• The height, and depths, of consumer idiocy

What does it say about consumerism gone amok when a 34-year-old Wal-Mart temp employee is killed in the crush of bargain-hunters mindlessly streaming into the store when it opened for business the day after Thanksgiving?

It happened today in Valley Stream, Long Island, NY. At least four other people were injured in the mob scene, police said.

“He was bum-rushed by 200 people,” co-worker Jimmy Overby, 43, told the New York Daily News. “They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too. … I literally had to fight people off my back.”

A police statement said shortly after the store’s 5 a.m. opening time, shoppers “physically broke down the doors, knocking (the worker) to the ground.”

A metal portion of the door was crumpled like an accordion. Witnesses told the Daily News that before the store was closed, eager shoppers streamed past emergency crews as they worked to save the worker’s life.

I can understand the energy of such concerted mass effort when it is something like the crowds that have been protesting against the government in Thailand this week, but shopping? Well, when you can pick up a 50-inch high-def plasma TV set for less than $800, it’s every man for himself. That’s become The American Way.

[Go here for scenes captured at the site of the tragedy.]

• Smoking can hurt you in so many ways

From the Albany (NY) Times Union:

A Washington County, NY, tow truck driver has been charged with two unsolved rapes in Maryland from 1988, but only after State Police in New York secretly obtained his DNA off a discarded cigarette butt.

William Joseph Trice, 47, of Eagle Bridge is being held in the Albany County jail, awaiting extradition on first-degree rape and assault charges that could send him behind bars for life.

State prosecutors in Maryland say Trice unwittingly allowed his DNA to be taken off the cigarette butt earlier this month, handing investigators long-awaited evidence to solve the attacks.

Trice already has a 1994 conviction for indecent exposure in Maryland, court records show. A person with knowledge of the case said Trice had exposed himself to a 12-year-old girl.

• More 2-faced heads

Another collection, created with the help of my friends, of unintentionally double-meaning or just plain “Huh?” headlines:

• Pickup crashes on I-95 with boy seated in bed
(Baltimore Sun

• John McCain, senility America’s loss of the Pacific
(Pravda)

• There’s no easy answer for chronic interstitial cystitis
(Manchester, NH, Union Leader)

• Recreation injuries: 213,000 treated in ER
(United Press International)

• Baby-faced chief executives save face better for companies
(Indo-Asian News Service)

• Girl, 10, improves after fatal crash
(Chicago Tribune)

• Irradiated meet in markets soon
(Hilo Hawaii Tribune-Herald)

• Staples to attach Dutch business
(BBC)

• Leading scorpion on first Beijing tour
(Xinhua News Service)

• A wild turkey of a different feather

I live on a hilltop overlooking the Hudson River in Upstate New York, a pastoral place that once was inhabited only by deer, foxes, rabbits, birds … and really big birds, in the form of wild turkeys.

The turkeys go wherever they want, whenever they want. It’s not uncommon to see a line of them ambling around the neighborhood, as you can see in the photo above that I snapped one day.

A few years ago, a new neighbor moved in down the street, relocating after a lifetime of New York City dwelling where wildlife was something you ran across only at the Bronx Zoo or when you waded through flocks of pigeons in Central Park. He knew little in the ways of true wildlife.

One summer afternoon he was in his backyard hammering something together when one of the wild turkeys came running toward him. Not knowing turkeys need to gather a head of steam to take off, he panicked and assumed the bird was attacking. He swung the hammer in the bird’s general direction and scampered off to the safety of his house.

After learning of this happening, I sneaked into his yard later that day and put a small bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon liqueur on the porch. I then called him to report “another wild turkey” was on his property. He came dashing out with the hammer and was relieved to find out what sort of “turkey” awaited him.

It is to this neighbor I dedicate this seasonal cocktail, the “Thanksgiving 101,” supplied by Lisa Cifuentes of the Thomas Collective PR firm representing the folks at Austin Nichols’ Wild Turkey. This particular expression of the bourbon is 50.5% abv (101 proof) and retails for about $20 for the 750ml bottle. As Lisa said in a note to me:

“Thanksgiving 101 is the quintessential classic American cocktail, and is a sure-fire way to get you through another family affair that is bound to bring some drama. It’s so easy to prepare, there’s no need to learn how to cook — as long as you have a bottle of Wild Turkey 101, everyone can still get their fill of bird for the day and salute to the ‘American spirit’.”

