When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, Part 4

Two Years of Sister Egg Noodle

Previous parts are not required to enjoy this part, not even partially...

But here are parts 1, 2. and 3. 

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 

Let's reintroduce corporal punishment in the schools - and use it on the teachers." -P.J. O'rourke

                                                                                            

Dear Gentlereaders, 

Her name was Sister Agnita, we called her Sister Egg Noodle and she was our teacher for two years in a row, both fifth and sixth grade.

Fortunately, unlike some of her colleagues at the time, S'tr. Agnita was relatively non-violent. I don't remember her using knuckle thumps, but this was a long time ago and my memory tends to swirl things together. Also, I'm blessed with not being obsessed with my past, mostly, and I deliberately try to stay present in the present. 

{Mostly?}

Well, there was this woman I had a very intense relationship with for about three years, prior to meeting my late wife, who used my testicles for a trapeze for the last of those three years. It's a very long story. Suffice it to say I don't forgive and forget easily. 

I bore her an intense grudge for a long time but it's (mostly) gone, I rarely think about her anymore, and when I do it's primarily about the fact I can't believe I put up with her poop for so long before closing down the circus and leaving town. I had a chance to go to Austin so I literally did leave town, took a geographic cure as they say, where I met my late wife and present daughter, the source of the Stickies.

She "just kinda' wasted my precious time"...and energy, and money, and...

{Hey, Sparky, you wanna little cheese with that whine?}

Point taken, Dana, after all she did say she was sorry. She actually said it was her, not me, like they do on TV? Unfortunately, it took her three years to figure out she was "incapable of commitment." I think she "just lost that lovin' feeling" but was too cowardly to say so...

{Ahem.}

Which has absolutely nothing to do with Sister Egg Noodle so I'm "movin' on down the road." 

{Are there any more song lyrics you'd like to bore our gentlereaders with? Perhaps you could explain exactly what a knuckle thump is.} 

Sure, but first...

Sister Egg Noodles' preferred method of corporal punishment was the tried-and-true wooden ruler palm smack. I always assumed that nuns learned this method when they were taught how to teach since it was so widely used, but now I'm not sure. 

According to my research department, there was no standard protocol for training nuns to be teachers "back in the day." Some had degrees, some were teaching and going to college at the same time, and some were taught how to teach by the order they belonged to. Perhaps it was just tradition. 

I can personally attest to its effectiveness. It hurt like hell (see what I did there...) but did no permanent physical damage. It was a definite deterrent to unacceptable behavior and could serve as a team-building exercise for the entire class when a group punishment was administered. 

{Group punishment?}

If you were sentenced to individual punishment you might get two or even three smacks depending on the severity of the crime. Although group smackings usually consisted of only one smack each, they included a diabolical psychological component, desk location. 

Unless your teaching nun used a random pattern for group smacking (unlikely if my personal experience was the norm) the further you and your assigned desk were located from where the pattern began, the longer you had to wait for your comeuppance and the more SMACKs! you had to see and hear before one of God's corporeal Army of Angels reached your desk. 

{What triggered a group punishment?}

Usually, believe it or not, talking when Sister had to leave the room, and we had been ordered not to talk while she was gone. As you can easily imagine, the longer she was gone the better the chance whispering would escalate to talking then loud talking then paper airplanes and spitballs. S'tr would suddenly appear as if out of nowhere (doors were usually left open so that she or one of the other corrections officers might hear what we got up to) and demand to know WHO WAS TALKING?!?

One learned early on not to raise one's hand as this was just a trick; it didn't necessarily spare one from a smack. After all, why would she believe that any given infidel, since we were all sinners and barbarians in need of civilizing, was telling the truth? At least that's my theory. 

One of the employees of my research department was dispatched to a home for retired nuns to ask relevant questions but never returned. The administration of the facility claims to not know what we're talking about. We then hired a private investigator to look into the matter but when he/she/they vanished without a trace we moved on.

There was a bright side to this phenomenon... 

(My late wife liked to say there was always a bright side if you looked hard enough. I generally bit my tongue before smiling and nodding; I didn't manage to stay more or less happily married for 21 years by deceiving myself into thinking I was in charge.)

It promoted class solidarity since there was no guaranteed upside to confessing your guilt so it was best to avoid eye contact and stare straight ahead while maintaining a stoic silence. It reinforced the fact it was us against them, or rather her, and the potential future nuns and priests in the class quickly learned that failure to be a team player might result in shunning, possibly worse if you were a boy. 

But we've come a long way, baby. The nuns with hair on their chests are gone and nowadays H. sapiens who self-identify as females are encouraged to scuffle in the dirt while H. sapiens who self-identify as (usually toxic) males are discouraged from doing so. Fortunately, we now know that regardless of the "sex assigned at birth" we're all the same and free to choose our identities from a broad spectrum of possibilities. 

{Why are you laughing? Also, that's two semicolons and a sentence with three ones in it so far, are you striving for a more upscale column than usual? And you still haven't explained what a knuckle thump is.} 

The knuckle thump is simply... well, start by making a fist. Next, extend your index finger straight out. Curl the index finger back towards the fist and the knuckle will pop out. Finally, lock your curled index finger in place by bracing it against your thumb and your knuckle is now ready for thumping. 

When addressing a miscreant face to face, strike the upper chest firmly and repeatedly using the knuckle to punctuate your words. Example: How (simultaneous-strike) many times (S-S) do I have to explain (S-S) to you that...etc. 

Caution! Be careful to confine your strikes to the upper chest while carefully monitoring the miscreant who may engage in unexpected contortions trying to get away from you. I once personally witnessed a nun who shall remain nameless (I don't want to be disappeared) accidentally striking a girl in the mouth and drawing blood. 

The other strike zone is the back of the head. This is normally to be used when your quarry isn't aware that you have snuck up behind them. It's perfect for correcting misbehavior like falling asleep during Mass and scaring the hell (see what I did there...) out of your other charges. 

Sister Egg Noodle's nickname was a double dis. It was a play on the sound of her name as well as the fact she was short and plump. I can't remember which of my classmates came up with it but I'm reasonably sure it was either Nick the Greek or Loopy De Loop. 

On the first day of sixth grade I/we were shocked (despite being hardened veterans, i.e. sixth graders) to discover that an unprecedented phenomenon had taken place, we were to have the same nun/teacher for two years in a row. S'tr announced that she was no more pleased with the arrangement than we were. 

I was surprised because I/we had no special animus towards this woman, she wasn't a dark force of nature to be feared like Sister John Edward of fourth-grade fame. She was just another typical nun/teacher/corrections officer who had to be dealt with. 

I wondered if she took our various and sundry crimes and casual contempt for our jailers personally? It wasn't till seventh grade, when I encountered Sister Mary McGillicuddy, a.k.a. S'tr Mary Clifford, that I discovered that nuns could be cool, and nice. Sister Egg Noodle wasn't mean, but she wasn't particularly nice either. 

Having finally more or less grown up I now wonder what went on in her head, what her life was/had been like. What kind of childhood did she have? Did she regard her vocation as a huge mistake but felt it was too late to do anything about it? Could she possibly not regard us as highly as we regarded ourselves? 

Before wrapping this up I must mention what I think was her most interesting characteristic, praying to the founder of her order, Mother Seaton/certified saint/Sisters of Charity, to ask her to help our basketball team beat the team of whatever other Catholic grade school team we were playing that week. As I believe I mentioned in my last letter, basketball was a RBFD at the time. 

Every classroom at St. Johns had a small picture of Mother Seton mounted above the chalkboard at the front of the room. On Fridays, S'tr Egg Noodle would take a few minutes to offer up a prayer to Mother Seaton to help us win that week. She would walk back and forth at the front of the class, head bowed, hands clasped in prayer, and reel off an extemporaneous prayer requesting help from above. 

Loving young, gentle Roman Catholic trainees that we were, some of us, not me of course, delighted in spreading the rumor that Sister Agnita prayed to a picture to help out our basketball team. 

In fact, we had already been taught that despite the persistent story, that persists, that Catholics pray to statues, is bogus. Catholics pray to the person the statue represents, who is assumed to be in heaven, for help, guidance, etc. I've known/know a lot of Roman Catholics and I've never encountered anyone who wasn't aware of the difference. 

Big BUT, various and sundry sorts of Christians (as well as no shortage of non-Christians) have enjoyed messing with each other for literally thousands of years. Organized religion doesn't necessarily bring out the best in people, but the decline of Christianity in Western Civilization doesn't seem to have improved our situation. But I digress. 

{Get outta here, no way!}

Truth be told, she didn't actually make much reference to the picture; she had to pray while simultaneously keeping an eye on certain members of her collection of barbarians (mostly toxic males in those days) who resisted her efforts to civilize them at every turn.

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

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Copyright 2024-Mark Mehlmauer-All rights reserved

    

  

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, Part 3

Parts 1 and 2 are not required to enjoy this part, not even partially. 

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 

"I've yet to read a memoir of anyone I know at all well that came anywhere near the truth." -Gore Vidal

 

.

Dear Gentlereaders,

Inna summer ah '61, we moved across the semi-mighty Monongahela, from da Bluff to da Sou'side ah Pittsburgh.

 

{My Pittsburghese is a little rusty but I think you just said that in 1961 you and yours moved from the Pittsburgh neighborhood called the Bluff to the city's South Side, yes? 

You emboldened the h at the end of Pittsburgh because Sister Mary McGillicuddy taught you that Pittsburgh, PA, was the only Pittsburg in America that came with an h appended to its name, and for some reason, you feel compelled to point that out. Right?}

Absabalutely, (a word, for the record, that isn't Pittsburghese). When I was a kid it was just the Sou'side. However, my research department claims that people append/appended the term Flats or Slopes to the words South Side. We lived in two different houses in the "Flats" but I don't remember anyone calling it that. It was just Sou'side

But I'm talking about 60 years ago, so perhaps it's a Millennial/Zoomer thing? After all, I understand that the Shot-and-a-Beer bars that lined Carson Street back then to serve our blue-collar parents and the Boomers who followed them into the mills have been replaced by much more upscale establishments that cater to white-collar sorts, as hard as that is for me to believe.

Of course, I'm also led to believe that there aren't thriving Catholic churches and/or schools here, there, and even over there, and lots of buildings housing some sort of beachhead for every Eastern European country's citizens who have emigrated to America and are anxious to become Citizens of the Republic, and for which it stands, while still maintaining and celebrating the cultures of their native lands.

For example, the Polish Falcon Hall on the other side of the alley that runs behind what was our second Sou'side domicile (now a parking lot) where they had frequent, boisterous Polka parties.    

I don't remember questioning why we had moved, or being asked my opinion on the matter, but I do remember being mildly traumatized. I was, and remain, a shy kid, but I'm fairly adept at hiding it nowadays. I suspect that being eight years old, the fifth of seven kids, and the fact it was a much different world than the one we live in now is the reason I was not consulted.

It was assumed I'd just deal with any problems (what are nowadays called issues) and get over it.

My new grade school was called Saint John the Evangelist, on 13th Street, across the street from the 12th Street playground, which was across the street¢ going the other way, from Ralphie's mom's house where I attended Cub Scout meetings. More importantly, it was next door to my favorite store to buy 5¢ snow cones. 

It was part of a compound that included a nunnery, a church, a rectory, and a (very old) church hall for playing bingo and basketball...all shoehorned into a space less than a small city block in size. 

As best I can tell from Google Street View, the school and the nunnery buildings are still there, but the school is no longer a school and the nunnery ain't a nunnery. The rectory, the church, and the church hall have been replaced by parking lots.

Why do they call 'em nuns?

'Cause they don't get none.  

First and second grade had been completed in my previous school, Epiphany. That building is also still there but is no longer a school. The church next door is still there as well and is still a (beautiful) church, with roots reaching back to 1902.

{I'm noticing a pattern here.}

Indeed. In fact, my third and final Catholic grade school is now a privately owned facility, caught up in a dispute with the Diocese of Pittsburgh, that offers daycare, preschool, and "educational services." It's located in Allison Park, a Pittsburgh suburb. At least it's still a school, sort of. But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

Third grade: Miss Wright. A nice woman who seemed ancient from the perspective of an eight-year-old. For some reason, my most vivid memory of that school year was the time we built robots out of scavenged milk cartons. In the future, we would not only have flying cars we'd have robots to do all the hard work, like on the Jetsons. 

Our first Sou'side house was a four-by-four. One of four narrow, four-story tall brick row homes that were butt up against each other making them look like a smaller version of a tenement, one of those buildings that big cities had in the olden days, where immigrants lived who worked in meat packing plants — in conditions that would shock Charles Dickens — that Sister Mary McGillicuddy taught me about a few years later.

Fortunately, it wasn’t full of cold-water flats, rats, and rotting walls where the average apartment overflowed with enormous extended families who wondered in what part of town one could find the streets paved with gold. 

It was just four working-class families living their lives except for the...never mind. The most important thing was that I was no longer "walked" to school and back by one of my older siblings and I free-ranged over a much larger terrain.

There's an apocryphal story that claims that on my way home from school on the first day of third grade, I got turned around and had just started to panic when my big brother Eddie appeared out of nowhere (having been dispatched by Mum to discreetly monitor my journey) and saved the day that is pure bonkercockie...and I took steps to make sure it never happened again.

In fact, if my parents had any idea just how extensively I traveled in this new, much larger country and some of the things I got up to, they would've been surprised — and pleased. I wasn't killed, had many adventures, and learned many lessons they don't teach in school (or on "playdates").

Fourth grade was a major turning point in my life. This was the school year that I had to contend with a sociopathic nun. Sister John Edward, I realize in retrospect, was some sort of sadist who had found a socially acceptable way to indulge her pathology.

Given that I never encountered any pedophile priests or had even heard of one, and I would've heard (more on that in a minute) at some point in my eight years of traditional Catholic school education, permit me to point out a life lesson taught to me by my late wife, who lived with illness (and no shortage of other problems) from day one.

It could've been worse.

If not for the fact I plan to be cremated and scattered in someone's compost heap, with just a pinch of me set aside to be rolled in a joint and passed around by anyone left who found me more likable than not, I would request that the words above be the epigraph inscribed on my tombstone.

Perhaps if one of my progeny can afford it they will provide a tombstone for me anyway in the same cemetery where my Mum is buried. Here doesn't lie Mark Mehlmauer.

Where was I?

{Fourth grade.}

Oh yeah. S'tr John Edward (they all hated being called S'tr instead of Sister, "Yes S'tr, sorry S'tr.") seemed to live for administering multiple and creative forms of corporal punishment and snarling at her charges for any and all behavior that if not immediately corrected would prevent them from one day joining her in heaven.

It was also the first year I can remember dealing with peer pressure which brings me back to pedophile priests...

{Well sure, obviously.}

Almost. Big BUT, first, lest ye think the fourth grade was all bad, I almost got to see President Kennedy being driven down Carson Street in October 1962.

JFK came to town to stump for some of his fellow Democrats who were running in the mid-term elections including Elmer Holland, the Sou'sides congressmanperson at the time. The fact that President Kennedy was the first Catholic president was a very big deal we were told.

Since Carson Street, Sou'sides Main Street, was about a 30-second walk from St. John's the whole school was dispatched to stand on the sidewalk to cheer as he went by. This was almost as cool as getting out of jail class to watch a movie in the church hall, even if was just a boring, educational documentary,

Think of Andy Dufresne and Red Redding drinking a beer on the roof of Shawshank Prison. (That's an intelligent, well-crafted movie for grownups from the distant past (1994) when Hollywood was capable of such a thing kids, Believe It or Not!, and even though most of it took place in a prison it wasn't filmed in GloomyVison like most movies nowadays.)

But the sidewalk was overflowing with adults and I couldn't see anything but their legs and bums. I don’t know if Sister John Edward actually saw him either but I’d bet no. She was much more likely to have been screaming at one of her charges, or administering a back of the head knuckle thump to save their souls when he passed by. She was a one-man one-person inquisition and the meanest nun I ever knew.

I don’t think it likely she saw him as she probably would've screamed at him to sit up straight, tone down all that hand-waving and goofy grinning, and pay attention. After all, he was the first Catholic president, and as we had been regularly reminded, he represented us all. No pressure. Miss Monroe is on the phone, Mr. President.

He probably wouldn’t have been able to hear her over the crowd noise and when he didn’t comply with her orders she would've rushed his limo and tugged on his tie to get his attention (an effective method that I can personally attest to) and give him a back of the head knuckle thump.

Watching her being wrestled to the ground by Secret Service agents would have pleased anyone and everyone who had survived/was hoping to survive her Neo-Middle Ages style pedagogy. Also, it might’ve increased sales.

When we weren’t selling something to raise money for our school, we were selling something or collecting money for worthy causes, like saving the Pagan Babies. “Hey, ain’t St. Johns da school wit da nun dat attacked da president? Didja see it?

Before I forget to mention it, I did see the roof of the Limo that carried Soviet dick-tater Nikita Kruschev around town when he visited the Burgh in 1959. My fellow Bluff dwellers and I were lined up along the edge of the Boulevard of the Allies, which on our block overlooked the highway that runs parallel to the semi-mighty Monongahela at the base of Da'Bluff.

