Tag: blog

Remember Going Out for New Year’s Eve?

This year I am staying home for New Year’s Eve.  Not that I would otherwise have gone out.  Going out for New Year’s Eve has always been for me a fun but long and arduous duty, with many minutes standing in cold air, far from food, beverage, or restroom.  But this year I have an excuse.  I can tell people that I really would have liked to run out into the cold, dark air and ring in 2021 with pomp and parade, and that because of the pandemic such hopes were dashed. And they will believe me.

When you stay home for New Year’s Eve, the hardest thing to do, I am finding, is to stay up until midnight.  When I was a child, staying up until midnight was more than a rite of passage – it was a way of conquering nature itself, of saying, “I will greet the new day when I will!”  And then I went through a time where staying up until midnight was nothing, because midnight was still evening.  

And now…now staying up until midnight is like holding a full can of paint at arm’s length.

To pass the time I shall take stock of the year’s doings, of what I have, and of what I’ve left undone. As for what I have, I count a total of five masks – two of them with strings knotted beyond salvation; two more that fell on the floor in a public place; and one that has acquired the odor of many lunches.  I was supposed to have ordered new masks, but the mails have slowed to such a crawl that the post office publishes guidance on making things by hand.

What will I remember most about 2020?  I think the better question is what will I forget?  Never before has a year left its mark like this one.  This was the year that I wiped down frozen pancakes with isopropyl alcohol.  This was the year that I followed arrows pasted on the supermarket floor.  

The most forgettable part of the year to me is the part before mid-March.  Those hazy months of January and February are now like a dream of some forgotten childhood, where life was innocent and free, and I frolicked about the garden of good feelings, and ate sweet fruit straight off the vine.    

The year 2020 was destined to be a year of masks and social distance, of new protocols and the end of many things that we took for granted.  As if the year of perfect vision would like corrective lenses let us see things that we had not seen before, would like an LG flatscreen display our blemishes in Ultra High Def, would like the Sword of Omens give us sight beyond sight.        

And as I pretend to wish that I was out on the town, in the crowds, breathing in their exhalations, I look towards 2021 with a mixture of gratitude, hope, and a firm resolve to stay awake for at least a few more minutes of 2020.

Posted on by Mark Kaplowitz 0

Remember When the Trial Subscription Was Really a Trial?

Yes, the rumors are true.  I missed the deadline to cancel a free 7-day trial subscription of a streaming channel for a smart TV.  The particular channel is not important. I assure you, it was something educational.

I was not that late.  The evening of the deadline, I had been busy cleaning the coffee pot, and had become so absorbed in my work that I lost track of time.  And when I was done, I realized, Oh, I had better cancel that streaming channel.  And it was just about ten or at the most fifteen minutes past midnight.

White text on blue background that says "FREE FOR 7 DAYS"

I already had an email from the channel, containing a receipt for my payment.  I called up the channel to request a cancelation and removal of the charge.

“I’m sorry, I cannot remove the charge,” said the billing clerk.

“Surely there is some exception,” I pleaded, “some special procedure, some authority with the power to take off the charge.  Please!  My payment for Misfit Fruit is due this month and I need to make sure I have enough to cover it.”

“I’m sorry, sir.  All sales are final.  Except – “

“Yes….?”

“Except there is this process where you can request a trial.”

“Really?  A trial?”

“Yes, but I have to warn you, we don’t get very many people using the trial procedure.  Are you sure you do not want to simply pay the charge.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but in the warrior’s code, there’s no surrender.”

The trial of Streaming Channel v. Myself took place three days later.  Of course it was via Zoom video chat to maintain social distancing, and once again I had trouble with the background.  Fortunately, under the Zoom Court’s rules, the jury is sequestered until all Zoom background issues are resolved.  

As the first belligerent in the matter, the Streaming Channel put its case on first.  It called the billing clerk as a witness.

“And how are customers billed?” asked the lawyer for the Streaming Channel.

“On the first of every month, the bill goes out.  It is automatic.”  

“And what would have happened if the customer had canceled on time?”

“Then the customer’s name would have been taken off the billing list.”

On cross-examination, I asked the billing clerk if there was any empathy at the Streaming Channel for someone who was only ten or at the most fifteen minutes late with canceling the streaming service.  

“I’m sorry, I don’t have the answer for that,” said the clerk, “but if you visit our website, you’ll find a place where you can chat with one of our customer service representatives.”

The trial was then turned over to me.  First, I put my neighbor on the stand, who testified that in 25 years of living next to me he has never known me to be late in canceling anything, including a streaming television service.  It was brilliant testimony.  It should have ended the case right there.  Unfortunately, on cross-examination my neighbor was compelled to discuss our plum tree dispute from several years back, and the implied conflict of interest undermined his credibility.

Then I called a freelance technician who testified that the time stamp of the channel was not accurate.  Unfortunately, on cross-examination, the channel proved that my witness technician had an unusually high number of returns via Amazon, strongly suggesting that he ordered things just to use them once with no intention of keeping them.  I let myself have a glance at the jury – something they tell you not to do – and on their faces read nothing favorable to my side.

Finally I testified in my own behalf.  I told of my struggles at remembering to cancel free trial versions of things.  How growing up, my parents worked with me late into the night at remembering to cancel free services.  How I had forgotten to cancel a free compact disc service (remember those?) and how the experience had made me rethink my entire approach towards free services – that the service was never really free, that it was the work of thousands of unnamed and unthanked individuals who perform their jobs with diligence and dignity, and all they ask in return is that I notify them of my intent to cancel by the deadline, usually 7 or 14 days from the day you sign up.

The jury was in tears.  Deliberations lasted all of 10 minutes.  They returned a verdict of “no liability” meaning the charge would be removed, and I wouldn’t have to pay anything, and I even got a new trial subscription that I just had to cancel by the deadline.

The channel’s attorney congratulated me on my win; a professional to the end.  I held an impromptu press conference on the courthouse steps, where I thanked my legal team, expressed gratitude that justice prevailed, and closed on a message of hope. 

“My hope is that one day such efforts – such trials – will be unnecessary and people who are only 10 or at the most 15 minutes late in canceling a streaming channel can avoid a charge without having their lives tossed about.”

My finest memory of that day shall be the faces of the children in the audience, who saw at last that the system can be trusted, but that you should still remember to cancel the free trial by the deadline.

Posted on by Mark Kaplowitz 0

Remember When This Avengers Movie Wasn’t Everywhere?

It was another slow day at the Little Puppet Theater.  The theater director, ringed by hanging puppets waiting to be used, hung up the phone. “Dang!” he said.  “Another cancellation.  Big party too – fourteen cats from the cat shelter, with staff.  The cats wanted to see the new Avengers movie. What is it with this Avengers movie?  Everywhere I go, it’s Avengers this, Avengers that. Did you know it is 3 hours long? Did you know that Thanos destroys half the universe?  Uh oh! Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert!” The director waived his hands in the air.

The set designer looked up from his phone.  “Did you say something, sir?”

“What is it with this Avengers movie?”

white star

“Well,” said the set designer, taking a deep breath, “the Avengers: Endgame is the culmination in the epic series of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, abbreviated MCU if you really want to sound cool, to rival the last epic series, called…oh I don’t remember what is was called.”

“Aha!” said the director, clapping his hands together.  “So that’s the secret! You need a series.” He rubbed his hands together.  “Well this gives me an idea!”

The first installment of the Little Puppet Theater Theatrical Universe (LPTTU) was “Pinocchio: The Beginning.”  A toymaker makes international sales of wooden puppets to belligerent regimes. While making a pitch one day, the toymaker is captured by partisans, but escapes by turning a pile of firewood into a large wooden puppet body suit and then doing a dance – “I got no strings…to hold me down” – kicking up his legs and twisting his head around – thereby distracting the kidnappers and making a clean getaway.

The performance had a decent run.  There were a few classes of school age children, and a bus from the nearby home for people who refuse to use touchscreens.  Reviews were mostly positive. The role of Pinocchio was praised for its energy, but a few critics found it lacked depth.

The next show – “Howdy Doody” – premiered a few weeks after that.  In this show, Howdy Doody – a puppet introduced in a small role in Pinocchio: The Beginning – is a scientist working for NASA when he discovers a wormhole to a planet 2,000,000 light years away.  On the planet, Howdy Doody finds a neckerchief that, when taken back to Earth, magically turns its wearer into a huge tv star even though the wearer is an extremely creepy-looking marionette.

“Howdy Doody” was both a commercial success and a leap forward for the franchise.  Critics praised the “growth in maturity” that the theater had shown in the sequel of what could only promise to be a series for the ages, something that would one day come in a box set wrapped in shiny cellophane and bearing a gold sticker proclaiming that there was contained therein additional material not in the original run.

