Sunday, February 29, 2004
ARNOLD, YOU RASCAL!
The secret is not yet out.
California’s new Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has a plan in progress to overcome the state’s huge debts.
The nation will not become aware of the scheme until the Governor announces: “Let the trials begin.”
The plan got underway just after St. Valentine’s Day - appropriately enough, when the mayor of San Francisco let it be known that he would be available to perform marriage ceremonies for homosexual couples of whatever ilk. He set up shop and thousands of same-sex twosomes flocked to the Mayor’s nuptial headquarters. Many who have previously desired to be left alone to live their own way of life, now wanted o b e,it appears, like everyone else. They had to get married. None of this “living in sin”shame for them when the benefits of being wed were obvious and becoming more so.
To date, the leap year date of the year 2004, over six thousand couplers - three thousand couples, have taken the vows of marriage at the mayor’s altar. Being caught short by the sudden rush, the Mayor has had to resort to multiple marriages quality control . Being caught rather sort-handed by the rush, His Honor’s offices has been has had to resort to marrying eight or ten couples at a time. I understand, however. The Quality Control Section of the office has looked into the matter, however, and does not like to be quoted as saying one such marriage seems to be about as good as any other.
If and when the flood of applications eases off a bit, we can expect word from Sacramento saying:”Let the trials begin!”
Beyond any doubt, the marriages have been done in clear and intentional disregard for the established Laws of the State, and are, hence, subject to fines and punishment.
Let's think of three thousand couples to start with, and more on the way, let's say at fine rates of from ten to fifteen- K each! That would add up... to what? A well known “tidy sum”, right? The take is then to be applied to the most pressing and politically correct red ink areas in the state's books. Lest we seem too heartless and lacking in compassion for our our fellow mankind and female counterparts, let's keep the punishment at say two to five years – suspended.
Each law-breaking couple should have its day in court. That's the only fair way to go about it. Maybe eight or ten couples a time, if need be. Much depends on how urgently the state's creditors need their money. Some of them are going to learn that marriage is not always what it is yakked up to be. Why not learn that lesson earlier rather than later?
A.L.M. February 29. 2004 [c469wds]
Saturday, February 28, 2004
AND FASTER, TOO!
It is odd that what appears to be the first serious efforts in a long time to attempt to clean up our entertainment a bit, should happen at the very time that violence seems to have peaked at a new, higher level.
Two seemingly unrelated incidents are involved.
The first was the unfortunate decision made , it appears, by two mediocre young performers who decided to spice up their rhythmic talk and gyrations routine during the Half-Time “show” at this year's Super Bowl game. No one expected much from the show which was billed well ahead of time as a sleeze showing to include cheer leader-type girls undressing. A bare bosom would not be out of place, exactly, yet when Justin Timberlake tugged at Janet Jackson's costume blouse enough came off to reveal one-each bare breast.
People were shocked! If one compares the incident with scores other entertainment acts on stage the very day, theirs was kindergarten stuff, at best.
The time was right, however, and millions of people - many who did not even see the act - condemned it and spilled ink and phone calls all around the world bemoaning the low depths to which our moral life had descended.
Now all that took place a good three weeks or so before Rosie O'Donnell and her homosexual companion were officially “married” in freaky Frisco along with three-thousand other such couplers. Rather than “capping the climax” that public display knocked the bottom out of the lowest level to which we had fallen by that time.
Meanwhile, back at the entertainment ranch...
An old violence theme had been re-done and was being made ready for the public with great care and detailed planning. It will take a while for society to understand the relationship of the Janet Jackson bare breast bit and the intensely hyped introduction of Mel Gibson's R-rated film masterpiece: “The Passions Of The Christ”
It appear that Mel Gibson has successfully pulled off an old stunt done on a fine but much smaller scale many years ago here in Virginia. Robert Porterfield started his famed “Barter Theater “in wrongdoing, Virginia That was home to him and he knew his family roots well. He knew he had to be very careful about bringing actors and actresses to the rural area in any number. To many “locals” actors and actress were symbols pf “loose living”. Upon their arrival, Porter field already had a plan at work. H He held orientation sessions with them and on the following Sunday morning, and the very first after their arrival they scattered and appeared as earnest twosomes s with a natural desire to be in church of a Sabbath morn. They knew the hymns, joined in the singing with much interest and seemed at ease with the litany of the varied services. They met and mingled with the people and formed actual friendships in those first weeks .The idea of having resident theatrical troupe in the community ceased to bother the long-time residents. They worked together to make the “Barter Theater” the success it became even in those Great Depression times. Admission to the theater productions could be – and often was - done by bartering of local food and products. They locals became an important part of the theater itself. A host of stars came from the companies on stage at the Barter Theater, Abingdon. Robert Butterfield, actor and manager won over a supporting audience at the very start for a chancy, doubtful project and Mel Gibson has done the very same thing on a grander, national scale by gaining the support of religious leaders and church members before the premiere of his masterpiece - “The Passions Of The Christ”.
The film, which was R-rated because of excessive violence would have had a tremendous uphill battle without his pre-showing screenings to church groups before the film was shown to general public. The Gibson gambit worked well. It worked so well that books will be written about it.
Then ,following those two events, we find a sudden flurry of activity from regulatory agencies causing one network to kick Howard Stern off the air in six leading markets... that's “s-i-x.” Suddenly new legislation surfaces seeking to apply present limitations to cable TV as well as over-the-air transmissions. “Cool the cable” seem to have become the watchword for a clean-up crusade with some. Most telling of all is the fact that ABC-TV has set,for the first time, a mandatory five-second delay of the forth coming Academy Awards Presentations program, which gives producers a change to delete profanity, obscenities and who-knows-what-else which may be tried?
I have worked with two second delay on talk radio and we became quite comfortable with it on the doing end. Two second delay enabled us to cut quite a few nasty expressions, cuss words and indecent references without those notable “bleep” sounds. A five-second delay makes you wonder what ABC-TV is expecting to meet with during the Academy Awards speeches.
A.L.M. February 27, 2004 [c856wds]
Friday, February 27, 2004
HOW MUCH?
I find it difficult to understand how a car dealer can offer me, and anyone else, “over four thousand dollars” back, if I agree to buy one the cars he sells.
He must have a dependable stock of money which allows him to make such and offer, which he, himself, terms as being a “generous”one. I have never been a real threat to any sixth grade math student, but I do add and subtract well enough to realize that he is talking nonsense. He is a person whom the American Indians warned us of years ago.
We might easily become skewered on his “forked tongue” if we head his message for rush right down to buy a car while we can get this fine rebate. The amount of money he says he will return to you, we find, makes reference only to your cash purchase of the most expensive model expensive model of the finest car he can offer, If he kept one in stock in his showrooms, he could show it to you. The price tag on such a unit is astronomical and he could well afford to discount up to four thousand dollars and still make his well-known “killin'”. You find that the refund on the smaller, less-padded, crummier, maintenance-prone model you want to buy brings his “generous” offer:down to around $2.37 cent a week for two weeks, unless you buy a special Service Package he has available just for you, your refund can be goosed a bit up to the double digest area.
It's the old “bait and switch” con routine under a slightly different guise, and its continued on the v-screen, on the radio waves and in print.
If you listen carefully, read with intense suspicion and have a short of double vision to see through glamorous settings and dancing dollars, you can avoid much of the heartache and, possibly years of financial servitude.
When someone offers me a sum back, I have a deep feeling that is almost the exact overcharge he would otherwise be making on my purchase, or those of others, if he had not been so overcome by his sense community responsibilities and of fairness in his business whatever the product may be.
