Duck and Cover

A blast from the past. 

CDD20

Letters of eclectic commentary featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, a persistent hallucination and charming literary device.

  

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"Just dive under your desk and kiss your ass goodbye." -Jimmy Buffett

Dear Gentlereaders,

The Cuban Missile Crisis — which according to Wikipedia "...is widely considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into full-scale nuclear war — occurred in the fall of 1962. I was nine years old in '62 and I remember Mum and Dad obviously being freaked out but pretending they weren't so as not to freak out their kids.  

I now understand that having lived through the Great Depression and World War Two they were understandably a little jumpy. But I was a Boomer. Boomers, the first generation to grow up with television, knew just what to do if the nukes started flying and there was a commercial to remind us. All you had to do was duck and cover!

 

I don't remember the commercial, but I do remember seeing the official Civil Defense film at some point that starred the famous Burt the Turtle the commercial mentions. I went a-googlin' to try and find out if anyone is officially credited with modifying the tagline duck and cover to a popular and widely known slightly different version — duck and cover, and kiss your ass goodbye — but had no luck. 

My fellow Boomers and I should've all been subject to debilitating existential trauma. Instead, some unknown one of us turned our trauma into a joke, a pre-meme era meme if you will, a poster that was quite popular. I know this because I owned one. An alleged original copy of the one I owned in the early 1970s that I purchased for, maybe, five bucks is nowadays a collector's item that sells for $270.

Given the price of concert tickets for Boomer rock bands (that may or may not feature original members who nowadays look like death sucking on a LifeSaver), it seems like there's good money to be made in the nostalgia business.     

{Official Civil Defense film?}  

Civil Defense, as my fellow geezers/geezerettes hopefully remember, was the purview of various and sundry agencies of The Fed'rl Gummit that were sorta/kinda early versions of what we now refer to as Homeland Security, Dana. 

Very long story short (there's a long Wikipedia version available) a ton of tax money was spent to teach Americans how to survive a nuclear war, info about everything from stocking up your pantry to how to build personal nuclear fallout shelters. 

Nowadays, it's generally agreed that this would all be ultimately pointless, which is the primary reason the world has to worry about the Pooteen, kids. Mr. Putin, despite the fact Russia continues to fall apart, still has enough nukes in his basement to end the world. 

Given that a full-fledged nuclear war could end the world in about a minute, why isn't anyone gluing themselves to streets and/or splashing paint on famous paintings like the traumatized delicate flowers obsessed with global warming?

Anyways... originally, this was supposed to be a full-fledged column adhering to a now-defunct company policy, that is to say, at least 1500 words in length since I now only publish every other week. But it was at this point that I hit a wall and not only lost interest in the subject at hand, I contemplated shutting this enterprise down. 

I repeatedly opened my free (which means you no longer have an excuse) Google-supplied software — "Blogger" according to Wikipedia "...is an American online content management system founded in 1999 that enables its users to write blogs with time-stamped entries." — and just stared at the content above. 

Stumped. 

Holly crap, do I have writer's block? I am, of course, aware of this phenomenon and have even suffered from a mild case of it from time to time but this was different, it felt like I was done and had nothing else I wanted to say. 

Fortunately, my spiritual advisor (for lack of a better term), the Daozhang of a secret Taoist monastery in China's Wudang Mountains, was recently gifted with a free Starlink connection by our mutual friend, Elon Musk, so I was able to give him a call and ask for advice. 

I'll tell ya, beats the hell out of having to take a sabbatical and make my way there in person, all the while having to worry about being tossed in the jug by one of the Emperor's minions, possibly for years, while hoping for a hostage exchange. 

Sometimes I hate to write and I wish I didn't have to.

{Have to?}

Often I enjoy it, when the words flow freely, other times it's too much like work. Sometimes I'm satisfied with the results, but often I'm not. 

{Huh. Sounds like someone's off his psych meds again.}

Balderdash! I don't take psych meds, Dana, thank you very much.}

{Balderdash? Have to?}

It's a cool word that I don't believe I've ever used before. As to have to, writing is my psych med. If I don't write, my nogginal neurons tend to get tangled. I've done a bit of research and I'm led to believe that if you're at all creative and don't have an outlet this is what happens. 

