Remember the old days when you had a telephone installed and the man from Ma Bell did all the magic stuff he did and ta-ta!? You got yourself a real telephone. A big momma with a rotary dial and built sturdy enough to beat an intruder half to death.

Well, a lot of much younger folks might not. I do remember rotary dial phones. The first phone that I can remember in the second house in which I grew up was a rotary dial. A note: The first house I lived in — from birth until I was around 10 — didn’t have a phone that I can remember. I seem to remember hearing my parents had a phone at some point in time in “the old house” but I don’t remember it. Nevertheless.

My first phone, after I got out of the Navy and worked as a firefighter, was a touch tone. That had the same keypad layout you see to day. Those type of phones also were a transition to life without a central switching office with actual humans who would dial the number for you. Can you imagine that?

Of course, I am not old enough to remember depending entirely on an operator for a call. But you would have to call an operator to make a long distance or collect call, as well as for local information. The mother of a friend from high school worked as an operator in the little telephone building in my hometown. I could always tell her voice when I dialed “O.”

This was before the days of recorded voices telling you which numbers to punch, driving a sane person half mad and and a mad person insane. That was what happened today. It’s kind of involved, but these days when you deal with a cell company, it’s always that way. I don’t have a land line these days, BTW. (Oh come on, you know that means “By the Way.” Get with it!)

I recently switched my phone service from T-Mobile to Verizon because Verizon provides my wireless Internet.—> I went to the Verizon store and got a new phone, but not the one I wanted. —> The phone I bought had a faulty camera. (Wow, when I was a kid I could have never imagined a camera on my phone. I couldn’t have imagined a phone one takes everywhere.) —> I got into an argument with the store guy because I didn’t feel like I should have paid a $35 restocking fee to make a basic dollar-for-dollar trade. —> I raised a little hell with Verizon, then I raised a lot more hell. —> The company waived the restocking fee and sent me a “new” phone. It wasn’t new, however. It was used and a Blackberry. I didn’t want a Blackberry. The phone I wanted already had mobile Internet access. Wow. What’s an Internets? —> Today I finally got my phone. I programmed it but had to call Verizon six times to get everything I needed done.

And there you are. I live in a time I never imagined as a kid except,  perhaps, when playing like I was Dick Tracy from the “Funnies” and the weird-looking detective who wore an interactive TV on his wrist watch.

So today, we have tiny little telephones that can communicate over a wide world and find out damn near anything — although you have to be careful as to the veracity — and write little messages damn near anytime. You can take pictures and just send them right over the phone. I can even make a video. On my phone!

But to do all of this, we have to go through our own little brand of Hell. Instruction books one receives when you get a new phone, or computer or TV are basically little pamphlets that don’t instruct. When one calls “customer service,” the path is littered with voice “prompts” at every turn, followed often by waiting to speak with someone which can sometime last hours. Finally, you might talk with someone who works who knows where and who knows what they are talking about, or not.

This all leads me to ask: What price for magical methods of communicating on devices which are built as much as for convenience as they are for the actual act of communicating with someone?

Sometimes, I think the answer to such a question is “a lot.”

You could get Miz Jeanette, the operator, by simply dialing “O.” You could speak with a person you know. If you were a few cents short to make a call at the pay phone outside the phone company, it wasn’t a big deal. You didn’t have to yell and raise nine kinds of hell to get results in your favor. That was unthinkable. You could get results, most of the time, by being polite.

It’s too trite to paraphrase Bob Dylan that the “times, they are a’ changing.” But I did. Damn. I got to go and check my e-mail.

Your what?

I speak of the jihadist — our main enemy these days — who killed thousands on 9/11 and continue to kill with their strapped-on explosives or even with weapons of mass destruction if they are available. Many Americans probably see these fighters as young men with brown skin and haunting eyes. Some are from the poor neighborhoods where their lives have been one of want and lack of justice. Others come from privilege, courtesy of the petro dollars from the massive oil and gas wealth of some Middle Eastern states.

But others who fight civil society also seem normal and are the boy next door turned “The Jihadist Next Door,” which is also the title of a fascinating New York Times Magazine article I read yesterday. The article — by Pulitzer Prize winning writer Andrea Elliott — explores the life of  Alabama boy Omar Hammami.

Omar is the son of a Syrian immigrant, and Muslim, who married a Southern Baptist from Alabama. His intellect and wit drove Omar to become one of the most popular kids in his high school. He was steeped in both of his family’s cultures including spending summer days shelling peas on his maternal grandmother’s farm.

But eventually, Omar’s intellectual and religious curiosity steered him to those with the more radical interpretations of Islam, in which as a student and young adult Omar became increasingly entrenched.

