Fruit o’ the Loon
’07 Installment # 3
If I fail to offend everyone, I’m sorry.
NOTABLE QUOTES
1. “Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.” William E. (Bill) Vaugan, American author and columnist.
Vaugnan also wrote “A citizen…will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won’t cross the street to vote in a national election.”, and “If there is anything a nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it is another nonconformist who doesn’t conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity.” The Loon adds, Bill died in 1977; may he R.I.P.
2. “You know what I hate about people who criticize you? They criticize what you say, but never give you credit for how loud you say it, or how long say it.” Stephan Colbert.
The Loon knows just how he feels.
3. “It doesn’t take a Cornell West (who he?) to see the underlying racism involved when NBA players and hip-hop artists are categorized as thugs and gangsters. But, for some reason, it is still acceptable to make hurtful redneck jokes about the fans of country music and NASCAR. That’s yet another example of the sociological double-talk that indirectly feeds into this country’s festering racial tension.” LZ Granderson
The Loon questions the use of the word, “hurtful”.
4. “…beauty—whether in sculpture or in philosophy ---is a consequence of artistic and emotional discipline that leads to proportion, discrimination, and perspective. Accordingly, nothing is worse than excess of decoration, or of ardor.” This was taken from an article in the Jan/Feb ’07 “The Atlantic” and these are classic Greek values.
The author is anonymous, but the ideas belong to Thucydides. The Loon is borrowing shamelessly from that article to voice his concerns that the Western world is retreating into ardor, and into an age in which facts matter less than perceptions. It would appear that we are retreating toward the Dark Ages when what people believed was more important than what they knew, and passion with the resulting irrationalities are central to thought.
A SAMPLING OF MURPHY’S LESSER KNOWN LAWS
1. “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat all day drinking beer.” The Loon sez, file this under, “No man can fish while not drinking beer and chewing tobacco. The Loon preferred Budweiser, or anything cheaper, and Beechnut, but he could get along in a pinch (pun intended) with Red Man.
2. “Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there is a 90% probability you will get it wrong.” The Loon sez, file this under, “Life ain’t fair, nor mathematics reliable”
3. “The things that come to those who wait are the things left by those who got there first.” The Loon sez, file this under “Garage sale wisdom.”
CRAZY AL’S NEWS DIGEST
1. PIZZAS FOR PESOS
“Dallas-based pizza chain, “Pizza Patron” has received death treats and hate mail for accepting pesos as payment for pizza.” (From the Jan 12 2007, “South Florida Sun Sentinel”) Crazy Al thinks it ain’t no body’s business but their own what species of payment anyone wants to take in payment for goods or services. It may make a mess of cash register receipts used to determine how much sales tax Pizza Patron owes Texas, but if Texas doesn’t care, why should anyone? However, Texas might take exception if Pizza Patron accepted labor or goods barter as payment for pizza—the State of Taxas would likely take a dim view of that.. Look, Crazy Al is no globe-trotter, but he has been around some, and in many countries he has visited, several forms of currency are accepted, albeit, foreign currency is usually discounted from a tad to a lot.
2. MEATLIFTING
Meat reached first place on the list of preferences for shoppers who use the five-finger form of discounting. According to the Food Marketing Institute “Meat was the is the most shoplifted item in grocery stores in 2005” Meat moved up when cold medicines containing ephedrine were moved to secure counters, but, unexpectedly, meat roared right by beauty care items to the top of the shoplifters top ten. Crazy Al is reluctant to read anything sociologically devious or sinister into this shift in theft preferences, but the grocers are fighting back by secreting security tags under the labels on packaged meat.
3. PARIS HILTON’S WONKY LEFT EYE (the rest of the story)
See, the “Daily Dish” avers (I paraphrase) that Paris Hilton had a left eyelid-lift 7 years ago which went awry, causing her cockeyed stare. Now she wants plastic surgery to fix the damaged eye muscles. Meanwhile Ms. Hilton is going against doctor’s orders by wearing blue contact lenses in her brown eyes, and thus further drying out her already dry eyes.” Crazy Al thought you might want to know about this tragedy and Paris Hilton’s continuing ocular travails. Sigh! sometimes bad things happen to essentially worthless people. But wait, let’s cut her some slack; she is still young, with plenty of time to turn her life around and do service to her fellow man. Sadly, Crazy Al is not filled with confidence at the prospects.
4. BANNED BY THE MAN
In the Jan 12 edition of the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Jonah Goldberg wrote an editorial entitled “Pastures of liberty fenced by bureaucrats”. Part of the lead line reads, “…a list of things that the New York City Council tried to ban—not all successfully—just in 2006 alone: pit bulls; trans-fats; aluminum baseball bats; the purchase of tobacco by 18-20 year olds; foie gras; pedi-cabs in parks; new fast food restaurants;…cell phones in upscale restaurants; the sale of pork products made in a processing plant in Tar Heel, N. C. because of a unionization dispute, mail-order pharmaceutical plans, candy-flavored cigarettes; gas station operators adjusting prices more than once daily; the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus; and Wal-Mart. Washington D.C. extended the ban against smoking in bars, nightclubs and private clubs to cars in which children are passengers.” In 2005 a Pennsylvania legislator received national attention for his effort to mandate that all dogs must wear seat belt in cars.” Crazy Al thinks we are being annoyed, neigh, assaulted, by hordes of legislative mental midgets and busy-bodies. They bleed us of a free life in myriads of tiny ways, just as a thousand tiny cuts will free us of all our blood. Goldberg quotes Alex de Tocqueville, “It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life.” “It does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of their own will.”
5. KIDNAP-PROOFING KIDS
The January 25, 2007 Charlotte (FL) Sun, contained a front page article reporting that Florida is passing out take-home kits to kids in school so the kids can submit a DNA sample from a mouth swab, and a fingerprint. This will give law enforcement an identification data-base should a kid be kidnapped. So far so good, but Crazy Al, wonders about so many things. He wonders if a kid should do this if the kid is contemplating a career in crime. Furthermore the article reported that 800,000 kids are kidnapped each year in the United States. Crazy Al questions that number. That roughs out at 2197 kids kidnapped per day. Doesn’t that seem too high? Further, If our population is now 300,000,000, and kids are about one fifth of those, then, there are 60,000,000 kids in the country and that means that one kid out of every 75 kids is kidnapped every year, or if a kid is defined as between 1 and 17 years of age, then each kid has a one in five chance of being kidnapped once while they are a kid. Math is not Crazy Al’s long suit, but this 800,000 number just doesn’t jive.
POTPOURRI
1. “DUH” MAGAZINE
Has anyone every heard of this periodical? If so, send me the info for subscription. I am stuck using dial-up service and can’t surf the web. See, an item in this morning’s newspaper reads. “…beverage studies tend to be biased when the money funding them comes from the beverage industry, according to an article published today in “Duh” magazine.” Are you intrigued? Crazy Al is.
2 DIAMONDS
My daughter who creates and sells jewelry tells me that the 2006 Holidays sales of diamonds were noticeably down. Hmmmm! Hollywood has taken up the cudgel against trade in “blood diamonds” and the violence associated with them by making a movie of the same name. Hmmmm1 Ya don’t suppose? Anyway, blood diamonds are those which are mined in West Africa in areas not under the control of DeBeers, the company which exercises an international cartel on rough diamond supply. In the bloody violent anarchy of West Africa, people are killed for diamonds, and those who kill to get the diamonds are often killed by others to get the diamonds, and people use the diamonds to buy guns to support insurrections or to shoot people who have diamonds. DeBeers can maintain its international cartel in rough diamonds, by virtue of making the largest and virtually the only market in rough stones. This keeps free-lancers from entering the diamond trade. You may be disappointed if you try to sell rough diamonds. If you become more than a nuisance, DeBeers will punish you by dumping stones on the market and depress the value of your diamonds. And so, you must sell to DeBeers. However, blood diamonds has been creating a publicity nightmare for the diamond trade, and so, the Kimberly Process was begun. It is supposed to provide provenance for diamonds and declares that they were purchased from reputable dealers, which is ridiculous on the face of it, as diamonds are fungible, and there it no way of discriminating blood diamonds from DeBeers diamonds. Given the international availability of diamonds, the DeBeers cartel has maintained an unnaturally high price of finished (cut) diamonds many times higher than they should be, but Hollywood was not at all concerned that diamond purchasers have been screwed for decades by an international cartel.
First is was furs, and now diamonds. What’s next, clothing textiles because they are manufactured in Chinese and Indian sweat shops? Can you say, “Unadorned naked celebrities.”? Well, folks, we are on our way, with Brittany, Paris and Sharon providing recent peeks at female celebrity pudenda, but my first exposure, so to speak, came at the expense of Carmen Miranda, when a photographer took a shot of as her, sans panties, as she was held aloft by a male dancer. What is there about celebrity which makes people forget their undies?
Allen Hall a.k.a. The Loon and Crazy Al
January 28, 2007 in chilly southern Florida—go figure.
’07 Installment # 3
If I fail to offend everyone, I’m sorry.
