Good Bye to All That! Happy New Year!

 

Having a dreadful year? So is everyone, worldwide. That is an unusual bit of commonality for the human race. If only there were some positive way that we could build off of this? We should in all probability settle on some small universal consensus, lest our musings drift off into hallucination.

The net consensus should be that whatever or whomever solves this plague is wonderful and due a worldwide parade at some point. Perhaps this was possible back before all of the researchers were hoovered up by corporate interests. You can’t really hold a parade for “Team Regenerex” or whichever lab coalition winds up with the biggest lift to our fates. The fact that so many cures were spewed out in such a short time itself says something about this moment in history. We could issue a general cheer for science and publicly supported higher education.

Thanks to the efforts of the above, the vast majority of us in the Western World will look forward to surviving this.  It is, however, something less than the egalitarian result ration might model. Somehow the rich and famous have placed themselves on the same priority tier with the healthcare workers, the currently infected and essential workers of all stripes. (What would we do without plutocrats and celebrities? One shudders to imagine it.) The Slave States are also splurging on doling out cures to their unfortunate client base. Quick, who wants to be first in line to help field-test the warp-sped medical innovations rolled out by Russia, Iran or China? Or the My Pillow dude, for that matter.

The aftermath on all this ruckus is anyone’s guess. Cataclysms usually presage a change in the world’s internal social orders. It’s not so much political orders falling or the last coming first, but it is an up-churning, usually involving new faces and ideas. Nothing is evident yet, except the losers.

My focus is trivial. I am not talking about the 300 thousand plus dead among us. I am talking about people who will survive this. I am talking about certain people who should never be taken seriously again. There’s a legion of them at this point, including everyone even tangentially involved with Wall Street and Big Data. Thanks for nothing, guys. All of your prognostications and corporate jingoism have amounted to self-aggrandizing diddly squat. Our salvation has come at the hands of good old fashioned government fiat powered academic research. The parts which have been handed off to industrialization and on-time logistics have been shamelessly botched. The researchers get an A. The MBAs get an F.

As I have mentioned previously, we need to keep score during this. Mostly because it is all we can really do. Beware the rewriting of history. It is incumbent upon all of us to hold this moment dear.

Sadly, the biggest loser is the United States. With the worst plague results in the Western World, American leadership, innovation, and internal organization will be questioned for decades. An election which reveals that nearly half of us are willing to abandon democracy for strong man happytalk devalues all of our works in an actionable manner.  It could only be worse if any other country had succeeded in dealing with the pandemic. But coming in DEAD LAST has a real price.

(We don’t know how things are going in Slave State Land because they lie about everything. That’s no comfort, though. Fucking up everything is what they do.)

At its core, the pandemic is the price China has exacted upon the world for its rise as a power. Its manifestation and spread are products of China’s internal mechanisms. Like the bird flu and ash beetle and Asian carp, it is Chinese Communism’s unique contribution to world culture.

Every time I sit down to conclude this, something weirder happens. An attempted coup of the United States took place. At the direction of the president of the United States. As with the above, my focus is trivial. The oddball rioters are being methodically tracked down. Not to trivialize the loss of three lives, but as counterrevolutions go, it was fairly minor. As riots go, it was well-contained. As a political demonstration, it was hideous. I question the game plan. What did this assortment of battle flag waving face painters in tac togs hope to accomplish? Ok, you kill Nancy and Pence and the Squad and then Arson Up. And then what happens? The jails are full of people who think this way.

Trump has met with the My Pillow Guy to strategize further. Thus far this impulsive line of thought has got him a second impeachment. I really thought I had retired my banner. Oh well…

 

While meeting with the My Pillow Guy to discuss his future agenda might be a fitting ending to the Trump Maximum Melodrama, I fear he may still have another parting shot. Reports are that Trump has effectively departed for Florida already and is scheduled to take one last Airforce One flight there well in advance of his defenestration. His last words may be a subscriber-only commentary screed second screen event coinciding with the impeachment trial. And special bonus Trump-themed criminal trials. To be followed by fundraising for the Feckless One’s senatorial run, a contest for the design of the Trump Library (1) and perhaps a raffle for Trump Tower itself! (2) It all ends with Rudy and him giving eulogies for each other. (3) I ask, with programming like this in the offing, is there any real reason to underwrite it with an actual impeachment vote?

I answer: yes. I do fear that a six-season situation comedy will be made of this administration otherwise. A few somber moments to remember the ruin to our national reputation are in order before this is reduced to fodder for laugh tracks. (4) Jailed toddlers and coddled dictators and hundreds of thousands unnecessary plague deaths and a failed coup are not a springboard for witty reverence. Let’s get the accounting straight for a change.

Take this with a grain of salt, but it seems as if Trump’s political demise coincided with the rational refuting of one of Conservatism’s favorite maxims:

Researchers at the London School of Economics and King’s College London looked at 50 years of tax policy favoring the rich across 18 OECD countries and found that the benefits remained with the wealthy while poorer citizens saw little improvement in the form of jobs or economic growth.

I know. Fake media, them London School of Economics people. (Most famous graduate Mick Jagger.) (5) Until lies about pollution being good or free will being an illusion can be concocted in pithy form, I fear the rich face a future of increased scrutiny, regulation, and taxation. Amen.

The near future is otherwise fuzzy. Picking winners and losers is a near short-term horizon thing in the best of times and a reason to evoke common sense against a hail of evidence to the contrary in the worst of times. I will close with two cases.

Case One: I seem to have written off the electric car a tad early. Innovation is true magic, the wet towel snap of sharp minds. Industrialization, by contrast, is a chore of numbers. In this in chore the electric car has failed miserably. I have seen more charging stations removed than I have electric cars in operation. The demand has not arrived, the cost has not diminished, and the number of actionable producers has remained fixed at one and that one is Elon Musk (who would rather blow weed.) Emerging from the mausoleum of past efforts are the green shoots of an industrial sector. With this have come the first benchmark.

$100 per kilowatt-hour, the lithium-ion storage battery’s magic number. At that point, the upfront cost for an electric passenger vehicle will be the same as—or less than—a similar internal combustion model. From there, the economics are clear, and other things (hopefully) fall into place: manufacturing happens in mass volumes; charging networks grow as needed.

That’s where Henry Ford started. Build a $400.00 car. Nothing else mattered. The Electric Model T’s price is now known. Hopefully this is the start of something. I don’t want to buy another pollution machine.

Case Two: Synthetic Finances. Full disclosure, I took a course on synthetic financial vehicles. My head is now waterfall tranche full of factoids deodorizing the obvious. There are no assets without recourse. Assets without recourse are empty promises, no matter how many of them can be traded for money money. It’s called a Tulip Bubble. Once the music stops, all of the Synthetic Financial vehicles become smoke. Right now Bitcoin’s lesser brethren are emitting whiffs of nonexistence.

Bitwise Asset Management is dumping what was the world’s third-largest cryptocurrency after Ripple Labs and its top executives were accused by U.S. regulators of selling more than one billion of unregistered virtual tokens.

And the number of classes of Synthetic Financial Vehicles to survive after a member of their class has turned up fraudulent is historically ZERO. So trade them Bitcoins in now. Just saying…

Note: We will return to our normal beats in a week or so, pending Trump not being involved in additional buffoonery. (Fingers crossed.)

