B-Fuzzled World News and Commentary: The Toilet Tech Fair

Because cable news is so completely and notoriously unreliable when it come to reporting on truly newsworthy material, today’s special edition of B-fuzzled World News and Commentary brings you up to date on the Toilet Tech Fair, held this past March in New Delhi, India. While the Elite Media Liberals wasted time and precious copy space covering whatever was supposedly “news” that day, millions of concerned citizens worldwide completely missed out on the latest developments on how to transform human waste into “profit-generating resources”. While I do not suggest deliberate misconduct on the part of the news outlets, I do feel that this information was willfully eliminated. 

Katy D., fearless and intrepid reporter for the Associated Press, tactfully and sensitively handled this inspiring event, which reporting I will expound, explicate, and elucidate. She writes: “Who would have expected a toilet to one day filter water, charge a cellphone or create charcoal to combat climate change? 

“These are lofty ambitions….Yet, scientists and toilet innovators around the world say these are exactly the sort of goals needed to improve global public health amid challenges such as poverty, water scarcity and urban growth.” 

[In the growing category of What Kind of Child Decides To Be A ______When She Grows Up, we now stack “Toilet Innovator” next to “People Who Name Paint Colors”.]

“Scientists who accepted the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's challenge to reinvent the toilet showcased their inventions in the Indian capital Saturday. The primary goal: to sanitize waste, use minimal water or electricity, and produce a usable product at low cost.” 

[This choice of words was somewhat worrisome to me--to which usable product might they be referring?]

“India is by far the worst culprit [of poor sanitation], with more than 640 million people defecating in the open and producing a stunning 72,000 tons of human waste each day — the equivalent weight of almost 10 Eiffel Towers or 1,800 humpback whales.” 

[I would just like to pause a moment to let these facts and figures sink in. As usually happens when I read the news, I am left with a greater number of questions unanswered than answered: First, who is actually counting these people--another strong contender in the category of What Kind of Child Decides To Be A___________ When She Grows Up. Secondly, who is weighing and tracking the daily output of human waste? And third, seriously? Did you just compare the weight of mountains of dung to the Eiffel Tower, let alone humpback whales?]

“To be successful, scientists said, the designs being exhibited at Saturday's Toilet Fair had to go beyond treating urine and feces as undesirable waste, and recognize them as profit-generating resources for electricity, fertilizer or fuel.”

[I am reasonably confident that the lofty goals of “improving global public health amid challenges such as poverty, water scarcity and urban growth” just got flushed down the sewer.]

“The University of the West of England, Bristol, showcased a urine-powered fuel cell to charge cellphones overnight.

“Another team from the University of Colorado, Boulder, brought a system concentrating solar power through fiber optic cables to heat waste to about 300 degrees Celsius. Aside from killing pathogens, the process creates a charcoal-like product called biochar useful as cooking fuel or fertilizer.

[This seems another appropriate place to pause: Call it what you will, I have trouble imagining the family gathered around the backyard BBQ on Friday night, and Dad saying, “Jimmy! Go grab a bucket of biochar! It’s time for S’Mores."]

“A team from Beijing Sunnybreeze Technologies Inc. also brought a solar-biochar system, but with the solar panels heating air that will dry sludgy human waste into nuggets that are then heated further under low-oxygen conditions to create biochar.”

[Two important things to note here: One--Sunnybreeze is a very pleasant, if slightly misleading, name for a company that studies how to repackage poop into a profit-generating resource. Two--The use of the word “nuggets” in this sentence is incredibly ill-advised.]

“'Toilets are more common in [the southern Indian state of] Kerala than they are in much of the country, but no one wants to clean them', said Bincy Baby [I just need to interrupt at this point to say that this is an amazingly awesome name. Okay. Moving on:] of Eram Scientific Solutions.

'There is a stigma. [um. yes.] The lowest of the low are the ones who clean the toilets,’ Baby said. Eram's solution is a coin-operated eToilet with an electronic system that triggers an automated, self-cleaning mechanism. With 450 prototypes now looped into sewage systems across India, electrical engineers are lining up for jobs as toilet technicians. 'Now, they're proud of their jobs.'"

[I am speechless.]

