The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Maybe you already heard the results of a new study that shows 14% of cellphone calls are phony – meaning, the person on the phone is pretending to talk to someone on a non-existent other end.  That’s one in seven calls are meant to remove the user from real interpersonal contact with the excuse he has a call coming in.  This is maybe great news for thespians, all this acting practice, but not so great for actual relationships.
Consider this next time the person you’re in mid-sentence with suddenly breaks off for that important I-have-to-take-this-call incoming.  Good chance they’re nodding and bobbing, babbling away at the soft hum of a dial tone, pausing, listening, answering back, all to remove themselves from the great pleasure of your company.  Course our friends wouldn’t do that, just everybody else’s.  But … occasionally you might try slipping off to dial their number, see if it rings while they’re in mid-chat with Harvey the Six Foot Rabbit.  Good chance they’ll just put you on hold, probably, and keep on talking.  In the end maybe even a crummy friend is better than no friend at all.
Down here on the South End, we sort of expect strange behavior from our pals.   If we wanted Normality, we’d have moved north a long time ago.  But you ask me, anybody who answers a cellphone in the middle of our conversation, made up call or real, is sending me a message loud and clear.  Maybe time to go weed the garden,  let them talk without an eavesdropper.
Still, it’s a tad troubling, this phone-call-from-the-void stuff.  Sad enough to get solicitations from strangers with odd regional dialects, really almost alarming to chatter with nobody.  Next thing you know they’ll be doing it when they’re alone.  And before long, mark my words, they’ll be writing a blog nobody reads.  ….. Uh-oh.  Operator, I think I been cut off….

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/CLICK-TO-HEAR-black-monday.mp3[/podcast]CLICK TO HEAR — black monday

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I’m in transit today, cars, buses, planes – no trains yet —  and hopefully my truck at the end for the final leg.  This means I’m wandering airport corridors barraged by TV’s hanging overhead every thirty feet or so for the traveler in need of a constant IV drip of fast breaking news, an electron lifeline to the events of the day.  Today we’re watching the stock market swooning, the Dow Jones down now by over 600 points, all our winnings at the national crap table lost in one throw of the dice.
Standard and Poor, that exemplar of a ratings agency, downgraded the U.S. from Triple A to AA+ and now the institutional investors are dumping equities like they were toxic drums of pesticides the EPA just banned.  If you’re like me, you got some skin the game.  Enough to hurt if you’re hoping to retire some golden day.  Probably not gonna be as soon as we thought….
I suppose we can be grateful our paltry Social Security isn’t pegged to the Market.  Although I know plenty of folks who would love to gamble that too, the same folks who want an ATM machine in the casino for easy access to more money.  Those people should take an early retirement and head straight to the nearest betting mecca, rent a motel room by the month nearby and put their severance check on the Red Seven and spin the wheel.
I guess I’m not much of a gambler.  And when this rollercoaster market steadies out, I’m going to gather up my losses and what’s left of the shirt on my back and hunker down for a long hard run toward old age.  The Young Turks of Wall Street are going to have to continue without me.  When I watch a ratings agency like Standard and very Poor make a two trillion dollar math error on their downgrade assessment, my faith in capitalism drops way below a Double A+.  These were the fine fellows who gave Top Drawer ratings to Enron and WAMU and all the other fast buck subprime freddies and sold us down the river 3 years ago.  Maybe math ought to be the criterion, not card counting.  It’s supposed to be Wall Street, not Las Vegas.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/CLICK-TO-HEAR-BETTER-BIZNESS-PRACTICES.mp3[/podcast]CLICK TO HEAR — BETTER BIZNESS PRACTICES

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If you’ve been down to your favorite fiduciary lending institution lately, you’ve maybe run into the New Improved Tighter Regulations.  These are the folks who brought us the Great
Recession we’re still trying to climb out of, but now they’ve learned their lesson, at least the ones who weren’t bankrupted or defaulted or reorganized by the FDIC.  We gave them TARP loans so they’d loan money to jumpstart the
economy they’d stalled, and instead, they just hung onto it.  You got a house underwater, good luck getting new finance terms.  They’re going to take the house  —- the only question is how
long can they convince you to tread water, meaning, how long can they keep you making those payments before you sink like a stone.

