Oh Mother you wouldn't believe the dive bar I go to now

Recently, The Star Ledger of New Jersey had a poll where it asked viewers to vote for their favorite dive bars. I recognized some of the places, but to be honest, although interesting places they weren't really "dive bars". Real dive bars would not find their way into a poll. It reminded me of the time I was in a bar (the sort of place my father would go after a game of golf with the boys) and I could hear a young twenty something lady on the cell phone telling someone "I'm in my favorite dive bar!"

Young middle class women love to frighten their mothers at holidays and tell them that now they hang out in dive bars. Poor mother will worry nights now, perhaps now that Lisa in on her own in Philadelphia she is hanging around with the wrong sort. Of course in reality the places she goes are far from being true dives. Even Yelp has a category for dive bars that probably includes places that are far from true dives.

I guess most of us like to have a little mystery about us and make the people around us think we are having adventures, perhaps disreputable ones. Sort of like exaggerating the events of a college trip to Mexico. 

The Huffington Post has a cute article about dive bars. Would people who write for the Huffington Post go to such places?  I see the ghost of Charles Bukowski nursing a beer in a bar in Baltimore. A dive bar. 

To surplus

Last night I listened to the Slate Culture Gabfest and they talked to someone from Merriam Webster about how new words or new uses for older words come about. I realized that for the past five years, in my job, I have been hearing and using a new use for the word surplus. It is being used as a verb, at least in my narrow parochial world.

Mrs. A: All these old computers are on the floor. Can we get rid of them before I trip over them?

Miss B: Yes, but you'll have to surplus them. Get Mr. Mustache to surplus them.

Mrs. A: Can you surplus them?

Mr. Mustache: Yes I'll surplus them tomorrow morning.

Surplussing usually means getting on my hand and knees, finding the inventory number, the serial number and the model and writing it down and e-mailing this information to Mrs. A and Miss B. Then someone turns up in a few weeks with a hand truck and carts them off to surplus where they are dismembered or otherwise recycled. That is the process of surplussing. It is used as a verb.

Surplus is a transitive verb. I surplus, he surplussed, my back hurts because I have been surplussing all morning.

I have not seen surplus used as a verb in my quick Google search. Being clever, I sent this information off to the Merriam Webster website for new uses of terms. .

Gender-neutral bathrooms

This news story caught my eye this morning. Apparently to accommodate men who think they are women and vice-versa in Los Angeles they are creating gender neutral bathrooms. I wrote about this topic a few years ago. I guess it's okay. In male dominated bars it would free up the usually empty female facility for men.  I guess men could buy sanitary napkins and use the changing tables if it suited their fancy.

Men usually don't talk that much in bathrooms although there are exceptions. There are men so talkative that they never stop. I know from movies and television women talk at the sink as they are putting on makeup. Here they discuss their dates and their shoes. Now men can eavesdrop on their conversations as they sit on the toilets.

I suspect many members of the fairer sex don't won't their farts and other bodily noises to be within earshot of  men they aren't married to.  It might take away some of their feminine mystery. All to accommodate gender neutral people. I promise not to bring in Aunt Agnes for a guest column.

De-Christmasing

So this weekend we are all de-Christmasing our homes. In some ways it is melancholy and sad to say good bye to another season. Of course it's also nice to get rid of all that Christmas clutter. Every year I get more Christmas shopping bags which I store with the other ones. They will come in handy some day, I promise myself. As a young tot I can remember singing Christmas songs backwards as we took down the ornaments from the tree. Someone should make a CD of backwards Christmas songs just for that purpose.

Of course, unlike a month ago I have unwanted presents I will have to find a place for. I don't need a pair of Ray bans to be honest.  At least the globe I can find a space on a table. I'll have to remember to dust it.

So now I'm reprinting a favorite post-Christmas poem of mine.

Another Christmas come and go

The fun the tinsel ho ho ho

But now it’s over no no no

And Santa’s back in the garage.

We sang our hymns and cookies made

But now that cheery time will fade

Christmas visits have been paid

And Santa’s back in the garage.

Oh holy night is now forgotten

Old wool socks replaced by cotton

I was so glad now feeling rotten

And Santa’s back in the garage.

So here’s a toast to the new year

Hot spiced cider replaced by beer

Winter gloom instead of cheer

And Santa’s back in the garage.

Next to the gas for the lawn mower

Near the sand and the snow blower

Spirits high now getting lower

Santa’s back in the garage.

Predictions for 2015

This year my predictions were not bad. A little conservative but not bad. 

On December 31, 2013 I said the Dow would go to 17250 and it went to 17823.

I said the NASDAQ index would go to 4600 and it went to 4736.

S and P I said it would go to 2000 and it went to 2059.

I predicted a good year for Microsoft and it went from 35 to 46.

Drum roll please. Mr Mustache predictions for January 1 2016:

Dow 18500

S and P Index 2100

NASDAQ 5000

Microsoft will retreat to 40

Eagles will get in the playoffs but lose in January.

Obama will make overtures to Iran like he made to Cuba but Congress will not go along with the deal, no treaties or normalization.

Unemployment will go down to 5% and oil will go up to $60 

Middle East will stabilize a tad but the EU will be in the doldrums.

The New York Post will start the drumbeats to impeach the mayor of NYC.

Overall another middling year. 

Christmas bellyaching

One of the nice parts of the holiday season is it gives us all lots of reasons to complain and bellyache. For the occasion, I let Aunt Agnes write a guest column.

The rain: This crummy rain puts me completely out of the Christmas spirit. Just an inch or two of nice white snow would do a world for my spirits.

Having to go to work on the day before or after Christmas. The roads have almost no traffic and here I’m cavorting along to work. Yuch. Humbug.

Having to put up with other people’s children at work. Daddy is off, the kids are off from school but instead of spending some time with their adorable children the fathers bring them into the office to have lunch with their poor mothers, who are chained to their desks.

People who put 20 foot high statues of Homer Simpson in their front yards. 

The scales. I put on five pounds! Too many Christmas cookies.

Christmas music. Humbug! I’m tired of hearing about poor old women getting run over by reindeers!

Trying to do other people’s jobs. The customer wants to know something that I don’t have any knowledge about. I should route her through to the cell phone of the lady, sitting in an airport, who would know.

The seven fishes. I hate having to cook seven fishes. I have enough trouble cooking one fish. All night I was refilling the water of the bacala. Humbug! I think we should open up a can of sardines and be done with it. 

Humbug. Listening to Italian Jingle bells again!

Editor's note: May you all have a happy Ukrainian Christmas.

Why the U.S. may recognize Cuba

The conventional wisdom has always been that the the United States can never have normal relations with Cuba because the politician who proposes such a thing will lose Florida in a presidential election. Yesterday Jeb Bush indicated he will run for president. If he runs he will probably get the Republican nomination. A popular former governor, as a candidate he will probably win in his home state, Florida.

President Obama must figure that for years Democrats have been afraid of proposing normal relations because of a fear of losing Florida in an election. However, in 2016 there is no need to worry about making Floridians mad since they are going to vote Republican anyway. In the electoral college system, losing by one hanging chad or 20 percent is the same. So why not lose Florida in a big way rather than a small way and have an ambassador in Cuba.

It's like the kid who knows he is going to get yelled at if he arrives home ten minutes late or two hours late. He figures he might as well get home two hours late and have a good time. In for a penny in for a pound.