Parallel Universes: CJG Asks, Why Can't They Be Perpendicular?

A few days ago, crankyjewishguy's (CJG) friend, Bill, texted him from Florida, where he was on a bender with a bunch of middle aged guys, to see if CJG could pick him up the next day at Logan Airport in Boston. Bill assumed that because CJG is a writer he could easily drop everything and come pick him up because for a writer "everything" means typing a few paragraphs in the morning and then going to Starbucks for seven hours to have a mocha and a nap. Bill happens to be right about that, but the real question is why Bill, who is supposedly one of CJG's best friends, or so he thought until Bill texted him from Florida and CJG realized he was not with Bill in Florida but staring at three feet of snow that needed to be shoveled, didn't invite him for all the fun and games. Anyway, since Bill's entire work schedule consists of teaching three one-hour spin classes each week, the tables have been turned because this morning, in about twenty minutes as a matter of fact, Bill is coming to pick up CJG and drive him to Logan Airport because CJG is on his way to visit his brother in Boca where the five day forecast is calling for sunshine, temperatures in the mid-70s, and thousands of Jewish people in their upper 80s driving ten miles an hour.

Which brings us to today's topic: cosmology. While CJG was idling in front of the American Airlines terminal waiting for Bill last week, he was listening to Fresh Air with Terry Gross. She was interviewing Brian Greene, an astrophysicist from Columbia University about his new book, The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos.  Greene is a kind of latter day Carl Sagan, adept at putting abstract concepts into easy to understand terms, except that as CJG listened he realized that though the analogies sounded nice and simple, the concepts were so mind boggling that he thought his head was going to explode.

Space: the final frontier. Or is it?

It seems to CJG that the reason concepts such as multiple universes and bending the time-space continuum are so hard to grasp is that most of us still haven't mastered the cable remote. Now we're supposed to wrap our heads around the idea that there may be many universes layered, Greene suggests, one on top of the other like so many slices of bread in which everything that's happening right now in our universe is happening in all these other universes, too. Actually, that last part was kind of comforting because it meant that there were, oh, maybe another ten or ten trillion cranky jewish guys listening to the same interview. If only we could call each other and form a support group. Then again, maybe all of us have the same cell phone number, too, in which case we'd just keep getting busy signals or be leaving messages for ourselves.

Anyway, the explanation for these carbon copy universes has something to do with the mathematical limitations of the ways in which matter can arrange itself so that eventually matter runs out of options and starts repeating itself, just like Rush Limbaugh. But, even if that's true, CJG isn't buying the notion that just because he's sitting in a Volvo listening to NPR at Logan Airport his counterparts in parallel universes are doing exactly the same thing. Even if we concede the existence of these parallel universes, why did cranky jewish guy in Universe #17, for example, also have to buy a used 2001 Volvo? And is his left tail light out, too? Is that state trooper also telling him to circle around? (By the way, do you understand the implications of all this for Starbucks' profits?) You see, this is where these geniuses who seem to be good at explaining all this arcane stuff fall down in CJG's humble opinion. For the sake of making what they are saying remotely accessible to those of us with just above average human brains, they say things that clearly can't be true because CJG knows for a fact that only in this universe could there possibly be a place like Boca Raton.

The one and only.

Charlie Sheen Enters Rehab: This is a Story?

Crankyjewishguy (CJG) is sorry to report that actor Charlie Sheen has entered rehab...again. Let's all hope the 87th time is the charm because if he isn't careful he's likely to end up all over the tabloids. To help readers grasp this breaking story, MSNBC.com had a very helpful timeline of Charlie's rap sheet that went on for about the web equivalent of about two miles starting with the time he "accidentally" shot the first of his 23 fiancees in 1990, through his testimony at the trial of Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss, with whom he ran up a $50,000 bill and who, CJG is proud to say, is Jewish, to his arrest for beating up his porn star girlfriend, Brittany Ashland, in 1996, to his arrest on domestic violence charges in 2009 to his historic Las Vegas bender with a hooker earlier this month. The good news is that at least fame and money haven't changed him over the years.

Heidi Fleiss, prominent Jewish entrepreneur.

But, you know, anyone's life can sound like a train wreck when you line up small, isolated instances together like that, so MSNBC.com's timeline is really unfair. Take CJG's life, for example. There was the time in 1968 when CJG's little brother broke his hand on CJG's head during a fight over a television show, the argument with his parents over getting a haircut in 1969, the break-up with a girlfriend in 1972 that left bruised feelings all around, the parking ticket in 1979, the minor fender bender in the supermarket parking lot in 1985, and the big argument with his wife a week ago over which brand of marinara sauce is "the usual" one they buy. Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt during that last incident. When you put them side by side CJG's life doesn't sound so much different than Charlie Sheen's, does it?

But here's the big difference: Charlie Sheen could go on beating up and betraying wives, girlfriends, and prostitutes, abusing alcohol and cocaine, and tearing up hotel rooms and, even though CJG is much better looking than Charlie Sheen and almost as famous, there will always be another gorgeous woman waiting to go out with Charlie Sheen because, unlike CJG, he makes two million bucks a week and, as American history expert Michelle Bachmann can attest, his father was president of the United States. Hardly seems fair does it?

President Josiah Bartlet.

WTF? Ignorance Officially Replaces Hope as One of the Seven Virtues

As you may have heard, Half Baked Alaska, responding to President Obama's State of the Union speech, rewrote history by asserting that the launch of the Sputnik satellite by the Soviet Union in 1957 led to the dissolution of the USSR more than 30 years later. You have to love the confidence she shows when she utters her inanities as if, duh, everyone knows that. She also said the U.S. "lost" the space race, apparently unaware that the U.S. dominated the space race through the 1960s and reached the moon first. She then criticized the president for trying to "aspire" Americans by saying this was our Sputnik moment. She called it another "WTF" moment in Obama's speech which, as you may know, means "white trash female."

Did you know that the launch of Sputnik in 1957 led to the demise of the
Soviet Union more than thirty years later? Neither did CJG.

But Half Baked Alaska's utterly ignorant remarks almost pale next to congresswoman and Tea Party diva Michele Bachmann's claim that the Founding Fathers, "the ones who wrote those very documents" worked "tirelessly" to end slavery. As most high school students know, not only did Jefferson and Washington own slaves, slavery was the great unfinished business of the American Revolution and the issue festered until it led directly to the Civil War nearly a century later. She is also apparently unaware of the compromise enshrined in Article 1, Section 2 of the United States Constitution that for the purposes of counting the American population to apportion taxation and members of the House of Representatives, slaves were counted as three-fifths of a person which helped states with large slave populations remain slave states.

