Peak 2020?

Well, here we are. Halloween at last. The horrors of the year are all concentrated on Halloween. 

But no! It's not just Halloween! There's a full moon tonight as well. 

Decorations showing witches and black cats aside, this is not very common. The next full moon on Halloween will occur in 2039. 

But wait! It's also a blue moon, meaning the second full moon this October. This also is not that common; the next blue moon will be August 2023. So all those things that happen once in a blue moon are on the way. 

But it's also the Hunter's Moon, because the last full moon was the Harvest Moon. It's also called the Blood Moon, because it's time to kill all the creatures fattening up for winter. And maybe, since it's on Halloween, humans too. Sounding more threatening yet?

But wait! There's more! It's a full moon on Halloween on a Saturday! How often does that happen? Not often -- I am told the next one is scheduled for 2172. Don't make plans. 

But wait! Again! We also have a mini-moon circling the Earth, which we picked up some time during this annus horribilis of 2020. They call it 2020 SO, as in "2020 I am SO sick of you." No doubt it will act as a force multiplier for whatever other bad juju is in the air. 

AND we're pushing the clocks back tonight as Daylight Savings ends, meaning whatever happens tonight, we'll get an extra hour of it. 

AND we have the Biggest Election EVAH in a couple of days that could mean the END OF LIFE AS WE KNOW IT. 

AND WE STILL HAVE CHINESE DEATH VIRUS AND STUPID RIOTERS HAUNTING OUR STREETS.

So, I think I'm going back to bed. See you in November. 

Electile dysfunction.

I voted yesterday. Yay for me. 

We've been doing the early voting here in New York, but somehow we have not made the worst mistake possible -- that of sending ballots to everyone on the voting rolls. Maybe I should call it a "mistake" rather than a mistake, since it seems to have been pushed by pols who are most likely to benefit from election fraud, and most likely to be experienced in it. 

We've had a huge increase in requested absentee ballots here, including from my wife, thanks to fear of Chinese Death Virus. I went in person yesterday morning to drop hers off at the town hall, which is the polling station for early voting in person as well. It opened on Thursday at seven a.m. But there were three small issues with my plan, those being:

1) The dogs helped hold me up later than I'd hoped; 

2) The station is open to all the voters in the county, and there are only seven such stations for the 385,000 residents of the county;

3) It was raining. 

The line started at the back door of the building, snaked around the front to the other side, wound all the way around the large parking lot, and ended about ten feet before it would lead back to the road. I felt like I was on line for Space Mountain. Of course the rain had stopped when I got there, so I left my umbrella in my illegally parked car, but started again soon after. 

No matter. I said I would walk through fire and over broken glass to vote in this election, and I meant it. Every election is sold as the most important of our lifetimes, but this one seems to fill the bill. Even if the voting of our electors in the electoral college is a done deal (this being New York), the down-ticket candidate fights were of great interest with Governor Sonny Corleone making stupid decisions twice a day and three times on Sunday. 

I wish we still had these old-fashioned voting machines, though. We now fill out dots with a marker on a piece of ledger-sized paper, which is slipped into a reader that supposedly reads our votes properly. You get no satisfaction of the sort that came with the Automatic Voting Machine of the sort seen above, manufactured proudly upstate in Jamestown. Click the little switches and then throw the lever -- CLUNK! I JUST VOTED, BABY! 

Your vote had heft! No more -- all digital now, even the sign-in. But they still won't ask for any ID here. 

They won't give me an "I Voted!" sticker, either. I never knew why anyone would want to wear one of those anyway. To say, "I did my civic duty"? Or "I'm better than you"? Or "I look like someone who would vote against you, so you'd better go cancel out my vote!" Why would I want to warn you to do that?

2020 armam -- er, ornaments.

Well, 2020 is creeping to a close, and as I noted in August, a lot of us seem to be wanting to push the holidays along and get to January 2021. So I have held off on my usual complaints about the Christmas season muscling its way in too early and stomping on Halloween and Thanksgiving and all that. No, bring it on! Then shove it off, and pray for a good new year.

Meanwhile, I notice that Hallmark advertises no less than 1,111 ornaments on its Web site. To be fair, a couple of these are accessories for other ornaments -- hooks, wires, etc. --  and two or three are Halloween ornaments, which is odd. I have seen other companies doing 2020-themed ornaments that involved face masks, toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and the like, and I wondered if Hallmark was too. Sad to say, no. 

But that doesn't mean there are not Hallmark ornaments that can mark the year in a special way, representing the many reprehensive things that have come to pass. I've pasted a few below. Find them at your local Hallmark store or of course at Hallmark.com. 

Around this time of year you see a lot of penguins, because of the obsession with snow at Christmas, and Hallmark has one for you! 

The Batman enemy known as the Penguin, a criminal mastermind and ruthless killer -- also a social climber. He's a featured villain in next year's reboot of the film franchise. But the Burgess Meredith version is dapper and not so scary. If you'd like something more disturbing, how about... 

The flying monkeys! The part of The Wizard of Oz that probably freaks out kids the most, unless it's the Wicked Witch of the East's feet curling up under the house. Maybe they'll have that next year -- a plug-in version where the feet roll in and out. 

Speaking of disturbing:

This is one of 29 different Star Wars themed ornaments! They only have three patriotic ornaments. Even the Disney Princesses only have 17. And among the Star Wars ornaments we get this one, literally titled "A Lack of Faith." Which in a way is nice. Christmas is about faith, after all, and come to think of it, so is Santa. Maybe when you play the sound effect (this one talks!) you could think of it as Vader's reaction to Admiral Motti saying he doesn't believe in Santa Claus. "I find your lack of faith distURBing." Then again, you have an ornament of a guy literally torturing another guy on your Christmas tree. I've been down on Darth Vader ornaments before, but even those didn't depict him in the act of crushing a man's windpipe with Jedi magic. But is it perfect for a year best characterized by a killer Chinese respiratory illness? Hmm.

Here's another movie themed disaster: Flick getting his tongue stuck on the frozen flagpole in A Christmas Story. It's not the only scene in the movie where someone gets hurt, but it's the only one we see that requires bandages. Ha ha! Pain! Yes, that does seem to suit this year. But even more than that is:

Anger! From Disney/Pixar's Inside Out. He lights up! His job is to be furious! I think he spends a lot of time on social media! He has been setting fire to Kenosha with his head! He's a mindless missile of fury! Right on the money there, Disney/Pixar! It's the closest thing Hallmark has a to dumpster fire ornament.

Now, a couple of 2020 ornaments that look friendly but are not. 

You may think: A golf bag with Christmas-themed club head covers! Perfect for Uncle Dave, about whom the only thing anyone can remember is that he loves golf! But I look at it and see that Uncle Dave has killed and beheaded Santa, Donder, and Frosty and stuck the heads on poles. North poles, in fact. Maybe I'm just in a mood.

What about this one? "Mischievous Kittens" it's called, but I call it "Hamster in Solitary Gets Terrified to Death." Seriously, this hamster lives a miserable existence. He can't even lie down in that box. He can't fit on the wheel. And now he gets to pee himself with fear as the kitten threatens to disembowel him? This is another scene of horrifying torture, worse because it looks cute.  

All very 2020 in their way -- but surely there must be at least one 2020 ornament that's just cute and harmless! 

Of course! Courtesy of Star Trek: 

The Star Trek Tribble Fabric Ornament with Sound and Motion. It vibrates and coos like the real thing, unless you encounter a Klingon, when I guess it would make that terrible fear noise. So fuzzy and cute! So born pregnant and eager to eat all the food supplies and starve everybody! Don't be taken in by Cyrano Jones in the guise of Hallmark; this cute bubble of fuzz is as big a harbinger of doomsday as the actual Doomsday Machine from another episode.

In fact, if 2021 is as bad as 2020, maybe Hallmark will use the Doomsday Machine for next year's Star Trek themed ornaments. Just spitballing here. 

Fred's Book Club: Ghosts.

Welcome to our Halloween edition of the Humpback Writers book feature! Even now there are no humpbacks or hunchbacks or anything of the kind, and it is a mean thing to call people who deal with the condition. But it is Hump Day, and the one before Halloween, so we have a spooky book for you. Probably the only spooky book that was published with an introduction by T.S. Eliot.

Charles Williams was one of the three most famous members of the Oxford Christian group known as the Inklings, the other two being J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. Like those celebrated dons, Williams wrote fantastic fiction, fantastic in the sense of being otherworldly. While Tolkien created the most detailed fantasy world in history, and Lewis dabbled in fantasy for children and science fantasy for adults (among other things), Williams's stories were set in his current day England. He was also a poet, a playwright, a theologian, a biographer, a critic -- he did everything literate that a man may do with paper and pen. It is not surprising, then, that he was friends for twenty years with Eliot, a convert to Williams's Anglican church.

All Hallows' Eve was Williams's last novel before his untimely death in 1945. It is a ghost story, and unlike any other I have read. Here's the opener: 

She was standing on Westminster Bridge. It was twilight, but the City was no longer dark. The street lamps along the Embankment were still dimmed, but in the buildings shutters and blinds and curtains had been removed or left undrawn, and the lights were coming out there like the first faint stars above. Those lights were the peace. It was true that formal peace was not yet in being; all that had happened was that fighting had ceased. The enemy, as enemy, no longer existed and one more crisis of agony was done. Labor, intelligence, patience -- much need for these; and much certainty of boredom and suffering and misery, but no longer the sick vigils and daily despair. 

We're right at the end of the war, and she's is considering what will happen next, and where her husband Richard is. But what she (and we) will soon discover is that she is dead; the last thing she remembers is going down into the Tube. And that's only the beginning of her problems. The woman's name is Lester (I guess that was a woman's name in wartime London), and in the ghostly streets she soon encounters two other deceased women whom she knew in life, the chatty and annoying Evelyn and the woeful Betty, whom Lester and Evelyn had treated badly in school. And even this is still just the beginning of Lester's problems. 

Only a few people can be made aware, through brief contact, of the presence of the spectral women, including Lester's husband, and much more unsettling, a man named Simon Leclerc. Leclerc is a very bad man, and indeed Williams's books have no shortage of bad people engaged in bad acts. He is a necromancer, who uses Betty's ghost as a conduit to the spirit world, by which means he intends to amass power. It will be up to the ones who choose good to try to oppose Leclerc, if they can. 

Eliot's introduction discusses the book's central battle:

The conflict which is the theme of every one of Williams's novels, is not merely the conflict between good and bad men, in the usual sense. No one was less confined to conventional morality, in judging good and bad behavior, than Williams: his mortality is that of the Gospels. He sees the struggle between Good and Evil as carried on, more or less blindly, by men and women who are often only the instruments of higher or lower powers, but who always have the freedom to choose to which powers they will submit themselves. Simon, in this story, is a most austere ascetic, but he is evil; Evelyn is a woman who appears too insignificant, too petty in her faults, to be really "bad," but yet, just because she is no more than pettiness, she delivers herself willingly into the hand of evil.

Furthermore, Williams's writing on the experience of the supernatural is truly unique, as Eliot explains:

I have already tried to indicate the unity between the man and the work; and it follows that there is a unity between his works of very different kinds. Much of his work may appear to realize its form only imperfectly; but it is also true in a measure to say that Williams invented his own forms -- or to say that no form, if he had obeyed all its conventional laws, could have been satisfactory for what he wanted to say. What it is, essentially, that he had to say, comes near to defying definition. It was not simply a philosophy, a theology, or a set of ideas: it was primarily something imaginative.

This is true, and something I have seen time and again in Williams's work. Take this simple passage from All Hallows' Eve:

 

She made a third effort and again she heard from her own mouth only the flat voice of the dead. She was possessed by it. Death, it seemed, was not over; it had only just begun. She was dying further. She could not call; presently she would not be able to speak; then not to see -- neither the high stars nor the meaningless lights -- yet still, though meaningless, faintly metropolitan. But she would find even this pale light too much, and presently would creep away from it towards one of those great open entrances that loomed here and there, for inside she could hide from the light.

He writes as if he has experienced these things personally, like a man desperately trying to communicate this in all his books to those of us tied down with the mundane work of living -- a Lazarus "come from the dead, / Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all." His novels are characterized with these passages, some nearly impenetrable because they can be so hard to grasp -- because they grasp what to us is the ungraspable.

So I have to say I've never enjoyed Williams's books the way I've enjoyed others, because they are a lot of work, and even then I feel like I've never quite been able to tune him in. And yet it is rewarding. All Hallows' Eve has a remarkable spiritual struggle, unlike any I've seen in any other ghost story, even the (to me overpraised) Henry James novel The Turn of the Screw.

A Reader's Guide to Fantasy (by Searles, Meacham, and Franklin) sums Charles Williams up very well thus: "In his books he demonstrates a deep knowledge and understanding of traditional magical theories and implements, and invests them all with power as symbols of an absolute reality which underlies the manifest reality of the visible world."

Of Williams's books, I think War in Heaven is my favorite, mainly because it centers around the Holy Grail. The Greater Trumps is one of the more readable, and in spots terrifying. There is a scene in Many Dimensions regarding the Seal of Solomon that made me almost jump up in shock. And Descent into Hell is not only one of the scariest books I've ever read, but one of the most aptly titled books as well.

If you are prepared to work for your ghost story, All Hallows' Eve is as good as it gets. But Charles Williams is never light reading, although he can be enlightening reading.

Castles, cottages, and cabins.

This castle has towers that are probably full of the bones of fair maidens who died waiting to be rescued by the mighty princes who were imprisoned in the dungeon, whose bones are in the dungeon. There are also bones of fair princesses littering the grounds, badass no-nonsense princesses who were not going to wait for their prince, who plummeted to their deaths. Which at least was faster. This creepy castle is also regularly visited by man-eating dragons, not the kind who sit down and chat with you but the kind that slither up behind you and eat you whole. It takes a while to digest a fully armored knight, but these dragons are prepared to do so. This castle was owned by Mad Queen Plychwych, who liked to drink the blood of infants to stay alive. Didn’t work. Some say she haunts the dark and spiderweb-encrusted halls, rattling chains made of bones, waiting for the Devil to come take her away. Good schools, minutes from train. 18 bd, 12 bth, 25,562 sq ft. Best offer. Contact Bobbi Smith, Better Homes & Gardens Real Estate, 555-9855.

Handyman special, needs a little love and some paint. Manor, stone keep, towers, cellars, kitchens, a great hall, gatehouse, chapel, amazing views. Unlimited parking. Not all features still in place. Terrific fixer-upper bargain. For sale by owner. Serious inquiries only. Contact Glenn c/o Knobblebury Pizzeria and Post Office. 

Begorrah! Sure'n 'tis a perfect little country cottage ye be wantin', and this little thatched item is just what ye need! Two rooms (not incl. mushrooms), outdoor bath, charming windehs, cozy as a goldcrest's nest. Secluded. 1/2 pot o' gold or equivalent lucky charm value. Listing via Sean Seamus Fergus-Fergus at Fergus-Fergus and Fergus-Fergus, Inc., fergusfergusfergusfergus.com.

Lovely cabin for sale. Excellent accents, gorgeous accessories, location fungible. You will tell your friends: Isn't it good? Swedish wood! Some assembly required. Free meatballs. Visit us at ikea.com for more details. 

Paradise on earth! Amazing place, perfect weather, opportunities galore! Highly diverse population in exciting location! Plenty of wealth to be made for spirited go-getters. Wonderful schools, incredible shopping -- no place finer in the nation. Restrictions apply. Many, many, many restrictions apply. Call today! Inquire c/o G. Newsom, gov. 

Halloween candy delivery.

WINning?

This American artifact may ring a bell for those who lived through the 1970s.  

For those whom 1974 is as distant as World War II or the reign of Ramesses II, here is the story, from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan: 

President Gerald R. Ford inherited a nation in dire economic straits. A debilitating recession that combined high unemployment and a stagnant economy with rampant inflation posed many difficult challenges. With a degree in economics and 25 years of Congressional budgeting experience, President Ford plunged headfirst into the crisis. His first and most public move was to combat inflation. He declared inflation “public enemy number one.” Ford’s economic advisors devised a Whip Inflation Now or WIN program in the fall of 1974. It focused on a variety of voluntary anti-inflationary initiatives that individual citizens and businesses could embrace. Early enthusiasm for the program generated massive quantities of handmade and mass-produced material, including buttons, signs, clothing, stickers, ephemera, and much more. Unfortunately, enthusiasm waned by the New Year as the program failed to generate the results people had hoped for and the program quickly died out.

Inflation was and often is pretty damn serious. At the time it was a disaster for people on a fixed income, like many who had been paying into the Social Security fund for thirty years. The dollars that they received were worth far less than the dollars they had paid in; a dollar in autumn 1935, when Social Security was implemented, was equivalent to $3.65 in autumn 1974, but the recipient got that same dollar back -- which had depreciated by 83 cents, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Inflation Calculator. News stories of little old ladies surviving on cat food led to the general cheerfulness of the era. 

And the little old ladies were just the tip of the dwindling iceberg. Inflation was eating invested money faster than it could be returned, which was discouraging all sorts of investments. As Amy Farber of the Federal Reserve Bank writes: 

In October 1974, with consumer inflation running at more than 10 percent annually, President Gerald Ford gave a now famous speech (watch video or read text) in which he proclaimed: “There is only one point on which all advisers have agreed: We must whip inflation right now.”

    “Whip Inflation Now” was not just a speech—it was a public relations campaign to enlist American citizens to hold back the increases in wages and prices of the 1970s, supposedly by increasing personal savings and taming spending habits. The symbol of the campaign was the large round red button with bold, white uppercase letters: W I N.

    According to the American Presidents blog, “The campaign did not work as President Ford had hoped. Inflation remained a threat to the economy well into the Reagan presidency … the pins were widely mocked and it gave Ford’s opponents an easy target for criticism.” 

Was the WIN campaign a failure? Economists may argue the point, but I think by every conceivable measure there's no question that it was. Inflation got worse into the late 1970s, and Ford's successor (just like his two predecessors) were incapable of formulating a policy that went beyond Ivory Tower economics and rather encouraged economic growth. This appears to be at least to be part of the massive, crushing failure of academia to teach the truth from at least the start of the postwar era to the present day. They were and are in love with socialism, and every policymaker who falls for that inflicts misery on his constituents.

I believe most of the disastrous ideas of public and social policy have come out of Western universities. I'm far from alone in that belief. Maybe WIN would have looked better in retrospect if a non-nuclear nation had declared war on us, just as FDR's New Deal looks like an economic powerhouse because war was breaking out and someone had to make all those tanks and planes.

For Ford, personally, the WIN campaign was a disaster. People may note that WIN was mocked, and Ford made fun of by Chevy Chase (a one-time show business personality), but most Americans thought Ford was a decent man. There was a lot of talk (in my family, for one) that if Ford had not pardoned Nixon he might have been elected in 1976, but I have my doubts. I think Ford was right on that one, that most Americans didn't want a Nixon clown show trial sucking all the oxygen out of the room. 

I think if Ford had not studied economics, and had a better plan than a vague FDR-ish call for normal people to go out and whip inflation (how does one do that? No one who was an adult at the time has ever been able to explain what they were supposed to do), the economy might have improved. He still would have had an uphill fight in 1976, with the swine flu disaster and the general hatred and fear of Washington everywhere, but an improving economy might have saved him from the juggernaut that was James Earl Carter. Despite everything, Ford carried 27 states in the election, but lost by about 1.7 million votes and got clobbered in the Electoral College.

I mention all this today not just because it's an excuse to talk about what was briefly a major cultural item -- WIN buttons -- but also to show that good intentions and college degrees don't always make for good results, especially in government. Reagan was an economic wonder in spite of rather than because of his economics degree from Eureka College; he spent decades learning about economics in the real world as his acting career dwindled. And Trump's bachelor's is also in economics, but I'm not sure he ever paid much attention in school. He probably learned more about economics at his father's knee. 

In the end, you can call for the people to rise up and whip that inflation, beat that poverty, conquer that cancer, declare war on bad weather, stop the tide from going out, but some battles can't be won by good intentions. 

My inner eight-year-old.

We interrupt this thoughtful blog in its usual considerations of philosophy, current events, and literature to bring you this stupid picture that tickles the little eight-year-old Fred within. 

The awning is apparently Photoshopped; I can't tell you how sorry I am to report that. But even with my knowing this, it still got the Butt-Head (from Beavis & Butt-Head) laughs out of me. Huh huh... huh huh... huh huh...

Sadly, despite my career as a dazzling urbanite and a shining sophisticate, at heart I am still a child who laughs at this kind of semi-scatological humor. Take, for example, this flyer that came with the gas company bill for the month. 

Now, I know a gas leak is nothing to laugh about. It can explode, burst into flame, or just suffocate you if it's feeling kindly. And I understand that the gas company is trying to use simple figures here for the sake of people in our area who don't read. These symbols, as explained inside, mean Gas - Smell - Run - Call. Easy to remember. 

Ah, but oh so easy to use for humor purposes. 

 

See what I mean? I don't think this is what they mean by being "young at heart," but it's all I got and I guess I'm stuck with it. 

Or should I say "young at fart"? Huh huh... huh huh... huh huh...

Death Virus installed and serviced.

So hurray for the Chinese Communists. Not only do they release a virus into the wild, keep a secret, allow (maybe encourage?) travel from the hotspot of Wuhan, and otherwise make sure it gets everywhere in the world before they make the slightest acknowledgment of the danger, but now they can make some dough off it as well. 

Bought this box of face masks while waiting in the checkout line, because I was getting low and wanted a box for the car. Because this is New York, and our friendly governor Sonny Corleone, the man who puts the dic in dictator, will probably issue an executive order soon that we have to wear masks into our own bathrooms. Meanwhile, you can't go to any store without one.  

But enough about Cuomo, Mr. Leadership himself, who is currently hawking a book around telling us how brilliant he is. What about the Chinese? Here was the Certificate of Approval inside the box of masks, which of course was made in China:

They're A-OK! They'll protect your life! Except they're "Not intended for medical or clinical use," so how are they supposed to actually protect people from a medical problem? I understand we don't all need surgical N95 masks, but isn't protecting one another from the virus a "medical use"? And if it is, should we have different masks? Are these useful at all? Maybe to stop unwanted kissing or to protect your mouth while painting the ceiling.

Furthermore, although sealed in plastic within the box, they expire in two years. What happens to them in two years? The paper degrades? This is all very confusing.

And of course the big question is: Are the masks even helping? 

In Europe, where people are usually more acquiescent to government bureaucracies than we are, people have had it. John McGuirk in Ireland writes, "Across Europe, the picture is the same: Near universal mask wearing, and near universal record-setting in terms of the number of new cases." He questions the assertion that masks have kept this COVID crap crisis from getting much worse, and notes that COVID fatigue is causing people to be less careful now than they were in spring (which I have certainly observed around here). Is it the carelessness that's causing a huge spike in infections in Europe, or is it just that the masks aren't doing the job?

To ask the question is to invite a firestorm of anger, as with so many other things that should be examined rather than accepted dumbly. 

Meanwhile, Chinese industry sells us masks and other products, like the Sani Trendz hand sanitizer on my kitchen windowsill. I'm not accusing the Communist government of starting the pandemic just to sell some more lousy products, although I do accuse it of purposely making sure the infection spread outside the nation just so that the Chinese would not suffer alone and look like sad, incompetent fools. I do think too that, like all good power-hungry bastards, they never let a crisis go to waste. 

Out: "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." In: "We will put the Capitalists' heads in the noose, and then sell them the scissors to cut their way out."

Personally, I will totally stop wearing a mask tomorrow if places will stop barring people from entering without them. To hell with it; give me the Chinese Death Virus and freedom. But in the meanwhile, for practical purposes I have to wear the stupid things to go grocery shopping. Hey, a guy's gotta eat. But I'm playing this game under protest.

Making a spooktacle.

When a major decorative holiday approaches, I like to canvass the area and see who's doing what. I have to say that my friends and neighbors have mostly not thrown in the towel, or the hole-covered sheet, on Halloween just because trick-or-treating may be cancelled and there's no Great Pumpkin special on TV for the first time in 54 years. 

So here's what I've seen in my jaunts about town, often accompanied by my Canine Praetorian Guard. We'll start with a music number: 

Leaning on a lamp

You think I look a tramp

Or maybe I'm just 'round to steal a soul

But no, I'm not a schnook

You think that's what I look

I'll tell you why I'm on this bloody pole

I'm leaning on a lamppost at the corner of the street 

In case a certain walking dead man comes by

My, oh my

I hope that walking dead man comes by

You see he's doomed

His death has loomed

And by the tomb he'll be consumed

So anyone can understand why

I'm leaning on a lamppost at the corner of the street

In case a certain walking dead man comes by

And here we have good old Jolly Jack. He's two-dimensional but full of cheer.

The maiden aunt of Death, above.

This family's home always seems quite proper. So, no fun decorations. I have no idea where they got the classy Halloween bow. Who does classy Halloween decorations?

Now, that's more like it! Big, fat, inflatable pumpkin fun. The brim is even up at a rakish angle.

The local kids painted the windows of our public library. Frankie and Drac are by far the best work. Unless these are decals. They are good enough to be decals. Now I think they're decals. 

Half upright with bloodshot eyes. This scarecrow is just missing a bottle of MD 20/20. Which would be perfect for this stupid Halloween, as I think about it. Sober up and get a job, scarecrow.

This is not a house that goes in for Halloween stuff, but this year they went game. Made a good job of the big web by the front door. That could actually deter little kids.

Okay, this is sad. Mistakes were made, clearly.

A common problem this year. People think putting out pumpkins is a nice, decorative touch. Sure, if you don't mind feeing the squirrels and chipmunks. So, these migrated from the home's porch to the curb to await the garbage man.

I dig this one. A haunted tree with a churning green light inside! Never seen that before. I even took the two-second video below so you could see it in action.

I was surprised to find out it's an inflatable. When I passed by later that day with the other dog, it was collapsed on the ground like a teenager's sock.

Aaaaand here are the pumpkins by the curb a couple of nights later, when the deer have gotten into the act. 

So that's what's going on around here. How are things where you are?

Fred's Book Club: Kind to be Cruel.

Good day, book lovers, and welcome to another Hump Day edition of the Humpback Writers, the book feature with the stupid Wednesday-related name. The writers probably don't have actual humps, but back in the early days of his career, today's writer probably would have pretended he did for physical comedy purposes. 

Throw your mind back to September 9, 1979. Now look on the New York Times best-seller list. What do you see? 

That is correct -- the first book by the world's hottest comedian, Steve Martin. I got this copy years later at the Strand in Manhattan, because one of my best friends was obsessed with it and I got curious. More about that later. 

Cruel Shoes is a collection of very short pieces, some fiction, some observational gags, some drawings, all joined to the amazing absurdist comedy that Martin had perfected over years of standup. It's nothing like most other comedian best-sellers (Alan King's Help! I'm a Prisoner in a Chinese Bakery; Jerry Seinfeld's SeinLanguage; Ray Romano's Everything and a Kite; and so on). It has more in common with John Lennon's free-form books In His Own Write and A Spaniard in the Works. But it's a lot funnier. It began life in 1977 as a small, limited edition book, but was reissued with a lot more material by Putnam in 1979. The 750 copies from that limited run are rather valuable now. 

Most comedians work with straight jokes; a few can work in weird, far-out stuff like Andy Kaufman. But Martin is the only one I know of who could do both at once, and shift gears rapidly. It's seen in this book; you follow along and think you're getting a sophisticated vibe, and suddenly there's a pratfall-level joke that's all the funnier because you expected something more esoteric. 

It's a hard book to quote because it is so awfully short, and I don't want to get in trouble for running whole pieces. But here are a few slices: 

The introduction:

You are walking down a country road. It is a quiet afternoon. You look up and far, far down the road you see someone walking toward you. You are surprised to have noticed someone so far away. But you keep walking, expecting nothing more than a friendly nod as you pass. He gets closer. You see he has bright orange hair. He is closer -- a white satin suit spotted with colored dots. Closer -- a painted white face and red lips. You and he are fifty yards apart. You, and a full-fledged clown holding a bicycle horn are twenty yards apart. You approach on the lonely country road. You nod. He honks and passes. 

 From "Turds":

The Turds never became accepted in this country because of their name. The Turds, or people from Turdsmania, were people of healthy stock. They were tall, with long, straight hair; the men robust, the women bold and beautiful. The first Turds arrived on these shores in fifteen eighty-nine, one year after the defeat of the Spanish Armada. They were unjustly blamed for the defeat of the Spanish Fleet when a Spanish admiral remarked, "No wonder we lost, we had a bunch of turds managing our cannons!" 

From the title story, "Cruel Shoes:"

Anna knew she had to have some new shoes today, and Carlo had helped her try on every pair in the store. Carlo spoke wearily, "Well, that's every pair of shoes in the place."

"Oh, you must have one more pair..."

"No, not one more pair.... Well, we have the cruel shoes, but no one would want..."

Anna interrupted, "Oh yes, let me see the cruel shoes!"

Spoiler alert: They are cruel, those shoes.

Martin followed this book with Pure Drivel in 1998, almost twenty years later, so he didn't exactly jam the shelves with comedic books after the success of Cruel Shoes. He has also written some novels, a kids' book, three plays and a musical, and of course screenplays galore (does anyone still say "galore"? In seventies mode here). But Cruel Shoes is the one that always stays with me. 

My friend, the obsessed one, says half-seriously that there's a lot of points to meditate on in Cruel Shoes. He finds many passages to be like a koan, a paradoxical or non sequitur-like statement to meditate upon for enlightenment. Like this from "What to Say When the Ducks Show Up":

Many people won't know what to say when the ducks show up, but I will. Maybe I'll say, "Oh ducks, oh ducks, oh ducks," or just "ducks wonderful ducks!" 

Or "The Vengeful Curtain Rod":

The story of the vengeful curtain rod is an exciting and dramatic tale told by the people who only say "hup hup" on the east coast of Borneo. The real facts are vague and misty, but the legend of the vengeful curtain rod as told by the people who only say "hup hup" goes like this:

"Hup hup hup hup hup hup hup hup hup hup hup."

I think my friend may have a point. Or, he may not be quite right. 

As someone who has worked in books for decades, I have to say the acknowledgments to this volume are the very best I have ever read. 

Yakkity yak yak yak yakkity yak yakkity yakkity yak yak yak yak yakkity yak yak yak yakkity.

Earlier this year, Martin wrote and starred in an animated version of the title story. I have not seen it yet. Does it have the depths of wonder and spirit that this book does? 

The only proper answer to that question is: Hup hup hup hup. Yakkity yak yak.

Teeth so clean, you could eat off 'em!

It seems that a lot of people I know in person and via the Great Lileks's site have been visiting the dentist all at once, and probably not a coincidence. Dentists' offices, like most other businesses, had to shut down or severely limit patients for a while thanks to the Chinese Death Virus, and are just now getting caught up. As I write this, it is late Monday morning and I am leaving for my own checkup in a couple of hours. 

Current status: Worried; bug bite on ankle that will drive me nuts during the appointment; flossed recently; no dental insurance whatever.

The thing is, I am sure I have a cavity on the side of one tooth. When I was at the dental mill last year they warned me about this but wanted to take a wait-and-see approach. Well, I waited, and now I am about 100% sure it's a cavity (or caries, as the dentists insist on calling them). So I called this new dentist, a fellow in private practice, and had to wait over a month for this appointment. I guarantee the hole did not get better in this time. It may in fact have company.

I don't know if he will get out the drill and go for it today, or schedule me for a follow-up some time around Christmas. I also worry that I will not like this guy, because he came recommended by a friend and it will be awkward if I think he stinks. That's happened before. 

We now pause for a comical old piece of clip art, and I will report further beneath it. If I survive.

So here's the update:

My appointment actually was for tooth-hurty (2:30 har har har). My old dentist, whom I liked, was never safe to visit after lunch because he always had Chinese food and his own garlic breath could blunt the instruments. But no, this fellow was scentless and very good. Big-time COVID protocols, but I don't mind. As long as I didn't have to wear a mask during the exam (har har some more). 

I got off light. The cavity I worried about was not so bad. On the other hand, to fix it will probably require a crown. But we'll check again next year. Not needed now. Hooray! 

He did an old-fashioned cleaning all by himself -- that is, rather than blow the tartar off with a water jet, he used the little pick. My mouth was like that mine the Seven Dwarves worked in, without all the big pre-cut diamonds. Some people hate that kind of cleaning, but it makes me feel like the choppers are as immaculate as Queen Elizabeth's silverware. Of course, sometimes it makes me feel like I deserve an "I Gave Blood" sticker, but not so bad today. I did get the caution that more flossing will be appropriate to avoid gum disease, however. 

On the whole, for a dental appointment at tooth-hurty with an unknown dentist on a Monday near Halloween in 2020, I'm going to say it was as good as it could be. Drop that one in the gratitude box, and on to the next thing. 

P.S.: There was an incident this same afternoon regarding a fire alarm, a crazed dog, a business crisis, and a mad dash down a busy highway, but I may save that for another time. Right now I'm still enjoying my close escape from drilling. 

Things are tough.

 

The most valuable real estate.

If you live in a domestic situation, as many people do, you may quibble with this point, and I welcome such lively debate. But I wish to set down the case as I see it. The question is: What is the most valuable real estate within the home?

Someone with small children can certainly make the case for every bit of open floor space. Even more than pets, kids are notorious for leaving objects and sometimes food any old place on the floor. The naked foot / LEGO connection is the stuff of legend. But except in the case of the most awful hoarders, or the kids' playroom, the actual space is mostly space. What makes it dangerous is that the small things are unexpected because the floor is mostly bare.

Similarly, the garage, cellar, or attic may seem valuable because they are cluttered, as Manhattan is valuable real estate because it's already built up. But the comparison doesn't apply; people live in Manhattan, or used to; nothing human can live in those clutter bins. I've seen a number of attached garages that not only can't be used for cars, they can't be used as an exit from the house. 

Then there's the bathroom. Many men find out in adulthood -- sooner if they have sisters -- that a lot of women are fascinated by products. What products? You have to ask? Hair products, skin products, beauty products, soothing products, aromatherapy products, and so on, not to even mention the small appliances like hair curlers and dryers and straighteners and all kinds of various tools for removing unwanted hair or blackheads or whatever else is unwanted. A guy goes in his girlfriend's bathroom and reels in shock at every horizontal surface being jammed with stuff. Meanwhile, at home, his bathroom has a razor, shaving cream, deodorant, and this:

Shampoo, conditioner, and body wash in one. It could be used as shaving cream, like any soap; if only it could be used as a deodorant he'd be all set. 

(For the record, I have known men who also made large collections of products; it's just mostly women that these things are marketed toward, and for a reason.)

The bathroom space can indeed be crucial real estate, but I argue that when it becomes very tight it is usually because the bathroom is old-fashioned and tiny, or too many people use it as a primary grooming station, or some other issue -- that issue being that too many products have proved disappointing or unhelpful and have not been pitched, even if they have passed their expiration date. In other words, a little planning, vigilance, cooperation, and a second bathroom could solve the problem. 

But there's only one kitchen, usually, and that's where we hit the skids. 

A kitchen, even a large one, only has X amount of counter space, but if you add up all the possible countertop appliances one might want, you find it comes to X ✕ 2, or even X². Here's a list of all the kitchen countertop appliance types on Bed, Bath and Beyond (a store that doesn't even mention Kitchen in its name): 

• toaster oven
• toaster
• blender
• juicer
• air fryer
• food processor
• waffle maker
• stand mixer
• slow cooker
• coffee maker
• coffee pod machine
• electric grill
• electric pressure cooker
• microwave oven
• electric steamer
• pizza maker
• espresso machine
• vacuum sealer
• electric kettle
• meat slicer
• dehydrator
• coffee grinder
• fondue pot
• deep fryer
• ice crusher
• wine refrigerator
• popcorn maker
• infrawave oven (!)
• pasta machine
• mug warmer
• grain mill
• cotton candy maker (!!)
• rice cooker
• ice maker
• deep fryer
• electric griddle
• electric skillet
• ice cream maker
• bread machine
• cupcake maker (!!!)
• baby food maker
• snow cone maker
• electric teapot
• electric burner
• electric induction burner
• quesadilla maker
• electric wok
• convection oven
• soda machine
• soy / nut milk maker (!!!!)
• sprouter (don't ask)
• water reviltalizer (no idea)
• yogurt maker
• empanada / churro maker
• cake pop maker
• pressure cooking oven (?)
• hot dog toaster (you read that right)
• hot chocolate maker
• Bundt cake maker
• mini pie maker

Sixty appliances. I didn't even include handheld items like electric knives and immersion blenders that would typically not be left out when unused. 

Obviously no one would need or even want all of these things, but you can just imagine the kind of ridiculous pileup that would be caused on the kitchen counters with even a handful. Now throw in the Ronco Rotisserie & BBQ Oven and you see why kitchen counters are precious land. 

You literally cannot make a kitchen large enough for all possible countertop appliances. Any kitchen close would be so huge it would be impossible to get a meal cooked and served at a proper temperature. Besides, if you have an oven and stovetop, most won't be necessary. 

So we have to pick and choose. This can start early with something like the wedding registry. Take it easy on the registry! You don't really need a popcorn popper if you have a microwave oven, do you? Especially in your starter apartment?

Since I got rid of the Sodastream (for reasons detailed here if you're interested) and retired the Mr. Coffee Ice Tea Maker, we have these appliances permanently stationed on the counters:

• toaster oven (for toast and for light cooking in the summer)
• microwave oven
• coffee grinder
• coffee pot
• coffee pod machine

And that's all. We love our coffee; can you tell? 

We also have an electric vegetable steamer, a large and a small slow cooker, a food processor, and a waffle maker. These are tucked away unless needed. The waffle maker has not been used in years, actually, not since my wife decided she was sick of waffles for dinner on Friday during Lent. Sad!

So that's how we allocate our valuable real estate in the kitchen. How about you?

Step into my Parler.

 Some of you may know -- since it brought you here -- that I joined Parler. 

Why would I do such a thing, when I have thus far eschewed all the other social media platforms? Well, the reason I decided to try Parler is that I always entertain hopes that my blog might entertain others, and maybe even entice them to try one of my novels. 

The problem is that Parler only has about 2.8 million users compared to Twitter's supposed 330 million and Facebook's 2.6 billion. 

But Parler is devoted to the exercise of free speech. Therefore, Parler is not dedicated to hosting the mobs who moo as one to destroy the lives of people who say things they dislike. And Parler itself does not go about silencing the voices of people who might -- just as a hypothetical -- post something embarrassing about its preferred political persons while promoting the voices of those who make wild claims about persons it dislikes. 

As Mark Steyn often says, if you don't believe in free speech you dislike, then you don't believe in free speech. There was a time when that bald fact might be enough to shame Leftists who shout down and threaten political opponents, but no more. To them it seems power is the only principle, and all other principles are only speedbumps to be run over, torn up, paved over. 

I hope very much that Parler sticks to its guns, and that its membership continues to grow. It will take quite a lot more Parleyers to get to the point of cascading popularity, where people go on the platform because so many people they want to follow are on the platform. 

Twitter looks invincible now, but so did MySpace, AOL, and Yahoo, once. 

So come drop by @Vitaminfred if you're on Parler and say hi. Hell, say whatever you want. It's a free country -- so far.

Worst Halloween ever?

Will this year be the worst Halloween ever? 

Well, in addition to everything else, mostly emanating from the Chinese Death Virus, it certainly could be. I think of Halloween as a kiddie holiday, because I'm past the age where I want to spend it getting into a stupid costume and getting wasted with my friends. We're all too tired after the early bird special at Denny's anyhow. 

So my concern is for the kids, and they surely have had bad Halloweens, individually and collectively. Individually I've known children whose Halloween was ruined by chickenpox or a death in the family; collectively, here in the lower Hudson Valley, we've had to cancel everything en masse because of things like the remnants of a hurricane taking down power lines or a freak blizzard that hit just before the big day. 

But now we have the Wuhan Fluie, and I almost think it would be better to cancel everything than move forward with a lousy halfhearted "let's have fun!" kind of holiday in which no fun can actually be had. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, has put out a few pages of information designed to make Halloween lousy. It's not the goal, but it's the inevitable result. Here are some helpful tips to suck the fun out of everything:

Make your cloth mask part of your costume.

A costume mask is not a substitute for a cloth mask.

Do NOT wear a costume mask over a cloth mask. It can make breathing more difficult.

Stay at least 6 feet away from others who do not live with you.

Indoors and outdoors, you are more likely to get or spread COVID-19 when you are in close contact with others for a long time.

Go on an outdoor Halloween-themed scavenger hunt.

Visit a pumpkin patch or orchard. Remember to wash your hands or use hand sanitizer frequently, especially after touching frequently touched surfaces, pumpkins, or apples.

Go to a one-way, walk-through haunted forest or corn maze.

But it's probably all right to eat candy, IF you open the wrapper, then wash your hands, then eat the candy, then throw it up. All right, I made up the last part, but it's kind of similar and if there's enough candy it could happen anyway.

I don't want to be Mr. Pouty Puss, but I'm so sick of all this crap that I'm even sick of it on behalf of other people now. I don't even like Halloween much. The doorbell ringing freaks out the dogs, the kids interrupt everything between three p.m. and curfew at eight, and I'm either left with a bunch of candy I don't want (but will eat) or get caught short and wind up giving out money or canned products. And the kids never want to even stay for a "What are you supposed to be?" chat; they are too busy making their rounds and have a lot more doors to hit. I understand -- they're working hard out there. 

But maybe not this year. Our town has had a larger than average uptick in cases (that's another story, having nothing to do with people who celebrate Halloween), so the town may feel they should cancel trick-or-treating entirely. Governor Corleone is on the fence. So I haven't even been able to prepare properly.

Okay, I bought two bags of candy. But I am only willing to eat one of them (Milky Way Midnight). The other is full of Twizzlers. Plastic candy substitute to my mind. And maybe I intended to eat some Milky Way Midnights. Dark chocolate, you know; too sophisticated for children.

But that's all beside the point. Halloween is the first of the Big Three (Four if you count New Year's) and it's a harbinger of what the other two will be like. If Halloween sucks thanks to the Chinese Death Virus, we can count on a crappy Thanksgiving and Christmas too.

Your vote is important to us.

 

Fred's Book Club: Pet and 'Net.

Welcome, friends, to another episode in the Humpback Writers series, which runs every week on Wednesday, or Hump Day. Are there actually humps, or camels, or anything like that connected to these books? Beats me. Humps be damned! Sometimes these things are only even books by a stretch of the imagination. 

That applies today, as we have a look at the sad remains of what once, briefly, was a titan of the Internet bubble, now almost entirely forgotten. I am referring to the "author" of a novelty book produced during that wild era, a book featuring a character that was for a short time one of the most popular advertising mascots in the world. And this is that book:

Those of us over age 23 or so will probably remember the brief renown of the commercials for Pets.com. This was a pet supply site founded in 1998 for that World Wide Web thingy, which was advertised by a wacky sock puppet in the shape of a dog, voiced by actor Michael Ian Black. This is that dog, and this is the short book that featured some of his signature humor. 

These are three spreads from the book, and there's not a whole lot more; as it promises on the back cover, "as much as I could fit on a roll of 35mm film." That's about all there is to it. It's short and funny, meant to cash in on the popularity of the commercials. Unfortunately that was about the only thing Pets.com did cash in on. 

In these days of streaming TV I wonder if we'll ever have such an advertising phenomenon again. The puppet was interviewed on network television -- it even was a float in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. So naturally branded sock puppet products like this book would follow.

This was an era when bales of funding went to any old startup online, after which the entrepreneurs would reveal that they didn't know what they were doing, didn't have any idea how to get a customer base that would support the massive spending used to get things going, were only interested in blowing money on pool tables and employee backrubs and high salaries and nothing else, or some other combination of incompetence and malfeasance. As noted in Wikipedia's necropsy of the site, "Although sales rose dramatically due to the attention [of the sock puppet], the company lost money on most of its sales through mismanagement. Its high public profile during its brief existence made it one of the more notable victims of the dot-com bubble in the 2000s." I'd heard that Petco bought much of the remains of the property, but now the URL Pets.com leads you to the PetSmart site.

Running a pet supply site can be tricky. Pet food in any bulk, canned or bagged, is quite heavy and expensive to ship. Pet owners who know that regulation of pet products is nothing compared to that for human products are often wary of buying online, or at least they were in 2000. Amazon started a pet site called Wag (after losing its own stake in Pets.com), but has pretty much folded it into the regular site now. The real breakout in the field was Chewy.com, which we at Key Casa have found to be an amazing and dedicated site for pet owners. Unfortunately it was bought by PetSmart, whose own site was so-so, but so far Chewy has remained very good and we are regular customers.

As for the sock puppet -- well, you may remember that for a while he was doing ads for auto loans, saying "everyone deserves a second chance." But the ads were not funny, just sad; someone else was doing his distinctive voice, and it was not quite right. It all came to an end soon enough. Sic transit gloria puppi, and all that. 

But in this era where sock puppets are so often in the news, sometimes serving as our politicians, let's pause for a moment to remember a really popular sock puppet, who had a day in the sun that was so brilliant, it was doomed to burn out quickly.

Gotham needs us!

Longtime readers (who are just the greatest, believe me, above average and good-looking, everyone says so) may know I'm a little obsessed with comics, and maybe specifically Batman. They may be aware that I have mentioned Batman many times on this blog -- and have even discussed the famous Bat-Signal that the police use to call the Caped Crusader for help. 

Well, thanks to my wife, I now have my own Bat-Signal!

Yes, it looks like an ordinary Batman-themed pen, as one might see anywhere, but it actually has a secret button that turns it into the Bat-Signal Projector Pen! The batteries inside power the light that shoots the signal from the top, so it can shine anywhere you might need to notify Batman that there is perfidy on the prowl!

On the ceiling! 

On the street!

On the lawn! 

You may say it's silly for a grown man to carry such a thing, but you know, it's a dangerous world. I'll bet that the president carries a pen just like this. If I were him I would insist on using it to sign a big treaty with some important country like Sweden. Just to remind those Swedes that we have Batman and they don't.

I have to admit I've often wondered how the Bat-Signal is supposed to work. You can't just flash it in the sky; it vanishes into the night. Maybe it would shine on a cloud, but what if it's clear? 

The first time I attended an arena concert that used laser light to form words and shapes in the air, I thought it would make a much more effective signal. Would it work in the skies over Gotham? No idea. Maybe just shoot into space or blind pilots. Anyway, they didn't have lasers in 1942, when the Bat-Signal was first seen in a comic book. 

It was all mysterious to me when I was a little kid, when I saw Batman and Robin just get a phone call from the Commissioner and drive over to see him in broad daylight. They used the Bat-Signal only a couple of times on the sixties TV show, although it appeared in cartoon form over the opening and closing credits. 

However it works, the Bat-Signal plays a crucial role in Gotham crimefighting. So the pen is not silly at all. What IS silly are the Bat pants that I got five years ago. Silly, but comfortable. But my wife, who gave them to me, still won't let me wear them outside unless it's pitch-black, and even then she's worried I'll faint or get another concussion and be found there in the morning in my Bat pants. As the Swedes say, Hur pinsamt! (How embarrassing!)