humor

Cure for the Common Cold Remedy

~ Lee Swanson ~ 1 Comment

TO: Kimberly Clark

DATE:   June 9, 2012

RE:   Kleenex

Dear Kim,

It occurs to me every time I catch a cold that someone needs to work on the design for a better  Kleenex box.  Now, before we get too far along this road, let’s settle one thing.  No one this side of Nottingham calls it facial tissue.  Perhaps we are cowed by our inability to say “tis-s-s-yoo” without giggling but refuse to say “tish-oo,” and the campaign to call it a “paper handkerchief” failed for obvious reasons.  So the real point is that it’s Kleenex because no one has ever asked “do you have a Puffs?” Honestly, you can’t ask for “a Puffs.”  How many would you get?

There’s only one thing wrong with the Kleenex box.  It comes in a variety of lovely designer colors and an assortment of convenient sizes.  But no matter what color or size, there comes a point where you can no longer get the Kleenex out of the box.

If you’re honest about it, Kim, you’ll admit it’s even happened to you.  You pull one Kleenex out, and the next one pops up behind it.  You pull that one out – because one Kleenex is not enough, no matter what you plan to use it for – and the next one falls back into the box. And there it hides, shielded by the cellophane that is supposed to make it possible for the Kleenex to pop up.  Instead, that thin sheet of clear plastic now makes it impossible to get a Kleenex at all.  You stick your finger into the box and try to snag the next one, and you fail.  You put two fingers into the slot and end up pulling up forty five or fifty Kleenexes and the fifty-first one falls back into the box again.

You turn the box upside down and try to grab hold of the top Kleenex but it won’t budge.  I’ll admit to not having the patience of Job, unless Job had a nose full of snot, a headache, sore throat and more than a few anger management issues, but come on, there must be some good way to get the damned tis-s-s-yoo out of the box.  Something has to be done.

Allow me to propose two alternatives.  First, the box should be patterned after the napkin dispensers at fast food restaurants.  Simply put, the bottom of the box should be spring-loaded so that the Kleenex is always accessible at the mouth of the box.  Granted this will make the box much more expensive than the Kleenex, and not the least bit recyclable but it will solve the problem.

The second possibility is to include with each Kleenex box a long, slender sliver of wood with a small piece of Velcro attached to it.  (The nubby side of Velcro, not the furry side).  This will enable the user to slip the sliver into the cellophane slit and snag the offending fallen Kleenex.

Glad to help,

Lee

Masters

~ Lee Swanson ~ 1 Comment

Don’t judge me, but I spent a fair amount of the weekend watching the Masters.  I can be entertained watching golf on television partly because I can still do the Sunday Times crossword and not miss a shot.

But I’m left with a few questions.  First, the visor.  Can anyone explain the visor?  It’s not for sun protection; a visor has an SPF of 0.1.  It looks ridiculous. Spend the extra four dollars and buy the whole cap.

Then there’s Jim Nantz, the CBS announcer.  He treats it like the eighth wonder of the world, starting with his continuous network tagline:  “The Masters, a tradition unlike any other.”  What the hell does that mean?  Aren’t all traditions unlike other traditions?  “The Fourth of July, a tradition unlike Columbus Day.” 

Granted, the Masters thinks it’s got the corner on pomposity, but why feed that beast?  Sure, Gary McCord was kicked off the broadcast team a few years ago for saying a green was so fast it seemed to be bikini waxed.  Announcers aren’t allowed to refer to the fans as fans, or a crowd.  They are “patrons.”  The holes are marked by flagsticks, not pins and you better not make that mistake.  And no one can ever say anything about the prize money.  The prize is the cheap green sports coat.  They’re playing for the green jacket that looks like it’s off the rack at Walmart, not the $1.44 million check.  Yeah, I believe that.

But back to ever-so reverential Jim Nantz.  He does a painful little interview after the tournament in Butler Cabin where the jacket is handed out.  And he says to the winner (Bubba Watson for those who weren’t watching) that he knows how much it means to him to win the Masters on Easter Sunday.  Really?  Because there’s such a close tie between golf and Christianity?  I do know a lot of guys who play golf religiously every Sunday and invoke Jesus’ name while they’re doing it, but I don’t think that’s what Nantz was talking about. 

