The Smarmy Carny

Cars have so many features nowadays that it can make your head spin.

• Cooled Compartments: D- I'll file this one under "Things that sounded cool until I realized I would literally never use them." These aren't refrigerators, either — they're simply cooled compartments. So if you have something cold, it will stay cold for two hours instead of an hour and a half. Yippee.
• Heated Seats: C I've never had heated seats, but I've heard that they are wonderful for drivers in cold climates. My problem with the heated seat is that it's not natural. Sure, you can sit on the comfy heated seat, but then you have toasted buns and your fingers are still freezing off.
• Power Windows: A- I miss having to lean over to manually roll down the passenger side window before I started getting power windows. And I don't think the rear passenger window was rolled down for the entire two years I owned that car. Power windows are wonderful, except when they break. Then, you get to watch people at the toll booth opening their door to try and hand their money to the toll booth attendant. That doesn't hurt the rating here for two reasons: First, it's hilarious to watch, and second, manual windows have the same problem.
• Cup Holders: A+ Remember when we didn't have cup holders in the car? When buying fast food, we'd be forced to rely on those lousy cardboard drink holders. And forget about the coffee on the drive to work — you'd just set it on the dash and hope no one made you swerve.
• Dual Zone Climate Control: C- Ever want to The only time that this feature is worthwhile is when your significant other complains that s/he's burning up when you're freezing cold or vice versa. The feature won't actually help you much, but it'll keep the both of you from arm wrestling in front of the console. If you're single, consider this one an F. Anyone who likes this feature might also want to follow Steven Wright's advice and buy a humidifier and a dehumidifier and put them in the same room, too.

Please feel free to leave a comment. What do you agree or disagree with, and why? Which car features do you wish were included that I didn't cover here?

When you look through your kitchen drawers, you'll be surprised to see the dozens of tools and utensils available to help you make food. Even most bachelors have a relatively large number of such tools. Which are worth their salt?

• Basting Syringe: B The basting syringe earns points for its simplicity, but mostly it's just great because it's useful for indoor water fights, too. Just as we love miniature corn because they're so much smaller than we're used to seeing, the basting syringe is great because it's so much bigger than we're used to seeing.
• Can Opener: C If there was another way to open a can, the can opener would get an F. Most can openers have so many little blades and gears and such, it usually requires several minutes and an engineering degree to figure out how the darned thing is supposed to open a can. I've seen someone cut the entire upper section of the can off instead of just the top because of a confusing can opener.
• Candy Thermometer: F This is one of those tools that sounds a whole lot better than it really is. "A candy thermometer? Awesome!!! Oh, wait — you mean it's just a high-temperature thermometer? Rats."
• Cheese Grater: D Sure, it's a wonderful tool when you want to turn a block of cheese into a bunch of little tiny cheese shavings, but this device is really just a torture machine. Use this tool to get rid of any skin on your knuckles. Usually, you end up feeding your knuckles to your family because, let's face it, who wants to go and grate more cheese?
• Egg Beater: A Egg beaters are fun! Electric-powered egg beaters are good if you're making food, but the hand-operated ones are much more fun for anything else. Plus, if your sister starts annoying you, just let it rip and hold it up to her beautiful locks of hair. She'll leave you alone for at least an hour.
• Flour Sifter: A- This has always been one of my favorite kitchen tools. Crank it, and the flour falls out the bottom. No flour, no problem! You can have hours of fun just cranking an empty flour sifter and listening to the metal scrape along the sieve.
• Whisk: B- Simple, elegant, and a pain in the butt to wash. The whisk definitely loses points for being difficult to lick clean. And I wanted all the brownie batter!

Please feel free to leave a comment. What do you agree or disagree with, and why? Which kitchen utensils do you wish were included that I didn't cover here?

Ever since we were small children, we have learned the sounds that animals make. We are even taught at a young age how to "properly" spell these sounds. But how accurate are they?

• Baa: B- Sheep do seem to make a "baa" sound of sorts, though I'm not sure I can hear a "b" at the beginning. I'd be happier with it if there was an obligatory hyphen to show that they are making that repeated guttural pause.
• Bow-Wow: F This may be one of the worst animal sounds. The closest a dog comes to making this sound is when it's yapping repeatedly, and even then it rarely just says two syllables. I've heard more dogs say "I ruv you, Reorge" than I have heard saying "bow-wow".
• Caw: A Crows say it, no doubt about it. So does my friend Joel D — seemingly nonstop.
• Croak: D- No, no, no. Frogs don't croak at all. "Ribbit" works well for some frog sounds, but not "croak." Whoever it was who first thought they heard this particular sound was probably licking the frog a couple minutes beforehand.
• Hoot: C I've heard an owl say "who" before, but never with a "t" on the end. Hilarious comedian Brian Regan has a spiel on how the owl doesn't go "hoot".
• Meow: A- I can hear "meow" coming from a cat. It's definitely two syllables and definitely has "e-ow" in it. I'm not so sure about the "m" at the beginning, but we'll roll with it.
• Moo: D- I think "moo" is one of the most popular animal sounds, but it's not one of the best. Go listen to a cow. The sound they make is not "moo". It's the same sound I make when my wife tries to wake me up in the middle of the night. I can tell you one thing — it's definitely not "moo".
• Oink: F As far as I can remember, I've never heard a pig make the "n" sound, so how can they say "oink"? They also don't make the "oi" sound, unless perhaps you've got an Australian pig. A pig's snorting sound definitely needs a new name.
• Quack: D+ When you say "quack", you're not making a duck sound, but part of your word is. That "wa" sound in the middle is spot on. The rest is just filler to make you say that sound.

Please feel free to leave a comment. What do you agree or disagree with, and why? Which examples of animal sounds onomatopoeia do you wish were included that I didn't cover here?

NB: Not only do I love onomatopoeia, I even know how to spell it.

In my mind, the Atari 2600 is the best video game console of all time. You either had a joystick or a paddle — both of which had just one button. Modern day consoles have nothing on the Atari 2600 with their 80-button, vibrating controllers and frequent crashes. The Atari 2600 blows these out of the water with its 128 bytes of RAM and 1.19 MHz processing speed.

• Basketball: D- I know that the graphics weren't top-notch on the Atari 2600, and that's fine. But playing basketball with a square ball? Something's just not right with that.
• Combat: B It came with the console, so everyone had it and knew how to play it. Somehow, they managed to turn two games (tanks and planes) into 27 games — really just different options on the two themes. For such a basic game, though, getting those tanks to move and shoot the way you needed them to really became an art.
• Missile Command: C- In retrospect, I probably played Missile Command far more than I should have. This game, though entertaining, quickly becomes repetitive. Gee, I wonder what the next level will bring me — perhaps more missiles I'll have to shoot down in the same manner? You basically played until the game outplayed you.
• Pac-Man: A- Pac-Man was the game. Easy to understand but difficult to master, I don't know a kid who was yelling at their television because of this yellow dude.
• Pitfall!: B+ I don't know how many times poor Pitfall Harry fell down holes or got eaten by a crocodile, but this game was addictive. The game used a combination of timing skills and just a bit of strategy that made you want to come back for more.
• Space Invaders: A+ Simple, easy, and perfectly designed for the platform. You have shields, you have bad guys. They inch closer, and you try and pick them off. And just when that might have started to get boring, you've got a UFO to aim at! It even spawned quite a few 80s song, which actually might not have been a good thing.

Please feel free to leave a comment. What do you agree or disagree with, and why? Which Atari 2600 games do you wish were included that I didn't cover here?

La la la la la la. Sing a happy song. La la la la la la. Smurf the whole day long. This smurfy show really smurfed the generations of little smurfs back in the day. Besides the annoying smurf of replacing words with "smurf," it seemed to entertain the masses.

• Brainy Smurf: C- Afflicted with nearsightedness, Brainy is the smartest Smurf in the town. Brainy clearly annoys the rest of the Smurfs with his know-it-all attitude, but Brainy is rescued from a failing grade because he would often get his skull crushed during his long, boring speeches.
• Grouchy Smurf: F Grouchy Smurf just wasn't a developed character. Anyone can walk around saying that they hate whatever-it-is-you're-talking-about. And he rarely serves a purpose.
• Jokey Smurf: A The only truly fun Smurf, Jokey lives up to his name. The most common joke was the exploding surprise gift. He won over the hearts of the viewers by playing practical jokes primarily on Brainy Smurf, one of the most annoying characters.
• Papa Smurf: B+ The friendly leader of the Smurfs had about as much patience as was reasonable. And with that white, fluffy beard, you just knew he was their wise and kind leader. As far as alchemists go, I suppose Papa Smurf is fairly decent. But there may be an evil side to Papa Smurf — do we know what happened to all the other Smurfs of his generation? Is that why his clothes have all been stained blood-red?
• Smurfette: A- When you're the only girl in a village of 100 men, you're bound to get all the attention. And like any Hollywood star, she's an original brunette who bleached her hair. Lucky for her, Smurfette never had to get pregnant in order for the Smurflings to magically appear.
• Vanity Smurf: D- Before Smurfette came along, this was the closest the Smurfs had to a woman. I can only assume the writers asked, "How can we show that this Smurf is vain? I guess we can have him wear a pink flower in his hat and have him carry — what else? — a mirror."

Please feel free to leave a comment. What do you agree or disagree with, and why? Which Smurfs do you wish were included that I didn't cover here?

Condiments — what would we do without them? Eat our food plain? Enjoy the taste of the food we're eating??? Imagine the horror!

• Hot Sauce: C Hot sauce earns a middle-of-the-road grade because it can go either way. The name of the condiment itself promises only to be hot, so many hot sauces do not have a particularly good taste. In the end, its best uses are for novelty purposes and practical jokes.
• Ketchup: B+ Ketchup is one of the standard condiments, and it has earned that status. It's the standard condiment for America's classic food, the hamburger. It's so good, some people even like to use it on eggs. Plus, we've somehow got dozens of varieties of ketchup.
• Mustard: A- Mustard is another standard, typically for topping off a hot dog. Face it — who really wants to taste their hot dog? Mustard helps the nation ignore the actual meat between the condiment and the bun. Summer picnics wouldn't be the same.
• Relish: D This is the most overrated condiment of all time. Relish breaks one of my primary food rules by consisting of something pickled. Another broken rule is that it's a condiment in which you can pick out the various pieces of the food that created it. I don't want to see poor Larry the cucumber's sad face staring up at me from my food! Another problem with relish is that you never know if it's going to be sweet, hot, or whatever. If you're going to be a chunky condiment, you should still have more sauce than chunks and you better taste as delicious as tartar sauce!
• Tartar Sauce: A There's just something about tartar sauce that awakens my taste buds. I'm no fan of relish or mayonnaise, but tartar sauce takes two awful ingredients and turns them into a super-flavor. I've always said it: Fish is a great excuse to have tartar sauce.
• Worcestershire sauce: D- Based on taste alone, Worcestershire sauce would quickly fail with an F–. I think I'd rather eat raw radishes than spread any of this on anything I'm about to eat. The only reason this one gets bumped up to a D- is that it's one of my favorite fun words to say.

Please feel free to leave a comment. What do you agree or disagree with, and why? Which condiments do you wish were included that I didn't cover here?

During Blogathon 2007, I will be posting Grating Ratings.

Here's how Grating Ratings work: I will select a topic or group of "things". I will then take different condiments and grade them on the typical scale of A+ down through F.

There is no real "standard" on how to grade these items, so I'm sure you will be wondering why I've graded how I did. Thus, I will explain the reasoning behind the grades I give out. I know this will cause some havoc as you will still be annoyed with a particular grade here and there, so please, feel free to comment and let me know if you disagree!

Upcoming Grating Ratings to look out for:

• Condiments
• Minor Seinfeld characters
• Weather
• Kitchen utensils
• Onomatopoeia
• . . . and other random stuff!

Feel free to e-mail me if you have an idea for a good topic for Grating Ratings!