Don't know the answer? Look it up.

This is the stuff that makes crankyjewishguy's (CJG's) blood pressure go through the roof. No one waves the Constitution around more, or claims to be more patriotic than thou, than these two half-wits, yet for the purposes of enumerating the population we count each of them as a whole person. CJG thinks that perhaps members of Congress, and those aspiring (note correct usage of the word "aspire") to the presidency, should be given a basic test in Constitutional literacy and American history. CJG is hard pressed to recall a time when abject ignorance was the political virtue it is now. WTF indeed.

Evolution Proved! Christine O'Donnell Forced to Admit Error

As one of CJG's favorite scribes, Bill Bryson, once wrote about an effort in the 1990s to again ban the teaching of evolution in the Tennessee public schools, "the danger for Tennesseans isn't so much that they may be descended from apes as overtaken by them." Which brings us to Christine O'Donnell. Remember her? She was the dim-witted Tea Party/Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Delaware who once asked Bill Maher, if evolution was a valid theory, why aren't monkeys still evolving into human beings?

Well, crankyjewishguy (CJG) sure hopes she saw this story and this YouTube video of a gorilla named Ambam who lives in a sanctuary called the Port Lympne Wild Animal Park in England because, as you can see in the video, and the photo below, the answer to Christine O'Donnell's question is, "they are." Ambam, you see, walks upright, not on all fours like some humans.

Ambam, a Western lowland gorilla, out for a stroll.

In fact, some are evolving so fast that it only took a few days for Ambam to go from walking upright to this...

Yup, that's an iPhone G4 and just like his human counterparts Ambam is so engrossed in sending meaningless texts and downloading pornography that he's ignoring his son. In about two weeks he'll be ready for the U.S. Senate himself.

Why is CJG So Cranky? It's As Easy as A, B, Z

For more than five decades now, crankyjewishguy (CJG) has tried to understand what it is that makes him so cranky. Years of expensive therapy, a four-month trek in the Himalayas seeking enlightenment from a wise man, and countless fortune cookies later...and nothing. Until now. You see, yesterday, CJG stumbled onto an article on the Internet, the most authoritative source of information ever invented, and found an article that may explain it.

According to two professors, one at Georgetown University and another at Belmont University, who did what was, no doubt, a very expensive study, people whose last names begin with letters near the end of the alphabet are different from people whose names begin with letters near the beginning of the alphabet. It may surprise you to know that CJG's real name is not really crankyjewishguy, and that his real last name begins with...Z. That's practically the last letter in the entire alphabet. This means two things. First, he's at the far extreme of whatever tendencies afflict those with names that begin with letters near the end of the alphabet and, second, that in elementary school gym class he always had to line up with Jewish kids named Zimmerman, or Chinese kids with names like Zhuan or Zhao.

One of the startling discoveries made by the professors is that people with names that begin with letters such as Z are much less patient than other people. Zorro is a good example. He hardly waited sixty seconds before cutting up people's clothes with his trademark "Z," like some crazed Romanian tailor. One of the experiments that proved this was that when a group of people were sent a survey with a chance to win $500 if they returned it, completed surveys poured in from people with names like Wallace, Yates and Zippy. When an offer for free basketball tickets was made to another group that was told supplies were limited, same thing. (CJG suspects the results might have been different if we're talking Lakers/Celtics as opposed to University of Hartford versus Ursinus.)

Zorro, the world's most impatient man.
The actor's name was Guy Williams. Not much better.

As CJG can attest, those at the end of the alphabet spent so much time as kids waiting for their names to be called for things like popsicles, only to find that some kid named Snodgrass got the last one, that we've been itchy ever since to grab whatever we can in life. This just goes...hold on, there's a pop-up window on CJG's computer screen with a great offer on stain remover...he's just gonna' navigate over there and order a few pallets of the stuff before it runs out.

OK, back. Great. Now CJG forgot what he was saying. Anyway, one of the brilliant controls in this study was that married women's behavior correlated to their maiden names, not their married names, which begs this question: if women named Adams, Breyer and Collins who married people like Wallace, Yates and Zippy had been a little more patient, maybe they could have married less cranky guys with names like Abrams, Bates, and Clarke. CJG thinks he's made his point.

State of the Union: Hot and Getting Hotter

If you watched last night's State of the Union address you know that the seating arrangements were somewhat different from those of recent and even not-so-distant memory where Democrats and Republicans sat on different sides of the House chamber, sort of like men and women in an Orthodox shul. This separate but equal seating meant that only half of those assembled would be standing and clapping at any given point since it is perfectly obvious that anything a president says that appeals to one party has to be seen by the other as completely antithetical to the American way of life and probably even subversive. The old seating arrangement also ensured that when someone like Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina yelled "Liar!" at the president last year, Congresswoman Maxine Waters of California wasn't right next to him to punch him in the face.

Typical of Congress, it took a congresswoman getting shot in the head for its members to decide that maybe they could intermingle across party lines for an hour or so during the State of the Union. But it wasn't like they just filed in and grabbed seats. A big deal was made in the run-up to last night's speech every time one member found a member of the other party willing to sit next to them. Chuck Schumer of New York and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma found each other, which had the added value of having a Jew and a gentile sitting together.  Nevada's three congressmen, two Republicans and a Democrat, decided to sit together, but no one wanted to sit with them anyway. Some Republicans agreed to sit with Democrats, but only on the Republican side of the chamber. The whole thing was like a bad mixer at a single sex college. And some weren't buying the new comity. Senate Minority Leader Mitch (Dr. No) McConnell said he preferred the company of his usual cronies. Nancy Pelosi and Eric Cantor didn't sit together, but crankyjewishguy (CJG) doesn't think it has anything to do with the fact that Cantor is a Jew and Pelosi is not. He thinks they just hate each other's guts. John Boehner and Joe Biden had no choice but to sit together behind the President, and it was a relief that Biden didn't need the box of tissues he brought just in case Boehner had another one of his crying fits, though Boehner appeared to come close  near the end when the President invoked his Horatio Alger-like rise.

One can understand why Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr might have avoided sitting together, but really, all this fuss about who's sitting with whom? Please. All CJG wants to know is this: who got to sit next to freshman Congresswoman Kristi Noem of South Dakota? That had to be toughest seat in the House.

Congresswoman Kristi Noem (R.-S.D.)

CJG used to be a liberal Democrat from Massachusetts.
He is now a registered Republican from Rapid City.

Palm Trees, Blue Skies, Azure Waters: It Must be Wintertime in New England

It must be so nice being married to crankyjewishguy (CJG). Most mornings he rises early to get his son, who is also Mrs. CJG's son, up and out to school, so that Mrs. CJG can get her beauty rest. And, boy, is she beautiful after all that rest. Yesterday, when CJG got in his car, the outside temperature monitor reported that it was one degree below zero. CJG's friend, Joe, posted on his Facebook page that where he lives, about a mile away, it was zero. Why CJG doesn't move to the warmer side of town he'll never know.

The view outside CJG's kitchen window yesterday morning.

Now that it's nearly February, and seeing as how CJG is getting into his late 50s (despite looking more like 40 and acting more like 80), he's starting to think about life in a warmer climate. His younger son will be off to college in a couple of years, so anything is possible, especially given how rich CJG is getting off his blog. But where? And since Mr. and Mrs. CJG are very social people, what will life be like without all of their friends around?

Just to prove that CJG looks much younger than
 his years, he offers this self-portrait for your inspection.

CJG isn't especially keen on Florida for the simple reason that there are too many cranky jewish people there. CJG wants to stand out. But not so far out that he wants to be the only Jewish person on the Mississippi Gulf coast, for example. CJG loves the beach, but he fears even he would soon grow bored watching the waves for three straight months, only to be interrupted for an occasional game of Scrabble. CJG once went to Hawaii, to the island of Kauai to be precise, and that's a great place except that it's about 6,000 miles away and CJG doesn't want to have to find a new barber. Over the past couple of years, CJG has really come to love New Orleans (his older son goes to Harvard on St. Charles down there, otherwise known as Tulane University), and there's no shortage of things to do and great restaurants to eat at there. But, there's no beach nearby. How about Italy? CJG went there once, too, and he fantasizes about Italy the way Silvio Berlusconi...oh, never mind.

For now, it looks as if CJG is going to have to contend with a few more winters. But he's optimistic that a week from tomorrow, on Ground Hog Day, that varmint, who has his own web site by the way, is going to tunnel up through three feet of ice and snow, look around and demand a condo in Miami Beach because whether he sees his shadow or not, there's gonna' be at least ten more weeks of winter in these parts.

Au Revoir Jack LaLanne

When crankyjewishguy (CJG) was a small lad of six or seven, he used to see this guy on the little black and white family television doing all these strange exercises with a broomstick and a chair, and CJG surmised there were housewives all over America doing those exercises along with Jack LaLanne because he seemed to be talking to someone. Jack LaLanne did his TV show for more than three decades and for six decades he preached the virtues of fitness and a healthy diet. A lot of good it did him: he died yesterday...at 96! For those of you who haven't gotten up off the couch yet, or who are still eating a pound of bacon at breakfast everyday, you might want to take note.

Considered the "father" of the modern fitness movement, to celebrate his 60th birthday, LaLanne, the son of French immigrants, swam from Alcatraz to Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. Not so impressive until you consider he was handcuffed, shackled and towing a 1,000 pound boat at the time. CJG isn't exactly sure of the utility of such an exercise unless you are training to be a tug boat, but it is quite a feat nonetheless. At age 70, again in handcuffs and shackles, he towed 70 boats carrying 70 people a mile and half through Long Beach Harbor. CJG assumes they were chained together since repeating the task one boat at a time would have been a complete waste of time. At 80, this time completely encased in nine inches of reinforced concrete, he towed the QE2, carrying two thousand passengers and crew, on a six-month round the world cruise. OK, he didn't really tow the QE2 around the world, but Jack LaLanne was a true pioneer and countless people are living healthier lives because of him. So...kick those legs up, that's right, one and two and one and two and...CJG can still hear him today just as he sounded in the late 1950s. Au revoir, Jack LaLanne.

Two Suns Coming to a Planet Near You!

Every once in a while, crankyjewishguy (CJG) stumbles upon a headline and says to himself, because no one else ever listens to him, "that simply can't be true." For example, the other day he came upon a story that said the Earth could one day have two suns. OK, CJG buys that. Maybe in the year 58,675, when everyone now on Earth will long since be dead (with the possible exception of Joan Rivers), there will be some cataclysmic astronomical event, and whatever life forms survived the epoch when all the water boiled away because of global warming will gaze into the sky and see two suns. That strikes CJG as eminently plausible. But this news story said that the Earth could have two suns as soon as 2012. CJG checked his calendar and suddenly realized, that's next year! Holy shit! Really? CJG would like to see that!

CJG knows an opportunity when he sees one and he immediately got on eTrade and bought a ton of Coppertone stock. Then he traded in his old Volvo and bought a little convertible. Then he came home and read the article and discovered that the story was hyped a little bit. CJG is no Stephen Hawking, so his summary may be a little rough, but here it is.

One of the brightest stars in the night sky is called Betelgeuse and it's collapsing. When it does, one of two things will happen. It will become a black hole and suck the Earth and maybe the entire solar system into it in which case CJG hopes everyone is wearing a seat belt, or, it will explode and become a super-nova in which case it would be bright enough to appear, for a few weeks, as a second sun. A few weeks? So, back to eTrade to sell all the Coppertone stock and back to the car dealer to try and return the convertible.

Betelgeuse, the ninth brightest star in the galaxy.

But all this begs an interesting theological question. Since the Jewish sabbath begins at sundown on Friday, would both suns have to set? Or just the real one? CJG thought maybe we could look to Jewish communities north of the Arctic Circle for the answer since there's no sunset at all up there for good parts of the year. Then he remembered -- Jews can't survive north of the Arctic Circle. In fact, few can survive north of Boca.

CJG thinks headline writers are like salesman. They draw you in with a promise too good to be true and then disappoint you. But here's the real mystery, if this isn't going to happen until at least 2012, how did they get this picture?

