A LITTLE HASTY, A LITTLE BETTER

TBP CLASSIC: “DEATH OF A TOASTER”

From May 2000, before I’d ever even heard of a ‘blog.’

It has not been a good week for mechanical things here at the dacha. The week got off to a rousing start on Tuesday, when the Richardson County “roads” claimed a new victim.

Here’s how it happened: The main route into Falls City from here takes me down what’s known as Kunz Corner Road (unless you live north of me, in which case it’s known as Palmer Corner Road, but I digress). Now, that particular road carries a lot of traffic, maybe 100 vehicles a day. I know that doesn’t sound like a lot to some of you, but trust me, for a gravel road, that’s freeway traffic. Kunz Corner Road is in such notorious disrepair that the UPS drivers are not allowed to use it. It’s potholed, washboarded, and generally covered with loose gravel.

Lately it’s been even worse than usual. It actually rained here the first part of this week, so now the road is not only potholed and washboarded, but rutted as well. How bad is it? I drove my truck down it on Monday, and dang if the road didn’t bounce me around so hard that the truck sloughed about 45 degrees off a straight ahead track. It gets disconcerting.

So I avoided Kunz Corner Road and started going into town on the Straussville Road. It’s a lot better, with two notable exceptions: there’s a vicious bump on the far side of a railroad crossing just west of the USDA office, and there’s a bridge just north of Straussville itself that has an 8″ deep pothole right in front of it.

Tuesday I ran into town like a fiend, trying to beat a check to the bank. I made it with plenty of time to spare, as it turns out. So I go roaring back up Straussville Road. I hit the rail crossing by the USDA office and catch a little air on the downside. (I love doing that.) I slow down to 50 when I hit Straussville (which is nothing more than a house, a machine shed, and a grain elevator, but the railroad still stops there) and blast it on north of town, because if you catch that one pothole just right, you almost go
weightless across the bridge.

So here comes the bridge KCHUNK and there I go! Once across the bridge, though, I heard this strange white-noise sound coming from the back. I pulled the truck over to make sure I wasn’t trailing suspension parts or a pedestrian or God forbid a shredded tire. I walked to the back of the truck and what to my wondering eyes should appear?

The tailgate, literally hanging on by a thread.

Not a good omen to start the week. Things got worse on Thursday, when I drove the Honda into town via the same route. I had noticed that one of the tires was looking a little low. I returned to the Tire Store of Indentured Servitude, knowing that I’d be out at least ten bucks. It was a nice day, so I meandered aimlessly about downtown while they worked. When I got back, bad news: ALL FOUR TIRES WERE GOING FLAT. The back two just had nails in them, but the front two had worn down to the steel belts. Oh, and it was out of alignment too. It would take $150 to get the car back on the road, plus about three hours of my time. And no, unfortunately, they’d already loaned out their loaner car. Grrr.

What do you do when you’re stuck in a tire store for three hours? That’s a rhetorical question–it’s happened to me twice in the last six months and I *still* don’t know. If it weren’t for the news stand at the Grocery Store Formerly Known As Hinky Dinky, I’d probably be stuck paging through all their back issues of Modern Tire Dealer.

I made it back home by about 4, lighter in the wallet and grumpier than a gathering of “Matlock” fans. It was too early for dinner, but the rumble in my gullet would not be denied. I grabbed an English muffin, popped it into the toaster, and sat down in the living room for just a minute.

Then just two minutes. Then three. Still no POING from the toaster. I sprung back into the kitchen just as the smoke began pouring from the slots. I jerked the plug out of the wall and flung the flaming English muffin directly out of the toaster slots and into the front yard.

That was it. That was all I could take. One too many mechanical betrayals in a week filled with stress. I had no choice. The toaster was going to pay.

I spun it over my head, lasso-like, by its cord, then flung it down the road. (That’s the great thing about living in the country. I’d like to see you try something like that in town.) Then I did it again. And again. Then I picked up all the plastic parts and chucked them into the burn barrel. Charcoal lighter fluid. Match. Two-week-old potato salad. Bye-bye, junk toaster.

