Crime and Punishment, Effective Advertising, and Huge Crowds

In yesterday's post, I referred you to a news story about the use of very loud music as an interrogation tactic - after a few hours of listening to Barney, Sesame Street, or Nine Inch Nails, even the most hardened terrorists were ready to cooperate with their questioners. In that post, I misremembered (is that a word?) a related story about teens being punished for playing their music too loudly by being made to listen to Barry Manilow. The actual story can be found here. It seems the offender was offered the choice of paying a $150 fine or spending 20 hours listening to classical music...he was only able to survive 15 minutes of Bach, Beethoven, and Chopin before giving in and paying the fine. What a dumbass.

And from the intersecting worlds of Why Didn't I Think of That and Hey, Buddy, My Eyes Are Up Here comes this interesting story of a lady named Kelly Kinney who printed her resume on the front of a t-shirt and spends her days hanging around upscale coffee shops and major intersections, hoping to be noticed (according to the article, Ms Kinney said she chooses coffee bars and intersections because they offer captive audiences where prospective employers are stuck waiting for lattes or for lights to change). Yes, the story's dateline is Los Angeles...where else could it have been?

Closer to home, here in the so-called National Capitol Region, local governments are trying to gear up for crowds estimated in the millions for the historic inauguration of President-elect Obama on January 20th. Some of the problems the planners are facing include:

- Where do you park 10,000 (yes, that's ten thousand) tour buses?

- Where do all those out-of-town people stay? (enterprising people as far away as Gettysburg and Richmond are renting spare bedrooms for hundreds of dollars per night).

- Where do you find enough porta-potties to accommodate 5 million people?

- How do you move crowds this size on a subway system that is notorious for choking on its normal daily ridership, much less heavy tourist days, much less 5 million people? Those of you who want to attend the festivities and live within walking distance (now defined as suburban Cincinnati) of the National Mall should start walking now.

- What...and where...do they all eat?

And...

- Who cleans up all the debris when everything's over? Actually, this last one is probably not a problem, because the incoming administration will already be so busy cleaning up the wreckage of the current one that a few hundred more tons of reeking caca won't make much difference.

I'm sure glad somebody else has to worry about all that. Me, I have enough to worry about, like not drowing in the rain as I hike to the bus stop this morning, and making sure the bus actually stops to pick me up (unlike the other day). By the way, Twinkie, your mental image of Bilbo as homicidal Mary Poppins was not all that far off the mark.

But now it's time to get ready to face another day. At least tonight I can go dancing...the opportunity to hold lots of different ladies close (Agnes first, of course) and move to the music is always a good way to end a tough week.

Eat your heart out, guys.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

I Couldn't Make This Stuff Up...

One of humorist Dave Barry's signature lines before he reported on something true but silly was, "I'm not making this up!" Well, I'm not either. Today, presented for your approval (I'm channeling Rod Serling this morning), three really bizarre recent news stories that I managed to find before Mike scooped me...

Number 1: Ooga Ooga! Men Overspend to Attract Mates. From LiveScience.com comes this searing blast of the obvious - that men will spend themselves into poverty to attract desirable sexual partners. Oddly enough, this article led to a lengthy scholarly discussion in the office yesterday during a break from our usual routine of defending the nation from godless communists and over-godded religious fanatics. One of my coworkers claimed that men marry for sex, while women marry for security...seen this way, men who vaporize the magnetic strips on the back of their credit cards to impress cute girls are simply fulfilling the biological imperative to prove they are good providers. This is important, as it's pretty hard nowadays to show up at a girl's door with a gutted, bleeding aurochs slung over your shoulder.

Number 2: Military Interrogators Use Blasting Music as a Weapon to Break Detainees. The most interesting thing about this story isn't that playing Nine Inch Nails at top volume makes hard-core fanatics crazier than they were before...it's that the playlist also includes Barney the Dinosaur's "I Love You" song and several hits from Sesame Street. This is, of course, not news to parents who have been driven around the bend by their toddlers who want to hear those songs seven billion times a day. I also recall a recent news article about a judge who sentenced some teens guilty of blasting their rock music at top volume in public to sit in a room and listen to hours of Barry Manilow tunes. I'd confess, too.

