Throwing my mitre in the ring

I heard there was a vacancy in Rome, so I have decided to throw my mitre into the ring to be the new pope. I figure by the time the Cardinals get around sending out their smoke signals I could already be planning Vatican III!

There are a handful of cardinals who are rumored to be in the running, though no clear leader has emerged.  I’m figuring to get the endorsement of the Arizona Cardinals football team (or the logo anyway), who at least outweigh the poseurs assembling in Rome.

When not in the conclave in the Sistine Chapel, these scaredy cat cardinals are staying closely guarded in the Domus Sanctae Marthae, a Vatican residence. They are banned from contact outside the conclave, including the use of cell phones, social media and the Internet. What’s the big deal?

I, on the other hand, have no such restrictions.

There’s a new sheriff in town

As the new pope, I’m fixin’ to make several key changes:

1. Optional celibacy and marriage allowed

2. Female priests allowed

3. Contraception allowed

4. Papal infallibility changed from “matters of faith and morals when speaking ex cathedra” to “matters of grammar and punctuation when speaking ex couchus“

5. No more “insta-saints” ─ that is, beatification and/or sainthood without proper waiting period, a la fast-tracking of Mother Teresa.

6. No more pedophilia and molestations. This time we’re not kidding around.

7. No more cover-ups of pedophiliacs and molesters, especially including hustling them off to unwitting parishes

8. No more weekly confessions; instead we’ll have an annual “Olly Olly Oxen Free”.

9. Heaven is now the default option. In other words, you automatically go to heaven unless you opt-out in favor of your own version of paradise or nirvana. This overcomes a major theological dilemma of the ages: What to do with all the pagan babies, rain-forest-dwelling tribespeople, Eskimos, aborigines and other inadvertently unsaved innocents.*

In other business, we’ll be declaring a moratorium on certain annoying words and phrases:

1. “sequester” or “sequestration” (except for when I retreat to Castle Gandalf, formerly known as Castle Gandolfo)

2. “reached out to” when “contacted” or “called him” will do

3. “How’s everything tasting?” at restaurants (would you say, “How’s that Pepsi/Sprite/bottle of wine tasting?”)

4. …and the excessively good buddyish “You have a good day now!”

New papal name

Obviously the choice of a papal name is key to the success of His Vicarness. Therefore, I put the question to a key community of the faithful on the official Holy Roman website, “Faciem Libro,” with these results (in no particular order):

1) Veedsus I

2) Nebuchadnezzar III

3) Beelezebub II

4) Judas D’Scaredycat

5) Barabbas II (a prominent misunderstood social vigilante of the 1st century)

6) Papa Veedgilus I

7) Pope Vinediddler

8) Nebuchadeiffer

9) Debauchadieffer

10) Popee McPoperton

11) Popus D’Opus

12) Pope Victor Veedsus  V (has the advantage of a snappy “VVV”)

13) Pope Moishe or Pope Moses (we’d like to see the Cardies turn down such a distinguished Old School name!)

Judging by some of the silly names,  apparently many of the FaciemLibro folks were too busy playing “Angry Cardinals” and “Farm Villa” to take this seriously. However, one name has emerged that seems to be favored by all constituencies:

Joe d’Pope†

Has kind of a nice Italian feel to it, eh?
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*In the old days, of course, we had Limbo and Purgatory to play with but they were, at best, theological stopgap measures, pretty much ruined by indulgence-selling and doctrinal disputes, not to mention no one really knew what kind of lifestyle was involved. Nevertheless. as my brother-in-law remarked, “But won’t this let evil persons in?” To this we say, “Wouldn’t it better to let an evil man in than keep an innocent babe out?” Moreover, we suspect that certain naughty types might prefer to go downstairs rather than be bored to tears in an eternal milk-bath existence with the likes of Ghandi and Mother Teresa. Indeed, we’re not naming any names, but certain people might like to be with their relatives.

“Faciem Libro” (snicker)  sometimes I just kill myself.

Things I’m Giving Up for Lent

Corresponding with prisoners

Moving small objects with my mind

Origami

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chicken Curry

Becoming a magician

Foosball

Drinking the water in Mexico

Speaking in tongues

Fennel

Casting a spell on the neighbor’s dog

Mortal combat

Taking a metal detector to the desert

Humming the theme from “Green Acres”

Crank calls

Duplicate Bridge

Homeland Security

Elvis impersonations (but not my famous James Brown or Dostoyevski impersonations…obviously)

Decoupage

 

Cursing in Franco-Arabic

 

Flinching

Taxidermy

Unicycling

Using the Jedi mind trick on snakes (it’s good to learn from mistakes)

Sardines

Vacuuming my chest

Balloon animals

Buying cereal in bulk

Making citizen’s arrests

Running headlong into glass doors

Jailhouse tattooing

Live ammo

 

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Original origami art by the author

Handcuffs courtesy of Saudi Arabia, photographed by the author in al-Bordello

Thanks to JU of New Jersey for reminding me of these resolutions and other tips and suggestions.

Pay Pal not such a Pal

This has to be one of the most aggravating business dealings I’ve ever had—on a par with hospital insurance claims, IRS and the motor vehicle department . . . all rolled together.

The situation is simple: There’s a guy I needed to send $65 to for a service he was kind enough to render in advance of being paid. He had a Pay Pal (PP) account for me to use.

After I figured out how to transfer money to Pay Pal to pay the vendor, the vendor’s PP website wouldn’t recognize the transaction, sending me in an endless loop. Then I discovered that I had a “limited” account, so I took the required steps to verify my account information. I received an automated phone call with a confirmation number and used it to verify the account. Apparently all was well, but the vendor’s PP website still wouldn’t accept payment, even after both the bank and PP verified that the measly $65 I needed to pay had been transferred to my PP account.

(I might mention here that I’ve used PP in the past but stopped using it because PP had become notorious for phishing schemes and other scams.)

However, PP did remember my e-mail account. One of the problems was that I kept forgetting my password after each failed attempt to pay my vendor so I had to re-set it several times.

So now I was at the stage where I had verified the account with the confirmation number. And I had successfully transferred funds from my bank account to my PP account.

But what’s this? Apparently my account was still “limited”.

I went to try to figure out how to “unlimit” it but . . . what’s this? It seems PP had “randomly selected” my account for a new security check!

All right, I could do that, but I had to be at my home computer in order to look up my bank routing number. I did so.

But what’s this? PP now wants me to specify two security questions out of a quirky menu they provide. I selected my father’s middle name and my sainted grandmother’s maiden name because I always remember the answers and the spelling is certain (unlike my first pet dog’s name which I spell a couple different ways and the name of the hospital I was born in which has changed names a couple times)

I answer these questions…but what’s this? Ah, PP now wants me to change my password again (and confirm the new one).

Whew! I grit my teeth and do so.

But what’s this? Apparently there’s a problem with my user name that requires a new password.

At this point I have no idea how to get past the PP gatekeepers to even find out how to remove my restrictions so I can just pay the stupid $65 that I’ve been promising my faithful and patient vendor.

I tried again the next day using a helpful invoice my vendor sent. This duly took me to the PP site but didn’t do anything except show me my account balance: $65.

Now I noticed that my account was “verified” but still “limited” so I figured I’d try at least confirming my credit card account, which may have been an old one. However, PP also wants a photo ID and a bank statement of some kind . . . which are not going to be happening from my location in Cairo, Egypt. Nevertheless, I started in on the credit card. I looked up my Visa number, expiry date, special code and entered the info. PP then wanted me to go to my bank account where they had put a “test amount” with a 4-digit code. I went to the bank account online and found the test amount but, naturally, no 4-digit code.

I tried to go back to PP but the webpage had expired (after only 3 or 4 minutes) so I had to go back in, change my password, enter new security questions (same as the old ones) and start over. In the meantime, I had received two additional e-mails from PP telling me my password was changed and my security questions had been changed.

And so it goes…and endless series of password and security question changes, bank verifications and other nonsense.

Here’s how Pay Pal describes my account status:

 What can I do while my account is limited?

• receive or request money
• update your account information
• add money to your account
• add a card
• add a bank account
• use PayPal logos in your auction listings or on your website

What can’t I do while my account is limited?

• send money
• withdraw money from your account
• close your account
• remove a card
• remove a bank account
• send refunds

I can’t imagine I went through all this folderol the first time I opened a Pay Pal account to buy some trinket from Ebay.

Am I missing some key piece of information? Maybe I inadvertently selected the “Extract gold doubloons from Fort Knox” option and thus have understandably tighter hoops to jump through. Perhaps Pay Pal is punishing me for jilting them a few years ago. Possibly even this moment some fiendish phishing felon has discovered my grandmother’s maiden name and is secretly slipping spondulics out of my savings.

I wondered what my sainted grandmother would have advised. She passed away before there was Pay Pal, before there was Internet, before there was online banking, before there were personal computers . . . practically before there were even electrons.

She knew about checks though. So I got hold of a party traveling from Egypt to the US, wrote a check, put it in an envelope and asked them to mail it from Tucson to Phoenix.

That’s what I call a dang pay pal.

Why you should let a native speaker check your English exam

From a final exam in Reading for advanced                    English as a Second Language (ESL) students:

Question:

(click image to enlarge for better readability)

The problem here is that, in fact,  none of the answers is correct, although the test developer apparently thought it should be “b”.

See, while ‘qualified’ can indeed mean “trained” or “skilled” or “having the appropriate credientials for the job,” in this particular context it means nothing of the sort. Rather, it is being used more like “counted” or “reckoned as” or “having the quality of.” It has nothing to do with skill.

The question itself is a bit awkward since it’s not quite how a native speaker would say it but this passage is presumably a real quote from a magazine article so some leeway can be given. Normally one might say something like “Well, that X doesn’t really qualify as “Y” — in other words, ‘qualify’ means “meet the standard of.”

Here’s one from a Technical Writing final exam:

What are 3 ways to avoid sexiest writing?

This could have been a mere typo. More likely, the test author didn’t understand that “sexiest” and “sexist” mean very very different things.

In the question above, “sexiest’” isn’t a grammatical use but one could understand a sentence about “sexy writing” and why it should be avoided.

“Sexist” writing on the other hand would be something on the order of “Let’s make sure we send the right man for this job,”  or the use of “Miss” or “Mrs.” instead of “Ms” or even “He got busted by a male grammar cop.”

In spelling, sometimes the e‘s not the i‘s have it.

Millionaires Fight Club

What’s all this I hear about millionaires going on strike*?

From my listening post in Cairo I’m a little more concerned that I’ll get caught in the middle of an uprising or worse, a monstrous traffic snarl, but I can’t help but hear bits of news about basketball players wanting to sit out the season because they want more money.

Or maybe it’s greedy owners not content to just have one luxury yacht for each family member.

Either way, I have never understood how the American sports-going public can even think about putting up with this sort of folderol.

A few years ago I was actually hoping and praying that the millionaire baseball players and owners would cancel a season. In fact, I even wrote an opinion piece for the Arizona Republic about it.

“The problem is that we have an economic death spiral here. Owners need butts in the bleachers and pay players royal sums to attract the butts’ owners.”

Did you ever hear of triple A-league baseball players going on strike? I reckon if the major league millionaires and owners canceled a season, fans could just turn to the minor leagues and enjoy a level of athleticism not all that far from the Bigs.

Of course the reason players can command multimillion dollar salaries–and that’s not even counting endorsements and the fact that they get to be thugs in cities around the country for free–is that the fans are willing to pay exorbitant ticket prices and ridiculous food and beverage tabs at the stadium, ballpark or arena.

“Even if your friendly neighborhood power forward plays only six years, it would still take your school psychologist or teacher 160 years to catch up.”

