Let’s Talk or – “Maybe you can just E-mail me”

The following discussion is semi-serious, so you may just want to skip it, although it is an attempt to set the stage for some of my attitudes and antiquated observations for later dissertations on the state of electronic communication and human relations.

This is something of an older generation’s observation on the wonderful world of electronic communication, as we know it today. Now, don’t get me wrong, I have a computer – actually three, multiple wireless telephones and wireless communication for my computational needs, such as they are, and two cell phones. Not that I know how to use all the stuff, but at least to indicate that I have it.

I have some technology knowledge and capability that spans approximately 40 years in the electronics industry – specifically 10 or more in the communications and the data products elements of those markets. This “knowledge is somewhat questionable and antiquated, according to my “curtain climbers” and many past employers. “My God, I can’t get no respect!

In the early days I was part of a team that started a communications company, and we had contacts with Don Ameche, Alex Bell and an Italian guy named Marconi. They were on our Board of Directors along with a couple of Cal graduates, which was two too many and one guy from Stanford name Dave something. The Stanford guy didn’t have any money but he and his partner let us use their garage. We had a small loan from the Bank of Italy and were close friends with an Irishman named Gianneni.

If you have no idea who Don Ameche was, then get on the web and it will tell you that he was an actor who played Alexander Graham Bell in his life story. (If you don’t know who Alexander Bell was, I will assure you that in the 13^th century or there about he conquered 90% of Europe. For you wine lovers, he was better known because he was ”round and purple” and went by what is better known as the name “Alexander the Grape.”  Bell supposedly discovered the telephone, but there are some Italians who would disagree. He formed the Bell Telephone company. Sound familiar? They were the first to develop the basic methods of how the various corporate entities could be allowed to screw up our communication system, as well as nail the consumer to the wall. “Watson! Come here. I need you!” Go figure that one out.

We had cornered the market for used tomato cans, thanks to our banking connection, and waxed string, which really got the attention of the venture capital groups. We submitted a business plan and the Cal guys jumped in, took the total offering, gave us $37.50 for 10% of the company and we were off and running. That was the only reason they were on the board, because they really wanted to protect their investment. The last of the big spenders. It might’ve been the same year they built their first football stadium, but they really didn’t have a team and I had to lend them an ax, which they didn’t return, and of course they have tried to keep ever since. But that’s a different story for later date.

If you have no clue what the hell I’m talking about, then go buy about 20 feet of string, put some wax on it or make it wet, drill a hole in a tomato can, or whatever, pass the string through the hole you drilled and tie a big knot on the string. You now have the rudimentary technological elements of the telephone and a land-line, which you can speak over. It won’t take any pictures, nor will it tweet nor text. There is no provisional answering machine. If you’re still lost, watch for Progresso Soup ads on TV, likely defined as “Ring–Ring.”

Some years ago, I was defined as something of a corporate troubleshooter, euphemistically known as “gunslinger” (Magnum 44 and all). I had to get involved in a company that was underperforming, also known as “on its fiscal and performance ass.” We had just let the CEO go to “find greener pastures” and my assignment was to try to define what some of the problems might be beyond the obvious – marketing, sales, costs, distribution and all that meaningless stuff. Notice I didn’t say engineering, because there’s never really any technical problem in that regard. HA!

After reviewing a number of major problems and issues over a couple of months, and more importantly, talking with what I like to call the working stiffs, I discovered a singular surprising lack of communication. Nobody knew what the hell was going on, what the goals and objectives were, how they were performing and most importantly, what they needed to do to improve. Ouch! Does that sound familiar?

I asked the ex-CEO’s senior administrative assistant (currently politically correct) to bring in the staff meeting minutes over the past three months. Her comment was “There aren’t any, because there weren’t any staff meetings.” Okay! There’s nothing wrong with that approach because I’m an advocate of the concept called MBWA (a.k.a. management by wandering around), which is more effective than sitting in your office with your fat ass waiting for the phone to ring. Plus, it makes you visible to all your fellow workers and gives them the opportunity to come up and tell you how screwed up things are, including you. As Blue-eyes had often commented, I really am weird because even then I got my own coffee, simply because I believed we paid these talented people too much to run around getting coffee for other people and besides, to me it was a little more than demeaning.

