yanoblog

I spotted a moth in my closet this morning. Sigh. Searching for solutions, I came across this review on Amazon for this moth product

This seems like an odd product to Astroturf, but it’s either that or this woman’s house is swarming with thousands of moths (insert visions of a 50s horror movie here). “Several years” of moth problems? WTF?!?

I fear this woman’s home and all that it represents.

As usual, Google know something I don’t. Unless this is some weird Department of Defense tie-in. I got these country choices when signing up for a Google product:

1991: The USSR ceases to exist as an entity.

1997: Google.com is first registered as a domain.

2008: Google leaks plans to reestablish Soviet Union. Sergey is a closet Stalinist?

I, for one, welcome our time traveling galactic overlords at Google.

Recently, I was at my favorite bookstore-with-attached-cafe, the Montague Book Mill (thus combining three of life’s great pleasures, coffee, food and books). Apparently, they have some trouble with their century-old plumbing. Great haiku. And people, PEOPLE, Please Use The Trashcans for Pantyhose.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B: Exhibit C:

Animal rights activists often claim that animal research is unnecessary or not reasonable (e.g., PETA’s FAQ or their website devoted to the issue).

Today’s Times has an article about (it’s in the business section, reflecting the various contradictions about a for-profit economy and medical need) that opens:

Chopped pig pancreas may not sound appetizing. But most cystic fibrosis patients eat a refined version of it each breakfast, lunch and dinner — five large capsules a meal — to supply enzymes their bodies do not produce. The pills are life-sustaining for most of the nearly 30,000 people in the United States with cystic fibrosis, a hereditary disease that attacks the lungs and digestive tract.

The article then discusses efforts to develop animal-free alternatives (failures so far) as well as various business aspects of the issue.

But for me, the most important point is that if PETA et al had their way, these 30,000 people would just be told to crawl off and die. Animals Rights uber alles.

I am blessed with a great mother-in-law (as far as I know, she doesn’t read this blog, so I’m not even going for brownie points).

So, this story is not about me.

We have some friends, let’s call them Alice and Bob, to protect the innocent (them) and, as a side effect, the guilty, Bob’s mom.

A few months ago was Channukah, a relatively unimportant holiday on the Jewish calendar. In the States, we have the I-used-to-think-silly-but-I’ve-thrown-in-the-towel “tradition” of giving gifts on each of the 8 days (usually just to the kids?).

Last Channukah, Bob’s mom sends Alice and Bob’s daughter a book (I believe she went to the trouble of overnighting it (from her office).

The book, Papa’s Latkes appears from the title and cover to be a sweet tale of a nice Jewish boy who learns to cook. Remember, this was a gift from Alice’s mother-in-law.

So, Bob starts to read the book to his three-year-old daughter that night (they also have an infant girl). Page 1 opens with:

Selma and her little sister [Hey, Bob’s daughter has a little sister too!], Dora, were waiting for Papa [Hey, Bob’s daughter calls her dad Papa too!] to come home. It was their first Chanukah without Mama [insert sound of needle being lifted rapidly off of an LP]. Selma’s heart ached when she remembered how sick and thin Mama had looked last summer. Thin enough to be blown away by a light summer breeze. And then, right before school started, Mama died.

I’ll stop there.

Now, I think it’s great that this book exists (and sad that it needs to). There’s obviously a specific market for whom something like this is important. It can help cut against the isolation that children coping with actual grieving no doubt feel.

But, let’s review.

Mother-in-law. She’s always been kinda mean/passive-aggressive to Alice; sends Alice’s daughter for Channukah a book about Alice being dead; claims that she didn’t look inside the book before buying it.

Bob consulted Alice–in French–about what to do and she suggested changing the story so that the kids were sad because the mother was traveling on business during Channukah. The on-the-fly edit worked.

I rescued this book from their recycling bin and was giving permission to write this blog entry. Three months later, here you go. I once had pretensions of doing a survey of the child-in-grieving literature market with additional title suggestions for future holidays, but have since decided that, A, that would be too depressing and, B, a good blogger has to know when to put they keyboard down and declare the post finished.

That said, the story improves. That holiday season also saw Bob’s mother give Alice a… well, I’ll just quote her (names changed):

My Christmas gift from [Bob’s] mom: a loose, shapeless sweatshirt from [Hippy Dippy] organic farm thingy…. With an illustration of… what? What’s that? Are you 9 weeks postpartum and feeling sort of shapeless and blah but very hungry? Great! Then here’s a picture of a freaking PIG on this sexless sweatshirt! Enjoy! (And no–no chuckling or implication that this was a “joke” that I was in any way in on.)

p.s. She asked for my wish list this year. I received nothing from it.

p.p.s. Bob either.

Jane, if you are reading this and you’ve ever felt I don’t appreciate you as a mother-in-law, I apologize. I love you.

I normally wouldn’t bother posting this, I’d just send it to friends, but Bijan made it clear I have to blog about this sort of thing.

Ferraro quit Clinton’s campaign after saying:

If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.

Regardless of who you are or aren’t supporting in this election, that was a racist comment. But it’s not her first time spouting this crap. Back in 1988, she said:

If Jesse Jackson were not black, he wouldn’t be in the race.

(Washington Post, April 14, 1988, pA4)

He’s have to become a Methodist, but he’d probably be happy to do so to live in this retirement home:

Here’s the AP story by Jay Reeves:

From the ground, the Wesley Acres Methodist retirement home looks like any other building. But fly over in an airplane, and the outline is unmistakable: It’s one big swastika.

Prompted by complaints from a Jewish activist, the agency that owns the government-funded building is planning to alter its shape to disguise the Nazi symbol. The move comes just a few years after a $1 million design modification meant to quiet similar complaints from a U.S. senator.

“The difficulty is there are a limited number of options for fixing a building that has been there for some time,” said Mike Giles, counsel for the Methodist Homes Corp. of Alabama and Northwest Florida. “We have to come up with a way to fix an appearance that we want solved and not hurt our residents.”

Wesley Acres provides government-subsidized housing for 117 low-income people ages 62 and above. Most have no reason to suspect their hallways take on a sinister shape.

The one-story building, designed in the mid-1970s and completed in 1980, underwent a $1 million alteration in 2001 with funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development following complaints by Democratic Sen. Howell Heflin, who has since died. But the addition of two wings did little to hide the offensive shape, and in some ways accentuates it.

Options for the new renovations include the addition of covered porches or other outdoor areas.

The latest push to rid the landscape of the broken cross shape follows complaints from Avrahaum Segol, the same Israeli-American researcher who last fall helped publicize a swastika-shaped barracks at Naval Base Coronado in San Diego. The Navy said it would spend about $600,000 to alter the building, which opened in the 1960s, but the work has not yet been done.

Segol calls the Alabama retirement home a “sister swastika” to the building in California and says they were both part of a tangled, government-funded conspiracy to honor Nazis.

Segol claims the swastika shape of Wesley Acres in Decatur pays homage to the German scientists who came to nearby Huntsville after World War II and designed the rockets that put Americans on the moon.

Methodist Homes’ Giles said Segol’s conspiracy claims are ridiculous. The building was originally designed to be much larger, he said, and cutbacks resulted in a shape that resembled the four-armed swastika used as the symbol of German Nazis during World War II.

“It was certainly not intentional,” Giles said.

The shape of the retirement center is evident in satellite photos available on the Internet. But it is located in a residential section in a city with few tall buildings, and many in Decatur have no idea Wesley Acres resembles a swastika.

Giles said any changes to the building must be relatively inexpensive since the agency lacks money for an elaborate solution. Planners are considering modifications, he said, “so that from the air it takes your eye away from what was originally there.

It’s been six months since my last Drool Tools posting. In that time, I’ve picked up two more regular readers of my blog, so this next part is directed at that half of my audience.

Drool Tools is my attempt to mourn the decline of the Cool Tools website. It used to be filled with interesting tools. Then, perhaps because of the pressures of needing to post regularly, the content started to go from cool to drool. Hence my clever name. I gave up posting for the last six months once a mock “Cool Tool” that I created became real (read about it here). Since then, I decided to Let It Go.

But no longer. There have been too many dumb postings lately.

Exhibit A. A Belt That’s right. A belt. The description starts:

I’ve never been a fan of notches. But most cinch belts just don’t do the job.

Why not suspenders? Hold, before I go too far, I should check…Oh. My. God. They have done suspenders.

Anyway, moving right along in our tour of silliness, we have

Exhibit B. Popcorn Popper as Coffee Roaster.

Ah, where to begin. First of all, this is not what I would consider a cool tool so much as a cool hack. And it’s not a particularly novel one.

But most importantly, the instructions for doing it on the website are really, really bad.

Roasting doesn’t produce a lot of smoke, but does produce enough to set off a smoke detector. Be sure to disable it while you’re roasting inside.

Um. No. It can produce a huge amount of smoke. Don’t do it inside, ever. That’s what the experts say. Also these folks say it’s smoky and these folks emphasize the dangers.

Next cool tool: you can use pots, pans, and some glass beakers to make a stovetop meth lab. It’s safe too.

Exhibit C. A Windbreaker.

The 80s called. They want their “cool tool” back.

Exhibit D. Another book. Sigh. This one is on snowflakes.

What a useful tool.

Exhibit E. A timer made just for Yoga.

The idea that you’d need a special timer for meditation is kinda, well, weird. Other upcoming tools include a voice memo recorder for monks with vows of silence and special guns for mixed martial arts fighters.

Exhibit F. Another Belt.

Oh, the hell with it. I give up.

They win.

Since many of my entries seem to be about hatin’ on this or that (kind of the opposite of my buddy Bijan’s approach to blogging), I figured why not start making fun of dumb books. I’ll start with the book that inspired me to do this, but I’ve got much better ones coming.

You know, the kind of book you see and say, “I can’t believe they published that.” I won’t do book reviews as such–that would require reading the book. These posts will be more about me just picking a book and complaining (whining?) about it.

Books like Valerie Bertinelli’s, Losing It:

The book is about 70s TV Star Valerie Bertinelli’s battles with weight loss and mental illness. Get it? “Losing it?” Don’t get me started on the subtitle.

I can’t think of a single reason we need this book. There’s already enough (bad) books on weight loss. I liked One Day At A Time as much as next kid, but the show’s been off the air for 27 years. Let. It. Go.

We’ve already had to endure her co-star, Mackenzie Phillips battle with anorexia (and drugs). At least she had the decency not to write a book that opens like this:

Some people measure depression by the medication they take or the number of times per week they see a therapist. For me, it was different. I measured my depression with baked jalapeño-and-cheddar-cheese poppers, the brand that advertises itself with the slogan “Bring home the fun.”

I’d love to meet the person who came up with that line and ask him a question. Is it really fun to see yourself blow up three dress sizes?

I suppose they -wouldn’t sell as many if their slogan was “Pack on the pounds.” On the other hand, they may do OK with a promotion that said “Forget your ex-husband” or “Eat these instead of having sex—since nobody wants to see your fat bare ass.”

During the cold winter months of 2002–03, when I was making Touched by an Angel in Utah, those jalapeño-and- cheese poppers were my Prozac. I was on a significant dosage: at least nine a night and sometimes more.

But who am I to judge? There are a lot of favorable reviews on Amazon.

Although the date of a number of these seems suspicious–one day after the book was published. This 3-star review makes a good point:

The book is a fun read and great for anyone who grew up at the same time and thought she would be a great friend. HOWEVER – I have had some weight struggles myself, probably gaining/losing a similar amount over the years, and aside from the Jenny pimping, I want to point out that Valerie a)was getting the expensive Jenny food for free (which is nowhere near as yummy as home cooked meals), and b)was able to use a personal trainer and c)does not work full time, care for two children, necessarily clean her own house or do her own bills. In short, as much as Val is like us, she’s not. So her diet experience in so many ways is atypical and I don’t want this to be taken as a realistic picture of what Jenny can do for you. Add to this that many of these pre-packaged foods are processed with additives, it is indeed cautionary.

But here’s my favorite review. It’s 1-star. For all the wrong reasons:

I’ve always liked Valerie Bertinelli, i’m a huge fan of Vanhalen and I was excited to read this book, BUT I didn’t get past the first chapter and I had to put it down. Why did Valerie feel she had to diss our President and in the first chapter?? Don’t these Stars realize they are going to alienate at least 1/2 of the American population by saying such things?? Why make any kind of political stand? I totally lost interest and paid money for something I won’t finish reading.

(My first thoughts: “Maybe this book isn’t as bad as I thought; actually, at this point, she’s going to alienate about 20% of America at this point.”)

The comments on the review are hilarious.

Wait, I take it back, here’s my favorite review. The author pimps her own book in the review. Brilliant!

I am truly grateful for Valerie’s book. Not only did it give me a break from studies and allow a bit of literary voyeurism, but it reassured me that getting real with oneself is probably the greatest personal event any person can participate in. This level of self honesty is not easy. I know. I went into that emotional place when I wrote The Sleeping Stranger. It is most certainly a traumatic yet cathartic process and I admire her courage. This well penned book, Losing It, is worth the time and money.

This is another take on the book.