Get off the lawn, you kids! Or I will unleash the power of technology! Just in time for M.'s and my descent into crotchety old-codgerdom: A teenager-repelling device.

The device, called the Mosquito ("It's small and annoying," Stapleton said), emits a high-frequency pulsing sound that, he said, can be heard by most people younger than 20 and almost no one older than 30. The sound is designed to so irritate young people that after several minutes, they cannot stand it and go away.

When I was a lad, there was a department store that we visited regularly that had some sort of device on the ceiling just above the escalators. No idea what it was for, but it emitted a steady, loud, very high frequency tone that was physically unpleasant to be around for all us young'uns. We'd complain about it regularly, but my parents couldn't hear a thing. (Or so they said — probably trying to gaslight us.)

A trip to Spar here in Barry confirmed the strange truth of the phenomenon. The Mosquito is positioned just outside the door. Although this reporter could not hear anything, being too old, several young people attested to the fact that yes, there was a noise, and yes, it was extremely annoying.

Hmmm.... I think we should place a dozen around the perimeter as soon as A. goes off to college...

---

Via.

Quote of the day, or week, or whatever. "I had a tremendous amount of free-floating hostility within me as well as downright aggression--I thought being a pacifist ... could control my inner feelings of rage."

– Helen Smith

Hell in a handbasket, pt. ∞. Speaking of dim awareness, here's another thing that had mercifully escaped my attention until now. Stories like this definitely tend to arouse the inner Old Fart. Maybe it's just a form of jealousy — until I ran across this (via M. Rosenberg), not only did I have no idea that the item itself existed, it would simply never have occurred to me that anyone could make a business out of selling garish germ-ridden tooth jewelry to teenagers, poor cud-chewing hick that I apparently am.

Errol Gaines, an eighth-grader at Frick Middle School in Oakland, is on his second set of gold teeth.

"When I first got them, the girls said I was cute," he said. Now Gaines has the same compliment: "Grills make the girls look a little prettier."

Eighth grade. Can lip plates be far behind? Oops, too late!

Peasant on fire. I've been only dimly aware of the whole "Pajamas Media" brouhaha; it is thus similar, in that fashion, to the way I am only dimly aware of many, perhaps most, things. And just to even the score, I suppose the movers'n'shakers behind PM aren't even dimly aware of the the hit-delivering machine that is this blog. But the heat and light of the PM explosion are so great as to have cast ruddy reflections even upon these distant, stagnant backwaters of the great blog sea.

From this great distance, it all seems remarkably like high school, except with lawyers and money. Hmmm... on further thought, the whole "blogosphere" seems remarkably like high school, cliques and claques and in-groups and out-groups, etc. (Another horrible thought — all of life is like freakin' high school! <shudder>) Anyway, the point being that one of the central points of the vortex, a Mr. Dennis the Peasant, has been blogging feverishly, one could say obsessively, on the subject, churning out in a few short days what this blog would take about a year to produce. One-sided? Check. Mean-spirited? Absolutely. But funny as all hell. You get the full effect best by starting at the bottom and scrolling upwards. This is a man posessed by the blog-muse — weave a circle round him thrice, avert your eyes with holy dread!

Shooting their little round ASCII plasmids at each other. Based on the tortured yet ornate English of this e-mail I received yesterday, the classic Nigerian 419 scam spam e-mails have evolved the ability to exchange spam-DNA with mortgage-reduction spam e-mails, and now hybrids have escaped into the wild:

Return-Path:
Received: from lh ([66.28.108.222])
by obsidian.aracnet.com (8.13.4/8.13.4) with SMTP id jAH0Murt027738;
Wed, 16 Nov 2005 16:23:19 -0800
Message-Id: <200511170023.jAH0Murt027738@obsidian.aracnet.com>
From: "Beverley Childers"
To: amerritt@aracnet.com
Subject: Fw: Please Read
----------------------------------------

Your case file has been judged to the essential boards, and upon precise consideration, we
are able to extend to you the subsequent offer.

Based upon precise consideration you make the grade to be given a princely rebate on your
original property investment.

By completing the subsequent attached form in a timely manner we will be able to finalize
our evaluation, and we feel certain you will be given not only a decreased rate of
interest, but also a cash return that will accomplish all your holiday needs and more!

Please go here to finalize this juncture of the
deal.

Hoping on the best for you all.

Beverley Childers

Should you prefer not to grab hold of this holiday offer you can go here.

Well, of course precise consideration would get me a princely rebate. 'Bout time the world starts recognizing what it owes me.

---

(I assumed the IP would resolve to some third-world spamshop, but actually it belongs to Cogent Communications, which appears to be in Washington, D.C. I guess an e-mail to abuse@cogentco.com is in order.)

An errant cosmic ray, travelling through space at the speed of light, passes through the atmosphere, the earth's crust and its molten core, and finally through David Adesnik's brain and subtlely re-routes a thought pathway as he types.

"But what it comes down to is that [Ted] Kennedy has a reputation as a man of principle and a deep thinker, [...]"

At least, that's the only explanation I can come up with.

Excuse me while I pick up my jaw off the floor.

Moira-

This post and its associated comments just made my head asplode.

Election Special. Our Fair Town is having elections for city council tomorrow, and I hang my head in shame to admit that I don't really know squat about the candidates running for the open seat. Today's mail brings two postcards, one from each contender — let's see here; Candidate A promises:

• a vibrant and diverse economy
• affordable housing for all
• a modern electric utility
• strengthen our neighborhoods and schools

while, spitting in the face of convention and Candidate A, the radical Candidate B will focus on:

• more jobs
• more housing
• more recreational choices
• stronger neighborhoods
• growing our schools

but to my everlasting disappointment, neither have boldly stated that his opponent's 3 percent titanium tax doesn't go too far enough!!¹

With these John Jackson / Jack Johnson type candidates, I immediately mused aloud, "What would Morbo campaign for?" I suspect it would involve a platform like:

• create vibrant and diverse economy by forceful annexation of Des Moines and Polk County
• reduce the housing shortage by eliminating excess people
• replace unsightly electric plant with fast breeder reactors
• arm neighborhoods and schools, heavily
• widen the Squaw Creek bike trail

---

¹But this does tell me that Candidate B, with his blatant pandering to the Neanderthal jockocracy ("more recreational choices" indeed!) has definitely frittered away my vote.

Prog.Reac.Sit.Rep. Nope, not much going on here. I think M. and I are both just out of new thoughts. Plenty of old thoughts keep re-occuring to us, but they're old. When you reach the end of whatever it is you have to say, you can either repeat yourself – but this time louder – or you can find someone else's thoughts and repeat them, or you can stop talking. I think we're both in the latter position right now. Presumably, things will resume when some new thoughts pop into our little heads.

There are those noble souls out there who can crank out sparkling little diamonds of wit on a near-daily basis — and to them, salute! — but us lesser mortals have our best pondering and composing hours filled with the wearing petty concerns of work, and mowing the lawn, and painting the house, and putting up the new framing in the living room, etc.

(Personally, though, I blame M. for this state of affairs — if she hadn't allowed me on here, with my idle maunderings, then this blog would have retained, you know, focus. Obviously letting me post here was a profound error of editorial judgement on M.'s part, for which she should be roundly denounced.)