Dowbrigade

When we teach Marketing in one of our business classes,
along with Product, Price, Promotion, Placement we
add a fifth "P": Packaging. And when introducing the topic we always
use the same example as the paragon of perfection in packaging – the
banana.

Think of it. Unique shape, vaguelly phallic but in
a colorful, kid-friendly sort of way. Bright, primary color, with built
in spotting to indicate its present point on the ripeness scale. Disposable,
100% biodegradable cover. So easy to open even a three-year-old can
handle it.

All in all, an iconic, timeless masterpiece of design,
an exmple to all us mere mortals that the original Grand Designer not
only knew what she was doing, but had a firm grasp of the value of
simplicity and elegance in the greatest designs. As well as a swell
sense of humor.

The banana was a perfect package, except for one thing
– squishability. Now, thanks to Paul Stemple and the Banana
Bunker,
squishability may be a thing of the past.  Check
out this essay in today’s Boston
Globe:

Riding the Red Line home from the airport recently,
I was tapped on the arm by a woman who turned out to be the bearer
of very bad news.

A downward glance confirmed it: my backpack was smeared with a gooey,
chunky, yellowish substance that, to my mortification, also coated
my pants, my shoes, the floor of the train, and the seat next to mine.
The muck, I realized, was the remnants of a banana I had tucked into
the side pocket of my backpack earlier that day. It had slipped through
a tear in the mesh and — during two flights, one layover, a shuttle
bus ride, and a subway trip — been smashed to oblivion.

essay from the Globe

homepage of the Banana Bunker

The police have arrested a Penacook woman who advertises
herself online as an "Amazing Goddess" and charged her with
prostitution. According to the police, Suzan Belanger, 38, was running
a prostitution
business called Amazing Alternatives from 324 Village St. in downtown
Penacook.

Belanger said yesterday she intends to fight the charge. While she admits
she received money after sex with clients, she said that the money was
a donation and that the sex was not for physical gratification.

Belanger said she was called to sexual healing, which she said involves
oral sex and intercourse, by God and fairies.

Belanger has been a healer, she said, since January,
and she initially advertised herself on the website Craigslist.com
under erotic services. She opened her shop in Penacook in mid-March.
She said God reassured her that her business was legal.

from the Concord Monitor

Belanger rests comfortably in a tradition almost as
old as human religion – the Temple Prostitute. Enlightenment through
Sex, and Sex through Enlightenment, may be an idea whose time has come again,
depending on who wins the next Presidential election….

New York, NY (June 28, 2006)–In a country known
more for conflict than conservation, a joint effort by the government
of Afghanistan and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and funded
by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has
been launched to protect the region’s unique wildlife and develop the
country’s first official system of protected areas.

"This is an important and exciting moment for Afghanistan, which
contains some of the most beautiful wild lands in Asia," said Peter
Zahler, Assistant Director for WCS’ Asia Program and a researcher in
the region
for over a decade. "Conservation is critical for recovery and stability
in a country where so many people directly depend on local natural resources
for their survival. Conservation can also inspire local communities and
even neighboring countries to work together to protect the region’s natural
heritage."

Specifically, five areas being considered by this
project for protected area status include the Pamir-I-Buzurg, Little
Pamir, and the Waghjir Valley–all located in the high Pamirs in an
area called the Wakhan Corridor–and Bande Amir and Ajar Valley, located
in the Central Plateau region.

from the Wildlife
Conservation Society

Is it possible to simultaneously wage an all-out
war against an implacable enemy, and protect the environment in which
the battle is beng waged? Possible or not, there is something deeply
disturbing in the whole idea..

On Tuesday morning, a retired Catholic priest and
two veterans put on clown suits, busted into a nuclear missile launch
facility, and began beating the silo cover with hammers, in an attempt
to take the Minuteman III missile off-line. Seriously.

