One memey moisty morning.

Greetings, my friends! The weekend was acceptably lovely and busy. I did pick the winner of the Kentucky Derby, but only because a friend of mine was once really into an independent comic book by the same name. Alas, I put no money on the horse. Did I spread mulch this weekend? Yes sir, I did. Just ask my back! 

Today, I offer fresh picked memes to start your week. Don't all hurrah at once. 

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Thanks to fellow Bleatnik rbj13 for the otter picture

Maybe it comes with the name?

Mailed it in.

In case you feel like you're wasting time with whatever you're doing, let me just remind you of something:

The US Postal Service has its own podcast.

These days, every organization has to have its own pricey Web site, podcast, video introduction, YouTube channel, and LinkedIn page. Some never get much farther than all that. The part where they actually do something useful, benefit society, and/or make money? Forgot in all the excitement.

It's weird to see that the post office has a podcast. What is the post office's rep? Slow, late to adopt tech, humorless, a dinosaur, at worst just a benefits program that happens to deliver the mail, as General Motors became a benefits program that happens to make cars. The post office doesn't even have a lot of fun stamps anymore. The last time a stamp issue was a big deal was the Young Elvis vs. Fat Elvis vote in 1992.

I was looking for the tracking tools on the USPS site when I came across the link for the podcast, available on Apple Podcasts on on the Simplecast site. So, okay, what the hell do they talk about on a podcast by the post office? What could possibly interest you and me, going about our business and not much thinking about mail? I mentioned to my wife that the post office has a podcast and she said, "I can't imagine a duller one."

I downloaded episode 32, new this past Tuesday, in which Bill Gicker, USPS director of Stamp Services, talks about the 2023 stamp program. Other episodes deal with topics like postal history, delivery preparations for the holidays, the origin of the zip code, and why mail-in voting is totally safe, you bet, no cheating here. Each one is just around half an hour. 

Well, it actually was fairly interesting. Got some standard jukey intro music, and then the host introduces the guest, and they talk about post office things. I learned some info bits from the episode I heard -- like, new stamp designs are chosen three years before they are issued, a citizen's group is included in the voting, and the post office is at least as obsessed with diversity as any other American organization. I don't think I heard the name of a straight white person mentioned among the upcoming 2023 issues except Ruth Bader Ginsburg. (The current rule says someone must be deceased for three years before being eligible to be enstampified.) Peanuts stamps do very well, according to Gicker, as does the Black Heritage series. The host is fine and all, but I'm not much into postal things, so I don't know that I'd download another episode. Maybe some of the American history-tied episodes. (They did not mention that once again! the price of a first-class stamp is going up, this Monday the 22nd, to 63 cents.)

I'm sure there's an audience for this stuff -- even though interest in philately has declined, it has not gone away entirely. It might be of interest to employees; the post office currently has more than 516,000 full-timers on staff (about the population size of Atlanta, Georgia), and no doubt millions of former and aspiring employees in the wings. And the beauty of the podcast environment, like that of the blog (cough, cough), is that don't need to put up big bucks to design, write, and produce the thing. Why, sometimes one idiot with an obsession (ahem) is all it takes. So the USPS may not be spending much, but they got a PR program out of it. 

I guess it seems odd because -- why do it all? We know the post office loses money every year, and the odds of it being able to become a money-making enterprise are about as good as the odds of it being able to lay off redundant workers -- roughly 0%. Most of us treat it like a utility, so it's like if the local water company had a podcast. It could be interesting -- clean water available on demand is a great luxury in the history of the world -- but why do it at all? 

If you're the kind of person who likes checking out the odd spots in podcast world, check it out and let me know what you think. It's hard to find stats on podcast listeners or subscribers, but Mailin' It does have a 3.6-star (out of 5) rating from 182 reviewers, so someone must be enjoying it. But it just seems like another way that modern organizations spend time, effort, and resources to tell people how great they are instead of actually being great. (See also: the Academy Awards.)

