Adventures in Haberdashery

The local paper had a Gifts for Dad ad section and a plaid sport coat caught my attention first because it was hideous and second because they were asking $795.00 for it. And I’m like O My Gawd because the likeliest way somebody would buy that for their dad is if they were using his credit card which how about make him snort Tabasco then blow his nose in sandpaper. Seriously, this jacket could make a sportscaster upchuck. And for that price you could buy 100 jackets at the Salvation Army, not one of which would be half as ugly.

changeable hawk-eagle

The first thing you need to know about the changeable hawk-eagle is that there is such a bird. Beyond that, and I’m going to copy and paste here to mitigate somewhat the awesome burden of actually typing 100 words, “the life histories of raptors from tropical Asia are generally quite poorly-known, even in the case of easily observed raptors such as changeable hawk-eagles.” You may be thinking, “This isn’t starting off in a very promising manner,” but understand there is an extremely old dog behind my chair snoring and farting and also linear thinking has never been my strong suit.

Thumbs up for thumbs!

We win the biomass derby! There are about 8 billion humans, in global terms virtual clones of one another, currently living here. According to scientists, there is no evidence that there have ever been that many of any one species bigger than an ant alive at the same time. Just for comparison, they (smart people) estimate that the T. rex population probably averaged around 20,000 at a time for about a million and a half years for a total of 2.5 billion ever. To be fair, the T. rex had those tiny arms, so sophisticated tool-making would have been problematic.

Choo Choo Charlie

Suddenly and without any proximal sensory trigger, I want some Good & Plenty candy. It turns out I can have a five-pound sack delivered right to my door for less than 25 dollars. This is, of course, from Amazon and probably five pounds is more than I need. But here’s the thing: Amazon offers me a discount if I subscribe to regular deliveries - they recommend every two months. That would be 30 pounds of Good & Plenty per annum which I’m pretty sure is more than an average person eats in an average lifetime, even assuming they like licorice.

"Let's get this over with."

It’s always the end of the world somewhere. The defenders of Masada were dead sure that their struggle would bring about the arrival of the Messiah. Jacob Bernoulli predicted a comet would destroy the Earth in 1719. (The guy they mention when explaining airplane wings was his nephew.) TV preacher Pat Robertson said the world would end in 1982. There still live among us dotards who recall that whole Y2K kerfuffle. Seeing that extinction is apt to entail a lot less work than survival, predicting the imminent end of all things may be seen as a kind of wishful thinking.

A pretty kettle of fish

“A newly opened can of surströmming has one of the most putrid food smells in the world.” I’ll explain. Surströmming is a traditional Swedish food that is prepared by marinating Baltic Sea herring in just enough salt to prevent it from rotting while it ferments in a can for up to a year. It is recommended that the can be opened out of doors, and that’s advice from people who like the stuff. Several international airlines have banned it. So it’s unsurprising that there are a lot of Italian restaurants in Sweden but not so many Swedish restaurants in Italy.

Cranky Codger Chronicals

There once was a library service called Ready Reference where you would dial a phone number and a person would look up facts in actual books and give you your answer. These were some of the finest people in the world. Now instead we have Wikipedia and YouTube, which is like going to a library where the reference section is curated by deranged bonobos. Still, on occasion you can pick up unexpected tidbits of arcane knowledge. I have learned, for instance, that using one of those chin-up bars that you install in a doorframe will lead immediately to coccyx-shattering hilarity.