Digressions of a Dilettante

Digressions of a Dilettante
Vignettes of Inanity by Bud Hearn

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Shoes...Shed 'em at the Back Door, Please!

Shoes…
Shed ‘em at the Back Door, Please!


We have a Rule at our house about street shoes: Shuck ‘em and shed ‘em at the back door! So, there they are, six pairs of shoes lying lifeless in the wicker basket in the back foyer, waitin’ for tomorrow.

It was not always that way, of course. The Rule was initiated some years ago by our daughter, Leslie, who is somewhat obsessive about certain things. While she will preserve the life of spiders, lady bugs and other small creatures, capturing them and turning them loose outside, she is ruthless with dust and grime. I suspect her floors would pass muster with St. Peter and assure her entrance into Heaven.

But like all new habits, parading around the house in bare feet took some getting used to, not to mention the embarrassment of explaining to visitors that unless they removed their shoes we’d have to do our visiting through the screen door, so to speak. But after several stern lectures and demonstrations of exactly what clung to the soles of shoes, and with no loss of friends, we capitulated. This was brought vividly to mind recently on our trip to China.

Get this picture: Here we are, tired after a day of touring, and Martha is sitting there on the bus exhausted, massaging her foot…with her shoe on, clearly oblivious to the gooey gook that covered the bottom of it. “Martha, WHAT are you doing? Can’t you see what’s on your shoe,” I shouted? Realizing what she was doing, she recoiled, “Oh, Yuck, look at that slimy goop dripping from my shoe,” frantically grabbing handfuls of Wet Wipes and scrubbing her hands and feet mercilessly. And parenthetically speaking, we mostly avoided contact with Martha for quite a while afterwards!

Now, reflect for a moment and you will see the wisdom of the slight inconvenience of leaving your shoes at the back door. Why, just think of where your shoes have walked on any given day. Imagine, as my daughter pointed out, the creepy-crawly germs and pathogens that find their way from shoe soles into your fine silk rugs and wool carpets. Imagine them clinging to your feet and crawling up your body as you get into bed, or to the animals that sleep with you? Can you get that picture? You will soon become the perfect host…and your home the perfect habitat and filthy incubator of these deadly microbes (well, sometimes I may exaggerate).

Hogwash, you say…but before you dismiss this idea as sheer lunacy, consider some its advantages:

• Bare feet return us to childhood, which in these times some escapism is a good thing…what child ever worried about the stock market or who got elected to anything?
• Your poor feet will say “Thanks” for letting them breathe fresh air for awhile…”fresh air,” you say? Yeah, just take a whiff of the inside of any of your shoes and you’ll know about “fresh air!”
• Then there’s always the freedom of propping your feet on any of the furniture, tables or counters with impunity and without fear of contamination or hearing that dreaded admonition from you-know-who, “GET your feet off that!”

And the list goes on and on…

There may be some symbolic meaning hidden within this inane vignette for you philosophic types who like to dig into the esoteric meandering of such minds as mine. Go ahead, have at it, but I offer this obvious tip: The Shoe Rule offers us the daily opportunity to leave some of the world’s crud at the back door when we get home, and I don’t know about you, but as for me I like to shake today’s contaminated cruddy dust off of my feet and leave it outside…it’ll be there tomorrow when I put the shoes back on!

So, “Shuck ‘em, Shed ‘em and Park ‘em at the back door…they won’t leave home without you!

Bud
October 30, 2008

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Stuff Happens...Call Joe the Plumber

Stuff Happens…
Call Joe the Plumber


I knew all along you could not be trusted with money.

I go to China for a few weeks and look what happened…you let the markets sink, credit seize up and $9 trillion of wealth leak out. It must have been one hell of a party you had. The whole plumbing system is now stopped up, and leaks are spurting everywhere in the house and yard! What did you put down the drains? Now we have to call Joe the Plumber to get things fixed.

I called Joe, but he was busy explaining his dilemma to Barack, and like all the other plumbers, he “promised” to get by as soon as he could ~ as soon as his celebrity status ended. You know Joe, the Toledo Pretender…claimed he was a Master Plumber, but was nothing more than an apprentice. “Not to worry,” he advised…”try the old remedies first, then call me back.”

You know these: Infusion, Ingestion and Intrusion. “Infuse” the system with excessive amounts of that caustic chemical Drain-O and watch the toxic poisons bubble out and fill the air with poisonous gases. Didn’t work, Joe.

OK,” he said, “now try ‘Ingesting’ Rid-X into the sewer lines.” Did that, and while the septic caldron boiled and rumbled, the problem persisted. Panic now…. “Joe, Help, our options are running out, and we have another party scheduled.” Not to worry.

