Category Archives: Tenant Newsletter

Solano Stroll is Coming!

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Don’t miss Solano Stroll. It’s this coming Sunday, September 9. Solano Stroll is the biggest and the best street fair in the entire San Francisco bay area. The Stroll covers the entire 26 block length of Solano Avenue in Berkeley and Albany. There will be almost 1,000 booths along Solano Avenue, including more than 50 food vendors, hundred of artists and craftsmen displaying their wares, and a long list of civic and political organizations. Over 250,000 people attend Solano Stroll every year. The Stroll starts at 10:00AM and ends at 6:00PM. Parking near Solano Avenue on Stroll day is very difficult. There will be free shuttle buses to Solano Stroll from the North Berkeley BART station, and AC Transit will have extra buses running along Marin Avenue, a block away. I usually bicycle to the Stroll myself. For more information about Solano Stroll, go to the: Solano Stroll web site.

Clarence Bullwinkel

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For several years, Safeway has been trying to get permission to rebuild and expand its Rockridge store at the corner of College and Claremont Avenues. A lot people think the store is in Berkeley, but it is actually a few feet over the city line in Oakland. Many of the neighbors oppose the project because traffic on College Avenue is terrible and there is no practical way of improving it. But – do you know what was at that location before Safeway built the supermarket there? Back in the 1960s, the lot was the site of an auto dealership, Bullwinkel Ford. When I arrived in Berkeley, Clarence Bullwinkel was a well-known local businessman. He owned a number of rental properties in Berkeley, but most people just knew him as the local Ford dealer.

In 1959, a Berkeley real estate agent named Jay Ward created the ‘Rocky & Bullwinkle Show’ He named the main characters in the show after people he knew around town – but not always with their permission. Bullwinkle J. Moose was named after Clarence Bullwinkel, but Clarence Bullwinkel did not like the show, mainly because Bullwinkle Moose was incredibly stupid. Clarence Bullwinkel complained that after ‘Rocky and Bullwinkle’ became a huge hit TV show, people started talking to him as though he had the same I.Q. as Bullwinkle Moose. In order placate the Bullwinkel family and avoid a lawsuit, Jay Ward reversed the spelling of the last 2 letters of the Bullwinkel family name. I sometimes think about Clarence Bullwinkel when I shop at that Safeway store. I am surprised that Safeway has never put a picture of Clarence Bullwinkel on the wall or a statue Bullwinkle Moose at the store’s entrance. Personally, I loved the ‘Rocky and Bullwinkle Show’! My favorite character was Boris Badenov.

Nibiru Update

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Back in July, I wrote a story about Nibiru, a phantom planet supposedly inhabited by ‘Jewish space reptiles’ and under the control of Pope Benedict by means of the ‘Pope Scope’, a powerful telescope named ‘Lucifer.’ Rather than fading away, Nibiru-mania has grown considerably over the past few months. Back in July, there were over 100 books in print about Nibiru. According to a new report from NASA, there are now 300 books on the market about Nibiru. There are also 50,000 videos on You Tube about Nibiru.

To my tenants – Don’t forget my Nibiru discount. If the planet Nibiru crashes into the Earth in December, as predicted, destroying all life on our planet, you can take 10% off your January rent. To the best of my knowledge, I am the only landlord offering a Nibiru catastrophe discount! (To be honest, I don’t expect that this is really going to cost me a lot of money.)

My Favorite Pascal Quotes.

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Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician and physicist who lived from 1623 to 1662. He died young, but wrote a lot or memorable stuff. Here are my 2 favorite quotes from Pascal:

Pascal often ended his scientific papers with humorous remarks. At the end of a lengthy letter to a fellow mathematician, Pascal wrote: “I am sorry that this letter is so long, but I did not have the time to write a shorter one.”

From ‘The Art of Persuasion’: “People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of evidence but on the basis of what they find attractive.” I think that this accurately describes how politicians, both liberals and conservatives, come to their positions. A good example of this is the National Helium Reserve.