NOTABLE QUOTES
1. “Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them.” William E. (Bill) Vaugan, American author and columnist.
Vaugnan also wrote “A citizen…will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won’t cross the street to vote in a national election.”, and “If there is anything a nonconformist hates worse than a conformist, it is another nonconformist who doesn’t conform to the prevailing standard of nonconformity.” The Loon adds, Bill died in 1977; may he R.I.P.
2. “You know what I hate about people who criticize you? They criticize what you say, but never give you credit for how loud you say it, or how long say it.” Stephan Colbert.
The Loon knows just how he feels.
3. “It doesn’t take a Cornell West (who he?) to see the underlying racism involved when NBA players and hip-hop artists are categorized as thugs and gangsters. But, for some reason, it is still acceptable to make hurtful redneck jokes about the fans of country music and NASCAR. That’s yet another example of the sociological double-talk that indirectly feeds into this country’s festering racial tension.” LZ Granderson
The Loon questions the use of the word, “hurtful”.
4. “…beauty—whether in sculpture or in philosophy ---is a consequence of artistic and emotional discipline that leads to proportion, discrimination, and perspective. Accordingly, nothing is worse than excess of decoration, or of ardor.” This was taken from an article in the Jan/Feb ’07 “The Atlantic” and these are classic Greek values.
The author is anonymous, but the ideas belong to Thucydides. The Loon is borrowing shamelessly from that article to voice his concerns that the Western world is retreating into ardor, and into an age in which facts matter less than perceptions. It would appear that we are retreating toward the Dark Ages when what people believed was more important than what they knew, and passion with the resulting irrationalities are central to thought.
A SAMPLING OF MURPHY’S LESSER KNOWN LAWS
1. “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat all day drinking beer.” The Loon sez, file this under, “No man can fish while not drinking beer and chewing tobacco. The Loon preferred Budweiser, or anything cheaper, and Beechnut, but he could get along in a pinch (pun intended) with Red Man.
2. “Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there is a 90% probability you will get it wrong.” The Loon sez, file this under, “Life ain’t fair, nor mathematics reliable”
3. “The things that come to those who wait are the things left by those who got there first.” The Loon sez, file this under “Garage sale wisdom.”
CRAZY AL’S NEWS DIGEST
1. PIZZAS FOR PESOS
“Dallas-based pizza chain, “Pizza Patron” has received death treats and hate mail for accepting pesos as payment for pizza.” (From the Jan 12 2007, “South Florida Sun Sentinel”) Crazy Al thinks it ain’t no body’s business but their own what species of payment anyone wants to take in payment for goods or services. It may make a mess of cash register receipts used to determine how much sales tax Pizza Patron owes Texas, but if Texas doesn’t care, why should anyone? However, Texas might take exception if Pizza Patron accepted labor or goods barter as payment for pizza—the State of Taxas would likely take a dim view of that.. Look, Crazy Al is no globe-trotter, but he has been around some, and in many countries he has visited, several forms of currency are accepted, albeit, foreign currency is usually discounted from a tad to a lot.
2. MEATLIFTING
Meat reached first place on the list of preferences for shoppers who use the five-finger form of discounting. According to the Food Marketing Institute “Meat was the is the most shoplifted item in grocery stores in 2005” Meat moved up when cold medicines containing ephedrine were moved to secure counters, but, unexpectedly, meat roared right by beauty care items to the top of the shoplifters top ten. Crazy Al is reluctant to read anything sociologically devious or sinister into this shift in theft preferences, but the grocers are fighting back by secreting security tags under the labels on packaged meat.
3. PARIS HILTON’S WONKY LEFT EYE (the rest of the story)
See, the “Daily Dish” avers (I paraphrase) that Paris Hilton had a left eyelid-lift 7 years ago which went awry, causing her cockeyed stare. Now she wants plastic surgery to fix the damaged eye muscles. Meanwhile Ms. Hilton is going against doctor’s orders by wearing blue contact lenses in her brown eyes, and thus further drying out her already dry eyes.” Crazy Al thought you might want to know about this tragedy and Paris Hilton’s continuing ocular travails. Sigh! sometimes bad things happen to essentially worthless people. But wait, let’s cut her some slack; she is still young, with plenty of time to turn her life around and do service to her fellow man. Sadly, Crazy Al is not filled with confidence at the prospects.
