SLiM: Did you even read At Home?

How does a writer know they have been granted access to that group of elites whose writing will be bestowed great accolades solely by virtue of the fact that said writer wrote it? Is it by getting to the #1 spot on the New York Times Bestsellers list? Is it when they must dunk their hand in ice for three days following each book signing session? Is it when they are interviewed on a total of fifty SiriusXM channels? (Considering how much space they must fill, that last qualification probably isn’t all that hard to achieve. Just call them up and tell them you’re willing to be interviewed. It doesn’t matter who you are, I’m sure they’ll leap at the opportunity.)

While all of these things are certainly enjoyable and gratifying, I think that there are two apparent ways to verify whether one is in this exclusive club: The Bryson and The Clancy.

We shall first deal with The Bryson. I’m going to take a look at some of his his books first, and we’ll see where we go from there.

   

The Lost Continent was published in 1989. If you manage to get past the overly busy cover, you may note that the author’s name is no more than a small note near the title. The Mother Tongue (not pictured) came out in 1990. Even then, the O of “Mother” is a good 33% larger than that of “Bryson”. His sequel to this was Made in America, published in 1994. Here, the title name is bigger too, so I guess we won’t blame the publisher for pumping up the size of the author’s name too. Then we get to his next published book, called Bill Bryson, authored by Notes from a Small Island. “Oh,” you say, “you just made a mistake, SLiM. I thought we were dealing with books by Bryson, not about Bryson.” To which I may likely respond (if you are kind enough to send me your comment so I can respond to your negative conclusion) “No, the publisher made a mistake.”

It continues thusly.

  

Wow, all these different guys had to write their own biography on Bryson? Maybe it’s a series; one is a short history of nearly everything about him, while one deals exclusively with tales of his domestic achievements!

Okay, probably not. More likely Mr. Bryson hit The Bryson, which makes a lot of sense if you think about it. The Bryson, as summarized by some prestigious society, is:

When an author’s name is printed larger than the title of the piece written, said writer has reached The Bryson.

Once an author accomplishes this, the doors are wide open for him, for he hath arrived. Let’s say Mr. Bryson is sitting around at home, when suddenly the idea occurs to him to write a 400-page book on the history and proper techniques of radish farming. All he has to do now is jot some random blathering on a page and send it off to the publisher, who will get back to him in a week with a cover like this:

It will then hit the shelves. CNN, ABC, and NPR will all be rushing to be the first to interview Bryson on his new book. Reviews will be gushing with “Bryson’s only flaw here is that he only covers radishes,” and “In that inimitable style, Bill has done it again!” Thirty copies of it will be in your local library within the week, and by the time you get to putting in an order for it, you will actually have to wait upwards of ten months before you can get to it. Fans will be swooning in the streets, the police will be rushing to clean up the mess left by a truck bombed while carrying 15,000 copies of Radishing Around, and hoodlums dressed as turnip-zombies roaming the streets with their shirts off will be reported by the dozen.

But ask anyone what the book is about. If they manage to get that correct, ask them if they read the whole thing. And they still respond yes, chances are they would fail to extol it under hypnosis.

Please note that I don’t mean to bash Bryson. All I’m saying is that The Bryson is a sure sign that one could get away with a Radishing Around if they wanted to. This is in contrast to The Clancy, which is in and of itself a little unethical. I’ll be getting to that soon.

Keep in mind, by the way, it doesn’t count as The Bryson if you have your name larger than the title on the cover just to say you have arrived.

SLiM: My Triumphant Return

To my dear readers who have faithfully checked this site every now and then over the last two years, hoping something would show up to support their notion that the beloved runner of this blog was not, in fact, dead, I have an announcement to make.

It would now behoove me to explain just how shocking this newsflash will be. If you have high blood pressure, or have experienced a seizure before, just take note of the fact that I have just taken the time to single you out to yourself. If you happen to be sitting next to a doctor, you may consult his opinion as to whether you ought to read on. Otherwise, just give yourself a hearty round of applause and try not to have a heart attack or seizure; because if you do, I don’t plan on holding myself responsible. This means that I will ignore any lawsuit your relatives bring up against me – and I won’t even have a guilty conscience – because your medical problems have nothing to do with me or my blog.

