Bob Crespo

If you are getting a free set of steak knives thrown in with your purchase, odds are you just bought a worthless piece of crap you’ll never use. If you act now and get two for the price of one, that’s two pieces of junk plus a set of flimsy steak knives you need to find someplace to store.

These are modern times, people, as far into the future as we’ve ever been, and it’s getting later all the time. Tick-tick-tick! These days call for new ideas, new slogans and new words to live by. No more of that “a stitch in time saves nine,” nonsense. Nobody sews anymore! And forget about “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Like hell it does! It begins with a cab to the damned airport, everybody knows that. It’s high time we get some proper proverbs to reflect these shiny new times. Quick, to the point and not leaving you scratching your head trying to figure them out. And no more than 140 characters either so that even those Twitter bozos can understand them. So, in the interest of serving the public in this brave new millennium, bobcrespo.com has compiled a few modern proverbs:

When the going gets boring, Tweeters share it with you.

Honor thy donor and thy surrogate.

If it’s on the internet, question it not.

When the cable news guru of the big red bulging forehead vein hates a foreign country, it is truly time to declare war.

There’s no business like the high speed fiber optics interface business!

You know God loves you when he makes you rich.

If God loved you, you’d be rich like all his special friends.

Avoid the poor and the hungry for God loveth them not.

The Bill of Rights is for God’s special fiends. His enemies need not apply.

There’s no place like your home page.

Home is where your equity is.

Don’t trust anybody over a hundred and thirty.

It’s not killing if an unmanned robot drone does it.

Many are texted, but few are chosen to receive emoticons.

Meeting someone in person is usually a let down. They’re just so alive and real, nothing like their true chat room self. It can be messy and demanding and take you a long time to reinvent them… (to be continued for Twitter weenies)

(proverb continued) …in your mind as a controllable pawn in your universe. Avoid this distressing disappointment whenever possible.

Covet not thy neighbor’s technology.

Sculpted Abs are better than a sculpted mind.

Beauty is the eye of the laser scalpel.

When faced with a personal character flaw, take an aroma therapy treatment and declare yourself cured. When challenged, demand to see their aroma therapy certificate!

Selfishness is its own reward.

Love thyself, period.

More than one second response time is not high speed.

Gratification delayed is gratification denied.

A chain e-mail is only as strong as its least gullible recipient.

A fool and his money are quickly parted. Let not the fool escape unburdened of his wealth.

It is only stealing if you get caught.

The keyboard is mightier than the shoulder-mounted rocket launcher.

A picture is worth a thousand pixels.

When the world is imperfect, demand that somebody take action to fix it for you.

Nobody liked polar bears all that much anyway.

Money can’t buy you love, but it sure gets plenty of Viagra.

You can’t put an old head on new shoulders, but plastic surgeons can put a young head on old shoulders, no problem.

This has been a public service announcement from bobcrespo.com.

If you ever find yourself in charge of a country, that’s honor enough in itself. Don’t look for glory by starting a war against a vulnerable neighbor. Only one guy gets to be called “The Great” in those situations, and it just might the other guy instead of you. Guys nicknamed The Great tend to enjoy putting the loser’s head on a pike. Better to leave well enough alone.

A few pressing questions on affairs large and small:

So, President Obama is going to sit down and have a beer at the White House with a cop and a professor and help them hash out their differences over a disturbing but relatively minor misunderstanding that happened in Boston. Which leads the curious among us to pose the question: Isn’t there like, big stuff going on? Things like important legislation, two wars, unemployment, a recession and a health care crisis? Or were all those things solved over the weekend, pending only the completion of the requisite paperwork? Inquiring minds want to know.

Now that the jig is up for “organic food,” which has finally been declared to be no healthier than any other food, what are the food faddists going to promote next in order for them to feel smug and superior? Free range daisies, maybe?

“Let sleeping dogs lie,” is a very old saying and supposedly very wise. Which makes you wonder; were there ever any other options? Did dogs sleep standing up in days of yore? Doesn’t seem likely.

Speaking of dogs, do kids with imaginary friends also have imaginary dogs? Might as well, no? In for a penny…

With all the overpopulation of deer in New Jersey, how come the bears there still eat out of garbage cans? Aren’t they supposed to be powerful predators that can run just as fast as a deer? Either the New Jersey bears didn’t get the memo or the deer in that state are really tough customers.

Is Joe Biden really that dumb or did the Democrats entertain the notion of nominating their own Bush The Younger a couple of times in recent memory?

Are all those Ikstans that used to be part of the Soviet Union real countries now or are they just pulling our leg? Seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to just to get ambassadors sent there and then yell “Psyche!”

And is there some sort of international competition in Africa to see which government can stick their heads further up their own asses, with bonus points awarded for the most cartoonish dictator? Who’s winning? With all the genocide, civil wars and corruption, it’s kind of hard to tell. Seems like a standoff. Let’s just hope there’s no tie-breaking playoffs. We wouldn’t want to overtax the United Nations’ stern resolution writers or study-the-problem-for-six-months-while-populations-are-slaughtered committees, now would we? Doesn’t seem fair to the U.N., who already have their hands full doing nothing about huge problems on all the other continents (with the possible exception of Australia, which always seems to have “no worries, mate!“).

So now Microsoft and Yahoo are teaming up to challenge Google by creating their own bigger and better search engine and trying to grab some of the billions in advertising revenue garnered by Google. Good thing they’re striking while the iron is hot, before the whole world starts using the name Google as a verb to describe looking stuff up on the internet, eh?

In yet another example of creeping Big Brotherism, the Senate is seeking to outlaw sending text messages while driving a car. What’s next, banning glassblowing or small appliance repair when you’re behind the wheel?

Is there any reason not to rejoice that makers of dopey violent video games are reporting slipping profits?

With all the talk of sweeping change in Washington, is anybody looking into taking away the sizable federal subsidies given Senators for not growing alfalfa on their tennis courts at their “farms?” Or maybe getting some of those huge Agri-businesses off of welfare? Or are they too big to fail to suck every last red cent out of antiquated protectionist laws? Here’s a slogan: Get Dole off the dole!

Is there any reason why the panic over swine flu won’t go away? More people have died from bee stings since this dreaded pandemic has reared its not-so-ugly head, and there’s not even as many bees around as there used to be. And yet no one panics that 13.2 million people die every single year from starvation, a plague easily curable by food, which has already been invented.

And speaking of bees, where the hell did they all go? Was it something we said? Or maybe they just got tired of being so damned busy all the time, figuring let the flies take up the slack. The flowers they pollinate haven’t died off, so somebody’s on the ball with the bees’ old gig. Wonder who? Could it be one of those jobs that Americans won’t do and the illegals are eagerly filling?

Why is it only in recent times that armies have ceased marching into battle with bands blaring and banners gaily waving? Not only does it let the enemy know you are coming and enrages them with your poor taste in music, but across the broad spectrum of human activities, isn’t killing one another the one endeavor that least calls for musical accompaniment?

Is there something wrong in show business, at least on the female end of things? They just haven’t been producing any new out-of-control drunken drunken and drug-sodden bimbos for a few years now. The men of entertainment have kept up their end of the bargain admirably. A bigger bunch of cads and louts hasn’t strolled the boulevards since Errol Flynn’s salad days. But the young ladies? Please! Girls, do you even know what business you are in? What’s with all this circumspect behavior and taking good care of yourselves and the demure comportment? That puts a lot of unfair heat on Lindsay Lohan, Amy Winehouse and Britney Spears to produce, doesn’t it? They can’t be everywhere making pubic fools of themselves and getting arrested and checking into revolving door rehab joints, can they? There must be some enterprising young ladies out there willing to step into the breach and go commando for the cameras, drive into trees while having drunken sex in their vehicles and throwing public tantrums by slugging paparazzi with barstools! Come on, girls, is that asking a lot? You’ll be rich and fay-muss…

