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I have a friend, who, for the purposes of this broadcast, wants to be known by the alias David Melman.
Melman is unhappy because his rabbit-ear antenna gets better T.V. reception than his cable, for which he is paying 40 bucks a month. So Melman calls the cable company and complains and is told the service crew will be there Thursday, between 8A.M and noon... (comedic pause) on Tuesday of next week.
Once there the service guys, of course can't fix his cable so Melman demands to speak to the President of the cable company, telling the receptionist, he, Melman, is a major stockholder and is so disgusted with the service he is receiving, he is seriously considering dumping the considerable Melman holdings in the cable company.
Guess what? All of a sudden the receptionist is saying "Yes sir, Mr. Melman. We are doing everything we can Mr. Melman." And the next day, Melman, gets a call from the President of the cable company who says, "Mr. Melman. What a pleasure to talk to you. Please Mr. Melman, pick a time, any time, when our best people can come out and fix your cable reception problem."
Melman picked 11:08 A.M. and at exactly 11:08 A.M. the service crew knocked on his door... but of course still couldn't fix the reception problem.
Before Melman could pick up the phone to complain in came another call from the President of the cable company.
This time Melman tells the President his cable company stinks because he isn't paying his workers enough and that higher salaries would produce a higher quality product. And then Melman says that Warren Buffet and he, Melman, believe in buying and holding positions only in solid companies who are in it for the long haul. The President said he would consider raising salaries.
It's unfair that the average customer, the non-stockholder can't get the same treatment from corporations that major stockholders get... which makes it so sweet that Melman, is not a major stockholder in this or any company. The only assets Melman can actually claim are a vivid imagination and an uncommon bravado when dealing with authority over the phone.
As Bob Dylan once said... just kidding, I don't need a Dylan quote here. The point is I don't think claiming you are a major stockholder when you aren't is against the law and it works. But if you try it don't use the name Melman. I've already done that.
Did you see that story in the paper about the Norwegian woman who beat up a moose? It's true. She was out skiing through the woods when she was attacked by a full grown moose. Some of you may be surprised that a moose would attack a human and I blame Bullwinkle for making us think mooses are well intentioned dunderheads but actually the moose, as a species, is very anti-human.
In fact I saw video of a moose attacking this poor guy who had just walked out of a college bookstore in Alaska. How weird must that have been? He's in the middle of a big college campus carrying a plastic bag full of periodicals and a moose stomps him. If you're just leaving a place that sells the Wall Street Journal, you should at the very least, be safe from moose attack, right? Well, apparently not.
And these are tough animals. A snowmobiler in Minnesota ran into a moose at 60 mph and the collision destroyed his snowmobile. The moose was only annoyed.
So anyway, this woman in Norway is pinned down by an angry moose and it would have killed her had she not thought quickly and stuck her fingers in one moose nostril and her thumb in the other and squeezed the inside of the moose nose. And the moose thought, "Ouch. I've never been touched there before. What strange powers the cross-country skiing animal has. I'm getting out of here." She beat up a moose. The moose is tough but the inside of the moose nose is not tough... it's big, you could hide your wallet in there... but it's not tough.
What's my point? You young people going to college, don't ever give up. No matter what the odds are, no matter how tough your classes look, you can do it. Even if your opponent out weighs you by 600 pounds and has a rack of antlers, you can beat up the moose. You are the future. Study hard. It's not the size of the fingers in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the fingers in the nose of the moose that you can beat up. Good luck with calculus and when you get out of school down screw up the country.
Did you see that story in the paper about the guy in Japan who is willing to let people hit him for $9.00 a minute?
This poor guy, Akira Hareruya, is 1.3 million in debt after a business collapse. And because bankruptcy is so stigmatized in Japan, this former professional boxer, is doing whatever he can to pay back his creditors.
Well, he's not doing whatever he can, he's going out onto the streets of Tokyo and allowing people to smack him in the face. So, I guess he is doing just one of the things he can to pay off his debts. Factually, there are many other things that he could do, dress up like a rabid chicken and threaten to chase people if they don't toss him a few yen, comes immediately to mind.
Anyway, the rules are Akira gets to wear headgear and a mouthpiece and can't hit back but he can bob and weave. The men, women and children who play smash mouth on Akira's face have to wear boxing gloves and there's no hitting below the belt, elbowing, head butting or hitting him when he is down. Women get in for half-price, I believe children hit for free.
You might think the Japanese would find it disgusting to punch someone so down on his luck but Akira makes as much as $800 a night. So while there is great shame in personal bankruptcy in Japan, there is apparently little shame in pummeling the unfortunate.
America, of course, is just the opposite, we would never allow anyone to go out on the street and get beaten up for money but we have no shame in spending millions of other people's money and then using the legal system to tell our creditors "Ssssppplllltttt..." (blowing the raspberry sound) before we re-structure our debt, buy a new Land Rover and get right back in business.
Maybe we Americans might benefit from, once again, stigmatizing bankruptcy by making the financially irresponsible dress up like, say, a chicken and prance around in front of thousands of people... excuse me, that's the San Diego Chicken and he makes good money doing it. Hmmmm... maybe since Jerry Springer there is just no embarrassing Americans.
Anyway, I don't know which of these two value-systems is better, the Japanese where personal debt is so embarrassing they would allow people to smack them in the face for the opportunity to pay back what they owe or the American where we believe in second chances, but somehow ours results in lower interest rates which is sure a lot better than a poke in the eye.
In the past 6 months my wife and I haven't seen any new movies or been out to dinner but we did recently buy a new vacuum cleaner.
Our old vacuum got to the point it wouldn't ingest anything unless it was hand fed so my wife bought the leading consumer we-test-the-products-so-you-don't-have-to magazine and said let's buy their top vacuum recommendation. But first I go ask the local vacuum repair place about the recommended brand and the guy there says, We love them... because their motors are made out of plastic and melt. I said, How often, and he said, Every time someone plugs one in and uses it. And he said in the past few years that consumer magazine has picked, as their top performers, the vacuums that actually break down the most for which he is very grateful because he is in the melted plastic-motor replacement business.
I didn't know what to think so I call a few other vacuum repair places and they tell me the same exact story and then all recommend the same make of vacuum, a brand I'd never heard of, called Simplicity. So, I go in and get the demo. The salesman rubs baking soda into a carpet, runs the highly recommended plastic-motor melting brand over the carpet, then puts a special black filter over the Simplicity's blow hole and runs it over the carpet. Tons of baking soda on the black filter. And thus, therefore, ergo, the Simplicity literally sucks baking soda right through thick carpet while the leading brand figuratively just,... sucks (not as well as the Simplicity).
And the coolest thing for me about the Simplicity is the non-melting metal motor because it sounds like the Bat-mobile when you start it up.
I half suspect a woman engineered that Bat-mobile sound into my new best friend, the Simplicity 6550, knowing it would make baby-boomer TV-addicts like me vacuum more often. Cleaning is now less a chore and more like zooming out of the Bat-cave heading for Gotham City to fight the forces of evil. Which, in this case, is just dirt and filth left over from our old vacuum cleaner.
Do you know that sound dirt and filth make when they get sucked into a vacuum cleaner? Wouldn't it be pure evil if some company sold a vacuum that had a secret chamber filled with dirt and filth and every time you turned the machine on it made that dirt getting sucked up noise? And if somebody made a vacuum that only sounded like it was devouring dirt and filth, do you think the we-test-the-products-so-you-don't-have-to consumer magazine would catch it? I hope so but if they're listening, some research you people may want to consider in the future, is to call vacuum repair shops. They seem to have a pretty good idea about which vacuums suck in the right way. And which ones just plain... don't. In Los Angeles, I'm Tim Bedore for Marketplace.
I have seen the future of politics and its name is T.J. Rooney.
