Christmas 2015

Well, Christmas has come and gone. A certain young woman of my acquaintance, who had relatively recently turned 13, relatively recently revealed to me that the result of her recent reflections regarding the holiday has resulted in some remarkable revelations. Sorry, I'll stop.

Now that she's no longer a child, she's noticed that though Christmas still rocks, it's just not the same as it was last year -- when she was still a kid. We had this conversation about a week before Christmas and she remarked mentioned to me that last year at this same time (2014) her emotions had begun ramping up to what by Christmas Eve was what I would've called, when I was her age, a full blown Purple Leptic Fit, or at the very least, a nervous breakdown.

For the Record: When and where I was but a wee lad, several thousand days ago, a Purple Leptic Fit meant the same thing that flipping out or freaking out does now. Googling the phrase will point you to novelist Chuck (Note: Effective illustration of the potential long-term side effects of the plague of moniker malpractice currently ravaging the realm  infecting the culture) Dickens "Great Expectations." However, when I was 12, and living on the Sou-side a Pittsburgh, the only book of Chucks that I was familiar with at the time was the famous novella, "A Christmas Carol." I hadn't read it, I've yet to read it, but I have seen most of the movie versions including the best one, Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol, an animated musical. Move along, move along, no snobby literary allusions to see here folks.

Anyway... I responded to my favorite trumpet playing, cook, interior decorator, and future lawyer by pointing out, as gently as possible, that unfortunately this was the nature of the beast in question. At some point the magic starts fading and we feel like we're missing something because we're unlikely to experience Christmas with quite the same intensity ever again. However, if we're lucky, we'll have access to some kids still young enough to go as berserk as we once did in the week leading up to the holiday. Better a thrill once removed than no thrill at all. What I failed to point out -- in my defense it was because I hadn't yet read a brilliant article in the Wall Street Journal by a Clare Ansberry that's about believing in Santa Clause -- was that parents go to exhausting and expensive lengths to perpetrate this happy hoax because, "... Christmas often represents their own fondest childhood memories." That, "It signifies the all-too-short time in a child's life when everything is good and nothing impossible." Exactly. Therefore, a good egg, such as herself, can look forward to doing her duty and participating in the hoax for the rest of her life. She doesn't even need to have her own kids to do so.

So of course, this got to me thinking about hedonic adaptation. (It's not you, it's me, I've always been like this.)

According to Wikipedia: "The hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes."

Now in case you haven't been paying attention, or have an actual life, studies have been conducted, books and articles written, hypotheses and conclusions debated, etc. Fear not, gentlereaders, I'm not about to offer up a lecture on the subject. As is the case regarding the myriad subjects that I, your dilettante about town, am interested in, I'm singularly unqualified to do so. This used to be a source of some embarrassment to me -- the fact that I'm not an expert, specialist, go to guy, or the like  -- as concerns, well, anything. However, one of the many unexpected compensations of getting old, at least for me, is finally figuring out just what it is I'm about, and accepting it. Also, I've found comfort in that bit of folk wisdom that states that an expert is a bonkercockie artist at least 50 miles from home.

Anyway... Notice that the definition offered up by Wikipedia doesn't say that if you win a large enough prize in a lottery or some similar sort of endeavor and realize one of my (and I have reason to suspect many other people's) fondest dreams, F.U. level wealth...

Or, that if you get hit by a bus, and it takes a year or two to successfully(more or less) put Humpty Dumpty together again, that you will be happy. It says that you will "quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness."

The good news is this phenomenon is widely studied, researched and documented; you can add it to your Facts are Stubborn Things list; you should keep it in mind. The bad news is that if you were miserable by nature before the life-altering event, odds are you will still be miserable after the smoke clears and you return to your stable level. On a side note, I highly recommend that if, "Money is the root of all evil" is on your Stubborn Things list that you cross it off and write: Money has the potential to be the root of much evil or good, but more importantly, the lack of enough money to fund a modest and virtuous lifestyle sucks sweaty socks.

What have we learned Dorothy?

It's not you, It's me.Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Clause. You really should read, or  resuscitate and re-read, a remarkably relevant previous post, my first, The Pursuit of Contentment.

Have an OK day.                                                                                      

©Mark Mehlmauer 2015



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Grups v. Snowflakes

I've always wondered who it was that thought up the idea of getting an advertiser to pay a given radio station to regularly state something like: This broadcast is coming to you live from the studios of The Flyoverland Crank. The Flyoverland Crank -- bringing you enlightened infotainment since July! Pure genius. A business pays the given radio station, that they and their competitors already pay to run commercials, a premium, so that they will be mentioned briefly, but regularly, throughout the day.

If the radio station wasn't effectively competitive, wasn't attracting enough listeners to justify the premium, the money would go to a station that was. Competition.

If the advertiser wasn't effectively competitive, wasn't attracting enough customers to generate the money needed to pay the radio station a premium, one of their rivals might. Competition.

When cut-throat capitalism is working the way it should, the consumers win, the consumer has the power -- no customers, no money -- bankruptcy. We Earthlings fortunate enough to live in a country that has a sorta/kinda free market economy are the beneficiaries of cut-throat capitalism, and we love it. We love living in the most prosperous society the world has ever seen. We love the myriad choices. We love the competitive prices. We love the jobs generated...

...Until the alarm clock goes off, or the payment's due, or we lose our job, or fail as an entrepreneur. Or if the philistines/the 1%/the dean/the boss/or dad just don't/doesn't appreciate our delicate sensibilities, and the fact that snowflakes need to be nurtured (and subsidised) lest they melt in the heat generated by the daily struggle for three all natural, organic hots and an adjustable Tempur-Pedic cot.

Well then, then capitalism/the market/the system/the rat race -- sucks sweaty socks.

This is when the grups (grownups) are separated from the snowflakes.

We're the grups! We know that every coin has a head and a tail. We've been around those often cited proverbial blocks and came in last at more damn rodeos than we care to admit. We deal with it. We take care of business, it's in the job description. We do the work, raise the kids, pay the bills, fight the wars (or, lucky us, more likely just support the ones that do), we care for the aging parents.

I'm a grup, but I've no interest in demonizing snowflakes. I do enjoy making fun of them though, I hope they will do me the honor of returning the favor. Humor trumps demonizing. Just thinking about an aging, mostly bald, chubby guy with a ponytail that's been espousing socialism for decades makes me smile. Gazillionaire actors with left wing politics, of any age or appearance, who haven't had to work at a real job since they were part-time food service workers while attending drama school make me laugh out loud.

On a vaguely related note: For the record, I've no idea where William Devane stands on anything, or if he's a gazillionaire, or what he's like in real life, but I think it should be illegal for actors to encourage people to buy gold and silver. "What's in your safe?" Unfulfilled dreams and empty promises, but thanks for asking Bill!

Some good news for snowflakes still involved with the 1% movement. If you happen to live on the planet Earth, work full time, and make at least $9.09/hr., congrats, your yearly income is greater than 99% of your fellow Earthlings. That is, assuming you define full time the traditional way, 40 hours per week, and not the Obamacare way, which is only 30 hours. But prosperity, and even living in a country that has a nationwide obesity epidemic (and you thought there was nothing new under the sun), doesn't seem to do much to help us to all get along.

You've no doubt noticed we seem to be a country devolving into warring factions. The national consensus was always a fragile structure (involving much duct tape) because we're a nation of all sorts of people from everywhere and anywhere. For that to work without employing the traditional methods, murder and subjugation, a system is needed that grants the "other guy" the same freedom and liberty we want for ourselves. Live and let live.

