Heifering About: The Subway Anthropologist or How to Make People Slightly Less Comfortable Than is Comfortable

In an effort to go green, I have been taking public transportation a lot lately. As it turns out, the subway is not just a convenient means of travel, but it is also a social experiment in the making. After some spotty and poorly-documented field research, I believe I have accurately sketched the boundaries of acceptable social interactions among urban humans. To wit, people will become slightly uncomfortable if one does any of the following:

1. In a mostly empty row of seats, sit immediately next to the only other passenger.
2. As the train turns, lean against the other passenger in the opposite direction from that dictated by physics.
3. Make sassy expressions at one's own reflection in the window.
4. Make direct eye contact with anyone for longer than 3 seconds.
5. Wear a large hat.
6. Eat a burrito.
7. Ask to borrow a piece of toilet paper.
8. Ask to pet someone's baby.
9. Ask to pet someone's ipad.
10. Breathe conspicuously.

Heifervoyeur: PowerPoint Derails Military

Everyone knows that military commanders go nuts for pretty pictures. During the French and Indian War, Washington famously spent twice his monthly ration budget on illuminated maps of Ohio and Maryland. In his memoirs, he wrote, "I thought the inlets were cute."

Now, in an attempt to reduce their carbon footprint and be more "with it," the U.S. Army has gone digital, moving from watercolor cartography to PowerPoint. According to an Army publicist, the shift will give the Army "street cred" and will limit the number of inadvertent orphanage bombings that result from using maps whose ink has bled.

However, the digital shift has caused some unanticipated side effects. High ranking officers have started working late into the night, adding sound effects and animation to their PowerPoint presentations in an effort to outdo one another at Monday morning meetings. While many officers describe the atmosphere on the base as "good-natured competition," many of these strategy sessions have dissolved into street rumbles between two newly-formed gangs: the Comic Sans Kings and the Helevectias. Perhaps most worrying is the CIA's new policy of using Wingdings to encrypt sensitive messages.

The impact of basing troop placement on PowerPoint is yet to be determined, yet some of our soldiers are noticing disturbing trends. Private Idaho, stationed in Iraq, remarked that his troupe's maneuver's have become increasingly "like the lilt of a cartoon word across a screen." The U.S. Army press office was unavailable for comment.

Heifervoyeur: Boy Scouts Molest Man

FOXNews.com - Boy Scouts ordered to pay $18.5M in sex abuse case

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Do not be deceived by their cherubic faces and wrinkle resistant fabric. According to Fox News, these seemingly innocent Boy Scouts are ordered by the court to pay $18.5 million in damages to an Oregon man for abuse perpetrated in the early 1980s.

Many Oregonians are using the case as impetus to air their grievances against the Scouts. Allison Splinter, a female lumberjack, claims that Boy Scouts have frequently poached leaf samples from the national forest where she works. Several residents reportedly have seen Boy Scouts lining up and walking around in an intimidating manner. One architect who lives on a houseboat claims to have seen Scouts lining up on the shore, making obscene hand gestures (see above image).

When pressed for comment, 6th grader Timmy Smith insisted, "I wasn't involved. I was born in 1998," to which ADA Portland replied, "A likely story." Fourth grader Emmett Apple simply broke down in tears, repeating over and over, "I just want to sell the pop-corn." As our reporters left the scene, most of the Scouts remained stone faced, whittling spears out of sticks.

Heifervoyeur: Those Decadent Canadians

My friend Muffin constantly finds herself with extended periods of free time and a vast supply of disposable income. Suffering from ennui after yet another weekend at the Paris Ritz, she came to me in search of fresh, new vacation ideas. I was happy to oblige and came up with a winning option:

Canadian Style Camping.



Everyone knows that Canadians are decadent, always flaunting such things as 100% pure maple syrup, fur, and universal health care. But now, the Canadians have reached a new level of audacity with the development of glamping (glamour + camping).

Gone are the days when Canadians had to leave their mansions behind to enjoy the great outdoors. At Clayquot Wilderness Resort, for a modest fee, one can rent fully furnished tents with room enough for one's chef, valet, and badminton instructor.

For an additional fee, they will resurrect Clark Gable and have him lounge saucily on your setee.

Heifering About: As the Buddhist Rabbi Says...

