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.