Category Archives: Social comment

Hell’s Kitchen with Gordon Ramsay: a culinary Kobayashi Maru

March 18, 2013 jkkblog 4 Comments

You all saw at least that much of the Star Trek movie in question, right? The Kobayashi Maru was a Starfleet simulator exercise meant to be unsolvable. The trainee could not win. The point was to see how s/he lost. I think that’s what Gordon Ramsay’s about on Hell’s Kitchen, his reality show whereby supposedly the winner gets to be head chef at one of his restaurants. (In reality, not so much. In reality, there’s a good chance that the winner will be more or less kept to the side at the restaurant and advised not to get in the way of the professionals.)

The main purpose, of course, is manufacturing entertainment; let us not self-deceive. Contestants are chosen not for ability to cook, but for likely personality conflict and entertainment value. Several are certain flameouts, and the game will be rigged to keep them around causing drama, conflict and meltdown. Hollywood is in the business of lying to you, and that’s actually praise for its skill; no, Tom Hanks wasn’t actually stuck on an island with a ball, but Hollywood used masterful skill to make it seem like he was. Let us just be realistic, and say without rancor that Hollywood is so much in the business of lying that the idea of truth mattering isn’t part of the game. Expecting it to value truth is rather like expecting major bank CEOs to place value on the public good, or putting an alligator with your chickens and expecting it not to eat them. What the hell did you expect?

Other deceptions include frankenbites (they can, do and will actually make it so you ‘said’ whatever they want), the fact that the whole thing is just a sound stage and that all the ‘diners’ are human props from the industry, and that Ramsay’s not a good tycoon restauranteur. His real-world restaurants keep eating flaming death, so to speak, financially, which suggests that he’s a great cook who could probably win the game running one or three restaurants. One cannot imagine that strong, confident people sit close to his throne and take the kind of abuse he slings on the show, so either we’re being put on and he’s great at pretending to be a complete jerk, or he perhaps has the flaw of hiring only people who will put up with inordinate crap (skill being a secondary hiring concern). That’s what insufferable employers end up with: the few whose main qualification is abuse tolerance. I’ve seen whole companies where that was the key trait for survival.

If it weren’t mostly fiction dressed up to look like reality, reality shows would not need draconian confidentiality agreements in which participants agree to be parted out for transplant organs, caned daily by professional Singaporean caners, forced to watch Honey Boo Boo Clockwork Orange-style, and pay $5 billion in restitution if they reveal the truth.

So Ramsay puts roughly eight males and eight females, all opinionated, boastful, overconfident, foulmouthed, mostly fat, mostly eccentric chain-smokers (in other words, restaurant cooks) onto two teams divided by gender (thus destroying the natural balance of complementary gender traits). He then gets them up at boot camp hours to perform challenges that may sometimes mean zero to the culinary art, but will be funny to watch, such as tackling pigs. The losing side gets some charming penalty, something like ‘scrub spotless the inside of the trash dumpster behind the homeless shelter,’ and of course has to prep both kitchens. The winning side gets pampered, though in one case they were forced to meet Celine Dion without pointing out that she couldn’t sing, which I wouldn’t call pampering.

Obviously, the show has little to do with finding the best chef. If it did, they would not cast prep cooks and fry cooks and line cooks and culinary students and others who, sweating and shirtless, shovel coal into the boilers of the world of dining. (Now picture all the current contestants as stokers on the Titanic. You’re welcome.) The very worst thing about the show’s editing is Fox’s shameless cliffhangering, which seems done by a 12-year-old to appeal to 10-year-olds. You always expect the trashiest of trashy from Fox, and they do not fail to disappoint here. Lots of “My decision is…” [commercial break] and plenty of “The person leaving Hell’s Kitchen is…” [to be continued]. Fox: always low standards. Always.

We don’t see something like 95% of what goes on, but what is weird: even through the deception, contrived stress, and all the other stuff that’s hardly relevant to deciding who can cook and who can lead, Ramsay does accomplish one thing. He does find out who can face stress and keep cool enough to continue trying to retrieve the situation. I can grant that a chef might need that property above many others. In at least this one way, his culinary Kobayashi Maru seems to serve one authentic purpose.

Other than that, well, entertaining bullshit remains bullshit. And yes, I admit to watching it. There are worse character flaws.

Investing, Social comment

Why I don’t believe in ethical investing

February 28, 2013 jkkblog Leave a comment

Considering how I feel about many major corporations, it might be shocking to hear that I have zero compunction about profiting from their stock. None. Monsanto, Wal-Mart, AT&T, Toyota, whoever–I don’t care about their sins in this context.

Why? Because my reason for investing is to make money.

I believe that investing to bring about social change is just fine, if you think it through; however, then acknowledge to yourself that this abandons moneymaking as the primary purpose, and don’t complain when you take a bath because your eco-friendly investment rolled over and threw up again. Personally, I think you could do more to bring about social change by sending charitable contributions to well-investigated causes, but hey, it’s your money.

Mine will be invested for profit, and for no other purpose. That is the game as defined by the market, and the laudable goal as defined by our broad social consensus. I did not design this game. Were it up to me, a whole lot of corporations would be running very scared, but it isn’t.

The individual investor in the marketplace, which is heavily rigged by the big guys, is like the new and friendless inmate in a major maximum security prison. He did not design the prison, with its gangs, variably-ethical guards, drugs and hazards, but it’s where he is. He can either spend a lot of time trying to effect ‘change’ against a tide like they get in the Bay of Fundy–and get nowhere–or he can figure out how to find some comfort, learn to do time. He may have to do things he’d never have considered on the outside, associate with the worst scum in society. He may have no choice. As with combat veterans, it’s not sensible to lecture him on morals if one hasn’t been there, felt what he felt, seen what he saw.