For the third installment of the Little Puppet Theater Theatrical Universe, they decided that Kermit the Frog was going to hatch a diabolical plot to destroy the world, assisted by (and some would say, driven by) his partner in crime, Madam Piggy.  The play was produced in the greatest of secrecy, with a few well-placed rumors circulating, such as the final battle with Pinocchio and Howdy Doody. The marketing started a year in advance. Fast food restaurants sold plastic figurines of the puppets with kids meals.  The puppets appeared on morning talk shows. Large companies ran tv commercials using cheap references to the LPTTU.

By the opening night of “Kermit and Piggy: Apocalypse” the media was saturated with coverage.  This promised to be the biggest opening weekend ever for a puppet show.

“You did it, sir!” the set designer said.  

“No,” said the director.  “We did it.  They said that puppets shows were dead.  We showed them!” It was a proud moment for the theater, and would have been prouder still, but the Estate of Jim Henson sued for copyright infringement, and the Little Puppet Theater Theatrical Universe met an ending that can only be described as epic.

Posted on by Mark Kaplowitz 0

Remember When You Could Fire the FBI Director Without Getting a Lot of Flak?

So the President has fired the FBI Director.  I’m surprised it took this long.  Maybe the FBI Director owed the President money for a lost bet, and the President figured as long as the Director was still in Washington, I’ll have a better chance of collecting.

In the second season of The Apprentice, there was an episode where the contestants were tasked with creating a dog grooming business.  at the end of the episode the businesses were reviewed by the host, our current President, and he decided that they very worst performance was that of a contest named Stacy.  “Your charity was the Kitty Kat Shelter.  Why would dogs care about cats?  Stacy, you’re fired.”

Almost immediately, there were calls to appoint a special investigator to investigate Stacy’s ties to cats.  It turned out that two months before she appeared on The Apprentice, Stacy had met in a hotel room with a Maine Coon and two tabbies.  Her aides had originally denied the meeting but a few gray and orange hairs were found on her jacket.

Then there were calls to investigate the cats.  At first no one could find them.  But one of the cats was caught posting photos on Facebook of a party where Stacy and the President were in attendance.  The cat was issued a subpoena to testify before Congress, but his attorney sent a message that his client was sleeping and would not awake for several years.

Then there arose a rumor that there were videos of the cats paying Stacy in return for her designating the Kitty Kat Shelter as the beneficiary of the dog grooming business on The Apprentice.  The videos were also subpoenaed.  But the cat’s attorney replied that the tapes were no longer in existence, but were of the cats just squeezing into baskets and so were completely useless (although still very cute).

The whole affair was dying down and the media were about to give up and go back to covering Nicole Kidman’s strange clapping at the Academy Awards.  But then they got a break.  The President tweeted that “These cats better hope their breath doesn’t smell like tuna fish!”  This tweet was considered unusually enigmatic, even for the President, and breathed new life into the investigation.  Soon a connection through a company that manufactured tuna fish was revealed.  It turned out that the President, early in his career as a real estate developer has owned a piece of a tuna fish company and had used cats for quality control.  When the cats complained about the low wages and infrequent changes of kitty litter, he locked them in a room and made them taste tuna fish all day long, permitting only 12 hours a day for naps.

After the company went bankrupt and the cats escaped when someone opened the door to grab the paper, the cats later blackmailed the President into paying them.  So he came up with a scheme to funnel money raised on The Apprentice to these cats, using Stacy as a pawn.  When Stacy threatened to reveal the real reason why a dog grooming business was benefiting a bunch of cats, the President fired her, claiming the reason was her poor management skills and bad decision-making.

When all was revealed it had the making of the greatest scandal since Watergate, encompassing all levels of government and the animal kingdom.  No one thought that the President would be able to bounce back.  But then House of Representatives passed a bill cutting aid to people who clap strangely (and their dependents) and everyone forgot about Stacygate.

Happy Mother’s Day to all Mothers!

Posted on by Mark Kaplowitz 0

Remember When the President Lived at the White House?

It was nearly 100 days into his presidency, and Donald Trump had spent half of his weekends as president at a private resort in Florida.  There, in addition to playing golf, he held cabinet meetings, met with foreign dignitaries, and, while enjoying a candlelit dinner on the patio, reviewed evidence of North Korea’s ballistic missile testing.  Many people criticized him for not spending enough time at the traditional home office of the nation’s chief executive.  But the press secretary assured the nation that the president “carries the apparatus of the White House” wherever he goes.

