Many of you know that there is only one dangerous addiction in my life. I don’t drink, or smoke (bleagh!) or do any of the (frankly, more interesting) substances available. But there is one seriously controlled substance in my life: peanut butter. I luvs me some peanut butter.

I could go on and on explaining that love, but suffice to say there was a point when the young ‘Deep, circa 5 or 6 years old, decided to seek a better parenting opportunity* by running away from home. To begin my new life on my own, I carefully chose the three things I’d take with me: a blanket, a spoon, and a jar of JIF Extra Crunchy: I have always been serious about my peanut butter. It is a conscious effort not to eat peanut butter every day of the week**.

So about a year & a half ago, I came across this blog post by someone who loves peanut butter even more than I do (shocking! & perhaps a bit scary, actually) & ever since I have been looking for this “Parkers Farm” Peanut Butter of which he speaks. It had been a long and fruitless search and I had all but forgotten, until one day on Facebook, one of my friends mentioned her favorite snack*** & happened to include the brand of the peanut butter involved! I realized that she knew where to find it! Woot!

After getting the scoop, I immediately went and bought some. And……. lo! I had been delivered from darkness! It is truly the best peanut butter I have ever had. Whether you like all natural or not, whether you like creamy or not, whether you like sweetened or not, it doesn’t matter. This is IT:

• in San Francisco, it can be found at Whole Foods South of Market. [UPDATE 11/23/09: I have been informed that it is also at Whole Foods in Noe Valley & Delessio's Market near the PanHandle.] All Whole Foods don’t carry it, but here is a link to the Parkers Farm company & I think they have a link to some of the distributors.
• It is kept in the refrigerated case (like where they keep cottage cheese and butter.)

If you like mainstream peanut butter (as I do), you’ll find the honeyed ones are where it is at!
If you like natural peanut butter, I still think you’ll like the sweeter honeyed ones, but by all means go for the “Plain” if need be. I prefer the “Honey Crunchy”, but the “Plain” is also great & a significantly different excellent experience from the honeyed ones. The “Honey Creamy” is practically as good as the “Honey Crunchy.” There is a “Plain Crunchy”, but they don’t seem to carry it at my Whole Foods.

The second amazing thing about this peanut butter, after the taste, is that it’s ALL NATURAL – and the ingredients are ONLY: peanuts & salt or peanuts, honey & salt (in the honeyed case). WOW.

The third amazing thing is that unlike all other natural peanut butters I’ve tried, the oil doesn’t seem to ever separate! They have some process miracle going on in there. Fascinating. My mind keeps returning to this question – how do they do it?!!!

So, get to it people! You won’t be disappointed! And if you are ever at my house, feel free to ask for a taste spoon. And thus I shall spread The Gospel!

‘deep

* Since my Mom will no doubt read this, let me state for the record that I was getting fine parenting of course.

** Unfortunately, the latest pictures of me suggest that I have been… BUT I HAVEN’T – which of course, begs the question “What is the point of gaining weight if you aren’t doing it by getting to eat peanut butter 24/7?” – clearly my life (& my waistline) is amiss! I need to fix that – but the good news is that means more PF Peanut Butter for all of you Use it well!

*** THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU SHANTHALA!!! And big thanks to my favorite blog Daring Fireball, & ESPECIALLY Davenetics for bringing me to the light.

.ps It is amusing to me that both of my food reviews have taken on biblical tones, and probably heretical ones at that. I’m clearly gonna burn in hell.

[UPDATE: They contacted me 2 weeks after I posted this - see the bottom for the update.]

Dear Soma Folks,

First off let me say that I love that you are here in SF & that you make awesome bike stuff. Keep on Rockin’!

The reason for my email though, is my love/hate relationship, no – let’s say “love/deep-abiding-sadness” relationship with your Crystal Polypropylene Water Bottle. The love comes from the fact that as a constant-water-drinker I tried out one of your bottles a few months ago & it was love at first sip. No rubbery taste! Clear and large and clean! I felt a revolution in my water intake was afoot! And so simple! Seemingly, so obvious! Happy Happy Joy Joy!