I worked closely with this long-time professional assistant, trying to determine how effectively the past CEO had communicated. She said “Rarely in person, mostly by e-mail!” I said “Say what?” and her reply was the same. “By e-mail.” I asked her, “What did he do all day?” Her comment was “I think he was working on long-term strategy.” My opinion at this point was that she had more brains and talent than the guy we fired.

I went to the trusty computer and discovered three months of communication between the various organizations, which struck me as being nothing other than “let’s cover our ass as best we can” and see what happens. I immediately called a meeting of the seven top executives of the company and started the conversation with “Let me introduce you people to each other because clearly you haven’t had a face-to-face meeting of this entire group for better than three months, maybe never and you may well have sunk this company as well as your future with our Corporation.” Three of these people fainted on the spot. I’m joking! Well not really, because in some instances my form of corrective action is to take the culprits to the back parking lot and shoot-em. But first I used to say “Okay punk, make my day!” Now I’m kidding!

The trusted assistant – well she stayed and ended up as the Vice President of HR, had a bunch of stock, and eventually retired with her husband to Hawaii where they started up a “shaved ice” thing in downtown Kona. I’m not kidding! She sent me a certificate guaranteeing that I could get all of the free shaved ice that I wanted for life, as long it was only once a day. Smart and talented lady.

This situation was the first indication I had of the negative and possibly dangerous aspects of electronic communications as an end-all versus face-to-face conversations. It is directly related to decision-making, team-building and a general understanding of each other as human beings. It can often be determined by such mundane and dumb things like body language, eye contact and overall physical reaction, like in make the bastard sweat… There are necessary concepts on subjects such as the “like or dislike” on an individual basis, as well as a collective basis, and a team can only determine this by working personally with each other. I know, you’re thinking what a bunch of pontification and BS.

I fired four of the seven vice presidents within the next two weeks. I found them totally incapable of verbal communication. We found a new president and the company doubled in size within the next six months. This was a major lesson for me, and one I did not hesitate to impart to our other corporate entities. Face-to-face and verbal communication is a necessary human event and extremely important for understanding each other, whether we agree or disagree on direction and objectives.

Moral of story – There used to be a cartoon character by the name of Pogo and one of his great comments was “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Hello, Can You Hear Me Now? I just hit a Dead Spot!

The dark side of this technology onslaught is we are losing or have lost our conversational capabilities. It would seem to me that conversation these days has been relegated to monosyllabic answers to a question, or with conversational attempts of two or more variations of grunts and tactile gestures, like gestures of a single finger, thumbs up, thumbs down or half of the peace symbol clearly indicating displeasure with whatever I might’ve asked! As an example, I recently ran into a friend while they were texting and said “Hey, how are you?” The response I got was “Ugg!” My assumption is that meant “not good,” and that ended the conversation. If we do lose the ability to verbally communicate, there is an upside that I really would be in favor of – it would shut up most of our politicians and certainly simplify the matter and manner of law by not allowing lawyers to talk.

I do know how to make a call, answer a call and turn the damn thing on and off, which is mostly off! Not too long ago I inadvertently switched the ring tone to vibration and scared the living hell out of myself. At first I thought it was some sexual experience, and then came to the conclusion that I was having an out of body experience involving an isolated earthquake. Blue-eyes fixed it for me with the unnecessary comment “Not only are you weird, but you’re getting old. Sex indeed!”

My kids and their kids are no exception to the current cultural phenomena that basically mandates everybody has to have a cell phone, or whatever the current technology is offering. I have a cell phone, but even now there are functions that I don’t understand, and quite frankly don’t care about and refuse to use. I guess that makes me a real dinosaur.

I still have the understanding that a “cell” is something that you can get slammed into if got caught perpetrating something illegal – unless you have a real good lawyer. If you go back to the Cold War, it was something that according to a lot of politicians the Communists had a whole bunch of in the US, but that’s history and you probably don’t have a hell of a lot of interest in that. Or maybe “cell” is something like issuing stock for a company on the public market that within the first 30 days loses 50% of its value. But what do I know?

