Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Perspectives on Current Events

On Hurricane Sandy:

View from the religious right: God has sent this storm to wipe clean from the earth the scourge of liberalism and homosexuality!

View from the extreme left: This superstorm is not normal! It is because of man's refusal to admit his effect on the global environment!

View of the Libertarians: This will cost taxpayers billions and further demonstrate big government's inability to lead.

View from a comedian: "Hurricane Sandy? Sandy? Wasn't that Annie's dog's name? Sandy? What is up with that name?"

View from the New Jersey coast: "Ahhhhhhrrrggh!"
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On The World Series:

View from The New York Yankees: We seriously lost to these guys?

View from the San Francisco Giants: The Yankees seriously lost to these guys?

View from the Detroit Tigers: We beat the Yankees!
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On the election:

View from Obama: I deserve another chance

View from Romney: I am so handsome...

 View from the citizens of the United States: "Enough already!"
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 On Facebook's Stock Price:

View from the stockholders: "Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

View from white men over 50: "That's the last time I let my 14 year old daughter pick a stock.

View from Mark Zuckerberg: "Dude, I'm so rich either way. What do I care?"

________________________________________________________


Friday, October 26, 2012

This Old House

Welcome to the Uebbing's! We are so glad you could stay with us. I hope you will find our company and your stay warm and welcoming. Our home retains much of its original charm and character. Those are real plaster walls, solid wood doors and custom crown mouldings! Yes, the real hardwood floors creak when you walk on them and could use a good refinishing, but that's part of what we like to call patina!

Built by master craftsmen in 1926 and remodeled numerous times by people of increasingly lesser talent many times since, we feel it necessary to warn you that things might not be exactly like you are used to. Especially if you are visiting from a home built in 1978 or after.

The Paint:
Is missing in spots because we took it off and haven't put any back on. What's left is lead. Don't eat the paint or feed the paint to your children.

The Doors:
They stick open and closed all at the same time. We recommend making a game out of it by guessing whether you will be stuck in your room or locked out. It's harder than you think!

The Shower:
Yes, there is only one and yes, there is a window in it. That's what the blinds are for. Sure they're stained, they're in the shower!

You will notice three knobs over the spigot rather than the usual one. The knob on the left seems to have something to do with the hot water, but we are still unsure exactly what relation it has to the amount or temperature of the hot water coming out, so use caution. Turn the handle clockwise to open the hot water. As a side note, discussing what actually happens when you do this usually makes for interesting breakfast conversation! No two stories are the same!

The right handle is the cold water. Turn it counter-clockwise to unleash either a raging torrent of freezing cold water or but a trickle of something the temperature of beer in a German pub. Also, this handle operates in all axis'. You may find that by turning the knob clockwise, the expected result of which would be to reduce the amount of cold water, instead increases the flow of arctic chill. No worries, simply tap the knob twice lightly with the palm of your hand inward toward the wall. Wait a moment for a change in sound, akin to a jet engine spooling down, then recheck the temperature. Similarly, pulling lightly on the handle away from the wall produces a result, but we just haven't narrowed down precisely what that is just yet.

The middle knob is the mixer. This sends the water up to the spray head. Mind you, the water it sends to the spray head is not the same as the water that was coming out of the spigot, because the temperature and pressure are wholly unrelated to the settings you indicated by following the previous steps. Please repeat the previous steps until the water is to your liking, remembering that if the sound is like an airplane taking off, it will be very cold. If it is like an airplane landing, it will burn off your skin. You are looking for something in between, which is impossible, but good for you for trying.

Enjoy the 30 seconds of hot water that remains!

A final note:
Please do not flush the toilet within 36 hours of attempting to take a shower lest you suffer the profound and mystical consequences that result.

The Kitchen:
Welcome to 1984, Crockett and Tubbs! Sure, the rest of the house is all class and style, but here, white melamine rules the day! And yes, that is the second bathroom hanging right off the back of the kitchen there. You can run the water all you want, we will still hear everything that's going on in there, so keep it clean. It is also cold in there, so please keep the door open in the winter time to avoid the pipes freezing. This costs me on average $200 a year, so let's resolve to work together! If it is hot when you come visit, please keep the door closed. This bathroom is apparently a portal to another dimension whose seasons are opposite of those we have here in our reality. Use common sense.

If you need a pot or pan or utensil, chances are it will require you crawling wholesale into the cabinets as they stretch 37 feet into oblivion. We have tons of storage space, but most of it exists only in Narnia. Ask Emily for assistance if you can find her. I sent her to find me a medium saucepan three weeks ago and haven't seen her since.

The Windows:
Thoreau lived in a cabin in Walden Wood with no windows. Our home has splendid wood casement windows, each with 8 true divided lights. In spite of this, any resemblance to the functionality of modern windows is purely coincidental. In fact, they have a negative R value. Please leave the operation of the windows to one of the house staff.

The Doors:
Each door is equipped with multiple locks designed not so much to actually secure the doors, but more to befuddle and frustrate any would-be burglar. The exception is the sliding glass door out to the terrace on the back of the house. It uses "The Club" to bolster its lockset. "The Club" looks suspiciously like the the remnants of a broomstick handle and is propped in the corner to the right of the door, except when it has fallen over because of a cat or from being placed there haphazardly. If that is the case, it is likely that "The Club" is behind the 2,600 pound hutch on that wall.

The Driveway:
Yes, that ribbon of cracked asphalt that wends its way up one side of the house is the driveway. You will notice, among other features, it is exactly the same width as your car, with the doors closed. Excluding your mirrors and any other non-standard body accessories. If you have a trailer hitch, please do not enter the driveway, for you will not be able to back out, for your hitch will simply dig into the street and you will be stuck until a crane can lift you, (at your own expense), over the crevasse and into the street again.

The Haunted Shack at the Rear of the Property:
This is the garage. No, we don't keep it like that because we love Halloween, that's just what we have. Please don't discuss it further. But also don't go in there unless you like spiders, used motor oil in orange juice containers and abandoned woodworking projects.
And no, the combination lock and motion lights are not meant to be ironic.

The Basement:
Under no circumstances is anyone allowed in the basement. Ever.

The Ventilation:
You may notice some seasonal discomfort relating to the temperature of our home. That is because the furnace apparently blows all hot air directly to the outdoors and the air conditioner is filled with pancake syrup instead of freon. For two days in June and eight days in September, it's perfect. We suggest you dress in layers the other 355 days.

The Cats:
It may seem as though we are lousy with cats, when in fact we have only two. It's just that one comes in and out so much you'd think there were a dozen different cats when instead it's just the one, highly conflicted and totally decision averse animal. The other is only one cat as well, but seems to always be sleeping where you were going to sit down giving the illusion of being many more than one cat. Though she's old, fat and nearly deaf and blind, she has the uncanny ability to be right where you wanted to be. We suggest folding your body uncomfortably around her as she is very fat and not easily moved. If you don't like cats, don't worry, I bet ours don't much care for you, either.


Well, that's about it. We are so glad you decided to stay with us, that is, if you haven't made other plans having read this handy guide. Stay as long as you'd like, or as long as you can stand, whichever comes first. Dinner is served when dinner is done, breakfast is poured daily from our coffee pot and if you want turn down service, I'll give you a tic tac and show you to the nearest bar.








Monday, October 15, 2012

Jimmy Crack Corn

I dreamed in an Irish accent last night, after having watched a couple or four episodes of the 12 part series "Titanic: Blood and Steel". So far, near as I can tell, it has as little to do with the Titanic as possible while still telling its compelling story of the labor movement and socioreligious tenor of the city of Belfast shortly after the turn of the 20th century.

People who know me, or read this blog regularly know I am a sucker for all things Titanic, even when like in this story, the Titanic is essentially a tertiary excuse for the storytelling. Who cares? It's pretty interesting. And for once, the Catholics aren't the bad guys. It's been a good long time since the media has had anything to say about Catholics unless there was some sort of sordid details involved.

I bring this up because I dreamed in an Irish accent last night. Dreamed about being in that world. Dreamed about eating popcorn. Not any popcorn, but the kind Em brought home from church that had been donated by Celebration! Cinemas.

Now I know what the song Jimmy Crack Corn is all about, because this stuff is the addictive spawn of crack and corn. And as the song continues, I don't care because it is so deliciously amazingly unremittingly good. So, I dreamed with an Irish accent about building the Titanic, but all the scenes I was in featured me throwing gobs of crackcorn in my mouth. I dreamed in Irish and popcorn.

