Recent Comments

1. about 2 months ago on Pearls Before Swine

   “My barn having burned down, I can now see the moon.” (Zen teaching koan)

2. 5 months ago on The Flying McCoys

   I believe you are thinking of Douglas Adams (Hitchhiker’s Guide), not Scott Adams.

3. 7 months ago on Baby Blues

   Last week the grocery store refused to sell me a small box of wine because I had left my ID in the car. I’m 73 years old and look it. Apparently it is a hard and fast rule for that store chain.

4. 8 months ago on Close to Home

   If you really want to know, Martinizing was a process developed in 1949 to make dry cleaning local and faster. At the time, dry cleaners used very flammable solvents instead of water. Because of the fire danger, dry cleaning establishments had to be way out of town. For example, acetone, which was an effective solvent, has a flash point of 17 degrees F. By using either high flash point solvents (like glycol ethers, Stoddard solvents or other isoparaffins) or better yet, halogenated hydrocarbons, you could make the process safe enough to be used in small, local stores, thus offering a much quicker turnaround for dry cleaning (such as “one hour Martinizing”) that was done nearby at a neighborhood store. Again, if you are interested, halogens are hydrocarbons in which one or more of the hydrogen atoms are replaced with chlorine atoms. The added chlorine does two things: makes the solvent non-flammable (Halogens are used in fire extinguishers); and two, it turns it into an even better degreasing agent, thus making it an efficient cleaner. PERC (perchloroethylene) is probably still the most common non-flammable dry cleaning agent used, at least in Europe, but is has come under fire as being potentially dangerous when humans and animals are exposed to it. The search for safer alternatives continues, and currently includes a number of options, but I will spare you any further chemical confusion, at least until everyone has had their coffee.

5. 10 months ago on Baby Blues

   Yes and no. My HOA was fine for 23 years, then a couple managed to take over the board and turn it into a dictatorship, creating new rules and harassing people they didn’t like. And really, does someone else’s house color really matter? Don’t look at it. As for the rest, our town zoning laws are more than sufficient. The few things the HOA should have protected, like 100 year old trees, they didn’t; it was in the bylaws and people simply ignored it, and the HOA did nothing. Meanwhile they were busy telling people what they should and should not grow in their yard. I will never live in an HOA neighborhood again. Zoning laws? Yes. Arbitrary tin pot dictators running HOAs? No.

6. almost 6 years ago on Heart of the City

   I think she means “know the words by heart.” A rote is a stringed musical instrument from a bygone era. Teachers would use it to play on while teaching, so “learning by rote” means learning by repeating a musical ditty, like learning the alphabet by singing the alphabet song.

7. almost 7 years ago on Baldo

   This is a paraphrased version of the titular joke from the Herb Gardner play “I’m Not Rappaport.”