This time I have to leave.

Well, all good things must come to an end, and so do things like this blog. I thought about what I should give up for Lent, and I decided: Everything! Dust thou art and all that.

In some regards, the blog has done what I'd hoped, in that it kept me busy every day, made me write something every day. In other regards, it has been a disappointment, or rather, I have been a disappointment.

I'm grateful for every one of you who stopped by to spend a few minutes with my words and pictures. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your visit.

For now, the books are available from iBooks, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Google.

Good-bye and God bless,

Fred.

A Fish... Out of WATER.

[Series Finale of Bacon's Beat.]

This program contains graphic images and mature subject matter. Viewer discretion is advised.

(EXT: A parking lot at the old abandoned mall. Police are cordoning off the area, some taking photos. Detective Bacon strolls into the lot, sniffing this way and that. The smell of death is in the air, yet again. Bacon knows it's a mean city and it's written all over his face. He approaches lead investigator Peter "P.B." Barilotto, whiskers trembling, eyes riveted on the corpse.)

Detective Bacon: Well, this is a puzzle, right, P.B.?

P.B.: I've known a few fish out of water, Bacon, but this guy takes the cake. Some squirrel found him while running across the lot.

Bacon: Murder?

P.B.: (shrugs) Not sure yet. Cause of death looks like acute asphyxiation, but we're a mile from any substantial water. It's not like he was out for a walk and had a coronary.

Bacon: No. So either he was killed, or someone came on the body and dumped him here.

P.B.: Always hard to tell with these wetbacks.

Bacon: Hey, now---

P.B.: I'm serious! We drybacks get killed and dumped in the river. Maybe this was the reverse.

Bacon: I can't figure on a pack of fish killing this guy and dragging him a mile from the water. It's not like he washed out this far from the banks, you know?

P.B.: You're right. Looks like he just landed here, no sign of dragging or flopping around. Can't be dead more than a few hours.

Bacon: How'd he get here?

P.B.: Maybe was dropped off from a vehicle; we're gonna check out some of these tire tracks.

Bacon: Any I.D.?

P.B.: Why should today be easy?

Bacon: Yeah. I'll get in touch with the chief. We'll contact someone in the aqua district, see if they have any missing fish reports. Where's the squirrel that spotted him?

P.B.: It was an anonymous call to precinct. No name.

Bacon: Figures. I'll see if the tech boys can figure out where it came from.

P.B.: We can't even figure out where he came from!

Look out.

Don't say you weren't warned.

Prufreed Ur Werk!

The big day is less than a month away! I can't wait!

I refer of course to March 8, National Proofreading Day, the day in which we reflect on the importance of proper spelling and grammar and those unsung heroes who are the last line of defense: the proofreaders.

The home page for the celebration will give you any number of reasons why it’s important to read your work or have it read---for example, you might think you’re a person of great importance, but your typo may render you a person of great impotence. Spellcheck will not help you then.

Proofreading, like copyediting, used to have more respect in the publishing world because mistakes make publishers look sloppy and stupid. In the Internet era almost everyone online IS sloppy and stupid, however, so looking intelligent has less value. Plus, as they always say, content is king but it doesn’t pay the bills; publishers of all kinds get much less return on each word published than they used to. To feed the beast it behooves them to generate copy as cheaply as possible. Proofreading is one of the first things to go.

If the people who make their living on words don't much care anymore, you can imagine how much other industries think about proofreading, even though all of them need to communicate. Hey, if everyone is a moron, then no one looks moronic! seems to be the rallying cry of our time.

Proofreaders are, as I say, the last line of defense, usually the last people to see copy before it gets published. What do they do? The proofreader must carefully read each word, seeing that it is spelled properly; they must make certain each sentence follows accepted rules of grammar; they must check previous versions of the copy to see that all corrections were properly made; they must see to it that proper style is followed for whatever the assignment requires, be it footnotes on academic work, page numbers on indexes, running heads on book pages, or even musical or mathematical notation. The proofreader must be hyperfocused on the page. It’s hard to find people like that in our modern ADD world.

