This just in

A recent study is primed to turn the hygiene world on its lathered and rinsed head as a Swiss consortium released a report indicating that one of the time honored truisms of cleanliness is simply not always true. Coming fast on the heels of the “cleanliness is actually three steps away from Godliness” statement which sent the “wash-your-mouth-out-with-soap” community scurrying, it is being reported in Swiss media that over one-third of all people are actually fully clean even without the benefit of being Zestfully clean. The data, collected by the Geneva based Center for Sanity in Sanitation shows that, when judged by a panel of cleanliness experts, 35% of all those who self reported themselves as having washed and dried themselves into what they would consider complete cleanliness even when no Zest was present actually were considered to have reached that state. The study’s sample of 150 women and 88 men was broken into a control group which used no soap or cleanser, a group which used Zest and a group which used anyone of six other brands of soap product. Of these, 98% of the Zest-using group achieved “fully clean”; this indicates the presence of human error in the application of the soap more than a failure on the part of Zest to provide a deep, refreshing clean, according to consortium members. What was revealed, though, was that almost a third of the non-Zest soap users who felt that they had truly cleaned themselves satisfied the standard of cleanliness and even more surprising, that a small number of the control group, using only water and a loofah, also were considered fully clean. “I have, for years, insisted that I was really, really clean and I thought it was unfair that just because I’m an Irish Spring man, I can’t qualify as fully clean,” confided one study participant who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals from the powerful Zest lobby, “but now I can walk with my head held high and know that being clean as a whistle is just as clean.” Another participant was overheard saying, amidst sobs of joy “The day of the cleanliness monopoly is finally over.”

The shocking statistics came out as the toiletry world is trying to deal with changing societal standards of purity and dirtiness. A representative of the Zest Corporation spoke to reporters just hours after the first bits of this study began to leak saying “It is a sad day when being 99 and 44/100% pure is considered fully clean. We at Zest hold ourselves and cleanliness to a higher standard. This study only reflects pressure from the hand-wash and body-lotion PAC’s and does not really speak for those who prize real cleanliness. We will continue to push our notion of fully-clean aggressively and we maintain our position that while one who uses another soap product may be somewhat, or even pretty much clean, one cannot make a claim to fully-clean without the use of Zest.”

random musings

Let's say I throw a ball at a mallard -- what do I yell to tell him to get out of the way?

If I am hanging out with a radioactive isotope which is a nerd, do I tell him to get a half-life?

Looks like I'm feeling visual

First off, I came up with a slogan for a new product. True, it is geek-based but I looked and I can't find anyone using this phrase.

Next, I was looking through an old gemara of mine and I found a doodle I had made in (approximately) 1985. Back then, i used my poor cartooning skills to draw all sorts of strange stuff, and could I find it, I would certainly subject you all to my childish punistry. But since I only found this, I'll let you off the hook.

Assorted pun stuff

I have been compiling a couple of pun-based lists. i want to put them down on e-paper so that I can throw those scraps of tissue out.

First list:

Large Amounts

Cotillion -- a lot in the south
Brazillian -- a lot with an accent
Godzillions -- a lot of monsters
Vermillion -- the number of words which qualifies as purple prose
Killian -- a lot of beer


Second list:

Sand-niches

A kosher deli sandwich -- Hero Israel
A sandwich made with strips of meat, but with no dressing -- Bump and Grinder
Homer's Open Faced Club Sandwich -- Sub Par
From the city of sisterly love -- The Feminine Cheesesteak

The Impossible

I'm a fan of the Food Network. i like cooking shows and can sit with rapt attention watching a man turn chocolate and sugar into a tennis shoe that 4 judges will say looks like a tennis shoe and merits second place next to a combination of jelly beans and fairy dust that resembles Mel Brooks. I think that Alton Brown may be the best thing to explain sliced bread, and Iron Chef should be an Olympic event. I have even watched this show called "Dinner: Impossible."

I got over the cheesy (ha! food puns...) title and sat down to see how this annoying foreigner could make dinner for 6,000 people out of a pile of rice and a quart of phlegm, all in 23 minutes. Fascinating stuff. So I'm watching Alton (PBUH) discuss the merits of blanching peaches and in the commercial break there is a teaser for the next episode of Dinner: Impossible. In this episode, the intrepid Michael Symon (how pompous is that) has to do the following

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"No Pork, No Pressure"
It's the King of all Pork vs. the Rabbi. Chef Michael Symon's mission is to create a kosher meal for the 2,000-year-old celebration of Passover. He must adhere to strict culinary guidelines and face a congregation that has sampled the best of every Jewish mother's cooking.
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Come on...Jews everywhere have been cooking like this for a long time and now suddenly having to cook by our quaint rules for one meal turns the battle hardened TV star into a struggling culinary school drop-out?

What's next? Having to cook for a vegetarian? Wow...that must be tough for someone who is so used to wrapping his bacon in bacon. It just confirms what my mother has been saying to me and my siblings for years,

"cooking for you people is impossible!"

Parental Guidance is Requested

I have been wrestling with what my role is as a parent. My instinct is to protect my children. My gut says I have to let them explore the world and make their own mistakes. I wonder what my exact purpose is. So I read. Sadly, I read nothing about parenting so I haven't gotten any good answers from my worn out copy of The Binghamton New York Hadassah Cookbook.

In my role at work as a "teacher" (I put that in quotes to show that I know how to use the shift key) I require that students read things and for the sake of appearances, I occasionally read what I have assigned. So I started tackling summer reading and I read a couple of books. I read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and The Things They Carried, and I'm midway through (midway if the book were 30 pages long, but I have started it) The Glass Castle, and these little nuggets of summer tedium have shown me what my job is.

Being a parent requires that we walk a very fine line. It is great if our kids talk about us in glowing terms with their friends. It is acceptable if they say our names in school without spitting. It is even allowable for their childhoods to become fodder for those 45 minute hours at the therapist twice a week. But under no circumstances can we do anything that would motivate our children to write books about their childhood. That's my job – to stay out of print.

I have yet to read a memoir which has such entries as "In third grade, things were pretty much cool," or "and then, we went on vacation. It was ok." Show me a book which recounts such thrilling childhood experiences as "lunch" and "not hating my parents because they raised me normal and sent me to school, and camp and are nice people."

When those books reach the best sellers' chart and replace the "I was born into slavery and then things got really bad" books, then my kids can write about me.

my new handheld

I bought an electronic piece of technlogy that I (as an English teacher) could use on the go and I called it my mobile literary device

it has access to hyperbolinks -- y'know..the BEST WEBSITES EVER

and similinks...sites that are like (or as) other sites

addresses like www.littlelively.com full of URLiteration and even websites that bring up errors like ErrorMeta404 which compare directly to other sites which don't exist.