Month: November 2024

Laundromats – Part 2

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Story 14 of 52, continued.

By M. Snarky

To the contrary of Laundromats – Part 1, my extremely frugal paternal grandmother Mary Alice never stepped foot inside a laundromat. She had an old electric semi-automatic open top 1940’s era Maytag washing machine with a wringer that sat out on the back patio. Nothing fancy. I saw her doing a load of laundry once in that odd machine. Odd, in that it was cylindrical and didn’t connect to any plumbing and had to be filled with a combination of garden hose water and boiling water from a tea kettle. It also had an external drain hose that was connected to a wye cleanout plumbing fitting on the back wall of the patio. There was a foot switch, a lever, and a knob to control it. It had a clutch. It also required the user to have one or two rinse tubs full of water available.

The semi-automatic washing machine process went something like this:

  1. Place dirty laundry in the tub and fill with water of the desired temperature.
  2. Add laundry soap.
  3. Turn the machine foot switch on, engage the wash tub agitator, and set an egg timer for 15-minutes.
  4. Disengage the wash tub agitator.
  5. Engage the pump.
  6. When the wash tub is fully drained, disengage the pump.
  7. Engage the wringer.
  8. Wring out the clothes and place them into rinse tub 1. Agitate by hand.
  9. Wring out the clothes from rinse tub 1 and place them into rinse tub 2. Agitate by hand.
  10. Wring out the clothes from rinse tub 2 and place clothes in laundry basket for clothesline drying, or place directly into dryer.
  11. Disengage the wringer.
  12. Engage the pump to drain the tub of the water collected from all of the wringing.
  13. When the wash tub is fully drained, disengage the pump.
  14. Turn the foot switch off.
  15. Drain the rinse tubs.

Obviously, this was really only a semi-semi-automatic process, and a very hazardous and ridiculously tedious one, but she didn’t mind doing it. Thank god for the modern automatic washing machine. I hope the person that invented them won a Nobel Peace Prize!

Mary Alice didn’t have nor apparently need a gas or electric dryer. Instead, she had one of those rotating umbrella clotheslines that looked like a TV antenna that she used for drying her laundry naturally with only sunlight and a light breeze. She also knew not to dry laundry on the clothesline if the gusty Santa Ana winds were blowing, shrewdly circumventing the possibility of having to fetch her undergarments from the neighbors sycamore tree.

Fast forward to when I was about 19 and lived in a 2-story 20-unit apartment building with my younger brother and my mom at 6037 Hazelhurst Place in NoHo. The apartment building had a small room on the ground floor near the pool equipment that had one heavy-duty top-loading coin-op washer and one heavy-duty front-loading coin-op dryer that were situated to the left side of the room and a small, convenient counter to the right side for folding your clothes. Above the folding counter was a soapbox vending machine. It was ostensibly a micro laundromat. Sorry, no fluff ‘n’ fold services available.

However, there were rules for using the laundry room to prevent any conflicts. On the back of the laundry room door, the apartment manager had posted a framed 8 ½ x 11-inch mimeographed schedule with gridlines for which apartment had access on which days of the week and which 2-hour time slots. There was another larger, 2-foot by 3-foot professionally hand painted sign from Erroll Sign Company in NoHo (I actually worked for the owner, Erroll Biggs, over one summer) that was screwed to the back of the door that had the following:

LAUNDRY ROOM RULES       

HOURS – 8:00 AM to 10:00 PM ONLY!                                                    

NO SMOKING!

CLEAN OUT THE LINT SCREEN IN THE DRYER WHEN YOU ARE DONE!

DO NOT LEAVE ANY TRASH BEHIND!

They went a little overboard with all capitalized letters and the exclamation points which gave me the impression that they were a little bit angry and very shouty. Reading between the lines, the sign inferred that people used the laundry room between 10:00 PM and 8:00 AM, regularly smoked in it, didn’t clean the dryer screen, and left trash lying around which probably consisted mostly of empty soapboxes, empty beer bottles, and flattened cigarette butts extinguished on the floor with a shoe. 

