Mullings: An American Cyber-column By Rich Galen

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Pre-Winter Weirdness

Rich Galen

Monday November 28, 2005

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First up is this odd item from the Office of the Governor of New Mexico, Bill Richardson. Richardson, remember, was while he was US Ambassador to the UN flew from New York to Washington, DC to interview someone for a low-level job.

This type of recruiting doesn't generally attract the interest of an Ambassador his own self, but in this particular case, the name of the potential employee was Monica Lewinsky.

But that's not what we find amusing about the Gov this morning. According to CNN:

"For nearly four decades, Richardson, often mentioned as a possible Democratic presidential candidate, has maintained he was drafted [in 1966] by the Kansas City Athletics."

One of the reasons a lie in one's r�sum� is so damaging is simple: It is totally and completely in the control of the person about whom it is written - especially when it has been included, as in Richardson's case, since he first ran for Congress in 1982.

Richardson's explanation was fabulous:

"After being notified of the situation and after researching the matter ... I came to the conclusion that I was not drafted by the A's."

What? "Came to the conclusion�?" Yeah, Right. Until recently, I had believed I was the Sultan of Brunei. I "came to the conclusion" I was not.

Next: Baltimore. Charming cousin to Your Nation's Capitol. Lovely row-housed neighborhoods and a re-vitalized "Inner Harbor." Baltimore.

According to the NY Times "with a population about one-twelfth that of New York City's, [Baltimore has] a homicide rate more than five times as high."

But that's not what we find amusing about Baltimore this morning. It seems that about 130 light poles - those 30-foot, 250 pound aluminum babies - have been,

"snatched during the day and in the middle of the night, from two-lane blacktop roads and from parkways with three lanes on either side of grass median strips, in poor areas and in some of the city's most affluent neighborhoods."

The Times' editors have not, in spite of their many recent woes, lost their sense of irony when they allowed reporter Gary Gately to write: "[T]he case of the pilfered poles has stumped the police, and left many local residents wondering just how someone manages to make off with what would seem to be a conspicuous street fixture."

I know who's doing it: Aliens. Aliens landed in Baltimore and "came to the conclusion" that the light poles - standing in straight lines and glowing at night - must have some religious significance. Like the statues on Easter Island.

They've taken the light poles to their home base: Roswell, New Mexico.

The next weird story du jour has to do with Starbucks. Driving across the George Washington Bridge on Saturday, I heard the local all-news station run a piece about how the International Workers of the World is trying to unionize Starbucks.

I started laughing about this and the Mullings Director of Standards & Practices (& Speed, Following-Distance, and Up-Coming Bathroom Facilities Monitor) asked my why. I said that that International Workers of the World is known to my generation of high school social studies students as "The Wobblies."

In case you've forgotten about the Wobblies, this is the final graf of their mission statement:

It is the historic mission of the working class to do away with capitalism. The army of production must be organized, not only for everyday struggle with capitalists, but also to carry on production when capitalism shall have been overthrown.

With writing like that they should be reporting on missing light poles in Baltimore. Or writing r�sum�s for Bill Richardson.

Finally, bird flu is not a joking matter and we know that any epidemic will probably start in Asia. Therefore, we at Mullings Central were mighty pleased when we read Jonathan Watts' report in the Guardian newspaper that:

Asian governments have adopted increasingly desperate measures [including] an official warning against kissing parrots to prevent the disease from spreading to humans.

Good advice for us all: "Don't kiss your parrot." That's right up there with "Don't put your tongue, on a freezing Winter morning, on a light post in Baltimore."

And don't have the aliens in Roswell, New Mexico, sitting in the light of stolen light posts, write your r�sum�.

On the Secret Decoder Ring today: Links to the stories above, links to the Wobblies and Easter Island, a nice Mullfoto and another quirky Catchy Caption O' the Day.

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