by Peter Rodman
While injuries do give a person a certain insight to the importance of various parts of his body, too much of that sort of insight gets to be a drag. Statistics are not as exciting as injuries, but sometimes I think I prefer getting my insights from reading, rather than deriving them from my instrument (as actors say.)
I think we need a survey. I'd like to find out if, after all but killing themselves with dull knives, do the same people sharpen their cutlery and start having accidents that put them in the vital statistics column of the newspaper?
Better Cars and Gardens
I don't get to enjoy my back yard garden much these days, and since the kids have all moved out on their own and the Oldsmobile has that family-sized back seat, I figure, well--why not?
I admit it seems strange at first, but many people spend more time in their cars than at home. They have a car phone and fax, and a much better stereo system in traffic than at home or in the office. So a garden in the car makes sense even if it seems a little odd.
It's catching on, though. The Father's Day ad supplement from Macy's suggested very small automotive string trimmers ("Cuts a four inch swath") and leaf blowers that plugged into the car cigar lighter socket as very real--or as real as Macy's gets--gift possibilities for the dad who has everything except a tiny trimmer or blower.
Obviously if Macy's sells stuff like that, this isn't a freak event. So I'm not talking about some nutcase who spreads glue over the outside of his car, scatters grass seed on it, and waters it with a mild fertilizer until the lawn grows so tall he can't drive it. (It's one thing to sod a car, another to mow it.)
Nor am I talking about the guy who "thew cuppla yards topsol backa th' pickup 'n mixed in some m'nuur, put in cuppla rows a corn," and called it a truck garden. And I'm certainly not talking about the guy who lined the back seat of his Chevy with plastic, filled it with water, and carpooled with his friends one summer afternoon.
Nope. This is a real fad--rapidly rising and soon to have its own magazine.
I don't rush impulsively into something without being informed (but please stay out of my way when I become informed), so I naturally did some research on cargardening. Because there is no magazine or database yet, I did my research by finding people who knew and asking them questions.
I drove along the freeway until I saw someone with plants in his back seat, blew my horn to get his attention, pointed to the side of the road, then forced him off to the shoulder. Here's what I found out:
Cargardeners are divided into two types: crop or ornamental, with the food growers decidedly nuttier than the people just in it for automotive aesthetics. One cropper had an orchard of seven dwarf fruit trees in the rear of his Olds Vista Cruiser station wagon: an apricot, two almonds (for cross-pollination), a four-on-one peach, a nectarine, and two espaliered cherries. He was loony, the first sign of Peach Leaf Curl will total his car.
Croppers usually stick to small root vegetables that don't block rear or peripheral vision--carrots, turnips, radishes and such. Low-growing head crops such as lettuce and cabbage are okay unless they bolt. But you do find a few weirdos who plant pumpkins in the VW bug and gradually find themselves overwhelmed by the foliage and bashed by the fruits of their labors during a sudden stop.
The majority of cargardeners are ornamentalists. They range from the guy with a couple of azaleas by the windows, a marigold border and the rest done in baby tears to the guy who hires a landscape architect to do up his Mercedes, to the guy with the Japanese garden complete with trickling waterfall, stone lantern, and bonsai pomegranate. It's safe to say that the simpler arrangements are most popular--a few sacks of potting soil and some pony packs of annuals go a long way towards brightening a dreary expanse of cracked vinyl.
Every gardener I talked to agreed that there were a few things to be careful of.
Sundials or cement deer and gnomes must be bolted to the frame of the car. More than one simple fenderbender has been turned into an automotive calamity by a ballistic gnome through the windshield.
Although it's possible to wire a bugzapper to the ignition coil of the car, it isn't a very good idea, particularly if you also hang a hummingbird feeder. The concept of a mobile hummingbirdzapper is too horrible to contemplate.
Windows should be kept rolled up when the car is left unattended, especially in urban areas. This not only cuts down on windblown seed (and therefore weeding), but also keeps out cats. Cargardeners have the same problems with cats as regular gardeners.
Not only cats, but elves, nymphs, and dryads will invade a healthy cargarden, and California state law does not distinguish between real and mythical beings. Every passenger in a car must be seatbelted. No exceptions. It is not pleasant explaining to a Highway Patrolman that the little people of the forest prefer dancing, cavorting, and making merry to proper highway safety. Best that one should avoid the situation all together.
Finally, blue jays may visit your car if you leave the window open. If just one jay hides just one acorn from a native oak in your cargarden, you could be in deep and lasting trouble. You may end up needing an Environmental Impact Report to sell your car.
It's best to stay away from native plants altogether. California poppies and bunchgrasses are quite decorative, but if you're not careful you might accidentally build a vernal pool, and if you do that, you probably won't even be allowed to drive your garden.
Kick Me Hard
I wasn't very old, perhaps 12 or 13, when I first saw a sign on the back of a truck asking me to tattle on the driver. "Report any discourtesies to 1-(800) ***-****." Later signs were more upbeat: "How am I driving?" they'd ask, but I knew from the first sign that if I called the number, I wouldn't get to talk to the truck driver.