Proofreading differs from editing and copyediting in a number of ways. Basically, here’s the breakdown of duties in a book publishing house:

Writer: Poor slob crunching through pages slowly, wondering why he chose a career that pays peanuts or less up front, noticing that there are fewer famous authors than there are famous architects and maybe Mom was right and he should have gone to engineering school; then looks in newspaper and sees that a guy who spent thirty years as a civil engineer has written a murder mystery about a civil engineer who solves crimes in his spare time and it has shot to the top of the best-seller list (The Pothole of Doom); writer wonders how he can kill himself and make it look like this son-of-a-bitch engineer-turned-author killed him.

Editor: Acquires manuscripts; lunches with agents; glances at story and tells writer what a great book it is; then tells writer to change the plot, characters, names, setting, audience, and title, to rework huge sections of the story, and by the way, instead of a historical mystery about pyramid engineers who solve murders, could you make it something more contemporary and like The Girl on the Train? Then goes home and watches HBO and wishes she were like one of those editors on TV who live in nice apartments and never seem to worry about money.

Copy editor: Main duties include reading carefully for spelling and grammar but also for sense---to track the plot, mind the time and sequence of events, and fact-check as necessary (“Since the book takes place in London, why are all the characters in this book Egyptian? QUERY”). Watch as editor STETs everything and says the author is already crying every time they talk. Other duties include: Bitching about authors and editors.

Proofreader: Can’t make the book other than a piece of whale crap, but must see to it that it is a neat, polished, professional piece of whale crap.

As you can guess, there is a certain amount of tension between these jobs. When feeling good they call it “creative tension,” but this is infrequent. Also a lie.

Most of my experience in-house has been copyediting, and I’ve copyedited more books than I’ve written by orders of magnitude. We like to tell editors and authors that we’re not trying to make them feel as if they are stupid! No, we’re trying to make them look as if they were smart! But they never appreciate it.

Anyway, I salute the proofreaders, who as you can guess are the only grown-ups in the editing world. Thanks, proofreaders! Maybe it's not too late to go to engineering school.

Welcome!

Hi, Neighbor! Welcome to Whispering Rock Development! We're so glad you bought a home in our community! So glad to see you! We're sure you'll "fit right in"!

Now, you're probably wondering if Whispering Rock has any covenants. Of course! We want the place to stay as delightful as it was when you decided to move here. So there are a few little "odds and ends" we ought to address. When you purchased your home you agreed to abide by these---so let's see what they are!

LIST OF COVENANTS

1. Paint. No wacky paint colors on houses. We know, one man's "wacky" is another man's "traditional," right? But we all pretty know what it means. If you have any doubts, please feel free to ask at the next board meeting, open to all residents.

2. Pets. Please restrict the number of dogs to an overall average of one large dog, which would be either one large dog, one medium and one small dog, or no more than three small dogs. We don't restrict the number of cats, but more than three is in bad taste, don't you think?

3. Mailboxes. Please, no whimsical mailboxes. We've had people ask if they can have mailboxes in the form of windmills, footballs, Jeeps, teddy bears, golf bags, and barns, barns, barns. Let's just stay with the classic Joroleman mailbox in uniform white.

4. Trees. We may be named for a rock, but we love our trees! No cutting down trees unless you are replacing the tree with a larger, healthier tree.

5. In-home businesses. We certainly don't think we can stop anyone from making money out of their home! That would require 24-hour surveillance! But we do discourage any obvious commercial activity, including but not limited to: storefronts, doctor's offices, medical labs, meth factories, animal breeding, distilling, accounting offices, massage parlors or "massage" parlors, tanning salons, hair salons, restaurants, catering, espionage, organized criminal activity, daycares, babysitting, dog-sitting, blogging, or writing and copyediting. Any violations will be dealt with firmly.

6. Vehicles. Every home in our development comes with an attractive two-car garage. Which doesn't mean you have to park your car in them---goodness, where would you store everything? No, but it does mean that we ask you to have no more than two cars to avoid cluttering the curbs. Please never use your home to store other vehicles, especially those that do not function. No hoopty wagons. Anything up on blocks will be forcibly removed.

7. Fences. Unless you build a board-approved backyard swimming pool, in which case state law requires at least a four-foot fence around the perimeter of the pool, we insist on no fencing to interrupt the flow of our development. They say good fences make good neighbors, but we say, who needs good neighbors? (That's a little Whispering Rock joke.) And if you do have a board-approved backyard swimming pool, that fence ought to be tasteful, preferably natural wood or stone. It better not be chain link, buster.

8. Decoration. Decorating for holidays is fun! But so is elegance and style. For most holidays we recommend a fun banner; the December holidays may include monocolor lights in a tasteful arrangement. A United States flag is welcome---we love our veterans! Please restrict its use to Flag Day, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, and Veterans Day. Flags of other nations are welcome any time.

9. Parties. No more than twenty people are permitted at any gathering and must end at ten p.m., eleven p.m. on weekends. No amplified or live music. Please inform the board in advance so we'll know what to think when we see people outside your house. Better yet, invite the board to your party! Maybe you can run a little past eleven, if you get an impromptu approval!

10. Controlling authority. Don't give us that old "no controlling legal authority" guff. The board means business, and we can make you miserable even if we can't have you arrested. We know, it may seem restrictive, oppressive, even Victorian, but we in Whispering Rock believe the good life means restraint and feng shui, and we pretty much all back progressive causes so we could not possibly be oppressive.

Five-ring circus.

In 2014, the last time the Winter Olympics were starting, my wife and I had just taken a huge puppy named Tralfaz into our home. So, as much as we like the Games -- and we actually do -- we hardly got to see a moment of them. Because we were either getting the puppy outside to evacuate  his little bowels (and it was cold as hell that month) or we were training him or we were trying to keep him from hurting himself or anything valuable. By strange coincidence, we got our second dog, Nipper, right before the Summer Olympics in Rio began. So ditto all of the above.

I do have some memories of the Sochi Olympics. Okay, not really. I pretty much saw nothing beyond the opening ceremony. But what an opening ceremony it was! 

Well, I don't remember much of that either, and I was sacked out by the time of the famous ring failure:

But I do remember two things quite clearly, probably because I blogged about them on the old, defunct blog shortly thereafter. The first was the prison garb worn by the Irish team -- I even saved this shot:

Take away the flag and they'd look like a handful of army prisoners, wouldn't they? Happy army prisoners, maybe because they're getting time in the yard. I suspect they decided on those uniforms because the Irish had never won a medal in the Winter Games, and sure enough, they didn't in Russia, either.

The other thing I kept a picture of was an example of what someone thought would look great as the escort's uniforms during the opening ceremony:

Apparently they thought that the Games were being held on a planet in the Power Rangers universe.

I have hopes for better things at today's opener in PyeongChang. Seoul has become a very important fashion and cosmetics center, so we can hope that everyone will look a little better this time. The Norks are participating, so there's a slightly better chance that no horrible acts of warfare will take place.

And I don't have a new dog hanging around today. So we got a shot at seeing something. Maybe some of that cool curling action.

Lessons of KinderFred.

It's been 30 years since Robert Fulghum published his runaway best-seller All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. I've never read it, but it was enjoyed by people I respect, so I can't knock it. I don't know how comprehensive the author's kindergarten learning was. I mean, personally, I need to know how to write checks and balance my checkbook, but I doubt that these skills were in the curriculum. Neither, I suppose, were how to drive a car, how to talk to girls after puberty, how to cook a decent meal, how to tie a necktie, how to make yourself get up and go to your stupid job when all you want to do is stay in bed--these are all important things that every man ought to know.

I guess he means lessons like: share your stuff, don't hit, be nice, and so on, the basic building blocks that turn the little savages into rational human beings--or try to. I am reminded, as was perhaps Mr. Fulghum, of Hannah Arendt's famous quote: "Every generation, Western civilization is invaded by barbarians – we call them 'children.'"

As I thought about it I realized there were some important things I did learn in kindergarten, although I'm not sure they would have made Mr. Fulghum's book or its several sequels. 

My lessons include:

• Never get into a fight with girls. If you lose, you got beat up by a girl; if you win--you just beat up a girl, jerk.

• Always make sure you take the right paper bag off the counter in the morning. Instead of your toy for show-and-tell, you might wind up with a sack full of Dad's leftover bolts and pipe connectors for the machine shop.

• When it becomes apparent that they are never going to give you anything but unflavored milk, you'd better learn to choke it down.

• Never snap your fingers at the substitute teacher.

• To talk to the pretty girls, it helps to have a neat parlor trick. Blowing a bubble with your own saliva is an excellent one.

• Use the magic words "please" and "thank you." It's astonishing how well grown-ups respond to them. But you still won't get chocolate milk.

• Being able to sit Indian-style is very important. It may be that this is how the President holds Cabinet Meetings.

