You call this stuff writing!

By Joe Walther

 

Last night I found a folder. Inside was a paper that I had written forty-one years ago. In 1966, during a brief medical reprieve from duty in Vietnam, I decided to kill a couple of months by taking a formal journalism course at a small liberal arts college then named California Western University located at Point Loma, California.

 

            On the first day of class—there were only twenty students registered—the professor, Dr. Archibald, told us that his job was to “mold us mud piles into writers.” He then gave the class what he called an “assessment” assignment. Each of us had to write a 1,500-word editorial piece on why we decided to take a formal journalism course.

 

            Many wounded Vietnam veterans went through rehabilitation in San Diego, California. I was one of them. A Washington Post reporter had risked his life back in those jungles to pull me to safety. This is what piqued my interests in journalism. I enrolled in this course as a positive way to pass the 4-months before returning to Vietnam. I figured that I could write this paper without any effort at all. Little did I know.

 

            I finished my piece the day before the deadline. I saved every draft. The finished piece would surely get me nominated for a Pulitzer. It clearly answered the questions: what, who, when, why, where, and how. It possessed the perfect mix of fact and emotion. Besides, most of the others in the class were inexperienced: mere longhaired, pimply-faced, undergraduates. Freshmen and sophomores at that! I, on the other hand, was a mature combat veteran of twenty-four. I could not miss on this one.

 

            Dr. Archibald returned the graded assignments the first class after we turned them in. I hate to admit this, but I had completely missed a minor flaw in Professor Archibald’s personality. Apparently, Professor Archibald was an asshole!

 

            Not one paper received a passing grade. In fact, every paper had a handwritten note at the top, IN RED, “An F is too good a grade for this garbage!” Now, I could certainly understand the way he felt relative to the other students in the course. After all, they were pot-smoking dweebs who could barely read the funnies. None of them had ever been outside of California, let alone outside of the United States.

 

            But ME? What about my Pulitzer? Who did this jerk think he was dealing with? I distinctly remember my mother telling me what a good writer I was. And had Father Spragg, my high school English teacher, lied to me. I think NOT!

 

            I estimated the amount of red ink used for the seemingly endless litany of critical remarks, written on MY paper alone, at around two and a half gallons. The good professor made no bones about the fact that he would not tolerate sloppy organization, misspellings, poor punctuation, and a total disregard for grammatical integrity. It was also quite clear that he was not going to let any of us baffle him with bullshit, either. Oh, boy, did he ever make that point crystal clear.

 

            He was looking right at me as he spoke. The veins in his forehead bulged as his rage intensified. He reached over my desk, grabbed my paper, and began to read random sections—sarcasm oozing from his mocking voice. “It has been said that journalists represent a nation’s social conscience…,” he droned. Then, as some bile, drooling from his mouth started to drip from his chin, he hissed, “Where did you get this crap? Not only is it CRAP, it’s sickening. In passive voice, too! Only idiots write in passive voice.”

 

            His gaze had turned to a strained glare by now. It looked as though blood had begun welling up in his eye sockets. He seemed to squint and his voice was giving out. His face reeked with disgust. Looking me in the eyes, he wondered aloud as to how I was able to breathe on my own. He questioned whether my parents knew that I was not in my room. He told the rest of the class that society should shun a person who writes like this because they present a boring menace to society. “This is awful stuff. All of you stink,” he shouted and stomped out of the room.

 

            Most of the others in the class just stared off into space waiting for him to return, except for Stanley, who was still taking notes. Enthusiastically, too! I wasn’t sure how I felt. Part of me wanted to slink out of the room and die quickly. Another part of me wanted to grab and choke the hell out this self-aggrandizing twit. Anyway, we all waited for him to return. Only, he didn’t return, so we all left… that is, all of us but Stanley, who was still taking notes.

 

            The next week, the class roster had shrunk to nine students, including Stanley, who was still taking notes. In fact, I’m not sure that he had ever left from the week before. Anyway, Dr. Archibald, upon entering the room, looked at us and declared. “Ah, this is a much more manageable number.” There was no sarcasm in his voice and his demeanor was quite jovial.

 

            “Mr. Fugere—Stanley’s last name—stop writing and listen. You may learn something.” The atmosphere in the room was much more relaxed, too. It appeared as though the “Mr. Hyde potion had worn off. Looking at me, he said, “Dr. Walther, (He called me Dr. throughout the entire semester.) I don’t know if you can write, but I’m sure that you want to try and that’s good enough for me.” All nine of us finished his course with passing grades.

 

            Dr. Archibald is long dead. But, as I reread that 41-year old paper, I found myself reflecting on all of that red ink. Soon, I was in a rage, bile drooling down my chin. My eyeballs began to bulge out of their sockets as the blood oozed in. The veins in my temples were throbbing and I caught myself hissing, “This isn’t writing. It’s maudlin, unmitigated garbage. If I had a student hand this into me, I’d flunk the dork out of the human race!”

 

            Sweet dreams, Professor Archibald, and THANKS. Of course, writing teachers can no longer  treat students the way Dr. Archibald did without getting their butts sued off. On the other hand, I don’t think he would have cared. We need more Professor Archibalds.

 

See you all next week.

 

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Send your comments. Just click here.

Does Masturbation Really Cause Blindness?

 

 

By Joe Walther

 

This has been a perpetually controversial idiom for eons. The good nuns from decades ago told us boys, emphatically, that it did. However, as we get older, things tend to get a bit more complicated. As I type this, the scientific evidence overwhelmingly tells us that it does not. In fairness, though, and paraphrasing something that former president, Bill Clinton, probably would have said had the lawyers asked him, “It depends on your definition of masturbation.” I have long advocated that there is also a non-physical form of masturbation. It DOES cause blindness, and millions do it.

 

            I’m talking, of course, about mental masturbation. I realize that the mere mention of masturbation sends the world’s prudes into a moral frenzy. So, if you feel more comfortable, instead of the term, “mental masturbation”, use the term, “intellectualizing simplicity”: IS if you prefer an acronym.

 

            The list of IS examples is unlimited. Unfortunately, time and space are, so, I’m only going to relate a few of them this week. One involves the shenanigans of a local town government as reported by the Delaware’s News Journal. Another came to me via an email from a reader about a news article located on Yahoo! News. The last came as another email from someone who read one of my columns dealing with cloning and the use of embryonic stem cell research.

 

            Item one concerns Middletown. It is a growing, incorporated metropolis located in Southern New Castle County, Delaware. Even though the town has grown exponentially over the past 20-years, the town government still consists of unpaid elected officials, including the mayor. It also employs a sizeable paid workforce.

 

            The town’s politicians came under fire several months ago when the News Journal began a series of articles uncovering some questionable practices. The mayor, with town council’s knowledge had been making interest free loans of up to ten thousand dollars each, from taxpayer funds, to employees who had fallen on hard times. Oh, and there were no written loan agreements. Each employee involved had to agree to let the town deduct the monthly repayments from their periodic paychecks to pay back the money.

 

            Since that time, we’ve come to find out about several other loan/grant irregularities. I’m not going to rehash the whole thing here. You can query www.delawareonline.com for related and/or follow-up articles. They’ve become quite abundant lately.

 

            Quickly, though, click here and read the fifth paragraph beginning with “Vice Mayor Jim Reynolds said…” and ending with his quoted words, "If somebody is going to complain about us giving money to transport senior citizens around town, to me that's money well spent," in the sixth paragraph.

 

            Unlike many others, I won’t concede that Mr. Reynolds, along with the others involved, had purely altruistic intentions relative to these matters. These people are not stupid. They knew that their actions were questionable at best and illegal at worst. The fact that we even permit discussion to the contrary is mental masturbation of the highest caliber.

