Random Thoughts

The original settlers of San Francisco were a hardy bunch that lacked any kind of talent for building proper shelter. Do you like neighbor noise? I hope so. These charming old flats transmit noise from outside and from neighbors as if there were no walls or ceilings. It’s really fun when you have neighbors with weird unseen rituals that seem to invlove rubbing the floor with a broom handle and re-arranging all the furniture in the wee hours.

My other favorite feature of charming old SF housing is the total lack of temperature regulation. I can crank the heater to 80 and it will never get above 68 in the living room. After years of paying through the nose on my gas bill and still being cold, I have decided to try the trusty Vornado. This little bad boy has an amazing combination of thermostat settings and vortex wind action. I can now luxuriate at a comfortable 71 degrees in my living room. I wonder what my electrical bill will be like…

While visiting my brother in New York, we went to dinner at a new restaurant in his neighborhood. An expensive new restaurant. After we sat down the waiter said, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Regis Philbin is dining here tonight”. Well, the waiter didn’t say it exactly like that. He had a thick latin accent and was kind of hard to understand. But that was the gist of it. I looked over and saw the back of Regis’ head.

On my flight back home from NYC, I noticed a passenger holding these ski poles that weren’t ski poles. They had little rubber feet on them instead of spikey ski pole things. He looked like a young wanna-be mountain man. Or maybe he was just really pragmatic. His clothing was very practical. Nothing flashy. And he a had a beard. Which is very practical if you’re a guy, because none of us like to shave. And so I wondered, what were these special poles that the pragmatic bearded young guy decided to lug across country in a plane?

I was sure I’d somehow seen poles like that used for walking. So I did a Google search on walking poles. This led me to the Exerstrider site, which boasts about carrying the “world’s #1 fitness walking poles”. There is obviously heated competition amongst fitness walking pole companies. The site is littered with customer quotes you will enjoy reading, such as:

“Once I started using fitness walking poles, I could walk a lot longer”.

or

“I love my Exerstrider walking poles. I mean…….I LOVE THEM!”

Something tells me these walking pole people don’t have a whole lot to get excited about.

One of the other links in the Google search results was for “Walking Gear and Walking Clothing”. What have I been doing all these years, walking around in clothing not specially designed for walking!? It makes me want to produce a line of clothing specially designed for sitting. I’ll follow that up with a clothing line optimized for standing.

I had to drop off Autumn at the Oakland airport the other day for her 2.5 week journey to Alabama. She started crying at the curbside drop-off, so I spent a little time consoling her. Then I notice one of these glorified meter maids at the front of my car, scribbling away on a pad. I look over at him and politely say, “Is there a problem?”. “No problem,” he says, “Just writing you a ticket.” First off, when did it become standard procedure for the fauxlice to be smart asses? Second, who the hell gets a ticket for saying goodbye to a significant other at the airport dropoff? It’s not like I went to get a cup of coffee or something. I was standing right by my car. I was so outraged, I called the Oakland police department to find out who is in charge of officer Knittel and his mustache. I got the number for Ira Christian (510-986-2687). I spoke to Ira and she told me that I had left my vehicle unattended. Did anyone out there know that “unattended” means you were not behind the wheel? I didn’t. I thought it meant you were nearby and could deal with your car if someone told you to move it. That definition means we could get ticketed when helping a significant other remove the luggage from the trunk and giving them a hug goodbye. What man with any kind of manners is going to send his girlfriend out to deal with her luggage by herself? Utterly ridiculous. Ira went on to tell me that they ticket disabled people if the person assisting them gets out from behind the wheel. THEY TICKET DISABLED PEOPLE FOR GETTING HELP FROM THEIR DRIVER! Ira went on to tell me that they’ve had to get more strict since 9/11. Tell me how the hell giving me a ticket is going to keep me from detonating my car bomb? Wouldn’t it be safer to tell me to leave? Ira told me I would remember and not do the same thing next time. I told her she was right because I was never going to return to Oakland airport.

Have you ever had a Jewish Christmas? Seems like it would be great, right? How bad could it be to get a day off work?

Well, let’s start the day by calling a friend to come join us for breakfast or something. rrrrrring. rrrrring. [brief conversation with friend]. Hmmm. Slight setback for our wonderful day off. It seems our friend is spending the day with family. Never fear! We’ll just try another friend. rrrrring. rrrring. [brief conversation with other friend]. Dang. Same story. [repeat until frustrated]. Bah, who needs those pesky Christmas celebrating friends. New idea. We’ll turn on the TV and see what’s doing. Hmmm…christmas special [change channel] …christmas special [repeat until frustrated]. Arrgh. The TV is filled with non-stop christmas specials. Gotta get out of the house. [drive by lots of closed stores in every part of town]. What the!? Everything is CLOSED. ARRRRGH.

