Real Simple Scores Again

Readers of the blog will recall how much crankyjewishguy (CJG) values the household tips regularly provided by the good people at Real Simple magazine. For those with nothing but time on their hands, it's an incredible resource. For example, if you have a few weeks free, you can fluff your carpets with a dinner fork.

So, CJG was really interested when he saw a Real Simple web feature called "New Uses for Things in the Bathroom." There were 74 of them, but CJG only got up to about 39 before he was overcome with excitement. If you've been fluffing your carpets with a dinner fork, chances are when it comes time to meet your friends at a restaurant, you won't have time for a full shower and shampoo so you can "fake" a shampoo, according to Real Simple, by sprinkling baby powder on your head like a British judge and "combing it to the roots." But, really, can you imagine having so little time you can't spare 30 seconds to wash your hair properly? CJG also liked the suggestion that you can clean the gunk from your tile grout with an electric toothbrush. But it seemed a serious omission not to mention that you should change the toothbrush head when you're done. How did that get by legal? Need to dry your ear canals? A few drops of rubbing alcohol will do the trick, but trust CJG, is you have even a tiny scratch in there it's going to hurt like hell.

But there's no bathroom item that seems to have more uses than dental floss. For those who can't afford $3.99 for a cheese slicer at WalMart, you can use dental floss to slice cheese and hard boiled eggs (do not try on aged parmesan), mend your umbrella when the fabric separates from the metal spines, tie up a chicken or roast, slice a cake horizontally (something CJG has to do every day), or as a thread substitute. Having trouble picturing all this? Here are some visuals (CJG's favorite is the raw chicken):

Using floss to truss the chicken is especially clever since you can use the floss after you've eaten the chicken to clean your teeth or sew on a button. CJG would appreciate it if you didn't tell the people at Real Simple he's using their photos, but since the legal department is asleep at the switch it probably doesn't matter anyway.

All of this inspired CJG to come up with a few tips of his own. For example, you can use your toilet to provide a point of interest in an otherwise bland landscape, though CJG recommends having a back-up plan at home.

Did you know you can also use toothpaste to caulk around your tub? Much easier to use than the real stuff. And, finally, this: if you're making a Blue Hawaiian and run out of Blue Curacao, you can use Vick's NyQuil cold and flu symptom reliever, though you may find your guests nodding off earlier than usual. Bon appetit!

Free Advice for Beating Stress

According to a recent article in Prevention Magazine, everything we've been told about how to reduce stress is wrong. F#&K! How stressful is that! Maybe crankyjewishguy (CJG) should take up smoking. It's supposed to help reduce stress even as it kills you.

This man is stressed about being stressed.

In the article, Prevention conveniently lists "yesterday's wisdom" followed by "today's smart strategy" for reducing stress, and CJG is going to repeat them here along with his own wisdom for beating stress. Ready?

Yesterday's wisdom: Never soothe yourself with food.
Today's smart strategy: Treat yourself to chocolate.
CJG's take: Go on a fast food bender.

Yesterday's wisdom: "Om" your way to calmness.
Today's smart strategy: Do something you love.
CJG's take: CJG loves to "om." Now what's he supposed to do?

Yesterday's wisdom: Control your temper.
Today's smart strategy: Throw a tantrum now and then.
CJG's advice: Go ape shit on the next person who says "have a nice day" to you.

Yesterday's wisdom: Turn to family and friends for support.
Today's smart strategy: Cuddle up with your pet.
CJG's take: CJG owns a small turtle. When he tried to follow Prevention's advice he crushed the poor thing. Now he has to sue Prevention and he finds nothing to be quite as stressful as depositions. This was CJG's beloved turtle, Pokey. R.I.P., Pokey-mahn.

Yesterday's wisdom: Never go to bed angry.
Today's smart strategy: Just get some sleep already!
CJG's advice: Get some bennies and stay up for seven nights straight listening to The Doors.