America's Rudest City? F*#% You, It's Boston

We Americans sure do love to rank and categorize and make top ten lists of things, and no one seems to do more of it than the people at Travel & Leisure (T&L) magazine. Crankyjewishguy (CJG) was reminded of this when he stumbled upon T&L's twenty rudest cities in America list, a subject he takes very personally because people often confuse crankiness with rudeness. In fact, CJG is almost unfailingly polite which is probably one of the reasons he's so cranky all the time: so much pent up frustration! Though CJG is going to provide a link to the story here, he's going to save you the trouble of going to the T&L web site and list the top ten here. He's worried that if you navigate away from his blog you might not come back. CJG has moments of painful insecurity like this several times a day.

So, here goes, with the rudest city listed last: Dallas/Ft. Worth, Orlando, Las Vegas, Baltimore, Boston, Washington, D.C., Miami, Philadelphia, New York, and the No. 1 rudest city, Los Angeles.

CJG doesn't know about you, but he thinks this list has some really big surprises. For example, in Washington, D.C., members of congress interrupt the State of the Union address to call the President of the United States a liar and routinely say the most vile, hateful things about each other, but the nation's capital only comes in fifth. That really tells you something about the top four. And people in Dallas/Ft. Worth, who have to live constantly with that back slash (/) running through the middle of their city, only came in tenth. The other big surprise, at least to CJG, is how many cities with salutary weather are on this list. Bostonians often come across as rude for two reasons. First, they are rude. And second, for many months of the year it's so damned cold that any outdoor conversation has to be kept short and ends abruptly, leaving at least one party feeling mildly insulted. And you can understand why New Yorkers are so rude just by looking at this picture of theater goers on 42nd Street all trying to hail the same cab...

You'd be rude, too, if you had to spend every day competing with eight million other people for air. But what excuse do people in L.A., Miami and Orlando have? Is all that sunshine cooking their brains?

T&L claims to have surveyed some 60,000 people to arrive at their list, but do you know any of them? Yeah, neither does CJG. And he's suspicious about the scientific integrity of the process. You know how it is when you travel: you generalize about your own narrow experience then think you know the place inside and out. Got stuck in a huge traffic jam in Reno? Oy, such traffic in Reno. Ran into a spell of bad weather in Albuquerque? The weather there sucks. Got flipped off by a rude driver in New Haven? The people in New Haven are assholes. But, of course, you actually have no idea where the driver in New Haven was from, do you? No, but CJG does. He was almost certainly from Boston where they teach you how to flip off other drivers in driver ed class. As readers of CJG know, he lives in Boston and he can tell you right now that people here are going to be really ticked off they only came in sixth.

Milan Lucic of The Boston Bruins,
 Honorary Chairman of Mayor Thomas Menino's "Welcome to Boston" Hospitality Committee

P.S. Just hours after finishing this post, CJG came upon a story on msnbc.com that proves his point. Yesterday, a 63 year-old man named Michael Isabelle was on an American Airlines flight from Rio to New York when he repeatedly kicked and then knocked over a beverage cart that was blocking his path to the rest room. When a flight attendant grabbed Isabelle's arm, Isabelle punched the flight attendant in the stomach. So, what's the connection? Isabelle is from Framingham, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston. CJG encourages everyone to visit Boston. The welcome may be cold, but the chowdah is hot!

A Little Italy

So much raw material, so little time! Today, crankyjewishguy (CJG) doesn't know where to go first: to the arrests of more than a hundred mobsters in the largest one-day Mafia round-up in U.S. history, or the latest revelations about Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's lurid sex life. CJG is almost afraid to mention what these two stories have in common because he doesn't want to return involuntarily to his home state of New Jersey, so figure it out for yourself.

Let's start with the mob. The federal indictments handed down yesterday included charges of murder, extortion, narcotics trafficking, illegal gambling, loan sharking and racketeering, a panoply of crimes otherwise known as a Jersey Poo-Poo Platter. Give us a break. Other than going to the shore or the mall that's all there is to do in New Jersey. All the major New York/New Jersey crime families -- Lucchese, Gambino, Colombo, Bonanno and Genovese -- and the Patriarcha Family of New England, were affected. (CJG is sorry if he left anyone out. Let him know and he'll publish your family name in a future post.)

As usual, the list of defendants includes people with names like Jackie the Nose, Vinny Carwash, Junior Lollipops, Jack the Whack and Tony Bagels. (No, CJG didn't make that up.) Some of those names don't even sound Italian, which makes CJG suspect they may not be their real names. In fact, Tony Bagels sounds vaguely Jewish, doesn't it? Anyway, all this just reminds CJG how much he misses The Sopranos.

Of the 127 people charged in federal indictments yesterday, all but one were arrested in the U.S. The other was arrested in Italy and much to CJG's surprise it wasn't Silvio Berlusconi. Actually, what Berlusconi's been up to sounds like much more fun than murder, loan sharking and illegal gambling. He's been cavorting with teenage girls and paying them huge sums of money to keep quiet about it, except that Silvio, who is 74, obviously doesn't appreciate the reach of a teenage girl with an iPhone. So, now Italian prosecutors have about 300 pages of transcripts and other information that reveal a level of depravity that makes the Lewinsky scandal look like a pancake breakfast at a Baptist church in Mobile.

It seems Silvio "The Salami" Berlusconi was done in by one Karima El Mahroug, an under-age Moroccan belly dancer known as Karima Cheese and Bagels. (No relation to Tony Bagels.) Just kidding. She's known as "Ruby the Heart Stealer." Sounds faintly reminiscent of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, don't you think? Anyway, here's a picture of the femme fatale...

Karima El Mahroug, Silvio Berlusconi's right hand man, as it were.

At least CJG thinks that's a picture of Karima El Mahroug. On closer examination it could be American Idol judge Steven Tyler. "Judge" for yourself.

Half-Baked Alaska and "Blood Libel"

On the Sean Hannity program the other day, Half-Baked Alaska (HBA) defended her use of the term "blood libel" to describe the suggestion that maybe, in light of the tragedy in Tucson, she should turn down the gun-related rhetoric a bit. (No, of course crankjewishguy doesn't watch Hannity; he reads about it later.) Responding to critics who suggested she might not have understood the historical, anti-Semitic implications of the term, she asked, "how would they know if I knew what the term meant or not," or words to that effect. Note that she didn't claim to know the origin of "blood libel," she just questioned how others would know whether she did or didn't. Crankyjewishguy (CJG) is going to answer that question in just a moment, but in CJG's humble opinion HBA really stepped in her own poo here, because either she knew what it meant and still believed it was an apt comparison for the way she was being treated by "liberals" and the "lame-stream" media in which case she's delusional, or she didn't know what it meant and she's just as ignorant as many of us suspected.

Now, CJG considers HBA proof positive of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, a psychological theory that posits that incompetent people overestimate their level of skill and fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy. Even so, CJG doesn't think she believes that the knocks she's taken over Tucson are the equivalent of a centuries old canard that Jews drink the blood of murdered children during religious ritual. But to answer HBA's rhetorical question, the reason people can make an educated guess about what she knew or didn't about the term "blood libel" is that when people use words or phrases in wildly inappropriate ways, or make words up, chances are they don't know what they are talking about. For example, take HBA's use of the word "refudiate" when opining about what New Yorkers should do about that Islamic Center some want to build in lower Manhattan. CJG doesn't believe HBA uses her spare time to think up new words she'd like to add to the English language, so it's pretty safe to assume that when she used the word, she thought it was a real word. Except, of course, that it isn't. If a stranger walks up to you while you're walking your dog, looks at your dog, pats it on the head and asks you if your bird talks, you can assume they can't tell the difference between a dog and a bird. So, CJG would say that those, like himself, who think HBA didn't have a clue what the term "blood libel" refers to are actually being charitable, given the other option.

By the way, readers of CJG will recall that he named HBA, also known as She Who Shall Not Be Named, as the most annoying person of 2010 last year, and on January 1, 2011, the most annoying person of this year...and that was before her latest "it's all about me" moment. Boy, does she make CJG cranky. But let's move on to one final point.

CJG thinks 99% of the debate over the last couple of weeks about the connection, or not, between overheated political rhetoric and the Tucson tragedy misses the point. HBA has a long history of over-the-top rhetoric. If you accuse someone, as she accused Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign, of "paling around with terrorists" while the country is fighting a war on terror, that's incendiary. When you put crosshairs on a map and list the congressmen you want to send packing, that's more than "targeting certain congressional districts," a commonplace phrase in politics, especially if you are prone, as she is, to inflammatory, gun-related rhetoric. For example, when you rouse a crowd and tell them not to retreat but to "reload," and immediately feel compelled to remind those same people that you are not calling for violence, then you obviously know there are nuts out there with easy access to guns who might just hear it that way. Let's remember that some in the anti-abortion movement label doctors who perform the procedure "murderers," and some of those doctors have paid the price with their lives, as have other abortion clinic workers. In short, it's no single poster or phrase, it's a politics of incitement that may be the spark for some nut case. (There were no "government death panels" in the health care bill, for example, but wouldn't you be angry as hell if there were?) We may never know if political rhetoric played any role whatsoever in the Tuscon shootings, but the fact that the gunman was deranged and deeply disturbed doesn't mean we shouldn't choose our words with care. To the contrary. In a country where getting a gun is easy as pie, we need to realize words fall on the delusional, and the heavily armed, too.

The point is this: when your most ardent supporters look like this...

and you fancy yourself like this...

maybe you need to be a little more careful about what you say and how you say it.

Fluff Those Carpets? Get Real

Readers of crankyjewishguy (CJG) will recall that a couple of days ago he passed along some helpful household tips from Real Simple magazine, known in the psychiatric community as the Journal of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. One of those tips was that you can use a fork to fluff up your carpets. (Under no circumstances should you use Marshmallow Fluff for this purpose, despite the name. They won't tell you this on the Marshmallow Fluff web site, but CJG will.)

Now, CJG will freely admit that he's a tad compulsive, which is why he uses tight little words such as "tad" instead of "really" or "extremely." So, he has spent sixteen hours over the past two days with a dinner fork trying to make his carpets look like Donald Trump's hair and so far he has managed to get three and a half square feet of his living room carpet to sit approximately .00025 inches higher than the rest of the carpet, sort of like what you see here.

Unfortunately, this is well outside CJG's tolerance for lack of uniformity (as is the Donald's hair) and now he either has to borrow an industrial strength iron to flatten out the fluffed carpet, or spend another six to ten days fluffing the remaining 92 and 1/2 square feet with a dinner fork. But since CJG, inspired by Real Simple's determination to recommend time consuming ways to use ordinary household implements for purposes other than those for which they were intended, CJG doesn't have that much free time. For example, since two feet of snow fell here last week, CJG has been using a soup spoon and a ladle to remove approximately five tons of snow from his front walk and driveway and so far he's made it to the mailbox, which is immediately outside his front door. But CJG reminds himself to be patient because people in East Berlin used to tunnel into West Berlin with the same equipment.

Even the Berlin Wall was no match for a simple soup spoon.

When he finishes removing the snow this summer, CJG is going to try filling a swimming pool with a thimble, or reading twelve back issues of Real Simple with binoculars.

Ask Crankyjewishguy Vol.3: Patriots Lose to Jets: Get Over It!

Starting Sunday night, crankyjewishguy's (CJG) inbox was flooded with e-mails from shocked and distraught New England Patriots fans. This message, from Ned in Easton, Massachusetts, is fairly typical:

Dear CJG,
I was so sure the Patriots would be playing in Super Bowl XLV in Dallas, that I booked non-refundable flights for my family and a $1,000 a night hotel suite, also non-refundable, and I don't even have tickets to the game! I don't really care about the money, but I'm just not sure life is worth living after this devastating loss to the Jets. Why is God punishing us?
Losing It in Easton
P.S. Look how upset my son is.

Dear Losing It,
CJG would say "Lost It" is more like it. First, tell your son it's just a football game. Second, get some Neosporin for that nasty looking rash on his cheek. Third, you shouldn't be so presumptuous. Look, CJG was rooting for the Pats, too, but he's not losing any sleep over it. Hundreds of thousands of people in Haiti are still homeless a year after the earthquake. Thousands in Brazil have seen their towns destroyed by mudslides in recent days. An epic flood has inundated Australia. All over the world people are starving and suffering in ways you can't even imagine. And you're wallowing in self-pity over a football game? If so, then you deserve whatever punishment God is visiting on you at the moment.

P.S. CJG has several thousand dollars of Patriots Super Bowl XLV gear he's unloading at a deep discount, including a hundred of these. You interested? Your kid would love one. All sizes available, including XL (that's a 40 in case you are Roman Numeral impaired).