There was talk about how easy it would be to roll boulders or explosives down the slope and take him out, but having neither explosives nor boulders at hand it was a moot point.

As to the aforementioned peer pressure and pedophile priests, fourth grade was the first time I can remember being aware of peer pressure although I didn't hear it called that till I got to high school.

The boys that were in my class from the fourth to the seventh grade at St. Johns (after which we moved to the 'burbs) were what nowadays would be called my homies... if such a word existed at the time...and if we were black...and if we had banded together to survive life in our 'hood — none of which applied.

We were all just the offspring of white, working class, two (heterosexual) parent households who all lived in the same neighborhood and went to the same school. As previously hinted at, there were other Catholic grade schools on the Sou'side whose pupils lived in more or less the same area as we did and who belonged to the same demographic cohort...

However,

Exactly which school you attended made a hooge difference as to who you ran, "loafed," and hung out with. Although there was limited cross-pollination, your social life revolved around the boys from your school and your class, and intense rivalries existed between schools.

You were expected to not only comply with your school's absurd and uncool dress code (I wasn't kidding about wearing a tie) you were expected to comply with your tribe's dress code as best you could given that this was a working-class neighborhood and your family's personal finances often resulted in compromises.

P.F. Flyers and Keds were out (although both "retro" brands are now considered cool in certain circles) and Converse was in (I never actually owned a pair). We wore polished dress shoes to school that we bought from Thom McAns.

Peer pressure extended to other areas of life as well. For example, basketball was a RBFD within and between schools at the time and although I hated playing it, I played it, because it was the official sport of not only my tribe but multiple other tribes located in the Sou'side jungle. I wasn't very good but I was a master of remaining as invisible as possible on the court.

Other non-athletes out there will immediately understand what I'm talking about.

However, when I was in the seventh grade, and we played against the eighth grade in front of the whole school in the annual fight to the death grudge match, I actually managed to score a couple of baskets (the fact that all the girls in the school were there was a powerful motivator) and we triumphed over a disgraced bunch of eight grade losers.

I'll wager that if St. Johns still existed they would still be talking about it. I wonder if there's a dusty, commemorative plaque hanging in that empty building somewheres...

{Somewhere, not somewheres. What's any of this got to do with pedophile priests?}

Sorry, I occasionally lapse into my native dialect. Anyways, me and my buddies (Honky for homies) talked about nearly everything, bonded together by not only having to survive nuns like St'r John Edward but also by unraveling the mysteries of sex.

Older Boomers than us were just starting to toss out tots with the Jacuzzi water. This was the tail end of an era in which all things having to do with sex were viewed in a radically different way than nowadays. Yes, Virginia, there really was a sexual revolution and although things changed amazingly quickly, it didn't happen overnight, and I don't think most Americans had any idea that it would ultimately go too far (at least in this writer's semi-humble opinion).

{I still don't understand...}

This is my long-winded way of saying we talked about sex, a lot, but our thirst for knowledge was hobbled by limited information, the Catholic church being committed anti-revolutionaries, and a culture in which modesty was still considered a feature, not a bug.

Not to mention that many of us were too embarrassed by the subject to discuss it with our parents, like me for example, and preferred to obtain our knowledge the old-fashioned way, on the streets and in the playgrounds.

Secrets were hard to keep from your buddies in an environment crowded with other little Boomers living in a fairly stable culture that was just starting down the path of major fragmentation that we're dealing with today.

If any of us were being abused, and we all had a friend or two at other Catholic grade schools, it would have likely been widely known. It would also likely have been dealt with by the big brothers/dads of the parish.

I'm not saying it didn't happen to other kids living in other neighborhoods, everyone knows it did, and I'm sure it still happens. When all is said and done priests are merely men. All men are dogs (trust me) and there are always plenty of bad dogs! loose in the world.

I took it for granted at the time, but I now realize I was lucky and had a pretty good childhood all things considered. It certainly coulda been worse anyways.

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

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Copyright 2024-Mark Mehlmauer-All rights reserved

   

A Day Late & Two Dollars Short

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images 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 

"Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals."                                                                                                       -John Steinbeck

Dear Gentlereaders, 

In my last two columns, When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth 1 and 2, My subject was the first seven years or so of my life. The response from my millions of gentlereaders was overwhelmingly favorable so I plan to continue the series. But this time I'd like to explore...

{Wait-wait-wait. I've got a question, you "self-identify" as an independent columnist who self-publishes columns, but your columns have the same format as a traditional letter.}

True, so what?

{Well, everybody and his their brother sibling, including real columnists, are trying to get people to sign up, to subscribe to their "newsletter" which isn't actually a letter, it's their latest column, essay, editorial, recipe, whatever... In fact, your gentlereaders can "subscribe" to your column on your website and receive it via email. What's the difference between a column, or any sort of writing, and a newsletter?}  

Forgive the cliche, Dana, but: it's complicated. 

As you've noticed, "newsletters" aren't usually letters by anyone's definition. Newsletter has become a catch-all term for something that you subscribe to (by providing an email address) so that whenever there's a new version of that something, it will be sent to you via email.

There might be a fee or it might be free but either way, it places their content in your hands (in front of your eyeballs) without you having to seek it out. Win/win, as far as the sender is concerned anyway. The sender is hoping this will help to build an audience and/or make 'em some money. 

As you mentioned, anyone can "subscribe" to have my columns emailed to them just by clicking a button on my webpage. I use a free service for this but they (and their competitors) who also offer free versions, offer paid versions as well. 

The more you're willing to pay, the more services they offer based on the data they collect from the people who sign up for your content so that you can offer them more services...as well as find out what your readers are up to, or into.

Pass. 

I don't think that whatever my readers are up to or into, is any of my business. I'm not even aware, or even care, who subscribes to me...with the exception of my lovely sister, Arletta, because she told me she does.   

Big BUT, we all should never forget there's a veritable industry of not only content providers but thousands of others who do care, very much so.   

{Looks like this is what you're writing about this time.} 

That's your fault, and whaddayamean real columnists?

Shortly after I started writing columns, I decided my focus/motivation was my grandkids, the Stickies, and my columns all began with, Dear Grandstickies, and ended with Poppa (the proper way to spell poppa by the way) loves you, Have an OK day. (For various and sundry reasons previously explained they've since been folded into the gentlereaders demographic.) 

This was a cosmic coinkydink that had absolutely nothing to do with the (insert fanfare here) RISE OF THE NEWSLETTER. 

Unfortunately, the (inflation-adjusted) idiom, a day late and two dollars short, is a term applicable to several stages of my life. I was oblivious to how pervasive the newsletter phenomenon had become and just kept writing my columns till it was impossible to ignore but by then I had missed the boat once again.

When I had finally started blogging, blogging was not only far from a new, cutting-edge way of communicating, it was well past its peak, had become a very crowded endeavor, and was playing second fiddle to ubiquitous online video content of all sorts. 

Having a face and physique made for radio, and being so introverted some days that I'm one psychological step away from subscribing to Huts and Hermits quarterly, I thought I'd try blogging anyway, but declare myself to be a columnist, being an enthusiastic reader of columns for several decades now. 

{You're a wild man... What's the difference?}

Well, a given publication, traditionally, publishes the work of a given columnist on the same day (or days) every week as I did till recently, of roughly the same length. Bloggers tend to post whatever/whenever and are often ghostwritten - or AI-written - or are advertisements disguised as blogs, or my personal favorite — bloggers who blog about how to make money blogging by writing blogs that are actually advertisements.  

But I had a vague notion that if I was good enough, I might get a syndication deal, or at least be offered a few shekels to write for an individual publication. This would be hard enough to make happen under normal circumstances, and I began my writing "career" when newspapers and many a meatspace magazine had collapsed/were collapsing and everyone and their uncle Bob was trying to land a gig in cyberspace. 

No joy.

Next, I set my dignity aside and tried running ads. The Goog, who owns the software that powers my scribbling and provides it for "free" just like they do various other services ("If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold," a famous tweet by one Andrew Lewis) and builds the ability to do this into the software, virtually effortlessly. 

Any given content provider can become part of a globe-spanning business that generates billions in revenue for the Goog. The bad news is, unless you have a lot of readers who click on a lot of the ads the Goog places on your site, you're not going to make enough to pay for an overpriced cup of coffee.

No joy. 

Running ads for Amazon is nearly as easy to set up so I tried that...and setting up a "tip jar," and making it possible to commit to paying me a monthly fee (via services that handle processing credit cards, and the ability to sell stuff to build a "community" — for a piece of the action). 

No joy. But I didn't take it personally.    