But how can you stand to own stock in Unislime (NASDAQ:UNSL), which treats its workers like Michael Vick treated dogs, pays them almost enough to buy one Taco Bell meal a day if they don’t pay rent, and last year gave the CEO a $4 trillion bonus while laying off the entire populations of five impoverished Appalachian cities? I won’t say that I feel moral joy owning UNSL shares, though it makes me economically joyous if it’s up 14% this year and coughed up a 3.5% dividend. (Once I sell it, it’s welcome to jump off a bridge, so I can buy it again real cheap.) Remember: there is no such thing as shares which are sold but not bought. I could dump UNSL, and someone else would own it. My selling would have the infinitesimal impact of driving the current share price down a tiny notch for a brief half-second, it is true, but the share price overall is based on market perceptions, the greatest percentage of which come from mutual and hedge fund managers. If a $12B mutual fund owns 5% of UNSL, and decides the stock has reached its target price, it will start selling and the stock will go down. Whether I own fifty shares of UNSL, or someone else does, will have no measurable effect on anything.

Haven’t you ever heard of shareholder activism? I have not only heard of it, I have engaged in it with some malicious glee. It works like this: every year, corporations hold shareholder meetings. Inevitably, some shareholder proposals make it onto the ballot for voting. Management invariably recommends a vote against all shareholder proposals and in favor of all its nominees, policy changes and so on. You can bet that if I get my UNSL shareholder ballot, and I see that a coalition of nuns has proposed something deeply idealistic and completely loopy, they have my vote just because that’s fun for me. I myself do not take shareholder activism seriously, because the only reason I own the stock is because I think it will make me money. Others feel differently, and consider it a powerful weapon. Good for them, but that is investing for social change. I’m investing for profit, and profit alone. Any satisfaction I get from doing something management won’t like is a minor bonus.

But you’re supporting Unislime by owning its stock! Your money is blood money! Eeeeeeeeeeeek! Icky! In order: not true, just sounds like it should be; yes, as is most of the money made in the market; stop screaming; no money is icky.

As mentioned before, someone’s going to own UNSL. Might be Unislime itself, using its cash reserves for a big stock buyback. My ownership or non-ownership is not itself support; that assertion is mindless and disintegrates under scrutiny. My ownership just means I own some phantom pieces of paper representing a little chunk of UNSL. Voting for Unislime’s paid Congresspeople–that is support. Did you stop to check on that before you marked your November ballot? Also, do you own a 401K? Does it own mutual fund shares? Do you check rigorously to see if any of your funds own UNSL? Do you even know how to find that out? If you have an employer-sponsored retirement account, you probably own UNSL shares indirectly, or stocks of even more odious corporations. Most of the large ones are so unscrupulous that ‘ethical investing’ would be problematic anyway, especially considering how much we do not know. Most of them would be out of bounds. CEOs are paid to increase shareholder value, not be ethical.

It’s much easier for a corporation to be ethical when it’s not publicly traded. A very good friend of mine works for such a firm in Portland. He tells me, and I believe him, that his company has very high ethics toward the communities in which it does business. Fantastic! I’d want to work for an outfit like that, and I’d love to own stock if it would make me money. But I can’t buy their stock, and unless I need teeth for my earthmoving equipment, I’m not in a position to steer them any business. I respect them and their business practices, and I hope they prosper handily, but they are not germane to my own investing.

So, it’s pretty hard to do any investing at all without profiting from the profit of a company who earned it by working to someone’s disadvantage. It is to the company’s advantage to sell goods and services at the highest possible profit, which usually means paying employees less, offering fewer benefits, and gouging consumers to the highest possible degree. Publicly traded companies answer to shareholders, and shareholders demand value. That’s just how the game works. And as before, if you buy mutual funds, unless you do a pretty thorough walkthrough of their portfolios, odds are you are building your Sun City sunset years nest egg on ‘icky’ blood money. You can face that with eyes open, or pretend it’s not so, or choose to invest for social change rather than financial gain. We all have to be comfortable with our financial plans. Mine are to make money, and devil take the hindmost.

This all sounds like a big rationalization to liberate you from ethical considerations. For starters, I don’t believe I’m obligated to ethical considerations in what is essentially a free-for-all where the biggest players just laugh at the concept of ‘ethical considerations.’ I’ve never seen evidence that my owning or not owning a stock affected the business outcome. My stance is that the vast majority of people invest for the same reasons I do, deep down, but that some are not self-honest about it. If you do not believe in owning certain types of shares, and you fail to review the portfolios of all the mutual funds you profit from, you aren’t self-honest about it. I prefer to apply my ethical considerations in areas where I feel I make a true difference: recycling, shopping local, supporting deserving causes. I have never had a charity interrogate me to ask whether my contribution was ‘blood money.’

I’m a Muslim. I invest only in funds that are consistent with Islamic principles. Some years, that’s turned out very well for you financially. I’m not a Muslim, and I considered buying a couple of the Amana funds myself–because I don’t care what the fund stands for, just whether or not it makes me money. There are plenty of funds whose charters are based around ethical notions, be they Islamic, Christian, environmental, fair trade, no sin stocks, no defense/guns, what have you. Sometimes you’ll do pretty well. But tell yourself the truth: You are investing with a social (religious) agenda that trumps the profit motive. If that’s how you must invest in order to feel okay about your money, as before, best of luck. I don’t think less of you for it, unless you get self-righteous with me without being self-honest.

