Tag Rant

Brain Dump, Part Waytoomany

Michael 6 Comments

Ladies and gentlemen and all varieties in between, it’s another edition of Clear. Your. Mind.

Yes boys, girls and undecided, now it’s that time again to empty the mind of all the useless, senseless, often humorless, and always commonsense-less bits of information clogging my brain and causing cranial constipation.

I don’t know if this is a national thing or just for the locals here who have a hard time leaving home without loaded guns in their carry-ons. I noted a number of times the alarming rate that loaded handguns are confiscated at airport TSA security lines. After the security screeners snagged 5 loaded weapons in a 7 day period and 29 in 40 weeks, the local paper reported on the local office of the U. S. Attorney’s Office announcement that anyone henceforth found attempting to enter the airport secure areas so armed will be relieved not just of their rods but their permits to carry said weaponry.  Interestingly a poll appearing in the same paper indicated 35% of those questioned felt this punishment was too harsh. One comment included, “How will the district attorney feel when somebody’s family is hurt after he took away their protection.” Hmm, let’s see. These bozos, err, honest gun permit holders whom claim they meant not to carry a loaded gun through security, they merely forgot the guns were in their carry-ons. Yet we are to believe those bozos, err strong protectors of family sleep with their carry-ons under their pillows ready to defend family or fortune.

The defense in the trial of the bozo, err alleged future convicted mass murderer of 11 people and injurer of another 6 at the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in October 2018, wants anti-Semitic statements made by him at the scene disallowed because they were made while he was receiving medical care and is therefore protected health communication. Hmmm, and someone went to law school to come up with that.

A recent letter to the editor in one of the local papers expressed dismay at government vaccine mandates. Politicians have no business making medical decisions, then went in to express support and admiration for Texas Governor Greg Abbott for banning vaccine mandates. Hmm. Isn’t not doing something a medical decision too – or maybe bozos, err governors don’t qualify as politicians?

But the brain isn’t filled with only bozo-ish occurrences. I also have to try to eliminate the mental picture of girding my loins, which apparently is really a thing as noted in The Art of Manliness (oy), see 👇

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Just suppose…

Michael 8 Comments

Hang on kids, the ride is about to leave the station!  I wouldn’t have to rant so much and so often if humans, well, if Americans weren’t so gosh-darned stupid. I seriously mean that, and I mean all of them, even me sometimes (but not as often as every other single person in the country).  I warn you right now, I’ve started this three times. This is, believe it or not(!), the least offensive version I can manage. Hey, somethings are just plain offensive, and no amount of whitewash or orange hair dye can cover them.

Let’s say you own an art studio. You may not be the best artist in the world, but you know what you like, you’ve done this for a while, and you’re reasonably good at it. But you can’t be everywhere your art is, so you hire a representative to, well, to represent you. For some reason, that representative who said at his/her/its job interview that it/she/he was 385% behind you, working for you 29 hours a day 11 days a week 62 weeks a year, now decides he/she/it has his/her/its own ideas and it/she/he will do whatever she/he/it damn well, sorry, darn well  feels like and right now that is promoting its/her/his own brand of bathtub gin. Now after a couple years of not only not selling any of your art pieces, but not even knowing or bothering to learn anything about your art, it/she/he comes to you promising to be 873% behind you 59 hours a day 1112 days of the year, sign it him or her up for another 2 year stretch and you won’t regret it. And guess what? You do! Dumbass!

Now let’s say you fell out of a tree and broke your arm. Your arm is clearly broken. There’s bone sticking out and blood pouring from the hole it made in you. Your losing blood fast and you have time to make only one phone call for help before you pass out. You choices are: 911, the local EMS non-emergency number, the nice doctor who lives across the street, the kid who works at the grocery store and restocks the first aid supplies, the hospital emergency room, your insurance company, and the representative who hasn’t sold any of your paintings even though you just rehired her/it/him and gave it/him/her a raise.  So who do you turn to? Why naturally, you pick the deadbeat representative, the one who has no connection with health or medicine, even a connection as tenuous as the one who at least works with first aid supplies. Dumbass!!

