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 Can't
stop listening to Shirley Q.
Years after everyone else, I've found the guilty joys of
listening to the banned-in-Boston Shirley Q. Liquor, a character created by
comedian Chuck Nibbs, who has been roundly criticized for
creating racist humor. I may not be black, but I see
nothing racist at all in the struggles of a 350-lb mother of 19 to
balance the responsibilities of distributing hymnals for her
church—"at the crack of noon"—find
employment—"Every so often, the government reQUIRES me
to act like I'm looking for a job to get recertificated and
all"—or operate a microwave oven—"Honey, I heard
some popping and banging, I thought it was a
drive-by." OK,
Nibbs is white and performing in blackface. OK, Nibbs
seems to have been co-opted by the right
wing. Nevertheless, I think there's a little bit of
Shirley Q. in all of us—"I feel like a slave at my own
job!" I said to myself after they shipped me to West
Roxbury—and I can't stop listening to her on my little mp3
player (I have her interspersed with some of my November
tunes). Explore the complex multi talents of Mizz
Shirley Q. here.
"You tell your mother I axe her how she durrin."
posted November 14, 2011, 7:12 pm
Dear
Mountain Room Parents
Every now and then a New Yorker humor piece hits it out
of the park, like this
one.
posted November 1, 2011, 8:02 am
Fig Newtons, crappified
While the whole grain is a step in the right direction, the new Fig Newtons coming out of the Kraft factory this year still are
polluted by sugar, corn syrup, and high fructose corn syrup (the #3-, #4-, and #5-highest-percentage ingredients, respectively) and hydrogenated oil (#8). Syrupy sweet foods promote diabetes while hydrogenated fats clog blood vessels. Can't you do any better, large food company?
Apparently not. I e-mailed Kraft, Nabisco's congolomerate parent, and they
replied that "hydrogenated oils can be part of a nutritious diet." Read about it here.
posted October 31, 2011, 8:31 pm
 Netflix
lays an egg
I still love Netflix, despite the now-famous Qwikster debacle.
Getting DVDs by mail is a wonderful
improvement over going to a video store, but streaming, at
least right now, still has its problems— fewer available titles, the need for uniformly super-high-speed Internet, and server overloading during peak times like Saturday
nights. Nevertheless, Netflix announced September 19,
shortly after a poorly
received September 1 price increase on its streaming customers, that it would move its DVD-by-mail
segment onto a separate website called Qwikster, then reversed
its decision a couple weeks later, and decided, thankfully, to
keep its DVD-by-mail segment intact. An avalanche of media scorn
resulted from all this, including a Saturday Night Live skit here,
and David Zax's excellent article here
with adjectives like "erratic," "garbled," "sweeping,"
and "weird," detailing the passive-aggressive nature
of CEO Reed Hastings's apology (the e-mail begins "I messed up" before announcing new
consumer irritants), and noting that the Qwikster Twitter handle appears to belong to a
stoner. A furious commentator on Hacking Netflix
suggested that customers unhappy with proposed Netflix
changes be sent to the Afghanistan combat zone,
while oft-cited Wedbush Morgan securities analyst Michael
Pachter concluded that the company was going to sell its
streaming service and would soon trade at $150. (Pachter was
wrong again: shortly after his September 22, 2011
announcement, Netflix sank from $128 to a low of $75, just as
after his notorious comment
of January, 2005 that the company was
a "worthless piece of crap" its stock price steadily
outperformed the market to grow from $11 in January, 2005 to
$295 in July, 2011.) My opinion? Hastings should have begun his e-mail apology like
the cheap motel scene in the Strangers with Candy episode
"A Burden's Burden," where Jerri pours a shot of
Jagermeister, and, throwing a pair skimpy underwear across the
bed, says, "I wanna 'pologize."
posted October 26, 2011, 1:24 pm
Park
of shame
I like walking to work, it clears my mind before and after to
march briskly past grass and trees before spending all day
listening to chatter. And I know that living in
Dorchester I shouldn't expect pristine surroundings. But
why do people have to throw so much trash in the park?
This spring when both Dorchester's so-called
"Malibu" Beach Park?— McConnell Park? Or is
it Dorchester Shores? The park seems to be constantly
changing its name—and South Boston's Moakley Park became
submerged in a tide of garbage, I took some pics with my cell
phone to create the uncompromising "Park of Shame"
page here.
posted April 27, 2011, 7:45 am
Cybill
Read my acerbic take on the dismal offering of the mid-90's
pseudo-feminist sitcom "Cybill" here.
I also include links to watch on YouTube, at least for now,
some of my favorite episodes—which are otherwise unavailable
in American and not one of which is on the American "best
of" DVD.
Audio cassette
tape conversion
In yet another chapter in my continuing story of necessarily
late technology adoption (invest
your disposable income and wait for the
technology to mature, I always say, to anyone who
will listen), I have decided to convert
my music collection, quaintly stored right now as
audio cassette tapes, into MP3s. I describe the
process in more detail here.
I had considered getting a PlusDeck, a thingie
that inserts into my computer to directly convert
the tape to MP3 without having to -- gasp! --
walk 3 feet to the stereo, but PlusDecks, ahem,
suck. Worse, the normally stalwart Amazon has
apparently allowed a manufacturer of horribly
defective PlusDecks plastered with bad reviews to simply open a new page with the
same horrible product newly packaged in a
COLORFUL BOX here.
So I posted a comment here.
Oooooh!
posted April 15, 2011, 10:33 am
For entries posted prior to
2011, I invite you to my archive.
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