As the weekend trips to Florida continued, the criticism continued.  They complained and complained and drew charts and tables showing how much more President Trump spent on travel than President Obama, than Franklin Roosevelt, than Abraham Lincoln.  On the last day of Trump’s presidency, a major newspaper posted a graphic showing that, on average, Trump spent more on travel in five minutes than George Washington did in his entire life.  And so it was believed that this was the end of the dual residence president.

But the next president wanted to spend weekends in a cabin in the Adirondack Mountains of New York.  Although a cabin in the woods was much quieter a fancy Palm Beach resort, so many tree houses had to be built to house the secret service, White House staff, and visiting dignitaries that the eastern meadowlarks and three-toed woodpeckers had to be relocated to the nearest Best Western, to the annoyance of animal rights advocates and hotel cleaning staff.

People figured that after a resort president and a nature president, it would be the end of the president spending half his time as president living someplace other than the White House.  But the next president announced in his inauguration speech that he would be spending weekends in a cave.  He assured the American people that because the cave had only one entry way, far fewer secret service agents would be required.  And this was true, although cabinet members disliked having to sit upon rocks during meetings rather than chairs.

After the cavern president, people were no longer surprised at the president choosing to spend time at an alternate residence.  In fact, they began to expect it.  Getting to live wherever the president wanted became one of the perks and political prizes of winning the election.  During the presidential campaign season, political commentators would analyze the candidates’ likely choice of residence alongside their views on domestic and foreign policy.  And it was not uncommon to overhear ordinary people saying things like, “Yes, I think it’s time that America had a president who lived in the Cinderella Castle at Disney World.”

The “Presidential Residence Agent” became a permanent position on every presidential campaign staff as the candidates became more and more creative in their choice of residence.  The effort paid off.  One president wanted to spend his term voyaging under the seas like Captain Nemo. The army corps of engineers built a special submarine residence called the Nautilus which the radical liberal Marxist Leninist media dubbed the “Thought-a-Less.”  And after that was a president who opted for a crystal palace at the North Pole, modeled after Superman’s Fortress of Solitude. There was international tension because of the proximity to the Russian border. But we removed our opposition to Russia’s plan to turn the Caspian Sea into a giant samovar, and crisis was averted.

And then there was the president who did not like to travel.  Don’t ask me how he got elected.  Obviously someone tampered with the voting booths.  But nevertheless there he was, ready to move in to the White House and occupy it as his only residence…and it turned out that someone else was there.  The White House had been shunned as a residence for so long that it had been leased to a group of elephant trainers, and the new president and his family had to live at the Hampton Inn in a room next to the eastern meadowlarks and three-toed woodpeckers.

———————

Sources:

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-03-20/spicer-golf-part-of-being-president-but-potus-doesnt-always-play-on-trips-to-courses (last accessed 4/27/2017)

http://www.adirondack.net/wildlife/birding/ (last accessed 4/27/2018)

Posted on by Mark Kaplowitz 0

Remember When Virtual Reality Was More Virtual Than Reality?

Facebook’s Director of Newfangled Operations was sitting at his desk, reading reviews on Yelp for a good place to get turkey salad. An assistant knocked at his door.

“Come in, come in,” he said, facing the assistant. “So what’s the good word?”

photo of human wearing virtual reality headgear
Photo courtesy of Sensics, Inc. via Wikipedia.

“Well, sir, you know that ever since we acquired the virtual reality company Oculus VR, the, uh, upper management has been anxious to learn about the user experience.”

“Yes, yes,” the Director said. “And what is the user experience? Do the people, the salt of the earth, the great unwashed masses yearning to be free…do they like virtual reality?”

“Yes, they do, but—”

“But what? Are people displeased with the gaming?”

“No, they love it. They say the exploding bodies have never been more life like.”

“Are they able to access enough pornography?”

“Of course. We’ve enabled even individuals with visual, hearing, and tactile disabilities to enjoy it. A Congressional committee has commended us.”

“Don’t tell me they’re concerned about privacy.”

“Most people accept the theory that privacy was a myth originated by the Sumerians around the same time as the Epic of Gilgamesh.”

“Well what then?”

“Sir, the users’ concern is that when they wear the virtual reality headgear, they can’t tell if people are touching their food.”