The activists used bolt-cutters to get into the E-9
Minuteman II facility, located just northwest of the White Shield,
North Dakota. "Using a sledgehammer and household hammers, they
disabled the lock on the personnel entry hatch that provides access
to the warhead and they hammered on the silo lid that covers the 300
kiloton nuclear warhead," the group said in a statement. "The
activists painted ‘It’s a sin to build a nuclear weapon’ on the face
of the 110-ton hardened silo cover and the peace activists poured their
blood on the missile lid."

This was all done while wearing face paint, dunce caps, misfitting
overalls, and bright yellow wigs.

from DefenseTech.org

Brings to mind the good old days of Jerry Rubin
and the Yippies, who ran
a Pig for President in ’68, doesn’t it? Still, we’re not sure dressing in
clown costumes is the best way to get people to take you seriously…

ONCE
again, an online news outlet has published details about secret rooms
in AT&T buildings where government spies are
said to be gaining access to millions of private e-mail messages and
other Internet traffic. This time, it’s Salon, which on Wednesday published
an article featuring two former AT&T employees who asserted that
the company had maintained a secured room in its network operations
center in Bridgeton, Mo., near St. Louis, since 2002 (salon.com).

AT&T instituted a new privacy policy this week
stating that the company, not customers, owns customers’ private data.

from the New York Times

And these are the people pushing legislation through
Congress giving them control of the Internet
of our future.

PETA activists are cracking the whip on Springfield-based
Merriam-Webster, demanding that the definition of "circus" be rewritten
to label the big top as cruel to "captive" animal performers.

The dictionary currently defines a circus as "an arena often covered by
a tent and used for variety shows, usually including feats of physical skill,
wild animal
acts, and performances by clowns."

But People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals – known for caging naked women
to protest the wearing of fur and protesting the living conditions of pet store
iguanas – wants a new entry.

PETA’s proposal defines a circus as a "spectacle that relies on captive
animals" who are "forced to perform tricks under the constant threat
of punishment." It also wants the definition to say that "modern circuses
include only willing human performers."

from the Boston Herald

As an English teacher and a linguist, we are shocked that PETA would
take their campaign to the editorial offices of a dictionary, of all
places.  While opposition to animal cruelty is all well and good,
applying political editorial alterations to dictionary definitions
would be somewhat akin to publishing a cookbook with politically correct
admonitions after key ingredients (Beat 4 eggs **WARNING – Consumption
of more than two eggs per week can lead to dangerous levels of cholesterol**
Next, melt 8 tbs of butter (1 stick) **WARNING – butter contains saturated
fats, which have been shown to produce hardening of the arteries**,
etc.).

Hey, PETA, quit messing with the English language! The Merriman
Webster dictionary happens to be our favorite on-line
dictionary to
use with our students because of the concise definitions and
the free and fast pronunciation button – click it and hear a clear,
US Evening News prouncation of any word. But it is not WIKIPEDIA. No
user editing.

If you feel that some circuses are cruel and exploitive, by all means
expose them – hold a press conference, publish shocking pictures on
the internet, organize a protest, write your Congresspeople, march
outside the Circus sites, create a blog, sneak cameras behind the scenes
and
post
the video
on
a videoblog,
make a movie, publish a book, a pamphlet, a tract, a flyer, a glossy
magazine or your own dictionary, organize a concert, enlist animal-loving
celebrities,
go on Oprah, but for Webster’s sake, leave the language alone.

PETA activists are cracking the whip on Springfield-based
Merriam-Webster, demanding that the definition of "circus" be rewritten
to label the big top as cruel to "captive" animal performers.

The dictionary currently defines a circus as "an arena often covered by
a tent and used for variety shows, usually including feats of physical skill,
wild animal
acts, and performances by clowns."

But People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals – known for caging naked women
to protest the wearing of fur and protesting the living conditions of pet store
iguanas – wants a new entry.

