Whimsy Speaks Again

I had this marvelous breakfast with my ex-in-laws this morning at Cath's, with Cath's guy Terry and Ky and Eileen and Mark and Robin and Cy and Ilse and Chris and it was just great.  Ky and Eileen made what was, I swear, the best crème brûlée I've every had.  Made from scratch, of course, with egg yolks, whole cream, real vanilla beans, and then glazed on top with turbinado sugar and a hand-held gas torch.  Outstanding!

~~


More catalogs today, natch.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art always has nice stuff, though a little pricey.  What makes it a good catalog, though, is that their merchandise is generally unique and often tied into one of the artists they exhibit.  Some of the goods are downright quirky, such as the set of 7 miniature designer shoes ($125).  The Lady's Locket Pendant Watch (fashioned after 18th century watch that hung from a pendant on a lady's chatelaine) is has a hand-enameled burgundy case and quartz movement (a decided improvement on the original).  There are pages of Christmas card offerings, from Renaissance Angels to American Natural.  Lots of jewelry, of course, including replicas of Minoan necklaces circa 2,000 BCE.  I like the ladybug lockets and the hammered silver cuff bracelets.  The Treasures of Ancient Egypt includes a Small Selket and a snake bracelet.  Jewelry takes up a lot more of the catalog, followed by "exquisite" scarves and ties.  There's even a kids' section with museum-themed puzzles, books and kits (including a pint-sized lap loom).

Two years ago, all my Christmas presents were obtained from Heifer International.  This organization was the first to provide animals to the impoverished citizens of undeveloped nations, and still does.  You can buy a a flock of chicks ($20), honeybees ($30, they don't say how many), a trio of rabbits ($60), a pig ($120), a sheep ($120), a goat ($120), a llama ($150), a water buffalo ($250), or a heifer ($500).  You can also finance the Milk Menagerie (a heifer, two goats, and a water buffalo, at $1000) or a World Ark (all the named animals in some quantity, for $5,000).  I've looked these guys up and they have low administrative costs and do a lot of good.

There are catalogs that I've been getting forever because I made the mistake of buying something a long time ago.  That group includes Frontgate, which is just filled with items that are more expensive than you would pay elsewhere, generally not unique, and then you get to pay shipping, to boot. 

I've ordered from La Tienda, because you can buy real Spanish food, not the stuff that supermarkets and gourmet stores think are Spanish.  Last year, I got Cath some chorizos and Bomba paella rice and a portion of Jamon IbericoI forget what else.  If you want real Spanish (Marcona) almonds, Serrano ham, piquillos stuffed with bonito, or tender white asparagus, this is your place.  When I used to fly down to Bilbao from Brussels, I would make it a point of spending two hours eating entremeses with colleagues, always starting with lomo and requesting the espárragos gigantes erectos which was nomenclature of my own devise, but I got them nonetheless.  La Tienda has rather pricey lots of saffron threads, but at least it's the real deal.  I used to get mine at El Corte Ingles in little boxes that would set me back a hundred bucks, but worth it.  Alas, I just don't visit my buddy Alejandro as much as I should anymore, so I resort to La Tienda.  La Tienda also has a decent selection of Manchego, the famous and ubiquitous cheese from La Mancha.   There are hundreds of kinds of Manchego, since unlike the French, the Spanish don't give every damned cheese a new name just because it's aged, or moister, or has a different culture.  Great selection of Spanish olives, of course, that bar staple that like the almonds, are usually free at Spanish bars for the price of a glass of Jerez.

Meduri is a new one, a catalog filled with that bane of the Christmas season:  dried fruit.  One of my wives had a family whose tradition was to re-gift some dried fruit that someone had given to someone during the Truman administration.  The amazing thing is that it still looked reasonably edible.  But, I digress.  Meduri dried fruit looks pretty upscale:  Sweetglow apricots, Mandarin orange slices, Double Red grapefruit slices, Golden Blush peaches, Granny Smith apple wedges, Cherokee Blackberries.  This looks like the kind of thing you could actually ship to friends and colleagues with pride.

For a couple of years, I have been getting the Zingerman's catalog.  Unlike many of the catalogs to whom Dean and Deluca must have sold my name, they're not in New York, they're in Ann Arbor.  I like the catalog because there's not a single picture in it, just illustrations, which fires up the imagination, I suppose.  Zingerman's is mainly about baked goods, so you can buy their Cinnful Cinnamon Roll Gift Box, Holiday Stollen, and Better Than San Francisco Sourdough Bread.  They have branched out over the years and also carry a lot of tapas fare, specialty olive oils, and "reserve" cheeses.  One thing that looked interesting was the "underrated" Smoked Liverwurst from Wisconsin.  Lord, I haven't had liverwurst in 40 years, but I'd give it a shot again.

I think everyone on the planet has received a Hickory Farms gift at least in their lifetime.  You remember, those columns of sausage in a box of confetti.  They're still doing it, and focusing on the middlebrow:  smoked cheddar, three cheese and onion wedge, ham summer sausage.

I thought Gorton's only sold fish in boxes in the freezer section, but apparently they have ambitions.  Their catalog is filled with seafood stuff, most of it looking delicious.  However, except for the lobsters, which they ship live, most of the rest of it comes on dry ice, hard as a rock.  They will send you the inevitable "clambake for two", for only $125, for example.  Or a 1.25 pound lobster for $39, and that doesn't include shipping.   A live lobster should cost less than $20 on the Internet, and that's more than double the cost in Maine.  So look around.  Gorton's will sell you crabcakes that aren't as good as I make for an arm and a leg, but the prize winner is their "two vacuum packed 8-ounce portions of halibut" for $65.90.  Yikes.  Just go down to Whole Foods and spend a third of that for fresh halibut that WF has FedExed in from somewhere the day before.

Restoration Hardware is a fun upscale mall stop, but their catalog is silly.  The cover has the ancient Carroll Shelby hawking the Shelby Black Hornet, which doesn't look like a Cobra at all, and is being auctioned, the bidding starting at $100K.  However, the Premier Edition of Monopoly, with special drawers for the money and a cool wooden case looked slick.

Sur la table is an interesting purveyor of cooking stuff.  I liked the looks of the Viking Burner, a $500 induction thingy that you can set a pan on and see it heat up by magic, even on a dining room table.  Lots of cookware, but the killerbee offering was the Bob Kramer Shun knife set, looking all Samurai and Toledo steel.  The 8-inch chef's knife will set you back $340 and a whole knife block filled with these babies would cost as much as your first car.

There's still MOMA, Pfaelzer, BB&Beyond, and Mackenzie, but I've run out of steam.  More next season.

Posted by jbahr at 05:55 PM | Permalink

A short break from catalogs.

Good article by Thomas Friedman yesterday:  "So many people were in on it: People who had no business buying a home, with nothing down and nothing to pay for two years; people who had no business pushing such mortgages, but made fortunes doing so; people who had no business bundling those loans into securities and selling them to third parties, as if they were AAA bonds, but made fortunes doing so; people who had no business rating those loans as AAA, but made a fortunes doing so; and people who had no business buying those bonds and putting them on their balance sheets so they could earn a little better yield, but made fortunes doing so."

At another point in the article, he mentions this amazing bit of history:  "In Bakersfield, Calif., a Mexican strawberry picker with an income of $14,000 and no English was lent every penny he needed to buy a house for $720,000.”

I was using the search engine on this blog to remember the amazement I had expressed at the outrageous rise in home values in many parts of the country, the creation of so many new millionaires.

Nov 28, 2005:  "Lots of average Joes have seen the value of their house double and triple, making them more money in a few years than their 30 years of retirement savings.   Just as a rough estimate, I figure there are about 36 million people in California (I'm not sure that's counting the undocumented aliens), and let's say 10 million separate residences.  Whether they are owned or rented, somebody owns them, and it's probably a person, not a corporation.  Let's say the average appreciation in the past 5 years has been $250,000.  That would mean the wealth creation for California alone has been 2.5 trillion dollars.  For the entire nation, the number is probably $10 trillion, or about the size of the U.S. GDP.  "

Jan 30, 2006:  "Large national builders are putting up houses in quantities that may exacerbate the housing bubble implosion. "

Oct 26, 2006:  "I've been thinking about that amazing statistic regarding housing prices and median income.  In many places on both coasts, the median home price is 12 to 15 times the median income.  That means that a 6% mortgage, together with PMI and property taxes, would consume the entire paycheck of the average homeowner (well, OK, the median homeowner).  How in the hell could that be?  It's not like the houses are owned only by the very rich — 70% of all American families own their home.  The answer is a) ARM loans with artificially low payments that are going to explode in the next couple of years, and b) home ownership isn't 70% in the highest-priced areas (more like 20% in some pricey locales where speculators account for most of the housing sales), and c) many Americans have traded in the gains in the last house to invest in their next house. "

Dec 6, 2006:  "Speaking of property values:  No one has explained to me why there is so much new housing.  After all, houses aren't like cars . . . they last the better part of a century in most cases (Junie's house was built in 1936).  Even in this construction slowdown, the forecasts are for another 1.5 million homes to be built.  This includes both apartments, townhouses, and houses.  The population of the US is roughly 295 million and the average household size is 2.6 persons.  That means there's about 115 million households (with roughly one-third renting and two-thirds owning).  The population grows by about 2.3 million people per year, or about about 900,000 households.  So we must be building 600,000 more homes a year than there are new people to live in them.  Presumably, that's because 600,000 existing homes per year either disappear (think Katrina) or become undesirable for some reason.  I wonder where they go?"

June 6, 2007:  "I'm trying to get my mind around this statistic:  the size of the average new home in Boulder County is now 6,300 square feet.  That must mean that the average house is selling for $600K to a million dollars or more.  Where are these people coming from?  My house is an absurdly large 3,000+ and has 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, a large living room, great room, and built-out basement.  In any event, the Boulder County commissioners want to limit new homes to 2,600 square feet in unincorporated areas and 4,000 on "the plains".  Now that I'm getting the paper, I've just started to notice the amazing rise in Boulder home prices recently.  The classified section is filled with page after page of houses that run a million bucks or more.  Keep in mind that this isn't California – there are dozens of towns in Greater Denver with affordable housing and when you get away from the Front Range, prices start to drop to levels that Midwesterners are familiar with.  There are a reasonable number of high-paying jobs in Denver, but it's hard to imagine the same is true for Boulder.  There is a smattering of high-tech and a few big players, like Pfizer, but the majority of these "good jobs" are still paying wages below 6 figures.  So how do you afford an $8,000 mortgage?  Maybe these are all trust fund babies or Californians trading in their West Coast equity, but I doubt it.  Anyway, I don't get it.  But then, I don't understand how New Yorkers survive their real estate and rent market." 

