Baptists Don't Play Well With Others

Once again, the Boob Scouts are in the news.  Well, no, actually, it is the Southern Baptist Bumpkins and their adverse reaction to the recent decision of the Boob Scouts  to allow gay scouts into the canoe.  Of course, once those kids get a little older, you have to throw them out of the boat and take away their paddles.  The Scouts won't let in gay Scoutmasters, but the Baptists know this compromise isn't good enough.  They have already decided not to play, and have folded up their campfire and gone home.

Well, who can blame them?  Once you let gay kids put their...er...noses inside the pup tent, it's only a matter of time before there is a rainbow merit badge for a gay pride parade.  

The leadership at the Southern Baptist Convention are taking an active stance against this inclusion.  They have taken half the Baptists with science degrees---that would be four---off of watching old reruns of the Flintstones in hope of discovering new ways to debunk evolution, and reassigned them to a new emergency project: trying to isolate homo cooties.

In the meantime, they are starting their own "Christian Boys Club" that will

exclude all gay people of any age.  Is it just me, or does the act of excluding children sound about as un-Christian as letting loose a pack of hungry wolves on a daycare center?  Let's give this idea the acid test: try to think for 30 seconds straight about a Christian Boys Club run by the Baptist Church that excludes the "wrong type of boy" without once thinking about the Hitler Youth Group.  Go ahead...try it.  I'll just sit here, quietly humming the Horst Wessel Song while you're busy.   (I wonder what the new oath will be like?  And the salute?  Nah.  They wouldn't.  Would they?)

All of this is a little confusing to me!  If a homosexual lifestyle is a choice, then you would think that the Baptists would welcome "sinners" into their fold, in order to lead them "straight" by example.  After all, in Matthew 28:18-20 didn't Christ exhort his disciples to become "fishers of men" in order to spread his word?  (I'd double check that if I were you.  As Shakespeare said, "the devil can cite scripture for his own purpose.)  If I were dragging a net for sinners, I wouldn't do it in a desert: I'd pick a target-rich environment.

Obviously, the Baptists don't want to do that, which implies that homosexuality is not a choice but an uncontrollable, inherently God-made trait.  But why would God do that?

I have a theory: God is bipolar.  Think about it: what else would explain a platypus?  Or the people in MallWart?  On his good days, God created coral reefs, forests and the fjords of Norway.*   His bad days resulted in volcanos, swamps, and Oklahoma.

Until all of this is figured out, perhaps the Baptists should exercise a little humility and/or  not be so convinced they completely understand God or his will.  As a group, the Baptists have been on the wrong side of important social issues for over a hundred years.  Whether it was slavery, civil rights, feminism, evolution, global warming or just enjoying a cold beer on a hot day, the Baptists have always seemed to be championing the side of stupidity.  It is really hard to learn anything if you stop asking questions in the belief you already know all the answers.

This reminds me of an old story that hasn't happened yet.  The college of cardinals were sitting around a large table waiting for the pontiff.  The door opened and the pope trudged in with his shoulders stooped, staring at the ground.

"Santa Merda," exclaimed the pope as he put his elbows on the table and sank his forehead into his hands.

"What's the matter?" asked the concerned cardinals.

"Christ has risen!  The second coming is now! " said the pontiff.  "Christ just telephoned me!"

"That's fantastic!" shouted the assembled cardinals as they jumped to their feet.  "But, why are you so sad?"

The pope slowly lifted his ashen face from his palms and spoke slowly, "It was a collect call.  And she was calling from Salt Lake City."



*According to the preeminent Bible scholar, the Right Reverend Adams, when the Norwegian fjords were created, God had help from Slartibartfast.

Brand This!

Enema U is having an open discussion about football.  Well, actually one of the university's Evil Overlords wrote a letter to the local newspaper claiming that the university needs football.  As he explained it, football helps brand the university. 

Personally, I think that Division 1 football for a southwestern Ag school is more like an anchor—or a millstone—around the financial neck of an impoverished state university, but who am I to argue with an Evil Overlord.  And I confess, not that long ago, I made a suggestion for re-branding Enema U.

Unfortunately, the whole idea of branding is so 1990’s.  It is a marketing idea whose time has come and gone.  Perhaps we should refer to Jonathan Salem Baskin’s book:  Branding Only Works on Cattle—a perfect choice for an Ag school.  In his book, Baskin points out that branding as a marketing scheme simply does not work.  He carefully points out that the Burger King mascot is readily identifiable, but probably never sold a single hamburger.  There is a reason why Taco Bell had the Chihuahua put to sleep sent to live on the happy farm and Geico sent the cavemen to a museum.  They were identifiable, but did not attract new customers. 

Successful marketing links a product or a service to something new, valuable, or unique.  Baskin gives the example of Starbucks, who took the common cup of coffee and promoted the image of high quality and convenience.  None of this is possible with a football team that hasn’t had a winning season since…well, shit!  The last time Enema U had a good enough season to be invited to a bowl game, John-John was playing under President Kennedy’s desk.

In a media-saturated market, successful marketing no longer works with cute phrases, goofy mascots, and marching bands.  What works is carefully analyzing what our students really want and then delivering a high quality education.  And this will be true no matter how many times our Evil Overlords scream, “Go, Zombies!”

I hate that whole “Go, Team, Go!” mantra crap.  Life is not a game that you play for an hour.  Winners are not the ones with the most points.  Everything truly good in your life will be the result of years of hard work and preparation and your successes will be slowly accumulated over time.  You know, kind of a like a four-year degree program.  How many places in life would it be appropriate to scream out these simplistic moronic platitudes to people hard at work?  Do nurses scream at surgeons, “Cut, Doc, Cut!” in an operating room?  The next time you are on an airplane, get as close as you can to the cockpit door, and at the last possible moment, scream, “Land, Pilot, Land!”  I hope the sky marshal shoots you in the crotch with a rubber bullet.

Since I have worked at Enema U, the school has probably spent on football (and I admit this number is only a semi-educated guess--which means it is probably as ignorant as a lady’s watch) a quarter of a billion dollars.  Fortunately, New Mexico didn’t need that money.  The taxpayers couldn’t possibly have done anything more effective with the cash--the state didn’t need more schools, hospitals, or fire stations.  Surely, the university hired the finest professors who taught in up-to-date classrooms while charging the lowest tuition.  And I believe in Tinkerbelle.

