Let's Drop the Big One

 A Random Randomnesses Column

Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay

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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"A woman would never make a nuclear bomb. They would never make a weapon that kills - no, no. They'd make a weapon that makes you feel bad for a while." 
                                                                                                 -Robin Williams      

Dear Gentlereaders,

My favorite Randy Newman song is called Political Science and can be found on one of his early albums, Sail Away, which was released in 1972. Randy Newman has been at it since he was 17; he's now 81 and has created a hooge body of quality work. Trivia question: What was his only top 40 hit? 

In the course of the song in question, Mr. Newman opines that America, like Rodney Dangerfield, doesn't get any respect. He suggests that we "...drop the big one, and see what happens." 

SARCASM WARNING: The verse below is from a sarcastic song written by a sarcastic songwriter famous for his sarcastic songs. If you have a problem separating sarcastic content from sincere sentiments, I sincerely recommend that you stop reading now.  

Boom goes London, boom Paree

More room for you and more room for me
And every city the whole world 'round
Will just be another American town
Oh, how peaceful it'll be
We'll set everybody free
You wear a Japanese kimono, babe
There'll be Italian shoes for me
They all hate us anyhow
So let's drop the big one now
Let's drop the big one now

We didn't drop the big one, but we did drop a handful of big-ass bombs on Iran recently, which is what reminded me of the song in question. We knew what was likely to happen, and that's why we did it. 

Good. 

But the usual suspects began maneuvering in short order to exploit the situation for their own benefit. 

The Depublicans are calling for hearings, commissions, and official reports. AOC wants the Donald impeached, again. 

"The enrichment of nuclear material — and, now we can say it outright, the future production of nuclear weapons — will continue," says Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian president who's now the deputy chairman of Russia's security council. "A number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads." Thanks for the heads up, Dmitry. 

Here ya go, kids, the bomb. Be careful not to drop it on the way home. He neglects to mention exactly who it is that can't wait to give the Mad Mullahs a nuke or two in the Tweet I just quoted. And no, Cranky still doesn't Tweet/X-claim. I found the quote elsewhere. 

Golly, it would appear the Mad Mullahs were fibbing. It turns out they really weren't interested in building power plants that would mitigate any global warming that might result from all that oil they supply to Medvedev's boss, the Pooteen, and China's Emperor Poo Win Nie — via ancient rust buckets with the transponders turned off. 

Just look for the slick, Slick. 

However, I firmly believe that 99.44% of the citizens of the planet Earth are absolutely delighted that, at the very least, the Mad Mullah's quest for a "the bomb" to call their own has been put on hold for now. I'm hoping this holds true till after my mortal coil and I have gone our separate ways. 

I recently read an article in The Wall Street Journal titled The Holy Grail of Automation: Now a Robot Can Unload a Truck. I had no idea this task, one that I've not only done myself, I've also supervised others doing it, was the holy grail of automation. 

Assuming you have a reliable pulse, I betcha a boddelapop (that's soda pop to some of you) you're aware of the endless speculation as to whether or not artificial intelligence technology is going to render we H. sapiens more or less superfluous. 

I keep running into articles claiming that, like in the past, there will ultimately be more jobs created than destroyed. However, I also keep running into articles about white collar jobs also disappearing.  

{Robot mechanic?}

If AI is as powerful as predicted, Dana, in short order, robots will be repairing robots. I predict professional Bread and Circuses promoters will make a good living irregardless. You can get started now by getting a job working for rich (at least on paper), less well-known versions of the Donald, or a "reality" TV show producer. 

Perhaps you could be one of the one in a thousand "Influencers" that make enough money to live on. How hard could it be?

{Look on the bright side, America's building nuclear power plants again.}

Indeed. Who would've thought an accidental side effect of the need to supply electricity to hungry artificial intelligenci that (who?) might destroy our jobs, or us, would be to radically reduce fossil fuel emissions. 

{I'll bet the Mad Mullahs would be willing to take care of all the nuclear waste for us.}

Speaking of fossil fuels, have you heard about President (since 1979) Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, pardoning the two South African oil workers he locked up for more than two years because he could?