{Didn't Freud give a famous lecture on tangled nogginal neurons? Anyway, what's your problem? just write. You don't even have to publish the results if you don't want to. Chill, dude.}

Remarkable, that's pretty much what the Daozhang said. 

{What's so remarkable? I'm smarter than I look, just like you.}

Alrighty then, new company policy. 

Going forward I shall continue to publish a new column every other week. Without a minimal commitment, to this and no shortage of other things in my life, I might just stop getting out of bed or even just float off into space, never to be seen again. 

{Say what?}

It's a jaded geezer thing. I'll strive for at least 750 words but there might be far less (or more, like this particular column). Anyone who doesn't like the new policy can request a refund, no questions asked.

Note to Theo: I'm thinking of resuscitating my would-be novel. Don't tell anyone.  

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

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Copyright 2024-Mark Mehlmauer-All rights reserved

  

Hooterville Falls?

 I'm, like, not bein' judgy, I'm just sayin'. A (2) Random Randomnesses column.

Letters of eclectic commentary featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, a persistent hallucination and charming literary device.

  

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“Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”. Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it”.  -Elizabeth Powell/Ben Franklin 

Dear Gentlereaders,

Are you familiar with the fictional town called Pottersville, formerly known as Bedford Falls?

Without getting out of bed I can fire up one or more of several competing sports betting apps and gamble away my fortune...alright, my limited resources, but still.

Or, I can roll out of bed, get dressed, head outside, and walk about 100 yards due north from my front door to a convenience store and choose to buy beer, wine, or "hard" iced tea, lemonade, etceterade from a relatively small but fairly representative selection of alcoholic beverages.

On the checkout counter there's a display of colorful cardboard tickets, scratchcards, with easily removable coatings for sale ranging in price from one to twenty dollars each. By removing the coatings, by "scratching" the cards, you can participate in instant gratification gambling games run by the State of Ohio, which by law, has an exclusive monopoly on this sort of thing.

Behind the counter, multiple brands of various and sundry nicotine delivery systems are on display that come with government-mandated warning labels, nicotine being a highly addictive substance that kills a lot of people in the long run. Both nicotine delivery systems and alcoholic beverages are sin taxed by both the State of Ohio and The Fed'rl Gummit. Both products also come with a sales tax mandated by Ohio and the City of Hooterville.  

If I wanted to access a much larger selection of alcohol, scratchcards, and nicotine delivery systems I could continue to walk or drive north over a small bridge into downtown Hooterville and pay a visit to my local Giant Eagle supermarket.

There's an entire aisle devoted to wine, a beer department, and a store within a store, a "State Store," where liquor is for sale by the State of Ohio which benefits from a monopoly on same as well as the requisite sin and sales taxes.

I can also bet money on the daily number, daily numbers actually, as I can bet on 3, 4, or 5 numbers twice a day, seven days a week. 

{Even on Sundays?}

Well sure, why not? We go to great lengths to separate church and state in this country, Dana, even in solidly Team Red states like Ohio. Besides, I'll wager that any given day of the week is somebody's sabbath day in our 24x7x365 culture.

There are daily, weekly, and national progressive jackpot games available as well. Don't forget, ya gotta play to win! 

Ohio has four real casinos, i.e. ones that include table games and scantily clad cocktail waitresses, as well as seven "Racinos" that are pretend casinos attached to race tracks where there are no "free" drinks available from very modestly dressed cocktail waitresses. 

There's a racino a 10-minute drive due south from my driveway. 

Racinos all come with Ohio lottery terminals disguised as slot machines (no table games allowed) where you can pretend to be playing real slot machines. You've probably heard the house always wins? In this case, the house is the State of Ohio.

All winnings on all of the above-mentioned games are subject to local (yeah, I said local), state, and federal income taxes. 

Heavily taxed and regulated weed is also available for sale in Ohio; there's a "dispensary" about a 15-minute drive from my house and others are coming online. I'm told that street weed is cheaper, but I don't know if this is true as I'm so old and boring that I don't purchase either alcohol or weed nowadays.

