Hope, and Ice Cream, Floats.

Really interesting article on The Atlantic site about the development of the game Candy Land (hat tip to Instapundit for the link). I knew the game was old when I was a child, because it had a kind of old-time look and sensibility. For one thing, very few games in my day were making a direct appeal to the visceral love children have for candy. That might make them want to eat some! They'll rot their teeth and get fat! Meanwhile, candy was a major sponsor of children's TV.

To give you the gist of the story, Candy Land was developed by a teacher who contracted polio in her thirties and was confined to the polio ward with a bunch of children, the most common victims of the disease. She had the brilliant idea to give the kids a pastime that would appeal on many levels, not just with the joy of candy, but also the action of a quest, of color and adventure, of quick movement and flight, of all the lovely things a sterile and scary hospital ward is not full of.

Candy Land was introduced in 1949 and never gone out of print. It was rightly inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame, in 2005. It's been released as a DVD game and in Disney Princess and My Little Pony and Retro editions. I have a Candy Land ornament on my Christmas tree that I picked up somewhere along the way (I think during a stint on a family magazine). Many people remember it as the first board game they ever played.

Not me. I don't remember playing it until I was past the age recommended, for a laugh. We didn't want for games or toys in my childhood home, but we never had that one. Chutes and Ladders, either. Don't know why. My parents liked games. They preferred games that weren't entirely predetermined by the shuffle of the cards, the way Candy Land is -- there's no strategy or choices to make, not even the luck of the spin. I guess if you could ask for a hit, like in Blackjack, they would have been more interested. I didn't miss it, anyway; Peppermint Stick Forest and Gum Drop Mountains would have had limited appeal to me.

If they'd released a game called Beer Land when I was in college, I would have taken notice. Stroll through Ale Alley! Climb the Hops Heights of the Malt Mountains! Avoid the Bed Spinner! There are a number of beer-related games listed on the irreplaceable Board Game Geek site, but none that I saw combined the adventure of a magical journey with getting faced. Oh, well; those days are past anyhow.

But today we're focused on the kids, and we want to salute Eleanor Abbott, the creator of Candy Land. Anyone's who's ever been a bored child, or had to entertain one, can thank her for thinking of them. Being able to think like a little kid, to see what a child in a sad situation could really use, would really enjoy, and might even give them a glimpse of hope, gets a lot of credit in my book.

Migraine, and yours.

For decades I've had these weird, occasional migraine symptoms, without the actual migraine.

I get the shimmering lights that they call the aura. It starts as little spot, then slowly spreads into a backward C, and keeps expanding until it goes beyond the range of vision. I can't drive, can't read; it blocks the center of my vision, then a large part of the field; just before it goes away, when it's only at the edges, it's still very distracting. I used to get a headache at the end of this little light show, but no longer.

The aura is the first sign of an oncoming migraine headache for many sufferers. I'm very grateful that I don't get the actual migraine. I've heard stories of people beating their heads on the wall because that pain was less bad than their migraine, so it felt good.

It happens maybe twice a year. Only once was it so bad that I left work. It happened yesterday when I was up early to finish a project I couldn't complete over the weekend. I started work at five, before the dogs (Thing 1 and Thing 2) were awake, and suddenly had this little twinkling dot in the center of my vision. As it grew and obscured my sight, I knew I'd have no choice but to lie down until it passed. That usually takes about half an hour. Of course I fell asleep, and woke at six.

So what causes this problem? Defective brain? Am I Abby Normal?

Years ago I talked to an eye doctor about this, and he was a bit confused. He said it sounded like the migraine aura (which is well-known, but only about 20% of migraine victims have that symptom). He thought it could be a vascular problem, which I believe at the time (the early 2000s) was thought to be migraine-connected.

The National Headache Foundation now says that "we know that aura is due to transient changes in the activity of specific nerve cells." Thanks! I'll make sure to keep those cells safe from transient changes. Seriously, though, I wonder if what I have does count as a migraine; the NHF also notes that there is no specific test that can confirm a diagnosis. "Your blood contains Factor Z, my man -- migraine!"

The Merck Manual, a very good resource, tells us that "Migraines occur in people whose nervous system is more sensitive than that of other people." Well, that sounds like me. "In these people, nerve cells in the brain are easily stimulated, producing electrical activity." Again, me. Some things are known to trigger the headaches, like lack of sleep and stress. Who dat? Me! But why some people get them and others don't is still a pretty dim area.

It's weird to have any kind of condition that science! doesn't understand. Same thing happened with my idiopathic hearing loss last year. You guys figured out the human genome, but you can't figure out this? 

It doesn't always help when they do understand, though -- they know all about the hundreds of cold viruses, but haven't yet managed to come up with a vaccine to prevent them all. Although, to be fair, they're trying.

Oh, well. I'm still very grateful that these attacks are rare, and that I don't get the crippling migraine headaches. Sinus headaches are another story. And tension headaches. Those I get. Doesn't everybody? Or is it just us people with more sensitive nervous systems?

Bear bites.

I would appreciate it greatly if you would all write to the gentleman across the street and tell him he needs to keep his garbage can inside the garage until the morning of collection day. Thank you very much.

I had to be up early Saturday morning, and thus, so did the dogs. We went out the front door and Holy Toledo! A black bear, had to be 300 pounds, was having a Bear Smorgasbord on the contents of the garbage can that the gentleman mentioned above will not keep in the house.

I understand the issues involved. My garage is connected to the cellar, where any odors are well contained; his garage is right by the kitchen. It's also stuffed to the rafters with toys and luggage and things. But he has two little kids, and if I were him I wouldn't want a big bear hanging around the yard where a kid could become a snack.

For that matter, he probably didn't enjoy being awakened by two insane dogs barking toward his house at 5:15 on a Saturday morning.

I suppose the bears have started their fattening-up rituals and we should expect this kind of thing. My neighbor especially should expect it, because his can and another guy's got nailed last Tuesday on trash day. I believe they both put out the trash on Monday night. I didn't see the bear that time, but his can was knocked over and a bag dragged out halfway across the lawn. Raccoons don't bother doing that.

