The Rising Tide of Stupidity

The Constitution and Bill of Rights has become a smorgasbord for the credulous. It's been my observation that the person in cuffs being led to a waiting patrol car shouting loudly "I know my rights!" invariably does not. Most people know what they think the constitution means, particularly the Bill of Rights, but what they *know* has most often been spoon fed to them like pablum by people with murky agendas.

Witness the rise of the so called tenthers and ninthers and now the firsters and the arguments they parrot straight out of faux news (deliberately left uncapitalized) and santorum (ditto) hq.

Remember as Major Armstrong always urged "It's not what people know that's dangerous. It's what they know that ain't so."

Now.....in its wisdom our legislature is about to remove the prefix "retard-" from the Code of Iowa because certain people with Down's Syndrome people are having their feelings hurt by people calling each other retards, fucktards, etc etc ad nauseam. It has been proposed to use the term 'intellectually challenged'.

I believe, however, that there is a place for the term 'retard' and 'fucktard'-otherwise, how in the hell is a Democrat supposed to get through this campaign season?

Grouchy Six Year Old Likely To Get Testy

This marks the sixth year that I've been running this show and as usual we post the picture of the unknown grouchy kid at left.

My interests have changed focus-being creative takes a lot out of you and lately the guitar amp business has presented challenges-the deeper I go into it the more I discover I don't know. Such is the price of tackling something new that you didn't imbibe with your mother's milk, so to speak.

It requires a lot of thought and experimentation. There are a lot of people out there Who Shall Remain Unnamed who seem to think that you cannot be permitted to attempt to repair a guitar amplifier unless you have a PhD in electrical engineering, are on speaking terms with the ghost of Lee DeForest, and have about 200 years of experience. They also posit that unless you understand exactly how and why something works from theory outward you have no business poking around inside one and ought to be publicly flogged with a Tektronix scope for your temerity.

Parenthetically, these are the same people who never seem to be able to advance a cogent and simple explanation of why or how something actually works.

Of course, saying that you don't have to master the minutia of a device to restore it to proper functioning is heresy to these folks. Knowing what doesn't change the parameters of a malfunction is just as important in the repair process because it whittles down the work load to a manageable level.

Well, as my old crew chief Wayne Hawkins used to say, "F**k 'em if they can't take a joke. Get back to work."

Part of my new years' resolutions are to ignore these and a lot of other annoying people. I'm simply not going to deal on any level with people who offend me and I am going to be happy whether they like it or not.

They're not getting any forgiveness from me despite whatever bait they may try and dangle in front of me.

Life, as they say, is far too short. People rarely change on a fundamental level, and a life spent in making other people miserable does not have any attractions for me.

Memo From The Tundra To New York: Get Over Yourselves

Along with the hot air and swamp gas of the runup to the Iowa caucuses, we hear and see a lot of stuff in the papers (and from people who should know better) that can be more or less characterized as the following whinge:

"Why is a place in flyover country, the dark space between N'Yaark and Los Angeles that's mostly made up of white bread bible thumpers, hillbilly klan types, meth crazed whackozoids in pickup trucks, animal buggeristas and divers categories of midwestern dimwits get to do the initial sort of presidential hopefuls? I mean, no diversity to speak of and nothing important has happened there since 1857 more or less, if ever, which is a dubious proposition. Let the Big Places Make The Big Decisions And Let The Flyover Types Be, Well, Flown Over. Sheesh."

The hubris is unmistakable, as is the implication that if N'Yaark is not the navel of the universe it damned well should be. It smacks of social darwinisim of the kind that Herbert Spencer peddled but I digress.

Jules Steinberg, the eminent cartoonist, captured that in his now famous cover of March 29, 1976, which we reproduce for your delectation.

The attitude's pervasive. I was watching an episode of House Hunters last night (we do have televisions, y'know, and cable and that there internet) and it featured a couple living in Jersey City who wanted to buy a crib in Manhattan and do it on $400k. The real estate agent, a N'Yaarker, opined that he was not licensed to flog his wares in New Jersey, didn't care to be, and considered Jersey City "the tundra".

The takehome from the show was that the couple bought in Jersey City and the N'Yaark sophisticate got no commission from people over in the Tundra.

I think the Grant Wood painting here seems apropos-it's titled "The Appraisal" and it depicts a farm woman with a fat hen listening to the city lady's pitch for said fat hen with a certain amount of cynicism.

One of the reasons we're First Here is because we're first and despite caviling and whingeing from New York and similar tottering edifices, we're first. It is what it is. Get over yourselves.

That would usually be enough to silence most doubters and midnight skulkers but hey! This is the age of the internet.

Sure, it is kinda whitebread (not necessarily always a bad thing), and it is pretty spread out in winter, and we do drive a lot of pickup trucks, and we're slow to anger, and we're not embarrassed to salute the flag or stand up for a lady, and some of us start nearly every sentence with "well, down on the farm Dad allus said..." and there are an unseemly number of men named Galen and Eldon, but we take an interest in the affairs and processes of governing.

We want to see our-and your- potential leaders up close and personal, and not for a weekend either. We want to see politics sold retail like a fan belt for the Farmall or the blue plate special at the North Side Cafe. When the candidates come here, we make sure they're fit to go the distance and by the time the good people of New Hampshire step up to the plate the candidates will stand naked before the electorate, exposed for all the world to see-as Mr. Santorum was recently.

That raises another point. Judging by the level of participation in the primary circuit and the general elections in the rest of the country, Mr. Lupica and the rest of his similarly inclined crew of whiners and kvetchers might as well clean up their own Augean stable of public indifference before bitching, as they do every four years, about how we do things here.

Me and Greg and the Dog Cart

We here at the Dougloid Towers read with much dismay and sadness of the passing of Gregory Papalexis recently.

Mr. Papalexis started his business with a small G.I. loan, buying the bakery his father had started in Manhattan and in time, branched out into building the hot dog carts you see on every street corner in Manhattan.

In 1969, he acquired the Sabrett's firm, which is undoubtedly the finest hot dog obtainable at any price. I know, I know, adherents of Vienna Beef and Nathan's will cavil and obfuscate-and they are fine dogs indeed, but only when you cannot get a fix of Sabrett's.

Mr. Papalexis knew all this, enjoying the delectable canines four or five times a week-which undoubtedly contributed mightily to his long life, devotion to his wife of 63 years, and happiness. If it wasn't for this damned issue of geography I'd do the same-Sabrett's carts are few and far between in Iowa but I can and do get Sabrett's dogs mail order every time I think about it. Imagine-owning your own hot dog company, and Sabrett's at that.

When you think about the philosophy of it all, it is clear that Gregory Papalexis brought much happiness to many people, far more so than any number of soapbox preachers, hectoring high school assistant principals, angry traffic cops, draft boards, store detectives, and numberless other wet blankets and buzz killers of every type and size.

For that this modest resident of Norwood, New Jersey, deserves our everlasting thanks. When the roll is called up yonder, this will all weigh heavily in his favor. Of that there is absolutely no doubt.

What could be better than a fall afternoon in Manhattan, a park bench, and a couple of Greg's best safely nestled in their buns? It is surely a Manhattan thing, and New Yorkers can be justifiably proud of this minimalist yet complete culinary tour de force.

Tenterhooks Demystified

Every once in a while you'll see a reference to somebody being "on tenterhooks"-that is, a state of extreme uncertainty. When I saw that this morning I asked myself "What in the hell is a tenterhook, anyway?"

Well, it's a sharply hooked nail that is used to stretch wet cloth over a frame so that it dries flat. A person whose job it was to put the combination of tenterhooks and wet wool over a frame was known as a tenterer-as are the workers in the picture.

The fine folks at the Trowbridge Museum have put together a website that provides much detail on the various now forgotten trades associated with cloth making. It's well worth your time to have a look.

The Return Of the Soup Nazis.

You recall we had a little discussion here a while ago about Dillards'-you know, the people with the department stores-firing a person over two hot dogs they didn't even want, and we mused over the kind of company that could be that petty?

At the time I was feeling a little bit holier than thou, figuring it'd never happen in Iowa.

Well folks, I'm here with a plateful of crow, and as Joe Hammond of Eagles' Nest, New Mexico used to say "Hell, that crow don't taste too bad if you put salt and pepper on it. Hah!"

In Tompkins-Kutcher v. Employment Appeal Board, 11-0149 (Iowa Ct. App. Aug. 24, 2011), a woman who worked for Casey's was fired and was denied unemployment.

It seems that she took outdated soup from the store as she was directed to, placed it in the dumpster outside the store and then removed it, took it home and used it to feed her dog.

Tompkins-Kutcher was initially awarded unemployment benefits but Casey's resisted because she had violated company policy, to wit: employees are required to pay for any item they intend to use, whether outdated or otherwise, trash or whatever. The administrative law judge concluded Tompkins-Kutcher was discharged for misconduct because she'd signed for a copy of the employee handbook wherein this policy was set out.

The district court affirmed, finding that she intentionally disregarded the standards of behavior employers have a right to expect from their employees.

Atta way, Casey's. You sure showed 'em.

Of course there's the small matter of the secret video camera that was set up in a Casey's office to observe a woman employee who was, as she thought, expressing breast milk in a private place. It's been removed to Federal Court, but stay tuned.

A gentle reminder

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