I woke up to nasty heartburn and my mind said, "You know, Bill, a little popcorn will calm that down." I tossed and turned, trying to shake the devil. And I made it through the night without succumbing to my urges. Barely.

I just now walked through the kitchen. There it sits, in a garbage bag. Taunting me. "Eat me before I go stale!" "I'm popcorn, the healthy snack! It's ok, I'm mother approved!"

Man, work is done for the day. I got to go take a walk and try to get that evil, terrible, rotten, greasy, buttery, crunchy, salty wonderful goodness out of my head. Wish me luck.I still have 5 hours of Titanic to watch.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

An Open Letter to Kraft Foods

Dear Kraft Foods,
I am writing today because I am extremely concerned about the state of one of your staple products, and a favorite of mine, Kraft Singles. I am long since past the shock that anyone is allowed by our overreaching government to call this, "cheese", but in spite of the blatantly misleading name, there are some serious issues with this product that need to be addressed immediately.

It begins with the plastic wrapper around the stack of slices. Perhaps the good people at Kraft never thought to engineer this part of the cheese packaging for strength. Perhaps you all were under the assumption that we all had avocado green or burnt sienna colored TupperMaid containers into which the slices would go once the package has been opened. This is just not realistic. My Mother-in-law is perhaps the last person in the known universe who still has her resilient cheese slice caddy, circa 1974. The rest of us are relying on the increasingly flimsy film wrapping that the stack of slices come in to keep those very slices from becoming errant in our refrigerators.

Without some kind of wrangler, the wily slices tend to slip and slide all over and end up in the darndest places. It is almost as if they are magnetically monopolarized rendering them impossible to keep together. Even if they manage to stay corralled in their general intended location, the corners tend to get all sad and dark and dry. This renders the slice inedible, even though with slight melting the condition seems to reverse. Clearly it's a miraculous self-healing product. But I have a psychological inability to eat dried up American Cheese under any circumstances.

The next problem is also in regards to the packaging. Seriously, has anyone in any consumer testing panel ever successfully opened either the outer wrapper or the individual slice wrappers successfully? Ever? Even once? Because I have been consuming your product on virtually a daily basis for at least 30 years. The mind reels at the true number of Kraft American "Cheese" slices I have consumed in my life. It is surely incalculable.

What is not incalculable is how many of those packages or slices I have opened successfully as designed. That number is zero. Zero times out of, perhaps 100,000 opportunities. This is a failure rate that even a Chinese factor wouldn't accept - and I watch Fox News, I know those Chinese are up for almost anything.

The knock-on effect is that the part you are supposed to use to grab and pull to remove the wrapping breaks, leaving behind a diabolical puzzle for which there is no solution. At the end, much of the cheese slice is mushed hard into the remaining plastic which winds up with most of the cheese in the trash can and me putting another twenty in the swear-jar. Seriously, I funded a trip to Europe after one night of making grilled cheese sandwiches. It's an epidemic.

What's left of the now wasted cheese slice needs to be dug out from under my finger nails. It is disconcerting for guest to walk into the kitchen and see you with a nail cleaner over top of their Triscuit. You can try to explain, but by then the party is pretty much over.

The usable remainder of the cheese slice that survives this common tableau is now subject to the greatest of all dangers - the nuclear nature of the now melted cheese. Seriously, what is it about the slices that retains, magnifies and eminates heat to disfiguring levels? I have burnt at one time or another the equivalent of over 80% of my body and it has to stop. There is no reason why a perfectly innocent person should fall victim to a pernicious molten glob of American "Cheese" after being melted in the microwave for only 15 seconds.

Is this product a failed prototype from your military division? Perhaps at one point it was to replace napalm? I am just speculating here, but maybe the good people at Kraft and talented engineers at Raytheon were co-developing a super weapon that became obsolete with the ever changing face of war on this planet. In order to reduce the losses, each company repositioned their product and thus was born both the microwave oven and the American "Cheese" slice.

I am asking you to please address these dangerous product flaws posthaste. Winter is coming and I don't know if I will survive another meal of grilled cheese and tomato soup. I still have the remnants of the blisters from last year when I had the audacity to bite into my grilled cheese without the requisite 2 hour cooling-off period. My dermatologist said without Kraft Cheese, he wouldn't have the boat or the second home. His son is going to Yale, and he's an idiot, so you know business is good!

