The Early Bird Pact

More important than “to love and cherish” or “in sickness and health” is the vow we made to each other many years ago – no early bird dinners. I’m not sure how it all began, but it may have had something to do with watching some seniors shuffle into the local Horn and Horn Smorgasbord Cafeteria at 4 o’clock in order to get the cheaper Early Bird dinner. One of us looked at the other and we vowed at that moment, to never, ever go to one of those things.

It’s a lot like the “shoot me if I get like that” promise that spouses extract from each other. There’s something about a herd of seniors being corralled into a cafeteria to eat at 4 pm (whether they’re hungry or not) that’s very unsettling. The restaurant views them as a captive audience that can be manipulated easily by the promise of a discount because they’re living on fixed incomes. Maybe that’s why there are so few guys wearing ascots or women wearing diamonds at an early bird dinner.

Does eating dinner at 4 pm mean you’re in bed under the covers by 8? Why does being older mean you have to miss all the fun? We want to eat at 8 pm and stay out until 10 or 11. Where’s the fun in sitting at home watching reruns? I would rather eat less and pay less than be rounded up like docile cattle for the chow line because the restaurant wants to fill some seats and get me out before the high rollers show up (if there are any high rollers going to cafeterias).

Even the elder hostels give me pause. Sure, the programs are great and they take the guesswork out of the planning, but there’s that herding thing going on again. Like lemmings following the lady with the red umbrella at the museum. I’m too much the nonconformist to go there.

I’ll take the discount for seniors at the movie theatre, museums, for bus/train fare, and at the supermarket. That’s only fair. We paid our dues by paying full price all these years. And it’s okay if a younger person allows me to go ahead of them (age before beauty is a reasonable accommodation). But, we have promised ourselves that there are no Early Bird dinners in our future, and it’s a promise we intend to keep.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

We Got Game Still

I can’t be the only boomer who is taking a belated interest in video games. It seems like we still got game after all. But it’s not the appeal of the more violent games such as Grand Theft Auto that has caught our attention.

In my own case, I just want to see what I’ve missed. If it’s only gaming where you shoot at people and things, we have enough of that in real life. It appears that boomers are looking for something more constructive or rewarding, and strategy games such as Civilization and the Sims may be just the ticket. I mean what self-respecting baby boomer doesn’t thing she/he can build an empire from scratch or create a better community? We’re the can-do generation, right? The other avenue for boomers would be games like Nintendogs or Brain Age which help you exercise your noodle. I guess the attraction here is that if you engage with video games you can keep using your brain and keep Alzheimer’s at bay.

If you want some physical exercise to stay fit, the whole Nintendo Wii phenom may be just right. Some retirement communities and cruise ships are installing the consoles just to get residents up on their feet and moving again. It’s not just the movement that helps, but the thinking that goes into the activity as well. Bowling without the heavy real ball cuts down on body aches and pains, but it still is a decent form of exercise for someone who is doing no other form of exercise.

The big game publisher Electronic Arts runs a web site called Pogo where boomers can play simpler games such as Poppit, Word Whomp and Bingo Luau that are amusing entertainment if you want to kill some time, but they do promote mouse dexterity and some level of brain activity. Hey – it’s another way to get through the day, okay? And what’s so wrong if the place turns into MySpace for seniors?

Bookworm from PopCap games is another video game popular with older players. Similar to Scrabble (which also can be played online), Bookworm has you building words for points with letter tiles.

In the final analysis, we are becoming just another demographic for the game makers to hook on “game crack” but I guess that’s better than the only option being to shoot up gangbangers, and it’s certainly going to be more beneficial for our brains.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Whatever Happened to Driving Nowhere?

When we were really desperate to drive somewhere, anywhere, we would pry out the back seat of the Mercury to look for loose change. In the bowels of the strange brown matting beneath the seat we would find nickels, dimes, pennies, and every now and then, a precious quarter. It may not sound like much now, but gas was 22 cents a gallon in those days, so 50 cents bought us some quality time on the back roads of New England.

We could take the old MG out by the reservoir and watch the beams of light from the headlights bounce off the rows and rows of pine trees that made up the watershed. After midnight, with the top down, all we could hear was the roar of the wind and the purr of the motor. Long straight roads were our late night entertainment as we pushed the MG to see just how fast it could go. The speedometer hit sixty, seventy, eighty, and sometimes ninety before the lights of an oncoming car would force us to click off the high-beams and ease off the accelerator.

