Monthly Archives: January 2013

Lingering Lights & St. Nick’s Chopper

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This is the real mid-winter, about half way between December 1 and March 1. Whatever pleasure the December holidays might have bestowed is long gone, and weeks and weeks of cold lie ahead. Very little snow so far this year, however, only a bit more than last. Odd.

There are still a few houses displaying Christmas lights. Strangely enough, the only one on our block to retain their lights has downsized their display. During the height of the holidays, it’s one of those places with lights strung all around, bright figures in the yard, and a couple of inflatables. Now all they’re showing is one string of white and one string of blue along the roofline.

In the holiday décor Go Figure category this year: inflatable Santas in helicopters. I saw more than one of those. One chopper piloted by Kris said on the side, Ho Ho Helicopter. Does a helicopter really fit into the Santa story? It would have to be a pretty quiet helicopter, otherwise he’d wake everyone. And St. Nick might be in danger in areas of civil unrest and a repressive regime that uses helicopters. (If I had a rocket launcher, that jolly old elf would die…)

More on Fibber

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After mentioning Fibber McGee yesterday, I found an episode of Fibber McGee & Molly online and listened to it in segments, between everything else that I had to do. It’s been a while, but I’ve heard the show before on WDCB’s old-time radio program. The particular episode I just heard, dating from early 1941, deals with Fibber erroneously believing he’s been drafted. It didn’t include his closet.

Most of the comedy stems from the disbelief of various characters to Fibber’s news. He had been, after all, “in the last war.” (Something about working in a kitchen the whole time; no one called it the Great War, but there was a mention of Gen. Pershing)  The show holds up better than some (much) radio comedy from the era. The oddest thing to modern ears is the way one of the characters lapses into talking about the sponsor, Johnson Wax.

And when did linoleum become so important as a flooring? The late 19th century, come to find out, so that few listeners in 1941 would have remembered a time without it. To hear Johnson Wax tell it, of course, keeping your linoleum floors clean and shiny is a top priority.

Fibber McGee’s Garage

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Winter warm through most of Friday and Saturday – in the 50s at times – and then freezing rain came on Saturday night, followed by normal January temps again plus ice. Not major ice, just enough to leave thin sheets underfoot here and there, which I coated with sand. Why isn’t sand more popular for dealing with icy patches? It doesn’t melt the ice, but it neutralizes the slip danger, which is what matters.

But I couldn’t deal with the ice sheet on the Sienna with sand. Lilly wanted to practice some driving on Sunday, so I made her chip parts of the ice off the windows with me. If you’re going to have a car in the North, and a two-car garage organized by Fibber McGee so that only one car goes in there, you’ll have to de-ice your car windows sometimes.

I wonder how long Fibber McGee’s closet will be a widely understood reference. Or has it already passed into obscurity, and I didn’t get the memo? It’s easy to ignore that kind of change. I do it all the time. Then again, you can’t ever know what’s going to die out in the age of YouTube. (This is cheating, since it isn’t the radio show, but it’s still worth a link.)

Dodging a Few Maintenance Bullets

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Earlier this week my ancient Sienna started shaking like an old wino, and I imagined that a wheel was coming off. A visit to my trustworthy mechanic — glad to have found him — revealed it sounded and felt worse than it was. Repairs came in at only a couple of hundred bucks. Annoying, but passable.

If it had been a more expensive job, that would have been the end of the line for the car. It’s reached that point. Going to have get another car soon. Some people seem to enjoy acquiring cars, but not me. I once worked with a fellow who bought a car every other year or so, trading the old one in each time. I never understood that psychology. When you have a car the object of the game is to keep it as long as possible.

Also this week, a large amount of vile water collected in our dishwasher, which we seldom use, and refused to drain. Meaning that water from the kitchen sink drain had diverted into the dishwasher because of some blockage somewhere. Would Power Plumber fix this?

First, though, I had to get the nasty gray water out of the dishwasher. I considered various ways to do that before I remembered, having stupidly forgotten, that I have a small Craftsman wet/dry vac out in the garage. The water responded to its suction, and then I applied Power Plumber to the underlying problem. It worked. How often do I get to dodge two potentially expensive problems on the same day? Not often.

That’s what we need nanobots for. To make things that fix themselves. Of course, self-repairing machines would upend a lot of the service economy, but then again the economy’s been continuously upended since the Industrial Revolution. Not that I expect to live to see such things, but it’s a nice techno-pipe dream.

My Fellow Americans

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There’s been a run of presidential birth centennials lately, and by lately I mean since 2008. LBJ was born on August 27, 1908, Ronald Reagan on February 6, 1911, and Richard Nixon came into the world 100 years ago today. Later this year we’ll see the 100th anniversary of the birth of Leslie Lynch King Jr., better known as Gerald Ford (July 14).

One more centennial this decade: JFK in 2017. That one’s a little hard to wrap one’s mind around. Die young, stay pretty. After that, no more centennials until 2024, both the elder George Bush’s and Jimmy Carter’s.

I have wispy memories of Lyndon Johnson as president, but Nixon’s the first president I really remember. You might say Nixon’s the one. I remember hearing about him, of course, and seeing him in the papers and on TV from time to time, and the way he’d start by saying “My fellow Americans…”

The time he announced he was releasing transcripts of the tapes he’d made stands out; I have a vague impression of him looking sweaty and less than sincere under the lights. He came off that way a lot. I think that particular speech stands out because I was visiting a friend’s house when that speech came on, and they had a color TV, which we did not.

In the summer of ’73, Uncle Ken and Aunt Sue — good Democrats, they were — visited us in San Antonio, and I think it was my brother Jim who asked them what they thought about President Nixon. I remember Ken’s answer clearly: “He’s guilty as hell.”

Dozenal Day

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Come to find out, at no point in Lilly’s schooling has anyone taught her about alternate numeral systems. You know, binary numerals, to cite the best known example, or Base 12 or any of the other bases. She’d never heard of it.

How did that happen? I remember learning about bases in the sixth grade. A number of students did presentations about various bases. Rick Reynolds, rest his soul, did Base 12 by coloring his face green and tying a pencil to each hand to be a 12-fingered Martian who counted from 0 to 9 and then t and e. I’m not making that up.

So I introduced the concept to her. For everyday living, it’s useless knowledge, which is often the sweetest kind.

Naturally, I had to look further into this other base business, especially Base 12, here in the age of the Internet, and it wasn’t long before I learned the term dozenal to refer to Base 12, and that there’s such a thing as the Dozenal Society of Great Britain and the Dozenal Society of America, which have a web site with a dozenal clock, among other things.  Man, I’m glad to be living in a world with eccentrics like this on the loose.

The web site says: “The Dozenal Society of Great Britain (founded 1959) and the Dozenal Society of America (founded 1944) are separate organisations with a common aim: to draw attention to the advantages of the Dozen (or twelve-based) system for numeration and measurement. We consider that the decimal system is inadequate and of limited competence in many aspects of numeration. Decimals handicap the teaching of arithmetic and so inhibit understanding of the physical world and the decimal system is unable to express in simple terms the common proportions by which we order our practical and economic activities”

I don’t know if this bloke is a member of the British society, but he knows about their arguments. Not-too-vehement arguments, but arguments all the same.

At the Movies With Lincoln

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Lilly didn’t want to go to the movies by herself on Saturday. Her mother and younger sister were going to one picture she didn’t want to see, and I was going to another, and we each offered to take her to our respective multiplexes to see something else of her choosing. Hastily texted friends couldn’t make it, so she stayed home.

Maybe it’s a function of being a 15-year-old girl. I don’t ever remember being reluctant to park myself alone in a movie theater. If I’d never gone to the movies by myself, particularly in my early 20s, there’s a lot of worthwhile ones I might never have seen. One of my early experiences along those lines was seeing a revival of 2001: A Space Odyssey at the Broadway Theatre in Alamo Heights when I was younger than her — too young to really appreciate it, but I was wowed by the spaceships. Of course, going alone would defeat the purpose at some movies, such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I went to see Lincoln. Been meaning to for a while. Aside from a few quibbles, such as (especially) the business about the soldiers reciting the Gettysburg Address and the stretcher that had Mrs. Lincoln and her black servant attending the debate in the House regarding the 13th Amendment, along with some lesser odd details, it’s rousing good historical fiction, about as good as you’re going to get in a movie.

Crystal Pepsi Girl

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Twenty years ago for the 92/93 New Year’s, Yuriko and I were in Boston. We spent some of New Year’s Eve downtown, including a short visit to the Massachusetts State House. Out in front of the building, PepsiCo was busy marketing a new drink, Crystal Pepsi.

Even then, the detachable pop-top was a thing of the past, but the costume wouldn’t have worked without it. I returned to Japan shortly afterward and thought little about Crystal Pepsi. Years later I learned that it was a famed new-product flop.

Reading about that flop now, I found an interview with Yum! Brands CEO David Novak in Fast Company in 2007. He’s credited with creating Crystal Pepsi, and when asked about the flop, his money quote is: “People were saying we should stop and address some issues along the way, and they were right. It would have been nice if I’d made sure the product tasted good.”

The Mad Little Boot

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I, Claudius, that remarkable combination of comedy and horror, is worth watching (again) for many reasons, but few better than seeing John Hurt do Caligula. Such as in this scene, which only goes to show there’s no profit in reasoning with a lunatic who also happens to hold absolute power.

It’s all a fine production all the way through, but once Caligula is offed, the story loses a bit of its spark. A bit of its insane spark, that is.

Vain Bibble Babble

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Back on a work schedule. Full schedule, that is, because work didn’t quite stop, even between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Yuriko’s back at work, too, even though her employer is Japanese and were this Japan, the New Year’s holiday would last through the third.

The Christmas tree still lingers, but oddly enough the dry tree-removal schedule this year has the tree out on the curb on the morning of January 7, so the last day of the tree being up coincides with Twelfth Night. Not that I’m particular about that, but Epiphany does seem like a good time to clear away the last of Christmas.

I saw the following on a sign at a grocery store today: Miss Your Twinkies? It was advertising a house-brand cream-filled sponge cake. Judging by the box, at least, they looked very much like the product of the defunct Hostess. But I decided I didn’t miss Twinkies all that much. And besides, they won’t be gone all that long.