IRS agents are howling with orgasmic glee as they anxiously await your tax filing tomorrow and you’ve waited until the last minute in hopes that someone would give you the secret deets to save, save, save on what you owe. Are you crazy? Last year ended, well, last year, and you can’t do anything now to fix all the ways you screwed up in 2023. You know that by now, though, because you’ve been studying all the lame-stream media guides and every one of them mocks you for all the things you were supposed to do, but didn’t, when it could actually make a difference:
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The guy at the next table is explaining that it was a Secret Service agent—not Lee Harvey Oswald or the marching band on the grassy knoll—who killed JFK, and I cannot help but ignore my dinner companions to eavesdrop with intent. The story goes that a Secret Service agent pulled his gun after hearing the first shot and the weapon went off accidentally, firing the bullet that killed Kennedy. I had never heard this one, but there was a book about it and the agent sued the author over it and, well, does it even matter how all the court cases ended? The tale has survived and now I’m getting the inside info from one table over. The guy telling the story is holding court, doing about 99% of the talking at his table of six, and I cannot tell if his fellow diners are enthralled by the new insights or resigned to one more night of rambling. Nobody interrupts or argues with him, but I cannot guess what that means. Maybe they agree, maybe they know he won’t listen to reason, maybe they’re hoping he’ll pick up the check. You never know. Over at my table, I’m wondering why this guy landed on this particular theory about the JFK assassination. He had a couple hundred theories to choose from, but this is the one he’s sharing now and he seems to have forsaken all others. I’d argue that he’s a sap, falling for one more conspiracy/coverup story, but who am I to call him out? I’d have to reveal that I’d been eavesdropping on his table and, even more embarrassing, I’d be confirming to my friends that their stories aren’t nearly as interesting as his. Which they aren’t, of course, but I don’t want to hurt their feelings. Even worse, he could be right. That’s the problem with everything we know, or think we know. Except for a few experiences like brain freeze or stepping on a Lego brick, most of what we believe is based on a story we heard or read. We tell ourselves we don’t trust the media or politicians or big business or conspiracy theorists or whatever bogeyman/woman/person/they we choose to name. We’re lying, though, and we’re only fooling ourselves when we claim to be too smart to be fooled. In truth, we’re a bunch of saps and we’re such a big bunch of saps that we don’t even recognize what a big bunch of saps we are, which is really sappy. Yours truly is a case in point. I like to think I’m discerning and insightful, able to separate fact from fiction and burros from burrows.* As brilliant and wonderful and exceptional as I am, though, I’ve absorbed a heaping helping of misinformation over the years. I’ll do it again today. Between now and bedtime, I’ll read all kinds of stuff at various websites, including Fox News and the New York Times and Facebook and X. At the end of the day, I’ll have absorbed a new set of data points that will be mostly true and partly garbage. I’ll be better informed and more deluded at the same time, which would normally lead me to a Schrodinger reference, but I’ve used up my allotment for the month. Most of the facts bouncing around in my head are real, I think, but keeping the ledger clean is almost a full-time job. Credible media are in decline while the propaganda industry is growing faster than AI hype, so I’m spending way too many hours double-checking things I’ve read. Lately, I’m applying three screens to my news consumption:
*When I was working at United Press International, our style book noted that a burro is an ass, while a burrow is a hole in the ground, and everyone on the staff was expected to know the difference. Get more brilliant tips like this by clicking here to subscribe. Not only do oldsters write in a secret code called cursive, we’re also coming up with hip new lingo and a cure for short-term memory loss. Making it less of a drag getting old this week…
While you're waiting to join the class-action list of plaintiffs, take a moment to click here to subscribe for more brilliant ideas for revenge. The guy on the next barstool is curious about the photos I’m taking, so I explain it’s an exercise I do every so often, sitting in one place and finding something picworthy from wherever I’m perched. I show him the shot I took of the champagne flutes, refracted through a water glass, and then we veer off into a conversation about cameras, motorcycles, politics, and abortion. Turns out, he owns one of the condos in the hotel complex where we’re staying and he sells motorcycles, among other things, to put food on the table. I get the feeling he can afford much fancier food than he’s munching on at the moment, but he also seems to enjoy being in a place where everybody knows his name. He took some photos when he was younger, drifted away from it, has considered getting back into it, but life intervenes and you move in different directions. We talk about our kids, who are relatively close in age, their careers and life choices, the way our roles change as we and our children get older, and the complexities of business. I tell him a bit about my career and he gives me a brief tutorial on the motorcycle industry, which leads us into the challenges of updating a brand and appealing to a new generation of buyers. Then we're deep into marketing, supply chain management and the damage that the finance guys have wreaked on American industry. I tell him re-shoring and the rebuilding of infrastructure are big investment themes for me, now that the Chips and Science Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law are generating results. His state is one of the bigger beneficiaries, but he isn’t all that familiar with them, and I’m not surprised. Based on some of the phrases he uses, I know at least one source of his news, and Biden successes aren’t a primary topic over there. So, now we’re talking politics, focusing on the misplaced incentives that make it more profitable, literally, to create problems than to solve them. We agree that Congress is pretty ineffective at addressing the issues that are most critical, that there’s more grandstanding than real effort in political circles, and there's a gigantic gap where common sense should be. Inevitably, it seems, we end up on abortion. Both of us believe life begins at conception, but neither of us thinks a woman should be forced to carry a dead fetus to term. He said he was opposed to all the proposals for post-birth abortions and I said I would be opposed, too, if that really was a thing. Between those points of agreement, we didn’t quite find a bright line that divides what’s acceptable or not for the two of us. And by “us,” I’m talking about two men sitting at a bar...pretty much a textbook definition of having no skin in the game. Ninety minutes later, we both have somewhere else to be and some of the world’s problems will need to wait until another pair of old guys grab our stools. As I’m heading out, it occurs to me that it’s incredibly easy to have a congenial conversation with a stranger, to talk about challenging issues without getting angry, to see things differently without seeing an enemy. Clearly, I should spend more time in saloons. I’m doing a good job of keeping up on the news these days, but I’m not completely sure that any of it makes sense. For instance…
A friend of mine died more than a year ago, but I was too busy to notice. We worked together for a while, stayed in touch over the years, saw each other every six months or so, and then the visits became less frequent. We moved into the city, he and his wife moved farther into the suburbs, we’d find opportunities to meet in the middle somewhere, but neither of us pursued the connection with the utmost zeal. Then he took ill, an increasingly common development as my friends and I get older. I went out to visit, as he couldn’t drive anymore, and we had a couples dinner or two, but that was clearly a long, long time ago. I knew he was getting worse, I wrote myself a note to check in on him, and then I made another note and another. I never actually checked in, but I was very diligent about writing new notes. And one day, it was too late. Not that I knew about it, since I was so busy writing reminder notes. I thought about the challenges his wife was facing, I thought about his descent into a hellish disease, I thought about the small support a check-in call might offer. But there’s a huge difference between thinking and doing and I didn't bridge the gap. Since the days when everyone lived in the same cave and spoke the same five words, it has never been easier to stay in touch than it is today. We can Zoom or conference, text or email, make a phone call or jump in a ride-share 24/7. And yet, it seems we are more distanced in many ways, unable to find the time or the drive to connect. Sometimes we spend more time making the plans than we actually spend together. Sometimes, we spend more time writing reminders to ourselves than we’d need to make the damned call. There’s always tomorrow, until there isn’t. In this case, nearly 600 tomorrows have elapsed since the last one that might have mattered. I have no idea what I would have said on the call I never made. People sometimes say it’s important to say goodbye, but that always seems more of a benefit to the person who’s staying than for the one about to depart. The visitor checks a box, while the patient knows they will never hear from their contact for as long as they live. I’ve done the last-goodbye visit more than once and I’ve always felt it was the right thing to do in the specific circumstances with the specific people. Usually, I try to avoid any indication that I don’t expect to return, even if we both know it’s the final conversation. This time was different, because I didn’t bother at all. Now I’m wondering if I should do anything or let it lie. Should I call his widow and express condolences, or does my lengthy absence make things worse? “Yes, I ignored you and your husband, my friend, for so long that he died more than a year ago and I never even noticed, but isn’t it great that I’m noticing now?” Does it reopen a wound to remind her of the people who didn’t show up when it mattered? Am I calling to help her or just to assuage my own guilt? Or, does any expression of sympathy help with the healing, even if it comes much too late from a pretty crappy friend? Gotta ponder that for a while. Maybe I’ll write myself a note. |
Who writes this stuff?Dadwrites oozes from the warped mind of Michael Rosenbaum, an award-winning author who spends most of his time these days as a start-up business mentor, book coach, photographer and, mostly, a grandfather. All views are his alone, largely due to the fact that he can’t find anyone who agrees with him. Archives
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