The cable library

I'm starting a cable library.

You need a cable? No more shelling out 30 bucks at Radio Shit Shack for a cable you're only going to use one effing time. You come on over to the cable library.

Hey man, you got a male to male nine to six pin firewire?

Hell yeah. How long you need it for?

Aw christ, one day? Two on the outside?

Here. Take it for a week.

Thanks man!

Then the guy takes the cable, uses it for his data transfer and brings it back. How beautiful is that?

No more buying a new cable, taking it home, taking it out of the package real careful-like, using it, putting it back in the package real careful-like (so it looks like you never took it out), trying to return it, and getting busted by the snotty Radio Shit Shack clerk (not that I would know anything about that). We're talking a one hundred percent honor system cable library.

You go in your old cable drawer? You bring all those cables to the cable library and donate them? We'll totally give you a beer. Everyone at the cable library will be totally cool.

You know the crap they have on the walls at the regular library? Some happy "Think Spring!" billboard with pink and yellow construction paper flowers?

Not at the cable library.

We'll have stuff like a 2004 fishing calendar and  pictures of people no one knows standing next to their cars. Maybe a special section where we can staple "paid return" slips from cable library users who actually got the Radio Shit Shack clerk to take their cable back. The cable library won't have your regular library smell either. It'll smell like a machine shop and have used mismatched display cases that are never locked and have tons of cables in them.

This is sort of pie-in-the-sky, but maybe there'll even be a picture of the ol' O'Brien with a scroll-type banner at the bottom: Our Founder.

Obviously, there's room for plenty of expansion here. I'm thinking outdated disk drives, power adapters, camera memory cards, chargers--anything you need to get something old to talk again.

You with me? You're either with me or you're not with me.

So, you with me?

*  *  *

Fels-Naptha

I am pretty busy, but as you people need all the help you can get, here I am, taking time out of my impossible schedule (next up: couch vacuuming) to save your sorry asses.

You see that soap? That's your Fels-Naptha heavy duty laundry bar soap. And no, I don't do my laundry by scrubbing it on a washboard, which is the natural intention of your Fels Naptha, but I always have a bar of this on hand.

You tangle with poison ivy? You're allergic to poison ivy? Let me guess, you go and get some candy-ass tube of Ivy Dry or (christ awmighty) calamine lotion.

You're kidding me, right?

What you need is your Fels-Naptha.

Directions: Scrub the living shit out of the poison-ivied area with a bar of Fels-Naptha as soon as possible or when those little effing blisters show up. Repeat two or three times a day for a few days until the shit clears up.

This is hands-down the best poison ivy advice you ever got in your whole sorry miserable life and you are welcome.

That is all.

* * *

Mystery burger deconstruction

So I'm walking down West 6th Street after leaving a cocktail party. I had to park a couple of blocks away, but that was fine. Sure I had my high heels on, but who doesn't love a stroll through the cool hipster Warehouse District?

Then I spy this right outside of Johnny's Downtown Bar and Grill.


I stop, look over my shoulder, look over my other shoulder, then give it a poke.

Curiosity got the best of me.


Thank god I'd just had some lovely sushi and chardonnay. But how hungry would I have had to be to eat it? After all, this was probably some ritzy Kobe beef burger from XO or the Metropolitan.

Oh, don't be so smug. Haven't you ever watched another diner push away a plate that had a lingering bit or two on it and and wish you had the balls to say, "Excuse me, but are you going to eat that shrimp?"

Okay, so this was no shrimp.

But who left mystery burger here? A man or woman? And why? Did she change his mind about taking it home? Did he set it down to retrieve something she dropped, then, realizing he had set it on a garbage can, decide it was no longer suitable for her consumption?

Was he alone? With a sig other? With a first date?

It was a cheeseburger. The cheese was white.

Emergencies such as this fluster me to no end. What could I do?

I'll do this: For your safety and convenience, I have worked up the following valuation schedule for mystery burger:

Before ordering: $20

Upon serving: $10 (a gourmet burger never lives up to its hype on a visual basis)

After first bite: $15 (but it does taste good, and that is one hell of a lot of mashed potato)

After 50 percent consumption: $3 (the eater is stuffed, but respects the protein/caloric value of the remnants)

After waiter boxes item: $1 (it is a shitty looking box--in fact, now that I look at it, I doubt this was from XO Steakhouse or the Metropolitan Cafe, it was probably from John Q's, which is another story entirely, but hey, I'm here now and I'm not turning back)

After box is set on municipal garbage can: $0

After Erin spies box: $5 (attention and curiosity have got to be worth something)

After Erin pokes and fiddles with box, opens it and starts taking pix with her phone cam: $10 (can you imagine how entertaining this was to the people noshing on the Patio of Johnny's Downtown?)

After Erin recloses the lid, puts the box back in the bag and leaves it exactly as she found it: $0

Upon being discovered by the next person: $? (are they hungry, curious or indifferent? a whole new flow chart blooms just thinking about it .... )

People, welcome to my world.

In the bag