• Fifth graders are immense, inscrutable, and dangerous. Don't make eye contact with them.

• Proper crayon etiquette dictates that you share, even if Charlie rubbed his black crayon down to a nub and now it looks like he wants to do the same to yours. Perhaps explain that it's enough to hint that the night sky is black with a little shading. You don't have to color in every inch of the paper.

• Don't worry too much about what you say you want to do when you grow up. It's not a contract; no one will hold you to it.

• Somersaults are cool. So is standing on your head. But socking people in the eye with your foot while doing them is not cool.

• Girls cry no matter what. Get used to it.

• The nap mat you used last year for naptime in nursery school is a thing of the past. So is naptime, for that matter. It's hard, but it's time to move on. No point staying attached to the things of your fleeting youth.

• School is going to bore you stupid sometimes. Learn to distract yourself by thinking of other stuff. It's like talking in your own head where no one else can hear it. This "thinking" thing might really be worth something someday.

• Never miss an opportunity to use the can. You do not want any accidents. Not ever.

• In a similar vein, boogers can be a real social faux pas, although some guys have the chutzpah to use them to their advantage. Unless you are certain that you are in the latter camp, maintain good nasal hygiene at all times. But not in class. No nasal spelunking in public. 

• Most of the time, whatever you want to fight about is not worth it. But don't let anyone ever try to tell you that you will never have to stand up for yourself, that you'll never be called on to let someone have it in spades. Some people need to have the mean knocked out of them.

• Cupcakes are awesome. But if you have too many, you will discover that they taste much better on the way down than on the way up.

Nothing but love songs.

With Valentine's Day approaching, the topic of love songs is close to everyone's heart. Now, what constitutes a great love song differs from person to person. For one person, it might be "As Time Goes By." For another, "Melancholy Baby." For another, "Yakkity Sax." There's no accounting for taste.

I seem to recall Mark Steyn, in discussing the womanizing career of brilliant Broadway composer Richard Rodgers, pondering how a man like that could write such stirring and beloved love songs as "Some Enchanted Evening" and "If I Loved You." And it's a good question. Many of our favorite romantic songs have been written by people who, in their personal lives, barely seem able to muster the affection to stay with one other human for more than eighteen minutes. And yet they can write the words, music, or both pledging love eternal.

Here's a chart I whipped up of twenty favorite songs, often heard at wedding receptions, and how the songwriters themselves scored in the game of love:

There are a number of things we can learn from this chart. The first is, if tempted to marry Pattie Boyd, maybe give it further consideration. For another, divorce can break up a great songwriting team. For a third, Lionel Ritchie has a lot to answer for. Fourth, just because a guy is named Love doesn't mean he's good at keeping it going. And finally, Bruno Mars may have been less than serious in his request to join in wedded bliss.

Now, you may object. You may note that I have my facts wrong here. It's possible; I don't know music trivia at this microscopic a level and may have screwed up the details. You may note that this skirts over the details, like the sad cases behind many of the divorces, sometimes happening against the will of the songwriter. I'll grant you that, too. You may wonder why I didn't include the thrice-divorced Billy Joel. I just forgot him, but yeah; ditto for others I didn't think of. You may be a big fan of Pattie Boyd and think I'm giving her the Yoko Ono treatment here. We can take that up another time.

But mainly, you may point out that I'm cherry-picking. After all, other songsters have had very long-lasting marriages. Irving Berlin had two marriages and outlived both wives; his first wife died less than a year into the marriage in 1912, and his second marriage began in 1926 and ended with her passing in 1988. And Neil Sedaka is still married to the same woman, Leba, that he married in 1962 -- unlike the Captain and Tennille, who had a big hit with his "Love Will Keep Us Together," but it did not for them beyond 39 years.

So sure, there are examples of love-song writers who stayed in love. But the question is, why don't they ALL stay in love? Aren't they the love experts?

Well, maybe not. We know some people are addicted to drama; it doesn't mean that they aren't really feeling those dramatic moments when someone hurts them or they fall in love (or lust). They are 100% sincere... while it lasts. And while it lasts they may compose something great. Further, these hit songwriters have a knack for putting tunes and/or words together in an expressive way that the rest of us can't, which also means that they can use these talents to pump up the volume on what may for them be a passing mood. Were they not music writers they might have been salesmen.

I guess in the end we must always remember that musicians, like actors, are excellent at appearing to be something they are not, and it may be safe to assume they're worse than they look, especially regarding matters de l'amour.

