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| April 30, 1921: Cartoon history is made when Herbert Jounce starts Jounce Air Anvil Delivery Service in major metropolitan areas. |
Thursday, April 30, 2020
Cartoon history in the making.
Wednesday, April 29, 2020
Fred's Book Club: Courage in Reporting.
Welcome, friends, to another edition of our Wednesday book group, the Humpback Writers, not named for humps but for Wednesdays. It's a dumb joke but we're sticking with it.
This week's book is by one of the few really sharp and honest reporters of whom I know, someone who does not toot the courage horn by sitting in a studio defended by the resources of a network, but demonstrates it by going out in the world to find things called facts and write stories based on them. I mean City Journal's own Heather Mac Donald, and her book, The Burden of Bad Ideas: How Modern Intellectuals Misshape Our Society.
I feel you can make a distinction between two types of reporters who look at societal problems: the first, your average J-school grad, says Look at this problem! Do something! The other, much more rare, says Why is this a problem, one that has proved so hard to solve? Mac Donald is squarely in the second camp, and this book is a great collection of her pieces on these problems.
"The reality I have observed again and again in welfare offices and urban classrooms across New York and elsewhere is so dissimilar from that presented in the mainstream media that I sometimes wonder whether their reporters and I occupy the same universe," she writes in the introduction. "Maybe this is a matter of my background. I came to writing about urban problems and social policy as an innocent, without a preconceived theory about the neighborhoods that have dominated domestic policy debate for almost half a century now."
This book was published in 2000, but hardly anything has changed in the last twenty years, and where things had changed for the better, as in New York, they are rapidly changing back for the worse.
What Mac Donald learned in her work is shown in this book, with chapters like "The Billions of Dollars That Made Things Worse," "Why Johnny's Teachers Can't Teach," "Public Health Quackery," and "Revisionist Lust: The Smithsonian Today."
One of the most powerful chapters to me was "Homeless Advocates in Outer Space," which described a 1990s program by the Business Improvement District of Times Square to do exactly what advocates for the homeless seem to think has never been tried -- provide a no-strings-attached outreach to feed and clean and house the homeless, then offer every kind of help to get them on their feet provided they refrain from drug and alcohol use for a period of time. "One year and $700,000 later, only two people had accepted housing," Mac Donald reports. And this is only one of the programs described, a hint of the millions spent that helped hardly anyone. She concludes, "A sane homeless policy would acknowledge two basic realities. First, many people on the streets need treatment, not housing. For the sickest, legislators need to change rules against involuntary confinement, and states need to recommission mental hospitals emptied by deinstitutionalization. Second, for the rest of the homeless the best medicine is the expectation of responsible behavior -- the expectation of work and civil and lawful conduct in public spaces."
When The Burden of Bad Ideas was published, the New York Times Book Review said "this book has the freshness of a stiff, changing breeze." With the rush among governors and mayors to empty prisons and allow tremendous homeless encampments, and ding-dongs like Mike Bloomberg disowning all the policies that made his political leadership successful, I think it's safe to say that Mac Donald's essays, backed by interviews, observation, and deep research, have been completely ignored by those empowered to make better public policy. In fact, just last year she had a look at San Francisco's intractable homeless situation and found a situation even uglier than described in Burden. I doubt her work finds a welcome in the New York Times Book Review today.
I would advise anyone interested in the problems of urban decay to read The Burden of Bad Ideas. Urban problems have been given the breath of new life since the book was published. The causes have not changed, but now the idiocy that led to bad public policy has seeped into an urban population incapable of seeing how its participation in bad ideas leads to its own misery. This book ought to be required reading for every political science major in the country.
Instead, of course, Mac Donald gets silenced on campuses by the usual idiots who can't bear to hear anything resembling the truth.
This week's book is by one of the few really sharp and honest reporters of whom I know, someone who does not toot the courage horn by sitting in a studio defended by the resources of a network, but demonstrates it by going out in the world to find things called facts and write stories based on them. I mean City Journal's own Heather Mac Donald, and her book, The Burden of Bad Ideas: How Modern Intellectuals Misshape Our Society.
I feel you can make a distinction between two types of reporters who look at societal problems: the first, your average J-school grad, says Look at this problem! Do something! The other, much more rare, says Why is this a problem, one that has proved so hard to solve? Mac Donald is squarely in the second camp, and this book is a great collection of her pieces on these problems.
"The reality I have observed again and again in welfare offices and urban classrooms across New York and elsewhere is so dissimilar from that presented in the mainstream media that I sometimes wonder whether their reporters and I occupy the same universe," she writes in the introduction. "Maybe this is a matter of my background. I came to writing about urban problems and social policy as an innocent, without a preconceived theory about the neighborhoods that have dominated domestic policy debate for almost half a century now."
This book was published in 2000, but hardly anything has changed in the last twenty years, and where things had changed for the better, as in New York, they are rapidly changing back for the worse.
What Mac Donald learned in her work is shown in this book, with chapters like "The Billions of Dollars That Made Things Worse," "Why Johnny's Teachers Can't Teach," "Public Health Quackery," and "Revisionist Lust: The Smithsonian Today."
One of the most powerful chapters to me was "Homeless Advocates in Outer Space," which described a 1990s program by the Business Improvement District of Times Square to do exactly what advocates for the homeless seem to think has never been tried -- provide a no-strings-attached outreach to feed and clean and house the homeless, then offer every kind of help to get them on their feet provided they refrain from drug and alcohol use for a period of time. "One year and $700,000 later, only two people had accepted housing," Mac Donald reports. And this is only one of the programs described, a hint of the millions spent that helped hardly anyone. She concludes, "A sane homeless policy would acknowledge two basic realities. First, many people on the streets need treatment, not housing. For the sickest, legislators need to change rules against involuntary confinement, and states need to recommission mental hospitals emptied by deinstitutionalization. Second, for the rest of the homeless the best medicine is the expectation of responsible behavior -- the expectation of work and civil and lawful conduct in public spaces."
When The Burden of Bad Ideas was published, the New York Times Book Review said "this book has the freshness of a stiff, changing breeze." With the rush among governors and mayors to empty prisons and allow tremendous homeless encampments, and ding-dongs like Mike Bloomberg disowning all the policies that made his political leadership successful, I think it's safe to say that Mac Donald's essays, backed by interviews, observation, and deep research, have been completely ignored by those empowered to make better public policy. In fact, just last year she had a look at San Francisco's intractable homeless situation and found a situation even uglier than described in Burden. I doubt her work finds a welcome in the New York Times Book Review today.
I would advise anyone interested in the problems of urban decay to read The Burden of Bad Ideas. Urban problems have been given the breath of new life since the book was published. The causes have not changed, but now the idiocy that led to bad public policy has seeped into an urban population incapable of seeing how its participation in bad ideas leads to its own misery. This book ought to be required reading for every political science major in the country.
Instead, of course, Mac Donald gets silenced on campuses by the usual idiots who can't bear to hear anything resembling the truth.
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
Ah, Walmart! Ah, humanity!
I have to say, during this Chinese corona crisis, the world has turned upside down. By that I mean I actually preferred shopping for groceries at Walmart last week to the local supermarket.
The reason has nothing to do with selection (Walmart's better with some things and worse with others) or even price (Walmart's generally cheaper but the quality is lower, especially in produce). Nor is Walmart known to be more hygienic than other stores. No, the reason I preferred Walmart is that it's easier to get around without someone sneering at you from behind the mask.
I'm okay with the mask thing and the latex gloves, and I can do my best with the six-foot social distancing space, but I am driven crazy by the one-way streets. This goes against a lifetime of training in supermarket etiquette. Now suddenly I have to follow arrows taped to the floors that indicate which aisle is east (or north) and which is west (or south or whatever). This becomes an issue mainly when I skip an aisle. "I don't need paper products today," I say, and skip that aisle, and suddenly I'm in Dairy with oncoming traffic all mad at me. I also have a bad habit of missing something on my list, abandoning my cart, and running back to a previous aisle to get it (but not if I'm already on checkout). This inevitably requires contravening the one-way rules.
This is better in Walmart than in the supermarket for three reasons:
1) The aisles are wider in Walmart. So you have more room to pass the large lady trying to find the can of low-sodium peas.
2) The ceiling is high, too. This gives the illusion of space, even though it doesn't really matter, as if the COVID-19 virus was lighter than air and would cluster far above us harmlessly. But it feels better.
3) People don't care as much in Walmart. The people in Walmart are -- by and large -- less concerned about personal space, even in a pandemic. Let's face it -- some of them are less concerned about their own personal pants. So they are not as inclined to give you a dirty look.
Walmart also always has the advantage over supermarkets that in addition to buying steak, milk, and Cheerios, you can buy tires, dandelion killer, and neckties.
So two cheers to Walmart for being a place that you can shop without getting dirty looks, regardless of your compliance and maybe even the state of your trousers.
Of course, my own trousers are fine. I can't believe you'd even ask such a question.
The reason has nothing to do with selection (Walmart's better with some things and worse with others) or even price (Walmart's generally cheaper but the quality is lower, especially in produce). Nor is Walmart known to be more hygienic than other stores. No, the reason I preferred Walmart is that it's easier to get around without someone sneering at you from behind the mask.
I'm okay with the mask thing and the latex gloves, and I can do my best with the six-foot social distancing space, but I am driven crazy by the one-way streets. This goes against a lifetime of training in supermarket etiquette. Now suddenly I have to follow arrows taped to the floors that indicate which aisle is east (or north) and which is west (or south or whatever). This becomes an issue mainly when I skip an aisle. "I don't need paper products today," I say, and skip that aisle, and suddenly I'm in Dairy with oncoming traffic all mad at me. I also have a bad habit of missing something on my list, abandoning my cart, and running back to a previous aisle to get it (but not if I'm already on checkout). This inevitably requires contravening the one-way rules.
This is better in Walmart than in the supermarket for three reasons:
1) The aisles are wider in Walmart. So you have more room to pass the large lady trying to find the can of low-sodium peas.
2) The ceiling is high, too. This gives the illusion of space, even though it doesn't really matter, as if the COVID-19 virus was lighter than air and would cluster far above us harmlessly. But it feels better.
3) People don't care as much in Walmart. The people in Walmart are -- by and large -- less concerned about personal space, even in a pandemic. Let's face it -- some of them are less concerned about their own personal pants. So they are not as inclined to give you a dirty look.
Walmart also always has the advantage over supermarkets that in addition to buying steak, milk, and Cheerios, you can buy tires, dandelion killer, and neckties.
 |
| Also the only store I know where you can meet at the corner of Child Care and Child Prevention. |
Of course, my own trousers are fine. I can't believe you'd even ask such a question.
Monday, April 27, 2020
Back to the present.
Correspondent and non-commenter Mr. Philbin wonders how my back is doing. This may come from the goodness of his heart, or indeed it may come from his desire to inherit my vast collection of Precious Moments figurines upon my passing. As I have drawn up no will, at this time no non-family member can expect to get anything. Sorry, Philbin old boy.
As for the question, though, regular readers of this site (you handsome devils, you) will recall that last February some spinal issues landed me in the hospital in absolute agony. I haven't mentioned much about my medical progress since, only my financial progress, as bill after bill keeps coming in from my two-night stay. Just FYI: Business Insider says the most expensive hotel in Manhattan is the Central Park Ritz-Carlton, whose rooms start at $4,000 less per night than my hospital bed (not including doctors or treatments or drugs or tests, which are billed separately).
Anyhoo, what about the back itself? When I left the hospital, in grave fear of a relapse, I could not walk more than a hundred feet without shooting pain in my back and/or my leg. Follow-up care with a pain specialist and another spinal injection barely made it scarcely better at all. I was forced to order groceries for pickup and abandon walking the dogs. I wondered if this was going to be as good as I would get for the rest of my life.
By the time I was due for a follow-up to the follow-up, my pain doc was doing virtual appointments because of the Wuhan Death Virus. I figured he would suggest trying more shots, or maybe go straight to surgery, but to my surprise he recommended... an antidepressant.
What the hey...?
Yep, duloxetine (known as Cymbalta to its friends) is an SNRI drug that for some reason treats chronic musculoskeletal pain (also diabetic peripheral neuropathic pain). I have taken antidepressants in the past, for (duh) depression, and was not eager to go back on one. But I was sick of debilitating pain and was willing to try almost anything.
And what do you know: It works.
I've been able to do normal supermarket runs now, and have walked the dogs for a mile or so at a time without having to stop and wait for the pain to subside. I do have some weird leg and foot cramps and the odd shot of pain, and sometimes a cold feeling in my back where the disks went flooie, but it's almost normal. I am not advised to do very strenuous things, like tossing cabers, but the fact that I'm able to do normal things without suffering is almost a miracle compared to how I felt that night I came home from the hospital.
Now, duloxetine does not actually change the situation; it doesn't put slipped disks back in place or heal bone or anything. I am mindful that the whole spine issue could come crashing down on me again. The doctor said these things can improve on their own, so I have hope. But it's definitely improved the pain situation, so thumbs-up for that.
The funny thing is, I don't think the drug has improved my mood at all. It ranges from kind of average to bleak, depending on my worried fixation on money and quarantining and things, probably like everyone else. I think it makes me drowsier, and certainly the naps have been more frequent. But we have plenty of coffee, so I'll get through.
Thanks to everyone but Mr. Philbin for the kind wishes. You're not getting my Precious Moments, pal.
As for the question, though, regular readers of this site (you handsome devils, you) will recall that last February some spinal issues landed me in the hospital in absolute agony. I haven't mentioned much about my medical progress since, only my financial progress, as bill after bill keeps coming in from my two-night stay. Just FYI: Business Insider says the most expensive hotel in Manhattan is the Central Park Ritz-Carlton, whose rooms start at $4,000 less per night than my hospital bed (not including doctors or treatments or drugs or tests, which are billed separately).
Anyhoo, what about the back itself? When I left the hospital, in grave fear of a relapse, I could not walk more than a hundred feet without shooting pain in my back and/or my leg. Follow-up care with a pain specialist and another spinal injection barely made it scarcely better at all. I was forced to order groceries for pickup and abandon walking the dogs. I wondered if this was going to be as good as I would get for the rest of my life.
 |
| The problem is in here somewhere. |
What the hey...?
Yep, duloxetine (known as Cymbalta to its friends) is an SNRI drug that for some reason treats chronic musculoskeletal pain (also diabetic peripheral neuropathic pain). I have taken antidepressants in the past, for (duh) depression, and was not eager to go back on one. But I was sick of debilitating pain and was willing to try almost anything.
And what do you know: It works.
I've been able to do normal supermarket runs now, and have walked the dogs for a mile or so at a time without having to stop and wait for the pain to subside. I do have some weird leg and foot cramps and the odd shot of pain, and sometimes a cold feeling in my back where the disks went flooie, but it's almost normal. I am not advised to do very strenuous things, like tossing cabers, but the fact that I'm able to do normal things without suffering is almost a miracle compared to how I felt that night I came home from the hospital.
Now, duloxetine does not actually change the situation; it doesn't put slipped disks back in place or heal bone or anything. I am mindful that the whole spine issue could come crashing down on me again. The doctor said these things can improve on their own, so I have hope. But it's definitely improved the pain situation, so thumbs-up for that.
The funny thing is, I don't think the drug has improved my mood at all. It ranges from kind of average to bleak, depending on my worried fixation on money and quarantining and things, probably like everyone else. I think it makes me drowsier, and certainly the naps have been more frequent. But we have plenty of coffee, so I'll get through.
Thanks to everyone but Mr. Philbin for the kind wishes. You're not getting my Precious Moments, pal.
Sunday, April 26, 2020
Dr. Prepper.
I'm no prepper. Much of that comes from spending my life in or near New York City. I always figured that if the balloon went up, I'd be an early casualty anyway. No use stocking up on canned tuna when your block looks like this:
But my error is that I did not foresee other kinds of public emergencies that could require preparation. Like a massive solar storm or EMP that knocks out the power grid and all the electronics. Or a contagious disease that quarantines everyone at home for an extended length of time.
Even if I had imagined the latter, there's no way I could have figured out exactly what to stock up on to prepare. The things one normally associates with preppers includes many items that would not have been handy to me in the current crisis -- guns and ammo, propane, hunting knives, canned milk, firewood. Instead, these are the items that I have seen myself and others in need of, things that turned out to be hard to find at one time or other in the last couple of months, or things needed for an extended home stay:
Masks
Gloves
Hand sanitizer
Hand soap
Toilet paper
Paper towels
Those we've all heard about. Then there's:
Rice
Meat
Bottled water
Pasta and sauce
Pinto beans
Soup
Italian bread crumbs (?! Walmart was totally cleaned out yesterday)
Brita filters
Eggs (although how one should save them I don't know, short of hard-boiling and pickling)
Seeds (at least in Vermont and Michigan)
Sweatpants
Booze
Self-haircutting tools
Candy
Craft supplies
Old Dr. Prepper here has learned a few things, as you can see. So I guess if there's another virus circling around China, I'd better go out and buy all of these. Of course, we can never say for sure what we'll need, and we're always in danger of getting ready to fight the last war.
But if China unleashes another damn fatal virus I think I'll look like a genius. Although that image might not hold past my first self-haircut.
But my error is that I did not foresee other kinds of public emergencies that could require preparation. Like a massive solar storm or EMP that knocks out the power grid and all the electronics. Or a contagious disease that quarantines everyone at home for an extended length of time.
Even if I had imagined the latter, there's no way I could have figured out exactly what to stock up on to prepare. The things one normally associates with preppers includes many items that would not have been handy to me in the current crisis -- guns and ammo, propane, hunting knives, canned milk, firewood. Instead, these are the items that I have seen myself and others in need of, things that turned out to be hard to find at one time or other in the last couple of months, or things needed for an extended home stay:
Masks
Gloves
Hand sanitizer
Hand soap
Toilet paper
Paper towels
Those we've all heard about. Then there's:
Rice
Meat
Bottled water
Pasta and sauce
Pinto beans
Soup
Italian bread crumbs (?! Walmart was totally cleaned out yesterday)
Brita filters
Eggs (although how one should save them I don't know, short of hard-boiling and pickling)
Seeds (at least in Vermont and Michigan)
Sweatpants
Booze
Self-haircutting tools
Candy
Craft supplies
Old Dr. Prepper here has learned a few things, as you can see. So I guess if there's another virus circling around China, I'd better go out and buy all of these. Of course, we can never say for sure what we'll need, and we're always in danger of getting ready to fight the last war.
But if China unleashes another damn fatal virus I think I'll look like a genius. Although that image might not hold past my first self-haircut.
Saturday, April 25, 2020
Who was that masked man?
A couple of observations from wearing a mask in public for the last couple of weeks:
1. I'm not sure I like the way my breath smells, and I've been breathing a lot of it. Maybe it's the fact that I've been digging into my supply of dust masks, which have their own slightly weird scent. And all the coffee.
2. I guess the dust masks are okay for the purpose and to comply with the order from Governor Corleone. They'll do to contain the droplets if I cough or sneeze or breathe at someone. A dust mask may not be the best but it's all I got.
3. I was in Home Depot yesterday and they were cleaned out of all types of masks. They did, however, have toilet paper, some kind of industrial brand sold by the roll. I was glad I didn't need it. It looked like the kind that would sand your butt flat. Maybe it's repurposed fine-grit sandpaper.
4. Everyone looks like a bandit, or like a dust storm is a-blowin' through town. Get the cows in, Pa! Dust storm a-blowin'!
5. These frigging things get hot. A friend of mine, a retired New York City fireman, says that the dust masks were so annoying that the guys working the World Trade Center site in 2001 would just throw them away. I asked if that's why so many of them have succumbed to lung diseases and mesothelioma. He didn't think it would have made that much difference in such a contaminated environment, but figured that we'd never know.
6. Spider-Man must be hot all the time with that full-head mask. Batman would be cooler (in every way) but non-compliant with Governor Corleone.
7. I too am non-compliant, in that while I am willing to wear the mask in stores, where it's not possible to stay six feet away from people at all times, I am not going to wear one while walking the dogs. This is the freaking suburbs, not the Avenue of the Americas, and I can easily stay away from other people.
8. They may try to enforce a mask rule, but they can't make me not wear my Bat Pants when I'm attending an online meeting!
9. Just kidding. I have some pride. I wear sweatpants.
1. I'm not sure I like the way my breath smells, and I've been breathing a lot of it. Maybe it's the fact that I've been digging into my supply of dust masks, which have their own slightly weird scent. And all the coffee.
2. I guess the dust masks are okay for the purpose and to comply with the order from Governor Corleone. They'll do to contain the droplets if I cough or sneeze or breathe at someone. A dust mask may not be the best but it's all I got.
3. I was in Home Depot yesterday and they were cleaned out of all types of masks. They did, however, have toilet paper, some kind of industrial brand sold by the roll. I was glad I didn't need it. It looked like the kind that would sand your butt flat. Maybe it's repurposed fine-grit sandpaper.
4. Everyone looks like a bandit, or like a dust storm is a-blowin' through town. Get the cows in, Pa! Dust storm a-blowin'!
5. These frigging things get hot. A friend of mine, a retired New York City fireman, says that the dust masks were so annoying that the guys working the World Trade Center site in 2001 would just throw them away. I asked if that's why so many of them have succumbed to lung diseases and mesothelioma. He didn't think it would have made that much difference in such a contaminated environment, but figured that we'd never know.
6. Spider-Man must be hot all the time with that full-head mask. Batman would be cooler (in every way) but non-compliant with Governor Corleone.
7. I too am non-compliant, in that while I am willing to wear the mask in stores, where it's not possible to stay six feet away from people at all times, I am not going to wear one while walking the dogs. This is the freaking suburbs, not the Avenue of the Americas, and I can easily stay away from other people.
8. They may try to enforce a mask rule, but they can't make me not wear my Bat Pants when I'm attending an online meeting!
9. Just kidding. I have some pride. I wear sweatpants.
Friday, April 24, 2020
One for the cats.
Some folks have noted that I mention dogs a lot on this blog.
Well, here's one for the cats.
Today is National Hairball Awareness Day! If by some chance you had not marked that on your calendar, I'm here to give you the reminder. Apparently the last Friday of April has been designated for that special day since 2006, according to the Days of the Year site. "Launched in 2006 by the National Museum of Health and Medicine, Hairball Awareness Day aims to help educate people about hairballs. They want pet owners to know why it’s essential to pay attention to your cat when they have a hairball."
The National Museum of Health and Medicine is a real museum, located in Silver Spring, Maryland, and indeed it has a mind-boggling collection of hairballs, some of which can be viewed at this page when you are not eating.
Let's become aware! Most cat owners have to deal with hairballs from time to time, but are they a problem? Usually not, but WebMD's pet site (where everything eventually means a tumor) says:
Well, here's one for the cats.
🐱🐱🐱
Today is National Hairball Awareness Day! If by some chance you had not marked that on your calendar, I'm here to give you the reminder. Apparently the last Friday of April has been designated for that special day since 2006, according to the Days of the Year site. "Launched in 2006 by the National Museum of Health and Medicine, Hairball Awareness Day aims to help educate people about hairballs. They want pet owners to know why it’s essential to pay attention to your cat when they have a hairball."
The National Museum of Health and Medicine is a real museum, located in Silver Spring, Maryland, and indeed it has a mind-boggling collection of hairballs, some of which can be viewed at this page when you are not eating.
Let's become aware! Most cat owners have to deal with hairballs from time to time, but are they a problem? Usually not, but WebMD's pet site (where everything eventually means a tumor) says:
If you notice the following hairball symptoms, be sure to contact your veterinarian, as they could indicate that a hairball has caused a potentially life-threatening blockage:
🐈 Ongoing vomiting, gagging, retching, or hacking without producing a hairball
🐈 Lack of appetite
🐈 Lethargy
🐈 Constipation
🐈 Diarrhea
So there we go! We're all just a little more aware of hairballs than we were five minutes ago, and aren't we better off for it?
All right, so, if that didn't do it for you, today is also National Pigs in a Blanket Day. This does not refer to the actual pigs qua pigs, but the little hot dogs wrapped in a crust. No one seems to know where this holiday came from, but here are five recipes for sorta-pigs-in-a-blanket if you feel moved to celebrate.
I think it's just a coincidence that these two holidays fell on the same day. At least I hope so. Anyway, now we're aware of them. Isn't awareness-building fun?
All right, so, if that didn't do it for you, today is also National Pigs in a Blanket Day. This does not refer to the actual pigs qua pigs, but the little hot dogs wrapped in a crust. No one seems to know where this holiday came from, but here are five recipes for sorta-pigs-in-a-blanket if you feel moved to celebrate.
I think it's just a coincidence that these two holidays fell on the same day. At least I hope so. Anyway, now we're aware of them. Isn't awareness-building fun?
Thursday, April 23, 2020
Dog game show.
As my work has dwindled during the current crisis, and the cost of dog treats continues to rise, I was daydreaming about how to get my dogs, Tralfaz and Nipper, to start bringing home the bacon (without eating it all before they got here). Sure, they're cute enough to be in show business, but that requires something called "obedience," so forget that idea. And then I drifted off, thinking....
Host Bob Animus: Welcome to today's episode of What's That Smell?, the game show for dogs! Can our contestants tell the smell? Let's find out! Who's up first, Johnny?
Johnny: He's a large hairy boy from New York, whose hobbies are eating snacks and looking for places to pee! He's here to try to sniff out some dough -- let's welcome Tralfaz!
Tralfaz: Yay for me.
Johnny: Facing Tralfaz is a ferocious bloodhound from Kentucky, who loves searching for escapees and biting them on the tush! Say hello to Sheba!
Tralfaz: Figures.
Sheba: I am here to win.
Bob: Okay, puppies, you know how this works. I'll give you a clue and you bid on how many sniffs it will take to identify the object. If you're wrong, your opponent can steal. First round is best two of three. Are you ready?
Tralfaz: I guess.
Sheba: I was born for this.
Bob: Here we go! This scent was found at the side of the Garden State Parkway near Watsessing Park. Sheba?
Sheba: I will name that smell in one sniff.
Audience: OoooOOoooo
Bob: All right, Sheba: What's That Smell?
Sheba: SNIFF. Smashed rutabaga!
Bob: That's correct!
Tralfaz: This sucks.
Bob: Get two more right and you'll move on to our second round, Sheba. Our next object was discovered in a drainpipe near Puckaway Lake in Wisconsin. Tralfaz?
Tralfaz: I will name that smell in... three sniffs.
Sheba: I'll do it in two, Bob.
Bob: Oooh, Tralfaz, will you let Sheba try or go for it yourself?
Tralfaz: Grr... I will name that smell in one sniff!
Audience: OooOOO!
Bob: All right, Tralfaz... What's That Smell?
Tralfaz: SNIFFFF. Umm... chipmunk carcass?
Bob: I'm sorry, Tralfaz, but no. Sheba, chance to steal?
Sheba: SNIFF. Poodle scat!
Bob: That is correct!
Tralfaz: Mumble mumble chipmunkinest poodle poop I ever smelled doggone it mumble
Bob: Sheba has a chance to sweep the round! Are you ready?
Sheba: I live to sniff.
Bob: Tralfaz, you'd better jump in here if you have the chance. Our third scent was collected in the middle of the Santa Ana Freeway, a mile south of Anaheim. Sheba?
Sheba: I will name that smell in two sniffs.
Bob: To you, Tralfaz.
Tralfaz: Aw... heckin' heck, I'll try it in one.
Audience: OooOOOoooOOO!
Bob: Okay, Tralfaz! What's That Smell?
Tralfaz: SCHNIFFFFFF! Hmm... Run-over barbacoa taco!
Bob: Oooh, sorry, Tralfaz! Sheba?
Sheba: Sniff. Run-over barbacoa empanada, Bob. With mild sauce. Wimp.
Bob: That's exactly right! Sheba will move on to our second round and get closer to a chance to win ten thousand dollars! I'm sorry, Tralfaz, but thanks for playing.
Tralfaz: Shoulda let Nipper come on this show instead, dagnabbit.
Bob: Of course you'll go home with a copy of the What's That Smell? board game, a case of Turtle Wax, and a five-pound wheel of stinky feet cheese!
Tralfaz: Why would I want to wax a tur -- What? Cheese? Hooray!
Oh, well. We didn't get them for their money-making ability. Anybody want to buy some stinky cheese?
📺🐶💲📺🐶💲📺🐶💲
Johnny: He's a large hairy boy from New York, whose hobbies are eating snacks and looking for places to pee! He's here to try to sniff out some dough -- let's welcome Tralfaz!
Tralfaz: Yay for me.
Johnny: Facing Tralfaz is a ferocious bloodhound from Kentucky, who loves searching for escapees and biting them on the tush! Say hello to Sheba!
Tralfaz: Figures.
Sheba: I am here to win.
Bob: Okay, puppies, you know how this works. I'll give you a clue and you bid on how many sniffs it will take to identify the object. If you're wrong, your opponent can steal. First round is best two of three. Are you ready?
Tralfaz: I guess.
Sheba: I was born for this.
Bob: Here we go! This scent was found at the side of the Garden State Parkway near Watsessing Park. Sheba?
Sheba: I will name that smell in one sniff.
Audience: OoooOOoooo
Bob: All right, Sheba: What's That Smell?
Sheba: SNIFF. Smashed rutabaga!
Bob: That's correct!
Tralfaz: This sucks.
Bob: Get two more right and you'll move on to our second round, Sheba. Our next object was discovered in a drainpipe near Puckaway Lake in Wisconsin. Tralfaz?
Tralfaz: I will name that smell in... three sniffs.
Sheba: I'll do it in two, Bob.
Bob: Oooh, Tralfaz, will you let Sheba try or go for it yourself?
Tralfaz: Grr... I will name that smell in one sniff!
Audience: OooOOO!
Bob: All right, Tralfaz... What's That Smell?
Tralfaz: SNIFFFF. Umm... chipmunk carcass?
Bob: I'm sorry, Tralfaz, but no. Sheba, chance to steal?
Sheba: SNIFF. Poodle scat!
Bob: That is correct!
Tralfaz: Mumble mumble chipmunkinest poodle poop I ever smelled doggone it mumble
Bob: Sheba has a chance to sweep the round! Are you ready?
Sheba: I live to sniff.
Bob: Tralfaz, you'd better jump in here if you have the chance. Our third scent was collected in the middle of the Santa Ana Freeway, a mile south of Anaheim. Sheba?
Sheba: I will name that smell in two sniffs.
Bob: To you, Tralfaz.
Tralfaz: Aw... heckin' heck, I'll try it in one.
Audience: OooOOOoooOOO!
Bob: Okay, Tralfaz! What's That Smell?
Tralfaz: SCHNIFFFFFF! Hmm... Run-over barbacoa taco!
Bob: Oooh, sorry, Tralfaz! Sheba?
Sheba: Sniff. Run-over barbacoa empanada, Bob. With mild sauce. Wimp.
Bob: That's exactly right! Sheba will move on to our second round and get closer to a chance to win ten thousand dollars! I'm sorry, Tralfaz, but thanks for playing.
Tralfaz: Shoulda let Nipper come on this show instead, dagnabbit.
Bob: Of course you'll go home with a copy of the What's That Smell? board game, a case of Turtle Wax, and a five-pound wheel of stinky feet cheese!
Tralfaz: Why would I want to wax a tur -- What? Cheese? Hooray!
📺🐶💲📺🐶💲📺🐶💲
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
Fred's Book Club: I've Seen Better Days.
Welcome to our Wednesday Humpback Writers feature, where the writers don't actually suffer from severe kyphosis. However, today's book is for people who might think they are coming down with kyphosis, COVID-19, leprosy, or anything else: The Hypochondriac's Guide to Life. And Death. by Washington Post writer Gene Weingarten.
"Gene is the perfect person to write this book," says his friend Dave Barry in the introduction. "He is not some Johnny-come-lately who is just now adopting hypochondria as a way to sell books. Gene is the most sincere, most dedicated, hardest-working hypochondriac it has ever been my privilege to know. When he tells you all the really awful things that can happen to your body -- that could be happening to your body right now! -- he's not just spewing empty words. He's spewing words about problems that he has spent countless hours convincing himself that he, personally, is suffering from."
Weingarten's political writing aside, he is a hilarious writer in his own right who is not afraid to work blue, as the comedians say. We'll stick to PG quotes here. Such as the justification, right off the bat:
Believe it or not, this is a fun and funny book, although if you are prone to hypochondria you may develop a thousand new symptoms while reading it. But don't fret; late in the book, Weingarten shares a cure for hypochondria! Yes, in 1991 he was instantly cured, according to his account. And that cure was: hepatitis C. Having a real diagnosis of a genuinely dangerous disease took him out of the insanity of imagined illness and put him squarely in the realm of actual illness.
Believe me when I say I sympathize with the hypochondriac quarantined at home, time on his hands to think, at risk of driving loved ones and overworked health professionals crazy with the awful fears that lurk in a period when the whole planet is scared of a virus. But he could do worse than read Weingarten's book. Hey, we all gotta die one day; maybe we can at least die laughing.
"Gene is the perfect person to write this book," says his friend Dave Barry in the introduction. "He is not some Johnny-come-lately who is just now adopting hypochondria as a way to sell books. Gene is the most sincere, most dedicated, hardest-working hypochondriac it has ever been my privilege to know. When he tells you all the really awful things that can happen to your body -- that could be happening to your body right now! -- he's not just spewing empty words. He's spewing words about problems that he has spent countless hours convincing himself that he, personally, is suffering from."
Weingarten's political writing aside, he is a hilarious writer in his own right who is not afraid to work blue, as the comedians say. We'll stick to PG quotes here. Such as the justification, right off the bat:
Do you suffer from hypochondria? We are all susceptible to it -- it is part of our survival instinct, imprinted on our brains from infancy. We are in our crib and our diaper is wet, so we howl and thrash and whimper, and pretty soon someone comes to help us. It is our mom. She coos to us sympathetically and slathers our behind with products that make us smell like the sitting room of a nineteenth-century San Francisco bordello. An important behavioral arc has been established: Complaint brings attention; attention brings relief.From there, Weingarten takes us through a tour of all the amazing and wonderful diseases that can kill and cripple us; his hypochondria has led him to be an excellent researcher on the topic. He has some charts that list symptom, most likely diagnosis, and most terrifying diagnosis, such as:
Symptom: Drooping eyelid, called "ptosis"And if you think I was joking about hypochondriacs thinking they can come down with kyphosis (hunchback), think again:
Most likely diagnosis: You have a minor eyelid infection.
Most terrifying diagnosis: You have myasthenia gravis. It can turn you into flaccid goop.
Take a deep breath, and then start counting rapidly out loud. If your lungs are functioning normally, you should be able to count to 70 or so before you need to take a breath. If you don't get near that, your lungs may be showing diminished volume, which could indicate restrictive lung disease. This would be anything that makes it hard to take deep, full breaths, including an array of lung diseases and infections ranging from pneumonia to lung cancer to kyphoscoliosis, a malformation of the spine sometimes associated with heart disease.But it must be said that Weingarten does some good reporting here beyond looking at symptoms of cancer and other deadly diseases that are probably nothing. For example, he notes that even the best of hypochondriacs, with hysterical symptoms, can be detected by medical professionals:
The symptoms of strokes and tumors that they fear are far more common: paralysis on one side of the body, muscle weakness, inability to talk. Sometimes they fear these things so desperately that they develop the symptoms, a form of hysteria. Emergency room doctors in particular are adept at weeding out the nuts, or "gomers," from the real disease victims: When a patient says he can't talk, doctors will sometimes ask him to whisper. If you can whisper, there is nothing wrong with the speech center in your brain. When a patient claims complete paralysis in an arm or appears unconscious, doctors will sometimes lay him in a bed, hold his hand above his face, and let go. If a patient is faking or imagining paralysis, he generally won't let his hand bash his face; it will fall to the side."Gomer," he informs us, means "Get Out of My Emergency Room."
Believe it or not, this is a fun and funny book, although if you are prone to hypochondria you may develop a thousand new symptoms while reading it. But don't fret; late in the book, Weingarten shares a cure for hypochondria! Yes, in 1991 he was instantly cured, according to his account. And that cure was: hepatitis C. Having a real diagnosis of a genuinely dangerous disease took him out of the insanity of imagined illness and put him squarely in the realm of actual illness.
Hepatitis C is a cool disease. Lots of famous people have had it. Mickey Mantle, for example. King Farouk. Many of these people are currently dead. My point is that I had something serious, which I discovered to be a fantastic cure for my hypochondria.I'm not sure if that's useful knowledge for the hypochondriac out there, the one reading this who has been convinced since January that every cough and sneeze is COVID-19, even though he lives alone and has not traveled farther than the refrigerator since Martin Luther King Day. After all, a real disease may cure hypochondria, but in this case the cure may really be worse than the disease.
Believe me when I say I sympathize with the hypochondriac quarantined at home, time on his hands to think, at risk of driving loved ones and overworked health professionals crazy with the awful fears that lurk in a period when the whole planet is scared of a virus. But he could do worse than read Weingarten's book. Hey, we all gotta die one day; maybe we can at least die laughing.
Tuesday, April 21, 2020
Monday, April 20, 2020
Daddy to the rescue!
On Sunday morning I was out in the yard with midsize sedan dog Nipper. Even though it was a beautiful if chilly morning, not another soul was around. It was early, and everyone in the neighborhood seemed to be asleep.
Then the jerks started to make noise.
There's a pond nearby where large aquatic birds like to rest and/or have fights. I've heard ducks giving each other the business over there. But Canadian geese are another thing. Two of them seemed to be having a pissing contest, honking at each other with anger, rhythm, and volume. They were like two giant goose trucks backing up, or a couple of goose cars' alarms going off. I thought that they'd wake up the whole block.
Nipper did not like this one bit.
He growled at the sound, and with him the growl is the father of the bark. And he can bark. So people who had not been disturbed by the jerk geese would be disturbed by my dog, and pin the blame on us. Clearly, someone had to take action.
That person appeared to be Nipper, who wanted to go kill the geese. But I held on tight to the leash and we made our way to the pond to see the foul fowl. There they were, floating peacefully, honking away like billy-o. Nipper really hated all this. So I did what any self-respecting male would do. I found a rock and threw it.
Not at a goose; they were too far off, and whacking one might not stop the other. I plopped it nicely between them with a satisfying plunge, and the startled combatants squawked in fear and took flight. Their honks wore off with distance as they shot away into the breeze.
Nipper looked up at me with a big grin, like, "Holy cow, that was amazing!"
You're welcome, Nipper. And you, my neighbors. You may never know who saved your early Sunday rest, but Nipper does.
 |
| Jerk. |
Nipper did not like this one bit.
He growled at the sound, and with him the growl is the father of the bark. And he can bark. So people who had not been disturbed by the jerk geese would be disturbed by my dog, and pin the blame on us. Clearly, someone had to take action.
That person appeared to be Nipper, who wanted to go kill the geese. But I held on tight to the leash and we made our way to the pond to see the foul fowl. There they were, floating peacefully, honking away like billy-o. Nipper really hated all this. So I did what any self-respecting male would do. I found a rock and threw it.
Not at a goose; they were too far off, and whacking one might not stop the other. I plopped it nicely between them with a satisfying plunge, and the startled combatants squawked in fear and took flight. Their honks wore off with distance as they shot away into the breeze.
Nipper looked up at me with a big grin, like, "Holy cow, that was amazing!"
You're welcome, Nipper. And you, my neighbors. You may never know who saved your early Sunday rest, but Nipper does.
📣📣📣
On an unrelated note, big get-well wishes to our friend Mongo, who practiced his swan dive in an inappropriate place and suffered the consequences. God bless and get well, Mongo; no doubt you'll be punching horses again real soon.
Sunday, April 19, 2020
Quarantine Day 149? Or Something.
I look at the walls
The walls look back at me
I say to them "Hi, walls"
But the walls say nothing
War on COVID
Conscientious objector
Time for a snack
Down to the rice cakes
Not even the cinnamon ones
War is hell
Could go out to the store
Whom am I kidding?
I even got TP
Don't look pathetic
It's even worse than desperate
6266 confirmed in the county
That's a lot of sick people
Where are they hiding?
Stay away from me, sick people
I resist the siren call to join your ranks
Lookit people going for the mail
Wearing pajama pants!
Har har hardy har har!
I would never do that!
Temperature? Feels good
No fever
Cough! Oh no!
False alarm
Swallowed funny
Time for a nap
Still tired from
My last nap
Daytime TV!
Shoot me now
Look out the window
Some people coming down
Opposite sides of the street
Chicken!
Left side blinks
Moves across street
Don't wave to each other!
That could spread germs
Can you catch a virus from Zoom?
Computer virus
Ha Ha
I need a life
Memo to me:
Buy some pajamas
They look comfy
I guess I'll know I'm going nuts
When the walls talk back to me
The walls look back at me
I say to them "Hi, walls"
But the walls say nothing
War on COVID
Conscientious objector
Time for a snack
Down to the rice cakes
Not even the cinnamon ones
War is hell
Could go out to the store
Whom am I kidding?
I even got TP
Don't look pathetic
It's even worse than desperate
6266 confirmed in the county
That's a lot of sick people
Where are they hiding?
Stay away from me, sick people
I resist the siren call to join your ranks
Lookit people going for the mail
Wearing pajama pants!
Har har hardy har har!
I would never do that!
Temperature? Feels good
No fever
Cough! Oh no!
False alarm
Swallowed funny
Time for a nap
Still tired from
My last nap
Daytime TV!
Shoot me now
Look out the window
Some people coming down
Opposite sides of the street
Chicken!
Left side blinks
Moves across street
Don't wave to each other!
That could spread germs
Can you catch a virus from Zoom?
Computer virus
Ha Ha
I need a life
Memo to me:
Buy some pajamas
They look comfy
I guess I'll know I'm going nuts
When the walls talk back to me
Saturday, April 18, 2020
April is the coolest month.
We dipped below freezing the other night -- unusual at this time of April. Yes, April is the coolest month this year so far, meaning unseasonably chilly. And that damn windstorm that came through peeled a stack of shingles off the roof four inches thick. This morning is as foggy as a hangover.
Spring is like pizza, though, in that even when it's bad it's still pretty good. It's also like that crazy girlfriend who made you a basket case and dumped you but you couldn't shake for the longest time.
In years to come -- unless China keeps sending us more contagions -- we may look back on 2020 as having "the spring that wasn't," But rest assured that no matter what, spring was here.
Sometimes the seasons don't give us much, but sometimes it's enough.
Friday, April 17, 2020
Easter candy thoughts.
I guess by this point in the week the Easter baskets have all been emptied. Any little toys have been broken. All the candy has been consumed, maybe even the black jelly beans.
I could never stand those. Any licorice candy turned me off. Mom would eat them. She said she liked them. Maybe it was the only candy in the house she knew she could enjoy in peace.
My aversion to black licorice has lasted from childhood until this very year, when I tried some Gimbal's Scottie Dogs, which were purchased along with dog food at the Tractor Supply. But even though Gimbal's Scottie Dogs are shaped like dogs, they are not dog food.
This is black licorice that tastes good. Not mean and bitter and astringent, but delicious, a perfect balance of the anise flavor with the sweetness. I have always found black licorice to taste like anise seeds and wallpaper, with the consistency of the latter, but these are really tasty. Unfortunately for me, or fortunately for my waist, I must forgo them as they will pull every filling out of my face.
I guess I've always just eaten cheap, lousy black licorice before. But I never minded cheap, lousy chocolate Easter bunnies. They always were a mild disappointment, though.
Having grown up with pretty good Hershey's and the like, and even sometimes really good chocolate, the cheap, waxy Easter bunny was not too exciting. But I found the secret to enjoying it -- get the jar of peanut butter and make your own Reese's. The quality of the chocolate is almost irrelevant when mixed with PB. You can even break up the chocolate and make a sort of Reese's Peanut Butter Sandwich for lunch. This is what we used to do before Nutella was all over the place, children.
But back to the Easter bunnies. If you were really lucky you got a solid chocolate bunny, but of course most of them were hollow. This has led many people to use an Easter bunny for a metaphor for their lives -- cheerful and appealing on the outside but completely empty on the inside.
See, my life is not like that. I'm grumpy and scared on the outside, and it goes straight to the bone,
Thursday, April 16, 2020
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
Fred's Book Club: Keep It Clean!
Welcome to our Wednesday "Hump Day" feature called the Humpback Writers, because we thought it was funny last year when we started this and we're stubbornly continuing it even though we were wrong. But for those quarantined and unsure of the day, I can tell you that I am indeed posting this on Wednesday.
It's time for spring cleaning, and in these germaphobic times of Wuhan coronavirus it is especially important. So I pulled this one out of the library:
Coming Clean: Dirty Little Secrets from a Professional Housecleaner by Schar Ward is not the kind of book I would have run out to buy. I was working for a magazine when it was published, and I think we profiled it and included some of Ward's tips. When it appeared on the giveaway table I snatched it up, because I liked the idea of anything that made housecleaning more easy and less rotten, which Schar Ward does. And I did learn a lot about cleaning at that magazine -- the concept of "dwell time," for example.
Here are some excellent tips from Coming Clean:
I have also taken the liberty to scan this section, one of a few illustrated bits, because it has her instructions for folding fitted sheets, a task that has brought strong men to tears:
There are a lot of other great tidbits in this book, not only about how to clean, but even how to think low-maintenance when building or redecorating your home (such as: "Get the best grade stainless steel sink you can afford" for the kitchen, because "Lower grade stainless steel doesn't wear as well").
Ward's other books include 2017's Teaching Children to Clean: The Ready-Set-Go Solution That Works! And if this solution really does get kids to clean the house, I just want to say, I think the Pulitzer committee missed its shot back in 2017.
It's time for spring cleaning, and in these germaphobic times of Wuhan coronavirus it is especially important. So I pulled this one out of the library:
Coming Clean: Dirty Little Secrets from a Professional Housecleaner by Schar Ward is not the kind of book I would have run out to buy. I was working for a magazine when it was published, and I think we profiled it and included some of Ward's tips. When it appeared on the giveaway table I snatched it up, because I liked the idea of anything that made housecleaning more easy and less rotten, which Schar Ward does. And I did learn a lot about cleaning at that magazine -- the concept of "dwell time," for example.
Here are some excellent tips from Coming Clean:
Toilet cleaning is easier when the water is out of the bowl. To get the water out, dump a pailful of water into the toilet.... Remove blue water and other waterline stains with a pumice stone made for that purpose. A pumice stone is to be used wet. Leave the water in the bowl while you rub at the stains until they are "erased."
To keep a clean house and save time, get rid of everything you don't need! Just pretend you are going to move to another house or an apartment. As you are going through your things, ask yourself these three questions:
* Can anyone in my family use this?
* How frequently will we use it?
* If I keep it, how will I store it?
Don't use wood in a bathroom except for doors, moldings and cabinet fronts. Water rots wood and eventually, no matter what it's coated with, it'll look bad.And, since we love our books here at Fred's Book Club:
Dust books at least once a month with the vacuum brush attachment. Yearly, remove all books from their shelves and wipe them with a (barely) damp cloth.The tips are generally divided into sections by room (living room, kitchen, kids' rooms, etc.), types of surfaces, supplies, and even cleaning philosophy. She actually doesn't include much on disinfecting in this concise (117-page) guide. She says disinfectant cleaner is "a must for kitchens and baths," of course, and although she has some product recommendations, she says disinfectant and antibacterial cleaners are all about the same. In other words, they will all kill those nasty germs if you use them as directed. And she recommends kitchen counters get a good disinfectant cleaning once a week.
I have also taken the liberty to scan this section, one of a few illustrated bits, because it has her instructions for folding fitted sheets, a task that has brought strong men to tears:
There are a lot of other great tidbits in this book, not only about how to clean, but even how to think low-maintenance when building or redecorating your home (such as: "Get the best grade stainless steel sink you can afford" for the kitchen, because "Lower grade stainless steel doesn't wear as well").
Ward's other books include 2017's Teaching Children to Clean: The Ready-Set-Go Solution That Works! And if this solution really does get kids to clean the house, I just want to say, I think the Pulitzer committee missed its shot back in 2017.
Tuesday, April 14, 2020
Armageddon! Ragnarok! Apocalypse!
Well, it felt a little like that yesterday with that storm that raged through here. We're used to a lot of bad weather, but gusts in the fifties are pretty unusual for New York. You can definitely feel that kind of wind in the skyscrapers, and it can scare the crap out of you. But in fact, things were much worse at ground level in the southern states, with more than thirty deaths reported as of this morning.
Along with the worldwide pandemic, things are feeling a little end-of-the-worldish, are they not? There's even a plague of locusts in Africa. So the four horsemen -- Pestilence, Famine, Death, and War (with China) are ticked off, along with a fifth one, Terrifying Weather.
I'd add my own personal sixth horseman of the apocalypse: Hospital Bill.
Along with the worldwide pandemic, things are feeling a little end-of-the-worldish, are they not? There's even a plague of locusts in Africa. So the four horsemen -- Pestilence, Famine, Death, and War (with China) are ticked off, along with a fifth one, Terrifying Weather.
 |
| Which included a plague of dill pickles on my front lawn last night. |
I'd add my own personal sixth horseman of the apocalypse: Hospital Bill.
I got a call from the hospital billing department yesterday to inform me, very pleasantly, that I owe them more than four thousand bucks from my little visit last February. Now, this was stunning, but more so because I've already paid bills totally close to two grand, including a few hundred for a strange foreign gentleman named (honest!) Zoltan, who came to my bed of pain in the ER to whack me in various spots with a reflex hammer. So I was expecting more billing, but not on this scale.
You just never know when it's over with hospitals.
In my mind, every episode of House would have ended the same way.
"Your brilliance has once again saved another patient, Dr. House! None of us could have known that his Cushing's syndrome was masking his Sjogren's syndrome! But when he got the fifteenth bill he hanged himself in the garage."
"Okay. So what's going on with the fat slob with the creeping crud on his junk?"
Oh, well. I am told that there's a handy interest-free payment plan, so I can go broke over the long run rather than right away. So I got that going for me.
Honestly, I could even take all that on the chin if I only knew for sure that there'd be no more bills. But who knows -- Zoltan might send me an invoice to buy a new hammer.
Maybe I'll send him a nice jar of dill pickles.
Monday, April 13, 2020
The Easter Bunny is a loon.
Yesterday turned out to be a little crazy, even though we had no guests and went nowhere. So I am afraid I have only a couple of quick hits for you this morning. A small dose of VitaminFred, as it were.
1) The Easter Bunny is a loon.
Maybe that's not fair to that well-known lagomorph. because I don't actually know who did this:
Actual hard-boiled eggs along the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the road. They appear to have been decorated by youngsters with crayons. There were a number of them along the street. Two of them were out in from of my house. Why?
If someone was hoping to spread Easter joy, this is not a particularly good way to do it. In these pandemic times, no one wants to pick up food other people left around. And no one wants to eat something that's been left on the devil's strip. My dogs like to use that to leave little "eggs" of their own, so to speak.
Was it part of an Easter egg hunt? If so, the hunters were not too swift. The eggs outside my neighbor's house are still there this morning. I disposed of the ones outside my house. This is how you get ants. And maybe bears.
2) I just wanted it stated for the record, that even if I come down with COVID-19, a.k.a. Wuhan Flu, I do not want to go on the cart. I feel happy.
I think I'll go for a walk!
1) The Easter Bunny is a loon.
Maybe that's not fair to that well-known lagomorph. because I don't actually know who did this:
Actual hard-boiled eggs along the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the road. They appear to have been decorated by youngsters with crayons. There were a number of them along the street. Two of them were out in from of my house. Why?
If someone was hoping to spread Easter joy, this is not a particularly good way to do it. In these pandemic times, no one wants to pick up food other people left around. And no one wants to eat something that's been left on the devil's strip. My dogs like to use that to leave little "eggs" of their own, so to speak.
Was it part of an Easter egg hunt? If so, the hunters were not too swift. The eggs outside my neighbor's house are still there this morning. I disposed of the ones outside my house. This is how you get ants. And maybe bears.
2) I just wanted it stated for the record, that even if I come down with COVID-19, a.k.a. Wuhan Flu, I do not want to go on the cart. I feel happy.
I think I'll go for a walk!
Sunday, April 12, 2020
Wait for it.
Lent is a time of testing and trial and waiting, but Easter is the great celebration at the end. Well, it may be a celebration spiritually, but physically, we're still enduring testing and trial, and most of all we're still waiting.
I had high hopes in the president's earlier wish that things would be normalized by Easter, but my wife was less optimistic, and also correct. This is bad for the churches, of course, and businesses that rely on a boost from Easter. I think I feel worse for all the families for whom the holiday is a time to get together and do fun things like brunches, Easter egg hunts, and run screaming from men in scary bunny suits. Traditions!
We would have gone to the vigil last night, although I was beat by the end of the day and would have had to slug down an enormous mug of coffee. It's worth it. Even our medium-size parish is home to majesty at the Easter Vigil. The church is dark, the pews are full, the candle light works slowly up from the back as the announcement is sung that Christ is the light that has broken the darkness, and soon the whole place bursts into light singing hallelujah. I love it -- even though it plays heckin' heck with the dogs' schedule and makes me stay up past my bedtime.
Instead we will watch Mass online today. Although sometimes it feels like I'm isolated, I know we all are; the priest will be almost completely alone, maybe with a lector present.
Oh, well. Lord give us patience, and let's pray as hard as we can that we can get back to our lives, and that this damn Chinese coronavirus will be gone for good long before Christmas. Amen!
I had high hopes in the president's earlier wish that things would be normalized by Easter, but my wife was less optimistic, and also correct. This is bad for the churches, of course, and businesses that rely on a boost from Easter. I think I feel worse for all the families for whom the holiday is a time to get together and do fun things like brunches, Easter egg hunts, and run screaming from men in scary bunny suits. Traditions!
We would have gone to the vigil last night, although I was beat by the end of the day and would have had to slug down an enormous mug of coffee. It's worth it. Even our medium-size parish is home to majesty at the Easter Vigil. The church is dark, the pews are full, the candle light works slowly up from the back as the announcement is sung that Christ is the light that has broken the darkness, and soon the whole place bursts into light singing hallelujah. I love it -- even though it plays heckin' heck with the dogs' schedule and makes me stay up past my bedtime.
Instead we will watch Mass online today. Although sometimes it feels like I'm isolated, I know we all are; the priest will be almost completely alone, maybe with a lector present.
Oh, well. Lord give us patience, and let's pray as hard as we can that we can get back to our lives, and that this damn Chinese coronavirus will be gone for good long before Christmas. Amen!
Saturday, April 11, 2020
Friday, April 10, 2020
Suffering for art.
When I was a young man, with that fresh-out-of-college smell still on me, I was on a self-improvement kick. Having neglected everything in pursuit of my degree, and in pursuit of having fun as I pursued my degree, I tried to make my mind more well-rounded and my body less so. I took up running. I started reading great books without a professor forcing me to. I studied philosophy and economics and history. And one year, when the office tossed us out at noon on Good Friday, I went to a Good Friday service at a church where the choir was performing the Johann Sebastian Bach St. Matthew Passion.
I wanted to cultivate some knowledge of religion, but also knowledge of classical music, which like most American kids my age had been largely restricted to aborted piano lessons, school choral groups, and of course Looney Tunes. But because of this minimal exposure, and the fact that I thought I liked things I'd heard from Vivaldi and the rest of that crowd, I wanted to immerse myself in Bach's musical masterpiece.
I learned a few things that day.
1) Good Friday services with the complete Bach Passion run for three hours.
2) Three hours can feel like 300 hours.
3) It is apparently important to suffer right along with Jesus.
4) Despite having studies the origins of words, I don't know a single word of Latin when sung.
5) I am an unreconstructed ignoramus slug of a barbaric bozo upon whom the world's greatest music is completely wasted.
Every time I look back on that day, I think of Sinclair Lewis's novel Arrowsmith. The hero, Martin Arrowsmith, a young man with a powerful bent for science, is taken by fellow student Angus Duer to a classical music concert.
And I have avoided Bach ever since.
That's pretty much all I remember about it except for one thing, which is also 100% true. It had been a very wet, miserable April day, and the rain was lashing the church pretty well throughout the interminable service. Then, at three o'clock, just as everything was finished, through a narrow window behind the altar, I could see a sharp, piercing beam of the sun breaking through.
I wanted to cultivate some knowledge of religion, but also knowledge of classical music, which like most American kids my age had been largely restricted to aborted piano lessons, school choral groups, and of course Looney Tunes. But because of this minimal exposure, and the fact that I thought I liked things I'd heard from Vivaldi and the rest of that crowd, I wanted to immerse myself in Bach's musical masterpiece.
I learned a few things that day.
1) Good Friday services with the complete Bach Passion run for three hours.
2) Three hours can feel like 300 hours.
3) It is apparently important to suffer right along with Jesus.
4) Despite having studies the origins of words, I don't know a single word of Latin when sung.
5) I am an unreconstructed ignoramus slug of a barbaric bozo upon whom the world's greatest music is completely wasted.
 |
| No thanks, Mr. Bach. |
At supper Duer said abruptly, "Come into town with me and hear a concert."Unlike Martin, I was not particularly good at science, and I think I missed any of the incomprehensible beauty bits. It made me wonder what I had been doing my whole life to that point.
For all his fancied superiority to the class, Martin was illimitably ignorant of literature, of painting, of music. That the bloodless and acquisitive Angus Duer should waste time listening to fiddlers was astounding to him. He discovered that Duer had enthusiasm for two composers, called Bach and Beethoven, presumably Germans, and that he himself did not yet comprehend all the ways of the world. On the interurban, Duer's gravity loosened, and he cried, "Boy, if I hadn't been born to carve up innards, I'd have been a great musician! Tonight I'm going to lead you right into Heaven!"
Martin found himself in a confusion of little chairs and vast gilded arches, of polite but disapproving ladies with programs in their laps, unromantic musicians making unpleasant noises below and, at last, incomprehensible beauty, which made for him pictures of hills and deep forests, then suddenly became achingly long-winded. He exulted, "I'm going to have 'em all--the fame of Max Gottlieb--I mean his ability--and the lovely music and lovely women-- Golly! I'm going to do big things. And see the world. . . . Will this piece never quit?"
And I have avoided Bach ever since.
That's pretty much all I remember about it except for one thing, which is also 100% true. It had been a very wet, miserable April day, and the rain was lashing the church pretty well throughout the interminable service. Then, at three o'clock, just as everything was finished, through a narrow window behind the altar, I could see a sharp, piercing beam of the sun breaking through.
Thursday, April 9, 2020
Furlough.
I got the sack. Partially. It's a semi-sack. A temporary semi-sack.
One of my clients is the small publishing wing of a big media company. How big? Mid-level vice presidents get paid more for the time they spend farting in the office than I get paid to work for them. And yet I'm too expensive.
I'm not really down about it, since it's only one of my regular clients, and the layoff is supposed to end (maybe) when the current crisis is over. But it comes at a bad time. Another client can't send out the money they owe freelancers because they are not allowed to enter the building to sign and mail the checks, lest their accountant stagger in reeking with COVID-19. They've also pushed back their publishing schedule a few months because no one can go to bookstores and no authors can go on book tours, which means all current projects have ground to a halt. Book printers, who usually work around the clock, are going to be in trouble.
(The irony is that the big media company's kiddie books, which require bright colors and even toy-like attachments, will probably continue to go to press, because they're sold in places like Walmart, and the vast majority of those are printed in... Can you guess? Yep, you're right.)
All of which is made worse by the fact that I have to cough up money for New York State's clutching tax barons next week. I owe nothing to the Feds but have to pay the state this year. I think New York needs my cash to pay for Andy "Evil-Eyes" Cuomo's nipple ring polish. I think that's why Sandra Lee dumped him -- tarnished nipple rings. But never mind all that.
Actually, I am not so bad off as many others, even other affected by this very same furlough. A number of people who got the heave-ho work full-time for this outfit. Of course, they'll be able to go on unemployment, but if they never get hired back it could be a problem. Virtually no one is hiring right now.
Publishing is a sucktational business to be in. I always quote a late friend of mine, who said that it's got all the ego of the movie business with none of the money. Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be editors. If this situation doesn't bother me more than it ought to, it's because I have been laid off or otherwise turned loose (companies closing under me, for example) six times. I can smell the bloody ax coming from two hundred yards away.
Still, a furlough is a furlough; if they wanted to sack us they could have straight-up sacked us. What will happen next? No one really knows.
One of my clients is the small publishing wing of a big media company. How big? Mid-level vice presidents get paid more for the time they spend farting in the office than I get paid to work for them. And yet I'm too expensive.
I'm not really down about it, since it's only one of my regular clients, and the layoff is supposed to end (maybe) when the current crisis is over. But it comes at a bad time. Another client can't send out the money they owe freelancers because they are not allowed to enter the building to sign and mail the checks, lest their accountant stagger in reeking with COVID-19. They've also pushed back their publishing schedule a few months because no one can go to bookstores and no authors can go on book tours, which means all current projects have ground to a halt. Book printers, who usually work around the clock, are going to be in trouble.
(The irony is that the big media company's kiddie books, which require bright colors and even toy-like attachments, will probably continue to go to press, because they're sold in places like Walmart, and the vast majority of those are printed in... Can you guess? Yep, you're right.)
All of which is made worse by the fact that I have to cough up money for New York State's clutching tax barons next week. I owe nothing to the Feds but have to pay the state this year. I think New York needs my cash to pay for Andy "Evil-Eyes" Cuomo's nipple ring polish. I think that's why Sandra Lee dumped him -- tarnished nipple rings. But never mind all that.
Actually, I am not so bad off as many others, even other affected by this very same furlough. A number of people who got the heave-ho work full-time for this outfit. Of course, they'll be able to go on unemployment, but if they never get hired back it could be a problem. Virtually no one is hiring right now.
Publishing is a sucktational business to be in. I always quote a late friend of mine, who said that it's got all the ego of the movie business with none of the money. Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be editors. If this situation doesn't bother me more than it ought to, it's because I have been laid off or otherwise turned loose (companies closing under me, for example) six times. I can smell the bloody ax coming from two hundred yards away.
Still, a furlough is a furlough; if they wanted to sack us they could have straight-up sacked us. What will happen next? No one really knows.
Wednesday, April 8, 2020
Fred's Book Club: A Turning Point.
Hello, book lovers! Welcome to our Wednesday Humpback Writers feature, where writers without humps (or maybe with; we're not ableist) are celebrated on Hump Day.
This being Holy Week, I wanted to make a brief mention of a brief book that was crucially important to me.
Mere Christianity was not the first C.S. Lewis book I ever read. Like so many other people, I came to meet him through the Chronicles of Narnia, when I was in high school and reading my way through every classic science fiction and fantasy series I could find. Then, in college, I read his Space Trilogy, which is a series written for adults and also follows Christian themes in a compelling way. Then I borrowed his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, from the library, and that was a body-blow to my muddled mess of neo-paganistic pseudo-Christianish soul. That led me to Mere Christianity.
As Anthony Burgess wrote, "Lewis is the ideal persuader for the half-convinced, for the good man who would like to be a Christian but finds his intellect getting in the way." I think that's true, but I also think in cases like mine that it was not all intellect but also mental glitches and half-baked notions -- and maybe most of all the fear that I was going to have to give up things I liked if I followed this path. How did he bring me around? It is a logical progression from first principles, like showing that people believe in Right and Wrong even though that would not possible in a world without transcendent meaning, and from there leading up to where our instincts should lead us, to the Source of happiness and all good things.
Mere Christianity (titled mere as in basic, or what all Christians believe regardless of denomination or sect) is just 173 pages in my Collier edition, but every page has a powerful thought put in a plain and dynamic way. Let's look at some bits from this immensely quotable book:
"Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right or Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining 'It's not fair' before you can say Jack Robinson."
"Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all of the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two plus two made five. Men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to -- whether it was only your own family, or your countrymen, or everybody else. But they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired."
“This is the fix we are in. If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again. We cannot do without it, and we cannot do with it. God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies. Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion.”
“There is nothing indulgent about the Moral Law. It is as hard as nails. It tells you to do the straight thing and it does not seem to care how painful, or dangerous, or difficult it is to do.”
“Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with ever fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”
"Christianity is a fighting religion. It thinks God made the world -- that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colours and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God ‘made up out of His Head’ as a man makes up a story. But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again."
“When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less.”
"He chose an earthly career which involved the killing of His human desires at every turn --poverty, misunderstanding from His own family, betrayal by one of His intimate friends, being jeered at and manhandled by the Police, and execution by torture. And then, after being thus killed—killed every day in a sense—the human creature in Him, because it was united to the divine Son, came to life again. The Man in Christ rose again: not only the God."
It is powerful writing with the concision that any poet ought to envy. It is amazing that a book built on a reasonable argument could have so many quotes that are clear and potent when standing alone, as if every brick in a lovely home could be a work of art by itself.
Lewis was about as educated in the liberal arts as a man could get; also a combat veteran of the First World War. He was a hardened atheist brought to his knees by faith. He brings myth (as the echoes of reality) and stone cold fact together to reveal the truth that is beyond nature itself.
This book contains a somewhat simplified version of his philosophy and apologetics; classics like The Abolition of Man and Miracles are more sophisticated. But his goal here in these essays was to lay out his case plainly, and he did, and it hit me like a thunderbolt. I'll tell you one thing: He's the best modern writer you'll find at Hobby Lobby.
This being Holy Week, I wanted to make a brief mention of a brief book that was crucially important to me.
Mere Christianity was not the first C.S. Lewis book I ever read. Like so many other people, I came to meet him through the Chronicles of Narnia, when I was in high school and reading my way through every classic science fiction and fantasy series I could find. Then, in college, I read his Space Trilogy, which is a series written for adults and also follows Christian themes in a compelling way. Then I borrowed his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, from the library, and that was a body-blow to my muddled mess of neo-paganistic pseudo-Christianish soul. That led me to Mere Christianity.
As Anthony Burgess wrote, "Lewis is the ideal persuader for the half-convinced, for the good man who would like to be a Christian but finds his intellect getting in the way." I think that's true, but I also think in cases like mine that it was not all intellect but also mental glitches and half-baked notions -- and maybe most of all the fear that I was going to have to give up things I liked if I followed this path. How did he bring me around? It is a logical progression from first principles, like showing that people believe in Right and Wrong even though that would not possible in a world without transcendent meaning, and from there leading up to where our instincts should lead us, to the Source of happiness and all good things.
Mere Christianity (titled mere as in basic, or what all Christians believe regardless of denomination or sect) is just 173 pages in my Collier edition, but every page has a powerful thought put in a plain and dynamic way. Let's look at some bits from this immensely quotable book:
"Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right or Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining 'It's not fair' before you can say Jack Robinson."
“This is the fix we are in. If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again. We cannot do without it, and we cannot do with it. God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies. Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion.”
“There is nothing indulgent about the Moral Law. It is as hard as nails. It tells you to do the straight thing and it does not seem to care how painful, or dangerous, or difficult it is to do.”
“Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favorite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end submit with ever fiber of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”
"Christianity is a fighting religion. It thinks God made the world -- that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colours and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God ‘made up out of His Head’ as a man makes up a story. But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again."
“When a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse he understands his own badness less and less.”
"He chose an earthly career which involved the killing of His human desires at every turn --poverty, misunderstanding from His own family, betrayal by one of His intimate friends, being jeered at and manhandled by the Police, and execution by torture. And then, after being thus killed—killed every day in a sense—the human creature in Him, because it was united to the divine Son, came to life again. The Man in Christ rose again: not only the God."
It is powerful writing with the concision that any poet ought to envy. It is amazing that a book built on a reasonable argument could have so many quotes that are clear and potent when standing alone, as if every brick in a lovely home could be a work of art by itself.
Lewis was about as educated in the liberal arts as a man could get; also a combat veteran of the First World War. He was a hardened atheist brought to his knees by faith. He brings myth (as the echoes of reality) and stone cold fact together to reveal the truth that is beyond nature itself.
This book contains a somewhat simplified version of his philosophy and apologetics; classics like The Abolition of Man and Miracles are more sophisticated. But his goal here in these essays was to lay out his case plainly, and he did, and it hit me like a thunderbolt. I'll tell you one thing: He's the best modern writer you'll find at Hobby Lobby.
Tuesday, April 7, 2020
Best of the quarantine!
We present today the ten best ideas (so far!) for families (and others) stuck at home together during the quarantine.
Animal Fun
Players reenact the talking-animal classic Animal Farm. Who wants to be Napoleon? Who's Boxer? Who's Benjamin? Squealer? Game continues until players get bored or mad or the counterrevolution begins.
Backseat Driver
Everyone piles into the car. The driver will turn at every intersection in the direction shouted from the backseat. Oh, the places you'll go!
Shut Up in the Backseat
Everyone still in the car. No one say a goddamn word until we get home again or else. And never contradict Mommy in front of a police officer again.
Pretend School
Mom and/or Dad, completely unprepared, will try to remember some algebra to keep their at-home students up to speed. Older kids can have fun with geometry or calculus!
A Spoonful of Sugar
Reenact the famous room-cleaning scene from the Disney classic Mary Poppins, except it's the whole house and nobody has any magical powers. And stop that singing! Here's your sponge.
Dad's on the Roof
Or is he? Dad's gone hiding on the property to drink beer. Your mission: Find him before Mommy kills him!
Pretend Naptime
You kids lie down and pretend to nap while your parents pretend to work.
Who Can Scream the Loudest?
Mom will let you know when to start playing this game, usually when she's about to go out and leave Dad in charge.
Annoy Mr. Wilson
Since you can't bug the neighbor in person, children will be challenged to pester him or her (whose name may not be Wilson) in creative ways without breaking social distancing rules.
We're a Happy Family
Convince the neighbors that you all get along 100% of the time.
That's only the top ten -- your contributions to helping the world stay sane will be appreciated, of course! Meanwhile, remember: Don't volunteer to be Boxer on Animal Fun Day.
Animal Fun
Players reenact the talking-animal classic Animal Farm. Who wants to be Napoleon? Who's Boxer? Who's Benjamin? Squealer? Game continues until players get bored or mad or the counterrevolution begins.
Backseat Driver
Everyone piles into the car. The driver will turn at every intersection in the direction shouted from the backseat. Oh, the places you'll go!
Shut Up in the Backseat
Everyone still in the car. No one say a goddamn word until we get home again or else. And never contradict Mommy in front of a police officer again.
Pretend School
Mom and/or Dad, completely unprepared, will try to remember some algebra to keep their at-home students up to speed. Older kids can have fun with geometry or calculus!
A Spoonful of Sugar
Reenact the famous room-cleaning scene from the Disney classic Mary Poppins, except it's the whole house and nobody has any magical powers. And stop that singing! Here's your sponge.
Dad's on the Roof
Or is he? Dad's gone hiding on the property to drink beer. Your mission: Find him before Mommy kills him!
Pretend Naptime
You kids lie down and pretend to nap while your parents pretend to work.
Who Can Scream the Loudest?
Mom will let you know when to start playing this game, usually when she's about to go out and leave Dad in charge.
Annoy Mr. Wilson
Since you can't bug the neighbor in person, children will be challenged to pester him or her (whose name may not be Wilson) in creative ways without breaking social distancing rules.
We're a Happy Family
Convince the neighbors that you all get along 100% of the time.
That's only the top ten -- your contributions to helping the world stay sane will be appreciated, of course! Meanwhile, remember: Don't volunteer to be Boxer on Animal Fun Day.
Monday, April 6, 2020
Electric booga-loo.
So the national toilet paper emergency continues, and I'd like to thank Will Oremus for providing a little light on the subject. Writing in Medium, he charges that the shortages in stores are not caused so much by panic buying at this point but by the fact that many more behinds are being cleansed at home, rather than at the office or school or other commercial places:
But what it doesn't do is solve the problem of what to do when we find ourselves stranded on the toilet bowl without another Quilted Northern in sight. I mentioned this to a friend, who enthusiastically recommended the SmartBidet 1000!
Look at this thing! Toilet seat! Wireless remote control! Elongated or round! Tushie or feminine use! Easy installation! Heated seat! Heated water! Heated dryer! Skin sensor (whatever that is)! And soft-closing hinges so you don't wind up calling for Dr. Bagga! This thing is wired for everything but sound!
And if you want that, maybe the luxurious SmartBidet 3000 has that! No, but it has a deodorizer, a child wash (?), LED backlit nightlights (I wish they were disco lights), and a stainless steel nozzle with replaceable cap. If you want sound, you'll have to spring for a Sound Princess.
The 1000 costs $300 and the 3000 costs $650, but they have other models, too. Amazon has these hot seats and they seem to be selling like hotcakes.
And yet, I pooh-poohed the idea. I don't wish to cast aspersions on the engineers at SmartBidet or other similar outfits, but as I told my friend, "Toilet plus electricity equals the worst obituary ever." For example:
Electric toilet plus me would probably equal something like that.
People actually do need to buy significantly more toilet paper during the pandemic — not because they’re making more trips to the bathroom, but because they’re making more of them at home. With some 75% of the U.S. population under stay-at-home orders, Americans are no longer using the restrooms at their workplace, in schools, at restaurants, at hotels, or in airports.It's a good piece of reporting, one of the few unbiased, non-panicky pieces getting traction out there. It also makes me feel better about my fellow Americans, and not think of them as wreckers and hoarders, betraying the revolution of 1776.
Georgia-Pacific, a leading toilet paper manufacturer based in Atlanta, estimates that the average household will use 40% more toilet paper than usual if all of its members are staying home around the clock. That’s a huge leap in demand for a product whose supply chain is predicated on the assumption that demand is essentially constant. It’s one that won’t fully subside even when people stop hoarding or panic-buying.
But what it doesn't do is solve the problem of what to do when we find ourselves stranded on the toilet bowl without another Quilted Northern in sight. I mentioned this to a friend, who enthusiastically recommended the SmartBidet 1000!
Look at this thing! Toilet seat! Wireless remote control! Elongated or round! Tushie or feminine use! Easy installation! Heated seat! Heated water! Heated dryer! Skin sensor (whatever that is)! And soft-closing hinges so you don't wind up calling for Dr. Bagga! This thing is wired for everything but sound!
And if you want that, maybe the luxurious SmartBidet 3000 has that! No, but it has a deodorizer, a child wash (?), LED backlit nightlights (I wish they were disco lights), and a stainless steel nozzle with replaceable cap. If you want sound, you'll have to spring for a Sound Princess.
The 1000 costs $300 and the 3000 costs $650, but they have other models, too. Amazon has these hot seats and they seem to be selling like hotcakes.
And yet, I pooh-poohed the idea. I don't wish to cast aspersions on the engineers at SmartBidet or other similar outfits, but as I told my friend, "Toilet plus electricity equals the worst obituary ever." For example:
HERMAN GROSSCHUSTER
Herman Grosschuster, 85, passed away suddenly at home on April 6. While engaged in common bathroom use, he was accidentally electrocuted by his toilet.
"We are so sad that Herman has left us," said Bob Finkle, chairman of the Plumberg chapter of the Abnormally Loyal Order of Wombats, to which Grosschuster belonged for many years. "We loved him for his intestinal fortitude. He was a retired baker by trade, and they always said no one could pinch a loaf like Herman. He was a familiar sight at the lodge bar, exuding wisdom from his stool. At least we know he died doing what he loved."
Grosschuster is survived by his sons, Sherman and Hermann with Two N's, and a parakeet named Mr. Peepy.
Electric toilet plus me would probably equal something like that.
Sunday, April 5, 2020
Facepalm Sunday.
Gorgeous weekend here, and I'm sad. We're all magnets with the same polarity; you get too close to anyone on the street or in the store and you are instantly repelled from each other. There's no baseball, although of course by the end of the first week it's always possible that the beloved Mets would be mathematically eliminated anyhow.
It is Palm Sunday, which is a sad day; it is the start of Holy Week, and Mass includes the reading of the entire Passion. The five weekend Masses are the longest our church has all year, except for the Easter Vigil Mass next Saturday night. And this year it's sadder yet, as there's no Mass in the Archdiocese, thank to that damned virus from China. We'll watch Mass online, but it's not the same.
It may be especially disappointing for the A&P Catholics. Unlike that other uncommonly seen variety of observant Catholic, the C&E, who only turns up on Christmas and Easter, the A&P only comes to church for Ash Wednesday (which is not even a day of obligation) and Palm Sunday. I can see making the effort for the two biggest holidays on the church calendar, but why lesser days instead?
The theory is that they are the only days you get something free from the Church. Besides, you know, the bulletin and -- oh, yeah -- Holy Communion. This year the A&Ps were able to get their free ashes, since the churches had not been closed yet on Ash Wednesday, but they will be unable to complete the Denominational Double with a palm frond.
Everybody really likes to get those palm fronds, though. Especially if they know the trick to tying them into crosses. It figures that this is the first year I found nice, clear directions, and I have no blessed palm fronds to tie.
In other words, in this time of trouble, I ain't got no fronds. No frond to speak of. Not a frond in the world.
It is Palm Sunday, which is a sad day; it is the start of Holy Week, and Mass includes the reading of the entire Passion. The five weekend Masses are the longest our church has all year, except for the Easter Vigil Mass next Saturday night. And this year it's sadder yet, as there's no Mass in the Archdiocese, thank to that damned virus from China. We'll watch Mass online, but it's not the same.
It may be especially disappointing for the A&P Catholics. Unlike that other uncommonly seen variety of observant Catholic, the C&E, who only turns up on Christmas and Easter, the A&P only comes to church for Ash Wednesday (which is not even a day of obligation) and Palm Sunday. I can see making the effort for the two biggest holidays on the church calendar, but why lesser days instead?
The theory is that they are the only days you get something free from the Church. Besides, you know, the bulletin and -- oh, yeah -- Holy Communion. This year the A&Ps were able to get their free ashes, since the churches had not been closed yet on Ash Wednesday, but they will be unable to complete the Denominational Double with a palm frond.
Everybody really likes to get those palm fronds, though. Especially if they know the trick to tying them into crosses. It figures that this is the first year I found nice, clear directions, and I have no blessed palm fronds to tie.
Saturday, April 4, 2020
Funeral in a small town.
I don't think of my town as being small. Sure, it was pretty small compared to New York City, from whence I hailed. And it was smaller when we moved here than it is now. But when our church hosted a funeral for a police officer killed in the line of duty, it seemed minuscule.
Thousands descended on the town. NYPD, EMS, NYFD. Politicians in entourage vans and helicopters. Police from other cities, other states. Family and friends of the deceased. Police motorcycle clubs. Military. Retired cops. Locals who wanted to show their love. Locals who were just curious. Everybody, everybody came to show their respects, and it shut the whole place down.
I'd never seen anything like it. The schools had to close. All businesses were either closed or inundated with out-of-towners. Streets were lined with little American flags. Every major road was closed off, and any side road of any size. The new pastor at the church where the thing was held was thrown into the deep end, but apparently carried off his duties with aplomb.
I only saw this because I had a mission that took me out of the house that morning, and I made the mistake of waiting too long to do it. Everywhere I drove I ran into roadblocks. I felt awful just being out, not like they were in my way, but like I was an inconvenience to the mourners. So I got home as fast as I could.
What brought all this to mind was the crowds. Now our town is sleepier than it has been since there was a farm in the middle of the main road, I think. With the sheltering-in-place rules, and general fear of COVID-19, things are pretty quiet. But I saw that picture above that I had taken a day or so after the funeral, and I remembered when we had quite the crowd, the biggest I had ever seen. God bless our officers.
