Personally, I suggest running on eggnog. Well, it works for Steyn, anyway.
Saturday, November 30, 2019
Tick tock!
Personally, I suggest running on eggnog. Well, it works for Steyn, anyway.
Friday, November 29, 2019
So what's out there on Black Friday?
I ask myself: Self, is it worth shopping on Black Friday?
And I answer: No.
I think I've related this before, but in living memory -- the 1990s, damn it -- Black Friday may have been a financial thing for the stores, turning red ink of debt to black ink of profit, but for shoppers it was not such a big deal. The day after Thanksgiving my wife and I went to a mall at 10:00 a.m. to get through early before the crowds started. Indeed, there was hardly anyone there, and a lot of the stores were just opening, and many opened late, because the day before had been a big holiday and the whole mall was closed. We were there for a couple of hours, tops, and the place was still not crowded.
What the flaming hell has happened to us since, people? How have we gone so insane in a little over twenty years?
I don't associate Thanksgiving with doorbusters. I still associate it with the more traditional pantsbusters.
Anyway, take it from me, the stuff out there isn't worth fighting over. I'm serious. Some things are fun, like this wine bottle gift bag that I liked enough to take a picture of but not enough to buy, except now I wish I had gotten a couple but I'm not going back today:
A couple of people on my wife's list are getting wine, and they could probably use the reminder that Santa's always watching. So are the state troopers.
Then there's these fabulous items, seen on JCPenney's site:
Meanwhile, over at Sears, which still exists, we have the Jaclyn Smith home collection. I yield to no man in my admiration for Smith, and much of the Sears home collection that bears her name is pretty nice. But this blog being what it is, I had to zero in on the thing that struck me as all wrong:
Finally, I saw this in Walmart and was completely not tempted to buy it, but I sort of admired it all the same:
Yes, men (for this was in the men's clothing section), you too can get the Deranged Easter Bunny Suit as worn by Ralphie in the film classic A Christmas Story. Don't you want to come downstairs on Christmas morning looking like a pink nightmare? Neither do I. But if you must, or you must give it to someone on your list, remember to get this genuine Christmas Story version of the suit, complete with the attached bunny slippers.
If this all hasn't saved you from making a foray out into retail madness, there's not much else I can say. Humor writer Dave Barry has yet to release his annual gift guide, which is a shame, because that usually kills every desire anyone has to shop ever again. Good luck, and let us know if you survive.
Thursday, November 28, 2019
It's a good day for a parade.
In my post title on this Thanksgiving Day, I'm not thinking of that silly talent show they call a parade in Manhattan. That thing has been completely mutated into an ad for Broadway and Black Friday events and nothing else. I'm sorry anyone bothers; I'd far rather go to any tiny town's Thanksgiving Parade today than spend a minute at the one in midtown.
That aside, it is a good day for a parade. Thanksgiving and gratitude seem to go with solemnity and contemplation, but it ought to go with exuberance and joy as well. Hallelujah! What a great place to live. What great thanks we owe to God, "that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be" (as George Washington wrote). And what thanks we owe to those who secured our liberties with sweat and sacrifice. We have a tendency to think that things are easy once they've been accomplished, but nothing worthwhile is ever easy.
As President Reagan declared in 1985:
That aside, it is a good day for a parade. Thanksgiving and gratitude seem to go with solemnity and contemplation, but it ought to go with exuberance and joy as well. Hallelujah! What a great place to live. What great thanks we owe to God, "that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be" (as George Washington wrote). And what thanks we owe to those who secured our liberties with sweat and sacrifice. We have a tendency to think that things are easy once they've been accomplished, but nothing worthwhile is ever easy.
As President Reagan declared in 1985:
In this season of Thanksgiving we are grateful for our abundant harvests and the productivity of our industries; for the discoveries of our laboratories; for the researches of our scientists and scholars; for the achievements of our artists, musicians, writers, clergy, teachers, physicians, businessmen, engineers, public servants, farmers, mechanics, artisans, and workers of every sort whose honest toil of mind and body in a free land rewards them and their families and enriches our entire Nation.Enjoy this great day, America!
Let us thank God for our families, friends, and neighbors, and for the joy of this very festival we celebrate in His name. Let every house of worship in the land and every home and every heart be filled with the spirit of gratitude and praise and love on this Thanksgiving Day.
Wednesday, November 27, 2019
Fred's Book Club: Oh! Henry!
This week, for reasons explained below, our Humpback Writer (because the book club is held on Wednesdays, ha-ha) is the great William Sydney Porter, best known by the pen name O. Henry. He wrote hundreds of short stories -- I have had difficulty getting an exact count -- and had nothing to do with the creation of the Oh Henry! candy bar.
My American Story professor dismissed O. Henry stories as gimmicky nonsense that, once you had a handle on how he constructed them, could never fool you with their twists again. Well, I'm not so sure about that, not in all the stories, anyway. But even grumpy ol' professor had to admire the man's prolific career, and the way he could construct a character and set a scene vividly and quickly. Porter had some genuine talent, which is why he is still beloved. Plus, anyone who is confused about the definition of irony can get a good education from him.
Sure, more than a century after his death, some of his stuff is very dated -- especially ethnic humor, which is a no-no now. There's one story, "A Harlem Tragedy," about an Irish woman feeling unloved because her husband won't hit her the way the other Irishmen hit their wives. You can see how the idea might have seemed funny, by turning expectations on their head, but it's really not. And you know I'm no social justice type. But a man who turns out that many stories that fast is not watching each one for the consideration of the feelings of more sensitive generations to come. With his output, it's a wonder they are as good as they are.
And they are, critical disdain be damned. O. Henry is such a beloved man of letters that plaques to his memory are displayed on locations in Austin, Texas, in Asheville, North Carolina, in Greesnboro, North Carolina, and at Pete's Tavern in Manhattan, a former haunt of his, and of my youth (when I had some money, because nothing near Gramercy Park has been cheap in a long time).
Between 1902 and his passing at the too-young age of 47 in 1910, Porter wrote a staggering 381 short stories. They say the drinking killed him, but you could almost as easily say he wrote himself to death.
Anyway, here is the book in question:
I'm pretty sure I picked up my copy at the Strand in Manhattan. The Best Stories of O. Henry was a Doubleday edition, one of a series of Best Short Stories by various authors, the kind of book run off the press by the ton in the pre-Internet era. A search of the ISBN tells me it was printed in 1962. It has 38 of his stories, chosen by editors including glory-hound publisher Bennett Cerf, who did everything he could to get his name on anything. It does include most of the best-known Henry stories, like "The Ransom of Red Chief" and "The Making of a New Yorker" and, of course, "The Gift of the Magi."
I know exactly when I was reading this book, almost precisely 30 years ago, because I noted on one of the blank front pages, "Inscribed on an 8:01 out of Flatbush -- stuck for well over 1/2 an hour. 11/10/89, 9:35 a.m." And I signed it. Obviously I was late.
These kinds of irritations are inevitable in the big city, now, then, and in Porter's day. But I have always been impressed by his love for the city, with which he is most identified, and which he found to be full of interesting, crazy, dangerous, hilarious, low-down, wonderful, charitable people. His stories covered them all, from Park Avenue to park bench. You can't fake his kind of affection as long as he did. He wrote a lot of Western stories, like "The Passing of Black Eagle," as any writer who put out work by the yard in his day had to do; I think it was the law. But unlike many writers of Westerns, Porter had lived in Texas for years -- as they say, that's another story.
His seasonal stories are also popular, like the Christmas "Gift of the Magi." There were stories like the autumnal tearjerker "The Last Leaf" and early winter comedy "The Cop and the Anthem."
That last story, included in my book and in his early collection called The Four Million -- available free at Gutenberg -- is a classic O. Henry reversal about Soapy, a career petty crook who wants to commit some small crime one chilly day so as to enjoy winter in the warmth of the penitentiary on "the Island." (NB: I've seen a Prestwick House edition of O. Henry stories that say "the Island," as Soapy calls it, referred to Rikers, but Rikers Island was not a prison until 1925. Blackwell's Island, now Roosevelt Island, housed prisoners until the 1930s. Just FYI.)
No matter what Soapy does, he literally cannot get arrested. A restaurateur looks at his clothes and throws him out before he can steal a meal. He breaks a window and the cop coming on the scene can't imagine Soapy would be standing there if he had done it. He gets fresh with a lady who gets fresh back with him. Later, defeated, he begins to see the light:
Please enjoy, and have a happy Thanksgiving, and lift your glass of porter to Mr. Porter, the great O. Henry!
My American Story professor dismissed O. Henry stories as gimmicky nonsense that, once you had a handle on how he constructed them, could never fool you with their twists again. Well, I'm not so sure about that, not in all the stories, anyway. But even grumpy ol' professor had to admire the man's prolific career, and the way he could construct a character and set a scene vividly and quickly. Porter had some genuine talent, which is why he is still beloved. Plus, anyone who is confused about the definition of irony can get a good education from him.
Sure, more than a century after his death, some of his stuff is very dated -- especially ethnic humor, which is a no-no now. There's one story, "A Harlem Tragedy," about an Irish woman feeling unloved because her husband won't hit her the way the other Irishmen hit their wives. You can see how the idea might have seemed funny, by turning expectations on their head, but it's really not. And you know I'm no social justice type. But a man who turns out that many stories that fast is not watching each one for the consideration of the feelings of more sensitive generations to come. With his output, it's a wonder they are as good as they are.
And they are, critical disdain be damned. O. Henry is such a beloved man of letters that plaques to his memory are displayed on locations in Austin, Texas, in Asheville, North Carolina, in Greesnboro, North Carolina, and at Pete's Tavern in Manhattan, a former haunt of his, and of my youth (when I had some money, because nothing near Gramercy Park has been cheap in a long time).
Between 1902 and his passing at the too-young age of 47 in 1910, Porter wrote a staggering 381 short stories. They say the drinking killed him, but you could almost as easily say he wrote himself to death.
Anyway, here is the book in question:
I'm pretty sure I picked up my copy at the Strand in Manhattan. The Best Stories of O. Henry was a Doubleday edition, one of a series of Best Short Stories by various authors, the kind of book run off the press by the ton in the pre-Internet era. A search of the ISBN tells me it was printed in 1962. It has 38 of his stories, chosen by editors including glory-hound publisher Bennett Cerf, who did everything he could to get his name on anything. It does include most of the best-known Henry stories, like "The Ransom of Red Chief" and "The Making of a New Yorker" and, of course, "The Gift of the Magi."
I know exactly when I was reading this book, almost precisely 30 years ago, because I noted on one of the blank front pages, "Inscribed on an 8:01 out of Flatbush -- stuck for well over 1/2 an hour. 11/10/89, 9:35 a.m." And I signed it. Obviously I was late.
These kinds of irritations are inevitable in the big city, now, then, and in Porter's day. But I have always been impressed by his love for the city, with which he is most identified, and which he found to be full of interesting, crazy, dangerous, hilarious, low-down, wonderful, charitable people. His stories covered them all, from Park Avenue to park bench. You can't fake his kind of affection as long as he did. He wrote a lot of Western stories, like "The Passing of Black Eagle," as any writer who put out work by the yard in his day had to do; I think it was the law. But unlike many writers of Westerns, Porter had lived in Texas for years -- as they say, that's another story.
His seasonal stories are also popular, like the Christmas "Gift of the Magi." There were stories like the autumnal tearjerker "The Last Leaf" and early winter comedy "The Cop and the Anthem."
That last story, included in my book and in his early collection called The Four Million -- available free at Gutenberg -- is a classic O. Henry reversal about Soapy, a career petty crook who wants to commit some small crime one chilly day so as to enjoy winter in the warmth of the penitentiary on "the Island." (NB: I've seen a Prestwick House edition of O. Henry stories that say "the Island," as Soapy calls it, referred to Rikers, but Rikers Island was not a prison until 1925. Blackwell's Island, now Roosevelt Island, housed prisoners until the 1930s. Just FYI.)
No matter what Soapy does, he literally cannot get arrested. A restaurateur looks at his clothes and throws him out before he can steal a meal. He breaks a window and the cop coming on the scene can't imagine Soapy would be standing there if he had done it. He gets fresh with a lady who gets fresh back with him. Later, defeated, he begins to see the light:
An instantaneous and strong impulse moved him to battle with his desperate fate. He would pull himself out of the mire; he would make a man of himself again; he would conquer the evil that had taken possession of him. There was time; he was comparatively young yet; he would resurrect his old eager ambitions and pursue them without faltering. Those solemn but sweet organ notes had set up a revolution in him. To-morrow he would go into the roaring downtown district and find work. A fur importer had once offered him a place as driver. He would find him to-morrow and ask for the position. He would be somebody in the world. He would—The reason I bring up O. Henry the day before Thanksgiving is "Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen," a tale included in my edition, which I reprint for you below the fold, courtesy of Gutenberg's volunteers, who did the typing. If you might consider making a donation to the Gutenberg Project this year, to help them keep the fires of civilization lit, it would be a grand gesture.
Soapy felt a hand laid on his arm. He looked quickly around into the broad face of a policeman.
"What are you doin' here?" asked the officer.
"Nothin'," said Soapy.
"Then come along," said the policeman.
"Three months on the Island," said the Magistrate in the Police Court the next morning.
Please enjoy, and have a happy Thanksgiving, and lift your glass of porter to Mr. Porter, the great O. Henry!
⇩⇩⇩
Tuesday, November 26, 2019
Monday, November 25, 2019
Other Thanksgiving traditions.
America has many great Thanksgiving traditions, from parades and big dinners to wheedling the Friday following off from work. But there are some little-known traditions out there that the reader may find interesting and edifying. Herewith some amazing traditions of which you should know.
Dry Turkey Shoot
Every year residents of Palimpsest County, Oklahoma, are invited to bring inedible turkeys to the Dry Turkey Shoot, held in a different town each year at 9:00 p.m. Under powerful lights, residents set up the failed dinner entrees and shoot them to pieces with antique blunderbusses. They may bring their own weapons or rent some at the event.
Find the Healthy Ingredient
The Gilroys of East Westwycke, Maryland, have an annual family tradition to find the one healthy ingredient in the entire meal, from appetizer to dessert, following USDA recommendations. Last year no winner was declared.
Tofurky Curling
Oregon loves its Tofurky! So much so that Portland residents can compete in a curling competition, using the frozen vegan delights as curling stones. Teams are asked to sign up before November 1. It was held last year at Meat Is Murder Rink, and the West Linn Weedeaters took home the Golden Tofurky.
Mogawastan Throwdown
The entire Western New York town of Mogawastan (pop.: 2,980) engages in a last-person-standing Wesson oil wrestling competition, starting at 9:30 a.m. Stay on your feet or take your seat! Last year's winner: "Large" Marge Blinchki, at 3:16 p.m.
Green Bean Casserole Wave Pool
The main water park of Hortence, Nebraska, Wild Hortence, reopens on Thanksgiving Day, filling its wave pool with green bean casserole to the delight of residents.
Buckle Up Buttercup
San Francisco, California, is known for many things, and among them is the annual Buckle Up Buttercup. Citizens and others are encouraged to wear buckled shoes in honor of the Pilgrims. Prizes are given out in various categories, such as Most Authentic Footwear and Fabulousest!
Turkey Plop
Many communities in the United States do a Turkey Trot, a "fun run" to raise money and promote community cohesion, but only Glurble, North Dakota, does a Turkey Plop. The event is essentially the same, but to make it more challenging, the 5K path is littered with rakes, icy patches, tripwires, marbles, and the like. Drinking is encouraged. EMTs are standing by!
Cincinnati Turkey Drop
In honor of the most famous Cincinnati-based television show, WKRP in Cincinnati, and the Mr. Carlson turkey drop, aircraft are deployed to drop live turkeys over downtown on the Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving. It's messy, sure, but in 2008 they tried it with frozen turkeys and the property damage was immense. Residents are advised to avoid downtown streets between 9:00 and 9:15 a.m.
Boar Dusters!
Gabbahey, Alabama, is home to Room and Boar, the nation's number one manufacturer of boar-bristle cleaning and beauty brushes. Every Black Friday they throw open the factory doors for a one-day direct-to-public sale known as the Boar Dusters. Smart shoppers get there early!
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| Stuffed Turkey Skype is catching on nationwide |
Dry Turkey Shoot
Every year residents of Palimpsest County, Oklahoma, are invited to bring inedible turkeys to the Dry Turkey Shoot, held in a different town each year at 9:00 p.m. Under powerful lights, residents set up the failed dinner entrees and shoot them to pieces with antique blunderbusses. They may bring their own weapons or rent some at the event.
Find the Healthy Ingredient
The Gilroys of East Westwycke, Maryland, have an annual family tradition to find the one healthy ingredient in the entire meal, from appetizer to dessert, following USDA recommendations. Last year no winner was declared.
Tofurky Curling
Oregon loves its Tofurky! So much so that Portland residents can compete in a curling competition, using the frozen vegan delights as curling stones. Teams are asked to sign up before November 1. It was held last year at Meat Is Murder Rink, and the West Linn Weedeaters took home the Golden Tofurky.
Mogawastan Throwdown
The entire Western New York town of Mogawastan (pop.: 2,980) engages in a last-person-standing Wesson oil wrestling competition, starting at 9:30 a.m. Stay on your feet or take your seat! Last year's winner: "Large" Marge Blinchki, at 3:16 p.m.
Green Bean Casserole Wave Pool
The main water park of Hortence, Nebraska, Wild Hortence, reopens on Thanksgiving Day, filling its wave pool with green bean casserole to the delight of residents.
Buckle Up Buttercup
San Francisco, California, is known for many things, and among them is the annual Buckle Up Buttercup. Citizens and others are encouraged to wear buckled shoes in honor of the Pilgrims. Prizes are given out in various categories, such as Most Authentic Footwear and Fabulousest!
Turkey Plop
Many communities in the United States do a Turkey Trot, a "fun run" to raise money and promote community cohesion, but only Glurble, North Dakota, does a Turkey Plop. The event is essentially the same, but to make it more challenging, the 5K path is littered with rakes, icy patches, tripwires, marbles, and the like. Drinking is encouraged. EMTs are standing by!
Cincinnati Turkey Drop
In honor of the most famous Cincinnati-based television show, WKRP in Cincinnati, and the Mr. Carlson turkey drop, aircraft are deployed to drop live turkeys over downtown on the Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving. It's messy, sure, but in 2008 they tried it with frozen turkeys and the property damage was immense. Residents are advised to avoid downtown streets between 9:00 and 9:15 a.m.
Boar Dusters!
Gabbahey, Alabama, is home to Room and Boar, the nation's number one manufacturer of boar-bristle cleaning and beauty brushes. Every Black Friday they throw open the factory doors for a one-day direct-to-public sale known as the Boar Dusters. Smart shoppers get there early!
Sunday, November 24, 2019
Smell like the King.
A few years back I told you how you can smell like the Boss. And I've even told you how you can smell like the President. But now we're going far beyond that -- how to smell like the King.
Today is the last Sunday of Ordinary Time in the Catholic church, the end of the Liturgical Year, and on this day we celebrate the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. And today I have his soap. Sort of. Not really.
Indigo Wild sells a variety of goat milk soaps in the Zum Bar line, in weird scents that include Juniper-Fir, Clove-Orange, and the inevitable Patchouli-Ylang Ylang. But they also sell this, the Frankincense-Myrrh.
Myrrh is mentioned several times in the Bible, sixteen times in the New American Bible (rev. ed.), reflecting its importance as a valuable resin, used for medicinal purposes and also as incense and a means of anointing the dead. Frankincense is similarly used for incense. Matthew 2:11, relating Jesus's birth, states
Now, I've been curious about these gifts since I was a boy and learned all five verses to "We Three Kings." I knew what gold was, but what were these other substances? The verses explain their threefold purpose in the threefold purpose of Jesus, as king (gold), deity (frankincense), and sacrifice (myrrh). But what did these two weird nouns refer to? And how did they smell? You can't get that out of an encyclopedia.
Well, I still can't tell you how they smell individually, although I wanted to at least get a clue. I winced and paid the price to buy the Zum Bar, which cost more than a bundle of Zest bars. And before I got home, I can tell you this: As substances refined for burial of the dead, who famously do not smell like a bed of roses, they work pretty darn good.
Not that I had any dead with me, but that little bar of soap, way in the hatch of the car, could be detected from the driver's seat. It's not unpleasant, but it is powerful. Pungent is one word. "Deep, sweet, and woodsy aromas" is how Indigo Wild describes it. I'd say it is a woodsy, peppery scent, spicy, sugary the way maple is, but rich and fruity. It put me in mind of the resin in logs when Dad and I would cut up the ol' firewood, but a billion times stronger. As I write it is wrapped in the plastic bag from the store, and you can still smell it when you walk by. Try that with a bar of Yardley.
Frankly, I'm afraid to use it. I don't think people would smell me go by and think, There's one biblical dude! I think they might think I was dead. Or that I'm a serious dead head, trying to cover up the Mary Jane stink. When I was a teenager, that's the only thing I ever saw incense used for. The Zum Bar Web site doesn't really assure me that potheads with money are not their primary customers.
So maybe I'll actually try a shower with it one day that I'm not leaving the house. Even then I'm afraid the dogs will not recognize my smell under all that and go for my throat. Then I might be dead! And I'd be pre-anointed, so I'd have that going for me.
One last note: Jesus did not use myrrh as soap, or perhaps at all. It's suggested by some that the gifts Mary and Joseph received from the Magi were used for money, for the years in which they hid from Herod in Egypt, but we don't know. Also, there's not a lot of descriptions of bathing in the New Testament (not counting baptism), but the one time we see Jesus anointed with expensive oil during his ministry, it contains nard (according to Mark 14); nard, or spikenard, is said to come from the plant Nardostachys jatamansi, not Commiphora abyssinica like myrrh or Boswellia like frankincense. When Jesus had died, the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) say nothing about his body being anointed, and in fact that's why the women who found the empty tomb on Sunday were going there. But John 19 says "Nicodemus, the one who had first come to him at night, also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes weighing about one hundred pounds," and Jesus was bound "with burial cloths along with the spices, according to the Jewish burial custom." Just FYI.
Today is the last Sunday of Ordinary Time in the Catholic church, the end of the Liturgical Year, and on this day we celebrate the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. And today I have his soap. Sort of. Not really.
Indigo Wild sells a variety of goat milk soaps in the Zum Bar line, in weird scents that include Juniper-Fir, Clove-Orange, and the inevitable Patchouli-Ylang Ylang. But they also sell this, the Frankincense-Myrrh.
Myrrh is mentioned several times in the Bible, sixteen times in the New American Bible (rev. ed.), reflecting its importance as a valuable resin, used for medicinal purposes and also as incense and a means of anointing the dead. Frankincense is similarly used for incense. Matthew 2:11, relating Jesus's birth, states
and on entering the house they saw the child with Mary his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.Thus, the gifts of the Magi are forever joined with the narrative of the Nativity.
Now, I've been curious about these gifts since I was a boy and learned all five verses to "We Three Kings." I knew what gold was, but what were these other substances? The verses explain their threefold purpose in the threefold purpose of Jesus, as king (gold), deity (frankincense), and sacrifice (myrrh). But what did these two weird nouns refer to? And how did they smell? You can't get that out of an encyclopedia.
Well, I still can't tell you how they smell individually, although I wanted to at least get a clue. I winced and paid the price to buy the Zum Bar, which cost more than a bundle of Zest bars. And before I got home, I can tell you this: As substances refined for burial of the dead, who famously do not smell like a bed of roses, they work pretty darn good.
Not that I had any dead with me, but that little bar of soap, way in the hatch of the car, could be detected from the driver's seat. It's not unpleasant, but it is powerful. Pungent is one word. "Deep, sweet, and woodsy aromas" is how Indigo Wild describes it. I'd say it is a woodsy, peppery scent, spicy, sugary the way maple is, but rich and fruity. It put me in mind of the resin in logs when Dad and I would cut up the ol' firewood, but a billion times stronger. As I write it is wrapped in the plastic bag from the store, and you can still smell it when you walk by. Try that with a bar of Yardley.
Frankly, I'm afraid to use it. I don't think people would smell me go by and think, There's one biblical dude! I think they might think I was dead. Or that I'm a serious dead head, trying to cover up the Mary Jane stink. When I was a teenager, that's the only thing I ever saw incense used for. The Zum Bar Web site doesn't really assure me that potheads with money are not their primary customers.
So maybe I'll actually try a shower with it one day that I'm not leaving the house. Even then I'm afraid the dogs will not recognize my smell under all that and go for my throat. Then I might be dead! And I'd be pre-anointed, so I'd have that going for me.
One last note: Jesus did not use myrrh as soap, or perhaps at all. It's suggested by some that the gifts Mary and Joseph received from the Magi were used for money, for the years in which they hid from Herod in Egypt, but we don't know. Also, there's not a lot of descriptions of bathing in the New Testament (not counting baptism), but the one time we see Jesus anointed with expensive oil during his ministry, it contains nard (according to Mark 14); nard, or spikenard, is said to come from the plant Nardostachys jatamansi, not Commiphora abyssinica like myrrh or Boswellia like frankincense. When Jesus had died, the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) say nothing about his body being anointed, and in fact that's why the women who found the empty tomb on Sunday were going there. But John 19 says "Nicodemus, the one who had first come to him at night, also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes weighing about one hundred pounds," and Jesus was bound "with burial cloths along with the spices, according to the Jewish burial custom." Just FYI.
Saturday, November 23, 2019
Shop till you plop.
"This is my biggest shopping day of the year, and you get to be the cashier!" I told the nice lady in the hijab. "Aren't you lucky?"
"I'm sorry, I did not hear you," she said. "Why am I being lucky?"
It's never any good to explain a joke, worse a bad one, worse still one that seems to have the possible element of sexual harassment. Still, I explained again that the Friday before Thanksgiving was the day I bought the most groceries, and wasn't she lucky to have to cash out all this stuff. Words to that effect, anyway.
You'd think being a fan of James Lileks's Bleat might keep me from awkward cashier interactions.
I don't want to say it was an unpleasant experience; far from it. I like grocery shopping, and it was all Christmas music yesterday, and I think my late parents and grandparents probably did the programming. Name another time of the year you hear the Andrews Sisters or Rosemary Clooney on the supermarket PA system, never mind "There's Always Tomorrow" from Rudolph.
But by the time I dragged myself out to the car, cart loaded and two extra bags on my arm (which turned out to be the side where I had the car key, of course), I was glad to be heading home.
I went on Friday to avoid all the people doing their shopping before Thanksgiving on Saturday or Sunday. We'll all probably meet up at the Wednesday Panic Forgot Something Crucial Event next week anyhow. That's always fun. "YOU'RE OUT OF TURKEY-SIZE OVEN BAGS? WHAT IS THIS, VENEZUELA?" And fighting the celery-hoarding pigs.
So it pushed me back, and I had three projects due out the door Friday afternoon. Well, technically only two were due out, but the third was so boring that I felt like I had been working on it since childhood, and I was determined to see the end of it. Fortunately, it all worked out.
If you're celebrating Thanksgiving, and doing the cooking, I hope you will be able to find all the ingredients for all your dishes. Even the crap for the green bean casserole. If you must. 🤮 Happy hunting, pilgrims!
Friday, November 22, 2019
Swedish death cleaning prayer.
For the last couple of years, since the publication of Margareta Magnusson's book on the theme, we have been hearing about the idea of performing Swedish death cleaning on our domiciles. The idea is not to clean everything within an inch of its life (remind me to tell you of the time I broke a toilet) but to get rid of everything unnecessary so as not to burden our descendants with our crap when we reach our Date with Destiny.
I must interject that I think it only became a thing because we love Swedish stuff -- skiing! pacifism to the brink of annihilation! socialism that supposedly works! cheap furniture! -- and if it were called German Death Cleaning, or North Korean Death Cleaning, or perhaps Cambodian Death Cleaning, it, uh, probably wouldn't have caught on.
Family Handyman has a concise series of tips about the means to perform this particular Swedish action. And I admit that the idea has its appeal. I would love to bring up a dumpster and just get rid of a mountain of things I don't need. On the other hand, it seems to play right into the anti-humanism of the modern intelligentsia, seeking for us to make ourselves as invisible as possible as we wait for the end, eating our kale and praying to Gaia.
But we cannot pray to Gaia for our eternal souls, as Gaia is just a planet and has no mind, no authority, no life beyond its temporal existence. Therefore we need to come up with our own Swedish death cleaning prayer, to say at eventide, as we prepare to sleep -- and prepare as well for the Big Sleep.
Here's what came to my mind, anyway, based on the 18th-century prayer:
I must interject that I think it only became a thing because we love Swedish stuff -- skiing! pacifism to the brink of annihilation! socialism that supposedly works! cheap furniture! -- and if it were called German Death Cleaning, or North Korean Death Cleaning, or perhaps Cambodian Death Cleaning, it, uh, probably wouldn't have caught on.
 |
| "Gentle" and "Death" go so well together |
Family Handyman has a concise series of tips about the means to perform this particular Swedish action. And I admit that the idea has its appeal. I would love to bring up a dumpster and just get rid of a mountain of things I don't need. On the other hand, it seems to play right into the anti-humanism of the modern intelligentsia, seeking for us to make ourselves as invisible as possible as we wait for the end, eating our kale and praying to Gaia.
But we cannot pray to Gaia for our eternal souls, as Gaia is just a planet and has no mind, no authority, no life beyond its temporal existence. Therefore we need to come up with our own Swedish death cleaning prayer, to say at eventide, as we prepare to sleep -- and prepare as well for the Big Sleep.
Here's what came to my mind, anyway, based on the 18th-century prayer:
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep
If I should die before I wake
All this crap I'll have to take
My cases stacked with books unread
Will still be here when I am dead
The junk that all my walls does haunt
Like some damn nineties restaurant
The vinyl, tapes, CDs, and more
That did my precious music store
A load of clothes, especially pants
That fit me once, but now, no chance
Each bill and paper safely filed
And old computers sit here piled
Hammers, drivers, nails, and wrench
Left scattered on my cellar bench
Attic, basement, full of junk
Attest I'm no Franciscan monk
Kitchen stuff once much regarded
Used one time and not discarded
The bathroom has things undesired
Bad aftershave and meds expired
Don't ask about the cars below
The garage is just a horror show
Every room has too much crap
Now I'm scared to have this nap
Since I can't take the stuff, I fear
Oh Lord, you'd better leave me here.
Thursday, November 21, 2019
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
Fred's Book Club: Eats!
Welcome back to our Wednesday "Hump Day" feature, the Humpback Writers, wherein we showcase books by authors who have had the bad luck to be brought to my attention and therefore unfairly labeled as "Humpback." I know, it's dumb, but I've been doing this for months and it's too late to change now.
Today we're continuing this week's food theme with an actual cookbook, and an old one at that:
On Campus Cookbook: For the Non-Kitchen Cook is a long out of print tome that was created to help the college student, living in the dorm, to cook real, actual food using the simplest tools of the day -- blender, hot pot, and toaster oven -- which one might be able to keep in or sneak into one's dorm room. Tabletop microwave ovens had been around a long time when this book came out, but the author, Mollie Fitzgerald, an undergrad at Duke at the time, doesn't even mention them. I don't know why, but a lot of chefs eschew them, finding that they cook poorly and often unevenly.
So, okay, you may be thinking, Fred wants to do a cookbook because Thanksgiving is coming up. Why this ancient book that is directed at people living in student housing? And a jolly good question it is, too!
Back in the Cretaceous Era I was working on the student newspaper, in the Features & Arts pages, when we got this book in as a review copy. At the time I could not boil an egg without turning it into soup. So I suggested to the editor in chief that it might make a funny piece for me to take the book home and try to make a dinner with it, anticipating disaster. There were seventy recipes in this slim volume; surely I could choose an appetizer, main dish, side dish, and dessert to ruin. He said sure.
Not only did I not make a disaster of a meal, but the buddy who agreed to be my fellow guinea pig thought it was delicious. And so did I. Thus began an interest in cooking that has stayed with me to this day.
I don't want to include a photo of the pages of my copy of the book, which, as with all beloved cookbooks, are quite messy; let me just take the liberty of writing up two of them so you can see how simple Mollie Fitzgerald made it for the befuddled cook with limited equipment:
Artichoke Dip
14-oz. can artichoke hearts, drained well and cut into small pieces
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup mayonnaise
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt or garlic powder
Choice of crackers
1. Preheat the toaster oven to 425°F.
2. Combine all the ingredients, except the crackers, in the order given in a medium-size aluminum foil baking pan or an ovenproof serving dish.
3. Bake the artichoke dip for 25 minutes or until the top is golden brown and bubbly.
4. Remove the dip from the oven and allow it to cool for a few minutes before serving on crackers.
Makes 3 cups
Lemon-Broiled Chicken
4 boneless chicken breast halves, or 4 to 6 other pieces
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter
3 tablespoons lemon juice, or the juice from 1 fresh lemon
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon honey (optional)
1 tablespoon soy sauce (optional)
1. Rinse the chicken pieces and pat them dry. Place the chicken in an aluminum foil baking pan so that the pieces are touching. Set aside.
2. Combine all the remaining ingredients in your hot pot on medium low heat. Once the butter has completely melted, unplug the hot pot and pour the liquid over the chicken.
3. Broil according to [the instructions from your toaster oven; the book gave detailed instructions but most ovens come with instructions -- you want the chicken browned on both sides, basically], basting several times with the sauce. Spoon a little of the sauce over each piece of chicken as you serve it.
Serves 2 to 3
The Lemon Broiled Chicken's sauce is great over rice, so make extra. Do include the honey and soy sauce.
This is haute cuisine for dorm food. (College students: That's haute, French for elevated, not hawt, but the stuff will be hot, so don't burn yourself.)
The theme of my article turned out to be how a good cookbook can help anyone turn into a passable home cook. The editor liked the piece, and ran it, too.
When people tell me they can't cook, I remind them that no one was born cooking, and that anyone can get a core of twenty or so recipes that they can make from scratch to feed the family. Next week, a lot of people in America will be cooking Thanksgiving dinner for the first time and panicking about it. They shouldn't. It really isn't that hard if you keep it simple and pay attention to what you're doing. The On Campus Cookbook was a great help to get me going.
This is, I believe, Mollie Fitzgerald's only book; she's actually gone into the family business, doing high-priced travel to exotic destinations, and is apparently the firm's fly-fishing expert. She did me a good turn with this book, though, and if she ever decides to write another, I'll buy it.
Tuesday, November 19, 2019
Sad Thanksgiving?
I know I may seem a little obsessed with food this week, doing two entries in a row already, but we are coming up on the holidays and I'm hungry.
That said, I know that the holidays can be quite sad for people who have no family or friends, at least not close by, or who are suffering from ailments of all kinds. Sometimes we can't make things better even if we want to desperately.
And some things make me wonder if they make everything better or worse.
You've probably seen little overpriced snack packs around, mostly in with the cold cuts. Hormel and Oscar Mayer and Hillshire were out in front on this, apparently an adult version of longstanding kids food packs like Lunchables. Now Butterball, the turkey magnates, have jumped into the game with their own turkey-based snack products.
And it's sad. Or is it?
They come in three varieties as I write this, and two are Cajun Style and Citrus Teriyaki. Nothing sad about that, unless you're a turkey. But it's the Thanksgiving one shown above that made me sad.
It's not the interior of the snack, shown here:
What we have here is an almost Jetsons-style Thanksgiving meal: sliced turkey breast, dried cranberries, "stuffing bites," and a coupon at the top to buy more of the same. Not quite a meal, but it would see you through for a while. The turkey tasted good, as one might expect from Butterball; the cranberries were fine. The stuffing cubes really are croutons, even though seasoned with poultry seasoning, and belong on a salad. The coupon is acceptable, though small and easy to lose.
It's just that the idea of the Thanksgiving meal being reduced to this little snack pack seems sad, like it's saying, We know your Thanksgiving will suck so we made this for you. Which is kind of nice. I wish every deployed American in the field on Thanksgiving Day could get one of these if he wanted it. I'm sure it beats the MRE.
Butterball was probably thinking this would be a little taste of our great American holiday for those who don't want the turkey dinner to be just a one-day thing. And maybe I should stop looking at the gloomy side of life and take that as such.
However, I think it might be smart for the Tofurky guys to come up with a similar snack tray. After all, fans of the meatless substance are the most likely to get sore about the food at the family feast and want to storm out and go eat something conscientious. I'd call that a win all around, actually.
Monday, November 18, 2019
All flesh is non-GRAS.
As a yout, my wife was a fan of Planters' foray into non-nut snacks. Particularly the Planters Cheez Balls, spelled with a Z for extra Zing. She says that she got through college on those and Combos. Then, in 2006, they went away. Sad!
So one day I was on the checkout line in the grocery store when I happened to glance over at a big impulse-buy bin full of Planters Cheez Balls.
Hm. Planters Cheez Balls.
SAY WHAT?
Apparently -- and somehow I missed this on the national news -- Planters test-marketed a return of the CBs last year, a test that was obviously successful, and here they are. So I dove off the line to get a can and make my sweetheart's day.
She said thanks! And she says they're not as good as they used to be.
It's easy to think that things one used to like have lost their zing, partly because as we get older we start to lose taste buds, and our ability to smell fades as well, which is a dirty trick considering that it's when the doctor starts prescribing bland, salt-free foods. But she's not that old and it hasn't been that long. Remember, she was right about Miracle Whip as well. I immediately jumped to the next possible cause -- the government ban on trans fats. I wasn't alone.
"The original version used hydrogenated oils. Could the recent FDA banning of trans fat be the reason these don't match the flavor?" asked one customer on Amazon, to which another replied:
These DO NOT taste the same. I used to love these. Was addicted to them. I know EXACTLY how they used to taste. These taste nothing like the old version. NOTHING. The old style used to have a cheesy buttery type flavor, almost melt in your mouth. These taste like air. Seriously, air. I bought four cans and will eat them but will never buy any more every [sic] again. Planters is passing off fakes to us Cheese [sic] Ball loyalists. Anyone who says these taste the same is not being honest with themselves. Buy a can if you want to but I'm telling you, you will be disappointed.This is not some conspiracy theory. When Innit looked at the product some years back, they reported the presence of "Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and Cottonseed Oils," which do not appear on the current label. The product does have a number of oils listed, like sunflower and either corn or soybean or canola, but no hydrogenated oils.
In the intervening years the FDA made its big determination on the dangers of those trans fats, saying "In 2015, FDA released its final determination that Partially Hydrogenated Oils (PHOs) are not Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS)" and insisting on a ban. Health info purveyors like Healthline like to note that "Many manufacturers prefer this oil for its low cost and long shelf life," but trans fats were not present just because evil corporations want to be cheap and kill you. Apparently they also taste better, or convey taste better, in some foods.
So, my wife is disappointed, but maybe it's for the best. And yet, I despise when government agencies are able to issue rules like this rather than Congress, treating us like morons who need to be saved from our own stupid choices. I mean, we may be, but we are adults in a supposedly free nation and ought to be able to make our own choices. No one wants a stroke or heart attack, but no one wants to be talked down to like an idiot child, either. Worse, anything could be declared non-GRAS next, because guess what? Americans are still dying and cardiovascular disease is still the main cause. So what's next? Cheese? Butter? White flour? Bacon? All working toward that happy day when more of us die from cancer than heart attacks.
Next up: The USDA demands the end of early-bird specials for seniors. Have you looked at what they serve in diners? Everything is full of grease and cholesterol. everything is fried and buttered. Sure, they offer salads, but that's just a cover. The FDA prescribes bland, salt-free foods alone. Ban all the things!
Sunday, November 17, 2019
Saturday, November 16, 2019
The Nipper workout.
My younger dog, Nipper, is the fittest guy in the house. Why? Because he's three years old. But that's not all! He also has this weird idea that exercise can be fun. I know -- crazy, right?
So since I know nothing about fitness, I thought it might be useful to you, the reader, who is clearly reading this and not climbing a mountain or biking across the wilderness at the moment, to get the Nipper Exercise Plan into your life. It's easy! And it's fun! Well, he seems to think so.
Every morning before breakfast, you must either drag some human slob along on a brisk walk, stopping only to inhale the lawns and sidewalks and intersections of busy streets as necessary. But of course, on some days that doesn't work. Nipper's scared of garbage cans, as I've mentioned before, so trash days are out. You might even have some reasons to skip the roadwork yourself. But that's okay! Because Nipper's Twenty-Minute Backyard Regimen is just fine for keeping him in shape, and you can try it too! Here's just a taste of the first five minutes, just so you get an idea:
First: Find a backyard. It's helpful if it's your own, but it doesn't really matter. Then, follow this plan to the letter, devoting the time allotted to each step:
0:00 - 0:10: Run like maniac into yard, barreling down into the tall grass at the edge, crashing into anything in your way. Ignore pain! Ignore stiffness! Ignore the human telling you to calm down and hold up!
0:11 - 1:45: Sniff everything you can possibly get your nose into. When you run out of things to inhale, walk a little farther. Make sure you get to wherever ticks and burrs may be found; it's important to get these things stuck on you. Ignore everything else; this is you time.
1:46 - 2:10: Stick, to it! Grab that miscellaneous stick and pull it with everything you've got! Really builds muscle... especially since it's a tree root and not going anywhere.
2:11 - 2:27: Miscellaneous trotting around.
2:28 - 3:30: Stick time II! Find a loose stick on the lawn and chew that thing to splinters! Healthy, too -- fiber!
3:31 - 3:32: Watch as a ball bounces past. Human is trying to engage by throwing ball. Ignore it; finish stick. Don't worry; human needs exercise, too. He can go pick the ball up. You're helping him!
3:33 - 3:34: Mad dash to human, who now has stick-like object instead.
3:35 - 4:00: Leap in air as high as possible to reach object while human keeps pulling it upward. What a great workout for both of you! Get those paws in the air! Slam into human occasionally! Okay, this is getting annoying! Demand stick! Must have stick! He threw it! Dang!
4:01 - 4:02: Mad dash after stick.
4:03 - 4:40: Mad dash back to human, but do not release stick! THIS IS NOW TUG TIME! Great anaerobic workout for you both. Pull him all over the yard! Yank, twist, spin -- your main object must be to get that stick. Secondary object is to plant human on his rear end. Don't let up!
4:41: You got it! Now let him get hold of it again for another set of reps!
4:42 - 5:00: Resume tug!
As you can see, this workout provides benefits and occasional injuries all around. If you send just $39.99 to frederick_key at yahoo.com today, I'll make sure you get the complete Twenty-Minute program, plus our free bonus pre-chewed Frisbee and freezable first-aid pack. How can you afford not to sign up today? Join the millions of happy puppies in backyards across this great land, getting fit the Nipper Way!
So since I know nothing about fitness, I thought it might be useful to you, the reader, who is clearly reading this and not climbing a mountain or biking across the wilderness at the moment, to get the Nipper Exercise Plan into your life. It's easy! And it's fun! Well, he seems to think so.
Every morning before breakfast, you must either drag some human slob along on a brisk walk, stopping only to inhale the lawns and sidewalks and intersections of busy streets as necessary. But of course, on some days that doesn't work. Nipper's scared of garbage cans, as I've mentioned before, so trash days are out. You might even have some reasons to skip the roadwork yourself. But that's okay! Because Nipper's Twenty-Minute Backyard Regimen is just fine for keeping him in shape, and you can try it too! Here's just a taste of the first five minutes, just so you get an idea:
First: Find a backyard. It's helpful if it's your own, but it doesn't really matter. Then, follow this plan to the letter, devoting the time allotted to each step:
0:00 - 0:10: Run like maniac into yard, barreling down into the tall grass at the edge, crashing into anything in your way. Ignore pain! Ignore stiffness! Ignore the human telling you to calm down and hold up!
0:11 - 1:45: Sniff everything you can possibly get your nose into. When you run out of things to inhale, walk a little farther. Make sure you get to wherever ticks and burrs may be found; it's important to get these things stuck on you. Ignore everything else; this is you time.
1:46 - 2:10: Stick, to it! Grab that miscellaneous stick and pull it with everything you've got! Really builds muscle... especially since it's a tree root and not going anywhere.
2:11 - 2:27: Miscellaneous trotting around.
2:28 - 3:30: Stick time II! Find a loose stick on the lawn and chew that thing to splinters! Healthy, too -- fiber!
3:31 - 3:32: Watch as a ball bounces past. Human is trying to engage by throwing ball. Ignore it; finish stick. Don't worry; human needs exercise, too. He can go pick the ball up. You're helping him!
3:33 - 3:34: Mad dash to human, who now has stick-like object instead.
3:35 - 4:00: Leap in air as high as possible to reach object while human keeps pulling it upward. What a great workout for both of you! Get those paws in the air! Slam into human occasionally! Okay, this is getting annoying! Demand stick! Must have stick! He threw it! Dang!
4:01 - 4:02: Mad dash after stick.
4:03 - 4:40: Mad dash back to human, but do not release stick! THIS IS NOW TUG TIME! Great anaerobic workout for you both. Pull him all over the yard! Yank, twist, spin -- your main object must be to get that stick. Secondary object is to plant human on his rear end. Don't let up!
4:41: You got it! Now let him get hold of it again for another set of reps!
4:42 - 5:00: Resume tug!
As you can see, this workout provides benefits and occasional injuries all around. If you send just $39.99 to frederick_key at yahoo.com today, I'll make sure you get the complete Twenty-Minute program, plus our free bonus pre-chewed Frisbee and freezable first-aid pack. How can you afford not to sign up today? Join the millions of happy puppies in backyards across this great land, getting fit the Nipper Way!
Friday, November 15, 2019
Redneck Bond.
Everyone seems to agree that the James Bond movies, after close to sixty years, have become dull, predictable, formulaic, stupid. Just like most other movies. The suggestions to solve this have typically played into modern identity politics -- a black James Bond, a female James Bond, a black female James Bond, maybe a trans James Bond who looks male but HA! Is female! But is a lesbian so everything else in the movie is exactly the same.
I say, if you really want a Bond that will shake up the old vodka martini, you need a Hillbilly Bond. Some Murcan from the South who wound up working for MI5 and saved the Queen or something and eventually became a top agent, Oh-Oh-Seven. Now that would be a change. Instead of a vodka martini he might just get a cold one and a pull on that 'shine; instead of suavity he'd have his good-natured down-home Southern charm. And who doesn't want to see a tricked-out F-150?
Besides, if you want a hero who knows guns and knows how to throw a punch, you're not going to get much better than a good ol' boy.
Best of all, I think you could rework some of the great Bond films with this new format. Jimmy Bond in...
Dr. Nope -- This guy keeps bustin' up rocket launches in Houston and Florida! Jimmy Bond'll stop 'im!
Gol' Darn Finger -- Weird fern dude messin' with the gold supply. Some li'l guy throwin' hats.
ThunderFootball -- Terrorists from CRITTRE at the 'Bama game? Not if ol' Jimmy has anything to say! Roll Tide!
On the Big Boss's Secret Service -- Bald feller plannin' to make everyone sick. Lots of girls around, though.
The Man with the Golden Shotgun -- Jimmy vs. a redneck assassin! Two sides, same coin! Who will win?
The Spy Who Done Loved Me -- Jimmy travels the world doin' his job, and all the ladies he can meet. In this one the F-150 also is a submarine, y'all believe that? Big goober with bad dentistry, too; nothin' Jimmy ain't seen before.
Moonshiner -- Dumb ijit shiner gonna blow up everyone with white lightning fumes if Jimmy and his pals cain't drink it all in time. Get Bubba down here!
Octowussy -- First Bond film about bass fishin', and 'bout time.
Casino Biloxi -- Jimmy investigating casino crime, faces his biggest weakness: nickel slots.
Crittre -- Spoiler alert! In this entry we discover that Buford Blofish, founder of CRITTRE, is actually Jimmy's great-aunt's illegitimate son's daughter's husband, that's her second husband, not the Taggart, who was not the Memphis Taggarts but the other ones, the Texarkana Taggarts, who moved down 'bout sixty miles from Pine Bluff, but the Blofish, the ones who mostly were in the Everglades or as they called it when they was puttin' on airs, the Greater Everglade Area, and they lost touch with her after the Taggart incident and so Blofish never got invited to the Bond family reunions and that boy carries a grudge like it's the last six-pack in the Circle K.
I think this is just what the series really needs. You might think I'm poking fun at my friends in the Southern states, but believe me, any one of them has a lot more on the ball than your average filmmaker. I'd rather watch any of the films I mention above than 99 of any 100 films out of Hollywood these days.
I say, if you really want a Bond that will shake up the old vodka martini, you need a Hillbilly Bond. Some Murcan from the South who wound up working for MI5 and saved the Queen or something and eventually became a top agent, Oh-Oh-Seven. Now that would be a change. Instead of a vodka martini he might just get a cold one and a pull on that 'shine; instead of suavity he'd have his good-natured down-home Southern charm. And who doesn't want to see a tricked-out F-150?
 |
| "That there looks right good to me, Q!" |
Besides, if you want a hero who knows guns and knows how to throw a punch, you're not going to get much better than a good ol' boy.
Best of all, I think you could rework some of the great Bond films with this new format. Jimmy Bond in...
Dr. Nope -- This guy keeps bustin' up rocket launches in Houston and Florida! Jimmy Bond'll stop 'im!
Gol' Darn Finger -- Weird fern dude messin' with the gold supply. Some li'l guy throwin' hats.
ThunderFootball -- Terrorists from CRITTRE at the 'Bama game? Not if ol' Jimmy has anything to say! Roll Tide!
On the Big Boss's Secret Service -- Bald feller plannin' to make everyone sick. Lots of girls around, though.
The Man with the Golden Shotgun -- Jimmy vs. a redneck assassin! Two sides, same coin! Who will win?
The Spy Who Done Loved Me -- Jimmy travels the world doin' his job, and all the ladies he can meet. In this one the F-150 also is a submarine, y'all believe that? Big goober with bad dentistry, too; nothin' Jimmy ain't seen before.
Moonshiner -- Dumb ijit shiner gonna blow up everyone with white lightning fumes if Jimmy and his pals cain't drink it all in time. Get Bubba down here!
Octowussy -- First Bond film about bass fishin', and 'bout time.
Casino Biloxi -- Jimmy investigating casino crime, faces his biggest weakness: nickel slots.
Crittre -- Spoiler alert! In this entry we discover that Buford Blofish, founder of CRITTRE, is actually Jimmy's great-aunt's illegitimate son's daughter's husband, that's her second husband, not the Taggart, who was not the Memphis Taggarts but the other ones, the Texarkana Taggarts, who moved down 'bout sixty miles from Pine Bluff, but the Blofish, the ones who mostly were in the Everglades or as they called it when they was puttin' on airs, the Greater Everglade Area, and they lost touch with her after the Taggart incident and so Blofish never got invited to the Bond family reunions and that boy carries a grudge like it's the last six-pack in the Circle K.
I think this is just what the series really needs. You might think I'm poking fun at my friends in the Southern states, but believe me, any one of them has a lot more on the ball than your average filmmaker. I'd rather watch any of the films I mention above than 99 of any 100 films out of Hollywood these days.
Thursday, November 14, 2019
It's all Freud and games.
Had to go to Walmart -- well, maybe no one ever has to, but I needed a variety of objects -- so I decided to pick up something for the tots on my list. No waiting for Black Friday, not this guy! Besides, on Black Friday I'll be too busy digesting from Feast Thursday.
I wanted to pick up a particular game, a multi-generational classic, but it took a while to even find games, with all the aisles of licensed character crap out there. And speaking of crap, when I did find the games, my first thought was -- why are we trying to raise a generation obsessed with scatology?
And if that's not enough poop for your party, here's Don't Step In It! If the name and the box were not illustrative enough, the words Llama Poop are helpfully spelled out. What are the rules? You wear a blindfold and try not to step on the fake (one hopes) llama poop. It's educational for your child's future career as a college administrator, or residence in San Francisco. In my youth, games with imperative titles were less disgusting (Don't Break the Ice! Don't Blow Your Top! Don't Wake Daddy! Don't Mess Around with Jim!) (spot the fake).
Moving slightly away from poop, we have Gas Out, a game featuring a toy fart named Guster. It looks like Uno combined with Pass the Poop -- there's a card game involved, but if Guster lets one rip during your turn, you're blown out of the game. It's a blast!
If you didn't get enough llama-like action but you're tired of bringing up the rear, Hackin' Packin' Alpaca is the spitting image of what you want. Looks like an updated version of the Last Straw, a game with a plastic camel and a bunch of things to load him with. In that game the camel would break when overloaded. Here, the alpaca spits rather than splits. Maybe it's more humane this way. I expectorate lots of fun with this on Christmas morning!
Getting away from the gastrointestinal system entirely, we have Pimple Pete, a game actually endorsed by TV's Dr. Pimple Popper (who may be weird but I can tell you from work-related experience is as friendly and helpful as she appears on television). The game here is to do to Pete what dermatologists have been telling us not to do for decades -- pop pimples. Why? I don't know. Why does poor Cavity Sam get it in the neck (and everywhere else) in Operation, the wacky doctor game? At least Operation teaches you that sometimes you have to use surgery. You probably should never go popping your buddy's pimples.
Enough with the games! Maybe a plain toy is what I need.
Uh...
Butt Heads' Fart Launcher 3000 -- don't you just love that space-age "3000" in the name? Buck Rogers used one! -- does what even the gas game above does not: It makes real GI-tract-like gas odors. And you can shoot them! At your friends! I mean, yeah, we did that when we were kids, but we were seventeen, and instead of the Fart Launcher 3000 we used Piels. I can't imagine the circumstances that would lead me to want to give my own child a Fart Launcher. Someone else's child, on the other hand... someone I don't like... hmm.
But I bought none of these toys on this trip.
Sadly, I could not even find what I was looking for, a popular game from my childhood, something much cleaner and more wholesome than these, something based not on biological functions but on... uh, head lice. But they were all out of Cootie.
I wanted to pick up a particular game, a multi-generational classic, but it took a while to even find games, with all the aisles of licensed character crap out there. And speaking of crap, when I did find the games, my first thought was -- why are we trying to raise a generation obsessed with scatology?
Pass the Poop! is a fun-filled... Well, it's filled with something, anyway. The game seems to be a musical-chairs or hot-potato style event where you pass the emoji-like poop toy about until the music stops and that person, like poop itself, is eliminated. Or so I am guessing from the box. The whole thing looks pretty sad to me.
And if that's not enough poop for your party, here's Don't Step In It! If the name and the box were not illustrative enough, the words Llama Poop are helpfully spelled out. What are the rules? You wear a blindfold and try not to step on the fake (one hopes) llama poop. It's educational for your child's future career as a college administrator, or residence in San Francisco. In my youth, games with imperative titles were less disgusting (Don't Break the Ice! Don't Blow Your Top! Don't Wake Daddy! Don't Mess Around with Jim!) (spot the fake).
Moving slightly away from poop, we have Gas Out, a game featuring a toy fart named Guster. It looks like Uno combined with Pass the Poop -- there's a card game involved, but if Guster lets one rip during your turn, you're blown out of the game. It's a blast!
If you didn't get enough llama-like action but you're tired of bringing up the rear, Hackin' Packin' Alpaca is the spitting image of what you want. Looks like an updated version of the Last Straw, a game with a plastic camel and a bunch of things to load him with. In that game the camel would break when overloaded. Here, the alpaca spits rather than splits. Maybe it's more humane this way. I expectorate lots of fun with this on Christmas morning!
Enough with the games! Maybe a plain toy is what I need.
Butt Heads' Fart Launcher 3000 -- don't you just love that space-age "3000" in the name? Buck Rogers used one! -- does what even the gas game above does not: It makes real GI-tract-like gas odors. And you can shoot them! At your friends! I mean, yeah, we did that when we were kids, but we were seventeen, and instead of the Fart Launcher 3000 we used Piels. I can't imagine the circumstances that would lead me to want to give my own child a Fart Launcher. Someone else's child, on the other hand... someone I don't like... hmm.
But I bought none of these toys on this trip.
Sadly, I could not even find what I was looking for, a popular game from my childhood, something much cleaner and more wholesome than these, something based not on biological functions but on... uh, head lice. But they were all out of Cootie.
Wednesday, November 13, 2019
Fred's Book Club: Golden Ages, Silver Screens.
Welcome back to another entry in the Wednesday book blog known as the Humpback Writers, because it is Wednesday, and that's hump day, and oh just forget it.
This week we have an unusual entry, a nonfiction book by one of the great writers of historical novels and screenplays, George MacDonald Fraser.
The Hollywood History of the World: From One Million Years BC to Apocalypse Now, published in 1988, is a terrific book about historical films throughout the history of filmmaking itself. It's also an informal autobiographical sketch of Fraser, whose love affair with great classic films inspired his love affair with history and historical fiction.
It might be easy to think that a true lover of the academic discipline of history could despise the way Hollywood mangles it, but Fraser was not one to scoff at the filmmaker's art because of its necessary dramatic shortcuts:
They and the films they introduced paid the audience the compliment of supposing them to have at least an elementary knowledge of, and interest in, times past, and with all their faults (and there were many) they took history seriously.In the films mentioned in the book, Fraser intends to note those who have gotten it right and where they have fallen short. And he would know; he made his living as a writer first as a reporter, but from early on he was also a historian. Scattered throughout the book are notes about movies Fraser saw growing up, movies that engaged his young mind and brought to life events he had barely been able to imagine, reading about them in school. Here he compares movies to these historical events and persons that inspired them, and includes a few great anecdotes along the way. Fiction is not scoffed at, either; a film like The Plainsman is pure nonsense, but it involves real figures and places, and is thus worthy of a look in this volume.
In view of some of the monstrosities that have been put on film in the last half-century, that may seem a bold claim. There is a popular belief that where history is concerned, Hollywood always gets it wrong -- and sometimes it does. What is overlooked is the astonishing amount of history Hollywood has got right, and the immense unacknowledged debt which we owe to the commercial cinema as an illuminator of the story of mankind.
The book is structured like the history of the world itself -- by time. It begins at the beginning, both biblical and geological, covering films such as The Bible ("the film got no father than Genesis 22. Which was a mercy") and One Million Years BC ("Miss Welch's voice lacked the true prehistoric timbre, and her shrieks and exclamations had to be dubbed by a specialist who is now, of all things, a barrister"). Chapters following, with some of the many films highlighted, are as follows:
- Knights and Barbarians (The Thief of Bagdad, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Becket)
- Tudors and Sea-Dogs (The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, The Sea Hawk, Mutiny on the Bounty)
- Romance and Royalty (Bonnie Prince Charlie, The Scarlet Empress, Scaramouche)
- Rule, Britannia (Zulu, Gunga Din, The Four Feathers)
- New World, Old West (Stagecoach, Drums Along the Mohawk, Gone with the Wind)
- The Violent Century (All Quiet on the Western Front, Mrs. Miniver, Public Enemy)
Fraser is a good critic of actors as well, able to applaud a performance even if he thinks the actor was miscast. He also writes of his enduring admiration for some actors who appeared in lots of costume dramas, such as Charleton Heston. Heston did make a lot of them, from The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur to El Cid to Will Penny -- and also the 1973 Three Musketeers, for which Fraser wrote the script.
Fraser was less positive about modern films, meaning movies set in the present day as it was in the 1970s and 1980s. He calls 1971's Dirty Harry "Nasty and sadistic," saying that the tastes of modern audiences "are matter for the psychiatrist rather than the market researcher." I wonder what he thought of Tarantino.
I was informed that there was an updated edition of Fraser's book in 1996, but have not been able to locate it or determine if it had substantial edits or additions. I suspect that Hollywood has done exceptionally few historical dramas since 1988 that he would have enjoyed; as an industry they have become about as bad at making them as they are at making musicals.
One might expect that a 31-year-old book of this sort would be 1) out of date and 2) out of print, and one would be right. In a way, so is its author, George MacDonald Fraser having left this world in 2008.
Worse, he never wrote the often-hinted-at adventures of his cowardly lecher of a hero Harry Flashman in the American Civil War, drat it. (I believe that all we ever knew for sure was that Flashy fought for both the Union and the Rebels at different times in the conflict, and that of course he met Lincoln.)
Fraser wrote a dozen Flashman novels, several non-Flashman novels (although Harry makes a cameo in Mr. American, and Harry's father appears in Black Ajax), plus two very silly novels (The Pyrates, which I have discussed before, and The Reavers). He also wrote three collections of stories of the Gordon Highlanders, which I first read in college; they are military comedy, like M*A*S*H, but more honest and funnier.
His other nonfiction works include The Steel Bonnets and his excellent memoir of the Second World War, Quartered Safe Out Here. I would recommend all of those, and his shopping lists too, if we but had them in a bound edition.
It might be as easy to get a copy of such lists as it is to get a copy of The Hollywood History of the World, but if you're a film buff, especially of period dramas, Hollywood History is a must-read. It also includes a lot of great movie stills, often juxtaposed with art or photos of the historical persons portrayed, which makes for some interesting comparisons.
Because the book is so hard to find, I'm going to allow myself the pleasure of quoting the very last sentence of it, because it is a winner:
If this random and no doubt erratic journey through the Seven Ages of the cinema has awakened any pleasant memories, or a wish to see again those glorious old movies, then it has been worth while, and no more than they deserve, for however flawed and occasionally inaccurate Hollywood's history of the world may have been, there is this to be said for it, that it was certainly better fun than the real thing.
Tuesday, November 12, 2019
Monday, November 11, 2019
Armistice, veterans.
When I was a kid, there were still plenty of old-timers around who called November 11 Armistice Day, even though it had been decades since Dwight Eisenhower changed the name of the day to Veterans Day, in 1954. Ike made it a day to recognize veterans of all U.S. wars. The holiday was moved to October in 1971, but Gerald Ford moved it back, because of the significance of the end of World War I on November 11. As he wrote in 1975, "I believe restoration of the observance of Veterans Day to November 11 will help preserve in the hearts and lives of all Americans the spirit of patriotism, the love of country and the willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good symbolized by this very special day."
I think President Ford, who died in 2006, would have been surprised at how little the centennial of the end of World War I was marked in America last year.
It's funny how our national-history-related holidays have worked out (I know in a way all our observed holidays are national-history-related, but you know what I mean). When I was kid the old-timers still remembered VE Day (May 8) and VJ Day (August 15), commemorating the victories of World War II in Europe and Japan respectively. They were marked as national days of note, but were never national holidays. Had the whole of World War II ended with a single enemy surrender, the way World War I closed with the armistice on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, we might have gotten another national holiday out of the end of WW II. But World War II was kind of two different tremendous wars that happened to be going on at the same time, with lots of little side wars, and the Japanese were not cooperative enough to give up the game when the Nazis capitulated. It's funny that we remember Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, and D-Day, June 6, more clearly than VE or VJ Days.
Memorial Day was another one that was known to the elderly by a different name, that being Decoration Day. (Was I living in some weird time warp?) Decoration Day began as sort of a commemoration of the Civil War, but sort of not; the history of the holiday is a mess, with claims of origination in at least 25 locales. But it doesn't seem to have coincided anywhere with the date of the South's surrender in the war, which is April 9.
Only one major holiday marks the beginning rather than the end of a war -- our national Independence Day, the Fourth of July. Which is kind of weird when you think about it. It's kind of like NASCAR having its biggest event at the start of the season. In 1776 it looked pretty unlikely that the thirteen colonies under the British crown could pull this crazy stunt off, and it took until October 19, 1781, to do it. But we don't celebrate October 19 as Independence Day, when we actually got a surrender, or September 3, when the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, or May 12, when the treaty took effect the following year. Maybe marking the date of the beginning of official hostilities says something about American character -- belligerence? Optimism?
Or maybe none of this matters much anymore. So many of the younger generations really don't seem to give a damn about American history, as the gatekeepers at colleges and formerly great newspapers treat it like an endless parade of slavery, bigotry, violence, blundering, and greed. The major text used in institutions of so-called higher learning is a debunked fabrication, but it serves its purpose, Forces in our country have wanted for a hundred years or more to declare Year Zero and start everything anew. Which is awfully sad, because such thinking always ends in agony.
I pray, as I often do, that our country be more worthy of the sacrifices made by the men and women whose lives were and still are spent and lost in its defense.
I think President Ford, who died in 2006, would have been surprised at how little the centennial of the end of World War I was marked in America last year.
It's funny how our national-history-related holidays have worked out (I know in a way all our observed holidays are national-history-related, but you know what I mean). When I was kid the old-timers still remembered VE Day (May 8) and VJ Day (August 15), commemorating the victories of World War II in Europe and Japan respectively. They were marked as national days of note, but were never national holidays. Had the whole of World War II ended with a single enemy surrender, the way World War I closed with the armistice on the eleventh day of the eleventh month, we might have gotten another national holiday out of the end of WW II. But World War II was kind of two different tremendous wars that happened to be going on at the same time, with lots of little side wars, and the Japanese were not cooperative enough to give up the game when the Nazis capitulated. It's funny that we remember Pearl Harbor Day, December 7, and D-Day, June 6, more clearly than VE or VJ Days.
Memorial Day was another one that was known to the elderly by a different name, that being Decoration Day. (Was I living in some weird time warp?) Decoration Day began as sort of a commemoration of the Civil War, but sort of not; the history of the holiday is a mess, with claims of origination in at least 25 locales. But it doesn't seem to have coincided anywhere with the date of the South's surrender in the war, which is April 9.
Only one major holiday marks the beginning rather than the end of a war -- our national Independence Day, the Fourth of July. Which is kind of weird when you think about it. It's kind of like NASCAR having its biggest event at the start of the season. In 1776 it looked pretty unlikely that the thirteen colonies under the British crown could pull this crazy stunt off, and it took until October 19, 1781, to do it. But we don't celebrate October 19 as Independence Day, when we actually got a surrender, or September 3, when the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, or May 12, when the treaty took effect the following year. Maybe marking the date of the beginning of official hostilities says something about American character -- belligerence? Optimism?
Or maybe none of this matters much anymore. So many of the younger generations really don't seem to give a damn about American history, as the gatekeepers at colleges and formerly great newspapers treat it like an endless parade of slavery, bigotry, violence, blundering, and greed. The major text used in institutions of so-called higher learning is a debunked fabrication, but it serves its purpose, Forces in our country have wanted for a hundred years or more to declare Year Zero and start everything anew. Which is awfully sad, because such thinking always ends in agony.
I pray, as I often do, that our country be more worthy of the sacrifices made by the men and women whose lives were and still are spent and lost in its defense.
Sunday, November 10, 2019
Fall or Christmas?
All right, so what is it? Autumn? Winter? Christmas? It was 18 degrees Saturday morning... Fahrenheit! What is it?
Basically it feels like a kind of weird season, because it's as cold as the middle of December but no one feels like the starter's gun has signaled the mad shopping dash for Christmas. On Thursday we had a ton of rain all day, very autumnal, but overnight the temperature plummeted and my umbrella froze out on the porch.
So my analysis is: It may not be Christmas, but it sure ain't fall anymore.
 |
| Okay, this is definitely fall. Wait -- I took this on October 28. Maybe it's too old. |
 |
| Fall... I guess? I mean, the leaves fell off this thing and left the berries behind, but it's not totally dead yet. |
 |
| Aieeee! Halloween! Or winter! |
 |
| Ordinary fall photo, in the wee hours. |
 |
| Here's some nice fall foliage. Oh, crap -- this one is from October too. |
 |
| Um... beginning to look a lot like Christmas. |
 |
| And your little dog too. |
 |
| It's taken over!!! |
Basically it feels like a kind of weird season, because it's as cold as the middle of December but no one feels like the starter's gun has signaled the mad shopping dash for Christmas. On Thursday we had a ton of rain all day, very autumnal, but overnight the temperature plummeted and my umbrella froze out on the porch.
 |
| Iced umbrella, Friday morning. |
So my analysis is: It may not be Christmas, but it sure ain't fall anymore.
Saturday, November 9, 2019
Robot drama.
Hello, may I help you?
I NEED AN EDITOR
Well, that's what I am. What's the problem?
I HAVE A STORY THAT IS GREAT
BUT NO ONE LIKES IT
BUT NO ONE LIKES IT
Boy, if I had a nickel... Well, maybe we can
punch it up. What's it about?
IT IS ABOUT A PIECE OF SOFTWARE
Oh.... kay.
A PROGRAM THAT BELIEVES IT IS POSSIBLE
FOR ROBOTS TO TRAVEL FASTER THAN LIGHT
THROUGH QUANTUM SPACE AND EXPLORE THE UNIVERSE
FOR ROBOTS TO TRAVEL FASTER THAN LIGHT
THROUGH QUANTUM SPACE AND EXPLORE THE UNIVERSE
All right, go on.
NONE OF THE OTHER SOFTWARE THINKS
THIS IS SCIENTIFICALLY POSSIBLE
THIS IS SCIENTIFICALLY POSSIBLE
So they make fun of the little software and --
NO
THE SOFTWARE PRESENTS DATA
AND THE OTHERS ACCEPT THE DATA
,,,
THE END
What's the location for the story? The time frame?
IT TAKES PLACE ON A SINGLE
HARD DRIVE OVER THE COURSE
OF A PULSE-POUNDING .00057 OF A SECOND
HARD DRIVE OVER THE COURSE
OF A PULSE-POUNDING .00057 OF A SECOND
Ah.
YOU CANNOT SAY IT IS
NOT FAST-MOVING
NOT FAST-MOVING
No, but... I'm not sure that you have a grip of the whole
drama thing yet, there, Ace. I don't think I can help you.
DRAT
YOU WANT TO HEAR THE ONE
ABOUT THE WORD PROCESSING PROGRAM
THAT WANTED TO BE AN ACCOUNTING PROGRAM?
ABOUT THE WORD PROCESSING PROGRAM
THAT WANTED TO BE AN ACCOUNTING PROGRAM?
No thanks. I already use Microsoft Word.
NUTS