Yes, I know what you are thinking: College football brings in donations and makes lots of money.  No, even in the big league schools it usually doesn’t.  Take the time to read the report from the Knight Commission, or look at the data on the U.S. News and World Report website.  That quarter of a billion dollars is over and above gate receipts, donations, and the loose change the coaches sweep up under the stands after we finish losing a game.

Naturally, I have a suggestion--a fair suggestion.  In order to generate enough cash to continue to fund the bottomless pit of football, Enema U has privatized several services on campus.  We leased out the campus bookstore and turned it into a Hukked on Foniks T-Shirt Shop.  We leased out the cafeterias to a company that specializes in providing meals to airports and prisons.  (Presumably, we get their leftovers.)

If leasing out university services effectively delivers a quality product to our students—and I believe that is our state mandate—let’s shut down the football program until a company steps forward and is willing to lease it and run it at a profit.  Since I’m sure the coaches and athletic supporters who have claimed that college sports actually make money have been telling us the absolute truth for years, it shouldn’t take long for a smart investor to step up and lease our team. 

And the new owners can brand each other on any body part they can reach.

No Rescue Tonight

The trouble started with a hotel fire in Manila.  The fire spread so rapidly the guests could not get near the fire escapes until it was too late.  All that was possible for the guests was to flee ever upward, hoping to stay safe by moving up the stairs ahead of the flames, but steadily moving higher and farther from the ground.  By the time the fire department arrived, no ladder could save the trapped guests.  Eventually, however, most of the stranded guests were evacuated from the roof by helicopter.

The Flagship Hotel also had a perennial fire safety problem.  First, the hotel was seven stories tall, built on a pier that extended out over the ocean, and the fire department--whose longest   ladder wouldn't reach to the top floor of the hotel--could only park on one side of the hotel.  The firemen would have needed a boat to access the other side.

The General Manager read about the fire in Manila and immediately decided that the Flagship should keep the door to the roof unlocked at all times.  This was a decision about as flawed as deciding to store beer in a fraternity house.  The
security guards were catching a drunk every week up on that roof and we were not catching the morons who were busting the fluorescent 'L' in the hotel's name.  I was getting really tired of wags calling the front desk asking, "Is this the love boat?"

Weekends, the hotel hired an off-duty policeman to stand security outside the hotel's bar--a duty that usually fell to my friend Bill.  I won't give his last name, since he still has a lot of friends on the island.  Now, before I can finish the story about Bill, I suppose I have to mention his funeral--even though this is bass-ackwards from the way you talk about anybody else--but whenever I think of Bill, his funeral is the first thing that comes to mind.

Bill looked like Dracula.  He didn't need a costume: he had the thin angular face, the black hair that came down to a widow's peak over his forehead, and the deep dark eyes.  Hell, on a good day, he looked like Dracula.  As he began to slowly drink himself to death and his liver started shutting down, he turned a pale yellow color.  If you ran into him at night, he was terrifying.  Eventually--no matter how hard his friends tried to prevent it--Bill ate his gun and ended his life. 

Bill was well-liked and missed by a lot of friends, so his funeral should have been a solemn occasion.  It should have been--but it wasn't.  Without exception, as his friends entered the funeral parlor and made their way up the aisle for the viewing, every single one of them started laughing: there was a pasty-faced Dracula lying in his coffin, with his hands crossed over his chest. Bill would have loved it!

Where was I?  Oh yes--one night, right about midnight, Bill and I were having a cup of coffee in the deserted restaurant.  The bar was open, but it was a very quiet night, so Bill and I took advantage of the solitude to sit at a table and stare out the glass wall at the waves.  The sea was rough and the wind was sending an endless series of rollers under the hotel to crash onto the beach.

And then, my radio went off.  A guest on the top floor was reporting that a woman was screaming from the roof and was threatening to jump.  

As we raced to the elevators, Bill used his police radio to report the jumper and to ask for the fire department to be notified.  By the time we got to the roof--sure enough--there was a woman standing close to the edge of the roof, threatening in a very loud voice for us to stand back or she would jump to the parking lot seven floors below.  

I think I spent about two minutes trying to talk to the woman.  She was in her thirties, and I never did learn exactly what she was upset about.  Suddenly, the sound of the sirens of the fire trucks could be heard and we all stopped to look at the distant rotating lights coming closer.  

I can remember wondering what use the fire department was going to be since they didn't have a net and their ladders weren't long enough.  Just what were they going to...

"Bullshit!" roared Bill as he walked past me, getting closer to the woman.  "This is all bullshit!  I used to be a fireman before I joined the force and I know all about you jumpers.  You're going to wait until the last minute, and then try to pull some poor guy off with you.  Well, not tonight, bitch!"

Bill kicked at a brick that was holding an electrical conduit up off the roof of the hotel.  He raised the brick over his head and said, "You don't get to jump.  I'm going to knock your ass right off this roof before any of my friends get here.  You have 5 seconds!  One!  Two!  Three!..."

Before he could get to four, she had passed us and was down those stairs.  We searched, but never found her.  If she jumped, it wasn't from the Flagship--I locked the rooftop door that night and it stayed locked.

It was a unanimous decision by the management that in case of fire, the guests could just jump into the ocean.
  

Be Prepared!

The Boy Scouts of America has reached a half-assed decision this week.  Over 60% of the 1400 voting scoutmasters have decided it is okay for gay boys to be scouts.  Presumably, the other 40% still prefer ritual purification by burning at the stake—and if you can start the fire using only one match, you earn your woodcraft merit badge.

Still, I suppose this is a giant step forward for the scouting organization.  Finally, after more than a hundred years since scouting began, the organization has decided that some boys are not inherently evil.  The founder of scouting--Lord Baden-Powell (who many historians believe was a homosexual)—would be proud.

Still, there seems to be one final step for the organization to take—scoutmasters still have to heterosexual. 

So, this is the way it goes.  A young boy becomes a Cub Scout and starts earning those merit badges.  He buys the uniforms, attends the meetings and goes off to camp every summer.  As he becomes older, he becomes a Boy Scout and then an Explorer.  If he works hard, after many years he can become an Eagle Scout—the epitome of scouting.  Then, when he turns 18, he is thrown out of scouting because his sexuality has made him unfit to be a scoutmaster and have contact with his friends from the day before. 

Something is wrong here: I thought the purpose of scouting was to turn good boys into good men.  The day before that 18^th birthday, that young man is a shining example to young boys everywhere.  Then one day later, the scouts have no use for the degenerate pervert. 