T.J. Rooney is a state legislator in Pennsylvania who believes computer consumers are being ripped off by the hi-tech industry and wants to, by law, force them to sell a product that either works or you get your money back. And because of T.J. Rooney's computer lemon-law I may move to Philadelphia. Or Hershey, because I love chocolate and hate my computer.
If the computer industry represents the future of America then we're driving into the next millenium in a Pinto. And there's no future in an economy that explodes in flames when you back into a light pole.
Besides the computer business what other industry gets away with making the consumer spend hours fixing their faulty product? Because that's exactly what happens when you buy a PC that doesn't work.
My current computer is the Gateway to Hell. The last in a series of crashes came as a result of the toll-free doormen to the Gateway to Hell giving me the wrong sound card driver to download and install, and that crashed my system and then their solution was to reformat the drive and reload Windows. Like I have nothing better to do with my time AND no files that my life and career and sanity depend on. So I say words to that effect and the tech guy on the phone says "Well, don't you back up your files?" Yes, but not every minute. Do I have to plan on your product screwing up on a regular basis? How long would an elevator company stay in business if you called up and said "Our elevator is stuck on the 14th floor, people are going crazy in there, what are we going to do?" And the elevator company said "Well... you have to re-install it. But we'll help you... over the phone."
I used to think the neo-luddites were crazy but now I long for the days of the IBM Selectric and carbon paper and mimeograph machines. I loved the smell of that purple ink and our educational system was in much better shape when we had to show our work on a separate sheet of paper. What was wrong with caligraphy? What's the point of instant chat and buddylists when in a 30 second phone call you can say everything that it takes you three minutes to type?
The reality of it is, if you are re-installing the operating system on your computer because of their mistakes you are working for them. You're not going to get invited to the company Christmas party but you're doing their job and paying them for the privilege.
So I beseech you now, all hail the future of politics... T.J. Rooney. Take care of us T.J. Give us a computer lemon law. Give us pure, righteous, working computers that won't shove us kicking and screaming through the Gateways of Hell. And if T.J. fails in his efforts then please make me your King. Just for three days. On day one I will fix the computer industry, on day two I will ban astro-turf and domed stadiums and on day three I will demand appropriate leg room for people over 5 feet tall be put back on every plane in America.
Did you hear that story about the couple who drove all the way from Georgia to Valdez, Alaska, and while gassing up their Winnebago an eagle swooped down and made off with their chihuahua? True story.
Unbeknownst to this couple, an eagle lived in a roost high above the gas station where they stopped. The eagle saw the wife walking her chihuahua and thought "Oh Boy. Mexican food!" Actually, that part wasn't in the newspaper. I added that. The eagle probably just responded to the chihuahua as a food source, not as an ethnic food different from say... a French poodle or German shorthair. Although wouldn't it be wild if we found out that eagles who fed, primarily on poodles had higher cholesterol than those that ate schnauzers or springer spaniels?
Anyway, the poor woman sees this eagle take off with her beloved "Schnookie" or "Schnookums" or "Bob" or whatever she called it and she knew her chihuahua wasn't just going for a ride. This eagle had just beaten her chihuahua in the survival of the fittest game. And realizing that, she understandably collapsed in tears, nearly falling into the bucket where they keep the windshield washer thing. I added that.
Her husband, dutifully consoled his wife and then compassionately helped her into the Winnebago. But witnesses said once he was out of his wife's sight behind the Winnebago the husband started jumping up and down and pumping his fist in the air, thrilled his most fervent prayer- somehow that lousy dog would leave this Earth- had finally been answered.
And basically that is how I see our economy. Sometimes it seems like America is cruising down the highway, on vacation, singing happy songs and nothing can stop us. Other times it seems like Alan Greenspan is going to swoop down and steal our pet.
It's such a volatile, eagle eat dog world. Who knows what to do? You buy low and sell high but did you sell at the right high and why didn't you buy and hold and whatever you do you always end up thinking the eagles made off with your chihuahua. And that's not a good feeling... unless you bet on the eagle and are jumping up and down behind your Winnebago.
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copyright 1999 Tim Bedore --- all rights reserved