(1)  My design for the Trump Library is a giant functional urinal. Inside there is a maze, with each twisting hall ending in a spectacular Trump Event themed dead end. Heading to the next section requires backtracking through all of the previous ones.

(2)  Word has it that Trump owes 300 large to the Germans. (Whose leader he presented with a bill for their defense.) Your awarded prize may be confiscated.

(3)  Although this technically isn’t possible, they could record the eulogies in advance.

(4)  If Trump does wind up in jail then it’s an HBO series.

(5)  Is Mick dead or is he planning his next Last Rolling Stones tour? He went on the first Last Tour when I was in high school. I am now 57.

Mister Fun Responds to the Coronavirus

E pluribus unum, fellow Social Distancers.  Parting  the mists of a heady cocktail of long bouts of rerun television and the occasional bleating of Kate Smith word jazz patriotism, comes time for our own vacuous corporate hood ornament to shine anew with fervent sentiment. Good lord, what does that mean? Why are the divorce attorneys and Burger King taking to television to respond to the Coronavirus? And why are they making more sense than the current president? Maybe, unlike Trump, they know that they have nothing to say other than “Hope for the best, expect the worst”  and exit the flatscreen stage before some inkling to question their motives sets in. Trump just stands there, every day at about 4:00 PM and… Let’s just forget about Trump for a moment. And the next moment and the next moment. Come on, try! There. Doesn’t that feel better? And it does not require a mask or a shot or an effective treatment or a cure. Which is good, since most of us don’t have the sort of things.

We here at Hil-Gle’s Intercontinental Operations Conclave in sunny Chicagoland are doing our best at playing Club Fed. Unlike a real minimum-security prison, we are doing our own laundry and making our own meals. We have restricted our making phone calls only to those people we have thought about for the past ten years. Thus far we can report that everyone we have contacted electromagnetically is not dead. Which is good, since our electromagnetic séance capabilities are somewhat limited. Proactive plans to cover additional communications contingencies are predicated on the term-fluidity of our current cable TV compact and whether or not there is a cash award for using ‘proactive’, ‘contingencies’ and ‘predicated’ in a sentence. We are not holding our breath, despite the larcenous levels of remuneration demanded by said cable ‘provider.’ First, they jack up my rates and then I am confined to home. Talk about being vice twisted by the googies.

Speaking of googies, let us think of them like Trump and try not to think of them. Easy enough for you to do. They’re not your googies.

Hil-Gle has always wondered what it would be like to live through a dystopian novel. Plague would not have been our first choice of background menace, however. Hil-Gle is not sure what flavor of Mad Max it would  prefer to hopefully survive, but this does suck.  A comet strike would be worse, as would a persistent solar flare. Those would be more or less quick but might still suck because there would be nothing on cable TV, ever again. I suppose the upside is no Fox News. (We would insert a joke about a plague which only kills Fox viewers, but that may prove too close to reality to voice, even in jest.) Much like He Who We Are Not Thinking About, Fox News has made the scatological switch and twitch back between plague denial, plague political conspiracy and feel good stories about Americans helping Americans during this time of crisis. Nice of them to go from National Enquirer to Stars and Stripes. (People under 100 take note: National Enquirer was a newspaper which specialized in lying as a form of reporting and Stars and Stripes was a military publication noted for stories about grunts making good.) Normally this is the time of year when internet search engines are abuzz with inquiries as to where Gonzaga is located. Basketball and sports in general seem like a minor loss compared to ACTUAL CONTACT WITH ALL HUMANS (as opposed to the idiots at the grocery store.) Let me make this clear to all of you diseasoids out there—STAY AWAY FROM ME. We joke, really, when we’re not blubbering like the sissies we are or shouting at the television when He Who We Are Not Thinking About comes on.

Speaking of ranting, we here at Hil-Gle have decided to postpone all ill feeling towards China and communism and totalitarian bastards in general. Not that this makes these people more palatable, just that there is no point to it. Yes, the Red Chinese government is entirely to blame for this. Each and every death is on their hands, the real testament to their rise as a world power. Our lack of resources for dealing with this mess is on us, on greed capitalism, on an overt willingness to exploit people we know are slaves just to save a few pennies. There will be plenty of time to contemplate this, once all this mess is over. They have a saying in baseball about how a having a good manager as opposed to having a bad manager accounts for about a 10 point difference in win/loss percentage. In American football, the coach has a much greater impact. While there is no question that He Who We Are Not Thinking About is a zero as leader, it’s unclear which game our government’s actions are analogous to.  American culture is robust, our institutions generally sound, but no one has ever designated the Federal Government a “back up” program before. Previously it was the instrument which created the Free World.  

Hil-Gle is compiling a listing of things not to think about now. Better to think about nicer things or at least make this time work for you. Oh, who the hell are we fooling. The prisons are full of people attempting to make time work for them. Consuming distractions in quantity with variety is the best most of us can hope for. We had not even started to contemplating business continuation, much less loans, when our own Mister Fun appeared at our door, demanding that we lay him off. When last we spoke with Mister Fun he had departed our employ to toil in the campaign of one Michael Bloomberg. You may recall Bloomberg’s ads, if not the person himself. You may recall that there’s a political campaign in the offing, also. When last we checked, Michael Bloomberg was not one of the viable candidates, having fallen to a venom-clad impression from Liz Warren’s dick.  I’m sure I recall Bloomberg stating that he would put the remainder of his massive war chest on the line reminding us all of the person or persons who still are viable candidates. Unlike this nation’s fine divorce lawyers and the now reemerging Shamwow guy, the Democrats and the campaign itself are social distancing. This seems a strange strategy until Hil-Gle remembers his every 4:00 PM or so date with He Who We Are Not Thinking Of. Every word out of his mouth is the best advertisement for anyone else.

As for Mister Fun, he was commissioned to craft an advertorial manifesto in You Tube form for the wonderful ex-Mayor of New York--which Mister Fun took his damn time with. He’s now on the second draft of the shoot script. This would be fine, if it were timed for the general election. And Michael Bloomberg were still a candidate. Hil-Gle has opted not to option this work, given that Hil-Gle is not Michael Bloomberg. This makes Hil-Gle part of a progression of monied entities to decline patronage for the completion of Mister Fun’s You Tube masterwork. While we are sure that such is indeed ‘epic’, it is not something that a confined to home forever game publisher can justify expenditure upon. Note: when Hil-Gle is considered a monied party, hell has frozen over. But we don’t want to stiff Mister Fun (horrifying in any permutation to contemplate), so we have offered him an opportunity to perform something like work, after which we will promptly sack his ass. Hil-Gle is not sure how this constitutes a favor, however it beats having Mister Fun live in our car.

My Fellow Humans:

Please allow me to respond to the coronavirus. The term respond is broad, although I am sure that it is not intended that I should address the virus directly. I do intend to address the subject of the virus, however not the virus itself. I am not a virus whisperer. I do not speak virus or Mandarin. I would be at a loss as to which orifice to speak into. Please be assured that I would attempt to speak to the virus if it were in you and it could be reasonably expected that it would do any good. In which case, I would be happy to speak into whichever of your orifices is most expedient in doing the trick. That’s the type of man I am—bravely offering to perform useless rituals. Sadly, I am not alone.

There is nothing a true huckster dislikes more than not having a monopoly on a subject.  He may dislike it, although it is rare that one is first in with the offers of snake oil or hopium. What hucksters really dislike is when their acts have become shop-worn through previous repetition. There is a certain degree of modeling that goes on in the huckster field and only a finite number of huckster moves. After a while you are more playing to audience expectations than you are to making an actual sale. And that ain’t right. This is where we are on Coronavirus. There is a set format. And I have only limited latitude in its application.

First let me emphasize how important Hil-Gle is to the support of its community. It isn’t, but that’s part of the gig. Hil-Gle and Mister Fun himself are here to eat, poop and buy things. As long as Hil-Gle continues to have money it will continue to do so. Adding to this is an aspiration to not resort to cannibalism or looting or eating unhygienic foods. These are stretch goals. Allow us to rah rah for those unfortunate souls in the service sector, stocking our shelves, tending the sick, facing the perhaps lethal public. This is not shocking news: you have lost life’s lottery. Those of us who are fortunate enough to be working from home shelter in place are doing so safely thanks to your support.  That most of you are not paid better is a crock of crap. Hil-Gle is itself supported by what has been dubbed an essential worker. The essential part is that this person continues to be paid. Nothing is certain, ever—and these times serve as an excellent reminder of that maxim.

Allude to other historic struggles mankind has overcome. There’s a big pot of things that we’ve done, issues solved, especially on the disease front. And plagues do die out. In the middle of it, however, it’s bad form to randomly babble preambles like “when the history of this crisis is written” and then pull specific panaceas out of thin air, such as “big data”, “internet” or “nanotech.” That has no value. That’s just being a tout. Whatever the solution is likely to be will be based on education, insight, talent, luck and hard work.  Fate will choose a hero and give his weapon a name.  Until that happens, there’s a body count to endure.

Emphasize common sense and togetherness.  Unless you have a space suit handy, your survival is probably predestined by biology. The carriers are going to live. The infirm and the susceptible are at risk. Masks, handwashing and social distancing are mitigation rituals with unknown ratios of efficacy. Common sense says shutting down all society should work. Even that is not certain and it’s certainly not a solution.  Keep in mind that much of what you are being instructed to do as far as safety is concerned is largely a distraction.  Help out with what you can, if you can. Given that no testing is likely to take place to determine which of us can help and which of us is a mobile hazard, any help you render is a risk. Your biggest role in this is to remember what has transpired. Remember the charlatans, the nimrods, the parasites and the gougers. In the aftermath there will be a rewriting of history which needs to be thwarted. We need to hold people accountable, for the housecleaning to follow.

Suddenly lose interest in the topic and talk about your pets.  This is a unique characteristic of the coronavirus crisis. Chances are, your career is not a big deal. It only seemed like it was. If you’re lucky, you’re surrounded by the people who matter to you. Take some joy in that. Make it a point to take your opportunities for happiness where they can be found. Maybe we will all be better grounded after this is all over.

End on a Hopium Note. I would if I could but I can’t so I won’t. This is over when it’s over and it is only over for you when it’s over where you are.  There’s a lot of us in this. We’re pretty smart as a lot. No society in history has ever evaporated as the result of exposure to a single plague. That said, this is the stuff of nightmares. Most of us will wake up from it. Those who don’t will leave us all the lesser, will have been robbed of their potential. This did not have to be this way. There are guilty parties in this. We owe it to the lost to make sure this does not happen again.

Keep calm. Keep score. Good luck.

Ideas We Will Outlive

Can we fast-forward to the part where Trump dies in prison? This maudlin Punch and Judy show has gone on long enough.  It has now become clear that our President is on intimate terms with more wacky Muppets than Oscar the Grouch is.   

Other than perhaps ending all life as we know it BECAUSE HE CAN, the risks of the Trump presidency seem to be on the downside. At this moment the only real risk Trump poses to the future is that his tactics may be taken up by another politician, that Trumpism and Trump-Like figures could become a mainstay of the American political environment.

The odds are against it. Nixonism, Clintonism, Hooverism never took off, never became a going thing. Reaganism, Jacksonian and Kennedy-esque did. (There was also a craze involving Teddy Roosevelt which even Teddy Roosevelt himself could not successfully harness.) What does and does not stick has more to do with a memorable style than anything else. Like it or not, Trump does have a distinct and memorable style.

Sadly, HATE as a political philosophy will always be with us. This whole gloomy gob of right-wing puss is always looking for a stylish wrapper for its cartoonish slogan “Our problems are all the faults of others.” Adding Mexicans to the mix (thank you Victor Davis Hanson), is Trump’s only recipe augmentation. Evil exists and it will manifest itself anew to meet the times. The good news is that most of this stuff has a shelf life. Tonight our featured correspondent Mister Fun will give his take on  bad ideas which are on the way out.  In a way they are all tied to each other and, in a way, all of them are heading out the door for the same reason.  And in a way, all of these predictions are pipe dreams and magical thinking on the part of Mister Fun himself, which leads us to…

Disclaimer: Mister Fun’s statements, opinions, predictions, run-on sentences, variable verb-noun tense oppositions, rare alliterations (he promised to cut that out), philosophical pronouncements and venting of vendettas are his and his alone and do not represent Hil-Gle Mind-Rot Quality Creative Newsstand Fiction Unit, the Hil-Glea Wonderblog, its ownership, operators, employees, surfs or slaves. (Not saying that Hil-Gle has surfs or slaves, which would be an admission of guilt in certain quarters and something that Hil-Gle, as an aspiring international conglomerate, would never do—that is, admit or confess to anything.)  Hil-Gle is a good international citizen, obeying global mores and values as they are found, specifically in Liberia and the Central African Republic, which Hil-Gle may someday own outright—although this should not be construed as a forward looking statement for prospectus purposes. Mister Fun’s words as represented here come to him, as per terms of a one hundred year leasing agreement via undisclosed 3^rd parties in the Virgin Islands, often in unmarked brown packages sent media mail. These words are generally found in a hermetically sealed condition and are then removed from their packaging at first with a set of kitchen scissors but eventually with Mister Fun’s teeth. He spits those words and hopefully not also his teeth out for you now.

1950s Nostalgia

The Skinny: A belief that the mid 1950s was the apex of American society, that people were far better off in this time period than in those previous or since. It has never been beat, in terms of music (Rock & Roll), manufacturing (1957 Chevy), overall standard of living and position of military power.

The Draw: Like Gay 90s nostalgia, which we have covered, the 1950s had a lot of design and popular arts firepower.  It has trends in almost everything other than architecture.  In reality, it’s not much of a break with other emergent trends—an extension of Art Decco in design, an offshoot of Rhythm & Blues in music, a continuation in mechanization. The unprecedented break is reverse urbanization, leading to the mass creation of homogenized suburbia. Effectively ‘mass homogenization’ is the buzz word for the era.

Its Flaw:  Like all nostalgia, it ages out. People who had first-hand experience of the 1950s are now climbing into their 80s.  And many of them may be more nostalgic for the 1960s. What people like about the 1950s was somewhat unequally present in the reality of the times. If you were poor, rural or not white, much of what was attractive about this era may have passed you by.  The political paranoia and mass conformity of the era were also not a boon to many.

Fascism/Populism/Nationalism:

The Skinny: All of these are various aspects of tribalism or localism and, in an increasingly more interactive and interwoven world, have no real place in the future.  All of them tout “A WAY” as a specific ideal end state. Proponents discount or denigrate impediments to reaching that end and squelch debate as to its worthiness. It’s a big version of “I’m right. You’re wrong. Move on.”

The Draw: It would be nice to have a few simple solutions to our many problems. Almost all religions uphold the same ideals.  There does seem to be an agreed on set of moral values, virtues, goals. Certainly there is a good and agreed on method. All of these are methods which feel best, which seem like the ways in which we conduct ourselves within our families. It’s time to dispense with the red tape and do what’s right!

Its Flaw: Too numerous to mention, so we will just go with the fatal ones. First, not all ideals are equally valued. Everyone has their own little pyramid. In an effort to enforce a specific ordering of values, the tribal types spend all of their capital scapegoating “the other” or pruning the masses of deviance. Second, red tape exists for a reason. Each rule and regulation has a mountain of human suffering as its parent. You ignore red tape at your peril.

Communism

The Skinny: The rich really do suck. There are no honest fortunes. Capitalism seems to only work for the few and the connected. Surely a more egalitarian distribution of the rewards of mechanization can be contrived to supersede the lopsided windfalls afforded to the financial sector.

The Draw: Egalitarian outcomes always sound good. Enforced fairness sounds good.  Bankers are just government-backed rich people toadies.

Its Flaw: There are all of three communist regimes left in existence. To the extent that they function, each does so to the extent that they are Capitalist. The most successful of these, China, makes its international living by pimping out its poor masses to foreign capitalist manufacturers. And a great big clique of know-nothing, do nothings (whose only talent is for conformity) gleans the cream of the worker’s labor. All in all, no real improvement over rule by the rich. For bonus points, the ones which still exist are held together by systemic murder. In our only example of a nuclear armed communist state collapsing, Russia, it simply became a totalitarian regime without an ideology. But no one can predict what happens when a nuclear armed communist state in the midst of failure will really act. And all communist regimes have failed. And none are successful by any measure. So sleep soundly, assured that the end of the world is likely to be the result of a nuclear armed Chinese civil war.

Mission Statement

The Skinny: A run on sentence, about the length of a candy bar’s list of ingredients, which proports to explain what a business organization’s purpose is, its product or service and the market segment it wishes to operate profitably within. At their best, Mission Statements were both focusing and reassuring, a long-form advertisement in the guise of noble purpose. At their worst, they were gibberish goulash suffering from too many chefs.

The Draw: Putting the superstructure of your business plan front and center is a good way of informing at least your own employees what you are out to do. The idea is to get everyone on the same page. It keeps your mezzanine finance unit from pouncing into online sub-prime auto consumer loans. It’s as close to commissioned poetry as the modern world provides.  

Its Flaw: Once contrived, printed, framed and hung prominently, most were never interacted with again. Almost all of them became embarrassments over time.  The fact of the matter is that a business’s sweet spot evolves over time. Your Fast Casual restaurant branches out into Drive Through or Fresh Sushi. None of them were honest, otherwise they all would read “We intend to operate profitably until we are bought out, merged or bankrupt. Whichever comes first.”

Corporate Values

The Skinny: Your business needs a religion. Why? Because many of your employees don’t seem to have been raised right. It’s a proactive listing of expectations, common virtues and things which will get you fired. Add some glop about how without customers you have no business. Season to taste and post in meeting rooms.

The Draw: This became an absolute obsession with large corporations. The Big Cheeses suddenly all decided that they were philosopher kings, that their positions were attained through some sort of virtuous cycle. Lords of the meritocracy spewed forth with such nasal noises as “Commit to Life-Long Learning” and “Always be growing.” (My own favorite was “Know your place.”) Despite the fact that most of this stuff was rather interchangeable and mundane, it gave the successful a platform from which to crow.

Its Flaw: Ethical lapses on the part of front-line employees have never ruined a company. The ethical lapses that smart are launched from the Executive Suite.  Most of these value regimes were thought up after an organization has been busted for a crime. Given that the values almost never apply to management, value statements are viewed as the dual track double stuffed eyewash that they are. Eventually most of these degraded into statements about pretending your mother was watching you.

Six Sigma/Quality First/Accountability

The Skinny: That which gets measured, gets done. You should provide the best product or service that you can. The end results of a process can only be measured on a step by step basis. Improving or removing steps will lead to a better result.

The Draw: An excellent method for sidetracking rivals for management leadership.  Created an entire class of people who had oversight responsibility without any actionable authority. Also allows managers the freedom to hide out in their offices reading charts and dashboards, as if they were rocket pilots. Proposed an entire language designed to obscure numbers and facts.

Its Flaw: I am picking on a largely dead horse here.  This is a progression of the idea’s degradation. Six Sigma was remedial scientific, with Quality First being its overall goal. Accountability is the state of the idea now—and all it boils down to is blame. Its major flaw was that it is NOT TRUE. Quality is not everything and sometimes it’s not the most important thing. And sometimes quality cannot be measured.  That said, parts of the Quality First regime are valid, to the degree that they apply. The sin is in applying its methods to everything or making method a shrine unto itself.

Empowerment/Controllership

The Skinny: These are ideas in opposition to each other—and yet they are often both attempted simultaneously. Empowerment in the corporate sense is a dust off of the old Management By Objectives.  You hire good people, tell them what you expect and then give them the freedom to proceed as they like. Controllership is all about putting baby bumpers and training wheels on things. It’s about assigning dollar values to someone’s authority, about restricting access and withholding information.  In Controllership roles are narrowly defined.

The Draw: Optimally these two concepts should work together. You’re guiding someone’s progress, establishing firm goals and boundaries.  This pairing is usually not about operational efficiency, but rather an attempt to be attractive to all of an organization’s constituencies. Empowerment helps attract employees. Controllership attracts customers and investors. No one really notices the contradictions.

Its Flaw: It is not functional. All that happens is that you burn out your HR department. And its never uniform, compliance depending entirely on the managers directly above the front line. It’s too much to do and too much effort to make sense of. Every single moment spent mounting screen shots into an SOP is a moment hopelessly wasted.

Rock & Roll:

The Skinny: A splicing of up-tempo Rhythm & Blues and Country Western music forms. Rose in opposition to Champagne Music, a degradation of the Big Band Jazz form. Featured drums, bases, guitar and often a piano. Thrived through a number of periods of musical electrification, which it embraced in all of its nuances. Spawned numerous subgenres all slated at a tween to young adult market. The majority popular musical form in the developed world for several decades.

The Draw: Spoke to the emotional state of young people. Embraced its times.

Its Flaw: Its designed demographic lost much of its market power. Was more dependent on a “Music Industry” for creating interest in new acts than other forms. No new act in this genre has caught on in more than a decade. Largely supplanted by electronica, hip hop. Survives in nostalgia mode.

Mindfulness

The Skinny: Live in the moment and contemplate the moment as the moment is here. Remain at an even keel. Represent memory as a resource and not a confinement. Seek the best results for all.

The Draw: Treats stress. Legal. No known withdrawal symptoms.