During World War 1, the Germans bombed England using zeppelins. Back in those days, airplanes were too small and flimsy to fly across the English Channel with bombs. In 1925, the U.S. government started buying and stockpiling helium just in case the next big war was fought with zeppelins. Although it was obvious by the 1930s that zeppelins were technologically obsolete, the U.S. government continued buying large quantities of helium every year until 1996. Even though it made absolutely no sense at all for the U.S. to be stockpiling helium for zeppelin warfare in this day and age, for congressmen from helium producing states, it makes perfect sense! Incidentally, the largest zeppelin in the world is housed at San Francisco Airport. It was built in Germany but does not carry bombs.

Kobe Beef. The Most Counterfeited Food in America.

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What percentage of the Kobe beef sold in the United States is fake? Answer: 100%. All of the Kobe beef sold in the U.S. is fake – but – how can that be? They sell Kobe beef in spiffy supermarkets and butcher shops all over the U.S., plus it’s on the menus of hundreds of restaurants, including many well-known, high-priced steakhouses. There are 6 restaurants just here in the San Francisco bay area with the word ‘Kobe’ in the name of the restaurant itself. There are over a dozen restaurants just in Berkeley that sell Kobe hamburgers and Kobe hot dogs. Lots of Kobe beef is also sold on the internet. You can buy a ‘Kobe Waygu Beef Extravaganza’ from Amazon. It contains 5.5 pounds of steak and costs $518. The most extravagant thing about this ‘beef extravaganza’ is its price, beacuse it too contains no real Kobe beef. How can all this Kobe beef be fake? The answer is simple: Kobe beef is not sold in the United States.

‘Kobe beef’ is a legally controlled and trademarked name. In order for a steak to be genuine Kobe beef, it must have come from a cow that was raised and slaughtered in Hyogo Prefecture in Japan, where the city of Kobe is located; however, none of the slaughterhouses in Hyogo are approved or inspected by the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture.) As a result, it is illegal to import Kobe beef into the United States. American tourists visiting Japan sometimes try to sneak Kobe beef into the U.S. in their luggage, but it is routinely confiscated by U.S. Customs agents.

Real Kobe beef costs $300 to $500 a pound in Japan. The stuff called ‘Kobe beef’ that you see in U.S. butcher shops usually sells for $30 to $50 a pound. That is a pretty good indication right there that the stuff is fake. Most of the so-called Kobe beef sold in the U.S. is actually Waygu or Angus beef, neither of which costs as much as real Kobe beef. Angus beef typically sells for $7 to $14 a pound. The Japanese government and the producers of Kobe beef have tried for decades to get the U.S. government to crack down on the sale of counterfeit Kobe beef, but to no avail. Nobody knows how much fake Kobe beef is sold in the U.S. The one thing that we know for sure is that no real Kobe beef is sold in the United States.

The Dangers of Mixing Cleaning Chemicals.

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Mixing cleaning products together can be fatal. Every year, people really do die as a result of mixing cleaning liquids that created and released toxic gases. The most dangerous mixtures usually include bleach. When you mix bleach with certain other cleaning liquids, like ammonia, it can release chlorine gas. Just how dangerous is chlorine gas?

World War 1. The Battle of Ypres. In April, 1915; the Canadian First Division arrived in the trenches on the Western Front near the town of Ypres in Belgium. Most of these Canadian soldiers were 18 to 22 years of age. None of them had any prior military experience. They knew nothing about poison gas, and they did not have gas masks. Ypres was quiet when the Canadians arrived. The reason it was quiet was because the Germans were waiting for the wind to change direction. Normally, the wind in Europe blows from west to east, just as it does in the United States. The Germans were waiting for the wind to blow west, towards the Allied lines. On April 22, the wind started blowing westward, and as soon as it did, the Germans opened the valves on 5,700 cylinders of chlorine gas. Within seconds, a billowing green cloud began rising from the German lines and started moving towards the Allied trenches. Since the Canadians had never seen poison gas before, they mistakenly thought this was a smokescreen designed to conceal a German assault. The Canadians prepared for an assault, but an assault did not come. Instead, the green cloud moved slowly forward and then fell into the Allied trenches. Chlorine gas is heavier than air. Even though there was a breeze blowing, the Canadians began choking to death. That is because chlorine gas is toxic even when highly diluted. At only 1 in 10,000 parts of air, chlorine gas can be fatal. When chlorine gas gets into your lungs or eyes, it forms hydrochloric acid. In the first 10 minutes of the attack, over 6,000 French and Canadian soldiers died of asphyxiation. Thousands more were blinded. Tens of thousands were dead, blind, or incapacitated by the end of the day. Ironically, hundreds of German soldiers were also killed when the wind changed direction and blew some of the gas back into the German’s own trenches! Chlorine gas was used by both sides during World War 1. (You see, not all of my little stories are amusing.) I hope you will think about this depressing story the next time you are considering mixing bleach with other cleaning agents!