Thanksgiving 101

Wild Turkey 101
Cranberries
Rosemary

Serve the whiskey over fresh ice in a rocks glass. Garnish with several cranberries and a sprig of rosemary.

Simple to create, and a great way to have turkey even if you can’t cook.

• Beg your pardon

George W. Bush has been rather restrained in handing out presidential pardons to a variety of convicted criminals during his time in the White House. He has issued 117 — less than half of the number granted by Presidents Reagan and Clinton, for example, and rejected about 8,000. But, as with so many things, it’s quality, not quantity.

Here are a few of the recipients of his most recent round of cleansing:

• John Edward Forte, a Grammy Award-winning rapper from North Brunswick, NJ. The “artist” was arrested at Newark International Airport in 2000 after being found with a briefcase containing $1.4 million worth of cocaine and was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

• Leslie Owen Collier of Charleston, MO. He pleaded guilty in 1995 to improperly using pesticide in hamburger meat to kill coyotes but ending up killing many other animals, including three bald eagles, our national bird.

• Three different people for three different bank-related crimes — Geneva Hogg of Jacksonville, FL, who was convicted of bank embezzlement, William McCright Jr. of Midland, TX, — Bush’s home area — who was convicted of bank fraud, and Paul McCurdy of Sulphur, OK, who was convicted for misapplication of bank funds.

I can hardly wait to find out who gets any last-minute pardons before Bush vacates office. If he thinks people who steal money, handle huge amounts of drugs and ignore environmental laws and kill off our national symbol are worthy of clemency, the sky’s the limit.

Among those who have applied for a get-out-of-jail-free card or image-cleansing move, shown above:

Left: Michael Milken, the Wall Street financier/con artist who created the market for high-yield bonds in the 1980s, leading to his nickname:”Junk Bond King.” He was indicted on 98 counts of racketeering and securities fraud in 1989 as a result of the government’s insider trading investigation of Wall Street. A year later he pled guilty to six felonies, paid $200 million in fines — wonder where he got the money? — and served 22 months in prison. He has since been using his personal fortune in philanthropic ventures, none of which apparently include helping the people he screwed to make that fortune.

Center: Randy “Duke” Cunningham, former California congressman who was caught taking at least $2.4 million in bribes and underreporting his income for 2004. The bribes included limousines, prostitutes and a house boat. He was sentenced to 8 years, 4 four months in prison and ordered to pay $1.8 million in restitution.

Right: John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban” captured in the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. He was indicted by a federal grand jury on 10 charges, including conspiracy to murder U.S. citizens or nationals, and later pleaded guilty to serving in the Taliban army. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

• Give till it hurts

From the BBC.com Website:

A Muslim charity and five of its former leaders have been convicted of funding the Palestinian militant group Hamas, designated a terrorist group in the U.S.

Jurors reached the guilty verdict after eight days of deliberations in the retrial of the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.

The group, once the largest U.S. Muslim charity, was accused of giving more than $12 million to support Hamas. It was the largest terrorism financing trial since the 9/11 attacks.

Go here for the full story.

• Never mind what she said, here’s what she said

Queen Sofia of Spain has reached the ripe old age of 70, had been princess of both Denmark and Greece before that (royal intermarriage and in-breeding, you know) and has routinely been at the top of the heap in public opinion polls in Spain.

However, she apparently hasn’t learned that the key to popularity is not telling people what you think. As a journalist of long standing, I can attest to the fact that frankness is guaranteed to annoy at least half the people who hear or read your expressed thoughts.

In the case of this particular monarch, she gave a series of interviews to journalist Pilar Urbano for the book “The Queen Up Close.” She apparently didn’t clear what she said with the royal household (i.e., hubby King Juan Carlos and his ministers and opinion shapers) even though she and her people had the opportunity to review the book’s text before publication.

