The Expert on Wasps

A man who was a professional entomologist walked into a record shop specializing in old LP discs. He asked the assistant “Do you have European Vespidae Acoustics Volume 2? I believe it was released some thirty years ago.”

“Certainly,” replied the assistant. “Would you like to listen before you buy it?”

 "That would be wonderful," said the expert, and he put on a pair of headphones.

He listened for a few moments and said to the assistant, “I'm terribly sorry, but I am the world's leading expert on European wasps and this is not accurate at all. I don't recognize any of those sounds. Are you sure this is the correct recording?”

The assistant checked the turntable, and replied that it was indeed European Vespidae Acoustics Volume 2. The assistant apologized and lifted the needle onto the next track.

Again the expert listened for a few moments and then said to the assistant, "No, this just can't be right! I've been an expert in this field for 43 years and I still don't recognize any of these sounds."

 The assistant apologized again and lifted the needle to the next track.

The expert threw off the headphones as soon as it starts playing and was fuming with rage. 

"This is outrageous false advertising! I am the world's leading expert on European wasps and no European wasp has ever made a sound like the ones on this record!"

The manager of the shop overheard the commotion and walked over.

"What seems to be the problem, sir?"

"This is an outrage! I am the world's leading expert on European wasps. Nobody knows more about them than I do. There is no way in hell that the sounds on that record were made by European wasps!"

The manager glanced down and notices the problem instantly.

"I'm terribly sorry, sir. It appears we've been playing you the bee side."

A Close Call on LA 69

In the Spring, adolescents' thoughts occasionally turn to the mischievous, and sometimes to the downright illegal. It happened that one year at Bayou Teche High School it became a fad to swipe numbered highway signs.

Now there were more or less implicit rules: like don't swipe stop or caution signs. It was thought to be especially cool to swipe a numbered state highway sign from another part of the state, either to display in one's room, or to nail it publicly in a prominent place.

Needless to say, the state highway maintenance people cast a jaundiced eye on these doings, as did doting parents. Parental decorative schemes did not include such items.

Anyway, Tee Thibodaux and Marie Claire did this nefarious deed and boastfully displayed their ill-gotten gain by nailing it to the main door of the high school so that students coming to class on Monday got to see their handiwork. Word got around quickly enough who the culprits were; even though no adults were privy to that information.

Tee Boudreaux and his girlfriend Big Tina* decided to top Tee Thib and Marie Claire's exploit. Tina figured out how.

Why not shoot for a sign with some meaningful number? -- Now that would be clever. Like LA 1, maybe?

Big Tina, further thought, is there a state Highway 69? If so, why not swipe a Highway 69 sign and switch it with one of a local highway? Okay, okay . . . . but this required a good old-fashioned road trip to get the proper sign.

All the way to Assumption Parish, at that.

Now that particular numeral had somewhat of a cabalistic significance to the younger brethren as signifying true sincerity and affection.  For that reason Big Tina thought it would be an exploit topper.

So early one Friday night, instead of the usual movie and parking afterwards, they took a little ole road trip across the Atchafalaya into the river parishes. Now LA 69 is a short one, as highways go: only 15 miles long. So it was a trick to find a sign in a relatively isolated place. But they did; and parked next to it, and Tina and Boo went at it with a wrench.

They just barely managed to get the nuts off when they noticed a Assumption Parish Deputy car approaching. Oh, double damn!**

Anyway, before removing the sign from the bolts Tina thought immediately,"Boo, kiss me! And hug me like you mean it."

Tee Boudreaux got the general idea; and together they performed a reasonable facsimile of a couple in the throes of passion. It wasn't hard. They had practice.

So the Assumption Parish Deputy pulls up behind Boo's car and asked if they had a problem. Boo and Tina break the clinch, and turn to the officer.

"Nossir . . . . we're just having a moment's discussion."

"Well, you young lovers might park in that Dollar store parking lot some 100 yards up the road. It's safer and more private for your discussion."

"Yessir, Officer. We'll do it right away."

