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All the News That’s Fit to Overlay

Michael Leave a comment

A funny thing happened the other day while we were watching the eleven o’clock news.  We lost sight of it.  Between reading the crawl along the bottom and the severe thunderstorm watch announcements along the side, and the scroll beneath the reporter telling us what building she was standing in front of, we never heard what happened at that building.

Sports scores are the only thing you want to know?  Tune to one of the sports channels and it doesn’t matter what is playing because the scores will be marching across the bottom of your screen.  Need to know if you can wear open toe shoes to work?  Lock in the local 24 hour news channel and the weather forecast is “always in view.”  Did the traffic ease up any?  Turn your dial to the major local stations and watch the live traffic cam in the corner of your screen.

If you have enough time some morning turn on one of the national news networks.  There you will find a split screen with two or sometimes three anchors taking turns spouting something.  A t the very bottom will be a scroll with regular news.  Above that will be a wider band of travel conditions including delays at major market airports.  Focus a bit higher and we have the band of “Breaking News” headlines.  Just above that will be the blurbs highlighting whatever it is those people in the main screen are talking about.  Turn your attention to the left of the screen and there will be a vertical band with the nation’s weather forecasts displaying the high and low temperatures and pictograms of the sun with or without clouds, raindrops, and/or snowflakes for every city in alphabetical order.  Except yours.  Along the right edge is the schedule of what will be coming up in 3 minute increments, excluding commercials.  And somewhere is the time.  Which you are quickly running out of right along with your patience. 

All that information and when you turn off the TV you can’t remember what happened in the world today.  If you should be hearing impaired or just preferred to have the closed captioning turned on, now there is yet another box competing for space on the screen and attention in your brain.  Just because something can be done – a cute graphic for partly sunny or a countdown to the next story – doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to do it. 

We’re willing to let the producers of these news shows into our homes to watch us while the newscasts are on to see how we absorb the information presented to us.  We’ll be the ones reading the newspaper.

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?

 

Lions and Tigers and Bears. Oh, My

Michael Leave a comment

Everybody with a computer, TV, smartphone, or friend with one has heard about the bear rescued after falling from a tree in Colorado only to be hit and killed by two cars about 10 days later (hit by two, killed by one or the other).  A spokeswoman for Colorado Parks and Wildlife said the bear was probably trying to return to its home ground not unlike another bear they attempted to relocate a couple years ago.

Between the bear rescue and bear loss there was another story.  A dolphin got trapped in a coastal area outside Laguna Beach after wandering in during high tide and not getting out before low tide. Or so they said.  Now, officials are saying that even at low tide the dolphin has enough vertical space to move back out into the ocean but likes it where he is.  Although there has been talk about moving the dolphin if he doesn’t move himself, everybody seems to be standing pat.  And a good thing or he might get hit by a couple of cars also.

Ok, we’re joking there.  But usually nothing good comes of trying to relocate animals, wild, tame, intelligent, or needing a little help.  There are all sorts of proponents of animal rights that do good things when trying to rescue abused puppies and tormented kittens that feel when wild animals intrude on somebody’s back yard that they should be put back where they came from.  The problem is that often, where they came from was right around that back yard. 

People keep wild animals as pets – snakes, alligators, and even lions and tigers and bears are caught or bought when young and seem to make great pets at 6 or 8 weeks old.  After a couple of years they start acting like and are recognized for the wildlife that they are.  Not wanting to explain to the wife who ate the entire contents of the refrigerator they are sent on their way.

Quite often, as more and more houses are built on land that used to be just rocks and hills, the animals that still live there are forced to share their former rural space with suburbia.  And they do.  They live out of garbage cans, dumpsters, and landfills.  Eventually one evening, one gets caught pilfering the cafeteria discards behind the dish room and scampers up a tree only to lose his usual surefootedness and fall into the waiting dart of a tranquiller gun.  A few quick trusses, a quick drive 50 or 60 miles away, the former semi-wildlife is in the real wild, and doesn’t like it.  So he tries to work his way back with less than, or perhaps more than smashing results.

So we’re offering this advice.  We heard similar from our parents and now pass it on.  If you should see a bear going through your garbage, he’s probably more scared of you than you are of him.  But just in case, leave him alone.  There’s plenty for everybody.

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?