If the fans as a group got together and said, “Look, we’re having enough trouble just buying gas for our cars and maybe going to a movie matinée, so you millionaires who could buy a car with the money you make in just about a half hour, you go ahead and sit out the season and we’ll use the money we save on concession stand nachos to pay our rent this month or buy books for our kids at school.”

You guys are mad at Wall Street? Save your breath. Why not put your efforts where it will actually make a difference. Occupy the Millionaires Fight Club.

Remember Howard Beale.

 ____________________

*I know it’s not technically a strike, but when a season is cancelled because players want more tattoo bucks…that’s a strike, even if the owners are scroogy SOBs.

PS…let me know if you would like a copy of the Republic article.

Easter comes early at Skype

The other day one of my Skypemates and I were fooling around with some new icons in the latest version and, purely by accident, we came across several, um…”undocumented” icons.  These are little cartoon icons that don’t show up anywhere on the menu.

Now, there’s a term in the software business for bits of secret code embedded in a program or DVD: “Easter eggs.”

These are harmless yolks inserted in the program that appear magically when certain key strokes are made, yielding a gag reel or nerd-amusing game.

For example, typing (smoke) yields a little guy smoking and (rock) sends out a head-banging rock ‘n roller. Now try typing (drunk).

Note that you have to type in the word with the parentheses.

There’s another one so deliciously improper you’ll have to write me privately. Send a note to jveedsATaol.com and I’ll reveal it.

Of course, I suppose this is old news to veteran egg hunters. Frankly, I haven’t Googled the matter to find out whether there are dozens more. Sometimes it’s better not to know.

Like when I figured out how to advance to the upper levels of PacMan.  The whole thing was ruined for me when I found out that the “cheats”  had been figured out long ago and were actually published.

I suppose I’ll have to eventually do the search and find out what secret icons we missed.

But sometimes it’s nice to just let serendipity happen, walk through the world with the eyes of a child finding colored eggs under bushes, making a conscious effort not to read all the reviews of a movie before going to see it, not doing an Internet search of your new dating partner to see if he’s a beau or a beauzo…

…in short finding the Easter eggs of someone’s personality.

Librarians run amuck

Me: What’s all this I hear about librarian rebels storming Tripoli and searching for Qadaffi?

You: Wha’?

Me: Yeah, I’ve been hearing about these librarians all like running amuck trying to take over Tripoli and searching for that Qadaffi guy. Shouldn’t they be looking for missing books and hunting down library book scofflaws?

You: (sigh). Libyans. Not librarians.

Me: Wha’?

You: They’re Libyan rebels, not librarian rebels.

Me: Oh. Never mind.

—————

In memory of Emily Litella

16 Tips for Expats Re-entering the US

1. Never drive to Scottsdale AZ without filling up on gas first. (Gas costs 20-29¢ more per gallon in Scottsdale; there are various theories.)

2. Always park on the street in the direction of traffic. (It’s a $25 ticket in Erie PA though I got off with a courteous warning in Glendale AZ.)

3. For Sunday breakfast at a restaurant, do whatever it takes to arrive before 8:30am. (8am to be safe). Otherwise marauding hordes of zombies willing to sit semi- lifelessly in the waiting area staring at the floor for a half hour to 40 minutes will take over the joint.

4. When watching TV, be prepared for an onslaught of law firm commercials for class action lawsuits against a variety of prescription drugs.

5. When watching TV, be prepared for an onslaught of commercials for prescription drugs with bizarre, scary side effects, usually including possible death and/or vomiting.

6. Pay attention to left turn lanes, especially after 10pm. Paradise Valley AZ charges you more than $200 for failing to make your left turn properly…even from an otherwise deserted roadway with no oncoming traffic.

7. Sometimes it seems like the only difference between corruption in an Arab dictatorship and corruption in US politics is that the dictator gets deposed. The US politician – say, an ex-governor – goes on a speaking tour and collects $100,000 per event. (One Arab elected official said “Sure I gave out the best government-subsidized housing to my sister’s family. What was I supposed to do…give it to a stranger?” See? That’s just being honest. An American official might chirp “Corporations are people too!”)