I have a tough time getting and reading missed messages and frankly don’t really care because my attitude is that if it’s important whoever it was will call back. I can’t text, nor tweet. As hard as I try, I cannot take any pictures because this phone doesn’t have a camera capability. That’s how old this phone is. I got it while I was still working, but frankly felt that it was something of an invasion of privacy.

Case in point, I’m in the men’s room or whatever, to take a whiz and the damn phone goes off. I’m tempted to answer, telling the caller exactly what I’m doing and if it’s really necessary that we talk at this particular moment. The only reason I kept the cell phone was principally for emergencies or to call Blue-eyes while I was shopping for groceries or whatever to make certain that we didn’t forget something. She is very good at making thorough lists of what needed to be bought, but would consistently leave this exacting document on the kitchen counter. That, of course, always led to buying a bunch of stuff we didn’t need, but that was okay with me because otherwise I would have to run to the store, which I really hated.

When she got home, I would mention that she forgot her notes once again and this was usually a huge mistake. Blue-eyes had sliced a tendon in her middle finger some years before and didn’t realize that she’d done some permanent damage, which caused this finger to do a left oblique. This deformity gave her a very personalized signature gesture when she decided to flip me off. She thought this was hysterical, and I threatened to take a picture and show the curtain climbers some of the unique aspects of her personality. Her come back with something to the effect that I should keep in mind that she got half of everything and my half will be the remaining debt. This usually got my attention. But I digress…

I only use this ancient cell phone about 10 minutes a month and have accumulated 534 million rollover minutes or at least that’s what my carrier says. When I die, I intend to take it with me so that I can call the smart ass grand kids or whomever and continue to harass them, like I was still there. This is not just another hollow threat.

Moral of the story: Don’t denigrate a woman with a deformed middle finger. Also, use your cell phone minutes because there is not a heavenly repeater.

Can We Talk?

The wonderful world of electronics has advanced to the point where communication could soon be relegated to sign language – if we’re not already there! For sure, the concept of social networking is far superior than going to a bar and trying to meet people, but I think that still goes on, in that all you’re doing is sitting there texting. What few observations that I have of the current generation manipulating these various devices is often hilarious, however, I’m absolutely astounded at their tactile dexterity.

Sometimes I go up to a total stranger and ask some dumb question – just to screw up their texting or whatever it is they’re doing on their little social network devices. Most the time, I just get a blank stare. Very rarely do I get any kind of a verbal answer, and a majority of the time that is usually monosyllabic. I usually apologize by saying “I’m sorry, but I thought you were somebody else.” The potential problem here is if you were to ask them what time it is, they will either say “what?” or suggest that you look up that question on one of the networks, which of course, will give you the location of the most rudimentary instructions on how to build a clock.

It would seem to me that the last thing someone might want to do is sit and talk to a computer, addressing some unknown person in the never-never land of the Internet. I recently got an e-mail from one of these networking sites which said I had four friends that wanted to contact me. I knew right away this was just so much B.S., because I haven’t got four friends. Well, not that can write, anyway. It’s also like this on another site called Classmates, which say some of them are trying to find me. The only reason they’re trying to find me is more than likely that I owe them money. What’s the compounded annual rate on 10 bucks over 40 years? It’s a bunch of money, and I don’t want to know anyway.

Social networking and things like Zinga, Linked-in and Facebook, which I call “Dunga and Butt Book” to me are extremely frightening. I was very tempted to sign up, put a picture of Tom Selleck on my site and see what the hell happened. But, frankly the more I thought about it, the more I figured I would get close to 16 million inquiries. It didn’t make any sense to me unless I could convince each one of them to send me a dollar. As a second thought, I dug up the picture of Harpo Marx, thinking I would use that with the understanding that anybody who contacted me would have one hell of a sense of humor.

I do understand, however, that LinkedIn has some redeeming values relating really to professional networking. “Hey! You know where I get a job?” The others all seem to be very a successful marketing ploy to sell you something you wouldn’t think buying if you weren’t sitting there screwing around with your computer. Gee-whiz! There might be some money in this business and maybe if we were talented enough, we could take it public and make a gazillion dollars! Does that sound familiar? Yeah, and you could also hit the wall at Mach 2.