Now as long as we’re supposing, let’s suppose you have a youngster, a kiddo, a small person hanging around your house who vaguely looks like you. And let’s say that child of yours is 8 or 9 years old and this young person wants to play football, so you send this young person off to play football. Why not? This young person did last year and had no problem. You bought this young person the very best equipment that credit could buy including a wonderfully decorated helmet and this young person stayed safe all season long. So this year when this young person wants to play football again you say “sure darn tootin’ you can!” and you send this young person off to play football! But… there’s always a but and some are big and dumb …but, you’ve been ready Facetokgramditter and saw that the bath tub gin swilling art representative say there’s no scientific proof that football helmets protect football players, even this your person size and age football players, and it fact it makes it harder to play football and violates the first 17 amendments to the Constitution and that goes double for anybody who ever already got hurt playing football because now those people have built up an immunity to injuries and probably won’t even need to wear seatbelts in the car on the way to the game.  So you happily send your young person off to play football with a sign to carry in front of the field that says, “No More Helmets,” “My Head Can’t Breathe,” and “Students Stand Up Against Tyranny.” Dumbass!!!

dumbassNow let’s suppose one last thing. Let’s suppose this is all a bad dream, there are no bathtub gin swilling art representatives, we let medical professionals make medical decisions, we don’t pretend to know what’s best for anybody, and we certainly don’t force kids to walk into dangerous situations just because. Did you think we can suppose that everyone cooperates like we did last 16 months ago, because last I looked, we’re about in the same boat as 16 months ago. No I don’t suppose we can. That’s why I just got my third COVID shot. Thank you. Bunch of dumbasses.

That’s it. The rant is over. See you next week.

Things I think I think

Michael 5 Comments

Now that I’ve had my fill of ranting for a while here, it’s time to catch up on some thing that have been floating around in my brain and make some room up there for future ramblings.

thumbnail_IMG_0599Have you ever tried to grow a tree from an avocado pit? Let me rephrase that, have you never tried to grow a tree from an avocado pit? I think that’s required in “Things to do in your first adult kitchen 101.” I tried and sort of even succeeded. Sort of. For a while I had an actual tree. It stood about 5 feet tall but was only as big around as a school pencil. Unfortunately, not quite as sturdy. My latest experiment was “let’s grow a pineapple plant from the crown of one.” (The things we did while locked in.) A year later I have not just one, but two.  I wonder if this is how Dole got started.

I recently ranted over the increasing number of loaded guns brought to airport security. The most common excuse for such behavior was “Duh, I forgets I was packing a rod.” I found a story about another feller who forgot he was carrying a loaded weapon. This guy brought his gun not the airport but to his bathroom. As he dropped his pants to drop into the seat, the gun dropped out of his pocket into the floor and went off, sending the bullet through the bathroom floor which doubled as the bathroom ceiling to the apartment below where it met the hand of another young man, unarmed but now not unharmed. You can’t blame the gun guy. There have been alligator sightings in the area and you never know when one might pop up anywhere there is water. (My conjecture, not his explanation. He said he forgot it was in his pocket. Yeah, right.)

Service with aAre there any grandfather clock aficionado out there? I have a contemporary long case that has travelled with me now through three homes and resided in multiple places at each. The years have been kinder to the case than the movement. It is still in great shape, shapewise, but it runs late. Not slow. Late. It keeps a 60 minute hour today as good as the day it was uncrated but little by little it has developed its unique peculiarity of chiming the hour late. We’re now up to 5 minutes late. It’s not unusual for a guest when hearing the chime to comment, “Oh it’s x o’clock, no wait, I have 5 after. Your clock is slow,” and I respond, “No, it’s not slow, it’s late.” It has taken 20 years for the chime to be out of sync by 5 minutes. (Out of synch?) An optimist would note that in another 220 years, it will work its way around and be right on time.

Just two rants ago I questioned what could be more valuable than your own child in response to Consumers Union’s suggestion that until all manufacturers put warning devices to alert to unforgotten children locked in the back of hot cars, one should put something of value there that you would not likely forget. For one young father around here last week, that should have been tacos. Apparently, the good lad had a hankering for tacos. Not just any tacos, he wanted the kind available only at the local casino. There he parked his car, left his children behind just to run in and place the order, then decided he might as well wait for that order sitting in front of a slot machine instead of in front of his steering wheel. Security cameras caught his elation at hitting a jackpot about the same time they caught his kids waiting alone in the car. No word on how long the tacos were waiting.

