Crime.org - God Hates Scammers - c/o MikeMann.com

Summer in the mid-Atlantic means trips to the Delaware shore, with all the saltwater taffy and skee-ball the Holy Prepuce can eat. And no afternoon at Rehoboth Beach would be complete without the quaint commercialism of the billboard boats and airplane banners hawking the latest Grotto Pizza two-for-one or $1.75 Nattys Ladies’ Nite in Ocean City.

Recent beach-goers may have been scratching their heads, however, at the unusual message currently saturating the floating and airborne media:

Crime.org
God Hates Scammers
c/o MikeMann.com

Who is the mysterious, eponymous Mike Mann, to whose online care the Almighty has entrusted this message of condemnation? And who are the “scammers” meriting the awesome domain name “Crime.org,” not to mention all this expensive promotion? Two questions; two mad, mad rabbit holes.

Mike Mann is evidently someone whose marriage did not go well, and whose divorce went worse. Other problematic relationships in Mr. Mann’s life appear to involve his father, stepmother, sister, brother-in-law, ex-girlfriends, Rabbi, divorce lawyers, psychiatrists, childhood acquaintances, and homeowners’ association members.

You might assume that a high-value domain name like Crime.org would belong to a nationwide crime prevention or victims’ rights organization. But there you would be wrong. As it turns out, Crime.org is the private mouthpiece of Mr. Mann, and it is a tour de force of crazy.

“If you love America and her freedoms you came to the right place,” visitors learn upon arrival. In the 5800+ words that follow, visitors also learn Mr. Mann’s opinions on the various people and organizations that have “scammed” him over the years, as well as his thoughts on child rearing, “phony mystics,” the First Amendment, and most of all the Montgomery County, Maryland, family court system, which according to Mr. Mann constitutes “a horror movie of a vicious, insanely greedy, malpracticing, white, suburban, ignorant group of completely self-absorbed elitist self-entitled phony professionals ceaselessly attacking someone else’s wallet and family to proudly proclaim their lying group narrative and stolen cash.”

5800 words are only the beginning, because at various points throughout his screed Mr. Mann includes hyperlinks to Google Docs files featuring additional, self-contained sub-screeds.

Mr. Mann’s ex-wife, we are told, is a “serial homewrecker” as well as

vindictive, hormonal, jealous, greedy, psychopathic, idiotic, violent, [a] bona-fide rage-o-holic: (And just maybe factually in the closet, menopausal, drunk, [a] compulsive pathological liar, [a] huge blabbermouth, unemployable, ineducable, unconscionable, unintelligible, filthy, overindulged, overfed, overcompensated, self-entitled, coddled, dramatic, pretentious, undisciplined, completely unaccountable, wasteful,—and [someone who] sleeps with MARRIED men with unsuspecting wives……in Tennessee.)

That the Manns’ divorce was less than amicable can be verified externally. A bit of internet sleuthing leads one to the Maryland Judiciary’s public docket for the Manns’ case, containing some 260 entries within which the word “contempt” appears 30 times, the word “incarceration” appears 5 times, and the words “Motion To Enjoin and Restrain Plaintiff from Engaging in Threatening, Harassing and Disrespectful Behavior Towards [his daughter’s] Court Appointed Therapist” appear twice.

Oddly, a more cogent recitation of Mr. Mann’s side of the divorce story, authored by one “Tiffany Reynolds,” appears on the website of the Adyayan Trust, an Indian NGO with no obvious connection to Mike Mann. Crime.org appears not to be Mr. Mann’s first attempt to air his divorce-related grievances online. Still indexed on Google, although sadly defunct, are www.save[the Manns’ teenage daughter, whose name I will not repeat here].com, and www.[Mrs. Mann’s full name, which I also will not repeat here]IsEvil.com.

Other revelations on Crime.org: a Dewey Beach masseuse and the proprietor of a Maryland dance studio (presumably both Mr. Mann’s ex-girlfriends) are, in fact, whores; the Rabbi and Cantor at a prominent Washington, D.C. synagogue are likely pedophiles; Mormons get a bad name but are actually very little trouble and high performers; and Mr. Mann’s former divorce attorneys are “like the Washington Generals basketball team lining up to take it from behind from the Harlem Globetrotters.”

