An extra charge for Touch-Tone calling

[From my latest bill.]

Recent news about Verizon’s $1.99 key and various cellphone companies’ payment charges reminded me to be amused and annoyed that my land-line company charges a dollar a month for Touch Tone (or Touch-Tone) service. I have called on two occasions to inquire and have been told that the charge is a nationwide practice and that it’s Illinois-only. I have also been told that some people prefer to use pulse dialing and that there’s a little switch underneath the phone, &c. True, there is a switch. My response, sane as can be, is that in 2010, Touch-Tone is really the only way anyone dials a land-line telephone.¹ No, I am told; there is also pulse.

For a telephone company to charge for Touch-Tone in 2010 is, to my mind, comparable to a cable-television company’s charging for color. But absurdity can be profitable: with, say, 10,000 customers, this little charge would bring in $120,000 a year.

Reader, if you still use a land-line, do you pay extra for the privilege of Touch-Tone service?

¹ Unless perhaps one patronizes thrift stores or has wonderful children who do so.

Elections and misspellings

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

The last name of Green Party gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney is misspelled as “Whitey” on electronic-voting machines in nearly two dozen wards — about half in predominantly African-American areas — and election officials said Wednesday the problem cannot be corrected by Election Day.

Given the presence on the ballot of Green Party Senate candidate LeAlan Jones (whose overall numbers are low but who has significant support among African-American voters), and given the very close race for Senate between Alexi Giannoulias (D) and Mark Kirk (R), one must wonder whether this misspelling is accidentally-on-purpose, a way to steer African-American voters toward the Democratic slate.

Oh, and given that it’s Illinois.

October 16, 2010: The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the misspelling will be corrected. Says Election Board Chairman Langdon Neal,

“No one at the Chicago Board of Elections or a vendor would ever do anything to in any way negatively effect the integrity of the election, the integrity of this office or in any way influence any one candidate’s success.”

Movie recommendation: Ace in the Hole

[Lorraine Minosa (Jan Sterling) confronts Charles Tatum (Kirk Douglas): “I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you — you’re twenty minutes.”]

Billy Wilder’s Ace in the Hole was a commercial flop when released as The Big Carnival in 1951. It’s easy to understand why: the film presents a world almost wholly corrupted by the desire for power, prestige, and spectacle. Kirk Douglas plays Charles Tatum, a once-prominent newspaper reporter now working in the “Siberia,” as he calls it, of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (released one year earlier), Tatum longs to return to the world in which he was a star. He finds the means to do so in the story of Leo Minosa (Richard Benedict), who gets trapped in a cave while searching for Native American pottery. Tatum ventures into the cave and finds in the trapped man his ace in the hole, a story to be managed day by day, sold to the wire services, and parlayed into a return to big-city papers.

Wilder’s plotting is inspired: Minosa’s plight is a spectacle that offers very little to the eye. As in Greek tragedy, the horror happens in imagination, here with the assistance of Tatum’s reportage and his photographs of the trapped man. As Minosa languishes day after day and news of the rescue effort spreads, people begin to gather and a carnival spirit takes over, with campgrounds and entertainment and Ferris wheels. Sightseers drop from special trains and run to this theater of cruelty. No wonder that the trucks pulling in bear the name of The Great S & M Amusement Corp. While drawing upon a past newspaper exploit — the story of caver Floyd Collins (who’s mentioned in the film), Wilder has anticipated the more lurid spectacles of our media-saturated world. But reporters don’t make events happen: they just report them, or so Charles Tatum tells himself.

As good as Douglas is in this film, Jan Sterling is even better. Her character is reminiscent of Cora Smith (Lana Turner) in The Postman Always Rings Twice (dir. Tay Garnett, 1946): Lorraine Minosa too is a frustrated wife stuck in a diner. Her cynicism and self-interest make her more than a match for Tatum, who is both attracted and repulsed by what he sees in her. Will anything develop between these two while Leo is stuck in the cave? You’ll have to watch to find out.

Ace in the Hole is available from the Criterion Collection, beautifully restored. I watched and wrote about this film in late July, before the Copiapó mining accident. I decided that I would post this review only if that story came to a happy ending, which it now has. Coverage of the miners’ ordeal, at least what I saw, seemed respectful and restrained — no Charles Tatums on the scene.

A los mineros: bienvenidos de nuevo, señores.

Procrastination, effort, reward

James Surowiecki on procrastination:

Procrastination is driven, in part, by the gap between effort (which is required now) and reward (which you reap only in the future, if ever). So narrowing that gap, by whatever means necessary, helps. Since open-ended tasks with distant deadlines are much easier to postpone than focussed, short-term projects, dividing projects into smaller, more defined sections helps.

Aha: granularity!

(Found via Good Experience)

Boycott Koch Industries

Charles and David H. Koch are the subjects of a recent New Yorker article by Jane Mayer. The brothers Koch, worth thirty-five billion dollars, are the owners of Koch Industries, ranked, Mayer notes, as “the second-largest private company” in the United States. Here is an excerpt from the article:

The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry — especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies — from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program — that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.

Among the Kochs’ political front groups is the faux-grassroots organization Americans for Prosperity (a dark-roots organization, I’d call it). Some of the details in Mayer’s reporting are beyond appalling: see, for instance, Koch Industries’ efforts to block E.P.A. classification of formaldehyde as a human carcinogen, even as David H. donates large sums for cancer research.

