Do I care that I’m posting this? Obviously the answer is no, because when deadbeats get misassociated with my contact information I start to lose my patience with the eternal onslaught of – in this case – modern carpetbaggers. I myself get the occasional clickbait version of a mailer in my mailbox to sell my own home, but the frequency at which the texts come in soliciting sales for this place lends me to think that something’s not going well.
According to the Montgomery County Auditor, Fred bought this abode in 1993 for $17,000. It’s now worth $15,380, and owes taxes of $34,356.81. Ouch. But it has well water, I think. And a bad storm sewer? The tax assessment codes are hard to understand.
But maybe Fred’s a nice guy. Maybe he just fell on hard times or simply held onto the property for some reason. One never knows the full story, and I don’t care to find out more, so stop texting me about it!
I was watching No Reservations recently and noticed that Anthony was eating some kind of mollusk in a long straight shell. He described it as a razor clam. This is an unremarkable observation in and of itself.
However, the shell was very familiar to me, and I eventually pieced together why.
I was in an especially anti-Boomer mood for some reason (easy to do when the internal monologue digs up resentment towards American economics, and Anthony Bourdain was doing one of his self-gratification episodes). And so my thoughts had turned towards my wife’s aunt, who is in many ways the personification of Boomerism. While quite kind in her own way, she has a predilection for Boomer opinion stereotypes, such as taking hearsay at face value, and maintaining a preference for mediocre chain restaurants that serve needlessly large portions.
I’ll chalk that last one up to simple generational preferences, and the fact that she doesn’t enjoy cooking. You can’t really blame someone who doesn’t like to cook for their pre-prepared food preferences. But it’s that first observation that’s the theme of this post.
The other reason she came to mind was that she is a resident of St. Augustine, FL – and the place where I first saw these clam shells. She also told me that it was illegal to pick up rocks off the beach and take them home when we last visited. I refer specifically to coquina – those cool rocks of compressed shells that the Spanish used to build forts out of.
But back to the clam. The shells of these creatures were all over the Atlantic Florida beaches. Not knowing them for what they were, I was informed by said aunt that they were the hardened outer skins of mangroves. I did not question this, probably because I was on vacation and intentionally trying to avoid thinking too much.
A brief internet search revealed that the Atlantic Jackknife Clam (a type of razor clam, which I already linked to above), is indeed a very common shell to find on the Atlantic beaches, and there were no apparent references to petrified mangroves.
I then attempted to determine definitively if picking up coquina from the beaches of St. Augustine was in fact illegal. I found two references to the topic that said yes it is: 1) A personal blog by a resident, and 2) A private local newspaper that didn’t cite any legal statutes. The examples given in both were extreme, claiming that tourists go out to the beaches and chip lots of coquina away from major outcroppings. A somewhat different situation than some guy who picked up a rock sitting on the sand.
I also found out that commercial licenses are issued for the wholesale harvesting of coquina for the purpose of selling it to tourists. This leads me to believe that there are no environmental or archaeological concerns involved, and that it’s simply control of local economics. So locals don’t like tourists, but have no problem with taking their money. I’d hazard to say that this is common sentiment amongst small communities in desirable locations.
She had tricked me into not keeping a cool clam shell I found because I falsely believed that it was an unremarkable sliver of wood that would just dry out and rot away. But I didn’t believe taking a rock was illegal, so when she wasn’t looking I pilfered a sizeable chunk.
Contraband!?
And here it sits on my deck now.
I’m still not convinced that taking it was illegal, both because of the misinformation I already received and that the only internet references I can find to this mysterious rule exist on non-credible websites. It wouldn’t surprise me if she was just messing with me, but I’d equally believe she took these fallacies herself to be truth.
Okay, I’m getting silly now and making some of these up. But weather encourages superstition, with all its violence and unpredictability. And Al Roker. Fuck that guy. There’s no way he’s human. Humans don’t smile like that. Humans aren’t that ecstatic to look at a Doppler map first thing in the morning.
Anyway, so one of these portents of climactic evil is the Moon Ring. I remember these well from the Lubbock years, probably because the sky was very open and clear, and as such these events were dramatic. Also since they indicate fronts, it always meant tornadoes.
Ohio isn’t quite as tornado-y (although it’s certainly getting there). But nevertheless these are still cool. Here’s a picture from a few days ago:
November 13, 2024
And it did indeed rain for a day following that. So there’s some potential truth in the old adages. But really, it’s just the coolness factor.
And if you want to read way too much about their formation, they’re called 22° halos, because that’s the geometric alignment at which they form, via suspended hexagonal ice crystals.
