Here comes Santa WHUH?

 

Little known fact: Reindeer were not the first animal Santa Claus tried for his delivery service.

First Sunday of Advent.

I like this "Advent in Two Minutes" video from the Paulist Fathers at Busted Halo. "Faith shared joyfully" is their mission statement, and you get a little taste of it here.

 

I'm a fan of Advent. As the video stresses, it is a season of hope, unlike Lent, which is a season of repentance. People do give up things or take on good things during Advent, but that's not considered a necessity -- although it would certainly be nice to plan to be friendlier in this Advent, especially at a time when lockdowns and riots and politics have us at one another's throats. 

As for Loving Thy Neighbor, my Advent Eve Day got off to a poor start. (NB: There is no such thing as Advent Eve Day, although Advent started with the Vigil Mass yesterday.) My dog-hating neighbor, the cable thief destined to be led out of work with a raincoat over his head one day, was putting up wreaths on his illegal fence that divides our properties. He has not spoken to me in years except to yell at me once when his wife was not home to scold him. It just so happened that my dogs both had to water the lawn that afternoon -- I didn't even know Wicked Neighbor was there, but they spotted him right away. Probably the stink of wickedness on him. 

Anyway, Junior Varsity dog Nipper was on a leash with me, so he stayed by my side, but Senior Varsity dog Tralfaz, all 120 pounds of furry Fazzy fury, trotted up to the fence and unleashed a volley of barks. I didn't see the man's reaction, although it would have been satisfying to know he'd soiled his Fruit of the Looms. 

I called Fazzy away and got him focused on his task -- pee -- but gave him lots of praise and an extra-large treat for scaring the big jerk. 

So you see what I'm dealing with here, and I mean me, not that guy. Immanuel Kant famously said that "Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made," and that's me down to my socks. 

Still, today is a day when hope starts again, and maybe I can hope and pray to turn the other cheek in the future. And not gloat when my huge dog frightens someone who really deserves it. 

Turkey's revenge.

My wife made the best turkey ever this year. She's always had a knack, and her reliance on oven bags usually ensures a moist bird. Still, this year she outdid herself. We had a wonderful meal on the big day, and looked forward to leftovers.

Enter me.

Our refrigerator, which is on the small side due to the knuckleheads who placed the cabinets where they did, was already jammed with leftover sides when I decided the turkey was cool enough to join them. (The pearl onions were awesome, BTW.) It was past ten p.m.; the dogs had settled down for the night, and no one wanted a turkey sandwich. 

I had wrapped the bird in the roasting pan under layers of Glad Press 'n Seal, then covered the whole thing with heavy duty foil. There was a lot of moisture still in the pan, and you want to keep that in to make sure the meat stays moist. Also, you certainly wouldn't want to do anything that would allow the pan to leak, would you?

Ha, he laughed hollowly, ha.

I had cleared a shelf for the turkey, except for the pot of creamed onions. I figured they would both fit. I figured wrong. As I realized that the pot, jammed now in the corner, would not allow the roasting pan to fully slide in, I decided I had to take the turkey back out and find another spot for the onions. But by that point I had pushed in the fridge just a hair backward, and the door would only open to a 90-degree angle because now it was flush with the wall on the right side. Because of that the pan would not come back out, nor was I sure would it stay on the shelf if I let go. 

At this point I had two choices:

1) Call for help

2) Use the same instinct that makes a man want to carry 11 shopping bags into the house by himself to try to pull the roasting pan against the door to bring the fridge out far enough to open the same door to say a 120-degree angle and return the pan to the stovetop

Naturally I chose option 2, which is when the roasting pan slipped out of my grasp and landed on the floor upside-down, shooting turkey juice on the floor in a huge puddle and on the floor of the refrigerator in a small puddle.

The turkey itself stayed in place; the wrappers held pretty well. The leakage was understandable after half a gallon of liquid was violently tossed about. 

So, despite the fact that I wanted to go to sleep myself, and the inner three-year-old just wanted to walk away and leave it, I spent quite some times cleaning up everything. The turkey was fine, but what a mess. 

Needless to say, I learned some Key Lessons for next Thanksgiving:

Men, don't be stubborn when rassling a turkey into the refrigerator. Call for help if you need it. Don't try to use ten pounds of meat, two pounds of liquid, and a five-pound roasting pan as a tool for moving a refrigerator, even one on glide wheels. It's just not worth it. 

And finally, store the onions in a bowl. It takes up less space. 

More light -- more dark our woes.

Okay! Thanksgiving is gone! Time to get the Christmas stuff up! Hurry hurry hurry! It's an especially good day to fight about the lights! 

Actually, I'm not sure about whether people fight over the Christmas lights. There may be some families where Dad insists on something like football lights on the house or tree... 

...but I think most of the time it's whatever Mom wants.

And what does Mom want? It's my experience that many high-class type families, or those who want to look high-class, prefer all-white lights. It looks snowy and stately, the kind of décor that says WASPy restraint. Lower-class families prefer the more fun multicolored lights, as do families with small children, and of course those whose small children have driven them to lower class. Iconoclastic high-class types will go with all blue lights, which have a restraint to them like the white lights, but more soothing. Also appropriate for Jewish families as Hanukkah lights. Iconoclasts of lower class go all-green, which is Christmassy but also a little non-Christmassy at the same time; someone celebrating the solstice would be equally fine with green lights on their green boughs. And those who get the hard-to-find all-red lights may think it looks Christmassy against the green decorations, but those are black in the night so the place looks like a Commie safehouse. 

Some people may try to be ecumenical, putting white lights on one bush and green on another and so on, but I guess that it neither wins the support of the white or green or other light people. They never are so ecumenical that they mix in multis, though.

Indeed, you can't win, but you also can't lose. Any decoration that isn't positively offensive is good decoration. If Christmas is not complete for Dad without his football lights, let him have some football lights, I say. If someone wants to go the Commie light route, fine, whatever. It's still pretty.

Personally I'm more of a multicolored light guy myself, but my wife prefers all-white, so guess what we use? What can I say; she's the classy one in the relationship. Meanwhile, for my fellow low-class lads, here's the type we can wear personally:

I'm referring to the light string, of course, not the model. She seems awfully excited by the necklace of battery-powered lights, doesn't she? I think the necklace and Santa hat were Photoshopped on. 

If you really want to see fireworks, watch what happens when a blinking-lights person marries a steady-light person. That's a which-side-of-the-toilet-paper-roll-hangs-down level fight. It makes mere religious differences look like an argument over white vs. colored underwear. But that's much too hairy a topic for this blog today, which is all about peace and serenity. Mainly because I'm too full to move.

Thanksgiving in photographs.

For Thanksgiving on this dreary year, I thought it would be fun to look at the holiday with images of past years. Thanksgiving may not be grand for us in 2020, but better times will come. 

Courtesy of the Amazing Actors of Old Hollywood community, allow me to share some Thanksgiving publicity photos of great movie stars back when movies were fun, not wanton obscenity and hectoring minefields of political correctness. 

Felix the Cat shows how it's done. Not sure about the
guy in the Felix suit, but then, the original Mickey at Disneyland
was terrifying. 

Marilyn Monroe goes after wild game.

Looking delicious, Rita Hayworth -- and 
so does the turkey!

Adelle August had a short movie career but
plenty long legs. Probably not the 
first turkey she got to do her bidding.

Debbie Reynolds lands on Plymouth Rock.

That moment Doris Day became an animal
rights activist.

Durante compares schnozzolas.

I dream of Pilgrims. Seems to be a holiday mashup
for Barbara Eden.

I think we all know who killed this turkey.

Just slipping in a little cannibal from the neighborhood!

Harold Lloyd either doing his shopping for Thanksgiving dinner
or just back from Black Friday doorbusters.

And finally, another great movie star, the Tin Man,
wombles down the avenue.

Happy Thanksgiving, all! Feast and be grateful -- if you're reading this, you have survived 100% of everything life has been able to throw at you so far. God bless! 

Fred's Book Club: Black Friday Blues.

Greetings, book lovers, and welcome to another edition of the Humpback Writers. What dumb name is that, you ask? Why, it's a dumb name that reflects the fact that it is posted on Wednesdays, or Hump Day. Which, on Thanksgiving week, is more like Friday for most of us, but never mind. It's still dumb.

But speaking of work, today's book is all about retail, reflecting the Thanksgiving tradition of going to the mall and knocking people over for Black Friday sales. Of course everything is different this year, what with Chinese Death Virus preventing the usual doorbusters, thanks to government diktats and retailer fears of causing so-called super-spreader events. Also, with the blessings of our city leaders, the summer had plenty of doorbusters of another kind, wherein people would literally bust down doors and help themselves to 100% discounts. But that's another story. 

Our focus today is on the plight of the retail worker, and there's no better source than Norm Feuti, writer and illustrator of the comic strip Retail from 2006 to this past February. Feuti published a book on the subject in 2007, featuring a bunch of the strips from the series, called Pretending You Care: The Retail Employee Handbook.  

"I am of the opinion that everyone should hold a retail job at least once in their life," writes Feuti in the introduction, "not because I think it's an enjoyable experience, but because I think it builds empathy for the human condition. I believe that working in retail for more than fifteen years has taught me a lot about people and the world we live in. The things I've learned are not always pretty, but they are valuable and true nonetheless." 

For example, one of the things he stresses is that you have to pay your dues. Under the heading "Being the Newbie," he writes, "The transition from newbie to trusted colleague is a slow process, so you should count on being handed the crappiest jobs the store has to offer for at least the first month. Everyone has to go through an initiation period, so when they tell you to clean the toilets or climb into the cardboard compactor when it gets jammed, just suck it up. You can't be accepted into the flock until you've felt their pain." This is indeed good life advice; it teaches humility, but conversely, when you've survived the crap jobs, you learn some self-respect for being able to handle adversity. 

Another important lesson is etiquette, or "How Not to Be the One Everybody Hates," and Feuti devotes an entire chapter to the subject. "Certain actions and behaviors will be considered unacceptable by your coworkers, and if you break these taboos too frequently you'll soon find yourself the object of everyone's scorn. If you walk into the break room and everyone suddenly stops talking, it's a good bet that you're doing something the rest of the staff considers 'not cool.'" He goes on to detail a number of ways you can screw up and infuriate your coworkers through poor etiquette in the retail setting, something that should be required reading for everyone in the business.

Throughout the book are scattered cartoons from the Retail strip, which was very funny, even to those of us who mostly experience retail from the other side of the register. Here is a sample page:

And here's a page particularly appropriate to Black Friday:

On the topic of the products sold by the store, the author makes an interesting distinction in a chapter called, logically, "Products" -- "all retailers tend to think of their merchandise in the same way. Whether they're selling jeans, computers, or Rubik's Cubes, retailers all see their individual wares as generic 'products' that affect the bottom line in either a positive or negative way." So the things that the front-line workers deal with are only 1s and 0s to the home office, tabulated to generate the bottom line of profit or loss. Which explains why the buyer can be very frustrated to find something he wanted is no longer available; that particular product (bit of data) wasn't generating enough money (bit of data desired). 

And yes, Feuti deals with one of the most irritating experiences in retail -- the sudden offer to enroll in a credit card program that offers a whatever discount or something, even if you are only spending five bucks. It's irritating on both sides of the counter, but the guys in the home office hundreds of miles away aren't bothered in the least.

One more section I wanted to mention, though, that's applicable to any workplace is what Feuti calls the Archetypes -- twelve basic types that employees run into. For example, the Animosity Generator is rude, inept, lazy, unhelpful, and gives everyone and the store a bad name. The Slacker is a master of goofing off. The Whiner complains about everything, but everyone else's suffering is invisible to him. The Transient (retail's most populous Archetype) is only hanging in there until something better comes along. And so on. 

It's a fun book and would make a fine present for the retail Lifer (another Archetype) on your list. Feuti's cartoon work is bright and clever; he's busy these days doing another strip called Gil and books for children, and good for him. He won't have to return to the cash register any time soon. 

As for me, I never worked in a retail store (they wouldn't hire me), but I was a teller for a year. So I met all the cranky customers in front of the desk and the same Archetypes behind the desk, thus I still clicked with the book. Pretending You Care is a book for anyone who's ever had a job, especially one that deals with the public. Scary things, publics.

Gratitude garland.

I've kvetched in the past that Thanksgiving, for a very important American holiday, has little in terms of decoration. This year I've seen some lawn inflatables around, generally the classic turkey in a pilgrim hat type of thing, but I've seen far more houses where people have already put up all the Christmas stuff -- inflatable Santa, garland, candy canes, wreaths, twinkle lights, floodlights, the works. 

We had some nice days last weekend, the kind that might encourage people to get the outside decked so as not to have to do it in the freezing rain, but when people have done that in the past, they usually leave the lights off until Thanksgiving or so. Not now. I think it's all part of the Let's Shove 2020 Out the Door as Fast as Possible movement that I noted in September. 

Sadly, I no longer think that getting to 2021 will help. I think there will be more lockdowns, more panic, more nanny state, more spying on your neighbors, more useless regulations, and now with the full force of the federal government and its Silicon Valley enablers involved.  

Regardless, we soldier on, knowing that we all have things for which to be grateful, individually and as a nation. And I was pleased as punch to drive by this house:

The owners have lit up the joint with orange lights, but with the accompanying wreath and garland they look more Thanksgivingy than Halloweeny. And indeed, the pumpkin decoration in front of the staircase says "Happy Thanksgiving." That's what I'm talking about! As I've said before, the problem with decorating for Thanksgiving is that the predominant color of the day is brown (a serious hue), but here is a family that did it up right. 

We need more Thanksgiving decoration, which will help us celebrate the holiday properly rather than steamroll over it on the way to Walmart for Christmas shopping. I suppose it might make us a target for the Small Thanksgiving Police, but that's a chance we'll have to take.

As for me, I've got a little sign on the door and some patriotic motifs, because that was all I could think to do. I hope to do better next year, and I hope I and all of you will have more for which to have gratitude next year too.

Teeny tiny toys?

We all want to be more charitable at Christmastime, don't we? (Just say yes and nod for now.) And Toys for Tots is without question one of America's favorite charities. Who doesn't want to give a child in need some Christmas cheer? This year you can donate a toy more easily than ever, by selecting what you would like to give and paying for it on the charity's site. No need to break quarantine! 

Or maybe you can donate even more easily... by eating chips! 

When you purchase specially marked packages of Frito-Lay snacks, you give a gift to Toys for Tots! "Give a Gift with Every Bag" it says. Which makes it sound like 1 bag = 1 toy for the cause, at least to me.

Only on the back of the bag in fine print does one discover that a purchase of a specially marked bag results in a 2.5-cent donation to Toys for Tots, capped at $500,000. My math isn't great, but I think that means they have to sell 200 million bags of chips to hit the $500,000 cap. Now, this is not as impossible as it sounds, since according to Food Insider the company (a division of Pepsi) makes 16 billion bags of snacks per year. Still, Toys for Tots doesn't even list Pepsi or Frito Lay on its Corporate Sponsors page, and no mention of this fund-raiser is found in the Frito Lay site's newsroom section. 

I'm in favor of corporate giving, but making people feel like they're really participating when they're only giving the equivalent of 2.5 cents is just stupid. They'd have to be pretty tiny toys to buy them for 2.5 cents. 

This is like my exposé of the Box Tops for Education program in 2017, when I realized that if everyone in town contributed the maximum allowed box tops (each worth a dime) to our local school system (capped at 200,000 box tops), it would fund the education of ONE STUDENT. Actually, not even one student; about 88% of one student. But I dutifully clipped the box tops for donations to our parish school, and guess what? The archdiocese closed it anyway.

The late Don Imus used to grouse that companies that wanted to make a donation should just make the damn donation, not tie it to consumer purchases or other incentives. I think he was probably right. 

I'm just tired of everything not being what it is supposed to be. Charity programs that don't help, voting machines that don't tabulate votes, reality shows that are fake, entertainment that isn't any fun, lockdowns that don't stop the spread of disease, governors who don't govern, district attorneys who turn criminals loose, churches that don't teach faith in God, an ACLU that doesn't support free speech anymore, sports leagues that produce crap sports, news media that don't report news. It's all image, no substance, or worse, substance contrary to the image. 

I'll send Toys for Tots a buck and forgo the 40 bags of snacks I would have to buy to make the same donation. Frito Lay will have to muddle through.

A fistful of ice cream.

I know I am late to the game on this, but I finally tried a treat that the rest of the world has tried -- mochi ice cream. I'd heard it referenced in everything from books to video games, but never wanted to invest in a boxful of the stuff. Well, My/Mo has made it possible by sheer genius for everyone to have a taste, one frozen dollop at a time. 

"Chew Your Ice Cream Because, Whatever" is one of their slogans. and it seems to sum it up. I was hunting for pearl onions in a strange town halfway up the county when I saw a freezer full of these li'l cuties near the registers. For $1.50 I had to sample the mochi mojo.

For those as ignorant as I was, mochi ice cream is a dollop of ice cream within a sticky rice cake, invented in Japan. This gives it the chewiness mentioned above, but also the ability to be handheld, at least long enough to eat it, without significant melting. Genius!

As for the taste, the dollop shown above was as advertised, vanilla ice cream with a touch of blueberry in the middle, the perfect ice cream serving to ease a craving. 

Hurray for thinking of such a clever idea. Portable ice cream has been a dream from the beginning, when the ice cream cone was invented more than 120 years ago. Eskimo Pies (or whatever they are called now), ice cream sandwiches, Klondike bars, ice cream bars on sticks, all sorts of clever ideas have been tried to give us ice cream on the go. I can't say mochi is the best from my small sample, as the rice cake is kind of flavorless, but it achieves a kind of perfection -- one little ball of goodness that doesn't melt as you eat it. It's like the M&M of ice cream.

One of the curious things about this invention is that, while everyone loves ice cream, people of Asian heritage are among the most lactose intolerant in the world. Europeans and their descendants tend be 18% to 26% lactose intolerant, but Asian ethnicities run 75% to 95%, and some figures for Japanese run all the way up to about 100%. Now, not everyone suffers severely from the condition, and the mochi is so cute and small that it might bother only those who really get the heebie jeebies from milk the worst. I'm just impressed that a people who are that intolerant to lactose devoted the will to make this great ice cream treat. All the same, My/Mo is wise to make some vegan and nondairy flavors. 

So will mochi replace our scooped ice cream as the traditional Key family Thanksgiving dessert (for the last two years, by popular demand)? Nah. A big bowl of vanilla with cranberry sauce and whipped cream is what I want. But I still give a big hand to a little treat that represents another way to enjoy the world's greatest confection. 

La forza del destino.

It's a little-known fact that Hannibal, crossing the Alps to invade Rome in 218 BC, suffered a loss from a nine-elephant pileup that reduced his elephant capacity by almost 25 percent. Who knows how history might have been different.
 

All alone, dressed like a lunatic.

And MERRRRY CHRISTMAS! 

With the return of the Chinese Death Virus restrictions, we can bet that Halloween and Thanksgiving won't be the only holidays ruined by the local authorities. Already the commercials with happy people enjoying Thanksgiving connected only by iPad are flooding the TV, and if they're so happy in TV land, I'm sure everyone will be thrilled to give up Christmas with their loved ones as well. 

But don't worry about going crazy from cabin fever as winter approaches! Target, ever the thoughtful retailer, is making sure that everyone can look like a lunatic as well as feel like one. Here's some samples I photographed in the men's department the other day -- and you can bet the women's and children's departments are at least as scary.   

Target's going all-in on the movie Elf this year. There are bedsheets and yard decorations and DVDs and all manner of T-shirts, and I think I saw a board game. There is also this ugly sweater, and if you want to see the whole thing (including the even worse back of it), I direct you to the site. I found the 2003 film to be one of more more endurable Will Ferrell excursions, although I think they portrayed the North Pole more accurately than they did the publishing business. Written by a cotton-headed ninny muggins.

The thing that bothers me most about this shirt is not the cats, not the fact that it has a sound chip of the cats singing, not the lousy pun, but the fact that it's a men's shirt. This is for crazy cat ladies only, in my opinion. Don't fall for this, men! I don't care how many cats you have or how much you love them, this is not for you!

Now, this nifty suit, from the David S. Pumpkins school of classiness, is just awesome...ly bad. Bright green with cartoon Santa heads, it just yowls CHRISTMAS. The cheap material is about as cheesy as you might expect. And these things never come in a good size for me!

To be fair to Target, and men who might want this stuff, they and the things like them are supposed to be ugly. The Ugly Sweater fad has moved on to shirts and sweatshirts and suits now, and God knows if it will ever end. 

But maybe this Christmas will kill it. As I noted in the header, we'll probably be told by our betters to shelter in place for Christmas, and the only thing sillier than a grown man dressing like this will be him doing it by himself alone at home. 

I say, if you got it, flaunt it -- if you must buy something like this, get a matching face mask and do the town. Go caroling! Go wassailing -- whatever that is. And if your governor objects, throw a snowball at his window, tell him Merry Christmas, and then tell him to go kiss a reindeer butt. Ho ho ho.

These little pearls.

So the hunt resumes on Friday. Having procured a turkey -- small, but large enough to attract the attention of Sonny "I Deserve a to Be the Nation's Highest Paid Governor" Corleone's social distancing police -- and most of the sides last week, there remains but two things to get from the produce department. Those are fresh green beans, and these little gems, which were missing last week.

In some homes it's the candied yams, in others it's the green bean casserole (bleah), but in ours it's my wife's recipe for creamed pearl onions that are the star of the sideshow. 

Longtime readers (who are above average in every way) may recall that I've had problems fighting off celery-hoarding pigs and locating turkey roasting bags as the holiday approaches, but those are purchased and socked away. 

But the pearl onions! I searched and searched in two supermarkets last week, but all I could find were these tiny little onions, shown here on a bed of shallots and ginger:

I've gotten these dime-size ones in the past, also when I couldn't find the larger ones, and while they are quite good they are also a misery to peel for my wife, whose big cooking day of the year is Thanksgiving. So no.

While I was searching, a lady in the produce department asked me if I needed help, and I explained my quest. She sent me on a side quest -- no, actually, she said they would be in next week. Anyone know why this might be? Do pearl onions go off fast when released from their secret holding pen? 

Technically we could use frozen pearl onions, but that would be wrong. Freezing breaks the cells of the onion, leaving them limp and with a great loss of flavor. No guy wants limp onions. If it turned out there was a Chinese Death Virus-related shortage of pearl onions and only frozen ones were available, I think my wife would say, no, I'll just make more green beans.

Speaking of which, I mentioned that I also need to buy fresh green beans. That's because when I was at two supermarkets last week, I, uh, forgot to buy them. 

Wish me luck. And best to you, o hunter-gatherers. Just remember to be careful about your guests if you're in New York. 

Fred's Book Club: Does Anybody Know What Time It Is?

Greetings, book fans! Welcome again to our Wednesday book feature, the Humpback Writers, called so because of the day of the week on which it falls (Hump Day), not because of any actual hunchbacks. We might have called it the Full of Woe Writers, but knowing writers as I do, I think that might have been a little too on the nose. Alas!  

Today's author should not be full of woe anyway. Dava Sobel accomplished a number of things with this book, giving us a brief and riveting history and becoming a best-seller that has remained in print since first publication in 1995. I refer to Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. 

This is the tale of John Harrison, a clockmaker in the 18th century who invented the first accurate chronometer that could be used at sea. This was a huge deal -- while latitude could be calculated from the sun at noon, longitude could only be calculated if one knew the time at a fixed point (like the ship's point of origin) at a known time aboard (such as noon). As Sobel writes, "Since the Earth takes twenty-four hours to complete one full revolution of three hundred sixty degrees, one hour marks one twenty-fourth of a spin, or fifteen degrees. And so each hour's time difference between the ship and the starting point marks a progress of fifteen degrees of longitude east or west."  

And therein lay the problem: "Precise knowledge of the hour in two different places at once -- a longitude prerequisite so easily accessible today from any pair of cheap wristwatches -- was utterly unattainable up to and including the era of pendulum clocks." A pendulum is more useless on a rolling ship than I am. So Parliament offered a prize of up to £20,000 to the inventor who could solve this vexing problem. Harrison not only solved it -- he solved it five times, each of his chronometers getting better and smaller as he progressed.

Fascinating, especially since he came out of nowhere: "Harrison started out as a carpenter, spending the first thirty years of his life in virtual anonymity before his ideas began to attract the world's attention." Not unlike Jesus in that regard. As a youth hungry for knowledge, Harrison borrowed a textbook on natural philosophy and made his own copy of it by hand. And clocks seemed to compel him early on:

Harrison completed his first pendulum clock in 1713, before he was twenty years old. Why he chose to take on this project and how he excelled at it with no experience as a watchmaker's apprentice, remain mysteries. Yet the clock itself remains. Its movement and dial -- signed, dated fossils from that formative period -- now occupy an exhibit case at The Worshipful Company of Clockmakers' one-room museum at Guildhall in London.

      Aside from the fact that the great John Harrison built it, the clock claims uniqueness for another singular feature: It is constructed almost entirely of wood. This is a carpenter's clock, with oak wheels and boxwood axles connected and impelled by small amounts of brass and steel. Harrison, ever practical and resourceful, took what materials came to hand, and handled them well. The wooden teeth of the wheels never snapped off with wear but defied destruction by their design, which let them draw strength from the grain pattern of the mighty oak. 

It's hard to escape the idea that Harrison became obsessed with the longitude project. It took him five years to build his first sea chronometer, H-1, and three years for the second, H-2. When he set forth to build the third sea chronometer, H-3, it took him nineteen years. Sobel points out in the text that this was five more years than the Statue of Liberty from conception to building, five more years than the carving of Mount Rushmore. But hey -- those great monuments didn't require things like an innovative friction-free design! 

Sobel's book is not long, and every page is fascinating. She goes through the history of time measurement and sea exploration in short order to bring us to the problem of longitude, and studies how the single-minded Harrison attacked the problem with a perfectionism that seemed to admit no end to the amount of time available. Every page of the book has some beguiling detail on the man, the mechanisms, and the history. And later editions, like the 2005 one above, also include a foreword by Neil Armstrong, worth reading on its own.

Harrison did eventually get some money out of Parliament, but the whole prize was never awarded to him or anyone. Maybe it would have been if Harrison had been a big name like Astronomer Royal Edmond Halley, but Harrison was little more than the autodidact whose genius was matched by his persistence. We've seen that sort of expectation again. It was, after all, Professor Samuel Langley of the Smithsonian who was supposed to solve the problem of powered flight, not a couple of young bicycle mechanics from Ohio. 

If you heard of John Harrison and his clocks after the year 1995, it's probably because of this book. In addition to the number of prizes it won, and a large illustrated version that followed, a dramatic television series with Michael Gambon and Jeremy Irons aired in 2000. 

Harrison would have been surprised but probably pleased by this belated popularity. Sobel writes, "When John Harrison died, on March 24, 1776, exactly eighty-three years to the day from his birth in 1693, he held martyr status among clockmakers." She notes that by 1860, when the Royal Navy had fewer than 200 ships, it owned almost 800 sea clocks. Harrison's idea of using clocks for longitude at sea had taken over so thoroughly that the man himself had returned to obscurity -- until Sobel's book made him famous.

I can't recommend the book enough to people who like a good popular history book. There is a reason this one has been so popular in the last quarter century -- it's a terrific science history and a ripping good yarn. 

Everyone says they're so pretty!

 

Huppeldepup.

A fellow editor passed this along to me: 

I want to thank Adam Sharp for arranging these foreign words for whatchamacallit. I'm not quite sure it's accurate, though. I put huppeldepup in Google Translate and got hopping pup. Of course, the Dutch may have thought that a crazy puppy was a good visual representation of a weird object for which you have no name, something that gets lost when you need it. Or the whole thing could be nonsense. I put thingamajig in the translator and got dinges, which (when reversed) came out in English as thingy. Also, zamazingo I found nowhere in Turkish, but is a Xhosa word meaning round. 

I don't care; I love huppeldepup and I'm adding it to my personal list.

We already have a lot of terms for these unknown thingies in English. Thesaurus.com gives me these words for whatchamacallit:

• doodad
• doohickey
• gizmo
• thingamabob
• widget

Under other terms I also found:

• gimcrack
• contraption
• dojigger
• jigger
• thingummy
• whatsis
• whatsit
• whosit
• whosis

And related:

• knickknack
• bric-a-brac
• flummery

We have a lot of words for nouns we don't remember in English. Not surprising, in one way; it's often considered the language with the most words, so there's that many more to forget. 

In my family, whatchamacallit was my mom's favorite, but my dad preferred the simplicity of thing. As in, "Go to the bench and get me... one of those things -- you know, that thing." (No, we're not related to the Bidens.) He might add, "Aaah, what's it called." And 90% chance I would return with the wrong thing. I'd bring an airplane (Phillips) screwdriver when he wanted a 1/4-inch socket. 

So I will try to remember huppeldepup and use it the next time I forget the noun for the object I actually need. The problem is, now I have to remember huppeldepup, when I ought to just remember what I'm looking for. Well, 90% I'll say naninani and not even know what I'm saying. And two more words will enter the English language.

Just a-walkin' the dog.

Everyone who walks his or her dog has favorite routes. In countries it might be a good country road; in cities maybe you look to avoid nasty blocks or veer toward the coffee place with window service. Here in suburbia, and in my general state of fitness, we have but two small preferences: 

1) Sidewalks if possible;

2) Ability to return home alive. 

With the dog park closed -- well, we think it is, because the main park is closed, although the dog park looks open, but anyway is probably full of Chinese Death Virus Zombies, or so my wife thinks -- I'm walking the dogs more that I had been a year ago.  Here are my well-drawn maps of our favorite paths around the neighborhood:

Rand McNally wishes they had a cartographer with my mad skillz, don't you think?

That last big triangle, as I've noted, was one I haven't done with either of the dogs since my back went bust last February. The hypotenuse (c) is a very steep climb; the (a) side is a sidewalk-free road with blind curves and not one I like to walk with a large dog except when very few people are driving around. Large dog Tralfaz and I used to walk it every Sunday morning when the weather was cool. Maybe we can try it again before it gets snowy.

I have a friend who lives on a cul-de-sac that is the end of a long road. Every morning walk with her dog has to at least begin with the same ol' sidewalk, and the dog is bored with it. It's not like she has time to drive the pup somewhere else and walk around before work; she's doing the best she can. Her only other choice would be to go running through her neighbors' backyards into the wooded areas, and she's a nice person and probably wouldn't do that. Or perhaps she just would hate to have her reputation ruined among her neighbors. 

Anyway, if we ever move, I hope it will be to a place where there are multiple trails outside the door for dog walking. Bored dogs without enough exercise can be real trouble while you're trying to work, even if you work from home as I do. Remind me to tell you about the dinette floor sometime. 

Making a sausage of Thanksgiving.

Or in other words, making it the wurst.

If you thought that the CDC's recommendations for Halloween would make it the worst Halloween ever, as I did, then you'll be certain that the CDC's recommendations about Thanksgiving vis-à-vis the Chinese Death Virus will make it just terrible.

Here's how you're supposed to celebrate your all-American freedom and the blessings of Almighty God: 

Attending a Gathering

Make your celebration safer. In addition to following the steps that everyone can take to make Thanksgiving safer, take these additional steps while attending a Thanksgiving gathering.

• Bring your own food, drinks, plates, cups, and utensils.
• Wear a mask, and safely store your mask while eating and drinking.
• Avoid going in and out of the areas where food is being prepared or handled, such as in the kitchen.
• Use single-use options, like salad dressing and condiment packets, and disposable items like food containers, plates, and utensils.

Hosting a Thanksgiving Gathering

If having guests to your home, be sure that people follow the steps that everyone can take to make Thanksgiving safer. Other steps you can take include:

• Have a small outdoor meal with family and friends who live in your community.
• Limit the number of guests.
• Have conversations with guests ahead of time to set expectations for celebrating together.
• Clean and disinfect frequently touched surfaces and items between use.
• If celebrating indoors, make sure to open windows.
• Limit the number of people in food preparation areas.
• Have guests bring their own food and drink.
• If sharing food, have one person serve food and use single-use options, like plastic utensils.

There are more, lots more. My favorite is to have everyone bring his own food, utensils, plates, and cups. Our public health scolds love to remind us that the important thing is that we are together, despite the restrictions. They'd say the same thing if we were required to sit around in asbestos-removal suits and stay in different rooms and scream to each other. These were the same people, I remind you, who made us stay away from dying family and not even attend the funeral, but thought it was fine for thousands to pour into the streets to protest the killing of career criminals, or to loot, or to honor the dead as long as it wasn't some peasant like us.  

I got my turkey at the store yesterday and I have never seen so many frozen birds under 13 pounds. The Butterball case was at least half full of "Li'l Butterballs," birds that weigh as little as six and no more than 11 pounds. Butterball and the supermarkets are assuming that the public will be eating alone. 

We have plenty of native New York turkeys,
but most of them are in Congress.

And if you think that the actual governmental restrictions in place in your state are not too restrictive yet, then A) You don't live in the Kingdom of Newsom and B) You haven't seen this (from November 11): 

                        COVID-19 Surges Threaten to Overwhelm Hospital Staff

As the United States continues to set records for coronavirus cases, the inevitable has been the result: Hospitalizations, too, are hitting higher levels than at any other time in the pandemic.

Nearly 62,000 people were hospitalized with COVID-19 in the U.S. on Tuesday, more than ever before, according to the COVID Tracking Project. 

Beds filled as new COVID-19 cases rose 20% across the United States last week. The number of hospitalized COVID patients shot up 14% November 5, straining hospital resources and overworked staff.

Across the country, states have been slammed hard with new COVID cases, overwhelming local hospitals. In the Texas city of El Paso, officials are setting up an alternate care facility to help relieve medical centers.

The Northeast appears next, with surges in new COVID-19 cases in all six New England states, according to The Boston Globe....

Seems like spring is in the air again, isn't it? Spring 2020, that is. 

I heard some dumbbell on the radio claiming that here in New York, Gov. Sonny Corleone will be reluctant to shut down everything again because it might make him look bad after touting his wonderful job at handling the crisis in his new book about leadership. If by leadership he means wreck the economy, waste precious medical resources, blame others, and "decrease the surplus population" a la Scrooge, you bet. If leadership = dumb bastard, he's a freaking Napoleon. Besides, Cuomo is looking to sail off back to Washington with the Biden administration, so he could not care less. He'll probably see to it that we get the full lockdown business sometime in the next two weeks, is my guess. 

As I noted last Tuesday, COVID fatigue is a real thing and is taking a terrible toll on Americans, maybe worse than the disease itself. If people get too crazy to give a good goddamn about getting sick anymore, then we will really see the feathers fly. 

Fred gets results!

You may remember last year when I went bonkers over a minor thing that was none of my business. All right, that doesn't narrow it down very much. What I was mad about was the cheapassery involved with a house that was being flipped. The flippers took out a glorious old light fixture, one that showed off a gorgeous vertical window, and replaced it with a cheapjack kitchen table fixture. 

Time marched on, and no one bought the house. Then one day in the spring I noticed that the cheapass fixture had been replaced by a more expensive one, although one still too dull and small for the showplace window. 

Couldn't really get a nice shot, but this one is triangular with an unusual fiery bulb. Okay, well, better anyhow. Not so cheap. 

A couple of months later the For Sale sign was gone and lots of activity was seen on the grounds. 

In the end, the new owners put in this: 

Well, all right! It's a big eyecatcher, which is just what the space needs. It is the first thing one notices about the house from the street and it deserves something special. 

I still think it's not long enough. The space is narrow and high, and would be better served by something similar, like maybe:

But hey, I don't have to live with it. I'm glad they've improved what the flipper put in. 

Now, I hope they don't suffer for all the cheap structural "improvements" made to the house as well. 

Of course, I'm still not happy. The new owners are building some sort of arbor at the front of the main door that looks terrible. Why, if I weren't an uninterested party with no stake in the outcome, I'd have words with them. But as it is, I will just continue silently judging, like everybody else.

Sad mayoral history.

I thought the graphic below from National Review was very interesting, especially to those who keep wondering why their cities suck so hard. The point is not that Republicans do such an awesome job, but that one-party systems have no incentive to provide any service. 

You will notice that the last row is an important addition from yours truly. Fixed it for ya, NR! 

For those who would like more information about the administrations of Bradley Stokes and Dave the Orangutan, I refer you to the following texts: 

Detective Comics 179 (January 1952): 

(NB: I know Bruce Wayne is "Mayor of Gotham City" in this issue, but it's just a stunt by Stokes where prominent citizens get to be Mayor for a Week when he goes on vacation -- Bruce didn't have the time or authority to do much. Clever fund-raising gimmick, Stokes.)

2000 AD 366-443 (1984-1985): 

(NB: Dave would die tragically as part of an insurance fraud murder, but he is still remembered as one of the most popular mayors Mega-City One ever had.)

Fred's Book Club: Look Before...

Good day, persons of book interests, and welcome to the latest edition of the Humpback Writers, the book feature that falls on Hump Day, but as far as we know has no actual hunchbacks among the writers. I keep asking but they refuse to acknowledge one way or another. Of course many of the writers are no longer alive to return my calls, but today's writer, England's own Jonathan Stroud, is alive and kicking. And leaping.

Stroud is best known, and justifiably so, for two of the great fantasy series of the modern day, the  Bartimaeus books and the Lockwood & Co. books. The Bartimaeus books are set in an alternate world where magic works because of the use of the capture of extra-dimensional demons, such as the snarky narrator, Bartimaeus; Lockwood & Co. stars a company of ghost-hunters in a London where dangerous hauntings have suddenly erupted. Both series are full of humor and suspense and genuine frights. They are targeted to young adult readers (that is, teens), as is today's one-off title, but I'd recommend them to any adult as well. 

The Leap is a different sort of fantasy novel. It takes place in current times, but tells a much more personal tale. At the story's beginning, a boy named Max has drowned in a mill pond. Max's best friend, Charlotte (called Charlie), almost died trying to save him. During the event she saw strange and horrible things -- and no one believes her. And it's not surprising that they don't:

And then I noticed other things moving in the water; pale thin women with long hair streaming like river moss, who wrapped their arms around him as he spun in the waters of the mill pool. 

I swam toward them, and they turned, and Max's face was white and his eyes were open, but I knew he couldn't see me anymore. He smiled and the women smiled with him, and they could see me all right -- they were looking at me with eyes as green as buried pebbles.

Charlie's single mom and her older brother are terribly concerned about her, of course, even though she stops trying to tell the truth and goes along with the usual psychologists and grief counselors. She is sure that something strange has happened to Max, but can't understand what. Then she starts to have exceptionally vivid dreams, beginning with coming out of the water and finding something shocking:

I bent down to the nearest print. It was crisscrossed with lines and had an oval imprint in the heel. Crouching there, I bit my lip until it bled; Max's Nike trainers had that pattern in the sole. Before I straightened, a vague dread made me scan the sand for a few yards on either side of Max's trail, but there was no sign that anyone else accompanied him.   

Where is Max going? Why is Charlie having this dream? 

Night after night, Charlie follows the trail, hoping to catch up to Max. Then one day she wakes up and finds that the cuts she sustained in the dream are on her body, and thus somehow her dreams are real. Which means Max must be alive somewhere.

Her actions in the waking world become increasingly distressing to her little family, who find her doing things like searching around Max's house, upsetting his mother and father. The crisis and the suspense build through the book. Something very strange is going on, and Charlie is determined to find out what -- but the farther she travels, the more it looks like her own life is in jeopardy.

It's a moody story, so well and richly written that it's hard to believe it's just over 230 large-print pages. Stroud is simply an excellent wordsmith with an imagination to match. 

If you like fantasy novels but are not convinced that The Leap is your cup of tea, do try one of his other books. I have not yet read them all but I've enjoyed all that I have. 

House arrest.

An elderly friend of mine is going absolutely out of his mind. 

He has a wife with an advanced autoimmune disease, and she has begged him through this Chinese Death Virus crisis not to leave the house. 

They're getting the groceries and prescriptions delivered. A guy leaves them on the porch and they hustle them in like smugglers. 

That's all they see. Friends, family have to stay away. No nurses, no barbers, no trips to the doctor. She's deathly afraid, and so neither of them has gone farther than that porch since March.

And my friend is going batty. 

Our medical boffins at the CDC are aware of this situation. They know that people are missing necessary medical exams and procedures because of their fear of the Chinese COVID. On October 20, the agency reported, "Overall, an estimated 299,028 excess deaths occurred from late January through October 3, 2020, with 198,081 (66%) excess deaths attributed to COVID-19. The largest percentage increases were seen among adults aged 25–44 years and among Hispanic or Latino persons." 

So at that time 198,081 deaths were attributed to COVID-19, leaving 100,947 others that would not have statistically been expected to die but did. To what do they attribute these other deaths, a group larger than the population of Bend, Oregon, all by itself?

The study spends a lot more time breaking the data down by race (God, I am sick of race) and poverty and whatnot than giving us any conclusions, but they sort of blame "disruptions to health care," of which there were certainly plenty. The word "fear" doesn't appear in the study, but it should, as in "People who need health care to stay alive were paralyzed by FEAR by the endless media drumbeat and the horrible overestimates of deaths expected from this plague of indistinct origin, so they didn't go for help when they needed it and died." 

I certainly doubt that a statistically large segment of these excess deaths were caused by people driving like idiots because the traffic was so light last April. I know we've all been flying by the seat of our pants through this thing, CDC, but you have not covered yourselves in glory, though you act as if you have.

If my elderly friend and his wife or both die in that house of any cause other than the Wuhan Flu this winter, I'm blaming you, CDC.

One last note: I heard that His Fraudulency, the presumptive president-elect, was thinking of getting our governor, Sonny Corleone Cuomo, to be his Secretary of State. Well, that's nice. We'd be glad to be rid of him. And he'd fit right in. Cuomo already bent over for the Chinese at least once this year, trying to call the Chinese Death Virus the "European Virus," so he'll fit right in with the Biden administration's prostration toward the new Evil Empire. The only people Cuomo can be tough with are grandmas in nursing homes, to whom he sent infected people, like smallpox-coated blankets. 

Chaos, you say?

November 9 is, according to our friends at Time and Date, a holiday called Chaos Never Dies Day. "This made-up holiday encourages people to realize that chaos is part of life and that it will never die. So instead of getting hassled by it, just take a deep breath and let go of things that create chaos in your life on this day."

Well, I think we can all get behind that, especially at the moment. But it sounds like we should be more accepting of chaos today rather than try to let go of it. How can you let it go if it’s inevitable?

I tried to find the origin of this special day, but all I could find was this, from Holiday Insights: 

This day is well recognized on Internet calendar and Ecard sites. Online and offline, we found no documentation about the creation of this day. Most likely, the creator's life was so chaotic, that he failed to document it. We do suspect that this day was established shortly after the U.S. General Election, to remind us that chaos, in particular political chaos, never dies. It may abate for a short time, but rest assured, it will return!

All righty, then. 

The interesting thing is that it always falls on November 9. Shouldn't it just pop up on the calendar completely at random? We might celebrate it five times one year, none the next, and on two neighboring days the year after that. But that has the problem that, in order to celebrate it together, we would have to have someone announce when it has appeared, so that would indicate some kind of spontaneous order behind the holiday. 

Now we're getting into quantum stuff, and the hell with it. 

Maybe you, like my desk, attract chaos, and would like to celebrate it. How can you do that?

Holiday Insights suggests, "It's a day to recognize the chaos in your life. You can best celebrate this day, by recognizing that chaos never dies. Rather, its a way of life. You can partake in this special day, by putting just a little order back into your life. You can start, by picking one thing that is really disrupting your life, and change it...for the good."

It seems that putting something in order is the antithesis of the holiday. Time and Date has these ideas:

Take the day for yourself and do things that de-stress you. Pack your lunch and go for a picnic in the park with your loved ones. Watch a feel-good movie or read a book. Take a nap in the middle of the day and remember chaos never dies, so it can wait to hassle you for one more day.

I'm still not feeling the Chaos here. 

"You need to esk an exshpert, Schmart!"

The When Is Holiday page has a lot to say about chaos, but still no good ways to celebrate it. Like the others, they suggest using the day to enjoy order and taking some Me time. 

Personally, I think a better way is to run around naked from the waist down with turkey legs strapped to your head singing random notes from Swiss yodels while you challenge strangers to an upside-down skateboard race. But the police often frown on this kind of thing, spoilsports that they are. 

And as Holiday Insights also says, "It is pretty ironic that the colors red, white and blue stand for freedom until they are flashing behind you."

I can’t top that. Enjoy your chaos today.