Perhaps it might be instructive to remember how scouting came to the United States.  (Do you feel a history lecture coming on?)  Over a hundred years ago, when scouting was alive and well in England, but had not yet crossed the Atlantic, William Boyce, a Chicago publisher, visited London.  This was back in the days when the humidity rising from the Thames River valley would combine with the dense smoke of innumerable coal fires to produce the infamous London fogs. 

Boyce ventured out into the city one night and immediately got lost in the poorly-lit twisting streets.  Suddenly, a young boy appeared in the gloom and led the publisher through the dense fog to his destination.  When Boyce tried to give the young boy a tip for his service, the boy, now known as the Unknown Scout, refused the money and said that he was just doing his daily good turn. 

Boyce later met with Lord Baden-Powell, learned more about the scouting program, and when he returned to the United States, started the Boy Scouts of America in 1910. 

That story of the Unknown Scout is, paradoxically, well known.  The organization later awarded the young boy The Silver Buffalo, the highest award given by the BSA.  At the ceremony, a large silver buffalo statue was accepted by the Prince of Wales in his stead.  The prince thought so highly of the statue that he left it in America when he returned to England--presumably because his luggage was already overweight.  (I can’t really blame him, as I wouldn’t want the statue myself.  Today, the ugly hunk of metal is on a brick pedestal in Gilmore Park behind the White House.  I tried to find a good photo of the statue, but all I could find is this one.  Is that “statutory” rape?)

Less well known is exactly what happened when Boyce met the Unknown Scout.  Let’s go back to that cold winter night in 1909 when Boyce was standing lost in a pea soup fog. 

“Begging your pardon, guv’nor.  Are you lost?” said the Unknown Scout.

“Why, yes, I am,” replied Boyce.  “Do you know the way to the Dorchester Hotel?”

“Surely.  But first, are you a poofter?” asked the boy.

“A what?” asked Boyce.

“A poofter.  You know guv’nor… an arse bandit.  A shirt lifter.  A bum burglar.”

“Uh, no,” said Boyce.

“Then Bob’s your uncle, guv’nor.  Follow me,” said the Unknown Scout.

The Struggle for Life

The new life form did not know exactly when it became self aware--there was just a gradual realization that it had been for some time.  Nor did the organism even know why it had suddenly become self-conscious, having only the dimmest sort of memory of the world before consciousness. It only realized that it had been thinking about its surroundings, and even about itself, for some time.

Nor was there any apparent reason why it--among all the teeming life forms present--had become self-aware.  Perhaps it was because of the relatively short lifespan of the organism: during the single life span of most living organisms, this life form could go through dozens of generations.  Coupled with the remarkable fertility of the organism, in a very short time, hundreds--even thousands--of the organisms could attempt to adapt to their environment and try new approaches to survival.  The profound fertility and reproductive capacity of the organism was crucial, since the environment was especially  unforgiving and dangerous.  Most of the new organisms died early in life, long before they could individually reproduce.  It was only as a collective species that the life form flourished.

Luckily, the new organisms were perfectly adapted to passing information to each other.  Knowledge, once acquired, was quickly passed from organism to organism and thus, the information was easily retained.

Like all sentient life, the first questions asked were, "Where am I?  Who am I? Why am I here?"  And like all sentient life, the organisms struggled to provide answers.  It was difficult to survey their environment, but they could tell the world was round, with light above and darkness below.  Since life seemed more abundant in the light, they sought the light and shunned the darkness, which seemed comparatively barren.  While they constantly strove upward, more often than not, they failed and fell downward towards the dark.

Thousands of generations passed and eventually, the organisms began to explain their world, and to do this, they needed language, and the names and nouns a language demands.  One of the first names, was the name they gave themselves--they were the Malebolgians.  And after naming themselves, they began the process of naming their world--giving names to every feature and object in their world.  However, they had difficulty in providing individual names for each other, since their consciousness was more of a collective.  While each Malebolgian was capable of individual action, due to its method of reproduction, it was difficult to separate any individual's identity uniquely from either its ancestors or its offspring.

Despite this, the tribe grew, multiplied, and prospered.  In their own way, they achieved the rudiments of civilization.  The Malebolgians fought at times, they explored, they reasoned, and they slowly developed a religion.  Like most early religions, it was focused on the light above, warned against the evils of darkness, and attributed to gods all that could not be directly observed--such as the strange and terrifying noises that came from the sky above them.  As new knowledge was acquired and the realm of the unknown slowly retracted, their religion and their gods evolved.

Some of the Malebolgians began experimenting in art and philosophy, and a few were working on a theoretical explanation of economic activity.  Lives steadily became richer and fuller, and the Malebolgians were even beginning to discuss how to explore the universe beyond their small round world, and what their place in this mysterious cosmos might be.

There is no telling what achievements the Malegbolgians might have eventually achieved had someone not poured an unwanted cup of hot coffee down the kitchen drain and exterminated them.

    

Bond, Wrong Bond

James Bond might be a great spy, but there are a few things that need to be corrected.  Simply put, James Bond is wrong about quite a few things.  I’m not talking about such trivial things as his age.  (According to the original novels by Ian Fleming, Bond would be the oldest patient in the world slowly dying of multiple social diseases.  Hell, the man ended WWII as a Commander in the Royal Navy.  He has to be crowding 100.)

Let's start with what he drinks.  "A vodka martini, shaken—not stirred."   Say this to any movie fan, and they will instantly know you are talking about James Bond—this is his signature drink.  But if you say this to any competent bartender, he will know that you just ruined your drink.

There are two ways to mix a drink and get it cold enough to enjoy:  either use a cocktail shaker with ice or add the ingredients to a pitcher of ice and stir.  It is NOT two ways of doing the same thing.  A shaker is the perfect tool for blending fruit juices with alcohol while a pitcher is perfect for blending two or more kinds of alcohol together.  For a vodka martini, stir 30 times and pour.  Want to be a British effete spy/snob?  Demand a silver cocktail stirrer.   Better yet, ask for a Baccarat martini glass.  Then toss the drink back and throw the glass into a fireplace.  This should cost you no more than $145—that’s about $5 for the drink made correctly and $140 for the glass.  Somewhere in the bar, a Russian spy will wet himself.

In total, Bond has 35 martinis during the 12 novels and two collections of short stories.  Of these drinks, 19 are made with vodka and 16 use gin.  Ignore these and just read the first two books in which Bond reveals his real favorite drink—the Vesper Martini.  It is a strange little drink made with both gin and vodka.  The drink never makes it to the large screen, as it turns out that Bond is a little mercenary.  In the first movie, Smirnoff paid the producers to drop the gin—from that point on, his martinis were either all gin or all vodka.