FYI, according to his lengthy Wikipedia page, Mr. Mbasogo "...leads one of the most corrupt, ethnocentric, and repressive regimes in the world."

It's a complicated story that I stumbled across in the Wall Street Journal that prompted me to go a-googlin' to verify since it's a you can't make this stuff up kind of story. As a public service, here's my Joe ("All we want are the facts, ma'am") Friday version.

 - South African businessman, Daniel van Rensburg, and President Mbasogo's son and Vice President, "Teddy" Mbasogo, get tangled up in a business dispute. 

- The Mbasongos resolved the problem by tossing van Rensburg in the jug, Black Beach Prison, where rumor has it torture is not unheard of, for 500 days or so, but forgot to charge him with anything. When he gets out, he returns to South Africa and sues Teddy. He's awarded almost three million bucks, plus interest and expenses. 

- The court ordered the seizure of Teddy's two South African villas and a couple of his yachts, which were parked there at the time, to ensure payment.

- Understandably annoyed, Teddy has two South African oil workers in Equatorial Guinea, who have absolutely nothing to do with the kerfuffle in question, busted on a bogus cocaine charge, and he tosses them in the jug. Sentence: twelve years and five million in fines. 

Diplomatic efforts to rescue them ensue, and go nowhere. But then, two plus years later, a happy ending. 

Teddy's dad, the aforementioned President Mbasogo, freed the men, part of a group of 476 prisoners he pardoned to celebrate his recent birthday, without an official explanation. 

Little Teddy cleared things up via a social media post. 

“Once again, His Excellency the President of the Republic has shown the world the values of humanity, solidarity and a sense of reconciliation that he embodies by pardoning two South African nations convicted of drug trafficking. In an increasingly divided world, this pardon reminds us that Africa must continue building bridges between its nations, resolving differences through dialogue, and emphasizing cooperation over punishment, while still upholding the rule of justice."

Answer: Short People

Have an OK day, Colonel Cranky

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Copyright 2025-Mark Mehlmauer-All rights reserved

 

 

 

The Further Adventures of Ice Cream Man

My (one) Amish Summer

Image by Tom Markoski from Pixabay

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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"Do you sell pop-seekles by the box too?" -Anonymous Amish Teenager

Dear Gentlereaders,

Late spring and early summer were when neighborhood-based professional popsicle peddlers based north of the Mason-Dixon line had their most profitable days of the season. I assume this is true of the food truck-based version, but I bailed when the former version began to die and before the rise of the latter. 

This is why I, your favorite former off-again-on-again ice cream man, is writing about being a popsicle peddler, again. While I think about it every year at this time, this is the first year I've written about it. If you're interested, I've written two other columns, this one and this one.   

  

My sister-in-law, Aunt Brenda, was the one who told me about _______ Road, just off 422, in Parkman? She was a Yoder Toter at the time, a title she didn't much care for, deeming it demeaning to the Amish people she toted around in a van for a while.

The Urban Dictionary defines Yoder Toter as "A large white 16-seater van that carries the Amish on excursions to Walmart." The Urban Dictionary prioritizes humor over scholarship, but if you live here in Hooterville, or any area that has a large-ish Amish community from what I can tell, this is a relatively accurate definition, although I can't remember if Aunt Brenda's van was a white 16-seater. 

In the unlikely event an Amish person should read this, I apologise if you're offended. I went a-googlin' and found nothing about the Amish finding the term offensive and I've never encountered anyone who used the term in a derogatory fashion when referencing a van, its driver, or the Amish.  

I have encountered a few "English" people (to the Amish, we're the English) who don't care for the Amish for one reason or another. I love the Amish even though I only spent one evening a week, for one summer, selling them ice cream bars and pop-seekles from the ice cream truck I owned towards the end of my on-again-off-again career as an ice cream man.  

