Beware the Highwaymen

No thief is happy to be a thief and no murderer is happy to be a murderer.

― Rajneesh

Amid the celebrations of sacrifice and innovation, it's easy to forget malfeasance.

While hard times bring out the best in some people, they bring out the worst in thieves.

I ran into thieves during the Great Recession, when I was running consumer shows. 

A half dozen exhibitors―people with whom I'd been doing business for years―wrote me bad checks for their booth rents at the close of several shows. Some simply skipped out of the shows without paying anything. 

I lost more than $18,000 to those thieves.

I'm running into thieves now. Texas-based Newtek last month billed my credit card nearly $900, claiming I owed the company for "storage." 

While the company had been my web-hosting provider for 10 years―billing my card $6 every month for the service―I shut down my website over two years ago, after which I heard no more from Newtek.

Until it suddenly billed my credit card the $900 last month.

Now the company wants me to prove I shut down the website it hosted. 

"If you 'turned off the services in February 2018,'" the CFO wrote me yesterday, "I could not find any tangible evidence to support this event. 

"I can assure you we are only collecting on balances that are due and payable. 

"I would be more than happy to credit the account if you can provide the tangible evidence."

"No thief is happy to be a thief and no murderer is happy to be a murderer," the guru Rajneesh said. 

"They have been forced. In fact they are victims; they have been compelled by the logic of situations. They have been brought up in such a way that their whole being has been poisoned.”

Time are hard―and growing harder.

Beware the highwaymen!

So Long, High and Tight

He who neglects his hair neglects his country.

― Ben Franklin

American men will go to great lengths for short hair.

The proof: barbers have already reopened in 32 states.

Custom makes men their customers.

For men, high and tight―throughout the past century, at least―has been the American way.

Long hair on men is loathsome to many. Sergeants hate it; so do principals, umpires, bankers and firefighters.

Their aversion is scriptural: “Doth not nature teach that if a man have long hair it is a shame unto him?”

It's also historical: Ancient Barbarians had long hair; Native Americans had long hair; hobos and hippies had long hair.

You can't trust any of them!

"Trust and confidence go hand-in-hand with remaining high and tight," says journalist C. Brian Smith.

But I respectfully disagree. I think, as does journalist John Green, "The worse the haircut, the better the man."

Feminists also hate long hair―but on women.

I'm pro-feminist, but like long hair―especially on women. 

I like in particular:

Veronica Lake

Cleopatra's braids. 

Marie Antoinette's mane. 

Barbara Feldon's bob. 

Angela Davis' Afro. 

Farrah Fawcett's shag.

Princess Diana's pixie. 

Bo Derek's cornrows.

And―my all-time favorite―Veronica Lake's pageboy.

How about you? 

Whose 'do do you fancy?

Thanks, Mom!

Necessity is the mother of invention.

— Plato

What better day than today to celebrate Necessity?

Wartime shortages of chocolate in 1938 prompted Italian pastry maker Pietro Ferrero to find a substitute. 

After months of trial and error, Pietro hit upon the winning recipe: mix one part coconut butter with five parts hazelnut oil and five parts molasses; add a smidgen of cocoa.

Pietro's brother Giovanni was so impressed, he formed a company to sell Pietro's "Super Cream" throughout Italy, Germany, Austria, France and Belgium.

Today we call Super Cream by another name. 

Nutella.

According to Plato, Necessity was the goddess of fortune.

She rules the cosmos by wielding a giant spindle that her three daughters, The Fates, perpetually rotate.

Picture the planets and stars orbiting Earth and you get the idea.

Not only do they spin heavenly bodies, The Fates also weave destinies.

When you die, you appear before Necessity's throne and request of the Fates your next incarnation. 

You can return as a king, a courtier, a commoner, a peasant, or even a pet or wild animal. 

Myself, I hope to return as a Kardashian.

So while the Fates are in charge of every individual's destiny, Necessity is in charge of the whole shebang.

Which is why we should celebrate her today.

Late Friday, the FDA approved an antigen test invented by Quidel Corporation. It detects in only minutes whether you're infected by Covid-19.

The new test gives the nation's healthcare workers the tool they've so desperately needed.

Necessity is indeed the mother of invention.

Thanks, Mom!

Published Mother's Day 2020.

Perfect Storm

I'm doing what I was made to do―and I've got a feeling I'm going to do it even better this time.

― Capt. Billy Tyne

You know the drill.

A colleague phones―often he has sizable obligations―to say his job or business has withered.

Fortunately, all of my colleagues are sensible people with emotional and financial reserves, so there's no hint of "talking them off the ledge."

But I can imagine there are people who are making desperate calls―or none at all. 

In fact, suicide-prevention experts are worried the Great Shutdown will trigger a spike in unattributed deaths.

The difference between the sensible and the suicidal is hope. Behavioral scientists have correlated hope with coping.

In my opinion, people find hope in one of three places. 

Some people find hope in belief in a savoir; others, in substance abuse; still others, in sheer will.

The philosopher and psychologist Eric Fromm thought hope was the evolutionary counterweight to our acquaintance with finitude. 

Unlike the other animals, Fromm said, we are self-aware; and the price we pay for that awareness is insecurity.

"How can a sensitive and alive person ever feel secure?" Fromm wrote.

"Just as a sensitive and alive person cannot avoid being sad, he cannot avoid feeling insecure. The psychic task which a person can and must set for himself, is not to feel secure, but to be able to tolerate insecurity, without panic and undue fear."

Why aren't my colleagues hobbled by insecurity? 

What makes them hopeful?

A team of behavioral researchers in the UK think they've found the answer: self-esteem. 

In four different studies, the researchers separated respondents into two groups: those who tested positive for high self-esteem, and those who tested positive for low self-esteem. 

They then asked them to write about death. 

The researchers found that people in the first group felt very little after the exercise, while the people in the second group felt hopeless.

I've also noticed my colleagues aren't only hopeful; they're thinking of others. 

Who's depending on them to come through? 

How can they help customers? 

Can they find in this mess an opportunity to contribute more to society than they have in the past?

The nuns taught me back in Catechism class that hope is a virtue that aspires to "the to happiness which God has placed in the heart of every man." 

Hope is life-preserver. 

"Buoyed up by hope," the Catechism says, "man is preserved from selfishness and led to the happiness that flows from charity."

The nuns had that right.

Stay well.

Downtown

Her breasts jiggled fetchingly, but Larry wasn't fetched.

— Stephen King, from The Stand

A recent radio interview with the author has prompted me to re-read Stephen King's 40-year-old doorstop The Stand. 

On Page 101, I encountered the sentence above: perhaps the worst in all of King's novels; perhaps the worst in American literature.

I have relished reading trash ever since high school, where the Jesuits, hoping to instill in us "catholic tastes," encouraged our indulgence in "middlebrow" literature (after all, they said, Shakespeare aimed to please the groundlings as much as the audience in the seats; and Faulkner supported a family of ten writing short stories for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Mademoiselle and The Saturday Evening Post).

And so I've consumed scores of best-sellers by the likes of Upton Sinclair, John O'Hara, James M. Cain, Henry Miller, Jim Thompson, Philip K. Dick, James Michener, Ross Macdonald, John D. MacDonald, Herman Wouk, John leCarre’, Robert B. Parker, Ken Follett, James Lee Burke, Henning Mankell, John Grisham, Dean Koontz and, yes, Stephen King.

My teachers understood: reading middlebrow authors would help us appreciate the skills of highbrow ones (authors like Hardy, Conrad, Maughm, Hemingway, Faulkner and Heller).

I adore all those best-selling writers; and, besides, sometimes you need to go downtown to get uptown.