The U.S. Open always ends on Father’s Day and those announcers spend half the broadcast talking about how important it would have been to the winner’s father if he had been alive to see his multi-millionaire golf pro son win.  That makes some sense, though it’s also pretty cheesy, but why does winning a million and a half dollars on Easter have a psychic significance?

Later in the evening I checked on the Golf Channel long enough to hear one of their brilliant broadcasters say “who would have thought that a guy named Bubba would ever win the Masters.”  Augusta National didn’t admit a black member until 1990 and still doesn’t have a woman member.  Its current president is a 64 year old man named “Billy” and for the ten years before him, the place was run by a guy named “Hootie.”  My question is, why did it take so long for a guy named Bubba to win the Masters?

There’s Not an App for That

~ Lee Swanson ~ 1 Comment

This week Microsoft said it’s working on Windows 8 and Apple says it will have the iPad 3 ready by May.

They are both doing the wrong thing.  Windows 7 hasn’t been out long enough to be universally hated yet and no one needs an iPad 3 until everyone has an iPad 2.  There are more pressing needs.

I was one of four hundred people who got an e-mail today saying an event had been canceled.  268 of those people sent reply e-mails saying essentially “thanks for letting me know.”  And all 268 of them replied all.  The remaining 131 (I did not participate) wrote back and said “please don’t reply all.”  And when they did, they replied all. To which the first 268 wrote “sorry, but you don’t have to get all huffy about it.”  And of course they replied all.  That brought back “I haven’t even started getting huffy, you keep replying all and you’ll see huffy,” replied to all.

So what the world really needs is an app that puts up a warning every time someone clicks on “reply all.”  Something like “are you sure you want to reply all?” When the sender clicks “yes” another screen will appear. “Not everyone needs to see this; do you really, really want to reply all?”  If the sender clicks “yes” again the screen would say “no, you don’t.  Don’t be an idiot.”  At that point the e-mail program would close.

That’s what the world needs.  Somebody should e-mail everyone at Microsoft and everyone at Apple and tell them about it.

And when they’ve got that done, they can start on an app that blocks every e-mail that starts “I never forward these, but this is just too good to pass up….”  Because, actually, no it’s not.

Treatment

~ Lee Swanson ~ 3 Comments

I woke up this morning pain free for the first time in about a month.  My ears were ringing from the ibuprofen and there was a dull ache behind my left eye from the scotch that washed the ibuprofen down.  But the back pain that had kept me awake the last two nights was gone.  And more than that, my swollen hands and wrists were close to normal size and able to open wide and close tight.

Maybe I’d turned the corner.

It was a far cry from just two days ago when the cry was of pain and misery and just plain sorrow.  Sitting in a recliner at the infusion center in the hospital, still wrapped in blankets though the uncontrollable chills had passed, an IV attached to the back of my hand, I was not a happy camper.   “He seems a bit depressed.”

Depressed?  Me?  Why would I be depressed?  I have incurable leukemia, am four years out from chemotherapy for a disease with a five year survival rate of seventy percent.  My bone marrow never really recovered from the chemo and my immune system hovers just slightly above bubble boy.  When my granddaughter came home with an innocent little childhood virus it appears to have picked me as its next victim and threw me on my ass.

My hands swelled up like the Michelin man.  I squeezed the rings off my fingers the first night just before my knuckles disappeared.  My watch that usually hung fashionably from my wrist now clung to it like it was painted on, until I could not wear it any more.  I didn’t sleep much because every time I moved in bed my hands got in the way of something and woke me up.  Throwing the covers back to get up was painful.  My ankles and knees started to ache.  I swore that if this ever cleared up I would go back to doing crunches and exercises so I could stand up without pushing myself off the chair with my hands; hands that aren’t capable of pushing anything anymore.

I went to see my primary care doctor who mostly puzzled over it and ordered some blood tests.  He’s careful about doing much of anything for much of anything without consulting my cancer doctor because I don’t react to normal treatments in normal ways.  (The last time I took an anti-viral pill for a little canker sore on my tongue I was in the hospital with pneumonia for a week.  Seems the pill reduced my white cell count even further and in walked the pneumonia.  Who knew?)

