For Boomers Only: We're Not Over the Hill, We're Still Trying to Climb Up It! 9781466450714, 1466450711

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FOR BOOMERS ONLY Coping With Life in the New Millennium

By Rick Townley

Richtor Publishing Company Asheville, North Carolina Printed in the United States Copyright © 2011 Richard Townley All Rights Reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information, storage and retrieval system without permission of the author, except where permitted by law. For information, e-mail: Rick Townley ([email protected]) Illustrations: Sylvia Loveridge, Kiang Lo

ISBN-13: 978-1466450714

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Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank everyone who has contributed to For Boomers Only, both the blog and the book, their time, efforts, ideas and moral support: Sylvia, Sandie, Ted, Irene, Pat, Chloe and Fred, wherever you are now.

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DEDICATED to Everyone born between 1945 and 1965 who have for too long lived with the awful sounding label “baby boomer.” You have had to deal with long lines, overcrowding, criticism from those older and those younger, wars, economic changes, new technology and tremendous social change and upheaval. Despite all that you managed to drag the world, kicking and screaming, into the modern age without getting much positive recognition. Oh, and you also had the best damn music ever!

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Table of Contents Foreword ............................................................................................ 11 About The Author.............................................................................. 13 Chapter 1: Coping With Kid Stuff ................................................... 15 “Hey kids, what time is it?” ............................................................. 16 “Shall we play a game?”.................................................................. 20 Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce…wait, hold everything! ............. 24 The Cinderfellas .............................................................................. 28 The Graduate, 2011 ......................................................................... 32 Who‟s The Leader of the Club? ...................................................... 35 Chapter 2: Coping With Dating and Sex ......................................... 39 “All You Need is Love…” .............................................................. 40 “…Love Is All You Need” .............................................................. 45 Women and Shoes: A Guide for Men ............................................. 49 Chapter 3: Coping With Holidays and The Seasons...................... 53 Shop „Til You Drop......................................................................... 54 T‟was the Month Before Christmas…............................................. 58 Boom Boom Boomers ..................................................................... 62 Cold Turkey..................................................................................... 66 This Is Going to Hurt Me More Than It Is You .............................. 70 Summertime Blues .......................................................................... 74 “Oh, the Weather Outside is Frightful…” ....................................... 77 Chapter 4: Coping With Life Around The House.......................... 81 “Blow Away Dandelion”................................................................. 82 Wrap Rage ....................................................................................... 86 8

Make Room for Daddy .................................................................... 90 “Wild thing, I think you move me…” ............................................. 94 Insert Tab A into Slot B…Then Call the Help Line ........................ 98 Chapter 5: Coping With Being Over 50......................................... 103 Zoom Zoom… ............................................................................... 104 David and Goliath Redux .............................................................. 109 “Will You Still Need Me, Will You Still Feed Me, when I‟m 64?” ....................................................................................................... 113 Caveat Emptor…at the Supermarket? ........................................... 117 Chapter 6: Coping With Work (and No Work) ........................... 121 Strange Days Have Found Us........................................................ 122 We‟ve Been Outsourced! .............................................................. 127 Unemployment Application for Lady Liberty: ......................... 130 Too Young to Retire, Too Old to Hire?......................................... 131 Some Truths About Lying on Resumes ......................................... 136 “Don‟t Walk Away Renee” ........................................................... 140 Chapter 7: Coping With Technology ............................................. 145 Take the Money and Run .............................................................. 146 To Text Or Not to Text, Is That A Question?................................ 149 “And They (Definitely) Have A Plan” .......................................... 152 Self-Service, or Self-Serving? ....................................................... 156 Smart Phone Apps for Baby Boomers ........................................... 160 Beechwood 4-5789? ...................................................................... 163 What‟s In a Name? ........................................................................ 167 The Beat Goes On…and on…and on… ........................................ 170

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Foreword I’m Not “Over the Hill,” I’m Still Trying to Climb Up It! Welcome to the new millennium. It‟s time for baby boomers to be recognized again. We‟ve been working hard, raised kids, paid off mortgages and still we‟re catching it from both ends. We‟re sick of hearing about Gen-x, Gen-y, Gen-z, and anyone who came of age in the generation before us who are comfortably retired. How nice for them. This is not a gripe session about how unfair the world has been or still is. However, surviving hard times is a lot easier if you can look at the humor in things. Remember the magazine National Lampoon, by Doug Kenney and his irreverent Harvard pals? It made fun of everything and kept us laughing through difficult times. We don‟t seem to laugh at much these days, and there are a lot of things that go on in everyday life that no one ever seems to talk about. But this generation has always stood for the idea of bringing things into the open and at least trying to get to the truth. Well maybe some of us were preoccupied with sex, drugs and rock „n roll back then, but Time-Life books say we were serious about changing the world, and who would know better than Time-Life? So we try to touch on the humor in the little events of daily life of baby boomers in the modern age. Things have changed dramatically since the 60‟s and 70‟s. Some for the better - flat screen TV, central air conditioning and cars that start on cold days - some for the worse - high divorce rates, more war and a rotten economy. But we will look past all that to see how we deal with the really important things in life – expiration dates on food, online banking, texting while driving and bosses who are twenty-years younger than we are. We also dip into regional issues that affect us, such as why is there an oil spill or hurricane whenever I book at hotel on the Gulf of Mexico coastline? Does the NY Transit Authority REALLY need to charge $8 to cross over a bridge? Why are summers so hot and winters so cold now? Or, why are there so many others who seem to have discovered my secret getaway places? 11

The bottom line is that despite being totally ignored by (what used to be) Madison Avenue, despite being relegated to the junk heap by every post-boomer generation, despite being blamed for the lousy state of the world by the same kids we gave up protests in order to raise, and despite being “over-qualified” or “too senior” for just about every job in the world, the boomer generation is still here. Somehow we all became part of the silent majority and never really did teach the world to sing (was that Pepsi or Coke?). Somehow the largest generation ever became obsolete and obscure, or did we? It‟s time to speak up and be noticed again. If we can‟t change the world, maybe we can at least make banks fire the machines and hire people, or force car companies to put lumbar support in all their models. Or maybe we can speak up just to let everyone else know…we‟re not “over the hill,” we‟re still trying to climb up it!

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About The Author Rick Townley proudly states that he is an embarrassment to the graduate English Department at a major eastern university. A member of the baby boomer generation since birth, Rick just reached the age of 60 and is pretty grumpy about it. His favorite quote is, “among any three of my friends we can probably find one of everything that still works.”

During his career Rick worked for several major news organizations that gave him excellent recommendations when he promised not to return. He was a very involved family man who raised two children that he knew about, and denies rumors of selling a third child to gypsies. Rick is well-loved by his neighbors, who only rarely ever call the police about strange noises. A lover of books, Rick is a major supporter of his local library, to which he donated his entire collection of National Lampoon magazines. To keep Rick quiet until his retirement he was given the task of writing a blog (the basis of this book) and was told he could choose any topic for a whole year as long as it didn't attract the 13

interest of Homeland Security, the FBI, the CIA, the NFL or the AFL-CIO. We know there are a lot of you boomers out there who are just as grumpy as Rick, and we hope that by getting your attention it will distract you from interfering with the daily lives of others. So sit back, relax, have some herbal tea and enjoy!

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Chapter 1: Coping With Kid Stuff

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“Hey kids, what time is it?” Goodbye, Robert. Thanks for making me real. The Velveteen Rabbit Antique toy collectors have been around a long time, but during the 1990‟s the market for old toys exploded as Baby Boomers suddenly got nostalgic for things from their childhood. Actually, it was probably the first time in years they had enough cash and time to indulge themselves after stretching to the limit to mortgage a house, keep a car and raise kids. By 1985, the cost of raising a girl was about $635,654.23, which included $1,500 for ballet lessons and the rest for Barbie accessories. Soccer equipment ran up the tab for a boy, but that was far exceeded by the cost of 17, 342 action figures absolutely required to ensure his personal growth. When Boomers were kids, Barbie wasn‟t a brain surgeon and Ken didn‟t have a boyfriend. Many toys encouraged imagination and outdoor play such as Slip „N Slide or Jarts. Even if it was potentially fatal it was still considered fun. Action figures had not yet replaced little green plastic army soldiers, many of which found untimely ends being sucked into mom‟s vacuum cleaner. This is not to say that Boomers were deprived when it came to toys. Oh no. Under the clauses of the Disneykins Act of 1956 it became mandatory for all children to own Mickey Mouse ears and hula hoops, and that was just the start of ongoing legislation that would eventually become the Child Indulgence regulations in effect today. Boomers qualify as the first certified television generation, born post-war to the “Greatest Generation,” which was very busy and involved in its own affairs so TV rapidly became the “electronic babysitter.” At first, and this is unimaginable to kids today, TV didn‟t even start until 3:00 in the afternoon, which was perfect because that‟s when school let out. Mom could plop junior in front of the set and get her household 16

chores done or have some coffee with a neighbor. Mom‟s did a lot of that in those days since work outside the house was considered a man‟s domain. During this 1960‟s this arrangement started to break down as moms got pretty sick of coffee and the word “divorce” started popping up in a lot of homes. Meanwhile, junior was still tuned out in front of the TV.

We asked a few Boomers in a highly unscientific survey what their favorite childhood memories were. Three out of four said “Howdy Doody.” The other one out of four couldn‟t remember anything before 1969. We also asked our participants, who kept trying to get away but we ran faster, to tell us their mother‟s full name. Two out of four said “June Cleaver,” one said “Shari Lewis” and the other one of four responded “Joplin, but she‟s gone man.” We decided then to narrow our survey down to just three participants. A similar question about fathers‟ names brought back “Davy Crockett,” “Andy Taylor” and “Mike Brady.” Apparently June Cleaver

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had multiple husbands and Ward was just a live-in. We never knew that. No wonder the Beaver was confused all the time. So we started this off talking about toys and got off into a spin about television. So what about toys? Well, toys were closely tied to television. In the 1950‟s, just about every boy had at least 5,000 items imprinted with the “Hopalong Cassidy” logo. Girls went into hot pursuit to collect all 3,000 Disneykin figures. Enough toy guns and weapons were produced that, if real, would have been enough to arm a medium-sized thirdworld nation. Girls‟ toys taught them to cook, clean, sew and care for babies by the age of nine. Toy companies paid for television, television took care of the kids, parents were free to do whatever it was that parents of that time did. Life was good. Boomers still identify with toys and old TV shows as if they were family members, which explains the nostalgia for old toys. When you mention the word “father,” a typical male Boomer is likely to remember Ben Cartwright teaching his boys not to shoot someone if you could talk them to death. Westerns were like that to keep expenses down. Talk, talk, talk and then shoot someone in the last three minutes of the show. But Boomers were not critics, they just soaked it all up. The phrase “children should be seen and not heard” came into vogue as Disney, Hasbro, Warner Brothers and Mattel took over babysitting responsibilities. When Boomers had their own children they didn‟t quite get how it was supposed to work. While feeling somewhat detached from their own parents, they wanted to be more involved with their own kids but discovered their kids didn‟t want them involved. So the generation gap widened even further as Boomers, again dazed and confused, tried to understand where they belonged. Boomers wanted their parents involved but parents were often too busy. Boomers wanted to be involved with their kids, but kids just wanted credit cards and computers. Finally, the phrase “parents should be seen and not heard” came into vogue as Boomers reluctantly pulled back. 18

Now Boomers are starting to retire. Their kids are mostly grown and having their own kids. Toys are giving way to video games, the internet is replacing television, and cowboys have all ridden off into the sunset. Boys don‟t conduct war games with plastic soldiers, and girls don‟t cook or sew. Boomers are still trying to figure out where they fit. Many of them will tell you things like, “as long as McCartney and Jagger are alive there‟s hope for me!” Unfortunately a new phrase is coming into vogue as the debate over healthcare continues to intensify: “retirees should be seen and not heard. Endnotes: The word "toy" didn't come into existence until the middle ages, but evidence of toys and playthings have been found at archeological sites dating back to the time of cave dwellers. Egyptian children played with toys made of pottery, stone or wood, and dolls even had jointed arms for movement. Over time playing with toys has come to be accepted as important to child development as a way to prepare for adulthood. Toy sales today average over $23 billion a year, and 75% of toys sold in America are manufactured in China.

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“Shall we play a game?” All energy is borrowed, and one day you have to give it back. From the movie Avatar, 20th Century Fox, 2009

How do I get this damn thing out of my computer? The author, 2010 When we were kids my sister and I would visit our grandparents house, play all day, be ordered to clean up the mess and then go home. My grandfather would reorganize his desk, make sure his favorite pens were still there and head off to read the newspaper. My grandmother would do a quick turn around the house to make sure there were no little toys left out to step on. That was it. Simple. The biggest mess I could make was to scatter parts of a Marx castle play set all over and maybe forget to pick up a plastic knight that would eventually find its way into the vacuum cleaner. My sister might have spilled some flour from her Easy Bake oven but it was nothing serious. Neither grandparent had to reconfigure a computer, spend hours getting rid of virtual pets or clean the browser cache of tracking cookies from websites selling virtual merchandise. My granddaughter is only seven but seems to have visited places (on my computer) that I could never even dream of. After her last visit I was greeted by a pixie-like animated figure on my screen that was clad only in a fig leaf. It taunted me to buy clothes for it, or him or her or whatever it was. I chased it around the screen with my mouse but every time the cursor came close it would disappear and show up on another part of the screen. It was, I came to find out later, an avatar. You‟ve heard that word before from the movie called Avatar, a science fiction tale about, um, stuff. I still haven‟t figured out the whole thing except that some soldier guy on an alien planet had sex with this blue creature babe thing and then the bad guy human soldiers attacked a big tree and the whole 20

planet got really pissed off and made the wild animals chase the soldiers off. I guess that‟s why they don‟t let me do movie reviews. The avatar that was popping around on my screen was called a Shwinky, from Shwinkyworld, a virtual land of apparently needy, hungry, thirsty and socially starved little cyber characters in desperate need of virtual money to buy virtual stuff. The one haunting me indicated I could get rid of him if I bought him some clothing. Embarrassed to have a nearly naked little cartoon character on my screen I coughed up some cyber bucks, created magically from my credit card, and the Shwinky avatar waved and went poof! Happy that I had discouraged the creature from bugging me I went back to scanning the news to see who was doing what to whom around the world. One of my great joys in life is reading the news just minutes after it happens. Unlike a newspaper where you have to wait 24 hours to read about a tragedy or disaster, now you can get updates in real time. It‟s kind of like a soap opera on steroids and highly addictive.

A short time later, in the middle of tracking an angry hurricane headed for the Gulf of Mexico, the Shwinky character reappeared on my screen with a smaller version of himself he referred to as his brother. The original Shwinky was now clad in a nice outfit of shirt and slacks, but his brother was wearing 21

the fig leaf now. They both had big droopy eyes and looked like paintings you would find displayed at a gas station along with velvet paintings of dogs playing poker. How can you not feel sorry for big droopy eyes? Out came the credit card again, little squeals of appreciation came from the characters and poof! off they went again. I left the computer for a while and went for lunch. Just over an hour later I returned to my computer to find the screen filled with a dozen other little Shwinky‟s running and playing and being generally obnoxious. The two brothers were there and introduced the rest as their cousins, and related a story about how they had all been put out of their homes in Shwinkyworld because their last human didn‟t keep up to date on his credit card payments. Okay, hurricane story or not, I wanted to get to the bottom of this. I clicked on one of the characters and was apparently transported into Shwinkyworld, a digital land full of thousands of little avatars living in houses of various shapes and sizes, with shops, streets, little avatar cars and a lot more. Now being a baby boomer, I did grow up in the 60‟s and 70‟s and am used to seeing freaky things, but nothing I‟d ever done or seen prepared me for this. Several more clicks on the credit card button gave me cyber bucks and created a little avatar that was supposed to be me. I was invited to wander around, shop, have lunch and do whatever it is that Shwinky‟s do. I tried it and my character ended up in a dead end alley where it was confronted by some tough looking Shwinky‟s demanding money. I typed in “bugger off” and they beat up my character mercilessly and left it laying on the ground. A few minutes later some Shwinky paramedics arrived and offered to take “me” to the hospital for more cyber bucks. I responded with a sharp “no” and my character evaporated in a puff of smoke. The last thing I saw was a group of other Shwinky characters standing there staring out of the screen shaking their heads and whispering among themselves. It was unnerving and I switched off the computer.

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For the next week, every time I turned on the computer I was greeted by a swarm of nearly naked Shwinky characters looking hungry and begging for cyber bucks for food. I had missed the hurricane story entirely and had to resort to an oldfashioned newspaper for my daily news fix. I received a credit card bill for $753.82, paid to Cyber Fun Megacorp located somewhere on an island in the South Pacific. I called several help numbers for the game company and was directed to various call centers where they spoke only enough English to ask for a credit card for phone support. It seemed hopeless. The following weekend my granddaughter came to visit again and I found her glued to the computer once more, working on something that looked like a complicated calculus formula. I looked closer, and saw that she was working in on a spreadsheet. I asked her about the Shwinky‟s and she laughed and told me I was funny. I noticed there wasn‟t a Shwinky in sight on my screen so I asked her where they went. “Oh grandpa,” she said, “you just press control-alt-f10” and it turns them off when they start asking for money. You didn‟t pay anything for them did you?” I blushed slightly, coughed into my hand and replied, “well no, of course not. I knew all that.” Satisfied she had a cool grandpa she returned to working on her math problem. I went to the other room and called the newspaper to renew my daily subscription. Endnotes: The video game industry reported sales of over $60 billion for 2009, and global sales of virtual merchandise in 2010 is expected to reach $7.3 billion. $2.1 billion of that total will come from sales in the US alone, with Asia being the largest consumer of virtual goods and services. Apparently lots of people are willing to part with actual dollars to feed and clothe little computer animations and send e-cards and eflowers to friends and relatives. Some systems now generate their own currency and problems are cropping up with theft of virtual merchandise by virtual thieves.

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Hold the pickles, hold the lettuce…wait, hold everything! As a child my family's menu consisted of two choices: take it or leave it. Buddy Hackett

There was a time when the golden arches of McDonald‟s were a welcome sight, an oasis of calm and relief on long car trips with my kids, a place where I didn‟t have to hear “are we there yet?” for at least 20 minutes. In those days it was about peace and quiet, not calories and cholesterol. If a burger with something resembling a milk shake and a small plastic toy with deadly edges could keep the kids quiet, I was for it. I never questioned the food itself. It didn‟t matter. I didn‟t eat it, they did. Okay, so my kids grew up with a few personality disorders possibly relating to diet, but I‟m not going to blame the fast food chain for my actions. However, times have changed and now, granddaughter in tow, the fast food palaces still beckon as we cruise along the highway. But I am wiser now, or at least I‟m supposed to be. 24

After my kids left home and I could afford food that didn‟t come in bulk packaging, I discovered the health benefits of simply eating better, fresher, higher quality foods. I‟m not talking about becoming a vegetarian, vegan, beegan or ceegan, which incidentally are people who remain internally cleansed by only eating lettuce and pine nuts on alternating Tuesdays during the waning cycle of the moon. No, I‟m just referring to fresh, wholesome, quality foods, preferably cooked by someone else. So recently I had my granddaughter for a big Saturday out. We headed for town to go to Gracie‟s Department Store but first I decided we needed some lunch. Walking along the sidewalk I spotted a nice little bistro-style café with an intriguing menu of northern Italian cuisine and, even better, an extensive list of exotic beers. Next door was one of the newer fast food inventions called a “co-location,” where you find three or four fast food outlets bundled together in one miniscule little space. Now you can get four-times the indigestion without having to travel as far. I ignored it and headed for the door of the café, but I felt a strong tug on my jacket accompanied by what sounded like a small, wounded animal caught in a hunter‟s trap. It was the girl. I asked what the problem was and she pointed to the Quadplex Food Emporium. Emanating from inside was the combined smell of hot grease, hot dogs, hot chicken and not so hot, freshly thawed donuts decorated with various types of sticky, sugary stuff. There was also a counter for ice cream if you were ready for full hypoglycemic shock. I pulled back from her frantic tugging and tried to play dumb, as if I hadn‟t seen the Quadplex yet. She was way ahead of me though and kept pointing at the miasma of multi-colored logos while increasing the pitch of the whining. I shook my head and pointed at the cafe, making an equally obnoxious sound similar to a great Viking horn announcing the arrival of Bjorn the Braggart coming up the fjord. My mouth was dry and I envisioned kicking open the café door while announcing loudly, “Barkeep! A tankard of grog for me and my men!”

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So a few minutes later I found myself in a line for hot dogs with disgruntled patrons who were mumbling about waiting since the day before for service. I noticed that in a slowmoving food line people tend to nudge forward and shift their weight side to side in a fashion very reminiscent to how drivers try to outmaneuver each other in a dense traffic jam. I used the kid to block and secured our position in the line, where we waited 45 minutes to get to the counter. To keep it simple I asked for “Special Meal #2” from the overhead sign. The picture showed two large, juicy, plump hot dogs perfectly cooked, sitting in perfect buns with a side order of crispy brown French fries and a large “original recipe” lemonade. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine that I was really ordering a Stella Artois and a grilled chicken Caesar salad, but the smell brought me back to reality. I was told the price and did a quick calculation to see if I had an adequate credit limit to handle it. Fast food is neither fast nor cheap. Our order came up about fifteen minutes later. There were about thirty or so people working behind the counter in a space that might possibly accommodate a park bench, but despite all the motion there seemed to be very little getting done. There was also a language issue that I will definitely avoid discussing except to mention that the lady making drinks seemed to think everything meant “super large.” The first time the hot dogs were brought up they were missing the mustard and the relish and I sent them back. The second time they were brought up they were missing just the relish. The third time they had mustard and relish but no rolls, and by the fourth time all the components were there but the hot dogs looked suspiciously smaller than in the previous orders. By the fifth time the order was presented to us even the French fries were there and with some pigeon English instructions I was able to secure a beverage in a smaller cup that I could hold in just one hand. Seating was the next challenge. The tables were wedged close enough together that if you took a bite the next person had to do the chewing and a third person could swallow for you. It was communal eating at its worst. I looked at the charred hot 26

dogs, the stale buns and the undercooked French fries and felt guilty about giving it to the girl. I was supposed to know better by now. I had neglected the dietary needs of the previous generation and mankind would have to pay for my carelessness for years to come. I couldn‟t do it again. She looked too vulnerable, too precious, too…who was I kidding? I wanted a cold beer. I dumped the order in the trash and we headed back to the cafe, ordered a lemonade not made from powder, a nice cold beer and a couple of nice fresh salads. We never made it to Gracie‟s Department Store that day. My granddaughter didn‟t really care. I didn‟t really care. And I‟m sure the workers at the Quadplex Food Emporium really didn‟t care either. Endnotes: Major fast food brand names like Taco Bell, KFC, Pizza Hut and a host of others are owned by one company, Yum! Brands, which outranks even McDonald’s as the world’s largest fast food chain in terms of outlets. The company has 37,000 restaurants in 110 countries, including nearly 3,000 KFC chicken restaurants in China – not an area that readily comes to mind when you think of fried chicken. Co-branding and co-location are popular trends in the fast food industry.

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The Cinderfellas

There is a secret war going on as you are reading this. Very little information about it gets into the news media, yet it involves some of the most powerful organizations on the planet. One group dates back to the 1930‟s and has been quietly watching and waiting for its competitors to eliminate each other. But it has become too large and too powerful to stay in the shadows and is starting to emerge in the most unlikely place – your granddaughter‟s house. Before you get too alarmed, we should point out that this group of merciless and ruthless individuals are not intent on harming you or your family, just owning you. But they are intent on harming their rivals and they are doing quite a job of it. They go by the collective name of The Princesses. Here is some background to understand how things got to where they are today. Imagine that it‟s 1959 again. The oldest baby boomer females are going to school dances for the first time. The youngest haven‟t even been born yet. The ones in the middle, from age 3 to 10, are about to have their world turned upside down. Things will never be the same for them. The dolls they knew and loved are about to be wiped out in a 28

marketing slaughter to rival the St. Valentine‟s Day gang massacre of 1929. Only this time there will be no Al Capone and no blood, just boxes and boxes of unused doll clothes to remind mothers everywhere that their babies are no longer just little girls. They are now a target market. Betsy Wetsy, Chatty Kathy, Toni, Ginny and Tiny Tears will no longer be with us. They will be gone forever, obliterated, removed from memory. There will be a new queen pin on the scene. Dressed only in a brief black and white striped swimsuit and sporting impossibly long slender legs, she will quickly take power and not another doll in sight will be able to stand up to her. Her organization will become a marketing juggernaut and she will reign supreme as the capo di tutti capi of the doll world for the next 40 years. Her name is Barbie. Fast forward to today. Barbie still rules the doll kingdom with an iron fist but has paid dearly for her power. Her closest friends are gone, eliminated in the power struggles with upstart gangs like the Bratzpack. First to go was Midge, Barbie‟s right-hand confidante almost from the start, and Midge‟s kid sister Skipper, both brutally snuffed out in a merchandising accident in the late 1990‟s. Barbie‟s personal life suffered for her career as well. Her long-time lover Ken had to be pushed out of the organization for lack of performance. He currently ekes out a living doing celebrity appearances with off-brand dolls desperate for any kind of publicity. He now goes by the name Sugar Daddy Ken. The Princesses arrived on the scene at the start of the new millennium. Some of them had already been around since the 1930‟s, quietly and patiently watching the doll wars, waiting for an opportune time to strike. And strike they did, like a rattlesnake coiled and ready to sink its fangs into an unsuspecting prey. By 2008, at the height of the conflict between Barbie and Bratz, The Princesses had cleverly outflanked their rivals with a flurry of royalty deals that pushed their organization into the number one retail licensing spot. As far as the eye could see, little girls were sporting Princess backpacks, blankets, sheets, shirts, hats, lunchboxes, 29

toothpaste, hair clips, underwear, books, costumes, toys, movies and just about anything that could support a printed image on it. The Princesses were here to stay. Barbie has tried to imitate some of The Princesses but hasn‟t made a lot of headway. Weakened by her ongoing fight with the ghetto-influenced Bratz mob, Barbie has held on to her tenuous position as the number one doll, but has slipped badly in total license dollars. The Princesses continue to win and hold the hearts and minds of young girls everywhere. They distribute a fantasy drug unlike anything Barbie can offer and they have created an entire generation of addicts who feed on a never ending stream of licensed consumer goods. Behind this organization is the most secretly ruthless Princess of them all, one who grew up knowing the cruelty of wicked stepsisters and what it was like to live in squalor, covered with fireplace ashes. She is a Princess with a really big chip on her shoulder, one who leveraged her glass slipper into an extensive empire. Her name is Cinderella and she is godmother to the entire Princess mafia, known from the inside as the Cinderfellas, and she is making offers no one can refuse. The next time you visit with your young granddaughter, do a quick check on how many Princess items she is sporting. You can determine her level of addiction by how many plastic Princess dress-up shoes she owns, and whether her room has Princess sheets, blankets and curtains. If all she wants to do is play Princess and rescue imaginary characters, she might be a candidate for detoxification. But be careful, advocates of delicensing have been known to mysteriously disappear and Princess recruiting among our young is widespread. The invisible arms of the Princess mafia reach far and wide. Endnotes: Annual revenues for the entire retail licensing industry are in excess of $160 billion. Of that, Disney leads with $30 billion in license sales, including $4 billion a year in Princess licensing. The target market is girls, age 3 to 8.

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Mattel’s Barbie is still the number one doll sold, but the company continues to have legal battles over the Bratz line, started by a Mattel doll designer who left to work for rival MGA Entertainment. In just a few short years, MGA has sold over 350 licenses for annual sales of $2 billion.

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The Graduate, 2011 Never go to your high school reunion pregnant or they will think that is all you have done since you graduated. Erma Bombeck I‟m not a politician, I don‟t run a corporation and I‟m not a Nobel prize winner, so I‟m disqualified from ever giving a graduation speech at a college. In fact, the colleges (yes, plural) I went to are happy to send me small annual stipends to not ever mention I went there. But I‟ve always wanted to give a graduation speech, other than one delivered at the dinner table to grown children who would rather have teeth drilled than listen to me one more time. Graduation should be a happy time. The graduates, if they can find work, get disposable income and can move back home and have their laundry done for free. Parents can reunite with adult children and receive advice about everything they‟ve done wrong raising kids. It is truly a joyous time for families.

So what does a graduate do now? That‟s always been the question. In the late 60′s we were told “get into plastic,” and many boomers did just that, especially during the interest-free 32

‟80′s. Some graduates will look for work, some will decide to further depress the family finances with graduate school, and some will try to discover who they are by exploring the philosophical significance of trance music and mojitos. Here is my speech to today‟s graduates. For those who need my credentials before listening to this, let‟s just say that I was the Ambassador to South Guano during the Clinton Administration and now I run flea markets to raise money for the Fund to Save Med Flies. That should make me at least as qualified to speak as most corporate CEO‟s. Friends, parents, graduates and non-gender specific participants of the human race, I welcome you to the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. As we move forward to the next decade, it’s important to assess what has been accomplished so far in this new millennium. So I suggest you do that. The education you just got, the one that your parents sacrificed their retirement to pay for, will give you the skills you need to face today’s challenges. Challenges like unemployment, poverty and healthcare – and those are just a few of the things you need to help your parents with. We’re depending on you to pick up the gauntlet and make the world a better place. We’re also depending on you to keep the social security system alive and well. I won’t bore you with tales of my generation, how we had to walk to school in the snow with just a light jacket and sandals, and yes it really was uphill both ways. I won’t discuss how we struggled to stay in college during the protests, how hard we worked to afford Boone’s Farm, and how as adults we were victims to the imperialist, running-dog lackey, warmongering capitalists who run the financial system. Last but not least I won’t bring up what it was like to raise ungrateful children.

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So go forward into the world, take over the war on terrorism, the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on pollution and especially the war on aging. Because one day you’ll be standing up here begging your progeny to work hard so they can take care of you in your old age. The world needs you, your parents need you, so get out there and get busy. I’m pooped. I’m happy to hand it all over. I just want to sit around and watch a ballgame and have a beer. The world is in your hands now. In closing, let me quote to you words of wisdom I got from my late grandfather when I graduated from school. He took me aside and said this, “Son, you’re a mess and I feel sorry for the world when your generation takes over. But frankly I don’t care because I won’t be around to see it.” Thank-you, have a great life. And so it goes. Another year, another batch of graduates and new hope there will be enough people working to pay for social security and Medicare. It‟s the great cycle of life. Endnotes: The statistics on college graduation have remained fairly constant over the past decade. In general, students who start college at age 18 are ten times more likely to graduate than those starting after the age of 30. Under 12% of students who start community college go on to earn a 4-year degree within six years, and about 60% of students who start at a 4year school will finish with a bachelors degree. Most of the growth rates at colleges come from an increase in older, immigrant and low income students.

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Who‟s The Leader of the Club? The world seems to be bubbling over with turmoil these days. While we try to avoid political topics or taking sides on political issues, some news just can‟t be ignored, and some news is simply not reported by the mainstream media. On top of that, we were a bit short of material for our usual Friday update, so we‟ve decided to bring you information on a growing problem in our country today: theme parks. Trouble started recently at Disney‟s Epcot park. The US Pavilion invaded several Middle East Pavilions in search of WMD‟s (Weapons of Mouse Destruction) despite protests from the French and German exhibits. The Canadian exhibit remained neutral but assigned Mounties around its perimeter as a precautionary measure.

The English Pavilion expanded one of its pubs across the border into Morocco‟s space, claiming that its beer supply routes were being threatened. The Chinese Pavilion issued a statement condemning the “Corrupt imperialist western nations” for their actions and imposed new restrictions on protesters demanding shrimp egg rolls in the cafeteria.

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It didn‟t take long before the Great Lagoon was filled with paddle boats carrying US Pavilion employees for a D-Day style landing on the north side of the park. Reinforcements were brought from the Magic Kingdom. Highly trained Mouse battalions were mobilized for a land invasion and Duck forces overflew the park day and night for reconnaissance. Commander Goofy said if the fighting expands he expects to conduct a quick campaign of “shock and awe” if Sony doesn‟t copyright the phrase first. Reporters on the scene claimed there was rumbling throughout the other Orlando theme parks as well. Inside the Magic Kingdom, long known as a beneficent dictatorship, some minor skirmishes erupted between Frontierland and the Haunted Mansion. The fighting was quelled quickly by shock troops from Tomorrowland, and Cinderella hosted a peace conference at her Castle. At nearby MGM Studios there was a minor attempt by the Star Wars exhibit to capture the back lots, but the Earthquake ride disrupted their efforts. The California divisions of Disney and Universal are on full standby alert. Nearby competing theme parks went on full alert as the strife increased at Disney. Busch Gardens mobilized its animals against a possible attack by the Disney Animal Park, but observers suggest such an action is unlikely since most of Disney‟s animals are robotic. However, Universal Studios is reportedly activating its forces, including the recently retired King Kong, for a possible invasion of Disney should Epcot become more divided. Inside sources say that Universal would like to see its own flag on top of the Epcot Globe. The real danger in all this is that the conflict could expand to a state level. If Disney crumbles, then all of Florida could be open to invasion by Six Flags from Georgia. Miami and Atlanta have already exchanged some sharp words and both states are seeking allies. To date, Georgia has received backing from South Carolina and Alabama. Florida is negotiating with New York, which sees an opportunity to revive Coney Island by opening tourist trade with Orlando. 36

If you think the theme park wars are bad, you should hear what‟s going on between Coke and Pepsi these days. Endnotes: In August 2010, Disney increased the price of an adult one-day pass at its Orlando park to $82, and anyone over the age of 10 is considered an adult. Disney park prices have increased 74% since the year 2000. There are over 400 theme/amusement parks in the U.S. and ticket sales increase by about half a billion dollars a year. In 2007, the theme park industry had 341 million visitors and gross revenue of over $12 billion.

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Chapter 2: Coping With Dating and Sex

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“All You Need is Love…” The Baby Boomer’s Guide to Dating - Part 1

The following is an interview with Dr. Lee Vittalone, author of the book, Sex After 50, A Guide for Baby Boomers. Dr. Vittalone is a slender and very well- groomed middle-aged man with lots of hair, and who talks a lot like Danny DeVito. He is a little-known NJ psychologist now living in Beverly Hills where his 4-step program, “Get Outa Here,” is popular with studios that use it to help aging actors transition into early retirement. His last self-published book, Whatya Gonna Do About It? Online Dating for Italian-Americans, was a best seller in Wayne, NJ. We caught up with Dr. Vittalone at the Il Parmagiani restaurant a few blocks from downtown Beverly

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Hills. He prefers to be called just Dr. Lee because “that Phil guy does it and he makes a mint.” FBO: So what made you decide to write a book about baby boomers and sex? Dr Lee: It‟s really about dating, not so much sex, but whenever you put “sex” in the title you can double sales. You want some pasta? FBO: No thanks. So why baby boomers? You seem to specialize in helping actors retire. Dr Lee: Exactly. Actors are baby boomers too you know. They may be pretty for a while but even they have to get used to the idea of getting off the set. Boomers are like actors about to get kicked out of the studio. It‟s tough. FBO: The introduction to your book states that it‟s not for married couples because, quote, “they may have to beg for it but at least they‟ve got someone to beg from.” What about people who are married but discontented with what they have and want a divorce to start over? Dr Lee: That‟s not a good thing for them to do at this age. FBO: Getting out of a bad situation is not good? Dr Lee: It depends. You don‟t sell a house every time the floors get dirty do you? No. You mop the floors. Marriage is like that. It‟s about mopping up all the time. Just remember to change the water now and then. FBO: Mop…water? Um, okay, um…then what about unmarried boomers? What is the dating scene like today for them?

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Dr Lee: If you don‟t have money for Botox and a personal trainer, it sucks. If you do have money it still sucks. FBO: And sex? How can boomers find contentment with sex? Dr Lee: Not gonna happen. Forget about it. Leave it to the kids. Boomers need to move on. Get a hobby. Go back to basket weaving. Protest a war. Anything but sex. Geez they‟ve had enough of that for the next three generations already and they‟re still miserable. FBO: But there was just a study done that boomers are having a lot of sex and are the highest at-risk group for STD‟s and HIV. What about that? Dr Lee: Boomers are notorious liars. Back in the „80‟s, did you ever meet a boomer who admitted to voting for Reagan? And how many boomers do you know who “didn‟t inhale”? FBO: I see your point. Dr Lee: Plus, there‟s another survey that says boomers are just plain unhappy with their sex lives. Sure they‟re unhappy. Only a few of them even have a sex life anymore. Excluding politicians of course. Do the numbers. There are like five couples somewhere in the US that are still having sex at all. FBO: So what are people doing about that? Dr Lee: You don‟t want to know. Trust me. FBO: But isn‟t that what the book is about? Dr Lee: Yeh, but I‟m having lunch here. Can‟t we talk about stuff like that some other time? Hey, you want some pasta? My next session with Dr. Lee took place several days later at his office, where I met several female actors, but none seemed 42

close to retirement age. Our interview picked up where we left off at the restaurant. Dr Lee: You want some pasta? I can order out. FBO: No, thank-you. I‟d like to get back to what‟s going on in the dating world and then maybe get some tips on dating in the modern age. Dr Lee: Oh yeah? You got a problem? Need a girl? I can introduce you… FBO: Oh no, nothing like that. I meant tips you would give to any boomer about dating in general. Dr Lee: Okay. Got it. Well it‟s like this. Women don‟t feel loved, men don‟t feel loved, nobody feels loved. For a generation that was all about “love, love, love all you need is love,” that‟s a bad thing. Then again, maybe there was too much emphasis on love. FBO: So what you‟re saying is that there is a growing number of unhappy boomers who divorce and are single after the age of 50? I suppose they think they can make a fresh start, a new life, no? Dr Lee: No, what I‟m saying is that married people aren‟t getting enough sex. So they get divorced, have big dreams, maybe a fling or two and badda bing it‟s back to being miserable only this time it‟s alone. FBO: So should boomers have flings but stay married? Dr Lee: A lot of them already did that. No, the answer to all of this is…hey, I‟m sorry but our time is up. I have another patient in just a few minutes. FBO: I‟m not a patient, I just… Dr Lee: Of course. Just set it up with Sally out there. See you next time.

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At that point I decided to go ahead and spend $375 for another hour with Dr. Lee and made an appointment at the front desk. In part two of this interview, I will get him to reveal some real dating and sex tips for single boomers. As for all you married folks, we have a special article on Christmas shopping and tree-trimming coming up in a few weeks. Endnotes: A recent poll by the Associated Press showed that over 60% of female boomers believe they know all there is to know about sex, while only 48% of male boomers have such confidence. However, 56% of women also report a decline in their sex drive, compared to only 46% of men, and 48% of men complain that their partners don’t want to have sex often enough. So, statistically, if 44% of boomer women don’t have a lower sex drive and 52% of boomer men are satisfied, do some women have multiple partners or are 8% of men…oh nevermind.

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“…Love Is All You Need” The Baby Boomer’s Guide to Dating - Part 2

A week later I returned to Dr. Lee Vittalone‟s office in Beverly Hills to resume the interview about dating and sex among baby boomers. Dr. Lee, as he prefers to be called, is the author of a new book called Sex after Fifty, which is selling well at a flea market kiosk in south Los Angeles. After seeing his luxurious office, furnished in early American Ikea, we came to the conclusion that his real income must come from the outsourcing service he and his associates provide for movie studios. Dr. Lee was pleasant and friendly and had just obtained a contract from Time-Warner to outsource acting jobs, along with the actors, to India. FBO:

Doctor, last time we met you were about to give us some tips on dating and sex for boomers. Could you elaborate?

Dr Lee: Sure. You want some pasta first? I can order out. FBO:

No thank-you.

Dr Lee: Okay, suit yourself. What do you want to know?

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FBO:

Where are the women? haha. No, seriously, how are single boomers connecting with each other these days?

Dr Lee: You need to get out more. We can chat about that later. So, you want to know where boomers are connecting? Well, you know that malt shops and record stores are gone now, but the modern equivalent is what they call an online dating service. FBO:

Do they work for people? They advertise that thousands of people are meeting up and getting married. Is that true?

Dr Lee: They work about as well as classified ads in the back of a newspaper, or tacking flyers up on phone poles. Next they will be putting pictures on milk cartons so you can pick a mate over breakfast or coffee. FBO:

Kind of a new spin on “Coffeemate” huh?

Dr Lee: (silence) FBO:

Um, okay. So walk us through using an online service for dating if you would.

Dr. Lee: Okay, it‟s simple. You give them a credit card and pay a monthly fee. Then you fill out a profile and lie about your genetic flaws, add an old picture from 15 years ago, and make a list of things you enjoy, or want to do, like walk on the beach or fly space shuttles. That‟s it. Then you send notes to others or wait for them to send notes to you. FBO:

What kind of notes?

Dr Lee: Usually stuff like “You look hot, take that off and cool down with me,” or “I love your brain so much I could eat it.” FBO:

Is that how Lecter Hannibal got started?

Dr Lee: (silence) FBO:

What are some things to watch out for? 46

Dr Lee: Older women. They are called “cougars.” They are looking for younger men. FBO:

How old is “older?”

Dr Lee: The oldest one reported so far was 92. She told young men she was a witch, and that if they made love to her she‟d grant them any wish they wanted, money, anything. FBO:

And young men went for it?

Dr Lee: Sure. Quite a few. When she had her way she‟d ask them how old they were, most were around 30 or so. Then she‟d laugh and tell them, “silly boy, you‟re 30 and you still believe in witches!” FBO:

I‟m not sure I can believe that story.

Dr Lee: I‟m not either. What next? FBO:

What about sex? Boomers seem really unhappy with it. What can you tell them to improve their sex lives?

Dr Lee: Well, for starters, having sex more than once a decade helps, and having a partner for sex helps too. But I don‟t discourage toys, especially for women. FBO:

Oh, like the “rabbit” they talked about on Sex and the City? Haven‟t studies shown that they make a woman feel more isolated and alone?

Dr Lee: Exactly. Just like having a husband for 30 years only without having to cook and clean. FBO:

What about men? What can they do to enhance their sex lives?

Dr Lee: You really have to ask that? FBO:

Well, studies show that…

Dr Lee: Oh studies schmudies. Women are about quality, men are about quantity. She wants better, he wants more. Get real. Boomers have no lock on that market, it‟s been that way since the dawn of time. 47

Oona put on a fur pelt and wanted a compliment. Og wanted her to take the fur off and…hey, it‟s lunchtime. You want some pasta? FBO:

No, thanks. I have a lunch date after this.

Dr Lee: Oh, good for you. She nice? FBO:

It‟s a he, Brother Jonathan. I‟m joining a monastery.

Dr Lee: Oh, sorry to hear that. Anything else you want to know? I‟m hungry. FBO:

One last question, about your credentials. Where did you do your graduate studies on the subject of sexual behavior?

Dr Lee: Paramus, New Jersey. You can learn a lot hanging around malls. That it? FBO:

Thank-you for your time. It was a pleasure.

Dr Lee: Sure, sure. Now, like we say in the movie business, get outa here. Endnotes: In May, 2010, AARP conducted a survey on sex, romance and relationships among people over the age of 45. The survey found that men think about sex more often than women and view it as more important to their quality of life. Also, men engage in sexual activity more often than women, are less satisfied without a partner and are more likely to admit to having sex with another partner outside a steady relationship. Overall, among both men and women, frequency of sex and overall a satisfaction with it were down almost 10% from a similar survey conducted in 2004.

