News You Can Use - December 2, 2006

A day or two ago I wrote about the really clever packaging for the Ritz bits snacks I bought at a convenience store. [Why Didn't I Think of That?]

Giving the matter some additional thought, I came up with a way that you and I can enjoy the same convenience of having a container that we can fill with snacks that will fit into drink holders in our cars... for only the cost of putting some snacks into a very similar kind of container ourselves.

The next time that you go to any of the fast food places like MacDonalds or Wendy's, purchase a large drink. Usually the large drinks come with a sturdy, reusable plastic cup. Get a couple of the tops that fit the cup. Keep the cup and the unused tops and take them home. When we went in for a sandwich, we were going to get a drink anyway, so the cup is, for all intents and purposes, free.

The cup can be used over and over to take snacks with you when you are driving somewhere. Pretzels, crackers or cookies or Goldfish or better yet, Pepperidge Farm Milano Mint cookies... anything that warms the lining of your stomach. It will not tip over. When your are driving, you do not look for it on the seat, because it is not going to move around. If you run out of tops for it, simply pick up a new one the next time you visit the fast food place where you got it in the first place. And to boot, a great way to recycle a perfectly good plastic cup, rather than just throwing it away.

And that is my News You Can Use for Dec. 2nd.

Kindest Regards,

Howard Fireman
Houston, Texas

The Hunter-Gatherers of the 21st Century

I was with a friend of mine. We were chatting over coffee at Starbucks, one of my favorite places... the one inside of the Barnes and Noble Bookstore in a shopping center near my house. He had just gotten a new job as an outside saleman for a lighting showroom. He told me all about the company and his boss... and that he was very confident that he was going to do very well in the new job.

I listened attentively to everything he said.

He looked up from his coffee. "Do you want to know the best part of the job. There are no territories. It is every man for himself. The entire city of Houston is the territory so that whoever gets to the job site first, gets the order."

I thought to myself that it takes a special type of person to do well in this kind of job. And in a way, this special type of person was almost a throwback to what mankind did before the first human settlements were established.

Back then, life offered the human species no guarantees of survival. People were essentially nomads who wandered from place to place hunting for food and a safe place to bed down for the night. If they were lucky, they had some kind of structure they could put up to protect themselves from the elements. These early generations of the human race never knew if there would be food on any given day. With some pretty fierce and dangerous animals out there, there were no guarantee that these nomadic humans would not be hunted by the very creatures that they themselves were tracking and hunting. Life for them was short, dangerous and very uncertain at best.

I looked at my friend. I suspected that his existence as an outside salesman, going after business accounts in the volatile housing market wasn't that much different than the lives of the nomads I was just describing. My friend would always be hunting for another house that was being built. He may or may not get authorization to get the job from the builder or the buyer of the house. There would be other lighting salesmen who would be competing with him, to supply the lighting for a particular construction project. And in the course of making cold calls and trying to stir up business with builders with whom he had worked in the past, he would encounter competing sales reps who were the sharks who would do anything to cut him out of a deal. In sales it is always a numbers game and the numbers would not always be in his favor.

A long time ago, when I was working at a brokerage firm, I became good friends with Lee, one of the very successful brokers in the firm.

One day when we were talking at the water cooler, he commented, "You know, Howard, in this business, it is either chickens or feathers." Even then, I realized that was very true, and not just for stock brokers. It was equally true for all of us as we try to do anything in life and even as we just try to make it from day to day. Sometimes it is chickens and sometimes feathers... sometimes things go our way and sometimes not.

To my friend who was entering the somewhat dicey profession of outside sales, I said, "Well, I really hope you do well and make a lot of money." I chose not to share with him my other thoughts on the subject. I didn't want to discourage him. Who knows? He may do very well and prove my concerns to be irrelevant in his case.

But having been there and done that, I was fully aware of all the problems he could potentially be facing. He was choosing to take a path that mankind had travelled thousands of years ago, in a world without cities, roads, convenience stores, gas stations, television or grocery stores. Just broad plains and virgin forests that stretched far into the horizon... a world with no guarantees of having food and shelter... a world in which survival was never assured. My friend had become one of the hunter-gatherers of the 21st century and I wished him well.

Question of the Day - December 1, 2006

Our generation has the appointed task to take care of this fragile Earth until it is time to turn over the responsibility to our children. What sort of condition do you think this planet will be in when we do?

Why Didn't I Think of That?

On my work tonight, I stopped off at a convenience store along the way. I picked out a couple of 20 oz. cokes and a package of Ritz-bits. I paid for them and headed on to work.

When I got situated at work, I looked at the package of Ritz-bits. What a great marketing concept. Essentially, it is a plastic cup covered on the side with all the labelling for the product. The cup has a yellow plastic cover that fits snugly over the top of the cup. Beneath it was plasticized paper that served as the saftety sealer for the product. I looked at the labelling. The marketing gurus called this package a Go-Pak.

If you read further on the label, you see two small pictures on the side of the cup. One has the caption: "Perfect for cup holder...Reach in to snack." The other caption reads: "Recoverable."

This product, my dear readers, reflects some really smart marketing on someone's part. And you can have 3.5 oz. of Ritz-bits, packaged in this handy-dandy cup, for just $1.49. Why didn't I think of that?

Dangerous Minds

On a rainy night in Houston, I was headed home after a particularly brutal day at the office. In Houston, when it rains too hard, it floods and that is exactly what I was up against this particular night. So I pulled into a Starbucks. I dashed from my car to the front door and got out of the sloppy weather. I bought a New York Times, a large cup of coffee and a few pieces of chocolate biscotti. I found a comfortable chair by the window and watched the rain pound down on the street outside.

Nearby, two guys sat talking very intently. They were close enough that I could hear what they were saying, even though they were not talking very loudly. They looked no different than a lot of guys like them in their late thirties or early 40's. As I listened to what they were saying to each other, I realized that these two fellows had dangerous minds. What these guys were saying made them a potential threat to the powers that be in this country. You would have never ever known that just from looking at them from a distance.

The first fellow put down his coffee and said, "Jack, can you believe what Bush has tried to pull off. He is trying to rule by executive order. He wants to rule by decree and make end runs around Congress and the courts."

"So what else is new?" retorted the other fellow.

"You are always so damned flip. He is ruling like he was a king or a dictator or something. If we let him continue to rule by decree, we won't have a democracy anymore."

The second fellow did not respond immediately. He looked at his cup of coffee and looked up at his friend. "That sort of stuff did not start with him. President's have been trying to do that since Harry Truman, doing stuff behind the scenes out of sight. Doing what they can get away with."

"What?"

"Haven't you read anything about the history of this country since WWII? Well, I guess that is sort of a dumb question. Most guys are too busy vegging out in front of the boob tube or getting hard reading Maxim. Oh well, that's another discussion entirely."

"Anyway," the second guy continued,"most of all this crap really kicked in just after World War II. Harry Truman asked Congress to give him authority to set up ad hoc wartime agencies during peace time... you know, that was the time of Cold War. And without much discussion, Congress did that. They passed the National Security Act. That was the beginning of our government doing dirty tricks in other parts of the world and things like black ops."

"Black ops?" the first guy asked.

"Uhh... Black ops are secret operations that our government can carry out... like overthrowing the government of Allende in Chile about 30 years ago or supporting the contras in El Salvador. You know, the kind of stuff that our government can deny that we had anything to do with it and that whoever did it was doing it on their own. Or like our government moving people suspected of being terrorists to other countries so that we can torture them. Things like that."

"I see. Let's go back to what you were talking about. The National Security Act..."

"Oh yeah! Okay, first the National Security Act. Then came the CIA and then the National Security Council..."

"So what does all that mean?"

"It means that at the getgo our government was not in the business of undermining the governments in other countries that we did not particularly like. When the governing body of the CIA met for the first time, the first director declared that the CIA had no authority whatsoever to meddle in the affairs of other countries. So what did the National Security Council do? On it's own authority and answerable to nobody whatsoever, simply declared that the the CIA could essentially do any damn thing it wanted to do, so long as it kept things secret. So when our good Mr. Bush goes hellbent after the terrorists... the so-called 'War on Terrorism'... and does all sorts of stuff that his has no authority to do at all... Hell, that is in the great tradition of every one of the Presidents since Harry Truman."

"I didn't know that."

"Yeah, well not a lot of people do. Nor do they really have much desire to find out. Most people are so busy in their lives, they do real well just to get through the day in one piece."

