Archives for October 2013

One spring afternoon a couple of years back, I was returning from a visit to Florida when I decided to make a pit stop in Northern Virginia prior to hitting the Washington D.C. Beltway at rush hour.

Experience has taught me that a full gas tank and an empty bladder are prudent precautions when attempting to traverse this particular bumper-to-bumper, turn-signal-free-level of commuter hell.

Some of you will recall from previous rants on the subject, my strong preference (compulsion, after all, is such an ugly word) for using my cell phone only when the vehicle I’m piloting is stationary and safely parked.

So, after topping up the tank, I retrieved a few voicemail messages, one of which was from an editor, who’d recently taken the helm of my “hometown newspaper” back in Maine. He was calling to offer me a weekly column in that very same publication.

At the time our national economy was just beginning the agonizing transition from “glacial” to “sluggish,” so you’d think that a job offer, any job offer, would have gotten my full attention. Yet halfway through the message my eyes glazed over and my mind began a slow drift toward, “Here we go again.”

To be fair, my enthusiastic correspondent had no way of knowing that, over the years, I’d successfully rebuffed a half dozen similar pitches from other well-meaning newspaper editors. I’d simply heard the pitch often enough to know that I wasn’t the least bit interested, period, end of story.

Not that I had ever actually written a newspaper column you understand. Nope, not even one just to see what the experience might be like. Why bother trying when I already “knew” I wasn’t interested.

My “reasoning” if you could even call it that, went something like this:

I can’t take the pressure of a weekly deadline.

There’s no money in it.

Who can argue with such logic? Hmm, that would be a good question, if it were not for the fact that in this instance nobody was arguing with me. It’s true. I’m embarrassed to report that the entire hypothetical question and answer session took place strictly within the confines of my own fevered cranium.

My perspective (or lack of it) stands as a classic example of that marvelously human shortcoming first identified by 18th century Christian apologist and philosopher William Paley as “contempt prior to investigation.”

According to Paley, “There is a principal which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance — that principal is contempt prior to investigation.”

Although the highfalutin’ language has long since fallen out of fashion, example’s of the truth behind Paley’s dictum are certainly plentiful here in the 21st century, only nowadays we’ve boiled it down to a simple two-line mantra: “My mind’s made up. Don’t confuse me with the facts.”

Fortunately, my natural “contempt prior to investigation” is often tempered by at least a modicum of etiquette. So I returned the editor’s call and made a reasonable effort at keeping an open mind.

Just as he was getting to the part of the pitch where he wanted me to write a thousand words a week for 52 weeks, a little buzzer began to sound in some dusty math challenged corner of my brain.

I interrupted him;

Me: “How many words altogether?”

Editor: “That would be roughly 50,000 words over the next 12 months.”

Fifty thousand words? Where had I heard that number before? Oh, right! For the past year or two, I’d been struggling to put together a 50,000-word book manuscript. My goal was to produce a lighthearted “memoir” of sorts.

I even had what I figured was a pretty good title, “Stories I Never Told You.”

At it turned out, the title was fine. The manuscript itself, on the other hand, was pretty awful. Turgid, overwrought and self-conscious, it was anything but “light hearted.”

Then it hit me. Maybe by writing a column a week for an entire year I could finally put together that elusive manuscript.

So I took the job and now, about halfway into my second year as a “columnist” I’m pleased to report that I’m enjoying the enterprise far more than I ever could have imagined.

Last week I entered final negotiations with a publisher for a book based on my columns. Just as soon as I’ve hammered out the last few words in this one, I’ll hit the “send” button, thereby meeting my 75th consecutive weekly deadline!

If I’d only known how good that feels, I’d have started doing it a long time ago.

Original Appeared in the Boothbay Register

I was surprised the other day when I received an Internet order for a cassette tape of one of my early ’80s comedy albums.

Though the cassette market has cooled off in recent decades, I believe in planning ahead. So I keep a few on hand for folks like Isaac in Brooklyn, N.Y. who just shelled out $9.95 for one of these fine collector’s items. Having already recouped my production costs during the Reagan administration, I make a decent profit on each sale. Which is part of the problem.

Ah yes, that problem. Where to begin? Did I mention that I keep “a few” on hand? Forgive me. I meant to say “a few hundred.” At $10 a pop, that’s still a lot of money, right? Well, sort of. At the current sales rate it will take approximately three and a half centuries to move the remaining inventory. Not exactly a “get rich quick” scheme — and it gets worse.

You know those creepy horror movies where a crowd of zombies dressed in moldy OshKosh B-gosh overalls and John Deere caps threatens to overwhelm the village of Pleasantville? Well, something eerily similar seems to be happening to me.

Thankfully, there are no actual zombies involved. But I have found myself besieged by a remarkably similar horde (the operative word here should probably be spelled “hoard”) of unwelcome visitors. In my case, the “things,” creating all this havoc are just as lifeless, yet weirdly animated, as any member of “the living dead” ever was.

The way I figure it, a malevolent aggregation of inanimate objects appears to have been following me at a discrete distance for some years now. At this very moment it is garrisoned in my garage, lurking in my laundry room and barricaded in my basement with what I assume to be nefarious intent, quite possibly involving a final assault on my fragile sanity.

Henceforth I shall refer to this mob by its proper scientific name “My Stuff.” That’s right. It’s all mine. There’s absolutely nobody else to blame. Step by treacherous step, one innocent little impulse-purchase at a time, I alone have singlehandedly created this monster!

Readers of faint heart might want to turn away at this point. But, if you think you have the stomach for it, let’s take a peek shall we?

See? Right there, at the bottom of my basement stairs, next to the pile of cassette tapes, there are several massive industrial size rolls of bubble wrap. You know, the stuff you use when you’re packing up fragile household items.

How long has that been there? Five years? Ten? Who in heck knows? I do know that if I ever need to cut up 1,400 feet, 6 and a half inches of bubble wrap, one of the 39 pairs of scissors I own will certainly come in handy.

How, you ask, do I know the exact length of my bubble wrap collection? That’s easy. I measured it with one of the 17 retractable metal measuring tapes I have ferreted away in various drawers around the house. See what I mean?

Take that massive, hermetically sealed plastic carton of Legos in the garage (please!) It’s been there since our oldest boy left for college. I’ll bet there are enough Legos in there to build a structure suitable for human habitation. Darn! I should have donated it to the “Occupy” movement when I had the chance.

Let’s see what else? Oh yeah, a half dozen table lamps, some mismatched folding chairs, a box of portable cassette players, cameras, and CD players, a nice old boom box with an improvised coat hanger antenna, a perfectly serviceable seat from a 1980 Honda motorcycle … (sigh).

It’s not as though I haven’t tried getting rid of this stuff. Yet, somehow, despite yard sales, Goodwill, Salvation Army, the town dump, eBay and Craigslist, “My Stuff” is still here.

Unlike the Hollywood version, only time will tell whether this story has a happy ending. But I’m not going down without a fight. If I haven’t looked at it in a year, out it goes! If charities won’t take it, the dump certainly will.

I don’t know if that box of baseball cards contains a Honus Wagner and I don’t particularly care. Out it goes! My loss is your gain.

Of course, simply eliminating items already here won’t work unless I can also find a way to disrupt enemy supply lines.

Recently I’ve employed a sophisticated form of Psychological Operations. When tempted to buy something, I gaze intently at the desired object, while imagining it on a yard sale table.

I’ll keep you posted on the results. But, so far, it seems to be working!

Original Appeared in the Boothbay Register

Back in the ‘70s, I happened to hear a news report regarding one of America’s best-known retailers, which had recently been caught bilking a lot of loyal customers out of hard earned cash by means of a sleazy marketing scheme called “bait and switch.”

That phrase, fairly new at the time, has now become all too familiar. A long list of multi-national corporations have hopped on the same bandwagon, adopting tactics previously known only to grifters, con men and other low life types. In case you’ve been asleep on the couch since the Reagan administration, here’s how the scam goes.

You start with the “bait” part, which involves advertising a product for a ludicrously low sale price. “How ‘bout a brand new, luxury car for only $4,999.99?” Too good to be true or what? Hmm, hold that thought.

When the line forms in your showroom, it’s time for the “switch.” Explaining that you’ve “just sold” the last of your $4,999.99 specials, you offer the mark a “similar” car for slightly more money, say $31,750.99. Pretty slimy, huh?

I was reminded of this stuff recently when NASA announced that Voyager 1, the unmanned satellite we sent hurtling into the cosmos back in the Carter administration is still, to the amazement of everyone involved, whizzing its way merrily through the galaxy.

Having long since surpassed its mission goals, Voyager 1, like some other survivors of the Disco Era that I won’t mention here, has apparently just “kept on truckin’.” In fact, it has earned the unique distinction of being the first man-made object to exit our solar system.

By all accounts it will continue to boogie its way across interstellar space almost indefinitely at the laid back (no traffic, no destination, no toll booths) pace of roughly 650 mph. At that rate, the next major scenic overlook (a fly-by of a neighboring solar system) won’t occur for another 40,000 years or so.

You’re probably wondering what all this has to do with “bait and switch,” so here goes. Having been around at the time of the Voyager 1 launch, I vaguely recalled hearing something about a “golden record” being placed on board. A bit of Web surfing confirmed that, sure enough, a select group of Earthlings, led by the late visionary science guru Carl Sagan, managed to convince those stuffy eggheads at NASA to slip a specially made golden disc into the satellite’s cargo bay.

Further research revealed that this “gold record” is in fact an actual long playing 33 and 1/3 rpm phonograph record remarkably similar to the one Gilbert O’Sullivan received for selling a zillion copies of his 1972 hit “Alone Again Naturally.” The record was conceived as a sort of cosmic calling card from The Human Race to any extraterrestrial beings technologically advanced enough to decipher its contents.

The general idea was that if, at some point in the distant future, our unmanned satellite accidentally rear-ended a shiny new starship belonging to one of our intergalactic neighbors, the E.T.’s would at least have some idea who to call to talk things over.

Perhaps, while searching for the owner’s insurance card in the glove box, they’d discover the golden disc, slap it on their awesome “technologically advanced” Generation XXVII Bang and Olufsen turntable and learn all about The Earthlings who sent it.

That’s what’s bothering me. I mean, what exactly did we put on that disc anyway? Apparently, besides the mandatory geeky mathematical equations, boring anatomical diagrams and a map of our neck of the galaxy, the record contains what the experts determined to be the “very best” of Earth, sort of an Earth’s Greatest Hits LP.

There’s some awesome music from Beethoven and Chuck Berry, plus bird songs, whale songs, folk songs, great poetry and awesome sunsets. There must be at least one cute puppy picture in there, too, right? And we included some inspirational speeches from Earth’s most enlightened cultural, political and religious leaders.

And that’s pretty much the problem. I’m afraid that by sending out that little gold disc, we might, however unwittingly, be participating in interstellar bait and switch.

Think about it. What if someday The Zorcons really do find our “calling card” and decide to packed up the kids and come over for a visit? Based on our “bait” they’d no doubt be expecting to visit a miraculous “big blue marble” populated by, a bright, happy, friendly, high-minded visionary race, some singing whales and plenty of righteous rock ‘n’ roll.

Unfortunately, even a quick review of the world news headlines in this or any other newspaper on the planet leaves little doubt that any future interstellar visitors are far more likely to experience the “old switcheroo.”

Original Appeared in the Boothbay Register