My prose poem “The Taxidermist” is up now at “independent punk zine” lacuna.
Among the SEC Porn Dogs
Senior employees making over $200,000 at the Securities and Exchange Commission, the federal agency responsible for oversight of publicly-traded securities, were found to have spent hours surfing pornographic web sites. Associated Press.
Every day when I come into work at the Securities and Exchange Commission–at substantially less than I could make in the private sector, I might add–I take pride in the job my colleagues and I do protecting America’s widows and orphans from investment fraud. It’s a constant battle, ferreting out penny stock scams and fly-by-night bucket shop operators. Turn off the lights of regulatory oversight and they come out to feast on the sticky mess of investors’ nest eggs. Turn them back on, and the scumbags scatter like the cockroaches that they are.
It’s grueling, and a guy can be forgiven for spending an idle moment here and there on something . . . fun. Diverting. Relaxing. Like HotSweatyBikerBabes.com. It’s free, unless you want to enter the private “chop shop,” where you can conduct one-on-one conversations with the Women of the Road, the gals who stay glued to their seats hugging hot gas tanks with their thundering thighs. For that you’ll need a major credit card. Good thing I’m in a senior position here and have been entrusted with an SEC-issued VISA card to defray expenses associated with my . . . uh . . . investigations.
My phone rings and I look down at the caller ID screen. I see from the phone number it’s that damn “whistleblower” guy again–what a nuisance. Just when I was starting to unwind a bit.
“What is it now?” I ask wearily after I pick up.
“Did you guys look at that stuff I sent you on FTX?”
I rustle some papers to make a noise like I’m looking for the file. “Ah, here it is,” I say. Actually, I recycled what he sent me a long time ago. It was doing no good cluttering up my desk. Might as well get it back in the waste stream, where it could be made into something useful, like a post-consumer content coffee cup for Starbucks.
“So have I convinced you that it’s a Ponzi scheme?”
Blah, blah, blah–tell me something I haven’t heard a million times before. A little email envelope shows up on my screen as the guy drones on and on. It’s from Chuck over in enforcement. “Check this out,” his message says, and I open up the attachment. It’s an image from lizardlove.com of a raven-haired bimbo getting it on with a gecko, one of the small to average-sized lizards found in warm climates throughout the world.
“If you look at the article in CoinDesk,” the whistleblower says, “you’ll see that he’s running out of money so he’s probably using customers’ cash.”
“Jesus Christ,” I say. I turn on my computer speakers and set the volume on low, so I can hear the moans of the gecko, the only lizard that vocalizes.
“I love it when you flick your little tongue!”
“Exactly, that’s a big deal,” the guy says. “Are . . . are you okay?” he asks. “I hear a chirping sound.”
“Just clearing my throat,” I say as I turn the speakers off. Have to maintain the SEC’s standards of professionalism, which are a god damn nuisance if you ask me.
“So–are you guys going to do anything about it?” the whistleblower asks. Who, I ask myself, died and left this guy boss?
“You know,” I begin patiently, “in order to convict someone of securities fraud the SEC must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that an individual acted with criminal intent to–oh my god!”
“Oh my god what?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you guys for years!”
Happy Hairball Awareness Day
It’s Friday, and I’m “working” remotely from home. There’s just me and two cats, Rocco and Okie, three sullen males grunting their way through the day–as usual–while the wife’s out shopping for essential items. Milk, bread, a tall vanilla no-foam latte, a 2025 calendar–before they run out.
Rocco: “You insensitive clod!”
And yet something’s–not quite right. Okie, the elder cat, seems–distrait. Taciturn. Phlegmatic. And those are just leftover vocab words from my son’s senior English class.
He sits on a windowsill, staring off into the middle distance, as if he’s depressed. He’s indifferent to my attentions, or perhaps I should say more indifferent than he–or any other cat–is normally. Rocco’s outside rolling in the dirt, so I amble up to him for a sidebar.
“Nice day if it don’t rain, huh?” I say.
“Yeah. I’m going to hassle those stupid long-haired chihuahuas next door.”
“Okay, but get that out of your system early–I want to take a nap this afternoon. Hey–have you noticed anything funny about Okie?”
“Yip, yip, yip!”
“Funny strange, or funny ha-ha?”
“Strange. He seems somewhat–distant today.”
Rocco looks at me with a pitiless expression and shakes his head. “You are so freaking clueless.”
“What?”
He takes a second to scratch for a tick under his chin. “It’s all about you–isn’t it? You sit there at your computer all day in your own little world. Never thinking about anybody else.”
“Hey–if I don’t sit at my computer all day, you don’t get any Iams Low Fat Weight Control Dry Cat Food.”
“Oh, whoop-de-do! That stuff’s so bad I’d rather eat the bag.”
“You’ll thank me in a couple of years when every other cat in the neighborhood has a gut that’s dusting the floor. But seriously–is something the matter with him?”
“Don’t you know what today is?”
I search my memory. Not Arbor Day. Not my elder sister’s birthday, although that’s coming up sometime in the next month–or two. St. Swithin’s Day? Elizabeth Taylor’s wedding anniversary? “I give up–what?”
Rocco closes his eyes, as if he can’t believe how stupid I am. “It’s Hairball Awareness Day, you mook!”
I’m confused. “Okie’s a short-hair. Why would he get emotional about hairballs?”
“You are such an insensitive clod,” Rocco says, licking his white ruff. “Hairballs can strike any cat, at any time–long or short-hair.”
“I didn’t know. We get so many solicitations at work. United Fund. All kinds of diseases. You don’t expect me to keep up with all of them, do you?”
“Look–just because there’s no washed-up comedian doing a telethon for Hairball Awareness doesn’t mean you can completely ignore a cause that means so much to someone right in your own home!”
“Ack-ack-ack–it’s the sound of a hairball attack!”
“But I don’t . . .”
Rocco cuts me off. “Okie’s mom died of a hairball.”
Okay. ‘Nuf said. I “get it.” “Jeez–I didn’t realize.”
“You should go talk to him. Maybe buy a bracelet, or at least a ribbon.”
I take out my wallet. I’ve got four ones and a twenty. Stupid cat won’t know the difference.
“And don’t try to stiff him like you do the mini-mites hockey kids who accost you at the stoplights with their coffee cans.”
“You’re right. I’ll go talk to him.” I go back in the house and Okie’s still sitting where he was when I left, his chin on his paws.
“Hey Oke,” I say, “I’m . . . uh . . . sorry I forgot about Hairball Awareness Day.”
He looks up at me without anger. “That’s okay,” he says. “Who was it that said the universe was indifferent to our suffering?”
Camus: 1951 Existentialist Rookie of the Year.
“I don’t know. Either Albert Camus–or Yogi Berra.”
He lets out a short little sigh. “I think of the poem by Auden . . .”
“Musee des Beaux Arts?”
Auden: “At least this post has a smoking section.”
“Right. How suffering takes place while someone else is eating or opening a window . . . “
” . . . or just walking dully along?” I say, finishing the line for him. Nothing like the consolations of art–their purgative powers–to help one get over sadness.
“I tell you what,” I say. “I’ve got $24–I’m going to make a contribution in your mother’s name to the National Hairball Foundation.”
His eyes mist over–or at least I think they do. “Save your money,” he says.
“But I want to.”
“No–you’re going to need it.”
“Why?” I ask.
“For some Resolve Multi-Surface Fabric Cleaner. I upchucked a hairball on the dining room rug.”
Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Cats Say the Darndest Things.”
My Philosophical Dance
Lucius Aurelius Apolaustus Memphius, a slave by birth, caught the eye of Roman Emperor Lucius Aurelius Verus for his exposition in dance of Pythagoras’ philosophy of the transmigration of souls.
Review of “Populus” by Guy de la Bedoyere, The Wall Street Journal
Verus: “Shake that thang!”
It was, as the MFAs in the campus coffee shop said, a “fraught” situation. They never said what it was fraught with, but they didn’t have to; it was fraught with tension, fear of failure, anxiety. It was the day of senior oral exams at the University of Chicago, but I wasn’t going to the dentist; instead, I would be facing my senior advisor and a second professor of philosophy–there I suppose to revive me in case I passed out, or choked on the words “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”–in defense of my senior thesis.
It wasn’t altogether clear what my thesis was; I’d been, shall we say, distracted in my final year of college by the onset of legal drinking age that had allowed me to imbibe the regional beers of Illinois, Heileman’s Special Export in particular. You know you’ve developed a drinking habit when the bartender at your campus watering hole slides a free beer across the bar at you, a customer appreciation lagniappe that, unfortunately, you can’t take with you due to draconian open container laws in the Land of Lincoln.
