As Seen On TV

What is it with our country that its citizens firmly believe that product hawkers on TV are more credible when they hawk in a British accent?  This "credibility bump" even extends to the Australian accent as well.  What gives?

We know we're being sold something we probably didn't know we "needed."  A series of small accidents or embarrassing moments are thrown at us and a guy - apparently women aren't as credible - with this British accent makes the world a better place for us.  These guys know their suckers - us.

Notice the absence of ze French accent - I suspect smarminess and an air of superiority doesn't sell as well.

Allergies

I have lived a life blissfully free of allergies.  Allergies are for whiners.  We curmudgeons are built of sterner stuff - we may be pointer-outers, but we DON'T whine.

So I thought, until I aged. The "creaks and groans" associated with aging are actually real.  I don't know what part of my body is going to be complaining when I get up in the morning.  So I don't need any added aggravation.

Then I got an allergy. Every spring, when trees are blooming, I leak like a sieve.  Like I need this at my age.  NOW I feel like whining.  But wait - my Sainted wife is asking for help to move some shrub or other.  Sorry, dear but my allergies are really bad today - you know how I get this time of year.

That's not whining, is it?

A Great Gig

If I were to start up a thread of articles on government waste, it would never end, and this humble - yet remarkably insightful - blog would devolve into one of those whining web sites that are so common.  But I represent the Curmudgeon Societé Generale, and I am dedicated to reflecting their collective wisdom.

"Your tax dollars at work" is a popular workshop at our get-togethers.  At a recent one, I learned that our dear departed FBI "hero," J. Edgar (in addition to claiming the mafia didn't exist and such) had actually assigned an agent to read Playboy cover-to-cover every month in search of indictable offenses.

Talk about a great gig.

Doctor Waiting Rooms

As I have mentioned often in the past, my Sainted wife loves to garden.  As you might suspect, this involves rooting about in the dirt and similar acts of closeness to nature.  Often too close.  Especially when you live in an area that deer are fond of.  They prance about, happily dining on her prize rose bushes and tulips, nipping on the rhododendrons and tossing off a tick or two before moving on to the next victim's yard.

And this is where wives and nature collide for the worse - Lyme disease bearing tick bites.  After discovering the telltale "bullseye," it was off to a specialist: an infectious diseases doctor.  

Sounded all well and good until I got to the waiting room. Then the reality of what kind of people were in it hit me - people with serious, not-easily-cured INFECTIOUS diseases.  Do I dare sit down?  Breathe?  Touch any of the magazines?  Maybe I'll wait out in the car.  Hope I got away in time.  I fear I feel a slight chill...

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

If you were at all in doubt about the intelligence of some of your neighbors here in the good ole U.S., the following is certainly not going to cheer you in that view.  And I won't even use the evidence of the TV show "Are you smarter than a fifth grader?" to bolster my case.

Rather, I will use a recent survey by Public Policy Polling, a recognized general topic pollster, who recently tested the water on people's beliefs in various conspiracies.  Now, I recognize that there are always going to be groups of wingnuts who will go to their great reward believing in their favorite conspiracy.  But when you get above 10% of the public, you are beyond fringe groups.

Among the more depressing findings are: 20% still believe childhood vaccinations lead to autism, 15% belong to the "tinfoil hat crowd" - believing the government adds mind control to TV signals, 14% believe in Bigfoot and 13% are convinced that Obama is the anti-Christ.  This is NOT encouraging.

On the bright side, we are currently running only 7% believing the moon landing was faked.  Progress!

Romance Novels

You can look it up in the dictionary - the Urban Dictionary that is - "Romance Novels" are porn written by and for middle-aged women.  And there are a boatload of these books.  I know of this matter - my mother's collection is HUGE.

As you might expect, that guy - Fabio? - appears on the cover of most of them in some form or another.  I have no idea what lurks within - there do not appear to be any pictures, so it is not porn for guys - but it can be, and is, read IN PUBLIC.

