Out Of This World

Hello World, Happy Halloween! We certainly have reached that time of year that challenges ad writers, sign makers, and special event planners everywhere, as they do their best to entice us with their "spooktacular" savings, specialty "sandwitches," or holiday "skull-ebrations." It's another of those seasonal opportunities to break out, or dredge up, every lame pun, metaphor, cliche, colloquialism, aphorism or play on words under the sun - not to mention, some of the most trite and hackneyed phrases that haven't actually seen the light of day since the solar system was still in its infancy, I dare say. Fortunately for those of us affronted by this frightful assault on the English language, the jack-o'lanterns and goblins are all too soon steam-rolled by the jolly old elf himself, and in fact, when we went to the supermarket to buy our Halloween treats, the aisles were already awash in reindeers, snowmen and holly berries, with plenty of ho-ho-ho to go around. I don't mind saying that we found it pretty "spooktacular," and that's not just the candy canes talking, believe me. Speaking of Halloween, the Cinderella story of sports would have been a win for the plucky Royals in their first appearance in the Fall Classic in 30 years, but alas, it was too much for them to overcome the Giants, and they lost a heartbreaker in the 7th game. This is nothing new for the Bay Area, as their team has won it all in 2010, 2012 and 2014, although this series was no blowout like the previous two. Any time a series goes all seven games, it's a testament to both teams, and a pity that only one of them can take home the trophy. Of course, we have all long since come to accept the immutable fact that things can always be worse, and as much as we might feel sorry for our baseball brothers and sisters in Kansas City, theirs is hardly the longest streak of disappointment - in fact, it's actually the shortest of all active teams. Among teams that have won the World Series at least once, the longest droughts are Chicago Cubs (1908), Cleveland Indians (1948), Pittsburgh Pirates (1979), Baltimore Orioles (1983), Detroit Tigers (1984), and the Royals in 1985. "But wait, there's more!" as they always say in late night TV infomercials. Even worse than the longest droughts, there are 8 teams now who have never won the World Series in the entire existence of the franchise - and some of which have actually been different teams in different cities previously, and others of which have actually played in both the American League and the National League, and still haven't won: Colorado Rockies, Houston Astros, Milwaukee Brewers, San Diego Padres, Seattle Mariners, Tampa Bay Rays, Texas Rangers, and Washington Nationals. And yes, even worse still - the hapless Seattle Mariners have never even BEEN to the World Series since the team was founded in 1977, or perhaps "foundered" would be the better term, under the circumstances. In any case, hats off to the Giants, and their city by the bay, where generations of crooners have been known to leave their hearts, with the little cable cars that climb halfway to the stars, and the morning fog may chill the air, I don't care. Also on the subject of Halloween, it's entirely possible that normal people don't go out and buy way too much candy for trick-or-treaters, but admittedly, I wouldn't know anything about what normal people do. It's also entirely possible that normal people don't just sit down and eat all of their left-over Halloween goodies, or bring them in to work, where the vultures pounce on them like concentration camp survivors who haven't seen any food in a year. As I said, I can't answer for normal people, so I don't know if left-over Halloween candy is a universal conundrum, or just a trick question. (It reminds me of a cartoon where a Martha Stewart-type expert was explaining different uses for left-over wine, while her perplexed audience was wondering en masse: "What's left-over wine?" At our house, that would be like worrying about left-over Twinkies - I don't think so!) But in the event that this problem is bedeviling you, who should step in to the rescue, but Mrs. Green's Natural Markets, who sent out the following email earlier in the week - ================================== Trick or Trade! Donate Your Candy. Support Our Troops. Mrs. Green's is supporting our troops! For every pound of candy you bring to a Mrs. Green's store, we will donate $1 to the Wounded Warrior Project and the candy will go to our troops. =================================== Now THAT'S the kind of military maneuvers that I could really sink my teeth into, and that's not just a lot of Snickers and candy corn, believe me. And speaking of maneuvers, of course this Sunday we'll be hot-footing it around as always, with the twice-annual time turning trot, as we switch back to Standard Time from Daylight Saving Time - and I certainly hope that all of you out there were assiduous in your saving daylight efforts during that period, so that this was not just a whole lot of folderol for nothing. In some ways, it's better than it has been in recent years around the house, as more of our technological gadgets have become capable of resetting the time on their own, thank heaven, while some other equipment already comes with a handy feature that changes it forward or backward at the touch of a button, rather than having to push it through sixty minutes manually. I have a completely different solution in the car, where I find the clock a little too complicated for my tastes, so I leave it on Standard Time year round, and simply ignore whatever it says for 8 months until the time change rolls around, and it's back to being at the same time as the rest of humanity once again. I'm thinking this is what our old friends the Druids would call "re-in-car-nation" all over again, although right now I'm guessing by the unseemly guffaws from the dinosaurs in The Peanut Gallery, that would probably be laying it on way too thick. In other news, courtesy of our friends at City Images, the site for all things City Island on the local scene (and please do feel free to go ahead and visit their web site at CImages.me and see for yourself) I couldn't help but notice this arresting post from last week on their Twitter feed: ================================== An amazing overseas journey took me to PRC where the Peoples Republic of China blocks Twitter, Facebook and Goggle ================================== Now, first of all, if you're going to give your company a name that isn't a real word, like "Google," you can't be surprised when people get it wrong, especially if they (or perhaps their over-zealous auto-correct features) change it to something like "goggle," which actually is a real word. But in the second place, it suddenly hit me like the proverbial bolt out of the blue, that when the technology giant announced the invention of their wearable communications device, amid exorbitant hoopla and fanfare, what they really should have done rather than calling it the prosaically humdrum "Google Glass," would be to name it "Google Goggles" instead. Okay, I admit that I'm well-known for being easily amused, but I think that would have been hilarious. Of course, for Halloween, they would have to call them "ghoul-gles," I guess - or at least, out on the West "Ghost." I would say it was a brave "boo" world, but let's face it, that would be "pun-bearable," after all. Elle