Yesterday's wisdom: Express your feelings.
Today's smart strategy: Keep it to yourself.
CJG's advice: Feel yourself.

CJG is feeling better already. Om.

Another "Family Values" Republican Bites the Dust in Sex Scandal

Well, here we go again: another "family values" Republican politician caught in a tawdry sex scandal. This time it's Congressman Christopher Lee of New York, now former Congressman Christopher Lee, who resigned Wednesday when some interesting pictures of him turned up on the Internet. This is not one of them:

Former Congressman Christopher Lee (R.-N.Y.)

We'll get to Mr. Lee in just a moment, but for the record, crankyjewishguy (CJG) wants to make it clear that he actually doesn't care about the sex lives of presidents and members of Congress, unless we're talking about Congresswoman Kristi Noem of South Dakota; then he's very interested. He thinks there have been, and are, some very fine leaders with less than perfect records of marital fidelity and sexual propriety. Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy, and Millard Filmore come to mind. (Actually, CJG doesn't know anything about Millard Filmore's sex life, he just loves the name.) But, CJG does take exception to politicians who campaign on so-called "family values," which usually includes a rabid antipathy to gay rights and gay marriage, whose own family values leave much to be desired. Their sanctimony is repellent. There's Mr. Family Values, Republican Senator David Vitter of Louisiana, who was caught up in a prostitution scandal that revealed the Senator's affinity for diapers, yet his campaign commercials use his wife and kids for props to show you what a great family man he is. (Despite the scandal he got re-elected by a wide margin last year.) There was Republican Senator Larry Craig of Idaho, super conservative, arrested for soliciting gay sex in an airport men's room. There's Republican Senator John Ensign of Nevada, also a big family values guy, who was sleeping with the wife of one of his aides. And, of course, there's Newt Gingrich who was trying to impeach Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky matter as he himself was having an extramarital affair. There are frisky Democrats, too, of course, with John Edwards being Exhibit A, but he appears to be certifiably nuts and he didn't run around campaigning on a platform that tells other people how they ought to lead their sex lives. These GOP hypocrites take to the floor of the House or Senate and rail against gay marriage because, they argue, it will undermine the American family, then ravage their own American families because their egos and, excuse CJG for this, their dicks get in the way. Marriage is so special, they claim, heterosexuals have to fight to keep it for themselves or it won't be special anymore. How full of shit are these people?

So, back to Congressman Chris Lee. It seems he's one one of those self-respecting, cosmopolitan men CJG wrote about a few days ago who troll Craigslist for prey. And he made the mistake of sending one of the "women seeking men" on Craigslist a photo of himself which found it's way -- surprise, surprise -- into cyberspace. Here's the photo in question:

He rather fancies himself, don't you think? Notice the tightly curled right fist so he can flex a little political muscle, and the vapid, penetrating gaze that asks, "are you as into me as I am?" Maybe we should be grateful for small favors; at least he kept his pants on and had the decency to dispense with the American flag as a backdrop.

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.

Random Musings for a Wednesday

"JetBlue Passenger Swallows 50 Cocaine Pills, Flies to U.S." said a headline in The Huffington Post yesterday. Crankyjewishguy (CJG) guesses the only question is whether she flew to the States on the plane or all by herself. Apparently, 21 year-old Luisa Gill swallowed the pills in the Dominican Republic and was arrested on her arrival in Boston when she began "acting suspiciously." CJG suspects she was going round and round on the baggage carousel for a few hours when police realized no one was going to claim her.

The view out your JetBlue window when you fly after
 swallowing 21 capsules filled with cocaine.

It was also reported yesterday that Bristol Palin, the daughter of Half Baked Alaska, plans to run for political office some day, if she sees "something that needs to be changed." That's good to know because (a) we could certainly use someone with her vast life experience and high school education and (b) it means that everything is copasetic with Bristol right now and nothing needs to be changed. Kid, if your mother, by some miracle, gets elected president that will be your cue. In the meantime, the baby's diaper probably needs to be changed...now. Hard to believe that two and half years ago she was just an unwed, knocked-up teenager on pre-maternity leave from Wasilla High School and now, by dint of her intellect and hard work, is a national celebrity who owns her own home in Phoenix. Kids, here's a dirty little secret: the key to success in life isn't hard work and education; it's getting a senile politician named John McCain to put your ambitious, yet utterly unqualified mother on a national presidential ticket.