Picture this in your mind's eye. You're driving a large, pink ice cream truck down a quiet country road. Except for the fact it's pink and the ceramic-coated signs have been flipped over and now say Carrousel Ice Cream.  It's a "real" Good Humor truck with brass "sleigh bells" but without a loud, obnoxious electronic music box cranking out the same few bars of Turkey in the Straw over and over and over again. 

The houses on this very quiet country road...

{Wait-wait-wait. A "real" Good Humor ice cream truck? Why pink? Why reversed and remounted signs that now say Carrousel Ice Cream? Why is carousel spelled wrong?}

Because this is the greater Hooterville Metropolitan Area, and unlike the Pittsburgh area, there is no tradition of Good Humor trucks, or Goody Bar men/ladies, returning every spring in company bespoke ice cream trucks with ceramic-coated signs. 

In fact, I found out the hard way that ice cream trucks had a bad reputation in these parts. There is, or rather was (this narrative is ancient history), a large fleet based in Cleveland that had a small local depot here at the time featuring high prices and low-born (not all, I was friends with some of them) drivers.

{Low-born drivers?}

A bit of literary fodorol on my part, high prices — low-born drivers? But many of them did look and behave like personal friends of Cheech and Chong in their glory(?) days. Although this was the 90s. Long story short, after experiencing no shortage of kids yelling "rip off man," but otherwise ignoring me, drastic action was needed/taken. To the natives of this part of the world, all ice cream trucks were the same, they all sucked sweaty sox.  

Since the Good Humor name didn't mean much locally, I partially switched to a lower quality product line, flipped the signs, and painted the truck pink, having never encountered a Pink ice cream truck. Pinky had a big smile painted on her large front bumper and headlights that served as the pupils of painted-on eyes. 

There was no mistaking my truck for one of my enemies' trucks. Build a brand, that's what all those Inc. articles said.  

The pièce de résistance (pronounced pizza resistance) was a large 50¢ displayed in the middle of my main menu board that could be seen from fifty feet away. I had a dozen items for sale at that price that I sold for at least twice what I paid for them when I first started. As time went by, there were fewer and fewer of them, but by then I had built a trusted brand and business.

"Yo, everything on this sign is really fifty cents?" 

Where was I... You're driving a large, pink ice cream truck down a very quiet...

{Did you know you had spelled carousel wrong?}

Heavy sigh. 

The standard current spelling is carousel, but carrousel, caroussel, and carousell are used here, there, and even way over there. I deliberately chose two R's (that's how the Herschell Carrousel Factory Museum spells it), hoping to get the attention of members of the Spelling Police Department (bad publicity ain't necessarily bad publicity — build the brand), but I was only rarely accosted. I should have gone with carroussell. 

Picture this in your mind's eye. You're driving a large, pink ice cream truck down a very quiet country road. The houses on this road are relatively few and far between, but it's a long road, and the Amish still make lots of babies; the way the English used to. Many of them are adjacent to large gardens or fields of neatly planted rows of various and sundry crops. Barns are not rare. 

There's minimal motorized traffic as there are only a couple of houses with cars or trucks in the driveway. Horse-drawn black buggies occasionally clop, clop, clop by and you have to watch out for large clumps of horse... exhaust that you need to avoid if you don't want your truck to smell like horse... exhaust. 

Fortunately, this is easy to do because of minimal traffic, motorized or otherwise. Besides, you've got to drive super slowly. Many of the houses are far back from the road and you have to work your bell rope enthusiastically to make sure they know you're out and about, Quasimodo.    

Obnoxious electronic music boxes, which can be (and often are) turned up quite loud, would be more efficient for this but you bet the Amish would hate them as much as you do, and for all you know, it might spook the horses. There are not a lot of horses around, but there are always horses around. 

If you're old like me and lived in a neighborhood served daily, sometimes twice daily (parents love that) by an ice cream truck, now you know why you could often hear but not see the maroon that drove your kids into a frenzy on hot summer days.    

You spot a handmade phone booth. The followers of the local Amish Ordnung are somehow managing to survive without dumbphones in their houses or smartphones in their pockets.  