Anyway, the blood test didn’t say anything about the swollen hands but my cancer doctor saw the numbers and called to say he wanted to do a bone marrow biopsy.  Again.  This will help my swollen hands and pain exactly how?  It won’t, but my red cell count and platelets were way down and he wanted to know why.  The Internet says that’s one thing that happens when adults get this virus from kids so it made sense to me, but he was looking for other answers.  He’s all about blood cancer.  And when you’re a hammer the whole world’s a nail.

So we do the biopsy.  Actually the nurse practitioner did the biopsy.  My part is to lie on my side with my legs curled up toward my chest.  I’m used to it, but they always seem to forget they have a hell of a time getting this done on me.  Something about a strong pelvic bone.  The first time she tried to drive the spike into my hip, it bent.  I suggested that maybe she had hit a knot but she didn’t understand.  I guess she didn’t take wood shop.

The results come back and I’m told I have red cell aplasia.  Which means something is preventing my blood from making red cells.  The treatment is intravenous immunoglobulin.  They think.  They’ve hardly ever encountered this before in a leukemia patient.  From what I hear they’re all atwitter over it.  I just want to use my hands again one day.

That gets us back to the infusion center and the IV and the blankets.  See, I got a reaction to the immunoglobulin and it gave me a headache and the worst chills you can imagine. Tears ran down my cheeks.   So here’s a fucking news flash for you—I’m depressed.

I’d be suicidal but it’s redundant.

But then I got up Friday and the swelling was gone.  Today the backache is gone.  I’m going to mow the lawn, clean the pool and after my nap, because I’m still anemic as all get out, I might hit a bucket of balls.

It’s a beautiful day. Let’s go outside and play.

Mailbag

~ Lee Swanson ~ 1 Comment

A couple of interesting things popped up in the mail this week.

Stuffed in along with the gas bill was a flyer titled “Five Ways to Heat Your Home for Less.”  None of them will work of course, because if people actually did use less gas to heat their homes the gas company would raise the rates because in the utility world less is more.  More is more too, and they like that better, but they have to at least pretend they are being good citizens by encouraging savings and conservation.

Anyway, the number one tip for how to heat your home for less is this:  Set your furnace thermostat to 68 degrees or lower when you’re at home. You can save 5% for every two degrees you turn the thermostat down.

In other words, the best way to heat your home for less is to heat your home less.

This same advice can be followed in other endeavors.  To save on doctor bills, stay well. To save money at a restaurant, don’t order food.  To save money driving, park.

I knew there was a reason I never look at the junk attached to the gas bill.

The other thing I found intriguing was an e-mail from the Pew Research Center.  The Pew Internet and American Life Project did a study titled Why Most Facebook Users Get More Than They Give.

Here’s what they found:

  • 40% of Facebook users in our sample made a friend request, but 63% received at least one request
  • Users in our sample pressed the like button next to friends’ content an average of 14 times, but had their content “liked” an average of 20 times
  • Users sent 9 personal messages, but received 12
  • 12% of users tagged a friend in a photo, but 35% were themselves tagged in a photo

Yet more evidence the average person is sub-normal.

The Real Reason for Presidential Primaries

~ Lee Swanson ~ 1 Comment

Every four years, political writers, reporters, observers, pundits and prognosticators dust off their expense accounts and travel off to places they wouldn’t go for any other reason at any other time.

It’s the presidential nominating process. And for reporters it serves two purposes:  it lets them see how the quaint people live, and it gives them a chance to polish up their use of state nicknames.

State nicknames are used only by political reporters and the occasional sports writer.  The nicknames, like state flowers, birds, rocks, insects and weeds are the product of long hours of legislative debate by people specifically elected for their lack of imagination and creativity.

But because of an inane journalistic convention that says you can’t use the same word twice in the same paragraph, reporters are loath to write the name of the state in consecutive sentences.  Every political reporter carries a copy of “Ohrbach’s Official Listing of Arcane Facts” to use for just such occasions.

So far this year, we have the caucuses in The Corncob And Cows State and the primary in The Mirror Image of Vermont State.  Today voters are going to the polls in The Segregation State.  Next comes Florida, The Wishes It Was California State.

That’s followed by The Slot Machine And Hookers State, and then Maine, The May As Well Be Canada State. February 7 is the caucus in Colorado, The Would Have Been The Mountain State If West Virginia Didn’t Get First Choice State and Minnesota, the Nine Months Of Winter And Three Months of Bad Sledding State.  It’s also the date of the primary in Missouri, The I’ll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours State.

Then there’s a little break until voters in Arizona, The Almost Uninhabitably Hot State and Michigan, the Ugly Football Helmet State go to the polls on February 28.  March starts with the caucus in Washington, The Not Enough Creativity To Come Up With An Original State Name Much Less A Nickname State.

And then Super Tuesday on March 6.  Only in America would the definitive presidential nominating contests be held on a day named after a football game.  There are three caucuses and seven primaries on March 6:

Alaska           The Gateway to Godforsaken Territory State

Georgia         The We Ain’t Gonna Have No Yankee Nickname State

Idaho            The Ought To Be Part of Montana State

Massachusetts The Consistently Misspelled State

North Dakota The Not Known For Anything State

Ohio             The We’re Really Sorry About Cleveland State

Oklahoma      The Nobody Would Have Ever Heard Of Us If It Hadn’t Been For The Grapes of Wrath And That Stupid Musical State

Tennessee     The Moonshine State

Vermont        The No We’re Not New Hampshire State

Virginia        The How Would You Feel If A Ham Was Named After You State

Then the reporters will have to go back home and submit their expenses so they can be ready to go to the convention and find out that despite what they said, all the candidates always loved the nominee all along.  Cue the balloons and confetti.

Cars, Cameras and Cupcakes

~ Lee Swanson ~ Leave a comment

Am I the only one who finds it ironic that it is now almost impossible to (legally) use a cell phone in a car anywhere on the planet, yet cell phones began in cars?

The first cell phones were not Droids or iPhones.  They were not even Razrs or flip phones.  Cellular telephones were born, like the child of panicked prospective parents racing to the hospital in rush hour traffic, in cars.

My first cell phone was in my 1985 Audi 5000.  It was a great automobile.  The phone was bolted to the dashboard and the size of the average wall phone.  The works of the phone took up about a cubic foot of the trunk.  But the Audi had enough room in the trunk for a family of four, so I didn’t feel the sacrifice.

Cheryl has often said she married me because of my car and my shirts.

I wore a lot of Perry Ellis shirts then.  That was before we went to Bangkok and my mother-in-law took me to one of the 4,500 tailor shops on New Road.  There I was measured and re-measured and the fabrics I chose were cut into shirts and delivered to the hotel later that same night.  The man with the tape measure, who made every dress shirt I own, even now, is a Sikh named Mahatma Kote.

But that’s another story.

-0-

Hostess declares bankruptcy and everyone wants to make jokes about Twinkies.  They neglect the Ho-Ho, the Ding-Dong and the fact that Hostess was forty years ahead of the cupcake craze.  And they get no credit for Wonder bread – helping to build strong bodies twelve ways.  Twelve ways?  Seriously, after tall and wide, how many other ways are there?

-0-

And then Kodak.

Megapixels –
You give us those nice bright colors
You give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, oh yeah!

I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So Mama, don’t take my megapixels away.

Somehow, it’s just not the same..

In Just One Week

~ Lee Swanson ~ 1 Comment

The week between Christmas and New Year is supposed to be slow in the news business.

Donald Trump left the Republican Party and changed his registration to unaffiliated, causing unaffiliated voters everywhere to reconsider their lack of commitment.

Rick Perry was asked about the proposed Keystone oil pipeline from Canada to Texas.  He’s in favor of it because “Every barrel of oil that goes south is one barrel of oil that we will not have to import from foreign countries.”  I’m not making this up.  You don’t have to make up stuff about Rick Perry.  He does it to himself. Maybe he knows something about Canada that the rest of us don’t, like that it’s really part of Montana?

Aren’t you going to miss Rick when he packs up and goes back to Texas?