But a few days in, I noticed that it leaked around the top. Must be a dud I thought, a one-of-a-kind manufacturing mistake, I’ll just get another one! That will be perfect! Sadly no – it still leaked.

Sometime into my third one (having lost my second one) I just tried to ignore the drips of water on my face as I drank, or the small puddle of accumulated leaks in my bike bag. But how much can you ignore at 4 in the morning when you reach for a sip of water in a cozy half-asleep daze, only to be awakened fully by the needle-like prick of ice cold water on your chest? No – there is no ignoring, only sadness.

When I lost my third one, I briefly thought about going back to an older water bottle – but the thought of all those rubbery chemicals that I have imbibed all through the years was too scary to consider. “Maybe they have fixed it!” I thought. This was just three days ago mind you.

So I bought my fourth one, but no, it still leaked. I actually lost it a day after I bought it*, but today, I sadly & resignedly bought my fifth. It seems I am your customer regardless of what happens now. But know that with every drip upon my chin, there is also occasionally a tear in my eye.

yours
‘deep
SF Bike Coalition Board Member (FOR ID PURPOSES ONLY – My views have NOTHING to do with the SF Bicycle Coalition)

*Yeah, I DO lose a lot of water bottles! What IS up with that!?

UPDATE: So two weeks after I posted this, Stan at SOMA Fabrications found my website somehow & responded (I had sent him an email, but he never got it, due to an outdated email address I found for them). Anyway, he was super helpful and interested. But of course, now that I finally got their attention, Water Bottle #5 turned out to not leak. Theoretically, I’m happy about this development…..

Seriously, though THANKS STAN & I do love my water bottle, so I recommend ‘em.

Those of you who know me well, know that I am I’m never one for hyperbole or rampant enthusiasm. In fact, if there is anything wrong with my life, it is that I get excited about too little. Amen.

Thus when I tell you I have had the best pastry ever, know that such a statement, like all such pronouncements from me, can be taken for what they are worth: Gospel.

Thus I shall speak unto you: 

1. Go to Garden Bakery in Chinatown, on Jackson St. (just downhill from Stockton St.)
2. Walk in.
3. Order a “Lai Wan Bao” (my apologies to the Chinese.) (Ok Adrian, hit us with the translation)
4. Praise the Lord.

It looks like a large bun made of something like “Dutch crunch” bread but more yellow. The two I had (Well… I had to make sure the first wasn’t a fluke! I SUFFER for you guys) were both warm and just slightly crunchy from being in the heater. The first bite is yummy, soft, slightly sweet bread, with a lightly crunchy crust – yum! But soon thereafter you hit the custard bomb payload at the center and then… then the angels start singing….

Get Thee To Garden Bakery (Jackson & Stockton.)

Hallelujah 

‘deep

.ps

Ok, fine.  I didn’t discover this on my own, there was a Moses involved:  Brian Kusler.  Brian & Kelly were introduced to this by their friend Adrian, who’s family owns a shop nearby.  Brian then introduced this to me. Thanks Brian – though don’t think I don’t realize your nefarious homosexual chubification agenda! 

.pps

I can already hear Peat complaining ” but Tartine Tartine” – get over it.  I nubs me some Tartine too, but this is the deal.  In fact, if anyone else has a different great pastry, leave it in the comments.  If enough do, then there shall be a Pastry Off!