Hotel Mini Bar Motion Detectors.

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Hotel mini-bars are ridiculously expensive: $4 for a KitKat bar, $6 for a bottle of water, and $12 for a small bag of cashews. But – did you know that you can get a bill for the use of your mini-bar even if you don’t take anything out of it? Many big hotel chains now have motion detectors inside their mini bars. If you move something inside the mini-bar, the hotel’s computer will detect that movement, and you could find a ‘restocking charge’ on your bill at checkout. Some hotels will bill you for a ‘restocking charge’ for every day that something was moved in the mini-bar. Hotels justify ‘restocking charges’ by arguing that when the motion detector indicates that something has been moved in the mini-bar, a hotel employee has to go into the room to count the inventory and to make sure that everything is in its proper place. So – if there is a mini-bar in your hotel room, its OK to open the door and look inside, but if you move or even touch anything inside the mini-bar, you could get a bill for that.

Marijuana-filled Chocolate Bars.
Exploding Chocolate Bars.
New in the Chocolate Room.

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GOOD CHOCOLATE DOES NOT HAVE TO HAVE MARIJUANA IN IT!

I have griped before about the tendency of newspapers and web sites in the San Francisco bay area to think that chocolate has to have marijuana in it in order to be to be considered great chocolate. It seems like every time that some newspaper gives an award for ‘best chocolate in the bay area’, it always goes to a company that makes pot-filled chocolate. In the current issue (July 12, 2012) of East Bay Express, the newspaper’s award for ‘Best Edibles Company’ in the bay area was given to Bhang Chocolate of Oakland. All Bhang chocolate bars contain marijuana. They are available at marijuana ‘dispensaries’ here in Berkeley, where they are ‘given away’, not sold, but ‘given away’ with a catch. In order to get a ‘regular strength’ Bhang chocolate bar, you have to ‘donate’ $15 to the dispensary. For a ‘double strength’ Bhang chocolate bar, you have to ‘donate’ $20. I think that this is a rather obvious hypocrisy, but I may be biased. I think that I make good chocolate, and I refuse to accept the idea that the absence of drugs in my chocolate bars somehow makes them inferior!

HITLER’S EXPLODING CHOCOLATE BARS.

As I said, I don’t make chocolate bars with drugs in them. I also don’t make chocolate bars with explosives in them. Newly discovered documents reveal that Adolf Hitler tried to assassinate Winston Churchill during World War 2 with exploding chocolate bars. The Germans made time bombs disguised as 1 pound Peter’s chocolate bars. The exploding chocolate bars were smuggled into England in 1943 where German spies tried to get them into the war room. It was well-known that Churchill had a sweet tooth, and chocolate was very hard to get in England during the war. Lord Victor Rothschild, the head of MI-5, the British counter-intelligence service, found out about the plot and intercepted the exploding chocolate bars. Ironically, a similar idea occurred to Churchill at about the same time. In July, 1944; Hitler was almost killed when an English-made briefcase bomb went off in his war room. A number of people were killed by the blast, but Hitler was only wounded.

A Business Opportunity? I know an executive at Hershey. He tells me that Hershey does not make exploding chocolate bars – at least not at this time. Peter’s chocolate is still in business, but they don’t make exploding chocolate bars either. Should I make exploding chocolate bars? I could. I have some very big chocolate bar molds, big enough to conceal a bomb inside, and black powder is easy to get. You can buy it at any gun store. I could have the whole exploding chocolate bar business for myself! But – I have a feeling that my lawyer and my insurance agent would advise me not to do it. I’m not a lawyer, but my instincts tell me that there could be some serious legal liabilities attached to making or selling exploding chocolate bars.