Other teenagers parked at “the plaza” and went from car to car, making up lies about who was having sex and who wasn’t, which “good girls” really weren’t good girls, and countless other topics of absolutely no importance that whiled away their time. We, on the other hand, had to be on the move. The whole point of having a car was to be in it, to be one with it, and to always, always keep moving. Could we make it to the border of the next state and back on less than half a tank of gas? It’s not as hard as it sounds in a region of small states, but it was about the adventure. We tested our driving skill and teenage luck.

In hindsight, it’s easy to see how invulnerable we thought we were. It never occurred to us that you might lose control of an Oldsmobile Starfire doing 110 m.p.h. out on the interstate. All we knew back then was that our instincts were telling us to get out on the highway and drive.

Whatever happened to driving nowhere? Four dollar per gallon gas would be one answer, but maybe computers and video games provide a vicarious (and safer) sense of escapism. Besides, cars have become so complex that we no longer understand how they operate, and where’s the romance of that?

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Tel-Spell Madness

Are you as sick of phone numbers that spell things as I am?

I’m talking about 1-800-MY APPLE, 1-800-CALL ATT, 1-800-THE CARD, 1-800-COLLECT, 1-800-CONTACTS, 1-800-GO FEDEX, 1-800-FLOWERS, 1-800-MATTRESS, 1-800-METLIFE, 1-800-PICK-UPS, and 1-800-WESTERN.

What about 1-800-HAIRLOSS? 1-800-CANTPEE? 800-SEESRED? 800-GEEZERS?

Call 1-800-U-R-IDIOT because you have to spend extra time looking at the phone buttons in order to dial the number.

If you’re old enough, you remember when there were place names in front of the numbers, such as MUrray Hill 5-9975 (the number for the Ricardos on I Love Lucy). Likewise, PEnnsylvania 6-5000 and BEechwood 4-5789 made popular in songs, or BUtterfield, LUdlow and hundreds of others. As more and more people got phones, there were not enough numbers to go around, and that’s when AT&T went to all number calling.

Now we’ve come full circle and advertisers hit us with letters that spell out what they want us to do or what they want us to buy. You can even go to DialABC to find out if your number spells out anything, or to convert words to numbers.

At least some advertisers put the all number translation in parenthesis after the letters so you don’t have to waste time doing it yourself. This is also useful to foreign callers who are frequently baffled by a series of letters that means absolutely nothing to them when their phones have only numbers printed on the dial buttons.

I’m putting my money on voice dialing. Every phone will have it some day soon and then none of us will need to look at numbers or letters. If we see a number on our computer or TV screens, you’ll probably be able to click it with your mouse or laser pointer and it will dial up the call for you. It won’t be long before we forget our own phone numbers (that’s already happening to lots of cell phone users).

Maybe phone letters will have a useful function after all. They might play a role in helping us remember our own numbers. Telephomnemonics is the term coined for using letters to remember phone numbers. Now you just have to ask the phone company for 800-IFORGET (800-436-7438).

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

They’re All A-Twitter

If you haven’t come across it yet, there’s a new internet social networking tool known as Twitter. Their slogan is “What are you doing?” And my rejoinder is “It’s none of your business.”

Suddenly the “whole world’s a-twitter” is what it says on their website, but maybe the world is just full of twits who need to tell you everything they are doing. "I am taking a bath now. I have a bad case of diarrhea. We were going to have sex but Hank can’t maintain an erection. Julie and I were going to have dinner out but she says she’s all gassy."

You are limited to 140 characters in your message so you can’t get all literary with it. Would William Faulkner or Truman Capote be Twitter fans if they were still alive? Maybe Capote, but Faulkner? Never.

Twitter calls it being hyper-connected, but it seems to me that it’s another case of TMI – too much information. The funniest claim they make is “Twitter puts you in control and becomes a modern antidote to information overload.” The only control you have is to shut the damn thing off so that you don’t have to witness the constant stream of useless information being beamed at you every time you log on to your computer. It’s not an antidote to overload, it is the overload!

One of their endorsements reads as follows: "If you aren't familiar with Twitter, it is one of those things, like MySpace, that sounds totally ridiculous and stupid when you first hear about it. But once you start using it, you realize how much fun it is." That constitutes an endorsement? It’s fun to know exactly what your friends are up to every minute of the day? You can be sure their constant stream of "tweets" will hold you spellbound.

The big knock on baby boomers has always been how self-centered we are, but I would have to say that anyone who needs to tell everyone else what they are doing all day, every day, has a lot more ego issues than boomers ever had.

I get that Twitter wasn’t targeted to boomers, but that doesn’t calm my fears that twenty-somethings are spending their days all a-twitter. I want them out there working hard to pay for my social security, not twittering away their days. You think America is going to continue to be the world leader in worker productivity with gimmicks like Twitter nibbling away at our best workers? I don’t think so.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

That’s right – we want a little respect here. There are over 100 million consumers in the United States who are 50+ years old. But look at the ads on TV (forget Depends) and you would think only 20-somethings have any money to spend.

The reality is that those 100 million consumers have about $8 trillion in assets and 70 percent of the disposable dollars in the U.S.

So what’s the problem? I used to think that the conventional wisdom among advertising execs was that you want to focus on the 18-24 demographic to win their hearts and minds at an early age and maintain their loyalty over the long haul. However, the latest research is demonstrating that the 18 to 49 demo is no more willing to demonstrate brand loyalty than the over 50 demo.

It doesn’t help that most advertising creatives are in their 30s and 40s – it gives them a great sense of how to sell to their peers, but for the over 50 crowd – not so much. Some ad agencies are beginning to lessen their reliance on demographics and put more stock in psychographics – the study of personality, values, attitudes, interests and lifestyles. That’s okay with me as long as they don’t pigeon hole us as being only in the market for denture products and funeral homes.

Sometimes, products that are meant for a younger demo take a strange twist. The classic case for this is the Honda Element. The initial spin for this boxy looking vehicle was that it was a “dorm on wheels,” so they clearly thought it was going to appeal to 20-somethings. When sales exceeded expectations, they analyzed their sales data and discovered that the average buyer was over 44 years old. Boomers were buying them to haul the dogs and carry their gear to second homes. Amazingly, this discovery led to an analysis on their part as to “what did we do wrong.”

Boomers need cars, homes, vacations, gadgets, flatscreen TVs, running shoes, gourmet foods, wine, drugs, and hundreds of other consumer goods, and we have the money to pay for it. And since we are going to live longer, we are going to keep paying for these consumer goods for a lot longer.

So I’m not going to tell you advertising people again – we want some respect. When do we want it? We want it now!

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Leftover Hippies

Saw the term “leftover hippies” used in a news item about communities where boomers are retiring, and it made me wonder how they meant that to be taken. Was it someone who wore bellbottoms and smoked dope in the 60s but now that they don’t dress that way (or smoke anything illegal) they still like to think their ideals haven’t changed? Or was it someone’s lament that they are the last of the leftover hippies – an example of a vanishing breed?

It was spoken by a ready-to-retire baby boomer referring to herself, so I’m going to guess that she is someone who believes in the same ideals that hippies represented almost 50 years ago.

Leftover hippies and baby boomers are not mutually exclusive, but for some people it seems convenient to keep the culture war going. A certain radio showhost uses the term in a most derogatory manner, but is that any way to talk about people who just wanted to “give peace a chance.” Is that so wrong, as Harvey Fierstein would say. Hippies were supposed to defy the establishment, but once you’ve co-opted that establishment, you become part of it. Then what?

Can you tell just by looking if someone is a leftover hippie? For women, would it be longhair parted in the middle and going braless? For men, is it the pony tail in the back, all bald on top?

From music and politics to fashion and art, hippies had an extraordinary impact on our culture. If you need your memory jogged, how about The Summer of Love. Woodstock. The Grateful Dead. Tie-Dye. Psychedelics. Teach-ins. The Whole Earth Catalog. Communes. Ben & Jerry’s. Okay -- even Renaissance Festivals!
Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

You Know You’re A Geezer When…

It’s funny (or sad, depending on your viewpoint) how many occasions crop up when you find yourself thinking that you have entered geezerdom. I’m not talking about forgetting why you got up from the sofa to go into the kitchen, or not being able to think of the right word to express a particular thought. I’m talking about official acts of geezerness.

A good example was my recent experience at the car dealer. I was taking wife’s car in for an oil change after a night when the cat woke me up twice screaming for food. Add to that the fact that most mornings I get up at 5:15 a.m. to go brisk walking and you have all the ingredients for early morning drowsiness (the kind where you think you could fall asleep driving to work).

I planted myself on a cushy faux leather-genuine vinyl sofa in the showroom amid the gleaming Mazdas and thought I might read the paper. A showroom employee turned on the big flatscreen TV and set it on Good Morning America. I remember something about an interview with teenagers who survived a sinking boat-snorkel adventure and the next thing I knew Rachel Ray was talking to Buffy the Vampire Slayer --- well, not really Buffy, but the actress Sarah Michelle Gellar. The two of them appeared to be outdoing each other on the perkiness scale.

Somehow, I had lost about 10 or 15 minutes. I was either time-shifting or I had fallen asleep. I guessed that it was not down to time-shifting. I did a drool check (feel under your lower lip to see if anything has leaked out of your mouth) but that’s not always conclusive. I was going to ask the other customer waiting on the adjacent sofa, but thought better of that idea. I mean, what was I going to ask him? Excuse me sir, was I sleeping just now? Did you hear me snoring? These are not questions you pose to strangers in car showrooms.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Speed Up the Aging Process at H&M

If you wanted to age yourself five years, which I know is an absolutely insane concept, you couldn’t do it any more efficiently than to stand in an H&M clothing store while your wife tries on sundresses.

Standing in a forest of candy colored lingerie just off the dressing room area, you can survey the sights and sounds of youth culture, but you don’t get any younger by watching it. Quite the opposite. Every five minutes you’re there, you age one more year.

Upscaled lingerie stores are very pleasant places for baby boomers to hang while their significants purchase something they hope they will get to see again very soon. The H&M lingerie department, on the other hand, looks like someone spilled out hundreds of those silly heart candies they give out for Valentines Day. It almost looks edible – who knows – maybe it is. As far as the eye can see there are orange day glow, lime green, Barney purple, and Spider Man red bras and panties. It makes sense when you think about it. The 18 to 24 demographic sports underwear that is visible more often than not, so it might as well be colorful.

Walking into the dressing area to see if wife was making any progress, I soon realize that everyone that works at H&M is speaking a language unique from my own. There are a few English words that pop out every now and then, but mostly it’s some sort of rapid fire patois that remains a mystery even if you try really hard to decipher it.

A parade of customers streams in and out of the dressing rooms and it doesn’t take long to notice that very very short dresses or very very tight pants can be worn by anyone. It doesn’t matter for example, if you are on the -- let’s call it chunky side, you can still wear pants that are so tight they reveal not only the camel toe but the humps and the back molars as well.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Menopauseland? Give Me A Break

I can’t speak for baby boomer women -- hell, I can barely speak to baby boomer women -- but I am betting that they are not going to embrace the new ad campaign for Estroven.

Never mind the insipid music that plays in a mind-numbing loop that could make anyone cranky, the web experience seems to think that menopause is a theme park. I can just see Martina Navratilova coming off a seniors tennis tournament win and when they ask her what she is going to do now, she says, “I’m going to Menopauseland!”

Menopause is described as a “bumpy road” with “good days and bad days” but it’s a time to celebrate life. Really? I hope the folks at KSL Media actually talked to some baby boomer women before they came up with Menopauseland, but one has to wonder.

I suppose the one thing about the campaign that rings true is that like everything else in our baby boomer lifetime, there’s a pill to fix it. Hot flashes and night sweats got you down? Just pop an Estroven and all is well. Oh, and did we mention it’s natural? If it’s so natural, how come the pills don’t grow on trees? Natural to me means that I can grow it myself.

Not only is it natural, but Estroven also comes in Regular Strength, Energy, Extra Strength and Estroven PM. Four different boxes with four unique colors -- which one best fits your life?

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Retirement Income Obsession

Is it just me or are you also amazed by the blizzard of information directed at us about how much savings we will need for retirement? One look at the little charts and tables and your amazement turns to depression. Who are these people that have a million or two in the bank? Did they have any kids? Were they ever sick? Did they have to care for their aging parents? Did they rob banks?

The next thought that occurs to me is that there are way too many retirement income experts. Whether it’s Parade Magazine on one end or Forbes on the other, I have never seen the same expert quoted more than once. That means there is a surplus of these experts and that, in turn, means they have to come up with completely different income projections in order to differentiate themselves from the next expert.

My favorite statistic was from a survey of baby boomers in which 90% or so of the respondents had savings of $30,000 or less, but 75% thought they would have enough money in retirement! Enough to live under the official poverty level maybe! You could drive a Class A RV through this reality gap. Those who perpetually bash baby boomers (and there are quite a few bashers around still), would chalk this up to the fact that we are genetically unrealistic, and that this may often be combined with fatal doses of optimism. We think we are going to be okay. And why not? We lived through the sixties without overdosing on drugs, we haven’t damaged our hearing as much as the iPod generation is doing right now, and our music, fashion, and art have all come back for a second or third go around. That’s reason to be optimistic.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Confessions of a Wal-Mart Greeter

I know what the training program instructed us and I know what I am thinking, and I’m here to tell you that there’s a big difference between what’s going on in my mind and what’s coming out of my mouth.