This was the point of the American experiment, an experiment that many others have since attempted, with mixed results. All things considered, it's amazing it's worked out for us as well as it has. We nearly exterminated the folks that we expropriated a continent from. We enslaved Africans. We had to fight a civil war because of that one. Learning nothing much, we devised another obscenity, Jim Crow. We're still trying to fix that to everyone's satisfaction. In spite of these and no shortage of other screwups, we somehow managed to become the most prosperous country the world has ever seen, so far. And we're relatively free. And we twice elected an African-American to the most powerful job on Earth, which would not have been possible without Mr. Obama capturing approximately the same average percentage of white voters as any democratic presidential candidate in modern times.

We can take comfort in the fact we've done some good. That we may have moved a few rungs up the ladder in the direction of being truly civilized -- history will tell. That we're still trying.

I've read that scholars say that various cultures in the ancient Mideast thought that as we move forward in time we're facing the past, that the future is behind us. In other words, that we walk through life backward. This was because they valued the past, as I read somewhere recently, a little too much. This meme would seem to stand in start contrast to the way the modern world in general, America in particular, views life. We believe we're facing forward and racing forward. Who has time to worry about history? We're constantly running behind while simultaneously trying to stay one step ahead of the information tsunami.

I think most of us have more in common with the citizens of the ancient cultures of Mesopotamia and Eygpt than we realize. They walked backward through life, we run backward through life. The cult of victimhood encourages us to run backward while never taking our eyes off of what happened to us -- or whatever groups we've decided we're part of -- last week, last month, last year, etc. This process doesn't even stop at the womb. Look what happened to my parents, my grandparents, my ancestors, my country, my _____. Please feel free to fill in the blank with the grievance(s) of your choice.

Learn (from) history. As you may have heard, it will save you from having to relearn lessons someone else already learned the hard way. But the past is gone, the future is a maybe. Turn around, now, before something or someone smacks you in the back of the head.

Have an OK day.                                                                                      

©Mark Mehlmauer 2015



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I

When I'm the King Of America... (No. 2)

...I'm going to bring back Sunday blue laws. I've stated in a past post ("The 6.5 Commandments") that I don't support blue laws, but I've changed my mind. With no disrespect intended to any Type A types that thrive on the hyperactive pace of our current culture, or at least claim to, I suspect most of us would like a chance to catch our breath, smell the coffee, read the book, watch the game, etc.

Please Note: Sunday sports, particularly professional football and the enormous industry that supports it, will be exempted.

I'm not a sports fan. In fact, there's a false rumor loose in the realm that claims I've stated that if Lenin were alive today he would say that sports is the opiate of the masses. However, I firmly believe that professional sports serve a vital function -- as (mostly) harmless entertainment. ISIS, ISIL, Daesh, DAISH, Da'esh, Daech, Khilafat, the Islamic State -- or whatever their being called this week (just don't dare say Islamic terrorists) -- openly embraces murder, kidnapping, slavery and posting beheading videos on the web. In spite of Mr. Obama's assurances that his policies are shrinking this tumor, common sense seems to indicate it's still growing. Dr. Crank prescribes escapist entertainment, lots of it. Particularly on America's newly minted official day off.

Also, football, particularly American-style football, serves as a (mostly) harmless outlet for the violent tendencies we've inherited from our evolutionary predecessors. They are alive and well and living in comfortable apartments in obscure, but safe and long-established neighborhoods deep within the homo sapien brain. Ignore them at your peril.    

Irony Alert: American-style professional football, our most popular sport, often criticized for how violent it is, is played by highly-paid, elite professionals and the violence is (usually) limited to the playing field. Professional football in most of the rest of the world, a sport approved by eight out of ten moms because it's allegedly not a violent sport, is played by highly-paid, elite professionals, and the violence is (usually) limited to the spectators. Occasionally, people are killed.

Now, having promised in the past to be a benevolent tyrant (BT), a promise I intend to keep, I hesitate to reimpose Sunday blue laws. I believe the playground should have as few rules as possible, just enough to maintain order, maintain the playground, and neutralize the bullies.

(Incidentally, I consider bullies to be not only the thugs that seek power over others by physical force or social dominance. Bullies are also the kids that are prepared to cheat, steal, lie, etc. -- to engage in whatever unethical or immoral behavior is necessary to win at a particular game. The kids that don't play fair. You've been warned.)

However, as your king, 'tis my duty to keep a wary eye on the big picture. This includes monitoring the emotional health of the subjects of my realm. After all, since God him/her self (a BT must acknowledge political correctness lest they rouse the rabble) has bestowed this office upon me I must do all in my power to keep thee happy, and well adjusted.

Aside: The preceding paragraph perfectly illustrates why the concept of rule by divine right is so popular with me and my fellow kings. Note how easy it is to justify my being the boss of you while acting like I'm doing you a favor, and hinting that being the king is a divinely mandated burden that I'm willing to deal with for your sake. While the world has mostly/sort of/technically moved beyond kings there's no shortage of kings in disguise. I once had a boss that was a saint on Sunday and a scheming weasel the rest of the week. He honestly believed that his McMansion and well-fed bank accounts were earthly manifestations of divine approval. Otherwise, God wouldn't have gone to the trouble of personally supplying him with so many "blessings."

Now, if thou wert behaving thy selves, I wouldst not be forced to intervene in thine humble but busy little lives. Busy, busy little lives. Hence, we therefore proclaim that...

(It was at this point that my muse, thankfully, administered a psychic slap to the back of my head. This served to jolt me out of the embarrassing slide into kingly pomposity on display in the preceding paragraphs. We SMACK! I, apologize.

I'm going to bring back Sunday blue laws to give my subjects an excuse to take a day off without feeling guilty, having to worry about your competitor being open, to discourage your boss/employee/bill collectors, etc., from calling you. Please think of it as a gift and not yet another rule imposed upon you by The Gubmint, or the gubmint, for your own good. A committee of prominent citizens appointed by the governor of each state will decide on the rules; public opinion will serve to keep them in line so they reflect the wishes and values of the citizens of each state. Obviously essential services will have to be provided but a Sunday premium will have to be paid to reward those who have to work while letting the free market do its magic to minimize the amount of people that have to.

Sample Rule: Donut shops will only be permitted to open until noon. Churches are encouraged (but not required) to have only two services, 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m, that are no more than one hour long so that those attending the later service have time to purchase donuts on the way home. Recommended dosage is no more than two donuts for each person living in a given household.

Let's be a shining city on a hill the rest of the world looks to for guidance.

(The following sentence will be more infotaining if you have enough imagination to hear it spoken with some sort of foreign accent, in your head. Warning: Speaking it out loud may lead to a charge of political incorrectness, for which King Crank accepts no responsibility.)

"Those crazy, greedy Americans! The only reason they have the largest GDP on the planet is because they work their asses off 24/6 -- but they sure know how to take a day off to enjoy it.

Have an OK day.                                                                                      

©Mark Mehlmauer 2015



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Melting Pot, Conclusion

What follows will make more sense in you read parts one and two.

'Tis the fall of 1966 and our unsophisticated little inner-city refugee finds himself in a suburban school. He is, to put it mildly, pleasantly surprised.

Being a relatively normal 13-year old hormone saturated male with relatively normal teenage insecurities I had picked up on the fact, within about two seconds, that this sea of strangers I had just been introduced to all seemed to be better coiffed and clothed than I was. Not good.

However, a kid named Ed, whose desk was next to the one I had been assigned to had, without prompting from our nun/teacher, or any other grup for that matter, had appointed himself my guide to all things eighth grade, smart class. There was ample time for information exchange as we were assigned our textbooks (and this years catechism text) and briefed on the policies and procedures of my new school in general, this class in particular.

He was handsome, perfectly coiffed blond, and fit. He wore a bright red, crushed velvet, v-necked pullover shirt with leather laces in the V. I would describe this particular shirt as tacky and pretentious if I saw it today, but hey, it was the sixties. I was a, um, not handsome, slightly portly, product of the working class with a "regular boys haircut" from the Sou-side barber school. You know, the one up the street from Antknees fodder's shoe repair shop. I had a lazy eye. He treated me as though I was as pretty as he was.

