Today's Lesson: How Not Admitting You Were Wrong Can Bite You

Why?  Why why why do I live in America?  Why?

Don't take me the wrong way, it's not that I don't like living in America, it's that I should be living in the United States of Columbia, shouldn't I?  Shouldn't all we Americans be called "Columbians?"  We've been taught for centuries that America was discovered by Christopher Columbus.  In 1492.  When he sailed the ocean blue. 

Never mind that that's not entirely true, he was the first mainstream European to reach what is now known to be the "Americas" and tell a lot of people about it.  Why didn't mapmakers start calling the new continents "Columbia?"  That's usually how it worked.  You land on it first, you tell people about it, they call it you.  So what gives with the continents in the Western Hemisphere?


Waldseemuller map detail.



Many people know that the continents are named after Amerigo Vespucci, who landed in South America five years after Columbus.  The first map to use the word "America" was made by Martin Waldseemuller in Germany, in 1507.  He'd seen some letters from Vespucci from a decade earlier, which described the many wonders of the new world.  The letters were forgeries, but Waldseemuller plopped in "America" on his map.  Fortunately, the forged letters only enhanced his reasoning and weren't the only reason.

See, Columbus had, until his dying breath, refused to accept (or perhaps admit) that he hadn't succeeded at his original goal - to find India and Asia.  Rather than admit he'd failed, and accept the pretty astouding accomplishment that he had in fact found entire new continents with amazing, flourishing new people and civilizations to destroy, he stubbornly claimed he had found India.  Thus, the long-used tag of "Indian" to our Native Americans.

It was Amerigo who, looking around South America five years after Christopher, said, "WTF...this is so not India.  I can't help but notice a severe lack of elephants.  This place is not only not India, it's not anywhere we've seen yet.  This is some new world."  Or something like that.  In Italian.  With many hand-gestures.

Since Columbus had stubbornly refused to admit he was wrong, and Vespucci had been the first to realize that the new continents were new continents, Waldseemuller named the place after Vespucci, and now, 500 years later, we live in the U.S.A instead of the U.S.C.  The only surviving print of the original Waldseemuller map was purchased from Germany in 2001 for ten million dollars, and is stored at the Library of Congress, where you can see...a copy of it.

 

Full 12-Panel Waldseemuller Map

If Columbus had been willing to admit he'd been incorrect about finding the Indies, everything might be different: we'd be using the Columbian Express Card, flying Columbian Airlines, singing "Columbia the Beautiful," and our grandparents would talk of how they dreamed of one day emigrating to the land of the free and living the Columbian dream.  But that's what you get for being stubborn and refusing to believe you could be wrong, even in the face of true hard facts: America.

That's why I live in America!  It's a nicer name anyway.

(c) 2010 Scott Teel.  All rights reserved n' don't you forget it.

I Still Like This Joke

Didja hear about the dyslexic devil-worshipper who sold his soul to Santa?

Bah ha ha!

O Irony, O Irony, How Puny Are They Branches

I am not a [insert name of grumpy, fictitious Christmas-hating character here: Scrooge, Grinch, Mouse-with-glasses-from-that-odd-cartoon-with-the-big-clock-and-crappy-animation].  You can't be yourself and hate Christmas these days, you have to be "a" someone.  Although oddly, no one ever says "I'm not a Herod," even though he was undoubtedly the biggest Christmas-hater ever.

Anyway, I'm not.  It gets under my skin that Christmas is rolled out earlier every year, but everyone says that and it still gets earlier.  The Christmas season is an actual season long now, and soon it will start the day after Christmas like in Whoville.  It's tiring.  It makes Christmas wear out it's welcome.  It's too much of a good thing.

And I'm not one who overanalyzes things that aren't really meant to be looked at so closely, except when I am, which is probably a lot.  Like, say, watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and finding fault with the shape of Hermie's dental tools when I already have accepted that a flying lion cares enough about imperfect toys (now known as "seconds") to purchase, develop, and maintain an island for them where they can be miserable without being watched.  It's stupid of me, and I do it.

This isn't like that.  I love A Charlie Brown Christmas.  Fifty years after it was written, I still laugh that Lucy never gets what she truly wants - real estate. It's endearing that the kids who did the voices had been purposely taught English slightly incorrectly and wooden.  As in, "What do you want?  For Christmas Charlie Brown?"  It's cute.  It became a hallmark of Charlie Brown animated shows.  If you want your kids to be a Charlie Brown voice-over actor, you need to start early - begin erasing any correct diction they know before age three or you'll be way behind.

A Charlie Brown Christmas is pretty blunt when hitting you over the head with its meaning: Christmas of the 1960s was too commercial.  The Grinch also bluntly says this, but Charlie Brown actually says this, in dialogue, more than once.

And what does Charlie Brown (everyone always uses his full name, no one ever calls him simply "Charlie") do to fight the consumerism all around him?  Yeah, he buys a pathetic little real Christmas tree and everyone else hates it.  In the end, everyone else gives it a little love and "spruces" it up (oh YES!  Is it possible no one else has ever made that joke?  I know.  It's not possible). 



It's absolutely clear in its message - Christmas is too commercial and the little pathetic tree is Charlie Brown's attempt to overcome greed and the "buy buy buy" mentality.  That was fifty years ago, and we've taken the message to heart.

