catfish 20

 Was very pleased to see that Guiliani got raided.  The folks at CNN were positively giddy, I changed the channel to see what the Foxies were talking about and that turned out to be Hunter Biden.  Of course it was about Ukraine, remember when Congress authorized money for Ukraine and Trump withheld it unless the Ukraines would open an investigation into Hunter,  Not that there was any evidence of wrongdoing, but just to smear him and by extension his dad.

It was all laid out clear as day in the Mueller report, but those republicans, if that had been Trump with his knee on Floyd's neck (after shooting him on 5th Avenue) they would have seen nothing wrong.  

His guys in DOJ had thwarted the investigation, but now those guys are gone.  Stifling giggles the crew at CNN said that the way those prosecutors work they get a guy by the shorthairs and squeeze to get to the next guy higher up, and I guess we all know who that is.  And now he will not be able to to keep witnesses from testifying and he will be up in front of honest jurors rather than the McConnell senate, and now maybe the reps can wipe him off their shoes like the rancid dog turd that he is.

And I can feel the finger of Beagles tapping me on the shoulder and asking me, "Gee Uncle Ken, how many times before have you predicted the fall of the house of Trump?"

I don't know, twenty, thirty, two hundred, a quadrillion. 

Okay Gentlemen, a little Catfish for the weekend with just a hint of a development that will make Catfish unhappy.

Well how about that?  Suddenly I was on the road to riches.  Back at the bunkhouse there was a pot left on the stove, some kind of soup I think, I think they were beans but they might have been something else.  Ate the whole pot.  Mighty good. 

Pretty tired after that, not a chance that I would make it out to the Great Wall, but one thing I did, I went through my duffle back and picked out the catfish shirt.  It was bright red and the picture was of this dark green catfish, and big yellow letters said: Mister Catfish.  I had maybe like 15 tee shirts, but I kind of held this one back.  This was the one I wore when I made my entrance back to Champaign a couple months ago, and generally I held it back for Friday nights, though not every Friday night, because you know that would be a little strange, but anyway it was certainly the shirt I would be wearing back to the big job the next morning. 

And so I did, and standing there the next morning with all the other new guys, shovels in our hands I waited to hear my name called.  And it didn’t take long.  “Hey,” Budwieser yelled out, “Island girl!” 

And there I was back at my trench again, and that’s where I was on Wednesday and Thursday and Friday.  And you know that nurse was right, I got used to it.  It was miserable though, getting up at six, and those long days of just me and the shovel and the dirt and that fat sun, and just collapsing on the nearest couch in the bunkhouse, maybe get up sometime in the early evening, eat something, drink whatever beers were floating around in the bunkhouse and lights out early, and then bam it was six AM again.  Did appreciate that fat paycheck at the end of the week, but didn’t even pretend to go to practice, Saturday night I had thoughts of getting to the Great Wall, but it just never happened.  Sunday night I did make it because of Gina, bought a new cowboy shirt even and made a point of showing her my pay stub, and she was impressed. 

You know, I know that she wanted me to take her out someplace fancy, and I knew that would be exactly the right move at this time, call a cab, go out to someplace downtown, eat appetizers and get a bottle of some snazzy wine, clink glasses by candle light, maybe we would even neck on the cab ride back to her door where I would almost surely get to third base.  Knew that was as far as I would be getting.  She was not a home run girl, she was a base by base girl, which was a little irritating, but something about it, not that home run trot, but edging closer to the plate with every play, maybe stealing home, had a certain appeal, there it is a close play and Catfish scores! 

But I just didn’t have it in me that night.  I kept thinking about 6 AM Monday morning, and that Goddamn trench just waiting to eat me up.  After flashing that pay stub I didn’t have much to say.  Normally I could just push a button and out would come some fine Catfish stories but all I could think of was all that dirt still in the trench waiting for my shovel.  Around ten thirty Itch breezed over to our corner of the bar and she was ready for another glass of wine, and he glanced at my empty glass with a little nod and I surprised us all by putting up my hand, no more. 

And Itch, you know, he had kind of been hanging around our corner of the bar, was kind of friendly with me after that Island Girl thing, still called me Natty, but there wasn’t that sarcastic edge to it like before, and his little comments they were mostly about Ron sitting at the other end of the bar next to Tammy, who, I have to say no longer showed the shiner and he even seemed to be treating her nicer. 

Gina was tickled by Itch’s comments, laughed a little harder at them then they really deserved, and this kind of rankled me, but he showed no particular response.  As much as I didn’t like this development I sometimes felt like grabbing his shoulders and shaking him, why wasn’t he taking advantage of this attraction?  But he wasn’t.  He wasn’t a challenge and I didn’t feel so bad about walking out and leaving her to him.  Might have even have earned me some points, that hard to get thing, the change up which was not usually a pitch I threw, but there it was, and anyway I just wanted to get back to the bunkhouse and hit that couch.

bric a brac

 You are correct Mr Beagles, that is the source of Woolie Boolie that Catfish mutters as he passes out.  I chose that phrase because it kind of went with hula and it was a couple nonsense words.  When you write and put in contemporary phrases there is always the chance that people who have come of age later may not recognize them.  Yesterday I was reading a story, Pale Horse Pale Rider, by Katherine Anne Porter which was set in the time when WW I was ending and the Spanish flu was raging and she several times references one-dollar men which I knew, because I read a lot of history, refers to guys who were too old to go to the front but volunteered their time at a dollar a year to sell war bonds and suchlike.

The song came up second on my google list (the socks came later) of options.  I did get the one from the urban dictionary, but my experience of the urban dictionary is that being open to the general public many of the contributors are fools or liars.

And here is some exciting news, I will be leaving on a jet plane over Memorial Day.  This is an annual thing that has been going on for like twenty years.  I have old Champaign beer drinking buddies who live in St Louis and others who live in Rolla which is right about in the middle of the state, and I will be flying to St Louis and then we will drive to Rolla where they have a nice spread and the husband brews tasty beer.

For reasons I forget they didn't do it the year before and last year of course was the covid.  But of course we are all vaccinated now, so there should be no problem.  Well there is the case of my expired driver's license but a few years ago when I went to Buffalo with another buddy I got a passport so that we could go to Niagara Falls, so that should take care of that.  This will be the first time that I have been out of town since the 4th of July two years ago.

The other day the subject of Old Dog came up at the Ten Cat, as in whatever happened to.  I was the only one who knew because of the blog, tried to interest any of them into it, but you know how that goes.  The main thing people remembered was those huge projects Old Dog took over once he left Fedex, the 3d printer, the cad machine, the huge 3d printer, the makers spaces.  Do those still go on?  Never hear about them anymore.  A google search came up with a lot of office and school spaces, but I am thinking more of those high tech things.  Maybe I am using the wrong word.

Well I said, the last thing he was into was pasta, and that stirred some interest, and now that I think about it I haven't heard about how the pasta thing is going, so let me ask now, how is the pasta thing going? 

Wooly Bully

 Not that I was a great fan, but this thang was on every jukebox in town in the late 60s, and I spent a lot of time in the bars in those days.  As many times as I heard this thang, I never did catch the lyrics, so I selected the version with English subtitles, and here it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv5cXss5cPg

Blip

Woolie Boolie?

I wondered what Uncle Ken meant by that so I visited Mr. Google and learned about woolen cycling socks and that's about it except for a reference in the Urban Dictionary about an area of the human body known in some circles as the "taint."