"Well, I really don't think we really have much of a democracy anymore... maybe never did. We all want to believe in that great mythology that this is '...a nation of the people, by the people and for the people.' I mean, think about it. When was that ever true. When did "the people" ever really make the decisions or choose who our leaders are going to be or who the government is going to screw this week."

"That sounds about right."

"Just as we eventually have to give up believing that there is a Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy, we have to give up the illusion that this form of government was ever really run by the people. Hell, Diebold has these new computerized voting machines that only a politician could love. If you screw around with the memory card, you can make an election go any way you want it too. And the Republicans knew all about it and took full advantage of that to get old George B Jr elected a second time. Someone said that there is a memo floating around somewhere that Diebold told the Republicans that they would deliver the Presidential election to them on a platter... Maybe that is just urban legend... Don't know."

"Please stay on track, guy."

"Okay... where was I? Oh yeah. So there have always been big businesses and special politically powerful groups of one sort or another from day one in this country. The only thing that changes is what kind of political group that is or the extent to which big business interests are allowed to wield power. But the people... the people make a lot of noise, but can never get their act together for long enough to make a dent."

"So what are we going to do about it?"

"What are we going to do about it? You are asking me that? What can we do about that, really?"

"We could get the word out. We could make a lot of noise. We could blow the whistle on the whole corrupt mess and let the world know."

"What good would that do? How many people would listen? How many people would pay very much attention? It is a lot more interesting to watch some fucking reality show like 'The Great Race' or 'The Bachelor in Timbuktu.' "

"Look at the Drudge Report on the internet. He makes a dent."

"Maybe. But if we piss off the right people, we can disappear... even in this country. If you don't believe me, then I know of a bridge in Brooklyn I want to sell you."

"You are cute. Not funny, but cute."

"Yeah, I know. But you are right. We need to do something, even if it is only to change things locally... to fry the local S.O.B.s and hoist them on their own petard."

"All right. I'm game. Where do you want to start?"

At that moment, the rain stopped and I checked my watch. It was getting late. I made my way back to my car and headed home. I never did find out what these two dangerous minds were up to. But I am really thankful that there are still a few people out there like those two guys. What would our world be like if it weren't for people like them. Tell you one thing. We probably would not have had a country called the United States of America if there had not been a few dangerous minds like Thomas Jefferson or Patrick Henry or John Adams. Thank G'd we did.

Kindest regards,

Howard Fireman

It Could Happen!

Tis the Season...

My wife, Marilyn, enjoys nothing more than to go through the sales circulars in the Sunday paper. She will find the select items without which she cannot live and will add them to her list of things to buy sometime during the next few days. About the only sales circulars I find interesting are the Fry's ads or CompUSA... mostly electronic stuff. But in general I find the whole business of going out shopping to be an experience that usually just wears me out. I get little pleasure or satisfaction in the pursuit of the next great sale.

The Friday after Thanksgiving has come and gone and the initial craziness of people lining up all night to get the spectacular savings on tvs and cameras and clothes and whatever else one can buy... that was over. I felt very proud of myself that I did not allow Marilyn or me to get sucked into that temporary madness.

However, today the shopping bug bit me and it was me who was poring intently over the Sunday ads. Hey, I am only human. I saw this ad for a really nice 20" flat screen television set for under $100. And there were a few other goodies that caught my eye. All told, we were not going to be spending a huge sum of money. But today I was ready and willing to do my part to support our economy. I was ready to do my patriotic duty.

We grabbed a quick bite at Subway. After we finished our lunch, we made a bee-line for Circuit City in the Galleria area. In no time at all, we purchased the television set. But before we went to pick up our purchase at the loading dock, we made one circuit around the store.

Both of us like electronic stuff... really nice electronic stuff. Stereo units, cds, dvds, digital cameras, etc. Most of the things we already own are really pretty adequate to serve our needs. But the new stuff... the cameras and the new lcd tv sets, they sing their siren song and we are pulled in their direction.

We were standing in front of an lcd tv with a much bigger screen and a significantly bigger price tag than the set we just bought. I said to Marilyn, "Next year this time, we will come back and get one of those." Here we were. We had just bought a new television set, and I was already making plans to replace it. After our new set had been loaded into the front seat of our car, I was thinking about what I had said to Marilyn. I thought to myself, "Something is very wrong with this picture."

