Reality check, Grammar Freak Version
Originally appeard in The New Yorker magazine on May 2, 2011, byWilliam Haefeli
Figaro, the Transparent Cat
I love the art of Disney, particularly the craftsmanship that was present around 1940 when both Pinocchio and Fantasia came out. These are probably examples of the finest 2D animation ever produced, and both have long been among my favorite films.
I have one small nit to pick, however – it has bothered me since I sat through 4 consecutive showings of Pinocchio in 1972 or thereabouts – I noticed it then, but had no way of verifying what I had seen at the time.
As Gepetto drifts off to sleep, he sends Figaro to open the window.
As kitty pushes the window open and walks out into the moonlight, the color artists got a bit mixed up:
Notice that you can see the window frame through Figaro’s body.
A tiny detail and forgivable, and I had no way of verifying this until the advent of VCR’s and DVD’s, but I’m glad that I wasn’t just seeing things.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Rare color photos of Paris
These images, and many others found at Paris1914, were taken using Autochrome Lumière technology, an early color photography process, patented in 1903 and invented by the famous French Auguste and Louis Lumière. The Lumière brothers were the earliest filmmakers in history.
Avenue Hoche – 1919
10th Arrondissement – Wandering flower vendors in Place de la République in front of the Verines Armory – 10 May, 1918 – Auguste Léon
These images capture a Paris normally seen in grainy black-and-white photos, and bring a life to the city that can be seen today. In truth, it shows that Paris is very resistant to change – other than abominations such as the Pompidou museum and the glass pyramid at the Louvre, the city looks today much as it did then.
The full collection was available at paris1914.com, but it appears this website has been taken down. You can see a few more color photos of Paris from the epoch here.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Raping the public… legally
About a decade ago, my identity was stolen. An insurance card I had given to a family member was lost in the state of Florida, and some drone got his hands on it. All of a sudden I was being contacted by debt-collection companies for things like trips to a hospital in an ambulance, 9 months worth of rent, cell phone accounts with T-Mobile, and a host of others.
It took me about 4 years to get my credit reports cleaned up, and countless hours of time on the telephone, writing letters, and filing police reports. Through it all was dealing with the collection companies, and it was brutal. These people are relentless bullies, and they care about only one thing… collecting. Explaining to them that I did not owe said debts was fruitless. Explaining that I had been the victim of identity theft was wasting breath. Even after multiple explanations, I had agents offer to discharge the debt if I was willing to pay 50¢ on the dollar. Nothing I said made a difference. They kept calling until I informed them, by law, that they were no longer allowed to do so. [1]
Now comes word of a new scam being perpetrated on the public by a company called Corrective Solutions, and others like them. This article in LA Weekly outlines how DA’s offices have partnered with some very ugly, very mean people to terrorize consumers into paying stiff fees for bounced checks, all in the name of “diversion” – meaning keeping cases out of the court system – but really for only one purpose – increasing the flow of revenue into the DA’s coffers.
An extract from the article outlines the sad tale of Carole Hirth:
In fact, it was banker scheming that landed Carole Hirth in trouble last year. More than a dozen major banks have paid multimillion-dollar fines for reordering purchases and delaying deposits solely in order to generate overdraft fees. In Hirth’s case, PNC was holding her direct deposits until it withdrew her outgoing charges — effectively overdrafting her account so it could charge extra fees.
She knew none of this at the time she wrote a $393.86 check to Dominick’s, a Chicago grocery story. The 59-year-old was in the hospital being treated for Crohn’s disease when the check bounced. For some reason, the store never tried to redeposit it, which most merchants do. If it had, Hirth says, the check would have cleared. Instead, the Safeway-owned chain sent her a letter.
“I had been back from the hospital for just four days when I checked the mail and thought, ‘Oh, my God,’ ” she says.
Hirth went straight to Dominick’s, wrote a new check and paid a $35 bounce fee. She considered the problem fixed.
But four months later, she received a letter from the Cook County state’s attorney. It said that she’d been accused of deceptive practices and that she faced up to a year in jail and a $2,500 fine. The only way to avoid this fate was to pay $649.86, which included penalties and a diversion course.