A fascination with Somalia — complete with a Somalian wife — landed Omar in that African nation, held together by threads of authority. Now, the young Alabaman who still signs off “Later Tater” to his sister in e-mails has become one of the most powerful and fiercest jihadists in Somalia.

If you are looking for answers as how a seemingly normal young Syrian-American boy, the smart but funny kid everyone likes, becomes a jihadist you will either be disappointed or find yourself looking ever deeper.

Perhaps it is the lack of a solid reason why this young man, who says he considers America a target in the Jihad, is both so frightening and interesting. Maybe the clash of cultures were too great for Omar to withstand, even though on the surface he seems more assimilated than many Anglo Americans. He doesn’t appear to be a product of bad, or even lackadaisical parenting. So why is Omar a jihadist? It is a question that too often has followed the end to tragic cults, which is the closest I came to a parallel. If you are prepared to read an excellent article with an open mind, you might not be disappointed not knowing the answer to that question.

 Perhaps parents in “more traditional” homes will read their kids “The Night Before Christmas,” a rather quaint yet enduring poem about a visit from St. Nick originally published in the early 19th century. Certainly the children having “sugar plums” dancing through their head is a quite obsolete reference these days, unless the kids happen to be ripped on some kind of illicit drug.

 Great literary works usually are rewarded with a parody sometime along the line. As for our “Night Before Christmas” one might see variations such as this, for Pennsylvania deer hunters, “The PA Deer Hunter’s Night Before Christmas.”

  “… I looked out the window across the moonlite snow with glee,
  HOLY COW, there was 8 big buck standing underneath the tree.
  I grabbed the 30–06 and started the sneak,
  because I knew the game wardens were all asleep … ”

 And in the southeast corner of Texas, adjacent to southern Louisiana, where I live and itself home to a large Cajun population is the “The Cajun Night Before Christmas” complete with a fractured-English-Cajun dialect:

    ” … Then up through the bayou
           Dey got such a clatter
           Make soun’ like old Boudreau
           Done fall off his ladder … ”

Christmas stories are just as large a part of the holiday itself. Take for instance, the story of the Baby Jesus, de t’ing what got it started all. And over the years I have kept a keen eye out for a good Christmas story only to come up empty. That is, until reading a story by a witty writer named David Sedaris. Sedaris was raised in North Carolina, is gay and now resides in France. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. He has written a number of books which are compilations of mostly autobiographical-to-auto-fiction-graphical essays, many of which tales either involve his travels or life with a rather unusual family that includes his sister, comedian Amy Sedaris.

 I first read the Christmas story to which I refer in the Dec. 1, 2002, edition of Esquire. The piece is called “Six to Eight Black Men.” It is a tale of Sedaris trying to understand the subtleties of the Dutch version of Santa Claus, who was traditionally accompanied by “six to eight black men.” These black men were originally slaves but modern sensibilities transformed them in more recent times to “just good friends,” albeit with nothing in between. It was teased in Esquire thusly:

    ‘A heartwarming tale of Christmas in a foreign land where, if you’ve been naughty, SAINT NICK and his friends give you an ass-whuppin.’

 So settle back for a glimpse into another country’s version of Santa, have a few chuckles and be glad you’re an American where you might just find yourself in the deep woods staring at a blind deer hunter.

 Click here to read: “Six or Eight Black Men,” by David Sedaris

  Have a Merry Christmas.

Here is a very short synopsis about Festivus and more can be read in this pretty good Wikipedia article:

Festivus is a made-up holiday introduced to the world on Dec. 18, 1997 on the incredible late 20th century sitcom “Seinfeld.” The holiday is just one more gift to society given by the genius comedian Jerry Seinfeld and his writers. A line of such cultural gifts from Seinfeld and cast exists, like “close talker,” “regifting” and “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.” The date on which it is celebrated was portrayed on the show as Dec. 23. The premises of Festivus, as explained by character Frank Costanza — father of one of the main characters George Costanza — was a reaction to the hyper-commercialization of Christmas.

The major symbol for the holiday is an aluminum pole. Traditional practices include “Feats of Strengths” and the “Airing of Grievances,” in which each person tells the others present how they disappointed him or her that year.

Probably no one knows, but Festivus is actually celebrated by people in reality. There are three Festivus Facebook groups with more than 15,000 fans. Just what those numbers mean, I couldn’t begin to tell you.

Since this is a holiday that really lacks any rigidity it is a perfect one for me to celebrate. I don’t even have an aluminum pole this Festivus, but I might go out and find one. Although you can buy a Festivus pole online, I think it kind of defeats the purpose of thumbing one’s nose to commercialism. No offense Festivuspole.com.