Now that's a pretty good deal.

Who Cooks Anymore?

As I've mentioned in the past, I am no stranger to the kitchen.  Yes, that includes SPAM and beans and franks, but not to be immodest, I've prepared and cooked my fair share of meals that would, frankly, surprise you.

That doesn't mean I actually embrace this crap.  It takes a lot of preparation, some experimentation and reasonable precision to get it right.  That's fine by me...once in a while or on special occasions.  That's NOT so fine every day.

So, when not dining out (under the guise of "treating" my Sainted wife) I now more or less ASSEMBLE my dinners.  Grocery stores are chock-a-block full of all sorts of creative pre-assembled stuff, from piece parts of dinners to whole meals.  Heck, you can even avoid the mess of making Philly cheese steaks or the long drive for White Castle sliders! 

Now THAT'S what I call progress - the kind that is right up a curmudgeon's alley.

Dealing With The Government

I recently had to deal with an arm of the U.S. Government.  This is where one would expect my Curmudgeonry to be on high alert for incompetence, confusion, red tape and the like.  After all, I DO live in New Jersey and have l encountered more than my share of lazy, barely english-speaking government workers.

Astonishingly, not here!  The automated answering system kindly volunteered to call me back within 10 minutes when an agent became available.  The government worker was bright, helpful, and spoke perfect English.  My call lasted less than four minutes, she was so good.

I was floored.  Competent, energized government workers!!  Of course, at the time, they were helping me to arrange to send them more tax money, but she made the whole experience pleasant nonetheless.

So here's a shout-out to unit 09R in Albuquerque - in four minutes you undid years of carefully crafted anti-government arguments in the Curmudgeon Handbook.  That, dear readers, is not easy.

Would You Like Some Tea?

The British made a fetish out of tea - the Clipper Ship races from China, the 4 o'clock "high tea," the very way they made it (loose tea steeped in the pot, then poured over a strainer into the cup).

Of course, being haughty and of British descent, I had to drink tea in my bachelor days.  I even had a silver tea infuser to make it.  And my dates thought I was cultured, as opposed to a typically horny guy (which, of course, I was).

Then I met curmudgeons.  No tea in THAT community.  Coffee.  Generally black.  And it is much easier to make than tea.  With tea, you put the tea in the hot water for 3-5 minutes (no more lest it become acidy), fuss over "tea services" and such.  Coffee - you just push the button on your Mr. Coffee.

And we curmudgeons know our buttons.

A Great New Product

I'm sure you remember those pneumatic tubes in department stores years ago - the sales person would stick your sales receipt and your cash in a little container, close the door and whoomp! the little container would charge up a special tube and sail off to the billing office, where someone would thereupon register your purchase and send your change whisking back to you with another thrilling whoomp!  It always impressed us little kids.  Drive-thru banks still use them.

You can imagine my consternation when I saw an ad for a pneumatic elevator for the home (pictured).  It describes, in glowing terms, it's cutting-edge technology and its use of gravity for the descent.  So this is the image that comes to mind:  your hapless elderly aunt gets into this thing and whoomp! she's catapulted upstairs.  On the return trip, gravity brings her back down to earth with, no doubt, another resounding whoomp.

A genuine thrill ride in your own home.

Don't Expect Nature to Water Your Lawn

One of the attractions of the neighborhood we live in is its park-like, perfectly manicured lawns.  As Monk often said on TV, it is a gift...and a curse.  The gift is a beautiful neighborhood.  The curse is the unspoken pressure to keep up one's lawn.   

After years of watching my Sainted wife drag sprinklers and hoses around the lawn (and duly noting her wondering aloud why she was the designated waterer), I finally agreed to put in a sprinkler system.  I have always liked the chicka-chicka sound impact sprinkler heads make - sort of a comforting sound of summer - as if your were whiling away your afternoons at the Country Club with a gin & tonic in hand.