A few of her observations that have created consternation among certain slices of Spanish, and indeed non-Spanish, society:

• While she respects people’s different sexual orientations, she does not understand why “they should feel proud to be gay. … That they get up on floats and parade in the streets? If all of us who are not gay were to parade in the streets, we’d halt the traffic in every city.”

• While gay people have a right to unions with one another, they should not call them marriages.

As a result of the public indignation, some real and some play-acting, a spokesman for the royal family said the queen “deeply regrets that the inaccuracy of the comments attributed to her may have caused discomfort or offense.”

Note that there was no retraction of her comments, only finger pointing at the writer. Typical government spin no matter what country is doing it. And typical Spanish macho attitude that tries to keep men in firm control and women behind the scenes. After all, King Juan Carlos is the same guy who was unrepentant after publicly saying to controversial, motor-mouthed Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, “Why don’t you shut up?”

Olé!

• Common sense shrugs

I’m one of a diminishing number of people who can’t let a day go by without reading one or more newspapers. But some of the verbal and philosophical sloppiness that fills the news and opinion columns without challenge by editors who spend much of their time these days fighting off corporate mandates to cut, cut, cut makes me wonder how much longer I can keep supporting the medium.

Just two examples from today’s Sunday package of ads and a bit of news:

• Syndicated columnist Thomas Friedman waxes on about how he wants to tell young people in restaurants to stay home and eat tuna fish to save their money for this continued string of rainy days. He doesn’t say how this would help. Nor does he acknowledge that diminished consumer support of such businesses will harm owners, staff, supply vendors, insurance agents, trash haulers, delivery people … in other words, people working hard to make a living and relying on consumer spending to do so.

• A letter to the editor concerning retiring New York Chief Judge Judith Kaye takes her to task for threatening a lawsuit to get judges’ salaries raised for the first time in nine years. The logic isn’t that such a stance is unseemly. Rather, the complaint is that judges already make more than the average minimum-wage worker. Well, of course they do, you ninny. They’re worth more to society, have broader and deeper responsibilities, had to undergo more training and life experience, and have more impact on the populace.

Bits of both such styles of “logic” figure into the annual complaints I’ve heard about social doyenne Marylou Whitney, whose themed costume parties are legendary when the thoroughbred horse racing season comes around each summer in Saratoga Springs, NY. Some people love the events; some decry them as excesses of the privileged class. The latter are as short-sighted as columnist Friedman. Whitney’s events help spread money around to florists, winemakers, chefs, waitstaff, parking valets, delivery people, electricians, costumers, painters and on and on, all of them getting paid for an honest day’s work.

That is so much preferable to the re-distribution of wealth that many on the liberal side of politics and society are continually espousing. An attitude I regard as trying to penalize people for being successful. Taxation through jealousy. Willful ignorance of individual effort and initiative. A disincentive to achieve.

That may be what we face in the first term of the Obama presidency. He’s widely thought to be a proponent of wealth re-distribution but he has kept his public comments on the topic flabby enough to allow for speculation until he announces some sort of plan. As he told the now-famous “Joe the Plumber” during a campaign stop:

“My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody … I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

Many iconic thinkers have commented on this situation, but none has summed it up as succinctly as Ayn Rand (“Atlas Shrugged,” “The Fountainhead”), the Russian-born American writer/philosopher show above who advocated rational individualism and laissez-faire capitalism:

“Whoever claims the right to redistribute the wealth produced by others is claiming the right to treat human beings as chattel.”

• From JFK to eye in the sky

On a fall afternoon 45 years ago today I was the assistant sports editor — a lofty title for the No. 2 man in a two-man department — of a smalltown Pennsylvania newspaper. I’d been in the business barely a year and the biggest story I’d helped cover was the upset of a local high school football team in a game against its arch-rival.

The editor and the sports editor both were out of town at a meeting, so I was sort of the “senior” editor on duty in the tiny newsroom.

Suddenly, the alarm bell on the Associated Press newswire machine began clanging. In normal times, a series of rings from one to three indicated the importance of the news bulletin that was about to be transmitted. But this day it was different. The bell started its staccato sound and didn’t stop for perhaps 30 seconds, an eternity when no one knew what was going on.

