Weekend Tids and Bits

BIKINI-CLAD CAR WASHES AREN’T FOR WISHING, at least not for the Make-A-Wish-Foundation, reports Fox News. Seems like a Washington, DC guy wanted to donate half the take from a weekend bikini car wash to the foundation that grants wishes for kids with terminal illnesses. No thanks, the foundation is reported to have said. Only family-friendly money is acceptable. Unless Disneyland starts stamping tickets “Purchased With Tainted Money,” maybe the very next wish for Make A Wish should be for brains.

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STORMY WEATHER for Stormy Daniels, the porn star considering a U.S. Senate run against David Vitter, the Louisiana incumbent who turned up on a Washington madam’s list, and we’re not talking groceries. Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Gregory Clifford, was arrested in Tampa, FL for slugging her husband in a dispute over laundry and bills. Earlier, the car of one of her political advisors exploded – whether with help or not isn’t clear. What all this does for the political future of someone who starred in films with minimal costume budgets isn’t clear.

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HARRY POTTER AND THE GET-A-LIFE DEMONS might be a good title for a movie pitting the young wizard against those who are distressed that the adolescents in the current movie are shown in pubs. Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Prince shows characters ordering butterbeer – alcoholic content unknown – and other drinking-associated shots. Although it’s legal for youngsters of 16 in Britain to order alcohol with food, much tut-tutting was reported in the New York Times.

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“OBVIES” AWARD NEEDED, which would be an award given to studies, reports and findings of the obvious. If we can come up with a process, a study by Virginia Tech’s Transportation Institute would be a top candidate. It found that texting while driving is lots more dangerous than talking while driving. That prompted introduction of legislation in the U.S. Senate that would cut off federal highway funds for states who didn’t crack down on texting while driving. No word yet on studies about sleeping while driving, bombed-out-of-your-mind while driving, sex while driving or other behaviors that might pose danger while hurtling down the highway at average-IQ-in-miles-per-hour-rates.

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Last Week’s Lessons:

n Machine intelligence still has a long way to go before it can match many achievements of human intelligence. Problem: scientists can’t make the damned things dumb enough. See http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/07/intelligent-machines-not-to-worry.html

n Mortal Baby Boomers? Disturbing thoughts that the self-proclaimed inventors of sex, drugs, rebellion and living forever may die anyway at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/07/shocking-baby-boomers-mortal-world.html

n Kidney Punch To Capitalism when a broker is arrested for bringing a willing seller and a willing buyer together at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/07/capitalism-update-no-love-for-sale-but.html

n South Carolina Sex Scandal Focus shifts from Governor Mark Sanford to man accused of buggery with a 21-year-old horse named Sugar. No word from state’s supporters on whether they welcome this shift from dalliance in Argentina to making strictly domestic hay at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/07/another-sc-sex-scandal-horsing-around.html

n A Solution At Last to the Gun Debate is offered in a proposed “Must-Carry” movement that ties carrying weapons to voting with a “Wanna Vote? Gotta Tote!” slogan at http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/07/wanna-vote-gotta-tote-must-carry-rules.html

Have a great weekend!

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Shocking!

Baby Boomers

Mortal!

World business and financial markets teetered Monday on rumors that the Baby Boomers might be mortal.

Word that the 79 million or so Americans born between 1945 and 1962 might not achieve the “forever young” of their dreams and songs rocked all sort of businesses that were born catering to the ”Be Me” generation and now might face uncertain futures on the prospect that “Be Me” would at last become “Was Who?”

The White House had no reaction to the news that the Baby Boomers might be mortal. Analysts point out that President Obama, who turns 48 on August 4, was unlikely to call attention to impending mortality while trying to peddle national long-term health care.

“Highlighting that Baby Boomers might indeed be mortal would serve no purpose of this administration,” said an Obama confident who requested anonymity because she wasn’t authorized to speak publically on this subject. “The President is not as vigorous on these kinds of bedrock issues as he used to be,” she mused, “but he’s still not all that bad, considering.” Other analysts also pointed out that the president, with a 1961 birth date, has a trailing-edge stance on this issue.

That failed to deter conservative radio hosts who uniformly bellowed ‘How do we KNOW that 1961 followed 1960?”

Efforts to contact older Baby Boomers for clarification were largely unsuccessful, the demands of the news cycle conflicting with long-scheduled nap times.

Some media weighed in with intelligent coverage. A Business Week story on the msnbc website told Monday how Boomers are curtailing spending in the face of advancing age and declining prospects in the Great Recession, which has now been confirmed to be about incomes, not hairlines.

The article explores Boomers turning to saving instead of spending, and notes that some marketers, able to read the Adult Day Care Instructions on the wall, are focusing their efforts on the 20-32 age group. According to the article, Mercedes Benz calls this demographic “Generation Benz.” No German translator was available to confirm suspicions that this is a German phrase for “Mommy and Daddy Ain’t Paying No More.”

Still, Baby Boomers confronting an age-group death rate almost three times what it was in their 40s are retaining an entrepreneurial outlook. A Hoboken, NJ firm, Sleeps With Fishes, has switched its focus from one-at-a-time boutique operations to accommodate a larger clientele facing crowded cemeteries just as they faced crowded schools, suburbs and everything else.

“Youse are gonna get da best,” a spokesman for the firm said.”We don’t got no complaining customers.”

Challenged on that assertion, the Sleeps With Fishes spokesman insisted customers were “so happy they don’t even come up for air.”

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Mother Earth Beckons

 

 

Today is Earth Day, which means it’s time for Baby Boomers to hug your inner tree, at least for those still limber enough for that sort of thing. After all, we started this one.

 

Begun in 1970 at the urging of Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, Earth Day kicked off with large rallies in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and other cities. The Associated Press, in a year-end review it published then, estimated the city rallies at 25,000 and added that some 10 million school children also participated. The 35-word entry doesn’t mention much more, except to note that the day was to “draw attention to the globe’s environmental problems.”

 

That’s because there wasn’t much more to mention. Some environmentalists worried that the earth was growing too cold, some worried that it was growing too hot, and some thought the earth was just right, but didn’t say so because being just right was very unfashionable then.

 

Others worried that the earth was becoming too populated, ignoring the historical record of wars, plagues and famines that routinely regulate that.

 

Still others noted that April 22 was the 100^th birthday of Vladimir Lenin and wondered if the celebrations were part of the ubiquitous Communist Plot to Overthrow Democracy, probably by boring it to death.

 

And don’t forget that April 22^nd was the birthday of J. Sterling Morton of Nebraska, who founded Arbor Day which became a holiday in 1872, and is still celebrated in Nebraska, where occasions to celebrate anything except leaving the state are few.

 

But most of us who were then alive and young were just glad that Wednesday, April 22, 1970 gave us a chance to stop worrying about wars in Cambodia and Vietnam, Women’s Liberation, Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon, the Chicago 7, school desegregation violence, the My Lai massacre, the Israeli-Arab conflict, the Weather Underground, Mary Jo Kopechne’s fatal ride with Senator Edward Kennedy, and the whisker-close safe return of Apollo 13.

 

All those 1970 worries bubbled before the first Earth Day, and worse would come after, including Kent State and other nightmares, so for all the grand talk about Saving Our Environment, most who lived at the time concentrated on the more immediate task of Saving Our Ass.

 

Which is why except for the annual spasm of we-gotta-fill-the-space-somehow stories, Earth Day isn’t much of a threat to our more robust secular holidays like Mothers Day, Fathers Day or Super Bowl Sunday. In fact, a search on Hallmark’s website turned up zero Earth Day greeting cards and just five Earth Day e-messages.

 

Still, it is observed. President Obama gave an Earth Day address at a wind farm in Newton, Iowa, proving that his administration has risen above petty irony. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi predicts that by Earth Day next year, we’ll be celebrating climate change legislation, although it’s not yet clear who will be charged with getting Mother Nature to fall in line – or what we do if she doesn’t.

 

So if  Baby Boomers are distressed that Earth Day observances are somewhere between filing income taxes and colonoscopy on the scales of enjoyment, they can still take heart.  In spite of everything, everyone on the planet will one day be One With Mother Earth.

 

And the actuarial tables suggest that for most of us, it’s coming sooner than we think.

 

 

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