Okay, sharp witted readers may have inferred that I implied this post might be rant-free, yet 50% was rant-like. Let’s call it rank-lite. Hey, I’m making progress!

Vaccines, Star Trek, and Fluorescent Lights

Michael 2 Comments

I promise you, this will be my last rant for a while. Even I’m getting tired of listening to myself. Fortunately, I wrote this, waited a day, read it, then re-wrote and it isn’t actually quite so abrasive as its first incarnation.

I think a new rant is justified because stupid has really taken hold of the reins and we need to get this wagon back on track. (Did you like the horse and buggy metaphor? I don’t think I’ve used that one here.) (Anyway…)

Anyway, what got me thinking was another news article, this one that a group of shoppers was mounting a boycott of a local supermarket deigning to require all employees and shoppers to wear masks beginning this Friday. This group is taking some unusual “justifications” for their actions. Not only does a mask requirement infringe upon their rights (you remember those, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of fabric-free faces), but that the CDC calling for masks in high transmission areas of the country is “proof” that the vaccine doesn’t work. Well to that I say horse hockey!

Yes, you heard me right. Horse Hockey!

First of all, considering the meteoric rise of COVID deaths and hospitalizations are near exclusively among unvaccinated individuals speaks to the effectiveness of the vaccines. And that there have been some positive cases among vaccinated individuals and the notice that it is indeed possible for vaccinated people to spread the disease is not news among those who understand immunology at least as well as they do Tic-Toc.

Not Vaccinated Section (5)Try to picture this in your mind. Vaccines do not create a force field around you. This is not like in Star Trek. “Shields up, Mr. Sulu.” Even if it was, when do you ever see an episode when the shields weren’t breached, at least even a little bit? “I’m givin’ ‘em all wee got Cap’n, but I doona know how long thar’ll hold!” No, the vaccines are more like the incessant hum of a poorly grounded fluorescent light. You (or in this case the virus) goes into the room, plans on getting comfortable, switches on the light, and after hanging out for as long as you can take, you are driven out screaming, half crazed by the sensory assault. Before you went in the room you thought you found you happy spot. So you go on in but when you turn on the light, the room responds by making it so unlivable you are driven out.

Not Vaccinated Section (4)Vaccines work like those lights. They can’t keep the virus from entering you. Viruses are out there hanging around, looking for a happy place to settle in. They see those big nostril openings and buzz on in. (Note: make sure masks cover noses.) Their presence trips the sensor that turns on the immune system which drives the little buggers out. So you see, the vaccine doesn’t keep you from getting the virus. It keeps you from getting sick from the virus. That explains why 99+% of the people in the US now sick and dying from COVID are unvaccinated. And that also explains why a vaccinated individual can test positive for COVID when they swab the inside of the nasal passages.

PowertoProtect_1080x1080_FB-IGNow, here is something un-ranty. (Un-rantish?) (Un-rantlike?) August is Vaccine Awareness Month. It was founded by National Public Health Information Coalition nearly 10 years ago so it’s not something new just to trick you into getting the COVID vaccine. Remember my older posts. The first vaccine was developed in 1784. This is not new science. Do you part. Go get your vaccines. Already did? Wear a mask!

Okay, that’s it for now. Next week I promise promise promise I’ll be happier.

Uncommon Sense

Michael 3 Comments

The past few weeks have sorely tested my patience I wish everybody would go out and invest in some self-help books that include how to recapture some common freaking sense. Let’s start.

It’s summertime in the good old U. S. of A. which means, even in the absence of global warming, it gets hot. Glass amplifies heat. An enclosed space holds heat. Things inside hot enclosed spaces cook. And that’s how Jordan Mott came up with the oven in 1490 (minus the glass – that’s a bonus). Because we know it doesn’t count unless it happened in America, we can fast forward to 1882 when Thomas Ahern worked out the details for an electric oven. Granted, he was Canadian but that’s as close as we’re going to get unless you want to count the first person who fried an egg on the hood of a car. That had to be a “real” American, and that gets us to cars, hot cars, hot car interiors on hot summer days. There have been such a spate of kids being cooked in the back seats of cars – again. The government is mandating that by 2025 all auto manufacturers to put in systems that display and sound warning messages to check the back seat for Junior and Fido when you shut off your car. If you aren’t lucky enough to have one of the cars that already have such a warning and/or until you do, they suggest you put “something of value” in the back seat so you don’t forget your kid. Duh! Is it just me or is there nothing anybody owns more valuable than their own child? That was an honest to gosh, news piece just within the last week on most major news outlets. Don’t forget your kid, put something of value in the back with them.”

