Dean's World

Radio Shack started as the Tandy Corporation in 1919 selling home-hobbyist leather toolkits. Their market in those days was Boy Scouts and YMCA Indian Guides and other child enthusiasts for boyish (and tomboyish girl) crafts. In those days Tandy was mostly mail order with a few physical stores.

Some time in the 1950s or 1960s Tandy decided to get into amateur electronics, selling crystal radio sets and other do-it-yourself home hobbyist projects. By the mid-70s they were a great source of cheap CB radio equipment and guitar amplifiers and simple stereo equipment and simple electronics for hobbyists.

By the late '70s and early '80s they entered the world of home computers--"home computers" meaning computers you could put together yourself.

It is difficult to imagine now, but at one time there used to be something called a "home computer hobbyist," which then seemed very exotic: you mean an individual could put together his or her own computer? A home computer, as in a computer they had in their home?? It was radical.

Once those home computers became somewhat common Tandy began to sell mostly pre-assembled computers that you could expand upon yourself--the TRS-80 Model I, Model II, Model III, the Color Computer (CoCo), and so on. Indeed, at one point in Silicon Valley there was something called the "Four Sisters of home computers": Commodore, Apple, Atari, and Radio Shack. Then IBM came along and all but destroyed the 4 Sisters, with only Apple managing to survive.

Tandy/Radio Shack eventually gave up making their own computers and began selling other companies' computers. But they kept up their business of selling cool electronics and other gear that a young enthusiast--or older enthusiast--might get some pleasure and learning from.

A few years ago Tandy/Radio Shack finally just changed their name to Radio Shack Corporation. They no longer make computers but they still sell all sorts of useful and/or entertaining electronics, mostly geared for geek boyz and geek grrlz who love the magic.

Back in the early 1980s, when I was a "home computing hobbyist" (there used to be such a hobby, although no one calls it that anymore) it was extremely common for techies to refer to Radio Shack as "Radio Crap," and to refer to Tandy's pioneering Personal Computers, the TRS-80 series ("TRS" standing for "Tandy/Radio Shack) as the "Trash-80."

Even then I heard regularly about Radio Shack's imminent demise as a worthless purveyor of junk electronics.

Apple Computer was founded in 1976 and is still a Fortune 500 company some 30 years later. But also Wal-Mart was founded in 1962. Toyota was founded in 1933. Sony was founded in 1946. Polaroid was founded in 1929. Toys 'R Us was founded in 1948.

Radio Shack was founded in 1919.

Since we're in the middle of American Baseball's World Series, let me also give some baseball analogies: the Houston Astros and the New York Mets were formed in 1962. The Montreal Expos and the San Diego Padres were formed in 1969. The Kansas City Royals were founded in 1969.

Heck, let's say you're an American, and you don't like baseball but you do like American football. You like your Cowboys, your Steelers, your Colts, your Bears, your Lions, whatever: the NFL was founded in 1920.

Tandy/Radio Shack was founded in 1919.

So to make my point clear: I am not a Radio Shack fanatic per se. They are not the be-all and end-all of electronics. I acknowledge the company's many failings. But dude, I've been reading about how worthless Radio Shack is and how they are doomed to failure for most of my life. Yet they were founded some 47 years before I was born.

So now it's 2006, going on 2007, and still if you walk into a major shopping mall you'll likely find a Radio Shack tucked in there somewhere. And if you go in you'll find all kinds of cool little gadgets to play with, and all kinds of electronic components that only geeks fully understand.

If you're an under-10 enterprising young geek with an interest in electronics you'll still find things like soldering irons and diodes and resisters and fun little kits you can put together at Radio Shack. Plus some cool gizmos you don't have to put together yourself but can still just enjoy.

So you know what I think about people who snear at Radio Shack? Imagine yourself a classical musician or band leader. Not necessarily a great virtuoso, but someone quite accomplished in the field of music. So you walk into a little store dedicated to selling High School band uniforms and instruments and sheet music. And you snarl, "YOU WORTHLESS POSEURS!!!"