So - and I'm not the brightest so I can't be the only one to notice this, someone must have writen about it already - the irony that the little anti-consumerism symbol Christmas tree from A Charlie Brown Christmas is now available as a fake tree for purchase from retailers for as much as $23.99 is so pungent that the Sphinx can smell it.  And I mean that in the sense that the Sphinx is made of stone and can not smell anything at all, not because it doesn't have a nose, but I can see how you could have misinterpreted that.

Here it is.

Charlie Brown literally walks through and rejects a lot full of fake trees before choosing the little tree.  He goes out of his way to avoid commercialism and phoniness.  And today you can be a consumer and purchase a phony copy of the tree!  For Christmas. 

This tree represents the television special that represents the opposite of everything the tree represents.  It has become its own anti-matter and annihilated itself so now neither the fake tree nor the Christmas special ever existed, and therefore neither does this blog you didn't just read, and therefore writing anything further is pointless, except to mention that my first reaction to the fake tree was that I kinda wanted one.

(c) 2010 Scott Teel.  All rights reserved.

He Fell For It

Well, you've seen the t-shirts and bumper stickers that say "Join the Dark Side...we have cookies."  It looks like Santa, the goodest man on earth, has finally decided flying around the world bartering toys for cookies each year while overseeing a massive number of toy-production employees, not to mention a coal-mining operation that is now unable to keep up with demand (forcing him to negotiate coal from China to meet his needs) has decided to give in and join the Dark Sideto get his cookies free.

Which is cool.  We welcome Santa and note that he's had decades of experience terrifying children in malls!

(c)2010 Scott Teel.  All rights reserved.  Photo from sketchysantas.com.

Let's Stop Poisoning Our Dogs and Cats, Okay?

That was a dramatic title, I know. Too late now, I posted it already. But I’m not kidding, since I’m talking about Frontline and Advantix and such. This isn’t some crazy blog claiming fake things about Purdue chickens or whatever, there are resource links below and you can find more info on it. There’s a safer alternative! http://www.cedarcidestore.com/cedarproducts.html.

After using spot-on flea and tick preventatives (Frontline, Advantix, BioSpot) on my dog and our family dog before her, I learned that there are a lot of concerns about them being toxic (possibly very) and not a good thing to be putting on our animals. Spot-ons work by absorbtion into the blood through the skin, and what they basically do is make the dog’s blood into poison that kills any fleas or ticks that bite them. Yeah, the flea has to actually bite them first and suck out blood.

I never knew that. I guess I'm stupid, but thought the stuff managed to work its way around the skin and warded fleas off. If I’d known I was making Mabel’s blood into a POISON, I never ever would have used it on her. I wonder now if my use of Frontline may even have been a part of her death and it eats me up. No, it doesn’t affect all dogs terribly, but still…how do we know if it will until it’s too late?


The EPA is even investigating spot-on pesticides in this report: http://www.epa.gov/pesticides/health/petproductseval.html

 Which states:

• EPA found that the products could be used safely but that some additional restrictions are needed. EPA’s team of veterinarians learned that most incidents were minor, but unfortunately there were some pet deaths and “major incidents” reported. The Agency learned that the most commonly affected organ systems were dermal, gastrointestinal, and nervous.

“Could be used safely BUT” isn’t good enough for me. Sure, the report isn’t saying these treatments are terrible, horrible, awful, no good, very bad things, but they’re only starting the real investigating NOW. 

And you know how it goes with these types of announcements. Remember the dog food recall? First it’s only one type of one brand. Then it’s two types. Then it’s the whole brand, but others are fine. Then it’s one type of another brand too, but no indications that…what? Okay, it’s two whole brands to avoid. Three. Three whole brands, so don’t buy any of those four brands. Five. You know what, just let them catch some squirrels to eat. But be careful of those injected squirrel growth hormones!

 They let the info out in little crudules over weeks and months so you just get disgusted gradually instead of one giant disgust clump that might overflow into riots. Like the frog in a hot pot of water story: toss him in while its boiling and he jumps out. But put him in cold water and turn the heat up gradually and he doesn’t even notice how bad the situation has gotten and then he croaks (all right, he buys the farm. Pun haters). Also, spot-on treatments haven’t had to comply with pre-market studies to prove they’re safe as of yet. AAAAAIIIEEEEEEEE!


But there's also a safe, organic, flea and tick deterrent available called “Best Yet.” It uses cedar oil, “nature’s pest deterrent.” The stuff is basically a natural miracle, and is explained in this video from their site:





Cedarcide (the company that makes Best Yet) is a safe, natural way to control just about everything. This stuff kills almost immediately – the longest time a flea lived after a spritz was 41 seconds – and kills fleas, ticks, mites, mosquitos, ear mites, lice, silverfish, and works on Bedbugs so quickly and easily that it’s almost crazy they’re even considered a problem. It’s available for personal insect spray, in granules, as a fogger, as a pet flea and tick preventative, as a non-toxic deck stain, and more.

The only side effect appears to be that things sprayed with the stuff smell nice. There appears to be no reason to ever use any toxic insect repellent or pesticide again for nearly any insect.

 

Here’s the website for Cedarcide and Best Yet. It’s available from many carriers, including Amazon.

http://www.cedarcidestore.com/cedarproducts.html

I encourage you to look further into this and check out the cedarcide website, and any others. On Amazon, it rates as 5 stars with over 5,000 reviews, which is unheard of. I’ve looked into it a bit, but I urge everyone with a pet (or bug problem) to look into it further, as I’ve only scratched the surface. From what I’ve seen and read, I would have bought it it for Mabel for sure. Anything is better than poisoning your pet’s blood.