In summary: 

1. A little creative branding goes a long way.

2. Why settle for “improving global public health amid challenges such as poverty, water scarcity and urban growth” when you can go for “profit-generating resources”?

3. At any given time, there must be a whole lot of third graders in this world with some rather peculiar career choices.

I Must Have Flunked Prom

In my opinion, certain aspects of adolescence need to remain in the realm of adolescents for their enjoyment alone. Acne, getting grounded, and minimum wage jobs all spring readily to mind. In a close second come certain time-honored traditions such as listening to Radio Disney, jumping off the roof of your home onto your trampoline, rear-ending your best friend’s family car with your family car less than a week of receiving your driver’s license, and/or long-boarding down steep hills at 35 miles per hour with no greater personal protection than your own sense of immortality. [As a side note: Please do not ask me how I know that his speed was 35 miles per hour--lying makes me somewhat uncomfortable.] Let teenagers be the ones who get to stay up all night finishing research papers, eat Chocolate Lucky Charms or Cookie Dough Pop Tarts for breakfast, and go to Dances. I did my time. I’m done.

The specter of ever having to relive the traditions or customs of youth looms larger than an 80s hairdo, so a recent conversation with my sister-in-law about her son’s upcoming wedding stirred up profound feelings of dismay, if not panic: 
Me: “We are looking forward to it!”
Charlotte: “Get your dancing shoes--DJ is booked!”
Me: “Only if they play the Chicken Dance.”
(It was the only thing that felt safe, other than perhaps the Hokey Pokey...or Ring Around the Rosie, which may not technically qualify as an actual dance, but at least I am fairly confident of the steps involved.)

Dancing in public? Oh man. I thought once a person was safely married they were no longer required to dance in public. Don’t misunderstand. When I was younger I believed, like every other narcissistic and delusional adolescent, that I was an awesome dancer. Not that I had any dreams of dancing on American Bandstand or Solid Gold, but that’s mostly because they were truly, truly stupid shows. In the past 25 + years, the closest I have come to actual dancing in public has been when I bob my head in time with whatever is playing between segments on NPR while I’m driving around town.  I guess I have Just Dance-d in my house with my kids, but  because I routinely lose on everything from “Lollipop” to “I Don’t Feel Like Dancing”, this does not do much for my morale and hence does not encourage the idea of cavorting around the dance floor. 

Fortunately, we are entering what is known in certain circles as “social-dancing season”, and the newspaper recently ran a very helpful article on this delicate subject. The author, Elizabeth Holmes, informs us that there are actual people living among us, who “seem right at home on the dance floor, whether because they are self-confident, uninhibited, or musical.” Self-confidence? Got it: I have been known to scamper down the driveway in my PJs when trying to catch the garbage truck. Uninhibited? Check: I often sing Sesame Street songs while scrubbing down my shower. Musical? Ha! My oldest son plays bass. Yet the idea of dancing in public still fills my heart with fear and trepidation. I think Ms. Holmes hits the nail on the head when she says that “the threat of public embarrassment looms large.” I’d rather be forced to sit through an entire episode of Solid Gold, eating Pop Tarts, than have to prance around in front of other people.

I say we leave dancing to teenagers. Heck, if they can survive things such as various and sundry forms of social rejection, grandmother kisses, and the random and untimely appearance of mega zits, surely they can shoulder the burden of public dancing for the rest of society. After making us endure endless hours of Aaron Carter, Miley Cyrus, and “High School Musical”, they owe us.

Does this Haircut Make Me Look Big?

As Ken and I discussed a recent visit to my hairdresser, he paraphrased one of our favorite quotes: “The one constant in all your failed haircuts is you.” It’s true. I can count on three fingers the number of times I have been completely satisfied with a haircut in the past, say 25 years. (It would be unfair to count anything before that because as a youth, I truly had no taste, as evidenced by the fact that I thought McDonald’s french fries were pretty good, and I actually enjoyed several songs by Bob Seeger and the Silver Bullet Band.)

When I come home from getting my hair done...actually, let me back up a little more: Once I hop into the car after getting my hair done, the first thing I do is splash some water from my water bottle onto my hands and plaster my hair back down to an almost normal look. Why do hairdressers seem to have this need to give me super-boof-dos? I’m not too crazy about the Tiny Middle-Aged Lady With Super-Sized Hair look. I suppose it’s possible that after careful consideration, they have decided that I could use the extra height, but no matter how tall my hair is, I still can’t reach most of the stuff in my cupboards without climbing up on the counter.