It was, we quickly learned, the bulletin:

PRESIDENT SHOT

No more details, just that chilling and virtually impossible to absorb message. As the moments slipped by, the condition of John F. Kennedy and some details of the motorcade he’d been riding in through downtown Dallas dribbled in.

For some reason, the few people in the newsroom began looking at me. It dawned on me they were waiting for me to make some sort of leadership move. I think it was a matter that these were smalltown people, most of whom had never been outside the county they were born in. I was from New York State, so they always attached some sort of cosmopolitan magic to that fact even though I was a wet-behind-the-ears writer in his first real journalism job.

Fortunately, the magnitude of the situation quickly dawned on me. We had been about to begin printing that day’s edition, just after lunchtime at the afternoon-cycle newspaper. For the first and only time in my 40+ years in the business, I rushed to the pressroom and yelled “Stop the presses!” Just like in the movies, but this was real life. Too real.

Those few people in authority who were on the premises — the production boss, the delivery manager and me — created a new and arbitrary deadline, hoping we would get the definitive word on the President’s condition before we absolutely had to go to press.

It never came, so I wrote the most important headline of my life with what little we knew:

KENNEDY SHOT IN CAR IN DALLAS

That was then. This is now. In today’s world, and after many more assassinations of important leaders and heads of state, video and still photos are continually being shot of every moment of their lives. No one wants to be part of the news agency that misses THE event, and our all-pervasive technology reduces that possibility to almost nil.

Unfortunately, much of that technology also is used to snoop and pry, to harass and annoy, people of both high and low birth and rich and poor lifestyle. Used by the papparazzi and Homeland Security, angry neighbors and military planners alike.

It is, therefore, an irony in one comment that JFK made during his brief time on the national scene:

“I am sorry to say that there is too much point to the wisecrack that life is extinct on other planets because their scientists were more advanced than ours.”

• The worth of a turkey

Which of these is the real turkey?

This question occurred to me as I was watching the BBC News on cable. I like the channel because the British Broadcasting Co. is head-and-shoulders above U.S. commercial and “public” television (motto: “Keeping the B.S. in PBS”) in providing a broad look at the news of the world and putting it in some kind of perspective with deep reporting and insightful analysis. Most of the time.

On this particular evening, the newscaster — a Brit based in Washington, D.C. — couldn’t restrain himself when it came to making fun of a seasonal American custom: the annual presidential pardon for a turkey just before Thanksgiving.

This year the freed bird will range down to Florida to, I am not making this up, serve as grand marshal for a Thanksgiving parade at DisneyWorld in Orlando, just as one did last year.

The newscaster got his jollies at this event. I agree it’s a particularly stupid thing, and I have no idea how it came about — unless it had something to do with the poultry industry public relations gimmick to show the sitting President has a sense of humor.

But that doesn’t give a foreign guest to our shores license to poke fun at our gallant leader and our favorite holiday bird. England has some pretty odd customs, too, and most of them involve a certain Queen Elizabeth II. She doesn’t even serve as much purpose as a tasty turkey and costs a lot more per pound, even in pounds.

The turkey breast I bought for Thanksgiving this year cost $2.97 a pound. The queen, even after you take away all her freebie perks like rent and staff and travel and clothes and all sorts of other goodies, is conservatively worth $3.2 million a pound. I’d like to see her acting as grand marshal in a DisneyWorld parade!

• Two-faced headlines

A periodic report on unintentional double-meaning or just plain
“Huh?” headlines:

• Highway chief resigns after death in tunnel
(New York Times)

• FDA eyes better regulation of body parts industry
(Associated Press)

• Pickup crashes on I-95 with boy seated in bed
(Baltimore Sun

• John McCain, senility America’s loss of the Pacific
(Pravda)

• There’s no easy answer for chronic interstitial cystitis
(Manchester, NH, Union Leader)

• Recreation injuries: 213,000 treated in ER
(United Press International)

• Baby-faced chief executives save face better for companies
(Indo-Asian News Service)

• Girl, 10, improves after fatal crash
(Chicago Tribune)

• Irradiated meet in markets soon
(Hilo Hawaii Tribune-Herald)

• Staples to attach Dutch business
(BBC)

• Leading scorpion on first Beijing tour
(Xinhua News Service)

And, a quartet of headlines from Australian publications:

• Eye drops off shelf

• Enraged cow injures farmer with axe

• Miners refuse to work after death

• Cold wave linked to temperatures

• User-generated crap

So there I was, reading the major local daily newspaper when I noticed a line under a particularly fluffy story and poor quality photo: “Story provided to the XXXXXXX.”

“Story provided” is, heaven help us, news-speak for a particularly insidious development in the shaky world of newspapering. That is, cutting staff to save money, then replacing the stories they used to write with self-promoting free material sent in by local organizations or individuals.

I remember when that idea was floated a decade ago when I still was a newspaper editor. Virtually everyone in the room except the business-side non-journalist who supported it held our noses and promised never to let such a thing happen. We wanted to stick to quality, professional journalism as a way of serving the community and maintaining a solid business model.

So much for that promise. Let’s be honest about it. The true definition of “user-generated” is “quality-deprived.”

By the way, if you want to catch up on the manic things that have been going on in the journalism world (unfortunately, they’re predominantly negative), you can visit a Topix.com section I edit on a regular basis. Just go here.

• Please, watch your language

Each year, dictionary mavens come up with a list of new words being added to their reference works. Among the words this year: mondegreen, norovirus and pescatarian.

The problem is, the editors don’t tend to eliminate words and phrases that have become meaningless due to mis-use, feeble attempts to create new slang based on nothing in particular, or are just annoyingly sloppy talk.

Here is my first “Top 10″ list of such examples. Feel free to add your own.

• Amazing (so overused it has ceased to be … amazing)

• Buck (now being featured on “So You Think You Can Dance,” which means it unfortunately will quickly enter the mainstream slang vocabulary)

• Somewhat unique (there are no degrees of uniqueness)

• Ultra (the word means extreme, but is used any time the right adjective can’t be thought of)

• Mega (once “super” wore out, this replaced it)

• No problem (instead of “You’re welcome”)

• Basically (it seldom is basic)

• Bitch (except at dog shows)

• Book (as in to make haste)

• Substance abuse (that could include overeating of potato chips; call it what it is)

• Let freedom ring?

In my days as a young newspaper reporter, I was given all the oddball assignments that were beneath the dignity of the older, more experienced writers. So, it was no particular surprise when I was dispatched to interview a local man who had become a carnival sword swallower.

When I arrived at the rather dismal looking apartment building where this particular artist lived, I was surprised when I checked the mailbox labels to see that he had a roommate. I was even more surprised when I climbed three flights of stairs, knocked tentatively, and the door was opened by a ravishing young blonde lady who escorted me in to see the wizard.

Turns out they were living together without the benefit of matrimony, something that was rather uncommon in those days. I had no particular moral misgivings about their lifestyle, but I was concerned how I was going to mention it in the conservative news columns of my particular newspaper.

I finally came up with a way of writing around the subject and, luckily, no persnickety copy editor ever questioned me on the issue.

I recalled that when a few weeks ago I was interviewing a local couple for a magazine story and asked how long they had been married.

“We’re ‘together,’ not married,” she said.

“Never even gave marriage a thought,” he chimed in.

And, they both smiled while the young photographer and photographer’s assistant who were on the premises smiled as well. Clearly, I would have been the odd man out in this situation if I had said anything about the living arrangements.

Besides, it was none of my business and it also is very commonplace these days. There seems to be more concern over whether same-sex couples can get married than whether opposite-sex couples should get married if they wish to co-habitate.

I’m clearly a man of the Old School. Before I even formulate any thoughts on same-sex marriage, I need to come to a firm stance on people just living together without legal ties. I confess it’s the sort of thing that bothers me. I don’t know if that is based on residual guilt feelings from early religious schooling that I later repudiated, or whether I have trouble respecting people who won’t make a commitment … or whether I fear for the potential offspring of such a union who might be placed in a situation that could disintegrate, and thus harm them, if there were no legal ties to make the parents give it a really good shot at working out their problems.

I’ll have to get back to you on all of that.

• What black president?

Many years ago, on an episode of “Star Trek,” the noted impressionist/actor Frank Gorshin played an alien who was being pursued by another alien from his planet, bent on his destruction.