This sounds so Randroid. Haven’t I heard you say more than once that you find her ridiculous? And you’ll hear it again. Here’s a logic trap I believe in avoiding: eschewing an idea because some jackass also happens to share or advocate it. I can’t say whether Ayn Rand would approve of my investing notions, but I’m not investing to annoy or please a dead priestess of avarice. I’m investing to make money. No matter what your idea or view is, on any topic, you can find a complete scoundrel who advocates the same. Stalin had a draft; if you support conscription, does that associate you with Stalin? Jefferson owned slaves; if you admire his Constitutional concepts, does that mean you advocate slavery? It’s silliness to think so.

This whole greedy attitude is what’s wrong with America. Be the change you want to see. Nobly motivated, but you’re spending too much time addressing the wrong person. I didn’t design this prison; the gangs and the hacks have all the power here, and I have to live in reality. How about instead asking your legislators to be said change, since they’re the prison guards turning a blind eye to real wrongdoing? As demonstrated before, what I do with my investment capital will effect no social change, because what shares I do not own, someone else will. I can make my way within reality, or let it crush me without even noticing or caring. If I do, of course, I have less ability to effect other change. Take a look at Bill Gates, who made most of his money providing uncreative bloatware while assimilating or destroying most of what was better (and nearly everything else was). Now he’s giving most of the icky money away. You can argue that all of his money is filthy, if you believe there is such a thing. You cannot successfully argue that he is misusing his gains. He’s using them so honorably that Warren Buffett is just going to send all his money (a great buttload) to Bill.

Furthermore, this greedy attitude is America. Has been since the first Europeans showed up. The modern nation’s vast wealth was created through grants and exploitation of free real estate by pushing aside, confining or killing its original owners, whose descendants still aren’t getting a fair shake. Much of the initial labor was provided by slaves or indentured servants, many of whom shared in none of the rewards during their lifetimes, and whose descendants likewise still aren’t getting a fair shake. You may like this truth or loathe it, but it is reality. Unless you own nothing in the United States, or are prepared to surrender all that you own here because its economic base was gained through injustice, you’re a participant at some remove. Greed, and taking from others, made it all possible. Either none of the money is icky, or it’s all been icked out for centuries.

I don’t believe in small feelgood gestures that do no good. If you want to do some good, get out there and do some. You don’t need money to do that, but if you invest purely for profit–even in UNSL and its ilk–you may obtain greater means to do that.

Plus, look on the bright side. How good will it feel to make a bunch of money off UNSL, then dump it, and wait and watch smugly as it tanks later on? Even the ethical investing crowd has to like that.

Social comment

Reaching my caturation point

February 24, 2013 jkkblog 2 Comments

I’m caturated.

On a fundamental level, I like cats. That is not to say I find their depredations cute, want to pamper them, feel like carrying on conversations with them, or need to bomb your Facebook wall with cat pictures. No, it’s more basic. If the cat comes over to me, I’ll try to pet it, unless it tries to hurt me. If the cat ignores me, I’ll ignore it. If the cat accepts petting, I’ll keep it up. If it tries to harm me, I’ll brush it away. If it wants to play a game of entice-and-ignore, I’ll ignore the whole thing. But if the cat wants a normal relationship, in which it comes over for attention and leaves when it’s tired of attention, we’re harmonic.

It’s the cat people who are caturating me. I’m not talking about people who simply have cats. Like I said, I like cats. I’m talking about worlds where the cats occupy the top of the pyramid of priority, fascination and goodness, with human beings ranking as serfs lacking the right to object. Ever. We rank somewhere below field mice on this pyramid, since a field mouse is at least a fun cat toy.

Specifically: I don’t get the masochism. Cat threw up on your pizza? So cuuuuuuuuuute! Cat destroyed your mom’s wedding dress? Look at the kitty! Cat just hanging around doing nothing? Carry on a conversation with it, preferably using baby talk! Cat just walked through the litter box and across your kitchen counter? Isn’t this just the cutest thing, she’s ready for her hourly caviar treat! Cat just found a way to slash your femoral artery as punishment for a slight delay in giving attention, and you’re bleeding out? Ohhhh, woookada wittwe snwookums! Cat laid down on your couch? Post to Facebook immediately–the world must see this cat, for it is laying on a couch, which no cat has ever done in this exact posture, and which is utterly fascinating! Cat walks across dinner table while eating? Well, what are you waiting for? Duh! Give Precious access to your plate! Cat shed fine white hairs all over the $500 navy blue business suit you just bought? Isn’t this wonderful! Just got up at 1 AM to pee, and stepped right in a slimy hairball, falling and breaking your femur? Naughty kitty–while I am in rehab, I will adopt three more to keep me company!

Now, I do not dislike anyone for this. Truly. I try just to look past it, or tune it out, and mostly to shut up about it. If people think all this is fun and fascinating, then they do, and I don’t have to understand. I just have to accept it, but in turn, I need to sidestep as much of it as I gracefully can.

The job of authors is to give voice to that which other people are feeling, but have not yet themselves found the words to express. With that, I propose some additions to the English lexicon, which is already more bloated than a ten-day-dead herd of water buffalo in a tropical summer:

To caturate: to saturate with cat details. “Cousin Winifred hates cats. She is evil, and we want her to go stay in a motel. Let us caturate her until she leaves.”