By the way, that was a great comment, Mr. Beagles.

-----

Being informed about employment statistics is not one of my strengths and I suspect a lot of smoke and mirrors in most discussions.  There is one interesting bit of information that I read, and that is since the beginning of the current pandemic the United States has gained 98 new billionaires.  What that means, I don't know but it seems likely to me that those new billionaires must have created a few new jobs.

 

catfish 19

 In this segment Catfish gets hired, but he doesn't get laid, and there is just a hint of menace creeping into the story.

There was an actual big job building a nuclear plant in Clinton.  The most chronically unemployed of my beer drinking buddies got on it.  Suddenly the biggest bums who would normally be cadging beers were setting up the bar.  What a world we lived in.

The next thing I put my knuckles around was a shovel.  

Sector 5 opened up that Monday.  Some guy in a hard hat came in and looked at me and maybe ten other guys just settling in with our newspapers and our magazines and our cards, and looked at us like we were in a police lineup.  “I’ll take them all,” he said. 

Well wasn’t that something?  I bummed a ride from a couple of the chosen and then we were down the road to Clinton, to the Big Job.  Hot damn and damn I wasn’t so sure about all this suddenly.  Still a little sore from that softball practice, and was it really true, as Ted had described it that they just lined you up, handed you shovels, took you to a spot of dirt marked up with chalk and told you to get started?  I wouldn’t like that. 

Turned out that it was and that I didn’t.  Some guy at the gate with a clipboard checked off our names and led us off single file, like a chain gang you know, to another guy who had a stack of, that’s right, shovels.  And then some other guy came and took away a couple of us, and another guy took maybe three more, and I’m just standing there resting my eyes a bit when I hear some guy yelling something, and then I realize it’s, “Island girl.” 

What?  Is this some kind of coincidence?  I open my eyes and this huge guy in a Budweiser tee shirt says it again, “Island girl!”  It looks like he’s looking at me.  What the fuck?  I point to myself to make sure it’s me he wants and as I look down at my tee shirt I realize that I am wearing that damn shirt Itch gave me the night before.  Hadn’t even thought about it, just put on the first shirt at hand that morning, and now, at The Big Job my name is Island Girl.  Fuck.

 “Hey, you gonna do the hula all morning or are you gonna dig some holes?” 

 And everybody laughs.  I quick think maybe I could do some little hula motion, to go along with the joke you know, but I realize straightaway that that’s just not going to work.  The new guy is there to be laughed at, not to make jokes.

 And then I am facing the chalk line.  It fades into the distance like when you’re walking down railroad tracks.  “Two feet deep,” Budweiser says, “and two feet wide.  Just keep going as far as you can.  I’ll be back in a couple hours to let you know that it’s time for your first break, until then just keep digging.”  I put the shovel into the dirt.  “Way to go,” he says, “Island girl.”

 It’s only like 8 AM and it must be like 80 already, and it hasn’t rained in a week or two and that dirt is hard.  I like to think I’m a pretty strong guy but I haven’t worked hard in, well I can’t remember when.  Still when Budweiser comes back for my first break he looks at how far I’ve gotten and I can tell that he’s not that disappointed.  Fifteen minutes.  There’s a tree not that far away, though sore as I am it takes a while to get to it.  And when those fifteen minutes are up I can barely stand, can barely limp back to that chalk line.  But I think about those pay stubs Ted showed us a few weeks ago and then I am digging away.

 But not that well maybe because when Budweiser comes back to tell me it’s lunchtime, he’s not that impressed by how far down the line I am.  I’m not interested in his disappointment as I struggle out to the tree.  I haven’t brought a lunch, but I am not really hungry and I just fall next to the tree.

 And when I wake up that sun is just right down on me.  Right at the top of the sky and right down on me.  Well maybe not because it’s daylight saving time, so it’s maybe an hour over to the west, I think it’s the west.  Doesn’t seem like it’s possible that that dirt could’ve gotten ten times harder in just like four and a half hours, of course it’s gone from 80 to like, I don’t know, 110. 

 And actually it all becomes funny when I get back to the chalk line.  I put my foot to the back of the shovel and it just skitters off, doesn’t even break the dirt and I go ass over teakettle, and it’s just hilarious man.

 And I’m still in that sunny good humor when Budweiser is back again to tell me it’s time for my second break, and looking at my two foot wide and two feet deep trench, confirms my suspicion that since the last break it has only moved like a foot towards that distant horizon, by asking “What have you been doing, the hula?”

 “Woolie Boolie, “ I answer and go over like a tree. 

 And those last two hours of work aren’t bad at all.  I’m in an air-conditioned trailer, there’s some kind of nurse who looked really good when I first came in, but not so good later, and she had looked interested In me when I first came in and it looked like I was dying, but got bored when it looked like I wasn’t going to.

 It sure looked like the end of the job for me, but it turned out that this happened all the time.  “Just takes awhile getting used to,” the nurse said patting me on the arm and leading me to the door, really bored I could tell.

 “Are you sure?” I asked, but by then the door was slammed in my face.

 “Come back tomorrow,” the guy with the clipboard said as I hula-ed out to the parking lot to find a ride home I asked, "You’re sure?”  

“We’re short,” he answered. 

catfish 18

 I had never said anything about Beagles's local station, just that it was owned by Sinclair.  Beagles says that he has never noticed the right wing feed, and a very cursory internet investigation on my part yielded nothing, so perhaps it is ivory clean, of course that doesn't mean they couldn't slip in something tomorrow.

Ah, at last a bit of lit crit.  Thankyouverymuch.  And herein Catfish does not get laid, but he does get to second base.  Sorry about that font glitch at the beginning.  I am going from a Word doc and both Word and blogger are hinky about cutting and pasting their fonts.

I was just dragging my twelve pack out to centerfield a few days later when I heard a strangely familiar voice and looked up and it was Ron.  What the hell was he doing there?  Well he had been working at the big job before the guys in the bunkhouse had gotten hired, and I had noticed them drinking together at the bar, and you kind of figured he would be a big jock.  And now he was walking towards me.

"I said,“How's it going?" Ron asked, and I had to shake my head, all those things running through my mind.  "It's okay." I said, not too friendly, thinking of poor Tammy's shiner.

 "Hey, I can spell you out here, if you want to get some bats in," he said like he was doing me a favor. 

"No," I said, "I think I'll stay right here," and turned around to look at the infield where nothing much was going on because Dan wasn't even getting close to the plate. 

"Suit yourself," he said in his Ron way, but I noticed that he didn't move to left or right field, and I turned around and looked at him kind of irritated.

"Hey, uh, can I say something?" he asked, not in a Ron way at all. 

"Suit yourself," I snapped back. 

"Well, I, I wanted to thank you."

 Thank me?  I turned around and looked at him. 

"For the other night, that Island Girl thing.  You know I was going to punch him, punch him a good one." 

And he sounded a little too happy about that last thing, but then he went on, "But I'm glad I didn't.  It would have been a stupid thing.  I'd had a few, you know, and sometimes he can be such an asshole," and it seemed like he caught himself there and toned it down.  "But he's not a bad guy, just kind of different I guess." and he let that hang.  "Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for running that interference thing,that was a pretty smart thing you did, Thanks."

 I half expected him to walk up and offer me that hammy hand of his, which I was not inclined to shake because there was still the matter of Tammy's shiner, but he just faded out into left field.

 About that time Dan's pitches started getting closer to the plate and wild swingers were hitting some out to the outfield, and I have to say I didn't catch any of them.  That long afternoon at The Great Wall, and my poaching of the twelve pack in center field took its toll.  I fell down a couple times and there was mud and a little bit of blood in my mouth when I staggered back to the twelve pack behind home plate to wash it all down. 

That was Friday afternoon, spent Friday night, normally a prime Catfish night at The Great Wall, passed out and dirty on that crumby red couch, not that I was in any shape to notice.  Woke up Saturday stiff and sore, never made it out of the bunkhouse, had to listen to Dan's recap of the practice.  Ron had taken centerfield after I had left and played it like a natural to hear Dan tell it, hit like a ton of bricks too. 

Sunday I was still stiff and sore, walked like that old guy who was sitting next to me on the Greyhound on the way into Champaign, and felt like him too I imagined.  But I knew Gina worked that night, and even though the last time I had seen her she was slamming the door in my face, I had gotten as far as the clasps on the back of her bra.  And there she was in her bra, well in her other clothes as well, but I had my goal well in mind. 

It would have helped if I had been able to smoothly slip into the barstool next to her instead of crawling in like a cripple, if I had something more clever to say than, "Ooph," and she had a better response than, "What the hell happened to you?" which I guess was her reflection on the bruises and scratches on my face, I would have been more confident about my next move. 

But hell, women like their men a little beat up, a little fresh from the fight, and that athlete thing, I had that going.  "Oh I was out in centerfield," I said casually, shaking my head as I was shaking off my injuries. 

"Centerfield," she wanted to know, "Where is that?" 

Was she kidding me?  Was this some kind of Buster the cat thing?  But she didn't look like she was joking.  "Centerfield," I repeated, "It's in the outfield, it's between right field and uh, left field, you know, in the middle like." 

She had to pause to think about this, and then she brightened up, "Is this a baseball thing?" she asked. 

"Yes," I said.  Geez. 

"So you were playing baseball?" 

"Well softball actually." 

"But it's like baseball, right?" 

"Yes." 

"Why were you doing that?" 

"For the team." 

"What team?" 

"The Great Wall team, you haven't heard?" 

"No," she said, "I haven't," and she was looking a little bored. 

"We're getting up a team, for the restaurant, you know, a Great Wall team," and I swept my arm out gesturing over the bar and back towards the restaurant, because she didn't seem to be getting it. 

"A Great Wall team?" 

"Yes, yes, a Great Wall Team.  We will be playing for the restaurant, for George, the customers, the cooks and the waitresses, like you," and I took the opportunity to put my finger on her nose, a cute little gesture to get the focus back to the situation at hand, which was me taking the wide turn around first and setting my eyes at second. 

"So you're doing it for me?" she asked and I set my cleats into the path towards second. 

"Yes I am, for you Darling," stretching out my arm to enclose her shoulders, another step. 

She leaned back against my arm, pursed her lips, "Does this mean I will be getting bigger tips?" 

"Oh yes, oh yes indeed, when they hear about our latest victory, they will just mob the place to eat that Champ chop suey, that First Place fried rice." 

"Mmmm," she murmured, cozy in the crook of my arm.  She knew it was all bullshit, and I knew she knew it, and she knew I knew she knew she knew it, but women like that, they like it when their man bullshits them, it shows that he cares.  

And then, just as I had committed to second, she asked, "Is Itch on the team?" 

Damn.  "Well yeah, he's uh, first base, in the infield, not really in the action, you know." 

"Probably good for him, though, don't you think, get him out in the fresh air and all, get his mind off all that bitter stuff he always seems to be stewing about? Give him some, direction. I guess." 

And just then he dropped by, looked at our empty glasses, and wanted to know if we wanted another round.  I'm always up for another round, but right then I wanted to get Gina out onto the path to her apartment, into the cool summer evening air, strolling down the brick sidewalks through the shadows of the streets, but she pushed her little wine glass forward.  "I'll have another," she said sweetly.  "Yeah, me too," I shoved my glass at him. 

When he came back with the drinks he was carrying something folded over his arm.  When he set the drinks down he said, “Hey Catfish, I got something for you,” and he pulled it off his arm and stretched it out.  It was a tee shirt, on the front was a hula girl and across her grass skirt in big red letters it said ‘Island Girl.’ 

Gina burst out laughing so I joined right in even though I was a little suspicious, was Itch making fun of me?  But no, he launches into this little speech about how he appreciates my whole little Island Girl thing, how quick thinking I was, how I had the gift of gab, all while Gina is watching attentively.  This was great.  When he finally ran out of things to say I quickly asked, “And what about handsome?  Don’t you want to say something about my ruggedly outdoorishly good looks?” 

Itch smiled, “Indeed I do.  You are a handsome man Natty,” and he turned to Gina who was eating this all up, “You’re a lucky lady, Gina.” 

Oh and she giggled, maybe a little too much, and her hands fluttered on the bar, also maybe a little too much because I noticed that she brushed up against his hand as he was pulling away.

But I chose to ignore that, because wasn't I the hero, and the centerfielder too? 

The walk back to her apartment was fine too, the evening air, the tall trees, the bumping of hips.  It was wet outside her apartment door and I left twitching my fingers at the feel of her nipples between my knuckles.  I was safe at second and third base was just a sprint away.  The door closed softly.

Our Local TV Station

 I never said that Sinclair was fair and balanced, just that our local station was.  One of the quotes I linked to yesterday said that Sinclair does not exercise editorial control over the news departments of all of its stations, so our station must be one of them that it doesn't.  I can't seem to find proof of this on Wiki, but I did find this:

"WPBN's owners have traditionally poured significant resources into its news operation, resulting in a much higher-quality product than conventional wisdom would suggest for such a small market. Currently, the station produces and airs 27 hours of news a week, a considerable amount for a station in the 120th market."

 WPBN-TV - Wikipedia

I have been watching this station since about 1980, and Sinclair didn't buy it until 2013.  During all this time I have never noticed any trace of political bias in their news broadcasts.  

It has occurred to me that, when I talked about closing the gap between the poor and the rich, I should have specified the gap between the blue collar and the white collar workers, which is what my source originally reported.  It did not, and I did not intend to address the larger gap between the blue collar workers and the CEOs.  That's a whole nother story.  All I know for sure is that restaurants and retail stores in Cheboygan and Petoskey are advertising starting wages that are 20-30% above the Michigan minimum wage.  That may not be significant in the Windy City, but it's a big deal in my neck of the woods.  I don't think most of these establishments even have CEOs.  

Poor Catfish!  Will he ever get laid again or land a decent job?  Tune in to the next thrilling episode of the continuing saga to find out.

catfish 18

 I don't see anything presented that shows that wages have risen appreciably so I am done with that.  If you choose to believe that Sinclair is fair and balanced go ahead.  I have led you to water, and if you choose not to drink deeply, well I wash my hands.

 I made a small joke, namely that both of these findings should be good news for the liberals, but that they might not be because none of this was government mandated. 

I did not think that was quite fair because you are putting words into the mouth of my ilk, but hell, I have done just as bad, and often worse when I have been on my high horse.

It does bring up the subject of income inequality which is a big part of The Liberal Agenda and I had selected the appropriate wiki article and was just about to put chalk to blackboard when I realized it is Friday so why not let it go?