What I DIDN'T know was that they wear out annoyingly fast.  And replacement heads are expensive, and "expensive" is anathema to a curmudgeon.  Our sprinkler guy (yes, yet another "guy" - see last Tuesday's column) told us to convert to worm-gear heads.  Way more reliable.

But silent.  No more comforting chicka-chicka.  Bummer.

Do Not Attempt These Maneuvers

Picture this: I'm watching an ad for one of those 4-wheel off-road buggy type thingies.  The ad shows it gaily zipping around in a variety of - big surprise - off-road environments.  Careening around trees through forests, flying over dunes in deserts, steeply climbing huge rocks - the kind of exciting stuff, we presume, you would buy such a vehicle for.

Towards the end of said commercial, as the announcer is intoning the manly nature of the product - speed, power, stability - and as the viewer is getting really pumped up about this fine, fun, safe machine, across the screen appear the words:

"Do not attempt these maneuvers."

So, they're saying "buy this machine, but don't you dare do any of the exciting things we showed it doing."  Good luck with that.

The Well-Placed Comment

There are a number of glossaries in the Curmudgeon Handbook.  One contains a number of pithy observations, another has snappy comebacks at young whippersnappers, a third simple technical tricks (so, for example, you can set your VCR clock and show off to your friends), and they go on.  And on.

You no doubt remember the Seinfeld episode where George was frustrated at not coming up with the perfect comeback when it was needed.  With we Curmudgeons needing to maintain an air of superiority in all situations, Glossary II's snappy comebacks come in handy.

The downside, for the memory-challenged (a category that tends to include most curmudgeons), is remembering the perfect witticism to apply at the right moment. Glossary II delivers, but I can't very well be leafing through the manual during snappy repartee.  

Putting on the proper curmudgeonly airs is hard.

Duck Dynasty

OK, I've just about had it.  As you well know, dear readers, I am a fan of TV.  One may suggest I watch a tad too much TV.  Especially when it comes to Matlock repeats.  

NONETHELESS, I do have my standards, such as they are, and I am proud to say I draw the line at these ubiquitous "reality" shows.  An alarmingly large cross-section of this nation apparently disagrees with me because reality shows are proliferating at a truly scary rate.

So you can imagine how aggrieved I was when I read that Duck Dynasty's March 20th episode was one of the top-rated shows on ALL OF TV for the week.  The Capitalist in me is happy for this Horatio Alger-like family and the success of their duck calls, but the TV appreciator in me simply cringes.  A lot.

Call "The Guy"

You've done it - something in your house goes south, your in-house handyman (that would be me around here) can't fix it - so you call "the guy."  Normally, this is the plumber, the cable guy, the Geek Squad, etc.  Over time, we develop a list of our "guys."

Because I own an old house, all manner of odd things go wrong - doors stop closing right, evidence of a mysterious water leak appears on a ceiling, the bathroom exhaust fan sounds funny, a woodpecker discovers grubs in your outside trim - a bewildering variety of odd things.

Who do you call?  These aren't "normal" things.  You check around.  Who knew there were door guys?  Doors.  Just doors.  Grout guys.  Just grout.  Outdoor light guys.  Can you do pool lights?  Sorry, just outdoor lights.

There's a guy for everything!  But you have to find them.  And - regrettably - with my old house, they each have gainful employment.

Spring Cleaning

Around this time of year, people start talking about how they're going to tackle "spring cleaning" - air out the house, take rugs outside and whomp on them for awhile, clean things that you don't normally.

These people are, of course, nuts.  That is the LAST thing I want to do when the weather starts to turn nice - after being cooped up all winter, it's time to get outside while the getting is good.  And to my great regret, it generally turns out to be time to panic over the "prepare for next spring" projects I set out to do over the long winter months that I haven't yet started.  By the time I get those out of the way, the weather has become real nice and spring cleaning is the furthest thing from my mind.

One would aver that at my advanced age and substantial  experience that I would have been able to think this through by now, but no: procrastination always seems to prevail.

"Spring cleaning" will, once again, have to wait for next year. The sun is out and Tiger, the wonder cat and I are itching to be out as well.

Lettuce

When I was a kid, my mother decided to grow some lettuce in the back yard.  Now, I happen to like lettuce - especially iceberg: clean tasting, crunchy, the perfect accompaniment in virtually any sandwich or with any dinner item.

Not that horrible stuff that looks like roadside weeds or lays so flat on your plate you can't even fork it up.  Iceberg is what real lettuce should be.  On my more generous days, I admit Romaine comes close.

Anyway, you can imagine my youthful excitement that we would have our very own lettuce patch.

Alas, she didn't tell me it was going to be Boston lettuce.  Flat.  No good crunch.  Might as well munch on grass.  

Dizzying House Numbers

I was always amazed at the street addresses in TV shows and movies made out in Hollywood.  California really goes in big for ridiculously large house numbers like 23517 or 32889 and such.  Must be a real mental test for small children trying to memorize their address.

Being from a more rational place (the East coast), I grew up with addresses like 19 and 52.  Simple.  Easy to remember.  And cheap when you bought the numbers at the hardware store to put up on your house.

But numbers up in the tens of thousands?  Give us a break.  Even near Chicago, new developments way outside of downtown have actually volunteered to use the Chicago metropolitan numbering scheme so they end up with house numbers that START at like 21000-odd because they're 35 miles out.  The next door town can have a normal numbering scheme, e.g. 22 or 128.

The East coast?  Way less confusing.

Oh No! Tax Time!

Holy crap!  It's April!  Taxes are due!  Even wizened, tough old cranks in the curmudgeon fraternity quail at this time of year as do people all across this great nation.

From what I know of history, there was a time when people actually did their own taxes.  Of course, politics intervened and screwed things up so mightily that it is a rare person today who can manage such a Herculean task.  Rather, we have "people" do it for us.  Everyone I know has people doing it for them, and these are normal wage-earners, not trust-fund babies, Mafiosi, or hedge fund managers hiding income overseas.

So off to our tax preparer we went.  He's been doing it for us for 30 years, so we like to tell ourselves he knows what he's doing.  I shouldn't be worried that in addition to tax books and legal-looking books, he has Reno 911 and Star Trek paperbacks in his office bookcase, should I?

Cat Collars

Cat collars and Tiger the wonder cat do not get along.  My sainted wife thought it would be nice, since he is fond of outdoor adventures, to have a collar with a bell so we could sort of keep track of him.

Tiger thought otherwise.  He managed to "lose" them left and right.  Now I recognize that they were the breakaway types, but just how many fences was he squeezing under?  Our next door neighbor would find the occasional one during his spring cleanup, so we know they're out there...somewhere.

Us?  Never found a one.  At $9 a crack (collar, bell, name tag), I give up.  He shall forever more roam free of tinkling bells.  

Small critters: beware.

The Pursuit of Closet Space

As I have often noted, we live in a small 70-year-old cape cod style house.  Seventy years ago, apparently closets were not a key design element - I suspect they were more or less begrudged.  So a whopping 3 feet per closet somehow made sense.  Clearly, house designers of that era hadn't met women similar to my sainted wife.

Early on, we embarked upon a bedroom closet expansion effort.  Many thousands of dollars later, we had a beautiful 8' closet with mirrored doors and two huge bureaus.  Fantastic.

But not fantastic enough...  Soo, for many thousands of dollars more, we revamped things some years later: wall-to-wall closets (THINK of all that closet space!) and no bureaus.  Fantastic.

But, and needless to say there was a but, in such tight confines it was difficult to fit a walk-in closet.  This shortcoming festered within one of us, and now, many thousands of dollars later yet again, we have achieved closet heaven.

Or so I pray.