Once upon a time in a galaxy far far away I was required to work eight hours a day, 40 hours a week, with insurance companies. Truthfully it wasn’t much fun and after talking to literally hundreds of insurance company employees, they agreed. I was forced to read hundreds of accident reports and then pass them on to the insurance carriers. Some information contained in those reports was incredible to say the least. The following list of quotations is taken from actual submitted insurance claims concerning automobile accidents. You can read them, take your time, and try to figure out exactly what they mean. Here we go . . .
“I told the police that I was not injured, but on removing my hat I found that I had a fractured skull.”
“Coming home I drove into the wrong house and collided with a tree I don’t have. The other car collided with mine without giving me warning of its intention.”
“I pulled away from the side of the road, glanced at my mother-in-law and headed over the embankment.”
“I thought my window was down, but I found it was up when I put my head through it.”
“The guy was all over the road. I had to swerve several times before I hit him.”
“I collided with a stationary truck coming the other way.”
“In an attempt to kill a fly, I drove into a telephone pole.”
“As I approached the intersection a sign appeared in a place where no stop sign had ever appeared before. I was unable to stop in time to avoid the accident.”
“The pedestrian had no idea which direction to run. So I ran over him.”
“I saw a slow moving, sad faced old gentleman as he bounced off the roof of my car.”
“The telephone pole was approaching. I was attempting to swerve out of the way when I struck the front end.”
“I was thrown from my car as it left the road. I was later found in a ditch by some stray cows.”
“An invisible car came out of nowhere, struck my car, and vanished.”
“The accident was caused by me waving to the man I hit last week.”
“I had been shopping for a plant all day and was on my way home. As I reached an intersection a hedge sprang up, obscuring my vision, and I did not see the other car.”
I give thanks everyday that I know longer have to deal with this nonsense. The only thing worse than dealing with insurance companies is dealing with their customers.
I’m a reader of just about any printed material. I enjoy fiction, nonfiction, and anything else I can get my hands on. By far my favorite genre is science fiction and I’ve been reading it religiously since the age of nine. I love it for a number of reasons but primarily because of its ability to foretell the future. So many things included in the oldest sci-fi stories have eventually become part of our reality i.e. lasers, satellites, cell phones, and space travel. I then asked myself the question, if sci-fi writers have the ability to see the future so clearly, why not others. The novel 1984 is considered sci-fi by some but to me it’s just social commentary taken to extremes. But . . . could it be prophetic as well?
I look at the direction of our country today. It’s slowly sliding toward socialism with people like LBJ, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Joe Biden insinuating their kind of changes into every facet of our lives. In Orwell’s future, the Party is everything and only our service to the Party has any value. Sounds vaguely familiar doesn’t it?
Orwell rewrote the language into something called Newspeak. Changing words to reflect new meanings such as terms like Head Start, Hope and Lifetime Learning Credits, Peace Corp., Americorp and of course Welfare. Newspeak allowed the Party to suddenly change the perception of something just by making the name more palatable. The “proles” weren’t smart enough to figure that out. Are we?
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING was the mantra of the “proles” in Orwell’s novel. The “proles” were the regular citizens excluded from the upper echelon of society and needed to be strictly controlled. Could the NSA be the new “Big Brother”? Could Homeland Security be the new “Thought Police”? You tell me.
Mentioned throughout Orwell’s novel are the following three terms:
WAR IS PEACE – Doesn’t this clearly describe our current approach to the rest of the world or not?
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY – Does corroding our civil rights and freedoms under the guise of security explain this?
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH – When government transparency becomes just some phony “politically correct” term, does that explain this?
Orwell’s” Ministry of Truth” comes alive when you read this description:
“There were the huge print shops with their sub-editors, their typography experts, and their elaborately equipped studios for the faking of photographs. There was the tele-programs section with its engineers, its producers, and its teams of actors specially chosen for their skill in imitating voices.” – Sounds a lot like the Main Stream Media and “Fake News” to me.
I could continue these comparisons all day long. Orwell had the Thought Police and the Ministry of Truth and we have the Criminal Justice System. The comparisons were striking to me but will easily be shrugged off by our current government as a gross exaggeration of an old and antiquated novel. Just like the lasers and communication satellites were written about in the 1940s, at the time they were also considered a gross exaggeration. I’ve made my decision on where I think were headed as a country and a society. I’m not saying it’s a certainty but it could become our reality very easily and very quickly.
