THE AFTERMATH...

...of our recent Painty Adventures in the Mistress of Sarcasm’s room.



This solitary chair will have the company of a lamp and framed wall photo. The angles helped make painting this room a real challenge.



The photo atop the bookcase is of She Who Must Be Obeyed in her Snot-Nose days.



Old records and new paint.

Now that all the rooms in the house have been painted (finally!), I suppose we’ll have to start replacing the wallpaper. It’s always something...

GOING BROKE(N)

Years ago, the Morton Salt people came up with a brilliant slogan to promote their table salt, compounded with special additives that allow it to remain free-flowing even in humid environments.

“When it rains, it pours.”

But the slogan itself is not original: It’s a slightly edited version of a venerable old proverb, “It never rains, but it pours.”

More crudely: Not only does shit happen, but when it happens, a whole bunch of it happens all at once.

This has been the month of the Failing Mechanical Contrivances.

First it was Mr. Camera. For some inexplicable reason, the main control chip cacked while we were in Destin. I was able to squeeze out a couple of photos, but it was a Herculean effort involving a lot of tinkering with the reset switch. Not a tenable long-term solution. So into the shop it went.

Mr. Camera is back home now, $235 dollars later...but at least now I can take pictures.

Too bad I can’t do much with ’em. Mr. Computer ate it Thursday evening, probably the result of an electrical storm. It had been running normally that day, but after I put it through an uneventful planned Windows-approved shutdown, it refused to awaken. The problem? A blown power supply. So it’s in the shop now.

The lightning took down our Internet connection. Fortunately, the issue was simply a blown-out surge protector, a Protective Device that had done its job admirably, laying down its life so that our DSL modem might live. One new surge protector, and our high-speed Internet was back in business.

Alas, our satellite dish was now also on the fritz. It took several hours to reestablish partial service...the working diagnosis is a dead or dying LNB. The service people are supposed to fix everything up tomorrow evening...and we may end up with a new DVR as part of the deal.

Our Wii died, too - probably a result of the same electrical storm that played hob with our surge protector. It’s still under warranty, so all we have to do is ship it to Nintendo...a pain in the ass, to be sure, but at least not an expensive pain in the ass.

Did I mention that we just replaced our 17-year-old washer and dryer? The washer was fine, but the dryer had developed the bad habit of depositing a mysterious brown substance on light-colored clothing. The Missus had had her eye on one of those new front-loading washers, so this provided the perfect excuse to get a Matched Set. Whee!

I guess I can’t complain. Mechanical contrivances will break; it is their nature. Better that than broken people (kein ayin hora).

But why, O Lord - whay all at the same damn time?

ELISSON’S LESS-THAN-FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS

“If you’re gonna take a shit, take your pants down first.”
- Laurence Simon

Sage advice even the Boy Scouts (“Be Prepared”) would approve of.

THE BEAR FACTS

I happened upon a television program this evening about a retired Anchorage schoolteacher who lives amongst a small army of black bears...with the occasional grizzly thrown in.

This guy is probably stark raving bonkers, but he seems to have a better understanding of bears and their relationship with the Resident Human in their midst than the late wide-eyed naïf Timothy Treadwell, who had an unfortunate (and ultimately fatal) habit of regarding grizzly bears as big cuddly pets. Better understanding or no, I have a feeling “Charlie,” our schoolteacher friend, will eventually end up as a Bear Entrée at some point.

The show got me thinking about a story that had flickered briefly through the local papers, a story that we mostly missed out on owing to our having been away in Florida on our annual Beach Vacation.

It appears that, while we were gone, our neighborhood was invaded by bears.

A resident of the East Hampton subdivision in east Cobb reported seeing the “mid-sized” black bear crossing a street Thursday morning. The bear, which was wearing a tracking collar, was also seen near a fitness club on Roswell Road.

Great. Just great. Bears in my bushes.

Jimbo (to name one obvious example) may harbor a perfectly legitimate dislike - even a phobia - of alligators and other Humongous Reptiles. But the chances of Jim actually encountering an alligator in his Union County, New Joisey neighborhood are slim to none. But here, in the happy confines of east Cobb County, just north of Atlanta, there is the very real possibility that I will go out to fetch my newspaper from the driveway one morning and have a Close Encounter with a bear.

Or a steaming pile of Bear Feces.

Because, after all, we know that bears shit in the woods. And even the Charmin people will tell you that if you have bears in the ’burbs, you’ll have b’ar stools in your back yards.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN

One of ’em, anyway.

It ain’t anatomy. It’s how we choose to be entertained.

We all know the difference between Manly Cinema and Chick Flicks. Manly Cinema covers a broad spectrum: Three Stooges flicks (or their latter-day equivalent in brainlessness, i.e., anything with Adam Sandler or Rob Schneider) to Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay blow-’em-ups to Mutant Kalamatunis from Outer Space sci-fi. Chick Flicks - well, to paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of obscenity, we all know a Chick Flick when we see one.

There’s a television equivalent, too, demonstrated by the various viewing choices at Chez Elisson this evening.

Said choices were somewhat limited by the powerful electrical storm that rumbled through the area at about 8:00, playing hob with our satellite reception. There was enough lightning in that storm to animate an army of Frankenstein monsters sufficient to populate half of China, and Mr. TiVo did not like it at all. Fortunately, things settled down just in time for the Missus and the Mistress to catch the dénouement of...

“The Bachelorette.”

It’s the kind of programming that makes the average male want to drive a ten-penny nail through his eyeballs. But my programming choices have the same effect on the Missus.

Let’s face it. It is a rare female that will put up with (much less enjoy) the likes of “Assy McGee.”

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Men are from Mars, women are from the Andromeda Galaxy.

MONKEY SHIT FEET

Yes, that is what my podiatrist - a personal friend - said about my feet when he examined them a few years back...

“I’ll tell you what your problem is. You have Monkey Shit Feet.”

VACATION OBSERVATION #1

Absinthe makes the heart grow fonder.

AND NOW, THE NEWS...

What’s going on at Chez Elisson today?

It’s a little quieter, now that Aunt Marge and Uncle Phil have returned to South Florida after a week-long visit. Phil is thirty years my senior, but you’d never know it. He and Marge are active, outgoing peeps, the kind you never get tired of spending time with.

Tuesday afternoon we wandered about the High Museum of Art, checking out a remarkable exhibition - Road to Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement. Many of the images in the exhibition are familiar, almost iconic, while many others have never before been shown. They are sobering, taken both as a whole body and individually, reminding you of just how shabbily people are capable of treating other human beings. Hosing down peaceful demonstrators, setting dogs on them, burning buses, murdering people, and gathering in mobs to shout at schoolchildren...it’s an unfortunate part of this country’s history that needs to be remembered and taught. Those of us who lost relatives in the Holocaust can appreciate the consequences of a social policy that designates certain people as being less than fully human.

We’ve still got a ways to go, as regards the treatment of minorities...but as a nation, and as a region, we’re light-years ahead of where we were fifty years ago.

But back to Current Events.

She Who Must Be Obeyed is knocking around town with the Mistress of Sarcasm, who is here with us recuperating from a back injury she suffered at Tybee Island last week. (Memo to self: When jumping from a 20-foot-high dock into deep water, be sure to avoid landing on the back or stomach. Yeowch!) The Mistress will be joining us on our upcoming vacation trip to Destin, the annual week of Sun ’n’ Fun in the steaming sands of the Florida Panhandle. We head out first thing Saturday morning.

Meanwhile, Elder Daughter is enroute from Los Angeles to Detroit, from where she will fly to Amsterdam and then onward to Kampala, Uganda, where she will spend two weeks on a film shoot. Perhaps she will run into some of the exotic Local Fauna. Oh, wait: Zimbabwe and Uganda aren’t exactly close to one another...

And it’s a Special Day for SWMBO and me: today is our thirty-first wedding anniversary.

It’s a strange thing. We’ve been together for a long time, but somehow, the Missus finds a way to make every day seem new. Maybe it’s a new haircut, or some whacked-out private joke between the two of us, or...I don’t know what. But I’m looking forward to the next thirty-one with as much enthusiasm (if maybe not as much Raw Energy) as I did the first.

I loves me my SWMBO!

PROPAGREENDA

[Click to embiggen.]

Hilary Price must’ve read this post.

GOT GOTKIS?

I picked up a few pairs of undershorts yesterday.

Every so often, it’s a good idea to replenish the Inventory o’ Underwear. Not only is it necessary to replace old pairs that have worn out, or that have accumulated indelible Repulsive Skidmarkage, it’s nice to have as many as possible in order to stretch the interval between washloads.

