Back to naked in Mexico story

We have a report from one of my agents about the world who report on interesting stories
to include on my blog.

Mexico City is not a very attractive place to be at this time. We are given to inderstand that
it is not very clean. Lots of garbage and a deteriorating infrastructure are only part of the problem. Every dissatisfied group decides to have a manifestation and their favorite place is the Paseo de la Reforma, perhaps the most important artery in the city. On most days traffic is
stopped. Right at a key intersection a diehard group hangs about, naked as jay birds, still protesting whatever it was. Still almost unbelievable, incredible

Public television

I have never been enamored with PublicTelevision although they every once in a while put on some excellent programs. They had one the other night which went a long way toward improving my feelings about them. Peculiarly, it was a program that I didn't even see. I just liked the title ; JUMP-A FROGUMENTARY . That title is pretty funny, indicating that someone there has a sense of humor. I think it was about Mark Twain's jumping frog contest that started a tradition that goes on to this day.

More about Books

The book commentary of the previous posting seems like a popular subject.
What better way to get in touch with good books than to solicit suggestions and opinions.
Those books that I mentioned like " A Short History of Amost Everything" are just a few of my favorites. Reviews and comments are on the internet. Special mention for Sonya: This book takes you into outer space. It also takes you into microscopic
things like atoms and such. Strangely, it is really good science but is also funny.
I insist that you read it.
My personal preference tends toward history, sometimes disguised as novels .
One such book springs to mind : The Reason Why , published quite some time ago and likely out of print, is a history of the Chrimean (?) war and the charge of the Light Brigade and much more. Now I can't find the darn book. We keep lending things out and often never see them again.

Books

I wonder why it takes me so long to read a book while others( Jan ) can run through large tomes in a matter of days. She reads good books and some trash. I must select my reading so as not to waste my valuable reading time with inferior works.
Part of my problem may be caused by a tendency to fall asleep after reading about 20 minutes. Even so I have read several outstanding books lately.
Water for Elephants - It is called fiction but reads like maybe it really happened
A Short History of Almost Everything - Unbelievably fascinating.
Six Frigates - Early US naval history. Wonderful
Naturally, I have forgotten the author's names.

The nanny state

The government is looking after us. Two important groups are in charge of our welfare.
They are the Health Police and the Morality Police.

It really began, I think, with prohibition. This idea backfired terribly. It created criminals
( Joe Kennedy for example ) and scoffllaws by the many millions. Picture thousands of red necks
and hill billies, skulking about our forests with their stills cranking out gallons of moonshine,
some not too bad but some real rotgut too. The famous speakeasies and their patrons, scoff-laws all , include some of our finest citizens. Things got so bad that even the feds finally had to end it.

Then came the anti smokers. Both the morals and the health ones jumped on this one. It has been most effective. Smoking is down perhaps 75% in the last 15 years or so. Never mind that thousands of farmers and farm workers lost their livelyhood, as well as truckers and small retail outlets which lost a lucrative part of their business.

Now the health nuts are in complete charge. First, butter was bad so we ate margerine. Then margerine was worse so we are into olive oil. The eggs were bad. The day of cholesterol had arrived, and we were to be deprived of natures perfect food. MacDonalds was vilified. Their excellent hamburgers were deemed to be the unltimate junk food (meat, bread, letuce, tomatos are junk food ? ). Sugar should never be consumed. and this spawned an array of sugar substitutes which taste peculiar and may be harmful. Empty calories, we are told.

Now we are to worry about obesity. Do we care if some people are fat ? Is it really such a health problem for the whole nation ? Should we worry that fat people die a few years sooner that the skinny ones ? The world seem obsessed by longevity, at the cost of the bankruptcy of the social security system.

Final word : I can't find the spell check so no cracks about spelling and punctuation please.

Continued from previous posting

I have been accused of being a Bushy. I freely admit that I was pro Bush at one time and have downgraded that to neutral. He has made three egregious errors that I can think of. 1) Failure to enforce border security 2) Failure to try and control federal spending 3) The dismissal of the defeated Iraq army { We could have had a huge, disaplined force to help keep order }. Nobody seems to realize this latter failure
except for your obedient servant.
Aside from the above, I think poor old Bush deserves about a B. Now, please let me put this subject to bed.

A few more comments on presidential nominees : McCain, way too old. Count him out. John Edwards, $400 haircuts should put him out of the running. It must be awful to have so much money that you loose all perspective of the value of things.
One cannot help but admire the barber with the neerve to charge this much and still find suckers who will pay it.

Probably more on the political subject anon

A few comments

At the behest of El Ruco ( translation : worn out, useless ), our brother John Schmidt , residant of Guatemala, we are increasing the size of the font so that he, and other elderly people can better read our blog.
We were enormously pleased with the suggestion that Jan write something.
She read the responses and I think I detected a sneery smile on her lips. We will keep trying to encourage her but our chances of success are not guarantied.
Presidantial candidates: This could be an endless series but we will start out with the governor of Massechesets, Mitt Romney . I was thrilled when he announced that he was running. Then he ruined it. During a recent meeting with a group ( don't know who they were ) he proclaimed that he was an avid hunter and had hunted all his life. Later, it turns out, he has hunted a total of 2 times. Why he came up with such a stupid little lie is inexplicable. It reminds me of some of our previous presidents who had trouble sticking to the truth. I have decided that this type of phony is not who we want to lead us.
You will hear more about the candidates in the course of this endless campain.

