Archive for December, 2011
Letters
| LETTERS MAY BE ADDRESSED TO: curmudgeons@oldfartwebpage.com..Afghanistan War
Dear Old Fart,How many more Canadian peacekeepers have to die before Prime Minister Stephen Harper pops his head out of George W. Bush’s ass?Peter Arsenault, MontrealSuccinct, Peter, we like that in a letter. A more verbose letter has been received from Chicago, see below. TOF. Dear Old Fart, May I use your space to sound off on the war in Afghanistan? The historical facts behind this war do not seem to be well known. The facts are these: One, the Al Qaeda Arabs were brought to Afghanistan by the Pakistan ICI and the operation and the arming of them and the establishment of the eponymous base camp was paid for by the CIA. Two, the Taliban never really liked or trusted them. Three, the Taliban was the de facto and de jure goverment of most of the country in September 2001. The Bush government however chose to attack it and allied itself with those old friends of Donald Rumsfeld’s, the murderous thieving raping war lords. Four, the Taliban had succeeded in defeating most of the war lords and eradicating the opium trade and had established the rule of law. Maybe their laws are not the same as ours – in particular with respect to women. But they did respect the chastity of women. Any western woman who I has traveled in the country and written about it confirms this. For most of these facts I am indebted to Ahmed Rashid’s book published in 2001 just before the September attack. Five, the Taliban in September 2001 offered to catch bin Laden but rather than turn him over to the USA, promised to turn him over to a neutral country for a fair trial; the Taliban suggested France. The Bush government declined this offer and instead went to war with them, for no good reason. Cynics say the war was about oil or pipelines. But maybe this is too generous. The Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld families are heavily invested in the munitions industry. In studying the causes of World War One we students would laugh at the notion that the war was initiated by munitions manufactures; the notion was naïve. But this time it is no joke. And of course Bush had all those generals and admirals, chafing at the bit. Eisenhower warned us about the military industrial complex and his warning is ignored – even by Canada, where the Harper government is in bed with American owned Canadina munitions manufacturers Six, the headquarters of both the Taliban and Al Qaeda are both in Pakistan in the ungovernable west of that country. The Pakistan government from the beginning told the Bush administration it would co-operate in trying to apprehend the terrorists but would not assist in attacking the Taliban whom they respected for its achievements. It is impossible – any military person will agree – to defeat an enemy whose headquarters are in a neutral country! Now it’s a mess. The Taliban and the terrorists have been driven into each other’s arms and the terrorists have corrupted the Taliban, who have lost their ideals and respect for the rule of law. And the position of the Pakistan government is awkward to say the least. There is no end in sight – what the hell is NATO doing there? Since when was Afghanistan to be found in the North Atlantic? Dennis McCracken Chicago It’s not really surprising that the new policy of the U.S. and the Afghanistan government is to make peace with the Taliban on the condition that they end their alliance with Al Qaeda, an alliance, which they never wanted, and which was forced on them when their country was invaded. Most, not all, of the acts of terrorism currently taking place in Afghanistan are made by foreign born Al Qaeda fanatics, not native Taliban Afghanis. O.F. |
| Gun ControlDear Old Fart,I heard that you had a website for angry people. There is a campaign afoot to ban handguns. There are good reasons for this but remember if the government has a monopoly on guns the people won’t have any power. That’s right, if the government wants to get rid of guns let them get rid of their own guns. Anytime the government has more guns than the people the people are in trouble.Does anyone realize that if the American people had not had more guns than the government in 1776 the United States would be part of Canada now? George Bush, for example, would be a Canadian.Jason Revere, Aurora, Ontario |
| Below is a letter from Jack Crooks, a professional analyst with Martin Weiss Research Associates received by us a few days before Congress rejected the Paulson plan.Dear Old Fart:You can’t possibly have hidden yourself from the news of the $700-billion planned bailout that’s working through Congress this week. And I won’t mince words — I consider it a big slap in the face for the free market system.Henry Paulson repeated over and over again exactly how agitated, disgusted, annoyed, infuriated, angered, embarrassed, and irritated he felt about asking for this amount of money, or any money at all. Sounds sincere if you stop it right there.But apparently those feelings weren’t enough to reinvigorate his free-market spirit, abolish potential bailout plans, do away with unnecessary regulation and let those who deserve to suffer, suffer.How Free Markets Are SUPPOSED to Work …Availability of credit allows money to flow between savers and borrowers.Resources and funds are allocated to various projects or investments during a boom phase.Eventually borrowing becomes excessive and leads to malinvestment, thanks to the suppression of the real rate of interest by our illustrious Federal Reserve Banking system.At this stage, adherence to free market theory would allow for an efficient cleansing period and a healthy recovery period. How? Irresponsible and unprofitable businesses fail. Bad debts get liquidated. Excess resources go on sale, flow into more stable ventures and pool together with more profitable resources controlled by healthy corporations or entities.Sure, pain is felt by certain parties who can’t keep things going. But the moving parts become more efficient and stronger. Healthier, more efficient businesses emerge.As the Austrian School of economists says, the bigger the boom generated by manipulation of money and credit, the bigger the ultimate bust.That’s important, because thanks to the massive manufacturing and sale of derivatives, there has never been a boom supported to such a large degree by thin air. And since the laws of gravity haven’t been outlawed yet, what goes up must come down.* * *
But if Mr. Crooks had been familiar with Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine, he would not have been surprised that the right wing would appear to desert it principles in time of crisis. The evening of September 29th, the day the Dow fell 777.68 points, when the market learned that Congess had rejected the plan of Henry Paulson, the former head of Goldman, Sachs, to rescue the bankers with public funds, we went to hear the popular Naomi Klein, author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, speaking in a sold-out rented movie theatre. In her book, The Shock Doctrine, she showed how the right consistently uses a financial crisis to invoke fear in the people, and to convince them to allow capitalists more power to reduce social legislation, government regulation, public ownership, etc. and make a grab for public funds for themselves. According to the pattern she reveals, the right will deliberately bring on a crisis, and has, in Poland, say, or Russia, or numerous South American countries to achieve its goals. This time the crisis was not created on purpose, and fear ruled Congress, not the electorate: Fear of losing their seats over public indignation at the bailing out the incompetent bankers with public funds, a good many Republicans, two thirds of them in fact, rejected the Bush administration’s request. Sometimes democracy works. Readers are invited to send in letters to curmudgeons@oldfartwebpage.com . |
| ImmigrationDear Old Fart,May I use your forum to bring to the attention of your curmudgeons the relationship between immigration and the Law of Supply and Demand.The Law of Supply and Demand – as elemental to economics as the Law of Gravity is to physics – dictates that an increase in population lowers the cost of labour and raises the cost of housing.This of course means an increase in the Gross National Product. Both business and government revel in increases to the GNP (government because tax revenues go up).But the goal of government economic policy should be to increase Real Income per Capita. This has gone steadily down in recent years.Phyliss SmithCalgary, Alberta |
| Leaf BlowersDear Old Fart,May I take advantage of that corner of infinite cyberspace that you have secured for annoyed citizens and express my anger with the promiscuous use of leaf blowers in the Greater Toronto Area. From the basement apartment where I live, I hear their racket almost daily in the months of September, October, and November. You can complain; you can call Metro Toronto Noise Control. The people who answer the phone are very polite. They will tell you that leaf blowers have to be registered and the city checks their noise level to be sure that it is under an “acceptable” level. This department does not deal with the fact that they pollute the air. The average leaf blower with its inefficient two-cycel engine probably creates more pollution than a Cadillac SUV driven at 100 miles per hour.One gentleman who answered the phone there told me that they were very efficient. More efficient than a lad with a leaf rake? I doubt it. The gentleman told me that Metro Toronto itself owns over a hundred leaf blowers. Our blue-collar city workers have a powerful union and a monopoly on essential services. They probably make over forty dollars an hour. Most of the time a worker wielding a leaf blower is just shuffling them around. He is tuned in to his walkman or whatever and does not pay much attention to what he is doing.The same gentleman told me that the leaves are all recycled. That’s funny, if they left them where they were they would be recycled. The worms eat them in the spring and turn them into earth.I once lived next door to a man who took great pride in his front lawn. The houses were town houses, attached at both sides. Our lawns were about the size of the average dining room carpet. I didn’t rake my leaves; he did. I had vines as