Which reminds me of a story from my subbing days.  It was the last day of the semester, soft early summer breezes were wafting into the dark halls.  The bell had already rung and I was headed to the office to punch out when suddenly some kid dashed right by me.  "Now see here Young Man," I said, or words to that effect, my intention being to give him a short lecture on the danger of running in the hallways.

But he did not know that, for all he knew I was going to take him down to the office and get him into some kind of trouble and all this on the last day of school after the bell had rung.  Our eyes locked for a couple seconds and then he was off.

Now I was pissed.  He had compounded his crime. I took off after him, my intentions being, once I had caught him, to take him down to the office and charge him with fleeing an officer of the school law, something like that.

But I never caught him, he was young and I was old, also it was kind of the situation where the fox is running after his dinner but the rabbit is running for his life.  He got away into the crowd and I went down to punch out muttering to myself.

But on the train back downtown I realized that it was a good thing that he got away.  If I had collared him, and taken him down to the office this would have taken maybe an extra half hour of my time that I would not have been paid for.  It would be one more pain in the ass for the good folks of the office who were just as eager to begin their summer vacation as the kid was, and it would have put a damper on the kid's day and likely his parents also.  Everybody would have lost, so by contrast we all won by the kid getting away.

No lit crit I notice.  This is not the last day of school, but it is Friday. so what the hell? 

Pretty smug with myself over the Island Girl adventure I sauntered back to my stool to find Gina sitting right in the next barstool counting up her tip money.  She looked up at me as I sat down next to her, and she smiled, and her soft little pink fingers undid it must have been the third button down on her starched white blouse. She took a deep breath, "You like?" she wanted to know. 

"Well yeah," I answered. What did she expect me to say? 

She leaned into me, her soft breasts against my elbow as she slipped the tip money into her purse. "You were magnificent," she said. 

Well I thought so too, but just to make sure that we were talking about the same thing I asked, "How so?" 

That hillbilly would have kicked his ass. Island girls, how did you come up with that?" 

"I just started talking and one thing led to another, it all turned out okay."  I cut myself a little short, normally I would have gone on, played up the hero bit because really everything had worked out so well, but I could tell that if I went on too long about it it would be like bragging, which is fine and a lot of fun, but I suspected that wouldn't get me any closer to my goal which was now centered on Gina's quite opened blouse, and leaning over unobtrusively, that black lace bra which was just, well, welcoming me. 

"Yes it did, my hero," and she was leaning into me even heavier now, her voice soft and sweet and I was just seeing how fine this would all turn out when she said in that same soft and sweet voice, "I was really afraid that Itch was going to get beat up." 

Itch? How did he get into this? "You like him?" I asked and I really only meant this as a joking thing, a kind of teasing. 

She kind of pulled back, her breasts fading from my arm with her more erect posture, her half-opened whispering lips, pursed now in a straight line of serious concentration.  "I feel sorry for him," she said. 

Sorry for him?  Oh those words chilled me.  When a guy feels sorry for someone it just means something like too bad for that poor fucker, glad it's not me.  But when a girl feels sorry for a guy, those little tender tendrils go out.  I should know I've done it plenty of times myself, poor Catfish, not as educated, a po' boy really, a diamond in the rough, lacking only that touch of tenderness, oh works like a charm, I can tell you that Pal. 

"You know he acts so tough, so cynical," she continued, her breasts now seeming a million miles away, "Sometimes I just feel that..." 

 And here was a little pause and I stepped on it quick. "I know what you mean, he's a great guy, a great guy. We all think the world of him, and that's why I'm so glad that I was able to keep his head from being all swollen up like a watermelon."  A little crude here but I needed to shock her a little bit to get her focus back on who was the hero here, and it seemed to work well enough because the breasts came back and later we were all jumbled up on the walk back to her apartment, and at the good night station after the kiss she allowed my hands free rein over that terrain.  That little black bra tickled the undersides of my hands as I reached back for the clasps, and then she stopped me dead. 

"Catfish, I really like you," she said as she was pulling away, "I really do, really I really do. But I don't know, I just don't know," and then kind of sudden, because I didn't expect this with the excellent progress I had been making, she was inside her door and it was slamming on my face.

Deja Vu All Over Again

When you click on some sites they just give you an introduction.  If you want to read the whole story you need to click on the box that says "read the whole story", or "continue reading", or something like that.  I seem to remember that we've had this conversation before, but a certain amount of memory loss is normal at our age.  

I did not conduct the search recommended by Uncle Ken because it was about Black unemployment numbers, which was not my area of interest at the time, and still isn't.  I wanted information on the current labor shortage, specifically how widespread it is and how long it's been going on.  In the process, I came across some information that I thought would be of interest to my esteemed colleagues, namely that the labor shortage has driven up blue collar wages faster than white collar wages, and has resulted in increased hiring of women and minorities.  In reporting my findings, I made a small joke, namely that both of these findings should be good news for the liberals, but that they might not be because none of this was government mandated.  It has occurred to me that Uncle Ken, being unfamiliar with sarcasm, took such offense at my little joke that he felt compelled to attack everything else I said about the subject.  If that be the case, I hope Uncle Ken will accept my sincere apology and my promise to never resort to sarcastic humor on this forum again.  See, I can write fiction too!

I looked up that Sinclair Broadcast Group, and this is what I found:

A 2019 study in the American Political Science Review found that "stations bought by Sinclair reduce coverage of local politics, increase national coverage and move the ideological tone of coverage in a conservative direction relative to other stations operating in the same market."^[3][4] The company has been criticized by journalists and media analysts for requiring its stations to broadcast packaged video segments and its news anchors to read prepared scripts that contain editorial content, including warnings about supposed "fake news" in mainstream media.^{[5][6][7][8][9]}

This is not consistent with my experience, and I've been watching our local NBC affiliate for decades.  One possible explanation:

Hyman disputed these allegations by stating that its newscasts were "pretty balanced" and that "the reason why some on the left have characterized us as conservative is that we run stories that others in the media spike."^[124][132]

Another possible explanation:

The must-run segments usually only apply to those stations that have their own news department. For Sinclair stations where the newscast is operated by an external newsroom, the contracts generally forbid Sinclair from interfering with editorial control.^[156]

Another possibility is that the alleged allegations are fake news themselves.

no Catfish for you

 I don't reckon either of the dawgs does any zooming. I thought it was stupid before the pandemic, and I still thought that through much of the pandemic but finally I got into it with my two watercolor classes and my improv class, and while it was no way close to the real thing it was way better than nothing.  But a few weeks into it I developed a glitch: Zoom didn't recognize my speakers.  They were working for everything else and Zoom knew they were there, and I gave it permission to use them, and I tried all the solutions I could google and nada.  Well my computer is six years old and I thought maybe I ought to just get myself a new one, so I went out to Best Buy and got some information from the guy there and as long as I was there I walked the aisles of the other electronics, most of which I had no idea what they were for, but did see plenty of tvs.  They did seem pretty cheap, but my old, what 17 incher, is humming along just fine.

I don't remember what I told Old Dog about my Roku, except maybe that it was cheap, but if he is streaming along just fine without it, good for him, one less complication.

That quote is from that big business website that was all links and pictures and I didn't see any solid block of text and it's not in the present tense, it's in one of those more complicated tenses and indicates that this is something that has happened in the past, and there are no stats accompanying it or anything, so I am giving it a big thumbs down and closing the case as far as I am concerned.  And I get the distinct impression that Beagles has never done either of the searches that I suggested, and as I have said this headbanging is giving me a headache.