Anyway, nothing we've said around here seems to have changed his habits, so now I have to resort to asking outsiders to send him a message. Feeding bears by leaving around garbage is bad for the bears and dangerous for everyone else. It can't be helped on garbage day, but it can be helped the other days of the week. He either gets his act together or we have to pitch in to buy him a secure anti-bear disposal unit. But if those are tricky enough to outsmart the bears, they might be too much for him as well.

A movable pumpkin.

Now, to me this is stupid, but you may have very good reasons to disagree. Here's my take.

A petition on Change.org is demanding that Halloween as a holiday be moved from its traditional date of October 31 to the last Saturday of October. Actually there seem to be two competing petitions on the site, written with similar poverty of English usage, and they're both wrongheaded and dumb. Here are the reasons why.

1) The petitioners claim that this move will make the holiday safer for moppets, presumably because they can go trick-or-treating in daylight hours. But Halloween falls on a Saturday or Sunday about twice every seven years, and kids still don't come during daylight hours. I can promise you that. One year when it fell on Sunday I actually got all made up as Frankenstein's monster, green makeup and everything, and sat around doing nothing from three p.m. until the first kids started to arrive at the usual time of five or so. I know that's anecdotal, but kids usually don't trick-or-treat early.

2)  They claim that this will make it a "longer, stress-free celebration." This makes me think that the copy is written by people who have never had small children and don't realize that, when kids are involved, there is no such thing as a "stress-free celebration," and it certainly doesn't reduce the stress to make it "longer." And how long is it going to be? My town is not unusual in its curfew, restricting all youngsters to home on Halloween after eight p.m.

3) Which brings me to my main point: I firmly believe that most of the people behind this petition are just tired of having to leave the party early on Halloween, or call in sick the next day, or stagger in and try to hide their hangovers. As usual when we're told that things are "for the children," it's actually "for the adults."

4) Who have no standing to change the date of Halloween any more than they do of Christmas or Rosh Hashanah or Eid al-Adha or Diwali. True, Halloween is not itself a religious holiday, but it is unalterably tied to one, and is in fact the day of the Vigil Mass for All Saints' Day, a holy day of obligation in the Catholic church, which falls every year on November 1.

5) And for wacky types for whom Halloween is itself a holiday, they can't move the date either. The day is the day. Which brings us to our last point:

6) IT'S NOT A HOLIDAY! That is, it's not a national holiday. It's not Memorial Day, which celebration was officially moved to the last Monday of the month by the National Holiday Act in 1971. No government offices are closed on Halloween. No official notice is taken of the day at all. As far as the federal government is concerned, Halloween does not exist as a discrete legal entity. So the president can't move it.

I hope that clears up my position on this Halloween business. It would be just another silly petition except that the news media has for some reason piled onto it. Which I suppose could be taken as proof of its stupidity.

Safety first.

While many mountaineers believed that the new Everest Escalators would make the trip a lot safer for the thousands hoping to visit the summit each year, most observers felt that a certain something about the experience would be lost.

Freakout!

Gotta take the big dog, Tralfaz, to the vet this morning and not looking forward to it. He goes batty in there, and it's getting worse with age. Constant vocalizations -- not barking, just a loud, whiny "Ror ror ror ror!" on heavy rotation. Don't really know why.

This is just a routine thing, just checking his nails and ears (history of summer ear infections), but for all he knows he's getting another "operation" or at least getting a thermometer shoved up his rear. He can't even stand getting on the scale. I mean, I feel the same way about the scale, but you can't fat-shame a dog.

What I have to do is get him inside the building just far enough to sign in and let the receptionist know we have arrived; then we stand outside so he can freak out in the lawn by the parking lot until we are called, at which time he runs inside like he's a kid going to an ice-cream social with Batman and Spider-Man and all the Disney Princesses, and then the freakout continues right where it left off. Because he isn't unhappy or reluctant to go to the vet, just very, very agitated.

Don't be fooled by his calm exterior;
this dog is wacka-ding-hoy.

I wind up sitting in the little exam room yelling over his vocalizations to the deafened vet techs.

Really, when it's over I feel like I've run a marathon.

The interesting thing is, if they have to take him to the back area, where no owners are usually brought, he will quiet down. I have to wonder if all the prior hullabaloo comes because he thinks he's protecting me, trying to get me out of this dangerous place; once he can't see me, he thinks I'm safe. I can handle this, but YOU, Dad... You're in peril!

I don't know. I just am grateful that the junior dog doesn't mind the vet so much. He never makes a lot of noises. Although one time when they had him on the table and they gave him the thermometer, he gave me a shocked face, like, YOU KNEW THIS WAS GOING TO HAPPEN?

That's the way it goes, kid -- we all get it in the end.

Ah, puppies! Ah, humanity!

Boris.

I'm thinking a little about Boris today.

No, not Boris Badenov, Notorious No-goodnik. Not Boris the Spider, either. This blog wants to officially congratulate Boris Johnson for becoming the Prime Minister of the UK.

The unlikely named Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, who turned 55 in June, first got my attention at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing when he was mayor of London. In the closing ceremonies, the Olympic flag was passed to him to carry back to London for the 2012 Games. Who was this guy, this shambling mound of a human being?

He had the hair of a blond Beatle ca. his birth year. His clothes didn't seem to fit well, like he'd just found out with five minutes to spare that it was school picture day. Overall, he looked like some bloke who'd been drinking all afternoon that they pulled out of the stands. ("The London mayor didn't show! Get us an Englishman! ANY Englishman! All whities look alike! Stuff him in a suit and send him out there!")

This is a British politician? Well, surely he had to be one of those Labour Party oiks who purposely dress like pigs to prove they are down with the people, right? Nope, big-time Tory. He looked like he was assembled of parts taken from random English people. Who was this guy?

Soon I learned the one thing about him that explained everything else: He was a journalist.

Journalists, generally speaking, are not meant for visual consumption. The journalists on TV are mere newsreaders (there are exceptions, but not as many as they'd like us to believe). Historically, tweed is the natural environment of the journalist, not Savile Row. Most of them looked like they cut their own hair. Seen this way, Boris Johnson was the proud standard-bearer of his previous profession more so than the standard-bearer of the Olympics.

