Random Thoughts by Mark Milliorn

The Feral Administrator Program

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 07:54:58 PST

The campus of Enema U is under assault--we are in danger of being drowned by a tidal wave of administrators. While they were never rare on campus, it was possible for a few weeks to pass without sighting an administrator on campus. Occasionally, a vice-president could be spotted gently grazing in a coffee shop, or standing in the shade outside the Alumni Office. While it was never easy to accurately determine the size of the herd, estimates of the population size were never higher than a few dozen breeding pairs.

Sadly, those days of benign neglect are over. Several factors led to the sudden over population. First, and perhaps the worst mistake, was when the university introduced a new major--a Bachelor’s Degree in University Administration. After the success of the Golf Course Management program, perhaps this was an innocent mistake. Unfortunately, this new program was not established under the School of Agriculture, where such ideas as selective breeding and culling the herd are widely understood and practiced; the new major was mistakenly also given to the Athletic Program.

The new program began well, but soon (possibly due to low entrance requirements) there were simply too many majors. In an attempt to reduce the size of the program (and in keeping with the best hiring practices of Administrators at Enema U) only students from other universities were allowed to apply to the program.

Sadly, the administration population grew exponentially. While no one knows exactly what the gestation period is for bureaucrats, according to one professor of Biology, it is entirely possible that administrators are born pregnant.

Today, it is practically impossible to cross the campus without sighting small herds of Executive Vice-Presidents or Assistant Associate Provosts. At events such as convocations, the lowing of these administrators is deafening. Worse, the campus is littered with their spoor--memos and reports can be seen everywhere, as ubiquitous as tumbleweeds in the breeze.

As an example of the problem, can you determine which of the following is not a real job title at Enema U?

a. Senior Vice President of Research Integrity

b. Dean of Student Articulation

c. Dean of Student Success

d. Vice President of Student Affairs

e. Graduate School Mascot Handler

f. Senior Vice President of Redundancy

g. Executive Vice President of Redundancy

h. None of the above

i. Before e except after c. Weird!

Sadly, the answer is h. The problem is so severe, that it has been turned over to a new Vice President of Special Problems. An investigation is under way at all levels and a report should reach us shortly.

In the mean time, I have a suggestion. The university has for years operated a successful program to handle a similar problem: the Feral Cat Program. Periodically, cats on campus are humanely trapped and taken to veterinarians, who vaccinate and neuter the animals. Then, so the cats in the program can be recognized, the top of one ear is clipped. Afterwards, the cat is released back on the campus.

Surely, this program would work equally well with our feral administrators.

Let’s Encourage the Others

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 23:06:20 PST

Suddenly, with the foundering of the Costa Concordia off the Italian coast, people all over the world are thinking about a similar event 100 years ago this April. For days, the news agencies interviewed survivors who consistently said, “Did you see the movie Titanic?”

Ignoring the strange fact that people tend to categorize real world events through the distorted prism of Hollywood, it is rather heartening to see so many people striving to find a historical reference to help explain the seemingly impossible loss of an “unsinkable” ship. While I have no intention of repeating an endless stream of Titanic references—ending with the inevitable reminder that the Italian ship foundered on Friday the thirteenth—I do want to point out a few less obvious historical references.

As I write this, it is exactly one year after the US Airlines 1549 flight that ended with Captain “Sully” Sullenberger successfully landing his Airbus in the Hudson River. After a miraculous landing, Sully walked up and down the aisle of his aircraft, even as it slowly sank, making absolutely sure that every passenger and crew member had safely evacuated the plane. There were no casualties.

Almost forgotten today is Pan Am Flight 6. On October 16, 1956, the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser was attempting to fly from Hawaii to San Francisco when it lost two of its four engines. Captain Ogg managed to fly the crippled aircraft, and its 24 passengers and 7 crew members, to the Coast Guard Cutter Pontchartrain, and circle the ship until daylight. The ditching was successful, and Captain Ogg was the last man off his doomed plane. There were no casualties, excepting the 40 crates of parakeets in the luggage compartment.

When the SS Andrea Doria collided with the MS Stockholm in July 1956, the captain knew immediately that the ship would sink. Despite the fact that the ship immediately listed so badly that half of the life boats could not be used, the efficiency of the crew, led by Captain Calamai, ensured that the only casualties were a result of the collision, not from the evacuation. Only after every passenger and crew member was off the ship did Captain Calamai leave his ship.

While the exact cause of the Costa Concordia accident is not (at this time) known, it appears that Captain Schettino deliberately steered his vessel too close to the shore in order to provide his passengers a better view of the coast. When the ship hit the rocky reef, opening an enormous hole in the ship’s hull, the captain tried to ground his ship on the nearby shore. Obviously, by this point, the captain fully knew his ship was doomed.

No warning was given to the passengers for an hour, even as the ship began to list. No orders were given by the Captain to lower the lifeboats. The passengers, most of whom had not yet been drilled in safety precautions, were left to fend for themselves. While it is not yet known exactly when the Captain abandoned his passengers, his crew, his ship, and his responsibility, it is an undeniable fact that he was arrested on shore long before the ship was completely evacuated. Captain Schettino was on shore long before his purser (who broke a leg when the ship rolled onto its side) was rescued by helicopter.

There is one more historical event to consider. In March 1757, Admiral Sir John Byng was executed for his failure to aggressively engage the French at the Battle of Minorca. He was court-martialed, found guilty of “failing to do his utmost”, and executed by firing squad on the quarterdeck of the HMS Monarch in the full view of the assembled fleet.

Byng's failure is referred to in Voltaire’s novel Candide with the line Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres – "In this country, it is wise to kill an admiral from time to time to encourage the others.”

If Nominated, I Will Not Run

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 15:09:41 PST

I am very sorry to announce that I am not running for president. While I have no doubt that most of you will be severely disappointed at this news, I have no choice. It is my wife’s fault.

Evidently, I will never be able to run for political office. No matter how much I might want to, it appears that I do not have the right kind of wife to be a politician.

Herman Cain is just the latest in a very long line of politicians who have cheated on their wives (with partners ranging from chubby file clerks to farm animals) yet they still somehow want the voters to trust them enough to give them the most important job in America. During the Clinton impeachment fiasco, my eldest son once asked me, “If his wife can’t trust him, why should we?”

Actually, I’m not all that surprised. I have always taken it for granted that the most powerful man in the world could probably get laid. All things considered, this is probably a good thing. I think we can all agree that we don’t want the most powerful man in the world (the man whose finger hovers over the nuclear button) to get… anxious.

I understand the powerful men believing they can ignore social conventions. I can even understand these men believing that somehow their peccadillos won’t be discovered even as they undergo a very public anal exam by the press. But where in the world do these politicians find wives who will allow them to do such nonsense and then still stand by them on a podium, hand in hand, and pretend to smile lovingly at their scumbag husbands.

Herman Cain, after his ten year affair was exposed, somehow stood in public--with his wife--and made a public apology that miraculously managed to make it sound as if it was the press that was at fault. What was it that Cain said? "I am at peace with my wife."

Christ on a Popsicle stick! If my mistress of ten years came forward and outed me in the national press, I would be in pieces with my wife. The last words I would hear from my wife, as she stood over my bleeding body, would be: "How do you reload this son of a bitch?"

Even with the use of strong drugs, if my wife stood behind me during such a press conference, it would be so she could keep carving my spinal column into spaghetti-o's with a dull spoon. I simply do not believe my wife would allow herself to be humiliated that way.

More importantly, why would any man want to subject his wife to such public ridicule?

Perhaps more importantly, why are we far more interested in how a politician treats his mistress than how he treats his wife?

Evidently, to be a good politician, you have to be a lying cheating scumbag. My wife, the Doc, reminds me frequently that she knows “where the hurty parts are.” I think I’ll pass.

Profound Discussions

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 23:01:00 PST

Several years ago, while a student, I had the habit of getting an early cup of coffee before classes started. As I sat in the cafeteria at Enema U, I would invariably see a trio of my favorite history profs sitting together and having coffee. I used to wonder what they were talking about. Some abstract historical point? A discussion of the latest pedagogical approach?

Move forward a few decades. I now have coffee with two of the three above professors (the third having retired). And if you are a student observing us, wondering about our deep thoughts… We talk about the news, the weather, and our children. And women. Our conversations are about as deep as a parking lot puddle after a summer fog.

Our emails are not much different, either. Professor Grumbles, the German professor, and I have had an ongoing discussion about movies for years. Here is a recent email exchange:

From: Professor Grumbles
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 11:01 AM
To: Mark Milliorn
Subject: movie proportions

I think we need a new system of rating movies.

Grumble’s Movie Proportions

01% truly memorable, may withstand test of time = A

05% thought-provoking, worth seeing = A-

05% well-made, artistically rewarding = B

20% entertaining distraction or popcorn thriller = B-

20% pleasant, easily forgotten = C

49% not worth the ticket price = D/F

I probably should include examples.

Note total lack of correlation with Academy Awards or Golden Globes.

From: Mark Milliorn
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 11:21 AM
To: Professor Grumbles
Subject: RE: movie proportions

I think we need a grading rubric.

The Milliorn System

· Entertaining and memorable movie with a unique plot. Possible 1-60 points.

· Nudity with an attractive female actress. Possible 1-20 points.

· Nudity with a male actor. Negative 10 points.

· Gratuitous Violence. Possible 1-15 points.

· Car Chase. Possible 1-10 points.

· Cool airplane. Possible 1-10 points.

· Crashing cool airplane. Negative 50 points.

· Unique and horribly cruel violence. Possible 1-5 points.

· Unique and horribly cruel violence inflicted on anyone named Sheen. Possible 10-50 points.

· Horribly idiotic firearms mistake. Negative 25 points.

· Presence of Kung Fu or any other Asian martial arts without Jackie Chan. Negative 25 points.

· Plot consisting of 2 men discussing their lives and dysfunctional families. Negative 100 points.

· Plot consisting of several couples trying to relive college moments. Negative 100 points.

· Coming of Age plot with adorable child actors related to some famous star. Negative 1000 points.

· Sequels or remakes. Negative 10 points for each previous occurrence. At this point, any movie with Rocky in the title can achieve, at the unlikely best, 40 points.

From: Professor Grumbles
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 11:27 AM
To: Mark Milliorn
Subject: RE: movie proportions

A bit more subjectively flexible (what elements of a car chase give it more points?) than I would prefer. But thorough! I would also have to add:

· Clumsy misuse of a foreign language. Negative 20 points.

From: Mark Milliorn
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 11:28 AM
To: Professor Grumbles
Subject: RE: movie proportions

Well, a tank chase, with nude women driving them, would receive MUCH more in points than say… the car chase in Thelma and Louise. Let me amplify this… Which would you rather watch?

A. Thelma and Louise are chased off a cliff.

B. Angelina Jolie, nude, drives a Sherman Tank after a school bus, full of screaming, naked cheer leaders, that eventually finds safety at a lesbian nudist colony.

From: Professor Grumbles
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 12:11 PM
To: Mark Milliorn
Subject: RE: movie proportions

Only if B takes place in a warm spring drizzle. Of vegetable oil. And Angie should be in an open Jeep. The screaming doesn’t matter. I won’t get around to turning on the sound.

