Just above the porcelain retort appeared a little advice on the wall: “Notify Staff If Toilet Dysfunctions”. I appreciate this doctor’s clean and modern facilities and was touched by the thoughtful reminder to remain socially aware if things run amiss — while not loading on the responsibility quite as much as the airplane bathrooms that request you run a sponge around the place after your visit.

But it seems to me this notice was constructed by someone who spends too much time in a doctor’s office. Or maybe they did indeed intend a situational pun but possess a too-gentle sense of humor and their Brother P-touch couldn’t make a smiley face.

Anyway, the gears of my inner linguist began to grind, churning out alternative versions of the sign, all as syntactically correct as humanly possible:

• Notify Staff If Toilet Malfunctions.
• Notify Staff If Toilet Becomes Dysfunctional.
• Notify Staff In Case of Ejectile Dysfunction (the toilet’s not yours . . .which in your case would be Erectile Dysfunction and you should also tell us about it! Even Vice Presidents can’t perform sometimes.)
• If Toilet Sticks, Wiggle the Flushometer.
• If the toilet through mere obstinacy refuses to perform as desired, please understand. It is not sentient.
• If You See Something, Say Something.
• Flush Failure? Inform Authorities!
• In Case Of FAILURE,
  BREAK ASS
  Running in Opposite Direction.

Or words to that effect.

Written in honor of Bush’s current tour of the Middle East, it is in the form of a letter from the editor of the Gulf News, a newspaper in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Just to remind you, the USA and UAE are important allies in the war against terrorism.

(more…)

I was trying to come up with a blend of “cartoon” and some animal, preferably doggie hybrid style (whoa, that doesn’t sound right). (more…)

Call me uncool, call me urban-not-country, but I hadn’t heard about this particular recreational trend until today, when I was doing some research on the noble gases, answering the kinds of questions that come to me in the shower. Really. Like why are the inert elements all gases at room temperature? And why do they glow? I have thoughtfully provided links to the answers; how noble of me. The second answer is a fairly complete treatment of neon and its history in sign usage, on a site called SnowGlow, and what led me to the subject of this post.

The Greatest Question

Those elemental issues have now been superseded by this greatest question of our time: Why do snowmobilers put funny lights on their rides?

The Hypothesis

I suppose it could be attributed to the typical filtering down to the general public of ethnic or political gestures considered cool and exclusive. It doesn’t take long for any powerful symbol to be co-opted by the masses. Consider the histories of the Raised Fist Salute, the Fist Bump, and the Yellow Ribbon of Tony Orlando and Dawn’s excruciatingly popular song.

The raised fist, whose indelible first impression for me was for Black Power, has since the 1960s been used by millions of people in many different movements. The fist bump, popularized by football and basketball player types, is now observed among hip nerds and even less hip CEOs. And, as anybody who watches the Oscars or follows a gas-guzzling SUV down the freeway knows, that yellow ribbon (in the song, a secret signal for an ex-con) has morphed into little fabric loops of every dye-able color symbolizing any worthy cause.

Wool Gathering

Note that if you dig just the littlest bit into Wikipedia (with the customary Skeptic Filter engaged) it becomes pretty clear that most of these symbols in some form preexisted “modern day” usage. For instance, the raised fist was lifted in the Spanish Civil War and the Russian Revolution(s). The fist bump is a traditional Jamaican greeting. And the yellow ribbon story has existed in poem and song for centuries, since the dawn of time, as it were.

Anyway, what I’m trying to suggest is that lights under snowmobiles may have originated from the influence of Music Television videos depicting flamboyant Hip-Hop artists flashing personalized transportation tricked out with ostentatious lighting effects reminiscent of the style devloped by the Custom Car lowrider movement in Southern California of the 1950s and ’60s.

The Digression

In Brooklyn, whence I hail (at least for the past tenth of my life), a lot of the cars have tiny blue lights mounted on the hood, facing forward. I’m not sure what it means, some gang sign one assumes, but after I moved here I thought seriously of wiring a couple of those babies on my (otherwise unmodified) RAV4, just to fit in. Then I wasn’t sure exactly how to effect their acquisition. I don’t often find myself in an auto supply store, and Borders is disappointingly thin in that department. If I were to happen into a local shop, would I ask for “those cute little blue lights I notice on the indigenous automobiles”? Or how about, “Yo, gimme somma them blue gang lights. Y’know, for the hood o’my ride. Like the Bloods. But blue. The Blue Bloods. Aw, nevermind.”

Maybe once a year, I get my car washed, whether it needs it or not. Usually I’m piggybacking on the free coupon from the 10-minute oil change. Isn’t it fun while your car is being pulled through the 5-buck car wash, killing time in the accessory shop, looking at all the crap people buy to junk up their cars? Oh, how tempting some of that stuff is, way more sophisticated these days than pine tree air fresheners or Playboy mudflaps. A lot of it is high-tech, requiring batteries. Like blue lights. But the better stuff plugs into your cigarette lighter, like the Neverdown DeLuxe Auto-Vibrator I found in my neighborhood Instalube’n'Wash. Just keep the motor idling so the car battery doesn’t drain. Don’t forget the tip. (That’s a complete dramatisation of course. But you get my point.)

The Evidence

But back to the subject. First of all, it kinda seems that you can’t get much lower than a snowmobile, heightwise. Okay, maybe a toboggan. But then where would you put the hydraulic lifts? Now I’m not saying these snowmobiles actually do that hip-hop thing like the socal chebbies, though it would seem to come in handy for ski jumps, moguls, xtreme snowmobiling or whatever. All I know is what I see from the photo above and the SnowGlow website. They’re just kinda sitting there. Glowing.

Whoops, I spoke too soon. Here’s yer jumpin video. Check out NiteRide.

Conclusion

So, I have come to conclude, snowmobilers put funny lights on their rides because it looks freakin awesome.

My wife Laurel, dog Harrigan, and I moved from a dungeon-like apartment on the famous Upper West Side of Manhattan and bought a house in a charmingly funky part of Brooklyn — not as far up as Crown Heights or down as Flatbush, neither as hip as Dumbo nor as stuck-up as Park Slope — a neighborhood where it’s actually rude to not say ‘Hi’ to passers-by or ‘Good Morning’ to your neighbors. Where cute 3-year-olds hang out on the sidewalk under strict parental orders not to get hit by cars while their mothers work in the hair braiding salons. Where many folks compliment your tree pit flower garden — while others drop bottle caps into it. It is a neighborhood rich with cultures.

And wealthy with noise, (more…)

How is it that “honeycomb” became the authoritative nomenclature when describing a hexagonal pattern?

Bee’s Honeycomb	Cow’s Reticulum

• Always-On
• Fool-Proof
• Error-Free
• Always-There
• Perfect-Genius
• Never-Down
• Spotless-Syntax
• Faultless-n-Friendly
• Zero-Defect
• Immune-to-Laws-of-Nature

Offered as Evidence:

(Unretouched screen capture, 2008-01-05.)

“No problem. * Please note: Window locations present increased radiation levels potential, which have been demonstrated in non-trivial samples to cause cancer and genetic mutations. Some mutations are beneficial. This has been a government-mandated notification. * I can offer 47-A or 233-Gamma.”

“Gucking Gamma? On the Greek side of the pucking plane? Nope. Gimme A. Left side. Pucking posh. Then Gamma return. See the sucking city going out. See it again coming home. Can’t get enough of France’s second gift, for 9/11-II. Miss Statue of Liberty gazing at the Eiffel Twoer built on Freedom Tower’s ashes. Freeffel Twoer. Ha. Yeah, 47-A. BOOK, SEAT, 47-A. . . . PLEASE. How many complimentary pretzels do I get?”

“No problem. You have reserved seat 47-A. That flight comes with Class4 amenities: Recycled water is supplied in times of demonstrated medical emergency only. Please acknowledge by stating ‘I Accept.’”

“I ucking accept! Yuck.”

“Please acknowledge by stating ‘I Accept.’”

“I ACCEPT! You tucking turd!”

“Thank you. Your validity is confirmed. Thank you for choosing American Airways.”

“Like there’s a ducking difference.”

Ldawg slapped his transPod® into client-autoguide mode under AA server control. It dutifully jerked toward the jetway, joining streams of similar, though personalized, individual environment capsules, or iEpods™. Shiny decals of aliens and holograms of middle fingers danced off their contours. The stadium sized fuselage was nearly full on his level. As he was glided down the aisle, the nine pods in his row shifted out and back just as he arrived and his slid neatly into place, left-eyeport snugged neatly up against the multiCoat Plexiglas. The 10-10-10 configuration was a model of efficiency. Didn’t the French come up with decimal time, too? “CHARGE” and “LINK” indicators blinked as the transPod auto-Mated with the Airbus 999 and his accumulated waste was evacuated. A fresh breeze of tranquility pheromones wafted up through his custoForm bucket. It almost reminded him of a scratch-n-sniff post card of a New Jersey pine barren. He cocked an eye to the left and gazed out at the wonder.

Does it struggle to avoid the pain of biting itself?

Does it confront a moral dilemma when eating its own kind?

Which reminds me of another conundrum confronted in the deli: Honeycomb Tripe.