Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Cloak and Swagger

Have you ever noticed that when you put on a cape you immediately begin to swagger? No wonder it’s the garment of choice for superheroes. Picture Batman without his magnificent black cape. That’s right – now he’s totally neutered. He’s reduced to a muscle bound man in a foolishly sculpted leotard. But add in a cape and he is restored to superhero status. Capes are all about power.

Capes just don’t get trendy nearly often enough. If I wanted to go out a buy myself a cape this very afternoon, where would I go? Neither posh nor humble stores have a cape section. Where could I go to toss a satin cape over my shoulders and admire my reflection in the mirror? Even the Sears catalogue is devoid of capes.

So, where does Batman shop? Is there some secret Capeland Mall that we don’t know about? It seems that the Pope knows where it is – he always wears a modest-length pristine white cape for official duties. It’s probably a mall with separate entrances for superheroes and arch enemies, so they can avoid unnecessary clashes during off duty hours. There are different stores for heroes and anti-heroes, with clever names like The Cloakroom, Frantic Mantle, and Papal Stoles ‘n’ Stuff. Garments for sleuthing in are sold at Capers. Weekend wear features ponchos with a choice of stripes. These also possess the standard secret pocket where you can hide your jeans and sneakers when suddenly called into action. Possibly, in this mall, you can even buy a virtual phone booth, since real ones are scarce. These once popular change rooms have pretty much vanished in the era of cell phones, forcing superheroes into ever more compromising situations for urgent clothing swaps. Fortunately their super powers make these awkward moments fleeting. I’m not sure what the Pope does.

Perhaps the world would be a better place if we all started wearing capes. Don’t think so? The next time you fold up the sheets fresh out of the dryer, drape one over your shoulders. Oh – now you get it! Suddenly you are empowered. Now imagine that it is smooth and satiny and falls in thick red or black folds that drape down to the floor. You are now both sexy and powerful. You can see why even the tweed capes favored by British lords made them strut around with wool induced grandeur. Sherlock Holmes did his best thinking in a cape.

So who still wears capes? Well, there’s Dracula of course. His cape has a red lining that his tailor has discreetly installed to hide telltale stains. It also keeps people from confusing him with Batman, who stays with the classic double-sided black cape, which is not only intimidating, but reversible. Models wear capes - mostly because designers love to create capes but can’t figure out how to convince secretaries and doctors and accountants to buy them. Witches wear capes as a kind of uniform, making them easy to spot. This has the psychological advantage of warning us that we are about to be placed under a spell or fall prey to a potion. This little bit of foreknowledge actually primes us into being more easily influenced - the Wiccan version of advertising. Children wait impatiently every year for Halloween so that they can wear a cape. It doesn’t matter what the costume is, a cape is a mandatory accessory – Chicken Little and Michael Jackson costumes have capes that are just as worthy as the ones worn by Darth Vader and Snow White.

Capes are actually timeless fashion pieces. Darth Vader is still wearing one in a distant future… or is that right now in a distant galaxy? I can never figure that out. In Biblical times they were fond of capes, but referred to them as simply “cloaks”. Everyone had a cloak - the scribes, the shepherds, the rich, the poor. Even the cranky inn keeper had a cloak. They were practical in an era that lacked sewing machines, freeing tailors and housewives from the tyranny of sewing in sleeves. Long before panty hose were invented, these people had conquered the one-size-fits-all concept. A sleeveless item such as a cloak can be worn by anyone tall enough not to trip on its hem. Garments that have sleeves are not capes, nor are they cloaks, or ponchos, or stoles - they are coats! So when you see a cape with sleeves on eBay, do not be fooled.

Secret societies are also very fond of capes, or at least that is what I’m told. Details of their garb is, of course, strictly confidential.

Royalty goes in for the cape in a big way. You can easily pick out the king when you go into a palace – he’s the one with the biggest cape. Just in case you are a completely unobservant dolt, he also wears a crown. His knights wear sturdy capes that are handy to shelter in on freezing nights, or to stuff into bleeding wounds. They can be transformed into a blanket for a picnic, or a set of wings to aid an exit from a speeding horse. They also make a convenient wrap for warming rescued damsels. The sheer versatility of the cape is staggering.