PETA’s proposal defines a circus as a "spectacle that relies on captive
animals" who are "forced to perform tricks under the constant threat
of punishment." It also wants the definition to say that "modern circuses
include only willing human performers."

from the Boston Herald

As an English teacher and a linguist, we are shocked that PETA would
take their campaign to the editorial offices of a dictionary, of all
places.  While opposition to animal cruelty is all well and good,
applying political editorial alterations to dictionary definitions
would be somewhat akin to publishing a cookbook with politically correct
admonitions after key ingredients (Beat 4 eggs **WARNING – Consumption
of more than two eggs per week can lead to dangerous levels of cholesterol**
Next, melt 8 tbs of butter (1 stick) **WARNING – butter contains saturated
fats, which have been shown to produce hardening of the arteries**,
etc.).

Hey, PETA, quit messing with the English language! The Merriman
Webster dictionary happens to be our favorite on-line
dictionary to
use with our students because of the concise definitions and
the free and fast pronunciation button – click it and hear a clear,
US Evening News prouncation of any word. But it is not WIKIPEDIA. No
user editing.

If you feel that some circuses are cruel and exploitive, by all means
expose them – hold a press conference, publish shocking pictures on
the internet, organize a protest, write your Congresspeople, march
outside the Circus sites, create a blog, sneak cameras behind the scenes
and
post
the video
on
a videoblog,
make a movie, publish a book, a pamphlet, a tract, a flyer, a glossy
magazine or your own dictionary, organize a concert, enlist animal-loving
celebrities,
go on Oprah, but for Webster’s sake, leave the language alone.

An ocean speed limit proposed by the federal government
yesterday could help protect endangered right whales, but is expected
to face stiff opposition from the shipping industry.

The migration paths of the North Atlantic right whales significantly
overlap with major East Coast shipping lanes, and ship strikes and fishing
gear entanglement are the commonest causes of death for the whales.

from the Boston Globe

At the risk of sounding stupid
(a risk the Dowbrigade has been know to take on in his sleep) can
we ask
why
ships
don’t
use some sort of high-frequency warning horn to tell those pesky
whales to get out of the way? We always thought that whales had exceptional
underwater hearing, what with the Whale Songs of the Seas and all
that.

With all of the pork barrel projects getting milked
like zits on an adolescent by lawmakers of all stripes and political
persuasions these days (see this
Boston Herald article for juicy details
on line items such as $150,000 for a UMass study of the winter moth
worm,$50,000 to restore a stagecoach in Barre and $40,000 for Seine
Boat replicas in Gloucester), one would think the government could
spare a couple of hundred grand to figure out what kind of sub-sea
sounds
whales just hate, to clear them out of the area. Hell, if we have an
"ultrasonic teenage repellant", why not one for whales?

How much could it cost to mount one of these sonic
cow-catchers on the prow of every cargo ship and liner plying the Atlantic
shipping lanes. A lot less than this proposed "speed limit"! How much
would it cost world business and shipping concerns if all of our steel,
Toyotas and fashion footware took longer to get to the US because of
a mid-ocean speed limit! Think of the rock-hard avocados and rotting
mangos we would be facing on supermarket shelves! Think of the added
costs in labor and maintenance when 10-day trips become 15-day trips.

Think of the fiendish complexity alone of the necessary
efforts to enforce the limit! Maritime troopers on jet skis flagging
down million-ton oil tankers? Submarine speed-traps hidden beneath
the waves? A fleet of confiscated cigarette boats passing out infractions?

How about we impose a speed limit on the WHALES, huh?
They’re supposed to be smart – aren’t their brains even bigger than
ours? Why can’t they slow down by 5 or 10 knots, and watch where they
are going? What’s their hurry, they late for choir practicce? They aren’t on the clock.  What
right do they have to impede the wheels (or screws, in this case) of
commerce and cost tax-paying businesses millions?

We think it is time for the Whales of the World to
step up and do their part to keep the shipping lanes free. We all have
to share this planet, after all.

Nobody wants to see the whales get hurt.  But
of you insist on playing in traffic, sooner or later you will be hit.

Massachusetts has "the world’s costliest health care," with
average annual spending above $7,000 per person, according to an analysis
of federal data to be released today.

The report by Boston University’s Alan Sager and Deborah Socolar, health
care advocates at the university’s School of Public Health, is based on
state-by-state 2004 expenditures disclosed last month by the federal Centers
for Medicare and Medicaid Services .

The findings also show that health care spending in the state increased
faster than in the rest of the country from 2000 to 2004, the period covered
by the data.

from the Boston Globe

Lately the Dowbrigade has been studying the Massachusetts health care
system up close and personal. Last Friday we let our unmentionables
go fifteen minutes early because we
had a doctor’s
appointment
over in
Cambridge.
Five months
after
surgery for a tear in our diaphragm through which our stomach had migrated
from
our abdomen to our chest, we were still experiencing an assortment
of stomach pains, nasty gas and sulphur burps.

Our long-time Primary Care Physician is a moderately overweight laid-back
middle-aged Jewish guy, like the Dowbrigade, with a penchant for mixing
work and
pleasure on
extended trips to exotic locales.  Luckily, he had a cancellation and
was able to see us that week.

As soon as we got to the office we were informed by the receptionist secretary
that he was running late – had not yet arrived, in fact – due to an emergency
at the hospital. Such is life, we thought, glad we had brought the New
York Times and a pencil.

45 minutes later the doctor finally hurried in. Half an hour after that
we were invited into an examining room and 15 minutes later the doctor
finally came in.

"Sorry I’m running late. I was at the hospital. I just had a patient die,
suddenly. He wasn’t expected to die, but he just took a turn for the worst,
and in two hours, he was gone."

"It must be difficult," we ventured, wondering what the poor bastard had
died from. However, wanting to move the appointment along, and lighten
the mood, we didn’t ask.  Instead we made some small talk about Ecuador,
where the doctor had recently advised the government on a UN-funded supplemental
health care program.

We agreed that the people were nicer and the official corruption more
endemic than in any of the other South American nations we had visited.

Finally
we got down to business. We have been having digestive problems lately,
involving socially questionable symptoms such as voluminous farting
and
burping. Five months ago we were operated on for a hiatal hernia – a hole
in our diaphragm through which our stomach had migrated from our abdomen
into our chest.

To put everything back where it belonged and tie it down took popping
us open like a lobster tail and mucking around quite a bit. Our stay at
the local City Hospital, whose precise name we have been advised by counsel
not to mention, was a nightmare involving a historic blizzard, a seven-hour
surgery, awakening in an equipment storeroom, mind-boggling post-operative
pain, delirious ravings, pharmacueticals purloined from prostate patients and a 5-foot, 300-lb
female African nurse with a gleaming white human bone on a leather thong
around her neck. We are trying to forget the whole thing.

Of course, our Primary Doc referred us to a new specialist in town, who
of course had his offices in the very hospital from which we had barely
escaped five months earlier.

But we gritted our teeth, found parking in the neighborhood, and shuffled
in to see, believe it or not, Dr. Payne. Turns out we had been at college
together, he two years ahead of us, but in different fields and out paths
never crossed. 30 years later, we got on famously. He ordered blood work,
a three-day course of fecal analysis, a CAT scan and an endoscopy. If those
don’t turn
up
anything they’ll make us eat a radioactive egg and watch it digest.

And there’s the possibility that our current stomach
problems are stress related, caused by worrying about our current financial problems, which
have been created by our stomach problems.

Today we went in for the CAT scan. Same hospital. Luckily it was in the
afternoon, so we didn’t need to miss class. We had to register, dropped
our samples
at
the lab, and waited for our turn in the Big Tube. France and Togo were
just starting a World Cup match on a tiny monitor hanging from the ceiling.
We watched standing next to a middle-aged gentleman from an indeterminate
Caribbean
nation.

It was almost half time when they finally called us. We were led into
the back and given a hospital johnny. We were putting our cloths in a plastic
bag when they asked us if we had been able to get down all two liters of
the chalky white scan-shake.

What shake? we asked. No one, it seemed, had remembered to tell us when
we made the appointment, that we needed to pick up said reactive material
and ingest it all two hours before
our appointment. A simple oversight. No way to continue. We needed to reschedule.

