 |
 |
 |
 |
|||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||
 |
||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2010, APRIL |
||
|
|
|
April 28 The latest financial “solution” being bruited about by Democrats is the Value Added Tax. (Republicans aren’t talking about it because they do not use That Word.) The VAT is basically a national sales tax, something that is used in most European nations. It seems reasonable and progressive to me, since people who have more tend to spend more so the wealthy would end up paying more taxes than the poor. Critics object that it would put a greater burden on the poor, but it seems to me that if you exempt “essentials” like food—as they do with state sales tax—the VAT becomes a tax on discretionary income. I don’t really have any problem with that. The only question I have is with the name. Shouldn’t it be called a Value Deducted Tax?
April 24 Have you looked at your phone bill lately? It’s a masterful document devised by an obfuscatory genius. If you recall the Great FiOS Debacle, I switched from my old calling plan to FiOS and then back again. Or so I thought. I got to wondering why my phone bill was now consistently $10 higher than before, so I started scrutinizing the bill. Verizon charges me $20 for my phone line plus another $10 for a variety of taxes and fees—seventeen of them in all—including “Funding to support the Public Utilities Commission” (seems to me they support themselves quite well) and a “Temp. surcharge as allowed by Public Utilities Commission” (one hand washing the other), a federal universal service fee and a long-distance federal universal service fee (why do I need federal universal service for local calls?), and something called the VLD [Verizon long distance] CA High Cost Fund, which I take to be an additional assessment imposed because their other charges are so high. Then there is the VLD Shortfall Charge, $5.20 that is added for no apparent reason (yes, I asked) other than to prevent a shortfall in Verizon’s revenue. It has no relation to how many long distance calls you make. It’s purpose for the customer is to make it look like long distance service—a separate charge—is cheaper than it is. The Verizon rep I talked to thought I might be interested in the “6 & 5” plan, which costs $6 a month plus five cents a minute for all calls. “All calls, even local?” “Yes, it’s 5˘ across the board.” Well, no, it actually isn’t. The $6 and 5˘ plan is for long distance only, so the $6 is in addition to your $20 basic fee. Well, no, it actually isn’t. Because with the 6 & 5 plan, the VLD Shortfall Charge goes up to $9.99. Apparently a lot of people have given up their land lines. I can see why.
April 19 already--where does the time go? “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and brandish arms in Starbucks shall not be infringed.” I tend not to spend a lot of time in “open carry” states anyway, but that ruling was pretty chilling. Now a judge in Ohio has said in an interview on TV that the budget cuts had so decimated the sheriff’s department that citizens should “arm themselves and watch out for their neighbors.” I’m not sure whether “watch out for” meant “beware of” or “take care of.” Either way, it scares the crap out of me. I thought we were past the days of “Men, Pat Garrett has rode off to catch that durn Billy the Kid, so you better strap on yer guns and protect the womenfolk.” I’ve been called a pessimist, mostly by people who think global warming means we’ll be able to spend more time at the beach, but I think even the most rosy-spectacled Pollyanna would agree that reverting to vigilantism is a bad sign. Civilization is like the highway: when you can’t pay to maintain it, it starts to crumble.
April 11 “Vatican says pope not at fault in case.” In case what? In case you were wondering? In case you planned to sue? In any case, since my mother died there is probably no one else on the planet who cares about the difference between synechdoche and metonymy. I can never remember, but when the Vatican, which is a place, speaks it makes me think about it again. In case I was wrong and there is still one person out there who is interested, here it is: synechdoche is using a part for the whole: (“all hands on deck” really means bring your feet and the rest of you as well) or the whole for a part (Cleveland didn’t beat the Lakers, it was just the Cavaliers—or maybe just LeBron). Metonymy uses a separate but related concept to substitute for what you really mean. That headline really means “Pope says pope not at fault.” Surprise…. I’m pretty sure Mark Antony didn’t really want a bunch of ears, so ”lend me your ears” is metonymy, unless he really meant “I want to borrow your whole bodies,” in which case it would be synechdoche. Antony was a classier guy than my old Air Force sergeant, who would have said, “You mens listen up.”
April 6: The first chefs. I made some comments a while back about food, and tried to imagine how anybody ever took it into his head to eat such unpalatable-looking items as lobster. But at the time I hadn’t considered actually making food, which in some cases is even more inexplicable. I mean, once fire was invented, roast beef would have been pretty obvious. But bread? Whose idea was that? “Hmm, let’s see, if I grind up this old dry grass, maybe I could mush it up with some water and throw it in the fire to see what happens.” If the first baker hadn’t happened to have a yeast infection at the time, who knows how the course of culinary history might have been altered? You can probably imagine how somebody got the idea for sausage, but I can tell you if I’d thought of it, I would never eat it. “What’ll we do with all these leftover pig noses and ears and cockroach parts, Louie? I guess we could grind it all up together and put a lot of salt on it, but then what would we put it in? Hey, what’s that over there? A loop of bowel? Perfect! You think we should rinse it out first? Cheese? “Oh, crap, look what happened to the milk! It’s spoiled. It’s all separated—ick! Maybe we could pour off the wet stuff—it tastes lousy. How about the hard stuff? Hmm, maybe if we come back in a couple of months, it’ll be better. Oh, damn, now look: it got all moldy. Well, I’m really hungry….
April 1 Where do the calories go? If you have liposuction or the latest new laser treatment to “remove that belly fat forever, ” but you don’t change your diet, you are still eating more than your body can use and it will have to store the excess somewhere. So where does it go? Long-term studies confirm what you might suspect. Most of the patients who maintain the same diet gain weight after the procedure. They don’t publish photographs of long-term results, but I have visions of somebody with a chiseled, flat abdomen and four-pound earlobes….
The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect--well, yes, come to think of it, I guess they do. all materials on this site ©michael grossman. all rights reserved. |
||
|
|
|
|
|
|
NEXT MONTH >> |
||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|