Where there's smoke...

On the one hand, I appreciate that my smoke detector emits a piercing noise that I would never be able to sleep through. I also appreciate, on some level, the fact that it contains a hard line to my building (not sure what this "hard line" involves, but sounds serious) such that even when the battery runs out, it continues to beep. After all, my safety and the safety of my neighbors is at issue here.

On the other hand, this beeping began after midnight last night, and while it stopped for a short while after we removed the battery, it resumed bright and early at 6am. Naturally, it had never occurred to us previously to keep spare 9 volt batteries on hand, there was no time to purchase one before work this morning, the super didn't have one handy either, and the noise level is so loud that I jumped a bit every time the thing went off...all in all, rendering me significantly less appreciative of the inherent fire safety. Couldn't this thing be rigged to beep a few times for a couple of hours so that I know to replace the battery, but then allow a longer rest time (say, a couple of days) before resuming? The whole experience was like living with a newborn for a night, the battery is presently still not replaced, and now instead of saving our neighbors with a swift alert of a fire hazard, we're probably going to be pushed out of the building for creating a noise disturbance!

Further fall fashion

Due to the previously-mentioned change of seasons, I've been coat shopping, and something just isn't adding up: why on earth would I want a wool coat with 3/4 length sleeves? There are tons out there right now! What the heck is that about?

Time Warner Cable, your days are numbered

It won't be long, I think, before conventional cable television goes the way of the VCR and we all watch everything on an a la carte basis, paying as we go only for the shows we actually want to see.  Until then, however, much of Manhattan, at least, is beholden to Time Warner Cable, and they're terrible. All problems are met with the longest wait times imaginable on the customer service line, and in my case, I am driven up a wall by the pettiest of issues: every night from midnight on, the cable guide in my bedroom rolls over to "No Data" for all channels.  As a result, although we are spending an exorbitant amount of money to have lots of channels available, I have no idea what's on any of them later at night and have to scroll through, guessing, like it's 1986 and I am in my childhood living room all over again, turning a giant dial on a television set. Naturally, after midnight I am hardly inclined to pick up the phone and call Time Warner (who I doubt would be answering anyway), and during the rest of the day I am generally busy with other things.  Argh.

Fall: time for foliage, fireplaces, and...fashion emergencies

I am in an endless battle with the weather: every time the seasons change, I just can't seem to get it right. As spring turns to summer, there is the inevitable moment when I find myself sweating rivers on a subway platform in a pair of tights and tall boots. And now, as the long late summer finally turns to fall, I am, in a word, freezing.  Wrong shoes (flats), wrong sweater (short sleeves), wrong jacket (thin cotton). Yet just as surely, I will bundle up tomorrow in a nice warm wool-and-cashmere combo, the sun will come out, and I will melt into a puddle on Seventh Avenue. Can't win. 

Additional Journalism Commentary

I'd love to know whether any military families agree with me that it is just a terrible idea to broadcast so many surprise homecomings from troops serving in Iraq. Of course anyone can see the emotional appeal of such stories, but every time I see a piece like this, all I can think of is how disappointing it must be for the thousands of kids across the country whose moms and dads haven't been able to plan similar reunions, and especially those kids whose parents aren't coming home at all. To say nothing of the spouses struggling every day on their own! I'm sure it's nice to see another family enjoy such a wonderful surprise, but for children in particular, it has to be a little confusing to see some other dad on national tv hugging his daughter and taking rides around Central Park while wondering how come your mom's can't come home to pick you up from school or whatever. Seems insensitive, is all.

Please, Try A Mint

Lately it seems everywhere I go, I keep running into people with horribly bad breath. Is it that hard to brush your teeth in the morning before hopping on a crowded subway car to go to work? Or to perhaps chew some gum after a garlicky lunch? Do these people not know they have bad breath? Could I have bad breath and not even realize it? Hm.

The Coddling Continues

Frankly, easing high school students into college with all the delicacy of extracting an intact soft-boiled egg from a shell is ridiculous. How about a program to ease college graduates into the real world? We can just create a bunch of little cities that pay 22-year-olds great salaries to blog about themselves all day for a year, then toss them into the wild of actual cities and see how they fare. If students at our best universities can't hack sharing space and faculty access with a few students with a couple more years of life experience, then I have some serious fears about our country. Parents, and educators: if you really want to help today's most promising youngsters, how about a year off between high school and college for traveling the world and learning what's really out there, rather than further insulating them from the challenges they will inevitably face later in life? Why are we more interested in creating gentle buffers than truly expanding life experiences? We're going to have to do a lot better than this.

TSA=Tied Shoes, Annoying?

Why, why, why do we still have to take off our shoes to go through airport security? As if it's not sufficiently humiliating to endure a manual pat-down because your sweater, is, I guess, hooded? (True story, and I was not offered any explanation as to why a completely non-charming woman felt around my armpits while holding up a long line of travelers behind me.) I have also seen men clutching their pants in desperation as their belt buckles travel through the x-ray machine, while also trying to maneuver a laptop back into a bag and perhaps wrangle a small child through as well. And, what with the similarly unnecessary liquid restriction, we are also asked to put our various creams and balms, some of which have, shall we say, personal applications, on display for all to see (checked bags, I think not, with handling fees and lost luggage issues what they are these days). The shoe removal is especially irksome in summer months, when no shoes often means no socks, and therefore hordes of perfect strangers are forced to hop around barefoot on a cold tile floor, without a lap pool or coconut cocktail in sight. All because one single traveler, once, many years ago, attempted to board a plane with a device in his shoe? Was the shoe in question a flip-flop? Give me a break!

Insurance Companies: How DO You Sleep At Night?

Let's be real: just about every woman I know around my age takes birth control pills. This is clearly a necessary part of many people's lives. I've been taking the exact same birth control pill for years now myself, and it does exactly what I ask it to do. No Bristol Palin action for this lady.

But now, I have a new job, which comes with a new health insurance plan. And while I fully recognize that I am lucky to have health insurance at all, I was highly dismayed to learn today that the birth control I've been on for ages now, the one that my doctor prescribes because she thinks it's best for me, and which I feel comfortable ingesting on a daily basis, is not on my health insurance company's "preferred" list, and thus I am expected to cough up $50+ a month if I would like to keep taking it -- despite my employer's payment of what I assume are fairly high premiums, which are supposed to cover my medical needs. Finding this ridiculous, I inquired how I might contact the decision-makers who concoct this "preferred" list, and was told that would be impossible. Are they Santa Claus? Because otherwise I am not sure how it could be impossible to get in touch with a body of decision-makers at a fairly sizeable health insurance company. Certainly these decision-makers may not wish to be contacted by a disgruntled woman who was just forced off her perferred form of contraception, but that is a different question.

Meanwhile, on the preferred list, of course, are all generics, a distinction which I am a little fuzzy on, especially given that I am the sort of person who has always stuck with Advil over "Rite Aid Ibuprofen," which I am informed is the same product. When it comes to drugs, though, I trust my doctor far more than I trust some group of unreachable mystery pharmacists, who've clearly sold out to the man and presumably "prefer" generics because they are "cheaper."

I, however, prefer the real thing, because a daily dose of hormones is no joke, and I don't appreciate being asked to compromise when it comes to my health.

Height Inequities

The average height of a woman in the US is five feet, four inches tall.

I am almost exactly five feet, four inches tall.

So why, I ask, must I hem every single pair of pants I purchase, at $14 a pop!?

An Open Letter to the Producers of the Today Show

Dear Producers:

I am aware that the Today Show is no Frontline. I get that, really I do. And on that basis, each morning as I slog through a run on the treadmill while watching some tv chef show Matt Lauer how to make chicken nuggets even more exciting for kids, or a ridiculous segment titled "Five Ways To Talk About Infidelity," I set aside my typical tv snobbishness and just relax my brain a little. That's really what the show is all about. Over the summer, I enjoyed your coverage of the Olympics tremendously.

And yet: in an election year, when in just a few weeks votes will be cast that stand to affect everyone's lives for decades to come, and we are collectively freaking out over a financial crisis that few people understand, I simply can't stomach your endless coverage of a non-story like the disappearance of Caylee Anthony in Florida. This morning I practically flipped off the treadmill in outrage over a pointless interview with a tv judge who is in no way even involved in the related legal proceedings. Obviously it's sad when a little girl goes missing, and even sadder if her mother is implicated in a sinister fashion, but is this news worthy of broadcasting to over five million people? Now? With so much else going on? I mean, although I found your segment on fire safety to amount to little more than an advertisement for sprinkler systems, at least it's true that people's lives can be saved by such devices. For that matter, people's lives can at least be improved by tastier chicken, and possibly even by engaging in dialogue about infidelity.

I simply fail to see how encouraging our most simplistic, voyeuristic tendecies to analyze and comment on an isolated tragedy happening to one innocent family helps anyone. Thrusting these people into the national spotlight only diverts attention from the issues of the day that really matter. Or at least make the world a little easier to live in.

Sincerely,
The Venter

A Return Guest Post: Facebook Etiquette

Today, I bring you the latest guest vent from my friend The Parker, who broaches a subject that I'm sure will become a recurring theme as time goes on: Facebook and its seemingly endless potential for troublesome social interactions.

I went to a small college (graduated 10+ years ago!) and now on Facebook I have been "friending" and being "friended by" many past classmates. Recently I became Facebook friends with one past classmate who I was not particularly close with, but I did play a role in her meeting the man who eventually became her husband. When I put in a friend request to her husband, he did not accept it. I have no idea why not, but I decided he was rude, so I un-friended her and I blocked him for good measure.

To which I say, right on! and add another related comment of my own: just because we went to high school together 15 years ago - in a class of over 500 students - does not mean I wish to be connected to you on Facebook.  If we knew each other, even if not very well, by all means, friend-request away. That's fair game. But: if I have no idea who you are, what gives you the idea I might be interested in photos of your hiking trip in Peru or your status updates detailing the adorable things your children say? And I am certainly not prepared to have my own photo albums open to scrutiny by every yahoo who happened to grow up in New Jersey. If your name doesn't ring a bell, it's just not happening, buster.