The rest of the concept, although intriguing, seems to me to be somewhat dangerous and clearly personally intrusive. I worry about what these various sites are doing with all the data that they’re collecting, and how much more potential junk e-mail we might expect to see. If you can’t talk to somebody other than texting or tweeting, then I guess this is your last resort. If you try talking, you may find a rewarding situation – far more rewarding than the social networking that you could ever possibly achieve using these impersonal electronic devices. Some people are naïve enough to think that the whole world out there thinks the same way that they do. Believe me – during my short tenure on this earth and exposure to people, you never know what the hell is in the back of their mind.

My attitude then and continues to be 90% positive, until you show me that 10% negative. Unfortunately, sometimes that occurs too late to remedy. So the concept of social networking, albeit intriguing has to be done with a thorough understanding that there are certain intrinsic dangers. It’s not clear to me that this current fad will last much longer than the CB radio (“Breaker Breaker – Rocker Babe! – watts-cher 20?”), nor will it be around in the next two or three years with its current popularity, but there is no question we will have opened up social mores which will exist with or without electronic social networking. Moderation and caution are the key elements of utilizing what is an extremely positive advance in social communication and understanding. The ability to instantly communicate has prospects of forestalling international misunderstandings, but at same time can be used, such as by terrorists, to create unconditional havoc on a worldwide basis. My attitude is that with the good of any new invention or situation, there is always the bad that must be dealt with and resolved.

The moral of the story – Keep your eyes open, your hand on your wallet or purse, your mouth shut, and try not to run into a fire hydrant or a telephone pole while you’re networking.

So Easy a Child Could Do It

Please read on, because this is probably the only semi–serious comment I’m going to make about the topic of verbal communication, but I do so to indicate that I don’t take this subject lightly. I am extremely concerned about forthcoming generations ability to verbally express themselves and capture the essence of life as it may relate to potential literary and artistic endeavors. The fear is, where’s the next generation of really outstanding writers and artists, who can compete with previous giants and maybe qualified as possible Nobel Laureates or Masters of the Classics, without life’s important method of verbal communication, called “Gee, let’s talk!”

I have to admit that I have no clue as to how some of this new electronic stuff works, including the various and sundry remote controls for my TV, my TiVo or my DVR. I have the skill set that allows me to turn this stuff on and off, change channels, record programs etc. etc. I am not one that is really interested in sitting down and reading a user’s manual the size of a small novel, which in the final analysis does not do much more than confuse the living hell out of me. However, I have been able to muddle through this morass of information and am perfectly content with my present, albeit less than average skill sets.

It is rather disconcerting however, when my grandchildren come in and have the tactile dexterity and immediate comprehension of the most complex elements of utilizing the various controllers associated with the television, telephone, computer and all other accouterments such as the DVR and TiVo. Every time they mess around with my system it takes me hours to reset this thing back to the simplistic moronic utilization that I previously enjoyed.

Alas, I am a graduate engineer with years of experience in electronics and feel totally inadequate and useless having to call a nine-year-old to find out how to do something, or should I say undo something that was generated during their last visit. We now have a rule that says “nobody adjusts anything to anything without JJ’s approval and that all this equipment should be returned to its marginally functional state as JJ has prescribed because he’s not smart enough to figure out what the hell the nine year old did.”

One of the more recent humiliating events was during a visit of this latest generation. I was attempting to make some adjustments to the “TiVo” box with very little success and my 12-year-old grandchild came in and said “What you doing Papa?” My first thought was, well this could be interesting as a learning experience for this budding genius, meaning the kid not me. Again, I explained what I was certain were in layman terms what I was trying to accomplish and even had the instruction book, an oxymoron, sitting on the table, which shows you how frustrated I was because I only use these as a last resort. Maybe that’s my problem.

The only response I got from the diminutive whiz kid was “Oh.” This prompted me to try to explain in further childlike detail what the issue was. I had set the remote control on the coffee table and this obnoxious offspring of one of my children (whom I am absolutely convinced were switched at birth with some other less cogent parents or possibly something I could blame on the milkman, if we ever had a milkman, which we didn’t) came over, picked it up and inside of a minute or maybe even less had resolved the issue. He put the remote down and picked up his iPad, or whatever, and I’m sure was texting one of his friends that “he had a total idiot for grandfather.”