One Sunday night when our apartment number had the scheduled laundry time of 8:00 – 10:00 PM, I went downstairs to do my load of laundry at 8:00 sharp, but someone had apparently lost track of time and there was a load of laundry in both the washer and the dryer. Looking at the schedule, it was apartment #10 that had the 6:00 – 8:00 time slot. Not wanting to wait (nor should I have had to wait because of the established rules), I moved the clothes that were in the dryer to the folding table and moved the wet laundry from the washing machine and placed them in the dryer. I figured if the person came back while my clothes were still in the washer, they would just start the dryer and when I came down later the dryer would be available to me.

In the meantime, I went back upstairs and smoked a little weed and was feeling alright when I realized it was time to pop my clothes into the dryer at around 8:30 PM. I went back downstairs, and nothing had changed; the wet clothes were still in the dryer and the dry clothes were still in a pile on the folding table. No biggie – I decided to move #10’s wet clothes from inside the dryer and put them on top of it and put my clothes in the dryer and carry on with my business. But while I was loading the dryer, I noticed a rather large, middle-aged woman in a muumuu with these big curlers in her hair looming in the laundry room doorway, standing there in silence, and puffing on a cigarette. She was straight out of a Gary Larson cartoon.

I turned to say hello when she started in on me in a very nasty, throaty, gravelly tone of voice – the kind of voice brought on only from years of smoking. “What do you think you’re doing touching my clothes, you pervert!” Pervert? I don’t believe I deserved that. I defended myself by saying, “Actually, ma’am, this is my time slot (I gestured toward the posted schedule on the back of the door), and you left your laundry unattended, so I just moved it out of the way to make room so I could do my laundry.” I was talking in a low-key matter-of-fact tone of voice. Then she said, sarcastically, “Actually, it is against standard laundry room etiquette to touch anyone else’s clothes!” Standard laundry room etiquette? I didn’t know this was a thing – they certainly didn’t teach this is school.

Sensing the mounting agitation and wanting to avoid conflict, I said, “No problem. I’ll take my clothes out of the dryer and let you finish drying your clothes first and then I’ll come back later.” I grabbed my little white plastic laundry basket and filled it with my wet clothes from the dryer. Then she said, in a very demanding femdom-like voice, “Now you put my wet clothes back into the dryer!” I was shocked at her talking at me like I was her BDSM partner, and so I looked her straight in the eye and sarcastically replied, “I thought I wasn’t supposed to touch anyone else’s clothes, you know; standard laundry room etiquette!”

This snarky rebuff made her snap – she was apparently an angry woman who likes to get her way – she clenched the cigarette in her teeth and then she stepped into the laundry room and took a right-hand swing at me with all of the flabby power that she had in her big, puffy arms. I ducked and took a quick step backyard like a boxer in a prize fight. She missed hitting me by a mile. I said, “Are you crazy?” Then she said in a huffing voice, “You little bastard!” and took another step toward me as she was cocking her right arm back in preparation of taking another swing at me. I noticed that now there was just enough room behind her to squeeze between her body and the doorway. With newfound cat-like reflexes, I grabbed my laundry basket of wet clothes and faked a step to my right, which she jerkily followed while she was swinging at me which took her off balance making her fall softly against the dryer with all of her mass but catching herself from falling on the floor at the last moment. I took another quick step to the left and ran right by her, slightly bumping her, ah, equally puffy butt which prompted her to yell out loud, “DON’T YOU TOUCH ME YOU LITTLE FAGGOT!” So, within about a minute, I was labeled a perverted little bastard faggot. She was batshit crazy. Good job, Karen.

I had half a mind to call the cops on her for aggravated assault but thinking it through to the logical conclusion where the both of us are interviewed about what transpired while the cops are trying to keep a straight face and ultimately advising us to forgive each other and go back to our apartment prevented me from doing so. That, and I may have had a little bit of weed in my pocket.

This experience made me wonder about the frequency of laundromat violence, what was considered the ultimate unforgivable offense, and what the fatality rate was. It both slightly amused and somewhat disturbed me thinking about people snapping over such a trivial thing like touching someone else’s clothes. How about this, Karen: Follow the laundromat rules and don’t leave your damn clothes unattended!