The Enterprise crew couldn’t understand why the two hated each other for being “different.” They were, after all, one half black and one half white. Eventually, it was explained that one was black on the right and white on the left, the other vice-versa. Thus, shades of difference.

That came to mind when I began pondering why seemingly everyone, the new President-elect included, insists we have elected our first “black” president?

In truth, race had no influence on which way I cast my vote this year, but the continuing references to race kept me thinking about it more than I otherwise would have.

In the earlier days of our nation when slavery was legal, and even up to and throughout the civil rights era of the ’60s, the idea that someone had even a drop of “black blood” in their makeup was viewed as a negative by many “white” people.

They even came up with a system for encoding the degree of “black blood” one had, using such terms as quadroons, maroons and octaroons. Many parts of black society also had a way of reckoning such things — “high yellow” being one of the descriptors for people of mixed race and light skin.

Such designations have largely faded away … until this presidential race when it became fashionable, and politically correct, to refer to Barrack Obama as “black.”

Usually when one says someone is “black,” they mean both parents are black. However, as is common knowledge, Obama’s mother is white. In my view he, therefore, shouldn’t automatically be regarded as “black,” even though that is the descriptor he has chosen for himself. In fact, mathematically — if not socially — he could just as accurately be described as white.

I suppose it depends on one’s individual view whether not having “pure” white blood makes someone “black,” but to me that smacks of the days when being even partially black was a bad thing, something to be hidden or regarded as a negative.

That was wrongheaded. But have we reached a point at which it now has become a negative to be “white,” and ignore one’s white heritage by calling oneself black? That smacks of merely one more type of racial prejudice.

• It’s our National Anthem, you dirtbags

UPDATE NOTE: Since this commentary was posted, the video in question has been removed from YouTube.

It’s bad enough that unimaginative advertising agencies keep dredging up dead celebrities and old pop songs to help peddle their clients’ goods. But when “The Star-Spangled Banner” becomes the theme music to sell us an overhyped soft drink, that’s going too far. Really, it is.

If by some magic, or lack of paying your cable bill, you haven’t seen this abomination, here it is. (Note: I don’t have any trouble with the Jimi Hendrix version of the song; it’s the whole idea that appalls me.)

• Sometimes that single vote does make a difference

Well, did you do it?

Did you vote yet?

No? The polls are open until 9 o’clock tonight, many conclusions still in doubt no matter how many pronouncements are made on TV based on early returns, crystal balls and wild guesses.

If you don’t cast your vote, please don’t whine about whoever holds the White House for the next four years. He’ll have the toughest job in the world, and all the effort you had to exert was to pull a lever. Guess who deserves more respect no matter your political leanings?

Even though some prognosticators say this election may be a little closer than pollsters think, I hear people saying that an individual’s vote doesn’t make a difference. Really? History shows that not to be the case, especially considering that more than the presidency is at stake today.

There are many instances across the country of single votes affecting local, small-town races in which the voting pool is small. Sometimes the impact is much wider.

For example, a Pennsylvania election some decades ago ended in a tie for one district seat which, in turn, left the state House of Representatives evenly split between Republicans and Democrats. In the ensuing six months, during which a flood of appeals and recounts and a district runoff were held, no one had the individual character to cross party lines to vote on proposed legislation, so literally nothing was done by the state legislature.

In Washington state, an even split of House seats between the two major parties essentially stalled any meaningful progress in the state legislature because committee chairmen and the two co-speakers of the House wound up with what amounted to veto power over pending legislation.

If that sort of thing doesn’t scare you, let me once again share a personal experience that might convince you of the value of a single vote.

More than four decades ago I was editing a newspaper in Pennsylvania and writing a political column as well. I had used a lot of column inches commenting on some rather contentious issues in one particular county in our coverage area.

In that locale, a board of commissioners made up of the top three vote-getters ran the county. It was easy to get a write-in vote since the rural county still was using paper ballots. When the votes on that particular election day were tallied, yours truly was in fourth place despite not even being a candidate. The third-place finisher, who got only one more vote than I did, was a veteran county commissioner in very fragile health.

“Well, young man,” said the top vote-getter, “if Ward doesn’t live out his term you might have to take office and put your ideas where your mouth has been.”

I vigorously toasted the health of the No. 3 vote-getter and crossed my fingers. Fortune smiled, and he still was on duty when I left for a job in another state the following year.

The first time I shared that story was a couple of years ago before election day. My conclusion then was the same as it is today. If none of these election horrors convinces you to vote today, how about this practical reason: We all owe a vote every election day to those who died on battlefields, on the seas and in the air to preserve the American system.

Now, if you didn’t vote before you read this, get off your duffs and go do it. If none of the reasons I’ve mentioned convinces you, at least you’ll make yourself feel virtuous. Whatever it takes.

• A Seinfeld moment

I’m beginning to have more and more of what I call Seinfeld Moments. They’re the sort of unexpected vignettes in my life that end up reminding me of one of the little subplots on the old TV show.

The other day the missus and I stopped at a local supermarket for a few items. Because it was raining hard, I dropped her off at the door. Unwilling to park in the fire lane even though it was near capacity with scofflaws afraid of getting wet, I drove around for a while in search of a legal space. Once I found one, I reached into the back seat and picked up her umbrella, then trudged to the store.

We picked up what we needed, then began reversing the process. I told her to wait under the portico while I went back to get the car. I unfurled her umbrella and waited for a break in the traffic so I could dart out. The umbrella, it must be explained, is one of those clear plastic dome-shaped affairs, the kind you can pull down over your head and still see through. (See fuzzy cellphone-camera image above.)

As I prepared to go back to my car, I noticed a group of young men standing near the doorway. I saw one of them point toward me and say “Look at that umbrella.”

Ah, they noticed what a cool device it was, I thought. And, by extension, what a cool guy I am for using it.

When I drove back, the missus had a bemused look on her face as she climbed in the car.

“Well,” she said, “those kids had a field day talking about you and the umbrella.”

“What do you mean?”

“They were talking about how dorky you looked,” she replied. “One of them even said, ‘I’ve never seen anything that gay.’ “

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as Seinfeld would say.

Luckily, I’m secure in my own masculinity, so the umbrella will be put into play the next time it rains. I hope those kids get soaked.

• The Wizard of Abkhazia

I’ve prided myself since childhood on my knowledge of world geography. Imagine my chagrin, then, when I was perusing the BBC news headlines and thought a Harry Potter location had somehow broken into the Muggles world.

“Breakaway Abkhazia votes in poll,” blared the headline.

Azkaban broke away from the world of wizards, I thought for just the briefest of brief moments. Then, just as quickly, I thought “What the hell is wrong with me?”

In the back of my mind I’m just like kids my grandchildren’s ages — and, truth be told, a lot of people my age and the ages of my grown children — who are anxiously awaiting anything further that may be written about Harry Potter’s adventures. But, I really must get a grip and not let the mystical world rule my reality.

As any sane person knows, Azkaban is an eerie place that is located somewhere off the main British Isles, or not, and serves as the location for a high-security wizard prison in all the Harry Potter tales.

Abkhazia is a region on the Black Sea that has been trying since a brief war in 1990 to secede from the Republic of Georgia, which we think George Bush confused with the U.S. state of the same name when the Russians invaded it. Abkhazia now has held parliamentarian elections, much to the annoyance of the government of Georgia and the delight of the government of Russia which has been egging the Abkhazianerianites on because it has its own disagreements with Georgia.

Breakaway President Sergei Bagapsh, who seems to possess wizard-like powers since no one has shot him yet, said from the capital city of Sukhumki that elections being held in a state that has both an opposition party and a free press shows it’s a self-reliant republic and not under anyone else’s thumb.

No country recognizes Abkhazia’s claims to independence, but Foreign Minister Sergei Shamba, another breakaway official with nine lives, said, “Our objective is to show everyone that we meet modern European standards.”

Azkaban, of course, is not looking to break away from anyone. It just wants to avoid breakouts. From the aforementioned prison holding evil wizards.

• Who you gonna call? Booze hustler

At first I thought Dan Aykroyd was working on a new bit for a guest spot on “Saturday Night Live.” Many of us remember when he did a lot of con artist/pitchmen put-ons during his “SNL” heyday, and this seemed much like those skits.

