Turkey Fryers.

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Mark

I do not allow turkey fryers at my properties. The use of a turkey fryer at any of my properties, including outdoors the yard, is a breach of your lease. Although there are dozens of brands and models of turkey fryers on the market, not a single one is UL approved. Turkey fryers are just about the only gas or electric appliance that UL will not approve. Why is that? It’s because there is no such thing as a safe turkey fryer. They are inherently dangerous.

Turkey fryers can tip over fairly easily, and they often do, spilling out up to 3 gallons of boiling hot oil, causing terrible burns and setting buildings on fire. In 2012, over 1,000 turkey fryer fires were reported to fire departments across the United States. In addition, thousands of people wound up in the hospital with second and third degree burns from using turkey fryers.
When a raw turkey is lowered into a turkey fryer, oil often overflows the top. When that oil reaches the burner below, the entire unit can instantly be engulfed in flames.
The lid and handles on turkey fryers get dangerously hot, posing severe burn hazards.

Even if you do not burn yourself up or set the house on fire, what are you going do with the 3 gallons of used oil that you will be left with after you are done frying your turkey? You can’t keep the oil because it will turn rancid. You can’t put it in your garbage can, you can’t pour it down the drain, and you can’t give it to me. What would I do with it? So what would you do with 3 gallons of used turkey fryer oil?

If you still have a craving to eat fried turkey, go to a restaurant that serves it. You can get fried turkey at Cafe Lizzi at Jack London Square in Oakland. I hear its good.

Bakesale Betty. For fried chicken, you can’t beat Bakesale Betty on Telegraph Avenue. They consistently get 5-star ratings from customers. Bakesale Betty is only open 2.5 hours a day, 5 days a week, but they still make a ton of money. Get there early, or expect to wait in line. They also make great desserts. Their strawberry shortcake and molasses ginger cookies are superb.

Popeye’s. Personally, I like Popeye’s fried chicken. I also like their cajun beans. I don’t know how a KFC can stay in business if there is a Popeye’s anywhere nearby.

Titanic!

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Mark

Have you ever seen the movie ‘Titanic’? No, not the 1997 movie with Leonardo DiCaprio, but the 1943 version made in Nazi Germany. I collect movies made in Nazi Germany, and this is one of the best. No expense was spared in making this lavish movie. There are spectacular sets, beautiful costumes, and amazing special effects. The producers of this movie made a detailed 20 foot long model of the Titanic for the sinking scene, and they used a large luxury liner, a real one, to film the deck scenes. The special effects in the sinking scene are truly amazing considering the technology available in 1943. Despite the movie’s tremendous cost, ‘Titanic’ was never released in Nazi Germany. Dr. Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, did not like the movie’s message. In this version of the Titanic story, the hero is a German officer named Petersen. Petersen is convinced that the ship is traveling far too fast and is heading for disaster. He tells his superiors about his concerns, but he is repeatedly told to just obey orders and stop questioning the judgement of higher-ups. Petersen reluctantly does as he is told, and this leads to disaster. Goebbels did not like that message. He wanted the German people to just do as they were told, without asking questions. In this movie, the villain is a greedy, degenerate Englishmen named Ismay. In movies made in Nazi Germany, the villain was usually either an Englishmen or a Jew. Since there are no Jews in this movie, the villain is an Englishmen. If you would like to see this movie, give me a call. I have several copies with English subtitles.

San Francisco is Now the Most Expensive Rental Market in the U.S.

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Mark

Manhattan has long been the most expensive rental housing market is the U.S., but now it’s San Francisco. The average 1 bedroom apartment in downtown San Francisco is now $2,800 a month – and that’s just the average. These high rents are due to the explosive growth of dot-com jobs in San Francisco. Up until recently, most internet jobs were at the south end of the bay in Silicon Valley: Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, etc., but now, a lot of the new internet jobs are in San Francisco. The reason for this is simple. San Francisco is where well educated, 20-something, computer savvy people want to live and work, so the internet companies are moving jobs to San Francisco in order to get the people they want and need. Of course, some internet companies were always based in San Francisco, including Craigslist, Twitter, Salesforce, and Yelp; and these companies are growing too. The rental housing supply in San Francisco simply cannot keep up with all these new jobs. It’s created a seller’s market for landlords.

The high rents in San Francisco have spilled over to Berkeley. At Berkeley’s newest apartment house, Berkeley Central, 1 bedroom apartments rent for $2,500 to $3,000 a month, and 2 bedroom apartments rent for $3,000 to $6,000 a month. The owners are not having any difficulty finding tenants. On the day their rental office opened, people were waiting in line and down the sidewalk in order to turn in applications and put down deposits. Gee, when I first got into this business, I was renting 2 bedroom apartments in Berkeley for $150 a month! They were nice apartments too, but I didn’t have a free chocolate room back then.

Mississippi Ratifies the 13th Amendment.

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Mark

Who says that Southern states are run by reactionary old curmudgeons? On February 18, 2013; the Mississippi state legislature voted to ratify the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery. The move came as a result to popular reaction to the Steven Spielberg movie ‘Lincoln’, which focused on Lincoln’s efforts to pass the 13th Amendment. It only took the Mississippi legislature 148 years to ratify the amendment. Mississippi has still not ratified a number of other Constitutional amendments, including the 24th Amendment, which abolished to poll tax, a device used to prevent poor people from voting. Many other Southern states also never ratified the 24th Amendment. The 24th Amendment became part of the Constitution in 1964.

Prohibition. Mississippi has also never ratified the 21st Amendment, the repeal of Prohibition. Until 1966, it was illegal to produce, advertise, transport, or sell alcoholic beverages, including beer and wine, anywhere in Mississippi. Mississippi is still the driest state in the U.S. In half the countries in Mississippi, the transportation and sale of alcohol is still illegal. You can be arrested in Mississippi for driving through the state with a can of beer in your trunk. That is because it is impossible to drive through Mississippi on an interstate highway without passing through dry counties.

New in The Chocolate Room.

Posted on February 27, 2013 by Mark

Fleur de Sel Caramels. I now have fleur de sel caramels. I don’t make these caramels myself, but I know someone who does, a woman from Holland who makes them really well. We trade chocolate for caramels. Fleur de sel is a type of sea salt. It looks like snow flakes. Fleur de sel is the top layer of newly crystallized sea salt. Most of it comes from Brittany in France, where it is hand harvested. The stuff is expensive, but a little bit goes a long way. I also have unsalted caramels.

Barack Obama. Shortly after he was elected president, Barack Obama told a reporter that his favorite candy was fleur de sel caramels, and immediately, demand for this candy skyrocketed. Before Obama was elected president, nobody ever asked me for fleur de sel caramels. Now everybody wants them. Ronald Reagan did the same thing for Jelly Bellies. Jelly Bellies used to be made in a small factory near the Oakland airport. After Reagan was elected president and it became known that Jelly Bellies were his favorite candy, sales took off. Over 3 tons of Jelly Bellies were sent to the White House for Ronald Reagan’s inauguration in 1981. The Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield has the best factory tour in the bay area, and it’s free. It’s a great place to take families with kids.

Mark’s Job Hunting Tip #5: Have a Professional Sounding Voice Mail Message.

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Mark

When was the last time you listened to your outgoing phone message? Have you ever listened to it? Most people have no idea what their outgoing message sounds like. Call your own phone number from another phone and listen. You might be surprised by what you hear. When you are looking for a job, your outgoing phone message isn’t going to get you a job, but it could cost you one. Quite often, an employer will call an applicant, listen to his message, and then just hang up because he didn’t like what he heard. I have done that myself when calling applicants for apartments. I once called an applicant for an apartment and while I was listening to the guy’s outgoing message, I could hear the sound of vicious dogs barking in the background and a woman cursing at them. I hung up without leaving a message and rented the place to somebody else. Here is my advice:

1. Record your outgoing message in a quiet room where there is no background noise at all. It is unprofessional to have an outgoing phone message with the sound of a TV or music or anything else in the background.
When recording your outgoing message, be brief, and keep it simple.
Don’t be funny. High school and college students often have humorous or bizarre phone messages, but unless you are looking for a job working as a stand-up comic, you should have a straightforward, humorous, businesslike message.
Speak slowly and enunciate. State your name, say that you are unavailable, and ask the caller to leave a message. If you have an unusual name, state your full name and speak slowly so that employers and human resource reps will know how to pronounce it.
Check your voice mail frequently and return messages promptly.
When you return a message from a prospective employer, call from a quiet place. You may be anxious to return a call immediately, but you could do yourself more harm than good by calling from a noisy restaurant or a subway station.

Does Making iPhones Really Drive People To Suicide?

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Mark

The short answer is ‘No.’

All iPhones, iPads, and iPods are made in China at factories owned by Foxconn Corp. Foxconn is a Taiwanese-based company with factories all over the world. In China, Foxconn employs 1,000,000 people, making them the biggest private employer in the country. Foxconn makes products for many other companies besides Apple. Kindles, PlayStations, and Wiis are also made in China by Foxconn.

You may have heard stories that working conditions at Foxconn factories are so stressful that the employees are driven to suicide. Photos of suicide nets around Foxconn factories regularly appear in newspapers and magazines around the world. And indeed, there have been suicides. In 2010, 18 Foxconn employees committed suicide on the job or at an employee dorm. In order to reduce the number of suicides, Foxconn now requires every employee to sign a pledge not to commit suicide on the job.

While every suicide is a tragedy for both the individual and his family, we are talking about 18 suicides a year at a company that employs 1,000,000 people. The critical question is this – is this a high or a low rate of suicide? By Chinese standards, it is a very low rate. It is important to remember that suicide rates in Asia are relatively high compared to suicide rates in the West. Here are the suicide rates per 100,000 people in various countries.

South Korea 32
Japan 23
China 22
United States 12
Germany 10
Australia 10
Great Britain 7
Italy 6

Suicide rates vary a lot within the United States. In California, the rate is 9. In Alaska and Nevada, the rate is over 20.

Foxconn employs 1,000,000 people in China; therefore, if the suicide rate for Foxconn employees was the same as the suicide rate for the population of China as a whole, you would expect the number of Foxconn employee suicides to be 220 a year; however, the known number of Foxconn employee suicides is under 20 a year. There may be other Foxconn employee suicides that we don’t know about. After all, China is not an open society with a free press. However, no one has ever produced any evidence that the suicide rate for Foxconn employees is greater than that of the general population of the country. If you have any such evidence, send it to me. I’d like to see it.

Worst Apartment Ad Ever!

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Mark

I have often wondered why so many apartment ads on Craigslist contain no photos. Of course, some landlords may just be lazy, but I think the main reason for this is that there are a lot of very elderly landlords who have no technological skills at all. I know people who don’t know how to use a digital camera or how to upload photos from a camera to a computer.

On the other hand, some apartment ads contain no photos for good reason. There are landlords who, as a matter of policy, do not clean vacant apartments before offering them for rent. This is unfortunately quite common here in Berkeley. If a landlord is renting an apartment that was trashed by the last tenant, and he has no intention of cleaning the place up, he is probably not going to include photos in his listing. Below is a photo that one landlord included in a listing for a ‘Charming 2 Bedroom Apartment Near Campus.’ It seems to me that this guy could have at least closed the oven door and removed the mattress from the kitchen floor before photographing this depressing room! The photos of the other rooms weren’t any better. The photo of the living room showed rat traps scattered around the room. One of the traps appeared to have a dead rat in it, but the room was so dark that it was hard to be sure. I think this landlord’s definition of the word ‘charming’ must be quite different from mine.

Even Worse.

What could be worse than the listing above? How about this one. Below is a photo taken from an ad for a house for sale in Raleigh, North Carolina. An old man lived alone in this house. He died on the living room floor. If you look at the photo carefully, you can clearly see the silhouette of his corpse on the floor. The house sold for substantially below the list price.

Cashews.

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Mark

How Come You Never See Cashews In The Shell?

Do cashews have shells? Yes. All edible nuts have shells, but you can only buy cashews shelled. All other nuts are sold both shelled and unshelled, but if you want to see cashews in the shell, you will have to go to India, Brazil, or some other country where they are grown. You will never see them here. Why? It is illegal to import or sell unshelled cashews in the United States. That’s actually a good thing. Cashew shells are poisonous. They contain a toxic chemical called cardol. Eating just one cashew shell can cause blistering inside your mouth, and eating just a few of them can kill you!

Raw Cashews Are Not Raw.

You can find ‘raw cashews’ for sale in stores everywhere; however, this term is a misnomer. ‘Raw cashews’ aren’t raw. They are cooked, although just slightly. The only way to remove a cashew from its toxic shell is with heat. Cashew shells are removed by heating cashews with steam and then briefly boiling them in oil. It is illegal to import or sell completely raw cashews in the United States.

What Are Cashew Apples?

Cashew apples grow on cashew trees. Every cashew apple has a small crescent shaped appendage on the bottom of it containing a cashew nut. Cashew apples are sweet and delicious. Cashew growers eat a lot of them, but unfortunately, you can’t get them in the United States. Cashew apples are only edible for 24 hours after they are picked. After that, they rot very quickly.

The McRib Sandwich Is Back!

Posted on December 30, 2012 by Mark

On December 17, McDonalds started selling McRib sandwiches again. This is the 9th time that McDonalds has brought back the McRib sandwich since 1981. McRibs have fanatically devoted fans. Some people regularly drive 100 miles or more to get a McRib sandwich. Not all McDonalds locations have McRibs, so McRib fans maintain locator web sites that list all the McDonalds in an area that have the sandwich. Here’s one: McRib Locator. The patty in a McRib sandwich is shaped like a small rack of spare ribs, but it is not actually made out of rib meat. It is made out of a mixture of inexpensive pig parts like tripe, pig hearts, and scalded pig stomachs; all of which are pureed together into a slurry and then pressed into a rib-shaped mold. Doesn’t that sound yummy? A McRib sandwich also contains a long list of chemicals, including azodicarbonamide, a foaming agent that is commonly used to make gym mats and the soles of tennis shoes. So – bon apetit!

The Simpsons and Gym Mats. If the story above sounds familiar, it may be that you saw it on The Simpsons. Many improbable things on The Simpsons have actually happened. In one episode of The Simpsons, Lunch Lady Doris is shown preparing lunch at Springfield Elementary School. As she forces gym mats into a meat grinder, she says: “There is very little meat in these gym mats.” In another episode of The Simpsons, Homer becomes addicted to the Ribwich, a sandwich available for a limited time only at Krusty Burger. Homer travels the country looking for Krusty Burger locations that have the Ribwich. Homer winds up in San Francisco, where he eats the very last Richwich.

Today’s Food Quiz Question: What food product is made from petroleum and tombstone dust? This product is sold in every supermarket in America and can be found in over 2/3 of the homes in the United States. What is ‘tombstone dust?’ When slabs of marble are carved into tombstones, it creates a lot of fine marble dust. Marble dust has a number of industrial uses. FDA-approved ‘food grade’ marble dust is used in making a number of edible products, including confections. And just in case you are wondering – No – I do not put tombstone dust in my chocolate.