 

Yes, Virginia, it's true, very few writers, of anything and everything, will ever quit their day job. The good news is that writers, of anything and everything, can nowadays easily self-publish in multiple forms and fashions, and thanks to the internet can potentially reach almost everyone on the planet Earth. 

The bad news is that gazillions of writers, of anything and everything, can (and do) nowadays easily self-publish, and thanks to the internet can potentially reach almost everyone on the planet Earth. 

The Pareto principle applies to even sensitive arteeestes like myself. About 20% of the H. sapiens in any field are going to make most of the money. That's why you're brother-in-law is still living on your couch despite the fact he plays a mean guitar, and  practices  every  damn  day.

And while all of the flailing around on my part mentioned above was happening, the (insert fanfare here) RISE OF THE NEWSLETTER was going on while yours truly was busy being repelled by the fact Big Data had found yet another way to profit from electronically looking over our collective shoulders. 

{Wait just a minute there Sparky, I know for a fact you're thinking about publishing on Substack, newsletter central...} 

I've been thinking about that forever, and if I ever get around to it my stuff will be free to access, but not because I'm a selfless saint hoping to illuminate the path to paradise. For the record, I don't begrudge the relatively few writers, or any sort of "creators," who make a handsome living on the internet. 

I don't even begrudge professional "Influencers" although I confess that... well, never mind. All marketing all the time is the American way, it pays the bills, directly or indirectly, for literally millions of us, and after all, the root of much evil is not having enough money to maintain a fairly modest, sensible lifestyle.

I write because I enjoy it, I mean really enjoy it, which is a generous form of payment unto itself, and I'm doubly blessed. My pathetic retirement income enables me to just get by without having to work (for now at least) in the "real" world, and fortunately for me, I'm a man of relatively modest and sensible tastes by nature, not discipline. 

Although I admit that like many of you, I occasionally got carried away in my extended callowyute phase. I am a Boomer after all.     

At this point in the proceedings, I had begun ranting about how we should be getting paid by the Tech Lords with cash instead of the software/services (high-tech honey traps) they use to harvest our data and sell it to the highest bidder. 

Now they're "scraping" (harvesting) anything and everything available on the internet to "train" artificial intelligence software to help them harvest our data and sell it to the highest bidder...and "disrupt" (eliminate) jobs that can be done by machines much cheaper than they can be done by meat puppets. 

But I've written about this sort of thing before, and anyway, the world seems to have accepted the mission statement of the Borg: Resistance is Futile. You will be assimilated. So permit me...

{Wait-wait-wait. What about that Universal Basic Income thingy?}

Heavy sigh...UBI is a scam, it's based on the idea we should toss some money into a pot (taxes) and then send each other a monthly payment.

 

But there's no such thing as a free lunch. (You may have heard something about that.) There aren't enough Tech Lords and other rich people to fund the plans and dreams of those looking for a way to fund life as they think it ought to be, as opposed to how it is.

We would have to enact a UBI tax (good luck with that) or raise income taxes, and I have no doubt that a significant number of the Citizens of the Republic (roughly 60%) of Americans who pay the federal income tax might quibble with funding payments for the 40% who don't. 

And there's this: America now pays more in interest on the national credit card than it does on defending itself against the Pooteens of the world, and continues to charge present America to future America in the meantime. 

"If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold." I was never a Tweeter, and nowadays I'm not an Xclaimer, although I wish Elon Musk all the best in his efforts to stick it to his fellow Tech Lords, but that's another column. 

A bit of research revealed that when Mr. Lewis posted the quoted comment on what was then still called Twitter it took the Twitterverse by storm. His is not the only version of this modern-day truism. For example, "If you're not paying for the product, then you are the product" is a quote from the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma.  

That is to say, all that alleged free stuff the Tech Lords provide for us is sorta/kinda equivalent to the bread and circuses the powers that were in ancient Rome used to supply to the plebians to keep them happy and/or distracted and not considering the torches and pitchforks option.

{Sorta/kinda equivalent?}

In our case, we plebs are picking up the tab.     

   

{Hmmm...say, what was it you thought you were going to write about?}

I don't remember, and I have a headache.

{Oh, and by the way, you used entirely too many quotation marks in this "column."} 

   

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

P.S. A tip o' the hat to my big brother Ed, my biggest fan. He's long been my sorta/kinda dad and occasionally has been to me as Theo was to Vincent.  

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