Before I get into my thoughts though here are some video links that are MUST see for those iPhonically inclined:

• NY Times tech columnist David Pogue, lays it all out hysterically via the iPhone Musical. This link has better quality, but if you’re not a registered NYTimes user, go to YouTube below:
• PCWorld drop tests the iPhone – WOW & EEEK – it takes a licking…
• Apple’s video tips about Using the Keyboard on the iPhone

Also, before I go further there are a few important caveats to know. As an Apple employee, writing a blog entry about Apple products is a dicey proposition & one that I won’t do often – but I’ve been so obsessed about the iPhone that this will be a rare exception. So to that end – if you are reading this, keep in mind the following:

• all opinions here are MINE MINE MINE and have NO RELATION TO APPLE’s POLICIES OR PLANS
• There is NOTHING in this post that is not already public knowledge. It is not like I have many iPhone secrets to spill anyway – I’m just a happy little cog in the Apple machine & in very little position to know anything major about the iPhone. And if I did, I wouldn’t be talking anyway.
• Unlike most posts of mine, I’m not going to be completely transparent with my criticisms: sure there are things about the iPhone I wish were different, but as an employee, this is not the forum for them.

So on with the ramblings:

Short Answers:

• Yes, I nub nub nub it.
• Yes, it has flaws, but they are overwhelmed by its upsides.
• Yes, it is as cool as all that.
• No, the AT&T network won’t give you rabies. (a.k.a. It’s not that bad)

Long Answers

• How Do I Like It?
• More Does NOT Equal Better
• A Golden Apple

How Do I Like It?:

Now that I’ve been truly using it for a week, I’m even more amazed and captivated than I was when I first started playing with it at work. It is simply a stunning combination of power, ease, elegance, and beauty. Using it is really filled with tiny moments of “wow that is so cool” delight. Contrast this with the fact that using my Verizon-crippled RAZR* was punctuated with moments of “damn that is lame” frustration. Making matters worse was that, in the weeks before we launched, I had access to an iPhone at work but still had to use my RAZR for real life. Typing every TXT message became like torture, because I knew things could be so much better.

That is also why I got one on Friday (I biked to every store selling them in SF) rather than waiting for the free one Apple is giving all U.S. employees at the end of the month. After using one for a while it is impossible to go back. I’ll sell the free one when I get it (for list price if’n you’re interested).

The thing I’m most into these days is actually what I was most skeptical of: text entry. Typing on the iPhone has becoming one of my favorite features. I’m shocked. Don’t get me wrong – for writing a book, I’d still rather have a full sized keyboard. But text entry on the iPhone is really good, much better than any other small keyboard & really kinda fun.When I first played with the text entry a few weeks ago, it was a little disappointing and I felt it was qualitatively about the same as using a tiny Treo keyboard in that it was not enjoyable but useable. Typing on a iPhone didn’t feel as cramped as the Treo, but the Treo had the advantage of tactile feedback. Thus it felt like it came out about even. But then I watched the video on the Apple site about text entry and realized that I had been fighting against the “smarts” of the iPhone.

There are two smart things that Apple does for text entry & the combination is magic:

1. It calculates what word you probably intend based on all the characters near the ones you have typed – so for example if you are just a tiny bit off on the keyboard you may type “ouzza” instead of “pizza.” In that case, the phone guesses you mean “pizza” since “ouzza” isn’t in its dictionary & the characters in “pizza” are physically very close to the ones in “ouzza.” It offers “pizza” as the corrected word onscreen.
2. That is fairly standard, but here comes the cool part: The way you select the corrected word (like “pizza” from the above example) is by hitting the space bar OR a punctuation key – WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE PROBABLY STARTING TO DO WHEN YOU REALIZE YOU HAVE MISTYPED. This is the crazy-clever thing, because it means that if you just type along without stopping to fix typos, the iPhone will mostly likely get the word you want even though you technically mistyped it. To choose what you actually typed (if you really meant “ouzza”) you move your finger to the word you typed on the screen to cancel the corrected word. Since you will be doing this less often, it is a more disruptive action than the accepting the “corrected” replacement. That is just smart UI design.

Another general thing about the iPhone user interface, is that it is often easier than people expect it to be & it takes them a while to understand that. Folks are used to things being more complicated. Again: so cool!

