Junk haulaway services are always busy in college towns at the end of the school year. Hauling away bulky items, like furniture, can be very expensive, but did you know that the cities of Berkeley and Oakland offer free bulk junk removal? Every house and apartment in Berkeley and Oakland is entitled to one free bulk waste pickup a year. They will take away almost anything, including mattresses, box springs, sofas, and other things that are too big to fit in a garbage can. This is a really valuable free service! If you live in Oakland, give me a call if you want a bulk junk pick-up. In Oakland, the owner of the property has to make the appointment. If you live in Berkeley, go to: Berkeley Free Bulk Waste Pick-Up. At this web site, you can make an appointment yourself for a free pick-up and see a complete list of what they will take away and what they won’t take away. For example, they won’t take away boulders, explosives, or plutonium. Hopefully, you don’t have any plutonium in your apartment, but this is Berkeley, so one can never be sure.
Daily Archives: May 30, 2015
Street Furniture
The California Drought
I think that eventually this state will have to have to be a showdown with the farm lobby over water use. California farms consume 80% of the state’s surface water, but they account for only 2% of the state’s GDP. Even worse, there has been a huge increase over the past 20 years in the planting of very thirsty crops like almonds and walnuts. Incredible as it may sound, it takes over 1 gallon of water to grow 1 almond, and it takes 5 gallons of water to grow 1 walnut. It seems ridiculous to me for growers to be increasing the planting of walnut and almond trees during a drought, but that is what is happening. California nut growers have a very well financed and powerful lobby in Sacramento.
What Do You Know About Nero?
- Nero was raised by his mother. Nero’s father died years before he was born.
- Nero murdered his mother. After that, she lost all control over him.
- Nero murdered his wife by jumping up and down on her until he broke every bone in her body, but that didn’t count.
- Nero was a very cruel emperor. Nero tortured Christians by forcing them to listen to his horrible fiddle playing. The Christians who survived that were then sent to the arena where hungry lions consummated them.
- Soldiers rounded up the Christians in Rome and took them to the Coliseum where Nero lionized them.
- Back in Nero’s time, Christians didn’t like being eaten by lions.
- Nero burned down the city of Rome. He blamed the Christians for the fire but everybody in Rome knew that Nero started the fire himself to get even with them for booing at his awful fiddle playing.
- Republican senators didn’t like Nero because he raised taxes sky high to pay for his toga parties.
- Nero committed suicide by killing himself.
- After Nero died, an angry mob burned down his palace and smashed his fiddle.
- Nero’s fiddle is at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.
- Nero was a member of Caesar family. The Caesars were famous for their salad long before Nero was born.

Worst Application Ever
Do You Rent To Cats? Many years ago, I rented an apartment in Oakland. The day after I posted my listing, I got a phone call from a woman who said: “I saw your ad for a one-bedroom apartment on McAuley Street. I have a question. Do you rent to cats?” I thought that was an oddly worded question so I was careful how I answered her. I said: “No, I don’t rent apartments to cats, but I do rent apartments to people with cats.” The woman said, in a dejected tone of voice: “Oh, that’s too bad” and hung up the phone. I never heard from her again. Although this happened many years ago, I still think about that woman every now and then and wonder what was on her mind.
New In The Chocolate Room
Marcel Proust and Madeleines. Just before World War 1, Marcel Proust published ‘Remembrances of Things Past’. The book became an immediate best-seller. In his book, Proust recounted his childhood memories. He had a lot to say about madeleines and he said it in a way that made everybody want them. Before the publication of ‘Remembrances of Things Past’, most people, even in France, had never seen or heard of madeleines before. Madeleines were only made in a few towns in Lorraine, a province in northeastern France. As soon as Proust’s book came out, people all over the world went to bakeries demanding madeleines. Below is a small bit of what Proust had to say about madeleines.
“One day in winter, on my return home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, which I did not ordinarily drink. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent for one of those squat, plump little cakes called ‘petites madeleines,’ which look as though they had been molded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell. And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing tomorrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the madeleine. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was me. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and the madeleine.” – Marcel Proust.