Boooooooooooooo.

Our next vacation.

I used to want to take a vacation in a car commercial. No one else around, weather perfect, great car and the open road. But no more! I have a better destination in mind now. Someplace where money is no object and the natives are all friendly. I want us to take our next vacation in a prescription drug ad.

Oh, sure, a lot of them look gloomy at first. The figures who appear initially on the screen are often suffering from the hideous ailment the drug is meant to treat. But soon the clouds part, the smiles start, and the film goes from black-and-white to color.

Hooray! while I run through whatever this place is!

More to the point, money is never a problem for anybody in these ads. They live where everything is just awesome except for the ailment that has just been treated. Beaches, mountains, clean and safe parks, large houses, yoga classes, fine restaurants, quaint towns with every storefront occupied -- in real life these are mainly occupied by or found in the neighborhoods of rich people. These are the kinds of places our patients are shown enjoying life in drug ads.

Even if they're stuck in black-and-white.

The ones who are shown working? Usually they're in a modern office with smiling coworkers, or more often they're shown doing something creative and wholesome, like pottery or music. Laughing and being playful is a major occupation. Garbage collectors and assembly line workers never get to be treated with pharmaceuticals on TV.  Or on the Web sites.

Reimagine money.

It just seems like a great place to be. There's usually a dog, too. Dogs always help.

"Helping!"

I guess I would want to be a little picky about which commercial I wanted to stay in. Some of them go too far to show that people with cooties or creeping crud or whatever can live happy, active lives. These folks spend the length of the commercial running around like lunatics, laughing through concerts and hot-air ballooning and snowboarding and swimming and cooking classes and God knows what else. If I were that manic I might want a tranquilizer. I don't want to work harder on vacation than I do at work.

I also wouldn't want to be in a Cialis ad. What the hell is it with those bathtubs? Who wants to sit in a bathtub on the beach? Is this what promotes togetherness -- being apart?

Weird.

So I'm calling my doctor, my pharmacist, and my travel agent to see where we can go. Maybe a nice antidepressant ad. They always end well.

Also: Open hailing frequencies for Capt. Heywood Jablome.

Twiblight.

Sarah waited impatiently by the open window. The crescent moon set sail over a sky stroked with silver shadows and silent stars. Her lover was to come soon. This was the night.

With only a brush of a gust through the glass as a warning, Sarah realized that she was no longer alone.

"Good evening, Sarah," came the voice behind her in the room, a voice as rich and deep as the ocean it had crossed to be here. "I am so glad to see you. Alone."

"Barabbus," she said as she turned. Her breath caught in her throat as she saw him there---tall, slim, strong---the glow of the moon reflected in his pale skin, shading his dark brow. Her hand involuntarily found her breastbone. "You really have come for me."

"As you wished," he said. His smile had no mirth in it as he drew a step closer. It merely showed off his teeth---his perfect, perfectly sharp teeth. "You still wish to join us, my sweet?"

"Oh yes, yes!" she breathed, her voice trembling. "To be with you, a child of the night! Free of all human cares and fears! To fly by your side forever! I wish for nothing more than that!"

"Yes, my dear, and tonight, this very night"---he drew closer, closer still---"tonight your wish shall be granted!"

In a frenzy of the most exquisite terror and anticipation, she tilted her head to the side and pulled back her collar. Suddenly he was upon her, grasping her in his mighty arms, holding her so close to him that she could almost not bear it, waiting for his breath on her skin, his---there it was!---his bite!

She almost sank down then, but was upheld by his arms as he pierced her neck; as he drank she swooned, she melted in a maelstrom of overwhelming joy....

....and suddenly opened her eyes.

Sarah was lying on a pale ground under a gray sky. She blinked. She was alone.

"What the--?"

She sat up and clamped her hand to her neck. There was no wound. No blood on her palm.

She realized then she was wearing only a blouse and trousers, plain gray, like nothing she owned. She ran her tongue over her teeth. They felt completely normal. In fact, too normal. With a start Sarah realized that the wisdom teeth she'd had yanked in tenth grade were back in her mouth.

"What is going on here?" she cried.

"Um, sorry," said a voice behind her.

"What?" Startled, she leaped to her feet. There was a man who had not been there a moment ago, a tall man with angular features. He looked kind of like any dumb guy going to the office. But he too was wearing plain gray clothes, and his angular features were twisted in a pained expression.

"Who are you?" she said. "Where are we?"

"Yeah, Sarah, well, about that," said the man.

"You know my name?"

"They, uh, told me."

"You--- Who are you? You're not---"

"Yeah, Barry. Hi." He gave her a little wave.

"Barabbus?"

"Uh, well, that's what he calls himself, but I usually went by Barry."

"What are you talking about? Where am I? So help me, if you don't---"

"Sarah, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you're dead. This is the afterlife."

"WHAT?"

"Yep. The vampire killed you. Sucked out your blood. Usually fatal, you know, losing your blood."

"Well, yeah!" she hollered, stamping her foot. "That was what he was supposed to do! I'm not supposed to be dead! There's got to be a mistake. He was going to turn me into a vampire!"

"Yeah, well, he did that. Your body is now going to run around the earth with him for a while. But you have to come with me."

That was the last straw. Shrieking with fury, Sarah grabbed Barry by the shirt and screamed in his face, "WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?"

"Undead, Sarah!" he said. "You're undead! I'm undead! That means there's no soul! Just animated dead bodies!" He gripped her wrists in a kindly way. "It happened to me when I was bitten by a vampire. Now it's happened to you. We died, Sarah. We are the souls. Our bodies---" He shrugged. "They've moved on without us."

"But wait! No! You're saying I don't get to be a vampire? I don't get to fly around and be a wolf and a bat and have awesome vampire sex all over the place?"

Barry shook his head. "No one does," he said. "Only the bodies survive. Until they get staked, or splashed with holy water, or forget to wear SPF eight billion sunblock or something. Our bodies are just well-dressed zombies. And we're here, in the afterlife."

Sarah collapsed to the ground, bewildered. "Oh, God."

"Yeah," he said, sitting down next to her. "I'm sorry my animated corpse killed you. I hate to tell you how many women, and men too, I've had to apologize to for that. But I have no control over it. I hope someone stakes it soon."

"Men?"

Barry shrugged. "Corpse gotta eat."

Sarah flopped on her back. "Man," she said, "this totally sucks."

###

Great things and small.

I was thinking about this whole Hollywood scandal with that Weinstein guy. Not that I know any inside information. There are newborn antelope in Africa who are better connected than I am. But I remembered the first time I'd heard of Harvey Weinstein was in connection to one of his Miramax films that he was defending despite its vile subject matter and the childish means it told its story. He was acting like a poor innocent lover of art who couldn't dream of why people should be offended, all the while doing everything to gin up as much fury as he could.

What a jerk, I thought, and if I could see that from a million miles off, couldn't everybody?

I know that plenty of well-known gropers, creeps, and men who otherwise can't behave themselves get a pass in life because they are rich, because they can buy favors, because they can buy loyalty, because they can buy people's silence. Often they can just terrify people with the slightest hint of what horrible things they and their army of lawyers can do to them, to their reputations and careers. And sometimes they get away with things because they're on the "right side," they think the "right way" and support the "right causes." In other words, they may be well known as disgusting pigs, but they're allowed to get away with little things because they're right on the big things.

Yes, I realize I'm calling the subjugation, humiliation, and even rape of women a "little thing," but I didn't make this situation or define its terms.

And maybe it's exactly backward. Really, where did we get the idea that some schmuck who cheats at penny poker is a good ally when things are really serious?

I don't have to get biblical on you to make the case, but I will, specifically Luke 16:10: "If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won't be honest with greater responsibilities." Would you trust a guy who cheats at gin rummy even for funsies to do your taxes? to manage your money? Probably not, because in real life we know a cheater is a cheater. It's just a game is a meaningless excuse, because to a lot of big-time cheaters everything is a game. Their funsies is your ruined existence.

We love stories about the petty crook or awful sinner who comes through in the big stuff. Off the top of my head I give you wastrel Sydney Carton from Dickens, thief and murder-solver Bernard Rhodenbarr from Lawrence Block, Dustin Hoffman's petty schnook from 1992's Hero, and every bad-boy antihero scalawag out there. But the reason these characters are interesting is that they're unexpected.

In the last fifty years we've turned it all on its head. In the 1970s you were surprised when a movie cop was not corrupt. Now our pop culture heroes are all antiheroes; there's a strong wellspring of goodness lurking in every low-down punk, while every angel of charity is an evil creep. But that's not how it works in real life.

I know people who have really turned their lives back to front, inside out, to be good and upstanding, and I've also known people who never had to because they've always been kind and brave and decent. I love and respect them both. But I have also known human sphincters who never wanted to become good, never cared; always thought that genuine goodness was stupid at best, weakness at worst. People like them will always prefer the darkness, because the light burns them.

So what does this have to do with Harvey Weinstein? After all, the people who wanted large things from him (campaign support for national and international causes) got what they wanted, didn't they? He didn't stab them in the back, right?

Look at it this way: People who are rotten in small things -- especially when they are not really small -- will be rotten clean through. You know that some of Weinstein's friends are familiar with this principle; they would be among those objecting to the foreign policy position on friendly dictators that says "He may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch." And yet it didn't matter when Harvey was their son of a bitch.

Those who were using Weinstein for his money while he was using all kinds of women for his base desires were offering him cover as sure as if they were giving the police phony alibis on his behalf. The Harvey Weinsteins of the world are contagious, and you're better off staying away from them entirely.

Even if it means you wind up with all the fame, wealth, and prominence of a newborn antelope.

Seasonal scenes.

We had a big blow of wind the other day, but all the shingles stayed put on the roof. Or I think they did. There were none on the ground. They may have sailed so far away that I have no idea they've gone.

Unfortunately it meant for some naked trees, not to mention a couple of downed trees, so if we were going to do some leaf peeking, that time has passed. Fortunately there are a few hardy arboreal souls that have held on to their leaves.

One chilly morning I was out with the dogs, and as soon as the sun came up it struck the dew sharply. I loved this shot of the steaming mailbox.

It's been pretty rainy; I'm not sure if the grass has stopped growing yet. It's a jungle out there, no fooling.

One morning it was raining like crazy, and of course I had to take out the trash. I really felt sorry for the garbage men that day. The rain would come down intermittently like crazy, as if you were passing in and out of Niagara Falls. I think this guy was running for shelter when he spotted me in the garage.

"Change course! Change course! Dive dive dive!"

It rained most of the morning. That afternoon I was down by one of our local churches when I saw this flock of turkey vultures drying themselves on the roof. My picture does not do the scene justice --- there were at least a dozen and those suckers are huge.

Finally, on the topic of seasons: You may have seen a news report from AP that said retail giant Target was going to respect customers' wish to avoid the "Christmas creep," quoting marketing officer Rick Gomez of Target as saying, "They want us to pause, and be really intentional and recognize Thanksgiving. What they don't want us to do is go right into Christmas. So, we are going to respect that." Well, either this is another fake news story or Gomez is full of it, because I was in Target yesterday and the dollar-store entryway was being transferred over to Christmas stuff. This little item caught my eye as I passed women's wear:

Number of Thanksgiving-themed items spotted: 0. Stuff it, Target, you jive turkey vultures.

Inclusivity parade.

HIGGITY BOARD CANCELS OXYGEN DEPENDENCE DAY

Board Cites "Lack of Inclusivity"

Higgity, Massachusetts (AP) -- The Higgity Public School Board voted yesterday to cancel the system's Oxygen Dependence Day Parade, a holiday created to be as inclusive as possible to all students.

"We have been informed that our assumption that Oxygen Dependence Day was completely open to all students was mistaken," said schools supervisor Zo McHale Hernandez Ling. "We had believed that no matter what race, creed, political belief, national origin, traditions, or gender(s) (or lack of) students subscribed to, all of us require oxygen to survive. We have been informed that our position was racist, homophobic, xenophobic, imperialistic, racist, stupid, sexist, cisnormative, and racist by members of the studentry and faculty. We deeply regret our decision."

Five students from Che Guevara High School, expressing themselves to be among the Atlantis American community, posted a message on the school's online message board calling Oxygen Dependence Day "Airnormative" and "Anti-Gill." This was followed by a similar message from the Saturnian Alliance, a group of students that claim to be nitrogen-breathers who view oxygen as a waste product, "not like in your culture."

For students disappointed with the cancellation of the festivities, the school board announced another Teacher Appreciation Day to replace the holiday. This will be the fifth Teacher Appreciation Day on the school calendar, joining Day Off Day, Teacher Union Support Day, and Girl Power Day as the only officially sanctioned holidays in the school year.

Halloween decorations.

Just a week away now from Halloween. I assume you've made your preparations -- buying candy, eating the candy, buying more, repeat. What about the decorations? Got your pumpkin lights up? Your skeletal stockings hung? Were-wreath? Death tinsel?

Here's what I've been seeing about.

This was a picture in the Home Depot that I actually took in August, when they were assembling the Halloween lawn displays. Skeletons and skeletal dinosaurs were apparently expected to be the big thing this year. The T. rex was still missing his head, but it has been applied since. I must say, though, that I have yet to see one of these dinos on anyone's lawn, with or without the head. The fact that they run seventy bucks and higher might explain it. If you're wondering, the 16-foot inflatable dragon on the wall goes for $149. I haven't seen him on anyone's lawn yet, either.

Still, we have reports that this year will hit a record high for Halloween spending, and it's not all on David S. Pumpkins costumes. So perhaps before the day arrives I'll see some skeletal triceratops around. (Triceratopses? Triceratopii? For a dino with a small distribution he sure is popular.)

Now this is a little more traditional, and suitably scary enough to make little kids want to forego the candy at this place. It's the way the two creepy figures are aimed straight at the door, as if they're just waiting for you to ring that bell. Go ahead, my pretty. Maketh my day. Conversely, they could be waiting to snap up the people in the house the moment they walk outside. Good grief! Perhaps they already have!

Can you tell me what this is? I mean the main inflatable monster, of course, not the subsidiary monsters closer to the door. I saw it and immediately thought Balrog, but it seems to be just a random, everyday gargoyle. Maybe it's something from Minecraft. The wings are too tiny to be from the Gargoyles cartoon. In fact, although the eyes and face are scary, the wings are vestigial, almost hilarious. Good luck with those, Icarus. 

I found it on Amazon, and as far as I can tell it doesn't bear any pop culture significance beyond "gargoyle." With scary eyes. And silly wings.

On the friendlier side of the holiday, there's this, seen in a local hibachi spot:

The light-up inflatable Snoopy and Woodstock in a cheerful Schulz pumpkin is the perfect choice for the waiting area of the restaurant. It says Halloween without scaring anybody, and gives the kiddies something to look at. I regret that it did not have an inflatable Linus, who could have puzzled over the sincerity of this pumpkin and whether it was good enough to attract the Great Pumpkin. On that note, though, Woodstock should not be present, as he did not join the Peanuts strip (under the name Woodstock) until 1970, four years after It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown first aired.

So that's what I've seen so far. No one in my area has done anything really horrifying or disgusting in their holiday displays, at least not yet. No chainsaw massacres, no Pennywise butchery, no pile of severed heads. All pretty much PG at worst. How're things where you are?

I wanna eat it!

Hey, that looks delicious! I wanna eat it!

You cannot eat it as it is not food. 

But it looks so tasty! Yep, gonna eat it now!

Do not eat it. It says right on it. DO NOT EAT. In three languages.

Oh, that's just silly. Why make it look so delicious if you're not supposed to eat it? I'm a-diggin' in!

It is the dessicant from a bottle of pills. The pills use a gelatin capsule and must remain dry lest the capsule dissolve. The dessicant absorbs any moisture. It is not to be eaten. Just cut it out.

Now this one, this here? This also looks great. Lunchtime!