Upon reading this article (which appeared a month ago — I know I’m late to the game), I searched for boycott koch and found this image, maker unknown:



[Angel Soft Toilet Paper, Brawny Towels, Quilted Northern Toilet Paper, Georgia-Pacific Paper Products, Dixie Products, Stainmaster Carpet, Sparkle Paper Napkins, Lycra Fiber, Zee Paper Napkins, Mardi Gras Products, Dacron Fiber, Vanity Fair Paper Napkins, Soft ’n Gentle Toilet Paper.]

For readers worldwide: the Koch Industries website offers a handy list of Koch products for African, European, and Middle Eastern markets.

I don’t like the idea of a worker in a Koch operation losing a job because of decreased sales. But I also don’t like the idea of abetting, even in the smallest way, the efforts of men who endanger American democracy and the well-being of our home (that is, Earth). In my house, we’re done buying Dixie Cups and Vanity Fair Napkins. How about you?

Eagle Turquoise display case

This display case sat — for how long? — in an office-supply store that finally surrendered to Staples. The store began in 1935; I would imagine that this case sat there from very early on. It’s now spending its retirement atop a small bookcase in my house. This case suffers from one work-related injury: the grade-B display pencil is missing from its slot. To avoid reflections, I’ve photographed the case without the piece of glass that fits in front of the display. With that piece in, the case is even more attractive.

The 178 pencils that came with this case (from 6B to 9H) are mostly recent production: Berol Turquoises, Faber-Castell Designs and 9000s, General Kimberlys. A few dozen older pencils are mixed in: Eagle Turquoises (unfaded, unlike the display pencils glued to their slots) and A.W. Faber 9000s. In the photograph below, the Turquoises sit in the seventh slot from the left and the fourth and fifth slots from the right, looking rather cerulean.



[This post is the ninth in an occasional series, “From the Museum of Supplies.” The museum is imaginary. The supplies are real. Supplies is my word, and has become my family’s word, for all manner of stationery items. Photographs by Michael Leddy.]

Also from the Museum of Supplies
Dennison’s Gummed Labels No. 27
Fineline erasers
Illinois Central Railroad Pencil
A Mad Men sort of man, sort of
Mongol No. 2 3/8
Real Thin Leads
Rite-Rite Long Leads
Stanley carpenter’s rule

“Don’t look!”

This dopey-looking picture, from the SparkNotes website, may amuse readers of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. In case it’s not obvious, the caption is by SparkNotes.

There are, by the way, no SparkNotes for Infinite Jest. (Good.)

Some Infinite Jest posts
Attention : Description : Loveliness : “Night-noises” : Romance : Sadness : Telephony : Television

Van Dyke Parks and Clare and the Reasons, on the radio

Van Dyke Parks and Clare and the Reasons perform “The All Golden,” “Heroes and Villains,” “Pluton/Pluto,” and “You Got Time,” on WNYC-FM’s Spinning on Air. Listen, listen, listen.

Related posts
Van Dyke Parks in Brooklyn
Van Dyke Parks in Chicago (1)
Van Dyke Parks in Chicago (2)

“A Toy Kitchen That Looks Like Yours”

My daughter Rachel passes on the news of a toy kitchen that looks nothing like our kitchen (real or toy):

We designed this upscale wood play kitchen to look like yours! Beautifully crafted, with espresso cabinets, “stainless steel” appliances, and faux granite countertop.

KidKraft Wood Play Kitchen: A Toy Kitchen That Looks Like Yours

(Thanks, Rachel!)

Related posts
This is not my beautiful house
Word of the day: tyke

Word of the day: tyke

Tyke is a happy word in our family: the dependent clause “when you were a tyke” has prefaced various recollections of our children’s early years. Just this morning, I said in an e-mail to my daughter Rachel and son Ben that I wished Chicago’s Puppet Bike had been around when they were tykes. The corporate respelling of tyke has an honored place in our family lore: a piece of videotape from 1988 has Rachel, then all of two and a half, speaking of her dream third-birthday present, a Little Tikes Kitchen:

What’s so special about a Little Tikes Kitchen?

Because I like it.

What do you like about it?

Because it has a telephone.

It has a telephone. What else does it have?

It has a lot of cooking.

I wondered this morning: where does tyke come from? I’m sort of sorry to have found out. The Oxford English Dictionary gives this etymology:

ON. tík female dog, bitch (Norw. tik, also she-fox, vixen, Sw. dial. tik, older Da. tig); also MLG. tike bitch.

And the word’s oldest meaning (dating to 1400):

A dog; usually in depreciation or contempt, a low-bred or coarse dog, a cur, a mongrel.

But as early as 1400, tyke applied to men and women:

Applied opprobriously to a man (rarely with similar force to a woman): A low-bred, lazy, mean, surly, or ill-mannered fellow; a boor.

And it later applied to children:

Also said in playful reproof to a child; hence (unreprovingly), a child, esp. a small boy; occas., a young animal (U.S.).

I’m reminded now that kid too applied first to an animal, “the young of a goat,” as the OED creepily puts it.

If you’re wondering, Rachel got her Kitchen.