I question refunds, rebates, and other forms of inducement gimmicks.
A.L.M. February 26, 2004 [c402wds]
Thursday, February 26, 2004
TALK ABOUT BEING “BIG!”
We have all been well-schooled concerning about the the size of the State of Texas really is as a state, then , along came Alaska, and Texas seemed puny.
An metaphorical story has a young Texan couple deciding whom should tell Junior the facts of life. Finally, the father agreed: “Okay, you tell him all about the birds and the bees, and I’ll tell him about Alaska!”
But many citizens of the lower forty-eight, are woefully ignorant of the dimensions of the State of Alaska. It makes Texas seem puny.
If you could pickup the entire chunk of real-estate we call Alaska . Break it away from Canada in a straight line, and place it over a comparably-sized map of the United States and your will see some convincing evidence of it's large size.
Someone who has done that sort of thing tells me that if you place the southern end of the the map of Alaska over the edge of Florida on the map you will find a chunk of it goes up into Canada above the Great Lakes area and the west end extends to within a few miles of Santa Barbara, California.
Alaska has varied, uneven coastline dotted with an uncounted number of islands and it is bounded by three distinct bodies of water.
Three coasts? There’s another informational trap awaiting us. If you were a contestant on a TV quiz show you might well be asked: “What bodies of water border the State of Alaska?” Most of us would say “Pacific Ocean” and we would be one-third right. Everything above the long string of the Aleutian Islands is the Bering Sea and along the north coast is the Arctic Ocean. Two oceans and one ocean-sized sea.
The west end of the State of Alaska is the island of Attu ,scene of one of the bloodiest battles of World War II. Today the total population consists of twenty-four weather station personnel on assignment to the lonely outpost. Attu is said to have been the last place in the world to enter the 2lst Century. Alaska spans six time zones. It would be seven if someone had not decided to make a little box around Attu to keep it in the same time zone with others nearby.
Anyway you might look at it – Alaska is big.
A.L.M. February 25. 2004 [c415wds]
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
TIME'S UP, BEN!
Are you getting about as tired as I am watching them hunt for Ben-what's-his name- up there in those rocky Afghan “hills”. The call them “hills”on TV, but they begin to look more like “mountains” to me after a while of watching two locals stumbling around in the boulders for a few minutes.
It has been a rather a long one of those “whiles” since we first started searching for Ben Laden in those desolate mountain crag and craglet tes. We need to find him so he can be charged with a host of bad things he has done .He eludes everything we can do to smoke him out.
I have to admit I have ever been a fan of old lady detectives but I talked with two older women recently who had BL.'s capture worked out to a state nearing “possible.”. One of the ladies had just been involved in a family situation in which a little boy locked himself in the family's only bathroom and refused to come out. The mother had asked to unlock the door and come out, then, pleaded with him, then had lapsed into a series of potential punishments - in a succeeding series of steadily increasing violence – which screamed “unless you come out within the next three minutes.!” Father tried. Aunt Bessie came over and took a whirl at it. No luck. Night fell.
Two ladies came calling at just that moment and were told, tearfully of the family's plight of the moment.
The ladies stood silent for a moment, then bade the family be seated and to remain quiet whatever happened, and asked if they might “take a crack” at the problem..
One lady leaned close to the mother; whispered a few words and turned to the other as they left the room together . “It is at the bottom of the basement steps...on the wall on the left side. Gimme two minutes.“
Suddenly total darkness total darkness. The family listened for any sounds of struggle upstairs. None. They waited. and The lights came on and they were surprised to see the one lady and the boy standing in the doorway. The other lady was standing behind in the hall.
To get Ben L. to show himself,the ladies suggest three months of absolute, total news blackout - not a mention of him anywhere. Then, start a steady praise campaign for a former friend of his ”taking over”. Curiosity and envy will bring Ben Laden out. You'll never get him by threatening worse-and-worse punishments. Make him think of natural reasons for coming out of hiding. Then, just knock on his door.
A.L.M. February 24, 2004 [c496wds]
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
TRADITIONS
Each generation fashions its own traditions.
We as a nation, are, obviously, an example to others. We are also constantly revising and modifying that which we either are, or want to become. In our gradual development we respect the traditions which have been handed down to our generation but we accept them only to certain degree. One might, for example, long for the seemingly quiet and peaceful home life of an era long gone. We want to bring such conditions back once more, but we will insist that it also include the air-conditioning we have found is good and needed. Without such advanced comforts, the formal traditions go unused.
The idea of altering traditions is not new. We have been changing the pattern regularly ever since we we as misfits from various levels of European society. We came to our new home rather heavily laden with a host of traditions from one or more of our points of origin. We quickly found that such guide lines have to be be modified to meet local needs. Some of our traditions hold firm,but outward aspects of the would not be recognized by our ancestors.
,
Many of those who arrived in the new country liked it at once and settled down in the Eastern coast. Others, discontent, moved westward into a unknown wilderness seeking their niche in the affairs of the world. Each of them is building traditions based on those which may have guided their lives to an important degree.
Awareness of the important of traditions in our lives is often triggered by news events. Right new. we are in such a period of alertness by the deliberate disobedience of the Laws in California and in New Mexico, by men and women enamored by the gay marriage problems. Homosexual society challenges many of our fundamental views and many bi-sexual persons are being forced to question their stance. We go through such periods of doubt from time to time. ..suffering, as it were, through times of war and times of peace. but this particular affront to our sensibilities has been made a political issue in our elections over the years by those who are desperate to get into a command position once again. It will take longer to re-set our values this time,. perhaps, but tradition will, I think, win in the final rounds.
Too many people think of traditions as being restrictive, sanctuary cells, staid, lifeless hulks of history. True traditions are the hallmarks of venture for each of us, leading into the promising and demanding future which we anticipate, desire and even dread at one and the same time..
A.L.M. February 23, 2004 [c456wds]
Monday, February 23, 2004
February 23, 2004
WERE WE THAT STUPID?
Do you realize that it was four years or so ago when you, and many of your fellow citizens, were seriously concerned about the end of our world?
- The new century was approaching day-by- day and each new morning thousands of people were filled with anew with fears of the disaster which would most certainly befall mankind with the coming of the 2lst Century. Many placed their fear on the back of the computers which had so recenlty come to control much of our movement and thought. Many individuals predicted. quite seriously, that our financial world would fall into ruin because the computers in our banks and in our industrial plants could not tell tell one century from another. Or, others thought that ignorant men and women had programmed the computers incorrecty to deal with the future and that things would go to pot overnight once the century ended. I remember one case in which a demonic individual was said to have set it all up that way so hat he could take ove the world as a hacker-dictator of some sort and put Adolph Hitler and his type to shame forever.
It all sounds so silly now, doesn't it? Just a few years later we laugh about it and marvel that people could have been so stupid. Of course, we did not believe any such things, did we? Others did so, but not us. Only unthinking, unstudied, uneduated people would fall for such foolishness, we say.
The same sort of non-think fantasies happened in the prime days of radio when thousands of people from all over the nation ,in various educational and social levels, ran wild before the dramatic presenttioan of Orson Wells's play "Other Worlds". " Millions", we like to say, were conviced the events were takong place a t that moment. The Earth was being invaded by demonic space creatures and machines...but more people than we like to admit went to some pretty far-out extremes because of their misjudgment. One couple in southwestern Virgnia went outside, I remember, and took axes to their radio antenna poles, because they understood that the aliens were coming into even such remote loations as theirs by means of radio wave travel.