Three weeks back, I went downtown and decided I needed a caffeine hit, so I went into one of the specialty coffee shops and gave them my order. I sat down next to a young mother, and I’m guessing maybe a nine- or 10-year-old little girl. She was playing on one of these electronic gadgets, and her mother was attempting to use her cell phone. I overheard this young mother make a statement that she was having trouble with her cell phone. The nine-year-old looked up and said “We may not be near cell tower.” At this point, I did in fact eavesdrop with some amazement and curiosity as to what Mom would say. She said “But I just made a call!” The nine-year-old put out her hand and asked her Mom for the phone, did something I couldn’t see and handed it back to Mom. Mom proceeded to dial, talking to whoever she contacted and I sat there thinking whatever happened to Walt Disney and “it’s a wide, wide world.”

My concern is that when somebody’s youngsters ask questions like “Hey, where do babies come from?” The recipient will say something to the effect “Why don’t you get on your iPad!” Maybe we have put dear old Dr. Spock out of business. If you don’t know who Dr. Spock was, you get my general answer – get on the web or your iPad and ask Apple.

Speaking of Apple, it used to be that an Apple was something that you took a bite out of, rather than the Apple taking a bite out of you. Apples were usually grown on a tree somewhere in the United States and not necessarily China. I guess we put “Johnny Appleseed” as well as Dr. Spock out of work – as well as a bunch of us. To enlighten you, Dr. Spock wrote a book many years ago on how to raise a child, and Johnny Appleseed is at least a 250-year-old folk tale about a guy spreading his seeds throughout the United States. Keep it clean, it was Apple seeds, anf he was trying to grow Apples. His name was not Jobs nor Woz, like in the Woz-ard of Oz. “We’re off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Woz.”

The other aspect of this cultural and social communications revolution is by definition, jobs are something that better than 18% of Americans are looking for. Maybe we should all go to China, as that would certainly solve our federal fiscal issues. I don’t believe they have anything defined as mandates. Everything is a mandate! But I digress.

Years ago Blue-eyes had taught our kids a song by Harry Belafonte called, “Mama, look at Boo-Boo” (if you don’t know this one, hit the web for full disclosure and even less intellectual stimulation”), and I think my kids are teaching that to their kids with reference to their grandfather. I got even with all of them the next day however, when I called my lawyer and took them all out of the will, with the completely rational statement that “the whole world hates smart asses!” It’s really okay, and I’m not being mean because all they would’ve inherited would’ve been a bunch of debt anyway.

Moral of the story – Don’t teach your kids a song that they later invest in your grandchildren, and buy Dr. Spock’s book – you may have missed something!

Look Where We’re Going!

Here I am, one early Saturday afternoon driving down the freeway, headed for one of those big box stores because they’re having a sale on fertilizer. Four dollars a bag for 40 pounds of B.S. Five bucks for a 50 pound of Chicken Stuff. I cleaned that up to keep my PG-13 rating. There’s something wrong with this picture. All that to grow tomatoes and vegetables that the deer and damn squirrels consume. I know, you literary types or English majors are saying “that is a fragmented sentence.” I don’t care! I have a fragmented brain.

Anyway, I’m cruising along, doing about 65 mph in my Ford 150. (Made in Canada, but got a “fed loan” to save our auto industry. What Province in Canada is Detroit in? Say what?) Three or four cars passed me, and I glanced over and I see each driver on the cell phone yakking away or texting. In one case, a guy is lighting a cigarette as well, and in another, the gal is brushing her hair. So what the hell are they steering with? The only thing I can think of is their knees. Now this is Saturday, so it really is not business or something urgent, which is no excuse, and is likely to be strictly social. In my state, we have a hands-free law, but I’m beginning to think that means the driver doesn’t necessarily have to hold onto the steering wheel.

I’m not sure what the hands-free law says, but I do know that it says you’re not supposed to text or talk on a cell phone while driving. The alternative is to have a headset, I guess it’s called Bluetooth. My definition of Bluetooth is that it’s usually something you get after getting hit the mouth or your dentist kills most of the nerves in one of your molars. The problem with these headsets is that if you’re the listener it sounds like caller is talking from the bottom of a barrel. They fade in and out, and half the time I can’t understand what they’re saying and I have to keep asking them to repeat. This gets a little frustrating because what we have are disjointed conversations and it’s highly possible that I’ve missed something important and don’t even know it.

