WHAT’S HOT AND WHAT’S NOT AT AMAZON.

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So many people are hoarding food now that the most popular foods​ that​ they sell on Amazon are ​largely ​sold out. A lot of what s available for immediate shipment is the stuff nobody wants. For example, Armour canned roast beef is sold out, but Rose’s Pork Brains in Milk Gravy is available for immediate shipment, and you get all you want.​ See:​ Pork Brains. The listing says that Rose​’s​ is ‘Amazon’s Choice’ for canned pork brains, but that isn’t enough to get me to buy​, much less eat,​ this product. Now is the time when you find out what nobody will buy – even when they are hoarding food. Here are some other food items that are available for immediate shipment from Amazon.

Clamdy Candy Canes. Peppermint candy canes are sold out, but they have lots of clam candy canes in stock. The listing says that this is ‘Amazon’s Choice’ for clam candy. Clamdy Canes.

Sauer Frau Squeezable Sauer Kraut. The description on Amazon of this product says that this is “an authentic German sauer kraut made from an Old World recipe.” Well, excuse me, but I know lots of Germans and none of them eat sauer kraut out of a squeeze tube. Sauer Frau.

Pickle Soda. Pickle flavored soda is expensive, $6.95 a bottle, but even if it was cheaper, would you buy it? Pickle Soda.

Sweet Sue Canned Whole Chicken. I’ve eaten Kirkland canned chicken breast meat. It’s not as good as fresh, but it’s not bad. But it’s sold out. A canned whole chicken is something entirely different. Imagine, a whole chicken, including the skin and bones, in a can. This may be the single most unappetizing item on this list. See photos below. Sweet Sue is ‘Amazon’s Choice’ for canned whole chicken.

JUICE BOXES ARE NOT RECYCLABLE.

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Aseptic packaging, also known as juice boxes or Tetra-Pak bricks, are not recyclable. Don’t put them in your recycling can. They should go in your regular garbage can. Although Berkeley and Oakland recycle a very wide variety of plastic products, there is no practical way to recycle aseptic packaging. That is because this packaging is not made out of a single material, like paper or plastic. Aseptic packaging is a combination of plastic, paper, and metal foil all glued together. On the city of Berkeley web site, it says that they don’t accept aseptic packaging for recycling because they “have uncertain end markets.” What does it mean? It means that although it is theoretically possible to recycle this stuff, there is no practical way to do it. Aseptic packaging is one of reasons why China, India, and many other countries will no longer accept American trash for recycling. Americans mix everything together in recycling cans – products that are recyclable, products that Americans think are recyclable but actually aren’t, plus ordinary garbage. The food processing and plastics industries in the U.S. have been criticized for a long time for labeling products ‘recyclable’, ‘biodegradable’, and ‘compostable’ in ways that are either highly deceptive or just plain false. Plastic products that are often labeled ‘recyclable’ but that are not actually recyclable include: coffee cup lids, coffee stirrers, straws, cutlery, bottle caps, potato chip bags, and styrofoam. Remember – you can often get a lot more garbage in your garbage can if you take the caps off aseptic boxes and milk cartons first!

IRISH HUMOR & IRISH NAMES.

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Irish humor falls into 2 categories – jokes based on illogic and jokes about priests and nuns. Here are examples of both.

Illogic. (This is not an Irish joke. This is what I actually tell people if they ask me if I believe in astrology.)  I do not believe in astrology. The reason why I don’t believe in astrology is because I’m an Aries, and therefore, governed by the planet Mars. Like other Aries, I am suspicious and confident that I am right, and that is why I am sure that astrology is just plain nonsense. On the other hand, my stepsister does believe in astrology, but that is because she is a Pisces, and Pisces are the most psychic of all people.

Priests. (This one actually is an old Irish joke.) After mass, a sobbing Mrs. Crowley approached Father Sullivan. Father Sullivan said: “Mary, what is troubling you?” She said: “Father, I have terrible news. My husband passed away last night.” Father Sullivan said: “That is terrible news. Did Cassidy have any last requests?” Mrs. Crowley said: “Yes. He had one last request. Just before my husband died, he said: ‘Mary – please – put down the gun.'”

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A ‘Mc’ AND AN ‘O’ IN IRISH LAST NAMES?

A lot of Irish last names begin with ‘Mc’ or an ‘O’, like McCarthy or O’Sullivan, but what’s the difference? ‘Mc’ comes from the Irish word ‘mac’, which means ‘son.’ ‘O’ means ‘grandson’. Ireland was one of the first countries in Europe to use surnames. When people in Ireland started using surnames, around 1,000AD, most were patronymic, meaning they were based on the name of the father and were added to someone​’​s first name. However, many last names were based a person’s grandfather’s name. That was because life expectancy was often quite short in those days. A lot of people were raised by their grandparents because their fathers died young.

YOU JUST CAN’T PLEASE SOME TENANTS!

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Take a look at the photo below. The tenants at this apartment house complained to the landlord that they were seeing suspicious characters in the yard and on the walkways between the apartments. They asked the landlord to install a security gate at the entrance to the yard. The landlord gave the tenants what they asked for. He had a contractor install a security gate at the entrance to the yard, but for some reason, the tenants are still not satisfied. Can you figure out why?

