Barry Dyngles

From Wikipedia: "The Texas Legislature meets in regular session on the second Tuesday in January of each odd-numbered year. The Texas Constitution limits the regular session to 140 calendar days."

Also: "As a sovereign country (2014), Texas would be the 12th largest economy in the world by GDP."

So, the 12th largest economy on the planet Earth, GDP $1.65 trillion bucks, which was a country for a minute before becoming one of the United States, is a state whose legislature only gets together for less than four months, every other year. The legislators are paid $7,200 bucks per year plus a per diem of $150 bucks a day when the legislature is in session. Not a very good way to make a living.

Texas is a very pleasant place to live, jobs are plentiful and Southern hospitality is alive and wellI. See, I lived there once, briefly. But it was long enough to discover that from May to September, no matter where you go in this state that seems to go on forever, it's hot enough to melt your brain. Otherwise, I'd be planning/hoping/scheming/praying to get my butt out of Ohio and parked in Tejas asap, rather than ensconced South of the Mason-Dixon, but still well north of Texas. The exact location must remain a secret. As you can well imagine, highly fortified secret mountain lairs are not only hard to find and keep secret, once the word gets out that someone is looking for one in the neighborhood, prices start going up.

Now, while Texas is a free market paradise compared to Ohio, which has a good deal to do with the vibrant state of its economy, the gubmint is not exactly short on rules and regulations. For example, lotteries are strictly forbidden -- except for the one run by the gubmint. Casinos are illegal -- except for the Kickapoo Lucky Eagle Casino operated by the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas, formerly known as the Texas Band of Traditional Kickapoo. The original band broke up when its frontman died from an overdose of Kickapoo Joy Juice.

Bingo and raffles are heavily regulated and restricted to non-profit organizations. You can bet on horsies (as my brother Mike would put it) running in circles. This is regulated by the state gubmint and has a democratic component to it as well. The voters in a given county must vote to approve a new race track.

And then we have game rooms, which feature machines remarkably similar to slot machines. They are legal only if they offer prizes that are worth less than five bucks, no cash permitted. However, the state legislature has not seen fit to update and/or clarify the relevant law in spite of the fact that there's a low-intensity war going on between entrepreneurs that open and operate very popular game rooms (that award cash prizes) and local law enforcement agencies. The operators are always on the lookout for novel legal justifications. Seems that they often reopen soon after being raided and the lawyers are making good money from all the lawsuits. I've been unable to discover if the legislature has not acted because the game rooms are popular and they wish to leave well enough alone and/or if the brief window of time they have to pass legislation causes them to prioritize any efforts to keep the citizens of Texas on the straight and narrow.

Wikipedia says that if Ohio was a country they would have the 25th largest economy on the planet, with a GDP of $526 billion bucks -- one-third the size of Texas. In Ohio, we who have the dubious advantage of a full-time legislature, have been spared the discomforts of gambling ambiguity. Our full-time legislature, whose members are paid $60,584 bucks per year, have seen to that. Like Texas, the gubmint has a lock on lotteries. As in Texas, we have horsies running in circles, a few casinos instead of just one, non-profit raffles and bingo. All heavily and carefully regulated.

We also have had game rooms. Unlike Texas, when these started popping up all over the place and employing various angles to get around modest prizes, no cash rules (to the delight of their patrons) our full-time legislators wasted no time in cranking out a law to erase any ambiguity and the hammer was brought down on the miscreants by local officials that stepped up to enforce the law. And get on the evening news.

Which brings us to the unfortunately named restaurant, Barry Dyngles Pub.

I've never been there though it's located not all that far from my secret lair. This fact doesn't imply either approval or disapproval. I've not been to many places of business, local or otherwise, and don't maintain a list of firms I've no intention of ever visiting. However, the establishment in question recently had what might be it's 15 minutes of fame. It ran a promotion, still does I assume, a game called, "The Queen of Hearts." It didn't invent the game, it can be purchased at businesses that supply such things to bingo halls and the like. I'll spare you the details other than to say that it has simple rules and a jackpot that can build up, over time, to a snifigant amount via the purchase of tickets, one dollar at a time. When the jackpot kept rolling over, and over, and reached $1.8 million before finally being won, it became a news story. The bottom line is that customers were coming out of the woodwork as the excitement ratcheted up. Success! More business than they could handle. Where we gonna' park all these cars? We're gonna' need help from the local cops! The sort of problems an entrepreneur dreams of having.

Wait a minute...is this even legal?

Yup. Turns out that if you pay for the supplies needed to run the game and don't make a dime off of it, the game that is, you're welcome to the money coming in from all those extra customers. A success story in the rustbelt! Even the gubmint got excited. They wasted no time in demonstrating their willingness to do whatever it takes to make Ohio the financial powerhouse it was before the collapse of the steel industry keep the citizens of the Buckeye State on the straight and narrow. Somehow, in spite of having four different entities keeping an eye on the four different forms of gambling allowed in Ohio (casinos, horse racing, charitable games and the Ohio lottery) nobody is officially in charge of making sure a local upscale barbecue joint ain't getting away with something.

Not to worry.

The state legislators ($60,584 yr.) that are members of the Joint Committee on Gaming and Wagering are looking into the matter. I think that the kerfuffle in question is best summed up by a quote from an article I found that was published by the paper of record of the Cambridge Ohio Micropolitan Statistical Area, population 40,876. I swear on my honor as a former cub scout, current blogger, your dilettante about town, and a man with 39 certifiable college credits that nothing in next paragraph is made up.