 

Spring Chickens vs The Codger

Michael Leave a comment

With age comes wisdom.  And a bunch of people who don’t care.  We’re sorry, did that seem harsh?  Get used to it because the older you get the harsher reality becomes.

Neither of We is anymore what a spring chicken strives to be, but then Neither of We is at the codger level.  He of We is 5 or 6 years ahead of She of We and he might be starting to see it more.

See, back about 25 years ago He of We was a pretty good looking fellow.  Lots of hair, firm chin (with a dimple), clear eyes, and a dashing figure proclaiming him to be quite in shape.  Today he’s a bit puffy around the face and neck, lots of skin on top of his head, a figure that begs to cry out “but round is a shape.” Back then he didn’t know much more than what he learned in school and everybody knows that’s only 10% of everything anybody needs to know to be successful.  But he routinely was looked to for advice and confirmation and became that person who people listened to when E. F. Hutton wasn’t available. 

Over those 25 years he’s seen lots more of the stuff that makes him quite an invaluable asset to his employer.  Except now that he has the knowledge and wisdom that experience brought, nobody wants to listen to him.  They are all flocking around the new guy with the shirt collar that can be buttoned.

It’s probably not like that in the animal kingdom.  The dogs still follow the alpha male and it’s still the older birds that rule the roosts.  Probably in organized crime and the legal profession a little age and experience are also sought after attributes.  You can’t know a good loophole until you’ve been in one.  And maybe if you’re a dentist you never really want to turn your back on other dentists that have discovered how to keep the patient from biting and still cheerfully fork over outrageously high co-pays.

But by and large, it’s not what’s in your head that people look for at the weekly managers’ meetings.  It’s how that head looks that moves the body to the middle seat at the conference table.  If youth is wasted on the young, then experience is a mockery to the experienced.  But there is a way around this so what one learns in life isn’t wasted and what the men and women beginning their lives can learn without admitting they don’t know everything. 

Ooops, sorry.  Time for our naps.  We’ll get back to you with that at our next meeting.

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?

 

Please disregard this message

Michael Leave a comment

He of We should have taken heed of his computer.  The e-mail header said, “This message look suspicious to our filters.  Do you want to open it?”  He thought he’d take a chance.  After all, the message was from the local blood bank.  The subject was Happy Birthday and it was his birthday.  How suspicious can it be? 

Both of We have long been donators of blood.  It’s almost painless, fairly quick, you get cookies and juice when you’re done, and most of the time the blood bank has some cool premium just for raising, or dropping a pint with them.  So a couple times a year we find our way to a blood drive and do the right thing.

He should have taken heed.  Lately we have been going round with our local blood bank.  All of a sudden instead of impersonal post-cards touting specific blood drives that we can read, study, or throw away, the blood bank has taken to impersonal phone calls to cajole those with intact veins to high-tail it to the nearest donation center and start bleeding.  Lately these calls have been coming every day.  Multiple times a day.  So many multiple times that they managed to make She of We call them damn vampires and He of We called them blood sucking blood suckers.  On the same day.  From different telephones.  That’s when we confirmed that Each of We has the same tolerance for annoying telephone solicitations even when the solicitor isn’t trying to sell something.

He didn’t take heed.  He opened the message and read on.

On your special day we wish you a bright and happy birthday.  If you recently donated blood, or have scheduled an appointment to donate blood, please accept our thanks on behalf of the area patients whose lives you touched. If you have recently been told by our blood center, or another blood center, that you are ineligible to donate then please disregard this message.

Even the Happy Birthday part?  Gee these guys are tough.  You’d think a blood sucking vampire would have a heart.  Where else do you drive the stake? 

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?

 

There Is No Crying

Michael 1 Comment

“There’s no crying in baseball,” was Jimmy Dugan’s guidance in A league of Their Own.  Advice that Both of We have given to many in many fields.  There’s no crying in yardwork.  There’s no crying in meatloaf.  There’s no crying in plumbing.  There’s no crying in college acceptance celebrations.  Hold on!  That last one isn’t one of ours.  Oh but it is one of the New York City school district.

Yes, in the highly competitive world of college admissions, New Yorkers (New Yorkers!?!) want to be certain that the egos of students not accepted into their first choice institutions are not unduly bruised.   Teachers are told not to congratulate students in public and if they should see someone crying to “be sensitive” and to refer them to the college advisory office (guidance counselor?) immediately.  Perhaps it’s the school advisors who should be considering select institutions.

