Duck and cover.

Yes, it looks like it's the return of Duck & Cover!

🦆+📔 

No, not the act that killed vaudeville, nor the world's worst law firm, nor even my excellent duck-centric novel available in serial form on Amazon.

I am of course referring to the classic rules for survival in the event of a nuclear blast, to duck down and take cover. I had a science teacher in high school who, during what we called "shelter drills," said sarcastically that this would protect us from the nuclear holocaust. He was right, in a way, especially since being in New York City, I figured we'd go up like a Roman candle in the first breath of a nuclear exchange. Duck and cover wasn't a bad idea, if we still were dealing with A-bombs; in the bombing of Hiroshima, 30 percent of the immediate deaths were caused by falling debris. But by the time I was a kid we had ICBMs with H-bombs, so we were all going to be crispy critters, as they used to say. 

Which brings us to this, for which I wish I could take credit, or at least thank the person responsible:

Well, it's spring now, but that's all right. Missiles don't care.

I don't think we're going to get into a Fun With Nukes situation, despite provocative news (possibly disinformation) that Russian leadership is chilling in the bunker like aging steaks. Besides, the American ruling class hates its own people so much, they might be perfectly happy to let a couple of cities go and sue for peace. As long as they're in Texas or Florida, anyway. 

I guess I'm in a crappy mood to start this Thursday. Got any good news?

Philately.

In a way, we are all philatelists, because according to Britannica, the word comes from 

the Greek philos, “love,” and ateleia, “that which is tax-free”; the postage stamp permitted the letter to come free of charge to the recipient, rendering it untaxed.

Who doesn't love anything that's free of tax?

And yet, my attempt to be a brilliant philatelist failed, sometime around my tenth year.

I certainly did like to collect things in my childhood -- comics, Hardy Boys books, Matchbox cars, G.I. Joe stuff, bottlecaps, baseball cards, and so on. So, no surprise that at one point I responded to an ad like this: 

I had heard about the value of really rare stamps like the Penny Black and the Inverted Jenny, and I'm sure that piqued my interest. I was quite excited when I got a big sack of stamps in the mail, from foreign destinations of which I'd never heard, some very colorful and pretty. 

And then... nothing. I didn't know what to do with them. Sit around and look at them? That was fun for a while. Mount them in a book? Sounded like a lot of work. 

What I did was freak out when the company sent me another bushel of stamps, because that's how the deal worked -- you got the first pack for free and agreed to pay for the next. I didn't have any money, and I would have had to ask Mom to write a check, and she might have told me the truth, that I was a dummy. So instead I wrote the company back and claimed with great anger that I had not received the stamps for which they were billing me. 

I never heard from them again. 

In time, like the rest of the things I collected (except many of the books, which I still have, and all the comics, which I sold), the stamps wound up in the landfill. I conceded that some of us are not cut out for philately, and that included me.

Occasionally I'll see a story in the news that says younger people are developing an interest in stamps, but also stories that say the grand old hobby is on the wane. I hope that the former is true. Stamp collecting, like classical music and Latin, is a thing that I just can't seem to get into but have always thought to be a sign of civilization. I think we need more civilization these days. The haters of civilization have had their way for a while now, and it's not looking good. 

I'm sorry philately was not for me, but I admire and appreciate that it exists. I hope it will continue to do so.

Bucks and dogs.

Bloomberg Opinion got a world of heat earlier this month for publishing helpful tips for peasants trying to deal with inflation while making under $300,000 per year. Writer Teresa Ghilarducci, an economics professor at a so-called college called the New School of Social Research (most New Yorkers know what a joke that place is), had a whole heap o' tips for us plain folks out here in trailer park America, such as eating lentils instead of meat and selling our cars to take public transportation. 

The incredible shrinking
dead presidents

A lot of people among the 99% of Americans who make less than $300K seemed to take issue with the statement, including myself. We're complaining not just because of the pain we feel now, not just because we watch whatever money we may have saved become less valuable by the day, but also because we know this inflationary trend was entirely avoidable by the government not making all the hubristic blunders it has made since 2019. So being lectured by the kind of people who made the errors is kind of off-putting.

Many plain folk know just fine how to deal with inflation. Hunt your own meat. Don't buy scallops. Skip the brand-name goods for store-brand items. Don't go out to the movies or to pro sports. Don't go on Disney vacations of any kind. Make jokes to keep your spirits up. And vote against the morons of our terrible upper class who put us in this predicament.

One stupid statement among several made by the "professor" is this: 

If you’re one of the many Americans who became a new pet owner during the pandemic, you might want to rethink those costly pet medical needs. It may sound harsh, but researchers actually don’t recommend pet chemotherapy — which can cost up to $10,000 — for ethical reasons.

I searched for le mot juste to describe this and finally found it: Bullshit. I do not believe that veterinarians don't recommend pet chemotherapy, and I don't know what "researchers" she's referring to. Medical scientists? Animal activists? Economists? Vegans? Who the hell is she talking about? Certainly any decent vet will tell a pet owner if chemo is a lost cause and is just worsening or prolonging the pet's agony. That's what they did for our Nipper, and we let him go.

But Tralfaz is a totally different story. When he turned out to have cancerous lumps, including one that occluded his eye, we were advised to try lomustine for six months. One dose per month. Cost: $125 a month. An expense that might be tough for some households, no question, but not a deal-breaker by any means. Moreover, he has responded magnificently to the drug. The lumps are gone, including the one that occluded his eye, and he's doing fantastic. I had prayed he could get one more good winter with us, his favorite season, and he did, and he's still going strong. Moreover, he has had no side effects that I can tell. Not even an upset stomach. The worst part was just getting him to swallow the pills whole.

Had we listened to Dr. Asshat and her "researchers," I am certain we would have saved a few hundred bucks and Fazzy would be dead by now. 

Now, pardon me, because I'm going to go take both of my happy, healthy dogs out for a nice, long walk. 

P.S.: Undergraduate tuition and fees for a year at the New School is $73,376. I have a great idea to help the students there save money....

Either that, or join the clowns.

"I'm not kidding, Neil! Either lose some weight or we have to up the black powder!"

 

Peacocks on a mission from God.

Friday was National Peacock Day, as our friend and Certified Dad Joke Expert PLWoodstock mentioned in the comments yesterday. Actually, I have been able to find no reference to the weird holiday on all my usual Weird Holiday calendars, but let's just roll with it. After all, it was a day for Peacocks of the basketball variety, as a small private college, St. Peter's University in Jersey City, slipped past powerhouse Purdue in the men's NCAA basketball tournament to move into the Elite Eight. The 15th-seed Peacocks became the lowest seed to ever get that far. It was one of the most thrilling, nail-biting games of any kind I have ever seen. 

My disinterest in basketball is well known; just a sport that, like hockey, never grabbed me. That's changed in the last week, at least temporarily, since one of my oldest and dearest friends is an alumnus of St. Peter's. In fact, he was on the last football team the school ever fielded, since (dare I say) their success rate on the gridiron was exceptionally compromised. However, he is thrilled to follow his old school's playoffs, and we old pals, being scattered about the tri-state area now, have been watching each game together virtually while keeping a running chat going via texts. It's been a lot of fun. 

I asked my friend if he knew why the team's mascot is the peacock. He didn't know, although he'd heard that the grounds used to have a lot of peacocks hanging about. That seems odd, since the peacock is not native to the Americas. Moreover, St. Peter's avian symbol is the rooster or cock, after Christ's warning that Peter would deny Him three times before cock crow. 

I suggested that the name came from Pete cock, which seems unlikely but is kind of funny. (Keep it clean, boys.) 

Actually, it seems that the peacock, like the pelican and many other animals, has a history of Christian symbolism. The site Jesus Walk lists some examples of peacock symbolism in Christian art, for example, but nothing specifically associated with St. Peter. 

When I was a kid, the local zoo had a couple of African peacocks wandering around. They were fun to watch, but the males seldom put on the classic display. It's usually done to scare predators, and of course to attract mates. 

"Helllloooo, ladies!"

There's quite a spectacle on the court, though, as the young men of St. Peter's are playing an energetic brand of basketball that thrills my basketball-loving pals, most of whom can barely stand the modern NBA's current brand of three-point showboating and bricked foul shots. 

I root for the Peacocks unreservedly in their battle against the Tar Heels tonight. Fight fiercely, Peacocks!

I have also noted that, since it is Lent, St. Peter's is on a mission from God. I think we have to understand that that's the case. Villanova is still in the mix, but it's time for a more humble Catholic college to step forward. St. Peter's has gotten the call.

Stung.

Pardon me for not getting up, but I just got my taxes done. 

The problem is, I made too much money last year. It sure didn't feel like it, but when my accountant added up the figures, that was the answer. The thing is, as a freelancer, or I guess any kind of small-business operator, you are always paying your taxes based on the previous year. So, since I did well in 2019, I had to pay a lot, and I paid installments against my earnings in 2020. Then 2020 sucked, and I lost a big client, and got money back, so I didn't have to pay installments going forward. Then I worked my patootie off in 2021, and now this. My wife's earnings were way down, but that doesn't matter because she pays out of payroll like a normal human being. The government likes to get its cut up front, you know, and punishes you if it doesn’t.

For all my personal agony, I could stand it if they weren’t blowing far more than they take in, and on so much imbecilic garbage. 

I guess taxes and death really are inevitable, but while St. Paul could ask ironically, “Death, where is thy sting?” no one ever has to ask that of taxes. 

Hidden costs.

 

Chew baby.

Our dogs have been well named, in my opinion. 

Tralfaz, the original name of Astro from The Jetsons, grew up to be a very large and very vocal dog. While he may not share his opinions by saying "Ruh roh," he certainly makes a lot of other sounds to express his thoughts, and he has many of them. Whines, sighs, play barks, serious barks, disgusted huffs, rusty yawns, anxious yodels, he does them all. 

The late Nipper, named for the famous RCA mascot, certainly liked to nip as a puppy, and was always as spunky and chipper as the name would suggest.

And the name for Izzy, the new dog, often comes up in conversation, as in: Izzy ever going to stop biting us? Izzy ever going to stop tearing at the rugs? Izzy ever going to sleep in a crate successfully? Izzy ever going to be sane? And the answer to all of these and many similar questions to date is: NO.

There are several issues at play here. One is that when we got him he needed elbow surgery and he currently has hip dysplasia, and we've always been cautious about exercising him too much and causing him pain. However, an energetic young dog who doesn't get enough activity is a dog that will destroy everything in his path, so while he hasn't reached that stage yet, we are upping the walks & frolic time.

Another issue is that he has never shaken the idea that the best way to initiate play is to start biting. Dude, that worked when you and your siblings were the size and shape of dinner rolls, but that's got to stop! The odd thing is, Iz never bites Fazzy. Just the hands that feed him.

A third is he has not figured out a way to tell us when he has to go out, so he -- you guessed it! -- bites. My wife has ordered these bells that -- seriously! -- you can train your dog to use to let you know it's time to go. Like he's calling for the concierge. 

I'll update you on how that works out.

Finally, Izzy is still like a toddler, in that he just goes on one speed until he collapses. Whereas a toddler will be having the time of his life and suddenly fall asleep or burst out crying, Izzy has another behavior. Rhymes with kites. I might be sitting with him of an evening, holding his favorite Benebone chew toy, and suddenly CHOMP -- he's moved past the toy bone and onto the Fred bone. 

It's not like we haven't been training. He gets training every day. He definitely gets negative consequences for bad behavior, usually exile into the pen for a timeout. Sometimes he'll reform and be a humble bumble for a while; sometimes he'll come out and chomp right where he left off. My wife has threatened to send him back, and I've threatened to put him in a huge box with a sign offering a lousy dog to anyone who can stand him for free. Free to (very tough) home.

We hoped his behavior would improve when he got his adult teeth, then when he got elbow surgery, then when he got neutered, then when... I don't even remember what other milestones he's chewed his way past. He'll be a year old in about six weeks, and I guess we could hope for more mature behavior, or at least more acceptance of correction to bad behavior, at that time. Seems like a pretty forlorn hope at this point.

The worst thing about it is, when he is good, he is the sweetest dog in the world. 

That's how they getcha! 

An ill A/C that blows no good.

Spring has sprung, and summer will be here before we know it, and so the air conditioner decided it was time to give up all hope and die. Yes, just when I thought there was nothing left that could squeeze blood out of the turnip that is my wallet, we tested the compressor and found that the only reason the air coming through the vents seemed cool was because it was cool outside. 

I dunno; looks fine to me.

That was last week. On Tuesday a very fine chap came to see us from a large local HVAC/plumbing outfit, ready to check out our system and see what was what. We did not call the people who installed the thing nine years ago. I'm exceptionally glad for that, for a reason I will get to shortly.

Well, it turns out that the unit was all gunked up and full of debris. Okay, that's on me. I never hosed it off or whatever I was supposed to do. In fact, I haven't covered it for the last two winters because by the time we were sure we were past the warm days, there was half a foot of snow on it. Decembers have been a little weird here, and with my wife there is no covering the A/C before jingle bells are in the air. Just trust me on this.

So yes, the fact that the unit had enough grass and such in it for a hayride was my fault. However, it turned out that the copper pipe that held coolant (if I am remembering this correctly) was not brazed by the installers but soldered. Soldering is easier, as it is done at a lower temperature, but results in a weaker joint, more likely to -- what's that technical term? -- oh yeah: leak. And leak it has done, until there's virtually no coolant left. 

The pleasant fellow from the HVAC outfit gave me a comprehensive report at the end, leaving us with three choices to deal with the matter: 

1) Take everything apart, clean it, replace coolant, properly install fittings: four thousand clams

2) Same as #1, but also include motor boosters, line voltage switches, etc.: six thousand clams

3) Install a new unit: unknown (If you have to ask, you don't have enough clams)

Do these prices seem in line to you? Apparently the coolant, R-410A, is made from solid gold and unicorn blood, because it alone comes in on the estimate at almost a thousand clams. I hear it's being phased out for something more environmentally friendly, which to me means the replacement will be less effective and more expensive. Supposedly we have a 5-ton unit (however that's measured), which means a couple of pounds of R-410A are needed. This price seems incredible.

If we have no choice but the ones listed, I think we'll go cheap, because we're not planning to live in this house another nine years. There's no way to get out of paying something here. Summer with no central A/C is not an option in my home. Just trust me on this. 

Regrets, I've had a few.

An article in the London Sun, linked on the New York Post site, reported a hospice nurse's experience with her patients, particularly the four most regrets they have revealed to her at life's end. Julie, an American nurse, had posted her observations on TikTok. 

Julie posted the video in the hopes that people watching would take away her advice so they would not have the same regrets when looking back on their lives.

     The nurse responded to a question which asked: "What kind of regrets do you hear? I feel like in the end, everyone's going to have regrets of some sort."

     She said: "Most people at the end of their lives have regrets about not appreciating their health.

     "Not appreciating being alive, the little things.

     "Working their life away.

     "And not spending more time with family."

It's hard not to see the wisdom in that. The story continues:

From her patient's confessions, Julie has learned to "Be in the moment, live presently, be grateful, don't take for granted your health, and little things about living life.

     "Don't work your life away if you don't have to, or make it so you don't have to.

     "Spend time with those you love, not necessarily family, but those you love and make you feel loved."

Sure, that's fine. However, most of us do have to spend most of our waking hours working at something, or traveling to and from work, or working on our domiciles, or plain running errands. And that's okay, actually. Work is important to mental health. Everyone needs a purpose. If that purpose is selling Chryslers or mopping floors to feed the family, supporting ourselves independently, preaching the Gospel to save souls, or organizing charity events to help the poor, or any other honest work, that shouldn't be disparaged as a waste of time. Of course, looking back on one's life, it's easy to think about all the dull hours spent in these pursuits, but that doesn't make them useless. To me, looking at it that way disparages one's achievements, no matter if -- or perhaps especially if -- those achievements are humble.

And on that note, one of the reasons I find it hard to live in the moment is that the moment can suck. "Yay, I'm living in the moment as a proofread the most boring book in the history of books." "I'm living in the moment while I'm wiping dog hair off the toilet." "Mhmhmsm mhmsh momnbent whilemn bbrushing muh teef." Similarly, no one wants to live in the moment in the dentist's chair.  

Still, the point is taken that we shouldn't be so busy providing for others that we neglect the others. My dad and a lot of dads I knew growing up were like that. They worked like dogs and then felt like the kids hardly knew them, and vice versa. My dad even said as much once to my cousin's husband.  

Anyway, I expect I'll have all those same regrets if I linger on a deathbed rather than suffer a quick demise, like getting thrown off a cliff by an enraged author. ("How DARE you correct my speling?!" "It's 'spelling.'" "AAARGH!") 

Being a special and sensitive soul, though, I plan to have some extra regrets as well. Such as:

• Leaving the oven on
• Not saying goodbye to my dry cleaner
• Leaving the car running outside the emergency room door
• Janet Schnorbuss (forgive me, Janet!)
• All the people I ran over on the way to the hospital
• That time I swam naked in the fountain at Charlotte Premium Outlets and told them my name was Stiiv 
• That awful All-You-Can-Eat Wednesday at Schnitzel's Hofbrau
• Lying to the dog (I still had the ball, Fazzy)
• Not buying Apple in 1999
• Pulling Wanda's hair in class (you'd think a college senior would have a sense of humor about it though)
• Rumple Minze -- let's leave it at that
• Taking the Work Hard Challenge (turns out putting your nose literally to the grindstone has its drawbacks)
• Investing in Acme Corp.
• Swimming with electric eels at Ocean Mystery World Park
• Reading a Tom Robbins book
• Anvil paragliding

So many regrets, and yet, so many joys. Life! Sweet mystery of life!

Wheel of HELL?

If you play a "free" game on the phone or online, you are usually bombarded with ads. As they say, if you didn't pay for the product, then you're the product.  

Most of the ads I see are for other games. I feel somehow if I got a game advertised on another game, and a game advertised on that one, eventually it might lead me to One King Game that rules them all. But more likely it would just lead me back to the first game. It takes about 250 million years to orbit around the galaxy center, though, and it might take me that long to get around to the original game.

Some ads make me wonder just what everyone involved was thinking. Such as this.

The Wheel of Fortune game is definitely related to the popular TV game show; they have the same logo. But while the TV show is a relaxing half hour of puzzles and prizes, this game looks like it's a wheel of fire in some dark section of hell. Explosions and bursts of flame take up the whole 30-second ad. It's like where bad gamblers go when they die.

I haven't seen the TV show in a long time. I'm pretty sure that's not the vibe one gets from that, though.

However, I have been to a few casinos, and I know that they love to have slot machines that are dolled up with pop culture icons of the day, just the way pinball machines used to be. But they have to have that excitement-after-the-dark feel that casinos love. So, wheels of fortune become wheels of flame, I guess. 

As I've noted in this space before, gambling is about the one vice that doesn't tempt me much because I am a skinflint, from a long line of skinflints, and I hate the idea of money flying away, leaving nothing behind. However, I do see the appeal of a fast-moving game with something on the line, so I'm not entirely immune. The other appeal that I understand that many upright folks don't is that seediness, darkness, and decay are not bugs but features for those whose minds bend that way. The grim little bar, the greasy buffet, the sweaty dance floor, the dirty magazine, the disgusting shooting gallery, and yep, the hellish gambling den have a kind of pull that defy good sense and good taste. Therefore, a dark, flaming Wheel of Fortune for a gambling game, rather than the cheerful, sunny TV show, makes a kind of sense.

I don't speak from any moral tower here. It's my good taste or good sense that keeps me from gambling, just my cheapitude, which is a vice all its own. Moral uprightness is trickier than it looks. 

Scallop issues.

Sea scallops are a big favorite in our family, beautifully sautéed with a little salt, pepper, lemon, and dill. What a treat! It's about the only seafood we can all agree on.

And yet... there seems to be a national shortage of them.

According to various sources, including LA's KCRW last summer, 

The seafood section on some menus have been slim these days. Restaurants across the country are pulling dishes like crab croquettes or seared sea scallops from their offerings. That’s because prices are too high right now, thanks to major delays in the supply chain just as consumer demand for a nice seafood dinner is soaring. 

     "A pound of halibut before the pandemic might have gone for $16, now it’s $28. The worst example we're hearing is about scallops," says Kate Krader, food editor at Bloomberg News. "Scallops are getting pulled from menus across the country. They've gone up to about $42 a pound. Chefs were buying them for $28 pre-pandemic."

It's been hard to find a pound of sea scallops at all around here, fresh or frozen. Most of the supermarkets either don't have any or have precious few. I had a coupon for sea scallops at the wholesale club, hoping against hope that they had somehow gotten a line on them, but there was nary a scallop to be found, sea or bay. When I did finally get a pound at the Stop & Shop it cost $25, up at least $5 from last year.

I'm impressed that KCRW actually used the word inflation in its story, months before it could be blamed on that Russian schmuck raising hell just now. Bear that in mind the next time you hear someone try to blame all our economic woes on Putin. Putin also didn't ruin our supply chain or cause labor shortages. That was all the work of our own brilliant leaders. 

I was at least glad that the scallop issue was not caused by some horrible scallop blight. That means that in future the little beauties will once more be in good supply, and either the prices will drop or at least will stay stable long enough for all the other inflated prices to catch up. Meanwhile we have had our one Lenten scallop dinner; now we'll just have to eat mac 'n cheese and the like going forward. 

Resentment.

It's St. Joseph's feast day again! St. Joseph is my confirmation saint, and a very good one to keep an eye on, especially for those of us going through Lent. 

As I've noted before, we don't know much about St. Joseph, but we are confident that he fulfilled the mission of his life uprightly, and therefore that he didn't have resentments about the way things turned out. He certainly could have. There he is, perhaps the most decent man on earth, and he has to devote his life to a mission he did not choose, fleeing to Egypt, fleeing back from Egypt, hearing terrifying prophecies, losing Jesus in the temple, etc. But when he was told to do something by God, he did it without arguing. You can't say that for most of the prophets and saints.

I was thinking about resentments this week, and how giving them up has been a major work of my adulthood. This week I was watching a video by Fr. Mike Schmitz on Ascension Presents about having to do things we don't like, and how this often leads to the same ol' place: resentment. The point that stuck with me seemed quite psychologically sound: 

Resentment is that anger, that frustration, solidified. It's not a living thing. Anger is a living thing; frustration is a living thing; grief is a living thing. Resentment is a frozen thing. It's something ... frozen in time. And it can't move. It can't grow. It's not a living thing. 

While strong and negative feelings from unhappy events can change and pass away, in other words, resentment can't, and that's why it's so awfully destructive.

So, for the rest of Lent, I think it'd be good for me to unfreeze my resentments and let them pass along the way, and stop new ones from forming like dirty hunks of ice on the side of the road. Hey, spring is almost here -- time to end the freezing and start new life. 

Journalism.

The Facts

Funny that the more people who attend journalism school, the worse actual journalism gets. 
 

TP taste test.

Finally climbing my way out of deadlines, my friends! But I can't let a Thursday pass without giving you something entertaining for your visit.

I was shaving at the mirror when junior dog Izzy paid me a friendly call. Then he set to work, quick as a wink. 

In less time than it took me to finish shaving with the electric razor, he had de-papered the toilet. He also took half the cardboard roll with him as a souvenir. 

This is, fortunately, not the crisis it might have been two years ago, those innocent days when we would stop the Chinese Death Virus in its tracks in two weeks and our biggest problem was the hoarders and wreckers who took all the toilet paper. While inflation runs rampant and supply issues still curdle our cream, at least we have plenty of Angel Soft and the like to go around. Losing a roll to the inquisitive chompers of Chew-Chew Charlie is not the worst thing that can happen, nor is TP the worst thing he has chewed upon. (The new iPhone is working out just fine, thanks for asking.)

But I'm not going to keep the bathroom door open while I'm shaving anymore. He has plenty of toys to abuse; he doesn't need to lay waste to the Quilted Northern too. 

Meanwhile, speaking of toilets, today is St. Patrick's Day, which means amateur day for many out there, especially among the youths. Be careful on the roads, and in public bathrooms, and anyplace where drunks may cause mayhem. 'Twould be a sin indeed for the great saint's day to be remembered for something awful that befell ye. And remember: Water may run in the gutter, but 'twill never put ye there. 

Now ear this.

I'm afraid I was completely tangled up in deadlines yesterday, and still not totally out of the trap, so I don't have much to offer today. 

However, I thought I'd note yet another sign of the apocalypse for you.

I wonder if Evander Holyfield is getting a piece of this?

[rim shot]

I mentioned to a friend that I'm about ready to give up on 2022 now. She said she's going to throw in 2023 for good measure. 

The sandwich of sin.

Many years ago on a Friday night of drinking, we lads staggered into Subway to get some needed sustenance. My Irish-descended pal I'll call Jim got his favorite, the roast beef with all the toppings. He was a big man, and hungry. We all sat down to dig in. Just as Jim was about to tuck the end of that delicious meaty hoagie into his chewing apparatus, a mutual (and Jewish) friend said, "I thought you weren't supposed to eat meat on Fridays in Lent."

Jim froze in shock, and started to make frustrated alarm noises like a man having a seizure of some kind -- an angry seizure, that is. He'd either forgotten it was Lent or thought it was Saturday. He dropped his food with disgust.

This story is not that story, although they both involve takeout sandwiches and Lent. This is how I stole a sandwich during this solemn season. It did not happen in my misspent youth, as with Jim's misfortune; it happened Sunday night. 

 

The Sandwich of Shame

This time the place was Panera, not Subway. We like their sandwiches and soup, the latter especially on a cold day, as Sunday was. The only problem is that they keep screwing up orders. Every sandwich has a lot of components, and my wife likes to exercise options on the ingredients, so while I'm very careful about what is in the order I place, they have not always been so careful about what they actually put on the sandwich. Maybe their system is too complicated for a fast-food place. I have to say I've seldom seen the same employees in there twice. Big turnover means constant training and endless rookie mistakes. 

This time, we got someone else's sandwich in addition to the ones I ordered. 

I didn't check order as I often do, so I didn't find out until I got home. Then I felt bad. The Panera is not close to our house, so there didn't seem to be any point to driving back; by now they'd have had to make a new sandwich for the person whose food I got. If I reported the error with apologies to the Panera site, it would just expose the employee to reprimand. I guess I could have run out in the street and handed the sandwich to a homeless guy, but one of the key points of living in suburbia is that one is not surrounded by mendicants at all hours of the day. Also, it was a little late, and even the bums would have eaten by that time.

So I put it in the fridge and ate it for lunch on Monday. No point in compounding my shame by wasting perfectly good food. Yes, I felt a little guilty, but I also felt full, which helps ease the inflamed conscience.

Bad game shows.

I was trading notes on the Globle, the game that does for geography what Wordle does for five-letter words, with my old friends, and the question of Micronesia came up. Country or not? I remembered that it had once been administered by the United States, but has been independent for some time (official since 1990, as it turns out). I remembered that prior to full independence from the United States, there was a syndicated late-night game show that sent its winners on vacation there. I will be doggoned if I can remember or find the name of the show, but Micronesia has stuck with me. 

Anyway, it reminded me that there have been many lame game shows through the years. And yet, I can think of many lamer ones that never got made. Here are a few. 

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Bowling for Flounder

The Bong Show

Name That Rationalist Philosopher

What's In Your Fridge?

Wheel of Mishegoss    

Three Rounds with the Mike Tyson

Snot Potato!

Clinical Study

Eat Your Weight

Russian Roulette

The Recently Divorced Game

Three-Card Monte on Avenue D

Clean That Bathroom!

Girl or Drag Queen?

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Personally, I think I'll buy my own ticket to Micronesia, thanks. If I ever want to go to Micronesia. 

Return of Fredcoin!

Yes, friends, it's another plug for everyone's favorite cryptocurrency, Fredcoin! 

It's occurred to me that some of you out there in the virtual world still haven't invested your worthless U.S. dollars in rock-solid Fredcoin, and I wonder why. If you find yourself unaccountably reluctant, just look at this notarized list of 15 reasons to put your money in Fredcoin, and I'm sure you will come around. 

1. At Fredcoin, we never fight about whether someone on the bill fought Indians or owned slaves or otherized the bi-gendered in the Gilded Age. We just put Fred on all the documentation and ignore all that trouble. 

2. You can cash in your Fredcoin for S&H Green Stamps anytime you like. 

3. Fredcoin has 25% of your daily requirement of magnesium. 

4. You can't be suckered into losing your Fredcoin in a pachinko machine. 

5. Unlike other crypto guys, I will never forget the password that keeps Fredcoin secure. It's PASSWORD. Isn't that clever?

6. Fredcoin can be used to treat lumbago and has few side effects. 

7. On St. Patrick's Day, ask your bartender if he takes O'Fredcoin, our special issue for the holiday!

8. The word Fredcoin has only eight letters and two syllables. 

9. We're on track to make Fredcoin the first cryptocurrency on the moon!

10. Congress is printing money like crazy people, but not Fredcoin! Who would you rather trust, our insane Congress or ol' reliable Fred?

11. We expect to nail down our sponsorship of the Fredapalooza Festival this year, featuring great acts like the Flangepart Five, Hookers & Lookers, and Smiley Jim and His Magic Accordion. 

12. Wombats prefer Fredcoin two-to-one over regular money.

13. Bitcoin is common as dirt. Fredcoin is for the rarified smart set.

14. Fredcoin is available in Regular and Menthol.

15.  Chuck Norris's birth name is Fred Nioc, which you'll notice is Fredcoin spelled sideways, sort of.

So make Fredcoin part of your complete breakfast!

Finally, a friendly reminder that Daylight Savings Time has begun, so it's time to set those clocks ahead one hour! It's easier to push them forward one hour than to go all around the dial to push them back an hour. It's the only place in life where it's easier to spring forward than to fall behind. 

Gone fishin'.

 

An ice guy.

It's truly said that there are two kinds of guys who go from a nice warm bed to the frigid winter cold in under five minutes -- guys whose house is on fire and guys who own dogs. 

I'd much rather be the latter than the former, but some days it feels like a close thing.

This was particularly true on Wednesday night, when we had what was among the last and prettiest snowfalls of this winter. 

It snowed lightly, then heavily; it didn't coat the lawn, but then it did; it didn't stick on the driveway and roads, then it stuck to everything. On the whole it didn't amount to much, not even enough to warrant the use of a snowblower or call in the plow. 

Then large dog Fazzy had to go out multiple times in the night. I know not why. He didn't eat something unusual, at least not from us. He eats mud. He thinks it's full of minerals or something, I don't know. Maybe he's been reading Goop. I think he's too smart for that, though. The point is, between bedtime and the wee hours, the damp snow froze from the bottom up, leaving a slippery mess on top and a slick disaster on the bottom. 

I'm sorry to say I lost my temper with the dog, because it was A) the middle of the night and B) no time to be fooling around, which he was, in addition to doing what he had to do, when he got around to it. Apologies to everyone on the block for the crazy person threatening to murder a dog at that late hour. I slipped several times, but did not fall, thank heaven. But it put the fear into me, and I got mad. Mean mad. 

Thursday the temperature rose to 48, and the sidewalk that almost was a slidewalk became clear and dry by noon. 

It was beautiful morning, so people said; my wife and one other person mentioned that it looked like a Christmas card out there. And so it did. But we know what that was all about. 

In March, Winter puts on her most lovely outfit, makes up her hair and face, and slinks to the door, saying, "You're going to miss me when I'm gone, sugar."

And I say, "You almost caused me five concussions, two broken bones, and a permanent limp. Beat it, sister -- you've overstayed your welcome."

P.S.: Two to four expected Saturday. Winter is vindictive.

Let them eat cake!

You may have seen the sad news posted yesterday -- the great Charles Entenmann passed away at the age of 92. Entenmann was the cake magnate who took his German-immigrant father's Long Island bakery and turned it into a national brand. 

Unfortunately, the family has since sold it to Bimbo, the Mexican conglomerate that also now owns Thomas', Arnold, Ball Park, Beefsteak, Boboli, Sara Lee, and a number of other American baking labels. Still, I shall always have a doughy-soft spot in my heart for Entenmann's. 

I always considered Entenmann's a New York phenomenon, a product line that could be found in any store in the city but not known elsewhere. The show Seinfeld reinforced that local pride. In the Frogger episode, Elaine replaces a piece of frozen cake from Edward VIII's wedding with a slice of Entenmann's cake. In the Audrey episode, date-of-the-week Audrey is apparently known to keep Entenmann's doughnuts in her purse. 

My dad would have sided with Audrey. He was a big fan of their chocolate glazed doughnuts. He would take a bite of one in the morning to get the stale cigarette taste out of his mouth. We could eat any sweets around the house, but Dad's Malomars, Hershey with Almonds, and Entenmann's doughnuts were off-limits. 

My mom and my aunt were wild for the Entenmann's crumb coffee cake. If the cake got a little stale, they'd just cut the crumb topping off and eat that. Sometimes they wouldn't wait for the cake to get stale. 

I always liked their soft chocolate chip cookies. They made a good booze-free fruitcake, too, although not as good as Freihofer's. Now Bimbo owns both brands and nobody makes fruitcake. 

While my family was loading up with Charles Entenmann's sweets, he wasn't. According to his son, "He didn’t eat Entenmann’s cake … He just wasn’t a dessert guy." Well, maybe that's one reason Charles made it to 92. But as the obit makes clear, he was a man who treated his employees with respect, whatever their job; he was generous; and he had a great sense of humor. He may not have eaten sweets, but it seems like he was a sweetheart anyway. Rest in peace. 

TIPL.

Yesterday in the comments section of the Great Lileks's Bleat, I offered TIPL to a joke. TIPL is The Inevitable Punch Line. In this case, the punch line was a modification of the gag about first prize being a week in Philadelphia, and second prize being two weeks in Philadelphia. 

TIPLs show up in any conversation where people are apt to make a comment that sounds like the set-up to a well-known joke. In this way they function as either a short version of the joke, or can even be a standalone joke.

Examples of the first sort include tidbits like this: 

"Last night the bartender threw a guy out for bringing in his dog."

"And the dog said, 'Do you think I shoulda said DiMaggio?'"

"Looks like we're heading for layoffs."
"What you mean 'we,' whitey?" 

"Geez, that guy looks like Quasimodo."

"Well, his face rings a bell."

"The ecumenical service had a priest, a minister, and a rabbi."
"And the rabbi says, 'Is this some kind of joke?'"

Examples of the standalone sort might be:

"Get the other hose. This one's isn't long enough."

"That's what she said!"

So beware, friends; if chatting in a witty group, anything you say can and will be used to trigger TIPL if it fits in any possible way. Look for the sign of the punching line! 

Puppy vs. Bumble.

Dear friends of ours gave our puppy Izzy a Bumble to destroy. He loved it. 

Technically the head of a Bumble.

The Bumble was part of a Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer collection from dog-themed subscription service BarkBox. It's not the kind of thing we would sign up for ourselves, which made it a great gift as a one-off. 

Izzy really loved this toy. We had to get it away from him sometimes so he would eat and sleep. He got supervised play every evening. And eventually it was destroyed. "Eventually" meant three days. But our previous toy-destroyer, the late great Nipper, would have destroyed it in fifteen minutes, so this was an improvement. 

BarkBox costs $35 month, for which you get treats and toys, but we can get a lot more than what they provide for the money. I applaud the company for the quality of the toy, though, and the little touches. For example, this is printed on the inside of the inside of toy's fabric:

"Time to Throw Me Away" and "All Good Things Must Come to an End." Both true, alas.

Inside the Bumble head was a squeaky ball, which was cool, because it meant that inside the toy was another toy. Kind of like playing with the bones after you eat the squirrel, I guess. 

Behold the skull of the Bumble

We also had another BarkBox toy; this didn't have a ball inside, but did have a squeaker, and the squeaker had another message for the dog owner:

"Game Over / Your Dog Won / Discard This Squeaker"

It's the little touches that make it fun for the humans. 

Izzy doesn't go for just any toy, but he really loved these. We were really grateful for the gifts. They gave him something to destroy that was not rugs, furniture, or shoes. And it was nice to know that Yukon Cornelius was right: Bumbles bounce.

Guesstimate.

One of the things that scrolls my nurd is when clients ask for time estimates for editorial work. Not the deadline; they mean how many paid-by-the-hour hours will it take. 

I understand that they have their own paperwork to file, and that the bean counters think that estimating time to copyedit or proof a book ought to be as straightforward as estimating time for a delivery of rocks. But it doesn't work that way.

Actually, the proofreading is not too difficult to estimate, since by doing a couple of pages quickly I can figure out how long and messy the job will be. Copyediting is a little harder, since it involves editing for sense and continuity, which can be an issue if the book turns out to be complicated. Estimating for fact-checking is the worst, though, because it's hard to tell right away if the author is a know-nothing dumdum who is going to ensnarl me in a world of irritation. 

The estimate I'd like to send

You can give a book a quick going-over, but that won't tell you if the author is using half-baked or completely unbaked sources, is mistranslating foreign words, is making wild suppositions hidden by passive language, or a hundred other things that make a book a pillar of lies. As a fact-checker it is not enough to say "WRONG!" like Dom DeLuise in Blazing Saddles, although it would be satisfying. I'm expected to provide the right information, or exhaust all efforts to find it. 

The problem is, unlike your plumber who discovers hidden problems, I have little recourse when an estimate is entered. One large company in particular makes it very hard for everyone if a job comes in over estimate, and it delays payment by weeks or even months. They make strong incentives to get me to provide on-target estimates, even though there's no certain way to do it. Either I overestimate and get a rep as an over-charger, or I underestimate and wind up working free hours. 

Anyhoo, it's made me more sympathetic to the contractor who finds unexpected issues like asbestos or bad wiring or unknown leaks or any of a number of things unexpected in a renovation. Sometimes you just can't tell where the big problems are hiding, in homes as in books.

Spiders from Mars.

There we were, complaining about 2020, as if once we got through that stupid and miserable year everything would be better. Instead we got worse government, psychotic Russian warmongering, Canadian dictatorship (!), and now, gigantic parachuting spiders.

I get the feeling that this decade is going to suck pretty hard all the way to the end.

The spiders in question are the Joro spider, a brightly colored nightmare that comes to us from Asia, like so many bad and really weird things. According to the New York Post, from whence I borrowed the alarming photo below, "The massive Joro spider, an invasive species from Asia, has descended on southern states — particularly Georgia and South Carolina — and is now due to spread rapidly to Alabama, according to the University of Georgia’s Odum School of Ecology."

Surely such a huge bug would never survive our northern winters, right? That's for tropical places, the price they pay (along with cyclones) for gorgeous weather. But no, according to spiderologists: "The spiders were exposed to below-freezing temperatures for minutes at a time — about as long as they’d need to find a warm place to hide."

And what's this about parachuting?

"Indeed, bug-watchers have spotted the Joro using their webs as parachutes, transporting them by wind."

Uh-huh. 

I'm not a victim of arachnophobia, in that I am not panicked thinking about spiders or go into frozen terror looking at one. I know what phobias feel like, being inclined to acrophobia, and my feeling about giant spiders is not like that. However, I have a strong repulsion from giant spiders, and this one looks particularly bad. The Joro has a minor venom that isn't a real danger to humans, unless one has an allergic reaction.

I do not intend to let one of these bastards get close enough to me to find out.

Research scientist Andy Davis says, “People should try to learn to live with them. If they’re literally in your way, I can see taking a web down and moving them to the side, but they’re just going to be back next year.”

And I say: No. I say: I'm going to murder every one that I see. I say: These arachnid sons of bitches had better turn out to be a bigger bust than the murder hornets. And if not, I say: Nuke them from orbit. It's the only way to be sure. 

"Poem" doesn't rhyme.

It occurred to me that the word poem does not actually have a rhyme. Ironic, isn't it?

Of course, the always-helpful site RhymeZone, friend to writers of song and limerick, tried to come up with a few. 

2 syllables:

bro hymn, ho hum, know him, loham, low hum, pro-am, show him, spoem, throw him

3 syllables:

below him, roboam

4 syllables:

jeroboam, rehoboam

Meh. Take away the ancient kings and all you have are weird combo words and sorta rhymes. As example, RhymeZone shows that no less a person than Oliver Wendell Holmes resorted to a near-rhyme for "The Iron Gate":

Where all goes wrong, and nothing as it ought?

Old age, the graybeard! Well, indeed, I know him,--

Shrunk, tottering, bent, of aches and ills the prey;

In sermon, story, fable, picture, poem,

 

It's not bad, but there's still something imperfect about it, more suited for light verse than anything serious. That's okay for a trash poet like me, who just diddles with words for laughs, but Ollie W. was a pretty serious guy. "Poem" is not "pohim." It's not quite Tom Lehrer rhyming Harvard with disCARvard, but it's in the same zip code.

I like to play with the rules themselves rather than just look the other way. If you've hung around this drugstore for a while you know that I wrote a poem about eye rhymes (words that look like they should rhyme but don't) and words with silent letters, as well as verbs that defy reason and words with very few rhymes. My favorite may be my ode to Wile E. Coyote, though.

Rather than follow a standard rhyme scheme like A/B/A/B or A/B/C/B, I wanted to simulate the chaos of a Looney Tunes cartoon, where the storytellers follow a structure but all within is crazy. This was my rhyme scheme:

A

B

C

C

D

D

E

F

G

G

E

B

F

A

I

I

Every line has a line that rhymes, but most of them are not where they ought to be. I'm not sure it succeeded, and may have just confused people, but I was happy when I was finished.

Surely, not since the time of Roboam

Hath been such a wackadoodle poem

Roboam: "You can say that again!"

P.S.: Those who remember H.R. Pufnstuf might be interested to know that RhymeZone came up with a scant few rhymes for orange, which are even worse than the ones for poem. However, Witchiepoo was wrong; there ain't no rhyme for oranges. 

Perils of inflation: entertainment.

We all have heard how bad inflation is, although some people seem to have trouble comprehending the idea. These are people for whom the term "fiat currency" is alien. They still expect to walk up to the treasury building and trade in a dollar note for that amount of gold. They'd better bring a microscope if that's the case.

There are two equations of economics that everyone ought to know, but seem to be mysterious and inscrutable even to those who supposedly do:  

Greater demand or lower supply = higher prices

Too many dollars chasing too few goods = higher prices

The latter is exactly what's happening now, as the government runs off sheets of delicious money that are each worth less than the dollars printed before them. 

But is inflation really bad? Yes, to those who remember stories of little old ladies on Social Security eating cat food to survive before benefits were pegged to you-know-what. My savings cannot possibly keep up with the rate of inflation as it is now.

 

I thought, since people pay more attention to entertainment and celebrity than reality in our culture, it might help to look at inflation in another way, using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' helpful Consumer Price Index inflation calculator (costs as of January 2022). Here we go:

The Six Million Dollar Man -- TV show premiered 1973; man now costs $38,958,152.42

The Millionaire -- TV drama where a man gave random people a million bucks premiered 1955; now would now give $10,529,887.64

50 Cent -- Rap star born 1975; now costs $2.59

"Bet-a-Million" Gates -- American gambler earned nickname in 1900; now would be "Bet $33,470,000" Gates*

Marshall Crenshaw's "A Hundred Dollars" -- Song released 1987; now would be $250.80

Two dollars demanded by psychotic paperboy in Better Off Dead -- Film released 1985; now demands $5.28 

Sweepstakes -- Short-lived TV drama ran 1979; million-dollar prize now costs $3,768,739.95

The Million Dollar Duck -- 1971 live-action Disney comedy; duck now costs $7,028,700.00

Two Cents -- expression re: one's opinions originated 1939; now opinions worth 40 cents

A Fistful of Dollars -- 1964 Spaghetti Western; a fistful of singles (approximately 10) now worth $90.40

Million Dollar Baby -- Another Eastwood film, from 2004; baby now worth $1,480,505.53

 

$1.98 Beauty Pageant -- Prize dispensed in 1978 mock-pageant show now worth $8.37

Shoeless Joe Jackson -- Admitted to being paid $5,000 to cheat in the 1919 World Series; now worth $77,665.19 (current Major League Baseball minimum salary is $570,500.00) 

Total 1944 US Government spending --  $91.3 billion; worth $1.462 trillion today, which is a small bit compared to our actual 2021 budget of $6.818 trillion, and we were fighting a World War on two fronts in 1944* -- US population has not quintupled since then

*For these, I had to go to another site as BLS doesn't go past 1913 or over 10 million bucks.

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Everything looks more valuable with inflation, but that only means that the money is less valuable. Does this illustration help? Probably not. Some people can't see the crocodile that's biting them on the butt.