Finally… here comes Joe, driving a used Brinks truck, and toting a large Roto Rooter with a camera attached. Drastic measures are at hand with a Roto Rooter…some of you have had that experience, I suspect. Well, grinding and grating ensued, and the breakthrough began. The camera inserted into the system reveals the problems clearly, and we now see where the leaks are. Whew, things will soon flow again…maybe we can have another party soon! Thanks, Joe!

Now, Joe the Plumber comes from a long line of venerable leak-pluggers. Originally, plumbers were experts with the use of molten lead to plug leaky cracks. Lately, the financial system has taken to alchemizing lead into gold, but as we’ve seen, it was lead all along, and the pipes wouldn’t hold the pressure of the system-overload. And come to find out, the financiers were not really licensed plumbers either, just apprentices overloading the system, having fun at the party.

We can trust our political leaders to stop leaks, right? Well, before you put too much stock in these solutions, remember President Nixon’s “Watergate Seven Plumbers” who attempted to plug the media pipes…remember that spectacle? Sorry…keep Joe’s number handy.

Want a perspective? This week was the birthday of Dr. Timothy Leary, leader of the League of Spiritual Discovery (“LSD” for the illiterati). He was jailed for experimentation with hallucinogens and psychedelics long before they became popular. Wall Street has now hooked Main Street into experimenting with these financial hallucinogens for the last 15 years or so, better termed “Magical Thinking.” Well, Good Morning, America…the hangover is just beginning, and no “morning-after” pill will eliminate the debauchery of this party. Reality has set in ~ the drug-induced state of the last several years is now an ugly past.

Infusion, Ingesting and Intrusion…thanks to Hank, the Treasury Department Plumber, we may yet get the system unclogged, the leaks repaired and the house in order for another party.

Unfortunately, the bill has arrived…and like Joe’s invoice, it is more than we can pay. No, the party will have to wait, but in the meantime, we can certainly live on the memories of the bacchanalian excesses we’ve had. And I hope that one day we may again say, “Let the good times roll.”

Bud
October 23, 2008

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Living in Slang...Part II

Friends:

Living in Slang…
Part II


Well, since news travels a day faster in China, I knew that the Senate would finally cave in and “rip off” the American public again. So “what’s new?” And not that there’s not some more juicy news out there, like the Palin/Biden debate, which would be the better of choices for this week’s “advance” Friday Forum newsletter. At the barber shop one can get all one needs to know about nearly anything, and I got an “ear-full” as Donna chopped off my hair for the Chinese Idol show I’ve applied for. And the topic du jour was not golf, at is usually is, but politics. So, here are a few “tid-bits” for you to “chow down on” in my absence.

The “good old boy” network of pundits and handlers of the VP candidates have been busy working on the debate format and “gum up the works” by idiotic questions. The barbershop pundits decided that Palin should declare “bring it on” and “let her rip” as she takes out her skinning knife and pounds it into the podium. Biden would then begin to “laugh out of the other side of his mouth” as he tried to calm the cheering male crowd who knows that “if worst comes to worst,” Palin “would have the upper hand” in the fight.

Of course, the Feminist Movement is “hard as nails” and will soon “go to hell in a hand basket” if Palin becomes VP, which would make things “as funny as a crutch” and as “serious as a heart attack” to their “fools paradise” of world domination and control by peaceful means. It would be the final “nail in the coffin” of the flawed concept of “last man out “ideology they’ve been trying to “feather their nest with.”

The “matter of life and death” knife-in-the-podium concept “has legs,” since the years have been “few and far between” since such debating techniques occurred…duels were the “fair and square” way of “meeting one’s Waterloo” and settling divisive issues between contestants, like “public hanging” was with its propensity to attract crowds. I am not saying that barbershop discussions are the “be all, end all,” but it does “pack a wallop” and require contestants to “put up your dukes”

Of course, I don’t want to “rub salt in the wound” of Biden, a diminutive man of mind and stature, but he should be made to “put up or shut up” to the challenge. It would certainly “bring down the curtain” if he did and “pass the buck” to others to “fill the bill.” Or is that “fill the Bill,” a payback to the Clintons for their “grace and charm” in it all.

Enough of this inane slang and idiomatic idioms by an idiot. But at least I am “open and aboveboard” about things, and having “one foot in the grave” helps. And I’m not interested in “buying another pig in a poke,” nor am I “the pot calling the kettle black” kind of fellow. In conclusion, I have “passed the point of no return,” so I’ll “save face” by ending. Just “put this in your pipe and smoke it,” but don’t inhale!

Bud
October 16, 2008

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Living in Slang....Part I

Friends:

Living in Slang...
Part I


We live in a culture of idiomatic sayings, and sometimes it's interesting to take a number of these idioms and slang expressions, cobble them together with some current event, and come up with a coherent utterance. At least it is interesting to the bored and A-type nuts who find little opportunity in real estate these days. So, I've taken the credit crisis and come up with a few expressions that might serve to edify, or at least confuse, aliens from another planet or country. Try these on...

Finally the "moment of truth" has arrived, and our leaders have shown themselves impotent...but we knew that already, and it's "business as usual," whereby the bailout "deal on a napkin" has now morphed into a 400-plus document that attempts to solve the "whole kit and caboodle" of everybody's needs.

Of course, we're all being asked to "swallow our pride" as our future as a viable empire "hangs in the balance". The "flash-in-the-pan fat cats" have made off with billions, and "hung us out to dry” while they figured us for "easy pickens", saturated with "egg on our faces" for being so gullible. What nerve, to ask us to "hang in there?"

But "misery loves company," and there is certainly plenty of company to go around while "the fat is in the fire." Since lately "no news is good news," the leaders have assured us that we have "dodged the bullet" of the dire consequences of "the eleventh hour," and we should have no "bone to pick" with them when this is over.

Of course, we fell "so head over heels" for their "dirty tricks" as they "pulled the wool over our eyes" we are barely "hanging by a thread" and can now read clearly "the handwriting on the wall." The shifty Wall Streeters "ran circles around us," and about all the power we have is to be able to "run off at the mouth" and "eat humble pie" until the sorry mess has "run its course."

Well, you can "eat your heart out" if you sold Wachovia in time, but for the rest of us, we will soon "have to pay the piper" for being "penny wise and pound foolish." With "other things being equal, “it seems to be an "open-and-shut-case" of serious criminal behavior, and I hope they "throw the book at” the "movers and shakers" and "eat their lunch" while they still have some.

Well, in conclusion, and to "make a long story short," I guess we'll have to "make the best of a bad situation" and "make some hay while the sun still shines." So, "make no bones about it," my friends, I'm clearly "the low man on the totem pole" here, and while I'm getting pretty "long in the tooth," I intend to continue to "live dangerously". And now, the "long and short of it" having been said, I'm going to "lay low for awhile" and in the process, be certain to "let no grass grow under my feet."

See you soon, while I have "one more for the road..."scotch, that is, single malt, and a double ! Greetings from China.

Bud
October 9, 2008

Thursday, October 2, 2008

The Windsock...Nature's Warning Device

Friends:

The Windsock...
Nature’s Warning Device


“The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind, The answer is blowin' in the wind."
Bob Dylan

The Windsock... a simple but infallible indicator of wind direction and relative wind speed. It was imported from Japan and China and today hangs in the center of airfields. On an airfield, it is actually more practical than symbolic, but it does have symbolic application. It is unwise to ignore its advice…do so at your own peril.

So again, we’re importing helpful means from abroad to solve our dilemmas. Today’s dilemma? Funding a $700 billion solution to our credit crisis.

From the hangar office I can see it, and often metaphoricalize the windsock. I'm trying to do that as I attempt to digest the declension of our Empire that is requiring the massive $700 billion bailout of banking systems…hard to tell which way the wind is blowing just now, or how it will blow when this whirlwind has moved on ...as it will. The picture in my mind is of the devastation of Ike, the wind that just blew through Texas.

Smiling faces dominated the scene at Saturday's midnight announcement that an agreement in principle has been arrived at...I wondered what they were smiling for, in scorn or in mockery of the folks...us...who would be financing this method of relief. But there they were, hovering around Barney, flanked by Nancy, shadowed by Harry and lesser "Pillars of Principles" in the background for "show of support." I wondered on which runway they were landing this transport plane laden with pallets of freshly-minted cash, and if they were actually paying attention to the windsock of public opinion...apparently not.

It was, after all, the "Bush Plan..." Bush, that Master-Windsock Reader of all time. I think I saw a news clip of him once on the White House lawn, licking his index finger and thrusting it into the air, ostensibly to determine the wind direction of that moment. Could this be more of the same? Time will tell. Of course, we've all licked our index finger too, but less to determine the wind direction than to get the last little bit of fried chicken onto the taste buds.

I walked onto my deck recently amid the credit turmoil and did the lick-trick, and viola, I got an immediate answer...Go To China, the wind said. Heeding the wind direction, I immediately booked the trip to see for myself just where this bailout cash was coming from. So, off I go to the Orient for a couple of weeks, following the route of that master windsocker, Marco Polo--and wearing my Polo shirt, “Made in China,” as confirmation to the Immigration authorities of my appreciation of their efforts.

No doubt we’re in a serious mess. The wind will blow where it will blow, but I plan to leave a favorable impression on the beneficent Chinese while I’m there… hoping that our cyclone has passed on my return. And I plan to return ~ laden, I'm sure, with Treasures from Hong Kong and bills from Visa. And if the pawn shops and the main-street loan shops aren't closed when I return, I will pawn this stuff off and profit from my experience...hope to soon see “Made in America” again.


Bud
October 2, 2008