Any writer is interested when a writer gets elected to high office. We're still excited about Vaclav Havel, and he left office in 2003. Very few writers get a shot at changing the world, but a few big-time politicians are good writers -- Julius Caesar, Theodore Roosevelt, Ulysses S. Grant. The thing is, every writer on some level thinks he'd do a better job running the joint than the people who are; once in a while, one gets a shot. So we'll be following Boris's PM career with interest, especially as regards to Brexit.

Writers are probably only second to actors in terms of people who are 1 billion percent convinced that they are important with virtually no evidence to support that belief. At least actors never cut their own hair.

Stuff and nonsense.

Just a roundup today of various things I have encountered of late, starting with the most bizarre mall kiosk I have ever seen:

"Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Can we get some Fairy Dust Slime? PLEEEEEEASE?!"

What do they sell at this kiosk? I have no idea, as it was closed. All the slime was packed away. It was right by the food court so it couldn't be too disgusting. I know slime made with white glue is a big thing these days, but who buys it? The fun appears to be in the making of it.

Will let you know if I see this booth in action in the future.

I think our beloved Dunkin' Donuts (I refuse to drop the Donuts) has once again gone in the wrong direction with this product. The so-called Signature Series is a medium blend, just like their regular KCups... and it tastes exactly the same. Or, actually, a little weaker. My wife, the major #1 supremo Dunkin' Donuts coffee fan, thought it was a nothingburger -- maybe a nothingmugger. And was more expensive than the regular stuff, at least the day I bought it. Bad show, DD!

Another frigging bug. No idea what this one is, but I've seen his brothers too. Every time I think I've seen every lousy bug there is around here, Nature coughs up something new. Bleah.

This box may not look like much, but I was perplexed by it for a short period when I found it in the street. Soft feel! Hit straight! Well, I've seen all kinds of things people have thrown out of their car windows, and those descriptors sounded to me like... what this was not, which is a box of Srixon brand golf balls. As a non-golfer, that's not where my mind went. It went straight to the gutter into which I found the box. I hope that it just blew off of someone's recycling pile -- I still have this silly image of golfers as higher-class types, people who would think littering is beneath them, that emptying the balls into one's golf bag and throwing the box out the window would be too gauche. Of course, that's not always the case.

Okay, I did not actually see this sign in person; this picture came off the Internet. I just enjoyed it.

That's what I've seen lately; how's your day?

Location, location, location.

The perils of having some information, but not all the information....

A couple of classics.

When I was a kid, the dads tended to fall into one of three camps: Old Spice, Aqua Velva, or Skin Bracer. You'd meet the occasional Brut or even Hai Karate dad, but they were more likely to see overly friendly, like a salesman who couldn't turn it off at home. My dad found that Skin Bracer hit him just right.

But there were some classic colognes and aftershaves that had and have a recognizable scent, ones that just were not much in use by dads in the time and place where I grew up. I've not made a collection of them, but sometimes curiosity has overwhelmed me and I've felt obliged to try something like...

Clubman by Pinaud has been around since 1810, and smells like every just-for-guys barbershop I've ever entered. The omnipresent scent probably comes from the Clubman powder, with which every neck got brushed following the haircut. It's a nice, manly scent, a little floral but mostly woody, a little musky. I do find it a bit strong in the aftershave, though, so I will use a little Purell with it in my palm when I slap some on. I never want to be That Guy, the one who knocks people a step back because of his strong cologne (good or bad, a strong smell from a guy makes people react poorly).

This cologne, however, I found to be a little scary:

Supposedly Florida Water, an even older product, on the American scene since 1808, is named for the legendary Fountain of Youth that Juan Ponce de León sought. It's got a very spicy scent, clean rather than musky, and I would not have guessed that it contains oils of lemon, orange, and lavender, but it does. It also supposedly has a lot of spiritual uses for all kinds of pagan practices, but arrant nonsense aside, it's a pleasant enough product. I tend to thin this also with Purell, which may be why I have enjoyed no spiritual cleansing. The one mystic power I feared was that using Florida Water might turn a guy into a Florida Man, but the company that makes it is in New Jersey, so I think it's safe.

What do I usually use? Well, I like an alcohol-based aftershave because it kills germs (keep that flesh-eating bacteria out of your razor nicks!), it dries fast, and it feels clean. So I keep a pump bottle of Purell by the sink and usually just use that. For special occasions I may break out some fancy-pants cologne I got as a gift. But, every once in a while, I'll buy a bottle of Skin Bracer and use that, and remember my dad.

Why can't a man be more like a woman?

I had an idea to do a modern update of Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady, the beloved musical based on grumpy ol' George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion.

In my modern version, manly and rugged fishmonger Eric Doolittle one day self-identifies as the dainty Eliza, upon which he (with full beard) stomps around London's West End in high heels and a bad wig. Etiquette expert Henry "Hank" Higgins makes fun of this Doolittle character's gruff voice and poor dressing skills. Shortly thereafter, Eric shows up at Higgins's office, demanding his help.

ERIC: I'm come to 'ave lessons, I 'ave, and pay for 'em too no mistake.

HANK: Well!!!! What shall we do with this baggage, Dickering?

ERIC: I want to be a lady in a flower shop 'stead of selling smelly fish in a rubber apron. But no one believes I'm a lady 'cause I ain't genteel-like. You said you could pass me off as a duchess, you did!

HANK: Oh, well, why didn't you say so? To the shaving mirror, my lad! We'll make a lady of you yet!

Following are various scenes of Hank teaching "Eliza" how to dress like a lady, including sashaying in high heels without looking like stilt-walking gorilla on training day; how to talk like a lady and not drop F-bombs all over the scenery; how to be genteel at tea and clever at conversation; all the sorts of thing Eliza wants to know.

Mind you, this is not a comedy. It's a deadly serious drama. What, are you crazy? This isn't Benny Hill or Milton Berle, you know! There's nothing funny about a burly man in a dress! NOTHING! Please don't burn down my theater!

The big twist comes in Act Two, where Eliza is exposed to society and finds out that these days all the wealthy toffs go swanning around in ripped-up jeans and trackies, like a glossy magazine image of working-class heroes, swearing like, well, fishmongers, acting like the oiks that they still despise. Crushed, Eliza returns to Higgins, who takes him in.

Now, I must confess that this story just seems to be sitting there for the grabbing, and for all I know it's the plot of every musical currently running on Broadway and the West End that is not based on the work of a Boomer band or a movie. I wouldn't know; I gave up on theater years ago. If not, and someone wants to pay me a million dollars for the rights, I would not put up a fight.

I think Shaw would like this idea, though. Like a lot of modern love stories, it has a ton of hate, and Shaw seemed to hate nearly everybody.

Moon men.

I'm not sure what to say about the Apollo 11 mission that put men on the moon for the first time fifty years ago today. So many have said so much that we've run out of intelligent or even reasonable things to say, and major media outlets are resorting to the stupid and offensive.

I take second place to no one in my admiration of the astronauts. I think they were brilliant and maybe a little crazy. You look at the size of the three-stage rocket in comparison to anything man-made you know, and someone tells you, "Okay, Neil, we're going to put you in the top of that thirty-six story thing and blast this bastard out of the atmosphere. You'll go about 239,000 miles as the crow flies, as far as all the planets in the solar system shoved together. That is, if you don't blow up, and if all the right parts fall off when they're supposed to and none of the wrong parts falls off at all. Then we're going to plop you on the moon in a little vehicle, and then we're going to get you back off the moon, and after a little rendezvous with the bigger vehicle, you'll all come back, another 239,000 miles, then a fiery death plummet into the ocean."

"Sure."

"You and Buzz will hit the moon surface while Mike stays up top."

"Sounds good."

"None of this seems crazy, does it?"

"When do we go?"

Now, I'm not saying that the conversation went like that -- they probably used a lot of smartypants mathematics -- but I think when you got it to its essence, that's where it was.

And it was glorious.

If I'd been a grown-up watching these guys, and could grasp the scale of the mission, I'd have probably thought they were crazy. When I was a kid at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum and I saw the cockpits on World War II airplanes, I thought those guys were crazy. If everybody was like me, we'd have never gotten off the ground.

Oh, I have my moments, but when it comes to heights, find another pigeon. I know plenty of guys who made it through jump school; I would have washed out for sure. Literally -- rather than evacuate the airplane I'd more likely have evacuated my innards. I can be brave about a lot of things, but I literally cannot make myself do things like that.

Or get on top of a gigantic rocket and blast off the planet.

Fortunately, it's never come up at work.

So you'll never hear any bad words about astronauts from me. Amazing bunch of folks.

The moon, however, is another matter. As we've examined before on this blog, the moon is a publicity hound that likes making trouble for me. I hope Neil and Buzz gave it a good kick in the moon pants while they were up there.

The Corpse Pose was a little too on-the-money.

Lisa's first attempt at starting a Water Yoga Class was also her last.

Taps.

I had mentioned on the site of the Great Lileks, where we are mourning the loss of Great Lileks Senior, that I had a funeral to go to Wednesday in the city. The father of one of my childhood friends, a man who was like a second dad to every kid who knew him, had died. It seems like we're losing a lot of the good ones these days.

I've lived almost two decades away from the friendly confines of NYC, and the longer I spend away from it, the more I notice things I never did, things that were just the water in which this fish used to swim. For example, the singer at the funeral had a classic New York nasal voice, the kind where you send the voice directly from the vocal cords up into the sinuses. He was otherwise a very good singer, but I wouldn't have been in the least surprised to hear something like:

An’ He will raise youse up on eagle's wings
Bear youse on da breath of dawn
Make youse to shine like da sun
An’ hold youse in da palm of His hand

They did not do bagpipes at this funeral, despite the deceased's Irishness. I guess they only break those out for firemen and policemen, and he was neither. He was, however, a veteran, and they buried him with military honors; two soldiers, flag, and taps.

"I was okay till they played taps," said one of his sons to me, red-eyed. "I didn't know they were going to do that."

Cemeteries in the city are funny, in a way. In the movies, and often in real life, even in places like the massive Evergreens Cemetery that spans the borders of Brooklyn and Queens (which is not even the biggest in the five boroughs), you have the bereaved on a hillside in a shady spot while the final farewell is said, a peaceful and quiet place. Although in films, often raining.

Here we were on a hillside by a major road, traffic whizzing back and forth, swallowing the priest's words, one guy in a truck honking his horn in tribute. A flag is folded, passed on to the widow; roses are placed on the coffin. Good-bye; see you in a better place. Thanks for always being good to me.

I passed that cemetery a million times while growing up. I never knew anyone in it. Now I do.

Honk.

I'm happy to report that the car search was a success. Well, perhaps I shouldn't call it that. I think I'd better wait until we clear the first monthly payment without dipping into savings before I can totally call it a success.

What did we get? I'll leave it to you to figure it out. I'm planting subtle clues in this blog entry....

When shopping for a car I wish I were like Ralphie's father in A Christmas Story: "The old man loved bargaining as much as an Arab trader, and he was twice as shrewd." That's not me. However, I have two traits going for me when I go to buy a new car: desperation and cheapness.

When I bought my first new car, as a callow youth, the salesman asked me what I hoped to spend on a monthly payment. I thought about it and -- as I had no idea what it could work out to be -- I named a preposterously low sum that literally made him blanch. It also made him work hard to get me a payment I could live with.

This time, the salesman told us that the 0% financing offer we'd seen advertised was not actually available on all models, including the one we'd taken out for a drive, but the financing was very low, better than we'd find anywhere else and... I said we'd go home and think about it. I was serious; I figured we'd ultimately agree, but I wanted to go home and play with the numbers. Sensing that a fish was about to escape just when he had it netted, the salesman dashed off and -- mirabile dictu! -- they managed to bring the interest rate down to zero. And gave us more for the old car than I thought they probably should.

My wife is really digging her new wheels. I got a lower-end model from the same outfit just a few years back, and compared to the technology in her car, I'm driving a Studebaker. I got a CD player, no backup camera, no Bluetooth link, no all sorts of other things she got. I mean, I'm fine with that, having grown up in the "just another damn thing to go wrong" school of tech-skepticism, but I'm glad she has this groovy bells-and-whistles mobile.

Although I guess a car with actual bells and whistles would be an ice cream truck. Never mind.

So that's the story, and I'm glad it worked out. The old car served us faithfully, but had a lot of issues from the get-go, like the exceptionally touchy theft alarm that was dealer-installed and ate batteries. More recently it needed new tires, brake pads, maybe shocks, and then the fuel tank developed a problem that, as the mechanic told me, "Won't leave you stranded but you'll never pass inspection." That meant the clock was ticking, with New York State Inspection due this fall.

Now, all those worries are gone! Replaced by the one worry of paying for the new car.

Good thing I'm a desperate skinflint and therefore drive a hard bargain by accident!

The Editliest Catch.

Mike Rowe: In the Reading Sea, men hunt for books. But the sea -- the sea has a price to be paid. 

Captain Fred: Books... We search for them, we draw them, we wrangle them, we haul them on board, and then we beat the ever-lovin' snot out of them. It's the only way in the Reading Sea.

Mike: Fred Key, captain of the Red Pencil, knows a few things about books.

Fred: People think we just throw out a line and come back with a boatload of words. Nothing could be further from the truth. Half the time they're too short, too long, too stupid -- we won't sell the stupid ones, not on this boat. All of them need editing. That's the real work. That's when the knives come out.

Mike: The dangers of the profession are nothing short of legend.

Fred: I've seen men with paper cuts down to the bone. Writer's cramp so bad -- turned them into pillbugs right there on deck. Bad backs from cheap office chairs. Overwritten tomes that had to be hauled up by hand. I've seen books so awful they make grown men cry for their mamas. Sometimes there's a misplaced modifier, and if you can't find it in time... that's 30 for you, brother. This is no job for pansies. Well, actually, yeah, there are a lot of pansies in the book business. But they're tough pansies.

Mike: It's a dirty job. And dangerous.

Fred: We once had this greenhorn, a kid named Terwilliger Thistlewaite, who got a little careless. A participle that was dangling from the winch smacked him in the head so hard he started speaking French. He's never been the same. Ol' Jane Magee, she lost her editing hand to a split infinitive. Hell, my pal Tom Btfsplk went down with his ship, the Ink-Stained Wretch, last year. Tried to take on the new Stephen King book, The weight of that monster capsized him. I ... I don't even like to talk about the old James A. Michener days. So many editors lost.

Mike: Many leave the job.

Fred: I've known editors who left the business to become emergency room nurses. Said it was more peaceful. Others went on to teach small children. Said that screaming children were easier to deal with than authors. I think one went on to drive a nitroglycerin truck. Lucky bastard.

Mike: Good thing that editing pays well.

Fred: Sorry, I was too busy laughing to address that statement. Say, Mike, haven't you written some books? Maybe we ought to have them on deck, give them a look?

Mike: Uh... as the Red Pencil sails off into the Reading Sea, we close this episode of... The Editliest Catch.

Porched earth policy.

So, to continue the saga from yesterday -- an all-day saga, if you will -- I had to paint the porch again because it looked like crap after one winter, and since I didn't paint it last year, it looked like crappity crap after two winters. I refused to paint white again, at least for the floorboards, and the Mrs. agreed. All colors can show dirt and wear, but nothing compares to white.

Picking a color took most of the spring, but that was okay since it was too rainy to paint then anyway. The question was, should the porch floor match the shutters and roof? Or would it be too matchy-matchy? Ultimately we decided to take a chance on matchy-matchy, because the house already has two bold and one mild color, and a fourth non-white color would make it start to look all crazy-quilt, which anyone can tell you is more risky than matchy-matchy.

The other big decision was to use a textured paint, which was new to me. Our porch is ridiculously slippery in the winter; I've fallen down the stairs at least once, and I live in fear of UPS men with attorneys delivering to us in the winter. This textured paint has some sand-like stuff in it gives you a little grip. If it prevents one concussion, one back injury, it's well worth the extra expense.

They used to call it sand paint. I remember my dad using it. It was very popular for ceilings in the fifties and sixties, and was still in many homes when I was a kid. Now they call them popcorn ceilings, but I first heard the term in this decade.

For kids, these ceilings ceased being popular as soon as we let go of our non-Mylar helium balloons, because that sucker was popping instantly. Sand paint did not feel like beach sand; it felt like broken glass. You wouldn't want it on your walls.

Anyway, I remember Dad using sand paint and it being quite difficult. What made it harder for him was the cleanup; Dad never used today's disposable brushes, paint rollers, or drop cloths. In fact, I am dead certain that he had the same drop cloths in use from before I was born until they sold the house after I graduated college.

So, yes, sand paint was difficult, and textured paint is not as bad (less sand), but still more difficult than regular paint, and I didn't prepare adequately.

We prepped the space all right; I even let my wife use the power washer and play Ghostbuster. Seriously, she probably saved me an hour. But the textured paint ate up all that time and more.

It's extremely thick, as you might imagine, and painting the trim around the deck was like icing a driveway with a rubber spatula. My one saving grace was that our porch is not that big.

To determine if I could afford this house, I'd have to factor in the money
to have flunkies on hand to paint the doggone porch.

Usually I can do the boards with a roller on a stick. The textured paint can warns you right on the lid to use a roller cover with a 1/2-inch nap. I thought I had one but I did not, so I thought -- this 3/8-inch cover is close enough, right? That's just an eighth of an inch off!

Har.

The roller got sunk in this goo and wouldn't move. Trying to roll it out was like try to butter new Wonder Bread with cold butter. I wound up doing most of the planks by hand, with which my back and legs took great issue by Sunday morning. I work in a chair most of the time; I have muscles that have been dormant since the Space Shuttle program ended. They registered their displeasure.

But despite that, on Sunday morning, I dragged my sorry behind to Home Depot and got the right roller covers, some more disposable brushes, and some more disposable roller pans. I was aiming to burn whatever I used after this job, because nothing would ever come clean.

And the job did get done, but for a touch-up on the white bits, which I'll do today. It came off looking pretty good. You don't get that nice, smooth finish with a textured paint, but I'll trade that for safety. From the street it looks great. Not too matchy-matchy.

The one thing I didn't mention in all this is that the dogs only leave the house by the porch. They both are scared of the cellar steps, and the back steps are very steep. I had to time the painting around their usual evacuation periods, because no way can I carry 100+ pound dogs down the other stairs. I should have started training them on those back stairs after the last debacle, when the porch got repaired. Anyway, no dogs exploded and my back is relatively intact.

And the porch looks good. Will it really be safer underfoot in the winter? Will it really still look good come spring? Watch this space in the months ahead for more kvetching, moaning, krexing, and general complaining to find out!

Porched.

Blarg.

I'm afraid I have little for you today, as yesterday was finally Paint the Porch Day. I literally cannot tell you how many times I've done this since we moved in here and my wife decided the porch needed to be stained white. At a guess I'd say five, plus one porch repair job that included professional painters. That's a lot, but the elements beat the crap out of the porch. How they got on my porch, I'll never know.

I was at it all afternoon, and then we went to the Vigil Mass Saturday evening so I could have all day Sunday to finish the job. Fun!

Anyway, there's more to the story (isn't there always?), which I will share with you Monday, if finishing the job doesn’t finish me today. Darn you, nice days! Where's the rain when I want to get out of chores?

Live a little.

I recently read that human beings cry up to 30 gallons of tears annually. That's each of us, not all together. And it's a good thing that we don't do it all at once, or we'd be dead. In fact, we'd be worse than dehydrated, like we got zapped by the Kelvans; 30 gallons of water weighs more than 250 pounds, so a lot of us would disappear up the spout, as it were.

The fact is, we live out our entire existence on earth incrementally, one meal, one breath, one tear at a time. Years ago I heard about the "bologna loaf" method of tackling large and daunting projects -- no one can just sit down and eat an entire 10-pound loaf of bologna, but anyone (except perhaps the most bologna-adverse) can eat one slice. Do that every day and eventually: no more bologna.

Now, I don't know why someone would need to consume that whole loaf, nor how it could stay fresh long enough for such a period, but the point is illustrated well. You can't do it all at once, so do a bit now.

People sometimes like to advise us to live one day at a time, and there was even a hit country song along those lines in 1974. And while this doesn't mean to go hog-wild and throw away all your money today like Don Ameche leaving for space in Cocoon, it does mean that there's no day in which to do anything but the day we are in. So focus on that.

The mathematics of increments are always mind-boggling, though. Based on an average lifespan, the American male will brush his teeth more than 57,000 times, eat more than 86,000 meals, take something like 576,700,000 breaths. Hell, I'll probably spend 100 hours playing a game on my phone that I don't even like that much. And yet we think life is too short.

The Huffington Post's more useful Australian site addressed this topic two years ago, and their calculations provided some weird figures: You'll spend:

• just over 13 years of your life at work 
• with an extra year on top in unpaid overtime
• more than 11 years looking at screens
• 16 months exercising
• 4 and a half years eating
• 26 years sleeping

Man, just looking at all this makes me tired. I think I'm about six months behind in my sleeping, so I'm gonna lie down and catch up, k? See you at Christmas.

In my merry Oldsmobile.

Lucille decided to protect her new car by paying extra for the Bubble Wrap Package.

What does this mean?

We're buying a car.

Yikes!

Good-bye, money!

💸💸💸💸💸

It had to happen.

It's my wife's car, really. We're the kind of people that buy a car we like and drive it into the ground. Or into a guardrail, as one of my vehicles met its end, thanks to hydroplaning. Now her old car is just giving up the ghost, signalling a problem that the fixing thereof is more costly than the value of the vehicle -- so it is, as I say, time.

I think the Bubble Wrap Package depicted above is a good thing. A few years ago I wrote a song to commemorate the angst that comes with driving a brand-new car; my hopes that some genius would hammer out a tune to my lyrics has been unrealized. I suppose it's too old-fashioned, but then, so are Oldsmobiles. Actually, so am I.

I'll keep you posted on the Journey Into Autoland, as we try to dicker, bicker, wheel, deal, connive, convince, and bargain our way into a fine four-fendered friend to take us hither and yon. Especially yon. Hither is overrated.

Wish us luck! Wish all our money luck in its future new home!

😰

A numbers game.

Squish the Mets.

Not interested in the All-Star Game, as my beloved Mets are 10 games under .500 and going nowhere, saddled with injuries (as usual), stupid coaching, and criminal ownership. I was surprised to see that a Met (rookie Pete Alonso) won the Home Run Derby on Monday, but that will probably mean a season-ending muscle pull next week. Meanwhile, Real Baseball lost again to Fake Baseball, because the All-Star Game is played under the rules of Fake Baseball.

Never mind all that. I have a Mets mystery to solve. It concerns this:

What the heck?

Doesn't this Japanese soda made by beverage giant Kirin look a little like...

Why, yes it does.

I had never heard of Mets soda, but saw it in passing in a video about the strange Japanese (but I repeat myself) world of vending machines. I sat up. Wha...? The Mets have a soda brand? So I did some digging.

I have read, on a Web site that has just gone defunct so I can't link to it (I blame Trump) (organize and resist!), that the name of Mets soda does come from a baseball team, but not the New York one, or in fact a real one; it comes from the fictional Tokyo Mets, who appeared in a manga that ran from 1972 to 1976. It was called Yakyuukyou no Uta, and this is the summary: "Against her insistence, Yuuki is drafted by the Tokyo Mets as the first woman player in the baseball league."

Maybe the New York Mets should try it. What the hell, we're mired in fourth place.

Anyway, it's not too surprising that the manga creators should have named the team after the Mets, since they would have started work on this title soon after the New York Mets shocked the baseball world by winning the 1969 Series, the first expansion team to do so. And using a team name that way might be considered a non-violation, fair use of a trademark -- which then transferred to the soda.

Okay, so let's say the Mets name is up for grabs; what about that logo?

Generally, the United States and Japan respect each other's trademarks, both being signatories to the Madrid Protocol. (I know, China is too, but I expect better out of Japan.) For all I know, the Mets get a quarter every time the Japanese buy a case of Mets soda. Apparently the Mets soda has been around for a while, so I can't quite believe that the New York organization, greedy as it is, has never heard about it.

Mets cola, also by Kirin, made the headlines seven years ago by claiming to help people lose weight. I guess Mets losing can be a good thing, but I still dislike it.

Meanwhile, closer to home, we have a propane distributor in the northeast that goes by this name:

Hmm... Doesn't that remind you a little of...?

Good thing for the propane guys that the New York Yankees have such a reputation for being kind and generous.

Ladies and gentlemen... the Spurners!

I'm told that dogs will regulate their own weight, unless they have feeding issues that might interfere. They may, for example, eat less so they will carry less weight in the hot summer, then eat more again to bulk up for winter's scarcities. My dogs seem to be doing this now, but they have different styles. Tralfaz, who turned into a pretty good member of the Clean Plate Club in maturity, has been leaving about a quarter of his grub in the bowl at each meal. Nipper, on the other hand, just randomly spurns meals.

It's so weird, because as I mentioned when we got him three years ago, Nipper was the hungriest puppy in the world. He was insulted if someone else was getting food while he was hungry, even after he'd eaten. How dare you! Starving here! But of course that frantic growth period wore off, and he turned into an ordinary eater, though always a good trencherman. Lately, though, he's got a new nickname: The Spurner!

"How'd he do on breakfast?"

"The Spurner is back."

Nipper and the Spurners could have been a one-hit wonder in the sixties.

"The Spurners' 'I Kibble You Not' got to #52 on the charts on this date in 1965!"

Spurn has always been one of those words that make me smile. It's so useful, but in a haughty and old-fashioned way. It makes mere rejection sound so much more important.

I spurn your book of hamster poems.

I don't merely eschew kale, I spurn it.

Discounted tickets to the new Broadway musical, Scout 'n Boo, based on To Kill a Mockingbird? Guess what?

Spurn away!

And spurn always makes me think of a scene in George MacDonald Fraser's great comic history novel, The Pyrates.

The Pyrates is a madcap story of Captain Benjamin Avery, for whom every woman falls, the kind of hero that makes other men feel they are wearing mismatched socks, who must fight the ferocious pirate brotherhood to save a priceless crown and rescue his beloved blonde. One woman who falls for him like a sack of rocks is the lovely Spanish heiress Meliflua. At once point he and she must disguise themselves to sneak into Viceroy Don Lardo's ball, him as a Spanish grandee, her as a young stripling:

Stripling (pathetically): I can ask for thee man I love -- thee 'an'some, nobble, yummy, croo-el Capteen Ben 'oo spurns me!

Grandee: Oh, come off it, I don't!

Stripling: You do! Spurn, spurn --

Grandee: Oh, Meliflua, we've been through all that, and it boots not, honestly.

I think of that every time spurning comes up. If you read the book, you might too. But there are so many wonderful bits in The Pyrates that if I quoted them all, you basically would have read the book.

So find it and dig in. You want some light summer reading? Then spurn it not.

Mysteries in real life.

I'm working on a mystery novel, and I think I was like to start sweating blood working out the plot. You have to keep it moving, keep it interesting, keep it sensible, and keep it mysterious. The mystery genre is so well-trodden that it's hard to keep a fan guessing, but that's the writer's job. 

Unlike the Great Lileks, who writes mysteries as his characters lead him, I have to have it all plotted out in advance, lest I contradict myself, make a huge mistake, and hear about it from readers later. I have to know what all the characters are doing, even when they're off the stage. So I write page after page of notes until I have a workable outline. Even then I have to make changes on the fly, when I realize someone's motivations don't work, something happened for which there is no adequate explanation, or some guilty character's alibi really would exonerate him. It's beautifully complicated.

There are several kinds of mysteries, such as the whodunit, which usually features an eccentric genius as a hero who cracks the case, or a police procedural, which shows in a more realistic manner how the police solve crimes. TV crime shows are probably split between these two sub-genres. There are others, like the thriller, which is really a crime novel rather than a mystery, and cross-genre mysteries that are mysteries combined with romances, Westerns, SF, or fantasy (my favorites of all time being Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy stories). (Sorry, Mr. Asimov.)

My hero is no genius of a detective, but he will be required to use his wits and his powers of observation to solve the case and stay alive. But powers of observation are seldom as magically developed even in experienced policemen as they are in characters like Hercule Poirot or Psych's Shawn Spencer. I had a lesson in this in my youth from -- where else? -- something crappy I saw on television.

Whodunnit? was an absolutely dreadful TV game show that ran for five weeks as a late-season replacement in 1979. The object of the game (hosted by Ed McMahon) was to guess who committed the crime shown in several acted-out film clips. Celebrity panelists like Jack Klugman, who solved TV mysteries as Quincy, M.E., and lawyers F. Lee Bailey and Melvin Belli, would examine the clues, ask questions... and have absolutely no idea who committed the crime. At least that's how it worked in the episode I recall dimly. At the end, McMahon would go over all the clues that were in the scripted portion, and everyone missed everything. It was an embarrassment for all involved. 

I understand that this was based on a British show that had a more successful run; I've never seen it but I hope their panel of detectives was more observant than ours. 

I also remember an episode of PBS's American Playhouse called "The Great Whodunit." It featured some terrific actors like Gene Barry (who had solved TV mysteries in Burke's Law) and Howard Duff and Geraldine Fitzgerald, and starred TV's least believable action hero, William Conrad.  

Conrad was a brilliant actor; his voice work as Matt Dillon on the radio version of Gunsmoke is still outstanding, can still put a chill up your spine. And his comedy work as the frantic announcer for Rocky and Bullwinkle is an amazing roller-coaster of chaotic fun. But he came to national prominence when he stepped in front of the camera as hard-boiled and really fat and really expensive detective Frank Cannon. Audiences loved him so much that he went on to star in two other mystery series, both of which required less physical activity: Nero Wolfe and Jake and the Fatman (he did not play Jake). And, unfortunately, he appeared in this American Playhouse episode.

Part of the problem with the episode was that it was a collection of whodunits with Conrad and Barry as a framing device, playing themselves but also sort of playing detectives...? The mysteries seemed kind of stupid to me, sub-Encyclopedia Brown -- and I was a kid. The whole thing was a mixed-up, lifeless mess. But let me quote from an IMDB reviewer who nails it:

It has been a very long time since I saw this extremely cheap, studio-bound, videotaped omnibus of alleged mystery stories, but it has continued to stay in my memory as quite possibly the worst attempt at televised mystery programming ever done. Somehow it managed to attract an extremely professional roster of star names, all of whom play themselves... that is, if they were really private detectives instead of actors (both Barry and Conrad are forced to intone that the cases they are now working on are the most baffling of "my career," as though they really work for Pinkertons). The solutions to these mysteries range from the simply hackneyed to the grotesquely obvious to the downright bizarre. Somehow Barry, Conrad, Fitzgerald and company managed to hold straight faces through all of this, though Heaven knows how. There must be an outtake reel somewhere in the world that is absolutely priceless.

What does this all tell me? That in real life it is exceptionally difficult to solve mysteries based on observation of minute details. Also, that it is exceptionally easy to screw up whodunits if you don't know what you're doing. Then you wind up with a "whatdidIdo?" instead.

They're out there.

Remember, my fellow Americans, that the holiday weekend still isn't over, and while you may not be a crazy person, there are crazy persons on the roads....

Drink mixup.

This is all wrong.

It's not that Ripple is a dairy-free milk, or is so smug about its veganism that it touts itself with the tagline "As It Should Be." Although these things are indeed objectionable. It's that it stole its name from a great bum wine of the past.

Readers of a certain age, or those who just spent too much time watching reruns, will recall that Ripple was the genuine name of an actual E & J Gallo product, a flavored wine that was a favorite of TV's Fred Sanford of Sanford and Son. 

Ripple was a boozehound's drink because it was cheap, though, not because it was strong. It was a fixture on Sanford's sideboard, where he might have a brief cocktail when life sent him disappointments, or victories, or he just felt like it. Basically we were led to believe that Ripple was Fred's constant companion through his day. 

Real fans of the show recall that Fred liked to class things up sometimes by mixing Champagne and Ripple, a celebratory imbibition known as Champipple.

Sadly, however, Ripple is no more. One can imagine that Ernest and/or Julio Gallo got too big for his britches and decided not to quench the thirst of the Sanfords of the world.

I shouldn't be too upset about the smug babies at the new Ripple appropriating the name. The US Patent and Trademark Office lists 386 trademarks with the word "ripple" in them, most of which are dead. But losing "Ripple" as an alcoholic's tipple just takes something out of the culture. I guess we should be glad that we still have classics like Thunderbird, Wild Irish Rose, MD 20/20, and Cisco.

I'm not ashamed to say that I tried Ripple in my youth, but not in the circumstances you may be imagining (Fred standing around with the street crew, singin' doo-wop, pourin' out a little Ripple for my homies). It turned out that the Jewish grandfather of a childhood friend liked Ripple, even though he was not a drinker, and had an ancient bottle in his office. My buddy and I thought it was pretty vile, but it may also have gone off, if such a drink ever could go off.

Ah, well. 

Ed "The Man" Brown hid his bottle in his fire extinguisher. Lou Grant tucked his in his desk. Mr. Howell had a swagger stick filled with good stuff. But Fred Sanford proudly displayed his favorite beverage for all to see. Tells you something about the power of the Ripple.

Coffee math.

A K-Cup conundrum:

I've noted before that Dunkin' Donuts coffee has a prominent place in our household. In addition to a pot of rocket fuel in the morning and a pot of decaf after dinner, the day is filled with Dunkin' in Keurig pod form. Yes, we're pod people. I confess I like to try different brands of coffee for my K-Cup usage, but the lovely and talented Mrs. K prefers to stick to DD.

So, when I go to the Big Box Warehouse Member Store, I get her the Big Warehouse Boxes of caffeinated and decaffeinated. This way she can regulate her caffeine intake. During the day she uses two pods for big cups o' joe; she usually likes a half-caf, unless she's flagging (in which case, full strength!) or it's getting late (then decaf, or I call it, kissing-your-sister time). The pods usually go at about the same rate.

But Dunkin' seems to think that decaf drinkers don't drink as much coffee as caf drinkers. There are 72 pods in the caffeinated box, 54 in the decaf box. Normally Dunkin' sells both kinds of coffee for the same price, so it's not like the 18-pod difference is caused by the cost of the Swiss water process or something. And indeed, the decaf box is cheaper because it has fewer pods. But why does it have fewer pods?

No one I know can tell me. Seriously, if you have any insight on this, leave it in comments.

Now the math part. I asked myself, "Self! If you wanted to have an even number of both kinds of pods, how many boxes of each would it take?"

I sat down with the ol' adding machine, abacus, and Texas Instruments calculator to crunch the numbers, and it's not much -- three boxes of caffeinated pods is 216 pods, the same as four boxes of decaf pods.

So that solves the how but not the why. Why are their fewer decaf pods in a box? Even if people consume decaf at a slower rate than caf, it's not like these things go stale in a hurry. (The box I bought last month is good for a year.) And why do you taunt me with mathematics, Dunkin' Donuts?

Next up: How many boxes of doughnuts vs. boxes of Munchkins will it take to come out even...

Next up: Commies!

Did you know that Uncle Sam was a superhero? Yes, in the long-defunct Quality Comics. Created by Will Eisner (brilliant creator also of the Spirit), Uncle Sam dispensed some down-home American wisdom along with punching his way through all sorts of Nazis and other Axis types and beating the crap out of gangsters and suchlike internal enemies of our nation. 

After the war, comic books started to lose their grip on the American imagination, but for a few prominent heroes like Superman and his pals. Quality Comics folded; DC Comics has owned Uncle Sam and the rest of the Quality heroes (Doll Man, Human Bomb, Phantom Lady, Blackhawk Squadron, etc.) since 1956.

It's nice to know that at one time, American comics were pro-American. Of course now they tend to be as anti-American as anything in pop culture. In the 1990s, poor Uncle Sam was reduced to being a homeless bum fighting the evil side of America in a miniseries; it was painted by the brilliant Alex Ross, but it reflects the attitudes that have helped shrink comic books into claustrophobic US-hating nihilism. 

It's hard to believe how pro-America our comic books once were. Well, maybe the people who made them hated America, but it wouldn't sell back then. Not sure it sells all that well now, actually, but there are a lot of other reasons for the publishers to blame for their current decline besides wokeness, which is exactly what they will continue to do.

Oh, Uncle Sam! Where are you when we need you?