Eat it.

Quite a few years ago my wife and I were honored to be invited to a colleague's wedding in Chinatown. We were very touched to be included, along with some other people I knew, and were looking forward to it. It was a beautiful ceremony, a gorgeous blend of Chinese tradition, Christian church, and no fewer than three outstanding dresses for the bride at different parts of the evening.

We were also promised an amazing feast of many courses. I was a little wary, knowing that this was not going to be the takeout that Americans normally think of as Chinese food. But we had recently started to frequent a wonderful Indian restaurant and were all in on that cuisine, so we figured this might be a similar situation.

As you might guess, it was not.

To my uncultured Ugly American palette, what we faced was just dish after dish of weird things from the sea, stuff you would throw back, stuff that might make you give up fishing forever if it landed in your net. Everything seemed runny, gummy, wobbly, gushy, weird. We and the other white folks at the table were fighting over the rice as the meal progressed. Also, we of some Irish extraction drank all the beer before the reception was half over. (Meanwhile, the groom, who did not like to drink, was borne by tradition to toast every table of the large extended family with Chivas Regal.)

I bring this up as an example of why I think it's perfectly natural to resist unfamiliar food, and the more unfamiliar the stronger the resistance. My wife has lately taken to watching the show Monsters Inside Me, and if you are trying to lose weight this new year, I advise putting it on during dinner. 

Monsters Inside Me details the real-life horrors of people who at some point contracted a terrifying disease, most often caused by parasites. Doctors are unhelpful, because early symptoms and signs are confused with more common complaints -- but eventually the effects turn hellacious, and usually life-threatening. If that's not enough, the show provides gruesome magnified animations of the "monsters" at play in the body, munching, bursting, oozing, and multiplying. My wife turned it on once and the narrator was saying something like "When the fungus finishes eating the natural bacteria on the eyeball, it can adapt to eat the tissue of the eye itself." I called out from the kitchen, "That is the most typical piece of dialogue you can imagine from the show." Every episode I've seen includes little talks from Dr. Daniel Riskin, explaining why these creatures are so deadly and how many people they kill. He's lots of fun at parties. 

No offense to our wedding hosts, and I can promise you no one got sick there, unless it was from too much Chivas Regal. The only reason I bring it up is that there are consequences to eating unknown foods in strange places, especially things that have not had the hell cooked out of them, and we seem to have a natural urge to avoid foreign things if we can. Evolutionary biologists might say it comes from millennia of watching Og or Thunk so hungry that him eat weird thing raw and then him turn green and devoured from inside out. Our natural reaction to new food, thus, ranges from caution to spurning to horror. 

Heck, what's more anodyne than American peanut butter to those without food allergies? And yet I'm told many people from foreign lands think it's weird and won't touch it. 

It's not a bad idea to be cautious when sojourning outside the country. As the CDC says, "International travelers can be at risk for a variety of infectious and non-infectious diseases. Travelers may acquire parasitic illnesses: through ingestion of contaminated food or water, by vector-borne transmission, or through person-to-person contact. Contaminated food and drink are common sources for the introduction of infection into the body." I think Monsters Inside Me has turned my wife off sushi permanently.

It's not bad enough that eating raw crabs or something can infect you with a parasite that will kill you. It's that the parasite may also make you want to kill yourself. You may have heard that the common cat-related Toxoplasma gondii parasite is linked with depression, but so too is Ascaris lumbricoides, which may be ingested if good hygiene is not observed.

Which got me to think of chef and author Anthony Bourdain, largely remembered for traveling around the world and eating weird foods on shows like No Reservations. Well, now I have reservations -- I wonder if his mental state had been wrecked by some ingested parasite. If the autopsy did not look for it, we'll never know; Bourdain was cremated. 

I'll add a note too to Andrew Zimmern, host of various Bizarre Foods shows: Bring a microscope with you when you dine out. Or Dr. Daniel Riskin.

He never said "tropical."

Remember: A resentment is an expectation that has been mugged.

Updates and downdates.

Today I have some brief updates to items we've posted on this blog. In a way it's that old standby of the newspaper columnist, the Brief Observations, but in another way, it's not -- it's partly a Return to the Well. But some things do need updates, especially when an apology is in order. Thus we start with:

1) Apology to Chinese hand sanitizer

Last month I trashed a bottle of hand sanitizer I bought at Target, the "Scentfull" Winter Wonderland stuff. I thought it smelled like "some cheap 70's cologne with Tabasco mixed in". Well, as time went on and I was obliged to use it to fend off Chinese Death Virus, I came to appreciate its balsam scent. It actually does smell like a pine tree -- an artificial version of a pine tree from some weird planet that's like Earth but not exactly the same, but a pine tree nonetheless. So I don't hate it anymore. Sorry, hand sanitizer from China. But I still hate the government under which you were made. Anyway, speaking of health:

2) FitBit

I'm having much better luck with the FitBit I got for Christmas, the one that gave me a nasty rash on my wrist. I tried it again when the rash cleared up, only I wore it a lot looser and switched arms at night for sleep monitoring. This way I didn't have plastic tight on my wrist all day long. So I have been rash-free for the last couple of weeks. At first the thrill of getting 10,000 steps a day was a good motivator to keep moving, but then it started to wane, and now the software itself doesn't make a big deal about 10K steps. Seriously, I was getting fireworks on the little screen and everything. Now I'm mainly wearing it as a watch and to find out how poorly I slept last night. Maybe it will help with fitness in the long run. Except for...

3) Pork rinds

My wife was a pork-rind fan in college, because smoking and drinking were not unhealthy enough on their own (just kidding, honey!) (not really!). But I had never tried them. I remembered they were supposedly a guilty pleasure of George H.W. Bush, but I knew little else. Well, the delightful Mrs. K got me to try them, and I thought they were great -- the consistency of shrimp chips with a great bacon flavor. Just what I needed -- to like another snack with 90 calories in a half-ounce serving, along with 2g saturated fat and 12% of my daily sodium. Why can't I ever get that excited about a vegetable? Especially since all this lard can lead to...

4) Back pain

Had a scare this week following something that happened last week. I was taking down some Christmas stuff (believe me, it's still not all put away) when I decided, as we manly men will, to reach over a wing back chair to get a stocking hung at the top of the window rather than pick my way around the chair to get it. At that moment I felt something pull in a muscle on my left side. More than a week later the Back Revenge set in (a.k.a. Pay BACK Time), and I woke up feeling like I'd been questioned by the Inquisition. Well, I didn't expect that! Fortunately it seems to be fading, but for a day there I thought I was going to have to crawl back to the hospital, after I finally finished paying that little vacation off. Of course, I might wind up there anyway for frostbite, because it is:

5) Freezing cold

Ten degrees and breezy this morning; with windchill, -7. As I write it is colder here than in Anchorage, Oslo, Moscow, Helsinki, or Reykjavik. Which means it is time to take out... the Porta-Igloo, the Huge Lands' End Coat That Walks Like a Man.

I've had this thing for at least eighteen years and it hardly shows any wear. Why? Because it's so warm and well-insulated that I only wear it maybe three or four days a year. Today is one of those days. When I would commute to the city it was a major help, but I was always nervous about wearing a light-colored coat on the subway. Still, it was a matter of survival. And it never got all messed up. I think people believed I was the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man and kept their distance. 

Off I go with the crazy dogs! Keep warm and Chinese-virus-free, my friends!

The meaning is clear.

PROFESSOR DECLARES SNOW "CLEAR"
Cites "Accuracy" and "Hegemony"

Duckfoot Ridge, CO (1/28/21) -- Dr. Edwina Raige, professor of Meteorological Phenomena and Related Grievances at Duckfoot Ridge College, has announced demands to the weather community, media, and public at large that snow no longer be referred to as "white," but rather "clear." 

"Any scientist knows that snowflakes are made of frozen water, and thus are not white, but clear," said the professor at a conference today. "Only anti-science idiots and people with a vested interest in White Supremacy call snow 'white.' Today I demand that all references to snow be changed to describe it as clear rather than white."

Dr. Raige provided reporters with a list of "stupid, prejudicial, anti-science, patriarchal, pro-White, anti-BIPOC examples of the idea of white snow in Western culture," with preferred, pro-human pro-science replacements, including:

Whiteout weather warnings

Clearout weather warnings

 Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white as snow

Mary had a small quadrupedal, ruminant mammal whose fleece was clear as snow 

Ivory Snow detergent

Elephant Bony Tissue Frozen Water detergent

"White Christmas"

"Clear Eurocentric Historically Problematical Annual Event"

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves  

Snow Clear and the Seven Persons of Small Stature 

"Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow" 

"4.572 Meters of Crystalline Clear Frozen Water"

"Removing the toxic whiteness from our idea of snow will remove toxic whiteness from a primary part of our vocabulary and thought," said Dr. Raige. "It not only is a blow for scientific accuracy, it is also a blow against the white cisgender supremacist hegemony." 

The Weather Channel was among the first to agree to use Dr. Raige's new formulation, citing "her impeccable credentials" and "her living in Colorado where they get a lot of the whi-- uh, cold stuff." MSNBC and CNN concurred. All three were then soundly thrashed on social media for assuming Dr. Raige's gender.

Fred's Book Club: Hopelessness and Survival.

It's Wednesday once again, which means Hump Day, which means it's time for the Humpback Writers, our stupidly named book feature that looks at books. We often like to look at the lesser known works of famous writers, or more obscure writers and books, but today we have an author and book that are quite famous, and for very good reason. We're featuring them today because January 27 is the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, as decreed by the United Nations. And the book is Man's Search for Meaning, by Holocaust survivor Viktor E. Frankl. 

When you're in the publishing business you read an awful lot of books and articles on how to have a good life, but this is the only one I know of that was written by a man who spent three years in Nazi concentration camps. You're supposed to go to a spa in India and talk to a guru and then climb a mountain and stuff, right? Nope. There's a reason why those kinds of quests go many places but never get anywhere.

Dr. Frankl was a brilliant young psychiatrist when the Nazis rounded him up. In a very short time he lost family, career, and all the work he had done on a massive philosophical and psychological thesis. As for his friends:

It was the first selection, the first verdict made on our existence or non-existence. For the great majority of our transport, about 90 per cent, it meant death. Their sentence was carried out within the next few hours. Those who were sent to the left were marched from the station straight to the crematorium. This building, I was told by someone who worked there, had the word "bath" written over its doors in several European languages. On entering, each prisoner was handed a piece of soap, and then----but mercifully I do not need to describe the events which followed. Many accounts have been written about this horror. 
     We who were saved, the minority of our transport, found out the truth in the evening. I inquired from prisoners who had been there for some time where my colleague and friend P--- had been sent.
     "Was he sent to the left side?" 
     "Yes," I replied.
     "Then you can see him there," I was told. 
     "Where?" A hand pointed to the chimney a few hundred yards off, which was sending a column of flame up into the grey sky of Poland. It dissolved into a sinister cloud of smoke.

Long before reading this book I'd read Leon Uris's Exodus, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, and other books about the Holocaust and brutal prison (and death camp) conditions. The thing that is so amazing about Frankl's book, that still intrigues me, is that he combines his horrifying personal story with clinical observation, all of which will go to the making of the book's conclusion about purpose and human life.

Seeing himself and others as subjects, he looks at the phases of psychological change in the camps. The first phase is shock, shock at the terrible thing that has happened, with thoughts of escape by any means, even suicide. Eventually would come the second phase:

Apathy, the main symptom of the second phase, was a necessary mechanism for self-defense. Reality dimmed, and all efforts and all emotions were centered on one task: preserving one's own life and that of the other fellow.... It can be readily understood that such a state of strain, coupled with the constant necessity of concentrating on the task of staying alive, forced the prisoner's inner life down to a primitive level. 

Frankl would find himself numb to the suffering of others, suffering that would have caused a horrified reaction at any other time in his life.

With the inescapable presence of suffering and death and injustice, Frankl got to see what kind of men survived and what kind did not. The ones who were smoking their meager cigarette ration instead of trading cigarettes for food or clothes were ones who had given up. The ones who believed they would be free by Christmas would lose hope and die when the day came and went. ("The death rate in the week between Christmas, 1944, and New Year's, 1945, increased in camp beyond all previous experience" -- an observation later echoed by Commander James Stockdale.) Ultimately the survivors were ones who had found meaning in their lives, something that made the unendurable endurable:

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how."

And how does a man find this meaning? That was the subject of the rest of the book, his other books, and his career.

All I can offer here is a brief overview of this book, which itself is not long -- my Washington Square Press paperback runs just 179 pages, not including the extensive bibliography. It is very readable, though in parts shocking even to those of us who have read other accounts of the Holocaust, and ultimately very sensible. 

Frankl, who died in 1997, hoped that his hard-won lessons might enlighten mankind to avoid anymore such genocides, and even prevent nuclear war. In that, he admitted he could be overoptimistic, but one can never say he and his work were without meaning. I recommend this book unconditionally to anyone.

Bad moments in consumer science.

July 1948: Field testing Mennen's new catnip-based
aftershave, Hepcat.

 

Cold places that don't exist.

It was mighty cold here by New York standards over the weekend, those standards being four degrees Fahrenheit with the windchill. That ought to be cold enough for anybody.

But no! 

While turning to ice outside with the dogs, Tralfaz and Nipper (a.k.a. Thing 1 and Thing 2), I got to thinking about cold places in fiction, or rather places that are very cold that don't really exist. This is hardly a comprehensive list -- in fact, if you can think of any others I'd appreciate your leaving a note in comments. Just a fun thing to think about while freezing to death waiting for the dogs to defile the lawn.  

Frostbite Falls, Minnesota: The first place I thought of was the hometown of Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Bullwinkle Moose from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. According to the show's Wiki site, the population of this chilly spot roars to 48 during the summer rush. For such a tiny and cold place it is not underserved; it has a Rotary club, a newspaper (the Picayune Intelligence), a train station, and a hospital. It also has a town hall, movie theater, and bowling alley -- all in the same building. Apparently the inspiration for creator Jay Ward was football player Bronko Nagurski, who came from International Falls, Minnesota. Bonus Cold Place: The island that would become known as Moosylvania on the show became the focus of a comical campaign for statehood by Jay Ward and publicist Howard Brandy -- the timing of which turned out to be very bad, as they arrived in Washington, DC, in November 1962. 

Doc Savage's Fortress of Solitude: The pulp hero Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze, had a Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic that predated Superman's. This is where Clark "Doc" Savage Jr. goes "in order to make new scientific or medical breakthroughs, and to store dangerous technology and other secrets." That includes things from "Doc’s labs, and many of the inventions Doc has captured from the villains around the world," according to the Doc Savage fandom page. I only read a couple of Doc's books, because he was so perfect, so without weakness, he made Superman look like a wimp. And speaking of which:

Superman's Fortress of Solitude: When you're the world's most famous superhero, where do you go to get away from it all? Not just Clark Kent's apartment -- city apartments are too small for that, and the landlords complain if you keep interplanetary crap around. So, Superman totally ripped off Doc Savage. Originally he built a "Secret Sanctuary" in a mountain outside Metropolis, but later moved it to the "polar wastes." As time went on the in the comics, the Fortress was established to be in a secret location in the Arctic, and Superman literally used a huge arrow disguised as a luminous marker for airplanes as the key.

The Fortress had all kinds of stuff, like a zoo of animals from other planets, Superman robots, rooms dedicated to his friends (Lois, Jimmy, and so on -- and Clark, in case someone came in and wondered why his friend Clark Kent wasn't represented). There was alien weaponry, Superman's giant diary (written in Kryptonian), world monitoring systems, all kinds of stuff. It also contained the bottle city of Kandor, an entire Kryptonian city that had been shrunken and stolen by the evil android Brainiac before Krypton exploded. Superman spent a long time trying to find a way to bring the Kandorians back to normal size and a place to put them when he did. And you think your closet is a mess.

Santa Claus's Workshop and Castle: Got to be the most famous frozen fiction fortress. According to Oceanwide Explorations' blog, it was New York cartoonist Thomas Nast, remembered for driving Boss Tweed crazy and for designing the first modern Santa Claus, who put Santa "way up North where the air gets cold" (cf. Beach Boys). "St. Nicholas’s migration to the North Pole is due most directly to Thomas Nast, an American cartoonist who submitted 33 Christmas drawings to Harper’s Weekly magazine between 1863 and 1886, one of which featured a village called 'Santa Claussville, N.P.'" And, as they further point out, reindeer, who live in the arctic, had already been established as Santa's ride by Clement Clarke Moore. But why the North Pole? "During the 1840s and 50s, public imagination in Europe and America was stirred by several highly publicized expeditions to the Arctic, which at that time was largely unexplored." Just think -- if it had been the early 1800s, when there was great interest in exploring Africa, Santa's place might have been the source of the Nile.

Lake Woebegone, Minnesota: Garrison Keillor's chilly town of Lake Woebegone, whose tales were told for years on NPR's A Prairie Home Companion and featured in the best-selling book Lake Woebegone Days. I enjoyed reading the book, but that was many years ago and I can't recall anything much about it now. But the town is in Minnesota, like Frostbite Falls, so you know it's cold.

Blofeld's Research Station: From James Bond's adventure On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Located atop the Piz Gloria in the Swiss Alps, the evil Ernst Blofeld uses the cover of an allergy research station to plan biological warfare that will either destroy England's agriculture (1963 novel) or kill people all over the place (1969 film). Personally, if I were Blofeld, I'd have located the lab in a nondescript building outside Cleveland, but Bond villains always like to live it up. 

Arendelle: People kind of think that the setting for Disney's film Frozen is Norway, and if more proof were needed, the Maelstrom ride in Epcot Center's Norway pavilion, which was great, was replaced by a stupid Frozen Ever After ride in 2016, which is stupidly stupid with stupid sauce. What's the point of the "permanent world's fair" gathering of nations if you're just going to shove Disney junk everyplace anyway? Anyway, yes, Frozen takes place in Norway, during summer, which Queen Tantrum ruins for everyone by plunging the whole joint into freezing cold. But, being Norway, we know they're used to it. I'm sorry I even brought it up, but at least I haven't mentioned that pile of cowardly excrement, the snow homunculus Olaf. Oh, damn it. 

End of the Road, Alaska: Tom Bodett, best known probably as the friendly voice of Motel 6 ads (and author of the "We'll keep the light on for ya" slogan) is also a story writer and novelist. He has written several books about the people of End of the Road, which is based on his real-life home town of Homer, Alaska (Homer's nickname is "the End of the Road"). The stories are pretty good, and definitely in the style of Garrison Keillor. Bodett clearly loves his characters, except for the Lutheran minister and his wife, whom he paints as the stupidest people on earth. Go figure.