If you are pregnant, I wish you mazel tov and request that you finish reading this just like any other person.

If you are a nominee in this year’s presidential race, you will probably finish reading this and proceed to blame the poorly written parts on your enemies while taking credit for my good grammar and sentence structure. You will then give a speech detailing your catchphrase and your enemy’s Achilles’ heel while saying nothing of substance about yourself or your plans. (With this established, what, exactly, do you want my $25 for?) Because I know this will not change, I’m not even going to bother giving you any advice.

And if you are just a reader, I expect that my announcement will surprise you at least as much as when you heard that Newt had officially ended his incredibly powerful, Mitt-crushing campaign.

  I am returning to my post as Conversations at the Dinner Table’s writer-editor-director-coordinator-dictator!

At least for right now.

SLiM: Bloodbath day part I (Getting to know Halloween)

So that time has come and gone again–Hallow’een. Probably the most confusing and confounding “celebration” of them all. This odd reason to leave school comes with another holiday, this one All Saints Day. Okay, so we have more or less dropped the all saints day thing, and instead of decorating Wal-Mart® with angels and representations of all things good, we decided to place devils, skeletons, witches, and all other sorts of things that stops M.M. from bringing the Cutie of the Bunch with her on her shopping trips.

“Come and get a creepy skeleton costume with an ax in the head and an eyeball hanging out! After all, you must prepare for the most illogical, ludicrous, and brainless holiday in the world, and scare yourself to death every time you open a newspaper or door to a mall!”

Wow, that one makes lots of sense. Now, ponder this situation. Demon-Boy comes up to you and yells “Trick or Treat!”

You, being rational (and totally disconnected from the pathetic, sad world we live in), ask this kid, whose tongue is hanging out and has bloodstains on his shirt, “What does that mean?”

Well, Demon-Boy has never been asked this before, and looks totally bewildered. “Uhh, it means you have a civic obligation (whether or not you celebrate this holiday,) to spend plenty of your hard-earned money to give me candy.”

Ah. Well, that sounds fair to you (huh?). So you dig into your pocket, give Demon-Boy your stash of Almond Joy®, and say “Happy Bloodbath Day.”

Oh, I see. Do I run up to every door in my county on Purim telling them they must give me Mishloach Manos, or they will be -----? And even if I did, would I gleefully toss it into my bag with candy to last me 4 months, without even acknowledging that person’s existence in the world?

Let me ask you this question. Would you ever, in your right mind, get up on a table and yell, “Enough of all these celebrations about the good in the world! It’s about time we begin to celebrate the evil, dark side of the world! Let’s celebrate murder, death, doom! Yes, let’s cheer for the very idea that evil exists. Hooray, we have found yet another reason to party! For there is evil, the Devil, hell, crime, terror and all other sorts of grand stuff! And so, let us all put on costumes to see who will make 3-year-old, innocent, toddlers scream the loudest! Let us scourge the neighborhood, pulling up to each and every door to disturb the peace they most clearly desired by staying home, and vacuum out their stocks of chocolate and candy. Yea, let us ignore the good, peace, and saintlihood of man. Instead, we will make this preposterous, daft, and outrageous holiday of evil the focus of our lives for 5 weeks!”

Okay, I’ve made my point. I’m going to move on.

My good friend, whom I shall call Nate, called me (not texted!) to ask how to get Trick-or-Treaters to come to his door. You see, he lives on one of these dead-end courts, so they don’t “drive by” his house. My sister, KWBSLKM, answered the phone, and informed him of some little tips on said topic. Sadly, he never got what he was looking for. And neither did we, but we weren’t hoping they would come. Well, we did get one. Allow me.

As I came home from Maariv, my carpooler did not know that my garage door code thing was not working, and dropped me there anyhow. This was no problem for me: I instead went to the front door. I had (woefully) forgotten that this was Bloodbath Night. So I knocked on the door, and heard scampering inside. Now, I was wondering, if they know I’m at the front door, why won’t they get it? I was rudely reminded why, when Rabbim finally opened the door, and instead of saying “hello, SLiM,” he said “happy Hallow’een,” with a small bag of M&M®s. Once he saw my face, (we had left the outside light off so that no trick-or-treaters would come,) he then said “Oh. Hi, SLiM!” I am kind of remorseful that I did not grab the bag of candy, and run off, howling, into the moonless night. That would actually have been very funny.

SLiM: Old Faithful on Father's Day

Over here, on father’s day we had some father-son bonding time. This was helpful as the rest of the clan is currently absent.
Rabbim had to pick up some stuff from “the helpful place” (Ace Hardware). I went with him, and then we went to CVS\Pharmacy. We picked up the medications that we needed from the \Pharmacy, and were generally avoiding the CVS part. As we were leaving, I spotted a pack of Mentos®, just ten feet away from a bottle of Diet Coke! I got the idea, picked up both, bought them, and went home. We quickly researched the optimal number of Mentos as well as some interesting variations and cool YouTube videos.
Finally, we went outside to get ready.

We now present SLiM’s Quick ‘n’ Easy Steps to make your own Coke and Mentos Geyser.
1. Buy package of mint Mentos (mint Mentos aren’t kosher, so don’t taste) and large bottle of a diet cola.
2. Select open area outdoors.
3. Place bottle on flat surface.
4. Make tube of paper just wide enough to hold Mentos.
5. Open Mentos roll.
6. Take entire roll or just ten Mentos, and place in stack in tube.
7. Open bottle.
8. Position tube over top of bottle, with finger pinching bottom of tube.
9. Move close to bottle (yes, move close, so all the Mentos will actually go in).
10. Move finger to release Mentos
11. Now run.

You see how easy it is. There is a delay between the first Mentos hitting the soda and the fountain of about 1 second, so be wearing a shirt that can get dirty, so you won’t be paranoid and run from the soda before all the Mentos are in. Don’t be surprised if your geyser lasts only 1-2 seconds.
Of course, you want to be videoing this. We had three video vantages; one of them failed, so you may want backup.
Remember not to drink the soda still left in the bottle. It is no longer kosher. A cleanup may or may not be necessary. Some of the Mentos may fly out of the soda with the geyser, and you might not notice this. Don’t think that some of them missed the soda.
Well, enough with the reminders and instructions.



I’m the one dropping the Mentos in; Rabbim is doing the video. Ignore the slogan on my T-shirt.
It was really fun and really cool. I want to do it again with variations someday, and also Mister Youngster probably wanted to do it himself. So you might be seeing the fountain again soon on this blog.

SLiM: About those Blizzards...

I am a very environmentally aware person. However, for reasons I will not get into, I’m not very big on this stuff about global warming.

Yeah, it sounds weird, but Al Gore probably has one of the highest carbon footprints in the world, what with his flying on his PRIVATE JET too receive his Nobel Peace Prize for helping reduce carbon footprints, paradoxically enough. But oddly, Rabbim read me something that only proved me right.

It said that a group of scientists got together to talk about the problems of the fact that global temperatures are not moving. And what to do to stimulate global temperatures. And that it’s scary that they aren’t moving. And that it’s dangerous. And all the other things that they used to say about global warming.

Just four more words.

Take that, Al Gore!

SLiM: How Sweet it isn't!

Every person on the planet knows that sugar is dreadfully bad for you, and if you eat it, you will soon shrivel up, look something like a prune, and then die.

Oh, wait. I’m sorry. This does not apply to everyone. Not everyone is accursed by this horrible thing.

Diabetics will sometimes shrivel up like a prune if they do eat sugar, and sometimes will shrivel up if they don’t.

(I may have just made up the part about shriveling up, but that is the general impression that was made on me.)

Since no one is usually in the mood for shriveling up, we invented a new substitute for sugar, so supposedly we won’t actually shrivel up when we consume trivial amounts of sugar, simply trying to make our food edible. So, instead of using the good old G-d’s sweetener (the humble cane), we instead use a mixture of chemicals, trying (and succeeding) to replicate that taste, with all its attributes.

It’s Splenda®, of course! Or, perhaps a smaller but similar company, Sweet’n Low®!

But wait a minute. Since we tried so hard trying to replicate the flavor of sugar, we came up with something that’s almost as unhealthy as it (and therefore has the potential to turn you into a prune just as well). But if it is just as dangerous as sugar, why use it anyway?

There are 2 reasons, I think, that enter the average person’s mind. First of all, once we mankind have toiled so hard to create that substitute, why not revel in joy over our hard-earned sweetener?

Secondly, I think one of PETA’s sister corporations has gotten into people. People think that we must conserve the sugar, as it is cruel to chop a sugar cane.

However, I, SLiM, have a brilliant refutation for these claims, and it is a very short one.

If soluble saccharin isn’t going to turn you into a prune, what will? (Who wants to eat calcium silicate, anyway?)

SLiM: Health Reform Bull

When we look upon our woes and pities nowadays, we can see quite obviously, that it is the government’s fault. I mean, no duh it’s the government who is taking the money from our pockets, who else would it be? The wise men who you see walking down the street, hunchbacked and hoarse, will tell you, "“It is your own fault, sonny boy. You were foolish enough to vote for a lad who promised change. I remember, young whippersnapper, the good ol’ days, when no politician was corrupt." If you look more deeply, however, you will realize that change is a good thing. Just look at 1763. Then America really needed change. Being taxed with no representation at all, good or bad? Come on.

However, change is usually not needed after about 8 years of something which was, in my opinion, great. (If you feel differently, my next 2 sentences are for you.) However, change is often not needed after 8 years of something bad. I mean, give more time to try it out, like you give to a food! However, I would like to point something out. On the surface, Obama is changing. If you look deeper, though, you find that in the long run, Obama is not changing anything.

If you look carefully throughout recent history, there are 2 happy little countries. One is called the U.S.A., the other U.S.S.R. If you look even more carefully, you will see that the country called the U.S.S.R. ends abruptly in 1994, leaving U.S.A. as the only happy little country left. This is due partially because of a dude called Gobachev, who simply didn’t have the heart to kill every other person he saw. Killing every other, or at least every third person you saw, was a needed quality in the wonderful little country called USSR.

The other main reason was called something called communism, based on a little idea named socialism.

Before I explain what these terms mean, I am urged to quote from a foreign ambassador of Vietnam, a communist country itself:

“We are not without achievement. We have managed to distribute poverty equally.”

So there you have it, folks. Communism is the art of distribution of poverty equally.

But wait! I just got a telephone call from Joseph Stalin, to tell me what communism really is.

Waaaaait a second. Paul has a bull and Frank doesn't?! Gasp! We must give half the bull to Frank! But wait. My trusty PETA advisor here tells me I can't kill the animal to divide its meat, so the government will have to take the bull instead. Now Paul and Frank are both happy because they both have an equal amount of money. Paul complains that the government has taken his bull, and the current prime minister shoots Paul because he is a menace to society that he won'’t share his bull with Frank. Frank complains that he has nothing, so the government gets upset that he is not satisfied with their significant charity. The current prime minister puts a bullet through Frank’s head also, and everyone is happy.

Ah. Thank you, Mr. Stalin.

Now, we must explain what socialism is. Socialism is when one person has more than another, so the government decides to stick its large nose in the way. This is done quite conveniently by something called tax. Or, to be more precise, income tax. (Einstein once remarked that one of the only things he didn't understand was income tax.) So here's the scenario, in today’s terms.

Waaaaait a second. Bill has health insurance and Richard doesn't? We have to tax Bill to pay for poor, sad, Richard’s health insurance that he doesn't really want.

As it looks like from here, U.S.A. is gonna start working on spreading poverty equally.

Let’s hope I don’t get a bull.