But how could you blame the city schools for prohibiting public displays of best wishes?  They are just following the lead of several famous (or so we’re told) prep schools that have banned wearing college sweatshirts bearing the crests of the universities that have accepted their students or posting their good news on Facebook.

In January we asked in a post “How long has it been since we started instilling in our young people that there are no losers?” (Your Turn to Keep Score from Life, Jan 16, 2012).  We proposed then that it has been long enough that someday those young people will be running for “Congress, President, and your local school board.”  Seems like they might have already made it to the school boards.

We can poke fun at the bizarrely ridiculous notion that some adult somewhere really thinks that not going “Woohoo!” when a kid opens that long awaited letter from school will make life better for some other student who had a hard time spelling woohoo in Social Media 101.  The truth is that we have already seen how “everyone’s a winner” is destroying American life.  For example:   there’s no crying in bank failures; there’s no crying in corporate bankruptcies; there’s no crying in union negotiations; there’s no crying in lying in political ads; there’s no crying in government bail outs; there’s no crying in $5.00/gallon gasoline.

There used to be a lot of losing in life.  And those losses led to some of the biggest successes the world has seen.  Today we can say that life isn’t all winning and be absolutely accurate.  It isn’t.  There just isn’t any losing either.

Hey, there’s no crying in responsible adulthood.

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?

 

Road Rage

Michael Leave a comment

He of We lives between 5 and 6 miles north of city center of the major downtown He and She live near.  She of We lives 5 to 6 miles south of that same center of town.  Those ten to twelve miles get a lot of use out of Both of We’s tires.

Last night He of We was travelling those few miles on a dark and rainy night when a shot rang out.  Well, when a pickup truck pulled down an entrance ramp and shot out into traffic like it was a speeding bullet.  No emergency lights, no turn signal, no brake lights indicating he had intended to yield like the sign suggested.  Just shot out into traffic.  But it was ok because he was going about 10 miles an hour faster than the main line traffic which was going about 15 miles an hour faster than the posted speed limit signs suggested.

Every day we’re noticing a disturbing trend.  Nobody is obeying the law.  The traffic laws.  Even the littering laws are routinely broken.  Why do people feel justified to toss empty fast food bags and cups, worn gloves, or half-eaten chickens out their windows?  Is it a sense of entitlement?  Do they feel that since every mile of US highway has been “adopted” by some civic group, local business, or religious order that somebody has to give these volunteers something to do the third Saturday of every month?  (If you are secretly one of these, wait till you get to work to throw out the coffee cup and breakfast sandwich wrapper.  Nobody will think less of you if they spy you tossing trash from one of the billions of fast food drive throughs rather than the artisan bread and breakfast kiosk. That’s how there got to be billions of them.)

But we digress.  What is it about traffic laws that beg to be broken?  Stop and yield signs are there only for the local high school graduates to emblazon with their graduation year.  Speed limit signs are routinely run over but less routinely replaced.  One Way, No U-Turn, and No Left Turn signs are more outdoor art than even suggestions.   No Turn on Red signs might as well not be printed and mounted at all even though they appear at every intersection with a traffic light.

The problem with the traffic law breakers (besides breaking the law), is that they aim their rage when they are thwarted at law breaking by the occasional law abiding sign observer.  They tailgate, weave, and race their way down the road, taking time to turn and mouth obscenities at the ones who are going only 5 to 10 miles faster than the limit which lumps them with the slow moving vehicles.

Imagine if somebody suggested that breaking traffic laws is the gateway crime.  We’re not sure we agree with that.  We don’t believe that once you get over the thrill of turning on red it’s just a matter of time until you want to pull tags off mattresses or smoke in elevators.  We are sure that breaking the traffic laws doesn’t come without some penalty.  You don’t have to watch too many editions of the evening news before you hear of somebody who launched a car over a guiderail and into a grove of trees ejecting the driver and killing the passengers.     

Some people say it’s the boom of cell phones, GPS units, radios with multiple bands, MP3 players with thousands of songs, and other distractions that make people drive fast and recklessly.  Some believe it’s because Drivers’ Ed has disappeared from the high schools and is replaced by Moms and Dads who (sorry) are part of the problem themselves. 

