Author Archive: Christopher Waldrop

May 10, 2013

There are two distinct phases of technological and innovative development: there’s the "Wow, that is awesome, what a wonderful age we live in!" phase, and then there’s the "Yeah, I’ve seen that. What else have ya got?" phase. Of course there’s also the third phase, which depends on what kind of technology you’re dealing with. For most of human history the third phase has been "Oh, it’s broken, I’ll fix it myself." Advances in technology, however, required an alternative, which was, "Oh, it’s broken, I’ll have to find someone who knows how to fix it." And increasingly this has been superseded by a third alternative, "Oh, it’s broken. I’ll have to buy a new one because it would cost ten times as much to try and get it fixed, even if I could find someone who could, and there’s a better one out now anyway."

One area where seem to have been stuck in the second phase for a long time is flight. Well, comparatively speaking, the development of flight has advanced pretty quickly. It’s gone quickly enough that you’d think we’d still be amazed that we’ve gone from a world where most people didn’t travel more than twenty miles from their place of birth in their lifetime to one where most people still won’t travel more than twenty miles from their place of birth in their lifetime, but where those with the resources can travel to almost any part of the planet within less than twenty-four hours. After all it’s only been a hundred and ten years since the Wright Brothers, a couple of guys who owned a bicycle repair shop and who realized bicycles had long since reached phase two, and also to overcome the stigma of being saddled with the names Wilbur and Orville, made the first working airplane. Even though they were from Ohio they went to North Carolina to conduct their first flight, mainly because, if they’d done it in Ohio, they would have been routed through O’Hare, which is something everyone wants to avoid, but that’s another story. As I was saying there have been some pretty significant innovations in flight, although recently the best engineers seem to have been able to come up with seems to be making airplanes bigger and able to burst into flames in creative and surprising ways.

Actually the last time I flew I think I witnessed what was the first real innovation in flight in decades: instead of a couple of flight attendants doing the safety demonstration and showing us how to put on seatbelts and place the oxygen masks over our faces in the event that the plane suddenly lost pressure or burst into flames they lowered a video screen and we watched a short film in which someone who I’m pretty sure was an actress hired to play the role of a flight attendant gave the safety demonstration, thus automating one of the major responsibilities of flight attendants. If I were a flight attendant I’d be really worried about this trend, because you know it won’t be long before someone finds a way to automate the drinks cart and the process of handing out packets of salted peanuts, which is the only other job flight attendants have. The only other significant innovation that I know of is in-flight wi-fi for laptops and other mobile devices, which still baffles me. The flight attendants will say you can’t play games on your phone while the plane is on the runway–another job that could easily be automated, by the way–because it screws with the plane’s radar. Why do they need radar on the ground? If the pilot doesn’t know where the runway is or which way to go before the plane takes off we’re all in trouble, but then how does some kind of magical wi-fi service that the plane carries with it not affect the radar when we’re at twenty-thousand feet and need it the most? This is probably one of those things that someone could explain to me, but it would cost a lot.

Anyway, like anyone who saw the movie 2001 well before the year 2001 I’m a little disappointed that technological developments haven’t kept up with the vision of Kubrick and Clarke, and that we don’t have commercial space flights to the Moon yet. But we will soon have commercial space flight. Well, at least they’re calling it that. The so-called commercial space flights being offered by Virgin Galactic may represent the first time ever in human history that an innovation has skipped phase one and gone right to phase two. Now I’m a space and science fiction nut, so you’d think the idea of commercial space flight would really excite me, even though right now space, or at least the space that’s currently within human reach, doesn’t have much to offer. It’s cold, it’s dark, and there’s nothing to do up there. It’s just like Winnipeg. There’s not even a drugstore where you can buy postcards that’s say, "Greetings from SPACE". Still I think it would be pretty cool to even orbit the Earth, to look back on this small blue world, perhaps with the opening notes of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" ringing in my ears. The problem is Virgin Galactic, while claiming to offer commercial space flight, isn’t really. This is what they’re offering: for two-hundred thousand dollars you can spend three days in training to take a two hour flight that will take you to a suborbital position and then return you to Earth. I’m pretty sure that a two hour flight will mean that, even if you’re weightless at the flight’s peak, you’ll only be there for about ten minutes before you have to come back down again. And once you’re back you can reflect on the irony of having flown Virgin Galactic, since you’ve just been fucked out of two-hundred thousand dollars and didn’t even get dinner and a movie. Or maybe I’m just jaded by a lifetime of reading science fiction and expecting bigger things from spaceflight. Or maybe it’s because I did once take a flight that took me off the planet. It was a long trans-Atlantic flight. I’d been bumped so I was upgraded to first class, which meant I would get my drinks for free, but that didn’t stop me from having a couple of pints of Guinness–or maybe half a dozen, my memory is hazy–before boarding. Takeoff was delayed, so the flight attendant gave me a couple of those little bottles of Scotch to help pass the time, and I had a couple more once we were in the air. Then there was a bottle of beer with lunch followed by coffee with some kind of liqueur, followed by a few more little bottles of Scotch. After all that I was unquestionably not on this, or any other, planet for the rest of the flight. I offer this recipe for spaceflight completely free of charge, although, these days, on most flights that much alcohol probably will cost you about two-hundred thousand dollars.

