Christmas in Flyoverland, 2021

Pronounced, fly-over-lund 

                                          Image by Nita Knott at pixy.org 

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  

"Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice." -Dave Barry

{Shouldn't that be their own way and the mall of his/her/their choice?}

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

The good news is that two of the Stickies, the (formerly) evil step-twins (with help from Willamina, who's a sorta/kinda Sticky) have taken it upon themselves to hang Christmas lights all over the inside of the house this year. 

While I have bemoaned the paucity of exterior Christmas lighting here in Hooterville in previous Christmas columns, I have to admit that I'm a hypocrite. Casa de Chaos, as usual, has no exterior lighting. 

I'm too old, my son-in-law works six days a week to keep the wolf from our door (and that's enough), and my daughter acknowledges the fact she inherited her mom's gift for accidental self-injury, a disability her oldest stepdaughter, Asparagoose, has apparently inherited osmotically.  

The only Sticky I'd trust on a ladder lives elsewhere and is currently dealing with a deep-dip on the emotional roller coaster of he and his "partners" relationship. 

I doubt she'll read this, but I wish her and her's, a Merry Christmas anyway. 

{What's the bad news? Who are the (formerly) evil step-twins?}

The bad news is that all sorts of people in Mr. Cranky's neighborhood continue to believe that despite the wild temperature/barometric pressure fluctuations (and the occasional neighborhood miscreant) Northeast Ohio is subject to, this will be the year enormous, lighted, inflatable Christmas characters in their front yards will stay inflated for more than a day or two before collapsing.  

Whereupon they will set upon restoring them a couple, three times before giving up.

Mommy! Mommy! There's a giant dead and desiccated Santa Claus in Mrs. Mcgillicuddy's front yard! 

{You have to admire their, optimism?}

The (formerly) evil step-twins — don't call her Bug anymore, and Duuude — are now16. They...

{16! Are you sure? You must be even older than you ...}

Harumph! Everyone knows 68 is the new 39, Dana.

They met when they were barely two years old when Casa de Chaos was created out of two blended families. We briefly had to hire security so that mom could take an occasional nap without having to chain them to their... beds? Cribs? I can't remember.

Seemingly normal toddlers most of the time, if left alone for more than half a minute their souls would meld together and then be temporarily possessed by a nameless demon. 

For example, once, when mom was on the phone in the living room speaking to dad, who was on his lunch break at work, she got up to investigate the source of giggling and shrieking at the other end of the short hall that connects the front of the house to the back. 

The refrigerator door, the handle of which neither of them could reach, was open and they were running back and forth from the kitchen to the dining room and emptying out the contents of various containers, including ketchup, mustard, and the like on the kitchen and dining room, the carpeted dining room, floors.

Dad, literally left holding the phone, could hear mom screaming expressing her frustration and was about call 911 when she got back on the phone and explained it was just another day, love ya, gotta go. 

Fortunately time, and a do-it-yourself home exorcism kit from Home Depot, eventually solved the problem. 

{What's that got to do with Christmas?}

Nothing. But you asked and I realized that I don't think I've ever specifically mentioned the evil step-twin phenomenon in a column so I've recorded this story for my gentlereaders and posterity. Also, it was part of a devious plan to mention all of the founding members of Casa de Chaos in my annual Christmas column without anyone noticing. 

For the record, they're both fine now. She's a budding scholar, he's a budding weight lifter who will be starting tech school next year.

My room smells like Christmas smelled in my house in the late 50s/early 60s. 

I've been threatening to buy a bayberry candle for years, and, we had real Christmas trees in our house except for the time my old man brought home an aluminum one (but that's another story).

But now that I think about it... it seems unlikely we had bayberry scented candles when I was a kid. But to me, bayberry and pine are what Christmas smells like and since lived experience (as sometimes opposed to ones' actual experience) is a thing, I'm a stickin' to muh guns.

Anyways, my daughter and son-in-law surprised me with an early Christmas present, pine-scented and bayberry scented candles a few weeks ago. Merry Christmas to me...and to all my gentlereaders as well. 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

P.S. R.I.P. Michael Nesmith and Merry Christmas to my favorite lesbian. 

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Ohio

Collector's items on sale!

Image by OpenClipart-Vectors 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  

"You can't go into Youngstown, Ohio, and tell everybody they're going to be retrained and go work for Google or Apple." -Michael Avenatti

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

Ohio, temporarily my home state, and where I have lived for the past 35 years, recently was the subject...

{Given the undeniable fact you're old I'm guessing you weren't born there?} 

Correct, and as I clearly stated in another column, it's not Ohio, it's me.

{You're supposed to post a link to that column. I have it on good authority that's good search engine optimization (SEO). How do expect the Goog to find and offer up your column to some unsuspecting someone who's searching for some sort of information having something to do with say, Ohio, who turns out to be an internet "influencer," who will promote our brilliant work to his/her/their followers, whereupon, we will go viral and become rich and famous just like that?}

I've got a hooge (always try to link to another page on your website) problem with both the words our and brilliant work, but that aside, did you notice that the very title of this column is a word that all sorts of random users might have occasion to use, and that I not only repeated Ohio in the first sentence in bold, I've also re-repeated the word Ohio since, and now that you've got me thinking about it this would probably be a good place to link to content on another website (about SEO) which is also good for optimizing search engines, not just the Goog, to hopefully send an unwary reader or three my way. 

Or, I could just write my column because I really like to, concentrate my efforts on writing a good column, and hope for the best. 

{Balderdash! There's no money in that!}

Tell me about it. But still, there's something to be said for writing for a small, cheap discerning, audience. No pressure, just pleasure.

{Whatever, Dude. But ain't this supposed to be a column about Ohio, not trying to not so subtly warn Stickies and gentlereaders about how people like you are trying to manipulate them for fun and profit via the internet?}  

Ohio, temporarily my home state, and where I have lived for the past 35 years, was recently the subject of a very brief Associated Press article. I went a-googlin' and discovered that it had been published, in one form or another, on the website of many a news outlet:

Ohio printed 35,000 wrong Wright Brothers license plates 

You see, a banner, wafting in the breeze that says Birthplace of Aviation — was attached to the wrong end of the Wright brothers plane.

{In somebody or others defense, I gotta say it looks, to me, like the banner is attached properly. But let me guess, you fell in love with the phrase, wrong Wright Brothers, right?}

Wrong. All right, you're right. But it was a quote from a state spokesperson included in the article that triggered a crank attack. 

'"We will recycle the 35,000 plates that had been printed. It is too early to know about if there will be any additional cost,' said Lindsey Bohrer, assistant director of communications with the Ohio Department of Public Safety."

I'm sure that Lindsey Bohrer, as well as the other (roughly) 50,000 H. sapiens that work for the state of Ohio (as of 2017 anyway), are, on average, very nice people (you'd be amazed...maybe not, at how difficult it is to find current numbers) and that the same can be said for the 132 full-time legislators.   

BIG BUT, additional cost? None of these 50,132 people thought of 2 words, eBay?

{Two words?}

Well, two words mashed together, Echo Bay, tweaked, presumably to capitalize on a then-current fad to insert an e (for electronic) in front of any and all internet-related ventures. Echo Bay by the by, was the name of the consulting company run by eBay's founder, Pierre Omidyar. 

{What the hell are you...}

If one of the first items sold on AuctionWeb (eBay's predecessor) by Omidyar was a busted laser pointer for $14.83 — the busted laser pointer that launched a gazillion transactions — surely it would be easy to sell 35,000 "collector's items" in a market consisting of 7,900,000,000 potential customers?

Misprinted Ohio license plate - Mint condition, never used - Shipped to you in the same authentic plastic sleeve the Ohio BMV uses for regular license plates - Comes with a certificate of authenticity that looks like a standard Ohio vehicle registration! 

And, Ohio can then pay itself sales tax. Win/win!

{This is a very weird column...}

Said the imaginary literary device.

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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One Screen, Two Movies

Image by Gerd Altmann 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 

"If the Constitution was a movie, the Preamble would be the trailer, the First Amendment the establishing shot, the 13th the crowd pleaser and the 14th the ultimate hero scene." -Henry Rollins

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

{I've got a great idea for solving America's one screen, two movies problem.}

Hey, Dana. May I suggest you define your terms first? 

{According to Big Concept Wiki "One Screen, Two Movies is an idea created by Scott Adams to describe how people...can interpret events and narratives very differently, because they have different mental frameworks."}

Left v. Right? Blue tribe v. Red tribe? Is that where you're going?

{Pervasive political polarization, yes.}

Our gentlereaders await your wisdom. 

{What if each of the fifty states had a lot more autonomy?}

Well, our country's full name is The United States of America, which would seem to suggest...   

{I remember hearing something about the colonies having a hell of a time agreeing on what the Rules&Regs should be and even if they should decide to join the team.} 

I was taught that the first attempt at solving this problem, the Articles of Confederation, vested too much of the governing power in the individual states and that the Constitution solved that problem. 

However, that's why the Constitution clearly states that The Fedrl Gummit (it was known as the Federal Government back then) only has the powers specifically spelled out in the Rules&Regs, that all other governing powers were held by the individual states. 

You get all the benefits of being part of a strong, independent country on a planet that's chock full of bullies that want your lunch money but you also belong to a much smaller, individual state where you and your neighbors can run things the way you want to. 

Win/win. 

Also, different states can try different policies and programs and if they don't work out you can move on without harming the whole country, if they do work out the other states, or even The Fedrl Gummit, can follow the example.  

{I like it... so what happened?}

Better than 200 years of history. This being the work of a semi-humble columnist and not a book written by a respected historian (or even a semi-respected, best-selling charlatan) I semi-humbly offer the following summary.

Life was hard and harsh for most Citizens of the Republic, as it ever has been and always will be for most H. sapiens, but things slowly but steadily improved for many. Others not so much. 

For a very long time, a combination of different (many now outdated) sensibilities, 

And, 

Only so much money and technical knowledge (on all fronts) to go around, limited what was possible for a confederated group of states (united or otherwise) to accomplish.

However, 

Eventually, there was more than enough money, technology, and government to create The Fedrl Gummit.

Now, plenty of money sloshing around, ever-evolving technology, and the unlikely success (more or less) of the American experiment...

{American experiment?}   

From an editorial published in the New York Daily Tribune, 11/27/1860:  

Is the democratic principle of equal rights, general suffrage, and government by a majority, capable of being carried into practical operation, and that, too, over a large extent of country? 

See, when America was invented, we were the first ones to try to build a country based on the principles of what nowadays is called the Enlightenment. There was no guarantee that what we now take for granted would work as it hadn't been tried before.

Where was I? Prosperity...advancing technology...unlikely success of the American experiment... 

Oh yeah, this resulted in a hooge organization of federated states, a government unimaginable in size, and power, to our founding pasty patriarchs. 

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Big is good for crushing warped little dicktaters with tiny mustaches looking to conquer the world, for example. 

Big is bad when well (and not so well...) meaning utopians want to force the unawokened to adopt new Rules&Regs without being able to point to a successful experiment. 

California's run by Wokies. It's a mess and people are fleeing. If you don't believe me research it as if you're thinking about moving there... with children. Given the state of the Golden State, I wouldn't want to live there, however, I wish them well. 

BIG BUT,

If any other given state wants to outlaw things not actually covered by the Constitution, like abortion or gay marriage I wish them well too... although I personally support limited abortion rights and gay marriage.

Live and let live. As a briefly famous Californian once said, "Can't we all get along?" 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down to share this column/access oldies. If you enjoy my work, and no advertising, please consider buying me a coffee via PayPal/credit-debit card.    

Feel free to comment and set me straight on Cranky's Facebook page. I post my latest columns on Saturdays, other things other days. Cranky don't tweet.