Is it time yet for columnists and political talk show hosts to start questioning and criticizing President Obama like they would any other president? No, not the delusional right wing whack jobs who started branding him a traitor before he spent a minute in office, that’s jut meaningless noise and sour grapes, but the regular Op-ed people who have so far treated Obama with kid gloves. They sure didn’t spare Bush The Younger the tongue lash, which in retrospect hardly seems sporting. Pretty much everybody knew there was something seriously wrong with that guy. It was fish-in-a-barrel time. But with Obama, this time we got it right and elected the smartest guy in the room. Isn’t it about time we insist he starts to live up to his billing? We’re all aware that the last administration left behind an unprecedented mess for him to clean up, but, like it or not, the way it works in electoral politics is that now these are his wars, his recession, his health care mess and his rising unemployment. At the very least commentators can start asking: “What’s the plan, Bam?”

All the world loves a clown. At a distance, anyway. Actually hanging out with a clown is sort of awkward, what with the makeup, the big red wig and funny little hat, the giant shoes, the squirting flower and the fact that instead of talking they just stare at you and make weird faces. It’s pretty creepy.

Sure, everybody’s favorite place is where they grew up, their favorite cook is Mom and they root, root, root for the home team. And that’s fine. No sense denying who you are and forgetting about your roots. Nobody likes a phony. Which brings us to Brooklyn, where phonies have a hard time maintaining their cover. It’s not easy in a town where even a ten year-old will see right through you and tell you to get over yourself and be real already. See, nobody really minds who or what you are around here as long as you’re not hurting anybody else. Or pretending you’re something you are not. There’s so many different sidewalks acts going on at once in this place that people just sort of assume that if the next guy might seem a little unusual, well, so what?

We’re all God’s children and as long as someone’s not trying to shine anybody, odds are they’re okay. Besides, who knows how strange you might seem to others? There’s so many different kinds of people in Brooklyn that even the racists reform themselves rather than trying to tackle hating that many varieties. They’d need a whole lot more than one lifetime for that. Especially when the annoying sons of bitches turn out to be okay 9 times out of 10 when you have dealings with them, and in a place like this you can’t help but rub up against each other all the time. No wonder most of them move to the suburbs. It’s just too hard to keep a good hate on when your neighbors turn out to be good people, which tends to ruin that whole Master Race experience. At a distance you can hate anyone and never be disappointed by their goodness. Well, they can have our share of that lunacy and we’re better rid of of those clowns. More room for the rest of us, people who love this town and all the crazy people in it.

There’s cities and towns and villages everywhere, most of them really nice places, no doubt. They’re just not Brooklyn. Sorry, Everywhere Else, but the coolest place on the planet is Brooklyn, New York City, U.S. of friggin’ A! There’s around 3 million people here, not counting the illegals, and we’re sure as hell not going to turn them in. Even those of us born here for a generation or two probably had somebody somewhere back in the family tree who came here under the radar (Probably the only lie my grandmother ever told was when immigration officials asked her if she ever had tuberculosis.). The point is that they came here, had the nerve to move heaven and earth to make it happen for themselves and their families and are now part of America, doing their jobs, buying pizza, going to Coney Island and not stepping on anyone’s toes.

Lou Dobbs can drop dead. Most of us would rather have an honest immigrant neighbor than live next door to a mean old fat blowhard like him. Even if for no other reason than to hear some exotic music once in a while rather than anything that fool might listen to. Probably polkas and John Philip Sousa marches and the like. Living in Brooklyn, odds are you have a lot of immigrant neighbors with a lot of cool stories to tell and great food to eat and a different slant on things. You can learn a lot about the majority of the countries in this world without traveling, and can share your own experiences of being a lifer in this city to some people who love hearing it. And we sure do love to talk around here, sometimes all at once, and you pick up the skill of taking it all in, different accents and all, and they in turn learn to negotiate your Brooklynese, no prob, Bob. After all, their kids have that distinctive Brooklyn accent too, no matter where Mom and Pop come from.