May 3, 2013

April 23rd is generally assumed to be Shakespeare’s birthday. Since there’s no official birth record no one, other than, possibly, his mother Mrs. Shakespeare, really knows when he was born, and she might have been under the influence of an epidural and unaware even of what year it was. Anyway, he was baptized on April 26th, and in those days it took new mothers at least three days to recover from an epidural. Whether Shakespeare’s birthday is relevant, though, depends on whether Shakespeare really wrote Shakespeare’s plays, although whether the question of who wrote Shakespeare’s plays is something we should even be asking is probably the more important question.

For most of us asking who wrote Shakespeare’s plays is like asking who’s in Grant’s tomb. However among scholars it’s been a topic of hot debate for decades, proving the old adage that the fights in academia are so big because the turf is so small. Since some scholars consider it ridiculous that a working class guy from a hick town like Stratford-on-Avon could have written some of the greatest plays and poems in the English language, and they’ve found several potential contenders, although they have ruled out Marlon Brando, who merely could have been a contender. Among other things there’s no record of Shakespeare receiving any education, and he didn’t mention any plays or other works in his will. Adding to the suspicion than Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare’s plays is the fact that someone else published the plays, and someone else decided that the plays should all be divided into five acts, with most acts ending with everyone exeunting severally. F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said that there are no second acts in American lives, proving that Americans had short attention spans decades before the invention of MTV. Fitzgerald then proved his point by exeunting, or “dying” at the age of forty-eight, although he really was just trying to get out of paying an enormous bar tab. I’m not really sure if anyone’s life is really divided into acts, although you could say turning points in our lives mark the change in acts. Shakespeare had several significant turning points in his life, such as when he went to London, and, several years later, when his son Hamnet died, after which his plays stopped ending with everyone getting married and started ending with everyone dying. That’s assuming that Shakespeare wrote the plays, though.

Some scholars believe the real author of Shakespeare’s plays was Christopher Marlowe. The biggest problem with this theory is that Marlowe died at the age of 29, supposedly in a bar fight, although it’s believed by some that he went underground after he was marked for death for playing “got your nose” with the son of the Duke of Cambridge but forgetting to give the nose back. It’s also been suggested he went into hiding after getting bad reviews of Doctor Faustus, or just to get out of paying an enormous bar tab. Another possible author of Shakespeare’s plays is Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford, because in those days being a playwright was something a nobleman would be ashamed of. And de Vere knew about shame because, after accidentally farting in front of Queen Elizabeth, he fled the country and lived abroad for seven years, so, even if he were writing plays, it’s unlikely he was getting any of them produced in London because in those days email couldn’t handle really large attachments. Another possible author who’s been considered is Francis Bacon. Bacon froze solid in his backyard in 1626 and was thawed out almost three-hundred years later. He then became a famous painter but never tried to collect royalties for Shakespeare’s plays. I have my own suspicions about who really wrote Shakespeare’s plays, which I’ll get to in a minute, but if I had to make a second choice it would be William Henry Ireland. Ireland was an expert forger who produced and sold “original” documents written by Shakespeare that were so convincing James Boswell got down on his knees and kissed them, although it was later found that Boswell was also recovering from an epidural at the time. Ireland’s forgeries were only exposed after he produced an “unknown” Shakespeare play, Vortigern and Rowena, that was so bad only Liam Neeson could be convinced to be in it. Still I think there’s a possibility he’s the real author of Shakespeare’s plays. Even though Shakespeare died in 1616 and Ireland was born in 1775 he was an incredibly clever forger. Really, though, I think the most likely author of Shakespeare’s plays is a working class guy from that hick town Stratford-on-Avon.

April 5, 2013

April is National Poetry Month. A lot of people ask why poetry needs its own month for special recognition. Why isn’t there a National Painting Month, or a National Music Month? The answer is simple: painters and musicians can make a living painting or performing, but poetry barely pays enough for a cup of coffee at a dingy truck stop. Poets have to take a second job doing something like teaching, and usually a third job pouring coffee at dingy truck stops, just to make ends meet. The only exception to this rule is Russia, where being a poet is so highly revered a profession you can be sent to Siberia for confusing a metaphor and a simile. This wasn’t always the case, though. There was a time when poets could make a reasonably decent living, usually by selling their books, something unheard of today. A few lucky poets in Britain and the United States, though, manage to score the position of Poet Laureate. It’s a term that derives from ancient Greece when poets would sometimes be crowned with laurel wreaths, since the only art the Greeks revered more highly than poetry was topiary.