I may even order the insect spray. If this stuff does even half of what it appears to do, it could put Raid and other toxic chemical insect sprays and repellents out of business. Just kidding, don’t worry, those companies have lobbyists to watch out for ‘em!

 

Please take a look and do what you feel is best for your pet. Don’t lose them prematurely to a chemical company.

(c) 2010 Scott Teel.  All rights reserved.

Another Halloween Lesson

Halloween has taught us a variety of important things. Don’t put a valuable candleholder in the pumpkin if you live in an area with any teenagers. Giving out fruit will ensure your home is TP’d. Apples floating in a bucket are not as easy to bite as at first it seems (they bounce away off your teeth). The younger the trick-or-treater, the more doped up on Xanax they will appear to be (“Tik-Tea,” they mutter, and after getting candy, “Tha,” as they stare at you a little longer than is comfortable while slowly turning to walk off).

And once again, Halloween reveals its teaching prowess. Actually, it taught this decades ago, but most people have yet to learn it. I came across the costume below in a consignment/antique store.

 

If you don’t see any issues with the package above, please get yourself a “word a day” calendar, or just read a new word from the dictionary each day. Or just watch The Family Guy, you’ll learn definitions for both those words within three episodes.

One might also be concerned that this costume, according to its tag, is for “drum majorette.” Since there’s no superhero I know of named “Drum Majorette,” the fact that the costume includes a blonde plastic mask is confusing, since there’s no specific face for a drum majorette. Perhaps in the ‘60s when this costume was produced, drum majorettes were all blonde creamy-colored girls with quarter-inch-thick eyelashes, but more likely it was just a pre-determined blank set that was painted into a variety of famous stars like Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Pocahontas, Generic Nurse, Susan B. Anthony, etc. Drum majorette was probably a generic idea that came with a mask just because the kit came with a mask, so here you go.

 What Halloween teaches us here is that PROOFREADERS ARE INVALUABLE. Without them, you will inevitably look stupid. Spell-checking software will not save you from mishaps like the one above. I saved my former company from embarrassing typos countless times, yet when I left, they decided not to hire a replacement for me. A company that is the largest of its kind in the world, with four major product brands, that creates and prints its own packages, catalogs, and promotional materials decided it doesn’t need a proofreader, the product managers are good enough.

I’d been lobbying for adding another proofreader to help with the enormous workload. To my knowledge, four years later, they do not have a proofreader. That, in my opinion, is just like the costume above.


(c) 2010 Scott Teel. All rights reserved.

Kids Back When

The movie Grease was on TV last night.  At risk to the world's view of my masculinity, I actually kinda like Grease.  And even a few other musicals.  I don't however, care for Barbra Streisand all that much, which puts me well over the line into heterosexuality.  Babs is in the DNA of gay men for some reason.  If you could examine the genetic code of a gay male from one end to the other, somewhere in the middle you'd find:

G C C A C G U A U U C A C G U C C C A C G U F U N N Y G I R L C U A A C G U C A A C

That's pretty solid proof that being gay is genetic, and not a choice, if you ask me.

But back to Grease, the thing I notice that is so interesting is that Grease was written in the '70s, and it was a musical about the '50s, and it's fascinating to see how different things were in another, even recent, era.  Most surprising is that people attended high school well into their forties back then.  I mean, a couple of the Pink Ladies would be considered Cougars if the T-bird guys they were chasing weren't already using PolyGrip.

I used to see High Schoolers as adults until I became one.  Then I was like, "Really?  We're high school seniors now?  Why aren't we like the ones I remember from my childhood.  As we move on, high schoolers look more and more like Junior High Schoolers - Middle Schoolers for you more hip, modern people - they don't look anything like they're nearing adulthood yet.  Seniors look to be about 13 these days.  If our 13-year-olds are seniors today, and I was a senior at age 17, then it stands to reason that in the 1950s, people went to high school until they were near middle age.  For proof, just look at the kids in Grease.

(c) 2010 Scott Teel.  All rights reserved.

Oh Boy.

I procrastinate. When it comes to work or writing, I usually put things off until I have absolutely no choice but to perform the task due, lying to myself that I work better under pressure. With prescription refills, I act like world governments do with endangered animals. I’ll let the population of the species Protonix in my medicine cabinet dwindle to a lone pair before I decide that I really should take action, and call the pharmacy to return them from near-extinction, only to poach them back to the brink in 29 days.

About six weeks ago, my keychain died on me. I'd push the buttons to lock and unlock my car doors, but nothing would happen. The battery was dead, so I switched it with the other keychain the dealership had given me.

"Great," I thought, knowing I would put off getting a replacement battery until this one was dead, too. "Now I have no backup keychain. If this one goes, I'll be stuck with no way to get in the car."

Tonight, I passed a house and noticed a woman getting into her car. It was an older car, and to get inside, the woman pushed a metal stick into her door and twisted it, which magically unlocked the door's mechanism somehow, physically.

It was her key. I realized with shock, six full weeks after wondering what I'd do if my keychain battery died, that I also have a key to my car on that keychain and that it will in fact open the door. I was horrified at the realization: I had forgotten I could use my car key to open my car door. I did not have automatic locks on my cars until around ten years ago. And of course, as far back as I can recall, my parents used keys to get into their vehicles.

So for 26 of my 36 years, I used my key or watched others use keys to get into cars. In eight years I had forgotten that cars could be opened without the use of a push-button. That bothers me. I don't even remember the last time I opened a car with the actual key.