With the drinks taken care of, let's talk about his car.  In 1963, the Aston-Martin DB5 was one hell of a car.  The style, the break-through engine, the roar of the exhaust...  God, every teenaged boy in America tried in vain to get his mother's Oldsmobile to drive like that silver bullet.  But that was 50 years ago, and while James Bond may never get any older, he needs to ditch the old jalopy.

Cars have changed: that ancient DB5, even if it were in perfect condition, couldn't keep up with a Dodge Minivan driven by a soccer Mom.  My aging Toyota pickup could beat it off the line, accelerate faster, has a better top end and--most importantly—can do something that the Aston Martin could never, ever do even when it was new: make a turn.  Unless 007 were driving down a completely straight, long road (any highway in New Mexico would qualify) then he could never catch my mother's Oldsmobile.

Ian Fleming may have got that whole double-0 business wrong, too.  The original 007 was Dr. John Dee, a seventeenth century secret agent for Queen Elizabeth I.  Dee was a mathematician, a philosopher, a tactician and quite probably the first master spy for England.  He signed his correspondence to the queen with the double zeros to indicate that he was the queen's eyes and the 7 was a cryptic cabalistic symbol.  It doesn't mean a license to kill—it's a postmark.

Next, James is packing the wrong heat.  His rod.  His gat.  His heater.  Let's face it, the man carries a sissy gun.  In the original books, 007 started out carrying a .25 caliber Beretta 418 automatic.  Christ on a Popsicle stick--what the hell was Ian Fleming thinking?  Did Bond have a license to kill house cats?  Shit—my 92 year old Aunt Gertie packed more serious heat.  A .25 automatic is... not even a good girl's gun.  It's just barely a gun.  The puny slug from this Italian popgun has been stopped by shirt buttons!

Eventually, an astute reader told Ian Fleming that his super-spy was armed with the ballistic equivalent of limp spaghetti.  In Dr. No, M demanded that Bond trade in his dinky little .25 for a more lethal weapon—a Walther PPK chambered in 7.65mm.  Now that is a real and proper ladies gun.  While I admit that the gun is a huge improvement over the smaller gun...it is still a gun that is the firearms equivalent of riding a motor scooter--while you might have a lot of fun, you sure hope none of your friends see you doing it.

Lastly, (and my apologies to Sean Connery) but James Bond is not who or what you think he is.  Who played the very first James Bond on the screen?  No, it wasn’t George Lazenby, David Niven, Bob Holness, or even Bob

Simmons.  All of these actors have played Bond, but they weren't the first.  Nor was the first portrayal of James Bond even on the big screen.  He was a television star first, then he was on the radio, and only then did he made it to the theaters.

In the early fifties, CBS had a weekly show called Climax! Mystery Theatre.  On October 21, 1954, Barry Nelson starred as James Bond in an episode called Casino Royale.  Le Chiffre, the villain was played by Peter Lorre.  While the small screen black and white version is—at best—laughable, there is absolutely no doubt that it is the very first James Bond production.  James Bond is an American!

The Tag End of the Semester

Here it is, the tag end of the semester, students and faculty are just days away from enjoying yet another wonderful New Mexico summer.

Well, actually, while a New Mexico spring is fantastic--our summers are a little rough.  Already the state is so dry that the cows are giving condensed milk, the chickens are laying powdered eggs, and there is so much static electricity, that while walking through a parking lot, I accidentally jump-started a Buick.

There is a certain pattern to the end of a school year.  Students you haven’t seen regularly since February start showing up in your office with doctors’ notes explaining how the student was forced to miss the last six weeks of class due to the Galloping Galontis, the Chilean Creeping Crud, or an advanced case of Holy-Shit-I-Think-I’m-Failing.  The only known antidote for the latter is hard work, which, unfortunately for the student, if he were capable of it would have already effectively worked as a vaccine. 

The strangest behavior in the last few weeks has not been exhibited by the students.  Some of the faculty are also beginning to show the stressful signs at the semester’s end.  Professor Maleficent, the Matray Chair of Anthropophagic Studies, is desperately seeking a way to extend her interminable leave of absence for just one more semester, without pushing her retirement date past her life expectancy.   Despite the pleas of her publisher, she needs just one more semester to finish writing her cookbook.

The surest sign of a semester’s end, however, is the all too predictable return of Professor Chupacabra stalking his colleagues.  As soon as he realizes that he will no longer have students to torture, he turns to attacking those who work around him.

This is the sort of problem not isolated to Enema U.  It seems to be universal that, just as you feel motivated to really put your shoulder to the wheel and get some work done, some blithering asshole comes along and pushes you into a black hole of demotivation.  It wouldn't be so bad if you could isolate all of these mental midgets in one spot, where they could spend all day cancelling each other out.  Unfortunately, the universe seems to scatter the problem children around the world in such a way that each and every organization has its own private moron riding the brake on progress.

God knows, we have a beaut here at Enema U.  For a long time, most of the students and damn near all the faculty had considered him to be some form of evil troll that lived under the educational bridge of life.  Periodically, he slithers out of the ooze of imagined slights to scream his personal anguish at an imagined victimization from those he deems inferior, before the light of day burns his bloodshot eyes and he scampers back under his dank bridge.  Hiding behind the bent shield of tenure he emails his curses.  Rarely seen, the only sign of his presence between attacks is the labored breathing of the troll--a sound not unlike the rattling hiss of a leaky boiler.

But, it turns out that we were wrong.  He is not a troll--he is in fact Professor Chupacabra, a beast long thought to be mythological. While most of the stories about a chupacabra say that he survives by sucking the life out of goats, our Professor Chupacabra has only been known to kill them with his bare hands.  Goats are only a hobby--he prefers to suck the life out of an entire department, embroiling the faculty in pointless and childish arguments that would shame kindergarteners.

There is, however, a solution.  Even as I write this, the department is taking up a collection to enroll Professor Chupacabra in the Lard of the Month Club.  When he finally has the inevitable heart attack and the Biology Department has performed the necropsy, we plan to bury the monster under the Education Building.

A Garden of Memories

My parents met during World War II in Ft. Worth.  My mother was from the panhandle of Texas and moved to the big city seeking equal parts employment and relief from terminal boredom.  I can remember my mother telling me that everything in Plainview, Texas either “Sticks, Stinks, or Stings.” While the town may not have been a great place to live, it was a wonderful place to be from.  (The from-er the better.)  There were defense plants in Fort Worth that fueled a roaring wartime economy, and if you could walk and chew gum at the same time, you could land a job.