The only negative aspect of this senseless act of toastercide, of course, is that now I had no way of making toast. This is a big problem, since toast is one of my four food groups, along with pizza, coffee, and things other people give to me.

Have you shopped for toasters lately? My WORD! I’ve had computers that weren’t so advanced, and here I am thinking specifically of the VIC-20. They’ve all got names like “BagelSmart” or “PastryPerfect” or “LuftWaffle” or some other spaceless Space Age name. I actually found one with something called “ToastLogic,” an onboard COMPUTER CHIP that senses when the toast is done to perfection. Twenty years ago, we would have laughed at such a concept. Twenty years later though . . . well, I still think it’s funny.

I had only two criteria for the new toaster: It had to cost less than $30, and it had to not be a Procter-Silex, since that’s who made the scapetoaster I’d wrecked the day before. I finally found one, a Toastmaster, ’cause hey, with a name like that, they must mean business.

In case you’re wondering, yes. My new toaster does indeed have “ToastLogic.” It makes mediocre toast. Anybody want to play Cowboys and Indians? I get to be the cowboy.

YOU’VE GOT TO START THEM EARLY . . .

. . . especially if you live in enemy territory.

FALLING DOWN ON THE JOB

Egads. I haven’t posted any baby pictures in six days. Let me fix that:

. . . SO WHO’S PROUDER?

WHAT ‘APPREHENSIVE’ LOOKS LIKE

HELLO CRUEL WORLD

May I introduce to you . . .

Serena Caroline Hasty, born this morning in Beaver Dam, WI. She is 6 pounds 9 ounces, 19.25″ long. Mother and child are both resting comfortably tonight. Dad isn’t so sure how he’s going to do, since I’m at home, away from them.

TBP’S GUIDE TO PICKING A COLLEGE MAJOR

(This post has been sent to go play in Traffic. And I, for one, welcome my new FARK overlords.)

Since college students are a significant portion of TBP’s readership (I think one of my seven readers is in college), and choosing a major is probably the fourth or fifth most important part of the college experience, I thought I’d help some of you along with a guide to what you can expect if you choose to major in certain popular fields of study. After all, you don’t discover what some of these majors are really like until you’re 24 credits into them, and by then it’s too late to turn around. So, to prevent educational disasters like the several I experienced, forthwith, I preventpresent the TBP Guide To Picking A College Major. We’ll go through the academy department by department . . . which is what I did for my first two and a half years of college.

Accounting is a great field for those whose idea of a good time is trying to figure out if the fourth debit on page D41 of the ledger is supposed to be $438.43 or $484.33. Accounting majors alphabetize their gardens and organize their sock drawers based on predicted date of replacement.

Art majors spend four years in near-total isolation preparing for careers at which they will probably never get a chance to succeed. This is why you see art majors and college basketball players hanging out together all the time.

Art history involves four years of looking at slides and going to museums, and forty-five years of working the 3 to 11 shift at Domino’s.

Biology is a good major for those who aspire to be doctors. Biotechnology is a good major for those who aspire to be Dr. Frankenstein.

Business administration would seem to be a good major for those who want high-paying jobs after graduation. After all, the want ads are full of jobs for which a degree in business is required. So remember, if you long for the sort of job that’s so mind-shatteringly boring employers are forced to advertise its availability, major in business.

Chemistry majors have to endure all manner of snickering about the possible illegal uses of their studies. You should only major in chemistry if you have a thick skin or a well-trained goon squad.

Communications majors live in absolute denial of how little money talk-radio hosts and TV reporters actually make.

Computer science used to be a great way to get on board the gravy train. Now it’s a great way to wind up eating Gravy Train.

Economics: There are those who say that religion is despicable because it is nothing more than a bunch of unprovable assertions about that which is ultimately unknowable; furthermore, these assertions are frequently contrary to plainly-evident fact and represent nothing more than a backhanded attempt to rule the world by means of subjugating humanity through the application of ritualistic mumbo-jumbo which means nothing to the non-brainwashed. I didn’t realize economics was a religion until I wrote this paragraph.