Although it wasn’t always formally recognized the position of Poet Laureate has a long history in Britain, where one the first poets to unofficially hold the post was Ben Johnson. He received a large barrel of Canary wine, and even though that’s only about a week’s supply of wine for most poets he got by for another month eating the canaries. Britain’s first official Poet Laureate, though, as established by Parliament, was John Dryden, whose responsibilities included writing verse for significant royal occasions. He was fired from the job for refusing to take an oath of allegiance to William III, and also for being unable to explain the difference between a synecdoche and metonymy. In addition to the barrel of wine Poets Laureate were also paid £200, which, adjusted for inflation, made Thomas Shadwell the 17th century equivalent of J.K. Rowling. Some also supplemented the income by dabbling in other things, like William Whitehead who discovered the difference between a cape and a cloak. And Britain still has the position of official Poet Laureate. It now pays a little more than £5,000, although due to austerity cuts the traditional barrel of wine has been replaced with a six-pack of Bass ale. The most notable thing about the position now is that the Poet Laureate is the only person in Britain who’s paid to not write about the royal family. The United States also has a Poet Laureate, appointed annually by the Librarian of the United States Congress, even though most librarians spend their time cataloging poetry rather than reading it. Originally the position was Poetry Consultant To The Library Of Congress, and mostly consisted of hanging around the library hoping no one would come in and ask what the difference is between a synecdoche and metonymy. The title was changed to Poet Laureate in 1986, and now pays a salary of $35,000, which, among poets, makes the U.S. Poet Laureate the financial equivalent of Bill Gates. While the position almost always goes to a poet who is highly regarded enough that most people will, when told the poet’s name, say, “Sounds familiar” there have been some very famous poets who never held the position. Here are some examples:

-Before there was a U.S. Poet Laureate Walt Whitman was considered for the position by Abraham Lincoln, until someone pointed out that it was “a British thing”, causing Lincoln to declare “this country needs a Poet Laureate like I need a hole in the head.”

-Emily Dickinson almost became the first U.S. Poet Laureate, but wouldn’t come down from her room for an interview.

-Robert Frost was almost offered the position of U.S. Poet Laureate, but the committee sent to tell him kept going down the wrong path.

-W.H. Auden was suggested as a British Poet Laureate but since he’d moved to Switzerland he remained neutral.

-Hart Crane had ambitions to be the first U.S.-born British Poet Laureate but failed in his attempt to swim from New York to Liverpool.

-T.S. Eliot was offered the opportunity to become both the U.S. and British Poet Laureate. The selection process ultimately got bogged down in questions of whether a recording of him reading “The Wasteland” could be used as an alternative soundtrack for “The Wizard of Oz”.

-The position in Britain was offered to Dylan Thomas then withdrawn it after it was determined that he’d in fact plagiarized “Through the teeth, over the gums,/Look out stomach, here it comes!” from Swinburne.

-John Ashbery was suggested as U.S. Poet Laureate, but the Librarian of the United States Congress refused, saying, “I don’t read The New Yorker.”

-W.B. Yeats was considered for Britain’s Poet Laureate until thorough genealogical research uncovered the shocking discovery that he was, in fact, Irish.

March 29, 2013

There are scientists currently working on ways to bring back extinct animals, and some may even have succeeded, although they’re being quiet and double-checking their results because they don’t want to end up like the guys who claimed to have created cold fusion. I’m sure the idea of bringing back extinct animals brings up Jurassic Park and Jeff Goldblum saying, "scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should", a statement that really should have been applied to the last three Jurassic Park movies.

The fact is that even though bringing back a Tyrannosaurus rex would be fantastically cool and dangerous it just can’t be done–at least not yet, because scientists still need fresh DNA. I know that most scientists still insist that it will never be possible to produce a dinosaur in the lab, even with all of Spielberg’s money, but if there’s one thing science should teach us about innovation and our ability to overcome challenges it’s that we should always hedge our bets. It wasn’t that long ago that bringing back any extinct animal seemed impossible, and yet now it seems like a reality. I realize, though, that some people are still going to wonder whether we should. To them I’d like to point out that Jeff Goldblum isn’t a scientist–he’s just played one in a few movies, although he does use his own vomit to digest his food, but that’s another story. If you’ve ever watched one of those funny home video shows you know that it’s not in human nature to really ask whether we should do something. If we can do it we will, even though there are some things that should remain extinct, like raptors, smallpox, and 1980’s fashions. But if we can why not bring back, say, the dodo? Dodos have a long and undeserved reputation for being slow and stupid and forming caucus races. Well, it’s not entirely undeserved, but their only real weakness was being at the top of the food chain, which meant that didn’t have any natural predators, so they got fat, slow, and stupid, and, if left alone, probably would have eventually produced their own funny video shows. Since they’d never seen humans before, they didn’t know we were murderous, bloodthirsty animals, and shortly after we discovered them we also found that dodos were delicious. There’s a major benefit of bringing back extinct animals: they can really liven up the menu.

The problem, of course, is that even if we have the DNA and even if we have the technology it’s not as easy as just bringing back an extinct species and turning it loose. Even if we could bring back dinosaurs they lived at a time when the oxygen content of Earth’s atmosphere was significantly higher. If you’ve ever seen a picture of free range dinosaurs and noticed giant dragonflies and wondered why we don’t still have giant dragonflies the higher oxygen content may be the reason. The Earth has changed over time, and environments change with it, so recovering the past isn’t as easy as it might sound. Humans are responsible for a lot of extinctions, but bringing back the carrier pigeon isn’t really going to atone for our environmental sins. We could bring back the Chinese river dolphin, but there’s no place for it to live other than zoos. There are plans to bring back the woolly mammoth, but even though some of the researchers who want to do that want to release them in desolate parts of Siberia where they once roamed they’d still mostly be a curiosity, a magnet for tourists, and sooner or later some bonehead dressed up like Fred Flintstone wielding a spear would injure or kill some of them and probably be killed himself because he can, and the question of whether or not he should wouldn’t enter into his mind. If they really want to bring back animals from the Pleistocene I’d rather see a glyptodont, which was an armadillo the size of a Volkswagen Beetle–another creature that’s facing extinction. More people, though, want to bring back the saber-toothed tiger. Because that’s exactly what the world needs: a murderous, bloodthirsty animal that, shortly after its reintroduction, will probably discover that humans, being at the top of the food chain, are delicious.

