Imprecise language should be next reform

Much has been made of the sheer size of the healthcare reform bill currently being considered by Congress. Hulking, manly legislators who wouldn’t normally allow their strength to be questioned in public were seen staggering melodramatically as they attempted to carry the legislation before cameras, even using little red wagons to assist them. One representative dropped it to the floor with a resounding thud, making some arcane point about sound waves; another threw reams into a cheering crowd of protesters — cheering, that is, until Section 41, Paragraph 32, Subparagraph 15 injured eight.

All reasonable parties in the debate realize that to have a reform package that addresses such a complex issue requires meticulous documentation. We need a couple thousand pages of hopefully precise language, just so we don’t accidentally neglect to mandate that surgeries be sutured when done, or that CAT scans not be given to cats (unless they’re covered by Medicare). We don’t want to end up with tweet-able legislation that remakes our entire health care system in 140 characters or less.

Not sick? Good. Not well? See a doc. Really desperately ill? Consider dying cuz we won’t pay. LMAO

Imprecise language is a problem of everyday life that we don’t need to see codified into law. In fact, I hope that once we can get 535 Congresspeople, a president, 300-million-plus citizens and at least one Fox pundit to agree on insurance coverage, we can start to tackle the confusion that clouds ordinary conversations. I already have a list of “low-hanging fruit” ready for work.

“Low-hanging fruit” — This much-loved corporate bromide is supposed to refer to a strategy in which easily solved problems are tackled first. The next time I hear my manager request it, though, I’m bringing him a larva-infested mango.

“Just a little for me” — A common response when someone is asked “do you want some?”, usually in reference to food, though sometimes sex (which I won’t attempt to quantify here). More concise would be to actually describe the measurable amount of what you request. Often, I won’t want a full cup of coffee but a half doesn’t seem like quite enough, so I might request 65% of a mug. I’m hungry for a substantial slice of pie although asking for half seems greedy, so I’ll request 135 degrees. That mixed-green salad looks good; I’ll take four lettuce leaves, three cherry tomatoes, two onion circles, one cucumber slice and eleven croutons, please. Related to this imprecise phrasing is the haircut request “just a little off the top.” That it’s coming off the top should go without saying, except perhaps in the most expensive salons.

“Let’s turn down the heat” — Does that mean you’re too hot or too cold? Turning down the heater will turn up the temperature, and vice versa. I’m not asking that people dictate exactly what they want in degrees (that should be reserved for pies, as noted above). I just think we need to speak in agreed-upon terms, where up is “warmer” — think about how toasty it is in outer space, if this helps you remember — and down is “cooler,” just like the frosty magma that courses through the Earth beneath us. It’s all about clarity and accuracy, people. Please!

“We’ll do that next Monday” — If today is Wednesday (and it is), next Monday will be here in five days. Tomorrow, however, “next Monday” becomes a week from Monday, or 11 days in the future. If that’s the date you’re going to be discussing, get back to me in about a week because by then we may all be dead anyway.

“Part of me wants to say…” — This is used to communicate a certain amount of self-doubt about the statement that follows, or to escape responsibility in case your idea something like rounding up all the Lutherans and sending them back to Eleuthera. Too often, though, it implies instead that spoken language is going to be coming out of something other than your mouth. Anything you and Señor Wences have to say using your thumb and the lowest knuckle of your index finger (especially if you have lips and eyes drawn onto your hand) is not something that any part of me wants to hear.

“Do you know what I stopped you for?” – Most often asked by the police, though if the phrase interrupts your PowerPoint presentation to the corporate finance committee, you better turn around fast and make sure your laptop isn’t showing Shakira’s shaking hips to your meeting. If asked this by the officer standing outside your car door, do not start guessing assorted crimes in the hope that if you answer correctly, you’re going to get a prize. He knows what he stopped you for, and he’ll be more than happy to tell you. In fact, if you’re lucky, he’ll probably be kind enough to write it down for you.

“Let me know if you want to…” or “Feel free to…” – This passive-aggressive request is often made between spouses, to suggest in a friendly and loving way that you need to get your ass off the sofa and into something productive. Most couples have a relatively equal disposition of household chores, though they’re perception of when and how these need to be done is occasionally at odds. So the wife may breezily say “let me know if you want to climb up on the roof, clear those tree limbs, clean out the gutters, repair a few shingles, then possibly fall to your death, and I’ll hold off on dinner,” to which you’re thinking “oh, I’ll let you know, alright.” Husbands are usually a little less subtle, offering stuff like “feel free to take off your clothes and put on those high heels and cover yourself with whipped cream,” and she’s thinking “you call that freedom?” The good thing about using imprecise language in these scenarios is that you can answer “OK” to the request and not actually agree to do the act, but only to think about doing it (which can actually work just as good for the whipped cream fantasy, though not so much for the gutter cleaning).

“It’s always something” — Well, it’s not always something. Occasionally, it’s actually nothing but the random vibration of vocal chords in the larynx of the first-rate idiot who has chosen to speak to you.

Fake News: It’s like hysteria reigns

WASHINGTON (Nov. 9) — Following House Minority Leader John Boehner’s comment last week that health care reform was “the greatest threat to freedom” he’s seen, other opponents of the plan are stepping forward with hyperbolic metaphors that characterize portions of the plan in similarly apocalyptic terms.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called the provision that creates a so-called “public option” offering insurance that competes with the private sector “worse than if the sun were suddenly extinguished.”

“Health insurance needs private companies in much the same way that plants need sunlight to create food for themselves, which in turn creates food for us all,” McConnell said. “The end of nuclear fusion on our closest star would mean death to every living creature. I wouldn’t vote for that and I won’t vote for this healthcare reform plan.”

Rep. Walt Minnick (D-Idaho) targeted the part of the bill that would set up health insurance exchanges where consumers can easily compare rates and coverage. He said such a marketplace would be “like taking all the puppies in the world and all the lions in the world, and putting them together in one big cage.”

“You can just imagine what would become of those cute little puppies,” Minnick said. “They would be mauled beyond recognition, becoming a giant pile of puppy remains. A forum offering a free flow of information about coverage options would be like the Wild West, except without the beautiful and rugged landscapes.”

GOP Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R.-Ind.) said a mandate that would require nearly everyone to have health insurance by 2013 reminded him of “what it would be like if Hitler hosted a reality TV show along the lines of ‘Dancing With the Stars,’ except with history’s worst dictators playing the part of the experienced dance partners.”

“It would be absolute chaos combined with unprecedented tyranny,” Pence said. “If American citizens, represented by a Daniel Baldwin, for example, are required to choose between an Ivan the Terrible or a Genghis Khan or a Pol Pot, that’s not really a choice at all. Mandates simply will not work — not for waltzing with a despot, and not for being required to purchase insurance.”

Asked to explain how mandating car insurance but not health insurance made any kind of sense, Pence said that in a world that had been taken over by gorillas with giant fangs and where people suddenly sprouted two additional but non-functioning heads — one on each side of their existing head — common sense would go out the window.

Other comparisons being put out as talking points by the anti-reform FreedomWorks lobby include:

• A requirement that health plans allow children to remain on their parents’ insurance plan until age 27 was “like Judas betraying Christ and then posting a picture from His high school yearbook on Jesus’ Facebook page. Totally not cool.”

• Federal financial help for low-income consumers to purchase insurance is “like a trillion gazillion hydrogen bombs all going off at once.”

• A stipulation barring insurers from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions is “like trying to do your federal tax return with your right hand while writing a Christmas letter to relatives with your left hand at the same time, and you’re wearing pants that are three sizes too small and your glasses are fogged up and you’ve got swine flu.”

• A ban on lifetime limits imposed on insurance coverage would be “as if giant aliens — creatures so big that each one’s eyeball alone is three times as big as the Earth — treated our planet like a shotgun pellet and blasted it over a cliff and into the Grand Canyon.”

• The proviso that imposes a 5.4 percent surcharge on people earning over a half-million dollars a year is “like having a hangnail on your toe, then stubbing that same toe, then tripping and falling and breaking your foot, then having gangrene set in causing your leg to be amputated, then having the whole bottom half of your body cut off, like one of those people you see riding around on a plywood board with wheels at the homeless shelter. And then, on top of that, your insurance carrier says having no bottom half of your body is a pre-existing condition.”

Proponents of the reform plan approved by the House over the weekend said they couldn’t understand why such a high level of hysteria had emerged among those opposed to long-needed improvements to the current system.

“It’s like a group of ideologues who care more about their bizarre political philosophy than they do about the well-being of the public have hijacked this debate,” said one of the president’s advisors.

On being Thoreau

One of the great things about keeping a blog is the excuse it gives you to do weird things. As you try to build your experience so you can get more unusual things to write about, you find yourself in places and situations outside your normal comfort zone.

For example, it would never occur to me to go down on one knee at the entrance to the local McDonald’s and take a picture of the sign telling how to navigate the drive-thru. When I wrote last week about my encounter with a “buttinsky” trying to cut in front of me, I thought a photo of the sign telling customers to “circle building for drive-thru” would lend a certain visual appeal to my story. I imagined myself a crusading investigative reporter, hot on the story of a thoughtless man abusing the freedoms on which this country was founded in order to get his Egg McMuffin ahead of me.

After the incident, I’m crouching down by the street, snapping shots of the sign from all different angles, completely oblivious to passers-by wondering what in the world is that crazy man doing? I’m not concerned with what others think of me, because I seek the truth — there’s a crusading cyber-journalist at work here.

I did feel the need to draw the line a few days later when I was preparing my thoughts about falling and becoming trapped in a roadside ditch. I was walking along a heavily traveled highway not far from my work, examining the litter that had accumulated in the weeds. I wanted to be able to create an essay that came from an authentic place (in my mind, not in the ditch) about the refuse that might suddenly become life-sustaining if I fell while running and couldn’t get up. I considered collecting pieces of trash and discarded cans for a photo montage, until it occurred to me there might be passing co-workers who thought I was using my coffee break to make a few extra bucks in the recycling business.

Another thing I enjoy is doing on-line research — okay, looking stuff up on Wikipedia — for background information. In the falling-into-a-culvert post, I wanted to make a joke or two about feeling like Henry David Thoreau communing with the natural world only steps from civilization. I had studied Thoreau and other prominent nineteenth-century transcendentalists in college, and admired their pioneering efforts in the environmental movement and in avoiding constructive work. Reading more carefully now about Thoreau’s personal life, I came to a new appreciation of what a lunatic he was. Were he alive today, he might even be taking pictures at the McDonald’s drive-thru.

What follows are a few interesting facts from his curious biography. Everything cited below is true; if I can’t resist making a sarcastic comment about a particular point, I’ll do that in italic. Wait, that last phrase wasn’t meant to be sarcastic, I just wanted to show what the italic would look like. Like people don’t know what italic is. Like that.

• He was born David Henry Thoreau and didn’t become Henry David Thoreau until college. He didn’t want to keep the middle name at all, but his mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson insisted.
• Novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote that Thoreau was “as ugly as sin, long-nosed, queer-mouthed … but his ugliness is of an agreeable fashion.” He wore a neck-beard for many years, which he insisted women found attractive, probably because it hid large portions of his head. Louisa May Alcott said, however, that his facial hair “will most assuredly deflect amorous advances.”
• He declined his master’s degree from Harvard, in part because they charged $5 for it, and in part because the college offered it to all graduates who “proved their physical worth by being alive three years after graduating” and earning enough to be able to spare a $5 donation to their alma mater.
• He founded a grammar school with his brother John but had to abandon the effort when John became fatally ill after cutting himself while shaving. “See?” Henry told John as he lies dying in a pool of blood. “There are other advantages to the neck-beard.”
• Emerson urged him to start his first journal in 1837, and he did so with the following entry: “‘What are you doing?’ he (Emerson) asked. ‘Do you keep a journal?’ So I make the first entry today.” For the young people out there, I’ll note that a journal is like a collection of tweets, except if no one wants to read it, they don’t have to.
• After giving up teaching, he worked in his family’s pencil factory. He discovered a process to make a good pencil out of inferior graphite using clay as the binder. A pencil is like a laptop, except it can give you lead poisoning if it jabs you.
• In 1844, the original tree-hugger nature boy accidentally started a forest fire with his friend that consumed 300 acres of Walden Woods.
• His two-year experiment to live simply in the wilderness actually took place about a mile from his family home. Some historians claim his mom brought him a goodie basket of donuts and cookies every Saturday. You’d think that last sentence would be in italic but it’s not.
• In 1846, he briefly left the woods to make a trip to Mt. Katahdin in Maine. He later wrote a piece on the expedition that he titled “Ktaadn.” The transcendentalists were not known for their spelling skills.
• He wrote a two-million-word document that detailed his natural history observations over the course of 24 years. It didn’t sell well either.
• One night in 1859, he decided to go out during a driving rainstorm and count the rings on some tree stumps. He became ill with bronchitis and began a three-year decline that eventually rendered him bed-ridden.
• When he became aware that he was dying, he uttered his final sentence — “Now comes good sailing.” It sounds profound, until you learn that it was followed by the single words “moose” and “Indian.”
• Thoreau’s greatness was not recognized by some of his contemporaries in literary circles. Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson said that living alone in natural simplicity was effeminate. He was “like a plant that he had tended with womanish solicitude,” Stevenson wrote. “In one word, he was a skulker.” John Greenleaf Whittier (again with the middle name) said Thoreau wanted to “lower himself to the level of a woodchuck and walk on four legs.”

Revisited: Dispensing with good taste

If we could apply some of the same principles used by manufacturers of toilet paper dispensers to our country’s ports and immigration checkpoints, our concerns about national security would be over.

Bathroom tissue located in public restrooms is way more secure than it needs to be, if you ask me. American industry has developed highly engineered systems mounted in our nation’s stalls that are designed to allow users the absolute minimum amount of product while simultaneously making that product maddening to get at. These hulking plastic cases dribble a thin, single-ply dangle of paper with a fitfulness disturbingly similar to what I’m feeling in my own mid-section while trying to wrestle a few squares free.

Managers of these communal bathroom facilities – in restaurants, offices, government buildings – know this is a service they have to provide free of charge to their customers. So they’re obviously interested in limiting their expense as much as possible without putting their drapes and other nearby textiles in jeopardy. I sympathize with their situation in these hard economic times, but I also have similarly urgent hygiene concerns that need to be addressed. I decided to learn more about the companies that build and market these stingy dispensers.

Not surprisingly, most of them are manufactured by multinational corporations with interests in many sanitization-related areas. They are typically sold as part of a package that includes both the dispensers and the toilet paper, which I guess makes sense if you think about it. (The Pez analogy is one that unfortunately comes to mind; you rarely see the candy sold without the dispenser.) Bay West is one such company, offering a broad array of services in the environmental, industrial and emergency segments. Their corporate motto – “Slide Door Right for More Paper”– is printed proudly on each of their dispensers, and belies their larger mission in fields like brownfield site remediation (ew!) and hospital waste management. It’s good to know they have something to fall back on if bidets ever catch on in this country.

Another name that I came across in my research in the lavatory at a local bagel seller was SCA. When I searched for this firm on-line, I came back with several hits that caused me concern that this trend toward synergy in the industry was spinning out of control. Was SCA the Society for Creative Anachronism? The Student Conservation Association? The Society of Crystallographers of Australia? I could imagine any of these names being euphemisms for the business of helping the public do their business in public, but none turned out to be the company I was looking for. A link to “SCA Armor (Heavy)” seemed promising, considering the amount of protection these devices provide, but also led to a dead end. Finally I was routed to something called “Tork Online,” which referenced an SCA that sold “away-from-home tissue products,” and I knew I had struck pay dirt.

“An in-depth knowledge of our customers’ businesses means our products work hard to eliminate waste, reduce maintenance costs and offer hygienic solutions,” reads the products page. “Our dependable, attractive dispensers are designed to optimize hygiene, function and cost-in-use through designs that reduce consumption and maintenance time, dispense effortlessly and discourage pilferage.” Note that it’s only in the last two words of their blurb that they hint at their true purpose, keeping me and others from making off with free toilet tissue.

A more thorough look at the products section shows a fine array of conventional and jumbo dispensers, and a certain genius of these producers that I hadn’t considered before. The conventional model is described as “preventing waste by dropping a reserve roll only after the primary roll is depleted, keeping the used roll core in the unit and washroom floors clear of debris.” The jumbo model — for high-traffic facilities and, I presume, the waiting rooms of gastroenterologists — offers a “unique tear feature that eliminates the risk of cutting or scratching hands,” convenient for those moments of desperation we’ve all experienced but are too fortunate to remember in any detail.

Another maker is a company called Merfin, which I’m proud to say services my own workplace. With their system, “time spent replacing rolls can be reduced by up to 90%, and savings are increased by reducing waste and over-consumption with virtually indestructible locking dispensers.” I knew over-consumption was the problem that hyper-extended our nation’s credit system, but I never thought of it as an issue in the area of personal hygiene. Who are they to judge what’s enough or what’s too much? Anyway, I will give them credit for coming up with a cool trademarked and intercapped name for their line – VersaCore, offering the most versatile (bold italic theirs) tissue dispensing options in the world.

Finally, I want to reference probably the best-known company in this field, Georgia-Pacific. I didn’t go to their website because I found out enough to convince me that they are the future of public bathroom tissue during a recent and urgent visit to the toilet in the new upscale Barnes & Noble not far from my home. This casing, while still made of the traditional PMMA polystyrene that seems to be an industry standard, features a stylish, sloped front-end and an overall design that would be at home in the lobby of Europe’s trendiest boutique hotels. I was so impressed that I took a picture with my cell phone, even at the risk of criminal prosecution and a probable listing on certain predator lists. (I’ll include the photo with this posting if I can figure out how to get it off my phone and onto my computer). Even better, it dispensed paper easily in a free-flowing, luxuriant manner that tempted me to roll a mound out onto the floor and lay down for a nice nap.

Revisited: Happy Birthday to me

Yesterday was my fifty-sixth birthday. To honor the occasion, I’m reprinting the post I wrote for my birthday last year.

Today I celebrate what I calculate to be my fifty-fifth birthday. When you have to do the math to figure your age, you know you’re old. When your subtraction neglects to borrow from the hundreds column and you mistakenly calculate your age to be a negative number, you know you’re really old. With this birthday today, I think I’ve passed that threshold.

There are no party plans or other significant celebrations in the works. It’s a Thursday and we’re all still real tired from staying up for the election coverage the other night, so a party isn’t really practical (not to mention that I have no friends). My immediate family will be acknowledging me with cards, gifts and a special dinner that my wife is preparing. I got a few “happy birthdays” from my coworkers and I’m looking forward to a phone call from my parents tonight. But other than that, I’m on my own as to how I’m going to be receiving any unique treatment today.

It’s just the regular workday and the regular routine, so there’s not a lot of merriment I can inject into the occasion. I get up at 4 a.m., arrive at work by 5, take a lunch break around 10:30, get off at 1 p.m., stop by the Y for a workout, etc., etc. But I have managed to find a few small ways to honor myself on the anniversary of my birth.

• I skipped flossing today. This part of the morning bathroom routine is always a challenge, and I know I’m not really treating myself by increasing my odds of tooth loss. But there’s not much fun to be found at this hour of the morning, and it seemed like more of a tangible treat than my other idea – to slather a little extra mayonnaise on the turkey sandwich I prepared for my lunch.
• I chose a frayed, comfortable shirt to wear into the office. We don’t have much of a dress code, primarily because we don’t have much customer contact. I still like to wear a nice pair of business-casual slacks and what I guess is called a dress shirt. The one I picked out today isn’t what you’d call tattered but it has seen better days, like when I bought it for $2 at Goodwill about four years ago.
• Today is recycling day in our neighborhood and it’s my job to haul the bin down to the curb. When I collected the assembled piles of newspapers, junk mail and magazines from the counter and carried them out to the driveway, I chose to toss a small batch of cardboard into the regular garbage, just to lighten the load of the bin by a half-pound or so. Sorry about that, melting glaciers.
• Shortly after I arrived at work, my closest associate Arnie (a fellow Fifty-Something) gave me two slices of bread as a birthday present. It’s not as pathetic as it sounds. He bakes bread in a bread maker at home and this was from a nice dill and caraway seed batch he made just a few days ago. It was a little dry and a bit too seedy for my tastes but it was definitely not pathetic. He also gave me a Zip-Loc bag.
• Though our workload has increased in recent days because of an upcoming quarterly deadline, I still had excess time to kill and used a game of Scrabble with another co-worker to help with the killing. I usually think it’s pretty bush league to play two-letter words. However, today I indulged myself by using not only “oy,” but also “oi” and “oe.”
• Every time Arnie asked me a question or if I could help him out with a particular project, I responded by saying “Depends.” Incontinence humor is becoming a much more significant amusement for me than is probably healthy.
• For my lunch break, I decided to take a 10-minute walk to the neighborhood diner. It was a beautiful day for early November, sunny and approaching 70. Though I didn’t stop along the way to smell the roses, I did pluck a wilting gardenia flower from a bush outside the diner and detected a slight pleasant scent before it crumbled in my hand.
• I bought a cookie. I was going to use the change from the purchase to buy a local newspaper but as luck would have it, the change came out to be 48 cents and the newspaper stand required 50. I asked the diner cashier for change for a dollar and she declined, citing a critical lack of quarters in face of the upcoming lunch rush. Times are tough for everyone. I did find an abandoned USA Today in one of the booths, and that’s kind of a newspaper so I settled for that.
• While reading the paper, I indulged in one of my traditional birthday customs. I always read the column that lists which celebrities are also having a birthday today, and try to figure which of them I can beat up. I’d honestly have to say I’m in pretty good shape for a 55-year-old and I think I can still take screenwriter Mike Nichols, actress Sally Field and (probably) California First Lady Maria Shriver. I’d probably choose to run from a tussle with actor Ethan Hawke though. On the “Birthdays in History” list, I feel confident that I could soundly whip March King John Phillip Sousa were he still among us.
• Walking back to work from the diner, I took a scenic back road rather than risking my life along the shoulder of the truck-choked main highway. There’s no noise and no exhaust fumes and quite a few picturesque hardwoods, though the pastoral mood is lessened somewhat by the cinderblock back wall of a storage facility featuring the spray-painted message “redrum.”
• Not many opportunities for self-indulgence during the final 90 minutes in the office. Afterward, I climbed in my car and headed home right on time. When I hit the interstate segment of my drive, I decided I could splurge a little by declining to use the cruise control and instead went about eight miles an hour over the speed limit. You don’t get much opportunity to live life on the edge when you’re more than halfway through your fifties so I’ve decided to make the most of what time I have left.
• When I got home, I took a nap. Not that this is really anything all that special, since getting up at 4 in the morning each day makes the nap a necessary part of staying up past sundown.
• When I woke up, I headed off to the Y to end my day with a run on the treadmill. You might think I’d use my birthday as an excuse to skip the exercise for just one day, but I’ve found running to be so relaxing and so addictive that it would ruin my day to miss it. I did make a few concessions – I set the speed on 5.4 mph instead of my usual 5.5 and I brought the machine to a halt after only 25 minutes instead of my usual 30. If I ever used the incline feature, I could’ve cut back on that too. Maybe I should’ve tried putting the setting down below zero to see if I could achieve a negative incline, which would allow me to run downhill. On second thought, I’m probably headed downhill fast enough already.

Website Review: dbmassage.com

It must be tough living the life of a professional massage therapist.

On a good day, you spend your time working the muscles of well-heeled strangers, occasionally placing a hot rock on their backs or perhaps applying soothing unguents to the crevices between their toes. They’re relaxed, pampered, on the verge of a physical and spiritual rejuvenation, while you’re using your years of schooling in the ayurvedic arts in hopes of making enough tips to repay your student loan.

On a bad day, you’re clarifying your skill sets to a befuddled long-haul trucker whose interest in “massage” begins with the second letter of that word and ends with the fourth.

A proficiently administered massage, in the hands of a trained masseuse, can be a wonderful thing, bringing a sense of well-being to bodies over-exerted by the stress of everyday life. It’s a chance to step back from the rat race and give in to that guilty pleasure you’ve secretly harbored for new-age music and scented candles. Unfortunately, its image is too frequently sullied by purveyors of another, lower-class type of rubbing — the “adult hostess” whose “escort services” include “massage” along with posing, squatting and as much fondling of themselves as of others.

I wouldn’t claim to know anything about this baser style of entertainment, not in a public blog any way. But I have had an authentic, above-board massage on several occasions, and I’m sure I would’ve enjoyed it immensely if I weren’t scared witless by physical contact with others. So I thought I’d investigate the ins and outs of therapeutic massage (though I understand they don’t like the term “ins and outs”) in this week’s Website Review.

For my subject, I’ve chosen the site dbmassage.com. Obviously, they don’t do the massage through the website; you have to show up at their salon in a major city not far from my home. The “DB” in the name stands for Day Break, not for “denuded bodies,” not for “don’t blow,” and not for legendary hijacker D.B. Cooper, the guy who extorted $200,000 from Northwest Airlines and escaped via parachute over Washington State in 1971 (after all, why would you touch strangers if you had two hundred grand in ransom cash?).

Day Break’s home page is a simple affair, featuring a large close-up of either a bowl of jasmine petals gently floating in water, or an especially thin cabbage soup. You’re invited to “enjoy a respite from your hectic schedule,” and you don’t have to feel guilty about it because “massage is no longer a luxury, it is a healthy necessity,” though they do note elsewhere that it’s not covered by any insurance plan known to mankind.

Under the “Day Break Difference” heading, they describe their focus on offering “the best possible massage experience for the client, not on the quantity of massages performed,” so you can linger peacefully on a table rather than being rapidly kneaded in passing. All massage therapists must clear an extensive background check, because nothing ruins a soothing diversion like the fear that there’s a registered sex offender hovering inches above your half-dressed form.

The “Benefits of Massage” are described as “numerous and significant.” The style they use most often incorporates “touch therapy,” which I would think is a good idea for virtually any massage. Practitioners focus on “soft tissue dysfunctions” (the tissue may later become hard), and might provide “dramatic results” for conditions as unlikely as asthma, depression, gastrointestinal disorders, high blood pressure, and scarring. Their “knowledge of anatomy and physiology” will guarantee that they don’t accidentally massage your face when your biggest complaint is abdominal bloating.

I won’t name the individual staff members listed on the site, but you can trust that they are “passionate” about their work, travelled to Thailand, got an MBA from Wake Forest, or first became interested in massage while working for a dentist. Several of them are LMBTs (Licensed Massage and Bodywork Therapist) and at least one of the therapists has pursued additional coursework in something called “myofascial release” (hello!).

The “In-Studio” experience can generally take the form of one of three styles: therapeutic massage, sometimes called “Swedish”; neuromuscular and trigger point therapy, which “balances the person’s body over gravity” (presumably so you won’t go floating away during your session); and pregnancy massage. All three are reasonably priced between $65 and $75 an hour, certainly more expensive than the therapeutic benefits of a haircut but not as costly as legal advice. For only $20 more, you can get an additional 30 minutes of manipulation, a remarkable deal that makes me suspect you’re actually unconscious at that point and they’ve gone out for a bagel.

Finally, I’ll summarize a few of the Frequently Asked Questions. When should you NOT get a massage? If you are ill with an infectious disease, a fracture, or have open skin lesions, though the therapist will be willing to work around the latter if they’re localized and not actively oozing. What should you expect during your massage? You should talk with your masseuse before-hand to “determine what massage modality best fits your needs,” likely to include “vibration, percussion, effleurage, petrissage and whatever they think will work best for your muscles.” How should you dress for your massage? You can dress or undress to your comfort level, even leaving garments on, which the therapist will work around “as best they can.” I’d probably be most at ease in a full business suit, which hopefully they could massage through.

As for the proverbial elephant in the room (who, I imagine, would require one of the 90-minute sessions), they answer the question “what is NOT appropriate during a massage?” The following are strictly forbidden: foul language, arriving intoxicated, or “asking for more than a massage, i.e., sexual favors.” These can result in termination of the relationship, or simply allow you to take it to another level. However, “it is OK for your therapist to massage your buttocks/gluteal muscles.”

I guess using the term “gluteal muscle” is one way to keep those truckers at bay.

Fake international briefs: European edition

Scientology: C’est hilarant!

PARIS (Nov. 3) — French authorities defended a weekend court ruling that convicted the Church of Scientology of fraud and fined it almost $1 million, claiming that the faith’s basic tenets were “simply way too hilarious” to merit official recognition as a religion.

A Paris judge stopped short of an outright ban on the group’s activities. The church, which has attracted celebrity adherents such as Kirstie Alley and John Travolta, has a long and controversial history in Europe, with many claiming it should instead be considered a business, although a really, really funny one.

“The French have a proud heritage of appreciating the absurd, going back to playwrights such as Camus and Beckett,” said ministry of culture spokesperson Philippe Tardieu. “But seriously, you can appreciate the randomness of existence and the ridiculousness of the human condition without building a religion around it.”

Scientology preaches that the “thetan,” the equivalent of a spirit, can be cleared of negative energy from this and previous lives through a process called auditing. With the aid of auditors, followers seek a state called “clear” and then advance through various levels of the “operating thetan.”

“Stop it, you’re killing me,” Tardieu said. “I’ve got you on speakerphone here, and this whole office is just falling out. Quit, please.”

The minister noted that his countrymen appreciated contributions to their flourishing comic scene from such well-regarded Americans as Jerry Lewis, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Memphis Grizzlies reserve guard Allen Iverson. But he insisted that Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard was more pretentious than ludicrous, citing his use of an initial to replace his first name. He maintained that “if Hubbard was all that great, how come he’s not immortal, like the splendid Mr. Lewis? Huh?”

Tardieu also challenged the church’s concept of auditing, citing the French-born firm of Deloitte and Touche as recognized experts in the field. He admitted that accounting and similar assessments of financial records could on occasion be preposterous, though they too lacked concepts such as sin and redemption through a merciful God, so they’re not a religion either.

“When Tom Cruise shows up to tell us how wrong we are about all this, I’ll simply quote the master French mime Marcel Marceau,” Tardieu said. “He told us ’                                           ‘. Tom would be wise to model such wisdom.”

3G use getting heavy

BRUSSELS, Belgium (Nov. 4) — Communications experts have reported that the number of Europeans with 3G coverage now exceeds that of the United States, with as many as 70 million people on the continent living in areas where gravity has become three times as strong as normal.

Large portions of Western Europe as well as many nations of the former Eastern Bloc are now affected by the tripled gravitational pull that has taken the region by storm over the last year. The heightened force field has made economic recovery from the global recession considerably more difficult for a sluggish citizenry that even at its most vibrant could barely make it through an eight-hour workday without a wine-soaked lunch.

With many people now carrying as much as 500 pounds on their frames, large portions of the populace can only hoist themselves out of bed with the assistance of a system of pulleys.

It was originally hoped that the advance of 3G technology would herald a new era of productivity. After zero gravity was first explored during the space programs of the 1960s, most of the developed world spent the next three decades pulling a single “G”. Americans pioneered an increase in mass to as much as double their normal weight, but that had less to do with wireless data capabilities and more to do with poor eating habits and a sedentary lifestyle. Now, much of Europe is following the same path, or at least having their servants put them in a wagon or shopping cart and wheeling them on that course.

Experts say that 4G penetration in England, France and Germany will grow by more than 60% by 2010, at which point rising seas will consume subscribers in low-lying coastal areas. Wireless customers further inland will likely compress the ground under their feet to the point where seismic activity opens huge fissures across the picturesque countryside, swallowing millions in fiery death.

Live-blogging from the ditch near my house

My daily jog through the neighborhood takes me past a deep culvert just off one of the main roads heading into town. It’s not a drainage ditch or a creek bed; it’s more like a steep embankment probably built as part of the road construction. At this time of year, the thick grass lining the sides is dry and slick and matted and brown. It looks like a very slippery 30 feet from the sidewalk down to the deepest point.

It would be so cool if I fell in and couldn’t get out.

Maybe “cool” isn’t the right word, but it would be an interesting experience. You read occasionally about well-respected citizens who go out for a drive and are never heard from again, except perhaps 20 years later when their desiccated corpse is found by a utility crew. They veered off the road to avoid a deer and seemingly vanished from the planet. Every now and then they’ll survive on rainwater and gum for several days before gaining enough strength to haul their injured bodies up to the roadside. Then after all that, they get run over. Too bad, but it does make a great story. And the family is usually relieved to have some respectable resolution.

I’ve often wondered what it would be like down there in the ditch, pondering whether you’ll live or die, close enough to civilization to hear it passing by, and yet stuck in a world that is wild and primitive. If this ever happens to me and I happen to have my laptop along (and there’s a decent wi-fi hotspot within range), I’d love to live-blog about the experience.

It might go like this:

4:07 p.m. — Oops … oh no … sheesh … owww! … oof …

4:08 p.m. — Wha’ happened? What … ? Oh, shoot, my leg really hurts. Yow! Oh, hell, I don’t think I can get back up there. Oh, jeez …

4:13 p.m. — Well, that’s just great. I’ve fallen and I can’t get up. I’m like an old LifeAlert commercial. Great. How am I going to get back up to the sidewalk? Ow, my leg really hurts … I think it might be broken. What am I going to do?

4:15 p.m. — OK, try not to panic. I can still hear cars going by so I can’t be stuck here long. If I can just pull myself up this bank, I can signal for help. Guess I’ll have to crawl … ouch! Wow, I’m really up the creek. Heh, heh, that’s funny. Maybe I could blog about this!