Whether it’s distraction, knowledge deficit, the thrill of handling 2,000 pounds of anything, or enjoying that last morsel of sausage, egg, and cheese on a muffin before tossing the wrapper out of a vehicle moving faster than a last century’s high speed trains, breaking the law is breaking the law.  So slow down, read a bumper sticker, and arrive alive.  That’s a rage that’s all the rage that we can live with. 

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?

 

Game On!

Michael Leave a comment

Many people who are just acquainted with us are often shocked to ultimately find out that He and She of We are not married, or at the very least for the 21st century, not even living together.  We spend a lot of time together but we each have our own houses and spend more time in our own houses than we do at either’s others’ houses.  Of course there are evenings we’ll be found on one or another’s sofas usually in the glow of a televised sporting event or a demanded, if not on-demanded movie. 

Last weekend we were on He of We’s furniture, about 4 feet apart, rapturously engaged in a game of words.  No, not the grand-daddy of all games of words Scrabble, not the second cousin of word games without words, Charades.  No, we were sitting next to each other, letting our fingers do the walking through Words with Friends on our cell phones.  In the same house.  In the same room.  On the same couch.

Although both of our children are either young enough, or old enough depending on your point of view, to have discovered and to have played with PlayStation, Nintendo, and Wii, none of them became one of the electronic game junkies who walk around with fingers flailing over tiny controllers of hand-held versions of the gaming consoles that hold so many in mental hostage situations.   And all of them are familiar with games that involve fold-out boards, dice, tiles, poppers, timers, and a pad and pencil to keep score.  We’re pretty proud parents that our children made it into adulthood with having hand-held electronic games listed as dependents on their income tax forms.

So where did we go wrong for ourselves?  How did we manage to find ourselves phoning in our own recreation?  Don’t tell the children this but it is darned convenient having a game at your fingertips.  No boards to pull off shelves, no tables to clear.  No looking for the pieces that fall under the chairs, no pencil sharpeners to wonder if we even still have to look for.  No shaking up bags of tiles to pick from randomly, no wondering if that really is a word and will I look foolish if I challenge it.

So yes, we’ve succumbed to the dark side.  This time.  We’re willing to let a microprocessor randomly select letters and accurately add up scores.  We still get to use the best game piece – our minds.  Yep, of all the things we’ve lost – tile holders, letters, box tops, score cards – we’ve not yet lost our minds.  We’re pretty sure of that.  Yeah, pretty sure.

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?

 

Self Storage Wars

Michael Leave a comment

As spring progresses we’ve been finding ourselves in our garages and basements digging out the rakes,  shovels, hoses, and other outdoor implements that have worked their ways behind last winter’s accumulations of “stuff.”   Every season some items move closer to the doors, less used items are packed closer to the walls.  The things that haven’t been used in a couple of years are grouped by the spring three-way sort of “trash, donate, sell.”   At least in our houses.  Maybe not in the 10.8 million households that rent storage units.

There is a pretty big chunk of people who are renting a pretty big chunk of real estate for a pretty big chunk of money to hold a pretty big chunk of junk.  According to the trade group the Self Storage Association, over 50,000 storage facilities house over 2.2 billion square feet of storage space.  The average unit goes for about $120 per month and holds…we’re not sure.

It’s not like we are running out of space at home.  In the last forty years, new home construction in the US went from an average of about 1,400 square feet to about 2,400 square feet.  In those same forty years self-storage units went from almost none (the first units starting cropping up in the late 1960’s), to enough to fill up Manhattan three times over.  Again, what’s in those spaces?

Does anybody hand anything down any more?  We all grew up on our older siblings’ cribs and high chairs, their tricycles and bikes.  When families ran out of younger children those items got passed on to cousins, neighbors, and co-workers.  What we couldn’t sell ourselves at garage sales we brought to church for rummage sales.  Without the stuff we don’t use anymore, thrift stores would be out of business.  But people do hand things down and there are still rummage sales, and thrift stores are booming.  So what is in all those storage units? 

Maybe what gets handed down the “handed to” group doesn’t want to use but are too embarrassed to tell the “handed from” group.  Maybe they keep the extra dining room set in their storage unit and tell Mom that as soon as they paint the dining room those old table and chairs will look great in there.  Maybe people are getting married so late in life they already have everything they need.  But it’s a wedding.  They still have to register somewhere and get newer stuff.  Then when the gifts are opened they can’t discard the old toaster because it’s been so good to one (or both) of them for so long it gets a special place in mini-storage. 

Or maybe it’s just junk in those garage-looking units and once it is there for a couple years the owners stop paying rent and someone can bid $5 on Door Number 3.  Then they can figure out what to do with an Atari 64 game system.

We don’t know what’s behind Door Number 113,433 but whatever it is it better be pretty important.  The average American family is spending about $1500 a year to store it.  That’s about $500 more than the average American family gives to charity.  We’re not sure if there’s a connection there but we thought we’d mention it.   

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?

 

Quantities May Be Limited

Michael Leave a comment

You go to the store to get that great sweater on sale you saw in yesterday’s paper.  You go to the department, then to the aisle, then to the rack.  You see the sign.  “Great Sweaters.  Regular $49.99. Two Day Sale $1.78.”   You reach for it and find . . . a picture of the sweater with a banner across it that says “Sold Out.”

No, this never happens at the store.  Not a brick and mortar store, that is.  But it happens all the time on line.  You get an e-mail that says for tonight only, all housewares are 99% off.  You click on the link, the page opens, you see the counter in the corner, “Page 1 of 24; 20 of 480 Items.”  Page 1 has a couple things you like.  That Ice Crusher would be a real centerpiece for the counter but it’s “Sold Out.”  Page 2 has a few more things of interest, and a few more “Sold Out” banners. 

By the time you get to Page 5 you’re seeing more “Sold Out” masks than items of any real interest.  You brace yourself for the long ride and decide to hit all 24 pages.  The final count.  Two things actually worth considering, one of them actually at a good price, and 307 items with a banner across their pictures announcing them to be “Sold Out.”  Is that fair?

If they can put a banner on the picture why can’t they remove the picture?  Or are the on-line stores trying to tell us that if we had less of a life and could spend all day with our e-mail open and hop on the announcement as soon as it was posted we too could be proud owners of a solar powered ice crusher?

Yes, we know that sometimes things go fast on line.  Better to know they are sold out than to try to put a pair of chinchilla bowling gloves in your shopping cart only to find out later you aren’t getting them.  Still, a little site maintenance would probably end up in better sales.  We’d get less frustrated and actually go through all 24 pages – now reduced to 4.

Brick and mortar stores found out the hard way through consumer backlash that if they plan on advertising a fabulous deal but only put 2 or 3 copies in each store that they better say that in the ads.  Then we know that when we get to the $1.78 sweater rack and we see an empty space that we missed out.  We don’t need a picture to remind us of what we didn’t get.  Maybe the on-line shops should take heed. 

“All housewares on sale.  Seven to choose from.”

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?

 

Catching Flies and Filling Coffers

Michael Leave a comment

You’ve certainly seen them on TV, also.  Dogs hobbling along on 3 legs.  Babies in intensive care cribs breathing through holes in their throats.  Starving children sitting on hard packed dirt with flies on their faces.  Homeless Americans lining up around the block for a cup of broth and half of a sandwich.  All the poor and sick – and exploited – who need your help just getting through another day.

We applaud the people who can work with the unfortunates.  We applaud the people who give to help the unfortunates.  But for the people who prepare those ads, announcements, PSAs, whatever you want to call them, we have no applause.  For those people we have a little advice – you catch more flies with honey.

Year after year of the same pictures and the same pleas make us think why bother, we’ll just get more of the same.  We also think there’s a little hypocrisy in some of those ads.  When the animal rights groups are next preparing their condemnation of movie studios looking for a big payday on the backs of exploited animals, maybe they should look to their own ad agencies.

We feel sorry for all those who need our help but we have only so many contribution dollars.  Like those things that we buy, we want to see value for the money we donate.  Showing us a child tied to a wheelchair because of a congenital muscle wasting disease is a great way to get our initial sympathy.  It goes well with the brooding music and the desolate voiceover, “Send us your money because Johnny needs a miracle.”  But showing us that child a couple years later walking with the help of crutches or even on his own is a better way of saying “Look at what your money has done.  Together we made a miracle. Let’s make some more!”

We haven’t done any research on this but we have to think that there are others who would be more easily swayed to give to heal children and make happy animals.  Not everybody is a sucker for a sad song.  At least, usually not more than once.

So, any of you out there who might be in a position of authority with one of these hospitals or with a charitable or humane organization, remember this when you are putting together next year’s giving campaigns.  You catch more dollars with joy than you do with gloom.

Now, that’s what we think.  Really.  How ‘bout you?