So this is some kind of fashion statement?

From: Mark Milliorn
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 12:12 PM
To: Professor Grumbles
Subject: RE: movie proportions

Screaming cheerleaders jump up and down.

From: Professor Grumbles
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2011 12:15 PM
To: Mark Milliorn
Subject: RE: movie proportions

Again – the screaming is irrelevant. Jumping, though: excellent. And slo-mo, please.

From: Mark Milliorn
To: Professor Grumbles
Date Sent: 12/2/2011 12:20:54 PM
Subject: RE: movie proportions

And Sherman tanks are driven by tugging and pulling on long levers. Obviously, we would not want to deny the director the artistic use of such an obvious phallic symbol. You’ll just have to settle for interior shots of Angie, sweating profusely, straining as she manhandles (or womanhandles) the steering.

And so it went. I have consulted with my colleague, and Professor Grumbles and I are willing to discuss a possible movie treatment, but we insist on final say for both script and costumes (or lack thereof).

I Solemnly Swear

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 23:01:00 PST

Every year, millions of Americans make New Year’s resolutions. And most of these resolutions last about a week or two. Since resolving to do something evidently never works, here are my resolutions for things NOT to do. Not doing something should be much easier and more in harmony with my lazy nature.

I resolve never again to ask a woman when her baby is due regardless of how pregnant she looks. If you look pregnant and you're not, wear a damn sign.

I resolve that while I am driving to work, I will no longer slam on the brakes just because a student is tailgating me so closely that he is probably trying to become my own personal proctologist. For now on, I'll just fling trash out the windows towards them. Then, I'll slam on the brakes.

I resolve to stop telling the obnoxious missionaries all over campus that I can't accept their free bible literature because "My coven wouldn't like it."

I resolve that while grocery shopping, I will stop showing children how to juggle vegetables in the produce department.

I resolve to stop marking "Deceased" on mail addressed to a former colleague, (long since moved to California) just because he is a horse's ass. From now on, I'll mark it "Hopefully Deceased."

I resolve to stop tearing up all my junk mail and stuffing it into postage paid envelopes and mailing it back to the sender. I have a gut feeling that the post office is not charging bulk mailers enough money. We tax payers probably lose money every time one of these letters is mailed.

I resolve to stop telling students that the largest engagement of the Vietnam War was the Battle of the Kao Pectate. They actually believe this shit.

I resolve to stop eating in the university cafeteria until it stops serving road kill. Why must the university lease its cafeterias to a company that specializes in providing meals to prisons?

While I am at it, I resolve to stop eating in Chinese Buffets or any other restaurant where the average patron weighs twice as much as I do.

I resolve to stop telling students that the last communist country on earth is the Sociology Department. From now on, I'll include the Women's Studies Department. The Domino Theory is alive and well at Enema U. Even as I write this, outside agitators are infiltrating the School of Education.

I resolve to stop telling people at the bowling alley that I can’t keep score because I am still working on my GED and the numbers confuse me. Might as well--some damned student outed me, anyway.

I resolve to stop answering the enormous amount of hate mail I receive from the state of Arkansas. I have no idea what I did to upset people in this state, but most of their email starts with something along the lines of, “You will never see the sweet face of Jesus...” Actually, now that I think of it, I did write one or two blogs about religion.

While I am at it, I resolve to write no more blogs about midgets, blind people, nuns, or retarded people. At least until they develop a sense of humor. I might write about a short blind retarded nun, but definitely not if she has breast cancer. Wow! Did I ever receive a lot of shit about that one!

I resolve to stop treating my recycling bin as an ordinary trash can. Honest. If someone in my neighborhood is putting ordinary trash in their recycling bin, it is definitely not me. That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

I resolve to stop telling a certain faculty member that the best way to reset her laptop is to take her hands off the two white knobs, hold the laptop upside down over her head and shake it vigorously.

I resolve that the next time a failing student asks me (three days before the final exam) what he has to do to get a passing grade in the course, not to tell him to invent a time machine, go back about thirty years, and introduce some intelligent men to his future mother.

I resolve never, never again to let my wife take the cat with us on a car trip. She said she had given the screaming furball a tranquilizer. It turned out that I needed a double Xanax with a scotch chaser. The whole way to Albuquerque, all I could think about were cat jokes. (What has two legs and bleeds on the backseat? Half a cat on a road trip.)

And lastly, I resolve not to take any of these resolutions too seriously.

Pandering to Pandas

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 23:01:00 PST

The old chief’s health was failing, and he knew that his days of leading the tribe were almost over. Childless, he was worried about who he should select as the next leader of the tribe. Finally, he called the young men of the tribe together and announced his decision.

“I have decided that the next chief of the tribe will be selected by a contest,” he said. “I have three tasks for you. First, you must climb the glass mountain. Second, I want you to kill a mountain lion with your bare hands. And last, I want you to make love to the wild woman of the north woods. Whoever completes these tasks first will be the new chief.”

Immediately, the young men ran off towards the glass mountain. By the end of the day, several men had returned, bruised and battered by the mountain. For the next two days, men slowly returned to the tribe; either the mountain or the lion had proved to be an insurmountable task. Finally after three days, only a single man remained in the woods.

The chief and the whole tribe waited impatiently for his return. Finally, on the morning of the fifth day, the young man returned to the camp. He was bruised, bloody, and dragging his left arm as he slowly crawled into camp using his remaining good arm. He dragged his battered body to the old chief.

“Okay…the mountain was tough and the lion damn near killed me, but I did it. Now, where the hell is this wild woman you want me to kill with my bare hands?”

Suddenly, I am at the end of the semester and have time to read all the journals and magazines I have collected over the last semester. There are several stories about looming extinctions and endangered species. For whatever reason, it made me think of the joke above.

It seems that sometimes, animals, both two- and four-legged, are just meant to die out. Have you been following the current news about the wooly mammoth? Scientists in Japan and Russia are working on bringing them back to life. This is not quite Jurassic Park, as the mammoths have only been extinct for ten thousand years. Don’t get me wrong, I like mammoths; I hope they let them live in Central Park. Mammoths, however, have had their day, their place in the sun. They lived, they played the game for a while, and evolution ruled them out. Should we really be giving them a second chance at bat?

Which brings us to pandas. While I am ambivalent about mammoths, I don’t like pandas. You have to be about twelve years old to like an animal that looks like it lost a bet at a drunken frat party.

Pandas are growing extinct and all over the world, zoos are trying desperately to save them. We are down to fewer than 2,000 pandas. The problem seems to be that pandas suffer from a peculiarly embarrassing problem. They don’t want to get laid. Pandas in zoos evidently are given extensive opportunities; bachelor pandas have hot panda dates flown in from zoos around the world. Food, drink, and romantic lighting are provided… but nothing happens. I don’t suppose getting the big furballs drunk at a panda bar would work.

This sort of reminds me of an aunt I used to have. She was bright, attractive, and lived the last half of her life very much alone. As I used to tell her, “Let them that don’t want none, have memories of not gettin’ any.”

Though this is undoubtedly sound advice, it evidently doesn’t apply to pandas. These animals, for some reason are special; we have to keep them, even if they don’t want to cooperate. At the Chiang Mai Zoo in Thailand, for example, pandas are being shown special panda porn to help get them in the mood. Pandas are also being helped by giving the males a version of Viagra formulated specially for them.

Who exactly makes the panda porn? Is this a government job? Is a degree in Animal Husbandry required? When you are starting out in the business, do you make light romantic comedies for smaller animals? When Harry met Hairy. My Big Fat Goat Wedding. Hitched. Bringing Down the Horse.

Pandas evidently spend 16 hours a day eating, 8 hours a day sleeping, and no time whatsoever thinking about such important subjects as sex. Up until now, I had no idea that pandas had invented tenure.

Any animal so disinterested in sex is doomed. Hell, put any normal man in a cage with a panda and wait a few months--he’ll screw it. It will only take weeks if it is a female panda.

A Crackpot Solution

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 05:28:56 PST

After the meeting, the Head of Housekeeping came to me and asked, “Can you help me? I have a problem that just won’t go away.” And then she told me the story.

The Flagship Hotel had a management meeting every weekday morning. The heads of the various departments--security, engineering, food and beverage, accounting, front desk, and reservations--had breakfast with the resident manager and the general manager. I was the resident manager, and I ran the restaurant from dark to dawn, so while everyone else was eating eggs and pancakes for breakfast, I was having steak for dinner.

The head housekeeper’s problem was the lobby bathrooms--specifically the toilets. Several months before, the commodes had been treated with strong muriatic acid to remove water stains. Unfortunately, the acid was too strong and it had not only removed the water stains, but had damaged the porcelain glazing, leaving hundreds of fine cracks in the bottom of the toilets. These cracks caught, and held…let’s just say... some “unsightly” material that no one wanted to see in a public facility. Commercial grade toilets were too expensive to replace. The housekeeping department cleaned the restrooms several times a day, but the problem returned as soon as the toilets were used for their sole and useful purpose.

So every morning at breakfast, the management staff of the hotel would meet and we would go around the table discussing the previous day: what went wrong—and what went right. Most mornings, the front desk manager would report that at least one guest had complained about the toilets. This would be followed by a general discussion between housekeeping and engineering about possible remedies.

You might be surprised at how many attempts were made to repair those commodes. Both waxing and covering with clear acrylic paint were tried--unsuccessfully. Short of covering the seat with Saran Wrap, no temporary solution was likely to keep those cracks clean, so the problem persisted week after week, month after month.

So, finally, the head housekeeper asked me for help. “Mark, can you think of something? You seem to get your problems solved pretty quickly.”

Sunday night was the quietest night of the week for us. The weekend tourists left Sunday afternoon and by dark, the only people in the bars were locals. As soon as the bars closed at 2:00 AM, the hotel was fairly empty until Monday morning, when the traveling businessmen began checking in. Since there were no management meetings over the weekend, the Monday morning meeting was usually the longest and busiest of the week.

The next Monday morning, the general manager asked, “Does anyone have anything important to report?”

“Yes,” the head of security answered. “Sometime during the night, someone vandalized the lobby bathrooms. All the toilets have been cracked and broken. Looks like someone hit them with a hammer.”

“Bob,” the general manager asked the head of engineering. “How long will it take to get new ones and replace them?”

“We can buy six new ones in Texas City and have them installed by lunch.”

“Good,” the general manager answered. “Any other important news?”

The head of housekeeping glanced at me, but I just kept eating my steak. We never discussed the matter again, but the complaints to the front desk stopped immediately.

The problem had been solved directly and if not “correctly”, then at least permanently. There were eight managers sitting at that table, and if you consider what collectively we were paid, the amount of time we had spent discussing this problem (and the amount of time housekeeping and engineering had spent working on the problem) then as I calculate it, we were wasting enough money to replace those damn commodes about every 30 days. And we did that for months. Hell, we could have bought gold plated crappers.

Perhaps this is the way it is in any large organization. Far more time is spent talking about work than actually doing it. Sometimes, it is more effective to do something, even if it is not technically the correct action, than to do nothing.