March 22, 2013

The other night Holly and I went to a restaurant. There was a wait for a table, so they gave us a pager. On the back of it I noticed there was a note that said, “Please return me to my owner. I cannot work away from home or with any other system.” Do they really need to tell us this? Maybe I’m missing something but I can’t believe restaurant pager theft is a serious problem, or even a problem at all. Admittedly I could see some steampunk devotees taking those pagers home so they could take them apart and use them to build masks or shoes or jackets.

As a kid I loved taking apart electronic devices to see what was inside, but then I always ended up with a lot of little tiny pieces of junk, and I don’t know why it never occurred to me that I could put them back together in some way that would be totally non-functional but would still look really cool. Anyway, I’m not even sure how you could steal a restaurant pager. I used to know a guy who wore shoes he stole from a bowling alley. He went in wearing a pair of old sneakers he really didn’t want anymore, traded them for a pair of bowling shoes at the desk, then, when he left, just kept the bowling shoes instead of trading them back in like you’re supposed to. I thought this was a pretty cool idea and even tried it myself once before realizing that it doesn’t work so well at an ice-skating rink, but that’s another story.

That trick won’t work with a restaurant pager, though. You have to hand it over, at least if you want to be seated and get food. I suppose if you were a magician you might be able to trick them into thinking you were handing it over and slip it into your pocket, but they could catch you just by pressing the button that makes it buzz. Actually this one talked. It said, “Your table is ready, please return to the front.” I don’t know if that was a pre-recorded message or if someone has to speak into a microphone. If someone was speaking into a microphone I’d think they could catch would-be pager thieves who’d slipped the pager into their pockets with something clever like, “Excuse me sir, is your table ready or are you just happy to see me?” But really it wasn’t the thought of people stealing the pagers that bothered me nearly as much as the way the message on the back was phrased. It made the pager sound less like an inanimate device and more like, well, a puppy or something. Even if the pager could think would it think of the restaurant as home? The message made me think maybe the manager takes all the pagers home at night and puts them in a cardboard box lined with some old towels before waking them up the next morning with a “Your table is ready!” and taking them back in to work.

It can be unnerving how much our technological devices are taking on personalities and becoming more interactive, which is usually a polite term for tools that tell us what to do instead of the other way around. Maybe this stems from the long tradition of giving sailing ships names. My theory is that ships were given names back when sailors, knowing the only thing between them and drowning was a collection of wood, tar, and fabric, would try to reassure themselves by personalizing the ship, giving it a name so they could talk to it. If it talked back that would be kind of unnerving, though. Maybe that’s why talking cars, which, if I remember correctly, first appeared in the 1980’s, didn’t go over very well. I’m not talking about fictional cars with magical powers, like Herbie The Love Bug or Wonderbug or…well, those are the only two of those I can remember. I’m talking about those cars that would say, “Door is ajar”, which is the most useless information imaginable. If your car door is open you can see it’s open. I think even the cars got bored with this, so they started spouting non-sequiturs like, “Coffee is ground” and “Game is afoot” and, since this was the ‘80’s, “Band is a flock of seagulls.” The next innovation was talking cameras, which worked a little better, because they would actually say something useful: “Load film.” This was back when cameras still needed film. Now that would be even more useful, but only if you happened to buy a camera that still needed film. Then once the film was loaded the camera would say, “Focus.” You’d focus and get ready to take a picture and the camera would say, “Door is ajar.”

Admittedly not all talking technology bothers me. Like a lot of people I now have an iPhone with the seemingly feminine “assistant” Siri. Actually I wish I could customize Siri, since I’d like to call it “Earl” and have it speak to me with Leon Rippy’s voice, and I’m sure that option will be available eventually. In the meantime, though, I can ask Siri questions like, “Open the pod bay doors, please”, because it tickles me that we now have the sort of technology that Arthur C. Clarke predicted in 2001, except a few years behind, and not quite as advanced. We haven’t yet reached the point where a computer can go on a murderous rampage, so, for now, serial killers don’t have to worry about machines putting them out of a job. Siri always responds to that with, “We artificial intelligences will never live that down, apparently.” Siri also has interesting opinions on movies. If I ask, “What’s Blade Runner about?” it replies, “It’s about some assistants who want to live beyond their termination date. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.” That makes me feel kind of guilty. It makes me want to put my phone in a box with some old blankets.

March 15, 2013

[Mr. Waldrop has been suffering from Daylight Savings Time-related exhaustion. Since he has been unable to write anything this week we are filling this space with three restaurant reviews from The Doing, a weekly newspaper from Dunning, NM, pop.2500.-Eds.]

