Dumbidity

Judy in de Skies: Cryin'

Bummer. John Gourrier, better known as John Fred of John Fred and the Playboys, died today in New Orleans at 63 of a kidney-related alilment (same as Sandra Dee, except it doesn't ryhmn).

One of the handful of Baton Rougeans to ever succeed in getting a Top 40 hit, he topped the charts in 1968 with "Judy in Disguise."

He came back after the fame and glory to be the famous guy everybody back home could claim to know. I had a teacher way back when whose husband had played with John Fred. Many could make that claim over the years because he stayed active in the musical world and also found time to coach high school baseball. Most of the kids never knew he was a big shot until their parents told them.

Step aside Judy, now it's Johnny in de skies.

*dons glasses*
*nibbles at lemonade pie without any appetite*

Baby, What'd I Say?

More grim news this week. Ray Charles won't be singing "America the Beautiful" at President Reagan's funeral.

News broke this afternoon that Ray departed this life at age 73.

I like Ray's music in a general sense because it's very uplifting in spite of the sometimes depressing subject matter - disappointment, heartbreak, tragedy. In that way, Ray Charles and Ronald Reagan were similar because they both communicated hopefulness.

Ray's rendition of "America the Beautiful" is one of the most moving pieces of music I've ever heard, second perhaps to the Ave Maria, and I never heard Ray sing that. If we could all sing it like him, it would be our national anthem. Take a second to imagine the Olympic Medal ceremony - kinda cool, eh?

G'night Ray.

Unwanted Credit Card Solicitation Solution

"Kid, we found your name on an envelope at the bottom of a half a ton of garbage, and just wanted to know if you had any information about it." I said "Yes Sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie, I put that envelope under that garbage." - Arlo Guthrie, Alice's Restaurant, 1967

My friends, I have decided that the purveyors of the many and varied credit-card solicitations sent by mail are richly deserving of a little of their own. Interested?

Good! Follow along...

Do you remember saving box tops off of certain cereals or other kid-oriented products so you could send them in and get some really great thing in the mail that would break as soon as you breathed on whatever it was wrapped in? I do. I'd generally mail some off about the time school let out for the summer and watch for the mailman every day for 6-8 weeks until summer was almost over so I could break it.

This missive doesn't really have much to do with sending in box tops, but what little it does have to do with it called to mind that childhood memory.

We get, on average, 4 to 6 hundred thousand dollars worth of pre-approved credit lines a month at my house. I get solicited, my Dear Sweet Wife gets solicited, various schmedlets get solicited, and a person who exists only because some marketing company garbled me in their database about 15 years ago gets solicited. So far, none of the cats or houseplants get solicited, but any day now...

To deal with all the exposure to our crebit rating, I bought an implement of destruction (a cross-cut shredder) and we cull through the several pieces per day to ensure that anything with our names and the provisional preapproved numericals go in the "shread" pile (I remember a box labeled like that at a jobsite for about 3 years or more).

The fact that the onus is on us to stress the destruction of something we didn't request that can give an unarthurized party the ability to obtain crebit in MY NAME is an issue for another day, except - like the box top vignette above - it factors in here a bit as a motive.

RESOLVED:

WHEREAS multiple related and unrelated parties (of the first part) are highly desirous that I, Me and/or Mine (parties of the second part) carry, maintain and otherwise owe until death or shortly thereafter, multiple credit facilities carrying high balances at usurious rates of interest;

WHEREAS multiple credit facility solicitations may be received by the parties of the second part via the United States Postal Service;

WHEREAS said credit facility solicitations have not been and are still not desired by the recipient addressed;

WHEREAS said recipient is unduly burdened with the secure disposal of such items containing personal information as well as other printed matter not observed to have been personalized;

WHEREAS said undue burden is a royal pain in the neck and affects the quality of life of the aforementioned party of the second part, i.e. the individual(s) addressee, real or imagined;

WHEREAS said royal pain in the neck may be ameliorated and quality of life improved with applied humor and resulting laughter;

NOW THEREFORE, said recipient does declare his intent to party like the second part and:

1. Select one (1) or more ( >1) parties of the first part by design or random or because it provides the largest Postage Paid Return Envelope with the best-tasting moisture activated paper adhesive;

2. Decollate, sort and assemble items and articles from the various unrequested solicitations from the parties of the first part which do not contain any personal or other identifying information of the party of the second part;

3. Insert said collections and assemblies into the aforementioned Postage Paid Return-Reply Envelope and seal with real spit, saliva, slobber or other secretion at the recipient's sole discretion;

4. Submit resulting sealed assembly f.o.b. drop box, for delivery by the United States Postal Service according to its regular schedule without request for return receipt;

5. Project brief, mildly vengeful vibes to all parties of the first part, real or imagined, with intent to inflict infinitesimal damage to said parties bottom lines in lieu of the actual bottoms of such executives who may, from time to time, conceive, contrive or approve such unrequested solicitations.

Similar to the tactical philosophy of Arlo Guthrie's anti-draft antics in Alice's Restaurant, I figure if one household a day sends a bunch of clutter to MBNA, they'll think he's crazy. If two households a day send a chorus of Alice's Restaurant to Citiwank, they'll think they're uncreditworthy. But if three households - imagine, THREE households a day - send the useless refuse to Ban Cone, they'll think it's a movement!

Yessir, the schmed’s Household Credit-Card Return-Reply Refuse Massacree would sweep the nation and the diminishing returns, coupled with the surge in postage fees accrued, might just stop 'em from cluttering my mailbox with junk.

The "C" is for "Convicted"

This has blown the top off my Moronometer:

A gangsta rappa name of C-Murder was convicted yesterday by a Gretna, LA jury of 2nd degree murder in the shooting death of one of his misguided fans in a nightclub.

The AP shares a succint version here.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune goes into more detail.

Mr. Murder was born Corey Miller, the brother of Percy Miller aka Master-P, originally of New Orleans and run out of state for, among other things, defaulting on loans. C-Murder was one of his posse hanging at his crib in the exclusively posh gated community full of quite wealthy, mostly white folks, Country Club of Louisiana. The fine residents of that exclusively posh gated community, I'm afraid, expressed some concern when he first moved in, but once he burned through all his money, they all settled down and went back to business deals on the fairways.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and figure C-Murder's jackbooted, thug attorneys are going to file an appeal on the life sentence the judgemental judge imposed upon poor Mr. Murder. I'll inch way out on the limb and figure one of the many grounds upon which they'll base said appeal is that the jury was unfairly influenced by hearing their poor client referred to as (you know what's coming, wait for it)...

C-MURDER!

And that sad bit of packaging would be the fault of whom? Why Corey Miller.

That surpasses the the guy with the bumper sticker that says "Bad Cop - No Doughnut" on the back of his souped-up, tricked-out vee-hickle who wonders why he's always getting ticketed for the most nit-picky stuff.

When I get the Moronometer fixed, I think I'll have it calibrated on a non-linear scale like Richter did for Earthquakes.

Memo to Ronald, Wendy and HRH: Take a Note from the Music Industry

I read with concern today the news item appearing in the Stevens Point Journal about the decline in the sale of french fries in fine eateries across our nation. If the quotes attributed to the spokesbeings for your respective chains are accurate, this decline has had a significant negative affect on your revenues.

Is this true? Have sales of fried potatoes really plummeted over 10% from last year? This appears to be a crisis at a time in our nation's history that requires strong, decisive action to preserve our economy. And it appears this decline is your own fault:

McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's, all watching fry sales decline, helped bring this upon themselves - and the food industry. With entree salad sales rocketing and burger sales dropping, french fry sales have hit the skids.

"For every burger not sold, there's a bag of fries not sold," said Harry Balzer, who oversaw NPD's study.

You've also failed to factor in significant changes that have been taking place right under your very noses:

* Healthier eating habits. Concerns about obesity have nudged consumers away from many fried foods. A large McDonald's fries has 540 calories. Some consumers also are put off by the artery-clogging trans-fatty acids in most french fry oils. McDonald's has delayed previously announced plans to remove trans fat from its frying oil.

* Value menu mania. The "perceived value" of two burgers for $2 beats a burger, fries and drink combo, Lombardi said.

* Salad mania. Entree salad sales are hot, and few salad eaters order fries as a side.

* Cancer concerns. Some recent studies have linked fries with a potentially cancer-causing chemical called acrylamide.

* Aging baby boomers. Many feel more content with soup and salad at Panera Bread than a fast-food burger and fries.

* Fried is so 2002. Popularity for non-fried food is growing. Subway has no fryers - and more U.S. stores than McDonald's.

(emphasis mine)

It's bad enough that your lax management has allowed this to happen to your own revenues, but do you understand how this affects the independent potato farmers? These noble tillers of the earth toil in the soil to serve as the very foundation of the nation itself - and you people are letting them down.

It may be too late to readjust your marketing and product paradigms to recover the revenues in the short term, and for that you will surely suffer the wrath of your stockholders.

But take heart and follow the bold trail blazed by the Music Industry. They too sat idly by while their market dynamics changed drastically - fiddled (pun intended) while it burned, so to speak. Their revenues dropped, their shareholders wrathed and their CEOs, COOs and CFOs had no choice but to consult their attorneys.

The solution? If you can't get your market to go out and buy your stuff voluntarily, get your jackbooted, thug lawyers on it and get the money by SUING 'em for it! It's working like a charm for the RIAA - they even settled out of court for two large with a twelve-year old little girl - after scaring the living doody out of her with a lawsuit!

This could really catch on and help just about every troubled industry - at least until the political backlash hits or the jackbooted, thug lawyers suck all the money out of every man, woman and child in Consumerland, whichever comes first.

Firestone should sue all the people that dissed their Wilderness AT tires that had such an unfair reputation for blowing out and inconveniencing unreasonably demanding car owners.

AOL should sue all the people that dropped them like hot potatoes (sorry about the pun there, guys) for broadband web access when all those trillions of unused free hours were still in the "FREE-TAKE ONE" bins at Wal-sMarts, office supply houses, music shops and Circle K's.

The Tobacco Industry should mount a cooperative effort with several of the several states and municipalities that have enacted punitive tobacco taxes to fund children's health, education and welfare initiatives to recover sales lost to effective smoking cessation clinics and Indian Nation Reservation sales.

Nope, you can't just sit there hoping consumers will snap out of it and revert to their old ways - you'll have to grab them by the ankles, turn them upside down and shake them loose from your money...

...legally, in court, with a suitable percentage going to the aforementioned jackbooted, thug lawyers.

You wouldn't want them to sue their market, would you?