Sister whatever her name was (sorry s'ter) sent us outside at midmorning for recess. No carefully engineered for safety, lawyer resistant playground equipment. No equipment at all, just a grass covered field. This was a nicer, and larger, version of the tiny, asphalt coated, no equipment schoolyard I was used to. The only equipment we had, in either case, was our imaginations. Of course, grass stains were preferable to road rash, but mum wouldn't have any grass stains to deal with, well, not from school anyway (I wasn't a total nerd). In either case, when it was too cold, or the schoolyard was covered with snow, we spent recess in the same classroom we were caged in, with the exception of lunchtime, for the rest of the day. No gym, but no obesity epidemic either, go figure...

At this point, Ed introduced me to various fellow classmates, all of whom, every single one of them, had divided into a handful of groups that were standing around talking to each other. Not a single one was playing at something. Several had remained inside. Some were already studying, some were reading novels, some were just talking, as we who liked to get out of the building were. I didn't have to engage in various games that held no interest for me to prove my manhood? I could, instead, just stand around, talking, or participate in a group walk around the block, while talking? This was quite popular for some reason though there were no vaguely sleazy hangouts with pinball machines in the back room to visit, just suburban homes.

What was all the talking about? The war (Vietnam), folk masses, Bob Dylan, the war, was it true that the rock group called the Monkees had been created out of thin air (sacrilege!) just to make money by evil corporate types? the war, hippies, the pill, the civil rights movement, the war, the meaning of the lyrics of the song "Mellow Yellow," the war, the Beetles, who was "going" with whom, singles (99 cents), albums ($2.99), groups (rock artists) and their songs...on and on and on. There was a soft revolution going on and the goal was nothing short of utopia. There was surprisingly little talk about sex, but this was a much more innocent time, at least for young Catholics raised to believe any form of sex outside of marriage was likely to get you sent to hell. Getting pregnant was a disgrace and got you sent to a facility for fallen girls so the world didn't have to deal with you. Divorce was the exception, not the rule. And for some reason, Agatha Christie mystery novels were all the rage in the smart eighth grade and paperbacks were traded like playing cards. And talked about of course.

By a decade or so later, everything had turned to crap. Disco was here, AIDS was just around the corner, and no shortage of pop culture icons were addicted, dead, or debased.

What happened?

While attempting to build a utopia, with an unrealistic timetable and poorly drawn blueprints, we tipped over the melting pot and set the consensus on fire.

The fire, fueled by hubris, historically unprecedented prosperity, the birth of the information age, mind-expanding drugs, and the manic pace of modern life, science and technology, that continues apace -- didn't destroy the consensus, it reduced it down to it's component parts. We became the culture of unbalanced factions James Madison warned us about.

The USA was carefully crafted to be a democratic republic, a representative form of gubmint, ruled by law -- as opposed to a democracy, a direct form of gubmint, ruled by the majority. This was because it was/is/should be obvious, that in a democracy, well-meaning/not so well-meaning (and no shortage of freaking crazy) people can band together and 51% of the folks can legally decide to behead the other 49%.

Or, decide that free speech is not permitted when a given majority decides that the words of a given minority constitute a microaggression, are politically/morally/intellectually/_______ly incorrect, or even just cause a severe case of the vapors.

Houston, we have a problem.

Have an OK day.                                                                                    

©Mark Mehlmauer 2015


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Melting Pot, Part Two

What follows will make more sense if you read part one.

On the first day of eighth grade, I was randomly assigned to the smart class. Had I been placed in the dumb class (which we weren't supposed to call the dumb class), as I should have, I would've probably had a whole different life. While the smart class was indeed made up of smart kids, the dumb class was just everyone else, the ordinary kids -- with the exception of a few aggressively-stupid boys. Testosterone poisoning + stupidity = aggressively-stupid.

When I was 13 I thought this phenomenon was limited to boys. Turns out that girls are so much smarter than boys -- and women so much smarter than men -- that boys and men are often too stupid to spot an aggressively-stupid female. Men should be grateful that the feminist movement has made it socially acceptable for women to openly be as aggressively-stupid as men -- if they choose to reveal it to us. Makes 'em slightly less dangerous.

So, it's the first day of school, eighth grade, and I show up as required. I'm not a happy camper. I'm introverted, somewhat shy, and this is a new school. I don't know anyone, and though I love to read -- I'm willing to check out anything and everything for at least a minute -- I'm no scholar. I'm living in suburbia for the first time in my life and the school building seems huge.

Interesting paradox in that the densely packed, densely Catholic inner city neighborhood I came from had small Catholic grade schools, several of them. My new school drew from a much larger geographic area that wasn't nearly as densely populated and a given family was just as likely to be Protestant (or Satanists for all I knew at the time) as Catholic. Where I came from there were (mostly) Catholics, Protestants, and heathens. We Catholics were right, and assured a place in heaven, as long we followed all the rules. The many, many rules. Everyone else was wrong and probably going to hell, but it wasn't polite to tell them. We loved them anyway, and that's why one of our seemingly endless fund-raising drives each year was devoted to saving Pagan Babies.

Many of the many, many rules have radically changed, or vanished, since I was a kid. I can't help but wonder if there's a get out of hell free card available for anyone that died in sin before a priest could get there to punch their ticket to paradise.

Now, though it may seem as though I'm digressing my butt off what I'm actually doing is trying to paint a picture with words, to contrast my life before eighth grade with what came next. Though officially a typical, conservative Catholic grade school, run by a nun that had the sensibilities of a USMC Drill Instructor, there was music in the cafes (church social hall) at night and revolution in the air. And I was randomly placed in the "smart" class of eighth graders because though I had been properly registered by my mum, no one had decided which eighth grade I should be in and added my name to the appropriate list. Instead, two nuns had a brief conversation and it was decided on the spot to put me in with the smart kids and see what happened. They could always dumb me down later if necessary.

Well, I managed to hold my own, in spite of Algebra. For the first time in my life, I had more than one teacher for the entire day. We didn't change classes, we changed teachers. We had a very cool nun come in to teach us Algebra, which took the edge off of that particular nightmare. We had a male lay teacher come in for Science, my first experience with a teacher that wasn't a woman. He wasn't nearly as cool as our Algebra nun, but the girls thought he was a cutie. Curiously, I can't remember either of their names or the name of the nun we had for all of our other classes. I can recall the names of almost all the other nuns and teachers I had up until this point, and most of my high school teachers as well. This puzzles me because it was the  best year of school I ever had. I can't remember the name of the nun I had in first grade, but I've probably blocked it out because I was so traumatized (GRIN). There's a vicious rumor that claims one of my older sisters once had to unclench my fists from a wrought iron fence that I had latched onto in a futile attempt to keep from going to school that I refuse to either confirm or deny. However, it serves as a perfect illustration of how I felt about formal schooling as a child.

Returning to the fall of '66...it was the kids that made eighth grade my favorite school year. I was triply disadvantaged because they were, first, as a group, much more worldly, sophisticated and downright cooler than I was. They had older siblings in high school and college that were in the thick of the late sixties. My older sibs were out of high school and living, working and making babies in the real world. Not a one of them even lived in a commune. Also, many had parents that were professionals of some sort that made a lot more money than my blue collar dad and stay at home mom. And most of them were smarter than me. But I got lucky.

They were nice. They liked me. I liked them. They, the Algebra nun, a rebellious young priest,  and my mum, who had subscriptions to Look, Life, and The Saturday Evening Post, opened my eyes to a whole new world. And next week I will finally explain what all this has to do with melting pots and mosaics.