Caturation: variant of above, an overload of cat details. “I just hid two more people from my news feed due to reaching my caturation point.”

Caturbation: reveling in cat information, pics, hair, hair balls, litter clumps, videos, destruction, whims, genital self-licking, piles of puke, fickleness, and all matters catastic: otherwise unbearable or boring–but because they are associated with a cat, more wonderful than a bases-clearing double, a grilled salmon filet or the sudden news that a terminally ill child has somehow recovered and is now cancer-free.

Catastrophe: any slight thwarting or denial of a cat’s every whim. Considered animal abuse, and grounds for reporting to the authorities. Also can apply to a situation where no cat pictures or worship have been posted for two hours or more.

Catankerity: feline fickleness. “Fluffy is catankerous today. I wanted to pet her, and she tried to rip out my corneas. Isn’t she wonderful?”

Catotage: feline sabotage of everything you love. “Snwookums just bit through my DSL patch cable! Naughty Snwookums–I will rush out and get a wireless router, so that nothing will impede my posting of fifty new cat pictures!”

Catchet: the fundamental awesomeness, cachet if you will, of Permanent Cat Serfdom. “Aunt Edna has great catchet. She prepares a special grilled chicken chunk to her cat’s exact tastes every two hours, night and day. I’ll never equal her.”

Cateteria: dining area in which cats are pampered with special treats. No kibbles allowed, unless of course the cat demands them.

Catculation: the feline’s careful analysis of what he or she can get away with. Which, of course, is all actions, since all actions by cats are fundamentally acceptable, moral, cute and delightful. However, the cat does not always realize this, or it would not waste time catculating.

Catlendar: the pampering schedule. Rigorously enforced. Failure to pamper on schedule is borderline animal abuse, and can make you an outcatst from the Cat Worship Club.

Catvary: the metaphorical hill with the crosses, where cat owners suffer and bleed for the greater cause of catpture. (cat rapture). Normally, the living room.

Cateo: a cat’s cameo appearance to be photographed and posted on as many social networks as possible. Keep a camera in your pocket at all times, and your iDoodad handy–the moment is fleeting, and the world must know.

Catera: the photography device dedicated to the cat, and to him/her alone. Must never be used for any other, lesser purpose, lest it lose its holiness and become a measly, mundane camera.

Catdidate: potential cat for adoption into your Cat Worship Congregation (family). All cats not owned by anyone else fall into this category, since one can never have too many cats. Duh.

Catonese: type of Chinese food prepared specially for the cat. Naturally, each cat requires a different dish. (Cat owner eats Top Ramen.)

Caticle: liturgical hymn sung in praise of cat behavior. Twice daily is the norm.

Catharsis: the process when one has not shared cat details with the world for such a time (fifteen minutes is normal) that they simply explode forth unbidden onto social media, kind of like in that alien movie where the thing emerges from her abdomen, or like Pat Buchanan ‘joining’ the Reform Party.

Catillary: small blood vessel broken several times daily when the cat responds to the owner’s love and care by making him or her bleed a little.

Catressing: the compulsive petting of a cat at all times. Even while asleep, if you’re really good.

Catilage: the tissue in your knee which you tore trying to avoid a cat which suddenly appeared right under your feet. Expendable; small price to pay for Total Cat Adoration.

Catanova: a horny tomcat. Not allowed, since all cats must be spayed or neutered, even though you would think that Complete Cat Worship would mean letting them keep their organs. Yet another contradiction.

Catechism: list of rules for humans sharing space with (i.e. fawning upon and serving with humility) one or more cats. Recite at least daily.

Cathedral: house of Cat Worship. All spaces in the house are sacred this way, just as the yard is consecrated ground.

Never let it be said I was ungenerous to cat lovers! (A special thank you to Ms. Diane Anderson, who inadvertently inspired me to write this all down, having no idea at the time that such might occur. But who, being a literary professional of the first water, will completely understand how that went.)

Married life, Religion, Scumbag studies, Social comment

The day we faced down the Phelps gang

December 16, 2012 jkkblog 3 Comments

When thinking of people who have no purpose on earth but to hate and harm–real, true emotional terrorists–everyone but about fifty or so Americans agrees that Fred Phelps and his gang take the cake. Out of respect for my Christian friends, I’m not going to dignify the Phelps gang by calling them a Baptist church except in quotes (and tags). As much pain and indoctrination as real Baptists have inflicted on me in life while I was defenseless, even those involved in those abuses would not approve of the Phelps gang. Thus, I’m not cooperating with fake ‘Baptists’ in the effort to steal the title of authentic Baptists. I may not agree with much of anything that comes from the latter’s ecclesiastical leadership, but when it comes to Phelps, I’m okay singing a stanza of Onward Christian Soldiers with the real ones. (With my atrocious singing voice, they may not think of it as much of a joyful noise.)

Being a non-Christian here is actually pretty painless, because the Tri-Cities live by a quiet ethic of staying out of your face. It’s the same way with regard to homosexuality. If one doesn’t wash everyone’s face in one’s difference, and simply lives one’s life in peace, one is left in peace here. My gay, pagan and gay pagan friends living in other states tell me I shouldn’t take that for granted, and I believe them.

On 2 Feb 2007, Marine SGT Travis Pfister of Richland, WA died in Iraq. Always sad, but also an ever-present part of war. A memorial service was scheduled in early March for SGT Pfister at the TRAC (a trade show and expo center) in Pasco, to which one could presume his family, friends, and supportive community members might join in honoring his life and sacrifice. The Phelps gang announced that they were sending a picket.

Where there is a Phelps gang visit, counter-protests appear. For this one, attendance was triply obligatory. Phelps’s gang lives in my home state, in gutless Topeka which snivels and cowers before its barratry rather than taking concerted action to encourage them to find a new state. A civilized Kansan thus had to represent. Considering how many of my good friends are gayer than the 90s, I couldn’t look them in the eyes if I didn’t show up. I’m no patriot, but I respect service and sacrifice, and I don’t appreciate anyone–especially outside thugs–showing up to offend the family of someone who died keeping his oath of service. Deb, of course, was as dead set on attending as I.

We had company.

It was a pretty spring day, though I’m sure it didn’t feel springy for those who came to mourn. The law in Washington is that protests may not approach within 500′ of a funeral. The Pasco Police decided to confine the Phelps gang to a vacant lot across the street from the TRAC, well away from the main entrance and avenue of approach for mourners. A thin line of police officers manned the street with obvious reluctance, to prevent the crowd from physically tearing the Phelps gang to pieces. The air was filled with the sound of big motorcycles, for the Patriot Guard Riders had shown up with about 140 bikes. In most situations, to put it mildly, I am not a motorcycle enthusiast. For that day, I was happy to hear the rumbling sound. This organization travels around organizing counter-protests where necessary, and presumably doing other things associated with veterans’ causes. They do add a sense of muscle to the event, just by looking the way they look, not that we needed extra muscle. There were about two thousand people there, and it was a little difficult to get up the front of the police line. There was no way the family and attendees could see the protesters unless they worked at it. There was no way they could fail to see the rest of us, as there was barely room for cars to get around in the parking lot.

Across from us on the vacant lot were five pathetic individuals. I only remember a wild-haired adult male and a little girl. They were holding up their usual disrespectful signs, insulting military service, Christianity and homosexuals. What struck me was the great diversity of the crowd, a full representation of the Tri-Cities. Black, Hispanic, Asian, white; male, female, somewhere in between; straight, gay, still not sure; old, young, middle-aged; atheist, evangelical, Catholic, pagan, Mormon, Unitarian, agnostic; veteran, union, average joe or jane. At last, something we could all agree on and get together about! I am not a person for whom a sense of belonging or membership comes easily. I truly felt like part of the Tri-Cities that day, and proud to be so. We were supposed to turn our backs to them, or at least the Patriot Guard Riders tried to get us to, but not everyone did. I guess that’s the train wreck factor: it’s hard to look away.

In case you have never seen a Phelps gang protest, it works like this. They only send a small group (they’re a busy bunch, with a lot of people to offend nationwide). Their goal is to get attacked, or have some other event happen that will get them media time. If they do not get it, they lose. So they keep ratcheting up the outrage, in order to see what they can provoke, with increasingly offensive yells and signs. At the end, they had the little girl angrily stomp a U.S. flag into the dirt, which I gather is their ultimate step: if that doesn’t get them assaulted, nothing will. In this case, it didn’t. When it becomes obvious they won’t get what they came for, they leave. They may even have been gone before the family arrived at the memorial, which would be an added bonus. I think four squad cars of Franklin County Deputies escorted the Phelps gang’s car to the county line, off to whatever mission of antipathy awaited them next.

On the way home, I wondered if we’d done any good. I decided that we had. We couldn’t prevent the Phelps gang from doing what they did, but to whatever degree knowing of their presence made it worse for the family, perhaps a 400:1 support:hate ratio made it more bearable for the bereaved. It had gotten us all together, in all our different forms and ways of being and living, in good spirits. I didn’t see anyone showing disrespect for the police, who were doing a necessary and unpleasant job in a professional manner, and deserved cooperation from the good guys and gals. It must have been a moving experience for the gay counter-protesters, seeing so many of their neighbors so forcefully rejecting homophobia–which, after all, is the whole basis for this Phelps crap.

If nothing else, at least a few people learned that the Phelps gang is not representative of Kansas or Kansans. The heavy-bearded character in the KU t-shirt, looking like Gimli the Dwarf after a growth spurt, had something to say about that.

Religion, Social comment

My telemarketer FAIL

December 7, 2012 jkkblog 4 Comments

This needs some backdrop. I am of the following beliefs/persuasions:

Non-Christian, and disinterested in reconsidering that.
Committed to leaving people alone about that, if they leave me alone. I thus consider all active proselytizing very offensive and annoying, one of the worst social misbehaviors there is.
Some businesses and jobs are not legitimate employment, and that practice of a bad job liberates me from social obligations of courtesy and honesty when it intrudes on my life. I’m not moved by ‘they’re just doing their jobs.’ So are drug mules. If your job is to bother people who did not ask to be bothered, that’s a bad job.

So not only do telemarketers annoy me, they are fair game within the confines of law, just as are missionaries who dare bother me on my property. It does not follow that I am always necessarily dishonest or mean to either. It simply means that, within the confines of the law, I may be so if I choose, and I feel I’ve done nothing wrong. They always had the choice not to bother me. I wasn’t bothering them.

The only enjoyment I can get from a telemarketing effort, therefore, is a sense that I made it less worthwhile for the telemarketing company and its employees. To some extent, whether I do that through comedy, annoyance or venting depends upon the conduct. Obviously-read scripts offend me. Scripts that imply insults to my intelligence offend me. Illegitimate questions offend me, and since the querent has no right to ask me anything about my whole life, all telemarketing questions are illegitimate, especially if the individual has not even asked whether s/he may start asking them.

I’ve handled it various ways over the years. I actually got a robocall operation to leave my cell phone alone when, after about eight hangup calls from them, I called back and strongly implied that I had the power and will to traverse the electronic medium and cause grave physical infirmity. (That’s illegal, and not normal for me, but I was pretty tired of what amounted to crank calls. Oh, and it worked.) With males, I have been known to attempt a sultry tone hinting at seduction. I often take charge and say “I’m asking the questions here. How did you get my number?” I’ve pretended to have comprehension disabilities, or to speak little English. I give stupid answers, or make up a bunch of baloney. If I’m feeling lazy, I just say I’ll go get the person they want, pretend to call someone to the phone, lay it down and just not return. A minute wasted, some other person somewhere spared a call, the company’s money wasted, my little good deed for the day.

One time, some twenty years ago, I decided that I had the perfect screw-you planned out. I would preach. I was raised around a lot of that, for my father loved the 700 Club and religion was rammed down my throat by emotional and physical abuse all through my teens, until I (predictably) threw up. I know how to imitate a televangelist. So, next time the phone rang, and it was someone telemarketing me, I had all tubes loaded with canister. This was going to be my most successful, obnoxious telemarketing response ever. This would be for the ages.

“Good evening, sir, I’m Susan with Suchandsuch Co. Who is the main decis–”

“You know, I’m going to give you something better than a sale today,” I blared in my outside voice. “I’m going to give you the truth of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ! It says in the Bible…” I went on. And on. And on. I pontificated for minutes; no hangup, no interruption. I turned up the heat: “…because the alternative is the fires of Hell, and there is a real Hell, and it’s even worse than you imagine…” I quoted John 3:16 and offered interpretation. I began to wonder why she hadn’t just hung up, or butted in to bring the conversation around to what she wanted to sell, or responded in any way. I did this for about five minutes, getting a little curious, but starting to run out of wind.

When I began to slacken, she finally spoke up. “Wow, this is so wonderful. I also am born again, and it’s so great to meet someone who believes as I do and isn’t ashamed of the Gospel. Sir, this has been the best call of my day, and thank you so much for sharing your faith with me. I’m at work though, and I have to get going on other calls now, but God bless you, and have a wonderful evening. Good night!”

*click*

I never did find out what she wanted to sell me. I stood there, blown-out, dumfounded, struck silent, my whole plan having backfired about as back as a plan can fire. It was like the South Carolinians had tried to fire on Fort Sumter, but due to incompetent artillery direction, had shelled downtown Charleston instead.

Then I did the only thing that a sense of justice or humor would allow. I laughed until I was incoherent, red-faced and gasping for breath. In fact I’m tearing up laughing just thinking about it.

I haven’t pulled the preaching stunt since.

Social comment, Sports

Coaches Hot Seat froth on the Pac-12 Networks

Link December 4, 2012 jkkblog Leave a comment

Yeah, I know that college football discussion is not in the wheelhouse of a good percentage of the readership here at the ‘Lancer, but maybe some of it will work out. Here’s a rather frothy rant from the guy at Coaches Hot Seat, who Uses A Lot Of Caps and Exclamation Points! (It’s also a way for me to test a Firefox WP add-in. But I’m going to let you watch Larry Scott get blistered, and that should be worth it. I hope.)

Coaches Hot Seat froth on the Pac-12 Networks

The CHS fellow and I disagree about the meaninglessness of bowl games. I would, however, agree that the proliferation of stuff like the Kraft Fight Hunger With Manufactured Junk Food Bowl, the Beef O’Brady Bunch Bowl, and the Idaho Potato Bowl (they repeat themselves, ahem) has made college football bowl season ridiculous. Most times, all it takes is a .500 record to be assured of a bowl in a major conference, or a winning record in a non-major. It feels like ‘every kid gets a trophy,’ even though it isn’t, quite. Though at the rate we are going, we might end up with enough bowls that everyone makes it. It would only take about 60, and we’re halfway there. Bowl games I think would be fun:

The Rotten.com Bowl (play it in East St. Louis)
The Experian Credit Wrecker Bowl
The Bank of America Nickel-and-Dime Bowl
The Onion Bowl (in reality, it would turn out to be a hoax)
The Bismarck Bowl (let’s see how well your team really travels: North Dakota in December!)
The Twilight Bowl (during Fairbanks, AK’s few hours of dusk that pass for daylight)
The Lentil Bowl (played at Pullman)
The Begging Bowl (hold it in whichever EU country, that refuses to tax its rich people or rein in spending, is in the worst shape and needs a boost…Greece would be the current frontrunner, though Spain is mounting a credible bid)
The Crock O’ Crap Bowl (where else but our nation’s capital?)
The Smoke-A-Bowl (alternating between Colorado and Washington; I think that’s fair)
The Tidy Bowl (Geneva, Switzerland, since you can basically eat off the streets in Switzerland)
The Sanction Bowl (best two teams on bowl probation; held in the yard at a maximum security prison)
The Facebook Bowl Sponsored by Everyone

What isn’t funny this year, as the CHS article mentions, is the colossal failure of the highly touted brand spankin’ new Pac-12 Networks. Here was the idea: imitate the Big 10 (which used to have twelve members, now the number keeps shifting, but only ten of them are even remotely big anyway) by starting the conference’s own network, getting nearly every Pac-12 football game on TV and also televising a lot of other sports that don’t get as much exposure. It was a good idea.

What we did not expect was that the Pac-12 would get so greedy. It had a year to reach agreements with the major premium TV providers. In the main, the conference failed at the basics of business: you need to get the sale. My understanding is that the Pac-12 had promised the member schools Big Moola, forgetting two things: that one still has to reach agreement with providers, and that if one fails in this, one’s network is a not-work because your viewers can’t watch the games. In our area, the Pac’s failure to reach agreement with DefectiveTV and Cheater (two of our three primary providers) denied a majority of the local viewership any chance to watch the games. In my case, four Husky games plus one non-Husky rivalry game mattered to me. During that one, I sat down to write a letter, since it wasn’t on my TV. I’d like to share it with you.

November 24, 2012

Mr. Larry Scott

Pac-12 Conference

1350 Treat Blvd., Suite 500

Walnut Creek, CA 94597-8853

Dear Mr. Scott:

Normally right now I would be rooting for one disliked Pac-12 rival to beat a more disliked Pac-12 rival on TV. Unfortunately, the UO/OSU game is on your Pac-12 Networks, which DirecTV doesn’t offer, so I have free time to write you a letter I have spent most of the season formulating.

In 2011, I was able to watch all twelve Washington games on TV. In 2012, I was able to watch eight. Sadly, the other four were on your vaunted Pac-12 Networks, thus unavailable to me. I trust you understand what this means: your network has been a detriment to Pac-12 sports coverage. If that weren’t bad enough, you have sicked our almae matres on us. Pliant minions that they can so often be, they’ve tried to convince us to blame the satellite and cable providers, and to switch to a provider that carries the Pac-12 Networks. I am not an unreasonable man, nor am I new to DirecTV. I know that DirecTV, a perennial corporate spoiled child and bully, manages to fight with some content provider most months, causing loss of coverage. I am not taking DirecTV’s side when I fault you for the situation. I’m pointing to results: we were better off without your networks. Your networks made sports worse.

It didn’t have to be this way. There were other options. You had a year to work out some sort of deal with the likes of DirecTV. If you had to settle for less money than you have evidently promised the schools, you could have negotiated a one-year deal and returned to the table later. You could have offered online viewing through the Pac-12 Networks website for a reasonable subscription fee (or even free). I would have paid. Instead, you co-opted the schools into repeating your talking points, pressuring fans to pressure their TV providers. One problem with that, Mr. Scott: bright minds graduate from Pac-12 schools. Most aren’t fools. We learn critical thinking. We aren’t all so easily manipulated, and the attempt insults our intelligence and education. Who’s going to dump an otherwise functional vendor relationship over such a small percentage of their TV service? That would be dumb business.

I can tell what this stance cost the conference, because I happened to see some Pac-12 Networks coverage while visiting a friend. While I found the overall coverage substandard, the commercials stood out most. Nearly all were yours, which tells me you didn’t sell much airtime. While the ADs may parrot the line, the advertisers aren’t buffaloed. They know that your stance has lessened the audience, making your price higher than your viewing base is worth to them. It was more sad than comical, but it was a bit of both.

Sir, you have failed. You have taken yet another step in the transformation of a great sport into purest moneyball, where fans are just annoyances who had best hush, accept what is thrown to them, and keep their noses out of corporate management. You have made it pointedly clear that the fans’ good does not matter.

Proud of that?

Sincerely,

J. K. Kelley (UW ’86)

I don’t expect a reply.

Adventures, Human relations, Social comment

The only white guy on the bus

November 15, 2012 jkkblog 2 Comments

With nearly zero experience of the east, a few years back I went to D.C. Deb had a training event in Silver Spring, MD, which gave me free housing. Now, I have zero basic interest in the nation’s capital for its own sake. Like many residents of Washington, I am habituated (if not accustomed) to people asking “oh, you mean the state?” It’s difficult. If I say what I’m thinking, it sounds very churlish. Sometimes it comes out anyway: “Of course, the state. Is there another place called Washington that is relevant?” I’m not good at holding back, unfortunately.

Of course, when the Smithsonian card is played, I fold. Is there anyone with a passion for history who would not brave our nation’s capital if it meant a chance to spend almost unlimited time browsing the Smithsonian museums? Besides meeting up with a longtime online acquaintance who lives in the area, the Smithsonian was the reason for tagging along. I didn’t care about anything else. My world resolved into the need to get to the Smithsonian in the morning, then back to the lodgings at night.

Living in Seattle for sixteen years, bus travel is old hat for me. Not so light rail, which Seattle didn’t build until I was safely out of town. My day therefore meant taking a bus from Silver Spring to Fort Totten, where I would board DC Metro for the National Mall. I could then choose my museum, and wander freely and joyfully, lingering until closing if I desired. It was, of course, complete museum overload–and in a good way. I’m not sure the Smithsonian museum complex has an equal in the world. Whatever percentage of my tax dollars keep the Smithsonian going, I will cheerfully pay.

Thus, I didn’t expect that commuting to the National Mall would be an educational experience. Oh, sure, I knew I’d be a minority. I’m not ignorant of demographics. Didn’t bother me, and I even kind of felt I might learn something.

It was about a forty-minute milk run to/from Fort Totten. In nearly every situation, I was the only white/Anglo on the bus. Everyone else was black or Hispanic (perhaps both). Many times in Seattle, there had been only one black person on the entire bus. Now I was getting some exposure to that feeling, however brief, and it was an interesting sensation. No one was friendly or talkative, but that’s big city bus travel, and is the same in Seattle. People are in their bubbles. No one was hostile, though; no glares saying “you’re in the wrong place.” I’d describe it as similar to a Seattle bus, except perhaps a little more polite overall. Seattle bus travelers can be quite indifferent to basic manners.