Fortunately, laundromats have changed much from their utilitarian roots over the decades and have become much more civilized, but nowadays it costs like $5 to wash and dry a load of laundry. There are newer, fancier attended laundromats with attached sports bars where you can get a cheeseburger and a beer and watch a baseball game while you are doing your own laundry, or have someone else do your laundry for you, vis-à-vis, Fluff ‘n’ Fold service.

The fact of the matter is that I really don’t mind if someone else touches my clothes. As far as I’m concerned, standard laundry room etiquette can go to hell.

Instagram: @m.snarky

©2024. All rights reserved.

Laundromats – Part 1

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Our local laundromat at the northeast corner of Cahuenga and Magnolia Boulevards in North Hollywood, CA.

Story 14 of 52

By M. Snarky

Even if you have never personally been to a laundromat or needed to use one because you lived in a sucky apartment building that didn’t have a laundry room, you probably know about these places, or at least are familiar with the laundromat scene in the movie Fight Club or have seen a few of them as you drive through the city.

Growing up, my family moved around about every 1-2 years or whenever and wherever my dad could get work as an electrician. Even though we often lived in the boondocks outside of city limits where renting an old farmhouse was cheap, my parents always managed to make sure that a washer and dryer were available for our family of six. It wasn’t until my parents split up that I had my first of many laundromat experiences in 1973 after we moved into a duplex apartment in North Hollywood, or NoHo as it is now called.

My mom would wait until everything was dirty twice-over before overloading a shopping cart – which was somehow appropriated from the Market Basket grocery store on Ventura Boulevard, about 2-miles away – with a mountain of said dirty clothes along with a box of Tide and a white, plastic bottle of Clorox bleach. She wheeled it on down to the laundromat at the northeast corner of Cahuenga and Magnolia Boulevards, usually with my brother and I in tow. We were 10 and 12-years old, respectively. Our local laundromat was adjacent to the Bamford Liquor store, and my mom would sometimes hand over 10¢ to each of us boys to buy some candy to placate us. Our local laundromat was a very basic, utilitarian, no-frills place at the time.

For me, the laundromat was a wonderland of coin-op vending machines. Of course, there was the change machine, plus there was a mini soapbox machine where you could buy a single load sized box of powdered Tide, Cheer, Ivory Snow, or All. You put your coins into the coin slot below your preferred brand of laundry detergent, push the coin slot in, and the soapbox would drop into the metal bin below with a light thud.

There was also a molded, padded TV chair with a small six-inch black and white TV screen and tuner built into it that cost 10¢ for 30-minutes of broadcast TV. In the greater Los Angeles area at the time, the options were channels 2 (CBS), 4 (NBC), 5 (KTLA), 7 (NBC), 9 (KCAL), 11 (KTTV), and 13 (KCOP). That padded, spongy TV chair was the most comfortable seat in the entire laundromat, and someone – generally another mom – was always lounging in it without paying for the television service. They would get annoyed with you if you asked them to move so you could actually watch TV. I watched many reruns of Star Trek at the laundromat.

Directly outside the laundromat door was a ubiquitous Los Angeles Times newspaper vending machine too – 10¢ for the daily paper, 25¢ for the Sunday edition.

There was also one of those 5¢ triple-head candy vending machines inside the laundromat and it didn’t take long for us boys to figure out that the peanuts and bubblegum were perpetually stale in that vending machine so we would go over to the liquor store and buy candy from there where we could get a 3-foot-long whip of purple grape or green apple flavored bubblegum for 10¢. The flavor in that gum was gone in 5-minutes, and the more you chewed it, the stiffer it got. I’m surprised we didn’t get TMJ from chewing that stuff.