What other simple, possibly essential things have I forgotten? And what will I unnecessarily forget that I know now? Will I someday be stranded in a cabin somewhere, starving, cold,staring at a fully functional phone with a rotary dial and think "Damn!  This stupid thing's broken!"

For that matter, what have we as a society or civilization forgotten? If there's some huge power problem or a megatastrophe and the world loses all electronic systems for months, years, decades, or centuries, will we be able to survive? Will we have to rediscover all the simple things we just haven't done in a while?  How to make fire?  How to irrigate a field?  Long division?  How to tell if a thunderstorm is approaching?

At least our motionless, rusting automobiles will still have one use: they'll be able to provide us shelter from that thunderstorm we won't be expecting, if we can remember how to get the car door open.

Have you ever suddenly realized some simple thing that you'd totally forgotten about?
 
(c) 2010 Scott Teel.  All rights reserved.

I was at the walk-in clinic/lab the other day to get blood drawn for a test and noticed a new, nicely illustrated sign hanging in several areas instructing anyone with a cough to wear a surgical mask or:

"--Cough into elbow, not hands."
"--Use sanitizer to clean hands."

In that order.  Cough into elbow, sanitize hands.  Not even addressing that you can't cough into your elbow, you cough into your inner-arm-side of the elbow, the crook of the arm.  I had a red pen in my pocket and wanted to write "and sanitize elbows (crook of arms), too, where all the germs are now," but I had a needle in my right arm, so I couldn't.  My normal writing is hard enough to read; left-handed it looks like a photograph of microscopic tapeworm larvae.

(c) Copyright 2010 Scott Teel.  All rights reserved.

The Future Will C U L8TR

So The Library of Congress has announced it will be storing all Twitter tweets, going back to 2006's original tweet, "jack," for posterity.  The Library of Congress.  Feels the need.  To save every tweet twitted.  As a gift to the future of mankind.  The reason mankind hasn't come back in time to thank us isn't that they don't have time machines - they do - it's that they don't want to.

I know I'm not the only one who must see this as a ridiculous waste of time.  Why does the Library of Congress think humans in the future will want to see these things?

The library that holds the writings of 23 presidents, Jefferson's personal library, The Gutenberg Bible, the 1507 map that first labeled America, rough drafts of the Declaration of Independence, and uncountable other rare, precious, and important documents, which will now be joined by tweets such as, oh, say:

• "bored. wsh i hd a ps2. xbox sux"
• "on bus. tivo dwts so i can c beginin."
• "fk u i h8 u ur a ass"
• "jst saw seth green on st. short!"
• "eating a sandwich with ned."
• "thnk we shud c other peeple."
• "omg!!!!! poo on flr in subwy wtf!!! dens stped in it, lmfao!! hes nahc! so gross & funy lol!! gmab wwdt pshdd? ttyl byob!!!"

Tweets will be stored in Main Tweeting Room (formerly American Folklife Center)

Hopefully, people researching our era in the future will just give up after they read a couple billion.  As of today, 5 million tweets are sent out every day.  I hope the future can't understand why we'd want to save announcements that we're at the hair place or just trimmed our toenails, because that'll mean this fad passed and we realized we don't need to tell everyone exactly what we're doing every minute of the day.

It'll mean the future is wiser and understands life more, knows what's interesting and what's mind-numbingly boring, knows that this nonstop chatter about nothing isn't worth paying attention to.  Basically, if there's to be any hope for the future, they'll be just like me.

@SCOTT is sitting around waiting for a package and had some time to write a blog which is much more valuable than twi    *

*Address made up.  I have no Twitter account.

(c) 2010 Scott Teel.  All rights reserved.

On The Toilet

Potty humor isn't always about farts n' feces, as hilariously welcome as those topics are (see blogs below regarding dogs with gas and poo-covered cars - and probably several others I can't recall right now).

I once encountered a spatula on top of the toilet at a car-repair shop, the heavy kind of spatula you'd use with a barbecue, and never asked what it was there for, knowing that the answer would be nowhere near as entertaining as what I was already imagining.

Two weeks ago, I was at a local spiritual retreat center for the morning to hear a speaker, and when I snuck into the one-person bathroom halfway through, I noticed a sticky note on top of the toilet tank with the following handwritten on it: PLEASE GIGGLE THE HANDLE.

I don't know about anyone else, but that note alone was enough to make me giggle the handle before I left the bathroom.

(c) 2010 Scott Teel.  All rights reserved.

The Downfall of America (No, Not The Health Bill)

Okay, America has lost any dignity it had, no one will ever look up to us again.  You wanna know why?  You wanna know why?  Because Buzz Aldrin is going to be on this season of Dancing With the Stars.  Yeah, the second man on the moon is going to be on Dancing With the Stars.

Why?  Why would someone with such a distinguished history of bravery and discovery, someone who put our flag on another celestial object, an American and world hero, stoop to reality television?  This is what he's going to go out on?  Hmm...he stood on the lunar surface and watched earthrise for the first time in human history, but now he's going to samba against Kate Gosselin.  No...I won't!  I refuse!  I won't make any "he thought it was 'Dancing Among The Stars'" jokes!

The worst part is, more people will probably remember him for this than for standing on the moon.  Buzz Aldrin: second astronaut on the moon; first astronaut on Dancing With the Stars.  Neal Armstrong will probably be on next season, in an ironic twist.

(c) 2010 Scott Teel.  All rights reserved.

BREAKING NEWS!

I overheard this literally just now, here in the Tompkins County Public Library, in Ithaca.  The man is in the magazine reading section, on the other side of the library.  He was yelling (not in a figurative, "inside-voice" kinda way, but in a gym-class "I'M OPEN!" kinda way) into either a cell phone or an imagined cell phone. 

Ahem...let me get this right, the tone and subtle under-context he was using:

"WHA-IT?  WHA-IT?  I'M MEE-'IN HIM.  NO. MEE-'IN HIM LAYTA.  WHA-IT?  I'M AT THE LIBERRY NOW!  I'M AT THE LIBERRY!"

He actually yelled "liberry" in the liberry itself.

Now back to editing for me, and I hope you have a berry berry nice day.

(c)2010 Scott Teel.  All rights reserved.

Today's Advice: On Cults

Join a cult if you like...but practice safe sects.


(c) 2010 Scott Teel.  All rights reserved.

Funny "peculiar" or funny "very peculiar?"

People often say something is “funny” meaning it’s “peculiar,” but when something is very peculiar they don’t say it’s “hysterical;” for something only a bit peculiar, they don’t say it’s “amusing.”

“Funny” adjectives don’t vary with the amount of peculiarity, which is...ya know...peculiar.

(c)2010 Scott Teel.  All rights reserved.

Not Even As An Urn

I saw a vase at Kohl’s with a little label on the bottomish side, and always look to see if they say "Made in China," which they almost always do.

This one was made in China, but that was a different label.  This label read: “Do not use with food. May poison food.”

WHAT?  May poison FOOD?  Is that really the warning on this thing?  Poison.  Poison?  No.  No...there can not be a warning on a product in an American department store chain with the word "POISON" on it, okay?  No.  No. 

But there it was.  Look, I don’t care what I needed a vase for, if it poisons food, I don’t want it in my friggin' house at all!  How badly do we in America need cheap vases that we’re willing to settle for poisonous ones of ANY kind?

The worst part, or maybe it's just equally worse to the other parts, is that the manufacturer and the store know the vase may be poisonous, but instead of changing whatever is the poisonous part, they just slapped a label on it and put it on the shelf, knowing, KNOWING, that many Americans either won't look at the label or will read it and shrug like Homer Simpson, "meh, what am I gonna eat outta it anyway?" and buy it.  That's who we are now.  We don't care if it's poison, as long as it's CHEAP poison.  "I wouldn't pay more than $11.99 for something that's going to kill me.  I can get killed cheaper than that at Wal-Mart."

I mean...I mean...it's a VASE!  It's like, clay and water and maybe some glazes of color!  You'd actually have to TRY, you'd have to deliberately ADD hazardous chemicals to this product for no other reason than to make it poisonous, to MAKE it poisonous!  What are they up to?  Remember the dog food?  Was that unforgivable offense just a trial run?

Not for me, I'll get my vases at the Handwork Gallery, where they're locally handmade and guaranteed not to kill me if I accidentally brush a kernal of my Monsanto genetically modified corn against them.  Hey, at least Monsanto has enough respect for my intelligence to deny it's trying to off me.  To my face.

(c) 2010 Scott Teel.  All rights reserved.

100% what?

I saw a bumper sticker on an oversized black pickup truck that said "100% Jesus." That was it.

100% Jesus? Is Jesus, like, an ingredient in cereal now? "Fortified with vitamins C, D, and 100% RDA of Jesus!" What cereal would that be? Christ Crispies? ("One bowl and you're ready for the day before the cock crows three times!") Does Ivory soap now contain 99.44% Jesus?

Maybe the truck has a new type of fuel system that runs entirely on Jesus? Instead of keeping Jesus on the dashboard, now one could put Jesus in the gas tank? Would that have environmental consequences? Would there be a byproduct produced or health hazards? In 20 years would we hear reports like "Over the last two decades, we've seen a 70% increase in stigmata, yet the Republicans still insist that this is not caused by Jesus fuel systems, but is a natural phase the earth goes through every so often."

You think gasoline costs a lot per gallon, wait'll you see how much a gallon of Jesus costs. I mean, there's only so much Jesus to go around, and he's already being used daily in communion wafers and wine. When you put it in your car, would you be allowed to say you were "pumping Jesus?" If your battery died, would you be able to revive it with a few sprinkles of gas? Or would you have to wait until judgment day, when all cars would return to life at once?  Wouldn't Jesus have enough to do without having to propel the world's vehicles, too.  "Aw come on," he'd complain, "what's wrong with solar or hydrogen? Can't you people do anything for yourselves?"  It'd be a pretty thorny issue.

(c) 2010 Scott Tel.  All rights reserved.

Mmmm...me...

Know what I just realized? If I could develop a chocolate-scented cologne, I’d have the womenfolk all over me like white on rice. Don’t women love chocolate?  Isn’t that the stereotype? You don’t think a guy smelling like an “O-Henry” bar would draw the women like moths to a lightbulb?

What the heck is wrong with moths anyway, that they keep clamoring around light? They don’t clamor to the moon when there’s no light, do they? What do the moths way out in the woods do? Maybe when you die you actually become a moth, and that’s why people report being drawn to a bright light. There’s really no heaven, it’s just a GE soft-white 40-watt porch light that we all flap towards.



Note: I looked into it and moths apparently use the moon's light as a navigation aid, and since they don't know there's such a thing as a Sylvania candelabra bulb, they assume any light must be the moon.  But the moon is far away, and always in the sameish spot to them, while a light bulb is nearby; they can see it on their left, then their right, then their above, all within seconds.  They keep thinking it's the moon and that they must need to correct their position to it...which changes again a second later...requiring an adjustment...etc.  It confuses them and they end up flying in little circles around the light, bonking into it.  Bonk bonk.

That's fine.  But since the scientists who developed that idea aren't moths, and neither am I, I would hold that my theory is just as valid and feasible, so be nice to those annoying, spinning moths; you don't want to smash someone's grandma and ruin her eternal reward.  Well, you shouldn't want to.

(c) 2010 Scott Teel.  All rights reserved.

Presidents' Day

Can it be Presidents' Day again already? Seems like we just celebrated it and took our decorations down last week! Of course, the stores had their Presidents' Day decorations up for sale in October as usual, so it seems like it's a longer Presidents' Day Season than it really is.  They put that stuff out earlier and earlier every year.

I wonder if, for former presidents who are still alive, it's like having another father's day or something. Do you get a tie or a new drill maybe? What if you know a former president? What do you get him? A t-shirt that says "World's Best Former President?"  Finding a card must be hard. You can't just go to the President's Cards section of Hallmark.

Maybe you get a more traditional gift if you're a former Prez, like your kids run into the room and jump on your bed and wake you up and give you breakfast in bed that they made for you, even though they're in their sixties. Sure, Jeb burned the toast again, and George W. put prune juice in the cereal instead of milk, but they're your kids and they tried their best.

(c)2010 Scott Teel.  All rights reserved.

New! The Toyota Guano!

'God save thee, ancient Mariner,

From the fiends that plague thee thus!—

Why look'st thou so?'—"With my crossbow

I shot the Albatross."

                                                               --Samuel Taylor Coleridge
                                                                  The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

As the owner of a Toyota Matrix, I’ve been paying attention to all of the recent recall news on Toyota’s brands. I have always praised Toyota, never had anything but good to say about my car or the company, until these latest revelations hit the fan. It’s bad enough that basically all of their top lines needed a recall fix for accelerator-sticking, and the Prius has been recalled for brake problems, but recent news about the company knowing for years of the problems, being warned by All-State insurance of issues, and the slow way they handled actually addressing the problem once it was already public, not to mention the CEO’s lack of much remorse or caring when he finally did get around to it has really gotten Toyota’s reputation a good reaming.

How bad is it? I was in the parking lot at the mall yesterday, finishing a phone conversation in the car, when another Toyota pulled in next to me. I was gobsmacked at the sight of this vehicle, and said loudly into the phone, “Oh my God, I’ve never seen to much bird poo in my life!” I was so absolutely stunned that I said it again, “That’s a lot of bird poo!” The young woman getting out of the car’s passenger side glanced at me as I yelped that.  She heard me.

But I don’t think I had anything to apologize for, I was simply agog (“gobsmacked” and “agog” in one blog, hooray!) and to prove it, I took the photo below.

That is one poo-ass covered car, as they say in London’s Royal Society. And the picture doesn’t even do it justice. I mean, the darker splotches kind of vanish into the paint job in this image, in person it showed about a third more bird splatterings than appear here.

Of course, I immediately started trying to piece together what had happened here. Even nature seemed angry that Toyota had failed us, and was letting the company know, passing judgment by passing excrement. But my Toyota hadn’t been targeted, so maybe there was more to it. Was this car in a Hitchcock movie? What would make a flock of birds so angrily target one specific vehicle?  Maybe it ran over a seagull named “Gotti?” How do you so utterly piss off a flock of birds?

A family curse, was my best guess and secret hope. The owner’s ancestor had been the guy who killed the last passenger pigeon in the wild 120 years ago. The passenger pigeon, that once darkened skies for hours or days, blotting out the sun from horizon to horizon – a nighttime composed of fast-flying eight-inch birds in such unbelievable numbers they at one point made up an incredible forty percent of all birds in America, with some flocks numbering in the billions. One single flock could be over a mile wide and 300 miles long! There were so many, it couldn’t be possible for man to kill them all off, ever, and we did it in only 100 years.

And they say we don’t have ambition.

We knew they were vanishing, and we knew it was our fault. But even knowing it was the last flock, people thought only of making money right now, for themselves, not thinking about a species or even themselves next year, when they’d have nothing left to catch, and in 1900 the last wild passenger pigeons were wiped out. It makes me wonder about today’s fishing industry, which seems to be doing the same exact thing to itself. My recommendation to fishermen is: start training for your new job now! Some of you are down to fishing slime eels, with nothing else left to catch, and once they’re gone, you’ll be all ready to start your new job (I suggest logging, ‘cause there’s like totally no way we could cut down every tree in the world).

We don’t know who it was that actually killed the very last wild passenger pigeon, but like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, who is cursed for killing the albatross, this fellow and his offspring were smited with…smited?...smitten with…no, I like smited…smited with a hex! Henceforth, always would they be crappethed upon by the birds of the sky, and also penguins and ostriches if they managed to get beneath them. The curse had followed his descendents for 110 years and would keep following for a hundred hundred hundred more. I kinda didn’t want my car parked so close to theirs.

I made my way into Target, keeping my eyes out for the girl I’d seen, her red sweater and straight, blonde hair and remarkably, she and two other girls walked right past me.  College girls, buying a pole lamp. Finally I couldn’t take it any more. “Excuse me,” I said. “I was parked next to you when you pulled in…yours is the car that’s got all the…”

Oh --I hadn’t thought this far ahead and now I was stuck. How do you say “That’s your car plastered with bird shit, isn’t it?” without sounding rude? Is there a nice way to ask someone that question and not seem snarky or judgmental? Still, the sentence was already in play. I couldn’t just say “bird stuff on it” or I’d sound like an idiot.