It hasn’t happend again this year yet, but the clock is ticking. Tick…tock…tick…tock…

I went to Whole Foods Market to buy some cheese. They have this great cheese booth where you can taste the cheese before you buy. I love cheese. But apparently my fellow cheese lovers are all insane. There was a strange looking woman hanging out at the cheese booth. She had old-school over the head headphones on. I think she wears them to drown out the voices that are talking to her in her head. She looked at me and smiled and said “merry christmas”. I looked at her and nodded with a small smile, going quickly back to looking at cheese. She asked me a question about the cheese I was looking at, and then she said “happy holidays”, smiling broadly. She waited a few moments and then said “merry christmas” again with her same crazy big smile. Now I’m feeling uncomfortable and trying to pretend she just isn’t there. She looked over at me and said “Can I hug you?” as she threw her arms wide open waiting for a hug. I told her I’m OK, and she said “Awwww, you’re shy”. No. I’m just not crazy. I wandered around the corner to look at the goat cheese and get a little distance from headphone girl. Then a very short older bearded man stepped up next to me and started telling me which goat cheeses are really good. He went on to tell me about some weird bleeding intestinal condition he has that prevents him from eating much cheese. The first warning sign of trouble is someone who tells you too much about their bleeding intestinal condition without prompting. I think he ended up pointing out about every cheese in the goat cheese case and telling me it was really good. Apparently he really likes goat cheese.

I love cheese so much, the crazies can’t keep me away from it. I need to devise some way to elude the crazies if I go back to Whole Fooods for my cheese needs.

I really don’t understand people that say they like the rain. What is there to like about getting cold and wet one little drop at a time? Last time I checked, this was a form of torture attributed to the Chinese. The Chinese must really hate the rain.

The problem is that there’s nothing special to do when it rains. You can’t make rainmen or have a rainball fight. Why is it that the only thing special you can do with rain is torture people? Someone needs to devise fun stuff to do when it rains. Come on, there’s fun stuff to do when it gets windy, which has to be one of the most obscure kinds of weather. It should be a piece of cake to come up with something cool to do when it’s rainy out.

I have a children’s game for rainy weather. It’s called “fill the cup”. The kids get special “fill the cup ™” cups that are all the same size with hash marks on them for measuring. They go outside and mom starts the game with the offical “fill the cup ™” timer. It’s a race to see who can fill their cup with the most rain before the time is up. I’m happy to announce the official “fill the cup ™” funnel attachment for a competetive advantage.

Over the years, I’ve noticed some distinct differences between men and women. And I’m not talking about the obvious anatomical diferences. Let me illustrate…

Toilet Paper
Women love to have the paper coming from the back of the roll (as shown in the image). Men love to have the paper coming from the front of the roll. Why is this? I have absolutely no idea. I don’t even have a theory on this one. And believe me, I have no shortage of theories about random stuff.

TiVo
Women need to delete shows from the TiVo after they watch them. I think this has something to do with women’s propensity to be neat and tidy. They feel like they’re keeping the TiVo neat and tidy. Ladies, the TiVo will delete the shows when it needs to make room. Relax already.

Communication
When a man says “Do you see anything on the menu you like?” we actually mean exactly what came out of our mouth. We’re simple like that. Women are complicated. When a woman says “Do you see anything on the menu you like?” she is really saying “I don’t see anything on the menu I like, so you better tell me we are going to go somewhere else now.” There is a secret subtext to what a woman says. It is our job as men to crack the code. I have the code partially cracked, and it has taken decades.

Complaining
Guys you should never, ever, EVER offer advice to a woman that is complaining. Ladies, let me tell you, as a man that’s just about the most difficult thing in the world to do. We hear about a problem and we want to solve it. I get it now, though. I’m just supposed to sympathize.

I’ve noticed there are two kinds of walkers in this world. The majority walk with their arms swaying forward and back parallel to the way they’re walking. Then there’s this weird minority that walk with their arms swaying perpendicular to the way they’re walking. It’s like they started to do some tap dancing routine and now they’re stuck walking awkwardly. It’s completely unnatural. Look at the pedestrian crossing sign. Is the silhouette swaying its gender neutral arms in a perpendicular path? Of course not. The arms are in motion in a plane parallel to the way the silhouette is walking. This is the way humans were meant to walk. I wonder what happens if you try to walk while holding hands with an awkward walker? Awkward walkers must need to couple up with other awkward walkers.

The latest trend in conspicuous consumption: putting a bunch of crap on display in the rear window of your car. This is for the person who loves clutter and needs yet another spot to clutter up. I’m not a fan of clutter. And I really hate cutesy clutter. My mom loves cutesy clutter. The problem the clutter lovers eventually face is that they’ve maxed out on spots to clutter. So then they have to buy clutter as something to give to other people. If my mom were going to decorate the shelf under the rear window of my car, it would be filled with various cutesy things working on computers. See, I work with computers. So she thinks I’d like computer-themed clutter. This might be something like a dragon working away on a computer. My rear window would be filled with dragons working on computers.