Even as a kid it struck me as degrading to stick a sign asking strangers to pick apart a man's behavior on his back while he was working.
It was unfair, like grading a kid "unsatisfactory" in citizenship on a third grade report card without telling the kid what citizenship was or how to do it well.
I had to wonder what was wrong with that driver. What could he have done to have made the company he worked for so angry and distrustful?
He didn't have to do anything. Some companies normally treat their employees as suspects. Every effort is made to control their behavior the whole time they are at work. Workers are watched either directly, electronically, or by enlisting the aid of the faceless tattletale at large.
A supermarket has a sign behind each checker that says you get some groceries free if the checker fails to greet you with a cheerful hello, count your change out loud to you, offer to get you help carrying your purchase out, and say thank you. It's a bribe to get you to inform on bad checkers. But you don't get anything free if the manager almost knocks you down in an aisle on his way to bawl out a clerk in front of the customers.
Even as a kid I knew those employee "kick me" signs weren't on everyone's back, just the low-level workers'. Calling the number on the back of the truck to complain that the company chief executive officer's limousine cut you off in traffic probably wouldn't get you any satisfaction at all.
"Answer the phone by the third ring."
"You can naturally go to the bathroom as often as you need to, but maybe you should see a doctor about your problem."
"Smile."
"I'm sorry, but we have a procedure for employee complaints."
"Cheer up, look like you like working here."
"All of our new employees take the honesty test." Or the drug test. Or whatever.
"The timer starts when you take the order, you have 90 seconds to fill the order and kill the timer."
"Can't you smile?"
It's easier to have a company policy of friendliness and apply it ruthlessly than it is to treat employees so well that they want the public to go away happy with the company. That's because it's possible to give classes and seminars on dominating and manipulating people, but it isn't possible to give a class on being
a genuinely good employer.
This need to control employees and protect the company from the workers' laziness, thieving, gloom, recklessness, and all around lack of character poisons a company. Once a company has decided that employees need minute direction just to behave as normal human beings, the employees start living down to the company's expectations.
They don't have to become resentful and deceptive, but many do. It's a common reaction to being attacked by a greater power. You conform on the surface, but rebel, evade, and sabotage whenever possible. If you're caught, it's no big deal, you're just living up to the company's expectations.
As more and more employees pick up that attitude and the company becomes more and more repressive, it gets even harder for honest and good-natured people to stick around. They pack up and find a pleasant place to work. Soon only the wolves and the bears are left to tear at each other.
The final result of the company's distrust of its employees is a cynical distrust of everyone, including its customers. The company relies upon the faceless snitch to inform on their employees, and even offers rewards.
It's odd to see a company advertise its lack of faith in humanity. What the truck signs really say is, "We don't trust the people we hire, and we think you're enough of a gossip and backstabber that you'd enjoy giving us some dirt on this guy if you can do it without him knowing. Call us."
Maybe that's why I felt so disappointed in those signs when I saw them as a kid, because I do like talking behind people's backs. But I don't like my guilt when I do it, and I certainly don't like a company publicly asking me to cave in to a fault I'm ashamed of.
I guess that if I had to make some sort of judgment about a company that distrusts its employees and thinks so poorly of its customers, I'd have to say that I find the company's citizenship unsatisfactory.
Chemical Letter Bombs
Our mail at home drops through a slot in the garage door into a box. I can always tell when the Macy's bill comes; I smell the bill when I open the garage door.
Macy's likes to send me perfume samples with my bill. They also like to send me luggage offers and polymer mud mask offers to help me with my travel and pore grime problems, but mainly they send me perfume samples.
After an afternoon in the garage, every letter that came with the Macy's bill reeks of this month's sale fragrance. I have to be very careful opening the Macy's envelope. If I accidentally cut or crush any of the microencapsulated fragrance buds in the perfume offer, the smell will be out, all over me, across the table, over the carpet, and into the bedroom. It's that fast.
If I manage to slide this fragrance bomb out of the envelope undamaged, I quickly (but carefully) walk that puppy out the back door to the garbage can. I won't have it in the house.
It's probably an awful thing to do, but I'll often open the folder to trigger the sample just before I drop it in the can, then slam on the lid. I expect if everyone did that, come garbage pick-up day we could have our whole sanitary collection workforce knocked down by disability sinus injuries.
After years of dropping perfume samples in the garbage can, I've found perfume can be divided into two types. Scents that attract ants in the garbage can, and scents that repel or kill in the garbage can. I only classify, I make no judgment which is better.
I don't care much for perfume samples in my Macy's bill. I don't go anywhere, so don't need luggage, and though I certainly could use a polymer mud mask, I feel I can honestly say I've never bought a damn thing Macy's sent to me along with my credit card bill.
My Visa bill comes with wonderful pictures of doodads I could buy just by checking a space and returning the form, and I have to tear garbage off the envelope just to not buy something when I mail in my payment. I never bought any of that stuff either.
For the 417th time Sacramento Municipal Utilities District has sent me information about the Peak Corps, which will give me a discount on my SMUD rates if I allow them to install a cycler on my central air conditioning unit, which I don't own, but I don't get the discount for not having air conditioning because the point is not to save electricity, the point is to give SMUD control.
Does anyone not know about what a wonderful deal the Peak Corps is? Do I need a 418th flier with my bill? What about no-interest loans to beef up my insulation, which I also can't do--seems to me I've heard about that before too.
I just forward my Peak Corps fliers and my insulation fliers to Regional Transit (if I get a shadescreen flier, I send it along too). Those electric streetcars have no insulation at all and their air conditioners run full blast at the hottest part of the day. There's not much point in saving gasoline if you're going to waste electricity, so let's tape a few batts of fiberglass insulation to our trollies and cycle their air to make them really energy efficient.
I guess I don't know why my mail has to be the carny for every geegaw and pipe dream my creditors feel the need to shill. It's bad enough I owe them money, why should I have to sort through 6 pages of slick nonsense to find a bill so badly designed that I can't be sure exactly what I'm paying for, even if I can find how much?
So I'm ready to cut a deal.
In this country we have a great tradition. We pay to not have things. Non-fat milk is more expensive than whole chubby milk. If you would prefer your television without the added enjoyment of commercials, you have to pay for it-- either by subscribing to cable or by watching PBS and paying in guilt and marathon pledge drives. For a monthly fee, the telephone company will gladly not hand out your phone number to every person with a phone. And if you'd like to go somewhere where there isn't as much civilization, you can pay to go inside a park.
I already pay service charges for which I don't recall ever getting any service on many of my bills, why not give me the option of paying something--say a quarter--to not get something I don't want? Yeah, an Execrable Enclosure Omission Charge. For a quarter a month, all I'd get would be my bill and an envelope with their return address on it. Maybe for another thirty cents, they'd send me an envelope with "no postage necessary if mailed in the United States" on it.
There's an idea: service charges for services I pick. And if they go for that idea, maybe they'll start putting switches within the customers' reach at the supermarket that will let me turn off the mechanical voice that recites my prices as they're added and thanks me for shopping with all the warmth and sincerity it can muster in its cold, dead, nonexistent, cryogenic heart.
No One Asked Me
I'm sorry, but I'm upset.
I come home, check the mail, find my Sample Ballot and Voter Information Pamphlet, and what do I read: We've got Rudin, Chinn, Shore, Serna, and Kastanis arguing in favor of Measure O, and "NO ARGUMENT AGAINST MEASURE O WAS FILED"
No one asked me. I'll argue against it, I'll argue against anything.
In fact, Gregg Lukenbill and I are the only ones who seem to like the City Charter the way it is, and the other newspapers are so preoccupied with this nonsense about becoming a big-league city by getting a big League football team that they attribute everything poor Gregg says to that issue. No matter what Gregg says--even when he's discussing Measure O--they think he's talking about the Natomas Raiders.
Basically, Measure O will change the City Charter so that City elections will be held in even numbered years, along with county, state and federal elections. This will "save" $200,000 per election.
Gregg is too coy to say it, but I will. Big deal. Chickenfeed. By saving $200,000 in an election every two years, in 500 years we'll be able to come up with a football franchise fee. Why bother?
Not only do the two of us find the savings silly, we believe this off-year election money is well spent. As Gregg put it, "This will provide jobs for the unemployed-- perhaps some of the homeless people." Obviously he couldn't be talking about a football team, the statement would be ridiculous in that context. What Gregg means is that the County pays poll workers $55 to $70 per election for a day's work. If you abolish the odd-year mu
nicipal elections, you take that $200,000 out of the pockets of the unemployed and homeless.
And we know it will affect the unemployed and the homeless because these are municipal elections--only for the area in the city limits. That's where the homeless are. Sixty bucks may not mean much to you, but at ten bucks a visit, two visits a week, that's three weeks worth of going to the Plasma Center.
The supporters of Measure O point out that more people turn out for the big elections than for odd-year municipal elections, and that putting the city elections on the same ballot as the big-issues will give better representation. Tommyrot and piffle!
Gregg says that by keeping our odd-year elections "We have an opportunity to climb out of the long shadows of the coastal cities of California, and closer to home, of the Bay Area." Have you ever tried to find local election results on television or in the daily newspaper after one of the even-year balloting bloodbaths? You get L.A., you get Frisco, you get Texas and New York state, but what is the will of Curtis Park? You can't find it.
And who turns out for the big elections? Firearms enthusiasts trying to preserve their right to bear bazookas, homeowners out to rescue their equity, drivers trying to do to their insurance company what their insurance company has been doing to them, people trying to send AIDS sufferers to desert islands, Democrats trying to defeat fascism and Republicans trying to defeat communism. Do you really want any of these weirdos voting for something as important to your daily life as your city council and mayor?
They will if city issues are on the ballot. They'll take that little steel awl and poke something. They won't know what they're doing in their rabid rage (bits of foam speckling their chins), but they'll vote and keep on voting until they run out of ballot.