You creep along pulling on your bell rope with a practiced rhythm, alert to what's happening on both sides of the road while always keeping an eye on the rearview for maroons (see Bunny, Bugs) about to pass you at twice the speed of sound. 

A smiling woman wearing a white bonnet steps out onto her front porch (married women wear white bonnets, unmarried black) and holds up her hand. You pull over to the edge of her yard to wait. She goes back into the house, and in short order, a gaggle of kids emerges and spills out over the front yard.

Soon, girls in black bonnets and boys in straw hats are huddled in front of your menu boards, giggling, pointing, quietly conferring. A consensus is reached, and the oldest girl, it's almost always an oldest girl, once in a while a mom or a grandma, proceeds to conduct business with you while the kids fidget, giggle, and look embarrassed if you make eye contact.

I'm in a movie and it's 1955.  

There is no whining. There's is no arguing. None of the boys are busting a sag. None of the girls is so scantily dressed that you have to do your best not to get caught noticing for fear of being accused of something by someone, or worse yet, being flirted with by a little girl in a woman's body.

(I was asked if I was gay, more than once, when I didn't respond to a given teenager's, um... charms, while peddling popsicles over the years; I who have a face and a body made for radio.)

By the end of that first season, I was starting to make friends and having conversations with the adult Amish who lived on _______ Road and had started visiting my truck.  

When school got out the following year, I once again had the time to squeeze in one evening a week in Amish country. I didn't think they'd want me coming up more than once, maybe twice a week anyway. I worked from one end of ______ Road to the other in about half an hour and sold almost nothing. Yikes! Where should I go for the next couple of hours?  I waved to the Amish folks I saw. None waved back, none came near me. 

Finally, a customer, a family with cars in the driveway instead of black buggies. 

"Yeah, some guy in one of those ice cream trucks that plays music has been coming by, every day, for the last two weeks or so. Drives too fast too."  

And that, dear gentlereaders, was that. 

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

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Copyright 2025-Mark Mehlmauer-All rights reserved

 

     

What the Feck?

Image by Anand KZ from Pixabay

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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"Everything has gotten vulgar and out of line for children to watch. It's more of a swearing match." -Bubba Smith

Dear Gentlereaders,

The word feck, I refer here to that specific word, not to that other word it reminds you of, has been around for a long time and has had various and sundry meanings as time went by. 

Wikipedia: The most popular and widespread modern use of the term is as a slang expletive in Irish English, employed as a less serious alternative to the expletive (word you're thinking of) to express disbelief, surprise, pain, anger, or contempt. It notably lacks the sexual connotations that (word you're thinking of) has. My emphasises.

{Should I and our gentlereaders assume that (word you're thinking of) is the word...}

Yes, obviously, feck, on the other hand, is a minced oath, a term I recently discovered that shouldn't be confused with minced meat (a.k.a. ground meat, a.k.a. hamburger), or the culinary obscenity called Mincemeat.   

Wikipedia again: A minced oath is a euphemistic expression formed by deliberately misspelling, mispronouncing, or replacing a part of a profane, blasphemous, or taboo word or phrase to reduce the original term's objectionable characteristics.

{So, instead of saying (word you're thinking of), you say feck?}

Not usually, no, but I like the way the Irish have cleaned up this particular "dirty" word. 

I do say (word you're thinking of) from time to time, but only if/when it's situationally appropriate — context is everything when it comes to words — to preserve its power. I prefer a milder but more socially acceptable cuss word like damn for everyday use.

On the other hand, if I were able to communicate with the late, great Sister Mary McGillicuddy, I would switch to darn. 

Context.

Point of information (you learn something every day if you're paying attention) shite, which sounds like a minced oath to most Americans, or at least to this one, is actually a synonym of (word you're thinking of) in the countries where it's regularly used and is considered to be just as vulgar as (word you're thinking of).

You should keep this in mind if you find yourself visiting one of the English-speaking countries of the Commonwealth. 