Dude, get over it. They are not the end-point. They are just a great start-point.

Of course Radio Shack is imperfect and limited. Of course it's a little kitsche-ey. Of course it isn't all things to all people. But I defy you to find a national chain that makes a better start-point for kids (or kids at heart) who are looking for an on-ramp to the future. Or or the older tech-loving geek who wants to go a little past what he can find in the "big box" stores for his home entertainment or computer needs without making that quest the center of his or her life.

I'm always pleased to see a Radio Shack in my local shopping mall. "A Radio Shack! Cool! Let's go in and have some fun!" And please don't tell me you ever said, "A Best Buy! Cool!" (Best Buy established 1986) to your nieces or nephews or sons or daughters. I won't believe you.

My general reputation is that I am unflappable. Which is usually quite true. In fact, when my temper erupts, it tends to upset people and leave them running for cover. They find it out-of-character and even alien. They look at me as if a demon has suddenly taken possession of me. (Which might even be true, for all I know.)

Otherwise, even if I'm sometimes snotty or sarcastic, most people recognize that I am almost hyper-rational. Sometimes, to a fault. (Personality type: INTJ) Anyway, I can usually be talked to.

But I do have certain hot-button issues that make me go medieval. One of them is overt racism (racism that goes beyond gentle jokes and rational discussion, anyway). Another is overt religious bigotry (a good joke is funny, but hating people for their religion is not funny at all). Or sexism, (if it goes beyond gentle barbs and rational discussion).

In fact maybe that's the hot-point: "if it goes beyond gentle barbs and rational discussion."

A case in point might be my beloved Polish wife. In our first week together she let me know she hated Polak jokes. I grew up on the South Side of Chicago in the 1970s, where Polak jokes were very popular. I heard a lot of them growing up, and I thought a lot of them were funny.

Pre-marriage, my beloved and I argued about Polak jokes one night on the phone, back in our first two weeks together. She tried to convince me that Polak jokes were NOT funny. She had a book of Polak jokes, most of them nasty. She read a few of them to me and most of them were just mean and hurtful. They were making all Poles out to be dumb, just based on the fact that most Polish immigrants at the time were new to our country and language. And I had to agree that most of them were really uncalled for. Her mother was a college graduate with a degree in accounting, and both her parents had come here in the 1960s with absolutely nothing, barely the clothes off their backs, and worked their tails off to make a new life for themselves and their children. They came to Detroit in a time when that city was erupting in racial violence. How could you not respect that?? They had come to this country about the year I was born, and by the time I was in my 20s they had already accomplished far more than I had.

So she read me all these nasty jokes, and I was agreeing. Some of them were kind of funny, but others were just nasty. Then she said, "I mean, what the f**k is this one?"

"Uh, what?"

"I mean, just listen to this: 'Why did the Polish couple take so long to drive across America? Because they kept seeing signs that said, 'Clean Restrooms.' How is that even funny?"

I started giggling. She said, "What? How is that funny?"

I started howling. She said, "What, why are you laughing??"

I dissolved into uncontrollable laughter.

Then she finally said, "Oh, you as**ole!"

For the next 3 minutes neither of us could stop laughing.

Oh, I only hope that if my beloved mother-in-law Anna reads this she'll recognize it as a story about a stranger in a strange land trying to make sense of things. Because it is nothing more than that. We've all been there.

I know what gets me mad. I can take a good joke at my expense, just like I can take a good black joke (dey spinnin' n*gga dey spinnin!), a good white joke (how do ya dance again, was that 1, 3, 4, 2... er nope, you meant 3, 2, 1, 4...?), a good hispanic joke (how many latinos does it take to change a lightbulb--hey, who stole all the lightbulbs?), a good Asian joke (can you help me with my math homework?), a good woman joke (what do you mean by that?!?!?!), a good Catholic joke (so what do you feel guilty about today?), a good Jew joke (can I get that on wholesale?), a good man joke (uh, pussy?), a good redneck joke (you mind if I crack open a Pabst Blue Ribbon at this here funeral?), a good gay joke (do the colors at least match and do you have some decent accessories at least, puh-leeze?), a good atheist joke (Ayn Rand was a GODDESS!!), a good Muslim joke (who should I blow up today?), a good evengelical Christian joke (would Jesus approve?), and so on. I mean, I could go all night. (And there would probably be an Indian or Korean kwik-e-mart attendant available in the middle of the night to serve me if I did.)

