"Move 'Em In, Move "Em Out, Move "Em Back In Again"

Here in the City Of Brotherly Love we have just completed college move in days. I feel this is a very special series of events for which tickets could be sold to visiting tourists (Penn will be the first no doubt). The act of moving offspring into a large urban campus is not at all the same as what takes place in bucolic country side settings. That's what makes it so much fun to observe.
Here we have, almost cheek by jowl, the University of Pennsylvania (undergrad enrollment eleventy billion), Drexel University (undergrad enrollment one huge number) and just up the road a piece, Temple University (undergrad enrollment unlimited).

While the upper class men and women know some ropes and scam ways to get in early (mainly to get the hell away from their families), the incoming frosh and their attendees are clueless, and must be herded like sheep to well organized destinations. Upon arrival many discover for the first time that dorm rooms are not the palatial facilities they have at home. The families with big SUVs with U-Haul trailers (mostly from southern states I have noted) must quickly decide what of their kid's crap will stay and what will have to go back home. These are wonderful transactions to watch, especially when the kid's folks brought the family dog along (who right there and then must take a crap). They do this quickly because a campus or city cop will soon help them along with the comforting phrase "you gotta move your vehicle sir."

It is not only a clash of cultures, but a grand lesson in applied physics as well.
Once the kid's stuff is dumped, lots of folks, especially alumni, feel the need to trek about the campus, getting lost trying to find old haunts like Penn's Smokey Joes, with the kid in tow and the dog trailing the exuberant parent. The kid just wants all these assholes to leave so he or she can meet members of the opposite sex and explore the temptations of the big city. Lots of smiles at the front end and a scowl at the end.
Truly a glorious day. A great place to observe this in Philly if you ever happen by at the right time is the Starbucks at 34th and Walnut, right near the frosh dorm at Penn with the smallest rooms the city building code will allow.
There is another side to this ritual - what to do with the mountains of crap departing seniors leave behind? Like a digestive system, large universities (small one too I am sure) must excrete tons of stuff each year. No matter what their parents or they may have spent to get it, most of the kids' stuff does not go home. At Penn they load it into the ice skating rink and open it to the public to sell the junk by silent auction. Viewed from above this activity resembles a colony of ants with steady columns of worker ants leaving the colony with stuff in their arms. And trying to fit refrigerators in trunks of cars. Another lesson in applied physics.

The Gin Gimlet - Spirit of the Gods

The Gin Gimlet has been my favorite cocktail for many years and like so many high quality items, many have degraded it to a point where its often unrecognizable. Therefore I will start to monitor the local quality of this fine drink. In doing so I hope to fight against crappy drinks that taste terrible despite their fashion and the general decline of quality in America.
A Gin Gimlet is made thus, and only thus:
Four full shot glasses of gin
One half to one shot glass of Rose' sweetened line juice [can be another brand but best not].
THATS IT! NOTHING ELSE.
Shake vigorously with ice, until the shaker is very cold. Pour into full sized martini glass - it should fill it up to the brim.
The only permissible garnish is a slice of lime, but its not a necessity.
You can find lots of different recipes on line, which just goes to show you that the Internet is a source of a lot of lousy information.
My benchmark Gin Gimlet is that which is delivered consistently by Dan, the manager and bartender at the Pen and Pencil Club in Philadelphia.
If you order a Gin Gimlet and it has bits of citrus pulp, you are visiting a youthful place that should be avoided in future..
If you are served a Gin Gimlet in a tumbler, or with ice cubes in it, just get up and leave the place.
More to follow....

American Salafis - "..their number is negligible and they are stupid

American Salafis - “...their number is negligible and they are stupid.”

Awhile back, the folks that drink too much tea were very agitated by immigration, which they want to not reform but spend lots of other peoples’ money on. Now they want to defund “Obamacare”, the understanding of which eludes them completely. And before all this they wanted to reduce the deficit by strangling the government that feeds their constituents (did you know that Mississippi gets 53% of its state government revenues from the feds? Do Pennsyltuckians know that figure for the Keystone state is 37%? Likely not.)

Since as a nation we are far too backward to have single payer health care like the grown ups, we have stumbled with great difficulty to the Affordable Care Act, known to the weak of mind as “Obamacare”.