I like old tools. They’re my primary focus when antiquing. They have an individual history with their prior owners, which I don’t know about but enjoy imagining, and I feel a sense of purpose when I buy one and add to its legacy. Plus they’re usually made better than their contemporary counterparts, have already proven their durability, and cost less.
And so it was that with the Veterans Day holiday, I went antiquing with Liz and acquired this bench vise:
I wanted to replace the cheap clamp-on that I had been using, which would never stay in place no matter how hard I cranked down its grips. Now I have a bench-mounted beast. 3 5/8, 2″ bolts say that it’s not going anywhere! I even added lock washers.
The old vise.
And for the second best part: researching the crap out of it! Starting with the cast printing, which reads “THE DESMOND STEPHAN MFG. CO.”
The Desmond-Stephan Manufacturing Company was founded sometime over 100 years ago1. It’s odd that I can’t find an exact date of incorporation, even on their own website2. I’m guessing that they don’t use it as their established date because they were probably a family business when they started operations and tax codes back then were somewhat different and they didn’t get an EIN until much later – ergo they don’t view that as their start date and want to proudly claim their lengthier history.
The vise design and manufacturing actually predated them anyway, having been the property of Simplex Tool Company, later Simplex Corporation, and was sold to Desmond-Stephan in 1931, who continued to make the vises until 1964, when they in turn sold the rights to Ridge Tool Company3. I’m assuming then that my particular vise was made by Desmond-Stephan during this 1931-1964 time period.
My vise, with a single-swivel base and a 3.75″ jaw width, is also conveniently listed in a company catalog from 19414. It has a listed price of $15. Adjusted for inflation using CPI, that’s around $320 today5. I got guud dearl!
Additionally, just for more historical nerding out; The Desmond-Stephan Manufacturing Company; which is in Urbana, OH; was just today at the time of me writing this post coincidentally featured in the local news’ callout that Ohio Magazine named the city as one of Ohio’s 5 best hometowns6. So we get a little bit of local Americana as part of the story too.
So there we have it: a chance find on an antique tool for a good price and made by a local company that’s apparently in one of Ohio’s best little towns to grow up in. I will feel honored the next time I have to cut a board or sharpen a lawnmower blade.
(Or dispatch of a murderous sentient doll.)
Can you believe Apple won’t let me take a screenshot of content I’ve purchased through them? I had to get creative with getting this pic.
We’re all familiar with bags of potato chips, having cried out in irritation upon opening a large puffy bag of salty cholesterol, only to find a lackluster final count of individual product settled in oily mylar at the bottom of the false abyss.
Boo! Hiss!
And we accuse Lay’s of shrinkflation, and they say “Nuh uh! We didn’t do that.”
And we post pictures of historical trends in product reduction, and they say “We didn’t decrease the percentage of product to packaging ratio.”
And then we say “Nuh uh! You totally did!”. And while not experts, none of us buy into 1.034569 ounces being a standard serving size, to which Lay’s replies “Okay, we reduced size but it was to be more aligned with healthy serving size diets. See, we’re actually looking out for your wellbeing. You’re welcome.” And we might almost believe that, were it not for the price increase alongside product size reduction.
But potato chips are just the most obvious example, because the size reduction also made slack fill more obvious. When a bag was big and product content was 50%, we didn’t notice as much because faces could still be stuffed. When bags shrunk 30%, it didn’t matter if product content may have actually remained at 50%, because faces couldn’t be as effectively stuffed. And then we noticed!
Surely some government agency is out there to protect us from these shenanigans!
And indeed there is: the FDA:
So presumably, while shrinkflation is totally legal, slack fill isn’t necessarily, so if indeed the percentage of potato chips has remained constant, then Lay’s is in the right, despite the public’s resentment on limited face-stuffing. But they’re still jerks.
Anyway, on to the next point. One might notice that nowhere in this document is the word “medicine” used. Obviously prescriptions wouldn’t fall under this, but one might assume that OTC medications – a consumer retail product – would. And yet, it doesn’t.
Even ignoring the packaging waste, it’s rather egregious that everything in the left highlighted box easily fit into the bottle on the right. And there were already prior pills still in that bottle!
So why don’t these anti-consumer rules apply to medicine? Why did the FDA, whose very name has “Drug” in it, make this decision? I don’t know, because I can’t find any such explanation on their website. Someone tell me if you find out. Until then:
Fuck you, FDA
Fuck you, Lay’s (Frito-Lay/Pepsico)
And fuck you, Astra AB/AstraZeneca
And maybe Costco too, because they might have had a hand in it.