Groups.

A friend of mine asked me if I wanted to join a little writers' group she's putting together. I said no, but she's persistent (and very sweet). They haven't met yet, and I might still figure out a way to get out of it.

You might wonder why I would be reluctant. I'm not anti-joining, as so many of us are these days. Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone came out in 2000, and despite his optimism I see little to suggest that community is making a comeback -- except on social media, where people are insane. The Chinese Death Virus didn't help matters, either. However, I'm not anti-community. I'm a believer in the importance of commitment to worthy causes. I'm simply not convinced of the value of writers' groups, or perhaps in my ability to bring any value to one. 

Years ago in my misspent youth another pal suggested we get together with some other people he knew who wanted to write. We all met in a downtown bar, and talked about writing for about three minutes, then drank and played darts for the next couple of hours. That was our one and only meeting. 

I think at the time I felt that the others were not very serious, but the truth was that I too was not very serious. I had no voice, no ideas that weren't absorbed from someone else's work, and it took quite a while and a lot of bad words out of me (in every sense) before I felt I could write something worth reading. And that was a purely lonely job. Maybe it would have been faster if someone were to show me a direction, but when everyone is a novice, no one knows what he's doing. Bad writing ideas and habits can spread like a common cold. Maybe we all have to hack our way out of the jungle by ourselves, even if it means we may go down into the quicksand. 

At its base, writing is a lonely business. Some people are great collaborators, but I think that works better in show business, where people have to cooperate with others and no individual's personal vision gets to the audience exactly as intended. When writing for the page rather than the stage, however, the writer has to have confidence that his vision can be seen and understood by others. 

Either way, there's a lot of ego involved. 

And that leads me to the other problem. If group members are really tough on one another, feelings will be hurt. If it's really light and upbeat, no one's going to learn anything. If I am going to have my ego bruised, I would like it to be done by the person who is simultaneously seeing to it that I get paid. Otherwise, hell, I can hate myself all by myself. I don't need anyone else to help me do it.

TV writer Rob Long quotes an unnamed producer whose adage is, "I never take a no from someone who doesn't have the authority to give me a yes." Seems reasonable. So why would I want to join a writers' group and make other people feel bad about their own projects? I can't help them get published.

And what the hell do I know? When I'm not working on my own projects, I can be found working on someone else's books being published by my clients, and I think about 90% of the novels would never see the light of day if it were up to me. Nine percent of the remaining 10% would have to be reworked to death. But they're all getting published, and by some big publishers, so again, what the hell do I know? 

In the best-case scenario, the group does make your work better, and you get published, and you're the breakthrough one who has to try to get all your friends published, too. Plus, you have to list them along with every human being you've ever encountered in the acknowledgments or the dedication. 

Long story short: I don't want to join a writers' group. However, the friend who invited me has been my pal for like 25 years and sends us cookies every Christmas. So you never want to hurt a friend that good.

Oh, well. Mom wanted me to be a lawyer. Maybe I should have listened.

Org chart.

Okay, everyone settle down. You'll recall that we talked about this back in July. The new organizational chart is being released today, and I think you'll agree that this prevents a lot of the confusion we've had in years past. 

As you can see, we've broken the staff into three major groups -- avians, humans, and inanimate objects. That was our initial task. It was suggested that we instead group music-makers together, but there was too much gray area about which avians sing and which don't. Also, whether dancing and leaping constituted music. So, this was the basic breakdown decided upon. 

Now, right off the bat you can tell there's going to be some major changes. The avians are no longer grouped around the golden rings; the partridge and the pear tree have been separated. We think this will help clarify the purpose for each member, and make management more focused on their needs. 

