Straight as a two-dollar bill.

Got my hands on one of these old beauties while collecting money for a cause last week. You certainly don't see a lot of $2 bills in circulation anymore. 

The United States originally issued two-dollar bills along with the other paper currency after the Legal Tender Act in 1862, and continued to do so until 1966. They always featured Thomas Jefferson, so were sometimes called Toms. The bill never seemed to be as popular as ones, fives, and tens, though, and were thus not printed in as high quantities. In the time the $2 was first printed, it went from being a good deal of money (two days' pay for an unskilled laborer) to a lot less (two hours' pay for unskilled farm work), but neither time nor inflation raised the profile of ol' Tom.  

In 1976 the bill was revived, but the ten-year hiatus had not made it more popular, and it went out of print in 1981. Now they're as seldom seen as the Ike or Susan B. Anthony dollar coins. The Sacagawea coin went out of mint in 2008, so you still see some of them around, but not a lot. I seldom see the newer presidential dollar coins and none of the new "innovation" series, so I think the casinos are hoarding them. 

We just don't like dollar coins in America. I think all coins have an association with cheapness here. The Canadians loved their dollar coin so much they gave it a cute nickname (the Loonie, from the loon on the back). The same goes for their two-dollar coin, which also has a nickname (the Toonie). So even the money in Canada is looney toons. (rim shot)

But coins always got looked down on in the US. I'm not sure when the expression "folding money" (rather than the jingling kind) came into the lingo, as cash worthy of interest, but the oldest reference I know of came from a wartime Fats Waller song, "Cash for Your Trash." The listener is enticed to bring her household trash (old pots and pans and such) to the scrap drive for war use, and receive some money for it, and then canoodle with ol' Fats:

In between we'll do some lovin'

Wide handsome turtle dovin'

Will you listen to me honey

Get plenty of the foldin' money

Yeah, don't settle for that nickel-and-dime stuff; get some actual bills!

As for the two-dollar bill itself, I'd often heard that it was unlucky, but didn't know why. According to Mary Piles, CNB St. Louis Bank Historian (who knew that job existed?), the bad luck tag came from the two being called a deuce, which is also a nickname for the devil. But that's not all! She adds:

One of the reasons the $2 bill was never widely circulated is thought to be due to its negative reputation.

• An urban legend claims that at one time, election rigging was common and the reward for a favorable vote was $2. There was a belief that politicians would purchase votes for $2 therefore, having a $2 bill could be seen as evidence that you had sold your vote. While most likely an urban legend, the myth still gave the bill a sinister reputation.
• In the early 1920s, Prostitution was $2.00 a trick, leading some to refer to the bill as a “whore note.”
• The gambling tracks have a $2.00 window, and if you won, many times you were paid in $2.00 bills. If you were caught with $2’s in your wallet it could lead people to assume you were a gambler.
• The $2 bill was often thought to be bad luck, as “deuce” was a name for the devil. Recipients would tear off one corner, believing it would negate the bad luck of the bill. This caused many of the bills to be taken out of circulation as mutilated currency.

I worked as a teller for a while when I was in school, and I used to buy up $2 bills from other tellers when we cashed out on Friday. That way when I went out drinking with my buddies I would have weird money to draw attention to myself. And I can tell you for a fact that, whether the $2 was lucky or unlucky, I never was. And no, that was not so long ago that (even were I so inclined) I could hire a lady of the evening (ahem) for two bucks. 

There is just one song I know of that mentions a two-dollar bill, by the way (I'd be interested if you know of others). That's Hank Williams's "Hey, Good Lookin'" from 1951. I suspect Hank liked the way it sounded, like money but not a lot of money -- the federal minimum wage in 1951 was 75 cents:

I got a hot rod Ford and a two-dollar bill

And I know a spot right over the hill

There's soda pop and the dancin's free

So if you wanna have fun, come along with me

Less than two years later, Hank was dead, dying on New Year's Day 1953. Was it the mention of the unlucky two that did him in? One has to wonder. 

Let's hear from the spleen.

There's a woman I have known for a number of years, and the odd thing about her is that while she has changed many things about herself, she has herself remained unchanged. I'm not sure that's a good thing. 

In a way it shows consistency, but it may be of the hobgoblin-of-little-minds variety. I am not without any respect for her, so I'll say it's somewhere in between consistency and a failure to learn.

Everything about her seems to have changed in many ways, including attitudes, religions, politics, dietary preferences, work ambitions, and on and on, but they're all keyed into the fact that she is ruled by the heart. Intellectually it looks like she's all over the map -- and not a well-drawn map either -- but emotionally I think she's straight as an arrow, following a rule of kindness and love. It seems to me that without the intellectual virtues of prudence and justice, this kind of compass can lead to horrible whimsical decisions, and also hatred for those who get in its path, ending in destruction and misery. 

