The Victory of Marketing Over Common Sense
Manager
Red Robin Restaurant
10005 NE Cascades Parkway, Ste. A
Portland OR 97220
No one makes a burger quite as good as Red Robin, and none of Red Robin’s burgers is quite as good a the Bleu Ribbon Burger. This is not just my opinion, by the way, but an absolute fact.
Also, we have visited Red Robins all over the place, and the stores are consistently clean, cheery, enthusiastically decorated, and always have good service. We seldom have to wait very long, but not because the restaurant is empty … quite the contrary, it seems that Red Robins are always pretty busy.
Your store is no exception to these observations. Your wait staff was prompt, efficient, and courteous, and your store was quite pleasant.
But. You knew there was a “but” coming, didn’t you?
When we came to your store a couple of weeks ago, it was raining. As you probably know, this is not a novelty in Portland. We approached the door from the parking lot, as virtually every customer must do, and stood under the entry canopy only to be confronted with a sign that said we would have to walk around the building to enter from the other side. Which we did, getting even wetter in the process.
We were seated at a table very near to the exit door we were unable to enter. As we sat enjoying our lunch, we observed at least a dozen parties, probably close to fifty people, do the same thing we had done. They exited their car, scurried through the rain to the locked door, saw the sign, shook their heads, and then scurried in the rain around the building to the entrance on the opposite side.
I know the building “fronts” on NE Cascades Parkway, but during the time we were there, we saw no one enter who had parked in the very limited number of spaces on the street there. In point of fact, your customers virtually all park in the ample lot provided on the north-east side of the store.
Why in the world do you insist on making the majority your loyal customers walk entirely around your store to enter? Often, in the rain. And yet again when they leave.
Someone at corporate probably told you that the “entrance must face the thoroughfare.” Pshaw! The entrance must face the customer. There are many excellent locales with successful restaurants which enter from the parking lot side, away from the major street frontage. Among those that come quickly to mind are several in Bridgeport, virtually all Olive Gardens, the Red Robin in Sherwood, and several restaurants in our home town, Tualatin. Each of them has a “presence” on the street side, but also has a cheerful and well-lit entrance on the side where virtually all customers enter … from the parking lot.
In your particular store, it would take little or no effort to simply open the north-east door and allow patrons to enter and leave there freely. Why not?
Anyway, we still had great burgers that day! Keep up the good work!
Your loyal but soggy customer,
J. Michael Riley
8720 SW Tualatin Rd. #223
Tualatin OR 97062
jmyke2000@comcast.net
We Can't Afford Ourselves
My son-in-law disagrees, but I still think the cost of everything emerges from only two sources: labor and materials. And, if you think about it, in a world absent human society, materials would be free. Lumber? There are trees, take them. Food? There are berries, there are fish, gather them and eat. What is the cost of these? Your labor, wholly.
With the whole of society wrapped around us, though, others do these things for us. Farmers farm and harvest the results of their labor. Miners dig, truckers truck, refiners smelt, workers in rolling mills make the ingots into sheet steel, and, until recently, auto workers made the steel into cars. The car, the steel, the ingot, the ore ... each is free except for the effort put into turning them from an inaccessible object in an unusable form, into a useful object such as a car, which we desire to buy.
So, if things cost too much, what do we do, we capitalists?
One tool from our bag of tricks is to automate the processes of labor. There is a necessary injection of capital here, to set up the factories and build the robots to do the work of grinding out the products, work which was previsouly done more expensively by people, but in the long run, the robots are often a cheaper means to the same end. So the costs of production go down, and the costs of the objects produced can also go down.
(A word here about moving jobs to foreign countries in order to employ cheaper labor. This gives a temporary edge to whoever does it first, but as with automation, as soon as one's competitors do the same thing, the advantage is lost, and the need to economize on labor is again confronted. Thus, sweat-shop stichery moves to an even more impoverished locale ad infinitum. Except, just as robot help can only be made so efficient, there are not an infinitely large numer of poorer and poorer nations out there.)
