The Raven

Thursday, January 2, 2003

Interlude at the Mall

In 1728, William Byrd II wrote a kind of travelogue of his experiences surveying the disputed boundary between Virginia and North Carolina. Titled The History of the Dividing Line, it's an engaging read written in a dry, witty style. For example, he characterizes the North Carolinians thus:

Though, in truth, the distemper of laziness seizes the men oftener much than the women. These last spin, weave, and knit, all with their own hands, while the husbands, depending on the bounty of the climate, are slothful in everything but the getting of children, and in that only instance make themselves useful members of an infant colony.

Things haven't changed much in the South since Byrd made that observation, and the Southern Man still prefers to engage in whittlin', chewin', slow-talkin', spittin', and slouchin' whenever the opportunity do so arises. I noticed this the other day when I had to get a replacement for a broken watchband. I walked into Reed's Jewelers full of high hopes for a swift and successful transaction.

"Hello," I said, "Do you carry Seiko watchbands?"

There were two clerks—a man and woman—both in their early 20s, and at my query they proceeded to examine each other. The young fellow finally took a crack at it:

"I dunno."

Maybe it's just me, and maybe kids are all like this nowadays, but this kind of thing puts me in a bad mood nonpareil. I don't take it out on 'em, as that would be rude, but I do tend to sort of tilt my head and squint, clenching my jaw muscles slightly. This is supposed to look imposing. It probably resembles a man suppressing flatulence.

"Well then," clench, squint, "Why don't you go look and see if you have one?"

"OK," the kid says, drawling it out to three syllables.

So he's slumping around behind the counter, busting a sag and sporting a spike and I'm about ready to start firing off clipped imperatives at him like, "Move!" and "Let's make it snappy back there!" but instead I do this thing where I sort of roll my neck and shoulders. That's me, Mr. Dangerous.

"Uh...we don't have any."

Just that. Not, "May I order one for you, Sir?" Not, "We don't have one but I could call around to some other shops on your behalf and attempt to locate one for you." No, that would have been way too helpful and efficient. I'd like to say there was a happy ending here but in the end I had to walk them through the ordering procedure and by the time we finished all the paperwork and whatnot I'd killed around an hour with Burns and Allen. Can't wait to go back.

"Um...this doesn't fit."

Then we'll have a problem.

8:19:42 PM

Catch 'Em If You Can

That's our take on today's morning lineup. We've got Word Cops, Frog Cops, Fed Cops, Media Cops, Traffic Cops, British Cops, and Home Repair Cops. Let's see who's on the run—and who's in hot pursuit.

The Language Police

The PR staff at Michigan's Lake Superior State University publish an annual list of Banned Words. Their linguistic pet peeves include cliches, redundancies, and hyperbolic hooey. Heading the list is about half the vocabulary of our fearless Commander-in-Chief.

Bushisms cited for termination with extreme prejudice:

"Make no mistake about it," which dangles the question, "whose mistake?"
"The education issue ought to be discussed about,"
"More and more of our imports come from overseas," which they surely do, and
"Will the highways on the Internet become more few?" We're betting they'll become less more.

They also cited the President's shopworn "material breach," "weapons of mass destruction," and "homeland security" gambits.

The media were cited for "must-see TV," which is rather imperative, and "now, more than ever," which adds nothing to "now." We were glad to see the University targeting "extreme," as we did last year, but I wonder about this one:

Irritating to many contributors were the overused "having said that" and "that said," to which David Patrick of Indiana said: "I heard you the first time."

Seems to this desk that those phrases are useful for introducing exceptions, while we agree they should be used sparingly. Dick Cheney's Whack-a-Mole antics led reporters to constantly refer to his being removed to "an undisclosed, secret location"—fitting for a redundant personage, no? And lastly they'd like us to put a swift end to "untimely death," noting that there is no other type.

Jump Street

We've got Amphibian Police in Calaveras County, who are targeting the participants at the annual Frog Jumping Jubilee. This contest, as you probably know, was inspired by a Mark Twain story and the locals apparently have been cashing in ever since. Now they've got trouble.

It's not against the law to catch the bullfrogs that compete in the contest—but it's illegal to put them back, said Ed Pert, the California Department of Fish and Game's fisheries programs chief. Technically, violators could face a $5,000 fine and a year in jail.

So you can catch a frog, starve him, force-feed him with hamburger, keep him in a little cage, and poke him with a stick. But put him back in his pond and you're a world-class felon. Fish and Game are concerned that frogs returned to the wrong pond cause eco-damage, but we're concerned that the law will lead to wholesale euthanizing of the little critters after they've out-jumped their usefulness.

Band on the Run

For a few days now, we've been tracking a story about a bunch of Middle-Eastern men who've slipped over the border, quite possibly to wreak terror and havoc. Of course, they might only be looking for work at discount electronics shops, you never know.

The fun this morning concerns one of them, Mohammed Asghar (shown aging badly at left, most recent photo rightmost) who says, "Hey, that's me!" According to him, he can't be one of the Canadian border crossers because, well, he's in Pakistan. We think he has a good case. On the downside...

He said that he has not traveled to the United States, and that he left Pakistan only once this year. On that trip he went to Abu Dhabi, but he was deported back to Pakistan immediately because he had a forged United Kingdom passport.

He says, "I am really afraid of what Americans will do with me." For starters, we're probably going to shave off his mono-brow. How 'bout that, dude?

Bandwidth Patrol

The Media Police in this case are represented by the FCC. I ran across this story headlined, "Diversity Is Urged in Media Ownership," and was surprised to see that it wasn't the obvious. The diversity in question here concerns the number of companies involved in broadcasting.

"The narrow prime-time television programming marketplace has become dysfunctional as diverse sources of independently produced, non-network programming have been eliminated," MediaCom and the others say.

The FCC has been gradually easing restrictions on the number of channels a company can own and field in a single market, leading to the current trend toward homogenized blandness. At the rate we're going, pretty soon we'll be pirating Canadian TV for refreshment. The consortium urging more players in the market refers to something called, "the Golden Age of Television in the 1970s and 1980s," however, which I'd say is a fairly weak argument unless you're slavering for the return of Starsky & Hutch and Grizzly Adams.

The Traffic Police

Remember we told you this was going to be the Year of the Crackdown? John Seth of Seattle just got a $28 ticket for parking his car and leaving his headlights on. They're starting to play rough with us out there. Stagnant water, frogs, now this.

"For the life of me, I can't figure out what the public-safety issue is," Seth said. "I mean, is a small child going to walk too near to your lights and be vaporized?"

The interesting part of his bind was that after he calculated the hassle-factor of protesting the ticket in court, he realized that even though he'd surely beat the rap, it was cheaper and more efficient to just pay the $28 and get on with life, which he did.

Department of Stating the Obvious

I shouldn't try to get mileage out of a tragedy, but I won't be the first. In this story from Birmingham, England, we read that two teenage girls were shot dead and two others wounded during a party at a hairdressing salon yesterday. I'll skip the joke about "How would you like those bangs?" and get on to the weird part, which concerns the statement made by Chief Superintendent David Shaw, who said a "considerable number" of shots had been fired:

"There's been some dispute which has resulted in people coming to the premises with guns, discharging their weapons and causing the incident which we had today," he told reporters.

"We don't know what caused the incident or who's involved yet, but obviously that is now the main focus of our attention."

We wonder if British police are always so candid.

The Worst Six Words in the World

So the contractors came by Raven HQ this morning to install the garbage disposal we got just before New Year's. These guys were pretty rough-looking, the type you don't leave alone while they're working, if you get me.

Foreman: Did they tell you how much the installation was going to be?

Me: Actually, I believe we've already paid for that.

Foreman: [Checking the paperwork] Oh...yeah, I guess you did...

So they're slinging tools around, making a godawful mess in the kitchen, banging stuff around, you know. And it's bothering me, because they're not working careful, like I would if I knew what I was doing, which I don't, so I'm just watching 'em, making small talk, wondering if I could have managed this job by myself. Then, as they're getting close to finishing the Attachment of the Pipes, the guy under the sink says the Six Words No Homeowner Ever Wants to Hear:

You gotta little problem here.

Last time a contractor told me that, it cost about $5,000, so naturally my blood runs cold as I shakily inquire as to what, exactly, the problem seems to be. Turns out the "P-pipe," or gooseneck joint, had completely rotted out. The guy under the sink says, "Here, touch this." Incredibly, I poke my finger at what had all appearances of being a solid chrome-covered section of pipe and it crumbles at the slightest pressure.

I have no choice, so I authorize a "field repair," which in this case meant a complete refabrication of the under-sink piping with PVC tubing. They wrap it up, we test the Kenmore 3/4 HP Heavy Duty Food Disposer and it purrs real horrorshow. They're carting everything back to the van and I ask them how much all this came to, and amazingly, the foreman says, "It's covered under the install. You're good to go."

Looking like a good year so far.

12:51:47 PM