The Oppenheimer Report 11/19/12

Wild turkeys in front of our house

After a miserable October and a lousy start to November, last Sunday up here in the Great White North was just spectacular. I put up our glass storm windows on the front porch, planted a few more trees and generally spent as much time outside as I could. The retractable dock is up - I love that thing, because I can be the last guy on the lake to take up my dock and I don’t need to get wet doing it - the hoses are drained, coiled, and put inside, and all the outside water lines have been shut off. By last Monday, conditions had once again deteriorated, and I predict that the ground will soon be frozen. I don’t mind winter so much, and in fact I enjoy the odd snowstorm; it’s the transitional phase from fall to winter that I do not like. My body has not yet adjusted to the cold, damp, rainy weather, and now in my late 50s, the bones are beginning to creak and moan a bit. That said, every time I complain about the weather, I remind myself of the present condition of the Jersey shore. There but for the grace of Mother Nature go I.

The other night, we had another wildlife adventure in the house. We were eating dinner in front of the television and heard Jasper’s uncharacteristically muted growl. Usually, if she’s in the house and sees an animal outside, she transforms into her alter ego, the convulsive, unstoppably noisy hound from hell, barking, frothing, and lunging at the window. She hates all rodents, dislikes most other critters as well, and only really tolerates us. The last time I heard her make that muted sound was when there was a flying squirrel in the house, perched on one of our higher curtain rods. Sure enough, Jasper was warning us that there was another flying squirrel in our house, clinging to the wall near the ceiling of one of the turrets. Believe it or not, those particular squirrels are protected and I am not supposed to kill them. Once they enter my house, all bets are off. Shauna brought me the pellet gun, but I wasn’t too keen on firing even that pop gun inside the house. I ended up catching it in a butterfly net and flinging it out in the yard. It took three tries to catch it, and I probably should have 86ed the little bastard, but I gave it a second chance. Any more home invasions and we’re adopting a scorched earth policy.

The Gaza Strip is back in the news, after an Israeli drone attack took out a top Hamas leader. Of course Hamas fired a barrage of rockets back at Israel, and that has been ongoing since before the drone attack. Much is made of the Israeli attacks on the innocent Palestinians, and if last week’s media coverage was any indication, the spin seems to favor the Palestinians. Certainly Hamas is trying to rally the Arab world to support their crusade for a Palestinian state (and the annihilation of Israel). Meanwhile, Syrian despot Assad and his thugs have exterminated 30,000 or more of their own countrymen as the world stands on the sidelines. I wonder now how Egypt will react to this latest escalation, now that her leadership is controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood. Will they jeopardize billions in U.S. aid to support Palestine? I would not want to be someone charged with keeping the peace in the Middle East. When asked about the seemingly hopeless nature of this conflict, one expert on international affairs brought up the fact that no one thought the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland would ever end, and essentially it has. While I understand the point he was making, peace in the Middle East seems unobtainable to me.

Last week, I mentioned the latest dive into the deep end of junk food lust as Pizza Hut announced its new hotdog-filled pizza. In the yin and the yang of America’s love affair with junk food, Hostess announced that after 82 years, it is closing down the Twinkie factory. No more Twinkies!? Forget the jobless rate, this will officially throw Americans into a deep depression. What a blow to American culture! Of course this announcement immediately led to a run on Twinkies, with five dollar boxes of the little golden logs of lard selling for eighty bucks or more on eBay. Great gift idea for the upcoming holidays. Buy your loved one that very collectible last box of Twinkies. In fifty years, you can have it appraised on Antiques Road Show; I’ll bet its value will skyrocket. To hell with Wall Street, discontinued junk food is the new gold standard. In the Hostess arsenal, Snowballs were always my favorite - those cream-filled, wobbly, gelatinous, coconut-covered blobs of pink and white which, when I was a child, vaguely reminded me of boobs.

One final story was eclipsed by coverage of the recent hurricane … I send a belated don‘t-let-the-screen-door-hit-you-on-the-way-out farewell to colorful Italian hound dog ex-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi who, having resigned his leadership role, now faces four years in jail for tax fraud. Oops.

What would be the Italian equivalent to a Twinkie? Just wondering.

Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2012 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED