It slices! It dices!

My wife invested in a gadget that was meant to be helpful for the watermelon lovers in this home. That would be primarily Junior Varsity Dog Nipper, me, Senior Varsity Dog Tralfaz, and her. She's likes watermelon of a summer day, but is mainly in it for the gizmos.

And here is that gizmo.

Watermelon Slicer!

First of all, if you or I found that thing in a shop without the words Watermelon Slicer floating above them, we would be hard pressed to know what it is supposed to be for. The handle has a channel in it and there's a whirligig at the end...? Second, "Your best solution for eating watermelon" makes it sound like some sort of fork or spoon.

What they mean, of course, is that it is your best solution for cutting up a watermelon. This remains to be seen.

The Chinglish on the other side of the box is not the worst I have seen by far.

It actually makes sense. You push the tool into the flesh of the fruit and the thing cuts it into chunks. It starts to seem plausible. The little windmill is meant to break the slices into cubes.

It isn't that hard to cut a watermelon to pieces with a knife, but takes skill to get it into uniform size chunks. Can this Watermelon Slicer make the job easy and fun, O Chef of the Future? Let's see!

Here's me pushing the slicer into the watermelon. Note that the device does as advertised; it cuts into the fruit easily and the wheel lops off pieces as it turns.

For the record, these are rectangular prisms, not cubes, but we will not be picky.

Here my lovely and talented wife demonstrates better technique as she turns a watermelon quarter into rectangular prisms with ease:

Here are our findings from the field test:

1) She loved it. It turned a small watermelon into two large bowls of watermelon pieces of roughly uniform size without undue difficulty or time.

2) But I say a knife is twice as fast, if you're not concerned about your watermelon looking sloppy or your dogs choking on a large piece of fruit.

3) While the pieces are neat, the job is still sloppy, as the juice gets everywhere. Still not as messy as using my previous tool to break up a watermelon, the cellar stairs.

4) It's kind of a fun thing, but it would lose a lot of its appeal if it were not machine washable. That little windmill deal would be annoying to clean, and the edges of the channel are a bit sharp.

My wife has bought a few other oddball kitchen tools over the years, which I may showcase on this page if you're interested. Some have performed as advertised; some have exceeded expectations; some have been kind of sad. None, I think, were invented by Ron Popeil.

🍉🍉🍉

P.S.: I tried to find out where this slicer came from by searching the patents, but my quick turn through the system turned up nothing. Since the United States is a signatory to the International Patent System, it isn't generally necessary for devices patented overseas to receive a U.S. patent. China is also a signatory to the system, but I think they believe it means they get to steal everyone else's patents. If the Watermelon Slicer is a Chinese invention, then they finally invented something on their own that's useful.

P.P.S.: To put at ease any who are unsure: Yes, watermelon is okay for dogs, but get rid of the seeds and don't let them at the rind. The Slicer makes it easier to do both, actually, even for the few seeds in a seedless watermelon. Watermelon helps our hairy guys stay hydrated in hot weather. We don't let them have too much, maybe a cup or so a couple of times a week.

Bear joyride.

Once in a while there is some news that actually makes me smile, even if I know it means someone suffered some fear, distress, or discomfort. Hell, Fear, Distress, and Discomfort could have been the name of the long-running America's Funniest Home Videos, of which I remain a fan.

The story in question this week is this one:

A (human) family’s vacation took a bizarre turn when they found out that a family of bears had infiltrated their car.
     It’s a story that sounds made up, and we have to admit we were skeptical ourselves, but there’s some pretty solid proof: photos were taken of the bears during their attempted theft.
     They’re definitely in a car, and definitely causing some mischief.

Yep.

Eventually the three bear cubs got out of the car, went to another car, and rejoined their mother nearby. So no one was harmed, and the car only suffered a small amount of ursine damage.

Naturally I imagined that the entire scenario would have gone very differently if A) the keys were in the ignition and B) they could have talked Mom into joining them.

🐻🐻🐻🐻

BEARS ON A TEAR

Carl Cub: Come on, Mom! Let's go! Look! [jingles keys]

Cal Cub: Yeah, Mom! Don't be a stick in the mud!

Carly Cub: Shotgun!

Mom: Well... all right. Just this once.

[car backs out, hits seven other cars, takes to the road]

Carly: Gangway, world! Bears comin' through!

Cal: Hey, move over to your side!

Carl: I just want to see the truck driver! Did you catch his face?

Mom: Boys, no shoving or I'll turn this car right around.

Carly: Uh-oh!

[lights flashing behind car]

Officer: Ma'am, you were a little wild back there.

Mom: Sorry.

Officer: Have you been drinking?

Mom: No, officer. Although I am a mother of three, I am only eight years old.

Officer: Very well. You drive safely and have a nice day.

Mom: Thank you.

Cal: Wow, that was a close one!

Mom: Everyone be quiet until the nice man leaves the area.

Carly: Hey, look! There's an old-fashioned map in the glove compartment!

Mom: Huh. When I was a little cub, raiding cars, I used to see them, but that was seven years ago.

Carly: Look at this! Next exit up the road -- Hunny Ⓡ Us!

Carl: Can we go, Mom? Can we huh huh huh huh huh?

Mom: Well, why not? It's such a nice day. But you have to behave. No raiding the dumpster unless I say it's all right.

Cubs: YAY!

🍯🍯🍯🍯

Fred's Book Club: I Disapprove!

Welcome to the Wednesday "Hump Day" book feature, Humpback Writers, the book club feature that has many books but very few humps. The variety of books appearing in this feature is breathtaking, and sometimes the books are as well. Today's book may make you reel back in terror from the power of its disapproval. Don't say you weren't warned.

Disapproving Rabbits by Sharon Stiteler is the 2007 book version of the Web site Sharon used to run with her husband, Bill. Featuring their grumpy-looking rabbit Cinnamon and a host of reader-contributed grumpy-looking rabbits, the site was sure to put a sneer in your step as you enjoyed the pictures and commentary.

As Sharon wrote in the introduction:

We have owned many rabbits over the years and have learned the hard lesson that it is just impossible to live up to a bunny's standards. But still we strive, finding it a meaningful goal in this life. 

That's about all there was to it, but it was great fun. All I can do for you today is share pictures of some of my favorites from the nearly 200 revolted rabbits in this book. Those of us who are fans of Monty Python and the Holy Grail know just how dangerous angry bunnies can be. Brace for impact.

Well, one day Cinnamon died at a ripe old rabbit age. Sharon and Bill continued with the site, featuring their new extra-large bunny Dougal, but we could tell that some of the old joie de désapprouver was gone. Eventually they said farewell, and after a while took the site down entirely. And so another fine Web page from the oughts left us, like the USS Clueless and Modern Humorist and the Brunching Shuttlecocks and so many others.

Fortunately, for those who need regular doses of disparaging Lagomorpha, Mister Bun has kept the disapproval alive on his Disapproving Bun site. There is so very much to disapprove of at this moment in history that I think we should all be grateful that the rabbits are out there, showing us the way.

Yogurt as candy, candy as yogurt.

Yogurt is so good for you! Or is it?

On the yogurt-healthy-YES side we have plenty of articles easily found online, touting two or four or seven or any number of yogurt benefits (there's generally a number). And even people who weren't alive at the time remember the famous "In Soviet Georgia" commercial by yogurt conglomerate Danone, which showed people eating yogurt and living Methuselahesque years. Which may have all been nonsense, but that was the freewheeling seventies, where ridiculous claims were made routinely. Not like now, of course. 

What about the yogurt-healthy-NO votes? Well, first off let me say we are not going to address the vegan claim that eating dairy products is unhealthy on its face. Vegans have their own agenda, and we don't have time to pick it apart here. 

And we really don't have to, when products like Yoplait's Gushers are on sale. 

If you're not familiar with the candy Fruit Gushers, they are nominally fruit snacks for children, treats that have a sort of a soft outer shell with a liquid middle. Here we have a co-branded product, which is not hard since Fruit Gushers is owned by General Mills and Yoplait is owned by General Mills and dairy cooperative Sodiaal.

Does this look like health food to you?

How about the Fruit Punch flavor?

It's not unappealing in its way, but this is a long walk from all-natural yogurt, which is tart and separates and is milk-colored. Normal yogurt also doesn't contain these little "gushers" inside. You can see a little orb at the tip of the blue spoon. It is a soft bite that yields candy-blueberry liquid. In Soviet Georgia, they would not have known what to make of this. They might have thought People's Glorious Cooperative Chemical Plant #24 had started leaking again.

And speaking of yogurt and colors that don't appear in nature, Skittles has a product now called Skittles Dips. It's not Skittles with chewing tobacco; it's Skittles candy dipped in a yogurt-like coating. 

You can barely tell what color is what under the coating.

The coating is definitely yogurty in the sense that yogurt-covered pretzels and raisins are yogurty. Which is, about a dime's worth of difference from white chocolate. The insides are pretty standard Skittles, maybe a little larger, which play just fine with the coating. But is there anything healthy to these products?

The Yoplait Gushers have some redeeming qualities. All Yoplait yogurts have some vitamins, protein, potassium, calcium, and so on. Sugar, too, though. The Skittles Dips have a tiny bit of potassium, and that's it; not even any calcium. They are nutritional garbage.

What does it all mean? I guess that yogurt, like a lot of terms these days (peaceful protester, centrist, civil rights), means what people want us to think it means. Read the labels if you're concerned.

🍬🍬🍬

P.S.: I liked both these products, but I'm not a health maven, so don't come to me for health advice. While I'm eating a little better these days, "nutritional garbage" is still in my wheelhouse. 

These plants are made for walkin'.

If every day was not strange enough already, with Chinese Death Virus and unprosecuted violent mobs and Florida Man running amok, we have weird holidays to keep us on our toes. Worse, we sometimes have a confluence of weird holidays that seem to go together, but seem to not as well.

What I mean is, today, July 27, according to the fine folks at Holiday Insights, is the day we celebrate Take Your Pants for a Walk Day, Take Your Houseplants for a Walk Day, AND Walk on Stilts Day. Three walking-based celebrations, but no obvious connection. Or IS there?

Here are the descriptions of the days:

Take Your Pants for a Walk Day: "It's an easy day to celebrate. Simply go for a walk. Unless you are wearing a dress or a skirt, you probably are wearing pants. So, by definition, as you walk, they come along."

Take Your Houseplants for a Walk Day: "Take Your Houseplants for a Walk Day is a great day for you and your houseplants to get some exercise. It will be good for them. It will allow you to bond with your plants, helping them to reach their maximum potential. Along the way, you can get your houseplant accustomed to your neighborhood!"

Walk on Stilts Day: "Stand out in a crowd by hopping onto a pair of stilts. If you are about to mount stilts for the first time, begin with a pair that is short... low to the ground. Once you've mastered your first pair of stilts, you can easily graduate to taller and taller ones."

If you celebrate holiday #2 with pants, you're also celebrating holiday #1. Way to go! If you wear a sun dress or kilt, or even shorts, you're letting down the side. Now get some stilts. I especially do not recommend walking on stilts in a kilt.

It might be tough to try to enact all three holidays together. Here's a little girl I saw online who seems to have the houseplants thing down, though:

And look! She's got pants!

I currently have only one potted plant going, or rather plants; back on June 13 they looked like this:

But now the cherry tomato plants look like this:

I ain't walking them anywhere.

But if I do walk, it will be in pants. So let's celebrate, and Sing the Praises of Pants!

That's a lot of bears.

Today is the birthday of the late co-creator of one of the most beloved and famous children's book series, Jan Berenstain of the Berenstain Bears. She and her husband, Stan, met in 1941 at the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art. Wikipedia tells us, "During WWII, Stan served as a military medical illustrator while Jan was a draft artist for the Army Corps of Engineers in addition to working in an aircraft factory. Jan fashioned a pair of wedding rings from spare aluminum collected at the latter job, and the two married on April 17, 1946." They were married for 59 years until Stan's death, in 2005. Jan died in 2012.

They created more than 300 books featuring the Berenstain Bears, a family of cartoon bears that faced typical family dilemmas such as having a new baby, entering a science fair, watching too much television, and playing sports. That's a lot of bear books. I can't think of a single series produced by the same creators that had that many titles. And it hasn't stopped; Berenstain Bear books remain in print and seem to have acquired a more religious bent of late, with a series published by Christian publisher Zonderkidz. Their son Mike seems to have taken over the creative duties.

It's a remarkable run, and the thing that puzzles me is that I don't recall ever seeing any of their books when I was a kid. The only classics I remember are series and books like Curious George and Babar the Elephant and Frog and Toad and Frederick (great name) and Katy and the Big Snow and the awful ones by Dr. Seuss and Maurice Sendak and a bunch of others I was supposed to like but scared me. I don't think I saw a Berenstain book until I was an adult, but they'd been around my whole life.

A lot of kids grew up surrounded by Berenstain Bear books, and while they're often Photoshopped for cynical humor like Family Circus strips, they obviously have a lot of appeal. So good for you, Jan, and happy birthday to you in the Great Beyond.

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi Department: Today is also the birthday of author George Barr McCutcheon, who you and I never heard of but was well known in his day, that day ending with his passing in 1928. He wrote many novels and plays, but one that may ring a bell is Brewster's Millions (1902). That story had an irresistible catch -- the title hero must spend a fortune within one year, getting nothing of value for his money, if he is to inherit a much larger fortune at the end of the year. Readers found the idea so appealing it was adapted for the stage, and made into thirteen films starting with a Cecil B. DeMille silent in 1914. It has been very popular in India. The most recent film was a Chinese adaptation in 2018. The most recent American film was 1985's Brewster's Millions with Richard Pryor, which was pretty good. And yet its original author has fallen into obscurity.

Ah, but the good folk at Gutenberg, like our friend Mongo, keep the fires of civilization burning by making many of McCutcheon's works available for free online, including Brewster's Millions. Big hand for the gang at Gutenberg!

2020, on the hoof.

Was that a toy in the backyard? I can usually account for all of the dogs' playthings, because I'm the one who throws them and most of the time they remain there, being ignored by the dogs, who want to sniff and gnaw weeds instead. So yesterday morning when I spotted a long, white object off in the distance, I couldn't place it. I had Nipper with me, so while he was distracted by a weed or two, I went to check it out.

It was not a toy. It was the foreleg of a fawn, ripped off, the bloody thigh bone protruding from the knee. I gasped like a little girl.

And I'm really glad Nipper didn't key on it first.

I'm not particularly squeamish, especially about an animal I would and have eaten. Like a lot of people who are being honest, I'm mostly in favor of protections for animals in the genus Cutiepie. Like the little ducklings.

I love ducks -- on my plate -- but I have to admit ducklings are adorbs. My wife and I were sitting on the porch a few weeks back when a small army of ducklings, five in all, waddled and bonked their way toward us from the pond across the street, heads swinging right and left. Seemed like they'd gotten separated from their mother. I imagined us raising them like a family of ducks in a sixties Disney movie, but I knew it was best to get them back to their mother if possible. So I went toward them, and they literally turned tail and ran, or rather waddled and zigzagged back to the pond area.

I never had the heart to tell my wife that a couple of nights later, out with Nipper, I heard ferocious screeching and yowling across the street. I've heard lots of intramural bird fights over there, but this was different. This was the damnable circle of life in action. I figure we'll not see those ducklings again.

I was surprised though about this fawn, though. We get a good amount of foxes around here, and a few raccoons, but this was coyote or bear work. I hadn't seen any of them around, but a couple of the neighbors' trash cans had gotten the business last week, knocked over and ripped apart. I can only suppose that my can was left alone because of the large quantity of dog poop in it.

I had to get the fawn leg away from the dog, so I picked it up by the little hoof -- barely bigger than a quarter in diameter -- and chucked it in a trash bag that was waiting for the garbage truck. If it had been the leg of a full-size deer, it would have been harder to get rid of, but it would have made me less sad. Fawns and ducklings are cute, and dumb, and I just hate to see one get murdered so young. Life is hard on the little ones.

Well, be glad I didn't have my phone with me, or I might have taken a photo of the remains for a Very Special Movie Event of Bacon's Beat, reviving my mouse detective Bacon, investigator of all the roadkill I've seen around here.

That evening, by the way, I went into the back again with Nipper, and sure enough a dark coyote was making his escape through the tall grass as we entered. Come back for the foreleg, I guess. I'll be watching for him.

Oh, well. Sorry, little fawn. Just another damn creepy thing to happen in our annus horribilis, 2020. At least the coyote got to eat something he ought to eat, rather than leftover pizza crusts and tuna casserole.

Pitch in the dirt.

My thoughts on Thursday: 

Meh, I dunno. 

I've really missed baseball this year, I confess, although I manage to wrest the remote control away for the length of a whole game very infrequently. Quite often, if I wish to be social, I wind up following it on my laptop while Dr. Pimple Popper or something provides televised entertainment.

Even so, I've missed it, but I've gotten used to its being away. We could have skipped this year, and I'm rather surprised we didn't. 

Sixty games, DH in the National League, no one in the stands, extra innings start with a guy on second? It's so weirdly different from regular years that I wonder that the stats would even count (although they have in strike-shortened seasons, so there's that). (And I'm certain this is the way the National League has finally found to smuggle in the designated hitter against the will of its fans; it'll be there in 2021 too, is my guess.) 

Is a season 102 games short of normal even a season? As my mechanic points out, sixty games in most teams are just finding their feet.

Then again, anything that even nears normalcy at this point has to be welcome. And maybe the ridiculously short season will give teams that barely ever get a shot at the postseason a chance, if they get off to a quick start. Who knows? This could be the year the beloved Mets break the schneid. Hell, it might even see the Padres win the Series!

Then again again, it looks like the anti-Americanism that is poisoning the National Football League is creeping into Major League Baseball as well. While it's unlikely they'll broadcast or perhaps even play the National Anthem in from of empty ballparks, they're going to find ways to stick it in fans' faces all the same. And there's not much of that I can take.

So I guess I'll see how it goes. Three against the Braves, then four against Boston, because the leagues don't really matter anymore anyway, so why not plunge right in. I could be learning the violin or training for a marathon with the time I waste on this stuff, really I could!

(Not really.)

My thoughts on Friday:

Well, they did it. Both the Yankees and Nationals took the knee before the National Anthem last night on the season's first game -- the two teams with the most patriotic names. They wore BLM shirts at batting practice. They don't seem to know or care that BLM is an avowed Marxist organization, or that their actions are a thumb in the eye to the country that made every one of them rich. It's skin-suit time again.

To hell with them. I honestly, truly hope they all go broke.

UPDATE: I was just (6:42 pm) informed that the Mets and Braves all stood respectfully for the National Anthem tonight. So I'm softening my opinion but I'm reserving judgment.

From the Bad Idea file.

The Six Flags Acme Wile E. Coyote Super Coaster turned out to be a bit of a corporate risk.

Fred's Book Club: Use Your Words!

Welcome to our Wednesday meeting of the Humpback Writers! Why do we call it that? Because of that weird Americanism that calls Wednesday Hump Day. And speaking of Americanisms, this week's book is chosen in honor of our friend and commenter PeaceLoveWoodstock, a professed and confessed fan of etymology -- the origins of words.  

Never Enough Words: How Americans Invented Expressions as Ingenious, Ornery, and Colorful as Themselves is a fun book on Americanisms by linguistic scholar Jeffrey McQuain, Ph.D., a onetime researcher for the late Times language lover William Safire and author of a number of books on fascinating coinages and good word usage. This 1999 tome is a great one to dip into from time to time, or use as a reference book for the origin of strange terms native to the United States.

You might think right off that this refers to weird and often funny words like teetotaler, catawampus, succotash, and hornswaggle, all Americanisms, and it does. But more common words like belittle, ornery, and wayback are of U.S. origin as well. And if that's not interesting enough, McQuain includes some lists of awesome American expressions, like these variations on lousy automobiles:

Wherever possible the scholarly doctor has traced expressions to their origins. Often the trail of history just peters out, as with hornswaggle; sometimes it's more obvious -- but more involved than expected. Take baloney:

As another food given a larger meaning, the slang BALONEY for "nonsense" probably came from the large smoked sausage named for the city credited with its origin: Bologna, Italy. That sausage, mentioned in English more than four centuries ago, led to the 1920 use of "baloney" for an untalented prizefighter. Collier's Magazine reported in 1920 that "Kane Halliday, alias Kid Roberts, had won his first professional fight by knocking out a boloney with the nom du ring of Young Du Fresne." The "boloney" spelling was popular during the 1920s, but a decade later the "baloney" spelling superseded it.

A lot of our fondness for words that function like weird contraptions, like exflunctified (worn out), comes from our love for "tall talk." Tall talk arose with tall tales and their tellers, the classic American big-mouthed entertainer with the long wind and the hilarious stories being the archetype and indeed architect of many a big word.

Tall talk, a mouthful of unmistakably American language, has grown as much by chance as by design. The tall tales of the American frontier required tall talk, bountiful boasting based on mile-long words that covered the countryside with hyperbole.... Imported or homegrown, pioneering words seemed magically to appear whenever new meanings needed to be expressed. If English words proved inadequate, our forebears found ways to adapt or invent what they needed. 

Here's a great page of Tall Talk words that need revival:

I wonder what Professor Strunk of The Elements of Style, who always preferred short and effective Anglo-Saxon words to more fluid Latin words, would have made of that.

It's not just the early American period covered in this book, though. More modern coinages like road rage, drive-by, knee-jerk, -gate, and full-court press also make the pages. It seems like we Americans are always groping for a new, topical, and vivid term to describe the events of the day and the people in them.

Some of the tech terms in the book have fallen by the wayside; in the last twenty years we've lost interest in words like cybercash and webaholic. Others have arisen to take their place. But unless we work at keeping alive our linguistic heritage, I fear one day we'll all just wind up blathering in grunts and emojis. And what a dad-blasted* conbobberation** of a clatterwhacking*** that would be!

📖📖📖

* "Dad" was a euphemism for "God" in these kind of expressions
** Fuss or disturbance
*** Noise

Sights of summer.

Hello, friends, and welcome to another lousy Tuesday entry following a busy Monday. In keeping with such days, I would like to share some pictures of the season, that season being summer, and this place being around my neighborhood, for the most part:

Early morning, sun coming up on a neighbor's deck. The dew is heavy on the ground, and every other surface, but the moment the sun comes up it begins steaming off. Tears of Eos.

The last robin in the nest. They had at least three and possibly four baby birds in there a couple of weeks ago, but my do they grow up fast. It doesn't look like Mom has to chuck them out either; they seemed to get too big, and one by one they get forced out. Roll over! Roll over! Or the last one ate the others. 😱Probably not, right? Let's check with Mr. Britannica.

First we learn that the name for the American robin is Turdus migratorius. And then we laugh like Beavis and/or Butthead. Heh heh ... heh heh ... you said "turd." Further down in the article there is this:

Four to six bluish green eggs are incubated by the female for 12–14 days. The female incubates the eggs and the male obtains food for the young, who fly in 14–16 days. There may be two or three broods per season. The name robin is also applied to other New World thrushes of the genus Turdus.

Heh heh ... heh heh.

So yes, the robin (or Joe Turdus as he is now known here) does flee the nest quickly. Everyone else goes too. There's no empty nest syndrome with robins. After the kids are grown they all leave home. It's like Mom and Dad saw the last kid off to school, abandoned the house, and took off for their golden years in a Winnebago.

This one isn't mine:

I saw this online and immediately sent it to a friend. Due to circumstances beyond his control, he was forced to become the president of his homeowners' association. And he's been the one to get the flak for following through on the order to close the development's swimming pool. So of course I wanted to know if this "Due to The Carnivorous" picture was from his pool. He denies it, but I don't know. He does enjoy the Jurassic Park movies.

We'll end with this little love note from the skies:

Awww.

Lower the Zoom.

"I don't wish to cast aspersions, but I suspect that the enthusiasm for our Monday
meetings has waned somewhat since the start of the quarantine."

Riders of the Purple Nurple.

Looks like we're going to have another Western adventure of the one and only Bang Gunly. 

"BANG GUNLY vs. GANG BUNLY"

by Frederick Key

Dedicated to Mike "Flangepart" Weller,
who has no one but himself to blame for this

Bang Gunly rode his loaner horse into town. The sign, hanging by one nail on the left, said Lonesome Ridge. Sounded nice. He needed a spot to rest a spell. This ol' nag wouldn't take him too much farther without it, and the shop said his palomino wouldn't be ready until morning. Naturally all they had on the lot was an ol' three-legged draft horse named Shirley. 

He hoped he could enter Lonesome Ridge without being seen. Guys were always challenging Bang to a gunfight. He was tired of having to kill 'em. Plus, Shirley was kind of embarrassing. At least he was wearing a mask. Since the Chinese Tumbleweed Flu came to the West, the territories all had rules to wear masks to Stop the Spread and Flatten the Curve. What the goldang heck was the curve, anyway?

"That's one strange horse you got there, mister."

Bang looked up. Speaking of curves! Before him was a fine young lady, built like a brick shipyard under government contract. She had an hourglass figure filled with two hours' worth of sand. Indescribably delicious. And her eyes... uh...

"Up here, mister."

Brown. They were brown.

"Good evening, miss," said Bang, alighting from his saddle with a tip of the hat. He spat a bit of 'baccy juice, which was a mistake in his mask. "And what might your name be?" he asked, digging for a tissue.

"Lululubelle," she said. "Lululubelle Horowitz. I own Only Saloon in Lonesome Ridge."

"What's it called?"

"The Only Saloon in Lonesome Ridge."

"But what's it called?"

"The Only -- you know, never mind. This here's Gabby, my bartender."

Gabby, an older man with a big Mexican style hat and a lanyard with his union badge (Gabbys Local 135), said, "Ayup."

"You a gunslinger, stranger?" asked the comely lass.

Bang shifted his weight manfully and said, "Now how might you know that, missy?"

"Oh, the way you carry yourself with a swagger. The way you jump to the ground with your spurs jingling harmoniously in E and A flat. And the two six-guns at your waist, the shotgun on your back, and the Winchester rifle in your boot."

"Don't fergit the Derringer in my hat band."

"Nice touch. I could use a man like you."

"Hey-O!"

"I mean for fightin'." She fluttered her eyelashes flutteringly. "There's a gang terrorizing Lonesome Ridge, a group of bushwackin' sidewinders called Gang Bunly. I'm sick of them shootin' up my place. Can you take 'em?"

"Gang Bunly!" said Bang Gunly. "That's got kind of a familiar ring."

"It should!" came a craggy voice behind him. Bang spun about to see a foursome of desperadoes, armed to the teeth, which were covered by stolen N95 masks. The big one, a fat greaseball with a flowing mustache that threatened to eat his mask, said, "It's me, Bang! Your cousin, Gang Bunly! And this here is my gang I named after myself!"

The gang made evil noises, and farted just to be more evil.

"Three ain't much of a gang, cuz," said Bang.

"We're just gettin' started. It's more'n enough to take a dumbbell like you."

Bang squinted. "Smile when you say that, pardner."

"I am smilin', you dummy! I got this damn mask on is all! Now you better clear outta here or my gang will plug you where you stand, and your three-legged horse!"

"Now you done gone too far!" said Bang. In the blink of a skeeter's eye he whipped out his two six-shooters and blasted eight holes in three bandits. Do the math. Show all work. 

Gang Bunly found himself standing alone. "You're still handy with the irons, Bang," he said.

"Don't you threaten to kill that horse. I'll never get my palomino back."

Gang snarled. "They'll probably blame you fer that dent in her rear."

Bang snorted. "How's yer old man?"

Gang said, "Toler'ble. Bunions acting up. My sister just had a baby. Little boy named Dang."

"That's right nice."

"How's your ma?" Gang said.

"She's fine."

"Glad to hear it," spat the villain. "She's good people. But she's gonna have to bury her third-favorite son if you don't clear out."

"I'm a-stayin," said Bang.

Gang reached for the guns on his belt. "Oh, yeah?"

"This here town ain't big enough for the two of us," Bang growled.

"Ah reckon you're right," sneered Gang. "What town is?"

Bang thought for a moment. "Phoenix?"

Gang nodded. "Okay."

So they moved to Phoenix and each got a nice little place. Bang got a split-level with utilities included, and Bunly got a two-story walkup still under rent control. 

After they were gone, Lululubelle said, "Who was that masked man?"

"Consarn it, Lululu!" yelled her bartender, Gabby. "How in tarnation should I know? We're all wearin' masks!"

Back to school? Yes? No? Maybe?

I may have already mentioned in this space the lore that my late father-in-law would torture the children by telling them that summer was half over. He did this on July 5. My wife still boils about it.

Anyway, at this point summer is half over, at least in New York, where schools normally get out toward the end of June and start up after Labor Day. Private schools and colleges may start whenever, I guess, and colleges usually start at the end of August.

So it's not too surprising to see Back-to-School stuff in the stores already. But is it really back-to-school? We know that the president has insisted all schools in the country open on time for fall semester, and most cities and states and parents wish to comply. However, whenever outbreaks of Chinese Death Virus occur, even if there are no deaths, elected authorities go pull on their Time To Get Bizzay pants and order things closed. So who the hell knows what fall with bring?

Walmart is hedging its bets.

In addition to many banks of the typical BTS stuff (lunch bags, crayons, rulers, pencils, books, everything but teacher's dirty looks) there are things like these activity books by Bendon. "Learn at home!" it tells the parents who were unexpectedly thrown into the wide world of homeschooling last spring. Probably a good idea to stock up, right? And for $1.97, how can you afford not to?

But that's just for kids up to like age seven. What about the older ones? Maybe we should have big racks of Geometry for Dummies or The Complete Idiot's Guide to Physics or Advanced French for Lazy Teens or maybe even American History by People Who Don't Hate America.  

Parents with younger kids actually need help, too, with topics like Common Core for Normal People or Help Your Child Get Good Grades without Being Indoctrinated. There's a lot of opportunity here for educational publishers who want to help, whether the kids return to school or not.

Well, best wishes to the parents and the youths, because no matter if the schools do or don't open this fall, I think you're all going to need it. Even if the Chinese Death Virus vanishes, it's going to be a long road to normal. Maybe we could even shoot for better than that while we're at it.

It's for the public good.

Once again the medical profession has not covered itself in glory, with a news report yesterday that medical studies are being skewed by so-called professional study subjects, people who misrepresent their health conditions or treatment history in order to take part in paid studies:

For researchers, these so-called 'professional study subjects' are much more than a nuisance. Their deception can ruin the chances of an otherwise effective agent reaching the market, potentially dashing the hopes and jeopardizing the health of real patients living with a variety of acute and chronic illnesses.  

Misrepresentation of medical conditions, failing to accurately disclose the medications they are taking, or fabricating a clinical response to an agent in development can also skew skews results — in some cases enough to invalidate outcomes and even halt further research.

Isn't that just swell. Another case where the hard science of medicine looks as hard as a crème brûlée.

I joked about this stuff earlier in the week, but it's pretty serious. It's not like it was ten years ago when the much-beloved Dr. Anthony Fauci said not to bother with masks, as reported by Andy Larsen in the Salt Lake Tribune:

On Feb. 29, the U.S. surgeon general begged people not to buy masks, saying they were “not effective in preventing general public from catching #coronavirus.” On March 8, Dr. Anthony Fauci went on “60 Minutes” and said “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.”

Andrew Klavan notes that this whole coronavirus thing has gotten politicized, which we all know, and how terribly stupid it is. He says his non-political daughter would just like to know how to protect her family, and he agrees. But somehow in our current climate, nothing is allowed to be apolitical, certainly not a massive health crisis in an election year. And public health officials like the execrable 1,200 who signed the pro-protest letter have done more to set back the cause of public health than every anti-vaxxer on earth put together.

Here in New York, everyone seems to love Governor Sonny Corleone, who has the blood of thousands of old people on his hands for refusing federal hospital help and shoving sick people into nursing homes. 

This is no joke or exaggeration: We have a local nursing home, and during flu season that thing is shut down tight as a fly's rectum to any visitors. But during the huge and deadly Chinese Death Virus plague, Andy stuffed sick people in the same place, like the grandmother of a friend of mine. She had her own apartment, but when she got COVID-19 they sent her to the nursing home, where she died. And who knows how many more died with her, after she brought her share of the virus in. National Review actually got this wrong when the editors wrote:

Most disastrously, Cuomo and New Jersey governor Phil Murphy both ordered nursing homes to take back patients who tested positive for the virus, unleashing catastrophic death tolls in both states’ nursing-home populations.

Evil-Eyes Cuomo didn't just send nursing home patients back to the nursing homes; he sent people who didn't even live at the nursing home to the nursing home. A nursing home that in saner days wouldn't have allowed anyone in during flu season, symptomatic or not.

So at this point I would rather trust the five-year-old in the corner house than any so-called public health official in the country. At least he's a nice kid, and would want to help me. These idiots may have entered the field of public health hoping to help others, but they wind up helping nothing but themselves to the spotlight and the public trough. And politicians are even worse, and even dumber, especially in New York.

Mascot canceled!

METS HIRE NEW MASCOT

Mr. Met, Disgraced Mascot, Dismissed

FLUSHING, NEW YORK -- Fred Wilpon, majority owner of the New York Mets, announced a new mascot to replace the formerly beloved Mr. Met, who had been the mascot for the team for 58 years.

"Mr. Met's actions were a black, eh, eye to the organization," said Mr. Wilpon, referring to the Twitter war that led to the mascot's dismissal. Yesterday rival mascot, the Phillie Phanatic, had expressed his support for the Green Mascots Matter movement, after which Mr. Met replied online that All Mascots Mattered. A short time later the large, white, male, ballsplaining mascot was dismissed.

"It's time we move forward into the 21st century," said Mr. Wilpon. "We had been thinking about upgrading our image with a new mascot for a while, and then Mr. Met forced our hand. Racist baseballs have no place in this organization."

He then introduced the new mascot, Señor Met, to the press.

"We're very proud to have Señor Met join us," said Mr. Wilpon. "His full name, for the record, is Señor or Señora Juan Roscoe Hernandez Jinping Phyllis Exotic Met."

Señor Met held up a sign in seventeen languages saying how happy he was to join the team, and how much he looked forward to the 2020 campaign, short as it will be.

"These days it is crucial to have a mascot that represents the values of the company," concluded Mr. Wilpon. "If a mascot cannot comport himself with dignity, what's the point?"

Fred's Book Club: Another Brick.

Welcome to Wednesday, or whatever it is when you see this. It's Wednesday here, and that means it's Hump Day, and time for the Humpback Writers, who don't actually have humps, unless they have some around that they haven't shown me. Nobody tells me anything.

Today we delve into recent history to have another look at "real" communism in action.

British journalist Christopher Hilton, who was a sportswriter for most of his career, compiled an amazing collection of stories of the Berlin Wall in 2001's The Wall: The People's Story. It's a street-level view of the rise and fall of the famous barrier that came crashing down in 1989. For almost forty years it was at the eye of the Cold War, and by the start of the eighties it felt as if all the world was watching, as if Berlin was at the very center of the world. Not the Middle East, nor Kabul, nor Tokyo, nor even New York City, where I lived, but that bisected German city, one half of which was an outpost of freedom in a desert of communism.

Hilton seems to have talked to a lot of people; in fact, he seems to have talked to everybody. After summarizing the tensions between the East and West in the postwar period, he describes the origins of the wall that began in the city and spread its arms across Germany. Prior to that, thousands of East Berliners traveled to the western half every day to work, the half that had shops filled with goods. Many tried to move permanently, leading to worker shortages, particularly of the smarter workers (the "brain drain"). For that reason and a number of others, the East Germans, despite prior assertions to the contrary, decided that a wall must go up.

It didn't start with bricks at mortar; on the night of August 13, 1961, it started with wire. The East German Factory Fighters, a kind of civilian reserve, began the installation.

Two Factory Fighters in shirt sleeves walked with a coil of the wire wrapped in a ball round a stout stick, a Fighter holding each end of the stick. As they walked, the wire automatically uncoiled and another Fighter, kneeling, lifted a strand of it and hammered it into a concrete post using cleats, gathered another strand and hammered that in, then another -- row upon row, neatly spaced -- until the wire was head high. An elderly couple were escorted from the wire by a policeman, the sadness and the powerlessness expressed by the stoop of their shoulders.

That very night, illegal crossings began.

At 10.30, a crowd of 4,000 lingered on the Western side of the Brandenburg Gate but for an insurrection to occur would mean bursting past their own police, then the cordon of Factory Fighters, then the armoured personnel carriers with the water cannons, then the Eastern police, before reaching Unter den Linden; and Unter den Linden had been cleared, anyway. At 10.45, a report came in that ‘a male person’ had swum the Teltow Canal.

They would continue into 1989.

Part of the new wall ran right along apartment buildings, and East Berliners started jumping out the windows to escape to the West.

In Bernauer Strasse workmen swarmed the ground floors of the apartment buildings, bricking up windows from the inside. Residents called to people in the West for help and clambered onto window ledges to drop to the pavement. The West Berlin Fire Brigade hurried there with safety nets anticipating that, when the bricklayers reached the upper floors, residents might jump.

Hilton does a minute-by-minute reconstruction of the night the wall rose and the days that followed, when the United States and its allies tried to determine the best course of action against this surprise move. Three hundred trucks towing artillery were sent, and to many it looked like the wall was the spark that would begin World War III.

Hilton's book spends many riveting pages on the period following the initial wall construction, but goes on to tell the stories of those living in its shadow for decades, those who risked everything to escape, and those present when they tore the damned thing down.

Anyone interested in history would find this a fascinating read, I think, and for those of us who grew up in the Cold War, it's crucial knowledge. We are faced with a real possibility of Cold War II, thanks to the actions of the Chinese Communist party, and we have a generation that has no idea what communism really looks like, or why someone would risk death and torture to flee it. Hilton, who passed away in 2010, strives to be fair to the East German and Soviet leadership, and yet the bald, brutal face of communist dictatorship cannot be prettied up.

Maybe our youngsters now would say that it wasn't "real communism." But it's always real communism. This is what it always is.

Put it on, baby, put it all on.

Today is supposedly International Nude Day:

This non-official holiday was created by television presenter and former rugby player. Marc Ellis dared people to streak in front of New Zealand’s Prime Minister Helen Clark around the beginning of the twenty-first century. Since then it has celebrated to over 30 different countries.

The Web site I quote, Holidays Calendar, helpfully lists some advantages to taking off your clothes and running around like you're on PCP, including:

• Lower risk of Alzheimer’s in people who run barefoot--It’s believed walking barefoot stimulates neurons in the brain.
• Higher levels of Vitamin D in the body--Due to more sun exposure by the skin.
• Better circulation--Circulation is often restricted by clothing.

Well, isn't that nice.

I am sure I don't need to mention the truth that the people who want to run around naked are 99.999% guaranteed to be the people you would never want to see naked. Many of them you wouldn't want to see in clothing, even. My wife and I were on a vacation years ago, and noted that on one private beach to which we had access, one or two Europeans couldn't help themselves but break the rules and get naked. They proved the rule as well as you can imagine. And people wonder why we don't travel more.

These people may be butt nekkid

However, as loathe as I am to spill the hot coffee on someone's nudist fun, allow me to address the so-called health advantages above with some health advantages of clothing, which human beings have been wearing everywhere and at all times since Eve had that famous snack. To the nudists I say:

👀 It is true that many people lack enough vitamin D, and more sunlight can help correct that deficiency. You can fill your D needs with 10-30 minutes of midday exposure... in clothing. Hanging around in the sun naked gets you plenty of skin-cancer-causing UV radiation. Even a plain cotton T-shirt has an SPF of 7. Your naked hinder has an SPF of nada.

👀 Okay, suppose it rains. Sometimes rain is refreshing. Sometimes it's awfully cold or comes with cold wind. How's that feel on naked flesh?

👀 Spurious assertions about Alzheimer's aside, walking barefoot outdoors can cause all kinds of problems, from the obvious (stepping on broken glass, sharp rocks, stinging bugs, burning hot pavement) to the less obvious (fallen arches, Achilles tendinitis, fungal and bacterial infections, and hookworm).

👀 Are all of you nudists 100% sure you can identify poison ivy, poison sumac, poison oak? I've had poison ivy on my arms and that was bad enough. Further, when one is in real nature, not phony cultivated nature, one often finds that natural bushes and other plants have many means of protecting themselves beyond itchy poisons, like thorns and sharp leaves. The average hiker, properly equipped, can Vallereeeeee Valleraaaah right through all that stuff, but not Joe Birthday Suit.

👀 And what about ticks? Good grief, to avoid ticks you have to wear long sleeves and long pants and tuck the pants in your socks. Running around in the buff means none of this. Might as well write TICKS EAT HERE on your chest. And ticks are only the tip of the bug iceberg. Have none of you seen Naked and Afraid?

👀 If you think nature is bad, try civilization. I've already mentioned broken glass and pavement, and we can assume the police might have something to say about your sartorial choices, but modern life (meaning, from 10,000 BC to now) favors those in clothes and is not built to protect the nude. Plus, if you want a snack, try going into the Circle K. No shirt, no shoes, no pants, no underwear, no socks, no service.

👀 Finally: I hope you're not planning to cook anything.

I can't think of a single reason one would want to go about naked in the outdoors beyond a maddened urge to be an exhibitionist or some deep-seated rebellion against clothes as a form of oppression. If the latter, well, boys, cutting off your nose to spite your face is bad enough. Imagine what else might get cut off. Mind the closing doors!

P.S.: Curiously, I note that tomorrow is said to be National Hot Dog Day. I trust this is just a strange coincidence.

University of Lockdown.

There's a video (it's Buzzfeed, I'm sorry) featuring a woman who decided to use the Chinese Death Virus quarantine to learn 30 new skills in 30 days. Resin art, juggling, change guitar strings, and so on. A couple of weeks in she found it to be a lot more difficult than expected, and even distressing, because although she was not expecting to become a genius at the skills, she had assumed she could achieve competence.

I boggle at her underestimation of the difficulty of the task, but I admired the attempt. I think a lot of people who found themselves stuck and home and unable to work did not use the time to learn anything, except maybe how many Doritos can be stuffed in the human mouth at once. (Looking at you, Mr. Philbin.) Or maybe what it's like to drink Quarantinis at breakfast. And now, as the restrictions are lifting and the quarantine is ending, I have to ask myself: "Self, what things have I learned during this period?"

Urm... How about these?

🏫 The maple chipotle barbecue sauce you disliked is not improved by sitting on the door of your fridge for four months.
🏫 Drinking coffee before putting on a face mask can be a problem, because you must endure your own coffee breath for as long as you need to have a mask on.
🏫 All those things you said you'd do around the house if you only had the time? Turns out that wasn't the reason.
🏫 People can use facial tissues for toilet paper when push comes to shove.
🏫 Even during mob shopping sprees, Walmart still opens just five of its 43 checkouts.
🏫 The next time China ralphs up a novel virus, run right out and buy a freezer for the cellar and fill it with meat and tasty appetizers.
🏫 Cutting your own hair is more difficult than it looks, even with electric clippers.
🏫 People can use body wash for hand soap when push comes to shove.
🏫 When you have to go out, you want to stay home; when you have to stay home, you want to go out.
🏫 To contain a virus that is passed through the respiratory system, everyone must wear masks, unless wearing masks does nothing; not work, unless they have to work; stay six feet away from one another, or three feet, or twenty feet, or two grocery store aisles away; combat dangers to health by baking a lot and binge-watching and day-drinking; stay home, especially if you feel sick; stay home anyway, because people who get it often don't feel sick; stay home, unless you want to go to protest or riot, in which case you'll be protected by the justness of your cause and the fact that no one will trace your infection to it; protect the elderly, unless you want to bunch them together with sick people in a nursing home that normally locks down during influenza outbreaks; don't hoard, although a lot of shortages come from people being at home instead of school and work and from supply-chain disruption and are not the result of hoarding; shop online instead of stores, meaning Amazon, and spray everything you buy and the box it came in with Lysol, if you can find Lysol; wash your hands for twenty seconds at least, or use hand sanitizer, but it has to be at least 60% alcohol; hoard; not go shopping for nonessentials, unless they are sold in places that sell essentials, unless the state declares those aisles off limits; not patronize small stores, unless they sell alcohol or marijuana; not sing in church, if the churches are allowed to reopen; trust the medical experts, except when they turn out to be wrong; trust the talking heads on TV, except when they lie; hydroxychloroquine may be a useful treatment, unless the president likes it; and if you want to go back to work so you don't lose your home, you will be ridiculed as someone who just wants a haircut.

That's about all I learned. Surely this has been an expensive and yet mostly useless education, don't you think?