Category Archives: Over the Transom

Wacky Packages Are Definitely Non-Edible

Posted on by

Gray all day and then rain into the night. Light, steady rain that helps bring down the colorful leaves. On Sunday, under cerulean skies, diligent neighbors were outside collecting leaves. We weren’t so diligent, but I have a rationale (rationalization, perhaps). If you rake leaves on November 2, they’ll be more by November 9, and more still on the 16th. Best to wait.

Maybe in 20 or 30 years, raking leaves will be passé anyway. Leaves are just biomass nutrients for next year’s lawn, after all – which will be left uncut by right-thinking householders to save energy and encourage prairie restoration and wildflower cultivation to keep bees alive. I know I would skip lawn mowing if it meant saving the bees; I’m eco-minded that way.

Speaking of things that are passé, while digging through my desk recently – it often sports stacks of papers waiting for attention, because the only papers that need attention right away are slips payable to me, slips with information about how much I have to pay someone, and occasional personal letters or postcards – I found an early 2013-14 school year letter from Quincy Adams Wagstaff Elementary School.

Dear Parents/Guardians,

Birthdays are important to children and we want our students to be recognized on their special days…. Due to the rise in food allergies nationwide, and to promote healthy dietary choices and dental health, your child will be allowed to bring non-edible [their emphasis] birthday treats only…

The days of buying doughnuts for your kid’s class, in other words, are over. I don’t remember that we were entirely consistent about that, but during Lilly’s time at the school, and at least once for Ann, I remember going to our local doughnut shop early and getting three dozen doughnuts for the class: a mix of glazed and chocolate frosted, I think.

The letter continues —

Some ideas include:

Stickers

Bookmarks

Pencils/erasers

Fun items found at dollar stores

Donating a book to the classroom library in honor of your child

We are confident that these types of fun items will be just as enjoyable for classmates to receive on your child’s birthday…

Signed, the principal and the school nurse.

I’m not confident stickers or pencils or especially a donated book will go down as well as doughnuts, but I’m also slow when it comes to the latest in child psychology. Come to think of it, trading cards might be just the thing if they were along the lines of the perfectly juvenile Wacky Packages. I remember a few of these from junior high, even though I never bought any myself.

A State-of-the-Art Coupon

Posted on by

Not long ago, I discovered an inflated tube of Jimmy Dean Pure Pork Sausage in the refrigerator. I’d been down that road before. This time, though, the tube wasn’t at the back of the refrigerator, forgotten past its BEST IF USED BY date. Instead, the use-by date was the next day. This time I opened it up, slightly, and some foul-smelling air hissed out.

I wrote an email to Hillshire Brands, which owns Jimmy Dean, to let them know about the product failure. An automated acknowledgement came at once, then a couple of days later, another email:

Dear Mr. Stribling, [hey, they got the gender right]

It’s Christina from Jimmy Dean.

It is always important to hear from our consumers and we are so glad you sent us an email. Thank you for your loyalty.

We take pride in ensuring our customer’s satisfaction, and exceeding expectations. I am sorry for the disappointment of our mild sausage. We take quality seriously and this is not typical of our products. I have shared your feedback with our plant quality manager. 

We truly value you and via the United States Postal Service, I am more than happy to send you a full value coupon to enjoy the Jimmy Dean product of your choice. Please enjoy and have a fabulous Autumn season!

Regards,

Christina

Two days later I got a paper letter by USPS, expressing more gratitude for my communication, and including a coupon for any Jimmy Dean product – up to a value of $8.49. Not bad. Whatever else you can say about Hillshire Brands, they’ve got a mechanism in place for dealing quickly with consumer complaints.

The coupon itself isn’t like any I’ve ever seen before. The more I looked at it, the stranger it seemed – until I realized that it sports anti-counterfeiting features more commonly found on banknotes. Then again, it is a sort of money, or at least has a monetary value, and at $8.49 max value, not something the company wants reproduced willy-nilly.

All the way across the back of the coupon is a holographic foil strip with the initials “CIC” inside circles all way across. A little digging tells me that CIC is the Coupon Information Corp., a nonprofit of “consumer product manufacturers dedicated to fighting coupon misredemption and fraud,” according to its web site.

“The CIC and its members have worked with Federal, State and local Law Enforcement officials on every significant coupon fraud case since CIC began operations in 1986,” the site continues. “As of this time, CIC has not lost a single case.” We’re Batman, extreme couponers are the Joker.

But that’s not all. There’s a faintly visible pattern everywhere on the back surface of the coupon. It took me a while to figure out that it says VOID over and over. The idea is that when you go to photocopy the thing, a standard-quality printer will blur the lines together and ta-da! VOID is now written all over the coupon in a highly visible way.

Also, there are random patterns of little yellow bubbles printed at two places on the coupon. Or so it seems. As far as I can tell, those bubbles might be a form of EURion constellation, which is “added to help imaging software detect the presence of a banknote in a digital image,” according to Wiki.

Wow. I’ve got myself a hard-core, anti-counterfeiting coupon. I’ll bet more technical prowess went into it than most banknotes produced before, say, 1990.

The Web of Things

Posted on by

Driving along today, I saw Halloween decorations for the first time this year: a large pretend spider web stretching from the ground to the roof of a one-story house. Or many it wasn’t pretend. I wondered out loud – Lilly was in the car – what you could catch with a web that size. Maybe some birds, or squirrels, or people out giving away copies of The Watchtower.

That just goes to show people spend their money on the oddest things, unless the web was homemade by giant arachnids in the house (in that case, stay away, children). Then again, not long ago I found a trove of 8.25 in. x 3.5 in. postcards in a resale shop bin, and I paid 25 cents each for them. I suspect few cards that size, if any, are made any more. But more importantly, they remind me of childhood trips. They weren’t that hard to find 40-plus years ago, and take home as souvenirs.

I’ve already mailed some of them to Ed, a collector of hotel/motel cards, but I still have a few, such as a Howard Johnson’s card from Silver Springs, Fla. We never stayed at that particular one, but the brand has early, and pleasant, associations for me, along with Holiday Inn, Rodeway Inn, and maybe a few others, though we often stayed at independents.

GTT Fall 2013

Posted on by

Last Wednesday I spent the afternoon in downtown Dallas, walking around on a typically hot September day. I was visiting the second floor of a building – more about that later – when sirens blared in the street below. The windows sported heavy drapes, but it wasn’t hard to pull them back for a peek. On the street below was the aftermath of a traffic accident without apparent injuries, but also a little hard to understand.

So how did that little car wedge itself under that large truck? Other witnesses marveled at it as well. It would be one thing if the car was at a diagonal to the truck, which would mean that it rammed itself underneath. But the car’s aligned so evenly with the truck. Did the truck somehow park itself on top of the car? How could that have happened?

Just another little mystery. I went to Texas on the 12th and came back on the 19th. It was a trip but not a vacation. I spent time with family and friends, but I also continued working – all I need for that is a laptop, phone, and Internet connection. I drove a fair amount, too, because I flew to Dallas, drove to San Antonio by way of Austin, and later returned to Dallas for the flight home.

For a few hours on a couple of days, I managed to see a few things. New things, in fact: a large, immaculate Austin cemetery that I’ve known about for years but never visited; a music venue I’d never heard of in a familiar part of San Antonio; some small to mid-sized museums in Dallas, a pleasant bar in the same city, and a large church there, too.

What Kind of Passport Does Tinker Bell Carry?

Posted on by

Lilly took this picture on Sunday, September 1. “Dog on Deck,” or “My Nose in Your Business.” (To give it a dual title like Bullwinkle episodes.)

Lately we’ve been throwing away, or donating, a fair number of unwanted items.  It’s astonishing how many there are around the house. Things have been turning up that we’d forgotten we had — or at least I’d forgotten. Yesterday the flow of debris included a girl’s purse with a Disney label on it. We might have bought it for Lilly at Disneyland in ’01 or Disneyworld in ’05, but it’s always possible we picked it up elsewhere. More recently it’s been with Ann’s things.

Anyway, I noticed something odd about it. It’s a Tinker Bell purse, and it says Tink America. Tink is holding a small U.S. flag, her dress imitates the Stars and Stripes, and the background pixie dust is red, white and blue. “Isn’t that strange?” I asked Lilly, pretty much rhetorically. “I mean, Tinker Bell usually isn’t associated with America, right? I think she’s a citizen of Never Land.” Or, come to think of it, the realm of fairies, but not the United States.

Then again, what about Never Land? I told Lilly I didn’t think it was claimed by any nation, but considering that Capt. Hook, the Lost Boys, et al. seem to be British, maybe Britain did claim sovereignty at one point. Could be that it was even harder to claim than Pitcairn Is., what with Never Land not quite being in the material world all the time. Still, I bet Capt. Cook visited at least once; he went everywhere.

On the other hand, perhaps American whalers visited too, so lost in the annals of U.S. exploration and commerce is a claim to Never Land. Could be that it was the subject of negotiation in the same treaty that fixed the border between Canada and the United States, as part of one of the lesser-known codicils added later. By this time, Lilly had expressed her usual mild bewilderment at my oddball train of thought.

Protest at Adams & Clark

Posted on by

Back again on September 3 or so. Hard to believe the summer’s dwindling down, but at least it’s still as warm and dry as a real summer.

I was downtown late yesterday morning, and spotted a protest at the northeast corner of Adams and Clark. I heard it first, and then went closer to take a look. People filled the sidewalk in front of the building at that corner, and with them were a speaker on a small platform, some cameramen, and a few bored-looking cops, watching.

At first I thought it might be fast-food workers out on strike, but no. That was scheduled for today, and besides, no fast food is available at that corner. Instead, the building is home to the Chicago Board of Education, and it wasn’t long before I figured out that the protestors were being vocal about the recent closings of a large number of public schools in the city.

The speaker, despite his microphone, was a little hard to hear. Across the street, a fellow let us know his displeasure with Mayor Emanuel.

I haven’t followed the mayor’s time in office closely enough to form much of an opinion, but I know the protestor is hardly alone.

Dog v. Skunk

Posted on by

We usually let the dog out in the back yard one more time before we go to bed, and usually she isn’t very noisy. There isn’t much to stimulate her barking – nobody walking their dogs in the park behind our fence, no active squirrels or birds, no kids playing. But one recent night she cut loose and made a lot of noise.

Barking isn’t something that should come from your yard at 11 p.m. or midnight, so I went to bring her in. She was focused on the edge of the deck, snout down, pawing the ground. Something was under the deck. At first I thought the raccoon – a raccoon – had returned, since one seemed to live there for a little while a few years ago. Then I smelled skunk.

I really wanted to get her in. It wasn’t easy, but I did it. By then the reek of skunk was pretty strong. It turned out the dog hadn’t been sprayed directly, or at least the understructure of the deck caught most of it. Good thing, since the dog smells like dog and needs to smell no worse. Soon the stink wafted faintly into the house. It was gone by morning, except for the deck, which still smells of skunk, though not that much (the rest of family feels that it’s more powerful that I do, though).

About 20 minutes later, as I was in bed reading, I heard barking from elsewhere. As I’ve said, that’s fairly rare, but I think it was the dogs a couple of houses down from us, having their own encounter with the skunk.

Lost Words

Posted on by

Strange day, outside and in. Not strange outside, exactly, but cooler than it ought to be in early August. Cool and wet.

By inside, I mean my computer — the one I mostly use for work. My Word program was corrupted, or elves came and messed up some of my Word documents, or something happened over the weekend. A handful of files I remember working on a saving on Friday and Saturday were not saved when I opened them on Monday. At least, not saved as of the last time I worked on them, but as of an earlier, less useful version. Some hours of work swallowed up — where? why? I don’t ever remember anything like this happening before.

And then, I was supposed to do an 11 Pacific/1 Central interview, which somehow I’d written down on my paper calender — I’m old-fashioned that way — as 12/2. I missed the interview. So much for old-fashioned paper being more reliable than, say, a Word program. GIGO doesn’t just apply to computers.

Grindelwald Graffiti

Posted on by

In early August 1983, I made my way to Grindelwald, Switzerland. I could describe the majestic alpine scenery to be enjoyed there, or the memorable walk up to the Blue Cave, which is carved in a glacier, or the stunning cable-car ride. Instead, I’m going to relay the graffiti I found in the men’s room of the Grindelwald Youth Hostel all those years ago, which I recorded in my travel diary.

All of it was English, oddly enough. I bet it’s a unique array of information, even in the petabyte – exabyte? — realms of the Internet, even though I’ve seen a few of the lines elsewhere.

Time flies when you’re unconscious.

Sprio Agnew is an anagram for “Grow a penis.”

Spitoon rules the cosmos.

Stamp out quicksand.

Beware of limbo dancers.

Six months ago I couldn’t spell El Salvador. Now I’m going to die there.

Why does everyone scream when I say Waffen SS?

Toto, have we found the hostel yet?

The wall also featured a cartoon of the man in charge of the hostel, who was known as the “warden.” I knew it was the warden because the figure was labeled that. I never had any run-ins with the warden. I don’t even remember meeting him.

Speech balloons from his mouth said:

Bring up some f—king firewood!!! Or we’ll burn your f—king passports!!! If there’s not a s—tload of firewood up here by 12:00 we’ll kick everyone’s ass!!!

Under the cartoon were comments about the warden.

Who says Himmler’s dead?

He makes me vomit.

Nazis got to live, too.

This is the best hostel I’ve been in in 15 months, all due to the warden.

There was also a long rant that I didn’t record word-for-word, the gist of which was that the Australians should be glad that the Americans “saved them in WWII.” It concluded, “If it weren’t for us, you Aussies would be speaking Japanese.”

Under that, someone else had written: Then at least someone could understand them. 

The quality of bathroom graffiti, never very high, is probably down these days, and it might even be a fading phenomenon. Why write there when you can use web site comment sections?

Up in the Air, Junior Birdmen

Posted on by

Today I know more about “Up in the Air, Junior Birdmen,” than I ever have before. I read the Wiki page, of course, but that isn’t very meaty. A page on a site devoted to aviator Walter Lees is better, including bits of primary source material, or at least reprinting some.

Yesterday I wrote a short item about a trio of volunteers who helped build bicycle-powered pedal planes for an aviation museum. Non-flying planes, that is, the kind that kids tool around in for amusement and edification. I needed a headline. That request went to my synaptic warehouse, that sprawling place with an idiosyncratic and often infuriating filing system, overflowing with jumbles of memories, images, and logical reconstructions — or is it big ideas, images, and distorted facts? — and out popped “Up in the Air, Junior Birdmen.”

Perfect. I’m rarely so good at headline writing. But where did that come from? I wasn’t in the Junior Birdmen demographic, considering it was aimed at boys of the 1930s.

Later it occurred to me. I might have heard about it earlier, but I definitely remember Tom Lehrer mentioning it as a gag on one of his records, before he sang “It Makes a Fellow Proud to be a Soldier.” The early 1960s audience clearly understood the reference, because it got a laugh.

“Some of you may recall the publicity a few years ago about the Army’s search for an official Army song to be the counterpart of the Navy’s ‘Anchors Away’ and the Air Force’s ‘Up in the Air, Junior Birdmen’ songs. I was in basic training at the time…”

So today I did a small amount of checking on line about the Junior Birdmen phenomenon. Added a bit of information to the otherwise incredibly minor Junior Birdmen file somewhere in my synaptic warehouse. And no visit to the Internet for useless information is complete without a stop at YouTube, in this case to hear the song itself – which I don’t think I’d ever heard before.

Well, I can’t say completely useless information. I got a headline for a paid piece of writing out of it – one that the editors kept.