Why?

I am a fan of air conditioning.  Willis Carrier is my hero.  Yet I ask "Why?" is this wonderful convenience so often and so severely abused?  This is primarily in reference to public spaces.  How you use your unit in your own home  or in your automobile is  your business.  Enjoy.  But it is essential, at least in the Midwest where summer temperatures typically hover in the nineties that one carry a jacket or sweat shirt with him if he is planning a foray into a restaurant or public office.

Following a number of wonderful days in Kansas where the temperatures were often in the low nineties we headed homeward.  Typical Midwestern day, we stopped in Springfield, Illinois for an evening repast.  We were seated eight feet, literally eight feet, from the device pictured here.  Observe that  it is set calling for 70^oF and that the thermometer component records 70^oF.  I had to get up, go outside in the ninety degree heat, walk to my vehicle and get a jacket so that I could partake of my meal.  Hands were still cold, but my heart kept beating.

Telephony, or Tell A Phony #T

The telephone was conceived as a convenience.  We pay considerable money for telephone service.  It is, therefore, our telephone line, our number.  It is a pain in the neck.

Just when I start to give people the benefit of the doubt, someone somehow removes the doubt.  People are jerks.  Well, a lot of them, apparently.  I really want to think that people are good, and kind, and caring, and respectful of others.  Not so much anymore.

Telephone abuse.  Let me preface this by saying, yes, all our phone lines are listed on the "do not call" registry.  So what? The same type people who will hack your computer will abuse your telephone.  Some weeks the only calls received in my home are unsolicited solicitors, and most of them are disembodied voices.  "Hi, I'm Elizabeth," and so on.  Try talking to Elizabeth.  Also, guess who is paying for my telephone service.  Oh, wait.  I already told you.

Then we have the pharmacy.  Wakes me up at 9:01 a.m. to tell me my prescription is ready at. . . And so on.  I know I ordered the meds; I know when I plan to pick it up.  Leave me alone!

And the medical profession generally.  "We are calling to remind you that you have an appointment with. . ."  Calendar.  They cannot imagine that I keep a calendar?  What is the matter with people?  Also, after the appointment, "Do you have a few minutes to answer some questions regarding your recent visit to ____ Medical Facility?"  No.  I wasted enough time in the waiting room when I was there.

Then there are the calls we initiate.  Disembodied voice:  "If you are a current customer. . . press 1; if you. . ." and so on and so on.  "If you want to hear this menu again. . ."  Yikes!  Then press five to talk to a customer service representative.  "All our associates are currently busy with other customers.  We value you. . . please hold. . ."  (Elevator music; bad elevator music)

Well, you have been there.  Too often if your life is like ours; but then perhaps things are better where you live.  If you are on another planet.

Okay, good night.  I must get to bed, try to get some rest because "they" are coming to arrest me in the morning.  That's what I was told.  "You have four violations on your recent tax return and if you don't call this number today, you WILL be arrested in the morning!"  (I said, "Bring it on!"  But of course I was talking to the disembodied voice.)

. . .And Another Thing

Oooh!  Are we all excited yet about our big PAY HIKE due to the gop tax cuts?

I received my retirement check today for March 1 and it is true that my "take home" is increased due to a reduction of the withholding for federal taxes.  Who doesn't love a pay increase?

Smoke and mirrors are still basic props for governmental fiscal operations-- across a wide range of activities, I might add, up to and including the creation of "money" out of thin air.  But books could be written on the subject-- and little would be fixed thereby.  So back to the issue at hand.

The payer of my retirement stipend has no knowledge of my over-all income status.  He simply uses a federal table of deductions and applies it to the amount I have earned for the month.  And what he doesn't know doesn't hurt him-- but it hurts me, but only to the extent that I allow myself to be the victim of the ruse that I have gotten a "tax cut."

Because the Lord has blessed me I have certain other incomes in addition to the one referenced above.  Hence I pay taxes monthly on them, but in addition I submit a quarterly ES voucher with payment to the IRS four (4) times a year.  And wind up, usually, writing a fifth check in April, but that is also another issue.

So, this "pay increase," thank you Washington, DC, that I receive this month will ultimately cost me bigger checks direct from my bank account to the IRS.  But wait!  You say.  Your 2018 taxes will be less in the long run.

