*By “Special Offer,” we mean “Obsequious Solicitation.”
It’s not like we haven’t tried.
In our tireless efforts to increase our gross receipts, we’ve resorted to double-billing, even triple-billing, but our over-educated readership must employ a small army of highly trained accountants to heartlessly snuff out this nearly legal initiative. (If you would like to avoid the menace of multiple billing and its associated surcharges, we have an insurance plan just for this almost certain eventuality. For details, see below, in the space provided after the last paragraph.)
To bolster our resume, we’ve declared ourselves the uncontested winner of prestigious awards (the Stump-Bertoni Award for Excellence comes to mind) that turn out, upon more scrupulous inspection, to have been fraudulently concocted by a dummy organization. (That we also created. But with only with the purest of intentions!) Despite the laurels we’ve accrued in this totally transparent process, our membership rolls have gone down. (Italics supplied to make our plight seem appropriately poignant.)
Because we are constantly being pestered to provide our visitation numbers on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, we engaged the services of trained professionals to address our deficiencies in this department. (I am not making this up.) Despite months of effort by social media savants, we didn’t gain a single subscriber. Whatever activity this initiative engendered remained within the confines of the site whose membership we were attempting to woo into our orbit. In short, we went fishing in an ocean teeming with fish and didn’t get a bite.
Just when we feared all avenues to enhancing our income stream were blockaded, we received several urgent messages from one “George Dawson” promising that “Experian Confirms $307,600 Credit Line for Realskiers!” No personal guarantees required! And here I thought I was up to my knees in skullduggery. I’m a piker compared to the likes of Mr. Dawson (and dozens of others of his ilk who have reached out to us with similar appeals). While the offer is indeed tempting, some tingling in my lizard brain warns me that Experian’s keepers may one day want their money back.
We know what you’re thinking.
“How much should I donate? What’s considered appropriate?”
Logic can only take you so far down this road. Science, trying to be helpful, informs us that there is no single answer, due to the quantum nature of, well, everything.
Such foggy thinking may appease the curiosity of the feeble-minded masses, but those of us who dare to think the improbable know that when words fail us, we turn to math for solutions. To find how much it’s widely considered to be appropriate to give, abide by this simple, 100% recycled, organic, numerology-inspired formula:
- Add up the numerals in your date of birth.
Example: June 6, 1956 = 6 + 6 + 21 = 33. - Multiply by your age. 33 x 68 = 2244
Revel in the eerie mysticism of the total, which won’t tell you how to live, but will suggest an amount to consider donating, depending on where one puts the decimal point. - You’ll be tempted to divide this generous sum until it is much, much smaller, a syndrome known as “Musk’s Fallacy.” Don’t fall for it.
Keep in mind this is the most money you or your heirs will ever pay. (This time.)
How to Raise the Dough You’ll Be Sending Us
Now that we’ve established the scientific foundations for sending us a fat slice or your net worth, permit me to suggest a few ways to raise said funds. (Cue the Christmas music to imbue these suggestions with the Spirit of Irrational Spending.)
- Charge your offspring for financial advice. You know how much financial advisors make? I don’t either, but I’ll bet it’s a pantload. Your kids likewise won’t have any idea, so you can charge the seed of your loins anything you like. Best of all, just like astrologers, you don’t have to ever be right!
- Create a home maintenance account to which you contribute every time you mow your lawn or shovel your driveway. Refer to these activities as “landscaping” and you can charge a pretty penny for it. When the accumulated funds start to become an accounting headache, forward the lot of it to me. (I mean, “us.”)
- You could make boundless fortunes in crypto. What could possibly go wrong?
- There’s always another “George Dawson.” His current offer is $260,000, no strings attached…
The mechanics of giving are simple. Right there on the Realskiers.com home page is a lavishly illustrated Tip Jar. Go tap-tap on the Tip Jar icon and you’ll go directly to the head of the line.
Now all you have to do is not yield to panic nor surrender to attention-sapping distractions. If you live long enough, your mind will eventually wander about on its own. This is not the time to indulge it.
Stay focused.
Find the Tip Jar icon.
Be absurdly generous.
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From Fallible to Foolproof and Back
In the 1970’s, prior to the adoption of the first ski boot sole standard, boot makers were free to concoct any sort of sole they might imagine. Many skiers still used leather boots with laminated soles, even after the industry largely moved on to injected plastic, which enabled shapes and sole patterns leather couldn’t duplicate.
This incoherent jumble of boot designs showed no lack of imagination, but little consideration for how they might interact with a binding. Bindings were likewise free from any standards that might have limited the creativity of their designs, many of which were crafted specifically to reduce or eliminate the role of the boot.
The Road to Perdition
The road to hell is said to be paved with good intentions. In my experience, the friends and relatives of prospective boot buyers are a wellspring of wretched advice wrapped in bright ribbons of sincerity and concern.
(Let us pause a moment and prayerfully acknowledge the gratitude of bootfitters everywhere that the new, pandemic-driven bootfit protocol discourages the presence of a bootfit entourage composed of family, moral supporters and consiglieri.)
Back to the subject at hand, the particular nugget of advice I’m leery of is the customary admonition to avoid too stiff a boot as it will hurt, you’ll hate it eventually if you don’t detest it immediately, and it will inhibit your skills development. Get only as much boot as you need and no more, goes the conventional wisdom. Racers need stiff boots; you don’t.
The Making of a Skier, Part IX: The ASTM, Carl Ettlinger and I
One of the many hats I wore as North American binding product manager for Salomon in the early 1980’s was that of delegate to the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). I believe the first meeting of F8.14 – the sub-committee on ski safety – that I attended was in Pennsylvania. I was flying under the wings of Salomon’s seer of all standards and patents, Gilbert Delouche, and the binding product manager for the North American zone at that time (and my mentor), Joe Campisi.
I was a babe in the woods, but I soon caught on to the game under Delouche’s patience guidance. I recall a debate on the binding specification then being batted around in the technical committee chaired by Carl Ettlinger. Ettlinger wanted language that would require any release/retention setting of 10 or above to be “visually distinctive” from the rest of the scale.
