To Bean Or Not To Bean

In my last post, I detailed how I bought store-brand, no-beans chili and when I opened the can I saw it had beans. I wasn’t upset about that, but I wrote about the incident on this blog and somebody at Food Lion headquarters saw the article and phoned me. My phone records calls, and the call, at least the important part, went like this:

FL: “We want to assure you that our no-beans chili has no beans. Your article stating the contrary is incorrect.”

Me: “But there were beans in the chili.”

FL: “No there weren’t. We don’t like the implication that our chili has beans.”

Me: “But you sell chili with beans.”

FL: “Yes, we do.”

Me: “So what were the things in my chili that looked like beans?”

FL: “They weren’t beans.”

Me: “What were they?”

FL: “Bean-like objects.”

Me: “What are they made of?”

FL: “That’s proprietary. We can’t tell you.”

Me: “But doesn’t the law require you to disclose all the ingredients in your food?”

FL: “I’ll refer your question about the law to our legal department.”

Me: “My phone records all my calls. Do you mind if I blog about this phone call?”

FL: “Yes.”

Me: “You do mind?”

FL: “Yes.”

Me: “What if, at the end my blog post, I said this call never took place and it was purely fictional? Would it be okay to blog about the call then?”

FL: “I guess so. But you must report that our no-beans chili has no beans.”

Me: “I will.”

And we ended the call. Just for the record, I’ve eaten their chili-with-beans and it’s tasty. And that about sums it up.

Oh, one more thing. Their no-beans chili has no beans and this call never took place.

Let me think—am I leaving out anything? No, I think that does it. G’night, all.

Lifestyle

My biorhythm is out of whack. And by biorhythm, I mean that thing that tells us when to sleep and when to wake up. And by us, I mean me.

I went to bed to get some sleep at 5:30AM today. I’m not a shift worker. I just developed a problem with being able to sleep at night. I used to cure it by drinking alcohol, but that began creating its own problems, so now I just don’t sleep at night. Problem solved.

This morning, as I just said but it bears repeating, I went to bed at 5:30AM. I went to sleep about 6:30AM, by which time the sun was beginning to rise. Not exactly dawn, but maybe it’s what people call false dawn. I went to sleep and woke up at 7:30AM, so I got a solid hour of sleep. I got out of bed at 8AM and ate breakfast: two chili dogs.

I didn’t eat lunch until 2PM. For lunch I ate two more chili dogs. I use store-bought chili because convenience is my raison d'être. When I bought the wieners, I also bought a can of chili. Usually, I buy hot dog chili, but the store only had the Texas Tailgate brand, which I tried once and didn’t care for the taste. To each his own. So I bought a can of generic store-brand chili. The can’s label declared, “chili no beans.” It wasn’t hot dog chili, it was just chili like you might put on a baked potato. But when I opened the can, guess what was in the chili. Beans.

I know what you're thinking. You’re thinking if the can says “no beans” then it can’t have beans in it, because companies don’t lie or make mistakes. Sure. But in my version of reality … never mind, it doesn’t bother me at all. It was only a preference, not a got-to-have. Besides, with all the spices I can’t really taste the beans. And technically, I’m not sure real chili even has beans in the recipe. Nor meat. Chili with ground beef is called chili con carne—chili with meat. Isn’t it?

Anyway, I liked the chili with no beans; it made good chili dogs. I put diced onion on top of the chili. Chili dogs have to have diced onion on them. I’ll leave heating instructions to my readers’ imaginations and a little trial-and-error. I could easily tell you how to heat up a hot dog wiener in a microwave oven, but it’s a secret passed down in my family for generations and I promised to never reveal it.

I was talking with a friend yesterday and we both have our issues with house-cleaning. She gets run down from taking full-time care of a grandson with disabilities, and I’m just lazy. I’m not lazy when I do things I enjoy. I’ll spend hours writing software and it seems like ten minutes went by. Or designing a website. Or writing a blog post—when I have something to write about. But cleaning is a chore I can always put off until tomorrow. And then until the next day. And then the next. And the next.

Tonight, instead of watching YouTube videos or reruns of TV shows, I think I might wander the house zombie-like, picking up old mail and scratching my head and asking myself, “How did this happen?” Such is life.

Late Afternoon

The afternoon was quiet as he walked the tree-lined street. Quiet, but for the tinnitus—that eighth octave C note constantly in his ears, every second, every minute, every hour, every day. After hearing it for so many years, he seldom noticed it unless he thought about it. He didn’t think about it now.

He turned a corner onto another street and came upon a tree with clusters of bright red blossoms. Many of the oldest blossoms had turned a deeper shade, had fallen to the walkway below, creating a purple stain on the cement that would be washed away by the next rainy day. In the east, a white cumulus cloud boiled into the sky. Ten miles away, rain might be falling. But overhead, his sky was blue.

He encountered oases of sounds along his walk. In one spot, children’s voices drifted on the air. In another spot, birds twittered. Between the oases was a silence broken only by his own gritty footsteps.

Sometimes, on such a summer eve, he wished he could capture a moment like this. He wished he could distill its essence into words so that anyone reading those words could feel this moment as he felt it. But he knew that kind of writing was far above him. It didn’t matter. His writing was what it was. It served to pass the time.

For that is what life is: passing time while we wait for the end. If, while passing time, you do something that helps your fellow humans pass time, then your life surely must count for something, whether or not the world knows.