This is not new. Today we call the clutterers of our nations’ progress “Tea Party” people. They used to be the “Silent Majority”. In an earlier age they were known as “Know Nothings.” They have been with us always, guided by mythology about earlier times when we were all real independent, strong people who could care for ourselves. When most of us did not live past 50 and we lived in squalor free from running water, roads or electricity. They forget that their dependence on government largesse begins when their tires touch a paved road.

They are not much different from the Salafis, Sunni Muslims that believe themselves the only correct interpreters of the Koran and consider moderate Muslims to be infidels; they seek to convert all Muslims and to insure that a fundamentalist version of Islam will dominate the world. Drink tea and move backward.

 Like Salafis, many of our elected “public servants” seek to make sure all of us are as degraded as they are, and that the hands of the clock be turned back.

President Eisenhower, an astute Republican, when discussing conservative efforts to abolish Social Security, eliminate labor laws and farm support programs, had this to say to his brother “...their number is negligible and they are stupid.” [Read this and more in “Eisenhower in War and Peace”, Jean Edward Smith, Random House 2012]

How sad that today their number is no longer negligible.

"I'm good." Good at What? Good for What?

More bad English, where does this come from?
Nowadays when you ask folks (especially young ones) a question like "how are you/" or "can I get you something to drink?' you often get the response "I'm good" instead of "I'm fine" or "no thanks".
Instead of answering the question, folks make unjustified positive value judgments about themselves. What are you good for? Or good at? And who on earth told you that you are good for, or at, anything at all?? Maybe you're a jerk and others are just being polite wasting their time talking to you. Perhaps they wish you would just go away, instead of telling them how good you are.
Bad money drives out good, but need bad language do the same?

SCAMS TO LEFT OF US SCAMS TO THE RIGHJT OF US

Those that know me have heard a lot about the many things I view as scams, so I will start to detail them from time to time, perhaps too often.
Lets start with the best scam ever perpetrated on our continent - that would be BOTTLED WATER.
(In my hometown its often called "wooder"). "Purified" and "Spring Water" tend to make weaker minds think that there is somehow something special about many brands of bottled water. Somehow folks think that up in some bucolic forest there are people in loin clothes gathering water from springs and gently putting it in crappy plastic bottles. Or maybe forest nymphs are the ones. I think this is because too few people have ever spent time in a modern factory or seen a bottling plant in action. While in fact all (or almost all) rivers start as springs somewhere, there is no spring on earth that could feed a even a modest bottling plant. So forget "Spring Water" - it does not happen.
What does happen is municipal water is supplied to bottling plants. No bottled water in this country comes from a non municipal source. It goes into big vats where it basically sits for awhile  (this has been called "reverse osmosis"), and then in gets put in bottles which are shrink wrapped and out the door they go.
So its tap water. Not some of it - all of it.
Bottled water is more expensive than gasoline. A gallon of water from my tap costs about a penny. A gallon of bottled water from the lowest priced on line offering from walmart.com today is $3.40.
Some folks whine about the taste of tap water. They forget that the pipes into and inside their houses can crap up municipal water. Put a pH meter under the tap for a few minutes and watch the pH change.
But its so convenient! No its not. In a developed country its just plain stupid to lug water around like starving people in deserts someplace. That's why they invented pipes and pumps.

Worthy of Worship

Many, if not most people say they believe "in God." This is usually thought to mean that they are religious and have faith in a higher being. I am pretty sure this is bunk, but its a commonly held feeling. There are many gods for folks to believe in, and for the most part they (the gods) hate each other and all too often provide an excuse for their followers to kill non believers. Since no gods can be proven to exist, the belief in them is essentially a man-made fiction, one could even say a scam. If money is the root of all evil, what then is religion? Which has led to more death and destruction? Was there ever a one hundred year war over money?? Why do so many people believe that we can talk with snakes, and do what they say??
Personally, I think there are some pretty cool things about religion. I love the God Show put on each Christmas eve at the Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul here in the Quaker City; the place is beautiful, the choir and singing are lovely and the archbishop has a very slick hat. But when I was six no god would help me tie my shoes so there you have it. If you live in a city or big town, at some time you may have been, or will be, accosted by religious folks who feel the need to talk to you about some god or another. If you can't get rid of them by keeping your feet moving and a smile on your face, just refer to god in the feminine and they will stop cold in their tracks.
I feel humankind would be much better off if everyone venerated some thing, person or group that provides tangible value and makes the world better for all.
Personally, I venerate municipal trash collection folks. They do not demand offerings, but take all those that we give them. They perform reliably (here every Thursday). They do not visit wrath upon us. When it snows, they clear the streets. Their care for us is unconditional - they take the trash from saints and sinners alike. We don't even need to pray for them to show up - they just give us the joy of taking the crap out of our lives every week.
On their best day, no religion or mystical god can beat these guys.

Courtesy of the Sanitation Division of the Streets Department of the City of Philadelphia, 4th section, also known as "Home of the Motivators"






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Clinging Pennsyltuckians

Pennsyltucky is the part of Pennsylvania where folks that "cling to their guns and religion" live and vote. They send quite a few less than brilliant folks to represent them in our state capitol, Harrisburg. Not for not the first time, one of them proposes legislation to allow public school kids to "question the strengths and weaknesses of scientific theory". The proposer is State Rep Stephen Bloom, from one of our mid-state counties, who actually has a law degree and could well thrive outside the womb of the PA legislature (many of his colleagues would have a real hard time at this),
Previous attempts to include creationism and intelligent design, for which no tangible evidence can be found anywhere, have been tossed by the courts. Thus it is somewhat interesting that the measure to sneak that stuff in under the door has been conjured up by a real lawyer.
The proposed legislation states that "the teaching of some scientific subjects, including but not limited to, biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming and human cloning can cause controversy."
The controversy about well established science is not caused by its teaching. Science is about discovery and proof, It is not about dogma and religious nonsense. The only real controversy about teaching science is brought to us by crackpot politicians and the stupid or greedy folks that lend them support and the poor souls that elect them.
In much of the civilized world they "could not be elected dog catcher in our smallest village" (this from a Chilean  Fulbright Scholar who visited during the most recent national election campaign, and observed closely some of the Republican party's  presidential hopefuls in person).

Betsy's Finding About Shitty Dogs

To be specific, my niece Betsy has a well founded hypothesis about Chihuahuas and the in home abuse of children. Betsy works in social services and is called upon, among other duties, to remove kids from homes in which they are abused.
Chihuahuas as we all know, or should know, are a species with no redeeming qualities at all. They demean all other dogs, many of which are noble and helpful. Even mosquitoes are more elevated than these useless dog-rats. To kick them, all one needs to do is show them one's hand and when they leap up to bite it (even if its the hand that feeds them) they can be kicked judiciously in mid air. The extinction of this species would be a welcome development. Check out stories about people kicking these despicable creatures by Googling "man kicks Chihuahua".
But I digress.
Betsy's finding, after some years of careful observation, is that whenever a kid needs to be extracted from an abusive household that includes a dog, that dog is a Chihuahua. Not sometimes; not frequently, but always. If there is a dog in the house along with an abused child, it will be a Chihuahua.
Why is this? Do people take out their anger at their crappy dogs on their kids? Is there some toxic component in their saliva or fur that drives people crazy? Or perhaps child abuse and shitty dog ownership are somehow linked in some cause and effect relationship?
Well worth some extensive research if you ask me.

Wither Our Economy?

I know "wither" in my title should really be "whither" but the point here is of decline, not discovery of location.
Awhile back I heard a radio article about folks that rent tires for their cars, probably on NPR. It seems that there is a company called Rent and Roll that will rent you tires for your car by the week. After some weeks you can keep the tires in their well worn state for gobs of money paid weekly over time.
Wait a minute!! People are RENTING tires? By the week??  What's going on here?  Are people becoming more stupid or more poor?? Have wheels and tires become fashion accessories that can be changed like a pair of earrings?? The article included an interview with one of the customers, a manager of a McDonalds. It is claimed that the average McDonalds produces $2.3 million bucks a year, so why does the guy who runs one need to rent tires?? Maybe he likes a different look for his car every week? Who knows. All very strange to me.
By and lage renting anything except beachfront houses by the week is for folks with no money or no smarts.
I think this is a sign of a declining economy more than anything else and that Rent and Roll is pretty slick in taking advantage of a sad trend. If you want cool wheels and tires, here is one place to get them, by the week if you so choose-
http://www.rnrez.com/#