It's All About Timing

Lately, it seems like every time I allow extra travel time to get someplace, factoring in the lately-nutso city traffic, my terrible luck with finding cabs, etc....then without fail I find a cab right away, zip up whatever avenue, and wait around self-consciously at some restaurant or bar for whoever I am meeting. On the other hand, those days when I debate the extra three outfits and two pairs of shoes, I have to make a quick stop for a bottle of wine, say, to bring to a party, and the next thing I know I'm leaving ten minutes late, well: watch out New York, because somehow, some way, the trains will stop running, broken-down trucks will flood every street, and every single cab in town will be occupied.

But then, much of life depends on timing. A matter of degree, really.

A Return to the Smaller Things

This guest post generously donated by a friend on Facebook*:

Why do people park at an angle? Earlier this evening I was at the store, and when I came out, a giant SUV was parked at an angle next to me. Given that I drive a tiny car, it was not impossible to get out of the spot, but not easy either. Luckily, the woman who owned the giant SUV came out and I had the opportunity to give her my scary teacher look. She apologized, but I said nothing, given that I wasn't willing to forgive her.

My favorite part, of course, is the withholding of forgiveness. Why should someone be forgiven for failing to conform to the norms of civilized society? It is perfectly obvious that when you park at an angle, you are making things difficult for the drivers around you. Everyone knows this. It really should be ok to hold at least small grudge over such a blatant lack of courtesy!

*As a reminder, once again, I really do encourage these submissions. Sharing is fun! Vent out your anger! In these shaky economic times, even the small things can be even more annoying than usual. Bring it on, people.

Debating the Debate

No, this isn't a political blog, and yes, all vents on here are supposed to be strictly trivial. So, while it would be very easy for me to go on at length here about my many, many reservations about Sarah Palin as a vice-presidential candidate, and lament the idiocy of an electorate that actually thinks it is a plus she's just an average "Joe Six-pack" (what does that even mean?), I will leave that up to the thousands of bloggers who are already focusing on such issues.

I would, however, like to address an aspect of SP's candidacy that has lately been making my blood boil: the implication, in venerated publications like the New York Times no less, that Joe Biden needs to slip on his kid gloves for tonight's Vice Presidential debate, not because SP has all the intellect of an amoeba, but...because she is a woman. Seriously?

This suggestion, which I have seen in various media outlets, makes me uncomfortable for several reasons. For one thing, I very much doubt that were we still on planet Earth and the debate was between, say, Joe Lieberman and Hillary Clinton, that any commentators would feel the need to caution old Joe about inadvertent condescension. OK, you might be thinking, but let's chalk that up to the vast gulf between the respective experience levels of SP and HRC.

Except for this: I very, very much doubt that if the debate were between Joe Biden and a man possessing a complete lack of credentials to serve the US as Vice President, we'd be hearing a similar sort of cautionary tone. No, in fact, I think pretty much everyone would be saying - or even shouting - aloud what pretty much everyone's thinking right now: CLOBBER THAT MORON.

Which in turn raises the question, why do we still not believe that a fair fight can be had between a man and a woman? I've heard lots of people muse in the past couple of weeks that Biden just might make SP cry. Would anyone say that if SP were male? And getting back to the HRC comparison, aren't we maybe just a little bit guilty of characterizing these two women differently in part because SP trades so heavily on her status as a woman - with the skirts and the lipstick and the 19 children and the updo and the smiling and the lipstick - while HRC has spent the better part of the last 30 years perfecting the art of being one of the guys? It's like women come in two varieties - regular and lite, say - and we consider regular to be on par with men, but not lite, no ma'am.

I digress somewhat, but all of this is really to say "c'mon now" to anyone who's argued that there should be one iota of difference between the way Biden will debate tonight, and the way he might debate a male opponent. All the lipstick in the world shouldn't shield this impostor from her demonstrated ability to answer a question directly. How sad for women everywhere if Biden treads too carefully, and SP's nonsensical talking points score actual points with voters.

Please, Joe. Clobber that moron.

I Knew There Had to Be A Conspiracy

One of my biggest all-time pet peeves is junk mail, and now I know the reason for it: greed. Seems the post office is not content simply sliding into obsolescence, and the result is that sometimes innocent online shoppers like me can't even find their Rosh Hashana cards or Trina Turk sales announcements in their mailboxes amidst the onslaught of dwr/Bloomingdales/Bluefly catalogs and/or coupons. I keep waiting to lose a friend over somehow missing an invitation to a wedding or child's birthday party because 17 Corcoran brokers have my address and aren't afraid to use it. And, I'm not alone! According to that Newsweek article, "89 percent of consumers say in polls that they'd prefer not to receive direct-marketing mail; 44 percent of it is never opened." I mean, in that case, what's the point! I am appalled that the proposed Do Not Mail bills haven't passed (but, ahem, given recent political events, not especially surprised).

I am definitely giving GreenDimes a try, which claims it can stop up to 90% of my junk mail. If that's true, I'll be delighted.