Sep 21, 2008:  "Another question is:  what about Main Street (as opposed to Wall Street)?  Why not spend the time and resources to mitigate our enormous new-found ocean of mortgage debt by figuring out how to help millions of people keep their homes?  The housing price crisis is due in large part to the glut of homes on the market, some new builder homes, but many that are up for sale because homeowners can't make the mortgage, and many more because they've been foreclosed on and add to the glut of homes on the market.  With many fewer people selling or walking away from their homes, four things would happen:

1.  Supply and demand would realign home prices upward.
2.  The stock of homes on the market would shrink.
3.  Builders could start thinking about building again, with attendant gains in construction-related employment.
4.  Current homeowners would see their home values rise, yielding more of the feel-good sentiment that drove the economy for years."

Oct 28, 2008:  "This is also hurting a lot of middle-class people that used to work in construction.  Most of the home builder stock prices fell 20% today, after Pulte Homes announced quarterly losses, and the CEO of Pulte said "it appears that a bottom in the housing market may not come for some time".  Getting the foreclosures off the market would help a lot, since it's difficult to compete with fire-sale prices.  It would be much less expensive to the government (and the tax-payers) to subsidize house payments than to outright buy mortgages.  I would guess that many of the families in foreclosure are not that far from being able to keep their homes.  And I don't think people leave their homes, just because the current price is under water, mortgage-wise, any more than they abandon their car in the first year when its resale value is exceeded by their auto loan."

~~~

So, I guess the doubling and tripling of housing prices was an illusion.  While it's good to find out that, yet again, magic only exists among the prestidigitators, it appears the country has discovered perhaps the most painful way imaginable to find that out.

Posted by jbahr at 03:21 PM | Permalink

The catalogs continue to come in thick as thieves.  Today, I received another half-dozen, including (of all things) Pottery Barn Kids.  Other than the fact that there are an insanely large number of expensive items for 4-year olds, the thing that struck me first was that none of the children have the kind of names that dominated the schoolyard I played dodgeball on:  Billy, Joe, Cathy, Beth.  The various personalized items in the catalog enumerate the various Owens and Allrandas and Sampsons and and Haydens.  In fact, fully half of the kids' first names seems like last names.  The catalog contains the usual complement of high-end kid wear, but the most amazing thing to me are the faux adult toys.  These are vacuum cleaners and rug cleaners and blenders that make a lot of sound, cost a lot of money, and don't actually do anything.  Besides the kid-sized dining room furniture, there are ovens and refrigerators and dishwashers, all pint-sized, all expensive, all non-working – and I mean non-working in any functional sense.  I'm sure they're educational, because for example, the Gourmet Kitchen is "loaded with . . . interactive elements that encourage creative play and develop motor skills".  The pint-sized refrigerator, stove, sink, and kitchen island will set you back $1,379 but is that a lot to pay for "an ice machine with four wood ice cubes" and a "soap pump that goes up and down"?

As long as we're doing decadence, there's the Petrossian catalog (stores in Paris, London, New York, and Las Vegas).  One day I may actually buy something from these guys, say, the $28 box containing 12 macaroons.  Meanwhile, I can dream of having the means to send one of my friends the 17.5 ounce tin of Imperial Special Reserve Caviar, which would set me back $12,200 but feeds 8-12 people.  Or I could skimp a little and settle for the somewhat inferior tin of Imperial Special Reserve Stellatus Caviar at $10,900.  That might be a wise move, because then I could afford the Sterling and Crystal Presentoir (although it only holds 250 grams of caviar, surrounded by by ice, topped by a leaping sturgeons, (and do sturgeons really leap?  I'll have to ask Dima), for only $2,815.  When I used to shlep over to Moscow to visit Crazy Tim, who was helping me get a Russian programming staff together, we would wander down to the local farmer's market and there would be this guy with a 6-foot long sturgeon and an axe.  You would ask for a hunk and he would give it to you, though everyone advised that the heavy metals in the flesh would definitely frustrate any attempts of losing weight on a fish diet.  But, as usual, I digress.  Petrossian also offers a selection of foie gras ($300 fora 1.1 pound loaf), the surprisingly reasonable monkfish liver (6.75 ounces for 18 bucks), and of course, should you have your own truffle-sniffing pig, the Silverplated Truffle Shaver for a cool $225.  Not everything is priced at these stratospheric levels, of course.  There are lots of items in the $15 to $50 range, including smoked sturgeon, whitefish salad, a collection of saucissons and prosciutto, and mini blinis.  The dominant items, however, are in the $100 to $200 range, including Dill Marinated Tsar-Cut Salmon and Mother-of-Pearl Caviar spoons.  You have to wonder, with all the investment bankers out of work now, whether they will have to close their New York store.