Sometimes mom would let us feed the last three dollars of cash that she had in the whole world into the change machine which was sort of a mechanical wonder when you’re a 12-year-old boy. The machine would only accept the dollar bill when oriented correctly and if the paper money was in reasonably good condition. If you put the dollar bill into the slot incorrectly, or if the dollar bill was too faded or crumpled, it would just spit the bill back out looking as if the machine was sticking it’s tongue out at you with a resounding virtual message of REJECT! In those cases, mom would send us over to the liquor store for change, but the liquor store policy was NO CHANGE – DON’T ASK according to a sign on the wall behind the cash register. So, we had to buy 5¢ of candy to get change, which was usually five 1¢ pieces of Bazooka bubblegum. That liquor store was definitely benefiting from the laundromat. I was also secretly hoping that every dollar bill would get rejected so we could buy more candy. I also wondered how many pints of liquor were sold to the laundromat patrons.

When the change machine did accept a dollar bill, the sound of the four quarters hitting the metal tray at the bottom of the machine was glorious – it was like you won the jackpot from a slot machine in Las Vegas!

Mostly out of curiosity but with a potential monetary side benefit, I tried to trick the change machine once by tracing out the face and the back of a dollar bill on a piece of blank translucent tracing paper using a No. 2 pencil and then carefully cutting it out to the exact (well, mostly exact) size of a dollar bill. The anticipation of getting free quarters for a forged dollar bill as it was being fed into the waiting illuminated slot using the correct orientation of George Washington’s head was met with the cold rejection of a machine that was not so easily tricked. So much for my scheme to make more fake bills if it worked. In retrospect, it appears that my juvenile delinquency started earlier than I thought.

The change machine would also give change for coins: two-dimes and a nickel for a quarter, and two nickels for a dime. This was handy for the 35¢ washer and 10¢ dryer.

My mom would use three or four washing machines at-a-time, all in a row if possible, and separate the laundry mostly into whites and colors and transfer the dirty clothes from the shopping cart to the top-loading, large-capacity washing machines. She would tell us which settings she wanted on each load, for example, hot wash and warm rinse for the whites, and warm wash and cold rinse for the colors. She would then tell us how many scoops of detergent or how much bleach to add to each load.

We got to feed the coins into the waiting washing machines too, I think, mostly to continue keeping us boys occupied. We set the coins vertically into the appropriate slots, and then pushed the slotted coins into the machine which, coincidentally, also sounded like a slot machine payout.

However, some of the washing machine coin slots were occasionally jammed with what appeared to be foreign coins or metal slugs which made them completely inoperable. No doubt this irritated the owner/maintenance guy to no end and made him rethink his life choices. Also, what kind of lowlife cheapskate doesn’t have 35¢ for a load of laundry and needs to resort to such measures?

The laundromat also had these high, square laundry baskets on wheels with a hanger bar across the top. The top of the laundry basket was at the same height as the top of the washing machines, so it made loading and unloading clothes easy. These were also great for wheeling your little brother around inside the laundromat as fast as possible much to the irritation of other laundromat patrons sitting around and reading their copy of the Los Angeles Times or Time magazine while waiting for their clothes to finish.

Laundromat environments are this peculiar confluence of heat and humidity blending with the many laundry detergent scents competing with each other as they waft through the air. One moment you definitely smell the fresh scent of Tide and the next moment you get a nose full of flowery smelling Cheer. Occasionally, you’ll get hit with the chemical smell of bleach. Makes me wonder about the long-term hazards of inhaling all this stuff.

One time, I convinced my little brother to get inside one of the massive front-loading dryers under the premise that it was going to be like a carnival ride. He crawled in and sat in it like a recliner and braced himself. I closed the door and popped the dime into the coin slot and selected the cool setting and pressed the start button. There was a low hum as the dryer started to turn slowly and within a couple of seconds my poor little brother was getting the tumble dry treatment which looked like he was doing endless in-place somersaults. He started yelling “STOP!” and I quickly pulled the dryer door open to stop it. He jumped out of it like he was shot from a cannon. He said, “Now, it’s your turn.” I smiled at him, spun around on my heels, and ran out of the laundromat as fast as I could with my brother hot on my heels, as he was hollering, “YOU TRICKED ME!” I heard my mom yell out, “Knock it off boys!” as we passed by.

Eventually, we helped mom transfer the freshly laundered clothes from the washing machines to the dryers, and within the next 40-minutes or so, we were folding laundry and reloading the shopping cart for the return trip back to the apartment. I have a distinct memory of pushing the shopping cart down Cahuenga Boulevard with the pleasant scent of clean laundry in the air.