I got a check recently through my high powered business name and when I went down to deposit it, I was informed I would now need to open a new business account.
Undaunted, I went to another of my many favorite banks who used to cash my business checks just fine, without the necessity for acting like they were
my parents.  And once again I was told firmly and patiently that they could not, no, absolutely not, confuse my business with my personal account.  I
said it is WAY too late for that in my life that is approaching what for some would be retirement age.  They said  no, the time is now.

Of course I don’t suspect the real reason for this change of heart and policy has anything to do with extra service fees or set-up charges.  I would never never accuse my banks of
petty greed, nickel and dime tactics or outright deceptions from debit card fees, late fees, overdraft fees and all those myriad other small print hand-in-my-wallet charges that eat the poor alive, one dollar at a time.

So I spent an hour setting up my corporate account.  The one I will use til the last check clears from the current client — after which I will have checks issued to me, personally.   Muddy bizness
practice, sure, but simpler for me. And when we were done and the handshakes with the assistant manager done,  I mentioned their promotion of $100 to anyone opening a new business account.  And they smiled sadly before lamenting I was just two days too late, the offer expired already.  To which, I smiled sadly and pulled the internet ad that showed the offer good for another week.  Trust, as they certainly mentioned more than
a few times, is crucial to a good relationship between my business and my lending institution, a partnership, as it were, in these uncertain fiscal times.

It finally cost them 100 bucks for my time.  About $100 dollars an hour.  I’m sure they would agree that this constitutes  a fine business acumen.  I may open a dozen new accounts.  Hell, I could easily learn to love finance
with these folks as tutors and mentors. Or vice versa.

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[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/the-new-etiquette.mp3[/podcast]CLICK TO HEAR —the new etiquette

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Being the reluctant social scientist I am down here at the last refuge of the 20^th century, I’ve been noticing how a lot of my cronies are developing new paradigms of social behavior.  You folks who are up to date on all the latest technology probably just take it for granted, but I’m like Rip Van Wrinkled who just woke up after 20 years sleeping through the changes.  It’s all alarmingly new and different.  I’m even told it’s new and improved.

I’ve finally stopped saying hello to the folks in the grocery store standing right next to me who suddenly say hello.   Took me awhile to realize they’re calling somebody and don’t mind one bit if I listen in.  Kind of made me feel like I’m not
there or didn’t matter or was invisible. I even thought at first it was pretty rude.  The checkout people get the same
treatment.  Folks are too busy talking to someone somewhere else now to pay any attention to the nobody next to
them.  Sure, it looks like they maybe think they’re more important than us, but I’m getting used to it.  I just happen to be the only fool without a cellphone left in the store.  Me and the checkout clerk.

I got folks now who answer their phone in the middle of our conversation.  It rings its cute personalized ringtone and
next thing I know I’m put on hold.  Sure, I could maybe think I’m not there, insignificant as a 5^th cousin.  I thought at first maybe their phone couldn’t save a message, so they had to take a call.  Way back they used to apologize for taking it, but not anymore.

Nowadays I got friends who text message and get e-mails and search the web for stock quotes and ball scores while we’re at the table or in a conversation.  Multi-tasking.  They can keep up with my stupid banter and still get something  meaningful done.  Time’s short, why waste it?

Their kids don’t even make the pretense of eye to eye or one to one.  They got their friends to text message and if
I want to communicate with them I guess I better learn how to text them too.   Otherwise I’m relegated to the
trashpile of Obsolete Old Fart.  It took me awhile not to get mad and take it personal, but then I remembered my folks’
adage, kids are better seen, not heard.

What it seems like to me is we’re slipping out of the physical world into a virtual one where we would rather deal with folks on our gizmoes than be in the same room with them.  It took me awhile to reconcile myself to that notion, but sit with a pal through a couple of phone calls or watch them texting across the table, hey, call me old fashioned, but I’d rather they weren’t there either.

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CLICK TO HEAR — communism on the south end_

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