1615 iDate

I was sitting outside a restaurant not long ago and looking through the window. A couple was sitting across from each other at a table and they were each fiddling with their phones.
Looks like a great date, I thought to myself. Let's go out to eat and phone other people.
What must they be thinking about each other? If this is their first date are they thinking, "I'm going to keep pretending I'm getting calls 'cause this dweeb is lame. Look at him/her. He/she spends all his/her time on the phone."
Finally, the female put her phone away and stared at the guy, who was still busily engaged texting with his. Aha, I thought, phone imbalance. Two people, one phone, something's gonna break.
Then the guy pulls out a second phone. I kid you not, he kept texting on his first and put the second phone to his ear. In the meantime grinning and shrugging at the girl.
She actually smiled back.
You're so romantic... Wow... Two phones at the same time. Like a hunky juggler or a really macho dude involved in phone combat. Or a manly NASCAR driver switching from phone to phone like swerving through tight curves.
You could almost smell the estrogen as it burst through the building. This date was going to work out after all! With his powerful shoulder muscles pinning the phone to his cheek and his enlarged thumbs from 24/7 texting, this man was a master of technology.
Next stop, the crazy interpersonal world of the bedroom. Light his iPhone candle feature and share his iTunes on intimate earbuds. He sticks one in his ear, gently slides the other one into her aural orifice and says, "Babe, this bud's for you."
21st Century dating—there's an app for that.
America, ya gotta love it.

1614 Diet French

Read an interesting article about France recently. And about how they are imposing dietary guidelines in their schools. Namely, they are forbidding the use of ketchup except one time a week in school lunches.
No child left behind on condiments.
Ketchup, when it's served that once a week, will be on the day the school serves French Fries. The change is supposedly being made as part of the fight against obesity. And to be fair, they are also rationing mayonnaise, a far more caloric accouterment.
But kids will be able to eat as many baguettes as they want, because, as one official put it, "Cafeterias have a public health mission but also an educative mission. We have to insure children become familiar with French recipes so that they can hand them down to the following generations."
The plan, it seems, is to make sure French schoolchildren don't drown their meals in the quintessentially American condiment ketchup.
But I think it's kind of funny. At least because of some things about food origins. Take French fries. They are made from potatoes. Potatoes came from the Americas. So if there's a quintessentially American dish, it's potatoes.
And while the French may claim to have been the first to Frenchifry them, American fast food brought French fries to the world.
Ketchup, actually, originated in Malaysia, and was brought over to England, where it was toned down. In the early 1800s, somewhere between England and the US, it was mixed with tomato sauce and started to evolve to its current form.
So if the French wish their school cafeterias to be educative, perhaps they can educate their children about the inherent internationalism of the French fried potato and ketchup meal.
World peace and understanding...through condiments.
America, ya gotta love it.

1613 Bank On It

I'm always fascinated by all the wrangling that goes on with financial crises and the financial sector. They seem very Marie Antoinette-ish. Wanting to have their cake and eat it too. Maybe even wash it down with obscene bonus champagne.
I read this article recently on the European debt crisis. The one that's threatening to topple the Euro and send the world into another financial meltdown. This meltdown was oozing thanks to Greece.
Now the bankers who loaned Greece money want the government to do something. Sound familiar? Yep, the private sector of bankers made some bad bets. And now they want the government to come up with a plan to bail them out.
As one commentator put it, no one forced the bankers to buy Greek bonds. But now it's the bankers who are whining the loudest to France's President Nicholas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Merkel and Sarkozy, sounds like a Catskill Vaudeville act don't it? "And now for your enjoyment, the amazing juggling acts of Merkel and Sarkozy. Watch as they dance around the inevitable and build suspense. They'll have you, and the bankers, screaming!"
The bankers are screaming now. And what's funniest to me, they're screaming for government intervention. The same government they're always telling to stay out of business. "Leave us alone. Don't regulate us. Let the market work. Unless we ask you to bail us out. Then we'll sit on the cash and not lend it to anyone and raise fees and pay ourselves big bonuses. So there. Neener neener. We are, like, totally worth saving."
Some governments, namely Belgium, Luxembourg and France, did come up with a plan to bail out Belgium's largest bank Dexia from Greek debt problems.
They nationalized it.
Funny, that's not what the bankers banked on.
America, ya gotta love it.