I guess cell phones can get distracting. A few months ago I was driving in a residential area and came to a stop sign behind an SUV. I sat there for a minute and the SUV did not move, even though there was no other traffic and the stop sign makes no sense anyway. I thought possibly the car was having some trouble and then I noticed a lady apparently talking on her cell phone. Being the polite and patient person that I waited for a minute or two for this lady get it in gear, so to speak. Nothing happened! Clearly, she was a oblivious to the fact that there was a car sitting behind her. I have a real polite horn and I beeped it. The next thing I know is the door to the SUV opens up and out pops the lady, phone still in hand. She walks up to my car and kicks it in the left front tire. She went back to her expensive SUV and left. I I laughed all the way home.

The other scary thing is a few weeks ago I was at the grocery store trying to figure out what kind of meat I wanted to have for dinner. There was a young lady next to me talking and I turned my head and said “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand.” She gave me a look like I was a dirty old man, maybe hitting on her, and then I noticed this black thing hung on her ear and a small microphone. I should’ve flashed her, but I wasn’t wearing my raincoat. I suspect she was calling home to find out what was needed for dinner. Had she been as organized as Blue-eyes, she would’ve made a list, but based on my immediate evaluation of this lady I decided that she either would’ve forgotten it or couldn’t write.  People that wear those funny little ear things should be concerned about two things: first — having a permanently deformed ear, and the other — trying to figure out what all that low-level RF is doing to their brain.

I find the various cell phone carriers names rather interesting. As an example, Sprint is a track/field term – usually not more than 100 yards. Com-cast in my mind is a flyfishing term. Exfinity was uttered by Cmdr. Buzz in Toy Story number one. “Exfinity and beyond.” No, I’m wrong! That was “Infinity and Beyond.” The only one that got it right was AT&T and U-verse. That one suggests that if you have a problem it’s “YOU-Versus AT&T.”

From a social perspective, I’m beginning to wonder where our society is going. As an example, when I go downtown to the local specialized coffee boutique in order to get my normal double latte, decaf, with non-lactose, nondairy mixture and Sage-produced honey only (256 different blends), I am amazed that everyone in the store is either talking on a cell phone or texting, or doing something with their pocket-sized computer or whatever. Where one would normally expect conversations, there is nothing but silence. Sometimes, I sit outside watching people walking down the street texting or talking on the phone and running into other people talking or texting on their cell phone, who have just run into a light pole or a fire hydrant or crossing the street, knocking down to little old ladies from Pasadena and causing a five car pileup.

I noticed two or three people, clearly together for coffee, all texting or whatever. I sit there and wonder – are they texting each other? I suspect they are! The thing I’m fascinated by is these people taking their cell phones, snapping a picture and then showing the picture to the other person. I have come to the conclusion that the only reason they do that is to prove that they were both at the same place at the same time, because clearly since they haven’t been talking to each other, without this evidence they would never have known that the other person was there.

Now, I have to confess, obviously I blog. It’s a habit like smoking or drinking, but I haven’t found any clinically introduced medical or non-medical solutions, other than possibly smoking a “joint,” which I think would only add to this abstraction. But I am willing to try. Talk to your local law enforcement agency to determine if you’re safe from federal prosecution state prosecution, local prosecution or possibly intergalactic prosecution. Until introduced to blogging (not pot, although I suspect I could’ve been), provided by one of my over-educated children, I thought a blog and blogging was something out of a science fiction novel. Like maybe Tron or Dune or whatever. “I saw this massive creature creeping toward me with six legs and 14 arms and a huge blog.” You should assume that the blog was some kind of space creature’s appendage. Keep it clean!

I sure as hell would not use my real name, for obvious reasons. Don’t think for one minute that I am a social misfit, totally against scientific advancement. Unfortunately, I helped create it, but I’m beginning to wonder if I should change my name to Dr. Frankenstein along with the rest of our generation of technical nerdy groupies. I know! You younger folks think us older folks have a tough time accepting change. Don’t underestimate the over-60 group. Keep in mind, we set the stage for this massive potential set of technological tools.

Moral of the story – There is no moral, just an observation. One of the more enlightened statements made by Adlai Stevenson was “television is a vast wasteland,” and he said it in 1960 prior to running for president.  I wonder what he would say about today’s Internet?