Gary Johnson became the fourth candidate to officially leave the Republican Party presidential cavalcade (Not counting those who were courted but refused to run in the first place, including Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, Haley Barbour, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, Jeb Bush, Bobby Jindal, Paul Ryan, John Thune and the aforementioned Trump) and became the Libertarian Party’s tenth candidate for president. In so doing, he went from obscure to invisible.

Rick Santorum is being talked about as a viable candidate.  Really.

Newt Gingrich, facing the prospect of finishing fourth in the Iowa caucuses, continued his positive campaign by promising not to say anything negative about the people he considers incompetent ignoramuses who are challenging him for the nomination.

Gingrich proved unable to find 10,000 people in Virginia – the state where he lives – to sign a piece of paper saying he ought to be allowed to run for president.  Not that they would work for him, vote for him and even consider him, but just that he should be allowed to run if he wants.  Having failed to thus qualify for the primary ballot, Gingrich declared Virginia has a “failed system” because nothing is ever his fault. He then announced he would launch a vigorous write-in campaign, unaware that his home state does not allow write-in candidates in primaries.  If he didn’t know that as a resident or a presidential candidate, then as a self-described renowned historian he should have know Virginian has never in its history allowed write-ins in primaries.

Michele Bachmann’s Iowa campaign manager quit her campaign because, he said, she couldn’t win the nomination.  Later that day he joined Ron Paul’s campaign, presumably because he thinks Paul can win.  Bachmann claims the campaign manager told her he was given a large sum of money to defect.  What he really said was more along the lines of “you couldn’t pay me enough to vote for you.”

Mitt Romney campaigned at a corporate headquarters in Des Moines where he spoke mostly to the building because, as only he knows, corporations are people.

It appears likely either Romney or Ron Paul will finish first in the Iowa caucuses.  Either way, Romney wins.

Christmas Traditions

~ Lee Swanson ~ Leave a comment

There are some Christmas traditions I don’t miss.

4)  Flocked Christmas Trees.         My Dad used to buy Norway pine trees covered with “flocking;” white snow-lik-appearing carcinogenic toxic asbestos laden flakes that were supposed to make the tree look like it had been out in the snow, I guess.  But it had “flock” in places it had never had snow; all over the trunk of the tree and every needle covered top and bottom to about pencil width.  Those pencils from first grade width.

We didn’t put lights on the flocked trees.  We put floodlights on the floor that shone up onto the tree.  And we had colored discs in front of the spotlights that rotated and changed colors.  Red and blue and orange and, curiously enough, green.  Yes, because of the floodlights, one fourth of the time our white tree was green.

3)  Fruitcake. Enough said.

2)  Snow.      OK, not truly a tradition, but if you grow up in Minnesota it’s a fact of life. And I hated it. Every flake, collectively and individually. 

    I’ve included it on this list because of the idiots who complain that “it’s just not Christmas without snow.”  Well, the temperature in Bethlehem on December 25 will range from 45 to 48 so it will be Christmas without snow out there in Christmas-land.  Deal with it.

Snow is worthless.  Nothing that you need to shovel out of the way serves a useful purpose.  It’s wet and cold and horrible.  Animals slow their breathing and heart rate almost to the point where they are dead just to avoid going out in the snow.  There will be those who say snow is “wonderful” because you can go skiing.  The only good thing about snow skiing is the fireplace and the brandy in a warmed snifter when you’re done.

You simply must go skiing?  Buy a boat.  You don’t need to wear nine more layers of clothes and be treated for frostbite.

1)    Lutfisk.  This will take a little explaining. No, this will take a lot of explaining.

Lutfisk is Swedish for “inedible glop.” It’s dried cod, soaked in lye and “seasoned” by any animal that happens by the bricks of fish stacked up on the sidewalk outside the grocery store.  In my hometown we bought our Christmas lutfisk I think somewhere around June and then soaked it in water to leech out the—shall we say “impurities”—so that we might be able to eat it without suffering dysentery and ameobic meningoencephalitis.

Since we were destined to have to have the stuff, we were fortunate to have Swedish neighbors with whom we shared Christmas Eve and who would buy and prepare the glop.  She soaked it in water and changed the water every fifteen minutes.  The leeched water was picked up daily by hazmat workers in orange suits who transported it in lead-lined vehicles to dump sites that would later show up on the EPA superfund cleanup list.