What really makes me mad is when you want to take these stereotypes about any broad group and make them a subject of general hatred and mistrust. THAT makes me very angry. I always lose my cool over that. Because I just don't think that's the American way.

Well except for the Presbytyrians. I think we all hate them.

Methuselah's Daughter is now available in deluxe trade-paperback edition through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other fine bookselling establishments. You can ask any local bookseller and they'll get it for you.

Yeah it costs a little more than your average novel. For now. But if you buy it you'll be getting an early edition of a book that an incredible number of readers have endorsed. Why did they endorse it? Well here is a sample:

They entered the clearing. My altar consisted of a pillar of carefully placed stones, with a large, flat slab at its top. It stood just thigh high to a normal man and was otherwise undecorated, but I enjoyed its simplicity as it stood in the center of a clearing devoid of other stones or stumps. It was solitary and solid and as such it represented me in a way that gave me some satisfaction. The old hunter pointed to it and the other three approached it. They circled it, looked it up and down, and peered closely. One of them said something in that odd tongue, and then all three of them laughed. I could not understand their words, but I could understand their intent.

This is what you have been babbling about all the way out here? A pile of rocks?

I was stringing my bow even before they acted, but what they did next sealed their doom. The tallest of the three lifted his boot and set it to the altar. With a powerful shove he toppled the slab from the top, and the pillar crumbled about it. As he did so I stepped clear of the trees and leveled my bow. They all laughed at the old hunter who nearly screamed in horror as his eyes locked on me. One of the three turned in his mirth to see what the hunter was looking at, and my arrow took him in the throat.

The other two reacted instantly, crouching and drawing their blades, but I killed the second with two arrows to the chest before he could do any more. The last warrior turned and dove for the trees, finding cover before I could drop him. I sprinted into the clearing, trying to listen for his movement, but the old man was weeping too loudly for me to hear the running coward clearly. I silenced the old fool with my knife through his throat, fair punishment for bringing these interlopers into my woods to desecrate my altar. In the blessed silence that followed I could hear the last man attempting to move quietly around to the south, back towards his camp.

Fetching an arrow from my quiver I set out after him and soon had him in sight, though he was unaware of me. I trailed him back to the camp, which was now brightly lit with two large fires and numerous torches. As we drew close he began to run, thinking himself safely away. I listened to him begin to cry out an alarm, watched as those in the camp reacted, and then dropped him with an arrow through the left calf. He shrieked in pain again as I sent another shaft into his right calf, effectively pinning him to the ground.

Others rushed towards him, but stopped suddenly as three shafts struck the ground before them in rapid succession. I drew down on my whimpering victim again, this time piercing his left shoulder. I waited a moment, listening to the commotion in the camp, seeing several men head out into the woods, doubtless to attempt to circle around me. I loosed another arrow into my victim’s other shoulder, fixing him to the earth at all four limbs. My last arrow struck him at the base of the skull, silencing his moaning.

The one who commanded, Rufus, came to the fore and stood just beyond where my three warning arrows had fallen. It would have been so very easy to kill him then and there, but I stayed my hand, taking his measure. He stood fearless with his arms crossed over his chest, staring into the deepening gloom of the forest, obviously intent on laying eyes upon the one responsible for this. I nocked an arrow and stepped clear of the tree line and out into the light. Our eyes met. His gaze was level as he regarded me in my loincloth, chest wrap, and bare feet. A flurry of motion began behind him, but my eyes never left his as with a motion of his hand he brought his warriors to a halt. I pursed my lips, spat on the ground before me and, certain that my point had been clearly made, turned my back upon him.