Unlike novel writers. We always mean it.

Rejected paint colors.

Lobster Liver

Miscellaneous Brown

Magilla Gorilla

Star Trek™ Red

Booger

Vitamin Fred Pants Green

Prospector Tooth

Vertigo

Creepy Panel Van White

Malcontent Mauve

Algae

Harvest Goldberg

Whatcha-Got-in-the-Can Mystery Color

Malaise

Dog’s Breakfast

Sunburn

Detroit Gray

Dingleberry

Gefilte Fish

Poison Ivy

Dried Blood

Gluten-Free

Pseudoephed-Red

Mammal Enamel

Honky White

Phlegm

Plaid set (some assembly required)

Roadkill

Shroom

Snirt

Black-and-Blue

Hobo Nose

Extra Drippy Yellow

Teenage Goth Angst Black

Raw Turkey

Breaking Bad

Headache-Inducing Orange

White Castle

Shiny Cockroach


UPDATE: Mr. Philbin writes that I should add Talula Does the Hula from Hawaii. I think we can all agree that's a good idea.

Slidewalk.

We have a local law firm that runs these really cheesy personal injury ads. I'm not going to post the video because they might sue. But I don't have to. If you've lived in the United States since constitutional challenges in the 1970s and 1980s allowed lawyers to advertise, you know what those commercials look like. 

Lawyer [voice over]: Have you suffered injuries? Pain? Injury at work? Contusion? Burn? Do you have cancer? Mesothelioma? Fracture? Ulcer? Bed sores? Concussion? Auto accident? Sports accident? Played with fire? Have you hurt yourself by not reading the manual? Have you suffered a slip and fall? 

[Cheeseball video of some random idiot strolling down a sidewalk, foot on what looks like a microscopic crack; idiot's face in horror as he pretends to fall backward, and yet is somehow shown on the ground nursing a twisted ankle.]

Lawyer: Then call us today. At the law firm of Greef, Sorrel, and Payne, we never stop fighting for YOU. If you've been hurt by anything, we'll get what's coming to you. No fees unless we WIN! Remember, at Greef, Sorrel, and Payne, we'd sue the sun for giving you cancer.

[Lawyers sitting around stuffed into suits, with the name of the firm in large type, their phone number in larger type, and their slogan ("WE'D SUE THE SUN") below that.] 

The preponderance of personal injury lawyers have helped turn us into a people seeking to feed on each other, either terrified of being sued or hungrily looking for a chance to do so. Despite that, though, I have to say that at least where I am, people are pretty casual about how dangerous their sidewalks are in the winter. Maybe all the lawyers live around here. 

We got some ice on Friday, which was made bearable by a light layer of crunchy snow. It was quite navigable on foot, as the snow had plenty of traction. Hardly anyone bothered to shovel or salt. Saturday warmed up and a lot of it melted. And then it refroze. 

Sunday's sidewalks were slick, and treacherous to the two-legged among us. Even worse for the one-legged, I suppose. 

Pictured: Treachery.

The photo is not the sidewalk in front of my house, but mine looked the same. I had expected the melt to continue Saturday, but the clouds kept the sun from really getting the job finished. When I walked baby dog I stayed on the grass, which had not had the same melt/refreeze pattern and still had traction.

I'm not giving out my address, in case Greef & Co. find me. I'll have a mob of idiots practicing their anti-trust falls on my property.

----

Pride Goeth Department: I drafted much of the above after my walk with Nipper yesterday. This morning's iteration of ice is black ice. The schools are delayed two hours. I knew it was bad, but it was worse than I thought; I fell like a sack of lead on the driveway while taking big dog out to do the necessary. Of course, sod's law dictated that my idiot neighbor was outside for exactly that ten-second period. At first that irked me seriously; later I decided that it was all right to give him a cheap laugh, as he has so little pleasure in life.

Hey, I wonder if I can get Greef, Sorrel, and Payne to sue me? I'll be rich!

Sugar bowl.

So today we memorialize our New Year's Resolutions with an entry all about stuff with sugar in it. Farewell, resolutions! Hello, sweet, sweet taste!

Our first item up is a Mentos flavor I've never seen before -- Caramels? With a chocolate center? 

Like many in the Nerd-American community, my first exposure to Mentos was the commercials that ran on heavy rotation during Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Annoying and yet very successful, the "Freshmaker" ads were parodied in an episode of MST3K itself, biting the hand that fed it.

I like Mentos well enough, but this caramel candy with the chocolate center hardly seems to fit in with the idea of "freshmaker," which would be a candy that might make one fresh. Then again, Mentos come in many flavors in other countries, and most of them aren't mint. So, what the hell, let's give them a try.

The candy is a bit odd, in that most chocolate caramels have the chocolate on the outside, but I'll try caramel in any form, as long as it isn't in the feast from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom or something like that. And these Mentos are too good to belong there. They are very tasty, a nice caramel flavor and pleasant milk chocolate in the middle. I found them a little hard, but that often happens with Mentos if they've been hanging around for a while. Possibly they would have been soft if they'd been fresher. Hard Mentos need their own freshmaker to freshen them up.

In another case of stuffing chocolate into something else, M&M's has introduced a limited edition Double Chocolate candy. This actually is milk chocolate with a white chocolate center, covered in the usual M&M's candy coat.

I liked these quite a bit. White chocolate is awfully sweet, but here its sweetness is tempered by its combination with the milk chocolate. It might have been even better with dark chocolate. Me, I can handle the sweetness of white chocolate, because I have like a super power for that (kind of like Roger Mooking with hot food), but other, lesser folk can't handle the sweet. Even those unfortunates may like these M&M's.

Now that we've had dessert, on to breakfast! Today we're serving exploding cereal!

General Mills' new Blasted Shreds, which are available in Peanut Butter Chocolate and what I got, the Cinnamon Toast Crunch flavor. General Mills wants us very much to know two things about this product:

1) Its #1 ingredient is whole grain;

2) It's got a lot of flavor. As they say on the site:

MORE WHOA THAN WHEAT!

I opened the box and didn't think there was a lot of WHOA obviously apparent. The individual shredded wheat blocks are not half a foot high, as on the box; here's one in a tablespoon measure:

My first impression, eating one dry: They did seem to have a good deal of flavor, but I thought it was more like the Apple version of Cinnamon Toast Crunch that I reviewed last year. For a pro review, I turned as always to the inimitable Mr. Breakfast and his Cereal Project. Mr. B was impressed by the density of the cereal: "I'd recommend filling your cereal bowl about 1/2 as full as you would with other cereals you eat.... Cinnamon Toast Crunch Blasted Shreds have a big cinnamon punch (just short of overwhelming). The flavor is more bold than in regular Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal. This new cereal is just slightly too sweet."

Again with the too sweet! 

On the whole he liked them enough to award them 6 of 7 golden eggs, although he did prefer the Peanut Butter Chocolate variety.

As I post this, I am eating a bowl of the Cinnamon Toast Crunch Blasted Shreds, and I find that they do indeed pack a lot of cinnamon and a lot of wheat into those little squares. Most shredded wheat blocks have a lot of air in them, but not these bad boys.

Now I am just hoping that the Blasted part doesn't refer to what they do in your colon. I've got church later, and there's a lot old folks and small kids in our congregation and just two bathrooms. Wish me luck.

(Such an intestinal reaction would sum up my opinion of "Lance Armstrong" Brady and the rest of the NFL, but that's a story for another time. The only bowl that interests me on this Super Bowl Sunday is the cereal bowl. And, uh, maybe the toilet bowl.)

Pasta performance is no guarantee.

Had a box of Ronzoni Angel Hair pasta (#12, if you're keeping score at home) and was stunned when spaghetti came out. Spaghetti! #8! In an angel hair box! Whoa! But it was even MORE astonishing than that. Because about a third of the pasta in the box WAS angel hair pasta!

NO. WAY.

WAY. WAY.

Spaghetti's supposed to be in THIS BOX!!!! (!!!)

It may seem like no biggie, but no: Biggie. Because angel hair cooks in half the time of spaghetti. To get the spaghetti portion cooked, you have to cook the angel hair portion until it's mushy. I tried to compromise, and wound up with al dente spaghetti and mushy angel hair.

AND THE BOSS WAS THERE FOR DINNER!

Okay, I made that part up. I don't have a boss. I'm a freelancer; I have 89 bosses. And none of them were there.

So after dinner, which was not totally ruined, I shot a note off to Ronzoni's customer service department. Since I didn't see any recalls on their site or the government's recalls site, I thought the company ought to know that there was a packaging issue.

Within a day I got a nice note thanking me for my input, saying these things occasionally happen due to the automated packaging process, and I'd get a coupon for a complimentary product. A week later, score! Two coupons!

I'm glad Ronzoni owned up to the problem, but I wonder how it happened. How could the significantly thicker spaghetti have gotten into the box with angel hair? It just seemed weird. I never saw an episode of Unwrapped about a pasta factory, but you wouldn't think both pastas would be running on the machine at the same time.

Well, they're busy at Riviana, the parent company. In addition to Ronzoni, they make Creamette, Light 'n Fluffy noodles, Prince pasta, San Giorgio, etc. etc., plus at least 13 brands of rice. The Houston-based Riviana is itself owned by international rice giant Ebro, based in Spain. They basically own side dishes.

I know Ronzoni is just a small cog in the Ebro machine, but I'm still pretty brand-loyal to it. Like pretty much all New York families, ours was a Ronzoni family. When the company was bought by Hershey and production moved out of Long Island City (which I've discussed here and here), the demolition of the factory in 1998 made the Times. A Home Depot stands in the spot now. I don't think it was a loss on the scale of the Domino Sugar Refinery or even the Taystee Bread factory, but it was another blow to manufacturing in the five boroughs.

I understand that there are a lot of reasons why smaller food manufacturers get bought up, moved around, and all that, and I still think Ronzoni makes quality products. But I have to wonder... back in my parents' day, we never got two kinds of pasta in the same box.

I suspect the latter.

"Whoever did it to all our signs also left a note saying that 'woodchuck' comes from the Narragansett word
ockqutchaun and predates 'groundhog' by almost 70 years. The cops think it was either
Native Americans from Rhode Island or dictionary editors from New York."

The Adventure of the Looming Nose.

"This is quite a mysterious conundrum, Watson, but there's no question that there's a logical solution."

"Almost defies explanation, Holmes. A ghostly nose that looms out of the darkness at innocent sleepers? Chilling, what?"

"When we discover how it's being done," said Holmes, "We shall know why."

Well, I can tell you why. Our older dog, Tralfaz, keeps waking up in the night to pee and whatnot, as I krexed about last week. Sadly, it has not resolved itself since.

This four-year-old galoot has used several methods of waking us. He normally sleeps downstairs, and may just start whining down there. Sometimes he'll come upstairs and start whining in the hall. One night I left the bedroom door open (contrary to fire safety recommendations) and woke when I suddenly felt an alien presence in the room. There, out of the darkness, dimly lit by the soft glow of the digital clock, came the looming nose.

I just don't know what to do with this guy. Taking him out just before our bedtime, even if I had to wake him to go, seemed to help -- once or twice. Modifying his thyroid supplement seemed to help -- a little. Melatonin, diphenhydramine, each seemed to work -- once or twice. Together, once. The vet couldn't get a urine sample from him -- of course he'd peed just before we got in the car, he was so excited -- but did an ultrasound of his bladder and said it looked fine. He diagnosed anxiety and recommended Xanax, giving me a prescription to take to the normal human drugstore. My wife and I kind of pulled back from that. Doping him with something that can be a street drug just seemed severe, like we were sacrificing his health for our convenience.

But was that the right call? If he really is suffering from nighttime anxiety, is our hesitance making him suffer more? And us, too?

It's so tough with animals; they just won't tell you what's up. Dogs are famous for pretending everything is jake when they're sick. Not to mention that they're awfully tough. While playing in the yard two weeks ago, I jammed my thumb on Tralfaz's noggin so hard that I had to walk away for a couple of minutes so the pain could stop. It still hurts. He never reacted at all. I've seen little dog Nipper get up fast and smack his head on the underside of the table with a big enough bang to rattle the salt and pepper shakers, then just smile like nothing happened. It's amazing. (Accidentally tug one of Tralfaz's 80 billion hairs, though, and he yelps like he got stabbed.)

So the adventure continues.

Last night seemed to go all right, though, and I think it's because I got both boys out for a long walk. Fazzy did NOT want to go, fought me all the way from the front door to the sidewalk, but once we took off he seemed to enjoy it. Both of them were plenty tired afterward.

"Walking the dog" seems like a prosaic way to solve the issue, but it's not the first time I've tried extra exercise with him. It seemed to work -- once or twice.