Rob's Rants

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, last summer’s weather was absolutely awful for gardeners in New England. After a slow growing season from unseasonably cool and cloudy weather, a Late Blight epidemic simply swamped most of the tomato and potato crop.

I was happy to see that my favorite seed supplier, Johnny’s Selected Seeds posted an article on their blog specifically dealing with this subject.

Among their recommendations is one I wish more people would heed:

Grow or purchase tomato seedlings that are healthy — do not purchase or plant any seedlings that have disease symptoms.

I can not stress this enough. There is speculation that the Late Blight epidemic was fostered by contaminated tomato seedlings distributed through stores like WalMart, Home Depot and Lowes. As a New York Times article on the subject said:

Professor Fry, who is genetically tracking the blight, said the outbreak spread in part from the hundreds of thousands of tomato plants bought by home gardeners at Wal-Mart, Lowe’s, Home Depot and Kmart stores starting in April. The wholesale gardening company Bonnie Plants, based in Alabama, had supplied most of the seedlings and recalled all remaining plants starting on June 26.

Ultimately, the tomatoes I so carefully grew from seedlings in my basement, from seeds of varieties I specially selected, were wiped out by people who just bought some diseased crap from whatever store they happened to be shopping in. Please — if you’re too lazy to start your own vegetables from seed, at least buy your plants from some reputable local nursery (Mahoney’s Garden Centers in Massachusetts always have a great variety of vegetables that they grow themselves in varieties selected to specifically to grow well in Massachusetts).

After last year, I tried to pick up any fruit that was laying around and I burned it. Then I burned the vines that had dried over winter. I will be planting a variety of plum tomato called Juliet which has always been fairly disease resistant in the past, along with an heirloom variety called Brandywine. And I have my copper-based fungicide ready to go, because I’m sure my neighbors weren’t as careful to burn all their exposed plants like I was so I know there is a reservoir of Late Blight waiting to pounce. We can only hope that it’s a dry, sunny summer.

Additionally, I have used a drip irrigation system for the last 5 years to prevent leaving my plants with wet leaves more than the natural rain does. So as long as we have a regular rainfall schedule this summer, I should be in good shape.

Good luck to all gardeners out there.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post praising the cheap suit. In it, I said that for most people, the quality of a cheap suit really doesn’t matter.

But there are some concessions that must be made to cheapness. One of the distinguishing characteristics of a cheap suit is cheap fabric. And cheap fabric has problems. Namely, it wrinkles easily, it starts out “shiny” and gets worse the more it’s cleaned, and it falls apart faster than expensive threads. So what’s a cheap suit fan to do?

The Cheap Suit's Secret Weapon

The main answer is to reduce the number of trips to the dry cleaner that the suit takes. Each dry cleaning makes all the deficiencies of a cheap suit worse – the fabric gets shinier, the lining starts to come loose, and the wear increases. The good news is that no suit needs to be cleaned after every wearing, no matter how cheap or expensive. But how do you avoid looking like a wrinkled mess when you go to wear it again?

The answer is a home steamer. That’s right, the wrinkles can be steamed right out and the creases steamed back in. And it’s easier than ironing.

So, after you buy your cheap suit, buy one of these. There are several models available. I have the Conair model shown at left that I paid well under $100 for a few years ago. It works great, on suits, shirts, pants, and other clothes. And, it makes quick work of wrinkled clothes in the morning before work. I usually flip the heat on when I get out of the shower, and by the time I’m done brushing my teeth the steam is flowing and I can be wrinkle-free in minutes. The clothes are ready to wear as soon as I’m done. I can usually get three or four wearings out of a suit and still look crisp and pressed each time. And three or four wearings, rotated among the five suits in my closet means well over a year between dry cleanings. Provided of course you don’t spill anything on yourself and you don’t find yourself standing in the August sun sweating until your suit is soaked. Then you might want to clean the stink out of it.

Trust me on this — the steamer is the cheap suit’s best friend.

This is without question the most lucid and correct assessment of the state of conservatives in the wake of the healthcare reform bill signing. Please read it.

http://www.frumforum.com/waterloo

Some important excerpts:

A huge part of the blame for today’s disaster attaches to conservatives and Republicans ourselves.

At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994.

Only, the hardliners overlooked a few key facts: Obama was elected with 53% of the vote, not Clinton’s 42%. The liberal block within the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in 1993-94. And of course the Democrats also remember their history, and also remember the consequences of their 1994 failure.

This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none.

