Fairfax, California: A former client (of my voicemail company) asked about current rates. After I’d quoted prices, he wanted them cheaper, which I declined simply as unprofitable.

His email today said: “I can understand your rationale that they are not profit-generating packages, but at the same time, aren’t they pretty minimal to maintain? What’s wrong with a bunch of bread & butter stuff that takes little effort? I could get a $7.95 voicemail from Pacific Bell for less.”

He’s not counted his costs. For the PacBell home voicemail, he must provide the phone line. Including the phone line cost, the PacBell voicemail costs $31 monthly, lots more than ours at $9 to $13.50 which includes the phone line.

But the interesting part is his suggestion to run “Bread and Butter” accounts, even if they are not profitable. I’d ask: how much butter would zero money buy?

To me, that seems like no bread, no butter.

I am reminded of the two cowboys who decided to make some money.

They’d buy produce from the farmers, carry it to the town square on Saturday, and sell it from the back of their pickup truck. They did so, that first Saturday, and sold all the produce. The only problem was that they sold it for the same price they bought it. Adding up their profits at the end of the day, there were none.

“Well,” said one to the other, “We’re just going to have to get a bigger truck.”

Excerpt from iowablog, stolen outright for your enjoyment. And now, the jokes …

Charles Dickens: Please, sir, I’d like a martini.
Bartender: Sure thing. Olive or twist?

James Joyce: I’ll take a Guinness.
Bartender: So Charles Dickens was in here yesterday.
James Joyce: (drinks)
Bartender: And he asked for a martini and I said, “Olive or twist?”
James Joyce: (drinks)
Bartender: You see, it’s funny because he wrote a book called “Oliver Twist.”
James Joyce: What a crappy joke.

Ernest Hemingway: Gin.
Bartender: So Charles Dickens was in here two days ago.
Ernest Hemingway: Joyce already told me that story.

Franz Kafka: I’d like a mineral water.
Bartender: Olive or twist?
Franz Kafka: I can’t digest solid food.

Mark Twain: Give me a brandy.
Bartender: So Charles Dickens came in the other day and ordered a martini.
Mark Twain: Did he take an olive or twist? Ha ha ha!
Bartender: (tearful) You did that on purpose, didn’t you?

Virginia Woolf: I’ll take your second-best cognac and unadulterated experience.
Bartender: We don’t have that. This is a bar.
Virginia Woolf: Patriarchy! (drowns)

Austria, 1743: A young man wrote to Mozart and said: “Herr Mozart, I am thinking of writing symphonies. Can you give me any suggestions as to how to get started?”

Mozart responded, “A symphony is a very complex musical form, perhaps you should begin with some simple lieder and work your way up to a symphony.”

“But Herr Mozart,” the young man said, “you were writing symphonies when you were 8 years old.”

“Well, yes,” Mozart replied, “But I never asked anybody how.”

Dave Winer sez:

“Consider the sequence of developments in publishing:

“In the 70’s, to run a publication, you needed a million-dollar printing plant, or you needed to lease time on one, to print and distribute your publication.

“In the 80’s, with the advent of laser printers, GUIs and desktop publishing software, the cost dropped to $100,000. So more people could publish.

“In the 90’s, publishing technology took off in a new way, all-electronic, and the cost dropped to a few thousand dollars.

“Enter weblogs, and the cost drops to hundreds of dollars, maybe even tens. If you want to do a publication, all you need is the time to write, and an idea to write about. The number of publications goes up every time the rules are rewritten. Now, factor out the non-publication oriented websites. Those are not weblogs. Everything else is.”

Henrietta, Texas, 1955: The kids on our block were Donny Burkman and his younger brother John, myself, my older friend Jerry Lefevre and his younger brother Larry and toddler Mary. So it was natural that we boys formed the club.

The sleuthhound club featured a flag, on which artistic Jerry had copied a picture of Droopy the dog from a comic book. On this flag, Droopy wore a Sherlock Holmes deer-stalker cap and carried a large magnifying glass. Now that was a sleuth hound for sure.

John, being too young, was naturally excluded. This made the club even better, because not everybody could be in it. That was the cause of the trouble.

We had most everything we needed. Titles for the members, for example. Ordinary members were sleuthhounds, but the leader — Jerry, being oldest — was the Deep Creep.

Our motto was “Go see the Deep Creep before you Beep.” To this day I do not know whatever this might mean, but it still has a fine ring to it, don’t you think?

We had a club song. In fact, this song had formed the genesis for the motto. The song goes like this: “If you do ever want to sleep, then you had better go visit the Creep. He’s gone, and gone, and very Deep, Oh he is the Deepest Creep, beep beep!“

Oh sure, it’ll never be a hit record, but remember, we were kids, and, to be truthful, I’ve written worse songs since, but don’t spread that around.

The trouble began with the initiation.

Naturally, young John, being excluded, wouldn’t let us alone. “Why can’t I be a sleuthhound?” he demanded. We told him he was too young. He said he wasn’t, because he was eight and a half, and that was plenty old enough to be a sleuthhound. Even Jerry had no logic to refute this, so finally we set up an initiation.

Donny, being John’s older brother, was ensnared in John’s initiation. The initiation was that, for three days, whenever the two of them were in the presence of their mother, John was required to say “beep beep” every ten minutes. Donny was required to circle his finger near his temple and say, “He’s crazy.”

The initiation lasted about half a day. John and Donny’s mother had just had it up to here.

The sleuthhound club seemed to slide downhill after that. Oh, we had a few meetings, but it seemed the joie de vivre had gone. The club sunk into despond, and we went on to other things.

Dallas, Texas, 1967: When my stepfather showed up, it was unexpected. He was one of the two town doctors back in Henrietta, Texas. The other was my uncle, Dr. Hurn, whom I and all my cousins called Uncle Doc.

When I was thirteen, George S. had moved to Henrietta with two children, set up a practice, courted my mother, and lured her away from her job as nurse with Uncle Doc. My mother and I then lived in our green-siding little house near the cemetary. I didn’t like him much, didn’t want to move, and felt uncomfortable with the children, just toddlers really.

But, as families do, with silence, blunders, armistices, tacit agreements, and slow familiarity, we got along. We lived on the upper floors above his office, and later built a fancy house on the south end of town. From there I moved to college, dropped out, and later worked in Dallas at the Cabana Hotel.

His practice was busier than ever. He’d also bought the Schwend house just north of his office, and was renovating it for a rent house. A beautiful five-legged dining table from that house sat now in my Dallas apartment, and he was at the door.

“Don’t you have to be in the office?” I asked.

“Probably I should be,” he smiled, “But I can take off now and then. I just felt like visiting.”

I was flattered, but it was odd. We talked and talked; he was full of new projects, the rent house, some antiques. That evening he took us to Cattlemen’s steakhouse. Afterward, he wanted to see the movie Irma la Douce, which was a sweet-hearted romantic comedy about a hooker.

Now it was getting late, and he’d always been early to bed. A country doctor might be called from sleep in the middle of the night, so sleep was husbanded as a precious resource. But not tonight. He wanted coffee. He wanted to talk, more talkative than I’ve ever seen him. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.

Finally I had to sleep. I gave him my bed, and sacked out on the old sofa from my grandmother’s farm. It seemed I’d just dozed off when Clang- bang! Already it was early morning, and he was clattering in the kitchen.

Breakfast. More coffee, more animated talk. As it happened, it was my days off, so I was free. But he seemed behaving oddly to me, so I slipped away to call my mother. She was on edge.

“Ohmigod!” she said. “He’d just vanished. Something’s wrong. He’s been acting strange, and he just took off!” We talked. She thought. She decided. She asked me whether I could keep him for a couple of days. “It’s serious,” she said. “He’s destroying his practice.” She wanted to talk it over with Uncle Doc, and please call her back tomorrow.

I said OK.

By the next afternoon, I was bedraggled, exhausted. He was running on some nervous energy I didn’t understand. We’d driven the Morgan all over town, looking at apartments and scenery. I called my mother, and confessed I couldn’t keep this up. He didn’t seem to sleep; it was difficult to keep him from wandering off.

She told me to take him to X. Hospital, for psychiatric examination.

“Are you serious?” I said.

She was.

I had no other bright ideas, and I was already starting to get mad at him. I agreed.

At first it was easy, driving around in the Morgan. I just headed out toward the place; I knew where it was. He did, too. Along the way he became suspicious, glancing at me sharply.

“Where are we going?” he demanded.

I told him. He looked off into the distance. I wondered whether he’d start wrestling with the wheel. He leaned back.

“You know,” he said, “Your mother and I have been very worried about you.” He went on in this vein. It now seemed that he was taking me to the hospital.

I had no trouble getting him to go in; he led the way. At the desk he said, “I’m here to commit my son.” And I said “I’m here to commit my stepfather.” The nurse looked from him to me and back again.

“Please have a seat,” she said.

We sat. My nerves were rattling like a tamborine. They called my stepfather into an office. I waited. I spotted a payphone and wrangled quarters. I called our house. My Uncle Doc answered. “Where are you?” he demanded.

“I’m at X. Hospital,” I said. “I told them I was here to commit him, and he told them he was here to commit me, and they don’t know who to believe.” I wanted Uncle Doc to call them and speak to them, but he was too quick.

“Keep him there!” he ordered, “We’re on our way!” The line went dead; he’d hung up.

The nurse came to escort me into the office. An ancient psychiatrist, a contemporary of Freud and Jung perhaps, sat behind a wide desk, writing notes using a lovely fountain pen, with a hand that trembled and shook uncontrollably. With a kindly grandfather air, he looked over his glasses at me.

“Just how long have you been taking this L.S.D.?” he asked me. The rest of our little chat persisted along these same lines.

For about a hundred years of silence in the waiting room, I stewed while my mother and Uncle Doc were driving to Dallas. In a flurry, they arrived. Within a few minutes I was given leave to depart. Depart I did.

Soon after, I moved from Dallas. I abandoned the lovely table and my grandmother’s beautiful sofa. My haste to leave was strong. I was in St. Louis when my stepfather left the hospital and returned to Henrietta, to resume his troubled practice.

In St. Louis, I worked at the railroad, and in a hotel. It was there that I received a phone call. My stepfather had died.

I didn’t go to the funeral. It was just too much.