Common follies – Page 4 – HUMOR IS NO FUN UNLESS YOU LAUGH

No Bull

I remember the acrid smell produced by the coal fired power plant which I, then aged 16, was under orders by my (German) government to defend, should the Allies decide one day to attack it. They never did and I wasted a year practising at the vertical controls of my 88mm gun. I now think that the Allies decided not to bomb the power plant because it was more efficient to let it continue to poison the neighborhood, a sort of reverse chemical warfare.

When the war ended and I was no longer an enemy I found it very easy to become a friend of the United States. I moved to California in the Fifties, only to be choked by the pervasive and equally acrid smell of Los Angeles smog.

So I do know something about air pollution, and also how miserable it was to drive my employer’s, the Gas Company’s, truck day by day all across Los Angeles County, wedged in by big rig stinky Diesels. Back “in those days” we just worried about our lungs. In the meantime we have found out that it is more of a global problem, that it is not just the smell, but perhaps the ozone layer and hard to reverse global climate change that should concern us. We now know about hydrofluorocarbons, diesel exhaust, black carbon, and tons of methane from dairy farms and feed lots.

When I say “we” of course I don’t mean everybody. There is a solid body of citizens and politicians who deny that all this is real, that it may be just fake news, or as some say outright, that it is all “bull”.

Well, I have it from good authority: the Regulators at the Air Resources Board are recommending that we target, specifically, methane emissions from cow manure. I always suspected that the bulls were getting a bad rap.

Under the Slab

Strange things come into my field of vision, often in strange surroundings. The Church of St. Mary’s in the old Hanseatic city of Rostock in Germany, for example. I noticed that there were, all around the nave, small chapel-like alcoves. “The elaborate graves and memorials of the more wealthy families of their day”, the altar guild lady explained. The church is paved in stone that looks old and worn, having been trod upon for more than 500 years now. The entire floor of the huge church has been partitioned into small slabs, each bearing names hewn into the stone in an old script. “The graves of the less wealthy”, the altar guild lady observed. “Somebody is buried under each of these slabs”.
I visited Rostock in the month of July yet the floor was ice cold. Not much going on under those slabs, I thought. Five hundred year old memories. Macabre maybe, but nothing to provoke a shudder any more.
Unlike my kitchen floor. Now this did produce a shudder, only a week ago. I am positive: no relatives are buried under that ceramic floor, “less wealthy” or otherwise. There was nevertheless one spot that was warm, cosily warm. “Oh, oh”, my wife said. “There is something going on under this slab!”

A priest would have been of little use in this case, so we called the magician, our plumber. Like Julius Caesar he came, he saw, and he conquered the situation within minutes: we had a hot water leak under the kitchen floor, was his diagnosis. “The pipes must be repaired before water seeps up into the drywall”, the man said. The jack hammer was one option. “No!”, we said. “Not on our expensive Italian tiles”. Another method involves inserting a thinner pipe into the existing leaky pipe. Struck us as a Micky Mouse procedure inviting the jack hammer, should another leak occur under the same slab later. While waiting for a second opinion we anxiously examined the walls. By luck, no seepage had occurred. The last option, and our choice, was a complete re-routing of the pipes over the attic that would certainly give us better access during the next crisis.

We have hot water again and we are grateful. More than that: we now can’t help thinking of the old cathedral with the slabs. We can see them now, in our minds’ eyes, the good citizens of medieval Rostock as they kneel down after each slab burial, praying for mercy, glancing up to heaven in supplication.

We, too, now live in a mild state of paranoia as we furtively glance every so often at the kitchen ceiling above, hoping for the best and keeping our fingers crossed.

On Pack Ratting

We knew Tim and Mattie, both widowed, from way back. The two found each other and promptly moved in together. There was no problem in terms of their compatibility. Far from it. They had the right stuff, so to say. If there was a problem it was that in their combined household they now had more stuff than space.

One of the two dining room tables and six of the twelve chairs, for example, had to go to storage. They made inquiries. The Easystore Inc. facilities were new and clean. The friendly lady in the front office explained the different types of contracts. A notice displayed on the wall precisely defined what this business was about: “Storage of furniture or other unused or seldom used items in a warehouse for an indefinite period of time (Tipp vs. District of Columbia, 102F2nd264)” . No funny business in this establishment, they felt, and rented a standard 5ft x 5ft dead storage bin.

The power of perception makes an empty bin of this size seem large. The power of 2 reduces it to a narrow 25 square feet broom closet. It held the table and five chairs, just barely. The sixth chair would have fit if its legs had been sawed off. It had to go home again, to be used in the bedroom. That was the excuse. An old sleeping bag and the Coleman stove ca.1950 still found some space on the side, and several boxes of papers and old college textbooks as well. A few weeks later it transpired that the old sofa bed, two ottomans, a mattress, and a rug were also excess baggage. No sweat, Mattie said Tim said. They moved everything to a considerably larger 10ft x 10ft bin.

Problem solved, life and happiness were back on track. For a while, anyway. Eventually, though, it dawned on them how Tipp vs. District of Columbia fit into this picture. By using the term “indefinite period of time” that decision clarified that “dead” storage had nothing to do with dead in the sense of gone or finished. There was nothing gone or finished about stored old furniture. The whole adventure was a paradox, or what else would you call it if you can define a storage facility as a thing you use for things you don’t use. If there is some truth in the old saying that you lose it if you don’t use it the danger may be that in time you not only lose “it” but even forget what “it” was in the first place.

All this is actually humorous, the stuff of lighthearted banter. Provided that “it” is not yours and the Easystore Inc. tally of two thousand dollars per year is not addressed to you.
(c)2017 by Herbert H. Hoffman
Picture credit: blogs.discovermagazine.com

De-Frosting America

We are finally getting it right. The country is waking up. The first step is a big step, maybe not Moon shaking but certainly big. We are updating our poets! Because this is what Robert Frost really meant to say: “Something there is that does love a wall”. And we now join Cole Porter and Robert Fletcher as we sing “Do fence me in!” And we remember, of course, our own Ronald Reagan’s powerful speech: “Mister Gorbachev, do keep up that wall!”
The Chinese love their wall, too. “Nice tourist attraction”, as they say in Mandarin. And Hadrian was also happy with his. Kept the British out of Londinium, as we know. Oh yes, and the Roman Limes, the 500 km wall that kept the Germans out of Frankfurt. Those, of course, were bigger projects. But at least we are getting started.

The Apps and Downs of Contemporary Speech

“Alas, the brain is a receptacle for nonsense”. So says Dr. Fishelson, a character in one of Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer’s stories. “This earth belongs to the mad”. It often feels that way. Scholars used to study their texts. Now they text about their studies. And they do that on IPHONES and TABLETS and ANDROID devices that are also capable of ASR and that have PHOTO APPS in case PIX are needed. It is all done in a mysteriously abbreviated language accessible only to the elect. The acronymns alone can tax your memory. Granted, some we readily understand. If invited to a meeting we expect an RSVP, but not necessarily an ASAP or a FYI.
Who would have thought that we ever get used to EBOOKS and GAME on PADS or rest our brains in front of BLU-RAY compatible HDTV sets with 3D capability and connectivity to a variety of CDs and DVDs, DV AVIs, or even VINYLs, if we have kept them. Clearly this sort of R&R activity requires a special mix of DNA which no SAT scores will ever reveal, and it all depends on your DOB anyway, as any AARP member will attest.
Recently a lady friend of ours tried to call her new doctor. She could reach only his PA, however. We asked her if the new doctor was a GI. No, she said, he was actually an OB, but certainly an MD, not an OD, a member of AMA with a Ph.D. to boot. Thank God not a VET as well, I thought. She had seen him before, she said. He was up on EHR and had her EMR in hand. He had ordered some LAB work, an EKG, and a CAT scan. (She actually likes dogs better but she let that go). Luckily, she did not need an MRI, nor any ENDO-, ANO-, SIGMOIDO-, RHINOLARYNGO-, or other SCOPES. What is the DOS on your last EOB?, I asked her, tongue in cheekly. Shouldn’t have said that. She was in no mood for any kind of humor. Apparently she was also found to have AFIB and possibly DC and early signs of HCM, things you cannot cure with OTC pills. We saw her in the ER later, even though we were not NOK.
Yesterday, Thursday, the UPS man rang the door bell. Turns out that it was not UPS but the USPS with a letter from the IRS. The tax man has been a VIP since antiquity, or at least since the beginning of the CE, a person feared but not loved. The messenger wanted my ID and my SOCIAL. FIFO or LIFO? Irrelevant in my life and I should not have been afraid as any CPA would have told me. I support the ASPCA, UNICEF, USO, and the VFW, after all, and I keep all my W2’s and my SSA 1099’s. But I had a feeling, an attack of ESP I suppose, and went straight to the ATM and MAXED out my account. But that was yesterday, and the FMS found that all my YTD numbers were A-OK. ROGER, what a relief.
TGIF.
(Gesundheit!)
(c)2017 by Herbert H. Hoffman

Free May Cost You

One often hears it said that there is “no free lunch”. Tell that to your neighborhood hippie. He (or she) will probably be surprised that you do not know that “food just is”.
In the world, however, especially the world of commerce, nothing “just is”. Everything has to be made, grown, processed, and sold. Farmers who give their crops away at cost will soon stop being farmers. Many already did.

An ad in a certain newspaper I saw promised readers an irresistible deal, acronyms slightly changed: FREE XTM GUMSTER TOT WITH ACTIVATION OF A CHUPA X DRAMP (a $99.99 value). I assume that the readers of this ad knew what it was all about. The ad did not say what the item costs but the word “free” was there in big white letters on red background. The maker, it seems, was trying to slip us the hippie thing: merchandise “just is”. Caveat emptor!

But the little word “free” is so soothing in the shopper’s ear. Merchants use it all the time. “Buy one get one free”, you see it on every other ad. Often this message is followed by an amendmend in smaller print: “with card”. Occasionally there are further restrictions marked by a symbol like *. Such a footnote then leads the shopper to the bottom of the page where it says in even smaller print: “clip coupon to card”. And at this point you still do not know what each item actually costs. Never mind, just stay in line. You will find out. But you can be sure it is not free.

Complete and blatant untruths in advertising are of course banned by law. The little half truths described above are the only ones that vendors and manufacturers can use and get away with. But there is also a more subtle way to use deception in advertising: splitting the message into two parts, one manifestly true, the other somewhat murky. The Tesla Motors Company, for example, displays a proud sign on all new cars. It says in bold letters “NO EMISSIONS”. The Company is free to say this with a straight face by law because it is true: a Tesla car ejects no emissions. It has no fuel burning engine. It does not even have an exhaust pipe. This is the first part of the ploy. The second part is the virtual grin and wink that emanates from the sign on the car. It is Elon Musk’s little secret of which we are all aware, of course, but which we conveniently forget, namely that the power the car runs on is generated somewhere else, and power generation still produces plenty of emissions. The advertiser does not deny that and thus is home free.

Donald Trump would probably explain that this is called business and that the advertisers are just smart. As for the rest of us, we are still the same hippies. We pretend to believe that electricity “just is”.

Ask Your Doctor

bl_docpix People used to be obsessed with cleanliness. In those days television was essentially a mechanism to sell soap. We still have soap operas, of course, but we are now obsessed with health, especially pharmacologically induced health. And our 3D flat screen TV is a handy machine to sell pills and ointments. It is all so well done that there are people now who will select a given channel only because they do not want to miss the funny advertising. Just turn on the TV and actually listen for an hour. You will hear and see a minimum of three clever medicine-related commercials, and all of them will end with the by now ritual, i.e. customarily repeated, phrase: “Ask your Doctor”.

As if that were possible. They are pulling your leg. They know very well that in the United States of America, the land of unlimited possibilities, you can do just about anything. But two things are left that are not possible: you cannot place a direct telephone call to the President, and you cannot reach your doctor, by phone or any other way, to ask him something. In fact, you may not even have a doctor, ever since he went the concierge way. Thank God you will at least always have a President. He has not gone concierge yet. Or she, as the case may be.

Well, one should at least try the doctor. So I dial the number. A machine answers: “If this is an emergency, hang up and dial 911”. Well, no. It is not an emergency, I explain to the machine. I am just sick. And the man on TV said I should take two of the pills from the package he was holding up. And I should ask my doctor, presumably to pin him down and force him to decide then and there if those tablets “are right for me”. Hello? Hello? – Hung up.

All right. I try again. I ignore the 911 invitation. The conversation continues. At the doctor’s end still a machine. “Please listen carefully as our options have changed”. I listen until they mention Dr. Smith, my doctor. I press 5 as instructed. Another machine cuts in, so fast that I cannot catch the first two words but the message is clear: I have reached, it says, “the office of Sally Fango, Doctor Smith’s nurse. If you have reached this message between 8 AM and 5 PM I am either out of my office for no particular reason, or at lunch; or in my office but two strong gorillas are restraining me so I cannot reach the phone”, or words to that effect. Oh, there is an addendum. “If you leave me a message before 3 PM I will call you back today, or else tomorrow, unless tomorrow is a Saturday, a Sunday, or a holyday. If you don’t hear from me by Monday, hang up and dial 911”.

I am a patient patient. I try again. I let the machine go past number 5 and am rewarded by an option to make an appointment. I press the appropriate number key. Another machine answers. I am invited to press zero for an assistant. Progress! A real person picks up the phone but tells me that the appointment person is there only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This is Friday. Pause. “You can leave her a message”, the lady says. But her voice sounds very tired, as if to imply that that would not be of much use, anyway.

Monday rolls around. I call again. Bad timing: “This is the exchange for Oldtown Medical Services Inc. The office is now closed. Your call is important to us, please call again.” So we can tell you how important? Or am I putting words into their mouths?

Now, actually there is a Dr. Smith, my doctor. I have seen him. But he is well shielded from prying eyes. In other words, I know that he is, but not where or when. Once I met him in the library. I should have asked him then. I am sure he would have loved that.

From Fitness to Folly

bl_weightpix I exercise. In a gym. When you do that regularly you eventually get to know other people because they do the same, at the same time, on the same machines. I observed one fellow in particular. An over-achiever if there ever was one. Ten sets of ten was nothing to him. He did twenty sets. If twenty pounds was heavy to me he set it at forty. And he was not all that young. Just strong and determined.

By coincidence I met him one day at the supermarket. I mean, I saw him. I did not speak to him. I noticed that he was looking at a large carton of beer, 24 bottles, I think. It must have weighed at least twenty-five pounds or so. He did not even attempt to pull it off the bottom shelf, let alone lift it. He asked for help and had the young man lift it and carry it to his car. We are talking about the same “weak old man” who just earlier had been lifting forty pound weights over his head twenty times in a row. Absurd, no?

Twice a week he devoted himself to what must have amounted to a marathon: he worked that treadmill to death. Not just quietly and deliberate but with a vengeance, making the whole floor thump and shake under his heavy running steps, so loud and obvious that other exercisers would look up to see where that noise was coming from. His T-shirt soaked in perspiration he would keep this up for a good hour sometimes, never mind that twenty minutes was the “official” time limit. Schwarzenegger squared.

He must live in my neighborhood for I saw him again recently on my way to the supermarket. I recognized his car. He was cruising the parking lot, apparently hunting for an available slot. There really was no need to hunt. There were a lot of free places but not in the first row, of course. He slowed down in front of a spot about five rows to the back but then saw some backup lights coming on farther down. He trundled on expectantly but it was a false alarm. The driver of that car was merely straightening out her position between the lines, then turned off the ignition and got out. So my friend was still not parked. He turned into the next aisle and slowly rolled past eight empty spaces at the back of the lot, obviously still looking for something closer to the store entrance. On his next pass he spotted a space at the very front, in the number one position. He turned on his blinker but another car coming from the left beat him to it. Honking his horn angrily – after all, he had considered that space to be his – he had to turn into the next aisle again where he, reluctantly I suppose, settled for a space in the number two location, the second from the front.

Behold, then, Mister Marathon of the morning knocking himself out to avoid walking an extra three yards or so. It must be an inborn competitive spirit that compels people, a sort of subconscious Trumpian fear of being a loser. Ironic, actually. Nay, Byronic rather. “Fools are my theme, let satire be my song”, Lord Byron wrote.