Its Flaw: It’s Yoga without yoga.  Yoga itself is Buddhism minus theology. Mindfulness is Yoga plus something else other than Buddhism which is indistinguishable from Buddhism. There’s nothing wrong with Zen Buddhism. I’m a freaking ZEN MASTER myself. But it has its limits. At the retail level, Mindfulness is Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Repair as a group study. In the let’s meet after class at the Mat Master’s personal dojo version, it’s that religion which is like Judaism that the Yoga Mat people have been attempting to push as a sideline for the past decade or so, only under a new name. I’m not sure that’s what the Yoga Mat Ladies are really up for. If you need something more from Yoga—let us say an actual religion with a worked out cosmology and whatnot—may I suggest something less alien, perplexing and malleable, like Catholicism or its evil twins Lutheranism, Methodism and Church of England. Your chances of being molested or taken are far less with these than with some bearded nonsense speaker who shares storefront space with a potter.

Culture Wars

The Skinny: Satanists in the popular guise of secular humanism (so called humanitarians) are out to drive God (in the specific form of the Trinity, but with a carve out for Jews and a weird exclusion for Islam) from the public square and replace the attendant values and structures (primarily the father led nuclear heterosexual family unit) of such with idolatry for homosexual socialist ape people. Actually an outgrowth of invective against Secular Humanism which all Christian churches have been promoting for decades, with an appended extremist superstructure.

The Draw: The advantage here is primarily to the political class, of a specific financial elitist stripe.  The Evangelical movement is inherent to the United States, achieving a majority of religious affiliates in suburban, ex urban and rural areas. As a whole, persons of this religious affiliation are a majority in the United States. But they are not a set sect, denomination or organization. Most are mom and pop single church affairs, with a few Mega Church denominations in the low tens of thousands. What little commonality these churches had was that they were largely apolitical, many advancing a “come out of the world” approach to current concerns. Like all Christian churches of the time, most touted the invective against Secular Humanism. Seeking additional voters to tap into, the wealthy water carrier Republican Party politically aligned with this amorphous crusade and its various permutations.

Its Flaw: Several, however we will stick to the fatal ones.  The fight against Secular Humanism is illogically extrapolated from Christ’s teachings against materialism and hedonism, comfort and worldly goods. Humanitarian ethos and Christian ethos are identical, one having heavily inspired and influenced the other. The humanitarian ethic is the Be Attitudes reworded, making this a distinction without a difference. As initially construed, Secular Humanism was the churchman’s cudgel for use against psychology—not science, not ration and not modernity in general. Most priests now embrace and even practice psychology today. The extrapolated fights against foreign philosophy, abortion, birth control, woman’s equality and liberalism writ large have not been winners, either for the Republican Party or the churches. Moreover it has enabled literalists, bigots and classical iconoclasts.  The modern Evangelical Movement is repellant, losing more voters than it attracts. Thanks to its ascendance we are approaching a non-religious majority in the United States. Good work, guys!

It is what it is

The Skinny: Learned helplessness as a imposed condition. The speaker would like to cut off debate or restrict resources. The net cause of the problem is not to be addressed—or not to be addressed here or by you. Let us surrender to the inevitable and get on with the work around.

The Draw: Not everything is open for freaking debate.  Very few business decisions recquire ratification by consensus approval.  Some people, especially the dickless, go on and on about crap that either can’t be undone or happened in the distant past. Uttering words are always better than resorting to force and “It is what it is” is a fairly neutral way of acknowledging bad news and setting another direction.

The Flaw: Although the construction does follow the rules found in my HOW TO ACHIEVE GREAT BIG HUGE OPULENCE (found on the HIL-GLE website), the statement suffers from overuse by the overly smug.  A few moments of explanation as to why you have eliminated, curtailed, postponed, reversed or bypassed something important are usually in order, even if you are the Old Testament God. Unless fixing the underlying problem does indeed involve the use of a Time Machine, then the expression of this phrase should be avoided. 

Flat Organization

The Skinny: Something of an outgrowth of Six Sigma, this is an organizational structure which functions without what was once called Middle Management.  The structure has limited enterprise-wide departments and functions largely without secretaries. Most flat organizations are centered around specific customers or specific deliverables (products or services). Most operational managers will also have a production oriented role. For example, a factory’s production manager—the person above all of the people working making stuff in the factory—will split this responsibility with a role providing production forecasts.

The Draw: In any downturn, the first employees to be shed in the corporate structure are the Middle Managers, role administrators and purchasing agents. Why operate with them in the first place?

The Flaw:  Several. We will focus on the killer two. Human nature has not changed. For every five employees you need a designated shepherd. For every ten employees you need a sheriff.  These numbers can be multiplied by 2 to 10 depending on how similar the employee’s roles are.  If you have 10 people in a department, all of whom have distinct roles, you need two people who are familiar with all of the roles and one person who can be called on to wield necessary authority. This arithmetic came to us from the Romans—and they probably stole the idea. Violate this math and you are NOT MANAGING. Most flat organizations are controlled by their HR Departments, and not well. As a Six Sigma augmentation, many organizations routinely fire their bottom 10% performers every year.  This seldom translates into any type of reality, since most flat organizations cannot retain employees in front line roles.

 Flat organizations discourage the type of people you want to retain. A well motivated employee gives something extra to his/her work. For these people work is “their thing”, their primary interest, a part of their identity.  While it is wonderful to have people who just show up, do what their told and then pick up checks, any enterprise of note is driven by careerists. Without these people you go nowhere. Such people require encouragement, tokens denoting worth. Flat organizations limit the number of tokens that can be awarded, often causing the careerist to seek another pool to swim in. In point of fact, most flat organizations will inflate over time, creating distinction in roles and manufacturing jobs simply to keep good workers. But the orthodoxy drives a lot of good people away unnecessarily.

Proactive

The Skinny: Preemptive action generally designed to accomplish a task well ahead of deadline or to ready a contingency strategy in case of a failure in planning or to cut off the cowboys at the pass before they can get to Dodge City and rob the bank. Being engaged in a far-sighted and hyperactive sort of way. Not just prepared, but permanently coiled and ready to strike in any direction at a moment’s notice.

The Draw: Proactive is the fairy dust sprinkled on hedging and options and credit default swaps and other financial instruments. Outside of finance it means you’re really smart and you read up on things and can swoop in whenever your big data finds you a nice juicy fat worm to eat. It also means that you have disaster plans. You are telemetry god!

Its Flaw: The hell you are.  Man plans, God laughs. The more you stock up on fire extinguishers, the greater your likelihood is of being hit with a flood. This may come as a shock to some, but PSYCHIC POWERS DO NOT EXIST.  Also risk mitigation is profit suppression. Being prepared to navigate around reasonable and known hazards is not a particularly rare talent/skill set. Claiming that you are able to do more than that is horse crap.

Meritocracy

The Skinny: This is the Divine Right of Kings in new clothes.  The rich, the powerful, the successful and the beautiful would like to inform you that they are equal parts worthy.  Achievement within the system is part of an unbiased set of rational measures. We are better than you by a true yardstick. None of us got here by blowing or knowing anyone. We have obtained our status fairly and are the products of an organization capable of exact measurement. Know your place and lick my booties.

The Draw: Fun to say. One of those aspirational ideal ideals. For those in power, a justification for all sorts of unfairness. Related to the once fashionable “It’s like high school with money.”

Its Flaw: To put it mildly, it is an overestimation.  It denotes an organization which has entirely overestimated itself and is likely to be dismissive of outside ideas.  Many organizations are run by cliques of like-minded people and function perfectly well.  But once you’ve determined that you’re perfect, you’re done.

Coming Soon!