Then again, my wife thinks I am a logical person, and I've heaped my buffet plate with my share of destruction and misery too. So who knows what's best?

And yet whenever someone uses that aggressively stupid expression "The heart wants what it wants," I chime in with "Could you at least please give the head a vote?"

They might be better off if they polled all the organs, in fact, rather than just cave in to whatever that ignorant thumping dumdum in the chest says all the time. I'm sure the other organs might have interesting counsel. Like:

STOMACH -- "I don't care. When do we eat? Not now? In a little while? How about now? Not yet?"

GENITALIA -- "Who? That person? That GORGEOUS SEXY THANG? YES! LET'S GO! LET'S -- What? We're just here to compare home equity loans? DANG wake us when its over."

LUNGS -- "This nonsense leaves me breathless, although everything does in time. On that note, don't listen to the genitals. They just want to get into everyone's pancreas."

Pancreas: "Hardy har har, lungs."

LIVER -- "I'm just sick of this behavior. I always have to clean up your stupid mistakes, whether it's the Beer Pong World Championships or the Nuclear Wings Cookout or the gas-station nigiri. How about we just say no to everything for a couple of weeks and let me catch up?"

KIDNEYS -- "We are down with Liver on this, as we are with many things, and for the same reason -- we always have to deal with the fallout. Sorry to rain on your parade. Don't even ask Bladder; he never says anything unless he's all full of himself.”

LARGE INTESTINE -- "I think I speak for my partner Smalls when I say we are just flushed with relief. It bowels us over. Let's move on with this decision right away."

SPLEEN -- "What do I think? I think I'm furious, that's what! And if I don't start doing some venting, there's gonna be trouble around here!"

ISLETS OF LANGERHANS -- "Well, gee, thanks for asking! After all, I'm not really an organ, just a group of pancreatic cells, but since you -- Hey! Where're you going?"

Memes to rent, memes to borrow.

It's another Saturday meme day, kiddies! Not a lot on tap due to the final deadline crush Friday, but I trust you'll find these original creations to be on target. 

Purple Hearts and others.

I regret that I have only discovered that the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor is here in the lovely Hudson Valley, on the non-insane western side, at New Windsor. I don't get over that way often, but I did last week. Unfortunately I was driving Izzy to an animal hospital at the time for his pernicious eye infection (still not gone entirely at this writing) and could not stop to have a look. 

Picture courtesy of the American Legion

"The mission of the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor is to collect, preserve and share the stories of all Purple Heart recipients," says the hall’s site, and I hope a lot of people will want to visit on this Veterans Day. They do have special events today, of course. If you are or know someone who has earned the Purple Heart, check out the online search feature for inductees. 

I don't think it's a particularly large facility, and is not affiliated with the government or run by the US military or its branches, not even prominent veterans' groups like the American Legion or the VFW. It's administered by the New York State Parks Department’s Recreation and Historic Preservation squad, which would make this one of the exceptionally few really good uses of my state tax money that I know about. I've been threatening to flee this dumb state, but before I do I want to go to the hall to offer my respects. 

Closer to home, or my home, is a much smaller monument but another of interest. Even people who live around here may be unaware that the Missing in Action flag, the familiar black MIA flag, was first flown in the village of Harriman, New York, on 1974. I stopped by to have a closer look. 

The American Legion post mentioned in the marker still exists, right around the corner. The spotlit flag is right next to the marker in a little memorial area fenced by wrought iron. I’m sure the flag has been replaced many times since 1974. I wonder if the Legion post still has the original.

For the whole background about the MIA flag, check out this Veterans Affairs page. 

Two years later after the first MIA flag flew, the town buried a time capsule for the Bicentennial, to be opened in fifty years. Four years from now. Geez, what fun is that? Still plenty of old farts around that could tell you (whether you want to hear it or not) about America in 1976. 

"Disco! What a disaster! The Big Bus came out that year too. And you know what else happened in 1976? 'Muskrat Love,' that's what!"

Within walking distance of this capsule is a town park, a pleasant spot with a picnic area, baseball diamonds, basketball hoops, and Canadian invaders. 

It also has another flagpole.

This one also has a plaque at the bottom: 

I wish all our veterans a day of honor, with the thanks from their country for their service. 

Veterans Day has been leaking its public due a little more every year as we get further from the time when military service was not only universally respected but almost universal. Parts of our society would love to see this day forgotten. They only like Americans who fight other Americans. Businesses have long treated it as a "floating holiday," and every year seems to bring more such days aboard to jostle with time and space in our national consciousness.

Don't let them do this to Veterans Day. God bless our veterans, and God bless the United States of America.

Tough call.

Man, what a week. It put me in mind of one of Percival Sweetwater's greatest gags. 