When I get home from getting my hair done, my husband cautiously asks how it went this time. Whether I’ve gone to a highly recommended $50 a pop Salon and Spa with an unpronounceable Italian name or to a chain salon with a name like “Kutz 4 Cheep”, my usual response is, “I’ll have to give it a couple of days.” But within a day or two I will be able to answer definitively that the bangs are too short, or it’s too short all over, or it’s too short over my ears (I have been white-walled at least three times in the last year); that the left side was left longer than the right, the right side was left longer than the left, the length at the back is crooked; OR that the shape is all wrong, or it’s too blunt, or too choppy; or they left the back way too long, and now I feel like my mullet and I should be singing backup for some One-Hit Wonder 80s band.

Why is it so difficult to get a decent haircut? Part of the problem is that, frankly, I am really not very good at speaking Salonese. There was a time many years ago that I tried to describe to a new hairdresser a hairdo with flipped ends, without actually being familiar with the term “flipped”, and I wound up with hair that was full on the top and sides, tapered at the base of my head, and longer again at the collar, as though I had decided to chop off a mullet and changed my mind halfway through.  It is always best to choose your words carefully. For example, when your stylist asks how you liked the last haircut she gave you, you should look straight into the eyes of this person who is currently wielding a very sharp pair of scissors, and will soon have your arms pinned down under a heavy plastic cape, and lie through your teeth.

One of these days when I am brave, I’m just going to go to Ken’s barber and get the same haircut he has--Ken, that is, not his barber. It takes him all of 8 seconds to style it, and by that I mean wetting his hands and slapping the heck out of his noggin until he gets the pokey little devils to flatten down. In the mean time, I guess I’ll just continue to make my haircut appointments few and far between, and brush up on my New Wave dance moves, just in case.

Old Age MAY Be Just Down the Road, But I Lost My Car Keys Again

Somehow I have developed a reputation in my family as being astoundingly technologically impaired, but in reality I am totally techno hip. For example, I possess the knowledge of changing the speed on a record player so that the singers sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks.  I can still totally kick butt on Atari Pong (well, I could kick my cat’s butt anyway). And anytime you rent a VCR, don’t have a cow! I can set it up for you in a jiffy! And rewind it, too.  Truth be told, my techno-hipness comes and goes: When I was in college, my first experience with a microwave didn’t go so well. (How was I supposed to know that pots aren’t microwavable?) But even if my techno skills aren’t always cutting edge, I reject the notion that being technologically challenged means I’m getting old.

That being said, here are my Three Top Clues that old age MAY be around the corner for me:
I have trouble staying up late. I truly can’t remember the last time I made it to 10:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve. But that may be because I can’t even remember what day it is half the time.
It may be a sign of something that my husband and I have to finish each others’ sentences because we usually get hopelessly lost what day it is half the time.

If forgetfulness was truly a sign of old age, I could have joined AARP before I was legally old enough to be considered an adult. Surprisingly, I remember very clearly the time in highschool that I locked myself out of the house three times in one evening--and one of them wasn’t even mine! Okay, that was an exaggeration: I don’t remember that evening at all; I just wrote it down at the time. I also used to have a bad habit of locking myself out of my car. I didn’t carry a purse or backpack at the time, so to keep from having to shove a wad of keys the size and shape of a medieval flail in the pocket of my 501 jeans, I would just toss them under the driver’s seat when I got out. The problem occured when I got back to the parking lot and realized that I couldn’t even remember which car was mine. The upside to all of this is that I got really good at breaking into cars, and jimmying locks on apartment doors with a slightly damaged credit card. And when you’re a poor college student, these skills become invaluable.

If, like me, you occasionally tend to lose track of things, there is good news. According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, “The average person misplaces up to nine items a day.” [In truth, this factoid was more troubling to me than reassuring--if I truly misplace that many items a day, evidently I am also completely unaware of having lost 7 or 8 of them.] The article goes on to state the following, “Everyday forgetfulness isn't a sign of a more serious medical condition like Alzheimer's or dementia….
“Stress, fatigue, and multitasking can exacerbate our propensity to make such errors.” While we’re on the subject, do you ever get exacerbate and exasperate mixed up? How about lose and loose? And where do you stand on regardless and irregardless? Think carefully before you chose to respond.

Now where was I? Oh yeah. If the above statement is true, it seems to me that the closer we are to retirement, the better we will be at remembering things, because we’ll be past the stage of life where we are fatigued, stressed, and prone to multitasking. Actually, this rather makes me look forward to getting older...that and the Early Bird Dinner Specials a friend recently told me about.

Yes, the prospect of getting older is a mixed bag:
The first time my younger sister spotted a gray hair growing deliberately out of my scalp at age 17, I laughed. (Denial)
The first time a grocery store cashier called me “ma’am”, I was in my early 20s, and I was kind of annoyed. (Anger)
The first time a teenager asked me, when I was in my early 30s, “How did you feel the first time you realized they were playing your songs on the Oldies station,” I was so astonished by the question, that it didn’t occur to me until hours later that they didn’t actually play my music on the Oldies station. (Bargaining. In point of fact, I am not 100% sure that this would be considered “bargaining”, but that’s what’s comes next in the Kubler-Ross model.)
The first time I discovered, in my mid-40s that I had Oogway neck, I almost cried. (Depression)
BUT...
Naps. (Acceptance)

So, how do I know I’m not yet a geezer? I honestly can’t remember…what day it is half the time.

Quick! Someone Hide My Scale!

My husband stood still in the kitchen, blinking for a moment or two. He had just asked, innocently if somewhat naively, whether I wanted the last Nutella brownie. Although I give him credit for enjoying shopping, as well as dark chocolate, the truth is: He is not a girl.  How could he have guessed in the nanoseconds after the question left his lips the range of emotions which surged through my frazzled little psyche: overpowering desire for the brownie, guilt for wanting the brownie, worry that I might lose control and put on 5 pounds after eating the brownie (and the ice cream, fudge topping, Reddi Whip, chopped pecans, maraschino cherry, and maybe a small handful of sprinkles, which are all essential accompaniments), shame at my potential lack of self-discipline, stress that I might be transferring the wrong values to my teenage daughters in obsessing over my food intake, and extreme annoyance with myself for most of these thoughts--besides the original one about wanting the brownie. I bravely replied in a choked voice, “Umm...no,” and turned my face to hide my tears. How had I come to this?

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 extra pounds ago, I had almost come to terms with my matronly figure, looking like an over-sized pear that was losing the battle with gravity. I laughed right along with Garfield when he said, “I am not overweight; I am undertall.” And the day my sister-in-law and I wedged ourselves side by side into a big tube and bounced along on a lake behind a boat, I confess that I laughed until I cried when we saw what cellulite looks like jiggling at 25 mph! 

At that time, I couldn’t imagine myself ever seriously attempting to lose weight. Dieting is such an unpleasant word--the sound of it is uncomfortably close to the word dying. And frankly after giving birth to four kids, and later hitting middle-age, I was pretty sure that I was stuck--besides the fact that denying myself dreamy desserts or calming carbs while raising a pack of teenagers seemed truly ill-advised. Food is way cheaper than therapy...depending on how one eats. If I felt that I had a choice before me, it was not the choice about how to lose weight, but about the choice to either come to terms with my shape or to be constantly miserable. “Life is too short to not enjoy food,” I told myself. Whenever people would say, “Oh, none for me, thanks. I’m being good,” I wanted to laugh at them. Or slap them. So I just rolled along enjoying myself, with admittedly one or two bad habits: emotional eating, social eating, mental eating, spiritual eating, boredom eating, movie-watching-eating, book-reading-eating, eating to sustain life, eating to enjoy life...there are probably others but you get the idea.

Then one day I received a revelation: The Midnight Dessert Buffet. We had a cruise coming up in a couple of months and I had a flash of brilliance--if I lost 10 pounds in the weeks leading up to the cruise, I could eat as much as I wanted to at the Midnight Dessert Buffet with no harm done! Brilliant! Properly motivated, I can do amazing things. The biggest hurdle to overcome was my emotional eating. But I quickly learned to replace brownies and cookies...and graham crackers and Doritos and popcorn and spoonfuls of peanut butter and spoonfuls of hot fudge topping and spoonfuls of butterscotch caramel topping...with gum, mints, and fingernails. Long story short, I reached my goal and then some. But what did I give up in the process?

