Consumer Reports jumps the Shark

I used to read Consumer Reports religiously–every Sunday, and fell asleep during the sermon.  (rimshot)  Seriously, I subscribed to it for like five years, and bought everything from a king-size mattress/box spring set (Penney store brand) to a CD player (Magnavox) to laundry detergent (liquid Tide) on its say-so.  That was back when I had lot of money but no sense–now I have very little money and good advisors.  But even back in the bad old days, I had this nagging suspicion that the CR folks lived in their own little world.  Like with their car reviews–they seemed to give extra credit points for being boring, and they never tested convertibles, saying that ragtops were all too unsafe to even consider.  Well, fuck that–I had three (a Fiat 128 Spyder, Porsche 914, Fiat X1/9) and loved them all.  But I digress.

A news story today tells me that they finally went way over the top, finally jumped the shark.  It seems that they looked at a number of car dealerships and discovered–drum roll–that some car dealers do not always tell consumers the whole truth.  Well, duh!  Jesus christ, all they had to do was ask anyone who ever bought a car.  I mean, what are they, stupid?  Naive?  Of course car dealers lie–so do most other merchants.  Hell, Fred Meyers will charge you sirloin prices for the styrofoam they wrap the meat in,  Wal-mart steals from its own minimum-wage employes, and the fucking president lies and lies and lies, and gives medals to other motherfuckers who lie and lie and lie.  What the hell did CR expect?

I could just scream.  But I’m in a library.  And THAT’S the truth.

No,  My Life is NOT a Cabaret

Sorry, Liza.  It’s a circus.  Not a three-ring circus, though, but something much better.  It has become a four-kitten circus.

As I have mentioned earlier, Silky had four kittens in a box of knives.  That is why I named the first one “Hohner”–that, and because he sounded to me like a harmonica.  And the whole process took her over twelve hours–Hohner was the first, then out popped Buckeyball and Fullerene.  A few hours later, little Dingus joined the crew.  All of them are monochromatic, white and black and gray, all just as cute as, well, kittens.  I kept their box on the floor–after taking out the worst of the knives and adding some t-shirts of mine for warmth–but moved it up on the bed during a cold snap.  I kept it there, Silky got used to it, then they started to be able to get out.  I couldn’t have this, didn’t want a kitten falling off the bed, maybe to the floor and breaking its neck, or onto the oil-heated radiator and getting par-boiled or something.  So I taped up the sides, and put my shower pack (a day-pack with clean clothes and towels and stuff, I take it to the laundromat when I get a shower) next to the box.  She finally learned how to climb up, put her front paws on the side of the box and scramble in.  It didn’t sing, but it worked.

I would take the kittens out of the box from time to time for short field trips on the bed.  When they got sufficiently active, I decided–after consulting with the local experts, Kathy and especially Doug (and thanks, guys, for all your advice), I put the box back on the floor and lowered the sides.

Soon there were four kittens in brownian motion on the floor–one was subduing one of my socks, another was wading in Silky’s water dish, one was trying to climb up my pant leg and the  fourth was perched on top of one of my boots, no doubt thinking “I’m king of the world, ma!”

I did what little I could to kitten-proof the place, blocking off access to a few of the worst and most dangerous nooks and crannies.  Silky was frantic at first, following Buckeyball around and whapping him with her paw when he seemed to be going too far.  He was the first out.  But when all four had gotten out, she just seemed to resign herself, climbed up on my swivel chair and surveyed the situation.

I relaxed, too–after all, there’s no way they can get out of the cabin.  After a while they settled down, and all four made their way back into the box.  And I recorded two new benchmarks that night.  I picked up Hohner, held him close to me, and he started to purr–the first kitten-purr that I’ve heard in over fifty years–felt, really  And later, I heated up a can of catfood on the radiator and put it down for Silky.  And Hohner and Dingus started to chow down on it themselves–their first solid food!

Now they all go in and out of the box at their convenience.  I have to be  vigilant, make sure I don’t step on one, or into a puddle of kitten-piss.  I put some newspapers down on the floor, but what the hell–the carpet, what there is of it, is old and ratty anyway.

I do know one thing–as much as I love the little rascals, the more experience I have with kittens, the gladder I am I never had any children.

A New Word Enters My Vocabulary — “Smedley”

It can be used as a noun –”Look at that stupid smedley”–or as a verb –”Almost made the sale, but she decided to smedley.”

It comes from the Smedley family–the mom and dad actually (Peggy and Dave), the kids are smart and want nothing to do with the whole stupid thing.  The parents  decided to buy Amurrikan for Christmas, and specifically, to boycott Chinese-made goods.  (However, they continue to display the Chinese-made Christmas ornaments that they purchased before they decided to boycott one-fourth of the planet, which makes them hypocrites–as well as chauvinistic nitwits–in my book.)