 

            In light of Middletown’s phenomenal growth, over the past 10-years alone, it must take a considerable amount of time and effort on the part of the city’s political leaders to keep things going. I think it’s fair to wonder aloud as to why people with full time jobs in the private sector, not to mention their family obligations, want to devote so much time and effort to the management of this town. What’s the motivation for such people to place their personal reputations and feelings on the line for all of us to criticize whenever the spirit moves us? Non-paid, too!

 

            I wouldn’t do it and I have the time! Do any of you really believe that they do it out of a sense of public service, or in the words of the McDonalds Hamburger chain, “We do it all for you”? I sure don’t. Could it have something to do with a thirst for um, oh, I don’t know… control, or power, or, God forgive me, maybe even some form of non-monetary payment.

 

            Think about it. The expenses involved in political campaigns approach tens of thousands of dollars at the local one-horse town level, to virtually multiple millions for a national office. The resultant office salaries never result in a breakeven point. There MUST be other motivational factors. I’ll bet my last dollar that none of them has anything to do with “serving the people”, either.

 

            No, Mr. Reynolds, no one’s going to criticize a town’s administration for wanting to provide needed transportation to and from medical appointments for senior citizens. You knew this when you made let the paper quote you above. Conversely, not for a single second are you stupid enough to believe that this has become the true focal point of the criticism.

 

            Coordinated activity in secret is not just a way to circumvent those pesky legal rules that we all have to follow; It’s also know as CONSPIRACY and criminal prosecutors tend to be real snotty about it. You political types know this. The problem is the fact that your unmitigated arrogance blinds you to the idea that the rest of us can figure it out as well. Then, when someone catches you at it, you become indignantly defensive and insulted.

 

            You say stupid stuff like, “When the true facts come out, I’ll be vindicated.” Oh, by the way, let me thank you for this. It’s what gave rise to my column, The True Facts. It also provides the press and others with enough mental masturbation material to render all of us flat out “seeing eye-dog” blind.

 

            The second item told of scientists finding a brain evolution gene. You can click here to read it. While this was an interesting piece, it was the essence of the email from a reader named Mark at Nomoor.ThanUdo@yahoo.com that piqued my attention. Here is his email, verbatim.

 

“Mr. Walther, please read this article carefully. Please note that Professor Andrew Clark of Cornell University states, emphatically, that the rapid growth of this gene is NOT part of normal evolution. I don’t suppose that you’d concede that God had anything to do with it, would you? You seem so intent on denying us Christians the right to teach intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in high school biology.”

 

            Well, Mark, this may come as a surprise to you, but I happen to know Andy Clark. Trust me on this. He did not mean to give you the impression that he thinks God is involved in this business in any way. As for me, I have no idea whether God’s involved. However, if you or any of your friends come up with a scientifically falsifiable hypothesis to support your contention, I’ll sit right up, take notice, and perhaps rethink my position. As it stands now, though, you are doing nothing but showing your usual propensity for dallying in false logic.

 

            The last item came from callme1942@yahoo.com. The sender did not give any other identifying information. However, here is the email.

 

Subject: Cloning and Embryonic Stem Cell Research is a SIN!

“Mr. True Facts, when are you going to smart up? God will punich us if we keep skrewing with clones and babies for reserch.”

 

            Yo, Callme, who typed the subject line for ya? From the message section of your email, it seems that you didn’t. Anyway, I think you’re too late. Medical science has been doing cloning research for years.

 

            For example, there is substantial evidence that scientists are able to smell a random fart in mid-air, capture it in a jar, and take it to a lab. Once there, they proceed to build an asshole around it, add a torso, upper/lower extremities, and top it off with a mindless bobble head sporting a stupid grin. Many of them run for political office. Others become guides for those on perpetual tours of the absolute.

 

            Don’t believe me, Callme1942? The next time you see George Bush talking to the press, or Pat Robertson praying for someone through those tightly closed, squinting eyes, or Howard Dean in some frenzied pointless speech, or Ann Coulter in the midst of one of her high-heeled pit bull moments, think about it.

