I’m not sure exactly when the concept first came to me; but at some point I started thinking about the vast sums of money entrusted to the ad agency, and how someone might go about manipulating the system to take advantage of their clients. — Keith Harmeyer

Keith is the author of Commercial Break, a new novel about a jaded advertising man who concocts a scheme to bilk his detested clients. Instead of doing it himself, Keith decided just to write about it. Perhaps one of his readers will implement the plan.

When Gore left office in January 2001, he was said to have a net worth in the neighborhood of $2 million. A mere eight years later, estimates are that he is now worth about $100 million. It seems it’s easy being green, at least for some. — IBD Editorial

INSIDER TRADING
Do delusions of warming derange
And compel poor Al Gore to act strange?
No, the reason he’s fishin’
For those caps on emission
Is his stock in the carbon exchange.
– F.R. Duplantier, 2007

Swine flu isn’t only a health emergency. It’s a test for how we’re going to organize the 21st century. Subsidiarity works best. — David Brooks

Subsidiarity is a Catholic principle holding that responsibility should be assumed, and decisions made, at the lowest possible level. It is one of the most important concepts in our Constitution, as well. When problems that should be handled at the local level are nationalized, local leaders are disempowered and the problems get bigger. Globalization makes matters even worse.

Subsidiarity, decentralization, localization — those should be our bywords and guiding principles. Where are all the “power to the people” people when you need them?

What Bosses Really Mean

1. We need a multi-tasker: You’ll have to do my job as well as yours
2. We’ll have to work late: I screwed off all day
3. Employees should not discuss salaries: Other people make way more than you
4. We didn’t do as well as we hoped this year: I’ll get a bonus, but you won’t
5. We’re bringing in a management consultant: His recommendations will be ignored
6. You’re not a team player: You didn’t like my stupid idea
7. You seem unhappy here: It would be cheaper for us if you quit
8. We’re giving you an assistant: As soon as you train him, you’re fired
9. We have a whistleblower policy: The last guy who invoked it disappeared
   
10. The check’s in the mail: I have no intention of paying you

Politickles.com

Bob’s Other Lists:

• How to Interact with Humorless People
• Why Ordinary TV is Better than Cable
• Funny Things to Say at Work
• Things that Made Playing More Fun
• Lying Words and What They Mean
• Benefits to Homeschooling
• Drawbacks to Homeschooling
  

The consensus among Blake scholars seems to be that Blake’s “Mad Song” depicts the condition of insanity. A handful of critics will occasionally concede that the speaker may be a poet who has lost his sanity because of his poetry, but they invariably offer “inability to create” as the specific cause of his dementia. The evidence suggests, however, that the speaker’s affliction is not impotence, but omnipotence. — “Method in Blake’s ‘Mad Song,’” F.R. Duplantier, 1979

At the end of the 1973 fall semester at Tulane University, I was obliged to declare my major. I was drawn to history, philosophy, political science, and English and would have been happy to major in any one of them, but I had to make up my mind by the end of the day. My dad was the director of university relations, so I stopped by his office in Gibson Hall late that afternoon to talk it over with him. With moments to spare before the 5 PM deadline, I settled on English and headed for the department office one floor below in the same building.

The secretary asked who I wanted for my advisor. I had no idea. “Well,” she responded, “everyone’s gone home but Dr. Assad [pronounced: Acid]. He’s still in his office down the hall. How about him?” Sure. I’d never met the guy and knew nothing about him. Why not?

One of Thomas Assad’s first suggestions as my advisor was to sign up for his spring course on Blake, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. He was muscular, baldheaded, and looked like Kojak, so I accepted his advice. In answer to a question on the first exam about William Blake’s early poem “Mad Song,” I made the mistake of commenting that the theme seemed to be inspiration not madness. “That would be a good topic for your honors thesis,” Dr. Assad told me later. Honors thesis? Who said anything about an honors thesis? That fall, I began working on Blake’s “Mad Song,” An Instance of Poetic Madness, with Dr. Assad as my thesis advisor. (A condensed version was published five years later in the Blake Quarterly.)

The Audit Bureau of Circulations released this morning the spring figures for the six months ending March 31, 2009, showing that the largest [metropolitan newspapers] continue to shed daily and Sunday circulation — now at a record rate. — Editor & Publisher

When I first went online back in 1996 or 97 and began exploring the web, one of the first things I noticed was that contact information was easy to find on some websites and exasperatingly difficult to locate on others. Making sure people know who you are and how to get hold of you is plain common sense that should be obvious to everyone — especially professional communicators like journalists, admen, and PR people. But I soon discovered that the one type of website on which it was almost always nearly impossible to find contact information was the newspaper website. Contacts for advertising sales were readily accessible, of course, but the members of the editorial staff might as well have been deep-cover spies, their identities carefully hidden and even their actual existence uncertain. It was as if the editors and reporters didn’t want to hear from anyone. Clearly, they did not “get” the new media. With their news-noses stopped up, they could not detect the odor of change and missed the biggest story ever. They got scooped.

“Your Weekly Politickle” has been provided free of charge online and to email subscribers since 1997, but donations are accepted and appreciated. To donate online via PayPal, click the DONATE button, top right.

Feel free to publish, post, or pass on Your Weekly Politickle by F.R. Duplantier:

SCIENCE SAYS
“Science says beware because
Now it’s warmer than it was.
Just listen to me
And you’ll agree:
Science says what I say it does.”

From the archive:

INSIDER TRADING
Do delusions of warming derange
And compel poor Al Gore to act strange?
No, the reason he’s fishin’
For those caps on emission
Is his stock in the carbon exchange.
(2007)

HOTHEAD
Has Al Gore taken too many tokes
On that strange cigarette that he smokes?
Still, the burden of proof
Is on every green goof
Who espouses the climate-change hoax.
(2007)

AN INCONSISTENT BOOB, CONT.
“If superior beings ignore
Certain limits and use a bit more,
Then the peons, I guess,
Will just have to use less,”
Sniffed a gluttonous, glutinous Gore.
(2007)

HOT HEADS
They defend climate change willy-nilly,
And lately they’ve gotten plain silly:
Saying snow, ice, and sleet
Must be caused by the heat –
And that’s why the weather’s so chilly.
(2007)

SNOW DOUBT
As a theory it’s cheesily charming,
Except when the neighborhood’s swarming
With snow, sleet, and ice
From unfair Fahrenheits,
And we’re longing for real global warming.
(2006)

MOWER LESS
While it has been unreasonably hot,
And I do tend to wish it were not,
I am glad to save gas
By not cutting the grass,
’Cause there’s none on my shriveled-up lot.
(2006)

AN INCONSISTENT BOOB
Al Gore worries the world’s getting hot,
And all over the globe he will trot,
Warmly warning the masses
About grave greenhouse gases
Caused by people who travel a lot.
(2006)

HEAT RASHNESS
Every Spring they start their swarming
And fantastical alarming,
Fearing and oh-dearing
That the end is nearing,
’Cause it’s April and it’s warming.
(2006)

WARM MONGERS
Alarmists like to heighten
Anxieties and frighten –
Their aim’s made clear
In State of Fear
By author Michael Crichton.
(2006)

ABATED BREATH
Whether sickly or healthy and hale,
We object when the air gets too stale,
But what shall we do
When they ban CO2
And deny us the right to exhale?
(2001)

TRUTH IN THE BALANCE
The temperature’s not getting higher.
Our environmental future’s not dire.
With the best yet to come,
There’s no need to be glum:
Al Gore, you’re an ozone liar!
(2000)

CHICKEN LITTLE
Doomsday deadlines bear recalling
When they’ve passed and we’re not sprawling:
If dreaded fate
Is running late,
Then perhaps the sky’s not falling.
(2000)

EMISSION IMPOSSIBLE
We’re faced with a problem that’s prickly.
We’d better do something, and quickly.
Forget the suspicions
About greenhouse emissions:
It’s the wind from the White House that’s sickly.
(1999)

VICTIMLESS CLIME
The penguin complained, “It’s too hot!”
The hippo replied, “No, it’s not!”
The gator, when polled,
Insisted, “Too cold!”
And the polar bear grumbled, “What rot!”
(1998)

THINK GULLIBLY, ACT LOCO-LY
The temperature rose in July
Compared to December, quite high.
It’s really alarming
This “seasonal warming.”
Oh, lordy, we’re all gonna fry!
(1997)

Last week’s limerick:

WE’RE ALL TERRORISTS NOW
If your moral convictions are strong,
You distinguish between right and wrong,
And believe in one God,
Then you’re certainly odd
And a prison is where you belong.

I’ve been a fan of Dick Van Dyke  for as long as I can remember — and [whatever the opposite of a fan is] of his brother Jerry for almost as long. When he was young, Jerry would show up on his big brother’s show and I’d marvel at the similarity in their looks, and the dissimilarity in their talents. Then, somehow, Jerry got his own show — about a guy whose mother is reincarnated as an old car. What a concept! Inspired by Mr. Ed, no doubt. Granted, even Dick couldn’t salvage an idiotic premise like that, but, still, it was supremely lame.

Recently, I was watching an episode of The Andy Griffith Show with the family and who turns up as guest star but Jerry Van Dyke as a bumbling carny? The kids were surprised to learn that Dick Van Dyke had a brother. (They’re homeschooled and have never seen Coach. Neither have I, for that matter.) Like me at their age, they were unimpressed, but they wanted to know if he’d ever done anything else. Believe it or not, I told them, he was in a top-rated show not too long ago. They didn’t believe it, and it boggles my mind, too. But, I said, his greatest claim to fame, aside from being Dick Van Dyke’s brother, is that he was the star of “the worst TV show ever.”

What was it about? they asked. You wouldn’t believe it if I told you, I said. Try us, they said. I tried them. They didn’t believe it. You’ve got to admit it’s hard to believe: a show about a guy whose mother is reincarnated — as a car. (Is that where the big idea came from? The fact that the word “car” is in the middle of “reincarnate”?) A talking horse is one thing, but a talking car? That’s plain stupid. Or, at least, it was, back then, before we all started hearing incarnated voices saying, “Your door is ajar.”

I wondered later if I’d been too harsh in describing it as the worst TV show ever. After all, I hadn’t seen it in years, not since it was originally on the air. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I remembered. Maybe it was only one of the worst TV shows ever. But, just this morning, quite by accident, I happened upon My Mother the Car on YouTube and watched the first episode again. It turns out I was right. It really is the worst TV show ever.

My daughter Ida’s latest claymation production. Hire her now while you can still afford her.

Why is my verse so barren of new pride,
So far from variation or quick change?
Why with the time do I not glance aside
To new-found methods and to compounds strange?
Why write I still all one, ever the same,
And keep invention in a noted weed,
That every word doth almost tell my name,
Showing their birth and where they did proceed?
O, know, sweet love, I always write of you,
And you and love are still my argument;
So all my best is dressing old words new,
Spending again what is already spent:
For as the sun is daily new and old,
So is my love still telling what is told.

The numerous anagrams, synonyms, and puns on the name Vere that appear in Sonnet #76 (above) should suffice to convince any reasonable person of the true identity of Shakespeare. The pseudonym itself, “Will Shakespeare,” is an obvious joke, and a fitting emblem of defiance in anti-Catholic Elizabethan England. If the world’s greatest dramatist had passed himself off as “Will Flipfinger,” would anyone be so stupid as to believe that to be his real name?