8. Don’t expect to eat dinner out after 10pm unless you want to be the folks that close the place down.

9. You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant*.

10. If there are four cars or more at a fast-food drive-through, park your car and go inside to order. (Invariably one of the cars will be ordering enough food for a scout troop or frat party and might even be taking orders via cell phone. Actually, that’s exactly what Saudi students do in the line at a McDonalds–pronounced MAKdonalds–but at least they’re inside.)

 11. There’s a good chance your favorite bistro from a year ago is closed.

 12. There’s no need to pay more than $4 for a bottle of wine at a grocery store. (Wine names now sound like Big Hair rock bands–Double Dog Dare, Cardinal Zin, Little Black Dress, Chateau La Feets.)

13. US stores have about 40 brands and types of toothpaste stocked on the shelf. Pick the absolute cheapest unless it’s formulated from Vegemite or arsenic.

14. If everyone ignored the Kardashians, they might go away.

15. Naaaah!

17. But it was a good thought.

———-

*ceptin’ Alice

Save Saudi Arabia…bring a blogger home!

Having now served two years of teaching duty in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, your blogger is getting ready to return to the U.S. for summer vacation, around mid-July.

You are asking yourself: “What can I do to keep this faithful correspondent from leaving the States again?”

Simple. If you know of any specific positions, tips or leads that would save the Saudis from another year of my Middle East shenanigans…

…pass them along to me at the e-mail below.

Here, I’ll make it simple.

Just ask around and see who needs an accomplished and versatile teacher or writer and is willing to pay enough to keep the wolves from the door.

What will you say to your friends or colleagues?

You will say: He is equally comfortable churning out mouth-watering ad copy and technical white papers. He can do audience-grabbing executive speeches (like he did for a major aerospace corporation) or funny radio scripts (like for the Arizona State Fair). He proofreads and copyedits like a maniac (like he did for several Phoenix newspapers and marketing agencies). Feel free to paraphrase.

You want humor? You will make snorting noises and lose control of your sphincter. You want heart-rending? You will check into the hospital and beg for a transplant. You want dry and boring? Sorry. Try the hack next door.

And what about teaching, you ask? Boy, did you come to the right place!

He tames unruly youths in a single bound; imparts sage writing tips faster than a speeding bullet; flies through the air with the greatest of ease (without tights). Two out of three are more or less true. Pick ‘em.

In short, he teaches English, Business Writing and Rhetoric (along with Reading and Grammar, but no ‘Rithmetic).

He brings an invaluable international perspective. And is willing to relocate to your fair city.

But enough dilly dallying. Let’s see how we can save me from another year in the Magic Kingdom.  I’m ready to get to work and appreciate your tips, hot leads and especially any job offers.

Just jot a note to jveeds@aol.com to get the ball rolling.

Oh, and feel free to pass this article along to whoever might be interested.

Is there a bigger moroon than Glenn Beck?

No.

.

.

.

.

.

_________________

*Beck, to his radio audience on Monday:

“I’m not saying God is, you know, causing earthquakes. I’m not not saying that either. “What God does is God’s business. I have no idea. But I’ll tell you this, whether you call it Gaia, or whether you call it Jesus, there’s a message being sent. And that is, ‘Hey you know that stuff we’re doing? <laughing to himself> Not really working out real well. <laughing uproariously to himself> Maybe we should stop doing some of it.’ <laughing>I’m just saying.”

He doesn’t say which part of the “stuff” we’re doing ought to be cut out…maybe the tsunamis…but he then proceeds to mention, as an aside, that he has super-secret, uber-important information about Hezbollah and radical Islam that apparently is available only to him and then launches a full minute of a pointless extended metaphor about “buckling up”  and “keeping arms and legs inside the car.”

To get the full effect of his moronicity, you have to hear the self-satisfied chortlng (there is no better word that I can thnk of ) that accompanies his commentary.

FYI: the term “moroon” is used courtesy of Bugs Bunny, as in “What a moroon!”