While we’re on the subject of kids, in June in a small Pennsylvania airport, the TSA confiscated a loaded handgun – in a baby stroller! According to a report on TSA.gov, “The man said that when he and his girlfriend take their dogs and child for a walk that he keeps his loaded gun in the rear stroller pocket and forgot to remove it when they came to catch their flight.” I call bull-doodoo! If you’re taking a baby on a plane with a stroller you are using every cubic inch of that to add carryon volume. And where in H-E-Double Toothpicks is this guy walking that he needs to carry a loaded gun with him when he’s out with his pseudo-family? Let’s stay with guns in airports for a while, even though I ranted about this before. Also, from TSA.gov, “Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers detected twice as many firearms per million passengers screened at airport security checkpoints nationwide in 2020 compared to 2019, and at a significantly higher rate than any other year since the agency’s inception.” A total of 3,257 guns were confiscated from passengers carry them on their persons or in their carry-on bags, and about 83 percent of them were loaded. Those figures didn’t include the number of guns confiscated because they were improperly packed in checked baggage, or toy and BB guns. All while people on planes are beating each other up for taking too much of the shared armrest or [shudder] being compelled to wear a mask.

And now that the delta variant has bloomed in the US to where masking might become more routine again, I figure something in August I get to write this post all over again with a new set of “can you believe this” tales.

Patience. Please give me patience.

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Speaking of Others

Michael 4 Comments

Trigger Alert!! Trigger Alert!! Arh-oooo-Gah!!! Warning! Warning! If you’re easily offended get the forlorn abyss of despair out of here. Proceed at your own risk. You have been warned! I’ll save you the trouble right now, the punch line is – Just be nice for Pete’s sake. (And who is this Pete?)

Now, on with the show!

Have we gone nuts? I’m speaking to the Americans now. You others might have also but I have no first hand knowledge of your nuttiness. Here, it’s a whole different story. Pretty close to a hole different story too if you ask me.

Exhibits 1 though 10: Penn State to ditch ‘male-specific’ student titles like freshmen.
That was the headline in one of the local papers on Tuesday. In my day (yeah yeah I know, that was back when “Leave it to Beaver” was considered high art and we saw how they bullied poor Lumpy and mistreated Mrs. Cleaver terribly, made her cook dinner in high heels and pearls!) …as I was saying, in my day we were too busy trying not to flunk out before freshman year was over to worry about what people were calling us. Of course, back in my day there weren’t majors in Surf Studies (as in Surfin’ USA, thank you Beach Boys) and Social Media Management (a whole different sort of surfin’), real honest to gosh Bachelor programs, Surf Studies is even a BS for Brian Wilson’s sake!

It doesn’t stop at Freshman for good old Penn State (who by the way ended up with over $100,000 of my money not terribly long ago – my money, not some student loan company government maybe you can get out of paying back money – so I feel I can call them out on their lunacy). In their eyes, technically in the eyes of the Faculty Senate (like the regular U.S. Senate isn’t filled with enough nut cases), the entire student reference is flawed. According to the Faculty Senate who drafted a comprehensive set of “inclusive and welcoming” recommendations, “Terms such as ‘junior’ and ‘senior’ are parallel to Western male father-son naming conventions,” No word on if sophomore is too sophomoric for sophomores to handle but that goes too. Instead, the classes will be First Year Students, Second Year Students, Third Year Students, Fourth Year Students, and for those in five-year programs, Fifth Year Students (currently known as fifth year seniors or, colloquially, Super Seniors – clearly that has to go).  I mean that’s not such a big deal except it’s going to be hard to fit “Fourth and Possibly Some Fifth Year Students’ Recognition Day” on the football tickets for the last home game.

Shall we continue? Upperclassmen will be no more. Where there are upperclassmen there are underclassmen and that is just so wrong on too many levels that the naming stress must be why so many underclassmen never pass their way to being upperclassmen. The First and Second Year Students will be referred to collectively as the Lower Division. The Third and Fourth Year Students will comprise the Upper Division.