2AM Hopper

I awoke at 2AM and knew sleep was no longer possible. I got up and went to the kitchen. It was then that I saw the creature. It was a cricket. I turned to get a better look at it, and it hopped under the dining table. That’s how I knew it was a cricket. I get the occasional roach that finds its way into the house, but roaches don’t hop. I shrugged and let the cricket go. I knew the creature and I would cross paths again, and soon.

Recently, I awoke at night and went to the kitchen for a glass of water. There was a creature on the spigot. I knocked it into the sink, then I poured water on it and washed it into the sink drain. The creature was too large to fit through the slots in the sink drain. So I grabbed a knife and began chopping at the creature. Eventually, my chopping rendered the creature into pieces small enough to fit through the holes in the drain, and then it was gone. When unwanted creatures come into my house, death awaits them. And it won’t be pleasant.

I’m not even going to tell you about what happened to the mouse.

To Wear A Mask

A guy walked into a Costco (story) and began his shopping without a mask. Costco requires customers to wear a mask. So a Costco employee (wearing a mask) walks up to the guy and tells him to put on a mask. The guy refuses because, he says, he woke up a free country. So the Costco guy tells him to leave the store and takes away his shopping cart.

I think some people are confused about what a free country allows. It’s a free country but you can’t drive a hundred miles per hour on our highways. It’s a free country but you can’t take a loaded gun onto a passenger jet. It’s a free country but you have no right to come into my house without an invitation.

America is a free country, but there are federal laws and state laws and county laws and city laws. America has laws, as does every other country. Wearing a mask is not about freedom. Wearing a mask is about not giving a disease to people around you. You might insist you don’t have a disease, but no one knows that for sure, including you. Some people with Covid don’t exhibit symptoms; some exhibit very mild symptoms. But your cough or sneeze could give someone else a disease that kills them. Why is your “freedom” to not wear a mask more important than the lives of people around you?

If wearing a mask protected you and only you, then I would say, “let the guy (you) not wear a mask if he doesn’t want to.” But I would say that with one caveat. If you choose to walk around in crowds without a mask, then you should forfeit your right to hospital care if you get Covid. Why should you put doctors and nurses at risk of catching the disease from you, when you intentionally avoided preventive action? Why should medical people put their lives on the line to save you, when you refused to help yourself? If you would agree to not seek medical care if you caught Covid, then I would be okay with you not wearing a mask.

But it doesn’t work that way. Not wearing a mask means you could unknowingly infect others. I’m not okay with that, and you shouldn’t be either.

Russian Nurses

Credit: East2west News

A Russian nurse (in her 20's) claimed that wearing ordinary clothing beneath her PPE made her "hot." So she opted for lingerie or possibly a bikini swimsuit, it's hard to tell which it is from the photo. The news article where I saw this noted that none of the patients on the all-male ward objected to her attire.

My opinion is: she failed. She's still hot.

In her defense, she said she didn't know her protective suit was transparent. Sounds reasonable to me.

All I know for sure is that I've been in the hospital a few times and none of the nurses wore transparent clothes or bikinis. Those Russian nurses! You gotta love 'em.

Frankly, I don't have a problem with hot nurses wearing lingerie or swimwear in my hospital room. But in America, it never happens. We're so Victorian. In some ways, the Russians are well ahead of us.

Spam and Sausage Gravy

As I threatened in yesterday’s post, today I added a slice of grilled Spam to my mid-afternoon snack of toasted burger bun and pork sausage gravy. (Click image for mouth-watering larger image. Don’t blame me if you drool on your viewing device.)

“How was it?” I hear you asking. Are you kidding? There is fat in the gravy and more fat in the Spam. Both contain cholesterol. I can feel my arteries harden as I sit at my pc. My father would be proud. His doctor told me that he (my father) had the worst case of hardening of the arteries that he (the doctor) had ever seen. Wow.

And the meal contains those healthy saturated fats we hear so much about. Not to mention sodium. I guess what I’m hinting at is: you might want to reconsider eating this meal every day. But I give you permission to eat it on occasion. Unless you’re old, in which case you can eat it every day. It’s good for you. I can’t say that unless it’s true. 

Meal Dilemma

Breakfast: 1 slaw dog + 1 “regular” dog with mustard, ketchup, onion.

Lunch: Caesar salad

Mid-afternoon snack: Hamburger bun, opened and toasted under the broiler and topped with sausage gravy. Next time, I’ll grill a slice of Spam to go with it. My taste buds are already excited.

Supper: I don’t know yet. I never know until suppertime. I have frozen spaghetti with meat sauce. I have frozen chicken fried rice. On the Healthy Choice website, the fried rice rates a solid 3 out of 5 from 79 reviews. That’s close to average, and average is as much as I dare hope for.

The Stouffer’s spaghetti is rated 4.5 from 184 reviews. That’s quite good, but it is, after all, just spaghetti.

This isn’t fine dining. It’s a frozen dinner from a frozen dinner factory. Yes, frozen dinners come from factories. A long time ago, I toured a frozen dinner factory—my neighbor was the Plant Manager. I sampled some of the fried chicken that went into the dinners and it was really good. But something happens in the freezing-and-reheating process. The food is just not as tasty, IMHO. Maybe I’m heating it wrong. Maybe I’m eating it wrong.

Hours pass. What did I end up eating for supper?

A peanut butter and banana sandwich. Meh.

James Webb Space Telescope

NASA is building a telescope to be the successor to Hubble. It’s called the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). There’s one little problem: the telescope’s mirror is too big to fit into any existing rocket, so to make it more compact, the mirror is formed of 18 small, hexagonal mirrors and is folded up like origami. When the telescope gets to space, it will unfold itself into the correct shape. The telescope will have a sunshield that is also folded up. It too will unfold once it gets to space.