They said that they were surprised to see that some 80-90 percent of all the  merchandise on shelves was made in China.  And these people make their living by publishing a business newsletter–hellooo!  Boy , this does a lot for their  street cred–Wall Street, that is.

Why anyone would want to be a smedley is beyond me.  I run into the occasional smedley at my stand.  When I ask them to explain, they usually mumble something about “human rights.”  Granted, the Chinese have been screwing over the Tibetans big time–almost as badly as the Amurrikan government has been, and continues to screw over, Native Americans.  But the people in China who make the iPods and DVD players and so on are not the people who make China’s foreign policy.   What’s more, the Chinese who make and distribute the goods do not make anywhere near the money that the American importers, transporters, wholesalers, and retailers do.  And I should know, being one of the retailers.

Peggy got the notion into her pointy little head that China was somehow devaluing US currency by  making cheap goods.  If she is so concerned about American labor, maybe she should address the issue of all the big companies who are sending thousands of jobs overseas–ever call a consumer “help” line, only to  spend an hour on hold and end up talking to someone in Bumfuck, Egypt, or Smellbadda, India,  who knows barely enough English to tell you that she can’t do anything about your problem?  I have, more than once.

And don’t let’s talk about quality–anyone who thinks Amurrikan-made stuff is any better than imports is hallucinating.  My area of expertise is knives.  Once, I bought three Camillus folders–all made right here in the US of A–and all three were defective.  I returned them, and two of the three I got in exchange were defective.  Schrade used to make good knives–the Old Timer and Uncle Henry lines in particular–but they went out of business last year–couldn’t compete with the imports.  Case used to be a brand name to conjure with, but the family that used to own it sold out to the Zippo lighter people, and now they mostly make knives for rich but undiscriminating collectors, and yuppie posers.  In all my years in the business,  I have yet to meet a serious knife user who has anything good to say about Case.  Same thing with Buck–they still make a few decent knives in the US, but they are slowly being discontuned.  The best Buck folder, in my opinion, is the Ecco–made in Seki, Japan.

So if you must, smedley away.  But don’t come crying to me when you find that your selection is poor and you end up paying more and getting less for your dollar.

Now I Know What War Looks Like

I have little personal experience with war in this lifetime.  When my student deferment puked in the sixties, I tried to enlist–not out of any patriotic fervor, but simply because I understood that enlistees had more options than draftees–and found out the the Air Force was not interested in a kid with uncorrected  20/800 vision.  Legally blind is 2/200.  Many of my forebears, however, were warriors.  My five-times great grandfather, Red Eagle, fought andy jackson.  (We deliberately lower-case the name, it is a tribal tradition  meant  to show contempt.)  You can probably guess how that one worked out.  And a more recent grand-daddy, G. W. Grayson, led a regiment of Creek warriors in the War Between the States.  Yeah, we lost that one, too.  More recently still, an uncle of mine fought in ‘Nam, as a Green Beret and the highest-ranking noncom in the US Army.  Amazing guy–he used to jump out of perfectly good airplanes.  But I digress.

Although I share to a degree the Amurrikan fascination with violence–I will slow down to gawk at an accident, and as long as they pay some attention to the laws of physics, I enjoy the occasional action-adventure movie–I loathe and abhor war.  I despise beyond telling the all-hat, no cattle moron in the Oval Office who has sent so many young men and women to their deaths for no good reason, as well as all of his comfortable and  well-tailored accomplices.  But I never had anything resembling a mental image of war, some physical way to symbolize  what is to me the ultimate obscenity.  Until  the other  night.

I was watching one of the afore-mentioned videos, and there was a shot of an F-16 taking off, one of those Stealth fighter things.  Suddenly I got a sick sinking feeling in my guts seeing that featureless, anonymous thing taking off.  Out of who knows where, the thought came to me–my God, that is what war looks like.  No blood or guts or gore, just a shape streaking through the sky, as black as fear, as black as evil, as black as death itself.

And on the lighter side. . . .

I guess you had to be there, but it was one of the funniest things I have ever seen.

Who knows?   (a poem)

 
I know why some things irk me so–
The inattentive clerk,
The driver on the phone who runs my green,
The unexpected bill from deep left field.

But why do some things please me so–
The branches of the winter-nuded tree
That closely echo patterns of my veins;
The drowsy stretch of kittens coming to;
The well-turned phrase of wifely wit
That ambushes my heart.

Perhaps God works in some of this,
Perhaps a touch of love.
I do not know, or care.
I only feel, I simply see,
I merely marvel at the mystery.

The Twelve Days of Christmas, redux  (reductio ad absurdum, actually)

I will spare you all twelve verses–the last one  goes as follows:

On the last day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,

Twelve Hummers rumbling,

Eleven snipers sniping,

Ten voyeurs peeping,

Nine faggots prancing,

Eight ‘tards a’drooling,

Seven snowmen melting,

Six crips a’gimping,

Five yoyo strings!

Four stinky turds,

Three French whores,

Two sur-GI-cal gloves,  and

The latest Partridge Family CD!    

(And yes, I wrote it myself.  I take full credit, responsibility, and blame.)                                                                                             

Tell Colgate-Palmolive How You Feel!

Their toll-free number is 1-800-221-4607.  And tell’em you think they stink, and you won’t buy their products any more.  Let their CEO start earning his fucking $10 million a year.

If this makes no sense, please refer to my previous rant.  Thank you.

Another Vile Corporate Enemy of the People Raises  its Ugly Head!

This time, it is the Colgate-Palmolive Company.  The soapmeister general decided to close 1/3 of its plants and can 4,400 of its workers.  When I read this, I first thought, wow!   They must be losing a LOT of money!  Wrong, Lavoris-breath!  The damned company is not losing money at all–they are just not making enough to sate the greed-heads at the helm.

So to pay for the corporate mis-management–experts say the product is grossly mis-marketed–the little guys will suffer, the folks who struggle to make ends meet, the people who have that slightly doughy look from eating a LOT of off-brand macaroni and cheese dinners.  The people who send their sons and daughters off to die in a useless war, that benefits only the rich.

And what about the dudes at the top?  Well, the top five fat cats split up $32 MILLION last year–$23 million in cash, $9 in stock options.  The very fattest cat took home over  TEN MILLION FUCKING DOLLARS.  Where is Hannibal Lector when you need him?

For myself, I am going to boycott the bastards and tell them so.  I used to buy Irish Spring soap.  No more.  I swear by all I hold dear, I will never ever knowingly purchase another Colgate product as long as I shall live.  Fuck them, and fuck the horses they rode in on.

And then there’s Sears. . . .

Sears has a special place on my list because when I went bankrupt some years ago,  Sears was the only creditor that sent a suit to my hearing, to try to squeeze a few more bucks out of me.  They did it, too.  I owed around $2000 on a laptop that is now a high-tech paperweight–they managed to get, I dunno, around $400 out of me.  It was pay up on the spot or else have the bankruptcy proceedings go to court or go to hell or something.  But I digress.

For some time, I have been lusting after hi-tech goodies, at least a new TV.  Not that there is anything wrong with my 13-inch TV/VCR, other than the chronic toothpaste drool that gets sprayed on the screen from time to time, but it would be nice to be able to watch the occasional DVD, or maybe get a new TV, one with a screen I could see from farther than four feet away. Now maybe I’ll  hold out and wait until 20-inch LCD TVs go down under $299, which would be around the middle of 2006, according to an industry insider.  To make a long story  interminable, Sears had Memorex DVD players on sale at $39.99, with a $10 rebate.  Even Doug was impressed when I told him that yesterday, so I decided to go for it.

The deal seemed even sweeter when I got there.  It seems that if I signed up for a Sears card–which I would probably never use, Sears being way on the other side of town, and you have to go through a bunch of hellish road construction to get there–they would deduct another $15 from my first invoice.  Thus, the DVD would cost me a tad over $15.  It was an offer I couldn’t refuse.  Then we moved into cable land.  The DVD has component and S-video outputs; my TV /VCR has a co-ax and something else.  The Sears guy tried to sell me a cable for $12; he said I needed it.  I told him, thanks but no thanks, I can probably get the same thing cheaper at Wal-mart.  I had to go there for kitty litter anyway.

So I get to Wal-mart, ask for help, three of the clerks draw straws, and the loser waited on me.  I told him the situation, and he tried to sell me some complicated damn junction box that cost more than the fucking DVD player.  I ended up buying a cable that looked right, after the guy assured me I could return it if it wasn’t right.

So I get to the net cafe just before it opens, figured what the hell–if all else fails, read the instructions.  So I managed to open the box, kind of wishing the framing axe was in the car–they  really box those suckers up!  Waded through the instructions.  It seems that the box contained a cable just like the one the guy at Sears had tried to sell me.  What I need is this little gadget called a Y-connector.  Y, I don’t know.

So anyway, as soon as I’m done here, it’s off to Fred Meyers to see if I can get a cheap Y-connector.  If not, I’ll try Radio Shack.  Sigh.

I do SO miss my  five-transistor radio.

PS–Skipped Fred Meyers, went right to Radio Shack.  At first the clerk said that the part I picked out was wrong, she  looked at every other connector in the store, conceded I might be right, but keep the sales slip in case you need to return it.  Got everything home, the connectors physically fit what they are supposed to, but I am stumped by the warning in the DVD instruction book about don’t put it too close to a TV.  Um, that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?  More later.