CORONAVIRUS.

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MY CHOCOLATE ROOM.

The bad news is that my free chocolate room is closed due to coronavirus. The good news is that you can still get anything you want from my chocolate room! Here is the new rule. Go to: Chocolate List. There you will find a complete list of everything I have in stock. Send me an email with your shopping list. I will put what you want in a bag and leave it on my porch with your name on it where you can pick it up. (I am sorry if this sounds overly dramatic on part, but it the safest way to do this.)


HOW SIMILAR IS CORONAVIRUS TO THE SPANISH FLU?

You see comparisons everywhere between Covid-19 and the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918, but how similar were they? In 1918, people did many of the same things they are doing now: wearing face masks, stockpiling food, and avoiding crowded places. While the fear between the 2 epidemics is similar, the diseases are very different. The Spanish Flu was the deadliest epidemic in human history. It killed over 50 million people worldwide, far more than were killed in World War 1, which ended that same year. 500,000 people died in the United States alone. The most obvious difference between the Spanish Flu and Covid-19 was who was at risk. Most of the people who died of the Spanish Flu were in their teens, 20s, and 30s. Very few people over the age of 60 got the Spanish Flu, and people over 70 were at the lowest risk of getting or dying of it. That is just the opposite of Covid-19. No one knows why so few old people got the Spanish Flu. Below is a photo of soldiers at Fort Riley, Kansas stricken with the Spanish Flu. World War 1 soldiers had a very high death rate, and most of them were under the age of 25.

GOOD NEWS!

The good news is that medical science is in a much better position to control an epidemic today than it was in 1918. In 1918, doctors knew that viruses existed, but no one had ever seen one. Viruses are very small, and they could not be seen with the microscopes available in those days. Today, viruses can be seen with electron microscopes. Scientists in 1918 could not identify the genetic materials that a virus is made from. Now they can. And perhaps most importantly, they had no way to test people in 1918 to see if they were infected, so they could not quarantine people who were infected with the Spanish Flu but didn’t yet show symptoms of the disease. Now, doctors can do these things and a lot more. Because there was so little that doctors could do about the Spanish Flu, people resorted to folk remedies. People ate huge quantities of garlic and onions in the belief that it would ward off the disease. Grocery stores ran out of garlic and onions. Hundreds of worthless cures were sold, including arsenic tablets and beaver oil. They were all useless, and many were toxic.

Junk Bond Debt, The Coronavirus Threat That Nobody Is Talking About.

In 2008, the stock market crashed, and major banks were on the verge of collapse. In order to save the nation’s financial system, the Federal Reserve reduced the interest rate that banks and big corporations pay to zero. Ever since then, interest rates have remained very, very low by historic standards. Because the Fed was lending money at almost zero percent interest, a lot of big companies piled on debt, and much of it is junk bond debt. (These bonds are called ‘junk bonds’ for a reason.) American companies now have a whopping $10 trillion of debt, and half of it is junk bond debt. Some of the companies that have the most junk bond debt as a percent of their total capitalization are in businesses that are among the most adversely affected by Covid-19; airlines, cruise ships, oil companies, hotels, and entertainment companies. How will these companies pay their junk bond debt? Their income has fallen off the cliff. I seem to be the only person who is talking about this. Very little is being said in the news about the junk bond problem.

Was the Spanish Flu Spanish?

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No. Because there was no test for Spanish Flu, there was no way to trace the disease back to where it began. So how did people get the idea that this disease started in Spain? The Spanish Flu epidemic began during World War 1. All of the countries at war had strict press censorship. In order to prevent panic and keep up public morale, newspapers in warring countries grossly understated their infection and death rates. However, Spain was neutral in World War 1 and had a free press. Newspapers in Spain were reporting that large numbers of people were dying of the flu before similar stories started appearing in newspapers in the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, etc. Spanish newspapers also accurately reported the infection and death rate in Spain, which was much higher than what was being reported in the countries at war. When high government officials in Spain got the disease, like King Alphonso XIII, who was gravely ill with it, it was covered daily in Spanish newspapers. However, when high government officials in countries at war got sick, it wasn’t reported at all. This gave people the impression that the disease must have started in Spain, but nobody knows where it actually began.

THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR TOILET PAPER.

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Paper towels, Kleenex, and flushable wipes are not substitutes for toilet paper. Toilet paper is designed to dissolve in water. Paper towels, Kleenex, and wipes hold together when they get wet. If you flush these products, in little time, you could find it impossible to flush your toilet. Getting a plumber to fix that could become difficult – and expensive. Despite their name, ‘flushable wipes’ are not flushable. I have written about this subject periodically in my tenant newsletter over the years. Flushable wipes cause an enormous amount of damage every year to people’s plumbing and to city sewage treatment plants. Flushable wipes and paper towels combine with kitchen grease (something else you shouldn’t flush) in sewer pipes to create ‘fatbergs.’ Some fatbergs weigh tons and can only be removed by tearing up a street. One especially large fatberg in a sewer line in London was bigger than a city double-decker bus. There’s a picture below of a fatberg that weighed over a ton. As you probably know, some people are buying huge quantities of toilet paper right now, but toilet paper is not sold out everywhere, and the price of it is not going up. I saw people at Costco with huge quantities of toilet paper in their carts – and nothing else. If these people were afraid that necessities were going to become unavailable, and they were thinking rationally, they would have bought food too, not just toilet paper. However, that’s the nature of panic buying. It’s never rational.


WHY ARE PEOPLE HOARDING TOILET PAPER?

As soon as this epidemic began, stories began circulating on social media web sites claiming that most of the toilet paper used in the U.S. is imported from China and that because China shut down its factories, the U.S. would soon be running out of toilet paper. Through Facebook and Twitter, these stories were repeated countless times. This led to the panic buying of toilet paper that we see today. However, the United States does not import toilet paper from China. Over 90% of the toilet paper sold in the United States is made in the United States. The rest comes from Canada and Mexico. The United States is net exporter of toilet paper, and we export a lot of it. The United States is the 3rd largest exporter of toilet paper in the world. This panic buying of toilet paper is not China’s fault. Take a look at the toilet paper in your home. You will probably never see a package of toilet paper in your life that says: “Made in China” on it.

WHY DO PEOPLE SAVE OLD NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINES?

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Below is a photo of the lobby of the Graduate Hotel in Berkeley. Tartine Bakery is inside. Graduate is a chain of hotels in college towns. There’s a lot of them. The hotel is using hundreds of old National Geographic magazines as decor behind the check-in desk. It reminds me of when I was a realtor. I remember that I used to see National Geographic magazines like this in people’s homes, usually in estate sales. When an elderly person died in Berkeley, their house was usually put on the market for sale by the heirs. After I walked through a house like that, I would then go into the basement or the attic and there I would sometimes find hundreds of old National Geographic magazines, all neatly arranged by date. Whenever this happened, I would wonder: “Why do people do this?” Old National Geographic magazines have no resale value. Some people told me that they save old National Geographic magazines because they have wonderful photos and stories in them, which is true, but unless you have an index of all those magazines, which nobody did back then, how would you find those photos and stories? I had an aunt who did this. She had a room full of old National Geographic magazines. She also saved Christian Science Monitor newspapers, even though she was not a Christian Scientist. I know realtors who tell me that they still see rooms like this, filled to the ceiling with old National Geographic magazines. Can you explain to me why so many people do this? I have never figured this out.

WHO LIVES IN BERKELEY’S NEW APARTMENTS?

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There is an apartment house under construction on San Pablo Avenue at Jones Street called Jones Berkeley. It’s big. It contains 170 apartments and covers a whole block. They are renting apartments there now. Studio apartments are $3,000 a month. 2 bedroom apartments are $4,800 a month, and 3 bedrooms are $6,700 a month. Jones Berkeley. These rents are typical for the new buildings that are popping up all over town, and there are over 1,000 apartments currently under construction in Berkeley. Now – Jones Berkeley is not in a spiffy neighborhood. Across the street are auto repair shops and vacant stores. It isn’t near campus, it isn’t near a BART station, and unlike San Francisco and Silicon Valley, Berkeley does not have a lot of high paying tech jobs. There are no big tech companies or banks headquartered here. So – where do the people who live in buildings like this get the money from to pay rent like this? I can’t figure it out. Can you?

ARE METAL STRAWS SAFE?

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A lot of restaurants and bars in California have gotten rid of plastic straws since the state passed a law limiting where plastic straws can be used. Since then, metal straws have been popping up everywhere. You can buy them in many stores here in Berkeley, but should you? I have asked people who work in public health: “Are metal straws safe?”, and nobody said: “Yes.” The problem is this – it is easy to clean the outside of a metal straw, but how do you sanitize the inside of it? Metal straws come with a little brush designed to clean out the inside of these straws, but how can you be sure that you got all the germs and stuff inside the straw that could rot or mold? I was at a catered event and was offered a drink with a metal straw in it. I wouldn’t drink it and asked the bartender for another drink without a straw in it. I had no way of knowing who used that straw before me. The last person who used that straw might have had the flu. You can get the flu, hepatitis, and many other diseases by using a straw that was previously used by an infected person. In addition, it is not clear that metal straws are better for the environment than plastic straws. Making one nickel straw generates more carbon emissions than 100 plastic straws. Plus, how much hot water would you have to use to thoroughly clean a metal straw inside and out 100 times, and how many people are really going to do that? If you want to avoid using plastic straws, use paper or cardboard straws or drink your beverages without a straw. Many cities, like Berkeley, are passing laws to ban or phase out single-use paper products, like coffee cups and straws. I think that is a bad idea. The problem is that it is very hard for politicians in a place like Berkeley to vote against a law that is perceived to be good for the environment – even if they know that it is not a good idea.

RECYCLING CANS. Take a look at the photo below. I see trash cans like these all over Berkeley and San Francisco. This is why China and other countries won’t accept American garbage. Americans mix everything together.