You have to be pretty sharp to keep up here, and that’s another bonus, there’s not a lot of dummies or dull people. When you get the hang of Brooklyn, your mind is sharp as a razor and you develop a pretty pungent personality. There’s no shortage of characters here, and some of the quickest and sharpest minds around. Sometimes when you go visit other places you might be a little too much for them, and they might be a little not so much for you. Nice enough people and places, no doubt, but that buzz is what’s missing, that electric current that seems to run through the air itself in Brooklyn and makes us what we are. While you can enjoy yourself anywhere you go (might as well since the only alternative is not enjoying yourself, and that doesn’t make any sense), it’s always good to come back to the sublime chaos of home sweet home.

Another beauty of Brooklyn is that we’re part of New York City (the best part), that citiest of cities and the modern center of the universe. Rome had its day, as did London and Paris, but these days New York is Rome and all roads lead here. Is there any other city where the United Nations should be? The Statue of Liberty welcoming the wretched refuse? Hell, the population here is a United Nations of former wretched refuse, and a whole lot more united than the official U.N. We’re New Yorkers and we wear the name with pride.

The very many cool places to see and fun things to do are only part of what makes this city so special, but the very best part is the people, tourist attractions in and of themselves. There’s nobody quite like us, and Brooklyn people are the best of good lot. Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall, rain or shine, we wouldn’t trade our town for all the castles in Spain. Drop in some time, we’ll talk, have a little something to eat and show you around. You’ll be amazed and glad you came to Brooklyn. We’ll keep a few million lights on for you, no problem.

The world loves crazy people, except for the evil crazy or mean crazy types. Those we can do without. So, if you’re nuts, don’t sweat it. Just make sure you’re fun nuts and you’ll find open doors and warm welcomes always.

Some things you hear or read you just wonder about. Maybe it’s a gut feeling or maybe it goes contrary to what you know or simply contradicts your hazy general impressions, but something smells fishy and there’s no fish in the vicinity. And so you wonder. Scratch your head even. Here’s an example: some big muckety-mucks in the international community (and you have to also wonder about just what the hell is the international community) are urging the United States government to engage diplomatically with moderate elements of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And so you say to yourself: Tell us again exactly what is a moderate Taliban?

Do they advocate allowing women to be merely indentured servants who can read a little bit instead of illiterate slaves under house arrest? Are they for banning only music but dancing is fine? Are perceived sins against their harsh brand of Islam punishable by being stoned only half to death, maybe into critical condition? No one seems to have a solid definition of what a moderate homicidal maniac might be and how you would be able to tell them apart from the full-blown crazed killers. Maybe the people suggesting this approach could interview them first, sort of let everybody know exactly who’s who before our diplomats waste their time. That would be helpful. Providing they survive the encounters, of course.

Then there’s the (mis)conduct of our war against these people, the one we got involved in as a byproduct of our failed manhunt for Osama bin Laden, the war we’re supposed to be winding down. After all, just like in Iraq, right off the bat we defeated the Afghan armies and toppled their government, pretty much the textbook definition of winning a war. Well, also just like Iraq, for some reason we’re still there fighting against whoever will have us; ragtag militias, trained insurgents, crazy God-complex dudes with fanatical followers, it really doesn’t matter all that much. That’s what armies do, fight battles, and all they were ever designed to do, and whenever a mobilized foreign army is your neighborhood, someone’s going to take up the challenge. It’s just human nature to repel the interlopers. Weren’t we told that this was a war we would wrapping up ASAP? Is that ringing any bells here? So… tell us again how sending in another 22,000 troops is accomplishing this? Seems sort of counter-productive on the face of it.

And aren’t our unmanned aircraft drones operated with a video game joy stick by CIA computer geeks from the air-conditioned comfort of Las Vegas doing a decent enough job of winning the game of hide-and-go-seek with these Taliban guys? That’s more like hide-and-go-heat-seeking-missile and bye-bye Mr. Taliban with no Marines killed by roadside bombs 10,000 miles from home sweet home. Can someone in the Obama administration explain exactly what their thinking is on this escalation of hostilities? Maybe put our minds to rest here with the explanation of their ingenious master plan, the one where we finally get bin Laden and leave that godforsaken nation to their own devices, such as they might be? They don’t have to give away any secrets, just kind reassure us a little bit. There is a plan here, isn’t there? Isn’t there?

That gut feeling is one we shouldn’t ignore. Like that skin-crawling creepy sensation you experience when you see a broadcast of Sarah (I’m bailin’!) Palin. Why the hell would anybody point a TV camera her way anymore? There’s more interesting and substantive working Moms on every street of every town in America, and few of them are as willfully ignorant as she is, and fewer still are quitters. She made a farewell speech Sunday night explaining that she’s quitting the Governorship of Alaska, a job she committed herself to and the voters of Alaska entrusted her to complete by saying she quit because she’s (!?!) not a quitter. Wow. The jaw drops and the eyes glaze over…

This was not a comedy routine, either. She delivered it with a straight face and no trace of irony, then admonished the American press corps to “stop making stuff up” because America has brave soldiers. What? Maybe she can refresh our memories on what exactly that has to do with anything, anything at all. Just throw something out there, Sarah, whatever pops into your pointy little head! No one will expect you to make a lick of sense, just babble about veterans and farmers and apple pie and Coca Cola and American-made cars and the flag too while you’re at it. Your fans will love it and the rest of us will just sort of scratch our heads and stare into space with unfocused glazed eyes. You betcha!

And can anyone (Not her, please God not her!) tell us again exactly why this overambitious mental midget is important to anybody not directly related to her? And does she plan to even read the book that somebody with actual skills and an orderly, lucid mind is going to write for her so she can make 7 million bucks? So now she’ll probably go hang out with those “real Americans” she keeps ranting about, providing of course they’re the kind of real Americans who will pay her huge piles of cash money to keep on saying stupid shit that means absolutely nothing on her very own TV show. A nation waits with bated breath…

Lazy is as lazy doesn’t.

We here at the Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO), like much of the rest of humanity, read the newspaper and internet news and hear radio and television news reports just about every single day. Our highly skilled research team has long since concluded that the reports are often incomplete, and that certain phrases or words are code for something else entirely. For example, what is a “highly placed source” but a disgruntled employee who’s input has been rejected and has found a reporter to publicize their agenda? Those who do have the ear of the boss sure won’t risk their position by going behind his back to the press anonymously. And doesn’t “former beauty queen” always seem to mean vengeful wrinkled old hag? And there are a thousand more examples of newspeak that say something other than the obvious, an anathema to an organization like ours dedicated to pointing out the Emperor’s new cloths. Consider the following:

When the leader of a nation or his spokesperson says “our position is clear,” invariably that means they are sticking to an unreasonable policy and won’t listen to reason for all the cheese in Wisconsin.

When huge banks announce that they have bounced back from the grievous self-inflicted hemorrhages of last year so quickly and are reporting huge profits once again, what they really mean is that it’s okay again to transfer billions of their shareholders’ dollars (read that: someone else’s money) to the wealthy elite executive corps in the form of obscene bonuses.

And when these princes of high finance announce they have found another Golden Goose called “High Frequency Trading,” they are letting the cat out of the bag that they are cheating again and will move heaven and earth, fielding legions of attorneys and lobbyists, to find a loophole in any law or regulation designed to level the playing field and punish unfair insider trading.

When scientists worry that the machines they build may soon have the ability to outsmart man, they seem to have forgotten that VCRs, DVD players, phone answering machines and home computers have been doing this for decades. Who worries about robots and drone airplanes when you can’t even figure out what the hell the F12 key really does?

And speaking of scientists, when archaeologists uncover some new dinosaur skeleton or ancient human implement and say that this “probably” or “almost certainly” was this particular kind of creature that lived and ate this particular way or this specific tool was used for this or that exact purpose, what they are really saying is: “Your guess is as good as mine.” Nice work if you can get it.

When savage killings and open warfare breaks out between Muslims over the proper practice of the Islamic faith and Christians smugly announce how barbaric a faith Islam is, what they are saying is that they cut every single history class in school. No faith has been responsible for more bloodshed, torture, brutal oppression and widespread warfare than that of the followers of The Prince of Peace. Islam has a way to go to catch up to Christianity’s body count. To a whole lot of Muslims’ credit, however, they are trying their best in the critical Tyrannical Oppression and Senseless Killing departments, so there’s still hope for them entering the mainstream. Special kudos from The Department go out to them for the innovative and diabolical twist of talking young men in the prime of their lives into blowing themselves and others to smithereens in the name of a religion that means “Peace.”

When Charles Taylor, former brutal dictator of Liberia now on trial for war crimes in Sierra Leone (where he tried to conquer their diamond mines) pleads not guilty to the many charges against him, he is especially vehement in denying the charges of cannibalism. Which doesn’t look good for his prospects of acquittal on all the other charges of diamond smuggling, gunrunning, war making and the murder and mutilation of half a million human beings. When your only defense is: “At least I’m not a cannibal!”, your case is problematic at best and your chances of winning quite slim.

When China and Taiwan approach one another though official diplomatic channels, what that means is that China has finally given up the ghost of reclaiming the island, figuring, “Do we really need another 23 million citizens to go with our 1.3 billion, especially when those pesky Taiwanese are used to voting and having all those decadent Western human rights and liberties? They’ll just fire everyone else up and we’ll be having another Tiananmen Square incident every six weeks. That darned tank ammo is very pricey!”

When a species of frog previously thought to have been extinct is found somewhere, that means that nature has been pretty thorough in producing enough varieties of frogs so that their functions overlap and when one kind disappears the world doesn’t notice they are gone. Perhaps they take turns disappearing and reappearing to spread the frog workload equitably. What that also tells us is that there are people in this world who are on the ball with keeping tabs on frogs so that the rest of us are pretty much off the hook with frog counting. Reassuring, that.

When you read about billionaires still wheeling and dealing well into their 70’s and 80’s, your realize that the accumulation of that much wealth is as often as not an all-consuming compulsion rather than a means to an end. At an age when most men their age have relinquished the running of the world to younger hands and are enjoying the fruits of their labors in the restful and  leisurely pursuits of retirement, what these obsessive control freak geezers are telling you is that they are Ebenezer Scrooge, afflicted with a severe mental infirmity and unable to help themselves. And as any first year intern at DOPOTO can confirm, there are no Ghosts of Christmas Future handy to save these poor wretches from themselves.

When Republican Party operatives mount an intensive campaign to remove President Obama from office because he was really born in (!) Kenya, what they are really saying is “We’ve got nothing, not a damned thing in our pointy little heads.” Calling the followers of their movement “Birthers” isn’t helping their lost cause either, conjuring up images of inbred, isolated religious cults or Nadya Suleman, the Octomom. Calls to Birther headquarters in Brainfreeze, Idaho from The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious have gone unanswered due the Birthers’ fear of the “witchy voices” emanating from their telephones, which they have declared to be instruments of Satan.

When sport writers and cycling fans gush over bicyclist Lance Armstrong’s 7 wins in the Tour de France, they never mention that bicycle riding is something that most of us master completely at around the age of 7 or 8, and yet receive no accolades for our advanced skills or athleticism. It’s pretty much an unspoken assumption that someone who rides a bicycle 10 hours a day will get giant thighs, deep lungs and not much else. Which researchers at DOPOTO have discovered is why the Tour de France was originally invented, as a consolation prize devised by social scientists to boost the self esteem of French people whose only skill was bike riding and were starting to feel inferior to people who won accolades for actual athletic prowess or winning their wars. Somewhere throughout the ensuing decades it got out of hand with the Yellow Jersey that was originally the entire jackpot for the race becoming a symbol of actual achievement. One result is that Armstrong is a wealthy international star.

This has been a report from The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious.