Author Archives: Dick

Pop Goes the Weasel

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First week of the first month of Spring and it’s time for Random Fancies! Today, I’ll link barber shops and movie tickets and inflation, something I am doubly unqualified to do1.

My first real job (it had a paycheck and withheld taxes and everything!) was as an usher in the Warner Theater six miles from home and I whiled away some of my college hours managing the Lee Theater about six miles from school. I have good memories.

I got a raise to a buck an hour when the Warner’s maintenance man retired and the ticket price rose to a buck about the same time. (Minimum wage had jumped to $1.25/hour by then.)

Having Love Story at the Lee for 14 weeks, then getting transferred to the Criterion for the New Year’s Eve premiere of Nicholas and Alexandra was enough for my movie career. I have been to the movies since then but I don’t go very often. I was blown away when I saw that tickets to Les Mis cost $12.50 each.

People may complain more about the cost of popcorn (movie popcorn prices have popped disproportionately to average theater ticket prices over the last almost-100 years) but ticket prices make the better indicator.

My first haircut was, well let’s just say I had pretty, long hair at the time. And not a lot of language skills. And I got a lollipop. My folks believed in the “butch” cut, so the barber never had much trouble performing, other than to get me to sit still.

I rebelled the summer before I went away to school. OK, I told my mom I was too busy to get it cut. At any rate, it had grown out to almost an inch long by the time I got to Hoboken. And it kept doing so.

I haven’t been to a real barbershop since about 1967. One of my roommates taught me how to trim and more-or-less shape it in the mirror. Later, I taught SWMBO how to trim and shape it quite well. Even she stopped cutting it in 2004 when I ripped the kitchen floor up in Renovation, v. 2, the Sequel. I’ve kept it pretty short using the mirror again since I shaved my head for Cap Cancer in 2009. I was blown away when Rufus told me a $15.00 haircut was a bargain.

Those prices have climbed faster than the CPI which Federal Government uses to figure inflation. Or the PCE which the Federal Government uses to report inflation when they don’t like the CPI. Or the Chained CPI which the Federal Government uses to obfuscate inflation when they don’t like the CPI or the PCE.

There’s no hyperinflation if you believe the official statistics.

We need a better indicator.

Youtube is crowded with Quick Belly Inflation guides, most of which use air compressors.

We really need a better indicator.

The fact that hamburger “sale” prices have quadrupled while Uncle Sam tells us inflation is flat shows that Harper’s new Inimitable Impressive Inflationary Indicator is practically perfect.

Haircuts and movie ticket costs tell us
more about the economy than the BLS’
poke-in-the-eye-with-a-sharp-stick.

Here it is. The Harper Inimitable Impressive Inflationary Indicator, occasionally known as the Dick Stick:

INFLATION IS HIGHER THAN REPORTED WHEN:
HAIRCUT + MOVIE                                             
—————————     >     A GALLON OF GAS
2                                          

1 Unlike, of course, the majority of economists today.
In 1965 a six-pack of your average American beer cost just 99 cents, too.

 

Carpentry

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Tales from South Puffin.

My dad was a great cabinet maker. He liked fine wood and had an innate feel for grain and flow and hand. And I think he particularly liked sawdust. He made a lot of it, milling and shaping replacements for the cabin on one boat or crafting a table in another, building a bureau for a friend or a Chippendale-style mirror for our hall. There are a small number of (unsigned) Chan Harper pieces around southeastern Pennsylvania.

We no longer have any of the wooden boats he kept afloat but I do use the small walnut side desk he built for my grandfather.

Sadly, I’ve come to believe he was an lousy carpenter and yet he did a bunch of it. I think doing a lot of get-it-built-carpentry runs in the family.

I remember my grandfather building on and building in the baggage room at the Station. That became his wood shop. I remember my father building on and building in the chicken coop after he moved his father’s tools uphome from the Station. That coop became his wood shop. I remember building on and building in my barn in North Puffin. That barn became my wood shop but it is also where I built a race car, and some boats, and machinery prototypes, and our kitchen cabinets. Twice. And I remember my dad building a workbench and a lattice “cage” here in South Puffin. That became his wood shop here.

I’ve lived here 10 years now and built another set of kitchen cabinets in his shop but it really hasn’t ever met my own needs. I want to have room for my big rolling toolbox here and pull-out shelves for hardware and a home for the table saw and …

All in about 16 square feet.

My dad built a heavy duty bench with shelves under one side and a cubby for his tool bureau under the other. Above that was a kitchen cabinet made partly of particle and pressed board. The cabinet was disintegrating. The workbench was an inch too short for the table saw and a foot too long to fit my own tool chest. He had short louvered cabinet doors to protect his tools but the bench was open to every caller. Note the past tense.

Disassembly took a long time because he notched or mortised every 2×4 in the frame, applied resorcinol glue and then lagged all the parts together. Did I mention that disassembly took a long time?

Common practice for something as simple as a workbench is to pin or lag any stretchers and posts together and call it done. That adds up to rugged, potentially square, construction.

I made a mistake. I measured the space as I was taking his bench apart and assumed it was pretty much square. I don’t know how he built it so far off but it was an inch out in the 20″ width of the bench.

My replacement bench is about 30″ deep and only half an inch out across its 76″ length. The only glue I used holds the drawer boxes together. I have full size louvered doors that I can close to hide any mess.

The hutch/shelf is in place and loaded with all the tools. I’m pleased to report that it has lots more room than my dad’s original shelves and I now have them organized in a way that I can actually see and find stuff. I’m most pleased with the way this little project has worked out.

And when one of my kids or someone I don’t know takes that workbench apart, they’ll probably think, Boy, that Harper was a decent cabinet maker but he surely never used a square when he hammered this workbench closet together.

<sigh>

 

Random Medical Day

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CRE, the new super bug I had never heard of, is in the news after an outbreak at a UCLA hospital.

Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriacea has no known cure. It was transmitted at UCLA via improperly cleaned endoscopes that still contained the bacteria even after they were disinfected. CRE can kill up to half the patients who contract them.

“The moving parts of the elevator mechanism contain microscopic crevices that may not be reached with a brush,” the FDA said. “Residual body fluids and organic debris may remain in these crevices after cleaning and disinfection. If these fluids contain microbial contamination, subsequent patients may be exposed to serious infections.”

The advice is to show your doctor some FDA instructions that recommend additional cleaning practices, including meticulously cleaning the elevator mechanism by hand.

Yeah, that’s what I need to be doing, managing how my doc runs his office. Right after I get done managing how he bills me.

Lordy Lordy™.

 

Splain, Pls

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Partial Zero Emission Vehicle? [Spotted on a Toyota Camry]

PARTIAL Zero Emission Vehicle? PARTIAL?
Last time I checked, “zero” was a unique number. Unmodifiable.

Ahhh:

This vehicle category was created as part of a bargain with the California Air Resources Board (CARB), so that the automobile manufacturers could postpone producing mandated zero emission vehicles (ZEVs), which will require the production of electric vehicles or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.

I might have guessed it was California where words cost more and mean less than you think they do.