- My oldest friend sent me an email about International Disturbed People’s Day. Somehow, I feel I should receive not an e-mail, but an invitation, an engraved invitation. The e-mail was funny, but I looked and couldn’t find any agreement on the exact date on which the event is celebrated. I find that disturbing.
- Department of things I hope nobody buys: The Kate Middleton doll being sold by the Franklin Mint for $195.00.
- The Mets are apparently unfamiliar with Abbott & Costello. They have a shortstop in their training camp named Hu. Everyone who is familiar with Abbott & Costello knows Hu should be on first and I Don’t Give A Darn should be the shortstop.
- If you apply for a visa to visit China from the United States, the application asks for your marital status. One of the choices they give you is “spinster.”
- The government of China, from time to time, blocks access from within the country to certain Internet sites. Facebook is one of them. Expatriates call this action the great firewall of China.
- My son reports that there are tons of restaurants in Shanghai that serve American takeout food, but none of them are staffed entirely with American waiters.
- World traveler that my son is, he also reports that the McDonald’s Restaurant in which he dined in Shanghai doesn’t put salt on the French fries.
- The five-second rule is bogus. You know. That’s when you drop some food on the ground and eat it anyway because it wasn’t on the ground very long. Who says it’s bogus? Dr. Roy M. Gulick, chief of the division of infectious diseases at Weill Cornell Medical College. As quoted in the NY Times on February 28th, he said, “Eating dropped food poses a risk for ingestion of bacteria and subsequent gastrointestinal disease, and the time the food sits on the floor does not change the risk.”
- When Duke Snider died, not only did Newsday publish a picture of the Duke in a right-handed batting stance (in an era of switch hitters, Duke was a devout lefty hitter), but the Daily News published an editorial cartoon of Duke in heaven in which he had a glove on his right hand while he was catching a ball. In baseball shorthand, when he was playing, Duke would have been described as “bats left, throws right.” In Duke”s heyday, neither paper would have made either mistake, but the Dodgers have now been in LA longer than they were in Brooklyn, and Duke lived so long that nobody at either paper knew the answer without thinking about it.
- I have a Canon Pixma MP980 printer. It’s a wonderful device, except that the ink is more expensive than even gasoline, and it uses a lot of ink quickly. Since it cleans its heads every time you print anything, it will use all of your colored ink even if you only print in black and white. Canon makes a combo pack of four of the six ink cartridges you need for this printer. You also need a gray ink cartridge the same size and a larger black cartridge. I always wondered why they didn’t include the gray cartridge with the other four the same size and now I know. There are Canon printers that use the four cartridges in the combo pack, but don’t need the gray one.
- My wife’s latest theory is that light-weight, plastic garbage cans cause wind storms.