In other news, Orbitz.com, the online travel web site, surveyed customers ahead of Valentine's Day to find out which U.S. cities people thought were the most romantic. Talk about your scientific survey. Respondents were given only six cities to choose from: San Francisco (which came in first), followed by Miami, Las Vegas, New York, L.A. and Chicago. Couldn't they have opened up the competition a bit? What about Wilmington, Delaware,  Omaha, Nebraska, or Newark, New Jersey? C'mon, Orbitz, give us some real choices!

There's nothing like a romantic, moonlight stroll through downtown Newark.

And, finally, in the Poetic Justice Department, a man in California was killed yesterday by a rooster. Yes, by a rooster. The deceased was at a cock fight when all hell broke loose (he was not deceased at the time). In the mayhem, one of the roosters, with blades attached to his claw (as they are during cock fights), opened a substantial wound on the man's leg and he later died. Trust CJG, you won't see that on Animal Planet.

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.

We Interrupt These Commercials to Bring You Football

The Black Eyed Peas are in the middle of an incomprehensible musical performance at half-time, so crankyjewishguy (CJG) has a few minutes to start this blog post about last night's Super Bowl commercials. Apologies to readers outside of North America, most of whom don't really care about the Super Bowl. Here in the USA, Super Bowl Sunday is second only to Groundhog Day as a day of national importance and in recent years it's become popular to handicap the television commercials shown during the game, most of which are prepared specifically for the Super Bowl, because the game itself often isn't interesting enough on its own.

So far, CJG is completely underwhelmed with the commercials, though he thought the little kid in the Darth Vader costume who thinks he started his father's Volkswagen with his special powers was really cute, and careerbuilder.com got a chuckle out of CJG, but only because the chimps in the commercial are funny the way chimps always are when they're dressed up in business clothes and driving cars. If Christine O'Donnell doesn't think humans and chimps share a common ancestor, she obviously hasn't seen a chimp in a jacket and tie trying to park a car.

The cost to all these advertisers to run these commercials is astronomical so you'd think Pepsi Max could do better than insipid slapstick in which people get hit in the head or the gut by flying soda cans. And CJG still doesn't know, after all these years, what GoDaddy.com does except make commercials with women with large...you know. If CJG had to guess he'd say Go Daddy is a restaurant chain that competes with Hooters. Sealy tried a little sexual innuendo, far more subtle than Go Daddy, with their "It's Better on Springs" ads, but CJG already has a mattress so he didn't care, and the ad where some guy sucks another guy's finger because he has Doritos residue on it ensured that CJG will never, ever eat Doritos again unless offered some by this Go Daddy girl:

Just what business is Go Daddy in anyway?

Car ads were big; Acura, Audi, BMW, Chevy, Chrysler, Toyota, Kia, Mini Cooper, Mercedes and Hyundai all tried to get CJG to buy a car, but to no avail, and what was Chevy thinking with its ad for the Cruise Eco which made fun of old, hard of hearing people? CJG is no expert in advertising, but this is supposed to motivate car buyers to choose an Eco?

CJG has always loved the eTrade talking baby, but the new ad with the baby and his Italian tailor wasn't nearly as funny as previous eTrade commercials. The baby didn't look like the same baby to CJG, either -- not nearly as cute as this guy:

An eTrade classic: shankapotomous.

Anyway, the Super Bowl is America's annual celebration of its real national pastime, overconsumption, and somewhere during the day-long saturation media coverage a football game was played and one team won and one team lost and now that we have that out of the way will pitchers and catchers please report to spring training so we can start thinking about green grass and blue skies? Thank you.