I didn't expect that my begging for lit crit would come to much and it hasn't.  Beyond saying you liked it you could say what characters you liked or didn't like, did it seem believable, did it remind you of something in your own life, that sort of thing.  When you had to write what you did over summer vacation was Teach ever satisfied with "I liked it a lot?"

The point of discussing a incomplete work is that it is interesting to know what the reader thinks at one point to compare it with what they will think when they are done, for the author that is, the author who is spending a lot of time pulling and editing these chapters out of a very large Word doc, and it might be nice to give him a little of your time to compensate him for the time he is putting in.

Begging is unseemly but saying nothing wasn't getting me any response.  But now it turns out that neither does begging.  Fine, no Catfish for you guys this morning.

One More Time

"I don't know why Beagles thinks that wages are growing more than a few percentage points while the moneybags of the very very rich are soaring higher than the high sierras. 

This was my initial disagreement with Beagles, and I still see nothing that says otherwise." - Uncle Ken  

Uncle Ken would already know this if he had read the article but, since he didn't, here it is:

"Higher wages have led to historic levels of pay compression

The most basic and intuitive way to solve labor shortages is to raise wages. And indeed, in our Labor Shortages Solutions Survey, this was the most used solution for both recruitment and retention challenges. Given the variation of tightness across occupations, it is not surprising that most of the wage acceleration is occurring in blue-collar and manual services jobs, where wage growth is already above prerecession rates. Wage growth for management and professional workers, which includes close to 40 percent of the workforce and most of total compensation, is accelerating more moderately, which is one reason why, despite the historically tight labor market, overall wage growth is still well below prerecession rates."

"I never said anything about women.  And I see nothing to disabuse me of my findings in the google search is black unemployment growing." - Uncle Ken

Again, I was talking about employment, not unemployment.  It occurred to me later that today's employed people might be tomorrow's unemployed people and vice versa.  If the percentage of unemployed Blacks is increasing, it might be because the percentage of employed Blacks has already increased.  A person can't lose his job if he never had one. The article didn't talk specifically about Blacks, but I assume they are included in the category of "women and minorities".

I don't know enough about either art or literature to be considered an informed critic.  As the old saying goes, "I don't know much about art, but I know what I like."  I have already said that I like the Catfish stories, and I don't know what else I can say about them.  

Tuned in

After a couple of months I finally got around to getting a new TV.  A couple of things came together financially, I did some homework, and I think I got over like a bandit.  No smart TV either, the dumb ones are still in the supply chain and they're cheap, around $100 for a 32 incher.  I reviewed some of the comments made by Mr. Beagles regarding his experience and he may have gotten some bad information from the kid that sold him his TV.  My TV has inputs for those three color coded jacks, along with an antenna/cable connection, 3 HDMI ports, a VGA port, and component video inputs.  The speakers sound good so I can really simplify my setup.  I thought my 23 inch monitor was spiffy to use with the computer but the 32 incher is even better for these tired old eyes.

Uncle Ken asked, way back when, about the Roku and that question slipped through the cracks, for which I apologize.  Don't know diddly about the Roku so I had to look into it and it seems like something I have no use for.  I can already stream more content than I can watch and I don't need a special box to do it, even some newer movies.  No need for an internet connection to another service, either.  I'll take a pass on the Roku and the other gadgets that do the same thing.

-----

It's a waste of time to solicit comments on the Catfish saga until the whole thing has been been revealed.  What's the point of discussing an incomplete work?  

 

 

catfish 17

  I don't know why Beagles thinks that wages are growing more than a few percentage points while the moneybags of the very very rich are soaring higher than the high sierras. 

This was my initial disagreement with Beagles, and I still see nothing that says otherwise.  

I never said anything about women.  And I see nothing to disabuse me of my findings in the google search is black unemployment growing.

I'd suggest wiki if Beagles is interested in learning more about Sinclair Broadcasting.  But as I said just because somebody is a lying liar does not mean everything they say is false, it just means you should apply more than average scrutiny to it.  Gannet is a big operation but I think they are fairly middle of the road.

But enough of this head-banging.  A little disappointed that I didn't get the lit crit that I was asking (begging) for but I will continue.  At this point the story gets a little darker, but there is some humor.

About a half hour into practice Ted and Ron showed up, just in from the big job. Ted took up at second base and Ron, smacking his glove, sauntered right up behind me. "So how's it going?" he wanted to know, and I didn't want to say too much to him, not after Tammy had showed up last week with that black eye. He had rather shrugged it off, slipped on the stairs, and landed smack on the doorknob, those sloe gin fizzes, he mused.  He shook his head like what can you do, and she, a quick glance at him, shrugged apologetically, sorry to have caused a fuss. 

Itch was outraged. "That fucking son of a bitch. That Goddamn hillbilly," he hissed at me when I passed him coming out of the john. "Well," I answered, not really wanting to get into it.  I didn't like that shiner, but maybe none of my business, and she was a little lush.  It was possible that she stumbled.  And I didn't like that hillbilly crack.  

"You fuckers," he answered passing into the pisser, slamming the door behind him. Well shit, I kind of knew he was right. That Ron was wrong. I'd known that right from my first day in back in Champaign, but I hadn't heard Itch saying anything about it till now, and the way he had somehow put me in the Ron category, there was no justification for that. 

And I noticed, coming back from my piss, that he didn't say a word to Ron, didn't go near the side of the bar he was sitting at, let Maggie, the other bartender, take all the orders from that side. Ron, getting sloshed, picked up on this, there was no love lost between the two anyway. Ron kind of looked down on all those college types, oh he acted friendly to them, but always with kind of an edge, which most of them never noticed, but Itch did, he kind of edged him back, in that sarcastic way of his. If you didn't know any better you'd think they were just kidding around, but it didn't take too much to see that edge. 

Anyway, Maggie had gone to the bathroom or something and Ron's glass was empty, he kind of looked at the other end of the bar where Itch was fiddling with something, and banged his glass on the bar a little too hard.  "Hey Eetch," he said, because that's the way George pronounced his name, kind of a joke between us at the bar, but no joke the way Ron said it. 

Itch looked over at him, gave him a stare, and then went back to what he was fiddling with. 

"Hey Eeeeetch," Ron repeated louder drawing out the name, "Get me another beer."  Tammy surprisingly put her hand on his arm, like to rein him in a little. It surprised him too, he shook off her hand and grabbed her by the chin, pulling her face in Itch's direction and making a point of looking at her shiner, and then looking back at Itch, "You got a problem?" And this just as the jukebox was between songs so that everybody heard it clearly and all the heads turned in their direction. 

I'd been watching all this sitting near Itch's side of the bar, still a little sore about that "You fuckers," remark, but this was just too much.  Itch put away what he was fiddling with and just stood there, really pissed but really scared too because Ron could kick his ass in a heartbeat, and that appeared to be what he was thinking of as he unhanded Tammy's chin with a bit of a jerk and stood up like he was thinking of coming behind the bar. 

Well I couldn't just sit there, but I didn't know what to do exactly. Got up and walked towards Ron, made out like I was drunker than I was, always helps.  He was moving towards where he could get behind the bar when I met him, and I fell sloppily on him.  "Like being on a desert island huh?" first words that popped into my mind, always go with your first words. 

"Huh?" Ron wanted to know, still heading towards behind the bar, he was like a ram, but I had my arms around his shoulders and stuck my foot in between his so we were all tangled up.  