People throw stuff away left and right, including aluminum poles. That is especially true in places where hurricanes seem to strike every third week and folks are continually rebuilding their homes when they aren’t fighting the insurance companies in court.

And for those of you who read my blog, or even worse, know me personally, you know that I have no shortages of grievances to air. No one says the grievances one airs must necessarily be pointed toward friends or family. So here are just a few of my grievances for this year:

People who park their huge-a** trucks or SUVs across more than one parking space. Do these people think that because they have a large automobile it entitles them to park however they desire? Or are they just stupid? Especially during the holiday season when parking spaces at malls or other shopping areas are crucial, one should grasp the idea that parking spaces are there for a reason. A space isn’t there to make you conform to society’s rules. It is there to ensure everyone who can grab a space has a place to park. That is so these potential customers can buy things and the shopkeepers or large corporations can get filthy rich! Oh no, this rant has just gone South Pole with my musings returning to commercialism. I have just run myself into a literary circle of no return.

Well, that’s it. I have other grievances but instead of airing a few I just hit a dead end thanks to commerce. Screw it. It’s time to enjoy the holiday before the holiday (before the holiday if you celebrate Boxing Day on Dec. 26.)

Oh I forgot the Feats of Strength. I think I will pass on that this year.

Have a great Festivus and you know what you can do with the pole.

It can happen when you hear someone whistling some tune while they toil away at some task or another. You go to your kids’ school plays and the little ones sing something just darling and later that night while you try to sleep that song is still there. And then, there is background music as in music to shop by.

Now the grandpappy of background music, known as Muzak, has been around for years. As early as the 1950s — a time when the least little thing could get people wound up, a special congressional committee would be formed — there were charges Muzak was causing brainwashing.

I would imagine the subject of manipulation through background music would be research gold for a music-loving social psychologist. From what little scientific reading I have done I don’t know this to be one way or the other a fact. This piece suggests that playing classical music in a wine store made shoppers buy more expensive wine. Whether that would mean that playing Sousa marches in a gun store would cause customers to arm themselves to the teeth is something to think about, but I don’t know that to have been specifically studied and affirmed.

Nonetheless, it seems at the very least background music in grocery or department stores do seem to make songstuckus – my made-up word for a song being stuck in one’s head — more severe.

Since a great deal of my work is done in different stores, I listen to a lot of background music. I never really thought much about store music until I started visiting many different stores. Even when I go to stores now just to shop I am somewhat taken aback by the variety of background music in stores.

Go to the store just up the street, with a decidedly more working class black population, and you may hear Soul from the 60s and 70s. Before you know it, you’re walking out of the store with groceries in your arms and Eddie Kendricks and the Temptations in your head singing “The Way You Do the Things You Do.”

Sometimes the songs you hear will stick with you even though you may not have ever heard them or hadn’t listened to a particular song in years. Like at a drug store in Port Arthur awhile back while waiting to speak with a pharmacist. “Hmm, hmm, hmm.” Wow, what is this? And you remember from way back to “Toulouse Street” on which the Doobie Brothers quietly sing “I might just pass this way again.”

Today it was early Beatles I hear over and over. “If there’s anything that you want/If there’s anything I can do/Just call on me, and I’ll send it along/With love from me to you.” Such simple, melodic, pop music. You wonder what all the hubbub was about when the Beatles first appeared on the scene wearing identical suits and moptops? Nonetheless, the song got stuck in my head at a store this morning and now I can’t get it out!

I don’t really know why music from the store has such an impact. It is played at level in most cases where it is almost subliminal, which makes some sense. But if it’s meant to affect you, to buy more toilet paper and six-packs of Busch, then why does the lyrics and music get stuck in your head and not the products themselves?

It’s jus another one of life’s great mysteries, unsolved, with love from me to you.

 I speak of the recent flap over a poll placed by a third party on Facebook that asked if the President of the United States should be killed. That such a horrendous post would be put up by some dips**t for millions of readers is stupid beyond imagination on more than one level. Some 700 responses were received before the offending poll was removed by Facebook. Left out in all the stories I have read were the numbers voting in the affirmative. We thus have little knowledge whether the omission was a gesture of good taste or something to do with the ongoing investigation of the incident by the Secret Service. It would be kind of instructive to know.

 Given that a person or persons are stupid enough to post something so obscene makes me think there are people who are as equally moronic that they would answer online in favor of the question. 