Tee Boo and Big Tina complied; and enjoyed a few moments together courtesy of the Assumption Parish Sheriff's Office and their understanding deputy.

After the deputy went away, they went back and placed the sign in Tee Boo's trunk.

The following night they hung the filched LA 69 sign on a local road near Bayou Teche High School, replacing the highway sign already there. A few of their classmates noticed the number change eventually; but Tee Boo and Big Tina kept mum. The adults in the Grand Teche area merely noted the route number was now different. Everyone assumed it was an official change. In that way they didn't have the impact as expected.

*Known possibly because of her endowment.

**Boo and Tina were nice kids, and didn't cuss much.

The Poop Train

Yankee Poo made the news for the past two months.

No, this isn't a character from The Mikado; this refers to a a trainload of human waste shipped from New York City to its final destination in Adamsville, Alabama. However, due to an injunction, this malodorous shipment was stuck in the little town of Parrish, Alabama in Walker County instead of reaching the intended waste disposal site. in Adamsville.

For weeks! And the quality of life in Parrish declined. Frankly, the train stunk to high heaven and caused the town to do so as well. People could not sit on their porches. The smell permeated their homes, and outdoor sports could not be enjoyed. Frankly, the odor probably affected indoor sports as well! 

And the magnitude of malodor was too great for ordinary processes of sensory adaptation to take place.

As William Shakespeare would have said, "There is something rotten in Walker County!"

Seriously, part of the problem was that Parrish did not have zoning law protection that other places had. So there it stayed. Stinking to high heaven and places elsewhere as well!

It would have been neat for the odiferous cargo to be sent back to NYC for them to deal with; but no luck with that! This was one more grievance for the locals to be unhappy with.

The smelly stuff remained in place.  Finally, the human waste contents were removed from Parrish but the odor lingered for a while still.

There was some good news, though. Due to the bad publicity, NYC announced that it would no longer ship human waste to Alabama! Amazingly, they at least had a sense of remorse! I hope the unfortunate publicity from this episode will keep other places from using the South as their toilet in the future.

Are there not any suitable locations for waste disposal in the Empire State? It seems that each state should get its own shit together* and not be a problem to others!

See also the WaPo for a take on this story.

*Figuratively and in reality.

How Not to Conduct a Reenlistment Ceremony

What were they thinking, anyway?

Recently a news item came out regarding the conduct of a reenlistment ceremony for a Master Sergeant in the Tennessee Air National Guard. It seems that she wore a dinosaur hand puppet during the ceremony, which was conducted by a Colonel in the same unit! 

Some occasions do call for a proper degree of solemnity. This definitely seems like one of them.

Apparently, the Air Force agreed.  Both the Sergeant and the Colonel conducting the ceremony were promptly retired from the Air National Guard. 

While levity can sometimes serve a purpose, some situations do intrinsically call for an element of seriousness. Christenings, graduations, weddings, Bar Mitzvahs, and funerals* do come to mind. More specifically, there is a need for rituals. They serve to reinforce the idea that what is taking place is a Big Deal, and it emphasizes group cohesion. 

Yes! What she was signing up to do often calls for playing for keeps. There are risks and responsibilities that go with serving in a profession involving defense. Sometimes peoples' lives are on the line, and that profession should not be trivialized with hand puppets.

*An exception may possibly be made with the Irish wake. See this scene from The Wire.

"The Most Sanctimonious Song Ever Written"

A few months ago I was watching "Weeds" on Netflix; and I picked up an earworm in the process: a tired little ditty entitled "Little Boxes," by Malvina Reynolds. To my disappointment, each episode of "Weeds" started with that same irritating song while the opening title was shown. Something about it moved me -- close to nausea. It prompted me to turn the sound off for the opening of each episode of "Weeds." For the record, Pete Seeger did the more widely known cover of that unfortunate song.

Overreaction? Maybe. But there was just something about the sheer attitude that was being expressed in the song. To put it mildly, Angelique got extremely pissed off by it.

It turned out that Malvina Reynold's inspiration was the large tract housing being built on hillsides in Daly City, CA. Just out of curiosity, the unassuming Daly City did not make the list of the ten worst cities in California, according to certain YouTube websites. (Tip: YouTube has generic topics such as Worst Cities in (State), Most Dangerous Cities in (State), and others of that ilk. Choose any state you wish, and some unfortunate communities will be shown (?) to merit those dubious distinctions. Please watch these, if you must, with a lot of healthy skepticism.)

Anyway, the song satirized the bourgeois conformity supposedly taking place in shoddily-built communities like Daly City allegedly was.

I looked up the song title and musical satirist Tom Lehrer described it as "the most sanctimonious song ever written." Right on target, dude! I think those Daly City dwellers should have gotten some slack and not be judged by some arbitrarily-selected criteria. After all, all of us are not blessed with unlimited resources to choose locations or provide housing like we might wish. Most of us have to make do!

However, this allegedly stultifying bourgeois conformity attributed to those 1950's Daly City residents may simply be their individual wishes for the style of life that they aspired to. Mainstream culture and its alleged attributes seem to be an easy target for the hip aspirants, much like on Mad Men.*

With respect to this song, a few other sanctimonious songs floated on the airwaves of that A.M. sound track era: "Well-Respected Man" by The Kinks also comes to mind. Also should be mentioned is "Pleasant Valley Sunday" by the Monkees. 

But then, maybe sanctimoniousness was not the only issue from popular music. After all, a number one record from back in that era honored a woman-killer ("Tom Dooley").

This sort of makes "Baby one More Time" or "I Kissed a Girl" seem inoffensive, doesn't it?

Have you any thoughts on songs that rile you? Are are you moved in only one way? After all "Musick has Charms to soothe a savage Breast." 

Some Quotes of P. J. O'Rourke

P. J. O'Rourke is a humorist, satirist, and political commentator. He is the author of Parliament of Whores, Give War a Chance, Republican Party Reptile, and Holidays in Hell. He has a way with words. Here are a few of his zingers:

No one has ever had a fantasy about being tied to a bed and sexually ravished by a man dressed as a liberal.

I am a student of stupidity. I am a political reporter.

Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

Giving money to the government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

Never fight an inanimate object.

The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas: fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.

Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.

Ending wars is very simple if you surrender.

Term limits isn't enough. We need jail.

Political systems are run by self-selected politicians. We don't draft people; it's not jury duty.

Everyone knows how to raise children, except the people who have them.

A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.

We had a choice between Democrats who couldn't learn from the past and Republicans who couldn't stop living in it.

Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high-powered rifle and scope.

A hat should be taken off when greeting a lady, and left off the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.

I wasn't cut out to be a Chinese Tiger Mom. I'm more of an Irish Setter Dad.

In its worse forms, conservatism is a matter of 'I hate strangers and anything that is different.'

Politics should be limited in scope to war, protection of property, and the occasional precautionary beheading of a member of the ruling class.

Politics is the attempt to achieve power and prestige without merit.

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things that are bought and sold are legislators.

The U.S. Constitution is less than a quarter the length of the owner's manual for a 1998 Toyota Camry, and yet it has managed to keep 300 million of the world's most unruly, passionate and energetic people safe, prosperous and free.

Drugs have taught an entire generation of Americans the metric system.

Liberals are always proposing perfectly insane ideas, laws that will make everybody happy, laws that will make everything right, make us live forever, and all be rich. Conservatives are never that stupid.

Sloths move at the speed of congressional debate but with greater deliberation and less noise.

The three branches of government: money, television, and bullshit.

A very quiet and tasteful way to become famous is to have a famous relative. Then you can not only be nothing, you can do nothing too.

One thing that's certain about going outdoors: When you come back inside, you'll be scratching.

Mon Amie la Rose

Here is the incomparable Françoise Hardy singing "Mon Amie la Rose" back in 1965.

Françoise Hardy was one of the yéyé girls in 1960's French music. Her songs are among my favorites: they're pensive, sometimes sentimental, and always well-preformed, She also appeared in the 1960's movies The Pink Panther and Grand Prix. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this great French song!