The Great Urinal Brouhaha of 2012

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Rob| 1 Comment

You may recall that I wrote about the gentlemen on my floor who don’t bother flushing the urinal, but now it appears what we have is a plumbling problem. No, not a problem with their plumbing, a problem with the urinal. The darn thing just doesn’t flush properly.

I called the building staff about this, and they claimed that after a thorough check they found nothing wrong. Oh, really? Maybe they need to see for themselves through the magic of video.

I used food coloring to represent what you usually find in a urinal: urine.

As you can see, that urinal has serious problems. Unfortunately, I never got a chance to spring this damning evidence on them; before I could display the results of my analysis (urinalalysis?), they admitted that there’s nothing they can do to fix the problem. Ha!

I’ll take this as a moral victory, if something to do with urinals can be considered a moral victory. Better than nothing.

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Posted in manly matters, Tiny Annoyances

Oscar, Oscar, Oscar

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Rob| 5 Comments

Your mouth is so close to your brain that they influence one another constantly – so is it any wonder that mouth muscle memory makes me turn into Oscar’s Smokehouse whenever I come down the hill from Gore Mountain?

The new Oscar’s is just as good as the pre-fire version, and if anything they have more products on display. One thing is different: the beef sticks that used to sit out in a jar are now in an enclosed case. “The health department made us do that,” said the guy behind the counter. The health department ruins everything.

Among the items I picked up was their legendarily delicious bacon, which always makes me laugh because of the smiling pig on the wrapper.

 

Some people find images of happy animals on meat products bizarre, in fact there’s a website devoted to showing their use on signs, labels and in ads. They call the animals “suicidal,” but I prefer to think of them cannibalistic. As if to say, “This is so good that I will devour my own brethren to enjoy it.” Eating your own is a taboo but, boy, that’s some good bacon (pic).

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Posted in food, media

Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Rob| 2 Comments

Some people now keep a high tech piece of equipment with their first aid supplies: an automated external defibrillator (AED). Home AEDs are becoming all the rage, but they don’t come cheap. You’ll pay at least $1100 to get the most affordable model, the Philips HeartStart Home Defibrillator, but who can put a price on living through a sudden cardiac arrest?

If you think this is a good idea, I advise you to BUY NOW because BJ’s Wholesale Club has an amazing deal: order the Phillips HeartStart and they will throw in an electric toothbrush. Yes, you read that correctly.

That may seem like an odd combo — and it certainly caught my attention — but if you think about it, it does make sense. You may never have a heart attack, but you’ll definitely need to brush your teeth. And if the defibrillator doesn’t do the trick, it couldn’t hurt to be minty fresh when they come to cart you away.

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Posted in Consumerism, Health, Modern Living

Wordless Wednesday

Posted on February 29, 2012 by Rob| 2 Comments

Graveyard, Rockchapel, County Cork

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Posted in travel, Wordless Wednesday

Comically Bad

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Rob| 11 Comments

If your local TV station is working extra hard lately, that’s because it’s February sweeps. When I toiled in the business of marketing TV news, I used to love sweeps and all its sensational over the top stories. It made my job fun. And though it meant more work, it was work that came easy to me.

I’ve seen it all, some of it good journalism and some of it tawdry and awful — and some of it very, very flimsy — like WNYT’s story on the dangers of comic books.

Sex? Violence? Corrupting the minds of children? The points raised in this piece are precisely the same as those brought up when a US Senate subcommittee grilled comic book publishers at hearings in 1954. The hysteria they drummed up worked; the publishing industry created the Comics Code Authority to enforce a set of self-imposed standards of decency. Purists believe it ruined the business.

That the story completely ingnored the history of comics and how they were censored in the past really tells me something. It tells me someone did zero research — but can you really expect context from a story that doesn’t offer one shred of fact to support its premise?

And is it true that Comic Book Content Causes Concern for Some? Yes, in the story there’s a psychologist who’s concerned, and some comic-loving parents who understand the definition of age appropriateness — but I’d say they are only mildly concerned.

The takeaway? Monitor what your kids are doing so you can protect them from inapproprate material. OK, I guess the story did do one thing really well: it did a great job of overstating the obvious. There’s some news you can use.

By the way, if you’re interested in comics and how they were censored in the 50s, get a copy of The Ten Cent Plague. This is a must read for comic fans — and an eye opening look at what happens when you let social conservatives start running things.

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Posted in Kids, media

Let My People Go (have a bowl of cereal)

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Rob| 6 Comments

Price Chopper rolled out the Passover items this week. At my store they loaded up a big table right next to the produce section. In Bethlehem there’s always a lot of Passover stuff; pickings are probably slim in a place like Granville.

