A little love and a lotta hate.

Today I'd like to address a more serious, more meaningful topic than I did yesterday, when I discussed dingbats running around accusing people of racism. I don't have time for that silliness on a Monday morning. No, today I wish to address those things on which there is no middle ground; things that generate devotion in a few while sparking hatred and disgust in the rest. 

What inspired this topic was this:

I accidentally brought home a bag of hazelnut coffee from the store, a bag someone had left on the shelf with normal human coffee. I didn't realize it until much later when I saw it in the cabinet at home. Then it went straight off to the local food pantry before it could cause any harm. 

I dislike hazelnut coffee more than any other flavored coffee. My wife does even more so, for reasons I discussed the last time I addressed the hazelnut menace almost four years ago. I actually like hazelnuts, but that overwhelming odor mixed with coffee is just no good. I think many people feel the same way. In fact, it's one of those things that a small group loves beyond measure while the rest abhor with a hatred that makes Emperor Palpatine look like St. Francis. 

What else fits this profile? How about anchovies? Fans of anchovy pizza are few but strong in their desires, which is why anchovy pizza can still be found. The Anti-Chovy party is just as strongly opposed. My wife has a friend in the former camp who can't get her preferred pie because the rest of the family is in the latter camp and won't stand for it. Just the odor ruins the meal, like the guy who nukes fish in the lunchroom microwave. Maybe that's just an American reaction, though; people in Italy seem to enjoy their anchovies. I wonder -- do other regional foods like surströmming, haggis, and lutefisk enjoy wide popularity in their native countries, or are they also mostly shunned as they are here?

Veganism as a class should fit into this, although there is a buffer group of vegetarians. Are the vegetarians further divided between those who think vegans are cool because they're hard-core and those who think vegans are jerks who act all superior because they snub ice cream? Since there is an in-between question, we'll have to say that while some vegan foods do fit into this little-love/lotta-hate divide, veganism itself doesn't.

So what does? Well, it's not just ingestibles that cause this strong divide. Many niche interests do. Without going into miscellaneous fetishes, I think we can list these:

Opera

Bridge (contract or auction)

Wicca

Insects

Swedish cinema

Fly-tying

Most of these are harmless pursuits, but all of them leave me cold. I'd rather spend a night in solitary confinement than have to deal with any of them for an evening. But I don't condemn anyone for liking them -- no, not even the Swedish cinephiles.

What do you think? Do you know of anything that a few people adore that all others despise? 

Words without meaning.

A friend of mine got all grumpy because of some fool online. I told him if he was going to let things like that get to him, he was guaranteed to be grumpy all day, every day. 

He made the mistake of commenting on a YouTube video. I know, I know, but he meant well. The video is was a clip from The Red Green Show, a favorite of mine, Canada's gift to the lost art of manhood. Here's Red telling us about his idea to look younger with a fake ID.

Funny? My buddy thought so. He commented something to the effect that he thought it was a great idea to use a fake identification to seem good for his age, but with his luck it would be of an Asian woman. Because my friend is a white man.

Some jackass pops right up and says "Whoa, racist much?"

Now, if you watched the video, which Asshat obviously did not, you see that joke right up front -- Red saying that when he was a teenager, his fake ID was not too successful because it "said I was a 27-year old Oriental woman." IT WAS RIGHT THERE IN THE VIDEO, and my pal was just playing off the gag. And for that, a kneejerk weenie in Mom's basement with a diaper on his head says....

He did defend himself, telling the moron that A) it was funny because he does not look like an Asian woman and B) watch the video. 

I said he shouldn't have bothered. Penectomies like this guy wait all day to drop the R bomb on people online; it's what they live for. Facts be damned. They're miserable people and they deserve to be, but don't let them be contagious.

Besides, it's a known fact that the word racist is now officially meaningless, much as Orwell discovered the word fascist to be by 1944. In both cases a serious term for an idea antithetical to human dignity has been used so loosely by hucksters and the enemies of civilization that it means anything, and thus nothing. We all know how the game is played now. If you see people as they look, you're racist. If you see people as human beings and ignore physical incidents like skin color, you're racist. If you strive to understand the experiences of people of different races, you're "othering" them or playing the white savior and -- guess what? Starts with an R... 

In order to use racism as a weapon, the concept has had to be defined up to the point where it can be deployed against those whose antipathy toward those of other races is nonexistent, or so minuscule it could not be detected with an electron microscope. Here's how the scale looks as used with other human blights:

Racism --> everybody is racist
Famine --> everybody is starving
Pestilence --> everybody has plague
Addiction --> everybody is continuously stoned
Murder --> everybody would kill other people if they could get away with it

When famine means I can't find my favorite flavor of Baskin-Robbins, the word means nothing. (Whatever happened to the Blueberry Cheesecake ice cream anyway, Baskin? Robbins?) And as K-Von, the world's funniest half-Persian comedian, has said, "Leftists are using the word racist as a catchall for everything."

Racism still has something vaguely to do with race, but calling someone a racist now ought to have lost all its punch. Like Orwell's finding of fascist, it basically means someone of whom I disapprove. Since it is most often fired off by pinheads with nothing better to do, or cranks, slicksters, or academicians, one cannot take it seriously anymore. It's probably worth considering that if stupid people who hate civilization attack you unfairly, you're probably doing something right.

Rain.

This means nothing to anybody, because it's about the Mets, but they've already had seven postponements due to bad weather or Chinese Death Virus this season and we're just over two weeks in. Last night in Denver they were postponed by snow.

Mr. Met doesn’t have a Snow Delay test card.

It doesn't even mean much to me, because I haven't seen a single pitch so far. First, I've been doing a lot of my own work, so I haven't had a chance to watch a bunch of guys who make more money in the time it takes them to adjust their jocks than I do all year. Second, when I was planning to watch a little baseball, the games were delayed and then postponed. And third, Major League Baseball is run by blithering nincompoops who hold their fans in contempt, which makes me very unlikely to want to spend any time with the league. 

The main reason I was thinking about this at all was that I glanced at the National League East standings and was surprised to see that the Mets are in first place. With three painful losses and all those missing games, the Mets have the only winning record in the division at 5-3. (One of the five wins was on a blown call, but when you're the Mets you have to take the breaks when you get them.)

The Mets have played the fewest games in the division at 8; the Nationals have played 10, the Marlins and Phillies 12, and the Braves 14. It's preposterous. 

As you would imagine, the Mets have a lot of doubleheaders coming up now, starting today against the Rockies, if they aren't snowed out again. 

Mets fans are always pleasantly surprised to see the team in first place, because it doesn't happen a whole lot. We savor it while we can. Or at least we do when the commissioner isn't alienating fans with his jackassery. 

For me, I know that this lead won't last, and that it's unlikely I'll watch any baseball this year anyhow. I am too busy scrambling to make a living, unlike the greedy slobs who populate the league. No one needs them, and the league needs to figure that out. We shall see if they get the message. 

Bat cart!

You know, I enjoy my weekly run to the grocery store. I actually do. It is fulfilling in a primal way. I'm a hunter-gatherer, hunting for bargains, gathering the frozen scallops and the Nature Valley bars. Get a real satisfaction from stocking the fridge and the pantry. 

And yet, I too feel that the task is a little humdrum, a bit mundane. I wonder how other guys might accomplish the same thing in a more intriguing way. 

Other guys like... THE BATMAN!

As you can see, with the Bat Cart, Batman is prepared for any dangerous situation that may arise in the supermarket without looking conspicuous. And, as comic book readers know, trouble just seems to find our heroes, even in such anodyne situations. The Penguin's robbing Frozen Foods! Catwoman's in the Pet Needs! The Riddler is changing signs around! King Croc is in Seafood! Have no fear; the Caped Crusader is here. 

It ought to go without saying that James Bond's shopping cart, designed by Q, is identical in every way save the Bat Signal. Q did try installing an oil slick, but since the cart is pushed, it made Bond slip and fall. Cleanup in aisle 007! 

I certainly would enjoy playing with a cart like this, but I suspect that it would get me in trouble quickly. The knockout darts would definitely be used if the dude in front of me had, say, 20 items in the 12-or-less line. Someone blocks the aisle? Bat-tering ram. And then I'd want to drive it home, which would probably play hell with my glass spaghetti sauce jars in pothole season. Great Rao! 

I'd better leave the souped-up carts to the experts. At this point in life I'm just glad to have one with four wheels that can be cajoled to move forward at the same time. 

The next step.

Fred's Book Club: And What About Shrinky Dinks?

It's Hump Day! And that means it's time for our Wednesday book feature, the Humpback Writers! It's the stress of carrying Wednesday on their backs that causes the injury, you know, and.... Oh, skip it. I'm thinking of changing the name of the feature to the U#TIG’Hd836& Writers, which will make about as much sense. 

Today we go back in time, back to our younger days, or even the days before we were born, to ask the musical question... Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops?

Freelance journalist Gael Fishingbauer Cooper and PR agent Brian Bellmont created this project, and publisher Perigree turned it into a book in 2011. It's a fabulous collection of things pegged to the 1970-1990 era, especially for things that kids loved. That's an important feature, because most of us are at least a little nostalgic for the world of our childhood, and because nothing goes in and out of fashion faster than kid stuff. 

The book is a series of articles, arranged alphabetically, about the things of the past, and at the end of each there's a summation of its status in the current time (as of 2011), written as its "X-Tinction Rating." Here's one:

TIME FOR TIMER

TV was pretty lecturey in the 1970s and 1980s. Somewhere along the line, someone panicked that kids weren't eating proper snacks and decided the way to solve that was to offer nutritional advice from a yellow blob of fat with spindly legs and a ginormous hat. Thus, the birth of Timer, a disturbing but memorable PSA star whose segments were apparently dashed off by a bored but starving copywriter who had to make deadline before he could hit the drive-thru for a Big Mac.

     Timer's most memorable video has him "hankering for a hunka cheese," but any kid who needed to be shown how to place cheese between two crackers was really too dumb to be allowed to watch TV. In another, Timer takes a tour of the stomach and then apparently just gives up, encouraging kids to eat random leftovers out of the fridge. "Sunshine on a Stick" oversells the result by half, as it's just orange juice frozen in ice-cube trays. Timer also shows up in a segment demonstrating toothbrushing, which is odd when you consider that his teeth are as yellow as the rest of him.

 

X-TINCTION RATING: Gone for good.

REPLACED BY: Nothing. Television networks have since decided that kids can eat random food out of the fridge without frightening cartoon guidance. 

You get the idea. Each little profile is snappily written, with good humor, and appropriate kudos for products and other cultural phenomena that really came through.

Not everything is X-Tinct, either. Take those Shrinky Dinks:

SHRINKY DINKS

Invented in 1973, Shrinky Dinks brought into play the one appliance that Mom never really wanted you to mess with: the oven. In fact, the whole Shrinky Dink process seemed kind of like a joyous, don't-tell-the-parents experiment. Melting plastic on a hot cookie sheet without getting yelled at? Sign us up! 

     Shrinky Dinks never looked like they were going to work. You colored in the shape, be it a Smurf, Mr. T, or a rainbow-maned unicorn, threw it on a cookie sheet, and hoped for the best. Watching through the oven door, you were convinced you'd done it wrong and nothing would ever happen when suddenly it started to curl up like an old sheet of fax paper. It twisted, and then fixed itself, and the end product was tiny, bright and colorful, and thick and strong. As with Homer Simpson and his Flaming Moe drink, fire made it good.

     Few kids really knew what to do with Shrinky Dinks once they were shrunky dunk. One can only have so many zipper pulls, key chains, and napkin rings, after all. But no one ever thought about that when they were watching the plastic writhe in its little kitchen torture chamber. Sometimes the journey is indeed way more fun than the destination.

X-TINCTION RATING: Still going strong.

FUN FACT: In the 1970s, superheroes were the bestselling Shrinky Dinks theme; in the 1980s, it was the Smurfs. 

And indeed, in 2021, Shrinky Dinks are still out there, making kids ask themselves: What shall I create? And why is the oven door so grungy? Can't see nothin'!

As I noted, the book covers all sorts of cultural items, like typing classes, Bicentennial mania, Roosevelt Franklin, Jolt Cola, Halloween costumes "with unbreathable plastic masks," killer animal movies, Judy Blume books, and Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific shampoo. If you were alive and aware in the United States in the two decades covered, there's some cultural resonance for you in this book.

The authors have since moved on with their careers. They did a sequel book about the nineties, which looks like fun, but the original Web site for the project has been allowed to turn into a cobweb. I guess my looking back at this book that looks back at the past is like being nostalgic for Happy Days ("Fascination with the 1950s" is an entry in the book as well, by the way). 

And say -- before I close this entry, whatever DID happen to Jell-O Pudding Pops? Well, despite their popularity in the eighties, thanks to pitchman Bill Cosby (whose life went in the toilet after this book was published), the company had trouble making a profit from them. Then, "the Jell-O name was later licensed to Popsicle, which reintroduced the Jell-O Pudding Pops in 2004. Sadly, sharp-eyed eaters say its just not the same." And have since been discontinued. 

Well, sic transit Jell-O Pop mundi, I guess.  

Goo housekeeping.

It's happy homemaker time again, boys and girls! Today we're not going to wash our fine washables; we're going to dust our fine dustables. That is to say, we're going to try a product I got in my Christmas stocking, one designed to pick up dust from all sorts of surfaces... or maybe it's intended to turn into a giant town-eating blob. Could go either way.

ColorCoral, made in China (just like COVID-19!), is billed as a cleaning gel on Amazon, a gel that can be smushed on any surface and removed along with the dust, and used again and again. That's it. The jar comes with no instructions but a drawing of a hand pressing the gel onto a keyboard. Amazon's page has some details, however: 

【Universal Fit】ColorCoral cleaning gel, simple and convenient cleaning kits for PC/laptop keyboard 💻 and other rugged surface, such as the car vent 🚖, camera 📷, printer 📹, telephone 📠, calculator, Instrument 🎺, speaker 🔈, air conditioner, TV 📺 and other appliances.

【Safe Cleaning Gel】This universal dust cleaner is made of biodegradable gel, no sticky to hands, smells sweet with lemon🍋 fragrance, no stimulation to skin👌.

【Easy Dust Cleaning】Make sure your hands are dry and clean, 👉 take a piece of the cleaning gel, 👉knead it into a ball, press the cleaning gel slowly into the keyboard, car vent and rugged surface and then pull out, the dust would be carried away with the cleaning gel.

【Reusable】The keyboard cleaning gel could be used repeatedly till the color turn to dark 🌚 or it become sticky, then you have to replace the gel with a new one 🌝. After cleaning, please stock the cleaning gel in cool place. (📌Don’t wash the gel in water.)

【In the package】1* universal cleaning gel, we provide the cleaning gel with 💯100% money back guarantee, if you find the package broken, the cleaning gel dirty, or any other quality issues, please contact us through message 📩, we promise you a free replacement and a full refund.

Soooo... All right! Let's try it!

Right off, we can see that it is a gel, all right. And it does have a slight lemon scent. But don't eat it! (The jar does warn against that.)

I broke some off and pressed it on and about my dusty keys.

I have to admit it worked -- somewhat. It got the obvious dust, but not the more stuck-on bits of debris. (No, it's not salsa stains or anything like that. Well, maybe coffee.) I think the ColorCoral is okay, but for dusting, I think a can of air will do the trick faster, easier, and more thoroughly. Also more expensively; not sure why cans with nothing but air cost more than $5 and don't last long, when spray cans full of actual stuff cost a lot less. I suppose there's a reason. The ColorCoral gel is $7 but can be reused quite a lot. However, I did not find it to be the miracle cleaner I'd hoped. 

It's back in the jar for you now, ColorCoral! Maybe I'll dust some of my bookshelves with it. Meanwhile, it stays tightly closed. Steve McQueen is not around to defeat it this time.