As a result, my thesis was less a thesis than a mere observation: some metaphors that employ the same term–“bear,” for example–equate them with vastly different objects. There is both Paul “Bear” Bryant, college football coach, and poet Delmore Schwartz, who described his corporeal self as “The heavy bear who goes with me.” There could not have been two more dissimilar men–both, as it happens, born in 1913–and yet they were both bears in metaphorical terms. Had I drank less and thought more during my last year under the tutelage of chalky pedagogues I might have actually developed this into a thesis; instead, it just lay there, like roadkill, to be avoided if possible, or crushed to death if not.
Delmore Schwartz, Paul Bryant: Curiously, never seen in the same room together.
I was thus in the position of paleontologist Anne Elk, a character created by John Cleese of Monty Python fame; after much belabored throat-clearing and credential-citing (“A. Elk, brackets, Miss, brackets”) prefatory to the elaboration of her new theory, it turned out that the theory was utterly fatuous: “All brontosauruses are thin at one end, much, much thicker in the middle, and then thin again at the far end.” There was a rather high probability that when I expounded my theory that while Bryant and Schwartz are both metaphorically bears, they are nonetheless very unlike each other!–my examiners Knox Hill and Ted Cohen would purse their lips and say “Huh, fancy that. So what?” when I was through.
John Cleese (right) as Anne Elk
Hill I could handle, no problem. He was the slow, deliberative type; a ruminative cud-chewer of a philosopher, a bovine blovinator who’d rather masticate a concept until it is mush than come to a conclusion. He was the author of a text on ethical philosophy, so I had the home court advantage over him since my concentration was in aesthetics.
Cohen, on the other hand, was a philosophical Muhammad Ali; he floated like a butterfly, lulling you with a low-pitched voice and a distracted air, then stung like a bee with an apercu that seemed to come out of left field–to mix my metaphors–but stayed with you a long time: “Anthropological evidence cuts both ways,” for example, and “You can read too much existentialism,” both antidotes for what ailed many relativistic undergrads of my era. I could expect some light jabs from him to begin the sparring, then a knockout punch that I wouldn’t see coming before it landed.
Ted Cohen: Funnier than a barrel of Montesquieus.
I prepared for my examination with my usual performance-enhancing drug fix– Dannon blueberry yogurt and bad campus dining hall coffee–and made my way to Cohen’s third-floor office, which I used to haunt back when I was trying to persuade him to be my senior advisor. I had originally been assigned to the chair of the department who, in Bishop Berkeley-fashion–seemed to think that I wasn’t a material substance, just a tuition-paying cipher.
Eventually I persuaded Cohen to take me on, but he didn’t seem particularly excited about it. I assume it was because I added to his workload but not his paycheck, in the manner of the new teacher who’s asked to be the drama coach at a high school strapped for funds. Eventually we reached a sort of Midwestern detente; he told me jokes from his downstate Illinois boyhood, I parried with snappy one-liners from central Missouri. The material wouldn’t get past a censorious woke mind of today, but some of his made its way into his Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters, the leading–if not the only–book of serious philosophical thought on comic matters.
I knocked softly on the door and entered to find Cohen chatting away–his mind never rested–and Hill soaking it in like an over-serious sponge. I really shouldn’t be so hard on the latter; he gave me a straight A in Ethics even though at that time in my life I was one of the least ethical persons I knew.
“C’mon in,” Cohen said, and Hill sort-of smiled. They probably wanted to pass me just so I’d get on with my life and not hang around campus another year, a prospect for which I had no taste, they needn’t have worried. I had asked my friend Smitty what he planned to do after he graduated and there followed a sort of Ralph Waldo Emerson-Henry David Thoreau patter routine I’d learned about in high school; Thoreau refused to pay a poll tax, which he believed was used to fund a war that he opposed (the Mexican-American, for those keeping score at home). He went to jail where Emerson visited him and asked “What are you doing in there?” to which Thoreau responded “What are you doing out there?” “Why?” I’d asked Smitty what he was doing once he graduated and he’d replied “Stick around Hyde Park–what else am I gonna do?”
Sandy Dennis as Honey: “If I can’t do my interpretive dance, I don’t want to dance with anyone.”
After a bit of casual banter (“Heard any good syllogisms lately?”) we got down to the nitty-gritty: What, exactly, did I have to show for my four years of philosophizing? I have to say that I delivered an Anne Elk-like tour de force; nobody, but nobody, knew my thesis like I did. I doubt Aristotle himself, whose Poetics contains a number of passages dealing with metaphor, could have explicated it better. He’d been dead for 2,225 years at the time, but even with that head start he couldn’t have touched me.