Number 3: (Alert - temporary interjection of seriousness into an otherwise frivolous post) Pope Pius XII Unfairly Criticized for Not Speaking Out About the Holocaust. In this article reproduced on the Project Syndicate website, Rocco Buttiglione (Italy's former European Affairs minister) maintains that Pius XII could not have condemned Nazi Germany without appearing to give moral comfort to Josef Stalin's less-than-saintly Russian government, and couldn't condemn Stalin without giving a propaganda gift to Hitler's war effort. Therefore, he didn't condemn either one. Where I come from, this is called horses**t (a topic with which, along with boobies, fellow blogger Fiona is passingly familiar). When the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church can't bring himself to speak out against unspeakable evil, regardless of who is at fault, something's wrong.

Okay, that's enough for now. Time to get ready to out and face this odd world of ours yet again. Hopefully today will start off differently from yesterday, when my bus drove right past me as I jumped up and down and yelled like a wild man. This morning, it's raining...and if that bus passes me up again, I'll just jam the point of my umbrella into the nearest tire.

So there.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

And the Award for Excellence in Government Goes To...

From Bilbo's Department of "Is This Guy Nuts or What?" come several interesting stories today.

In Illinois (The Land of Lincoln), Governor Rod Blagojevich has been arrested on a list of charges 78 pages long, including just about everything except forgetting to put the toilet seat down after peeing. Here is a statesman clearly interested in serving the people and doing what's right for the nation, discussing the problem of filling the Senate seat left vacant by Barack Obama's election to the presidency: the open Senate seat is "...a f***ing valuable thing, you just don't give it away for nothing." By the way, Governor Blagojevich is free on $4500 bail.

On the CNN website a few days ago, commentator Ruben Navarrette posted this amazing article: Obama Ignored Latinos for Top Posts. Perhaps it's just me, but I never thought government ought to be staffed by quota. You might think that a new president trying to staff an administration facing as many problems as this one is would try to hire the very best people available, regardless of their race, religion, sexual orientation, or preferred breakfast cereal. Obviously, politics will play a part in the decisions (Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, for pete's sake?), but on balance, we need the very best people...not white or black people, not Christian or Jewish people, not Anglo or Latino people. Get a life, Mr Navarrette.

Representative Charles Rangel is being investigated by the House Ethics Committee on a list of charges which appears to include everything that didn't stick to Governor Blagojevich in Illinois. It does not, however, include "...the matter of Rangel steering $80,000 to his son to design his campaign Web site." And in the grand tradition of Congressmen under investigation, Mr Rangel does not intend to step down from his chairmanship of a key tax writing committee. I feel much better about my taxes now, don't you?

And looking farther afield, grand statesmen like Robert ("Zimbabwe is my personal ATM") Mugabe, Hugo ("Blame the Gringos For Everything") Chavez, and Mahmoud ("Let's Erase Israel From the Map") Ahmedinejad are still providing role models for the next generation of useless leaders.

Sometimes, even President Bush doesn't look bad.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

The Christmas Cards Are (Almost) Done!!

Even for someone who loves to write as much as I do, Christmas cards are a bit of a chore.

Over the years we have amassed dozens of friends in many countries on four continents, most of which we have contact with only via the annual Christmas card. Most of these get a card with a short handwritten note, but some of our oldest and closest friends also get The Letter - the three- or four-page magnum opus that covers the adventures of Bilbo and Agnes for the past year. And by the time you combine the card, the letter, and a photo, the postage to someplace like, say, Germany or Australia becomes a pretty significant line item in the holiday budget.

The Letter isn't handwritten, unfortunately...I just don't have that much time any more. So I write The Master Letter to my old friend Toni (whom I haven't seen in almost 30 years, and who always wants to know everything), and then word-process it so that it's customized for each other recipient and just contains the things I think they'd be interested in. I understand the people who send out the mass-copied-one-size-fits-all holiday letters, but I just can't do that - if I'm going to send you a letter, it's going to be as personal as I can make it, and contain the things you (probably) care about hearing. And this all, of course, takes time.

So...

This morning I have a stack of cards about six inches high, many of which will cost different amounts of postage based on weight, distance, the phase of the moon, the relative percentages of various ethnic and political groups in Mr Obama's incoming administration, and the molecular weight of the ink and the glue on the stamps...which means I have to go to the post office and stand in line with six thousand of my closest friends to have them weighed and the correct postage calculated by postal employees whose ability to move slowly is exceeded only by the heavily medicated zombies of the DMV. AARRGGHH!! This year I put a postal scale on my Christmas wish list, which may help in the future...but that, of course, doesn't help me now (yes, Mike, I know I could just go out and buy the stupid postal scale myself, but then I'd have one less thing to complain about).

But they're mostly done...I just have to address a few more to some of our friends and relatives in Germany, and the chore is complete for another year...

...then I can start wrapping and packaging the gifts that need to be mailed.

Just shoot me now, and get it over with.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Return on Investment

In the roiling political soup that is today's America, there appear to be two kinds of people: those who think president-elect Obama is the Antichrist who will bring horror and ruin to the country; and those who think he is the greatest thing since sliced bread, beer in bottles, and edible panties. Well, maybe not the last one. But there's not really much of the Bilbo-style view, which may be summarized as "he's not the best possible guy for the job, but after the stellar performance of the present administration, why not give him a chance to prove himself?"

I got a blast of this divide yesterday when I was talking with my Dad.

Dad is 83 years old, and is the man I respect and admire above all others. We don't see eye-to-eye on everything, of course, but who does? Anyhow, after we'd exchanged the latest jokes, shared the latest news on the family, and discussed the weather, Dad launched into his weekly can you believe what that Obama's doing now? segment. This week, the focus of his ire was Mr Obama's proposal to spend many billions of dollars on a WPA-like program for national infrastructure projects (road and bridge repair, improving the energy efficiency of Federal buildings, expanding access to broadband internet, etc). "Where's he going to get that kind of money?", Dad wanted to know.

Where indeed?

In line with my amazing and well-documented ability to come up with the perfect rejoinder several hours after it is needed, I just mumbled an incoherent question back about where Mr Bush is coming up with the hundreds of billions of dollars to rescue banks, investment houses, and the auto industry. But as I replayed the conversation in my mind later, it occurred to me that - regardless of where the money for infrastructure repairs and corporate bailouts is coming from - we ought to be thinking about what we're getting for it.

When the money has been raised, distributed, and spent, what will remain?

- Money invested in infrastructure projects will help repair aging bridges, fill potholes, build new roads and repair old ones, and generally yield visible, useful results while actually putting people to work.

- Money invested in bailing out banks will yield ... what? The money distributed so far doesn't seem to have loosened up the credit constipation or put anyone to work.

- Money invested in rescuing the Big 3 automakers will yield ... what? Will people actually go back to work? Will the Big 3 start building reliable, fuel-efficient cars that people actually want to buy? How long will it take?

So...

If we're going to throw money at problems, we may as well throw it smartly. Instead of giving it to banks who appear to be recycling it into dividends and corporate salaries, why not use it to put people to work doing things that need doing?

There's no doubt in my mind that there are reinforced regiments of lawyers already preparing the lawsuits to fight any effort to start up a WPA-like program, and that the government will end up spending money that should be used to rebuild the country and put people to work on lining those lawyers' pockets. It's always easier to run down someone else's ideas than to come up with one of your own...or, as Lyndon Johnson once said, "Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one."

So let's not kick down the barn just yet. If the government is going to spend hundreds of billions of dollars of our taxes for "economic stimulus programs," let's be sure they invest it on the right things, the things that will yield jobs and visible results. Let's see the return on the investment.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Ho, Ho, Hopeless...

It's that time of year when we go through the complex annual kabuki dance of Christmas gift selection, shopping, hiding (the gifts from prying eyes), wrapping, insuring, and mailing. The time of year when Agnes badgers me until I give her my Christmas wish list, which she loses four or five times before just buying me whatever she wants. The time of year when I badger Agnes to give me her Christmas wish list until I just give up and buy her what I think she'll like and I can afford (which, unfortunately, aren't always the same). The time of year when we try to figure out what to get for grandchildren who already have lots of stuff and plenty of doting grandparents.

I love my wife and my children and my grandchildren, and I would do anything for them. But I have to confess to a certain degree of Scrooginess at this time of year.

Because I just don't like a lot of the agony that goes along with Christmas shopping.

I don't like being pressured to buy and give gifts to people I wouldn't otherwise want to give anything to (such as the helpful, self-addressed - but not stamped - tip envelopes the newspaper delivery person leaves in the paper at this time of year...the paper that all-too-often arrives after I've already left for work).

I don't like driving endlessly around parking lots looking for a space within four zip codes of the store, or being stuck behind a person who blocks all traffic for minutes at a time so that he can get that one absolutely perfect and desirable parking place (see my post from September of last year, A Parable About a Parking Space).

I don't like reading about people trampled to death by crowds desperate to get into stores.

I don't like trying to do the complex mental calculus of determining who should get gifts and who shouldn't, how much to spend, how many gifts per person, whether the gift for this one should be better than, equivalent to, or less than the gift for that one, etc, etc.

The whole gift thing has gotten out of hand.

When Gaspar, Balthasar, and Melchior arrived in Bethlehem with their gifts for the Christ child, little did they know what they were starting. They arrived, pure of heart, guided by a single pre-GPS star, with simple gifts to honor a newborn king. They didn't worry about the holiday hours at Wal-Mart, how long UPS would need to deliver the gifts, or whether there'd be a place to park their camels while they shopped (in the Camelot, ha, ha?).

Nowadays the holiday season starts right after the fourth of July, and on December 26th the stores all put up their displays of summer beachwear. Santa glides over the snowy hills on the floating heads of his Norelco razor and quaffs Coca-Cola, and parents scramble desperately to obtain this year's must-have toy.

It's enough to bring out the seasonal curmudgeon buried under my normally cheerful and placid exterior.

But in the end it all comes down to the bright eyes and happy smiles on the faces of the children and grandchildren, and somehow everything else fades to insignificance. And so I scratch my head and search for just the right gifts for the world's most intelligent and adorable grandchildren, try to surprise Agnes with something she'll like and I can afford...

...and recycle that envelope from the newspaper delivery person.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

Winter's here, unemployment is at 6.7%, the flu season is in full swing, there are still 45 days left in the Bush presidency, and President-elect Obama is an unknown quantity facing tasks no sane human would want to take on.

Boy, do you ever need Cartoon Saturday.

Remember way back (yes, I'm talking to you, Mike and Gilahi) when banks sought your business by giving out free gifts when you opened an account? Things are a little different, now...

The banks need government handouts to stay afloat, and now the Big 3 automakers are in Washington looking for tens of billions in "loans" to stay in business. If I incorporate myself, can I get a handout from Uncle Sam, too?

One of the things we noticed on our cruise vacation was the number of grossly overweight people on board the ship. Of course, when they feed you 24 hours a day like a hog on a feedlot, what do you expect? The problem of obesity could have some other, unexpected side effects as well...

Unemployment numbers are skyrocketing, with over half a million jobs lost last month and the unemployment rate the highest in many years. I thought this cartoon was hysterically funny but, of course, it depends on your situation...this is about all the Golden Parachute most of us will ever see...

But don't worry...no matter how bad things are, you can rest assured that Congress is on the job to make sure that doctrine outweighs practicality and reality...and to take decisive inaction on the nation's woes...

Crying doesn't help, so you may as well laugh.

Have a good weekend. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Zipcode's Critical Mass of Bloggers

Yesterday evening after work, Zipcode organized a happy hour for a select group of local bloggers. How she managed to select me, I don't know, but I'm glad she did, for it was a great evening.

Eight people ended up at the table she'd reserved at a DC watering hole: yours truly, Zipcode, Zandria, Brian, Michelle, Doug, Liz, and Daniel. It was a lively crowd, but one in which I felt somewhat out of place for two reasons:

1. I was considerably older than the rest, although I think I cleaned up well and remembered not to drool on the table.

2. I was the only one without the enormous, muscular thumbs resulting from endless text messaging and manipulation of Blackberries to send and receive e-mail. I laid my sad, basic telephone on the table and explained (with hanging head) that I use it exclusively to make telephone calls, never having figured out how to use the built-in camera and being too technologically inept, too lazy, and too cheap to use the text messaging feature. I think everyone felt sorry for me.

Nevertheless, I greatly enjoyed the evening, particularly the odd looks we received in the Metro on the way back to our mechanical steeds as Zipcode entertained us with her recitation of the Achmed the Dead Terrorist routines ("Silence! I keeeel you!"). It was interesting meeting some of the people whose blogs I read and enjoy, and learning a bit more about them. It was also great to have a chance to unwind after a day spent in The Meeting From Hell.

So thanks, Zipcode, for organizing a fun evening. And thanks also to Zandria, who didn't laugh too loudly at me when I almost dropped my card into her drink, being temporarily blinded by her good looks and charm...

Well, so much for weighty thoughts for a Friday. Tonight Agnes and I go dancing, tomorow is Cartoon Saturday, the weather forecast calls for a 40% chance of snow tomorrow evening, and I'm in the mood to finish decorating the Christmas tree and cook up a big pot of Beef Burgundy for dinner tomorrow. Life is good.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Of Chicken Hearts and the Economy

I really enjoy old-time radio. I love listening to programs like "The Golden Days of Radio" and "The Big Broadcast" that feature the great old radio comedies, mysteries, dramas, and the science fiction/horror stories that only radio can do so well.

One of my favorite classic radio stories was a 1937 episode of Arch Oboler's Lights Out! program titled, "Chicken Heart." The story concerned a scientific experiment in which a disembodied chicken heart kept artificially alive in a laboratory suddenly started to grow. It kept growing (with the appropriate rhythmic thump-thump, thump-thump sound effects) until it eventually grew so large that it covered the earth. In the final moments of the story, the narrator is flying above a world that is nothing more than a vast, pulsating chicken heart...we hear his voice over the mighty pounding of the chicken heart below, the drone of the airplane's engine gradually sputters out for lack of fuel, and ... well ... use your imagination. That's the beauty of radio, after all.

I was thinking about the chicken heart story last night as I pondered the smoking crater where my retirement investments used to be.

It seems that there's a cautionary tale here. The chicken heart in the story kept growing without limits, eventually destroying the entire world. In the same way, economists (and those of us who used to trust them) expected that the economy would keep growing without limit or risk, generating more and more wealth. Well, the economy has chicken-hearted on us, if I may coin the term. We've learned that there's no such thing as endless growth without consequences. "Financial instruments" which assumed ever-increasing home prices to back mortgage debt as an investment imploded along with the collapse of the housing market, dragging everything else down with them. The real estate bubble burst, leaving many people with mortgages far in excess of the new, real value of their homes. The quest for ever-increasing profits and ever-lower prices sent jobs overseas, throwing millions of people out of work...and making them unable to take advantage of those lower prices.

You can almost hear that chicken heart beating in the background.

I guess the lesson is that endless, unrestrained growth is not always a good thing. I don't think Arch Oboler had the economy in mind when he produced the story of the chicken heart, but it nevertheless provides food for thought.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

P.S. - Comedian Bill Cosby did a hilarious routine based on the Chicken Heart broadcast, which you can enjoy - with his inimitable sound effects - on his 1966 album, Wonderfulness.

In Case You Were Wondering, Yes, Machines Still Hate Me

I was at work yesterday morning, minding my own business, when Agnes called to let me know that the power had just gone out at home as she was plugging in her hair dryer, that she was calling me on her cell phone because all our cordless phones were out, and that she was about to lose the battery on the cell phone. I had just enough time to tell her to check the circuit breaker panel in the basement before her phone went dead.

I keep a trusty old corded telephone in the closet in my study for just these occasions; unfortunately, I am the only one who can find anything in said closet, so Agnes was out of luck. As it turned out, the power outage covered a large area and had nothing to do with her hair dryer, but I couldn't tell her that until she got to work, wet hair and all, and I could talk to her on a real phone.

Okay, I told you that story so I could tell you this one: I arrived home at my usual time and reset all the clocks in the house...except the one on my nightstand.

As a result, I am running late this morning and don't have the time to put up the post I'd originally planned. Maybe later this evening or tomorrow morning.

Yes, machines still hate me. The battery backup in my nightstand clock should have kept it running on time. It has betrayed my trust. I am considering premeditated clockicide...


I'll have to ask Zipcode, who is a law enforcement type, what the penalty is before I do anything rash.

Have a good day. I'll reset the clock, and offer more thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo