Business Is Booming

According to an article in the August 30, 2005, New York Times, worldwide weapons sales in 2004 reached nearly $37 billion, their highest level since 2000. A major factor in this impressive performance was the $9.6 billion in arms delivered to Near East and Asian countries last year by the United States, the world's largest supplier of weapons to developing nations. The Times cited a just-released Congressional Research Service report as its source for these figures. The weapons being sold include tanks, combat aircraft, missiles, and submarines. It's reassuring to learn that Uncle Sam continues to dominate such an important and constructive segment of the global economy.

The Joke's on Us

Some years ago, Tad Friend wrote a brilliant, hilarious, and infuriating piece for the New Yorker about Aaron Sorkin's heroic efforts to talk ABC out of imposing a laugh track on his then-new TV show Sports Night. Sorkin, God bless him, was persistent and finally won a partial victory. Partial because ABC agreed to withhold some, but not all, "sweeteners," as laugh tracks are called in the industry, from the show. Still, it was an important victory for the talent over the suits, and it earned Sorkin a spot on my Inspirational Americans list a year before he started West Wing. You see, laugh tracks enrage me so much I never watch a TV show that has them. The Seinfeld phenomenon passed me by because the show was laugh-track polluted. Why get so worked up about this? you may wonder. Well, for openers, I don't like to be insulted, and I doubt you do, either. Network executives quoted in Friend's article insisted that people watching television wouldn't know when to laugh without the laugh track. Is that so? Well, I find it pretty easy to laugh when something strikes me as funny, and I can actually break out laughing without prompts of any kind, surprising as that may be to the arrogant morons who control TV sitcoms. Think of it--these clowns think viewers are so fucking stupid that we wouldn't know to laugh unless they told us when we should. Toward the end of the New Yorker article, Friend unveiled a great quote from Sorkin, who said that adding a laugh track to Sports Night "feels like I've put on an Armani tuxedo, tied my tie, snapped on my cuff links, and the last thing I do before I leave the house is spray Cheez Whiz all over myself." Now, that's funny. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

On the Job

McSweeney's Web site has a fascinating collection of interviews with people who work at "unusual" jobs. Activities director at a retirement home, repo man, certified firewalk instructor, New York City limo driver, and magician's assistant are a few examples. Because the interviewees are not professional writers, candor triumphs over craft. Their answers are often close to the bone and can be quite moving. There's also very funny material here, some of it surely unintended. Here's an excerpt from "On the Night Shift," an interview with a janitor:

The first vacuum I worked with, I called it Maud. She was a good vacuum. You know, life is like vacuuming — you're going along and everything is fine, when suddenly it shuts off and you realize you've run out of cord.

And this is from an interview with a guy who worked at a hot dog restaurant:

Q: What was the name of the place?
A: It was called Yum Yum Better Ice Cream and Hot Dogs.
Q: Was it some kind of hot-dog stand?
A: No, it was a family-run restaurant, run by two brothers who didn't speak to each other. They took turns managing—never at the same time, though.
Q: Did you have to wear a uniform?
A: You had to wear a Yum Yum baseball cap or a paper cap. Also a Yum Yum T-shirt that was just filthy. The people who worked there were not the most ambitious or cleanest people. I remember fighting for the good aprons. The ones that weren't torn or dirty or had strings that were too short.

The Old Man and the Tree

I am standing in a park a few miles from Tofino, British Columbia, on Vancouver Island's Pacific coast. Katie and I went to this stunningly beautiful part of the world to celebrate my 60th birthday, and I can't deny that I was feeling the weight of six decades. But the great tree I'm leaning against reminds me that there are creatures on the earth far older than I am or ever will be.

What Do You Mean?

In this marketing-saturated era, we're bombarded with expressions that actually mean the opposite of what they say. Nowhere is this hypocrisy more prevalent than in the responses we get from "Customer Service" departments, sometimes laughably called "Customer Care." For example, the recorded telephone message insisting that "Your call is important to us" clearly means "We don't care what you think, so why don't you stop bothering us." (If our call really was important to them, they wouldn't park us on interminable hold, hoping we'll get discouraged and hang up.) My theory is that the downgrading of customers began when the financial media started referring to them as "consumers." This institutional term--as in Consumer Price Index--replaced the more personal word "customer," with its suggestion of a living, breathing person who goes to the store to buy something and often knows the store owner. Now, our value has been reduced to that of spending units, whose purchases will be tallied electronically and published (or posted) in charts, tables, and graphs to help marketers sell us more crap we don't need.

Aid and Comfort

A while back, a story made the news about three lions coming to the rescue of a 12-year-old Ethiopian girl, who had been kidnapped by a group of men who wanted to force her into marriage. The lions chased off her abductors and guarded the girl for half a day, until police and her family arrived to take her home. At that point, the lions ended their protective custody and departed. I see no reason not to believe this story. Animals, unlike humans, are not distracted by incessant mental chatter. The lions sensed a helpless creature in trouble and came to her rescue. The next time you're tempted to think of humans as superior to "lesser" animals, ask yourself how you would have responded in this situation.

Drowning in BS

Harry G. Frankfurt, a professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University, has written a 67-page book, titled On Bullshit, that has become a New York Times best-seller. Of course, The Times won't publish the actual title, presumably judging it "unfit to print." So we find instead On Bull---- riding the paper's best-seller lists for 26 weeks now. Some interviewer should ask the author whether the Times's prim evisceration of his book's title qualifies as BS. In any case, you can hear Prof. Frankfurt discuss his book by clicking on this.