“I already paid them,” Hirth says. “I contacted [the grocery store’s] ethics department and said this was just wrong. I spend enough money there. I told them they should work with me. I told them to look up my Safeway card. I’ve been shopping with them for the past 30 years!”
Safeway said there was nothing it could do. She’d have to contact the state attorney’s office.
Hirth called the toll-free number on the letter but got nowhere.
“They accused me of committing a fraudulent act. They said that if I don’t pay everything and take their class, I could be arrested and end up in jail. He was very, very mean,” she says. “I told him that I didn’t understand how that could happen. I said I’d already handled it, it should be cleared up, but he just went on and on and on.”
Hirth wrote another letter to Safeway, begging the grocer to contact the prosecutor’s office on her behalf. The letters and phone calls kept coming.
It wasn’t until she got in touch with Arons that she discovered she wasn’t being threatened by Cook County. It was Corrective Solutions, which has contracts with 21 counties in Illinois.
Notice three major instances of douchebaggery in this one single story:
- Bank malfeasance (reordering deposits and withdrawals to create deliberate overdrafts and charge fees)
- Corporate insouciance (once a charge has been submitted to collections, nobody gives a rat’s south-40 – there appears to be no one inside a massive corporation who cares or who can deal with human situations)
- Consumer intimidation by Corrective Solutions using the name of Cook County to perpetrate their scheme, but fully with Cook County’s blessing.
The Napa Valley Register filed an article in October of 2012 describing a class-action suit against Corrective Solutions and another company, and outlining practices similar to what happened in Hirth’s case above, but the news is not good – most consumers won’t even benefit from any possible settlement, and the companies will likely continue to operate in one form or another. Indeed, Corrective Solutions is a rebirth of American Corrective Counseling Services, which lost a class-action suit against it, filed for bankruptcy, paid nothing, and began operating a few months later under a new name, free and clear, as reported in the LA times article.
The fight against this kind of corporate and governmental misbehavior continues. The war will be long and hard, and there will be bodies left on the battlefield, many belonging to innocent victims who made honest mistakes and found themselves caught up in a web of greed. The good news is that many legal advocates are aware of what is happening, and will continue to fight until this sort of program is outlawed by statute.
In the meantime, the more people who know what’s happening, the more ammunition they have to fight back. Read the linked articles. Be careful with your finances, and don’t roll over for the bullies.
This has been an Old Wolf public service announcement.
[1] A recent example: A family member has set up payment arrangements with a collection company in Idaho, in order to pay off a medical bill. The payments have been kept current for the last 18 months. Despite that, this letter is sent out monthly:
No mention of current account status, no “thank you for your payment,” just the constant threat of legal action. I’ve written the office to complain about this lack of courtesy and ethics, and no one has ever bothered to respond.
Parenting: No, there’s no manual, but this might just help.
9 Things I Learned In The Parent Encouragement Program, AKA Rotten Parents Anonymous
By Drew Magary, Jan 18, 2012 2:20 PM
Note: by permission of the author, Drew Magary, I have here reproduced a “more-or-less family-friendly” version of his awesome post, because it’s got some great ideas in it. If you don’t care about language that would make George Carlin feel right at home, you can read his original version here at Deadspin. Heaven knows I could have used this plainspeak about 35 years ago.
The Parent Encouragement Program is a series of classes and workshops that are available to parents living in the D.C. area. The introductory class is free, and so I went a couple of weeks ago, because it didn’t cost anything and because I need all the help I can get. The title of the workshop was “Why Don’t My Kids Listen To Me?” On that premise alone, I’d say roughly three billion people could have stood to attend. I grabbed a pen and a big legal pad for taking notes, and I went to go learn how to not be a terrible father.
The class I went to was located on the third floor of a nearby church. It was the kind of multipurpose church room that would be perfect for an AA meeting. This was fitting, because I felt like I was attending a meeting of Rotten Parents Anonymous and not some night class for supposedly normal people. Our teacher was a very perky 40-year-old woman, who readily admitted that she was a teacher in the program because it helped her remember all of the junk that she was supposed to do in order to be a good parent. Her kids were all teenagers and she still had issues dealing with them. I found this fact completely deflating. Here was someone who was GOOD at parenting, and she still felt compelled to go to classes and still had kids with terrific douchebag potential.
The class started with a bit of role-playing, with people from the audience reading from a scripted exchange between a child and a parent. They demonstrated three different techniques of parenting: Authoritarian Parenting (Bob Knight-types who yell at their kids and whip them with hickory switches), Permissive Parenting (hippie dipweed parents who let their kids do whatever the hell they want), and Democratic Parenting (the right kind of parent, who establishes firm boundaries for their child and gives them a certain amount of freedom within those boundaries). The aim was to teach us how to be Democratic Parents. I was more than willing to learn. I have yelled at my kid. I have given my kid timeouts. I even tried spanking my kid a few times, which was mortifying. All of it failed, and all of it made the problem worse.
So the purpose of this class was to find the happy medium, that place where you say the EXACT RIGHT THING in order for your child to do what you want him or her to do. Talking to your kids is like perfecting a golf swing. You have to get the technique just right, otherwise everything goes to Pluto. And whenever you pick up new techniques, you have to remember them all simultaneously and execute them correctly in a single instance. This is bloody annoying. Kids shouldn’t work that way. Evolution should have knocked some of the snotty defiance out of them. But nooooooo. No, asking them to do something doesn’t work. You have to CRAFT what you’re going to say. You have to offer creative solutions to problems, which is totally exhausting.
So the lecture began and immediately people started asking questions. And the teacher was remarkably patient, given that virtually all the questions were specific to that parent’s one kid and had no universal application. One lady droned on and on about how she was separated from her husband and that the husband bought her kid too many toys. LADY, TELL YOUR DIVORCE LAWYER. You’re ruining the learning process for the rest of us. Another lady said her husband was too much of a pushover for their kids WHILE THE DUDE WAS SEATED RIGHT NEXT TO HER. She just threw his butt under the bus in front of 50 total strangers. I wanted to buy the guy a soda.
But eventually, we were given some legitimately good advice as to how to handle these little demons. Here now are some of the more basic techniques of Democratic Parenting (I also like to call it Huxtable Parenting):
Never repeat yourself.
The second you repeat yourself, you’re dead. The kid will just be like, “Hey, I can just sit here and dad will say the same stuff over and over again. COOL.” Kids think this way because they’re evil. Say it once. If the kids don’t act, take them by the hand and guide them to their task. This piece of advice caused me to ask a question:
ME: What if your kid is naked on the floor and screaming her bloody head off and you literally can’t take her by the hand and guide her to the sink to brush her teeth?
TEACHER: Just avert your gaze, hold out your hand, and stand there until she knows you aren’t interested in her B.S.
I tried this later in the evening. Totally worked. IT’LL NEVER WORK AGAIN.
No drive-by parenting
You have to get down face-to-face with your kids to ask them to do stuff. You can’t stand at the bottom of the stairs and yell at them to stop putting hamsters in the blender. They won’t give a rat’s south-40. Hamster-blending is too much fun.
Talk to your kids as if they’re normal human beings.
None of this, “You need a wowwipop” stuff. The idea is that if you treat them as mature adults and talk to them with respect, they will reciprocate. I wanted to bring up Norv Turner as a counterpoint to this, but we were short on time.
Accept that your children are going to do annoying things.
We were told there was a list out there that detailed typical behaviors for children based upon their age. Two-year-olds will throw things. Five-year-olds will break things. There are certain annoying facets of children that are simply the cost of doing business, and accepting that makes it a little bit easier to tolerate it when your kid is spitting in your ear.
Never do for a kid what a kid can do for him or herself.
This was the big one. Sometimes, your kids will stand there for eight hours before they brush their teeth and you’re just like TO TOPHET WITH THIS, and you grab the brush and assault their mouth because it’s EASIER to do things for them. But once you do that, they’ll never do anything for themselves. You have to have Herculean patience to let them figure those things out, and then that problem is solved for the long term.
Never chase a kid.
IT’S A TRAP! THEY LIKE BEING CHASED!
Never get locked into a power struggle.
If you say to your kid, “Hey, eat your dinner,” and the kid is like , “No,” and you’re like, “You’re grounded if you don’t,” and the kid still says no, you’ve basically signed yourself up for a full night of PAIN. Because now you’re in a power struggle with a kid, and you won’t want to lose because you won’t want them thinking you’re a wuss, and they won’t want to lose because, hey, what’s an hour wasted to them? NOTHING. Kids were born to waste time. They have nothing better to do. May as well ruin your day while they’re waiting to become drinking age. If the kid doesn’t eat dinner, the kid doesn’t eat.
Never ask “OK?” at the end of a request.
You have to explain what needs to be done. For example, if you say, “Hey, your shoes are still on the floor,” the kid is more likely to put the shoes away than if you say, “Hey moron, put your shoes away, OK?” I got home from this class and I was shocked at how many times I said “OK?” at the end of something. Even when I was actively trying to prevent myself from saying it, I still did anyway. It’s like a bloody tic. The best way to get kids to do something is to present them with a problem that they can help solve.
The only person you really have any control over is yourself.
That’s pretty much the beginning and end of this. There’s only so much you can control with your kids, and it’s best to praise them when they do what you want instead of berating them for the times when they fail to act. You’re never gonna get them to do everything you want at all times. They aren’t programmed that way (even though they ought to be). You have to learn to tolerate some of their crap, and then be firm and friendly in the face of extraordinary rebellion. It isn’t easy, and I’m probably gonna have to take a lot more classes just to fail less. But trying is the most important part. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go tell my kid to stop throwing baseballs at the TV set.
Radio-TV Mirror, October 1952
My mother (left, below Bert Parks) had a wonderful and multifaceted career, but never rose to the level of stardom matched by some of the others on this cover. She was, however, pleased to be ranked among them at the time.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
“The Flash Plugin has Crashed”
It’s a common enough scenario. You experience a problem on the computer. You call the hardware vendor, who blames the software. You call the software vendor, who blames the hardware. In each case, you’re dealing with a chaiwallah in India who has nothing to go on but a script targeted for the least-competent computer user in the universe, and you waste precious time in order to get no answers. Which explains this XKCD comic. “Dammit” is right.
My problem: Flash 11.5.502.146 and Firefox 18.0.1 (both the latest versions) are incompatible, and the flash plugin crashes every ten minutes, with a cute little “submit a crash report” link. I’d be curious to know where those reports go, and if anyone cares, because the problem has been going on for a long time. For me, the problem began with Firefox 16 and have continued to date. Mozilla blames Adobe’s Flash 11.3 update, and the fora appear to bear out the fact that there are problems in Flash that Mozilla can do nothing about, and Adobe appears to be unwilling to fix, given the current version numbers.
Today I chatted with Adobe’s customer support, and you can see the result below:
Thank you for choosing Adobe. A representative will be with you shortly. Your estimated wait time is 2 minute(s) and 30 second(s) or longer as there are 1 customer(s) in line ahead of you.
You are now chatting with Vikas.
Vikas: Hello. Welcome to Adobe Technical Support. How may I assist you?
Me: I would like to know when Adobe will resolve its issues with Mozilla. This has been going on for over a year now. I’m using Flash – 11.5.502.146 and Firefox – 18.0.1, and the flash plugin crashes constantly. I have visited every online forum I can find, and everything points to the fact that the problem lies with Adobe’s refusal to fix certain bugs, and nothing to do with Firefox. It’s depressing, and I want it fixed.
Vikas: I can understand your concern. There could be multiple reasons for this error, we need to look into the issue and fix it. However,if you need our assistance then you need to purchase a support contract for $39. As the support for flash player or any other free software is paid.
Me: I don’t want to pay a fee, and I don’t want support to take me through a whole lot of idiot-checks only to find out in the end that the problem is the same one everyone knows about. I simply want the product fixed. Can you give me assurances that the problem is being addressed by Adobe, and a date when the fix will be implemented?
Vikas: I really apologize Chris. If you dont wish to pay I can escalate your feedback to our engineering team so that they can look into the issue. However, cannot assure you the time frame.
Me: Is Adobe aware of the issue, and are they working on it?
Vikas: We work on every feedback provided to us by the customers. We are currently working on the issue. As explained that cannot assure you the time frame.
Me: Thank you for your time. I appreciate your being there to answer questions.
I do my best to be polite to phone agents because they’re just trying to make a buck like me, but you can see that the corporate script they have to work with is hqiz. Even if I had paid the $39.00 fee (an insult!), the result is fore-ordained: “Is your computer plugged in? Have you rebooted? I suggest you re-install Windows 7…”
What bothers me the most is the insouciance. When companies get so large that their budgets move into the billions of dollars, some problems are deemed not worth fixing, and users are nothing more than dollar signs, some of which can be sacrificed as collateral damage in the pursuit of even greater profits elsewhere. It can be downright depressing.
I’m getting close to my only real solution at this point – ditching Mozilla altogether. I have it configured just the way I like it – no ads, no trackers, and a number of very useful add-ons, which are the main factors which keep me hanging around. Chrome has no such problems, and my patience is almost at an end. I’m surprised the Mozilla community has been unable to bring any pressure to bear on Adobe, Mogg knows they’re big enough.
The Old Wolf has whined enough for now.
I have seen The Picard
A friend of mine posted a link on FB to the “Civil Rights” speech of Jean-Luc Picard found in “The Drumhead.” The words quoted were:
“You know, there are some words I’ve known since I was a schoolboy: ‘With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured…the first thought forbidden…the first freedom denied–chains us all irrevocably.’ Those words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie, as wisdom…and warning. The first time any man’s freedom is trodden on, we’re all damaged.”
In response, another individual posted the video below, a compilation of some of the most awesome things that Patrick Stewart was given to say over the course of the show:
It’s hard to find sufficient words to express how much I love that collection of quotes – it admirably illustrates why I still love ST:TNG with all my heart.
(Returning to reality for a minute, a large hat tip is owed to the writers who put those words into Patrick Stewart’s mouth; you can’t come up with ideas like that unless they are part of your own psyche, so my thanks to the awesome men and women who crafted these episodes and gave Sir Patrick such stirring lines to say. Now back to your regularly-scheduled fantasy.)
Now let it be said that Patrick Stewart is not Jean-Luc Picard – despite his massive popularity in that rôle, he’s an accomplished Shakespearean actor, a knight of the realm, and has a wicked and irreverent sense of humor. But he’s also a pretty awesome human being.
Speaking of his experiences as a child, Stewart said,
“Our house was small, and when you grow up with domestic violence in a confined space you learn to gauge, very precisely, the temperature of situations. I knew exactly when the shouting was done and a hand was about to be raised – I also knew exactly when to insert a small body between the fist and her face, a skill no child should ever have to learn. Curiously, I never felt fear for myself and he never struck me, an odd moral imposition that would not allow him to strike a child. The situation was barely tolerable: I witnessed terrible things, which I knew were wrong, but there was nowhere to go for help. Worse, there were those who condoned the abuse. I heard police or ambulancemen, standing in our house, say, “She must have provoked him,” or, “Mrs Stewart, it takes two to make a fight.” They had no idea. The truth is my mother did nothing to deserve the violence she endured. She did not provoke my father, and even if she had, violence is an unacceptable way of dealing with conflict. Violence is a choice a man makes and he alone is responsible for it.”
So on stage and off, in character or not, the following expresses how I feel, allowing the character to stand for the man:
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Tight times, 5 years later
Posted this over at Livejournal on 11/22/2008, but things haven’t changed, so it’s worth a rerun.
Lor’ lumme, times is tough all over. People are actually starting to seriously use the “D” word for the first time since WWII. Today’s “Overboard” was funny, but also caused a cord in my heart to be plucked, because in some ways it’s not funny at all.
I remember reading this book to my kids when they were little, and it made me cry. Today, more folks than I care to count are really struggling, and I even feel the cold breath of economic terror from behind the door on occasion.
I’m hoping and praying that whoever is able to pull the economic strings in our country over the next four years can keep us from total meltdown, because folks, we’re only a couple of degrees away from an economic China Syndrome.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Playing in the World Game 