Many convenience stores sell legal "delta"-8, 9, or 10 forms of weed, that I don't much about, that will allegedly get you high but our five-foot-tall governor and the Ohio Legislature have sworn they're gonna put a stop to that soon.

Certain synthetic recreational pharmaceuticals, for the more adventurous among us who like to roll the dice and ingest substances concocted by who knows who and who knows where, are illegal, but may be purchased "under the counter" if one knows where to shop. 

Others are perfectly legal, till they're not. See, there's an entire industry devoted to inventing new products by tweaking a molecule here or there and creating a substance that must be evaluated by the powers that be before being added to the official list of prohibited substances. 

Ain't technology great? 

Unlike in Pottersville, there are no venues in Hooterville with marques advertising Girls! Girls! Girls! However, there are all sorts of places in Ohio where one can view women (and I assume men) partially or fully nude. I understand they're heavily regulated and there are different rules depending on whether or not a given performer's genitals are on display.  

I've never been to one although I confess to having visited bars featuring "topless" dancers while briefly living in Texas in the course of my misspent youth, which was, unfortunately, a very long time ago. I'm so old and boring that if I walked into a joint featuring totally naked female dancers I'd be too embarrassed to stick around.

I'm so straight that if I walked into a joint featuring even partially naked male dancers I'd vacate the premises ASAP.     

{So, is there a point to all this verbiage?}

Nope, I'm just sayin'. I'm just puttin' it out there for the consideration of my gentlereaders. I'm not bein' judgy. 

I recently accidentally discovered that Patrick Cadell is dead, but Sidney Blumenthal is still very much alive, and I, you're semi-humble correspondent, have willingly begun interacting with AI technology for the first time. 

I thought that Mr. Cadell was the one officially credited/blamed for the Permanent Campaign concept which I've written about at some point in the murky past. But according to Wikipedia, Mr. Blumenthal is. I went a'-googlin' and discovered that both men are credited/blamed to one degree or another by all sorts of people as you might expect given the nature of the WWCK (the Worldwide Web of Contradictory Knowledge), which is how I came to consult Perplexity.  

{Wait-wait-wait. I've perused the preceding paragraphs twice and still have no idea what...} 

Puh-leeze! It's my schtick as you well know, or should by now. And now that you're intrigued, I shall proceed and all will be revealed. It's but one of the reasons my millions of gentlereaders love me. 

As anyone who has ever gone a-googlin' is aware, the Goog's search results seem to have a tendency to favor advertisers and often seem to reflect the progressive political positions of Google's bosses and minions. They're also full of contradictory and/or out-of-date responses. 

I've always wondered why there was no mechanism in place to at least delete out-of-date material. Google's hard at work on updating their cash cow but Perplexity is...well, I asked Perplexity, "What is Perplexity?" and it replied that "Perplexity is an AI-powered (my emphasis) search engine that combines advanced language models with real-time web searching capabilities to provide comprehensive and accurate answers to user queries."

{Cool, thanks for clearing that up.}

Long story short, there's a free version without ads (for now at least) that works waaay better than Google. I'm not going into detail as to why I think that's true, just merely recommend that my online gentlereaders check it out. Perplexity succinctly explained why two different people are credited with the permanent campaign concept without choosing a side, provided the sources it used, and didn't throw a million contradictory links at me. 

I'm impressed, and this old crank is not easily impressed. 

Apropos of not very much but for the record, I communicate with it by typing in my queries on a keyboard connected to a computer as I much prefer to use my phone, as a phone. I realize that "resistance is futile" and privacy is dead, and far be it from me to object to my fellow H. sapiens' apparent eagerness to become cyborgs, but talking to machines creeps me out for reasons that many of my fellow geezers/geezerettes (and some younger weirdos) will understand. 

I'm sure you've seen news stories about people developing relationships with an artificial intelligence of some sort. I don't want to have a "relationship" with a computer program, I don't even want to be just good friends with one. 

In the meantime, back to Messrs Cadell and Blumenthal. 

