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	Happy NYU Year from

BEYOND THE FRINGEFAN is a monthly personalzine/apa-zine/letter-substitute written, edited and published by Beyond the Fringefan a/k/a Marc S. Glasser, and distributed through e-APA-NYU as well as directly via the Internet and (occasionally) through the mails. Copies may be requested by contacting him at the N.Y. Cadre (1088 East 40th Street, Brooklyn, New York 11210 ((718) NY-CADRE; nycadre@alum.rpi.edu); recent issues may also be viewed at <http://nycadre.org/btf>. This is Beyond the Fringefan #406, for readers of APA-NYU Volume 9, #1 (e-APA-NYU #81) and others for whom push has come to shovel, published January 2011 as a combined production of Quick Brown Fox Press and Syscrash Consulting, both subsidiaries of . All uncredited material copyright ©2011 by Marc S. Glasser. Member fwa.

I'D BE BRAVE AS A BLIZZARD: When the Great Blizzard of '010 hit, I was out of town visiting Kathy and Leo Sands in Baltimore. That town only got an inch of snow, and I thought I'd dodged a bullet, but unfortunately, I had to return to The City two days later, on Tuesday. Major roads all the way up were clear of snow, and I was unprepared for the sudden transition to unplowed streets and traffic paralysis when I exited the Belt Parkway. Still, I made it practically all the way home before Daisy the minivan got severely mired in the unplowed snow while turning the corner of my block. It took quite a bit of wheel-spinning and shoveling before we got her moving again, and when I tried to drive again two days later, she was behaving like a very sick beast (and flashing a bunch of ominous dashboard lights). Frankie the mechanic's diagnosis was that the wheel-spinning had cooked her transmission, necessitating major surgery only three years after the last rebuild. An expensive way to start the year, and with Daisy unavailable, we had to postpone a number of planned visits, both social and medical. Still, no one was hurt and we didn't run out of heat or food. And once I'd left Daisy with Frankie, I didn't need to shovel the driveway. (For those keeping score, the first city snowplow seen on our block this season made its appearance on New Year's Day, six days after the storm.)
            
     Come to think of it, our luck with wheels was generally not so good in December. The guy from Landauer Metropolitan who was supposed to come by and look at Donna's electric wheelchair did not show up as scheduled; they called us the next day to tell us that the truck had broken down. He finally made an appearance four days later and looked at the wheelchair. That's all he did—that and take down the make and our description of the problems, information we'd given three times over the phone. He said they'd call back the following Tuesday to let us know whether United would cover the repairs (no idea when they'd actually get done). Three weeks and five unanswered voice mails later, we're still waiting. [LATE UPDATE: they got back to us this Tuesday to let us know that yes, United will cover it, and so they're ordering the parts now. It's just possible that the work might get done before February.]

     And the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles is holding off on the renewal of Donna's driver's license—not because she's too sick, but because she's too healthy. For reasons unknown to us, the last time it was renewed, almost eight years ago, a restriction of "HEARING AID OR FULL VIEW MIRROR" was added alongside the "CORRECTIVE LENSES" notation. (Donna's hearing is just fine.) We never noticed it in the fine print on the back of the license. (Maybe the corrective lenses need to be strengthened.) But this time, because Donna checked "no" under "Do you need to wear a hearing aid?", the renewal was sent back, with a requirement that Donna submit a statement from her doctor attesting that she no longer needs to wear a hearing aid to drive. Luckily she hasn't felt any compelling desire to get behind the wheel recently.

     As regards health, nothing worse than typical winter colds seems to happened to us in December, for which we thank whatever deities are in charge of such things. And I finally finished the task of transferring all important calendar events from my Palm to Google Calendar, and have stopped schlepping the Palm around as of the New Year.

Comments on APA-NYU, Volume 8, #12 (e-APA-NYU #80)

JAMISON, TAKE e-LETTER (Mark L. Blackman):

"The super said he'd be up in 20 minutes to fix my running tub faucet ... that was on Election Day." Is that why so many Democrats are now all washed up? Too bad you're not living in the apartment directly above the super; water dripping from his ceiling would likely focus his attention on the problem. /*/ "I had a problem with my stove ... My oven, I learned, was never hooked up." How long have you been in that apartment without using your oven? /*/ (¢APA-NEWS) "The 'Red Queen' theory?" It's the idea that evolution is self-perpetuating because as each species develops new abilities, its competitors are doing the same, in a kind of arms race, so that, in the words of Lewis Carroll's Red Queen, "it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place." Sexual reproduction confers an advantage in this race because it's a way of recombining genes and spreading mutations more rapidly than asexual reproduction does. (Would Carroll have approved?) /*/ (¢Nelson) "My apartment is already in 3-D." So's mine: desultory, disorganized and disorderly. /*/ (¢me) Calling it "Animal Exceptionalism" doesn't make sense to me; humans are a subset of animals, so singling out the one species constitutes making an exception of it—hence "Human Exceptionalism." My point was that singling out one species as the bad guys isn't much different from singling out one species as the good guys, nor is it much more justifiable. /*/ (¢bacover) "(So now it's Vixen, Blitzen, Donner & Venison.)" And Weird Al did his turn on a homicidal—make that cervicidal—St. Nick in "The Night Santa Went Crazy": "He tied up his helpers and he held the elves hostage/And he ground up poor Rudolph into reindeer sausage/He got Dancer and Prancer with an old German Luger/And he slashed up Dasher just like Freddie Krueger/And he picked up a flamethrower and he barbequed Blitzen/And he took a big bite and said, 'It tastes just like chicken!'"

DANCE* TO THE MINAC (Ariel Cinii):

I observed John's 70th birthday and 30th deathday a bit late last month by viewing the documentary film LennonNYC that PBS was showing for the occasion. It just made me sadder. I've taped but haven't yet gotten around to seeing the BBC film Lennon Naked that was shown a few days later, starring Christopher Eccleston and introduced by David Tennant. (Any more Doctors and they'll need co-sponsorship from the National Health.) /*/ May The Guy you met at the Fripp concert really be the connection who gets your script into the hands of a producer. Make sure you get a percentage of the gross. /*/ "7. Naproxen does not work!" For you, I'm willing to believe. For me, it works better than any other non-prescription pain reliever; the only problem is that it also irritates my digestive tract worse than any other. If Tylenol won't do the job on a headache or backache, I take Prevacid to protect my guts, then a little later I start in on the naproxen.