To Tweet or not to Tweet? That is the Question.

Tweet or tweeting, in my mind and to this day, has always been something associated with birds or a cartoon character that is constantly being chase by this cat (as in feline, not like in ”hep–cat,” which really dates me). This bird character should probably file a lawsuit, because his name was “Tweety Bird!” It’s hard to believe the bird was smarter than that cat, named Nigel.

I caught a “snipe” once, which is the avian female of the Skype family and turned it in to the Humane Society, knowing that our government had recently put them on the endangered species list. For those of you that don’t know, a “snipe” is a non-existent creature. Its origin is from a practical joke done by kids and sometimes questionable adults.

The concept was to take a non-suspecting person and say “Let’s go snipe hunting, you can hold the bag.” It begins with your friends giving you a bag and saying “You stand here. We’ll go chase Snipes and they’ll run into the bag.” If you’re naïve enough, you do it, and they take off – with you assuming they’re chasing snipes. About an hour later you may realize that you’ve been had, unless you’re like me – a trusting soul who stood there for a long time. Humiliation personified! I got even, though. I told them I caught four, and we had them for dinner. They looked at me like I was really “weird.” I think that’s where the phrase “You’ve been left holding the bag” may have come from. Now, I’ll bet you’re sure glad I mentioned this!

Texting is a great tool and allows you to say things that you would not normally say to someone if they were standing in front of you. Don’t get me wrong, I think it is extremely valuable but at the same time cannot replace face-to-face verbal communication. If you’re not a good writer, texting is perhaps something you want to think about before using. But it has some tremendous advantages in speeding up certain kinds of communication.

Now, I have to admit I don’t text nor tweet because, one – my cell phone is too old; and two – so am I. Every time I try to do this my cell phone screen says “No service available you idiot!” I further thought texting was something associated with education, which I successfully avoided in college, as well as going to class. Supposedly, this was a necessary part of books.

Perhaps texting was associated with one of our larger states and was part of the rules that had to do with “cow pie” tossing contests. This part is no joke. I recently saw on the news that in Wisconsin and elsewhere, this national contest had to be postponed because of a lack of “raw material,” and that the sponsors had to dip into the reserve of dried steer droppings. Why anybody would save cow poop is beyond me, but to run out seems to be an unforgivable oversight, and complete mismanagement on the part of the contest management. I guess one of the questions that I would ask, were I running this organization, would have been “How high did you pile the BS and who in Wall Street did you send it to?”

Good Lord, if they thought about it and they ran out of BS, all they had to do was go to Washington. There has to be plenty of BS leftover and available on both sides of the so-called legislative aisle, and likely a lot more at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. I cleaned that up for you who are pure of thought and of body in order to maintain my PG-13 federal rating – which is unfortunately not available nor required on a blog entry, if you note all of the four letter words polluting some other literary blog attempts.

The First Amendment is something I advocate, however you have to keep in mind where this came from. It’s called the Constitution, which in my humble opinion, has been a little twisted lately. A fellow from ancient history, who was something of a humorist and comedian, made a comment: “When I make a joke, it’s supposed to be funny! When Congress makes a joke, it’s the law!” That was one of many utterances of a rather famous cowboy by the name of Will Rodgers during a time we were able to joke about ourselves and politics. Back then, the” tea party” was something that little girls and boys had before they became of the age where they could tweet or twitter without their parents interfering.

Now, a good thing. My curtain climbers have mandated a limit on just how much time their curtain climbers can spend manipulating their tweeting or texting, or whatever, as well as those mind-bending kids games, like crashing stolen cars, killing cops, combat robots killing off our enemies, let’s dismember the next-door neighbor and ship the remains to Venezuela or God knows what else. These games are clearly playing a less than positive role model for the users, aren’t they? But our government leads us to believe that it has really established strong controls over the content, distribution and sales. They have assured us that PG-13 really is being enforced and that is that! Just like the importation of Cuban cigars. First Amendment notwithstanding, it seems to me that the only real enforcement is at home! But I digress!

Moral of the story – If you do catch a snipe, keep it to yourself. They’re best cooked with salt and pepper over an open Bar-B-Q!