 Now I don’t know if all Facebook polls are created equally but I see quite a few voted on by my Facebook friends that are exhibited in plain view on their sites. But even if the poll allowed for some smidgen of anonymity, do you think that maybe authorities like the Secret Service might just find a way to crack that secrecy via warrants and various legal niceties?

 It doesn’t matter if you were joking — and if you were joking I can’t imagine anyone with the sense of humor to laugh at such barbarity — if you were stupid enough to vote on that poll and answered something other than “no” it seems like you should be due a visit by some scary looking dudes wearing suits and dark glasses. And that is the way it should be.

 Some actions do not rise to the level of felonious stupidity. I say posting this poll on Facebook, and voting at all, but at the very least voting “yes” or “yes if he cuts my health care” is grievously stupid.

 I don’t know whether these names come from the FBI agent who serves as media liaison in the larger division offices or whether the bureau has a computer that generates monikers in the way random generators do on some Web sites. Needless to say, some of these which I found today while looking through the FBI’s Houston Division press releases were amusing.

 The prize goes to the “Sweatin’ to the Oldies Bandit.”

 Actually, the alleged bank robber reminds me more of an overweight and unmasked Klaatu

“Klaatu barada nikto”

 from “The Day the Earth Stood Still” than some Richard Simmons devotee. Hi-ho Silver (above) robbed two Houston banks in late August within less than an hour’s time. No idle hands here.

 FBI agents are as well on the look for another busy bank robber, this one dubbed “The Grandma Bandit.” Now I would be willing to bet this “grandma” would have appreciated a more flattering nickname.

“You could use some castor oil and I could use all your money”

On Friday Granny allegedly robbed two banks — both Compass Banks — in a time span of about an hour. What’s with these fast robberies? I guess that like a rolling stone, these bandits don’t care to gather any moss, or coppers.

 Finally, I think the FBI were scraping the bottom of the barrel coming up with this name, The Déjà Vu Bandit.

 Weird.

 One doesn’t have to read all the top right-wing blogs or listen to the major reactionary talk radio shows to know that anger is dripping like blood from the Carter-haters today after he stated what many less prominent people have been saying for days. That is, of course, that the behavior behind the “You Lie” outcry of Republican U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina is steeped in racism.

 Now it is no surprise that everyone and their dog who supports Wilson says there is no truth to such a charge. Even President Obama’s press secretary Robert Gibbs says his boss doesn’t agree with Carter’s assessment. We are left to take the Big Man’s word as to whether such a statement from the first African-American president (Obama’s daddy and not Obama himself if you will remember was born in Africa) is sincere, playing politics or are all of the above. Therein is the problem “Bigger than Dallas” as people say down here in Texas unless they live in Houston or Fort Worth.

 Racism is not something one can see like, say, a three-headed chicken. It is not an olfactory sense like whiffing the aroma of a dead mackerel on the beach. Nor is racism to be heard (well, at least the feeling or behavior itself can’t be heard), tasted (except in some rare instances of poisoning) or touched (fill in your own exception.)

 You may call Joe Wilson a racist all you want. One might say that much of the dyspeptic right-wing political actions as of late certainly appear as being spurred by racism, such as keeping the children from watching their president give a speech on staying in school. But the fact is, if Joe Wilson says he isn’t a racist, there is little short of some legal action such as a criminal conviction for a hate crime that will prove it. Ditto for those who screamed that they wanted to save their little innocent darlings from being indoctrinated by Nazi-commie-pinko-homo-freaking-Democrats.

 What makes the charge of racism even more difficult to prove is that save for those who dress like punk-rock icon Henry Rollins, as in his guest gig on FX’s “Sons of Anarchy,” most racists are not going to show outwards signs of racism nor admit their feelings.

 Some racists will jump up and down, shout, knock the crap out of, perhaps even kill you if you dare label them a racists. Why? Because they do not see themselves as such. It’s not nice to be called a racist. It’s kind of taboo.

 On the other hand, if you were raised in a culture in which your parents or grandparents, neighbors and even your society expressed racial prejudice — such as the “White” and “Colored” water fountains and rest rooms I used to see growing up — that doesn’t make you a racist.

 If anyone believed that racial prejudice was going to be quickly dispatched by the election of a black (and half-white) president then perhaps now it is (way, way past) time to come back to reality.

 That there are those in politics who are using the so-called “race card” to their advantage — on both sides — likewise shouldn’t be shocking. That is because the race card is a trick card. It is there when someone says it is there, and it’s not there when someone says it is not.

 Likewise, I’ve not heard from other parts of these United States of thousands of red and yellow, black and white, they are precioius in His sight children marching with clinched fists extended toward the heavens shouting their praise for Barack.

 What? It couldn’t possibly be that President Obama’s speech to the nation’s school children has not touched off the so-feared socialist indoctrination the right-wing tried so hard to suggest would happen. Oh my. Perhaps it will be something covert.

 Little boys cutting their hair short and wearing polo shirts like their savior Barack and little girls dressed like Sasha and Malia are probably in their dens right now plotting the coup of the children.

 Teens, instead of playing ball, drinking some illicit beers and smoking cigarettes are meeting inside libraries trying with all their might to ignite the socialist will for their hero, the great Barack Hussein, o mighty socialist ruler!

 Silly? Hell yes it’s silly. Like Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs said the other day: “It’s the silly season.” It was a thought echoed by Education Secretary Arne Duncan. The furor, Duncan said, is “just silly.”  Silliness is the right’s forte and it has been spread like wildfire via a cable news cabal full of folks who are too f**king lazy to go out and report real news with meaning. No, they want drama. Drama is all important.

 Let the hairy-armed, Joe the Plumbers wearing wife-beaters, tell the story with their ignorance. Screaming and crying: “We want our country back!” makes for more dramatic shots than pointy-headed Democratic smart guys and gals sitting around doing the policy wonk thing.

 And then, there is, how shall I put this? There is this 800-pound g*****a in the room about which no one is saying a word.

 Many didn’t want their kids to watch Obama’s speech today because they held deep-seated beliefs that the federal government needs to be out of their schools. No matter that tons of federal bucks help keep their schools up and running. Others didn’t want their kids to get “brainwashed” by the socialism being warned about by the right-wing noise machine. And if  either reasons one or two didn’t do the trick, we still have that 800-pound g*****a in the room.

 Yes, some people don’t want their kids being spoken to by a black man, or at least a black president. Maybe it would be okay if the kids heard a speech from Michael Jordan, or Shaq, or Bill Cosby, or even Collin Powell. You know, they all be the “hired help.” But it just won’t do to let their kids hear from some black man who dares holds himself up as the president. Why, he wasn’t even born in the USA was he?

 You think I am imagining something? You think I have “black guilt?” Not one iota. I am sorry many blacks were enslaved many, many, many years before I was born, some of whom were sold into slavery by their own people. I am sorry but not wracked with guilt.

 I talked with an old college friend yesterday who was raised in an affluent and very white part of a large American city. We got to talking about this silliness surrounding the Obama speech and without hearing my views, he said that the silliness stems from people not wanting their kids to hear a speech from a black president. Bingo!

 Where is all the talk about a new day and hope and perhaps a new dialogue on race that the cable pundits and reporters (except from Fox) gushed about when Obama was elected? Now those same cable wise men and women seem to salivate when they can find any fault with BHO, not to mention an angry crowd of men in wifebeaters whose big-haired wives are ruining their painted faces, Tammy Baker style, by crying for a lost America that either was never lost to begin with or at the very least was lost by Mrs. Heavy Hair.

 If you want to know the truth, I haven’t been as scared at what might happen in this country since 1968.

 During that year of Tet, riots, assassinations, the world going topsy-turvy and not to mention being 12-turning-13 years old, there was plenty to freak about. The last eight years of George W., 9/11, the no weapons of mass destruction invasion of Iraq and a war in Afghanistan, were unsettling enough. The right wing was angry. Hell, they’re always pissed about something.

 And it was not unexpected they would get pissed when the Democrats took over, led by a black man.

 But the right wing wing nuts have become even nuttier. It seems that since they can’t get their way, right away, the old George W. “My Way or the Highway Style,” then they will just throw tantrum after tantrum and show how infantile and unsteady they are.

 I don’t know about you, but that scares the ever-loving hell out of me.

Ted Kennedy was the second Kennedy brother of John F. who never made it to the coveted presidency. That worked out okay for people on both sides of the political spectrum. The right didn’t get the liberal Kennedy brother as president. The left and center got a pretty damn good legislator and one hell of an orator of the likes one never sees anymore in Congress. Byrd was an old-time orator but he has just become too old to do the job. I’m sorry to say.

Ted Kennedy had his faults like all human beings. He wasn’t a good driver to say the least. But he was a tough old bird who did a lot of good for a lot of people.

If you didn’t like him or can’t find something for which to admire him, I’m sorry. I can find good in even the sorriest individuals on Earth with maybe the exception of Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity … Oh, Limbaugh does a good impression of a pig running around with a stick in his mouth when he inserts a cigar. My uncle used to say when he would see someone smoking a cigar: “I guess it’s going to rain. I see a pig running around with a stick in his mouth.” You had to be there.

So there is my short eulogy for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., the late. Rest in peace.