Order it here, while you still can get the early edition.

It is the best thing I have ever done creatively save the birth of my two sons.

Quoted:

I found your website today, but quickly realized it's not really promoting liberal or progressive causes. Lieberman is an enabler for the Bush crime family's radical right-wing agenda. And I also see you're repeating Lieberman's claim that Lamont is a one-issue candidate. This totally ignores the fact that the war in Iraq is the sinlge most important issue driving US policy at home and abroad, and most all other issues are affected by it either directly or indirectly.

Here's a quote by Paul Krugman, who really IS a liberal:

I can stop right there. This naif would not know real liberalism if it came up and bit him on the ass. But in case you think he's got no more to say, he then proceeded to say much more, and then send me an additional eleven--count 'em, eleven--emails, composed over a period of what looks like over two hours with his Jihadist rant about the evils of the Bush administration, the Republicans, and so on. Here's a screen shot:

Note, please, that I did not obscure his name, but I certainly would not publish his email address or any further identifying info. I try to never, ever do anything that might result in someone's being harassed. My guess is that this is a 19 year old inflamed with passion and a desire to make the world a better place, but deeply naive and unaware of how much hatred and bile he's swallowed into his politics. Although it's just as possible that he's a 40+ year old who just hasn't grown up yet and still thinks that guys like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn are the height of intelligent observers.

I would not normally reprint this, but, this is far from the first time I've been email-pelted by a leftist-in-liberal-clothes like this, and this seemed like a good example. It happens to me several times a month at least. It merely amuses me when it happens. My response to all and sundry:

LOL. I've been reading and listening to hatemongering irrational leftists like you for years. You think you've got anything here that I haven't heard before? You naive fool.

You aren't a liberal in any sense of the word. You're just a hate-filled reactionary leftist. You don't even know what "liberal" really means.

Go join Pat Buchanan, Cindy Sheehan, David Duke, and the rest of the Axis of Idiots. I have no use for you.

And here's a news flash for you:

Paul Krugman is nothing but a left-wing Ann Coulter.

You stupid sucker.

Yet, I'll avoid the cheap cliche of claiming that because I've got rightists who dislike me, and leftists who dislike me, this means I am somehow automatically correct. That is not true at all. Many of my critics might be right and I might be wrong about many specific things. But real liberalism comes from avoiding making blanket assumptions, and listening hard even to arguments you strongly disagree with--not to defeat them but to understand them.

And, as the great liberal philosophere John Stuart Mill once said:

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

Never forget that it was a proud liberal who said that. I don't think that Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Harry S Truman would have had any great disagreement with such sentiments, and both those men did things far more draconian on their watch when faced with war than George W. Bush ever has. So, for that matter, did Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson.

I have had about enough, however, of rightists who call me a sellout and a denialist and a useful idiot who just won't recognize that Islam is the West's eternal enemy. They disgust me almost as much as this paranoid lefty. Furthermore, I don't care who condemns me for any of it either way. Come and get me you bastards: my position on all of this has not wavered in almost 5 years, and if you doubt it ask anyone who has been here on Dean's World from the beginning.

Not that consistency is the measure of moral rectitude. It is not. But please: understand me for who I am versus your presumptions. Of course I've learned some things in the last 5 years that have made me change my views in some specific cases, but I don't think my view has ever changed in any fundamental way.

I still think the following musical track--which I still fear YouTube will take down at some point--expesses my exact feelings on the entire subject of terrorism:

If YouTube takes it down (or even if they don't) you should still buy this DVD. You know, if the boys in U2 could befriend Jesse Helms and befriend both Pope Benedict and the Muslim community then it's not too much to ask others to try to do the same. Is it?

I mean, really, do you want to open up a dialogue with this people in respect and faith and argue with them? Or did you just want to treat them like the Eternal Enemy and Satan's minions? The choice is yours, but I think that if you really understood the Gospel you'd know what the right answer is.

You may think me guilty of an artificially "centrist" point of view. Yeah, I get that a lot. On the other hand you might consider that I myself walked away from Christianity in part due to what I percieved as unyielding dogma and intolerance and hatred. I walked away from the political Left for the same reasons.

I used to support Christian terrorists.

There are people who hate me for saying that. Some hate me for saying I supported terrorists. Others hate me for saying that there is such a thing as a Christian terrorist. To those who are angry with me for supporting terrorists I say that I am so, so sorry. For those who say there is no such a thing as a Christian terrorist I have no apology at all.

Like my co-blogger brother Dave Schuler, I remember growing up on the south side of Chicago and being in a pub and seeing posters supporting the "Northern Irish." They told me stories about poor Northern Irish schoolchildren who had no shoes and were hungry. They asked me for my support, and I gave them money. Then some years later I learned that most of my money had gone to buy IRA bombs and guns. It was used to kill little children, or the fathers of children who made the mistake of fighting for order.

I gave money to terrorists. I still see their supporters regularly. Just show up to any St. Patrick's Day parade in Chicago, New York, Boston: they'll put up their posters about how Northern Ireland should be "free." And maybe it should be free, but what do these people want the money for? If you're Catholic they'll even push the religion button: the Catholics should not be oppressed by the Protestants. Well no the Catholics shouldn't be oppressed, but does that mean they are right to blow up bombs and murder anyone who opposes them? Where's the glory in that?

If you read much about The Troubles, you'll learn that Tommy lost more of his buddies in Northern Ireland than he did during any conflict since World War II. Those Republicans may have had a point but once they started murdering little children they lost any claim to moral rectitude.

As a man of Irish descent, I think that the following video expresses my deepest feelings. As expressed by a band from Northern Ireland. Sadly, I think YouTube will take it down before most of you have seen it:

If they take it down (or even if they don't) I hope you'll buy this DVD. Hard to believe it's been almost 20 years isn't it?

I hate terrorists. I don't care which God or version of God they worship. There's no glory in anything they do. I hate them all.

Imagine you wrote something on your personal weblog that you knew was fairly controversial but was in your mind defensible. Maybe you wrote 500 or 1,000 words to state your opinion, then wrote a few of your blogger friends to ask what they thought about it, then went to bed.

When you woke up, you found that there were hundreds of comments left, and 20 trackbacks (like oh, say this thread), with each of those trackbacks containing further comments from people who either thought you wrong or thought you right.

Without invoking any self-pity--none is required--wouldn't that be both a source of pride and a source of panic? "Oh they all thought I was that important?!" is surely one reaction. But another is, "Holy crap, I have to answer all these people?!!?"

This is an overwhelming position to find yourself in. When was the last time YOU said something you knew to be mildly inflammatory, and then had thousands of people divying up sides: anti-you vs. pro-you??

Again this is not a call to self-pity. No pity is required.

On the other hand, I must say that "Well Dean YOU did not answer MY specific points!" is incredibly self-important. The ass who says, "You're wrong because you did not answer MY SPECIFIC POINTS THAT I LAID OUT FOR YOU IN DETAIL!!!" is someone who, frankly, deserves a kick in the gonads. Very hard.

I ask for absolutely no pity. I just ask for some recognition that I am a mortal human with all the frailties and limitations that come with that. You get in my face and I'll get back in yours. I used to reposses cars out of the cities of Detroit, Inkster, and Highland Park Michigan, and have faced death more than once. Don't f*ck with me because I don't take well to being f*cked with, and I'm not afraid of anybody. You get in my face, or worse, threaten my family, and I am a nasty motherf*cker who will enjoy hurting you, and if you f*cking forget it once I'll make sure you don't forget it a second time.

But if you give me respect, I'll give you respect back. You want to argue with me? I'll argue with you until the cows come home if I have time. You want to tell me I'm wrong? Well heck you may be right. Just don't be dumb enough to think I'm omniscient, okay? Or that I always have time to answer absolutely everybody who writes to me. Because I'm not omniscient and I do have a life outside of blgoging.