Up, Up and Away

{In your beautiful balloon?}

Image by Susann Mielke 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.  

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

About 

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"...aerial military surveillance dates back to the Civil War, when both the Union and the Confederacy used hot-air balloons to spy on the other side..." 

                                                                                         -Michael Hastings

Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,

When recently spooked by a hooge spy balloon launched by the People's Republic of China, that sailed across our republic, American politicians of all stripes responded promptly: by attacking each other. 

Uncle Joe decided to wait till it completed its mission before ordering it shot down over the Atlantic with a $400,000 missile to insure that no pieces/parts would land on innocent civilians. 

Fortunately, so far at least, Chinese dicktater Xi dada has shown restraint and not cut off the flow of any vital imports like designer sneakers. 

{I'll bet Tom Cruise could've just popped it with a big-ass bayonet mounted on the front of a F/A-18F Super Hornet.} 

Doubtless, Dana. Subsequently, when three more balloons were brought down, demonstrating to the Chicoms that messing with the USA might blow up in their faces I couldn't help but wonder if bored teenagers had found a way to warm up life in the frozen North. 

In their defense, it might've been an accident. When I was a teenager my baby brothers and I once accidentally fooled our subdivision into thinking that a strip of adjacent woods had caught on fire. 

I went a'-googlin' and discovered that even as you read this there are all sorts of balloons bob, bob, bobbin' along the bottom of the stratosphere launched by everyone from hobbyists to government agencies. Turns out you can buy one for about 12 bucks. I'm thinking about...

{Wait-wait-wait. Hold it right there, Sparky. You and your little brothers once "accidentally" set some woods on fire?}

No, definitely not, the neighborhood just thought we had, that the significant billows of harmless smoke that drifted out of the trees and into our hood might be the result of a fire or some other disaster. But given that any applicable statute of limitations has (hopefully, surely) expired by now I can explain your honor. 

{Please do.} 

It was 1966 and one of my older sisters had brought home her new husband, a Green Beret, to meet the family. 

{What's that got to do with setting the woods on fire?}

I repeat, we didn't set anything on fire. I must beg the court's indulgence, a bit of context is required if it pleases the court. 

{You may proceed.}

There was a patriotic hit song out at the time called The Ballad of the Green Berets. The Green Berets,  Wikipedia: "... are a special operations force of the United States Army." Due to the song, and other factors, the Green Berets were "having a moment" not unlike the one the Navy Seals are having nowadays.

To my little brothers and me, this guy was an American warrior right out of central casting. And he brought us green berets. And he told us some cool, toxically masculine inappropriate stories.  

We were in love.  

Now, as to exactly why he had brought a pair of official United States Army-issue smoke canisters/bombs (I don't remember how they were labeled) and gave them to us, I can't tell you. My guess is that being a semi-good ol' boy from the South combined with the aforementioned toxic masculinity led him to believe that boys will be boys and that we would be impressed and enjoy using them.

He was absolutely right. 

We took them into a modest-sized strip of woods behind our house and popped the tops on what looked like large, Army green (soda) pop cans and were shocked and awed. The amount of smoke them babies produced was amazing.

Totally cool. 

But then, thanks to a light breeze, significantly sized billows of smoke began rolling out of the trees and into our neighborhood. We beat a hasty retreat to the first and only house my parents ever owned, the first suburban house my little brothers and I had ever lived in.

Picture a teenage boy, his two younger brothers, a small crowd, and a couple of fire trucks. Firemen were combing the woods in search of where all that smoke was coming from. Fortunately, they didn't find it. 

I confess we were more frightened than exhilarated at that point but we got away with our accidental crime and the adults involved didn't rat us out. I apologize for whatever it cost the township to pointlessly dispatch two fire trucks but I'm sure it was less than $400,000 apiece. 

We were only accidental juvenile delinquents for a minute and grew up to be productive members of society.

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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The High Price of Big

Image by StockSnap 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.  

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

About 

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world?" -Richard M. Nixon

Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,

Often, size does matter. I speak, of course, of the wild, wacky, wonderful world of retail. 

{Obviously.}

And when retailers compete, consumers win. Most American consumers, hip-deep in retail outlets, are used to winning, and take it for granted. Unfortunately, business owners and their employees often lose. 

Competition kills. 

From a storied, local family-owned supermarket to a late, great retail colossus (Sears/Kmart comes to mind), no one is safe. 

And bigger keeps getting bigger. 

A globe-straddling economy creates hooge retailers and the little guy person, as if he/she/they doesn't/don't already have enough problems, can't possibly match the big guys persons on price and selection.  

{Trying to write in a Wokie-approved manner so as to not inadvertently trigger a member of a marginalized minority gets ugly fast.}   

Right? Worth it though. I figure it's only a matter of time before an unemployed, deeply indebted individual with a Ph.D. in Critical Pottery Theory looking to break into the social justice industry starts applying ESG ratings to wordsmiths. 

But I drift. 

{As is you wont, your garrulousness. But you do you, as the cool kids say.}

Almost everyone roots for the local store owned and operated by a local businessperson. Hey, you just can't get that kind of personal, hands-on service at the area Mega Lo Mart. 

But not everyone's willing, or can afford, to pay the retail prices a local firm may have to charge because of the wholesale prices they have to pay. Also, how does the local little guy  person compete with their customer's virtually unlimited needs and wants being delivered to their customer's front door by enormous retailers offering virtually unlimited choices?

{Sure, but what about porch pirates?} 

Sociopaths have to eat too. Besides, crime is a fairly stable industry that generates a lot of jobs. 

Speaking of customer service, or the lack thereof, if something goes wrong, that's when the excrement may hit the climate control system.

Don't get me wrong, I hate shopping in meatspace. I'm an Amazonophile who would borrow money "on the street" rather than let my Amazon Prime membership expire. And this is in spite of the fact I think the cash Mr. Bezos spent building his penis-shaped rocket ship...

{It's an investment in the future!}

Would've been better spent on the millions of minions responsible for getting stuff to my front door. Of course, if something goes awry there are all sorts of procedures in place to easily straighten out the problem.

{Do you mean ih-shoe? Problems are called ih-shoes now.}

Big BUT, if your problem falls even slightly outside of established problem-solving protocols... well, I'd think twice before engaging with Lord Jeffry's army of algorithmites if I were you, buddy. At a certain point, the time you spend trying to resolve your problem costs more than the thing you thought you bought. 

{I'll just call customer service and hope that I'm familiar with the English dialect spoken by whoever answers the phone. What's the big deal?}  

Assuming, of course, you're not dealing with a company that's so large they go out of their way to discourage actually talking to customers. Once a company reaches a certain size it's no longer practical, or profitable, to answer the phone.

Regardless, you'll be forced to deal with decision trees, "Please press 13 if _______", and God help you if you press the wrong button and wind up speaking to the wrong person in the wrong department — the adventure begins! 

We're sorry, all of our customer service associates are busy dealing with other people's ih-shoes just now. Please stay on the line and your call will be answered in the order in which it was received. You are caller number 1,039. Thank you for your patience. 

{I've never understood that ih-shoe. Doesn't India have like, more than a billion people?}

Hey-hey-hey. Are you trying to get us canceled? 

{Sorry, please don't delete me.} 

You can't just go around... wait, I've got an idea. 

Some are saying that we need a "Universal Basic Income" (UBI) to provide for all those people who've lost their jobs to robots, algorithmites, Chinese slave labor, etc. But others are worried that getting paid to do nothing will create a modern version of ancient Rome's mob.

Imagine an America in which most of America, including the ever-shrinking middle class, provides stellar customer service of all sorts for the rest of America, their wages subsidized by a UBI so as to keep the peace between the halves and have-nots.  

Win/win. 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

Scroll down to share my work or access oldies. Buy an old crank a coffee? Extra content is available to members of Cranky's Coffee Club.    

Comments? I post my columns on Facebook and Twitter where you can love me, hate me, or try to have me canceled. Don't demonize, seek a compromise. 

 

Ma, I Don't Feel Good

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images 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.  