We’re supposed to epitomize the Basic Beliefs; that we respect Wal-Mart customers, that we provide superior customer service, and that we are the front-line soldiers for the company. We even have the ten-foot rule that dictates that any customer that passes within ten feet of us should be assisted in a courteous manner. Saw it all in the videotaped role-plays and training exercises.

Guess what? I’m tired of wearing a smile when some big fat assed lady wants me to be so obsequious that it makes my teeth itch. I don’t care about building rapport with the customer. Half of them are cheap-assed imbeciles that are too ignorant to know what a scam Wal-Mart is in the first place.

Sometimes I don’t even want to touch them to put a smiley face sticker on – you don’t know where they’ve been, but it doesn’t smell good. Let’s face it – I don’t think very highly of them and they don’t have much respect for me. Wouldn’t we be better off if we had a more honest relationship? Then I could tell you that your snotty-nosed kids are getting mucous all over the toys (and by the way, if you work or shop in a Wal-Mart, better keep the Purell hand sanitizer close by), that it’s customary to wear something a bit nicer than a wife-beater tee shirt when you go shopping, or that there are ways to prevent hippo breath.

You think I look stupid in this goofy vest with the smiley face and the buttons plastered all over it? Look in the mirror pal – you look just as stupid if not more so. If I took a picture of every slob who walked in here in a day, I could fill a room with photo albums.

Does Wal-Mart really have to be the place that retirees go to work and then die? Was their full-time job before this not humiliating enough that they must now end their working life inside a Wal-Mart with a phony smile on their face and fallen arches on their feet? Is that really what you want your mother and father doing in their late 60s? Well, is it?

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

The Vikings Are Coming

Spring: a time when a young man's fancy turns to explosives. An old man's fancy turns to balls of lead. Spring is the launch of reenactor season. Reenactors are men, and a few women, who love to relive the days of the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, and Civil War as a hobby.

Horses and gunpowder are the order of the day. Campfires and sleeping in tents are the order of the night. Mouth harps; fifes and drums; chaw; peeing on trees, wiping with poison ivy. Fun stuff. Redcoats and the Militiamen, Damn Yankees and the Johnny Rebs, fought on American soil. They were volunteers but many were drafted, arriving by foot, wagons, or on horseback. Now they are all volunteers, arriving by Winnebago, Ram Tough Dodge Pick-em-up trucks, or C-class Mercedes.

Picking a side is preordained. Your grandfather determined that by where he was born. No Pennsylvanians wear red coats and no Georgian will wear blue. Don't think the officers of your regiment or unit won't check out your lineage better than any thoroughbred horse.

As much as I like explosives in the woods, beans and pork bellies, and drinking from a tin cup, if I was going to be a reenactor, I would have to go with being a Viking. I would choose to be an Ericson. (Ericcson) like the phone people. Leif Ericson, Son of Eric the Red! ARRRR. Brother and spouse and father of the Thors. Thorvaldr, Thorsteinn, Thorgunna, and Thorkell. They romped all over Greenland, Iceland and the North Atlantic. Thors all over the place.

Thors founded Dublin. Word has it that one bad day Tykir was feeling particularly down because his name wasn't Thor. He wandered to the local pub inquiring about a book on suicide. The barmaid looks over her spectacles and says, "Bollocks to that Tykir, ye'ed noo be bringin' it back."

If one chooses to be a reenactor, why not choose to reenact the good life? Vikings pillaged and plundered. Like visiting a flea market in the summer. They were known for reciprocity: give and take. Vikings ate well. Lamb, veal, and potatoes. Their bellies were naturally round. Not like the Civil War reenactors who get their roundness from Budweiser. Vikings were required to carry a weapon. Similar to large audio speakers in cars today, the size and number determined status among a Viking's peers. Vikings built ships and screwed around on the ocean - or other large bodies of water, like fjords. Vikings like to be clean, they bathed once a week, on Saturday. laugardagur/laurdag/lørdag/lördag is Saturday in Vikingspeak. It means, "wash my back Thor."

Yeah, if I'm a reenactor, I'm a Viking.

Except I would be Minnesota in July.

Mark Van Patten writes a blog called Going Like Sixty and has been married to the same woman since 1968.

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C U LTR

PRW TTYL.

“Parents are watching. Talk to you later.” There – that wasn’t so hard was it.

Does the text generation think we are so brain dead that we can’t figure out texting short-cuts? For crying out loud (4COL), we can be educated. We can use the Google to figure it out like W does. Did you know that 9 also means parent is watching and 99 means parent is no longer watching? URSAI (you are such an idiot).

We’ve gone from emoticons – those idiotic smiley face iterations that contribute nothing useful to our civilization – to cryptologic letter sequences that defy solution. And for what? So we can type fewer letters. The real barrier to boomers being able to text like their children is that we don’t have elf-sized thumbs. GMAB (give me a break)!

Before there was texting, we were best friends (BF) and maybe even BFF (best friends forever). Now, we are such good friends we can’t talk to each other in person or on the phone, because texting is such a superior form of communication? ISH (insert sarcasm here).

Now your kids and their friends text each in the backseat of the car so that you can’t eavesdrop on their conversations. All you hear is thumb clicking and iPod overflow from their earbuds. HWIT (how weird is that). In the interest of truth in texting, I just made that last one up. Turns out that all they are saying half the time is WAYD (what are you doing) and the other person says IDK WAYD (I don’t know, what are you doing).

Sadder still are the parents who try to keep up with their kids by trying to text them. It’s just pitiful to see them punching away at the tiny keys because they don’t know enough short-cuts. Writer Adam Gopnik relates in Through the Children's Gate that he thought LOL meant lots of love, and his adolescent son humored him for a long time until he told him that it meant laughing out loud. At least now they both have agreed to use it for lots of love. It’s a lot like telling your parents to stop yelling, BECAUSE THEY’RE TYPING EVERYTHING IN CAPS.

@TEOTD (at the end of the day), I’m waiting for speech recognition to become so efficient that I can speak to my cellphone and it will transcribe it and send the message for me. Better still, what if reads my mind and sends that message. OST (on second thought….made that one up too), maybe it’s better if what goes through my mind doesn’t get out there.

B4N (bye for now).

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

On the Political Fault Line Again

Is it just me or have baby boomers been thrust on to another political fault line? Forty years ago it was the war in Viet Nam and most boomers wanted that war to end. The anti-war movement spawned more movements that subsequently morphed into everything from Green Peace to the National Organization for Women. Liberals grew more liberal and conservatives grew more conservative.

Which brings us to now.

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Retirement: Reward or Obligation?

If you’ve started to think about retirement, or at least some status that comes after working full time, has it occurred to you that you will either reap some reward or fulfill some obligation? Is retirement the prize at the bottom of the Cracker Jacks box or is it the time to do some things that need to be done?

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

The Blame Game Sucks

How much mileage can you get out of blaming baby boomers for everything? A lot apparently. Enough to drive cross country fifty times, bitching all the way.

Jay Harrison is a graphic designer and writer whose work can be seen at DesignConcept and at BoomSpeak. He's written a mystery novel, which therefore makes him a pre-published author.

Copyright Rant

Hey, it’s my stuff and you can’t just take it!

I worked long and hard and I may have failed utterly, but these are my failures and you may not use them to create something of your own. Worse, you may not take my successes; you may especially not take my successes as they are unutterably precious to me.

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Coffee, Black

I first drank coffee when I was in love with a silent, handsome painter back in college. He was, I believed, fascinating and mysterious in ways that made up for his not ever talking. We would cut class to get a cup of coffee and there we’d be in the campus diner; cute couple, dead silent. I, gripping my coffee mug, would peer, concentrated, into the black depths of, not of his eyes, but of my own coffee. Staring into my coffee postponed the moment, any moment, when he and I would need to talk. He never said a word. Then again, neither did I.

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Forget the Four-Hour Workweek

Is there anyone out there multi-tasking the way they used to? Don’t answer that if you’re going to say yes, because that’s not what I want to hear. If I can’t juggle as many task as I used to, I sure don’t want to know that I’m the only boomer who feels that way.

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Product Placement Notes

I’m holding my nice hot coffee mug and the character in our book is chatting amiably to another character, a buddy of his, and the buddy lights up a cigarette and the brand name is mentioned and then the character says—he actually inserts it right into the novel—he quotes the advertising slogan for the cigarettes.

Visit boomspeak for more

Forget the Four-Hour Workweek

Is there anyone out there multi-tasking the way they used to? Don’t answer that if you’re going to say yes, because that’s not what I want to hear. If I can’t juggle as many task as I used to, I sure don’t want to know that I’m the only boomer who feels that way.

Visit boomspeak for more