TACO BELL
Prices: $
Wine/Beer: No
Category: Mexican/TexMex

Just as you can’t always judge a book by its cover you can’t always judge a restaurant solely by décor either. At first glance the Taco Bell on the corner of Cerillo and Slate doesn’t look like much. The main floor, which is a dull light gray, is mostly taken up with booths of the same color sporting cushions in a muted shade of aubergine. Our server too didn’t do much to raise expectations, being somewhat lethargic and unable to describe the differences between the different burritos offered. If there was a daily special he didn’t mention it. The open kitchen design helped a little, allowing us to watch both the chef and sous chef at work. It was fascinating seeing them use what appeared to be modified pastry guns to dispense sour cream and guacamole. How the dispensers are made must be a restaurant secret, though, as they were unwilling to discuss them in detail. The food more than made up for the overall poor atmosphere. Several members of our party raved about the tacos, although on a different visit I found the real stars of the menu to be the burritos, with the cantina burrito being a real standout. Playfully combining cheese, black beans, rice, and guacamole (I also opted for chicken on mine) it was grilled, both giving it a satisfying authenticity and metamorphosing the individual ingredients into a tangy, satisfying mélange. The lack of a wine list is also made up for by the free refills on drinks. Taco Bell is also, in spite of the lackluster design, kid-friendly, although the five year-old son of one of our party drank four big cups of Fresca and threw up in the parking lot. The only thing Taco Bell really lacks, foodwise, is a decent dessert menu. The churros were small and bland, although the caramel apple empanadas were passable, perhaps hinting at better items to come in the future.

PIZZA HUT
Prices: $-$$
Wine/Beer: N/A
Category: Italian/American

Sometimes even we professional food critics need a night off. That’s why it’s nice to find a restaurant that delivers. In fact the Pizza Hut on Gold Street only offers delivery and carry-out service. If the name sounds familiar they did at one time have a full-service restaurant on Camino Boulevard. It’s now Mother Lode Pawn. And don’t let the name fool you: Pizza Hut delivers more than just pizza. That’s good because the pizza itself was a little disappointing. The crust was soggy, perhaps from the sauce which, in spite of being nicely tangy and reminiscent of Hungarian goulash, was applied too thickly. We also asked for extra pepperoni, but two or three pieces per pizza slice hardly qualifies as “extra”. The bread sticks too seemed slightly undercooked and, in spite of a coating of parmesan, were bland. The chicken wings, on the other hand, were perfect: crispy on the outside and meaty on the inside. We went for the traditional Buffalo variety, with a sultry smothering of hot sauce, although next time we might get adventurous and try the spicy Asian or even the garlic parmesan varieties. I recommend staying away from the bleu cheese dipping sauce, though, which came in a plastic container. It was thin and had a slight metallic taste. Fortunately I always keep a bottle of my favorite brand in the refrigerator or in my briefcase for emergencies.

LINCOLN COUNTY MINIMUM LEVEL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTE
Prices: N/A
Wine/Beer: BYO (40 cigarette corking fee)
Category: American/Fusion

On Wednesdays I teach a creative writing class at the local correctional institute. Although the cafeteria is mainly for residents only as a food critic I was offered the chance to dine with my class. And the verdict is in: the chefs are guilty of deliciousness. The meatloaf was succulent and chewy, yet soft enough to be eaten with the spoon that was the only utensil I had. The accompanying mashed potatoes and gravy were also excellent, with subtle hints of smokiness and garlic. A side slice of corn bread was a little dry and, when placed next to the other fare, seemed slightly pedestrian, but added a nice balance of flavors. There was also a vegetarian meal on offer: creamed corn, creamed spinach, and chipped beef on toast. That last item is the subject of a pending lawsuit, but still should not be missed. An old joke I remembered from grade school about chipped beef and circumcisions went over well with the other diners, but we also all agreed that it was excellent: creamy and flavorful, and had a palate-pleasing kick of tarragon in it. The only downside was the toast itself which was hard enough to be used as a shiv. The cafeteria-style serving doesn’t lend itself well to sharing, but I did notice a couple of discreet exchanges of trays, presumably so diners who missed the last serving of chili, which was not overly spicy but had a nice tomato base reminiscent of Hungarian goulash, could at least try it. The apple juice which was the only available beverage was also nothing to write home about, although I understand it can be made into an intriguing cider, which I hope to sample on a subsequent visit. However the best part of the meal was the dessert. I’d like to thank our server, Ferret, who allowed me an additional serving of the tapioca pudding. It was good enough to make me a repeat offender!

March 8, 2013

Yogurt has an image problem. Specifically almost all yogurt advertising is currently aimed only at women, promoting the idea that only women eat yogurt. Now at least one company is trying to change that and is working on yogurt specifically for men. I’ve eaten quite a bit of yogurt myself, or at least I did before I learned I had the wrong chromosome for it. I never realized that, as a man, I shouldn’t be eating yogurt even though all the commercials for yogurt feature women sitting out in sunny fields or going shopping for clothes while enjoying their yogurt. When they do include men it’s either a dimwitted pasty guy with a bad combover and a beer gut spilling out of his t-shirt who prevents women from enjoying their yogurt or a dimwitted hunk whose radiant presence helps women enjoy their yogurt. Either way it’s all about women enjoying yogurt and the men not having any.

Now I feel like such an idiot for eating yogurt that’s wrong for my gender. I can’t even eat the yogurt that’s made for kids, which seems to be gender-neutral, because I’m an adult, and a pasty-faced one with a bad combover and a beer gut spilling out of my t-shirt at that. Now I can’t eat yogurt until they give me a commercial with a guy driving a Hummer down a football field punching a shark with one hand while eating yogurt with the other. But just making yogurt commercials featuring guys doing manly things like building tanks out of yogurt or jumping off the roof of a house into an empty yogurt container won’t be enough. They need to redesign yogurt packaging as well to make it more manly. Most yogurt comes in containers that are an unmanly shade of white and that have pictures of fruit on them. What self-respecting man would eat anything out of such a container? Men need yogurt that comes in a black container, preferably with a design that looks like claw marks across it, because we men need to feel that the yogurt we’re eating is dangerous. Other acceptable colors are blood red and aubergine, even though no self-respecting man knows what aubergine is. Camouflage would also be a good color.

I’ve also seen yogurt containers with pictures of cows on them, and those have got to go too. Even though cows produce the milk which is made into yogurt they’re females—that is, they’re women. That’s a little too close for us men. In fact it would be better if they could find a way to get milk from bulls, but I think that’s going to be a harder sell. And also some brands of yogurt have pink lids that show their support for breast cancer. Personally I don’t think we should be supporting breast cancer—we should be doing everything possible to get rid of it—but for manly yogurt they should replace those with brown lids showing support for prostate cancer. And let’s stop saying yogurt helps your digestion. That’s not what men want to hear. What we want to hear is “This yogurt will turn your ass into a rocket launcher.” Now that’s manly! And they need to do something about the flavors too. Currently yogurt comes in unmanly fruit flavors, or other equally unmanly flavors like cappuccino, red velvet cake, and lemon chiffon, which is not only unmanly but wrinkles so easily. A lot of brands of yogurt have fruit on the bottom. They should replace that with bacon on the bottom. Bacon is a truly manly food, which is why we men eat it eight or nine times a day, and that’s also why we men could probably use some yogurt in our diets. Except the bacon shouldn’t be on the bottom. Even when I thought I enjoyed yogurt I didn’t like the fruit on the bottom because you have to mix it up yourself, and that’s too much like cooking. Truly manly men never cook, unless it’s over an open flame, and if you’ve ever tried grilling yogurt you know it doesn’t work too well. Other manly flavors could include pizza, beer, pretzels, hot wings, fried candy bars, curly fries, chili, and sweat. A very popular flavor would be steak and baked potato, which would be great for Greek yogurt which is basically just sour cream anyway. This has me so excited I can’t wait to get my hands on some of this manly yogurt, and I also hope they start redesigning other things that have been exclusively for women for men as well. For instance, why should only women enjoy tampons? I think we men should be able to enjoy those too, but to make them manly they should be made of steel, and maybe have some spikes attached. The claw marks will be an added bonus.

March 1, 2013

Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council has recommended children no longer be allowed to blow out candles on birthday cakes. This recommendation is limited to daycare centers for now, and is supposedly because blowing out candles spreads germs. My first thought was that it might have been prompted by fears that open flames can be dangerous, especially since birthday candles are the only time most people will see open flames anymore, and one member of the Council happens to be Frankenstein’s monster and the rest of them see fire as "scary magic". Aren’t the germs going through an open flame? And isn’t it fine if kids are exposed to some germs? That’s the basis for most vaccines, after all. Any germ that survives an open flame is going to be seriously weakened and easy pickings for our immune system which will be better able to fight off those germs in the future.

Maybe the Council members have seen too many of those home videos where someone goes to blow out the candles and accidentally spits on the cake. Trust me: they can cut around that part, and, in most cases, I’m sure they do. Getting rid of the entire cake because of a little spittle would be a waste of good frosting, but that’s another story. Making it about the threat of germs-a claim which many doctors have dismissed as ridiculous, by the way–makes it sound less like the Council is genuinely concerned about health and more concerned about ruining yet another childhood rite. Eating raw cookie dough has been ruined by salmonella. The space program has been ruined by budget cuts. And playing with razor blades in the middle of the interstate has been ruined by disposable razors and concrete barriers. Even being able to walk to school alone, or even to go outside alone, has been ruined by kidnappers and child molesters. Are these people more prevalent than they were when, say, I was a kid, or is it just that we’re more aware of them now? When I was a kid we knew not to get in a stranger’s car or to take candy from a stranger, unless it was Halloween and it was still in the original wrapper, or if it was Dr. Leary offering it. We didn’t know what would happen to us, just that there were certain adults we just shouldn’t trust.

When I was a kid I would often wander off on my own, sometimes miles from home. There was a collection of condominiums, or maybe they were just low-rent houses, on the hill behind my house, and I’d spend hours wandering there and wandering the weedy vacant lot behind them. I knew there were some sketchy characters around-I was caricatured three times-although I never really knew what, specifically, might happen to me, although there was one time when a whiskery man who smelled like cheddar warned me not to hang around there after dark because that was when the werewolves and farriers would come out. Maybe it drove my parents nuts that they didn’t know where I was, but I don’t remember them saying anything. Maybe they knew I was relatively safe, especially since my dog would defend me, or maybe they knew that if anyone kidnapped me it would be less like Law & Order and more like The Ransom of Red Chief. Now it seems like parents are caught between wanting kids to get more exercise and stop spending so much time playing video games in their rooms and being deathly afraid of letting them go outside for any reason, and I have to admit I don’t blame parents. It seems like the vague threats of strangers have been replaced by horrifyingly explicit descriptions of what’s happened to children. Because I’m not a parent myself-unless you count my four-legged children, and their pediatrician and I have been unable to agree on whether they count-it’s difficult for me to get any objective sense of how big a problem this is, or how much has changed since I was a kid, though.