To me, and I suspect to many of muh fellow 'Meracuns, shite sounds like a minced version of (word you're thinking of), and a funny one at that. I spell it shyte, a touch of personal mincing, I guess, but still only deploy it cautiously in my writing. 

{Fascinating. Anyways...}  

(Word you're thinking of), until relatively recently considered the mother (see what I did there) of all curse words, has lost a great deal of its power because it's so commonly used nowadays. It's so commonly used/encountered as to render minced oath versions almost pointless. Everyone knows what the F in WTF stands for. It ain't feck, and it's everywhere.

The Federal Communications Commission still regulates what can be said on broadcast radio and TV, but as far as I can tell, the rules are somewhat flexible. Irregardless, when a given word is "bleeped" in some form or fashion, nowadays it's usually easy to figure out what the specific word is.  

And yet, a paradox.  

We can't bring ourselves to toss out the tot with the Jacuzzi water and let anyone say anything they please on the (supposedly) publicly owned airwaves as well as other forms of public communication. 

Perhaps all words are not created equal?

On a related note, I personally think that you might as well say (word you're thinking of) as say frick (which sounds stupid) or frig, a ugly sounding word that for many of us citizens of a certain age is a slang term for masturbation. We find friggin' children freely using it somewhat disconcerting. 

I can't remember who he was or what kind of car it was. The dude in question worked, briefly, in the supermarket I worked in at the time, my first "real" job. 

I first heard George Carlin's famous bit about the seven dirty words you can't say on television via an 8-track tape (click-click) in that car in the early 70s. This tracks (see what I did there? again!) because a bit o'-googlin' revealed that Mr. Carlin's monologue, which is famous enough to have its own Wikipedia article, dates to 1972.

You could hear those words if you saw him perform live, or via record or tape, but you couldn't hear them on broadcast radio or TV. This is still true even though there is no, and never has been, an official list. It was just a bit of Carlin's shtick. 

TRIGGER WARNING! The following YouTube clip contains all seven of the dirty words. If you're a nun or a monk who has been living in an isolated, semi-secret facility since before roughly 1965, or a parent with little kids in the room who finds toddlers who talk like truck drivers jarring, don't say you weren't warned. 

Mr. Carlin, a master of wordplay, maintained that words are just words and that we shouldn't be so hung up about "dirty" words throughout his career. He was wrong. I was a fan, early on. I saw him live once at the Stanley Theater (now called the Benedum Center for the Performing Arts, dontcha know) in Pittsburgh in the late 70s. 

(Apropos of nothing much, I saw a lot of great concerts there in the 1970s, and never paid more than 20 bucks for the privilege.) 

But he lost me when he turned bitter, depressing, and nihilistic in the 90s. Wikipedia says that version of his act made him more popular than ever, which would seem to be an indication of the state of the Republic that continues today. But that's not my point. 

{There's a point?!?}

Don't be snarky, there's always a point... eventually.

Big BUT, this column is already late, and I'm running very low on motivation just now. I'm dealing with some health problems that are doing a number on my energy levels and generating brain fog, hopefully not permanently. So, going forward, if a given column is a day or two late, and/or not as long as you think it should be, please forgive me. If you would like a refund, please contact me at: mejotom824@endelite.com. 

{I guess you're not going to mention the fact you've rewritten this part of the column so many times that...}

My point? It's occurred to me that Mr. Carlin's notion that words are just words invalidated itself every time he used words. His words made us laugh; other words make us cry. We have to be careful about exactly what we say to whom if we don't want to destroy a relationship or start a war. 

Words are incredibly powerful, and I'm certain my gentlereaders can think of a thousand examples without my help. I'll start, how about so-called hate speech? No shortage of H. sapiens seem to be preoccupied with that subject just now. 

And didn't somebody say something about that in the beginning was the word?

Have an OK day, 

Colonel Cranky

Scroll down to comment, share my work, or scroll through previous columns. I post links to my columns on my Facebook page so you can love me, hate me, or call for my execution via social media. Cranky don't tweet (Xclaim?).

Copyright 2025-Mark Mehlmauer-All rights reserved