By the way, the problem was solved, not with a hammer, but with a short tire iron (a tire iron slides under your belt and is much easier to cover with a sport coat).

Truly Random Thoughts During a Faculty Meeting

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:48:26 PST

I probably should be paying attention, as we only have these faculty meetings once a month, but there seem to be thirty-leven months each semester. And every damn meeting is exactly the same: the same people talk about the same things and no one is listening. They are, at best, only waiting patiently until it is their turn to talk (again). If Dr. Holland were to switch to Chinese (and he could) few in the room would notice!

Don’t get me wrong—these are good people and all of them are sincere (and God knows this campus has more problems than an adobe submarine) but nothing much will be done. The problem is that too many of my colleagues still believe the administration when it talks about “shared governance.” Personally, I find the idea that the faculty still naively trusts the Office of Moose and Squirrel’s banter about sharing the responsibility for decision making on campus to be roughly equivalent to adults still believing in Santa Claus.

Put another way, “shared governance” is about the same as a few wolves discussing the dinner menu with a herd of sheep. No matter how the sheep vote, we all know what the entrée will be.

So meetings are full of well-meaning talk but little action, forcing my mind to wander. I’m keeping notes with a stylus on my iPad, but there is little worth noting. It suddenly dawns on me how similar my iPad and stylus are to Tom Sawyer’s playing with his tick at school. He, too, had a slate and a pin. And, out of boredom, Tom passed the time at school by pushing the poor bug around the slate with a pin. I pass the time by writing random musings on my iPad during meetings. Same thing.

Zzz……

Has anyone ever questioned what really happened in “To Kill A Mockingbird?” After all, the entire story is told from Scout’s point of view and she was only a child. Perhaps she is lying, or told the story in such a way to make her father look good? There are clues to a possible alternative interpretation. Is it possible that Atticus Finch was a Muslim? Why else did he dress his daughter in a burka? And look what he wrote on it! I bet his full name is Atticus Hussein Finch…

Zzz……

The state is changing our retirement program again. The problem seems to be that, every few years, our state legislature decides to pass a law making two plus two equal some number other than four. They keep promising us retirement plans for which there are no funds. Unless New Mexico annexes some neighboring state, I don’t see how this is going to work. Probably the only reason they still let us retire at all is that it is cheaper than building a whole mess of clock towers…

Zzz……

Of all the things I am truly passionate about, why do I teach history? Because I love to tell a good story? If that were true, half of Texas would be historians. On the other hand, I’m glad I don’t teach something like math. What fun would that be? There’s a right answer.

Zzz……

Oh, God! They are talking about rewriting mission statements! Why does this come up every few years? No one knows the current statement, no one remembers the last one, and no one will pay any attention to the next one, unless we write something like: “It is the stated mission of this department to eat the brains of our students with a spoon...”

Zzz……

I wonder if there is a twelve step program for mimes. First you have to admit you are a mime, then you have to recognize that there is a higher form of entertainment, finally, you have to seek the sponsorship of an ex-mime. Probably not: how would you seek atonement? Ritual seppuku?* That might make it hard to fulfill the rest of the steps...

Zzz……

Professor Eagleton (whom I support 1000%) wants more diversity in the department. I agree; this department is full of free range Yankees who have slipped the fence and turned into feral carpetbaggers. I wonder if he would be satisfied if we hired a Cajun, preferably an albino dwarf who is a freemason snake-handling Buddhist who keeps kosher? If more than one applies, let's take the tri-sexual with a trick knee. I can’t think of anything that would terrify real minorities more than the idea that, once again, Whitey was going to help them...

Zzz……

I see on the faculty email listserv that Professor Maleficent wants something again… Who cares? She thought she wanted a career in teaching, but it turned out she just wanted a paycheck. She is living proof that hanging around a university doesn’t make you a scholar any more than standing in a garden makes you a potted plant--a perfect example that you are never too old or too educated to learn something stupid. A new educational paradigm? How about teaching?

Zzz……

Thank God the students can’t read the nonsense that faculty write on that listserv. If the students read our emails, we couldn’t fill a classroom with a net…

Zzz……

Oh good… they are talking about adjournment. I’ll bet the only part of Robert’s Rules of Order that anyone remembers is the section that says a motion to adjourn is always in order. I wonder if I missed anything?

*Seppuku—Ritual Japanese suicide. Also called hara-kiri. Literally translates as protracted faculty meeting.

The Wood-Fired Hot Tub

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 08:49:28 PST

Fifteen years ago, a friend of mine came across a unique item to purchase: a wood-fired hot tub. The tub itself was a massive barrel, constructed of giant staves held together with three steel rings. This monster was four feet tall and five across. To heat it, it had a strange submersible wood burning stove. The chimney and combination wood hatch/air intake were the only parts of the heater that stuck above the water line. It was billed as all natural--a green, or eco-friendly, hot tub.

Ira, my friend, worked for the state and heard through the work grapevine that another state employee had this tub for sale. The price was right, and Ira had to have it. So, early one weekend, Ira and I drove over to Lincoln, New Mexico to put the tub in the back of my pickup. The hot tub was behind the old sheriff’s house in Lincoln, about 50 yards from the jail where, in 1881, Billy the Kid had escaped and shot two deputies during the Lincoln County War. The sheriff’s house now belonged to the state, and was used as housing for state employees.

That tub was enormous--there was no way in the world we were going to lift it up and put in the back of my truck—where it wouldn’t have fit in any case. We had to loosen the turnbuckles on the steel bands and remove the staves, move it to the new site, and then reassemble the barrel. And we had a spot all picked out. My family owns a tiny little cabin on the side of Sierra Blanca, bordering the White Mountain Wilderness Area. It’s so remote that you can’t see another home for the forest. The cabin is a ramshackle little affair that was built by drunks—I know, I was one of them.

With the help of a large wrench and a ten foot cheater bar, we got those rings off and the staves went SPROING! For a little while there, we had flying lumber, but eventually, we herded all the pieces and the submersible stove into the back of the truck and we were off to the cabin.

There is a damn good reason why coopers, or barrel makers, are considered master craftsmen. Trying to put a barrel back together is like trying to assemble a jig-saw puzzle while inside a rotating clothes dryer--except that the pieces are big enough to hurt you. Neither Ira nor I had any idea how coopers actually perform this miracle, so we had to invent our own technique. The damndest thing about this task was that, as near as we could figure it, while we were driving down the road, people had seen us and decided we were gathering barrel staves and had generously donated several extras to our collection. We had enough wood to build at least one hot tub and still had enough left over to construct a foot bath. And just as miraculously, our steel bands had shrunk.

A four foot curved barrel stave under enough pressure can smack you into the middle of next week, and figuring out how to put the staves together took a lot of thought, beer, effort, and beer. In hindsight, it might have made the job a lot easier if we had numbered each stave with a chalk-drawn number. And an arrow so we could tell which way was up on each stave. And if we had been really smart, we would have left that damn barrel in Lincoln, where it was resting happily under a tree.

Eventually, using techniques and tools that would have left a real cooper laughing hysterically, we had the barrel together. The staves were solid, the steel bands so tight you could pluck them like guitar strings. And as we began to add water, that tub leaked like a congressional committee. Like a newborn’s diaper. Like a Polish submarine. That damn tub threw water out faster than we could put it in. Ira and I tried everything; we tightened, we wedged, and with the advice of an old mountain carpenter, we added about ten pounds of corn meal. Supposedly, this would wedge in the cracks and expand. I have no idea what did it, but eventually we got that tub water-tight.

The weekend was over and Ira had to go back to work, but luckily historians work by a more independent and flexible time schedule (known as rarely). As Ira drove off, I stayed at the cabin to enjoy that hot tub by myself. It took a long time (hours) to fill that tub. The well at that cabin wasn’t designed for producing large volumes of water all at once. Finally, I looked off the deck towards the tub and saw it was full enough to start a fire in the submersible stove.

Luckily, (really luckily as it turned out), the cabin was well-stocked with wood. I had a couple of cords of wood ready for winter. It was the beginning of fall, not nearly cold enough yet for a fire, but I had been gathering and cutting it for weeks. I dropped a little kindling down that hatch, shoved a few pages of newspaper down the hole and lit it with a match. It caught and I began shoving ever larger pieces of wood down that hole into a roaring fire.

I pushed a lot of wood down that hole--a hell of a lot of wood! It seemed like that stove could actually dissolve wood. A large log would just seem to melt into a large cloud of blue gray smoke. Maybe it was because that firebox was cold--the water coming out of that mountain well was frigid. Or maybe you were supposed to burn something other than the soft pine wood of a New Mexico forest. Maybe you needed hard wood, or charcoal, or pellets of plutonium. All I know is that I ran back and forth between the wood pile and the not too terribly conveniently located hot tub as I chunked the better part of a cord of wood down the hatch of that submersible stove. It was quite a while before I could notice much improvement in the water temperature.

This was all hard work in that thin mountain air and I had worked up a sweat carrying wood by this time. The day was mostly over before I finally decided that the water temperature was up to an acceptable level. Maybe it wasn’t a hot tub, but it was definitely a more-than-tepid-and-fairly-warm tub. Close enough! I ran through the cabin, flinging clothes every which-a-way, grabbed two bottles of beer from the fridge, and headed for that tub, naked as a jay bird.

Ahhh. The hedonistic pleasure of a solitary skinny dip in a private hot tub in the middle of the forest. After 40 hours of backbreaking, and fairly dangerous, work, I have to admit that the hot tub wasn’t bad. There I was, neck deep in warm water, a beer in each hand, and grinning like a moron. At least until the volunteer fire department showed up.

It seems the smoke had drifted down the mountain for quite a ways. As it was the wrong time of year for a fire in a fireplace, someone had called it in as a forest fire. The fire department thought it was hilarious, especially the women of the crew.

I never fired up that hot tub again. For several years, the tub was mostly used as a bear watering hole. Eventually, Ira was transferred to Lincoln and was given the old sheriff’s home to live in. Using a large trailer, and a lot of help, the hot tub moved from my cabin back to the same spot under that same tree where Ira and I had first seen it. As far as I know, it’s still there.

Occupy Something

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 14:03:53 PST

I didn’t know there was a local Occupy Something group until I read a story in the local newspaper about a young woman who had, at the time of the story, spent three weeks camping in the park in front of the local city library. This really surprised me; I was at that library a week ago and hadn’t noticed any sign of a protest. I didn’t think we had any 1% types in our small town to protest against, in any case.

It turns out that we are a hot bed of wild and angry protest. The dozen, well… half-dozen protestors were just boiling with rage as they cooked their Dinty Moore stew over on a Coleman stove. If not rage, then they were at least filled with seething apathy. I know for a fact that the dog that licked my hand could have turned violent--he had that wild feral look you only see in a demented cocker spaniel.

There were several tables displaying literature, a few more tables for food, several propane barbecue grills, and half a dozen tents. Except for the pamphlets, it looked like a deer camp. I wondered about camp sanitation until I spotted one of the protestors walking back from the library. What they do after dark, I have no idea. Perhaps they depend on the kindness of the police station across the street. Nah! I’m sure that the Voice of the People wouldn’t want to take anything from The Man.

