October 13, 2007

Return of The Cranky Old Coot

I'm with PittGirl on the "Bodies" exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center. Call me an ignorant, small-minded fool, but seeing muscles and tissues unspooled and on display turns my stomach.

And no, I'm not swayed at all by the endorsement of former Allegheny County Coroner Dr. Cyril Wecht, J.D., M.D., L.S./M.F.T., the man who Doug Hoerth calls "one of the nation's leading introverts":

"I think it's fascinating. As much as I've been told about how wonderful it is, I'm truly impressed," Wecht told center Director Joanna Haas and exhibition medical adviser Roy Glover, who accompanied him on the tour of nine galleries filled with about 200 body specimens and 15 full cadavers preserved with silicone rubber.


Wecht walked away from it with a new sense of awe.


"It makes you think about the marvelous, incredible structure of the human body, its complexity, the way in which all of these things function and the interrelationship of the organ systems," he said.

The opinion of Pittsburgh's one-time leading pituitary gland salesman notwithstanding, I can think about the "marvelous, incredible structure of the human body" without looking at 24 feet of human entrails.

To me, there is also something vaguely unsettling about gawking at someone's most private parts, even if the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh has concluded that it's OK by them, ethically speaking.

If you went, more power to you. But I have a feeling you're going to have a hard time looking in the meat case at Giant Eagle for a while.

. . .

Speaking of Wecht: Looking for information on the "Bodies" exhibit, I discovered that Our Guy Cy has a blog, but it hasn't been updated since August 2006. Does this mean Cyril Wecht has run out of things to say?

. . .

The War's Over For God's Sake!: Have you taken a walk through Barnes & Noble or Borders lately? They already had entire sections devoted to nothing but World War II books.

They now also have an entire rack of magazines about World War II.

(Why, by the way? What new information is breaking about World War II that requires a monthly or quarterly magazine?)

I come home and turn on the TV, and there's Ken Burns' damned World War II documentary running on PBS (it's already on sale on DVD).

And if I turn on the History Channel any time of the day or night, chances are they're running something about World War II. (The red "H" in the corner of the screen doesn't stand for "History." It's for "Hitler.")

ENOUGH! ENOUGH WITH THE WORLD WAR II NOSTALGIA!

I think a lot of you people secretly admire the Nazis, and are hoping that maybe, in one of these documentaries, Hitler will win.

Stop it! If I see you with a book, magazine, TV show, board game, playing cards, obscene sampler or toilet-seat cover commemorating World War II, and you didn't actually live through the war, I'm going to sieg heil right in your face, and to hell with der Fuehrer!

. . .

And Another Thing: If you put up orange twinkle lights, cotton spider webs, and giant inflatable ghosts for Halloween, you're an idiot.

A jack o'lantern? Fine. A cardboard witch on the front door? Knock yourself out.

But decorating your house for the month of October is twisted. Stop trying to turn every single holiday into Christmas. Get some other pointless hobby.

Put up a website, for instance.

. . .

Time to Cut Back to Decaf: A few times a week, I stop at my neighborhood Shop'n Rob to get a cuppa coffee and a tasty, delicious doughnut.

Often I have to wait behind someone who spends 10 minutes futzing around with coffee flavorings and special creamers.

If you have to add cinnamon, chocolate, nutmeg, caramel, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme to your damned coffee, let's face it: You don't really like coffee. Just buy a Coke or a Pepsi instead. Seriously.

So get out of my way. If I'm stopping at the BP station at 7 a.m., I really, really need my coffee. You'll be lucky if I don't hit you with my cane.

Posted at 07:56 am by Jason Togyer
Filed Under: Mon Valley Miscellany | three comments | Link To This Entry

October 10, 2007

Barney Google, With The Goo-Goo-Googley Maps

Sorry, Liberty Borough, you didn't make the cut. Your fellow South Allegheny Gladiators in Port Vue and Lincoln are out of luck, too, and so is most of Glassport.

Our Fair City also got short shrift, and Braddock was completely ignored, but Duquesne made out like a bandit, as did Rankin, West Mifflin, East McKeesport and North Versailles Township.

I'm talking about the "Street View" feature on Google! Maps, the newest service of the web-searching behemoth.

Google! Maps already featured satellite and aerial imagery; the Pittsburgh region (also known as "Greater McKeesport") is now one of 15 metropolitan areas whose streets were prowled by Google's camera crews to capture low-resolution, 360-degree pictures.

You can learn how to use the Street View feature by visiting Google's help page.

North Versailles native and sometime Almanac reader Jim Lokay had the story on KDKA-TV last night, but he covered it from Market Square in Picksberg.