"Desert island," I repeated, wondering where I was going to go with this.  "Desert island, you know with that scraggly palm tree dropping those coconuts on your head, boink boink, and water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink, and what you want is just an ice cold beer, huh?" 

"That's what I want," he said, making a move to get past me, but we were just too tangled and he was becoming a little confused. 

"Those island girls, they know how to draw a beer, they have those little pink tongues and they hold them just so, and pull down on that big tap gentle-like with that smooth move, you know what I mean," and I leered at the watchers and got a few giggles.  And just then Maggie came walking back into the bar, and I sang out, "Island girl," and got a pretty good laugh out of that, and another one when she looked around confused.

And by then the whole momentum was gone. It all worked out for everybody. Ron was settled back in his bar stool as Maggie drew his beer, still wondering what everybody found so funny. Itch didn't get his ass kicked.  Poor Tammy, well at least she wouldn't be going home with a pissed Ron, probably he wouldn't smack her this night, or maybe not so hard anyway. 

How I Searched

Since Uncle Ken is too busy to read the whole article, here are two additional quotes from it:

 " A very popular strategy, especially among blue-collar employers, was to expand the target recruitment demographic, which partly explains why we have seen a large increase in the share of minorities in many types of jobs."

"The US workforce is becoming more diverse, with the share of women in 

several blue-collar occupations rising dramatically in recent years."

I already posted one quote, the one about the aging of the work force and, for some reason, Uncle Ken didn't have a problem with that one. 

As I said, the thing that got me going on this kick was a segment on the TV news.  It referred anybody who wanted more information to its website, upnorthlive.com.  When I got there, I searched the site under "labor shortage" and came up with the article for which I posted the first link.  Since that article was pretty limited to the restaurant business, I then searched Bing, which is the default search engine on my computer, under "labor shortage" in an attempt to broaden my scope.  The first two options that Bing gave me were "labor shortage USA" and "labor shortage UK", and I chose USA.  The first hit was the article for which I posted the second link.  I had no ax to grind at this point, I was just looking for information.  

Sinclair is the parent company of at least two of our local TV stations, one being an ABC affiliate and one being an NBC affiliate.  I have heard their people on both stations refer to the other one as "our sister station".  They also commonly display content from other sister stations from diverse locations.  From this I get the impression that Sinclair is indeed a pretty big outfit.  I have no evidence that they use their power to tell their reporters what to say and not say, but of course its possible.  Our local newspaper is also owned by a big conglomerate, I believe it's Gannet.  Does this mean that I shouldn't believe anything that I see on the TV news or read in our local paper or from anybody associated with  big business?  Who else, then, is more qualified to comment on our current national labor shortage?

It has occurred to me that part of our problem was that Uncle Ken was focused on the unemployment rate of women and minorities, which is not what I was talking about.  I was talking about new hires, people who have recently been hired for what might be the first job they ever held.  It is quite possible that the percentage of women and minorities in both groups might be increasing.   

lit crit

 I didn't look up those links of Beagles because there was no mention of their source or specifically where in their verbose jungle was what they were saying what he says they were saying and it takes considerable time searching through them looking for what often turns out to be a needle in a haystack.  But I decided today to humor him.

The first quote was from Sinclair that notorious right wing group that buys tv stations and then tells the reporters what to say.  But just because somebody is a lying liar does not mean that a specific thing they say is untrue, so I looked through it and all I saw was anecdotal evidence.

The other one was from something called The Conference Board which I never heard of and seems to be composed of the heads of big business.  The site is sloppy with a lot of photos and I gave up early on finding anything there.

The internet is indeed like the bible in that you can find anything you like there, that is why it is not a good idea to do this

I chose to take my sources at their word because they were consistent with what I had already seen with my own eyes,

Oh it's a good idea if you already know what you believe and are only interested in buttressing your ideas whether they are true or not.  But it is not the way science is done,  That's why people believed the earth was flat for much longer than made any sense.

What Uncle Ken did was asked an unbiased question of the google machine and then surveyed the first page of responses.  Also not an ideal way to search but better than looking for stuff that agreed with what I already thought I knew.  I wonder if Beagles did those searches, and if he did, did he read any of the articles.

But we have been here a million times, okay maybe a hundred.  And I get no joy in it.

Catfish is a long Word doc and searching through it while editing it a little bit and also searching through the blog which has an awkward structure takes a lot of time and I had a feeling that I might be repeating that last chapter, but I just went ahead with it because the time was getting late.

But I am glad it was pointed out because now at least I know that it is being read.  I know it is asking a lot, but I will anyway because I put a lot of work into this.  Could I get a little commentary from the Dawgs, comments along the lines of you liked this and you didn't like that?  Actually I prefer the latter because that is the way that I learn things.

Long ago I stood out front of the Ten Cat looking at one of my shows and this fellow came out to get a smoke and started commenting on the paintings and he was being quite critical, which I really appreciate because people who know me generally just say something like, oh that's great, which really tells me nothing, but this fellow was just standing there smoking his roll your own and saying what he thought.  He did not know at first that I was the artist, but even when he found out he kept right on being critical, and I really appreciated that.

And that fellow was Old Dog.

I Got a Source, You Got a Source, All God's Children Got a Source

 I already looked it up, and posted two links on April 15.  I'm sure if I searched some more I could find a source that disagrees with those sources.  The internet is kind of like the Bible in that respect, you can find something to support any position you want to take if you search long enough.  I chose to take my sources at their word because they were consistent with what I had already seen with my own eyes, namely entry level job postings offering starting wages of 12 and 13 dollars an hour when the current minimum wage in Michigan is $9.65.  I chose to believe the part about the women and minorities because it makes sense that more of those groups would be hired if there is a shortage of White male applicants.  

Catfish 15 is a duplicate of Catfish 13.  Catfish 16 looks familiar as well, but I couldn't readily find the original.  

catfish 16

 I don't know why Beagles thinks that wages are growing more than a few percentage points while the moneybags of the very very rich are soaring higher than the high sierras.  Rather than burden the readers with a long list of links I merely suggest that they google are wages rising?  and peruse the results. Likewise the gap between rich and poor is not narrowing but growing larger than it was in the gilded age.

As for minority unemployment shrinking I would suggest that the reader once more mount the google machine and feed it is black unemployment growing? and you will get the answer to this one.  

"Softball practice, this afternoon guys, look sharp." and then Dan flipped the ball behind his back. then turned around quick to snatch it in his glove on the way down only he didn't make it fast enough and just knocked it a little so that it took a little bounce on the floor and hit Ted, just rousing up from under his blanket and rubbing his knuckles into his eyes flat in the nose and dribbled back into the center of the room where Dan scooped it up like he'd always meant to do that and repeated, "Look sharp," and took his exit.

 Well shit was that coming up? It'd been a big triumph getting George to sponsor the team and all, but after that it had slipped my mind. Doing a little calculating I realized that opening day was just three weeks away, but you know I had never figured on practice, I thought we would just show up and do whatever.  Practice, shit, it sounded a lot like gym class. 

 Almost got on the shovel brigade that morning.  Guy came in and looked at us like we were a sorry lot of recruits which I guess we were, went down the line, this guy and this guy and just before he got to me he was done. 