There is one case I would like to check out. in particular. Though much the yezar oi 199 systematically invested every cent he could beg, borrow or otherwise acquire, in stocking his mountain side home as a fortress against the arrival - sure and certain - of a re-poackaged disaster such a nature and magnitude tghat man had never known before. He installed underground passageways which he filled with stocks of such essentials as fuel oil, gasoline, batteries, spring water, favorite beverages and canned goods and other foods storable in his location. I have ofen wndered what he did with all that stuff when the disaster did not happen as he had scheduled it to do with the New Year. He has certain shown his face again after all that frenzied prepartion
.
It could be, of course, that he has, by this time, made a small fortune by selling off the entire stock and could cash in on mankind's natural tendency to be careless about such things. Or, he may even have moved on to Richmond or Washigton, D.C. where men of such superior forsight and managment skills are much in demand in governing circles.
A.L.M. February 23, 2004 [c487wds]
i
Sunday, February 22, 2004
WHY?
I have often wondered why a man or a women chooses to run for the office of President of the United States.
What is the driving power that cause them to do so?
I am sure I have asked myself that question just about every presidential election day in recent times and I, obviously, have never thought of a good, sound reply or I wouldn't keep wondering.
Certainly it would take no more than a casual glance at the office to see that it has a few ,notable flaws which might make it less than a good place to work and live. Any man or woman in their right mind, would take such a critical look at it before stepping into the fray to wrest it from all others who aspire to win it as a special prize.
The impetus probaly comes from within more than from any other sourse, but we don't like to think of those who are ego-stricken as being ready to serve as a good, capable president. So, we shift our emphasis to followers - more like "underlings", one might say, who urge the victim to step into the snare and enter the election campaign trap. Then, it is too late.
I was not a all suprised last night to hear that Ralph Nader will place his name in nomination once again this week- end. This rather notorious "consuler's advocate" - which is his title with supporters, is typical of what also-rans might be. The Democratioc candidate now realize that it was Nader who cost Al Gore the presidency by sopping up from three to four per cent of the vote. While divided group of Democrats have been using their time to blame the "Bush peoplel" for downing Al by means of chads, ballot miscounts and other voting tricks, Nattering Nader has set up shop once more and will give it all another trial,
Ralph Nader is among those who really wants to be president. You may have noticed in the recent primary sideshows. that the people who knew they could not possibly win often were the best source of one-liners. a shake-em-up remarks which the media used and thre away. The also-ran candidate can be good to have aound.They can, and quite often do, say things which should be said. They can do so without any fear that they might have to "make good" on their statements in the future.
Some Democrats show their real concern that Nader will again be a "spoiler" inthis elecion.They clain that Nader will not do as well this time around because he is running as an Independent this a time rather than as a candidate backed by a group called "The Green Party". To many of us it appears that it was, instead, was the "Green Party" which was discredited rather than Ralph Nader. I have a feeling he will do better this time around without these "policy makers" hanging, rather uselessly, around his neck - which he likes to stick out now and again.
A.L.M. February 22, 2004 [c440wds]
Saturday, February 21, 2004
IT BOTHERS ME
What is that irks me most about present-day politics?
It doesn't seem proper, somehow, that I should be, in any way, critical of, or uncomfortable with the very process by which we select our nation's leaders.
Yet, I do.
I find the one quality which bothers me the most concerning any candidate running for public office is that of his, or her, being sincere in every way.
Insincerity is the most bothersome blight affecting a political campaign and much of it centers on the personal, individual sincerity of the person making the effort to place himself, or herself in a position of authority over others as an elected official of the governmental system they share.
If a person is not sincere in seeking office and, thus, in asking other people to place their trust in him and feel that he or she will do the very best they are capable of doing. If they do not make such a stand of integrity at the very start, they harm themselves most of all but also mistreat those who support them and their views.
I think we are called upon to take seriously our part in much of this political process/. When we look closely at the many people involved who, either set themselves forward or allow others to do so, who gather together an oft-times curious, even inexplicably composite group of individuals from which we must make a choice. They are not all there for the best of good reasons, either. I think we must realize this inequity at the very start and there can be just one fool proof way of doing so. It depends almost entirely on the level of personal dedication to which each of us holds fast as our own moral and practical view by which we live and express ourselves - knowingly or unconsciously - at the voting booths. If we are, in any way, lacking in such self-control and self-respect, we can, and do, elect poor leaders.
In the final hour, having looked at and listened to as many as we can, we select the one seemingly best suited to our own standard of sincerity.
Do you still want to be our President some day?
If so, be sincere and the Truth will make you be.
A.L.M. February 19, 2004 [c394wds]
TAB THINK
The selection of tabloid style newspapers on the stands near the checkout counters at your local super market are a changeable lot. They come and go. The stories they headline are mostly based on being timely rather than true. They often jump ahead of actual events, at times with suggestion of what might happen if things remain as they are ,which seldom happens.
Initial purchaser of such gaudy journals is based on spur-of-the-moment buying. The display is located at a place where someone who finds something of interest cannot really examine it without being on display while doing so.
There are three or four titles which seem to bloom for a time then fade away, only to come blazing back with a new set of fabrications. After years of telling what they claim to be the :real: story about the death of Princess Diane, new rumors or potential nonspecific. The mostly unlikely people are being show to us this week to snag additional takers/.This type of tawdry journalism is the lifeblood of more than one facet of our home entertainment. Several well know network personalities , who's names you would recognize readily, are producing and starring in TV shows dedicated to showing all they think they “can get away with.” And, they do , too. “get by with it” for s time. Scraps of nudity, sexually oriented body movements, profanity, flawed language terms, body language and sexual innuendo, are becoming common to most such shows and both runs and endless re-runs draw millions. of viewers - or should that, perhaps be read as “voyeurs”?
Segments of the Internet offer the same selections of journalistic sewerage.
Many realize this trend is not one which should be enlarged. Most seem to feel it should be curbed. We have not yet learned the simple truth that one of the most fundamental of re-runs is that it is very difficult to legislate morality.
We displayed a very impressive national display if “shock” recently when Janet Jackson choose to bare one half of her bosom be for those watching the half-time tab-type show during the Super Bowl Game. At that very moment far greater violations of the female image on other TV channels and on lewd Internet pages maintained specifically for Tab-Think persons - both men and women of all ages =
those who chose to watch them. The news stands went right on restocking the shelves without causing any great manifestation of nationwide shame or shock
Who stands, ready and willing, to cast the first stone?
A.L.M.. February 20, 2004 [c436wds]
Thursday, February 19, 2004
THE NEW “QUEEN”
I find it difficult to think of the fine old “Queen Mary” as having now been totally replaced by the emergence of a new, and even finer, ocean-going vessel bearing the same regal name.
I read the impressive specifications of the new liner just recently launched, and sent voyaging off to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and there is no doubt that she is ,statistically, far superior to the old Queen now lying in what would seem to be a regrettable, almost forced, inactive retirement at Long Beach, California used as a tourist attraction of sort of on-water motel, not sea-going motel.
I had rather expected something more in the nature of a souped-up, glamorized, overdone, personality-populated “Maiden Voyage” to start the new liner in service. That has been the usual way of showing off such accomplishments in the past and underlines the many changes in trans-Atlantic travel. Large, ornate ocean liners are not longer ruler of the routes - in the North Atlantic or else where for that matter. The new Queen Mary was designed, built, and properly put into service – not as a luxury liner in the traditional fast-crossings mode but as the luxury Cruise Ship she is intended to be.
