Etiquette & superstition: dealing with stutterers

Today’s examples of etiquette and superstition fall in line with my previously written beliefs about the value of superstition over etiquette. The etiquette tip is slightly useful, in that it explains why you shouldn’t do something, but it doesn’t provide you with any answers about what to do instead. Superstition wins again with some very helpful hints.

ETIQUETTE: If you find yourself in a conversation with a person who stutters, do not finish his sentences for him or tell him to slow down and take a deep breath. It may make him self-conscious about his stuttering, which in turn can lead to more stuttering.

SUPERSTITION: An infant will develop a stutter if you cut his hair before he says his first words. Thankfully, you can cure the baby of his stutter by throwing fresh, warm reindeer lungs at him. Alternately, make the child drink water out of a snail shell for several months.

The Fern Dell ghost and his vampire bike

Last week I was very disheartened because I saw the cool old guy who might be a ghost or might be a vampire near Griffith Park again, and he was riding his bicycle, and of course this is the only photo I got:

This got me wondering: if he’s a vampire but he was riding his bike, wouldn’t I have gotten a photo of a bicycle with nobody riding it? Or is his bike a vampire as well? I tried doing a little online research but didn’t find anything of much use. I should note to you that I do not recommend doing online searches for “vampire bike” or “vampire bicycle.” For that matter, “vampire,” unless you want to look at a bunch of old Angelfire or Geocities pages with black backgrounds. The only information you’ll find about vampires on these pages is that high school principals totally persecute vampires and it’s way not fair.

Anyway, I tried again another day last week, and just when I was about to take the picture, my camera battery died. I was really getting freaked out by this point. I was never going to get a picture of this guy. I was a terrible paranormal investigator. But yesterday there must have been some vampire-seeing eclipse or Pluto rising or something because I GOT A PHOTO OF THE FERN DELL GHOST:

There he is, jogging. I can’t believe it. And even better, when I was looking through my photos later, I found something that I hadn’t even seen when I was taking the pictures: I got a photo of the Fern Dell Ghost approaching his vampire bike, which was parked near a tree:

Even after I made the tags there, I had to do some Photoshop adjustments so you could see them, but they’re clearly there. I don’t think anybody has taken a photo of a vampire bicycle before, so I don’t know if I should try to send this in somewhere or copyright it or what. This is pretty exciting, no? I hope this site doesn’t crash from all the hits when word gets out about this.

America’s Next Top Bottle recap

I’m not sure if I’m going to do this TV show synopsis thing every week, but I thought I’d try it as an experiment, and America’s Next Top Model is the most insane show on TV without a decent online recap. Jezebel.com has one, but the commenters are really humorless, and the official website is choked with lousy formatting. So here we go.

Last night was episode 6 of Cycle 10 of Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister ANTM. The opening credits this season are based on Cabaret, except Tyra is pretending she’s Debbie Allen from Fame. A very airbrushed blowup doll Debbie Allen from Fame.

8:12 – This episode started late because of some dumb sports thing, and we were also busy practicing “Back In The Saddle Again” on the piano, but it finally started. Aimee the Mormon is the first person onscreen, which usually means she’s going to be eliminated, but they just keep talking about how luminescent her skin is, so maybe not. They then cut to Lauren, my dark horse favorite who looks like Sarah Polley. They keep telling her she needs to work on her self-confidence. Uh oh.

8:17 – Claire is using the breast pump and crying about how she misses her baby. Her baby looks like she’s about four years old so this is a little weird.

Haitian weather report

You’ll probably get about 50 links to this in your email today, but:

I elect this guy President For Life of Laugh Land. Thanks, Arthur!

Bibendum and Caoutchouc

There are a lot of common storefront art subjects – unlicensed Disney figures, a hand holding a rose, women making tortillas. I’m still trying to decide whether each subject deserves its own subcategory on this site, but for now I’m just going to try to highlight the best examples of each subject as I come across them.

The Michelin Man is, of course, one of these subjects. Apparently, his real name is Bibendum, which comes from the toast “Nunc est bibendum” (Latin for “Booze up!”)*. The guy above is actually a pretty accurate rendering of an old version of Bibendum, the version that ate glass and smoked cigars and kicked his competitors in the teeth. Or at least kicked their ass in a popping/locking competition.

But who is this little guy?

That is one fast tire he’s riding. He is a tire riding demon. I would buy his tire. Please don’t tell Bibendum.

* Comments correcting my Latin will be approved but mocked.

Found at Mom’s

Every few years or so, I try to help my mom out from under the garbage she accumulates. She’s not a full-blown hoarder, but she has hoarding tendencies. I don’t mean this lightly – I know the difference between “pack rat” and “hoarder.” I’ve always been concerned about this not only because I’m afraid she’s going to be buried under a pile of old magazines and gift ribbon, but also because I know I’ve inherited the same trait.

The last time I visited her I got really freaked out by the number of umbrellas and pencils and boxes of shoulder pads lying around. She needed a somewhat clean house in order to get around after hip surgery, so after I asked her, she let me clean up a bit while she was in the hospital.

Because she let me do that, and because she genuinely seemed relieved when she saw I had gotten rid of a lot of crap, I don’t feel she’s a genuine OCD hoarding case. Still, it was kind of disturbing for me to realize that one day I had spent the majority of my time throwing away old magazine articles about getting organized. I found over $100 of unused Christmas cards (the receipt was still in the bag), boxes of joke email printouts, years of church phone directories, my dad’s old pay stubs from Fairchild Camera & Instrument.

At a certain point though, I started finding the whole exercise fascinating. It was an archealogical dig of my mother’s life, after all. I understood what a lot of things were, but there were other items that were complete mysteries. I was a little mad at myself for not having brought my camera; I did, however, manage to collect some artifacts.

Here’s artifact #1.

Etiquette & superstition: eating eggs

I’ve been interested in prescribed methods of behavior for as long as I can remember. On my first day of preschool I was really disappointed with my teacher for not telling me that I was expected to wait in line before going out to the playground; I didn’t know that’s what I was supposed to do, so I didn’t do it and then she scolded me for it. It didn’t seem fair that she did that, and I was really embarrassed. Give me the rules first; I’ll decide whether I’m going to break them or not.

In order to get a better handle on the rules, I read a lot of books about etiquette and also a lot of books about superstitions. It seems a little funny to me that etiquette is given more credence in modern society than superstition, because the latter has always seemed more practical to me. It’s true that modern etiquette is simply a code of polite behavior to make others feel more at ease, but it started out merely as the upper class equivalent of a gang sign. “Yo, Homeschool’s not eating his Hochepot Normande with a knife and fork and spoon. Let’s beat this sucker DOWN.”

Etiquette tells you what you’re supposed to do in a particular situation, but superstition actually explains why you’re supposed to do it. Cover your mouth when you yawn, or else a little devil will come and snatch your soul out of your mouth. Don’t let a cat near a sleeping baby for the same reason. This is helpful information that people probably couldn’t figure out on their own. This goes far beyond common sense. I often choose to ignore the arbitrary rules of etiquette, but I think twice before laughing in the face of superstition.

In honor of the recent holiday, I present to you two rules of behavior regarding the eating of eggs:

ETIQUETTE: If you are eating a soft boiled egg in a cup (or in pants, as pictured above), the cup (or pants) must remain flat on the plate. Eat the egg with a teaspoon, and steady the cup (or pants) with your left hand.

SUPERSTITION: If you are eating a soft boiled egg, be sure to crush both halves of the shell after you have finished eating. Otherwise, a witch may use one of the halves as a boat and crash into ships at sea. Since it’s a witch, the ships will sink but the witch can keep sailing around in her egg boat looking for more ships to sink.

The sad bridesmaid

Hey, what’s this?

Oh great; it’s a wedding! And look how pretty the bridesmaid is in her fancy pink dress:

Really lovely. But wait – is it just me or does she seem a little sad? A little wistful? A little “I can’t believe this See You Next Tuesday is getting married and I’m still alone”? A little “Seriously, look at the bitchface she’s working ON HER WEDDING DAY and I’m the one going home to my cat and Miss Guided on my TiVo”? I don’t think it’s my imagination. And she does have a point.

The groom looks miserable too, even though today means he inherits his rich grandmother’s estate because finally, finally, he’s triumphed over that “but you’ve broken my heart with your homosexual lifestyle so you get nothing” clause in the will:

Don’t worry, Bridesmaid.

About two hours into the reception, the bride is going to find her new rich husband in a broom closet with Oscar de la Renta here, and she’s not going to be happy.

The fifth season

This first day of Spring is reminding me of a hotel in Texas I stayed in several years ago. My old rock’n'roll chamber orchestra went on a tour of the Midwest, and our first stopping point was Amarillo. It was really late by the time we got there, and we were all exhausted, so we checked in to the nearest hotel – The Fifth Season.

Our initial clue that this place was not a quality establishment was the old lice comb we found on the stairs. The second clue was the overwhelming stench of industrial deodorizing spray permeating the halls. We were too tired to try to find another place to stay, however, so we all went to bed.

In the morning, some of us went downstairs to check out the free breakfast buffet that had been much touted by the night clerk, and we weren’t disappointed. Well, we were pretty disappointed by the food, but the atrium in which we breakfasted was really something to behold.

First off, it was huge. There was an enormous cloudy indoor swimming pool infested with children before we got to the buffet area. That solved the question about the deodorizer spray. I think I may have preferred just a pure urine scent rather than that combined with the perfume odor, but that’s just my individual preference.

The buffet area itself was surrounded by fake trees decorated with combinations of seasonal props – one tree had apples and snow, one had blossoms and red leaves, et cetera. We decided they were representing the fifth season. Ah. There was quite a bit of discussion about the name of this fifth season: spummer, wall, sprinter, wing. After we ate up the hotel’s supply of cold toast, we decided we weren’t big fans of this proposed fifth season. Time to go.

I was a little sad to learn this morning that the Fifth Season Inn & Suites has recently been remodeled; where would all the birds perch during the long days of simmer? But a quick check of the Trip Advisor comments section comforted me that the hotel is at its heart still the same travel experience:

“Rooms were ok. Blood on sheets (…) Late night staff is busy sleeping in the back room.”

“This hotel is more out to protect their employees then the saftey of their guest. Not a freindly place to stay.”

“In the morning there was no coffee, no breakfast. We were told coffee would be ready at 5:30am, at 6:30am there was no coffee in sight. The man at the front desk was rude and just said, ‘I don’t know, maybe they over slept.’ Then he went back to watching his cartoons.”

“The room smelled heavily of urine as did many of the hallways. (…) The bed my friend slept in we discovered had skid marks the next morning when she got out of bed.”

Sounds great! Book your rooms for Fing Break now.

Happy first day of Spring

Power up!