 Back to the bunkhouse for a nap, sure was grueling getting up that early, and sitting in the hall for like three hours, but the nap was refreshing and then out to The Great Wall for noontime beers. Beers went on kind of late for me because of that practice thing, instead of heading back for my after lunch nap, I might as well suck up beers until we headed out to the field. Truth be told I was rather hoping it would rain, but no such luck.

 Itch, behind the bar, was strangely into it. Around five o'clock he shut us off sharp.  "No more guys. Out to the ball field."

 The ball field? "Is that what you call it?" I asked snatching my glass which was still maybe a quarter full from his grasp.

 "Indeed I do Natty," that stupid nickname he'd stuck on me, which I might say I didn't like a bit. "Because the ball is what rules the field, until it leaves the pitcher's hand nothing happens, just a bunch of guys standing around looking stupid, but once released, twirling in the air then it is in play. It may be a ball, it may be a strike.  It may be that the batter swings and should he make contact, maybe a hard grounder to third, maybe up the middle, maybe a..."

 "Maybe a line drive right at the first baseman's head," I cut in knowing that he would be the first baseman.

 He looked at me a little funny.  Hell I hadn't meant anything, was just trying to cut short his speech, finished my quarter beer and shoved the glass towards the bar. "To the ball field," Itch announced and off we marched. Well we bought a few twelve packs, one for first base, one for third base, and one deep into center field. Dan wasn't too happy about all that beer lugged out onto the field, but we had showed up, what more could he ask?

 I hadn't been too hot about interrupting that cozy early afternoon drinking session, but I have to say that once I got into that fresh air I perked up a bit I staked out my claim in centerfield, and it just felt alright, felt just fine. Of course that twelve back just behind me had something to do with it, but still when Dan ran out and tossed me my glove and I snagged it in the air and slipped it on well I was ready to go, hot to trot. Played a pretty good center field way back in high school, wasn't that long ago. Actually it was, fifteen years ago, doing some quick numbers in my head, but still felt as fresh as that green grass underneath my feet. 

Maybe seven, eight guys out there.  Dan took the mound, pretty drunk guy doing the catching, Itch at first, noticed he claimed it right off, just like I had claimed center field, no second baseman, young guy at shortstop, no third baseman. Just me in the outfield, lot of ground to cover, but that didn't matter because nobody was hitting anything out there. Dan wasn't much of a pitcher so the batter had to swing at almost anything, so it was mostly just slow rollers in the infield.  I kept moving in further, dragging that slowly emptying twelve pack behind me. 

I passed up my time at bat because I wanted to stake my claim in center field, and the truth was I wasn't that great a hitter.  Oh when I smacked one, I smacked it good, but I didn't smack that many, mostly I whiffed. Problem was I closed my eyes just as the ball was coming in. Coach was always on my ass about that, and I saw his point, I agreed with his point, but I don't know, I always did it anyway. The ball always looked like the full moon coming in, and I just wanted to hit it so hard that I squeezed my eyes shut for the extra power, and there it would be strike one, strike two, and strike three. Damn. You know I had gotten into it to impress the babes, not that there were many girls showing up for baseball games, but a few, and what they liked were the guys who got the hits, who put the runs on the boards. I had my share of over the shoulder running out and running in diving catches, but a glove man, you know, just not the same as the guy at the plate blasting them out of there.

Could Be a Good Thing

 The more I think about it, this labor shortage could be a good thing.  It is already driving up wages, and the blue collar wages are increasing faster than the white collar wages, which might help narrow the gap between the rich and the poor.  That's the right way to do it you know, raise up the poor rather than cutting down the rich.  Of course Uncle Ken and his ilk won't approve of that, they want to reduce everybody to the lowest common denominator.

Another result of the labor shortage is that more women and minorities are being hired than ever before.  Uncle Ken and his ilk should approve of that, but they might not because it's not being forced upon the employers by the government.  

I used the self checkout at Walmart again yesterday.  They had three regular lanes open, but they all had lines, and I noticed one of the self checkouts didn't even have anybody using it.  I encountered a couple of glitches, I figured out one by myself and the host lady came over and helped me with the other one.  I didn't time myself but I'm pretty sure that I still got out of there faster than I would have going through one of the regular lanes.  When I was done, the machine said "Thank you for shopping at Walmart and have a nice day."  Okay, any of the regular checkout clerks might have said the same thing, but the machine sounded really sincere about it.  I stepped back, saluted the machine, and said "Thank you. It's been a pleasure doing business with you."  I guess it won't be so bad, robots taking over the world, if they're all polite and friendly like that.

boomers

 When I think of boomers the first image that comes to mind is a Davy Crockett hat.  When you went down to the Kresge toy aisle there was a Davy Crockett section that took up half the aisle. As a huge Davy Crockett fan this made me feel, well kind of powerful.

The thing was, this is how I heard it explained, before us boomers, kids got whatever their parents got them.  If you wanted to sell your toys you advertised to the parents.  But in the fifties you had this huge bulge of kids coming down the pike, and having won the war the USA was fat and generous so there was a lot of money to made in selling toys.  And then you had that new sensation that was sweeping the nation, TV!  

And now you could take your message straight to the kids without having to appeal to the parents. You had to appeal to the kids, you had to figure out what they were thinking,  You had to pay attention to them, and there is nothing a boomer likes better than attention.  

The music of our parents was, let's face it, sappy, and kind of a mish mash, big band, crooners, ballads, the stuff of Snooky Lanson and Giselle McKenzie on the Lucky Strike Hit Parade,  And then suddenly there was Elvis Presley, bigger than even Davy Crockett.  

And then there was rock 'n roll, and then there were drugs, and then there was the unpopular war.  It was all about us.  This whole stupid corrupt world of our parents had to be swept away and replaced with oh, hippie paradise.  Had not one of those silly pledges in the Mickey Mouse Club spoken of the leaders of tomorrow?  Did not the bible say, A child shall lead them?  We were young and unblemished our vision unencumbered by the hypocrisy of the past.  We were something. 

Well we sort of ended the war, we brought in beards and long hair and got rid of a lot of suits and ties, we loosened the sexual mores, we brought in rock and roll which is still listened to by our great grandkids, marijuana is legal most everywhere.

But other than that we sort of became like everybody else after we hit our thirties, just going to work, raising kids, watching tv, getting old.  We broke for Trump 55 to45. though Trump, in a way, had kind of a sixties vibe.

But anyway we were a swell in the population growing older and people realized that there would be a problem for everybody when we started retiring.  We would no longer be paying into social security, we would be taking out of it.  We would no longer be working in hospitals.  We would, and have, become, a problem.

I've simplified a lot of stuff and I realize that a lot of boomers were not doing all that hippie crap, but I guess those of us who were got most of the ink (I can see a gen x, y, or z, or a millennial asking, Ink?  What do tats have to do with it?).  We did a lot of talking.  Like I said, we love attention.

Never before have such a large number of retirements and almost zero growth in the working-age population happened before.

Gee  I wonder where we could find people to fill that working-age population gap?  I wonder where they might be,

More on the Labor Shortage

I saw a thing on the TV news this evening about the current labor shortage.  One thing I learned was that it's not just a local problem, and another thing, which I already suspected, is that it's not just a current problem.  They reported that there were some eight million unfilled job openings nationwide as long as two years ago.  They said to see their website for more information about the subject, but all I could find was this article about restaurants:

'Now Hiring': Restaurants nationwide struggle to find workers | WPBN (upnorthlive.com)

Maybe I could find more information if I had my friend Cortana do a wider search of the internet.  I might do that tonight and, if I find anything, tack it on the end of this post.  The TV news didn't say what they thought was the root cause of the problem, but it occurred to me that the general aging of the population might have something to do with it.  I was 45 when our local paper mill shut down, and you couldn't buy a job in this town in those days.  On the national scene, many companies were downsizing and either forcing or persuading people my age to take early retirement.  Now that I'm 75, with barely enough energy to make the hundred yard walk to the mailbox each day, do they expect me to go back to work?  Sorry folks, you're 30 years too late.

***********************************************************************

And here it is.  Remember, you heard it first from Talks With Beagles.

"Working-age population growth is slowing to a halt. The massive retirement of the large baby boomer generation is bringing growth in the working-age population to a halt—a trend that will continue through 2030. This is the main reason why this era of shortages is so different. Never before have such a large number of retirements and almost zero growth in the working-age population happened before."

https://www.conference-board.org/topics/labor-shortages#:~:text=Labor%20shortages%20are%2

catfish 15

 It looks like Old Dog got his J and J right on time.   I think maybe they jumped the gun on halting the J & J's.  It was just four people out of a few million I think.  And it was all women.  Nobody knows why.  So far the vaccines protect for all the variants but that could change the longer it is around, that's why the idiots who won't vax endanger us all.

Pasta sounds interesting.  With bread you have all different kind of ingredients and all but pasta, I thought it was all the same stuff in different shapes.  I suppose we shall have to wait some weeks to learn more from The Old Dog In The Kitchen.

I don't think they do much here to enforce a covid quarantine, just rely on good faith I think.  Illinois has some rule that if you come here from a particularly covidy state you have to quarantine for a couple weeks before going about your business, but I doubt if anybody does that.

China on the other hand did put a padlock (piece of tape actually I think) on every door,  and you ate whatever they put outside your door for the next couple weeks.  That's the sort of shit you can do when you are a totalitarian state, which is deplorable of course.  Wouldn't we all be better off if we were locked up a couple weeks eating ramen noodles and watching I Love Lucy reruns and then it would all be over and we could go about our lives normally?  I would certainly go for that, but I did hear that part of the plan was when they sealed your door in Michigan they were going to put up a big poster of Gutsy Gretch on the door facing inwards.

Seems to me if the grocers had people watching cameras all day that would cost as much as manning cash registers.  I would guess they do spot checks though.

Those bonuses look like a sucker's game to me.  After you work there for whatever time you have to accepting the bonus, seems like it would pay like maybe a quarter hour extra.  I'd go for a higher wage.

And here is a little more Catfish.  At last a love interest.

Kind of set myself up a little schedule on that going out to the union hall thing.  This going out every morning at five was just too much, so I decided I would only go out like Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. But Friday you know that was prime time at the Great Wall, and getting up at five in the morning, well I was just nodding out too early, so Monday and Wednesday then, but Wednesday, well so close to Monday, why bother, so Monday then, and mostly I made it out on Monday. But after that big hiring earlier, nothing much was going on. The talk at the hall was about sector five, whatever that was, but it was going to open up a month or so later, so I was just going to wait on that.

And I'd picked up on this girl, Gina, short little girl, hair as dark as coal hanging low over her forehead, eyes as dark looking up over that mop and oh yes, big breasts.  Smart girl, music major, sang opera. Not an opera man myself, but one night I heard her singing. Well it sounded like screeching to me, I thought someone was being attacked, but it was just her, sitting alone at the end of the bar, a waitress at the restaurant counting up her tips after her shift on a slow Sunday night, and apparently she had done really well, and a little loaded, and that and the way the deep breathing swelled her white blouse, well I just drifted right over.

The Song of the Valkyries,that was the song she was singing she explained to me.  The Valkyries were those women you saw in the cartoons with the horns on their pointed hats. They scoured the battlefields and swept up the dead, and loved them up.

Loved them up?  She had my interest right there, and I told her that.  She kind of frowned, too fast, I had to slow it down. I mumbled something apologetic.  Mumble is good, encourages her to lean a little closer, but then you have to come up with something.  "You sing like an angel," I said, first thing that popped into my head.

And she saw right through it, some dumb guy with some dumb pickup line, but I followed up quick, "I really mean it," and I gave her that aw shucks Catfish look, and she paused and gave me a hard look.  Damn this wasn't going well.  "All right then, I didn't mean it.  As a matter of fact the only reason I came over was because it sounded like someone was killing cats."  That was my exit line, as long as I was going to get turned down I might as well go out with a little glory.

"Well aren't you charming." she observed.

"Well I try to be."

"Well maybe you could try harder."

"Well maybe you could sing better."

"Like this?" she asked and out came the song of the Valkyries again. 

"Oh those poor innocent cats." I responded.

"Like Buster?" she wanted to know.

"Who?"

"My cat, my sweet little cat, he just passed away," she bit her lip, "this very morning."

"Shit, I'm sorry, I didn't know, I didn't mean anything, I..."  What had I walked into?

"Poured him a little saucer of milk and stepped into the next room and broke into a little aria, and when I came back into the kitchen he was dead."

"How?"

"Well like a doornail.  On his back, his little paws stuck up into the air, his poor little mouth open."

I just stared at her, I think my mouth fell open.

"I can only hope,  We can only hope," and here she put her hand on mine, "that there are little kitty Valkyries, and they carried him off and that right now he is sitting on the banks of that big white cream river while they feed him peeled mousies."

And those deep dark eyes that she had fixed me with tweaked at the corners and then she was giggling like a naughty school girl.  "Oh you should see your face," she said.

Damn, the bullshitter, bullshitted, but I was still a little unsure, "Buster?" I asked.

"No Buster."

Maybe I should have been pissed, but hell there she was all laughing and happy.  "I'm Catfish," I said.

And I kind of liked that she was a bullshitter just like me, and I went on and she went on, beers were drunk. last call came and went and then I was walking her back to her apartment, but then when she got to her door she just kind of stopped you know, with her back to the door, her face turned up for a kiss and I gave her one, but it was like that was it, a good night kiss.  "Thank you for a lovely evening," she said, and I thought maybe she was joking, like she'd been all night, but that was it.  She put the key in the door, gave me a little smile as she went in and then closed the door behind her and I was left standing out there in the dark.  What the fuck? 

Things were just not working out for Old Catfish.  No late night romp, no calls of "Oh Catfish. Oh Catfish." late in the night, pink toes curling up, and no bacon and eggs in the morning.  Truth was in the two weeks I'd been back, the only time I'd gotten lucky was with Pukey Tammy, who had never fixed me up with any breakfast either, and now she was with that no good Ron.

And damn I'm not proud of this, but Claudette's old apartment was just a couple blocks away and I walked them.  Lights were out, was I even sure she still lived there?  Labels on the mailboxes were faded, couldn't make them out in the dark, but there was the button, the button I used to push coming back late and unlucky from the bar towards the end there when things were not so hot between us but she was always glad to see me.

But I wasn't sure she was still living in that old apartment, kind of a musty apartment to tell the truth, but comfy, plenty comfy for old Catfish with the blues.  Maybe some other girl was living there now, that might kind of work.  I could tell her I was looking for some old girlfriend, dress up the story a little, look woeful, shuffle and sniffle a little, might just do the trick.  But then it might be some guy, some drunk guy pissed at being woke up this late, that wouldn't work out so well, better to just move on which is what I did.