Truthfully, it was a sad little protest. They seemed mostly to be upset at the coming orgy of shopping on Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving). “Stay at home, don’t go to the stores,” explained one of the protesters from the comfort of a folding lawn chair. “If you do go shopping, only buy things made locally.”

I think this is an excellent idea. This Christmas, I’m going to only give gifts made locally. Would you like pecans, chilies, or sand? While I may not go shopping, I’ll bet my wife does. You have a better chance of slipping a hamburger past a fat man than of getting the Doc to miss a sale. If I stood between her and a 20% off sale at Tuesday Morning, she’d stomp a mud hole in me and never look back.

Other than being upset at large box stores, I’m not too sure what they were protesting. There was a general sense of anger, but I’m not sure what they were angry about. I did take a picture of a protest sign, but I’m not sure it really provides much in the way of answers.

I’m fairly sure the author of the sign does have a degree in Social Work. That would explain the grammar and spelling. And possibly the author’s confusion.

Who promised her a free education? Or free housing? Or free medical care? I work at a university and I want their paychecks to clear the bank. I own a few apartments, and I expect rent. And my wife, the Doc, wanted to be paid for medical care. In actuality, the university doesn’t pay me much, my tenants usually have problems with the rent, and my wife only got paid about 50% of the time. Maybe I should start my own protest movement.

I believe there is some confusion about the American Dream. This phrase is frequently bandied about, but I don’t think too many people understand the concept, so let me explain. You can count this as your free education.

In the days of Thomas Jefferson, the American Dream was to own a farm. Jefferson did not trust cities or the men who worked in them. If you drew wages, you would always be beholden to the man who paid you, and thus you could never truly be free. But the owner of a farm could truly be independent and subject to no one. Only a free man could be trusted with the reins of citizenship in a democracy. Jefferson believed that a young man might have to work for a while, but eventually he could head west and start a farm of his own. Obviously, there are a few logical holes in this plan: some don’t want to be farmers, somebody had to make the farmer’s iron plow, and eventually there is no more land to the west to “win.”

The American Dream changed over time. By the beginning of the Civil War, the American Dream for many was to work and learn a trade until you could save up enough money to start a shop or a business of your own. Ante-bellum America was full of small businesses; the largest employer in the country was the Baldwin Locomotive Works, where roughly 600 men worked. You might start as an apprentice, but you could aspire to own a shop of your own.

Early in the Twentieth Century, the American Dream had changed again, to the desire to learn a skill, become a professional, and start a career. This takes more education, but just as much work and forethought.

The American Dream has evolved constantly in our history, but a few of the details remain the same. If you work hard, save for the future, and plan and put forth an effort, you can achieve independence and financial security for yourself and your family. Nothing in the American Dream has ever said anything about something being free. And it shouldn’t. Anything that comes that easy is rarely worth keeping, and is never a dream that will inspire you to achieve.

I had a nice long talk with the protestors; I read their signs, took their handouts, smiled, and even wished them the best of luck. I probably spoiled the effect a little when I got in my wife’s Mercedes and drove away. Of course, they don’t know we bought it second hand.

Target the Trash

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 23:01:00 PST

Volkswagen is sponsoring a new and fun initiative—literally. It is called the TheFunTheory.Com and as the website explains, “This site is dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or for something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.”

The whole idea is similar to Freakanomics--that behavior can be changed by altering the monetary incentives--but Volkswagen has decided that fun is a better incentive, at least in advertising, than cash.

One of the better examples of Fun Theory is a trash can that produces the sound effect of a falling whistling bomb whenever someone puts something in the receptacle. The explosion at the end of the fall is worth the wait.

I like this idea so much that I want to expand it. If the addition of a simple sound effect will more than double the amount of trash put into a park trash can, what could we do for highway litter? We need to think BIG. And sounds! And lights!

I call it the Trash Target. Put a large drum on the side of the road and surround the drum with large metal rings so it looks like a bull’s-eye target. Naturally, it needs a lot of paint (mostly red). I picture something about ten feet across. These targets could be put on the side of the interstate about every 50 miles or so. Since every driver will want to legally dispose of the car’s litter even while driving alone, the targets should probably be placed on the driver’s side of the highway.

Picture it with me. You drive down the highway drinking Dr. Pepper and eating beef jerky when you see the sign: “Trash Target Ahead 3 Miles.” This gives you about three minutes to get your window down and reach under the seat for that empty bottle. You have to time this right, gauge the distance, judge the speed and calculate for the wind—and you toss the bottle at the target. As you pass the target, you check the rear view mirrors just in time to see the pulsing strobes and hear the klaxon. A direct hit--success!

Naturally, most people will probably miss the target, so I suppose we should have some form of consolation prize. A donkey’s bray? A recording of the governor saying “Thank You?” No, wait--that’s redundant.

I would imagine the ground around the trash target might get a little messy. But at least the trash will all be gathered at one point instead of spread up and down the highway. It should be easier to clean up that way.

In the spirit of Fun Theory, I have one more suggestion for your car: a new ashtray. A fun ashtray. All you have to do is put a venturi (that’s a funnel-shaped intake that forces air through a narrow opening to create a vacuum effect) under the car, run the vacuum hose up into the car and have it come out of a hole mounted flush with the dashboard near the driver. As you are driving along, just flick the cigarette anywhere near the vacuum hose. The suction will suck up the ashes right out of the air, through the tube and eject them safely under the car.

I know what you are thinking. No, it’s not going to start a fire. It’s a cigarette ash, not a piece of burning coal. By the time that the rushing air pulls that ash through about 6 feet of hose, then dump it under the car, those flakes of cigarette ash will be about as cold as a mother-in-law’s heart.

I don’t even smoke, but I’d be tempted to play with this thing. I call it the Ash Hole.

Why Men Do What They Do

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 13:08:36 PST

Sandy, a colleague of mine at Enema U, was bragging this week about her husband rescuing her from imminent doom: he changed a flat tire on her car. I know and like Sandy’s husband—and I know exactly why he changed that tire. And so does every other man alive.

It is absolutely amazing what men will do for…uh…women. I maintain that women are the main reason that man has ever accomplished anything. Continents have been explored, rivers bridged, and castles built--all for women. The Taj Mahal is not the only monument built for a woman--everything created since the invention of the upholstered cave qualifies.

To be fair, man--alone without female companionship--would eventually have created a few other things (a list most likely limited to hunting, fire, and beer). I am sure that one day primitive man would have sat around a campfire, sated after a large meal of burnt meat, and as he slowly sipped his beer would have daydreamed about inventing a large block V8 engine with dual carburetors. And then that same man would have thought about how much work that would require and probably would have gone back to drinking beer. Civilization, without woman, would have peaked at the invention of the barbecue.

Naturally, I will offer you a story as proof. Whole broad swaths of this story are demonstrably and provably true. There are a few details, however, that might possibly be a little hard to track down, so I am changing a name. It probably wouldn’t be that hard to figure out the guy’s real name--after all, I am using his real photo. If you want to take the time, go for it.

Starting in the 1950’s and for the next 40 years, Red Adair was famous for blowouts (oil well fires). Some of these oil rig fires shot flames hundreds of feet in the air. Adair’s method of battling these fires was about as dangerous a job as imaginable. First, a catskinner (that’s a bulldozer operator) would slowly approach the fire, with the rest of the crew walking behind the dozer to escape the heat. An explosive charge was placed at the wellhead, and then the crew, all of whom were wearing special suits to protect them from the incredible heat, would withdraw. With a large enough explosion, the fire could be blown out. Then a new valve could be lowered onto the wellhead and Red Adair could fly home to Houston with a very large check.

Some of the fires put out this way are legendary. The Devil’s Cigarette Lighter shot flames 450 feet into the air for 5 months until Red Adair blew out the fire. On average, Adair put out about 40 such fires a year. After helping to extinguish the fires in Kuwait following the first Gulf War, Red retired.

In 1962, as Adair and his crew were flying back from one of those famous fires, a newsman and a camera crew were waiting for him on the tarmac at Hobby Field in Houston. Live cameras were new, and this reporter was hoping to get a story big enough that the New York office might notice him and move him out of Houston and off to the big show back east. It was a longshot, but just the year before, a local reporter named Dan Rather had taken a camera down to Galveston and reported on the approach of Hurricane Carla. That story had earned Rather a job in Washington D.C.

As the firefighters got off Adair’s private plane and made their way to their matching red Cadillacs, the reporter, followed by his camera crew, ran up and shoved a microphone under Red’s nose.

“Why do you do such dangerous work?” the reporter asked. Adair glowered at the man and walked around the microphone. Before the reporter could turn around and face the live camera, Three-Fingered Wallace reached out with his mangled hand and pulled the microphone over to him.

Three-Fingered Wallace was a catskinner and had worked oil fires alongside Adair for years. Driving that bulldozer was dangerous work, accidents were frequent, and in one of those, Wallace had lost two fingers.

“Son,” he asked as the camera focused on him, “did you ever try to fuck a hungry woman?”

Why do men do what they do? That pretty well sums it up.

It's Still 'Gee Whiz' To Me

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 12:17:46 PST

Not long ago I was driving across West Texas. It had a long time since Interstate 20 had been repaved and the tires hitting the sundried cracks in the asphalt produced a rhythmic thump like a cat in a clothes dryer. It pains me to admit it, but the scenery isn’t much to look at either. If you have seen one pumping station, the next few thousand aren’t much to look at.

That’s a straight and flat road, so either the monotony of the drive, or the constant thump-thump-thumping of the wheels lulled me into thinking about what this country must have been like a hundred years before. There I was, driving my wife’s SUV just outside of Abilene, my iPod playing through the car's stereo, and the trip was being tracked on the car’s GPS, picking up signals from multiple satellites orbiting the earth in space.

Fairly fancy technology when you consider that this is pretty much the same ground my grandfather traveled in a covered wagon. Has it really been so little time?

Recently, I told a student that my grandfather had been born in the nineteenth century; she looked at me as if I had just admitted to having personally participated in the Battle of Troy. In her eyes, I must have been the very personification of old age. Yet it is true--a little over a hundred years ago, my grandfather decided to move the family from West Texas east to Arkansas. The family possessions were loaded into an old mule-drawn wagon and he drove the team the long trail to the rail station in Abilene. There, the wagon was loaded and tied onto a flat car along with a wagon belonging to another family. The fare to Arkansas cost each family $21.

The family did not do well in Arkansas, and in just a few years, the same trip was done in reverse, and the Milliorn family returned to West Texas. I have no idea what happened, but it could very well be that my grandfather couldn’t adjust to the idea of farming with both good soil and adequate rainfall. Within a few years after their return, my father was born. So, my grandfather had traversed by covered wagon the area that I was driving through--twice. I guess I was traveling about twenty times faster, and my version of a covered wagon had air conditioning and a few other amenities.

Somewhere along the line, all the high-tech gadgetry we all possess today fades into the background and we cease to actually see it. At what point can I pick up my iPhone and not automatically think, “Gee Whiz!” in marvel at this impossibly clever device? Arthur C. Clarke said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” But when does the magic wear off? How many times do we have to see the trick before we stop being in awe of the magician?

I know it is a generational thing. Of course we take for granted the technology that was around when we were born, no matter how revolutionary. I can remember when my nephews visited and looked in puzzlement at a rotary dial phone; they kept stabbing their fingers into the holes trying to push some non-existent buttons. My sons cannot remember a life without cell phones and the internet. But I can. When did I stop being amazed?

It was at this point that I realized I had missed my exit by the same distance my grandfather could have covered in about a day with his covered wagon. I really should pay more attention to my driving. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. So does a fall down a flight of stairs.

Splish-Splash, There Goes Your Cash!

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 00:43:28 PDT

Someone once described a boat as a hole in the water which you try to fill with money. While I have no direct experience with boat ownership, I can tell you that owning a swimming pool is pretty much the same thing, it’s a hole in the ground that you dug with money so you can fill it with water.

After 25 years of owning a pool, I’m an expert. And I have all the receipts to prove it.

Having a pool can be a lot of fun. I have fond memories of teaching the boys to swim. Warm summer days and lots of sun, laughter and cold beer. I also have plenty of memories of endless hours of vacuuming half the sand of Arizona out of my New Mexico pool. I can remember adding chemicals to the water until my backyard would qualify as a superfund site only to have the pool turn emerald green the morning of a party. Somewhere, probably deeply buried in the filter, is a critical need detector. When you most want to use the pool, this sensor will shut down the pump motor, short out the wiring, or burst a pipe.

Oh, the joys of standing in the deep end of your dry pool as you slowly paint it with rubber based paint! Actually, this job isn’t too bad--after about ten minutes of breathing in the fumes, you start to giggle uncontrollably. It’s pretty much the same effect as quickly downing three dry martinis on an empty stomach. Getting the pool clean enough to paint isn’t much fun, however. It’s sort of like scrubbing a bathtub, only its 27 feet long. Every time we paint the pool, I try to convince my wife to let me decorate it. I’ve always thought we should paint an image of a drowned person on the bottom of the deep end. She doesn’t want to tempt fate.

Years ago, I was writing late at night--it must have been about 3:00 AM. My head was in a fog, I had been at it too long, and so I took a break and walked out in the backyard. The night was warm, it was a moonless dark night, and the pool had been perfect the day before. I stripped off all of my clothes, left them on a chair and jumped into the inky dark pool. It felt wonderful: the water was cool and skinny-dipping in my own pool in the middle of the night was perfection. I was really enjoying it as I slowly swam across the pool—at least until I swam face first into the dead squirrel!

It was amazing—I could tell it was a drowned squirrel without even seeing it. What kind of leftover evolutionary trait is it that allows a man to distinguish, with only his face, exactly what kind of dead rodent he has swum into? Was this a useful skill for cave men?

I immediately did my Jesus Christ imitation and levitated up out of the water and walked—on the surface—to the edge and turned on the light. Yep. It was a dead squirrel. Actually, it was the first one that we had ever seen in our back yard. He probably came over for a swim.

Strangely, I’m not the only one I know who has had a problem with squirrels in their pool. A few houses down, a neighbor had an above ground pool that mysteriously drained in a single night. On investigation, it turned out that a ground squirrel had tunneled up into the bottom of the pool. Poor thing was probably thirsty--but he probably didn’t want the whole 10,000 gallons.

Another friend of mine solved the pool vacuuming problem by buying one of those robotic devices that crawl around the bottom of the pool sucking up leaves and sand. She looked out her window one afternoon and noticed that the robot wasn’t moving. She went out to investigate, and you guessed it—it had sucked up a dead squirrel, head first.

Maybe we aren’t meant to have pools in the desert.

Are You Lonesome Tonight?

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 23:01:00 PDT

In 1971, I was a house dick at the Shamrock Hilton Hotel. In case you don’t know, a house dick is not a freelance fluffer, but a security guard. I have written about the Shamrock before, and sadly, that is all that remains of the old hotel as she has been torn down. When constructed, she was the largest hotel in the United States--18 stories tall and 1,100 rooms. She had multiple night clubs, several bars, and a pool so large that guests were occasionally entertained with exhibitions of water skiing.

The hotel was built by a great old Texas wildcatter by the name of Glenn McCarthy who had won and lost a few fortunes in the heyday of Texas Oil. To be frank, the oil wasn’t the only thing that was crude. After Glenn had tossed back a few, he used to ride his horse through the 5.000 square foot mahogany-walled lobby. That wasn’t too bad; it was when he took the horse up and down the elevator that a few of the guests (most likely Yankees) complained.

McCarthy had built the hotel to be his home; it is possible that is why it contained so many bars. Glenn had a personal and very private suite on the 17^th floor with an exclusive elevator that only stopped at his suite and a small underground parking garage just large enough for 6 cars. The entrance to the parking garage was in the alley behind the hotel, secured by a private gate that could only be opened by a security guard behind a very tall fence topped by barbed wire.

Show me a wildcatter who got rich on oil and I will show you one that will gamble his fortune on the next well. Once that black gold gets into your bloodstream, you are unlikely to ever find a cure. About six years after the grand opening of the Shamrock Hotel, still the biggest social event in Texas history, McCarthy had to sell the hotel to the Hilton hotel chain.

Let’s move forward to November 1971. I was a starving student so poor that the only place I could afford to live was a dump of an apartment next to a cemetery. Actually, this had certain benefits; my dates always received fresh flowers. At night, I worked the graveyard shift at the Shamrock Hilton Hotel. I guarded the alley. This was a pretty good job, as I had a lot of time to study and very little else to do. Very few people actually tried to steal that alley. Even today, although the hotel is gone, the alley is still there.

Besides protecting the alley from theft and trying not to be eaten by huge packs of stray dogs attracted to the incredibly large number of industrial trash cans in the alley, I was also in charge of the two buttons that opened and closed the gate to that private underground parking garage. By 1971, the only thing left of the old Glenn McCarthy days were wild stories and an impressive number of horseshoe shaped scars in the parquet flooring of the hotel. While I worked there, his old suite was used by security-conscious guests. During my employment, that private suite was used by Governor Ronald Reagan, Vice-President Spiro Agnew, Jerry Lewis, and… Elvis Presley.

I really don’t remember much about most of those other guests. When the Vice-President stayed, all I can remember is that a Secret Service agent walked my rounds with me. This guy scared the pee-widdling crap out of me—by morning I was ready to confess to the Kennedy assassination. This guy never said 10 words all night long, but somehow made me feel guilty about sins I hadn’t yet had time to commit.

Elvis was different. That hotel was alive with the talk about his stay. By the time I arrived at work, he was already performing at the nearby Hofheinz Pavillion. Naturally, he was booked into the secured suite on the seventeenth floor, the private elevator was at the ground floor, the small private underground garage was empty and waiting for his chauffeured limousine, and I was waiting by the button for his arrival. I was pretty sure I could handle this job, being proficient in the operation of both the open and the close button. The hotel management was a little less sure--I got a call on the radio about every ten minutes.

A little after midnight, I finally got the call; Elvis was coming! Within a very few minutes a long black limousine was in sight. I waited until they pulled up to the gate and stopped while I carefully stared at the limo to make sure it was the right one. Actually, I was just hoping to see Elvis--no one had actually told me what the car looked like and it wasn’t like I had seen a lot of black stretch limousines driving down that alley at midnight. I pushed the button and the gate slowly opened.

The insides of that car were as black as a congressman’s soul. I couldn’t see anyone inside; I couldn’t even tell if the car was occupied. Then, just as the car slowly crawled through the gate, a hand appeared in the passenger side window, a white-sleeved hand waved briefly at me, and then the car disappeared down the ramp into the tunnel.

That’s it. I hope you don’t feel too disappointed. Yes, I had a brief ‘brush’ with Elvis—he waved at me. There isn’t much left to the story. I pushed the other button, the gate closed and I never got anywhere near Elvis again.

Well, it’s almost the end of the story. About two minutes later, several cars pulled up outside by fence. Almost a dozen middle-aged women climbed out of the cars as fast as their somewhat plump bodies would allow. To a man-er…woman, they ran up to the chain link fence, clawed at it with plump fingers and screamed for Elvis. A few even begged me to open the gate.

I can distinctly remember seeing Elvis wave at me. A far more clear memory is me staring at those housewives and thinking…”My mom’s that age!”

Tough Enough Not To Wear Pink

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 12:44:59 PDT

Enema U is having its annual drive to help raise awareness in the fight against breast cancer; Spineless Enough To Be Coerced Into Wearing Pink Against Your Will Even Though You Damn Well Know It Is Pointless. At least, I think that’s the name.

This is probably the point where I should point out that while I admit to being an insensitive brute, I actually do sincerely care about breast cancer. My mother and my grandmother both died of breast cancer. My wife, the Doc has performed countless operations for people suffering from breast cancer, both men and women. I just object to group feel good exhibitions.

My university disagrees. Half the administration is running around in pink t-shirts emblazoned with the words, “Tough Enough To Wear Pink” while the rest are sporting sweatshirts that say “Cinco de Pink,” Evidently, this is the 5^th year that “we” have done this.

I’m sure the university doesn’t mean to stereotype people, but isn’t this blatant macho challenge to men to wear pink a little over the top? Do we really need to stereotype both sexes? Next year, will we ask if women are feminine enough to wear a blue jock strap to help raise awareness of testicular cancer?

A lot of the research institutions involved in finding a cure for breast cancer are equally tired of the endless breast cancer walks, breast cancer runs, and enough pink t-shirts to keep half of China employed. As one researcher put it, “If one more pink tschotske would cure cancer, we would be there already.”

It’s not like it hasn’t been tried. Go to Amazon.com and search for the words “breast cancer” and you will find 51,000 cute little doodads for sale. You can buy anything from pink golf balls to pink bracelets, each with a cute little pink ribbon and a promise to forward a microscopic portion of the sale price to some organization claiming to be a cancer institute. There is a lot of green in pink.

Do we really need to raise awareness of anything related to breasts? Almost everyone I know either loves them or has them. Short of a telethon co-hosted by Hugh Hefner and Christina Hendricks, I think it’s been done. Hell, two of my best friends are breasts. If a few more million little pink ribbons would do it…. No, that’s just not going to work. And aren’t we focusing on the wrong thing?

Heart disease kills more people, both men and women, than breast cancer. But if numbers are not the point, maybe raising awareness of cancer actually is a good thing. But enough of breast cancer, that has been done. Let’s pick a new cancer, one that really does need more attention drawn to it. That is why I am pleased to announce my new campaign to fight cancer.

Are you tough enough to smell like ass? If so, please wear one of our new brown scratch and sniff ribbons for colorectal cancer. Are you tough enough to get a colonoscopy?

Depression Impression

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 23:01:00 PDT

This country is either in a recession or so close to being in one that the difference only matters to television economists. Despite what the talking heads on television say, however, this is nothing close to the great depression of the 1930’s. The difference is not to be found in the endless statistics of the number of people out of work, the percentage of the underemployed, or even the numbers in poverty. I think the real difference is in the attitudes of the people who lived during those difficult times between the two world wars compared with those of people today.

The history books contain a story about a man who was suddenly unemployed and found it difficult to adjust to the changes in his life. Unable to find work, for three years he painted his house, over and over again. This man wasn’t just passing time--he was desperate to regain a sense of purpose, to retain his pride. I think this is the main difference: how the people of the Great Depression found ways to cope with the depression compared with the people of today.

I don’t have to resort to the history books to find examples--my parents told me of their own difficulties during that time. My mother’s family lost their farm and moved to the giant metropolis of Plainview, Texas, where my grandfather could find work. For the first time, my mother and her sisters lived in a town and had to get used to a new way of life. She told me that one of the small ways the family coped was that they tried to ‘pretty up’ the trash in the garbage can waiting at the curb for the trash truck.

When my mother told me this, I thought it was hilarious. “Why did you want to make your garbage look good?” I asked.

My mother patiently explained, “We were poor, everyone was poor, but we didn’t want people to see the proof of it. So we tried to make the garbage in our trash can look like we had more money than we actually did. We would put the prettiest trash on the top of the can where people could see it.”

“What in the world is pretty trash?” I asked.

“A piece of colored ribbon or a shopping bag from a fancy store,” she explained. “But the prettiest trash was to show you could afford luxuries--something like a watermelon rind. If you could afford a watermelon, you must be doing all right.”

Food as a luxury was something that must have been common in West Texas in those days. My father had a similar story. The farm he grew up on was not a financial success before the depression—when hard times hit it must have been only a few steps above hell itself. My father was not quite a teenager when the depression hit. Within just a few years, he would have quit school to find work and help the family. For a while, however, he found a few odd jobs after school for small amounts of change. He literally had to save his pennies. If he was lucky, by the end of the week, he could finish chores on the farm and walk the few miles to town to spend that saved nickel at the small local grocery store.

In 1932, a nickel would buy quite a few things in there, but my father had two favorites. Occasionally, he would buy a brown cardboard box containing five large white marshmallows. I can picture in my mind my father describing that box and how he would open the lid and lick some of the powdered sugar off of one of the treats before putting the entire marshmallow into his mouth.

Those marshmallows were good, and my father had a powerful sweet tooth his whole life. I have no doubt that my father bought quite a few of those boxes over the years, but that wasn’t his favorite purchase. Instead, he usually bought a can of cling peaches in heavy syrup. A nickel for a whole 12 ounce can of sweet, sweet peaches! Once the can was purchased, my father would sit on the curb outside the store and open that can with his pocketknife, and then slowly eat those peaches, one by one, until they were all gone. Then he would carefully drink the syrup out of the can, making sure not to cut his lips on the ragged edge of the can.

Why didn’t he take the can home? My father was one of eleven children. His mother may have raised an idiot son, but that’s my uncle.

The Great Depression changed the people who lived through it. It created values and built work ethics in those people that I’m not sure we will find in today’s generation. I don’t think hard times will bind today’s people with a shared identity or a sense of accomplishment. When the economy inevitably improves, will it have changed today’s people at all?

There is no doubt it changed my father. He died fifty years after the end of the Great Depression. When we cleaned out his kitchen pantry, there were 18 cans of peaches stockpiled there.

Probably Incurable

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 23:01:00 PDT

For the last few years, Enema U has been conducting an interesting psychological experiment. As the university is blessed with an abundance of surplus office and classroom space, the New Mexico State Psychiatric Hospital at Fort Bayard, in cooperation with the campus Psychology Department, has been testing a new form of treatment for the severely mentally ill.

The patients being treated share similar psychotic fantasies, the most notable being an incredible conviction of holding advanced degrees, of having vast amounts of specialized knowledge, and of being employed as professors of obscure yet vitally important arcane trivial subjects. While generally harmless, these self-proclaimed “professors” are maniacally driven to “teach” the knowledge only they possess. In most cases, this specialized knowledge actually amounts either to endless repetition of a minute amount of information or total gibberish, complete with an invented vocabulary.

Dr. Potluck from the New Mexico State Psychiatric Hospital at Fort Bayard has devised an innovative treatment situated on the campus of Enema U. Why not group these patients into an imaginary department of teaching faculty? Allow them to use some of the empty offices, conduct “research” as they wish, and even allow them to teach classes. In other words, if the only way these patients could cope with reality was with the gentle fiction of being real academics, then humor them, observe them, and learn from them.

Office space was secured, the patients were assigned offices, and they even selected a department head from among themselves. In almost every way, the patients behaved and acted as real functioning faculty. Their habits were unusual, their dress strange, and their interpersonal skills almost nonexistent--In other words, they blended in perfectly with the real faculty.

The charade was so complete that even assigning these pseudo-faculty to teach classes was accomplished. While some of the students in the classroom were actually attending physicians and nurses, most of the students attending the make-believe classes were actually students majoring in psychology. According to one of these students, “It is amazing how long this patient can talk about absolutely nothing, almost like a real professor. Sometimes, the nonsense almost sounds like it makes sense.”

Another student added, “Unless you listen to what they say, they act pretty much like everyone else on campus. It is amazing--they really believe they are actual professors. As long as you keep nodding your head and agree with what they say, it is pretty much like being in a real class. I really feel sorry for them.”

The doctors have had to be creative with some forms of the treatment. Group therapy sessions are called faculty meetings or committee meetings. Many of the more severely affected patients are required to attend multiple such meetings each week. Most of the patients take their arts and crafts projects seriously, even though most of the projects involve nothing more than chalkboards and finger painting. The patients invariably call their creations “PowerPoint Presentations” and insist they are for their students. Similarly, medications are often administered at after work drinking sessions. Occasionally, you will even hear the patients referring to erstwhile Scotch as a “medicinal drink.”

Though generally mild-mannered and timid, occasionally patients suffer a relapses. While still harmless, the patients are returned to Fort Bayard for treatment—usually shock treatment. These absences are usually explained as sabbaticals. Surprisingly, the patient invariably believes in these sabbaticals as well, frequently commenting after their return to the campus as “feeling recharged” or “energized and ready to teach.”

Dr. Potluck firmly believes in the efficacy of these experiments. While the patients themselves are probably incurable, locked into endless cycles of denial and delusions of grandeur, they may provide the key to unlocking the secret to how these damaged minds function. Close examination of the inner working of these poorly functioning brains may reveal how real academic minds work.

Dr. Potluck has recently revealed that one of the patients has promoted herself, and has just announced that she is now a Provost.

Teaching the Obvious

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 23:01:00 PDT

During World War II, the Army Air Corps trained navigators in San Antonio, Texas. There was a critical shortage of classrooms, so a local movie theater was used for some of the instruction. On the first day of training, the students were taken into the auditorium where a large globe was situated in the middle of the room. While the students watched, an instructor with a long pointer indicated the lines of longitude and explained that every 15 degrees represented roughly an hour’s difference in time zones and that once you crossed the international date line, it was a different day.

Up in the balcony, another instructor was watching this whole process. After 15 minutes of observation, he carefully watched the face of each student. If he spied a student who appeared to be confused, a checkmark was made on a clipboard next to the student’s name. Later that day, these students were dropped from the program and sent to an alternate training program.

The reason for this action was that after many classes, the Army had learned that the very idea of time zones and lines of longitude was a concept that students either learned in the first 15 minutes of instruction, or never really understood at all. Any continued effort was generally fruitless and a waste of precious time.

Here at Enema U, I sincerely wish that the same system were used in the various employee training programs for faculty and staff. No matter what the subject, sooner or later the entire class is halted while someone, (probably a professor of Home Economics--or whatever they call it this week), has to be taught how to use a mouse. Frankly, I wonder why we need these meetings at all. The university is absolutely committed to teaching all academic subjects online, but somehow every time it decides to teach the faculty and staff how to fill out a simple form, this must be done in person. Even the classes on how to teach online are taught in person…. Evidently, the administration doesn’t actually believe in online instruction, either.

On the other hand, could this be some form of advanced pedagogical technique? Perhaps, making the class as long and boring as possible actually insures that the student will never forget the experience. I’ve never tried this in my classroom, at least not deliberately, but I’m willing to experiment. Here are my guidelines for the perfect boring training session.

1. Make the training session mandatory, especially if the procedure you are teaching has not changed since the last mandatory meeting. As you start the program, (a minimum of 15 minutes late), remind the class how important the training is. Repeat this, but this time stress that it is very, very important.

2. Use exactly the same jokes as last year. This puts the audience at ease and makes them feel at home. Then, as an ice breaker, make every single person in the room introduce himself to the room. While pointless, it will let everyone know how valuable you consider their time. People enjoy hearing total strangers mumbling incoherently about themselves, and--who knows--months from now, if you happen to run into the Senior Vice-President of Urinal Cake Rotation, you will know not to shake hands with him.

3. No meeting is complete without PowerPoint--and be sure to give everyone a complete set of printed slides. In this way, the audience can follow along with you as you carefully (and slowly) read every damn slide. Everyone appreciates redundancy. Everyone appreciates redundancy. Of course, you could have just emailed this information, but group reading is so much more educational. Besides, some of the attendees might be from the Education Department and may need help with the big words.

4. Read slowly. Not only will this insure that ten minutes of material will last an entire hour, but It practically guarantees that no one will actually pay much attention. If you happen to have some tiny morsel of new information, it can be presented at this point to be certain that no one actually hears it.

5. Have lengthy question and answer periods. Everyone in the room will appreciate staying in the room while you explain (again) some minor point to the Professor of Home Economics who has her mouse upside down.

At this point, in any rational world, someone would come into the classroom and remove the Professor of Home Economics. Her 15 minutes are more than up, and she will never understand the concept. The rest of the class should be allowed to escape. Until next year.

The Litter Box Is Here To Stay

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 23:01:00 PDT

The Doc and I are empty nesters. Almost. When I met my wife, she was pre-doc, and for a while we had only cats, then we had children and cats, then the children left and we have only cats again. Maybe the only permanent things in our lives are the cats, uh… and each other. The people come and go and the cats are with us in perpetuity.

This wouldn’t be so bad, but the cats are always weird. When I met the Doc, she had a cat named HP. Supposedly, this stood for Honey Pie, but from the way this cat acted, it was usually more along the lines of Horney Pot followed by Hugely Pregnant. And it didn’t help matters that the cat was insane. The Doc had found the cat in a cage in the Psychology Department of our university and the poor thing was liberated and smuggled to safety inside the roomy pockets of an army surplus field jacket.

Unfortunately, it was soon apparent that the cat had been rescued after the experiments had been concluded. This was a wild-eyed escape artist that seemingly could walk through walls. Once, she pulled the screen off the kitchen vent and made her way into the neighboring apartment. When the neighbors woke up, they promptly threw her out the front door. And she just as promptly got pregnant.

My wife has always had a thing for rescuing cats. Right now, we have Dust Bunny, a gray Siamese so cross-eyed that each eye is staring into the opposite ear. My wife had to have this cat; we had to rescue him from the pound before the silly cat was put to sleep. Eventually, I gave in to the inevitable and brought the pathetic thing home. It didn’t take half an hour to discover why the cat was in the pound. He’s not exactly blind, but evidently he can’t focus on anything. He sees the whole world as full of large, blurry, weird, and frightening shapes. As a consequence, the cat is terrified of everything. He got his name because he spends the vast majority of every day hiding under the furniture with the real dust bunnies, the color of which resembles his fur. Frankly, he has pretty much the same personality.

While the Doc was in medical school, we rented a three bedroom house where the pets greatly outnumbered us. Besides a large collection of cats, (mostly the descendants of HP), we had a growing collection of tortoises that had been rescued crossing the highway. These critters were about the size of a hard hat, and just about as lively. Occasionally, we would bring one in from outside and let it terrorize the cats, who would refuse to get within a foot of the tortoise.

Once, for about a week, we had a rabbit. Driving to work one day, I saw a large, fat rabbit hopping along the sidewalk. Since I knew it was someone’s pet, and I knew it would get run over, I stopped the car to rescue it. Why not--if we never found the owner, it would make great stew. I had to chase that rabbit, finally catching it just before it tried to disappear under someone’s garage door that had been left open about 5 inches. I took the bunny home and let it loose in the house. As far as the cats were concerned, it was just an ugly cat with long ears. I can’t say the rabbit made any friends, but there were no fights, either. Eventually, I asked enough neighbors to discover the rabbit’s home. Remember that garage door? That’s where the rabbit lived--I had rabbitnapped him just inches away from his own home. His owner let him run free and the bunny always returned.

Shortly after Thanksgiving one year, one of the cats figured out how to overpower the magnets on the refrigerator door, in order to steal the remains of the duck we had cooked for the holidays. Evidently, the remains of that bird were used in a soccer tournament as the cats played all over that house. By the time we got home, the hard wood floors were pretty evenly coated with duck grease. The Doc and I cleaned, scrubbed, and eventually buffed what was left of the duck into a shine on those hardwood floors. It took a whole weekend, but eventually, we had a beautiful shine on that floor that no paste wax had ever given us.

About a week later, the Doc and I were in bed about midnight, reading, when we heard a strange noise in the hall outside our bedroom.

Thump! There was definitely a footstep in the hall leading to our bedroom. We looked at each other wide-eyed and Karen reached for the phone on the nightstand. Though the door was slightly ajar, nothing could be seen in the dark hallway.

Thump! Whoever it was out there was getting closer. I reached over to my nightstand and took out a gun. This was obviously a home invasion, and I was ready to defend us.

THUMP! This was impossible, the hall wasn’t that long! Someone was playing with us, but the sound of the footsteps was still getting closer. I held the gun in both hands, doing the best Weaver grip I could manage while sitting up in bed.

THUMP! Finally, the door slowly--terribly slowly--opened up… and opened up… to finally reveal that damn tortoise we had forgotten to put back outside. Every time that tortoise took a step, his feet splayed out in all four directions, slamming the bottom of his shell into the floor. That duck fat floor was not only shiny, but a little slippery.

The Keys to the Problem

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 23:01:00 PDT

It has been thirty years so I can safely tell the story--I think the guy in question is probably either dead or in jail by now. In any case, I doubt if he could read. And Hurricane Ike dealt a death blow to the hotel and now it’s completely torn down.

Thirty years ago, my wife was in a surgical residency in Galveston, Texas. While Galveston is a beautiful place to visit—well, we didn’t really want to live there, but we had no choice if the Doc was going to complete her medical training. There were very few jobs for a computer guy on a small island whose economy centered on the tourist trade. Eventually, I was employed as the resident manager of the Flagship Hotel.

The Flagship was unique: a large hotel built on a pier extending over the Gulf of Mexico. The entire hotel was, quite literally, on the water--actually over the water, with an ocean view for every room. The Flagship was a great, old, weird hotel with a past that stretched way back into the days when the mafia ran the town, when prostitution and gambling were ignored, and when untaxed liquor ran about as hard and fast as the pounding surf under the hotel.

Those days had been the wild youth of the hotel, but when I ran her when she was a genteel and mature lady whose clientele were families and honeymooners. About the only evidence remaining of her uninhibited youth was a trap door in my office where one of my predecessors could quickly dispose of the gambling paraphernalia in the event of a raid. I never had to throw any poker chips down that trap door, but I did occasionally open the door for the view while I did paper work.

I liked the Flagship. She was a fine hotel, but if there was any one single recurring problem, (other than the occasional hurricanes that eventually claimed her) it was the fact that the hotel was large while the pier it rested on was small. To be specific, we only had enough parking for 90% of the guests. And this was a large problem, since parking off the pier along Seawall Boulevard was absolutely impossible.

While the mob was long gone (mostly) from Galveston, there were no shortage of thugs. A group of which had gotten together and bought a small lot on the main tourist drag just yards away from the entrance to the hotel. Though the lot was paved and striped for parking, there were signs warning that no parking was allowed, and that violators would have their cars towed away! Actually, that was the whole point since the lot was owned and operated by Five Thugs Towing, Inc. At least, I think that was the name. These gentlemen would tow your car to the far end of the island, and then charge you $85 for the return of your car. Remember, this is thirty years ago, and back then that was however much money it was back then. Roughly the price of a three bedroom house. Or something like that-- my memory is a little fuzzy. Whatever, it was too damn much money just to ransom your own car.

This was legal, but about as ethical as putting a tiger trap in a school yard just to collect the used clothes. And the five thugs who ran this operation were soundly hated by every businessman for blocks around.

When the hotel was full, we asked customers who could not find a parking space on the pier to leave their car keys at the front desk and we would double park their car at the end of the pier (keeping their keys so we could move the car if necessary to allow a blocked vehicle to escape). This was a real pain, as the bellboys spent a lot of time moving cars around all night long.

One Sunday morning, after several guests had checked out and driven away, I gave a set of keys to a bellboy and told him to move the guest’s double parked car, a Camaro, into one of the empty parking spaces. After a while, the bellboy came back and said there was not a single Camaro on the pier. I didn’t believe him, so I double checked. We did an exhaustive search--no Camaro. I had a premonition that I knew what had happened, but I checked anyway. The bellboy who had parked the car the previous night was new, and when I called him at his home, he remembered the Camaro. He had found “a really nice place to park it in an empty parking lot across the street.”

I made the phone call, and sure enough, it had been towed by the Five Thugs. The guy at the impound lot was laughing his ass off; I could have the car for $85. There was no choice--the hotel was going to have to pay the fine, and hopefully bring the car back to the hotel before the owner found out about the boneheaded mistake. I got one of the bellboys to drive me to the impound lot in the hotel courtesy car.

The impound lot was damn near in the swamp at the west end of the island. It was a large lot surrounded by a barbed wire fence containing dozens of cars, tow trucks, and one very angry guard dog. Just outside the fenced lot were a small shack with a single tow truck sitting in front of it. Inside the shack was a soulless cretin with his feet up on a desk, grinning like a drunken raccoon. I ignored his laughing, paid him the extortion, handed him the keys to the Camaro and asked for the car.

The wrecker driver slowly stood up and picked up a huge loop of keys. A piece of rope about three feet long with a hook at each end held dozens of key rings. There must have been two hundred keys on that loop. The driver escorted me out of the shack, locking it behind him, then went to the gate, unlocked it and drove the Camaro out, stopping to close the gate again, locking the guard dog and all the cars and trucks inside the lot. Finally, he drove the car over to where I stood waiting.

“Here ya’ are, boy,” he said. “Sure nice doing business with ya.”

I got behind the wheel, shut the door and began driving back to the hotel. Within a block, I heard a horn and a quick glance at the rearview mirror revealed that my thug was right behind me in the tow truck I had seen parked in front of the shack. This wrecker driver seemed really upset, waving his arms, flashing his lights, and honking constantly. There was no way in the world I was going to stop for this asshole, so I floored the gas pedal on that Chevy.

Have you ever driven a Camaro? They’re nice. That tow truck had a lot of power, but the Camaro ran like a stabbed rat. It was a damn good thing this race was on a Sunday morning! The streets were deserted with no pedestrians in the crosswalks. That guy behind me was determined, and we tore across the island running the lights and ignoring the speed limit. I beat him back to the hotel with just enough time to yell out the window to the guard at the hotel entrance for him to call the front desk and have the security guards and the bellboys out in front immediately.

As I braked to a stop in front of the hotel, a few of my employees were waiting for me (thankfully, for the wrecker driver skidded to a stop right behind me). I got out of the car, left the door open and stood on the sidewalk beside the car. The wrecker driver leaped out of his truck, ran to the car and jumped inside.

“Whar’ are my keys?” he roared. “I know you didn’t throw ‘em out the window, I was right behind you. You must have ‘em!”

Now it seems this poor schmuck had misplaced that big loop of keys. The only keys he had in his pocket were the keys to the tow truck he had been driving while chasing me across the island. Evidently, he believed that I had somehow stolen those keys.

“Gimme my keys! You gotta’ have ‘em. I can’t get back into the office. I don’t have the keys to my house. I can’t even feed my dawg!” The voice was a little more pleading and a lot less demanding, but after several long minutes of searching, he knew those keys weren’t in the Camaro. And he could see that I didn’t have them. This was Texas in 1980. I had on a white short-sleeved shirt and a pair of blue jeans so tight you could tell if the dime in my pocket was heads-side up. I couldn’t have put a fraction of those keys in my pocket without that man seeing them.

It took several minutes for that driver to finally give up and drive away to look for those keys at the impound lot. Maybe he had dropped them there. He had searched the Camaro several times, and begged me to tell him if I had seen the keys. Eventually, he even offered to give me back my money--all to no avail. I just stood there, shaking my head. Finally, at the gentle urging of the security guards, he drove away.

I stood there until he was out of sight. Then, I slowly walked towards the railing at the end of the pier. I had really enjoyed that race across the island, even though I had been a little busy. As soon as I had gotten into that car, I had noticed that huge key ring lying on the seat. As I drove off, I had taken out my pocket knife and cut that rope.

I could just barely walk across that pier, but when I finally got to the railing, I took off my cowboy boots and slowly poured all those keys into the ocean. I’ll bet they are still down there, right on top of all those old poker chips.

An Economic Choice

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 23:01:00 PDT

Someone asked me yesterday just what I thought I was doing in this blog. Was I telling stories, spreading lies, or dispelling demons? It was suggested that Texans just couldn’t answer a question without telling a story. I suppose that I am guilty of this and I admit, that if the only way you can make a point is by telling a story, sometimes it seems like you have to go down three sides of the barn to get to the horse at the end of the rope in your hand.

Still, in my own mind, I like to think my stories have an educational point. With that in mind, let me tell you about Bob.

Bob is no ordinary guy: he is an economist working for the government. Working at the Treasury Department, Bob is used to making complex decisions that will affect the financial well-being of not only the United States, but the world. Sometimes, Bob can see these problems looming on the horizon for weeks in advance, giving Bob the time necessary to make the correct decision.

At other times, a situation arises so quickly that, to paraphrase Rex Stout, Bob has to use his intelligence guided by experience and make a quick decision. That’s why the government hires an expert like Bob--to make decisions on the spot for impossibly complex problems.

Bob was a little shocked yesterday when his wife called him and demanded that he come home immediately--there was a crisis at home.

Bob’s house is at the end of a circular drive at the bottom of a hill facing a golf course. While his house is the lowest lot in the neighborhood, he has the best view. That day, however, an otherwise perfect location led to a crisis. The neighborhood sewage system uses a pump at a lift station to handle the difficult task of moving the liquid and solid waste uphill. Yesterday, the pump suffered a catastrophic failure while in the open position. Instead of moving the sewage up the hill, the system was reversed, draining raw sewage back to the lowest point in the neighborhood; unfortunately that point was Bob’s house.

When Bob arrived, his wife was hysterical. Tens of thousands of gallons of horrible stinking sewage had backed into his house, flooding the first floor until the level of the waste was about 7 feet deep--just inches below the ceiling.

Bob called the city utility and demanded immediate action. Unfortunately, the people from the city said they had no idea how long it would take to fix the pump, and were not even sure how to begin. As I am writing this, nothing of consequence has actually been done.

So what do you think Bob should do now? Pump out the shit or raise the ceiling?

This is a difficult decision, for there are valuable programs, er… things in that house that might be lost if you just pump out the house. Surely, if Bob just waits, the problem will stabilize. After all, it’s never been a problem in the past. On the other hand, almost anything of value in the house will be destroyed by the sewage and….

Oh to hell with it. You can only stretch this metaphor so far before it breaks. Congress raised the debt ceiling and spent hundreds of billions of dollars in just a few days. To keep giving this government more money makes about as much sense as giving an endless supply of liquor and guns to a college fraternity.

According to Washington, if we don’t keep borrowing and spending money, the country will cease to function. Will we know the difference? If the country can’t find a way to stop spending, can we at least start charging the debt on a Discover Card? We’ll still owe about the same, but the end of the year rebate might be enough to pay off the state of New Mexico’s debt.

Charity Begins at Home; I Just Wish It Didn’t

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 23:01:00 PDT

Do you have people using the mail to beg for money? I sure as hell do. Almost every day I get a handful of letters wanting me to donate money for damn near everything. I’m sure the causes are just: research for a cure for bedwetting, starving poets, retirement homes for the criminally stupid and perennially weird, and other such worthy causes. On the same day, I got two letters--the first pleading for money to rescue homeless dogs, while the second letter asked for donations of food for a gospel mission. I sent the dog request to the mission and the mission request to the animal people. I figure if they get together they can solve both problems at once. I even sent a note volunteering a recipe, but I haven’t heard back from them.

I get a lot of charities sending me address labels. I guess I’m supposed to feel guilty unless I send them money. Obviously, they don’t read this blog, but I do appreciate the little labels. A few of them even spell my name right. Since these people are obviously enamored with the postal service, I humor them by taking the time to stuff their prepaid postage envelopes with as much junk mail as will fit. Before I mail it back, I make sure to use one of the little return address labels. Anything else would be impolite.

The local electric company has an interesting idea of charity. I have a letter soliciting donations to help pay the bills of people who can’t pay their own bills. This almost sounds like a good idea, until you realize that what they are really saying is: “We think you should give us the money we might lose if these people don’t pay their bills. We believe that instead of us losing money, you should. If we can convince you to give us some money, we will only lose half as much while appearing generous! Now that’s a good cause.”

This is a good racket. I bet every company would like to figure out a way to convince people to make good their losses. Somehow, I doubt that the local bank can convince us to make half of someone else’s car payment no matter how sad the story.

I have a similar complaint about a local group of otherwise fine local business men who organize a circus every year. These fez-wearing business men do many excellent civic minded activities—but I simply do not understand their annual attempt to convince me to donate money so they can take blind kids to the circus. I’ve got nothing against blind kids, but if the fez guys want these kids to attend, why charge them at all? Hell, it’s their circus.

Actually, why go to all the fuss and bother? Couldn’t you just take the blind kids someplace and sit them around a bucket of elephant shit while you played a recording of a circus? The kids are blind--they can’t tell the difference. One guy in a pickup could drive across the continent and take all the blind kids in the country to the circus. In a pinch, I don’t suppose they could tell the difference between elephant shit and steer manure, either.

Everybody wants your money. As soon as I reached my 50^th birthday, the American Association of Retarded People (AARP), a group that evidently thinks senility is synonymous with retirement, started sending me…stuff. Letters, flyers, and magazines--all with large and easy to read print promoting a fairly constant message: Send us money or evil Republicans will make you eat dog food! Amazing Medical Discoveries! Fiber is Your Friend! Who knew that there was so much profit in pimping age?

I don’t think the AARP pays much attention to some of this--the literature is just an excuse to beg for more money. This month’s magazine has a smiling picture of Michelle Obama on the cover. Below that, and in what I sincerely hope is a separate story, it says: “Scam Warning! The New Face of Fraud!”

Congress Should Play Together

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 15:20:06 PDT

Our nation is broke. Evidently, if it took a dollar to go around the world, Congress couldn’t get out of bed. There was a story last week stating that Apple Computers had a cash reserve larger than the US Treasury. That seemed alarming for a while, then I realized you could say the same thing about my cat. While my cat is exactly broke, the US Treasury is $14 trillion in the red. I’d run my cat for Congress, but he’s overqualified.

Congress seems to be addicted to spending. It is amazing to think that if you raised every tax bracket by 50%, and somehow did not crash the economy, we would still have a trillion dollar deficit for this year alone. By comparison, the simple needs of crack whores seem relatively mild and normal. And as a whole, the American people don’t seem to be overly concerned. Now that television news comes in assorted flavors, each of us can find a presstitute who will reassure us that it is someone else’s fault.

Since Congress couldn’t agree on budget cuts, a special committee of twelve highly partisan politicians, (most of whom are infamous for accepting large donations from various interest groups) have been selected to do the job that Congress as a whole could not. Naturally, this will never work. The committee will not agree on any budget cuts, and even if it did, Congress as whole will not accept its recommendations. This is probably just as well--Congress would probably end up voting to spend more money.

I have a small suggestion. When my brother and I were growing up, my father got tired of our constant bickering and fighting over absolutely nothing. Like all fathers, ours didn’t want justice, he wanted quiet. Eventually, he invented a game for us to play that would settle our differences without anyone actually losing body parts or breaking furniture. While not exactly quiet, the spectacle was entertaining.

The game was called “Are You There, McCarthy?” in honor (more or less) of the late Senator McCarthy. It is a relatively simple game to set up. Each boy, blindfolded, is seated on the floor with his legs straight in front of him, with his left ankle tied to the left ankle of the boy facing him. Each boy is armed with a rolled up newspaper. If there is an age difference between the boys (as was the case with my brother and me) the size and thickness of the rolled up newspapers could be adjusted to level the playing field.

I say “boy” instead of “player,” not out of any overt sexism, but just because I think your reasoning needs to be somewhat influenced by testosterone to play this game effectively.

The playing rules are equally simple. When it is your turn, you may ask a single question, “Are you there, McCarthy?” If your opponent answers, you know, more or less, where he is by the sound of his voice, and you get one swing of the newspaper to clobber him. If your opponent remains silent, you get two swings: one to find him and the next to brain him. Then it is the other players turn. Repeat as necessary.

This is a game that needs a referee, as it is relatively easy to cheat--blindfolds slip, and it is very tempting to take more swings than the rules allow. The persistent family story that I once rolled up my newspaper around a short section of broom handle is a vicious lie perpetually perpetrated by my brother. (It was a broken hoe handle.)

Congress needs to play this game. The benefits would be enormous. It would relieve an amazing amount of tension between the politicians; it is also even possible that it might beat a little common sense into a few of them, hoe handles not withstanding. Most of our politicians could use a little cardiovascular workout, and quite a few need to have some spectacularly bad hairpieces removed. If Congress televised the event, it would definitely raise the ratings for C-SPAN. Better yet, make it Pay-Per-View and use the income to balance the budget. I’d pay $25 to watch a match between Charlie Rangel and Michele Bachmann. (And before you email me, yes, I know Michele Bachmann is not a boy. I figure if she gives Rangel a testicle, they will each have two and the game will be fair.)

Even the newspapers would benefit. It’s not like anyone is actually reading them anymore.

Sciurus Non Carborundum

milliorn@nmsu.edu (Mark Milliorn) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 08:22:37 PDT

It is a hectic week here at Enema U. Students are due back in just a few days, so in keeping with tradition, there are several sweeping changes and campus alterations being announced at the last possible moment. It is a well-known concept in education that nothing can be truly improved until it is totally destroyed.

So it follows that quite a few streets, parking lots, bicycle lanes, and walkways have recently been closed for renovation and repair by the MOB (Maintenance Of Buildings) office. As explained by Vinny Giaconno, the Associate Assistant Executive Vice President of Renovations, “These repairs will be completed by the end of June, long before the students come back to class. Besides, we’ve been busy negotiating a new waste removal contract.”

The Personnel Department has been equally busy. All married employees have been asked to produce copies of their marriage licenses to prove they are not defrauding the health insurance program. Evidently employees are guilty, and single, until proven wedded.

I figure this is probably a mistake, at least in my case; they probably meant to ask for a copy of my parents’ marriage certificate. I think I can save them the trouble: I will readily admit to being a bastard, but it had nothing to do with my parents’ marital status. I am proud to admit that I am a self-made man. Prior to coming to work for the university, I was only a self-made son-of-a-bitch, but I’ve been eddicated.

Perhaps the biggest change, at least for the faculty at Enema U, is the new digital measures program. For years, the administration has striven to perfect a process whereby they could evaluate the performance of faculty. Consider the problem: all the administration could rely on were arbitrary concepts like enrollment, class popularity, student evaluations, peer assessments, publications, or service work for the university and the community. Wouldn’t it be much more efficient if the administration could figure out a simple digital, and statistically manageable, measurement system to tell them who were the truly productive faculty?

You can imagine the excitement here at Enema U when the new evaluation process, the Numerical Uniform Teaching Scoring System (NUTSS), was announced. Developed by the Head Rodent in the Office of Moose and Squirrel, the faculty was sent a memo this week announcing that (at a full dress convocation in the coming week), she will proudly show off her NUTSS. And while she acknowledges that her NUTSS are modestly small at present, before long her NUTSS will be found in every departmental office on campus.

The pilot program has been extremely promising. It was tested by the Department of Creative and Interactive Social Justice Education, and while the faculty was originally justifiably afraid of the administration’s NUTSS, before the trial period was over, many faculty members were publicly saying they were ready to give up the old system and kiss the administration’s NUTSS.

Said Professor Ken Holland, “I had never handled NUTSS before, but after a while I got used to it.”

Initially, there was some concern that a computer virus might contaminate NUTSS, but this problem was quickly licked. The Administration urges that only routine protection should be used while using NUTSS. Or as one member of the administration said, “No matter what you heard, our NUTSS are safe to use.”

Regular use of NUTSS, essentially a large database, will soon insure that everyone in Administration will be able to access complex reports relatively easily. The goal is to have NUTSS exposed to every faculy member by the end of the semester. Within a very short time, even department heads will be able to produce sophisticated reports by manipulating the Administration’s NUTSS.

Proudly, Enema U developed NUTSS and nothing like it can be found at other universities. This situation may soon change, as several universities have expressed an interest in seeing our NUTSS. One administration official is reportedly emailing photos of our NUTSS worldwide. In the years to come, there is no telling where you could find Enema U’s NUTSS.