Fred and Valerie

We used to play this little game when I was in high school and college. The idea was to come up with three items (and only three items) that a person would take to the checkout counter that might thoroughly confuse the cashier. A good example might be:

• Pasta Sauce
• Garlic Bread
• Shampoo

These were always theoretical, but today we saw a guy shopping at Wal-Mart and he may have ended up with the strangest three items I’ve ever come across:

• 24-Pack of Hot Dogs
• 24-Pack of Hot Dogs
• Personal Lubricant (Think: KY Jelly type product)

If I were the cashier, I might have had a hard time containing my laughter.

The full title of the book is Why Do Men Have Nipples? Hundreds of Questions You’d Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini and it was given to me as a gift by some of our good friends. In the book, authors Billy Goldberg (the doctor) and Mark Leyner (the writer) answer questions that seem to only come up when people have lost all their inhibitions. Questions like:

• Can you lose a contact lens in the back of your head?
• Do oysters really make you horny?
• Does urination on a jellyfish sting stop the burn?
• Does drinking kill brain cells?
• What would happen if you stuck someone in the heart with a needle as in Pulp Fiction?
• Can you die from chasing Pop Rocks with Coke?
• What’s up with the ear hair?

And there are many more interesting and more risque questions that are asked and answered.

Overall, it’s an informative and humorous book. I found myself chuckling quite a few times at both the questions and the answers. (As I’m typing this, I just held in a sneeze to avoid waking up Valerie. The question of whether holding in a sneeze is dangerous is both asked and answered!)

The only part of the book I didn’t care much for was the interludes of instant messaging transcripts between the authors. It appears as though they did a lot of instant messaging while putting the book together and I suspect these transcripts are more humorous to them than to me. But, while they do offer the occasional insight into how extra tidbits of information found their way into the answers, they’re not necessary to the book and the book would be just as good without them. So, feel free to skip the chats without fear of missing anything.

This book is perfect as a bathroom reader and that’s where it’ll be whenever you visit.

I became a fan of Erik Larson after reading The Devil in the White City, Larson’s wonderful non-fiction tale of murder and intrigue set against the construction and opening of the Chicago World’s Fair. Because of that, I was excited about what Thunderstruck, another non-fiction book, might have to offer. Thankfully, I was not disappointed.

Thunderstruck begins at the end. Larson lays out the ending of the story in a way that doesn’t give away too much, but kind of lets the reader in on the secret of what’s about to happen. Some may consider this a spoiler, but I like it in the sense that you know there’s something devious about otherwise unassuming characters.

After quickly laying out the path of the story, Larson does a great job of weaving the the two stories of Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of wireless communication, and Dr. H. H. Crippen, a now infamous killer. Back-and-forth between the two stories, chapters are, for the most part, fast paced and provide just the right amount of information without overloading the reader. Never was I confused about whose story I was reading at any point in time.

And, as these things tend to do in book form, the stories come together in the end to bring the reader right back to the beginning. Along the way, Larson provides the reader with great insight into the development of wireless communication and the trial-and-error methodology of Marconi. He also provides a sympathetic side of Crippen while not attempting to excuse his actions.

Overall, a great book and I’m looking forward to reading Isaac’s Storm, Larson’s non-fiction story about the massively deadly 1900 hurricane that hit Galveston, TX.

A bumper sticker seen on the back of a car this afternoon read, “Hang up and drive!”

Appropriately enough, the driver was on his cell phone.

As if my previous exchange at Kohl’s wasn’t a ridiculously easy transaction, I actually managed to have a better exchange with Kohl’s tonight.

A little background. Quite a few weeks ago, I bought some shirts and pants. Yes, I’m referring to the same shirts and pants that I bought “a few weeks ago” in my last Kohl’s entry. By now, we’re talking about a two month, or longer, period between purchase and tonight. I found a number of Croft & Barrow shirts I liked and the Large size fit well, so I simply picked up a bunch of Large-sized shirts and bought them.

I managed to wear most of the shirts over the following weeks, but there was still a dark blue shirt with light blue horizontal stripes that I hadn’t worn. Finally, at least six weeks after I purchased it, I wanted to wear the shirt. I took off all the tags and stickers and everything else and put it on. To my surprise, the shirt was way too big. I was practically swimming in it. The other shirts I had bought were a bit loose fitting, but this was WAY LOOSE fitting.

I took the shirt off and looked at the size marked on the inside and it clearly said, “L.” The shirt information was screen printed on the inside of the shirt (yippee, no tags!) and I looked a little bit closer and saw that there were little white flecks of something to the left of the “L.” I decided to compare it to one of my other shirts and, sure enough, the “L” on the too-big shirt was a bit off-center to the right side. There was only one thing I could assume: the “X” in the “XL” had not gotten screen printed properly and this shirt had lived its life to that point as an “XL” in disguise as an “L.”

No problem, though. I can just return the shirt to Kohl’s. As someone who keeps every receipt of every purchase, it’s just a matter of going to Kohl’s. Since we were headed to Harrisonburg tonight, I looked for the receipt. Of course, just to make the chances of this exchange ever happening that much worse, I couldn’t find the receipt. “What the heck,” I thought.

We went to Harrisonburg, enjoyed some dinner, then went to Kohl’s. I got another shirt of the same exact style as the shirt in question (except no stripes because they don’t have any more) and made my way to the checkout. I said to the clerk, “This is going to be worse than ‘My dog ate my homework,’ but I swear it’s 100% the truth.” I explained how I had purchased the shirt, taken the tags and stickers off to wear it, it was the wrong size, it was mislabeled, and now I didn’t even have my receipt.

Her response? No problem. She typed in some number from a tag near the bottom of the shirt, then scanned the new shirt, then handed me a receipt for the exchange. I kid you not, it really was THAT easy and THAT quick.

Kohl’s continues to amaze me with how well they handle returns and exchanges. They obviously know how pointless it is to bicker with the customer over a matter of dollars and cents. They obviously realize that they’d spend more money in the salary of the people who I would have to deal with if they made it a hassle for me to return or exchange things. And for that, I’m a happy Kohl’s shopper and I will continue to be a happy Kohl’s shopper.

Rock on, Kohl’s! Rock on.