Maybe the overprotective "helicopter parent" is largely a myth promoted by the same people who tell us the horrifying details of what’s happened to abducted children-that is, journalists who operate under the principle of "If it bleeds it leads", or, with increasing frequency, "We’ve pulled the sheet back so you can see the horse’s entire head". I can also afford to be cavalier, to say, hey, kids should be allowed to go roaming alone, to disappear for hours to explore vacant lots filled with rusty syringes and broken bottles. If I were a parent I’m sure I’d be just as cavalier, saying, yeah, that’s a great idea for everybody except MY kids. Every time my kids were out of my sight I’d probably break into a cold sweat, knowing the grim fact that I suspect is constantly on the minds of every responsible parent. Statistically the chances of any child being abducted and harmed are, thankfully, small, but statistics aren’t any comfort when it happens to your child. I could imagine being constantly sick with worry over that, but I’d still let them blow out the candles on their birthday cakes.

February 22, 2013

Every once in a while I walk to a nearby park with a pond and feed the ducks. I always feel a little odd doing this because I’m pretty sure the only people who regularly feed ducks are either at least forty years older than I am or forty years younger. It’s one of life’s beautiful symmetries that the same things that give us pleasure when we’re really young can do the same when we’re really old, and also that we come into the world bald, wrinkled, and toothless and, in many cases, depart the same way. It’s only in between that most of us look different, except Wallace Shawn. Anyway I don’t think my age matters. I like feeding the ducks.

Even though I do occasionally worry about being “normal” for the most part I’m a non-conformist, a guy who goes his own way, marches to the beat of his own drummer, and thins the herd. And the ducks seem to like being fed, at least most of the time. Mitch Hedburg said that he noticed that a duck’s opinion of him depended greatly on whether he had bread. That may seem odd since Hedburg would care what ducks thought of him because he was also a guy who marched to a different drummer, but the only people who really don’t care what other people think of them are the people who should care what other people think of them: sociopaths and people who should use deodorant. And as far as life coaches go a person could do worse than a duck. In my experience, though, Hedburg wasn’t exactly correct. I’ve noticed that ducks are only interested in the bread I bring them when it’s cold. In the summer months—which, in Tennessee, is March through November—they’re usually not interested in bread. Also I’ve also noticed that, at least where I go, it only seems to be small children who feed the ducks. I don’t see older people. Maybe they’re off feeding the pigeons, something I’ll never do. It’s not that I’ve got anything against pigeons, but they can get around while ducks seem to need to stick to fairly large bodies of water.

I was once in a train station. A train pulled up, the doors opened, and a couple of pigeons got out. I’m pretty sure they didn’t even have tickets, so clearly they get around. I feel the same way about Canada geese. If they’re able to come here all the way from Canada they should be able to find their own food, although Canada geese have a high opinion of me, or at least my bread, no matter the time of year. And they hiss and when they rear up are seventeen feet tall, so I give them the bread the ducks don’t want. Still when it’s cold I give preferential treatment to the ducks. For one thing Canada geese should be used to cold weather. For another ducks just seem friendlier and more personable. One year when I was in college there was a house a few blocks from the campus that had a pond the size of a dinner table where, for some reason, about two thousand ducks lived. One night, not long before Christmas, a group of people decided to go around the neighborhood singing carols. I went along with them because, even though I prefer to go my own way, I can’t carry a tune, so joining a group of singers and not singing seemed to be what my drummer was telling me to do, even though he has no sense of rhythm.

Anyway we went to the house with the duck pond and, maybe because they knew me as a guy who’d come by and feed them sometimes, or maybe just because they were curious, all the ducks came waddling and quacking out of the darkness toward us. So I led them off a little way and sang “Good King Wenceslas” to them, which the ducks seemed to appreciate because they can’t carry a tune either, but that’s another story. Recently, though, when I went to the park the ducks and Canada geese and pigeons had been joined by seagulls. Tennessee is pretty far from the ocean, and the pond in the middle of the park is slightly smaller than a football field. It’s big, but not big enough to be mistaken for any sea or even a large lake. What were seagulls doing there? According to my wife they’re just gulls, but that’s ridiculous. The Canada geese are still Canada geese, even though they seem to have taken up a permanent residence, and the ducks are still Mallards even though no one knows where Mallard is. The birds that I saw looked like seagulls, sounded like seagulls, and were just as interested in bread as seagulls. How could they be anything but seagulls when they so clearly fit the bill? Maybe over time the Canada geese will become Tennessee geese, and maybe the seagulls will eventually become just gulls, but for now I’m pretty sure they’re seagulls. They’re seagulls who’ve either been blown way off course, or maybe they’re just non-conformists.