Life Made Real Simple: Don't Try This at Home!

Crankyjewishguy's (CJG) wife used to get a magazine called Real Simple, and occasionally CJG would leaf through it for tips on organizing his socks, things he could buy to help him organize his socks, and consultants he could hire to help him organize his socks. Typically, there was at least one article a month on this topic. Perusing Real Simple, CJG was struck by how much stuff one would have to own to make use of the tsunami of advice, organizational and otherwise, they have to offer in every issue. Hey, what do you recommend for organizing back copies of Real Simple? How about a recycling bin?

Did you know that according to Real Simple you can use mayonnaise as a hair conditioner? Or, if you have three weeks with nothing better to do, you can fluff your carpets with a fork? Or how about these adorable little berry baskets to organize your bathroom stuff?

Isn't that just so cute? Those things should last at least a week before they're covered with expectorated toothpaste, soap scum and mold from being saturated with water. And note the high quality, staple and balsa wood construction. That should hold up to the rough and tumble of the average household for a few hours. Given what's in these baskets, CJG estimates the average woman would need about eight thousand of them to hold all her bathroom supplies. Boy, what CJG wouldn't give to be at the editorial meetings where people think up brilliant ideas like this. 

One of CJG's favorite Real Simple tips is to use oatmeal as an "At-Home" facial product, as if someone might smear oatmeal all over their face and then ride the commuter train to the office, or board a flight to Tokyo. Yeah, if you're thinking of covering your face with oatmeal, you might want to stay home with the person with all that mayonnaise in their hair lest the two of you get attacked by a pack of rabid racoons.

Recently, Real Simple had a useful feature about non-kitchen related uses for your dishwasher, followed by a list of things you should never put in your dishwasher. Did you know, for example, that you can wash potatoes in your dishwasher? (Don't add detergent). Or garden tools, shin guards, knee pads and plastic hairbrushes? (Every other Real Simple tip is hair related.) Believe it or not, you can even cook salmon in your dishwasher if you don't mind the smell. For a future issue Real Simple no doubt has five hundred tips for eradicating the salmon odor lined up, including roasting a brisket in there. CJG isn't clear whether you put the salmon in alive or cleaned and skinned, in foil or on a baking sheet, or whether you put the marinade in the detergent dispenser or just throw it in willy nilly, but there's probably a whole cookbook in this somewhere. And what setting do you use? Pots and Pans? Quick Wash? And why salmon? Can a dishwasher distinguish between salmon and sturgeon? Maybe someone should come up with a dishwasher with settings like, "White Flakey Fish," "Oily Fish," and "Shellfish," so people don't have to figure out how long the lobsters are supposed to steam every time. Frankly, CJG has no intention of cooking anything in his dishwasher. That's why he has a stove, an oven, a toaster oven, a microwave, and a gas grill. If you need more options than that, CJG recommends a snow blower which doubles nicely as a food processor. CJG also suggests grilling fish whenever possible. Then you just put the entire grill in the dishwasher to clean it. 

Pre-heat dishwasher to 5,000 degrees and use a chain saw to cut
salmon into 20 pound filets. Cook for five days or until done.

What makes all this so interesting, is the list of things you should never put in a dishwasher: formal dishes, "nice" flatware, crystal glasses, wooden spoons, good kitchen knives, steak knives, wood cutting boards, insulated mugs and containers, and children under the age of four. In other words, just about everything you might actually use in a kitchen and need to put in the dishwasher. See, life isn't so simple after all which is why CJG is looking for investors for his new venture: a magazine called Real Complicated. Contact CJG for a prospectus.

Little Horoscope of Horrors: Do You Know What YOUR Sign Is?

As if we needed more proof that some people have way too much time on their hands, the Internet is all atwitter (:-) about what can best be described as an astrology crisis. Though crankyjewishguy (CJG) read this article on CNN.com several times, he still can't quite parse it, but as best he can tell there's been some kind of shift in zodiac signs that means some people who thought they were Libras are now Virgos, some who thought they were Scorpios are now Republicans, and others have been bumped from their flight of fancy altogether into a whole new sign called Ophiuchus. CJG thought the ophiuchus was the part of the gastro-intestinal system just below the colon, but apparently CJG was wrong. It refers to a constellation of a man wrestling a serpent, something you can see on pay-per-view almost any weekend night.

CJG defies you to stare into the night sky and come up with this
 because without the artist's help it would just be a random bunch of stars.
CJG guarantees he could take the same group of stars and come up with
 a hot dog vendor in Times Square...with sauerkraut and mustard.

This zodiac sign shift has caused a huge uproar. Astrologers have been inundated with calls and e-mails from distraught clients. Fortunately, one of them, Hilary Young, the CEO of AstrologyDating.com, had the presence of mind to tell everyone to calm the fuck down. "Everyone can relax," she told CNN. "People ask me what does it mean for their personality. I expect it will be the same it was yesterday. You probably didn't wake up with a new personality." CJG notes that Ms. Young was hedging her bets with the word "probably," but CJG thinks these people had one oar out of the water before the big announcement and they still do, no "probably" about it. Anyone who thinks a wobble in Saturn's orbit is going to transform their personality overnight should only wish it were true.

According to CNN, 25% of Americans believe the moon and stars can affect someone's life and CJG is going to go out on a limb and guess that Christine O'Donnell is one of them. As for CJG, he doesn't believe one whit in astrology. When people ask, as they do all the time, "hey, CJG, what's your sign," he shows them this and says, "take your pick."

P.S. The other day, CJG expressed his hope that Miss Massachusetts, the Miss America Pageant's only Jewish contestant, would win the crown. Is doing so, he poked a little bit of fun at Miss Arkansas. Well, Miss Massachusetts didn't win, but Miss Arkansas was the first runner-up! Your new Miss America, in case you haven't heard, is 17 year-old Miss Nebraska. Wow, today's NFL playoff games are going to be such a let down.

Don't Look If You Are Offended by Sexually Explicit Images!