I can stretch things out to about two weeks between washloads...twice that if I were, against the advice of Mr. Debonair, to double my Undershorts-Mileage by turning them inside out. Feh.

But I wanted some new shorts, and thus it was that we found ourselves at the local outpost of Kohl’s.

I’m a Briefs Guy. Specifically, a Hanes briefs guy. I know, TMI, but this Bloggity Business is all about the TMI, innit?

I’m a Briefs Guy because, as Kramer famously said, my boys need a home. It took a while to find what I was looking for, though. Lots of boxer shorts. But my boys don’t need a tent.

Lots of something they call “Boxer Briefs,” a garment that combines the worst features of boxers and briefs. My boys don’t need a prison.

[Whenever I wear boxers - or boxer briefs - I feel like I’m wearing two pairs of pants at the same time. Not a good feeling.]

After looking around a while, I finally found something that would work. Mid-rise briefs. Comfortable. My boys have a new home.

Here’s a mystery, though.

My new briefs came in a resealable package, the kind with one of those zip-lock strips. As if I were going to do something other than take them out of the plastic bag and throw the bag away.

Now: I can understand packaging, say, dried fruit in a resealable package. Trail mix. Brown sugar. That kind of stuff. Use some, then seal the package so the rest stays fresh.

But underwear? Is it going to go stale?

NATION OF PINHEADS

At our Corporate Whoop-de-Do this week, I grabbed a bottle of water out of the convenient bin and looked at the label. Ozarka water, it was, and it had a prominent green label on the back touting its new Eco-Shape™ bottle design.

Environmentally friendly, made with 30% less plastic than the average water bottle. Oh, boy! Save the whales! Collect them all, win valuable prizes!

I’m really not convinced there’s anything environmentally friendly about any kind of water bottle, since I can get perfectly good water right out of the tap without using any bottle at all. And if I want to schlep water around with me - ’cause everyone knows how hard it is to find water in this country - I can put it in a reusable water bottle. You know: the kind that has minimal environmental impact because you don’t throw the damn thing away after you’ve used it once.

Good Gawd, we have become a Nation of Pinheads.

We’ll buy those reusable grocery bags - we all want to protect the environment, right? - and then we’ll fill ’em up with bottled water, the most useless Value-Added Product the Madison Avenue marketing geniuses ever foisted upon the American public. I especially love the imported stuff. Fiji water, sucked out of a pristine spring half a world away, then shoved into a disposable plastic bottle and jammed into a container on a steamship to be transported 10,000 miles for your drinking pleasure.

The fact that the suppliers of Fiji water can spend all the money to do that and still make a profit by selling us something that comes out of the tap for practically free tells us how stupid we are.

We’ll happily spend a buck or more on a 20 ounce bottle of water - the equivalent of $6.40 a gallon. Now imagine a magical substance (let’s call it “Gazzo-Leen”), the same 20 ounces of which can push a two-ton chunk of metal, glass, and rubber three miles or more at more in less than three minutes. We’ll piss and moan about having to pay half of that $6.40 a gallon we spend on bottled water on this magical “Gazzo-Leen.”

We’ll piss and moan even more if we can’t buy however much “Gazzo-Leen” we want, whenever we want it.

Every aspect of our country’s infrastructure for the past 60 years or more has been built based on the assumption that we would have cheap petroleum-based energy forever.

Surprise! Eventually, if you assume enough, it makes an ass out of u and me.

In China and India, there are now a billion more people that are being lifted into the middle class by the powerful engine of world economic growth. One billion people...and that number is growing fast.

They all want the same bright ’n’ shiny stuff we’ve taken for granted for years. Cars. Televisions. Whisky. Flush toilets. Movies with plenty explosions and ficky-fick.

And now they’re buying oil, just like us. Which eats up supplies...and makes the prices go up.

Meanwhile, we’ve got our SUV’s to feed so we can commute to work on our Great Big Network o’ Interstate Highways. So let’s put more ethanol in our gas tanks, so we don’t need as much petroleum, why don’t we?

Hmmm, lessee. Ethanol is made from corn. In this country, at least, thanks to the powerful Corn Lobby.

Corn is a high-yield crop that sucks nutrients out of the soil, necessitating the use of chemical fertilizers.

Chemical fertilizers are made from petroleum.

We’re using oil to grow corn to replace oil. So: Just how fucking stupid are we?

Nation of Pinheads, I tell you.

LESS OF ME

There’s less of me around these days...which is a Good Thing.

Over the past three months, I’ve managed to drop about 10% of my body weight, bringing me down to my lowest body mass in at least ten years. I still have a good ways to go before reaching my goal: another 25 pounds should do it.

Old Uncle Elisson has always had to pay attention to his weight, which tends to balloon northwards when I get into sloppy eating habits. I love red meat, cheese, ice cream, and chocolate-based desserts, all of which have a tendency to convert themselves into Ass-Fat when consumed in immoderate quantities over a long period of time. And as I get older, I find that it’s all too easy to pack on the pounds.

You can ignore ’em for a while, but they have a way of making you take notice.

Some years back, I used to sport Facial Hair. My beard had its uses, chief among them (besides keeping the face warm in winter) being that it served to hide a Multitude of Chins. More chins than the Hong Kong phone book. But after I shaved it off - it was giving me an excessively grizzled appearance - I could no longer hide that burgeoning Neck-Wattle. Ecch.

And I also found that once my weight got to a certain level, I started snoring. Didn’t bother me, but it annoyed the hell out of She Who Must Be Obeyed. And it developed into a full-blown case of sleep apnea, serious enough to be life-threatening. I was tired all the time...because if you have sleep apnea, you never get a good night’s sleep.

Enough of that shit.

No stupid-ass Fad Diets for me. I’m a lifetime Weight Watchers member (and a former instructor), and I’ve learned that what works best is the classic, tried-and-true method: Eat fewer calories than you expend, exercise more, and choose your foods carefully to get the maximum nutritional punch. For me it means more fish and less red meat, and laying off the blue cheese dressing on my salads. Or having one or two slices of pizza instead of four or five. (Staying the hell out of the Godiva shop at the mall helps, too.) It’s a slow process, but it is less vulnerable to the Boomerang Effect. Who wants to take a bunch of weight off, only to put it right back on?

And it’s not all that tough. You’ll notice I haven’t given up my Sommelier Guild dinners. There’s nothing I can’t eat - it’s just a question of amount and frequency.

It’s also a lot easier for me because SWMBO is right there beside me. And man, does she look good.

Being slimmer is a mixed blessing. I feel much better, and I don’t snore as much, which is good. And I can wear my size 34 pants instead of having to squeeze into 36’s (or flirt with 38’s). Hell, there’s a pair of twenty-year-old pants in my closet that I can now get into comfortably. Who gives a shit whether they’re In Style?

But now I have to start getting my suits altered. They’re beginning to hang on me a little.

Even my Favorite Nutty Headgear is starting to feel a bit loose...


“Does this colander make my head look fat?”

AN OPEN LETTER...

...to the asshole who made that left turn right in front of us on Roswell Road at 10:20 pm, narrowly escaping getting T-boned by our car at 50 MPH instead of waiting five seconds for us to pass, after which there was absolutely no oncoming traffic:

Was getting to that Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet right that fucking second so important to you that you were willing to risk dying for it?

Shithead.

I NEED A SHOWER

I always feel like I need a hot shower after I watch even a few minutes of “Moment of Truth,” the nastiest, smarmiest, vilest, most obnoxious Reality Show since “Marry My Midget.”

The premise of the show is that contestants are asked questions in ascending order of Nosiness and Potential for Embarrassment. As you answer more questions truthfully (according to a polygraph examiner), you have the chance to win prizes of ever-increasing value. Presumably, one can win $500,000 by honestly answering incredibly personal questions such as, “When did you stop sucking your own dick?”

It says a lot about the concupiscence of the average American - or perhaps of his Lust for Fame - that people would line up for the chance to reveal Life-Shattering Truths on this show, in the process laying waste to their marriages, friendships, and family relationships for a few moments of sweaty, breathless television exposure and a crack at a few shekels.

Gawd, what assholes. Don’t they know how dangerous truth is?

Little white lies are part of the lubrication that keeps the machinery of Polite Society running. Strip away that lubrication - tell the truth about everything - and people’s lives grind to a halt.

None of us, alas, is perfect. Each one of us has a list of questions, the answers to which could conceivably make other people unhappy. But in the normal course of Human Events, we are never called upon to answer these questions...and if we are, we are allowed the face-saving expedient of the Little White Lie.