 

            Well, that it for now. As I said, I can’t confirm the alleged negative affects of physical masturbation. But, we do one hell of a lot of mental masturbating…I mean intellectualizing simplicity that it’s a wonder we’re all not walking around tapping our way along the sidewalks with one of those red and white canes.

 

See you next week.

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Send your comments. Just click here.

Damn! I Need a Calculator

By Joseph Walther

This past Saturday afternoon I found myself stuck in one of those express checkout lines in a grocery store. I swear! If it were not for me, there would be no delays at all in grocery store checkout lines. I attract checkout line delays like a magnet. The reasons for the delays can be numerous, but the main cause is ME. If I were not in the store in the first place, there would be no delays!

Some of the time, a customer syndrome that I call, “I thought that was on sale” causes the delay.” Moreover, like clockwork, there is nothing to confirm this in the current week’s sales brochure. All of us in line behind such customers discover this because the checkout clerk spends the next 5-minutes reading it from cover-to-cover. Then we’ll all have an additional 5-minute delay while “old” Herb (who’s been with the store since Christ was a cadet and knows the price of every item on every shelf in every isle but can’t remember this particular one) does the “moon walk” back to isle 25 at the other end of the store.

Can you guess what happens when he returns to the checkout station? “Sorry”, he announces, “but that sale tag refers to the item on the shelf below.” Staring daggers and mustering all of the sullenness in the universe, the customer snarls, “well I don’t want it, then!”

Sigh! The clerk picks up the microphone and speaks those ghastly, schedule-dooming words, “Override on 2.” Now we’ll all have to wait until a supervisor—let’s call her Condescending Cindy—gets around to waltzing over with the “Key” to set things straight again.

This time, however, employee stupidity, plain and simple, caused the delay. Somehow, I could hear old Uncle Jeb Clampett of the Beverly Hillbillies say, “If brains was lard, there wouldn’t be enough between the cashier and her supervision to grease a pan.” Here’s what happened.

The customer, a woman in her middle to late 50s had a rain check ticket in her hand to purchase some Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. At an earlier time, the ice cream was on sale for 10% off, but the store had run out of it. Thus the rain check. The rain check authorized her to purchase ten pints of Ben and Jerry’s at 10% off the normal price of $3.89 per pint. Completely devoid of any malice aforethought, all the woman wanted to do was redeem her rain check

The cashier looked dazed. Perhaps terrified was a more appropriate description. She had that blank stare of a deer looking into the headlights of an oncoming automobile. She stared, alternately, between the rain check and the customer. About 70-seconds had transpired during which the only thing that took place was the additional melting of the customer’s ice cream. Oh yes, my loaf of bread had become staler than it was when I first took it from its shelf. I also had a 2-pound bag of cherries that had become much riper.

Finally, the clerk made the call, “assistance on 2.” Indifferently, Condescending Cindy strolled over and stared at the cashier. “I need a hand calculator,” said the cashier. “What,” snarled the supervisor? “I have to figure out 10% off on each one of these ice creams,” retorted the cashier. The supervisor reached under the cash drawer, pulled out a small solar calculator, and tossed it on the conveyor belt. With a bit of a huff, she walked away rolling her eyes.

Another 65-seconds had passed. The customer’s ice cream had already reached the liquid stage. The cashier began punching keys on the calculator. After seven or eight key punches, she mumbled, “oh shi…”, and began to punch more keys. After another 75-seconds (I was purposely timing her by now.), she had finally figured out how to use the calculator but still had no clue as to what to actually punch in or why.

Agitated, I said to the highly embarrassed customer, “Make sure that they throw in some free straws. At this rate, you’re not going to need a spoon to eat the ice cream.” I quickly added that my loaf of bread had already turned into croutons. The checkout clerk was visibly angry at me, but not as angry as I or the others behind me had become.

Another 55-seconds whizzed on by. Somehow, the checkout clerk had figured out, thanks to the wonder of calculator technology, that a $3.89 pint of ice cream, discounted by 10%, should cost $1.21. The customer, not wishing to take advantage of the clerk, said, “Hon, that is not right.” “Oh, yeah, I see, now,” said the clerk and she punched in the numbers again. This time the calculator tallied a selling price of $1.29 per pint with the cashier quickly and proudly concurring. [SIGH!]

I could take no more! I told the clerk that since the ice cream’s normal selling price is $3.89, a 10% discount comes to $0.389 rounded to $0.39 per pint. This means that you charge the customer $3.50 for each pint. And, since she has ten pints, the total should be $35.00.

By now, the supervisor had returned. She looked at me and said, “We’re not all math geniuses like you, sir. This young woman is only a junior in high school, not college” The original customer, no longer embarrassed but very angry, jumped in with, “It does not take a math genius or a college graduate to figure this out.”

At this point, everything had become a red tinted blur to me because the blood vessels in my temples had burst, sending blood trickling into my eye sockets. “I’m not a math genius,” I said. “It’s just that I paid attention back in the fourth grade when the nuns taught me this stuff. This young woman is math illiterate; she should not be working a cash register. Furthermore, if YOU don’t understand fourth grade math either, YOU should not be HER supervisor.”

The ice cream customer, in disgust, told them to keep the ice cream and walked out of the store. I followed her, leaving my now crouton stage bread, along with a 2-pound bag of ever-softening cherries. All totaled, five customers walked out leaving their stuff on the conveyor belt of in those hand baskets. We all had quite a meeting outside.

I worked for a major grocery chain as a cashier for both my junior and senior years in high school. The cash registers were mechanical, not electronic. So, cashiers had to be fast and able to do the discount and odd lot math in their heads. My manager, Harold Ashman, would have fired me on the spot had I not been able to do percentage calculations on the fly.

And while I’m at it, neither he, my teachers, nor my parents ever seemed all that concerned about my self-esteem. As far as they were concerned, if you couldn’t do fourth grade arithmetic by the time you were in high school, you did not deserve to have any self-esteem. In fact, they would have wondered how someone so stupid even got INTO high school. None of them blamed teachers, either!

The sad thing about this is the fact that no one working in this store, including the management, had a clue. To them, we were just a bunch of unreasonable, disgruntled customers. This kind of stupidity will eventually erode a customer base to a point of bankruptcy. Unfortunately, though, when it happens, all of those genius Harvard MBAs will blame it on “market forces” and “shrinking margins due to high energy costs,” instead of who they should blame: George Bush!

Well, I still need bread and cherries, but you have a great week. I just know in my heart of hearts, that somewhere out there I’m going to find some present day cashiers who can figure out simple math.

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Send your comments. Just click here.

Who was Senator Edward Everett?

By Joseph Walther

I receive emails from all over the world concerning some of the stuff I write. Eighty five-percent of them come from people here in the United States. The email represents a myriad of viewpoints relative to many of my columns. And, oh boy, do I get questions! “Do you really believe that two can live as cheaply as one?” asks Marlene from Ding Dong, Texas. “Why do people spend all that money on those bottles of Evian water?” asks Todd from Toad Suck, Arkansas. “What are false choices?” inquires Brutus from Hot Water, Mississippi. Ahlota Krapp, who lives on Tater Peeler Road in Lebanon, Tennessee wants to know if there ”Shouldn’t there be a law against stupid people having kids?”

 

            I know! I know. Who the hell was Edward Everett? I’m getting there. Just hold on and be patient.

 

            No one can say that Joe Walther does not know his limitations. The fact is that many of these questions are just too, um, shall we say… intellectually unremarkable but obviously important to those who ask them. They require the services of a trained expert.

 

            To this end, let me welcome you readers to what, hopefully, will become a regular segment of this column. Not every week, mind you, but perhaps five or six times a year. A dear friend of mine, Dr. A. Hewge-Pyle, (Dr. Debbi to her, um, close friends) has volunteered to help with some of the questions. She is a Ph.D’d expert. She’s written several books, all of which contain big words, covering a lot of stuff.

 

            No, I have not forgotten about Senator Edward Everett. I have to set this up just right or it won’t register. I’ll get to him in a minute. In the meantime, here is part of the exchange I had with my good friend, Dr. Debbi.

 

Me: Welcome, Dr. Debbi.

Dr. Debbi: My pleasure, Joe.

Me: What about Marlene’s question: “Can two live as cheaply as one?”

Dr. Debbi: Absolutely, two can live as cheaply as one, but for only half as long.

Me: Should there be a law against stupid people having kids?

Dr. Debbi: If this were the case, the human species would have become extinct about a million years ago. Besides, I’ve never met a parent who looked into the eyes of a newborn and asked, “How can I screw this kid up?”

Me: I see your point, but on the up side, we wouldn’t have to deal with public school administrators and school boards!

Me: Emma D, who lives on Farfrompoopen Road (the ONLY road, incidentally, leading up to Constipation Ridge) in Tennessee asks, “My uncle is senile. Is this a problem for him?”

Dr. Debbi: No it isn’t. When you’re senile, you’re too senile to know it, Emma. He’s a happy as a pig in slop. How about you?

Me: Ah so! This explains public school administrators and school board members. Now, if only we could find a way to explain the lack of congruence between the looks on their faces and the things they say in public.

Me: Several readers have accused me, from time-to-time, of calling George Bush stupid. I don’t recall doing this. But, do you think he’s stupid?

Dr. Debbi: No! He is not stupid. He knows a lot of stuff. It’s just that he…well, he just never seems able to think of it.

 

            Well, thanks, Dr. Debbi. I’ll be calling on you to address readers’ concerns in future columns. However, I just learned of a statistic that goes a long way towards explaining some of the intellectually unremarkable attitudes that all of us seem to encounter almost daily.

 

            No, Senator Edward Everett was not one those intellectually unremarkable people. An intrepid windbag? Yes. A moron? No! I’ll get to him soon.

 

            In his book, Useless Information, Jon Wilman recalls a 2006 poll by the McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum where 22% of Americans could name all five Simpson family members: Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. “So what!” you exclaim? What’s the big deal, here? Here’s what the big deal is.

 

            The same survey found that only 0.1% (That’s ONE TENTH of ONE PERCENT!) of Americans could name the five freedoms—speech, religion, press, assembly, and petition for redress of grievances—guaranteed by the First Amendment. Even worse, about 20% of Americans thought that owning a pet is a First Amendment protection. The poll used a 95% confidence interval and a ±3% margin of error.

 

            While I think that it should scare the hell out of us to think that such people might vote, not to mention for whom, I am going to take this an additional step. We all deal in semantic fool drudgery when we assume that our Constitution/Bill of Rights guarantees anything. The ONLY rights that we possess are the ones that we are both WILLING and ABLE to defend, even to the death of necessary. This applies to the entire human population, regardless of where they reside.

 

            Perhaps we, including our elected politicians, should think about this prior to the next time we go attempting to shove democracy down another sovereign nation’s collective throat, unless we receive a credible request for help from folks living there who are, likewise, willing to die achieving it.

 

            Now, on the other hand, if other sovereign nations show intent to harm us or our legitimate allies, we should kick some collective butt. We should do it quickly and decisively in order to show that we live by our Constitution and that we will not be screwed with by any nation on this globe.

 

            See you next week. Oh, my, I almost forgot about Senator Edward Everett. He was one of our nation’s greatest orators. He was the thumbs down favorite to win any speech-delivering contest on the windbag circuit of his era. On November 19, 1863, he delivered a two-hour main speech on the battlefield of Gettysburg. Of course, a poll today would find that 99% of Americans don’t remember it because of the short, poignant two-minute Gettysburg Address delivered by one Abraham Lincoln immediately afterward.

 

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Send your comments. Just click here.