4:47 p.m. — I’ve tried just about every way I can think to get myself out of here, but I’m not having any luck. Surely another jogger or walker will be by soon — I’ll yell out to them and maybe they can call for help. If I can find one not wearing headphones, like that’ll happen.

5:13 p.m. — This is definitely becoming a cause for concern. It’s starting to get dark. I know my wife and son are starting to wonder about me by now, but I don’t think I told them which way I was running. I need to focus, I need to think clearly, I need to concentrate on my … hey look — a squirrel with one leg missing!

5:58 p.m. — Wow, this sure does put any other problems I might have in perspective. Worrying about that dental hygienist appointment next week isn’t such a priority any more, is it? I’m going to start throwing rocks at the cars.

6:04 p.m. — Somebody stopped! Hey … help! Help!

6:05 p.m. — No, no, I didn’t mean to hit your 350Z. I was just … Yes, sir, I know I’m too old to be throwing rocks, but if you could just … Mister! Don’t leave, please!

7:50 p.m. — What are people going to think about this? They’ll probably think I’ve left the country, that I’ve got a secret second family somewhere. Jeez, I’m lucky to have one that will put up with me.

8:46 p.m. — Man, I’m really starting to get cold. I remember seeing a glove lying over there. At least I can keep my left hand warm. And … a sock!

11:31 p.m. — Getting so sleepy … What am I going to do without my Ambien tonight?

6:14 a.m. — Wow, I can’t believe I’ve been here all night. Unbelievable.

6:58 a.m. — It sure is beautiful out here early in the morning. The air smells so clean. Really makes you appreciate how nature can be close to home, and yet still exotic and wild. I think it was Henry David Thoreau who said it best, while he spent two years living in the wilderness on Walden Pond. He was fond of saying … Hey — jogger! Down here! Down here! Help!

7:26 a.m. — At least it’s getting light enough to see. Maybe I can look around and find something to eat. Is that a can of potted meat product? Maybe there’s a little left inside … nope, just ants. How can they eat that stuff? Hey, there’s a mayonnaise packet and I think I saw — yes, a grape jam packet from Bojangles. I can make dip!

7:44 a.m. — I think I smell pineapple or coconut. Oh, shoot, it’s just a discarded air freshener. I’ll hang it from this tree branch. Might as well make it things home-y if I’m going to be here a while.

8:22 a.m. — So thirsty… If I take this old sippy cup lid, and stuff a bunch of cigarette filters in it, maybe I can strain some water from that puddle over there and get a drink.

11:14 a.m. — Starting to get dizzy. Sure wish I could find something real to eat. You know, this would make a really great weight-loss plan. I’m going to try to sell something like it on the Internet when I get out of here. Wonder if ditchdiet.com is taken?

3:44 p.m. — Must keep my mind alert. Maybe if I found something to read. Here’s a cash register receipt from the grocery store. Wonder what is “FL BKD BEAN HMSTYL”? Sounds good.

4:33 p.m. — Not sure I can last another night. Thoughts turning weird … wonder if that raccoon over there would be interested in joining me in a provisional government. Man and beast, together at last, creating a just and peaceful society. Or I could club him with this stick and eat him.

4:53 p.m. — Hey, doggie! Here, boy. Come here, boy. Yeah, you’re a good boy. Here, let me attach this grocery receipt to your collar and you go tell your owner that there’s an MVP customer stuck in a gully. There’s some rewards points in it for you if you’re a good boy. Maybe even a free half-gallon of milk.

5:06 p.m. — Officer, officer! Thank you so much for finding me. I’m rescued at last! Thank God! Please, call my wife immediately and tell her I’m okay. And if you get the chance later, please check out my blog — davisw.wordpress.com.

That’s me, over on the right

Fake International Briefs: Asia edition

Maybe running, maybe not

KABUL, Afghanistan (Nov. 2) — The leading opposition candidate for the Afghan presidency was reportedly reconsidering his decision late yesterday to drop out of the run-off against current president Hamid Karzai.

“If my assassination or the murder of my every living relative were the only things to worry about, that’d be no problem,” challenger Abdullah Abdullah told reporters at his compound. “But the Americans were telling me I might have to be interviewed on ‘Fox and Friends’ or have my character questioned by the Tweeters on CNN. That is something I could not stand.”

Abdullah said he initially misunderstood the perils involved in continuing his campaign after the August vote put him in second place. International observers feared security concerns caused by a resurgent Taliban would make another round of voting difficult. Abdullah said he was more concerned about media scrutiny than he was about having his hands cut off, or his feet cut off, or both his hands and his feet cut off.

“I am a shy man who just wants to pursue his life’s work in peace, with all my appendages,” Abdullah said. “I don’t need the aggravation of being the head of a failed state, but if my people call, I will serve. Fortunately, we have no land lines in my country and virtually no wireless, so I’m not expecting too many calls.”

Abdullah said he would reach a final decision on whether or not to pursue the presidency in the next 24 hours. He characterized his “life’s work” as efforts to reform the nation’s corruption-riddled judicial system. Even the simplest administrative task tends to get caught up in a web of bribes and kickbacks, and Abdullah has worked tirelessly behind the scenes trying to repair the courts. He is also trying to have his first name legally changed to Jason.

“That whole ‘Abdullah Abdullah’ thing was just too confusing,” he said. “Everybody wants to make joke.”

The former doctor may find he has some unexpected competition if he does decide to return to the political arena. His vice-presidential running mate from the first round may also be joining the race.

Saradullah Saradullah, who describes herself as “just an everyday hockey imam,” may decide to challenge both Karzai and Abdullah. The former governor of Badakhshan province, that squiggly part in the far north of the country, said her knowledge of local tribes and customs would allow her connect with the common man. She said she could also help advance the issues of women, assuming that’s what’s scurrying around the marketplace under those burkahs.

“Plus, I have advantages I can bring in the area of foreign affairs,” Saradullah said during a satellite conference call with potential supporters. “I can see Osama bin Laden from my front porch. In fact, he’s mowing his lawn right now. Oh how I wish he would put a shirt on.”

North Korea blames WordPress

SEOUL, South Korea (Nov. 3) — The North Korean government denied charges yesterday that it was behind a series of high-profile cyberattacks last July that caused Internet outages in the U.S. and South Korea.

“The people’s glorious republic was simply trying to put up a new post on its WordPress blog, and things got a little out of hand,” said communications ministry spokesperson Joong Kim. “That HTML editor is almost as unstable as we are.”

Kim said his nation’s efforts to compose the post in a word processing program, then copy and paste it into the blog host’s upload/insert field, resulted in the first and second paragraphs running together with no break. When they tried to edit the tags, it caused U.S. Defense Department computers to crash in what’s called a denial-of-service attack.

Later, attempts by the regime’s personnel to correct their spelling of “acommodate” by adding the second “c” ended unsuccessfully when the cursor jumped one character to the right and the misspelling “acocmmodate” triggered further outages in both Washington and Seoul. Then they tried to add an image from their desktop to the end of the post, and somehow it showed up at the beginning. Then they accidentally posted a draft before it was reviewed by Premier Kim Il Sung and run through spell check.

“We meant no harm to the Social Security Administration’s check-printing programs,” Kim said. “We just wanted to tell the world about that funny thing our uncle did at the big family dinner Sunday night.”

Kim said further errors of this sort were unlikely, since the North Korean military had attached the nation’s lone laptop to a medium-range ballistic missile and launched it into the Sea of Japan in frustration.

“We’re more comfortable using giant colorful posters and banners carried by hundreds of happy schoolchildren to get our message out,” Kim said. “WordPress might be better than Blogspot, but that’s like saying our agricultural sector is better than our industrial sector. It’s no great triumph.”

I’ll circle the building only if I want to

Signs, signs, everywhere are signs

Blocking out the scenery, breaking my mind,

Do this, don’t do that,

Can’t you read the signs?

I don’t respond well to direct requests made by giant multinational corporations. For example, when the McDonald’s drive-through pre-recording asks me to “try our new Angus Third Pounder,” or the receipt implores me to “have a nice day,” I tend to resist. I have no problem following their subliminal requests to get fat and clog up my coronary arteries. I just don’t like the hard sell.

So when I drove into the newly redesigned Mickie D’s not far from my house several weeks ago, and saw that they were redirecting traffic to make the best use of their tiny piece of property, I wasn’t playing along. The entrance I chose was only a couple dozen feet from the speakerbox where you place your order, yet the sign next to the lane demanded that I “circle building to enter drive-thru.” At this time of the mid-afternoon, there were virtually no other cars in sight, so I swung my car around a small curb and went directly to the order board. I’ll show those corporate bigwigs who’s boss.

However, this past Saturday morning it was a lot busier when I stopped by to get my son an Egg McMuffin. Cars were already backed up almost to the front of the store, and it actually made sense to drive the short loop around to position myself in the proper sequence. (I’m not such an anti-establishment rebel that I’m going to avoid breathing just because “The Man” says that air is good for me.)

By the time I made the circle, a large pickup from a local sign company had come in the same entrance and angled directly to a position behind the car that would otherwise be in front of me. I pulled up tight in back of the same car, and it started to look like things could get tense. I know McDonald’s is no stranger to provoking explosions from the lower half of the body, but this potential eruption of emotions from the upper half was different.

I could see the face of the guy who was trying to cut me off. He was giving me the no-look defense, staring straight ahead to avoid eye contact. I adopted a strained facial expression that should have gotten his attention, but he continued to avoid turning in my direction.

So now I had to figure out if I should honk my horn at him. I made a quick assessment of where each of us stood in the two social hierarchies that most influence interaction among strangers. I was obviously superior on the socioeconomic scale, since he worked for a billboard company and I didn’t, but it was somewhat less clear that I could beat him up if it came to a physical confrontation. He was a good 15 or 20 years younger than I, and had a significant number of hardened tools in the back of his truck. I think I had a blanket and an old pair of work gloves in the trunk of my Civic, and maybe a box of cat litter, though unfortunately it wasn’t soiled.

He inched forward and I inched forward and we were rapidly running out of inches. Horn-honking was increasingly out of the question, since there was no escape if things turned ugly, unlike on the interstate where you can always cross the median and start driving wrong-way into oncoming traffic. I considered my other options, because increased grimacing didn’t seem to be working. There was the phone number of his home office plastered across the back panel of the truck, and I supposed I could call and complain to them. Though what were they going to do, fire him? He’d probably welcome the unemployment insurance, as opposed to teetering 60 feet off the ground and looking up at a giant Hugh Laurie face. I could complain to the McDonald’s management, except that they probably had surveillance video of that first time I violated their rules, and would likely be aghast at my hypocrisy, if they cared at all.

The two majestic bucks facing off in the forest for dominance over the herd had head-butted and reared and twisted their horns together, and it had become clear who had won, and who was going to have to settle for that homely doe with the bad teeth. I gathered up what was left of my dignity, gave in, and let him proceed to the ordering position. He asks for a dollar-menu egg biscuit and a large, no make that a medium, coffee. If he had added a side order of lichen, my defeat would’ve been total.

Now I look off to the right and here comes another intruder trying to wedge in front of me. This is a much younger woman, probably college-age, and she makes the mistake of catching my eye. This time, it’s a clear case that I’m the superior human being, so I assert myself immediately. I raise my index finger in the air next to my head, then move my hand in a rotating motion to indicate that she needs to circle the building before lining up to place her order. The look on her face is blank — she thinks I’m either signaling that she hit a home run, or I’m asking her if she has a lasso. I mouth “you have to go around” so now she’s convinced I’m a crazy menace and zips out of the way.

I place my own order without further incident and pay at the first window. The guy who butted is still in front of me, though there’s little left I can do, except maybe hope that they screw up his order. If it were one of those complicated ones — can I substitute a freshly killed groundling for the cheese?, for example — they might make him pull off to the side, and I can swoop past triumphantly and beat him to the exit. Instead, we both move swiftly through the last step and turn out of the parking lot and back into city traffic.

When I’m sure he’s far enough ahead that he can’t see me, I raise my fist in a sign of contempt.

The scene of Saturday's humiliation

Profiles in line-waiting

     I’m writing today from our local Earth Fare grocery store, which has kindly set aside – whether they know it or not — a table and a wi-fi connection for my almost daily use. For those of you not familiar with the chain, it’s in the organic/health/inedible food segment, featuring high-end gourmet offerings along side free-range sticks and locally grown chaff. How it ended up in my rather working-class neighborhood is beyond me.

     Since I am using their space and their power and their Internet waves, I’m careful to patronize them on each visit with at least the purchase of a bottled tea (today I’m sampling the “fair trade” flavor). When I approached the checkout, there were two lines open, each of which had a single customer with a significant basket-load of merchandise. I lingered back briefly because I hate being reluctantly waved ahead when the large purchaser feels obliged to let me and my single item go through. Once each of them had committed to their position by partially unloading their basket, I picked the guy on the left to get behind.

     Usually, I’ll do some profiling of the people ahead of me before I commit to a line. It’s a sexist, ageist, racist, classist habit I have that you’d think would get me to the cashier faster. Obviously, I look at the quantity of items being purchased but that’s actually a very small factor in my assessment. The ideal people to get behind are young professionals who have that urgent on-the-go air about them. They’ll typically be paying with a debit card, usually swiping it crisply before the purchase is even completed, and the next thing you know they’re motoring out the door. At the other end of the spectrum is the harried working mom herding her kids while talking on her cell phone, the college student who’ll be digging through the 12 pockets in his cargo pants trying to scare up enough coin to pay, and the elderly couple fumbling through their belongings looking for the check book.

     Today, I waited patiently as Guy on the Left fell slightly behind Guy on the Right in their unloading. Switching lines at this point is usually not a wise option, as inevitably that speeds up the line you left and slows down your new choice. Besides, you can’t switch more than once without looking like you’re planning an armed robbery. You need to commit to your choice and stay with it unless some serious misfortune befalls the line, like a price check, a register running out of receipt tape, or (God forbid) some once-in-a-lifetime calamity like a travelers cheque.

     The line I didn’t choose is now wide open while in my line, the unloading has just finished and the customer is ready to step forward and acknowledge the cashier. I momentarily consider switching before two more carts pull in the temporarily cleared line and eliminate that option. That’s okay, though; I’m thinking my patience has paid off and I’ll be plunking my tea on the conveyor belt shortly. Suddenly, I’m horrified by a completely unexpected development: the customer in front of me knows the cashier’s mother! Soon there is chitting and chatting and reminiscing and banter, and I’m starting to wish my tea had a little more preservatives and a little less organic brown rice syrup, because it looks like I could be standing here a while.

     While the grocery checkout system we have in America has its flaws, I still think it’s better than the foreign alternatives I’ve seen in some of my travels overseas. In Manila, where retail seemed to be on steroids with the humongous Mega Mall just a few train stops down from the even larger Mall of Asia, I was in a grocery store that had no fewer than 35 checkout lines, and each of them was staffed on the busy afternoon I visited. In addition to designating several lanes as eight items or less (I think they’re on the octal system there rather than the metric), they also had two lanes marked “elderly only”. I would’ve thought this was a great idea if they hadn’t defined “elderly” as 50 and over, so I decided to be offended instead.

     In London, where I believe food stores are called apothecaries or chemists or something like that, I was too intimidated by biscuits that looked like cookies and cashiers that looked like earls to buy anything. In Bombay, the huge population apparently necessitates a whole different system that involves massing around the checkout and jostling for recognition like you were in some sort of commodities trading pit. Where there were lines, they didn’t seem to exist for any reason, as I had people literally step in front of me to make their purchase. In Sri Lanka, a rebel insurgency requires you to stand in line to go through security before you can stand in another line to do something else, so you’ve kind of lost interest by then and decide to order room service instead.

     Then there are the lines to get out of these countries and back into the U.S. Unlike retail lines, where annoyance and a waste of time are the biggest risk, the immigration and customs lines feel like actual life-or-death scenarios. When I tried to get out of Hong Kong, I had to pass through a scanner that detected my body temperature to make sure I didn’t have SARs, bird flu or other forms of excessive hotness. After it was determined that I was cool, I was challenged again at the ticket counter to prove that I was eventually going back to the States instead of staying indefinitely at my interim destination in the Philippines. My pasty features and American passport apparently weren’t proof enough that I wasn’t Filipino; I had to go through back flips to produce documentation that I had an airline ticket back home.

     Once I got to my final stop in Charlotte a few days later, my joy at being home after five weeks abroad was quickly dampened by the long, snaking line leading up to the immigration desks. About a half-dozen officers were on hand to service two jumbo jets that landed simultaneously for what must’ve been the first time in North Carolina history. Two subsections separately serviced American citizens and foreign nationals, though a third one for suspiciously dusky people who carried all their luggage on the plane with them would’ve been helpful. The perfunctory inspection that resulted in every one of the hundreds who were waiting being waved through eventually got me to my baggage and the customs officials. As soon as the official saw that I had visited something called Sri Lanka, I was ordered aside for a thorough search. The inspector was very chatty and very friendly, which I suspect was the result of some intense profiling training rather than a desire to be nice. Finally satisfied that my cheap souvenirs and even cheaper wardrobe presented no significant threat to national security, I got to meet my family and head for home.

     I suppose it’s only appropriate that the profiling came back to haunt me.

Being neighborly in the subdivision

They say that good fences make good neighbors. Since the restrictive covenants in our particular subdivision forbid the installation of “fences, barriers or similarly containing obstructions”, we have lousy neighbors.

Maybe I’m being a little harsh. I’m actually quite fond of the neighborhood we’ve lived in now for almost 15 years. It’s a collection of perhaps 60 or 70 upper-middle-class homes built in the pre-McMansion era, when floor plans were sensible and pre-existing plant life was respected by not being slashed and burned. In fact the name of our subdivision – I think it’s “Shady Creek”, but it could be “Shadow River” or “Dappled Brook” – reflects both the old hardwoods that canopy the main road and the shallow creek that, if you don’t look too closely, runs cleanly alongside the main road.

We live on that road, on the corner of one of about a dozen cul-de-sacs. We have a nice mixture of young families and retired couples, many of them academics from the college about two miles away. We’ve seen little of the housing market distress that haunts Subprime Village at the Township at Cityplace across the way, and even enough of a progressive streak that we sported a few Obama yard signs during the recent election season. I nod to the people I pass on my occasional walks and raise two fingers off the steering wheel  (three if I’m feeling friendly) as I drive past them, and am on good if anonymous terms with everybody. Most of them know me as the Stocky Guy that Runs and would probably describe me as the quiet type should I ever be charged with some gruesome crime.

I don’t really know my immediately adjacent neighbors at all. Some community-minded type down the street recently collected names, professions and other basic data for a small directory she published, but several families on our block declined to participate in the census. So they are known to me as follows.

The retired couple on our right (they’re either retired or simply don’t work very hard) have lived in their house for about two years now. I thought about approaching them and introducing myself when they first moved in, but after a few near-miss encounters it grew increasingly awkward to do so. Now I mostly see the husband as he walks his harnessed cat in the yard behind our shed. Why our property is better suited for the feline constitution than his is a mystery to me, but what’s even more curious is that he does this activity in full view of my wife and me. At least he has enough shame not to wave when he sees us. I’ve seen his wife only rarely when, for some reason, a different antique auto appears in front of their home every weekend and she engages in a long discussion with the driver. Maybe they’re running a stolen vintage car ring and the cat on a tether is meant to be a cover for their criminal enterprise.

The family on our left, across the cul-de-sac, consists of a young couple with two school-age daughters. They all seem nice enough from a distance, if balloons occasionally displayed on their mailbox is any indication. I have no problem with them, but I do have a concern with one of their visiting mothers. She recently pulled up to the side of their house to witness both me and her son hard at work in our respective yards. It seemed pretty obvious that both of us were herding leaves toward the curb, where the city’s vacuum truck would pick them up in a few days. Rather than park her car in front of his home, however, she chose instead to put it on my side of the street. I was stunned at first by this blatant show of preference for her own flesh and blood, especially since she did it right in front of me. After she went inside, I continued shepherding my leaves to the curb and put them exactly where I had originally intended, leaving a small space for her late-model sedan in the center of my pile. At least the vehicle was still largely visible from the door handles up.

Behind our house is an African-American family that I also know very little about. They’ve lived there about five years now but it’s been hard to watch their comings and goings because of how our respective homes are positioned. They probably know us a lot better than we do them, since the sliding glass double doors leading into our family room let them look out of one of their bedroom windows and directly into our lives. We had a good bit more privacy until they cleared a stand of shrubbery just inside their property line about six months ago; I’m not going to ascribe any voyeuristic motives to this questionable bit of landscaping, though I cut a pretty dashing figure as I clomp around the kitchen in my pajamas. The only other thing I know about them is that, for some unknown reason, they have their grass cut by the retired Southern gentleman on their other side. I’m guessing it’s some sort of Civil War reparations arrangement.

Finally, across the street there lives a cluster of several hundred people. It’s not an overcrowded group home but instead a development of townhouses just beyond the creek. Though not technically a part of the subdivision, the only way they can come and go is via our main road so I’ll consider them neighbors enough to grumble about. My primary beef is that they and their landscapers use the grassy area visible through our front window as a place to heap their trash, in direct violation of some municipal code or other we discovered when we called the city to complain. A guy came out and posted a “no dumping” sign, which they promptly ignored except for knocking it over. When we put it back up, someone stole the sign leaving only a post, which is nice as posts go but mentions very little about the ordinance. I bet the mostly retired community that lives in this development would sympathize with our concern and might even mention it to the landscapers, if any of them spoke English.

All in all, it’s really a pretty good place to live. We may not be neighborly when it comes to borrowing cups of sugar and checking each other’s pets while on vacation, we do have a Neighborhood Watch program. I know this because there’s a sign (not yet vandalized) and because the neighborhood coordinator stopped at my door one day to ask if she could have our stepping stones. I suppose they are desirable as stepping stones go – cement, circular, about 2-feet wide, truly exquisite – but I wasn’t quite ready to simply give them away to the crazy lady who yells at passing cars to “slow down!” Perhaps, for the betterment of the community I should have.

Learning to blog at WordCamp

Attendees at yesterday’s Charlotte WordCamp — you could tell it was a new media thing by how they took the space out of “WordCamp” — generally fell into two categories. There were the experienced bloggers looking to refine their skills and improve their social networking by actually meeting real people, and there were those like me, real (but old) people who had heard of blobs and inner-nets and wanted to get into this online action while we still lived and breathed. It was the twitterers and the twits. The avatars and the ava-tards.

The event was sponsored by The Charlotte Observer, respectfully called the “mature” media by symposium leaders who probably refer to it as the Observersaurus in private. I learned about it while reading an article in the paper a few months ago that promised an opportunity for new bloggers like me to learn the ropes. Publicizing the affair in the local section of the paper, right next to the article about Billy Graham “celebrating” his 90^th birthday, apparently garnered little notice, and registration was wide open when I went online to sign up. When word finally made it out to the blogosphere a few weeks later, the location planned for 50 participants now had to hold in excess of a hundred.

I arrived early Saturday to make sure I could get an outlet for my laptop’s power cord. Going through the lobby and up to the third floor of the Observer building, it was painfully evident that such a long-respected bricks-and-mortar newspaper operation was on the wane. The faded paint, the tattered flooring, the creaking elevator that failed later in the morning, trapping its inhabitant into the identity of “Elevator Guy” for the rest of the day, all served to reinforce the transition now taking place in the media world. We signed in at the registration desk, wrote our names onto nametags in marker ink that soaked through two levels of clothing as it made you high, and headed into the conference room to begin the session.

It was pretty evident right from the beginning about the dichotomy we’d be struggling with all day. Mostly middle-aged representatives of the Observer stood around the edge of the room, studying the participants like we were lowland gorillas. Their sponsorship was obviously aimed at figuring out how to get in on this young demographic and turn them into eyeballs they could charge 37½ cents a piece each day. Sharing their background if not their status among the employed were about a third of the participants. As we learned during brief self-introductions, these folks had opted for a “midlife career change”, “early retirement” or “freelance writing” that all looked suspiciously like being laid off. The other two-thirds, including the people at the front who’d be doing the presenting, may or may not have had jobs and didn’t really seem to care one way or the other. They had Twitter, and that’s all they had time for anyway.

After the introductions, the first item on the agenda was a meet-and-greet for non-beginners and a general Q&A session for the rest of us. The meet-and-greet would take place in an adjacent room, so the non-beginners were told to adjourn for about 30 minutes while the newbies remained behind to ask their stupid questions. I probably had enough experience to go either way but the prospect of climbing through all those wires and aisles convinced me to stay behind, though it did occur to me that perhaps we were being separated like the concentration camp victims told to stay behind for the showers.

I don’t know what went on the other room (I suspect there was a fair amount of snickering and cootie vaccines) but my group took the opportunity to ask variations on the same question for the better part of the session. What was a tag and what was a category? How are they different? How are they the same? What’s a tag again? What do you mean by category? A tag cloud, what the hell is that? Should I have brought a laptop?

After a break, we were again allowed to commingle with the veteran bloggers. There was a technical and design panel that gave ideas on how to make your blog stand out from the 700 billion blogs out there. We were told how to steal a theme, copy a graphic and plug in a plug-in. Most of these tips were delivered in reverse top-ten formats, a la David Letterman, which I’m guessing was supposed to make the aged among us feel like we had taken a long afternoon nap and stayed up past 11 for the first time since college. The nap came in handy, as the discussion turned to FTP, future-proofing, subdomains, RSS and microblogging, and I turned to my version of the Internet to avoid boredom. I had AOL open for about five minutes before I realized this was probably the most embarrassing site choice anyone in the room could possibly make.

After a lunch break for pizza (exactly what I thought bloggers ate), we began the afternoon session with the topic of content development. Not surprisingly, a recurring suggestion from all five presenters was that a blog should actually have some amount of content, which may not have occurred to about half the room who were waiting for the part about downloading reliable cash streams. Content was described as “king”, “queen” and, ultimately, the “ten of spades”. We were told we’d need dynamic content to attract readers but probably wouldn’t have any readers to appreciate it in the beginning, unless you worked for the Observer or developed wide social networks in places like FaceBook, MySpace and the bulletin board at Goodwill.

Some of the ideas for good content seemed to be exactly what I was already doing. One slide read “picture = 1000 words”, which I initially took to mean that the picture of the perfect web posting was something that ran to a thousand words in length. Unfortunately, what this actually referred to was the assertion that you could put photos and other graphics on your blog. My thousand-long-word essays now seem to be serious overkill compared to many of the blogs we were shown, where perhaps as few as fifty words were needed as long as several of them were “tweet”, “Obama” or “my naked girlfriend.” Apparently you can also put video on your blog, and I plan to do that as soon as I can find the port on my laptop that accepts VHS tapes.

Of course, no seminar like this is complete without the inspirational speaker offering his formula for success. Right before the keynote address, we were told that promoting your site was as simple as (now write this down) “create” plus “serve” times “community” equals “wealth”. This was about the most useless formula I had heard at one of these things since a corporate development trainer had advised me that ambition divided by talent minus honesty to the third power is greater than or equal to the cosine of success. Nobody wrote anything down, primarily because pens and papers are such primitive technology that only the older folks even brought them, and most of us were back in the lunchroom by now trying to snag a few more Chips Ahoy. Among those who remained, I did hear some tap-tap-tapping followed by a long pause as they looked for the “equal” key.

At the end, we collected our decidedly low-tech T-shirts (not at all virtual or digital, like I was hoping), said our goodbyes to the new contacts we had made, and hoped that someone somewhere in the room would be visiting our blogs.

Achieving quality step by step

Ever since we started outsourcing a lot of our work overseas, many companies have been real big on standard operating procedures. I think the theory is that breaking down your production process into a simple step-by-step operation makes it possible for even the most untrained worker to perform. While that can work well at a very basic level for those eager but inexperienced developing-world types, it hampers the ability of us still working on American soil to find creative ways to screw things up.

About ten years ago, the rage in corporate quality movements was something called ISO 9000. The idea was that if you documented (or “wrote down”) all your processes and then operated as you said you would, nothing could go wrong. No variation was possible when humans were turned into mindless, instruction-reading work-bots. Errors in this system were supposed to be so few that a special numeration system had to be devised to describe how tiny the odds of failure were. This was the concept of “Six Sigma”, or six mistakes out of all the fraternity or sorority members in the world.

Though ISO 9000 is still followed in some corporate backwaters of the world, it gradually lost credibility in the U.S. First there was the problem that even if American workers could make sense of the instructions, there was no guarantee that just because something was written down that it would work (see the 2008 Republican platform and any MapQuest directions for just two examples). And then there was the problem with the name of the initiative itself: ISO stands for International Society for Obduration, which I think has something to do with pity, and the 9000 part represented the year in which actual gains from the program will be seen.

The remnants of this system that still exist in most lines of work are now called “standard practices”. They used to be called “best practices”, but that was considered too elitist, I guess, and it was judged more important that we do everything the same, whether it was actually good or not. Now, whether the person doing the work is in Boston or London or Hong Kong or Neptune (in the year 9000), all they have to do is go to the corporate intranet, access the development and training section, then go to the operations page, then find the kind of process they’re doing, then call up the appropriate requirements, then find the “SP”, then start looking for another job because they missed a critical deadline while monkeying around on the computer.

When you do have time to follow the standard practice, you better pull up a chair because it’s typically going to take a while to get through it. One example I’m looking at breaks a particular operation down into 15 steps, which seems almost manageable until you consider that step 8 alone includes four checkboxes followed by 16 bullet points and six sub-bullet points. Other steps are ridiculously simple, like step 15 which involves taking your page off the printer. The standard practice doesn’t tell you how many fingers to use to pick up the sheet of paper, whether to use your left hand or your right hand or what kind of protective gear you should be wearing but, as the website warns all users, “don’t use a hard copy of these instructions because they are constantly being revised in the spirit of continuous improvement.”

When despite the best efforts of the quality mavens something wrong does make it out to a client, an investigation into how this could possibly happen usually takes place. A “service recovery account” is requested of the offending manufacturing site who attempts to figure out, usually several weeks after the error was committed, what step in the flawless process was not followed. Usually, the answer is something like “we didn’t work on this job”, and the matter is referred to another location. Once the site is definitively determined, the managers there will “drill down” through a massive collection of archived paperwork to figure out which individual or team was responsible (the drilling is just a figurative term at U.S. offices but involves an actual boring device for workers offshore). A corrective action is implemented, typically a scolding email to anyone who might’ve participated in the misdeed. We’re able to report back to the client that we appreciate they’ve pointed out an improvement opportunity that has made our process even better, and that someone won’t be getting their merit raise, if it’s ever decided these will be reinstituted.

What all this ignores is that some of the steps in a process are more critical than others, and that it takes an experienced person to know when it’s safe to cut corners and skip something trivial. If sub-step 2.4.7(A)(e) involves hopping on one foot while you key in your job number, you’ll see the Bombay skyline compliantly swaying with tremors while in Atlanta they’ll just take a chance they can skip the hopping. Our overseas workers are extremely good at doing exactly what they’re told to do, knowing they could be out on the streets if it’s found they cut a corner. At best, there will be “stand-ups” (where a top manager stands up before the group and yells at them), “letters of retribution” inserted into personnel files and, worst of all, week-long reprogramming regimens that involve the south Asian equivalent of a forced march. Virtually no one gets dismissed for cause domestically, since downsizing is certain to eventually take care of them anyway.

There’s a pendulum of emphasis that swings back and forth between quality and meeting deadlines that American workers seem to be better at timing. We’re much closer to the screaming customer to be able to tell when we’re about to enter a new era. We use those all-American traits of innovation and intuition and poor reading skills to perform from the gut what we think needs to be done rather than what some piece of paper says. And we can tell when it might be a good time take a lunch break to avoid those managers who are shocked (shocked!) to learn that a standard process wasn’t followed step by ridiculous, excruciating step.

Thanksgiving comes early in the office

The turkey carcass sits mangled on the serving table, looking like the victim of a bear attack. The sweet potato casserole has been denuded of its marshmallow topping, but you could probably scrape a few more servings out of the corners of the pan if you tried. The stuffing is completely gone, serving its stated purpose of stuffing those who now lounge around the edges of this scene, barely moving except for the effort it takes to moan.

No, you haven’t been transported a week into the future by the magic of the blog. This is the scene I left behind at yesterday’s office celebration of Thanksgiving, a full seven days before most of us will commemorate the occasion.

The corporate calendar of holidays is not something most of us are aware of until we walk into work one dark January day and discover we’ve neglected to bring the green bagels for St. Patrick’s Day, which the outside world celebrates on March 17. Maybe I exaggerate a little, but not much. The government has imposed Monday observance of the more minor holidays like Presidents, Labor and Memorial days. Christmas and New Year’s are complicated by the fact that the days before them — the Eves — are in many ways more important than the actual holidays themselves. Many human resources departments have come up with the concept of a “floating” holiday for individuals to use in the religious observance of their choosing, such as Yom Kippur, Kwanzaa or Talk Like a Pirate Day. People in my mostly Christian office, for example, use their optional holiday for the day after Easter, prompting one observer to wonder if the “floating” had something to do with Jesus’ ascension into heaven.

I guess having the Thanksgiving potluck yesterday made some sense on a gut level, considering few of us would want to gorge like that two days in a row if it were scheduled for next Wednesday. The only opening left on the sign-up sheet when I got to it was “salad”, which seemed very un-Thanksgiving-like but worked for me since it was so easy to prepare (take one head of lettuce, rip to shreds, serves 20). Management was providing the ham and turkey, and everything else was being brought in by the staff, who would have a chance to dazzle coworkers with their best recipes, many of which involved green beans, cream soup and those crunchy onion things.

