The Difference Between Life and Death

I know, I know. This isn't the first time I've pointed out badly-written commercial copy. But I just can't let it slide. This one is for Symbicort, an asthma inhaler which is not intended to replace a rescue inhaler. Nevertheless, it apparently opens airways and makes breathing easier. I'm all for this, of course. I mean, it's an asthma medication. If it didn't at the minimum make breathing easier, then this would be a letter to the FDA and to AstraZeneca. But the thing I find teeth-gratingly annoying, is that the purported asthma sufferer depicted (for no good reason, in silhouette) says, and I'm paraphrasing, but I swear it's no more ridiculous than the real stuff, "With Symbicort, I can breathe more freely and reduce my need for rescue inhalers. That makes a difference to me!"

I'm sorry. WHAT? You're kidding, right? So you're saying the fact that you don't fear for your life at every moment makes a difference in how you feel? It puts Symbicort on your Christmas list? Whereas before, the tightness in your chest and constricted breathing were just okay. But this, this really makes a noticeable difference. Huh.

Lame, lazy copy. I mean it. Don't make me blog about it again.

Jenny

Breaker breaker 1 9, we got us a convoy!

So I'm running on the beach in Santa Monica last night. And who passes me on rollerblades but Rhona Mitra, and I think her boyfriend was riding his bike along side as she bladed. Anyhoo, I'm running north and they're heading south. Rhona is on the phone btw.

Ten minutes later I have turned around and I'm heading back toward the pier. I was all set to pass them both on the way back. I had my routine set.

1. Turn off my iPod
2. Scream, "Underworld 3 vampire lady" at her
3. If she stopped me I would tell her that we worked together
4. She exits not believing me as she pretty much only saw me in my wolf costume.

Oh well, there's always the next movie which I hope will be called, Underworld 4: Ten Four Back Door. It's a movie where werewolves and vampires are long distance truckers working for competing companies. Rhona will be driving the vampire truck hauling silver bullets and I'll be in my werewolf truck hauling sunlight as we head for un-dead man's curve.

That's never going to happen.

Kurt

Greeny Come Latelies

I appreciate all efforts towards so-called greening. But I always have. These folks who are telling me "that's recyclable, you know" are treading on dangerously thin ice. I've been carrying their weight in recyclables for 20 years, and I still feel bad about how long it took me to get on board.

Until I moved and got my beautiful blue bucket, I lugged carloads of bottles, cans and boxes to Burbank. I take the cans and bottles with me from the restaurant, if I'm not sure they are doing the right thing. I boycott certain companies, and the packaging of a product figures heavily into my buying decisions.

When I was waiting tables at Max & Erma's in the beautiful Pittsburgh neighborhood of Shadyside - I've never forgotten it - I mentioned something about how it hurt to throw all the beer bottles away, and that I couldn't believe they didn't have a recycling program, and my co-worker, a senior server, turned to me and said, "Oh. You're an environmentalist?" It gave me paws. (I meant that.) And I remember thinking, "wow, is that even still a word?" That was 1992. You're either for or against, People.

Just a smidge of personal responsibility, is all, and I promise it won't hurt. It will even feel good.


Jenny

Rocketman

We've all done it. You pick up the phone and you hear the delay and the person on the line is asking for you and you know that they are a telemarketer.

When I pick up the phone and they ask for me I tell them that Kurt is not here right now, I 'm his brother, can I take a message? And when they ask what time will Kurt be back I tell them that Kurt isn't scheduled to come back for six more months. And they say, Oh is he in a foreign country? And I tell them, No Kurt is an astronaut on the international space station and so I can't get your message to him right away but give me your phone number and I'll have him call you.

They get excited and tell me that they'll call back in six months. Sometimes when they call me I apologize for not returning their call because I am an astronaut and I was on the international space station and NASA won't allow certain phone calls on the data stream to the capsule.

If you would like to try this, you could tell people that you are the Captain of a Navy submarine and you're under the waves for six months at a time, but when I get back from my next mission under the polar ice cap, I would love for you to shampoo my rug.

Kurt

Answers? They vary.

Not surprisingly, I was the teacher’s pet in the second grade. I was forced by my own nature to endear myself to Mrs. N. She was a terrifying figure. She’s been around for a while, and would occasionally resort to the corporal punishment ways of her youth. Back when it was ok to hit children. She would have the kids trade quiz papers with the person across the way, so they could grade each others’ work. She once hit my sister Lisa hard on the head when she saw she got eight wrong. But she didn’t get eight wrong, it was the girl across the way. She said, “Oh, sorry hon,” and ran around the desks to hit the proper kid. Lisa and her friend Elaine, the one with eight wrong, took the time to tell the story and to demonstrate for me, several times, just how hard Mrs. N could hit. So going in, I knew two things. If she hit me, it would hurt, one, and B), 50% of the time it would be totally unjustified. I had to not only be good, but be the best possible child. I would hug her hello in the morning, that’s how bad it got. I don’t remember what I did to achieve this status, but it must have been hard to watch. A kiss-ass that young…it couldn’t have been very pretty.

Anyway, being the suck-butt that I was, I would naturally finish my assignments early in the day. So I was allowed to take Mrs. Naumann’s teacher’s edition and check my work. This was all well and good, but one day I thought, what the hey. I’ll just check the next day’s assignment and get all the answers. Brilliant. I might have been chafing at the Perfect Child bonds that I had tied myself up in, but I had never done anything this devious. (Well, not quite true. There was a period when I would ingest my parents’ prescription medication from the cabinet in the bathroom. Oh, don’t worry, I would just take one pill, and only every once in a while. I have perfect memories of me perched on the bathroom sink, choosing that night’s pharmaceutical. It only lasted till I asked my mother what bloating was and had no answer for where I’d heard that word.) But my point is I had a streak of secret badness. Not Bad Seed bad, but pretty bad. Who knew where this would lead?

So the next day, we’re in social studies and the group is discussing the answers and well, I KNOW mine are right, right? I mean, I got them out of the Teachers’ Edition, after all. So we get to number one, and I’m all, “Oooh, oooh! Pick me!” like an idiot, so of course she calls on me, her little darling. And I say -- and I swear I didn’t really grasp what it meant till it was out of my mouth -- but I say, with pride:

“Answers may vary.”

Get it? Like the answers may vary. Like we won’t put the answer in the Teacher’s Edition because THE ANSWERS MAY VARY. It was pretty much the end of my life of crime.

But I like to take these little mortifying moments and learn from them. What was a humiliating experience, is really a pretty good life lesson. Answers may vary. Heck, they will vary, nothing you can do about it.

Check plus, everyone. Check plus.

Jenny

It was the birds.

Getting up for my morning walk with Kacey today was pretty easy. Usually I’m a zombie, shuffling out the front door, silently cursing the fact that I have to get up at all because I could easily get by with ten hours of sleep a night. I’m a good sleeper, like an Olympic caliber sleeper. But there was no cursing this morning because I was already up when my alarm went off at 6:30am. I’d been up since 6:00. It was the birds. The frackin’ birds going frackin’ nutso outside my frackin' window at the break of dawn (pardon my Battlestar Galactica French). For a split second I thought perhaps I’d been magically plopped down the Denver Zoo bird house, or maybe transported to the deepest, darkest corner of the Amazon. The sound was unreal. There was a mockingbird doing a spot on impression of the LG default ring. Ah, Spring. Walking down Gardner a sparrow flew right for me, buzzed so close to my ear that I get goosebumps even thinking about it. Hey, I’m walkin’ here! They’re crazy. Those birds are crazy. Be careful out there, you might want to bring some protection.



cawcaaaaw,
gretch

Panama

Kurt

Handle With Caution

You know what scares me?

I mean besides monsters and eyeballs.

Raw chicken.

It scares the living bejeebus out of me.



Raw chicken is covered in the most toxic poison known to humans: salmonella. That stuff will kill you dead if it so much as stays on your hand for more than 8 seconds. The only way to protect yourself against salmonella is to run your hands under scalding hot water after every encounter with the cooking implements used in cooking, an average of 13 times a minute.

Here are some facts you may not know about salmonella (just take my word for it):

- Salmonella can live in temperatures between 34 and 800 degrees.

- Carnivorous dinosaurs were killed off by eating their buddies without first properly cooking them. Salmonella has been around that long. Modern day chickens are descendants of dinosaurs, look it up. Herbivorous dinosaurs were the ones killed off by the meteor thing.

- If left out for more than five minutes, raw chicken will produce airborne salmonella that can travel up to 43 miles.


If you guessed that I’m in the mood for chicken tonight then you are the big winner. I just have to pick up my hazmat suit from the cleaners which just so happens to be across the street from Gelsons…that sounds like kismet to me.

Happy cooking!
Gretch

Building on my work

I have a unusual name. Let's just say it is not John Smith. I found three guys on Facebook that have my same name, although they do not spell it the same way. I know that this will sound conceited, but I can't believe that those guys are cruising on my good name. All of the groundwork that I have done over the last decades, they are reaping the benefits.

I'm sure that they are going out to bars or clubs for example and using their credit card and people are saying, "Oh, you're that Kurt..." and they're saying, "Oh... uh, yeah, that's me!"

C'mon. You know you'd do it too. I gotta say I can't blame em.

Kurt

Give us your pampered, your entitled.....

So I've had occasion to drive slowly over Coldwater Canyon twice in the past two days, and I was amused to find not one but two (that I know about) statue of liberty lawn sculptures. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think Lady Liberty translates well. Part of what makes her special to me is her size. So this is a diminishment, literal and figurative, no? When set up on the front lawn? In Beverly Hills?

Which brings me to my next point: Really? Beverly Hills? It seems to be proof positive that the people who live there are more than a little out of touch. The tired and poor are only welcome at the bus stops after a long day toiling in your houses and gardens, let's be honest. If you think the statue makes your maid think you're one of the people, think again. It serves only to underscore, in this humble Ellis-island-descendant's opinion, the vast separation of you and me, and while we're at it, you and reality.

Sincerely,

Jenny