ground cover and I let the leaves lay where Jesus flang them (sorry, I’m from New Brunswick). Some of my leaves would blow over onto his lawn whenever there was a bit of a breeze. He was pretty good-natured about it because he liked raking leaves and as his lawn was the size of a picnic blanket it gave him more raking to do. When he did scold me, I would reply “You’re starving your worms. Come spring your worms will have nothing to eat!”Sure enough the following spring my mother-in-law skidded on one of his worms, which was crossing the concrete path dividing our lawns, and went down. She was okay, thank heavens because she is very litigatious – she’d had a few G and Ts, and don’t think that I wouldn’t have brought that up in court. But the worms were totally crushed and a few others flattened where she went down (she’s quite a heavy woman like many Maritimers). They died hungry too. In the good old days when we had capital punishment even murderers were given a hearty meal before they went to their deaths.Sincerely,Frank Vermicilis, Toronto |
| Dear Old Fart,I understand your website is for people who want to sound off about their pet peeves. Mine is the phrase Original Six used to describe the teams in the National Hockey League as it existed between 1942 and 1967, a mere 25 years out of the 92 that the League has existed.The National Hockey League was begun in 1917 with five teams. For the next 25 years the number of teams varied from three to ten. The Ottawa Senators were in the league for most of those years. Philadelphia, and St.Louis had teams in the league for some of those years, and New York, which had two, as it does today. And let’s not forget the famous Montreal Maroons.It seems to me that the phrase Original Six is an insult to these historic hockey teams.Robert Bidwell,OttawaTOF: And now we have the Leafs claiming that they have existed for a hundred years. The Toronto team in the original four was the Toronto St.Pats. |
From the ashes
Sorry everyone, we were static for a long time in blog parlance but we’re back – explanation is boring, to do with Old Fart’s incompetency in Internet matters, but we finally got around to getting going. We were nagged by three other curmudgeons and they now have their own blogs: Business and Finance, Office Etiquette, and Etiquetter Period.
A number of letters were sent to us over the past year or so which we did not read but we’re going to go look for them in cyberspace and maybe we’ll find them.
Christmas Eve is coming up and curmudgeons should be reflecting on Le Rochefoucauld’s observation: ”I am least alone when I am by myself”. We wish all you curmudgeons a solitary Christmas Eve.
Now a few words about ice hockey:
The puck
The origin of the word puck is not well known. People used to play the game with a ball as is done in field hockey but on ice it bounced around like the elusive elf of that name, so they called it the puck. Then someone – someone whose name is lost to history – had the bright idea of slicing the sides off! and hockey as we know it was born. (The first pucks were easier to raise having a curve at the edges).
The trap
I heard a sports announcer recently speculating on the origin of the unpopular strategy of ’the trap”. Well, folks it was originated by the Ottawa Senators around 1930 and was known as ‘kitty-bar- the-door” after the children’s game. The Senators won a couple of Stanley Cups with it but it was so boring people stayed away and the team lost money. Tommy Gorman, the owner, sold the club to an American city. The strategy bored everyone there too, and the club went broke. Gorman got the name back and entered the club in the old Quebec Senior Hockey League.
Concussions
There is a lot of talk lately about concussions in the National Hockey League. If you click on the Boxscore on the Scores page on the NHL site after a game, you will see a stat for Hits. The league credits players with hits as if they were assists or something. If the NHL changed this stat from Hits to Attempts To Cause A Concussion we might have a clearer idea of why there are so many concussions. In a Toronto paper recently (December 2011) a former Leaf player, Stankowski, I think his name is, declared he never watches NHL games. It’s not hockey as we used to play it in the forties, he said. In the old days, a body check was an option. You could force a pass, poke check, or knock the fellow off the puck. Then you played the puck. All you wanted to do is get him off it so you could take it from him. This cult of hits leads inevitably to concussions.
As for boarding: the boards were ten inch by twelve foot wooden planks, one inch thick. They were mounted on little posts and with gaps, the total height of the boards was twenty-four inches or two feet approximately. Above that loomed snow banks – we kids shoveled the rinks, which were located at the schools, ourselves. Boarding would consist of knocking an opponent over the boards into the snow bank. He – or sometimes she – would emerge covered with snow and thoroughly humiliated. A fight might ensue. Delay of Game took place when a raised puck disappeared into the snowbank. Sometimes they were not found until spring and another had to be found.
There were no helmets. We had shinpads attached to kneecaps, like today’s, and elbow pads. That’s all. The lucky kids had hockey gloves and hockey pants. Poor kids could afford to play hockey then; today ice hockey is a middle class sport. I was looking at a photograph of Hall of Famer, Frank Nighbor, the other day. He played in the twenties. No helmet (because there were no helmets there were fewer concussions – look at the sport of rugby). But I did notice that his gloves had ribs reaching half way to his elbows. Last year in the NHL West finals I saw Joe Thornton chopping repeatedly with his stick at Kesler’s wrists, which were exposed when his arms were extended between his sleeves and gloves as he carried the puck. There is a chink in today’s armour and trust old Joe to find it.
But today’s game in the NHL , the CFL, and the NFL, is for sissies: in the old days you went out with what equipment you had and you took your licks. Nowadays, professionals go out in full armour and the whistle hardly stops blowing as the highly paid referees/nannys try to protect these grown men from hurting themselves in the sandbox spectacles of commerce.
The January thaw: remember that? Us kids huddled in a dark gymnasium as somebody tried to teach us basketball while our eyes were looking out the basement window in sorrow at our old soggy rink, where ice had turned to slush and the world was grey.. without hockey the world was a dark and dismal place.
Speaking of the weather, we have now an appalling example of government selling out to a scoundrel: The Weather Channel. Have you counted the minutes devoted to selling crap? An American entrepreneur approached the cable companies, who were providing weather information free on a government channel, gathered world wide at the expense of tax paying citizens, and said, hey, you are giving the weather forecasts away for free, you fools, I will pay you cable companies, money in your pockets, to run my channel, The Weather Channel. Of course, he got all the info for free from government, and pockets millions for advertising stuff no one needs. No doubt he make enormous donations to the political parties and gets tax credits. We do not live in a democracy, let’s face it. Plato called it something else, an oligarchy.
First Post in ETIQUETTE PERIOD BLOG
Second Post
Dear Old Fart,
I have an embarrassing cross-cultural problem right here in my own country. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does I want to flee and hide in a dark closet! I am not a snob (please don’t accuse me), but, I’m sorry, I do not “high five”.
What is “high five” anyway? Who started this hideous, spontaneous maneuver and what on earth is it meant to signify? A “high five” happened to me just the other day, as it happens. I was shopping with some people I didn’t know very well, and standing in the green-grocer aisle, I made an innocent comment to one one of the party…something like, “Oh boy, I think I got these avocados at a bargain!” The next thing I knew, a hand the size of a baseball mitt was enthusiastically wind-milling its way up into the air…to meet mine! But, mine was not there. No. I suddenly had to sneeze, you see, so I found myself rustling in my handbag for a Kleenex. It was a narrow escape.
The young man, I could tell, felt a bit miffed, as if I’d just been introduced to him and refused to shake his hand. Well, I’d certainly not have avoided a handshake, but, as I said right at the beginning, I do not “high-five”.
Trusting you’ll affirm my good sense.
Yours sincerely,
Ms. C
Dear Ms. C
Clearly you have either been away a long time or you do not watch team sports on television. It is one of the ways professional athletes congratulate one another for a good play. It is the equivalent – in intent – of a handshake. Another is to leap in to the air while turning your back to the other chap while he is doing the same and you click bums. The next time your young man attempts a high five respond with this move and with any luck you will get him right in the kisser.
TOF
First Post in Etiquette Period Blog
Dear Old Fart
I have been noticing lately an increasing number of restaurants embracing the “small plates” or “small bites” concept: a tapas-style approach to “dining”, rather than the traditional menu format of entrée, plat, dessert.
Whence this phenomenon? Is the trend economy-driven (ie: restaurants can charge a lot more for the same amount of food when it’s spread over several plates)? Or is it a reaction to customer rebellion when portions got unappetizingly big (ie: customers started to order two first courses rather than a first and a main, leaving chefs short, as mains are the more expensive)?
When portions went Gargantuan in restaurants, there was another way in which customers handled the problem, and perhaps this too initiated the “small bites” trend. There you would be in a restaurant with a party of, say, six, just about to order a succulent sea bass dish all to yourself, when some self-declared leader-type would belt out the rhetorical question: “Shall we just get four dishes and share?!” There was the end of your sea bass. (And the chef’s sale of six.)
May I say this? I DO NOT WANT TO SHARE.
During drinks, maybe. But, to define “dinner” as forks violently flying from plate to plate, dropping food sloppily on the table in between and nearly taking out eyes…no thanks. I’d rather dine with a flock of starved pigeons. Seen another way, it’s like interminable cocktail party, only here with the trouble of implements, where we stuff ourselves cross-eyed on a cacophonous overdose of the superficial.
I blame technology, sneaking its evil, greedy way into the dining room. Watching television, these days, seems almost as archaic as curling up for a long session with an illuminated manuscript, what with the internet having grabbed all the viewers with shows lasting no more than minutes, or even seconds. With “small bites” now joining us at the dinner table, they are starting, insidiously, to nibble away at civilization itself. I don’t like it. Give me back my dinner!
Yours sincerely,
Ms. C
Health & Beauty
 Dear Old Fart,Thanks for getting in touch and suggesting that I resume our Health and Beauty column in cyberspace. I am not at all sure that existence in cyberspace is healthy or whether one can be beautiful there but I will certainly take a crack at it. As it happens I had a little column ready for The Old Fart Magazine when you collapsed it or perhaps it collapsed on its own. It is on the subject of Sleep. Old farts, worrying about the condition of the world and what they can do to worsen it, often have trouble getting to sleep and I hope that this column may be of use to them. By the way, thanks for forwarding copies of the column to Graydon Carter at Vanity Fair in the hope that their magazine would take me on after the aforesaid collapse. I knew Graydon as a boy of course, growing up in Ottawa, and even then he had curmudgeon potential. He was quite naughty.He would be a useful addition to your staff but unfortunately he has his own magazine. He was good enough to write to me, although I don’t think he remembered me, or pretended not to. He wrote: “It’s good, but alas, I do not think it quite right for Vanity Fair”.SLEEP
A Brief Treatise By Melinda Moorehouse Sleep can be thought of as a refueling process. The fuel is oxygen. We use up more oxygen in the course of the day than we take in. In a deep sleep consumption of the fuel is limited by relaxation of the muscles and inactivity of the brain. The human brain is responsible for approximately 40% of total oxygen consumption. These things can be observed in a person who is sleeping deeply: deep slow breathing as the system refuels and a low heart beat frequency. The heart should rest as much as possible during sleep. Many individuals seek this condition at night and have trouble achieving it. Here are some tips: Relax your muscles. Stop thinking; this is easier said than done but think of it as a discipline. You will get better at it with practice. One never stops thinking entirely, hence dreams, but try to send thought to the back and rear of the brain. One way of doing this, the author has found, is to concentrate on lowering the frequency of the heartbeat while breathing deeply. That is, you think about your heartbeat and your deep breathing. Deliberately imitate deep sleep. Pretend perhaps you are an actor and the director has asked you to imitate a person in a deep sleep. It is your job. Funnily enough, a grand niece of mine, Sophia, last summer on the dock, was trying to teach me to meditate. The process seems quite similar to the above. So now we know why Buddhists seem so peaceful; they are actually all fast asleep. Many people who have work to do in the morning and an early appointment start to worry; here they are awake and they should be asleep. This anxiety of course activates the brain and is counterproductive. Here is how to rid yourself of this particular anxiety: If you follow the above tips you will be getting your oxygen and your rest whether you are awake or not! So tell your system not to worry. And a successful imitation of sleep results in just that: sleep. That is my experience. But sometimes the brain keeps going. General anxiety can be relieved by placing the tips of the fingers of each hand lightly on a spot about one inch above each eyebrow. When one is anxious there is excessive energy in the frontal lobes of the brain; feel it drain away down your arms to your body. Close your eyes and think black. |
Famous Curmudgeons
 Ambrose Bierce: From the Devil’s DictionaryAchievement, n . the death of endeavour and the birth of disgust.
Advice, n. the smallest current coin. Bore, n. a person who talks when you wish him to listen. Cynic, n. a blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. Edible, adj. good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm. Labour, n. one of the processes by which A acquires property for B. Lawsuit, n. a machine which you go into as a pig and come out a sausage. Marriage, n. a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two. Prejudice, n. a vagrant opinion without visible means of support. Sayings of : Woman would be more charming if one could fall into her arms without falling into her hands. Self-denial is indulgence of a propensity to forego. |
 Sayings of Mark TwainSoap and education are not as sudden as a massacre but more deadly in the long run.Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do….Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.To promise not to do a thing is the surest way in the world to make a body want to go and do that very thing.A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother. I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know. Give an Irishman lager for a month, and he’s a dead man. An Irishman is lined with copper, and the beer corrodes it. But whiskey polishes the copper and is the saving of him. War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull. Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world. The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime , if not asked to lend money. If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man. Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated. Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to. |
 Sayings of Francois, Duc de La RochefoucauldOur virtues are most frequently but vices in disguise.We all have strength enough to endure the misfortunes of others.
To succeed in the world, we do everything we can to appear successful. The love of justice in most men is simply the fear of suffering injustice. Old people like to give good advice as solace for no longer being able to provide bad examples. The mind is always the dupe of the heart. Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue. Too great haste in paying off an obligation is a kind of ingratitude. We frequently forgive those who bore us but cannot forgive those whom we bore. We rarely find that people have good sense unless they agree with us. |
 Sayings of Dorothy ParkerFour be the things I am wiser to know:Idelness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe. Four be the things I’d been better without: Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.Brevity is the soul of lingerie.Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone. One more drink and I’ll be under the host. Why is it no one ever sent me yet I don’t care what is written about me so long as it isn’t true. I’ve never been a millionaire but I just know I’d be darling at it. If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words. This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force. Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, A medley of extemporanea; And love is a thing that can never go wrong; And I am Marie of Romania. Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.. She runs the gamut of emotions from A toB (of Katherine Hepburn in a performance) |
First Post in OFFICE ETIQUETTE BLOG
First Post in OFFICE ETIQUETTE BLOG
Your life is not as interesting as you think… or is it?
By Norris Van Heatherington
Over the course of my numerous years spent co-working in a variety of cubicles I have overheard many personal conversations. Despite not being a nosy neighbour (I could care less what these people are doing), the details of the lives of colleagues have voluntarily been polluting my workspace. I’ve been through dilemmas with badly raised children (spare the rod…), family trauma of every variety (no one can grow up these days), conflicts over after-work drinks (a pub is a pub, for Christ’s sake!) and most health-related problems. My least favourite invader, following gastrointestinal issues, is break-ups. God help you if you have a co-worker going through a divorce!
The new world of portable telephones, smart as they are, is turning average people into idiots. Once a phone is attached to their ear, it’s as if a clear-glass booth descends from the heavens and encases them in a private, sound-proof haven where they are free to talk openly about anything and everything. Except there is no such thing as clear-glass booths that descend from the heavens – no, these people are yakking on senselessly forcing everyone to listen in.
This is what these silly narcissists inevitably forget about – the audience. The sea of snared victims sharing the self-imposed telephone booth, cringing with misplaced embarrassment and praying for a power outage. Further, they seem to forget we might not all be compassionate souls. We might, in fact, be opportunists waiting for the chance to make their pathetic lives even more miserable. Yet on they protest, sharing intimate and private details as if they were a contestant being interviewed on a damned reality TV show. No need asking if they’re ready for their close up.
Recently, one of my least favourite colleagues has been going through a divorce, which was of no surprise to me having been subjected to his presence. The dissolution started amicably, as these things normally do nowadays, but quickly transformed into an all out war over child-custody agreements, and of course, money. I have spent hours listening to one side of his conversations with his lawyer, his soon-to-be ex-wife, his father, and his new girlfriend. “I am not a scum-bag!” he shouts regularly back into the receiver. I then spend more precious minutes listening to his moaning after each phone call, where he intrudes upon my cubicle and shares even more juicy tidbits, all with a captive audience around us trying to work.
This man seems to think I actually care about the state of his relationship. What I’m more interested in is the state of his financial portfolio. Thanks to his narcissism, I know how much he has in retirement savings, the appraised value of his house, his car, and how much he spends on food, clothing, and gas. I also know how much he tells his wife he has, and what the difference is. I know when he visits his girlfriend, and where he tells his wife he is going when he is actually visiting his girlfriend. I even know his credit card number.
This man suffers from the latest and most popular of First World problems: he has no idea how unintelligent he is, and believes his opinion counts as fact. Little does he know I’m ready to hit “Send” on the prepared anonymous email sitting in a Draft folder, which contains actual facts his wife’s lawyer would be extremely interested in reading. That, and the knowledge that I’m an avid bidder on e-Bay, and more than happy to allow his credit card to lead me to victory in winning a coveted replica of an East German torture device.
Long story short: you aren’t as interesting as you think you are… unless it services someone else’s thirst for revenge and/or pocket book, so remember that next time your phone rings at the office.
