Spring training injuries.

It's here! The Mets' first Spring Training game is today! Join us on this first leg of our journey as we follow our pennant-winning season with a second- or third-place finish! 

Of course, when you're a Mets fan you totally expect your stars to suffer season-ending injuries before Opening Day. Fortunately, for minor injuries, we have these! 

Yes, the dollar store provided me with these Mets-themed bandages, complete with Mets logo and Mr. Met on the box. Don't you feel better just looking at Mr. Met? I always do.

Teresa Taylor makes all kind of healthcare products, and they don't just do Mets products, they do all MLB teams. Although looking at the company Web site makes you think Ms. Taylor likes the Mets just a liiiiittle bit more.

Anyway, these are really good adhesive bandages, with lots of stick and a good seal. I'm sure they use these down in the Mets clubhouse. Not sure they'll be particularly helpful when Matt Harvey's arm falls off right after he signs a long-term contract. (Sorry, but that's how it goes. Forget it, Matt; it's Metstown.)

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THRILLING UPDATE: Still sick. Day three. I don't think it's a virus that turns you into a zombie; just one that makes you feel like a zombie. Without the, you know, cranial cravings. Naturally I have an enormous project with a deadline that positively must be met tomorrow. Blarg.

If only.

The cultural history of the 20th century might have been much better. 

(Apologies for the stupid gag; Tuesday I had work but I came down with a lousy cold, so basically I was in a weakened state and this idea made me laugh. Imagine Backus reading Ginsberg poems if you want to turn it around. "You were never no locomotive, my good chap, you were a sunflower!")

Jobs lost to inhuman aliens.

As if we weren't in enough peril of losing our jobs, and voting for crazy people out of rage over losing our jobs, Boston Dynamics has come up with a robot that they say will mean the "end of manual labor." (Hat tip: IMAO.)

Yeah, thanks, ya big bunch of boffins! We didn't need those jobs and that sense of purpose anyway. Hey, how's the novel-writing algorithm coming along?

Don't you guys remember that episode of Super Friends? Well, maybe not, since the ageism in the technical fields is so strident that most of you were probably chewing your pacifiers while watching the first season of The Suite Life on Deck.

But some of us recall "Professor Goodfellow’s G.E.E.C." In this episode, a nice mad doctor comes up with the Goodfellow's Effort-Eliminating Computer, which eliminates all need for everyone to have to work by controlling machines, including robots, to do the work for us. Everybody starts getting dumb and lazy, and when the computer malfunctions, only the Super Friends can save the day.

All the early seasons of this show were pretty stupid and very preachy (you can watch the whole ep for a couple of bucks here, if you must give Google money), but this one had a pretty good message on self-reliance and the value of effort. Also that computers would fail you and cause people to die.

Well, no one died thanks to the Super Friends, but they're not real, are they? But Boston Dynamics is, and it's owned by Google, which sounds pretty similar to G.E.E.C. to me, don't you think? Hmmmm?

I know this is a situation with tragedy built into it; remember, Goodfellow was indeed a good fellow and meant well. But by trying to help humanity he damn near destroyed it. Before all the novels on Amazon are replaced by computer-generated blather, I suggest you check out Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano, the only novel of his I ever liked, but I liked it a lot.

It came out in 1952, a couple of decades before the Super Friends. If Goodfellow had read it, Wendy and Marvin might have been saved a lot of trouble.

All the way with Pengy.

One of the reasons I think I have always been so attracted to writing is that I take stories seriously---maybe too seriously.

When I was pretty small and the Underdog cartoon was on every morning, it affected me a lot. Underdog really seemed to be up against it all the time. The Electric Eel was his scariest enemy, with those mean teeth of his, and that he got his electrical superpowers by accident when escaping on an electrified prison fence---it was horrifying that the means of controlling this evil menace instead empowered him. The Flying Sorcerers were pretty bad, too, turning Underdog into a ball. Overcat was a mean bully of the worst kind. And everyone was sad when Underdog lost his powers and was going to be gunned down by Riff Raff.

Simon Bar Sinister was Underdog's arch enemy, and he was as relentless as any mad scientist. He used his Forget-Me-Net to make Underdog think he was an old lady selling apples (I forget what "she" was called; possibly Caitlyn). He made phone booths into mind-control machines, a plot line Robert Heinlein would have found chilling. And he used his Tickle Feather machine to prevent people from being able to vote, so he and his sidekick could elect himself dictator, two votes to none.

That last one seemed increasingly weird as I got older. Why was someone even able to run for dictator? It's not a typical office in the United States, thank God. And yet the incidence of thugs preventing opposition votes is all too real.

Speaking of elections, another storyline that was very upsetting to me was on the sixties Batman show, where the Penguin runs for mayor of Gotham City. A municipal ordinance allows convicted felons like Oswald Cobblepot to run (unlike in Illinois, where they become convicted felons later), and he makes a great show of it.

The Penguin proves himself to be an excellent demagogue, a real political fiend, throwing fantastic parties for the citizens and making ridiculous but crowd-pleasing speeches. Only one person has the popularity to stop the Penguin's rise, and that's Batman---so the Caped Crusader is obliged to start his own campaign.

Batman, being the cerebral and civic-minded chap he is, runs a dull campaign, focused squarely on the issues that concern the city. Hardly anyone shows up to his events. Meanwhile, the larcenous Penguin, all rabble-rousing showbiz fun, has the city in the palm of his wicked hand. Maybe the people feel that they know him, since he is kind of a celebrity---unlike Batman, who hides his identity. All Gotham seems to forget Penguin's history of grotesque villainy.

The two-episode story made me so sad I didn't even want to watch the second part. If the citizens of Gotham were turning their backs on Batman, I couldn't bear to see it. I remember actually leaving the room (or turning off the set) so as to not see Batman's feelings hurt. Hurt feelings were exceedingly important to me then.

It was not until ages later, watching it as an older, wiser child---maybe eight---that I found out that the citizens voted for Batman over the Penguin after all. He was boring as a candidate and he threw no parties with well-known pop stars, but they knew he was the better man, and they came around. Batman of course resigned immediately, leaving the city in the hands of her stalwart stewards. But he was satisfied that the people of Gotham loved him and loved their fair city enough to do the right thing.

I have no idea why I'd be thinking about this today.

Or would you rather be a mule?

Once upon a time, I, Chuang Chou, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, a veritable butterfly, enjoying itself to the full of its bent, and not knowing it was Chuang Chou. Suddenly I awoke, and came to myself, the veritable Chuang Chou. Now I do not know whether it was then I dreamt I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.

--Zhuangzi

You're a man.

In the first place, while mammals dream, insects don't even sleep as we do. They may be in state called torpor, sort of like you after Thanksgiving, but their little buggy brains don't function the way ours do even in sleep. It is extremely unlikely that insects dream at all. So you're not a butterfly dreaming you're a man.

Even if butterflies could dream, how would they know enough to dream such a thing? Bugs have a very limited concept of the creatures around them, unless they are excited to attack. A butterfly wouldn't know what a man was even if you sat him down and talked about it all day. He could only think of it in butterfly terms, which, let's face it, are pretty limited.

And I don't want to start any fights here, Teach, but I really doubt you ever did dream you were a butterfly. You know what I dream about? My boss is a pest and I don't know how to do my job, I'm on a stage and never saw the script, my fly is open at a funeral, I missed the last bus to someplace I was supposed to be yesterday. I don't dream of being any other kind of animal. How could I? My dreams take my experience and my anxieties and put them through the paint mixer and pour out some stupid concoction based on that. Being a very non-human creature is completely alien, and doesn't come up on Morpheus's Wheel of Fun. Unless you've actually been a butterfly in this lifetime, I flat-out don't believe you could have dreamed you were one.

If you're going to keep up that story, I'm going to want to know how you felt looking at the world with compound eyes, and sucking up your lunch with the ol' proboscis.

No, I smell a rhetorical question here based on a fabrication, and I'm not going to play this game, Teach. Come back when you have a question based on the dream about falling off your house, or your mother catching you naked on the golf course.

Pasta point of no return.

As our journey through the cookbooks and pamphlets I inherited* continues, we come across a famous old brand of pasta I don't see much anymore:

Creamette is a weird name for a brand of macaroni, but it goes back to 1912. It sounds like a dairy product. The story of the name, according to the text of a 1947 lawsuit, goes as follows:

The president of Mother's Macaroni Company, Mr. James T. Williams, in searching for a trade-mark to employ on the new quick-cooking macaroni product, coined the word "Creamettes," and on or about the 15th of August, 1912, Mother's Macaroni Company began marketing said new type of macaroni in cartons bearing thereon as its trade-mark the word "Creamettes", and it then began advertising and pushing it as quick-cooking macaroni.

Williams's big idea was a thinner walled elbow macaroni that would cook faster. The other idea was to put artwork depicting a girl's face on the box, which you can see in the depictions on these big money-saving coupons found in the recipe booklet.

The girl was Margaret Linstroth, Williams's daughter, who passed away in 2004 at the age of 89.

Requiescat in pace.

It would appear that Creamette became the name of the company, while as late as the 80's (or whenever this booklet appeared---there's no date) that "Creamettes" specifically referred to their elbow macaroni. That doesn't appear to be the case anymore, judging from the Web site.

Worse, the girl is gone.

I don't remember Creamette around when I was a kid. We were a Ronzoni family. Every family in New York was a Ronzoni family. Ronzoni was made in Queens. Then Hershey, which owned it as part of the curiously named Hershey Pasta Group, moved the facility to Virginia, in 1993. It had been operating since 1950. And yet New York and its environs are still Ronzoni country.

At that time, Borden owned Creamette, having bought it in 1979. Since this booklet looks more 80's than 70's to me, I'm guessing it was a Borden creation.

I first heard of Creamette when it was a sponsor of the Imus in the Morning show. Imus always said to "look for the babe on the box." Well, no more.

Borden no longer owns Creamette, nor does Hershey own Ronzoni. Hershey divested that pasta group and it became New World Pasta; they acquired several Borden brands, including Prince and Creamette, in 2001, when Borden got out of the noodle business. New World is owned by Spanish food giant Ebro.

Everything is owned by somebody, but that's a blog for another time.

I always look for the worst recipe in any of these booklets, but this one looked tough; all of them were pretty standard macaroni dishes, nothing really startling. Then I spotted this:

Kind of an elbow macaroni pancake with peppers in it, pinto beans slopped on top. Mind you, there's nothing here I dislike, and I think it might be an excellent dish. It was just the funniest looking thing I could find. Let me know if you try it.**

And if you're worried about getting a load of carbs in your diet, look at the little article about the health benefits of pasta up there next to the coupons. Complex carbohydrates are released slowly into the bloodstream! Pasta produced flat readings on glucose levels!

So that's the Creamette story. The Creamette site says they are found in 37 states, but you can see why New York might not be one. When one company owns all the pasta, why would it compete against itself?

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*Previous episodes here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

**I should warn you that the recipe does not appear on Creamette's current Web site, but I have actually seen it online, quoting this very booklet. So someone out there likes it. 

Questions on Lent.

We're well into Lent now -- Easter is a month from Saturday -- so it's time to see how we're doing with our Lenten discipline. Old Fred is here to answer all your questions on Lent. 

Q: Do I have to eat fish on Fridays? I hate fish.

A: No, you don't have to eat fish. You just have to eat no meat. Vegetarians got it made. 

Q: I always heard Catholics had to eat fish on Fridays.

A: During Lent we are supposed to avoid meat on Fridays, but before the reforms of Vatican II Friday was always a meatless day. However, all Fridays are still considered important days of penance and sacrifice (Friday being the day Jesus died), and Catholics are under a grave obligation to observe it, even if they can now eat a hamburger on Friday. As you can see, there's a lot more to Catholic discipline then food. 

Q: Can you, like, eat Spam on Fridays during Lent, since that's not, like, meat?

A: No, we can't. Spam is meat.

Q: Are you sure? 

A: Look, can we talk about something other than food?

Q: You said before that people will sometimes take on a good activity rather than get rid of a bad activity during Lent.

A: Yes. Some people might commit to praying a rosary once a week, or making financial donations, or doing something nice for a stranger daily. Use your imagination.

Q: My boss is an ass. How can I talk him into giving up being an ass for Lent?

A: Is he a Christian?

Q: I don't know.

A: If he's really a mean person, then he may be a ChrINO, or Christian In Name Only. Or he may be something else. Odds are if he belongs to a religious community it does not condone being an ass anyway, but you never know. He could be part of a sect called Pals of Assmodeus, who dedicate themselves to being jerks. What you ought to do is pray for him.

Q:  I should WHAT?  

A: Do not repay insult with insult, or plot revenge. Pray for patience and pray for good things for your boss.

Q: Like an anvil dropping on him from a ten-story building.

A: That's not a good thing.

Q: It'd be good for me.

A: I think rather than worrying about your boss, you may want to worry about yourself more right now.

Q: Would Soylent Green be kosher for Lenten Fridays? It's sorta not meat.

A: I don't even know where to start on how wrong that one is.

Q: These days of abstinence -- does that mean no sex? 

A: No, it doesn't. It only applies to diet.

Q: That's better than Spam.

A: Hormel will be crushed.