The Director stared at the assistant for a few moments. “Touching their food?”

“Yes, you know. Like putting their hands all over a bowl of potato chips, and then watching while the virtual reality user eats the potato chips that have just been touched.”

The Director was a silent a moment. “I see how this could be quite a problem.”

“Sir, should we tell Mr. Zuckerberg? Perhaps—”

“No! Mr. Zuckerberg doesn’t like problems.” The Director chewed on a nail. “We’ve got to fix this ourselves.”

The solution was to offer virtual reality users the services of someone who would sit in the same room with them, without wearing headgear, and would stand guard over the users’ food or drink or bodily integrity. These hired individuals—called “guardians”—could also watch coats and book bags. And for a while it worked.

But then people started to worry that these guardians were doing things to them that they had been hired to prevent. What if the guardians had been bribed by someone who wanted to dip a finger in the users’ coffee and stir it around? How would the users ever know?

So then the guardians were scraped and instead the headgear was fitted with a little camera that would broadcast the user’s immediate surroundings through a little window in the corner of the headgear’s screen. So now users could watch the real world while they were immersed in virtual reality.

After a while, users found that watching their real life surroundings was more interesting than the virtual world. If they were alone, they could watch an empty room and see if anyone came in. If they were in a room with other users, they could watch a bunch of other people wearing headgear, bobbing around in their seats and waving their hands.

Users started talking to each other while they were immersed in virtual reality. Now that they could see everyone else in the room, they could talk freely, knowing that they weren’t speaking to an empty room. At first they talked about the virtual reality simulation they were using at the moment. But soon they moved on to other topics, like the weather, or upcoming weddings, or what each of them had done that day. Tech bloggers dubbed this growing practice of in-person conversation while wearing the headgear “non-virtual reality.”

Non-virtual reality became so popular that the software engineers kept enlarging the size of the window projected on the inner screen. Before long, this window took up the entire screen, so that when the users put the virtual reality headgear on, they saw a live, perfectly to-scale rendering of the same exact scene they would see if they took the headgear off.

“Sir!” the assistant said, entering the Director’s office with the headgear on. “Your program is a complete success! It is reported that 98% of the world’s population now walks around with headgear on all the time.”

“Splendid!” said the Director, wearing his own headgear. “But who are the 2% that aren’t wearing headgear? Are they from those primitive societies that walk around in loincloths and star in those movies they show at the Museum of Natural History?”

“No, sir. That was our initial theory, too. But it turns out that the 2% are hardcore techies.”

“Techies! But how can that be?”

“They say the original headset was better.”

Posted on by Mark Kaplowitz 13

Remember the Cold War?

Is it East versus West
Or man against man?
Survivor, “Burning Heart”
Rocky IV Soundtrack
(Volcano Records, 1985)

The President of the United States wasn’t having one of his better days.

“He wants to annex what?” he asked into the phone. “Moldovia? I’ve never even heard of Moldovia…What’s that you say?…It’s ‘Moldova’ and not ‘Moldovia’?…Well, I’ve never heard of Moldova, either…I don’t care how many athletes they sent to the Olympics.” An advisor walked into the Oval Office and the President glanced at him briefly. “Listen, John, I’ll have to call you back.” The President slammed the phone into its cradle.

The advisor spoke without preamble. “Mr. President, the President of Russia says he won’t withdraw Russian troops from Crimea and he won’t give Crimea back to Ukraine.”

“Really? Did you make him the offer?”

“Of course, Mr. President. And he said thank you, but that he already had a neck basket.”

The President frowned and nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “Time to think outside the box.” He went up to a white board along the wall of the Oval Office and wrote “military action” in red erasable marker. “Let’s brainstorm. Give me some options for dealing with Russia.”

“Military action, Mr. President,” said the advisor.

“Great! Now, let’s flesh that out a little. What are some things that go with military action.”

“Um, troops,” said the advisor.

“Yes, okay.” Underneath “military action” the President drew a dash and wrote “troops.”

“What else?”

“Tanks.”

“Okay, great.” The President wrote “- tanks” under “- troops.”

“What else?”

“Planes.”

“Great. We’re moving right along.” The President added “- planes” to the list.

There was a knock at the door.

ya

“Come in!” yelled the President, wiping away some stray marks from the white board. In walked the Secretary of Defense.

“Mr. Secretary!” said the President. “Come on in. Take a doughnut. We’re just doing a little brainstorming on what to do with Russia. As you can see, we’re off to a great start.” He presented the white board with his hand, palm turned up.

“That’s very good work, Mr. President. But I don’t think military action is going to work. The Russian forces are well set up inside and around Crimea, and our forces are frightened of going into a country that has a backwards ‘R’ in its alphabet.”

“Hmm, that’s a good point. I never trusted that backwards ‘R’ either,” said the President, shuddering.

“Mr. President,” said the Secretary of Defense with a tight smile, “may I offer an alternative strategy?”

The media did not respond favorably when it was announced that the President of the United States had formally challenged the President of the Russian Federation to a game of Flappy Bird to determine the ownership of Crimea and Russia’s overall designs on world domination. The criticism was especially sharp over the fact that the challenge had been issued over the President’s Twitter account. But to everyone’s surprise, the challenge was accepted, and the coverage shifted from anlysis of foreign policy to analysis of the two leaders’ video game skills.

American historians noted that when the President of the United States was in law school he had won a Super Mario Bros. tournament against the other students in his constitutional law class.

But Russian historians noted that the President of the Russian Federation had been the top scorer in a first-player combat video game developed just for Russian government officials, called KGB versus Journalists.

Flappy Bird was a two-dimensional, side-scrolling game with primitive graphics, like Super Mario Bros., but required laser-like precision and impeccable reflexes, like KGB versus Journalists. So both Presidents had an edge.

As the time of the match approached, people were anxious. No one wanted to be unpatriotic or find themselves imprisioned. But Vegas odds never lie, and the odds on the two contestants were neck and neck.

TV stations had arranged to broadcast the match during primetime. Since Moscow is nine time zones ahead of Washington, DC, to prevent either President from playing the middle of the night, the match was arranged for 10 a.m. eastern standard time, and 7 p.m. Moscow time, on the same day. Video cameras were set up so that in the left corner of the screen would be live video of the American President, and in the right corner would be a live video of the Russian President, and the middle of the screen would be the video screen of the leader who happened to be playing Flappy Bird.

The rules were simple. A coin flip would decide who would go first. Then they would take turns, and whoever had the most points at the end of ten rounds would be declared the winner. If the American President won, the Russians had to withdraw from Crimea and forget about the Soviet Reunion.  If the Russian President won…well, no one really wanted to think about that.

Everyone – East and West – was nervous as the coin was tossed at a live video feed in Reykjavik. As the coin flipped end over end the Russian President said “Golovy!” – heads.  And the coin landed heads.

Immediately there were arguments all around the world over whether it was better to go first or last. The Russian President chose to go first, and his compatriots cheered him for taking the initiative. But the Americans were, for the most part, relieved, as more than a century of baseball had taught them the value of last licks.

In the end it didn’t matter who went first.  Flappy Bird was so hard that even after ten rounds neither man had scored a single point. There was no winner and nothing changed in the geopolitical world. But since it had stayed unchanged without a single shot being fired, both sides declared victory and were wrapped in the flags of their respective nations by the warm embraces of their citizens.

I’d like to wish Renée A. Schuls-Jacobson a hearty welcome back to blogging.  It’s good to see that familiar title in my inbox again. – MK

Posted on by Mark Kaplowitz 3

Remember When the Affordable Care Act Wasn’t In the News Every Day?

The Director knew it was time for a staff meeting.

“All right, everyone. The deadline’s almost here. The President’s promised a smoothly functioning healthcare website by tomorrow. Now, I know everyone’s been yellow capletsworking hard. Visits to non-work-related websites like Facebook and Above the Law dropped by 40% in November. I’m proud of that figure and will make sure that New York Times knows about it. But the fact remains that despite our intense efforts the website is, in a word, still not working. So we’re down to our last option – paper applications.”

The following day, when millions of Americans visited the federal government’s healthcare website to see who won the bet, they were confronted with a perfectly functioning, non-glitch riddled single webpage, with no links or forms or fields or even photographs, but one toll-free telephone number.

When the number was called, the caller would be put in touch with someone who took their information and then read back to them the different health policies that were available to the caller and the price. It was clear from the very beginning that the “qualified healthcare agents” that took the calls had been greatly influenced by technology and faced challenges adjusting to world run by humans.