Thank you for your time and attention.

Sincerely,
Bill Uebbing

PS, please excuse any typos. My hands, what remain of them, are wrapped up in gauze, leaving only the nibs of my former fingers exposed to peck out my thoughts. The good news is the Otolaryngologist says I should have some function of the left hand side of my tongue again, soon. The right side is still anyone's guess, but I refuse to lose hope. When I am able I will call you to discuss this matter further.

Monday, October 8, 2012

Vomit, Vomit Everywhere

What is up with all these pop stars blowing chunks on stage? This isn't 1974 when rock debauchery met its ultimate zenith. I mean, Keith Moon and John Bonham never chundered on stage. Sure, they both passed out a time or two, their drum techs famously having to pinch hit for them so the show could go on. But they kept their guts in check. And they survived to party another day... right up until they died. And sure, if you want to be picky, Bonham did ultimately aspirate on his own vomit which caused him to die. At least he did it in the privacy of his own suite. And maybe Moon would still be with us if he did vomit up the 23 pills found in his stomach post mortem. But if he was alive, he would probably just be drooling away in a nice wicker chair in front of the window facing the lawn of the Syd Barret Convalescent  Home for Burnt-Up Rock Gods. Who wants that?

Bieber and Gaga have both tossed it on stage within the last week. And why? Were they lip synching so hard they couldn't keep it in? Who knows. But Bieber is Canadian... I never drank with a Canadian that I could keep up with, so drunkeness doesn't seem likely. OK, I have never drank with a Canadian, but I have drank with a group of Youpers in an oddly "Deer Hunter" like scene around the kitchen table of a trailer out in the middle of nowhere. Didi Mao! Fun night. From what I can remember, which isn't much.

But I remember this; I didn't puke. My parents raised me better than that. I remember sitting down with my mom at the age of six and she said, "Son, you better hold your liquor or don't come home."
Ok, that never happened, but maybe someone should have had that talk with Bieber and Gaga.

Bieber's manager says he is exhausted. Exhaustion led to his upchucking his Bieber-ness all over the stage. Strangely the audio track never stopped, which means when people finally realize the Bieb has no talent, that he has a future as a ventriloquist. Maybe on a kids show. Or maybe in a burlesque show. Who knows, I won't see it either way. I would rather watch mimes perform "Who's on First?" while getting my teeth drilled than see a ventriloquist. It's not that I'm a fan of mimes and dental work. I don't like ventriloquists.

Gaga's manager says she is not, repeat, not pregnant. Except that she inevitably is. Why? Because as much as I hate to admit it, when Star Magazine says "Sources close to the avant garde singer say she is expecting a little miracle...", or some such tripe, they are usually right. How am I so sure? Because "sources close" to famous people like to "shit" on their "friends" so they can be famous. Even though we will only ever know them as "sources close". Those people are not friends. Someone should tell these famous people not to trust any sources close to them. Trust only strangers and vagrants you meet after the show in the alley.

Gaga is so thin that she should be showing a baby bump in like, her second minute of pregnancy. But who can tell under all that fluff and poof and whatever else she wears all the time? Does anyone even know what she looks like? Does anyone want to? Sex with Darth Vader, absolutely, but helmet on, buster, I don't want to see your left over Anakin business under there.

I can't imagine how she got pregnant. Her costumes must be hard to get off.  If the anticipation of sex is the sexiest part of sex what happens after unhooking all those trusses and buckles and load bearing Lycra panels if she looks like Rosy O'Donnell?

"Oh, sorry, Gaga, I just realized I've got somewhere to be, I promise it's not your P P P P P Poker face. Although, next time, you might want to keep the costume on. Just sayin'. And, hey, get a nap honey, you look exhausted!"

My point is that these ersatz  stars have nothing on our rock gods and goddesses of the classical era. For real, unless you're ready to commit to the whole Mamma Cass, keep your insides, well, inside. If you want to express yourself, hire someone to write you a song that explains how you would feel if you were human.

The next thing is kids will start thinking it's cool to puke at school while speaking at the pep rally, or having their mothers excuse them from gym class because of exhaustion. Whatever, puking on stage is so not bad ass. It's just puking in public, which where I come from is cause for sincere apology and showing up the next day with a bucket and a hose.

Of course, in today's world the person who cleaned up the puddle of famous sick is probably shopping pictures of it to the rags, or at least trying to sell it to kinky Japanese businessmen on Craig's List. I can see the title of the listing now: "Not just one, but many pieces of Bieber!" or, "Gaga's goo-goo for you-you."

My closing thought is that you pop stars better either back off the "exhaustion" juice and the "not pregnant" pills and slow it down for a spell. Your fans are too busy screaming or looking around for the nearest security guard so they can fire up their one-hitter in the relative privacy of row 322 double balcony, far left; a ticket for which they refinanced their Kia Sephia to afford, to even notice you're phoning it in. And at the end of the day, who cares? With a conservative financial plan in place, you could live forever off the money you've already bilked off of thousands of unsuspecting tweens, gay people and their beleaguered custodians. And that includes the millions in settlement money and attorney fees that are the inevitable result of those freaky sexual dalliances that you can't get off without.

Back in the golden days, rock stars taught us about the dangers of excess in the most effective way possible. They died. There was no overstaying their welcome. I blame Elton John for starting the trend of recovery from addiction and depression leading to a happy, charitable, self-actualized long life. BORING!

Nowadays, famous people don't burn out, they just flirt with disaster until they get singed and keep showing up on season after season of celebrity rehab, spitting out dime store, Dr. Phil grade psycho-platitudes until the people who once loved them wish they had choked on that ham sandwich after all.

Neil Young said it best, way back in the heyday: "My, My, Hey, Hey, Rock N' Roll Is Here to Stay. It's Better to Burn Out, Than to Fade Away. My, My, Hey Hey."






Any Way You Cut It

For years, I have been entrenched in my use of a certain major label razor. Being a bald man, I have a lot of ground to cover and as such, my razors tend not to last as long as the average guy's. On top of that, my beard, particularly around my neck and jowls is very tough so my razors work hard.

But I was having to work too hard for my razors. I mean, geez, "Brand G" is pretty proud of their product, considering I am using the same design as the one from 10 years ago. The price sure hasn't gone down during that time and I'm pretty sure the tooling and R&D have been paid for by now.

So, I heard about an inexpensive place online. A service with brilliant marketing that will bill you monthly and send top quality razors to your door. The marketing really is brilliant. It is very funny. But since I am not being paid to hawk wares and I refuse to monetize this blog, I'll leave you to find them if you want. It may be worth it.

In the end, I didn't use the service because I wasn't thrilled about recurring billing or the vagaries of the US Postal Service, which lately delivers Tuesday's mail on Thursday, after 5:00pm. No joke. Anyhow, I did more Googling and found the name of the manufacturer of the shave club's blades and wouldn't you know it, they have an online store.

I bought 32 cartridges and a shaver for... wait for it... $30.00. A far cry from the $22,543.12 that haul would have cost from "Brand G" at a retail store.

The level of my neurosis becomes apparent to me every so often, and this was one of those times. I literally felt anxiety at the thought of changing razors. But at the same time, I was so excited to try something different. I poured over internet reviews which were roundly positive. Some were even done with a nod to the scientific method. I guess I am in good neurotic company. I have bought cars after doing less research. Much less. Many cars.

But I ordered the wrong item and so got 30 blades but no shaver handle. I would have to defer my excitement until the shaver came. By Saturday, I really needed a shave. I was shaggy in all the wrong ways. Not that cool CEO five O'clock shadow that popular douchebags all across America like to sport, (including me), but an unkempt sort of Rasputinesque look. And not the cool Alan Rickman Rasputin, but more like a National Geographic Rasputin. Have I made myself clear?

It was bad enough I relented and used one of my wife's disposable razors to clean up my aforementioned tough neck whiskers.

Now I know why Frankenstein had those knobs on his neck. he must have borrowed his wife's disposable razor. No wonder it takes Em 36 hours and 300 gallons of water and a full tube of goo to shave her legs! Em says she doesn't have an issue with them and I say fine. I will sooner use caustic lye t remove my stubble than use one of her razors ever again.

Wouldn't you know after I performed this task I checked the mail and in my box was my new shaver! Had I only waited 45 minutes! There's a lesson in that somewhere, but that's not where I am going with this. I tore the packaging open, ran upstairs and immediately tried it out.

I am happy to say I love it. And it's cheap, so I really, really love it. I am now a full fledged fan of these razors and even shaved my head again this morning though I didn't need to. I did it because I could without irritation.This may seem small to you, but I have, like 900 square feet of head to shave three times a week. It's a huge relief to me.

I have saved the rough equivalent of the GDP of a third world country in shaving costs over a 12 month period and I like that. They are made in Tijuana, Mexico. If not American made, at least they're made in the NAFTA region. I don't know what that means, but I suppose I feel good about it. I didn't know they made anything in Tijuana except herpes and empty, broken tequila bottles.

So I don't have a closer, really, except to say I am a happy, whiskerless guy with a good, cheap shaving solution thanks to the internet, the post office and the good people of Tijuana, Mexico. 





Friday, October 5, 2012

Personal Mascots

Schools have mascots. Professional sports teams obviously have mascots. Even community groups are named after mascots of a sort, like the Lions and Elks and Shriners, whatever the hell they are. I suppose it follows that individuals could have mascots, too. Why not?

I don't know what mine would be. The Screaming Rant? The Angry Buffalo? I don't know. The possibilities are endless. It might be a fun party game to name your friends with the most apt mascot. I'll have to remember that one next time I'm in a group. Maybe you could have two or three hats, each filled with paper on which is written an adjective and a noun or verb. That way it would be like mascot Mad-Libs!

With ideas like that, how am I not rich?

So, if I am on the fence about what mascot would fit me best, I do know what my wife's mascot would be. The Thundering Herd. No other person in the world walks with fervency equal to the clompen-schtompen of my wife. My wife is not an overweight woman, but she walks as though she were making a concerted effort to make sure the ground stays on the ground. Or maybe she is trying to step on, and pop some invisible balloon tied to her ankle.

I don't know, but the knock-on effects are obvious. Among them, I am forever repairing plaster in our old house. It cracks where the walls meet the ceilings as it flexes and vibrates under the strain of Emily's steps. Also, I can tell her mood by the sound of her walk.

Just now, the dining room chair slid back with a particular staccato and Emily's normally metered stump was replaced with a gait that was oddly fleet and powerfully heavy at the same time. She continued this pace up the stairs and I could tell by the sound alone she was skipping stairs as she went. Something got her hackles in a twitch.

"Monday is Columbus Day," she said.
"Is that still a thing," I asked?
"The banks will be closed!" she said, making that face that wives make whose power actually projects across the room and strikes fear into the heart of husbands.
"Dually noted," I said, trying not to let on that I understood that this would mess with the paycheck cycle and require certain adjustments in our spending. I mean she came all the way up the stairs to make a big deal out of this, I felt I could oblige with a little word play.

The other day when we were taking our walk, I broached the subject with Em and she said our friend Greg says the same thing about his wife, also not a heavy person. She just walks like she never fully trusts gravity, or as if that Godzilla movie she saw as a kid disproportionally influenced her step.

"I weigh upwards of 240 pounds, and yet I can move daintily about our old, creaky home without being tracked and you are this little waifish thing and sound like the thundering herd!" I said as we were walking yesterday, the sidewalk behind us buckling and crumbling.

"So what? That's how I walk? I don't know why," Em said defensively.

She then went on to remind me how she does have a history of falling. A lot. Down the stairs. Even up the stairs. And I don't mean the Lifetime Movie kind of falling a lot. I have nothing to do with it.

"Maybe I am just trying to be sure I don't die every time I take a step," came the ultimate decisive response.

Good answer. So, mascots don't have to be attractive or fully welcome if indeed they are apt. And so, if my wife is The Thundering Herd, she's the prettiest, best smelling thundering herd there ever was. And she can cook. Pretty impressive

Oooh, I got one for me. Bucket O' Lard, no, wait, Giant Blister! Blustering Wind? Category IV Hurricane? The list goes on.
________________________________________________________

Last night was my night to cook dinner. Em mentioned she had purchased some talapia. I saw it and figured it was one of those things for me, as Em doesn't really like fish so much.

"I want to try it. We had it at Amy and Adam's and I liked it. Will you make it Thursday?"

Of course. So, since Em is sort of new to eating fish, I at least wanted to prepare it in a way that downplayed the fishiness of it, even though talapia isn't really fishy to begin with. So, I lightly seasoned the fish and coated it in a 2 part breading of seasoned flower and seasoned breadcrumbs. It was very light and promised to enhance the flakiness of the fish.

I pan fried it and prepared some linguini and a cream caper sauce.

I had never made this meal before and was sort of making it up as I went along. I didn't have the stuff I would normally have to make the sauce, but it all turned out OK.

Em always talks about her meals, which are universally amazing and I love them. She has multiple recipe books, boxes and binders. They are alphabetized, rated, modified and annotated. If you want to make something, Em has the recipe. For her, a recipe is the key. I am recipe dyslexic. I can't follow one. I have to use my old actor's trick of actually memorizing the recipe so I can recite it as I go along. My brain just doesn't work that way.
I am a guy after all and therefore impotent to the challenge of reading and following directions, maps, ransom letters and the like. I lost a sibling that way. $20,000 in unmarked bills to the southwest corner of the park before 2:00 on Saturday? Southwest corner? Oh, man. Sorry, sis. I can't do this.

So, I just wanted to let the world, (or at least the 16 people in  the world underemployed enough to waste their time on reading this garbage), that sometimes, I make something good, too in spite of my many disabilities, like the inability to read for information.

That is all. I really need to get some actual work done.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Climbing Mt. Irony

We all have our strengths and weaknesses. I don't know anyone who doesn't wish they were good at something they are not whilst overlooking the things at which they are truly talented. I, for one, wish I could draw. As it stands, I cannot make a credible stick figure. I am truly awful at drawing. And I so admire people who can create a reality from a blank canvas.

Emily, my wife, is at our dining room table as I write this, pouring over some forms that people have filled out. Filling my 17th cup of coffee of the morning in the adjacent kitchen, she looks up and says to me, "What is so hard about filling out a form?! I mean, seriously, why can't people fill out a form?!"

I dropped my coffee, but luckily caught it in my lower jaw, which had also dropped to the floor, for my wife is famously unable to fill out forms without constant intercession. It is a running joke amongst us. If St. Peter has a clipboard at the pearly gates Emily's well-lived life is all for naught. Unless we go together in which case I will help her fill out the form. That is, if I even make it that far. Personally, I'm thinking I should just buy a place in Purgatory. Why rent when you can own? It's not like I'll move on anytime soon.

You know the form you have to fill out at the doctor's office? The one that asks if your pee smells like asparagus and if you can see the back of your head when you roll your eyes? Em is incapable of filling it out.
"It says 'Name', here. What do they want me to put down? Do they want my maiden name? I was to be called Tom if I had been a boy, do they need to know that?"

It only goes downhill from there as the second page asks you to check off the maladies that brought you in to the office today.

"I don't know... do I suffer from headaches? I had that one in January...", she said earnestly.
"Honey," began my condescending retort, "I think the form means do you have chronic headaches that cause an issue in your life."
"Well, they're an issue when I have them. I don't like headaches..."
"But you could hardly call one headache in the last year 'chronic', now could you?"
"Well, maybe there is something wrong. I should check the box." She continued.
"Yes, fine, check the box. I don't care." I said dismissively and turned my attention back to the fascinating video on geriatric care.
"I guess I won't." Em resolved, somehow.

All was well until the very next item which started the process all over again. "... honey, you don't have a prostate..."

Our polling place is close to the house, so we get up early and walk over to avoid any traffic. Walking home, then we have the inevitable "how'd you vote" discussion. We share these things with each other, even though we occasionally disagree. That's what life is all about. Last time, there was a proposal that was written in such a way that you had to vote "Yes" to mean "No" and vice versa. I won't get into the what the proposal was because I don't intend to betray the privacy that we all have rights to as voters. Suffice it to say, Emily voted opposite of how she intended to because of the (intentionally?) confusing language of the proposal.

In the end the result worked out OK, but since then, Em and I sit down before hand and discuss all the proposals and referenda in detail so she knows how she wants to vote before she even goes in. We discuss them in order they appear on the ballot so that she can even create a mnemonic device if she feels the need to do so. This year's ballot has several proposals on it, so we have created a little rhyme so she doesn't choke in the booth.

The point is, that Emily, my dear wife, talented and gifted in so many ways planted a flag at the summit of Mt. Irony when she railed against others for not filling out her form correctly. And that's OK, she says, because "this form is simple. Even I know how to circle the best contact method!"

I am the annual hero in my home each winter when I sit down to complete the taxes. "I don't even know how you can do that", Em says. And it's actually not hard, but I don't let her know that. I stomp and brood around the house, sighing at measured intervals to feign duress. I usually get some good meals out of it. "Come here you big strong man, you need potroast!" Yes, I do!

My dearest wife wrote one about my failure to put away clothing after she washes and folds it with such care and how I finally get nutty after about a month and empty my dresser and reorganize it so everything fits. And even though I perform this task 12 times a year, I am still surprised by what I find. "Hey, look, my Tommy Brann's little league jersey!" By the way, the second 'n' really throws Em off... She still calls it 'Brawns', even though it is clearly a short a. But that's another idiosyncrasy and I don't want to appear to pile on, here in my attempt to make a point...

...Which is we all have our 'things.' And even though we know we all have our things we don't often see our things as things, but we readily see other peoples' things, even if they are the same things as our things. This is called "Fundamental Attribution Error" by academics.

I call it the top of Mt. Irony. It's funnier that way.


Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Whispering Pines Redux

Both of you who read this blog on a regular basis will recall my ode to Whispering Pines, a place Em and I went to this spring. It was on the market outside the little town of Kalkaska, itself about 25 minutes from the resort town of Traverse City in Michigan's northwest lower peninsula. It is just a little log cabin on 10 acres of tall, swaying pines and gently rolling sandy hills. Emily christened it Whispering Pines because it was breezy the day we went and looked at it.

We stood in the clearing that emerged to the right of the gently ascending two-track that ran along the property line, listening to the trees sway in the wind and occasionally crack together at the top. It was not ominous in any way. It was peaceful. I could have stayed all day, the dappled sun falling gently on my face as I watched the tall pines sway in the wind, (All apologies to Don Henley for the phrase grab).

Though the price was reasonable and in my estimation would only go up, we simply couldn't have purchased it. We both briefly bought into the dream of having a quiet place out of town. It seemed to come up every time our next door neighbors had people over, (pretty much every night in the summer, it seemed), and the smell of their cigarettes would waft into our house, situated essentially on top of theirs. We do live in the city after all. That's the price you pay.

Later in the summer I had a couple opportunities to camp, first in West Virginia and then in Pentwater, MI. These were enough to help me remember how much I love being outdoors. Reminded how in nature, surrounded by peace and quiet I am alone, but not lonely. Whispering Pines became a goal for me. Something to be reached for.

I checked on my Zillow app daily to see if anyone bit. The price went down a time or two, but there was no change to the disposition of the place. Until Sunday. That's when it changed from "For Sale" to "Pending".

Pending. The word stabbed at my eye and stung me in my chest. My stomach lurched and my mouth went dry. Someone with the money to do so bought Whispering Pines. And they probably didn't even know the name of the place was Whispering Pines. They'll probably call it something stupid and hackneyed like "The Stumble Inn" or, "The Last Resort" or even more ubiquitously, "The Cabin". Or worse, the new owner won't name it at all!

I don't know if you know this about me, but I name everything. If I don't have a name for an object it means I truly don't care for it. I name cars, houses, things... each one of my cats has at least a dozen pet names on top of their given names and that's because one name can't contain the love I have for the stupid critters.

And so would be the same with Whispering Pines if I were able to make it mine. A home is a major purchase. It is no small decision to buy a place... especially if you already have a place and the second place is essentially a nod to superfluity. And if you don't love something enough to name it, why spend money on it?

We just worked on the 2013 family budget and it's gonna be a lot of years before I can ever have a place out in the woods. Priorities have to take... well, priority over things not needed. These are austere times for society and indeed for us.

I don't know the new owner or owners. I hope they love the place and it is everything they want it to be.In my opinion, they got a fetching place for  a great price. The land is truly blessed with natural beauty and I hope the new person or family is blessed with good health and good times there.

And for God's sake, I hope they give it a name. I humbly suggest Whispering Pines. You can have it, free and clear.