Naturally they recommend doing away with he/him/his and she/her/hers, replacing those with they/them/theirs or non-gendered terms such as student, faculty member, staff member, and presumably coach although there was no mention if sports staff terminology will be an separate convention. (Coach Member may have been discussed and if it was, wouldn’t you have just loved to have been a fly on one of those wall?) I have always had an issue with they/them/theirs as a singular. Besides the fact that it/they are grammatically incorrect no matter what any easily coerced style manual may say, it appropriates the schizophrenics’ culture.

I’ve wondered this before. When somebody brings up the new “proper way” to refer to people so as to not offend, pronounly speaking, how do they feel about languages that have gender-based pronouns for inanimate objects? According to a survey cited in Wikipedia (well, it was handy and I wasn’t going to look up all those languages separately), of 256 languages surveyed, 44% had gender-based pronouns. I don’t know if that means much considering there are close to 7,000 known languages but it does mean that in at least 144 languages the computer I’m typing this on may be male or female and isn’t having any of the fun that goes with being one or the other being with the other or the one.

Hey, here’s a little aside. We’re always so busy “correcting” the male based words like Freshman, why hasn’t anybody been beating the drum to get rid of Girl Scouts, charwoman, showgirl, shopgirl, and Congresswoman. And why do we still have separate Best Actor and Best Actress awards – in California for Oscar’s sake!

I warned you that it wasn’t going to be pretty, so let’s pretty this up a little before we move on with our day. First, I’m not some ranting privileged old white dude, and although even I chuckled at a couple lines here and there, this is a serious problem. Not inclusivity – this pseudo inclusivity that is running more amok than usual, probably because if the pandemic starts to wind down what will people have to talk about. Do you want to include people? Do you want to welcome people? Then welcome them. I, poor little ole under-woke me, am for sure, for certain, know that if you went up to somebody and said “Hi! How are you? Would you like to have a sit and chat for a while? I’ll bring the donuts, you bring the coffee,” they wouldn’t give two rats’ gluteus maximuses if you said while wiping the jelly off your chin, “Boy oh boy that new donut lady at the bakery knows how to fill a donut!”

Maybe we should spend more time welcoming people into our lives than we do figuring what to call them while we keep everybody an arm’s length away. Perhaps it is time to revisit the Golden Rule, Modified: Speak of others as you would like them to speak of you. And do that treating part too while you are at it.

Continuing with my experiment on the WordPress/Anchor partnership, Don’t Believe Everything You Think is available on these platforms. 

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Please let me know what you think. So far I’m still mostly just recording the blog posts but eventually there will be more than that. We might even get into a discussion about how we all got into blogging. 

This post will begin to be available later today, after noon EDT. 

Selfish Is and Selfish Does

Michael 4 Comments
I’ll start right up front apologizing to all my non-US readers. You’re too kind and don’t deserve to play the innocent bystander but you should know from the start that this is not going to be pretty. 
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Now for the rest of you, my fellow Americans, just how incredibly selfish is this country getting! Not the people in this country. The whole darn shooting match. It’s now a national pastime to do whatever you want regardless of consequences. Go to parties, get on planes, play football, go to happy hour. If you’re reading this you are more than likely among to ever shrinking quantity of intelligent, courteous individuals but you probably know more than a few handfuls of whiny, reckless, selfish bastar…er, jerks. I don’t know how it is where you are (which is the polite way of saying things are getting out of control everywhere) but around here, things are getting out of control. For example: 
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Every day for the past 8 days the morning paper headlines have been [State, County, City] Sets New Record for COVID [Infections, Hospitalizations, Deaths] (they rotate the where and the what so you don’t think they just re-ran the same story). Someone on that same front page is the other inevitable headline [Party, Candidate, Congressmen, Senator] [Claims New Voter Fraud, Decries Latest Fraud Claim], sometimes all the above! While the world is falling apart, these imbeciles are busy engaging in playground “did so, did not, did too, make me!” games. Children have more sense than these disgusting, miserable, adolescent excuses for human beings. (Too rough?) 
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It’s gotten to the point that now I personally know seven people who have been tested positive for CoViD-19 and one who died from the infection. Once removed (as in know someone who knows someone) the numbers are greater than 70 infections, over a dozen hospitalizations, and 2 deaths. There were all cautious, all held fast to safe prevention practices, only one was a nursing home resident (one of the deaths), 18 were health care workers or first responders (including the other death), and a handful of other essential workers. These aren’t great numbers when you consider my state is reporting over 424,000 cases and nearly 11,500 deaths but these “numbers” are people I know. They are people I have shared space and time with, who over the years have been to the same church or party or store or hospital as I have been. They are friends and neighbors. They are not Democrats or Republicans, they are not maskers or anti-maskers, they are not cowards or daredevils. They are people. People who relied on public servants to serve their public rather than serving their egos.
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KeepCalmSo, what can we do about this? I’m staying calm but taking names. Oh sure, today I’ll write a couple letters to my so-called representatives in between  checking in on friends and relatives to see how everyone is doing and that my “numbers” aren’t going up. But some day those so-called representatives who today are busy representative themselves will surely run for office again. That’s when the real letter writing campaign begins. That’s when I will start reminding everybody that when they should have been meeting in chambers, representing us working on health initiatives, equipment and vaccine allocations, or financial assistance packages, our so-called leaders were instead meeting in courtrooms and TV studios representing themselves and working on undermining the security and confidence of the country – all in the name of “did so, did not, did too, make me.” 
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I’m sorry, it wasn’t a very pleasant post today. They made me do it.
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Selfish Is…Deuxième Partie

Michael 6 Comments
Was is just 4 days ago I posted a sort of breezy, lighthearted look at our new normal? (Surely you remember the new normal way to make a frozen cappuccino at home.) Unfortunately the weekend brought us back to lots of the old normal of name calling, blame laying, and old fashioned selfishness.
 
As more and more cities, counties, and states across the US and many other countries are falling under shelter in place orders, this from the letters to the editor section of the local paper is an example of what is unfortunately becoming a common response:
 

Once again, we are sacrificing the future of the young for the sake of the old. We could, at considerably less cost, attempt to keep the economy functioning at a high level, and safeguard seniors.

People over 70, and all those at high risk, regardless of age, should be banned, not encouraged, from leaving their homes. Resources should be made readily available to them: free delivery of groceries, medicines, even alcohol. Old people love “free.” They even exercised when Silver Sneakers was introduced, so I’m sure most would go along with this in an effort to save the country.*

 
More than other comments that follow every online article about the impact of the novel corona virus this letter struck me as a particularly insensitive read. I don’t know if I should preface this with “oddly enough” but oddly enough in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, my home county and that of the letter writer, those over 65 testing positive with COVID-19 account for only 14% of the total, and the 25-49 age group made up 45% through Sunday, March 29. Perhaps the young adults also need some risk mitigation.
 
The writer’s cut-off age interested me. How did 70 become the magic number? Is that how old his or her parents are? Or grandparents? Is that the age the letter writer thinks is the average American’s life expectancy so anybody over that is in bonus time anyway? The average life expectancy in the U.S. is 78.7 years. Pennsylvania is a little less friendly to the elder crowd with an average life expectancy of 78.3 years. Perhaps the writer knows Allegheny County is stingier still with a 77.9 year expectancy. Still that is many years from 70. Maybe the writer is willing to sit at home for 7 years and 10 months now to get a head start on … on what I’m not exactly sure. (Life expectancy data generated by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.)
 
I have to admit I smiled a little at what the letter writer must think are the greatest concerns of our senior members of society – “grocery, medicine, even alcohol.” Is that what we are considering the new necessities of life? What, no free delivery of the TV Guide or People Magazine? Perhaps he or she should pick up a Bible. Whether in Matthew or Proverbs or Deuteronomy there are plenty of references to man not living by bread alone. Are the septuagenarians and older never to be allowed to worship as they wish? I suppose we dispense with their freedom of religion, not to mention that of speech and assembly. We will give them plenty of freedom of fear though. Oh, it’s supposed to be freedom FROM fear. My mistake. But hey, you gotta love that “even alcohol” tucked in at the end of the writers list of necessities. “With alcohol all things are possible” is the new battle cry, right after “wash your hands” or maybe “drink heavily and lick your hands.” I’m wondering if that might a window into our writer’s personal wish list of essential items he or she is having difficulty securing during our time of sheltering in place. The virtual happy hour is not so happy when you all you have left is the company and conversation. 
 
But then the writer wants to take away company and conversation. He or she wants the oldest Americans “banned, not encouraged from leaving their homes.” Although the CDC is in fact encouraging seniors and those most vulnerable to remain indoors as much as possible, all health experts agree that isolation is itself a deterrent to healthy living. Valtorta and Hanratty* conclude “Lonely or isolated older adults are at greater risk for all-cause mortality,” and “The effect [of loneliness or isolation] is greater than that of other well-established risk factors for mortality such as physical inactivity and obesity, and comparable with cigarette smoking.” Clearly this is why among the list of permitted out of home activities (grocery shopping, medical appointments, and such) exercise is included.
 
The writer also seems a little confused about the cost of “free.” He or she singles out the Silver Sneakers program which is most often identified as a Medicare Advantage plan additional benefit available to Medicare recipients at age 65. I wonder if the writer realizes Medicare is not free. Even those plans on TV advertised as “zero premium” plans aren’t zero dollars. Those advertised premiums are in addition to the basic premium the government charges seniors. Medicare premium payments are withdrawn every month from the Social Security payment. In those odd instances when an individual receives Medicare but is not drawing Social Security benefits, a bill for direct payment is sent. (Something to keep in mind if Medicare for All mimics the current Medicare program. Free it isn’t.)
 
I’m most distressed over the assumption that we are “sacrificing the future of the young for the sake of the old.” What happened to “30 is the new 20,” “40 is the new 30,” “60 is the new 40?” There is no old, at least according the merchandisers there isn’t. Or wasn’t. “At what age do you begin to not care?” the cosmetics company asks. I suppose we should be asking, “at what age do you begin to not care about?” Considering that the 25 to 49 year olds are responsible for nearly half of the identified positive cases in the county should the under 18 group with less than 2% of all positive results be asking that largest group of infected individuals to be sequestered so the truly young’s future is not sacrificed for the sake of that of those older, even if those older aren’t what we might consider old? You know, geese and ganders and all that.
 
Over a spring weekend that saw nature act as normal bringing 17 tornadoes to the middle of America we need to stop following our own natural instincts and be better than normal. We need also to be nice. I could have been nicer myself and not used a few hundred words to disparage somebody’s Freedom of Speech. I’m sorry I wasn’t as nice as I want others to be. I’ll do my best not to let it happen again. Just not today. 
 
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* This is the complete, unedited letter, “Keep Seniors Home,” to the editor, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 30, 2020. 
 
**Valtorta N, Hanratty B. Loneliness, isolation and the health of older adults: do we need a new research agenda?. J R Soc Med. 2012;105(12):518–522. doi:10.1258/jrsm.2012.120128
 

One of Seven

Michael 4 Comments

I’m doing something today I don’t usually. I’m complaining. Yes, you’re right, I have expressed displeasure from time to time but this is different. This is head shaking, head scratching, “what did you expect” vent-age.

You can tell by how late it is that I wasn’t even certain about posting this, but clearly I have. If you don’t want to think of me as a complainer stop here and I’ll see you again on Thursday.

Yesterday’s paper featured an article, “Why aren’t wages rising?” It stated that although some of the brightest economists in the country can’t agree on the reason, they do agree that wages are not increasing any faster than the rate of inflation. Today’s paper had a headline that a local company’s employees are “set for raises” for the next three years after the company and a local union agreed to a new contract.

So salaries are going up, nobody is losing spending power, yet nobody, or at least not one headline writer, is happy.

Was I the only one to see this 60 years ago? There used to be a time wages were commensurate with results. Now they are time released. Ever year everybody gets more money for doing the same work they did the year before. The widget maker doesn’t make more widgets for the widget company to sell yet the widget maker makes more money from the widget company. The widget company can’t report to the widget investors they are turning a smaller profit because they are spending more money paying the widget makers so they raise the price on widgets. Now that the price of widgets is up, everybody who buys a widget, including the widget makers, go to their respective companies and say next year they will need bigger raises, inflation isn’t making their dollar go as far. The next year the companies, including the widget company, increase workers’ salaries, sometimes by predetermined, contracted amounts. Again there are no more widgets to sell to offset the increased expense so again the price of widgets goes up. And the snowball continues its run downhill.