In theory.

This folding/unfolding process is very complicated and has caused delays and cost overruns. If only those telescope scientists had come to me for advice. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m good at many things, and especially at telling people how to do stuff. They could have sent me an email:

Dear VirtualWayne, we have a problem. Our new telescope is too big for the rocket’s nose cone, so we’ve designed it to fold up. Then when it gets into space, it unfolds itself. The problem is: that’s really hard to do! What is your advice? —Your friend, NASA

I would’ve tossed out the folding telescope design. Who came up with that? I would’ve advised NASA to send the telescope mirror up into space in pieces. Have it dock with the International Space Station. The astronauts there, who are probably bored to tears, can go outside the Space Station and assemble the mirror, attach it to the rest of the telescope, attach a rocket motor, and off it goes to the Earth-Sun L₂ LaGrange Point, where it will be parked and begin operating. No folding/unfolding in space by itself—just assembly and testing by humans. And if something doesn’t work, we don’t lose a multi-billion dollar telescope and years of work. Rather, we fix it in orbit.

Just saying: that’s what I would’ve done. But I’m a civilian, so what do I know?

Prepping the Jeep

I wanted to prepare my Jeep for the summer driving season, so I checked the tire pressure, the oil level, and the transmission fluid level.

First the tires: I wanted to inflate them to correct tire pressure. Being an American I like to use pounds per square inch—the way God meant pressure to be measured. I like to keep tire pressure at 30 psi. I got out the air pump I keep in the Jeep’s rear cargo area. The dial pressure gauge on the inflator is calibrated in Kg/cm² (Kilograms per square centimeter). Dang it, metric units. I pulled out my stick pressure gauge. It’s calibrated in kPa (kiloPascals). I looked at the dial gauge. I looked at the stick gauge. Then I made the only rational decision. I hooked the compressor to each tire and pumped in 5 minutes worth of air. Kidding! I put in 30 psi. Tires: check.

Next I checked the oil. The level was a half quart below the Add mark. It so happened I had two half-full quart containers of 10W30. I also had a funnel but I didn’t feel like walking around the Jeep to the shelf where it was stored. I removed the bottle cap and poured the oil into the filler hole in the right valve cover. I figured I might spill a little at first but counted on the fact I could quickly adjust the pour to go into the hole in the valve cover. To my dismay, the stream of oil was not a nice, steady stream. It wiggled and wavered, hitting the valve cover on one side of the filler hole, then a split second later hitting on the opposite side of the filler hole. Back and forth the oily stream went without hitting the filler hole. Finally I got the flow rate adjusted so that oil flowed more or less in a straight pour into the filler hole. That brought the oil level up to halfway between Add and Full. Oil: check.

I checked the transmission fluid. The transmission fluid is supposed to be checked with the engine warmed up. My Jeep’s engine was not warmed up. But how far off could the fluid level be just because of engine temperature? I thought the level might be a bit low because I’ve never added transmission fluid. With the engine running and my foot on the brake pedal, I shifted the transmission through its range: Low, Drive, Neutral, Reverse, Park. Then I pulled out the transmission dipstick and examined it. Close to the end of the stick was the Add mark. About an inch and a quarter above that was the Full mark. Above the Full mark was an inscription, “DO NOT OVERFILL”. And about 5 inches above that was the actual transmission fluid level. Hmm. I wondered briefly if someone was sneaking into my garage at night and adding transmission fluid. I resolved to recheck the fluid level after my next trip in the Jeep when the tranny was warm.

Tomorrow, if it’s a warm day, I’ll check the a/c and see if it needs refrigerant. I’ll check the coolant level, the power steering fluid level, the brake fluid level, and the windshield washer fluid level. I’ll pull the Jeep out of the garage into sunlight and check underneath the hood for anything that looks funky. I’ll look for cracks in hoses and in the serpentine belt that drives the water pump and all the accessories (alternator, power steering pump, and a/c compressor).

I might also check the air filter. Though, it’s hard to know if the filter has become too dirty. And if you ask a garage mechanic, he’ll always tell you it’s too dirty. It’s best to just replace your filter every 15,000 to 30,000 miles.

Prepping the vehicle doesn’t eliminate the possibility of a breakdown on the road. But it does lessen the chance of a breakdown that could have been prevented by a simple under-the-hood inspection. Every driver should know the basics of an automobile engine. Every driver should know where the tire jack is located and how to use it to change a tire. In my Jeep it’s in a compartment under the rear bench seat. I think the original purpose of the compartment must have been to smuggle drugs across the border. If you didn’t know that compartment was under the seat, you would never guess by eyeballing the interior of the vehicle.

That’s it. Checking your vehicle isn’t so hard. You might want to think about doing it once in a while.

Outside the Simulation

When my mother was 80-plus years old, I sometimes thought about that and wondered how my mother felt about it. How did she feel knowing that her demise was, figuratively, just around the corner?

I don’t expect to reach my mother’s age. But the obituaries are full of people who died of natural causes long before they reached my age. You see it on the news too frequently.

Probably like a lot of people, I think about death sometimes. I think about the fact that on any given night I could go to bed, go to sleep, and never wake up. For me, time will stop. The Universe will end. I will sleep a dreamless sleep, as unaware of the Universe as I was during the first 13.8 billion years it existed.

But perhaps I won’t be having a dreamless sleep after all. It’s possible that our consciousness continues after our body dies. Lately, a lot of people—including scientists—have been asking the question, “Are we living in a simulation?”