Will this change the numbers of each? Yes, to be frank, some will be changed. Most interior groups will not be affected; in fact, the human groups will remain as is. And for the avians, there will be a net gain of four new hires, so I think you ought to be happy with that. Here is the new overall arrangement:

    12 Drummers (drumming)

    11 Pipers (piping)

    10 Lords (a-leaping)

    9 Ladies (dancing)

    8 Maids (a-milking)

    7 Swans (a-swimming)

    6 Geese (a-laying)

    5 Calling Birds (a-calling)

    4 French Hens (a-Frenching)

    3 Turtle Doves (a-doving)

    2 Partridges (doing whatever they do)

    1 Golden Ring (just lying there)

    Pear Tree

So, you -- oh, okay, I see some hands and wings up out there. Yes, Partridge? Right... right... No, we appreciate that you've always worked alone, but maybe you ought to consider the advantages of sharing the limelight. Not that we don't love your solo act! But why should everything fall on you all the time? Just think about it for a while. This is to benefit you!

Yes, Maids? Oh, you did? Well, I'm not sure where you got that idea, but if we did increase the maid workforce that would just require an increase in the cow workforce, you see? I know you work very hard, but the contract calls for one cow per maid, even if the cows don't particularly get a mention. These are implied cows, yes. 

No, Ladies, I'm sorry, this is not the time or place to take up your grievances with the Lords. Please call my office after the holidays and we'll try to work out a meeting. Meanwhile, Lords, please stop taking things from the Ladies' dressing room. If you need makeup or undergarments to perform your duties, you should be discussing it with your manager. 

Okay! So let's... What's that? Gold Rings? Well, I'm sorry, Rings, but as inanimate objects, you really have no standing to complain. The layoffs will be done by seniority. Last in, first out. Yes, yes, that does mean Ollie will be the ring staying on. I didn't want to discuss it this way, but those are your union rules. Remember, though, you're at all-time high value and are a great hedge against inflation -- all the radio ads say so. You'll get snapped up quick.

Uh -- what was that, Hens? Oh, I'm glad you asked. Yes, this will apply in languages throughout our territory. In Canada, that means you'll be the Four French Hens as well as Quatre Poules Françaises. Naturally in France you'll just be Quatre Poules. In China it will be right to left and vertical, while in Israel it's backward. Those aren't big markets for us, though.

Thanks everybody! I think we have everything squared away. Let's go make this the best 12 Days ever! 

Oh, and Pear Tree? May I see you in my office for a moment...? 

Organizing junk.

My wife'd been after me for a little while -- maybe six or seven months -- or years -- to organize the junk drawer. 

Now, I feel in my heart that the junk drawer, a staple of the American kitchen, ought to be as full of junk as possible. After all, if it doesn't have a little something for everything, how can the thing you need be there when you need it? But I gave in on the issue when it got to the point that pulling open the drawer led to flying projectiles or unknown objects being dumped into the cabinet below. 

I intended to follow the four-step plan for organization:

1. Empty the contents into an area in which I could sort them;

2. Categorize the contents;

3. Throw out obvious garbage; 

4. Organize the remainder. 

The kitchen table was up to the task, so I got to it. 

The challenging part was categorizing the contents, because, let's face it, junk is by definition an amorphous mass that defies division into categories. But digging around I began to detect patterns, and those emerged as:

Tools: Screwdrivers, pliers, scrapers, box cutter, Allen wrenches, scissors, shoehorn, etc.

Batteries: AAs, AAAs, miscellaneous button batteries

Things that join other things together: Tape, plumber's tape, electrical tape, Command hooks, paper clips, twist ties, rubber bands, thumbtacks, superglue, string 

Keys and key-related objects: The latter being color-coded key caps, mostly; one (1) padlock too

Things that were supposed to help but didn't: Reflectors, napkin rings, toothpaste tube squishers, etc.

Things that were related to things that may have been thrown away: Charging wire fixed with tape, instructional booklets, etc.

Things that have been superseded: Chair leg floor protectors, tiny Post-its, etc.