We need not be worried about the place of the Queen Mary II for she is under the expert care of Pamela Conover a superbly qualified young lady who knows the cruise business well because of years spent among leaders in the field..She became president and CEO of Cunard Lines and its associated cruise firm. Ayear or more ago. A native of the larger London area, she worked in New York offices for years in essential shipping fiannce and management.. It might appear to many that Cunard would be taking somewhat of a chance putting a such a costly ship in the cruise trade. Any such fears.can be laid to rest by becoming aware of that fact that this capable woman is in charge of Cunard Line and that company was acquiredcquireds ago by Carnival Corporation.,
The luxury liner Queen Mary II will be in active competition with some of the most glamorous, brazen, specialized ships of that nature. Thedy are,of course, smaller, buy many of them are well-equipped and very well established as sea-going hotels, convention centers, amusement parks and gourmet foods showplaces as routine.accoutrements. Where the new Queen will fit into such a pattern as has already been established is difficult to say, but she might well merit the eliite, higher- income spenders, and more-monied cruise-trip buyers. She might well be something of a prestige in the mind of many would be travelers.
As an example, it has been been suggested that we will certainly will see the new Queen in the harbor of Pirius while the Olympic games are being held with guests making their home for the entire span of the games in one of the townhouse arrangements featured on the new Queen Mary.
In many ways I see this all new ship to be continuing the fine work of the older vessel rather than replacing her any sense of he word. She holds great promise for all of us who continue to have dreams.
A.L.M February 12, 2004 [c552wds] Note: Erased by mistake on previous day of publication. Restored here by request. a.l.m.
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
UP OR DOWN?
Are we, indeed,, as a nation, in a period of cultural decline as many loud persons, so proclaiming , tell us we are. I am generally suspicious of any person who has a cure ready for everything that might face us socially or physically.
Could it be, rather than a declining situation,, that our case has been improperly diagnosed?
As a nation we are rather young. We think we have lived a rather full existence in our short span. My own state, the Commonwealth Virginia. Is getting ready to observe her 400th birthday in 2007. It will call for us to take a close look at what we have accomplished in that time/ It will also be a time in which we mus evaluate the enduring worth of our action in the past.
Youth, generally, lets confidence show itself. We have been accused from time-to-time of being a bit on the cocky side when meeting with European or other nations. The opinion has, at times, been justified depending on the nature of the individuals who have represented us in those specific times.
The upcoming years of such birthday celebrations marking four hundred years of existence, may be a good time for us to access our past accomplishments and to determine wherein we may have been amiss in dealing with with some of the problems which faced us
It may well be that we, at times, have confused quantity those quality. In our past we have taken risks. That element, too, is typical at times of most nations as they grow and mature. How did those experiences affect our national history? Are they part of the reason for the alleged attitude of superiority? Can we justify actions we have taken in the past which may no fit well with he best thinking of today?
In truth, there will, I think, be little reason to think we can change things we did wrong as any point of crisis in our years of becoming what we are today. We can , however, learn to live with them in constructive, healing ways. Any nation claiming to be pure is in abject error so, on our 400th Birthday be prepared to witness the presence of warts, wens and withered areas on the birthday cake,. Some of the candles simply will not burn and add light. Some of he sweetness will be bitter and some of the color will be faded and waning.
It could, perhaps, be that we have forgotten much of the stress and growing pains because of the exceptional blessings which have come our way. This 400th birthday celebration will be a good time for taking inventory of our accomplishments and of our failures and those times when we have been, perhaps, amiss in our duties toward others.
A.LM. February 17, 2004 [c476wds]
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
RIGHT ADDRESS?
Continued resistance on the Iraqi front makes one wonder if we have the correct address affixed to our efforts to bring the country back to peaceful conditions?
It is becoming increasingly evident that the Iraqi opposition is getting large amounts of logistical and armament assistance from other sources interested in maintaining a "status un-quo" in the area. If such raids and counter-actions continue to grow, as they seem to be doing at the moment, are we ready and willing to take a closer look at our address books to determine if it might be necessary to deliver some serious messages of discouragement to other addresses in the immediate area - such as Iran, for example?
We have been subjected to much political drivel here at home about the apparently unsuccessful efforts to find "Weapons of Mass Destruction". We have heard the term so often. in fact that the media uses "WMD" and everyone knows what it is supposed to mean. It has become so common that it is a great deal like asking if a stray dog has fleas. The term itself has lost stature as it has been purposely restyled into a political party pinnate.
Why, I wonder, are both political extremes here, seemingly, so ready, even eager, to agree that no convincing evidence has yet been found within Iraq to substantiate any some accusation. Some politician opportunists among us have seemed to be overcome with a sort of almost apologetic attitude and they have stated that Saddam Husein, at no time, had such weapons. They do remember when Saddam Heusen himself proclaimed that he did and they forget, too, that he used them to kill Kurd citizens of the northern section of his own country.
I have a feeling that no one has really been surprised to find there is no strong evidence within Iraq. Such incriminating materials were moved out of the country well ahead of the arrival of United States troops. Look next door, Don't be in too much of a hurry to do so, however.
This weeks announcement by Iran that it does, after all, have nuclear capabilities and that it fully intends to “share” them with others in the form ”of power supplies only” comes at an interesting time.
Don't expect to hear much about it until our presidential election is completed. No one, in their right political mind, would even suggest right now that the war be expanded to include take out Iran's newly discovered funicular plants they didn't know they had. Those who helped to build them would be objects, as well, no doubt.
So, take it easy. Think about it, but don't go asking a lot of questions. Not right now, at least.
Never let your bladder get all a'bubble until you know, for sure, the exact location of, and the availability of , the nearest bathroom facility.
A.L.M. February 15, 2004 [c487wds]
Monday, February 16, 2004
WAY BACK WHEN `
` Do you remember when, not too many years ago, people - you and I among them - used to complain when shopping that “everything seems to be made in Japan!” You don't say that any more, do you? Now it's China. Yes. Now its China and almost anywhere else you care to name other than the United States.
If Huck Finn was around today and saw the situation he might well say:”We don't make nuthin' no more.”
He would be almost correct. At this moment, as I take a quick accounting of what I am wearing as I sit here typing this page. I find I am wearing only one item of clothing which bears the legend “Made in U.S.A.”. It's not my shoes – China. Dress shoes I will wear this evening are from India. My well-know brand of trousers were made in Korea; nor is it either section my underwear, or my socks made in China My sweater is a product of the workers of Bangladesh. The only thing made in the U.S.A is the belt which holds my pants up. It is plainly stamped on the leather - or, whatever the material might be, just behind the buckle which is of metal and which may well have been brought from far away to be fitted to the locally made leather portion of the belt. I assume that same source punched the six holes in even sequence along the hitchin' end of it, but the buckle, itself, might be from anywhere.
We had a case years go pretty much like that of women's elegant gloves plainly marked as being made in the U.S. of A. But, the tiny tag saying so was added in the seam of the cloth cuffs when they were sewn to the gloves themselves which were all imported from Italy. I have a feeling they have been having trouble finding the exact place where they can make belts and ship them some ump-teen thousand miles all at a cost lower than we can make a belt here at home.
I was scolded recently by an economist-type person who told me that it is far better for all of us to have workers in other nations manufacture the stuff we need. This, I am told, enables them to earn a living and allows the foreign workers to pay taxes and buy property as the work for locally respected “fair” wages to earn what the local owner calls good working conditions. The have a income of their own and get along in an improved lifestyle.. We no longer find it necessary for us to fork out millions of dollars in economic or political aid needed to help them subsist.