I would answer that question, “Of course we are!”

The Big Bang Theory is the theory that describes the evolution of the universe. The theory doesn’t tell us how the universe was created; it tells us how the universe evolved after it was created. An article on Vox says,

In an influential paper that laid out the theory, the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom showed that at least one of three possibilities is true: 1) All human-like civilizations in the universe go extinct before they develop the technological capacity to create simulated realities; 2) if any civilizations do reach this phase of technological maturity, none of them will bother to run simulations; or 3) advanced civilizations would have the ability to create many, many simulations, and that means there are far more simulated worlds than non-simulated ones.

So maybe the universe was simply…switched on. I think it’s an interesting idea, but one that won’t affect my life at all, whether or not it is true. How do you feel about it? 

genGUI

Written: 4/25/2017. My friend and fellow blogger CyberDave published a post in April titled Kindle-gen. So I looked through my Drafts folder and found my own ebook-related post. And I published it. Not that anyone is going to make heads or tails of either post, but if CD can publish ebook gibberish, so can I. Witnesseth:

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I have an unrealistic expectation that I’m good at many things, even though my entire life stands in stark contrast to that notion. In my most introspective moments I wonder if I’m good at anything. But that’s a whole other topic.

So, being good at many things, I decided to write a book. Specifically, an ebook—an electronic book that you can read on your ebook reader (Kindle, Nook, Fire, iPhone, Android phone, Mac, or PC). Self-publishing an ebook is almost trivial. Step one: write an ebook. Step two: create an account with an online publisher. Step three: upload the ebook to the publisher’s website (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc.). You decide what the book will cost. The publisher takes a percentage of your ebook sales. This lets you bypass the gatekeepers—agents, print publishers and, unfortunately for some writers, copy editors—and your book goes straight to the public.

I said self-publishing was easy. Creating your own ebook is another matter. You have to be one half creative artist and one half software egghead. At least, that’s how it seems to me. Example: one day recently I spent the better part of the day writing a computer program to serve as a GUI front-end to Amazon’s Kindlegen command-line tool that converts opf or epub or html or zip files into Amazon’s proprietary mobi format. And just an hour ago I found myself pondering the difference between “huffdic” compression versus standard doc compression. If Aldous Huxley were alive, he would certainly be thinking that it’s a brave new world. Indeed, writing has come a long way from the Woodstock typewriter I used in my youth.

Ebooks begin life as HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language), the language of the Web. But how does one write in HTML? There are HTML editors, of course. They’ve been around for a while and are much used for website design. Some document editors allow a file to be saved in multiple formats including HTML. You can write your own HTML using Notepad, which is how I designed websites back when the internet was new and there weren’t many tools to help website designers.

Nowadays, many ebook writers use a program designed with ebook production in mind, like Scrivener or Jutoh. But those tools only take you so far. To get from HTML to EPUB or Amazon’s MOBI format, you need a tool that converts your HTML into the ebook format.

Converting HTML to EPUB format isn’t difficult; there are even online converters for that format. But to convert HTML into the Amazon Kindle proprietary MOBI format, you must use Amazon’s Kindlegen, a command-line application. Some book editors—such as Scrivener—integrate with Kindlegen so that the conversion process is seamless.

Kindlegen is a command line program, which means it runs in a command box, a.k.a. “DOS box.” Kindlegen has several arguments that can be included with the file you’re converting. I’m not a fan of command line programs: they’re awkward to use and every time I use one I have to study what the various arguments do all over again. So I decided to write a GUI (graphical user interface) for Kindlegen. I call it “genGUI.”

It looks like this (click for larger image):

The empty rectangle on the right is the “output window” where Kindlegen’s messages appear in the language you have selected. The program works fine. I might use it one day to create a Kindle ebook. But the book I was thinking of publishing had a lot of images, and images make an ebook larger (file size), and file size is money. The project became uneconomical for what I had in mind. So I put it on the back burner for now. One day, one day, maybe.

On the LSE lecture

Written 4/10/2016. Here’s another post I never finished. I’m posting it as-is because it informs and might give someone something to think about. And, I finally get it out of my Drafts folder. (LSE is London School of Economics.)

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I watched a YouTube video which featured, as speaker, BBC journalist Justin Webb. It was hosted by chairperson Kirsty Young and taped at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Justin spent 8 years in America, from 9/11 to the election of Barack Obama, as a journalist. From her remarks, Kirsty seems to have traveled throughout America as well. There was an audience who were there, apparently, to learn more about America. There was a discussion session in which Justin, prompted by questions from Kirsty, remarked on the various differences between America and England, and talked about some things that might surprise Europeans traveling to America. Their observations provide insights into America that we who live here often don’t see.

When Justin first went to America, his young son said to him, “America is rich, right? But it doesn’t look it.”

Kirsty added,

What a brilliant observer he is, because, of course, if you spend any amount of time in America at all, you find your cell phone communications don’t work, your cell goes down, the roads are filled with potholes, the ambulance will not take you away, there are all sorts of things about America that border on the third world just clinging on to the first world, in some respects, with its fingertips.

My comment: I’m sure Munich and Singapore and Beijing have gleaming new airports along with a lot of other shiny new infrastructure. Those things cost a lot of money. Americans could pay more taxes and build our own shiny new infrastructure. Or we could pay less taxes and keep the old infrastructure a while longer. We could put the money we would have paid in taxes into our own pockets.

America is a wealthy country, and I think tourists from other countries have an expectation that American highways, bus stations, train stations, and airports will be at least as modern as those that are in their own country. And there are places in America that are as good as any you’d find outside of America. But America also has plenty of places where people live in poverty.

Justin said,

Infant mortality is bad, especially considering how wealthy the country is. Those Americans who travel discover that their infrastructure is staggeringly bad. Americans are embarrassed when they travel to Munich or Singapore and see how other people have rebuilt and revivified their public spaces. There are pockets of extreme poverty. I just made a road trip through West Virginia. There are people there who live in trailers beside the road, pretty much eating road kill—it doesn’t quite come to that, but it’s a really rough existence—the awfulness of life in America if you’re poor. And the question is, does one lead to the other; does the fear of failure push the nation into being so staggeringly wealthy, and successful, and full of ideas, and buzziness? I think Americans themselves believe very strongly that part of the strength of their society is the poverty. They wouldn’t put it like that, but there is a sense that you can climb very high, and you can fall very low, and if you stop people falling very low, you stop people climbing very high, as well.

My comment: Americans believe in social mobility—the belief that one day things will work out for them and they will be on top, they’ll have the big house and the new car. It’s a great belief to have. Unfortunately, social mobility is becoming more difficult.

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Wikipedia offers more information on social mobility in the US here.

Choices

Written: 7/9/2018. I didn’t think it was good enough to publish (which happens often) so it stayed in limbo in my Drafts folder, along with many other would-be posts. But I’m lazy today, so here it is.

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A fertility clinic in San Francisco had an equipment failure and 2,000 frozen eggs and embryos may have been compromised. Another fertility clinic in Cleveland had a similar failure that same weekend that compromised 4,000 eggs and embryos. Women who wanted a baby in later life may be out of luck. Naturally, lawsuits are pending.

When I saw this on the news, I had an imaginary conversation with an imaginary wannabe future mom.

“If you want to have a baby, better have it now,” I told her.

“But I want a career, too,” she replied. “I shouldn’t have to choose between a baby and a career.”

“That’s what life is: choices. We make little choices and big choices all the time. Do I get pizza or hamburger for lunch? Choose wrong and you may get indigestion. Should I marry or not marry, should I choose this person or that person? Choose wrong and you could live a lifetime of regret. Life is a long series of choices.”

“But it’s not fair,” she said. “Those eggs were supposed to be there when I want a baby. Now they’re gone. I’ve lost my future child. Somebody has to pay.”

“I’m sure they will pay, but it’s only money. That is no substitute for a baby you can hold, a child of your own.”

We make choices and we live with them. All we know for certain is that sometimes our choices will be wrong, and all the lawsuits in the world won’t change that.

I feel bad for that wannabe mom. But all isn’t lost. If she has an instinct to mother a child, she should look into adopting a young child. I know it’s not the same, but she’ll grow to love that kid, and the kid will love her, and isn’t that the important part of having a child?

The Mask

I bought my first face mask today. I don’t really need a mask. The purpose of a face mask is to prevent you from spreading the illness, in the event that you have an illness, and I don’t think I have an illness. I’m self-isolating as per the governor’s mandate. I bought it because I don’t want to be tackled to the ground by an officer of the law for not wearing a mask. Nor do I want to be harangued or attacked by an irate customer at a business. There are some businesses that won’t allow you to enter unless you’re wearing a mask. So I bought the thing. But I don’t plan to open the package unless I have to.

The mask is a miracle of nothingness. It’s literally light as a feather. It’s not cloth; it’s about as hefty as a facial tissue. There are instructions on the back of the package—instructions such as:

Before using this mask, consult an Industrial Hygienist or Occupational Safety Professional to determine the suitability for your intended use.

and

This product does not supply oxygen.

Right.

Anyway, I feel a part of the community now. But it’s not a community I want to belong to. I feel more comfortable being around the minority who don’t wear a mask. Isn’t that strange? But I’ll hang onto my mask for those occasions where I must have a mask. You will wear a mask or you will die! Okay, be cool, I’ll wear a mask. I have one; it’s in my wallet. Let me get it out. Where is that thing? Is it here? No, that’s my driver’s license. Is it here? No, that’s my insurance card. Here it is! I’ll rip open the package and take it out and…nope, that’s my emergency condom. Where is that dang mask?

One day things will be normal again, I hope.

Another Day At The Lion

I went back to the Lion. I was there to buy Xiao Long Bao soup dumplings. At the entrance, a very young lady with a very bored expression was cleaning shopping cart handles.

“Excuse me,” I said, “but can you tell me where the Xiao Long Bao dumplings might be found?

She looked confused. “What?”

“Okay,” I said, “Where are the generic dumplings?”

“What’s a dumpling?” she asked.

I studied her for a few seconds as my brain quickly computed all the various bifurcations this conversation could take, and then I replied.

“Listen,” I told her in a low voice, “If you lose your job, there will always be a stint waiting for you at Johnny Ramone's Tiki Hut. Just be careful, when you walk in, to not slip on the glitter.”

I wish her the best.

Freeze Frame

Have you ever noticed that public people (movie stars, film directors, etc.) in public settings, having their picture taken, often appear goofy? Their heads are too big, they’re in awkward poses, their smiles look phony. Or all of the above and then some more.

There’s something about freezing a person in time that is not flattering. Take a short video of them and they look fine. Take one frame of that video and enlarge it, and they look goofy. A video is really just a bunch of goofy photos strung together, but play them back through a video monitor and a person in the video looks ordinary, not goofy at all. I think its because their posture and features are changing constantly, even if subtly, and our brain takes that stream of less-than-flattering images and composes them into a likeness of a human being, and then we see the person that we expect to see.

