Ask Crankyjewishguy Vol. 11: Which Way Does the Wind Blow?

As readers of crankyjewishguy (CJG) know, he takes great pleasure in answering questions from readers seeking wisdom and enlightenment, and goodness knows so many CJG readers are. It's sad, really, that this is where they turn for advice because it shows a certain desperation. CJG suspects these lost souls come to him having exhausted their psychiatrists, friends, and rabbis (and other clergy). But there's no doubt they have come to the right place.

Today's question comes, remarkably enough, from GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. CJG isn't sure if the question is political or meteorological, though.

Dear CJG:

Which way is the wind blowing?

Desperately seeking a compass,

Mitt Romney
On the Road in my Escalade in Iowa

Dear Mr. One-Term Governor of Massachusetts:

What an interesting question from the guy fellow GOP presidential candidate John Huntsman and, CJG might note, fellow member of the Church of Mormon called "a well-lubricated weather vane." Your question is simple on the surface, but perhaps more complex than you realize. But judging from the American flag flying outside the Starbucks where CJG works rent-free he would say, "north at about 8 mph."

But CJG suspects your question is really a philosophical one. In Massachusetts, where the winds tend to blow to the left, you flew the kite of reproductive rights, universal health care and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Now, running in the GOP primaries where the wind blows right at about 200 mph with occasional gusts to 300 mph, you hoisted the sail of water boarding, climate change denial, repealing health care and the anthropomorphication of corporations. (If you don't know what anthropomorphication means, CJG suggests asking Rick Perry.) With all due respect, CJG suggests you seek out a quiet, windless retreat and try and figure out what you really believe in, if anything. Does that answer your question?

The weather vane atop Mitt Romney's La Jolla
mansion, the one he uses so he can tack
with the political winds.

On a separate note today, CJG notes that the GOP candidate du jour who is not Mitt, Newt Gingrich, acknowledged today that he had a more extensive relationship with Freddie Mac, the U.S. backed mortgage giant, than previously disclosed. Bloomberg is reporting Newt and/or his "consulting" firm received somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.6 to $1.8 in fees for "strategic advice" over a nine to ten year period that ended, ironically enough, in 2008. Given Freddie's role in the 2008 economic collapse, and its enormous debt, CJG surmises that Newt's advice may have been a tad off the mark. But here's the real laugh line; Newt says he wasn't hired as a lobbyist but in his capacity as a historian. Oh, really? One who just happened to be a former Speaker of House of Representatives? Like there weren't any non-government connected historians around? And since Newt's area of expertise, history-wise, seems to be the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, one wonders what expensive advice a mortgage lender would need from such a historian. How to use a musket?

Seriously, does this ring true to you? No doubt Newt will be out there promising that if elected he's going to change the culture in Washington. Sure thing, Newt. It's enough to make CJG want to give Mitt another look and CJG doesn't even vote Republican. But it is kind of understandable. The third Mrs. Newt has very expensive tastes and how else is a guy supposed to get a million dollar line of credit from Tiffany's?

"Oh, Newt, please buy me that nice monument in
the background!"

Bad Lindsay, Good Lindsay

If there's one person crankyjewishguy (CJG) hasn't heard enough about lately, it's Lindsay Lohan. CJG isn't even sure why she's famous. Is she a tennis player or something? No, that was Amy Winehouse. Anyway, CJG does know she's been in and out of jail, that she takes a lot of medicine, and is often late for stuff. Like the other day she was supposed to do some court-ordered community service at a morgue and she was sent away because she showed up late. CJG doesn't know what she was supposed to do at the morgue, but he thinks it's safe to say that not too many people in the morgue are in a big hurry to do anything so being late doesn't sound like a huge problem. To make up for her tardiness, she showed up the next day with a box of donuts. Well, one published report said donuts, another said cupcakes (why can't the media get this story straight!) and in any event the assistant coroner deemed Lohan's efforts to lift the spirits, so to speak, of her charges, inappropriate. He's right, of course. It was incredibly insensitive since most of the residents probably died of obesity and other diet-related ailments. Talk about rubbing salt in the wounds (or sugar in the arteries). Sometimes CJG suspects Lindsay Lohan thinks she deserves special treatment just because she's a celebrity.

Hey everybody, Lindsay brought donuts!

If you've been watching the new Lindsay Lohan 24-hour pay-per-view channel, you probably already know that Lindsay has agreed to pose for Playboy for a million dollars (note to the GOP: don't even think about raising this "job creator's" taxes) and her father was arrested yesterday in Florida on domestic violence charges. What a family of attention seekers! Believe CJG, if they wanted anonymity they'd be bloggers.

Lindsay Lohan in familiar surroundings. When she
isn't in rehab she's in court.

P.S. The woman sitting next to CJG at Starbucks today keeps lifting her empty coffee cup and banging it on the table as she talks. If CJG had her cell phone number he'd call her and tell her to stop.

Esquire's Question of the Day

WARNING: Today's post contains adult language and graphic content that ay not be appropriate for Hasidic Jews.

Yesterday morning, crankyjewishguy (CJG) was at one of his favorite coffee shops (i.e. not a Starbucks) where they have a magazine rack filled with interesting magazines you can read while you drink your coffee (as opposed to Starbucks where they will sell you a copy of Howard Schultz's new book about Starbucks).

Anyway, they had the new issue of Esquire which had a major article on men's health that included the results of an extensive survey. Most of the questions were predictable, such as how often do you exercise, what do you eat, are you getting enough sleep and so on. But there was one question that really stuck out, so to speak, and it was a very simple one: can you see your penis? pretty direct, too.

But simple questions defy simple answers, despite the fact that 83% of respondents answered "yes." For example, this question could just as easily be about eye sight as body weight. Before CJG guy had cataract surgery last year, without his glasses he couldn't see his hands if he held them up in front of his face and his penis is half way down his body; well out of range. The question is also more complicated than it appears because it didn't specify whether the penis should be flaccid or erect, nor does it make allowances for size. CJG bets there are some heavy men who would have to answer "sometimes" to what appears to be a yes/no question. So, if these men overwhelmingly assumed an erect penis we may have a skewed picture of whether they have a weight problem. It also seems to CJG that the question -- can you see your penis -- cries out for multiple choice answers such as (a) yes, (b) no, (c) easily, (d) in brightly illuminated rooms or (e) when I look in the mirror.

If, as CJG assumes, Esquire was trying to get a handle on how many men have a weight problem, aren't there better ways to find out? Like asking: are you overweight? This is why CJG puts very little stock in articles that appear in Esquire.

P.S. For obvious reasons, today's post has no pictures.

Some Thoughts on College Admissions

When crankjewishguy (CJG) applied to college sometime in the middle part of the last century, he was asked some interesting questions. This was in the day when you visited most of the colleges you were applying to and had an interview with a member of the admissions committee. At one Ivy League school, CJG won't say which one except to note that its name is the same as the color as some of his shoes, he was asked what he thought of life insurance and life insurance salesmen. As a callow 17-year-old CJG was non-plused by this questions and it's only with the benefit of decades of hindsight that he realizes that this was a trick question designed to test how well he handled a curveball. Not very well apparently because he didn't get into that college on a hill and had to settle for another college where they don't teach life insurance. But at the college he did attend, the dean of admissions was known to have someone from maintenance seal the window in his office and then ask prospective students to open it so he could gauge how they handled the dilemma.

If you have college-age kids, or are going through the college application process now, you know it's become much more sophisticated and anxiety producing than in CJG's day. It's also become much less personal. The college interview is a relic, except for the alumni interview, most of which, from CJG's observation, take place in Starbucks. They are easy to spot: it's usually a strained conversation in which a nervous kid is asked whether he or she has any questions for the interviewer whereupon the kid pulls out a few painfully obvious questions about what the person studied, whether they liked the school, and so forth, as if the experience there in 2012 will be the same as it was in 1968. This is usually the signal for the alum to spill his or her life story to a kid forty years their junior who is listening, sort of, but only because he or she desperately wants in.

Once they have your SAT scores, if they require them -- and who scores high and doesn't send them in -- and your grades, it seems to CJG that the modern application could be boiled down to a few simple questions:

1. Do you have a name? If so, write it here: _________________________

2. Have you ever read a book?

3. Do you know what a book is?

4. On a scale of one to ten, with ten being the highest, how badly do you want to come to college here?

5. Can your parents muster $200,000 over the next four years?

That about covers it, CJG thinks, and we'd all save a whole lot of time.

Surely You Jest!

A few headlines caught crankyjewishguy's (CJG) eye yesterday and he thought he'd share them with you.

First, this: "Charlie Sheen Offers Some Advice to Lindsay Lohan." OMG! Can you imagine how bad things would have to be in your life to be getting advice from Charlie Sheen? This is like asking Mel Gibson for tips on reaching out to the Jewish community, or John Edwards for marital advice. Heaven help Lindsay Lohan.