According to The Daily Jeffersonian, "The game has been deemed legal, though it is subject to regulation by the state's liquor control office" -- you can buy a beer at Barrys -- "inspector general and tax officials. County prosecutors also could pursue legal action, if they believe laws have been broken. Otherwise, there are no state requirements for the game."

Well, not yet.

Have an OK day.                                                                                  

©Mark Mehlmauer 2016


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Bigfeets

Image by Wolfgang Eckert from Pixabay

In a previous post, I used the phrase gut first, brain later. I explained that this was me vastly oversimplifying a concept accepted by mainstream science. We react emotionally and viscerally first, rationally (hopefully) later. Assuming you accept the validity of the theory of evolution, this makes perfect sense. If you don't, well... God bless us, everyone.

It's a typical day in the stone age. Og and the boys are out and about hunting. Marge and the girls are gathering -- and/or taking care of the kids, and/or doing the laundry, and/or cooking and cleaning, and/or attending a Rockerware party, and/or...

Now, Og and the boys are having a slow day and a friendly but animated argument has broken out about last nights rockball game. It started because Ug, who had won a bet with Og, began teasing Og about the fact that every time Og loses a rockball bet he rants about the poor quality of the officiating in the NRL.

They're walking through a wooded area, and not paying attention, when they stroll into a clearing and unexpectedly encounter a band of Bigfeets entering the clearing at the exact same moment from the opposite direction.

Bam, fight or flight time baby.

The homo sapiens adrenal glands shift into overdrive faster than the Billary can spin out a lie to explain why they _____ (insert your favorite scandal here). The Bigfeet's adrenal glands probably do the same. Well, that's assuming they have adrenal glands. For some reason, scientists have been unable to compile much in the way of reliable data on them.

Actually, there are only two facts that everyone seems to agree on. First, Bigfeets somehow emit a reality distortion field that has the curious effect of making any photographs or video footage of them appear as though they are at least a couple of hundred yards away. Also, the image captured always looks grainy, shaky and poorly lit.

Second, that they stink. It would seem that the latter feature would not serve them well, not now, or not when Fred and Barney roamed the Earth. As to the first, there's much controversy and speculation because it's hard to say with any certainty what the specific effects of the reality distortion field are on anything or anyone other than the technology mentioned above.

Meanwhile, back in the clearing...

The homo sapiens are having the exact same reaction they would've had upon suddenly and unexpectedly encountering a wooly mammoth with a tuskache or a brace of Jehovah Witnesses -- fight or flight.

But suppose their instinctual reaction had been to organize a nonprofit to raise money to fight tusk decay. Or suppose, upon encountering a band of bigfeet their instinctual reaction was to quickly but discretely dab a bit of cologne under each nostril, smile, and say something like, "Nice coat! I'll bet that thing keeps ya' warm! Say, if you guys are up for a bit of species to species interaction there's a watering hole at the terminus of that path over there where we can get a cold one. First round's on us!"

We (homo sapiens) might not exist, and this blog might be authored by a Bigfoot.

We like to think that we're past all that, that we would choose to react via some form of the latter scenario, and we just might. But that's just because we live (most of us anyway) in a different milieu than Og, Ug, and the boys.

If we're waiting at a bus stop in our comfortable and reasonably safe 'burb or small town, or even if we should meet a Bigfoot in the large city we live in or commute to every day, we know that, rationally, a Bigfoot (think, oh Idunno, big scary smelly homeless mildly aggressive panhandler?) is unlikely to attack and kill us.

But she might.

Our time tested fight or flight app will launch, but we may not even notice unless things get ugly and it shuts down all of our other apps and ratchets us up to survival mode.

Or, perhaps we don't notice it because it's a background program that never shuts down anymore. Perhaps it's running all the time, at least at a low level, and that's why we don't notice it unless/until things get stupid. Perhaps this is one of the many side effects of a high-speed informationally overloaded life.

Perhaps this is why Xanax is the most prescribed psychiatric drug in the USA.

Walking into the lobby of the ginormous highrise we work in, the app in question fires up again as we approach the elevators. Ug, Og, and the boys had to think twice before chasing lunch into a cave because God only knew what might be lurking in the darkness.

So, we enter the crowded but blessedly well-lit elevator full of strangers (potential threats one and all), automatically check for the most defensible spot and face forward like everyone else to avoid making eye contact. And just as the door to the cave/coffin starts to close (gulp!) someone yells, in a friendly voice, "Hold the elevator, please!"

Somebody helpfully sticks their arm out, the doors reverse direction, and the big scary smelly homeless mildly aggressive panhandler nimbly steps into the cave/coffin.

She doesn't face forward.

Grinning from ear to ear she scans the cave/coffin like a politician or someone recently recruited by Amway and makes eye contact with as many people as possible. As the elevator starts to ascend she says, "Oops, my bad!" and then turns around and presses the button for every - single - floor. She turns around again and resumes grinning and scanning.

You can almost smell the adrenalin.

When the elevator stops on the second floor a startled receptionist witnesses everyone on a crowded elevator car trying to exit simultaneously. They all make a beeline to his desk, including our new friend, who keeps cheerfully repeating, "Where's the party?" as she looks around inquisitively. They silently ask the receptionist to call security with their eyes and facial expressions.

He's on it.

Have an OK day.


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©2017 Mark Mehlmauer   (The Flyoverland Crank)

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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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