Why Old Men Cry (Part One)

  

Image by Stefan Keller from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now, haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

"Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their inability to give bad examples." -Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Dear Stickies and gentlereaders,

I am, officially speaking, a member of the (in?)famous Baby Boom generation, people born between 1946 and 1964. Have you ever wondered who decided on those dates? Or the dates that bracket the Ds.O.B. of other generations? 

I consulted the worldwide web of all knowledge and the very first hit returned revealed that the rumors aren't true. There is not an obscure department — buried so deeply in the Census Bureau and staffed by bureaucrats that are the otherwise unemployable relatives of powerful Senators and Congresspersons who rarely bother to actually come to work — where this sort of thing is decided. 

Pewtrusts.org: "...through a somewhat haphazard process a consensus slowly develops in the media and popular parlance." 

Are you aware that people born in the "early 2010s" aren't Zoomers, they're Generation Alpha? Have we started over? Why wasn't I told?

{Are you wondering what this has to do with why geezers cry?}   

That's easy. A fundamental tenet of my Overflowing Cistern hypothesis includes the age of the Geezer in question, more on that in a minute.   

I recently saw an interview in which Jordan Peterson (Boomer) was asked why he cries regularly, and in public, which reminded me of former Speaker of the House John Boehner (Boomer, Red Tribe) who was regularly attacked by members and supporters of both tribes for being a lacrimaniac. 

{What's a lacrimaniac?}   

Well, technically, there's no such word as best I can tell. 

{Ah, you're making up words again.}

But in my defense, lacrimation (the secretion of tears) is a word so it follows logically that... 

Anyway, I thought the responsible thing to do, before proposing my hypothesis, was to have the research department investigate if there might be a scientific consensus; does old dudes crying have anything to do with the physiology or psychology of old dudes?

Answer, no. There are myriad opinions floating around, but no consensus. The guys couldn't even find an unimpeachable meta-study that'll be debunked at a later date.  

Therefore, for your consideration, permit me to present the Overflowing Cistern hypothesis. 

A cistern, if you're unaware, is according to Wikipedia, "...a waterproof receptacle for holding liquids, usually water."

The word waterproof is important in that in this context refers to the fact that although there's a way for water (or tears) to get in it's supposed to stay there. 

{Permit me to cut to the chase to save us all some time, big boys don't cry, right? You're cistern thingy is an obvious metaphor. At some point, the cistern all the old dudes have funneled their tears into over the years starts overflowing, right? Next thing you know a given geezer is crying at both appropriate and inappropriate times, Bohener was famous for crying about all sorts of stuff and...}

Thanks for your help, Dana. Permit me to return a compliment you have paid me on occasion, you too have a keen eye for the obvious. However, there are devils lurking in the details. 

First of all, the reason this missive began with a fascinating and informative digression about where generational names and dates come from is because I came across this information when I was researching the three sub-generations of Boomers, a phenomenon neither widely known nor discussed.

These subdivisions are important to my Overflowing Cistern hypothesis and I was searching for the approximate date Sub-2 ended and Sub-3 took over.

{Hoo-boy. Here we go again.}

Remain calm, it's really quite simple. Sub-1s are the early Boomers, and were as much influenced by the previous two generations (the Greatest Generation, 1901-27, and the Silent one, 1928-45) as they are by Sub-2 and Sub-3 Boomers. 

{Fascinating.}

Right? I was trying to determine at what point during the rise of the Sub-2s (when Boomers started tossing out the tot with the Jacuzzi water) the big boys don't cry ethos morphed into the big boys should be more gentle, sensitive, and not hide their feelings ethos that the feminists convinced us would get us laid more often (which unfortunately turned out to be B.S.). 

{Oh my dog! you can't...}

That's a subject for an entirely different column I'm highly qualified to write because I confess I bought it -- hook, line, and sinker. But unfortunately, the rest of this column, for reasons not interesting enough to bother you with, will be published next week. Think of it as a cliffhanger, but in compensation... 

Update: as to the ongoing tempest in a teapot that is the Ohio legislature's stumble-bumbling-fumbling attempt to legalize weed, Ohio's five-foot-tall governor is upset.

While our state senate quickly passed a law overriding the citizen's initiative we morons recently voted for (yeah, they can do that) the house (and senate) left town to begin a month-long break for Christmas without taking any action. 

Fun facts: Our legislators have to scrape by on only $70,000 a year, but "leadership" positions pay a little better. According to ZipRecruiter, the average Ohio working stiff makes $47,000 a year. As for what the mean wage is, which I would guess is closer to 40k based on my 38 years of living here in paradise, I couldn't find it on the worldwide web of all knowledge. 

Also, according to Open the Books, Ohio has 164,821 state employees whose wages add up to $9,517,773,573.09 a year.

Anyways... It's occurred to the governor (Mike DeWine, multi-millionaire and full-time politician since 1976) that since the initiative remains in effect till our betters fix it for us it's now legal to smoke weed in Ohio but there's no place to legally buy it so people will be risking their lives by buying it on the "black market" (and not paying the 10% sin tax, which Mr. DeWine would prefer to be as much as 18%).

All over Ohio people who would never even dream of buying weed when it was illegal to smoke it for fear of paying the $100 fine if they got caught are roaming the streets in search of a connection. 

{You're making that up!}

Not the $100 fine part, that's actually all that happens. But I must also confess that our governor is at least 5 foot 6, a solid 140 pounds, and pretty sharp for a geezer pushing 80 and who doesn't cry, not in public anyway.

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Like, Wow!

A Random Randomnesses Column

Image by Terre Di Cannabis from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now, haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

“To inspire himself, he lit up a marijuana cigarette, excellent Land-O-Smiles brand.” -Philip K. Dick, from The Man in the High Castle

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),  

Like, wow. I've written several columns that use the now apparently ubiquitous discourse marker (aka a filler, filled pause, hesitation marker, planner, or crutch) like. 

For the record, I wish to point out that I was like, being sarcastic.

However, I've recently encountered the word here, there, and occasionally even over there, and spoken out loud and repeatedly, by seemingly intelligent and rational people. Given how rapidly f-bombs are becoming f-firecrackers I expect it's only a matter of time before I encounter a demure, genteel-looking woman of a certain age exclaim — like, FUCK!  — while rooting through her purse in search of her car keys.

{That's sexist and agist! You can't...}

According to Wikipedia, "Christopher Hitchens described the use of the word "like" as ..."a particularly prominent example of the 'Californianization of American youth-speak.'" 

Indeed. The Boomer legacy continues. 

The recent off-off-year election (that I wrote about not long ago) here in the Buckeye state went off without a hitch, unlike the inevitable cluster coitus next year's national election is already shaping up to be. The post-election hitches, unfortunately, are legion.

Let the litigation begin! continue! 

While weed is now legal in Ohio ya can't just show up at any of the existing outlets that already sell medicinal weed and cop some chronic. From the Akron-Beacon Journal: "The Division of Cannabis Control must first set rules on licensing, product standards, packaging and more." 

They have nine months to do so, so I figure it will be a year or so... maybe.

"The state can't dole out additional licenses for another two years." Enter the Social Equity Program.

"This aims to help business owners who are disproportionately affected by the enforcement of marijuana laws. That includes people who are disadvantaged based on their race, gender, ethnicity or economic status.

"The law reserves 40 cultivation licenses and 50 dispensary licenses for these operators and provides them with grants, loans, technical assistance, and reduced license and application fees. The Department of Development is tasked with setting specific rules for the program."

If I were a lawyer I'd be salivating. 

{What about the abortion rights amendment to the Ohio Constitution?}

Passed. 56.6% yea, 43.4% nay. 

Big BUT, there were already various and sundry related legal actions tied up in the courts — the infamous six weeks with no exceptions for minor problems like rape, incest, or the mother's health law for example — prior to the vote, and more are being filed even as I write. 

But in the meantime, the same law that was in effect before the current kerfuffle remains in effect. Abortion is legal with certain civilized restrictions (such as no partial-birth abortions). 

{Then why on Earth...}

On a possibly related note, statewide primary elections are just around the corner.

If two people with two last names get married, do their kids have four last names? I went a-googlin' and can confidently report that I have no clue. In my defense, neither does anyone else. 

As best I can tell, there are no legal restrictions. Like gender choice and pronouns, you can follow your heart. 

Perhaps this will serve as a wakeup call to all the hes, shes, and theys out there to think twice before saddling their spawn with bizarre first names, or even traditional ones with mangled spellings likely to lead to a lifetime of peer abuse, psych meds, and therapy. 

On a practical note, filling out a form when one's last name is something like Smith-Jones-von Pufendorf-Garcia is clearly potentially problematic.

{Congress needs to step up and do something about this!}

Don't hold your breath. Congress can't seem to deal with truly important issues, like whether or not we should get rid of daylight savings time or make it permanent. On the bright side, twice a year the endless controversy gives reporters and commentators something to write about on slow news days.

This just in... henceforth December 7th will not only be famous for being Mark and Ronnie's wedding anniversary, Aunt Brenda's birthday, and some other thing... Oh yeah, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Today it's legal to smoke weed in Ohio. 

Big BUT, a few days ago it occurred to our five-foot-tall governor that there was no place to actually buy recreational weed — well, at least no government-approved, licensed, inspected, all fees paid outlets —and he has sprung into action. 

At his behest, the State Senate passed a new law, on December 6th, to replace the ballot initiative the hoi polloi passed last month that, among several other things: 

Cuts back on the amount of weed adults can grow in the privacy of their homes, raises the sin tax from 10 to 15%, permits local jurisdictions to add 3% on top of that, and allows existing dispensaries selling medical weed to start selling to the public — 90 days after (and if) he signs the new bill, as long as they comply with the new Rules&Regs.  

{I smell a rat... wait, if he signs?}

That's the smell of a new strain called Ratso Rizzo, my priest stopped by this morning. 

Ohio also has a full-time House of Representatives who will consider the new bill next week and who knows what sort of mischief they might get up to. Cluster coitus is always possible in Columbus. Irregardless, I'll bet the current black market merchants of the Devil's Weed are partying. 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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The Buckeye State

Image by Rupert Kittinger-Sereinig from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny — the Stickies — to advise 'em now, haunt them after I'm deleted.

Trigger Warning: This column is rated SSC-65: Sexy Seasoned Citizens   

About 

Glossary 

Featuring {Dana}: Persistent auditory hallucination and charming literary device 

"The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it." -P.J. O'rourke 

Dear Stickies (and gentlereaders),

It occurred to me that it has been quite a while since I have written much, if anything, about my tired little town, one of many in a tired little valley that doesn't look like a valley.  

{Tired? A valley that doesn't look like one?}

As to tired, Dana, Hooterville is in the heart of the rustbelt, and despite heroic efforts to revive it and the valley in which it's located, it remains rather rusty overall.

As to the valley thing, if you found yourself passing through, particularly if you were a Yinzer (a native of Pittsburgh like me), you'd be unlikely to notice that you were technically in a valley. 

The 'Burgh is in a clearly defined, deep valley that conforms to the definition of a valley that I learned in geography class under the tutelage of Sister Mary McGillicuddy. I wonder if there's a commonly used word for a very shallow valley? 

Just a second, I'll be right back. 

Huh, according to Google/Generative AI (Generative AI is experimental. Info quality may vary.) there are a ton of names for shallow valleys including dingle, bunny, thrutch, etceterutch. My personal favorite is cwm, a Welsh word pronounced kuum. I caught a rabbit in the cwm, so we had a Welsh rabbit for dinner. 

And now that I think about it, isn't there a tiny town in West Virginia called Dingle Bunny?

{There's something really wrong with you, you know that, right?}

Living in the Rustbelt ain't all bad. For example, recently our three-burner stove--which I bought new down at the BestBuy 16 years ago, the one near damall?--which originally had four burners transformed, literally overnight, into a two-burner, both of which were clearly not long for this world. 

Not good, particularly given the current cash flow crunch here at Casa de Chaos. However, in short order, we secured a surprisingly decent one from the next tired town over for $100, and the old one vanished the next day.

{A hundred bucks! Vanished?}

 

As to the price... it's better not to ask any questions. Pay the money, load up the stove, say thanks, and get out of Dodge. As to vanished, we have a very dedicated and discrete group of voluntary recyclers in the area who are happy to deal with anything made of metal left out on the curb.

We once shoved a very large, very dead air conditioner out of a first-floor window and into the yard, intending to drag it to the curb the next day. In about an hour, a very polite, if somewhat disheveled gentleman knocked on the front door to inquire if we had made funeral arrangements yet for the dead appliance in question. 

He recycled it quickly and efficiently with our blessing and our thanks.

There's an off-year election coming up, (11/7),  in which the good citizens of the Buckeye State will decide if, going forward, weed, with the requisite sin tax and no shortage of silly Rules&Regs, will be recreationally legal, not just medically legal as it is now.

{Silly?}

Well, after all, it is a weed, and I'm led to believe it's not difficult to grow, particularly since instructions, advice, and equipment are easily acquired. My favorite caveat? You can legally grow your own, as long as you don't have more than six plants, 12 if there are at least two adults in the household that are 21 or older. 

After all, like tobacco, you're not allowed to use it till you're 21. However, it's still legal to join the military or star in a porno if you're at least 18.  

Also, possessing more than 2.5 ounces is illegal, but that's not silly. That's just Ohio trying to make sure that sin and state and local sales taxes are being collected, and that the shady-looking dude that hangs out in front of the 7-Eleven and his colleagues aren't dodging both sales and income taxes and underselling their legal competitors. 

This might seem odd given that the Republicrats, the party of small government, currently have an iron grip on most of our carefully gerrymandered state, but maintaining a full-time, two-house legislature, 24x7 x365 ain't cheap. Neither is maintaining numerous tired, tiny towns that all have their own government employees, school systems, police departments, zoning boards, etc. 

Having friends in low places, I could have weed delivered to my front door, with no delivery charge, by making a phone call. I haven't been a regular user in decades but I'm voting yes so that those who do choose to indulge can do so knowing the source of the product and know that nothing dangerous/crazy has been added to tweak its potency. 

There's another issue to vote on this year, a proposed constitutional amendment no less, that guarantees abortion rights to the women of Ohio. This, as you might imagine, has generated endless Sturm und Drang... all of it unnecessary. 

Long story short:

Roe v. Wade is overturned by the Supremes but Ohio already has a law in place restricting abortion (21 weeks and 6 days), a law the majority of its citizens support.

The masters of morality in control of the Ohio Legislature pass a law that limits abortions to the first six weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape or incest, that is promptly, and currently, blocked by an injunction. 

A ballot initiative, a broadly worded amendment (thus guaranteeing endless litigation if it passes) to amend the Ohio Constitution to include abortion rights is added to the ballot. 

Money is pouring in from outside Ohio by people and organizations on both sides of the issue to fund information/disinformation campaigns. 

Our 76-year-old, five-foot-tall governor (whose son is an Ohio Supreme Court justice) and his wife have released their own ad. They both look right into the camera and lie their bums off, stating that if the amendment passes partial-birth abortion will be legal in Ohio. 

They neglect to mention that there's a federal law in place that bans that barbaric procedure nationwide.   

{Ain't it cool that the German phrase Sturm und Drang sounds like what it means in English? Is Mike Dewine really five feet tall?}

Nah, I lied. Go Buckeyes!

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down to leave a comment, share my work, or access my golden oldies.   

I post links to my columns on both Facebook and the social media site formerly known as Twitter so you can love me, hate me, or lobby to have me canceled or publically flogged on either site. Cranky don't tweet (X-claim?).

The DEA

Your tax dollars at work

                                      Image by pasja1000 from Pixabay 

This is: A weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandkids — the Stickies — eventual selves to advise them and haunt them after they've become grups and/or I'm deleted.   

Warning: This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens — Perusal by kids, callowyutes, or grups may result in a debilitating intersectional meltdown.  

About

Glossary 

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlereader  

"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal" -Richard M. Nixon

Dear (eventual) Grandstickies and Great-Grandstickies (and Gentlereaders),

I thought I was well on my way to becoming an expert on the Mexican drug cartels until I was halfway through the latest season of Narcos: Mexico (Season 3) on Netflix when I found out there isn't going to be a fourth season.

I was hoping that I might be able to make a few bucks by passing myself off as a consultant to the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) and maybe get a small taste of some of their $3 billion (and change) budgeted bucks. 

The current season, historically speaking, ends in the late 1990s because according to one of its co-creators, Carlo Benard, the story of how we arrived at the situation Mexico now finds itself in has prevailed ever since. 

In an article in the Hollywood Reporter, Bernard is quoted as saying that "...stopping at the moment where we had delivered the world that we now live in today made sense, thematically and narratively.”

The "world that we now live in" is a world in which the cartels control as much as 40% of Mexican territory and profits from smuggling people across the border is a "billion-dollar business."

The war on drugs has been raging for 48 years. We pulled out of the Graveyard of Empires (Afghanistan) after only 20 futile years. 

The DEA was created in 1973 by President Richard Nixon by merging some existing government agencies together. Nowadays it employs over 10,000 people, and as mentioned, has an annual budget of over $3,000,000,000.

On their website you can "...report what appears to you as a possible violation of controlled substances laws and regulations." Given that the DEA considers the planet Earth its jurisdiction they must use a helluva algorithm.   

They also have a recently reopened museum you can visit the next time you find yourself in D.C. and are looking for something to visit besides the same old, same old tourist traps like the Lincoln Memorial.  

"After a two-year renovation, the all-new DEA museum is now open." It's free, open Tuesday thru Saturday from 10 to 4, and has its own website. The gift shop isn't open yet but they're working on it. 

{Five days a week from ten to four? You should try to get a job working there.} 

Nah, I'd have to live in the Swamp, Dana. If I were a consultant I'd only have to show up in D.C. once in a while and take a bureaucrat or two out for an overpriced but deductible lunch. 

A current exhibit at the museum features a Harley confiscated from the Hells Angels that demonstrates the importance of asset seizures to the law enforcement community in fighting crime.

From a Wikipedia entry: "In 2014 law enforcement took more property than burglars did from American citizens."

There's another Wikipedia entry about America's first national prohibition of a recreational pharmaceutical, "...a nationwide constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages from 1920 to 1933." 

In the section that describes the increase of various and sundry crimes across the board caused by the prohibition of alcohol, it mentions that the budget of the Bureau of Prohibition tripled in the course of the 1920s.  

Sound familiar? 

{So what are you trying to say? We should legalize all drugs, even the obviously dangerous and addictive ones?}

Nope. I'm saying we should decriminalize the use of all drugs like they did in Portugal — 20 years ago — where selling drugs is a criminal offense, but using them is an administrative offense. Drugs addicts are considered to be a public health problem, not criminals, and are dealt with accordingly. 

The experiment has been a hooge success.   

{Interesting article... But Mexico would still be a mess, and the cartel's best customers, us, would still be awash in hard drugs.}

Easy-peasy. All we have to do is invade Mexico. 

We can set them free, do something about violent crime rates (particularly femicide), get a much smaller southern border to deal with, and...

{We don't do that sort of thing anymore, we...}

And we can tell China that until they stop exporting precursor chemicals for the manufacture of fentanyl, methamphetamine, and the like to the Western Hemisphere we're going to ban all Chinese imports. 

{We don't do that sort of thing anymore either...and we'd have to start making all sorts of stuff ourselves.} 

Yeah, wouldn't that be awful?

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

 

P.S. Although it's legal to smoke marijuana in 36 states if a doctor prescribes it, 18 states have approved "recreational use," and the Apocolypse has yet to commence, the DEA ain't letting up on its effort to eradicate the Devil's weed. 

A weed that can easily be grown by drug lords — or grandma to treat her glaucoma and liven up things at the senior center.

A GAO report estimates that the DEA spent roughly $17,000,000 a year from 2015 to 2018 on its Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program (just try to get more recent numbers, I dare you). 

Bottom line? The DEO can't account for how all the money was spent or what the results were. "DEA officials said they are now working to address this issue, but they have not developed a plan with specific actions and time frames for completion."

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