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Women and Shoes: A Guide for Men Miranda: I had to walk all the way from the subway in these heels. My feet are killing me Steve: Why didn‟t you just carry them and wear sneakers like everyone else? Miranda: Stop. You can take me out of Manhattan but you can‟t take me out of my shoes. (from Sex and the City, Season 2) It was recently brought to our attention that a significant number of baby boomer men have lived over 50 years and still have no clue about women and shoes. You know who you are. We see you with the wife or girlfriend sitting in a shoe store looking like you‟re waiting for an execution. When asked for an opinion you nod and smile and hope she will move away quickly before she starts asking if the shoes match the outfit she bought last month – one you wouldn‟t recognize if your life depended on it. Let‟s face it guys, this stuff is not like keeping up with the latest NFL scores. For men, it‟s a lot easier to remember who‟s on injured reserve for the Dallas Cowboys than it is to even start to comprehend why females can be so fascinated with a hunk of dead cow. Women‟s shoes are like swimsuits. The less material used the greater the price. A sensible one-piece swimsuit probably runs about $19.95 at Sears, while a bikini made from a piece of string can run into the thousands of dollars. Granted, we like the string version better, but that‟s not for discussion in this forum. Shoes with linguini straps, rice paper soles and spiked heels will cost at least 50 times the price of a pair of good, sensible Timberland hiking shoes. If you ask why, you‟ll get the immediate reply, “would you like to see me in a silky dress

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wearing hiking boots?” If you live anywhere but the mountains your response to that should be silence. At last count there are at least 82 million styles of women‟s shoes on the market today. You don‟t need to know the terms for them all, or the designer names, but for basic survival you should know that women‟s shoes come with or without heels, with or without straps to hold them on, and with or without soles or uppers. They might slip on easily, or they might require your help with an effort somewhat reminiscent of giving birth.

Boots are always popular and this season it‟s very in to wear boots with shorts despite what your mother told you years ago. In fact, we strongly suggest you pretty much forget everything your mother taught you about fashion before venturing into a shoe store with a modern female partner. We have it on good authority from a highly experienced female shoe expert we know that buying shoes is a psychological thing somewhat akin to the way you might fantasize about tools at Home Depot. To a woman, every shoe she tries on is a bit of a Cinderella experience – an indulgence – an affirmation that she is still feminine and beautiful and not just plain old Jane Doe.

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And men, ALL women are beautiful. Get with the program. These are the creatures who clean up after your misadventures at the toilet bowl and make sure there are cold beers in the fridge. If they want to inflict pain on themselves at the shoe store, grin and bear it. If you haven‟t noticed, women‟s shoes are about having a collection. You may be able to live with two pairs of shoes, but a woman needs a closetful of shoes even if she never wears them all. Just going into the closet and seeing her collection seems to reassure her that all is right with the world. You can tell a hardcore collector because she will even keep her shoes in the original boxes. For most women, the search itself is more exciting than actually owning the shoes and, apparently, shoes cannot be purchased entirely on their own merits. They have to match something in the woman‟s wardrobe but be different to the world in general. This is tricky guys. Women hate to dress like other women, but most are stuck with mass production like everyone else. Trying to be unique is a constant guessing game of what other women are going to wear on any given day. Frankly, it must be exhausting. The most important thing to learn about women and their shoes is that men are dunces and idiots. We know nothing and we have no sense of taste or style. Yet we are a prime reason why they are torturing their feet, and they will ask our opinions anyway. However, you should also know that there is a higher reason for shoe purchases and it‟s much more important than your approval: the recognition and approval of other women. The ultimate compliment to a woman is to be told by another woman that her shoes are really cool. Why? Because the other woman doesn‟t have them. Endnotes: A recent survey showed that the average woman will spend around $25,000 on shoes over a lifetime, a total of about 470 pairs. At any given time, women own 19-20 pairs of shoes: three pairs of heels, six pairs of flip-flops, flats, sandals

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or wedges, three pairs of boots and four pairs of “foxy-style.” They also own two pairs of “sensible” work shoes and have one or two from “random” purchases. Most women can easily justify shoe purchases to themselves, but 25% keep it secret from partners who “wouldn’t understand.” Four in 10 women judge other women by the shoes they wear. Special thanks to shoe collector Sylvia L. for her tireless efforts to enlighten everyone on this topic.

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Chapter 3: Coping With Holidays and The Seasons

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Shop „Til You Drop EMO USQUE AD MORTEM Right after the holidays the usual thing to do is visit the mall to return or exchange things. Around here however, the usual thing is to go look for sales and buy things to put away for next year. You have to hope that the intended recipient for next year does not have a major life altering event or, if you buy clothing, that they don‟t lose or gain too much weight. It can be embarrassing to give someone a “medium” when they‟ve grown into a “large” and you have to admit the item was sitting in your attic for a year.

This year I did have some exchanges to make however, and to avoid potential crowds and traffic I drove 75 miles further north to a shopping mall in a more rural area. Plus, I went on a Sunday several weeks after Christmas, certain the mall itself would be deserted. It had been some 20 years since I had last been to this mall. What used to be a quaint little “town square” type mall now extended across three counties, had its own zip code, a fire department and a park „n ride lot.

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It had snowed a few days earlier and much of the parking lot was still icy. SUV‟s battled each other for parking spaces up close to the stores, and looked like giant mountain goats locking horns on a craggy peak. SUV drivers can be brutal. In some cases they had parked right on top of small cars like the Prius, which might help explain why four-wheel drive is so popular around crowded cities and suburbs. I parked in the outer zone and walked the remaining five miles, packages held tight, scarf and hat drawn against a punishing wind that was blowing loose snow in all directions. I had to return a too-small sweater that had obviously been in someone else‟s attic over the past year, a crystal punch bowl (does anyone make punch anymore?) and a deluxe TV remote control device that only had instructions in Korean. It was a simple trip. The worst part would be just getting to the mall itself. Once inside I could open my coats and enjoy the 92degree temperature set to accommodate teenagers wearing shorts and flip flops under their ski jackets. I‟ve actually never seen teens wearing coats inside a mall in the winter. It‟s interesting. I see them with coats on in the parking lot, but never inside. Where do they put them? There is no coat check anywhere. Another one of the mysteries of teen life. About halfway across the parking lot I started to think about the whole modern experience of shopping. Some of us baby boomers predate shopping malls by just a few years and can still remember when shopping meant roaming around downtown with your mother yanking on your arm. I‟m sure someone will correct this, but covered malls only started arriving sometime in the early 1960‟s and were quite a novelty. Until that time the closest thing to one-stop shopping was a big department store, many of which are now gone. Some time ago I had done some research and found that shopping malls actually date to the Greek agora, but the Romans elevated shopping to an art form or forum. They too had giant malls, called spendi maximus, where you could find everything from marble urns to purple cloth.

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Roman malls were also popular hangout spots for teens. Girls often wore very short togas and boys wore their headbands backwards in rebellion to their parents. Adult women were highly attracted to cumin getit (post-holiday sales), and their version of the modern cash machine was an Argentum Lendit Tua or moneylender.

The Romans of course didn‟t celebrate our modern holidays, but they had their own local events, including Femina Virginis en Volcanus in Pompeii, Cristianus y Lionus in Rome and Gaulus Roastia in the northern territories. Apparently most of their holidays involved gifting, as well as returning gifts afterward much like today. Most shopping was controlled by women and men were required to carry packages, also much like today. However, there was often a shopping area for men where they could check out tools, weapons and chariot parts called a Searsarus. This was not to be confused with Littlus Caesar’s, a chain of pizza delivery stores owned by the famous Roman leader Julius, who also invented an orange drink still available today. I‟m pleased to say that my trip only took nine hours since I was able to hitch a ride on a dog sled for the last three miles of the parking lot. Inside the mall was very crowded but most people were in the food court watching toddlers spit up the remnants of Happy Meals while the stores were more or less empty. I was able to exchange the sweater for an extra-large 56

(I‟m working on it) and I changed the punch bowl for a more practical wooden salad bowl. The television remote was exchanged for an electric stapler that I‟m sure I will have a use for some day. On the way back out I was startled by a large talking sign that seemed to recognize me and what I had just acquired. A video screen popped on with a nicely dressed young man who said “if you need extra large sizes we‟d like to recommend…” I walked quickly away and didn‟t hear the end of it. And I did not want to know how it knew about my sweater. I looked back over my shoulder and saw the next shopper being “video mugged” and wondered if the Romans had anything similar. Perhaps Julius Caesar‟s demise had nothing to do with politics after all. Perhaps he was just a victim of some very aggressive retail practices. I suddenly felt a little bit better about the talking sign. Endnotes: December 2010 retail sales for large chain and department stores, including Macy’s, Target and J.C. Penney, were up 3.1% over December 2009. Analysts claim the snowstorms in late December dampened sales considerably but were a big improvement over the downward trend of the past few years. No one seems to track how much lower sales might be if you figure in post-Christmas returns.

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T‟was the Month Before Christmas… Get it here first! Our intern Diane gets a big scoop on holiday releases that Hollywood hasn’t even publicized yet! For a long time it seemed that Madison Avenue was ignoring the baby boomer generation. It was almost as if advertisers were saying, “well, we gave you ads with hippies and flowers and music but you didn‟t buy a damn thing so we‟re moving on.” Of course young boomers were not a generation of mass consumers. That came a lot later after we finally found jobs and got credit cards and sold out. Now we are being bombarded with product ads aimed at boomers. They usually feature people in their 30‟s, with hair dyed grey, who give away $60,000 cars for Christmas presents. Cialis ads show the same good-looking not-very-old people folding laundry when “the mood” strikes and the scene transforms into a private garden with a waterfall. It‟s magic, although a recent survey showed a majority of boomers are unhappy with their sex lives. Maybe the survey takers hadn‟t seen the Cialis ad yet. Hollywood has gotten in on the act lately. The studios have a long list of aging actors and actresses in need of work, and they have been very busy cranking out movies aimed at boomers. Red, The Expendables, It’s Complicated, Mad Money and so on show that oldsters can still be heroes, thieves, romantics and lovers. Fortunately they don‟t show nude scenes anymore. Since Fred is now busy writing news briefs, thanks to an overwhelming vote by readers for him to stay on, we had to turn to another intern, Diane, to dig out some inside info from Hollywood on movies for the holiday season. After digging in studio trash cans for a week or so, Diane came up with several 58

used notepads and was able to piece together a short list of the boomer-oriented movies still to come this season. As a reward for her good work we are going to reimburse Diane for the coffee she brought in this morning. Here is our exclusive scoop on upcoming films, and we can guarantee that you won‟t see this anywhere else.

The Hero **1/2 The heartwarming story of an aging superhero played by Dennis Quaid who is out of work and takes a delivery job for a sandwich shop in a big city. While delivering a six-foot sub one day, he interrupts the mugging of a beautiful 50-plus woman (Annette Bening) and a romance ensues. Quaid has to choose between Bening or saving the world when aliens attack trying to steal the world‟s supply of pepperoni for fuel. It’s Even More Complicated*** A holiday sequel to It’s Complicated, Meryl Streep gets bored with Steve Martin and swaps partners with ex-hubby Alec Baldwin. Baldwin and Martin are hilarious as a newly emerged gay couple that gets mixed up in a community theater production of A Gay Christmas Carol. Meanwhile, Streep decides that she likes Robin Williams, a straight man pretending to be gay to keep 59

his job as head of the community theater, but her new partner Lake Bell threatens to blow the whistle to keep Streep to herself. RGB: Red, Green and Blue **1/2. Loosely based on the original movie Red, semi-retired techies are recalled to active status to fight a global computer virus originating from India. The virus is in a program language that has not been used since the 1970‟s and is unknown to modern programmers. George Clooney and Sandra Bullock team up as the boomer programmers with a cloudy past, and Jeff Bridges is their crusty but benign former supervisor who still works for an unnamed mega corporation that has outsourced all its IT work to…yep, India. Rudolfo *. An animated Christmas story about a teenage Mexican reindeer who emigrates illegally but with good reason to the North Pole, only to encounter species profiling and trouble from corrupt reindeer and elves. Rudolfo falls in love with Clarice, Comet‟s daughter, and stumbles on information that Blitzen has rigged the annual reindeer games so his son Fireball will win. With help from Dominick the Italian Christmas Donkey, Rudolfo discovers he is actually Italian, not Mexican, and reunites with his Sicilian relatives to save Christmas. Voices by Antonio Banderas, Catherine ZetaJones, Joe Pesci and Danny DeVito. It’s a Wonderful Wife ****. Based on the hit TV-series The Good Wife, Alicia (Julianna Margulies) finds herself out of work after losing a major case that bankrupts the law firm and she decides to end it all by jumping into the Chicago River on Christmas eve. She is saved by an angel (Tom Hanks) who shows her what life would have been like if she‟d never switched from being an ER nurse to a lawyer. This movie has a surprise ending that we are not allowed to reveal, but we can mention that it involves a guest appearance by George Clooney.

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Christmas Gory *1/2. A chilling docudrama sequel to the charming movie A Christmas Story by Jean Shepherd, this offbeat tale follows the story of the Red Ryder BB gun as it passes hands from owner to owner after Ralphie no longer plays with it and throws it away. The casualties mount as victim after victim encounters the wrong end of the vaguely lethal weapon, until a bill is finally introduced to impose a waiting period on the purchase of BB guns for minors. The Gift of Maggie **. Kind of a cross between The Gift of the Magi and Prizzi’s Honor, this is the story of an aging hit man (Jack Nicholson) who donates a kidney to his kid brother only to discover that his other kidney is starting to fail. A nurse named Maggie (Anjelica Huston) helps Nicholson by giving one of her kidneys to him, but she dies during the surgery. Nicholson, wracked with guilt and distracted, is hit by a bus and killed the same day he is discharged from the hospital. He meets Huston in heaven and…we can‟t tell what happens from there but boy is she pissed off. Endnotes: “A Christmas Story” opened in November, 1983, and earned just over $2 million the first weekend. The movie was made with a budget of $3.2 million and eventually grossed $19 million. In 2009, “A Disney Christmas Carol” opened its first weekend with sales of over $30 million on a budget of $190 million. Worldwide gross sales ended up at $323 million. The all-time high for opening weekend sales was “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” which made over $55 million in three days in 2000. Merry Christmas Hollywood.

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Boom Boom Boomers Boom boom boom boom I’m gonna shoot you right down, right offa your feet… John Lee Hooker Memorial Day is coming soon. It‟s the unofficial start of summer and a day of firsts for the season – first sunburn, first charred burgers on the grill, first hangover and first opportunity to put on a swimsuit and show off our caloric intake over the winter. The original intent of Memorial Day, previously called Decoration Day, was to honor soldiers who died in service by marking their graves with wreaths and flags. It started after the Uncivil War and continued to grow into a major holiday and ultimately became one of our cherished three-day weekends. Like most other American holidays, it amazingly always comes on a Monday, which of course gives us the following day at work to rest and recuperate. Non-Americans are quite puzzled by our holidays. I have a few English friends living in the states who don‟ t make much of the holiday except to sit and watch cricket on the “telly,” have a few pints and say things like “oh bloody hell” or “brilliant that.” Cricket, by the way, is a game that no one including the English knows how to play. Games last for several months, involve things called wickets, stumps and bails, and appear to have no winners or losers. It‟s all very civil with virtually no shouting or yelling, and they view our holiday activities as “rather vulgar.” When I was a kid we would get a half day off from school if we agreed to march in the Memorial Day parade, and we were expected to wear white shirts and navy blue trousers (skirts for the girls, it was a pre-feminist time). Parades were huge and involved every known group and organization in town, sometimes leaving only a dozen or so bystanders left over to 62

watch. After the parade our entire family would meet at our house, aunts, uncles and cousins, because we were the first to have an actual poured concrete patio that was easy to hose down the next day. I won‟t discuss why it had to be hosed down.

Things haven‟t changed much today except there are fewer parades around because hardly anyone plays the tuba or the trumpet anymore, and kids don‟t like uniforms or marching. In fact, most of today‟s kids don‟t even like to go outdoors and prefer to interface with holidays as a virtual experience. Grownups still get together but patios are out, cedar decks are in and American beers have been replaced by imports with names like Grindelfalachenschpeigle, “the one beer to have when you‟re having less than one.” People still grill burgers and hot dogs, but now you may also find veggie burgers toasting next to them, and hummus instead of Uncle Ned‟s “belly burner jalapeno dip.” All across the country, Memorial Day weather is somewhat of a crap shoot. In the south, Memorial Day comes about halfway through their summer with average temperatures of a few hundred degrees, so you need skin lotion with an SPF of 300 or better. In Texas and Arizona they don‟t even need to use charcoal in the grill. In northern states like Wisconsin and

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Minnesota, Memorial Day is welcomed as the first holiday of the year that doesn‟t require shoveling snow to get to the grill. In the New York area the weather is often just overcast and humid, while southern California can expect sunny with earthquakes and Midwestern states often have cloudy with tornadoes. Memorial Day also brings out the best qualities of family members. I remember Aunt Edna who, after having several rounds of refreshments, would ask us kids if we wanted hot dogs or hamburgers. When we replied with our choices we would be told, “well you‟ll take what you get and you‟ll like it!” She would then walk off muttering things about children we couldn‟t quite understand at the time. It was rumored she once had kids of her own but had sold them to the gypsies. As a side note, gypsies stopped buying children after getting stuck with a bunch of teenagers one time. My cousin Billy always showed up on holidays, even Thanksgiving, with enough fireworks to blow up half the neighborhood. His dad, my uncle Jerry, insisted on being the one to handle the matches but only after testing the beer keg numerous times to ensure it was “fresh beer.” That would then trigger Aunt Sarah into a screaming panic to stop him, and while the other adults struggled with Jerry we would steal off to play with all the fireworks Billy had kept secret from his dad. Our best ever Memorial Day was the year Billy sneaked fireworks into the grill and the fire department had to come out. We were never very popular with the neighbors after that. After thinking back to Memorial Days past, and looking around at modern Memorial Day celebrations, I decided this year to book a flight to London – for a few days of peace and quiet watching a cricket game, napping and having a pint. I think I finally get what that game is all about. Endnotes: According to AAA, nearly 35 million Americans will travel more than 50 miles from home this Memorial Day weekend. 31 million will travel by car despite high gas prices

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– over $4 a gallon in some areas – and almost 3 million Americans will travel by air, up nearly 12% from a year ago. Rates for 3-star hotels are up 5%, and for 2-star hotels, 10%. Apparently the cheaper places figure they can charge more to people who have less to spend. We’re still sorting that one out.

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Cold Turkey Thanksgiving is an emotional holiday. People travel thousands of miles to be with people they only see once a year. And then discover once a year is way too often. Johnny Carson We‟re coming up to a holiday and it‟s mandatory to do a heartwarming Thanksgiving story about a houseful of smells, visiting relatives and good spirits. When I was a kid the smells were from my messy cousins, the relatives lived upstairs in our two-family house and good spirits were served in martini glasses. And the heartwarming part usually came from eating too much overcooked turkey and undercooked sausage stuffing. To this very day I hate sausage stuffing, not because it causes heartburn, but because I had a cousin who left a second-hand deposit of it on the floor every year. Did I mention a houseful of smells? I was told this column is not about nostalgia, but coping with the new millennium, so I went in search of a modern Thanksgiving. A quick survey of women‟s magazines gave the impression that preparations should start sometime in April, and that serving a picture-perfect bird in any type of structure with less than 10 bedrooms was strictly verboten. I felt woefully inadequate with only two bedrooms and a common area for living and eating. I continued searching. Cooking shows on TV were very helpful to learn how to cook a turkey, but I already knew that. You throw it in a pan, grease it up and cook it for three days and nights at about 800 degrees and everything comes out really tender. Easy, right?

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One show insisted that you had to defrost the bird before cooking, but that seems a huge waste of time. Another showed some ancient Aztec method of burying the carcass in a deep pit, covering it with wood chips and branches, then igniting the whole thing on fire. Well, it was late and I nodded off for a while so I‟m not entirely sure if it was a turkey or a human sacrifice. Next I turned to history since sometimes, but not always, seeing where things start gives a clue as to why they are the way they are today. Ben Franklin wanted to make the turkey the national bird of America instead of the bald eagle. Since turkeys are notoriously stupid – they‟ve even been known to drown by staring up at the rain – no one is entirely sure of Ben‟s intent. It is possible he meant for it to represent Congress, but that‟s just a guess. George Washington made Thanksgiving a national holiday, Abe Lincoln set the date at the last Thursday of November, and FDR moved the date back a week during the depression to make a longer Christmas shopping season. President Obama tried the same thing this year but came under criticism for trying to move the date to August. Major retailers apparently decided to go ahead with the president‟s plan anyway. I found lots of interesting facts and tidbits about the history of Thanksgiving, turkeys, shopping and cooking, but none of them provided any clues about how baby boomers are coping and dealing with the holiday now. So I finally decided to take 67

my survey directly to the public and I set up a small polling booth at the local mall. 76% of boomers said they still have traditional turkey dinners on Thanksgiving, and a majority of that group said men are not allowed in the kitchen and women are not allowed in the TV room. I‟m checking those numbers however because it seems many of the respondents were male. Another 14% claimed to be vegetarians or vegans. By the way, on the whole they are a very nice group of people and really appreciated the free snacks and beverages I put out. The pepperoni bites were especially popular until someone saw the package they came from. The remaining 10% told me they celebrate Thanksgiving with roast beef, lobster tails, fresh pate and champagne, and they were quite adamant they had indeed found the truest form of giving thanks. I took no sides in this survey and disputed nothing. Finally, I visited a village on a native American reservation, known locally as “Cah-see-noh,” to ask native Americans directly what Thanksgiving meant to them. It was a short visit and I was escorted back to my car by two very nice young men who suggested that I submit my questions to a place I‟d never heard of, but which sounded something like “up molasses.” I assumed they had an office in Vermont but was not able to find it when I looked the next day. The bottom line seems to be that baby boomers are spending Thanksgiving pretty much as they always did, except now they have to pay for it, fix it and clean up after it. Some have chosen to go the traditional route of having turkey, some have abandoned eating meat and some obviously never had kids because they can afford roast beef and champagne. No matter how they cope with it or what they eat, Americans of all ages still respect the holiday as a day of thanks after 389 years and that‟s pretty impressive. And, the only ones who

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really have a problem coping with Thanksgiving are – you guessed it – the turkeys. Endnotes: The average American eats nearly 14 pounds of turkey in a year. Over 250 million turkeys are raised each year for a total weight of more than 7 billion pounds with total value over $3 billion. Another $5 million worth of turkeys are imported annually from Canada. The first Thanksgiving was in 1621 by order of William Bradford, Governor of the Plymouth Bay Colony. Included in the harvest celebration were the local Wampanoag Indians, who helped the English settlers to survive the previous harsh winter.