Despite his lifelong abuse at the hands of family members, clergy, government, and members of the learned professions, spot number one on Mr. Mann’s shit list is reserved for a certain Mr. B, a board member of the North Indian Beach Community Association. (As above, because Crime.org will no doubt appear as Exhibit One in a number of soon-to-be-filed defamation suits, I shall not repeat full names here.)

Mr. Mann’s 10,616-word Google Docs diatribe against Mr. B. and the “puppet government” NIBCA is difficult to follow, but the upshot seems to be that various people want to stop various other people from building new houses, driving vehicles on the beach, and opening or closing roads. Mr. B’s position in these matters is contrary to the position of Mike Mann, and for this transgression he is outed on Crime.org as “[p]ervert [Mr. B] . . . sexual predator [Mr. B.] who dominated many workspaces and illegally unconsentually sexually assaulted, and permanently traumatized many young professionals in unsuspecting Rehoboth Beach businesses on many occasions over a long period.”

What I find most delightful about Crime.org is the disconnect between the effects Mike Mann presumably imagines it will have on readers and the actual reaction it is likely to elicit from any sane, WiFi-equipped beach-goer curious enough to bite. You can just imagine Mr. Mann watching from the boardwalk as the summer’s first billboard floated by, gleefully mouthing “yes! Yes! YES! Now it can be told! Now revenge is mine!”

What’s so delicious is his evident lack of insight that, far from settling scores and shaming the “scammers,” Crime.org succeeds only in making Mike Mann look like a lunatic. A lunatic with a media budget, mind you, and assets to settle an upcoming barrage of lawsuits, but a lunatic all the same.

I shall end this post the way Mike Mann ends everything he writes on the Internet: I will never stop cussing, screaming and documenting the truth, it’s the first amendment, if you don’t like it go live in China or Saudi Arabia.

Gay Teen Monster Truck Driving Curfews

The Holy Prepuce never expected to use "irony" and "monster trucks" in the same sentence, but how's this? Following January 19th's fatal accident at the Tacoma, Washington Monster Jam, rival monster truck promoter George Eisenhart dismissed safety concerns about his upcoming Motor Sports Monster Truck & Thrill Show, telling Madison, Wisconsin's WKOW "This is our 16th year, and I wish I had a big piece of wood to knock on right now, but we have not had an incident besides a gal slipping in the aisle at another location." Days later, Eisenhart was crushed to death by a monster truck.

While I'm busy making light of vehicular tragedies, I have to say that although Allstate's Parent-Teen Driving Contract may be an excellent idea, I wonder how an organization whose business depends on the sensible use of statistics could attempt to pass off the following:


Assuming that the average teen is awake no more than 18 hours per day, warning that half of all fatal accidents happen in a 9-hour period is equivalent to grousing that 40% of workplace absenteeism occurs on Mondays and Fridays. And when we factor in that most teens spend a good part of their other 9 waking hours in school, we are led to the inescapable conclusion that 3PM to Midnight is a remarkably safe time to drive. The obvious solution is immediate repeal of teen driving curfews nationwide, so that teens can take care of essential business at night and stay off the road during the 8AM bloodbath.

If an insurance company can't manage the non-risible use of statistics, there is little hope for the rest of us. I am reminded of my college's gay & lesbian student association, which--I swear to God--ran simultaneous poster campaigns proclaiming "One in Ten People Is Gay" and "Two-Thirds of Child Molesters Are Straight."

With Bonus CD-ROM!

The Holy Prepuce has been remiss of late in updating this blog, but hopes to make it up to you with this last-minute holiday gift suggestion, discovered while visiting the Saint Louis Science Center:


That's right, it's the Columbia Accident Investigation Report with Bonus CD-ROM!

Smartass Gets a Toaster

Mrs. P and I recently became proud owners of a T-Fal Avante Deluxe two-slice apparatus, and as a public service I thought I would reproduce, with annotations, portions of the instruction manual:

After a week of staring expectantly at that cardboard box, hoping for breakfast, I'm glad I finally consulted the instructions.

What?! And I bet you're going to tell me this "bread" is "sold separately."

But... but... you just told me I had to...?!

Not strictly an "instruction" (unless you are the toaster), but reassuring nonetheless.

This is generally how it works with toasters on Planet Earth, yes.

But how am I going to clean this fellow if I can't put him under the faucet? Wait, I know: the dishwasher!

Damn. Are you sure?


Curses!

This requirement excludes two of the three persons in my household.

toast \'tōst\ v.t.: to render (as bread) crisp, hot, and brown via a process of heating and drying.

Steroids / We ID Under 27

A.

I say screw it, let baseball players take all the steroids they want. Is juicing any more unnatural than forgoing all productive activity to spend four hours a day in a weight room and another eight practicing a game? Isn't that "cheating" compared to the 99% of human history in which athletes were amateurs who spent their days farming, smithing, or soldiering?

And if it's about setting examples for kids, do you really want your child's role model to be some jock who gave up any hope of an education for the one in ten thousand chance of making it to the big leagues? If you want to scare a kid straight, don’t show him some steroids-make-your-dick-fall-off public service announcement. Show him the 40-year-old shortstop on the AA team bus, screaming down his cell phone that this month's paycheck won't cover his child support either.

B.

Yesterday at the Seven-Eleven, while fumbling for my American Express (yes, I had the $1.01 in cash, but there are few things more satisfying than buying a Slurpee on credit and thinking "this is exactly why we have a subprime mortgage crisis,") I saw this familiar sign:


Now here's my question: if the Seven-Eleven clerk is so gifted that he can distinguish on sight a 26-year-old from a 27-year-old, can't he tell a 20-year-old from a 21-year-old? And if he can, why does he need to ask for ID? And why is he working at the Seven-Eleven, when he could make a killing down on the boardwalk hustling "Stump the Wizard"?

Outlet Malls and the Universal Studios Florida Principle

This post comes to you from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, home of surf, sand, salt-water taffy, and three massive incarnations of the Tanger Factory Outlet Mall.

So here's my thing about outlet malls. Once upon a time, when clothes were actually manufactured in the United States, clothing companies would sometimes operate "factory outlets" that sold overstock or imperfect items. (The distinction between "irregulars" and "seconds" eludes me now, but any bargain hunter of a certain age can fill you in.) These stores were either adjacent to a factory or else in low-rent rural areas, and the savings in transportation or rent made the sale of cut-rate merchandise workable.

Outlets didn't for the most part advertise their existence beyond their immediate geographical reach. A few billboards along the highway drew in enough shoppers to clear merchandise that, after all, existed only as a byproduct of quality control and overly optimistic production. Discovering a new outlet while on vacation carried with it a certain smug satisfaction.

But over time, demand for the outlet shopping experience--and, presumably, for the attendant smugness--mushroomed beyond the limited supplies of imperfect goods and factory-adjacent retail spaces. Indeed, these supplies dwindled as offshoring shuttered domestic factories and rendered the cost of bringing defective merchandise to market unjustifiable.

Fortunately for the outlet industry, we Americans are highly amenable to what I term the Universal Studios Florida Principle. The Principle is an entrepreneurial maxim holding that commercial exploitation need never be subverted by reality. The origin of the name should be familiar enough: by 1990, the "back lot" tour of Universal Studios was so popular that Universal built a second movie studio in Florida just so that people could tour it. And it was a huge success! Universal's gamble--that the marketability of a studio tour would in no way depend on the authenticity of the studio toured--paid off in spades.

Following this Principle, enterprising manufacturers and real estate developers created special "outlet" clothing lines for the major brands, to be sold at purpose-built "outlet malls" across the country. Tanger is the largest chain, with 32 locations in vacation spots coast to coast. Another successful chain is The Mills Corporation, with 15 properties each called "[Name of City] Mills." The names evoke quaint New England factories, steeped in local history, lovingly rehabilitated for modern bargain hunting convenience. (The malls are, of course, nothing of the sort.)

Shoppers throng to such establishments, unaware that as with every other modern apparel purchase, they are being spoon-fed an illusion of value in which $40 appears a rational price for $1 worth of fabric, 25¢ worth of labor, and $1.50 worth of shipping from Bangladesh.

I am one of these shoppers.

SafeFit Baby in Sight Laser Beam Eye Discipline

As our newfound domestic bliss does not afford much free time for composition, I shall provide only the following quick update for the week:

From our gift registry, we received a clever item known as the SafeFit Baby In Sight Back Seat Mirror. The idea is to install it on your back seat, align it with your rear-view mirror, and thereby keep an eye on your rear-facing baby. (Exactly what you are supposed to be worried that your unsupervised infant would get up to while straitjacketed into a five-point restraint is not specified, but no one ever went broke overestimating the paranoia of new parents.)

It all sounded fine and good until I looked at the diagram for installing the thing, and discovered that we had inadvertently registered for a corporeal punishment aid for evil Supermen:

Aaaaaa!

Itsy-Bitsy Spider-Man

Spider-Man, Spider-Man, why am I a Spider-Fan? Because Spider-Man is about a lonely, unpopular science and photography enthusiast kid who becomes a super-hero. Because Peter Parker is a middle-class New Yorker, not some space alien or millionaire dilettante in an imaginary metropolis. Because Spider-Man doesn't help the simple folk out of noblesse oblige; he sticks up for the little guy because he's one of us. Because he keeps at it, even when the world misunderstands his heroism. And because there's something authentic in his brooding masculinity; not the narcissistic machismo of the alpha male, but a quiet manliness born of adversity and self-examination.

Now, behold, if you dare, the Itsy-Bitsy Spider-Man:

The picture does not do this travesty justice--you must visit the website, where you can watch and hear the wretched thing in action, and learn that the Itsy-Bitsy Spider-Man

talks, dances, even sings! This friendly plush, electronic Spider-Man figure is ready to boogie! Press his left foot and he sings and dances to the "Itsy-Bitsy Spider" song! Press his right foot and he moves and grooves while singing the Spider-Man & Friends theme song! He even says fun phrases like, "Would you like to have some fun?" and "C'mon, let's do it again!"

The great web-slinger reduced to a poor relation of Tickle Me Elmo? The hero who battles evil in atonement for the death of gentle Uncle Ben; who stood up to the Green Goblin and Dr. Octopus in the face of personal tragedy--now "moves and grooves" to "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider?" Is nothing sacred?!

Indeed, this ignominy is precisely the sort of thing a demented Marvel Comics villian would visit on Spider-Man:

The Toymaker: Well, Spider-Man, I've been expecting you.

Spidey: Toymaker!

The Toymaker: Yes, welcome to my workshop. Oh, and never mind the force field...

Spidey: Can't...move...

The Toymaker: Ha ha ha ha! You thought you'd defeated me back at FAO Schwartz, but now it's time to PLAY!

Spidey: You'll never get away with this, Toymaker!

The Toymaker: Oh, we'll see about that. I have great plans for you, Spider-Man, or should I say, The Itsy-Bitsy Spider-Man! (Engages shrink-ray.)

Spidey: Getting...smaller...

The Toymaker: Wa ha ha ha! (Engages emasculation-ray, audio-animatronic-ray, move-and-groove-ray.)

Spidey: Must...resist...

The Toymaker: Come on in, children!

Children: Yay! Yay!

Spidey: Must...no...arrrgghhh...the itsy-bitsy spider went up the water spout! Down came the rain and washed the spider out!

Children: Yay! We love you, Toymaker!

Spidey: Noooooooout came the sun and dried up all the rain...

The only thing I will say for the Itsy-Bitsy Spider-Man is that it comes with one feature parents will appreciate; something sadly lacking from many among the current generation of my-imagination-does-not-function-without-batteries toys: "A convenient volume-control switch lets you decide just how loud Spidey sings!" Thank Heaven for itsy-bitsy favors.

On Target

All right, listen up: don't come around here all smug-like, flossing some trendy new decor you picked up cheap at the Target and fronting like you're their number-one customer. Girl, I've been shopping at Target since before it was hip. That's right--some of you kids today may not remember this, but Targét was once just a step up from K Mart, and a short step, at that.

Target was the kind of place that the snobbiest girl in my 8th grade class used to make fun of, until the day I caught her family shopping there and she gave me this plaintive look that said, "if you'll keep this terrible, terrible secret, one that could result in forfeiture of all I have worked for socially since the third grade, I will let you sit at the popular table for two whole lunches."

Anyway, I happened into the local Target the other day, and discovered the first of two signs that the Smirky Retail Gods must have read my recent post concerning the handsome "Victoria Station 1747" wall clock. The first sign falls in the "Dumbass Anglophile" department. It seems that Target has begun carrying health and beauty items branded from Boots, the U.K. drug store chain. A display adorned with the familiar blue and white Boots logo invited me to enter a new world of beauty with these sophisticated British cosmetic products.

Now, Boots has a perfectly reasonable line of store-brand products, but what we’re talking about here is the equivalent of a British retailer stocking CVS brand merchandise and touting it as the pinnacle of American cosmetology. Buy Boots brand items at Boots? Great, you're paying decent money for some decent products. Buy them at Target for fancy import prices? You are a pretentious idiot.

The second sign falls into the "egregious retail anachronism" category. I don't make any claim to having discovered this myself; rather, H.P. reader Superfecta directed me to the following target.com listing, which appeared yesterday on Wonkette:

When I followed Wonkette's link to target.com this morning, the ad was curiously missing, and by this afternoon it had been corrected to, ahem, Benjamin Franklin--a personage somewhat more likely to be sporting 18th-century get-up (and to be standing upright unassisted) than FDR. Sadly, Google's cache of the original ad has disappeared into cyberspace, but, at least as of this writing, you can still see a smaller version here, if you scroll down a bit.

All I can say is that I hope the error reflects overseas outsourcing of Target's proofreading, rather than the fact that America's higher education system has gone down the celebrated Franklin flexible-tube catheter.

Having a Baby Changes Everything

Johnson & Johnson, venerable purveyors of everything from dental floss to prosthetic shoulder blades, recently let loose a barrage of print and TV ads featuring the tag line "having a baby changes everything." Each TV spot's voice-over is of the format

"{A(x)}, so who'd have ever thought that {B(x)}. Having a baby changes everything."

where A={statement of frivolous, vain, or egocentric pre-baby attitude toward subject x}, and B={statement of laudable, nurturing, and mature post-baby attitude toward subject x}. The print ads' texts run somewhat longer, but present extended riffs on essentially the same themes.

What I find fascinating about this campaign is that the ads make no specific claims about particular Johnson & Johnson products. Nor do they suggest that the use of Johnson & Johnson products will enhance the everything-changingness of your baby-having. Bottles of Johnson's Baby Wash show up in a few of the print ads and one of the TV spots, but generally appear in the background or out of focus. The company logo is understated in both print and broadcast versions, and the company name is not spoken aloud on TV.

These choices puzzled me at first, because they didn't suggest any clear reason why one should prefer Johnson's nourishing milk wash over, say, Gerber's, or why babies absolutely cannot live without lavender chamomile soap. After all, such messages of brand superiority and want-equals-need feature prominently in most succesful advertising.

But then it struck me: the ads are not promoting Johnson baby care products; they are promoting babies. Johnson & Johnson enjoys such a lion's share of the industry that advertising to lure marginal customers away from competitors is less profitable than telling consumers to get busy and make more babies. Probably 90% or more of births inspired by the "changes everything" campaign will result in babies who are washed, shampooed, balmed, swabbed, and de-diaper-rashed with Johnson products.

For all the warm fuzziness of this campaign, I have to question its social and ethical implications. At an abstract level, the profit-motivated encouragement of human reproduction instills in me a Kantian unease. Is not the (even indirect) creation of human beings as a means to economic ends an affront to human dignity?

Moreover, having a baby certainly "changes everything," but I dare say the change isn’t always for the better. If you don’t believe me, try spending an afternoon at the family law clinic where I volunteer. In its unqualified promotion of childbearing, I fear the campaign does not discriminate between targets for whom the change would be a life-affirming miracle, and those for whom it would prove an unmitigated disaster.

Indeed, the ads may encourage the latter group disproportionately. People who are emotionally, socially, and financially ready for parenthood probably don’t want to change that much about their lives, other than the absence of children. But tell people whose lives could use a lot of alteration that “having a baby changes everything,” and they are liable to conclude that they can change everything by having a baby. Want to find love, find a purpose, save a marriage, get married, get respect, get your own Section Eight voucher? Having a baby changes everything!

And then, of course, there's the overpopulation thing. But since the "change everything" babies will be funding my Social Security checks, I’ll shut up now.

Did I mention that Mrs. P. & I are expecting a baby?

Victoria Station, 1747

Today's episode of "Dumbass Anglophile" features this handsome wall clock:

Ah, the charme of olde Londone. Imagine this "timeless timepiece" bringing history alive in your home! Experience the thrill of dashing for a train in the real Victoria Station, back in... 1747?

I don't know much about clockmaking, but you have to figure that this product was conceived, designed, approved, etc., by more than one person and over some period of time. Yet throughout this process, did no one bother to check whether "Victoria Station" and "1747" were reasonable concepts to associate on the face of a single product? Now, I don't expect everyone to know off the top of his/her head that Victoria Station was not constructed until 1860. But it seems to me that people with the savvy to mass-produce and market a consumer product should be capable of some basic research.

That aside, the continued availability of this item suggests that someone, somewhere, is buying the thing. Assuming that people don't generally intend their homes as showcases for laughably obvious horological anachronisms, we may conclude that these purchasers are unaware of the mistake. I don't, of course, hold purchasers to the same standard as the designers--we all have better things to do than dig out an encyclopedia every time we go to the mall. But one typically associates Anglophilia with a desire--however ill-conceived--to project sophistication. So it might not be too much to ask that the committed Anglophile recognize two rather glaring clues that something is amiss.

OK, first: for whom might Victoria Station be named? Hmm... famous Englishwomen named Victoria... aha! Queen Victoria? Indeed. And when did Queen Victoria reign? No exact dates needed, just a general sense. Let's see: Victorian era... Charles Dickens, Sherlock Holmes, Jack the Ripper... sometime in the 1800s right? So is it likely that Queen Victoria was having a station named after her in 1747? Why, no.

And, second: let us think about 1747. Hell, let's just think about the entire 1700s. Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels, the American Revolution--were the key players chugging around on locomotives? Did Tom Jones extricate himself from a hay-loft sex romp in time to catch the 07:28 for Taunton? No, because there were no trains! (Yes, yes, there were horse-drawn rail trams, but they didn't carry passengers until 1807.) So, in the absence of trains, is it likely that a train station was constructed prior to 1747? Again, no.

Of course, no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American Anglophile. So maybe the designers of this piece figured they'd be wasting their time coming up with a plausible date. Perhaps I'll buy one, and present it to the Townes at Cameron Parke.

Price Point

Happy Fourth of July! Today we celebrate the courage of the founding fathers, who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honors so that one day, after six seasons of "The Apprentice," we could all walk around smugly saying "price point."

Am I the only one bothered by the creep of this meaningless phrase into our vocabulary? Well, not entirely meaningless; in microeconomics one can speak of a "price point" along a demand curve, corresponding to a particular number of units demanded at a given price. And in business, one may discover natural "price points" for a given product, at which demand is disproportionately high due to an irregular demand curve.

But lately I have heard people on television say "price point" simply to describe the cost of an individual item--i.e., its price. The word "point" does not convey any additional information. And yesterday, a furniture salesman offered to sell me a sofa, chair, and ottoman package at "a price point of $1200." Actually, he said "price" first, then (a bit hesitantly) "price point," before repeating the latter term with confidence, clearly pleased with himself to be using such important language.

I am convinced that this trend is a result of "The Apprentice," which has given ordinary Americans a peek into the world of junior executives and their typical activities such as piloting the Goodyear Blimp and engaging Michael J. Fox to play ice hockey at a casino. Each week on "The Apprentice," someone is guaranteed to say "price point," even correctly on occasion.

So here is my rule: if you have a Ph.D. or M.B.A., and if you are standing in front of a chart, you are permitted to say "price point." Otherwise you are just a dumbass with a new word.

The Townes at Cameron Parke

An open letter to the developer of the Townes at Cameron Parke subdivision in Arlington, Virginia:

Dear Sir or Madame:

I had the recent pleasure of visiting your fine development. I found the architecture and landscaping quite pleasant, but feel I must bring the following to your attention:

1) Dubbing your new subdivision "The ________s at _________" is rather like naming your child Madison. You think it's sophisticated, original, and indicative of your taste for olden-days refinement. And it might have been, were you among the first 10,000,000 or so people to come up with it. But you weren't, and it is instead indicative of your complete lack of imagination.

2) I am willing to refer to row houses as "townhouses" (although not "townhomes," mind you), if it will make everyone feel important. But no one has ever called them "towns," let alone "townes."

3) The first faux Olde Englande silent E shows merely that you are pretentious. The second demonstrates that you are, in fact, a pretentious bastard.

Yours faithfully,
H.P.

All This for 100 Calories?