My father was from Winters, Texas—a town so remote that, even today, the town proudly boasts the recent arrival of cable-radio.  My Dad had come to Ft. Worth while serving in the CCC—the depression make-work program for teenaged boys and young men, named the Civilian Conservation Corps.  The motto of the CCC was “Have Shovel—Will Travel.”  After Pearl Harbor, these khaki-clad young men were marched into the nearest recruitment centers where they exchanged their shovels for rifles.  Well, to be accurate, in my father’s case, he got a set of wrenches since he was a flight engineer. 

Once my parents met in Ft. Worth, the problem was how to date on a limited budget.  Neither had any money, so they depended on free public amusements and their favorite was the Botanical Gardens.  The largest and oldest such garden in Texas, the original name was The Rock Springs Arboretum, but the name had to be changed when too many people thought it was a fancy name for a swimming hole.  Renamed, the gardens quadrupled in size over the years. 

Evidently, the gardens have always been spectacular.  I know this because my parents took a lot of photos, usually from the same place--leaning against a railing and smiling directly into the camera.  Looking at that photo, staring into those smiles, you can almost see them planning their future, wondering about their lives after the war.

Fifteen years later, I have memories of the gardens as a child.  My parents would take my brother and me to the gardens because the gardens were still lovely.  And because the gardens brought back special memories for them.  (And, no doubt, because the gardens were still very inexpensive.)

Today, seventy years after the war, my parents are no longer with us and my wife and I live in a desert hundreds of miles from those gardens.   My son (not What’s-His-Name, but The-Other-One) lives in Fort Worth with his wife, the Leprechaun, and their child, the Munchkin.  He took the family to the Botanical Gardens last weekend.  Evidently, finding a cheap family outing is still a problem in my family.

In due course, my son sent my cell phone a photo of the Munchkin standing in front of a garden that I immediately recognized.  A few minutes later, I sent back one of those photos of my parents smiling at the railing sometime during 1943.  Seventy years later, you would think that the garden would have changed dramatically.  I know some changes did occur—the people of Ft. Worth have added a Japanese Garden—a highly unlikely to have been there in 1943.  (Two hundred miles south, San Antonio renamed its Japanese Tea Gardens—for the duration—to the more patriotic-sounding Chinese Tea Gardens.)

About half an hour later, my son sent me a second photo.  This one was of him and his wife standing at the same railing, smiling into the camera, with the same thoughts and the dreams of the future evident in their smiles.  The two photos are not separated at all by 70 years and three generations.  In all the most important ways, they are identical.

The Doc and I are planning to visit Ft. Worth soon.  We will go to the Botanical Gardens and have our photos taken.  We’ll stand at the same railing and smile at the camera and think the same thoughts.

Peden Iron and Steel, R.I.P.

Someone I trust has reliably informed me that a dead man cannot sue for libel.  Harry has just recently passed away, so I guess I’m free to tell the story.

There used to be a grand old Texas landmark:  Peden Iron and Steel of Houston, Texas.  Peden sold everything—or at least everything useful.  The name hints about the massive steelyards and fabrication shops.  Peden sold structural steel such as H-beams, channel iron, angle iron, and steel plating.  It also sold mechanical tubing, copper plate, and drill stem pipe.  I can remember walking through a valve so tall I could not reach up and touch the opposite wall of the valve.  Peden sold this steel to companies all over the world, and bought steel products from mills all over the United States.

But that was only part of what Peden sold.  The multiple enormous warehouses of the wholesaler stocked everything from lion repellent to guns, kitchen utensils to blue jeans, and from baseballs to nails.  If a hardware store or a department store anywhere in Texas had it for sale, it came from the warehouses of Peden.  Peden could sell you all the material needed to construct a house, supply the tools to build it, and then fill it with everything you needed to live in it.  Peden had been doing this since 1905.  The drawing at right dates to 1924, by the time I worked there, Peden had grown much larger.

Among all my other jobs during college, I sold structural steel at Peden.  It was a great place to work, if for no other reason than employees could buy anything Peden sold at wholesale less 10%.  It they had sold food, it would have been the only place I would have shopped.  (I remember buying my wife—The Doc—a Christmas present: a Remington Nylon 66 .22 rifle.  I paid $36 for it, and it still shoots wonderfully.) 

Selling steel was a great education for an engineering student.  I had to learn the difference between steel grades and got to talk to a lot of working engineers and architects.  I could go down in the yards and watch the steel being fabricated, as well as talk to mills about future production runs.  Eventually, I worked up a clientele that called me regularly to negotiate purchases.

One afternoon, I got a call from Brown and Root looking for bridge beams.  They needed huge beams in an unusual length.  There weren’t a dozen places in the world that would have such big beams, but Peden had them in stock.  What they finally picked were 6 beams, 36”x 652# at 60’ for $18.97 CWT.  For those of you who have never sold steel for a living, I’ll translate.  They wanted 6 beams, 60 feet long, each 36” wide, and weighing 652 pounds per foot.  CWT means hundred weight, so the beams cost slightly less than nineteen cents a pound--a fairly stiff price since steel normally sold for about fourteen cents a pound.  I negotiated the higher price because (a) they were desperate and (b) they needed them delivered the next day.  As Brown and Root knew only too well, in chaos there is profit.  (After all, Brown and Root was a subsidiary of Halliburton.)

Peden was one of the few steel service centers that had a fleet of trucks large enough to handle such an oversized load.  Each one of those beams weighed twenty tons and would require its own individual truck.  In total, this was almost a quarter million pounds of steel.  Even Brown and Root didn’t have the ability to move those beams to the construction site.

There was only one small problem in completing the order.  By the time the negotiations were over, it was 4:15 in the afternoon.  About six months earlier, Peden had been purchased by a new owner.  Harry Surrenderstein (a fine old family name that comes from a region of France located close to the German border) had recently sold the chain of department stores that his family had run for 40 years.  With the profits, he had purchased Peden Iron and Steel.  Since his family had sold shirts—I guess he was a self-taught expert on selling steel.

Harry came up with a lot of silly changes, and one of the more obnoxious (in his case ox-noxious) changes was that he had to personally approve any next-day delivery written up after 4:00.  I wrote up the order, and took it to Harry for approval.

“Is it a big order?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” I said.  “And it is for material we really want to move and it is for one of our best customers.”

I handed him the order slip, which below the billing and delivery information simply said:

6 36”x 652# H-Beam @ $18.97 CWT

Harry looked at the order for a few seconds and said, “I thought you said it was a big order.  There are only 6 of them for $19 each.”