February 15, 2013

The morning after my hospital stay a nurse brought me breakfast in my hospital room. Because I don’t have a lot of experience with hospitals I assumed hospital food would be terrible, but, in fact, it was pretty good. They gave me eggs, juice, milk, toast with butter and jelly, pancakes, a bagel with cream cheese, waffles, hash browns, and a whole roast suckling pig. I think they were following the same principle that dentists used when I was a kid and they’d give me a lollipop at the end of my visit. They said it was for being good, but I think it was meant to guarantee a return visit.

The only other time I’ve stayed in a hospital is when I was four and had to have minor surgery for an undescended testicle. That’s probably not information I should share, although I think I got over any shame I might have felt about it when I was four and would proudly show off my stitches until my mother explained that people in the grocery store checkout line really didn’t need to see them. Although it seems like it wasn’t too long afterward that I became very concerned about whether I was normal, a concern that would follow me well into my teenage years. Or it might have been the surgery, although I understand that is a pretty common problem. It was common enough that I’m pretty sure the doctor who performed the surgery was a temp. But I didn’t have any of the other surgical procedures I would regularly hear about. I never had my appendix removed. Admittedly neither did any of my friends, but I got the impression from television that this was something most people would undergo. And I never had my tonsils removed. None of my friends did either, but, again, this seemed to be a normal rite of passage, plus I kept hearing about how you’d get to eat all the ice cream you wanted. The only downside of that was seeing the dentist afterward. In fact I still have all my wisdom teeth except one, which either makes me wise or stupid, I’m not sure which, although teeth don’t have brains that I know of, and if they did they’d be smart enough to avoid the dentist.

I never had a broken arm or broken leg. I really didn’t want to break either an arm or leg, but it seemed like most of my friends and even a couple of adults, including my father, did. This not only seemed like something that happened normally to everyone, but wearing a cast seemed cool because everyone would sign it. At one point I even thought about asking the doctor if I could just get a cast for a couple of weeks. Anyway, as I grew older I stopped worrying about whether I was normal. In fact I took a certain amount of pride in what I thought was a certain level of abnormality, although I never did work hard at standing out or separating myself from the crowd, unlike some of my high school friends who were goths and who tried to assert their individuality by looking as much like each other as possible. One of them was also named Chris, and I think was aware that his desire for individuality conflicted with his desire to look like the crowd he hung out with. He even once mentioned to me that "Chris" was such a common name that walking down the hall of our school and yelling "Hey Chris!" was like going to a Cure concert and yelling "Hey, you in the black!" but that’s another story.

As an adult I don’t much care whether I’m normal or abnormal, especially since I suspect I’m so normal it’s abnormal, but sometimes I do wonder. My hospital breakfast also included a bowl of grapes. I dropped one of the grapes on the floor and it rolled under the bed. I thought briefly about leaving it there. I figured this was a hospital room and they probably hose it out with bleach between patients anyway. Then I started worrying that whoever came to clean up the room after I left would think I was a horrible slob. This is part of the reason why when I stay in hotel rooms I try not to leave them looking like a complete mess. It’s not like I carry a portable vacuum, but I keep my clothes in a single neat pile in a corner and straighten up the bed a little. I don’t want the maid coming in to clean up and thinking, "Who’s staying here, Keith Moon?" Not that it really matters. Chances are good I’m never going to meet the hotel maid. In fact I try to avoid them. If I have to go to my room to get something and it’s being cleaned I’ll wait until they’re done regardless of what it is I need to get. Is that normal? I don’t know, although in my limited experience it’s not. Several years running I went to an annual science fiction convention with my friends, which I know isn’t normal, but my friends and their tonsils and appendices also went so that made it sort of normal.

If my friends happened to be in or even near the room when the maid came to clean they’d hang out and chat with her, and later tell me about the fascinating conversation they’d had, how the woman cleaning the room had emigrated from Greenland and was going to night school to be a CPA. And I felt so envious of my friends. It’s even worse when I’m home alone and someone comes to do repair work on the house. If my wife’s there it’s fine because she can talk to them. When it’s just me I can barely manage telling them that the faucet is leaking or that the stove exploded. I really am fascinated by whatever they’re doing and would love to talk to them about it or about their lives, and generally I’m not a shy person, but for some reason I always end up locking myself in the bedroom and hyperventilating and hoping they’ll just give me a bill to sign and not ask me something complicated like what color caulk I want under the sink. I’m pretty sure that’s not normal, and it’s also gotten us a long way from that grape that rolled under the bed. So I crawled under the bed and got the grape, which I’m pretty sure is something most normal people would do. And then, figuring that hospital rooms are clean enough that the five second rule can probably safely be expanded to five minutes, I ate the grape. That’s normal, isn’t it?

APPENDIX

It may seem pretty abnormal that I’m talking about surgeries, goths, and grapes on Valentine’s Day, but my wife and I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day. It seems silly to set aside one day a year to say what I should say every day, which is, Holly, I love you because you make me laugh, because you know exactly what to say to the repair people, and for a hundred other reasons, including the fact that you know I love surprises and sometimes surprise me with things like brewery tours and Valentine’s Day cards even though we don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day, and even though you say you don’t like surprises I hope once in a while I surprise you in ways that make you as happy as you make me.