The Tin Lizard

Holiday Decoration

It's just about time for the trick-or-treaters again but for many people, it seems, trick-or-treat is almost an afterthought to the huge amounts of decorations people put up for the season.   I think I recall reading that more money is spent on seasonal decorations at Halloween than for any other occasion except Christmas.

Some of the decorations I'm seeing this year are standard fare (ghosts, skeletons, and gravestones), and some are clever (the witch on her broomstick, who appears to have smacked into a tree, has been popular for several years), and a few are just tacky (I really hate those damned blow-up plastic things that are showing up at Christmas and now, at Halloween too).

And then there is the bane of all would-be decorators, the spider web.  I'm seeing a lot less of this stuff, and I would guess the reason is that it's so difficult to put up properly.  It's beyond the capability of kids (kids don't put up the decorations anyway) and of most adults.  Frankly, if you're still using it, you might want to reconsider.  This is a product that just shouldn't exist!

Without the application of time, patience, and some sense of what a spider web really looks like, you will fail miserably.  And 99 of 100 of you do, coming up instead with strange globs of white (or occasionally green) stuff that looks variously as if your bushes had been teepeed with toilet paper, you'd taken apart an old mattress and thrown the stuffing around, or (best-case scenario) possibly a light snowfall had taken place.  Here are some examples:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Getting A Handle On The Dirty Dishes

I'm sure none of you excellent gourmet cooks out there would think to wash your good knives, wooden implements, or similar items in the dishwasher.   Right?  So, when you wash them by hand, do you make the mistake I used to, which can be illustrated by this photo from doing the dishes a couple of days ago:

 

My epiphany of the sink, a few years ago, was that I was so often concerned about washing the "business end" of such items -- the blade of the knife, or the silicon paddle on the spatula -- that it dawned on me I almost never washed the handles.  Of course, it's difficult to do so, especially with the knives, when you have to grasp them by the blade.

But where, I thought, are the germs going to collect but on the handles?  And what about that point at the hilts of knives, where the blade joins the handle and "things" can pile up -- does that get any attention in your washing?  Now, I make sure I wash handles too.  A small victory, I hope, for cleanliness in the kitchen.

Construction Waste Recycled

Trash is a neverending source of fascination for me.  As a kid, I always thought I'd like to be a trash collector.  Work in the fresh air, an infinite kaleidoscopic array of slightly used goods from which to select, and doing a big service to society all at the same time.  I never made good on that ambition, though.

Nowadays, I still "follow" trash, though.  Just as my mother-in-law used to look out the car window on a trip and declare "nice wash!" upon seeing fresh, bright laundry hung out to dry on a line, I sometimes walk by a house on our neighborhood's trash pickup day and think, "well-prepared trash!" (or conversely and more frequently, "why don't they recycle?")

Which brings me finally to the point.  In our area, a lot of small 1950s houses are being torn down and replaced by McMansions that scarcely fit on their lot.  All well and good; it's a trend we can't buck, and local authorities are pleased with the increase in tax revenue it brings. 

The trend brings with it a lot of those waste containers (a dumpster by another name) where builders deposit their junk.  The serious debris (the bricks, concrete, mortar and frame of the old house) is carried away in dump trucks as "inert material" and, ineligible for most landfills, presumably ends up as fill somewhere.  Then comes the curbside container; but in this age of recycling, I am sorely tempted sometimes to jump in and pull out all the stuff that could be recycled:  huge amounts of scrap wood that could be reused with just a little trouble, or might become kindling; and later, all the corrugated cardboard that comes wrapped around the fittings and furnishings of the new house.  Here's an example below, filled mostly with cardboard:

 

Would it be so much trouble, I wonder, for a builder to bring along a second container for such recyclable materials, and for the county to pick it up?  I would guess that a builder wanting to establish a positive reputation among "green" fans could really help himself by doing so.

Zap Your Pooch

I see a lot of people in my area installing buried electric "fences" these days.  These do their job by providing a signal around the circumference of the enclosed area which sets off a small electric jolt in a special collar your dog wears.  None of the brands currently in evidence uses the trade name "Zap-A-Pooch" but that's what is really afoot.  The dog is pre-trained, by placement of flags (as in the photo) to avoid the shock. 

Evidently this product is for the crowd that has a dog (or two or three), but recoils at the prospect of walking Fido on a leash, and thinks that fences are ugly or just don't make good neighbors. So it seems the so-called "invisible" fences fill a psychological niche in the market.

 
 
I suspect this is one of those products that leaves a lot of room for "buyer's remorse" once they're installed.   They may work for many dogs in most conditions, yet I doubt they can be absolutely relied on to keep a dog -- an excited dog, an especially large one, or even just a dumb one -- contained.  I'm told the fine print from most of the makers of these "fences" concede that point.  For the more rambunctious dog, the collar can be set to deliver a stronger message but  I've known people whose dog just didn't "get it," and would get through anyway.  In the end, you may have to decide whether you want to be cruel enough to fry the canine's neck, or give up and turn the system off. 

So from the point of view of a frequent pedestrian, I'm not entirely reassured that the rottweiler whose domain I pass isn't going to be a threat.  As a dog owner, I wouldn't be too confident that Spot wasn't ever going to get out, run off, and get killed in traffic.  Go for the real fence.  I wouldn't be surprised if it were cheaper, too.

Will Chestnuts Make It Where Elms Could Not?

It's an old chestnut to say that there's a silver lining in every cloud.  But true, nonetheless.  Now and then, amid all the gloom and doom of economic forecasts, the rancor of political partisanship, and the ennui of the daily grind, some good news turns up unexpectedly.

A case in point is the word that the American chestnut tree, which effectively went extinct in the first half of the 20th century, might be able to make a comeback, with the help of some cross-breeding with an Asian variety.

This report seems much rosier than those that came out of a similar project to restore the American elm; crossbreeding there failed to produce an elm that had the characteristics (overall size and leaf size) of the original; nor was the result really immune, or even highly resistant, to the beetle that destroyed it in the first place.  As a result, if you want an elm these days, you'll probably still end up with the Chinese one (also known as "lacebark" or by its Latin moniker, "parvifolia).  A warning against these elms; they are hardy and fairly fast-growing, but they have tiny, tiny leaves that lack the majesty of the American variety and are hard to rake; and they produce prodigious quantities of tiny seeds that attract squirrels in the fall, so that by this time of year they are almost totally denuded.

Let's hope the results with the chestnut will be better.  The chestnut is a prettier and more useful tree anyhow.  And if the tree is successful, maybe we'll also see a revival of village smithies.

Affinity Cards

A reader of the local column "John Kelly's Washington" complains that the issuance of those little store loyalty cards has got out of hand, (a point with which I'm sure few of us would disagree) and suggests that the answer would be to develop a single card that would "do it all," register our purchases in every place we went.

In fact, this technology already exists, so it may not be so difficult to achieve, if we really want it. 

Do we?  As Kelly points out, the real purpose of the cards is to gather information about your buying habits, your favorite brands, the frequency of your purchases, and such, so that they can sell to you more successfully.  Many consider this an invasion of privacy, and might find the combination of such data from many stores on one card even worse, regardless of whether the data is controlled by different chips and supposedly remains compartmented.  (I predict it wouldn't; if individual stores couldn't access it all, the makers of the cards and the card readers certainly could.)

I'm not much concerned about privacy in this situation, but I do think it's essentially unfair for retailers to use the cards to discriminate against those who don't have them.  In most stores with such cards, you don't get the "sale" price unless you have a card.  Yet stores still publish those big ads, touting those low prices on milk, toilet paper, or ice cream; and those ads are intended to draw in all customers, not only those who already regularly shop at that outlet.  In fact, I'd argue the sale ads are more aimed at drawing in a new customer than an old one.

With that in mind, it seems about the only way around the proliferation of these annoying cards is grass-roots revolt.  Check out without the card; go to the store manager afterward to complain about not getting the discount; and if he/she isn't prepared to rebate, insist on a full refund of your purchase, and go to another store.  A manager who has to deal with 100 or more people a day this way is going to realize very quickly that he can't afford the time; he'll find a better way.  If there's a sale price, everyone should get it.

Blockbuster Busted; A World Without Borders?

The Washington Post's business section reports that onetime video-rental king Blockbuster is considering a new business model while keeping its current storefronts open for the time being.

So, Blockbuster is in trouble.  Gee, do ya think?  And as the article above mentions, experts suggest that they didn't adapt quickly enough to a changing market.  Tell me something I didn't know!  It's truly amazing how frequently our supposedly innovative, adaptive business executives are slow to react to reality.  Blockbuster was never as big as General Motors, but they suffered from the same blind hubris -- and so did their stockholders, eventually.

After all, my wife and I could see the handwriting on the wall at least two, maybe even three years ago; Netflix was already gaining market share and some stock analysts were still recommending Blockbuster because they had belatedly adopted a mail-delivery option as well.  Too late.  What we saw at our local Blockbuster stores (about half of which are now closed) included:

-- a continually dwindling selection of older films (it got to the point where it was hard to find anything that was more than three months old);
-- a contemporaneous focus on providing several billion copies of only the very latest movies;
-- an increase in empty space in the store, meaning less of anything to choose from;
-- more effort to sell DVDs rather than rent them;
-- greater space devoted to snacks;
-- and possibly worst of all, high prices -- $4 for a film that wasn't a new release, while many competitors around the country were selling the same for $1.

No wonder they're in trouble.  But if I could see these signs, couldn't they? 

The whole business of entertainment distribution is obviously in turmoil; some companies are adapting better than others.  I'd predict the next casualty is likely to be Borders.  Their stores are currently exhibiting some of the signs I saw at Blockbuster: reduced inventory, more empty space, increased focus on unrelated product lines (yoga mats?), late to the party on new trends (e-books), and increasingly desperate-sounding e-mail specials.

We've always bought a lot of books, and we recall when we walked into our first Borders store back in the early 80s, in a Maryland suburb of Washington DC.  It was a store that would seem tiny by the standards of today's huge retail premises, yet it was like emerging from the black-and-white of Dorothy's Kansas into the brilliant color and merriment of Oz.  What an amazing selection of books on all subjects!  What a bewildering, unprecedented choice!  At that time, neither independents (most of which focused on one niche or another) nor other chains (Barnes and Noble was still in the old mode of offering only the most popular and saleable titles) was offering anything like it.

Now, Borders stores are reducing their inventories; some sections are almost nonexistent.  Barnes & Noble also has gone this route, though seemingly to a lesser extent (their selection was never as large as Borders's).  I enjoy browsing as much as any booklover, but the dilemma is that browsing requires a huge selection that stores can't afford to maintain now.  I used to be able to go to Borders and find a classic like Plato, a coffeetable book about trees, a recent novel, several choices of titles on the history of Germany, and/or a computer manual for a cumbersome software program.  But if you searched for those things in recent months, you would find only the novel.

A story about Borders could be written today, similar to the one above about Blockbuster.  Sadly it will probably be a year or more before we see it.