It was also fortunate our neighbors prepared the fish because, if we were going to have to have it, we certainly didn’t want it in the house any longer than possible.  The only thing worse than the lye-infested toxicity of the glop, was the smell.

You might be getting the idea by now that this is nasty shit.

Regardless every December 24, our Swedish neighbors would show up with a stoneware pot of lutfisk.  And every year without fail she would say how good the fish was this year.  It was nice and firm, she would say.

Lutfisk is firm in the way grape jelly is firm.

Come dinner time my father, my brother and our neighbors would scoop this “food” onto their plates and hope it wouldn’t slide off onto the floor.  They were so excited about it.  At least my father and the neighbors were.  Genuinely excited.  My brother I think was just trying to fit in and be “a good Swede.”

I figured there hadn’t been a good Swede since Alfred Nobel and fitting in has never been my strong suit, so Mom would make a steak or pork chops or something for me and her.  Mom was German and while Germans aren’t known for culinary delights either – which you would know if you had ever tried what they jokingly call potato salad – she had the good taste to know that lutfisk is not fit for human consumption.

Truth be told, if you can get by the smell and the consistency, lutfisk by itself doesn’t really have any taste.  Most of that has been leeched out and transported across state lines along with the lye and the rest.  The flavor, such as it is, comes from the half pound of melted butter and two cups of “cream sauce” that every diner has to pour over it to mask its smell and enable them to choke it down while pretending to enjoy it.

So lutfisk is a tradition I don’t miss.  It’s not only a horrible dish; it’s a heart attack on a plate, provided you can keep it from sliming off your plate.

The Night They Drove Old Herman Down

~ Lee Swanson ~ 1 Comment

If only we had listened to The Band, none of this Herman Cain pizza-candidate-for-president would have happened.

http://youtu.be/-VShpcqd3zE

As Robbie Robertson would have us think this was the story:

Virgil Caine is the name, and I served on the Danville train, ‘Til Stoneman’s cavalry came and tore up the tracks again. In the winter of ’65, We were hungry, just barely alive. By May the tenth, Richmond had fell, it’s a time I remember, oh so well, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, and the bells were ringing, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, and the people were singin’.  They went La,  La, La, La, La, La,     La, La, La, La, La, La,    La, La,

Back with my wife in Tennessee, When one day she called to me,  “Virgil, quick, come see, there goes Robert E. Lee!” Now I don’t mind choppin’ wood, and I don’t care if the money’s no good. Ya take what ya need and ya leave the rest, But they should never have taken the very best.  Like my father before me, I will work the land,  Like my brother above me, who took a rebel stand. He was just eighteen, proud and brave, But a Yankee laid him in his grave, I swear by the mud below my feet, You can’t raise a Caine back up when he’s in defeat.

But here’s what we know today:  Sing along

Herman Cain is the name, and I rode on the campaign train ‘Til Ginger White came along, and tore up the tracks again. In the fall of eleven, we were debatin’ and stayin’ even. I went on CNN.  It’s a time I remember, oh so well.

The night they drove old Herman down, and all gals were lyin’ The night they drove old Herman down, and the people were singin’. They went Nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine.

Back with my wife in Sandy Springs, and one day she called to me, “Herman, quick, come see, there’s another one on TV!” Now I don’t know about Uzbeka-beka-stan, and I don’t care about the also-rans. Ya take what you know and ya praise the lord, But they never should have taken Ginger’s word.

The night they drove old Herman down, and all gals were lyin’.  The night they drove old Herman down, and the people were singin’. They went Nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine, nine .

Like my father before me, I will work real hard, And like my mentors above me, I’ll have a radio show.  We were on our way to the top, dodgin’ Libya and harassment claims I swear by the mud below my feet, You can’t raise a Cain back up when he’s in defeat.

And that’s tonight’s lesson for Mitt and Newt and Ron and Rick and Michele and the other Rick and Jon and Andy and Fred and Jimmy and Tom and Buddy and Matt and Vern.

Sleep well America.  Another idiot has fallen by the wayside.  Only 13 more to go.