So if you want to find yourself at the extreme end of the empowerment spectrum - good or evil - sew yourself a cape. There is no other piece of clothing that has the robust stamina and dominating atmosphere of a cape. Could Darth Vader have terrified Luke Skywalker while wearing a trench coat? Never! Nothing can be substituted for the noble cape. Whoever heard of a coat and dagger operation? As in all other things, only a cloak will suffice.

Monday, April 20, 2009

How to Say No

Do you ever get asked to do things that, frankly, you just don’t want to do? If you answered that question with a “no,” keep surfing. For the rest of you normal people, I’ve come up with a few suggestions on how to say "no." You will have to figure out for yourself when and where to apply my time-tested strategies.

Don’t lie about it. Just say “no”.

Say “no” but soften it with a “white lie.” Anyone who says they never do this is lying. And it isn’t even white.

Feign deafness.

Feign blindness. (Gets you out of a lot of stuff…)

Say “yes.” Especially useful when caught off guard. Go home. Think about it. Call back and say “no.” These things are always easier over the phone. Use one of the four techniques described above.

Say “no” but come up with an alternate solution to help the person making the request. Probably the gold standard in the art of saying "no".


Convince them they can do it on their own. (Doesn’t work when kids ask you for money or fever medication….)

Reply with an equal but opposite counter-request. (e.g. I will help you build your dog house, if you will help you me replace the roof on my cottage – hope you don’t mind doing it in June even if the flies are a tiny bit bad then… Most likely to be successful if your request is far more burdensome)

Say “Shhhh”. Pretend you are listening for a burglar. Indicate that you just “heard something” outside the window. This only works at night.

Walk away distractedly. If pursued mumble something about “those voices in my head.”

Carry around business cards that say, “Director, Just Say No Program.” Hand out liberally.

Defer your answer – maybe you want to say “yes” after you think about it. (especially useful with kids, if your first inclination is to say, “Oh-my-God-NO-are-you-crazy-have-I-taught-you-NOTHING???!!” There is an outside chance, very small, that you could be over-reacting.)

Advise them to call 1-800-NOT-EVER. Their hotline will take care of it for you. There is a small monthly fee for the subscription. Well worth it.

Say “yes” and then clearly illustrate your incompetence. “Sure, I’ll look after your dog! Don’t worry about the last five dogs that ran away. Two of them eventually came back. One was even alive…”

Wear a button that says “NO!” If people ignore it, show them how sharp the pin is. (Caution – “show” them only.)

Defer the request. Check with others in the group who supposedly said “yes” to the proposal. Chances are half didn’t and the other half won’t show up. Applies mostly to parents and events that take place very early in the morning. Give in to peer pressure. Ask yourself: what would other parents do?

Say “yes” and feebly mention that you will help as “soon as you can manage”. Keep crutches in plain view or wear an eye patch. Works especially well with bosses who are afraid of unions.

Slip out the back, Jack, Make a new plan Stan… (it worked for Paul Simon…)

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Gotta Love Those Earworms

Okay, it sounds more disgusting than it really is. They finally came up with a name for those maddening tunes that get stuck in your head and play over and over (and over and over…). They’re called earworms. They come knocking on the door of your brain completely unbidden: Jesus Christ, Sooooperstar, do yoooouu think you’re what they saaaaay you arrrre? If you weren’t around in the early ‘70’s that might not set one off in your brain, but if you’ve ever owned that album you are now doomed for the rest of the day. And if you’re like me, it will tap you on the shoulder in the middle of the night to remind you that it’s not quite finished with you just yet. It will override an iPod plugged directly into your brain, and it will make you go around humming that brief set of notes until your family starts considering stoning you with the leftover pork chops.

How did they come up with the term “earworm”? Just like so many other interesting English words we borrowed it from the ever clever Germans. They use Ohrwurm to describe this distressing bug in the head. From there it’s a short leap to “earworm.” Even though the term is not at all accurate – the tune is in your brain, not your ear, and there is, thankfully, no worm – it says it all. In reality, it’s just a bunch of intractable synapses having it off with you. Still, the term earworm perfectly nails the process.

Earworms are vile creatures. They play only a tiny portion of a song in an endless loop of brain-eating repetition. At the neurological level the needle on the tone-arm of your brain has gotten stuck in a groove. It can advance no further into the song. The harder you try to drive the fragment to the end, the more resistant it becomes.

Some musical artists are more talented than others at spawning earworms. Pretty much anything by Stevie Wonder will set one off. There is soooperstition, writing’s on the waaaaaalll. The overly catchy tune written for Canada’s 1967 Centennial is especially dangerous: Caaaaa-naaaa-daaaa, one-little, two-little, three Canaaaaadians… That one wormed out in my head for so long that it eroded down into my eye socket and caused era-realted hallucinations - mainly Pierre Elliot Trudeau caricatures. TV commercials finally dethroned it in 1971 by convincing me that I’d like to teach the woooorld to sing, in perfect har-moo-nnyyyy…setting me off on a Coca-Cola buying frenzy.

Sometimes new earworms set up shop in the middle of the night. One minute I am sleeping peacefully, the next I am wide awake and listening to an internal version of Hey Jude…but only the first eight bars. At times earworms even become adulterated. I have been tortured by the alternate Hey Jude lyrics a classmate once wrote: Hey Jude, don’t take it baaad, take a maaaad hog, and knit a sweater… So, so, SO much worse than the original!

So what can you do when you are infected by an earworm? Should you take an Aspirin? Stuff your head under a pillow? Crack yourself over the head with a baseball bat? Place your head in the vice in the workshop and squeeze until the worm pops out? Trust me. None of these work. Save yourself the bother. The only way to de-worm yourself is to find a recording of the song and play it. Somehow this satisfies the ear worm, integrating it back into its source. It nestles back into the song instead of bristling in your brain. Your head becomes clear again, and like a dog on his way home from the vet, you are blessedly worm-free. That is… until you encounter a Stevie Wonder song or one of those patriotic tunes crafted to inspire the war torn masses. It’s a long way to Tipp-errrr-arrrr-yyyy…

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Attention Span

I think our attention span is spiraling down into ever tinier fragments of time. Now I’m tired of this topic; I’m going to think about something else. What were those hockey scores? Has it started raining yet? I think I’ll make spaghetti for supper. No, wait. I was trying to turn my attention to the topic of span. Oh shoot. What was that topic again? Must remember to gas up the car. Isn’t some kid somewhere at some lesson waiting for a ride somewhere? Okay, now where was I? Oh yeah, I suspect something is happening to our attention span. Now where is the lid to the jam jar? I thought I put it right over….. ooh, look at the pretty picture on the calendar!

It’s like we’ve fallen into some sort of jumble of societal dementia. No one thought can last for more than a few seconds before caving in to the centrifugal force of the next bigger-better-faster thought that comes busting into consciousness. Or maybe it’s just a plain ordinary thought that meanders in and sets up shop. In any event, thought number one is deposed.

Researchers who have a higher attention span than the rest of us have figured out a few things. They say that the average attention span for adults is twenty minutes. What a lot of hooey. The average attention span lasts for the duration of that golden period that lies between strings of TV commercials. And this holds true only if someone blows something up, or guns down five people, or takes off their shirt. Failure to produce these essential components puts the attention span at about three minutes for adults, and three seconds for teenagers.

Rock videos probably changed the global neural network for length of attention span. This is how they work. You insert yourself into the video slingshot and hang on for dear life as they pummel your bleeding eyes with rocket-speed scene changes. While your neurons have their stubby pencils out still trying to record the first scene, the video blasts on through scenes two through twenty-five. You are still less than twenty seconds into the video. Plaster your brain with a few hours of this and then sit down to write a thrilling essay on how Shakespeare makes use of classical allusions. Gee, this is hard. Perhaps a video game would settle me down.

Advertisers know a secret they have kept carefully hidden from us. Focused attention span endures for only eight fleeting seconds. After that we look elsewhere. This gives them the appropriate rhythm they need to ping-pong us with their products, leaving us conquered by what amounts to attention spam. Now that I have revealed their secret they will probably hunt me down and force feed me frozen home-style deep dish pizza until I die of pepperoni poisoning. Of course, if I can distract them for eight seconds, I can probably make my escape.

Now where was it I left my other sock?

Sunday, February 15, 2009

A Perfect World

Someone told me the other day that this is not a perfect world. Gee, I already knew that! In fact, I’ve known it for a long time, at least a year or so. In the five decades prior to that I merely suspected it. What tipped me off? Well, it wasn’t any one big event, just the culmination of a lot of little events. That couch I paid $29.95 for on eBay never showed up. The birds at my feeder kicked out the bird seed and pooped on my deck chairs. The dog packed up my suitcase and took it with him when he moved in with the neighbours. Other hints: my iPod showed up in the dryer after boldly venturing into the washing machine. It was the first time I ever witnessed music committing suicide. Last Christmas I came down with a bad cold, just like the previous eleven out of the twelve Christmases. The only year I was spared the cold I had Norwalk virus instead. What a mercy it was to return to the simple rigors of a fever and a runny nose the following year.

I’ve also begun to notice that globally the world is a little less than perfect as craziness crests ever higher. When there are devastating wildfires in California or Australia, some people run for their matchboxes so they can get in on the act. The rest of us are left banging our heads on the Wall of Disbelief. While most people either strive to make the world a better place, or at least are feckless enough to avoid setting off the general ruination of the planet, there are a few who are so inexplicably malicious that we are left stunned with the jaw-dropping stupidity of their actions.

Why can’t we ever have perfection? To figure that one out, we would have to understand just what perfection is. Apparently, Aristotle was the first one who flopped down in his lawn chair and allowed this concept to wash up on the shores of his brain. When it was all over and the three barrels of wine had been rolled back into the cellar for refilling, he had decreed three rules. Perfection has to be complete – no parts can be missing. It has to be so good that nothing similar can be any better. Also, it needs to have some sort of goal in mind, and it needs to achieve that goal, like a hockey player with a vendetta lucky enough to have a crossed-eyed goalie on the opposing team. There can be no margin for missing that goal. Pretty heady stuff – can you imagine what Aristotle might have come up with if he had stopped after just one barrel of wine? Or if he’d sustained a puck to the head?

I tried to think of things that might fit with Aristotle’s three point plan for perfection. Shopping came pretty close, but fell down on the goal part. Often I buy the no-name brand when I can’t find the premium brand, or when the premium brand has a price so high that I require treatment for altitude sickness. Likewise, driving a car almost fit the bill, but when I applied the “nothing could be better” part I had to admit that my car was a Ferrari only in my mind. Regrettably, swimming in a lake on a hot summer day also fell by the wayside. While, for the most part, it satisfies all of Aristotle’s carefully constructed principles, I remembered that time I emerged from a swim with a blood-sucker the size of Lassie stuck to my leg. I’ve never felt the same about swimming since.

Then I thought about ice cream. Could it possess the potential for perfection? I began to apply Aristotle’s line of thought to find an answer. If you stick the ice cream in a cone, it is complete – no parts are missing. Can ice cream be said to be “so good that nothing of the kind could be better”? If you throw half a paycheck into this endeavor, that will most definitely be true. No point in getting the cheap stuff when you are seeking paradise. Does ice cream achieve its goal? This is a toughie, and you can see why Aristotle needed all those barrels of wine and a cozy lawn chair as assistive devices. It’s not something you can just decide in a moment or two. It must be tested. Ben and Jerry’s, Hagen-Dazs, homemade ice cream – all these depths must be repeatedly plumbed. Lumps of cookie dough must be deployed. Cherries must be Garcia-ed. Vanilla beans must be paraded down your palate, front and centre. Chocolate must be placed on the altar of your tongue and given its due diligence. It takes a lot of years and a lot of effort to make these important decisions about perfection. I’ve worn out more than one lawn chair in this exploration, possibly making me a larger authority than Aristotle in more ways than one. And when it was all said and done, when the multitudinous tubs of ice cream were swept away, and when the sugar fix wore off, and the bathroom scales loomed up into my consciousness, I would have to say that, unequivocally, ice cream fits all the criteria for perfection.

So while I admit that this isn’t a perfect world, there are those rare moments when it comes close enough not to matter. And in those moments, your fist is wrapped around a sticky cone, your forearm is awash with a river of ice cream, and bathroom weigh scales were never invented. That, my friend, is what you will find when you reach your Shangri-La or your Heaven – a big frosty ice cream cone. And it will have not one but two giant scoops waiting. Just for you.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

If a Tree Falls in the Forest…

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" How many times have you dueled with that tired scrap of philosophy? I never really get as far as thinking about whether or not there was a “sound.” I tend to get caught up in the part about the tree falling in the forest. Now, I can’t be certain, but I am pretty sure that, like all other things that don’t quite turn out the way we wanted, it’s my fault. The point isn’t whether or not the event was noisy, it’s my role in it that counts. Somehow, a tree has fallen. No doubt, it happened because I forgot to wash, feed, clean, or mail in something. Somewhere a sapling is without its mother and I am to blame. A bird’s nest is crushed on the forest floor in a yolky mess, a squirrel is missing his nuts, and a whole lot of bark beetles are wandering around trying to decide what to do next. And I know that it can all be traced back to me.

How do I know this? Well, why would the tree be an exception? I am responsible for all the other things that have gone wrong in the world, so surely my influence encompasses unsuspecting trees. It’s a guilt complex served up with global tendencies.

The magnitude of my complex has crept over into megalomania. The war in the Middle East? I’m pretty sure it’s my fault. After all, haven’t I been sucking down all kinds of gasoline in my Honda Civic, driving as much as four miles a day, and mowing the lawn without regard to fuel consumption? And what about the current economic mess that is sucking the life out of our entire planet? Yep, probably did that one too. I’m not sure of the mechanism, but somehow I must have played a tiny unwitting role that set this calamity in motion. Probably it was that account I closed at the bank with the $23.95 in it. One day someone will identify it as the fiscal tipping point that started the ball rolling.

So, how I have come to place myself at the centre of these crucial events? I’m really not clear on the “how” of these situations, but my guilt meter relentlessly claws at me. A dog gets hit by a car in Africa. Yep. Also my fault. If I’d sent that twenty dollars to the Save the Canines Fund, the dog would have been happily sleeping in a dog house. It would have had food and water, three rubber toys, and a photo of me hanging on the wall. It would not have been wandering willy-nilly in the streets scouring for food. My fault, all my fault.

I admit that I might have let my sense of responsibility get out of control, but it all started with little things. Someone spilled a Coke on the rug. I failed to clean it properly and now the permanent bear-shaped stain is my fault. I have to live with that terrible knowledge. The toothpaste ran out. I was the last person in the house to set foot in a store. I completely let my family down by failing to buy toothpaste. It doesn’t matter that the store was Blockbuster Video. Just wad that up and add it to the bin labeled All My Fault. A bridge collapsed and three people were injured. Oh oh – I was a little tiny bit late with the municipal taxes in 2003. I should have thought about how that transgression could lead to a disaster. In another city. In another province. Mea culpa.

So, for whatever reason, I have begun churning down the Hill of Guilt, deeply embedded in a giant dirty snowball. Its diameter is ballooning with the stretch-marks of remorse, and I’m picking up a lot of debris and momentum as I cascade ever downward. And I almost hesitate to report this: that tree in the forest is firmly in my sights. And when I hit it, no one is going to care if it made a sound or not. But the unleashed blast of guilt is going to pepper the entire planet.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Not Much Stock in Bond

I dragged myself out on a totally frigid, snowy night to see the new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace. I haven’t missed seeing a Bond film since Live and Let Die had me wallowing in laughter and popcorn back in the 1970’s.

I always make a point to recognize the “specialness” of the Bond films by seeing them on the big screen at the theatre. At ten dollars a head, I reserve this honor for relatively few movies, mostly because the deteriorating conditions of our local theatre are now easily eclipsed by the average TV set in the average home. But some things still need to be seen on the biggest screen you can find. As I watched the movie, here is the question that chiseled its way into my brain: where, oh where, was James Bond?

James seems to have traded in his personality for the Unlimited Edition of his License to Kill. Perhaps too many flying fists and knives and guns have sliced off his charm. Clearly, this was an action film that has fallen into the froth of maximum overdrive. It made Mad Max look like a sissy. Every single character got smacked or shot or knifed, usually with a sprinkling of each. This tended to occur in multiple ways and in multiple exotic locations. Some of them survived it, but most were left like turfed litter on the floor of a hamster cage. During the course of the film, Bond’s License to Kill actually had to be reloaded more often than his gun.

Of even more concern - Bond was so engaged in fisticuffs and dodging broken glass that his sense of humor was completely lacking. He even failed to concoct any of his usual double entendres. The James Bond who quipped "I am now aiming precisely at your groin. So speak now or forever hold your piece" in The Man with a Golden Gun was a no-show. I guess it could happen to anyone. I know that personally, the more people I beat to a pulp on the average day, the less funny I am. It bothers me to the point that I’ve cut back to decking less than a dozen people a day. It’s helped me regain the balance I need in my life. I also try to duck a lot – too much head pounding can put me in a mental fog. I become like a man with a hammer: every problem starts to look like a nail. Maybe that’s what has happened to Bond - one blow too many to the head. It’s rendered him desperately serious. He’s left his personality behind in the hotel safety deposit box, where it’s languishing in his wrinkle-free Armani tux and charming the panties off the safety deposit box next door.

James is now so jaded and shopworn by endless adventures in the spy world that he has almost nothing left for the ladies. Or did his supply of Viagra fail to arrive from that dodgy internet source? Instead of wooing the ladies, oh wait, make that lady since there was only one this time, he merely nodded his head, in a you-know-the-drill kind of gesture. No champagne, no titillating gambling, no white dinner jacket. I don’t know if she even bothered to murmur the customary “Oh James!” Even Moneypenny got better treatment than that! The only woman lucky enough to receive the Bond Treatment in this film had the boringly chaste name of Strawberry Fields, clearly a downgrade from the daring Pussy Galore of yesteryear.

And where was the indomitable Q or facsimile? While actor Desmond Llewelyn was impossible to replace, leaving a pandering John Cleese as a mere husk of a Q in the last few films, they both still made us laugh. Now in order to jam in more brawling, they’ve left out the whole spy toy reveal scene. I suppose MI6 now gets their kinky guns and laser beam watches over the internet like the rest of us, cutting out the middle man, and avoiding those huge liability insurance bills for their test lab. We didn’t need those laughs anyway, and it allowed them to punch in yet another action scene that was so tightly shot, I couldn’t really tell what was going on. Mostly, it was just more bashing, gun grabbing, and environmental ruination. To up the ante, the action took place on slippery roof tops and frail scaffolds. Lots of glass broke, but not in the elegant and regretful way it did in the antique glass museum in Moonraker. It didn’t make me want to charge in with my broom and my dustpan and my glass blowing repair kit.

Even the villain was kind of watered down, although not nearly as much as he would have liked by the end of the movie. He wasn’t so much evil as annoyingly snotty. His plan wasn’t the usual lofty goal of world domination or destruction, it was, well, stealing the water from a small poor country and selling it back to their corrupt goverment at a high price. Gee. Doesn’t this happen in the real world just about every other day? Water, oil, pantyhose manufacturing – isn’t it constantly wrestled for in the global marketplace where people use stocks as their weapon of choice instead of loaded guns?

So, I guess like so many other franchises that have lasted for decades, Bond has gotten tired of it all – the dead lovers to be avenged, the brain-teasing intricate spy plots, the megalomaniac bad guys, the humiliation of reporting to a woman, the lack of stimulating new spy toys sporting miniature saws and blow torches that come in handy in those everyday hopeless situations involving ropes and sharks. He’s had enough. Every molecule of suave sophistication has been sucked out of him. Like the rest of us grinding away in routine jobs, James Bond has become burned out. Perhaps it’s time for him to fill out the papers for his MI6 Spy Division Pension and kick back at the casino with his own cash. It’s time for him to settle down with one (or two, or three) women and sort out his collection of cravats. Maybe then his charm will resurface with a few of those one-liners to keep the hotel maitre-d’ chuckling.

As for me, I too am retiring. I probably won’t go to see any more Bond films until they can give me a character once again, not a robot attached to a pair of murderous fists. When Bond needs a personality transplant from The Terminator, it’s time for me to throw in my Official Glow in the Dark MI6 Spy Watch. The Bond franchise has melded with all the other soulless action films and forfeited its uniqueness. If they left all the brutality on the cutting room floor, you would miss the entire movie while carting your over-priced tub of popcorn back from the snack bar. So, the next time there is a Bond offering, stay out of the cold winter night and out of the theatre. That way, you won’t feel the need to punish yourself for wasting your time and money by sticking your tongue on an icy fire hydrant on the way back to your car! Keeping your ten dollars in your pocket may fail to provide you with a whole quantum of solace, but it should at least give you a cup full.