DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

I inadvertently lost 7 lbs. I had no intention of doing so, but now I realize I may have stumbled onto the next great fad diet. Practitioners need not count calories nor purchase approved food replacement products nor take supplements of any kind. There are no expensive bestselling how-to-diet manuals, no consultations with doctors, no record-keeping or worry or guilt.

No, all you have to do is join a blues band. Play the drums for 5 hours a week on top of your already full schedule and you, too, will lose 7 lbs.

I guess it will help if you’re mostly vegan when you start out. So in that sense, to honestly follow this diet you can’t eat any meat or dairy, except for the occasional baked good or pizza. Then just pick up some sticks.

As a bonus, you’ll get your shuffle back.

When I heard about MoveOn PAC’s Bake Sale, a coordinated grassroots effort to raise money for the Kerry campaign, I thought of Spinal Tap: there is such a fine line between clever and stupid.

It would likely make the news. Free PR is clever. But any single contribution to the opposition from a defense contractor or energy company would eclipse the total take of a nationwide bake sale, making the entire effort somewhat pointless.

Besides, I thought, who has time to bake cookies for a political campaign?

I do, as it turns out. And I wasn’t the only one. When I checked the MoveOn bake-sale site, I was surprised to see 35 volunteer bakers staffing three bake sales in this small town.

Given our normally tight weekend schedule, we had to compromise somewhat. We planned to make cookies anyway (for a dinner party), but getting them done in time for the bake sale required us to adjust our schedule. The adjustment meant not going to the store to pick up two of the necessary ingredients; instead, we substituted lemon zest for orange, and we used the wrong kind of coconut.

The chosen cookie recipe is nearly without peer: Nancy Jamison’s Coconut-Cranberry Chews. We’ve made the cookies many times before with uniformly excellent results. But our substitutions had an unexpected effect. The first batch sucked: dry, somewhat hard, not-entirely-sweet balls with a slightly astringent finish due to the lemon.

We added a shot of orange juice for a later batch. This cured the dry problem and the ball problem; it turned the batch into one Pangaea supercookie, encompassing all the earth’s landmasses, or at least all the dough on the cookie sheet. This cookie was so big, if we’d tried to dunk it in milk, it would have caused a tide.

This episode notwithstanding, I have a knack for cookies. I’ve seen a lot of sad-looking cookies, especially at, for example, community bake sales, and I’d looked forward to delivering a batch of something better. So it was with a distinct air of regret that I loaded a plate with the best of my own sad-looking cookies, and drove them downtown to find one of the local bake sales.

I’d had to choose between the perfectionist route — skipping the bake sale because my cookies didn’t turn out the way I expected — or participating with a slightly sub-par result. In the end I realized this was a completely appropriate conclusion for participation in a political process. I’d started with the best of intentions, made a slight compromise to accomodate a conflict, and the result was disappointing, leaving the consumer with a bitter aftertaste.

In February, 2003, I recorded LCD/Plasma TV prices, in hopes of documenting a dramatic drop in price over the next six months. But prices didn’t come down.

Now, though, they have. Here are the old and new results. (Some models have been discontinued, so I’ve substituted comparable items.)

• $4200 for a 29'' Samsung (LTM295W)
  $3150 for a 32'' Samsung HDTV (LTN325W)
• $5000 for a 32'' Sony (KE-32TS2)
  Now $3600
• $4300 for a 37'' Panasonic EDTV (PT-37PD4-P)
  $2800 for a 37'' Panasonic EDTV (TH-37PA20U)

Those prices are from major appliance retailer websites (goodguys.com, circuitcity.com). The discriminating shopper can do even better…

• $2409 for the 32'' Samsung HDTV (LTN325W)
• $2750 for the 32'' Sony (KE-32TS2)
• $2790 for the 37'' Panasonic EDTV (TH-37PA20U)

~$3000 still sounds like an obscene amount of money to spend on a television. But the 16:9 aspect ratio on a flat screen would make our DVD collection look gooood.

LCD computer monitor prices do not seem to have dropped the way television prices have. Dell’s 19'' LCD still sells for $719. The 18'' has gone up in price from $539 to $639. No doubt some special deals were in place last year (and will likely return).

I called on Wednesday to reserve a rental car. “Of course we’ll have a car for you!” she said. They always say that.

She asked what size car I’d like. “Small and inexpensive,” I replied, “with a CD player.” I always say that.

Thursday morning, when I got to the rental agency, the only car available was a full-sized cargo van. With no CD player. “We have several options,” said the clerk, but all of them involved me taking this enormous van. She offered to bring a replacement vehicle to my house.

“I have to leave at 11:00 AM for a meeting,” I said pointedly. “You’ll be there by then, right?”

Of course she would.

The van stunk. The predominant aromas were BO, unwashed stocking caps, and cigarette ash. By no small coincidence, these were also the predominant aromas of the family that had just returned the van. (I was in line behind them at the rental counter.)

I would have guessed that these smells were embedded in the upholstery, except that there wasn’t any upholstery — just two plastic seats in front and a bare metal shell. The van’s interior had been stripped. I’m not entirely sure it came from the factory that way. I think the stocking-cap people might have just furnished their trailer.

I called the agency at ten minutes past eleven. At least I didn’t have to explain why I was calling. “Simone brought you a car,” she said over what sounded like a cellphone, “but she got stuck in some gravel on your street.” Gravel? Stuck? The roads are all paved. There’s a quarry 20 miles away, but… no, not even Enterprise staffmembers can get that lost. “I have no idea what happened,” said the woman on the cellphone, sounding as exasperated as I felt, “but I’m on my way.”

There didn’t seem to be any point in waiting at home, so I drove the van up the hill to see if I could find a gravel pit with a rental car stuck inside. I didn’t find that… but I did see a king-cab, stretch-bed pickup, presumably with CD player, sitting perpendicular to the road with its back axle hanging off the pavement. Its frame rails rested on the edge of the asphalt. I can’t imagine how the driver got sideways in a truck so long on a street so narrow.

As I approached, a neighbor appeared and volunteered to help. I guess I’m still not used to living in a small community, for I was surprised, shocked really, to see him take a tow chain out of his truck and hook it to the frame of the beached luxury liner within 30 seconds of arriving. The sight of his little Mazda pickup trying to pull the ~5000lb Silverado back onto the road was a bit like watching an aircraft tow tractor pull a loaded jumbo-jet, but ultimately a lot less effective… those airport tow tractors have a towing capacity of 150,000+ lbs, whereas this Mazda could only tow about 30.

We were blocking traffic at this point. And I was late. I realized that I’d be driving the cargo van to my meeting, 40 miles south. I had no other choice. I squeezed the van through the available space and began to seriously lament the five CDs in my briefcase. I hate to drive without music.

Due to an email exchange with Karel just before my departure, I’d had occasion to watch a horrifying video of Leonard Nimoy singing the “Ballad of Bilbo Baggins” and I had the unnerving chorus stuck on permanent repeat in my mind. For 40 miles. Argh.

The woman at Enterprise made the best of a crappy situation, though. I can’t blame her for getting unexpectedly stuck with the van, nor for her staff driving the replacement vehicle off the road. She handled it with as much grace as could be hoped for.

I like these guys a lot:

I like these guys too:

Here’s a band I’d love to see:

For that matter, this would be cool too:

Or even just this!