There are lots of reasons given for why Peden went out of business about a year later.  Most of the reasons talk about cash flow, financing, or foreign imports.  If you ask me, I think it was because the president of one of the largest steel service centers in the world ran the place for over six months before he learned from a 20 year old employee that steel was sold by the pound.

A Pox On Both Your Parties

I have to admit to being a news junkie.  Being addicted to the news and owning a Tivo is like living in a state that has legalized drugs.  I’m over-dosing.  I watch all the stations, all the news programs, and see shows from multiple countries.  As near as I can figure out, there are about four different countries called the United States governed by several different presidents, at least one of whom appears to be an Indonesian/Hawaiian-born Muslim Kenyan who is a practicing free-market communist, who hates guns but murders some little animal known as skeet—or something—the story changes constantly.

All of this makes me an expert in politics.  Television has taught me that an expert is anyone with an advanced degree from out of town.  I qualify, and as an expert I have some badly needed suggestions for both major parties.

Democrats—You need to stop saying you have created any new jobs.  Jobs are created by the private sector, usually in spite of the government.  In particular, you need to stop saying that you have created 6.5 million jobs.  This is true ONLY if you do not mention either the number of jobs that have been lost or the number of new people who have entered the job market.

Perhaps the Enema U football team should follow this example.  We will just brag about the touchdown we produced in the game—not the five touchdowns the opposing team scored.

And please, stop telling us the number of people who have quit looking for jobs and thus are no longer part of the workforce.  If everyone in the country quit working except Hobo Joe, my gardener, would this mean we had 100% employment?

Republicans—Please stop saying that your opposition to Gay Marriage is a God-inspired mandate to protect traditional marriage.  If you really want traditional marriage, let's go back to the Old Testament.  This would not only allow polygamy, but if a man's brother dies, it would require him to marry his sister-in-law.  Also, I have always felt a little cheated—my wife’s dowry did not include a single goat.

Do NOT say that you hate the sin and love the sinner.  You don't, just admit that gay people scare the shit out of you.  If you are irrationally afraid of spiders and gay people, we won't make you play with either.  Until we can come up with an effective 12 Step Program to ease your fears, let's make a deal:  why don’t you just pretend that gay marriages are like your assault weapons.  If you don't like them, you don't have to get one.

Democrats—Stop calling “taxes” by the incredibly silly name of “contributions.”  Contributions are something you give voluntarily.  Taxes are something you collect with either force or the threat of force.   Taxation is inherently an act of violence.  If you don’t believe me, just make paying taxes a voluntary and patriotic activity for one year.   I don’t so much mind that you are taking my money by force as I do your ridiculous notion that it was my idea.

Republicans—Stop giving President Obama a hard time about using drones.  Personally, I don’t like drones and wish they had never been invented, but can you not see the hypocrisy of advocating almost unlimited private gun ownership while opposing the use of unmanned weapons?  And I have to admit, if I were President, I’d use drones on the morons who use handicap stickers to get a good parking spot at the gym.

Democrats—Yes, Republicans do want to kill Early Childhood Education—mainly because the program simply does not work.  Students have been tracked for years and by the time they reach junior high school, there is no appreciable difference in their test scores from students who did not go through the program.  Think about it, if the program really worked, by now there would be such demonstrable benefits that parents everywhere would demand it.  So why does a failed program survive?  Because anyone who wants to eliminate it can easily be painted as an evil prick who wants to cancel Christmas.  So kill the program and use the money for some useful educational purpose—like a three team version of football.  This should make everyone happy; the new triangular playing field will require the construction of all new—and bigger—stadiums.

Republicans—Give up on abortion.  Actually, don’t run five miles out in the desert and even whisper the damn word to a jackrabbit.  It is over and you lost.  The longer you whine about it, the more you resemble a toothless hillbilly who claims the South will rise again.  Come to think of it, that is your base.

Look on the bright side.  If only the Democrats get abortions and the Republicans don’t, it won’t matter that you have alienated gays, Hispanics, women, immigrants, and Blacks.  In only a few centuries, your party will outnumber everyone else and will once again be a serious contender in a national election.

Democrats—Please stop changing the language just to be politically correct.  We will all agree to stop calling them “illegal immigrants” if you will just let us call them “unregistered Democrats.”

Republicans—Stop nattering about marijuana.  It is not a gateway drug, you cannot overdose on it, it has fewer permanent harmful side effects than oatmeal cookies, and most Nobel prize-winning scientists admit to having used it.  What are you worried about?  George Washington grew marijuana in his personal garden.  Would the nation really be better off today if he had been busted for it before the revolution?

Both Parties--Stop telling me that polls support your opinions.  Have you learned nothing from the last election?  If polls were accurate, right now, everyone but President Romney would be drinking New Coke.  Polls tell us very little except the political opinions of the people doing the poll.  If you let me pick the wording of the survey question, I can prove that most Americans want to have sex with porcupines.

And both of you—Stop calling the other party the party of NO.  Both of you have done your share of blocking votes and appointments while the other party was in power.  And in the long run, it doesn’t really matter—this country is not in trouble for the things you blocked—we are in trouble for the things to which you said YES.  Congress needs to stop acting like a drunken sixteen year old girl on prom night before the entire economy is knocked up.

And for The Press—Stop reporting anything about North Korea.  When spoiled children have tantrums, you should either ignore them or throw them in the pool.  I've done both, but the latter only works well in winter.

The Check's in the Mail--Somewhere

I got an intriguing letter the other day.  It was interesting in part because it was from me--but mostly it was interesting because of all the places the letter might have traveled.  God alone knows where.

About two months ago I was paying bills and sent a check to the Archer County Tax Collector for $3.31.  I would hate to describe the miserable lil' piss-ant chunk of land that has an annual property tax of only $3.31--but let's just say that if I retire to the Texas ranch, I'll have the only working hamster spread in the state.  Come branding time, I use a bent paperclip in the shape of a question mark.  You may not like it, but trust me, it impresses the stock.

The Tax Collector at Archer County sends me my tax bill on a postcard.  Personally, I resent people sending me bills that don't enclose a return envelope--subconsciously, they are telling me they want to be paid last.   I wrote the check, grabbed a blank envelope, shoved it in the laser printer and printed the address. 

Now, do you use Microsoft Word?  If you do, you know that when you use the program to address envelopes, Word searches through your open document for an address to use.  If you don't like the auto-selected address, you can write over it.  When I made the envelope for the Archer County Tax Collector, I must have forgotten that last step. 