But as the bus filled up, the last vacant seat was always the one next to me. Sometimes it stayed vacant even when the bus had standing room only.

I don’t think it was conscious. But I saw that in reverse plenty of times in Seattle, and now I had a sense of how it felt. I wasn’t offended, nor terribly surprised. I guess I could have been offended, but it wouldn’t have done me any good. No action available to me was going to change habits overnight, or in a week. Nothing for it but to mind my own business, ride the bus to my stop, and that was that. It’s not as if anyone were singling me out on purpose; I just stood out, with my pale skin, crew cut and heavy beard. They weren’t talking to me, but they weren’t talking to each other either.

The only real epiphany from it, I suppose, would be this: I think I understand why minorities are sometimes bemused and philosophical about implied racism, rather than angry. The anger will kill you without changing the reality. One gains more from just observing, accepting that it’s not going to change today, and getting on with whatever life details face one that day. It’s not like anyone acted in a way to force me to take notice of the situation; they just decided not to sit next to me. I have no basic call or right to influence where someone chooses to sit on a bus. Or stand. The only way one can lose in that situation is to call more attention to oneself, which would probably confirm to everyone else on the bus–and one is heavily outnumbered–that it was smart of them not to sit next to one. That’s going backward.

It does make me wonder how different the world would be if we all made a better effort to bridge the gap. On all sides.

Social comment

Roy Benavidez

November 11, 2012 jkkblog 1 Comment

In case you don’t know, Veterans’ Day used to be Armistice Day. It was chosen as 11/11 because that’s when the World War I shooting stopped, which is why it is such an important part of Commonwealth life as well, and why it rains poppies (“…in Flanders fields…”) in nearly every Anglophone country.

While many Americans (and citizens/residents of other countries who celebrate their veterans) will take time to thank a lot of people for service, and this is a good thing, I’d like to pick one veteran and tell you his story. It went far too long with insufficient recognition.

His name was MSG Roy Benavidez, and he entered the U.S. Army from his native Texas.

On 2 May 1968, a Special Forces A-team was doing some recon near Lộc Ninh, Republic of Vietnam. Unfortunately for them, the Vietnam People’s Army (North Vietnamese) had effective control of the area, and the SF team got in serious trouble. Surrounded and under heavy fire, they called for extraction (“get our asses out of here”). Three helicopters couldn’t reach their position due to the intense ground fire. They came back shot up, birds and crews alike.

Benavidez decided that wasn’t the end of it. You couldn’t make this stuff up. He grabbed a bag of medical supplies and a knife, boarded one of the helicopters and rode toward the scene. He had the helicopter land him some distance away from the SF team, then infiltrated past the VPA. They shot him in the face, leg and head in the process. When he reached the A-team, it was trashed: everyone WIA or KIA, but the wounded were still fighting. (SF quits real hard, as many of its adversaries have learned to their great unhappiness.) Benavidez got the wounded into better positions from which to defend, popped smoke and prepared to load the survivors onto a helicopter.

That didn’t work out worth a damn. He managed to drag some of the wounded onto the helicopter; as he went back for the A-team leader’s body, Benavidez’s problems multiplied. Not only did he take small arms fire and grenade fragments to the body–remember, he was already shot up–a VPA rifleman shot the helicopter pilot dead, crashing it. (I presume it was ‘light on the skids,’ so it didn’t fall far enough to kill everyone inside.) Benavidez got the survivors back out, set up another perimeter and gave them aid while directing their defense. They were probably outnumbered about 50-1, give or take.

Next, Benavidez started calling in airstrikes and gunships. He continued directing all the fire, doctoring the wounded and getting further wounded himself. Another helicopter landed to extract the A-team, and Benavidez began hauling them aboard. While doing this, a VPA soldier clubbed him from behind. Benavidez paused to kill him, obtaining some more wounds in the process. A couple of enemy rushed the helicopter, so he killed them too. He made one last trip back to the position for the rest of the wounded, by which time he was pretty near dead himself. He then let the aircrew haul him aboard the helicopter, and everyone booked out of there. It had taken six hours, and Benavidez had thirty-seven separate wounds from shrapnel, bayonets and bullets. That’s a Mansonian level of punishment to absorb.

When the helicopter landed back at whatever base or hospital, Benavidez looked dead enough that Army medics were trying to zip him into a body bag. Without much strength left to move, Benavidez spat in the medic’s face. Seriously. They stopped trying to body-bag him. I would have stopped too. I’d have been very concerned that he would find a way to rip the bag open and strangle me with it.

MSG Benavidez survived those wounds. The Army awarded him the Distinguished Service Cross, our second highest decoration and one they don’t pass out like candy. He retired in 1976. His former comrades, however, would not let the matter rest. If Benavidez’s heroism wasn’t worthy of the Medal of Honor, then what on earth must one do in order to deserve the thing? Based on testimony from the limited number of surviving eyewitnesses, on 24 May 1981–as I was dealing with senioritis and starting to get really excited and scared about college–President Reagan hung the Medal of Honor around MSG Roy Benavidez’s neck. About time.

Benavidez passed away in 1998. He was 63.

Gracias, Sargento Mayor, para su servicio pundonoroso y valiente. No olvidaremos a Ud.

Blogging freelance editing, writing, and life in general. You can also Like my Facebook page for more frequent updates: J.K. Kelley, Editor.