Can you repeat after me:  Poppycock!

Will not.  I have already done the math.

If the pants of every liar in DC caught fire simultaneously the entire district along with the states of Virginia and Maryland would go up in flames.

(But, you say, if you are armed with this knowledge why don't you have your payers withhold larger amounts in the first place?  Yes, I could do that.  And how does that reduce my taxes?)

Life Revised #T

NBC runs a show called "Timeless."  The premise is ridiculous, though I generally like stories that involve time-travel.  Last night, though, I watched the program, my first time.  I saw it through, but found myself getting increasingly irritated.  Over a fictional story? you ask.  Yes,

Three years ago, coincidentally on the same date NBC ran this show, I posted a fictional tale here in which Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow played roles in my tale.  Though my account was fictional and the actions of the characters were dreamed up in my mind, I went to considerable lengths to make sure that the timing and the locale of the behaviors were such that they might have fit perfectly into the lives of these two notorious characters as they actually lived them.  Preface.

Which brings us to the NBC folly.  The only thing they got right other than the names Bonnie and Clyde was the date, 1934,  Everything else was nonsense and in particular the way in which they were killed.  Now fiction is one thing, but violation of historical fact presented as fact in a fictional tale is an abomination.

We live in the Post-truth Era.  Truthiness is to be accepted as fact, for truth is what I say it is.

One is compelled to believe that whatever he reads or hears is likely to be baloney or horse feathers.

Discernment?  Play a requiem for discernment.  Sad

"When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less." --Humpty Dumpty

Smile

A couple of days ago I was on about my aversion to "take it to the next level."  Last night I was reading the newspaper and came across another cliche that sets my teeth on edge.  This one is heard on a daily basis on tv newscasts, *growl* but now it has crept into the print media.  Is there no hope for us?

The offensive line? 

"We reached out to . . . "  Of course we left a message but the source we wished to contact did not return our call.  Smart source, unless someone wants to be misquoted in the press.

Here's an idea, Ms. Reader, or Mr. Reporter as the case may be.  Why don't you "reach out," grasp your throat firmly with your hand and throttle yourself?

Rant over.

have you smiled today?

Anyone Have a Sturdy Sabot I Can Smash This Thing With?

I have issues with computers.  I mean we all have the virus and trojan issues; we all have the pop-ups and unsolicited advertisements.  We all deal with them in one way or another.  But this is not what I mean.

We were sold into the computer age with the promise of a more efficient and easier life,  This turns out to be largely poppycock.  More information more readily available, yes.  Too much information too freely shared.  But again, this is not what I am on about.

I am mad at the people who make and sell the computers and the software.  I am mad because they misrepresent reality and sell our dreams down the river for their own perfidious ends.

Here is the crux of the matter.  For years I maintained a neatly organized four-drawer steel file cabinet.  Yours might have been oak or walnut, but the purpose was the same.  In it I filed papers that I wrote or collected and wished to keep.  Want a document?  Go to the cabinet, open the drawer, go to the file, and voila! there is the document just as we left it a week ago, a year ago, a decade ago, or even in some cases forty years ago.

So buying into the promise of convenience, upon acquisition of a computer I started writing and storing my documents on the hard drive and on ancillary hardware sold for the purpose.  You know: floppy disks, diskettes, thumb drives and so on.

As the industry grew and changes became head-spinningly rapid, we allowed ourselves to grow with it.  I mean, who wants to be a troglodyte in the information age?

Now as I moved from one device to another or one platform to another I judiciously transported stuff I wanted to keep from the old equipment to the new.  Makes sense, doesn't it?  No, it does not.

And here it is.  I have documents on my current device which I wrote originally in Microsoft Works.  I kept them because I wanted them.  And I still have them.  Ostensibly.  But I cannot open them.

And as for floppies and diskettes, no way to read them anymore.  Old hard drives?  Doorstops.

Cf the automotive world.  Autos have changed tremendously in the past seventy years.  But I can still drive a 1930s car.  I can drive a modern vehicle. Would that once learned one could always drive a computer.

Random Doodles and Stuff

I keep a clipboard with a pad of 8.5 x 11 paper thereon close at hand, for one never knows when something of critical importance may impinge itself on the consciousness.

