Tagged: edlines.co
Refusing Role Call
I’m on Linkedin a lot to promote my Forbes.com stories and podcast, Tales From the Beat, so I see things. What I see are a ton of people who write they’re looking for “a new role.”
Of course these are unfortunate individuals who have found themselves suddenly payless because the thing they were doing to make a living was taken away from them due to firing, layoff, business failure or just bad luck.
It happened to me back in January, 2001 when I was laid off as part of the awesome merger between CNN parent company Time-Warner and AOL. I was the CNN Detroit bureau chief and correspondent at the time and was one of about 1,000 employees told to hit the road, thanks to the recommendations by an outside consultant.
So I’ve been there.
In my “role” as a father and husband I burned some of my generous severance to take my family on a vacation out to Arizona, then went to work…looking for work…a job.
The term “role” never entered my mind. I’m not an actor, although I act up some times. I actually was a speech and theater major in college until I realized I had no future as an actor because I couldn’t remember my lines. That’s one of the reasons I pivoted to broadcasting, because you get to read stuff instead of memorizing it.
But I’ve been thinking a lot about the wide use of the term “role” because, well, everyone has a role. Maybe you’re a partner, spouse, parent, mentor, individual pursuing life, support for a disabled person, confidante, conspirator. Those are all roles.
Folks, what you really need….is a job. It may not be as elegant a term as role, but it’s what you really seek.
You need a job because you don’t have one. You need a job because you need a source of income. You need a job because you enjoy working in your chosen field and it gives you pleasure, satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment.
Why do we need to use this word “role” to soften the message?
There is zero shame in admitting you need a job. There is no shame in admitting you need work. It’s what we all need unless you’re independently wealthy.
Coming out loud and clear that you’re in the job market is actually a great message. It tells prospective employers you’re ready to work and don’t mince words. Yup, no screwing around. “I need a job. I’m right for your company because I have all the skills, great employment record, list of accomplishments. I’ve thoroughly researched your company, its goals, its culture, its accomplishments and I bring qualities that will add value to the operation.
You’re not looking to play a role, you’re not looking to play at all. You’re looking to do a job and do it well in exchange for money.
Actors who play roles have understudies to step in when they can’t come to work. In real life, we don’t have the convenience of someone being paid to wait around backstage to do our jobs in case we don’t show up.
In my entire working 52 year working life, I never once said, “gotta head off to my role now!” I’ve never undergone “on the role training.”
I went to work. I underwent on the job training.
There’s no reason to substitute some sugar-coated euphemism to soften the message.
Just say what you mean. Use honest words to find honest work. You’ll always have your life’s role.
Mixus Uses the Other AI To Ensure Accuracy
In the world of artificial intelligence, when the technology spits out inaccurate information, instead of calling it what it is, a screw up, the industry invented a softer euphemism—hallucination. Those hallucinations have the potential of causing physical or financial harm, or at the least, a major embarrassment.
But a months-old startup called mixus.ai has added a very analog backstop to catching errors before they do any harm—the human brain. Indeed, its name is a portmanteau of mix and us, meaning blending artificial with human intelligence to help ensure accuracy.
The simple explanation is when a user makes an AI query, in addition to a AI-generated response mixus.ai also recommends people who have expertise, experience or knowledge on the specific topic. The user can then add those recommended people into their chat and converse with them and AI together.
Building on that original model, mixus.ai has now added an even more powerful tool it calls “colleague in the loop” AI agents, which can conduct a vast array of tasks such as generating social media posts, recruiting talent, drafting and sending emails, to name a few.
The twist is, the content goes nowhere until trusted human beings in a user’s network act as editors and fact-checkers.
“By bringing colleagues into the loop, you get the full power of AI agents, the efficiency and the time savings, etc, without any of that downside risk of AI mistakes going undetected,” explained Elliot Katz, who co-founded mixus.ai with Shai Magzimof.
Creating AI agents on mixus does not require any sort of coding or programming knowledge, just the ability to read and write.
“The beauty of this is someone who’s never used AI, someone who doesn’t even know what an AI agent is, you can create and use agents on mixus,” declared Katz, in an interview.
In the video below, Katz demonstrates how a colleague in the loop AI agent is created in mixus.
There’s no shortage of examples of the volume of AI hallucinations causing companies and individuals to swoon from their effects.
A report released in April by OpenAI, which operates the popular ChatGPT platform, revealed its o3 model hallucinated over 50% of the time, meaning every other answer was incorrect. And OpenAI’s o4-mini model performed even worse: nearly four out of five responses were wrong, meaning it fabricated answers nearly 80% of the time.
A very recent example occurred just last month when a summer reading list written by a syndicated freelance writer using AI appeared in such major market newspapers as the Chicago Sun-Times and Philadelphia Inquirer.
As reported in the Sun-Times, the writer admitted he never double-checked the results of his AI search which was incredibly unfortunate because several of the book titles in the list never actually existed, making the AI-generated summaries equally false.
Katz contends it’s an example of a situation that could have been prevented by use of the colleague in the loop system.
“They could be using mixus, and they could have rules that are brought out through mixus, that say, before you publish anything, you have to have your editor or a colleague or multiple colleagues press that verify button, meaning they’ve actually reviewed what the AI put out is real and not total slop, etc,” Katz said.
Investors are backing the mixus.ai playbook. The company just closed its $2.6 million pre-seed funding round which included participation by Liquid 2, former NFL star quarterback Joe Montana’s venture capital firm.
Access to mixus.ai is by subscription. The company offers a free, 14-day trial to individuals using a business or personal email address. After that period, anyone who wants to continue as a user will need to contact mixus for “custom pricing,” according to Katz.
Since launching late last year, mixus.ai has changed its business model from B to C, targeting consumers, to now targeting businesses, for which, errors can be more consequential according to Katz.
“We want colleagues in the loop,” said Katz. “We are working with businesses that want to deploy AI agents in a way that they don’t have to deal with these undetected AI mistakes.”
You can listen or watch the entire interview with Elliot Katz and an extended demonstration of the mixus.ai colleague in the loop AI agent creation tool in the author’s podcast Tales From the Beat.
Party Pooper
My wife likes purple. I thought it would be cool if I tossed a bag of purple candy in her Christmas stocking. I looked in every supermarket and big box store but purple colored candy just wasn’t something any of them offered. Online wasn’t an option. Christmas was just a day away and I don’t fall for the “Prime” extortion.
I was about to give up when I decided to try my luck in a store that was all about celebrating, since purple seemed to be a celebratory color, if not exactly appetizing.
Yes, Party City had bags of it. Tubes of it. All the purple M&Ms any number of humans could desire simultaneously. It had so many pieces of purpley pills that would melt neither in ones mouth or hands I had to contain myself. Hell, I wanted to toss myself a party for popping into Party City. It would be a theme party with purple hats, cups and paper plates and plastic utensils. Everyone I invited could take a whack at a purple pinata in the shape of a lavender lizard. I wouldn’t even have to leave Party City to get all that stuff because it was all there.
In fact..on the Party City website you could actually search for stuff not only by theme or occasion, but by color. Click on purple and voila, it’s a grape new world!
Now the suits who run Party City say the entire chain is closing down. They say the Party City poopers are discount stores, online marketplaces, people not throwing parties at all that require bundles of balloons or paper tablecloths and napkins with pictures of ponies or super heroes.
What are kids doing for birthday parties? Maybe there’s an app for that, like everything else. How do you play pin the tail on the donkey—close your eyes and take a poke at a smartphone screen? Feels ass-backwards.
Where do you get party favors? You know, those little tchotchkes you give each kid who is sure to either break it or choke on it before the candles are even lit? I’m told you can get that stuff at “dollar” stores. Heh. Even those have given up the ghost now charging at least a buck-twenty-five for their wares that were barely worth a single in the first place and it’s never as cool or in the variety Party City offers.
I always enjoyed watching some poor mom or dad trying to schlep out to their car with a bundle of a dozen helium balloons, struggling to get out the door without cursing as that big Mickey Mouse one got loose and headed to oblivion in the troposphere.
Where do you even buy helium-filled balloons now? When I was growing up long ago, Party City didn’t yet exist. It was hard to find a place to buy helium balloons, so my father figured out if you rub an inflated balloon on your pants it created enough static electricity for the balloon to stick to the wall…for about 10 minutes.