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

About 

Glossary 

Featuring Dana: Hallucination, guest star, and charming literary device  

"It's no longer a question of staying healthy. It's a question of finding a sickness you like." -Jackie Mason

Dear Stickies and Gentlereaders,

I have a confession to make. As a kid and a callowyute, I regularly missed school by claiming to be sick when I wasn't.

{Gasp!}

My mum and I had an unspoken, unacknowledged agreement that as long as I didn't get carried away, as long as I was passing, this was acceptable. 

{Wait-wait-wait. If this arrangement was unspoken and unacknowledged how do you know what she...}

For the same reason I knew that if I did get carried away or I was failing that she wouldn't have hesitated to intervene, Dana.

{Huh. Ask a silly question. I'm going to go out on a limb here. You didn't much care for formal education, yes?}

It interfered with my reading, but that's not what I want to talk about.

{I'm shocked. May we, your humble gentlereaders, have a hint, pray tell?} 

Certainly, it's about how I felt about illness/injury/disease/etceterease as a kid and a callowyute as opposed to my take now that I'm a sexy senior citizen.

Even when my delayed adulthood finally arrived — when I was 32 and went from hippie with a job to a man with a chronically sick wife and a nine-year-old daughter (a tomboyperson still prone to self-injury decades later) virtually overnight — I took my good health for granted and assumed it would last forever. 

{Forever?}

In the sense that I didn't give it much thought. Having been blessed with what I now realize was excellent health I somehow assumed this was the way of things. Other people might be subject to health problems, but not me.

{That makes no sense. I suppose you thought you were going to live forever as well?}

Paradoxically, no. I've long assumed, to one degree or another, that we're all merely characters in a very vivid dream that God is having regardless of what's next. Since there's nothing to be done, what's all the fuss about?

For the record, I can't take any credit for this attitude any more than I can take credit for many decades of effortless good health (now gone), or any more than I can take credit for having no desire to live forever (which I suspect would be quite boring).

That's just how I roll, as they say, assuming they still say that. 

{You should ask them.}

 

Nowadays, I give a lot of attention to the state of my health for multiple reasons: 

- I'm in no hurry to be deleted. Watching Western Civilization attempting to commit suicide is fascinating. 

- I'm almost 70 and I've always thought that 70 and up means you're old. I'm now coping with various and sundry health problems, none life-threatening (that I know of), that started about five years ago and seem to be proliferating. 

- I know a lot of dead people who live on in my psyche.

- I've personally been directly involved with more than one H. sapien dying slowly, painfully, and not "well" (as they also say), and I know there are worse things than dying.     

Fortunately, unlike my mum and dad, who died 5 and 13 years prior to my current age, respectively, I've never been addicted to nicotine and I have effortless access to a world wide web of all knowledge.

Unfortunately, real, licensed, practicing highly trained docs frequently disagree with each other about any given malady. 

Note the word real and consider yourself warned because there's also no shortage of (technically) real doctors and licensed practitioners of this, that, and that other thing on the web, many of whom have thousands of "followers," and who claim to have the answer (or the product) you're looking for. 

There's also no shortage of quacks, blackguards, and ne'er-do-wells making a comfortable living legally selling snake oil in the Information Age by posting notices and warnings in the fine print. Preying on the sick and vulnerable might not be the world's oldest profession but it's on the top ten list. 

For some reason, George Noory, host of an extremely popular late-night radio show, comes to mind 

Wikipedia: "Coast to Coast AM is an American late-night radio talk show that deals with a variety of topics. Most frequently the topics relate to either the paranormal or conspiracy theories."

Helpfully, there's a website where you can easily access: 

"...EXCLUSIVE HAND-PICKED PRODUCTS FROM GEORGE NOORY'S SHOW! ONE-OF-A-KIND PRODUCTS, FOR LIVING AND LOOKING A HEALTHIER LIFE, ALL WITH A FREE GIFT AND FREE SHIPPING."

As Mr. Spock would say, may you live long and prosper. 

Poppa loves you,

Have an OK day

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Comments? Head on over to my Facebook page and love me, hate me, or try to have me canceled. Cranky don't tweet, but I'm considering it... Go Elon, go!