And this, which so accurately captures my feelings towards self-described conservatives on the radio:

I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead. The real leaders are on TV and radio, and they have very different imperatives from people in government. Talk radio thrives on confrontation and recrimination. When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.

In short:

We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.

Finally. Some conservative sanity. Maybe now the real conservatives will wake the fuck up and get back to governing instead of waving signs from the balcony of the House.

Rain on Grass. Courtesy Adrian Benko / Wikimedia Commons

I always intended this blog to have some gardening component. In fact, the third post I ever wrote was about an asparagus bed I had just planted.

But then last Summer happened. And last summer was an absolute disaster for New England gardeners (and farmers too).  So about a third of the way through the season I gave up, and didn’t write a thing about vegetables or anything else. And it was a good thing too, because at the end of the season, my harvest amounted to exactly two dozed snap peas, one stalk of basil, and about a dozen fingerling-sized Yukon Gold potatoes. What happened? Rain. A slow and steady summer of rain that simply kept everything soaked for several weeks straight. And the end result was a round of fungal diseases (including Late Blight) and an onslaught of slugs and other pests which killed and consumed everything in sight.

My carrots? The leaves were eaten by slugs. Cucumbers? Slugs. Lettuce? Slugs. Peppers? Slugs and a fungal disease. Basil? slugs. Tomatoes? Late Blight. Pumpkins? Late Blight and slugs. What a disaster.

According to my weather station, and the rain gauge which sits right in my garden beds, we received 35.05 inches of rain between May 1, 2009 and September 30, 2009. The average temperature was only 62.8° F. And if you look at the rain graph from around June 15th through August 1, it rained almost every other day on average. In one stretch in June, I recorded eight straight days with measurable rain, followed by two dry days, followed by twelve more days with measurable rain. That’s twenty out of twenty-two days with measurable rain. It was terrible. (You can see the actual data from my weather station here: http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KMANORTH12&graphspan=custom&month=5&day=1&year=2009&monthend=9&dayend=30&yearend=2009.)

At the end of July 2009, the National Weather Service published a Public Information Statement about the unseasonably cool and wet Summer weather. Here is the summary for Worcester, MA:

WORCESTER REGIONAL AIRPORT MA OFFICIAL RECORDS SINCE 1892

AVG TEMPERATURE  DEPARTURE   REMARKS
 JUNE 2009         61.9F           -2.8F    6TH COOLEST JUNE

JULY 2009         66.8F           -3.4F    4TH COOLEST JULY
 COOLEST JULY SINCE 2000.

JUNE/JULY 2009    64.4F           -3.1F    TIED COOLEST JUNE/JULY
 COMBINATION WITH 1958.

PRECIPITATION    DEPARTURE   REMARKS
 JUNE 2009       6.51 INCHES   +2.49 INCHES NOT WITHIN TOP TEN WETTEST

JULY 2009      10.81 INCHES   +6.62 INCHES 2ND WETTEST JULY…WETTEST
 SINCE RECORD 11.41 INCHES
 IN 1938. IT ALSO RANKS AS
 THE 10TH WETTEST MONTH OF
 ANY MONTH ON RECORD.

JUNE/JULY 2009 17.32 INCHES   +9.11 INCHES 2ND WETTEST JUNE/JULY
 COMBINATION ON RECORD AND
 WETTEST SINCE THE RECORD
 OF 18.80 INCHES IN 1938.

ADDITIONAL REMARKS…
 - WORCESTER NO JUNE OR JULY MAXIMUMS 90 OR HIGHER – NONE SO FAR IN
 2009.
 - THE LAST TIME A 90 DEGREE OR HIGHER DAILY MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE DID
 NOT OCCUR IN EITHER JUNE OR JULY WAS BACK IN 2004..PRIOR TO THAT IN
 2003. NONE ALL YEAR IN 2004.
 - 40 DAILY AVERAGE TEMPERATURES BELOW NORMAL…16 DAILY AVERAGE
 TEMPERATURES ABOVE NORMAL…5 NORMAL IN JUNE AND JULY 2009.
 - 38 DAYS OF MEASURABLE PRECIPITATION 0.01 INCH OR MORE OCCURRED IN
 JUNE AND JULY 2009…DEPARTURE PLUS 17 DAYS. THIS BEATS THE RECORD
 FREQUENCY 34 DAYS IN JUNE AND JULY 1958.

Note the part about 38 days of measurable precipitation in June and July. And that pattern continued into August. That set up the perfect conditions for a fungal disease epidemic, and that came in the form of Late Blight. The Boston Globe wrote an article on the destruction of the state’s tomato crop and said,

Produce farmers in Massachusetts and elsewhere in New England – already struggling with one of the wettest, coolest summers in recent history – are now battling late blight, a fungus with tiny spores spread by the wind that rots tomato and potato plants. It is the same disease that was responsible for the 19th-century Irish potato famine.