We grew incensed with the ineptitude, incompetence and insulting inefficiency
shown in this simple oversight. Fortunately, we had the presence of mind
to realize that the people in the CAT scan lab had nothing to do with the
mistake. Quickly and silently we dressed, got a new appointment for Monday,
and stomped upstairs to Medical Specialties, where they had given us the
appointment two days earlier.

"Can I help you?"

"Not now, you can’t. But you could have helped me two days ago when I
was in here getting the appointment for my CAT scan.  You could have
told me, for example, I needed to pick up these two bottles of white shake
and drink them before my appointment. Since you didn’t, they couldn’t do
the
scan
and I’ve  wasted half a day!"

"Well, I’m sorry, sir," she was glancing nervously around, looking for
a weapon or a clear escape route. "I wasn’t even here Wednesday."

"Well, I was, and nobody said anything about any white liquid. I had to
find a substitute teacher to teach my class this afternoon, and pay her
out of my own pocket. I’m out $100 and half a day of my life. I missed
my student’s final presentations. Do you have any idea of the effects of
your little "mistakes"?"

"Actually, we’re just admin staff. I’ll try and find a nurse." Her eyes
continued darting around the area, but the office suddenly seemed strangely
silent and empty.

"Never mind" It occurred to us that she might have a silent alarm below
the desk to summon security,and the last thing we wanted at that point
was to spend a few more involuntary hours in that hospital, "But when you  find
the person responsible make sure they know that they wrecked my entire
day and I will come back soon to talk to them about it."

We hate losing our cool, but that damn hospital creeps us out. As we hurried
out to save the White Whale from the Parking Police, we thought back to
the original appointment with our late-running Primary Care Doc.  Why
hadn’t we let well enough alone?

It was on the way out that we finally asked our friend the doctor what
had been the immediate cause of death of his unfortunate patient at the
hospital that day.

He gave me a weird, reluctant look like he wished he could lie but couldn’t,
and answered.

"Ruptured diaphragm"

Too close to home.

Massachusetts has "the world’s costliest health care," with
average annual spending above $7,000 per person, according to an analysis
of federal data to be released today.

The report by Boston University’s Alan Sager and Deborah Socolar, health
care advocates at the university’s School of Public Health, is based on
state-by-state 2004 expenditures disclosed last month by the federal Centers
for Medicare and Medicaid Services .

The findings also show that health care spending in the state increased
faster than in the rest of the country from 2000 to 2004, the period covered
by the data.

from the Boston Globe

Lately the Dowbrigade has been studying the Massachusetts health care
system up close and personal. Last Friday we let our unmentionables
go fifteen minutes early because we
had a doctor’s
appointment
over in
Cambridge.
Five months
after
surgery for a tear in our diaphragm through which our stomach had migrated
from
our abdomen to our chest, we were still experiencing an assortment
of stomach pains, nasty gas and sulphur burps.

Our long-time Primary Care Physician is a moderately overweight laid-back
middle-aged Jewish guy, like the Dowbrigade, with a penchant for mixing
work and
pleasure on
extended trips to exotic locales.  Luckily, he had a cancellation and
was able to see us that week.

As soon as we got to the office we were informed by the receptionist secretary
that he was running late – had not yet arrived, in fact – due to an emergency
at the hospital. Such is life, we thought, glad we had brought the New
York Times and a pencil.

45 minutes later the doctor finally hurried in. Half an hour after that
we were invited into an examining room and 15 minutes later the doctor
finally came in.

"Sorry I’m running late. I was at the hospital. I just had a patient die,
suddenly. He wasn’t expected to die, but he just took a turn for the worst,
and in two hours, he was gone."

"It must be difficult," we ventured, wondering what the poor bastard had
died from. However, wanting to move the appointment along, and lighten
the mood, we didn’t ask.  Instead we made some small talk about Ecuador,
where the doctor had recently advised the government on a UN-funded supplemental
health care program.

We agreed that the people were nicer and the official corruption more
endemic than in any of the other South American nations we had visited.

Finally
we got down to business. We have been having digestive problems lately,
involving socially questionable symptoms such as voluminous farting
and
burping. Five months ago we were operated on for a hiatal hernia – a hole
in our diaphragm through which our stomach had migrated from our abdomen
into our chest.

To put everything back where it belonged and tie it down took popping
us open like a lobster tail and mucking around quite a bit. Our stay at
the local City Hospital, whose precise name we have been advised by counsel
not to mention, was a nightmare involving a historic blizzard, a seven-hour
surgery, awakening in an equipment storeroom, mind-boggling post-operative
pain, delirious ravings, filchered medicinal narcotics and a 5-foot, 300-lb
female African nurse with a gleaming white human bone on a leather thong
around her neck. We are trying to forget the whole thing.

Of course, our Primary Doc referred us to a new specialist in town, who
of course had his offices in the very hospital from which we had barely
escaped five months earlier.

But we gritted our teeth, found parking in the neighborhood, and shuffled
in to see, believe it or not, Dr. Payne. Turns out we had been at college
together, he two years ahead of us, but in different fields and out paths
never crossed. 30 years later, we got on famously. He ordered blood work,
a three-day course of fecal analysis, a CAT scan and an endoscopy. If those
don’t turn
up
anything they’ll make us eat a radioactive egg and watch it digest.

And there’s the possibility that our current stomach
problems are being caused by worrying about our financial problems, which
are being created by our stomach problems.

Today we went in for the CAT scan. Same hospital. Luckily it was in the
afternoon, so we didn’t need to miss class. We had to register, dropped
our samples
at
the lab, and waited for our turn in the Big Tube. France and Togo were
just starting a World Cup match on a tiny monitor hanging from the ceiling.
We watched standing next to a middle-aged gentleman from an indeterminate
Caribbean
nation.

It was almost half time when they finally called us. We were led into
the back and given a hospital johnny. We were putting our cloths in a plastic
bag when they asked us if we had been able to get down all two liters of
the chalky white scan-shake.

What shake? we asked. No one, it seemed, had remembered to tell us when
we made the appointment, that we needed to pick up said reactive material
and ingest it all two hours before
our appointment. A simple oversight. No way to continue. We needed to reschedule.

We grew incensed with the ineptitude, incompetence and insulting inefficiency
shown in this simple oversight. Fortunately, we had the presence of mind
to realize that the people in the CAT scan lab had nothing to do with the
mistake. Quickly and silently we dressed, got a new appointment for Monday,
and stomped upstairs to Medical Specialties, where they had given us the
appointment two days earlier.

"Can I help you?"

"Not now, you can’t. But you could have helped me two days ago when I
was in here getting the appointment for my CAT scan.  You could have
told me, for example, I needed to pick up these two bottles of white shake
and drink them before my appointment. Since you didn’t, they couldn’t do
the
scan
and I’ve  wasted half a day!"

"Well, I’m sorry, sir," she was glancing nervously around, looking for
a weapon or a clear escape route. "I wasn’t even here Wednesday."

"Well, I was, and nobody said anything about any white liquid. I had to
find a substitute teacher to teach my class this afternoon, and pay her
out of my own pocket. I’m out $100 and half a day of my life. I missed
my student’s final presentations. Do you have any idea of the effects of
your little "mistakes"?"

"Actually, we’re just admin staff. I’ll try and find a nurse." Her eyes
continued darting around the area, but the office suddenly seemed strangely
silent and empty.

"Never mind" It occurred to us that she might have a silent alarm below
the desk to summon security,and the last thing we wanted at that point
was to spend a few more involuntary hours in that hospital, "But when you  find
the person responsible make sure they know that they wrecked my entire
day and I will come back soon to talk to them about it."

We hate losing our cool, but that damn hospital creeps us out. As we hurried
out to save the White Whale from the Parking Police, we thought back to
the original appointment with our late-running Primary Care Doc.  Why
hadn’t we let well enough alone?

It was on the way out that we finally asked our friend the doctor what
had been the immediate cause of death of his unfortunate patient at the
hospital that day.

He gave me a weird, reluctant look like he wished he could lie but couldn’t,
and answered.

"Ruptured diaphragm"

Too close to home.

Archaeologists say they have found evidence that in
one respect people were behaving like thoroughly modern humans as early
as 100,000 years ago: they were apparently decorating themselves with
a kind of status-defining jewelry – the earliest known shell necklaces.

If this interpretation is correct, it means that human self-adornment,
considered a manifestation of symbolic thinking, was practiced at least
25,000 years earlier than previously thought.

from the New York Times

Now wait one Paleolithic minute! How can they be so sure that these
three shells with holes in them were the product of human craftsmanship
and not just happenstances of nature?  Barring of course the possibility
that they are going by the snake-like engravings resembling the letter
"S".

We mean, those Nassarius gibbosulus shells are just about the most common
shells in the world. There must be literally billions of them sloshing
around in the ocean all the time. A lot of them must end up with roughly
round perforations in their centers.

Of course, we are not completely brain dead. We realize that
the lithologists think they can identify the unmistakable markings
of human
craftsmanship, but can they really? These primitive human craftspeople,
if they existed, used what for tools? Rocks! And out of the billions
of rocks and billions of shells in the sea, don’t the odds favor, eventually,
a series of knocks of stone against shell which exactly duplicate the
efforts of our putative caveman? On the theory of a million monkeys at
a million typewriters?

Although we are not ready to junk evolution and the fossil record, it
seems sane to approach scientific speculation of this sort with a certain
skepticism.

The Dowbrigade is old enough to remember
when we had more time than media. Long hot summer afternoons when we
ran out of the paperback Ace and Tor science fiction novels we borrowed by the armload
from Mother’s mysterious friend Betty Mae, nights after curfew with
a flashlight under covers sick of rereading the same Dr. Strange and
Green Lantern and Magnus Robot Hunter issues, long weird nights in our
dorm in the Yard, wired and twisted, listening to the national anthem
following the late show on the last TV station to sign off, six long
empty hours til dawn. VCR’s, Cable TV and personal computers were years
from being invented, and physical media like books, comics and LPs were
expensive for a kid.

How times have changed! Gainful employment and the
internet opened access to far more types and numbers of media than we
had even
imagined existed during our formative years. We first realized during
the original Napster gold rush that one could download media at a much
higher rate than you could consume it, leading to media glut. Bit torrent, podcasting, video blogging and collection nets, together with huge, cheap hard drives, only exacerbated the problem.

Our apartment and our office are piled high with unread
or annotated newspapers, magazines and academic journals. There are overflowing
bookcases in every room, with books stacked two high and two deep on
most shelves, and horizontal piles on top. There are racks, piles and stacks of CDs and
DVDs, drawers full of VCR tapes, and hard drives internal and external,
with and without computers, on all surfaces.

And in addition, almost to our chagrin, we find ourselves
with a "real" life that we rather like – a job we enjoy, a lovely and
lively wife, plenty of free time to exercise and play games. On
nice days, we can’t bring ourselves to sit in front of a screen anymore.
We finally have a surfeit of fantastic media, and a deficit of idle hours
to enjoy them.

Plus, like Zippy, we just can’t stay awake for three
or four days at a stretch like we used to, back in the day. Nowadays,
we have trouble making it to the end of the 11 pm news. It took us three
days to watch Da Vinci Code cuz we wouldn’t fire it up til Norma went
to sleep, and soon we were getting verrrry sleeepppyyy. And now the World Cup is wreaking havoc
with our nap schedule.

Of course, even today there are people in the world who have more time than media. Pockets of poverty throughout the developed world and oceans of humanity in Asia. Practically the entire continent of Africa. People incarcerated, hospitalized, militarized or otherwise institutionalized. Entire families who voluntarily eschew modern media as uncouth, unaestetic or corrupt. Of them, we can only say, may God have mercy on their souls. We are sure they feel the same way about us.

It is both a blessing and a curse to live in times so
interesting, and to be so easily amused…