For example, in one of the many (many!) demos I’ve given in the past week, a friend started typing an email on my iPhone & after typing in the recipient, she pointed towards the “Subject” field and asked how to enter text there. She was looking for a mouse or key to move the insertion point to the “Subject” line. If she had just moved her finger a little closer & actually touched the screen, she would have done it. But instead she stopped just short of touching the screen because she expected something harder. She just didn’t imagine it could be as simple as touching the screen with her finger.

That all being said there are definitely flaws and things that do annoy me when I use the phone. For example, the lack of cut and paste bugs me, Safari crashes too often, and numerous apps could use a few more features to feel mature (“BCC” in email, “Open in Tab” in Safari), but who knows what the next software rev will bring?Apple has said it will “surprise and delight” users with software updates for the iPhone.

That is another significant thing about iPhones that people don’t necessarily get. Apple will be updating and improving the software and UI on the iPhone you buy today via free software updates! Normally when you buy a phone, you are locked to the software that the carrier puts on there & updates are incredibly infrequent. And if they happen at all, they are usually a confusing (“Did I get the right version”) & worrisome (“Am I doing it right? Will I brick my phone?”) process. This is largely because the phone manufacturers & carriers aren’t great with software. Apple IS great with software, and already has in place all the mechanisms for updating and improving iPhones that are out in the field.

So we’ll see. The phone is clearly a “1.0″ version – but a “1.0″ that feels 10x better than any other phone/internet access device I’ve ever seen. Someone said that as much as they liked it, “this is the worst iPhone you will ever own” & its true – this thing is amazing and only going to get better. And even as a “1.0″ I love it.

More Does NOT Equal Better (a.k.a MISSING THE POINT):

There were numerous of reviews (mostly before the phone came out) that said things like “other-phone-x already does music-playing, internet-browsing, email, and phone calls and also has features X, Y, & Z – why would anyone pay for an iPhone”. Why indeed. I keep hearing this line of thinking & again amazed at how many people miss a fundamental point: there is a huge value differential between having a lot of features and having those features work WELL and EASILY. I’m sure that the iPhone does not have the most features of any smartphone. But there is a big difference between having the most features and the most features that work WELL. And beyond that, most of the features the iPhone does, it does delightfully.

This reminds me of the first post on Slashdot when the iPod first came out:[For the non-geeks amongst you, Slashdot is computer-geek info-central and the Nomad he is referring to is the Creative Nomad: one of the first hard drive based MP3 players. It was released a while before the first iPod.]

The BrownFury writes“At an invitation only event Apple has released their new MP3 player called the iPod. iPod is the size of a deck of cards. 2.4″ wide by 4″ tall by .78″ thick 6.5 ounces. 5 GB HDD, 10 hr battery life, charged via FireWire. Works as a firewire drive as well. Works in conjunctions with iTunes 2. Here are Live updates”.No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

The comment was VERY Slashdot, and in this case was technically correct but missing the above point entirely and thus incredibly stupid. Sure, the Creative Nomad had larger capacity and removable batteries & if you bought an MP3 player based on the most obvious feature bullet points you would have gone with the Nomad. But if you even looked at both side by side, or better still played with them you’d begin to realize why the iPod eventually became a phenomenon and the Nomad is long deceased: the iPod was physically much smaller and much more elegant and beautiful. The iPod worked much much better: it had a much nicer interface and much better computer integration (iTunes!). Meanwhile the Nomad sucked batteries and took forever to load songs over its weak USB 1.0 interface, while the iPod had super-fast Firewire downloading and much better battery life. The sum total of these “non-bullet” features made for a MUCH MUCH better device and the market bore that out in short order.This same kind of myopia rears its silly head in various reviews I’ve read about the iPhone, but most people are starting to hit the nail on the head. Maybe this will be the product that makes people start to get the fundamental difference between more & better.

A Golden Apple:

A final neat thing about the iPhone is that it reflects something really cool about working at Apple these days. I’m tremendously lucky in that I’m working at Apple in what is probably its second Golden Age (the first was probably 77-mid eighties at its birth). It is quite a ride to be working at a company that is at the top of its game and hitting on all cylinders and to be at the company as it has been getting there. The iPhone reflects so many parts of Apple working well.

The iPhone uses Apple’s OS X thus it is based on all of Apple’s decade of work of OS X on the Mac. It is clear that we are leveraging a lot of our years of OS & application development for the iPhone – what a huge boost & a leveraging of effort.

Similarly, 6 years of making and refining iPods gives us the expertise needed to make “our best iPod yet” and all of our work with durability and power management are on display in the tiny, beautiful, little machine. We could never have made such a device without all of that experience making iPods.

Nearer and dearer to my heart is the iTunes integration, from syncing to activation, that adds so much of the value to the iPhone experience (like the iPods before it). A lot of people don’t get that a big part of what makes the iPod experience so great is iTunes. And now we leverage that expertise for the iPhone.

And finally, in addition to the fact that the Apple retail stores are the perfect place to go try out an iPhone, the retail experience of buying an iPhone on the first week was stellar – the Apple retail stores did just a phenomenal job managing such a huge crush of shoppers.

We are a company hitting on all cylinders and it is really cool. I wish everyone at Apple would notice the coincidence of this Golden Age with the hiring of one Amandeep S. Jawa – but so far they haven’t.

Pronounced Eye-Pee-hOn

Walt Mossberg from the Wall Street Journal
David Pogue from the NY Times

‘deep

.ps
Does anyone use AT&T in SF? I’d love to know how you feel about coverage since I’m switching from Verizon (Verizon – how I loathe thee for crippling my phones – though I’m a slave to your coverage area!)

.pps
Ok – here is one more – Steven Levy from Newsweek – he captures the feel of it (& it is funnier!)

Hence the quest to try a Deep Fried Turkey. And I’ve tried. A deli opened that sold DFT sandwiches. I went within a few weeks. It had closed for business. A friend offered to lend me his. I said yes. We made arrangements for pickup. At the last minute, he checked with his girlfriend. She had promised it to someone else. Finally, this year I could take it no more.

mmmmm deep fried goodness (Thanks Adrian!)

I decided it was time for ‘Deep Fried Turkey (I hate this pun. Unfortunately it is more powerful than I am. Every time I try to ignore it, someone foists it back at me. If I wrote this post without this pun, people would fill the comments section with it. I give up. Resistance is futile. Ha. Ha.) I would get a fryer and make my own dammit.

So the next question was how do I get a fryer? Well I went to Bed, Bath & Beyond – they had smaller more-expensive indoor electric units. I went to Costco, they had larger outdoor propane units. I wanted indoor, not having to deal with propane meant there was a chance I would use it more often. My friends advised outdoor (more likely to get the oil up to temperature quickly). My coworkers advised outdoor (less indoor grease problems). They had me convinced. But as I walked out the door to go buy one, I checked Consumer Reports, & it said that the indoor units were just as good and MUCH safer. I went with indoor.

before

during

after
BTW checkout my hazmat suit aka a raincoat

There are more great pix in Brian’s & Adrian’s Flickr pages (thanks guys!). The turkey was supa moist, supa yummy and cooked supa fast! (Damn I have to go eat some of the leftovers right now). We actually ended up making 3 turkeys in as many hours (two for my TDay & one for a friend’s). They turned out tremendous! The skin is like lightly fried chicken (no batter) and the insides are just super juicy. The cooking process was pretty damn simple. I highly highly recommend it.

.ps: I went with a Masterbuilt Stainless Steel Electric Digital Turkey Fryer. Overall it seems to be a well thought out and well functioning appliance, but I had two problems of note:

1. The biggest problems was that they had a MAX FILL LINE in the fryer that does not match the real world. You are supposed to put the turkey in & then fill the fryer with water to figure out how much oil you need – a.k.a the Eureka principle, but you are also supposed to never fill the fryer with oil past the MAX FILL LINE. Well, both my birds were within the allowed size (a 10lb & a 14lb – 14 is the max) & yet BOTH required oil past the MAX FILL LINE. That was disturbing.
2. A smaller (but potentially confusing issue) was that in the directions, they say explicitly how to use the controls. Unfortunately, various buttons on the controls are different from the instructions – for example, they don’t mention the START button at all. You kinda have to take that part of the instructions as a hint.