Let’s put aside the heinous premise of “Moment of Truth” aside for a moment and talk about Nuts ’n’ Bolts matters. Personally, I think the show could be improved. It tends to drag, and the producers have the nasty habit of stretching each segment out with repetitive, annoying teasers.

Me, I’d dispense with the teasers. You don’t need ’em.

Want to keep those viewers riveted? All you have to do is give the contestants’ spouses, girlfriends, or boyfriends a loaded pistol...

LET’S GO KROGERING

There was a whole chicken sitting in our Meat Locker, waiting for us to do something with it. And it was getting to be time to (you should excuse the expression) shit or get out the pot.

“Hey, bub, ya gonna cook me, or what? ’Cause otherwise, I’m gonna just lay here until I stink to high heaven.”

I’ve cooked Chicken in a Pot several times over the last month or two. It’s a fine dish, but it results in a very chicken-y tasting chicken. Not that that’s a bad thing, but there aren’t a whole lot of other flavor notes. And She Who Must Be Obeyed wanted something with a little more oomph. So I suggested Coq au Vin, that venerable old standby consisting of chicken braised in red wine. It’s got onions, carrots, shallots, and mushrooms to help create a whole symphony of Good Tastes...just what the Missus ordered.

The larder was short by one key ingredient, though: We lacked mushrooms. So we took a spin over to the local Kroger, the Publix where we normally shop being closed for the Easter holiday.

I guess the Kroger folks aren’t “shomer Easter.”

Anyone who does most of his or her food shopping in one particular store will always feel a little disoriented when in a different one. And adding to my sense of disorientation was the Kroger penchant for Trying to Make Shopping Entertaining and/or Educational.

In the dairy section, for example, there was a device that simulated the sound of cows mooing. And over by the eggs, you could hear the clucking of chickens. Was this Kroger’s attempt to tell us how wholesome their dairy products were? That the eggs were “Really Clucking Fresh,” straight from the chicken’s ass? Or were they trying to tell the less intellectually capable of their customers that “the milk comes from the animal that sounds like this, and the eggs come from the animal that sounds like that” – as opposed to the huge factory complex that produces Rice Krispies?

I began to get worried. When we got to the meat department, were we going to be treated to the sounds of cattle being whacked on the head with sledgehammers? Squealing pigs, bleeding out while hanging upside-down from a hook on a conveyor belt?

Naw. It was actually a little disappointing.

But, having scored our mushrooms (and a bunch of other comestibles), we headed home, where, at this very moment, the Coq au Vin is simmering merrily upon Darth Stover’s largest burner.

And it’ll be Clucking Fresh. I’ll even provide the sound effects.

Update: Here’s the finished product.

OBSOLETE SKILLS

A post over at verbatim caught my eye the other day.

There’s a website out there that lists an inventory of Obsolete Skills...an inventory that is growing daily.

Many of the skills or activities listed have been obsolete for lifetimes. Centuries, in some cases. Knapping flint? That one went out with the Iron Age in most places. Swordfighting? Modern projectile weapons have pretty much reduced the role of swords to that of pure ceremonial decoration, even if you can still use one to disembowel an unruly neighbor in a pinch.

Plenty of other items have to do with information technology, recent advances in which make numerous tasks obsolete within a short span of years. Such things as “Tweaking your AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS files” or “FORTRAN programming” may be obsolete today, but we expect technological advances to sweep this sort of geekery away pretty quickly...to be replaced, of course, by fresh, new geekery.

But there are plenty of other activities, formerly routine, that truly have become obsolete...at least, as long as you live outside of historical preserves such as Old Sturbridge and Plimoth Plantation. Here’re a few:

• Crewing a muzzle loading cannon
  
• Carving a nib into a quill or pen (what a penknife is for!)
  
• Casting lead bullets
  
• Starting a fire with a wood drill and block

OK, sure - these activities have been obsolete for a long time. But here are some others that died out within my lifetime:

• Adjusting a television's horizontal and vertical holds
  
• Extracting a square root using pencil and paper
  
• Changing a typewriter ribbon (or using a typewriter, for that matter)
  
• Calling collect on a pay phone (try to find a pay phone these days!)
  
