Category: Politics, Religion & Money

Popeye… stoned sleeper agent?

My first favorite cartoon character was Popeye. I never cared for spinach as a kid, canned or otherwise, but that didn’t stop me from loving the Fleischer Popeye cartoons.

I was in an ice cream-candy shop with Carol and Eric this weekend, and I spotted boxes of Popeye ‘candy sticks’. They’re what used to be called candy cigarettes.

These ‘candy sticks’ look like reefer joints! What if those aren’t spinach leaves in that can, but marijuana? Maybe that explains why Popeye is senselessly punching his own shadow on the back of the box. He’s stoned!

But look closely on the side of the box, made by World Confections, Inc., of Brooklyn, NY, and you’ll see writing in Arabic!

Have Islamic extremists put Popeye under their influence? Is he in fact a drugged sleeper agent? Why hasn’t Glenn Beck said anything about this?

ATOYOTA

For nearly fifteen years, until about fifteen years ago, I was a frequent business traveler. I spent a lot of time in airports, rental cars, and hotels. Back then, before the Internet and laptops with wifi, newspapers and magazines were essential for a long flight.

The rental cars were often the most interesting part of the trips, because they were almost always American, and they turned me into a student of automotive awfulness.  The rare times I was given a Toyota, the contrast was striking. Everything from the seating position to the placement of controls, and the feeling of quality, to the lack of “funny noises,” was vastly superior to anything I rented with a GM or Ford nameplate.

The low point for me was when a brand-new Pontiac Grand Am stalled and left me stranded on my way to an airport. Cell phones for consumers were almost non-existent, and I was stuck having to leave the car in the middle of the road so I could find a payphone to call the rental agency. I started declaring that “GM is doomed,” and I made a point of seeing ‘Roger & Me’, by Michael Moore. Then I read a book I’d seen reviewed in Business Week, called ‘Rivethead’, by Ben Hamper, with a forward by Moore. It was an honest, and unflattering, portrait of the working stiff side of GM.

I was reminded of ‘Rivethead’ a few weeks ago, when ‘This American Life’ devoted a show to the New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. plant, aka NUMMI (KNEW-me), a joint venture between GM and Toyota. With GM having to be rescued from the brink of oblivion, and Toyota now having quality problems of its own, this program answers the questions, “what made the Japanese so good (with some exceptions), and why is American quality so variable from one plant to another?”

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/403/nummi

Apple says, “Don’t Think Different”

Back in February, I pointed out a controversy caused by a political cartoon from December, by Mark Fiore, who has won the Pulitzer Prize. And he’s the first to do it with animated cartoons.

But before this good news, it turns out that December was a doubly troublesome month for Fiore, because that was when his iPhone app was rejected by Apple Computer. Why? Because it “ridicules public figures.”

Follow-up: Fiore submitted his app again, and this time it was accepted, but the decision had to come from Steve Jobs.

Welcome to Pair-o-dice

The push to allow casino gambling is a hot topic here in Massachusetts. Gambling is economically regressive. Much of the money comes from those who can least afford to spend it — day laborers, people on Social Security, etc. The only valid argument that I see favoring Massachusetts casinos is keeping the state’s gamblers from spending their money at Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun in Connecticut. WGBH radio in Boston, which recently retooled to compete with FM news leader WBUR, has been doing a series on casino gambling.

http://www.wgbh.org/news/lastresort.cfm

I was surprised to hear that Mohegan Sun wants to develop a casino in Massachusetts.Their chosen site is Palmer, which is one of the many failed mill towns in the region. Apparently Mohegan Sun executives feel Palmer is far enough away from Uncasville, Connecticut that they won’t be competing with themselves.

The decline of communities like Palmer has been going on for a very long time. Over 30 years ago, I spent a day with Nixon-Watergate attorney John Dean, who was speaking at my college, and while we were driving through Western Massachusetts we talked about how many of the once-thriving textile mill towns were in trouble. Is casino gambling a way out of financial desperation? I don’t think so. I think it causes more desperation than it prevents, but if it happens my feeling is very simple: NIMBY.

Colbert’s Uncle Eddie

Monday’s ‘The Colbert Report’ had a special moment between Stephen and his guest Tom Hanks, who was 2/3 of the show. It starts at 2:15 into this video.

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Tom Hanks Pt. 1
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Mr. D.F. Rogers, B.A. History and WWII buff, watched this segment, and had these comments to make:

Hanks mentioned that much of the new show [‘The Pacific’ on HBO] is based on the [Eugene] Sledge book. I’ve had it for years and I brought it with me to read on the train to NYC, but instead I read a book by a B-17 pilot. I guess I’ll have to read the Sledge book next! Plus, the companion book for the series is by Ambrose’s son, so I assume that is what the father was working on when he died.

Hanks also brought up a point that I have found interesting and feel is very much forgotten and not written about. The events that happened AFTER the war finished. As mentioned, like Colbert’s Uncle Eddie, THOUSANDS of guys died in the months after the war in strange accidents and non-war related incidents.

It was very chaotic, and the U.S. troops were also saddled with going from fighting in fierce battles to being administrators and security guards almost overnight. There were millions of displaced persons from all over Europe, hundreds of thousands of surrendering troops, POW’s, starving civilians, retribution from freed slaves and workers, etc. Plus, hundreds of thousands of young American males suddenly let loose once the fighting stopped, doing what young men always do, participate in various untold “risky” behaviors of all kinds — driving cars too fast, getting blind drunk, riding horses, climbing mountains and hunting, etc.! Things had to be reined in after a few weeks of that, and the officers had to gain control again. There was some semblance of military order and duty, of course.