NEW IN THE CHOCOLATE ROOM.

Chocolate Chip Buttermilk Pancake Mix. Some people never make pancakes at home because they feel it is too messy, time-consuming, or complicated; but my pancake mix is complete. All you have to add is water! Everything is in the bag, including miniature chocolate chips, flour, malted barley, canola oil, baking powder, and buttermilk. All you have to do is dump the contents of the bag in a bowl, stir in water, and you’re ready to make pancakes. What could be easier? Try it! You won’t be disappointed. One bag makes 12 – 4″ pancakes, enough for 3 or 4 people.

Why Buttermilk? Buttermilk adds flavor to pancakes. It also makes them lighter and fluffier. The reason for this is simple chemistry. Buttermilk contains lactic acid, which is why it tastes sour. Lactic acid reacts chemically with baking powder, creating carbon dioxide bubbles in the batter. As the pancakes cook, the bubbles expand, making the pancakes rise.

Russian Cigarettes.  Russian Cigarettes aren’t Russian, and they aren’t cigarettes. A Russian Cigarette is a type of cookie that’s popular in Belgium. It is a thin butter cookie that is rolled up into a tube while it is still warm and soft. Once the cookie cools and becomes hard, I dip it in chocolate.

Remember – you don’t have to wait until the first of the month when the rent is due in order to get chocolate. My free chocolate room is open for business all month long! And also remember – all my chocolate is both drug-and-explosive-free!

Nibiru.

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In May, I rented a house on Milvia Street in downtown Berkeley. While the house was listed for rent, a man called me on the phone and said: “I’m calling about your ad on Craigslist. Do you know what the elevation of your house is?” I said: “I’m not sure. I think it’s about 150 feet above sea level. Why do you ask?” He said: “That’s not enough.” I said: “Not enough for what?” He said: “Everything under 500 feet is going to be washed away when NIbiru comes.” I said: “What’s Nibiru?” He said: “You’ll find out” and hung up the phone. I was intrigued, so I went to Google and searched for information about Nibiru. Here is what I found out.

Nibiru. If you haven’t already heard of Nibiru, you may find this story very hard to believe. There are a lot of crazy Mayan calendar doomsday theories floating around, but this one tops them all! According to this theory, a rogue planet named Nibiru, also known as ‘Planet X’, is going to crash into the Earth when the Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012 or that it will come so close to the Earth that cataclysmic earthquakes and tidal waves will destroy nearly all plant and animal life. A lot of people believe in Nibiru, which is surprising since there is absolutely no scientific evidence that Nibiru exists. When you search ‘Nibiru’ on Google, you get 10 million results! Think about that. 10 million web pages about Nibiru! Even more surprising, many respected universities now have ‘Nibiru study groups’ or are hosting Nibiru message boards. See: U.C. Berkeley Nibiru Message Board. The first person to ever mention Nibiru was Nancy Lieder in 1995. Lieder describes herself as a ‘contactee’ with the ability to receive messages from extra-terrestrials by means of an implant in her brain placed there by space aliens.

NASA . There are dozens of books on the market about Nibiru, although they all seem to differ about the details: what Nibiru is, what’s going to happen when it arrives, and what you should do to prepare for it. The only thing that all these Nibiru books seem to agree upon is that NASA has been tracking Nibiru for decades, that NASA knows that Nibiru is coming towards the Earth, and they have been hiding this information from the public in order to avoid a general panic. NASA actually does have a web page designed to assure the public that Nibiru does not exist. See: NASA Nibiru Q&A.

Lucifer, The Pope Scope. A lot of books and web sites claim that many years ago, Pope Benedict bought a big German telescope named ‘Lucifer’ (a.k.a. ‘The Pope Scope’) and had it shipped to a secret observatory in Arizona so that Jesuit scientists can guide Nibiru towards the Earth. I can’t figure out why the pope would want to do this or why the pope would name his telescope ‘Lucifer,’ which is another name for Satan. Nevertheless, this story is partially true. The Vatican does have an observatory in Arizona, but the telescope there is named ‘Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope’, not ‘Lucifer.’ According to the book ‘2012..The Secret Vatican Agenda,’ available from Amazon, the Vatican also has a ‘top secret deep space probe’ on Nibiru so that Pope Benedict can communicate directly with the inhabitants of the phantom planet.

Jewish Space Reptiles . Many thousands of web sites claim that Nibiru is inhabited by reptilian creatures called Anunnakis. They say that sometime between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago, Anunnakis came to Earth and lived in the Middle East and that references to this can be found in the Torah, such as the story of Adam and Eve and the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. They further claim that DNA and blood analysis proves that Anunnakis crossbred with Jews in ancient times, and that as a result, modern Jews are actually part human and part space reptile. They say this explains why famous Jews in the Bible were able to perform miracles, such as Moses parting the Red Sea. It was because Jews inherited supernatural powers from their reptilian ancestors. (This theory sounds slightly anti-Semitic to me, or I am just being overly sensitive?)

Taking Shelter. For under $200, you can buy a Nibiru Survival Kit, but if you have big bucks to spend, you can buy a very spiffy Nibiru shelter. Some people are spending huge sums of money on Nibiru shelters and stocking them with food and other provisions. The largest Nibiru shelter complex in the world is under construction right now in Kansas, where a one-half floor underground luxury condominium costs $900,000, payable in advance. The price does not including furnishings. The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) produced a documentary recently about this complex. See: Nibiru Condominiums. Another large underground Nibiru condominium complex is being built in Spain in the Pyrenees Mountains. Another is being built in Australia.

I know that this story sounds utterly preposterous, and you may be thinking to yourself: “Oh, Mark obviously made up this ridiculous story,” but if you go to Google and search ‘Nibiru’, you will quickly find out that I did not make this up!

NEW IN MY CHOCOLATE ROOM.

Chocolate Mayan Calendars. These chocolate calendars are 5″ in diameter and weigh 4 ounces each. I can’t guarantee that eating a chocolate Mayan calendar will prevent Nibiru from crashing into the Earth, but on the other hand, it couldn’t hurt!

MY BLOG.

I have just switched from a newsletter format to a blog. A blog has some big advantages over a newsletter. For one thing, with a blog, people can comment on articles, and I would like to know what people think about the stuff I write! Had you ever heard of Nibiru before? Did you like the story? Do you have a Nibiru shelter? Are you a Jewish space reptile? I would very much like to hear from some Jewish space reptiles or Jesuits with dope on the Pope Scope.


Mark’s Job Hunting Tip #3: Don’t Get a Conspicuous Tattoo.

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20 years ago, it was very unusual to see a tattooed student at U.C. Berkeley, and there was only 1 tattoo parlor in the whole city. Today, a lot of Cal students have tattoos, and there are now 6 tattoo parlors in Berkeley. Tattooing has become far more socially acceptable than it used to be. One quarter of all Americans between the ages of 18 and 50 have a tattoo. But wait! Before you get a Chinese dragon tattooed on your wrist, have you considered how a tattoo might affect your ability to get a job or a promotion?

Careerbuilder.com, a job search web site, asked HR (human resource) managers what they considered the #1 physical attribute that would most likely limit a candidate’s chances of getting a job or getting promoted. 37% said body piercings and 31% said tattoos. A similar survey conducted by philly.com put tattoos at #1. According to The Patient’s Guide, laser tattoo removals increased 32% between 2010 and 2011. When asked why they were having their tattoos removed, 40% of respondents cited ’employment’ as the principle reason. Many employers have stricter dress codes these days and are refusing to hire people with tattoos. That is legal. People with tattoos are not a protected class under labor or discrimination laws. I once refused to hire someone myself because of a tattoo. I was managing a restaurant here in Berkeley called ‘The Station’ when a young man with a skull and crossbones tattooed on his cheek applied for a job. I thought: “Who is going to hire someone to serve food to the public who has the symbol for poison tattooed on his face?” If you are going to get a tattoo, my advice is to have it put someplace where it can’t be seen when you are wearing work clothes.