I blame both of these guys for the fact that whoever the current POTUS happens to be, as well as most members of both houses of Congress, campaigning never ends. 

Perhaps you've noticed? Professional pols...

[Professional Pols: career politicians, often with minimal real-world work experience due to the fact they consciously chose to be career politicians.] 

Professional pols...

(Particularly at the federal level since term limits are an unachievable dream given that for some mysterious reason there's an excellent chance of getting "lucky" playing the stock market or via assorted investment opportunities while selflessly serving the Citizens of the Republic.)

Professional pols who have embraced the Permanent Campaign strategery govern with one eye always on the polls. The way they go about governing isn't primarily motivated by what's best for the country, it's done while always keeping track of which way the political winds are blowing to ensure reelection... or that a cushy job will be waiting if reelection fails.

From Wikipedia: "Strategies of this nature have been in active development and use since Lyndon Johnson, where priority is given to short-term tactical gain over long-term vision. The frenzied, headline-grabbing atmosphere of presidential campaigns is carried over into the office itself, thus creating a permanent campaign that limits the ability of policies to deviate from the perceived will of the people (hence, intensive polling."

The Founding Pasty Patriarchs, many of whom were intimately familiar with those dusty tomes written by ancient Pasty Patriarchs that contained their thoughts on politics and history gave us a democratic republic, not a democracy (if we can keep it) to avoid certain problems. Your semi-humble correspondent has previously summed up these problems by pointing out that if 51% of the citizenry voted to murder the other 49% there might be downsides.    

But as my late wife used to say, there's always a bright side. If the people we send to the Swamp are preoccupied with divining the "perceived will" of the people why don't we just get rid of them all (think of the money and time we'd save!) and use our smartphones to vote for a national CEO to run things who we can vote out of a job whenever we don't like the results and get a new one? 

We could enjoy all the benefits of having a temporary king/tyrant/dick-tater. What could go wrong? Just Sayin'. 

 Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

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Copyright 2024-Mark Mehlmauer-All rights reserved

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, Part 7b

Still Eighth Grade

Except for 7a, previous parts are not required to enjoy this part...

(But, here are parts 1, 2. 3. 4. 5. and 6.)

Not breakfast at my house, then or now. Image by Jo Justino from Pixabay

 

Letters of eclectic commentary featuring the wit and wisdom of a garrulous geezer and {Dana}, a persistent hallucination and charming literary device.

  

                     ABOUT                                              GLOSSARY 

"Hearing nuns' confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn."                                                                                -Fulton J. Sheen  

Dear Gentlereaders,

Our last installment of Me, the Early Years ended with your's truly, a child of inner-city working-class parents, having been randomly/accidentally placed in the "smart" eighth grade of St. Ursula's Catholic grade school and I was about to make first contact with the spawn of suburban middle-middle and upper-middle class parents.  

With the help of a kid/guy (we didn't have dudes back then) named Ed, who served as my first guide in this strange new world, I was able to get my feet under me in relatively short order. Ed was sitting in the front row of the classroom I was ushered into and there was an empty desk next to him.

I was told to sit there by Sister _______ and he, who was obviously very cool as indicated by his red velour pullover top with leather laces where I was expecting a tie to be, not to mention his grey corduroy pants (cords were very "in" that year), took it upon himself to provide an orientation via muted conversations between the various and sundry activities needed to get a new school year rolling.

The answer to one of my first questions was yes, the neckties I hated wearing were technically required. Big BUT, if one didn't get carried away, and depending on the nun/teacher, and if you were in at least sixth grade (seventh was safer), and if our aforementioned universally feared principal, Sister Gabriel, didn't decide you were a barbarian who hadn't yet been entirely civilized and took it upon herself to do so — you could gently press against that particular rule.

I don't know about nowadays, but back then attempting to successfully navigate the many Rules&Regs of the Catholic education system to secure what limited freedom of action/behavior was possible while avoiding getting in trouble — or possibly being sentenced to a stretch in purgatory upon your demise — was as complicated as what I'm led to believe goes on behind the scenes at the Vatican.