Things that should go on my workbench instead: Many, many wood and metal screws, nails, pieces left over from furniture assembly

Things for writing: Chalk, Sharpie, pencil, pencil sharpener

Car stuff: Tire pressure gauge, vent air freshener (unopened), de-icer

Garbage: Everything else

The last category was joined by many things that were in the other categories as I went. I kept about 10 percent of the twist ties, for example, and half the Allen wrenches. Most of the rubber bands had dried out. A set of three napkin rings is useless for entertaining. The Post-its were bunched up and dirty. And so on. 

Car/key related things. Plus shoehorn.

Stuff for the workbench. I don't even
know why those wrenches were upstairs. 

Here is the completed junk drawer, with approximately a quarter of the mass inside previously:

The problem is, so much of that junk has to go in the cellar, and now it's all in a bag waiting to go down. So ultimately I've moved the problem from the kitchen to my workbench, which is also an unholy mess. So therefore the problem is in one regard not solved, but relocated. 

On the other hand, my wife is happy. She never uses the workbench. So really, the problem is solved. Hooray for me!

Fred's Book Club: Get 'Er Done!

Welcome to another Wednesday Hump Day meeting of the Humpback Writers, thus the stupid name. No one has humps, although some may have lumps. We all take our lumps in life. Anyway, you could call it Fred's Book Club, but that might be even dumber. I don't mind either way.

I was barely able to get a post together today because Tuesday was nutty, with work coming in and the router acting up and a dog needing to go to the vet (Tralfaz got a hot spot from the injury I mentioned on Monday, but he'll be all right after pills pills pills). Anyway, it was a good excuse to look at time management, which brings us to:

Alan Lakein is no slouch when it comes to time management -- which, for that matter, is not a field that really rewards slouches. How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life, first published in 1973, is a plan for the scatterbrained to do exactly as the title says. In 160 pages, Lakein gives a brisk run-down of all the principles one really needs to decide on priorities and goals and give them the one thing that cannot be bought or sold: time.

"Time is life," he writes right up front. "It is irreversible and irreplaceable. To waste your time is to waste your life, but to master your time is to master your life and make the most of it." He goes on to outline his plan in a way any writer could envy, with powerful, economic words.

I'm not a "time and motion" organizer, trying to get everything done in the shortest time with the fewest waster motions. That kind of efficiency means taking the thinking out of an activity and reducing it to a series of mechanical routines. There is no attempt to keep it fun or interesting, so you might even say that such extreme clockwatching takes the life right out of an activity, along with the thought.

Lakein is all about deciding what your priorities are and planning your time to push those first. "Control starts with planning," he writes. "Planning is bringing the future into the present so you can do something about it now." He is impressively quotable.

Of course he is aware that plans go awry, just as I didn't intend to spend an hour and a half at the vet yesterday. That's not what this is book about. This is planning over the long haul. Know your goals, resolve their conflicts. set lifetime priorities.

Take your Lifetime Goals list in hand and spend one minute selecting your top three goals. Label the most important of these A-1. The second most important is A-2. The third is A-3. Do the same for your three-years list, and your six-months list.
     At this point you have nine goals culled from the three lists. To pick out the three most important long-term goals of this nine, write on a fresh piece of paper, "My three most important long-term goals are..." Then write them in order: A-1, A-2, A-3. You have now finished a preliminary Lifetime Goals Statement. You have zeroed in on just what it is you want to do with your life as you see it at this time.

It doesn't get much more complex than that.

I don't think there has been a single book on organizing for success that really had more to say than Lakein has here, but most authors pad their books with cute names for complex tasks, endless anecdotes and testimonials, and misattributed quotations swiped from the Internet. If you just want to get your life in order, I say, stick to Lakein.

And there is the rub. I bought this book more than twenty years ago, when I had a demanding job and a scattered personal life and was trying to get things in order. The problem is, like any good program, it only works if you put it into action. I don't know what became of the notebook I was using to work out my life plan back then, but it is gone. It may be in my desk. The fact that I have no idea tells you how well I practiced the program.