When the night of the Midnight Dessert Buffet came along, I didn’t even really want to go. I was having fun with my new size, and my newly found self-discipline (read: Boring-ness). My teenage daughter was disappointed. I also became one of those annoying people no one wants to go to lunch with: “I’ll just have a Caesar salad with light dressing--on the side--and a glass of water. Dessert? [haughty sniff] No thank you.” My lunch friends were disappointed. For many, many months I did not bake any goodies or buy any donuts. My family was disappointed.

Several months after breaking the habit of emotional eating, one day I fairly threw myself off The Wagon. Somehow I got the idea into my little pea brain that if I ate something when stressed, just this once--just to try it--it would be no big deal. Probably wouldn’t even be satisfying. Dead. Wrong. I ate it and felt immediately soothed, calmed, and pacified, wrapped in the comfortable and familiar arms of dark chocolate. It was at this point The Wagon ran over me. It wasn’t long before I began telling myself that a little bit of this or an extra helping of that surely wouldn’t hurt. Now I bounce between More Or Less Completely Out of Control, and More Or Less Completely Boring. 

What is important to me is being physically healthy, and making emotionally sound decisions--which do not include emotional eating. But instead of emotional eating, I find myself obsessing equally over my weight, and when the next meal or snack will be. I vacillate between feeling good about the way I look, and feeling the guilt, worry, shame, stress, and annoyance previously discussed. This is better?!?

I could have been happy as a saggy piece of fruit.

10 Things To Know For Wednesday (With Help From the AP)

A look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about Wednesday, somewhere between discussions of the Toilet Tech Fair, and crumbling NCAA brackets:

1. GM FACES CONGRESS ON RECALL DELAYS

The company's new CEO admits she doesn't know why it took years for the automaker to fix a faulty ignition switch linked to 13 deaths. She is also trying to figure out how she got suckered into this job in the first place.

2. PALESTINIANS RESTART BID FOR UN RECOGNITION

The surprise decision signals a new crisis in the troubled efforts to bring peace to the Middle East. Whether this news is actually New News, or whether this headline has secretly been recycled dozens of times over the past several decades, is currently under investigation.

3. TIGER UNDERGOES BACK SURGERY

The world's most-recognized golfer will miss The Masters, but will the Masters miss him?

4. US WEIGHS RISK OF FREEING JONATHAN POLLARD

Releasing the convicted spy could spur talks between Israel and the Palestinians — or prove a costly embarrassment to the White House. And between the recent round of technical glitches on the government’s healthcare website and the President’s Power Rangers PJs, they just don’t need any more embarrassing moments

5. CONGRESS OKs $1B FOR UKRAINE

The loan guarantees are part of a bill giving lawmakers a way to denounce Russia for its military incursion and express support for Kiev, since they learned that neither sticking out their collective tongues nor blowing raspberries were as nearly effective as they had originally hoped. Give money--good ploy.

6. 'GOOD NIGHT, MALAYSIAN THREE-SEVEN-ZERO'

Malaysia now says the last words from the cockpit of the lost plane were not, "All right, good night," raising further questions about the government's credibility, rationality, soundness, stability, sanity, grasp of reality, dosage of medications, etc.

7. WHY CANDIDATES REMAIN LEERY OF 'OBAMACARE'

Because. Period.

8. HOW APPLE SAYS SAMSUNG REACTED TO THE IPHONE

The South Korean company didn't have a product that could compete — so it stole the iPhone technology, Apple alleges in a patent infringement trial. Apple has furthermore accused Samsung of stealing its spot-locked window seat and of breathing on them.

10. WHICH YOUNG AMERICANS ARE STILL AT A CLEAR DISADVANTAGE

In every region of the country, white and Asian children are far better-positioned for success in mathematics, expecially counting and spelling, than black, Latino,  American Indian, Polynesian, Canadian, redneck, Liberal Elite, white, or Asian children of any gender, culture, religion, nationality, income, height, mass, or age.

_______________________________________________________

As usual, we invite your comments, as long as the conversation remains respectful, and no one brings up Tootsie Rolls again.

Do Sherpas Eat Skippy?

A really good way to know you are a Mom is if you find yourself with a tube of toothpaste stashed in your back pocket. Or pill bug exoskeletons in your dryer lint trap. Or you carry everything from spare bobby pins and tubes of Neosporin, to “D” batteries and bite-sized pieces of doggy biscuit in your purse. My sister-in-law, mother of three, became legendary for the strange things she often carried upon her person, but it’s hard to top the time she was carrying an entire package of Hormel Black Label bacon in her purse. Her family had just dropped by one Saturday morning, and as we discussed breakfast plans, she announced that she happened to have some bacon and pulled it right out of the little bag she was carrying over her shoulder!  I’m not sure how or when this happens, but as children grow, they came to view their mothers as an odd combination of sherpa and garbage disposal. “Hey! Where did this crust of peanut butter and jelly sandwich come from?!? I don’t want this on my plate! Oh, wait….Is that extra crunchy peanut butter? Mmmm….”

I have also found children to be marvelously ironic: You can’t get them to go to sleep at 9:30 p.m., but they can’t stay awake at 3:30 in the afternoon to do homework. How about the child who comes up with every excuse under the sun to NOT get in the shower, then subsequently drains a 70 gallon water heater? Furthermore, we have found that it is far easier--and safer--to bathe an angry cat than to get a dropperful of Amoxicillin down the throat of a feverish and, until moments previously, completely lethargic toddler. The  older children, meanwhile, stand around saying helpful things such as “She gets the pink medicine? Lucky!...I think my ear hurts, too.” And how about trying to argue with a tween? “If you’d only be reasonable, you’d see that I’m right.”

Speaking of irony, someone once asked my three oldest children, at the time ages 10, 8, and 6 to think of something their parents had taught them. Within nanoseconds, I had taken a whirlwind tour of the past 10 years, remembering lessons such as how to ride bikes and roller skates; how to tie up shoes and zip up jackets; how to read, to count, or for fun, to write with a crayon between your toes; how to brush their hair or their teeth, or even how to use a toilet; or how to interact with other humans in something vaguely resembling a civilized manner. (I readily admit however that by this point in their lives, one still did not grasp the basics of the use or purpose of napkins, and one could not wrap his brain around nose-blowing--”Why? It will just fill up again.”) Anyway, my sentimental eyes welled with tears as I imagined their little hearts rapturously filling with gratitude for all our loving teaching. And now they were speechless, too choked with emotion to voice just one, if they must limit themselves to one, of the myriad life skills and lessons freely shared and lovingly taught by their sainted parents. However, as I dabbed at my tears and my vision began to clear, I took in their various expressions--from distracted to vacant to baffled--and realized that they had each drawn a complete, absolute, and utter blank. “Um, I can’t think of anything….” They were pretty sure they were born into this world shooting lay-ups, reciting multiplication tables, and singing “Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg….” (Okay, I admit to one or two parenting mistakes over the years.) That being said, I am also reasonably confident that at least one of my children doubted the tale of mundane mortal birth into our ordinary family, preferring the idea of gracing us with his presence in a spontaneous and glorious appearance--complete with shimmering shafts of light and an ethereal soundtrack.

Lest there be any misunderstanding, the fact that I still sing Sesame Streets songs in the shower, wear gum-ball machine earrings, and carry Sponge Bob bandaids in my purse (my youngest child is 13) is NOT a matter of irony. I’m just warming up for grandmotherhood. And just as well, too. The final irony of parenthood is the fact that I spent so much of my discretionary time (read: the hours between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m.) planning my next Mommy’s Getaway, and now that my nest is nearly empty, I wander nostalgically around the grocery store, going out of my way to walk past the Snyder’s Cheddar Cheese Pretzel Nuggets (one of Megan’s favorites), growing misty-eyed when I pass Frank’s Red Hot Sauce (Spencer’s), and feeling my heart grow all soft and mushy when I remember Jordan’s delight the year he discovered Dunkaroos in his Christmas stocking. Bring on the grandkids; my dryer lint is boring and my pockets are empty.