I never have and never will understand how people believe it is their right to get more for doing no more. I also never have understood and never will understand how the same people upon receiving this windfall instead of voluntarily sharing their increase with their church or synagogue or charity or charities of their choices complain about it being not enough while simultaneously complaining about others getting increases for not doing anything to deserve them. The price of everything keeps getting more and more expensive they say.

NoMoreMooneySo wages aren’t going up but are going up just not enough because they only go up as much as necessary to keep with inflation but that’s not enough because everybody else gets more too.  It won’t end. It can’t end. For it to end everybody has to simultaneously say they want no more increases, even minimal cost of living increases. You can’t do it piece meal because somebody will (with a capital WILL) break the chain and not give back. And you can’t just rely on people. You need industry, large and small companies, profit based and non for profits to agree to no increase fees or prices except for bona fide improvements. Wages will go up in response to increases in output and profits will go up when true efficiencies result in lower expenses. Won’t happen. Can happen but won’t. Too many people have to make the right choice. The right choice never made anybody anything for nothing.

Greed is one of the seven deadlies, isn’t it?

Something in Common

Michael 4 Comments

What do I and Matt Lauer and I have in common? I wouldn’t have been given a second chance either. Finally somebody is treating the elite like the mere mortals they are!

If you were expecting to read a post decrying Matt or Charlie, Kevin or Harvey as scums who don’t deserve to share Earth with the rest of us, that’s not quite what you’ll find here today. They are and they don’t. You don’t need me to add to that conversation. You will find here a grudgingly admiring opinion recognizing the particular powers who finally started treating the Matts and Charlies, the Kevins and Harveys like the Regular Joes that they are. At least the Matts.

Mostly I have to say how I hope this trend will continue. No, not the trend of hate and fear and intimidation. The trend (if one instance can be hoped to be the start of a trend) that even the star quarterback of the team isn’t going to get any different treatment than the water boy when one who was wronged speaks up.

I worked in management positions for 30 years. In addition to nice salaries and bonuses, choice hours, opportunities to write and speak, and a really bigger office than I deserved but wasn’t about to give back, management positions bring with them lots of complaints. Complaints between coworkers that I had to deal with and complaints about me that somebody else made sure I had to deal with, and sometimes complaints about other supervisors that I was asked by my superiors to participate in the deliberations begun to deal with. And among all the complaints, though very few, were complaints of inappropriate behavior.

There were probably very few complaints of inappropriate behavior because for the most part we were a system within an industry within a country of water boys. But when inappropriateness raised its head (and I’ll keep using the questionable term “inappropriate” because at our level, inappropriate behavior was just as bad as blatant assault) there were no look aways, no second chances, no golden parachutes. There was termination. And sometimes criminal charges. If a creep was uncovered he (and sometimes she) was told to move on. Preferably in some other field, like envelope stuffing. See, there aren’t many star quarterbacks in the word. Nor many movie moguls, A-list actors, famous comedians, politicians, TV news anchorpersons. So the investigation, the deliberations, and the punishment were conducted like it was just A Regular Joe, not the face of morning news.

There are creeps among the Regular Joes but for most, Regular Joes are an ok bunch. When a Regular Joe is determined to be irregular, Joe is called out for it. There aren’t many “suspended with pay pending investigation,” “determined to be an isolated incident,” or “it was consensual.” Regular Joes were sent home while we looked into it, which usually took just a day or two or three. Only if there was clear evidence that the allegation was fabricated was Joe asked back. Then a whole different investigation was begun. Sometimes Regular Joe had to sit at home for a length of time. When that happened, Regular Joe better have had a decent savings account because in the Water Boy World, if you aren’t working, you aren’t earning.

Finally, I have to ask for blessings to the women and men who have stepped up and made known the atrocities they were forced to endure. I also have to state my disappointment that there were probably others who didn’t step up not because they felt threatened but because they sought out the attention of these creeps only because they were famous creeps. Some creeps are born to creepdom but many are encouraged along the way. It’s no excuse and it’s not making things easy for the ones opened up.

There aren’t a lot of breaks for Regular Josephines and Joes that stepped forward. There shouldn’t be for a Matt or a Harvey.

The famous already got their break.