Month: May 2024

Let’s imagine that there is a small world consisting of sixty people.  All sixty of these people have industrialized processes that sustain and improve their lives.  Industry makes food, shelter and clothing.  It enriches their lives with leisure and entertainment.  Unfortunately, there are   some undesirable bi-products of the industrial process.  The air and water near the people who manufacture stuff suffers.     

Another bi-product of industrialization is a volatile and dangerous gas called Cabluigen.  If Cabluigen reaches a specific level it will definitely explode killing all sixty of the small world’s inhabitants.  The good news is that Cabluigen will degrade at a very constant rate.  So if the small world citizens extract the gas and store it in a large container, they will not have any difficulties as long as they do not add Cabluigen to the container faster than it naturally disappears.       

The shift to industrialization was not made equally by all sixty citizens. Two or three of the inhabitants moved headlong into manufacturing.  The others who were late to the party were intent on making up for lost time.  Surprisingly, this offered great opportunity to all sixty citizens.  The fifteen or twenty who were suffering with air and water pollution could close their factories.  They could still get cheap stuff by letting the gung ho newcomers make everything in their corner of the world.  Smog and water pollution would abate for the initial producers when they shut the factories in their countries but they could still reap the benefits of good cheap products by purchasing them from their neighbors.  

For years, the sixty inhabitants have been more focused on improving their lifestyles without much concern for Cabluigen levels.  Industrialization and Cabluigen production was not at all proportional to the natural rate of Cabluigen decay.  The citizens with factories created much more Cabluigen than the other citizens.  In fact, one of the sixty inhabitants produces 28% of the world’s Cabluigen and the top five producers create 62% of the gas.    

For several years Cabluigen, has been added to the tank faster than the degradation rate.  A concerned citizen, Dr. Seymour Perrill, decided to scientifically analyze the rising Cabluigen levels.  Dr. Perrill’s findings were shocking and depressing.  He determined that if the sixty citizens of the world did not reduce the production of Cabluigen to the rate of natural degradation in the next ten years, the world would explode shortly thereafter terminating all life on the planet.

Very simply, if the sixty residents did not solve the problem in the next ten years, no one could prevent the end of the world from happening.

Needless to say this was very unwelcome news to the occupants of small world.  Their reactions were all self serving.  No one wanted to forego the pleasures of industrialization.  Some attacked the messenger.  Surely, Dr. Perrill has miscalculated.  I can’t see giving up my private jet because of these crack pot calculations.  The largest producer of Cabluigen pointed out that he was late in utilizing technology so he did not intend to reduce his industrialization until he had enjoyed as much of the benefits as others who preceded him. 

Fifteen or twenty citizens decided that they could solve the problem by dropping their production of Cabluigen to zero.  They believed that each person should voluntarily join them.  However, the late industrializers made a valid point and it did not seem fair to ask them to live by the same standards.  More importantly, none of the sixty citizens wanted to give up the benefits of cheap lifestyle improvements by forcing the citizen most responsible for manufacturing them to change their manufacturing methods.

The problem was that the tank holding Cabluigen did not care where it came from.  When it exceeds capacity, for any reason, it is going to explode.  Fifteen people cutting back production to zero while not addressing the primary polluter is like killing off harmful black mold in the prison’s gas chamber. 

So a quarter of the planet’s population changed their behavior.  They were colder in the winter and hotter in the summer.  They still had a plethora of manufactured goods but the pollution of making these things was in someone else’s backyard.   All fifteen achieved their goal of zero Cabluigen production, largely by sending production of their stuff to other countries.  The biggest polluters promised to change their ways but they never altered anything.  Cheap stuff could only be manufactured with low energy costs.  All of the low energy sources threw off a lot of Cabluigen. Dr. Seymour Perrill did annual studies and reports indicating that science behind the initial ten year calculation had not changed. 

Nine years, eleven months, and twenty nine days after the initial study (ironically, it was the month of February and a leap year), Dr. Perrill set up a lawn chair and a plastic table in his front yard.  He arranged a large tumbler of gin, a small snifter of vermouth and a jar of blue cheese stuffed olives on the table.  Halfway through the third martini, KABLOOEY, the world exploded and all sixty occupants died.  

As so many people have told me, the world is really a changed place.  The value system I was taught by my parents is as archaic as a beer can opener. 

With today’s social media and technology you do not move your economics forward by improving your skills and enhancing your value to a profitable enterprise.  In the olden days, the employer recognized your increased contribution by giving you more responsibility and more money.  There was nothing charitable or morally upstanding about the employer’s actions.  They wanted to keep the people, who really had positive impact on the bottom line, happy. Rewarding high performers was the best wat to ensure long term profitability for the enterprise.  Midway through your career you were creating more compensation than you needed.  By saving and investing the excess you put yourself in a position to retire and live happily ever after.

A ridiculous business model in 2024.

I started modernizing my pursuit of wealth ten years ago.   Driving around the city, I was very impressed with people who created revenue simply by holding up signs at busy intersections with long delayed traffic lights.  So I hand painted a number of signs and went to work.  Some were pretty effective.  “Will work for fried chicken!”, “The Bentley needs tires”, and “My Karma ran over my Dogma” were money makers.  “Need help funding my 401k” was a dud.  Apparently, no one in America wants to fund any retirement accounts, anywhere.

So the key to real wealth was tapping in to Americans’ penchant to donate to causes that they deem to be “most worthy”.  Determining what Americans deem as “most worthy” is an art form.  Often the values are counter intuitive.  For example, in the 1990’s, a young mother was sadly attacked and killed by a mountain lion in California.  The park service tracked and euthanized the mountain lion.  Later they discovered that the lioness had a litter of three cubs.  A charity was created to help care for the mother’s children.  It received donations of $20,000.  Completely independently, a charity was established for the lion cubs.  It received $160,000 in donations. So if you are going to be financially successful, you must really understand the values of potential donors.       

Before the internet changed our lives, soliciting charitable contributions was a complicated effort.  It was labor intensive and expensive.  You had to establish a valid charity from a legal and tax perspective.  You had to identify prospective donors.  You had to develop effective solicitation techniques.  You had to put the touch on the donors and ultimately collect funds.  90% of the donations actually had to be disbursed for the explicit purpose of the charity. There were legal and tax filings, mailing list or phone solicitation research and execution, credit card receipt formats, mail and check receipt formats, etcetera.  The solicitations had to be rock solid because most of the potential donors you would contact would be both sane and sober.  You needed to be sufficiently convincing in your appeal to motivate rational people to write a check.     

Thankfully, as the internet and financial transaction processing evolved, a world of opportunities has opened for the tech savvy entrepreneur. 

I have eliminated nearly all of the complexities of generating contributions with the “Come Fund Me” application.  I go to the App, put in the reason I am in need of funding and nearly everything else is managed by the web site.  For example, last February I set up a “Come Fund Me” page to help me overcome my depression.  Tom Brady’s retirement was such a shock and trauma that it prevented me from working.  In fact, my mental state was such that I may never be able to resume my lucrative career as a truck driver.  I carefully posted the “Come Fund Me” application in Bistros located in Tampa, Boston and Ann Arbor at 1:00 AM.  Within a week, the sensitive patrons provided more than $97,000 to help restore my mental health.  This is so effective because it is so easy for the donors to make the pledge.  “Come Fund Me” accepts real money, credit cards, crypto currencies, the yuan, rubles, you name it.  At 1:00 AM many of the patrons are sloshed and they really align with my plight.  They may have just paid a few hundred bucks for a lap dance, why not give the poor Brady fan a sawbuck.  They push a button or two and bingo, I have a contribution.       

Three weeks ago I posted that I was careening toward bankruptcy because of the high cost of diesel fuel.  I needed to trade my 1988 – F350 diesel for a sensible Tesla but I had no funds.  So far I have tallied up $47,500 of the money required for the new electric vehicle.

I generated $8,500 to fund addiction counseling to help me conquer my life long addiction to fried chicken.

I even garnered $1,113 to help me recover the cost of losing too many golf balls on the 17^th hole at TPC Sawgrass.