We ARE capitalists, though, so we don't pass along ALL of the savings generated by our ingenuity to our customers. We keep some of the difference for ourselves. The cost to us goes down $100, we lower the cost to our customers maybe $80, and the stuff sells like hot cakes. And, lo and behold, we can sell the stuff for less, yet make more money by selling more, at a higher profit per item! Yay!
What has been done is to lower the cost of labor. But for the next business in line, it has instead simply lowered the cost of the thing, which, from their point of view, is not labor, but the raw material for their step of the process.
And so it has gone for generations in the developed world. At each step of the chain of effort from seed to table, from mine to highway, from author's mind to readers' minds, crafty and ingenious entrepreneurs have devised creative methods for lowering their costs of production while raising their profits. For every succeeding buyer, whether that buyer is another in the chain of producers, for whom the product is but another raw material, or that buyer is the untimate consumer, for whom the whole cumulative effort has resulted in some material goods, the pride of our society has been to reduce the effort, and thereby the cost, of the production of goods.
Great.
But what does this mean in the great scheme of things?
The total cost of each thing produced is made up of some percentage labor and some percentage material. If, at each and every step in the process, we successfully strive to reduce that percentage which is attributable to labor, then the percentage attributable to materials must perforce rise.
Imagine that geniuses in every industry figure out a way to lower the labor costs of production to zero. All fabrication, storage, shipping, stocking, etc. is done with such perfect efficiency that those processes cost nothing. Then, the cost of anything could be set equal to the cost of the materials as purchased from the previous step in the chain of production. Of, course, being capitalists, we would expect some profit to be added along the way, so there would be some added cost.
Hopefully small.
And if the previous step in the process were also perfectly efficient, and so-on back to the ore pit or the seed drill or the mind of the artist, what then? Well, then, the cost of the final product would be made up entirely of profit.
Leave it for a moment to ponder what one would do with profit in such a world, not to mention what would motivate everyone involved to work, because this is just an exercise, and of course impossible.* But the effort to minimize costs of production is an effort to head in this direction.
Is this a good thing?
Well, in the interim, while all these production efficiencies are being made, progress is uneven, and some industries along the way from resource to consumer have been quicker to economize on their means of production than others. It is to be assumed that their owners benefit more and sooner from this, but more to the point, for those who add value during the OTHER steps along the way, their labor now seems unduly high in cost compared to the reduced cost of materials in their step of the process. And the incentive grows for the capitalists who own their industry to minimize their own labor costs (even if, maybe especially if, it is their own labor!)
In other words, their supplier has just lowered the cost of widgets they use to manufacture gadgets. But their labor costs remain what they have always been. So the cost of their product out the door now consists of a much higher percentage of labor costs than materials costs. Any sane manager will be alarmed at this and seek to reduce labor costs.
To be sure, the cost of things everyone buys goes down. But much more to the point, the percentage burden of the work that is done which produces the funds used to buy those reduced-cost items has been increased by the very efforts of other industries to minimize their own labor costs, and thus raised the incentive for the reduction or elimination of labor costs for the later consumer/producer as well.
Over the last couple of generations (and maybe back as far as the beginning of the industrial revolution, although for a while that process created new things to consume, which simply increased the size of the pie and raised the demand for labor, but that phase seems to be over), this process has been going on apace in every imaginable industry, in every imaginable step in the process of production.
For those still at work, the cost of their work represents a target of inefficiency which must rationally be minimized.
So it is, that as we wallow in ridiculously inexpensive consumer goods from basic necessities like food to complex finished products like cars, we cannot afford the services of other human beings which generations past took for granted: beat cops, tailors, housekeepers, laundries. This pressure evinces itself in other areas not as the abscence of human services, but their extreme cost: health care, legal help, delivery service, child care, education.
What's the answer?
