I plied my summers as a shoe salesman for a national chain during a very impressionable stage in my life. One July, a buddy and I—both of us callow college students—were dispatched to a new mall still under construction somewhere on Long Island.

 

Don’t ask me where. In retrospect, it seems every part of Long Island had a new mall under construction during the late 1970s. One day there was a potato field. The next day, a retail temple with two anchor stores, one Sbarro restaurant, and a gaggle of subordinate emporia, all of it swarming with pre-adjudicated teenaged shoplifters.

 

Our mission—and we had no choice but to accept it—was to help set up a new shoe store, which included arduous tasks such as opening cartons and stocking shelves…but definitely not sweeping the floor. 

 

Sweeping the floor, we would find out the hard way, was the exclusive province of the union workers on the site.

 

Consider: our mission was to set up the new store, and both of us figured that a logical first step would be to sweep away the three-inches of sawdust and other construction detritus that stood between us and the shelves we were ordained to fill.

 

We began to sweep, which would be about the time that a corpulent representative of the local trades—whose dad definitely wasn’t a dentist—made a point to stop by for an up‑close-and-personal tête-à-tête.

 

He counseled us that floor-sweeping was the contractual province of union members, and that it would be in the best interest of our immediate health & safety were we to cease and desist from using a broom—although these weren’t his exact words.

 

I said, “You’ve gotta be kidding.”

 

He wasn’t. And as I mentioned earlier, this was an impressionable time in my life, especially when significantly out-manned and morbidly outweighed.

 

He pointed to a whistle hanging around his neck, smiled a creepy smile, and assured us that if he blew it, all the union workers in the entire mall would cease doing whatever it was they were doing, construction would stop, and it would be all our fault, which would be duly reported to the powers-that-be, including, we surmised, someone with a proclivity for felonious assault.

 

Ergo, in a friendly spirit of cooperation, we demurred, respectfully querying what one would have to do to engage a highly trained union-certified broom tech to sweep out our nascent store. The answer, as I remember, involved people higher-up on the shoe store food-chain than my buddy and me, as well as the petty cash fund.

 

These reminiscences have become more acute as I’ve been reading about something called “The Employee Free Choice Act,” which is one of those names that should really creep you out because its subsumes the exact opposite of what it actually is—sort of like you woke up in an Orwell novel and can’t get back to sleep.

 

The Employee Free Choice Act would do away with workplace secret ballots about unionization, which have been in place since the 1930s. Instead, one would be asked to sign a public workplace petition, and if a majority do—volia!—you have a unionized shop.

 

Of course, when the union organizers come around, you wouldn’t be pressured to sign the petition should you feel unionization is not in your best interest. No questions asked. We’re all pals here, right?

 

Yeah, right.

 

Which brings us to today’s news, paraphrased from Reuters:

 

France this week is apparently facing major disruptions from transport and public sector strikes as unions wage a slew of separate campaigns against labor reforms.

 

Hundreds of domestic and international flights were cancelled for a third day on Sunday as Air France pilots pursued a four-day strike.

 

Travel chaos could spread to the railways on Tuesday when train drivers stage the first of two actions called by separate unions for the same week, while on Thursday many schools could be closed when teachers demonstrate over 2009 budget cuts.

 

On Saturday, postal services face disruption over plans to prepare the La Poste mail service for partial privatization.

 

Sounds like a worker’s paradise to me.

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Send me an email at halfjoking@ebarodine.com with “Subscribe” in the subject field and I’ll drop you a note whenever there’s a new post. I promise I won’t otherwise contact you, provide your email to third parties, or try to sell you male enhancement products.—S. Barone

Mainstream pundits assure us that the election of Obama was colorblind; that people voted for him because they like his policies, or because they disliked his opponent’s even more; that race-qua-race had nothing to do with it. Of course mainstream pundits are full of crap, which is a nice way of saying that they tend to prevaricate toward their predilections, whether subconsciously or by design.

 

First, the pre-election excitement about the prospect of electing America’s first African-American president was palpable across the country. If you were a liberal in resonance with his rhetoric, you were in pig heaven, with an entire cosmetic department of lipstick lain before you. And, certainly, the underclass Blacks who voted for the first time in their lives didn’t do so because of perceived nuances between the Obama campaign and the Democratic platforms of 2004 and 2000. Just ask them—as NPR did in Grant Park on election night.

 

We can imagine had Condoleezza Rice been the Republican nominee, and she were beaten as ignominiously by some Democratic white guy, that the pundits would be saying the same thing: that she was rejected by America not for reasons of race, but because she was a Republican and people have had it with Republicans, as well they should, unless they’re totally sadomasochistic, in which case they should be lobbying for a repeal of the two-term limit.

 

However, if Obama would have lost last Tuesday, please don’t tell me that the same pundits would be saying, “Gosh, a totally colorblind America rejected this candidate because their political instincts are right-of-center more so than leftward.” (Which, by the way, their political instincts are.) The cries of racism would be shrill enough to drive America’s swing voters into the sea like lemmings.

 

Fact of the matter, the Left is now holding all the race cards, and we jokers better not be too wild. Political discourse—and especially political humor—will require greater vigilance in the way one speaks, and much more so than simply purging highfalutin words like “niggardly” from one’s vocabulary when “maliciously parsimonious” might work just as well, if not so economically.

 

Consider:

 

At a client meeting yesterday, I heard a woman blaming McCain’s defeat on what she should have simply called “Rockefeller Republicanism.” Instead, she took the long way home, opining, “Republicans can’t win elections by saying that they’re going to do the exact same things the Democrats will, only do less of it. You can’t win by trying to be “Obama Lite.”

 

Oops. You could see the color drain out of her face. (Oops, again. My bad. I’m not sure why.)

 

During a telephone conversation with my cousin, while lamenting a probable increase in government nannyism under the Obama presidency, she told me, “I’m not looking forward to having Big Brother in the White House.”

 

Oops. Silence. I thought ATT dropped another call.

 

Unless you’re some kind of postmodernist nut job who believes that language only refers to itself—that everything that’s written has a hidden meaning that’s unknown even to the writer—then these are innocent mistakes that merit little more than a wry smile. In fact, our discomfort with them attests to our hypersensitivity about race, and that’s something to celebrate, I think.

 

But if these same innocent verbal faux pas were uttered in an unfriendly environ, you can bet your liberal opponent would pounce upon you like a leopard, resorting to arguments ad hominem, saying that your objections to this or that policy were borne of your racist nature, which maybe they are, or maybe they aren’t, but in any case, just in case the deconstructionists are right…make that a spotted leopard.

 

Wanna Make Things A  Lot Easier For Both of Us?

Send me an email at halfjoking@ebarodine.com with “Subscribe” in the subject field and I’ll drop you a note whenever there’s a new post. I promise I won’t otherwise contact you, provide your email to third parties, or try to sell you male enhancement products.—S. Barone

If you’re one who hates confrontation—and I am—then it’s hard to be a libertarian. This is because you’re constantly confronted with nice people who nonetheless think their lives—and particularly yours—would be much better if politicians had a greater hand in it. This makes socializing difficult.

 

You can either sit stoically and silently through a dinner party and ruin the evening for yourself, or you can vocalize the grim reality that, for example, a national healthcare system would be brought to us by the same people who run the USPS and the TSA. Thereby, you would ruin the evening not only for you but for everyone else, too.

 

You can’t even watch television, listen to the radio, or pick up a novel without cognitive dissonance. Every day, celebrities and quasi-celebrities who you like to watch, listen to, or read feel compelled to ruin it all for you by announcing their affinity to one or another form of government nannyism or oppression.

 

I tried to assuage this feeling of alienation yesterday by Googling “famous libertarians” to see what popped up. Thereby I came across a website called Advocates for Self Government, and therein was a listing of “Libertarian Celebrities.” The usual suspects were there: Clint Eastwood, Russell Means, John Stossel, Melanie…

 

Whoa…did I say Melanie?

 

I was a fan of Melanie when I was a kid. I had her live album, and I even heard her in concert at Westbury Music Fair—twice. Suffice to say, her between-song banter didn’t evoke images of Milton Friedman. And on her live album, she sang a paean to vegetarianism that—to be charitable—had melody and lyrics commensurate with its intellectual underpinnings. Consider; “ I don’t eat animals ‘cause I love ‘em, you see. I don’t eat animals, don’t want nothin’ dead in me.”

 

Yeah, whatever.

 

I really hope Melanie is a libertarian. The website quotes her as saying, “I’m a total Libertarian, and I am not a Democrat, a Socialist, or a Republican…” This is a good start. Nonetheless, I have met a fair number of people who call themselves libertarians and don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. They talk the talk until the conversation turns to national health, or Iraq, or abortion, or even the NEA, and then they look about as much a libertarian as I do a ballerina.

 

But I really do like Melanie. Consider this story:

 

The young woman who taught me to play guitar (Sarah Scala, where are you?) had learned from watching Laura Weber on Channel 13 in New York. I never saw the show, but as I understand it, Weber taught with a nylon-strung Spanish guitar, which—at the risk of understatement—has never been the rock-n-roll axe of choice.

 

Also, the chords and syncopations Weber favored were more endemic to Peter Paul & Mary than Jimmy Page. So I went away to college able to play Puff the Magic Dragon, even though everyone wanted to hear Stairway to Heaven. In effect, my repertoire was largely unappreciated. Even I couldn’t stand it.

 

That brings us back to Melanie, who in 1971 had a hit called Brand New Key, which could be played using three of the five or six major chords I could manage without biting a hole in my lip. I couldn’t really sing Brand New Key because the lyrics are not androgynous—to say the least—and because the chorus occurs in a register that would challenge even the most determined eunuch.

 

Anyway…for reasons that are tangential to the present discussion, I was ensconced in an all-women’s dorm late one night when the fire alarm went off and I fled outdoors to the quad with my guitar in hand, lest it be stolen or incinerated.

 

Thereby, I found myself amidst approximately 100 sleepy, irritated, nubile women—many in their jammies—with a guitar in my hand as they waited for the ‘all-clear’ to re-enter the dorm. And so one of them inevitably yelled at me, “Don’t just stand there, stupid. Play something.”

 

So I did. I started plucking away on C-major, singing the lyrics of Melanie’s Brand New Key: “I ride my bike, I roller skate, don’t drive no car.” And each time I got there, approximately 100 sleepy, irritated, nubile women—many in their jammies—would sing the Freudian falsetto for me: “I’ve got a brand new pair of roller skates, you’ve got a brand new key…”

 

This earned me some fleeting notoriety among a very limited circle of acquaintances. And although my 15 minutes of fame has been only among 100 sleepy, irritated, nubile women—many in their jammies—I wouldn’t trade that memory for anything, not even the sheet music for Stairway to Heaven, and the wherewithal to read and play it.

 

So I really do hope Melanie is a libertarian.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We live in an age where life mimics art. And since a lot of what lately passes for art involves feces and urine, I guess that explains the 21st Century zeitgeist. Nonetheless, I think the national psyche can use a few hours of couch time when politics starts mimicking comedy rather than the other way around.

 

Last week, Sarah Palin appeared on ‘SNL’ and John McCain appeared on David Letterman.  I didn’t catch Sarah Palin, although I understand she did a bang-up impression of Tina Fey. As I write this, people are rejoicing—either that she affirmed her earthy humanity or further revealed her copious inadequacies—depending on one’s political proclivities and prejudices.

 

I did, however, watch John McCain on Letterman.

 

Let me state emphatically that I would no more vote for Obama than I would McCain. Choosing one over the other is in effect voting for which parts of the Constitution you’re less frightened to see disemboweled.  But if America needed another reason not to vote for John McCain—and there’s robust evidence that they don’t—I offer his performance on Letterman last Wednesday.

 

What we saw was the aspirant Leader of The Free World, the would-be triggerman for the most powerful nation on Earth, cow-towing and flagellating himself in front of a gapped-tooth clown whose artistic persona might best be described as “America’s Official Doofus.”

 

Letterman spent most of his monologue humiliating McCain, impugning him for canceling an earlier appearance at the last minute, and apparently prevaricating about the reasons.  Ugly stuff—and funny, too.

 

But the real spectacle began as soon as McCain walked onto the set, feigning to hide behind his own arms, miming an effort not to be physically assaulted by Letterman. That’s not what America needed to see. We would prefer he had made a fist. Didn’t this guy fly a fighter jet in real combat? Get shot down over Viet Nam? Survive the Hanoi Hilton?   Eat raw fish heads before anyone ever heard of sushi?

 

It’s hard to choose what was the lowest of the low-points during this late night inquisition of McCain. My nomination is when Letterman challenged him for the reason he really canceled his appearance.

 

McCain offered, “Because I screwed up.”

 

Like most wimps in a fight, McCain thought that if he coughed up the milk money his antagonist might let him keep the bologna sandwich. Letterman didn’t, and McCain was pathetically on the defensive for the remainder of his appearance. 

 

A better answer would have been, “Because you’re not that important, Dave, and I had better things to do. You’re a comedian of sorts, Dave, not a journalist. You’re no Bob Schieffer.  You’re no Dick Cavett.  You’re not even Katy Couric. Your major contribution to Western Civilization is the Top Ten List— and maybe the Velcro® Suit”. 

 

All that might not be exactly true.  But since when did that matter in politics? 

 

 

One of the easiest and fastest ways to get the liberals and conservatives in a room to agree with one another is to mention that you’re a libertarian. They will transmogrify into instant concordance, telling you that you’re crazy, practically singing “Kumbaya” together as they make their case for more government of one or another kind.

This is the only reason I’ve been such a great fan of George Bush. Finally, here’s a president that I can loathe with as much ferocity as do my liberal friends. Previously, all we had in common were bad haircuts.

George has been good for me when it comes to conservatives, too. I sent this Wall Street Journal editorial to one of my right-leaning friends. Here’s his reaction:

“As much as I can’t stand Democrats and their destructive, almost irrational policies, I loathe Republicans more. Their venality, greed, and craven power mongering have almost totally destroyed the Conservative brand. I think most Americans are instinctively conservative, so would prefer a slightly right-of-center government.”

“Yet, despite the advantage of that inherent national tilt, Republicans have managed to so alienate people that–anecdotally anyway–many conservative people I know, small business people included, are planning to vote for Obama simply out of spite, regardless of the consequences.”

“When you run across that level of incompetence and arrogance, you just have to step back in awe and almost cheer their destruction–although God knows what the consequences will be for the country.”

“It is really difficult to fathom how a party could be so completely politically inept. I can’t imagine what it will take short of a national disaster to revive the Republican brand. Its resurrection certainly doesn’t seem likely to come from any internal causes, such as respectable, capable leadership.”

Are those the strains of “Kumbaya” I’m hearing?

Item: A TSA agent in Newark has single-handedly stolen over $200,000 worth of travelers’ belongings, primarily cameras and laptops, including a near-$50,000 camera with which an HBO employee had been traveling.

 

Maybe I wouldn’t have noticed this news item if I hadn’t just endured going through TSA International Security at O’Hare earlier this month. The TSA idiot-in-charge was berating the crowd for not approaching the podiums correctly. “I keep telling you people…” he was saying, and then would gesticulate madly to show people where he wanted them to go, what he wanted them to do, and how he wanted them to do it.

 

I guess it never occurred to this freaking genius that the people he berated an hour ago were not the same people he was berating now. This was an airport, after all.  People come and go all the time. Unless I’m missing a major airport concept, that’s why they keep all those airplanes, busses, and taxicabs there.

 

Here was the situation as best I can remember: Imagine five TSA petty tyrants standing abreast, each at his podium. Let’s number the tyrants 1 through 5. 

 

To make a long story short, if you’re the fourth person waiting in line to the right of Tyrant #1, you should leave the line and jump four places to Tyrant #5 for processing.

 

There’s nothing in the world intuitive about this. And in cold point of fact, the timbre of TSA security checkpoints gravely discourages hopping, skipping, jumping or otherwise acting proactively at all, lest you wind up in a little room with some high school dropout probing your orifices.

 

This isn’t Disneyland. The O’Hare TSA agents are rude, surly looking, and bored. For the most part, they’re the kind of folk you wouldn’t want to meet on a dark street—especially if you were carrying a suitcase with an expensive camera inside.

 

We approached the TSA agent’s little podium. Susan was first. The petty tyrant feigned great interest in Susan’s passport, giving it theatrical scrutiny, poring over it with his little specialized flashlight, grunting and harrumphing with exaggerated self-importance, as if Susan smelled of gunpowder instead of Patchouli, and she were wearing an ominously black burka instead of slacks and a sweater from Lands’ End. Then with a patronizing flip of his finger, he waved her through toward the next humiliation.

 

Next was my turn, and I endured the same melodramatic pomposity, fantasizing how I would like to twist this guy’s nose like a wing nut instead of pretending to harbor deep respect and gratitude for his time and attention. But suddenly, his demeanor changed, and I could almost hear some hot air hissing from a hole in his over-inflated ego. He called across the security area, ordering Susan back to his little podium.

 

It seems Susan was carrying both her and my boarding pass, and she accidentally switched them when we entered the O’Hare security gauntlet. So the passport she was holding identified her as Susan, but the boarding pass she was holding said she was Stephen. The fact that the name on the boarding pass didn’t match the name on the passport totally escaped the resolute scrutiny of this American hero. He didn’t notice it until I handed him a boarding pass that said I was Susan. I suspect my beard gave me away.

 

You’d think that would be one of the fist things you’d notice if you were a highly trained security specialist protecting the international airways from crafty suicidal terrorists with all your dedication and cunning. Like, “Whoa dude. Your boarding pass says your Ginny from Dubuque, but your passport says you’re Abdul from Dubai, so how ‘bout you step off the line and chat with me awhile?”

 

But let’s be fair. We all know that protecting the international airways from middle age, middle class women wearing sensible shoes and carrying the Wall Street Journal is a joke. The TSA tyrant didn’t notice that Susan wasn’t Stephen because the chances that either of us are terrorists is too absurd to take seriously. We wanted to giggle, but feared we might find ourselves in the bowels of O’Hare having our own probed by vengeful TSA agents intent on making  a point.

 

The TSA tyrant condescendingly ordered us to trade boarding passes, so Stephen was again Stephen, and Susan was again Susan.

 

I’m sure he would have preferred to arrest us or something worse right then and there, just so the bored, stupid, son-of-a-bitch would have something to do. But then he would have to explain to his superiors that he didn’t notice the guy named Stephen had tits and was carrying a handbag.  It was better if we just faded away into the crowd.

 

And so we did.

Observation: You can learn a lot about your own country by visiting someone else’s.

 

Susan and I were recently in Ireland, and many of our friends have asked penetrating, insightful questions about the country’s culture and new zeitgeist, particularly, “What’s it like driving on the left?

 

Actually, we found driving on the wrong side of the road and steering from the passenger seat to be fun, exciting, and no trouble at all. The weirdness of the experience keeps you extremely alert, as does the specter of ending your life anonymously in a foreign country inside a rented Opel Vectra.

 

Truth be told, walking and running in Ireland were really the challenge.

 

In fact, the Irish even paint  “Look Left” or “Look Right” on the asphalt at sidewalk corners, concerned as they are about the health & safety of visitors from drive-on-the-right countries, who need to look in the direction opposite of what they’re accustomed. You would never get this kind of help in America.

 

First of all, the painted warnings in Ireland are only in English. In America, the warnings would have to be additionally in Spanish, French, Hmong, and possibly Braille, too. There’s just not that much room on the asphalt.

 

There would also have to be disclaimers in fine print, because if an American municipality were to alert certain pedestrians that there is a danger specific to them, it would be acknowledging tacitly that it knows such a peril exists, making it even more legally culpable should a visiting Brit get bounced by an evil SUV.

 

Observation: In America, any mortal danger that’s distributed evenly across a diverse and litigious population is far less a pecuniary liability than a safety warning delivered disproportionately among the same. We found it endearing that in Ireland they say, “Mind your step.” In the USA we say, “Cover your ass.”

 

At one point I came perilously close to getting hit by a speeding lorry as I stepped out onto the roadway, looking one way when I should have been looking the other. It was one of those fight/flight moments when your adrenal glands shoot their entire wad, and you tell people afterward “my heart was in my throat.” But really you’re just being polite, because actually the feeling was much more like you wanted to grab your crotch to make sure your sex organs hadn’t become proximal to your Adam’s Apple.

 

In Dublin they have roundabouts that take the place of conventional stop-and-go intersections, and they’re absolutely sublime in their ability to keep traffic moving. As a motorist, they have my wholehearted endorsement. For a walker, however, they’re about as pedestrian friendly as a twilight stroll in the fast lane on The Long Island Expressway.

 

Susan and I were jogging in downtown Dublin during the early morning rush hour, and we had to cross a particularly inhibiting roundabout that was ostensibly controlled by traffic lights for the benefit of pedestrians. But the traffic kept careering around us like angry Indy cars, no matter what color the lights turned.

 

(I’ll admit some of our timidity might have been secondary to blurred senses and a slight hangover. We were out the night before, conducting scientific comparisons of different Irish whiskeys and liqueurs juxtaposed to Guinness Stout. By around midnight we had determined that none of them make a suitable sport drink—either alone or in combination—and are especially contraindicated with raw oysters.) 

 

Anyway, we sidled up to this patrician-looking matron who had gray hair, a silly hat, and sensible shoes. She was either dressed for business or was on her way to a costume party as Aunt Bee. I figured we would traverse the roundabout whenever she did—nice and calm. But suddenly, she bent herself at the waist, held on to her hat, and sprinted full bore across the roundabout, traffic lights be damned.

 

Susan and I were left standing there, still on the opposite side of where we wanted to be. It was like getting beaten in a 50-yard dash by Margaret Thatcher, and you never even heard the starting pistol.

 

In Madison, where I live in Wisconsin, there are “progressive” self-segregating neighborhoods that have painted crosswalks where pedestrians are provided dainty & diminutive red flags to wave above their heads as they step self-righteously into the flow of speeding traffic.

 

Their denizens cross the street not just to buy cappuccinos on the other side, but also to make some amorphous political statement up-close-and-personal to your front bumper. They have the right-of-way in the abstract, although there’s very strong empirical evidence that you can get killed doing this, and in many cases these people make large and appealing targets.

 

Contrarily, in Dublin or Rome you get the impression that were you to get hit crossing the street, you would be ticketed for obstructing traffic—perhaps posthumously. So you can understand how it’s been politically popular for the EU to force manufacturers to design cars that are more pedestrian friendly.

 

The new EU standards require passenger car A-pillars, bumpers, hoods, and windshields to protect pedestrians from injuries–not if but when they get hit by cars. Automakers will also be required to install flexible bumpers and hoods that crumple, as well as add eight inches of space to the substructure between the front bumper and firewall to better absorb energy and minimize collateral damage to pedestrian targets.

 

Observation: In America, jaywalkers are seen as a potential liability. In Europe they’re fair game—but at least the EU is trying to level the playing field.

Item: Sen. John McCain on Monday is delivering a new speech that a senior aide says he thinks “will begin a turnaround for the campaign” as Election Day approaches.

 

I hate politics, and so let me state up front that I don’t care which lying sack of excrement gets elected. You and I have both read erudite missives, each written by one or another political strategist, extolling what their candidate should say to “position” himself in the eyes of the electorate.

 

Republican strategists counsel that McCain has to appear more right-winged, less hawkish, and in better congress with God, regardless of what he might actually believe. Democrat strategists say that Obama has to appear less of a tax-and-spend nascent socialist, even though that’s exactly what he is.

 

Mind you, these strategists say these things bald-faced, in public fora, with neither shame nor sense of irony. What they are advising–right under our noses–is that their candidate should espouse whatever the hell it takes to get elected–which is to say–lie. 

 

Thus, to paraphrase H. L. Mencken, voting for president is like buying bootleg whiskey. You don’t know exactly what you’re going to get, but you can be damn sure it won’t be what you were sold.

 

Item: McCain’s speech comes the same day that the Democratic candidate Barack Obama is laying out his economic rescue plan for the middle class.

 

Note to Obama: Hellooo! I am middle class. I am disgustingly middle class. My last name even begins with “B,” as in bourgeois. And I don’t freaking want to be rescued by you or anyone else. I want to be left alone. Especially since there is ample evidence that the machinations of politicians Left and Right are directly responsible for the 50 percent deterioration in my personal M-1 during the past month.

 

Consider: There is no single “Economy” in America that someone can pop up the hood on and tune up as if it were a stumbling 327 with an errant 4-bbl. (Prius drivers: consult NASCAR dad to explain metaphor. But define metaphor first.)

 

Instead, there are many little economies, e.g., mine, yours, GM’s, Microsoft’s and Macy’s. Trying to “fix” one economy by giving away money is always at the expense of someone else’s economy. It’s called redistributing the wealth. And if you’re middle class, the odds are extraordinary that the wealth to be redistributed will be your own. 

 

Check here for an informative article.

Wanna have words, wise guy?

Imagine the austere pleasure of enucleating what a jerk I am, for the whole world to see, and you get to do it anonymously! Your comments, observations, and pithy remarks are welcomed, encouraged, and will appear at the bottom more-or-less right here.

 

But to protect halfjoking.net against human and robotic spammers–especially the malicious or profane kind–you have to “register,” which involves simply sending me your email so that I can instantly send you a password.

 

Don’t worry. I won’t contact you. After all, I don’t even know you, and you’re probably hostile.

 

Click the “comment” (or “no comment”) below. A panel will appear wherein you get to choose a User Name and type in an email address to which I’ll send the password. 

 

The password will be horrendously non-intuitive, something like AxXOyOZ43%, all case sensitive (or course)… and are those round things zeros or letters?  

 

Just copy the password from the email, and then paste it into the window when you come back to comment. Tell your browser to remember both the password and your User Name when it asks, and you’ll never have to fuss with either again. 

 

At least that’s their story down in the IT department. And they’re sticking with it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The precipitous disappearance of print media as a palette for us writers who like to kid around and tell jokes can be depressing. This is my first sortie into the blogosphere, and I’ve been turning the house upside-down looking for my sense of humor. The last time I remember having it was sometime during the closing days of the Clinton Administration, when Major Tobacco summarily rejected my proposal for a series of provocative cigar commercials.

Oh, did I mention I’m a creative marketing consultant?

I used to be a school psychologist–you know, working with young children, counseling adolescents, and keeping up with Sponge Bob to maintain my street cred in kindergarten. That is, until I figured out that public schools were the disease–and I certainly wasn’t the cure.

Of course as a Boomer, I majored in the social sciences to escape the specter of imminent employment. So did most of my classmates. These classmates are now shocked–shocked–that I would prostitute my Rasputin-like psychological prowess to private business, selling things to an unsuspecting peasantry who don’t know any better than to do exactly what I say. I find this irritating, because if anyone anywhere were ever guilty of trying to sell a credulous American public on an ephemeral, amorphous, undulating, ill-defined bucket of shit masquerading as erudition, it would be social scientists in their various permutations.

Anyway, I’ve built this blog to serve as a creative outlet in lieu of old-fashioned newspapers and magazines. There are no less than 24 ways to subscribe to it, all of them viewable at the top of the column at right. Locally, I used to freelance with The Wisconsin State Journal, The Milwaukee Journal, WISCONSIN magazine, and sometimes even Madison’s Isthmus. Nationally, there was Reason Magazine, The Executive Educator, Restaurant Hospitality, and others.  

You can see some of my past ruminations: here.

Some of these newspapers and magazines are gone. Hardly anyone reads the rest–at least in print. So I’ve decided to blog–something that’s wrought with danger because there are no editors. Consider: There used to be a time when a writer would compose an article, send it to an editor, and in all likelihood the editor would never respond, leaving said writer to wonder whether the article had evaporated into the ozone. This was not necessarily a bad thing.

One of the greatest conceits in the world is thinking that the public-at-large wants to know what you’re thinking about something, when in stark reality the public-at-large doesn’t think about you at all. This was one of the great services that editors provided: effectively saving us writers from ourselves. Otherwise, who knows what kind of crap would have filled our nation’s newspapers and magazines under our bylines?

Well, actually we do know. The Internet has given us the great democratization of writing, so that anyone can write anything at any time and post it, no matter how stupid. Stupidity, however, is in abundant and dynamic supply, so that we now have more of it than we need on the Internet.

Nonetheless, I’m looking forward to contributing.