A difficult case.

I like my new bookcase, I really do. 

Sort of. 

My old bookcases were pretty cheap and didn't make the move. I got this new one from the Home Depot--okay, it's also pretty cheap, but new! Putting it together was not difficult, but did take a while, and I am happy to say it is a solid hunk of furniture. 

There's just one little problem. 

You may notice that many of the books are on their sides. That's because this item (that Home Depot sold as a bookcase) features shelves that are mostly too close for a standard size book to stand up. Most hardcover and trade paperback books sold in the West, when standing, are nine inches tall. The unadjustable shelving space has a height of eight inches. 

This is not the worst thing in the world by far. But it is rather weird for a bookcase. I didn't realize it until I had assembled it, and at that point there was no way I was going to take it apart and ship it back. 

And yeah, it's fine, no big deal. But still--how did this happen?

I took another look at the instructions that came with the thing, and the truth was made clear. 

AHA! 

So the item that Home Depot sells as a bookcase was actually a Shoe Cabinet all along! 

I wrote to them to alert them to this issue, but they have not made any changes to the listing. Of course. They sell a zillion products on their site and can't be bothered dealing with this, as long as it didn't explode, fall over, or kill ayone, Besides, who really buys books anymore?

Harrumph harrumph harrumph. 

Well, I can live with it. Still, I am surprised anyone would use this as a "shoe cabinet." I don't have enough shoes and boots to fill even two of the shelves. And the boots would be too tall. 

My wife has a lot of shoes and boots, as women often do, but she doesn't want a wooden display case for them. Even sneakerheads wouldn't be thrilled with this; they'd probably want a case with tilted shelves, to display their collection, not a flat shelf where you'd barely see the toe or back. 

It's all crazy to me. But I, of course, can clearly remember an era where people liked to display their books and weren't interested in showing off clothes they were not currently wearing on their persons. Perhaps it's different in Asian countries, from one of which I am certain this "book"case was shipped, or maybe I'm just behind the times. 

In any event, it's one for the books, I say. 

Candy crush and Hurlaween.

Halloween's a comin', Paw, and we may be in danger. 

Last year we got very few trick-or-treaters. The neighborhood was changing; kids who'd grown up there were gone, folks had moved away, houses now held Orthodox families that ignore Halloween and familes of uncertain origin who didn't have kids -- just 23 adults in one house -- or anyway didn't send out any children to get free candy. 

Plus, it was very cold and rainy last year. I know, because I sat on the porch by my stupid self waiting to hand out the goodies. 

New year, new neighborhood, and this one is packed with kids. I asked around: What size U-Haul box truck should I fill up with Skittles to feed the candy-crazed masses? Ha ha, they said, a 15-footer should do the trick. 

Apparently it's quite an operation here in the south. Kids zoom around on scooters and ATVs and in golf carts and expect the adults to be set up at the end of their driveways, handing out goodies. A regular McCandy Drive-Thru. 

I think we'll be all right. But I'm not sure. I have 13 sacks of candy in various sizes (from bag o' 20 servings to monster sack o' 160), plus a few packs small toys that can can be split among the bags as filler, plus boxes of lunch-pack cookies that can be hauled out as need be. No kid, no matter how candy crazed, is going to ignore Oreos. 

I expect to see kids from all over. Wonder if I'll acually see the two next door. They're pretty young, but their mom will not spreak to us. Really, a month and a half and not a peep, despite seeing each other around mowing and stuff. Sure, I might be a weirdo, but come on. All I ask is that people give me one chance before they hate me. Then they can hate me all they want. (But the older kid waved and said hi.)

One more observation as we barrel toward the big 👻💀day: WHAT THE HELL IS THIS? 

"Spooky Ranch"? It took a few years, but kids ultimately rejected Heinz's weird purple, green, etc. ketchup. I can't see them going for diarrhea-colored ranch dressing. If you don't mind how it looks, watch for it in the remainder bin on November 1. 

How Shiloh can they go?

If you think the Ivory Tower creeps are only trying to destroy Israel now, you'd be wrong. 

The bright lights of learning want to destroy Israel in the past as well. 

Out of curiosity regarding the famous 1982 Civil War battle of Shiloh, Tennessee, I looked up the name in Merriam-Webster, the #1 name in American dictionaries. I couldn't remember if it had two H's, believe it or not. But if you think I'm dumb, get a load of this:

I want to point out that Shiloh was NOT a village in ancient Palestine on the slope of Mount Ephraim. Shiloh was a village in ancient Israel. Shiloh was the site of a temple of the Israelites long before there was a temple in Jerusalem. That temple, says Chabad, stood for 369 years. It was in Samaria, but that was part of Israel in the iron age. And all this was long before the Romans stamped their name, Palestine, on this land in AD 135. In other words, Shiloh was founded 500 years before the area was called Palestine by its authorities, so calling this area "ancient Palestine" is ahistorical and should be an affront to Jewish people. 

(Webster's definition of the word Palestine doesn't make things any better.) 

The fun continues in the Encyclopedia Britannica, which owns Merriam-Webster: 

"Ancient city, Palestine" it says, and describes its founding thus. Interestingly, the "Shiloh" entry in the famous 1911 edition of the encyclopedia does not mention Israel -- but it doesn't mention Palestine either. Its description makes it clear that they are referring to a site belonging to the Israelites. 

"Ancient Palestine." Feh. When the editors of Britannica write about one of the native tribes in the Utah area, they don't say that they lived in "ancient Utah." They write that the Paiute, for example, "one time occupied what are now southern Utah, northwestern Arizona, southern Nevada, and southeastern California." But here they don't even say that Shiloh was in "what is now" Palestine; they infer that it was always Palestine. 

While it's true that the Greeks had used the term Palaistinê to refer to the area between Egypt and Phoenecia, that was not what the natives called it. And if you think native preferences don't matter to professorial types, then why is Canada putting aboriginal names to everything in sight? 

We see that it's not enough for the modern academic to want to wipe Israel off the map now; they want it expunged from history entirely. 

I suspect there will be some lame reasons given for their not calling the ancient homeland of the Jewish people Israel, but from what we hear out of academia these days, I would distrust it out of hand. Our universities and institutions of learning, including educational publishers, have not covered themselves in glory in the last forty years. In fact, they have proven themselves unworthy of our respect. 

They are incapable of acting as disinterested keepers of knowledge, and they don't even pretend to. Why would anyone trust them?

Secret construction.

So, what're we building?

Beats me. Well, were I to guess, I would say it's a hotel, and likely a Hampton Inn. Hamptons have that center pile and wings that jut forth from the rest of the builting. They're also usually four or five stories, tops. 

A Hampton with all the doodads on it.

When they were framing this I thought it might be a Home Depot. You couldn't guess by the signs. You still can't. Construction projects in America always used to have big signs with the art from the architectural firm showing the glorious new thing being built and cueing in the citizens to what wonders awaited. 

The project could be a skyscraper; could be a dam; could be a school.* Whatever it was, the sign was intended to promote the community's interest in it.

But on this project, as on most I see now, there's no signage telling you a damned thing. Well, maybe one of the contractors on the project will have put a sign on the fence -- a dirty sign, toted from job to job -- as a way of keeping the company name up:

And that's it. 

I have to think this is part of a growing trend in the last fifty years to object to anything being built, even if the local town or county legislature approved it. Like Rufus T. Firefly, whatever it is, we're against it. Factory? Pollution. Power plant? Environmental destruction. New housing? Brings in more of THOSE people. Shopping plaza? Death to local businesses. Prison? Not here, bub. Road? Noise and pollution. Dam? What about the red-striped pootwangle fish?

No one wants to live next to a prison, but as for the rest, this is not the attitude of a great nation. 

And it's often not too smart. The local government that got elected by promising jobs becomes accused of taking bribes when the ground is broken for factories or shops that provide those jobs. Maybe we'd all like it if the whole town could be completely supported by a Christmas tree farm and a family-owned beeswax candle shop, but that's not how money works. That's not how anything works.

So we feel betrayed, everyone gets mad, the project gets built anyway, and only the lawyers are happy in the end. 

And maybe Joe of Joe's Cement.

This, I think, is why we never see information about the exciting project on signage. The less information, the less chance people will find an excuse to hate it, and go grab torches and pitchforks and cause trouble. 

It's all quite exhausting. 

Meanwhile, I really hope that is a Hampton Inn and not a prison. 

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* My high school was supposed to be a brand-new building, and had the signs to prove it. Then the city teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, and all building projects were stopped. We had to attend the old 1930's building, which was so overcrowded that the fire marshall probably turned white with fear if he ever peeked in. The new school opened the year after I graduated. It looked pretty much like the art on the signs. 

But he got no skin in the game!