For example, to try and detail the series of maneuvers I had to carefully and subtly execute to get out of that spot in the front of the classroom, where I had absolutely no desire to be, would take up an entire column.

Being in the "smart" eighth grade came with certain subtle, unspoken privileges. We were treated a bit more like high schoolers than the other eighth-grade class. We also studied Algebra 1 (taught by Sister...Anthony?), traditionally a ninth-grade subject, at least back then.

{Another teacher whose name you can't remember? Did you fall off your bike that year?}

Not that I remember, but you may be on to something. Anyone wearing a helmet to ride a bike back then would've been considered a sissy and subject to much in the way of verbal abuse.

Not being mathematically inclined, and not being particularly interested in the subject (traits that continue to this very day), I made it through by the skin of my teeth. I spent a lot of time on the phone with a friend named...Roger? doing Algebra homework together; he served as my tutor. The following school year, ninth grade in a public high school, I had Algebra 1 all over again and it was a piece of caramel apple pie thanks to Roger.

Speaking of sissies, I'll wager the boys in the normal eighth grade thought the boys in my eighth grade were a bunch of sissies but I've no memory of any verbal abuse along those lines. It really was a remarkable school year from my perspective. You might think it would've motivated me to study hard in high school, but it didn't. It was this particular group of kids, none of whom I maintained contact with once they continued on with parochial education and I switched to a public school.

The "smart" eighth grade consisted of the kids who were either smarter by nature and/or willing to work hard to get good grades. This was not a thing at my previous school. Smart kids, average kids, and certifiable brutes all shared the same classroom and the same teacher, usually a nun. Present-day Wokies would no doubt applaud the exact same curriculum for all.

This might sound like a recipe for disaster, and nowadays apparently is, but back then all the nuns and lay teachers I was aware of ran a tight ship, and (in most cases at least) the parents were on board. It wasn't till ninth grade, when I found myself in a public high school, that I experienced weak and vacillating teachers who could barely maintain control of their classrooms.

But the empire still struck back.

For example, I didn't personally witness it but Miss H. (she definitely wasn't a Ms.), who taught ninth grade (Pennsylvania) history, and may have been the most boring teacher I've ever known, fled her classroom in tears one day and didn't return for a week. This resulted in several boys being paddled by the onsite enforcer, the assistant principal.

{Paddled!}

Yes, high school boys were still being paddled in the late sixties/early seventies, at least in my world. Fortunately, no one was killed. My Health class (boys only) in high school was taught by Mr. F. who was the football coach and a gym teacher. Pissing him off in class would result in being forced to do enough push-ups to make sure you never did it again.

For the record, I don't think girls got paddled though...

{You're getting ahead of yourself again, Sparky, eighth grade, remember?}

Right. How do I explain this? From my perspective at the time, the important difference between the two eighth grades was primarily cultural? A matter of temperament? Maturity? Yes, all of the above, and more. This was the one year out of my twelve years of formal mandatory education I worked my bum off, just so I could stay.

A few hours later I found myself standing in that field between the school and my house mentioned in our last episode and talking to some of my new classmates, both male and female. I had been successively (not successfully) madly in love with three of these young women by the following June, but being a confirmed bachelor, I played my cards close to the vest and never revealed my feelings to any of them.

I was welcomed with open arms even though I'm sure that at least the girls could tell my clothes were of Spiegel Catalog quality. This continued even after they knew I lived in that very modest house that could be seen from where we were standing.

(Ironically, by the end of the 1970s, Spiegel transformed from low-end clothing that could be bought with high-priced credit to high-end, high-priced women's fashions because Kmart ate their lunch.)

Male members of the other eighth grade, being more normal than me and the rest of the 13-year-old boys in my eighth grade, were running around being normal young men who much preferred being outside than inside a classroom, bouncing off each other and burning off excess energy, dealing with what nowadays would be called their toxic masculinity.

There was at least one of them who probably stayed inside (we never discussed it) but I didn't get to know him till we were forced to bond together to survive public high school and who lived only a few blocks from me, although I didn't know it at the time. In the unlikely event there's a high school version of this series of columns — Mark and Glenn Visit Hell (The high school years) — you'll meet him.

I know for a fact that nobody, male or female, was hiding in the woods behind the school smoking cigarettes, or other things. St. Ursula's was larger than St. John's but still small enough that everyone was up on everyone else's business.

I have no memory of what the young women from the other eighth-grade class got up to; In fact, I don't remember if there were girls in that class, and I was acutely aware of members of the opposite sex of all ages at the time, but I imagine there must have been...

{Ain'tcha glad you're not like that anymore?}

The pot no longer boils but has never stopped simmering.

Strangely, I also don't remember there being much in the way of conflict between the two versions of eighth-grade boys, although there was some. We were carefully supervised and if you've got to catch a bus to get home you can't agree to fight after school if you have no other way to get there.

I can't remember if we went outside during recess, I don't think so, and there was no playground equipment. But at lunchtime, we could hang out in the cafeteria, return to the classroom to read or study, or go outside (weather permitting).

{What's with the read?}

Well, I had been into reading for several years at this point. My closest new friends from another planet also enjoyed reading. They also were news nerds, loved rock music (which was still at the beginning of its temporary glory days), and were enthusiastic, cis-gendered heterosexuals like myself constrained by societal and religious constraints that weren't giving up without a fight (a fight they would lose in short order).

I had found my people! Briefly.

On their own, they had organized an informal book club of sorts and for some reason, they were currently obsessed with Agatha Christie novels (whom I had never heard of at the time) and borrowed, traded, and discussed them enthusiastically. In short order, I was reading a loaned novel. No, I don't remember which one, it's been a long time since I was a fan of cozy mysteries.

{You were a simp!}

I was a shy, reserved, idealistic, semi-nerd who had one enjoyable school year who would go on to never really fit in anywhere although I've spent my entire life trying to do so via adopting this, that, or even that lifestyle or career and who shot himself in the foot, financially speaking, because I never thought twice about burning bridges in search of, it.

I'm now a cynical old fart subject to occasional flashes of light who knows what it is but can't tell you what it is effectively, I can only point at it with my feeble scribbles.

{Yikes! Talk about getting ahead of yourself! What happened to eighth grade?}

Good point, Dana. I should have saved those two sentences for a big finish. Well, let's wrap this baby up, I've already gone on too long.

As mentioned in the previous column, I think that Sister _______ was preparing us for attending a Catholic high school, and how to "take it up a notch." This is pure speculation on my part but in retrospect, it seems obvious. She not only taught us specific subjects, she also taught us a methodology for how to go about dealing with any subject, a study system if you will.

She followed up relentlessly and made sure we were all using her system. We weren't specifically graded for following the system but it was made abundantly clear we better be. It worked for me, I was never demoted to the other eighth grade.

I think I now know why I can't remember her name. She wasn't someone to be trifled with, but we took her for granted, we were obnoxious adolescent know-it-alls anxious to get on with what would no doubt be very exciting lives. She was just another nun... and a humble woman who happened to take her vocation seriously, a possible lifestyle choice we weren't even remotely aware of.

If my parents could have afforded the tuition, not to mention North Catholic High School was located on the Nor'side ah Pittsburgh, and getting there (no car, remember?) would've been a problem, I likely would've had a radically different life than the one I've had. Not necessarily better, but certainly different.

[Note: North Catholic lives on but is no longer in the city. It's now located in an expensive Northern Burb, is coed, and costs about 15k per school year.]

Also, being young and stupid, having had enough of ties, nuns, and priests, and being caught up in the whole late sixties thing (we Boomers were supposed to fix the world, not screw it up) I was looking forward to public high school — till I got there.

Sister _______ made a point of speaking individually to all her students on eighth-grade graduation day (there were only about 30, maybe 35 of us) for a few minutes, and having just assumed I was headed to North Catholic, was shocked to find out I wasn't.

She had tears in her eyes when she wished me the best, which shocked me, but the significance of her tears was lost on me at the time. God bless you, sister, wherever you are.

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

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Copyright 2024-Mark Mehlmauer-All rights reserved