Residing at the opposite end of the catalog spectrum has to be the What On Earth catalog.  It is so filled with kitch, it almost transcends trashiness and breaks through to the other side.  I ordered a couple of gag gifts for my family (including the impeccable Spock nutcracker), and to my surprise I received the "Thank You For Your Order" super-kitchy catalog.  This 40-page catalog is filled with WOE stuff that they couldn't sell at their normal rational prices.  There are hundreds of T-shirts like the one that says "It's uncredible how well I am at grammer" (which I actually considered for a moment as a parting give for W).  The real hyper-kitch though includes:  The pink Snoopy Puppy Love Lounge Pants;  The Bullet Cribbage Board that comes with "polished empty shell cartridges"; The Hostess Twinkies Cookbook;  the Red Corset Nightlight (which appears to be a "laced up bustier with a fluffy feather boa"); the Welcome to Las Vegas Musical Light with a bar that you push to hear Elvis sing "Viva Las Vegas"; the "Never Go Faster Than Your Guardian Angel Can Fly" garden stepping stone;  the Leopard Skin Print Martini Shaker and Glasses; the wooden plaque that says "Dogs Accept You As The Boss, Cats Want to See a Resume" (which I kinda liked); The Salvador Dali Wristwatch with mustaches that revolve with the hour and minute and an ant that crawls around the dial for the seconds;  the Season One Bill Cosby Show DVD Set (marked down from $44.95 to $19.98); the Mushroom Accept Lamp (don't ask);  the Jesus Loves Me baby bracelet;  the Flamingo Flag Set, which displays a pink flamingo celebrating alternatively, Christmas, Halloween (!), and Saint Patrick's Day (yes, the flamingo has an Irish hat with buckle on);  the Singing High School Musical Gabriella and Troy Figures that launch into "Breaking Free" with the push of a button;  Harry Potter Death Eater masks; the Royal Flush Toilet Seat Cover;  the Insect Computer Mouse with a real beetle or scorpion captured in clear acrylic.  Oh, there's so much more.  The best deal in the catalog are the Pimsleur Language Learning Audios at $29.98 apiece.  I listened to the German set in 1985 and could actually converse with actual Germans when I got there.

More tomorrow.  Or virtual tomorrow, I guess.  Two days ago, I said "see you tomorrow", but forgot I had a board meeting with the Boulder County Art Alliance.  Anyway, I think it will be tomorrow.  Depends upon how much competing, paying work pops up.

Posted by jbahr at 04:59 PM | Permalink

I would have thought that by now paper would be a thing of the past.  Not so, if the daily contents of my giant rural-type mailbox is any indication.  And those catalogs!  I used to order almost all my Christmas presents by catalog, as my extended family is almost entirely out of state (well, actually, they're all in California).  So, I get a lot of catalogs from the residuals of passing my name around from company to company.  Then, there's the magazines.  I already get The Atlantic, Harper's, Scientific American and lots of poetry journals and mags.   Add to that the two magazines (whose details I actually forget) I ordered from the young man who was working his way through divinity school or some such nonsense that I didn't believe even when he was right there telling me.  And then, there are the 5 more magazines I receive for turning in my Continental Airline miles.  Oh, well, there's at least a separate disposal bin for paper that the Longmont trash pickup people collect in a separate truck.  OK, on to catalogs.  But, first a few goodies from Harper's:

Findings:  High testosterone is correlated with risk-takers.  An Austrian study finds that people agree on which cars are angry/dominant/masculine, but not on those that are disgusted, extroverted or neurotic.  Sexologists can predict a woman's predilection to orgasm by the way she walks.  Sexist American men make over $11,000 more on average than non-sexist.  A prominent geneticist has concluded that human evolution has ended.  The Mediterranean diet is disappearing from the Mediterranean.  Space smells like hot metal and fried steak.  Polar bear cannibalism is on the rise.  HIV first infected humans before 1884.  Negative political advertising has been shown to be more informative than positive.  A 10 year old boy in Iowa discovered a 74-million old plesiosaur fossil.  It was determined that it was killed during the Manson Impact by coming up for air, looking around, and getting a lungful of hot glass shards.

Harper's Index:  The $750 billion bailout exceeds the U.S. GDP of a century by 50% (adjusted for inflation); The amount funded into the FDIC by banks approximately equals the fees they receive from ATM use;  One out of 8 Fortune 500 companies are in an emerging nation;  Sudan exports approximately the same amount of food as it imports (535,000 tons); Since 2002, the government has ruled in favor of the 1,288 workplace safety whistleblowers only 17 times; 36% of all Christmas trees sold this year will be artificial; 1,156 people belong to the FaceBook group "Belgium Doesn't Exist";  Four million U.S. postage stamps were mistakenly printed with the phone number 1-800-TRAMP-24 (a phone sex site) instead of 1-800-STAMP-24.

~~~

There was a time when everyone received dozens of catalogs a month from Christmas, and maybe you still do.  It seems the cost of paper, ink, and media-class postage has put a hitch in the giddyup that was catalogs. 

But, not for me.  I still receive dozens of catalogs, from the preposterous to the inane.  The preposterous arise from the fact that every year I send an upscale Christmas gift to my best clients.  I've settled on Dean and Deluca for the past few years, sending their "Snacks on the Run", which would distribute among my valued clients and their varied employees a nice mix of chocolate, toffee, dried fruit, nuts, Swedish Fish, and yes, Gummy Bears.  Which reminds me, and I may have told you this story, but the first time I arrived in Hanover for Hanover Messe, the gigantic industrial fair in Germany that more than a million people show up for, that I was staying at the Vier Grenzen Hotel (which basically means four borders or four frontiers) and it was just across from this giant factory that had Gummi Werke in these huge letters on the top of the building and I honestly thought "My God, this must be the home of Gummy Bears", but it turned out it was a tire factory).  But, I digress. 

I really get some amazing catalogs.  Let's start with the middling amazing.  Like Fiorella's Jack Stack Barbeque.  They offer the "Highest Rated BBQ in the Country", so says Zagat.  Four full slabs, which comes with a 16-ounce jar of KC Original BBQ Sauce (isn't that $2.99 at WalMart?) will set you back $140.  They have another couple of dozen arrangements, including the BBQ Super Sampler which has Spare Ribs, Chopped BBQ Beef Brisket, Fire-Kissed Chicken Wings, and Pork Burnt Ends.  Feeds 8 to 10 people for only a hundred bucks.  The offering that most cracked me up was the "Kobe Beef Rib Indulgence".  Kobe cattle are those pampered bovines that spend their lives getting massages when they're not topping up on Asahi Draft for breakfast.  I've had a couple of Kobe steaks in Tokyo back when I worked for Seiko, and it's like eating relatively flavorful filet mignon, except you could cut it with a plastic fork and it costs $90 for 6 ounces in the restaurant, and that was 20 years ago.  Why would you want to make Beef Ribs from those poor beasts? 

Oh, well, on to the next one.  Biscoff has a nice catalog filled with things biscuity.  I can't remember if they're a Belgian or German or Dutch company, but it's one of those.  Their deal is that they basically want you to spend $40 for a box of cookies.  Oh, they have cheesecakes and truffles and pecan patties, but there's a lot of cookies in the mix.  Also Leonidas chocolates.  Which are to die for, actually.  When Cath and I lived in Belgium, I had this fancy job with a big salary and an expense account that covered everything up to the purchase of family nukes, and we would go to the most famous chocolate vendor all the time, which was Leonidas, not Godiva, which didn't have all the much presence worldwide except for their refrigerated cabinets in the duty free stores.  Alan Tamura, my main man, who had made the trek to Europe with us, would take back to the U.S. a dozen kilos of Leonidas every holiday, and even after filling out the customs forms, had to threaten to eat them all before The Agent let him into LAX with a suitcase of decadence.  But, I digress.  Biscoff also sells Leonidas chocolates, which includes the world famous praline, which is not a cookie, it's a chocolate shell filled with this and that, depending upon their whim.  One pound of mixed Leonidas will set you back about 45 bucks.  The rest of the catalog is Madeleines, tiny chocolate Belgian waffles, and endless arrays of shortbread cookies.

If you wanted to get me a Christmas present, you could do worse than ordering from Hammacher Schlemmer (Offering the Best, the Only, and the Unexpected for 160 Years).  They have, of course, their "Best" category, like the Best Robotic Vacuum Cleaner.  But, they also have some oddball stuff that tickles me.  Take the World's Smallest Humanoid Robot, for example, at only a hundred bucks.  Or the Only Widescreen Personal Movie Theater glasses that you wear to simulate the experience of a 52" TV from 9 feet away ($249).  The Belle Epoque Espresso Machine would be nice (15 bars of pressure, naval-grade brass innards) with a heating shelf and complimentary cups ($6,000).  Spring-loaded slippers.  The Maui Pocket Saxophone.  I really like the looks of the 50' Snowball Launcher, with its top-mounted magazine for holding up to 3 snowballs at a time for rapid fire.  The Personal Oxygen Bar.  The Battle of the Mouse King Porcelain Musical Egg.  The wallet made of genuine stingray skin.  The Fish Agility Training Set, which looks like an obstacle course with hoops and soccer goals and stuff to train your piscine friends.  The world's only rechargeable heated insoles.  A walking stick that converts into a telescope.  A pocket GPS locator that, with one push, records where you park you car, and then with another push, tells you where it is and how close you are.  The R2D2 acquarium that holds 1.75 gallons and is "ideal for small freshwater goldfish".  The ear-mounted, hands-free, book light.  A wine glass that will hold an entire bottle.  A box containing gold, frankincense and myrrh.  The laser-guided pool cue.  A remote-controlled tarantula.  A fish-finding watch.  The World's Strongest Crystal Stemware that will "thwart the repeated blows of a 12-gram steel ball" and can withstand 4,000 cycles in a commercial dishwasher.  A bed vacuum that eliminates dust mites.  A planter that grows tomatoes upside down.  A UV light wand that will kill 99.9% of bacteria wherever you pass it over.  Underwater goggles that can take photographs.  Star Wars nutcrackers.  An alarm clock that launches a disk into the air at wakeup time and will not stop complaining until it is returned to its base.  Lighted billiard balls.

More tomorrow.

Posted by jbahr at 04:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Posted by jbahr at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Damned funny:

Marx is back:  "His basic point is that there is some good news and some bad news. He gave you the bad news first: capitalism is dreadful. The workers are exploited and the capitalists get rich at their expense. So far, so Lehman Brothers. The good news was that the bad news was bound to come to an end. Capitalism wasn't just nasty, it was doomed. It would collapse under the weight of its own internal contradictions. A bit like Lehman Brothers."

~~~

Krugman advises abandoning caution:  "The economic lesson is the importance of doing enough. F.D.R. thought he was being prudent by reining in his spending plans; in reality, he was taking big risks with the economy and with his legacy. My advice to the Obama people is to figure out how much help they think the economy needs, then add 50 percent. It’s much better, in a depressed economy, to err on the side of too much stimulus than on the side of too little."