Needless to say, this year I’m hoping for a little sun.

I’m placing my order tonight with my favorite seed supplier, Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Maine. On the list this year:

• Cucumbers
• Lettuce
• Bell Peppers
• Basil
• Dill
• Yukon Gold Potatoes
• Brandywine (heirloom) Tomatoes
• Plum Tomatoes
• Carrots
• Green Beans

Hopefully it will be a drier year. It looks like my asparagus and strawberries survived from last year. I should get a decent crop of strawberries at least.

And I mean that in a good way.

One of the most often overlooked tax rules, at least among technology workers, is that personal use of a work-provided cellphone is a taxable benefit and you’re supposed to pay the Gov’t if you do this. The problem is, almost everyone who has ever been issued a cellphone for work uses it for personal use and no one ever tracks it and pays the tax.

Although the IRS has recently (January 2010) indicated that they would hold off on enforcing their position outlined above, instead waiting for Congress to pass legislation clarifying the issue (see this FierceWireless article), waiting for Congress to actually do something could take the better part of a lifetime. So, whether or not you think the benefit should be taxable, it is. That’s the way the law is written. It essentially says that personal use of a work-provided cellphone is a taxable “fringe benefit,” and just like the use of a company car, it should be tracked and reported. But the paperwork to account of all the simple 30 second personal calls one makes is so ridiculously burdensome that no one does it.

And this is where I think Google Voice can help. Simply put, you can avoid using your work cellphone for personal calls if people call a Google Voice number that also reaches your desk phone. Or, if your work plan can designate some free numbers (Inner Circle, MyFaves, etc.), and your Google Voice number was one of them, then you could probably show that you weren’t consuming any chargeable minutes taking personal calls and will owe nothing. As the Wall Street Journal says in the article linked above, one of the IRS’ suggested rules says:

The IRS, in a notice issued this week, said employees could avoid tax liability if they showed proof they used personal cellphones for nonbusiness calls during work hours. The agency also could decide on a set number of phone minutes as “minimal personal use” that would be untaxed.

I would hope that showing that you used your own personal GV number would also count, if you could show that the company paid nothing for those minutes.

Anyway, I think it’s important that I point out the following warning. In big red letters.

I am not an accountant. I haven’t consulted with an accountant to write this. I may have no idea what I’m talking about. I could just be a babbling idiot. This is just an idea, not advice.

Or, as the Refreshments say in the song Nada:

There ain’t no moral to this story at all.
Anything I tell you very well could be a lie.
I’ve been away from the living, I don’t need to be forgiven,
I’m just waiting for that cold black soul of mine,
To come alive.

Good luck with your taxes.

I’ve always felt at home in New England, even though didn’t grow up here. The traditional New England values of thrift and ingenuity appeal to me. If you couple these ideas with my aversion to shopping, and you’ll understand the title of this post.

A suit is the uniform of the powerless man; the universal projection of insecurity combined with narcissism. Think about it – a suit is neither comfortable nor practical. So by definition it is used for something impractical, namely projecting your wealth as a proxy for your power. But herein lies the issue. One cannot project power through a suit, expensive or otherwise. I quote Margaret Thatcher to explain:

Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.

Following this logic, there would never be a time to wear a suit at all. Unfortunately, much of the world hasn’t realized the silliness of this whole endeavor, and in some places a suit is still the standard uniform. It is, unfortunately, something that I am not going to change single-handedly. But, given the silliness of the whole suit exercise, at least one shouldn’t pay a lot for the privilege of trying to reinforce your status through your clothes.

Apparently, this message was lost on a large part of the US during the last economic boom. Starting with Queer Eye [for the Straight Guy] back in 2003 the world of men’s clothes started growing rapidly. It mostly seemed to mirror the growth of other “form-over-substance” industries like Investment Banking, and Private Equity; you know, where men (and it is mostly men) try and out “compete” each other by conquering business without actually doing anything besides pushing paper around. In an industry where one is measured purely by money tracked on a computer, there is no way to show the score, unless you prove how much money you’ve amassed by buying ridiculously expensive things. So, in the Wall Street banking world, men’s clothes have become the newest battleground for penis size competitions, with participants moving up the clothing ladder and ridiculing anyone who doesn’t play their reindeer games.

"Wow, Fred sure has on a nice suit!"

This phenomenon lead to the growth of several online communities for men to talk about clothes. (As a side note, are you noting the extreme change in the definition of manliness underlying this? Can you picture men working in a real industry like coal mining or an auto plant or a steel mill actually talking about clothes? If nothing else the development of these message boards cements the United States’ transition away from an industrial economy.) Two of the biggest such message boards are Ask Andy About Clothes (AAAC for people in the know …) and Styleforum.

Now my warning before I go any further. These sites are populated primarily by cocks. Cocks in the British, Top Gear, slang for rich idiots with more money than sense sense. The kind who drive BMW M3s just because they think they should. They say things like:

“Men think about clothes with fire and intensity and all day long.” (And you thought it was sex …)

And this gem …

Thank you for your website.  I’ve been using many of your web pages (I even printed some of them) since prep school.  There were only a few senior superlatives to go around and you are certainly partly responsible for my snagging “most likely to be seen in dress code.”
Best, Paul

If only Paul realized what an insult that would be to the rest of the world (and I went to a prep school with a dress code, so I know.) Poor Paul. I bet he pegs the Top Gear Cock-o-Meter in his M3.

Wow. He Pegged It!

And this, finally, brings me to my main point. On these boards, the inexpensive off-the-rack (OTR) suit is universally maligned. I suppose that in the insulated world of Wall Street and law firms and wherever else it is that denizens of these fora live and work, a man really is judged by his clothes. And that is a true shame.

By cheap suit, I mean a suit from one of the big (also growing) men’s clothing chain stores like Men’s Warehouse and Jos. A Bank. Of the two, Jos. A Bank actually has a slightly better reputation (and I do mean slightly) on the message boards, but the comparison can be best summed up by this quote from a poster named “LA Guy” comparing the two on the Styleforum:

I say that this contest is like two fat kids wrestling. At the end of the day, there is no “winner”. There are just two fat kids. Men’s Wearhouse sells dreck for a little less than does Jos. A. Banks. That’s what it boils down too [sic]. Seriously, if I really, really, needed a cheap suit in a pinch, and only had access to retail, I would go to Macys and pick up something by Calvin Klein (the new, cheap, black label collection.)

Seriously? “If I only had access to retail.” What a cock. Can’t you just hear the condescension dripping from that statement? A little lower down the thread, a slightly funnier and less pompous Kaga weighs in:

This would be like a Kitchen Stadium battle between Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders.

OK — I’ll admit that one was funny.

The boards go into all sorts of critiques of construction of the big-box retail suits and lament the lack of full-canvassed construction and the proliferation of fused (read glued) linings. In general, anyone who frequents these boards thinks that anything but the $1000 + Signature Gold suit from Jos. A Bank is shit and you are an undesirable a-hole if you buy one.

The ultimate expression of narcissism is the “bespoke” suit. Bespoke being a British term for “giant insecure cock who needs others to praise him and grovel at his feet.” Actually, it refers to a suit made completely by hand in the traditional sense by a tailor, but it also means outrageously expensive. (A great description of bespoke can be found on the “English Cut” blog from Thomas Mahon, a London tailor.) Back at the height of this craze in 2006, the Boston Globe ran an article on a Boston tailor who had one client, A fund manager from Fidelity, that spent $300,000 at one single tailor in a year. Read that again after you get done choking. The full quote from the article:

One Sullivan client, a fund manager at Fidelity who wished to remain anonymous, buys suits that cost up to $9,500. He spent almost $300,000 on clothing last year; this year he’s already run up a $190,000 tab. Sullivan is now working on a vicuna winter coat for him that will cost $24,000.

No wonder the client wanted to be anonymous. That this can happen in the United States isn’t a source of pride, it’s a national fucking tragedy. To add some perspective, in 2006, $24,000 was roughly the Federal poverty level for a family of 5. I wonder if five people were going to live in this asshole’s coat?

So, where am I going with this?

It’s some actual praise for a cheap suit. It takes a certain kind of narcissist to be a banker or high-profile corporate lawyer in the first place (you know, the kind who believes that THEY really affect the outcomes they’re being compensated for rather than realizing the true complexity of the systems in which they operate and the luck of events that got them where they are). And these guys will never understand how the rest of the world runs. Nor do they want to. They can debate all they want whether a $1200 made-to-measure suit looks worse than a $2500 bespoke suit, and the rest of us will get on fine.

So here’s what you need to know about cheap suits:

Quality Doesn’t Matter for Most People

Seriously. If you are starting in a job that requires a suit every day, stop reading now. Because for daily wear, construction quality matter a lot. For daily wear, you should buy several good quality $1000 suits (preferably on sale). But for the rest of us, quality doesn’t matter. I work for a prestigious organization (honestly). I have been asked to give presentations at several university conferences this year, including Stanford. And I wear a suit no more than 15 days a year. And I am far ahead of most of the US. Most people looking for a suit will wear it 3 times a year tops. And even if they dry clean it after every wearing, it will still last three to five years. Three cheap suits might last someone like this a decade or more. I have five inexpensive suits in my closet right now, most won’t be worn more than three times this year, and then only cleaned once.

99% of Looking Good is in the Fit; Take the Time To Find Something That Fits You Well

A decently fit $199 Men’s Warehouse suit will look better on you than a poorly fitting $2500 bespoke suit. So, unless you keep yourself in shape and don’t routinely change weight by more than 5 pounds, a bespoke suit probably isn’t going to help. You need to have a stable body for a bespoke suit to be worth the money.

Borrowed from: http://www.austenmcdonald.com/writings/ocmf/images/suit.diagram.jpg

I recommend going to whatever retailers are around and trying on several suits before you buy one. You will invariably find that one brand fits you better than another, even before tailoring. This is probably more important than anything else. I have several Men’s Warehouse suits and their cut off the rack just fits a little better in the shoulders than say a Jos. A Bank Executive suit, which is always a bit wide for me. As a disclaimer, I have three Jos. A Bank suits in my closet now, and no one I ask ever notices the shoulders until I point them out, but there is something just a little off about them. I did have a little work done on the jackets to make them look a little better though.

In my opinion, you are better off spending an additional $50 for a good tailor to get a suit fitted than spending an extra $50 on the suit itself.

What defines a good fit? Like Supreme Court Justice Potter Stuart defining obscenity, “you’ll know it when you see it.” But basically, it means:

• A suit jacket where the shoulders fit well. That means a slight slope down and that they don’t stick out too far. One good rule of thumb: put on your jacket and stand perpendicular to a wall, with your arms relaxed at your sides. Lean towards the wall. If the suit touches before your shoulder does, it’s too wide. On a cheap suit this is difficult to fix, so try another brad or style until you find one that fits well.
• When buttoned  the vents on the suit coat shouldn’t open up. The vents only open when you sit.
• 

  Perhaps a bit too high ...

  The sleeves are the correct length. (This also depends on wearing the right shirt, but a well-fitting suit helps.) It is common for you to have different length arms, or at least for them to hang differently depending on the straightness of your spine, etc. Seriously. So a suit jacket will often need the sleeves adjusted to the proper length in order to hang correctly when you stand. When standing straight with your arms relaxed, about 1/4 to 1/2 an inch of shirt sleeve should show.

• Pants that ride correctly. Not too high like Urkel from Full House, and not too low.
• Pants that are the correct length. How your pants hang at your shoes is called the “break,” as in “full break,” “medium break,” etc. (Read this for a better description.) The break really refers to the amount of slope created by the pant resting on the front your shoes and hanging lower in the rear. A full break can be stylish, but most normal people don’t get chauffeured to work or travel on private jets, so there is a practical consideration. A full break hangs low down in the back with maybe 1/2″ clearance to the ground. In my world I am sometimes forced to walk through snow and puddles and pants with a full break tend to soak up a lot of this leading to a premature demise. So I opt for a medium break instead.

Whatever your style, get your suit tailored. The in-store tailor at one of the big box chains will do a decent job, but make sure they aren’t just going through the motions. Even the cheapest suit (like the Jos. A Banks Executive suits that I just bought on sale at 3 for $499) needs tailoring. Wear a good dress shirt to the store so you can gauge the sleeve length correctly. Also wear the dress shoes you normally do. If you don’t want to, then ask to borrow a shirt and shoes. This is critical and you shouldn’t be embarrassed. All decent stores (certainly the chains) have these things to borrow. You can expect to pay $30 to $50 per suit for this service.

And whatever you do, don’t let the cocks convince you otherwise. A well fitting $166 suit (Jos. A Bank Executive at 3 for $499) is going to look as good on you the three or four times it’s worn as a $1500 suit. Save your money and spend it on something you’ll actually use.

Finally, once you have a closet full of cheap suits you’ll need something to care for them. See my recommendation here.

I’m receiving a couple of hundred page views a day from almost a hundred unique visitors (on average) but have very little comment traffic to show for it. And that kind of bums me out.

So I’ve decided to allow anonymous comments on this blog. So go ahead and say something, I’ve made it even easier!