I find it to be still subject to some doubt. question the authenticity of those words and the methods actually applied. Being polite as can be, this critics simply says I am “stubborn”, but you and I both know they really “dumb”.
I'm planning to stay that way until someone shows me how this scheme works. At the moment I plan to keep right on agreeing with Huck Finn's hypothetical assessment. ”We don't make nuthin' no more!”
A.L.M. February 15, 2004 [c541wds]
Sunday, February 15, 2004
“SECRET” WEAPON
A totally new facet has been added to the not-so-gentle art of electioneering since television has taken over the bulk of the process in most areas. Right now, almost daily, I see and hear candidates fall into the subtle trap which can do them real harm on their way to the upper office area.
A very real change has taken place in the composition of the audience to whom a candidate may be speaking. He who ignores the change is courting disaster albeit in small does - which can be just as deadly in the long run.
There is quite a different type of “ammunition” allowable when a candidate speaking to a “closed” group of people who are in sympathy with his views, but a totally different different type of word weaponry is needed for reaching a group which includes people opposed to his programs. Every time a he or she candidate makes a sharply critical of an opponent he is greeted by cheers from those whoa agree but there others who are bot so easily pleased. They scoff and ridicule what is said and resolve to continue to belive as they have before. The old railroad yard crowd which gathered around the rear platform of the visiting Pullman cae was made up of ninty-per cent loyal supporters. The TB audience is seldom, if ever, so one-sided.
Each time John Kerry, or any other opposing candidate, speaks of President George W. Bush as being a :”tyrant “, “liar”,”:an AWOL soldier”, or some other such term, he drives yet another bent and poison-dipped, corroding nail in his own coffin.
If a candidate is going to use TV to seek out new adherents, he had best be schooled in the realities which come with it. It is one of the few chances you, as a candidate, will have to talk to people who are not convinced you are what you claim to be. In reality much of the winning of new people is done by the loyal workers you inspire rather than through any direct, personal appeals you might make..
You will not make much progress with any of them if you purposely drive them away. Sugar makes a far better bait than vinegar. Television is best used by “adults” and it is increasingly obvious that not all candidate are that far advanced in the ways of going about it.
My advice to all candidates: Mind your TV manners!
A. L. M. February 14, 2004 [c423wds].
Saturday, February 14, 2004
TOO FAST!
A much used comeback line in the days of the old style Minstrel Show used to be - in explaining one's lassitude - to proclaim: “The faster I go ahead, the behinder I get!”
I feel the same way when I meet with all the new knowledge we are supposed to absorb. There are entire armies of technical snoopers out there discovering things we should have thought about a hundred years ago.
With every announcement of a discovery they have just made ...proclamations which are supposed to keep me up with our times, I tend to fall back another notch or so into the century long gone.
For instance, take this matter of “matter”.
I have been completely comfortable with the idea that there were three types of matter. That's what we were taught in the lower grades at school. There were “Solids”. Right? Then, we had another form called “Liquids”, as I recall, and a third type of matter - entirely different from the other two - which we were to call “Gases.” All that, I grasped and understood. “No sweat”, we say which shows how natural and effortless the acquisition of knowledge is supposed to be.
Now, however, my fact-finding friends at NASA tell we there are “at least” - as they put it – six forms of matter. One was added sometime ago, but no one told me about it being so different. The other two are ones I am going to be working on for some time. It does not help one little bit when NASA scribblers start their sentence to me with the words: “Most second graders know...” But, I will go along with their thinking that insists that the number four form of matter is that which we call “plasma.” They cite the sun as being a good example. It ls not a solid, it's not a liquid and it's not a gas even though it may seem to be likeanyhor allof them at times. Plasma is, technically, that state which happens when the atoms have their ions and elections are ripped apart. NASA also says, quite confidently, that the rest of the universe is also made of the same stuff.
The fifth an sixth types of matter are still in the alphabet stage of “discovery”. The one is called BEC or the Bose-Einstein condensate. It was discovered in 1995 and it appears only when you freeze particles called “bosoms” to ultra-low temperatures.
The very latest matter is called “fermionic condensates”. I you just happen to “freeze half a million atoms of potassium-40 atoms to less than a millionth of a degree of absolute zero.” you mayget some of it.
I don't think your local lumber yard is going to be getting in sizable stocks of any of these for some time, so be content with the old threesome for a little while lonmger - maybe like a century, or so. We can all think “plasma”now-and-then to show we are not completely out-of- date.
A.L.M. February 14 , 2004 [c511wds]
Thursday, February 12, 2004
TRUST
As I listen to people telling of affairs in their communities - small, for the most part, I get the feeling that the quality of “trust” is not as strong as it once seems to have been in public affairs.
Cases of graft, embezzlement and cheating in various forms, both old and new, are coming to light at a somewhat faster rate, it seems. Some of the most unlikely persons are suddenly thrust into the limelight as “criminals”- often people we would not, normally, think of as being even potential wrongdoers; people we have known and respected, are being found wanting.
Some restrictive business practices seem to have mellowed over the years, as well, and are becoming visible once more. Activities which used to be considered improper is now allowed to proliferate and new twists on old scams are given a rerun. One current misuse seems to me to be the growing number of so small-called “stores” selling money. The practice seems to be in direct contrast to the intent of our usury regulations and laws.. The growing number of such transitory “stores” which deal in translating personal checks into ready cash, has become somewhat of a shameful epidemic of evil possibly brought about by the growth “rent to own” arrangement stores offering furniture and appliances in particular. Both are based on maximum interest rates obtainable. I realize they have been a blessing to some real estate people concerned with filling some vacant store fronts in dying shopping centers, but they, in their gaudily locations, are designed to lure unthinking individuals into financial chaos. People who feel they are in dire need of cash-in-hand, write checks which those stores hold against the writer's future earnings. Client. Eager and impulsive, often do not realize the interest rate being charged for doing this service on their behalf.
Cash money appears. seemingly out of nowhere in particular, and worries and cares go out the window for a time. Pay up time will come later. But inevitably so. This all seems wrong to me. Such a method, open to trickery and double-dealing, done even at the highest interest rates, can quickly become criminal in my book.
Dishonesty grows in election years, too. I looked back though these pages for these pieces and four years ago scores of the insulting remarks made then, are now being repeated. They were found to be without factual foundation then, but they are being run all over again against our President.. The same vilification of others - among them both “politicians”and “statesmen”- are being rehashed. The permissive attitude prevails as long as an act appears to be to one without backlash qualities. The false statement made or suggested by candidates during the hectic weeks of permissiveness will come back to haunt them again once having been used.
Examine you own feelings today.
Whom do you truly trust?
Your Doctor, maybe? Your Surgeon, perhaps? Who else might you list? How much understanding is there between husbands and wives? Brothers and Sisters? What trust do you place in the guidance of your religious leaders and the authority from whom they have their place in your life?
Whom do you trust and obey? Do you totally trust anyone?
A.L.M. February 11, 2004 [c540wds]
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
YOU DON'T SAY!
We all make judgments every day.
How well qualified we are to do so, is a matter for serious questioning. The urge to do so is one of today’s greatest temptations, especially those of us who, by circumstances, appear to be on the edge of becoming seriously informed on a given subject up for judgmental comment. Far too often we are “students of...” rather than “spokesperson for...” the subjects on which we tend to pontificate.