Well, I guess, there is no answer so long as we don't see this as a problem. Do we long for a time when one's wages relative to the cost of groceries or a car or a radio were very small, in exchange for the opportunity to be able to hire a nanny to care for our kids? Would we swap cheap electronic entertainment systems for a beat cop to patrol our neighborhoods?
Some would. Others, not.
I don't know how I feel about this.
(*... and fodder for another rant.)
In The Now / Happiness
I have had an odd feeling from time to time recently. When I first felt it, it took me a little bit to recognize it; it had been a while since I had this feeling before. I probed around inside, like you do with a sore tooth: 'What IS that?'
Then I remembered a poem I had written years ago. Here it is:
Afghanistan (A Few Moments Without Fear)
For just a few minutes.
So short a time,but so fine.
As I write this,
I can still close my eyes
And see the little dance I'd do.
Oddly, though, the dancer is
A woman young and slim,
And the dance that cool
Arch-back strut thing
Mick Jagger does so well.
Unselfconscious, though,
I strut, and purse my lips,
And punch those bunchy troubles
Back and down.
So short a time,but so fine,
All fear was gone.
And with it,
Guilt and hatred,
Sloth and envy far.
So far they had no name.
For a thing not imagined
Cannot be named.
Instead ...I did not see the world
But was in it,
Had eyes to see,
But did not look through them.
There was no space, none!
Between me
And whatever it is that starts
Where my skin quits.
Nothing to have.
Nothing to want.
Nothing to regret.
Just to be.
Instead ...I knew those words,
I knew them not
Like you know Afghanistan:
Someplace over there,
Cold and Hot by turns,
Bomb craters and Islam.
You know it, yes,
But in your head.
Instead ...I knew those words,
I knew them like
You know your backyard:
Blue horizon, hummingbirds,
Bird feeder beat up by the deer,
Quiet, warm and cool by turns.
The place over there
Where we made love one night.
The scar in the apple tree
Where the chair hangs in Summer.
Smell of pine oil, sun on skin.
Oh, so painful brief I knew those words,
Not like Afghanistan, but like backyard.
Freedom, Joy, Life, Love.
I knew them, yes,
Not only in my head,
But in my heart.
For just a few minutes.
For so short a time, but so fine,
There was nothing I couldn't do,
And again nothing I felt I must.
Obstacle was a word without traction,
Depression like Afghanistan.
Do people live like this?
Is this what we were meant to be?
Is this who I really am?
As I write this, I blink away tears,
And I remember the feeling fade.
Oozing up from cracks below,
Coiling oily darkness returns.
But a tiny smile remains.
I'm back, I'm afraid.
Afghanistan (c) Mike Riley 2003
Joy. That's what it is.
Manifest Destiny
Practically no one would argue with the proposition that our country is in a sorry state right now.
The arguments would begin, of course, once the topic was broached about WHY the country is in such a sorry state. I imagine two camps, one armed, each with a list of what is going wrong and what should be done about it. Take the two lists, retitle the "what's going wrong" part to say "what should be done about it," and vice-versa, and you could give the two lists to the opposite parties with no problems. On so many topics, we have drawn into two ideologically opposing groups of approximately equal size, in a tooth-and-nail confrontation to rehabilitate our ailing nation.
But in spite of the many ways in which we disagree about what has gone wrong, most members of each of these groups would agree that our country is hurting.
Imagine: two centuries ago, there was such a thing as "manifest destiny."
In those days, the people of our country had a vision of the future, and in that future, our country was to be a grander, more prosperous, happier place. The future was a place where those people WANTED TO BE.
Do you long to be in the future of our country, our world?
I virtually never hear politicians, clergy, scientists, engineers, or regular Joes mouth their longing for the future, nor their vision for the future, nor their hopes for the future. Our manifest destiny has evaporated into a manifest apathy.