But all in all I was pretty happy with it – here’s a link:

Masterbuilt Stainless Steel Electric Digital Turkey Fryer

.pps: 3 words: Deep Fried Twinkies.

.ppps: Does anybody know anybody with a biodiesel car to give the oil to? Or a restaurant that likes such stuff?

[I don't work for Belkin or have ANY connection to them whatsoever other than as customer. I do work for Apple, but I think that is irrelevant for this article & the opinions expressed in this article are mine & mine alone.]

Of course, I can’t resist a chance to lecture you on why you should be biking or walking (or living someplace where you CAN drive less (like fabulous SF)) – so consider yourself lectured. Maybe at some point I’ll show people how I connected my iPod to my bike!

Anyhow, the best way to connect your iPod to your car is of course a direct input & some cars these days have little auxiliary input jacks or some such & if you have one of these you are golden & have no reason to be reading this… move along!

The next best way, is if your car has a tape deck, (I remember thems!) you can buy a little tape adapter, which looks like a tape with a headphone plug sticking out of it. You plug it into your iPod’s headphone jack & pop the tape into your tape deck & voila – you’re done. These are trivial to get at RadioShack or Circuit City & I think they are probably all about the same – so just go get one. The only caveat is that some car stereos don’t like certain ones I’ve found, so you might have to try a few to get one that works for your car stereo*. Yes, lameness abounds in this here universe. Also, some people have complained about the audio quality on these things, but for me they’ve been fine (maybe it is because I’ve never invested in a high falutin’ car stereo – or a high falutin’ car for that matter). If anyone has a model they really like, please feel free to post it in the comments.

So that leaves the case of a car stereo without a tape deck. This comes up often for me because one of the few times I drive a lot is when I’m visiting someplace & have a rental car (i.e suburban wastelands). The solution most often suggested is the mini-FM transmitter. A bunch of these exist & in theory they should be perfect: just plug it into your iPod & it broadcasts your music to you car stereo, just like a radio station**! The reality is a giant wash of suckiness: Most are very low power – making reception shite & almost all only let you broadcast on like 4 stations & if all these stations are taken (or even close) to real radio stations, the real radio-station will win & you’ll be back to listening to drek-o-rama. The sad truth is that most of these FM transmitters suck.

Well, on my most recent trip, I found one I liked & though it is possible I just got lucky, I’m guessing it is probably one of the best ones out there: The Belkin Tunecast II (not the I the II – it is important! Part # F8V3080-APL). The Tunecast II isn’t a remarkably different product, so don’t expect nirvana, but it smooths enough rough edges that I think it is really pretty good & I expect that it will be good enough for me. It would be better to test it in more locales (different amounts of radio-station density) but I’m guessing it will work out pretty well (you SFers are welcome to borrow mine & for your trips & report back).

Anyway here is what is cool about the Tunecast II:

1. it lets you broadcast on any station you want.
2. it is cleverly (& optionally) compatible with Belkin’s iPod car power adapter. (Part # F8V7067-APL)
3. it turns itself off when not in use.
4. it can remember 4 stations just like presets on your car stereo

Here’s what isn’t so cool:

1. it, like all other small FM transmitters, is kinda weak
2. I don’t think it can work w/out batteries
3. the first one i bought didn’t work

So good things first:
1) it lets you broadcast on any station you want.
This is simple but perfect, 9 out of 10 FM broadcaster thingies only let you broadcast on 4 or so stations – in fact the original Tunecast I seems to have this problem, but this one lets you broadcast on the whole FM frequency range. This is CRITICAL because it makes it MUCH more likely that you will be able to find an open frequency that you can use, even in an FM crowded area. This is why I expect the Tunecast II will be the last FM transmitter I’ll need. I’m still stunned that most FM transmitter’s don’t do this – maybe it is hard for some reason?