First Post in Business & Finance Blog
First Post in Business & Finance Blog
The Old Fart’s Blog
ZOOMERS ???
The Old Fart Magazine to Arise from its Ashes and Enter Cyberspace: Declares War
Curmudgeons Awake!
When this magazine was a regular paper periodical in the good old days we were abominated by some for the use of the word “Fart” in our name. But it seems that today, in the 21st century, the bad word in our name is “Old”.
That wonder boy of television, the ever-youthful Moses Znaimer, inventor of MuchMusic and other things, has declared ‘old’ a bad word. In a recent interview he declared: “Old is not a good word, and variations on the concept of old make people squirm, especially since we came out of a culture that wildly overemphasized youth, so we have an entire generation that is kind of programmed to resist the concept of age.”
So he has coined a new word for old people, Zoomers – talk about squirm – and threatens to produce a magazine of that name, actually the first issue, I just noticed yesterday has hit the streets: the innocent Wayne Gretzky, aged 47, is on the cover. We have not seen a copy but are informed that there are nine photographs of Moses in the first issue. Maybe he should have called the magazine Exodus. Go to www.mosesznaimer.com for his biography and you will find that so terrified of age is Moses that he does not give his age or the year of his birth.
Let’s be clear – The Old Fart Magazine, for and by curmudgeons, was not and nor is this site intended for or restricted to old people. Indeed, we have a nine year-old curmudgeonly nephew, one Dashiell, and it will be difficult to keep him off the site if he finds out about it. Who has not known a seven-year old curmudgeon? And they come in all genders…..
But we do maintain that old is good. Who does not prefer old furniture – me, I am partial to 18th century Georgian, Adams brothers, Hepplewhite etc., not that I am so fortunate as to own any – and who will argue that wine improves with age? There is beauty in age and truth but I go on….
This site is not about praise but condemnation and we declare war on Zoomers. Really, when they first started to grow up, the Boomers, they did have their good points, still do, we had many friends among them, they were useful for getting dope and other things and they were against war and hypocrisy, but boy, after they got a bit older, wow, aren’t they in the White House and on Wall Street? In Ottawa? Enough said. It may have had something to do with them being the first generation not to be toilet trained, parents being the first generation to read Dr. Spock. (Parents were also the first generation to defer to both parents and children. This observation was attributed to Leonard Cohen by my wife – I have never seen it in print, God forbid that I should read all his stuff, but I have always suspected that she was given this nugget of wisdom in bed – that’s the only benefit of being cuckolded by a poet, you get – second-hand – nuggets of wisdom).
But we are not opposed to them as a generation, we are not going to take on the whole f’ing generation: only those who embrace Zoomerism are going to have to bear our wrath and contempt and this apparently includes all members of the Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP) which Moses seems to have taken over. You fools.
Any comments please send to curmudgeons@theoldfartwebpage.com . You can sign your own name or a nom de plume, we don’t care, but we would like to know the municipality and country you are writing from. We don’t promise to print it and if we do, it may have a limited shelf life.
And remember, as Polonius remarked to Hamlet, brevity is the soul of wit. As Dorothy Parker remarked – elsewhere on these pages – it also the soul of lingerie but we don’t want over-zealous curmudgeons forwarding pictures demonstrating the latter – there are other websites for those, but perhaps we should consider illustrating the Dorothy Parker pages with one or two examples.
Hey, that’s an idea, a contest, the first Old Fart Web Page contest, – winner to get one of the black walking sticks with a cigar case in the handle, designed by Soheil Mosun, from the original Old Fart Magazine mail order list, retail value $200 – they cost over $100 to manufacture – for best illustration of Dorothy Parker’s dictum that brevity is the soul of lingerie – entries to be exhibited discreetly on the Dorothy Parker page. How about it?
Write to us at curmudgeons@oldfartwebpage.com and attach your scanned entry. Remember most photographs are under copyright, so to ensure that we don’t get sued, take the photograph yourself, and get the model’s permission of course to enter the contest. We have to limit the contest to original photographs, I am informed by curmudgeonly lawyers. And please no smut, or pictures of guys – ugh!
When we have 100 entries we will close the contest and ask readers to vote for the winner of The Dorothy Parker Memorial “Brevity is the Soul of Lingerie” Contest.
Good luck, old farts.