Dubious Constituency

The Wal-Mart sushi is not for eating. It has a rooting interest in something; it exists because of intentional effort, however despite its seeming availability, is not meant for your utility. Similarly, your mother in law is not your mother.

We exist in frequencies, semi shared running parallelograms. We are AM, FM, CB, VHF, UHF, digital, analog and rotary analog. At moments we process everything,  bestowing some grading on all content. Over time, we tune some content out, either because it is not actionable, false, in sharp contrast with our established preferences or is asking us to make a continual payment with our cell phones.

There is a rhythm in all of us, the ticking of a time bomb that will someday just stop. As we become more aware we become better able to sort time wasted from time well spent. Most people navigate accordingly, becoming blind to as much nonsense as we can, jumping pot holes, avoiding sidetracks, dead ends and cul de sacs. If you are deft and smug, you are where you should be, no doubt in the presence of other deft and smug types. And if you are normal, you are  helping others while also being helped. Most people are either Scrooge McDuck or Donald Duck.   

Most forces in our mind forged manacles world are geared broadly at the type of Duck you are. Investment programs for the Scrooge McDucks, expanded Basic Cable for the Donalds and Depends and Huggies for all. BMWs, Audis, Corvettes and such for various age ranges of Scrooge McDucks and Teslas and Leafs for the outliers of all ages. Similar but broader groups of cars are offered to the Donald Ducks. All cars being car component containers, with an 85% similarity in systems and only three distinct classes of quality within each system, there is a wide variety but little difference in what is offered to whom.* Clothing, furniture, the law and food are fairly much aligned similarly. Either caviar or peanut butter will get you fat in the right doses. And no one in the United States gets an effective mass transit system.

In short, we have hazard control and pecking orders down pat. Keeping up with the pace of change has been a mandate on active adults since the 1870s.  Each new idea is ratified against a collective help/hurt horizon. The Scrooge McDucks wanted the public trust companies and the railroads. The Donalds drove banking, medicine and the police. Luxury niceties such as automatic transmission and cell phones became necessities. Entire segments of the economy are created and destroyed, realms of existences traded, the farm for the city, the city for the suburbs, White Out correction fluid for computers.

Most ideas in the guise of innovation either pass the test of time or fail. As my laser disk player will tell you. There is, however, a new wrinkle in the process of ascertaining progress which has emerged. It is an outlaw to the process, a manufactured subversive. Evidence of this new breed of Bug Bear has crossed our desk enough for us to identify it. The Wal-Mart sushi is just one example.

Before describing how to identify these Bug Bears, allow me to place the blame for their existence squarely on the shoulders of Microsoft and its founder. Bill Gates is a thief. He invented nothing and the firm he built owes its existence to plunder, almost to the exclusion of any other force. ** Other people invented browsers and word processing and spread sheets and operating systems. By in large these were good products which worked. All Microsoft did was commission less functional knock offs of these programs, package them and sell them to the Scrooge McDucks of this world. The McDucks, in turn, shoved them into our work spaces.

The overall effect was to create a new shoddy standard for everything, to undercut the general presumption that products and services should do what they are supposed to. Today most complex things are sold with the expectation that they will require continual tweaking. Moreover, it is now expected that we will continually pay to maintain an entity which was shipped to us defective.  That’s a hell of a trick.

It is this environment which has allowed the latest class of Bug Bear to thrive. Its calling cards are the shouted maxims “We are smarter than you” and “We are indispensable.” They don’t actually mean it, although they may think they do. What this is evidence of we will define later. A few examples of claimed transcendence illustrate the creature’s behavior.

Recently GE (General Electric) has fielded a slew of public communications asking the question “Do you know what GE is?” Simultaneously the company has been shedding all of its entities that might actually bring GE to mind. It no longer makes toasters and coffee pots. It sold its television networks and movie studios and the parts of it which issued credit cards. The divisions which make light bulbs and freezers and even plastic are now all on the block. So if you are no longer interested in selling me anything or interacting with my life in any meaningful way, why do I have to pay attention to you? Because Miss America would like to tell you that she is now in the marrying a billionaire phase of her existence; other than to distribute admiration in her direction, your actual participation is not required. What happened to bringing good things to living? What happened to imagination at work?  Even the business which GE is actually advertising (integrated production automation, I think) has no broad calling. Surely there is a better way to reach the room full of people who make such decisions than network television? Ditto the computer engineers the firm is seemingly out to recruit. (All of whom, no doubt know that GE sold its actual computer service business to IBM long ago.) For the rest of us it’s a big shrug and a sideways mouthed “Thank you for sharing.” Such loudly bleated irrelevance is typical of the form.

Perhaps more typical is the sudden aspirational offering of a product or service clearly beyond the purveyor’s normal range. This is where Wal-Mart sushi comes in. The folks in charge of the place are trying to communicate to their customers that they are deprived of nothing. In this they are asking their said target consumer to ignore the reality of every waking second of their lives.  No, you are not flunk outs, not children of a lesser god. Look… sushi, just like normal people in real cities get to eat. Sadly, this is a hard sell to people whose feet are sticking to the floor and who have no doubt already passed through the produce section—one glance at which demonstrates Wal-Mart’s all thumbs approach to fragile objects not to mention its minor incompetence with “food” in general. To Wal-Mart sushi is just a form of produce, but it is analogous to Midas suddenly offering HVAC repairs. Yes, you have tools, but stay the hell away from my furnace. Even master makers of sushi can horribly screw it up, rendering it either poisonous or bland. And Juan Wal-Mart over there is no master maker. (This is the same “grocer” that’s so proud of their ground beef that they package it in opaque tubes.) In the end, common sense kicks in and few people are tempted. Again it’s not really Wal-Mart’s intention to poison you or even sell you sushi. They’re just out to make you feel happy, in the weirdest way they can.

On some level it’s that form of resume padding that buildings in the old west used to do, commonly putting the façade of a second story up on a building that only has one floor. But there is a very dangerous section of this Bug Bear continuum.

Toyota’s problems have been well documented. Whereas simply being cheap skates was at the heart of Toyota’s problems, a far more pernicious version of our Bug Bear has inflicted its fellow Axis war criminal profiteer cousin VW. (VW owes its existence to one of Adolph Hitler’s directives.) VW launched a sales campaign to boost the image of their same model year in year out car line. In these ads a group of old women sexually assault VW employees and leer at stray fellow prospective VW buyers. Lost somewhat in this oddness was the “revolutionary” product being pushed, cars equipped with a new cleaner and quieter diesel engine. Perhaps with good reason, because it turns out that the innovation in question did not exist. At no time did VW endeavor to manufacture a cleaner diesel engine. They didn’t think they had made one and fail. They just said they had it and moved on from there. In retrospect, the odd communication style—one which met the classical test of causing observer distress—should have clued us in to the total bat-shit crazy lying underneath. No rational human being would think of trying to get away with something like this—much less a group of them. Moreover, no effort was spent on formulating a mitigation strategy on the offhand chance that the firm got caught. Surely they don’t think they’re that smart or that all of humanity is that stupid.

That’s exactly what they think.

*The systems included in your car have more to do with the size requirements of various compartments than they do with quality. Some perfectly wonderful cars have at least a few systems which were chosen entirely due to the fact that they fit. There are also channels of compatibility between systems which impose their own considerations.

** Mr. Fun’s opinions do not represent the opinions of the Hil-Gle Wonderblog or its managers, some of whom own stock in Microsoft and GE. (And Ford and Apple.)

Note: I could have made this a lot less hoity toity and still made my point. But the subject is hoity toity so I felt my tortured prose should reflect such. You don’t buy that? Blow me.   

Mister Fun Solves the Problems of the World!

The world would be better off without you, really. Unless you are doing something to increase the overall carrying capacity of the planet, then you are just another lug nut too many. Since so few of us are engaged in any endeavor which might exponentially increase food production or expand humanity’s elbow room, some of us are just going to have to go. Way back when we could count on the old mainstays of war, disease and ice ages to trim mankind’s number, but no more. Thanks to a wildcard in the dissemination of science, the people who contribute least to the weal of the world are the most likely to self elect into the burgeoning reproduction cycle. In fact, the more backwards, poor, war-like and starving you and yours happen to be, the greater your likelihood is of having eight children. And most of these people aren’t even Catholic.

Not that being Catholic, by itself, makes one prone to multiply or more susceptible to becoming  losers. The Italians, who are losers in every way one might imagine—and who invented Catholicism--are not multiplying. (Pleas from their mothers to stop living in the basement notwithstanding.) Nor, really, are the Irish, although no one has checked. If mere Catholicism and loser-ness were actually the only factors in the desire to produce more miserable masses, we would  already all be Irish and Italian. Instead we are all increasingly Asian, sub continental and sub Saharan.

What, we wonder, is the tipping point? Answer: Not having so much as a bucket to piss in. If you have at least a bucket to piss in, you don’t want to share. The more constant such things as your very own bucket to piss in, a language with actual punctuation, roadways that connect to other places, access to internet porn, a government not manned by someone else’s relatives and a reasonable expectation that you will not wake up with your skull crushed in are, the less likely the drive for eight children is. No bucket? Screw it. Multiply away. Misery loves company!

Several obvious solutions spring to mind, providing you accept the above as fact. (And why shouldn’t you? THE INTERNET NEVER LIES!)  If you are a Republican “Kill the poor” comes to mind. For the rest of us some permutation of schemes air dropping buckets and cell phones are conjured.  If there is a universal common ground in all of this it is that any such solution should not involve the expenditure of “my” actual money. (By this I mean my actual money. How you feel about your own money is of no consequence.) Overcoming narrow minded interests such as my own and forming the type of universal consensus needed to start a plod in the direction of an equitable, sustainable future will require substantial prolonged effort. Which is why I have decided to talk about fixing Sears Department Store and the National Football League instead.

In case you’ve missed it, both Sears (where America shops) and the NFL are in deep trouble. And for entirely different and unrelated reasons. McDonalds and KFC (Kentucky Fired Chicken) are also in trouble, but it’s for the exact same reason. The Chinese have discovered that these two chains serve dog food. Since McDonald’s and Yum Brands (KFC/Taco Bell/Pizza Hut) have issues dismissed in one sentence whereas Sears and the NFL have problems which will fill up word hole—and we do things in twos here—like Noah—we will be diagnosing their issues in an entirely non actionable way.

It’s what we “do”.

To start someplace, once upon a time there was a company that sold everything a human might possibly need. You placed an order, sent it in with your payment and what you bought would show up on your doorstep. And this firm wasn’t Amazon. It was called Sears. As opposed to the internet, they mailed out a catalog. But it essentially was the same business as Amazon. The only difference is that Sears came to manufacture most of its more popular types of merchandise. They had “knock off” brands, much like your local grocer does. Unlike your local grocer’s canned beats—which are crappy compared to Del Monte’s—the Sears brands were generally better than whatever it was they were imitating. On top of this, Sears stood behind everything they sold. If that sounds like the makings for a big time successful business it is only because it is. Sears was huge.

Recently Amazon announced that they would be opening up a string of stores. They are doing this to attract shoppers who may not like waiting for the mailman to drop in. Or who simply want to physically see some of the many things Amazon has to sell. Having physical stores also lessens potential warehousing costs as well as helps move merchandise about your distribution network. (It is cheaper and faster to ship a toaster from your store in Atlantic City to a buyer in New York City than it is from a central warehouse in Nashville. Also, the toaster has a better chance of being sold while sitting on a store shelf.) This is also the same reason Sears began building stores 100 years ago. Since Sears had a 100 year lead on Amazon, Sears bought up all the best store locations.

Flash forward 100 years and Sears is closing its stores while Amazon is looking to put stores up.  If both businesses were still essentially in the same business this would raise some questions. (It might also suggest a synergy: Amazon buying out Sears.) Sages will turn to the intervening 100 years to point out various distinctions between the two businesses. But they are wrong. Stripped to the bone, both businesses are essentially the same.

I love telling the sages that they are wrong. (Psychiatrists and law enforcement officials, too!)  The sages do, however, have some groundwork from history to point to. One of the reasons Amazon is looking to build stores is the same reason Sears originally built stores: they are in competition with stores. As old fashioned as stores are, they are still the place that most people shop. Many of these “store” places are quite pleasant, too. This has engendered in the public a desire to “shop”. If you want to reach most “shoppers” you must build them a place to perform this activity. One of the earliest of the successful chain shops was called F.W. Woolworth’s.

Woolworth sold junk. Cheap junk. It was what we would call a Dollar Store. Due to inflation it was at the time known as a five and dime. Price nomenclatures notwithstanding, the dollar store concept has never really gone out of fashion. Then as now, there were bunches of little independent chains and a few national firms involved in this space, such as Dollar General and Family Dollar.

It’s not the best space to be in, but it is a fairly broad draw. Current behemoth Wal-Mart started life as nothing more than a pale imitation of Woolworth’s. Since Woolworth’s was such a large operator in the dollar store space, its competitors made certain changes to distinguish themselves. In Wal-Mart’s case, they decided to become larger, as in having bigger stores. Wal-Mart was still a junk shop, it was just a really large one.

Out of fear that Wal-Mart was going to eat the dollar store space, Woolworth itself moved to become more like Walgreens, a pharmacy chain. This turned out to be not a great move. As opposed to eating the dollar store space, Wal-Mart began stocking some “not junk” and essentially left the lowest rung of retail. Dollar General and its peers, all essentially Woolworth imitators, stayed put and ate the five and dime space.

Leaving Woolworth’s in the dust. Most people reading this have probably never heard of Woolworth’s. The company did diversify at one point. Today they operate Foot Locker. But its fate is the result of a series of mistakes.

Had Woolworth’s held still it would have owned the dollar store space.  This is hard to do when you think your entire category is about to be Wal-Marted into oblivion. Woolworth’s biggest mistake was to act proactively, to abandon a space they had been in for more than 100 years before they  knew what the impact of their competitor’s moves were. That’s freaking cowardice.   

Cowardice is also the sole explanation for every single move Sears has made during my entire life. Quick, what the hell is in a Sears? What do they sell? Most people don’t know. A few may dimly remember hardware and lawn mowers. The reason most people don’t know what is in Sears is that most people haven’t been in one in years.

In the mass retail world there are today essentially four disparate levels. Utter Crap (Dollar General), Slightly Shoddy (Wal-Mart), Not Soddy (Macy’s, Target, Kohl’s, Best Buy, ect) and Premium (Lord & Taylor, Needless Markup, ect). The way things have been playing out, it is only the Slightly Shoddy sector that is really under pressure—primarily because it is a one horse town. (Once occupied by K-Mart, it is today the home of only Wal-Mart.) Why Sears has been running from the Not Shoddy space that it invented is beyond me.

For those of you not in the know, Sears is Macy’s and Kohl’s and Target combined with Best Buy and Home Depot. Only they don’t sell junk. And they have a reasonable return policy. I have now provided you more information than the LAST DECADE OF SEARS TELEVISION ADVERTISEMENTS.

The people at Sears can thank me later. 

(For the rest of how to save Sears, kindly dump all of your mall properties that can’t somehow become padded sites. Or go ahead and merge with Amazon. One warning. Sears may be bleeding red ink, but Amazon has never made a dime.)

On a lighter note, the national pastime has been killing people left and right. When it isn’t beating folks to stupid pulps in front of television cameras. Although some people may think that our most popular sport is violence itself, it is actually Football. By Football, we don’t mean soccer, we mean rugby. Like the Australians, the Canadians and the Americans have invented a slightly more violent version of rugby.

To use a politically incorrect term, the game of American Football is a overly rule bound version of  Smear the Queer. In the American version, two sides of eleven people run at each other. In the Canadian (North Pole) version, it’s twelve people. I’m not sure how many people are involved in the Australian version, although that variant also has occasional breaks for fist fights—like hockey. At any rate, as with rugby, its quite fair for everyone on one side to commit various acts of violence on whomever it is who has the ball. The person with the ball is free to fling the thing to someone else on his side, should his need for self preservation become intense. There’s also some violence stopping scoring going on, but you get the picture.  

This may come as a shock, but people get hurt doing this. (Perhaps more shocking is that this is considered a sport suitable for children.) Compounding matters somewhat is that from the High School age and up, most of the football players are extremely large people. For most football aspirants, all participation in the sport comes to an end around age 14 or so. This is when the JV Football coach looks you in the jock and tells you, matter of factly, that you are too small to play. The upper 10% of the body mass blokes may move on. For the regulation sized it is over. This process then continues well up the football food chain. By the time you get to big time college football, everyone involved is huge.

The football food chain itself then dead ends for most of even the large people by age 22. This is when the colleges boot you out of school, degree or not. A little under 1% go further than this, either into Semi-Pro Football or Professional Football. But even there the whole thing dead ends by the age of 34 or so. In short, even if everything goes absolutely right for a football player, his career is over at about the same time that your average used car salesman’s is just starting to gear up.

Even such a bleak optimal outlook is occluded by the realities of the activity. Most people who are qualified to play football at any organized level (Junior Varsity and up—in short, high school upperclassmen) do not leave the sport voluntarily. Most are carted off at some point, too injured to continue.

It’s not a pretty picture. But people love the game. And being large is pretty obsolescent otherwise, so why not let the freaks have some fun while they are young? Answer: because they have mothers who don’t want to see them get all mangled. 

Mothers have ended many a sport.(*)  Mothers are the reason only ex convicts and orphans box. At a certain tipping point, there is really no stopping them. Since preparing Junior’s funeral is never going to become fashionable with the Mom Set, something must be done to save the national past time.  Or we face a future of watching Team Rhythmic Gymnastics.  

The National Football League, employer of the 1% of the larger people who were not injured playing football in college,  has been perusing a two part “Distract Mommy” strategy. The first part involves making the rules too difficult for the female brain to understand. Offered up is a “new” “heads up” brand of teaching football along with a slew of special rules that can be called in reaction to various female expressions. In short, the NFL is assuring the women (the dickless) that injuries will not happen during what is effectively a one hour group fistfight because there are specific game laws against it. This is, at best, a delaying tactic. Common female understanding is all of one week away from calling BS on the entire parade. Which brings us to part two, having doctors go on television to deride soccer.  Yep, soccer is just as bad. Kids get them brain hits just as bad in soccer. As propaganda goes, this isn’t so  much half assed as it is both half assed and mildly tardy. It may have worked about twenty years ago.

Unfortunately most modern Mommy eligible women have played soccer. Thanks to Title 9 and years of compulsory gym classes, the average Modern Mommy can discriminate between soccer—a giant kickball version of croquet—and two eleven person teams of people in crash helmets running into each other. In fact, most women can distinguish between soccer and field hockey. For the normal girl person there is a dawning moment in their progression of sports involvement. It comes about at the time they choose their sexual orientation and goes one of three ways: (1) Sports are entirely stupid and I will never have anything to do with one that remotely involves intentional bodily contact (Women are weird about not wanting to be maimed);  (2) In limited doses, certain aerobic sports like kick ball and soccer are fine as long as I don’t get too sweaty and can wear a skirt doing it; and (3) hand me the field hockey stick I am a rug muncher. I think it’s the introduction of weapons into the thing that separates the girls who want to be mothers from the girls who will go onto more self-focused destinies. Sadly for football there are a lot of weapons involved. It is a Rubicon that the average Mother can easily grasp.

Recognizing that Mommy is the enemy of Football is the basis of my proposed reforms. Mommy knows what weapons look like. So all of the weapons have to go.  No more plastic hammer pads. No more crash helmets and cage masks. For better measure, the uniform is now flats and leotards. The helmet is a boxing helmet with a clear plastic face shield. Flak jackets are fine, but the closer we can make this look like gymnastics the better.

Next, a few rule changes. Unlimited forward passing. Beyond the line of scrimmage, the ball is dead from the last place a pass was attempted from. This essentially differentiates the focus of violence. The defender’s focus is split from creaming the ever living snot out of the person who caught the ball, to worrying about where the ball may be thrown to. As opposed to merely having the option to tackle, the defender now also has the option to deflect or intercept. And it gives the person who caught the ball downfield a dignified way to pussy out.  Offensive linemen would be free to do whatever it takes to protect the ball carrier, short of linking arms (with eash other) and kicking. In short, there’s no more holding.

Finally, socker boppers. For those of you not in the know, a socker bopper is an inflatable boxing glove which sheathes the hand six inches on the side. In my minor repair, any player can wear one. Mostly these are for the offensive and defensive linemen. The offensive linemen are perhaps compelled to wear them. In any case, it makes line play more of a fist fight with pillows than a mashing match.

I believe these changes will preserve the game. Or we could go with the virtual version proposed below.

(This is indeed a striking cover. It does, howver, not propose that football be played by robots. That's what the cover of the magazine I wanted to post said. But it wasn't anywhere near as good of a cover as this one. And I found this one.)

Not only does Mister Fun think that these changes are essential, but also inevitable. No major national sport can long exist on an intake of orphans alone!

*Mothers killed fencing and horse racing and polo and race car driving. We could add wrestling, too, but that has never been all that popular of a sport. When it came to boxing and fencing, the sports were essentially indefensible. No you may not beat each other stupid or stab each other. Ditto dueling, although that never was so much a sport as it was out of control dick wagging. The mommy standard appears to be “It’s fine if you run yourself silly but you have to come back in one piece.” I fear that any sport that does not in some way cling to this standard has no place in the future. Women have truly ruined everything.

The opinions of Mister Fun do not represent the stated positions of Hil-Gle, its Wonderblog nor anyone remotely affiliated with the Quality Creative Mind Rot Newsstand Fiction Unit. They are his own and he is advised to take them with him when he leaves or we will have to start charging storage. This constitutes legal notice in a publication of mass distribution for the purpose of enforcing any future liens.