Coffee Klatch

Just read on CNN.com: 1,300 Rats Overwhelm Man’s Home. Apparently he got one to feed his pet snake and felt sorry for it, so he befriended the rat instead. Then he bought three more to be friends with him, and then nature took its course.

Roger Dier’s house in a quiet middle-class neighborhood in Petaluma reeks of urine, and the floor is covered with the feed mixed with rat droppings, and gnawed walls, according to The Press Democrat.

When animal control officers arrived after a neighbor called about a foul smell, they found some rats stacked six deep in cages so overcrowded that many had missing eyes and limbs.

No mention of the pet python that started the whole mess. My guess is that the rats rose up and overthrew their carnivorous master, turning tails (pun intended) on the snake and eating HIM instead! Once the python was gone, it was every rat for himself!

Rats make nice pets, but come ON! There’s got to be a limit!

Current music: Toward the Within, by Dead Can Dance

From the Book of Ratings, an analysis of Cold Symptoms. (For those of you unfamiliar, the Book of Ratings is an AWESOMELY funny book by Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg, who provides “opinions, grades, and assessments of everything worth thinking about.”)

Cold Symptoms
Sneezing
In minute quantities, sneezes can be gratifying. I’ve heard orgasms described as a sort of full-body sneeze, and that’s an alarmingly accurate description. I don’t go on the Internet at two in the morning looking for pictures of bee pollen, so I think I’ve still got perspective, but I figure if you’re going to be expelling mucus at fastball speeds, you may as well put it in the best possible light. B+

Stuffy Nose
When I was younger I didn’t realize that sinuses actually swell when you’re sick. I thought that the reason I couldn’t breathe out of at least one nostril was that a wad of passage-blocking snot was in the way, and it bugged the preteen hell out of me that no amount of blowing could clear it. The only good thing about a stuffy nose is that if you’re in too much misery to sleep, you can always play “waiting for the nostril switch.” D+

Coughing
The human animal has an astonishing repertoire of coughs, the sickness equivalent of a high-end synth box. My favorite, which is to say the least annoying, is a quick lung-clearing hack. The worst are those long resonant vibrating coughs that leave you feeling as if your lungs had been scrubbed by an obsessive-compulsive with a fresh scouring pad. C-

Fever
I don’t find fevers pleasant–except, of course, for disco fever–but I am grateful for them as the ultimate vindication of one’s whining, short of wasting death. Complaining about headaches and scratchy throats can be dismissed as a ploy to get attention and/or avoid work, but once that thermometer reads 98.7 or so, you’re sick, baby, with all the pillow-fluffing and daytime-television-watching due thereto. B-

Sore Throat
A vague scratching at the back of my throat is, often as not, the first sign of an oncoming attack of several days of burning misery. Because of this, I pay frequent low-level attention to my throat, the way adolescent girls pay frequent low-level attention to the growth of their breasts. Unfortunately, it’s very easy to convince yourself that you have a minor sore throat if you’ve just woken up, inhaled cold air, or eaten wasabi in the last week, so there are a lot of false alarms, and many oranges have given up their lives for my paranoia. D-

Headache
I don’t get many headaches, of which I’m glad, because if one is to believe television advertisements, most headaches are slightly more painful than extended torture by intelligent evil mandrills and are accompanied by such uncomfortable effects as blurry close-ups of you grimacing while holding a hand to your forehead. Luckily, you’ve got Epoxidril, with the maximum amount of painkiller available without immediate liver failure. D

Personal Note: Up there with the coughs, at least from an observer’s unfortunate standpoint, is OTHER people’s coughs that are continual attempts to clear the phlegm from their breathing passages. Yuck!

Current music: In the Wake of the Wind, by David Arkenstone

No, not the movie. The actual thing! In the recent budget approval by Congress was $700 million for Mars exploration. The first plans actual visits planned are to be unmanned flights, of course. And if the machines to get there have to be big when carrying people, we’ve got the International Space Station and the moon, to which President Bush promised in 2004 that we would return by 2020.

For more on the budget, read the article on Fox News.
For more on the Mars Exploration Program visit NASA’s site.

What is the opposite of ‘more?’ Most people would answer ‘less.’ In fact, many people think of that as the only answer. Truth be told, they’re wrong. More times than they have any idea.

‘More’ means a greater number or amount. You use the word ‘more’ whether you’re talking about coins in a fountain or water in the fountain. The difference is whether the thing there’s more of is made up of individual components (coins) or is one big mass (water). That makes no difference if you’re talking about increasing the amount, but if you’re decreasing, there IS a difference.

‘Less’ is used for the mass description. More water, less water.

‘Fewer’ is used for the item description. More coins, fewer coins.

You can’t have ‘less coins.’ It just doesn’t work. You also can’t have ‘12 items or less’ in your shopping cart at the grocery store. The proper grammar is ‘12 items or fewer.’ A friend of mine back in Grand Rapids always had an issue when he saw that kind of error on signs in a grocery story. And when the day came that Meijer changed their signs to ‘# items or fewer,’ I tell you there was great joy in the Burghart household!!

So there you have it. Less water. Fewer coins. Now you know. (And if you already did, God bless you and spread the word.)

You may notice that I’ve changed the name of my blog. Pfitz’s Miscellany was a pretty good description, but a friend of mine said that it made it sound like an old attic. He also observed that my posts were still broad and disparate, which he felt was remarkable after two years, since most blogs tend to narrow their focus over time, until they focus on the person’s hobby or rants. The feel was more “coffee-house-conversational.” I liked the idea and went with it. You’ll notice that the look has also changed. I’m experimenting with some coffee-related themes in WordPress, to tie into the coffee house idea.

Hope you like it.

Update: I ended up settling on a WordPress theme called ‘Caffeine.’ It’s visible at http://www.lifeaftercoffee.com/ and is downloadable at http://www.lifeaftercoffee.com/caffeine/

Premiere Magazine has put together a Top 100 Performances of All Time list. This list was last updated by them on 14 March 2006. Here’s the top 25 of those (you want the full list? click the link!)

1. Peter O’Toole as T.E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
2. Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront (1954)
3. Meryl Streep as Sophie Zawistowska in Sophie’s Choice (1982)
4. Al Pacino as Sonny Wortzik in Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
5. Bette Davis as Margo Channing in All About Eve (1950)
6. James Cagney as George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
7. Dustin Hoffman as “Ratso” Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy (1969)
8. James Stewart as George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
9. Gene Wilder as Dr. Frederick Frankenstein in Young Frankenstein (1974)
10. Robert De Niro as Jake La Motta in Raging Bull (1980)
11. Daniel Day-Lewis as Christy Brown in My Left Foot (1989)
12. Jack Nicholson as “Badass” Buddusky in The Last Detail (1973)
13. Katharine Hepburn as Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter (1968)
14. Robert Duvall as Mac Sledge in Tender Mercies (1983)
15. Tom Hanks as Josh Baskin in Big (1988)
16. Cary Grant as T.R. Devlin in Notorious (1946)
17. Denzel Washington as Malcolm X in Malcolm X (1992)
18. Emily Watson as Bess McNeill in Breaking the Waves (1996)
19. Paul Newman as Frank Galvin in The Verdict (1982)
20. Al Pacino as Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part II (1974)
21. Giulietta Masina as Cabiria in Nights of Cabiria (1957)
22. Johnny Depp as Edward Scissorhands in Edward Scissorhands (1990)
23. Russell Crowe as Jeffrey Wigand in The Insider (1999)
24. Humphrey Bogart as Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
25. Greta Garbo as Ninotchka in Ninotchka (1939)

And all this because I watched Young Frankenstein tonight (#9 on the list).

And, yes, my personal all-time favorite movie character was #79! (Go look for yourself.) If you want to see the entire list all at one shot, visit Listology.

Are you into R/C? (Remote-controlled vehicles) Would you be interested in a flying R/C vehicle that is safe for indoors and is tough enough to endure most crashes?

Enter the Micro R/C Helicopter from ThinkGeek.com!

What a cool gift! (hint hint) It comes pre-assembled and can be flying in 5 minutes. It’s small and made for indoors. And there are two main rotors on top of the helicopter, revolving in opposite directions, so the torques cancel each other out and the helicopter is MUCH easier to control. What a great idea!

Plus, it comes with a wall-charger that gives the helicopter 15 minutes of flight per charge. I’m adding this helicopter to my wishlist. Sure it’s not exactly designed to be utilitarian or have a useful purpose, but that’s the way toys are! Like chocolate.

But, then, ThinkGeek is always coming out with great ideas. If you know anyone who’s into gadgets, technology stuff, computers, or just geekdom in general, this is a great place to shop for them.

The Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is developing a human cannon for SWAT teams to use. The point is to get them up to hard-to-reach places like the tops of buildings within a matter of a couple seconds. You can even read their patent application, which they’ve filed already.

Read more about it at HowStuffWorks.

Current music: Kojiki, by Kitaro

They played great music and they made a movie that has become a classic. The Blues Brothers has some awesome music, some great blues talents (like Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Cab Calloway, and Ray Charles), and some great cameos (like John Candy, Carrie Fisher, Henry Gibson, Frank Oz, Paul Reubens (Pee Wee Herman) and Steven Spielberg). And, of course, one of the longest (and definitely the most extensive) police car chases in movie history!

The original theatrical version is by far the best. There’s a Collector’s Edition that has several minutes of extra footage that fills in some story holes really nice, but the music editing STINKS! All in all, the original is better for the music and editing.

Or better, get the 25th Anniversary Edition! They’ve got BOTH versions on one disc! As well as never-before-seen footage, interviews, behind-the-scenes stuff and more.

And, of course, there’s the Soundtrack that has all that excellent music on it!

You know one of my favorite things about the movie (besides the things I’ve already listed)? All the musicians in the movie are ACTUALLY PLAYING the instruments!! Like they did on Saturday Night Live. I just HATE it when a movie has someone playing an instrument and it’s obvious that they’re just pretending. Call it a theatrical pet peeve of mine.

Speaking of what American cities fit you, I found this MOST EXCELLENT website for looking at all your preferences and giving you a list of cities and small towns that best fit you.

It’s called Find Your Spot and it’s a nicely detailed survey (8 short pages) that assesses your preferences and matches them with cities and towns across America. “Compare the perfect hometowns and undiscovered havens that match your interests. Dig deeper with colorful reports, job listings, and more. It’s fun & easy!” Complete the survey and they’ll give you a list of the top 24 cities that they recommend as the perfect place for you. Survey questions cover weather, culture, education, outdoor activities, geography, crime, religion, housing costs, and other qualities.

It might sound a little hokey, but IT REALLY WORKS! I was surprised by how accurate their suggestions were matched to what I like in a city/town. Their results give you stats like weather, housing costs, population, and a short description. And right from their list you can follow links to more information about the city, job listings, realtors, and more. And if you create a profile (or allow cookies), you can save your results and revisit them later.

Here’s the list they provided me (updated from the original since they allow you to review your answers and make changes):

1. Carlisle, Pennsylvania
2. Cincinnati, Ohio
3. Olympia, Washington
4. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
5. Seattle, Washington
6. Roanoke, Virginia
7. Tacoma, Washington
8. Altoona, Pennsylvania
9. Kent, Washington
10. Anchorage, Alaska
11. Ogden, Utah
12. Norfolk, Virginia
13. Spokane, Washington
14. Springfield, Missouri
15. Duluth, Minnesota
16. Bellingham, Washington
17. Indianapolis, Indiana
18. Grand Rapids, Michigan
19. Asheville, North Carolina
20. Albany, New York
21. Idaho Falls, Idaho
22. Bloomington, Indiana
23. Provo-Orem, Utah
24. Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Try it out yourself! You’ll be impressed and maybe even inspired to consider relocating! http://www.findyourspot.com/

(Now if only they’d include Canada, or better, World Cities (or at least Europe).)

Current music: Soundtrack from The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers