A student sent me an email the other day because he couldn’t find a writing assignment on the class website.
My Google mail has Smart Reply enabled. In theory, this makes it easier to send quick, appropriate answers.
Yet one of the suggested replies to the flummoxed student was “That sucks.”
Discretion being the better part of teaching, I didn’t go with it. I can only imagine the student opening the response, hoping for directions or, at the very least, a sympathetic ear, and finding instead a slacker retort.
Another email feature, Smart Compose, is more helpful. It suggests words and expressions based on context. If I type, “I’m sorry you dislike,” it might continue, “reading this column.”
In my typically perverse way, however, I am more captivated by the less-helpful Smart Reply. Today, in my ongoing efforts to avoid real work, I emailed myself several sketchy comments to see how Smart Reply would handle them.
For some reason, the program always generates options in threes. Call it the Law of Thirds ported onto a computer screen. Three Bears, Three Little Pigs, Three Blind Mice, three Google options.
“I need you to stop at the grocery store,” I wrote to myself. The possible responses? OK, I will. Will do. What do you need?
Those are relatively helpful for the half-dozen people who use email for a milk run instead of texting the request like the other 328.2 million Americans.
Next, I stepped up my game: “I saw you run that red light,” I typed. Suggested responses: Really? Lol. What?
Deflection, humor and disbelief — boom boom and boom. This algorithm really understands humanity, doesn’t it?
I went ambiguous with the next one: “I ran into your mom today.” This could mean a lot of things. Mom might be a mole for the CIA, a reanimated zombie or a federal prisoner. Running into her might not be so wonderful if she had died in 1982.
The responses: Love it! Who’s this? Nice!
I’m trying to conjure a scenario where running into somebody’s mother would elicit a cutesy-pie “Love It!” but my imagination is failing me. Ditto “Nice!” with the recipient making a cha-ching gesture.
I guess “Who’s this?” wins by default.
Next: “I have incriminating photos.” Answers: Got them, thanks! These are great! Thank you! (There apparently is a fire sale on exclamation points at Google Central.)
“I severed my finger on your fence gate.” Love it! Nice! Wow!
“Where do you want to meet?” I don’t know. Where? My place?
“I hear you are voting for Donald Trump.” I voted. I vote yes. I am not.
Then came the masterpiece, the pièce de résistance, with the funny flying accent marks the French love so much: “I think I am pregnant with your baby.”
The suggested responses? Congratulations! Why? What?
Suggestions one and three are within the realm of possibility, but suggestion two?
Where’s “That sucks” when you really need it?
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Wednesday, September 2, 2020
Sunday, August 23, 2020
Did a cynical generation get the president it deserves?
If I had been 30 or 35 years younger in 2016, I would have voted for Donald Trump.
I would have selected him because, in my callow youth, I equated “outsider” with “good.”
I was too young in the 1970s to care about Watergate, except that the televised hearings interrupted my favorite cartoons, but I still absorbed the basic cynicism about government that was Nixon’s legacy.
The ugliness of the nation’s response to Vietnam, the burgeoning military-industrial complex, the rise of lobbyists and their hidden and not-so-hidden agendas, the proliferation of nuclear arms — all of it got into my DNA in a generalized, non-partisan way.
It ultimately led to a generation — or more — of people like me who came of age believing that all career politicians, Republicans and Democrats, were smarmy and not to be trusted. (I’m sure older readers will attest that governmental distrust did not begin in the 1970s.) I also believed gridlock was good, so a government that was mewed up in debates and didn’t accomplish anything was less likely to hurt anybody.
See? Cynical.
As we Watergate kids grew up, some of us became content creators whose projects underscored and extended that pessimistic worldview. “The X-Files,” for example, combined Nixonian distrust and paranoia with a healthy dose of public-health anxiety (vaccines, carcinogens and the rest) and urban legends to create a heady broth that influenced yet another generation.
These same misgivings and paranoia begat the modern iteration of Fox News, which begat QAnon, which begat a thousand and one memes where facts take a backseat to smarminess, conspiracy and the quick comeback.
All of which is to say that there is an undeniable appeal in the outsider, the maverick, the person who promises to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, to borrow an old expression, by tossing a grenade into the political system and chortling gleefully amid the ruins.
Donald Trump would seem to fit that bill. He comes from the corporate world. He has a healthy disdain for the status quo. His very presence irritates all the right people.
Eighteen- or 20-year-old me would likely have punched Trump’s ticket based on those qualities alone.
What I’ve come to realize over the decades, however, is that blowing things up isn’t enough. The guy with the live grenade in one hand needs to have blueprints in the other and a construction crew right behind him.
Trump is all about the destruction. The destruction of civil discourse. The destruction of democratic norms. The destruction of the rule of law, except where it benefits him.
In the last several months alone, we’ve seen him flounder through a pandemic, civil unrest and now an impending election. His administration’s lack of response and denial of science have contributed to the sickness and demise of more than 170,000 people.
Yet, somehow, he still has the active support of some 40 percent of Americans who have apparently made peace with the misogyny, racist dogwhistling, and election meddling. They are still fascinated by the guy with the grenade.
I’m convinced that, for many voters, politics is like being a fan of a particular sports team. No matter how awful the record, no matter how many people the star player assaults, it’s still their team. To abandon the franchise is to risk that worst of appellations: the fair-weather fan.
Good governance, of course, is not about blowing things up or backing the same horse, time after time. It’s about making laws to protect people and help them live better lives.
In my older and somewhat wiser years, I prefer to believe that many career politicians subscribe to a similar definition. They have dedicated their professional lives to working within a system of carefully delineated — yet imperfect — checks and balances to bring about their vision of what better lives look like.
They may disagree about what tomorrow should be. Some may be more willing than others to cross certain lines to get there.
And for those who are in it just for the money or the glory, or for those who step off the straight and narrow, well ... that’s why we have a free press.
Mavericks are fun to read about in novels or watch in movies. We cheer when they cut through the red tape by coercing a confession with force or punching through problems.
But real society shouldn’t work that way, not and call itself civilized. Trump is not building anything; he’s tearing it all down. Along the way, he’s gone from outsider to insider, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy about the inherent corruption of politics.
Let’s stop glorifying the maverick mindset and start appreciating those who work for change from within, through diplomacy and collaboration. Maybe that way, future generations can grow up with a healthy skepticism, minus the cynicism.
Or maybe I’m still cranky about missing my cartoons during those endless Watergate hearings.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
I would have selected him because, in my callow youth, I equated “outsider” with “good.”
I was too young in the 1970s to care about Watergate, except that the televised hearings interrupted my favorite cartoons, but I still absorbed the basic cynicism about government that was Nixon’s legacy.
The ugliness of the nation’s response to Vietnam, the burgeoning military-industrial complex, the rise of lobbyists and their hidden and not-so-hidden agendas, the proliferation of nuclear arms — all of it got into my DNA in a generalized, non-partisan way.
It ultimately led to a generation — or more — of people like me who came of age believing that all career politicians, Republicans and Democrats, were smarmy and not to be trusted. (I’m sure older readers will attest that governmental distrust did not begin in the 1970s.) I also believed gridlock was good, so a government that was mewed up in debates and didn’t accomplish anything was less likely to hurt anybody.
See? Cynical.
As we Watergate kids grew up, some of us became content creators whose projects underscored and extended that pessimistic worldview. “The X-Files,” for example, combined Nixonian distrust and paranoia with a healthy dose of public-health anxiety (vaccines, carcinogens and the rest) and urban legends to create a heady broth that influenced yet another generation.
These same misgivings and paranoia begat the modern iteration of Fox News, which begat QAnon, which begat a thousand and one memes where facts take a backseat to smarminess, conspiracy and the quick comeback.
All of which is to say that there is an undeniable appeal in the outsider, the maverick, the person who promises to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, to borrow an old expression, by tossing a grenade into the political system and chortling gleefully amid the ruins.
Donald Trump would seem to fit that bill. He comes from the corporate world. He has a healthy disdain for the status quo. His very presence irritates all the right people.
Eighteen- or 20-year-old me would likely have punched Trump’s ticket based on those qualities alone.
What I’ve come to realize over the decades, however, is that blowing things up isn’t enough. The guy with the live grenade in one hand needs to have blueprints in the other and a construction crew right behind him.
Trump is all about the destruction. The destruction of civil discourse. The destruction of democratic norms. The destruction of the rule of law, except where it benefits him.
In the last several months alone, we’ve seen him flounder through a pandemic, civil unrest and now an impending election. His administration’s lack of response and denial of science have contributed to the sickness and demise of more than 170,000 people.
Yet, somehow, he still has the active support of some 40 percent of Americans who have apparently made peace with the misogyny, racist dogwhistling, and election meddling. They are still fascinated by the guy with the grenade.
I’m convinced that, for many voters, politics is like being a fan of a particular sports team. No matter how awful the record, no matter how many people the star player assaults, it’s still their team. To abandon the franchise is to risk that worst of appellations: the fair-weather fan.
Good governance, of course, is not about blowing things up or backing the same horse, time after time. It’s about making laws to protect people and help them live better lives.
In my older and somewhat wiser years, I prefer to believe that many career politicians subscribe to a similar definition. They have dedicated their professional lives to working within a system of carefully delineated — yet imperfect — checks and balances to bring about their vision of what better lives look like.
They may disagree about what tomorrow should be. Some may be more willing than others to cross certain lines to get there.
And for those who are in it just for the money or the glory, or for those who step off the straight and narrow, well ... that’s why we have a free press.
Mavericks are fun to read about in novels or watch in movies. We cheer when they cut through the red tape by coercing a confession with force or punching through problems.
But real society shouldn’t work that way, not and call itself civilized. Trump is not building anything; he’s tearing it all down. Along the way, he’s gone from outsider to insider, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy about the inherent corruption of politics.
Let’s stop glorifying the maverick mindset and start appreciating those who work for change from within, through diplomacy and collaboration. Maybe that way, future generations can grow up with a healthy skepticism, minus the cynicism.
Or maybe I’m still cranky about missing my cartoons during those endless Watergate hearings.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Thursday, August 20, 2020
Why Schools Can't Reopen This Fall
Schools cannot open or reopen this fall.
Because they never closed in the first place.
Schools, you see, are not brick-and-mortar structures, desks and hallways. They are not cafeterias, musty locker rooms and student art on the walls.
Schools are people.
First and foremost, they are children and young adults bound together in a learning community.
They are professionals who have made careers out of introducing others to a world of ideas and knowledge.
They are support staff who nurture young bodies and minds, physically and emotionally.
And they are the community that surrounds these people — parents, grandparents, neighbors, government officials, clergy and taxpayers.
So when many governors — including Ohio’s Mike DeWine — ordered districts to close last spring in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, they were shuttering buildings, not schools.
Because the business and passion of education continued.
Schools changed because of these orders, to be sure. The student’s desk moved to the kitchen table. The classroom shifted to a computer screen or a thick packet of activities. The cafeteria became a line of cars in a parking lot, picking up bagged lunches for the next day or the weekend, delivered by workers smiling behind their masks.
Some teachers went live on Zoom, delivering content in real time. Others recorded their lectures and posted them on YouTube.
I know teachers who visited students’ homes and presented lessons through screen doors or open windows, who answered emails in the wee hours of the morning as students worked through challenging math problems or complicated reading passages.
I know principals who mailed birthday cards and planted yard signs to honor the Class of 2020. Don’t forget technology resource workers who delivered wifi hotspots and diagnosed troubles with tablets and laptops.
And students responded. They submitted work through Google Classroom or email. They dropped it off to front offices or sent it by snail mail. They scheduled one-on-one conferences through video chats.
They persevered even in the face of incredible odds. Some became the primary breadwinners after their parents were laid off. Others cared for younger siblings. At least one of my students was diagnosed with the virus. Would it be OK, they asked politely, if their work came in a little late for the next couple of weeks?
Was it easy? No.
Was it equitable? Sadly, not always.
Were there trade offs? Of course. Students lost out on sports and other extracurriculars. They missed socialization with friends.
But was it school? Undeniably.
Now the nation’s administrators face tough choices — from the kindergarten to the collegiate level: How to juggle students’ educational, social and emotional needs during a still-dangerous pandemic.
How do kids go back to classrooms safely when they could be asymptomatic carriers, spreading a virus with no vaccine, no proven treatments and a variety of long-term side effects even for its many survivors?
And what effect will that return have on the nation’s healthcare system? Will hospitals be overrun with cases? And what happens when flu season begins in earnest?
I feel for every administrator wrestling with these issues, compounded by contradictory messages at the federal level, financial considerations and pressure from stakeholders across the political spectrum.
Many schools are opting for online-only classes again this fall. Some are advancing a hybrid solution — partially online and partially in-person. Others are going back full-tilt.
All have to remain flexible and be prepared to walk back plans if numbers spike or a governor speaks.
Regardless, none of them are truly reopening schools. Because you can’t restart something that never stopped.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Because they never closed in the first place.
Schools, you see, are not brick-and-mortar structures, desks and hallways. They are not cafeterias, musty locker rooms and student art on the walls.
Schools are people.
First and foremost, they are children and young adults bound together in a learning community.
They are professionals who have made careers out of introducing others to a world of ideas and knowledge.
They are support staff who nurture young bodies and minds, physically and emotionally.
And they are the community that surrounds these people — parents, grandparents, neighbors, government officials, clergy and taxpayers.
So when many governors — including Ohio’s Mike DeWine — ordered districts to close last spring in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, they were shuttering buildings, not schools.
Because the business and passion of education continued.
Schools changed because of these orders, to be sure. The student’s desk moved to the kitchen table. The classroom shifted to a computer screen or a thick packet of activities. The cafeteria became a line of cars in a parking lot, picking up bagged lunches for the next day or the weekend, delivered by workers smiling behind their masks.
Some teachers went live on Zoom, delivering content in real time. Others recorded their lectures and posted them on YouTube.
I know teachers who visited students’ homes and presented lessons through screen doors or open windows, who answered emails in the wee hours of the morning as students worked through challenging math problems or complicated reading passages.
I know principals who mailed birthday cards and planted yard signs to honor the Class of 2020. Don’t forget technology resource workers who delivered wifi hotspots and diagnosed troubles with tablets and laptops.
And students responded. They submitted work through Google Classroom or email. They dropped it off to front offices or sent it by snail mail. They scheduled one-on-one conferences through video chats.
They persevered even in the face of incredible odds. Some became the primary breadwinners after their parents were laid off. Others cared for younger siblings. At least one of my students was diagnosed with the virus. Would it be OK, they asked politely, if their work came in a little late for the next couple of weeks?
Was it easy? No.
Was it equitable? Sadly, not always.
Were there trade offs? Of course. Students lost out on sports and other extracurriculars. They missed socialization with friends.
But was it school? Undeniably.
Now the nation’s administrators face tough choices — from the kindergarten to the collegiate level: How to juggle students’ educational, social and emotional needs during a still-dangerous pandemic.
How do kids go back to classrooms safely when they could be asymptomatic carriers, spreading a virus with no vaccine, no proven treatments and a variety of long-term side effects even for its many survivors?
And what effect will that return have on the nation’s healthcare system? Will hospitals be overrun with cases? And what happens when flu season begins in earnest?
I feel for every administrator wrestling with these issues, compounded by contradictory messages at the federal level, financial considerations and pressure from stakeholders across the political spectrum.
Many schools are opting for online-only classes again this fall. Some are advancing a hybrid solution — partially online and partially in-person. Others are going back full-tilt.
All have to remain flexible and be prepared to walk back plans if numbers spike or a governor speaks.
Regardless, none of them are truly reopening schools. Because you can’t restart something that never stopped.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Thursday, August 13, 2020
Cleaning up on hygiene
Have you ever read something that you knew you shouldn’t, but you couldn’t help yourself?
When I was 13, it was “The Exorcist.” That novel gave me nightmares for years and made me hate pea soup. It wasn’t much of a loss. If you’re going to associate a food with demonic possession, you don’t want it to be pizza or ice cream.
Last week, the piece I couldn’t avoid was “Your Body Is a Wonderland” in the Aug. 3 and Aug. 10 issue of The New Yorker. In it, Brooke Jarvis reviews two books on skin, a topic that always makes my own thin layer of external tissue crawl with the thought of microscopic critters feasting on me day and night — especially night.
(Although I know it’s been widely debunked, I still can’t shake the fear that we swallow a certain number of spiders in our sleep each year. It’s another, less-publicized reason to wear a mask. If eight-legged freaks are going to lay eggs in my stomach, they’ll have to gain entrance through my ears.)
The books Jarvis reviews are “Clean: The New Science of Skin” by James Hamblin, and “The Remarkable Life of the Skin” by Monty Lyman. Both appear to address the way we have dissed our epidermis over the last few generations and to extol the virtues of a back-to-basics approach.
Hamblin’s book sounds especially odd. He is a medical doctor who no longer showers, although he “occasionally rinses.”
I went through a phase like this in grade school. I would retreat to the bathroom, fill the tub with water, and then sit beside it, splashing with my hand every once and a while to satisfy my parents, who were listening outside the locked door because apparently there was nothing good on TV.
Instead of bathing, I would read books and comics I had smuggled into the bathroom. My vocabulary was increasing at about the same rate as my B.O.
This went on for a while. I don’t recall a come-to-Jesus moment when my friends confronted me because I was stinking up the classroom — it was the ’70s, and nobody smelled too good — or any teacher phoning home to inquire ever so carefully about why I looked greasier than usual.
One day, I just started to groove on bathing again.
Dr. Hamblin hasn’t outgrown his inner second-grader. He argues we are better off not stripping away the body’s natural biosphere with abrasive soaps and chemicals, only to add them back with commercial moisturizers.
Jarvis makes a point to say that Hamblin still endorses handwashing, however, so coronavirus conspiracy lovers need not apply his rhapsody on the unwashed body to any spurious arguments about herd immunity or letting viruses ooze all around us unchecked.
Fair enough.
The takeaway is that Americans have been sold a bill of goods about cleanliness, to the tune of about “a hundred billion dollars” in 2019. What most Americans today take as a given — wash the body with soap, the hair with shampoo — is not natural, but rather the consequence of generations of marketing decisions to make us feel perpetually dirty.
If I can get serious here for just a moment (it may surprise some of you to realize I was trying to be funny before), this cleanliness manipulation is a reminder that many of the assumptions undergirding our lives —about gender, race, beauty, education, transportation, faith and civic duty, to name only a few — are not some profound expression of natural law or eternal truth, but the result of coordinated campaigns that benefitted somebody, somewhere.
Follow the money, goes one old saying. “Nothing happens until somebody sells something,” goes another.
All of which isn’t to say that I’ll be swearing off either soap or showering anytime soon. Nor do I plan to read Hamblin’s or Lyman’s books.
A few pages of skin creepiness is more than enough for me. If I want to be scared this summer, I can always reread “The Exorcist.” Or just watch the evening news.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
When I was 13, it was “The Exorcist.” That novel gave me nightmares for years and made me hate pea soup. It wasn’t much of a loss. If you’re going to associate a food with demonic possession, you don’t want it to be pizza or ice cream.
Last week, the piece I couldn’t avoid was “Your Body Is a Wonderland” in the Aug. 3 and Aug. 10 issue of The New Yorker. In it, Brooke Jarvis reviews two books on skin, a topic that always makes my own thin layer of external tissue crawl with the thought of microscopic critters feasting on me day and night — especially night.
(Although I know it’s been widely debunked, I still can’t shake the fear that we swallow a certain number of spiders in our sleep each year. It’s another, less-publicized reason to wear a mask. If eight-legged freaks are going to lay eggs in my stomach, they’ll have to gain entrance through my ears.)
The books Jarvis reviews are “Clean: The New Science of Skin” by James Hamblin, and “The Remarkable Life of the Skin” by Monty Lyman. Both appear to address the way we have dissed our epidermis over the last few generations and to extol the virtues of a back-to-basics approach.
Hamblin’s book sounds especially odd. He is a medical doctor who no longer showers, although he “occasionally rinses.”
I went through a phase like this in grade school. I would retreat to the bathroom, fill the tub with water, and then sit beside it, splashing with my hand every once and a while to satisfy my parents, who were listening outside the locked door because apparently there was nothing good on TV.
Instead of bathing, I would read books and comics I had smuggled into the bathroom. My vocabulary was increasing at about the same rate as my B.O.
This went on for a while. I don’t recall a come-to-Jesus moment when my friends confronted me because I was stinking up the classroom — it was the ’70s, and nobody smelled too good — or any teacher phoning home to inquire ever so carefully about why I looked greasier than usual.
One day, I just started to groove on bathing again.
Dr. Hamblin hasn’t outgrown his inner second-grader. He argues we are better off not stripping away the body’s natural biosphere with abrasive soaps and chemicals, only to add them back with commercial moisturizers.
Jarvis makes a point to say that Hamblin still endorses handwashing, however, so coronavirus conspiracy lovers need not apply his rhapsody on the unwashed body to any spurious arguments about herd immunity or letting viruses ooze all around us unchecked.
Fair enough.
The takeaway is that Americans have been sold a bill of goods about cleanliness, to the tune of about “a hundred billion dollars” in 2019. What most Americans today take as a given — wash the body with soap, the hair with shampoo — is not natural, but rather the consequence of generations of marketing decisions to make us feel perpetually dirty.
If I can get serious here for just a moment (it may surprise some of you to realize I was trying to be funny before), this cleanliness manipulation is a reminder that many of the assumptions undergirding our lives —about gender, race, beauty, education, transportation, faith and civic duty, to name only a few — are not some profound expression of natural law or eternal truth, but the result of coordinated campaigns that benefitted somebody, somewhere.
Follow the money, goes one old saying. “Nothing happens until somebody sells something,” goes another.
All of which isn’t to say that I’ll be swearing off either soap or showering anytime soon. Nor do I plan to read Hamblin’s or Lyman’s books.
A few pages of skin creepiness is more than enough for me. If I want to be scared this summer, I can always reread “The Exorcist.” Or just watch the evening news.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Tuesday, August 4, 2020
Wing, wing, who’s there?
Given that much of the world is on fire, literally and figuratively, I hope you didn’t miss National Chicken Wing Day on July 29.
Yeah, every food, article of clothing and hobby has its own day. I used to scoff at such foolishness, but since this damn pandemic bound me up tighter than a block of cheese, I celebrate every single one that is of interest to me, no matter how inconsequential. It’s the little things, ya know?
So, National Chicken Wing Day. If you’re late to the party, it’s fine. The wings will taste just as good, unless you order them from [name of area business redacted. Imagine it’s one you really, really like so that you are suitably outraged].
According to information found in a random tweet, which is at least as trustworthy as Dr. Demon Seed in the Breitbart live stream that has everybody all riled up, Americans prefer flats to drums by a ratio of three to one.
If you’re like me, you’re saying to yourself, “Flats? Drums? What the h-e-double-hockey-sticks is the difference?” (Having already sworn earlier in the column, I cannot curse again without receiving an R rating, which would cause my audience to plummet from 15.07 to 3.07 readers, the .07 being my mom, who gamely tries each week but then quits when I’m not funny.)
I had to look up “flats” and “drums” as they relate to wings. As I suspected, drums are the really good ones and flats are the ones I leave for somebody else, popularity be ... darned.
I’m not well-versed in chicken, so I don’t know which part of the poultry tree growers use to harvest each type or how long wings take to ripen. Maybe the drums stay on the tree longer, since they’re bigger?
Just kidding. Everybody knows chicken wings grow in the ground, like potatoes, and the really hot ones come from closer to the equator, while the mild ones are native to the northeast.
Another distressing factoid is that the average American eats 90 wings each year. If a standard wing weighs about 3.5 ounces, then the average American eats ... a lot of wings.
Calm down, logisticians. That equals almost 20 pounds of wings a year, which is a figure math-aletes can calculate in their heads, but which took me several long, laborious steps on the computer, followed by a short break of three hours to relax on the couch with a cold compress on my forehead.
Numbers, numbers, will no one rid me of these meddlesome numbers?
Regardless, America consumes more chicken wings than it has unused doses of hydroxychloroquine stored in the bunker beneath the White House that the president regularly inspects. A goodly number of these are consumed on Super Bowl Sunday (the wings, not the chloroquine), which is kinda sorta the unofficial National Chicken Wing Day.
I’m not the biggest fan of chicken wings, truth be told, because I hate any food that’s too messy to eat without a bib. Chicken wings fall into this category, especially when coupled with pizza. Together, they create a perfect storm of greasy sauce and poultry residue on your fingers — and when a cat saunters across your lap while you’re eating them, a purrfect storm — just as your spouse asks you to pretty please turn up the volume on the TV to cover the disgusting sounds you make while chewing.
So while I’ve never walked away from a platter of chicken wings, I’ve never sprinted toward one, either.
Which begs the question, when is National Moist Towelette Day?
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Yeah, every food, article of clothing and hobby has its own day. I used to scoff at such foolishness, but since this damn pandemic bound me up tighter than a block of cheese, I celebrate every single one that is of interest to me, no matter how inconsequential. It’s the little things, ya know?
So, National Chicken Wing Day. If you’re late to the party, it’s fine. The wings will taste just as good, unless you order them from [name of area business redacted. Imagine it’s one you really, really like so that you are suitably outraged].
According to information found in a random tweet, which is at least as trustworthy as Dr. Demon Seed in the Breitbart live stream that has everybody all riled up, Americans prefer flats to drums by a ratio of three to one.
If you’re like me, you’re saying to yourself, “Flats? Drums? What the h-e-double-hockey-sticks is the difference?” (Having already sworn earlier in the column, I cannot curse again without receiving an R rating, which would cause my audience to plummet from 15.07 to 3.07 readers, the .07 being my mom, who gamely tries each week but then quits when I’m not funny.)
I had to look up “flats” and “drums” as they relate to wings. As I suspected, drums are the really good ones and flats are the ones I leave for somebody else, popularity be ... darned.
I’m not well-versed in chicken, so I don’t know which part of the poultry tree growers use to harvest each type or how long wings take to ripen. Maybe the drums stay on the tree longer, since they’re bigger?
Just kidding. Everybody knows chicken wings grow in the ground, like potatoes, and the really hot ones come from closer to the equator, while the mild ones are native to the northeast.
Another distressing factoid is that the average American eats 90 wings each year. If a standard wing weighs about 3.5 ounces, then the average American eats ... a lot of wings.
Calm down, logisticians. That equals almost 20 pounds of wings a year, which is a figure math-aletes can calculate in their heads, but which took me several long, laborious steps on the computer, followed by a short break of three hours to relax on the couch with a cold compress on my forehead.
Numbers, numbers, will no one rid me of these meddlesome numbers?
Regardless, America consumes more chicken wings than it has unused doses of hydroxychloroquine stored in the bunker beneath the White House that the president regularly inspects. A goodly number of these are consumed on Super Bowl Sunday (the wings, not the chloroquine), which is kinda sorta the unofficial National Chicken Wing Day.
I’m not the biggest fan of chicken wings, truth be told, because I hate any food that’s too messy to eat without a bib. Chicken wings fall into this category, especially when coupled with pizza. Together, they create a perfect storm of greasy sauce and poultry residue on your fingers — and when a cat saunters across your lap while you’re eating them, a purrfect storm — just as your spouse asks you to pretty please turn up the volume on the TV to cover the disgusting sounds you make while chewing.
So while I’ve never walked away from a platter of chicken wings, I’ve never sprinted toward one, either.
Which begs the question, when is National Moist Towelette Day?
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Friday, July 24, 2020
Coming to the aid of lemonade stands
Country Time rolled out its “Littlest Bailout” plan earlier this summer.
Recognizing the COVID pandemic has wreaked havoc with lemonade stands across the nation, the company is offering budding entrepreneurs (re: kids 14 and younger) a chance to recoup their losses.
In exchange for a 250-word essay submitted on the company’s website and a photo of each entrant’s lemonade stand, Country Time will send 1,000 baby businessmen prepaid gift cards valued at $100 each.
In the essay, writers must explain how they will use the cards to “juice” — see what Country Time did there? — the economy.
By the time you’re reading this, my guess is that Country Time will already be inundated with entries. It’s a cute idea, right?
My rudimentary math skills indicate that $100 for 250 words works out to 40 cents a word, which is — ahem! — more than some people are paid for their writing.
If there’s a sticking point in the deal, it will be the photo. Even before the pandemic squeezed the life out of lemonade stands — see what I did there? — the practice was one that, in Shakespeare’s words, was more honored in the breach than the observance.
In other words, many adults like to say we gained business experience by running lemonade stands, but how many of us actually did?
I didn’t. During my formative years, I lived on streets where lemonade stands would either be decimated by wind from speeding trucks or where cars were so rare that they were akin to UFOs.
Foot traffic? Fuhgeddaboudit!
I have, however, had the experience of being a customer at a few lemonade stands. But given the suburban neighborhoods where I’ve lived as an adult, not as many as one might expect.
Most of these exchanges involve jogging or running — or crawling and crying, depending on the heat and my exhaustion level — past some enterprising kids, making the mistake of looking into their weepy eyes, and then promising to come back when I have money.
I generally do — come back, that is. I never run with money, unless you count Apple Pay on my phone as money, which you could, but what self-respecting lemonade stand accepts Apple Pay?
Come to think of it, what business anywhere accept Apple Pay? Whenever I ask, I’m met with a sad shaking of the head. Nope, sorry, not here, the cashiers say with a frown. These days, I have to assume they’re frowning beneath their COVID-repelling masks – the same coverings that their noses hang out of and that are worn to protect only their chins, apparently.
But I digress.
On those occasions when I return to a lemonade stand with change (back when change was plentiful and its scarcity was not a sign of the impending New World Order, according to all those conspiracy theorists holding court in their parents’ basements), I’m often not served lemonade, but Kool-Aid, and usually whatever unpopular flavors have been clogging Mom and Dad’s cupboard for the past three years.
Sometimes, the pitcher contains sugar. Most times, it doesn’t. If ice was ever part of the mix, it has long since melted, further watering down the strawberry-kiwi-raspberry concoction.
Nobody wants to be that guy, the one who complains about quality at a lemonade stand. So I drink what I’m given, try not to think about the last time the little barista washed her hands, and then go on my way.
Regardless of my execrable experiences, I hope this year’s crop of junior business people gets a share of those $100 windfalls and that they don’t all get gobbled up by giant corporations and the infamous lemonade lobby. Which is probably really a thing, right?
Good for Country Time for having some fun in a summer that isn’t exactly overflowing with it. Still, the company missed a golden opportunity to call this promotion Lemon Aid. A savvy copywriter could have fun with a tagline offering kids $100 in their pocket for not making lemonade in their pants.
Goes good with fudge, I hear.
See what I did there?
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Recognizing the COVID pandemic has wreaked havoc with lemonade stands across the nation, the company is offering budding entrepreneurs (re: kids 14 and younger) a chance to recoup their losses.
In exchange for a 250-word essay submitted on the company’s website and a photo of each entrant’s lemonade stand, Country Time will send 1,000 baby businessmen prepaid gift cards valued at $100 each.
In the essay, writers must explain how they will use the cards to “juice” — see what Country Time did there? — the economy.
By the time you’re reading this, my guess is that Country Time will already be inundated with entries. It’s a cute idea, right?
My rudimentary math skills indicate that $100 for 250 words works out to 40 cents a word, which is — ahem! — more than some people are paid for their writing.
If there’s a sticking point in the deal, it will be the photo. Even before the pandemic squeezed the life out of lemonade stands — see what I did there? — the practice was one that, in Shakespeare’s words, was more honored in the breach than the observance.
In other words, many adults like to say we gained business experience by running lemonade stands, but how many of us actually did?
I didn’t. During my formative years, I lived on streets where lemonade stands would either be decimated by wind from speeding trucks or where cars were so rare that they were akin to UFOs.
Foot traffic? Fuhgeddaboudit!
I have, however, had the experience of being a customer at a few lemonade stands. But given the suburban neighborhoods where I’ve lived as an adult, not as many as one might expect.
Most of these exchanges involve jogging or running — or crawling and crying, depending on the heat and my exhaustion level — past some enterprising kids, making the mistake of looking into their weepy eyes, and then promising to come back when I have money.
I generally do — come back, that is. I never run with money, unless you count Apple Pay on my phone as money, which you could, but what self-respecting lemonade stand accepts Apple Pay?
Come to think of it, what business anywhere accept Apple Pay? Whenever I ask, I’m met with a sad shaking of the head. Nope, sorry, not here, the cashiers say with a frown. These days, I have to assume they’re frowning beneath their COVID-repelling masks – the same coverings that their noses hang out of and that are worn to protect only their chins, apparently.
But I digress.
On those occasions when I return to a lemonade stand with change (back when change was plentiful and its scarcity was not a sign of the impending New World Order, according to all those conspiracy theorists holding court in their parents’ basements), I’m often not served lemonade, but Kool-Aid, and usually whatever unpopular flavors have been clogging Mom and Dad’s cupboard for the past three years.
Sometimes, the pitcher contains sugar. Most times, it doesn’t. If ice was ever part of the mix, it has long since melted, further watering down the strawberry-kiwi-raspberry concoction.
Nobody wants to be that guy, the one who complains about quality at a lemonade stand. So I drink what I’m given, try not to think about the last time the little barista washed her hands, and then go on my way.
Regardless of my execrable experiences, I hope this year’s crop of junior business people gets a share of those $100 windfalls and that they don’t all get gobbled up by giant corporations and the infamous lemonade lobby. Which is probably really a thing, right?
Good for Country Time for having some fun in a summer that isn’t exactly overflowing with it. Still, the company missed a golden opportunity to call this promotion Lemon Aid. A savvy copywriter could have fun with a tagline offering kids $100 in their pocket for not making lemonade in their pants.
Goes good with fudge, I hear.
See what I did there?
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
Saturday, July 18, 2020
Mr. President, What a Big Mask You Have!
President Trump was photographed wearing a mask last Saturday, and the internet went wild.
He was visiting Walter Reed National Military Medical Center when the media captured the history-making moment. It didn’t take long for the derision to kick in.
Some online wags were pleased the mask shielded the public from the president’s weirdly-shaped mouth. Others cheered because they said he looked defeated and deflated.
I don’t know about that. In a rare move for me, I’m going to applaud the president for having the courage — just this once — to lead positively by example.
Of course, we can’t discount the possibility that his decision was politically motivated. Trump’s calculus about such matters is as shrewd as it is often accurate: Like a wounded animal with its paw caught in a trap, he knows when it serves him to act in a certain way, whether to endear himself to his base, to own the libs, or both.
So the mask may be an act of political expediency. Or not. It doesn’t matter.
What does matter is that, by wearing it, he paves the way for the typical Trump supporter to do the same, to reverse course and put on a mask even after long, drawn-out Facebook rants about how our rights are being compromised by a piece of cloth over our mouths and noses.
Who knows how many lives Trump will save and how much illness he will prevent by the simple choice to wear that mask, even if only for a few minutes, even if in his secret heart of hearts, he still believes a cocktail of hydroxychloroquine and bleach works better.
Less publicized but just as significant, Trump told CBS News a few days after the hospital visit that Americans should listen to the CDC. “If it’s necessary, I would urge them to wear a mask and I would say follow the guidelines,” he told reporter Catherine Herridge.
While this is hardly a ringing endorsement for the efficacy of masks, it’s another step in the right direction. How exhausting it must be for Trump’s handlers to nurture anything like empathy in the man. Almost as exhausting as it is for the public to watch him slowly evolve into somebody with an iota of compassion — a case of one step forward, two dozen steps back.
Let’s face it, Trump needs some wins where the coronavirus is concerned. His administration’s handling of the pandemic has been horribly uneven, which is a euphemistic way of saying it has been a near-total disaster leading to more illness, fatalities and economic disruptions than necessary.
The national shutdown last spring, intended to give the country time to ramp up COVID testing and contact tracing, was instead so squandered that some experts now speculate a second shuttering of non-essential businesses and activities may be needed. By advocating for the nation to reopen too quickly, in defiance of his own administration’s plan to wait until 14 days of declining numbers, Trump presided over a Titanic-level catastrophe and spawned a Frankenstein-monster patchwork of state and local regulations festooned with red tape and contradictions. Meanwhile, President Nero waded into the culture wars, crowed about his ratings and pouted over his rally attendance.
His most definitive COVID action, announcing travel restrictions to and from China at the end of January (they went into effect on Feb. 2), could be seen as merely an extension of his usual America-first nationalism. In other words, he used COVID as a cover story.
Another bold action with a similar not-so-hidden agenda was a recent attempt to ship foreign college students back to their countries of origin if their courses were entirely online in the fall. His administration walked that back recently after threats of litigation and, one assumes, realization that these students subsidize many American students’ bills.
But timeout. I came to praise Trump, not to bury him, or however that line goes.
So ...
At least he’s wearing a mask and advising others to do the same. That’s a start. And while it would undoubtedly have been better had this realization hit him two months earlier, his detractors — if they truly desire best-case outcomes where the virus and the country are concerned — should encourage the better angels of Trump’s nature to unfurl their wings a little more often.
If that means admiring the emperor’s new mask, so be it.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
He was visiting Walter Reed National Military Medical Center when the media captured the history-making moment. It didn’t take long for the derision to kick in.
Some online wags were pleased the mask shielded the public from the president’s weirdly-shaped mouth. Others cheered because they said he looked defeated and deflated.
I don’t know about that. In a rare move for me, I’m going to applaud the president for having the courage — just this once — to lead positively by example.
Of course, we can’t discount the possibility that his decision was politically motivated. Trump’s calculus about such matters is as shrewd as it is often accurate: Like a wounded animal with its paw caught in a trap, he knows when it serves him to act in a certain way, whether to endear himself to his base, to own the libs, or both.
So the mask may be an act of political expediency. Or not. It doesn’t matter.
What does matter is that, by wearing it, he paves the way for the typical Trump supporter to do the same, to reverse course and put on a mask even after long, drawn-out Facebook rants about how our rights are being compromised by a piece of cloth over our mouths and noses.
Who knows how many lives Trump will save and how much illness he will prevent by the simple choice to wear that mask, even if only for a few minutes, even if in his secret heart of hearts, he still believes a cocktail of hydroxychloroquine and bleach works better.
Less publicized but just as significant, Trump told CBS News a few days after the hospital visit that Americans should listen to the CDC. “If it’s necessary, I would urge them to wear a mask and I would say follow the guidelines,” he told reporter Catherine Herridge.
While this is hardly a ringing endorsement for the efficacy of masks, it’s another step in the right direction. How exhausting it must be for Trump’s handlers to nurture anything like empathy in the man. Almost as exhausting as it is for the public to watch him slowly evolve into somebody with an iota of compassion — a case of one step forward, two dozen steps back.
Let’s face it, Trump needs some wins where the coronavirus is concerned. His administration’s handling of the pandemic has been horribly uneven, which is a euphemistic way of saying it has been a near-total disaster leading to more illness, fatalities and economic disruptions than necessary.
The national shutdown last spring, intended to give the country time to ramp up COVID testing and contact tracing, was instead so squandered that some experts now speculate a second shuttering of non-essential businesses and activities may be needed. By advocating for the nation to reopen too quickly, in defiance of his own administration’s plan to wait until 14 days of declining numbers, Trump presided over a Titanic-level catastrophe and spawned a Frankenstein-monster patchwork of state and local regulations festooned with red tape and contradictions. Meanwhile, President Nero waded into the culture wars, crowed about his ratings and pouted over his rally attendance.
His most definitive COVID action, announcing travel restrictions to and from China at the end of January (they went into effect on Feb. 2), could be seen as merely an extension of his usual America-first nationalism. In other words, he used COVID as a cover story.
Another bold action with a similar not-so-hidden agenda was a recent attempt to ship foreign college students back to their countries of origin if their courses were entirely online in the fall. His administration walked that back recently after threats of litigation and, one assumes, realization that these students subsidize many American students’ bills.
But timeout. I came to praise Trump, not to bury him, or however that line goes.
So ...
At least he’s wearing a mask and advising others to do the same. That’s a start. And while it would undoubtedly have been better had this realization hit him two months earlier, his detractors — if they truly desire best-case outcomes where the virus and the country are concerned — should encourage the better angels of Trump’s nature to unfurl their wings a little more often.
If that means admiring the emperor’s new mask, so be it.
chris.schillig@yahoo.com
@cschillig on Twitter
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