Sheep and Goats

Category: Countries/States

  • Virginia Tech and the Blame Game

    A student gunman killed 32 people on Virginia Tech campus Monday, and wounded 15 others. There were two attacks, one at 7:15 claiming two persons, and the other across campus 2 hours later. Hordes of media descended, asking all questions except the important ones. Like:

    Did you ever imagine, when you came to class this morning, that such a thing would happen?

    Has it sunk in yet?

    The blaming began within hours. There was Katie Couric, so somber, oozing love and compassion, ever so gently probing college president Charles Steger. Didn't he bear bloodguilt, she implied, for not locking down campus immediately after the first shooting?

    No, he didn't. He'd already explained the first incident bore every mark of a domestic dispute. No reason to think differently. Besides, thousands of non-resident students were just then arriving for 8AM class. "Where do you lock them down?….You can only make a decision based on the information you know at that moment in time. You don't have hours to reflect on it." West_Virginia_Flying_WV_logo.svg

    That made sense to me. God help us if we start shutting down entire communities (30,000 plus at Virginia Tech) every time domestic violence flares up.

    But Mr. Steger is my age, brought up in a different time. The younger you are the more likely you were to disagree. Today's students were born in the late 80's, not the domestically tranquil 40's, 50's and even 60's. A madman on rampage is not so unusual for them, so that it seemed the college should have taken this in stride. They should have known and been ready. Reporters searched until they found SWAT team experts, guys who live and breathe and dream CSI. Yes, they affirmed, the college should have known. All night, cable and satellite stations pushed the theme.

    Lawyers have facilitated this thinking by successfully implanting the notion that money can compensate for life. Of course, that only happens if someone is found blameworthy. So someone must be.

    On the other hand, local radio guy Bob Lonsberry found someone here who's a student there. He chatted a few minutes on air with Doug MacEvoy. Doug didn't fault anybody. Absolute madman, who could have known? totally out of the blue was all they could say from the start. But within hours, the same media folks were in full court blame press.

    So maybe it's not young people at all. Maybe it's entirely lawyers and media, two groups who distinctly gain by finding parties to blame. [media, because it extends the life of the story]

    For those who view such violence as, if not everyday, at least common enough that everyone should always be ready, the important question was not asked. How did society get to be this way?

    In the last days, so says the apostle Paul at 2 Timothy, people will be …. without natural affection, not open to any agreement, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, without love of goodness.

    They've always been like that, some today counter. So was Paul giving a non-prophesy? Of course he knew what people were like. But there would be a time, he advised, when such traits would be off the charts. Is such the case today? Do we not entertain the nagging suspicion that we are just this close to such events becoming absolutely routine?

    Jesus said the dangerous times he foretold…times that would serve to seal the dismal record of human self-rule…would find people "faint out of fear and expectation of the things coming upon the inhabited earth." [Luke 21:26] Those with faith would also be affected by events. A sign is a sign.

    Yet knowing the meaning behind it all would give them a different outlook, even a hopeful one. "In this way you also, when you see these things occurring, know that the kingdom of God is near." [vs 31]

    Announcing this kingdom forms the core of Jehovah's Witnesses ministry.

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    Tom Irregardless and Me        No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash

  • Rochester and the Curse of the Fast Ferry

    It's the curse that keeps on cursing.

    Anyone from Rochester will know what is referred to….the fast ferry, that lake-going vessel that is yet plunging the city through descending levels of financial hell which even Dante never imagined.

    It seemed like such a good idea. Bring a high-speed ferry to Rochester, so that the folks in Toronto, whom we all know are itching to visit our town, could hop over the big lake in no time. Sure, it was expensive, but then, great ideas are never cheap! Where's that checkbook? Whadyamean, you're opposed? You got something against progress? But the operation lost money the instant it touched shore….like a million dollars a month. A new administration decided, within days of taking power, that enough was enough, and put the boat up for sale, pleased to escape with a taxpayer tab of only $20 million (now $28 million), assuming they could sell the boat. It was an optimistic assumption.

    There was this outfit, Euroferries, that straight off said they wanted the vessel, and city luminaries gave each other high-fives. But that was almost a year ago. You can only drag your feet so long, and so Mayor Duffy sent the city lawyer to go eyeball to eyeball with those guys. Yes, look them in the eye, just like a TV anchorman, and peer into their soul. It was a wise move, for their soul revealed that they did indeed like the boat, but they didn't…um…have the….uh….dough. So the city cut them loose and retreated to square one. That way the boat won't sit ten years awaiting a new owner, or at least awaiting Euroferries as a new owner.

    Alas, throughout this long saga, it's hard to avoid the impression that sharpie businesspeople have been playing city officials like Prince played his guitarat the Superbowl. I mean, our boys are politicians, for crying out loud! It hardly seems fair.

    Many projects are achieved by trampling the opposition under your feet. If you wait for all the bickerers, backbiters, and foot draggers to come on board, you’ll never get anything done. Noble projects get done this way. This, they tell me, was the story behind the fast ferry. If it works out, the doer is a visionary. A hero. Who cares how he got it done? Running down the whiners is brilliant, an absolutely essential, strategy! But God help that doer if the vision doesn’t pan out!

    Isn't there a war somewhere following this general pattern?

    Too bad for the first mayor, Bill Johnson. He worked tirelessly and obviously had the city’s interest at heart. But he will be remembered only for “Johnson’s folly.” Fortunately for him, since the next administration scuttled the deal, he will always be able to say "if only." If only they had hung in there. If only they had marketed more. If only they had gone to other places, say the 1000 islands, not just Toronto. If only they had prayed more. And maybe he's right. Nobody will ever know for sure.

    Nor can they say they weren't warned. Contrary to popular belief, the city was advised beforehand that the project didn’t have a snowball’s chance in you-know-where. Not wanting to rush blindly into a deal of such magnitude, the city engaged the Carriertom Into-Wishin Research Institute to provide a feasibility study.

    Carriertom completed its report in record time, a mere three days, since they are fun-loving people there at the Institute, and could not resist calling their report the fast fast ferry study. True, the haste was at the expense of accuracy, but it was not thought to be out of harmony with the company’s motto “That’s Close Enough!“ After all, Carriertom doesn’t charge much, and in these days of high fuel prices, that’s always a valid consideration. As it turned out, it didn’t matter anyway.

    For, not wishing to be ambiguous nor make local politicians do a lot of reading, the report arrived in a dust jacket with bold lettering: Fast Ferry Won’t Work! Alas, this tactic backfired, because they are very politically correct over there at City Hall, and the mail room clerk, upon seeing the dust jacket, misinterpreted it to be a slur against gay people! And a groundless slur at that, since the city has hired several gay persons, and has found they work just fine. Indeed, they are model employees. Enraged, the clerk hurled the report into the trash! Thus, valuable research, which city fathers desperately needed, never reached their eyes.

    The next day, the city of Rochester spent God knows how many millions to purchase and transport the boat to harbor. Six months later, a new administration canned the floundering operation, and it's been root canal sailing ever since.

    That’s the true story, which the Carriertom Institute is eager to tell so that it may not be unjustly blamed for the failed project. They tried, they really did.

  • Elliot Spitzer and the Garbage Plate

    Hickey Freeman was not enough! Elliot Spitzer has selected another Rochester icon to usher in his inauguration day this Monday…the Garbage Plate. Seems when he was in Rochester his wife sampled this bit of local cuisine just after or before Mr. Spitzer bought his new suit, and decreed it must be on the Big Day Menu.  If she ate the whole thing, she’s 20 pounds heavier now. A “gut-busting” local favorite, it’s a hot dog or hamburger under home fries, macaroni salad, baked beans and meat sauce. It’s a Rochester legend, as is Nick Tahou’s, the restaurant where it was invented.

    When the old man (Nick) was alive there was just one restaurant, open 24 hours, in the rugged part of the city. Sheepandgoats worked in the suburbs during the B shift, and rubbed shoulders with all the suburban wannabe toughs who maintained that they were tough, and as proof, cited that they were not afraid to venture into the city, at night, to grab a Garbage Plate at Tahou’s! Of course, it wasn’t really that big of a deal. Sheepandgoats, who for many years lived in the city and consequently, to a mild degree is "streetwise",  did not consider a nocturnal visit a test of manhood, but such was the reputation.

    When our buddy Derrick ran the 5K race, he finished, more or less, last, but we were all proud of him on account of the effort. We went to celebrate at Nick Tahou’s ordering Garbage Plates all around. They needed cranes to get us out of there.

    Mr. Spitzer’s new Hickey Freeman suit provides Rochesterians with an early warning of his intentions, but not necessarily his ability. Now the Garbage Plate has come to the rescue! If Mr. Spitzer wears his Hickey Freeman suit, which he said he would do, subject to assorted disclaimers of my previous post, and he eats 3 or 4 Garbage Plates, which he must do to make us happy in Rochester, and he does not slop any of it on his new suit, then he can do anything! Everything will indeed change, as he has promised, the only possible exception being his unspotted suit!

    Spitzer watch here.

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    Tom Irregardless and Me           No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash

  • Elliot Spitzer’s New Suit

    You would think the Messiah was coming. “On Day One, Everything Changes!” pledged the campaign ads. Voters loved it, because it was Elliot Spitzer and he’d made a ruckus on Wall Street, sending some rich people to jail. He trounced what’s-his-name to become New York State governor. They swear him in January 1, amidst high expectations. But can he keep his promises?

    Politicians don’t always keep promises and when they don’t you can’t necessarily conclude you‘ve been lied to, though that always possible. Sometimes, once in office, they learn new things that cause him to reflect how ridiculous their  promise was in the first place, and so they change it. Or their heartfelt promise dies when they go toe to toe with some fathead who has promised just the opposite and there’s no guarantee your guy won’t get outmaneuvered. But with Mr. Spitzer, there is a canary in the coalmine, an easy-to-keep promise that will reassure us as to his future intentions. And it will actually happen “on day one.”

    Just after winning, Mr. Spitzer visited Rochester, where Sheepandgoats lives. He met with the mayor, said some nice things, and toured Hickey Freeman. Hickey Freeman manufacturers men’s suits, expensive ones that are sold on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Rochester used to have a lot of such manufacturers, but they’ve all moved or gone belly-up. H-F updated their facility in the city’s depressed sector and stayed. We admire them. The state must do more to accommodate business, Spitzer said, and then he bought a new suit, and promised he’d wear it on inauguration day (Day One). Many heard him say it. It was in the newspaper.

    So we’ll soon know. If he wears it, all is well. If he doesn’t….well then…like the Who…we got fooled again.

    Of course, we must be careful not to quickly jump to conclusions if he doesn‘t wear it. Maybe he will spill taco sauce on it, just like I do on my suits, and so it will have to go to the dry cleaners who won’t get it back on time. Or maybe he will kiss a baby, the way politicians do, and that baby will puke on him. Indeed, at the Kingdom Hall, you can often spot a new Dad by the puke marks on his suit, but would you show up for inauguration like that? You would not. So Mr. Spitzer has some wiggle room.

    Still, early signs are troubling. The Democrat and Chronicle’s staff writer Joseph Spector covered Mr. Spitzer’s Hickey-Freeman visit and reported he said (November 16th D&C issue) he’d wear the suit. But now I see a friendly blog from Andy [Spitzer’s Day One] who reports Spitzer said he will likely wear the suit!  And the original D&C link is now dead.

    Uh oh.

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    Tom Irregardless and Me           No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash

     

     

  • Xerox and Erasable Paper

    Rochester’s own Xerox Corporation just came up with a great new invention: erasable paper, for those you-only-have-to-read-it-once messages. Within a day, the paper erases itself and you can reuse it! Thrilled, the cutesy Rochester Democrat and Chronicle used a fading headline to announce the innovation. No, they’re not going to sell it right now, it will take a few years to get to market. But when it does, just think of all the paper it will save!

    There was a time when a more naïve Sheepandgoats would have lapped up every word of this hype, but no more. Weren’t PCs supposed to bring about this same huge paper saving? Yes they were, and, spurred on by anticipated savings, companies which once distributed documents only to those two or three who needed to see them instead sent an e-copy to every employee who could read, only to find that each recipient promptly printed out a hard copy.

    And what about the internet? Wasn’t that also supposed to conserve paper? Alas, starry-eyed scientists discovered too late that there is no joke too asinine, no story too sappy, to not copy and paste and send to everyone in your address book, each of whom also must print a  hard copy.

    Sheepandgoats predicts that this invention too will squander paper, not save it. Exactly how he can’t yet say, he just has faith in man’s infinite capacity to screw things up. Perhaps, as with PCs, the new paper will spur ever more messages. Why not, since the cost is negligible? “So-and-so is going to the bathroom.”  No announcement will be too trivial! Then, after messages have proliferated, some recipients will complain that they’ve missed some, since not everyone reads incoming drivel right away, but puts it aside till they get a minute, which may come days or weeks or months later. Missed messages! We can’t have that. The obvious solution: don’t use the newfangled stuff, but use good ‘ol chop-a-tree-down paper that doesn’t go belly up on you.

    That’s not all. There‘s no end to potential abuses. Already, that lazy lout Tom Pearlsandswine has exploited the new technology, and its not even out yet.  He bought a few reams of blank paper, distributed it via office mail to coworkers and supervisors alike, claimed to have done a ton of work, and, when informed he’d only sent blank sheets, blamed a defective beta version of the new erasable paper, which wiped out his work prematurely! But we’re all wise to that skunk by now. His incoming phone call was traced to the golf course.

    Indeed, the only permanent customer Sheepandgoats can envision is the Impossible Mission Force, (IMF) which will use the new paper to give Tom Cruise his assignments.

     

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    Tom Irregardless and Me               No Fake News but Plenty of Hogwash

  • Horses in Water

    Ever since I was a kid, Durand Eastman beach has been closed. With much hoopla, the new administration vowed to open it. Opening day came and their first action was to close it. The bacteria count was too high.

    Really, for 40 years you would never  had known the beach was closed. Come warm weather, swimmers flocked to it, almost as much as to the open beach two miles down the road. But every year, a child or two would drown, and the following chain of events invariably ensued:

    First would come the tragic story of the drowning itself. A day or two later, somber "I told you so" scoldings from the newspaper, coupled with dismay that people still, even in the face of such tragedy, continue to play Russian Roulette with their very lives, swimming where there are no lifeguards! A few days later, some old codger or two would write in to say that he had swum at the beach for 50 years, same as his parents and grandparents. Furthermore, his children and grandchildren would also swim at the beach, and it was up to parents to watch their own kids, in which case tragedies would not happen.

    These coots notwithstanding, city officials, as mentioned, coughed up the dough to hire lifeguards and build high chairs for them. They roped off an area, kicked out dogs, boats and floats, banned horseplay, splashing, chicken fights, snorkels and masks. Opening day finally came, after the bacteria had subsided,

    While lifeguards badgered, cajoled, and nagged their charges, in the name of Safety, they were indulgent with those crazies, quite a few of them actually, who chose to swim outside the supervised area, leaving them unmolested for the time being. You don’t change 40 years of risk taking behavior in one day.

    If it saves one life, it’s worth it, goes the slogan. But I will miss the literal horseplay.

    They came from the stables across the street, clip-clopping straight into the water. You could tell straight off they weren’t people, because they didn’t dip their hooves in and take forever getting used to the water. No, they barreled right in, up to their shoulders, and frolicked around, having a good ol time. Of course, there were people with them, their handlers, and getting them in proved easier than getting them out. One horse got spooked at the mini-breakers hitting the shore, and he would not cross them. His handler tried and tried to coax him, but he would not do it. He might still be there, had he not finally sashayed around the wave, eying it warily all the time, oblivious that he was sidestepping through other breakers while making his escape.

    They’re not all as smart as Mr. Ed, and from now on, they don’t swim at the open beach. Image

    Tom Irregardless and Me   No Fake News But Plenty of Hogwash