Maybe I’m being too critical. In fact, I am critical. I hate to present something to the world that isn’t my best effort. I have to set the bar somewhere, so I try to set it where I have to strive a little harder to make my creation as near to perfect as I can. So am I picky? Was Michelangelo picky? Was da Vinci picky? Was Monet picky?

Someone is going to ask, “Are you comparing yourself to some of the greatest artists of all time?” Well, yes. Yes I am. I’m just telling it like it is.

Earlier this morning (did I mention it’s morning?), I awoke in a dark room. I turned my head to look at the clock beside my bed. The clock’s usually glowing digits were dark. The electric power was off. I lay awake for a long time, but the power never came back on. It’s unusual for the power to go off. Rarely, it will flicker, but to go off and stay off is unusual. Eventually, I returned to sleep. When I awoke again, the power was on and the clock read 4:43AM. I got out of bed and walked to the kitchen and reset the blinking displays on my stove and microwave oven. A clock radio that cost me less than $10 has a battery backup for timekeeping, but my electric stove that cost hundreds of dollars and my microwave oven that also wasn’t cheap do not have backup power for their clocks. Why is that? I just want to put that notion out there. Battery backup for everything with a clock! But this is modern times and we needn’t use batteries. Just put a Wi-Fi chip inside the product and let it get the time from the Internet.

It’s almost 5:30AM on a Saturday morn and still dark outside. I think this little article has meandered to something resembling a conclusion. It’s not a great article but it will have to do. I’m trying to be less picky. I’m going to hit the Publish button and maybe go back to bed. Or maybe I’ll just sit and read until the sun comes up. Goodnight and good morning.

Black Rice

Like most men, when I need something from a store I go to the store, get what I need, pay for it, and leave. In other words, I don’t shop—I purchase. Therefore, there are many things in the store that fly under my radar. They may be common items but I’m not aware of them.

When I buy rice, I choose brown rice, never white or yellow rice. White rice is basically brown rice with the healthy parts removed, and yellow rice is white rice colored yellow with annatto, saffron or turmeric. White rice has such poor nutritional content that certain nutrients are usually added to it before it is packaged. Then it is called enriched rice. Brown rice has more protein, more fiber, and more vitamins and minerals.

Now we are at the point where my not being a shopper becomes relevant. I was not aware until recently that there are other varieties of rice that are even healthier than brown rice. Healthier but harder to find are red rice and purple rice. There are several varieties of red rice, such as Himalayan red rice, Thai Red Cargo rice, and the rare Rakthashali. Their color comes from a flavonoid called anthocyanin pigment. Anthocyanin is an antioxidant that promotes heart health and lowers the risk of some cancers. Anthocyanin is what gives blueberries their color and health benefits.

Purple rice has more anthocyanin than red rice, and black rice has more anthocyanin than purple rice. There are several varieties of black rice such as Indonesian black rice, Philippine balatinaw rice, and Thai jasmine black rice. Black rice is also called forbidden rice because in ancient China it was reserved for the emperor. Ordinary Chinese were not allowed to eat it.

I have never seen these varieties of colorful rice on a store shelf, and if I had I would probably have shrugged and thought “rice is rice.” Yet they exist and are healthier than other types of rice. Not every grocery stocks black rice but you can buy it online. Black rice costs more than white or brown rice, and organic black rice costs still more.

According to their website, a nearby Kroger stocks black rice. The store is ten miles up the road from me, but it might be worth a trip there to satisfy my curiosity. What does it taste like? Will I like it? If I don’t like it at first, will its taste “grow on me”? It’s too late for me to start making food choices based on health benefits. But recipes for black rice dishes and superb food photos online have piqued my curiosity.

It's Not Junk Food

My amigo and fellow blogger CD has informed me that I’ve published too many posts about the virus and I need to get some new content. So in this article I will not talk about the virus.

I drove to the grocery this morning. Almost all the customers were wearing face coverings, perhaps to conceal their identities as I can think of no other reason for such behavior. But oddly, and in defiance of the local custom, the employees who were pretending to stock the shelves were not wearing face coverings.

I mainly bought food items. I bought Spam simply because I haven’t eaten it in a very long time and, after all, Spam is delicious. I bought frozen hamburger patties. The package has 6 patties, but the buns come 8 per package, because of course they do. There’s a wiener maker I won’t name that sells a package of 7 wieners. I can hardly believe it. It’s almost like the wiener company is giving us shoppers a big F* U*.

Almost.

Back to the bun situation. What to do with the extra 2 buns? It occurred to me I could toast them and pour sausage gravy over them and eat them for breakfast, like SOS but with buns and pork gravy instead of toast and creamed beef.

So I bought a can of sausage gravy. The can's label says it is “homestyle” sausage gravy. The only reason I dine out is so that I don’t have to taste my own cooking, so labeling a can of food "homestyle" is not, for me, an inducement to buy it. But I know what they meant. I think.

What other edibles did I buy?

I bought a heat-and-serve (not frozen) dinner of linguine with marinara sauce. I bought a two-pound package of breaded chicken nuggets. (I know, chickens don't have nuggets. Whatever.)

I bought two Totino's Party Pizzas (one Combination and one Triple Meat) and a little can of anchovies. Some people put anchovies and capers on a pizza. I have no use for capers, but sliced black olives might be good with anchovies. One of the pizzas has meat on it so I probably won't put anchovies on that one. I'll have leftover anchovies which I may just eat slice by salty slice right out of the can. Done it before. Or I might save the anchovies for a future pizza. The anchovies, sealed in their can, will stay good for eternity plus a day.

