2009, December

	2009, DECEMBER

December 26

The story of me and the hog is too long for this page. Click on "Current Chapter" to read all about it. [Curmudgeon V, 15]

December 21

I had a dream that I was hiking (that’s how you know it was a dream) in Alaska’s Kenai wilderness and I came across the remains of a large, elderly bear. I knew it was old, because all the fur around its muzzle had gone gray. The bear had been shot and left to die, and after the crawling, walking, and flying carrion eaters had been at him for a few days, most of the meat was gone, leaving only the pelt, bones, and a lot of the tough connective tissue that holds things together. It was a gruesome scene: a grisly, gristly, grizzly grizzly.

December 16

Time once again for our annual holiday story:

The Explorers’ Club, founded in New York City in 1904, has boasted among its members such luminaries as Sir Edmund Hillary, Roald Amundsen, and Neil Armstrong. It is a very exclusive organization, offering full membership only to those who have made significant discoveries and presented their findings formally at one of the society’s meetings.

Adrian Farquhar, the little-known but ambitious adventurer, wanted desperately to be included but his qualifications were meager to nonexistent. In an attempt to find something—anything—that would impress the Explorers, Farquhar spent much of last winter and early spring trekking through the area known in radio melodrama as Darkest Africa.

Finally in mid-April he happened across a tribe of pygmies unusual among Africans in that they tended toward the hirsute. One member in particular was completely covered with what appeared to be long, silken fur. When Farquhar, whose anthropologic experience was limited to looking at the naked pictures in National Geographic, spotted him, he thought the man was some previously unknown species of small, highly evolved gorilla. At least he hoped so, and he determined to bring the specimen back and astound the Explorers’ Club.

The tribe spoke a dialect of Bantu with which Farquhar was unfamiliar. This was not surprising, as there are some 400 different Bantu dialects and Farquhar was unfamiliar with all of them. Communication was understandably difficult, so the explorer did the only thing he could.

In the interests of decency and expediency, we will gloss over the scenes involving tranquilizer guns, racing through the jungle, and narrow escapes and simply note that the moment he landed at JFK, Farquhar telephoned the president of the Explorers’ Club to report his discovery. “It’s the Missing Link!” he shouted over the phone. “I’m calling him ‘Prince Kong!’ You must let me address the club at next month’s meeting.”

The Explorer-in-Chief was skeptical but interested, and invited Farquhar to his apartment. So our lower-case explorer caught a cab from the airport and shortly presented himself and the Prince—by now awake but still clad in nothing but a loincloth and his own fur—at the door of Professor Gilbert Grosvenor IV.

Regrettably for Farquhar and his ambitions, the old man was a physician as well as an anthropologist and immediately recognized a rare but classic case of congenital hypertrichosis. Something of a prig, Grosvenor was offended as well by the African’s attire or lack thereof. He turned to Farquhar and in an icy yet musical voice intoned:

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(Once again, to the tune of “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen”)

“Go dress your hairy Bantu, man; let’s not have nudes this May.”

December 11

You may have noticed that Congress is kicking around something called Health Care Reform. Unfortunately, there is a great deal of kicking around, but not much reform and virtually no health care. The struggle on Capitol Hill is not about health care but about power. Obama is so desperate to score a success that he is willing to push for a bill that primarily benefits the insurance companies, which really don’t need any more help. And members of the Loyal Opposition are so intent on handing the Damned Democrat a defeat that they don’t care what the bill says or even what it’s about.

The main problem with what is currently on the table is that—if it passes—it might fool people into thinking we have comprehensive health care, and that would pretty much forestall any serious action on the subject.

I’d like to see a real health care bill, one that actually addresses the problems in a reasonable and meaningful way, come up for a vote. It will fail, of course, but the vote will be a matter of public record. And after we’ve had a chance to send the idiots home to find honest work after the midterm elections next year, it could be brought up again. And again, every two years: sooner or later, our representatives in Washington will get the message.

Or not. I live in California, where the electorate, mindful of the legislature’s incompetence, has decided that all laws should be made by ballot initiative and if anything ever actually gets passed, it’s in conflict with existing laws and only makes things worse.

December 7

OK, clearly a visual aid is in order: my powers of description are insufficient for the task. So I bought one, being careful to preserve the packaging. Here's what the thing looks like:

squeezer

You can see that if you set the lemon half in the bowl, it will block the holes and the juice will end up everywhere except where you want it. So here is how the seller says to use it:

squeezerinuse

Aside from being completely absurd, this will not work, of course: if you try to close it, you will just push the lemon off of its perch.

December 6

I’ve been studying a juice squeezer for sale in the supermarket for quite a while, trying to figure out how it works. It has one piece with a handle and a convex end with ridges like any juice squeezer. This is hinged to a mating handle with a concave end, so the two nestle together. There are holes in the concave part to allow the juice to run out.

Think about it. Nobody in Ralphs could explain how to use it. I finally wrote to the company that sells it, and I reproduce our brief but enlightening correspondence here verbatim, only restored to its original chronological order:

ME: I've been looking at your Citrus Squeezer in my grocery for months, trying to figure out how it works. It looks like the lemon half has to sit in the concave section so the pulp can be crushed by the mating convex part. But the holes to let the juice run out are in the concave section, where they would be blocked by the lemon rind. What am I missing???

THEM: I know, I was confused about this as well, actually to my understanding you put it facing the concave and when you push it from the bottom it turns it inside out. Seems hard to me or you can just do it the way you are doing it.

Thank you,

Karen Wilson

Consumer Relations

Bradshaw International

1-800-421-6290 X 237

Karen.Wilson@GoodCook.com

ME: C’mon, you made that up.

December 2

The California legislature was contesting the legality of a pay cut for elected officials (you mean we PAY those people?) scheduled to take effect after next year’s election. The Attorney General ruled recently that it was not only legal, but could be instituted immediately. So the chairman of the state’s independent pay board directed the state controller to cut the legislators’ pay by !8% effective this month.

This is the legislature that diddled over the state budget for about a year before finally passing a bill that left us $21 billion in debt. I’ll be interested to see how long they diddle over their own pay cut.

The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect--well, yes, come to think of it, I guess they do.

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