~~~

Friedman:  "America is surely the only nation that could — in the same decade — go to war against a president named Hussein (Saddam of Iraq), threaten to use force against a country whose most revered religious martyr is named Hussein (Iran) and then elect its own president who’s middle-named Hussein.   Is this a great country or what?"

~~~

From Nate, my favorite statistician:  Al Franken may be very likely to win in a recount.  Or, perhaps not.

~~~

Pelosi and Reid are being lobbied hard by the Big 3 and their unions for a piece of the bailout.  In 1985 GM had over 800,000 employees.  Now they have about 325,000.  That's a lot of legacy costs for a company that is now significantly smaller.  GM has enough cash for about a year's worth of current burn rate.  Then, what?  If the Big 3 fail, it will put over a million people out of work.  The 54-day labor-related GM shutdown in 1998 "knocked a full percentage point off the U.S. economic growth rate that quarter".  What would the collapse of all three mean?

~~~

Yikes.  Circuit City has filed for bankruptcy.

~~~

The Obama recession is in full swing, ladies and gentlemen," Limbaugh told his radio audience of 15 million to 20 million on Thursday. "Stocks are dying, which is a precursor of things to come. This is an Obama recession. Might turn into a depression."

And upwards to 20 million people listen to him.  Amazing.

~~~

I've been thinking about the fact that 55 million Americans voted for McCain.  I think you can reasonably expect 30 to 40 million to vote for him, based upon consideration and choice.  Twenty to thirty percent of the country consider many issues important (strong defense, abortion, guns rights, gay marriage, . . . ) and voted for the candidate that best represented those views.

However, I think that there's another 10 million-odd souls that could be reasonably expected to represent the true landslide that this election should have been.

I have friends and relatives who aren't political.  They don't read newspapers or listen to NPR or click on the blogosphere.   Many of these friends and family voted for McCain, and I think one plausible reason is that they just didn't know much about Barack.  I know that sounds crazy, but there are millions of people out there who get their opinions from the very unreliable sources, if they have any opinion at all. 

All that will change soon.  I'm willing to bet that the inevitable exposure of the President to the people will create in voters a much more informed choice in 2012.  It's up to Barack to earn a positive evaluation, but if he does, we may see the blowout that many expected this election.

~~~

P. J. O'Rourke, the most entertaining conservative in the world: 

A "farm" today means 100,000 chickens in a space the size of a Motel 6 shower stall. If we cared anything about "nutrition" we would--to judge by the mountainous, jiggling flab of Americans--stop growing all food immediately. And "bioenergy" is a fraud of John Edwards-marital-fidelity proportions. Taxpayer money composted to produce a fuel made of alcohol that is more expensive than oil, more polluting than oil, and almost as bad as oil with vermouth and an olive. But this bill passed with bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress and was happily signed into law by President Bush. Now it's going to cost us at least $285 billion. That's about five times the gross domestic product of prewar Iraq. For what we will spend on the Farm, Nutrition and Bioenergy Act of 2008 we could have avoided the war in Iraq and simply bought a controlling interest in Saddam Hussein's country.

Yes, we got a few tax breaks during the regimes of Reagan and W. But the government is still taking a third of our salary. Is the government doing a third of our job? Is the government doing a third of our dishes? Our laundry? Our vacuuming? When we go to Hooters is the government tending bar making sure that one out of three margaritas is on the house? If our spouse is feeling romantic and we're tired, does the government come over to our house and take care of foreplay? (Actually, during the Clinton administration  .  .  .  )

Posted by jbahr at 06:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I promised myself that I wouldn't blog until I stopped tearing up at the drop of a hat.  You know, seeing an MSNBC recap of Grant Park or seeing BO on the cover of Time.  OK, I think I have it under control now.  I just think of baseball or reruns of Ugly Betty.  But honestly, it's more difficult than I ever imagined.  It wasn't that long ago that I was telling Sweet Junie that That One really didn't have a chance, much as I wished we would Do The Right Thing and elect him.  But her quiet belief in hope kinda won me over.  The next thing I knew I was sort of rooting for him, then listening seriously to the consistency of both his message and his team's execution.  And then, out of nowhere, it was perfectly natural to join 1.1 million volunteer and help him get elected.   One point one million people, almost one out of 50 of the Democrats who voted for him.  Has that ever happened in the history of politics?  It's the strangest thing to see him flanked by Washington heavyweights and Nobel Prize winning advisors.  I still think of Obama as someone who might actually just show up at my door and convince me why I should vote for him.  A loose associate in a common cause to reverse the errors of the last decade.  Somebody who I could be down H-O-R to H-O-R-S to, and then he would sink the 3-pointer, nothing but net.  As a poet, accustomed to baring my inner self, I still find it difficult to reconcile my complete capitulation to my Yankee pragmatism.  It's probably the result of giving up all hope, as I did in 1987 at the apex of Reagan's disaster, when I moved to Europe to avoid witnessing the end of the American Empire.  It's different now, because for all the appeals to hope, we have a President Elect that has shown that he can hire smart people and plan a strategy that actually may bring about the changes that are so important that my children's future most likely depends upon them.

I'm making stew tonight.  It's $1.79 a pound pork cut up to avoid most of the fat streaks and braised in a hot pan of olive oil with a sprinkling of ground pepper and flour.  In another pan, I've sautéed a concoction of red peppers, garlic, red potatoes, carrots, celery, and shallots.  Together, with some herbs and two tablespoons of tomato paste, they are slowly melding into a mélange of wonder-stew, having been augmented with a half-bottle of Robert Mondavi 2005 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon.  Those who try to tell you that you can use "cooking sherry" or other inferior wines in cooking are nutz.  If you want first-class stew, use at least second-class wines (by which I mean $15 a bottle).  If you can't afford that, the lesser vintages will do OK, but the full power of the grape will not evidence itself.

I just watched three hours of the 2008 World Series of Poker tournament.  At this point, there are 70 finalists and one is a woman.  Only Mike The Mouth Matusow is left among the heavyweights, and he's much more entertaining to watch than Phil the Poker Brat.  The top performers include contestants from 25 different foreign countries.  It's a lot like politics.

I read the latest APR today and the only thing that struck me was the elegance and depth of the article by Kazim Ali, as he wanders around southern Spain.  I have been to many of the same places, but without the benefit of his erudition or world view.  The issue is almost worth buying for his article alone.  The rest of the issue?  There are some things I look for in poetry.  Startlement.  Wisdom.  Not being able to always know what the next line will say.  Music.  Complexity.  Needless to say, I am the minority among poets, because APR (not to mention The Atlantic and other top-notch venues) continues to print poems that are . . . hell, I don't know.  There's been too much said already about diary entries and domestic drivel and heart-felt naivety.  I suppose it comes back to my long-held belief that "if you don't have anything to say, don't say it".  Apparently, that doesn't prevent some poets from saying it anyway, or major publications from printing it.  There are many major publications that don't, of course.  I received a request to renew from 32 Poems, for example, a journal which between Deborah and John, manages to hit a balance that seems pretty close to just right. 

OK, time to stop kvetching.  It looks like the time before us is going to be difficult.  But, of course, not as difficult as when we had a leader that was variously indifferent or hostile to our concerns.  It's apparent from his picks so far for staff that Things Are Going To Change, from reversals of Executive Orders to clamping down on Senate and House pandering.   As Tiny Tim was wont to say, God Bless Us Every One.

Posted by jbahr at 06:07 PM | Permalink

Mary Jo Bang in the New York Times opinion section.

~~~

John McCain is remarkably gracious and eloquent.

~~~

An uncharacteristically outstanding article by Thomas Friedman:  "A civil war that, in many ways, began at Bull Run, Virginia, on July 21, 1861, ended 147 years later via a ballot box in the very same state.  . . . None of this will be easy. But my gut tells me that of all the changes that will be ushered in by an Obama presidency, breaking with our racial past may turn out to be the least of them. There is just so much work to be done. The Civil War is over. Let reconstruction begin."

~~~

The curious citizens of Alaska may have elected convicted felon, Ted Stevens, as their senator.  The Senate may, however, vote not to seat him, or he may resign.  In that case – in contradiction to many pundits who believed that Palin would appoint a successor  – a successor will be chosen by special election.

~~~

As of 5 AM MST, Al Franken trails Norm Coleman by less than 800 votes out of a voting population of 2.8 million.  By law, a recount is a virtual certainty.  We are used to SNL'ers going on to become movie and TV stars.  Is this the beginning of a new foray into politics?  Not so strange in a world where progressives get all their serious news from The Comedy Channel.

~~~

Signed, Sealed, Delivered.

~~~

Thought:  Perhaps we have finally entered the post-post 9/11 world.

~~~

Fallows, Four Reasons to Vote for Obama:  "There have been minor positive aspects to the eight-year Bush-Cheney era now coming to an end. But when the diplomatic, fiscal, Constitutional, economic, and other civic consequences are viewed as a whole, this era has, in my view, been a disaster for the United States".

~~~

One guy still likes George Bush:  "George W. Bush is history's president, a man for whom the long-term success or failure of democracy in Iraq will determine his place in history."

Yes, Andrew, it will, but probably not the way you think.

~~

Russia, so recently swaggering with gas and oil revenue, is in trouble:  "In the near future, he envisages Russia's becoming a country whose dwindling population is mired in deepening poverty, an increasingly authoritarian state, run by a handful of immensely rich people, their despotism mediated only by their wish to be accepted in the West."  The most telling anecdote?  "Even the vodka has disappeared from the shelves of my two village stores — they can't raise credit to pay their supplier. And at least two major national alcohol producers have recently folded."

~~~

It's official.  2008 voter turnout has shattered all previous records.  Except maybe in the really old days, when you could vote more than once, especially in Chicago.