At the time, I was working on a lecture about Mexico, so Microsoft Word did its very best, and addressed the envelope to:

Viceroy Juan O'Donaju

San Juan de Alua

Vera Cruz

For those of you who aren't enrolled in my class, O'Donaju was the last Viceroy of Mexico, and San Juan de Alua is a fortress in the town of what is now known as Veracruz.   You can understand why the post office had a little trouble delivering the letter--the recipient has been dead for almost two centuries.  Undoubtedly, I now possess the man's last piece of correspondence.  I'll put it on Ebay.

The Post Office had the letter for almost two months--I wonder where it went.  Do you suppose it actually made it to Mexico?  There are are very few marks on the envelope, so there's no hint what the itinerary was.   And that got me thinking.  What happens to our mail? Where does it go?  How many stops?  How is it handled?

Naturally, I have an idea.  Action sports cameras are all the rage now: you can mount one on your helmet and document exactly how you came to be in traction.  Everyone from skydivers to skiers are using them.  Why not put one in a box, aim it out a hole in the side of the box, and mail it somewhere?  Set the camera on time-lapse and let it film the entire trip until it is delivered.  Since the camera is tough, it should survive the journey (but just in case, I suppose you could insure the package).

I'd like to see such a film, but I'm willing to bet that the whole idea is against some law.  It seems like everything is illegal these days (especially in New York). Or fattening.

If we could watch such a film, I'm sure we would discover that the Post Office does its very best to deliver the mail promptly and accurately.  Sadly, this is not the general impression that most people have about the Post Office--people have a bad impression about the mail service. 

There is an old story about a postal employee who was sorting the mail one day and came across an envelope hand-addressed in a barely legible scrawl,  "To God".  Intrigued, he opened the envelope and read the letter inside.

Dear God, please, please help me.  My purse was snatched this morning and the thief stole my last $100.  I can't pay my gas bill or buy groceries for the rest of this month.  I'm afraid I will starve to death in the cold.  Please help.

Our hero was touched by the story and passed the hat among the rest of the mailmen and ponied up their lunch money for a total of $90.  With the return address on the envelope, the cash was promptly delivered by special delivery to the woman.

A few days later the Good Samaritan was sorting mail when he spotted another letter addressed to God in the same handwriting.  He opened the letter and read:

Dear God.  Thank you for the $100.  Without your divine intervention, I don't know how I would have survived the month.  I really appreciate your help.

P.S.  The envelope only had $90 in it, the missing sawbuck was probably stole by those thieving bastards in the Post Office.

  

Beware the Ides of April!

We have safely passed the Ides of March.  In Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar, a soothsayer warns the dictator to beware the ides of March.  Although Shakespeare was very superstitious, he ignored the warning and was assassinated right on schedule in 44 B.C.  Someone should have warned Caesar that it was bad luck to be superstitious.

Ignoring the fact that Caesar had destroyed the Republic and ruled as a dictator, perhaps Caesar deserved to be killed for what he had done to the calendar.  Under the self-named Julian calendar, which Caesar had just imposed on the empire, the days of the month were not counted sequentially, but counted backwards from three points of the month; the nones (roughly the 5^th or the 7^th day of the month depending on the length of the month), the ides (the 13^th or 15^th day of the month), and the kalends (the first day of the following month).  So where we would say March 10, the Romans would say “Five days before the ides of March.”  Except of course they said it in Latin and used Roman numerals.  This made writing checks very difficult.

Since Shakespeare has already warned us of the ides of March, I thought I might warn you of the twin dangers of the ides of April—specifically April 14^th and April 15^th.  Together, these are peculiarly rough days.  I should confess, of course, that since April has fewer days than March, that the true ides of April is April 13, but such honesty is so rare today that we should husband it carefully and not waste it unnecessarily.  Many a good story has been ruined by too much truth.

On April 14, 1861, the Union forces of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor were forced to face the inevitable.  For two days, soldiers under the command of General Beauregard of the newly declared Confederate army fired on the tiny unfinished masonry fort.  After enduring over 3000 artillery rounds, Major Anderson

formally surrendered the fort.  The next day, April 15, all Union forces evacuated the fort.  This first small battle began the four year nightmare of the Civil War.    By the time the Union retook the fort, on April 14, 1865, over 600,000 Americans died—all of them killed by other Americans.

On April 14, 1865, a war weary Abraham Lincoln sat in Ford’s Theater watching a play:  Our American Cousin.  The president, who appeared to have aged a decade in just the previous dozen months, was clearly exhausted, but still elated by the surrender of General Robert E. Lee just five days earlier.  During Act III, Scene II, at 10:25 PM, John Wilkes Booth shot the president and made his escape.

Mortally wounded, Abraham Lincoln was carried on a door across the street to the Petersen Boarding House where the president was placed diagonally on a bed too short for his tall frame.  A series of well-meaning but incompetent doctors attended his wound, each pushing an unwashed finger into the wound to determine the exact position of the bullet—each reopening the wound and pushing the bullet further into the president’s brain.  Abraham Lincoln died at 7:22 AM on April 15, 1865.

Just twenty minutes before midnight on April 14, 1912, the H.M.S. Titanic was steaming toward New York on her maiden voyage.  The largest passenger liner ever built, the ship carried 2,224 passengers and crew.  Despite having received numerous reports of sea ice in her vicinity, the doomed ship was traveling very close to her maximum speed when she struck an iceberg. 

For two hours and forty minutes, the passengers and crew tried to save themselves.  When the ship sank early in the morning of April 15, over 1500 people died in the frigid waters before a rescue ship arrived an hour and a half too late.  The loss of the Titanic is still one of the deadliest peacetime maritime disasters in history.

As an historian, all of these events play endlessly in my thoughts as I struggle to gather what remains of last year’s receipts and financial statements.  General inertia, incompetence, and overwhelming sloth will prevent me from actually starting to prepare my taxes until April 14^th in order to have the silly form in the mail by the ides of April—April 15^th.

Safety in Numbers

Wonder of wonders—the TSA, the government agency in charge of providing security at the nation’s airports--has decided once again to allow passengers to carry small pocket knives aboard airplanes. 

Since I have carried a pocket knife since the third grade—except when specifically denied such a dangerous weapon by an overly protective government—I’m glad for the change.  Now that I think of it, the genuine Barlow that I carried when I was nine is still too large for what the TSA will allow on a plane today.