I have to tell you, it's been a rough time, and I'm not even discussing concerns about the country or the stupid state of New York. In addition to being quite stressful with work, I've also in withdrawal from the duloxetine that the doctor recommended for neuropathic pain almost three years ago. I never found it helpful with depression, but I certainly have found withdrawing from it to be helpful for depression -- four weeks in and it's depressing as hell. I know it's biting me harder than usual, because seasonal affective disorder doesn't usually set in for me until the dead of winter, and this year it's starting way early. 

Plus, I can't stop missing my dog Tralfaz. He was such a good boy, and the first dog that ever loved me, and you just can't let that go easily. But this is ridiculous -- my wife had The Polar Express on last weekend and it almost brought me to tears just passing through the room. 

I mean, A Charlie Brown Christmas, maybe, but The Polar Express? I'd sooner be caught weeping at Die Hard. 

And here's where I get to the Rodney Dangerfield joke above. Our veterinarian has an admirable service -- for three months after losing a pet, they'll pay for phone grief counseling. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I appreciated the thought when he gave me the card. But I didn't have more than a few bad days after we lost Nipper last year, so I didn't expect losing Fazzy to be tougher. It has been.

So after much contemplation, I dialed the number.

They hung up on me!

Seriously, there was a rattle on their end and the phone went dead. 

What the---?

Okay, so it's not like a got a counselor who was recommending suicide, but still. It took me days to get over my typically manly reserve (well, a little manly) and dial that number, and bang! Sorry, no time for you, Freddy Boy. I guess you could say the moment had passed, and I didn't try again.

Anyway, thanks to Rodney Dangerfield, I did get a good laugh from it. In related jokes, he told of the time he complained to his doctor (Dr. Vinnie Boombatz, of course) that he wanted to stop aging, so Vinnie gave him a gun. In his song "Rappin' Rodney" he sang (well, a little singingish) a version of the other joke: 

I can't take it no more! I'm getting too old!
I called suicide prevention--they put me on hold!

So if I can't fight off this mood or get help for it, maybe I can at least laugh through it. High five to Rodney, the Patron Schlemiel of Perpetual Woe.

MS KMA.

When I was a kid, the schools were closed on Election Day. They were closed here yesterday. Unfortunately, unlike when I was a kid, I didn’t have the day off, and it was frustrating.

I have three big projects due at the end of the week, and one of them is particularly stressful. It’s for a prestigious publisher, and I did not do my best work for them last time. I may have been sick that week. But that’s not their problem. I got called out for it, and they didn’t send me work for months. I thought I had been moved to the naughty freelancer pile. 

After a nine-month freeze-out I was offered a shot at redemption. I already had a pile of work, but I was determined to restore my reputation. Pride? Certainly. Hubris? Well... Whatever it was, my deadlines turned into a title of a popular movie: Everything Everywhere All at Once.

And then Election Day fell. Which was fine, but I had to go to the polls twice (once to take my wife, because it was unclear that she knew the Secret Backroads Shortcut, and by the way there are two polling places closer to our house than the one to which we have been assigned). Leading up to the second trip, Microsoft decided it was the perfect day to update the laptop.

It is like a pesty salesman. 

Let's do the upgrade now.

I'm busy. Later.

It'd be much better to get this done right away.

Leave me alone.

How about now?

FINE Let's schedule it for tonight.

I set up the schedule to restart at nine o'clock in the evening. Around four thirty, it was time to take the Mrs, to the polls, and Izzy the Baby Dog as well since his attachment has gotten fierce since we lost Tralfaz and we haven't started alone-training again because he has been getting antibiotics and eye drops and eye ointment for blepharitis and conjunctivitis these last two weeks and don't even ask. So we loaded up the truck and we drove past two polling places to the stupid one we have to go to. 

When we got back about 5:30, I found out that Microsoft had apparently decided that it was just going to go ahead without me, since I'd been away from the computer and had probably knocked off for the day. Why wait until nine? I swear, as I woke the screen it asked, should we start now or reschedule? As I reached for the mousepad to stop it, it plunged into update world. OK! Silence is acceptance! Let's go!

Never change, Microsoft.

Eventually I got back to work, but of course I couldn't get as much done as I wanted after all that. Plus, I was hardly in a proper frame of mind. You know what it's like -- you've already gone way past frazzled and are edging up to psychotic when that last thing happens to make you Hulk out. Like, you finally get the dishes in the dishwasher and turn it on, thinking you won't be late for work if the traffic isn't as bad as usual, and then:

I'm not saying it's a suitable time to go William "D-Fens" Foster, but you know you'd start with the dishwasher and somewhere along the line take out the laptop as well. Well, I know I would under those circumstances.

Ejection day.

Another voter pulls the wrong lever on a Richard J. Daley
Electromagic™ Voting Machine (US Reg Pat Off)

American cities: The vote of the living doesn't always count, but the vote of the dead, 100%.