Or maybe apathy is too kind of a concept for today's attitude about tomorrow. There is too much anger, fear, and loathing of what our future is likely to be for the word "apathy" to adequately describe our feelings. Maybe manifest dread is more like it.
Oh, sure, people make plans and live in hope. Especially politicians, whose stock in trade is the proposition that if they are elected our cherished hopes will be realized, whereas if their opponents are elected, our hopes will yet again be dashed.
Sadly, each of the opponents in any race is half right.
Our talk of a brighter future, our plans, our hopes and our dreams today feature mainly repairs, corrections, fixes, disasters averted, pain ameliorated, suffering lessened. When did you last hear a leader, any leader in any field, describe a future with not only our current problems solved, but with creative new things, new frontiers, new nourishment for the human spirit, new grace?
I do not excuse or exempt myself.
We have become cynical, sarcastic, and defeatist. As you read this, you are thinking to yourself, "yes, but manifest destiny was a jingoistic, rapacious, racist, exploitative, chauvanistic illusion." Aren't you thinking that? Doesn't G.E.'s "Progress is our most important product" slogan sound cloying and even somewhat horrifying now?
Stop for a moment and try to visualize life in these United States in the year 3000. Granted, it's unlikely that the United States as a political entity will still be around by then, but try to imagine what life will be like for your many-great-grandchildren who may be living right there where you are at this moment, whatever the name of their home may be by that time.
Is it a beautiful, utopian world? Is it not only free of the many physical, social and environmental problems of today, but also free of new ones, and ALSO filled with something new, something beautiful, something uplifting and worthwhile?
If not, why not?
Close your eyes, and visualize that world of the year of 3000, the good world, not the post-apocalyptic one we are being sold over and over again in our imaginations by the beneficiaries of fear and the merchants of dread. What does your world look like?
I can see that world quite easily, although I have rarely seen it portrayed or described. Are we supposed to just make it come about by pure blind luck? Is the "invisible hand" really guiding us there, to a world of grace, prosperity and fulfillment? Or have I revealed too much about my vision?
I beg you to consider this. Imagine that good world. Imagine what it is that makes it good, and how that differs from what we have in our world today.
Then forget whether bringing about that world, bringing about those things that make that world a place worth living in, bringing about a place worth leaving to our cherished children and their cherished children and so-forth ... forget whether those changes fit into the mold of your political affiliations and religious beliefs.
Becasue I think we will have to forget those things to bring that world about. And only by US working together will that world come to be ... it will certainly not happen by itself, and I think you'll agree it will not happen if we continue as we are now.
It is only our destiny if we MAKE it manifest.
Why Witches Love Harness Racing
Sometimes when we're out and around, I get an inspiration for a subject for writing. Sometimes, it is a story idea, sometimes it's a poem (not too much of that recently, unfortunately), but most often, it's an idea for a brief essay like this one right here.
Not being of the current plugged-in generation, I am generally not carrying a computer or i-Phone at these times, so I resort to an old-school solution and borrow a pencil or a pen from Karen and jot down a few words to remind me what the idea was, for when I get home to where my computer is.
What I jot down is sometimes the title, but oftenit's just a few words that will trigger my memory about what it was that I wanted to write about.
The mind wanders; when I get home, things have usually happened between my inspiration and my renewed proximity to my computer, and I forget to even look at my scrap of paper. Therefore, it is often days, weeks or even months later when I finally open my wallet (where I keep the scraps to keep them from being laundered when I abandon them in my pockets and put the clothes in the hamper), and I see the note there and I am reminded to write about whatever it was that I jotted down earlier.
Over-and-above the laundry, this scheme is fraught with troubles.
Part of the problem is that I also use this method to record gift ideas for future birthdays and holidays, as I generally have that "deer in the headlights" reaction when I finally realize that the joyous occassion is rapidly approaching* and I have yet to buy anything. So, if I remember my list of inspirations, I pull it out to see if maybe sometime over the last year I maybe wrote down something to give Karen for her birthday, or to give Morgan for Christmas, or whatever.