In fact, one glance at my desk (which I shall spare you) is enough to prove that I have never followed any advice on organization for long. I won't say that my desk looks like you took a bunch of books and papers and pens and things, stuffed them in a huge ballpark T-shirt cannon, and blew them at it. I will say that if you did such a thing, the results would be indistinguishable from the current condition.

Perhaps I ought to give this book a second glance. If I can find the time.

Heavy metal.

Here it is Tuesday and I'm just recovering from the weekend. Yessirree Bob, there was some heavy metal to be moved, and I'm the one that moved it.

What happened? Well, I mentioned after Christmas that Santa, bless that jolly old elf, had given me a new set of bakeware as a present. And the box was still sitting in the living room. Why? Because the house is a disorganized wreck, that's why, and there was nowhere to put the new stuff.

I'm not blaming anyone but myself for this, by the way, certainly not when it comes to cookware. I do most of the cooking and pretty much all the baking around here, and I have a bad habit of chucking things into closets and cabinets willy-nilly when I'm done with them. My wife organizes, and over time I disorganize, leading to chaos. I'm like a one-man entropy.

She was NOT going to straighten up the closet again, the one off the kitchen where were keep the bulk of the cookware, as she did four or five years ago. And as you can imagine, with ol' Jack Entropy here, it had gotten to be a total wreck in that time. So I decided that, hell or high water, that closet was getting straightened, cleaned, and the old junk pitched last weekend. And I did so. And it involved moving a lot of metal. And any metal is heavy if you have enough of it.

It's always a hassle to do this kind of project because you quickly run out of places to stash the stuff as you remove it from the closet -- if you had other places to stash it all, you wouldn't need the closet. Soon staggering piles of metal and whatnot were nearby, along with rolls of trash bags, cleaning tools and supplies, paper goods, and whatever other crap had been shoved in there when company was coming. It was awful.

I did toss some old pans -- cheap muffin tins from Walmart that rusted on the first use, black bakeware that required fiddling with time and temperature on every recipe, tools that had been superseded or had parts missing -- and among the non-cooking tools I separated the wheat from the chaff, and moved some other items to more appropriate storage areas in the house, like my poor beleaguered cellar (you're next, cellar). Then I found a nice, safe place for the things that were going into that closet. Now, if I can only keep it that way, the closet will be a shining example of smart organization. Yeah, Jack Entropy's on the job.

My other heavy metal experience was shaving with a fresh disposable razor on Sunday. Ooooh, such a nice smooth shave it was too. How clean my skin was! How sleek! How ... bloody my neck was! Crap. Looked like I'd had a run-in with Sweeney Todd. A safety razor isn't supposed to strip the skin that way -- you may have noticed "safety" is right there in the name. It shouldn't just mean "safer than shaving with a chain saw." It probably wouldn't have been like a scene from Halloween if I didn't have such paper-dry winter skin, though.

Next weekend I think I'll focus on plastics or cardboard and leave the metals alone. Something lightweight sounds good. And stick to the electric razor for a few more days.

Acronymwits.

If there's one thing I hate -- hold on, never mind, there are many things I hate -- 

Of the many things I hate, one of them is -- 

Try again. 

One thing I hate is organizations that are stupid about their acronyms. I really hate it. When a group changes its name it often means it has lost its focus. And that's only part of it. 

Take, for example, the FFA, and this from their site:

So FFA, which used to have the purposeful and clear name of Future Farmers of America, decided that they didn't want to just focus on people who wanted to be farmers, in America, in the future. No, it was silly that people would want a thing like that! "FFA welcomes members who aspire to careers as teachers, doctors, scientists, business owners and more"...

They were focused on promoting agriculture careers. That's a clear and important mission. Now they're promoting any careers in anything. They have a little something for everyone. Which means what they do have has been devalued. No one but St. Paul can be all things to all people. In other words, the FFA has no reason to exist.

But what most irritates me is that they decided to keep the acronym FFA, even though it doesn't stand for anything. THAT IS SO STUPID. What, you were too cheap to buy new stationery?