As I brought my presentation to a less-than-rousing conclusion, Cohen smiled knowingly, since he’d been working with me for the better part of the year to refine what passed for my thinking. Hill, by contrast, seemed befuddled. Little furrows of doubt formed across his forehead–and try saying that five times fast. Back then many professors smoked pipes indoors, and he fiddled with his, tamping the tobacco down, then re-lighting it. He stared off into the distance–which given that we were in a faculty office wasn’t that far–and a cloud of concern scudded across his face. If the furrows on his forehead were lucky, he might have broken out into a spring shower.
I can joke about it now, but at the time I was genuinely concerned that he’d pull a Gertrude Stein on me, saying as she did of Oakland that “there’s no there there” and hold me back. He had, as T.S. Eliot said of Henry James, “a mind so fine no idea could violate it,” so it was possible my diaphanous subtlety had eluded him. Didn’t he realize that senior seminars are pass-fail? My job was not to score high, but merely to show up and make it to the end of the hour.
He stirred slightly in his chair, as if troubled by the deep superficiality of my reasoning. “Is it possible,” he said finally, “that you could repeat that doing the Hokey-Pokey?”
Yours for a Song
I got my COVID booster last week, but despite the somewhat urgent nature of my visit to the mass vaccination site on Route 128–“America’s Technology Highway!”–the nurse had a number of nitpicky questions to ask me. Was I taking any medication? Had I ever had an allergic reaction to any vaccine? Did I have high blood pressure?
“Your smart-alecky numbers are rather high.”
I had to stop and think about that last one. “You know,” I said finally, “when I was out in the waiting room . . .”
“Yes?”
“I got high blood pressure when you called my name.”
The woman looked at me as if I were crazy, then slowly moved her hand to the emergency call button to summon help.
“No, no–that wasn’t me talking,” I said, trying to calm her down. “I was quoting the song ‘High Blood Pressure.’” The look of incomprehension on her face was not erased by my explanation. “By Huey ‘Piano’ Smith and His Clowns?” I said, trying to recall the fifties hit by the New Orleans R&B star for her.
“I’ve never heard of them,” she said as she gingerly returned to her litany of questions.
“Never heard of Huey ‘Piano’ Smith and His Clowns?” I asked, stunned. “So you don’t know the words that segue into the bridge–’Ooba-dooba-dooba-dooba’?”
“Can’t say that I do.”
“What the hell are they teaching kids in nursing school these days?”
I had just pulled off, with mixed success, one of my favorite conversational gambits; inserting the words of a song into a conversation.
It’s a rare thing, like a meteor shower or a courteous driver in Boston, when such an opportunity presents itself; when it does you must seize it, for you may never get another chance to use a particular lyric in conversation again.
Humphrey Bogart, Dooley Wilson in “Casablanca”
I was introduced to this custom when, as a young lawyer, I committed one of the errors the flesh of legal beagles is heir to. I had confused an accretion with a reliction, or maybe requested an additur when I should have asked for a remittitur, I can’t recall precisely. After a scolding by Charlie, the partner I was working with, his tone shifted to the avuncular. “You must remember this,” he said as he looked out his office window at the Atlantic and jingled some change in his pocket.
I gulped, waiting for the next lash of his tongue.
“A kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh. The fundamental things apply.”
I nodded my head. “As time goes by,” I acknowledged, recalling the lyrics burned into my memory by the movie Casablanca, in which Dooley Wilson sings them for a nostalgic Humphrey Bogart.
Once we got started, there was no stopping us. “And when two lovers woo, they still say I love you,” Charlie intoned, “on that you can rely.”
“No matter what the future brings,” I added thoughtfully. “As time goes by.”
A senior partner in the firm stuck his head in the door at that point. “Say Charlie,” he said, not noticing that we were engrossed in conversation.
“Moonlight and love songs–never out of date,” Charlie said.
“Hearts full of passion, jealousy and hate,” I reminded him.
“Maybe I should come back later,” the senior partner said, before beating a hurried retreat
“Woman needs man–and man must have his mate,” Charlie noted.
“That no one can deny,” I said, summing the thing up.
Men are the primary perpetrators of this little gag, perhaps because women lack the deep capacity for insincerity that the male of the species is capable of, especially those men who must busy themselves with work that the world considers serious all day long. Walter Wriston, the man who built Citibank into an international financial powerhouse, was reputed to string junior yes men along in this fashion until someone would finally realize they had been gulled.
Walter Wriston: “There were chills down my spine–and some thrills I can’t define.”
Like riding a bull of a different sort, the trick is to keep yourself astride the lyric for as long as you can. It helps if the words of the song actually mean something, unlike say “Wooly Bully” by Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs, and that they are not so current that your interlocutor will recognize them immediately. I find the Beach Boys’ “California Girls” to be particularly helpful as I counsel my two sons on what part of the country they may want to settle in once they’ve graduated from college.
“Well, East Coast girls are hip–I really dig those styles they wear,” I say, reminding them of one of the advantages of returning to New England.
“Yeah, if you like Uggs,” says the younger of the two, who’s thinking of staying below the Mason-Dixon line.
“The southern girls–with they way they talk–they knock me out when I’m down there,” I say, giving that warmer region of the nation its due.
Even an elevator conversation can be enlivened by this rhetorical trick. “What’s new?” a colleague asks as he pushes the button for his floor. “How is the world treating you?” I fire right back, understanding that his words to me were a greeting, not a question.
“Oh, okay, I guess,” he replies.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” I say as I step off the elevator. “Lovely as ever–I must admit,” thereby completing the first verse of the Johnny Burke and Bob Haggart classic of 1939. The guy tries to hide his embarrassment as there are other people in the elevator, so I throw him a bone of explanation. “For my money,” I say as the doors close, “the best version is on the ‘Louis Armstrong meets Oscar Peterson’ album.”
Lyricizing your conversations isn’t just for fun, however. It can help defuse an argument with your spouse over his or her lack of affection.
“A fine romance this is, a fine romance–with no kisses,” you complain amusically, channeling Billie Holiday.
“What do you mean?” your opposite number says.
“You’re calmer than the seals in the Arctic Ocean,” you say bitterly. “At least they flap their fins to express emotion.”
Ask Mr. Punctuation
Wondering how to end that sentence you’re working on? Don’t know what an “interrobang” is? Ask Mr. Punctuation, if he doesn’t know the answer he’ll look it up in his fourth-grade English book.
Dear Mr. Punctuation:
My eldest daughter is engaged to an adjunct professor at Wapello County Junior College, a real “know-it-all.” My husband Earl and I let him stay over last weekend even though he has not given Lynette a diamond, just his high school ring, he makes so little money. We laid down the law first thing Friday night, though: This is our house, and our rules apply: If we’re not having sex, you’re not having sex.
Anyway, this guy Michael–“Mike” isn’t good enough for him–told our younger kids about “semi-colons,” and now it’s become a “fad” around our house, like the Hula-Hoop was when I was a girl. Example: Sunday night Timmy our youngest wrote me a note saying “Mother, I need you to go to Staples and get me a Flipside 1-Ply Project Board for my oral report on dinosaurs; either brown or red, because my report focuses on Tyrannosaurus rex, which was reddish-brown, not orange as typically depicted.”
My question is–can semi-colons breed? They are everywhere in the house now, and none of the bug sprays Earl has in his garage “workshop” seem to kill them.
(Mrs.) Violet Sprague, Ottumwa, Iowa
Where Earl keeps the insect sprays.
Dear Mrs. Sprague:
The semicolon or semi-colon (either spelling is acceptable) is used to separate major elements of a sentence and to show that the author went to college. They cannot reproduce, but they molt once a year. Keep them off the den couch during their fall shedding season.
Dear Mr. Punctuation:
My daughter Violet has applied unsuccessfully for over sixty jobs since she graduated from high school last spring. I am beginning to think her writing style may have something to do with it, as I recently peeked over her shoulder before she hit “send” on an email to Fast Seal Adhesives and it was “peppered” with exclamation points and included a “smiley” face where I was taught you should put “Sincerely” or “Very truly yours.”
Perhaps I am “out-of-date” but it seems to me that if you want to get a position with a corporation that includes benefits instead of being a car hop at “Shakes ‘n Fries” which is where she works now, you need to project a “professional” image in your correspondence. I was an executive secretary for six years before I got married, so I know a little bit about the “world of business.”
Marjorie Olmstead, Seekonk, Mass.
“Perfect–not a single exclamation point! Oops.”
Dear Marjorie–
I asked Thurman Seebold of the Calumet (Michigan) College of Business for his take on this inter-generational squabble and here is his response, which I quote in pertinent part: “The rule in this regard is known as ‘Mulhern’s Law,’ after Edward Mulhern, the former Director of Personnel at Atlas Brake Pads, a major supplier to the auto industry: ‘The competence of a prospective employee is inversely related to the number of exclamation points in his/her resume and/or cover letter.'” So tell Violet to “shrink” the number of exclamation points she uses down to zero.
” . . . and no politics, religion or punctuation arguments.”
Dear Mr. Punctuation–
Please settle a dispute that threatens to tear my family apart. Now that everyone communicates by email, differences in punctuation styles are readily apparent–this is why I miss a nice note or letter written in cursive. Some members of our family put two spaces after the period or other ultimate punctuation mark at the end of a sentence, while others use only one.
This issue has caused many “flaming” wars between the two opposing camps, and we have a wedding coming up in October so the volume of communications will increase right before Thanksgiving. I don’t want what should be a nice family get-together to degenerate into a free-for-all of the sort you read about in the police blotter of our local newspaper, not that I have any interest in the mortality rates of the lower classes.
We have agreed to abide by your decision, regardless of how you punctuate your reply.
Millicent Bristol, Croton-on-Hudson, New York
Dear Millicent:
There are substantive reasons for the two most popular spacing techniques. Some word processing programs choke when they open documents with more than one space after the end of its sentences, causing laptop computer screens to “freeze.” This in turn requires a “re-boot” that your children can perform for you–it is like a Heimlich Maneuver for a computer. Others say two spaces makes for easier reading, and thus is preferable from the point of view of the human and not the computer.
A third and increasingly-popular minority viewpoint is who gives a rat’s ass?
Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Take My Advice–I Wasn’t Using it Anyway.”
A Day in the Life of a Spritzer Girl Organizer
The National Labor Relations Board ruled that a small group of cosmetics and fragrance workers at a Macy’s store in Saugus, Mass. can be organized separately from other employees.
The Wall Street Journal
It’s never been easy bein’ a labor organizer, but right now it’s never been harder.
Private sector union membership has dropped through the roof, or maybe I mean the floor. It was 16.8% in 1983, it’s 6.7% now. That’s why we gotta go after the minnows, because there ain’t no big fish to fry no more.
Which is why I’m standin’ outside Macy’s, bein’ as surreptitious as possible. I’m trying to organize the girls at the in-store Beauty Bar into the International Sisterhood of Cosmetics and Fragrance Workers. Yeah, go ahead and laugh, but I want to be the guy going toe-to-toe with Big Perfume fightin’ for the rights of spritzer girls!
What I gotta do is catch ’em as they come out the door and tell ’em how the big department store where they work is gettin’ the gold, while they get the shaft. An employer can exclude me from organizin’ on the premises, so go ahead, exclude me out, I can still get all the signatures I need as long as I got the right, shall we say, “incentive.”
“You’ve got some kind of goober between your teeth.”
That’s why I loaded up on every woman’s dream: handy, convenient small appliances! Just the thing to turn a working girl’s few hours away from the sweatshop atmosphere of the cosmetics counter into a miracle of efficiency. I’ve got a dishwasher-safe countertop donut maker, a Salad Shooter, a Dust-Buster–I should be all set. Ooh–here comes a poor, oppressed spritzer girl now. It’s Jeenie, who works the noon to 2/5 to 7 split shift.
“Absolutely–nose hair highlighting is VERY popular these days.”
Hey, Jeenie. Al DiBartolo of the ISCFW. What’s that? Only the best friend a working girl slavin’ away on her feet all day at a cosmetics counter ever had, that’s what–the International Sisterhood of Cosmetics and Fragrance Workers. Say, how would you like to better your wages and working conditions, huh? Sure you would–EVERYBODY would! Well, that means you gotta join together with your sisters at the . . . what’s that? They ain’t your sisters? They ain’t even your friends? If you had a chance you’d scratch Mimi LaFrance’s eyeballs out? Whoa–that’s no way to level the playing field with the overwhelming bargaining power of greedy bosses to get what’s coming to you. You gotta band together–sisterhood is powerful! Listen, I got this nice Dustbuster here for ya–9.6 volt cordless model, it really sucks . . .
Whadda ya mean I really suck? I’m just tryin’ to help ya girlie. Oh yeah? Sez who? Same to you! Yer gonna be sorry when we get this place organized. Don’t come crawlin’ around, begging me ta make ya shop steward. Blow it out your panty hose!
Dustbuster: Didn’t seal the deal.
Jeez, what a bitch. Guess I’ll have to catch the next . . . okay, I got a live one here. Tina Del Guidici–generally regarded as Queen of Mascara, Eyeliner and Blusher. She’s a triple threat! Hey, Tina, great job you did on that lady with the oily T-Zone. It was like the Exxon Valdez there, you was terrific. Say, we’re having an organizational meeting tonight, it would be great if you could come, we’re trying to get some dignity for you cosmetic and spritzer gals. Better wages ‘n hours ‘n stuff. I got a little somethin’ for youse, it’s a gen-you-wine Salad Shooter by Presto, this thing is like the Harley-Davidson of hand-held electric shredders and slicers. It slices, dices, chops and . . . what’s that? You don’t like to cook? You want rich guys to take you out to dinner?
Slice the big ones!
Well, jeez, if you’re gonna throw your lot in with the 1% instead of your comrades storming the barricades of exfoliants and lip gloss, that’s your business, but I’d think it’d be nice to make your guy a home-cooked meal every now and . . .
Say what? I’ll have you know I may be a prick but I’m not a little one. I should do what to your yeast-infected . . . do you kiss your mother with that mouth?
Well, all I can do is try. I never met a labor force so unwilling to do what’s necessary to improve their lot a lot. You’d almost think they think they’re . . . better than their sisters in misses and juniors and their brothers in snow tires and men’s outerwear. I can’t imagine why, just because they spend 16 hours a day lookin’ at themselves in the mirror.
Hey, here comes a prospect. Lu Ann Bemish-Slaughter. Hasn’t made enough money to change back to her maiden name since she dumped her no-count loser boyfriend. She’s low-hanging fruitcake!
Hey Lu Ann, how ya doin’. Al DiBartolo of the International Sisterhood of Cosmetics and Fragrance Workers. We’re trying to organize to get you “gals” a pay raise and benefits so we’re offering one-time come-ons like this beautiful Sunbeam Donut Maker, regularly $28.99 at Target but it’s yours free if you’ll sign this card sayin’ you want . . . wait, what?
You don’t need no donuts? Well, how was I to know you was in Weight Watchers? I mean, except for your thunder thighs there you’re lookin’ pretty . . .
Hey, officer–arrest that woman for . . . anti-union violence!
Walk for Self-Abuse Brings Shady Secret Into the Light
BOSTON. Thousands of men and boys soaked in the cool spring air today as they filed down Beacon Street on their way to the Boston Common for the first annual “Walk for Self-Abuse,” a fund-raiser that hopes to bring public awareness to a problem that has historically been kept behind closed doors.
“Wait–you all do it?”
“I’m an out and proud onanist,” says Bill Leeds of Wayland, Massachusetts, using one of many euphemisms that victims of self-abuse use to cloak their disability for purposes of public discussion. Onan was the second son of Judah and in an incident recounted in the Book of Genesis, “spilled his seed on the ground” rather than have intercourse with his late brother’s wife. Dorothy Parker named her parakeet “Onan” because the bird also spilled his seed on the ground.
Celebrity spokeswoman: “I beg you, please–do NOT do it to pictures of me.”
The theme of the march and the ensuing gala ball is “One Man Can’t Do it Alone,” a reference to the fact that self-abuse, referred to by medical professionals as “masturbation,” is typically a victimless crime that goes unreported, leading law enforcement and public health officials to offer widely varying estimates of the magnitude of the problem.
“Many men hide the damage they have suffered, because they are also the perpetrator,” says Sergeant Jim Hampy of the Massachusetts State Police. “It’s tough to file a complaint and risk self-retaliation for abusing yourself.”
Do it like the pros!
The platinum sponsors of this year’s walk include Maxim Magazine and Vaseline Intensive Care Hand Lotion, a measure of the public acceptance that the affliction has gained through outreach and marketing.
Available in dishwasher-safe edition.
“This disease strikes entire families,” says Norwell Fulsom of the Self-Abuse Society. “We had a father-son weenie roast at the march’s halfway point to highlight the generational tensions it reflects, and relieves.”
Ernest Borgnine: Past Grand Marshall of the parade.
The highlight of gala dinner will be the presentation of the Ernest Borgnine-Jocelyn Elders Public Service Award, named after the Academy Award-winning actor who created a sensation by crediting his long life to frequent self-abuse, and the Surgeon General appointed by President Bill Clinton who proposed that masturbation be incorporated into the curriculum of public schools. Clinton eventually fired Elders, saying “Dr. Elders’ remark was entirely inappropriate. That sort of thing should be learned at home.” This first recipient of the award will be Jeffrey Toobin, the legal analyst for The New Yorker magazine and CNN who brought the age-old practice into the era of Zoom teleconferences.
Jocelyn Elders: “Hey Ernie–don’t let your meat loaf.”
Event organizer Fulsom tries to keep the marchers on track, but becomes frustrated when walkers use the men’s room at a gas station along the route for a prolonged “pit stop.” “C’mon guys,” he yells as he knocks on the restroom door. “What the hell is taking so long?”
Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “The Spirit of Giving.”
Gladys Kneff, Mistress to Secretaries of Commerce, Dead at 90
ARLINGTON, Virginia. Gladys Kneff, who rose from a lowly position in a secretarial pool to become the secret lover of a succession of U.S. Secretaries of Commerce, died here yesterday after a brief illness. She was 90.
Gladys, in her salad days.
“I saw what I wanted and I took it,” she recalled in an unfinished autobiography she was working on at the time of her death. “What I wanted was Charles Sawyer, twelfth Secretary of Commerce, and I wasn’t going to let piddling things like his wife and children get in my way.”
Charles Sawyer: Simply irresistible.
Sawyer repaid Kneff for her favors by designating June 1-7th as the inaugural National Secretaries Week, and Wednesday, June 4, 1952, as the first National Secretaries Day. “My wife balances our checking account so I can’t buy you anything,” Kneff said he told her at the time. “But here’s a nifty holiday that bosses will be forgetting about for many years to come–I hope you enjoy it.”
Kreps: *Maybe I came on too strong.*
From that initial seductive success, Kneff bounced from bed to bed with each new Secretary of the Department, pausing only to hop over female appointees. “I don’t swing that way,” she reportedly told Juanita Kreps, who importuned her one night at a Georgetown cocktail party with a coquettish look, saying “Is it my turn now?”
Ross: “You want to what with me?”
Kneff had been in failing health, but the immediate cause of death was reported to be a broken heart when she was turned down by Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce in the Trump administration and former People Magazine “Sexiest Man Alive,” who demurred, saying the age difference between the two was too great. “She was 8 years older than me,” Ross said to a reporter who button-holed him in front of the Department’s offices on Constitution Avenue. “What would we have to talk about–the Spanish-American War?”
Ms. Kneff is survived by her cat, Pookie, and three spider plants. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the National Stenographers Hall of Fame in Chillicothe, Missouri.
Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Fauxbituaries.”
The Ferret Racing Corrections Department
The name of the Upper Wharfedale Fell Rescue Association was incorrectly given as the Upper Wharefedale Fell Rescue Association in a Page One article Thursday about ferret racing.
The Wall Street Journal
Yes, it’s really a thing.
In a listing of past winners of American Hot Rod Association Championships, Donald Glenn Garlits’ nickname was given as “Big Ferret.” Mr. Garlits is known to racing fans around the world as “Big Daddy.” Ferret Breeders Monthly regrets its error.
In the article “American Sports Heroes of the 20th Century” the ferret “Tricky Trev” was described as a winner of horse racing’s “Triple Crown,” the Preakness Stakes, the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes. “Tricky Trev” is a ferret, and thus ineligible to race in horse racing’s Triple Crown. He is a past winner of ferret racing’s Triple Crown, the Gas Pipe Stakes, the Commando Crawl, and the Sewer Pipe Stakes. Ferret Racing Digest apologizes for any confusion caused by its error.
In the February edition of the New England Journal of Genealogy ferrets were referred to as members of the Saltonstall family, related to the Cabots and the Lowells. Ferrets are in fact members of the Mustelid family, and related to badgers and polecats. The Journal regrets any embarrassment to ferrets that this inadvertent comparison to old-line Boston families may have caused them.
Leverett Saltonstall: “I’ll shake your hand if you promise me you’ve washed it today.”
In the article “Great Unsolved Murders” that appeared in the January edition of True Ferret Crime Paul the Ferret was identified as a possible suspect in the murders attributed to The Boston Strangler. Paul the Ferret was incarcerated for the murder of six hens at the Craven Arms in Appletreewick, England during the early 1960s, and thus has an airtight alibi. In all other respects the story was accurate.
The Kentucky Derby (yawn)
A story in the December issue of Turf Monthly transposed the pictures of Don Prince, Jr., owner of the Prince Racing Stable found guilty of doping horses with banned anabolic steroids, and Louie the Ferret, a member of the Ferret Racing Hall of Fame. Mr. Ferret uses only abolic, not anabolic steroids.
Gerbil News Network 