To be continued next week…

Instagram: @m.snarky

©2024. All rights reserved.

Hello Back – A Lost Art

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Story 13 of 52

By M. Snarky

I’ve mentioned in a previous post (https://msnarky.com/2024/08/30/walking-in-my-neighborhood/) that I do my best to get my ten-thousand daily steps. It’s good for me. It gets me away from my screens for an hour or so. It gets my heart rate up a little bit. I also benefit from the sunshine and fresh air and the endorphins especially after getting chased by a dog for half a block. I do most of my walking around my neighborhood and I’ve become familiar with the streets and the houses and the other regular walkers.

I’ve gotten myself into the habit of saying hello to everyone that I pass. Not an over-the-top, phony “HELLO!” like what the salesman at the car dealership says as if they know me, it’s just a regular, friendly, low-key “Hello,” which to me is a simple greeting and an acknowledgment of someone’s presence. Oddly, my hello back ratio is lacking, like maybe I get a one out of five response, or 20%. On a good day, maybe one out of four, or 25%. My ratio is 100% because I always say hello back.

There is a semi-regular walker in my neighborhood that I call Bigfoot. He is a thinnish sixty-something year old mustachioed man with a ruddy complexion and thinning hair and he’s maybe five-feet-nine-inches tall. He wears Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses…even at night. He walks with duck feet (out-toeing) at such an unbelievable angle with shoes so large that it reminds me of Bigfoot, hence the nickname. He walks with his head at a downward angle as if he is avoiding making eye contact with anyone. His body language tells me that he is walking reluctantly – as if he’s only doing it because of doctor’s orders.

I have said hello to this man at least dozen times. He has never, ever, said hello back. My first inclination was that he was tuned out with earbuds (which, unfortunately, is often the case) and maybe blasting Liberace’s Greatest Hits and simply didn’t hear me, but there was nothing jammed into his ears. My second inclination was that he had a hearing deficit and simply couldn’t hear me. But then I saw him having a conversation with someone in the neighborhood which ruled this out. So, if he can hear me, there must be another reason. Maybe he’s just a shy person. Maybe he’s just going through the motions of life and not really engaging in it, which is sad, really. Perhaps he is in a witness protection program and is suspicious of everyone, which pretty much borders on paranoia. Or maybe he’s just an anti-social crank that hates the world. I’m leaning toward that last one.

So, this got me thinking about the actual word, hello, where it came from, what it means, etc., and down the world-wide-web rabbit hole I went…

According to Merriam-Webster, the etymology of the word hello is that it is an alteration of the word hollo (14th century) which was originally used as an exclamation or to attract attention. The Oxford English Dictionary notes the earliest known use of the word hello is in the 1820s. Okay, so the word has been in use for a couple of centuries so it’s not like it’s a new word that hasn’t caught on.

According to NPR, Thomas Edison is credited for popularizing the word hello by suggesting that this is how you should answer your newfangled telephone in the late 19th century. His rival, Alexander Graham Bell, however, thought the better word was “ahoy.” I can’t imagine answering my phone with, “Ahoy!” instead of, “Hello!” unless, of course, I was a pirate.

Anyway, I’m not exactly sure why there is a hello back deficit and I do have some theories about this. But first, some definitions (that I made up):

  1. Hello-er [he-loh-er] – the person who says hello first.
  2. Hello-ee [he-loh-ee] – the person who is the recipient of the hello.

Theory 1 – People are Generally Unfriendly

For whatever reason (or reasons), people, in general, are just not that friendly. By default, they are wary of a random stranger talking to them. Maybe they think replying with a hello back will open up an opportunity for a life insurance sales pitch. Or maybe this is just an L.A. thing.

Theory 2 – Avoiding Conversation

People might think that if they respond with a hello back, it will open up the floodgates of a potentially awkward conversation with the unknown hello-er, so they avoid replying back because they don’t want to get pulled into a discussion about politics or religion or veganism.

Theory 3 – Cultural

Unless you have been introduced to a person by a friend or a family member of a member of the clergy, you just don’t talk to strangers unless you want to get flogged. This is probably more applicable to women than men because it is mostly men that make up the rules that incorporate flogging.

Theory 4 – Stranger Danger

Similar to Theory 3 but without the flogging part, Stranger Danger mandates that by default you don’t talk to any stranger for any reason or under any circumstances because they might be a slasher or a rapist or a politician. Don’t even make eye contact. Be a ghost. Indeed, we teach our children to be paranoid and anti-social at an early age here in the USA.

The response of some hello-ee’s is sometimes that of a happy surprise,  as if they didn’t expect you to acknowledge them at all, and when you did, they smile and say hello back. These are my favorite people – they are spontaneous and genuine.

For example, there is a family in my neighborhood that has a special needs daughter in her late teens or early twenties. She is non-verbal and the parents have this special three-wheeled wheelchair contraption for her that straps her feet onto pedals and her hands onto handlebars that are articulated to encourage motion in her withered limbs. It is both heartbreaking and beautiful to see parents that are so devoted to their daughter that they regularly walk her around the local elementary school.

The first time we walked by them we were walking in opposite direction around the school, so we saw them face-to-face. I said hello, not only out of being social, but also to convey to them that I see them and that I acknowledge them. They probably didn’t sense that I silently understood the 24/7 anguish they must be experiencing. The response from the parents was as if they had become so accustomed to being invisible that they didn’t think anybody cared to say anything to them, especially a perfect stranger, and I think that I caught them off guard. My hello evoked from them a quick smile and a friendly hello back. It appeared to me that this family had grown accustomed to people walking silently past them. They were used to people ignoring them, not particularly out of callousness or indifference, but because people don’t naturally know how to act or what to say to someone that is clearly living day-to-day with such hardship.

I strongly recommend that people say hello to the passersby that are less fortunate – you might just make their day.

I’ve also noticed that there are vast differences between the hello back response rates of men versus women. In my experience, the man-to-man hello back rate is probably close to one in two, or 50% while the man-to-woman hello back rate is much lower, like maybe one in five, or about 20%.

Not being a woman, I have no idea what the woman-to-woman or woman-to-man hello back ratio is, but I imagine that it is not exactly the inverse. What I mean is that perhaps the woman-to-woman is on par with the man-to-man ratio but the woman-to-man hello back percentage is probably much higher because most men are, frankly, a bunch of horndogs. I also wonder what the national average is between the hello-er and hello-ee ratios between the sexes.

I recently discovered the Google Books Ngram Viewer, and it appears that the frequency of the word hello peaked around 2012:

Google Books Ngram Viewer results for “hello.”

Is hello getting cancelled? If so, we’re doomed.

I’m going to rebel against this trend and keep saying hello anyway.

Instagram: @m.snarky

© 2024. All rights reserved.

Supporting Links

Hollo – https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hollo

Hello – https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hello, https://www.oed.com/dictionary/hello_int?tab=factsheet#1691340

NPR – https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2011/02/17/133785829/a-shockingly-short-history-of-hello

Google Books Ngram Viewer for hello https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=hello&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=7&case_insensitive=true

Politically Homeless

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Still standing.

Story 12 of 52

By M. Snarky

That divisive 2024 presidential election cycle was pretty wild, wasn’t it? We went from old man Biden falling behind old man Trump in the polls to younger woman Harris surging past Trump in the polls. Some polls showed Harris ahead in this state and Trump ahead in that state and vice-versa. Women favored Harris and men favored Trump. Duh. Projections from the pundits, pollsters, politicos, and pinheads were for a tight election – not chad checking tight like in the 2000 presidential election, but tight, nonetheless. When the dust settled, we got ourselves another old white man, but also a misogynist, a womanizer, and a convict. Good job, America – you just elected the first Convict-in-Chief.

Was this a “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t,” vote? Perhaps it was, but we can do so much better than this.

Again, as a solid Libertarian (I voted for Chase Oliver and I encourage you to read about him), I find myself politically homeless. Being a social liberal and fiscal conservative makes me an outlier in today’s corrosive Team Red or Team Blue political duopoly.

Also, there is a misrepresentation of libertarians in that all we want to do is legalize drugs and prostitution. This is the bastardized version of the libertarian party. The libertarian party is about much more than decriminalization of drug use and sex workers. It’s also about personal freedom, minimizing government force and government interference in your life, free markets, sound money policy, etc. I recommend that you read all about it over at lp.org before making any judgment.

The best definition of liberty I ever heard was from Katherine Mangu-Ward, editor in-chief of Reason, the magazine of “free minds and free markets,” which, to paraphrase, was, “Liberty is the total absence of government coercion.” Yes!

I was a double-hater from the beginning for many reasons. Neither candidate had a coherent foreign, domestic, trade, or monetary policy. Both Harris and Trump were floating out off-the-cuff ideas here and there (most of them terrible) I think mostly to see what might stick in the news-cycle, but there was zero substance in my opinion. No tax on tips was the best idea they could agree on. Wow. Talk about weak sauce. Instead, how an adult conversation about a simple flat minimum tax rate coupled with a value added tax (VAT) plan like what 175 other countries do? Just floating out an idea here. Also, we don’t need a new Department of the Politically Homeless, thank you.

Neither candidate spoke about reigning in the size and scope and power of the government. It was essentially more of the same – more spending, more government jobs programs, more debt. So much debt that tens of trillions of dollars of it doesn’t even move the needle anymore. I think this is because most people just don’t understand that one trillion dollars has twelve zeros (for a visual reference, that is $1,000,000,000,000) and is too big of a number for the average person to comprehend let alone talk about.

No talk about federal government program reform, or departmental or agency audits, like maybe audit the Federal Reserve, Department of Education, Postal Service, Social Security, Medicare, IRS, ad infinitum. Do we really need the Commission of Fine Arts? Probably not. No talk about shrinking the military budget or de-tangling our very messy foreign entanglements. Balancing the budget? Forget about it! Sorry, Senator Rand Paul: Your Six Penny Plan to balance the federal budget in 5-years is a great idea but is also a non-starter because Congress is addicted to pork. What we need here is an intervention.

It has been said that a government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have, which is something that we are flirting with. This is why further expansion of any existing or creation of any new government program or “service” needs to be curtailed by any means possible, including some old school filibustering.

Also, the voting bloc of unionized government workers is probably going to vote for the candidate that is not talking about reform or cuts, because reform or cuts may cost them their jobs, so there’s that. Essentially, they vote for job security.

Oddly, neither candidate talked about the ever-increasing tax burden placed on the shoulders of the American people because of the federal government’s spending problem. Instead, Harris supports an unrealized gains tax and Trump supports massive tariffs, both of which are unbelievably bad ideas and would increase the tax burden and the cost of goods for Americans across the board, not just the millionaires and billionaires.

To drive this idea home, I’ll flip the script from talking about income to talking about tax burdens. For example, “I make $100,000 per year,” changes to, “My tax burden is $24,000 per year,” which is an entirely different conversation. This is only a 24% tax rate on gross earnings example, so it’s not a crazy high number that I’m hypothesizing with here. Work with me. In some places in the world, that $24K is a fortune.

Can I get a show of hands from people who like having $2,000 a month stolen from them? Oops! What I meant was, can I get a show of hands from people that like making a “voluntary” $2,000 per month contribution to the IRS? Oh, and if you don’t voluntarily give up your money to the government, it will be taken by force. That force being the confiscation of your cash and assets and possible jail time.

Also, that pesky 6,871-page U.S. tax code (75,000 pages after tax regulations and official tax guidelines from the IRS are included) is just too unwieldy for casual political conversation. Let’s be honest here; the U.S. tax code is a bloated tome of the greatest cradle to grave taxation scheme ever imposed upon the public. I say we burn it and start over with a single page tax return.

The only more that I want from the government is more freedom, more personal liberty, more reform, and more contraction. Anything less is anathema to a free society.

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© 2024. All rights reserved.

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Why Turtlenecks?

~ msnarky ~ Leave a comment
Turtlenecks have been cancelled.

Story 11 of 52

By M. Snarky

Ahh, fall is in the air and with it comes longer nights and cooler temps and the season of the…turtlenecks. God help us.

Guys, turtlenecks just don’t look cool and are a very dated fashion choice. Seriously. It’s a dreadfully old, dull fashion statement that just won’t die and it’s all your fault.

Do you think turtlenecks make you look taller? They don’t.

Do you think turtlenecks make you look smarter? If you don’t mind being judged as an elitist intellectual type – because this is what turtlenecks say about you – then, yes, you look smarter you little snob.

Do you think a turtleneck makes you look trendy? Depends upon whom you ask, but the correct answer is no.

Nobody really likes them, except for maybe mothers and girlfriends and boyfriends with ulterior motives.

Looking back to days of yore, turtlenecks were only invented to protect the necks of medieval knights to prevent chafing from their chainmail armor way back in the Dark Ages. They were not invented for men to wear while singing folk music, reciting poetry, anchoring the news, playing the bongos, or eating a steak at Morton’s with Guido and Tony.

Are these modern turtleneck wearing men trying to signal to us that they are identifying as a bold, horse riding, sword fighting, mace swinging, lance impaling medieval knight with bad teeth and actually trying to subconsciously intimidate us? Granted, this is a massive stretch. Eh, on second thought, probably not.

What looks worse than an actual turtleneck? A Dickie mock turtleneck, like what cousin Eddie spectacularly wore in Christmas Vacation. I guess if you don’t have the bucks for an actual turtleneck, a Dickie is your discount fashion option, you cheap, out-of-touch bastard. Also, I don’t think a man should wear anything called a dickie because the name itself hints that a certain body part may be smallish.

The worst look of all is a turtleneck with a big, chunky gold or silver chain worn on the outside of the collar. Unless, of course, you are Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson; he’s the only one that can pull that look off. Ahem, hi Dwayne – I love your work!

Do men really wear turtlenecks to fend off a chill to their neck on a cold day? No. It’s only worn as a fashion statement, not as a practical clothing item. So, you gotta man up, dude – wear something hip like a cravat, or a neckerchief, or an ascot, or a buff, or even a keffiyeh, but wearing one of these might piss a few people off.

Or is it that these turtleneck wearing men are channeling an actual turtle in that they can retreat into their shell if frightened by, say, a snarling Pomeranian gnashing its teeth?

Do these men look in the mirror and say to themselves, “Wow, dude – what an absolutely awesome fashion statement!” Or is it, “Mom love’s it when I wear this!” This is wrong either way.

Or is it that you allow your mother or the woman or the man in your life to dress you in a turtleneck? Rage, rage, against the…wearing of the terribly bad fashion choices.

Does your girlfriend or wife or boyfriend or husband tell you that you look handsome in a turtleneck? They are lying to you through an ulterior motive which is to make you look as unattractive as possible to other people, you know, to fend off any potential competition. The same goes for two-faced lying coworkers who tell you that you look great in a turtleneck but are laughing behind your back. You’re actually being subliminally manipulated, and you should be angry about that!

Whatever the reason is that you’re wearing a turtleneck now, it’s categorically wrong. Please, just stop it.

I’ll concede here that I can only see one, ONE, possible reason to wear a turtleneck: To cover up a poorly executed neck tattoo of a red lipstick kiss that you paid $10 for when you were 20 years old and drunk in Mexico. At the time you thought that it looked like a kiss from Angelina Jolie’s sexy lips, but when you sobered up it looked more like a smeared, sloppy, drunken kiss from the lips of Mrs. Doubtfire.

I encourage everyone to dig through their closets and their dressers and grab every single turtleneck or Dickie that can be found, pile them up high in the driveway, pour some gasoline over them, and torch them. Yes, yes, set them ablaze in the ultimate rejection of a fashion style that should have died out during the Renaissance!

And suddenly, I’m getting notices from Amazon that fall turtlenecks are on sale. “We found something you might be interested in…” with a bunch of turtleneck images and links. This can only be because I had researched turtlenecks on the web, not because I was actually shopping for one to purchase. Yeah, that’s it. Apparently, the app was “listening.”

This creepy AI algorithm stuff is going way too far.

Instagram: @m.snarky

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