Please do not get me wrong. Like most Americans, I like to have really nice clothes and a great place to live and nice furniture and... well, you get the picture. Usually, I am able to rein in my urge to actually go out and buy that something better thing. This nagging urge is always just a short distance under the skin, just waiting to break out. Who doesn't like the good feelings we get when we buy something new, even if we don't really need it or if we can't really afford to spend the money. Nevertheless, for a short time, all is well with the world, at least until the bill comes in.

We moved on to another store. I had to pick up a spare battery for my digital camera. In typically male fashion, I found what I wanted and a cd that caught my eye.

I was about ready to head over to the cashiers when a strange thought entered my mind. I looked around at the overabundance of things I could buy. MP3 players and portable dvd players with 5" screens and stereo sound. Really powerful computers. Laptops. Ten megapixel cameras no bigger than a credit card. Any one of 10,000 different titles of cds or dvds. This overabundance of things I could have, if I only wanted them enough, for a moment overwhelmed me.

At that moment, I realized that in thousands of stores just like this one there were even more lovely items for sale. And in reality, most of us really don't need to have them. But we want them anyway. The merchants of the world have made it their holy mission to get us to buy them, enticing us with rebates and by slashing prices until our resistence melts away. And especially from Thanksgiving to Christmas Day and even after that. My good sense gave way to an urge almost as strong as that of sex. Today, I needed a new television set like I need another hole in my head. But now I own a new one.

Why does this bother me so much at this moment? I am trying to figure that out. I only know that sometimes there are more important things that I should be doing with my time and with my money. Maybe it is because this overabundance of stuff blinds us from seeing that there are too many people, young and old, who are standing on the fringes of our society. They lack the means to buy much less enjoy these goodies that our country has available. Important areas of our society go begging for money, like our schools... like mental health programs... like the lack of health insurance for poor kids who are excluded from enrollment in any subsidized insurance plan. Even in this rich nation, children go hungry every day. Mankind is always at war, somewhere in the world. In short, there is genuine suffering in the world today.

Our eyes become glazed over by the dancing visions of all these goodies in the stores in this most joyous and expensive of seasons. At a time when we should be opening our hearts and getting involved to confront the problems we are seeing, where are we? Rushing mindlessly from one store to the next, to grab up as many specials as we can from cameras to automobiles to diamonds and pearls. Nice.

I am bothered most about how we can so easily become hypocrites during the shopping season.
I am not Christian. But I can at least agree with the notion that the time of Christmas is supposed to get us to work for Peace on Earth, Good Will toward other people. A nice thought. I am Jewish. We have Hannukah. The celebration of lights, during which we focus on the quality of hope and of commitment to a cause, even when the odds of winning are slim. Our holiday is about keeping the faith, even when all seems lost. These are equally worthy sentiments.

However somewhere between Santa's appearance at the end of the Thanksgiving Parades and Christmas, these messages get lost. There is such a din of elevator music Christmas carols in the stores and the sales ads, that all that most of us can think about is, "Gimmee this and gimmee that."

So standing amidst all these wonderful things, I found the place just a bit of an embarassment. From the merchants to the customers in the stores to the political powers that be... the season that promotes peace and tolerance and kindness and hope has become something else in this great nation. A lot has been lost. So many things that made the holidays so rich in meaning and significance has been lost.

Even now, in Jewish families, as each family will very soon celebrate the eight days of Hannukah, the main thing for most Jewish kids is what gift they are going to receive on each night of the holiday. And that tradition of giving eight gifts to kids over the course of the holiday developed because their parents did not want them to feel left out when Christian children celebrated Christmas, and got all those presents. Maybe this gift-a-night thing really wasn't all that great an idea after all. So much which is truly good and meaningful is being forgotten, in the process.

Maybe I am making something of a big deal about all this. I am certainly not against the gift-giving that has become part and parcel of this pleasant time of the year. I only wish that during this period, each of us would set aside even a small amount of time to reflect on what these holidays are really about. We should want something more out of what we are experiencing, than just to get caught up in an annual orgy of shopping opportunities. There should be more to these holidays than that.

So I have said my piece. I have my thoughtful moments but I will not pretend that I am any better than anyone else, when it comes to the holidays. So now Marilyn and I are off to another store to snap up a few more great buys. But, because of my nature, I will be stopping a few more times along the way, as a reality check, in an effort to keep all this in perspective.

Kindest regards

Howard Fireman