“Thank you for calling healthcare.gov,” the agents would say in their best cheerful machine-voice. “Press 1 if you are calling about individual policies. Press 2 if you are calling about family policies. Press 3 if you have experience building large websites.” When they realized they couldn’t tell which number had been pressed, they would say, “Why don’t you just tell me what you are calling about?”

After a day the telephone lines were hopelessly congested. The Director had to call another meeting.
“Okay,” said the Director at another staff meeting, “the telephones aren’t working out so hot, either. The average wait-time has grown so long that people are complaining about the hold music. And here I thought people liked Lawrence Welk. All right, well, we’ve got to go back to the drawing board. What’s a drawing board? I don’t know. Look it up on Wikipedia.”

The only thing left to do was to have people sign up in person. People were annoyed at having to drive all the way to Washington, D.C. just to shop for medical insurance, but the complaints subsided a bit when the President issued Executive Order 94029 which authorized valet parking.

The wait time to see an agent was still very long. And the long journey made it even longer, since people figured, “Well, if we came all this way and waited all this time, we may as well ask as many stupid questions as possible.”
The wait time to meet with a federal healthcare agent became so long that people were practically living in the lobby. They had to miss appointment, including doctors’ appointments. The government had to arrange for doctors to visit the lobby and examine the people waiting in line. The convenience more than made up for the lack of privacy.

The people in line started liking the lobby doctors so much that they lost their interest in procuring health insurance that would require them to find a new doctor. They started letting others go ahead of them in line, hoping to extend their stay. “Oh, you go on ahead of us,” people would say. “We haven’t decided what we want yet.”

The lobby grew ever more crowded, and eventually some members of Congress introduced a bill to expand the lobby and the number of doctors that serviced it. The bill won bipartisan support, largely on the strength of a rider that increased the Netflix subsidies for senators and their staff. The Affordable Care Act Sign-Up in Person Waiting Lobbies proliferated around the United States, so that whenever people had to see the doctor they would just go to one of these lobbies, get in line, and wait for the doctor to come around with the stethoscope and little rubber hammer.

A cottage industry of lobby-care grew, and almost overnight people started seeing everything from examination tables on wheels to mobile MRI apps for smartphones. Around the time that they started adding operating tables to the lobbies, the website was finally fixed. No bugs, no glitches, no crashes. But no one bothered signing up. The millions of Americans waiting in line already liked the plan they had, and wanted to keep it.

Posted on by Mark Kaplowitz 4

Remember When No One Cared Where Their Food Was From?

When I was a kid I didn’t care where my food was from as long as it wasn’t from off the floor.  Food falling on the floor is one of the worst things that can happen to you in elementary school.  In later years we would learn about the “five second rule,” which I once mixed up with the “five minute rule” and almost got left back for poor attendance.  But in elementary school, if there had been a little more room on those menus magneted to every refrigerator in the land, the description of the lunches would say something like “Not Dropped On the Floor Sloppy Joe.”

At restaurants today it is taken for granted that food is not dropped on the floor, or that if it is, no one will tell you about it.  Instead, the menus emphasize the geographic origin of the ingredients.  Everyone wants to know if the vegetables are locally grown, or if the chickens were raised on local farms, enjoying the fresh local air and tasty local feed, taking in the local theater and shopping at the local boutiques, before their necks were wrung ever so humanely.

Wikipedia describes the local food movement as a “collaborative effort to build more locally based, self-reliant food economies—one in which sustainable food production, processing, distribution, and consumption is integrated to enhance the economic, environmental and social health of a particular place.”  There is a Taco Bell five minutes from my home that I’ve often relied upon, parking my car behind the dumpster so that my wife wouldn’t see it while she shops for fresh vegetables and couscous.  But I don’t think that’s what they mean.

My first exposure to the local food movement was when my wife and I attended a farmer’s market near our home.  The vendors had set up tables with their wares, and offered so many free samples of local tomatoes, local cheese, local bread, and local meat, that it was not long before I was looking for the local bathroom.

One table was offering locally made gourmet peanut butter.  The options were far beyond the traditional chunky and smooth.  There was chocolate-pretzel peanut butter, cookie-dough fudge peanut butter, jalapeño peanut butter.  We were impressed.  Then I looked at the price tag, and realized why choosy moms choose Jif.  Panko-crusted animal-cracker peanut butter mixed with goat cheese and leeks may be great for dinner parties, but I had to conserve my cash for the parking attendant.

Local food, however, is about much more than nutrition and economics.  There is controversy about what constitutes “local.”  The United States Congress, in the 2008 Farm Act, defined “locally or regionally produced agricultural food product” as less than 400 miles from its origin.  That means that “local” covers an area of 502,655 square miles, or, as Tom Hanks’s character in “Cast Away” would have put it, “twice the size of Texas.”  Under that definition, I could secure a lot more free time by telling my wife I’m going out to run a few local errands.

I’m no member of Congress, but, to me, “local” implies that a chicken could have its head cut off and still be running around in my shopping cart when I’m swiping my frequent shopper card.  Politics is truly the art of compromise.

But these lofty concepts and global disputes rarely affect my daily life.  I eat whatever food I can find in the refrigerator or cupboard, with no thought of the journey it took to my gullet, and whether it paid tolls with E-Z Pass.  The only time the local movement enters my decision-making process is when I’m at a restaurant, and I am given the choice between meats raised on local farms or meats from origins unknown.  It is such a hard decision to make, that I already know I’m going to be reaching for antacids later on that night…antacids that are, fortunately, the most local food of all—right on the nightstand, next to my bed.

Posted on by Mark Kaplowitz 26

Remember How You Used to Celebrate Valentine’s Day?

My first Valentine’s Day  involved a second-grade class and a sheet of perforated Valentines.  We had to give them out to every other kid in the class, and I’m pretty sure I gave them out to the boys as well as the girls, and signed “Love, Mark” at the bottom of each one.  Even in the midst of Freud’s latency period I felt a vague uneasiness, but did not see how I could discriminate.

My phrase of choice that year was “Holy Baloney,” which I said every time the teacher told me I answered something wrong, or assigned another project involving construction paper and paste.  One girl in my class laughed out loud every time I said it, and on her Valentine to me wrote “Holy Bologna” just above the salutation.  I was touched by the thought, and figured that I could accept her even if she did not know how to spell.

Valentine’s Day was so simple in the second grade.  No flowers, no dinner reservations.  I even think my mother bought the sheet of perforated Valentines, and instead of chocolates we snacked on those little hard and powdery candy hearts that said “Be Mine,”  “I Luv You,” and  “We Need to Talk About Your Choice of School Bag.”

But Valentine’s Day was not always this romantic.  There were many a year where Valentine’s Day was spent seeing how many beers I could drink before the pile of dirty laundry in the corner of my bedroom looked like a work of modern art.  If was lucky, there would be a friend who was also single, and we would go to the local dive and watch ESPN with the sound off, hoping that with each round we’d forget our loneliness and be able to read Mike Krzyzewski’s lips as he yelled at his players and, sometimes, the referees.

And then one Valentine’s Day I proposed to my now-wife, and my perception of this day of flowers and chocolate changed forever.  I don’t see Valentine’s Day as an obligation.  I see it as an opportunity.  For 364 days of the year (or 365 days in a leap year, like this one), I sit in my house and look at my wife and think to myself, “She’s so beautiful and wonderful.  I’m such a lucky man.  I wonder what she’s annoyed at me for this time.”

I wish there were answers in the back of the book, or a teacher’s edition, but there are not.  I have to make educated guesses of how to make my soul mate view me as less of a parasite who watches football.  Could it be the glass I left on the kitchen counter instead of putting it in the dishwasher?  Could it be that bowl with four floating Cheerios that I left in the sink instead of washing out and putting in the dishwasher?  Could it be that pair of dirty socks that I left on her laptop instead of washing them out and putting them in the dishwasher?  The greatest fear in any relationship is the fear of the unknown, and for a marriage that fear is codified in statute.

But for one day a year I am relieved of that fear, and handed a game plan with three simple steps: bouquet of roses, reservations at a nice restaurant, and then…you know…HGTV.  It is as simple as snap, crackle and pop.  My grandfather used to say that problems that can be solved with money alone are the kind of problems you want to have.  I’m sure that he had Valentine’s Day in mind when he said that.

So fellow husbands and boyfriends, my brethren in arms and credit cards, do not fear Valentine’s Day, but embrace it and its obligations with gusto, and be thankful that for one day you get to enjoy the greatest pleasure you can enjoy in a relationship: not having to think.

And to the ranks of the single who complain that there is no single person’s day, I respond: every day is single person’s day.

Happy Valentine’s Day, especially to the students of Mrs. P’s second grade class.  I meant what I wrote on those perforated cards.

Posted on by Mark Kaplowitz 22