Suffice to say “Come Fund Me” has changed my life.

What’s next?

I may need help converting my home to a totally green environment.  Solar panels and a couple of windmills.  The thought of Donald Trump becoming President has certainly rekindled my depression.  The thought of Joe Biden remaining President has certainly rekindled my depression.  The interest rate on my variable rate mortgage just doubled.  I don’t know how I can survive the 18% inflation that has been thrust upon us since 2021.

Watch the news.  Truly, the possibilities are endless. 

Thanks to the ease of accessing sympathetic and often inebriated contributors and the ease of completing the entire transaction, “Come Fund Me” is likely to be my full time occupation for a very long time.    

Many people make seemingly small decisions early in life that have a profound effect on the rest of their lives.  In fifth or sixth grade we are all seeking to establish our identities.  Our daughter fell in love with grade school dramatics.  The passion continued through high school and through a theater degree at Northwestern.  She loves acting and she is very good at it.  It all started in fifth grade.  In sixth grade our son signed up for Space Camp and it lit a fire for pursuing science that culminated in a PhD in Archeology.  He is now a professor at the University of Central Florida, teaching his favorite subject.   

I too had a seminal experience in sixth grade.  I rearranged my school schedule to maximize my exposure to the wisdom of Soupy Sales. 

Southeastern Michigan was blessed with daily performances of Soupy.  He started as a host of a lunch time cartoon show for kids.  He was so popular and versatile that he simultaneously hosted an evening program, Soups On, to compete with the 11 PM News.  The night time program featured great Jazz and adult oriented Soupy Sales humor.  Eventually, the Lunch with Soupy program migrated to Breakfast with Soupy.   

I quickly became a full member of Soupy’s exclusive “Bird Bath Club”.  All participants were known as “Bird Baths”.  Eventually, the number of cartoons diminished and were replaced by great personalities that would have a positive impact on children.  Willie the worm, “the sickest worm in all of Detroit”, would announce birthdays for fellow “Bird Baths” between sneeze attacks.  Pookie the lion would come to the window and sing Little Richard’s “Tutti Fruitti” or Oscar Brown, Jr.’s “But I Was Cool”.   Soupy had two dogs, White Fang and Black Tooth.  They spoke dog to Soupy and he would translate their communication for the “Bird Baths”.  It seemed like every two minutes someone would hit Soupy in the face with a cream pie.  The pie shots always sounded like ricocheting bullets.   

Soupy was a font of valuable information.  He would dial in the radio searching for a weather report.  The announcer said, “Oh, Oh! We’re in for a bad spell of weather.  W-e-t-h-o-r”.  Soupy was a dance instructor.  He taught us all to do the Soupy Shuffle. He gave health advice “Be true to your teeth and they won’t be false to you” or “Don’t scratch those chicken pocks or you will grow up looking like a golf ball”.  He was an investment advisor.  He pointed out that he once bought 7 Up when it was six.  Every day he had a chalk board with today’s Words of Wisdom.  “George Washington may be the father of our country but Faygo is the pop”.  “Show me an explosion in French bakery and I’ll show you a Napoleon blown apart”.

It was certainly clear to me that Soupy Sales was a very important educational resource.  Unfortunately, when I entered six grade, Breakfast with Soupy ended at 8:30 and classes started at St. Thomas at 8:30.  I only lived a mile from school but I could not possibly watch the half hour television program and get to school on time.

As I sat in my first period math class, I noticed that a couple of students arrived a half to three quarters hours late every day.  Sister Lucentia never reacted and never reported them as LATE.  I asked one of the late arrivers why they were never on time and why they did not get suspended.  They indicated that they were on the late bus.  It seems that one bus had such a long route each day that it could not possibly arrive on time.  If you rode the late bus you were never considered TARDY.  It also occurred to me that, if I stayed at home and had breakfast with Soupy, I would get to school about the same time as the late bus.  Perhaps Sister would assume that I also arrived on the late bus. I would miss three quarters of my math class but I would get all of the valuable lessons Soupy offered.  

This certainly seemed worth a shot.  The next day, I poured a bowl of cornflakes at 8:00, watched Soupy and rode my bike to school.  I wandered in to math ten minutes before it ended.  Turned in my homework and picked up this evenings assignment.  Not a peep from Sister Lucentia.  If she had asked why I was late, I would have replied that I had no excuse.  But she did not ask.  On the other end, my mother never asked when I was supposed to start school. A perfect situation.  I was prepared to ride this horse as long as he could trot.      

As it turns out, that horse galloped from September 8, 1958 to June 10, 1959.  That’s right.  I never got nailed.  In my 76 years on the planet that was the longest run of anti institutional behavior that I ever achieved. No discussions with my parents.  No discussions with the nuns.  Olly Olly all Home Free!  

As with my children, the whole experience made a big impact on my life.  I muddled through math but I also enjoyed episode after episode of the wisdom on Soupy Sales.  I can handle the quantitative stuff.  I have been a CPA and a systems design specialist.  However, my first reaction to most things in life has always been comedic. 

As Controller of a public company, I found that one of our subsidiaries was in dire straits.  I analyzed the problem and set up an emergency meeting with the CFO and President. The President noted that the sub was losing $10,000 a day.  He asked if there was anything positive about this situation.  My immediate reaction and response to him was “Well, it isn’t leap year.”  Fortunately, the President must have also been a “Bird Bath” when he was young.  He laughed heartily and didn’t fire me.    

It is exciting to see Ann Arborites reinvigorating the old neighborhoods on the West side of the city.  My formative years from Grade School through Twelfth Grade were spent in a house my grandfather built on Miner Street.  I can’t imagine that there could have been a better place for me to get started in life.

Let me take you back to 1957 and tell you what it was like to live in that great neighborhood. 

My dad worked for Michigan Bell and my mom had her hands full organizing the household for two “grown ups” and four kids.  My two older sisters plowed the way.  They led mom and dad through the initial perils of parenting.  Being five years younger I mostly cruised under child rearing radar.  My parents thought “Mikey is a breeze compared to Jo and Barb.” 

How could two sweet young ladies be a parenting challenge?  When I was seven years old Lucretia and Mad Madam Mim warned me not to disturb their paper dolls.  “You will regret it!”  Naturally, I ran amok with all of the dolls and associated paper clothing options.  For some reason my grandfather had a fetish for laundry chutes.  The house on Miner Street had a three foot square laundry chute that was a straight drop, three stories into the basement.  Virtually kicking and screaming they tossed me into the chute on the top floor.  It was a very quick trip to the basement.  Fortunately, the incident occurred one day before laundry day and I landed pretty softly.  My mother plucked me out of the bin and the siblings were grounded for a month. 

So, being third in the birth order, I was given a lot of latitude.  On a summer day I would pop out of bed and make my own breakfast.  For me that was either a bowl of cereal or cocoa and toast.  I was now free to pursue all of the entertainment opportunities the West Side offered. This morning it would be baseball.  Every morning, a group of kids would meet up at Hunt Park and organize a marathon baseball game.  I put on my Tigers Cap, stuffed a baseball in my pocket and retrieved the Al Kaline signature Louisville Slugger from the corner of my bedroom.  It was amazing that Al and I had the same taste in bats.  We liked a thin handle for a better wrist snap and large barrel that was a little more forgiving when you made contact with the ball.  Al’s bat was 34 inches long.  Mine was 29.  Other than that, they were identical.  I dragged my bike off the front porch.  I threaded my glove on the handle bars and straddled the bat across the handle bar between the grips.  Off to Hunt Park. 

Hunt Park offered two backstops facing each other from opposite corners of the park and a pitcher’s mound for each diamond.  There was no precut infield but the base paths were heavily grooved by hours of play from the sandlot teams. Anyone was welcome to play.  Girls, boys, anyone between seven and eleven years old.  We named two captains and went through a ritual with a bat, slightly more complex than the theory of relativity, to determine who would get the first pick from the dozen players.  Sides chosen, we played ball.

We had formal rules and informal rules. 

Formal rules were: “Pitcher’s Box is out. No Walking. No catcher (we did not have the requisite equipment). If we had less than five players a side, right field is closed.  Anything hit to right was an automatic strike.” 

Informal rules were you did not take advantage of the weaker players.  Everyone was allowed to play and the skilled players would not over power the neophytes.  When a seven year old came to bat you pitched the ball softly and underhanded.  You might throw a cross body block on an eleven year old when you were trying to score but no one ran over a seven year old. Nothing I ever did later in life emphasized a sense of fair play more than sand lot baseball at Hunt Park.   

The games lasted for hours.  Twenty or thirty innings.  All of us developed and honed our baseball skills much more on the sandlot than we did in official little league play.

After baseball we had lunch.  We randomly raided different households in the neighborhood.  Standard fare was PB&J’s or bologna sandwiches.  Occasionally, I would feast on a fried bologna sandwich.  Usually one of the mom’s organized lunch for the horde.

Following lunch we might decide to race our dirt bag soap box derby cars down Daniel Street.  Five or six of us made race cars out of spare wagon parts, two by four axles, and two by six chassis.  We steered with ropes tied to the front axles. No brakes. Daniel Street was perfect.  There was a very steep hill starting at Sunset Street but toward the end of Hunt Park there was an upslope so we all coasted to a stop.  Clear vision, no side streets, little traffic.  Spring Street on the other hand was totally down hill, three stop streets, heavy traffic, lots of trees.  Our test run down Spring resulted in one broken arm and lots of scrapes and bruises.  After five or six runs on the Daniel Track, someone was awarded the Barney Oldfield trophy and we moved on.

The Westside was a working class neighborhood and dinner time was pretty standard.  I had to be home at five and cleaned up for dinner forty five minutes later.  Dinner was served to the whole family at 6:00 every weekday.  We took turns at the dishes and then we went out to play with kids on the block.  Could be anything.  Touch football in the street.  Frisbee tag.  Hide and seek.  Whiffle ball.  Maybe a low profile card game on the front porch.  The old adage that we had to be home when the street lights came on is a little misdirected.  The real rule was we don’t want you home until the street lights come on.    

The West Side was rife with parks.  Hunt Park offered excellent sandlot, football, and basketball facilities.  In the winter, there was a great open hill that was ideal for sledding.  West Park was only three blocks from my house and it provided even greater recreational opportunities.  West had a fully maintained little league baseball field and a spectacular full size baseball diamond complete with dugouts.  Ann Arbor sported a semi pro baseball team, the Ann Arbor Travelers.  They played every weekend during the summer.  All the home games were at West Park. For four years, I was their batboy. West Park offered a wading pool to cool off on 90 degree days.  In a corner of the park there is a band shell for community music performances of all types.  In the winter, the baseball diamond was flooded and served as a public ice skating rink.  This was a big outdoor skating rink.  No hockey allowed.  My sister Barb had visions of becoming the next Sonya Henning so she spent many days and nights perfecting her figure eights at West Park.  The rink was lighted and there was a heated portable shed to warm you up on cold windy days.  We played “crack the whip”.  The person at the end of the whip achieved speeds near the sound barrier.  He or she was usually launched completely off the rink and over the surrounding snow bank.

Another great feature of the Old West Side was the proliferation of mom and pop stores. There were three stores within three blocks of our house and four more within six blocks. They were really needed for the mid fifties lifestyles.  Most families only had one automobile.  That vehicle went to work with the working parent.  At our house, when mom needed sugar, noodles, a can of soup or even a pack of Camels, she sent me a block and half south to Tom’s Miner Street Grocery.  This was always a great opportunity for me.  There was a two cent deposit on long neck bottles in Michigan.  Doesn’t sound like much.  But in 1957 a full size Snickers candy bar was a nickel.  A Faygo Crème Soda was a dime.  So for three pop bottles, I could get a Snickers and a piece of Double Bubble chewing gum.    For some reason we could always find a few beer bottles or pop bottles laying around the neighborhood.  If I had two salted away, I just needed to find one more on my way to Tom’s and the Snickers was mine.

Out of necessity, we all became capitalists.  The family budgets were tight.  Very rarely did discretionary income trickle down to the kids.  No problem.  With a little creativity we could be feasting on Snickers and Rock and Rye for a week.  I had a few lawn mowing and snow shoveling customers.  We all had our eyes open for long neck beer and pop bottles. 

Two of my more creative enterprises were in the recycling industry and the wholesale bait and tackle business.  Every month or so, I would drag the wagon out of the basement and tour the neighborhood asking for old newspapers and magazines.  Most of our neighbors saved these.  In fact they saved almost everything.  These people had survived the depression and you never knew when you might need to wrap fish or line the bottom of the birdcage.  When the piles got really big, they were happy to have me carry off the excess. I would take the papers home and bale them up with twine.  When I had stowed enough to fill the trunk and back seat of our 55 Mercury, my dad and I would load up the car and drive them to Lansky’s junkyard on Main Street.  Lansky paid me bulk pound prices for the paper.  I raked in three or four dollars a carload.  I bought my first Argus camera with paper proceeds. 

One of my friend’s father was an avid fisherman.  He determined that the perfect bait for big Bluegills was wild black crickets.  He offered to pay us the exorbitant sum of a penny per cricket for as many as we could deliver. During the day the crickets would hide under boards and rocks in the fields around the West Side.  Jimmy and I would hunt crickets alone but it was better to team up.  These guys were actually pretty fast and when you flipped the boards they started to move.  So one guy flipped and the other pounced.  More than once we flipped a board and were about to pounce when we found the den was occupied by a large spider, a snake or field mice.  Occupational hazards.  Jimmy and I always split the proceeds and we netted at least a dollar a month during the summer.                         

Growing up on the Westside, at an early age, we learned that you could always make money.  You could find a need, satisfy the need and support your lifestyle (usually Snickers and Faygo).  We never worried about having the opportunity to make enough money.  That perspective stayed with me my entire life and I learned it at age nine on Miner Street. 

I was very fortunate to grow up on the Old West Side of Ann Arbor.  We had a lot of fun.  My parents instilled solid values in their four children.  The need for equal opportunity and fair competition.  The benefits of self reliance and acquiring skills that were needed in the community.  These values were reinforced by our peers on the Old West Side.  I remember these lessons as I pass through life.  Most importantly, I never touch anyone’s paper dolls.    

I am finding that it takes a lot more time to draft correspondence these days.  A few years ago, I could rifle off a well thought out letter in less than ten minutes.  It now takes a least a half hour.  At first I thought, this is a sure sign of aging.  The grey matter is just not as responsive as it once was.   

So I started charting what I spend my time on in the writing process. 

Last week, I received an email from my electric company stating that my invoice was past due and accordingly they are charging me a late fee of $19 dollars.  It took me 8 seconds to comprehend that DT, Inc. is a monthly Auto Pay that creates an ACH withdrawal automatically from my checking account.  Only 8 seconds to frame the problem.  Not much time wasted there.  I don’t pay the bill, the electric company, DT, Inc., does and they didn’t pay this one.  They should send me $19 for non-performance of the auto pay feature.  So I started the letter with one of my favorite expletives “Balderdash”.  As I was moving to my next thought, I noticed that the word processing software changed this great expression to “Your balls are smashed!”  So I went back and changed the computer generated correction again to “Balderdash”.  I also decided not to use “Poppycock” in my next sentence fearing the auto correct response might really get me in trouble. 

In my next line, I noted that “DT, Inc.’s Auto Pay software is running amok”.  When I reread the sentence it had been changed to “The delirious tremor episodes of Otto Payne are in the mud.”  I back track and fix the ridiculous auto correction revision.  I now have a minute tied up in the first two sentences.  One of them is only one word.  I drafted the second one in four seconds but it took another 20 seconds to fix auto correct. 

Several things are becoming clear.  My brain seems to be firing on all cylinders and manually re-correcting auto correct is sucking up all my time.  In addition, if I don’t simplify my language so that it doesn’t trigger auto correct, it will take me a long time to draft this correspondence. 

If I do all the things the Immaculate Heart of Mary sisters taught me in eighth grade to draft a crisp, interesting correspondence, it may take an hour to write a simple letter.  Eight minutes to write it and 52 minutes to fix auto correct. 

So I won’t use very short sentences, like “Balderdash”, for emphasis.  I quash colorful descriptions, like “running amok”.  If I have a word that auto correct likes, I will keep using it.  The nuns said I should keep the reader interested by varying the terms I use for the same item.  E.g. cash, money, dollars, payment, remittance, currency, legal tender, moolah, scratch, dough, samollians, bread, greenbacks, bananas, long green, dead presidents, Benjamins, coin of the realm, and mana from Uncle Sam.  For the electric company letter I will only use “cash”. Auto correct likes “cash”.    

At this point, I am wondering what the auto correct criteria are for editing correspondence.  The algorithms have to use some assumptions about the reading level of the recipients.  In the United States, this is pretty low.  54% of adults read at or below the fifth grade reading level.  Our government has actually lowered that standard.  Because of the education debacle with Covid, fifth graders are no longer reading at the same level they did before Covid.  That’s right, fifth graders cannot read at the fifth grade level.  So the Fed’s lowered the standard and the 2018 third grade reading level is closer to the 2024 fifth grade reading level.

My word processing provider believes that they are helping me by editing my correspondence to something that a 2018 third grader will easily understand.  If I am ever going to finish this letter to the electric company, I need to further simplify my writing.  So I try to complete the correspondence with one syllable words.  “I think the goof up in the bill is your fault.  I saw my bank charge and you took cash to pay the March bill last week.  Give me back the late fee and fix your IT.”  Almost made it past auto correct.  It changed IT to “ants”.      

Here are three versions of the same letter.  The first version is in the form that I normally use for my correspondence.  It took 15 minutes to draft because I constantly had to override auto correct.  The second is the version of my original writing without revising any of the changes made by auto correct.  This only required 5 minutes of writing time.

The third version is the adjustment I made to my writing style to minimize auto correct edits.  This required 10 minutes to draft.

My response:

Dear Customer Service Representative,

I recently received a notification that my March payment was not received in a timely fashion by DT, Inc.  Balderdash!  DT Inc.’s Auto Payment software is running amok.  At your request, I signed up for Auto Pay.  DT Inc. triggers an ACH disbursement from my bank account.  A fast review of my bank account showed that you extracted a timely payment on April 10.  You should credit me $19 for the erroneous late fee and you should pay me $19 for having to address your mistake.  If the late payment has an effect on my credit rating, the next correspondence will come from my attorney.

Sincerely,

Michael Jay Sinelli        

My response as edited by Auto Correct:

Dear Custard Cone Server,

I recently received a notice that my march to Pensacola was not completed because of a delirious tremor episode.  Your balls are smashed!  The delirious tremor episodes of Otto Payne are in the mud.  At your direction, I signed up for Otto Payne.  A delirious tremor episode shot a classic hound at the river bank.  A fast review of my river bank showed that you extracted a timely pickerel on April 10.  You owe me $19 for the erroneous lake fee and you should send me $19 for mailing your prime steak.  If the lake cash has an impact on my car racing, the next letter you receive will come from my Aunt Tierney.  

Sin Surely,

Michael Jay Sinelli 

The response that was most in line with the auto correction algorithm:

Dear helper,

You sent a note that said I did not pay you on time. I did pay you on time. You took cash from my bank for a March bill on April 10.  You told me to sign up for auto pay.  I did.  In your bill you add $19 for a late charge. This was your goof up, not mine.  Send me the $19 cash for the goof up and $19 more for me to fix your goof up.  If your goof up makes me look bad, I am going to tell on you.   

I really mean it,

Michael Jay Sinelli

Not bad, only three multi syllable words and it passed all of the edits directed to third graders.   

What a great benefit auto correct provides.  I actually drafted the same correspondence with a quill pen 30% faster than using my word processing system.  That includes the time required to photograph the document and upload it to my computer.  Unfortunately, no one under 62 years of age can read cursive.

Ah well, the IHM sisters told me that easy reading is hard writing.  Thanks to the assistance of word processing software, it is getting a lot harder.