Cull the herd.

I know the time has come to get rid of some books. 

I've talked about this before, maybe on this blog, but I've done nothing about it. In my heart of hearts, I do not want to. As a boy and as an apartment-dwelling young man, I dreamed of one day having a home with a dedicated library. You know -- all wood and leather and comfortable chairs and reading lamps and peace and quiet and books as far as the eye could see. I didn't care what the rest of the house looked like. I never got that far.

None of that worked out -- we have two rooms with large bookcases and a desk with bookshelves and a small shelf downstairs with cookbooks and home books and stacks of books around and a box of books in the cellar that I had stored in my in-laws' cellar and had to retrieve when they passed on. 

And random piles.

Thank God I don't live in an earthquake zone, because I am sure I'd be buried in them one day. People would say "He died doing what he loved" and my wife would say "What, gasping for air under half a ton of old paperbacks?"

If I'm to avoid that fate, I figure I should sort the books first into sets:

1) Books I need to have about me and would take into the grave with me for the afterlife like a Pharaoh

2) Books I treasure 

3) Books I like and would like to read again

4) Books I think I liked and pretend that one day I will give them another shot

5) Books I read but didn't like and won't read again

6) Books I bought new but will never read

7) Books I bought used but will never read

Seems like a pretty easy go from there, right? Just eliminate piles four through seven and I'm done! 

But of course it's never that easy. Deep inside I hate to get rid of books. Worse, no one wants them. I have perhaps three or four valuable enough to sell online, but people don't collect books anymore -- not like they collect really valuable things, like Star Wars figurines. The library doesn't want them -- they certainly don't want paperbacks, although I might convince them to take a stack of new hardcovers that I bought in a moment of madness and now regret. Stores that sell used books, once thick on the ground in any city, are now barely extant. Recycling is the fate of these books, and it'd be sad even if I had not spent actual money on them. 

Well, if I don't do it, one day my wife will be stuck with the job, and that's a sad thought. (Women tend to outlive men by about seven years.) Looks like my dream library remains as far-off as thoughts of being interred in a book-lined pyramid. But I can dream, can't I? Call me Nectanebook, last of the book-obsessed mummies.

The monster returns.

Strangest things happen around here. Last year I noted that my new duck boot had been partly eaten in the middle of the night by some critter. Now, this.

What you see here is a long tether, made up of two tethers, that permits baby dog Izzy to run around like a loon in the backyard without leaving the property. At some point in the dark of night, some critter literally chewed both of them to pieces. 

This is very peculiar. The tethers were made out of cotton, so I suppose they could have provided sustenance to some creatures, or maybe they got hungry enough to think it would. But cotton is actually not good for any mammal, as far as I've been able to determine. And whatever cut these six-foot tethers into small pieces was very determined and must have stayed at it a long while. What could it be?

Before you ask, let me say that baby dog Izzy has an alibi. 

Besides, we've had three dogs on these things, and sometimes they've tried to chew them but never got far. They're tough. I'm sure any of the dogs could have chewed through in time, but look at those cuts! Neat and clean. Like they got run over by some farm machine. 

So again, what could have done this? If someone wanted to pull a prank on us, there are much worse and easier things to do so than cutting our tethers up. Even with hedge clippers, this would have been a good amount of work. Critter-wise, we have deer, groundhogs, rabbits, turtles, ducks, geese, small birds, chipmunks, snakes, squirrels, skunks, foxes, an occasional coyote, and a very occasional bobcat or bear. It's been a very mild winter, and none of them should be desperate for food, and some of them should be on vacation. 

I don't even know what could do this, or would bother. 

I never did earn my Critter Badge in Cub Scouts, so if any of you have any ideas, please drop a line in comments. I'll be sticking with petroleum-based tethers from now on.

The disco menace.

It's hard for kids today to appreciate the disco menace. It came on suddenly, and when it had done its damage, it went away. But even though I was a kid, I can never forget.

The word disco was alien when I first heard it, and it seemed like a nonsense word. But it came from the French discotheque, which itself came from "disque disk, record + -o- + -thèque (as in bibliothèque library)" according to Merriam-Webster. In other words, disco is short for record library. A discotheque was a place where people would dance to music played on vinyl records rather than music played by a live band. Any little town could have a dance club even if they had no musicians. The word disco dates to 1957, but disco didn't conquer the world for a while after that.

Disco music was defined by a particular beat, as classic rock is, and as the waltz is. Whereas rock used the backbeat (the emphasis on every even beat -- one TWO three FOUR etc.) and the waltz's emphasis is on the second and third beats (one TWO THREE one TWO THREE), the disco bass drum is hit on all four beats of the measure. Thus the four-on-the-floor, thumpa thumpa thumpa thumpa. It's harder to play than you'd think, but it had the advantage of letting songs run one after another with the exact same rhythm and speed, so dancers never had to stop unless it was time to re-up the cocaine. 

The thing is, during the height of the vogue, any music could be put through the discoizing machine and come out disco. Any. Music. 

They dusted off a 1926 hit ("Baby Face"), put it through the discoizer, and it got to number two on the disco charts. They took the theme from the TV show I Love Lucy and discoized that, and "Disco Lucy" got to number 9 on the Easy Listening chart. The music from  May 1977's unexpected smash film Star Wars managed to get a whole disco album out of it before the end of the year (Meco's Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk), which is not to be confused with the mashed-up film music set to a disco beat by a studio band called the Force, released as a single before the end of the year. (The B side was the timeless classic "Funky Hat.") Even Ludwig van Beethoven became discofied in 1975, his breathtaking Fifth Symphony shrunken and beat to "A Fifth of Beethoven" by Walter Murphy and the Big Apple Band. Disney discofied itself, doing a takeoff of the Village People's "Macho Man" ("Macho Duck"), certainly the most famous track on the immortal 1979 album Micky Mouse Disco. If you stood still long enough, you might get discoized, too -- finding yourself with a whitefro and a leisure suit, gold Italian horn chain, shirt open to the waist. 

It seems to have seized the nation and the world like a kind of mania, but ebbed within a short period. "The Hustle" was a disco landmark, released in 1975, but by 1980, when Studio 54 closed, the whole thing seemed to be old (if still funky) hat. The Who had declared disco dead in 1978. The infamous Disco Demolition Night in Chicago took place the next year. But it took a while for the rest of the culture to catch up. 

Say what you will about disco, at least it finally got out of the center ring. If only all our manias would have the good sense to ebb as quickly. I can name quite a few that I wish would go away already, or at least go on vacation.

Looking for the I in AI.

I know some people in the visual arts are worried that artificial intelligence may replace them. I can sympathize. I've been traded in for a box of tissues and a can of Turtle Wax, so I know the feeling. But enough about my dating history.

AI art does things automatically that people are not born doing. For example, gradient backgrounds and shading. These things have to be learned. A computer art program can do it for you, but you have to learn how to use the program. With AI, you plug in the subject and out pops the art, with 3D shading and all. 

But how intelligent is it?

Being cheap, I wanted to try a couple of drawings with some free software, so I used Gab's AI program, Gabby. I asked it to illustrate the old setup line: Why did the chicken cross the road? I got two choices:

Here the chicken -- if that's what it is; some chickens have five toes, but she must have lost one on the right foot -- is shown at the Alamo. Colonel William Travis has personally challenged the chicken to cross the line in the sand if she is willing to stay and fight. We don't know what the chicken chose to do, but legend says all but one at the Alamo crossed the line to join Travis. It would make sense that the one that didn't was, in fact, chicken.

In this more cartoony version, the chick seems to have decided not to conform with the parameters of the joke. Rather than cross the road, he looks at the viewer from the middle of the road, challenging him to swallow the punchline. The highway line painter also seems to have decided not to conform to anything, running right off the road toward the single, mysterious farm building in the distance. Lovely sunrise, but no one's doing anything right on the ground.

For my next experiment, I asked Gabby for a picture of President Biden riding a hippopotamus while wearing a crash helmet. I heard his wife was in Africa now, so maybe if she got in trouble he could go ride after her and save the day on a local water mammal. 

Okay, well, this isn't too bad. He does not have the crash helmet, but he is protected against drowning with the vest, and that's more important since they're galloping through the water. He is also being safe against viral diseases with the mask, and prepared to sign something if necessary. Fairly dramatic. The hippo's flank is looking blank, though.

I like this one better, for its splashing -- that's another thing that's hard to draw -- but I have no idea what planet this hippo came from. And what in blue blazes has the president got in his hand? Someone had better take that away from him before he gets hurt. He's well dressed, though, pocket square and all. Still no crash helmet.

So that's the state of AI art today, or at least a free version. Maybe the ones that you have to pay for are better. They all inhabit the uncanny valley, but that's going to change in the future. I don't know what future we're going toward, but everyone seems to be in a tremendous hurry to get there.

The gossip truth.

Forgive me if I've told this story in this space before, but I think it's interesting.

In my checkered career in publishing, I've done a number of different jobs, including proofreading, writing, copyediting, and fact-checking. I was a fact-checker before the term became a synonym for confirmation bias. I've had at least one shouting match with an editor who wanted to run bad information because the truth ruined the story. Try that at the Washington Post these days and see how long you have a job.

Probably the strangest week in my career, though, was spent as a fill-in fact-checker at a popular weekly celebrity gossip magazine. I disdain celebrity and I eschew gossip, but I was desperate for work at the time. 

Why was it so strange? Because absolutely everything I expected about the job was the opposite of what it was. Here's what I mean:

1) It was dull.

I thought the work would be frantic, and maybe impossible. "I just got word that Alexis Bigbutt is pregnant! The father is Jimmy Cueball! We need to confirm that!" But no. When those kind of pieces would come in, the writers -- the life's blood of the business -- would just say "That's from one of my confidential sources," and that would be it. We'd just shrug and make sure all the names were spelled right and the ages were correct. Maybe it would have been more interesting for me if I knew who anyone was. But I could not get shocked at news about Gunnah Rimez's drug arrest or the hysterics on Real Housewives of Scranton. 

2) It was quiet.

Consequently, there was none of the running around one might expect of a weekly gossip sheet. The photo editors probably worked harder than anyone, but they kept to their own corner of the floor. Everything else was as quiet as a bank vault. I barely got to know the two women in my department. We took care of whatever crossed our desks, then it was back to Internet surfing.

3) The place was dark.

Everyone thinks Manhattan magazine offices are bright and sunny, because they believe everything they see on TV. This was an old building and the managers had all the windows. Those of us in the pit in cubicle city got no sun at all. Not that I was jealous -- we were on a low floor of the building, sandwiched in the middle of the block, so on two sides there were no windows and on the other sides you just looked at the buildings across the street.

4) Everyone was really nice.

Really, not a soul was mean or brash or snarky or creepy or crude. I don't even think anyone stole lunch from the fridge. The celebs may have hated the rag (although in fact they love gossip media -- it's all publicity), but it wasn't because the editors were cruel. It was a friendly office. 

I'd like to say they also paid way above the going rate, but they didn't; it was good, as I recall, but not generous.

After my week, they thanked me and said they'd let me know if they needed me again. In fact, I did get a call not long after, but in the meantime I had gotten a temp job that meant more hours for a longer stretch, so I had to turn them down. 

A few months later I was back in the book end of the business, working for an academic press in an office that was even darker and quieter, but less friendly. Everyone had a resentment. It also had the slowest elevators of any building I've ever worked in, and we were near the top floor, so it took forever to yabba-dabba-doo and get out of the place at quittin' time. (The actual top floor was a 17th floor penthouse, believe it or not, where a mysterious personage dwelled. On a dare I rode up to that floor, but I could see was a dark foyer and a front door with frosted glass.) 

All that is another story, however. 

Hand of the giants.

If you ever want to feel humongous, like André the Giant, try fixing your own glasses. 

I don't wear my glasses often, mostly for driving. Yet, despite the unfamiliarity with them, I gathered that something was wrong the other day in the car when I put them on my face and a lens fell out. Well, that's not supposed to happen.

Turned out I lost a little tiny screw that held the rim together. (Get your mind out of the gutter.) Fortunately my wife has multiple kinds of spectacles and we've acquired a few of those glasses-repair kits over the years, some of which have those completely useless plastic magnifying glasses. I'm glad that I'm nearsighted rather than farsighted, because if I were farsighted I would need my glasses to fix my glasses. 

Surely there is no common task more suited to making a man feel like a fumble-fingered fool than fixing eyeglasses. The screws are less than 2 mm long -- for reference, an inch is 25.4 mm. I don't care who you are, that's hard to handle with adult fingers. I don't have large hands -- size 10 wedding ring -- but I feel like I'm wearing baseball mitts on both while doing this job.

But with time and patience, neither of which are my friends, I was able to get the screw secured at last. The lens stayed in place all the next day while on a drive to Pennsylvania, accompanied by dog Izzy. 

It's satisfying to get a tricky repair completed. Although with my history of handiwork, it's always on the back of my mind that the repair will fail -- in this case, that the screw will shoot out and somehow get on my eyeball, that the lens will drop off my face and be consumed by the dog. Well, it might wind up giving him good hindsight.

Get ready to fight!

So it's Ash Wednesday again, and boy are my arms tired. Wait, that's the wrong joke. 

Am I ready for Lent? No. Usually I like to pick a project, like reading all the Pslams, but I haven't managed to do that. Well, maybe I'll think of something today. I do kind of have a theme. 

Last Sunday's readings included the Beatitudes, especially the part about turning the other cheek, and our pastor went bananas on it. I mean that in a good way -- inspiring. He shared stories of forgiveness of people who had suffered more than I ever will, and how freeing forgiveness was to the forgivers. 

That got me thinking. Any Christian will tell you that the Evil One, the Bad Guy, is always seeking our collective and individual ruin. Sometimes you have to be ready to literally fight when circumstances call for it. And sometimes you have to figuratively fight, which can be a lot harder. 

I grew up reading comic books, as you undoubtedly know, and at the heart of comics, fighting evil comes down to one thing: Punching someone. 

Again, don't get me wrong: Sometimes nothing less than Clobberin' Time will do. But there are reasons Jesus didn't come into this world to tell us to find God's enemies and slug them. 

Let's face it -- we can't outsmart the devil, or overpower him, or trick him, or probably even beat him at a violin playing contest. 

Maybe the Blessed Mother can punch him in the
face, as in this 13th century image, but we can't.

The only way we can beat him is to do what Jesus told us. Help others. Forgive our enemies. Correct those in error. Love God. Avoid sin. Sacrifice our own desires. Think of ourselves less. 

I know, I know. Punching is a lot easier. That's why we have a 40-day period of exercising our spirirs. We don't have a 40-day period where we do a training montage and come out throwing fists. 

Big dog.

Baby dog Izzy will be two years old in a couple of months, and I'd kind of hoped he'd have stopped growing by now. It doesn't seem to be the case. 

He's not crazy huge -- not like some dogs.

He's not even as big as Nipper was, let alone Tralfaz, who was pretty darn big. But there is a difference. Izzy is more of a cuddlemuffin than those two were. Nipper was all playah, all party all the time, and Fazzy was the eternal watchdog, stoic and humorless (except for when he'd let himself go and be a big goofball). Izzy wants to be close by, but he's getting a little large for it. 

For example, he really doesn't fit under the desk as well as he used to. He liked to lie down there with his favorite toys (feets!), but now bits of him spread out from underneath. I've rolled over his tail hair -- though not his tail -- by accident, to find I'd pulled out hair with the wheel of the chair. This kind of thing didn't used to happen. 

Or say I want a nap on the couch, a fairly common event. The other dogs had no interest in hanging around on the furniture, but you can't keep Iz off it. Now I'm sharing a couch, and there really isn't enough room for the two of us. Nevertheless, we nap as best we can. 

It's sweet that he wants to be close to his people, but it can be very tricky as well. I think we may need a longer couch. But actually, the one we have pretty much takes up the wall. So it looks like we'll have to move to a house with a longer family room. This is getting complicated. 

Presidents Day sale!

Hello, friends! We're celebrating Presidents Day here at Fredcoin, everyone's favorite cryptocurrency, with an amazing deal! You won't want to miss out on this one! But first, you need to ask yourself some important questions. 

Yes, friends, you need to say to yourself, "SELF! Do I want my wallet to be fat, like Taft? Or scrawny like Madison? Do I want my savings to be piled high like Lincoln? Or be peewee like, er, Madison? Man, Madison was a little dude, wasn't he?"

Well, of course the answer is: You want the big dough! You want to be raking it in like Trump before becoming president, not have to wait like Obama until afterward! 

But, you wonder, how can Fredcoin bring you the big bucks if it's just another form of currency?

See, right there, that's our secret: No one knows. The US Treasury is jammed with people who know a lot about money. Congress and the White House are full of money people. The Federal Reserve is all about the good old US dollar. And how is that working out? Your dollar has more shrinkage than the guys in the Polar Bear Club on New Year's Day. Meanwhile, at Fredcoin, we don't know beans about money, and 1 Fredcoin has remained equal to 1 Fredcoin ever since we started. QED!

And here's our amazing Presidents Day Fred, White, and Blue Sale: Buy 50 Fredcoin for one Grant, and we'll throw in another 20 for one Jackson! We must be nuts to make a deal like that, I know! Or maybe drunk! Oh ho! Which two presidents have a reputation for being prodigious topers? Aaahhhh, there you are!

Once again, I must ask if you want to be smart like our smarty smart presidents (Washington, Lincoln)? Dumb like our big dumbbell presidents (take your pick)? Or even so smart you come all the way around to being stupid again (Wilson)? Of course not! You want to be with the hip crowd! You want Fredcoin!

So remember, my fellow Americans, turn that flimsy US currency into rock-solid Fredcoin! And keep flying the Fred, White, and Blue! 

Between hibachi and low tide.

Surely no art form has managed to combine cooking, comedy, prestidigitation, and danger as the hibachi. 

We were at a celebratory dinner the other day and got a table with its own little griddle. "Griddle" seems like an insultingly low-class term for the art of the hibachi chef, to be frank. It comes from the Middle English gredil, or gridiron, but the flat surface isn't a gridiron, which is a grate. Another area where English has let us down.

You have to admire the showmanship of the hibachi, even if you don't like the food, although I do. The chef generally has a repertoire of stunts and jokes, flinging raw eggs and flipping things in his hat and whacking things to pieces and making ingredients dance and sing. This is always accompanied by good cheer, no matter how many times they've had to do the act that day, no matter how grumpy the patrons may be. These guys are pros.

And they're not always guys! For the first time at this restaurant we saw a female hibachi chef. She wasn't feeding our little crew, but I could see her in action, and she was doing her own version of the act. I guess she has broken the glass shīringu.

I have heard that traditionally in Japan, as in many places, chefs of any rank are considered menials, barely worth noticing. It seems strange for a country that gave the world the goofy Iron Chef, but perhaps that's helped change things. The show was wacky but the contestants always serious. In the West the great Auguste Escoffier made cooking at high level a well-respected career. Personally, I have always shown respect to people who are giving me food, if for no other reason than eating it is an act of trust. 

Also, I like to think that in America, we always respect people who work hard. Hibachi chef is no lightweight career. We salute you, chefs! Flame on!

De-meme-ing! Part 2.

As I noted yesterday, my friend Philbin (if that is his real name) was unable to post this hilarious meme of mine on Facebook. It was cited by the FB cops for violating community standards. Yesterday I tried to explain the joke, just in case any Facebook representatives were standing by.

Philbin protested the ban in the same way, arguing to the faceless Facebook police that this is a victimless joke and inoffensive to anyone who understands it. That cuts no ice with the idiots who man the barricades at Facebook. But to his credit, Philbin then decided to push the issue, risking time in Facebook prison, to find out what problem the idiots at Facebook have with this meme. 

Was it the template?

The template is a picture of conservative comedian and podcaster Steven Crowder, who appeared on a college campus with a sign saying "Male Privilege Is a Myth / Change My Mind". Crowder is a happy warrior, ready to take on anyone. After he posted this picture in 2018, it immediately became a meme, with all kinds of challenging statements, like "A Hot Dog Is a Sandwich/Change My Mind". People who never heard of Steven Crowder have used it. Others have made anti-Crowder statements with it. It's a meme; that's how they work. 

Is it offensive just on its face? My friend posted another, even more anodyne gag with the same meme to see what would happen. 

He did not get an angry warning about this one. However, he also did not get a response from his FB buddies, not even a mercy like. He checked his feed and discovered that the joke had mysteriously disappeared. Was it an accident... like a Russian window fall accident, hmm?

So he put this one together and posted it.

That did it.

You can disagree with the decision on one hand, and crap in the other, and see which fills up first.

Okay, so what is the problem? Do they hate Crowder? Many people on the left do. He makes fun of them, often in childish ways. Only leftists are allowed to make fun of people, especially in childish ways. 

Once more into the breach! Philbin made and posted this one: 

You can't get more Crowder than that, and yet it was allowed to stay.

We put our heads together (clunk ouch!) and decided that the "Change My Mind" meme has somehow gotten flagged as is at FB, regardless of how it's worded, either because people were using it for genuinely offensive content or (more likely) because it was being used to actually challenge people's beliefs, and that gave people the bad feels. It's hard to tell, but from all the information coming out about the willingness of Silicon Valley to censor "enemies" and how what most Americans believed in 1983 would put them on the "enemies" list now, I think it's safe to say Facebook is ceding to the usual crybullies on the left over this. And many of their employees are the crybullies on the left. But that's all just conjecture.  

What can we say for certain? That no one at Facebook has a genuine sense of humor or irony, and probably doesn't know anything at all that happened before 2010. That they don't believe in free political speech in any significant way, and think plugging up one meme is going to change anybody's mind. Irony alert! 

It's all just further confirmation that everything is the world is being run by the worst possible people. We have military brass who can't win a war, comedians who aren't funny, schools that can't teach, politicians who can't lead, singers who can't sing, corporations that can't make money, representatives who hate their voters, an entertainment industry that doesn't entertain, surgeons who mutilate patients, an energy sector that won't provide reliable energy, information technology that spews horse crap, religions without God, and social media that's antisocial. Everything must be sacrificed if it leads to that bright socialist future. 

That's a lot of gloom for one little meme-ban, I know, but it's hard to shake the feeling that everything is geared toward trying to make our lives harder, more expensive, more miserable, and definitely less funny.

De-meme-ing! Part 1.

A friend of mine (let's call him Philbin) wanted to post my super-hilarious and super-dated meme about Tommy Chong and Foster Brooks on Facebook. Much to our mutual surprise, Facebook's idiot censors rejected the post, saying it was offensive (violating "community standards," which would imply that the "community" is made up of drooling morons).

So, as a public service, I thought I had better explain this joke. I figured that they didn't get it. I have often said that dissecting a joke is like dissecting a frog, in that you can do it, but don't expect the frog to jump afterward. Nevertheless, since our Social Betters are A) stupid and B) ten years old and "literally know nothing," I thought I had better explain it from top to bottom. 

Don't worry, Facebook censors -- I am typing this slowly because I know you don't read very fast. Okay, here goes:

1) Tommy Chong:

Tommy Chong is a comedian and comic actor, best known as part of the duo Cheech & Chong with Cheech Marin. Chong was born in 1938, so he's not exactly some brash newcomer of whom Facebook could not be aware. Cheech & Chong were famous for drug-centered humor, as witnessed in their first comedy album, 1971's Big Bambu. They later made the most marijuana-soaked film ever, 1978's Up in Smoke. The movie was well-regarded among connoisseurs (my elder cousins) for gags like the pot-smuggling van made entirely of compressed marijuana and the drug-sniffing dog that gets killed just smelling it. Chong wasn't just kidding around -- he became a marijuana activist and longtime fighter for legalization. So Chong's connection to marijuana has been pretty well established for more than fifty years. 

2) CBD:

As has been recounted on this blog, CBD, or cannabidiol, is the magic compound in marijuana that doesn't get you high (that's Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC) but supposedly cures everything. Maybe some people really have found relief from these CBD products, but the few people I know who tried them thought they were disappointing. I begin to suspect it was just a means of promoting the agriculture of marijuana, as George Washington Carver developed more than 300 uses for peanuts to help peanut agriculture. The difference is, most of Carver's inventions were useful. Be that as it may, Tommy Chong went all in on this, promoting his line of hemp-based products, notably those containing the magic ingredient CBD. So it's no offense to anyone that this former star stoner is promoting CBD; it's exactly the truth.

3) Foster Brooks:

Foster Brooks (1912-2001) was a comedian who had one schtick, but he was exceptionally good at it: He was a drunk. He had the knack for coming across as a cheerful, befuddled drunken man trying very hard not to appear drunk, and would stumble over words and make unusual statements in a way much funnier than any real drunk. In reality, Brooks was not a drinker, or had not been for many years when he became famous doing this bit. 

4) O'Doul's:

O'Doul's is one of the first successful U.S. brands of nonalcoholic beer, or rather beer with trace amounts of alcohol in it. This Anheuser Busch product has an alcohol content of .4%; a regular Budweiser has an alcohol content of 5%. So to get the buzz from one lousy can of Bud, you'd have to drink 12.5 cans of O'Doul's. It's still not recommended for people in recovery from alcohol addiction, but you can imagine how insanely difficult it would be to get loaded on O'Doul's. 

5) The Punch Line:

The comparison, then, is a simple one, that of a famous stoner who sells marijuana products that don't contain THC to a famous drunk selling beer that doesn't contain alcohol. Both guys were comedians who made a lot of comic hay playing people whose addictions were way out of control but were still funny to watch. So the meme is challenging others to disprove that this is a valid comparison. (This could be done by pointing out that Chong is still using pot while Brooks was not using alcohol, for one thing.)

6) Facebook:

So what's the problem? Does Facebook just not have a sense of humor? Well, no, it doesn't, because it's run by SJWs, but is that the whole problem?

Well, Philbin continued to investigate, and what he turned up is shocking! Tune in tomorrow for the revelation -- it's amazing! And if you disagree, change my mind! 

No man winter.

I don't want to jinx us, but except for a couple of nasty cold snaps, this has been the easiest winter I remember, and I remember a few. The worst weather we have had so far in New York actually started on the first day of winter. It was no joke -- Buffalo got it horribly, and with a body count. But since then it's been very light. When we have had precipitation, it's been warm, so it's been rain. And, Mr. Snow Miser, for the record I am just fine with that. Why, it's like living in the south!

Usually when the winter is warm in this neck of the woods you hear a lot of wailing about global warming, but not this year. No one wants steady, freezing cold, with back-breaking car-wrecking ice and snow measured by the yard. Maybe the big-time climate chaos enthusiasts are thinking, Well, Miami, sucks to be you, but I'm digging this. And I think they can probably relax about Miami too. (Remember the #1 rule of Climatology: If it fits the Narrative™, it's climate; if it contradicts the Narrative™, it's weather.)

Having said all this, I do seem to recall Januarys and Februarys that were deceptively mild, followed by Marches that were -- to put it mildly -- bastards. The worst is when we make it to March 21, or whatever day the vernal equinox falls on that year, and think we're home free, and BLAM! Blizzard. 

So you can bet I'll be keeping a weather eye on things here, and if we do get smacked late in the season, you can bet I'll be linking back to this page. Heat Miser is at his weakest early in the spring, and Snow Miser thinks it's funny to drop a bomb on us just when we think we're safe. Keep watching the skies!

Known for shoddy construction.

 

Collateral stinkage.

Yesterday morning I was walking the dog when we came upon the scene of an attack. It was dark, and we were walking the Big Loop, which as its name implies is a long street that leads us back to the street that takes us home. We were at about the halfway point when the evidence of a violent encounter became clear. 

When I say "violent encounter" I mean probably no one got physically hurt, but I'll bet something got a full-frontal skunk blast. 

I've been in cars and buses and on trains when we've passed the scene of a skunk run-over or a skunk attack, and the odor hanging in the air is a shock, but quickly gone -- although never as quickly as you might expect. It clings. Here it clung and how. There was no evidence of a skunk vs. car situation, so I suspect a critter decided to tangle with a skunk and lived to regrets its decision. The farther we walked into the cloud, the stronger it got; it would ease up a little due to that wonderful invention called olfactory fatigue, and then incredibly it would return, stronger and stronger, when you wouldn't think it possible. I expected to be able to see it, like mustard gas in a World War I movie. 

Eyes watering, we persevered. It seemed to go on for a good half mile. Hard to tell because of the curve of the sidewalk. There was no breeze blowing, though, so that cloud of punk just sat there. Whatever riled up the skunk got both barrels.

Don't look so flipping innocent.

I have nothing against skunks, really. They eat bugs, which I endorse -- not for me, but for other mammals and for reptiles. (Eat all the bugs!) And they have a unique self-defense mechanism. Everything is entitled to try to defend itself. Like porcupines, they only have one trick, but it's a winner.

The skunk can shoot its little anal weapon about ten to fifteen feet, and the speed at which it deploys is astonishing. Mental Floss says "Aside from the offensive smell that lingers for days (or even weeks), the spray is intensely irritating and can cause temporary blindness in anyone unfortunate enough to get caught in the stream. Even if you're nowhere near the scene of the spray, you could still suffer the unpleasant consequences: People can detect the scent from up to a mile downwind." When Tralfaz got skunked years ago, it did take weeks to get the lingering funk off him. He'd gotten shot right in the mouth, and you could smell it on his breath the whole time, like he'd been drinking Skunk Vodka.

Weiler Woods for Wildlife tells us that the skunk has pretty damn good aim with the spray thanks to nipple-like protrusions on each anal gland. (That's like having a heat-seeking hand grenade -- which is to say, accuracy is not super important but still improves effectiveness.) They can shoot up to six times, like an old Colt revolver, except it takes them even longer to reload -- about 10 to 14 days. 

Fortunately, baby dog Izzy has not been so unwise as to challenge the local skunks so far, or any other wildlife. I hope our schlep through the cloud of doom convinced him that whatever made that odor is not to be trifled with. Meanwhile, if it wasn't a bear, fox, coyote, or bobcat that got the skunk treatment yesterday, then someone's house cat had a rude surprise for its owners in the morning. 

🦨🦨🦨

P.S.: This may seem like a strange topic for Valentine's Day, but remember the words of that great social philosopher Peter Wolf, "Love Stinks."

Frecoin Super Bowl Ad!

Well, friends, I hope you enjoyed the Super Bowl! Mostly of course I hope you enjoyed the Fredcoin ad that aired coast-to-coast during the game, and even in parts of Guam! It's sure to be on everyone's Top 10 Super Bowl LVII Commercials this morning. 

Did you miss it? I mean, it was right there, late in the fourth quarter. Actually, it was after the final whistle. A little bit. A couple of hours. Well, just in case you did, you'd better have a look at this baby, because everyone at the office is going to be talking about it this morning. 

 

Doesn't that just have the zingeroo? Gets the visual across with a catchy tune and leaves people wanting more. Like a lot of the ads, it doesn't waste time explaining the product. If you're not cool enough to know what we're talking about, well, I guess it sucks to be you. Or you could just look online and find out that Fredcoin is simply the fastest growing cryptocurrency mentioned in this post. It's true! 

I don't mind telling you we spent a pretty penny on that ad, yessir, a pretty penny. It was a 2018, exceptionally shiny. Minted in Denver, I believe. But it was totally worth it. Our agency, Wahoo Begonia, is simply amazing. Great work, guys! Is that Clio I smell? 

So thanks for all of you who supported us when we were just starting out, a far cry then from hitting the "Big Time." Remember, we're always here for you for all your crypto needs. We'll never get "too big for our britches." We're not even sure what "britches" are, but we'll never outgrow them. 

Oh, and I hope you liked the game. I heard one team beat the other one. That's probably for the best. 

Dog burglar.

Merriam-Webster tells us that the term cat burglar goes back to 1907, and means "a burglar who is adept at entering and leaving the burglarized place without attracting notice". Although it was probably the inspiration for Batman's nemesis/girlfriend Cat Woman, the term seems to have gone out of fashion (just like second-story man) as a means of describing a particular kind of theft. And why not? If you can just walk into Target and walk out with whatever your little arms can carry, why go sneaking around? 

Nevertheless, as a dog owner, I wonder what kind of a thief would be considered a dog burglar. I just wonder.... [Cue wavy fadeout as scene cuts to the sketch]

[Scene: Dead of night, Suburbia, USA]

Wife: What's that?

Hubs: HMph?

Wife: I heard something downstairs.

Hubs: Mmmblmm.

[Hubs schleps downstairs. At door SFX: scratch scratch]

Hubs: Huh? [Opens door]

Dog Burglar: Thanks thanks thanks! I was whining for hours and hours!

Hubs: Hey, wait--

DB: Can I come in? Thanks! Say, where do you keep your valuables? It smells great in here! 

Hubs: Valuables? You got the wrong house, brother.

DB: There! [Opens fridge]

Hubs: That's what you want? You're hungry?

DB: Not really but -- Oh, wow! You got ham and turkey and even cheese! Okay if I steal some?

Hubs: Well, er...

[1 hour later]

Wife: What the hell's going on down here?

Hubs: Hi, honey! We're just having a little midnight snack.

Wife: At three a.m.?

Hubs: This is my new best friend, Finnegan.

DB: Hi, glad ta know ya. I love your house.

Wife: Uh... thanks? Hey, is that the leftover ham? That was supposed to be dinner tonight.

DB: Welp, gotta go! Thanks so much, Sam! I love you. And you too, Mrs. Sam! [exits promptly]

Hubs: What a nice guy.

Wife: Why did he steal one of my boots on the way out?

Meme streets.

Have to get out of the house early today, so I spring-loaded these memes to pop out at you when you opened the page. Enjoy your Saturday! 

The one was making the rounds thanks to Elon Musk--story of my career

Robo Fred.

After I reported on the rise of artificial intelligence used by students to write papers and the reaction by the New York City Board of Ed last month, the problem may have temporarily solved itself. So many people are trying to use Open AI's AI writer that the servers are completely tied up. I get results! 

However, I wanted to get through myself. I wanted to see if I could retire from this exhausting work of blogging every day to have a robot write my blog for me. So I waited my turn to use ChatGPT and asked it to write a blog entry in my style. Herewith the results:

Good morning. This is Fred and I have more updates for you. The weather is all right. The dog is being very crazy today. I am not sure what the problem is. I wouldn't mind so much but the book I am editing is a real crowd-loser. It's called Eat Pond Scum, Live Forever!. I get sick looking at it. It's totally put me off my twinkies. If I have to eat pond scum to live forever, I'm A-OK with dying.

I wanted to buy a cartoon to run in this space with some Fredcoin, which is the world's greatest cryptocurrency, but it turns out the exchange rate is a little lower than I had expected. I needed an electron microscope to see how many Fredcoin fit in a regular dollar. Some people would say only a moron wouldn't find this depressing, but I don't! 

Meanwhile, I am recommending books, which you can find elsewhere, especially the ones I have written. Check them out! Or I will make more bad jokes. Or make you watch the Beloved Mets.

Come back tomorrow -- could be memes, could be cake. It could be memecake. It may be more complaints about the dog. Probably that.

💻💻💻💻

Okay, I was just joshing. After waiting to use ChatGPT for a couple of days, I did what I hope all the students are doing, and just wrote my own piece. 

However, to keep you from being disappointed by lack of AI blogging, I asked one of the AI image generators, Fotor, for a picture of Fred going off to war on a horse, wielding a pen. I didn't say whether it was I or the horse who would be holding the pen. This is what I got:

Doesn't look like me at all. Neither does the guy, for that matter. At least the horse doesn't have a teeny little face.

Old World craftsmanship.

I was looking through the Book of Esther in the Old Testament. Esther is a fascinating book, a story of a narrow brush with destruction for the Jewish people in exile, a history of the origin of the holiday Purim, and a story of how the courage and faithfulness of two normal people can make an enormous difference. It also shows some amazing carpentry work, if you ask me. 

If you're not familiar with the story, here's the setup: King Ahasuerus of Persia gets a new wife (well, a new #1 wife -- he had plenty) named Esther, whom he does not know is one of the many Jews living in the 127 provinces he controls. The king's top man, Haman, just despises the Jews, especially that old Mordecai who hangs around outside the palace. Haman decides he's going to kill all the Jewish people he can get to, and the date is set for a general massacre throughout the kingdom. 

There's a few things Haman doesn't know beyond the fact that the queen is a Jew. He doesn't know, for example, that Mordecai is Esther's cousin and foster father. He also doesn't seem to know that Mordecai saved King Ahasuerus's life by revealing a plot against him -- not that Mordecai ever got rewarded for it. Oy, such ingratitude! 

Haman's skipping along home, knowing that in a few months' time all the Jews in Persia will be massacred. He sees old Mordecai and thinks: I'm happy as a clam, but that guy burns my bacon! If only I could bump him off now! Haman's wife says, well, so what are you waiting for? Just go ahead and have the old man hanged. 

And here's where the carpentry comes in. 

Haman's wife tells him to build a gallows fifty cubits high, and then tomorrow tell his buddy the king he would like to have Mordecai hanged on it for all the world to see. Haman likes this idea fine, and orders the gallows built. So I asked myself, Self, how high is fifty cubits that the palace crew could knock this together overnight?

Merriam-Webster says a cubit is "any of various ancient units of length based on the length of the forearm from the elbow to the tip of the middle finger and usually equal to about 18 inches (46 centimeters)". So fifty cubits would be 900 inches, or 75 feet tall! You know how many things in an ancient city were seven stories tall? Maybe none. And yet by morning the staff has whacked the gallows together. 

Say what you will against royalty and the lack of rights for individuals, but they could get things done. In the modern era, Haman couldn't have even gotten the forms to fill out for a building permit as fast as it took these guys to shoot a gallows up. When it came to murder machines, they were raring to go! 

Now, one of the interesting bits about Esther's book is that God isn't not mentioned in it. Some Bible scholars and others dislike the book for that reason. And yet, the providence of God is evident. First, Mordecai and Esther fast in preparation for the dangerous act of asking the king a favor (to please not kill us all!), which shows they know they need God. Second, the king is having trouble sleeping -- maybe because some fools are hammering away on a building project all night long, who knows -- and decides that good, soothing reading would be to have his scribes "bring the book of records of the chronicles" and read to him. Maybe it was so dull that it would put anyone out. But what part do the scribes just happen to read that night? The part where Mordecai saves the king's life. The king realizes he never rewarded the Jewish man. He decides it's time to do something about that. Sounds like the hand of God was pointing to the page to me,

By the time Haman gets to the office the next day he is doomed, but he doesn't know it yet. Mordecai becomes a public hero, Esther makes a request of her husband, and guess who winds up hanging from the gallows? Yep, and for centuries "Haman's gallows" was a term either for a weapon that turns on its wielder or a catastrophic reversal of fortune.

Anyway, I was very impressed by the building skills alluded to in this story. I'm told that the author of the book of Esther may have telescoped events for dramatic effect, but I don't know. I'd prefer to think that those Persian carpenters (International Association of Death Machine Workers, Local شش هفت پنج) just knew how to get things done. You want to hang a guy? Such a gallows they'll build! One night, no waiting!

More old drunks than old doctors?

In 1953, American businessmen and civic leaders began an anti-littering organization called Keep America Beautiful, which persists to this day. It got a large boost in the sixties, when First Lady Lady Bird Johnson began a campaign called the Beautification Project. The whole ball o' wax probably hit its zenith when a public service ad -- probably the most famous ever -- featuring fake Indian Iron Eyes Cody made everyone feel guilty. 

And yet the litter keeps showing up all the same. 

Usually the stuff I see by the side of the road includes fast-food wrappers and cigarette butts. Sometimes there are soda cans, but more often beer cans, little airplane liquor bottles, and other open containers that would get you in trouble with the cops if they pulled you over. 

So this surprised me. 

I was walking Izzy early in the morning, and he was poking at something on the ground. I wasn't surprised to see it was a bottle, but was surprised to find it was a bottle of Ensure, the nutrition shake generally used by the elderly and other populations who have trouble getting adequate calories. We were on a stretch between houses, so it wasn't likely to have rolled out from someone's garbage. But who would pitch this out of the car?

Ultimately I decided it was an old drunk, a guy whose doctor told him he needed more nutrition and also needed to stop drinking vodka. Well, our drunken driving friend decided he would meet the doctor halfway, and mix vodka into the Ensure while tootling about, making a Poor Old Man's Black Russian. (I guess if he wanted a White Russian he'd use the vanilla.) Having consumed the cocktail, he pitched the vodka-scented bottle out the window and hid the remaining vodka for his next drink. 

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. But if you're abiding out there, Dude, please remember, you're too old and weak to go to prison for killing someone driving drunk. You wouldn't like it a bit. Save your POM Black Russians for home. And please: Keep America Beautiful. 

(NB: The bottle was not actually tested for vodka scent; I pitched it in the trash when I got back home, just in time for the garbage collection.)

The final cut.

"Yo, Phobos, get over here. Got a bunch of new releases from Hollywood."

 

The Hand that writes.

I was asked about writing a religious novel -- not one with religious themes, but a straight-up story where faith is crucial to the plot. And I have to say, while I would love to write a Ben Hur or The Robe or a story set in the modern day where a character's faith is central to the plot and miracles occur, I don't think I'm qualified to write such a thing. I'll tell you why. 

It's not because I don't have faith. I believe in God, I believe in Christ. But I also can't speak for them. A writer of this kind of work generally wants to show the miraculous, if subtle, work of God in action in the characters, and I think that'd be presumptuous of me. I'd be a terrible scriptwriter for the Almighty. 

Little Sally is dying! But her father comes to You and prays! Okay, now here's the scene where You heal Little Sally.

Sally [dies]

What? 

Well, it happens. We know it does and we're sorry it does. God is sorry it does. Dickens was sorry it did when he killed off Little Nell. (Oops, spoiler alert!) It's a fallen world and all too often the very best, most sincere prayers have to be answered with a no. (See also: Gethsemane.) Am I as a writer supposed to decide when God would make that decision? Am I to mislead readers into thinking that's how it works? I get sore enough when I read a historical novel where figures of the past are made to dance to the author's pipes rather than act as the real men and women would. One best-selling novel I refused to finish because I thought it did such a poor job with famous men of the past. If we can't get, say, Wellington right on the page, how are we going to get the incomprehensible God?

This I suppose is why Catholic writers like Evelyn Waugh and Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy didn't write stories where God reaches in and produces desired outcomes. And yet they are (or some are--looking at you, Evelyn) infused with Christian life in one level or other. However, I don't think I'm up to writing those kinds of books, either. 

Faith is the most important thing in my life, and it surely can be found in one form or other in my writing. I just don't think I can make it the utter focus of a book without falling into error. And if I should lead my readers into error, kindly put a millstone around my neck and drop me in the Hudson. I aim to entertain, not lead others in bad directions. 

Dog countdown.

Sometimes it would be nice to have mild superpowers when dealing with dogs. Nothing major, like being able to speak with them or magically ball up the shed fur and roll it in the neighbor's yard. No, maybe like being able to see a glow on the ground ahead where something of interest to the dog lies, so you can slow down for him, or pull him out of the way before his nose gets it. It might save some unpleasant encounters. On windy days like we've had this weekend, it would be a safety feature -- my dog's nosedar gets screwed up when it's blustery, and he'll sometimes reverse direction so suddenly it can twist me like a corkscrew. Wait! I missed something! Damn it, kid, don't break formation! If we went past the target, we'll bomb it on the way back! 

But the best imaginary superpower would be to see how many steps are left before the dog has to 💩.

Under normal healthy conditions -- that is, the dog has not been sick or stuck inside a long time -- dogs always have to walk around a lot before they do the deed. People think they're looking for the perfect spot, le bon endroit, just as Flaubert always sought the precise word, le mot juste. But I am convinced they need to take enough steps to get the missile loaded and ready to fire. It would be helpful to have an idea how many steps are left, especially when time is short or the weather is lousy. It would help me to have patience, knowing when the ordeal would end.

This would be great to know for ourselves sometimes, actually. As WebMD notes, "Exercise helps constipation by lowering the time it takes food to move through the large intestine." You could just check your number before you hit the treadmill. You wouldn't need Metamucil anymore, and thank heaven you'd never need to even consider something like this:

Yes, it's real. I had no idea they had 
competitions.

But alas, my number-viewing superpower is just a pipes dream. I'll just have to be patient with little Izzy as I await his hitting the magic number of a morning. It's usually not too onerous -- he's what we used to call a regular guy. 

Sign of the times.

Well, it certainly was windy in New York yesterday. 

[Audience: HOW WINDY WAS IT?]

It was so windy you could hear the air whistling through our governor's head, playing Billy Preston's immortal "Nothing from Nothing."

As I knock these words out it's a little after six p.m. on Friday. The temperature is dropping to below zero, bringing the ruinous winds, and there are 57 power outrages posted on the local utility company Web site. We've been lucky -- so far. If the electricity goes out our gas furnace can't go on. And we only have one dog to cuddle up to -- everyone knows you need at least three for a bad cold night. 

To show you just how bad the wind was on Friday, here's one of the big signs in our area as I saw it at eleven in the morning:

That sign's been up for over a decade and I don't remember it ever getting whipsawed so badly, not even when hurricanes have crawled up this far north. My wife thought some large projectile must have been flown right through it, but I don't think so. I am not sure if it's appropriate or ironic that the one fix-it store in the shopping plaza, Home Depot, had its sign completely blown out. 

Side view -- I don't know what those signs are made of but they were coming off like shredded cloth.

Mean as this cold snap is, it's not supposed to last. By Sunday we should have a high of 44. That'll feel like a day in Daytona by comparison. 

Stay warm out there, my friends. Human beings are only able to survive this kind of thing because God gave us the brains for it. It's our only natural defense against the elements. Regarding intelligence: I wonder sometimes why half the population of New York doesn't die when the weather gets rough. I've seen how they drive.