I look at the list and I am confronted with the words "Perilous Harmony," for example, and I'm totally bewildered, unable to discern in my dark and creeky memory whether "Perilous Harmony" was an idea for a blog entry or a new perfume.**
Similary, when I sit down to write, and refer to my list for an idea, I will see "Cute Knit Cap," and totally draw a blank about what I had in mind about a cute knit cap that would be interesting to write about.
I'm not stupid, but ... well, maybe I am.
Maybe a longer, more explicit note would be a good idea, huh? Yeah, but when I write these notes, I'm either WITH Karen, so I can't be too obvious writing down some long and explicit note just after we saw a cute knit cap in The Gap. Or maybe I'm driving and listening to something on the radio that inspires some potential future writing, and I scrabble around for a pencil in the glove compartment to write with and the back of a credit-card receipt to write on, and, while trying to avoid hurtling cars in the intersection, I have only seconds to jot down literally a word or two, no matter how obscure.
Another problen with this method is that these notes soon become bedraggled to the point of illegibilty. The paper gets wrinkled, smeared by rubbing against my too-often-used credit cards, sweat-stained (sorry, TMI, I know), or folded and refolded by the vagaries of wallet-bound life. Many such notes have been executed on Post-It-Notes, and in time, the none-too-sticky-anyway adhesive loses its attractiveness, and the note flutters out of my wallet, to be lost to me forever.***
But worst of all is this: I find a fairly recent note in still-legible condition, but I simply have NO IDEA what the hell I was thinking when I wrote it down.
So it is with "Why Witches Love Harness Racing."
This entry appeared on one of my longer and more-productive lists a couple of years ago. For all the memory I have of writing it down, it might as well be a channeling from the beyond. But I suspect that I actually had something in mind, so it's only fair to my former self to give it due consideration. I kept the note for a long time after I had worked off all the other entries, then I actually transcribed "Why Witches Love Harness Racing" to a newer note to give my memory the best possible chance. But, no luck. So, I approach the problem analytically.
A quick check of Google reveals that, incredibly, there is a connection between witches and harness racing. There have been several recent, brilliant harness-racing horses with "witch" in their names: "Son of a Witch," "Witch and Famous," and "Wags to Witches," to mention only three.
But I doubt this is what I had in mind,as it doesn't really explain why witches, or even ONE witch, might LOVE harness racing.
I get a great mental image of a coven gathered at the rail of some toney trotting-horse track, yelling and screaming for their favorite horse-and-jockey (are they still called "jockeys" in harness racing?), with the other patrons giving them wide berth in case they inadvertently cast a spell in their excitement. I sense an episode of a tevee sitcom here, don't you?
So what drew these women here? Why do they love it so? I don't know.
Is it because the little cart in harness racing is called a "sulky," and witches are, well, you know, sulky? Is it because the cart is a sulky and the jockey's clothes are silkie? Is it just the inherently classy atmosphere of harness racing as opposed to plain ol' horse racing? Is it all the flaming accidents that occur between sulkies in these races? (Okay, just kidding about the flames, but there ARE a lot of accidents, and I can see how that might attract witches.) Is it the oddness of harness racing as opposed to plain ol' horse racing? Is it just the grace and pride of the trotters trotting?
A new thought occurs to me. Perhaps I wrote down "Why Witches Love Harness Racing" as a little joke on my future self, just to torment me when I tried, as I am trying now, to figure out what the hell I was thinking.
It's the sort of thing I would do.****
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Memo for self for future essay: "fast approaching" is a bogus expression, like "eleventh hour."
** Seriously, what IS "Perilous Harmony?"
*** But not to everyone; I sometimes wonder how many husbands I've saved of a Christmas Eve with one of these notes. Or perhaps a desparate feature columnist.
**** If, on the other hand YOU know why witches love harness racing, please drop me a note (but please be less opaque about it, okay?) @: jmyke2000@comcast.net Thanks.
The True Nature of the Numbers One thru Nine
For the everyday consumption of numbers, such as for balancing your checkbook, estimating the amount you are traveling in excess of the speed limit, or lying about your age or weight, one doesn't easily discern the true nature of the digits themselves. They do their work as symbols, always enslaved to the iron-willed demands of those real-world objects they enumerate (or intentionally obscure).
But in sudokus, the numerals might just as well be letters of the alphabet, alchemical symbols, or colors of the rainbow. In a sudoku, the numerals have no numerical purpose. They are simply place markers, pure symbols, indicating nothing except their difference from one another. As such, their otherwise hidden personalities can emerge, and to the observant and receptive sudokuant, each will have revealed its true nature.
Each of the numbers we use in our decimal system, like each of us, has a unique personality and each presents us with its challenges when it comes to more intensive uses such as computer science, speculations in futures short-sell pork-belly contracts, nuclear physics, and sudokus.
Those of us who practice the arcane and dark art of sudoku tend to be a secretive and studious lot, cowering in the dark, away from the distractions of social entanglements and physical liaisons. Sometimes by choice.
As a result, we spend much more time in the sole company of the numbers 1 thru 9 than the typical modern person. It's not that we shun the zero, you understand; it's just that the conventions of sudoku do not require its use (except for that heresy which is the super-sudoku and which shall not be spoken of here.)
Although every practicing sudokuant will recognize the descriptions offered below as being perhaps obvious, non-solvers may never have experienced the numerals' intrinsic personalities. As far as I know, no one before has recorded these emotional quirks of the numerals for their benefit, so I will endeavor here to do so:
0 As I mentioned above, zeroes are not used in true sudokus. But I assume the zero's personality is as well-rounded and balanced as it appears. But beware, these seemingly harmless digits can catch the unprepared making uncomfortable and incorrect assumptions; I assume the zero is no different, and every bit as devious as the others.
1 One must be understood as pure ego. Used to being first, the one has come to expect priority not as a convention or a privilege, but as its due, its right. Make no mistake, the one is an experienced leader, and can certainly do the job, but never forget that in sudokus, the numbers have no mathmatical values; don't let the one sweet-talk you into starting your slicing-and-dicing with a one every time. I use a strict rotation, yet the one always seems to push its way to the front.
2 Two seems so innocent and unassuming. But when we are not looking, the two is a jezebel, evening up the other digits as if their sudokuic roles were actually mathmatical. The two is unfaithful, duplicitous and corrupting - the exact opposite of its apparent equanimity and fairness. Beware.
3 Three, of course, is the obvious trouble-maker and rabble-rouser of the digits. But this reputation is somewhat undeserved. It is just that the nature of the three is boisterous, jubilant, and full of fun. Those are not qualities often appreciated by the quiet-loving and more sedentary personality of the typical sudokuant, often leading to misunderstandings and paper-shredding erasures.
4 Four has a superior and snooty attitude that makes it both unpleasant to associate with and unpopular with the other numerals. But life is often unfair, and the problem here is that the four is actually a superior number, indeed. Try not to let it know just how good it is, or you will find that the four becomes completely swell-headed and unmanageable. Be especially cautious of the closed-top four; the open-topped four has all the vanity of the breed, but at least is open-minded.
5 Five is the blue-collar-worker of numerals. It is well-centered, untroubled by doubts or distrubing dreams. Five also unfortunately lacks much creativity or passion. It is what it seems: a willing worker and a fair dealer.
6 Six is coy and devious. Beware of entering this number into a box of your sudoku in pen, because it loves to mislead you as a passive-aggressive expression of its inner hostilities. Check it twice; it is no coincidence that it looks like a snake coiled to strike.
7 Seven has a long-standing reputation for mystical and spiritual significance which it finds hard to live up to. In reality, it is just a hard-working, journeyman numeral, much like the five, trying to make its way in the world. The seven must be respected, but like a famous yet lonely super-model, it longs only to be treated as every other number is treated.
8 Eight is the great evader. It may seem friendly and avuncular, but make no mistake, this digit is one of the most truculent when it comes to revealing itself, perhaps the most devious and recalcitrant of them all.
9 Nine, of course is the numeral of death, and it cannot be understood until this is recognized and accounted for. It is neither doom nor glory, it is simply the end of all things. So, approach it warily and with due respect.
No one who often solves sudokus will be surprised by any of the above; if you are one of us, you may even say that what I have written here is so obvious as to be a foolish waste of time. But after having many, many discussions with sudoku outsiders, I know with certainty that most people do not, in fact know about these personality traits of the numerals, and many have wandered all innocent and trusting into a puzzle completely unprepared for the emotions, politics, and intrigue in which they soon are enmeshed.
I hope I have spared at least one of you an unpleasant experience and needless Wite-Out.
Identity Card
Okay, so I know of a guy who's a collegiate sports official, a recovering alcoholic, a member of the auto club and over fifty years old. His identity card says:
NCAA AA AAA AARP
On Primitive Beliefs and Recylcing
Setting out our recycling containers makes the wind blow. Hard.
Now I know you are either wondering why I harbor obvious superstition, or more charitably, you wonder what rational process might lead to such a conclusion.
The observational parameters are as follows:
a) Our recycling service gives us three little open bins, sort of like the milk boxes that are used by dairies to deliver gallon jugs of milk to reatailers.
b) Recycle-eligible materials almost by nature seem to be light and fluffy.
c) We live in a narrow valley along the Front Range of the Rockies knonw for the literally hurricane-force winds that blow through from time to time.
d) Our recycling schedule is on Mondays, bi-weekly (an ambiguous term that in this case means once every two weeks), which is about as arbitrary a schedule as far as Nature would be concerned as one could devise.
I have observed, over hundreds of events and dozens of years, that other than the traditional and predictable spring-time dawn and dusk chinooks, year-round and regardless of time of day, setting out our recycling is the ONLY time that these winds erupt spontaneously and destructively.
I flatter myself that I have an especially sharp, agile, and scientific mind, and as an amateur scientist, I am sceptical by nature. Unfortunately, I have not kept notes or done any statistical analysis to prove the truth of my observation that these two seemingly-unrelated occurences are, in fact cause-and-effect.
Nevertheless, I am aware that I might seem to others to be like the primitives who believe that cows standing under a tree make the day very hot. Which is just silly.
I am aware of all the logical fallacies such as confusing cause and affect, attributing cause and effect relationships to chance simultaneous events, just being stupid, and so-on. But on the other hand, if human beings have any evolutionary advantage, it is that we live and learn. And the smart ones only burn their hands at a fire once ... or maybe, if they're scientific, twice.
Yet I dutifully set out my recycling again and again in the vain hope that the wind won't blow this time, only to be forced to get my cardio-vascular exercise for the day by running around our neighborhood like a madman with our "Pik-Stik" gathering it back together.
This has become so common that the neighbors no longer bother to take out their own trash on recycling day ... they just wait for the wind to start and throw it out their doors, knowing that I will dutifully gather it and stuff it into totally non-PC plastic garbage bags for them.
Setting the question of religious beliefs aside for the moment, one might wonder why I don't devise some simple method of securing my recycling aginst the howling might of the moving air. Don't believe for a minute that I haven't tried!
I routinely lash our trash (as opposed to recycling) containers to our mailbox and one another with bungee cords in case the gods of the winds might mistake them for recycling. These containers actually have lids. On those days, I have spent many happy hours wandering the streets nearby to find and retrieve said lids, content in the knowledge that most trash (as opposed to recycling) is nasty, wet and heavy, and if anything like that wants to blow away, Pueblo can have it.
This morning, as Karen and I were taking the recycling out to the curb, I commented that it felt like it was going to snow. I do not exaggerate when I say that IMMEDIATELT AFTER I SPOKE large fluffy flakes started drifting lazily down all around us. Again, I guard against leaping to false conclusions, but I will tell you, we were both impressed. Knowing that that sort of snow is seldom accompanied by high wind, we continued in our task.
As I sat back down to finish my second cup of coffee and peruse the second page of the daily fascist pamphlet they call a newspaper here, I was not at all surprised to hear the familiar sound of trees groaning and shingles striking our siding as a seeming cyclone took form outside.
I just smiled. Nature, devious and sinister at heart, could no longer fool me. I had not been led astray by the deceptive gentleness of the morning's snow. I had been down this road all too often. I had actually put the damn recycling in a regular garbage can and lashed one of the recycling bins to the top to form a lid, then lashed the entire contrivance to our mailbox with bungee cords. My hope is, and here I may be in for an accute disappointment, that the recycling guy will recognize the green bin as more of a token or icon of recycling, and understand that the container below is not actually trash, but potential environmental gold ore.
I would not be surprised to look outsise later only to discover that our mailbox has blown down the street.
Claims to Fame, Dr. Science, and the Daylight Savings Crisis
Most people have a claim to fame. But, as in many things, I excel in this in that I have several claims to fame.
First and foremost, I bussed the table of the seven original astronauts when they had dinner at the Dublin House the night of the Air Force / Navy football game in the sixties. You may touch me. And as proof, I offer this: they were all pretty small guys.
Second, I served in the Air Force with a guy from New York who stepped on Danny Kaye's foot. Please, no autographs.
Thirdly, and perhaps most important because it reflects on a personal acheivement, I have had a submission answered on air by Dr. Science. My question was: "If werewolves are people who turn into wolves at night, what are warehouses?" His answer was that they were regular houses guarded by werewolves, which is not at all what I had presumed.
I had sent in several other questions, as I am by nature an inquisitive sort. One of my most sincere requests was this: I have participated in Daylight Saving Time for many years. I am approaching retirement, and I would like to know how to make a withdrawal."
As I am now actually retired, and in as much as Dr. Science did not deign to answer my question, I am faced yet again with a conundrum, or perhaps a quandary: Daylight Saving Time is scheduled to start yet again (against my better judgement, I might add) this Sunday morning. I don't know of any mechanism to exempt seniors from making the mandatory contributions to this madness, which I personally consider a sort of tempero-solar ponzi scheme, and, of course, there is no mechanism I know of to withdraw the thousands of hours of perfectly good daylight I have already contributed.
I at least would like to transfer to my daylight saving account the total of all the seconds saved by time-saving appliances and the more efficient routes through traffic advised by the KRDO Traffic Eye In The Sky, which I conservatively calculate as amounting to at least two days.
I had a friend in college who refused to participate in Daylight Saving Time. He refused to turn his clocks forawrd and back each year along with everyone else. During Spring and Summer, he just turned up everywhere an hour earlier than he had been doing. This seemed to me a pretty good solution ... the temporal equivalent of putting your money under your mattress, which recent history has shown can be a particularly astute investment idea.
I never had the guts to bug The System, however, as I was afraid that The Man would come and Take Me Away. So, I apparently have a Time Saving Account, but I seem to have lost my account number and PIN. I understand that this saved time is not actually available, anyway as additional time while I am still using regular time, as explained under IRS Rule A-24/7-365-DTS23/24.oo7. It has been explained to me that the only way I can have any saved-up time while I am still using regular time is by using twice as much at once by taking speed or meth, which I also understand can have severe withdrawal penalties.
But I wouldn't mind the extra sunshine at least, if that might be possible. This has become especially important now that we live part time in the Pacific Northwest.
Thank you for your interest.