Magic Max's Fruity Magic LoopsWhat caught my eye immediately was the breakfast cereal, Magic Max’s Fruity Magic Loops. Basically, it’s Manischewitz’s kosher for Passover take on Fruit Loops. Instead of Toucan Sam on the box it’s Magic Max, who is a magician of sorts with a Star of David shaped head. Naturally, it’s made with tapioca and potato starch, rather than wheat products.

I had to have a box, but almost changed my mind when I saw the price: $5.99. We all know breakfast cereal is expensive, but this was for a 5.5 ounce box, making these $17.44 per pound. A few aisles over, Fruit Loops cost just $5.23 per pound — and Price Chopper’s Fruit Whirls, only $2.67 per pound.

I eagerly opened the box in the car because I couldn’t wait to try them. The verdict? Terrible. Fruity Magic Loops have an odd, chalky consistency unlike any breakfast cereal I’ve ever tasted. You would never grab a handful of these and stuff them in your mouth as a quick snack — not that I would eat cereal out of the box with my hands, or anything.

Magic Max’s Fruity Magic Loops are like something you’d make kids eat to punish them — but maybe that’s part of the point. If they tasted exactly like Fruit Loops, you would lose the significance of doing something special, wouldn’t you?

We learn small lessons in strange places, sometimes even in a box of cereal. For that I am grateful — but I do believe if I want to experience a bit of Passover, I’ll just stick to the matzah.

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Posted in food, Religion

Get Sauced (and Squashed)

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Rob| 2 Comments

Weeknight dinners are a bear. Well, OK, maybe not a bear, because a bear would go out and forage for something or just eat a squirrel — or better yet, sleep through the winter. But we can all agree that it’s a bitch getting dinner on the table during the week.

Meetings, school stuff, youth sports — who has time to cook? But even on the craziest weeks, it’s good to try to make at least one really decent sit-down dinner. I like trying new recipes and this week stumbled across a winner on my favorite food site, Serious Eats: Butternut Squash and Sage Cream Sauce.

Was it good? If someone put this in front of you in a restaurant you’d be licking sauce off the plate — or at least soaking it up with your napkin and eating it. I served it with rigatoni, which has enough surface area to accommodate this hearty stuff; I bet it would also be perfect as a bed for some ravioli.

There you go! You can do it in an hour as long as you don’t make the rookie mistake of forgetting to boil your pasta water. And if it all seems like too much work, there are plenty of squirrels in the backyard.

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Posted in food

Printed Matter

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Rob| 10 Comments

My son, Alex, is training in Mississippi, and while the Army has plenty to keep him him busy, he asked for some reading material to help pass his free time. I sent two books, a novel, The Given Day by Dennis Lehane — and because he asked for something on investing, A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel.

Oh, yes, and a few magazines:

  • Esquire
  • Guns and Ammo Handguns Annual
  • National Review
  • Journal of Counter Terrorism & Homeland Security
  • The Economist
  • Maxim

That’s eclectic. I need to put together another package to send this week; your suggestions are most welcome.

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Posted in books, Kids

Melon Protector

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Rob| 3 Comments

There’s something about the shape of my head that seems to make helmets look strange. Maybe because it’s sort of oblong but helmets ride weirdly on my noggin — and we know it’s not from having too much brain stuffed in there.

At Jiminy Peak recently, almost everybody on the mountain was wearing a helmet, and by almost everybody, I mean over ninety percent of the skiers and boarders. This represents a very big change in a very short time.

It wasn’t long ago that you would just see kids with helmets and an occasional adult, who was regarded as an oddball. Since then, helmet use has caught on like wildfire.

A helmet won’t necessarily protect you from a severe blow to the head or the multitude of other injuries you could suffer, but it couldn’t hurt. And forget about looking weird — have you seen some of the strange sh*t people wear while skiing?

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Posted in sports

Urinetown

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Rob| 6 Comments

I take a shortcut through a walkway in downtown Albany that takes me below the steps in front of the Times Union Center.

When I started walking this way, I noticed that every single morning there was a guy out here with a bucket and mop cleaning all around the dark nooks and crannies. Wow! They do an amazing job of keeping this place tidy, I thought. It smells like bleach — which to me is the odor of CLEAN.

Then one day the bucket and mop guy wasn’t there — and the entire area reeked of urine. Ackkkk! Apparently, this is Albany’s favorite spot to urinate, which makes perfect sense. There are a couple of bars nearby and lots of street people — not to mention all the beer drinking at the arena — so the urinating is understandable.

Because I always have to go to the bathroom, I find this interesting — but just for the record, I do my best to find a bathroom.

I think the mayor should stop down here and have a look; if we clean up around Albany as if people are peeing everywhere, it would surely be a better place. And the mayor could stop worrying about Alex Trebek dissing the city.

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Posted in Drinking, Modern Living, Tiny Annoyances