I’ll admit one thing of Orwell’s that does not translate to our current generation is the “Ministry of Love”. He thought his “Big Brother” government should mandate copulation and childbirth as a service to the Party as a means of keeping the population levels growing. I’m sure he never anticipated a government assisted by the courts that would permit the wholesale slaughter of unborn children just to maintain the status quo and keep citizens voting a certain way.
I’m as big a critic of President Biden as anyone one but one of my biggest pet peeves with him is his inability to make a quick and logical decision without involving the Congress or twenty advisory committees. It’s as if he realizes his decisions may be faulty so he asks for backup to try and cover his butt if things don’t go as expected. In my mind that does not make a good leader, it actually weakens the presidency in the eyes of the world as recent comments from Great Britain confirm. So I’ve gone searching for the thoughts of other late and great Americans on this subject.
“Problems come when the individual tries to hand over the decision-making to a committee.” Rupert Murdoch
” If I had to sum up in one word what makes a good manager, I’d say decisiveness.” Lee Iacocca
“The percentage of mistakes in quick decisions is no greater than in long, drawn-out vacillations, and the effective of decisiveness itself “makes things go” and creates confidence.” Ann O’Hare McCormick
” A decision delayed until it is too late is not a decision; it’s an evasion.” Anonymous
I understand the need of big government to have panels and advisory committees. The President supposedly makes the final decision but a really smart president makes it in a reasonable length of time. The need for lengthy meetings, conferences, and telephone calls in the middle of the night to Democratic and Republican buddies isn’t getting the job done in my view. Nothing is more important than a timely decision. If the voters in this country took as long to make a decision as some of the politicians, it would take twelve years to elect a president. Now that I think about it maybe that’s the best way to go.
A QUESTIONABLE DECISION IS PREFERABLE TO A DELAYED ONE
I thought I would spend some time today dragging you back to the reality that was the 1960’s. I’ve written this story one other time many years ago but I think it never hurts to repeat something that makes me smile. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did at the time.
Let me take you back to the 1960s when life was good, drugs were plentiful, and love was free (as we all know it’s never free). I was a struggling Art major attending a small midwestern school with my fair share of financial difficulties as most college students have. I was forced to take jobs that I hated but sometimes you just have no choice in the matter. I was a busboy in the college cafeteria during my freshman year which was quite possibly the most demeaning job I’ve ever had. It was awash with benefits like the $1.50 an hour I was making and the incredible amount of crap I had to take from my fellow students. I decided a short time later that I’d never bus tables again, resigned my position, and walked away.
By walking away it made my financial situation a bit more difficult forcing me to scramble to find some kind of work to pay my bills. Where do you go in a case like that, the student billboard of course. As I was perusing through the tons of nonsense hanging on that billboard I found a small note with only three words on it and a telephone number, NUDE MODEL WANTED. I put the note in my pocket and returned to my dorm room to give it more thought. An hour or so later I finally called the number and surprise, surprise, it was one of my professors home telephone number. In those days $10 an hour was a lot of money but the consequences of modeling nude were numerous. He assured me I wouldn’t be required to model for my own classmates but I knew that being in such a small school the word would get out quickly enough. For about a week I weighed the pros and cons of sitting nude before numerous art classes and finally made the fatal telephone call and accepted the job.
You have to understand something, I was at that time in my life extremely shy and my self-esteem had yet to be developed to its present fantastic levels. My instructions were as follows; sit unmoving for one to two hours a session (10 min. break per hour), make no unnecessary facial expressions, no acknowledgment of friends, and TO BE TOTALLY FREAKING NAKED. I must’ve been out of my mind.
Not Me Either!
Day one started in front of the mirror in my dorm room checking my body for unnecessary hair in odd places and zits no matter where they were. There was only so much I can do because “what you see is what you get”, so I made my way to the Art building for my debut. I stood in the hallway, removed my robe and pranced (I could’ve used a better word here) naked into the room. Unfortunately as I looked around I knew damn near everyone. All of my so-called friends and classmates decided they would show their moral support by attending. The hooting and catcalls only lasted for a few minutes until the instructor quieted things down. He was grinning and enjoying himself like everyone else. As I told them all the next day and as I’m telling you now, “it was a VERY, VERY cold room”. I was able to ignore all the laughter, lewd comments, and the snickering but I managed to survive.
Over the next three months I modeled for probably 500 students and I soon became quite popular in the artist community. I had more dates than I can handle and my dance card was always filled on the weekends. Is there a moral to this story? I really can’t say. Getting naked in front of strangers was difficult but the money was good and kept my head above water for that school year. I got naked many times over the years since but only in special one-on-one situations with female friends where I immediately waived my fee.
Are you old? Let me rephrase that. Do you think you’re old? That’s the question everyone knows is coming but nobody wants to deal with. Unfortunately most people who are old know it but again refuse to deal with the reality. Some people just can’t get past the fact that there isn’t one damn thing they can do to combat it. Plastic surgery works for some but eventually you’ll end up looking like a really silly cartoon character. Many have paid for a new young face, fake hair, fake boobs, butt implants, and still insist on wearing old people clothing. Old folks never quite get the hang of dressing properly because they keep sliding “fashion backward” to a time when they were young. They mistakenly think it still looks cool.
Well I’m not complaining about any of those things just willing to pass along some others you should be looking for if you’re worried about getting old. I’m old, I know I’m old, and I went through this list myself just for laughs. I’m not laughing now. In my head I’m thirty years old but this list kicked my elderly ass. If you are experiencing 50% of the things on this list you ARE really old. Have fun . . .
Your kids are becoming you and you don’t like them very much.
Going out is okay but coming home is better.
You forget names but it’s okay since no one remembers you either.
Your spouse is counting on you to remember things you don’t remember.
The things you used to care to do, you no longer care to do, but you really do care that you don’t care to do them anymore.
You spend a good deal of your day looking for things you hid so you wouldn’t lose them.
You can’t use more four letter words i.e. what?, when?, and where?
You notice everything sold in stores is “sleeveless”.
What used to be freckles are now age spots.
You constantly call your children and grandchildren for help with your computer.
You have three sizes of clothing in your closet (fat, fatter, and fattest) two of which you will never wear again.
You find yourself spending a great deal of time trying to have conversations with Alexa.
All of your favorite songs are now only heard in TV commercials.
You find yourself trying to remember what stories you told one person.
You miss the days when everything worked with just an “ON” and “OFF” switch.
Well how have you fared? Now that you’ve received a second opinion verifying what you already knew, welcome to old age. I’ve been here for a while waiting for all of you to arrive. Just between us, in a few days you won’t remember any of this anyway. I have to go now, it’s 3:30 PM and time for dinner at the IHOP. There’s a 10% discount for old farts so don’t forget your mask and your AARP membership card.
I’ve been a fan of the Darwin Awards for many years. I’m not sure why I enjoy reading about stupid people dying in stupid ways, but I do. Here’s a headline I happened upon as I was surfing this morning. If anyone deserved a Dumb💩💩Award it’s this genius.
Dad of three crushed to death under BMW as he tried to steal a catalytic converter.
I honestly try to avoid getting into political discussions and arguments with people because any fool knows it’s a waste of time. As I’ve always explained, I don’t have a lot of good things to say about any politician whether they be Democrats or Republicans. I think the system has the ability to corrupt even the most honest elected official once they been in office for a period of time. As a lover of history I constantly fall back on the words and opinions of past politicians who practiced their politics in a different way than these modern magicians.
Today I think it’s time that we hear from some of those experts on exactly what a politician is or should be. These quotes, no matter how old, still retain a great deal of truth about the human condition both good and evil and how they operate within their political reality.
“Politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.” Charles De Gaulle 1961
Anonymous: Do you pray for the Senators, Dr. Hale? Hale:” No, I look at the Senators and pray for the country.” Edward Everett Hale 1964, Senate Chaplain
“If ever this free people – if this Government itself is ever utterly demoralized, it will come from this human wriggle and struggle for office – a way to live without work; from which nature I am not free myself.” Abraham Lincoln 1865
“Politicians who vote huge expenditures to alleviate problems get reelected; those who propose structural changes to prevent problems get early-retirement.” John McClaughry 1978
“A politician should have three hats: one for throwing in the ring, one for talking through, and one for pulling rabbits out of if elected.” Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
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