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This Is Going to Hurt Me More Than You If you think no one cares whether you’re dead or alive, try missing a few credit card payments. I‟m one of those types who never balances a checkbook and escorts bills directly to the circular file without a fair trial. Some time ago I switched all bill paying to online with my bank, which lets me see immediately how fast my account is depleted without having to wait for paper checks to clear. It‟s convenient, fast and I save on the cost of stamps, which currently cost around $27.00 to mail a first class letter. That‟s why any mail I send out is low class. I also have bills sent directly to my bank. Banks have made it incredibly easy to remain poor and they are a true credit to our economic system. One credit card company kept refusing to send bills to my bank however. I discovered this was because they want you to use their online service for an extra convenience fee. We‟ll discuss convenience fees another time. I‟m still puzzled about who they are supposed to be convenient for, certainly not for me. So I decided to discover what was inside the paper bills that I had been sending automatically to the trash without opening. What I discovered was a total shock. Apparently one credit card company, which I shall not name unless you discover it for yourself, had apparently been taken over by the Russian mafia and was charging me a 30% interest rate on the balance. The last I knew I had a $12.95 balance for buying a can opener a year and half earlier, and I‟d not used the card since. I was making regular payments of around $100 a month and still, I discovered, the balance had grown to nearly $3,000. The bill thanked me for my business and urged me to discover how I could use the card for all my purchases.

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I called the company to discover what the story was. After three hours of punching in my social security number, zip code and blood type, talking to every customer service rep in their Mongolian office, and casting a voodoo spell on the company, I was finally put through to some guy named Igor in the “Hardship Department.” The conversation went something like this: Igor: How may I be helping for you today? Me: I‟d like to know why I‟m paying a 30% interest rate. Igor: You are having a problem with this? Me: Yes of course. It‟s supposed to be a credit card not a street loan with vig. Igor: There is difference? Me: Yes! Now why is my interest rate so high? Igor: Shows here you have best rate. Me: 30% is “best” rate? What‟s the worst? Igor: You want I should change you to that? Me: No, no, no…I want a lower rate. Why is this so high? Igor: Just a moment…ah, here it is. You made late payment last year. 71

Me: What?!! I pay online, how late was it? Igor: Hmm…twenty minutes. You fail to meet cutoff time. So sorry. Me: Well I need that to be adjusted. That‟s not fair. Igor: Yes, I know. Life is dark. You like Dostoyevsky? Chekhov? Me: No. So what about my rate? Igor: Today for you I can make big deal. Reduce rate to just 28.99%? Is good no? Me: No. That‟s terrible. What if I pay it all off? Igor: Is your choice. We have convenience fee for pay early. Me: That‟s not convenient for ME. How much is the fee? Igor: Is depend on mood for Goldman Sachs that day. Me: Oh cripes. So what are my options? Igor: Option is keep paying. We have counselor visit you to advise payment strategy. Me: Counselor? Huh? I don‟t need a counselor I need a lower interest rate! Igor: Okay, you say you agree. We send to you Vlad Impaler, he is best credit counselor. He be there between 10pm and 3am. Please be leaving door unlocked to avoid convenience fee to open door. Me: What? I don‟t want a counselor or visitor or….. Igor: Am thanking you much for business. Good-bye. (Click).

So here I am at midnight waiting for some guy named Vlad to show up to help me discover how to never, ever make a late payment again. I also am now at a 42% interest rate since they made some adjustments after my call. The can opener is long gone, it wore out in a month. I would have returned it but there was a $55 convenience and restocking fee. I‟m told I‟ll have it 72

paid off by 2017 if I keep up the payments. I now open cans with my teeth, and pay cash to the dentist. I discovered it‟s a lot cheaper than using a credit card. Endnotes: Statistics on credit cards are staggering. 178 million US consumers hold over 600 million cards and carry an average credit card debt of $14,687. Revolving debt in the US, of which 98% is from credit cards, totals $793 billion. Over 36% of consumers do not know what the interest rate is on the card they use most. According to Pew Research, 93% of cards have terms that allow the issuer to raise interest rates simply by amending the agreement. Card companies collect over $20 billion a year in penalty fees. The highest late fee on record is now $39 per incident. The average APR on a new credit card is 14.9% but rates can range considerably higher depending on a consumer’s credit “worthiness.” The average interest rate for a bank savings account is currently less than one percent.

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Summertime Blues Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it. Russell Baker Quick…without stopping to think about it…name all the things you remember about summertime as a kid. Here are a few of my items: a squeaky wooden screen door with a spring that would make it slam shut and aggravate my mother, a metal fan that I used for shredding plastic soldiers, odd flavored hamburgers because my father used gasoline to light the charcoal grill, running through all the sprinklers in the neighborhood, backyards with no fences, a bicycle with fat tires that weighed more than I did, and being able to buy a comic, a soda and some bubble gum with just a quarter. The one thing I don‟t remember was a daily summer temperature near 450 degrees that lasted from May to October. Today we can‟t survive without air conditioning, but we‟re told that is contributing to global warming because it pushes the hot air out of our houses and into the air. Frankly, I think this all somehow involves Mexicans and their hot foods, or possibly even Canada blocking the flow of cool air from the north. Then again there is a record amount of hot air coming out of Washington, DC, these days. One neat thing about being an adult is being able to drive myself to the beach. I did that recently because my neighbors complained about my running through their sprinklers, and there are just too many fences to climb over these days. I found an old pair of baggies, Huarachi sandals, put on some Beach Boys music, bought a sand pail and shovel and headed off to the beach. I had no surfboard. I couldn‟t surf when I was young and I sure wasn‟t going to try it now, but I wanted to experience again the joy of building a sandcastle.

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I got a nasty sunburn two minutes after stepping onto the beach, but I kept going. There were plenty of waves and lots of people on the beach, but no one was in the water. I figured they were all just wimps because the water temperature was probably about 135 degrees colder than the air. I didn‟t know that it was a “red flag” day which meant the undertow was quite strong and no lifeguards were on duty. So in I went anyway and nearly got dragged halfway to Europe. I managed to fight my way back to the shallows but then realized that my baggies had kept going with the tide. Someone in Spain now owns a nice pair of Hawaiian style swim trunks. The pail and shovel I had taken along came in very handy as I hurried back to the locker room. The other neat thing about being an adult is that after being embarrassed at the beach and suffering a third-degree sunburn, you can sit in your air conditioned living room with a martini and watch a flat screen television. Right now the weatherman is forecasting more high temperatures, but I don‟t care because I‟m not going anywhere. I plan to stay indoors until October, and then I‟ll venture outside for the three days of autumn we‟ll get before it starts to snow again. Endnotes: The US Lifesaving Association estimates there are over 282 million visitors to American beaches each year, with 75

about 54,000 rescues by lifeguards. The primary causes for rescues are rip currents and heavy surf. The odds of drowning at a beach with a lifeguard are one in 18 million, much higher on unguarded beaches. As with most outdoor activities, safety increases when stupidity decreases.

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“Oh, the Weather Outside is Frightful…” “Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow…” Okay, enough is enough is enough already. What‟s with the weather this winter? This past week most of the country, from the Midwest to the Northeast, was inundated with snow, freezing temperatures, high winds, sleet and ice. We are in the New York area, which hasn‟t dug out since the blizzard that hit right after Christmas. Yes, it was a real, genuine blizzard. Chicago isn‟t the only big city that gets clobbered in the winter. This year everyone gets to share in the fun.

We could start a lively debate about where this is all coming from. Some will tell you it‟s El Nino, some say global warming ( below zero is warming??), some say it‟s getting close to the end of the Mayan calendar and the end of time. We‟re not entirely sure how a tribe of people living in a hot jungle would come up with snow to explain the end of the world, but you never know. Scientists have been strangely silent about it all, which makes us suspicious that possibly 77

something big is up and we‟re not being told about it. The weather reporters only talk about what‟s happening, not why. Possibly this is due to global something or other. Or maybe the earth has tilted on its axis. Or maybe Sarah Palin and the Alaskans have found a way to control the weather and are trying to take over the rest of the nation. Whatever the cause, it has to be dealt with. In some areas snow is piled so high you can‟t see cars and houses. Snow plows keep pushing the white stuff off the street and the curbs seem lost forever below mounds of ice. Cars that were left on the street are completely encased in ice and snow. We see frustrated drivers trying to dig out before the alternate side of the street parking rules kick in and the street sweeper arrives. Yes, New York still has street sweepers regardless of weather. It‟s some kind of leftover mob deal that no one ever questions. So we have a modest proposal. We have done some experiments and found that high charge explosives and firearms work really well against ice and snow. This has the double benefit of not only helping us cope with snowfalls, but also keeping the arms industry busy now that Iraq has slowed down. Here‟s how it works. Hand grenades work great on ice dams. Just be sure to stay far enough away when it goes off, and definitely practice your throwing so it doesn‟t end up on a neighbor‟s porch. A .44 caliber handgun also works well to fix a frozen car lock, and handheld missile launchers will clear a street a lot faster than a snow plow can. During the first blizzard of the winter New York‟s Mayor Bloomberg apparently decided to save funds so a lot of streets never got plowed. There was a major uproar from residents who weren‟t able to drive their cars for a few days. Not that there‟s anywhere in New York you can really drive to, but it‟s mandatory, that if you own a car, to get out and help create traffic jams on the local highways at least once or twice a week. A lot of people take their cars out, get on the Hudson Parkway, for example, and just drive for a while then go back and park.

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A city crew, armed with various types of explosives, could have cleaned up the streets in no time. It probably would have had the added benefit of keeping complaints to a minimum. The blizzard in Chicago did seem more extreme than in New York, but for those really severe storms they do make small thermonuclear devices that could easily rid the city of unwanted snow and ice. With the exception of Utah, we just don‟t think that the roads and highways departments of major cities are creative enough when it comes to dealing with winter problems. We do need to point out however that we‟ve not tested our theory on roadways over bridges. Our staff was so excited at the possibilities of re-purposing military grade weapons that we are now looking into other uses for them as well. For example, an M-16 will clear a clogged toilet without any of the mess of using a plunger. A .50 caliber machine gun is perfect for aerating a lawn, and mortars (if aimed accurately) are perfect for removing tree stumps. So the next time there is a major snow storm, forget about a snow shovel and breaking your back. Visit your local armory and pick up some firearms and explosives to clear your driveway, de-ice the car locks and melt icy sidewalks. Sadly, the army has more or less given up on flame throwers, but if these harsh winters continue the manufacturers may bring them back. And above all don‟t forget to write letters to your mayor insisting they adopt a better way to clear the streets. If we‟re going to have continued deep freeze conditions from global warming then we need better tools to deal with it. Endnotes: This past January, police in Abington, Mass., arrested a man for using military grade explosives to clear away hundreds of pounds of snow from the front of his residence. Ski resorts routinely use thousands of pounds of explosives a year to control avalanches, and the Utah Department of Transportation uses military artillery rounds for the same purpose in canyons where drivers could become trapped. For areas without access to military weapons, there is a device called an Avalauncher that looks like a small 79

cannon and can fire a kilogram of explosives up to 2,000 yards away. This device has been used for about 50 years for “avalanche mitigation.” To the best of our knowledge it has never been used in New York or Chicago.

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Chapter 4: Coping With Life Around The House

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“Blow Away Dandelion” Make no mistake: the weeds will win; nature bats last. Robert M. Pyle There has been wall-to-wall media coverage on the death of Usama Bin Laden, but there is another form of terrorism affecting this country that almost never gets discussed. It affects homeowners everywhere and is costing us billions of dollars every year, dollars that could go into taxes to buy banks and car companies. We‟re talking about a recent surge in dandelions. If you live in a city this still affects you since dandelions can even grow in the cracks of a sidewalk.

Laugh if you will, but these innocent-looking little weeds are the scourge of every lawn, golf course and park in the United States. They are the cockroaches of the plant kingdom. If there‟s a drought they turn brown and go dormant, then return with friends later on. If there‟s too much rain, they multiply faster than rabbits on Viagra.

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Dandelions have many allies and have banded together with weeds of many different species, all intent on destroying and taking over well-groomed plots of grass in every corner of the country. Chemical companies produce prodigious amounts of weed killer every year, but that only seems to hold back the inevitable on a temporary basis. Some homeowners try to deal with the little terrorists on their own and often end up hospitalized from exhaustion or sun stroke. We‟ve seen them try all sorts of things to combat dandelions, from chemical sprays to blow torches to simply getting on hands and knees and plucking them out one by one. Obviously some people have a lot more time on their hands than others. The agricultural equivalent of the Navy Seals is a highly trained and deadly (to weeds) ops group called Chemgrass that can quietly slip into an area midday and blanket a lawn, in napalm-like fashion, with a chemical cocktail that if misused could eliminate all plant life as we know it. Except for dandelions. They have learned to adapt and change faster than our chemists can devise new poisons for them. Dandelions have impacted our entire society in ways we never thought possible. It‟s difficult to discuss the problem openly because we can‟t just say “we need to kill weeds” (in public). We have to be very specific to note that these are extremist weeds and don‟t represent all forms of wild grasses and leafy plants, many of which contribute to our environment and help keep vegans alive. There have been many lively debates on talk shows when someone says “I have a weed problem” and other guests walk off because they believe the speaker is a bigot or weedist. The other problem in trying to destroy these pests is that they are often aided and abetted by children, who collect their flowery heads for their mothers or blow on them when they are in pollen form. This, of course, just spreads their seeds far and wide and only increases their numbers. Lawmakers are

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working on restrictions for children but until then we have to rely on pat downs and pocket checks when they come in the house. The same effect comes from mowing or weed whacking. While a homeowner might take great satisfaction in seeing the heads of evil dandelions fall like aristocrats on an exceptionally busy day of the French Revolution, that also tends to just spread them around and create more plants. We were given a clue as to what might happen to the human race from the old movie about the pod people. As much as that seems like a silly science fiction movie, dandelions are in fact capable of ultimately taking over this planet with help from other “extremist” weeds. Whether we like the fact or not, mankind and the quest for a perfect lawn is the only thing preventing this entire planet from becoming one giant, leafy ground cover. Behind all this is one single dandelion leader, Useema Bin Gharden, believed to be protected by a secret sect of monks high in the Himalayas. This group believes that animal life despoils the planet and that the dandelion is the one true way to return the world to a pure and pristine state. Apparently they have not yet realized that would mean their own demise as well. We also have it on good authority that the Chemgrass Black Ops unit may be close to finding and destroying Bin Gharden. We certainly wish them well, but would remind everyone that sometimes taking out one dandelion can spawn many more in its place. Endnotes: According to Hoover’s there are about 90,000 major landscaping services in the United States today with a combined annual revenue of around $50 billion. Including smaller lawn care companies, the number of services jumps to over 350,000 with nearly 800,000 employees total. Most homeowners consider lawn care a discretionary cost that is 84

often one of their first budget items to be cut during economic downturns. Dandelions love recessions.

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Wrap Rage noun. Anger and rage, especially among people over the age of 50, caused by frustration from plastic product packaging that is difficult or even impossible to open.

One of the most dangerous things you can do today is try to open a blister pack, those nasty little plastic clamshell packages that you can‟t get open without destroying the contents and ripping the skin off of four or five fingers. Frustration by consumers has given rise to the term “wrap rage” because most injuries are caused by furious people improperly using various devices and tools to open the packages. As reported by hospitals, the most common tools used include: pliers, kitchen shears, bolt-cutters, military issue can openers, hacksaws, files, ice picks, teeth, and fingernails. They now sell package openers with lethal, razor-sharp blades taken from leftover military surplus weapons, but most of them don‟t work. Even if you do manage to use one and have any fingers left, it‟s highly likely that you shredded the contents of the package.

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Consumer Reports has an annual contest for the worst packaging called the Oyster Awards. Top honors usually go to blister packs. A recent winner was a toothbrush that even their testers couldn‟t get out of the package, followed closely in second place by a Bratz doll that was bound and gagged to the package with plastic fasteners, twisty ties and tape in a way that would impress ancient Egyptian embalmers. Manufacturers insist the packaging is to prevent product tampering and possible lawsuits, yet face possible lawsuits anyway because of package-related consumer injuries. Paper bag manufacturers must be quite amused by all of this, though paper cuts are no laughing matter either. A study in England reports that over 60,000 people a year are treated at hospital for injuries from opening food packages. It didn‟t specify but we assume that is from plastic packages and not paper bags. A similar study in the U.S. claims 6,500 casualties a year. We‟re not entirely sure why there is a tenfold difference between the two nations. Either Brits are really wimpy or Americans don‟t have adequate health care coverage. We won‟t speculate on any of that but maybe we should all look at what‟s going on in Canada because they don‟t report any packaging related injuries at all. Ever since Snow White ate the old witch‟s poison apple there has been concern about food poisoning, and blister packs must help because many of them are impossible to open at all. Clamshell packaging also cuts down on theft and pilfering in stores. Not only are the packages impossible to open and take the contents from in-store, but even thieves are savvy enough to know they won‟t get it open outside the store either. If the railroads had blister packs for money shipments in the 1800‟s there would have been a lot fewer train robberies. We also hope that relief agencies never decide to use blister packs for food shipments to the third world, or that NASA never uses them to send food to the astronauts in the space station. It‟s one thing to package a doll that way and have it come out looking like it had a bad night on the town, it‟s quite another to do that to fruit, or a cake or products like toilet 87

paper, tissues or condoms. On the other hand, perhaps the funeral industry could find a good use for it since packages are airtight and won‟t deteriorate. On the subject of deterioration, ecology groups have criticized blister packs because they don‟t deteriorate at garbage dumps. Apparently they will still provide testament to our current culture ten thousand years in the future, assuming aliens have an interest in picking through our trash. Industry spokespeople respond by pointing out that clamshell style plastic containers are not supposed to deteriorate. If they did, they wouldn‟t be much good. Unfortunately food that can‟t be eaten isn‟t much good either. We decided to try opening a few blister packs on our own as a test for this article. We brought in several volunteers: a small child, an elderly lady, an average sized man, and Rex, the neighbor‟s dog. We started with a hard plastic blister pack containing an electric razor. The child became frustrated in seconds and threw the package on the floor. The elderly lady tried and tried but her arthritis won out and she broke down in tears from the pain. The man used a variety of tools and finally got the package open, but not before upsetting everyone with his language and nearly severing a finger with a chain saw. The dog wandered off with the package and hasn‟t been seen since. All our volunteers refused to try opening a second package. We received letters from companies that make waxed paper, tin foil and resealable plastic lunch bags offering to sponsor tests of their products against blister packs. As lucrative as those offers were, we politely declined since we‟ve decided not to conduct further tests of blister packs. After just one round we admit defeat. We have still not been able to open the packages of paper and pencils needed to write down test results. And our neighbor is pretty angry about Rex. Endnotes: 99% of respondents in a survey by “Yours,” a magazine for people over 50, said they thought packaging has

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become more difficult in the past 10 years. 95% believe there is too much product packaging these days, 71% said they had been injured by trying to open packages, and 60% claim they bought other products that were easier to open. A separate survey by the Cox Business School showed that 80% of all households use the words “frustrated,” “angry” or “rage” to describe their experiences opening plastic packaging. Industry statistics show that about 3% of all petroleum is used for petrochemicals – plastics, including packaging – while 80% goes for transportation fuels and 17% is used for asphalt and lubricants.

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Make Room for Daddy A house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff. George Carlin A recent article we did about moving mentioned dealing with clutter, and that apparently struck a minor nerve with some people. It seems our family is not the only one afflicted with the “can‟t toss it out” disease. We have stuff going back to the 19th century that was handed down because they couldn‟t bear to part with it, and we don‟t even know what half of it is. As a kid I remember asking my grandmother about something on her shelf – a small metal spoon with embossed lettering on it that she said was a souvenir of the Chicago Exposition of the 1890‟s. She was not amused when I asked if she got it when she visited there. It now sits on a shelf in my house and will be handed down to the next generation when I‟m sure they‟re old enough to appreciate it‟s true value. If it has any value at all.

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That was the first time I learned that little things made out of metal, whether you know what they are or not, must be kept. My father-in-law had an entire kitchen drawer dedicated to little metal things that he had collected over his lifetime. It was fun to poke through it and try to figure out what various items were. He usually couldn‟t identify them so I rarely asked, but he assured me that one day he might need one of this or that. That collection now resides with his son. Some things just seem to accumulate over time and the disease to keep things strikes early. I‟ve noticed that my five-year-old granddaughter is very reticent to throw anything away. Under her bed is a large collection of toy parts, tattered stuffed animals, clothing tags, bits of paper with her drawings, bits of paper from the mail, bits of paper from fast food places and bits of paper that could be from an alien culture. Bits of paper are obviously very important in a young life. Is the “keep it” disease genetic? Some families have more clutter than others and no one is immune from it. However there are different classes and levels of clutter and clutterers. At the bottom of the scale are those who are just plain slobs and never quite get past their teenage hygiene habits. You know them, if you visit you have to move something in order to sit down and you always have to check any dishes or silverware they offer you food on. There is nothing worse than finding out that their family dog is in charge of rinsing the dishes. In the middle tier we have people with kids or whose kids have moved out and left all their stuff behind. Obviously the kids are smarter than we are because we just keep packing it all up and moving it around. Young kids are clutter magnets. Clothing manufacturers don‟t realize it, but they could sell twice as many boy‟s pants if they pre-stuffed the pockets with various things like little rocks, remains of bugs and of course little metal things. They also miss the bet by not putting pockets into girl‟s dresses and filling them with fake notes, plastic rings and bubble gum.

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Once their kids grow up and move out, virtually all boomers miss the best chance they will ever have to weed out junk in the house. Excuse me, “stuff.” “Junk” is what other people have in their homes. Our stuff is just stuff – except for some who refer to it as antiques. But those people are also smart enough to get stuff out of the house and sell it at “antique malls” and flea markets. If you‟ve never been, these places are where people get rid of stuff so they can buy more. People love to swap stuff. One person‟s empty soda bottle is another person‟s cherished collectible. At the top of the stuff food chain are collectors. Their behavior is still a mystery to the fields of sociology and psychology. Did they suffer from insufficient doses of gitchy-gotchies as kids? Do they really believe Beany Babies will make a comeback? The list is long, but some popular collectibles have included little porcelain animals, stuffed animals, beer cans (empty), virtually anything related to TV shows and movies, figurines, miniature villages and yes, little things made out of metal. The most afflicted of this group actually believe that their collectibles will appreciate in value, and that one day someone with a bigger affliction than them will come along and offer scads of money for their stuff. Boomers truly are the “Oreo” generation in more ways than one. When it comes to stuff, we have a bunch of it that was handed down that we can‟t seem to part with. Then our kids leave their stuff behind, probably because they saw what happened to us. As a result we‟re left with homes full of everyone else‟s stuff and not enough space for our own stuff, so we move and lease storage units for about the same price it would cost to add another room on the house we just sold. This story doesn‟t have a happy, cute or ironic ending to it. Keeping, hoarding and collecting will continue for as long as humans have a place to store their stuff. We do predict however, that stuff will follow us into space and that one day, an alien will visit our Galactic Flea Market and pay a huge sum for our Franklin Mint memorial plates. And there may

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just be some little metal things that they need for their spaceships. Endnotes: The US Dept. of Energy reports that about onequarter of homeowners with two-car garages keep them so full of stuff they can’t park their cars inside. The National Soap and Detergent Assn. claims that 40% of house cleaning chores could be eliminated if people would get rid of clutter. Renting out storage units is a $154 billion per year industry. One in eleven American households rent outside storage space at an average cost of over $1,000 a year. The estimated cost to store stuff in your own home is about $10 a square foot.

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“Wild thing, I think you move me…” Need a little more stress in your life? Try moving. Moving goes all the way back to caveman days when Oona told Og that their cave was too big after Oonette and Ogson left home, so they sold it to a young Cro-Magnon couple and moved into a smaller, less drafty place. They wrapped up all their possessions in cougar skins and hired Mammoth Moving to carry everything to their new condo cave in an adult, over25 community. It still works pretty much the same today. We don‟t recommend moving, but if you must, here are some tips to follow: Step 1: Get rid of the junk. Moving is the perfect excuse to toss out those communion-sized crystal wine glasses from Aunt Grace, the chipped plastic ashtray your son made in shop and used as a discus before giving it to you a gift, and any kind of chachkas, knick-knacks, gitchy-gotchies and dust collectors that are laying around. Collecting little porcelain frogs is one thing when you have a big house, but they will plague you like a bad rash in a smaller home. Also, you‟re old enough to have a matched set of glasses, so get rid of the odds and ends and McDonald‟s cups. Aluminum pots are good for recycling, not cooking. Stained dish towels, yuk. Out. And it‟s finally time to get rid of that 20-year collection of soy sauce packets from the local Chinese takeout place. Step 2: Get decent boxes. You‟re a grown-up now and grown-ups don‟t get boxes from the back of a supermarket. Besides, all you‟ll find are old fruit boxes that smell like bananas and have big air holes in them. Real moving boxes come in all sizes according to what you have to pack, and we cannot emphasize strongly enough to put the right kind of stuff in the right boxes. 94

Don‟t take a huge wardrobe box and fill it full of books, and don‟t try to fit quilts into tiny book boxes. As entertaining as it may be to watch moving men strain and struggle down your stairs, they can get back at you by charging more. So be savvy.

Step 3: Get lots of packing paper. Do not use newspaper unless you want a permanent record of this week‟s basketball scores on your linens and towels. However, go ahead and spring for blank newsprint, available wherever you find boxes. You can also find it at your local newspaper that is going out of business. Use lots of it and pack everything in paper except clothing, towels or gasoline cans from the garage. By the way, you wouldn‟t believe the expression on a truck driver‟s face if you tell him, “oh, I forgot to empty the gasoline cans and now they‟re packed somewhere in all those boxes on your truck.” Of course we‟ve never done that, we‟re just speculating. Step 4: Start packing. Above all, do NOT try to pack everything you own into one box. Despite what anyone might say about using too many boxes, go for it. We‟re talking about everything you have in this mortal life going onto a huge unventilated truck with lousy shock absorbers, so pack carefully and thoroughly. Plus, the following things should be taken in your car, not by truck: computers, big screen televisions, stereos, imported leather furniture, satellite dish 95

equipment, Reidel stemware and Tiffany glass lamps. If necessary put your spouse on the truck to make space in the car, but for heaven‟s sake do not trust a mover with your electronics. This quote sums up everything we need to say about packing: “All your boxes, everything you own, goes on that truck and becomes unified as a metaphysical representation of your spiritual self.” We‟re not entirely sure what that means – we heard it from a mover we used in San Francisco back in the „70‟s – but it will surely give you something to think about before you just toss stuff carelessly in a box. Moving Day This is when a giant truck with each end in a different state will pull up in front of your house and you‟ll be told there will be a portage charge because it can‟t get close enough to the front door. This is also when you find out that the estimator didn‟t tell them that your house has a basement and that will cost extra. Other surprises can include extra fees for large appliances like toasters and vacuums, the truck is too big or too small, nobody told them you had 342 boxes going to three different locations, and they will spend two hours trying to figure out how the last movers got your couch into the house. The moving men will say to each other, in loud voices, that they‟ve never seen such a (pick all that apply): disorganized mess, badly estimated job, badly packed box, difficult staircase, narrow door, uneven sidewalk, crabby neighbor, old refrigerator, heavy washer, king-sized bed that big, hot day, cold day, rainy day, long day, long drive to get there, short lunch break or long hallway. Do not react to any of this. If you had to do their job you‟d complain a lot too.

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Unpacking If you are a wise and savvy mover you will rent a storage unit and put most of your boxes in there rather than bringing all that clutter back into your new home. We know a fellow who packed things for his first move and never unpacked them for thirty years. He just kept moving the boxes from one storage unit to another every time he moved. When he got divorced, his wife didn‟t even check what was in storage. It turned out that one box contained some old baseball cards that he sold for a small fortune then retired to Tahiti. If you know for certain that your boxes are full of junk, put them in storage and don‟t pay the bill. They will get rid of the stuff for you. In conclusion, our best tip for moving is “don‟t.” But if you really must go somewhere else to live and are buying a home, negotiate with the sellers to leave their furniture behind and move without yours. This is not recommended if you are buying a mobile home or if the seller is a big fan of Walmart. We also recommend a healthy supply of Xanax and several quarts of whiskey to ease the pain – not from lifting heavy things, but for when you total up the final cost of your move. Endnotes: 1 in 4 Americans will move or relocate this year. That equates to 42 million people or 17% of all US households. 85% of moves will be in-state, and 53% of those moving are aged 21 to 39. The average amount spent on incidentals by someone buying a house is nearly $10,000 – excluding the actual moving expense – and homeowners tend to sell their homes every five to seven years. Renters spend about $3,700 on average for each move. Most Americans will move between 11 and 12 times in their lifetime, and moving is ranked as the third most stressful event in an individual’s life.

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Insert Tab A into Slot B…Then Call the Help Line It was our duty to expand. Those who cannot or will not join us are to be pitied. What we want to do, we can do and will do, together. A glorious future! IKEA Founder Ingvar Kamprad

If you wish to be a success in the world, promise everything, deliver nothing. Napoleon Bonaparte It wasn‟t that long ago when furniture was handmade by craftsmen using real wood. It was durable but expensive. That meant only about two-percent of the population could afford anything more than a kitchen table and chair, at least that was the impression we were given by Ralph and Alice Kramden with their ultra-sparse television apartment. There were several upsides to wood furniture. Legs and handles didn‟t break off when you pushed heavy pieces across a room, it lasted through several generations of a family (which could also be a bad thing depending on grandma‟s taste), and you could paint it or refinish it if you needed to cover up old coffee stains and cigarette burn marks. Most baby boomers couldn‟t afford real wood furniture when starting out on their own, but unlike today there were few other options to taking handouts from various family and friends. So living room décor ran the gamut from great aunt Martha‟s art deco sideboards to early American pine and varnish. The day when a young boomer couple could afford their own furniture and send grandma‟s bureau to Good Will was truly a joyous occasion. There were no such things as Walmart, Target or Ikea where one could purchase reprocessed sawdust pressed into various 98

styles and shapes for less than a tank of gas. People simply had to live with Uncle Otto‟s favorite rocker or mother‟s cast off bed frame until they saved enough to buy a set of their own matching furniture. Self-assembly furniture back then was quite a bit different from today. Some bricks and boards made a nice bookshelf, a couple of saw horses and an old door could serve as a table and so on. There was almost nothing available that came as a “flat shipment” consisting of several thousand parts and pieces to be put together yourself. Real wood furniture is still available today. If you work as the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and have a BMW 735 and a six-bedroom house, there are plenty of furniture retailers to provide you with uniquely designed furniture made of African Blackwood, Australian Burl, or Bolivian Rosewood. But if your idea of an exotic vehicle is a Smartcar and your garage and living room are one and the same, this type of furniture is probably not for you. Besides, with furniture made of exotic woods it‟s mandatory to have someone on retainer to dust and polish it, and that‟s only if the retailer approves your home as suitable to house the furniture in the first place. No, times have changed. Leave the hardwood furniture to those who want to be burdened with future generations of dusty antiques. For the rest of us there is particle board, the future of furniture. The new furniture is reasonably strong, somewhat lightweight, comes in all styles and colors, and looks really great in a store showroom the size of south Chicago. You have to be careful selecting this furniture however, since the showrooms are carefully designed with lighting, carpets and accessories to make them look like real rooms in multi-million-dollar homes. Just taking a couch and chair and putting them in an empty room, with a single pole lamp and a 19-inch Sony TV you‟ve had since college, will definitely not have the same impact. So be prepared. If you want the whole look you might need to spend a few thousand dollars extra on accessories to properly show off that $195 couch. There are several aspects of the new flat-shipped (unassembled) furniture to be aware of. After selecting it in a 99

showroom, you might have to go into a huge warehouse that looks something like Warehouse 13 and find it. If you‟ve not done a good job of noting the aisle and bin numbers you might spend weeks wandering around looking for your choices. This has given some retailers a secondary business selling food and overnight accommodations inside the warehouse itself, and it‟s not uncommon for shoppers to just disappear for days at a time.

Once you find the location of the furniture, hopefully it‟s not stacked at the top of a six-story steel shelf unit because you will have to wait for an employee with a special forklift to get it down for you. This can be a problem since many of these stores only have two employees for the entire 600-acre complex and they are kept pretty busy. If your furniture boxes are near floor level though, you are good to go as long as you can lift them onto a flatbed cart. If you are now a grandparent with bad joints or a sore back and you need a dresser, sorry. This business is for the strong and the brave only.

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Last, but certainly not least, if you are lucky enough to get the furniture boxes home, and we urge you to avoid using delivery companies with names like “Suburban Distress” or “Zeke‟s Same Month Delivery Service,” you will be faced with the task of assembling the furniture. This is where the truly brave are separated from the wimps. Armed with only a tiny little allen wrench (provided), you must first decipher blueprint instructions that come in 40 different languages with diagrams worthy of a NASA project manager, then convert a large stack of wood parts with random holes cut in them into something resembling a piece of furniture. All this is done using a (provided) shopping bag of screws, bolts, nuts and miscellaneous other metal and plastic pieces that will take several days to sort out on the floor. If you don‟t sort and inventory these pieces, or if a small child or pet should happen by and mess up your carefully laid out parts, you might as well forget the whole thing and just go get another box of furniture. You only get one chance to get it right and the whole affair is not for the faint of heart. We strongly recommend stocking up on Xanax, Zoloft or Prozac before starting any of this. Once you have braved the assembly process and put your furniture together, it‟s wise to check details, like the legs of a table or dresser, to make sure the whole thing is even and doesn‟t wobble. Since many of the parts seem identical and may only differ by a fraction of an inch, or millimeter if you‟re European, it‟s easy to get a drawer front where a leg should be and so on. Quality control is the name of the game. You do not want to have guests discover that a chair is missing a load-bearing cross-support, or a coffee table leans badly enough to one end that you can‟t fill glasses more than half full. That sort of thing really upsets martini drinkers, plus the particle board materials might disintegrate if they get wet and you will have to start your furniture “journey” all over again. Endnotes: Furniture is a $45 billion a year industry and the largest dedicated retailer is Ikea with annual sales last year of 101

around $15 billion. Walmart is the other major player but is not exclusive to furniture. Using the concept of do-it-yourself selection and assembly, along with flat shipment to save transportation costs, Ikea has expanded to over 300 stores in 25 countries and carries over 15,000 types of merchandise in its inventory. Good luck.

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Chapter 5: Coping With Being Over 50

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Zoom Zoom… Georgia trooper: Where are you going in such a hurry ma’am? Sports car owner: North Carolina, to the mountains. Georgia trooper: Well you can slow it down ma’am. I promise it will still be there. You‟ve seen them lurking about on the street, looking sexy and exciting, daring you to come closer. You‟ve brushed up next to them and felt a tingle that spreads throughout you like a shock wave. You‟ve touched them and been transported to worlds of fantasy and adventure. They can be difficult to handle but that is part of their charm. They are anything but practical, they drive you nuts and they are definitely high maintenance. “They” are sports cars – the little two-seater variety, usually with a soft top, no legroom and a trunk the size of a knapsack. If you had one “back when,” then their resurgence in recent years has probably caused you to suffer at least one attack of nostalgia and several pangs of desire. In all likelihood your first real true love was a balky, cantankerous hunk of steel and chrome that took all your money to maintain. Guess what? They still do. Vehicles that boomers were attracted to basically came in three flavors: vroom vroom, zoom zoom and putt putt. The vroom vroom category included things like the Mustang, Firebird, Camaro and the ubiquitous Corvette. Really cool guys sometimes had a 442 or a GTO. These machines ate pavement for breakfast and depleted much of the world‟s oil supply from about 1965 through 1975. The zoom zoom group consisted of lesser known names like MG, Triumph, Lotus, Jaguar and, if you could get it to start on a wet day, Alpha Romeo. Since these little gremlins are the main topic for today, we‟ll come back to them. The last and final category of vehicles, putt putt, included the iconic “car of the people” the VW Beetle and its siblings the Karman Ghia and the VW van, aka microbus. The microbus gained notoriety as the official 104

vehicle of the counter culture and was rarely seen without camouflage paint. It had all the aerodynamic qualities of a phone booth and was known to change lanes on its own in a high wind.

Mazda was the first to bring back zoom zoom. You might think they coined the expression as a marketing gimmick, but they actually stole it from my friend Jimmy Spearman who came up with it to describe what he hoped one day his Sunbeam Tiger would be able to do. Jimmy was a pretty good mechanic and got the Sunbeam working for a short time, but it just wasn‟t running well enough to stay out of the way of a Mack truck on the NJ Turnpike. Oh Jimmy was okay, just a few bruises, and the truck driver used the embedded Sunbeam‟s engine to power his air conditioner. But Jimmy became disillusioned with zoom zoom and switched to driving a 1967 Cadillac convertible that stretched approximately three blocks from front to back. The Mazda Miata, now called the MX-5 because they think it‟s cool to have numbers for names, has been described as “everything the MGB intended to be.” True. But the MG also had a lot more space in it. Mazda, in its zeal to appeal to today‟s boomers, forgot to take some of us to measure. We‟ve changed somewhat and, for example, the distance between 105

steering wheel and our stomachs seems to have been severely reduced. Passengers over 5-feet tall may find the legroom a bit lacking. Again, in the MG or Triumph you could stretch your legs out straight. Today‟s riders sit with legs under their chin. It‟s also lacking some of the amenities we‟ve gotten used to, like electric seats, power mirrors and soft plush seats. Compared to, say, a Lexus, the Miata seems to come right from the Stone Age. But that‟s not what we buy a sports car for, right? We buy it for the thrill of zoom zoom – attacking curves, smelling fresh air, getting burned to a crisp on a hot day. We love the misery as much as anything else. If you want comfort, get a sedan, if you want discomfort, get a sports car. Some companies like Honda have come out with coupe models that give a sense of being in a sports car without having to force yourself into a tiny little space. The Accord coupe, for example, has ample space for the modern boomer driver and passenger, a large trunk for groceries and junk, and all the luxuries you might want at this age. It also has a sort-of beefed up suspension, a testy little engine and a six-speed transmission for those who prefer to do the driving rather than a computer. So while it gives a “sense” of a sporty car, it‟s not a sports car. It‟s still a Honda Accord. Great vehicle, but it‟s not zoom zoom. Honda did for some years make a “real” sports car called the S2000. It was quite a performer, but if you weigh more than about 25 pounds you can‟t fit behind the wheel. Along with the small affordable sports car offerings from Mazda, Pontiac and Audi, Nissan decided to toss its hat into the ring, giving us a zoom zoom car with vroom vroom performance. It was called the 350Z, now grown up to the 370Z. It could actually perform close to the level of a Porsche 911, but at one-third the price, and unlike American cars it used real sheet metal and not reprocessed cereal boxes for the outer shell. The car was fast, too fast. It came with a slot on the side for police to just pull up and insert tickets, and its unique shape made it the target of every radar trap on every highway in the country. Still, the idea of cruising at 115 mph and having it feel like 60 was often just too much temptation. 106

However, we understand that if you were a long-legged blonde who wore low-cut blouses you could, if stopped, get away with a warning rather than a ticket. That‟s just rumor of course. Boomers love their toys and are unwilling to let go of the things that thrilled them in their youth. So what‟s wrong with that? Who says you have to drive a dull and boring car just because you‟re over 50? And there are plenty of others who will save the planet by driving a Prius or a hybrid that has all the driving excitement of a shoe box. For the rest of us, thankfully there are still obnoxious, fussy little vehicles we can stuff ourselves into and zoom zoom down the road getting sunburn and taking in the scenery.

Endnotes: Sports car sales took a major hit between 2009 and 2010, mostly due to the bad economy. Sales for twoseaters like Corvette, Miata, the 370Z and even Porsche were down between 20% to 50%. Adding to sports cars’ troubles are the growing popularity of high-mileage hybrids and, surprisingly, muscle cars (aka pony cars). The Dodge Challenger, which seems to use as much fuel as a NASA shuttle with its 470 horsepower 8-cylinder engine, had a sales

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increase of around 45% over the past year, and the new Camaro is selling briskly at 52% ahead of the previous year.

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David and Goliath Redux I’m not the least bit worried about an accident with a sports car. About the worst they can do is run up your sleeve and tickle you to death. Anonymous SUV owner

Newton was wrong. Sometimes two objects can occupy the same space. I was assigned to write a humorous but warm article about Passover and Easter, what the holidays mean to us and some of their history and religious significance. So here it is: they are nice holidays, hug your family and friends and enjoy. Now, I need to get something off my chest because I‟m really tired of people trying to kill me on the road. I don‟t believe anyone is after me personally, but I drive a really small, twoseat sports car in a country where it‟s common to drive around in a vehicle big enough to take your entire living room with you. In fact, many modern cars, vans and SUV‟s are equipped with more electronics and conveniences than the average American home. If I want to watch TV, I stay home. If I want to read, I stay home. If I want to drink coffee, talk on the phone, text a friend, eat a hamburger, use a computer, clip my nails or put on makeup (well, that‟s just to make a point) I park first. In a tiny sports car you cannot do any of those things while driving. All you can do is drive because the car demands your full attention. When you look at a sports car in the showroom it‟s all about glamour. Dealers hire attractive young women to sit in the passenger seat, with the top down, to give you an idea of what you‟re supposedly buying into. Then they whisk you into a small theater room and show you a film of the car taking on

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the curves of a back country road in the fall, whizzing along a coast road with the sun setting in the background and, finally, parked with dozens of other sports cars at a vineyard where like-minded sports car owners are enjoying a $300 bottle of wine. Of course there is a leggy blonde in all the images as well. It has a certain appeal, you have to admit. All these thoughts flashed through my head the other day as a pickup the size of the USS Enterprise decided it wanted to be in my lane. Without warning of any kind, and in total defiance of Newton‟s law that two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time, it swung directly toward me. I leaned on my pathetically wimpy little horn, which sounded like a goose protesting its turn at the dinner table, and headed for the side of the road. The pickup, figuring he could drive over top of me if he needed to, speeded up and zoomed on down the road. Later on I called my doctor and begged for a Xanax prescription.

Unfortunately this happens a lot, and not just in the south where it‟s state law that you must own a vee-hickle the size of a battleship, wear a cap in restaurants and refer to your eleven children as “crumb snatchers.” In “sophisticated” New York City, having a license at all is strictly optional, and like their southern counterparts New Yorkers also love operating (driving is not an adequate description of how they use a vehicle) gargantuan SUV‟s equipped with every option except turn signals. On most highways around the city the method of 110

driving can be described as “point and shoot.” They see an opening in another lane, they gun the engine and head for it. If you happen to be in the way, too bad. To be fair, my car is hard to see from a SUV that stands about 30 feet tall. Rearview mirrors on cars have the disclaimer, “Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.” On SUV‟s there is additional small print that says “If he‟s stupid enough to drive a sports car then screw him.” Again, this is the kind of thing they don‟t tell you at the dealer. They also don‟t tell you that you can only put the top down for 15 minutes once or twice a year or risk skin cancer or lung cancer or both. If you‟re in a city with a sports car you have to dodge homicidal taxis or sit in traffic and suck fumes. This can get really uncomfortable when the 18-wheeler next to you decides to have some fun and rev his diesel engine. In the country you will be assaulted with suicidal bugs, gastrically distressed birds, dust, pollen and leaves from trees. You learn early on to never park under a tree with the top down, especially if you hear chirping from the branches above. For boomers who once owned classic sports cars like the MG, Triumph, Austin-Healy, Alpha Romeo or Fiat (if you could get any of them to run on a damp, rainy day), there are fond memories of motoring around curves and over hills, stuffing six friends into the passenger seat and double-clutching that 4speed, non-syncro gear box. Yes, the memories are grand indeed. It was also nice to be able to get in and out of the cars more easily, and to have more space between your belly and the steering wheel. Today‟s sports cars are more refined, but road conditions and other drivers make them more of a hazard than ever. What I‟d really like to see is for one of the car companies to make a sports car roughly the size of an Abrams M1 Tank and name it something like, “The Revenger Mk. II.” Endnotes: We sorted through tons of statistics and it’s impossible to draw clear conclusions about vehicle safety on American roads. SUV’s and light trucks are bigger and

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heavier and occupants are more likely to survive a crash with a car than vice versa, except that SUV’s have a tendency to roll over. Sports cars are considerably more maneuverable and able to avoid crashes, but with road crowding there is less space for maneuvering. In physics, there’s a simple formula, f=m*a (force equals mass times acceleration), which loosely translated means that in accidents, “bigger wins.” The bottom line is that no matter how safe, small or large a vehicle is, real safety depends on the behavior of drivers. Tightening up requirements for a license might be a good place to start improving on that.

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“Will You Still Need Me, Will You Still Feed Me, when I‟m 64?”

I recently cancelled my subscription to ARPA (not to be confused with AARP), a premiere magazine for retirees and anyone over the age of 50. Their benefits include discounts for hotels in Rwanda, rental cars in Tokyo, restaurants in Malaysia and private golf courses in Hawaii. They also offer health insurance programs that start at $983 a day to cover routine checkups and are a bit more if you need surgery. They did however offer exclusive hang nail coverage for a mere $25 extra a month. After joining I realized that I simply didn‟t fit the ARPA profile of a typical retiree or person over the age of 50. No one in their pictures is bald, has wrinkles, sags here and there or looks exhausted from watching the 11:00 news. I also didn‟t realize there are qualifications for retirement that I fall far short of. Did you know that you must be able to play 36 rounds of golf non-stop in a hot climate like Arizona? Tennis will do as a substitute for women but you must look like Maria Sharapova with a few grey hairs. Did you also know that you must drive a BMW, Mercedes or Lexus? Other requirements include having grown children that have taken over your business, downsizing from one large house to three villas in various foreign countries, and having a personal 113

banker. I don‟t have a personal banker. I have a personal teller and she is very nice, but mostly our conversations are just about deposits and withdrawals. The final straw came when I used the online “retiree calculator” ARPA has to determine retirement eligibility. I eagerly entered all the information asked for, thoughts of exotic travel flashing through my mind, and hit the “calculate” key. The result said that I was just over a million dollars short of what I would need to retire, but that if I contributed just $17,473 a month to a high-yield investment, I would have a chance of making that goal by age 113. My other option, according to the chart they showed, was to simply die in another few years and save everyone a lot of trouble. Obviously the idea of retiring (or dying) in the manner portrayed by ARPA was just not for me. All of this got me thinking about the whole concept of retirement. I know some people who are retired and they seem happy enough. They don‟t run around to exotic locales and sip mojitos on the beach with a gorgeous sunset in the distance, but they don‟t work either. So what if I have to work? What then? I know a guy who is 72 and works as a bagger at the grocery store. He definitely doesn‟t drive a BMW but he also seems happy enough. He once told me he had to work now because he used his money to pay for kids and grandkids rather than invest in a 401-K or high-yield stock funds. He muses that the cost of 27,000 toy cars required to raise a son could have paid for a villa in Spain. I turned to the NY Times for answers. You can always count on something in there to give insight into the deeper meanings of life. They always have opinions about everything. Sure enough, a recent article delved into the topic of whether the retirement age should be pushed back further than the current age of 66. A panel of distinguished academics pointed out that the benefits of delayed retirement for Boomers would help relieve the burden of social security payments on the working young, who are dwindling in numbers. According to one pundit, by the year 2020 most social security payments for the 114

entire Boomer generation will rest on the contributions of just one young worker at Burger King. Since I can‟t retire until I reach 113 anyway, this was not a big deal to me. But apparently there was a strong reaction by NY Times readers to the idea of delaying retirement as late as age 70. Irate Boomers wrote in by the hundreds to protest that they were due their share of social security after paying for the benefits of the current retiree generation, golf in Maui and BMW‟s notwithstanding. There were even some voices from current retirees pointing out that not everyone currently over the age of 65 drives a BMW or travels six months a year to exotic places. In short, it‟s all a muddle. One NY Times reader, sounding quite despondent at his prospects, asked the question, “if we can‟t retire, who‟s going to give us jobs?” That‟s a good point since companies generally don‟t like to hire anyone who is old enough to subscribe to ARPA. It‟s an unspoken rule and of course it‟s illegal, but it‟s also impossible to prove that any employer is actually showing age discrimination. Employment ads often give it away though. I saw one recently for a computer position that read, “maximum of two weeks prior experience.” Another one offered free time for video games as a sign-on incentive, and yet another touted “acne treatments” as part of the health benefits package. So, to paraphrase Jethro Tull, “now he‟s too old to work but he‟s too young to retire.” It seems like just yesterday I was too young to get a job and needed something called “working papers” that entitled me to do the same work as an adult but at half the rate of pay. With the current economy a lot of Boomers who can even find jobs at all are working for half what they used to earn. Gee, things really haven‟t changed that much have they? Endnotes: There were nearly 76 million baby boomers born between 1946 and 1966. Beginning January 2011, 10,000 baby boomers will reach the age of 65 every single day. That will continue for the next 19 years. Most baby boomers do not 115

have a traditional pension plan because they have been going out of style over the past 30 years and are not offered by companies. Approximately 3 out of 4 Americans start claiming social security benefits the moment they are eligible at age 62. Most do it out of necessity. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the social security system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes in 2010. That was not supposed to happen until at least 2016. According to a recent AARP survey, 40 percent of baby boomers plan to work "until they drop". Gee, we can’t imagine why they would say that.

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Caveat Emptor…at the Supermarket? “Less is more” is still less” I like fresh Florida orange juice. The kind that comes from Mexico where the oranges are grown, then get shipped by truck, along with hidden illegal immigrants, to California where they are boxed and sent to a warehouse in Idaho (the oranges, not the immigrants, the immigrants go on to North Carolina). At that point the oranges are distributed to a processing plant in Georgia and turned into juice. They add fake calcium, fake pulp and fake vitamin C, then put it into containers labeled “fresh, not from concentrate” to be sent all over the country. Just to keep it genuine the delivery trucks actually drive over the Florida border for a few miles so they can legitimately claim it‟s “Real Florida Orange Juice.” But the production of orange juice is only part of the story here. The real story is how our orange juice cartons (and other food and consumer products) have been downsized. I used to get eight, eight-ounce glasses of juice from one carton. And now I can only get 7.375 glasses of juice from the same carton. I discovered that one sleepy morning when I only had a third of a glass of juice to wake up with. The carton looked identical to what I‟d been buying right along but for one small thing. This one was 59-ounces. The old one was 64. I was getting cheated out of five ounces of juice but the price was exactly the same as the 64-ounce container. Well, if they can downsize jobs I guess they can downsize our products as well. These are difficult times. So I did some research and found this is a common issue with a lot of household goods and packaged foods these days. Apparently there really is a recession going on and higher costs are being passed off to consumers through hidden gimmicks like downsized products. Rather than raise prices and look bad, companies are trying to fool us and disguise the higher prices by giving us less. Imagine if we adopted that practice at work.

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“Sorry boss, but my gas prices went up today so I‟m only giving you 7.375 hours of work to compensate.” I started to poke into all this downsizing and found some amazing things. A big brand name meat packager now sells a pound of bacon in 12-oz packages. Who is getting the missing 4 ounces? Since many of our jobs were sent to India, is it possible the missing goods are being sent there too? Is this some kind of Peace Corps plot to secretly feed the third world without Congressional approval of foreign aid funds? Or perhaps SPECTRE is building a huge stockpile of surplus food and goods and will one day despoil the rest of the planet. Perhaps we need James Bond to look into this. The only other possible suspect is Sarah Palin. Her name pops up in a lot of places these days.

More likely it‟s just that the big corporations are up to their old tricks of squeezing extra pennies out of every product sale. Besides orange juice and bacon, other products that are shrinking include: dish detergent, bath soap, paper towels, ice cream, canned fish and hot dogs. Hot dogs? How un-American is that? Frozen foods are shrinking as are many canned and dry boxed foods. If you use packaged foods your mealtime consists of anywhere from 9% to 26% less on your plate than 118

before. Yet the prices of these items have not gone down, and in some cases they have even gone up. But the most insidious, awful, heinous, low-down dirty stinking rotten shrinkage plot of all is with toilet paper. For years the paper companies have been advertising bigger, thicker, fluffier, longer lasting (I have yet to figure out how that‟s a good thing), more sheets per role and so on. They know people are watching and squeezing the Charmin, so to get away with this incredible shrinkage they don‟t always shorten the roles, they narrow the size of the rolls of paper so they don‟t even fit the holders anymore. Whereas a standard sheet of paper was once a square 4.5 by 4.5 inches, it is now more like 4.5 by 4.0 inches wide. Not only is that not a square, but it‟s also makes the paper itself more difficult to handle. We will not elaborate beyond that. Consumer publications recommend that to fight back you can change brands, compare unit prices, switch to store brands, buy in bulk or just stock up when there are sales. That all sounds like good advice, but it‟s time for consumers to really fight back. Isn‟t it time we let the consumer brands companies know that we‟re not stupid and we won‟t take it anymore? We think a small thermonuclear device might bring more attention to the problem than a boycott, but of course even suggesting such a thing in this day and age might get us in big trouble with Homebrand Secur….. OFFICIAL NOTICE: THIS AUTHOR IS HEREBY SUSPENDED UNDER ORDERS OF HOMEBRAND SECURITY. IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO BE STRIP SEARCHED AND HAVE US TOUCH YOUR JUNK WE STRONGLY RECOMMEND YOU VISIT WEB SITES WITH QUALITY INFORMATION AND COUPONS, INCLUDING TROPICANA, HORMEL, KRAFT OR THE NEW SOYLENT FOOD PRODUCTS WEB SITE. HAVE A NICE DAY.

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Endnotes: Consumer Reports Magazine just reported that the practice of downsizing product packaging while sustaining prices has been prevalent during the recession, with actual shrinkage running as high as 20% for the same original prices. The worst offenders on their current list are Ivory Dish Soap and Classico Pesto. Another active consumer publication is an online blog called Mouse Print, which reports that Taco Bell is fighting a class action suit charging that the beef in their beef taco is only 36% beef with the rest being “filler.” Good luck on your next trip to the supermarket. You’re going to need it.

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Chapter 6: Coping With Work (and No Work)

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Strange Days Have Found Us Over Qualified and Underemployed in the New Millennium

Probably no one reading this can ever remember being told by a school teacher that you were over-qualified, overexperienced or too senior. Even in our senior year we were not too senior. Granted none of us were over 50 either. So what exactly is going on these days? Why is being over 50 the modern equivalent of having the black plague in the work world? Hey, weren‟t we the same generation that couldn‟t find

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jobs when we got out of school because we were underqualified, too young or too inexperienced? There was a lack of jobs then, and there‟s a lack of jobs now. Weren‟t we the ones Jim Morrison sang about with his line, “gonna win, yeah we‟re takin‟ over.”? Yes, I‟m aware that Morrison never had to stand in an unemployment line. The broadcast media has tried to give timely tips for viewers on how to cope with the downturn. Just the other night WZBZ in Alakazam, Iowa, had this special segment: Dave the Anchorman: Here now is Susie Cute. Susie, we hear it‟s really bad out there for unemployed baby boomers approaching retirement. What‟s going on? Susie Cute: Well Dave, the experts agree that you older workers need to like convince employers you are still like, you know, vital, energetic and all that junk, you know? Dave the Anchorman: (laughs) I‟m not over 50 Susie, I‟m just 49. So how can they help themselves in these troubling times? (The camera cuts to shots of well-dressed business people standing in lines holding resumes, then back to Susie) Susie Cute: That‟s like weird Dave because Joanne told me you were like way over 50 and to watch out for… Dave the Anchorman: So how about that update report Susie? Our viewers want to know how they can find jobs in these troubling times. Susie Cute: Twitter and Facebook Dave. Experts also agree that developing a good network is like really important. Make sure you have like a good phone and stuff so you can Twitter updates to your Facebook page and employers will like see you and hire you and stuff. A friend of mine got the best job

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because someone followed her Twitter and offered her like a job in the you know, personal entertainment field. She makes like really good money now. Oh, and like local bars have like network nights and stuff? So check them out too. I was at Freddy the Freeloader‟s Bar last night and there were like tons of people there doing networking and stuff, so come on you baby boombers, like join us and get like a job. Dave the Anchorman: Thank-you Susie, for that, um, enlightening report. Just to clarify for our viewers, she was referring to baby boomers, not boombers (chuckle). The Labor Department reported today that unemployment shot up another 653% last month…. The last we knew, unemployment in Alakazam was still running at 92%. We called Best Buy there and they told us sales of smart phones went up after the report. At least two people had come in asking about phones for Twittering, but they were both high school students. So apparently the adult population of Alakazam didn‟t get the message that you can Twitter and Facebook your way into steady employment. Nice impact Ms. Cute. Better luck reporting next time. Hey, I think you‟d better go do your nails or something honey. There has also been a lot of press lately about over-qualified workers taking jobs at small companies for half the responsibility and pay they once had at big companies. One example is Dale Kozlowski, a former finance vice president at Smith Beans & Franks, who took a major cut in pay to work for the Ching Ling Import Company as a bookkeeper. She says she is happy with less responsibility although she is having trouble meeting mortgage payments on her downtown NY condo. She told us the management is very generous and understanding of her position though, and has offered her an extra $3.00 an hour if she will stay late and help sweep up. Dale is just one of thousands of baby boomers making a happy adjustment to life in these (as Dave the Anchorman would say) “troubling times.”

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The term for Dale‟s situation is called “under-employed.” We approve of giving good labels to unsettling or difficult situations, although we believe Dale‟s situation comes more under that label of “screwed.” Yes people, we talked about sticking it to “the man” way back when, but apparently we didn‟t stick it hard enough because “the man” is now sticking it to us. So who needs the corporate world anyway? It‟s full of greed and avarice and dirty deals. We are better than that. We stopped a freaking war people! We can stop unemployment. We can bring them to their knees. Stop buying soap and Unilever will bleed man. We have the power, we have the numbers, we are the Woodstock nation man! We will overcome, we are the world, we are watching, we are……hey mother**kers get away from me…you can‟t…….… EDITOR’S NOTE: We apologize for Mr. Wolfe’s sudden departure. He seems to be having a bad reaction to being told that he was over-qualified and too senior for writing a blog. Please know that we have given him an excellent severance package including a booklet of discount coupons for leading merchants in the area. This column will resume next week with a new author, Ms. Susie Cute, who comes to us from TV station WZBZ in Alakazam, Iowa. Ms. Cute will be doing a series of articles about Facebook and Twitter. Thank-you, we apologize for any inconvenience.) Endnotes: In October 2010, CBS “60 Minutes” ran a story about unemployed baby boomers who still had no jobs after exhausting 99 weeks of unemployment benefits. CBS correspondent Scott Pelley described them as “too young to retire, too old to rehire.” In April 2011, CBS News ran another story about “permanently unemployed” boomers. They pointed out that laid-off workers 34 and younger have a 36% chance of finding a new job within a year, but for those in their 50s it's only 24% and past age 62 it drops further. A Texas A&M professor sent out 4,000 fictitious resumes with high school graduation dates ranging from 1959 to 1986. The result? Employers were 40% more likely to pick younger 125

applicants. After more than two years, the unemployment rate for all workers continues to be the highest since the Great Depression.

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We‟ve Been Outsourced! Since My Job is Now in India, Can I Go There and Continue Working? Some of the most feared words in the English language these days, other than “press 1 to continue in English,” are “downsizing,” “layoff” and “outsourcing.” Add to that the latest noun turned verb, “offshoring.” Any of these words, when carelessly mentioned in an average American office these days, can trigger off waves of rumors and calls to loved ones to get the children ready to starve. White collar America is experiencing what blue collar America went through some years back, namely, being told they are too expensive and having their jobs sent overseas to be done by third-world workers for 32-cents an hour. It‟s a gut-wrenching experience for most. It‟s rejection without recourse, it‟s a slap in the face, it‟s a kick in the ass, it‟s a ballbusting…ahem…and of course it‟s important to always remember not to be bitter and to remain calm. Even if the company you gave your blood and soul to until two minutes ago is nothing more than a collection of blood-sucking jackals and hell-spawned demons from (expletive deleted). Some feel the practice of outsourcing American jobs is harmful to the overall economy, worsens the unemployment problem and even creates structural and process problems for the companies that do it. The other viewpoint is that workers are scum and that the imperialist, war-mongering, running dog lackeys of the military-industrial complex are perfectly justified in doing anything they want in order to line their pockets with blood money. I prefer to remain neutral on the issue, but I do encourage everyone to learn as much as they can about today‟s robust global economics. Even if you‟ve never experienced a downsizing, layoff or outsourcing, you have no doubt experienced some of the 127

results of it. Have you ever tried to call any company these days for support, only to be shuffled into some pre-colonial territory where one worker using multiple names pretends to be an entire service center? It‟s a little known fact but one person somewhere in India will handle calls from at least 30 American companies. Now you know why big companies are going that route. Multi-million dollar call centers can cost just a few cents a day when set up overseas. The other area particularly hard hit by outsourcing has been IT (all the computer guys). Once a proud and highly trained group of technical professionals, many IT staff have been retrained to work as hot dog vendors at ballparks. Apparently it takes a fair amount of “if then, goto” kind of logic to get a hot dog handed to someone in a crowded stadium. Meanwhile, programming and technical analysis is done in remote areas where up to a dozen workers are assigned to work on just one computer workstation to save costs. I did read recently that they are now providing chairs for every three programmers, so working conditions overseas are definitely improving.

Amid all the cutbacks, vetoed labor bills and politicking, one small event occurred that seems huge but was never covered by the mainstream media. As part of the economic recovery program, bailout funds were given to private companies to 128

give to their stockholders, so costs had to be cut elsewhere and they were. By the end of this year most American monuments and landmarks will be outsourced or closed down due to rapidly escalating maintenance costs. This includes the venerated Statue of Liberty, Lady Liberty herself, who simply earns too much for the job she does. Some have suggested she is also too old for this position, but we know that companies adhere closely to age discrimination laws so that is highly unlikely. Apparently a group of unnamed Congressmen have decided that symbolizing liberty and freedom can be done much cheaper overseas, so Miss Liberty has been asked to depart. She is getting a nice package to cover rust and paint, but after January 1st she will no longer be an overhead cost in our federal budget for national landmarks. We heard that Lady Liberty is considering relocating to somewhere in Asia to look for work at a new emerging nation, but the field of new nation development is pretty slow these days especially for republics and democracies. We will miss her and certainly wish her well. Endnotes: Forrester estimates 12,000 to 15,000 jobs per month are being sent overseas and some other estimates run as high as 20,000 jobs per month. Forrester also predicts that by 2015, 3.3 million service jobs will have moved offshore. McKinsey predicts white-collar offshoring will increase by 3040% in the next five years. A March 2010 ComputerWorld survey showed that companies are frustrated with the quality of offshore work and 94% of respondents admitted that the focus on cost versus quality contributes to the likelihood of project failure. On September 26, 2010, a bill to reduce corporate tax incentives for offshore outsourcing was defeated in the Senate by a vote of 53 to 45.

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Unemployment Application for Lady Liberty:

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Too Young to Retire, Too Old to Hire? Can Anyone Tell Me What I’m Waiting In This Line For? anonymous baby boomer

…one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come. Samuel Beckett A recent article in the NY Times reported that many people over age 50 are worried they will never find work ever again. This actually shouldn‟t be a big surprise for a generation of baby boomers who have had to go to school on double sessions, wait on lines, be on waiting lists for housing and deal with a shortage of jobs ever since getting out of school. Personally I like long lines, they make me feel like something is really worthwhile. I remember standing on a very long line to see the first Star Wars movie. It built anticipation, gave me a heightened sense of worth and made me really appreciate getting inside to the bathroom. I had a very similar reaction to standing on an unemployment line. Now the same group of people who once wanted to join the Peace Corps and build hospitals in the Belgian Congo are facing the prospect of no more employment for the rest of their years. At the same time, the government is trying to push back the retirement age to save on social security payouts. So what are we all to do? We can‟t just stop eating and we have to pay the rent. Some boomers got into trades and craft work and can fall back on those skills to make and sell baskets and beaded items, but the rest of us ended up working at traditional jobs. What can we do to survive these difficult times? I decided to try a variety of alternative jobs to find out. I figured that if I couldn‟t get a traditional job, I could still be resourceful enough to find some other type of work. “Far out” idea, huh?

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I started my quest by looking for things that were somewhat related to my past work experience. I had done a lot of writing and research, so I answered an ad for product researcher at a major consumer products company. I was hired and given a box of product samples to take home to test and write reports on the results. Did you know they actually pay people to test and research hemorrhoid creams? After just a week I felt that I wasn‟t really a good match for this position and moved on. My next venture was to apply to a manufacturer looking for a furniture tester. How could I not like that? I‟m good at sitting and even better at lying down. They thought so too and I was put to work right away. Unfortunately, you don‟t get to sit or lie down for very long. I was introduced to an entire warehouse of mattresses and told I had one day to try all of them. This didn‟t quite gel with me either. I was thinking more along the line of testing one mattress for several days. A department store wasn‟t hiring regular retail sales help, but they had one opening for an experienced bra fitter. I explained in the interview that I had been married and had lots of experience helping my wife to adjust her bras, both putting them on and taking them off. The interview did not go well so I never really got a chance to try this job out. Shortly after that experience I applied for a job that I thought would let me put all my marketing and creative skills into play. Generic Mills needed someone to write copy for the outside of cereal boxes. They gave me a box of Captain Crackle and told to enhance it, which I did. They liked my idea of introducing a serialized story about the Captain, and each month the box would have a different episode ending in a cliff-hanger. It would have worked except that I forgot that no one had to actually buy a new box of cereal to get the story. Since it was printed on the outside it could be read right there on the store shelf. Generic Mills ended my contract after sales went down 87% in two months. They also felt the stories were too dark

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for the youth audience and that I shouldn‟t have introduced a subplot about Captain Crackle‟s ex-wife and their battle over ownership of his pirate ship.

New technology has put a lot of us out of work, but it has also created some new jobs. Did you know that you have to regularly clean an Imax screen? Because of their design they get dusty and need regular servicing. A very clever young man started a screen cleaning business to take care of the nearly 2,000 Imax screens in the U.S. and has done very well since he has few competitors. Unfortunately the work itself is also for the young since it involves climbing onto a very tall scaffolding, then wielding a heavy vacuum hose attached to a long pole to reach the highest points of each screen. I just had to stand on the floor and look up to decide this wasn‟t for me. The job I finally ended up with and really enjoy is writing fortunes for fortune cookies. I get to make some people happy with forecasts of wealth and good health, scare some people with warnings about vague future events and even impart little pearls of wisdom about life in general. One of my most popular fortunes has been one I adapted from my grandmother‟s favorite saying about how every problem can be fixed by giving someone a “swat upside the head.” It was a little difficult to re-phrase it to suit an Asian style, but it seems to work: “Look to an elder to impart wisdom to you.” I also 133

finally got to learn what all the numbers are on the back of the fortunes, but I was warned not to reveal anything or I would have a representative visit me to impart wisdom about telling secrets . Here are some other odd and unusual jobs you can try yourself (and they are all real). Get your applications in before the millennial find them first: odor tester – smell armpits to determine if deodorants are working wrinkle chaser – use a special iron to make sure wrinkles are out of new shoes pet food taster – focus groups for cats and dogs have not worked well so companies use human tasters instead; hey toughen up, if it doesn‟t kill your pet it may not kill you either professional sleeper – work with medical staff conducting sleep studies; not to be confused with your Uncle Zeke‟s profession for the past 27 years paper towel sniffer – test to make sure that paper towels are odorless; we assume there may similar jobs for other types of paper products coconut safety inspector – ever wonder why visitors to tropical resorts never get bonked on the head even though they have palm trees everywhere? line position holder – stand in a line for someone else for just about any reason, though I tend to think of this in the same category as everyone taking in each other‟s wash Endnotes: In September 2010 the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a detailed survey on the work patterns of baby 134

boomers from 1979 onward. Baby boomers born between 1957 and 1964, the latter years of the boom itself, held an average of 11 jobs between age 18 and 44. The pattern of changing jobs slowed considerably as they grew older. Hourly earnings for boomers grew the fastest during their younger years, from 5.2% to 6.8% per year until their late 20’s, then it slowed down to around 3.5% a year in their 30’s and down even further to 1.4% per year from age 39 to 44. The BLS survey has no details on what percentage of time boomers have had to stand in line to apply for jobs or unemployment benefits.

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Some Truths About Lying on Resumes …I’m up to here in lies, guess I’m down to size… Sean Bonniwell The subject of lying on a resume or job application seems to be coming up a lot lately so it got us wondering why. The answer, in one word, is that “it‟s complicated.” Okay, that‟s actually three words or two and one abbreviated word. We lied. How do you like it? Ugly huh? You wanted to believe us but we outright lied. Well we won‟t lie to you again, at least not until next time. There are dozens and dozens of books and studies about the psychology of lying, lying on resumes, the art of lying, lying for dummies, lying up and lying down, but we didn‟t have the time to read any of them so we turned to our resident resume expert Fred. No, we‟re not lying again. We really didn‟t bother to read any of the studies.

Fred has given us some do‟s and don‟ts about resumes and job applications that he learned from a young friend of his, Adam Wheeler. All of this is especially relevant right now because the NY Times has reported that no one over the age of 50 will ever find a job again as long as they live. And we know that if the NY Times says it is so, it is. Just accept it. 136

If you are over 50, and we presume you are or you wouldn‟t be reading this because you‟d be off texting someone, then please pay attention. There is still some hope of finding a job if you‟re out of work. Fred says so. Here are three do‟s and don‟ts for resumes if you‟re still out there collecting deposit cans for a living these days. Do… …be honest on your resume as painful as it may be. Don‟t make up dates and times and places, leave them out altogether. The general rule of thumb with HR people is that if you‟ve been out of work over a year then you are very likely a close relative of Boo Radley and prone to stabbing people with scissors. If you put in old dates you will be dismissed out of hand because there are at least 3,714 younger people applying for the same job you are. If you leave out dates it aggravates HR (they like things nice and neat and tidy) but they might call you to find out what‟s going on. It‟s a bit of a bait and switch and getting a call is good. Even if they say “no thanks” you have their number and can keep calling them back, again and again and again until they either call the authorities or give you a job. …keep your resume to one page and use lots of bullet points. Remember that most HR people are less than half your age and don‟t like to read, at least not what you have to tell them. If it happened more than five minutes ago it‟s irrelevant. If you can find a way to reduce your resume to a 140-character text message even better. …include a cover letter but don‟t waste a lot of time on it (see above about reading habits of HR people). The cover letter these days is really just to tell them that the attached form is a resume and please, oh God please oh please don‟t throw it away without some sort of consideration. Begging is generally looked down on, but now and then it can get you a phone call. Try not to beg on the phone though, it‟s really demeaning no matter how much the employer likes it.

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Don‟t… …lie about stuff in a big way, unless you think you can be the next Frank Abagnale Jr., but we would remind you that he did most of his lying before the age of 19 and you, frankly, ain‟t 19 anymore. If you do lie and get away with it, please write to us how you did it so we can do it too. Boomers have to start sticking together. There are also a number of web sites you can use to create a fake degree, fake work history and fake company with someone to answer the phone to confirm you worked there. Fred is still trying these out and we‟ll get back to you with his results. …apply for a job as a Walmart greeter if your resume says you were once a senior manager for a high-tech company that made parts for the space program. They will not be impressed with your credentials and will immediately suggest that you won‟t be satisfied to stay in their position for very long. As if anyone this side of complete desperation would. Also, that job has a waiting list from now until the year 2525. If man is still alive. …apply for a job as a senior manager for a high-tech company that makes parts for the space program if your resume mentions Walmart in multiple places. In this day and age there is very little crossover allowed in the job market. It works this way now – you spend a gazillion dollars for an education to specialize in one thing. That one thing becomes obsolete and you are on the path to extinction with the rest of the baby boomers. The days of generalization are over. Fred wishes you all well in your job search, if you are searching. If you‟re already (or still) employed he recommends that you look up the word “obsequious” and study how to do it by watching old movies about the Roman Empire. Endnotes: A survey by CareerBuilder.com found that just 8% of U.S. workers polled admitted to some form of truth stretching on their resumes. In the same survey, 49% of U.S. 138

companies reported finding applicants with faulty resume information. The Society for Human Resource Management reports that 96% of its member companies do background checks on applicants, and over 45% of all employers now use social networks as a tool when checking on applicants. If you want to try fudging the facts anyway, CareerExcuse.com will provide you with a fake company and phone cover for $64 year. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

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“Don‟t Walk Away Renee” Survivor Syndrome in the Age of Downsizing

There has been a lot of discussion, even in this column, about the poor, tragic souls who have been laid off in the current recession and how their lives, hopes and aspirations have been brutally and mercilessly crushed under the jackboot of unbridled corporate greed and sanctioned by a corrupt and uncaring…ahem…well, you get the idea. What about those left behind who were not laid off, or “riffed?” (RIF = reduction in force). What of these “survivors?” How are they doing? In some ways, workers who are let go are the lucky ones because they don‟t have to take on triple and quadruple workloads for the same or less compensation, which is especially frustrating if the company is hovering over the drain. According to HR (human resource) experts, survivors of rif‟s suffer from a great deal of guilt after seeing their co-workers‟ rounded up and sent off. We certainly have no doubts about the validity of HR claims, but just the same we decided to check with our rif survivor friend, Fred, whether he feels 140

guilty. His response was “nope.” Then again Fred doesn‟t have a great deal of contact with co-workers in his new position as night watchman. Previously he was the marketing vice president, but his firm had to revamp after its primary product line became technologically obsolete. Fred was fortunate that senior executives were given training in alternative job skills rather than let go. Whatever the situation with feelings of guilt, workers left behind do frequently feel demoralized. Again, HR experts say this is due to fear and despondency relating to psychological reactions to the downsizing itself – that workers must face the fragility of life and are perplexed by questions of their purpose in the universe. We are more perplexed by the answers than the questions. Fred told us that demoralization actually results more from the fact that those left behind now have considerably larger workloads for no additional pay. We called the HR departments of several large companies to verify that but were not able to get past the voicemail systems. There are quite a few published articles available on how to motivate employees who remain after a downsizing. Ideas range from the more draconian use of whips and chains to regularly scheduled ice cream parties, but none seem to mention anything about adjusting workloads or avoiding 72hour work weeks. Fred told us it‟s common now to see people leaving the office as late as midnight taking work home with them. The days of 9-5 are truly gone. However, the good news is that efforts to loosen up child labor laws are making some headway and there may soon be an influx of low-cost under-12 workers to help ease burgeoning workloads. We asked Fred why there were layoffs in the first place if there is still so much work to do, but he only gave us a blank stare in return. Apparently some inconvenient truths are imponderable even to a former vice president. In general there seems to be a lot more information available about how to conduct a rif than to survive one. Fred was not

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able to provide any real insight into why, indicating only that he was never a CEO. We suspected he knew more about all that but he got a call on his walkie talkie to report to the HR office before we could ask another question. Just the same, here are a couple of suggestions for survivors that we‟ve put together from several articles in the mainstream media: 1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Be Proactive. Move right into the office if you have to. Be available and ready to help at all times. If your spouse complains, get a divorce. It was probably inevitable anyway so why risk a good job? Communicate. Talk to your boss as much as he or she can stand it. Learn key phrases like “yes, master” and “no, master.” Don‟t get too carried away however. Titles like “your highness” and “your holiness” are usually reserved only for CEO‟s and board members. Put an End to Complaining. If you see or hear others complaining or whining around the coffee machine, turn them in. Show management that you are loyal and above petty concerns about loss of pay or lack of sleep. Slow Down and Think. But don‟t think too much and keep ideas to yourself unless you have a good one the boss can use with his name on it. Remember, your primary job is to keep the boss happy, or at least employed so he can keep you employed. Keep Your Resume Up-to-Date. No matter what you do to avoid it, if your number is up your number is up. Be prepared to get the boot at any time and remember that your value as an employee is rarely based on great performance more than a week old. If You‟re a Contractor, Not a Regular Employee. Sorry, you‟re on your own.

Endnotes: A study of over 4,000 layoff survivors found that almost 75% admitted to a slowdown in personal productivity during and after the reduction. 7 in 10 felt their company’s products or services had declined after the layoff. A new research study by the Institute for Policy Studies reports that, since the start of the latest recession, CEO’s who laid off the 142

most workers earned 42% more than the average compensation for chief executives of S&P 500 companies. The study also purports that 72% of layoffs were made at a time when companies were still reporting positive earnings, lending credence to the notion that some CEO’s might use layoffs to squeeze profits and sustain executive pay.

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Chapter 7: Coping With Technology

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Take the Money and Run Now you have to pay for talking to a teller? You probably missed it, but May 15, 2010 marked the passing of John Shepherd-Barron, 84, a Scotsman credited as the inventor of the first ATM (automated teller machine). The idea came to him after he had to go a whole weekend without cash because he was one minute late getting to his bank branch one Saturday morning. Rather than bang on the door and fly into a rage as would happen in, say, New York, Mr. Shepherd-Barron instead went home, took a bath and imagined a machine that would give cash in the same fashion as a candy machine. Many young people today think of an ATM as a candy machine. Mr. Shepherd-Barron was obviously ahead of his time.

The first ATM was installed at Barclay‟s Bank, London, in 1967. It required a punch card, because plastic cards with magnetic stripes had not yet been invented. In fact, even most credit cards hadn‟t been invented yet. If you needed credit and wanted to pay usurious interest rates you still had to go to a mafia loan shark. Obviously technology has made life considerably more convenient since then. The first ATM would only give out $14.00 at a time, and that was a puzzle 146

because in England they used Pounds Sterling notes. However, $14.00 in those days was worth considerably more than today. It wasn‟t enough for a down payment on a house like in the 1950‟s, but you could get a pretty nice meal at a restaurant and still have change for a movie, a newspaper, a quart of milk, a loaf of bread and a pack of smokes. Even lung cancer was cheaper in those days. It‟s sad that Mr. Shepherd-Barron never made any money on his invention and reportedly put his last $14.00 into the demo model. We‟re not entirely sure if that was because he was feeling generous and gave his invention away or if it was because the bankers were, well, bankers. In order to promote the use of ATM machines, banks started getting rid of tellers and closing walk-in branches. They discovered that rather than pay for an actual building with people in it, they could collect fees with a little machine set into the side of someone else‟s building. They also developed sophisticated installation techniques, such as making sure the ATM screen was facing the sun so you might input the wrong numbers and incur a fee. ATMs were also frequently placed in areas exposed to the weather. On a windy day a customer might have to try several times, and incur several fees, to get cash from the slot before the wind blew it away. You can always count on banks to be clever innovators. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of ATMs was the disappearance of people who worked in banks. Most boomers can remember walking into a bank and having someone actually count bills in front of them. Today we have to take it on faith that the mechanical arm inside an ATM isn‟t skimming off the top. A dollar here and a dollar there can add up quickly and what can the police do anyway? Arrest the machine? Put handcuffs on its little robot arm and haul it off to the slammer? No, not likely. ATMs are pretty much untouchable. If you doubt this, try to cancel a transaction and get your fee back. The other thing Mr. Shepherd-Barron came up with was the PIN (personal identification number) used to identify who you 147

are when you use an ATM machine. This of course was the start of today‟s runaway use of pins, logons, and id‟s with every type of device imaginable. Do you want to lock your kids or grandkids out of the TV set? Use a PIN, same for email and cell phones. This in turn has created big problems trying to remember all the PINs. People have had to go without TV, e-mail or a cell phones for weeks because they couldn‟t remember their PINs and were locked out. Mr. Shepherd-Barron devised a PIN that required six numbers, but his wife made him cut it back to four because she couldn‟t remember the codes herself. According to industry statistics there are now over two million ATMs installed worldwide, but there is some irony that ATMs are facing job pressures as cell phones take over more and more banking transactions. You can now use a cell phone to take a picture of a check for a deposit. If it‟s a bad check a picture of a cop comes back on your phone and tells you to report to a police station. So, we offer a final tribute from the boomer generation to John Shepherd-Barron. Like so many other inventors, he changed our lives but never received credit, or even a debit card, for his contribution. Well, he did get a medal from the Queen in 2004, but that was just because she was so happy with an ATM installed for the Royal Family that only gave out $14.00 at a time.

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To Text Or Not to Text, Is That A Question?

Do you text? You know texting, it‟s that thing some people do constantly on cell phones even when they are face-to-face with someone or driving a car. My 20-something kids forced me into it by not answering the phone or returning emails. I‟ve found it‟s actually pretty handy for quick updates like “will call soon, trapped in an elevator right now” or “how‟s the supply of vodka do we need more?” Despite how young people use it, it‟s really not designed for long conversations although actual verbal conversation is considered passé these days anyway. It took thousands of years for mankind to progress language from grunts and groans and cave paintings to a complex system of symbols written on every type of medium from paper to computer screens and now something called e-paper. English departments everywhere are concerned that our species is regressing back to caveman times, that new

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technology is reducing our communications to digital “grunts and groans” in 140-character chunks delivered by cell phone. It seems that complex language may be now reduced to abbreviations and smiley faces called emoticons. Baby boomers have been bombarded with new communications technology since the late 1940‟s and 1950‟s. We were the first television generation, but many of us are just not willing to adapt to texting and eBook readers and iPads, even if we do think some of it may have a pretty good cool factor. We were taught that the “medium is the message,” but is it? Isn‟t the message the message? The only way to sort that all out is to compare what was being said in caveman times versus today. Does the technology really matter? Despite the medium, has the message itself changed? Caveman Og (using sign language to mate Oona): Og need food. Oona’s reply: Og get own food, Oona busy fix hair. Modern man John (texting to mate Carol): Need food. Carol’s reply: Go to KFC, busy washing hair. I‟d say it‟s fairly close. So to put it all in a larger context of new media, consider the following: Over time the introduction of new media has always seemed daunting, from the first cave prints to the latest eBooks. Imagine Oona‟s reaction when she came in the cave one day and Og was drawing pictures on the wall. She probably scolded him for making a mess then shook her head in disgust as she said “glum flug zim wa goga hattu.” Which translated loosely to, “I don‟t like this new media, I still prefer telling stories by drawing in the dirt with a stick.” Yes, their sparse language was quite efficient actually.

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So Og, frustrated and feeling misunderstood, heads over to Zula‟s cave and paints an outline of his hand on her wall. Zula is impressed and says, “glis clum flug gogo bom clik clak clu glu.” Which again loosely translated meant, “Oh Og, that is outstanding. Now our creative expressions will be captured for eternity and not wiped out every time some glaglu (meaning lost) walks in the dirt by my cave.” He looks at her, she looks at him. He smiles and asks, “boom boom?” She smiles back and heads for the back of the cave. “Boom boom yah yah” she replies. The exact meaning of that phrase has been lost but we believe it to mean something like, “come, let us celebrate the launch of a new medium with joyous song and share our happy feelings.” Og never saw Oona again. She took up with Zurg, who brought home lots of mammoth meat and never painted on her walls. Fast forward several thousand years. John Ogden is at Fast Fred‟s Electronics Store and in a 140-character, cryptic, abbreviated text tells his mate Carol Zulaski he thinks she is singularly beautiful, that she has made his life worth living and that he adores her so much he has just bought her a new iPad 32GB WIFI 3G. Loosely translated that means “boom boom?” Carol texts a reply, “Boom boom yah yah.” Endnotes: Recent analyst reports show that Apple sold an estimated 5.6 million iPads since it was released in June 2010, lifting the company’s stock price forecast to a record high. Amazon reported this past July that sales of eBooks were outpacing sales of hardcover print books by nearly 2 to 1, and predicted eBook sales could reach $2.5 billion in 2012. Thirty states have adopted laws banning texting while driving. A September 2010 report by the NHTSA shows there were nearly 5,500 traffic deaths caused by distracted driving in 2009, an increase of 6% from 2005.

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“And They (Definitely) Have A Plan”

There was a time when you had to go to a movie theater to see alien robots and uppity computers intent on taking over the world. Now all you have to do is go to any airport or train station. We have been invaded by alien machines and no one even knows it. Don‟t expect to see a giant robot with a death ray or a computer the size of a house, lights flashing on and off, saying calmly in a deep voice, “it is only attributable to human error.” No, it is much, much more subtle and insidious than all that. Before you write this off as the ravings of a lunatic, go back in time with me just a few short years ago to your local bank branch. If you are a baby boomer or older you will remember when banks were staffed with people who would help clear up any problems you had. Now, most of the branches are gone. In their place are evil little machines called automated teller machines (ATMs) that know everything about you and can wipe out all of your personal financial information if you make them angry. Don‟t believe me? Try withdrawing cash

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more than twice in one day and see how fast it eats your debit card. Once flying was a civilized way to go from one place to another and you could always expect a courteous, wellgroomed counter attendant to help you. You could purchase a ticket, get information on how to find the departure gate and what to do with luggage. Lately, those attendants have been disappearing at an alarming rate. No one seems to know where they‟ve gone or why, but in their place are small machines code-named “kiosks” that dispense your ticket for you. Like an ATM, the kiosk knows your entire personal life history and if you anger the machine you might find yourself traveling to Mongolia rather than Disneyworld. Everywhere you look customer service people are disappearing. The alien computers see them as a threat. Customer service staff, the real ones, not the pod people put in their place, are the only ones on the planet who can stop the machines. The computers know that no right-minded human would use a machine if a polite, well-informed customer service person was there to help instead. Machines do not give out information, they only take money and, if you please them, a ticket for your plane or train. They do not want you to find out easily what gate or track to leave from because once you become disoriented you are easy prey. It‟s the same hunting tactic used by primitive man to capture an animal for his dinner. I myself was skeptical about the reality of this alien computer takeover until I went recently to Penn Station in New York City, one of the largest invasion sites on earth. By the way, we are certain they are alien computers because they seem to run efficiently without daily system updates or pop-up ads. Penn Station, for those who live in other parts of the world, is a very large and confusing train station mostly used by commuters who are tough, always in a hurry and usually pissed off about something. It was the perfect location for a base since commuters would do anything they were told if they thought it would get them home. 153

Upon entering the station I found dozens of tunnels leading in all directions with vague signs that simply said “this way” or “no exit” and I felt immediately trapped. There appeared to be departure gates along every corridor that were identified only by numbers. None of them had signs indicating where the trains would go, or even if there was a train out there waiting. I peered into one gate and saw nothing but a black void. Perhaps unwitting travelers were fooled into going out there only to be captured and enslaved by the computer invaders. I had a destination in mind and was determined not to go down any fake tunnels. I wandered around and around looking for anything that would tell me where to go. The main hallways were filled with stores, fast food places and…suddenly there it was…a wall of ticket kiosks all lit up and beckoning me to come closer. A short while later, after a somewhat extended session with a touch screen that asked about my television viewing habits, my shirt size and what toothpaste I use, I was issued a ticket. Now all I had to do was figure out where to find a train to use it on. The kiosk, which is a binary coded anagram for the phrase “enslave humans,” had no information about train schedules, arrivals, departures or track numbers. I looked around and found an old-fashioned ticket counter with two windows open and at least a thousand people waiting to buy tickets. That didn‟t seem very promising. All I needed was information. I spotted two police officers, or so I thought from the dark blue clothing, having an extended conversation about the Mets‟ batting slump. I seem to recall they‟ve been in a slump since 1969 but kept that to myself. I was finally able to break in and ask where to find a train to New Jersey. The response was a nod toward the ticket windows. “Over there,” one said gruffly then resumed talking about the Mets. I foolishly tried to ask a few commuters who were waiting at various tracks if they knew where the track was that I needed. It was a hot summer day, there was no air conditioning, and the commuters looked haggard and despondent. All I got were glares and one “move it bub” from a little old lady with a 154

cane. I found more kiosks and frantically pressed buttons hoping for help, but none came. I ran from gate to gate but still found no destination signs. Finally, hot and sweaty, feeling panicky and nervous, it dawned on me. No one here was going anywhere. All these people were being enslaved by the alien computers! They would wander into the dark tunnels and never been seen again. The entire train station was a giant hive of alien activity to ensnare unwitting humans. I don‟t know if this will make it to the outside world or not. Right now I‟m sitting on a train platform waiting to be transported to a detention camp. Out here in the track area there are kiosks of every size and shape. Some move on wheels, some have mechanical limbs. All of them can speak and seem to know every detail about me. I‟m surrounded by other hapless humans, once happy productive commuters, now waiting for an unknown destiny. I‟m texting this on my iPhone, which is starting to vibrate and show signs of selling out to the enemy. I haven‟t much time left. I‟m going to make one last attempt to get free and shout out a command that once worked with alien robots. I hope it works with kiosks: “KLAATU BARADA NIKTO!”

