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.