Education is a great major for those who have always wanted to be blamed for all of society’s problems, from drug abuse to property taxes. If you’ve got buckets of unwanted self-esteem you just can’t get rid of, hasten thee to the teachers’ college.

Engineering students spend four years in agony, taking brutal math and science classes. Many would-be engineers wash out and wind up in easier fields, like Middle East peace negotiations. But the dirty little secret is that engineering students smile so much at graduation because they know they’ve solved their last differential equations and can spend the rest of their careers just looking things up in handbooks.

English was in danger of dying out as a field of study due to a lack of lunatic interpretations around which to structure doctoral theses. Then along came Jacques Derrida and the twin demons of deconstructionism and semiotics, ensuring that PhD candidates will never lack for thesis material again, since it just might be possible that Julius Caesar is actually about Shakespeare’s deeply-sublimated fetish for root vegetables.

Geography: If you’ve ever thrown a hand full of pocket change on the table and spent three hours staring at the patterns it formed, you may be a budding geographer. Either that, or you just drank a full bottle of cough syrup. Otherwise, geography is a great major for people who think that they may one day be called upon to prove that, in fact, they can find certain parts of their anatomy with two hands and a map.

Geology majors usually find some sort of employment in the oil industry. Sometimes this is great; when the awl bidness is booming, the money flows like . . . well, like oil. But it’s fickle; you might also find yourself unemployed and trying to sell a house in Dalhart, Texas. Either that, or you’ll wind up as Vice-President, and I am not sure which fate sounds worse.

History is based on the idea that, if I know the winning lottery numbers for the past five years, I stand a better chance of picking tonight’s winning numbers.

Mathematics majors find employment as teachers, statisticians, actuaries, and stadium gatekeepers.

Philosophy is the biggest scam in academia. I ought to know; it was my undergrad major. In philosophy, you don’t have to be right; you just have to sound like you’re not wrong.

Political science appeals to three basic types of people: Pre-law students (insert punchline here), persons interested in foreign service (while we do have diplomatic missions in Paris, Fiji, and the Bahamas, bear in mind that we also have people in Gdansk, Ouagadougou, and Ulaan Bator), and persons who are actually interested in politics. The latter are guaranteed perpetual employment, since the only thing more difficult to explain than the ridiculous, self-contradictory behavior of politicians is the ridiculous, self-contradictory behavior of voters.

Public administration students spend four years in college doing the college-student thing, then two more years in in grad school. At the end of this, they get a government desk job. Why everybody doesn’t major in public administration, I’ll never know.

Sociology majors study complicated problems without any feasible solutions. It’s a great major if you one day expect to be named head coach of the Arizona Cardinals. Social work is the major to pick if college football is more your speed.

Hopefully, this will help out those of you who are uncertain about the future path of your life. Just remember, though, that ultimately, you can’t put a price on the value of a well-rounded education.

OK, actually, you can. How does $400 a month for the next 30 years sound?

I SAID, ‘DO YOU SPEAK-A MY LANGUAGE?’

This was about the point where my wife’s pregnancy kicked into full gear.–mh

Vidiot is talking about word usage pet peeves, and he’s got some goodies:

decimate, nauseous, imply/infer, less/fewer, disinterested, chaise longue, bemuse

I was almost offended by that last one. Anyway, here’s my list of Language Things Which Rub Me The Wrong Way.*

• your/you’re: Come on, is this really that hard to remember?
• impact as a synonym for affect: You’ve got a perfectly good word–affect–which everybody understands. So why replace it with an ugly word that doesn’t even mean the same thing? Oh, yeah, because too many writers are too lazy to learn the difference between affect and effect. There’s only one way to spell impact, so you can never be wrong.
• spelled-out mispronunciations like playa hata, dat, and a’ight: No, you don’t look cool. You look like the General Foods marketing department trying to get 8-year-olds to buy into your concept of ‘extreme branded toaster pastry-based cold breakfast cereal.’
• ‘I could care less’: This implies that you care a little bit. Perhaps you meant you couldn’t care less?
• ‘athiest’ instead of ‘atheist’: I’ve known a few atheists in my time, but none of them were particularly athy, so it’s hard to say if any of them qualified as the ‘athiest.’ But it does sound like something a starlet would’ve said in in a 50s ‘B’ movie: “Oh, Moondog, you’re the athiest!”
• ‘the exception that proves the rule’: All this phrase means is, if the sign says ‘NO PARKING 3 AM-6 AM,’ you can park there any other time.
• disinterested/uninterested: The first means ‘unbiased,’ the second, well, ‘uninterested.’
• mixture: Technically, if you can’t separate the things being combined, it’s not a mixture, it’s a compound. The Chex Mix is a mixture, the fruit punch is a compound.

(*: or is it ‘That Rub Me The Wrong Way’? I can never remember . . . I think it’s actually ‘That.’)

THE SEARCH ENGINE ANSWER GUY

Welcome to a new irregular feature at TBP. As anybody with a blog knows, search enginges generate tremendous traffic for our sites. However, frequently we bloggers discover that the search phrases which lead people to our sites are a bit . . . uhh . . . how shall I say it? Ridiculous.

Indeed, laughing about strange search phrases has become a regular schtick for many bloggers. But I, for one, have decided to make the this world a better place by committing a semi-random act of kindness for these misguided souls who came to TBP in search of things they are not ever going to find here. I’m going to try to help them out. Forthwith, here are some of the more intriguing queries this site has received just this month, along with some words of wisdom for the searchers thereof.

shakespeare buy me a coke

Quite impossible, I’m afraid. William Shakespeare died in 1616, 270 years before John Pemberton introduced Coca-Cola. The Bard of Avon therefore never enjoyed the cinnamon-lime-and-caramel flavor of the world’s most popular beverage.

Playwrights who could buy you a coke include David Mamet, Eric Bogosian, and Woody Allen.

dave grusin history lesson

Dave Grusin was born in Denver on June 26, 1934. After an early career as a pianist, he entered the world of production music in the mid-1960s. He co-founded GRP Records in the late 70s; the label was known as a purveyor of light but high-quality pop/jazz music. Grusin is perhaps best known as the composer of the themes for the TV shows St. Elsewhere and Baretta.

popular soccer players in the 70 s pele

Yes, that is the complete list.

pronounce syttende mai

It’s a bit difficult. The first vowel sound is a combination ee/oo, so it’s something like ‘SHEEOOt’n'duh MY’. But don’t say the ‘H’, just sort of imply it.

mcdonald quarter pound - layers of cheese

Two. One on top of the burger, and one below it, yet above the condiments.

is it normal for 18 year olds to be single?

Yes.

tony kornheiser radio new show

Mr. Tony still has about 2.5 years left on his ESPN Radio contract. Don’t look for a new show before early 2007.

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I suppose that’s what I get for having a Dadaism Day, isn’t it?

where can i buy olive garden coffee blend

It’s just a hunch, but have you tried the Olive Garden?

greek god mancow

I strongly doubt it.

iowa state quarter design

Last I knew, Iowa State was on the semester system. Readers?

guess papers for medical exams 2004

A. 13.6 grams. The xyphoid process. Rule out osteoarthritis. Four hours, if you don’t use a cart. Hold the pen between your middle and ring fingers, and don’t look down while you’re writing. There are a variety of reasons why the Communists would’ve loved HMOs.

keith urban immigrant

Yes, he is. Mr. Urban was born in New Zealand on October 26, 1967. Dave Grusin was exactly 33 years and four months old on that day.

destiny stahl pictures

Sigh. How much longer? Fine. You want ‘em? Here you go! There’s a whole page full of them. Now leave me alone.