Inexplicably, he didn't visit his alma mater, which is included in Google's Street View feature, as is a certain bowling alley in Pitcairn called "Lokay Lanes."

Yet big swaths of the Mon-Yough area aren't covered, and some of the omissions are puzzling.

One side of White Oak is done, but the opposite side isn't. Patches of North Huntingdon have been photographed, but parts of Monroeville weren't.

At first I thought they might have selected more populous census tracts and ignored smaller ones, but why do parts of Penn Township and not Elizabeth Township?

And there doesn't seem to be any demographic pattern --- meaning I don't see any race or income-based selectivity. Duquesne (no one's idea of a wealthy community), for example, is well-covered.

It looks to me as if the Google folks drew a rough circle around the Golden Triangle and covered most of the streets within that circle, then grabbed some of the busier secondary roads. I suspect the blank areas (like Braddock and Braddock Hills) will eventually be filled in.

As best I can tell from various clues (the Street View image was taken after Eastland Mall was demolished, for instance, while Kennywood's parking lot is full) the photos were all taken this summer.

According to Elwin Green's story in yesterday's Post-Gazette, Google is sensitive to privacy concerns, and if someone wants their picture removed, they can ask Google to remove it, but according to Wired Magazine, it's not all that easy.

I had trouble finding Google's own help page on the topic, and when I did find the text, it turned out to be fairly terse.

(Green's employer is pictured on Street View, by the way, and so is the competing newspaper across the river. But the great, gray lady of Lysle Boulevard is only barely visible.)

But as Green points out, "Street View" is not real-time video, and the pictures are fairly blurry and indistinct. You'd have a hard time making out facial features or license plate numbers or other identifying information, and your rights to privacy on a public street are almost non-existent.

Besides, anyone who wanted a picture of your home or business could just drive past and take one.

So, I wouldn't get too concerned about your privacy being invaded, and anyway, there's a much bigger problem to worry about.

Playing with Google's Street View is an enormous time waster. You could easily lose an hour or three scrolling around different neighborhoods.

Does anyone remember how we shirked responsibilities before the Internet?

Posted at 12:00 am by Jason Togyer
Filed Under: Mon Valley Miscellany | two comments | Link To This Entry

October 09, 2007

Sweet Smell of Success

I hadn't been to the flea market at the Wallboard Township Twin Drive-In for several weeks, because I didn't need any moldy 8-track tapes, dirty stuffed animals, out-dated copies of Sports Illustrated, or expired bottles of Tylenol.

But just for something to do, I drove over there this weekend.

To my surprise, I found vendor after vendor selling gas masks of every variety, so I asked one man why they were so popular.

"There's a lot of demand around here," said Joe Fonebone, chewing on a Marsh-Wheeling stogie. "All of a sudden everybody thinks they got methane."

"Oh, yeah, everybody from Versailles comes down here, they want a gas mask," said his neighbor, Mary Potzrebie, whose own table was laden with gas masks, flower pots and mildewed copies of National Geographic.

"Not just Versailles," Fonebone said, "people from 10th Ward and Port Vue, too. They can't stand the stink from the sewage plant."

"I saw the article in the paper," I said. "I guess it gets pretty bad."

"Smells like an earthquake in a graveyard," Potzrebie said.

"And there's always need for gas masks for people who live in Liberty Borough," Fonebone said.

"Because of Clairton mill?" I asked.

"It sure ain't 'cause of the slag pond in Dead Man's Hollow," Potzrebie said. "Of course, some people say the smell is worse on Friday nights during football season. You see, when the wind shifts over Glassport stadium ..."

I quickly cut him off. "What else is selling around McKeesport besides gas masks?" I asked.

"Everything you'd expect," Fonebone said. "Air Wicks. Nose plugs. Spring-loaded clothes pins ..."

"But not maps," Potzrebie said. "People don't need maps. If they smell rotten eggs, they're near Versailles. Fire and brimstone, you must be near Clairton. And if you're near Downtown McKeesport or the 10th Ward, it smells like sh..."

"... surely," I interrupted, "the sewage plant situation is temporary. And the Clairton Works has smelled bad for as long as I can remember. So once the methane scare in Versailles ... um ... blows over, aren't you going to be stuck with a lot of unsold gas masks?"

Mr. Fonebone snorted, pulled another Marsh-Wheeling from his shirt pocket and bit off the end. "I already got a plan if that happens," he said.

"Yeah?" I said.

He nodded and grinned. "Just wait until April. I'll stand out front of PNC Park and sell 'em on opening day."

Posted at 07:21 am by Jason Togyer
Filed Under: Mon Valley Miscellany | No comments | Link To This Entry