Crankyjewishguy (CJG) learned a valuable lesson yesterday. He blogged about something to do with sex and more than tripled his average number of daily visitors. Coincidence? CJG submits that it is not. But even more interesting is that CJG's blog post yesterday contained two images, one of a Kosher cheese steak sandwich (inside Jewish joke) and the other a mug shot of disgraced former congressman Tom DeLay. (The cheese steak was the one with meat and cheese inside a sub roll. The other was just a cheesy meathead.) Given that you can find far more exciting pictures in about .0000001 seconds on the Internet, CJG is flattered that so many people were curious to see what he had to say on the subject of sex and hopes it was helpful because CJG lives to serve.

But, just for the sake of science, CJG is going to post a sexually explicit photo here today and see what happens. He'll let you know tomorrow if his server crashed.

If you are offended by sexually explicit material this is your last chance to turn back.

For those who proceeded through the warning signs, here it is...

Tom "The Hammer" DeLay on Dancing With the Stars.
  Now that's obscene.

Scratch and Sniff: Astonishing New Finding in Sex Research!

While perusing the Internet yesterday, crankyjewishguy (CJG) came across an article that really piqued his interest. The article says scientists have determined that the way a man smells may be the most important factor for women when it comes to picking sex partners. This caused CJG to immediately tuck his nose under his arm in the middle of Starbucks where three very attractive women were in the process of undressing the nerdy guy at the next table who apparently smelled like Brad Pitt (no pun intended).

What CJG finds especially remarkable is that there are real scientists out there spending real time and real money to study such things. Rather than spending their time finding cures for disease, or figuring out how to save the Earth from the ravages of climate change or a speeding asteroid the size of Rhode Island, these scientists are figuring out what odors women find attractive in a man. Finally, science we can actually use! Scientists aren't going for cologne or aftershave odors, but natural odors which, theoretically, can only be masked by colognes and aftershaves, but not altered by them. One experiment involved having men wear the same t-shirt two days in a row and then having women smell the different t-shirts and, based on that, pick a husband, or something like that. Just who, CJG wants to know, volunteers for these experiments and what are their goals in life?

Even more astonishing is that scientists have determined that odor preferences vary by city. So, for example, women in New York prefer men who smell like coffee, which may explain the high rate of STDs among male baristas in Manhattan. In L.A., it's lavender. In Chicago, it's vanilla. Cut grass, for reasons unclear, is the preferred odor in the Twin Cities. OK, so far, so good. But if you are a guy and you live in Houston, you need to aspire to smell like barbeque. No, CJG is not kidding and no, he doesn't want to meet your cute sister from Houston. But CJG's favorite is Philadelphia. You'd think the preferred man odor there would be cheese steak, but it's not. It's clean laundry. How they determined this by having women sniff two-day old t-shirts CJG has no idea.

Do women in Philadelphia prefer men
 who smell like cheese steak? The answer may surprise you.

The obvious lesson here is that men having trouble dating should figure out what their natural odor is and move to the city where women prefer that particular aroma. CJG conducted a little informal survey of his own and offers these suggestions:

If you smell like a landfill...Newark or Jersey City, NJ.

If you smell like oak with hints of blackberry and spice and citrus notes...Napa, CA.

If you smell like a buffalo in August...Cheyenne, WY.

If you smell like burning rubber...Indianapolis, IN. (Note, that's "burning rubber," as in the Indy 500, not "a burning rubber.")

And, if you smell like laundered money...anywhere in the 22nd congressional district of Texas. It worked for this guy:

Crankyjewishguy Marks One Month in the Blogosphere!

Today, crankyjewishguy (CJG) marks one month in the blogosphere which means he's been blogging almost as long as a certain politician served as governor of Alaska. What you may not know is that the technology that allows you to blog also allows you to see where visitors to your blog are coming from. No, CJG can't tell you exactly how may times his friend Ann Marie has been to his site, or even that Ann Marie has been to his site (except she said she was), but he can tell you, by country, who has been reading CJG and how people are finding him.

By far, most visitors are from the United States. No surprise there. Next are Canada, Singapore, the U.K. and Croatia. Let's hear it for Croatia! But the occasional visitor has also shown up from The Netherlands, Israel, Germany, France, Russia and even Cambodia. They love Jewish jokes in Cambodia.

And by far the biggest source of "traffic," as they say in the blogging biz, is Facebook which, as you surely know, was inspired by a movie called The Social Network.

But all of this begs the question: how many people are actually reading CJG? According to the data, CJG has had approximately 1,450 page views, not counting his own in the first month. If you count his own, the total goes up to 6,461,877,931,831 as you can see from this electronic tabulator in Times Square.

Now, 1,450 may sound OK for being just a month out of the gate, but CJG suspects that when you factor in repeat visitors all of his labors are actually entertaining an audience of dozens, most of them people he knows. But CJG is not deterred. He's going to keep at it until he can safely say there isn't a man, woman or child on Earth who hasn't heard of CJG, or until all this snow melts. It's gonna be close.

Oh My God! It's Going to Snow...In Boston!

Here's some big news: it's supposed to snow six to twelve inches, maybe even more, today. In Boston. In January. Now, crankyjewishguy (CJG) doesn't know this from watching the local news, or from checking the weather online, or even from looking out the window where he can see that it's snowing. He knows it by the obvious signs that the apocalypse is upon us well before the flakes even began to fall..

CJG has lived in Massachusetts for about forty years now and he's seen what, maybe 300 or 350 significant snowstorms in that time, and only once that he can recall, during the famous Blizzard of '78, was it an inconvenience that lasted more than a day, and usually it's less than that. Typically, after a few hours, you can get to the grocery store or, if the local newscasters haven't scared you into a fatal cardiac arrest, to the emergency room for medical attention. It snows in New England. Sometimes it snows a lot. We've been through this drill before. And yet, every time the forecast calls for six inches of snow or more you can sense the panic rising and the local news stations kicking into high gear.

For example, apparently CJG and his family are the only people in greater Boston who keep more than enough food around to get through lunchtime tomorrow. This is why, a day before the storm, the supermarket parking lot looks like the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel at rush hour as panicked shoppers stock up for the big event. Here's a picture outside CJG's local market taken just before the last snowstorm which dumped six inches of snow on the Boston area:

Last night, local news stations started running their wall to wall special reports headlined "This Could Be It," or "The Monster Blizzard of 2011," or "Run for Your Lives, It's About to Snow." Later today they will dispatch reporters to stand dangerously close to slippery highways to give the exact same report everyone has seen a thousand times before and the only thing that will hold your interest is waiting to see if someone, blinded by the klieg lights, loses control of their car and starts careening towards the reporter who will, inevitably, have his or her back turned to the fast moving traffic. And it will be fast because even though the roads may be slick, everyone remembers the Blizzard of '78 when thousands of cars were abandoned on Route 128, a ring road around the city, and they want to get home and make sure the cupboard isn't bare. For those too young to remember, or who weren't living in these parts back then, this is what it looked like 33 years ago on Route 128:

Yeah, it was a mess and for a full week private automobile travel was banned throughout a good portion of eastern Massachusetts which meant people were walking or skiing to the store and pulling their groceries home on sleds. It was like living in a Currier & Ives Christmas card for a while, but it got old quickly. This why every mention of six inches of snow sends people into a frenzy, even 33 years later.

In any event, once we're a few hours into today's storm, and just when everyone thinks the saturation coverage of snow falling in tiny white flakes from the sky can't get any more redundant, there will be footage of a plane being de-iced at Logan Airport and of snowplows pushing and piling snow in various places around the city. The reporters will stick microphones through the window of a plow and ask the operator how it's going. Since it's cold the plow operator will appear to be breathing fire as his warm breath meets the frigid air and he'll say something in a "wicked hahd" Boston accent that no one will understand because NewsCenterPanic hasn't thought about subtitles. But, everyone will be able to infer that he's saying something like, "it's snowing and my job is to move it from here to there."

So, CJG is going to sign off now, before the roads become impassable, and head out to the market for marshmallows, graham crackers and chocolate bars because it's gonna' be a three S'more kind of day. And while he's there he's just gonna pick up a few other sundries -- some bottled water, duct tape, a first aid kit and six weeks worth of canned food, if the survivalists haven't emptied the shelves already.

Ask Crankyjewishguy Vol. 2: Driver Ed

Today's question comes from Michelle in West Linn, Oregon. She writes:

Dear CJG,
My 16 year-old son starts driver education classes soon and I'm petrified. Should I worry?
Petrified in Portland

Dear Petrified in Portland,
The answer is absolutely yes! Coincidentally, CJG's 15 year-old son starts driver education classes tonight and CJG is plenty concerned. Up 'til now the most dangerous equipment he's operated is a Playstation 3 game controller and now we're about to let him take control of a 4,000 pound vehicle capable of traveling 140 m.p.h. This is compounded by the fact that CJG and his son live in Massachusetts where driving is a contact sport.

To get his son through this nerve-wracking phase, CJG is buying him some special equipment including a football helmet, shoulder pads and a mouth guard. And he's also invested in the safe, secure vehicle pictured here:

While you are right to be concerned, take comfort in the fact that the requirements for getting a driver's license are quite stringent, a lot like becoming a cardiac transplant surgeon. For example, before your son is licensed to operate a motor vehicle he will have to answer questions like this:

When you see this, what should you do?

a) Turn the radio from AM to FM

b) Refill the washer fluid reservoir

c) Stop texting

d) Floor it, lean on the horn and hope for the best

The correct answer, of course, is D.

Now, if your son is Jewish and attended Hebrew School, it is essential that you tell him that all road signs are read left to right, not vice versa. Otherwise, when he sees this...

...he's going to think "POTS" and by the time he realizes his mistake he's going be in the middle of the intersection. If he travels to Israel, don't worry. As usual, the Israelis have thought of everything. Stop signs in Israel look like this:

However, if he sees a sign that looks like this...

...he's gone too far. He needs to turn around slowly and try not to call attention to himself because this sign doesn't mean what you think it does. Israel doesn't have a two man bobsled team.

The NFL on CBS, FOX, ESPN

Since the NFL Playoffs started this past weekend, crankyjewishguy (CJG) thought this would be a good time to analyze the veritable blizzard of pre, post and halftime analysis that accompanies every game. CJG has been watching football with mild interest on and off for about half a century and he makes no claim to being a student of the game. He's more in awe of the fact that every two hour game (eighteen minutes if measured in actual on-field action) is surrounded by hundreds of hours of analysis on television, talk radio and in newspapers and web sites, as if every football game, even Cleveland v. Buffalo, is an event of monumental proportions with the fate of the Earth hanging in the balance. You turn on FOX or CBS or ESPN and there, arrayed around a huge table, are a half dozen former players, coaches, sportswriters or Iranian clerics pontificating about who is going to win, who is winning, or who just won and why. All of this blather can be boiled down into a relative handful of contradictory football truths.

1. The team that controls the line of scrimmage will win.

2. The team that plays best on special teams will win.

3. The team that forces the most turnovers will win.

4. The team with the quarterback that has the best day will win.

5. The team that maintains the territorial advantage will win.

6. The team with the offensive line that dominates will win.

7. The team with the defensive line that dominates will win.

8. The team with the best game plan will win.

9. The team that establishes the running game will win.

10. The team that establishes the passing game will win.

11. Having the hottest cheerleaders will have no effect on the outcome.

All of this is nonsense of course because everyone knows that it's the team that scores the most points that will win, or in the case of a tie score the team with the hottest cheerleaders. But, none of these overpaid "analysts" ever says that because they aren't being paid to state the obvious. If just one of these networks had thought to add a woman to the panel, maybe we'd be able to cut through all this bullshit.

So, CJG's question is which of the teams below would win a hypothetical contest to determine who offers the most astute analysis. Is it the team from CBS,

the team from FOX,

the team from ESPN,

or CJG's Uncle Sherm?

Don't bet against Uncle Sherm. He put five kids through college with his winnings at Aqueduct.

A Shout Out to Baltimore!

CJG wants to say thanks to the Baltimore Jewish Times for recommending crankyjewishguy to its readers. CJG loves Baltimore. His father went to college and medical school there and CJG has family living in Baltimore. Just to prove CJG isn't just blowing smoke out of his ears and sucking up to the Baltimore Jewish Times, here he is proudly wearing his Johns Hopkins University sweatshirt. It's still around here somewhere.

CJG shows his loyalty to Johns Hopkins University
 at age five months. He looks happy here, but at
six months he started to get cranky...really cranky.

So, thanks Baltimore Jewish Times for making CJG's day, or at least making him a little less ornery than usual. As an expression of his gratitude, CJG promises to root for the Baltimore Ravens next week when they play the Pittsburgh Steelers. If the Ravens score more points than the Steelers, CJG predicts the Ravens will win.