I'm very frightened. The thought that people would purchase a little digital device with a battery in it and consider it a virtual pet is just unsettling to me. The concept of a pet rock was funny. This is not. Japanese inventors came up with the "Tamagotchi" idea, that of a keychain-sized device that needs a battery and your help to survive and grow. Or it dies.High maintenance is the draw, strangely enough. People who forget to floss remember to feed their Tamagotchis. I'm convinced the Japanese need more sleep, (and the rest of us need lives). Since they work so hard over in Japan and there is so little room for real pets they have this surrogate device to "care" for. Does this creep anyone else out but me?
When the Tamagotchi bleeps, its owner is expected to feed it, or maintain it's "health and well being" with a couple of button pushes, then the Tamagotchi thingie is all happy again. Parents think it will teach their children responsibility. . . as if letting a keychain die is tragic. I think it will impress upon children how little their own parents care for THEM! (Microwaving a teevee dinner for the kids is, remember, considered quality time these days.)
Imagine sitting in an important business meeting and your pocket starts to peep. "Excuse me boss, I have to administer digital medicine to my virtual pet else it will surely die." "What, you bought a Newton? Wilson, you are insane and fired."
Becoming emotionally attached to a keychain is something the Japanese should keep to themselves. This is a culture that thinks sleeping in tubes and wearing gas masks in public is just A-OK. Giant monsters stepping on buildings and pets you put in your pocket. Sushi shock or something, who knows? Obviously a society way out of balance.
If your life needs this kind of activity, then I pity you. For about $18 you can have the privilege of fending for a liquid crystal display that annoys you every so often. The fact that over 350,000 of these things were sold over here in the U.S. within a month is a sure sign of mass hysteria and mental illness. If people are so incredibly lonely, feel so totally powerless that a little computer chip can give their lives meaning then I give up. I'm scared. Very very scared.
The historic, (I suppose) gathering of leaders from the planet's eight most powerful nations is over. Denver's Summit of the Eight, nicely timed for the summer solstice and beautiful full moon over Colorado, passed without major incident. So I'll focus on the minor ones.
Not that Denver locals weren't inconvenienced--traffic was snarled wherever the dignitaries would go. I sat in my car for twenty-five minutes in 100+ degrees waiting for Clinton's caravan to pass the intersection on the way to a tour of TCI's totally digital television production facility here. I have to admit although the heat was unbearable, it was cool to see the SWAT teams hanging out of the helicopters with their guns trained on our cars. Manhole covers all over downtown were welded shut, storm drains were wired over and Denver's airspace was patrolled by fighter jets.
(Amazing how fast that McVeigh trial got wrapped up isn't it?)
Okay, let's say your group is composed of seven white guys and one Occidental planning the future of the world behind closed doors in a Denver library. Wouldn't you send your wives away on a little day trip up into the Rocky Mountains while you got some work done? That's what they did, and the world's First Ladies got an eyeful of the beautiful mountain scenery on the way to Winter Park and a little more. Seems a few folks in Toland, Colorado didn't have the Summit Spirit and decided to drop trow and moon the dignitaries' wives as the train passed. Welcome to America!
The Japanese contingent mandated that no female limo drivers be used in its carpool. In fact the Japanese managed to be the most rude overall. Japan's Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto stiffed a downtown bartender and fell asleep at the gala Saturday night entertainment.
Coincidentally, Gennifer Flowers, (who lives near Denver), and Paula Jones who doesn't were both rumored to be in town during but not for the event. Maybe it was the moon or something. They were not invited to the Summit or the dreadful Saturday night bash which forced the likes of Michael Bolton, Crystal Gayle and a Patsy Cline imitator on the world leaders--I guess Kenny G. was booked.
Feminists nagged that Hillary was taking a back seat, German Chancellor Helmut Khol refused to wear his complimentary Colorado cowboy boots (he was the only world leader who chose a tour bus instead of a limo for his personal transportation--guess he likes to stretch out) and the Japanese smoked freely in the no-smoking zones.
This was the first such Summit in which Russia was allowed to participate, (rumored to be part of the NATO bargaining). Boris Yeltsin was looking fit and trim after numerous heart and vodka attacks--the picture of health. Russian health that is. Boris stole the show with his winning smile. But the real G7 still didn't let him vote on anything important.
The ever-present Secret Service was impressively oppressive. From sharp-shooters on the roof of Cherry Creek's exclusive subdivision where numerous A-list parties took place, to the little directory sign in the Marriott (as reported by The Denver Post) where they stayed which read: "Secret Service dinner/meeting. Location--Secret." They kept the peace, the Big Guys and their squeezes got in and out okay and the world is a better place because of The Summit of the Eight. I suppose.
There isn't enough thoughtful comedy music these days. Sometimes we have to reach back forty years for a chuckle. I was introduced to Tom Lehrer's music in high school when the songs were already 20 years old. A buddy of mine drafted me to play the piano accompaniment to one of Lehrer's song for a talent show. He sang, I played and it was hard to pull off but we managed.
