The McCarthy Era: Close to Home

Posted on by The Old Wolf

UN Letter (blackball era)

 

Joe was my father. During the communist witch hunt, he and many of his colleagues were unjustly tainted by allegations of disloyalty and sedition. This letter was the end of the official episode for my father, but the event had a decided dampening effect on the remainder of his career, as extensive as it was. I often wonder how much more success he could have seen, had there not been this miasma hanging over him.

May we never allow this kind of insult against the American people to be repeated. Big Brother must be fought at every turn.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Thou shalt!

Posted on by The Old Wolf

wickedbible

 

This King James Version Bible is an unspeakably rare collector’s item. The printers were fined 300 pounds sterling for their terrible typographical error in printing the Ten Commandments, omitting the all-important word “not” and rendering the verse as, “Thou shalt commit adultery”! The lot of 1,000 copies were ordered destroyed, but only a handful escaped destruction, making them the rarest of rare. This is the only one for sale in the world. Offered at $89,500 at the Platinum Room.

For those of you who wish to justify yourselves via an appeal to the Scriptures, this is the volume for you.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

 

Roasted Marrow Bones

Posted on by The Old Wolf

marrowbones1

 

As a child, I learned to love the succulence of a marrow bone. They were a rare treat, usually only one at a time with whatever piece of meat was being served, but easy to obtain at the local butcher’s. I don’t think I’ve seen a decent one for 50 years or so.

Later, at college, I learned wisdom at the hand of Rabelais who admonished his readers, “Il faut rompre l’os et sucer la substantifique moelle” (one must break the bone and suck the substantial marrow.) From this I took that wisdom is never found on the surface; particularly true today with so much disinformation and misinformation hurtling around the internet. Anything worth knowing is worth researching to its core, if one wishes to judge its relative merits in the endless ocean of encyclopedic knowledge.

It’s a good lesson. But I still miss a succulent, greasy marrow bone, always saved until last.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Caution: RabbitTV

Posted on by The Old Wolf

This appeared in my email today:

RabbitScam

Sound too good to be true? Well, guess what.

From SFGate:

Q: I’ve been seeing TV commercials for Rabbit TV, a USB stick that supposedly provides free access to thousands of television stations worldwide over the Internet – including all the big networks, Disney and ESPN. Apparently when you plug it into an Internet-connected computer, a menu appears with links that take you directly to video streams. The Rabbit TV costs $10 a year. As a person who pays nearly $100 a month for satellite TV, I’m afraid this sounds too good to be true. Is Rabbit TV legit, or is it a scam?

A: It’s a big-time scam. All Rabbit TV does is point you to websites that have video. And, with rare exceptions for breaking news, the big U.S. networks don’t show live programming on the Internet. Ditto for ESPN, Disney and other top cable networks. With Rabbit TV, live streaming is limited to small local stations, religious and shopping channels. Repeat: There is nothing on Rabbit TV that you can’t get by entering a URL into your browser.

In fact, you can get the same experience that Rabbit TV provides by going to wwitv.com. That’s World Wide Internet Television, which, like Rabbit TV, has a clickable menu for accessing websites of global TV stations that show live and recorded programming.

This piece of junkvertising reminds me of the most deceptive advertisement I’ve ever seen.

Rabbit TV responds with the following text on their rebuttal website:

Q: Why would I use Rabbit TV when I can access most of the same stuff on my own?

A: Viewers want to spend time watching content, not searching for it.

Similar to the print publication TV Guide, who for years made you aware of what was going to be on your television set every week, Rabbit TV is simply more robust, interactive, and option-packed for the new age of TV, automatically gathering, categorizing, managing and organizing an overwhelming 2 million+ video updates daily. It also introduces you to loads of new content you’d never find on your own everyday, including massive worldwide options that aren’t even available through cable or satellite.

Rabbit TV does all the work, so you don’t have to.

If Rabbit TV were advertised as an information aggregator service, it would probably pass muster. Based on their spamvertising and their deceptive website (I don’t recommend clicking that link, but I provide it in the interest of full disclosure), however, they appear to offer one thing but in actuality offer something entirely different, and that’s where the problem lies.

The drones are still hoping that there’s a sucker born every minute; sadly, they’re right. No one is immune – all of us can be taken in by a slick operator if the conditions are right, because these slimeballs are very good at what they do. All we can do is educate ourselves and strengthen our resolve to be vigilant. And, of course, pass the word along.

I’ll stop (barely) short of calling it a scam myself because apparently there are some people who like this service; judge for yourself, but be careful out there.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

The Birth of a Prescriptive Grammarian

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Remember these? It was a clever marketing ploy by Kellogg’s to increase sales. In effect, the idea was good – but unless the package was opened with surgical precision using razor-sharp instruments, you usually ended up with a leaky carton and milk all over everything but the cereal. Others have blogged eloquently about the phenomenon, so I won’t go into the relative merits and drawbacks of the concept (the patent on the Kel-Bowl-Pac was cancelled in 2003, by the way, so it’s up for grabs if you want to use it.)

Kel-Bowl-Pac 2

When I saw this picture the other day, it brought back a memory that, in retrospect, makes perfect sense.

Kel-Bowl-Pac

I couldn’t have been more than 7 or 8 when I realized that the instructions on this box irritated me; it was the seminal moment. “Pac” is not how “pack” is spelled, morons. Also, you’re missing the definite article: “the”. The sentence should read, “Eat from the pack.” (Attention! Notice that the French translation doesn’t say “Mangez dans paq.”) I was convinced that “Kel-Bowl-Pac” itself was an abomination: they should have called it the “Kellog’s Bowl Pack.”

Yes, yes, it’s all rather irrelevant. It’s Madison Avenue. They did it to save space. Yadda yadda. But looking back, I realize that language was important to me, even at that tender age, and continues to be so. I remember being disturbed every time I read that on one of their little boxes;  I’m still embarrassed when I make a grammatical mistake through fatigue or haste, because split infinitives, dangling participles, and misplaced or misused apostrophe’s (sic) task me[1]. I feel like taking in my sign, that’s all.

The Old Wolf has spoken. Hopefully without any errors.

[1] Despite the “sic”, I’m sure someone is going to write me to point out that I misused the apostrophe here. It’s called satire for the sake of emphasis, bitches. By the way, does anal-retentive have a hyphen?

Please Sue Someone Today

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Previously I wrote about 21st-century ambulance chasers; here’s another example of legal douchebaggery and the sad results of the CAN-SPAM act.

This arrived in my mailbox today – the topic caught my attention because I have a neighbor who may need dialysis, and I wondered if this were anything of value based on the subject line. Unfortunately, not so.

spammers1

Rather than doing anything at all to reduce unsolicited commercial email (UCE), the CAN-SPAM act actually increased spam, simply by requiring that spammers identify their messages as commerical solicitations and offering an opt-out link.[1] Another example of how our legislators are bought, paid for, and in the pockets of their largest contributors.

The spamvertisement leads to this web page:

Spammers2

Like the universally-hated LowerMyBills.com, this one is a “matching” service which spamvertises widely, and distributes the information you provide to any number of willing shysters who would be happy to help you recover the compensation you’re entitled to for the ingrown toenail that was caused by D’Agostino Bros. grocery store serving your mother tainted potato salad in 1953. You’ll be contacted by “Dewey, Cheetham and Howe”, or “Barton, Potrini, and Konlon”, or some other hellish conglomeration of soulless bottom-feeders who will be very sympathetic to your case; of course, the scummy drones will take 60% of whatever they happen to squeeze out of your victim.

Q: What do you call 6,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?
A: A good start.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

[1] Never click these opt-out links. Anyone sleazy enough to spam you is sleazy enough to use your unsubscribe request as a verification that yours is a real e-mail address. Your spam will only increase.