We all know and love dear old Jan. (oops ! Let me rephrase that. We all know and love dear Jan. ) But how well do we really know her. The energetic Jan: We can generally find her cleaning, weeding, or reading. She has accumulated a huge store of knowledge, and a vast vocabulary. No one is perfect. She readily admits that mathematically she is useless. ( How come she balances the checkbook so easily ?) Mechanically she is a clutz.( I don't think she can operate our magical TIVO yet ) She eschuse the use of the computer , perhaps out of fear.
( I am kind of afraid of it myself)
I have been begging her to write something for the blog but as of now, she adamatly refuses.
Surely she has something to share with our numerous relatives , friends, and other admirers.
Dare I impose upon you all to write a few words of encouragement ?

Minimum wage

I wonder if you remember the days when if you stopped to get gasoline, a young lad would appear, check your oil, tire pressure, and pump the gas for you. You would then magnanimously tip the kid a quarter ( a dime if you were a real cheapo). Or, perhaps you remember getting on an elevator , only to find a greybeard in attendance who was able to direct you to the correct floor. The youngster in the first case and the old man in the second were working for a pitance
but at least they were employed. The work they did wasn't worth much but you may be sure that the tiny paycheck was greatly better than nothing. Besides, it kept them off the streets and/or out of the old folks home .
Think of the small businessman with a few emplyees. A small grocery store or a restaurant
with a payroll of workers, generally at low wages. Suddenly each worker will cost about $16.00 more per day. Some of those marginal workers will be layed off. Young starter workers will have a hard time being hired. The business will become less profitable and his prices will rise.( This is called an unfunder liability, a favorite tactic by our wonderful congress). Perhaps the biggest effect will be a kind of ripple effect. For example, if one earns $6.00 per hour, now he also will requirw a raise to peraps$8.00, &7.00 to $9.00, and so forth. Almost the entire payroll will rise proportionately. Did congress consider this when they reeled out their statistics ?
What effect might the new minimum have on illegal immigration ? Will it encourage the
illegal scofflaws or will it throw millions of them out of work and somehow, on the wellfare rolls ?
The minimum wage idea just will not go away. My opinion , it is a brainless concept that should be done away with forthwith.

Great inventions

We can't help but stand in awe of those clever people who have given us those things that we
can't live without. I think Edison may have started the whole thing. Try to imagine your life without electricity or light bulbs. Then came radios, telphones, television, and cell phones.
But the greatest invention of all was the magical TIVO. I confess that Jan and my principal entertainment in the evening is television. It is largely junk, punctuated by frequent and annoying adds. However, there are occasionally some good things to watch which, due to our active social life we might miss. Not any more. Our incredible TIVO records it and we watch at our convienience. Better still, we rush through the commercials and are able to watchthe typical one hour programs in 40 minutes. How cool is that ? It turns out that, in the unlikely event that there are two programs at the same time, we can watch one on regular TV while the other is recorded to be watched later. We even have the possibility of watching a third program on our old VCR machine to be viewed once again, at our leisure.
Almost to good to be true. There is a potential downside. If everyone has a TIVO ( and lots of us do) then the advertisers will no longer have any reason to finance the programs and the quality of TV, bad though it is, will get even lousier. Off hand, I can't think of a solution to this potential problem and must leave it to the industry to solve it. Any suggestions?

UNBELIEVABLE

A recent article in the newspaper tells us that 20,000 Mexicans took off their clothes
and marched through the streets, all of them getting together for a photo op in Mexico
City's enormous main square, the Zocalo. To put this into perspective, this is about one of every thousand of the population of the mega-city of about 20 million.
All the participants must qualify as idiots, morons,degenerates, or left wing protesters.
They were apparently called on for this display by someone who thought it would make some sort of artistic or political statement. Maybe they were protesting something; Global warming ?
Anti smoking ?--- aha ! I think I have it. Anti Bush.
There was a blurry picture accompanying the article. From what I could see, these
people were really stark naked. No bras, no panties,no jockey shorts. Incredulous, isn't it ?
Yes, it is unbelievable.

PET PEEVES

Here we are, in a crisis mode, due to a gasoline shortage. The skyrocketing price of
fuel is the obvious symptom. The price, as you know, is the result of supply and demand of the gasoline commodity. And yet, no real efforts are being made to fix the supposed problem.
There probably isn't one big solution but a big band aid might be as follows.
Have you noticed the proliferation of stop signs that are littering our neighborhoods. Some officious bureaucrats are most likely to blame. Most of these signs are unnecessary or could well be replaced with Yield signs. With over 200,000.000 vehicles on the road, each one making many stops per day and therefore burning fuel, I calculate that perhaps one or two million gallons of fuel are wasted each day. What to do? Since it is unlikely that our city fathers
or state representatives will help us out, I suggest that we all become scofflaws and ignore those
needless signs. Of course we take care that no one is coming the other way and there are no cops about. I think I increase my mileage by 5 to 1o%.

Sad News

We now have confirmed that the blog is out there so I can confidently write
whatever tickles my fancy.
A few days ago I got a call from Sister Mary Virginia and she informed me that my brother Toti has died. Through this same source we were aware of his serious illness
(brain tumor) and so we were not shocked by the news. A really sad aspect of this
is that I have had no direct contact with Toti for thirty years and very little for the twenty five years prior to that. It is almost unbeleivable that I have never gotten a letter or phone call from him. That is not only sad, it's pathetic. Comunication is a two way street but I long ago gave up trying to hear from him. By the way, the rest of his family is not much better.
I think there is a moral to this story. Unless there is some overriding reason, keep in touch with your siblings. It's so easy now and with e-mail it is quick and (for you
penny pinchers)cheap.