Oh, you might find another store that sells helium-filled balloons but only Party City has them for every freakin’ age decade–although I’d be afraid to buy one for someone turning 80. The damned thing bursts, scares the crap out of the new octogenarian, that’s their last birthday. Too bad because Party City has balloons for when you turn 90 or 100. So deflating.
I’m not much for dressing up for Halloween, or even to go to the store, but hell, you never know when you’ll get the yen to pop on a Green Glam Wig when you’re too lazy or late to wash your hair..or you just wanna look greeny-glam.
I never really got the thing with “gender reveal” parties. I mean, when we had our kids the nurse or doctor just kinda looked, er, under the hood, when the cherub made his or her way into the world from the tunnel of love. But nowadays couple want to know in advance so they can decorate the nursery gender-specifically, advise attendees to their baby shower not to gift jock straps when they know the lil’ darlin’ about to emerge will have nothing to strap in.
I know, I know. You can find them online. I did, but hell, you don’t get the satisfaction of watching the smirk on the face of the pimply teen-aged cashier or the opportunity to tell a bad dad joke while cashing out. “Yeah, the wife and I are celebrating our second honeymoon. Heh-heh.” Then you apologize as the kid makes some rude remark about Boomers.
Sure enough, Party City carries just the right accessories for gender reveal soirees. I love the paper plates that say, “just here for the SEX.” Heh. I’m here for that! Where will you buy those now?
I could go on and on about all the party paraphernalia at Party City, but you get the idea. We’re just losing too many go-to chains that we long depended on for one reason or another, like Big Lots—cheap stuff, tacky furniture, giant containers of cajun snack mix and a hundred varieties of ear buds and pods for Keurigs.
But I mourn the passing of Party City the most. It’s not that I visited the store very often, but sometimes it’s just nice to know a place like that is there when you need it. Like when your partner in life decides she has a new favorite color M&Ms, or when a friend turning 100 boldly requests a helium balloon and doesn’t care if it bursts, because they can’t hear it anyway.
So long, Party City. I’d say “party’s over” but that’s just too trite..and I won’t be party to that.
Busting Baseball Crib Notes
I’m old enough to remember hiding “crib notes” in my hand when attempting to not fail a trigonometry exam. Oh c’mon, you did it too. Maybe you scribbled some facts in pen on your hands or arms. Get caught, you get sent to the principal’s office, or worse, get a F on the exam. Aw, don’t act self-righteous about it. I bet you read the Classic Comic version of Silas Marner or dove into the Cliff Notes rather than suffer through the actual, depressing book.
Yeah, yeah, it’s technically cheating, which has me thinking about what’s become glaring demonstrations of cribbing among Major League Baseball players. It’s right there on TV. Catchers sport those flip up things attached to their wrists that contain intelligence on opposing batters. Pitchers and position players doff their caps where they’re hiding cheat sheets on how to play the next guy at bat.
I don’t know the exact wording but I’m imagining something like, “Joey Bagadonuts sucks at hitting sliders,” “Andy Eatme hits to short right field and has bad breath.” This is invaluable intelligence as to how to pitch to or defend against the hitter. But it just smacks of smuggling crib notes into the test room.
OK, I’ll invoke it. What I was a kid, players just, well, remembered things about their opposition or had a feeling about the guy and acted accordingly. Can you imagine a grouchy Nolan Ryan looking inside his cap for advice on how to brush back a batter with a 100 mph fastball? Screw it, he’d just terrorize the guy on general principles because it’s fun.
If Ryan’s catcher had the temerity to flip up and refer to crib notes on his wrist and then actually suggest a pitch based on that information, I’m guessing he’s the one who would get the heater aimed at his head.
Did Willie Mays need notes hiding on his head? Are you kidding? Ball goes up, ball comes down… in his mitt. What’s so hard about that? Nothing, if you’re Willie Mays.
I know, it’s all related to the scourge of sports related Sabremetric, data, numbersnumbernumbers, blah blah blah blah.
Go ahead, without Googling it, tell me what OPS is. Sure, some of you will know, others will pretend they know, honest ones will say, “don’t give a shit.” What’s the guy hitting? Launch angle? It’s baseball, not NASA. The ball’s gotta rendezvous with the fielder’s mitt, not Venus.
I love it when they tell me how fast the ball left the bat. Sure, it lets you know how hard the guy swings but honestly, some of the most effective swings are slow and easy and result in run scoring hits.
All these esoteric stats may be included in these cheat sheets but to me sports is all about training, natural talent, instinct and spitting.
But it would be fun to see the umps crack down on this stuff, like test proctors, ejecting guys for using the crib notes on their wrists and under their hats rather than playing the game using their heads.
Standing up for office furniture
Being semi-retired, my attendance in the office is only semi-regular. That means I can only stand..or sit..guard over my workspace semi-regularly. So I was only mildly surprised, but thoroughly disappointed when I showed up the other day after a few days away to find my chair in two pieces, on the floor with two screws sitting on my desk. No explanation until my boss happened by and I pointed to the wreckage while giving him a questioning look. He kinda laughed as he explained the person who sits across the aisle from me had a “chair emergency” while I was gone and grabbed my chair. That meant the carnage on the floor was actually her chair and not mine. My chair was under her butt.
After an embarrassed apology my chair was returned and the victim of the “chair emergency” got a spare chair from some other office.
It all got me thinking not only about how important our office furniture is to us but how it can also be used as just another form of bullshit one-upsmanship.
Cases in point.
At a former employer..a large corporation…office furniture was doled out according to your “band” or pay level. A vice president or above got a big office with a defined furniture formula of a walnut partner desk, meeting table with four chairs and a credenza for displaying photos, awards and free shit from media events.
The formula cascaded down quickly to a counter with 6 drawers and a meeting table all the way down to a cube with two file cabinets, a counter and a trash can. Actually, that’s about as much space as most anyone needs to do most jobs. When I was promoted to a glass office with 6 overhead bins and nine drawers I just dumped crap in them that I didn’t want to take home. I did use two drawers for files and another for my lunch.
One day things suddenly changed. A co-worker decided she needed to stand while she worked and got the office manager to order one of those Varidesks. Maybe you’ve seen them. You plop it on your real desk then raise or lower it to a comfortable level. Pretty cool. The cheapest one is about 400 bucks. After a few weeks it looked like Varidesks were growing wild. They started popping up all over the office. Short people, tall people, busy people, people who didn’t do 3 minutes of work a day all decided they would be more productive if they could just have the option to stand while they surfed Zappos for shoes, played Solitaire or screwed off on the boss’s dime in any number of ways. At one point I could hear at least one standee emulate Mr. Ed because she was sleeping standing up and snoring like an old nag.
I couldn’t help inquiring of the office manager while the company was spending all this money on stand-up desks when budgets were otherwise tight. She didn’t want to tell me at first but finally admitted that once the first person asked for one others became jealous that a co-worker got something new and they wanted one too…even if there was no physical reason for working standing up. In fact….it wasn’t long before some of the me-too standees realized they couldn’t stand standing and ordered high stools so they could sit at their standups. I don’t have to tell you once the first stool arrived, more were demanded because why shouldn’t they have what someone else has..even if it’s malaria.
As time went on, I noticed many of those who had stamped their feet for a standup desk caught wind of the “vari” part of the Varidesk and began using its various settings to gradually lower the desk until, after a week or so, the standup desk was simply sitting on top of the sit-at desk and the high stools were shunted into a corner and used as coat racks or just another surface to stack crap. This left the original Varidesk requestor feeling mighty lonely because she really needed to stand to help ameliorate a painful back condition. I had to ask her how she felt about the jealous copycats demanding, then abandoning their Varidesks. Well…she said. It was satisfying that as the one person who actually needed it.. she was the last one standing.
Now I work mainly from home. My wife and I each have our offices..and our own chairs. Invoking the crazy guy in the movie Stripes, we always joke with each other, “you touch my chair…I kill ya.”
Senior Moments at the Gym
The slight elderly woman was bent over a magazine propped up on the stand attached to the stair-stepper machine. Slowly, slowly, she depressed on the pedal, stopped, read a line or two from an article, then took another step with the opposite foot.
She was in the middle of this routine when I arrived at the storefront fitness place I joined in January to rehab my left knee, which underwent surgery in December to repair a torn cartilage I suffered playing ice hockey into my mid-60’s.
I mounted the elliptical and began my program. She was three machines to my right. I cranked up the Tom Petty concert playing in my ear buds and entered the trance one enters when doing mindless, repetitive exercise. But the spell was broken when I found myself looking over to see if the stair-stepping senior was OK. Oh, she was. Where at first glance the poor woman looked like she was in pain, a closer examination revealed a small smile. I’m not sure what made her happier. The workout or the article on Reese Witherspoon’s cupcake preferences. I know what I’d choose.
My time on the elliptical complete, I moved on to the leg press machine where a grey-haired gentleman had just finished his routine. He paused to watch me start and, I’m guessing, to see if I added any weight beyond the 10 pounds he had locked in. Well, yes, I did add another 40 pounds, and he left with a wistful look as if to say to himself, “I’ll get there too.”
From there it was on to another machine I can’t name, but it’s supposed to help you strengthen your chest and upper arm muscles. A serious-looking fellow dressed in a faded golf shirt, work pants and brown walking shoes got on an adjacent piece of apparatus, took a bit of a breath, and slowly worked on completing some leg curls.
To be surrounded by seniors, like me, just trying to fight off Father Time, attenuate whatever aches and pains might wrack our aging bodies, perhaps boost the flow of serotonin to our brains, is most inspiring and comforting.
None of us wear designer workout togs, worry about our hair or makeup or pose for the benefit of, really, no one. Sure, there are always a few of “those” at the gym, but this is a cut-rate joint in a strip mall, making it affordable for us retirees and absent the attitude at flashier and more expensive fitness centers.
I complete my workout and as I start to walk towards the door I see my stair-stepping friend still at it. Slowly, slowly, slowly on her virtual climb, head still bent over that magazine. Still smiling. Me too.
Happy EastOver (plus podcast)
Too busy to read? Link to podcast at the end of this post
It’s like this. I’ve got a stack of matzo, wine glasses, six colored eggs and a bunny on my dining room table. Add a Hagaddah and a hymnal and the picture of our ecclesiastical schizophrenia is complete. It’s a condition my daughter aptly named EastOver–that confluence of Easter and Passover where it’s OK to eat Peeps but not bread. That’s our family. As Marisa Tomei memorably squawked in “My Cousin Vinny,” “like you blend!” We do.
Most years each holiday gets its own due. Typically Passover starts before Easter and we do the traditional seder. My Episcopalian wife makes her sublime matzoball soup..a fact that royally ticked off my late, Jewish, mother who demanded her secret. “Just follow the directions on the box,” my wife deadpanned. I always feared that once Protestants figured this out, beyond my kitchen, they would co-opt the dish, the holiday and take credit for conjuring up the potent agent of constipation.
I always enjoyed the seder, even when I was very young and Passover tradition was held at my maternal grandparent’s apartment in Flatbush. My grandmother Perlberg was calm and gracious and made these killer french fries in the oven that were joyously greasy and crunchy. My grandfather insisted on reading the Passover story in Hebrew even though he spoke not a word. Indeed, every passage came out as “zummmmmzummmzummmcha!”” Sometimes he would nod off in the middle of the story which didn’t please us because it only delayed getting to the big meal, which was generally roast turkey and those rock-hard fries. We often were told the Last Supper, noted by Christians was probably what we were served because we were convinced Jesus actually died choking on a hard, greasy fry. The cross thing was just to cover up for the cook.
Which brings us to Easter. My wife has a deft touch when decorating the house for every holiday. For the Resurrection she exhumes a host of colorful, sparkling eggs and they rise to hover over us from various light fixtures. This not only adds the bright hues of Spring and hope to the house, it provides a reminder that between Easter and Passover ….eggs suffer from a high mortality rate.
We always enjoyed creating fun Easter baskets for the kids, stuffing them with toys and candy, which invariably led to the question, “hey mommy and daddy, what’s this stuff have to do with a guy going down then coming back up and what does the word ‘Easter’ mean?” Our explanation centered on the joy of the season and happiness that a very important person got a second chance… and our awesome dental insurance. No, I do not know what the word “Easter” means although I suspect it’s a Welsh interpretation of the word “Cadbury.”
The way we handle the confluence of Easter and Passover pretty much mirrors our even-handed approach to the intersection of Christmas and Chanukah, as I explained in the 2016 post “Holiday Turf War.”
It’s nice to see how our now, adult kids respect the different celebrations and beliefs, while hedging their spiritual bets. After all, you don’t want to put all your eggs.. matzoh or Easter, in one basket.
Cowardly Lyin’
Back in 5th grade I was cast as the Cowardly Lion in our class’s production of the Wizard of Oz. Not because I was a coward, but because I was brave enough to attempt belting out “If I Only Had the Nerve” in an auditorium packed with my judgmental peers and their parents, who secretly hoped my voice would crack or I’d fall off the stage and smash the piano. Yeah..that’s me in the photo below. First schnook on the right in the first row. Mane made of yarn..tail cobbled together by my Boy Scout brother with rope. The basic outfit was a set of pajamas in my dresser the same color as a bald lion.
Yes, it took some balls, and maybe a dash of rashness, to get up and do that, and the experience stuck with me, because I built my career on a simple willingness to try something new, never fearing failure, because you have nothing to lose by giving something a shot.
Without being too self-serving, most every job that represented some major move for me came as a result of looking for opportunities to grow and succeed. I auditioned for a weekend weather job at a Tucson TV station, never having done a weathercast in my life. Got the job. Took a job producing television newscasts having never produced a newscast, because, what the hell, I could get a six-grand raise. First show? Reagan gets shot. Trial by fire! Yes! It led to getting hired as one of the first producers to launch CNN’s second network, CNN2, now HLN. Oh…took a reporting job at a newspaper having never worked at a newspaper, and was hired to start Chrysler’s first blog, but I’d never blogged. It morphed into a senior management position over the course of almost 11 years.
You get the idea. What I’m leading to is I read all these stories and posts about how to handle job interviews..both as a candidate and as a manager. Oh, there are boilerplate questions such as greatest challenges, strengths, weaknesses, blah, blah. What I never see are questions regarding one’s courage. How willing are you to try something new, break from the mold, take risks, stand up to those who would attempt to drag you into doing the same damn thing, the same damn way.
Those who can convince me they’re fearless…not careless…are the kinds of folks I want on my team. I was blessed with a team at Fiat Chrysler that never once in the ten years we were together said “no” to at least trying a new idea. Some worked, some didn’t but we learned from every experience, sometimes using that knowledge to create something better. Yes, despite significant pushback from some, we brought then-emerging digital communications techniques to the department.
By the same token, if you’re a job candidate, when it’s your turn to ask questions, quiz the interviewer as to the company’s courage..how open it is to new ideas. You don’t want to work somewhere that still believes the best way to communicate is by fax.
How often are we hard-pressed to succeed and put forth new ideas when others attempted to thwart our efforts through their own cowardice and jealousy? Indeed, over the years at many different workplaces, one no doubt encountered co-workers and managers who haven’t had a new idea since deciding to go from white to rye for their daily tuna sandwich.
Cowards are death to any organization that thrives on moving forward, on fostering creativity and bolstering worker morale. Cowards are useless wastes of space and resources and should be swept from the payroll immediately. They will only hold you back and piss you off.
You wanna work for me? Have the skills, experience and work habits the job requires and the courage to challenge every pre-conception and past practice to take the type of chances that will make us winners…together.
Think about it. If the Cowardly Lion was too scared to join Dorothy, the Tin Man and the Scarecrow on the Yellow Brick Road to meet Oz, he might never have found the nerve he had in him all along.
Sweet balls of death (plus podcast)
No time to read? Check out link to podcast at the end of this post.
In our office today are boxes of doughy, sweet, greasy and goddamit, delicious filling-injected balls of dough called Paczkis..pronounced poonch-kees. That’s Polish, I believe, for “imminent death.” They look like jelly donuts, and many are stuffed with it, along with custard, various fruits and creams, only enhancing their effectiveness as desserts d’demise.
Indeed, inventive purveyors of comestible poison keep coming up with new ways to make paczki’s even more hazardous to one’s longevity. Note..the coney paczki, combining the nutritious elements of a chili dog with the pernicious pastry.
Why so harsh about a tasty treat? Oh, I dunno. Maybe because one of key ingredients is that renowned health food called lard. Perhaps they call it shortening because it shortens your life. The average paczek (the singular form of the word) will caulk your arteries with 11-22 grams of fat and pack 340-500 calories.
It’s all related to Fat Tuesday..the beginning of the Lenten season. The idea, I’m told, was the heavy use of lard is part of the tradition of emptying your cupboards of the stuff by frying up pastry in it.
They make a huge deal of Paczki Day around here. Polish bakeries work around the clock to serve the thousands of people who called in advance orders. Lines form while it’s still dark so folks can pick up their paczkis in time to bring them into work…in an effort to kill their inter-office rivals. It seems no one can resist eating paczkis despite their lethal legacy. I’m guessing more than one victim died with powdered sugar and jelly on his or her smiling lips.
I was brought up in NYC, and lived in Central New York State, Tucson, Arizona and Atlanta, Georgia before moving to the Detroit area in 1989 and Paczkis were available, or even heard of, in exactly none of those locations. Indeed, according to the CIA World Factbook, the average lifespan in New York State is 80.5..or 6th in the nation. Arizona ranks 18 with an average lifespan of 79.6 years. Meanwhile in Michigan, the average time on Earth per person is only 78.2 years..ranked 37th. See the correlation? Oh, Georgia? Well..you’re talking awesome Southern cooking where they fry everything from chicken to Crayolas. Down in Dixie they only live an average of 77.2 years….ranking 43rd. But I will never complain about Southern cuisine.
Since I grew up in a Jewish community, the only thing halfway equivalent was the heavy use of chicken fat. Grandma would toss it in anything “just to add a little flavor” and to elicit loud cries of “feh!” from anyone unlucky enough to be caught in the kitchen.
It’s kind of quiet in the office now and I’ve had my lunch. The fumes from the few remaining paczki have worked their way over to my desk. A nice lemon cream would make a fine complement to the sorry ham sandwich I brought from home. The doc just told me yesterday I need to lose some weight…and I will…but not today. I may not celebrate Fat Tuesday, but it would be wrong not to support my co-workers who do.
Listen to the podcast:
Edison Wrecks: An illuminating horror story
Note: no time to read? Link to podcast below
Here’s a riddle? How many brands does it take to screw up a light bulb? Answer: All of them! Here’s the situation. Tried to buy a light bulb lately? I did and my brain blew. Let me, er, illuminate the issue. Old days: Her: “Hey honey, the bulb in the bathroom blew. I need a 60!”
Him: “Sure. Here ya go.”
Today: Him: “Hey honey, the bulb in the bathroom blew. I need a 60!”
Her: “A 60? What kind? An incandescent, LED, squiggly? And what light temperature? 5000K? 2400K” Daylight? Oh..the squiggly doesn’t tell you the watts, but promises 60 watt ‘equivalent.’ So what’ll it be?”
Him: “Uh, never mind. Seeing is overrated.”
Yeah. Like that. We moved about 7 months ago into a house with about a million lights. Some are in the ceiling, some hanging from the ceiling, some are bulbs, some are floodlights, some are fluorescent and none are the same. Some have standard bases, some have candelabra bases, some look like a grown-up bulb, others are little bitty appliance size. I could fill up a footlocker with every permutation of illumination this house requires.
So we go to the nearest big box discount store to score some squigglies, technically known as CFLs. None. Go to another. None. Go to one leading home improvement store. None. WTF! I thought squigglies were supposed to supplant bulbous bulbs..the ones with filaments that sear your fingers..that incandescents were going to be as dead as Edison. Yet, there they were, looking smug on the shelves where squigglies once sat. An online search then revealed it’s lights out for squigglies because they contain mercury, which can kill you, so bulby-bulbs ain’t dead yet. BUT..they’re losing ground to bulby-looking LED bulbs which are supposed to last like a million years and burn cooler, making them better than incandescents, except a dozen of them cost the same as the monthly power bill for all of Akron.
We finally found some squigglies at another home improvement store and thought we were good until, wonder of wonders, all the squigglies available were 2400K and not the 5000K we required.
At this point I’m tempted to boycott bulbs completely and head to Yankee Candle where I can stock up on a couple of cases of Marshmallow Vanilla Madness tapers and pillars and go completely “Little House on the Prairie.” Maybe if enough people did that a bulb would go off in the heads of the manufacturers on how to go back to one standard. For godsakes…make it easier for us humans..to replace our lumens!
edLINES 