Author: Ben

Ben http://benjaminfenster.com/

Strollers are Good

Following are reasons strollers are excellent inventions:

  1. They increase the maximum possible speed at which a child can be transported from one place to another
  2. They decrease arm fatigue resulting from carrying the aforementioned child at the end of the trip when she has become tired
  3. They reduce dramatically the perception that I’m a creepy guy ogling the bikini-clad women coming out of the women’s changing room at the beach.

I watched about seven separate people today give me the dirtiest looks I’ve ever seen, glance down, notice the stroller, and then smile and walk by peacefuilly.

Nice Guy = Creepy Guy + Stroller

Mable

Mable the Monkey was born when I was a child on a trip to Estes Park.  She was sitting on a shelf in Geppetto’s Toy Shoppe with a variety of bears, horses, and several other monkeys of different colors.  Mable and her sister Julie were the only white monkeys in the shop, and we immediately bought them both to take home with us.

Julie stayed with me in my room, making friends with my other stuffed animals, getting constant attention, and finding her fur ever more matted and in need of grooming.  Mable stayed in a bird cage atop our foyer closet (living arrangements for which I never got an explanation I considered adequate) in my mother’s attentive care.  Her fur stayed a shiny white, and she stayed in excellent health.

When inevitably it came time for Julie to go to the Great Stuffed Jungle in the Sky, I was old enough to inherit Mable, and she continues to sit in a corner of my apartment with her gorilla friend Ian, fur still white, posture still perfect, and smile still endearing.

Naturally, Sophie has adopted Mable as her new friend.  I introduced them almost the moment she walked in my door.

This is Mable, the monkey!  And this is Ian, the gorilla!  They’re friends.

Sophie nodded, hugged them, and ran off to play.

Today, when I came home from work, Sophie brought Mable out to the couch and announced, “George is hungry!’

When I naturally answered, in Sophie-friendly language, “Who the heck is George?,” she just replied, “George!  He’s hungry!” and offered Mable for my inspection.

“No, Sophie, that’s Mable! She’s a girl monkey.”

That was three hours ago.

She’s still George.

Counting Sheep

While I lay in bed at the end of the day, I heard Sophie’s bath running as Mommy tried to talk her into taking one.  This is what I heard from the other room:

Sophie:  I don’t need a bath!  I’m a superhero!
Mommy:  You should be Bubble Bath Girl! You can kill monsters with bubbles!
Sophie:  No!

Mommy:  Look how many bubbles you can kill monsters with!

(long beat)

Sophie: One… two…

Longest… bath… ever.

It’s Round! And Yellow!

I went shopping for some color coding labels from Staples this morning, and I particularly enjoy the picture of what a yellow dot looks like.  You can also zoom in if you find that picture of a yellow dot insufficiently detailed.

I’ve written before about Office Depot’s picture of a white poster board (which looks suspiciously similar to the rest of the white website), but now I feel like the giant yellow circle is even more awesome.

Genesis 6:11.com?

The front page of the Metro section in this morning’s Boston Globe featured a helpful guide titled How to build an ark.  The introduction reads:

We’re in the worst recession of most people’s lifetime, and in the midst of the worst stretch of summer weather that anyone can remember. Have things reached biblical proportions? Maybe not, but just in case, we thought it might help to provide instructions on how to build an ark.

The print version features a beautiful infographic that’s partially reproduced online.  In both, the attribution line reads:

Source: Genesis 6:11, eHow.com

I can hear the trailer now, voiced by the late Don LaFontaine: “In a world overtaken by water, one man… one ark… and one Internet connection to eHow.com.   In theaters everywhere, July 23rd.”

The Great Uniter

Finally, as US troops withdraw from Iraqi cities* we learn how influential George W. Bush was in bringing together people of vastly different ideologies.  From this morning’s Associated Press piece on the withdrawal:

“All of us are happy – Shi’ites, Sunnis, and Kurds – on this day,’’ Waleed al-Bahadili said as he celebrated at the park. “The Americans harmed and insulted us too much.’’