A few weeks ago, I went on a 3 day silent Jewish meditation retreat. I know what you're thinking... Well, actually I don't. It wasn't a silent psychic meditation retreat.

In 3 silent days, though I did not learn telepathy, I picked up some helpful lessons:

1. People can tell you're not Jewish if you hold the Hebrew chant sheet upside down. Nevertheless, they will be gracious and will help you learn.

2. Breathing is more interesting than you'd think.

3. There actually are little bugs living in your eyebrows and on your skin. If you sit still for long enough, you will feel them.

4. If you want to inspire murderous thoughts in those around you, you should: fall asleep and snore during the rabbi's teaching, arrive late and huffingly to each meditation session, and chew loudly.

5. Oscar Wilde was right. The only possible society is oneself.

6. If you pay attention, you notice stuff.

For more about God, Judaism, and meditation, see Rabbi Jeff's excellent wesite: www.awakenedheartproject.org

Heifervoyeur: Pardon Me Sir, But A Cat Pooped In Your Coffee

The most expensive coffee in the world is made of cat poop. Well, to be more precise, it's made from the dung of an Asian Palm Civet, a cousin to the mongoose that is native to Southeast Asia and Indonesia. Civets like to eat berries, and (being evolutionarily elegant) they choose the fat, juicy ones. Apparently, we humans have a more difficult time distinguishing the fat, juicy, ripe berries from dried up, rotting ones, and we must rely on civets to do this for us.

After the civets have defecated, Indonesian farmers sort through their poop, wash it off, roast it, brew it, call it "Kopi Luwak," and sell it to to captains of industry for upwards of $600/lb. Well, they probably sell it to a coffee company for a lot less than it's worth, but who's counting?

A captain of industry friend who has sampled Kopi Luwak tells me that it's mild and aromatic at the same time; well worth the $30/cup price tag. He assures me that the washing process is thorough and that it hardly looks like cat poop at all.

Further shoddy online research suggests that the aroma may be derived from the anal glands of the civet, which excrete a musky pheromone meant to attract civets of the opposite sex. It is not yet possible to buy coffee made from the feces of gay civets. I checked.

While Kopi Luwak has been popular with yuppies since the early 1990s, it reached national attention through a scene in the 2007 masterpiece The Bucket List. And now, through a feature article, the New York Times is calling attention to the economic and environmental impact of farming palm civets for their poop. If this concerns you, you may consider joining the boycott.

If it doesn't, before you go rushing off to demand that your local Starbucks stock Kopi Luwak, be warned that there are a number of copycat varietals out there. People will stoop to anything to make their coffee taste like cat poop, including but not limited to gluing poop to the beans themselves. One woman in Pittsburgh trained her cat to defecate directly into her coffee pot. The cat felt used.

Heifertorial: The Rich Could Take Over The World!

A recent article in the Bible - I mean The New York Times - revealed the shocking fact that many recent immigrants to the United States are educated and wealthy. Now, I don't know a lot about "educated wealthy" people, but I'm inclined to be suspicious of this group. On many occasions, I have personally observed them shopping, traveling, using pronouns correctly, buying netbooks, and various other sordid activities. Furthermore, they pay far too much for recycled stationery, which, any fool knows, is just old stationery and cuts down on our national use of vellum. Add to these, the fact that educated wealthy people are good at stuff, and you see how much of a drain they are on our economy.

Some might argue that educated wealthy people are an asset to our country because they bring perspective, insight, culture, skill, money, and taste, but I submit that our country has gotten along well enough for hundreds of years without any of the above. Furthermore, they they could pose a threat to our treasured customary laziness. If we let them in, we could easily find ourselves in a situation where not only do 5% of the population have 90% of the wealth, but the 5% with the money will spend it on things like smartcars and universities instead of on satellite dishes and unnecessary plastic objects. Even worse, we could soon discover that educated, wealthy people will snap up all of the power. They'll give jobs only to other educated wealthy people, and they'll use their money and learning to make more money and learning. We would wind up like Switzerland! We must sit up and take note! We must defend our reality-show legacy from the threat of educated wealthy people! Aux armes!

The Big Sleep: Abridged

Every woman that Bogie encounters throws herself at him, from sexy bookstore clerks to sexy cabbies. There must be something to that whole chain-smoking-talking-out-of-the-side-of-your-mouth-thing.