I bought a couple cans of Vienna Sausage. Not the boring Original flavor, but the BBQ flavored sausage. I might even spice them up with a little hot sauce. Armour makes a Bourbon BBQ flavored sauce (the one shown here), which I might have bought if the store had any in stock. I bet it sells out before any of the other flavors.

A lot of people will tell you canned meats (Vienna sausage, deviled ham, sardines, etc.) are foods just for fishing and camping—they're snacks for when you can't cook. But don't believe them. If you're hungry and you're at home but you don't feel like cooking, then they're a tasty way to get some protein.

I returned home and put my purchases on the shelf, in the fridge or the freezer, whichever was appropriate. The canned items joined my Beanie Weenies, grits, oatmeal, peanut butter, sardines, and herring fillets.

And for supper tonight, chili with beans—the kind that comes in a can. It doesn't get any easier. Let's hear it for modern times!

Hunting

I saw this news headline today:

Americans turn to hunting amid fears of coronavirus food shortages

(Eye-roll)

I’m sure that’s the reason they’re hunting: all the grocery stores are out of food. Even H-E-B. These Americans are not hunting because they enjoy it. To the contrary, they have no choice but to hunt or starve.

Not! The stores have plenty of food, but even if all the stores were out of meat, people wouldn’t starve. Vegetarianism has been around a very long time and is reputed to be quite healthy.

What we have here are people who feel the need to justify inflicting fear, pain, and death on animals, and a reporter who is trying to spice up what is otherwise a non-story.

If you want to hunt, then okay, go hunt. Go fish. But don’t pretend your survival depends on it. Your sirloin may depend on it, but not your life.

A Day in May

It’s 3AM. As I sit in the dark, I realize it’s also another night without the sound of a train passing through town. Those trains haul freight, and freight isn’t moving, at least not by train, and that is a not a good sign for the economy.

It’s 6AM. Time for breakfast. I eat two bowls of raisin bran and a banana. What am I going to eat for lunch? Maybe a tuna fish sandwich. And supper? I have Power Bowls in the freezer. Plus I have some canned food, such as Brunswick stew, and chili, and beans and greens, and Beanie Weenies, and little fish in cans: sardines and kippered herring. And I have food in round boxes: oatmeal and grits, just add boiling water and stir. And I have ingredients to make Mexican Rice, if I can muster the will power.

One of the downsides of quarantine is there is nothing to write about. Much of what passes for news is just news about the virus. Or it’s about the lockdown and how its making people crazy. Last night I read about a security guard who was shot and killed because he wouldn’t let a shopper into a store without a mask. Which, incidentally, was the law. The guard was doing his job. Now he’s dead and three people face murder charges, so their lives are going to suck for a long while. Why? Because of a face mask?

Speaking of face masks, I can’t buy one around here. Every place I’ve shopped is sold out. That is a problem only because some places won’t allow me to enter without a mask: doctor and dentist waiting rooms, for example. What I’ve read repeatedly is that the purpose of wearing a face mask isn’t to protect the wearer; it’s to protect others from the wearer. From the CDC:

When you wear a cloth face covering, you help protect those around you from #COVID19. Help keep each other safe by continuing to properly wear cloth face coverings every time, the entire time you’re in public. Learn more: https://t.co/lxWMe4NUBD. pic.twitter.com/42bOU3Vuuh 
— CDC (@CDCgov) May 4, 2020

Yesterday was sunny and warm. I got out of the house and went for a walk. In the next block I encountered a young lady wearing Daisy Dukes and a cropped tank top. She flashed me a big smile and said, “Good morning! Have a nice day!” She was pushing a baby stroller. In the stroller was a baby. Or maybe it was a stroller full of empty soda cans, à la Speed. Then the young lady and the baby were gone, headed toward the park.

I continued my walk and on my return I saw her again, walking a paved path inside the park. We were two walkers, the young lady and me, getting out of the house, getting exercise, trying to avoid cabin-fever in the midst of this lockdown. Maybe I’ll go for another walk today. I might even walk to the park and sit on a bench for a while and take in some sunshine. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Come noon I’ll be watching the sights and taking in sunshine, in the park, on a spring day in early May.

Have a nice Cinco de Mayo, and remember that today is also Taco Tuesday.

Court Is In Session

I listened to oral arguments at the Supreme Court for a while this morning. (I’m referring to the Supreme Court of the United States.) The arguments were about whether adding “.com” to a generic word such as “booking” would make the combination (booking.com) non-generic and therefore trademarkable. It’s hard to believe, but there really are people who get their panties in a twist over that kind of thing. They’re called lawyers, and the really good ones are paid very big bucks.

The legal shootout was a dispute between the Patent & Trademark Office versus BOOKING.COM B.V. I don’t know what B.V. stands for, but I’ll guess that it’s Besloten Vennootschap, which is the Dutch and Belgium version of a private limited liability company.

But back to the Court. Did you know there are only 50 seats in the Supreme Court that are allocated to the public? Not that it matters at the moment. The Court building is currently closed to the public because of Covid-19. In ordinary times, the line to enter the Court building forms early. But you can hire someone to stand in line for you! Standing in line for people is an actual industry in Washington, D.C. I didn’t have to stand in line, because this Supreme Court session was different from all previous sessions. This one was the first-ever Supreme Court session to be broadcast over the Internet. Lawyers and judges were connected by phone. (I suppose video conferencing is too high-tech for the Court.)