Let us deconstruct some advertising, and peek behind the curtain as the marionettiers tweak our manufactured lusts. Our subject: that Ritz 100 Calorie Pack television spot in which an adorably annoying Long Island woman asks, "You mean I get all this for a hundred calories?"

Study that question, my young ones, for it contains a miniscule shift of meaning worth the copywriter's weight in gold. Not "all this contains one hundred calories," oh no. Rather, our protagonist expresses the energy content of her snack in the language of spending. Once you adopt her viewpoint (or, in the argot of the ad biz, "internalize the worldview of the aspirational figure"), you come to understand that calories are issued--perhaps by God, perhaps by Richard Simmons--like a per diem stipend. When you've run through the 1800 in your wallet, you're done eating for the day; so you had better use them judiciously.

This conceptualization isn't completely off the wall--the same shift took place over the 20th century in our approach to time. We used to have time in abundence and found ways to "pass" it; now it is a scarce resource to be "spent." Turn the concept upside down and you have calories: we evolved to crave every last one we could hunt or gather, but now most Westerners can buy far more than is wise to consume. Our copywriter's brilliant twist was to reverse the polarity: the calorie is a measure of external energy to be consumed, yet the ad treats it as something internal to be let out, and that with reluctance.

The effect of all this is to transform calories--or, more to the point, avoided calories--into a sort of money. As such, they merit a status comparable with that of other currencies. And this transformation is fundamental to the mission of selling 100 Calorie Packs, which bear the central absurdity of costing more than the next-smaller size. In a world where cost is measured only in dollars or euros or yen, a rational consumer would never pay more money for less product. But where price is expressed as a function of two variables, one monetary and one caloric, the solution can be quite different.

That said, perhaps you are like me and want to give 100 Calorie Pack purchasers a good shaking, verify they can count to twelve, then present them with a box of Lowfat Ritz and some ziplocks. But that would presuppose the existence of a third variable: self control. And that, my young friends, is today in very short supply.

Waxing Services

OK, this is terribly immature, but:

I can have my package waxed for $20? What a bargain!

On Bill Stuffer Bullshit

Included with my bank statement this month was a bill stuffer informing me that “in an effort to serve you better, we have streamlined our consumer check card benefits... [and] will no longer provide Purchase Security, Warranty Manager, Concierge Services, Price Protection, Purchase Security and Extended Protection, or Travel Accident Insurance.”

Do the copywriters who churn out this sort of Orwellian corporate bullshit announcing the latest lap in the relentless race toward shittier and shittier service think they are doing great and meaningful work for society? Was this what they dreamed about when they signed up as English majors? Or do you need an M.B.A. to tell me that you are serving me better by taking away perks I already had and replacing them with nothing?

I am reminded of Princeton’s Harry G. Frankfurt, who writes in his monograph On Bullshit that the eponymous device may be defined as a statement “grounded neither in a belief that it is true nor, as a lie must be, in a belief that it is not true. It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth—this indifference to how things really are—that I regard as of the essence of bullshit.”

And thus it is with my bill stuffer. Its authors care not a whit whether the bank’s actions were or were not taken in an effort to serve me better. Rather, their concern is only that I believe the bank to have my best interests at heart. For all they care it may be the truth—they profit no more from a clever deception than from communicating objective reality—but the point is that they are paid for the effect their copy has on me, with no premium on the words’ relationship to any external state of being. As Frankfurt puts it:

This is the crux of the distinction between [the bullshitter] and the liar. Both he and the liar represent themselves falsely as endeavoring to communicate the truth. The success of each depends upon deceiving us about that. But the fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know that he wants us to believe something he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we are not to understand is that his intention is neither to report the truth nor to conceal it.

Not that I was using the “Concierge Services,” or any of that bullshit.

Mostly Gizzards

No one else may find this as delightful as I, but:

Yesterday, in the meat department of the Safeway, I spotted a shrink-wrapped package boldly proclaiming “Chicken Hearts and Gizzards.” And then below, in fine print, it admitted “Mostly Gizzards.”

I guess that people in the know demand full disclosure of the balance between moist, delicate hearts and coarse, plebian gizzards. Perhaps this legend is to stave off litigation from the poultry organ aficionado bar.

But what leaves me confused is why there would be other than a one-to-one ratio between these items. Barring unlikely mutations, each standard-issue chicken comes with one of each. Who’s hoarding all the chicken hearts?