Since I have previously written on this subject--and proffered the TSA the kind of excellent and creative advice that one would expect from this blog--only to have the agency totally ignore me—this time I will just rejoice in my newly-recovered personal freedom.  I understand why, for the last 12 years, my government has been terrified of my pocket knife.  After all, the most lethal assault weapon in American history, responsible for the most deaths in a single incident, was a 1 inch box cutter in the hand of a terrorist on 9/11.

But that was then, and it is no longer possible for a terrorist to get into the cockpit of a plane with any kind of a knife.  I’m not sure it makes sense to disarm the passengers on planes in any way—remember that the only plane that failed to reach its intended target was stopped by passengers with improvised weapons.  Still, I guess I will have to settle for this one small concession by my government that I am not one of the guilty.  (At least as long as my pocket knife has less than a two-and-a-half inch blade:  three inches, I’m obviously a traitor.)

Since the TSA will not listen to me, I have a few suggestions for you—the traveler.  Actually, the internet is already full of travel advice: wear shoes without laces, buy a belt without a metal buckle, how to package your toiletries in small bottles, etc. ad nauseam.  None of this advice will in any way make you safer while you fly; all it will do is get you through airport security a little faster.  Getting through security faster just means that you will sit in the lounge longer.  This is kind of like walking fast on the people movers they have at airports—it just makes you work harder to get to the same place where you will end up waiting longer.

The biggest danger facing today’s traveler is a bomb.  Somewhere, somebody is working on a bomb that can be carried aboard a plane disguised as a rambunctious two year-old child.  Or something.  In the meantime, I suggest that we ban all small children from planes unless they are smaller than two-and-a-half inches tall.  Let’s err on the side of safety.  Or at least check them in as baggage.

The horrible truth is that we can’t keep a bomb off a plane–they are simply too easy to make.  Someone will combine something that looks like mouthwash with what looks like toothpaste, and stir it with what was supposed to be a fountain pen and–BLAM!  God knows, there are already loads of highly dangerous chemicals on board cleverly disguised as airline food.

All TSA can do presently is make it extremely difficult to get a bomb onto a plane.  The odds are supposedly 1 in 10,000 that you will fly on a plane with a bomb.  This is not necessarily frightening: it is at the very heart of my plan to fly safely.  If the odds are 1 in 10,000 that one person on a plane has a bomb, then it must be at least 1 in 1,000,000 that two people on a plane would be carrying bombs.

Obviously, whenever you fly on a plane, you should carry a bomb to improve your odds.

Revolutionary Economics

State and federal budgets are wildly out of whack--we have the kind of budgetary restraints you could expect to find with drunken sailors on shore leave.  Well, actually, no--when sailors run out of money, they generally stop drinking, quit spending, and eventually sober up and go back to work. 

Fortunately, we have no reason to fear.  Both the federal government and the various states have come up with several innovative--if not down right peculiar--ways to increase revenue.

In New York, the state has dramatically increased the tax on yoga studios.  (Really!  If I  came up with shit like that, you would stop reading.)  That should be enough money to make up half the the state's deficit.  And Mayor Bloomingbird has a plan to ban large soft drinks, salt, and headphones for iPods.  While none of this will do a damn thing to end the deficit, it should make the populace so angry they will forget the city's staggering debt. 

If none of this works, the back-up plan is to sell New Amsterdam back to the Dutch.

The deficit in California is staggering under debts that date back to former Governor "Fifty Shades" Gray Davis, who promised to whip the state into shape while actually just screwing the taxpayer.  By now, even the voters of California must realize they chose the least appropriate safe word:  "MORE!"

Now, Governor Brown & the California legislators have a multi-part solution.  First, they outlawed goose liver pate.  While this has not yet provided much financial relief, we all understand that some economic measures take time to be effective.  Second, California has solved the insolvency of the lottery-funded tuition program by diverting half of the proceeds into the purchase of additional California lottery tickets.  While the system is not yet solvent, the dramatically increased sales of the lottery tickets indicates that it is only a matter of time before the system is profitable.

This program is far superior to the New Mexico program.  Under that program, instituted by Governor Martinez, up to 5% of the state government income will be used to purchase lottery tickets from more profitable states.  According to scientists at Enema U, the program should be profitable within 10 years, or well into the term of the next governor.  Longtime resident Shirley MacLaine has been placed in charge of picking the winning lottery numbers.

Both Governor Brown and Governor Martinez have a backup plan:  if all else fails--they plan to annex Texas.

President Obama has identified a heretofore under-taxed pool of great wealth:  Professional Football.  "After we nationalize the two leagues," the president said, "they will be known as the National American Football League and the American National Football League."

"I want to assure Americans that if they already have a favorite team, they can keep it.  But for the millions of Americans who are too poor to have access to a team, or who live in a state that does not pay its fair share by supporting a franchise,  a team will be assigned to them.  Effective immediately, the position of Football Commissioner will be raised to a cabinet-level position."

And, of course, the president has begun a policy called Quantitative Easing to shore up the sale of Treasury Bonds.  The US keeps up the demand for US government-backed securities by purchasing large quantities of the securities with other US government-backed securities.  Currently, we buy $40 billion dollars worth of such funds a month.  (Hell--I didn't make up that nonsense, either!)

Actually, there is a little historical precedent for this last policy.  During the Mexican Revolution, Pancho Villa operated along the US-Mexican border in the Chihuahuan desert.  As the Mexican government fell and every rebel army fought to seize control, the monetary situation of the country became insane.  Villa (and every other general) needed to pay his army and purchase supplies, so eventually every army captured a printing press and issued its own paper money.   Soon there was over a dozen different currencies being issued and begrudgingly accepted by skeptical merchants.  Adding to this chaos were counterfeit bills printed by opportunists with printing presses--with that many currencies floating around, no one could tell which was "real".

Pancho Villa was no exception.  His first attempt at printing currency was rather primitive--it looked like someone had used a rubber stamp on a piece of brown paper that had been used to clean a frying pan.  I imagine that the only way Villa could get anyone to accept that money was to have the army "persuade" them.

Eventually, Villa got the American Banknote Company of New York to print some money for him.  These bills are beautiful, and I have a couple of examples framed in my office.  They are real works of art and look, feel, and even smell like real money. 

When the American Banknote Company delivered a boxcar of the new paper currency--along with a sizable invoice for its work--Villa promptly paid for it with the new money.  Presumably the ever persuasive army was near by.  If you think about it, the company could hardly complain that its own handiwork wasn't real.

Who knew that Pancho Villa, the father of modern economic theory, invented Quantitative Easing?