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Peace is bad for Business.

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December 23, 2007 Rants

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Rants December 23, 2007

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http://www.storyofstuff.com/

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This is an important video as it pulls many things together. I’ve talked about various aspects of this for years, which is one more reason you no longer hear my show on MPBN. This is something we are not supposed to think about. Obviously the video could go on for hours with other aspects of our going to hell in a hand basket, as they never even touched on how Bush has destroyed education.

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1. Here’s an email letter from a friend who says, “I used to work as a DJ at a big dance club in Portland. One night somebody climbed the ladder to the DJ booth and told me to shut off the strobe because it was bringing on an epileptic fit. You know just as well as I do that that must have been a long, long time ago, because the way kids dance now nobody would have noticed. 010209

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2. If you think about it, and if you don’t have a family member who is involved in the situation, you must be amused by the kind of talk you hear on TV about what we can do to stop the flow of illegal immigrants. I don’t know about you, but a lot of my ancestors were immigrants, and although they might not have come to this country illegally, when they did arrive the people who were already here did not break out the welcome wagon. What makes me smile about all the talk today, is that the folks in charge are saying the exact opposite of what they think and what they’re doing. The people running things want that cheap labor. The people running things count on that cheap labor. They’ll build fences and they’ll hire guards but that’s just smoke and mirrors because those illegal immigrants have to be allowed many holes through which to creep into this country. Business wants that influx of cheap labor. Business needs that influx of cheap labor. You hear them talking about it on TV, but you know that what they’re saying about keeping out cheap labor is just the opposite of what they want and the exact opposite of what they’re planning to do. I’m humble@humblefarmer.com Do you see it any other way?

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3. You got me started on this by talking about the way we look at facts. And, as often happens, I never did get around to saying what I wanted to say. I wanted to point out that facts have no relevance if you believe something that would be contradicted by those facts. And from what we’ve been reading lately, although we are always hearing about great advances in science, tens of millions of people in this country have chosen to ignore facts and science and still believe things that have been passed down from their ancestors who lived in caves. So we live in an age when facts still really don’t mean anything. I read on line that digs on the Olympic Park site of the London 2012 Olympic Games have turned up 4th-century pottery and a Roman coin from the time of Emperor Constantine II. So most any observer might evaluate these facts, shrug his shoulders, and say, “So the first Italians to come here were litterbugs.”

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22008567/

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4. The other day we were talking about the tremendous leverage a business has if it can get the customer’s credit card number. If you are on top of things, you probably have nothing to worry about, but if you are senile or if you don’t understand how the system works or if you have other things that occupy your mind, you might be paying for some things in an account that you should have cancelled years ago. Yes, here’s your example. My wife Marsha got netflicks as a gift from her best friend. When the subscription expired, her friend gave her another subscription. But then I noticed that every month I was being billed for netflicks. I didn’t realize that I had to go on line and activate the second gift, so they automatically started billing me. You see, they won’t let you activate this gift subscription unless ---- unless they have your credit card number. This is a very clever way to sign you up --- have you on the hook, if you will. When your gift subscription expires, they simply begin billing you for it as a new customer. Is it legal? Certainly. Do they email you ahead of time and warn you that your subscription is about to expire and that unless you cancel you are going to be billed? Por supuesto. I understand that they do. Do you like this way of doing business? I don’t. How many of us don’t take the time to read the hundreds of emails we get every day? I don’t know about you, but I am an old man and I’m annoyed by this new way of doing things. Unfortunately, no matter how bad any new system is, kids who are born into it will take it for granted.

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5. I’ve been wondering about this for so long that I finally emailed my radio friend Joel and asked, “Why do educated people refuse to put contact information on their emails so their friends will know who they are and how to contact them? It is my only pet peeve about having thousands of radio friends. All but a few write without telling me who they are and how to contact them. I'll read your answer on the next show I make.” Here’s Joel’s one-word reply: “Ego!”

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And here’s Joel’s Tom Allen spot on youtube. Check it out.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajBMM7VPSaI

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6. Many professional speakers get a weekly newsletter from Speaker Net News and I am one of them. This week I learned that it is not good to drink coffee before doing a show. Just before I go on stage is about the only time I do drink coffee. Because I’m not a regular coffee drinker, one cup of coffee puts me right up through the ceiling. Of course when I drink coffee I fall into a wicked depression 24 hours later, but that is the price of doing drugs. I was told to warm up and protect my vocal cords by sipping a small bit of warm water and lemon.

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7. There was also some cryptic information in the latest Speaker Net News. I didn’t understand it. Please tell me if it means anything to you. It said, “Send text message for Google search …You send a text message to Google at 466453 (spells Google on your keypad), and within a second or two it replies back to you with the information you need. You can type in a person’s name plus city and state and get their contact information, including address…. You can also get weather reports by texting “weather (name of city),” along with sports scores, stock quotes, dictionary definitions, movie listings, and driving directions. Get the full information and instructions at www.google.com/mobile/sms This service is no-cost except your own text messaging rates will apply via your provider.” Well, when I first read this I didn’t know what a “text message” was. There were some other concepts there that I didn’t understand. Now I think all this has something to do with a cell phone because when I went to www.google.com/mobile/sms it brought up a picture of a cell phone. I don’t have a cell phone. You’ve heard me say that where I live in St. George, Maine, cell phones aren’t reliable and you'll see people stopping by the side of the road when they find a spot that brings in reception. Or else you’ll see them running around in circles in their back yards. The only place my friend Larry could get his cell phone to work in our house was to lie on the floor in the northwest corner of the northwest upstairs bedroom.

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8. You’ve heard me say that I was lucky enough to go to a one room school. When I was in the second grade, we brought our teacher birthday presents. When Carol, whose parents sold apples, gave her a present she shook the box and said, “I guess that it is apples.” And Carol said, “How could you guess?” Then Ingred, whose mother made nice braided rugs, gave the teacher a present. The teacher felt of the package and said, “I guess it is a rug.” And Ingred said, “How could you guess?” Then my friend Winky, whose parents were famous for their apple wine, gave the teacher a present --- and the box was leaking. The teacher wiped off the drops with her finger and tasted it and said, “Mmmmmm is it apple wine?” And Winky said, “No, it’s a puppy.” 9. I went to a one room school. There weren’t many rules there and but we were expected to abide by those rules. One day a new kid came to school and the teacher was telling him about the rules. She said, “If you have to go to the toilet, hold up two fingers." The kid said, “How will that help?"

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10. When I was a kid I spent a lot of time over to Winky’s house because his father would read to us or tell us stories. I remember story where his father said, “A man named Lot was warned to take his wife and flee out of the city, but his wife looked back and was turned to salt." And Winky said, “What happened to the flea?"

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11. Do you spend any time looking for information on the Internet? I’m always looking up associations on the Internet. I am convinced that anyone who looked at hundreds of web sites would really be surprised at the large number of wimpy, inefficient, uninformative, inoperative web sites out there --- unless they had taught school. 010209

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12. How are your kids doing at college this winter? Ever wonder what they are doing at college? If they keep emailing you and calling you to “Please send money,” tell them they don’t need your money because they can easily earn their own. Did you know that anyone with the cash can Get Term Papers From Ohio State University? Yes, there is a web site where you can purchase high quality term papers from Ohio State University students. So think it over before you shell out any more green to your kid. Make it very plain that if Ohio State University students can pay their way through school by writing and selling term papers, anyone from around here can, too. 010209

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13. You heard me say that Marsha and I were chosen to play Joseph and Mary in the Christmas play, only because we were the only folks in the group who weren’t obese. Yes, the costumes fit us nicely, but I’m not going to put mine on until just before I go on stage. Nowadays, just getting out of my car dressed like Joseph is enough to land me on a waterboard on suspicion of being a terrorist.

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14. A woman who does a lot of public speaking wrote me a letter last week asking for advice. She said she gives the people in her audiences an evaluation sheet. But no matter how wonderful they said she was in the written part of the evaluation, most of them never give here more than a seven on a scale from one to 10. I told her that if I were having that kind of trouble, I’d ask them to evaluate me on a scale from one to seven. She didn’t write back. 010209

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