“…bird stuff on it, right?”  Idiot.

“Yah.” The girls nodded.

“That’s amazing!” I gushed. “Do you mind if I ask how it happened?”

And they told me. And it was so boring. “Crows,” the car’s owner said. “Where I park there are a lot of crows that sit there.”

I thanked them and moved on, realizing that this was likely not one massive bird attack, but the accumulation of a couple weeks, most likely. She just hadn’t cared to get the car washed, or hadn’t driven it in some time. It was just crows, sitting in a tree over her car. That was it. I wanted more, some spectacular story of an attack, with splattering thuds raining down. Nope. Crows in a tree. Girl to cheap to have the car washed or too rich to care about the paint damage. I sighed in disappointment, but there’s hope, because if life has taught me anything, it’s this one thing: people are liars. And I know there are no more passenger pigeons and it’s her fucking fault.

And I had done a hellish thing,

And it would work 'em woe:

For all averred, I had killed the bird

That made the breeze to blow.

The very deep did rot: O Christ!

That ever this should be!

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs

Upon the slimy sea.

(c) 2010 Scott Teel.  All rights reserved.

Y-sexual

The letter "Y" -- the bisexual of the alphabet. It can be a consonant, it can be a vowel, it goes both ways. They kept it quiet on The Letter People, but someday you'll see "Y is bi" on Sesame Street. Might be a while, but you will. And Y not?

Whoever really really really smelt it...

I read in a little factoid book that a German Shepherd’s sense of smell is more than 30,000 times more acute than a human’s. I knew dogs had a great sense of smell and all, but Christ, that’s not even a competition! We suck at smelling! I can’t even imagine smelling certain things 30,000 times more acutely than I do now. A skunk sprayed something near my house one night and it actually woke me up. An odor actually was so unbearable that my brain got frightened enough to wake me about it.

The only other time I was awakened by a smell was when I was pet-sitting two wonderful dogs for a friend of mine. I was staying at their house while the family was away, and the dogs were used to sleeping in the bed. One night, I woke up to a strong odor; there was a gas leak. And it was coming from the ass of Jake, the basset/beagle mix. Worse, I awoke with my head turned, staring into…I didn’t know. It was familiar, but my brain needed a second to figure it out, since I’d never seen an anus so closely before.

Dog farts have a distinct stink, but this one was an award-winner. I gasped and tried to sit up, but I gagged on the funky pong hanging in the air and needed to roll sideways off the bed before I could take in enough oxygen to yelp, “Jake! Out! Out of the room! You wanna to go outside?” I turned on the ceiling fan and let Jake and Mabel outside for a couple minutes, in case Jake was having issues. It took a while to clear the room enough for life to survive inside it, when we could all go back to bed. I wondered what I’d fed Jake that had led to a gas attack unlike any since the trenches of World War One.

It brings me back to dogs’ noses. Why, since they have such a spectacularly acute sense of smell, were Jake and Mabel not giving a hoot about something that my simple sense of smell found so repugnant it actually awoke me as if a potential emergency might be afoot? My brain wakes me up at night when I have to pee or when something seems terribly wrong that I might need to deal with or flee. Two dogs with me act as if they’re breathing air from the Swiss Alps. Humans have evolved over time to be repulsed by the smell of poo, rotten food, corpses, Rush Limbaugh, because those things are dangerous to us and can make us sick or dead. But dogs routinely put their noses right up to a fresh turd, will gladly eat a rotting squirrel or a piece of old cheese. These things just don’t seem to be a danger to them, so the smell isn’t considered so horrendous, perhaps.

Not that the smells are exactly pleasant to them, either. And dogs are not above pranks, as our dog Tiffany showed when I was a teen. Tiffany would walk into a room, look at us, and then leave. And then the stink would hit us. Tiffany had felt a fart coming, gotten up, walked over to the room we were in, cut one, and walked away. It happened enough times to rule out chance. She knew what she was doing. She didn’t feel like sitting in the pewey cloud, but why waste it, so she crop-dusted us, and I think she got a kick out of it.

I was maybe 10 feet down the aisle from my sister, in a toy store not too long ago, when a nasty shitty smell assaulted me. I crunched my nose and said, “Oh, KIM, Jesus! What the hell?”

Kim’s eyes widened almost fearfully, as if she’d seen the ghost of a Bigfoot. “How did you smell that so fast?” she stuttered. “I just did it…you smelled it all the way over there just as it came out, it couldn’t even have gotten to you that fast!”

“That’s how bad it was,” I said. “It was so awful it warped time. You farted into the future.”

We still remember that and laugh about it, the time my sister farted into the future. I wonder, knowing my primitive nose smelled it before it was even created, how soon Jake or Mabel or Tiffany would have noticed that nasty in the toy store aisle. They might not even have come into the store with us with their sniffers. All three of those dogs are gone now, including Mabel, who ended up being my dog and almost never cut the cheese. I’d happily spend the rest of my life breathing a Jake-Level-Five haze to have them back.

(c) 2010 Scott Teel.  All rights reserved.