• Replacing burned out vacuum tubes in your radio or TV
  
• Counting out change (a useful talent killed off by electronic cash registers)
  
• Darkroom photography
  
• Dialing a rotary phone (strangely enough, we still use the verb)
  
• Editing audio tape with a razor blade and splicing block
  
• Laying out magazines using wax and bromides (I’ve done this)
  
• Loading film into a 35mm camera
  
• Opening a can of beer or soda with a church key
  
• Placing a coin on a tonearm to prevent skipping (What’s a tonearm, Grandpa?)
  
• Using a slide rule
  
• Setting the choke or pumping the accelerator when starting a car
  
• Making copies using a mimeograph or a ditto stencil (mmmm, ditto smell)
  
• Using carbon paper to make copies
  
• Using correction fluid to fix typos (and huffing it to get wasted...)
  
• Using a party-line telephone
  
• Using paper tape for programming
  
• Typing and sending a telex (it’s what people used to send written stuff overseas before the Internet...and faxes)
  
• Using Hollerith punch cards
  
• Doing calculations using a Table of Logarithms
  
• Using an Odhner pin-wheel mechanical calculator (for those occasions when a slide rule wouldn’t be precise enough)
  
• Using telephone exchange names
  
• Watching a slide show with a slide projector
  
• Taking photographs with flash bulbs or flashcubes
  
• Applying the coating to a Polaroid photo

There are plenty of others...but what’s bizarre is that I remember many of these activities as being pretty commonplace. Yet, can you remember the last time you used a Logarithm Table...or an old-fashioned slide projector and screen...or a church key?

THE POINT OF DIMINISHING RETURNS

There’s an economic concept known as the Law of Diminishing Returns, which states that past a certain point, each additional unit of variable input yields less and less additional output. Or, put another way, if you spend more, you get more...but as you continue to pay more, you get less and less socko for your simoleons.

If I pay $50 for VSOP Cognac instead of $30 for VS, I’m getting a big boost in quality for that extra $20. To move up to XO, the next quality level, may run me $50-60 or more above and beyond the cost of the VSOP, yet the difference between XO and VSOP is not nearly as dramatic as that between VS and VSOP. And that $1500 bottle of Louis XIII? Sure, it’s good. Hell, it’s better than good...but that extra $1400 buys an improvement that is more subtle than it has any right to be.

Having said all this, it’s still true that the price of a given tipple is a rough guide to quality. Sure, there’s all that marketing ballyhoo - which is why a product such as “premium vodka” even exists - but there really is a huge difference between that $150 flagon of 21-year-old single malt Scotch and the $20 bottle gathering dust on the bottom shelf at the local Schnapps Merchant.

It’s also true that high quality consumables are best enjoyed with minimal doctoring...and, conversely, why complex recipes are helpful in masking the nastiness of cheap ingredients. I can get away with using rotgut gin and brandy when I mix up a batch of Chatham Artillery Punch...but for a Gin and Tonic or a Martini, only the best will do.

Likewise, I will drink a fine single malt Scotch whisky - or a high-end bourbon, for that matter - neat, or with a splash of water. Soda? That’s for mixing with blended Scotch (if you must). And nobody in his or her right mind makes a whisky sour with Lagavulin or Talisker: It’s stupid and wasteful. Like eating Beluga caviar on a Ritz cracker.

You got Dom Pérignon? Great. Pour me a flute full, and I’ll get a snootful. But don’t you dare make a Mimosa with it. That’s why Gawd invented Korbel Brut. Making a mimosa with Dom Pérignon is like lighting a cigar with a $100 bill. No: it is like wiping your ass with a $100 bill.

It’s like having an Oscar Mayer wiener with yellow mustard, sauerkraut, and chopped truffles.

So imagine my horror when I see that the local Longhorn Steakhouse is offering up a “Gold Dust Margarita,” their attempt at a top-shelf drink. It contains Patrón tequila (nice!), the usual margarita sour mix, and Grand Marnier. But not just any Grand Marnier: this drink contains Grand Marnier Cuvée du Centenaire, a hyper-costly version of GM containing rare old Cognac.

Top-shelf or not, folks, a Margarita is still a fucking Margarita. The quality of the tequila is important, as it is the drink’s main Active Ingredient. But the orangey triple sec component is there to provide a minor flavor note at best. The subtle, delicate quality of Grand Marnier gets lost amidst all that tequila and lime juice like a fart in a windstorm.

With this drink, it’s not even the waste of money that pisses me off. It’s the misuse of a precious natural resource: Expensive Booze.

You want a Margarita? Use good tequila, by all means...but you can get by with Hiram Walker triple sec. If you feel like getting fancy, go with Grand Marnier (the basic Cordon Rouge kind), or, even better, with Cointreau.

But if I see you dumping fifty-buck-a-shot Grand Marnier into a stupid-ass Margarita, I will either want to laugh at you or kick your ass on account of you’re Too Stupid To Drink Like A Human Being.

Now, can you bring me a Quarter-Pounder with Cheese...with a slice of duck Foie Gras and extra ketchup?

A FLOCK OF ASS-HATS

Or, our Adventures with UPS.

“What can Brown do for you?” - UPS slogan

Well, they can provide you with a few weeks of irritation and nervousness...and at least one post worth of Blog-Fodder. They are, indeed, a Flock of Ass-Hats.

I’ve had my issues with Brown before, mind you.

Back in the late summer of 1997, when Elder Daughter was preparing to begin her University Education, we had planned to ship most of her supplies to Boston via UPS. We lived in Houston at the time, and we had no desire to schlep E.D.’s crap up to school in a U-Haul trailer in what would have been a three-day marathon drive. Of course, that’s when UPS’s employees decided to go on strike, in possibly the most dramatic demonstration of Murphy’s Law since the Challenger disaster.

E.D.’s stuff showed up at school eventually, but it did make for an exciting several weeks.

Fast forward to early February 2008. I’m sending a small but valuable package to Mrs. Eli, a birthday present intended to commemorate a Major Milestone. I go to the local UPS store, log in, print out my shipping label, hand the package over, and pay the tariff.

“You’ll need to put it in a shipping box,” I told the Genius in Brown Shipping Specialist, almost as an afterthought. As I said, it was a small but valuable package.

A few days later, I got a call from Eli and Mrs. Eli. They had, it seems, received a Rather Strange Package: a Fuzzy Helmet with Bison Horns. And I was the shipper, according to the mailing label.

“Now, why would Elisson send you a Fuzzy Helmet with Bison Horns?” Eli had asked Mrs. Eli. A rhetorical question, of course. Clearly, a mistake had been made. Or I had gone stark, raving bazonkers. (Hey, anything is possible.)

UPS contacted them the next day, asking whether they had received a package (yes), and whether it was something they had expected (no). It seems that, sure enough, the Genius in Brown Shipping Specialist had mistakenly switched my shipping label with one that belonged on another package. The Fuzzy Helmet! And, listening to Eli recount the story to me over the phone, I recalled that someone had indeed been shipping a Fuzzy Helmet with Bison Horns at the same time I was shipping my package. It’s not the kind of thing that’s easy to ignore, you see.

OK, well and good. Now, UPS sends someone over to pick up the Fuzzy Helmet with Bison Horns, so that it may be shipped to the correct consignee.

Getting said consignee to send Mrs. Eli’s package to her, however, took a little more work. UPS, having solved half the problem that they themselves created, dropped the ball, forgetting to arrange the solution to Part 2.

It took a few phone calls from Eli to get the ball rolling again. But imagine the frustration of calling UPS on the phone, giving them a tracking number, only to be told that, “Oh, we already delivered that package.” Sure you did, Chumley - to the wrong frickin’ address. Catch 22, make room for Catch Brown.

After sufficient badgering, UPS sent the Erroneous Recipient a prepaid label, and said Recipient shipped Mrs. Eli’s package. It finally arrived today, fifteen days late, unceremoniously dumped on their front steps. I’d have thought they would have wanted a signature, especially since the package was small and valuable.

At least it got there. Finally.

MOUSE CRAP

Those of my Esteemed Readers above a Certain Age may remember a board game, newly invented in the early 1960’s, called Mouse Trap. I’m pretty sure it’s still around today.

The game per se, at least in its original incarnation, is not especially thrilling: your basic advance-pieces-around-the-board sort of thing. What makes it moderately interesting (to those with a nascent engineering bent, anyway) is that, over the course of the game, you construct a Rube Goldberg device - the eponymous Mouse Trap - and then, at the end, you activate it, trapping your opponent’s mouse. Whoop-de-fucking-doo.

I will confess to playing Mouse Trap frequently back when I was a sixth-grader. But after a while, the game lost its luster. It’s not easy to stay fascinated with a Rube Goldberg device, unless it’s a real doozy.

But that’s not really what this post is about.

Every so often, I will make a pilgrimage to the Headquarters of the Great Corporate Salt Mine, there to hob-nob with my colleagues and the various Middle and Senior Management wonks. When I spend a day at said Headquarters, I will generally camp out in an unoccupied office, snapping my laptop into the docking station. This hooks me directly into the corporate LAN, as well as providing a handy full-size keyboard and display. And a mouse. (I hate the dinky-ass keyboard and screen of my laptop, but I especially hate the nasty-ass little touchpad mousing device.)

And this is where you can learn a lot about people’s Computer Hygiene...which I suspect is somehow related to their Personal Hygiene. Because some people have Mouse Crap.

Mouse Crap is the gunk that, over time, builds up on the internal rollers of a standard computer mouse. When it becomes thick enough, it interferes with the smooth operation of the mouse, causing the cursor to skip and stutter across the screen.

My borrowed mouse had a bad case of the Shakies ’n’ Skippies, so I opened ’er up.

Gaaaaah. There must’ve been pounds of black grachitz in there, forming a thick incrustation over all the rolling surfaces. Normally, I’d attack the crud with an alcohol-moistened cotton swab, but here it was laid on thick enough to be chipped off with a fingernail. I felt a little disgusted doing it; it was so much like picking one’s nose. Hunting Mouse-Boogers.

I was tempted to leave a note alongside the little heap of Mouse-Droppings, something on the order of, “Check out all the crap I found in your frickin’ mouse, dude!” But that would have been nékulturny. Unprofessional. And too much fun.

At home, of course, I have my own solution to the Mouse Crap problem: I use a laser mouse. Wireless, to boot.

Have you given your mouse an enema lately?

THE GONIFS OF HOLLYWOOD

A gonif, I should explain to the Yiddish-Impaired, is a thief. Hollywood is full of ’em these days - no surprise - but these days, their main stock-in-trade is ideas.

The Missus and I were enjoying a few draughts from the Glass Teat this evening when Fox showed a promo for their upcoming new series New Amsterdam.

We looked at each other. The story, about an Immortal Guy who lives in New York City, seemed strangely familiar.

Let’s just take a look at the description from the Fox Broadcasting Company website, shall we?

NEW AMSTERDAM is the story of a New York homicide detective unlike any other. He is brilliant, mysterious, reckless, magnetic, unknowable. And he has a profound secret – he is immortal...

...Amsterdam has found [immortality] to be a mixed blessing. Over the course of three centuries, he’s experienced endless adventure and honed his many talents. But everyone Amsterdam meets must leave him in time; lovers and children die while he remains young.

Having witnessed its entire history from colonial outpost to mega-metropolis, John Amsterdam is the living embodiment of New York City. He and the island of Manhattan are now part and parcel of each other...

Gee, this sounds a lot like a book both I and She Who Must Be Obeyed have read within the past several years: Forever, by Pete Hamill.

What possible similarities could there be?

Well, the main character in Forever is an Irishman, one Cormac O’Connor, who travels to America and is given immortality by an African priestess for having saved the life of an enslaved prince. The immortality comes with a price: Cormac can never leave Manhattan Island. In New Amsterdam, John Amsterdam is given Life Eternal by a spell cast by a Native American girl whom he saves by interposing himself between her and a deadly sword blow. He cannot die...until he finds True Love. (It never hurts to have a Politically Correct Backstory.) Forever starts about a century later than New Amsterdam, but there seems to be too many similarities to ignore...in particular, the especial connection between the (respective) heroes and the island of Manhattan.

I will be very interested to see whether Pete Hamill ever receives a scintilla of credit for the TV show. I suspect not; and I further suspect that he would have a legitimate cause of action in that event.

This smacks of the recent film Idiocracy, and its complete lack of acknowledgement of any influence from Cyril Kornbluth’s classic SF short story “The Marching Morons.” The remarkable similarities in major plot points between Idiocracy and “The Marching Morons” were the topic of a post by Yours Truly some time ago. Mike Judge’s failure to credit Kornbluth is reprehensible.

Is this a new trend? Are things in Hollywood not loathsome enough, with studios recycling old ideas in a ridiculous orgy of Sequel- and Prequelitis? Is outright plagiarism now to be the Order of the Day?