I think I’m ready for Pamplona now. The city, in the northeast of Spain, is the annual host to the San Fermín festival, known to the rest of us mainly for the running of the bulls. Never mind that I normally root for the bulls; it’s time.
And what, you might ask, qualifies me for this feat? Agility? A spry physique? Monumental derring-do? Not so much. I live and work in New Jersey, and I’m a commuter. ‘Nuff said. (more…)
Checked my Yahoo account today, and thought for a minute I was reading some descendent of Lewis Carroll, or maybe Hugo Ball. Spam seems to be Yahoo’s bread and butter, judging by the amount of it that clogs my inbox every time I log in, but lately it’s taken on an almost poetic, musique concrete quality. The Ali Zapatas and Zenobia Q Titmouses of the world have given us some real gems, reprinted here as poetry (n.b. the typos are theirs, not mine):
pricrot Tort Radmid
Priant Alpher bato spire
Horth Guitchop Botather
(more…)
Rule of thumb: Food always tastes better when it’s shaped like something. Okay, maybe it’s just me, but I’ve always had a weak spot for shaped foods over their dull, geometric counterparts. For instance: Fritos used to make chips that were shaped like race cars. They tasted much better than the spiral Fritos, which, in turn, tasted better than the “traditional” ones. Animal crackers, gummy bears, Goldfish… Come to think of it, this needs to be put to a blind taste test.
Of course, there’re exceptions. The chicken nuggets at Burger King, for instance, are supposed to be shaped like crowns, but they look more like paws. Chicken ought not to have paws. This is an abomination against nature. So, for that matter, are Burger King’s Chicken Fries (I don’t want to know what part of the chicken they used to get that shape) or White Castle’s Chicken Rings (ditto–actually, that goes double, in this case).
Watching the news last night, you know what I realized? I’d make a lousy weatherman. For one thing–and God help me, I never thought I’d say this–I’m not funny-looking enough. You don’t believe me? Two words for you: Willard Scott. The other thing is, I have no patience. I feel sorry for the first anchorperson who says, “So, another day of rain, Paul? When are you going to stop this? Give us some sun, already!” (more…)
Supermarkets try too hard. You can’t walk into a supermarket anymore that doesn’t have a full selection of “Home-Cooked Meals”: hermetically sealed roasted chicken, baked hams in little plastic coffins, and ribs sulking in oversweetened barbecue sauce.
One day, I got to thinking. Why not take the next step, and have a potluck aisle? You could have everybody in the neighborhood bring something, and sell it all on consignment. There’d be aisles of steam tables piled with goulash, mashed potatoes, creamed corn, and all the stuff that someone found in the back of some Betty Crocker cookbook, some of it edible, some not. After all, what potluck is complete without at least one or two dishes that can be identified only by their dental records, or by some kind of culinary DNA analysis? (more…)
Science has made great strides in prenatal and neonatal research, and things have the potential to get interesting. For instance, it’s only a matter of time before we see a modification of the common “Parental Advisory–Explicit Content” stickers found on so many CDs. Building on pseudoscientific quack Don Campbell’s research on the effects of music on unborn and newborn babies, a bill to relabel CDs will be introduced. The current sticker will be replaced by, “Prenatal Advisory–Explicit Content.” It will be argued from both sides that hearing obscenity will have a deleterious effect on the unborn. Using the same labirynthine logic with which they’ve defined the abortion debate, the GOP will argue that the unborn, though they lack the facilities to comprehend what they’re hearing, could be corrupted by the content of the music; the Democrats, of course, will fall in line behind the GOP for fear of losing support on a populist issue in an election year. (more…)
This being an election year, we’re reminded constantly that somewhere in the neighborhood of 45 million Americans have no health insurance. An additional 30 million people (give or take a few mil) are temporarily without health insurance in the course of a given year. Mind you, this doesn’t mean that nobody’s getting sick, it just means we can’t afford to.
And how, exactly, are the uninsured going to pay for anything from hospital visits to critical care? You see ads for hospitals from time to time, about how they’re so advanced, about their great strides in neonatal care, cardiac medicine and oncology… it’s like they’re rattling off the features on a car. “Do you have 99 dollars and a job? You may qualify for health care! Try the new 2009 Pinebrook Hospital. Preferred patients get 4.9% financing with only 150 dollars down.” Before you know it, they’ll be offering lease options on artificial hearts. What the hell, once you kick over, someone else’ll get it.
And like everything else that’s financed, they’ll find ways to repo the stuff if you fall behind on your payments. You’ll wake up one morning to two enormous guys holding you down while a third cuts out your corneas. Your female coworkers will come in with their faces saggy and their breasts two cup sizes smaller: “Liz missed two installments on her implants.”
At least there wouldn’t be the long waits for transplants. Just go to the hospital and some guy with a cheap jacket and a combover will tell you about this week’s livers. “This one’s only had two previous owners. The last guy had a bit of a drinking problem, but it still works like a charm.” They’d even make sure it had that new organ smell.
When Gary Numan sang, “Here in my car, I feel safest of all,” he probably wasn’t singing about the smartCar. This reeeeeeeeeeeeealy tiny jalopy has been available for years in Europe, and it’s finally getting a full roll-out on these shores.
The $11k-plus car is the result of a partnership between Mercedes and Swatch (seriously). I guess that means that if you can’t find a parking space, you can take a band out of your glove compartment, attach it to the car, and just wear it on your wrist. While the design may be innovative and earth-friendly (both, no doubt, good things), it doesn’t strike me as the safest thing on the road; as was recently pointed out to me, it’s probably not the first thing you’d want to drive down the New Jersey Turnpike among the 18-wheelers. It makes the Mini Cooper look like an Abrams tank; the overall design scheme would seem to have been “coffin with a transmission.”
My grandfather was a bit old-fashioned, and we’d get reminders once in a while, like when he met my friend Phil.
“So, Bill. What’s your last name?”
“Yurchuk.”
“Bill Deerchuck. What kinda name is that?”
“Oh, it’s Russian.”
“You don’t LOOK Russian.”
“Well, I’m half Russian. My mom’s Puerto Rican.”
“Oh.” Long pause, then: “Well. Nothing wrong with them…. They’re good people. Good, fine, people…” And you can tell that something in him is telling him he’s dug himself a nice, deep hole. “Very hard-working.” Phil and I, meantime, know that if either one of us looks at the other, we’re both gonna lose it.
He was also an old-school Catholic. You’d have thought that the Catholic Church was a travel agency, and all those church visits were racking up frequent flyer miles. And if, for some reason, you needed a reminder of that fact, you only had to look at his Buick.
Some people are happy enough just to put one of those Jesus fish on the trunk, or slap a bumper sticker on. Grandpa had rosary beads hanging off the rearview mirror, a St. Christopher medal on the dash, a saint or two fixed to the dashboard with some kind of adhesive, a bottle of holy water in the little caddy, a little bible in the glove compartment… that car looked like a rolling botanica. And if you ever sat in the car when he drove, you knew why he needed all that stuff. Picture a New York City cabbie in slow motion: all the bobbing and weaving and cursing, but without the punctuality. He’d be talking to his beads as he went, too, so the typical ride went something like this:
“Our Father, who art–SLOW DOWN! Ah, ya sonofabitch. Who art in heaven, hallowed be thy–ah, shit! name…”
And you’d be praying, too, but not for the same reason he was. To this day, I think the first joyful mystery is that we always got where we were going in one piece.
WASHINGTON (AP): A source close to the president, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed widespread rumors of a coming toast shortage. Urgent pleas have been lodged with the Toast Producing and Exporting Countries (TPEC), whose members are expected to hold an emergency summit in Yemen (motto: “White or Wheat?”), during which solutions are to be discussed, and ways found to keep prices low at the toaster.
In the meantime, the United States Department of Agriculture has recommended toast rationing, especially in urban centers, retirement communities, and truck stops, where recent toast consumption has far outstripped the rates of both import and production.
Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke does not expect that the shortage of toast will further dampen the currently bearish market. President Bush, speaking at a press conference earlier today, sought to quell consumers’ fears, alluding to America’s 257-billion bushel stockpile of emergency surplus toast, held in reserve on a military base in Arizona, whose hot, dry climate makes it ideal for toast storage.