2) it is cleverly (& optionally) compatible with Belkin’s iPod car power adapter.
This is pretty cool, but maybe not quite perfect. Basically the Tunecast II comes with a cable that will allow it to draw power from Belkin’s iPod Car cigarette lighter adapter (Part # F8V7067-APL) rather than it’s batteries. This is cool because if you’re going to be listening to your iPod in the car for a long trip, you’ll probably want a car power adapter anyway (the kind that plugs into the cigarette lighter) to power your iPod. Unfortunately, your FM Transmitter requires power as well & it usually uses batteries, that you eventually have to replace. Well, Belkin’s Tunecast II takes batteries, BUT if you have Belkin’s iPod car power adapter- you can also plug the Tunecast II into it – so it will power your iPod AND the Tunecast II – thus keeping it from running off it’s batteries. That’s cool. The only thing I’m not sure about is that I still think the Belkin needs to have batteries in it to function – even if it is not drawing power from them – that’s a little weak – but no huge deal & I could be wrong – I haven’t tested it – it is just the sense I got from the instructions.

3) it turns itself off when not in use.
Duh, this is very useful for saving batteries. Basically, if you’re using batteries, you don’t really have to turn the Tunecast II on & off – it just senses when it is getting audio signal & turns on. If the audio signal goes dead, the Tunecast II waits a while & then turns off.

4) it can remember 4 stations just like presets on your car stereo
This could be useful if you do the same drive repeatedly & know different areas where you need to use different frequencies.

Ok the bad things are:
1) it, like all other small FM transmitters, is kinda weak
This is just the nature of the beast & the Belkin is no different***. You usually need to put the transmitter as close to the antenna as possible, or move it around the dash of your car to find the best place to make it work.****

2) I don’t think it can work w/out batteries
See note (b) in the good parts section above – i could even be wrong about this – but I haven’t tried. I’ll edit this article when I know more

3) the first one I bought didn’t work
Yup – I still don’t know why. The second one has been flawless, so maybe it was just a random fluke – but I’d recommend testing yours right away & buying it somewhere locally if possible*****.

Ok there you have it – I hope you found this useful! Please let me know in the comments. And, for the record, I really hope you don’t spend to much time in your little oil-slurper.

‘deep

_{* Also, you may still want to read on about FM transmitters because your tape adapter may not work in your next rental car – which for me is when i want it most (I plan to bring both the tape adapter & the FM transmitter on trips)}

** In this article I use the terms “station” and “frequency” pretty interchangeably. What I mean is “those numbers you tune to on your FM Stereo”

*** I have heard that there is an FM transmitter by a company called C.Crane that is higher power & thus better, but I’ve never had a chance to use one (Anyone else?).

**** Someone has suggested to me taking a regular old headphone extender cable & putting it between your FM transmitter & your iPod to make a better antenna 7 I *THINK* this would work. They also recommended wrapping the new longer cable around your dash or around the external antenna & thus never having problems with signal strength – which seems plausible too – let me know if you try this trick!

***** I know they are carried at Apple Stores, but I only say that as a convenience to some folks – I work at Apple & am not trying to drum up business for my employer or anything.

(Read no more if you want to form your own opinion of “The Good Body” first!)

My only complaint was that Ensler’s play did not really address the complexities of the issue. She makes the point (quite well in fact) that women are constantly forced (by society & themselves) into a kind of self-destructive relationship with their own bodies by having to be so preoccupied with their physical perfections and imperfections. But identifying this problem is pretty easy – the hard part is how to deal with it realistically – and by that I mean including the fact that we are all programmed to observe other bodies and I think women’s bodies in particular. In fact, it is one of my favorite things to do. So how do we all do it non-destructively? It isn’t going to go away.

Nonetheless this is a great performance, and I recommend it highly (Eulalia & I both liked it even more than The Vagina Monologues.)