So, out of curiosity, I listened for a while. It was deadly dull.

D-e-a-d-l-y.  D-u-l-l.

However, if you so choose, you can listen to those oral arguments. Audio files will be available on the Supreme Court’s website. Today’s session is the first to be made available.

Before publishing this article, I decided to go to booking.com and see what I could learn about B.V. and Booking’s country of origin. Quoting from their home page, “Booking.com B.V. is based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.” People from the Netherlands are called Dutch. Dutch is the language spoken in the Netherlands. So my guess was correct and B.V. stands for Besloten Vennootschap. Private company. A minor mystery is solved. Now I can publish.

Becoming Lost

I just read an article I came across in Business Insider. The article was titled Airbus just beat Boeing to be the first to complete a wholly automated air-to-air refueling operation. There was a photo of an A310 refueling another jet. The successful test means that the next step—implementing the technology on the A330 MRTT—can now proceed.

And I thought, “What is wrong with Boeing? They used to be so good at this kind of thing and now Airbus is beating them.” The last passenger jet Boeing developed, the 737 MAX, was fatally flawed and two of them crashed within six months, killing all passengers and crew. Then reports surfaced that Boeing’s employees had been disgruntled for some time. Internal documents were damning. One employee described the 737 MAX as a plane “designed by clowns…supervised by monkeys.” Another employee called the plane “such a shitshow.” Still another agreed and said, “I’ll be shocked if the FAA passes this turd.” This kind of discourse peppered the internal documents.

I decided to write a blog post with the topic, “What is wrong with Boeing?” But it was such an obvious question that I knew if I asked Google, the search engine would find a number of already-published articles. So I did, and it did.

I’m sure those articles go into great detail about the flaws of the design of the 737 MAX. But it’s my opinion that Boeing simply lost its way, and all its problems stem from that. Boeing used to concentrate on building great airplanes. But at some point, it decided to concentrate on building great balance sheets and cash flow statements. To show the financial world its commitment to grow beyond building great airplanes, in 2001 Boeing moved its headquarters from Seattle, where the company was founded, to Chicago, the home of banks and deal-makers.

As internal documents would eventually reveal, safety took a backseat to maximizing shareholder value. An article in Yahoo Finance put it this way, “A company that had long been run by engineers for engineers was now a company run by corporate bureaucrats whose primary goal was to please Wall Street.” I couldn’t say it more concisely than that. I don’t know if Boeing will be able to find its north star again. I’d like to think they will, but big changes will have to take place for that to happen. Companies have an ethos—a spirit, a character, a culture. When they lose that ethos, they’re no longer the same company, and that is usually a bad thing.

Quarantine

The latest Covid-19 prediction is we’ll have it for two years. That, I believe, is based on the 1918 flu pandemic that lasted two years. That pandemic died out when global herd immunity was achieved.

I don’t think people in general, and people in America in particular, will be willing to self-isolate from Covid-19 for two years. People will be jumping out of windows.

Let’s get a little perspective on the danger we face from Covid-19. As I write this, about 65,000 Americans have died from Covid-19. That’s a lot of deaths, but consider the following facts.

According to the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, “An estimated 88,000 people (approximately 62,000 men and 26,000 women) die from alcohol-related causes annually … in the United States.” But drinking alcohol is legal and most people are not concerned.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, “Cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 480,000 deaths per year in the United States, including more than 41,000 deaths resulting from secondhand smoke exposure.” But smoking is legal and most people are not concerned.

According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, “Unhealthy diet contributes to approximately 678,000 deaths each year in the U.S., due to nutrition- and obesity-related diseases, such as heart disease, cancer, and type 2 diabetes.” But there are fast food restaurants everywhere and most people are not concerned.

Thus far in Virginia, we’ve had 552 deaths from Covid-19, and yet we’re under orders from the governor to stay at home until 11:59 pm on June 10, 2020. My small city has seen two deaths (elderly patients in a nursing home) and it’s being called a “Covid-19 hotspot.” What?!

I’ve been quarantined at home for most of March and all of April. Now I have to do the same for another six weeks. And then what? Who can say the quarantine won’t be extended?

Maybe we the people should vote on what we will do next. Let’s protect the elderly and those with compromised immune systems, but the rest of us should be able to choose our poison. Do we sit at home and video chat, or do we go out into the world? We should each have the chance to choose our path. It’s called responsibility. How long we live shouldn’t be our primary objective—the thing that matters above all else. As Abraham Lincoln said,

And in the end it's not the years in your life that count; it's the life in your years.

The Covid Formula

On March 30 there were 161,800 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in the US. One month later, on April 30, there were 1,100,000 cases of Covid-19 in the US.

At the end of April, the US had 6.8 times the number of cases it had at the end of March, despite a partial lockdown. (I call it partial because I’m sure many people ignore it.)

The growth in US cases since the end of March has been linear, not exponential. The country, even half shutdown, is adding 900,000 cases per month.

Something will change this trajectory of cases. What will that something be? The possibilities, in order of decreasing likelihood, are:

1. An effective drug cure
2. An effective vaccine
3. Herd immunity
4. Summer heat
5. Friendly space aliens

I know it’s a longshot, but I hope it’s number 5. Imagine: a saucer lands in my backyard and friendly aliens beam out of the saucer and shoot me with anti-viral health rays. I’ll invite them into my house for a little SciFi-watching on the flat-screen. I wonder which alien creature they’ll look like? I kind of hope they’ll look like Frank from Men In Black. A-n-d … I also hope they don’t bite.