Friday Report 8/31/07

Hello you faithful. Here's this week's monologue, diatribe, rant, bitch and groan.

Landlord Story

There's an open window right above the spot where I kneel to hook up a garden hose.

I hear angry speech inside. I don't want to hear it, but I'm here, and the hose has to be hooked up if I'm to water the lawn.

"Moses," a woman says, "you have no right to strike me. A man should never hit a woman."

"Tammy," the man says, "I'm sorry I hit you. But it wasn't my fault. It was your fault."

"What do you mean it wasn't your fault," Tammy asks, "What do you mean by that?"

"Well," answers Moses, "You're the one who made me mad."

The curse of Horace Greeley

Fate took me to a place called "Town Center" a few weeks back. It was a shopping mall recently erected in a perfectly good corn field. But "Town Center?"

I finally figured it out. As the crow flies, "Town Center" is exactly halfway between Greeley and Loveland.

Now, after all these years, Horace Greeley's strange historical incantation finally makes sense.

We've all heard Greeley's answer a thousand times. But what was the question?

I'll take a stab at it. An aspiring businessman might ask, "Should I open a retail business in old downtown Greeley?"

I can just see old man Greeley scratching his chin for a long time before responding, "Go West, Young Man, Go West."

-0-

Because of Horace Greeley's curse, we're thinking of changing our address. No we're not moving, we're just changing our address.

We will live on "Invisible Street" right at its intersection with "Chopped Liver Avenue."

Civic pride will abound in our neighborhood because the city is quite able in performing its duties. Well, most of them.

The city diligently collects the water bill, arduously enforces the sign code, dutifully collects the stormwater tax . . .

Wait a minute. Stormwater tax? If there's a stormwater tax, there must be a stormwater system.

Wrong. Not at the corner of Invisible Street and Chopped Liver Avenue.

There is no stormwater collection and disposal system here. But the city can't know about that -- that would be too much like accepting a responsibility.

Rather, go around shutting people's water off and giving them tickets because their neighbors complained about the weeds.

Moving briskly along . . . .

Freedom of Speech

Freedom of speech is officially dead. I have declared this, so it is so. Here's an excerpt from editorials in the Rocky Mountain News from Aug. 24, 2007:

A National Highway Traffic Safety Administration official seems to have set a new standard for shutting out the public.

NHTSA administrator Nicole R. Nason has muzzled an entire agency. Christopher Jensen wrote, "Without special permission, officials there are no longer allowed
to provide information to reporters except on a background basis, which means it cannot be attributed to a spokesman."

Under the rules of most news organizations, that makes the information useless. The information can be put on the record later, but only after clearance with the public-relations staff at NHTSA.

This is not the CIA or the Pentagon or the Justice Department, where information may have sensitive nuances.

This is an agency that deals with automotive safety, for crying out loud.

The explanations for the new secrecy make no sense except in the context of political appointees anxious that the agency stay "on message."

The people behind the clumsy attempt at image control probably didn't think of it this way, but the taxpayers who pay for NHTSA to gather data and also pay for the experts to analyze it deserve unfettered access to both.

Animation Nightmare

Indulge us in yet another trip on the wayback machine. This time, we're going to the Skyvu Theater north of Brighton, about 1950.

Again, the Big Hodges, (Dad and Mom) took the pint-sized Hodges (my brother Dick and me) on an excursion. Mickey Mouse is cool and innocuous, right? Donald Duck is wholesome, right?

So we went to see the outdoor movies. It was either "Fantasia," or "Snow White," I don't remember which.

Dick hunkered down in the back seat of the Pontiac. He refused to look at the screen, and began quietly crying. I wasn't too pleased with what I saw, either, but being a couple of years older, wasn't quite so frightened.

Pretty soon, a quiet little voice came from the back seat. "Can we go home now?"

I remember watching great swooping, violent, vividly colored images of witchcraft going on. Walt Disney? Tame old bland middle-America Walt Disney?

We went home. Mom and Dad were somewhat perplexed, but they did understand our fright.

Fast forward to 2007. A doting grandfather, writing in "Does God Exist?" magazine, describes a similar scene.

This time, it's Disney World in Florida. Proud Grampa takes grandsons to the Tiki Room. Sounds harmless enough so far, right? Wrong. The puppetry is violent, loud, angry and hostile.

The Grampa says,"My two-year-old grandson buried his head, my four-year-old wanted to leave, and my six-year-old was somewhat bewildered by all that he had seen and did not want to see that show again."

Remember retinal memory. Harry Potter? Vividly illustrated witchcraft, wizardry, not suitable for adults, let alone young children. Remember, kids retain images just like you do.

Hearken to "The Lion King." There's a wedding in there somewhere, with a lot of cliff climbing and fright of height. When the couple seeking wedlock reaches the priest on a high ledge, guess what. The priest is a baboon.

Disney is on somebody's side. Disney (with or without Walt) has an agenda, and it is propagandization, not good clean entertainment.

Remember "Porgy and Bess?" Did your parents make you go to that one like mine did? Here's a line from one of the songs: "The things that you're liable/ to read in the Bible/ Ain't necessarily so."

We do need to censor what we see and hear, and watch out for the little ones, don't expose youngsters to manufactured evil. It's difficult enough for them to see real evil in their day-to-day world.

Turn off the TV and throw it away. Avoid movie theaters. Avoid theme parks. Go swimming. Go camping, scouting, hiking, bicycling. Teach your children and grandchildren what you want them to know, not what Funny Uncle Walt wants them to know.

Too Busy

"Too Busy." We all hear it, lots of us say it. What are we really saying?

A grandchild says, "I would have called you Grampa, but I've been too busy."

It means that by the end of the day, Grampa was somehow unable to levitate to a level of priority anywhere above the cell phone, the "I Pawed," or that the three-hour Disney cartoon movie about Simba the Salesman.

It's not a very nice thing to say to a Grampa.

Same thing for a long-awaited visitor, the phone call, the birthday card, the e-mail. You're too busy? I get the picture, all right, I get the picture.

WOTW

Word of the Week: Analgesic. Latin and Greek. An, without. Algesic, pain. Without pain. Something that produces analgesia. A topical painkiller.

Next week's word: Catacombs.