But, no, with either total disregard for veracity or with tongue firmly planted in both cheeks — or even all four, the actor/singer/entrepreneur is spieling for a new vodka called Crystal Skull and in an online ad delivers a very long, very rambling, very self-impressed monologue about mysterious crystal skulls found in different parts of the world. He also throws in mentions of Roswell, witchcraft, ghosts and other stuff.

He eventually stops talking and lets a colleague describe the Newfoundland vodka — quadruple distilled, triple filtered at the suggestion of one Mr. Akyroyd through “500-million-year-old crystals known as Herkimer diamonds.”

For those unfamiliar with that particular mineral, it’s a faux “diamond” found in upstate New York around the Herkimer/Utica/Syracuse area. It’s OK for costume jewelry but of no particular value otherwise.

This isn’t the Canadian star’s first venture into pushing an alcoholic beverage. In June of last year, he announced plans for the $12 million Dan Aykroyd Winery to be built in the Niagara wine area. Part of it will house memorabilia from his film and TV career. The project also includes a line of wines bearing his name.

• Life imitates art, sort of

One of life’s guilty pleasures is watching reruns of the various iterations of “Law & Order.” Actually, it’s difficult to avoid watching them, given the profusion of versions that have dominated series-TV for lo these many years.

I particularly enjoy seeing unexpected casting decisions. For example, standup comic/TV host/voiceover-artist Bob Saget playing a techno-nerd who poisons the wife of the man who is having an affair with his wife. His character was so obsessed with tracking his wife’s wherabouts he secretly embedded a tiny RFID in her shoulder.

That came to mind when I read that European citizens will be getting a chance to shape policy on the use of RFIDs, sometimes called “smart tags.” RFIDs, which stands for radio frequency identification, are tiny sensors that store data about whatever they’re attached to by linking a piece of computer memory with a radio transmitter. Saget’s character used the device to track his wife’s travels. More commonly, they’re used to track and inventory merchandise, although their use is increasingly found in keeping track of pets.

The European Commission is setting up a group made up of a large cross-section of the population of member nations to discuss how the tags should be used. Some people think they’ll be a common, benign tool in business before long. Others think they may not be confined to “Law & Order” episodes, instead being used secretively by governments to track people.

Whatever they wind up being, it’s a fascinating move when a multi-national organization such as The European Commission opens up the discussion to the public at large. That’s a good use of democracy. It fills me with warm feelings. Or, perhaps that’s because of the forecast for Wednesday, our national Election Day, is for clear skies and mild temperatures as we cast our ballots that will make all our problems go away and bring us tweeting birds, dancing butterflies and sunny skies for ever and ever more.

• Wassupp, 8 years later

• Oh, ‘Bama, what a family

I’ve always found it curious that the American, indeed the global, public has regarded Barack Obama as a black man. Probably it’s because he identified himself that way even though his mother was white.

I’ve come to the conclusion that it is because in our society, which eschews being racist but still uses some of the same criteria as we did in the pre-civil rights protest era, if you have any amount of non-Caucasian blood you can’t possibly be “white.” Therefore, you have to be something else.

But that’s just a matter of labels. People will consider other people to be exactly what they feel like considering them to be. Let us, then, move on to something of more substance. Obama’s sloppiness when it comes to paying attention to details.

This is a man who, according to some polls, will become our president-elect next week. A man who, therefore, will be responsible for surrounding himself with well-investigated people and appointing some to cabinet posts, others to judgeships, others to positions of power and influence. A man who, we must hope, will be sure all such people are checked out.

Why, then, did neither he nor his staff check out his own family to see if there were skeltons in the closet? I speak of his aunt, his late father’s half-sister, who has been living in public housing in Boston for several years after being denied political asylum and told to return to her native Kenya. It’s not as if he didn’t know of her existence; his campaign has been accepting money from her.

So, here we are, practically on the eve of Election Day and the Democratic candidate has been taking money — small amounts to be sure, but accepting them nonetheless — from a close relative who has been living here illegally in defiance of  our laws.

Definitely cause for concern about Obama’s judgment.