The Spam Election

As you read this we are fast approaching election day. Whether you voted by mail, early in person, or are waiting for the big day, the season for insults, boasts, promises, falsehoods, hyperbole, truth, claims, attacks and every other form of free speech is drawing to a close. Nah, just kidding! It won't stop, but it will diminish. As of November 4th, or shortly thereafter as they call the winners in most races, we'll revert to the usual state of affairs, which, sadly, is insults, boasts, promises, falsehoods, hyperbole, truth, claims, attacks and every other form of free speech. But with one side no longer actively seeking office it should drop to about half of what we've seen and heard over the last few months.

To be fair, none of this is new, though the method of electioneering has changed over time. In the past the options were a soapbox or bigger box, but it all amounted to gathering a group of people and standing in front of them to tell them all the good you were going to do and all the bad your opponent would inflict on them. It was the presidential election of 1920 that changed the playing field. Even though only 100 people were listening, Pittsburgh's KDKA became the first station to broadcast the results of that year's presidential election. Four years later the airwaves were filled, not just with results but with ads for the candidates. As TV was introduced and spread the evolution continued, with 1952 marking the first time that presidential candidates turned to television to communicate their message.

From the beginning, all those live candidate pronouncements were supplemented by handbills, pamphlets and posters. Trying to broaden their reach, candidates turned from in-person distribution to the US Mail. That meant that as election day drew closer your mailbox became filled with cards and flyers with smiling pictures of the sender and snarling visages of their opponent. Technology overtook that as well, and by 1980 your electronic inbox was flooded with digital versions of the same.

As much of our everyday electronic communication has moved from email to messaging, the pols have made the switch as well. As such this year marks a major escalation in using text as a campaign tool. While there is no accurate measure of the volume, experts guesstimate that tens of billions of texts were sent out this election season. This is spite of the realization that they don't necessarily make a big difference. According to Katherine Haenschen, assistant professor in Northeastern University's Departments of Communication Studies and Political Science, "Text messages are effective, but we're finding that the effects are relatively small." Per her study as published in the journal "Political Behavior," messages increased turnout by 0.25 percentage points during the 2018 U.S. midterms. That's an additional 2.5 voters per 1,000 people.

But especially in a close election every vote counts, and election texts are cheap to deploy. Average costs range from 3 cents to 8 cents a message, so a campaign sending 500,000 messages at 7 cents spends $35,000. This cycle the top sender is Democratic Senator John Ossoff who is running for reelection in Georgia. His campaign has so far spent about $10.6 million in messaging, which works out to about 151,428,571 texts. Add in various PACs, double it to account for roughly the same from his opposition, and no wonder every voter's phone in Georgia is overheating.

Even without a competitive race in New York, my Pixel is no more immune. It seems that not an hour goes by that I don't get another text message from Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania or John Turek in Iowa, Troy Jackson in Maine and yes, Senator Ossoff in Georgia. I can't vote in any of those races, but my money is good anywhere. And so they and their affiliates ping me and ping me, hoping that I will finally relent and send them some cash.

As a matter of course I have taken to reporting every message I get as spam and blocking that number regardless of the sender's political outlook. But doing the math shows I'm on the losing end of this battle. Since phone numbers in the US consist of 10 digits, that means the maximum number of possible senders is one shy of 10 billion. In just the last few weeks I've blacklisted 343. At that rate I've got a ways to go.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford is looking forward to the election being over. His column appears weekly via email and online on Substack and Blogspot as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.

Gratitude

Not that it's a reason for doing anything, but it is nice when someone offers you their gratitude. Hold the door, and you hear "thank you." Help someone carry something or get something down from a shelf, and there is usually grateful acknowledgment. It's something taught by every parent, a two-sided coin where you help people, and recognize those that help you.

While those are everyday examples, there are other instances where the stakes may be higher. A doctor saves a life, a benefactor funds an education, a stranger rescues someone from danger: each stems from the same desire to help, and the response acknowledges that effort. Then there are cases where the act is far removed from the gratitude in distance, personal connection and/or time. No matter, the response is no less sincere.

In Zach Eisen's case, the expressions of thanks occur long after the original act took place. At thirty-something, Zach is on his second career as a Director of Photography. His first began when he was four and cast in a movie, a world in which he is known by his full name of Zach Tyler Eisen: "I was the right mix of well-behaved, I could read, I could take direction." As he told me about his background, he laughed: "Oh, and I was cute. That certainly helped!" 

As he got more experience he appeared in commercials, a couple of films and TV shows, eventually falling into voice acting, giving life to characters in several shows. "It worked well with my schedule. I didn't have to get pulled out of school. No hours spent on set with tutors, memorizing lines and rehearsals. I could go after school to sessions, and even make it to baseball practice. So, yeah, that was a nice balance."

Then came the roll that any actor wants, regardless of age: the lead. "Avatar: The Last Airbender" was an animated fantasy action television series that ran for three years on Nickelodeon. Set in a largely Asian-inspired world in which some people can manipulate water, earth, fire and air, Zach gave life to twelve-year-old Aang, the current Avatar and last survivor of his nation. Along with his friends Katara, Sokka, and Toph, they worked to defeat Fire Lord Ozai before he conquered their world.

A ratings success, the series received widespread acclaim, winning a slew of awards. It touched on themes not usually found in kid cartoons, from war and sexism, to class warfare and political corruption, and even indoctrination and free choice. And bringing it all to life every week was Zach.

But as much fun as it was, it was taking over his life, and he didn't want that. "The end of the Avatar series aligned with me starting high school. And I said I want to step back, just kind of take back my life." And so he walked away, set up shop behind the camera, and while not hiding from it, made acting a piece of him rather than the whole.

As these things do, though, the series recently had a resurgence. Reissued during the pandemic, its original fans rediscovered all they liked about it, and a new audience embraced it. Zach starting getting calls to appear at Comic-Con type gatherings to celebrate the series, and meet and greet the fans. At first he was a little hesitant to revisit that part of his life. But the more he met those fans, the more he started to realize what it meant to them.

"I started doing conventions back in 2023, and it's become a big part of my life." I asked him what he got from the interactions. "The series really brought joy to people. So many are there to say thank you for the memories. People say, 'It helped me through my parents' divorce,' or 'It helped me through cancer.' It's incredible." Zach knows he just played a part, but still: "I didn't write the show. I don't get recognized for my face. But I voiced it, and that's what they remember."

We all do nice things for others, and get acknowledgement for them. But for Zach the act is both removed and for strangers, which makes the gratitude that much more special. "I've had people come up to me and say 'Thank you for my childhood.' It's very cool. It's nice to be able to put a smile on people's faces like that. And it is very, very humbling."

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Marc Wollin of Bedford loves to find out what he doesn't know about people. His column appears weekly via email and online on Substack and Blogspot as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.

More than Seven Words?

Back in the day students like me were encouraged to learn the touch typing method for our typewriters. That meant fingers resting on the home row of ASDF and JKL; with thumbs at the ready on the space bar. It was supposed to be the key to speed and accuracy, and whether you were a student or a secretary, an insurance agent or an HR professional, it was how you produced clean, printed documents. 

For the record I was a poor practitioner. I hunt and pecked my way around the keyboard, producing as many errors as correct words. I used every correction method available, from eraser to tape to what had to be gallons of Liquid Paper. My documents looked like they had been in a street fight, except all the cuts and scrapes were white instead of red.

As standalone word processors and then computers elbowed their way into the mainstream, skill at typing became both more and less important. More, because everything moved from handwritten to machine written. Less, because whatever method you used to enter the data was immediately correctable before it got to the page, so accuracy was less important. Whether you were a 75 word-per-minute professional-level typist or used two fingers made no difference to the finished product that people saw, which is all that really mattered.

Of late we have been moving to the next frontier, voice typing. Accurate transcription of spoken speech used to be an expensive and time-consuming proposition. You had to make copies of tapes or files of speeches or conversations, send them to a service, and wait several days to get back the result. But like travel and banking, technology has elbowed its way in, pushing highly skilled and experienced professionals out of the way with a product that offers high efficiency with little or no cost.

I've been trying to learn to leverage that application, certainly for first drafts. Rather than bang on a keyboard or make my fat thumbs find the right letters on my phone, I have taken to activating the microphone on the device and trying to assemble my thoughts in coherent enough form to see them appear on the page. I say "first draft," as what comes out of my mouth often makes little or no sense when read back without serious editing. And I mean serious editing.

I also find that when dictating I am less reserved about my choice of words. Credit my mother, but I do try and watch my language in a public setting. Sure, I try and make coherent sentences, but I also use words and phrases not offensive to those with tender ears. That contrasts with when I am talking with those I know, and that includes me. In those instances I am, how shall we say, less restrained.

As such, looking at a dictated version of my thoughts is likely to include several of instances that the brilliant comedian George Carlin singled out this way: "There are 400,000 words in the English language and there are 7 of them that you can't say on television. What a ratio that is! 399,993 to 7. They must really be bad. Those are the ones that'll infect your soul, curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war."

But I have noticed that not only can you not say them on television, you can't say them in Microsoft Word. If I dictate the word b*******, well you can see what comes up, a "B" and a lot of asterisks. Rifling through Carlin's master list you get f*** and m***********, p*** and c*********. It does seem that context counts. I can dictate "The cock crows at dawn" with no issue, or "I pricked my finger" and it is accurately rendered. But try and use those words in a more colorful way and, well, asterisks for days.

To be clear I can type those words, I just can't say them and have them typed. Seems for all of its advanced capabilities my AI transcriber has the same sensibility as a network censor in the 70's. But tastes, mores and speech patterns are shifting, so perhaps it's just a matter of time until the asterisks clear. In the same vein, in certain quarters these days demo*ra*y is a dirty word. Whoops, looks like the times, they are a'changin'.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford tries to us PG language when he can. His column appears weekly via email and online on Substack and Blogspot as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.

All You Can Eat

There are some things you can eat a lot of. I don't mean a big serving, I mean a lot of servings. In some respect the fact that the initial offering is small rather than large probably helps, as there is breathing space between ingestions. Hot dogs and slices of pizza rank high, as do chicken wings and ribs, cookies and M&M's, potato chips and fries. Yes, there are people that can probably say the same about tofu or lentils or kale, but I choose not to dine with them.

However, regardless of what your fav is, when you go to a restaurant your order is usually one and done. Other than topping off your soft drink, any additional food goes on your tab. Yes, there are the all-you-can-eat buffets, and their "good for you" cousins, the all-you-can-eat salad bars. More catering halls than made-to-order eateries, these self-serve establishments offer chafing dishes and platters filled with a wide variety of offerings, whether it is on the strip in Las Vegas or in a strip mall in New Jersey.

The most notable exception is probably Olive Garden. This chain of Italian themed restaurants offers waiter and waitress service, as well as all-you-can-eat fresh breadsticks along with salad or soup. Finish nibbling before your meal, and the server will happily bring you more. Many a diner has wound up taking home their entire plate of chicken parmesan as they filled up on multiple tranches before their main course ever arrived.

Every now and again (and this is one those times) they have a special promotion where they extend that concept to a portion of their main menu. Forget fall foliage: we are smack in the middle of "Never-Ending Pasta Bowl" season. While the price might vary depending on location, for the bargain sum of $14.99 you get a non-stop supply of rigatoni with creamy mushroom sauce and meatballs, angel hair with spicy alfredo and sausage, or fettuccine with marinara and grilled chicken. Or maybe all three. If you're running a marathon the next day, this is carb loading at its finest.

That said, if you are like many, after you binge on anything you're happy not to see it for a while. But if you're the kind of eater wherein too much is not enough, you might want to move up the scale to the "Never-Ending Pasta Pass." Making a return in July after a six-year hiatus, the chain offered 10,000 passes for $100 each plus tax. They entitle the holder to 13 weeks of unlimited pasta, sauces, toppings, soup or salad, and breadsticks. And least you think no one would really be interested in such a thing, it's worth noting that, like Taylor Swift tickets, they sold out within minutes.

And if that doesn't sate your starchy jones, then you might just be Braden Sinclair.

One of just 50 people in the world who holds a "Lifetime Pasta Pass," Braden was into Olive Garden early on. In 2004 his Little League coach nicknamed him "Breadsticks" after he ate too much on a team visit and had to sit out a game. He got his first Never-Ending Pasta Pass in 2015 and his first OG (as the fanboys and girls call it) tattoo in 2016, a picture of a parmesan cheese grader with the slogan "Say When." Then in 2019 he was plucked as one of chosen few who were offered the chance to pony up $500 for a lifetime of fettuccine. 

On his site lifetimepastapass.com you can track consumption (118 visits), see his fav combinations (rigatoni with Alfredo sauce and crispy chicken frita wins going away) and even vote for what you think his next combo should be (as of this writing it was Rigatoni with Traditional Marinara and Meat Sauce topped with Italian Sausage). There also a helpful status flag that proclaimed, at least when I looked, that "Braden is not currently at the Olive Garden."

The movie "Annie Hall" opens with a joke: "Two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, ‘Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.' The other one says, ‘Yeah, I know; and such small portions.' OG is the flip side of that. The pasta isn't bad, and the portions can be endless. And believe it or not, Woody, it's a club that would even have you as a member.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford prefers red sauces. His column appears weekly via email and online on Substack and Blogspot as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.

The Big Cleanout

First it was just a steel 4-drawer filing cabinet leftover from my wife's business. Then we added an old dresser we had stuffed in the basement from one of the kids' rooms. Some ripped lawn furniture that I thought I could fix joined the party, along with a knocked down entertainment center from my first apartment (its vintage was such that the opening for the TV was square). The pile under the deck continued to grow: an old highchair, a bed frame, a bunch of chipped Formica shelves.

The original plan was to call a local handyman and have it hauled to the town dump. But as the load grew it became obvious it would take multiple runs. And a call to the town revealed that they don't take that stuff anyways, so I'd have to find a commercial hauler. College Hunks with a Truck and JunkLuggers were happy to come, but as the pile grew the price went up. And so we did what my wife had suggested in the first place (Yes, yes, you were right, honey) and we got a dumpster.

For us, this was summer of the big cleanout. Having lived in our home for over 3 decades and raised two children here, we've accumulated a lot of stuff. Not sure where our lives would take us and having extra space, we hesitated to throw things out, opting to put it in the attic or a corner of the basement. And indeed, when our boys got their first apartments, they were more than happy to take a chair or table, a set of dishes or some towels. But much water has gone under that bridge, and what they didn't take was now just accumulating dust.

We gave away what we could to various charities, hoping it might find a home with someone who was in need. But much wasn't really in that category: who really wants an old kitchen cabinet with some plywood on top we used for storing planters? Or a chipped dresser? Or set of stained shelves that sagged? Hence the pile under the deck. Only a garbage can of industrial size and strength would suffice to throw it all away.

A few calls landed a company that could get us one which we could have for 2 weeks. I ran out as the truck carrying it backed down our driveway, imploring the driver to slip the mammoth 15-yard steel coffin as far over as he could so we could still use the garage. Once settled in he showed me how the latch on it worked, and cautioned me not to fill it over the top. "You doing some remodeling?" he asked, a reasonable enough question considering the gargantuan size. "No," I replied sheepishly, "we've lived here for 30 years and we need to clean out a bit." He didn't bat an eye: "You buy stuff and then you throw it away. That's life." 

It took me a day to relocate the heap under the deck to its new home. But then the gloves were off. Having a receptacle so large meant we didn't have to be precious about what would fit. Out went an old footboard. An old car top luggage carrier was next, along with some rusted lawn tools. Would the kids ever really use the small desks still in their rooms? And the old fireplace set in the attic was never going to see another blaze. Going, going, gone.

After the big stuff came the small. Old jumper cables and broken Christmas lights, not to mention the shelves they sat on. I had good intentions for a box of old lamp parts, the same for a collection of carpet remnants. And odds of repainting the rusting chairs that used to be on the deck were slim. All of it made the cut. Literally.

Two weeks later the truck returned, and the dumpster disappeared as easily as it came. The truly frightening thing is that if you walk through our house you would not know we got rid of anything. But if you open the storerooms, the basement or the attic you'll see, well, the storerooms, the basement or the attic. You couldn't see them before. We made great progress, but we know we're not done. As the guy said, "You buy stuff and then you throw it away. That's life." Truer words were never spoken.

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Marc Wollin of Bedford still has to tackle his office shelves. His column appears weekly via email and online on Substack and Blogspot as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.