4. BANNED BY THE MAN
In the Jan 12 edition of the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Jonah Goldberg wrote an editorial entitled “Pastures of liberty fenced by bureaucrats”. Part of the lead line reads, “…a list of things that the New York City Council tried to ban—not all successfully—just in 2006 alone: pit bulls; trans-fats; aluminum baseball bats; the purchase of tobacco by 18-20 year olds; foie gras; pedi-cabs in parks; new fast food restaurants;…cell phones in upscale restaurants; the sale of pork products made in a processing plant in Tar Heel, N. C. because of a unionization dispute, mail-order pharmaceutical plans, candy-flavored cigarettes; gas station operators adjusting prices more than once daily; the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus; and Wal-Mart. Washington D.C. extended the ban against smoking in bars, nightclubs and private clubs to cars in which children are passengers.” In 2005 a Pennsylvania legislator received national attention for his effort to mandate that all dogs must wear seat belt in cars.” Crazy Al thinks we are being annoyed, neigh, assaulted, by hordes of legislative mental midgets and busy-bodies. They bleed us of a free life in myriads of tiny ways, just as a thousand tiny cuts will free us of all our blood. Goldberg quotes Alex de Tocqueville, “It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life.” “It does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of their own will.”
5. KIDNAP-PROOFING KIDS
The January 25, 2007 Charlotte (FL) Sun, contained a front page article reporting that Florida is passing out take-home kits to kids in school so the kids can submit a DNA sample from a mouth swab, and a fingerprint. This will give law enforcement an identification data-base should a kid be kidnapped. So far so good, but Crazy Al, wonders about so many things. He wonders if a kid should do this if the kid is contemplating a career in crime. Furthermore the article reported that 800,000 kids are kidnapped each year in the United States. Crazy Al questions that number. That roughs out at 2197 kids kidnapped per day. Doesn’t that seem too high? Further, If our population is now 300,000,000, and kids are about one fifth of those, then, there are 60,000,000 kids in the country and that means that one kid out of every 75 kids is kidnapped every year, or if a kid is defined as between 1 and 17 years of age, then each kid has a one in five chance of being kidnapped once while they are a kid. Math is not Crazy Al’s long suit, but this 800,000 number just doesn’t jive.
POTPOURRI
1. “DUH” MAGAZINE
Has anyone every heard of this periodical? If so, send me the info for subscription. I am stuck using dial-up service and can’t surf the web. See, an item in this morning’s newspaper reads. “…beverage studies tend to be biased when the money funding them comes from the beverage industry, according to an article published today in “Duh” magazine.” Are you intrigued? Crazy Al is.
2 DIAMONDS
My daughter who creates and sells jewelry tells me that the 2006 Holidays sales of diamonds were noticeably down. Hmmmm! Hollywood has taken up the cudgel against trade in “blood diamonds” and the violence associated with them by making a movie of the same name. Hmmmm1 Ya don’t suppose? Anyway, blood diamonds are those which are mined in West Africa in areas not under the control of DeBeers, the company which exercises an international cartel on rough diamond supply. In the bloody violent anarchy of West Africa, people are killed for diamonds, and those who kill to get the diamonds are often killed by others to get the diamonds, and people use the diamonds to buy guns to support insurrections or to shoot people who have diamonds. DeBeers can maintain its international cartel in rough diamonds, by virtue of making the largest and virtually the only market in rough stones. This keeps free-lancers from entering the diamond trade. You may be disappointed if you try to sell rough diamonds. If you become more than a nuisance, DeBeers will punish you by dumping stones on the market and depress the value of your diamonds. And so, you must sell to DeBeers. However, blood diamonds has been creating a publicity nightmare for the diamond trade, and so, the Kimberly Process was begun. It is supposed to provide provenance for diamonds and declares that they were purchased from reputable dealers, which is ridiculous on the face of it, as diamonds are fungible, and there it no way of discriminating blood diamonds from DeBeers diamonds. Given the international availability of diamonds, the DeBeers cartel has maintained an unnaturally high price of finished (cut) diamonds many times higher than they should be, but Hollywood was not at all concerned that diamond purchasers have been screwed for decades by an international cartel.
First is was furs, and now diamonds. What’s next, clothing textiles because they are manufactured in Chinese and Indian sweat shops? Can you say, “Unadorned naked celebrities.”? Well, folks, we are on our way, with Brittany, Paris and Sharon providing recent peeks at female celebrity pudenda, but my first exposure, so to speak, came at the expense of Carmen Miranda, when a photographer took a shot of as her, sans panties, as she was held aloft by a male dancer. What is there about celebrity which makes people forget their undies?
Allen Hall a.k.a. The Loon and Crazy Al
January 28, 2007 in chilly southern Florida—go figure.
posted by Allen Hall at 3:50 PM
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