Little Blog Church Newsletter

Message from Reverend Nosh:Yesterday was Super sunday, one of the holiest days in the Little Blog Church of Copious Consumption. On that day we gathered in our homes and sportsbars to prepare and eat ritual foods, featuring the many foods of the Southwestern persuasion that glorify spice, representing the "spice of life". The most revered Super Sunday offering is, of course, the guacamole. As I reminded you last week, flock, we eat only of the Haas variety of avocado as the others are consumed by heathens and are unfit for our tables. The avocado is combined with chopped onion (or onion powder), chopped tomatoes, salt and black pepper. Some denominations of our faith accept chili peppers and cilantro. The latter ingredient is considered unpalatable by certain congregants and may be excluded. Remember, however, that he who would combine sour cream unto his guacamole shall be sent down with the white chocolate eaters and shall never enter the promised land. Finally, my friends, As we bow before the guacamole bowl, we are reminded by the scripture to dip but once lest we contaminate the offering.

The Twelve Weeks of Christmas

Anachronisms are things that are placed in the wrong time period
Are they referring to the Christmas decorations on the house down the street?
Tomorrow it will be February and these people still have the Nativity scene, electric snowman, the 10 foot blow up Pooh and Tigger. Maybe they are waiting until Wednesday - if Punxsutawny Phil sees his shadow, we have another six weeks of Christmas? Ooh, that reminds me, time to pull out the Groundhog Day video. Gotta watch Bill Murray and (sigh) Andie MacDowell.





Pooh in the hunny pot, all rights owned by Disney (ripped off from A.A. Milne)and Home De-pot Ugly Yard Decorations, Inc.

New Yorker State of Mind

For Hanukkah, Karen gave me The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker. Complete? Is that possible? Sure, the book is large and weighs only slightly less than a middle-schooler’s backpack, but it would have to be 5 times larger to include all the cartoons from the 80 year history of the magazine. However, inside the book is a set of two CD’s containing all 68,647 cartoons! I trust that the number is accurate, but I haven’t counted yet.

In fact, reading through the book was easy, but the concept of browsing through the entire CD is a bit overwhelming. If I read 20 cartoons every single day, I can finish in just under nine and a half years. Meanwhile, the New Yorker goes on, so Karen will have to buy me the 10 year supplement when I’m 60.And by then my failing eyesight and feeble mind will make it slower going.

For now, while I’m still spry, the CD’s are great because you can search by date, artist’s name or any of several key words that relate to a cartoon’s theme. They are in pdf format, though, so copying them and using them in a blog entry or Board of Directors report at work is not a simple task, which is as the New Yorker intended it. They are possessive about their intellectual property.

I’ve always been fond of the New Yorker cartoons. My mother had several cartoon collections, either “the best of” the New Yorker type or books of specific artists such as Peter Arno, who drew society people at cocktail parties, or Whitney Darrow, who drew all sorts of people. She had several book of Charles Addams cartoons, populated by odd characters, the most famous of which became the Addams Family. I guess I don’t really know if the books were bought by my mother or my father or by both together.

In any event, I ended up with them. I have read them all a few times each over the years. I learned a lot from them when I was young. They give some added context to the times the cartoons were drawn, revealing things about culture and history. They revealed a few other things too. New Yorker cartoons often contain cartoon nudity and sex. Since sources of visual information about such things were limited when I was a child (what with the scarcity of internet porn), those types of cartoons were of great interest to me then.

They became somewhat embarrassing a few years ago when my young daughter decided that New Yorker cartoon books were good bedtime entertainment. We had a lot of fun reading them together, especially the Addams books. In some of the others, though, I had to skip some pages or try to explain why that man was imagining that lady was naked.

The quality of the humor in the vast majority of the cartoons amazes me. There is so much wit there. A friend of mine at work also enjoys these cartoons and insists that we collaborate and submit some cartoons to the magazine. I’ll let you know if we come up with any that are worthy. Perhaps we’ll have some in the 10 year supplement edition when I’m 60 and can’t read them anymore.

Maybe when I get to that point, Allie will visit and read the cartoons to me at bedtime.

Friday Fun

A diversion.
You have to enter your age just because the website is sponsored by Christian Morlein beer. The game itself is clean, despite it's name.
This is a very popular game in Cincinnati and is spreading across the country. Couldn't they have comeup with a better name?

Plumber Man

Plumber man
working on my pipes
Don't bend over!
OH! Jesus Cripes!
Plumber tools
pulling down your pants
Forcing me to
avert my glance
Plumber man

I saw Lon-don and
I saw France
I saw some-one's
White un-der-pants
Plumber man
When will you
Shave your crack?
I saw beams of the
full moon rising
How wrong, how wrong!

Plumber man
working on my pipes
Don't bend over!
OH! Jesus Cripes!
Plumber tools
pulling down your pants
Forcing me to
avert my glance
Plumber man

I can tell you've tossed
a few brews down
Your beer belly's getting
big and round
Tends to push your Levis
too far down
I saw beams of the
full moon rising
How wrong, how wrong!

What I Learned About Maine

I like it there. I kept thinking what a nice place it would be to live - on the coast, of course. I had to force myself to think about what it would be like full of tourists in July or full of ice and snow in October through March.

The people are really nice. Granted, half the people we encountered were hotel or restaurant employees looking for a tip. Still, they were nicer than many similar tip-seekers I've encountered elsewhere. And all the non-tip-seekers were friendly and helpful too.

Maine has a statewide prohibition of smoking in bars and restaurants.

They also have many local breweries. I sampled a different beer with almost every dinner and they were good.

I read an article in one of the Maine newspapers that was about Maine growing (ha. ha) obesity problem. Well, here's a clue: when getting directions from Bar Harbor to Kennebunk, it was, "take route 3 down here. you'll see a McDonald's and a Dunkin Doughnuts. That's where you turn on route 122, Then go 3 miles and you'll see Irving's gas and a Dunkin Donuts. You get on route 1 there. Then go to where the McDonald's and Dunkin Donuts are at route ----". I'm not making that up. Dunkin Donuts outnumbers McDonald's 3 to 2. they are everywhere. The mainers have had lobster and butter for eons. If obesity is a new problem, I think the doughnut's are doing them in.

When driving, people in Maine tend to go at or below the speed limit. There are many roads with one lane each way and you just get behind someone and go as slow as they decide. With two lanes each way, people will drive side-by-side, at or below the speed limit, without fear or shame. On the turnpike, with three lanes, the at-or-belows all get in the middle lane while everyone else goes around on the left or right. I think the at-or-belows are weighed down by doughnuts.

The Wonderbob

There is a new coommercial for Victoria's Secret, featuring a model clad in VS's products while Bob Dylan's song "Love Sick" plays in the background. The creepy part is that Bob Dylan's face, looking like a homeless stalker, floats into the picture. I don't understand how that sells underwear. I guess that is Victoria's secret.

The commercial is controversial among Dylan fans because he apparently swore he would never use his art for selling products.

I had a talk with Bob about this and here's what he said:

Come gather ‘round people, wherever you roam
And sit by the TV inside of your home
See underwear models who’re just skin and bones
And I gave the authorization
To put in my face and one of my songs
For their lingerie they were changin’

Come writers and critics who say I’ve sold out
You make fun of me and you scream and you shout,
“Bob Dylan and bras? What’s that all about?”
You say my credibility’s fadin’
But you’d do the same, about that I’ve no doubt
For their lingerie they were changin’

Victoria’s Secret gave me a call
And I met all the models so slim and so tall
Young women there wearing those garments so small
Who knows what I signed, ask my agent
I never took my eyes off those women at all
For their lingerie they were changin’

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land
And don’t try to tell me you don’t understand
Your sons have the catalog in one of their hands
Their hormones are actively ragin’
These commercials get TIVO’d by every young man
And their underwear they are changin’

“The line has been drawn, in stone it is cast
I won’t sell out my music, so nobody ask”
That’s what I once said, but those days are past
You can see that I’m rapidly agin’
And my principles now aren’t so hard and so fast
For their lingerie they were changin’

Fun With Plagues

Passover started last night and we had a very nice Seder with our family and a friend of Allie's. We ate great food, sang songs, read the Passover story and had fun.

However, as always, I have trouble taking the story of the plagues seriously (besides, plagues should be fun.

First off, I imagine this conversation between Moses and Aaron:

MOSES: Pharaoh still refuses to free our people.
AARON: Even after I showed him the power of God?
MOSES: Oh, some "power" you showed him. You cast down your rod and it became a snake. Woo hoo! Who are you, David Copperfeldman? Why don't you also pull some doves from your robe? Even Pharaoh's magicians can turn their rods into snakes.
AARON: Well my snake ate their snakes! Why don't YOU try something? I'm doing all the work here! Go talk to your bush!

So then they go back and really do a frightening miracle, turning all the rivers to blood. And once again, Pharaoh's magicians do likewise.
PHARAOH: So, what just happened?
MAGICIANS: That Moses dude and his He-bro like turned the water to blood. And he's all like, "check it out, this is the power of the God of the Hebrews!"
PHARAOH: And your response was?
MAGICIANS: We're like, no biggie, and we copied the same trick. We're all like, "In your face, Hebrew dude!"
PHARAOH: So, let's recap. Moses and Aaron turn our water to blood, which is gross and nasty. So you all decide to copy him. Did it occur to you that turning the blood back into water would have been a better trick?
MAGICIAN 1: Aw, dude, that would have been awesome!
MAGICIAN 2: Our bad.

LATER
PHARAOH: So gentlemen, do you remember our discussion the other day about replicating plagues? Plagues are not good. We talked about this. Then our slaves cause the land to be covered with frogs. And what do you dimwits do?
MAGICIANS: Uh, we made frogs too?
PHARAOH: Now we have twice as many frogs, all dead, and the place stinks.
MAGICIANS: Yeah, but.....
PHARAOH: Just fix it.

When M & A then cause lice to attack all the men and beasts:
MOSES: How do you like me NOW, Pharaoh!
MAGICIAN 1: Hey, big man, lice are no trick.
MAGICIAN 2: Yeah, dude, anyone can do lice! Watch this!
PHARAOH: Gentlemen.........
MAGICIAN 1: Uh .... but we won't!
MAGICIAN: Yeah, we won't! And you can't make us!
MAGICIAN 1: Nyan, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah.
PHARAOH: Oh, that's very mature.

And at this point the magicians got out of show business. I suspect they were never seen again.

A Tale of Two Bureaucracies

Most IRS forms are available on-line. Some are not. Today I needed some of the latter. I work downtown, a few blocks from the Federal Building, so I walked over.

It was raining and Cincinnati was draped in black because Marge Schott died yesterday.

At the Federal Building, I had to go through a security setup exactly like at the airport. Everything got wet as I juggled my dripping umbrella and the contents of my pockets. My shoes and belt set off the metal detector, but they let me keep them on and just wanded me. (How long ago was it that "they wanded me" would be interpreted only as an encounter with witchcraft?)

The IRS office was just past the sign saying "employees must wash hands after apprehending terrorists." To get waited on there, they have a high-tech procedure where you get a number, but you don't pull it out of one of those deli-counter number dispensers. The number is spit out by a computer. When it was my turn, a disembodied, computer-generated voice, like the lady that tells the time over the phone, said "Number - 121 - is now being served at window - 4."
The number 121 appeared on a large digital readout screen mounted near the ceiling.

I looked at the windows. Over each one was taped a piece of paper with a hand-scrawled number. Apparently the high-tech budget ran out before they got to numbering the windows.

Or to the filing system. I needed two different form numbers, a W dash 2 small c and a 1099 dash capital DIV. I told this to the woman at window - 4 - , who turned and, with a painful limp, went away.

For the next few minutes I listened to the conversation at window - 3 .
A guy who had changed his name at some point, had IRS records under two names. He apparently had been there before and talked to window - 2. The women at 2 and 3 and the man went on about how his name had been Sanders, but he changed it to Tubbs because, he said, "my mama and daddy were never married." The women said, "um hmm."

The women explained to him that he can't just change his name on his own. Not pejoratively, just conversationally, they explained that now he had records under Sanders, under Tubbs and under Sanders-Tubbs. The three people, at great length and with much repetition of facts, discussed all aspects of his problem but one: how to fix it.

I kept hoping they'd get there, but before they did, window-4-lady came back with only the 1099 DIV. "They don't have no more W-2c forms back there." They who? Isn't she one of them? Anyway, I said I would just order it to be delivered by mail (that takes 10 days). So she said, "Well, I could go check in the back."

Now I felt like I was in an old General Store. We had regressed from the 21st century line control system to the 19th century stock room system. "Clem, we got any W-2c forms in the back?". "No, the stage ain't due until Thursdee." I didn't want to make her limp all the way into "the back", so I said, "That's okay ---", but off she went.

Meanwhile I wondered, "where had she gone before, if not 'in the back'? In the middle?"

At the same time I listened to window-3-man saying once again, "I used to live under the name of Sanders, but I changed it to Tubbs because my mama and daddy were never married, you see." And the women said, "um, hmmm". Then window-4-lady returned with my other form and I left.

Finished with the government (I thought) and back to my office, I had some more forms to fill out for a brokerage account I was setting up. The first form informed me that, under the Patriot Act, they needed certain information to help protect against terrorists setting up accounts and laundering money. (What's the best detergent for that?)

Speaking only of this aspect of the Patriot Act, I guess it's the same as the security scanner. It's a necessary protection these days. But, if my form sets off the metal detectors at the brokerage, will they come to my office and wand my assets?

Groundhog Day

So, in today's primaries, if Howard Dean sees his shadow, we have 6 more weeks of his campaign, right?

I know that Groundhog Day was February 2nd. But let's pretend it's today also. After all, one of my favorite movies is Groundhog Day. I could watch it over and over and over and.......

Apparantly this movie has deep significance and symbolism. And I just thought it was funny and heartwarming. (Plus it has Andie McDowell).

Today on the radio, a reporter was talking about Groundhog Day and kept calling it "Groundhogs Day". She called it Groundhogs Day over and over and...
I was wishing she could have gone back and started her day again and said it correctly.

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