Buried Treasure in Winter Snow

If you live in a warm or even mild climate, you probably think crankyjewishguy (CJG) and his fellow New Englanders spend their winters gamboling across the countryside sipping hot cocoa and admiring downy white snow that makes the world seem as cozy as a snow globe on January Jones's dresser. Something like this perhaps:

But it's not like that at all. Oh, maybe for a few hours after the snow falls the world looks as pure as Snow White on her wedding day, but after that the snow turns black from car exhaust. And after that, when it all starts to melt, you get scenes like this:

You see, when a big storm bears down and the sanitation department can't pick up the trash, it sits there under the snow, maybe even for weeks during a bad winter. In New York this week, as the snow has receded, people have found garbage, rats in soda cans, bikes, sludge and even human bodies on the sidewalks and in cars that were buried by the blizzard. Inspired by what sounded like a great opportunity to find something valuable, or just plain interesting, CJG spent a day walking through Boston to see what he might find buried in the snow and, boy, was he ever rewarded...big time.

For example, down near Northeastern University he found this next to a parked car:

At first, CJG thought it was his Uncle Stu who had wandered away from his assisted living facility, but later discovered it's a rare Egyptian mummy that was being delivered to the Museum of Fine Arts and apparently fell off the delivery truck.

Then, CJG stumbled onto this amazing find:

It was inside an envelope postmarked in Philadelphia in 1776 and addressed to John Adams, Peacefields, Quincy, Mass., but marked "Return to Sender: Insufficient Postage." CJG has dried it out and posted a message on Craigslist seeking descendants of the original sender.

But nothing surprised CJG more than to find this adorable fellow nearly frozen to death in a snow bank near Fenway Park. CJG has since thawed the grateful little guy out in his microwave and put him on a plane back to L.A. to resume his acting career. Good grief, winter really does suck.

Facebook: The New Face of the World's Oldest Profession

Crankyjewishguy (CJG) often blogs about news stories he's read that involve professors and academics and the interesting, but often, shall we say, dubious research they pursue, but CJG really isn't sure what to make of this story. According to MSNBC.com, a Columbia University professor named Sudhir Venkatesh, whom CJG presumes is not Jewish, "spent a year gaining the trust of and tracking 290 prostitutes in New York to study the 'contrasts between old-world prostitutes and new-age sex workers.'" Wow, and they pay him for that?

CJG thought that by "old-world" it meant he was doing a historical comparison between, say, the Spanish prostitutes of Columbus's time and those of modern times, but that's apparently not the case. What he's studying is those who solicit business the old-fashioned way, by standing on dark corners in short skirts and low-cut tops and looking extremely available, for example, and those who are using Facebook, Craigslist and other new media to grow their business so to speak. In fact, according to Professor Venkatesh, 83% of the prostitutes he surveyed have a Facebook page which means CJG is going to be going back to his list of Facebook friends this afternoon and scrutinizing it very closely.

The new face of the world's oldest profession.

According to the good professor, in this day and age "no self-respecting cosmopolitan man looking for an evening of companionship is going to lean out his car window and call out to a woman at a traffic light." Right. If he's "self-respecting" he's going to troll the sex ads on Craigslist from the comfort of his own den while his wife and kids are upstairs sleeping. And the rise of new technology, says the professor, has made the trade "less risky and more lucrative," so much so that it has attracted "some middle-class women seeking quick tax-free income." Whoa! Good thing this guy doesn't work for H&R Block! CJG is pretty sure that the Internal Revenue Code does not exempt income earned from illegal activity from taxation (in fact, he just looked it up and he's right), though he's equally sure few actually declare it on their returns. Sorry, professor, tax free income is what you get from municipal bonds and certain mutual funds, not from turning tricks. Better stick to your field of expertise.

This is how today's discerning, cosmopolitan man arranges to pay for sex.