighbor’s driveway as usual.

Grapeshot:

-Flu shot objectors have finally won one after federal health officials say the current vintage is only 23% effective.

-If you’re having trouble falling asleep there’s help ahead: the state of the union speech is just around the corner.

-The counter speech, the Republican “rebuttal” (when did we start needing that?) will be given by freshman sen. Joni Ernst, who rose to fame with her commercial about spending her youth castrating pigs.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

For more of my nonsense check out Gargoylz

© WJR 2015

1433 Salt Water

(Mount St. Nittany, PA) -- Worthy water supply is a problem in much of the world.  Countries are ever looking for ways to desalinate their seawater.

Here at the Wessays™ Secret Mini Mountain Laboratory, we are going in the opposite direction. We add salt.

Explanation: The water here is so hard you can make hammers out of it. There’s so much calcium in it, the deed to your house comes with a guarantee that if you drink 16 ounces a day, you will never get osteoporosis.

The calcium clogs pipes, laundry machines, coffee makers, shower heads, faucets, and taps for the garden hose.  It destroys hot water tanks, leaves blotches on pots made of freight train- grade steel.

It turns the outdoor plants white if you water them.  White roses are attractive.  But only if they’re born that way.  White powdered ferns, ewe bushes and red maple trees are not.

Calcium vaccinates bath soap, shampoo, dish washing liquid and laundry detergent against sudsing.

So we knuckled under to science and had installed a softening machine.  It looks something like a nuke plant scaled down to 5% actual size.  Tanks. Meters. Plumbing. More plumbing.

And it eats salt. Not sea salt, not kosher salt, not iodized salt, not flavored salt. Just… salt. The Water Softening for Dummies website isn’t clear about what it does but is clear as smooth water that the salt and the water never touch.

The salt tank holds about 200 pounds worth and needs replenishing now and then.

But all of a sudden, the soap is soapier, the pots don’t stain and the water tastes like, well, water. (As opposed to well-water.)

Salt is cheap.  It doesn’t have a “use by” or “expires” date.  The only difference between the “official” salt for softeners and the stuff you buy in the supermarket is it’s chunkier and dirtier.

Also, Waldbaum’s and ShopRite don’t have 50 pound bags on the shelf.

And we’re on the lookout to make sure all that salt doesn’t increase the softening machine’s blood pressure.  

Shrapnel:

--Groundhog day approaches, and in New York, mayor Bill de Blasio has wriggled out of another opportunity to cradle a creature in a photo op, since last year’s rat, Charlotte, turned her back on him, fell and later died. Staten Island’s Groundhogs won’t be tamed like those in Punxsutawney. In 2009, a predecessor hog bit then- mayor Mike Bloomberg who has since recovered.

--Congratulations to 25 year NBC veteran and whipping target Ann Curry who’s forming a new media start up.  When they lopped Curry off the Today Show they gave her a big contract which is near expiration. So they’re lopping her off once again.

Grapeshot

-Question for Mike Huckabee:  We know you’re a professional preacher but do you really think it’s your place to tell the Obama daughters not to listen to Beyonce’s music because it might lead them astray while you try to lead everyone else … who knows where?

-Question for Woody Allen: what makes you think your Hollywood experience has gotten you ready to do a movie for Amazon com?

Question for Google Drive: When will you allow macros so I don’t have to type...

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015 … 156 times a year?

1432 The Physics of Law

The words in the title are not out of order. Lawyers are among the leading physicists in America.  They take atomic and subatomic particles, rearrange them and turn lead into gold.

Eat your hearts out, alchemists.

Here’s what happens.

“A” is murdered.  “B” is suspected, arrested and charged.  Then the lawyers get to work.

You know how these cases go.  The defense makes a monster of someone who may have been the killer. Man into monster alchemy.

The defense admits “B” is not a saint, but is good to his children or his mother or was almost an Eagle Scout or worked in the soup kitchen and therefore couldn’t possibly have committed murder.

The prosecution will produce a fingerprint.  More magic.  The defense will say it’s only a 70% match.  The magic of diminished science.

The prosecution will use security cam video and the accused will suddenly appear at the crime scene.

The defense will say the videos have been altered.

This magic show will continue until half the jurors believe one side or the other has turned lead into gold.

Like modern day physicists, modern day lawyers work in the world of atomic and subatomic particles.  

Instead of cyclotrons and colliders, they use human powered wind machines, themselves.

Members of the jury are the peer reviewers academics depend on for reputation and confirmation.  Except the jury doesn’t have the credentials of a scholarly journal so they have to go on belief, the most volatile and unstable element on the periodic table.

Maybe the trial judge dozes off for ten seconds every once in awhile or is caught texting while the alchemists are on stage.  Grounds for appeal if “B” is convicted?

After a not guilty verdict, the defense alchemist passes out business cards.  “Hey! Let Whiplash Willie turn your lead rump into gold, too! Call 1800-4 Magic2.

At his sentencing, “B” will invoke the national anthem of the convicted, telling judge Snoozy: “I’m not a bad person.”

Yeah, probably, you are.  Not-bad-persons don’t commit murder.

Okay, alchemists, line up those protons and neutrons.  There’s always room for the wind accelerator at the appeals court.  

Shrapnel:

--Speaking of magic, the NYPD has made thousands of arrests and tickets disappear.  But they’ll soon tire of it.  So don’t try going 90 on 92nd street.

--Turning potential tickets into antimatter is the beat cops’ way of Charlie Hebdo-ing the mayor whom they believe is a key player in the Great Anti Police Conspiracy.  He isn’t.  He’s just taken too many public foot in mouth lessons from Biden or Bush.

--Cop wannabe George Zimmerman has been arrested again, this time for aggravated assault.  Police say he flung a wine bottle at his girlfriend in Seminole County, Florida.  Possibly after draining it mouthward.

Grapeshot:

-Question for Chris Christie: did you think you looked good in that orange sweater at the Cowboys game or are you just picking out a color for your minimum security jump suit.

-Question for the AP writer of this headline SEARCHERS HONE IN ON BLACK BOXES FROM AIRASIA PLANE: will you please learn the difference between “hone” and “home?”

-Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like hone.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1431 Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues

1431 Good Time Charlie’s Got the Blues

Two things you can say about the French -- maybe the only two things -- are that they understand the sheer ridiculousness of life and treasure freedom of speech as much or more than we do here.

It’s a country where the people eat snails and frogs’ legs, where it’s okay for a married public official to have a lover, where fermented grapes and goose liver are considered high art, where they can’t make a car that can go 20-thousand miles without a breakdown, where a tiny man had big power and enormous kings didn’t.  They can take a ribbing.

Oh, they sputter and snort about hurt feelings, and  act insulted.  But then they go out and buy 130,000 copies of Charlie Hebdo each week.

(Al Jazeera Photo)

Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier

Not exactly L’Express in circulation.  But apparently enough to scrape by, and easily as influential as its milder direct competitor, Le Canard enchaîné.

Charlie mocked everything.  Rude, for sure. But when it came to radical Islam, rude and dangerous.  The critics say they went too far, and got what was coming to them.  What came to them was a murderous attack in which three gunmen “avenged the Prophet.”

You know who Charlie is.  Do you know Ahmed?

Ahmed Merabet, 28, was one of the French cops shot dead at the magazine’s building. Died defending the people who mocked his faith.

(The Guardian via Twitter)

For many cops, copism trumps everything else: home, family, religion, diet, love, hate. The second killed cop was Franck Brinsolaro, 42, assigned bodyguard duty for Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier.

There are too many terrorists and not enough Ahmed Merabets.  There are too many people deluded into believing their prophet needs avenging… who hear voices telling them to kill.

There are too many people convinced that they are doing God’s work, imposing their interpretation of their holy book on everyone else and killing the infidels. And the Koran lets them off the hook:

8:17 (Asad) And yet, [O believers,] it was not you who slew the enemy [18] but it was God who slew them; and it was not thou who cast [terror into them, O Prophet], when thou didst cast it, but it was God who cast it: [19] and [He did all this] in order that He might test the believers by a goodly test of His Own ordaining.

(http://www.islamicity.com/QuranSearch/)

Who is the enemy?  Anyone who wants to live after the seventh century.  Surely they are entitled to want to turn back the hands of time. They are not the only religion to try.

But there’s a difference.  They’re the only ones who believe that you must go along. Not may, not can, not should, but must. It’s a matter of life and death.

Meantime, here where it’s 14 centuries later, the French are showing some backbone.  And we should be too.

Committing acts of speech should not be a capital offense.  And the people who insist on silencing their critics by killing and maiming and threatening? They are showing not bravery and devotion, but cowardice and weakness. As Reinhold Niebuhr once said they show fear, not faith.

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1430 Call Your Doctor Right Away

1430 Call Your Doctor Right Away

We’re all familiar with the never- ending ads for new pharmaceuticals.  Smiling faces and pounds of side effect warnings.  Many end with “if you develop these symptoms, stop taking (name of med) and call your doctor immediately.

Sure.

Calls to docs at off hours used to go to an answering service and if it was an emergency, you got a call back, often pretty quickly.

Today, lots of luck.

You dial the number, worried sick that you’re about to have a stroke or heart attack, and you get to climb the phone tree.

“If this is a life threatening emergency, hang up. Then call 911 or go to the nearest emergency room.”  If you listen only as far as “hang up,” you hang up… and nothing happens and maybe you croak.

If you call 911, and tell the operator your moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis is acting up, be assured they’re not going to activate a rescue mission in the middle of the night.  A heart attack, maybe. But not your irritable bowel syndrome.

When we were sick, really really sick, we still hesitated to call a doctor’s answering service.  After all, he or she was probably the busiest person any of us knew. The doctor was an authority figure, a pillar of the community, not to be disturbed for frivolous reasons.

But now, kindly old doc is just another businessman. We’ll call at all hours for all kinds of things.  And while it would take a fever of 102 or more to provoke a call in earlier days, we now will jump on the phone at 2am for a reading of 99.

We call because

--We itch.

--We sneeze

--We cough

--We have a hangover

So why are we surprised to collide with that phone tree and come away with Excedrin Headache #2?

Of course, there’s no way of reversing today’s tech-soaked, MBA-forged, bureaucratic non-communication systems.  The toothpaste is out of the tube.

So, in the quest for physical stability, we become our own doctor, especially if we have an eyelid that twitches and it’s not between 8am and 4:30pm on a weekday.

Shrapnel:

--John Boehner has won another term as House Speaker, showing the tea-punks that the old guard still has some clout.  Now, are you going to govern or just go gunning for Obama again?  Have another 5th, John,  and think about it until you pass out.

Grapeshot:

-Question for the participants in the Consumer Electronics Show: how much more of your stuff do we really need?

-Question for Sarah Palin:  As the dog and the boy grow older and larger, are you still encouraging one to stand atop the other, and if so, which?

-Question for former Virginia Governor Robert McDonnell:  You getting a two-year supply of that diet supplement you seem to love so well for use in the slammer?

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1429 The Accused Pleads Goo Goo

News Item: a two year old boy in Idaho shot his mother dead.  They were in a Wal-mart and he was searching through her purse, unzipped a hidden carry compartment, pulled out the 9 mm semi automatic and it went off.

Well, you know… terrible twos.  Cute, usually. Bad age, almost always. They’re forever sticking their fingers in light sockets, painting the rug or the dog with peanut butter and jelly.  Easily breaking easily breakable anything.

And curious.  At two, they start asking questions.  And quickly expanding a vocabulary of about 50 words.

The mother, Veronica Rutledge, 29, was shot once in the head.  She was “a responsible gun owner,” her father in law said. She and her husband, Colt Rutledge -- that is not a typo, Colt -- agrees.  They both have hidden carry permits.

He bought her that special purse for Christmas.

Just in case she should be hiking with their kids and came upon a mugger, or an FBI SWAT team which we all know are frequent occurrences in rural Idaho.

Those Special Agents could have mistaken her for Randy Woods.  You never know.  And a woman with little kids needs protection.

According to news reports, Mrs. Rutledge worked as a “nuclear scientist,” or “chemical engineer” which if true indicates considerable brain power, but not necessarily considerable sense.

So far, the following has not happened.

--The District Attorney wanting to try the toddler as a adult.

--The NRA defending the right of a two year old to shoot.

--The kid taken into an interrogation room and questioned without a lawyer.

--A Lawyer claiming the shooter was not read his Miranda Rights.

--A psychologist or social worker testifying that a two year old doesn’t typically know right from wrong.

--A gun control group claiming the mother should not have let a baby have access to a gun.

--A lawsuit against Wal-mart because it doesn’t have metal detectors at the entrances.

None of this yet.  But be patient.  It’s 2015 in America where anything is possible.

Meantime, at his arraignment the kid pleaded “Goo goo. Mama hole in head.”

Grapeshot:

-Question for the shopping channels:  when will you be offering those handbags with the pistol compartments along with the overpriced overweight  Dooney & Bourkeses?

-Question for outgoing PA Gov. Tom Corbett: Now that you’re going to have to buy your own gasoline, are you still happy with that new 10 cent a gallon tax increase you just had to have?

-Question for all newly elected politicians: Which campaign promise are you planning to break first?

-Mario Cuomo (1932-2015) to Tim Russert on why he never ran for president: “I didn’t think I was good enough.”

-Earth to Mario:  Yeah, you were.

Shrapnel:

--Rest in peace Hamlet on the Hudson. Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, 82, a good leader and brilliant orator, died on the day his son Andrew was sworn in for a second term as governor.  As Shakespeare’s King Claudius said of his own Hamlet, “he benefited the whole kingdom.”

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

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015