Have an OK day.                                                                                      

©Mark Mehlmauer 2015



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Melting Pot (Part One)

I don't remember what grade I was in or which nun it was, but I have this specific memory of being told that the concept of America as a melting pot was wrong, that a more accurate way to describe it was as a mosaic. I've encountered this particular refinement to this particular metaphor many times since, but this was the first time. Sorta/kinda missing the point (hey, I was a kid) I decided that I liked the melting pot analogy better because it conjured up a vivid image of a huge cauldron, boiling and bubbling, powered by an intense fire, flames licking up the sides. A melting pot, or at least what I thought a melting pot should look like, having never actually encountered one. And no, my imagination didn't include people being tossed into the pot. You've clearly watched too many horror movies.

I didn't care for mosaics, as an art form I mean. I still don't, but considering my extremely limited knowledge of the visual arts, about which I'm going to do something one of these days (I've been getting psyched up for this project for better than forty years, so I'm ready), I feel obliged to throw in a buhwhaddle I know?

I say sorta/kinda because I knew what she meant. She explained that what she was talking about was that while there was truth to be discerned in the melting pot meme, in her opinion, America was more like a mosaic because while we held certain truths to be self-evident and that there was such a thing as American culture, we could all fit into the big picture without having to give up what it was that made us different from each other. Well, mostly.

But I took that for granted. Not intellectually, but intuitively. Within the bubble of my childhood, which, being a kid, I thought included everyone else, this was the way of the world, well, the way of the USA anyway. I'd been made aware that the Godless Commies of the countries behind the Iron Curtain (BOING! another vivid image) didn't see things that way.

See, I somehow managed to get through my preschool years and then grade school, until the eighth grade, with kids from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds (in the early 1960s) without having a clue that various groups were locked in power struggles with each other, like the ones you see in the movies. Not even black folks (they were called negroes at the time), though admittedly, there were not a lot of black people in my bubble.

This was in spite of the fact these were politically incorrect times and we thought it normal to use words like dago, pollock, mick and the like. I didn't hear the n-word very often, but that was only because, as I mentioned above, I didn't have much contact with African-Americans. I had no idea, at the time, that this was because of segregation. The various Sisters of Charity that were in charge of my intellectual and moral development certainly made us aware of the civil rights movement. But that was something that was going on down South, wherever that was. That was about mean-spirited, narrow-minded rednecks that never got over having their butts kicked in the Civil war. President Kennedy and Martin Luther King were going to get that fixed. Then we would all be one big happy family, and did you know that George Washington Carver was a great scientist?

It was a very strong bubble. I remember, in the second grade, that when we got this new kid, the first black kid in our class, that we were fascinated by the novelty of it. He taught us to stick out our hands, palm up, and say, "Gimmie me five" and then you turn your palm to the ground and say, "On the n-word side." We loved it. It was almost as cool as the time Mrs. Barrett broke her dreaded yardstick (I had a lay teacher that year) over his ass and he shed not a single tear. Our hero!

In the summer of 1966, we moved from the inner city to the suburbs. As far as I know, it was primarily so my dad could be closer to work. If it was about "escaping the inner city," this was completely lost on me. I don't recall feeling like I had escaped from anything. But things sure were different.

We moved into what was probably the most humble section of a fairly affluent community and I had my last year of Catholic education, eighth grade; my parents couldn't afford to send me to a Catholic high school, and I was in the process of rejecting Catholicism anyway.

Ironically, it was a handful of prosperous little all-white suburbanites that introduced me to the societal upheaval that changed everything and has ever since simply been called the sixties. This was exciting stuff, we were going to change everything and save the world! I took to it like a duck to water. Fortunately, I had no access to recreational pharmaceuticals. Nobody under the age of 18 should, 25 would be better. I never cared much for alcohol, or cigarettes for that matter, which were available. Drugs were just starting to trickle down to the high school level, in my world at least, towards the end of my sentence there. But that's a subject for another post, and it will be.

Two quick items that have virtually nothing to do with this post but are vitally important. One: Yes I graduated, smart ass. As a  matter of fact, I also have 39 officially certified college credits. Also, in case I should drop dead before I get around to expounding on the secret of life, here it is.

The secret of life: So-called real life is just high school with money.

Anyways...somebody tipped over the melting pot and set the world on fire. Some of it was for the good, but a good deal of it wasn't. We've definitely got ourselves a mosaic now buddy.

To be continued...

Have an OK day.                                                                                      

©Mark Mehlmauer 2015



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Republicrats v. Depublicans, Part Deux

The leader of the most transparent administration in American history has stepped up to the teleprompter once more. Demonstrating that when our way of life is menaced, even by our largest trading partner, Mr. Obama is prepared to act swiftly to protect us from the crafty, conniving Canucks. This is why it only took him seven years to rule that we're not about to let 'em build a pipeline to transport their nasty, tar sands-derived oil to refineries on the Gulf Coast.

Mr. O. made this courageous decision in spite of the fact the State Department has concluded that the pipeline will have no effect on global warming, one way or another because, one way or another, this oil has and will continue to be extracted, shipped and refined by somebody. His decision will ensure that boom times will continue for anyone involved in transporting oil via rail even though pipelines are proven to be more efficient, and considerably safer. He will not be swayed in spite of the fact constructing the pipeline would've generated a bunch of construction jobs, the exact number of which depends on whom you choose to believe. Anyway, as he has pointed out, these jobs would only last for a couple of years, though I must admit that the construction workers I know would be willing to trade a non-essential body part for a couple of years of well-paying, guaranteed work. As a matter of fact, I personally know of several citizens of Flyoverland who would be willing to sell one of their kidneys if it were legal...

...Which baffles me because the official unemployment rate is down again and many economists think that a 5% unemployment rate, allowing for all the folks in the process of trading a great job for an even better one, effectively constitutes full employment. I must have too many friends in low places.

The point is that despite the fact we Americans overwhelmingly support the building of the pipeline in poll after poll, Mr. Obama, once again is not afraid to ignore us, to save us from ourselves. He has courageously decided that we will not inflict Mother Earth with this particular 1,200 miles of pipeline even though we are already continuously expanding the 2,500,000 miles of pipes running under our feet. Now he has street cred he can use at the upcoming twenty-first meeting of the United Nations Climate Change Conference. Unlike the first twenty conferences, the world has a chance at reaching a workable consensus this time because China, that generates more carbon dioxide than the USA and Canada put together, recently promised that although the numbers will keep rising, they will peak soon and then start going down -- by 2030 at the latest. Barry made Jinping pinkie swear.

Meanwhile...

The Republicrats, the party of small government, continues their bipartisan alliance with Big sugar, and Big Gubmint Depublicans.

The Gubmint began subsidizing the American sugar industry in 1934, a temporary measure to aid farmers in the midst of the Great Depression. The price supports, quotas, and loans enjoyed by the industry, that the GAO says costs us almost $2,000,000,000 dollars a year, are alive and well 81 years later. Congress, demonstrating that they're capable of bipartisan cooperation when it's important -- or when it's needed to buy votes -- remains committed. For example, Marco Rubio, the Florida Republicrat senator running for president (alleged Rightie) and Al Frankin (proud Leftie, a Depublican of Saturday Night Live fame, that somehow became a senator from Minnesota) stand united to protect the sugar interests in their respective states. Which means that if you live in the USA, you're paying at least twice as much for sugar as the rest of the world. One of the rationalizations offered for this program is that it protects American jobs, and it does -- as long as the jobs are in the sugar industry. Unfortunately, the U.S. Dept. of Commerce estimates that every job protected in the sugar business results in three jobs lost in the candy business.

Egads! exclaims the gentlereader, how is this possible? Information Costs.

"The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups."  Henry Hazlitt

When the phrase information costs is used by an economist, it refers to the fact that a given weasel, or group of weasels, can gain an unfair advantage in the market because while the advantage may be huge for them, it often goes unnoticed by the market as a whole. This is because we must choose our battles carefully since it's impossible to win them all.

The market is us. Or rather, the market is us, interacting with -- us. Filthy rich, desperately poor, or somewhere in between -- we all make choices, from moment to moment. Which burger joint should I go to? Who should I marry? How much will I pay for sugar? Who should I vote for? We choose based on available information.

The good news is that we're living in the dawn of the Information age. The bad news is we're living in the dawn of the Information Age.

Time is the cost of information.

Having an actual life, a given gentlereader may be too damn busy to know, or care, how economists define the term information costs. Having an actual life, a given gentlereader may be too damn busy to know, or care, that sugar costs too much -- as long as it doesn't cost enough to matter to a given gentlereader.

Step One.    The weasels donate some of the money you pay them to politicians.
Step Two.    The politicians use the money to buy your vote and get elected and/or stay elected.
Step Three.  The politicians pass laws that help the weasels maximize their profits.

Repeat.

Move along, move along --  nothing to see here but pillars of the community protecting American jobs.

Or, more succinctly:

The weasels make a killing by gently extracting a small amount of your money and giving some of it to politicians to buy your vote with your money.

Have an OK day.                                                                                      

©Mark Mehlmauer 2015



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Dude...

This post is addressed to a young man that recently turned 15. I and the other grups in your life have been rendered stunned and slack-jawed. How is this possible? How is it possible that my first grandkid, a boy that was born just a few months ago, will be driving in another year and our worries and anxieties are about to become worries and anxieties squared?

The first bit of unsolicited advice, the subject of this post (be forewarned, there will be more) I would offer you is hidden in what I just wrote. Unless you're the type of person that can create a new life and then walk away and leave the heavy lifting to others (and you're not) once you make a life, or even just become responsible for one, there's no going back.

You will be, on the best days, at least mildly obsessed with this kid until the day you die. There will be a limited (if you're lucky) amount of days when it feels like you've had your heart ripped out of your chest without the benefit of an anesthetic.

Moral considerations aside, at least for the moment, the technology for preventing unintentional impregnation is available at just about any convenience store. There's a morning after pill available at most drug stores in the event that passion overrides rational choice, as your DNA hopes it will. I know that acknowledging that a huge, honking factor in any world-class romance/hormone saturated world-class case of the hots, particularly among the newly fecund -- your DNA's determination to replicate at any cost -- is a world-class buzzkill. It's also settled science, ignore it at your own peril. The bottom line is that you can't escape biology, and at this point in your life, your actions are just as likely to be determined by what mother nature wants as they are to be the rational choices you need to make to avoid having to decide what your take is on abortion. While I'm at it can I get a shout out for STDs! Nature's own all-natural souvenirs of ill-considered fornication.

Please be careful. Your DNA has an unfair advantage that makes anything the New England Patriots can dream up seem pathetic in comparison. You may have heard that the human brain is not fully mature until a given human is about 25 or so, more of that settled science stuff. More importantly, the last area of your little gray cells to reach full maturity is the prefrontal cortex, the part that you make (hopefully) rational decisions with. You're gonna' be obsessed with sex -- be it just lust, a need to nest, or something in between -- for several years before the "smart" part of your brain catches up.

It gets worse.

You are part of a culture that has gone from a fairly rigid, conservative, sexually repressive view of the subject in question to an if it feels good do it, sexually drenched culture in a very short time. While you were born into the later culture and take it for granted, there are all sorts of grups out there that have lived through some version of both and feel as though the baby got tossed out with the bathwater. And though we've lost our consensus we have to share the planet with cultures that advocate standards that we consider to be hopelessly primitive; they think we embody the morals of the infamous dwellers of Sodom and Gomorrah. What a mess.

Before I continue I must deal with some housekeeping. If any of my tens of readers are annoyed by a post written specifically for a kid young man who is very important to me, sorry, but it's partially your fault. If you did a better job of promoting this blog and growing my audience, I would have to worry about alienating my huge following, my advertisers, and my publisher. Unfortunately, I don't have this problem. so I can write what I please.

Also, you've no doubt noticed the word grups in my second sentence. This ain't a typo it's just me and my love of invented words again. I vaguely remember an episode of the original Star Trek TV show in which the kids on some distant planet fear growing up because you turn into a grup -- which turns out to be a grown up -- and grups kill callowyutes (kids). Oh, and callowyutes has nothing to do with Star Trek, it's what happens when the word yutes (youths), from the movie My Cousin Vinnie, has a chance to marinate for a few years in the three pounds of neural cells that live at the top of my body.

And now, back to our show.

There's another major reason to avoid unintentional impregnation, the potential for dramatically negative effects on the kid. Multiple reputable studies by multiple reputable social scientists and the organizations they work for (and common sense...) have drawn the same conclusion: The best way to ensure that your kid grows up to be successful and well-adjusted is to raise them in one of those boring old traditional mom and dad marriages.

Now, this doesn't mean that a kid from a non-traditional relationship can't also grow up to be successful and well adjusted. This is a damn good thing because it's estimated by the Pew Research Center that currently slightly less than half of the kids in the USA are growing up in an Ozzie and Harriet (look it up) sort of household. There isn't actually an Ancient Chinese Curse (but there should be) that goes: May you live in interesting times.

I would posit that the most important moral and ethical consideration here is not whether or not you fornicate, though if you choose to I highly recommend fornicating with someone(s) you're at least deeply in like with, but that's another post. What's most important is that you avoid replicating your DNA with little or no thought as to what sort of quality of life Dude Jr. is going to have.

Have an OK day.



[P.S. Gentlereaders, I've experimented and will continue to experiment with various formats, column lengths, and the like. While my primary motivation was/is developing my writing style, I've always given (minimal) consideration to what I thought a potential publisher and/or advertiser might want to see. 

One of the reasons I don't run ads on my website anymore is the fact I've decided to just let the column happen and go where it (and Marie-Louise) wishes it to go. 

If there are some readers out there that think my shtuff is worth sharing and/or worth a buck or three, fine. If not, so be it.]


©2015 Mark Mehlmauer   (The Flyoverland Crank)

If you're reading this on my website (there are tons of older columns, a glossary, and other shtuff there) and if you wish to react (way cooler than liking) or share -- please scroll down.
                                                                                    

This Is Embarrassing...

This is a free bonus post. You will not be charged extra.

It looks as if the fact that I accidentally rendered what should've been this weeks post into Tralfamadorian is just the tip of an iceberg of issues. Having spent the better part of last week as a guest of the Tralfamadorians has caused even more problems than I realized.

The guys assured me that their excellent, high speed, WiFi connection was totally secure and that I should feel free to use it and the Chromebook they loaned me to do anything that I would be comfortable doing in my highly fortified lair here in the Ohio mountains.

But now I've got cascading problems because everything I did on their ship was rendered in to Tralfamadorian and I sent out some emails, among other things, written in a language that is used by only a handful of secret scholars that work for the actual powers that be on this planet and the resulting mess is much worse than I realized.

Also, the post in question was a collection of short subjects but I can only remember one of them. You see the Tralfamadorians have, what they claim, is a much more sophisticated version of a Neuralizer, the device the Men In Black used in the movies of the same name to erase memories of people's encounters with the MIB.

I was assured, by no less a person than the Braylyn him or her (it's complicated) self that only stuff they considered to be classified would be blocked out and that any side effects would be negligible. Well, I'm here to tell you, I'm having all sorts of memory issues and as to other side effects, well, don't get me started.

I was left with a customer service number to call in case of problems but when I call the phone is answered by what I can only assume is someone from Tralfamadore's equivalent of a third world Asain country. They speak a language that sounds like squeaks and whistles to my ear and the only thing I can make out is an occasional, "Hello, my name is Sally."

The only topic I can remember is that I wanted to recommend Scott Adam's blog to my tens of gentlereaders.

Now, pointing my limited readership to the blog of one of the world's most successful cartoonists (he's the guy behind Dilbert if you didn't know) might not be the best possible marketing move on my part. I mean, being a successful cartoonist with a strip that's literally published all over the world ought to be enough for anybody.

But no, he also publishes books and writes an interesting blog. But as I clearly state under my Welcome Who Is This Guy Anyway tab, my goal is to provide enlightened infotainment to my gentlereaders. Mr. Adams offers the best explanation I know of for the success of the Donalds current reality TV project, The Republicrat Primary Show

Scott Adams, a trained hypnotist, and both a student and master practitioner of what Dale Carnegie called how to make friends and influence people, uses the Donalds rise to explain and illustrate how to sway the masses primarily via emotional manipulation.

He even provides his readers with the titles of the books that can serve as textbooks if you wish to put your own home study course together.

At this point, I could easily generate several paragraphs, and I think I did, giving you my take on Mr. Adams take but since he does it so well it would be like putting legs on a snake. Instead, permit me to take a shortcut around that potential mountain of bonkercockie and arrive in Bottomlineburgh having saved us both some time and trouble.

As you're probably aware, it's settled science to state that we homo sapiens react to sensory input, of any sort, gut first brain later. This, as far as I know, is my own term, and it's also a deliberate, vast oversimplification on my part that reduces the results of multiple fields of study to a catchphrase.

I'm not embarrassed to go even farther and reduce a catchphrase to an acronym, GFBL. A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do in the service of his gentlereaders.

GFBL simply refers to the fact that, on the whole, we react emotionally, instinctually, physically, intuitively, automatically, etc. (this is a measurable phenomenon) before we (hopefully) react rationally and logically.

Mr. Adam's thesis is that the Donald, as well as no shortage of other folks, deliberately employ techniques that take advantage of this knowledge. The only defense we have is to know how it's done and who is doing it. I will be exploring the subject in future posts but Dilbert's creator can easily explain the Donald to you in the meantime.

Have an OK day.


[P.S. Gentlereaders, for 25¢ a week, no, seriously, for 25¢ a week you can become a Patron of this weekly column and help to prevent an old crank from running the streets at night in search of cheap thrills and ill-gotten gains.

If there are some readers out there that think my shtuff is worth a buck or three a month, color me honored, and grateful. Regardless, if you like it, could you please share it? There are buttons at the end of every column.]


©2015 Mark Mehlmauer   (The Flyoverland Crank)

If you're reading this on my website (where there are tons of older columns, a glossary, and other goodies) and if you wish to react (way cooler than liking) -- please scroll down.

The Missing Chapter

I just pulled up this week's post for FRBP (final review before publishing) and discovered it was written in what I at first thought was a foreign language. While trying to make sense of this development, I suddenly went into flashback mode. I mean, I think it was flashback mode, It was my first flashback. It was just like the ones on TV.

There I was, buzzing around the planet in a UFO, I had been abducted by aliens, cool. It all came back to me in a rush of disjointed images. I'll detail my experiences in a future post, but the bottom line, for now, is that the only probing I experienced was an extended interview by an academic from the planet Tralfamidore. We ate warm, homemade, chewy chocolate brownies, swirled with peanut butter, and washed 'em down with ice cold whole milk.

Also, they loaned me a Chromebook, at my request, so I could work on the post you should be reading instead of the one you are. The problem with that idea was that I didn't realize that the empathy beam I'd been exposed to when I went through quarantine would result in my composing in Tralfamidorian without even realizing it.

So now I'm sitting here with a glass of flat Asti Spumante and trying to work with a Tralfamidorian to English translation app that I got for free from Cnet that needs a lot of work. I'm never gonna' get the translation done in time to hit my deadline so I'm posting the third chapter of my novel, it's all I've got on hand.

MEMco, our parent company, mandates a just in time inventory system. 

Update: 11.30.17

As part of an ongoing project that involves rereading, updating and tweaking my accumulated columns it was discovered that the chapter of my novel referenced above had vanished and that the three paragraphs above had turned black, blue, and red. These are the colors of the flag of the planet Tralfamadore.

I've filed a complaint with the various and sundry relevant agencies of the Tralfamadorian government to try and find out if someone from Tralfamadore is responsible for this and why it happened.

Unfortunately, for me at least, Tralfamadore long ago evolved into a world where all wants and needs are effortlessly met via technologies we Earthlings can only dream of.

In short order this utopia became quite boring, rather like I picture Heaven to be. I think this is why our literature, sacred and profane, is chock full of angels. Angels are bored citizens of Heaven looking for something to do.

Anyway, Tralfamadore solved this problem by making everyone on the planet a bureaucrat in good standing of any government agency they please with the right to switch jobs whenever they please so they don't get bored again.

Tralfamadore is a planet of bureauons that deliberately screw with each others lives for something to do. Sounds counterintuitive I know, but who are we to judge never having had to suffer life in a genuine utopia?

Long story short, whether or not I ever get an answer, or if I do that It'll make any sense, is a crapshoot at best.

Have an OK day.


[P.S. Gentlereaders, for 25¢ a week, no, seriously, for 25¢ a week you can become a Patron of this weekly column and help to prevent an old crank from running the streets at night in search of cheap thrills and ill-gotten gains.

If there are some readers out there that think my shtuff is worth a buck or three a month, color me honored, and grateful. Regardless, if you like it, could you please share it? There are buttons at the end of every column.]


©2015/2017 Mark Mehlmauer   (The Flyoverland Crank)

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I'm an Unrepentant Wild Eyed Free Marketeer

In spite of the fact meteorologists have access to plenty of data and no shortage of hi-tech tools they are regularly wrong. Everyone knows why, variables.

If a butterfly flaps its wings in... well, you know the rest. We're pretty good at predicting the weather one to three days out, but beyond that, the farther out you go the more butterflies you have to keep an eye on. If one of Mothra's smaller relatives flies through even a short-term forecast, you're screwed

Economists have the same problem to deal with, variables. They build computer models designed to predict where the economy is headed. Or, they try and predict what might happen if this or that policy is implemented.

Now, like it or not, you're part of an ever-expanding, ever interconnecting global economy. There are roughly 7.1 billion souls on this planet trying to get the most bang for their Bucks, Euros, Rubles and the like -- 24/7/365. That's an awful lot of folks and potential spending decisions to account for.

The Federal Reserve System of the United States of America, where they pull the levers and adjust the dials, never issued a bulletin prior to the Great Recession warning that the economy was about to crash. Turns out that selling houses to millions of people that can't afford them can get ugly, and fast.

Who Knew?

It gets worse. The study of economics is the study of macroeconomics and microeconomics; the big picture as opposed to the local, independently owned, car repair facility that recently ripped me off...

Well Duh! exclaims a gentlereader, everyone knows that!

Settle down, I'm working here! No, everyone doesn't know that, they're busy leading busy/crazy/hectic lives and hoping that whose ever job it is to figure out the best way to keep the economy on track has a clue, but that's not my point.

What I was going to say was that since these divisions are two sides of the same coin, this introduces another layer of complexity. Also, if you happened to stumble into the bar where your local economists like to hang out after work, the arguments that are most likely to lead to a brawl are about macroeconomic issues.

The study of microeconomics has generated a good deal of consensus. Macroeconomics, on the other hand, has not -- and probably never will.

There are two reasons for this: Economists with radically different ways of viewing how the world works, proposing theories from radically different starting points, that's the first one.

The other is that a theoretically objective, unbiased professional can't set up an experimental economy in a laboratory and start tinkering to see what happens. Like meteorologists, they must rely on computer modeling and, well...please refer to paragraph two.

So...

Though major paradigm shifts in hard science can turn a given field of study on its head, these are, to put it mildly, few and far between. A chemistry major may show up for class on some random day and be startled to find that her favorite (married) professor has turned his back on academia and accepted a lucrative job offer from DuPont because his grad student girlfriend is pregnant and now there are doctors and lawyers to be paid.

However, she's highly unlikely to discover that the professor's replacement wants her to forget about all this atoms and molecules drivel and instead begin studying the basic principles of magic and alchemy.

On the other hand...

The next time she shows up for what's turned out to be her least favorite elective, macroeconomics, which was being taught by the newly impregnated grad student who's on leave due to medical and legal problems -- it wouldn't be particularly shocking if the new professor announced that although she will gracefully continue to teach university approved mainstream Macroeconomics 101, she's a communist and frankly thinks it's a bunch of bonkercockie.

But you can trust her professionalism and objectivity.


Meanwhile, off campus...

The market -- free, sorta free, heavily regulated, and/or all of the above -- continues to (seemingly) perform miracles on a daily basis This is true in spite of the obvious fact it's not perfect, it will never lead to utopia -- and no one's actually in charge.

How? 7.1 billion souls doing what needs to be done to survive, and when possible, with a little style.

Adam Smith explained the who/what/when/where/why (coincidentally) the same year America was born, but all he did (besides inventing modern economics) was formally codify what had been going on since Og (master spear maker, lousy hunter) made a deal with Ug (master hunter, lousy spear maker).


Og and Ug accidentally invented free trade. By specializing in what they were good at instead of trying to do everything themselves, both improved their lives exponentially. The market they created was self-regulating -- as long as they both played it straight.

If Og's Spears and Stuff dealt in sharp, durable spears and Ug's Meats and Things fulfilled their pledge to trade in only fresh, healthy meat it was a win-win. Og was an idealistic socialist and thought Ug was a mean-spirited, selfish libertarian. Ug was a rugged individualist who thought Og was a hopelessly naive dork. So what?

It gets better.

Both Og and Ug started trading with other specialists and free trade went viral. Since many people were good at the same things, businesses had to find a way to lure customers into their cave instead of the other guys. Competition was born and it also went viral.

Only the specialists that provided the best service or products survived, the rest were driven out of business and had to find another specialty. The customer wins and the failed specialists drive innovation by specializing in something else, occasionally something that nobody else had thought of.

The innovators occasionally made a cave full of money, occasionally changed the world. A few of the winners retired, moved to a larger cave with a great view and doted on their grandkids. The rest prepared to fight off the inevitable competition.

Wait a sec', Self-regulating?

Yup. Think about it. Two grocery stores at opposite ends of a small town are locked in competition. Both seek to offer consumers the ideal mix of price and service, the customers will unsentimentally decide on the winner, the loser will go out of business.

Or, the loser (necessity is a mother) will come up with a new angle and like the fake wrestler in a fake wrestling match, who clearly should be dead, will rise from the canvas and secure victory. Or maybe just become a laundromat with a bar where you can get loaded and meet chicks/dudes.

Ah ha! But then the survivor will have stumbled into a monopoly and that's why we need the gubmint or even The Gubmint to step in, The Gubmint has tons of economists on the payroll, The Gubmint...

...Needs to manage the safety net, make sure no one's getting cheated, enforce contracts and property rights, and lock up or kill the bad guys. (PERIOD)

Have an OK day.


[P.S. Gentlereaders, for 25¢ a week, no, seriously, for 25¢ a week you can become a Patron of this weekly column and help to prevent an old crank from running the streets at night in search of cheap thrills and ill-gotten gains.

If there are some readers out there that think my shtuff is worth a buck or three a month, color me honored, and grateful. Regardless, if you like it, could you please share it? There are buttons at the end of every column.]


©2015 Mark Mehlmauer   (The Flyoverland Crank)

If you're reading this on my website (where there are tons of older columns, a glossary, and other goodies) and if you wish to react (way cooler than liking) -- please scroll down.

Sunday

Hey...I like hey, when it's used as a social convention I mean. It's particularly handy at work. First pass: Howyadooin? Get that over with as best you can. Howyadooin requires a thousand words, no, a short book, but I'm in a hurry.

Next, and subsequent passes: Hey. Verbally punctuate and shape it any way you please. Hey. Hey! Heeey.... A very handy word. One syllable social lubrication. But I am in a hurry, as I said. I just began with hey, for no particular reason... and well..., well anyway, I'm back now.

The reason I'm in a hurry is that I've just decided that the post that I had prepared will not be available until Sunday. There's a whole bunch of mostly boring reasons for this, as well as what follows.

Starting this Sunday, Sunday is my official day to post. In addition to the boring reasons referenced above, it's been suggested to me by someone I trust, that the sort of stuff I write about and the way I write it goes well with Sunday morning, coffee and bagels, the Sunday paper... I know you can feel it., smell it.

Well, I do anyway and that's why I'm cranking this out (relatively speaking) and I'm going to post it in just a second (I'm a relatively slow writer) to meet a self-imposed deadline that's important to me.

And...

I'll write something every day between now and Sunday just to see what happens and as a peace offering if you get into this before I have a chance to beef it up, and you're disappointed.



Wednesday afternoon: Define (some of) Your Terms, Sir

Bonkercockie -- I stumbled on this word while wandering around the web and it was love at first sight. I didn't care what the definition might turn out to be. As it turns out the creator was easily located via googling, and the definition is a flexible one. I like to use it in place of B.S. because that feels obvious and natural to me, but the inventor uses it in other ways as well.

Hooplehead -- Often credited to the creator of the best TV show ever made, Deadwood, it looks as though the word was abroad in the world long before David Milch (sort of) popularized it. While my research indicates the definition is noncontroversial (fool, dope, hick etc. -- as seems obvious) the etymology is somewhat vague.

Gentlereader --  A somewhat archaic term that is actually two words I like to combine into one. It dates to Victorian times and is a device an author uses to directly address a reader. I combine the words just because I like the look and feel of the result.

I think we should all strive to be gentlepersons, and this will the subject of an eventual post. I always write with an imaginary gentlereader looking over one shoulder and my muse over the other. From my perspective, it's a way of saying thanks for taking a few minutes from your life to bother reading what I have to say.


Thursday Morning -- Nuns

When I was a kid my worldview was shaped by nuns. I'm an old dude so this means that I'm talking about an era when nuns still had hair on their chests and were proud of it.

I didn't care much for nuns at the time, and even though my feelings have changed somewhat, I have no doubt that one or two of the good sisters I spent nine months out of the year with, for eight years running, were at least mildly psychotic.

Fortunately, one or two were probably saints. Most would probably be less than pleased that I grew up to be agnostic. I say most because I'll betcha a bottle-a-pop that at least one of those bizarrely dressed women was secretly agnostic.

The reason my feelings have changed is that from my current perspective, that of an adult (more or less), I can now appreciate that as a group, they were an invaluable part of my life, even the nuttier ones.

They were part of a culture that believed (as I still believe) that kids were adorable little infidels in need of civilizing. Some handed out corporal punishment, as did some parents, too frequently. Some, like some parents, not enough. But you knew where you stood and you knew what the rules were.

They had the temerity to believe that a few thousand years of Western Civilization, warts and all, had come up with a system of morality, ethics, politics -- even common courtesy -- that worked and was one of the many reasons we callowutes were damn lucky to be able to take the USA for granted.

Finally, though they were members in good standing of an often hidebound institution, they, the ones that taught me at least (from '59 to '67), had no fear of discussing the "real" world and how it worked -- I believe they called it Social Studies. They also were strong supporters of the civil rights struggle and made it clear that I better be as well.

But for the record, by the time I reached ninth grade and switched to the public school system because my parents couldn't afford to send me to a Catholic high school, I no longer believed there was a place called Limbo.


Friday Morning -- Billary

This is the last installment of this transitional post, the transition from publishing on Wednesdays to publishing on Sundays. I can write publishing with a straight face because the button that you click on to post your post via Blogger is labeled Publish.

And no, I didn't stay home from work and life yesterday to watch Billary testifying, nor did I stay up all night to watch a recording of it of some sort. I checked in yesterday from time to time.

I began my day today in the usual fashion -- with a large cup of coffee and the perusal of multiple websites, a carefully crafted collection of key (Aw geez, there he goes again) websites designed to provide me with a snapshot of what's going on. I do this every morning, seven days a week, and it takes about an hour and a half.

Some folks might find this appalling, perhaps even mildly disturbing. I could easily justify the practice by claiming that I do it because I'm a columnist and it's part of the job considering the nature of my writing, and that would be partially true.

However, I would be doing this even if I were incapable of generating a single intelligible sentence. In my defense, the process includes comic strips. Also, an hour and a half is the absolute limit because my brain starts melting at that point so it's time to push away from the desk and return the coffee I've been renting back to mother nature. But that's not what I want to talk about.

Billary's Benghazi bonkercockie is what I want to talk about, but barely briefly. Turns out that Billary sent an email to Chelsea (estimated net worth, $15,000,000. I wonder how she's managed that?) -- 45 minutes after issuing a statement blaming mobs that went nuts over the famous YouTube video for the murder of some of her fellow Americans -- clearly stating that an "Al Qaeda-like group" was responsible for the murders. There are other emails and records that name the specific group, Ansar al-Sharia, and state that the attack was a carefully planned terrorist operation.

Billary and the Obama administration, the folks that assured us they had taken care of this Al Qaeda thing, spent the next couple of weeks sticking to the video story, and then when they couldn't anymore, blamed, and continue to blame, the attempted coverup mistake on the chaos and confusion surrounding the incident.

Mr. O. was re-elected a few months later. Billary, confronted with the facts stated above, stuck with the chaos and confusion defense. The New York Times website's story about the hearing this morning was headlined Four People Died, Clinton lied Benghazi Engages Clinton in Tense Session.

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman..."
"Yup, yup, yup, it was a vast right-wing conspiracy!"

Have an OK day.


[P.S. Gentlereaders, for 25¢ a week, no, seriously, for 25¢ a week you can become a Patron of this weekly column and help to prevent an old crank from running the streets at night in search of cheap thrills and ill-gotten gains.

If there are some readers out there that think my shtuff is worth a buck or three a month, color me honored, and grateful. Regardless, if you like it, could you please share it? There are buttons at the end of every column.]


©2015 Mark Mehlmauer   (The Flyoverland Crank)

If you're reading this on my website (where there are tons of older columns, a glossary, and other goodies) and if you wish to react (way cooler than liking) -- please scroll 

Just the Facts -or- Ohio and Weed

"Just the facts, Ma'am." The Information Age is clearly upon us. Never have so many had such easy access to so much information. Now that so many of us have ready access to the cold, hard facts of a given matter we are much more likely to form our opinions and policies, in the public as well as well as private spheres, from documented reality and not our personal prejudices and sticky, convoluted emotions.

The paragraph above is 99.9% unadulterated bonkercockie.

The Information Age is wonderful for weirdos like me. I'm thinking of starting a narrowly focused support group for dilettantes and current events junkies that have no interest in celebrity journalism. Keep an eye out for our micro-niche website.

Also, the internet can be a Godsend to anyone in need of the cold, hard facts necessary to deal with cold, hard objects or processes. For example, recalcitrant lawnmowers, or, how to make sunny side up eggs without breaking the yolks long before the dipping toast is ready, and the yolks turn into cold, hard objects.

However...

The inexhaustible high-pressure firehose of information available in real time often as not leaves us on our butts, gasping for air. If highly respected, highly educated economists, after 20 years or more of formal education can draw radically different conclusions as to what works best for the most, how are we mere mortals to decide?

If I want to purchase a particular product through Amazon and the reviews of previous purchasers are wildly contradictory, what should I do? My second example is even more complicated than it seems because I've strolled around the block often enough to know that something even most folks seem to agree on may lead me to conclude most folks are nuts.


This brings us to Weed and the Buckeye State. The good citizens of Ohio will shortly be voting on whether or not to end the prohibition of Cannabis. Sort of.

When the USA passed a constitutional amendment prohibiting the use of alcohol for consciousness altering purposes that occasionally lead to unconsciousness, it caused such a chaotic kerfuffle (somebody stop me) that it led to a capitalization. It wasn't an era of prohibition, it was the Prohibition Era. Ken Burns thought it worth a documentary.

Cannabis prohibition does and will continue to merit the attention of scholars, the media, The Gubmint etc, but it's not been Prohibition II.

 Mainstream Americans were not suddenly deprived of a socially acceptable (within limits) practice. White collar types have never been (in)famous for three joint lunches, (most) blue collar types for a quick joint and a beer after work before heading home for dinner with Marge and the kids. Dad must've worked hard today, look at him eat!

Though cannabis prohibition has needlessly trashed no shortage of our fellow citizens lives the worst damage has occurred south of the border, courtesy of those zany drug cartels that get so much press.

That's why cannabis prohibition has remained the law of the land for roughly a century in spite of the inherent difficulties involved in trying to stop folks from growing, selling and/or smoking a weed. But this is the Information Age, and having easy access to all that information enables us to repeal or amend goofy laws and get on with our lives -- after jacking everything up.

Several of the states have either effectively legalized weed or are working on it. The federal law that prohibits this remains in place. When it comes to laws The Gubmint (the Feds) trumps the gubmint (state and local). The folks currently in charge of The Gubmint are too busy screwing  up foreign policy and working hard to make sure we have a slow growth, politically correct economy to care about weed. But what if the next administration has different priorities?

In Ohio, ten groups of crony capitalists put up money to pay for a petition drive and bought themselves a motion that will appear on the ballot next month. The motion proposes that the state legalizes weed and helpfully supplies a slate of Rules&Regs for legal weed -- to be added to the state's constitution.

These Rules&Regs give the ten groups the exclusive right to grow the weed that will eventually be purchased by Ohio consumers. They're now paying for commercials to promote its passage. The commercials reassure the folks that a monopoly will not be created, that the ten authorized growers will compete with each other -- honest, we swear -- so that consumers will get the best possible prices.

They're technically correct. What they're proposing is a cartel, not a monopoly. Well, why not? We've certainly been well served by the world's most well-known cartel, OPEC.

The motion, if passed, will enshrine the right of these guys to be the only ones in Ohio to legally grow weed to sell, in the Ohio constitution. Citizens will be permitted to cultivate their own plants and maintain a stash as long as they don't exceed explicitly specified quantities -- and if they buy a $50 permit so the gubmint can keep an eye on them. The cronies will permit you to grow your own as long as you're not trying to compete with their non-monopoly.

The Ohio legislature, no doubt miffed that a group of would-be oligopolists is trying to have their oligopoly embedded the state's constitution, could've just passed a law that said weed is legal for everyone over 21, if you sell it you have to pay sales tax, and we're going to let the free market figure out the details. We can always step in later if the market messes it up.

Instead, they've placed their own measure on the ballot. This one forbids building a business monopoly into Ohio's constitution. Sounds good. Also, it gets them out of having to vote yes or no on weed. Unfortunately, it allows for placing motions on the ballot that would let voters decide that a given monopoly can become part of the constitution. Huh?

It gets worse. Both motions could pass. One that sets up a monopoly, and one that says you can't do that in Ohio -- except for when you can. Let the litigation begin!

But thanks to the fact we're living in the Information Age you now know what's up and it all makes perfect sense, right?

Have an OK day.


[P.S. Gentlereaders, for 25¢ a week, no, seriously, for 25¢ a week you can become a Patron of this weekly column and help to prevent an old crank from running the streets at night in search of cheap thrills and ill-gotten gains.

If there are some readers out there that think my shtuff is worth a buck or three a month, color me honored, and grateful. Regardless, if you like it, could you please share it? There are buttons at the end of every column.]


©2015 Mark Mehlmauer   (The Flyoverland Crank)

If you're reading this on my website (where there are tons of older columns, a glossary, and other goodies) and if you wish to react (way cooler than liking) -- please scroll