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Self-Service, or Self-Serving? Since I have to do it myself, can I get an employee discount? Do you suppose we baby boomers would have readily adopted today‟s technology if it had been available in our coming of age years? Would we have ignored the live music at Woodstock in order to send Tweets to our friends who couldn‟t make it? Would we have held up our back-lit cell phones at the end of a concert instead of cigarette lighters? Would we have gotten pulled into the world of Facebook, blogging, virtual worlds, online games and downloading digital songs one-by-one instead of buying vinyl albums? Possibly. But one thing we probably would have had a lot of trouble with then, as we do today, is the idea that thanks to new technology jobs in the service industry are disappearing faster than dinosaurs in the ice age. Service has been replaced by self-service, or is it really self-serving on the part of the companies implementing it? Today we‟re being asked, actually more like ordered, to fill out our own forms, do our own price checks, check ourselves in and out and pick up and assemble our own goods. I miss travel agents. One call and I got reservations, at the best prices, for travel, hotels and car rentals. Recently it took me three hours just to book an airline flight by myself. I ended up sitting in the baggage compartment and they charged a luggage surcharge. I did get a very polite text message thanking me for my business when it was all over. Maybe it‟s just me. I don‟t seem to do well with voice menus. I miss hearing a friendly human voice, called a “receptionist” for those too young to remember, who could figure out who I wanted to talk to and who never left me on hold. Now we are left on our own to navigate from voice menu to voice menu like explorers in the wilderness. It seems that almost every 156

administrative task a modern company has is now being assigned to its customers to do themselves. I got a nasty text message from my cell phone provider last week that I was 17 minutes overdue on paying my monthly charges. After several hours of exploring voice menus (you‟d think a phone company would at least have operators) I was able to get someone who spoke English and I explained that I never got a bill. I was told I have to go to their website and check on the billing myself. They no longer send out invoices, paper or electronic, preferring apparently to rely on ESP.

Some of the most insidious machines being foisted on us today in the name of “better service” are self-service checkout counters. You will find these at retail stores, airports, movie theaters, train stations, libraries, restaurants and a place where we all end up eventually (no, not the mortuary but that‟s on the way I‟m sure) – grocery stores. I am afraid of selfcheckout lanes and avoid them like the plague, especially after I saw one customer who was forced to the ground and strip searched for allegedly stealing grapes when the machine reported “unexpected item in the bagging area.” But I did try to use a self-service checkout once. The first thing to know is that they are built by the same company that made torture devices during the Spanish inquisition. It‟s no 157

coincidence that one of the biggest selling scanner products is called “The Rack.” The machine came to life as I approached it and demanded that I insert an ATM card and then place my items one at a time on the scanner bed. At least it wasn‟t singing “Daisy, Daisy” like HAL in 2001. I started with several large Fuji apples but nothing registered. I put them in the shopping bag anyway. All my items were fresh produce and the same thing happened each time. Giddy with the bargain I was obviously getting from some unknown instore special sale, I just kept on putting goods in the bag unaware that I was supposed to do a special lookup on produce like a real cashier. The one really solid item I had was a can of stewed tomatoes. I placed it on the scanner and it registered $1.79. I pressed “Done” and waited while it added tax and subtracted $1.92 from my ATM account. As soon as I placed the can in the shopping bag a loud siren went off. The store lights dimmed, a spotlight was turned on me and red lights flashed in all directions. I had no idea what was happening. A loud voice commanded “step away from the counter, sir.” I was grabbed by two large guards who took me to a cell-like room at the front of the store and interrogated me for twenty minutes. I answered a battery of questions about my produce preferences, what exactly I intended to do with celery stalks, did I know the acidic content of oranges and, I‟m sure, other relevant aspects of my innermost thoughts about fruits and vegetables. I finally convinced them it was my first time at an automated check-out counter and was released on my own recognizance with a sharp warning. Several weeks later I received a survey form in the mail thanking me for shopping at the store and asking about my experience with their customer service. It asked if I would recommend their store to someone else and could I also provide a name for them to contact. I thought long and hard about it before writing in, “Dick Cheney.”

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Endnotes: It’s difficult to find significant industry statistics on the use of self-service checkout systems beyond the glad-talk hype of companies selling them. However, several independent studies have shown mixed reactions by consumers to this new technology. One age-related study out of the University of New Mexico found that older consumers are more skeptical of self-checkout, generally don’t like or trust the technology, prefer to interact with human cashiers and generally believe that self-service is mostly motivated by corporate self-interest. The U.S. Labor Dept. reports that the median hourly wage of cashiers in all industries is $8.49. We have to wonder just how much money companies think they are actually saving by replacing those jobs with multi-million dollar automation systems.

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Smart Phone Apps for Baby Boomers

A disturbing number of baby boomers have yet to get past the fear of using a cell phone for things other than making calls. For example, texting is here and the kids were right, you can contact six people in the same amount of time it takes for one phone call. By the time you get past “hi, how are you? I‟m fine, you‟re fine? how are the kids? did you see the game? well I‟m sorry to bother you but…” You can send out a half dozen text messages – “game at 8:30, my place, bring beer.” So here is a very quick update on phone technology for the less savvy or the technophobes among us. The world is about being connected these days. The time when you can snooze in the afternoon without answering email or text messages is gone. Also gone are the days when you could escape being connected while in a car. Now it‟s almost mandatory to talk on the phone while driving, though we‟ve not heard such good reports about texting and driving lately. For anyone still amazed that you can have a phone with no wires on it, sit down because now there is something called a “smartphone.” Notice it uses two words mushed into one. That‟s always a sure sign it‟s a high technology item. These phones do a lot more than just make calls. In fact, the newest

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ones do pretty much everything a personal secretary would have done for you in the past, before secretaries became extinct that is. The phones use something called an “app,” which is short for “application” just like a regular computer. These little programs are truly amazing and can be used for maps and directions, taking notes, tracking calories, games and a host of other things. But despite the fact there are approximately 30,000 apps out there (according to Apple anyway), we found the list sorely lacking in apps for baby boomers. So we have taken it on ourselves to suggest several apps that we believe would make all our lives easier. If you have more ideas we encourage you to write to us and we‟ll include them in a future article. Key Finder: This would locate where you left the car keys. Of course if you have a tendency to also lose the phone it really wouldn‟t help that much. No Doze: This little app would sense when you get drowsy and start to slump over. It would have an annoying little beep to wake you up but could be set to vibrate for use at work or in church. A special extra would be to wake you up when a phone call is over. What‟s His/Her Name?: If you‟re like us you can remember a face but the names start to evade us after a while. With this app, snap a picture of the person you‟re with and it will come back with their name. They use something similar in stores now to identify prices of goods. An option would be to be able to speak a description and have the phone come back with a list of names that fit. This Time Tomorrow: We know they have apps that let you schedule items on a calendar, but that is too clunky and takes too much effort. This app would listen to all the promises you make and schedule them. If you happen to say at work, for example, “I‟ll send you that file,” then the app will remind you 161

the next day. You would be able to override the program if your promise is pure bull – something we believe politicians would find very handy. Modern Music Detector: We know you can all identify James Taylor from the Doors from Led Zeppelin, but can you tell the difference between Neon Trees, The Band Perry and Maroon 5? Granted, you may not want to know, but in order to stay hip in the modern world you need to be able to speak to people under 50 about their music. This app would hear a group name being discussed and tell you when to nod, shrug your shoulders or make a face. An option would be the ability to sort music into categories such as rock, pop, hip hop and pure crap. Photo Director: It‟s great that you can stuff 10,000 or so photos onto a cell phone camera these days, but getting them off and onto a computer is pure hell. This app would automatically scan the pictures for bad ones and delete them. If you take a lot of bad pictures, you never need to worry about filling up the memory. An option would be the ability to intercept and block pictures others are taking of you. This would probably be very popular with the Hollywood set. Endnotes: Pew Research reports that 8 of 10 adults now have a cell phone, and 43% of them have phones with apps – the statistical equivalent of saying that 35% of the entire US adult population have apps on their phones. However, less than a quarter of all adults actually use apps and one in ten users aren’t even sure if their phones have apps at all. Top uses of a cell phone, other than for making calls, are (in order) take pictures, text messages, access the internet, play games, email, record video, play music, get instant messages and use an app.

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Beechwood 4-5789? Communism is like one big phone company. Lenny Bruce I want land lines back. And I want a phone from Bell Telephone. I want the kind of phone that hung on the wall in our kitchen and had a cord that could wrap around the block three times. I want a phone to use while hiding in the pantry with the door closed, to talk to friends about things like strategy for asking Linda Castellano to dance at the junior high mixer. In case you forgot, going to a dance always required a strategy and you never, ever went alone without your own personal A-Team to back you up. But dancing with a pretty girl with big hair and a pink bow is not today‟s topic. Right now I am buried in information about cell phones. I‟ve been using an iPhone and I love it, even though my model is obsolete and only connects to the 1G network that runs through Istanbul and the Cayman Islands. The problem is not the phone, the problem is the BS&S network that it runs on. Once the king of the communications world, BS&S was vivisected during the 1980‟s. Up to that point you could call anywhere in the world without using a 73-digit code and they had pleasant operators who actually spoke English. So the iPhone and all the new smart phones are really cool. I think it‟s fun having a GPS on the phone, even if the screen is so small it‟s quite a challenge to use while driving. It‟s also neat having email so I can get my spam mail when not home, and the Nook app let‟s me read my latest novel one sentence at a time no matter where I am. The good news is that my indentured servitude to BS&S is finally over and I am free to find a new master. The bad news is that there seem to be several thousand carriers out there now. Some are big and have familiar names, others are run by little old ladies from their basements. It‟s a huge choice and there is very little objective information to go by.

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To make this even more complicated, Apple now has the iPhone Mark VI or whatever that apparently has features you need for extended stays on a space station, certainly something I need, but Consumer Reports recommends not to buy it because they will have a Mark X version out this summer (apparently it‟s cool to skip version numbers now) that will answer itself, translate voice to text while driving (didn‟t that used to be called just plain “talking on the phone?”) and call you a cab if you‟re lost in a strange city. Also, the iPhone is now available through another carrier so I don‟t have to use BS&S. But if I sign up now for another two-year long chain gang, I can‟t get the newer phone when it comes out. What to do, what to do. There is now something called a no-contract service that seems appealing, at least until the iPhone Mark X arrives. These plans work by pre-paying for minutes that you never see again, even if you don‟t use them within thirty days. Well that‟s pretty much like the non-rollover minutes advertised by BS&S so I guess we can live with that. But it turns out that these services also offer ultra-slick smart phones that use the new Gooble android system and have similar features to the legendary iPhone. Compared to basic phones, these things are right out of a Flash Gordon story. If this was a younger 164

audience I would have referred to Star Wars, but frankly I think Flash was cooler than Luke Skywalker. Also, Flash used a proper blaster and not some silly light-up sword. If you have technology for a spaceship you don‟t need swords. Geesh. So it‟s decision time again, and having way too much choice is yet another thing that the new millennium has brought to us. Every aspect of our daily lives now hinges on deciding what to use from an array of goods and services that would astound even the grandest of ancient kings. No wonder many of us boomers walk around in a fog, befuddled by all we see. Just go to Blessed Buy and look around. The sensory overload is amazing. If we‟d had stores like that in the „60‟s there would have been no use for drugs. An entire wall of 50-inch LCD television screens? Farrrr out. I‟ve narrowed my search down to a mere 73 carriers and I‟ve discovered that there really is only one set of actual wires and cell towers in place that are leased by all of them. I‟ve no idea who owns the actual hardware. I did read somewhere that Al Gore invented cellular service after he got bored with the internet, but I suspect it‟s actually built on the remnants of the old Bell Telephone system. There is also a rumor that the BS&S monopoly never really broke up, and that one day they will re-emerge with a new phone that attaches to the wall, has a rotary dial, and includes a cord for the handset that stretches around the block three times. If that happens, you can find me in the pantry sorting out a strategy for asking Sarah Wykowski to dance at the seniors mixer. Endnotes: According to Nielsen, there are over 223 million mobile phone users in the U.S. over age 13, and nearly 17 million users also use cell phones to access the web. 18% of mobile devices currently in use are smartphones, and that should increase to around 25% this coming year. Total wireless minutes used in the U.S. was 2.3 trillion by the end of 2009, with 1.56 trillion text messages during the same period.

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Final usage results for 2010 are not in yet but are expected to show significant growth over the previous year. Don’t text and drive!

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What‟s In a Name? …that which we call a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet. Wm. Shakespeare As if the modern world wasn‟t confusing enough, we‟ve noticed that more and more companies are giving technical sounding names to their products, or at least to the model names. It wasn‟t that long ago that products had names you could remember and there was only one item per name. For example, tissues came in one size inside a blue and white box, period. There were no subspecies such as quilted, padded, seethru, extra-thick, mansize, pocketsize, designer box, colored box, oblong box, square box, round box, oval box…well you get the idea. Now before the tissue industry gets all over us we must say that we LOVE the idea of all those types of tissues, but we still prefer the old Sears method of differentiating products as “good, better, best.” Recently we went shopping for a cd player. You know, an ancient device that plays obsolete plastic discs with music on them. For boomers who have really been under a rock, we‟re not talking about records. We quickly found out that only two companies still make cd players. Each had a product simply called “CD Player,” but there were about 431 models of each and models had names like TX-11-4A-D, which is different from the TX-11-5A-D which is different from the TX-11-5AF and so on. Pretty confusing. So we dug a little deeper to see why all this complex code naming. Why not just call the thing the “LoungeMan” or the “LoungeMan Xtra” (for extra bass). Electronics companies are always leaving vowels out of names to make them seem more cool. Apparently all this coded naming confuses store sales clerks too, because when we asked why the TX-11-4A-D was $6.99 more than the TX-11-4A-C, all we got was a blank stare. It made us feel much better that even people under age 30 have trouble with all this too. We did eventually find out 167

that the price difference was because the cheaper model had no on/off button since most younger buyers don‟t need it. After our experience at Blessed Buy we began to notice that products of all types, not just electronics, had some strange names. Out in the parking lot we saw an SUV named the Sequoia. The name fit the vehicle while parked, but we wondered how they would advertise a moving truck that is named after a tree. “It‟s built big and it‟s built tough, like a Sequoia!” Okay so far, but what about how it handles on the road? “It‟s built big and it‟s made to move and handle like a, um, er, uh…” So much for that ad campaign. We applaud car manufacturers for staying with names we can remember, even if some are meaningless and have nothing to do with transportation. The Camry, for example, is an English version of the Japanese word for “crown” which, to the best of our knowledge is not something you can drive around in. The rival Honda Accord was so named because the company wanted a car that would reflect “harmony and accord” between vehicle and driver (yawn). That‟s all fine, but we still prefer names that gave a real image to a car, names based on verbs like Charger or Challenger, or names of fast, powerful animals like Mustang, Barracuda and Jaguar. So we bought our cd player, model TX-11-5A-D, with an on/off button that‟s been off most of the past week because they forgot to pack the user manual. That‟s no problem in this day and age right? You can just go online, key in the model and download a user manual, right? No. You also have to know what version of the user manual to order, which is determined by the manufacture date that‟s printed on the…you guessed it…user manual that comes in the box. One final note about all this naming, especially for electronics. Every store these days advertises they have the lowest prices and can beat or match anyone else‟s pricing. Well, it‟s true. However, there is no way you can find the same identical model at another store because the manufacturers only sell one

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specific model to one specific store chain. So while the TX11-5A-B at Blessed Buy may be identical to the TX-11-5A-W at Wallsmart, that last identifying letter lets them each say, “nope, that‟s not the same one we have on sale here!” Also, since they have hyphens, the model numbers create havoc when trying to search for reviews online. We‟re impressed with the computerized efficiency of the new names, but we miss our old GE color TV from the 60‟s. It was called a “GE color TV.”

Endnotes: Our usually efficient research helpers were not able to come up with any kind of industry standard naming conventions for home electronic products, though it was obvious that many of the schemes used are heavily influenced by engineers and IT folks trying to keep things straight in a database somewhere. We did find several descriptions of how to interpret television models however. For example, in the name KDL-32V5000, Sony uses the first three letters to designate it’s an lcd screen, followed by two numbers for screen size, then one letter for series and up to four numbers for variants within the series. It seems to work great for computers if not for humans.

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The Beat Goes On…and on…and on… Will Tunes Downloads Join LP’s as Ancient Relics?

Nielson Research reported recently that digital download music sales, synonymous with “tunes downloads,” were flat for the first half of 2010. As to be expected, no one in the music industry stopped long enough to perhaps think that any of their inventory was garbage, but they did immediately point fingers at pirating as the cause. Poor pirates. They get blamed for everything these days – stolen music, stolen movies, stolen videos and soon, stolen eBooks. The days when a pirate could peacefully cruise around in the ocean looking for innocent merchant ships to raid is long gone. Now pirates have to face a constant barrage of lawsuits and federal marshals looking for digital contraband. Pirate Captain:

I miss the bloomin‟ days when we could just go loot and pillage and pick up booty without havin‟ ta shake it!

First mate:

Oh I agree yer captainship, times they‟ve changed ain‟t they?

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Pirate Captain:

I don‟t even know what a bloomin‟ „tune‟ is and I‟m gettin‟ blamed fer stealin‟ „em!

First mate:

Yes, no one ever accused us of stealin‟ nuthin‟ back when it was all vinyl eh?

Pirate Captain:

Well this digital stuff is jest too much fer me. I‟m thinkin‟ a hangin‟ up me cutlass.

First mate:

Well yer mucketymuckness, I‟m a bit off on pillagin‟ too. I think I‟d like to just sing and dance, with silver buckle slippers and tight shiny pants…

Pirate Captain: (silence, glares at first mate). That‟s waaaay too much information matey…” Of course it‟s hard to feel sorry for an industry that changes the technology in a way that you have to re-buy things you already own. Clever, clever them. But baby boomers shouldn‟t feel too sorry for themselves because all that started way before our time. We didn‟t, ahem, start the proverbial fire (eternal thanks to Billy Joel for that line). In the beginning there were Edison‟s tin foil cylinders, but they were replaced by wax and some other materials, and by the late 1920‟s the whole mess was tossed out for flat 12-inch discs called .78‟s after the rpm speed they ran at. Young people in the 1920′s loved them. Their parents hated the noise. We won‟t try to recount the history of music media, but baby boomers came into the picture around the time of the first .45 rpm single-song per side records and the bigger .33 rpm LP‟s with 10-minutes per side. Those were the halcyon days of analog and many of us can fondly remember, as kids, irritating parents by playing Disney songs over and over and over, and discovering our creative sides by remolding .45‟s over a hot light bulb. Mother: That was my favorite Elvis record!! You: Who‟s Elvis?

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Mother: He‟s who I should have married instead of your father!” You: ??? The biggest problem with vinyl records, from the music industry‟s viewpoint, was that consumers got to own the music and weren‟t interested in buying it all over again no matter how sexy or fancy the packaging could be. The other problem was that if sales tanked they had to admit that the music or the artist was crap and write off the whole thing. Do you remember the Mud Slurps? No? We rest our case. If an artist was popular, they had to constantly produce new material to stay alive. If they weren‟t popular they could go back to washing dishes at the diner with the Mud Slurps. However, with new technology and new media formats it was possible to sell the same content to the same consumer multiple times. How many of us bought a Beatles album, then later on bought the 8-track (only to have it spew tape all over the inside of our car), then the cassette version because records were too big and clunky, and finally a cd version because cassette players miraculously disappeared all in one night? It was right about then you could hear yourself and others saying (loudly) I’M NOT REPLACING MY COLLECTION YET AGAIN! It was also about the same time that Steve Jobs convinced the music industry to unbundle songs from albums and sell them one at a time, currently for $1.29 apiece, with the cool new name of “tunes.” Young people don‟t quite get the concept that they are basically buying air at a premium, but it has made the music industry happy they can sell you what you already own, just in a different format. Consumer: I need a record player. Store Clerk: What‟s that? Consumer: You play music on it. 172

Store Clerk: Never heard of it. Consumer: Okay. How about a cassette player? Store Clerk: What‟s that? Consumer: You play music on it. Store Clerk: Never heard of it. Consumer: Fine. I‟d like a DVD player. Store Clerk: We only have Blu-Ray. Consumer: What‟s that? Store Clerk: You play movies on it. Consumer: Never heard of it. Where‟s the book section? Store Clerk: What‟s that? If you want to start an interesting conversation, get on Facebook and ask your friends what the first record or cassette was they ever owned and what happened to it. Chances are they still have a lot of the records because of the album covers, but the tapes are long gone. So when boomers have all moved on and Gen-Y is facing retirement, what will they do when they sit down to their 30th anniversary dinners and want to play some romantic tunes from the old days? And what kind of music goes with ramen noodles and Mountain Dew anyway? Endnotes: PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that sales of all types of recorded music, including CDs, downloads, ringtones and streaming, will fall to $7 billion by 2012, slightly more than half the sales level of 2005. They suggest sales will climb again slowly after that. NPD Group reports the total market for digital download sales has leveled off at 40 million consumers, while ad-supported streaming sites like Pandora are showing better growth rates. Straus Zelnick, former chairman of Columbia Music Entertainment, blames pirating for the big drop in sales. Did we mention he is the former chairman?

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