Then there was, "Horse Visits Starbucks Drive-Thru." What the headline failed to note was that there was a rider on that 'thar horse; it didn't just wander in there by itself. The horse, no doubt, used the occasion to carry on a loud cell phone conversation. Oh, and this didn't happen in Manhattan or L.A. It was in Plano, Texas, of course.

"Egypt Leaders Found 'Off' Switch for Internet," said yesterday's New York Times about the five days during the recent uprising that the Egyptian government managed to shut down the entire Internet in that country. CJG never knew the Internet had an on-off switch. Where do you suppose they keep it? In Al Gore's house? Under Kim Il Jong's bouffant? And besides the Egyptians, who else knows where it is?

Believe it or not, this little switch
controls the entire Internet. But where is it?

CJG loved this one from a local web site: "Temperature Could Rise to 60 on Friday." Now, CJG knows that means nothing to many of you, but trust him, this is the best news in a long time because the winter snows that have piled up around here have remained frozen in place for weeks and are so high that everyone in these parts feels like a rat trapped in a maze...and there's no pulling up to the Starbuck's Drive-Thru on a horse drawn sleigh. Oh, then again, maybe there is.

Overhead view of CJG's neighborhood from space.
If you look closely you'll find the on-off switch for the Internet.

Afraid of His Own Shadow

Today, as you know from the saturation news coverage that has knocked the Egyptian Revolution off the front pages, is Groundhog Day in the United States. For those visiting this blog from other countries, Groundhog Day is a very important American holiday in which a bunch of people in a small town in Pennsylvania wait for a groundhog to come out of his burrow to have a look around. If the groundhog sees his shadow it means there will be six more weeks of winter. If he doesn't see his shadow it means winter is almost over. Or the other way around. Honestly, crankyjewishguy (CJG) doesn't think a groundhog knows his ass from his elbow, let alone understands what his shadow is, but there you have it.

Crankyjewishguy (CJG) knows what people from other countries must be thinking: the United States is one of the most technologically advanced countries on Earth and spends billions of dollars every year studying, analyzing and predicting the weather and this is how they do it? The answer is yes, this is exactly how we do it.

In a normal year CJG would anxiously await the news from Gobbler's Knob, Pennsylvania the way he awaits his colonoscopy results. But this year he doesn't care. First, he's in Boca Raton where it's already summer (80 degrees as CJG writes), and second, no matter when spring comes to New England, it's going to be at least August before all the snow melts. And, frankly, there's another reason: CJG has lived more than five decades now and he doesn't believe in the groundhog anymore. CJG can't remember a year when the groundhog's prediction was right, at least in New England. If you live in New England and it's February 2nd, there's always at least six weeks of winter left regardless of whether the sun is out in Pennsylvania.

Now, as for Boca, CJG continued his streak of consecutive vacation days on which he has run into people he knows, or close to it. Readers will recall that when CJG was in Puerto Rico in December he could hardly turn around without bumping into people from home, including the kid who used to work at his local Starbucks, and yesterday, walking the beach, it happened again, but only because CJG made the mistake of wearing a t-shirt with the name of the town where he lives on it. CJG hadn't walked a hundred feet before an excited couple from CJG's home town came running up to see if maybe they knew one another. CJG didn't recall ever running into them at the supermarket or the library, or denting their fender at the bad intersection near the post office, so pleasantries were exchanged, mostly about how smug we felt walking the beach while our neighbors were being buried in another foot of snow. But CJG suspects that he could have been wandering the streets of Khartoum in the same t-shirt and the exact same thing would have happened because that's the kind of guy he is: friend to all the people.

No need for the groundhog here. The weather forecast is for several
thousand more years of sunshine with occasional hurricanes.

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.

Starbucks Unveils New Logo: Company Collapses

People lacking crankyjewishguy's (CJG) sense of perspective probably thought the big news story this week was the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives, or maybe the impending start of a new season of American Idol. But those people would be wrong because the big news this week, and it really is HUGE, is that to celebrate its fortieth anniversary Starbucks has unveiled a new logo! It looks like this:

Just kidding. It actually looks like this:

No, the new logo isn't four coffee cups lined up on the bar at a Starbucks indicating a ten minute wait for your drink; it's the one to the far right. See the difference? The mermaid, which Starbucks calls the Siren, is no longer imprisoned in a ring that says "Starbucks Coffee." CJG thinks this means she's free to swim away. Maybe all the way to a Peet's. Somehow, though, this depiction of the evolution of the Starbucks logo reminds CJG of this:

As fans of CJG know, CJG has a love/hate relationship with Starbucks. First, he is a major shareholder in the company with about five shares, give or take. Second, he is the proud owner of the Starbucks equivalent of the frequent flyer card, a gold credit-card type thingee with his very own name on it. This means that every time he racks up fifteen drinks as Starbucks, or roughly every other day, he gets a coupon for a free drink. Third, though he frequents Starbucks with alarming frequency he is always at a low boil that the company doesn't take steps to discourage cell phone use in the stores which means his fellow patrons are always bringing him to the brink of a full boil. So, the news that Starbucks was changing its logo hit CJG right in the solar plexus, the region between Mercury and the sun.

Changing a corporate logo, especially one as ubiquitous as Starbucks', is no small proposition. They no doubt paid some consulting firm millions of dollars to come up with something as brilliant as simply removing part of the old logo and changing the mermaid from black and white to white and green, not coincidentally, CJG suspects, the color of money. Now they have to spend untold millions more to change all that stationery and all those business cards, toss about eight billion cups with the old logo and make fifteen billion of the new ones, and change the signage in every one of their seven million stores in the Milky Way Galaxy and on and on and on. The whole thing probably cost more than the gross national product of Canada. All this begs a simple question: could it possibly be worth it? Is CJG's decaf mocha latte with whipped cream going to taste any better as a result? CJG guesses he'll find out soon. Personally, CJG would have preferred a major investment in heavily upholstered furniture so he could sleep more comfortably at Starbucks, a matter he plans to raise at the next shareholder meeting.

You Call This a Wonderful Life?

Today, crankyjewishguy (CJG) feels like Ray Kinsella, the character played by Kevin Costner in the 1988 film, Field of Dreams. For those much younger than CJG, Field of Dreams is about a farmer in Iowa who hears a voice telling him to turn his valuable cornfield into a baseball diamond and when he does, Shoeless Joe Jackson and the 1919 Chicago White Sox show up to play. It's a documentary. Anyway, CJG isn't hearing more voices than usual, and none have told him to build a baseball field yet. Mostly they tell him to fold the laundry or take out the trash. So, why does CJG feel like Ray Kinsella today? Because there's a scene in the movie where Ray stares wistfully out the window at Christmastime watching the snow cover his precious baseball field. If Ray had been more imaginative or Jewish (same thing), he'd have made provisions for turning the baseball field into a hockey rink, hence CJG's major criticism of the movie. Anyway, today CJG is staring out the window of his local Starbucks (where else?) as the first snow of winter descends on his little town of Bedford Falls and that makes him cranky.

CJG's view from the window of Starbucks.

Actually, CJG doesn't really mind the first snow of the season. It harkens back to his days as a young lad in New Jersey when he used to don skates with his friend, Hans Brinker, and glide over frozen ponds until his mother called out to say his hot cocoa and latkes were ready. But, CJG knows this is just the first snowfall of a winter that will last until April. It's days like this when CJG understands the appeal of Chinese food served under palm trees in Miami Beach on Christmas.

Tower of Babel

I'm in Starbucks. Who isn't?

crankyjewishguy (CJG) spends an inordinate amount of time (and money) in Starbucks, but he hates his local Starbucks because it's very crowded and noisy. But he keeps going back because it's close to home. At Starbucks, CJG observes that 99% of the population is self-absorbed and completely oblivious. Here is a bunch of pictures of people in Starbucks.

"Hold on. The asshole at the cash register
 is interrupting me to take my order."

"Hey, I finally got laid last night!"

"My gastroenterologist says I have three
polyps on my colon, can you believe that?"

Waiting for upgrade (or Godot).

This is more like it.

"A black man is president? That's rich!"

"I'm in Starbucks. Where are you?"

"Am I the world's biggest schmuck, or what?"

"The dorks behind me are telling me to shut the fuck up.

What's their problem?"

What a powerful and important man.

CJG has written to Starbucks about eight thousand times suggesting that if they want to move a notch above McDonald's they should encourage customers to keep cell phone conversations private, preferably by taking them outside. (CJG always mentions he is a major Starbucks stockholder. He thinks he owns at least five shares.) Of course, Starbucks never does anything except send him coupons for free drinks with a preprinted card that says they hope his next visit is better. (For your free coupon, send a complaint of any kind to Starbucks by clicking here.) CJG thinks one problem is that the Starbucks logo sends the completely wrong message: the mermaid appears to be holding two cell phones, one in each flipper.