* Of course, “withdrawal” is used loosely here.  From the same article:

Despite today’s formal pullback, some US troops will remain in the cities to train and advise Iraqi forces. US forces will return to the cities only if asked. The US military will continue combat operations in rural areas and near the border, but only with the Iraqi government’s permission.

We’re Number One! Occasionally!

The public transportation system in the Boulder, Colorado area is the Regional Transportation District or RTD.

As in most cities, there is no competing public transit network.  Boston has the T, San Francisco has BART, and even New York has its subways and buses cooperating nicely as the MTA.  In Boulder, it’s RTD.

I therefore raised some obvious questions when I saw this banner on a visit to Colorado last year:

We're Number One... of One!

We're Number One... of One!

Chief among those questions: considering the complete lack of opposition, what exactly happened in  1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007?

In their defense, I lived in Colorado for quite a few years, including most of those in question, and I took the bus virtually everywhere.  (My parents would rightly challenge me if I said “everywhere,” having driven me and my friends to every conceivable neighboring city on more than a few occasions — thanks, Mom and Dad — but on balance I used RTD most often.)

I did endure Dick (his real name, as far as I ever learned) for my entire middle school career — the white-haired man who, despite an undying hatred for children and everything they stood for, picked up both the morning and evening runs most likely to have middle school children aboard every day.

But to compensate, I had a driver for much of high school who was fantastic, and whose name I have now completely forgotten.  The proper bus stop I used was about a block from the end of my street, but every single morning this driver would pull slowly up to my intersection and open the door, knowing in advance that I’d be sprinting breathlessly down the street to meet him.  (I always felt guilty about that, but less so when another kid did exactly the same thing at the next stop every morning.)

People like that should get medals.

Or, failing that, they should just hang a big banner on the side of the highway proclaiming that in three out of 13 years referenced, the agency beat itself to become number one.

Verizon LG Bluetooth

I learned today, as evidenced in my previous post, that I can easily transfer pictures from my LG phone to my iMac using Bluetooth.  Since this was not immediately obvious to me, I’ll now share the steps I took for the benefit of all mankind.

First, I made the phone discoverable (Settings > Bluetooth Menu > Options > Discovery Mode > On)

Next, on my iMac I opened the Bluetooth System Preferences pane and clicked the “+” button at the bottom of my list of devices.  After some searching, it discovered my phone and let me select it.  At some point I got to a screen that implied the only thing I could do with this phone was use its Internet connection.  False!

I ignored that screen entirely — in fact, I quit out of the setup wizard at that point — and went back to the Bluetooth System Preferences pane, which now included my phone in the list of devices.

Clicking the “gear” icon at the bottom of that list, I chose “Browse Device.”

There were my files!

It also looks like I could transfer new MIDI ringtones to my phone in that way, although like a civilized adult I want my phone to make a ringing sound when someone calls me.

iMac & Phone: Connected or Not?

Connected?

You can see that the iMac was somewhat conflicted about whether the phone was connected, but otherwise the whole thing went quite smoothly!

srouH erotS

I noticed this sign at the Verizon store in Cleveland Circle:

sruoH erotS

sruoH erotS

Here’s a tip: when posting your store hours, have the sign face outside the store.  Most of the people inside don’t need to know your hours, ’cause they’re already indoors.

Kingpin

Having loved Firefly so entirely that I’ve watched the entire fourteen-episode run about eight times in a row, I thought I’d try another highly-recommended seven-year-old show with a somewhat longer production run.  I’m speaking, of course, of the five season run of The Wire.

I’m only three episodes in and the jury’s still out, but I already love the star drug dealer’s tutorial on how to play chess:

Now look, check it, it’s simple, it’s simple. See this? This the kingpin. A’ight? And he the man. You get the other dude’s king, you got the game, but he trying to get your king too, so you gotta protect it. Now the king, he move one space any direction he damn choose, ’cause he’s the king. Like this, this, this, a’ight? But he ain’t got no hustle.

…

This the queen. She smart, she fierce. She move any way she want, as far as she want. And she is the “go get shit done” piece.