Today's Ponderables: Bananas

When someone goes crazy, we say they "went bananas." Why are bananas the fruit standard for craziness? How come no one ever "goes figs" or "went grapes?" "I told my dad I got an F in wood shop and he went pomegranites, man." It's always bananas. How did bananas become the insanity fruit?
Alternately, you could say someone went "ape shit," which is also slang for went "mad," or "crazy," so, you might surmise, it's not always a banana reference. But think! What do apes stereotypically eat? Bananas! Therefore, ape shit is made up primarily of bananas, so when someone went "ape shit," it's just another indirect reference to going bananas! Aha! And I believe apes eat nuts, too, so "going nuts" is also under the ape shit umbrella and connected to bananas!
I'm sensing conspiracy here...I don't know what this all means, but it'll make The DaVinci Code look like an episode of Dora the Explorer.
(c) 2010 Scott Teel. All rights reserved.

Not typical results

It troubles me at times to see “success examples.” For example, diet and weight-loss commercials always show people who had success with their system, or food, and it may be true. They usually have to quickly flash small print on the screen saying that the results of the person in the ad are “not typical,” that “results may vary,” and that the weight was lost by not only by using the advertised product or diet but also by exercising moderately 21 times per week, reducing total calories eaten normally by 2/3, making the 1/3 of calories eaten only the calories that come from water (I know…that’s the joke, get it?), being under the hourly care of a trainer, nutritionist, and physician, always eating while standing on a sensitive scale they’re forced to watch during meals, having gastric bypass surgery, and vomiting after each meal while undergoing therapy so as not to let it become a habit.


I don’t understand why we let companies get away with small print flicked for a quarter of a second onscreen and act as though that makes the whole advertisement honest. It’s misleading at least, since no one ever gets to read all those tiny words in that short time. The exception, for some reason, is ads for drugs, which spend 15 seconds telling you what the drug does and 45 seconds speedily listing the possible problems and side effects before telling you to ask your doctor about Zopretzyl.


I can’t figure that one out either. Tell my doctor what to prescribe for me? That’s his fucking job. Why are the drug companies advertising to me now? I can’t get the drugs without a prescription from the doctor anyway. I suppose they think I’ll watch a minute of stock-footage of people smiling, laughing, riding bikes, fishing, reading comfortably, enjoying life’s every drop while I hear “maycauseblurredvisioninsomniatiredness
excessiveurinationheartstoppagebloatinglossofheighteyediscolorationwhichmaybecomepermanentprematureagingimmatureaginglossofbreathing
hairytonguehypertensionhighbloodpressuredetachedpatellashollowedbonescancerdandruffhallucinationsdepressionattemptedsuicidesuccessfulsuicide
hairlosstoothlooseningsorethroatdisplasiaunbornparasitictwinvomitingweightgainorlossorneutralityamnesiapoorgrammarandinsomerarecases
death.  Pregnant women, children, or the elderly should not take Zopretzyl” and I’ll go up to my doctor’s office and tell him, “Doc, is Zopretzyl right for me?”

“No, you have a splinter,” he’d reply. “Why would you even ask about that? That’s a very risky drug that caused Psychotic Monkey Disease in the test animals. Which, as the name suggests, had never been seen in rabbits before. Not to mention the spontaneous limb detachment or the rectal reversal that trideathyl phoxycaloric fratricidol, which is what the company renamed Zopretzyl --”

“That’s the stuff, I want it,” I’d say.


Unfortunately, people probably actually do this. And insist. It doesn’t make sense; the doctor should be the one bringing up drugs, he’s the one who’s supposed to know the data on them and what might be best. Also unfortunately, I made up the name Zopretzyl since it sorta has the word “pretzel” in it, and sounds silly yet like a real drug (which must have at least one Z,Q, Y, or some combination), but now that I think about it, there might actually be one out there with that stupid name and I’ll probably get sued.

But I’m reading a book right now that gives “success stories” like those diet ads, yet doesn’t offer even any small type. According to the author, following her practices were successful for her and her family, and similar methods have succeeded for, so far, four or five people, three of whom are friends or relatives of hers. There are more throughout the book, so the number will go up to maybe 12 or 15, and sure, her methods might actually work. But we only hear about the success stories, not the failures. Few Hollywood megastars ever get to tell us what failed for them because whatever they did, it succeeded. I don’t usually get to see interviews in Entertainment Weekly with the 59-year-old Pharmacy cashier who wanted to make it at acting but didn’t. “I tried the same practices as I hear Meryl Streep say she used, every day, faithfully, and I failed at all of it.”

So how do I know if this author’s methods will work for me? I hear her success stories, but for each of those, how many failures are there who also tried similar methods? 1,000? 150? Maybe even none and everyone who tries it succeeds? The point is, there’s no way for me to know that, so giving me success stories makes it seem like the methods work, but it’s a tad misleading. “Hey, wow! It worked for these 14 people, so it must work!” Well…there are 6.5 billion people alive right now, so what percentage of those people who try it have success?

Obviously that’s harder to answer for an author of a system she’s promoting that has been used for decades before she even decided to try it herself. But non-information, info that is left out of statements, is used all the time for things and often sounds impressive if we don’t take a second to think about it. I’ve seen candy bars that say things like “Chocosaurus has 20% More Chocolate!” Sounds great to me…until I think, “20% more than what? Than it used to have? Than a competitor? Which competitor?” ‘Cause if it’s a carrot, that’s not all that impressive.

Oh Henri

Hang on...you change the letter "y" from the name "Henry" to an "i" and it changes the pronunciation, but NOT in the letter you changed. You go from "Hen-ree" to "On-ree." You change the "ree" part but the pronunciation changes in the "Hen" part. That's just stupid.

Lobster Launch with a Lobster Quote

“It is in the forgotten or neglected place that you will find the lobster.”
                                                                       
                                                           --Irish Expression