You want to change your mission? THEN CHANGE THE NAME. Don't just have letters that are meaningless. It reveals the hollowness of your thinking.

"Hey. Psst. Kid. Wanna join the FFA?"
"What's FAF?"
"FFA, kid. Get it right."
"What's FFA stand for?"
"Nothin'."

Change the stupid name.

If there was anything dumber than that, it had to be this, from AARP:

If you can't read that, it says that the American Association of Retired Persons changed its name because some of its members were still working. Because they were enraged at being represented by a bunch of retirees, I guess.

So now, AARP also doesn't stand for anything, but they call it Aarp. Ahrrp. Which sounds like the last word you say after you fall off your walker and expire waiting for help to arrive. "Aaaarrrrp."

(Extra points if you thought of Eric Idle.)

AARP seems to want to disguise the fact that its mission is to help old people. It was organized to help those who had retired and had all the various problems that come with old age and loss of income and even purpose. Now they want to help people who aren't old -- not really -- and aren't even retired. So they too have lost all meaning.

At least you could CHANGE THE STUPID NAME.

I fully expect that the Boy Scouts of America, who have stomped on the key word in that name -- Boy -- by allowing people other than boys to join, will become just "BSA" in the next decade or so.

"What does BSA stand for?"
"Nothin'."

When the American Academy of Dietitians wanted to expand beyond mere national borders (something I suspect they would not have done except that George W. Bush was in the White House, but I'm just guessing), they didn't just call themselves AAD and say it stood for nothing. They became the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, and to hell with the stationery. Why can't these other twit organizations do this? I mean, yeah, as AAD they might have gotten confused with the American Academy of Dermatology, but it was still a good idea to change the name entirely.

These dumbasses basically want to eat their cake and at the same time have their cake. They want to change the name for whatever dopey reason, like mission creep or greed for new recruits, while not losing name recognition. They are looking to split the difference. You cannot split that difference. You can only stick to thy last or CHANGE THE STUPID NAME.

It all makes me want to use language that is not worthy of a PG-rated blog. Besides, I have already used the ugliest word I know: Aarp. Which means, "I've fallen and I can't get up."

Memory holder.

This basket has been in the family since the 1990s, as you might guess from the logo design:

Have never understood the "be stylish to your life" part. "Add style to your life"? "Be stylish with the actions in your life"? "Treat your life stylishly"? Anyway, it's a lot to ask from a plastic basket.

I believe this basket, made by a company called Iris, came from the late, lamented Lechters Housewares, which folded 15 years ago. The basket was purchased for apartment use. It was meant to be a caddy to hold all cleaning supplies, so they could be carried from room to room together. Although oven cleaner is not great in the living room, and Endust doesn't get much use in the bathroom, it was still convenient and useful. I'm not sure if it is fitting or ironic, however, that all these years later it has developed a layer of grunge on the bottom and may have to be discarded.

blarg

Getting back to that nineties logo for "Mesh Basket": you might think Iris had gone the way of Lechters, or for that matter, Chumbawamba, Doug, or AOL discs. But you'd be wrong!

Mrs. Key (the lovely and talented) got a new box to hold dog food, and as an elevated feeder for the big guy's bowls. And just the other day I noticed the label:

Yes! Iris is still out there, making things (in the USA, pilgrim!) that hold other things. As someone whose idea of organization is "I think I left it on that pile, or maybe that pile, or possibly the other pile," I fully support the making of things that hold other things. It's not that they'll get me organized; it's just that I can put the piles away in the boxes and ignore them.

After Christmas, Walmart and other retailers have specials on storage bins. You can bet that Iris will be there.

I feel a kind of weird kinship with the company, even though I only have the two products and one of them may have to be thrown away because it's its own Superfund site. But when something is willing to hang around for twenty years, I'm willing to show it some love.

I have some Christmas ornaments like that. Some human friends, too, actually.