Of course, if you know me at all you are aware that "close at hand" means just out of sight or out of reach when the occasion for need arises, and thus my forgetter wins again.

The evidence before your eyes demonstrates that the clipboard is not always out of reach.

I shall look at this with you, lest you attempt to bicycle-analyze me.

This sheet has been in use for about a week.  It reminds me of a random  page in my notebook that I might have used during a class session in college, say Psych 254.  But that is neither here nor there.

In the upper left, there are several notes I jotted as I read the local newspaper.  These are the items that put me in a funk a week or so ago.  Remember?  In an attempt to balance the bad news, I jotted the "good news" in the upper right corner.  Note my conclusion: "Good news is no news."

What annoyed me?  The 63/30 notation is in reference to an article that told us that the tax review board had allowed a reduction in property taxes for a Meijer store in a nearby county.  This was allowed based on the "dark store theory," notwithstanding that the facility is in full operation.  Thus, it will be taxed as though it is an empty and disused warehouse.  Worse, the county may have to reimburse millions to the behemoth that owns the store for previous tax payments, not to mention the perpetual loss of half-million dollars a year in the future.

If allowed to stand, the door is open for builders to demand application of "dark store theory" to new construction, averring that a building is obsolete upon completion.   Grrr and growl.

The next item is in reference to a bill which has been introduced in the state legislature which if it becomes law will allow the construction of enclosed hunting preserves.  You know.  Raise in confinement and hand-feed game animals then enclose them in a pen with high fences and allow the "sports" to hunt them with rifles.

When I resided in the West, we went into the mountains to hunt game.  Surrounding the habitat were hundreds of square miles of wide open spaces.  Also, we were hunting because we wanted to eat.  It would not be appropriate for me to express how I really feel about this proposal, the people who made it, and the people who would exploit it.  Nevermind. I'm mad now.

The house at the bottom you have seen.  It is the sketch of the first house my first bride and I occupied.  The "church," the "dog," and other stuff thereabouts represent the scribbles I made as I was taking a break from organizing my tax papers.

The next morning I scribbled a part of Shakespeare's "He who steals trash," (Iago) and I do know the missing lines in the middle.  That may have been a follow-up to the discovery that someone apparently stole my registration papers for the vehicle which are normally tucked behind the visor on the driver's side.  Now why would anyone do that?

And so on and so forth, enough is enough.

If you embiggen the picture, it is quite legible, but not, alas, enlightening.

The Caesar and the 21st Century Child

January 22, 613, Constantine was crowned emperor of the Roman Empire.  He was eight months of age.

So, then.  What were you ruling when you were eight months old?  Like Constantine, and like most other people, the roost, would be my guess.  Hollering loudly, ordering people around, whenever you were hungry, or wet, or generally aggravated with life itself.

In all fairness, it should be noted that the child was crowned co-Caesar with his father, Heraclius.

Like many of you, I am a parent, and thus shared with their mother the responsibility of raising several children.  It is right and meet that the infant express his* desires and expect his demands to be met.  The demands are reasonable, and can usually be met, barring extreme poverty and illness.

But.  Here I pause to mount my soapbox

It is my belief that it is the responsibility of the parents to teach the child as it grows and develops that he is not Caesar, and that the world does not exist for the purpose of gratifying his every whim. 

Dismount.

And believe me, I could go on and on.

*Note that the masculine pronouns in the tirade

are to be considered gender-neutral in the 

grammatical sense.  Humor me.  That is how

I was taught.  In school.  By licensed teachers. 

Sneak, Snack, Snuck

Yes, the dictionaries of today
and the style manuals say
that the past tense of
"sneak" is "snuck."

And who cares?  No one but the pedantic old fossils among us (self included) who attempted to teach the youngsters of the previous generation to eschew this vulgarism.

Sneak, we averred, is a regular verb, and, therefore, conjugated

• We sneak under the tent.
• We sneaked in to see the elephants.
• We had sneaked in last year, but this time we got caught.

Now, we are compelled to listen to the news reader on CBS say

• The raiders snuck in under cover of darkness.

and so on.  

Snack?  Yes, please; I don't mind if I do.

I insist to this day that "dove" is a bird of the Columbidae tribe and has nothing to do with swimming.

And in the interest of total honesty, no matter the grating on my ear, both "snuck" and "dove" are acceptable forms, creating new irregular verbs from regular ones, especially in North America.  "Dove" in fact is more likely to be used than is "dived." Less likely to be encountered in other English-speaking areas of the world.  Perhaps I am not so hide-bound, after all.  But I still contend that if in doubt, go with the traditional.  And in my case, there is no doubt: I stick by the older forms.

There Ought to Be a Law

prohibiting the use of the phrase

1.  "edge cleaning " when advertising vacuum cleaners.

2.  "non-stick" when applied to cookware.

3.  "self-cleaning" when referring to kitchen ovens.

4. "stain resistant" on carpet labels.

5.  "gluten free" unless the meaning is "no charge for the gluten."  If there is no gluten, then it needs to be so labeled.

6.  "lite" anything.  Say what is meant, and if nothing is meant, say nothing.  If the intent is to deceive or mislead, shame on the advertiser.

In a similar vein, please observe that much advertising which may not be patently false, is deliberately misleading.  So, even the Romans had a cautionary phrase two millennia ago:  caveat emptor.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.

There I Go Again

Sometimes for no good reason except to vent, I find a rant tumbling from the ends of my fingers onto the keyboard. These ravings are often unfiltered, and probably unthought.  But, oh! how good it feels to get it out of my system. So far, so good. But then I find myself sometimes without a blog post for the morrow, and I stick one of these rants in the blog. Forgive me, please. This is one of those. You may choose to save your time and move along to the next post in your reader. That’s okay. (Or “okeh,” as a pedant I once knew insisted.) 

The day of interactive everything. Except of course for face to face interaction with another human being. Even the comic strips have to be interactive. Read the funny, write a comment. Who cares? The cartoonist came up with something, drew a picture, added some dialog, expressed an opinion or an idea, perhaps. I am intelligent enough to get what he is saying, or not, but I don’t need help in interpretation; and besides if I don’t get it I can ask my wife! Further, while the first commenter may address the cartoonist’s notion, the whole thing quickly degenerates into a garbage-flinging, name-calling slime fest completely unrelated to the original idea. Who needs that? 

Interactive television? You must be 1) joking, or 2) totally out of your mind. What exactly do you suppose I care about Miranda Moron’s opinion. If the opinion of the “audience” determines anything to come, forget it.

 How about commenting on the articles on the op-ed pages? Now that is opinion, and your opinion is still your opinion, and though you may be angry with the writer, leave him alone. He’s an idiot, too. If you agree with him, well, you know. What to do? Ignore the stuff, move along. Nothing to be seen here, or if there is, it isn’t edifying.

Save the Trees

For some time now I have been 1) puzzled; 2) irked, and 3) amazed when I find one of these stuffers in a mailing.

1) Puzzled.  What part of "blank page" do these people not understand?  Get a grip; a blank page is, by definition, blank.

2) Irked.  I know.  I shouldn't let such petty things annoy me, but that is just part of who I am.  No apology forthcoming.

3) Amazed. I am shocked that people who run major corporations allow such blatant stupidity to function on their premises.  I am amazed that people who should know better actually assemble and approve such nonsense.  I am stunned to realize that some of the same people who probably decry deforestation for paper production are actually using trees to stuff mailers with "blank" papers.
I could go on, but a good rant should end before the reader tires of it.

THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY FILLED WITH RANT

Marketing

Be forewarned that in reading this post you may perceive me as being a cranky, nay even a misanthropic member of the human clan.  If you see me this way,  you may be right.  So many things these days just wear me down.  The ultimate goal of the perpetrators, I am sure, is to wear me out.   I have probably carped about some of these annoyances before.  These things may seem petty to you. and perhaps they are, I'll give you that.  But a sufficient number of these little things loom quite large in my field of vision. 

These are little switch knobs for the rheostatically controlled lights and fans.  They are not readily available in the cream color here in Perfect.  So in the past, I have added a couple of white ones, notwithstanding the fact that they do not blend with the rest of the electrical fixtures.  So finding ourselves (what a concept!) in the City the other day, we stopped at a huge hardware outlet.  Certainly they had the item we desired.  Here you go, sir!  The guy handed me a packet containing two knobs.  Two matching knobs.  I think not.  One cream knob, one white knob per package.

There are marketing genii sitting around dreaming up ways to make the customers' lives more pleasant and efficient.  There are no such things.  Oh, there are marketing people, but they are sitting around dreaming up ways to steal from us without violating the law.  This is one example.

Thus, I bought three packages to get three knobs and paid for six knobs.  When I finished the installation of the knobs, now all matching the decor, I threw five white knobs into a box somewhere in the garage along with the spare screws and bolts we bought in packages of three, needing four, two to spare.  They will probably still be there at the resurrection.  But I have spare knobs!  They don't match anything, but I have them.

Drugs, Lawyers, and Major Annoyance

The C___a commercial was playing.  They came to the side-effects warning.  The announcer went on and on and on.  The smiley, happy portion extolling the virtues of this antidepressant  was actually shorter than was the litany of negative things that might happen, or had been known to happen in rare cases.

"Oh, man!" I said.  This stuff will kill you in thirty-nine different ways, but dang!  You will feel better while you are dying!"

BBBH is a believer in these warnings.  I was witness to her conversation with her primary care physician about that very thing.  He really was annoyed; he could hardly keep his cool.  Those warnings made him so angry he could scarce contain himself.  Well, I wonder why that is.

Now I reveal the troglodyte within me.  I hate, hate, hate with a purple passion the advertising of pharmaceuticals on the airwaves and in the print media.  (There oughta be a law.)*  I am also less than fond of the advertising by lawyers who prey on people who have been "injured" by one of the drugs advertised. (There oughta be another law.)   I really like the "If you or someone you know has ...  ... experienced death..." line.  Does anyone else see a vicious cycle here?

Yes, I know how annoyed the television industry would be with people who think as I do.

Or maybe I have become such a curmudgeon that everything annoys me these days.

(If you has [sic] experienced death, call a lawyer.)

*I am not one who believes government should control our lives.  But where are the ethics?

Autumnal Equinox

Everyone who knows me knows that I am pretty even-tempered, laid back, and not given to fits of anger. Yet there is one thing that always seems to enrage me, and it occurs annually right at the autumnal equinox.  It is the receipt of "Renewal Information" from the carrier of my Part D  Medicare insurance program.  For you youngsters, this is the drug insurance portion of the program.  Do not infer that I am unappreciative of any benefits that may depend from such a program.

The subtitle of this year's document is "Changes to Your Program for 2013."  The book is 154 pages in length and is printed on 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper slightly lower in quality than standard newsprint.  Apart from the aggravation and minor hissy fits I engaged in while attempting to understand the first half-dozen pages, as nearly as I can figure out the bottom line is that the premium will be increased by a mere 10.5%.  And that some of my meds may not necessarily be any longer on their formulary.*

Of course, I have the option of changing carriers.  This means I have the "opportunity" to explore and study some what? forty or more programs offered by twenty-some carriers.  Which multiplies the aggravation exponentially.

I think the designers' hopes are that everything is made so opaque and confusing that we oldsters will simply forget to or fail to comply with some jot or tittle in the program and thereby be eliminated.  Is that even remotely possible?  Nah, surely not.

*formulary: a made-up word meaning the list of stuff that will be covered.

Where'd It Go?

Banking in the sixties, my money (such as it was) was deposited at Farmers National Bank, locally operated by local people and capitalized largely by local investors.  In fact, that bank could not open a branch across the road, for that was in the next county and it was unlawful to operate a bank across a county line.

Money talks, though, and so do bankers and what they had to say was, "We want more money!"  Their lobbying efforts successfully gained the privilege of free-wheeling banking.  Soon my little local bank had branches in four towns, none of which were in the home county.  Thus it ripened like a plum, and it was soon picked off by a much larger bank in State Capital, Indiana.

It grew.  And the Cincinnati bankers' eyes widened with lust, they salivated with greed, and SC Bank was plucked by a bank in a neighboring state.  Now, following only God and the Feds know how many transactions later my bank has wound up doing business under a set of three initials.  No one knows what the letters represent, and I don't know where it is headquartered; and my money has all been transformed into digital information and disappeared into the ether.

And I am supposed to have faith and confidence in this.

I opened my first pass-book savings account more than sixty years ago.  The account drew a higher rate of interest than do my savings accounts in the bank today, which essentially grant the bank the use of my money for free.