You are getting closer. That is a silica gel packet from a package of dog treats. It is also, I am sorry to tell you, not edible. This time in seven languages.

Looks mighty tasty. Smells good too!

That is the beef scent on the package. Knock it off. 

Boy oh boy, am I gonna eat good now! Stand back!

Part of a complete breakfast!

Knock yourself out, wild man. Unfortunately those items are not poisonous, but you may choke, so there's that.

I was number six.

I found this in the pocket of my jeans before they went into the laundry hamper:

If you've gone to the supermarket you know just what that is -- a take-a-number ticket from the deli counter. And you know how it works. You pull a number from the little dispenser, look up at the tote board on the wall behind the deli workers, die a little inside, wonder if you can get everything else on your list before they get to your number, and just wait in place, beaming hate rays from your eyes at all the people before you, especially the old lady who is catering a wedding and has to get some of everything in quarter- to half-pound increments (and try a slice of each before she orders it).

The Hubert company, one of many outfits that make these things including the ticket above, refers to these as "call systems" or "crowd control."

I got there early, so I was 6. Sometimes you get there late and you're 6, because they got through a reel of tickets and started over again. Sometimes you get there and no one has taken a ticket because they just trickled in, but then it became a mob, and no one has a ticket, and there's mass confusion about who's next, and the hell with it. Oscar Mayer is fine.

The problem is that deli counters, like butcher and baker counters, have a tendency toward chaos. You have several workers and a lot of customers and the people behind the counter can't all be counted on to remember the order in which everyone arrived. The ticket system is a brilliant, easily grasped, low-tech, and inexpensive solution. (Four tickets for a penny, by my calculation.) It doesn't always work, as I indicated above. Hyun Lee with Qminder noted two issues with the tickets, the first being: "tickets are tangible objects, which means they can be damaged or lost. Ticket stand may also run out of paper in the most critical moment, preventing people from joining a queue."

Most of the real problems with the ticket system come from lack of effort on all our parts. We're the ones not maintaining ticket condition and presence or refilling the ticket dispenser. We can do this, people.

We need it for the deli counter, which is unlike any other department in the supermarket. The bakery is mostly stuff you grab, like the butcher, and only occasionally there are special orders. Not the deli! And outside of food service, no one else has found it necessary to use the take-a-ticket system--not furniture stores, car dealerships, gas stations, or funeral homes. It's a great solution for a narrow audience.

There are some alternatives to this, but they don't really change the dynamic. Another supermarket in my area has an electronic system where you can use a screen to place your cold-cut order; a computer voice announces over the PA when your order number is up. But that does not remove the need for the ticket system for customers who want to work with the luncheon meat wranglers at the counter; it acts like the line-cutting Disney FastPass, but it takes a wrangler out of queue service and doesn't eliminate the line any more than FastPass adds more seats to rides. Other high-tech alternatives (phone apps and such) are just more modern means of the old ticket system. Restaurants that hand out beepers are another example. They are not ticket systems but they operate on the same queue-without-a-queue idea.

According to a really good article on queuing in Management Today, the paper ticket system was created in the early 1970's to replace a system with reusable (and less hygienic) plastic cards. Did you know that longer belts on checkout lines keep us from feeling like we're on line? Once you get your groceries on the belt you no longer think of yourself as waiting in a queue. I learned something today!

I don't know when the reusable card system began. It seems like the "take a number" system has been with us forever. I couldn't find a patent for it prior to the paper tickets, and I wonder if it just sort of emerged. The Management Today article makes it seem like a British thing, a result of postwar shortages, but I always associated it with New York delis. It's in the culture. Certainly for my whole life I've heard people who are kvetching about something being told, "Yeah, take a numbah, buddy." Anyone with information on this topic is welcome to correspond with me in comments or at frederick_key AT yahoo DOT com.

The other problem with the ticket system is the whole number thing. Hyun Lee writes, "ticket queuing is a non-personal way of interaction between a customer and a business. Studies show that people react more positively when they hear or see their name, while a numbered system reminds them of a DMV office." I suppose the latter objection is true, but I just want my olive loaf. If the person behind the counter is good at the job and friendly, he or she can call me number 6 every day. You may say, "I am not a number, I am a free man!" That's fine, but the deli has no time for your I Gotta Be Me malarkey. They got a lot of meat to move, mister. We all got places to be.

As for me, I am number 6, and I'll have a pound of white American, thanks. Along with the olive loaf.

Psalt of the earth.

A few years back I was looking through the old Psalter at Lent in the hopes that exposing myself to more of the Bible I should become upright, upstanding, even outstanding in my goodness. Nothing ever seems to do it for me, though. I'm going to have to keep praying that Jesus drags me over the finish line.

Still, it can't hurt. As a side benefit, the Bible is the cornerstone of Western civilization, and anyone who wants to understand Western Civ should have more than a passing acquaintance with the book.

Since part of a psalm is read every Sunday, it seemed like a helpful part of the Old Testament upon which to focus. Read a few psalms a day and you're through all 150 before you know it!

Well, it proved to be a tougher assignment than I expected. I have the attention span of a 12-year-old, so sticking through some of the longer psalms is work. Theology is hard!

The psalms are heartbreaking in some cases, fearful, trembling, or joyful in others. They reflect the honest and strongest emotions of a people who know God knows exactly what they’re thinking. Many of the early Davidic ones reflect the various perils he encountered, so there’s a lot of similarities among them---my enemies are after me, they really suck, why won’t you help, I trust you Lord.

I can’t help feeling grateful that I was born when I was and not some time in the distant past, before air conditioning, cheeseburgers, and modern dentistry. If your man Fred had been a writer in the time of King David, the psalms might have been a much different and probably lousy affair. Here is my attempt at a psalm (Psalm 13½):

For the leader. A psalm of David. (By Fred! Woo!)

How long, LORD?
Have you totally blanked me out?
I’m in big heaping piles of trouble here.
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I go on whining and whining
Like a sniveling kid whose balloon broke
And he lost the top off his ice cream cone
And he didn’t get to go to the circus
Dude?
Sorry: MR. DUDE Sir?
How long will my enemy keep beating on me?
He kicks my hienie
He slaps my face
He calls me Herbert
He knees me in the groin
Which was great on Jerusalem’s Funniest Home Videos
But didn’t win the 10,000 shekels.
Help, LORD!
I’m in trouble here!
I am not kidding, even!
Don’t let my enemy get away with this!
He’s a real jerk!
But I trust in your mercy.
Everyone around me doesn’t care,
But you still care.
No matter how much I whine
And lie
And cheat
And sin
And---um, could you forget about the last few verses?
Grant my heart joy in your salvation,
And I will sing of your mercy,
Because no one needs it more than I do,
Except my enemy
Who is a jerk.
Thanks, God!
(Sorry about the “Dude” stuff.)

And then David would probably have separated me from my neck.

"Zing! Like butter."

The ten-minute special.

Around the house I have a reputation for a five-minute special.Yes, you know what that means -- I can go in the bathroom dirty and come out showered in five minutes. Others around here who shall be nameless take longer. Take considerably longer, for that matter.

I don't want to be crass and sexist enough to point fingers at one gender or other, but let me just mention that we have a friend with four daughters, and until the older ones started to move out of the house he couldn't tell you what color his bathroom was.

But I have certain advantages, as will come clear when I describe the ten-minute special.

The five-minute special only works if I don't shave and am willing to start my shower under freezing cold water. It's really only for emergencies, The ten-minute special allows me to do the job right. Here's how it works:

1) Chase out the dog that followed me into the bathroom before he chews up the rug. (The timer does not actually start until the dog has been removed.)

2) Turn on the water. While water gets warm, shave with the Braun electric razor. It's not as good as a razor shave but it's considerably faster. Check for odd ear or nose hairs that must be removed. (Guys who don't bother with that last part can shave -- har! -- a few seconds off the time, but men, please. Come on. No one likes a hairy ear unless you're in the Lord of the Rings.)

3) Strip, jump in shower. (Elapsed time so far: two minutes, twenty-three seconds.) If using dandruff shampoo, put that on first and leave it there through the shower; a dermatologist once told me that it helps to get the medicine into the scalp. Scrub chest, torso, etc. Continue through various and sundry bodily parts. Using the same bar of soap or body wash as a shampoo will save a little time, and if you get buzzed like an alpaca the way I do it hardly matters. I don't exactly give my golden tresses 100 strokes with a boar-bristle brush morning and night. Rinse well.

4) Pop out of shower--elapsed time, six minutes and forty-five seconds. Towel off, apply antiperspirant, aftershave; run brush over scalp. Brush teeth (forget about flossing or singing "Happy Birthday" twice so you brush for two minutes; just get the choppers clean). Total time: Nine minutes, forty-two seconds. So there's even a little time to use a Q-tip or apply jock itch or athlete's foot spray if you need it.

5) Get dressed. Done! All in under ten minutes.

Here are some extra tips:

🚿 Opinion is divided about whether peeing in the shower saves time, and even if it does, is that okay. My take is: You're there to do a job (get clean), not pee. Urinate in the toilet, outside of the ten-minute window.

🚿 Don't have a really nice bathroom. You think I could get through a shower in ten minutes if I had one of these babies in my bathroom?

I might never leave the house.

🚿 This is not a good time to use Crazy Foam. It may make getting clean fun, but fun is not time-efficient.

In racing to get this done on time, it's easy to forget some key steps, so let me remind you once again: wash everything, rinse off, and make sure the water is on before you start. And get the dog out. He's gonna eat that whole freaking bath mat, man.

Unrest on campus.

A seasonal induglence.

How many times do I have to tell everybody?

HIRE AN EDITOR AND YOU WON'T LOOK STUPID!

At least hire a proofreader.

This was a flyer I received in the mail from CVS, the Pride of Woonsocket, Rhode Island, #7 on the Fortune 500 list as of last June, the drugstore giant that pulled in more than $177.5 billion in sales (according to Hoovers). And yet with all that dough, all that moolah, all that Social Security money in their Scrooge McDuck-like vaults, they couldn't cough up fifty bucks to get a professional editor to look at this so they could spell INDULGE correctly.

This is a black eye for you, CVS, and I am doubly disappointed since just a few months back, in January, I mentioned how proud I was that you could spell stationery properly (meaning the paper stuff).

And yet I have had to take you to the woodshed before, CVS. In 2014, when I was posting on my old (now defunct and inaccessible) blog, you stopped selling cigarettes because (you said) you were so concerned about our health. I called you on your hypocrisy, on your attempt to get grace on the cheap. Not that I smoked at that time or since, not for quite a few years now, but I pointed out that you continue to sell candy, all the time, every day; there's a section of the store that's just candy, the seasonal aisle always has candy, and of course the checkout area is candy out the bazooty. (Never mind the snack aisle, which is very cookie-centric.) And I wondered if you were willing to cut off all that revenue, even though diseases of obesity are going to kill far more of us than diseases of smoking, and now our fatness is "astronomical," and even more out of control than it was in 2014. Heart disease, diabetes, stroke, cancer.... Well, CVS? Are you going to chase out the lardbuckets the way you chased out the puffers?

AND YOU COULDN'T EVEN PAY SOME POOR EDITOR A FEW DOLLARS TO SPELL A FLYER RIGHT, A FLYER BY THE WAY THAT WAS ADVERTISING CANDY?

Now, about your complicity in the rampant and deadly opioid drug epidemic that you're only just now addressing...

$177.5 billion and they can't hire a proofreader. Sheesh.

Emma and Anna.

[Classic reference here.]

Seasons.

October 16. You think the season is autumn.

But really... Christmasssstiiiiiiime is heeeeeeeerrre.....

In your mailbox!

In Home Depot!

At Walt Disney World!

I suppose there's no point in fighting it, although I would like them to wait until Halloween at least. Thanksgiving is pretty much a lost cause at this point, just a high-caloric speed bump on the road to the big wahoo on December 25.

I understand that people have to plan for the largest celebration of the year. If you're going to take the kids to Disney, for example, you have only a couple of weeks to figure out how to break into a bank vault or successfully counterfeit $100 bills. In addition to the catalogs shown, my wife gets a lot of craft catalogs, like from Michaels and JoAnn Fabric and Hobby Lobby and Yarn Bomb Monthly and Cross Stitch Hell and God knows what else. Of course, those outfits started with Christmas catalogs in June, but it takes a lot of time to knit that festive '69 Firebird cozy for Cousin Earl.

As I write this is, it is 70 days until Christmas. (That's 10 weeks, 1,680 hours, or 19.18% of 2017, according to TimeAndDate.com, for those of you playing Calendar Bingo at home.) For perspective, 70 days ago was August 7, which to my mind was pretty much yesterday. On August 7 I was complaining about bugs, as I was last Saturday, so it doesn't seem like much has changed. Therefore, Christmas will be upon us before you can take your next breath.

I guess what I mean to say is, tempus really fugits, especially when it comes to Christmas. Consider this your first warning.

Apple season.

At this time of year I hear all about my friends and their children all having a wonderful time picking apples, cooking with apples, posing with apples on social media, playing cornhole with apples for all the hell I remember. Well, I did some frigging apple picking too, damn it. In the cereal aisle.

Take THAT! losers

Regular readers of this blog -- your check is going out Monday, promise -- may recall that we've been closely following the Tiny Toast fiasco that began in 2016. General Mills released Tiny Toast in strawberry and blueberry to great fanfare, fanfare that quickly died down. A year later Tiny Toast was quietly shoved down the memory hole and the cereals were reintroduced as part of the Toast Crunch line. And now Apple Cinnamon Toast Crunch, another cereal that looks nothing like Cinnamon Toast Crunch. You can't slip this stuff by me, General Mills. I'm always watching.

My review: The Apple Cinnamon Toast Crunch is pretty good. Very sweet, of course, and with more of a genuine apple taste than I expected. I have to hand it to them; they say it's flavored with real apples and they've managed to do it or fake it convincingly. Point to you, G. Mills.

But you're wondering: What does Mr. Breakfast think? Well, Mr. B, being the world's greatest authority on breakfast, has waded in already, and his review is here. Money quote: "The more you eat - the more that apple tastes like apple flavoring as opposed to the real thing. But it's still pleasing and pretty much exactly what you'd expect."

That sounds kind of like "this appeals to the kind of people who would find this kind of thing appealing," but Mr. B knows what he's talking about. We don't expect that much from our fruit flavored cereals, just the effort. And I think this works better than most.

I'm still watching you, General M. You can only take this toast thing so far. Buttered Toast Cereal isn't going to work. Irish Soda Bread Toast Crunch, Bialy Toast Crunch, Bagel with Lox and Cream Cheese Toast Crunch... just leave well enough alone.

Six recipes, fast as you can.

Weird dream last night -- but they aren't they all? But this was a sign that I watch too many Food Network shows where chefs compete against other chefs. You may think that that would mean I was lolling in the sheets murmuring, "I didn't come here to lose" or "I'm here to prove that I've arrived," but no. I actually dreamed of complete rules for a cooking competition that made sense. It was a little like Chopped or Guy's Grocery Games, but probably too simple for TV. Here's the drill.

Six young contestants (self included) (I was a kid in the dream) in a supermarket were handed a sheaf of papers. They contained six serious chef recipes, including the lists of ingredients, each written out separately with all instructions. Each kid had the same recipes. But no one could look at them in advance. When the judge said "Go!" everyone jumped on a bicycle (because, dream) and we had to peddle off to get what was on the lists and make all the recipes. Whoever finished fastest got the most points, but other points were awarded based entirely on the proper following of directions. There was very little by way of subjective judgment in this contest.

I've had a lot going on this week, which is probably where the idea came from. The junior amateur chefs would have to coordinate six lists of ingredients and time everything they had to do in the most efficient manner possible, on the fly. Which is rather how my week has gone. Anyone who ever made a full Thanksgiving dinner for guests for the first time knows how this felt. "I gotta get the turkey in first, and then get the baking potatoes in, which can cook at the same temperature, but the green bean casserole cooks lower, and there's cranberry casserole, and I should have done the pie last night, and AAAAAUUUGGHHH!"

Feel the burn

What amazes me about the dream was that it presented me with a fully formed idea that was not that bad and made perfect sense. A contestant in such a match could strategize how to handle the situation, but ultimately you have to cook well and you really, really want to finish first.

Some elements of this idea, as I note, are not great television, but are in keeping with real chef competitions by brilliant chefs who never go on TV. I read a new book about Chef Roland Henin, the greatest American chef you never heard of; he made the Culinary Institute of America into a world-class school, he trained some of the most prominent chefs cooking today, and he coached teams of American chefs to excellence in competitions like Bocuse d’Or (which America won this year!). A lot of the Food Network competitions evolved from extant cooking events -- years before Chopped used mystery baskets of unknown ingredients, the American Culinary Federation was forcing chefs to cook with whatever came out of a basket. In fact, I think Food Network realized that viewers like this kind of thing when they used to show coverage of Bocuse d'Or and other international contests. 

I think my dream contest would be fun in real life. Like Bocuse d'Or it would take some time, and you'd have to restrict it to amateurs since professional chefs have a lot of experience in prioritizing in a snap in the kitchen.  

My dream skidded to a halt when I looked at the sheaf of papers and couldn't read anything. As we've discussed here before, you can't read in dreams, and I was only able to make out a word or two. Knowing I was sunk, I just woke up instead. Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey. Or coffee and cold cereal, which is all I can cook in the morning.

BUG!!!!!

People think of spring or maybe summer as the time for insects, but sometimes autumn has them beat solid. In these temperate climes, autumn is a great season for spiders to try to sneak into the house. Deer ticks have a great run in the autumn. The gnats come back to say hi. And then sometimes you spot something really terrifying, just in time for Halloween.

AAIIIIEEEE!!!!!

I'm not saying that I scare easy. You can say it for me.

"LOOK AT THE BONES!"

This little chum appears to be a Differential Grasshopper, near as I can find, a critter about as big as some of the chipmunks we have running amok in the area. The females grow up two inches, Wikipedia says, but I think this one was an overachiever. Melanoplus differentialis here was once one of 40 to 200 eggs, a hatchling who reached full maturity in 32 days. I'm surprised that I can pay the mortgage twice in 32 days. Like many of nature's little bastards, this huge grasshopper likes to swarm, and will take out an entire farm in less than a week. On their days off they like to stand on posts and terrify homeowners.

I guess we're luckier than folks in tropical areas, though, where winter never comes to kick the bugs' buts as they grow as big as Buicks. But this is big enough for me. I carefully skirted around the pole lest D.G. decide to jump on my shirt, at which point I'd have to run half-naked down the block.

A few moments later, though, she was gone. Bird probably got her.

Sometimes I like the Circle of Life.

Clip joint.

I used to care a little about where I went to get my hair cut. I wanted a manly barber with old guys who could shave your neck properly, with soap and a straight razor and a hot towel. Now I don't much give a damn, as long as it's short. My hair hates me, so I'm going to hate it right back. 

Last week my hair was getting kind of shaggy. It had grown to a length than in my teens I would considered "Marine." I tried a Great Clips nearby, for one crucial reason -- it was in the same strip mall as the supermarket. Location, location, location. Mind you, they probably get a lot of balding men and the children of harried mothers, but their job is to make money, not art. 

The gal behind the shears did a good job, although with her rubbing that electric device all over my scalp I began to feel sympathy for the alpacas of the world. It was over in no time and didn't cost more than any barber I ever went to. Did not get a proper neck shave, but she did buzz that too, so it was fine. Sideburns came out even. What more do I want out of life?

I was amused by the fact that they had a poster in the window, advertising for a mascot, someone to stand outside and hand out coupons and things. Basically this guy:

I told the lady when I sat down that I would be interested, but I already had a job and I already dressed funny. I may have been overqualified, really.

Not that I have anything against mascots -- as the French say, au gratin! I wrote an entire novel about a man who meets real-life mascots. Looking at that costume, though -- probably hot and clingy. Too much for me. I think of mascots as we would the purple cow, that I would rather see than be one.

It would appear, by the way, that the mascot's name is "Suds." Were I Suds, I would insist that "They call me Mr. Suds." I'm sure some terrified child would kick me right in the ol' curling iron. I would not last a day.

As for going to Great Clips, I think they're fine, even if you're not a wailing child or a middle-aged man in a state of abject despair over your male pattern baldness. And hey, they sponsor NASCAR, so that's kind of manly, don't you think? I wonder if the announcer ever says "The Great Clips car just cut the other driver off!" I would.

Cleaning up this town.

Need something superhero themed to amuse the kids? This looks like a job for SUPERMARKET!

Tucked in with the Mr. Bubble and the Johnson's Baby Wash is Crazy Foam, an aerosol body wash/shampoo/conditioner that I vaguely recall from my childhood. Apparently it went away in the 1990s, but is back now and as much fun as ever. Maybe more!

Well, everyone's in love with Wonder Woman again, following the success of the feature film earlier this year. Let's try that one.

Uhhhh....I know comics are what they are now, but that's a lot of cleavage for a product meant for the preschooler crowd. At least I think it is meant for the tots among us. That big hole where the mouth should be---I mean, I know I have a tendency to see potential Rule 34 situations, but the thing looks like it was the design for a prurient inflatable doll, IYKWIM (AITYD).

Well, let's try the soap. 

Okay, well, the soap isn't helping.

For the record, as an adult the soap is not so great. It is missing some key ingredient (sodium laureth sulfate, perhaps? It has sodium lauryl sulfate, though) that makes you feel like you're getting clean, although once done you actually do feel clean. I have no idea what I just said either. It's like with glycerin soap; gets you clean but without the lather you feel like you have to work twice as hard. For the kids, though, it's perfectly adequate to get the little stinkers clean. As Fran Lebowitz famously noted, "Even when freshly washed and relieved of all obvious confections, children tend to be sticky." Well, giving them some Crazy Foam might make them more eager to wash themselves, so that's something. Plus, it smells like bubble gum, which---

Uh-oh! Wonder Woman! What's wrong! She looks sick! Quick, the toilet's right there!

Phew. Another close call for Wonder Woman!

Now, in fairness, this Wonder Woman is a tie-in to the upcoming Justice League movie; you can get a less-cleavagey Wonder Woman from Crazy Foam's "DC Comics Originals" line, which features the characters as they tended to look in the 70's.

The Joker seems like he's really enjoying this gig, though, doesn't he?

Next time we'll see how supermarket life embarrasses other superheroes. Spider-Man string cheese, perhaps?

I guess that's not so bad, unless Peter Parker is lactose intolerant. But it does make me think of him shooting cheese from his webshooters, which... No, never mind.

He has a feel for the material.

"When you said they were having a reading, I didn't think
you meant a map reading."

Who made whom?

A few years ago I wrote the following short piece on the old, extinct Blog.com blog, a piece that was itself developed from something I wrote years before that (maybe five years after 9/11) for another guy's blog (since taken down). Every year Christopher Columbus comes under more attack, along with everything else in Western history -- it's not enough that our history must be turned on its head, now it needs to be expunged entirely. But I am still an admirer of Columbus, and the more I've read about him the more I find him to be a brave, persistent, and intelligent sailor. A book I read in the last year about the myths of the Bermuda Triangle informed me of his cool head when his ships were becalmed on the weird Sargasso Sea. 

Anyway, here was my take:

Batman: You killed my parents.
The Joker: What? What? What are you talking about?
Batman: I made you, you made me first.
The Joker: Hey, bat-brain, I mean, I was a kid when I killed your parents. I mean, I say "I made you" you gotta say "you made me." I mean, how childish can you get?

I always think of this around Columbus Day. A couple of years after September 11, 2001, I was thinking about the manifold grievances that the Muslim world claimed to have about America, and all the mean things we did to them since around the time O'Bannon captured Derna in 1805.

Well, if it hadn't been for the Muslim domination of the trade routes to India and China (a domination that was not enforced by sternly worded letters to the editor), Columbus would not have thought to try a Western route to what used to be called the Orient. No Muslim blockade, no discovery of America. They brought us on themselves.

Oh, sure, someone would probably have gotten here from Europe anyway, someone with more staying power than the Vikings, who apparently couldn't find enough houses to steal or stuff to rape or women to burn to want to stick around. (To be fair, although the Northmen had great navigation skills, the Viking colonies outside of Europe were quite cut off from their home countries, which was a problem when things got rough.) 

To make a successful colony would have required better and bigger ships. It also needed someone as clever at navigation as Columbus also was at promotion, someone as brave as a barrel of sharks, someone with enough charisma to keep a small fleet intact on a voyage that could be straight to hell for all anyone knew, a voyage that by anyone's estimation was not exactly a Carnival cruise, then go back, and then do the round-trip again, three more times in all. For most of my life people have been down on Christopher Columbus, but by God the man had more guts than any next thousand guys you meet. There was a time when real courage, sustained over the long term, meant something to people. 

Well, it means something to me. I admire all the virtues, especially those I do not have. 

Happy Columbus Day!

Through a glass, bottlely.

Walking the dog in the woods a few days back and came across this curious object:

Not that it's odd to find a bottle in the woods. Oh, heck no. This isn't exactly the Appalachian Trail we were on. It was a patch of woods that runs behind a school, I think, and some homes, and I don't think it belongs to anyone but the town, but I'm not sure. 😬 Anyway, however suburban your New York town may be, there's always a pretty good chance of finding beer bottles and cigarette butts.

But this was odd -- a glass bottle that has been hanging around so long that it appears the elements removed all trace of the label. No cap evident. If there were a number of beer cans around it might have seemed less odd, really, but this was all by itself.

I suppose it's a pint bottle, the sort favored by sneaky drinkers. Many of those are plastic, though. This is thick, clear glass of good quality. The first thing I thought of when I saw it was not furtive boozing; it was that, in my youth, people liked to collect old bottles, clean them up, and put them here and there as decorative elements. They were often colored glass, not very big, sometimes from the 1800s. There's still a market, but people don't seem to do that much anymore.

I've always liked bottles, but never collected them. Too fragile. My reputation as a clumsy oaf influenced my decision, perhaps.

I have done my bit to empty bottles, however; more than I can ever estimate. Some I left in the woods, too. Some made things blurrier the more clear they got. Some made it harder for me to see entirely. Bottles can be like that.

I left the bottle where we found it. It had earned the right to be free, full of only autumn air.