The sit-down time was scheduled for 11 a.m. so the organizers had the better part of the morning to set up the centerpieces, warm and then re-warm the hot dishes, and tempt us all with the smells of the season. This was to be an affair that combined our staff with workers from the front office, who we sometimes pass in the restrooms but about whom we know little else. As the serving time arrived, I was unfortunate enough to be just outside their offices when a manager called out for me to summon them. At first I was confused about who exactly he meant, and nearly beckoned the 200-plus temporary work crew from the warehouse. That would’ve been a horrible mistake, certain to result in stolen plastic cutlery and tiny, tiny portions for everyone. Still, I didn’t want to call for these front-office folks I didn’t know (“hey, it’s the guy from the bathroom – what’s he want?”) so I went to hide in my car for a few minutes.

I hoped this would have the added benefit of allowing me to miss the inevitable speech-giving and prayer that would precede the food consumption. But as the schedule started running behind, I made it just in time to hear the department head note that though these are difficult times, we still have much to be thankful for, followed by a brief blessing. Not being a currently practicing Christian myself, I’ve always felt awkward during this portion of the proceedings. It’s not because I take offense at having others’ religious beliefs imposed on me; rather, I’m bothered that I use the respectful silence to think of the sarcastic prayer I’d be tempted to offer if I’m ever called upon. Instead of beginning with “dear Jesus” or “holy Father”, the sacrilegious scamp in me wants to begin with a “good God” and then launch into several other James Brown references like papa’s brand new bag and how good I feel (so good). Fortunately for everyone, Edna does a nice reverent offering, and it’s finally time to chow down.

Office chairs were pulled up to the long row of covered work tables. After people worked their way down the buffet, carefully gauging the decreasing capacity of their Chinettes against the promise of what appeared further down the line, we were told to squeeze into a seat and begin the scheduled conviviality. The randomness and closeness of this seating arrangement, not to mention my very real fear of being injured by flying elbows, caused me to linger toward the end of the buffet line in the hope the table would be too full. I lucked out and was able to return instead to my work station to eat, where I got a kernel of corn stuck between “F7” and “F8” on my keyboard.

I genuinely enjoyed the food, as did everyone else. I was also able to enjoy the air of warmth and geniality in the room without actually having to get any of it on me. We didn’t have any holiday music piped through the intercom as we’ll do at Christmas — primarily I guess because there isn’t any, except for the less-than-festive “Turkey in the Straw” – but there was a certain atmosphere that for a moment almost made me give some actual thanks.

I managed to avoid overeating, which was good since I had a long drive home to navigate in the next hour and I didn’t want to sleep through it. Others in our department weren’t so lucky, as they staggered back to their desks to face another three hours of duty. The combination of turkey, heavy carbohydrates and the kind of workload you might expect at a financial services firm during the worst economic downturn in 70 years must’ve been as tough to handle as an Ambien/opium blend injected directly into your forehead.

At least there were no Detroit Lions to send them over the edge and into lethal coma.

A bad time to start eating good

Food has always played a central role in my life. I know that’s something that everyone can claim, except maybe those lucky few who survive by photosynthesis. I use it not only for sustenance and pleasure but also as a major contributor to my overall sense of well-being and security. If I have an ample store of baked goods, take-out entrees and my favorite soft drink, I feel I’m ready to survive any calamity short of a thermonuclear holocaust. My wife accuses me of collecting cookies and cakes like a squirrel collects acorns, but where else am I going to find a chocolate-chunk blondie post-apocalypse?

We’ll all be thinking a lot about food in the coming days, with Thanksgiving just around the corner. Because of its carbo-centric theme, this has always been my favorite holiday, but it’s hardly the only day where I’m thinking about the menu days in advance. As I write this posting, it’s Saturday afternoon and I can tell you virtually every meal I’ll be eating between now and the holiday five days in the future.

(This is what makes blogs so interesting).

During the workweek, I’ll have a blueberry breakfast bar, hazelnut-flavored coffee and pulp-free orange juice for breakfast, and a sliced deli turkey sandwich on Milton’s bread with two reduced-fat Oreo cookies for dessert. I’m very particular about these selections, and will not tolerate orange juice with medium pulp, some pulp, a little pulp, or one small suspicious glob you’d hope is only pulp. Pulp is for paper mills, not breakfast juices. I might allow some variation in this otherwise rigid schedule for a special celebration – the day after Obama was elected, for example, I treated myself to reduced-fat Chips Ahoy! (because of the exclamation point) – but I take great comfort in the predictability of this regime.

Dinner is my opportunity to allow a little variation in my food consumption. Tonight, for example, I’m considering the hamburger I bought but never ate at lunch today, some leftover Japanese food from my wife’s lunch, or I may just pick out some items from the prepared-food bar here at the grocery store coffee shop where I’m writing. I’ve already checked out the grilled hot dogs sitting under the warming lights and, though they look tasty, there’s a sign that says the buns are available behind the bakery counter, and I’m a bit reluctant to ask the worker there “do you have buns?” (especially since there’s a new hire sitting behind me who’s going through the company’s sexual harassment training DVD).

I may be able to attribute some of my quirky attitudes toward food to my upbringing. My mother created most of her meals out of her Pennsylvania Dutch background until she moved to a Miami neighborhood dominated by Italian transplants from New York. This allowed her to add things like lasagna and meatballs to hog maw and shoo-fly pie, though usually not in the same meal. Breakfast was typically skillet-fried potatoes and something called “scrapple” – more appetizingly known as “liver mush” in the South — and the lunch I carried off to school usually included a can of Vienna sausages (whatever rarely harvested parts of the pig that weren’t in the scrapple were probably in the sausages). It was all very tasty and very dense on a molecular level, and was probably a significant contributor to the fact that I weighed nearly 250 pounds by the time I graduated from high school.

When I went off to college, my eating habits didn’t get any better. “Healthy” eating was a concept still in the distant future in the 1970s; all foods that didn’t contain metal filings were considered healthy in those days. Despite the fact that my favorites at the time included the Burger Chef “Big Chef” and French fries covered in tartar sauce, and I remember celebrating my new-found independence early in my freshman year by eating a two-pound bag of Hershey kisses, I managed to lose weight throughout my college years. I briefly fell under the mistaken impression that there were other things in life besides eating, some of which suppressed your appetite when taken in illegal quantities. I rarely missed a meal – to this day when I hear someone say they forgot to eat lunch, it’s as astounding to me as if they forgot to properly regulate their body temperatures – yet I somehow found a way to metabolize the calories efficiently.

When I met my future wife after college, concepts like fat and cholesterol had become more widely known, as well as the idea that green plants could be used for something other than landscaping. Unlike many kids, I actually enjoyed most vegetables during my formative years. The cartoon character Popeye got me started on spinach and from there it was a slippery slope onto harder flora like broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower. I never went for the likes of okra and squash because of their funny names, though that never kept me away from a McRib. My diet did gradually improve throughout my marriage, largely thanks to my wife’s vegetarian tendencies and a maturing of my tastes that allowed me to appreciate fine wines as well as fine Pepsi.

Now I have a son who eats like the typical teenager, and I find myself once again coming under negative influences. The appreciation I had cultivated of foodstuffs like tofu and tempeh is now being undermined by Rob’s affection for all things nuggety. I still enjoy good-for-you quality – right next to those hot dogs I have my eyes on is a loaf called “field roast grain meat”, the first two ingredients of which are filtered water and wheat gluten – yet I find myself increasingly drawn to fast foods. Maybe I can find a proper balance in the oxymoronically named taco salad.

One of my wife’s favorite sayings is “life is too short to drink cheap wine”. In these uncertain economic and geopolitical times, I’m tempted to agree, and extend the aphorism to include “…eat healthy foods”. I worked hard a year or two ago to lose about 25 pounds, suffering through sensible portions that bordered on the subatomic just to make my clothes fit better. Now I’m inclined to think that’s a pretty high price to pay for a single notch on my belt buckle, and find myself migrating back to comfort foods, so-called because you can trade your trim-fitting clothing for a comforter.

When I drove through KFC for my son on the way home from school the other day, and I got to smell the barbecue boneless chicken wings he ordered, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.

That may yet be my fate if I don’t straighten up and eat right.

My life as a football fan

I’ve been a football fan for as long as I can remember, but I’m not sure why. In recent years, I’ve been able to put my attention to the game on a more sane footing than when I was young. I understand now that the outcome of a contest played by rented behemoths who’s five seconds of action is constantly interrupted by hopped-up robot graphics, slowed-down replays and giant pickup trucks running over things has very little to do with my happiness. Or at least that’s the way it should be.

That’s not always how I viewed it. My earliest memories are not of watching others play the game but rather participating in the activity myself, a concept now seen as hopelessly quaint. Larry and Lloyd and Ricky and I would take over the only open area in our Miami suburb – a public street – and play two-on-two games with gutters for sidelines and mailboxes for goals. It was a touch game consisting almost entirely of passing, since tackling on the asphalt was frowned upon by our moms and pediatricians. (Tackling was done only when we couldn’t scare up the four-person minimum and resorted instead to a backyard version of the game called “kill the man with the ball”.) We’d play for hours at a time, up and down the street with scores often soaring into the hundreds, interrupted only by the occasional cry of “car!” to avoid being struck by an oncoming vehicle.

The first football teams I followed from afar were the University of Miami Hurricanes, a pathetic bunch in the ‘60s more concerned with tanning than athletics, and the Green Bay Packers, more concerned with winning than packing. We didn’t have a pro team south of Washington back then, so proximity wasn’t an issue in my choice of gridiron heroes. The closest we ever got to the pros was when the now-abandoned consolation “championship” game was played in the Orange Bowl, and my father and I would use tickets promoters could barely give away to watch teams casually vie for the title of Third Best Team in the All of Football.

In 1967, the NFL finally realized that the South might possibly be interested enough in physical brutality and incredible amounts of sweating to support a pro team, and Miami was awarded the Dolphin franchise. They were lovable losers in those early years, featuring a head coach who chose his inept son to be quarterback and defensive stalwart Wahoo McDaniel, part of that rare breed of wrestlers-turned-linebackers who were named after game fish. The best part of those early years were the rare occasions when the Dolphins scored a touchdown and a porpoise I thought of as Flipper (though for copyright reasons, I think his name was actually “Blipper”) would leap in celebration from his above-ground pool in the end zone, then retrieve the extra-point kick on the occasions those were made.

I rooted so hard for the Dolphins in my high-school years that they actually started winning games. This was the beginning of my only recently abandoned fantasy that I could positively influence the outcome of a game by jumping up and down in front of a TV screen, crying out “yes!” or “no!” as appropriate to the circumstance. I imagined that either I had keen enough acumen to recognize quality players and coaching better than other observers, or else that I possessed a supernatural skill that somehow would propel footballs over goal lines and through goal posts. When the team posted a perfect 17-0 record and won two Super Bowls in the early ‘70s, I was proud to take the credit personally.

Shortly after I went off to college, I began to develop other interests. I worked at the school newspaper, finally found enough self-confidence to begin a form of dating, and even went to class now and then. As a result, or so I believed, the dynasty began to wane. I’d still watch when I could, on the TV in the dorm lobby, but thunderous expressions of glee or outrage had to be muffled lest onlookers be frightened. I still remember going back to my room after a narrow loss to the Raiders, and getting mad at my roommate when he teased me about my disappointment. “You don’t understand,” I tried to explain. “You making fun of the Dolphins is like me making fun of your family.” In an epiphany, I realized I was an idiot.

Fortunately, the timing of my about-face couldn’t have been more convenient, as my college team, the Florida State Seminoles, were in the midst of their worst run in school history. They had made the ludicrous move of hiring a coach with a doctoral degree who was using good-vibe pop psychology to coax the players into winning, if they felt like it. The result was an 0-11 season, followed by an only slightly improved record the next year after the coach vowed no more Dr. Nice Guy. I had picked up the contrarian nature of the counterculture by this time and, since football was only slightly less politically incorrect than the secret war in Laos, my friends and I delighted in the ‘Nolean ineptitude. Again, though, I was believing that my mental state was directly affecting results on the field.

It took a move from football-blessed Florida to the football-cursed Carolinas to finally break the spell. During my first 15 years in the region, there was again no pro team to follow and the game as played at the college level here contained more than enough mediocrity to keep me at bay. (Anyone who can get excited about a match-up between perennial rivals like Duke and Wake Forest is in serious need of a hobby). The last time a team from that Atlantic Coast Conference generated widespread enthusiasm was around the time the ocean of the same name was formed out of ancient Pangaea.

When the Carolina Panthers came into being in the mid-1990s, I followed them somewhat when they were up and not so much when they were down. Some might accuse me of being a fair-weather fan by ignoring their exploits when success was limited. But I’m not buying tickets to their games when they’re not providing entertainment, just like they don’t come to my house and run the west coast offense when I’m not providing them money. I am watching their games this season, since they currently sport an 8-3 record, but I do it by first recording the contest on my DVR and then playing it back at triple speed. That’s my idea of a hurry-up offense.

Now, when coworkers talk on Monday morning about their respective teams of preference and how “we” really handed it to the Cowboys yesterday or “our” defense made the difference, I can see the truth behind their perceived participation. As my wife succinctly put it when I got a little out of control watching a game early in our marriage, “do you even know any of those guys?”

Thanksgiving weekend musings

Among professional writers, I think the best job would be working in the press office at the State Department and the worst job would be as an editorial writer. At the State Department, every time there was some international catastrophe, it’d be your job to come up with the modifier that expressed the unparalleled level of concern all Americans felt in this time of tragedy.

“Hey, Bob,” your boss would instant-message you, “how concerned are we about Finland being invaded by space monsters?”

“Pretty darn concerned, I’d imagine,” you’d respond, stalling while you reached for your thesaurus. “I’d say we’re either ‘profoundly concerned’, ‘gravely concerned’, ‘momentously concerned’, or ‘really, really super-concerned’.”

“Good job, Jim,” the boss would reply. “We can always count on your sympathy.”

At the other end of the spectrum is the poor editorial writer, whose job it is to be outraged by mass murders, supportive of the local blood drive, and troubled by the rise in teen pregnancies. Only blatantly obvious and widely agreed-upon opinions are allowed. It’s only if you want to end your career in a hail of indignant letters to the editor that you could endorse an armed revolution against the government or a boycott of Girl Scout cookies.

* * *

I went to the mall this weekend, not because I needed anything but because it’s required by federal statute. I avoided the so-called Black Friday (which I thought is what they used to call Good Friday and actually seems like a better name, since it wasn’t good that Jesus was crucified but rather it was black, which I think in the current reference indicates retailers’ profits) like the plague, which was also black but not as popular. Anyway, my wife and I went on a rainy Saturday afternoon, mostly just to see the crowds and punish ourselves for eating too much turkey.

What I like best about a crowded mall is a game I made up that I call “mall-walking”. It’s not the slow-paced circuits made by energetic seniors, but rather an attempt to dart as fast as possible through crowds of zombified shoppers, imagining I’m avoiding tacklers while returning a kickoff for a touchdown. It’s best to walk quickly rather than run, unless you want to really be tackled by security guards. You start on the clockwise side, so you have a few “blockers” going in your direction but most everyone else is coming toward you. Extra hazards include kiosk merchants trying to rub you with cologne samples, restaurant workers trying to hand you teriyaki chicken, slow-moving family blobs who spread out six-wide, and fast-moving professional shoppers erupting unpredictably from storefronts. If you make it to the goal line (a pod of easy chairs containing heavy-eyed husbands who, before the mall was redesigned last summer, had to seek out the bedding section of Sears to recline their slumping figures) without being touched, you win.

I still think this would make a great video game, where you could use famous malls or other high-traffic areas – Times Square, the Ginza shopping district in Tokyo, penitentiaries serving the U.S. Congress – as different game fields. Electronic Arts, are you out there?

* * *

One of the most embarrassing situations I’ve ever encountered happened recently in my office. Coworkers were circulating a card to send to someone’s father who was about to have a serious operation. I was vaguely aware that someone in that family was in the midst of a health crisis, and had wrongly assumed that a death was involved.

When the card got to me, it was left at my desk with the inside open, so I could add my thoughts and/or prayers but I couldn’t see the message printed on the cover. Too quickly, I scrawled my message: “Thinking of you in your time of loss.” It was only when I closed the card to pass it on to the next person that I realized it wasn’t a sympathy card, it was a get-well card.

My callous lack of sincerity was captured in permanent ink. It didn’t matter that my sympathy was in one sense technically suitable – there probably was going to be loss involved in the anticipated amputation of his arm. But it was pretty clear that this wasn’t the kind of loss I was referencing and, even if it was, it was a pretty insensitive way to express my wishes.

Switching into recovery mode, I considered my options for fixing the hideous error. I obviously couldn’t run out and buy a replacement card, because of all the original messages already affixed. I considered white-out, but the glossy smear would only draw more attention and some curious individual would inevitably scratch it off to see what was underneath.

The only other choice was to work with the existing ink-strokes and modify them to change the message. After about 20 minutes of work, I got it to read “Thinking it’s your time to floss.” I had no idea what this was supposed to mean. My hope, however, was that my coworkers would think it was a friendly inside reference that only the patient would get, and that the patient wouldn’t know who I was anyway.

* * *

I called my insurance company this morning to investigate an apparent error in billing that cost me about $250. I was almost positive I was right, but even the smallest doubt seems magnified when you’re dealing with a sophisticated multinational computer system. I actually got through the automated voicemail system relatively unscathed and in touch with a real live person, who turned out to be quite helpful. After the usual small delays (“our computer seems to be a little slow today,” he says as he looks at my premium history in a grid that dictates how nice to be) he located my account and the source of the problem. “Yes, I think our records may be in error,” he says. “Will it be okay if we make the correction in your next billing period?” Yes, of course, that’s great, I say.

Then comes the little trick they’ve apparently taught every help desk in the world in the last year: “Before I let you go, can I interest you in our new 3.5% APR certificate of deposit?” While you’re still in the throes of relief over your billing being corrected, there’s a piece of your willpower against solicitation that has become slightly weaker, and they’re damn sure going to take advantage. I very much want to return the favor of helping this individual like he’s just helped me, and $5,000 does seem like a small price to pay. But in the end, I recover enough to politely decline.

 

 

 

Bits of Thanksgiving leftovers

Question: Is this a fitting response to the stampede tragedy at the Long Island Wal-Mart? “I don’t know why people were being trampled to death — the sales weren’t that good.”

* * *

If you stuff a turducken (a chicken inside a duck inside a turkey) with a tofurkey (a tofu-based turkey substitute), would you call it a “turfucken”?

Please discuss amongst yourselves.

Dispensing with good taste

If we could apply some of the same principles used by manufacturers of toilet paper dispensers to our country’s ports and immigration checkpoints, our concerns about national security would be over.

Bathroom tissue located in public restrooms is way more secure than it needs to be, if you ask me. American industry has developed highly engineered systems mounted in our nation’s stalls that are designed to allow users the absolute minimum amount of product while simultaneously making that product maddening to get at. These hulking plastic cases dribble a thin, single-ply dangle of paper out of their interior with a reluctance disturbingly similar to what I’m feeling in my own mid-section while trying to wrestle a few squares free.

Managers of these communal bathroom facilities – in restaurants, offices, government buildings – know this is a service they have to provide free of charge to their customers. So they’re obviously interested in limiting their expense as much as possible without putting their drapes and other nearby textiles in jeopardy. I sympathize with their situation in these hard economic times, but I also have similarly urgent hygiene concerns that need to be addressed. I decided to learn more about the companies that build and market these stingy dispensers.

Not surprisingly, most of them are manufactured by multinational corporations with interests in many sanitization-related areas. They are typically sold as part of a package that includes both the dispensers and the toilet paper, which I guess makes sense if you think about it. (The Pez analogy is one that unfortunately comes to mind; you rarely see the candy sold without the dispenser.) Bay West is one such company, offering a broad array of services in the environmental, industrial and emergency segments. Their corporate motto – “Slide Door Right for More Paper”– is printed proudly on each of their dispensers, and belies their larger mission in fields like brownfield site remediation (ew!) and hospital waste management. It’s good to know they have something to fall back on if bidets ever catch on in this country.

Another name that I came across in my research in the lavatory at a local bagel seller was SCA. When I searched for this firm on-line, I came back with several hits that caused me concern that this trend toward synergy in the industry was spinning out of control. Was SCA the Society for Creative Anachronism? The Student Conservation Association? The Society of Crystallographers of Australia? I could imagine any of these names being euphemisms for the business of helping the public do their business in public, but none turned out to be the company I was looking for. A link to “SCA Armor (Heavy)” seemed promising, considering the amount of protection these devices provide, but also led to a dead end. Finally I was routed to something called “Tork Online,” which referenced an SCA that sold “away-from-home tissue products,” and I knew I had struck pay dirt.

“An in-depth knowledge of our customers’ businesses means our products work hard to eliminate waste, reduce maintenance costs and offer hygienic solutions,” reads the products page. “Our dependable, attractive dispensers are designed to optimize hygiene, function and cost-in-use through designs that reduce consumption and maintenance time, dispense effortlessly and discourage pilferage.” Note that it’s only in the last two words of their blurb that they hint at their true purpose, keeping me and others from making off with free toilet tissue.

A more thorough look at the products section shows a fine array of conventional and jumbo dispensers, and a certain genius of these producers that I hadn’t considered before. The conventional model is described as “preventing waste by dropping a reserve roll only after the primary roll is depleted, keeping the used roll core in the unit and washroom floors clear of debris.” The jumbo model — for high-traffic facilities and, I presume, the waiting rooms of gastroenterologists — offers a “unique tear feature that eliminates the risk of cutting or scratching hands,” convenient for those moments of desperation we’ve all experienced but are too fortunate to remember in any detail.

Another maker is a company called Merfin, which I’m proud to say services my own workplace. With their system, “time spent replacing rolls can be reduced by up to 90%, and savings are increased by reducing waste and over-consumption with virtually indestructible locking dispensers.” I knew over-consumption was the problem that hyper-extended our nation’s credit system, but I never thought of it as an issue in the area of personal hygiene. Who are they to judge what’s enough or what’s too much? Anyway, I will give them credit for coming up with a cool trademarked and intercapped name for their line – VersaCore, offering the most versatile (bold italic theirs) tissue dispensing options in the world.

Finally, I want to reference probably the best-known company in this field, Georgia-Pacific. I didn’t go to their website because I found out enough to convince me that they are the future of public bathroom tissue during a recent and urgent visit to the toilet in the new upscale Barnes & Noble not far from my home. This casing, while still made of the traditional PMMA polystyrene that seems to be an industry standard, features a stylish, sloped front-end and an overall design that would be at home in the lobby of Europe’s trendiest boutique hotels. I was so impressed that I took a picture with my cell phone, even at the risk of criminal prosecution and a probable listing on certain predator lists. (I’ll include the photo with this posting if I can figure out how to get it off my phone and onto my computer). Even better, it dispensed paper easily in a free-flowing, luxuriant manner that tempted me to roll a mound out onto the floor and lay down for a nice nap.

All things considered, though, I think I’d still prefer the retro approach – the lone, free-standing roll sitting on the tank behind the seat.

The Handwashing Leadership Forum? Really?

While doing online research for my Wednesday posting about toilet-paper dispensers, I came across the following press release. Maybe this isn’t funny if you’re involved in one of these trade groups, but it sure seems curious to outsiders who happen upon them. Tork, by the way, is a leader in all things sanitized, so it seems only fair that they step up and be recognized.

Dateline: New York (Dec. 2, 2008) — Tork® has joined The Handwashing Leadership Forum, an alliance dedicated to advancing the science of hand hygiene to reduce foodborne illness and prevent infections caused by poor hand hygiene in healthcare settings.

“Members are invited to join The Handwashing Leadership Forum based on their demonstrated leadership and commitment to lowering the risks of foodborne and person-to-person illness,” said Jim Mann, Executive Director of the Handwashingforlife Institute, which is the forum’s umbrella organization. “Forum members agree that by thinking and working together, we can replace today’s misinformation with integrated solutions. We can fill the gaps in the science of hand hygiene, frequent handwashing and good gloving practices.”

Mann said SCA Tissue was invited to join the forum because of the technology and research behind its Tork brand products and dispensing systems as well as its ecological and humanitarian record. As examples, he cited the EcoLogoCM certification of its products and its donation last year of 34,560 rolls of paper towels to hurricane relief efforts on the Gulf Coast.

Ian West, SCA Tissue Category Director — Washroom, said The Handwashing Leadership Forum provides an important, unified voice in addressing hand hygiene issues and an effective way to share expertise across a wide range of industries.

“A lot of the issues addressed are related to foodservice, but the forum also looks beyond that sector,” said West, who represents SCA Tissue in the forum. “The membership of the forum represents a diverse, cross functional group that can address any hand hygiene issues that come up.”

In addition to SCA Tissue, members of The Handwashing Leadership Forum include: GlaxoSmithKline, 3M, and NSF, the Public Health and Safety Company™.

“The Handwashing Leadership Forum’s role is to support operators and regulators already searching together for solutions to the ever-growing threat of foodborne illness,” Mann said. “Poor handwashing plus poor gloving now add up to the No. 1 risk factor in foodborne illness.”

Hand hygiene topped the list of health-related risks among respondents in a global hygiene survey recently commissioned by SCA Tissue’s Swedish-based parent company, SCA. Three out of four respondents in the survey said they have been concerned at one time or another about getting sick because of poor hygiene.

The survey was conducted in nine countries: the United States, Sweden, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Mexico, Russia, China and Australia. Approximately 500 people were surveyed in each country with respondents balanced for geography, age and gender. Results were analyzed and compiled in a report “Hygiene Matters: The SCA Hygiene Report 2008.”

Several smart remarks, if I may:

·                     The Handwashing Leadership Form? Are you serious?

·                     The Handwashingforlife Institute? You can’t be serious.

·                     I didn’t know “gloving” was a proper gerund, but I plan on using it as soon as possible. I’m just not looking forward to the circumstances where it will be appropriate.

·                     Any humanitarian effort that involves the donation of almost 35,000 rolls of paper towels to desperate hurricane victims is definitely to be applauded. I wonder if they considered putting a little square of Danish on the napkins, to address needs equally important to clean hands, like maybe hunger.

·                     It’s good to have a single unified voice on the subject of handwashing. Only with that unanimity can the forces pushing dirty hands be overcome.

·                     So three out of four respondents in the survey said they have been concerned at one time or another about getting sick because of poor hygiene. The other 25% aren’t concerned and in fact actually enjoy getting sick.

Cruising to Alaska (without Somali pirates)

     The recent news story about the cruise ship full of luxury passengers almost being hijacked by decidedly more downscale Somali pirates reminded me of my own experience with the cruising lifestyle. It’s all too easy for everyone to make their own jokes about the prospect of buffet-stuffed tourists brandishing pool cues and miniature golf putters to ward off the boarding party, but I’m sure the confrontation was still very frightening to all those on board.
     The real story of vacationing aboard a lavish mega-ship is something I got to experience first-hand a couple of years ago, back when people had something called disposable income (ask your grandparents, kids). My wife, son and I had the chance to get nicely priced package through our local YMCA’s Silver Fox Club, a group of retirees who more typically take rollicking day trips to Charleston rather than the seven-day voyage from Vancouver to Alaska that we had latched onto. I kept asking at the sign-up if it was okay that we weren’t doddering and they insisted that it was, so off we went.
     Our group of about 20 departed from Charlotte on a flight to Seattle where we would catch a chartered bus for a quick ride across the Canadian border to our port of departure. We arrived at SEA-TAC airport (so named because it’s both seamy and tacky), collected our baggage and shuffled over to the bus loading area. After some considerable delay – we had to shove our own suitcases into the storage bay, which our elderly companions apparently hadn’t trained for at the Y – we left the airport for the two-hour drive north.
     Our driver, a heavy-lidded man who looked like he’d hijacked a few buffets of his own, was just across the aisle from my seat near the front of the bus, er, motorcoach. As our vehicle veered from one side of the lane to the other, I could’ve sworn I saw his head nodding. I’d survived five trips to the south Asian subcontinent without a bus plunge and I wasn’t about to experience one on I-5 just outside of Bellingham, but there was the usual sign that said not to talk to the driver, er, operator, so I resisted. Finally, I thought it might be better if I said “much longer till we get there?” now rather than “oh my god, we’re going off a bridge” two minutes from now, so I did, and he seemed to brighten.
     By now, though, we were seriously behind schedule and faced the real possibility that we’d miss our debarkation. Even though the cruise line had contracted with the ground transport provider to get us from the airport to the seaport, I doubted they’d delay 2,000-plus other passengers just to wait for the Foxes, even if we were Silver. After we made several wrong turns around the port facility, we found the ship and managed to get out and scramble up the passageway just in time.
     The ship was named Something of the Seas (Empress? Brilliance? Enchantment? I forget now) and was as huge as it was magnificent. Greeted in our stateroom by our steward with the usual joke about how the salt air would make our clothes shrink, we stopped to nosh on the welcome-aboard buffet before proceeding to the lifeboat drill/buffet (all jackets extra-large), then on to the settling-in buffet before a quick nap and the midnight you’re-still-not-full buffet. The next two days we were “at sea” according to our itinerary, churning through the Inside Passage while playing trivia games, going on scavenger hunts, scaling the on-board climbing wall and admiring an outdoor pool that seemed out of place off the coast of western Canada.
     We arrived at our first stop on the morning of the third day. This was the famous Hubbard Glacier, a mass of ice a thousand feet deep and a mile wide, inching slowly through the mountains and into the sea. We couldn’t actually get off the ship and experience the glacier first-hand (too slippery, I guess) so we sidled up several hundred yards off shore to watch the glacier “calving.” This is the process where huge chunks of ice fall off into the ocean with tremendous splashes while several cruisers-full of drunken tourists watch and talk thoughtfully about global warning. Though this was an unusually moderate June for these parts, the wind rushing over all that ice made us quite cold, so we switched over to Irish coffees.
     The next day we arrived at our first on-shore excursion at a small town with a “k” in it. We were told they only had about 100 year-round residents, who kept several blocks of souvenir shops during the summer and kept indoors the rest of the year. The main attraction was a vintage steam train that carried us about 15 miles into the snow-capped mountains where we enjoyed fantastic views. Probably the most unusual of these was a cliff face with a huge graffiti scrawl that read “Mr. Hamilton made us do this.” The story was that in the 1930s, a high-school teacher from the Midwest brought his students up here for a summer of adventure, character-building and, apparently, dangling from ropes. They thanked him at the end of the summer with this cliff-drawing before those who survived returned to Illinois.
     We docked next in Juneau, Alaska’s capital city. As we learned in the recent presidential election, state government in this part of the country isn’t much to look at, so we skipped tours of the boxy administrative buildings for a ride up the skytram to a park perched high over the city. We walked a nature trail hoping to spot any of the Big 3 of the Alaskan outdoors (bear, caribou and eagles) but encountered only these furry groundlings that scampered through the brush in a pale imitation of wildlife. The park also had a Pepsi machine.
     Our last stop on Day 6 of the trip was in the fishing village of Ketchikan. We had previously shunned the expensive excursions offered by the cruise line; however, this was our last chance to do something truly special, so my son and I signed up for a seaplane trip into the interior. We joined the pilot and a couple from Arizona for a 45-minute hop to a crystal-clear lake virtually untouched by the outside world. We flew in low over the mountainsides while the pilot played inspirational music (“America the Beautiful,” the theme from “Rocky”) over the intercom and let us all take turns holding the steering thing and pretending to fly. Once on the lake, we taxied over to the shore where the pilot produced a small fishing rod and allowed my son to catch his first fish. On the flight back, the pilot surprised us with short dive, just long enough to photograph everyone’s delighted expression, then maneuvered back into Ketchikan Bay just as an unforgettable sunset broke through the clouds. Meanwhile, my wife had been to the totem pole museum, which I heard was quite nice.
     All that was left now was our return to Vancouver and the flight back home, both very dreary prospects. Before you get off the ship, they make you gather in arbitrary color-coded groups before you’re allowed ashore, since everyone surging to the gangway at once is apparently a bad idea. All the fees and tips have been paid, so there’s no incentive for ship personnel to be pleasant to you anymore and you end up feeling like you’re in a refugee camp. My group, Camp Yellow, was among the last to be able to board our bus. We drove about an hour through the grey drizzle to the U.S. border where we were ordered off the bus by immigration while our vehicle was thoroughly searched. “We’re old and tired and all have headaches,” I wanted to scold the officials who had delayed us. I doubt that would’ve helped our situation, and eventually we made it to Seattle and barely made our return flight, no thanks to the Department of Homeland Security.
     It truly ended up being the trip of a lifetime and I think of it often now that I face a future of lean times and modest vacations. Having been born in Florida and currently living in the heat of the South, Alaska had long been for me an idyllic land of cold and mountains, and in 2005 it was yet to be despoiled by its association with a certain bee-hived governor. Unfortunately, now, when I wear one of my souvenir “Alaska” t-shirts bought on those rustic wooden sidewalks of that town with a “k,” I have the conservative Republicans of my hometown coming up to me, pointing at my shirt, and saying, “Alaska! Alright!”

You want my advice? (Pt. 1)

Free advice seems to be everywhere these days – in the newspapers, online, on television, floating freely in the ether. The problem with the stuff I’ve seen is that they rely heavily on so-called “experts” who have some kind of experience or background in the area they’re discussing. Starting with this installment today and continuing periodically, I will begin offering my own brand of advice, rooted deeply in a philosophy that values the concept of making things up as you go along with no regard for the consequences. Today’s topic addresses an interpersonal relationship, but I’ll also be tackling health problems, spiritual concerns, computer problems, do-it-yourself issues, travel, and virtually anything else I care to. Important Disclaimer in Bold: Remember, I have no idea what I’m talking about.
Q: Three years ago, my brother donated a kidney to me. I’m grateful and have told him so many times. The problem is that he talks about it every time I see him. He will tell complete strangers he gave me his kidney. He even took me to a school reunion to show his old teachers what a wonderful person he is. I’m glad I received the kidney, but how can I let my brother know that while I’m appreciative, I’m also tired of hearing him remind me every day? – Peeing Great in Arkansas.
A: As I see it you have several options: (1) Give him back the kidney. If you sit on the commode and strain really hard, this can be done without surgery. (2) Give him another organ in return. The lungs also come in twos and we can survive quite well with only one. Have it surgically removed (these are a little trickier than kidneys to expel yourself) and overnight it to him — I’d recommend FedX rather than UPS, what with the high volume of packages going through for the holidays. Or, to make even more of a point, smoke cigarettes like a chimney for the next few weeks and then send it to him regular mail after the holidays. You’ll save a lot on postage. (3) Accuse him of wild psychotic distortions. Claim that he made you a pot of kidney bean soup, and then became disoriented. (4) Kill your brother.

Help me Honda (my life in cars)

     With all the attention currently being given to the plight of the American auto industry, I thought I’d take this opportunity to use other people’s hardship for my own personal gain as a topic for a blog posting.
     Not that I’d be caught dead driving an American car, because driving while lifeless can be very dangerous. Actually, my family and I have a long history with domestic auto producers. My grandfather worked for a Ford dealer in Pennsylvania. My father owned almost exclusively Ford products for most of my childhood, except for a failed and ultimately flaming experiment with a Renault. The two most memorable vehicles of my youth were a giant Mercury Monterey with a reverse angle rear window that rolled down at the touch – actually it was more of a 15-second jiggle – of a button, and an even gianter Galaxy 500, our first car with air conditioning.
     And my first car was a “blue” Ford Falcon I inherited from my mother just before my junior year in college. I put blue in quotes because the paint job had become almost crystalline in the heat of the Miami sun. It ran reliably enough despite its stunningly ugly appearance, safely taking me the nearly 500 miles I’d routinely drive between Tallahassee and Miami. My most vivid memory of the Falcon was the day I parked it in front of my landlord’s office while I ran in to pay the rent, then emerged just in time to see it rolling downhill toward several parked cars. Not the best way to find out that adding transmission fluid twice a day was an inadequate alternative to actually getting the transmission fixed.
     My next car was also a Detroit creation, the much-maligned Chevy Vega. This one really was blue, a “fastback” that seemed like one first-rate vehicle to a poor college student of the early ‘70s. Even though it was another automatic transmission, the gearshift was on the floor, which gave its sluggish drive a certain sex appeal (if only to me). We bought it from a neighbor in Miami, who convinced us it was a great deal, which it probably was since he used his front as a used-car salesman to hide what in retrospect were obvious organized-crime connections. I don’t know how many headless bodies were crammed into that hatchback before the Vega came into my hands, but I know they had a remarkably smooth ride to whatever paving project they ended up in.
     The Vega had the distinction of transporting me from my dismal life as an eternally under-achieving college student in Florida to an honest career in a suburb of Charlotte. I drove it for about a year in my new hometown, until I became concerned the corrosive oxidation would metastasize from its body to mine. In my first independent transaction with a car dealer, I made the ghastly mistake of trading it in for a brown VW Rabbit. Not an American car, I know, but by the early ‘80s VW had picked up many bad influences from its U.S. counterparts, not the least of which was constant breakdown. I wasted a lot of money on fruitless repairs before taking it back to the dealer, who took pity on me and put me in my first brand-new car, a Datsun 210.
     I was still a very uneducated consumer – I bought the car in the hope that the “cool” setting on the dashboard fan was actually air-conditioning, which it wasn’t – yet I lucked into a reliable basic vehicle whose fanciest extras were FM radio and faux leather seats. I still remember the feel of those seats after driving through the afternoon heat to my second-shift job a half-hour from home. Open windows on the interstate and that “cool” setting provided little relief to the pit of my lower back, which was utterly sodden by the time I arrived.
     Now that I was experienced with Japanese models, I bought a succession of sensible cars. First there was a red Honda Civic, then a white Honda Civic, then a grey Honda Civic and finally a silver Honda Civic. Not much imagination, I admit, but memories of that damn VW were slower to recede than the stench of a dead rabbit jammed in the under-carriage, and I wanted reliability above all else. I admit I was tempted more than once during that 20-some-year span to go all middle-aged in my car selection, maybe a Miata or a convertible or at least the Honda CRV, the company’s smaller SUV. But common sense (and the advice of my wife) always prevailed. The craziest I was ever able to get was the Honda Odyssey, a chick magnet of a minivan if ever there was one.
     My only complaint with the succession of Civics was that there always seemed to be a slight problem in the same area, one I’ve found hard to describe to my mechanic. It’s sort of near the steering wheel, a bit to the left of the gearshift, maybe just above the accelerator pedal. I think it’s referred to as the vehicle operator, or “driver.” Aside from that incident with the wandering Falcon, I’d never had any accidents with my American cars, probably because I was so attuned to every detail of their operation that I actually paid attention while I was driving. With the Hondas I was able to do other things, like listen to the radio and go in reverse.
     In my first accident, an oncoming driver tried to turn left in front of me and we had a major fender bender in which I actually sustained an injury, a sprained thumb. The next incident was on the interstate near the exit ramp on my way home from work. A line had backed up for some reason, and when the truck in front of me rear-ended the vehicle in front of him, bringing him to a sudden and, I might add, un-signalled stop, I naturally plowed into him. Some extensive front-end damage but nothing irreparable. Finally, I was backing out of a parking spot at the mall on a foggy day, trying to see over the monstrous SUVs that flanked me on either side, when another driver looking for a parking space backed into my rear side panel. In none of these three cases were the Hondas “totaled”, an extremely cool verb I’ve always wanted to use; they were only partialled. All were fixed and returned to service.
     In the judgment of the moment, none of these episodes seemed even remotely to be my responsibility. All of them were largely caused by the inattention or carelessness of others while I was going about my business. I couldn’t have anticipated things were going wrong or changed to a direction that would have led to a more positive outcome. Simply put, none of the three failures were my fault.
     Sounds like I could get a job as head of one of the Big 3 automakers.

You want my advice? (Pt. 2)

This is the second installment in my free but awful advice service. As I mentioned before, my philosophy values the concept of making things up as you go along, with little or no regard for the consequences – a methodology I call “selfish preposterism”. Today’s topic addresses a health matter, but I’ll also be tackling interpersonal relationships, spiritual concerns, computer problems, do-it-yourself issues, travel, and virtually anything else I care to. Important Disclaimer, today in Bold Italic: Remember, I have no idea what I’m talking about.

Q. My 77-year-old husband has a bizarre skin problem. On his left arm he has red blotches that appear and then disappear every several days. He’s seen several dermatologists but none can give him a diagnosis. Now it’s showing up on the other arm. The spots are not itchy or painful, just unsightly. Please help us figure out what is happening.

A. There are several bizarre things going on here: your husband apparently has some skin without red blotches and, at age 77, if this is the best he can do for a health complaint, he’s better off than my sorry 55-year-old body.

 When you say the blotches appear and then disappear every several days, do you mean that they flash on and off like Christmas lights, or do they change more slowly? If they’re flashing, this could be very amusing to circus folk, and you should consider renting a tent for him and charging admission. If it’s more gradual than this, your profit-making options are limited. When it shows up on the other arm, does it disappear from the original arm? Does he ever have both arms in this disgusting condition? And are you sure those are dermatologists you’re seeing, or might they be herpetologists, who would be less surprised because of the unusual skin features they routinely see in snakes and alligators.

My advice would be that, if the spots are just repulsive, not itchy or painful, your best bet would be to cover him in a full-body burqa and move to the tribal regions of northeast Pakistan, which is about as far away from me as you can get.

Rediscovering the rock concert

     As a fifty-something man, it’s been some time since I’ve been to a live rock concert. I’ve been a fan of the genre for as long as I can remember (at least since 1966’s “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron,” assuming that counts) and grew up being inspired by rock’s energy and message (the Red Baron gets shot down in the end). Nothing beats a live performance of rock ‘n roll to celebrate those two magical elements in a community of like-minded people.

     The last concert I can remember attending before just recently was during my final year in college when I drove 180 miles to see John Denver. Now I know a lot of the purists out there will claim that John Denver hardly qualified as a rocker, but let me tell you that the bespectacled moptop could seriously get down. He wasn’t all “Rocky Mountain This” and “Rocky Mountain That.” He actually had a drummer on several of the songs.

     This past summer, I got to attend my first arena show in ages as I accompanied my 17-year-old son to a performance of Canadian rockers Rush. I was delighted to be invited, first because it indicated that Daniel wasn’t too embarrassed to be seen with his dad in public, and secondly because he was embracing a style of music that we could share an appreciation for. Also, I wasn’t on restriction, like the friend he originally planned to go with.

     We made our way to the Verizon Amphitheatre just north of Charlotte on a hot July day. Walking through the parking lot, we saw numerous tailgate parties featuring abundant amounts of beer and suspicious smoky odors. The rebellious nature of rock was alive and well in these small groups who were openly defying the property-wide ban on cigarette smoking. When we got to our seats, we found ourselves situated in mid-row between a guy throwing back Bud Lites at an alarming pace and a 6-foot-8 student with limbs the length of a primate.

     The three-man band took the stage and proceeded to rock long and hard through a set list of new songs and classics. We tried to care about selections from their new “Snakes & Arrows” album but were really there for oldies like “Tom Sawyer” and “Working Man.” To give something of a theme to the tour, they’d produced a short film featuring Jerry Stiller on a nationwide search for rotisserie chicken (I didn’t get it either), and stage props that included upright ovens that roasted rotating birds. The increasingly drunken guy to our left was really getting into this, repeatedly shouting “chicken! wooo!” and “wooo! chicken!” directly into my ear. As the afternoon heat and closeness of the crowd started getting to us, we retreated to the back lawn and spent the rest of the show looking up at the stars and considering how man should “put aside the alienation and end up with the fascination.”

     Then, just this past Wednesday, I had an opportunity to join Daniel for another concert, this time with former Talking Heads front-man David Byrne. We drove through a soaking rain to arrive at a trio of venues clustered together on the east side of Charlotte. I had been to this site several times before but became confused about where exactly I was supposed to park. There’s an auditorium, an arena and a theatre, and they are forever changing labels as corporate naming rights come and go. Were we looking for the Bojangles Arena, which used to be the Blockbuster Coliseum after it had been the Cracker Barrel Arena for years? Or did we want the Papa John’s Theatre, formerly the Time Warner Cable Theatre, formerly the Slim Jim Turkey Jerky Performance Space? We found a line of cars queuing up for a parking lot, so we got in it and hoped for the best.

     And the best is what we got. David Byrne put on an absolutely brilliant performance with all the quirky lyrics and bizarre choreography of the Talking Heads. Three back-up singers and three dancers lumbered frantically around the stage in hilarious chaos, at one point performing while lying flat on the floor and at another time scooting around in office chairs. The music was every bit as enthralling, with the new stuff as mesmerizing as the oldies. I will say nothing nasty or sarcastic about Byrne who is, remarkably, a fellow fifty-something.

     The auditorium offered very comfortable amenities and seating, though the crowd didn’t seem to know how to use the latter. When the musicians first took the stage, we all stood and welcomed them loudly. We continued standing through the second song, and the third song, and I began to wonder why we had bothered to pay for the seats. When a slower-paced song began, most of the audience took the chance to sit down and rest, but then re-exploded onto their feet when a high-energy number followed. My back is not in the best shape and I was starting to wish we could pick a pose and stick with it; I didn’t care which one, I just didn’t like all the up and down. Perhaps the guidance of a program would’ve been handy, like those we used to have in church that prompted “the congregation rises” and “now you sit down.”

     The other parts of the concert that gave me pause were the sing-along portions. It wasn’t a formal row-row-row-your-boat kind of thing. I’m talking about how enthusiastic audience members would chime in with the chorus of certain songs, whether they knew the lyrics or not. I wanted to hear Byrne singing “Life During Wartime,” not the bozo behind me who chanted “This ain’t no Hardee’s/This ain’t no Frisco/This ain’t no dueling in town/No time for potluck/Or heebie-jeebies…” and so on.

     The end of the set arrived, a reasonable 90 minutes after the show began, and we gave a rousing ovation as the band bowed, waved and then left the stage. Then, more awkwardness – how exactly is this encore thing supposed to work in a way that doesn’t embarrass the performer and afflict the audience with repetitive motion injuries? We all know it’s a sham, that the musicians are going to return for another song or two. Still we play this little game where we pretend we can’t live without them and they pretend to be on their bus, halfway out of town already. Byrne and company seemed to stretch their luck a bit with the amount of time they stayed off-stage, and the cheers were starting to ebb when they finally returned. Embarrassing, yes, and yet we did it all over again following another song. After this one, though, we clipped our appreciation short and managed to get them to stay away.

     Though awkward, uncomfortable and slightly scary to someone my age, I must say I enjoyed both of these concert experiences thoroughly, probably slightly more in retrospect than during the event itself. It was a great chance to bond with my son and allow us to share a common passion for a cultural phenomenon that will never die, even if most of its earliest fans will shortly.

Don’t forget to get Alzheimer’s

Like many people approaching late middle-age, I’m starting to have some concerns about my memory. I’m not sure where on the continuum from a few “senior moments” to full-blown Alzheimer’s I might be, and even if a neurologist could pinpoint it, I wouldn’t be able to remember what he said.

It’s that short-term memory that I seem to be having the most trouble with these days. I guess this is something everyone struggles with to an extent; even the twenty-ish cashier who I just paid for my tea had notes scribbled all over the back of her hands, including a scrawl that looked suspiciously like “kill.” (You’d think a chore that life-altering would tend to stick with you, but maybe she’s got a lot of holiday-related obligations – parties, cards, gifts for the nephews, etc. — on her mind.)

Now that I think of it though, my mid-term memory is also suffering. I recently made a list of all the places we’ve gone on vacations over the years so I wouldn’t forget the tremendous time we had in Montreal or that great walk along Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. My wife would suggest that if these events were so memorable, then I’d remember them, and I suppose she has a point. But I did shoot photographs and took video on both of these trips, so why should I have to waste cranial storage space when I can just as easily root around in the dusty bags stashed in the top of the coat closet to recall such precious times?

What tends to be most bothersome to family members, and I’ve heard this is a symptom I share with the most desperately neuron-deficient, is that my long-term memory remains quite good. The problem is that it’s not important lifetime milestones like weddings and births that I remember with such clarity. I do vaguely recollect that my wife had some sort of child a while back, and I’m pretty sure it was a boy because that’s what we have walking around the house now 17 years later. But the details of that event are roughly equivalent to my recall of the ’63 Dodgers and the record-setting 104 steals made by Maury Wills on their way to the World Series. The emergence of a living being who represents my own flesh and blood from the womb of my beloved life partner is a truly magical experience but, c’mon… 104 stolen bases in one season?

What worries me is that it’s neither long- nor medium-term memory that allows you to get through the day in some sort of organized, survivable fashion. It’s the immediate stuff that’s most important to daily life. I can’t imagine arriving at the airport having forgotten my passport and yet getting a reprieve from the screeners because I can remember the actress who played Granny on “The Beverly Hillbillies” (Irene Ryan).

For just one example, with this being the Christmas season, I am expected to remember hints dropped by loved ones about the type of gifts that would be most dear to them. I barely even realize that it’s the most wonderful time of year until we’ve run out of Thanksgiving leftovers, and that still hasn’t happened yet. My wife and son already have an estimated four presents either in-hand or on-order for me, and I’ve yet to visit a single retail website (unless you can count ESPN.com). I think Beth said she wants an iPod or socks or tea, or something in that general area. But these kinds of things come in such a huge variety of options these days that it’s very challenging to pick out exactly the correct item. Beth has kindly promised to get me to the website of choice this weekend and position the cursor directly on the gift she wants, then turn away as I click so that there’ll be at least some element of surprise.

It’s exactly this kind of immediacy that enables me to function with some measure of decency. I’ve borrowed a term from modern manufacturing techniques to give credibility to the technique I’ve developed. Called “Just in Time” – for the idea that you don’t build something until right before someone wants it – I want to learn what I need to know just before I need to know it. Don’t tell me several weeks in advance that my mom’s birthday is coming up. I need to know at the very last minute so I can spend three times the necessary amount on rush postage and still be two days late.

Aside from occasions like gift-giving and breaking the heart of my dear mother, the other major handicap I’m learning to live with has to do with following directions to get from one location to another. Visiting my son’s high school the other day, I asked at the main office to be directed to a particular room number. I was told go out this door, turn right, go down the hall and through the double doors, walk across the open area to building E and take the first hall to the right all the way to the end. I moved my head up and down and put the most understanding look I could summon on my face as the sounds being made by the secretary in front of me went whizzing by my head. It was at this point that I wished I’d put a Garmin GPS on my Christmas gift list.

There is one major benefit to a severely deficient memory, and that comes while watching television. I can’t tell a first-run TV show from a rerun even if it stars Bernie Mac, Heath Ledger and Pope John Paul II. I can blissfully sit through every episode of “Seinfeld” or “The Office” that I’ve ever seen and enjoy the jokes like I’m hearing them for the first time. This annoys my wife to no end, since she has the memory of a wolverine and can recite dialog from foreign films she hasn’t seen for years, and do it in French. Plot twists already known to millions hit me out of left field, like an errant throw from Orlando Cepeda trying to gun down the speedy Wills on his record-breaking dash for third base.

I’m just hoping to hang on till retirement, when I can while away my remaining days, remembering to drool now and then but not much else.

You want my advice? (Pt. 3)

This is the third installment in my free but dreadful advice service. As I mentioned previously, my philosophy uses the concept of making things up as you go along, with little or no regard for the consequences – a methodology I call “selfish preposterism”. Today’s topic again addresses a health matter, but I’ll also be tackling interpersonal relationships, spiritual concerns, computer problems, do-it-yourself issues, travel, and virtually anything else I care to. IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER, TODAY IN BOLD CAPITALS, IN HONOR OF THE FROZEN CAPITAL MARKETS: REMEMBER, I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT.

 

Q. My 82-year-old father was recently hospitalized with complications from a blood disorder. Medical staff assessed the need for a urinary catheter. The insertion was done with a dry tube surface. When asked if they could “put something on it,” the female nurse just told him to “take a deep breath”. The insertion was done twice, both times without lubricant. When he told his regular doctor, she just about came unglued. My father is now unable to urinate on his own because of a blockage, which his urologist said may have been caused by the dry insertions. He now has to live with a catheter. I cringe whenever I think about his experience and wonder if others have been subjected to this.

     A. HOLY CRAP! DID YOU REALLY HAVE TO TELL ME THIS? OH MY GOD, THAT SOUNDS HORRENDOUSLY PAINFUL.

     On a more sane and sober note, I agree with your father’s regular doctor who suggested using glue as a lubricant. Wait, that’s not what you said. Jeez, I’m really unhinged here.

     I’m guessing that the female nurse who did the unlubricated insertion misconstrued your father’s request to “put something on it” as an improper sexual advance, which it may well have been. Is your father currently getting “any”? Was “it” in an engorged state when the request was made? It may be that his eagerness for admittedly pleasurable but inappropriate touching by the nurse could have caused him a more painful procedure than was necessary.

     As for the blockage he’s now experiencing, I would suggest limiting his intake of fluids to zero. If he still has to urinate, you might try the homeopathic version of a catheter: a Burger King straw (the big ones they give out for milk shakes). Instead of the greasing the tube, try lubricating your father instead with a tall glass of Bacardi 151 rum. While he’s unconscious, his limp appendage should be far more user-friendly.

     And please, PLEASE, never write to me about urinary catheters again. I’m serious.

I beg (urp) your pardon (achoo!)

I wrote not too long ago about my annoyance with the social convention that demands a verbal response from bystanders when someone sneezes. Just as we properly fail to comment when our friends and coworkers make other kinds of unprompted nasal or oral outbursts — like snorting or saying “hi” — so too should we mind our own business for the sneeze.

The most common response always seemed a little presumptuous to me anyway. “God bless” sounds too much like an order to the deity. He’s supposed to stop whatever grand enterprise He might be involved in so He can heed your command to bless Bob from accounting simply because he (Bob) had an irritation of the nasal passage that caused a sudden, forceful expulsion of air and God knows what else? Even the most focused of us has to concentrate when creating worlds or smiting errant Methodists; we don’t need to be distracted by requests for trivial blessings, especially when we all know that Bob makes it louder than he has to just because he craves attention.

Saying “God bless” is second nature to many of us, yet would other cultures similarly demand their gods do such casual bidding? Can you imagine hearing “Shiva, hand me that stapler,” or “Yahweh, tell that guy to knock off the humming”? I don’t think so.

If we’re all going to agree that spontaneous eruptions from the mouth or nose need some kind of acknowledgment, let’s at least be consistent and come up with some standards that make a little bit of sense. I think I’m as competent as anyone to start the discussion.

For sneezing, I proposed we switch over completely to the more secular “Gesundheit.” I believe that translates from the German to “good health,” which is probably too late to hope for if the cold germs are already in the trachea but seems like a nice sentiment anyway.

For coughing, I think we should say “Schadenfreude.” Again, turning to the Germanic tradition feels appropriate and, since the translation has to do with taking delight in the failure of others more successful than you, a certain bitterness is properly communicated.

For hiccupping, I would suggest something along the lines of “Sorry you’ve had a convulsive gasp caused by the involuntary contraction of the diaphragm. Let’s agree that it won’t happen again.”

For burping, let’s go with “Jacksonian democracy.” Admittedly it makes no sense, but it should at least prompt a change of subject to 19^th century American history. I think we also need to acknowledge the pause in conversation you’ll sometimes detect when someone just barely manages to suppress a burp. Your boss says “I really think that in order to cut costs further we’re going to have to (pause, slight puffing of jowls and slight lowering of jaw) lay off our entire workforce and outsource our production to Chimp Haven, the retirement home for lab monkeys” and you’re thinking “Wow, he almost burped; I should probably say something.” That something should be “Hail, Satan.”

For yawning, no response should be required unless the yawn is accompanied by an audible sound. If it is, let me propose either “need a nap?” or the equally appropriate “please close your mouth as soon as possible.”

For throat clearing, keep in mind that this is usually done as a preface to an interruption, so a good reply might be “what the hell do you want?” If instead, a true backup of phlegm was actually involved and the “ahem” was sincere, say nothing but instead evacuate the area immediately.

For chewing gum in such an insistent manner as to cause a cracking sound, we should say (into the nearest 911-enabled telephone) “The nature of my emergency is that my friend has apparently swallowed Bubble Wrap.”

For sniffing or sniffling, like when you’re try to get air through a slightly congested sinus, I’m tempted to suggest the caustic “Oh, boo-hoo, what a baby” but that seems a little harsh, even to me. I think I’ll recommend tactful silence unless – and this is a very important exception – the sniff is accompanied by a high-pitched tweet, which should prompt the response “There seems to be a bird in your nose; let’s join together to kill it.”

Nose-blowing, even the most subtle variety, is an abomination that I can’t believe is sanctioned in polite company. Considering that it’s far less spontaneous than other expulsions – the blower even premeditates (if we’re lucky) his or her move by producing a hanky – it should not be tolerated, much less tacitly endorsed with a friendly comment. Nose-blowing should only be done under the care of a healthcare professional on an in-patient basis at the nearest major medical center, or at least not in the same room as me.

Horking, mostly done by cats trying to expel a hairball though occasionally heard from elderly gentlemen, should be met with “bad kitty” (or “bad elderly gentleman”) followed by a stern “No!”

I think I’ve provided an adequate framework for the transition from our current methods of recognizing these outbursts to something much more fair and equitable. I realize that there may be some categories I haven’t covered, in particular those hybrid explosions that combine two or more of the above-defined events: the sneef (sneeze + cough), the curp (cough + burp), the york (yawn + hork) and the never-documented but often-theorized snickup (sniffle + hiccup). But I can’t both create and manage this new system, and will have to rely on the good sense of average citizens to take it to the next level if that’s what’s needed.

I don’t want to appoint a Language Czar to oversee my plans though, if necessary, I understand George W. Bush may soon be available.

You want my advice? (Pt. 4)

This is the fourth installment in my free but increasingly dreadful advice service. Today’s topic again addresses a technical matter, but I’ll also be tackling interpersonal relationships, spiritual concerns, health problems, do-it-yourself issues, travel, and virtually anything else I care to. TODAY’S DISCLAIMER APPEARS IN UNDERLINED CAPITALS, BECAUSE I WANT TO SEE HOW UNDERLINES ARE CONVERTED FROM WORD TO HTML: REMEMBER, I HAVEN’T THE FAINTEST IDEA WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT.

Q. I’m hoping you can provide guidance concerning harmful radiation from a satellite dish mounted on my roof. I’m a little concerned because we’re expecting a baby soon, and her crib will be just a few feet away from the satellite dish’s position on my roof.

A. You’re quite right to be concerned about the position of the satellite dish. The way that it’s mounted, the angle of the dish and the condition of the bowl itself are all very important considerations in the well-being of your loved ones. You also need to look at the power source, the wiring and the connection into your TV. All of these must be in proper shape to guarantee you’re getting the crispest picture as well as all the channels you’re entitled to. The happiness of your family members hangs in the balance, especially if they can’t see all the Indian cricket, Mexican soap operas and NFL football they want.

As for the baby you’re expecting, I wouldn’t recommend putting her crib on the roof. Most roofs are slanted to allow rain and snow to trickle off, and the same thing could happen to your little girl if the crib isn’t soundly secured. It would be much better to keep her inside the house, preferably in a room by herself, if she’s going to scream and moan anything like my kids did. This room, often called a “nursery,” should not be confused with the nurseries and rooftop herb gardens some people keep in the city. It should contain bedding of soft cotton or linen, not soil or mulch.

Allow me to wish you all the best with the new addition to your family. A rewarding life of laughter, pride and contentment await you as you watch the number of channels offered on satellite TV continue to grow and grow. There’s nothing quite like a dish to make you appreciate how happy you can be with your family.

Just make sure that new little girl doesn’t get loose and chew through the wiring.

Playing the corporate game

As I’ve written before, I’ve been involved in a lot of game-playing during my corporate career. I’m not talking about the politics and back-biting that make the corporate life so much fun. I’m referring to the all-too-occasional exercises in what’s generally called “career development,” where a group of employees sit around a table (or a bush or an abandoned fire training tower) and get run through a series of humiliations and/or life-threatening workouts. If you’re lucky, you only feel stupid; otherwise, you end up “developed,” a painful condition where you exhibit a positive attitude all out of proportion to your circumstances.

Generally, these outings are designed to promote creativity and build camaraderie among the troops. You’re taken out of your normal cubicle environment and put in a setting where you are encouraged to think outside the box, dare to be great, or push the envelope of your normal comfort zone. I happen to believe that thinking outside the box is over-rated, and remind my cat of this every time he strays over the edge of his litter container.

Nevertheless, I try to be a good boy and play along. The first couple times, I genuinely tried to improve myself and my value to the company. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become a lot more jaded, as you’re about to read.

One fairly common method to get group members to open up and talk freely is to mentally transport them to a different place in time. Here, they can talk about their aspirations or ramble nostalgically about the past. In one session I went through in the early ‘90s, staged for what were (wrongly as it turned out) perceived to be future leaders, we were told to draw a picture of where we saw ourselves in ten years. The only thing the 15 people had in common was that they imagined a future somewhere very far away from the company they were supposed to be leading. I remember that my picture had me sitting on a dock next to a huge satellite dish that retrieved documents from outer space that I would then proofread while my son sat next to me fishing. (I wasn’t exactly prescient about the coming rise of the Internet.) Poor artist that I am, my group’s facilitator interpreted the scene as someone working at NASA directing the first mission to Mars, with my son playing the part of a tethered robot. Close enough, I figured.

A similar exercise was done with another group a few years later: they were told to think exactly ten years into the past. Headlines of the exact day were read aloud and a hit song from the period was played to tickle everyone’s memory. We heard funny tales from high school, a story about a surprise birthday party and, from one young woman who could barely hold back her tears, a recounting of the day after her mother was killed in a head-on collision with a drunk driver. The brainstorming was not especially inspired after that.

Another common activity is to break the group into smaller teams who are then given an assignment that requires them to work together to accomplish a goal. Once, we had to use tape, pipe cleaners and popsicle sticks to create a contraption that could cushion an egg from a six-foot fall. Another time we had to reach consensus on the best way to fold a sheet of paper into an airplane, then test our designs with a farthest-flight competition in the parking lot. My prototype was damaged when it was run over during flight testing; I wanted to ball up the remains and wrap them around a rock, which I was convinced I could throw way farther than anyone’s aircraft was going to go. Apparently, this was not the paradigm shift my trainer had in mind. Maybe I’d do better if a coloring or finger-paint session was next on the schedule.

I also had an opportunity to work on the other side of the equation when I spent a few years as an excellence trainer. (Note that I said “excellence,” not “excellent.”) During each day-long quality awareness session, we played what was called the JIT game, which was meant to demonstrate just-in-time production techniques. Each six-person team was given a collection of interlocking blocks and asked to set up a line that could produce exact replicas of a certain configuration. They were required to re-engineer their process several times – with blatant hints from the trainers – to achieve more and better widgets crafted each time with fewer and fewer people. At the end, they could do their very best work with only two people instead of six. Inevitably, some participant would learn the wrong lesson and ask what would happen to the four people who no longer had jobs. The trainers were told to make some vague hint about how maybe they could work in marketing instead.

The most enjoyable game I can recall from my quarter-century experience with this garbage was the Myers-Briggs personality assessment. What I liked best was that this was something you could do largely in the privacy of your own personal space, without having to “team-build” with your half-witted coworkers. You’d answer a battery of questions about your preferences – there were no right or wrong choices – and then you’d be put into one of 16 categories that labeled you as an extrovert, a thinker, a perceiver, an innovator, a molester, an invertebrate, etc. The only group participation required was at the end when you were given your results and told to go to a part of the room where you’d join up with others of your monstrous ilk and compare notes.

One thing I have learned from all these corporate games is how to game the system. Since no judgments are made, no answers are wrong and no ideas are too ridiculous, you can offer up the most absurd input and enjoy watching your guide squirm as they validate your responses. “Yes, Davis, your idea about twirling on our tippy-toes while talking to clients on the phone is a very innovative one,” the trainer says. “Let’s write that up on the whiteboard.” Until they wise up and put your manager behind a two-way mirror with your personnel file, your pay grade and a taser at the ready, these learning opportunities can actually be rewarding. Just not how they were intended.

 

Worst Christmas songs ever

Today I begin my list of the five worst Christmas songs in the history of the universe. In reverse order, they are:

Number 5 – “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” by Michael Jackson

This is the only song on my list that is a re-imagined classic rather than an original composition. It was recorded back in the Jackson Five days and features Michael at his high-pitched screeching worst. (I’d say he was pre-pubescent at the time, but then I could be talking about last week.) In the final bars – “…mommy kissing Santa Claus … last … night” – the pitch is so grating that I get a headache just describing it. It’s so bad that it’s possibly even worse than the allegations of child abuse against him.

Number 4 – “Little St. Nick” by the Beach Boys

Allow me to quote what is otherwise one of my favorite groups of the rock era:

Well, way up north where the air gets cold
There’s a tale about Christmas that you’ve all been told
And a real famous cat all dressed up in red
And he spends the whole year workin’ out on his sled

It’s the little Saint Nick / Ooooo, little Saint Nick
It’s the little Saint Nick / Ooooo, little Saint Nick

And haulin’ through the snow at a frightenin’ speed
With a half a dozen deer with Rudy to lead
He’s gotta wear his goggles ’cause the snow really flies
And he’s cruisin’ every pad with a little surprise

Run run reindeer / Run run reindeer / Run run reindeer / Run run reindeer

Ahhhhhh / Oooooooo
Merry Christmas Saint Nick
Christmas comes this time each year

I think that last line is my favorite. Nothing puts cheer in the season like reminding us that holidays come on a regularly scheduled basis.

Number 3 – “Step Into Christmas” by Elton John

I don’t know if Elton collaborated with long-time lyricist Bernie Taupin to create this song, or whether it was one of his rare song-writing efforts with the ghost of Adolf Hitler. Either way, it’s a sorry, sorry offering.

Welcome to my Christmas song
I’d like to thank you for the year
So I’m sending you this Christmas card
To say it’s nice to have you here
I’d like to sing about all the things
Your eyes and mind can see
So hop aboard the turntable
Oh step into Christmas with me

Step into Christmas
Let’s join together
We can watch the snow fall forever and ever
Eat, drink and be merry
Come along with me
Step into Christmas
The admission’s free

 Note that he’d like to sing about “all the things your eyes and mind can see,” in other words, virtually everything known to mankind, from kangaroos to the tensions on the India-Pakistan border to the third law of thermodynamics. Just “hop aboard the turntable so … we can watch the snow fall forever and ever … because the admission’s free.” Excuse me, but I just have to ask: what?

Number 2 – “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime” by Paul McCartney

This “song” is an absolute abomination. Even if you didn’t compare it to other holiday efforts by former Beatles – the haunting “Happy Christmas (War is Over)” by John Lennon and the not-really-a-Christmas-song-but-I-think-it-mentions-Jesus “My Sweet Lord” by George Harrison – it would still be ghastly. Let’s look at some of the “lyrics”:

The moon is right
The spirits up
We’re here tonight
And that’s enough
Simply having a wonderful Christmastime
Simply having a wonderful Christmastime

The party’s on
The feelin’s here
That only comes
This time of year

Simply having a wonderful Christmastime
Simply having a wonderful Christmastime

The choir of children sing their song
Ding dong, ding dong
Ding dong, ding ohhhh
Ohhhhhhh

“Ohhhhhh” indeed. And, I might add, “arrgghhh” and “eeewww.”

Tomorrow, the number-one worst Christmas song of all time.

The worst Christmas song of all time

Yesterday, I listed what I thought were four of the five worst Christmas songs of all time. Today, we learn who the winner is and, of course, by “winner” I mean “loser.”

The perhaps unlikely recipient of this honor is “Do They Know It’s Christmastime?” by Band Aid. I will admit that this song had at least two positives going for it: (1) it was a genuinely catchy and inspiring arrangement, and (2) it single-handedly saved the African continent from the ravages of hunger. Those are pretty strong plusses, so you can imagine the kind of negatives it would take to offset all that good, and transport this effort to the status of worst Christmas song of all time.

I know he’s already considered something of a “Gloomy Gus,” but consider what singer Morrissey had to say about the song. “I’m not afraid to say that I think … (Band Aid creator) Bob Geldof is a nauseating character. The record itself was absolutely tuneless. One can have great concern for the people of Ethiopia, but it’s another thing to inflict daily torture on the people of England. It was an awful record considering the mass of talent involved. It was the most self-righteous platform ever in the history of popular music.”

Another critic suggested “the song presents a very bleak view of Africa, which the lyrics appear to refer to as a whole. Some of these, such as the suggestions (if read literally) that the continent has no rainfall or successful crops, have been seen as absurd by critics. The lyrics as patronizing, false and out of date.”

Well, let’s take a look and see what we, and by “we” I mean “I”, think.

It’s Christmastime (for the half of the African continent that is Christian)
There’s no need to be afraid (yes there is, if you’re living in many part of Africa)
At Christmastime, we let in light and we banish shade (thank you, ‘80s British rockers)
And in our world of plenty we can spread a smile of joy (that’s your best idea?)
Throw your arms around the world at Christmastime (just not practical)

But say a prayer
Pray for the other ones
At Christmastime it’s hard when you’re having fun (please, don’t put yourself out)
There’s a world outside your window
And it’s a world of dread and fear
Where the only water flowing is the bitter sting of tears
And the Christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom
Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you (that just seems terribly selfish)

And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmastime (Accuweather calls for humid)
The greatest gift they’ll get this year is life
(Oooh) Where nothing ever grows
No rain nor rivers flow (except the Nile, Niger, Zambezi, Victoria Falls, etc.)
Do they know it’s Christmastime at all? (do these people have no calendars?)

(Here’s to you) raise a glass for everyone (we’ll have champagne; you drink the tears)
(Here’s to them) underneath that burning sun (thanks for that shade banishment)
Do they know it’s Christmastime at all?

Feed the world
Let them know it’s Christmastime again
Feed the world
Let them know it’s Christmastime again (OK, OK, we heard you the first two times)

With only a few days left till Christmas, I think I can avoid radios, malls, medical offices, elevators, etc., long enough to avoid this song for the rest of the season. If you can’t hole up quite the way I plan, then all I can say is thank God it’s you instead of me.

 

Twas the parody before Christmas

Twas the night before Christmas and all through the land
The economy’s falling like castles of sand
The stock market tanked like a chimney of hair
Investment banks toppled, and wide roamed the bear
The Dow hit new lows, then fell even more
The middle class joined with the ranks of the poor
Retirement and pensions and 401(k)’s
And savings we’d kept for our golden-age days
Were gutted and shredded and eaten for lunch
And now try to borrow in this credit crunch
We’ve bailed out the autos, insurance and banks
And we’re thrown out of work — this is our thanks
Unemployment climbs higher, near seven percent
And foreclosures rise and yet so does the rent
The Internet’s fun but it’s taking our jobs
And turning us all into hypnotized mobs
Outsourcing continues, white-collar work prowls
To lands in South Asia with too many vowels
We tried “Buy American”, tried doing our part
But succumbed in the end to the lure of Wal-Mart
When all looked quite lost and we struggled to cope
We saw signs of life, we saw signs of hope
When what to our wondering eyes did appear
A president-elect a bit large in the ear
But he knows how to lead, even knows how to talk
And he goes by the uncommon name of Barack
His electoral victory o’er Old Man McCain
And that gal from Alaska, the one who’s insane,
Was truly historic, inspiring and cool
After eight years of piss-poor incompetent rule
Now he’s picking his cabinet, a quite able lot
Can’t remember them all but I’ll give it a shot
Now, Daschle! Now, Vilsack! Now, Holder and Duncan!
On Solis! On Salazar, Gates, Chu and Clinton!
From the right, from the left, labels falling away
Need just one from the South and one who is gay
Transition’s proceeding at an admirable rate
Less than thirty days now till the January date
That Cheney and Rove and their underling Bush
Return to their homes with one final push
To a life full of leisure while the rest of us work
To undo the disaster that’s left by this jerk
But we’ll hear him exclaim as he flies out of sight
“Sure I lost your life savings, but I coddled the Right”.

You want my advice? (Pt. 6)

This is the sixth installment in my free but increasingly dangerous advice service. Today, rather than giving advice, I’ll be answering a deep theological question posed by one of our dimmer readers.

Q. Who created God? Everything else in the universe had a beginning, so why not God? – Just Curious

A. What an appropriate question for this magical day. The answer lies in the Christmas Story itself.

Hundreds of years ago, it came to pass that the Italians wanted to impose a tax on the people of Galilee, so they had to return to the land of their birth to register for a census. The tax was to be placed on wine and some of the Galilites protested this with a “wine party” in which they dressed up as Judeans, boarded a ship in the harbor and threw the wine overboard. Most of them, however, did as they were told.

A carpenter by the name of Jesus and his wife Mary were among those who had obeyed, so they rented a donkey to carry them to Bethlehem. But when they arrived, there was a big convention of the local medical association in town so no rooms were available. At the last hotel they checked, Jesus demanded to see the manager but while they discussed the matter behind the front desk, Mary went into labor and the child was delivered right there by the manager (now translated as “manger”). When the clerk came to check on the commotion and witnessed the scene, he shrieked “Oh my God,” so that was given as the new baby’s name.

Soon, there were Three Wise Men who arrived carrying gifts for the young God: gold, myrrh and a burning bush. The gold and myrrh looked on in silent awe, but the bush spoke up, saying “you must go find a man named Noah and get on his ark because there is a Great Flood on the way.” The young family headed for the mountain where Noah was known to reside. It was a two-day trip, so they had to stop for the night at a cave. When they woke up the next morning, someone had put a giant stone in front of the cave so they yelled and screamed till the Pharisees showed up and rolled back the stone. Finally they arrived at the ark and just as they were about to board, a giant whale ate them. But John the Baptist intervened, administering the Holy Emetic (later found to be syrup of ipecac) to the great fish. He swam as far as Gethsemane before he couldn’t hold it down any longer. Jesus, Mary and the young baby God were saved from the flood and the fish only to be injured by a stampeding cavalry (now translated as “Calvary”) of soldiers.

Some shepherds soon came to pass and carried the family to the nearby Garden of Eden. They were welcomed there by a talking snake who offered them a large meal consisting of apples, one fish, one loaf of bread and some communion wafers. The baby smushed his food all into one pile, creating the first shepherd’s pie. When the Holy Family recovered, they traveled to Rome to wreak vengeance on the Italians but soon became distracted and instead single-handedly built the Vatican.

And that’s roughly why we celebrate Christmas today.

Giving vs. receiving — which is best?

They say that giving is better than receiving. This sounds to me like one of those counterintuitive urban myths, except with fewer unauthorized kidney transplants. I would contend that common sense dictates that it’s the receiving that’s better than the giving. Sure, there’s a rush of warmth when you see the look on that loved one’s face as they open your gift. But that tends to pass pretty quickly, whereas on the receiving end, you’ve still got the socks.

No matter how much joy I’ve ever experienced giving or receiving during the holidays, it can’t possibly match what one of my coworkers went through just the other morning. Lucy is widely known as, shall we say, the expressive type, never one to keep her thoughts or feelings unshared. The generosity with which she lays out all the details of her life is something I don’t always appreciate. It’s a gift that keeps on giving. And giving. And giving.

The co-worker sitting immediately to Lucy’s right has become her close friend, which Lucy pretty much requires when you’re that close to her every day. Jen was nice enough to bring Lucy a gift, a contraption called the Pasta ‘n More. You may have seen the ads on late-night TV: features include a strainer lid, steam rack, storage lid and, if you order now, two handles. You can cook, drain, serve and store pasta all in one vessel constructed of FDA-certified materials. Makes a great gift.

But “great” didn’t come close to describing how Lucy felt upon opening the package. There were shrieks, there were yips, there were even tears. The entire production floor ground to a halt and got to hear how wonderful the gift was, how fantastic the pasta was going to be, and how unbelievably extraordinary was the two-quart capacity. Eventually, she had to be comforted and led to a chair.

Kind of made one of my most memorable gifts from childhood pale in comparison. I grew up in Miami, which sounds like an ideal place to spend your formative years but was actually quite lacking in many ways. I’d read in books at school about concepts like autumn leaves, mountains, chimneys and snow, though these were totally alien to the south Florida scene. Our Santa came not in a sleigh drawn by eight tiny reindeer. He came in a helicopter powered by Pratt & Whitney.

My grandmother, who lived in Pennsylvania, took pity on me one year and actually mailed me an oak leaf that had fallen in her yard. I removed the leaf from the envelope and marveled at how red and how leaf-shaped it was, not like the palm fronds and crocus spirals in my unnatural subtropical hell. She could’ve used the U.S. Postal Service to clear her yard like her neighbors used the city’s curbside vacuuming trucks if we could’ve figured out the logistics. Only the intervention of my parents kept me from requesting a snowball with the next shipment.

This is not to discount the value of the gifts I received from my own parents, for these were also very special. We lived in a modest working/middle class neighborhood but they always made sure my sister and I had one of the best Christmases in that part of town, and not just because all our neighbors were Jewish. My anticipation and gift list began in late November, when the 3,000-page Sears catalog would arrive at our door by flatbed truck. Up till about age twelve, I’d quickly flip to the last section of the giant volume where the toy section was spread out in its full black-and-white glory and begin to compile my list. (When my teens arrived, I tended to first make a furtive stop to check out the models in their industrial-strength bras and the sexiest girdles this side of J.C. Penney.) More often than not, I’d get most of the items I’d requested.

Aside from the conventional gifts that every boy of the ‘60s received – footballs, cap guns, the occasional bike – my parents were as accommodating as they could afford to be to some of my more unusual requests (no, not the bra). One year I asked for and actually received a full-size pool table. Our three-bedroom home contained modest floor space at best, yet we managed to turn that monster on its side and wrestle it down the hallway to my bedroom. There, it barely fit next to my bed, hard up against the other three walls. I still remember how impressed visiting friends would be as we stood in the closet banking shots into the corner pocket.

Other especially memorable gifts included a punching bag, a portable tape recorder and a slot-car racing set. As a nerdy, pimply overweight kid, my pugilistic skills were not the best. It was theorized the punching bag would build both the confidence and technique that would allow me to defend against those vicious Jewish bullies. The height of the bag on its spring was not quite right, so my most vivid learning experience consisted of the punched mass viciously returning back to my lower abdomen. I spent hours complaining about this to the tape recorder in an affected British accent, which I imagined would ultimately land me a job as radio deejay. The car racing set, much like the small stereo and the electric guitar I received at subsequent Christmases, was a mass of primitive electronics that alternately provided fun and dangerous high-voltage currents.

My folks were also open-minded enough to buy me some of them rock and roll records all the kids were so crazy about. I still remember the year I received the Beatles’ White Album, and the contortions I had to go through to hide the picture inside of a naked John Lennon. Though I succeeded at that, the Fab Four were eventually exposed when my mom overheard a playing of “I’ve Got a Feeling,” which contained the line “everybody’s got a wet dream.” What had previously been just noise to her now took on the awkwardness of a subject the 15-year-old doesn’t especially care to discuss with his mother. A year later, she heard the lyric “nothing’s gonna change my world” on “Across the Universe,” and commented that John should “quit whining and do something about it if he doesn’t like the world.” That is one valid criticism you can make about the Beatles: they didn’t exert much influence on the culture.

So now it’s the day after Christmas, and I’m enjoying playing with this year’s gifts – peanut-butter-stuffed pretzels, a book of crossword puzzles and a hat. (“Whee!” I gushed as I spin the fedora on my finger. “It’s a hat!”) At least these gifts are unlikely to electrocute me.

New ideas of 2008

The New York Times recently ran a feature in their Sunday magazine profiling what they called the “Year in Ideas.” They examined several dozen new concepts floated in 2008 that “helped make the previous 12 months, for better or worse, what they were” – an introduction that belied their alleged astonishment at the unlimited nature of the inventive mind.

I’ll admit that all the ideas are extremely imaginative, but that doesn’t mean that some of them can’t also be extremely bizarre. Today and tomorrow, we’ll look at a few examples:

Air Bags for the Elderly – In light of the fact that falls are the leading cause of death among people 65 and older, a Japanese company has begun selling a wearable set of airbags. Describing the device as looking “something like a fishing vest with a fanny pack attached,” it contains motion sensors that will inflate two airbags – one around the hips and the other around the neck – when a fall is detected. “Instant Michelin Man,” notes the Times. This innovation updates an earlier attempt to reduce injuries, the foam hip pads. Both the low-tech hip pads and the high-tech air bags could be a success from a bioengineering and cost standpoint and yet still fall victim to the elderly’s penchant for wanting to be fashionable. “One of the reasons people shy away from these is that they don’t want to make their hips look larger,” said one independent researcher. “These air bags look kind of parachute-y.”

The Biomechanical Energy Harvester – A knee-brace-like contraption has been developed by a Canadian scientist that reportedly can harness the power of your walk and turn it into something your cell phone and other small electronics can run on. Strapped to the back of your leg, the device taps the power of your muscles with each stride without making walking feel any more difficult. At less than three pounds, it’s small enough to fit under your pants (or, less subtly, just below the hemline of your skirt), which is a significant improvement on version 1.0 – a backpack that made its own electricity from the subtle bouncing of your walk but, unfortunately, weighed in at 80 pounds.

Bubble Wrap that Never Ends – Again it’s the Japanese leading the way to a better future. They’ve created a battery-powered keychain with a panel of eight buttons that simulate the tactile joy of bubble-package destruction. Roughly translated as “Infinite Pop Pop,” the company has already sold a million of the gadgets in its first two months of release, and it’s reportedly now available at American outlets such as Target and Wal-Mart. Makers of the real thing, the Sealed Air Corporation of New Jersey, acknowledge the tension-relieving properties inherent in ruining their product, yet they won’t admit to feeling the stress of potential competition from the Far East. (Probably the same way GM felt when that first Toyota rolled onto the docks of California.) No word yet on whether the Biomechanical Energy Harvester could be used to power the “Pop Pop” keychain.

Carbon Penance – To assuage the guilt many of us feel about our contributions to climate change, a Swiss-born inventor (again with the foreigners) has built a leg band that monitors how much power you’re consuming. When levels have exceeded a certain threshold, the techno-garter slowly drives six steel thorns into the meat of your leg. The concept came to the inventor, who not surprisingly also refers to herself as an artist, while designing a device that punishes the wearer who doesn’t spend enough time talking to their houseplants. The leg band is apparently not quite ready for full-scale development and distribution because of a slight flaw: when the spikes dig in, they don’t hurt that much.

The Cloth Car – This is a concept car developed in Germany that substitutes fabric for the more conventional (and you’d think safer) hardened plastic and aluminum auto body. The shell, made of polyurethane-coated Lycra, is stretched over a car’s frame in four separate pieces. It creases when the door opens, can be unsealed if work needs to be done on the engine, and contains eye-shaped slits so the headlights can shine through. The interior is similarly flexible, featuring a steering wheel and dashboard that collapse to lie flat and create more interior space. Perhaps the seatbelt and upholstery will be made of steel.

Tomorrow: eatings kangaroos and a vending machine for crows

More new ideas of 2008

This is the second installment looking at innovations of the past year that have both the potential to make all our lives more comfortable and, at the same time, illustrate why researchers and inventors typically live such lonely, pathetic existences.

The Dog-Poop DNA Bank – The mayor of a small city near Tel Aviv wanted a more effective way to enforce regulations requiring pet owners to clean up after their dogs have done their business. So he turned to the city’s director of veterinary services to come up with a system that could use DNA fingerprinting technology to attach (so to speak) unclaimed feces to specific dog owners. An army of 13-year-old volunteers recruited by the mayor’s office fanned out across the city, going door to door to collect samples of poop with which to create a DNA bank. Surprisingly, about 90 percent of city residents who had kids showing up on their doorstep asking for some shit complied with the request. Once the problem of random canine defecation is solved, scientists will then turn to less pressing issues like genetic research on dog diseases and returning strays to their owners.

Eat Kangaroos to Fight Global Warming – An official with Australia’s wildlife services, which you’d imagine is supposed to be protecting indigenous species, proposes that raising and eating kangaroos instead of sheep and beef could cut methane emissions by as much as three percent. Unlike the ruminants we’re used to slaughtering and devouring, kangaroos have a different stomach structure with different organisms to digest their food — probably something to do with the pouch. Already considered a specialty meat that’s (not surprisingly) a bit gamy in taste, the hoppers-cum-whoppers sustained native Australians for 40,000 years before Europeans arrived with their stupid cows. Reaction in the land Down Under has not been especially positive: the official can’t find any funding to further his study, plus he’s battling newspaper headlines that read “Skippy on the Menu!”

Scrupulosity Disorder – Researchers from Brigham Young University suggest that as many as a million Americans suffer from this disorder defined as “obsessive doubt about moral behavior often resulting in compulsive religious observance.” Not to be confused with your standard evangelicals, sufferers worry about thinking bad thoughts, whether or not these thoughts are acted on in the physical world. An omniscient God, after all, sees past the bumper stickers on your SUV and into your heart, where you may be doing things like being aware of curse words. Though possibly related to obsessive-compulsive disorder, there can be a fine line for chronic hand-washers like certain sects who observe such a ritual as part of ordinary religious observance. Treatment is thus problematic but another researcher says once patients are released from the crippling doubt about their own virtue, they can emerge with a new sense of faith, even if it means slightly more soiled hands.

The Spray-On Condom – The idea with this device is not so much the convenience of application but with the way it can made to fit a variety of sizes. Rather than asking retailers to stock a quantity of as many as 30 or so sizes, the spray-on condom can be customized to each man. The inventor, a German entrepreneur, got the idea in an automated car wash – not in the back seat while canoodling but while observing that the car was being inserted into a tube-like structure and then sprayed with latex from all sides. (Oh, baby). The only drawbacks reported in real-life testing were that the spray was a little cold and that the latex would take up to two minutes to dry. That, and the fact that the European Union’s strict product standards will make it difficult to bring to market, means the condom won’t be commercially available any time soon. I guess if you can wait two minutes, you can wait two years.

Vending Machine for Crows – An NYU graduate student (probably a marketing major) put coins and peanuts into a dish attached to a vending machine he created. The crows arrived and picked out all the peanuts, leaving only the coins. As they pushed the coins out of the way while looking for more peanuts, the coins were dropped into a slot which then dispensed more peanuts. When the crows figured out the equation that coins plus slot equaled more nuts, the more entrepreneurial birds starting looking for loose change on the ground to put into the slot. Realizing that the flock was quickly becoming his intellectual match, the grad student brought in a few more researchers to help him figure what all this might mean. Rather than arriving at the obvious answer (a fleet of trained ravens who could steal cash from the pockets of pedestrians, thereby giving the students the power to ultimately rule the world), they’re trying to do something positive. “Why not see if they can do something useful for us, so we can all live in close proximity?” they asked. They’re now busy trying to apply their techniques to train rats to sort garbage for us, instead of imagining a future in which they could practically bathe in dimes.

Giving until it bleeds

There was a lot of negative talk out there after my Friday posting claiming that gift-receiving was so much better than gift-giving http://davisw.wordpress.com/2008/12/26/giving-vs-receiving-which-is-best/. The Internet was absolutely abuzz, if you count the guy who said I was a “seflish idoit” and the email I got from my mom asking if that’s the way she raised me.

To prove the point that I can also be a very caring individual who feels deeply the importance of giving back to his community, I’ll be hauling a load of stuff over to Goodwill at the end of the tax year on Wednesday. I also went to the bloodmobile Saturday to give the gift of life.

Talk about giving of yourself, this is the most selfless contribution one can make short of a lung. My wife and I have been giving this annual donation right around Christmas for the past five years or so. She’s actually way ahead of me in the quantity given, having started in college. I was only introduced to the concept when the local Starbucks began sponsoring the event with the incentives of free coffee and a baked good for all donors. I also wanted to see if it was true that you’d get drunker on a couple of beers after your body had been sapped of almost a quarter of its life-force.

We arrived early enough to be first on the list of those signing up. While the rest of the nearly overflowing coffee shop was lounging around concerned only about number one (that coffee goes right through you), Beth and I read through the pre-donation materials to be sure we were still eligible. Easily clearing the requirement that I was at least 17, weighed at least 110 pounds and had at least one arm, I signed where they told me and soon was called out to the parking lot where the bloodmobile was parked.

I was directed to the tiny interview room by a middle-aged South Asian woman. This was a good start: my past experience with the workers who staff these events was that they tended to be either young Hispanic- or African-American women who were fast on the take but still required several jabs to hit the right spot, or else they were older Southern white women who were equally jab-happy but much slower about it. I’ve seen enough cardiologist ads in the paper to recognize that Indians make great healthcare professionals. In addition, when it was discovered the scanner connection to the laptop wasn’t working properly, she was able to troubleshoot that without calling home.

We huddled together in a space about the size of an airliner bathroom while she ran through the extremely personal health history questions she kept assuring me she was required to ask. Was I a hemophiliac? No. Have I had an organ transplant in the last 60 days? I don’t recall one. Have I ever had sex with another man? No. Have I ever had sex with a hemophiliac or transplant recipient who was a man? Have I ever been in prison? Have I ever been to Africa? Have I ever killed and consumed the flesh of another person? If so, did that person have hepatitis? Was I bitten by a crazy cow in the United Kingdom between 1980 and 1996? No, no, no, no, and no, that unfortunate cow encounter was in 1997.

 Finally cleared to proceed, I walked out to the main aisle of the mobile. My interviewer asked which arm I wanted to use, and here’s where I must admit I puffed up a little with pride. If you read my previous posting about selling my body to a company that was doing shingles research http://davisw.wordpress.com/2008/11/08/a-second-career-perhaps/, you might remember how exceptional the main vein in my right arm is. The inside of that elbow has been widely admired for the way in which the blue vessel protrudes in a come-hither fashion just below the thinnest layer of skin. Since the right-armed donation loungers were all full, I was asked if I wanted to offer my left arm instead. But when I showed the admiring circle of blood ladies my right vein, they all agreed I should wait. One of them marked the vein with a pen, then posed next to it for a photo to show her family. I took a seat to wait my turn.

 

Check out the vein

After about ten minutes, Beth finished her session and I was able to take her spot. The needle went in effortlessly and soon the blood was flowing. I sat back and relaxed as much as I could while workers scurried perilously close to my connection and the intercom played Christmas songs. And, wouldn’t you know it, two of them were from my “Worst Christmas Songs of All Time” list http://davisw.wordpress.com/2008/12/20/worst-christmas-songs-ever/ and a third was Bob Seger’s boozy rendition of “Little Drummer Boy.” (I don’t know if I was starting to get a little light-headed or what, but the line “the ox and lamb kept time” struck me as absolutely hilarious.)

My languor was soon interrupted when one of the workers reported that an “overflow situation” was developing somewhere in my vicinity. I tried to look behind me where my bag hung to see if the room was starting to look like a Quentin Tarantino film and I was preparing to bleed out. Apparently it was only a minor overflow so I was able to avoid infecting the whole bus with Creutzfeldt-Jakob Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or whatever it was that wacky British cow gave me.

I was disconnected from the tubing, had a gauze bandage affixed to my magnificent vein and was told to raise my arm high in the air. After a minute or so, a role of colored tape was brought out and a length was cut off and wrapped around my arm. Everyone else who’d been through this step in the process was asked what color tape they wanted, so I already had my eye on a nice pale green that would contrast nicely with my hazel eyes. But I was assigned the blue with no questions asked in what would turn out to be the only disappointment of the experience.

As Beth and I headed back into Starbucks to collect our premiums, I began thinking what kind of bakery item I’d be selecting for my freebie. When I placed my order at the counter for a tall-low-fat-mocha-no-whip and a slice of coffee cake, I flashed my bandaged arm at the barista and told her I’d just given blood. The point was to communicate that I shouldn’t be charged for my order but apparently the counter people hadn’t been told how this worked so she rang me up for $5.57. I got the confusion straightened out easily enough, but the embarrassment I endured for those few seconds when she thought I was just showing off my bandage to impress her lingered longer than it should have.

Now if I could’ve shown her my vein, that would’ve been a different story.

 

You want my advice? (Pt. 7)

“You Want My Advice?” is a twice weekly feature (Tuesdays and Thursdays) of davisw.wordpress.com. I look at questions of ethics, propriety, faith, technology, geopolitics, etc., and offer completely inappropriate, irresponsible and possibly even life-threatening advice. Heed my word at your own risk.

Q. I recently graduated from college and started working in the real world. My problem is that my name is gender-neutral, which my parents tell me was intentional. Many new business acquaintances, whom I meet through e-mail, mistake me for a man. I am often addressed as Mr. and worse, taken for my own secretary when they call. It’s awkward to explain and then embarrassing for the person calling. Is there a polite way to let people know my gender? – It’s Pat

A. I can definitely sympathize and may be able to offer some unique advice from the perspective of someone named “Davis Whiteman.” The “Davis” part comes from several previous generations of fathers and grandfathers, and is not to be confused with “David,” which I’m often mistakenly called. Because my father was also a Davis (actually he went by “Dave”), I became known as “Davie,” which I dropped as soon as I got to college. My son also has the first name of “Davis,” but we call him by his middle name, Daniel. I don’t know who or why somebody came up with the “Whiteman” part – it might’ve seemed like a good idea at the time (1800s), but is definitely awkward in this modern multicultural era. It’s actually pronounced “White-mun,” a small consolation.

Now what was your question again?

Oh, yeah … something about how you want to show your genitals at work. This is not something I’d recommend for most professional workplaces. While it may be essential for certain jobs in adult entertainment and, more recently, the real estate industry (“I’ll show you mine if you buy this house”), most of the dress-for-success literature out there strongly suggests dressing. If you’re a woman, you may want to stay away from pant suits; if you’re a man, I’d avoid putting flowers in your hair.

Electronic and telephonic communications are admittedly a little more problematic. For email, I think you can solve the problem merely by using pink paper for emails if you’re a girl and blue paper for emails if you’re a boy. On the phone, just talk in a real high-pitched squeaky voice if you’re a girl and a booming low-pitched baritone if you’re a boy. As an added flourish, make passing references to Barbie dolls or rocket-propelled grenades, as appropriate.

Doing the Charleston, Holy-style

A spokesperson for the travel industry estimated this week that at least 5 billion Americans made a trip of 100 miles or more during this holiday season. A large majority of these were on the airlines or driving on the road, though a growing minority of travelers are choosing clean alternative transportation such as paddle boat, skate, and sliding downhill on a piece of cardboard.

When my family and I decided to go the 200 miles from Charlotte to Charleston, S.C., to visit my great aunt, we debated the merits of flying versus driving. We could make it either way in about the same amount of time, when you consider the attendant hassles and time delays involved in modern jet travel. Did we want to pay about ten times what it would cost to drive so we could experience the stimulation of surly counter agents, body searches and a potential plunge from 20,000 feet, or could we endure the tedium of freeway motoring? We realized how close a call the decision was about 50 miles out of town when I almost fell asleep at the wheel, but in the end, we’re glad we decided to drive.

There’s little of the magnificent American landscape so idolized in popular culture on the stretches of interstates 77 and 26 that bisect the state of South Carolina. Brown flatlands give way to sulfurous marshes as you approach the coast, so you’re generally left to your own imagination to summon enough interest to stay alert.

One way to do this is to admire the creativity (and lack thereof) that’s been put into the naming of different locations along the route. Towns have been saddled with unimaginative monikers like Jedburg, North, Cope and, from mapmakers who gave up completely, Ninety Six. There’s also a “Townville” that apparently was judged to be better than “Cityberg” or “Villageton”. Meanwhile, interchanges between the federal highway and various county roads have been given elaborate names to honor prominent locals, I guess because “Exit 17” was just wasn’t inspirational enough. For example, there’s the Medal of Honor Recipient Eugene Arnold Obregon Memorial Interchange, the State Solicitor J. Robert “Bobby Joe” Adamson Jr. Interchange, and the Buck Mickel Memorial Southern Connector, to name just three of the dozens we passed. I can only assume that the memorials were put at highway exits to symbolize how these heroes left the mortal world in much the same way we drivers are forced to get off for gas and a Pepsi.

Though most of the old-time South is located too far off the highway to appreciate, we did get a good sense of the bygone era when we stopped in a tiny village called Restarea. The town had only two roads – “Cars Street” and “Trucks and Campers Avenue”. Though the manufacturing base of Restarea left long ago, there are still pockets of commerce among the 100 or so residents of this bustling community. The only shopping area is a bank of vending machines behind a beautiful wrought-iron gate. There’s a small park where families eat at picnic tables and dogs romp at the end of a leash. The city hall still shows an unfortunate remnant of segregation, with the community rooms divided into separate men’s and women’s facilities. Despite that, there’s still evidence of an active cultural scene inside, including an innovative arts installation where residents can leave their thoughts for others to consider, including thought-provoking folk wisdom such as “eat me,” “Goths and emo rule” and “your stupid.”

As we got further into the last half of our four-hour drive, amusements starting running low until we were passed by a large semi with a sign on the back that asked “How’s My Driving?” I’ve seen these for years and always wondered if anyone ever called, so I pulled out my cell phone and decided to give it a try. After a couple of rings, the operator answered “England Transport customer service, can I help you?”

“Yes,” I responded. “I wanted to offer a comment on the driving of one of your owner-operators.”

A pause, then skeptically, “How can I help you again?”

“I was just passed by one of your trucks on the interstate and a sticker on the back asked ‘how’s my driving?’ and gave this 800 number. I figured not many people responded unless they were mad about something, and I just wanted to offer another perspective.”

“OK,” said the woman. “Can you give me the truck number, please?”

“No, I can’t. It’s already passed. But I can tell you it had a metallic silver trailer, mud flaps on the back wheels and was heading south about 60 miles from Charleston.”

At this point, I got the distinct impression this woman was only pretending to care. “Oh… kay,” she said. “Can you give me your, uh, comment?”

“Yes,” I said. “The driver seemed to be doing an adequate job. Nothing dangerous, nothing dramatically good either. I’d say he was meeting expectations.”

Another pause. “Um, okay. England Transport appreciates your input. Thank you for calling.”

“Do I get a coupon or a discount or anything toward my next less-than-truckload haul?”

No response. She’d hung up. At least my grogginess had passed.

Rural South Carolina was now receding in the rear-view mirror as we headed toward the more metropolitan Low Country. We passed a pickup truck with a bumper sticker advertising the “Medieval Tattoo Studio,” and I couldn’t help but wonder how inked scarring of the skin could be more primitive than it already was. Maybe they splash you with flaming tar to give your etching a random effect. Soon, the “Holy City,” as Charleston bills itself, was all around us.

We had a pleasant two-night stay at our favorite Hampton Inn-Historic District (thanks for the one night free, Mr. Eichmann). We started to remember next morning at the lobby breakfast buffet some of the reasons for the “Holy City” nickname. A family at the next table grasped each others’ hands and bowed their heads, quietly but audibly thanking the Lord for the Honey-Nut Cheerios, banana and decaf that His Mercy had bestowed upon them. Later we met up with our aunt, and got to hear all the details about how her tiny evangelical congregation had schismed yet again, this time over something to do with casseroles. (They had been renting a movie theater for their weekly services when there were 40 of them; now that they’re down to 20, they’re looking at local self-storage facilities.) Aunt Vertie confirmed later that she had indeed erased the line between faith and lunacy. We commented on how well her Buick Regal seemed to be running, and she noted that it probably needed some brake work but she was hoping the occasional addition of fluid would allow it to last “until the Rapture.” This sounds like something that GMAC and other car loan financers should investigate – leasing options that are pegged to the End Times.

It was a short enjoyable vacation that made a nice respite during the holidays. Charleston is a great place to visit but I prefer my home just off the Ungodly Memorial Interchange.

You want my advice? (Pt. 8)

“You Want My Advice?” is a twice weekly feature (Tuesdays and Thursdays) of davisw.wordpress.com. I look at questions of ethics, propriety, faith, technology, geopolitics, etc., and offer completely inappropriate, irresponsible and possibly even life-threatening advice. Today, in the spirit of the New Year, we hear from a writer who decided to take matters into her own hands.

Q. In an attempt to stop smoking, I chewed gum all day and suffered from halitosis. I went to dentists and doctors to no avail. My family and colleagues at work learned to keep their distance. It was very embarrassing! Eventually, I discovered it was the aspartame in the gum and the many cups of coffee I devoured each day. After I switched to another sweetener, the halitosis disappeared and has never returned. – How About Me? Aren’t I Something?

A. Sounds like problem solved. What do you want from me?

I’m glad to hear you achieved success in your resolution to quit such a nasty habit. That can be an inspirational and helpful story for others of us who are trying to turn over new leaves at this time of year.

It can be, but it’s not. Instead, it just sounds like you’re bragging about your ability to identify a problem on your own and think it through to a successful conclusion. This is a very bad thing for us in the advice-giving field. People should not be trying to improve or change their lives in any way without the close supervision of a professional. You’ve seen the signs at the health clubs about consulting a physician before beginning any kind of exercise program? They speak the truth.

I’d recommend that you back up all the way to where you started on this journey — resume your smoking, resume your gum-chewing, regain your odious breath – then call up Harpo Productions to get on the waiting list for the Dr. Phil Show. Otherwise, you’re doomed to failure or, at best, a success that’s not nationally televised so no one cares.

A resolution on resolutions

This being the New Year, it seems we’re required to propose resolutions to improve our lives and the lives of those around us. What a drag.

I agree that it’s naturally appropriate to respond to the excesses of the holidays with a good stiff shot of moderation. It just makes sense that we can’t spend the entire year eating rum balls and eggnog for breakfast, and so it’s reasonable right now to assess the wisdom of year-round splurging, especially as you approach your late fifties. But to formalize this reasoning into a strict resolution is not something I’ve ever felt comfortable doing.

However, if I must, let me put it this way: everything I’ve been doing for the last month or so I’ll stop doing, and everything I’ve stopped doing I’ll resume. As an important exception, however, I will continue running my autonomic nervous system as I always have, and I’ll persist in being unable to take to self-powered flight.

I went online this morning to see what were some of the more common resolutions being considered. According to Wikipedia, these resolutions were “sorted by the horizontal pixel dimension in ascending numerical order. It is important to realize that the use of the word ‘resolution’ in this context is misleading and inaccurate. The sizes given are pixel dimensions, and do not imply anything about the resolution of the display, which would be expressed in pixels per inch or pixels per centimeter.” Typically helpful Wikipedia.

When I looked around a little longer, I found a more useful list that cited the following as popular choices among Americans: lose weight; manage debt; save money; get a better job; get fit; eat right; get a better education; drink less alcohol; quit smoking; reduce stress; take a trip; and volunteer to help others. I think just about everybody can agree these are worthy aspirations for self-improvement. All of us are imperfect in one way or another, except for a certain savior born over 2,000 years ago who probably never smoked in the first place and already had a pretty good job. If He wanted to make some kind of resolution to improve, about all He could do would be to work on His tan. (Should I capitalize the “t” in “tan”?)

The other thing about starting these new resolutions right on the advent of the New Year is that the timing of this particular holiday isn’t at all convenient. It’s virtually impossible to begin the New Improved You right at the stroke of midnight, when drinking less alcohol is probably the last thing on what’s left of your mind. You might be considerate enough to hold your girlfriend’s hair out of her face while she vomits over the balcony railing, but that’s hardly what you’d call volunteerism. You’re still wanting to celebrate throughout the day on Jan. 1, and then even though it’s back to work for most of us today, it is a Friday and then you’ve got all that free time to be tempted on Saturday and Sunday, and now you’re out to the fifth of the month before any proper behavior can reasonably be expected to begin.

Which reminds me: whoever is in charge of such things needs to resolve to reschedule our holidays so they’re more evenly spread throughout the year. After the King holiday in the third week of January, there’s nothing until Memorial Day, a full four-and-a-half months away. The summer holidays are pretty well spaced, but you hit another dry spot of almost three months until Thanksgiving, then there’s a holiday virtually every other week. I wouldn’t be opposed to getting rid of the January New Year’s Day altogether and putting it back to the beginning of spring, where the Druid gods intended.

But I digress, and that’s something I need to work on improving.

Anyway, while I was researching this subject yesterday, I did come across something I might be able to sign off with. Access Hollywood had talked with a variety of celebrities and other prominent individuals from around the world to see what a few of their resolutions might be. A number of them struck me as a tad bizarre, but most of these are folks who have risen to the top of their professions, so it’s probably worth taking a look at this insight into some of what made them so successful. The following list includes the individual quoted and what they wanted to accomplish in 2009:

George W. Bush: To discover and settle the West Pole, using only dogsleds and shopping carts for transportation

Laura Bush: To bank the seven ball into the side pocket

Barack Obama: To attend next year’s Chick-fil-A Bowl, especially if Vanderbilt is playing

Michelle Obama: To make a smoked bacon reduction sauce

Bill Gates: To learn to play the songbah drum using a stapler

Rod Blagojavich: To drink more brackish water

Oprah Winfrey: To breathe more frequently

Will Smith: To move furniture randomly throughout the day

Warren Buffett: To wear underclothing more often

Peyton Manning: To become chief technology officer of Dr Pepper

Usain Bolt: To play Scrabble with the evil twin of Mickey Rourke

Dakota Fanning: To close on a stunning three-bedroom, two-bath townhome condominium

Michael Phelps: To have his teeth yellowed from drinking coffee

Bernie Madoff: To be run over during the live telecast of a NASCAR race

Britney Spears: To have cholesterol so high it starts leaking out her nose

J.K. Rowling: To be sentenced to 35 years in a federal penitentiary by mistake

Tiger Woods: To review a major motion picture that doesn’t exist

Judge Judy: To develop gills and swim like a fish

Brad Pitt: To eat more cologne samples from men’s magazines

Vladimir Putin: To avoid saying the words “Queen Latifah”

Tina Fey: To climb more trees

Amy Winehouse: To cozy up to a warm winter soup

Tom Cruise: To have that 6-by-8-inch mole on my lower back checked out

T-Pain: To upgrade his 401(k) to a 407(m)

Robert Mugabe: To learn arthroscopic colo-rectal surgery by correspondence course

 

Wrapping up the bowl games, sponsored by DavisW

One of the great things about the global economic catastrophe has been the effect on certain corporate marketing decisions. High-powered multinationals have been forced to look at their priorities and re-evaluate how important it is to shareholders to have the company name plastered all over everything from sporting venues to golf tournaments to baby’s foreheads.

Two new baseball parks being built in New York City for the Yankees and Mets are struggling to find firms willing to spend multi-millions for naming rights, and may have to begin hosting games next season as Hank’s Place and Choker’s Field, respectively. NASCAR auto racing has seen a significant decline in its sponsorships, to the point where you can almost see a bare patch of material on drivers’ uniforms. Traditional suppliers like GM and Chevy are scaling back their involvement in motorsports and we may soon see a Daytona 500 featuring Mini Coopers and old VW minivans.

I’ll miss the occasional unintended consequences that resulted when corporate takeovers clashed with the best-laid marketing plans. For example, when First Union Bank acquired CoreStates, it also inherited the basketball arena that was home to the NBA’s 76ers. The “CoreStates Center” sign was coming down and the “First Union Center” sign was going up when it occurred to someone how headline writers were going to abbreviate the new name.

Before the college football bowl season finally began winding down, many of us (OK, a few of us) sat in front of our TVs wondering about this new crop of low-rent game sponsors. Slashed rates allowed local credit unions and regional trucking firms to have their images splashed across a national stage, prompting viewers to wonder how exactly they could patronize the San Diego Credit Union or R+L Carriers even if they wanted to.

To help these would-be customers, I’ve compiled a complete list of the games and their sponsors with a little something about each firm. I would’ve included the teams who played and the final score too, but nobody cares.

magicJack St. Petersburg Bowl – The magicJack is some kind of device you stick in your computer to make phone calls. Sounds like a good idea until you realize how awkward it is to hold the monitor up to your ear while you try to talk into the mouse.

R+L Carriers New Orleans Bowl – R+L is an Ohio-based trucking firm founded in 1965. Ralph L. “Larry” Roberts was a mere teenager with aspirations of owning his own business. His dream became a reality with the purchase of a single truck he used to haul furniture. The firm then grew into … That’s really all you need to know.

SDCCU Poinsettia Bowl – Everyone living in San Diego, Orange and Riverside counties is eligible to join this federally insured credit union. If you watched the game from your home in Louisville, their competitive CD rates make a move to California worthwhile. I hear R+L is available to help with your couch.

Motor City Bowl – Not too surprisingly, this Detroit game failed to attract a big-name sponsor. Reports are that next year’s game will be called the Bailout Bowl.

Meineke Car Care Bowl – Meineke is a car maintenance franchise clever enough to have worked not only their name but also what they do into their bowl name. This might be something for the SDCCU to consider when they begin negotiations for next year’s Poinsettia Bowl, which could instead become the SDCCU Foreclosure Poinsettia Bowl.

Champs Sports Bowl – Champs is a seller of sports equipment even though I thought they were a sports bar. I must be thinking of some other company I’ll never patronize.

Papajohns.com Bowl – Most people are aware of Papa John’s Pizza, but they also want you to know about their website, which uses a PDF (pizza delivery format) to bring you hot pies through your high-speed Internet connection.

Valero Energy Alamo Bowl – Valero is a retailer of gasoline that managed to work a slight rule change into the Alamo Bowl. Team scores not only can rapidly rise, but they can plummet just as quickly.

Roady’s Humanitarian Bowl – Roady’s Truck Stops are the nation’s largest chain of truck stops, catering to the professional driver and traveling motorist in 45 states, meeting the humanitarian needs of people low on fuel for many years.

Brut Sun Bowl – As the final seconds ticked off the clock in this classic, the winning coach was drenched by a cooler full of Brut cologne. He’s currently recovering in the Augusta burn center.

Bell Helicopters Armed Forces Bowl – The rush to purchase helicopters from viewers who enjoyed this match-up drove Bell’s stock price to a three-year high.

Chick-Fil-A Bowl (formerly the Peach Bowl) – They dropped the “peach” out of a concern that fuzz is not something chicken consumers want to be reminded of.

Outback Bowl – This is much like the regular college game except the football is replaced with a Bloomin’ Onion.

Gaylord Hotels Music City Bowl – This bowl game had more adjectives (4) than one of the participating teams had points (3).

Konica Minolta Gator Bowl – Makers of fine cameras until the next leap in digital technology sends them into bankruptcy.

AutoZone Liberty Bowl – Perhaps the winners of this game and the Meineke Car Care Bowl could meet in a playoff: the Sell ‘Em a Muffler When They Just Need a Spark Plug Bowl.

GMAC Bowl – A long, long time ago, people bought cars from a company named “General Motors” and frequently did something called “financing” with GMAC to pay for the car on credit. This bowl is a salute to those bygone days, and includes players using helmets made of leather that have no faceguards.

AT&T Cotton Bowl – AT&T is one of the few big names still in the bowl sponsorship business. Send me a 10-cent text message and I’ll tell you more.

FedX Orange Bowl – Another of the big names still in the bowl scene. Surviving despite the tremendous loss of business due to email attachments and zip files, FedX now has a business model that relies primarily on Amazon and eBay shipments, along with its recent diversification into mowing lawns.

Allstate Sugar Bowl – A curious combination considering New Orleans was wiped out by a hurricane and is still having trouble recovering because of tight-fisted insurance companies. You might be “in good hands” with Allstate, but watch out for their prehensile tail that may be picking your pocket.

Capital One Bowl – What’s in your wallet? Not much cash after you’ve finished paying the astronomical interest rates on their credit cards.

Tostitos Fiesta Bowl – The most delicious, crunchiest game on the postseason calendar.

Insight Bowl – I challenge you to follow this one: Starting in 2000, this game moved to Bank One Ballpark, now known as Chase Field. The game moved yet again effective with the 2006 game, but remained in the Phoenix metropolitan area, this time in Sun Devil Stadium, which was left without a postseason game when the Fiesta Bowl moved to the University of Phoenix Stadium.  The game was formerly known as the Copper Bowl until 1996 when sponsorship was assumed by Insight Enterprises and it became the Insight.com Bowl from 1997 to 2001, and then the Insight Bowl. Insight, incidentally, is either a type of Honda, a broadband service, or a laptop maker.

Rose Bowl, sponsored by citi – Yes, the same “citi” as the Citibank that narrowly avoided financial collapse late last year. So their stockholders wouldn’t be pissed that they threw money at the little-known Rose Bowl, note how they put their sponsorship after the bowl name and lower-cased the first letter, hoping no one would notice.

The Fabulous Band Names

There was a time when I thought the creativity put into the naming of a rock band correlated to that band’s skills and success. If you came up with a clever enough name, you’d shoot straight to the top. Then I became familiar with the oeuvre of “Frankie Goes to Hollywood,” “Death Cab For Cutie” and “Panic! At the Disco,” which made me realize that talent wasn’t necessarily a part of the equation.

Still, you have to admire how witty some of these are. Take a look at this collection I compiled recently:

Sonic Death Rabbit

Southern Culture on the Skids

Cottonwood Frostbite

Phil and the Blanks

Dexateens

Plants and Animals

The Hothouse Hefftones

Closed for Remodeling

Trivia Night

Bubonik Funk

Thunderlip

Coma League

Dante’s Camaro

Cowboy Mouth

Electric Chicken

The Holy Trinity Family Band

Stiff Knee Birthday Jam

Dangermuffin

Col. Bruce Hampton and the Quark Alliance

British Sea Power

These Arms are Snakes

I Set My Friends on Fire

The Hobo Nephews of Uncle Frank

Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head

God Came From Space

Lee Press-on and the Nails

Somebody and the Really Somethings

IWANTTOKILLEVERYHUMAN

And I’ll Form the Head

E=MC Hammer

The Unnecessary Gunpoint Lecture

Guy Who Looks Like Me with Glasses

Penguins with Shotguns

Robin Williams on Fire

Mel Gibson and the Pants

The Shark that Ate my Friend

One Small Step for Landmines

Boneless Children Foundation

The Busiest Bankruptcy Lawyers in Minnesota

Sorry About Your Couch

 

 

As great as those real-life names are, I always thought there was a rich source of funny names that were being overlooked. They could easily be ripped from today’s news headlines:

Gaza Rocket Attack

Mideast Peace Initiative

The Heart Transplant List

Workplace Hazards in the Poultry Industry

Federal Wildlife Experts

The Time and Frequency Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology

Cholera Death Toll

The Volatile Diyala Province

Bhutto’s Ancestral Village

The Year-End Deals

Santa Slays Seven

36 Months Free Financing

The Taliban

The Obama Daughters

The Spectrum of Neurological Disorders

Boneless Wing Tray

Double-Digit Unemployment

Multiple Listings Service

Certificate in Treasury Management

Checked Baggage Fees

Consumer Price Index

Federal Stimulus Package

Children Left Behind

Bristol Palin’s Baby

50 Herbert Hoovers

Repeat DUI Offenders

The Credit Freeze

Pork Tenderloin and the Spicy Cranberry Glaze

The Additional Rebates

 

 

Happy Worst Day of the Year

The first Monday in January should receive some kind of official designation as the worst day of the year. State and federal offices should be closed, black bunting should drape store windows, and flags should be lowered to half-staff. Calendars should note this as a day of commemoration of how miserable our lives are going to be for the next four to five months.

If you haven’t done so already, pause now for a moment in recognition of just how bleak our immediate future is. We’ve been observing one holiday after another for several weeks now, so even happiness and celebration are no fun any more. We’ve gorged on foods we’d never otherwise eat (can you imagine a dinner of goose, champagne and chocolate-covered cherries in August?). The friends and family we only get to see once a year have reminded us all too clearly why we moved halfway across the continent to get so far away from them.

I don’t know about you, but the weather where I am today is cold and wet, the sky a low-hanging grey. I’ve returned to a job that seems unlikely to get any more exciting or any more secure in 2009. There are no significant holidays, no coming of spring, no summer vacation anywhere in the near future. The landscape of life is desolate, barren, foreboding, dreary and miserable. Happy god-damn new year.

I tried yesterday to head off this gathering funk by going to the Y for a nice vigorous run on the treadmill. Exercise has always elevated my mood, even when it has to take place elbow-to-elbow with my fellow fatties in front of a bank of TVs showing the Dolphins losing another playoff game. I’m not one of these exercisers clogging the floor who are motivated only by recent resolutions to get fit. I’m the guy who was complaining to the manager that they were closing the Y early on Christmas Eve. Now here I am, unable to find a vacant treadmill because of all these latter-day athletes.

Out of the ten machines available, two of them have runners while the rest have walkers. Walking is for the hallways of hospitals, not for expensive exercise machines. The guy who just barely beat me to the last available treadmill is wearing a sweater, pleated slacks and penny loafers. He jabs perplexedly at the control buttons until the belt begins the slowest possible movement, which seems to satisfy him until a few minutes later when he feels compelled to poke a few more buttons, bringing the machine to a stop. The same pattern of behavior is repeated several times before the pudgy woman to his right finishes her stroll and lowers her moist bulk to the floor. A machine is finally open.

As the endorphins kick in during my run, I start thinking of a few of the positives that do exist in the first half of the calendar year. There’s the new TV season, one that’s lacking the day-long “Password”-a-thons we’ve endured over the recent holidays. There’s the Obama inauguration in mid-January and the Super Bowl in early February. But all these are enjoyed vicariously at best and don’t even require us to leave our living room.

There are some legitimate holidays on the calendar falling between now and the unofficial start of summer on Memorial Day. There’s Martin Luther King’s birthday in just two weeks, so we’ll get a Monday off to remember the accomplishments of the great civil rights leader. But greeting card companies haven’t told us yet how we’re properly supposed to celebrate this day. Neither parties nor gift-giving nor dressing up in costume seem quite appropriate.

In February, we have Groundhog’s Day, which represents the point at which we might potentially see an end to winter in the distance. Recent efforts to turn February 2 into even more of an occasion have met with limited success. Watching Punxsutawney Phil being groped by that guy in tuxedo and top hat was amusing the first 40 times I saw it on the news, though the novelty has since worn off. I liked the idea of expanding the number of species honored to include other groundlings – moles, voles, badgers, hedgehogs, large rats, etc. – but this added biological diversity did little to spur retail sales and holiday cheer.

Later in the month is Valentine’s Day, when we honor our beloved ones with candy and flowers and the disappointment of knowing a spouse can’t be any more thoughtful than that. Then, just a week or so later is the government-concocted President’s Day, timed to honor the birth of perhaps our greatest commander-in-chief, Abraham Washington. Once every four years, we celebrate the rare Leap Day by trying to find the instructions for changing the date on our digital watches. On March 17, St. Patrick’s Day comes rolling in drunk and smelling of cheap beer. We all wear green so as to better disguise the vomit stains on our shirts. By the time it’s April, we’re starting to sense that warm weather is in the air and we all get a little silly celebrating April Fool’s Day, when radio shock jocks trick us all into thinking an asteroid is about to hit the earth. We laugh when we realize it’s not.

Finally, on some apparently random Sunday between March and May comes Easter, originally scheduled to honor the birth of Christ but now more about the bunnies and candy than the Lord and Savior. When I was a kid, Easter was second only to Christmas in significance. Hunting for eggs, rather than avoiding them like we do as adults, was a big deal, as was the story of Peter Cottontail rolling back the stone from Jesus’ grave. With its Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Sadder Saturday and Maundy Monday (which gave us one of the few Easter carols, performed by the Mamas and Papas), Easter had the potential to give us almost a week off from work, but now most offices barely notice it.

Well, there seems to be a few breaks in the clouds as I look outside, and at least I have a job, a wonderful family and a home that’s not on the auction block. There is something to be said for the satisfaction of getting back to a routine that gives you a feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day instead of the incessant bloating I’ve endured since Thanksgiving. Once I get hungry again, and tired, and overworked, and stressed, and anxious about the economy, maybe then I’ll be happy.

 

You want my advice? (Pt. 9)

“You Want My Advice?” is a twice weekly feature (Tuesdays and Thursdays) of davisw.wordpress.com. I look at questions of ethics, propriety, faith, technology, geopolitics, etc., and offer completely inappropriate, irresponsible and possibly even life-threatening advice. Today, we hear from a writer who likes to complain.

Q. Whatever happened to the idea of keeping to the right? Most drivers observe this rule in their cars, but as soon as their feet hit the pavement, all memory of it vanishes. Our sidewalks, airports, grocery stores and shopping malls have become free-for-alls. People have crashed into me with their grocery carts as I made a right turn from one aisle to the next and they are making a left turn on the left side. If people will remember to stay to the right and pass on the left, they’ll see that these important rules of the road make all traffic move more smoothly. – Your Mother’s Busybody Neighbor

A. I couldn’t agree with you more. Perhaps together we can change the world.

There’s really not much difference at all between motor vehicles and what I call “pedestrian vehicles,” also known as “humans.” The windshield is like the eyes, the grill is like the mouth, the tires are like the legs, the headlights are like the headlights, and the tailpipe is like the you-know-what. Didn’t any of you people see the Disney movie “Cars”?

What we need to move toward now is fully equipping individuals with the accessories that automobiles have, so they can more easily obey the rules of the road. For example, we could attach turn signals to hip pockets so pedestrians could signal which way they’re turning. We could surgically implant an antenna in their heads so they don’t need to be distracted by their cell phones and music players. We could require everyone, instead of saying “hi” as they greet one another, to say “honk.”

The next time someone brushes against you with their shopping cart during one of these encounters, drop immediately to the floor and start yowling like a scorched cat. A store manager should arrive shortly with a specially equipped shopping cart into which you’ll be placed to be hauled out to the parking lot. There, this cart will be tied to the back of an ambulance and you’ll be taken to the nearest hospital. Meanwhile, the offender will be left in stunned silence before resuming their shop, hopefully noticing the great deal on frozen chicken breasts.

 

Three procedures and still alive

ATLANTA (Associated Press) — Griffin Bell, 90, the shrewd Southern lawyer who grew up with Jimmy Carter and later became U.S. attorney general after Carter was elected president, died Monday in Atlanta. He was being treated for complications from pancreatic cancer, kidney disease and being 90.

From the perspective of someone still in relatively good health, it often seems like medicine can go too far in treating the ravages of time. I think there comes a point when you feel like you’ve lived a rich, full life and now it’s time to go do something else, like maybe die. Throwing the incredible expenses of the modern healthcare establishment at the elderly and infirm just doesn’t always seem wise, especially if you hit one of them in the eye with an otoscope.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate with my health for over 55 years, and haven’t spent a night in the hospital since that whole birthing thing back in 1953. I’ve had my fair share of the usual modern maladies that almost everybody goes through – measles, mumps, mole removal, molar removal. I had what we politely called a “nervous stomach” in my teens, I’ve had a couple of lower back issues that kept me prone for days at a time, and I got chicken pox as a Christmas present from my son about ten years ago. Only three times have I gone through anything more serious.

My first such episode occurred in 1989. For years, I had noticed a brownish area just inside the top of my left ear. I chalked it up to poor hygiene until one day when it started bleeding. I knew that blood was only effective when it was coursing through your veins and that having it drip off the end of your earlobe wasn’t as good. I made a visit to the dermatologist who took one look at the wound and made his frightening pronouncement – ear cancer.

Well, not exactly ear cancer. It was a skin cancer that happened to be on my ear. All those hours I’d spent on college break in Miami laying out on my parents’ patio without benefit of sunscreen hadn’t been wasted after all. I was referred to a cosmetic surgeon despite my protests that I already looked damned good, but they explained he’d be the one carving off thin layers of my cartilage until all the cancer was removed, then would rebuild what was left into some semblance of an ear. The procedure I’d be undergoing was called “Moe’s surgery,” which sounded like it might involve a conk on the head rather than traditional anesthesia, but actually turned out to be Mohs surgery.

The operation was done in a Charlotte doctor’s office while I was fully awake but feeling no pain. Everything went as planned and the doctor assured me that all the malignancy was removed. I couldn’t look at the cosmetic results right away, since they wrapped my whole upper head in a bandage. I was able to return to work the same day, looking like that guy playing a fife in the middle of that iconic Revolutionary War painting, except that I had a $4,000 doctor’s bill sticking out of my pocket. But my coworkers we really impressed at the dedication I showed by coming in with such an apparently brutal head wound.

My next significant experience came in 2003 while I was planning my first business trip to India. I had noticed occasional discomfort in my groin for a few weeks before a particularly acute episode sent me home from work to wander restlessly around my house. When I went to the doctor later that morning, he immediately recognized the wandering as a symptom of kidney stones (go figure). X-rays confirmed the presence of a crystalline mass lodged firmly in my urethra. “It’s about six millimeters in diameter,” the technician told me, but failed to note whether that was considered small, medium or super-sized. Regardless, it was bad enough to require what they refer to in the business as a urologic intervention. Unless I passed the stone naturally or wanted to risk the male equivalent of childbirth while 35,000 feet in the air over the Middle East, I needed to get this taken care of.

Shortly before the outpatient procedure, called a “simple basket extraction,” I thought I might’ve avoided it entirely. After using the urinal at work, I looked down to see a corn-kernel-sized piece lying next to the scent cake. Had I painlessly expelled the stone and avoided costly surgery? Unfortunately, it turned out to be exactly what it looked like – a piece of corn – though I fail to understand even today how it got there.

Either kidney stone or granola

 

 

 

Going ahead with the physician-assisted removal turned out to be fairly simple, at least for me. The trickiest part was counting backwards from 100, and then waking up to ask when we were going to start, only to discover the doctor had not only finished but left the building. The nurses kept watch on me until I was able to wiggle my toes and pee on my own, which took only a few hours. Recovery was quick and relatively pain-free, and I’ve survived to this day without another incident.

What you’ll doubtless be glad to hear is the last experience I’ll recount was the highly recommended (by doctors, not by patients) diagnostic colonoscopy. As veterans of this wonder of medical science will tell you, the worst part comes the day before when you have to drink huge amounts of a foul liquid designed to cleanse your system of everything you’ve ever consumed. Once this is accomplished, you’re ready for your outpatient visit at the hospital. There was no backward counting this time; instead, you get an injection that puts you into a “dream sleep” where your dream consists of someone putting the proctological equivalent of a Swiss army knife (including a light, camera, scalpel, eraser, fountain pen and comb, I seem to recall) several feet up your colon. I do remember lying on my side and watching a TV show where the plot consisted of a cute little pink character named “Polyp” being snipped by a “Mr. Scissors”. The next thing I remember after that, I was arguing with my doctor about the billing.

It seems there’s a loophole in the way most insurance companies view the colonoscopy. They urge you to get one, they tell you it’s fully covered because it’s purely diagnostic in nature, but if they find anything that needs to be removed (which they apparently always do), then the diagnostic designation disappears and you’re suddenly responsible for a percentage of the $5,000 cost. Or, you could choose to have them maintain the status quo by shouting “hey, leave that thing alone” during your dream sleep. I almost came to the point of demanding that my gastroenterologist reinstall the polyp before I finally knuckled under and paid the fee.

I seriously doubt that any of these conditions, left untreated, would’ve led to my untimely demise. I suppose I could’ve had colon cancer, renal failure or an ear fall off, though chances are excellent I would’ve survived at least two out of three. Had they occurred later in life, I think I might’ve considered that option more seriously. I hope Griffin Bell didn’t suffer too much from treatments for the kidney and pancreas problems when his larger issue was that he was 90 years old. I’m not sure living to a ripe old age just for the sake of hitting a really high number is a worthy goal. It seems like the oldest living person is dying every other day anyway.

 

You want my advice? (Pt. 10)

“You Want My Advice?” is a twice weekly feature (Tuesdays and Thursdays) of davisw.wordpress.com. I look at questions of ethics, propriety, faith, technology, geopolitics, etc., and offer completely inappropriate, irresponsible and possibly even life-threatening advice. Today, we hear from a love-lorn teenager.

Q. At school last year there was this guy that I really liked. He was just a friend but then I realized that I really liked him! We ride together on the school bus, so while we were on the bus I asked him for his phone number. He said, “I don’t think so. I don’t want you to bug me.” Now what do I do? – Cute Girl in Third Row Who Accidentally Fell Out the Emergency Exit That Time

A. Some guys like to play hard-to-get, and I’m thinking that’s what’s going on here. You need to keep after him in every way you can think of – late-night knocking on his door, throwing pebbles at his windows, moving into his attic, etc. It’s only proper that you don’t technically “bug him,” since he made that specific request, but asking his friends to wear a wire is completely within reason.

Maybe a story from my school days will be enlightening. There was this girl I liked in the first grade and I think she liked me too. I wrote her a note – I don’t remember the specific language I used, but I’m pretty sure “like” was in there a lot – however I was too shy to hand it to her personally. I knew where she lived so I walked by the house and threw the folded piece of paper onto her lawn. Whether she eventually got it or her father simply ran over it with the lawn mower I’ll never know. Eventually, though, we entered into a tumultuous relationship that ended on the balcony of a Paris hotel where she struck me with an exquisite piece of Waterford crystal when I called her a “doody-head.” When we returned to second grade that next fall, we knew we were not meant to be.

My point is that young love has a way of resolving itself, though it usually involves an unwanted pregnancy. You just need to look your best, be kind and friendly when you’re around him, and slip some rohypnol (the so-called “date-rape drug”) into his Full Throttle when he’s not looking. When he falls to the floor of the bus, sit on his face, and I think you’ll be “2 forward + 2 be = 4 gotten.”

 

 

 

 

Website review: M&M’s.com

While I was at a theater recently waiting for the movie to start, I temporarily pulled my attention away from the trailer for Kevin James’ Oscar-bound vehicle “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” to read my M&M’s wrapper. I wasn’t too surprised to discover there’s an M&M’s website (mms.com, not the mandm.com I might’ve expected, which is being cyber-squatted on by men who like Depeche Mode) and I promised myself I’d check out this internet curiosity the next time I couldn’t find anything better online.

Several months later, I made my first visit and was delighted to learn there’s a world of enchantment behind that hard candy shell. The folks from Mars – the candy company that owns M&M’s, not the single-celled life forms on the nearby planet – have put a lot of work into dreaming up ways they can sell all things M-related. They offer not just the candy itself, with colors and imprints I could hardly believe, but an immense variety of merchandise, recipes, games and allergen warnings. Let’s review the site map as soon as I down a handful of America’s favorite sedative-shaped chocolate treat.

Mmmmmmmmm! I love the taste of ampersands.

The home page currently features three revolving promotions: exploring the five fabulous flavors of new M&M premiums; the somewhat-outdated “make holiday magic with M&M’s and Martha (Stewart, I’m guessing, not Washington)”; and the “bring ‘M’ to the party” Super Bowl campaign. I’m guessing “M” is the cool new identity designed to appeal the younger generation, who love the brevity of single-lettered terms, as in “let’s do some ‘X’” and “I have to ‘P’”. This is where I also learned that the iconic “melts in your mouth, not in your hands” slogan has been replaced with “Always Fun,” which works, I guess, unless one of them gets lodged in your trachea.

The recipe section was largely predictable, taking just about any cake, cookie or pie concoction and throwing a bunch of M&Ms into the mix. There were a few interesting ideas that wouldn’t have occurred to me (“put ‘em in your coffee!”) as well as a number of others that struck me as a bit of a stretch. These would include the Autumn Turkey Casserole, Citrus Basil Sangria and something called “Plantains with Mex,” which I hope includes a type of southwestern flavoring and not an actual Mexican. In addition to the recipes was a related section called crafts, which offered creative ways to assemble the M’s into works of art. Among the more inspired suggestions were the Eight Nights of Light cupcakes (for the Jewish holiday known as Hanukkah, which Mars has apparently moved to January), a party pizza cookie with M&M’s standing in for pepperoni and anchovies (two of the aforementioned “five fabulous flavors” I suppose) and a holiday wreath made of hundreds of green M&Ms crazy-glued together into a wheel.

Other ways to incorporate the M&M experience into your personal lifestyle included bedding, clocks and, not surprisingly, extra-large sweatpants; online games such as “Red vs. Green,” “Flip the Mix” and “Shmuffleboard” (that’s right, spellcheck, shuffleboard with an “m”); and the company’s venture into sports marketing with a sponsorship of NASCAR driver Kyle Busch. This last section is particularly interesting to those of us in the South. We get to read about the entire crew – cleverly dubbed the guys who “show grit in the pit” by some pathetic corporate copywriter – including jack man Jeff Fender, who  during his downtime enjoys fishing, the music of Bad Company, and long walks on the beach without being hit by racecar. We also see Kyle himself, posing at the track alongside a cocky-looking M dressed in a fireproof suit, because though he won’t melt in your hand, he doesn’t do real well with 900-degree gasoline fires. We get to read extensively about Kyle’s 2008 season, lowlighted by a nineteenth-place finish in Miami, a solid eighth in Phoenix and “surviving crash-filled Talladega despite damage from a late-race accident” to celebrate his birthday May 2 with M&M candies and “finding his inner M.”

Another way that Mars is trying to engage the candy-buying public is with the opportunity to create your own virtual characters. To get you started, they show a group of anthropomorphic sweets sitting around a breakroom table with coffee (WATCH OUT!!) and “Hi my name is” tags identifying them as Stacy, Naomi, Larry, Tony and Mike. A few of these guys are what you might call slightly edgy-looking – no body piercings or purple hair but a tattooed “m” on their chins. We see another set of unnamed characters standing proudly in front of a picture of an actual 50-foot M&M-styled Statue of Liberty holding her beacon skyward near the Brooklyn Bridge in 2007. One of these characters does have a mohawk, perhaps in recognition that Lady Liberty welcomes the tired, the wretched and the haircut-impaired.

My favorite part of the mm.com website is where you can order personalized M&M’s with words, faces and colors of your choosing. The faces consist primarily of the characters noted above and the colors include just about any pastel you can imagine. The words, however, are subject to a list of do’s and don’ts. The do’s include the requirement to use nice words, be cheerful, have fun and be expressive, just as long as you don’t take your basic American freedoms too far. You can’t use obscenities, proper nouns like business, celebrity or product names and, “to avoid any confusion and keep everyone safe, we will not print any reference to prescription drugs, especially those that are in pill form.” To drive this last point home, they show a diagonal “no” slash through a candy that reads “Mary’s pills.”

Finally, there’s the boilerplate part you see on just about every commercial website, offering basic facts about the company. We learn that Mars also makes Uncle Ben’s rice, Combos snack crackers, Seeds of Change for the home gardener, and a disturbing quantity of cat food varieties, including Whiskas, Sheba and Pedigree. An ingredients section talks mostly about potential allergens in their products, with additional unnerving references to bass, cod, crab and shrimp (hopefully these are in the cat foods, not candies like Skittles and Snickers.)

Then there’s a store locator to help you find where to buy M&M’s. It’s hard to imagine that locating the ubiquitous dark brown bag we all know and love is really a problem, unless perhaps you’re on safari in Kenya. I keyed in the zip code where I’m writing this posting and found that there are bags for sale in the drugstore across the street, the gas station opposite that, the bookstore on the other corner, and the dollar store three doors down. In total, there are 29 outlets within ten miles of my house.

I appreciated the opportunity to learn more about this fine all-American product and what makes it so special. Watch for more website reviews in future Friday postings.

 

Breaking news from the local paper

Being an old guy, I’m understandably a fan of old media, or what we used to call newspapers. I remember how excited I was the first time I had my picture in the local paper, as an awkward preteen caught in mid-air jump during a tryout for a local production of “The Sound of Music.” A few years later, I had a letter to the editor published that espoused human rights for broccoli in The Miami Herald. I spent many hours I should’ve been sitting in college classes instead working for the student newspaper, where my big achievement was planting a story about a meeting of the Streakers Club, which ultimately led to a mention in Newsweek magazine and a nationwide craze.

If that’s not the most bizarre career arc in journalism, it’s probably pretty close. I applied for a few editorial positions with publications as esteemed as the Tallahassee (Fla.) Democrat and the Columbus (Ga.) Ledger-Enquirer after college, but fortunately for everybody involved I didn’t get the jobs. Still, I’ve remained a life-long news junkie, subscribing to a number of papers (two).

In many ways, my favorite is the small local daily in my mid-sized South Carolina city. It’s a surprisingly professional periodical with just enough small-town amateurism to keep me unintentionally entertained. Today and tomorrow, I’m going to highlight (copy) a few of the more memorable features I’ve encountered in the last month. We’ll start with the news side of the operation.

From a “Fireworks primer” published during the holiday season: “Shooting fireworks from a moving vehicle or at a vehicle is prohibited. Nominate a ‘designed shooter’ for your fireworks display if alcoholic drinks are part of your plans. Let neighbors know your plans – hearing firecrackers explode unexpectedly outside the window can be a shock.” You think?

From “Deaths in the news”: “George Francis, the nation’s oldest man, died Saturday. He was 112. The UCLA gerontologist who maintains a list of the world’s oldest people says the oldest living person is Maria de Jesus of Portugal, who is 115.” Or at least she was a living person at press time.

From “(Local) woman hopes for return of stolen Jesus”: “(She) has set up a crèche every year in the yard of her home for as long as she can remember. The two stolen figures [a wise man was also snatched] can’t be replaced, she said, because she bought them four or five years ago from Carolina Pottery, which has since (gone out of business.)”

From a correction: “In a story about actor David Spade donating $100,000 to the Phoenix police, the AP erroneously reported the first name of a Phoenix police spokesman. His name is Andy Hill.” You would’ve thought the error was going to be that David Spade even had $100,000.

From the sports section: “Practice starts Jan. 12 for men’s (college) golf, with the season opener set for Feb. 15 at the Rice Intercollegiate. Practice starts Jan. 12 for women’s golf, with the season opener set for Feb. 22 in Kiawah Island.” Nothing matches the excitement of college golf – the pep band, the cheerleaders, the tailgating, the ceremonial washing of the balls…

From “Religious recordings hidden in dolls”: “Jennifer Calandra bought dolls at Wal-Mart for her daughters shortly after Thanksgiving. What she ended up with was a baby doll that says ‘Islam is the light.’ Calandra said she thought she was going crazy. She exchanged the doll for another but the second doll said the same thing. ‘It’s not really something you want to hear coming from a doll,’ she said. The doll’s message has sparked a lot of questions from her 7-year-old daughter about religious tolerance. She wants to know why it’s wrong to say ‘Islam is the light.’”

From the veteran local gardening columnist: “The kids are here! The grandkids are here! They were throwing a party for us so of course I had to get a hairdo. First let me tell you about the party tables. Each had three candlesticks, special ornaments turned upside-down and secured with double-sided tape, and a bed of greenery. The theme was repeated outdoors using large concrete urns filled with kitty litter. I ventured into the foggy night to gather more greenery … golden mophead cypress and Siberian Iris seedpods and twigs. What a difference those twigs make! It was nearly 3 a.m. when I brushed my teeth, glanced into the mirror and went into shock. My pretty hairdo was long gone, a victim of our misty foray into the woods.”

Finally, from two separate letters to the editor: “We recently attended the Cheer for Children Charity event and were really impressed. The crowd was lively, loud and good. Meaningful gifts were distributed.” And the other letter: “There are several states that have God on their license plates. Yet even though the plate costs $29 and gives Christians their first amendment rights for free expression, the judge shot it down. Separation of church and state doesn’t apply when Muslim students are allowed to pray in school several times a day, or where taxpayer money was used to provide foot baths so these students could clean their feet before praying.”

Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at some local advertising.

 

Amusing ads from the local paper

Yesterday, I wrote about (made fun of) some of the news items I found amusing in our small hometown newspaper. Today I’m going to mock the advertising side of operations.

From an ad for a local car dealer: “Free breakfast with the purchase of any new or previously owned vehicle.” Some are offering thousands of dollars in cash back, some are giving away gas cards, one carmaker is even offering to take the car back with no obligations if you lose your job. But how many will give you a cup of coffee and a free McMuffin (and hash browns) with your new Ford Focus?

From another desperate car dealer: “All credit applications accepted.” Note that they used the word “accepted,” not “processed,” “read,” “considered,” or “acted upon.” This same dealer also offers something special on their website: “up to 60 photos per car.” I would never consider buying a car online with only 40 or 50 photos, but somehow 60 seems like the right minimum.

From a fitness center trying to lure new customers with the high quality of their personal trainers: “Not all personal trainers are equal. At BOROCK, our standards are high. Our trainers are specially eductated [sic] to offer you the best in fitness.” Proof positive that you don’t have to be a good speller in order to clean and jerk 350 pounds.

From the county’s newest independent assisted-living facility: “Enhanced dementia care. Beside Outback Steak House.” The convenience of this set-up is that if your elderly Alzheimer’s-addled loved one does wander away from supervision, you know where you’ll find them – face down in a Bloomin’ Onion.

From a furniture store promoting a mattress sale: “Purchase any Tyndall Pedic Visco Memory Foam Mattress Set during this sale and receive a $1000 shopping spree.” That’s a lot of adjectives to describe a mattress set. But even more interesting is the adjacent picture of an astronaut fully dressed-out for an extra-vehicular spacewalk. The apparent connection is that the mattress features three layers of “certified space technology,” whatever that is. Among other features of the bedding listed in a bulleted checklist: “fibromyalgia, hands tingle, lower back pain, pain sitting at desk, nervous leg syndrome, diabetes, pain driving, arthritis, hurting shoulders, many other sleep problems.” These are listed as features that will come with the mattress, but I’m pretty sure they mean these problems will be alleviated, not imparted.

From the owner of an air conditioning and heating firm that suffers from the sad but silent epidemic of mental illness which accompanies price reductions everywhere: “AM I CRAZY? I’m offering my $179 furnace super tune-up for only $89… and I guarantee your system won’t break down this winter or this service is FREE!!!” Accompanying the offer is photo of owner Charlie Reid, known to his friends as the “King of Comfort.” I just love a promotion that offers you more of the same defective product or service if you’re not satisfied the first time. “If you don’t like our meatloaf lunch special, here, have another one.”

From another heating and cooling company, this one a bit punctuation-challenged: “Comfort you can depend on, is just a phone call away.” The ad also proclaims “from all of us to you – Jesus is the reason for the season.”

Speaking of Jesus, the most touching of all advertisements in the paper are those located on the obituary pages, remembering beloved family members who have passed on. An elderly lady who died in 2004 is wished “Merry Christmas on your 5^th Christmas with Jesus.”

Obituary pages, though very sad for obvious reasons, have a certain something about them I’ll be addressing in a future posting. Look for it soon.

When I first learned to blog

The following is a piece I wrote as a submission to our local newspaper when they expressed interest in the subject of local blogging a few months ago. Though it “doesn’t meet their needs at this time,” I believe that by “this time” they mean “while humans walk the earth.” So rather than waste my efforts, I’m putting it in as today’s posting.

As a fifty-something middle-class European-American, I long ago gave up any aspirations to be on the cutting edge of modern culture. There was a brief period years ago when I might’ve considered myself marginally “cool” – I think it was for about a half-hour during my junior year of college – but once you find yourself with a family, a suburban home and a corporate career, you are so far past cool as to need only a light jacket.

I like to think, however, that I’m at least aware of all the latest happenings among the younger generation. Though I choose not to indulge, I know all about the discos, the hip-hop, the so-called “brake” dancing, where kids stop and reverse direction in mid-tumble. I’ve heard the music of Madonna, LL Coolio J-Z, and Fall-Down Boy. I have a cell phone and I’ve walked past the video game section in Best Buy. And I’ve learned enough about computers and the Internet to think I’ve found a niche where perhaps I can rekindle enough of my def self to put a toe in the kids’ pool.

I’ve started a blog.

The young people out there know what I’m talking about, but let me take a moment to explain this phenomenon to any of my contemporaries who aren’t familiar with the concept. The blog has nothing to do with Steve McQueen and meteors exuding a pink, gooey substance (that’s “The Blob,” as I was embarrassed to learn a little too late) and everything to do with chronicling your every thought, move and breath for a fascinated world to follow. It’s a little like being an exhibitionist from the comfort of your home, without the gross and illegal parts.

I went online and found WordPress and Blogger, two of the more popular sites that serve as portals to the time-space wormhole known as the “blogosphere.” This huge ball of Internet waves, sitting in geosynchronous orbit over south Asia, is where you choose your blog name, create your profile, even upload video, if you can find the VHS port on the side of your laptop. The setup is quick and remarkably painless (as long as you keep your power cord out of the water) and before you know it, you’re a blogger!

Now that you’ve got the infrastructure in place, you need to turn your attention to something known as “content.” This annoying but necessary part of keeping a blog requires you to think of something interesting to put in your postings so that when people open your webpage, there will be words instead of blank space, which tends to discourage return visits. From looking at some of the blogs already out there, it seems that your content doesn’t have to be especially pertinent – cats, lawyer jokes and death threats are a few common themes – it mostly just has to be there.

My favorite subject so far, as I hope you’ve been able to guess from the last 491 words that preceded these, is humor. Since standards aren’t especially high, what with the lack of editors, fact-checkers and other mainstream media flotsam, all you need to do is position your screen pointer on the “write” tab and click it to open a window that looks something like an email entry. Type until your hands get tired and then press the “publish” button.

At this point, you’re usually given the option to “view site” so you can see what you just wrote in a slightly different format, but one that is now being viewed by millions of people around the world. Or at least that’s how I thought it worked. Turns out that the hardest part of blogging once you’ve gotten this far is figuring out how to get people to actually visit your blog. I believed that once your posting went up, there’d be a flashing signal on every computer then online that would direct readers to stop whatever they were doing and read all about you. I kept watching for evidence of all this traffic to show up in the comments that record what visitors think of your hard work. It’s the positive reinforcement of these remarks – notes like “wow, you’re terrific” and “worst blog ever” – that provide the incentive for people to keep up their blogs for weeks at a time. It’s been slow to come in my case, though with networking, webcasting and poking people with sticks, I’m starting to build a respectable audience.

It’s certainly not money that provides the motivation for blogging. If you’re thinking about joining in this communications revolution as a way to add a little extra income during this time of tight cash, you’ll find out quickly that that’s not how it works. Though my laptop does have a slot on one side that looks about the right size to spit out fifty-dollar bills, they haven’t come yet, and I’m starting to think they never will. Still, I’ve achieved the satisfaction of joining a community of like-minded citizens to whom connectivity, even though it’s virtual, gives us all a sense that we’re involved in something very, very special.

Being cool.

You want my advice? (Pt. 11)

“You Want My Advice?” is a twice weekly feature (Tuesdays and Thursdays) of davisw.wordpress.com. I look at questions of ethics, propriety, faith, technology, geopolitics, design, etc., and offer completely inappropriate, irresponsible and possibly even life-threatening advice. Today, we hear from a reader in the midst of a home redecoration.

Q. We are starting to renovate our kitchen and are thinking about basic black and gray and white. We would like modern, but not too cold. Maybe a bit Oriental. We also wanted to install a backsplash that has the “wow” factor. We want to replace the current countertop, which is tropical brown granite, and the deep sill of the bay window over the sink also needs tile. We’re also removing a dated sunshine ceiling light, which leaves a 3-by-4 foot rectangle that is unfinished, plain gyprock. The rest of the ceiling is popcorn finish. We’re installing three pendant lights. Our kitchen is contemporary with cream cabinets. How can we unify the ceiling? –Worried, Perhaps Even a Bit Paranoid

A. You’re under arrest for possession and distribution of methamphetamine. Put down the trowel and step away from it slowly.

Seriously, what is it with you ambitious do-it-yourselfers and your plans for creating the perfect home? Can’t you think of anything better to do with your free time? Maybe you should take up a more soothing hobby, like golf, stamp collecting, or occasional sleep.

I can try to answer your questions, but I’ll tell you up front that my heart’s not really in it, considering I live in a house with 15-year-old carpeting that used to be tan but now tends more toward a muted shade of cat-stain.

I’d say black and gray and white sound just about right for your kitchen; you can avoid the cold feel and add an Oriental touch at the same time by adding a flaming Buddha to your breakfast nook. I don’t even know what a backsplash is, so instead of a “wow” factor you’d be getting the “huh?” factor from me.  I’d go counter-intuitive on the countertop and replace the granite with hard cheese, maybe a nice Gouda. I also don’t know what a “deep sill,” “sunshine ceiling light,” “gyprock,” or “pendant light” is. I’ve heard of rectangles and popcorn, though admittedly not in the context of home décor. So I’ll refrain from advice on these issues, except to note that popcorn is to be avoided on a low-res diet.

Your final question about unifying the ceiling I feel fairly comfortable answering. You’ll definitely want all parts of the ceiling to touch all other parts, so as to avoid rain and bees.

Good luck with your renovations! I hope you finish before the Rapture.

This post not available in stores

With the poor economy continuing to affect TV advertising revenue, you see more and more direct marketing commercials selling items that are “not available in stores.” These ads typically feature extremely agitated pitchmen, a toll-free order number, a price that’s typically $19.95, and tiny-font shipping and handling charges that run you another $12. If you order now you can get two, and don’t forget that these items are not available in stores, probably because the idea behind stores is that they offer products people actually want and need to buy.

It used to be that you only saw these commercials late at night, when you were so worried about how you’d deal with sudden urges to fish that you couldn’t sleep. And mercifully, there would be an ad for the “pocket fisherman.” Now you’re likely to see these kinds of spots any time of the day or night. An NPR report recently explained the trend: as traditional advertisers reduce their budgets, local stations make leftover air time available to these low-end buyers at drastically reduced rates. One ad buyer interviewed admitted he was a “bottom feeder,” which I think would be an excellent name for a product: Try the BottomFeeder! You’ll never need to buy bathroom tissue again!

A lot of the trailblazers in this industry have unfortunately been made archaic by modern technology. The Ginsu Knives, famous for cutting through a can, were so sharp and awkward to use that most of their purchasers accidentally slashed their wrists. The Medic Alert bracelet, for when you’ve fallen and can’t (or simply don’t want to) get up, was antiquated by the cell phone. The Clapper, which allowed you to turn stuff on from across the room, was discontinued when seniors began using the Segway to travel effortlessly about their homes from light switch to light switch.

One of the promoters currently most in demand for these frenetic spiels is a bearded, raspy-voiced fellow named Billy Mays. Son of baseball’s Willie Mays, who roamed centerfield for the San Francisco Giants for over two decades on his way to 12 Golden Gloves and the Hall of Fame, Billy wanted to get out from the shadow of his famous father. His big break came in the ‘90s when he was selected to be spokesman for the Bedazzler, a tool that embedded plastic gems into jackets, jeans and that household pet desperately in need of a makeover. He later sold items like OxiClean, the Mantis Tiller and Miracle Whip (I can’t remember ever seeing him hawk the well-known mayonnaise substitute, so I can only guess this product was instead some kind of domination device).

Described by The Washington Post as having a “signature yelling approach” and being “known for screaming in lieu of talking during infomercials … a full-volume pitchman, amped up like a candidate for a tranquilizer-gun takedown,” Mays was last seen branching out into the service economy. He was recently named the new voice of iCan Benefit Group, “the first company offering health insurance Billy Mays has been excited to endorse.” (He’s endorsed many other insurance plans, but steadfastly refused to be excited by them until now.) I anticipate a not-too-distant future in which Billy sells everything from mutual funds to cremation services in his classic manic shriek.

Mays is not affiliated with the infomercial product that most recently has been all over the airwaves — I mentioned him mainly because I wanted to see how many readers would buy the Willie Mays connection. I’m talking here about the “Loud and Clear” sound-amplifying device that fits in your ear like a Blutooth cell phone apparatus. No longer will your difficulties interpreting sound be obvious to all who can see the electroacoustic device in your ear; now, they’ll think you’re just another self-absorbed tool enamored with pointless technology that hangs off the side of your head. I can hardly wait for the next-gen app that enhances your smelling abilities with the brushed-steel device that protrudes from your nose.

Rather than using a spokesperson, the Loud and Clear commercials feature actors pretending to go through their daily routines enjoying the life-enhancing properties of a monstrous hearing aid. There’s a guy in bed next to his annoyed wife, who’s giving him dirty looks because the TV is too loud for her to sleep, until he discovers the Loud and Clear and can turn that damn thing down. There’s a woman rocking out to the kitchen radio while her husband tries but fails to concentrate on his laptop work. Rather than asking him to get his stupid computer off the kitchen table, she’s seen moments later happily accessorized in her Loud and Clear. Others are involved in a number of activities designed to demonstrate that today’s seniors aren’t your father’s old people – they’re energetically playing bingo, strolling through the woods in tight jeans, and listening in on two neighbors having a private discussion across the street.

This last example hints at the more malicious uses of the Loud and Clear, which are also illustrated in the commercial with a surprising lack of guilt. One scene shows a guy, hopefully a private detective, sitting at the wheel of his parked car with the amplifier in his ear and a camera in his hands. He becomes suddenly attentive, clicks the camera at some off-screen scene, then nods in quiet satisfaction at how easily he was able to get naked pictures of his kid’s hot teacher. I’m not sure how the hearing device helped with this, unless maybe it keeps him on guard for the piercing sirens of approaching squad cars.

Generally, though, the Loud and Clear is shown engaging in harmless fun. There’s a party scene where a trio of attractive women are chatting, then the shot widens to show the eavesdropping stud who’s delighted to learn they’re talking about him. There’s a hunter in the woods — hopefully not the same woods with the tight-jeaned woman — using the hearing enhancer to listen for the rustle of live game. I only hope the L&C has a volume control handy, because when he lets loose with that shotgun, he’s going to get way more amplification than he bargained for. There’s a quiet conversation at home with the family, above a caption that reads “HEAR PEOPLE AROUND YOU!”

Probably the worst, most devious thing about this product is that I want one. I can tell that my hearing has declined in recent years, and I recognize that it would be nice to watch television and have some idea of why Howie Mandell is beating that guy over the head with a baseball bat. My world could be so much richer.

Actually, I think I’d like to have two, one protruding out of each ear. Maybe if I order now…

 

You want my advice? (Pt. 12)

“You Want My Advice?” is a twice weekly feature (Tuesdays and Thursdays) of davisw.wordpress.com. I look at questions of ethics, propriety, faith, technology, geopolitics, design, etc., and offer completely inappropriate, irresponsible and possibly even life-threatening advice. Today, we hear from a reader in the midst of a spiritual crisis.

Q. Why should I believe in Jesus and give up my lifestyle right now, if God will forgive me anyway whenever I ask him? Why not wait until I’m about ready to die? I like the way I’m living. – Tweet from the Floor (And I Do Mean the Floor) of the S’Uptown Dance Club

     A. Is that right? God will forgive you a lifetime of sins even on the day you die? Hang on a second while I check Bible.com.

     Wow, you’re right! I did not know that. Right there in Revelations 13:35-36, it says: “For ye shall be able to do all kinds of unrighteousness — up to and including sins of the flesh, sins of the spirit, and sins upon thy brother and thy father – as long as ye shall call upon the Lord during your last days and ask that He give unto you a break.”

     So what’s the point of living a proper and sin-free life? If you can lie and steal and murder and work for the Bush Administration during your days here on Earth, and you can still get into heaven with a deathbed confession of your wrongdoing and a new-found faith in God, why wouldn’t you want to do as much harm as possible in the time you have? Because even the “God-less” can have some sense of propriety and a recognition of what’s right and what’s wrong? That can’t be true.

     In my role as a leading theologian and an Authorized Vessel through which the Lord speaks unto all the world, I would still advise that you not to be so callous and calculating in the timing of your final confession. What if you’re walking down the street and suddenly struck by a truck? By a meteor? By a runaway train? I have connections and can make it happen, just like that if I want to. You might survive for a second or two plastered on the grill of that speeding Freightliner but I wouldn’t count on having your wits about you. They’ll probably be lying in the road about a hundred feet back.

     Get right with the Lord now, I say unto you. I’m not kidding around.

Website review: CNN.com

This … is … C … N … N.

So intoned the Lord our God, in his only commercial spokesperson role, some 40 years ago when the Cable News Network premiered. I was an early adopter of the cable news format when it was first made available in the 1970s, and have been a fan of its derivative networks since then. I enjoyed watching Braves baseball, Turner Classic Movies and the unchanging drumbeat of Headline News (now rechristened HLN) repeating the same stories over and over and over. I got a vicarious kick out of Ted Turner’s unsuccessful mergers, with both Jane Fonda and Time Warner. I’ve even taken the tour at the Atlanta headquarters, ascending the world’s tallest escalator to end up in a tiny room where they explain how the weather people can’t even see what they’re pointing at as they wave their arms in front of a green screen. Amazing!

Having seen the bricks and mortar of the operation, I was eager to take a look the digital and the virtual in the form of the network’s website, CNN.com. As you might imagine, the home page is heavy on the headlines of breaking news. Thursday’s highlights included must-reads such as: “Rabid fox attacks dad, son,” “Man complains about Buddhas at zoo,” “Cow gas tax not happening,” “Eighteenth Porta-Potty set on fire” and “Iowan: Cold hurts, makes ‘skin burn.’” There’s also promotion of a feature about what’s on schoolchildren’s minds (“Make Iraq war go away”) and an offer to update your Facebook status while you watch the inauguration on CNN.com.

CNN is working hard – some might say a little too hard – to make itself relevant in the new-media landscape that potentially threatens its very foundation. In its efforts to involve viewers and make them more a part of the news operation, it’s giving Average Joes nearly equal footing with its staff of veteran journalists. While participation from the grassroots can offer a broader perspective on the events of the day, it can be distracting to those of us used to a little more professionalism.

Take the concept of the “iReport,” a user-generated site containing stories that are “not edited, fact-checked or screened.” Just the kind of reliable information source you want. One recent example went beyond news into the realm of opinion and policy-making, allowing an iReporter to offer his views on how to fix the most severe economic crisis of our time. Zennie Abraham, also known as “Zennie62,” offered his taxpayer stimulus package to CNN chief business correspondent Ali Velshi. Zennie’s plan calls for a $3,500 stimulus check to those making less than $100,000 a year, presumably including Zennie. Velshi said such a plan wasn’t targeted enough to work but Zennie defended his idea: “$3,500, particularly for college students and their parents, can help pay for their housing.” (Sounds like someone trying to afford first and last month’s rent so he can move out of his parents’ basement.) CNN’s Velshi, after hearing the explanation – and mindful perhaps of the network’s changing demographics – started to agree. “That could work,” he said lamely.

Another new feature a little too close to the cutting edge for my comfort is the Rick Sanchez Show, wherein Rick attempts to moderate a Twittering free-for-all that’s taking place in a strip across the bottom of his screen. He tries his best to turn submissions like “great rap, agree … disagree no matter … all good. gots to go to bed. will do again morrow” and “hey, why’s ur girlfriend gaining weight again. u making her too happy?” into relevant commentary on the topic at hand. He squirms so hard at some points that you fear he’ll pull a muscle.

The website also includes details and extras about certain on-air personalities and the efforts they go to in making themselves more interesting. The “Today”-equivalent morning show on HLN is called “Morning Express with Robin Meade,” featuring a former beauty queen with a chatty manner, a smile as wide as  Heath Ledger’s Joker, and the kind of extreme makeup required in today’s high-definition production. Robin hosts the Morning Express Challenge, a news quiz where both the first correct answer and a randomly drawn player win the same prize – an autographed picture of Robin – but both are enrolled in a chance to win the grand prize, a trip to Atlanta to meet Robin in person. We also see Robin posed in what looks like the open bay door of a helicopter, the smile wisely turned upside down as she offers her “Salute to the Troops.” And, you can sign up for her daily email news preview, sent out early each morning in her signature lower-case style: “morning glory! let’s shake the sleepy out of you. this isn’t our top story, but i love this one: too much caffeine can make you hallucinate and see ghosts. okay, how much are we talking? more on that.” I actually subscribed to this service for a while, until I cancelled after realizing there’d be no pictures of Robin still in her baby-doll pajamas.

Other highlights around the site include pictures of Indo-hunk Surgeon General-designate Sanjay Gupta, promotions for the “News to You” show (a kind of “Best Week Ever” rip-off without the snark), and the obligatory nod to Nancy Grace’s all-consuming obsession with the Caylee Anthony case. I looked for something on CNN’s resident right-winger Glenn Beck, but he’s apparently left the company for a new and more welcoming home on Fox News. Either way, I’m glad to see network news offering a big enough tent to employ those afflicted with uncontrollable facial tics such as Glenn’s.

You can also sign up for CNN Mobile alerts, in case you want to be notified immediately via your cell phone should there be a warning about Vicks Vaporub or how “doctor [is] interested in seeing kids not kidney, lawyer says.” I tried to find out more about similar high-tech extras but crashed my PC twice when I tried to go to the Tools and Widgets section of the site.

All in all, it’s a respectable representation on the Web, almost deserving of the thunderous tones I quoted at the beginning of this post. If God is no longer in the promo business, maybe they can get James Earl Jones to splice a “… dot … com…” onto the audio for their site.

The mystery of health-food names

I absolutely love my neighborhood organic health-food store. They let me hang out in their small Wi-Fi-equipped café for hours at a time playing with my laptop, drinking cold bottled tea and raiding their free samples. Though the freebies don’t always complement one another — yesterday’s selections were chocolate brownie bites and garlic hummus – they’re always delicious.

My wife and I shop here on a regular basis, so I don’t feel too guilty doing this cyber-loitering. I blend in nicely with the houseplants and pistachio-nutshell artworks (I’m the one wearing sweatpants) and I try not to make a nuisance of myself. It’s become something of a home away from home since my hours at work were cut back a few months ago and I started getting on my wife’s nerves at home.

I’m not a big health-food consumer though I do enjoy just about anything that’s tasty and expensive. Browsing the shelves here I find a lot of products I’m sure I would enjoy, but I also see a lot of items that are something of a mystery to me. Health and organic food manufacturers have gotten very creative with their naming conventions. It does make them memorable, though often in an unintentionally funny way.

Here are some of the products I found while wandering around the store yesterday afternoon, and my guess of what they really are:

Wallaby yogurt – I’m sure it’s not made of wallaby, but I also want to know that it’s not made of wallaby milk.

Seventh Generation recycled toilet paper – Recycling is obviously a good and important thing, even in items like bathroom tissue. Taking it all the way to the seventh generation, however, seems a bit much.

Women’s bread, man’s bread, brown sandwich bread, kamut – These are all frozen bread products and are fairly self-descriptive, except for whatever the hell “kamut” is.

Dr. Praeger’s spinach pancakes – This sounds more like a prescription than a healthy side dish.

Amy’s tofu rancheros – Yee-hah, let’s round up those free-range tofus and slam ‘em into these rancheros.

Gaga’s SherBetter orange frozen dessert – I guess this is some kind of sherbet substitute. I thought sherbet was already healthier than other frozen desserts but, as the name suggests, this is even sherbetter.

Scandinavian-style Gravlax – This was displayed next to the salmon and crab dip, so I’m guessing it’s a fish product, possibly similar in nature to the notorious Norwegian lutefisk. Combining the word roots “grav” (as in “gravel” and “grave”) and “lax” (as in “laxative” and “lacks edible texture”) does not tempt me to buy it, however.

Chocolate hazelnut tea – Just doesn’t seem like a good taste combination.

Blackwing ostrich filet – “Blackwing” sounds like a disease sweeping through the ostrich population, not a brand of their tasty meat filets.

Uncured organic chicken corndogs – I know curing is considered a bad thing among whole-food purists, but it seems like if anything needs to be restored to health it’s chicken corndogs.

Ziyard vegetarian kibbeh – I had to go online to learn that kibbeh is a “Levantine dish made of burghul,” which wasn’t particularly helpful.

Quorn turk’y and chik’n products – I’m presuming these are made of corn and at least vaguely resemble the poultry products they sound like.

Dominex eggplant burgers – I’ve never before thought of the eggplant as a particularly assertive or strong-willed vegetable.

Baby Mum Mum vegetarian rice husks – Start your child out right in life with the kind of taste-free bulk that brightens the eyes of kids everywhere.

Venison jerky with sea cucumber – This product was in the pet food section, though I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the more hard-core customers here have eaten it themselves.

Organic Ghee – Ghee is a clarified Indian butter that can be stored without refrigeration. Mmm!

 

Soon, I’ll venture into the neutraceutical (pill) section of the store and report on some of those names. Stay tuned.

Now we’re cooking … with crackers

There’s been quite an explosion in culinary creativity in recent years. Things that just were not done with foods in the past are now being routinely cooked up by top-flight chefs as well as amateurs in their home kitchens. Taste combinations we couldn’t fathom ten years ago – lamb and Pez, free-range chicken and bubblegum, eggplant and Chloraseptic, pomegranate and mint-flavored toothpaste – are now so commonplace as to be almost ordinary.

Television, at least at some level, seems to have had a large part in driving this revolution. Shows like “Top Chef,” “Iron Chef” and “You Think You Can Cook? Well, Think Again” are all over the airwaves, showcasing cooks with stars in their eyes and eyeballs in their soups. Celebrities such as Anthony Bourdain, known for using his lit cigarettes as a heat source for his famous fondues, and Andrew Zimmern, the “Bizarre Foods” guy who recently added blown-out retreads and chunks of asphalt to the carbon-based matter he’s willing to consume, are well known and admired, assuming they’re still alive as of this writing. Racheal Ray brings less exotic ideas like pasta-stuffed Mom jeans to dinner tables all over the country.

But even at the everyday level where most of us live, we see these changes. Fast food restaurants that once offered only regular French fries, now also offer curly fries and seasoned fries. Pizza toppings, the most exotic of which used to be anchovies, now include pine nuts, pine cones and pine tar. You can even buy a hamburger that has another hamburger on top of it.

Large corporations have been quick to join in on this anything-goes bandwagon with suggestions of their own, cooked up in the same kitchens that brought us such entrees as high-interest junk bonds and collateralized mortgage originations. It’s a great opportunity to team even the most pedestrian snack foods with exotic recipes in the interest of selling more Fritos and Twizzlers.

One such company is Nabisco, makers of not only nature’s most perfect food, the Oreo, but also saltines, more formally known as Original Premium Saltine Crackers. The quick and easy recipe on packaging now on the shelves is the Grilled Steak Salad with Creamy Avocado Dressing. Below is the actual recipe:

Preheat grill to medium-high heat. Sprinkle steak with chili powder. Grill steak 7 minutes on each side. Remove from grill and let stand 5 minutes. Meanwhile, toss lettuce with tomatoes, onion and olives. Place Italian dressing and avocado in blender and blend until smooth. Cut steak into thin slices; arrange over salad. Drizzle with dressing mixture.

And then, the final and, some would say, most important step: Serve with the crackers.

Lives of the Dead: Martin Luther

Martin Luther (1483-1546), widely regarded as the father of the Protestant Reformation and a number of unintended babies, was a German theologian and religious reformer who challenged the supremacy of the Catholic Church. He also had a vast influence on European concepts of politics, economics, education, language and hair styling, with his now-familiar bowl cut making him one of the most crucial figures in modern European history.

He was born in Eisleben (later Hitlerville, and then back to Eisleben) in what today is Germany. His father, originally known as Hans Luder, had wanted to name his son “Lex” but was convinced by his wife to go with “Abraham Martin and John,” later shortened to simply Martin. The family was descended from peasantry, but Hans made a nice living for himself and his family as a copper miner and part-time fletcher/cooper (roughly equivalent to today’s writer/director). Martin received his early education at Magdeburg and Eisenach, before enrolling at the University of Erfurt at age 17. Red-shirted during his freshman season, he became an outstanding left tackle for the Fightin’ Furter football team by the time he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1502. He passed on an opportunity for a pro career — he was projected as high as the eighth round by some scouts — and chose to stay in school to pursue his master’s, which he received in 1505.

He began to study law, as his father wished, but didn’t have enough credits to graduate so he fell back on his undergraduate major – monking — and entered the Augustinian monastery. Within a year, he had so impressed his superiors that he was selected for the priesthood, ordained, and conducted his first celebration of mass. (“Celebration” might be overstating the case, as he kept stumbling over the unfamiliar phrasing, once mispronouncing “Madonna” as “My donut.”) He continued his studies in theology, including multiple re-takes of basic Latin, until he got his big chance to go to Rome and check out how Catholicism was done in the big city.

To put it mildly, he was not impressed. In fact, he was shocked by the worldliness of the Roman clergy, especially the way they had substituted vodka shots for wine in the communions they conducted. This led him to question other basic tenets of church, and he gradually came to believe that Christians were saved not through their own efforts but instead by God’s grace. The church leadership was making a tidy fortune off the sale of indulgences, which were peddled to the peasants in the form of mugs, posters and t-shirts (“Rome Rules” was a common slogan for this merchandising). This crass effort disgusted Luther to the point where he suffered from nearly constant vomiting, though scholars recently discovered a sixteenth-century Domino’s menu that led them to believe that salmonella-tainted pizza may have been a contributing factor.

Luther finally emerged into worldwide prominence when in 1517 he was named Holy Roman Empire Today’s “Most Pious Man Alive” and became known for some graffiti he had scrawled on the door of All Saints Church in Wittenburg. This posting of the so-called Ninety-five Theses has been greatly misunderstood by historians and only recently was clarified when the old door itself was located at a garage sale in East St. Louis, Missouri. It was long believed that Luther wrote the theses before-hand and then nailed them to the cathedral door as a sign of protest and to show his growing prowess as a construction worker. In reality, Luther wrote the seminal document on-site, meticulously painting it onto the oak with a fine single-haired brush. What bothered the church elders more than what the manuscript said was the fact that he was always in the way, blocking the main entrance almost constantly during the three weeks it took him to finish. Most of the demands were not that unreasonable – for example, he wrote of the need for sturdier pews to “accommodate the ample Germanic hind.” He also wanted Wednesday night services moved to Tuesday because most members couldn’t TiVo floggings in the public square like the wealthy clergy could, and he wanted the liturgy conducted in native languages because Latin “sounds too much like they’re just making it up as they go along.”

He made it all the way through the next-to-last thesis (“94. Enough with the incense already, it’s giving everybody a headache”) with church officials only mildly curious about the progress of the bowl-headed scribe. On the morning of his final day of work, he began writing the last entry as a crowd of onlookers grew around him. “The pope is not ni…” he began. The throng began buzzing with anticipation. The pope is not what? Nitrogen-based? Nihilistic? Luther slowly added a “c”. Nicene? Nickel-plated? Then he added an “e”. “Don’t get upset everybody – it could still be ‘Nicene,’” shouted one observer, trying to quell the growing distress of the crowd. Then Luther added the punctuation mark that would change European history forever, a period. “The pope is not nice.” The multitude gasped, but soon dispersed when they heard a beheading was being set up across the street.

The Roman Curia, which is kind of like a Senate subcommittee only crankier, began an investigation that eventually led to the condemnation of Luther’s teachings in 1520 and his excommunication a year later. He was summoned to appear before Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms and asked to recant. His famous assertion of conscience in the face of certain punishment – “No Can Do!” – is most likely legendary, but still he was spirited away by Prince Frederick the Wise who kept him in virtual house arrest at his castle.

Luther was able to continue much of his other life work, though it paled in comparison to royally pissing off the entire Catholic Church. He made a little money doing some free-lance translations and sticking his nose into the Peasants’ War of 1524-1526, where he supported the peasants’ political demands while repudiating their theological arguments, a fine distinction that was lost on all the people who had swords. He married a former nun, a widely acknowledged hottie by the name of Katharina von Bora, and continued his writing as his influence spread across northern and eastern Europe.

By the late 1530’s, his health began to deteriorate and he took on an anti-Semitic bent by accusing the Jews of exploiting the confusion he had caused among Christians. This made him virtually unable to locate a decent doctor, and he died on Feb. 18, 1546. His obituary, printed several days later in the Eisleben Picayune-Examiner, included a long list of his works, an even longer list of his children, and the name of his new religion: Martinism, which was later changed to Luthermania, then Lutheranism.

You want my advice? (Pt. 13)

“You Want My Advice?” is a twice weekly feature (Tuesdays and Thursdays) of davisw.wordpress.com. I look at questions of ethics, manners, faith, technology, geopolitics, design, etc., and offer completely inappropriate, irresponsible and possibly even life-threatening advice. Today, we hear from readers looking for a more open and honest relationship with their friends.

Q. Our best friends, “Bill and Melinda,” are financially well off. My husband and I make just enough to get by. We have been friends for a long time and always have a good time together. “Bill and Melinda” are always inviting us to go with them on expensive trips. When we say we can’t afford it, they insist on paying. They even offered to buy us a membership in their country club. When we explain we’re uncomfortable with them paying for everything, they tell us the money is no big deal. How can we make them understand that we appreciate their generosity but are uncomfortable accepting their charity? – Not Only Poor But Really, Really Stupid

A. I think that if you’re truly best friends with these folks, you should be able to have an honest conversation about your concerns. I suspect they don’t even realize your discomfort, and would try to be more understanding if they did. I also would bet that they consider your friendship far more valuable than anything they could buy, and that’s why they want to be so generous.

No – forget that. It’s entirely too reasonable.

I would make a point of entertaining them the best way you can afford, in the coziness of your own home. The fanciest restaurant in the world can’t compare with a home-cooked meal of spam-and-dog-food lasagna around the small bench you call a dining room table. Go all out for this event, setting a trash fire in the corner of the room to provide the right ambience and putting a block of cheese on the back porch to draw out all the rats. After your friends have had a few glasses of malt liquor, all class differences will be forgotten.

Then, when they return the favor by inviting you into their home, be prepared to thoroughly ransack the place looking for jewelry, cash and expensive electronics to be loaded into your pick-up truck and hauled away while they’re preparing the canapés. If they happened to surprise you during your looting spree, just laugh it off – in as threatening and maniacal a laugh as you can summon.

By the way, you say these people are named “Bill and Melinda.” That wouldn’t be Bill and Melinda Gates, would it? If so, make sure you also steal the Microsoft stock certificates.

 

Impressions on an historic day

Observations on yesterday’s historic events:

• My suburb of Charlotte, NC, was slammed by two inches of snow Tuesday, grinding everyday life to a complete halt. Transportation was paralyzed, schools were closed and people stayed home from work to eat French toast, made with all the eggs, bread and milk they’d purchased the previous night. Life slowly returned to normal later in the day when all the car accidents that could possibly happen did happen. In other news, the U.S. inaugurated its first African-American president, beginning an era of hope and promise not seen in decades.
• When Chief Justice John Roberts bungled the first few lines of the presidential oath of office, I got the sneaking suspicion that he was laying the foundation for a constitutional challenge that Barack Obama was not in fact president because he didn’t say exactly the right words. What Roberts should have prompted was “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of the president,” but instead he came out with “I do slovenly swear that I will facetiously execute the president of the office.” Fortunately, Obama saw what Robbie was up to and managed to recite the correct wording.
• In an attempt to capture every possible camera angle, the networks at one point were focusing their cameras through the bullet-proof glass and onto the front line of dignitaries right before the oath was delivered at noon. An astute reporter observed that the giant foreheads seen on the distinguished guests were a “funhouse mirror reflection” and not actual giant alien foreheads.
• I noticed that 10-year-old Malia Obama was fiddling with some kind of electronic device while waiting for her father’s big moment. TV commentators claimed it was a camera, but I got the distinct impression that she was texting her friends. I can only imagine the message that a pre-teen girl might send in the midst of so much attention being paid to her and her family: “OMG – my dad is becoming president – I’m so embarrassed!!!”
• I was not particularly impressed with the invocation delivered by controversial preacher Rick Warren. He managed to avoid the verb “smite” while talking about the diversity of America, but still snuck in a few ingratiating references to his own personal savior, while giving only passing acknowledgment to everybody else’s. Then, for the last quarter of the recitation, he had the nerve to sample from the Lord’s Prayer. What is he, some kind of DJ Saddleback? I just hope he’s made to pay royalties to whomever it is who owns the rights to that “Our Father, who art in heaven” lyric.
• I thought it was very sad when the Obamas had to get out of their GM-produced megamobile during the parade and begin walking because the vehicle couldn’t get above 2 mph. This was the Big Three’s opportunity for some impressive grill time before a huge national audience, and the giant Escalade broke down at least twice on the route. They were able to get it re-started both times and finally ended up at the reviewing stand in time to watch the rest of the parade.
• During some of the postgame analysis on CNN, Democratic strategist and Louisiana native Donna Brazille talked about how great it was to be so close to the historic event up on the main stage. She said she ran into Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas at one point and, in the spirit of bipartisanship, resisted what had to be an overwhelming temptation to punch him in the mouth. Instead, she reportedly told the Savannah-raised justice, “Georgia in da house, Louisiana in da house.” Responding with classic Thomasonian wit, the soft-spoken arch-conservative responded, “duh?”
• It was high noon, the historic moment was at hand, and inauguration coordinator Senator Dianne Feinstein takes the stage to introduce … an overhead backup band? Their set was mercifully short, just long enough for me to make a quick trip to the restroom before the presidential oath. They were just finishing when I got back, so I may not have the band lineup exactly right, but I think I know at least a few of them – cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Itzhak Perlman, pianist Billy Joel and saxophonist Kenny G were immediately recognizable. It was only the tambourine player that I didn’t recognize.
• Dick Cheney made his final appearance as sitting vice president literally sitting, in a wheelchair. He couldn’t have been happy with how diabolical that made him look. Reportedly, he suffered a back sprain while helping move furniture out of his office the day before (that man-sized safe isn’t going to move itself, you know). I’ve been through similar back pain myself, and I can tell you that sitting down is not the position you want to assume. When I had my most recent spell of back spasms, I wanted to either stand up straight or lay flat the whole time; any bending at the waist was extremely painful. I guess they couldn’t wheel him into the proceedings on a stretcher, since that would make it too hard to see unless he had one of those iron-lung mirrors you see in old movies. I suppose they could’ve slanted the gurney to a 45-degree angle so he might get an actual view. That was probably vetoed, however, when they realized how much it would look like he was doing a shout-out to waterboarding.
• Since I had to watch the proceedings from the office, I had to rely on the magnificent architecture of the worldwide web to get my live feed, and things were not going well. I went to several sites I would’ve thought reliable – CNN, CBS, ABC, MSN, even, in desperation, Fox – and all of them said I could “click here for live video.” I’d click there and nothing would happen except for a circular graphic rotation. I could understand why CNN’s wasn’t working; they had to use up half their bandwidth to include inane but real-time comments from their Facebook connection (Allegra Bischoff is thinking Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann are total foxes; Reza Gulastani is thinking I love everybody, God loves everybody, I think I need to study now). I finally got a site up and running just as Obama was stepping up to the podium for the main event, then … screen freeze. I rushed into the breakroom and was able to see the historic moment along with a group of African-, Asian- and Latino-Americans from our warehouse. When they broke into applause as the oath finished, it was a great moment.

Best of luck to all of us and to our new president.

You want my advice? (Pt. 14)

“You Want My Advice?” is a twice weekly feature (Tuesdays and Thursdays) of davisw.wordpress.com. I look at questions of ethics, manners, faith, technology, geopolitics, health, etc., and offer completely inappropriate, irresponsible and possibly even life-threatening advice. Today, we hear from an elderly reader wondering about his medications.

Q. I’m an 83-year-old man and am medicated pretty well. I walk sometimes but otherwise get little exercise. Recently, I started having bad cramps at night and my legs are getting weak. Please advise me. – Old Man

A. You’ve come to the right place. I’m a 55-year-old man and am also “medicated pretty well,” if you know what I mean.

Have you ever tried Simvostat, sometimes known as “Simmies” or “Vo-vo”? It’s a drug designed to lower your cholesterol but, man, I gotta tell you, that stuff sends me totally flying. If you’re at all into mad hallucinations, this is for you. After I dose myself (don’t take with grapefruit), I’ll just lay back and stare at the clouds. Sometimes they form themselves into the Face of God and speak to me, while other times all I can see are flying monkeys and these transluscent fish that just laugh and laugh. It’s so cool, AND it’s gotten my cholesterol down to 135.

Another high I can recommend is Lorzepam, often called “Zeps” or “Lordy Lorzy” on the streets. This is ostensibly a sleep medication, but if you can manage to keep yourself awake, the effect is similar to surgical anesthesia. You’re just drifting, drifting – it feels like your brain is buzzing. If you do fall asleep, beware that side effects may include amnesia with no memory for the event, such as sleep-driving, sleep-eating and sleep-robbing-convenience-stores.

The last medication that I would “highly” recommend is something called Flomax. This is frequently prescribed to men of a certain age who may have trouble “going” or else find themselves going “all the time.” Flomax isn’t in generic form yet, so you might also ask for pharmaceutical equivalents such as Peezalot, WeeBegone or Pissanpiss. Besides fixing your prostate, this stuff makes your face literally vibrate and gives you incredible incentive to get things done (mostly involving urinals). If you need to stay up late to study for a test or prepare a presentation for work, this is the junk you want.

As for bad cramps and leg weakness, I think you’ll forget all about these problems – not to mention the names of close family members – if you try any of the above-recommended drugs. Have fun, dude.

 

Website review: Pepsi.com

There’s probably no consumer product I’ve consumed more of in my life than Pepsi-Cola. For at least the last 40 years, it’s been my everyday drink of choice – preferred over water, over beer, over tea and over coffee. Especially preferred over ice, with a straw, in a tall frosty glass. A quick calculation shows that I’ve probably spent close to $10,000 on the corn-syrup-infused soft drink over the years. I’ve downed 438,000 ounces, which amounts to over 5 million calories, which adds up to about 5,000 pounds of added bulk, roughly the weight of a modern supertanker. It also means I’ve consumed more than a million milligrams of sodium – enough to build my own salt mine.

My love affair with Pepsi began as a youth in the 1960s. It was the ultimate treat my parents could get me at the end of the day. I occasionally strayed to other brands of cola, specifically RC Cola which at the time was the only drink to come in a 16-ounce bottle. Like many, I experimented during college, trying now-defunct brands such as Jamaica Cola, Chek Cola and the poorly-conceived Ebola Cola. Pepsi’s arch-enemy, whose name I shall not allow my fingers to type, is my choice only when there’s no other choice.

There’s nothing quite like that feeling you get after about the fourth or fifth gulp, when the carbonation in your gut reaches critical mass and that gentle eruption of flavor flows back into your sinuses and, if you’re lucky, stops there. It’s “the taste that beats the others cold” and “the choice of a new generation,” to quote slogans the company has used since its creation in the nineteenth century. I’ve got a lot to live, and Pepsi’s got a lot to give. Let’s see what some of that is by visiting the pepsi.com website.

The first inclination for any consumer visiting this site, after considering the home page request to make suggestions to our new president about how to Help Refresh America (I think I can guess at least one), is to find out what it is that makes Pepsi so tasty. I know there’s water and I suspect there’s sugar, but what else gives it that special bite? Well, there’s caramel color, phosphoric acid, caffeine, sodium benzoate, potassium, citric acid and “natural flavors.” I know what caffeine is, I imagine citric acid comes from fruit, and I read somewhere that phosphorous can make you glow, all of which are good things. And who can dispute the wholesomeness of natural flavors? I can practically taste the dirt in a freshly opened can of soda.

In the “yesterday and today” section, we learn that Pepsi was invented in 1898 by Caleb Bradham and was originally called “Brad’s Drink,” a clever name that survived for days. It was created, Bradham said, to aid digestion. He said it tasted good and was good for you, unlike certain other colas I could name who bred a generation of cocaine fiends. We see a whirlwind of Pepsi logos circling the computer screen and eating up display memory before being shown the new container design. This is introduced with inspired words we could just as easily have heard during President Obama’s inaugural address: “We’re looking forward without losing sight of our past. We celebrate tomorrow, but honor yesterday. Today, we introduce the new face of our future.” Be assured, however, that “the taste remains the same” and only the marketing campaign changes.

Wandering around the site a little more, I see a part that issues “false rumor alerts,” where the company gets a chance to address concerns that the drink is made from the liquefied remains of slaughtered Amazon natives (completely untrue). The only entry here is a rather benign story about a patriotic can Pepsi allegedly produced with an edited version of the Pledge of Allegiance. Creating a patriotic can hardly seems scandalous; I can only assume that the abridged Pledge was the point of concern, maybe something about the “Republic of Richard Stanz” preparing for an attack on the American homeland.

We also see the obligatory corporate interest in protecting the environment in the form of the Pepsi Eco Challenge. I thought this might be a specific effort to restore balance to the biosphere – maybe planting a new tree for every plastic bottle cap that’s properly disposed of. Instead, it’s some vague “New Pepsi Challenge,” designed to recreate the excitement of that time the company dared consumers to choose among competing cola brands. “Today we heed a different call and face a different challenge, one that cuts across brands, companies, industries, even continents – the challenge of environmental stewardship, protecting our planet’s resources for generations to come.” I expected perhaps a call to pursue renewable stores of potassium or an end to our nation’s reliance on unfriendly suppliers of benzoate, but couldn’t find it.

It was fun to view the company’s current TV ad campaign, the “Pepsi Pass,” in which every generation is shown refreshing the world. We see Pepsi first being served at an old-time soda fountain, then the drink is successively passed to a 1920s flapper, soldiers celebrating the end of World War II, teenage drag-racers, hippies, a streaker, disco dancers, break dancers, Germans tearing down the Berlin Wall, and finally modern concert-goers. Most historians credit the pressure of Ronald Reagan’s military build-up in combination with decades of economic stagnation for the collapse of the Eastern bloc. As a loyal Pepsi drinker, I’m glad to see the truth finally told: the gassy fullness caused by drinking too much requires you to vigorously move around to get relief, and the Germans chose to get their exercise by dismantling the symbol of communism.

Finally, I did a quick review of all the current Pepsi products on the market. I barely survived the emotional roller coaster that was the rise and fall of Crystal Pepsi in the 1990s, so I was glad to see that the diversification of my favorite soft drink is still robust. We now have regular Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Caffeine-Free Pepsi, Diet Caffeine-Free Pepsi, Pepsi Max (with extra caffiene), Diet Pepsi Max, Pepsi One (with one calorie, for those who can’t stand zero-calorie drinks) and an orchard of fruit-flavored Pepsi’s, including cherry, lime, vanilla, cherry and vanilla, and caramel cream. It’s only a matter of time until we see Pepsi with Chicken Broth and Green Pepsi, with broccoli, kale, cabbage and algae.

I’m sure they’ll be wonderful. I plan to drink many thousands and thousands of ounces.

 

More celebs to rewrite history

Film actor Tom Cruise revealed last week that he had a childhood dream of killing Adolph Hitler. While on a world tour promoting his new movie “Valkyrie,” Cruise told reporters he regretted that time travel was not available for him to show up in 1930’s Europe and personally take out the Nazi leader responsible for the deaths of millions.

“I always wanted to kill Hitler, I hated him,” Cruise, 46, said. “As a child studying history and looking at documents, I wondered, ‘why didn’t someone stand up and try to stop it?’”

News of the Hollywood star’s desire to transcend the laws of time and space in an effort to preemptively remove the brutal German tyrant represented a new high-water mark among celebrity do-gooders. No longer content to adopt Third World children and raise funds to fight disease, today’s idols won’t limit themselves to what’s physically possible as they aspire to help humankind and promote their vanity projects.

Here’s a look at what other kinds of murderous retro-vengeance are on the minds and lips of the stars:

Kirsten Dunst: “When I was a very young girl, probably not more than two or three years old, I harbored a desire to kill (Hall of Fame Detroit Tiger) Ty Cobb. He was a very racist, very mean man. He may have held the all-time base-stealing record for decades, but he did it with a cleats-up style that injured many a second baseman. I really, really hated him.”

Bruce Willis: “I’ve always had a very strong distaste for the Chinese Cultural Revolution that led to the deaths of uncounted thousands. I’m not saying I’d want to kill (then-Chinese leader) Mao Tse-Tung because he did some good things to fight the Japanese during World War II. I’d just like to have been on hand to advise him against some of the more heavy-handed aspects of his efforts to overhaul his society.”

Marg Helgenberger: “Given half the chance, I’d put fifteenth president James Buchanan on my hit list. He did virtually nothing to head off what everyone could tell was going to become all-out civil war, plus he was our only bachelor president. He was a real bungler, and we’d all be better off today if his sorry ass had been eliminated before his 1856 election.”

Carson Daly: “For me, it kind of depends on how far back in time I could go. If there was no limit, I’d want to kill Alexander the Great. His reputation, as the nickname implies, is that he was an enormous political and military talent. Though he did bring Western culture as far east as India, he was very pushy about it, killing many tens of thousands of innocent people. If, however, I’m limited to just the last century or so, I’d kill (Russian tyrant) Josef Stalin.”

Philip Seymour Hoffman: “Rather than bring physical harm to flawed-but-human creatures, I’d go back to 1935 to prevent so much devastation from the Labor Day hurricane that ravaged the Florida Keys. I’m not naïve enough to think I could’ve prevented formation of the storm, but I do think I could use my histrionic acting style to warn many hundreds of residents to move to higher ground.”

Meryl Streep: “I’d kill Vlad the Impaler and I’d do it with my bare hands. Even though he was the basis for the great dramatic character of Dracula, that whole impaling thing just rubs me the wrong way.”

Roger Moore: “I’d kill Ivan the Terrible. He was just terrible – what more can you say?”

Rene Russo: “I’m not sure I’d go so far as to kill him (Oliver Cromwell), but I’d definitely do something to seriously hamper his more vicious tendencies. While I sympathize with his anti-royalist tendencies, there were more constructive ways to achieve the ascent of the Parliamentarians without all the fighting and executions.”

Dennis Quaid: “I’d kill either (Roman emperors) Caligula or Nero, I’m not sure which. Caligula was mad, so I guess you could say he had something of a medical excuse for his virtual ruin of Rome. Nero, though, you know he fiddled while Rome burned. That’s very un-cool.”

Orlando Bloom: “There’s not one individual I could name, because I was never very good at history, but I’d definitely want to do something to prevent the Spanish Inquisition. I’m a big believer in freedom of religion, so you can imagine how I feel about the idea of Catholics burning alleged heretics alive. By the way, watch for the upcoming release of my film ‘Elizabethtown,’ coming to DVD on January 31.”

John Mayer: “I know Tom Cruise is already taking care of Hitler, so I’d say I’d want to kill (Italian fascist) Benito Mussolini. He would’ve been as bad as Hitler if he had the skills, but things just didn’t quite work out for him.”

Osama bin Laden: “I’d go back in time to kill the mother and father of Mike Meyers. That ‘Love Guru’ movie absolutely sucked.”

A visit to the neutraceutical aisle

Last weekend I wrote about some of the strangely-named — and downright strange — grocery items I found in my neighborhood organic health food store. Yesterday, I wandered through what traditional stores would call their HBC section (health, beauty and cosmetics) but this store would have to call their USB section (unguents, salves and balms). Here are some of the items I found:

Candex Yeast Management System – I know yeast are living creatures, however I doubt they really need a manager. If they do, I know several from my work that I can recommend.

Super Digestaway – I’d imagine this is for people who feel their food is staying in their gastrointestinal tract for too long, and would prefer to see it expelled only moments after it is eaten.

Colon Green – I can understand the importance of an environmentally correct colon, and I hope that’s what this product delivers. If instead it actually turns your colon green, that is something I would not want, no matter how many glaciers melt as a result.

Deglycyrrhizinated Licorice Root Extract – Whatever this product is, it single-handedly broke the spellcheck function in my word processing program. It now stops on every single word and instead of offering “suggestions,” that field is simply headlined “huh?”

Intestinal Bowel Support – I hope this isn’t what it sounds like: a contraption of harnesses and trusses.

Parasite Formula – Like several of the products listed here, I’m not sure if this formula fights the title character or is comprised of it.

Gigartina Red Marine Algae (5 strains) – For those situations where four strains aren’t enough.

Dr. Ohhira’s Essential Living Oils – I’m guessing these do NOT include gasoline, motor oil, heating oil, etc.

Fucothin (concentrated Fucoxanthin) – For consumers ready to say to society “screw your impossible body images and screw your xanthin as well.”

Show Me the Whey – It’s so clever, you have to buy it, regardless if your diet is whey-deficient or whey-cool.

Hemp Shake – Not yet available at Burger King, fortunately.

Goatein (goat’s milk protein) – Stimulates those follicle-producing glands on your chin and upper lip in a way that will produce a strong, healthy goatee.

Host Defense – Something you take before going to a party thrown by your pushy neighbor?

MucoStop – If mucus has already been produced in overabundance, I wouldn’t want it to stop; I’d want it to MucoGo, into a tissue, into the garbage and into the landfill.

Super Lysine+ FizzSticks – Imagine the disappointment of young children who instead were expecting fish sticks.

Organic Motherwort – Just because “organic” and “mother” are in the name does not make up for the fact that “wort” is there too.

Quai Dong – I wouldn’t buy this product simply because I’d be afraid that a mis-type dropped the “l” from “quail.”

IP-6 and Inositol Plus Maitake and Cat’s Claw – When IP-6 and Inositol and Maitake are simply not enough, it’s time to get out the nail clippers and call Harriet in from the other room.

Bone Up – Please, please, please, let this product be for sufferers of osteoporosis and not for middle-aged men.

Ultimate Eye Formula – Again, I’m not sure if this is something that purports to help your vision, or is simply made of eyes.

Holy Basil – St. Basil was one of the group of great oriental theologians to whom, under God, we owe our right belief in the Trinity and the Incarnation, and also the chief organizer of ascetic community life in the East. When he died in 329 A.D., he was freeze-dried, ground up and sold as a spice.

Inflatrol – Can be used both on your tires and on your gut.

Calming Kit for Kids – This is an organic collection of Benadryl, vodka and cough syrup with codeine.

Confidence and Daydream Remedy – These are two different products sold for use with children. I assume the former boosts confidence and the latter suppresses daydreaming, but I could have it backwards.

Gummy Omegalicious – Another product for kids, most of whom are smart enough to see past the “gummy” and the “licious” to find that key ingredient of fish oil hiding in the middle.

Ubiquinol – It’s the herbal treatment for everything!

Guggul and Red Yeast Rice – Guggul is the resin from a tree from India. Why you would want to ruin perfectly good red yeast rice with it is beyond me.

Ditch the Itch Bar – This label is pasted on the product sideways and I originally read it as “Ditch the Bitch Bar,” believing it to be some kind of soap that would repel an estranged loved one. That actually sounds like a more useful product than this anti-itching formula. You can relieve an itch by scratching it with your fingernails but you can’t … Wait a minute, I guess you could.

Superhazel – Sounds like a mash-up of two sitcoms from the 1960s, where the sassy maid and the suburban witch become one, and madcap antics ensue.

Licefreeee! Lice Killing Hair Gel – For those kids who want to be fashion-forward and parasite-free at the same time.

Bone, Flesh and Cartilage – Are these things enhanced if you take this product, or is that what it’s made of? We need to know.

Thoughts on death and dying

I’ve been thinking lately about death and dying, and there are a few things I don’t like about it.

 

Obituaries, for one. I find myself being drawn to reading the obituaries in the local paper, since I’m more likely to find people I know hanging out on that page than in sections like sports, weddings or commodities futures. As my young son used to observe as we’d drive past a cemetery – “that’s where the dead people live” – I think it’s time for us to take a fresh look at the concept of death notices.

 

Currently we get to read all about how old people were, who some of their survivors were, and which email address condolences can be sent to. We’re told that they “passed,” “departed this life,” “were funeralized” or “went to be with [their] Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,” but are given few other details. Sure, some notices may say that the departed passed “peacefully but unexpectedly” or “after a courageous fight.” That doesn’t really tell us enough. What we don’t get to hear, unless we’re good at reading between the lines, is what everyone really wants to know – the cause of death. If, in lieu of flowers, mourners are asked to make a donation to the National Skydiving Association, there’s a decent chance that the dead guy fell 10,000 feet out of an airplane. If they were employed by Johnson’s Crushing and Hacking, Inc., it’s a fairly safe bet they were killed in an industrial accident.

 

I think it’s a shame that the dead and their family members have to be ashamed of the way in which they left this earth for realms unknown. We have a much better understanding these days of what’s involved in the cessation of bodily functions, and it’s usually not anything to be particularly embarrassed about. My face might be red (before turning ashen) if it’s reported that I died trying to hold down a mattress in the back of a speeding pickup truck before the mattress became airborne. But at least everyone would know I was the kind of guy to help move a friend to his new apartment.

 

Then there’s the issue of what to do if your passing is going to take a while. No one wants to die of a lingering, painful illness, though I can’t say for sure I’d prefer the quick and easy death involved in a head-on train impact. You hear people saying they don’t want to spend their last days lying in a hospital bed hooked up to all manner of mechanical intervention to keep them alive. “I’d rather be home with my family,” they say, conveniently forgetting the smell of the cat box, the annoying telephone solicitations and how far ten steps to the bathroom seems when you’re no longer the most continent person in the home.

 

Before I’m discharged to my cluttered, dusty bedroom, I’d want to know more about which particular machines I’d be hooked up to if I stayed in the hospital. Might there be morphine involved? High-definition satellite television? The ability to pee without having to get out of bed? Talk about being treated and released. I’d be tempted to sign up for that now if I didn’t have to start paying for four years of college education this fall.

 

Speaking of early enrollment, I read a science fiction story once where members of the aging population were given the opportunity to end their lives sooner rather than later in return for a cash reward, a fabulous vacation and a pain-free passing. The short-term expense to society would be offset by the decades in which the fading individual was not eating their meals on wheels and using up other social services that might be better dedicated to those who could chase down their own food. I think this proposal should be given serious consideration. Put me down for spending a week in a hot tub on cruise ship eating prime rib with Anne Hathaway.

 

There’s one important consideration to reconcile before this can become a workable public policy: how you would create the least difficult death. Humanity has had a long history of failing to figure out the easiest way to go, if you can use execution methods as any example. The intentionally cruel attempts of ancient peoples – stoning, crucifixion, being fed to whatever wildlife was handy and hungry – gave way in recent centuries to progressively more user-friendly methods. The guillotine, gallows, electric chair and lethal injection were all thought at one time or another to be humane choices, though I don’t think any are quite my cup of poisoned tea. I think more research is needed to figure the fastest way out, and might I suggest the cast of the movie “Twilight” as possible volunteers in this study.

 

Finally, there’s the question of the afterlife. Most organized religions regard self-destruction as a sin, probably because it can make such a serious dent in their membership rolls. If you get to the other side legitimately and have lived a relatively good life, most creeds will give you a pass to a magnificent paradise featuring angels, harps, virgins, clouds, cows, gods with lots of extra arms, and all your dead relatives, though presumably the grumpy ones will have found other accommodations. If you’ve sinned or, in the Southern Baptist tradition, done a disco dance, you instead are consigned to a hell that will likely include at least one Bee Gee as well as a lot of other horrible stuff.

 

I honestly don’t know what waits for me in the Great Beyond. My best guess is that it’s eons and eons of nothingness, kind of like what the A&E channel has become. It’s only because we have such difficulty imagining what that void would feel like that we’ve come up with all these elaborate afterlife scenarios. Since they can’t all have it right, and because I hesitate to cast my lot with a randomly chosen sect (with my luck I’d get Zoroastrianism, which preaches a final purgation of evil from the Earth through a tidal wave of molten metal — ouch!), I prefer to think that you get whatever it is you believed in while you were alive.

 

 

And for me, that’s where Anne Hathaway comes in again.

You want my advice? (Pt. 15)