~~~

The Onion provides its analysis:  "Citizens with eyes, ears, and the ability to wake up and realize what truly matters in the end are also believed to have played a crucial role in Tuesday's election."  Also, Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job.

~~~

Republicans suggest Obama lacks courage.  This is a guy who gave eight interviews on Faux News.

 
 

Posted by jbahr at 03:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm home for an hour, taking a break before I'm needed at the Obama campaign office again.  At 10, 1, and 4, we "runners" go to the polling places, collect the voter lists and drop off sustenance.  Meanwhile, dozens of others in the office are calling voters who haven't shown up on the lists we bring back, and those that the State of Colorado say were sent mail-in ballots, but didn't return them.  So far, we have monitored about 400 voters in 7 precincts.  By the end of the day, we will have witnessed 1200 citizens who voted.  In our office, taking into account everyone there and using the office as a base for canvassing, there are about 120 of us.  That's 1 Obama volunteer for every 10 voters.  And there are four Obama field offices in Longmont (population 85,000) alone. 

I'm one of 4 volunteers who brought a laptop.  The campaign has rented a 3G connection and we're all tied in via WiFi.  Using our laptops, we key in all voter information into the Obama database site.  We don't know who people voted for, of course, but we do know affiliation (I think).  This should result in an amazing amount of real-time information, which I suspect will be more accurate in predictive power than exit polls.

I arrived this morning at 6.30 AM, after picking up a dozen bagels to share and a big cardboard jug of Starbuck's House Blend.  The office manager went over the day's activities with all the second-line managers, who then went over them again in turn with us worker bees.  My first run was to a retirement home to drop off snacks, pick up lists, and put up some big glow-in-the-dark posters with directions to the actual polling site (the site is rather sprawling and disorienting).  When I arrived, I looked for the Obama polling place "lead", who backs up the poll checker and reports in if anything seems to be amiss.  I found him and announced "I'm Jeff and I'm with the Obama campaign".  I was struck for a moment and a little bit overwhelmed.  I didn't think that could happen to an old cynic like me.  It was wonderful.

~~~

They shut down the phoning operation at 5 PM and all remaining staff went out to canvas the few remaining voters.  One reason that there are so few is that 1.7 million Coloradans voted early or by mail, which is 79% of the entire 2004 voting total.  Colorado Republican registration is a couple of points higher than Democratic registration, but we have over 20% self-identified independents.

With 3% of the precincts reporting in Indiana is breaking 55% to 45% for Obama.  Indiana.  It's early days, but Indiana.

~~~

I gave Amy a hug and shook the hands of Michael and Steve, the office bosses.  Got a bit of a lump in my throat.  Told them that it was an honor to serve.  And it was.

~~~

The early voting numbers are truly astounding.  4.3 million Floridians voted early, which is 56% of their entire 2004 total.  Over 2 million Georgians voted early, 60% of the 2004 voting total.  67% of the voting total for 2004 in Nevada have already cast their ballots.  74% of North Carolinians.  63% of the citizens of Tennessee.  This says two things: 1) Somebody has locked in a whole lot of votes.  2) This election will probably represent the largest percentage of voting Americans in the past 50 years, perhaps the large percentage ever.

~~~

Nate, who has gone from being an obscure baseball statistician to a household name, has made his final prediction.  McCain has a 1.1% chance to win the election.

~~~

HuffPo calls Vermont for Obama (yawn) and Kentucky (home of the Creation Museum) for McCain.

~~~

As of 5.30 PM MST, the (notoriously weird) exit polls look like:

Obama Ahead

Posted by jbahr at 01:56 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Well, goodness.  I suppose I have to post something.  Between work and politics, it's been a hectic week, especially if you throw into the mix the fact that Sweet Junie was visiting for most of a week. 

It appears that I have shown up in Blackbird, and should soon enough make an appearance in Double Room.  If I don't start writing some new poetry, I'm going to run out of legacy work shortly.

So there I was, dropping off a BlueRay DVD of something or other, ignoring the Papa John's, passing on the liquor store, and progressing to Safeway to buy more tomatoes and 93% fat-free ground round for my current passion for hamburgers-cum-Olbermann, when I noticed that the former Shipping Store was now an Obama field office.  I drifted in and said I'd be happy to drive voters to the polls (I wasn't really interested in doing canvassing, and they had a lot of people for that anyway).  The Ever Exuberant Amy took my phone number, gave me a bunch more lawn signs and told me to show up for an orientation meeting on Sunday.  I arrived among the bustle of dozens of Obama nuts and found that nobody really needs to get driven to polls anymore, as apparently the precinct-based voting places are generally within walking distance.  Two in Longmont are actually in assisted living complexes, for example.  What I would be doing is to be a member of the Comfort Team.  Shades of Korean hostages in service to Japanese troops, I thought.  Actually, we will be running food and water bottles to poll workers until mid-day, and then doing the same, but this time to anyone still waiting in line to vote (irrespective of party affiliation, of course).  We will also be picking up statistics from the poll workers who will be logging who has voted and who has not.  I have the longest shift of all of the Comfort Specialists, owing to the fact that I am my own boss and can decide to just take the day off, so I'll be there tomorrow at 6.45 and I think I'll hit Moe's Bagels first and bring a big box of morning fare.  I read the three-page synopsis of our schedule and activities and could almost make it through the acronyms (FOD = Field Office Director, DBR = Denver Boiler Room, etc.). 

So, why am I doing this when I could be making obscene amounts of money at consulting rates doing software development.  Because this will prevent me from clicking on every political site a zillion times during the day, or running upstairs to hear the results of exit polls, or any and everything else which would drive me crazy.  And, I will be helping a guy who I think should be the president. 

At the end of the orientation, I was chatting with the FOD and asked if I should bring the Lexus, the Honda or the pickup truck.  The last, he said, because they have to break down everything and be out of there by the morning.  Amazing.  If the organization of the Obama ground game is any indication, Mr. O is going to be a great executive for the country.

Posted by jbahr at 05:53 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)