` It has been said that no one person can know everything, and that is more and more factual today than ever before as our computerized culture continues to generate new information at double the given rate at any set time. We have, long ago, done all we could to keep our educational systems apart from reality. Only now, do we see some signs that segments of our system are becoming aware of the fact that no man or woman be a seen as a sort of container to be stuffed with all that we seem to know for regurgitation at a future time of need.
This is not and an impersonal thing. either. I accuse myself of doing just this sort of thing quite often. I am aware of this and see it as a weakness I must seek to change. I have cringed inwardly upon finding myself and my words being quoted as “authority” elsewhere on the Internet.
Think of it. What is your place in this world of information? I always try to leave a doorway for anyone who thinks otherwise to speak up. They rarely do so.
There is a little-used box on the lead page of each of these essays making it possible for anyone who disagrees to reply, question, comment or cuss-out if that is their mood at the moment.
Among the judgments I have been led to accept accept as being more and more common now. has been the glaringly accurate fact that so many seem to depend on others to determine what they believe. There was a day when newspapers, editors and other writers, determined what residents of their area “believed” perhaps, then radio and a magazine-oriented phase had some influence for a while, before TV moved in and took over the major power concerning what people ought to do with their lives
That, to me, indicates where we stand today -each of us being called upon to make a judgment concerning to what degree TV should determine what we do with our lives. Many of us make or re-make such a choice every day.
Where, I ask, is such a path leading us?
A.L.M. February 10, 2004 [c451wds]
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
OLD CAL
His name was really “Calvin. Everybody in town called him “Cal” or “Old Cal”, if you were younger than he. He was a thin dark man and a bit on the tall side it seemed to me when was small kid. His father named him after John Calvin, whom be believed started the Presbyterian church pretty much single-handedly.
As a kid I always remember old Cal's eyes. He seemed to be about ready to start crying most of the time. His eyes looked funny, sorta watery, uncertain look. Adults never told youngsters that we had “drug addicts” among us. They used a stronger term. There were “drug fiends”out there - never mere faddists. We young-younguns never thought of Cal as being .well, certainly not a-“fiend”or monster of some kind. He was always nice to us and our parents had him to do odd jobs for them around the place often.
Cal earned his living as a janitor. In the winter he fired furnaces.. He fired the furance in the apartment house in which we lived as well as our neighbors. Cal, himself, lived in a room or two in the unfinished basement of the apartment building. This drug thing was an oddity. We expected that he used “dope” like the Chinese people did in the opium dens and all that sort off thing, or maybe just whiskey. It came as something of a surprise, as well as a disappointment, when we found Cal drank a medication we had all used when we had a bad toothache and that sort of painful trouble. Paregoric. We were left to wonder about such a thing. He sipped paregoric solutions.. He was said to have acquired doctor's superscriptions which allowed him to buy the stuff. He could go from drug counter to drug counter to get a small bottle at each. He left home early every other morning and we didn't see him again until he came home that evening happier than when he left. It was a set o routine every other day with only occasional changes.
We came to think of Cal as being the village drunk, I suppose, though he never caused any trouble was never mean or disruptive. . We found, him to be well known where there was a drugstore.
I remember one Sunday morning/The choir was singing: “Shall We Gather At The River?” When we stopped, everyone was surprised to hear Cal adding a fifth verse. One of the church deacons jumped up and ran downstairs were he found Cal seated on some bags of ashes, a-singing his heart out. The singing stopped and the pastor got on with his the sermon.
Cal did a lot of “walkin' "' out” at night. We were always concerned about that acquired habit. Sooner or later he would get hit by a passing truck or car. It happened “sooner” rather than “later”./ A heavy, expensive car skidded on the wet highway and half overturned on him in the grass. Cal was well off the state's right of way.
Now, when people we talk about God working his miracles n mysterious ways, we know we certainly saw it happen with Old Cal. The man who was driving the car which hit Cal saw it that way, too. We heard he set up an insurance annuity of some sort which provided Cal with an income for the rest of his life.
How is that for a strange piece of luck? Of all the people who might have hit old Cal on that rainy roadside, he was struck by a rich, compassionate man. I remember thinking at the time, that maybe an old girl friend of Cal's might turn up to comfort him in his old age/”for as long as they both might live” It didn't work out like that, of course. That would have been asking too much. One miracle was enough.
A.L.M.. February 10, 2004 [c664
wds]
Monday, February 09, 2004
WORST CASE SENARIO
Many people like to look constantly at the bright side of living and, while I can see the merit of such a path, I also feel, rather strongly, that we must, from time-to-time, take an honest, forthright look at potential dangers we may have to face.
Now, during this election time of the year 2004 is such a moment. It may well be a time of radical change.
I cannot think of a time when we have been in such a state as we now seem to be and people are reacting in some odd ways to a circumstances and conditions. We are currently involved in a war that, which, while it is real and makes demands upon us all, does not conform to what a war generally should be in many people's views. Support for the war against Terrorism wavers .It has been dangerously politicized and re-named as “Bush's War” used as an election ploy. This is dangerous enough, but those who are doing so out of warped political party loyalty are admitting they do not realize that this war is far more than a misunderstanding with one small nation called Iraq. It is a time for all of us to see that this is a continuing phase in the old conflict between major religious faiths and that the more we deny that it is, the worse it becomes.
I sincerely hope that it may not work out this way ,but, if the current mood persists and narrow party politics continue to be as flexible and as unprincipled as they seem to be in many areas, we face a time when an immense army of “peace” persons might co-agulate as a major force in our political life. A Democratic Party candidate, willing to wave the bloody shirt throughout the land, could easily gather an overwhelming majority from existing party followers, holdovers, and Republicans and existing peace party persons and others who have lost faith in George Bush for whatever reason. It would take little effort at all for such a candidate, holding high a gaudy peace banner, to show senior citizen how their Medicare funds are being wasted on armaments; to show young people how their future Social Security funds are being drained away, how children, single mothers and widows are being starved to death by underfunded welfare programs.
Such a national “peace” movement may seem unlikely to many. I am not saying it even “may” happen, but I am pointing out that the possibility is there, and that we must avoid such a tragic pitfall. The ultimate consequence of such a thing are beyond our comprehension.
A.L.M. February 8, 2004 [c459wds]
Sunday, February 08, 2004
ARTIST OR HACK?
I wonder how and why it is that we continue to ignore, one of the finest national artists our nation has ever produced?
His name is J, L.G. Ferris and, if just the sight of that name brings immediate recognition to you as that of one of the truly outstanding artistic talents of our national history - – you may to the head of the class.
You will find, however, that you have been sent to a lonely place. Very few Americans know - or care to know, it seems - who Ferris was ; much less what his work should mean to all of us.
This artist, who died in 1930, produced a series of seventy large oil paintings of outstanding events in American history.
Much of the the information one can find about Ferris today is confused and middled. His father wanted his son to become an artist and even gave him the name of Gene Leon Gerome - hence the “J .L.G”.tag , who was a famed French painter of the mid-1800's. The elder Ferris gave his son good training here with reputable teachers, and took him to Algeria ,Spain and France with him to study art and to paint. Ferris actually me this famous namesake who helped him with his plans.
