Sure enough, Jon E. almost escaped. Due to the enslaving nature of the cell phone, however, he was impelled to return, and I signed paperwork on May Day. New home for voicemail numbers coming soon. This will make me mobile. Or, as we say in our slogan from the Abe’s SuperBudget VoiceMail brochures, “Freedom to Move!”
The Lesson of the Paper Bag
“I got this one,” she said, holding up a white plastic sack with a cute pink drawcord. “It’s silly, though, because I saw one of these over at [somebody’s] house, and looked all over to find one.” She looked at me expectantly.
“So I see you found one?” I said.
“Well, duh, yeah,” she said, “but the point is that they have rows and rows of brown grocery-store bags, and I was hunting all over for this kind, because I saw this kind.”
We all do this. We overlook a solution to our problem, because we’re holding some other picture in the mind. The mind is a targeting device. It gets a picture and then searches to find it. Picturing a white bag, we’ll overlook hundreds of brown bags.
— Casey Stengel
Is that really … seeing?
People say, “Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it.” I think, rather, we should be very careful about what we picture, as we’ll probably spend lots of time seeking it.
Maybe we’re seeking after what seems urgent. Because it looks urgent. Maybe we overlook what’s actually important.
Now and then, for a fresh view of what’s important, visit Jim Sloman’s site at May You Be Happy.com. Always a new view. See for yourself.
That is the lesson of the paper bag.
The Wrongest Man in the World – So Long, Saddam
It was an anxious, tense feeling, reminding me of a day in October of 1962, standing on the lawn of Midwestern University, looking up into the huge trees before the vast Admin Building. Listening to the radio, hearing how our navy was moving into position to block the Soviet ships approaching Cuba.
War hovered; it was scary. It was a fall day. The sky was grey, the branches of the trees were mostly bare, and a light, breeze spun across the lawn and through the trees. It was very quiet, except for the tinny sound of the radio.
Then, I went to lunch. It was fried chicken, at some place across the street. Why do we remember these things?
No matter. Saddam has fallen. And the current feeling is well expressed in this swell little ditty ‘Bomb Iraq‘, by Vince Vance and the Valiants. See and here it is now, hear, hear! — Bomb Iraq Music Video
Sounds good to me.
The Thumbtack Bugle
“Hello! You have reached the lejurious office of the Thumbtack Bugle, high atop Third Avenue. Right now, we’re out on motorcycles, putting up posters all over town, but this machine would be as happy as a machine ever gets to take any short message you might care to leave. I’m now going to make a beeping sound by magic. Behold!”
And then a beeping sound. Another thrilling chapter of …
The Thumbtack Bugle — We distribute your posters to bulletin boards all over town!
When I was very young, perhaps 9, I was visiting at my grandparents farm, 8 miles north of Henrietta, Texas. Two-storied, white with a red roof, it stood atop a hill with a wreath of tall trees around it.
“Unless you toot your own horn, same horn shall not be tooteth!”
With my grandmother in her cool, shady kitchen, I chattered. The conversation must have related to taking credit for one’s accomplishments, because she said, “Unless you toot your own horn, same horn shall not be tooteth!”
Honest, those were the exact words she used. She didn’t talk like that all the time. She was making a joke. And, at the time, I thought it hilariously funny. I laughed and laughed. It was so funny that, here 50 years later, I can quote her words exactly.
So perhaps it was fated …
In the days when I’d started my first business, Simple Simon Bookkeeping, my first client was Phil Groves who had just set up his ice-cream shop, Raskin-Flakkers, in the Haight Ashbury area of San Francisco.
About a year later, I had several bookkeeping clients, and my daily hours (1-4pm Monday-Friday) had begun to seem busy! On many days, I actually got several calls!
This particular day, it was Phil Groves calling, and he’d got a motorcycle. He had therefore decided to start an advertising leaflet, a single printed page called the “Thumbtack Bugle”, containing short classified ads, and he would tack this leaflet on all the bulletin boards all around San Francisco.
Since I had regular telephone hours, he wanted to know if I could handle the telephone communications? We made some arrangement, and I was the marketing front-end for the Bugle.
He sold darn few classified ads. It took an eternity to put up all the flyers. Even carrying other folks posters along for ten dollars didn’t make it worth-while. Therefore he attempted to hire two half-wits to do the job. They lasted about two weeks, and the Bugle went into mothballs.
A year later, and one night I had a dream. In the dream, I’d been to Marin County, to look at an apartment, and was driving back across the Golden Gate bridge in an open, red convertible. The sun was glorious, the air clean, and in this dream I thought to myself, “Now that Paul (my younger brother back in Texas) has gone off to college, he’s not using his dirt-bike motorcycle any more. If I had him ship it, I could start up the Bugle again!”
I woke up, and began making my plans. I called Phil Groves and made a deal, then figured out how to change the rates, the route, and to focus on carrying posters for other folks.
I made a logo. It was a bugle on a cord, held up by a big thumbtack. From the bell of the bugle came the large word: “Toot!”
With this logo at the top, I designed a new poster, a big one, that said “We distribute your posters to bulletin boards all across town.” While I was laying it out, a phone call interrupted.
It was a religious group, calling long-distance from Nevada City, California. They had a poster to go up. Was this the Thumbtack Bugle? Were we still in business?
“We are,” I said.
Bloggs for the Huddled Masses
What’s new here is that anyone can publish. No thought required about the format, about FTP clients. Just open a webpage, type into a box, and click. Bango! You’re published. This means that …
This makes web-publishing as easy as surfing, or operating a television. Your mama could do it. That means it’s easy.
In addition, now we get the smarty-pants, the artsy, the web designers. Suddenly they’re artistes. They can tweak and twitter, and all the world is aglow in the bask of their friends, and wine. No doubt. This is a fine feeling. I may sneer, but wouldn’t I go back to college age — just for an hour — and experience the richness of the emotions among my peers, the admiration, the fun? Of course I would. You would too. Don’t lie. You know you would.
So the point is: these young ones get all artsy, and by golly, here’s the truth: This is a new creative outlet! It’s a new outlet in three ways. You can have beautiful layouts. You can have cool pix. You can write with beauty and style.
If you got no style, you can scour for cool stuff and post that. Sort of getting your admiration by being the most clever scavenger-hunter in the group. You remember that from 5th grade, don’t you? Scavenger hunts?
This is something new. It will grow like topsy.
It Is Not Reality
Make sense? A blog is not reality. Instead …
A blog is a construction. Perhaps it is artistic. Perhaps it blogges at bloggy time. It’s well known that it steam-engines at steam-engine time. This might be the same thing.
The blog is a construction. This means you can cheat. E Pluribus Zample …
Spozin you had nothing to say? Today. No problemo. This is the perfect time to soak in the rich bath of memory, savoring the scent of a madelaine cookie, in remembrance of things past. Now’s the time for Looky Back. Just dredge and repeat, dredge and repeat. In no time there’s your post for today.
Now I have an advantage over some of you whipper-snappers — as my Grandfather would deem ye, I reckon — and that advantage is that I am 59. What does this mean? It means there is plenty of the good stuff lying around on my time-track. I’m as littered with good stuff as crates of contraband litter the smuggler’s cave.
What else? You can move time forward and back. So what if you had the funny conversation at the dentist on Tuesday. Need material for Wednesday? Slide that puppy around! As Julia Child says (in context of dropping the fancy dinner onto the kitchen floor) “Who’s to know?”
What’s what I say. What say you?
Just Like a Real Person
Sometimes she will say, “One of these days I’m going to have a real bedroom that’s quiet, like a real person.” For example.
I’ve been thinking about this real person …
These days, we enjoy Sunday pancakes and omelettes at Two Bird cafe. On our drive home, I inquired to learn more about this real person. Here is what I have learned …
A real person lives in a nice house, with adequate nice grounds around the house, and the house is well-maintained. The real person has lots of time for fun projects, playing with the dog, and has help around the nice house.
The real person drives a decent car. It might not be new, but it needs no body work, and it’s clean. You don’t have to struggle with the shift lever. You never need to worry about this car, because nothing is broken.
The real person has mostly casual clothes, but a few party things, because the real person is invited to parties by friends, and also invited to parties by friends of those friends. With these friends, the real person goes on tours and to dinner.
The real person is not lazy, and works, of course. The real person works about 5-6 hours a day, Monday through Thursday. In order to support this nice house, car, clothes, friends, tours, dinners, and parties, it would seem that the real person would need a take-home pay of about $4500 monthly from this work.
This work could be anything. Whatever a real person wanted to do. For example, it could be dog walking, or something healthy and fun. Now this might not bring in the entire $4500 after-tax income; but, if not, the real person’s partner would chip in.
The real person has a love partner, of course. This other person would also be a real person, because no real person would be with a workaholic. The partner would not be somebody who spent all day in front of a computer, for example.
So the partner, being a real person, also works 3-4 days a week, for somewhat limited hours, and they have time to spend together. I suppose that the partner must bring in even more after-tax dollars, so that the chipping in part works out.
So, now I know, for the first time, what a real person is. I’ve been wondering, and now I know.
Clarity is a wonderful thing.
Here Comes the Bloggard
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