Lehrer was popular back in the early Fifties, but a surprising number of his politically satirical tunes still amuse. His lyrics were incredibly clever and his piano playing top notch. (Mark Russell, who can be seen these days on public television, has made his pale imitation of Tom Lehrer's approach into a lucrative career.) Lehrer nowadays, spends his time teaching musical theater and math at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
I play piano, I make jokes. Tom Lehrer is a genius at both. He entered Harvard at the age of 15 and remained there through a graduate degree. I barely made it out of high school (it had something to do with a talent show I'm sure of it. . . .) In his off-hours Lehrer played his wise-ass songs in Boston night clubs. In an era of Pat Boone and Nat King Cole, Tom Lehrer's first album of comedy music sold an unprecedented 370,000 copies.
My 82-year-old father saw Tom Lehrer perform in a Playboy Club in Chicago many decades ago. (Last week was the first time in my life my father has admitted going to a Playboy club.) He said that when Lehrer played "The Vatican Rag" a man in the audience stood up, began shouting at him to stop, insinuating that God was going to get him, etc. The man was shown the door by bouncers. That's my kind of music. Tunes that moves you!
Thanks to retro fanaticists Rhino Records, Lehrer's music will be freshly minted for a new generation of impressionable young minds. "Songs and More Songs by Tom Lehrer" contains 28 original studio recordings (although I prefer tapes of his live shows where his between-number banter is as funny as the lyrics.) I hope that this initial Rhino re-release will be sufficiently successful to warrant resurrecting a live recording. Or at least inspire another high school talent show performance.
Would you like to fry for that? You really can't blame McDonalds for throwing the book at the British couple who passed out pamphlets claiming that the Arch Enemy was responsible for decimating the rain forest and causing Third World starvation.
McDonalds is a large concern with very large concerns about its worldwide corporate image. With 21,000 restaurants in 101 countries they employ and feed a lot of people every day. So when a couple of self-styled activists decide to fight the power, they were asking for it. And they got it, fast, hot and dumped in their laps.
Helen Steel (a part-time bartender) and David Morris (an unemployed former postal worker . . . which should be a warning to everyone) apparently had little better to do with their ample spare time than to stomp on Ronald McDonald's toes. Their little pamphlet entitled "What's Wrong With McDonalds" brought down the powerful gavel of British justice after a record-breaking 314-day anti-defamation legal battle. I'll have that to go.
Steel and Morris, with no cash reserves between them, decided to be their own attorneys. McDonalds threw millions of dollars at their corporate lawyers to crush the two, yet found themselves up against the age-old underdog image of their opponents. Sure, they won in court, but not in the court of public opinion.
As if it matters. I don't think people go to McDonalds for health food anymore than they ride roller coasters for transportation. The stuff tastes good. If, as the judge ruled in the case, there's some cruelty to animals and some employees are underpaid well that's all in a day's work. Cows don't have rights and folks are free to leave if they feel they're being undercompensated. I'll have cheese with that.
Where McDonalds made a mistake was letting itself get into this extremely expensive and somewhat ridiculous war of words in the first place. So a few pamphlets with inflammatory remarks are passed around by some out of work wack-o's. Did McDonalds corporate officers really feel that this kind of activity was going to appreciably eat into their bottom line? Hold the pickle!
By putting up their dukes McDonalds became the target of the world press and an easy one at that. "McDonald's has Egg McMuffin on its face," and "The Biggest Food Fight in History" are some of the excellent cheap shots that have been thrown at the fast food giant. McDonalds reportedly spent around 10 million dollars in a Big Mac Attack on the couple. Steel and Morris' defense was funded by cookie jar money and contributions.
McDonalds should have just let this slide. Most people don't know where the rain forest is, don't give a damn about the Third World and really really like the taste of McDonald's fries. In fact, I'm getting hungry and I think I get a toy with a Happy Meal!
An average family of four pays about five hundred dollars a month in taxes simply to pay the interest on the national debt. With this kind of largely invisible burden on our personal budgets it's no wonder why charities are having a difficult time filling their coffers with what's left over after groceries and rent.
The Red Cross came up with an interesting idea, combining the internet and a lottery and immediately ran afoul of international gambling laws. Sometimes the world-wide nature of the net can bite you from behind.
In the Red Cross lottery, you buy tickets with your credit card number at about 70 cents American apiece (one Swiss franc) for a chance at a weekly one million dollar jackpot. The goal of the lottery's organizers is five million of these tickets sold each week against the million bucks given out, leaving them about 3.5 million dollars, (American) after expenses with which to heal the world. Mmmmmmm. . . . uh huh.
If this is one step towards eliminating Sally Struthers' televised whining I'm all for it.
So far Austria, Finland and New Zealand have prohibited participation in the Red Cross internet lottery due to gambling laws on the books in these countries. Fine. (What would you do with a million bucks in New Zealand anyway, buy more sheep?)
I've always considered the state lotteries we have here in America to be a tax on the math-impaired. (I've played state lotteries--and no, I can't do math very well.) But charities are different. Why not have a little fun while you donate to a good cause? For that matter, the IRS should put a few names in a hat and let some taxpayers off the hook in kind of a jubilee lottery. Maybe more people would file. . .