In seeking reasons why the Ferris name was espenged almost entirely from art encyclopaedia's listings in the United States. He is not recorded for having had any personality flaws would have made him for association with the art community of the time.. Around l900, Ferris selected seventy American historical events and set about painting of each of them. His critics accuse him of “lack of continuity”. He did not do the paintings in chronological order. He roamed among the seventy themes and chose to work on the ones which moved him to a confident worsk on that he had enouigh detail in mind to do a good job.,and only when he felt he had sufficient information to make them authentic representations in every detail. I also find rather snide references to him as being “an illustrator” rather than a “ true” artist. This accusation was true in a sense, but not a demerit at all because noteworthy magazines such as “The Literary Digest” featured his works as front-cover art.. There is also some mention of “copyright difficulties” related to the large number of print made for his works. I have an idea there might be other reasons why Ferris was shunned by the art world of his day and I intend to find out what they may have been.
He was born in 1863, in Philadelphia. He willed his paintings to his wife and she, in turn, did so to the City of Philadelphia. I find that many of the seventy series have been on display at the Independence Hall Museum Hall Museum and I find references to the Library of Congress..You may well have some of his works:::The Rail Splitter” (Abe Lincoln in Illinois), “:the Writing of the Declaration of Independence”,: Liberty Bell"”, “Virginia Dare”, “Blacksmith”: and others., but he has been denied his proper place in our cultural history.. His paintings, in book form, would be the basis for an impressive telling of our national heritage and of America's proper place in world affairs.. I intend to find out more about J. L.G. Ferris, Won't you join me?
A.L.M. February 8, 2004 [c575wds]
Saturday, February 07, 2004
BEST WAY
The very best way to waste time is to hurry!
I have written thousands of notes to myself which I could not read even half an hour later. I have, as you well know from reading these pages, lectured myself severely for this bad habit. .It has done little good, so I have had to abandon much of such scribblings written as intended self-starters for late use. I tried, for instance, to limit such notes; to make them as short as possible even cryptic in physical appearance, but that produced even more of the same type of mystery-making material.
Other steps I tried doing them as a separate note file on a floppy disk. That helped to some degree, and I found I found it good to designate them all as “n” or ”f” - for “notes, or “file only”, That, at least, made them stand out as be what they were intended to be - reminders concerned with longer versions to be done later, using that small spark to light the fire.
The idea was to put the former scrap materials on a floppy disc under “N” from which may develop as the file grows to usable proportions and fills out under the usual outline headings which have been so helpful to me over the years: “H, WBTU,, For Inst.- 1.2 & 3, and SW”.
The new system has worked wonderfully well for me, I feel but there has been a reaction I did not expect. - a sort of : burp” effect: I found, to my dismay, that I have been doing the same sort of half-way, costly planning on so much of my life style itself.
It has suddenly hit me as being woeful lacking in good common sense elements, that I should spend all my life - eighty years or so of it writing literally millions of words of commercial copy, new stories, editorials, essays, column and plays as well as s short stories - and never learned to type properly. What a waste of effort and hours! The only typing lesson I ever had were during the Depression years when a young girl in our group found she could get a WPA job teaching in Night School if she could could scare up twenty-five students. I was among the dozen or so who volunteer for typing and shorthand lessons. She got the job. I should have stuck with that opportunity but in my haste to get along with being a writer, I let it get by, Now, years later, I see what a hollow-headed decision I made at that time years ago ...aproverbial case of “haste” making “waste.”
What have I done about it?
Now, just a few weeks before my 88th birthday, I am learning to type properly.
A.L.M. February 6, 2004 [c474wds]
Friday, February 06, 2004
LITTLE DOUBTS
Most of us, as individuals, are beset with many little doubts about a host of things. There are circumstances which, while not vital to our overall belief, might well be cleared up if we just knew how to go about doing so.
In recent years, it appears that many American “citizens”; to be read simply as meaning those who happen to live here legally or illegally, have, I firmly believe, been forced to alter some of their estimates of what a federal government should be in recent years.
Some such individuals find their concept of proper leadership demands changes to be made.. In spite of scores of instances in our history which, if totally stripped of concealment, might well equal or surpass those in which modern modern leader may have been engaged.
I recall the precise time when I, as a child, came to doubt that the President of the United States was not always a perfect person. My distrust came about from reading my Uncle's copy of a popular magazine of that that time called “The Literary Digest”. The cartoon artwork in that magazine depicted our President as a funny little man opening the top of a giant teapot and pouring out dollar signs to a joyous mob of toughs. We did not have radio in those days, but from conversations of adults I came to know all about the “Teapot Dome Scandal' and hushed conversations mentioned President Harding as being “womanizer” Teen talk of that time filled me in on what that might mean.
Another little doubt which assails many of us has to do with patriotism. I grew up in Southwest Virginia which brands me as being a hillbilly of the Appalachian breed. People I knew and respect to this day, made a point of having as little as possible to do with any of “them givernment men.” Some expressed themselves as being “agin “ many things that others thought of a being progressive. The “Great Depression” brought them in contact with government often with results verging on disaster. The New Deal and FDR still hold varied meanings among those folks. Never question the the term “patriotism”, however. In our Revolution, other wars, and more recent conflicts, there have been no finer patriots. I remember, too, how they disdained the politician who, at election time, chooses to “wave the bloody shirt”. They saw it as a direct insult to those who died for our nation.
These and other doubts trickle through the news I hear and see on TV in this modern election time of 2004. It takes some effort to put some of the old dislikes .“small cares” and “little doubts”in proper perspective.
Our greatest danger right now, I think, is to be found in the fact that a so-called “peace” movement rooted in narrow political party bickering might transcend the many really serious issues facing us as a nation.
A.L.M. February 5, 2004 [c495wds]
Thursday, February 05, 2004
THIS, TOO.
Get ready for change. The ante is going up!
We are going to be asked to up our estimate of the amount of money we might expect from TV just for answering a few questions.
Regis Philbin did a good job in convincing people that a million dollars was not out of line at all.. Anyone can handle that amount as a prize. Regis did very well, but the ABC network did not know how to control their enthusiasm. They overdid it. The million dollar peak idea became tiresome to some especially when several lotteries started routinely
shoveling out ump-teen million totals. The desire to be a mere millionaire almost died a horrible death, until Meredith Vieira revived it; brought it back into view with a half-hour version which is now syndicated all over the overflowing channels both day and night.
Meanwhile, back at the mint, ABC has devised an enlarged format of the same general nature which will feature a ten million as a peak. Regis will be doing it, too, rumor hath it.
.
There were at least a score of imitations of the original British show last time. But ten million is quite a chunk and not too many trial balloons will be floated this time, I dare say/ Ten millions! Imagine!
“This too, shall pass.”
I don't remember who is generally not credited with having said that, but “Thank you, whoever”. You are right on the ole button again, there, Buster. But , when it does ...what next?
A.L.M. February 4, 2004 [c339wds]
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
BREAK UP!
It has different names among those broadcasters or actors who have experienced such a condition. It is not uncommon incident and performers all dread the moment when it might come to them.
I am speaking of that strange condition in which a normally calm and stable individual finds himself or herself overcome with with a mad tendency to giggle and to break out in nervous spasms of laughter totally beyond one's control It has happened to the very best of the performers. For a time everything is funny and one has no ability to control it. It interrupts and punctuates anything one can say or do.
I have heard it on network radio;, witnessed it on TV nationally and locally just as you have. I remember one TV news program years ago, when a fifteen minute newscast went haywire suddenly, seemingly haywire without reason. The final eight minutes of the program were dismal. One had the giggles, another was on the edge, it appeared, and a third, the weather man, was obviously embarrassed by the sudden lapse in sanity. It was he who wisely took over and closed the time slot with more weather from his somewhat withdraw weather board area aside from the main area of frivolity.
When I got to the copy office the next morning, there had all ready been a “front office” pow-wow. The verdict by management was, wisely, one of total absolution. The station manager had been through the same experience himself in his years in the control room. It was to go unpunished.
I found out later there was a key to it all in the fact that a floor manager, moving about the studio, had tripped over a pile of coiled wire and fallen flat on the floor in front of the news desk. He decided to lie still where he had fallen rather that create additional noise, and the silly grin on his fallen face tickled the news reader deep down behind his common sense bone.
I have been on the brink of the precipice myself. I was reading fifteen minutes of commodity and farm market reports when it suddenly hit me that every time the word “turkey” occurred it was spelled on the yellow teletype paper in front of me as “Gurkey” and “Gurkies”. I had genuine trouble not saying as I was seeing. The more I tried to ignore the change, the more it became a matter of interest. I know I sounded happier than unusual, but the area was the leading turkey raising section of the nation and the news about turkey markets that days was good.
I have often thought of those strange moment of being on the every edge of collapse. You never know what strange little thing might tickle your funny bone. Having been there, I view such a plight with special concern.
A.L.M. February 4, 2004 [c486wds]
Tuesday, February 03, 2004
YEAR OF THE BARE BOOB
What a way to remember a sports event?
Millions of TV viewers will recall, years from now, that the 2004 Super Bowl Sunday following Super Bowl Saturday and preceding Super Bowl Monday,-was different from what was expected. It became sort of Judgment Day for television and the entertainment world.
It had been determined well ahead of time that the large audience anticipated - about forty million - would consist of three groups: devout football fans, to whom the day originally belonged, plus a large group of usually younger viewers called, half-time watchers who had been baited for some weeks with promises of a talent circus, and a third rather strange group to which belong there to watch the commercials.
Super Bowl Sunday has become a testing area for TV commercials in recent years when those who do such things make all-new productions from scratch for this platinum-priced project. The spots sell for higher prices each year - this year around two-and-one-half millions of dollars for a thirty-second message. At that price, successful spots are expected to set the pace in the TV market or the year ahead..
I am not a dedicated commercial watcher so I got with the whole thing about twenty-eight minutes late I've been told by some who had who watched a scoreless game to that length. I still do not believe I saw some of the stuff set forth, but the main estimates of the values of the game have been almost entirely on the half-time show which went awry.
Michale Jackson's sister, Janet, has new album coming out this week end and her bro has been hogging the Jackson publicity recently with his childish doings out west, so and her co-singer Timberlake, or whatever his name was, helped her devise a strip for her bosom to be a breakaway when tugged. Today she is saying it was planned to leave a red net covering under the strip he ripped off while singing a song with lyrics reading” “I'll have you naked before this song is ended.” Real art all the way! When Timberhead, or whatever, tugged at the strip, to whole thing came off in his hot little hand and the well endowed girl stood there in all her domed glory. The fans loved it! At that moment, in their view, it might be said that Janet Jackson had been crowned as the titular head of the entire cast of the half-time show. Yesterday they claimed it was an accident. Today they admit it was set up. Some cheating was involved, too. She was wearing a decorative covering on the offending protudeance...some called it a pasty, others said it was a snap-on dome, or a Japanese toy which demands pierced nipples. Perhaps we had best leave this nipple notching business to historians to determine later on. Don't be at all surprised if you get a premium set of them when you buy Janet's new album next week.
CBS and a random collection of other initalized firms, are exuding apologies today to each other, and they have good reason to do so.. The Jackson exposure is the headline item but the commercials were not all purity and light, either. Not since the film ”Blazing Saddles” have I seen any attempt to merchandise the fart. The first commercial I saw Super Bowl Sunday was that of a horse one. More on that street sweeper's nightmare later - maybe.
There was a football game that Sunday,too. They were both in the thirties with New England ahead when they stopped and went home.
A.L.M. February 3, 2004 [c617wds]
Monday, February 02, 2004
HOW'D THAT HAPPEN?
I find it odd that the names of all continents on Earth begin and end with the same letters. Who let such a semblence of order get by?
You have a choice of either an "e" or and "a".
I wonder what the gambler's chance charts show about such a thing happening. - seven continents - and all with names beginning and ending with identical letters. A rare occurrance, indeed, I would guess.
I doubt that we have been as careful in naming the various divisions of terrain on the surface the Moon or of Mars.
That's on of the few things I can think of which has not changed since I was a kid, unless it be the fact that we did not, years ago, consider Antarctica to be a continent . Each and every one of them have, in truth, gone through extended eras of cataclysmic changes we are just beginning to understand. It is thought they were all one big chuck at one time and that they have split and slud as far as they can get from one another with deep oceans in between, It was that parting which has broughy aboput the gross divisions of humanity into segments ofte
atodd woithone another. We became Africans, Asians, Aussies, Europeans, Americans - with Antarcticians yet to be heard from.
Australia and New Zealand with island nearby comes closer to be in a political unit than any of them. If one think unity is a mark of unity is also a sign of maturity, however, we may have another then we have another long wait coming. One would think there might be more signs of political and social unity within continents than we can cite.
The existence of the Euro ,perhaps, can be seen as an indicator of a tendency to think of continental-nation arrangementi inthe future./ A United States of Europe would be a good step in the view of man people, toward peace in that section, but it is difficult to say when such situations may arise, among the seven continents. It has never been resolved exactly who "owns" Antarctica , for instance, and that could - with detailed scientific evaluation of its natural resources, become a prime problem at any time.
A.L.M. Feb ruary 2, 2004 [c492wds]
Sunday, February 01, 2004
LOOK AT THIS!
The other night we sat watching and listening to a group of NASA scientists tell us all about the landing and first movements of the second rover vehicle – "Opportunity" - successfully landed on the planet Mars. It was especially good to see the enthusiasm of these gifted people charged with such an important step in mankind's progress. They reminded me, and many others I am sure, of a bunch of inquisitive, energetic kids sprawled on the floor and proudly showing off their latest construction accomplishments with their "Erector Set" many years ago.
This cheerful optimism is a qood quality to keep in such projects. We can be sure of positive attainments when we see those people engaged in the actual work are, obviously, have so much fun doing it.
Challanging demands face each of them in their special niche in a massive set of problems many of which are unknown and exist primatialy in the theories. It is a good thing to see both men and women involved in this sort of work which they, so obviously enjoy doing, which spells out an open invitation to young people today. Wth proper studies and physical efforts they, too, may be able to bring about changes in our environment which are essential to our continuing. Work needs to be made interestiing. We are in grave danger it this country, of thinking that the only employment available to youth in the future will be taking orders, with or without, at the local faster food emrorium or baby sitting a group of computerized switches in an automnatied industrial process.Seeing space industry workers at work and enjoying every moment of it, can be an inspiring gateway for us to plan the future of our young generation of workers now seeking such
paths.
It is true that we cannot all scientists. We could not, years ago, afford to have extra Erector Sets. They were expensive. We had one small, basic set in our family. It was understood that every little nut and bolt of that set belonged to the oldest boy in the family. He was deemed to have full rights of possession and a new piece was added each Chistmas season. We respected that rule of ownership, too, and today our space scientiksts are in charge of those portion of our life. And should remain so with new peoples added as they develop. The challenge to eduational experts today is to find ways to imbue more occupational fields with such a sense of importance, destiny and boundless satisfaction as space-related work seems to offer young people today.
Think about it.
Can you honestly say you are excited and enthused about the type of work your are doing ?
A.L.M. February 1, 2004 [c520wds]
|