Ice Station Zebra: Drift Ice Station Zebra is located an ice floe, and is the setting of a British arctic meteorological station, in Alistair MacLean's 1963 novel and the 1968 movie loosely based on it. The men at Zebra have suffered a catastrophe, and no one knows if anyone has survived -- so a U.S. submarine is sent to find out. I haven't read the book nor seen the movie, but it's a freaking ice floe, so coldness is assured. And it's imaginary, so it's on the list. For the record, ice-floe based stations are real -- MacLean was no slouch for research. I loved his The Guns of Navarone before I saw the movie.  

City of the Elder Things: Maybe the worst thing to ever be found at the Antarctic in fiction was this ancient city in H.P. Lovecraft's 1936 novella, "At the Mountains of Madness." I haven't read a lot of the famous horror writer's work, but that was one I read around Halloween and it was truly unnerving. More horrible than discovering the evidence of the advanced and awful Elder Things is discovering that some are still alive.... Surely no cold place Man's imagination could be more terrible than this!

The Ninth Circle of Hell: Unless it's this. In Dante's Inferno, every circle of hell is horrible, but the lowest, the innermost, the place reserved for abominable traitors like Judas and Brutus, the place Satan himself stands, is not burning, but frozen. I almost didn't include this because... do we really know that it's fictional? 😱

Lake Lebarge: To end on a lighter, if still eerie, note, Lake Lebarge in the Yukon is the place where the cremation of Sam McGee takes place in Robert W. Service's poem about that singular event. It's a terrific poem for several reasons -- for one, I love that it introduced me to the word moil. The problem is that there is a real Lake Laberge (note spelling) in the Yukon in Canada. But since Service changed the spelling and thus pronunciation, I'm calling it fiction. Also, I wanted to include this poem, because it makes you feel cold and it's so good.

Well, I've moiled through all the ones I can think of; what've you got? 🧊❆⛄

Kvetch and release.

Just in case you were wondering, I thought I'd fill you in on my latest peeves. Not my mass peeves, the things that are driving everybody crazy, like government and stupid ideas and cancel culture and whatnot. You look on social media and everyone is running around with his hair on fire. They all know how to run the world, but not one of them can run his own life.

Well, I don't know how to run the world, but I also admit I don't know how to run my life. So here are...

The Peeves

Missing Gloves

Where did all the gloves go? When the stupid Chinese Death Virus was inflicted on the world by the government of China, mask mandates started to pop up quickly, but people were also told to wear latex or similar gloves for safety. The glove issue became so big that news stories on glove litter in shopping center lots were seen throughout the land. Satirical videos on how to throw away latex gloves were found on the Internet. A few months later, poof -- all the gloves had disappeared. No one was wearing them in stores anymore. Why was this? What happened? No one seems to even know. One day a sign went up demanding masks but not mentioning gloves, and then no one was wearing gloves. Was this a mistake? Were gloves the key all along? No one knows, no one cares, just keep moving and hope that the virus goes away. 

Dog Stick Addiction

I'm starting to think my younger dog, Nipper, has a stick issue. He can't pass one by. He stashes sticks all over the yard. I check to see if he's peeing and find him chewing a stick. "What the -- Where the hell did that come from?" He can't just stop at one stick, no; he has to keep looking for more until he's pulled inside, and even then he'll try to sneak a small one in by hiding it in his mouth. "Whatcha got there?" "Nrfng." There's always splinters in his fuzz. He may need stick rehab. It's not just a bad habit -- it's a stickness. 

Guys Blowing Past Stop Signs

No one with little kids or dopey dogs prefers to live on a major thoroughfare, where guys drive like crazy, but living on a side street that parallels a major thoroughfare is almost as bad. Guys trying to avoid the cops go on your street, blow through stop signs, and double the speed limit. I think they've all seen the Fast and Furious movies too many times. They should stick to a film series closer to their own selves -- Dumb and Dumber.

Old Man Winter and Stupid Governor Ruining Plans

I was supposed to meet some friends Thursday morning for an outdoor socially-distant kaffeeklatsch, but I was running a little late because I had called in Tralfaz's thyroid prescription to the vet (on Tuesday) and when I got there was told no one had filled it. I texted my chums to say I might be late, and they said that it was so cold they decided to move to the McDonald's. When I got there they were standing around inside -- because New York's Governor Dumbwad still has the no-indoor-dining rule in place that he imposed in December. Never mind that transmission rates on indoor dining are minuscule, or that the holidays are over. No matter what the data are, I suspect Cuomo will not lift restrictions until Biden bribes him to make things look good in New York. Which, by the way, they are not -- I'm told the hospitals in the Hudson Valley are as bad as they were last April. It's not the restaurants that caused it. But now I'm back on the larger mass peeves. 

Speaking of my dog's unfilled prescription....

Unfilled Prescriptions

I called my own prescription for my back medication to the doctor on Wednesday. This is for the crippling pain I suffered almost a year ago; the doctor has me on duloxetine, an antidepressant that obviously isn't working for me as an antidepressant but has worked wonders for my neuropathic pain. The problem was, the doctor only wanted to give me a 30-day supply with one refill; the insurance company insisted that I get a 90-day supply at least, and the pharmacist was caught in the middle -- and no one told me this was going on. I found out Friday, when I was out of meds and went to get them. The doctor's office was closed when I called. And duloxetine can have significant withdrawal effects. Finally the pharmacist sold me a four-day supply for a sawbuck to get through the weekend, like a pusher. Has this ever happened to you?

And on top of all this...

Someone Used the name The Peeves

I thought that the Peeves would be a perfect name for a band of middle-aged suburban grumps, and guess what -- apparently a band in Chicago is already using the name. There goes my chance to cash in on my bad temper by starting a middle-class MOR rage-punk band. 

Oh, well -- must find gratitude, adjust attitude, and not throw punches. In the words of the philosophic band Yes, release all! Or abandon all hope for your brother! 

Caffeine crunch.

I know I said I wasn't going to do it. Every shopping trip I could hear its siren call -- "Buy me! You love coffee! You love cereal!" But nay nay! I had told my blog readers last August that I would not try the new Dunkin' Donuts (I still don't want to drop the Donuts) cereals. To quote the Beets, "I eat my sugar cereal, but it makes my teeth bacterial..." So I was going to be strong and pass it by.

Nor do I think many other people were excited about these Post products, because last week they turned up in the bargain bin, a buck a box. 

Sold! 

Okay, I was very curious about a coffee-flavored cereal, since I am such a coffee hound. Also, Mr. Breakfast still has no reviews for the new Dunkin' branded cereals, so I am left to review them myself, or at least the Caramel Macchiato one shown here. The Mocha Latte one will have to wait for another time, if indeed it still costs a buck.

So, what's it like? Well, the brown balls do taste like sweet, strong black coffee crossed with General Mills' Kix cereal. If you like the taste of coffee, you'd like this taste; it is a very good representation of the Dunkin' flavor. The tan marshmallows are the caramel, and they also hit the flavor mark. Overall the marshmallows give it a very Lucky Charms-like consistency. I found it tasty dry or with milk. 

I do wonder about the market for this product, though. Obviously a mature manly man like myself, someone who wouldn't order a Caramel Macchiato on a bet, is not the customer Post would expect to be a regular buyer. Teens? Dunkin' isn't hip enough for them. If we had a Starbucks in the middle of town, the teens would all be going there instead of the two Dunkin's. Adults? Stuff's not healthy for us grown-ups, and it isn't filling -- a big bowl left me starving for lunch at eleven. Children mostly don't like coffee. Although the Dunkin' History on the back of the box looks like it was designed for children.

The Dunkin' cereal may be in trouble. The bargain bin sale may have been a sell-off or a last shot at developing a fan base. It's still on Post's web site as of today, where reviews are 92% positive, 4.5 of 5 stars, but that tells us little. 

I've examined many Dunkin' crossover products on this site, from Pop-Tarts to Oreos to beer, and none of them have stuck around -- except the beer (Harpoon's Dunkin' Coffee Porter). Post might have been better served selling this cereal as a limited edition, as with the Oreos and Pop-Tarts. They could always un-limit it if it took off. 

Meanwhile, Dunkin' can contact DeKuyper about making Dunkin' Coffee Schnapps. Sounds like a winner in this cold weather, huh?

I'm like rubber, you're like glue.

Well, don't I feel stupid! Today is the last day of National No-Name Calling Week, and I almost missed the whole thing. 

According to the National Day site: 

Name-calling, insults, and words in general cause harm. In children and adults, unkind words leave marks we can’t see and often cannot be easily undone. Over time, the abuse results in poor grades, difficulty concentrating, anxiety, depression, and even suicide. Our children deserve the support of parents, educators, and administrators, and this observance brings everyone together under one cause.

That sounds pretty serious. And actually it is pretty serious, but it's also incredibly hard to police. The fact is, adults like to heap abuse upon one another, so it's hard for them to tell the kids not to do it. If a guy is telling the wife over dinner that his boss is a [redacted] and his coworkers are [redacted redacted], is it surprising when his kid tells someone on the schoolyard that he's a [redacted]? Especially if the other kid is a [redacted].

In a general sense I think it's a nice idea to call out this kind of behavior and encourage kids to find more constructive ways of looking at one another and dealing with things they don't like. Otherwise they may grow up spend four years blaming all their problems on some clown in the White House and never seek to improve their own stupid lives. They become adults who have no principles and come across as not particularly bright. Naming, blaming, and shaming are all we ever do these days.

Publisher Simon & Schuster has a site dedicated to No Name-Calling Week, which was based on a book called The Misfits by author James Howe. Of course, Simon & Schuster just canceled Senator Josh Hawley's book, blaming the so-called Capitol Hill riot on him, so the publisher is neither principled nor particularly bright. 

Basically, I think adults should stop name-calling if they really want children to do the same. "Deplorables," "bitter clingers," "typical white people," "tea baggers," "knuckle-dragging yahoos," all sorts of nasty names may be heard from the same school officials who weep if seven-year-old Timmy calls another kid a booger. When will this cycle of meanness end?

Say -- when I called myself stupid at the top of this entry, if I'm rubber and you're glue, does that mean I ricocheted the insult off myself and onto you? Heh heh heh.

Our tax dollars at work.

 

Fred's Book Club: The End, 2001 Edition.

Happy Wednesday, a.k.a. Hump Day, the day we run our Humpback Writers feature, in which writers with no known back issues have written books that have the singular advantage of me owning a copy of them. The books, that is, not the writers. I don't have a big photocopy of P.G. Wodehouse hanging on my office wall. Although that might improve the décor.

Today, January 20, for no particular reason, I am profiling a book from 2001 -- Barbara Olson's The Final Days: The Last, Desperate Abuses of Power by the Clinton White House. 

Okay, I should clarify that I'm not using this book to take shots at our departing president -- I mainly chose today to run this book because it's another day for the transference of presidential power, as when the Clintons left the White House twenty years ago. 

So what, according to author Olson, did the Clintons do that rates the "Last, Desperate Abuses of Power" subtitle? Well, to cite one abuse, the second chapter is called "Clemency for Cop Killers." For example, she writes, "Susan Rosenberg was a member of the Weather Underground, one of the most violent of the left-wing militias that disrupted the nation from the 1960s through the 1980s.... In October of 1981, Rosenberg's gang held up a Brink's truck in Nanuet, New York, killing guard Peter Paige and two police officers, Edward O'Grady and Waverly Brown, the first black officer on the local force. Rosenberg drove the getaway car and managed to escape." Rosenberg and her little friends also bombed the U.S. Capitol on November 7, 1983, causing no loss of life but a hell of a lot more damage than the "sedition" of two weeks ago did. Naturally Bill Clinton granted her clemency on his last day in office, and she now works for Black Lives Matter, along with other expressly Communist outfits. 

Anyone who still harbors some weird ideas that Bill and Hillary Clinton are good and decent people ought to read this book, although in the wake of #MeToo I wonder if anyone does, at least in Bill's case. But here's a description of the Clintons that could fit any well-known Washington lizard people with whom you may be familiar: 

The Clintons are members of the mandarin class -- public officials, accustomed to influence, respect, and privilege. People listen to them. People flatter them. And people do things for them, like feeding them, paying their bills, and giving them gifts. The Clintons may not even realize how much they have come to regard as an entitlement public financing and ubiquitous sycophancy. They can thus disparage the wealthy and rail against the "decade of greed" without any sense of shame at never, really having had to pay bills, meet a mortgage, or fix a roof. The perquisites and comforts of eight years in the White House further insulated them from the harsher economic realities of life. Bill and Hillary have every indication of believing that this form of life was their due; they were doing good things; therefore, they ought to be treated well -- very well. 

And people still wonder why so many in the nation backed Trump.

Although the book was published by Regnery, a conservative press, Barbara Olson was no far-right crusader. She had worked in the justice department as a prosecutor. Her husband Ted was solicitor general under George W. Bush and was a lawyer for him in Bush v. Gore, but has since represented clients on behalf of anchor babies and gay marriage. How Barbara Olson felt about these issues I don't know. She had previously written a book called Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton, so she seemed to have taken a particular disgust with the Clintons and their tactics. 

I would love to have heard Barbara Olson's commentary during the 2016 election, but that was not to be.

Maybe the worst thing Bill Clinton did as president was nothing -- about a certain Osama Bin Laden. Bin Laden gets only a brief mention in this book:

In the mind of Bill Clinton, political considerations outweigh even life-and-death matters of great concern to his own law-enforcement officials, not to mention the nation. As many in his own cabinet had repeatedly stated, terrorism, both foreign and domestic, was the nation's primary security anxiety. Since the end of the Cold War, Soviet aggression had been replaced by a number of particularly venomous threats, from Timothy McVeigh to Osama Bin Laden.

Barbara Olson perished on September 11, 2001, when the airplane to Los Angeles in which she was a passenger, American Airlines Flight 77, was forced to crash into the Pentagon by psychopathic terrorist flunkies working for Osama Bin Laden. 

Coffee and COVID.

If you are as caffeine-dependent as I am, or even worse as my wife is, you may be asking yourself, "Self! How does the Chinese Death Virus affect the coffee service chain? We've had multiple scares with TP and canned goods and antiseptic wipes and paper towels and so on; now as we near the anniversary of the COVID knee on our national neck, can it cause problems with my morning fix?"

Well, friends, the National Coffee Association has some answers for you. 

If you are old enough you may remember this NCA ad from 1984: 

If you don't recall it, you may be surprised to hear that in the early eighties, coffee growers and sellers were panicked that the youth market was not as addicted to coffee as their parents. So the NCA put out a series of ads using ELO's song "Hold On Tight" -- a song I have denigrated -- to encourage coffee as fuel for achievement. Next thing you know, every city in America had a shop selling $5 lattes (no one knew what a latte was in 1984), Starbucks was everywhere, a coffee shop was the setting of Friends, and all the cool kids were ordering double espresso scuros with a sprinkle of cinnamon and a shot of anchovy. So I guess it worked. 

Anyway, here are the NCA answers to some of your coffee questions, questions supplied by me: 

Are people drinking more or less of the precious fluid of life in this time of crisis?

• Just as before the pandemic, the vast majority of coffee drinkers (about 80 percent) drink coffee at home, but more than one-third miss visiting coffee shops. More than half of Americans have already returned to coffee shops or plan to do so in the next month.
   
• 75 percent of coffee drinkers say the pandemic has not changed their coffee consumption.  For those who have changed habits, the most reported change is making more coffee at home.
   
• App-based ordering, including delivery, rocketed up 63 percent amongst those who drank coffee in the last week.  Drive through ordering increased 13 percent amongst those who drank coffee each day.
   
• Consistent with measures recommended in NCA’s June 2020 COVID-19 reopening guidance, to feel comfortable and increase visits to coffee shops consumers most want to see visible precautions like workers wearing gloves and facemasks (48 percent) and mandatory facemasks for all customers (44 percent).  

Will I get COVID and die from my coffee beans or the bag?

Since the start of the coronavirus (COVID-19) public health crisis, NCA has received numerous questions about the impact the pandemic could have on coffee: Is it safe to drink? Can the coronavirus be transmitted or contracted via coffee or coffee packaging? What about the U.S. food supply in general -- is it safe?

Coffee itself has never been considered a means of coronavirus transmission, and the risk of transmitting the virus via coffee packaging is extremely low, according to the CDC.

So no matter how you buy or brew your coffee, rest assured that America's favorite beverage is completely safe to drink.

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I think we can all be relieved about this. However, if the NCA wants to start a new campaign to get people more coffee-focused, I'll be glad to sell or rent these coffee slogans I wrote to encourage more coffee consumption:

COFFEE: Because Pot May Be Legal Where You Are, But Cocaine Still Isn't

COFFEE: Because Red Bull Is a Weenie Juice Box Drink

COVFEFE: How You Spell Coffee When You Haven't Had Coffee

COFFEE: Because No One Ever Braced Himself With a Shot of Tea

COFFEE: Avocado Toast's Best Friend

COFFEE: Because People on Zoom Can Tell if You're Drinking Vodka

COFFEE: You Can Be a Coffee Achiever! You Can Sit Around the House and Watch Leave It to Beaver! The Future's Up to You -- So Whatcha Gonna Do?

Okay, I borrowed the last one from Weird Al. He can have a cut for that one. But Jeff Lynne gets no money this time.

Gab grab bag.

Parler is fighting for its life now after being cut off at the knees by Google, Apple, and Amazon, fearing that the president of the United States (for two more days) will flee to that platform. So I've established a profile with my handsome Vitamin Fred icon on Gab's site now. 

As I wrote when I joined Parler back in October, "I always entertain hopes that my blog might entertain others, and maybe even entice them to try one of my novels," and I thought that the site might help me do that without enduring the firehose of horror that is Twitter.  

Now it's become more than that, though. For years I desired to keep this blog free from political content beyond some light satire. I never intended to write fiction for political purposes, hoping to entertain any reader. I would prefer to write funny stuff about food and dogs and middle-class life and post goofy cartoons every day. But I was raised by libertarians and conservatives and liberals to love free speech, even when I don't like the content, and the cancel culture that's gripping the West is an abomination to everything for which our nation stands. Books are being forced out of publisher's lists or literally out of stores; persons are not only attacked but their families and livelihoods threatened. The only law these victims have broken is the law in some dillweed's imagination that says YOU CAN'T SAY THAT, although everything in our culture and history is meant to say we can. Meanwhile, our totalitarian enemies around the world smile.

The weird thing is, the Left used to garb all kinds of things as political speech -- comedy, obscene music, getting naked in public -- as political speech to prevent its being banned. Now the very speech they most seek to ban is political speech, and of course everything is political when you look at it through blood-colored glasses. The kind of speech that conservatives are apt to censor is very narrowly defined -- obscenity, threats, slander and libel (especially of private citizens) -- but if you remove all that I think half of the world's Tweets would disappear.

This all makes it sound like I'm using Gab for firebrand purposes, but no -- I just want to help support a free-speech centered company that believes in the user's privacy and doesn't support the Leftist mobs. A lot of people feel that way, and the Gab servers are being somewhat overwhelmed as I write this. I'm sure it will all settle down soon, and when Gab becomes popular enough to pose a threat to Facebook, the tech oligarchs will come after it as well.

Meanwhile, should you decide to join up, look for your friendly Fred Key on the site and let's have a gabfest. Hey, talk is not only cheap -- it's free.

This week in pastry.

 

Heavy metal classics.

This could also be called "What's on Fred's Phone?" Here are the latest pictures I took, which I suppose is a pretty dumb way to compose a blog entry. Welp, here we go!

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Friday morning was the foggiest I can recall around here. The weather center issued a heavy fog / black ice warning, which is a nice way to start the day. Here is the shot I took, which I think is worthy of hanging in MOMA (MOM's Art collection on the fridge):

Frederick Key, Fog and More Fog (2021)

Fortunately the black ice was not too bad here, and I got to play light saber with my flashlight.

whoom.... whoom

Now, I promised heavy metal classics, and here's one:

It's upside down, but by gum that's an old-fashioned metal garbage can. You hardly ever see these around anymore, since they have have no wheels and have to be carried. But Home Depot does sell the classic galvanized steel one, a 31-gallon model by Behrens, for $25. They can be racoon-proofed with a bungee cord, as long as your racoons are not especially smart or determined. Anyway, I'm glad to see the metal trash can tradition being kept alive. It's almost like finding a rotary phone.

Speaking of old stuff....

So RC Cola, the distant #3 behind Coke and Pepsi, is bringing back the old "Me and My RC" slogan that was in use in the mid-seventies, complete with groovy font. I wonder why. I suppose it was successful, more so than the "Decide for Yourself" campaign of the eighties. but a forty-five-year-old slogan doesn't seem like it would hit that youth demographic sought by beverage manufacturers. I have nothing against RC, but I wonder what they're thinking. Maybe they figure they can snag the old-timers while Coke and Pepsi fight for the Millennials. It's as if in 1975 they revived this campaign, except it would have been only thirty years old at the time, not forty-five.

But I think most of us feel that 1945 feels culturally a lot further from 1975 than 1975 feels from 2021. 

Finally, we have one more chunk of heavy metal, the base for a steampunk automobile.  

Nah, this is part of that annoying cable project they started a couple of weeks ago. The flatbed trailer brought a backhoe to the party, and the wheel was one of several that held a cable sleeve to run underground to allow the cable to be slipped along the curb. It was a pretty big project. They've moved on to running cables along telephone lines now. Since I took the photo the flatbed is gone, but the stupid reel is still sitting there, just off the road. If they don't come back for it by February, I'm selling it for scrap.

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And that's what was on my camera app. Be here next time when you get to see five shots of my index finger!

A bone not to pick?

There is a brand of dog toy called Playology. Their slogan is "Toys That Make Scents to Dogs."

Science! 

The Web site explains it this way: 

Dog noses are 10,000x more powerful than a human’s. But they have 80% fewer taste buds. A dog’s brain craves scent.

Scent processing through a dog’s nasal passage is detected by 220 million scent receptors.

In a dog’s brain the olfactory bulb is three times the size of a human’s.

Dog noses are stereoscopic, with one nostril identifying a smell, and one locating it.

Armed with these facts, these smell boffins of Gardena, California, invented their Encapsiscent Technology: 

Because we embed the scents directly into the material of each toy, your pooch will enjoy chewing and sniffing over and over again.

And as it says on the package, dogs play with scented toys 7X longer than with unscented toys.

I'd seen their products in the PetSmart in the leadup to the holidays, but resisted temptation -- the bone for heavy chewers cost twenty bucks, which is a hell of a lot for a chew toy, science or no science. But in the post-Christmas sales it was up on deep discount, so what the heck -- I bought one.

Our main chewer these days is youthful dog Nipper, Old Man Tralfaz having turned seven and now much too sophisticated for chew toys, except when he's not. Nipper loves a toy he can chew, and especially one he can destroy. Often in the mornings when we can't go for a walk I will sneak a toy out to the yard and get him revved up on it -- a half hour of chasing, stealing, and chew chew chew will usually make him a happy pup.

So I brought the Playology bone outside, showed it to him, and threw it into the yard. Nipper tore after it like a greyhound. He sniffed it, tasted it, and proceeded to roll around on it. This is a good sign, as it is his way of claiming a toy and getting his scent on it. So I was pretty impressed by the scientists. 

That lasted about two minutes. Then he completely ignored the thing. I could not get him reengaged on it.

The next time we were in the yard I picked it up. He leaped at it as if to take it from me, so I threw it. Again he charged after the toy, but as he neared it he veered away and went somewhere else. He has not touched it since. 

I brought the Playology toy inside, thinking its turkey scent might work better there. Maybe Tralfaz would try it. But it has been lying on the same spot on the rug for three days, untouched, unloved.

It is true that my dogs, for whatever reason, always preferred toys they could rip to shreds, something I've discussed in this space in so many posts I can't even link to them all. (Okay, just one.) And tough toys that resist destruction are of lesser interest to them. Still, they usually give it a shot. They just don't care about this Playology bone. Neither dog has any more interest in this bone than they would if I left a wrench on the rug. It's like it's not even there. Even if they didn't like the turkey scent I would expect some reaction from them.

I might have been warned by the one review on the PetSmart site: "My dog did NOT like at all, it smelled like rubber." One star.

Maybe Playology has other customers whose dogs love the toy. Surely they didn't spend all this money to develop a sciencey! dog toy without testing it on dogs, right? Otherwise it would be that old shaggy dog joke about the company that designs the perfect dog food campaign.

All I can say is that there are limits to science, and even more limits to things that are marketed with the look and appeal of science but are just a hunk of malarkey. Or, maybe my dogs are weird.

Flying pachyderm mandate.

AUGUST 15, 2057 -- This morning California Governor Hedley Skwirm signed into law the so-called Flying Pachyderm Bill, mandating that all elephants in the state of California be required to travel by flying.

"This is a great day not just for California, not just for Californians, not just for elephants, but for everyone who wants to see a flying behemoth," said the governor as xe signed the bill into law. 

The law was passed by the California Senate and Assembly over objections by the three non-Party members in the Assembly, who noted that elephants cannot actually fly or indeed be made to fly.

"Aren't those guys silly!" said Senate leader Biff Barbiekins. "This is why these unaffiliated assemblypersons must be voted out of office, just as they have been silenced on all Internet platforms. Everyone says something is impossible until we pass a law requiring it. Some people see what is and say 'Why?' We see what we want and say 'Why not?'"

According to the new law, any elephant or similar mammal must be able to become airborne under its own power no later than January 1, 2058.

"This will be another example of how the power of our collective will can defeat mere reality," said the governor. "We mandated 110 percent recycling, which required the recycling of 10 percent of landfilled garbage, and it happened. We mandated the end of gas-burning cars for clean electric power and they went away like magic. We said we could house every drug addict, mentally ill person, undocumented worker, and other transient in the world without building one new structure, plus provide free food and medical care, and we have done it. We said our state would consume no more carbon fuel or nuclear power, and we do not. We required a minimum wage of $500 an hour and it became real. Now we've decided it would be great to see elephants fly, and we will make this happen too!"

"All of those laws have been an utter disaster," said one of the assemblypersons we are not allowed to name in this news report, "and we are the laughing stock of a world that's almost as crazy as we are. None of them work and everyone lies. The entire state is delusional." The assemblyperson was then led to xer mandated re-education meeting in an unmarked wind-powered van.

"No doubters, hatemongers, or insurrectionists can defy the power of the people!" said Governer Skwirm in xer passionate closing remarks. Xe then retired to the temporary Governor's Trailer as firefighters continue to try to extinguish Sacramento.

Fred's Book Club: I Wanna Rock!

Welcome back to another episode of the Humpback Writers, the book feature that explores anything between two covers that I own in my library. No humps have actually been observed, even in cases where our books have dealt with biology or other sciences. If you are an author and we write about your book and you do have a hump, please inform us or the proper medical authorities. 

Today we're back on the science beat with a book that I don't know why I still own or why I thought of it today. It was purchased for a college course that I recall with some fondness. However, as this class was well outside my field of concentration, please bear in mind that any statements I make about geology below may not be accurate.

"Of all the objects in nature, minerals are among the most readily available for study and, because of their immense variety and intrinsic beauty, have always been items of interest and curiosity." -- from the foreword

Rocks and Minerals: A Guide to Field Identification, by Charles Sorrell with illustrations by George Sandström, was first published in 1973 by Western Publishing, the company best remembered for the Little Golden Books that every American encounters in childhood. Simon & Schuster now owns the Little Golden series, following Western's demise, but St. Martin's owns the Golden Guides, including this one, which is still in print. My edition was not the first -- I did not go to college in 1973, thank you -- but I don't think the book has changed much in close to 50 years. It is what it says, a paperback guide to take into the field to identify rocks and minerals you may encounter. Here's a typical spread:

Our class required this book, and another textbook that I sold back to the bookstore for a pittance. This one I kept, probably because it was only $7.95 and they'd give me zilch for it, but also out of curiosity. I liked walking about the woods, and I suppose I thought I might go marching into the brush one day seeking out interesting rocks and minerals. That has never happened, or at least not yet. If it does, this book will be good to have.

This is the kind of book one acquires when one is a senior and nearing graduation and is informed that one is three credits shy of the math and science requirement and will not graduate on time without great effort. Of course, when I say "one" I mean "I." I had thought that my Computer Science studies counted as science, but as far as the degree program believed, they counted as electives. I could have taken nine credits of something I liked instead of nine credits of Computer Science, damn it!

Well, that's all COBOL under the bridge. I had to do an emergency class, and was informed that the school was offering some one-month intensive classes, three hours a day, through which I could fulfill my requirement and graduate in June. Rocks, Minerals, and Gems -- or as I came to call it, Rocks for Jocks -- would satisfy the dean. I think the other students were in the same jam as me. None of them were science majors.

One of the things I remember best from our genial professor is his unit on molecular structure and the formation of rocks and especially crystals. It seemed to me like crystals looked the way they looked right down to the molecules, as seen on the illustrations above. If humans were like that, I guess we'd look mostly like H2O molecules, or so I fancied. 

I did not choose the above spread at random, however. You will note the descriptions of zincite, and especially zincite with franklinite. Franklinite is an oxide mineral rarely found on its own, and is usually embedded in something else. It was discovered at a mine in Franklin, New Jersey, and is sought, or was, mainly for the zinc and manganese it accompanies. The reason I bring this up is that toward the end of the month-long class, the professor put us on a bus to go across the river to Franklin to see the Franklin Mineral Museum, which exists to this day (although current closed for Chinese Death Viral reasons). It would be the last school field trip I would ever take.

As it turned out, we didn't all fit on the bus, so two guys from Jersey who'd driven to college said I could ride with them. This turned out to be an interesting ride, as they had a cooler of beer with them, which we enjoyed on the hour-plus drive to Franklin. However, it did make the museum tour more boring than it should have been, because all I wanted to go was go back to the beer and swap more stories with my newfound friends. But we saw a lot of rocks, a mine reconstruction, a film about the mining industry in New Jersey, and it was just fine. In the end, since the Jersey boys weren't going back to the city after the trip, I had to ride the bus back to town, sobering up as half the class napped.

I have one other souvenir from that class besides the book -- somewhere, I know not where, I have a small white rock I found at the museum, studded with little black crystals of Franklinite. And with that, my undergraduate science education came to a close. 

Just doodling.

If you were on Google yesterday you may have noticed that they've started the Google Doodle contest again. I immediately decided to enter. Unfortunately it is only open to kids up through grade 12, and whatever else I may identify as, a teenager is right out. ("How do you do, fellow doodlers?")

It's a shame, because the topic is right up my alley. 

This year's theme is:

I am strong because...

Hey, I'm all over that. Me manly man! Super strong! Walk giant dogs! Eat massive cookies! Break bottle of Man Lotion, me so manly! 

So I figured I would at least do a doodle for the benefit of you, my friendly visitors. Actually I had a couple of ideas on the topic, and here they are. 

Pretty good, huh? I'll bet I can work yesterday's Big Brother into this as well. Maybe Google will start a competition for adults as well!