Couple o' tidbits today on topics that don't merit their own full-fledged posting.

Tried out a new face lotion the other day. For me, that involves making very sure my previous one was empty, then proceeding to check the labels of the hundreds of other half-filled bottles of...stuff... in my bathroom until I find one containing the letters, L, O, T, I, and N in some order.

The one I landed on was a Neutrogena product of some sort and when I applied it to the face area, I felt a slight stinging followed by a sensation that BURNED WITH THE HEAT OF ONE THOUSAND SUNS! That's right, folks, applying this particular brand of lotion is akin to dipping your face into a vat full of tacks and porcupines. And it's not nearly as fun as they make it look on Fear Factor.

So I checked the label on it, which was much easier to do with no eyelids, and sure enough, it says right there on the label: Now with the cleansing power of sulfuric acid. Warning: If you feel a burning sensation not unlike swimming in molten lava, please stop using this product. For a while. But when your blisters have healed, come ON back, sucka!

I'm paraphrasing but you get the gist. Apparently, they weren't content with harnessing the useless oils and essences of fruits and vegetables that one would not normally associate with oils and essences unless they subtly hinted that your face would look like you had rubbed it with sandpaper if you didn't use it.

So I came out of the experience a little wiser and a little tinglier.

And speaking of labels, I had a nice chuckle when I discovered the bottle also had an "instructions" section. I didn't actually read them (I've heard you can catch scurvy from reading, and/or listen to, instructions of any kind) but it did remind me to make a mental note to ask why flight attendants feel the need to show you how to operate a seat belt. I figure if you have the intelligence and strength to navigate the behemoth that is the flight booking industry, you can handle a seatbelt.

OK, I know I said there'd be a menagerie of topics but I'm all creatived out. I'll close by saying good luck to the myriad of people vying for the position of Danielynn's father. I've heard good things about the Who's Your Daddy? DNA Testing Service in the Bahamas.

You probably think I'm making that name up.

One hundred fifty two!

No, friends, that is not the title of the upcoming one hundred and forty-eighth prequel to 300. That is the Hillbilly's current cholesterol level, down from a heart-wrenching (literally) 231 last summer.

You may ask yourself, "C'mon, Bahamian Hillbilly, how does a man in his mid-30s get high cholesterol?" Well, says I, through a strict regimen of shrimp stuffed with cheese, wrapped in bacon, and deep-fried. OK, I'm stretching the truth. I didn't eat that much bacon.

But no more! Thanks to the efforts of Dr. Symonette of the Bahamian Wellness Centre, my arteries have one third less cholesterol than they did a mere seven months ago.

For those of you who don't watch Oprah, I'll explain what cholesterol is the same way my doctor explained it to me: Cholesterol is Bad.

If this were the 1950s, that's where the explanation would end. Back then, eating was much easier because everything was either good or bad. Milk was good. Chocolate was bad. Now, in some circles, people would rather drink out of the toilet than put lactose in their mouths. And chocolate contains gluethlyenproponol, a compound I did not just make up and which, according to many studies I've read about in my junk mail, will make me so irresistible to women, I'd have to drink my weight in milk in order for my bones to withstand the onslaught. I gather many of these studies are based in Belgium.

All this means that it's impossible to tell people what you eat without getting advice thrown at you about its negative effects. "I drink lots of milk," I used to say at parties because according to studies, that ranks just below, "I'm very famous and my crap is made of pure gold," as a pick-up line. (I used to say, "I'm very wealthy and old," but we all saw how that turned out for J. Howard Marshall.)

Anyway, I'd say I drank lots of milk and inevitably, I'd meet up with someone acutely interested in dairy products who would discuss, at length, what cheese was doing to my lower intestine. (Apparently, it takes up residence and acts as a gatekeeper for all other....ummm....items. And it's a pretty strict one.)

The point of all this is that, like the Force, there is a good side and a dark side to cholesterol. Cholesterol is no longer Bad. Some cholesterol is Good. Not sure how you tell the difference. Check its rap sheet, I guess, and see if it's clogged anyone else's arteries in the past.

As for my efforts, they did not include drugs although they were suggested to me by people who suggested them on the basis that I could then eat what I wanted to eat, consequence-free. Not sure how to counter that kind of "logic" but at age 35, I thought I'd give it a go with diet and exercise before I start in on the drugs.

Besides which, the list of side effects they list on the commercials for these things are getting so far out there, I almost think the ad people are making them up. I swear I heard one drug warn that if taken in large doses, you may experience the vague notion that Dr. Phil is a competent psychologist and not just a spoof character created by Jeffrey Tambor.

Syd takes art lessons on Thursdays. To my unbiased eye, she's damn good at it, too. So it was with more than a little pride that I agreed when her art teacher, Malcolm Rae (who works in five styles, none of which is website design), asked if she wanted to include some pieces in an upcoming art show.

I showed up on the morning of the show with Syd's work and frames (not necessarily attached). The studio is actually her teacher's house but it's a beautiful setting for a show as it has a garden that has been meticulously groomed for over thirty years.

As I was attaching the work to the frames (with a staple gun; we'll talk injuries later), Malcolm comes over and says, "You may want to put a name and a price on each of those." To which I replied: "???" He countered that witty retort with: "And you should have an artist statement that people can take with them." My unspoken words at that point were, "Man, I wasn't even going to bring the artist."

So with an hour and a half to go, we put together an artist statement and the artist (who was still sleeping; sheesh, artists...), slap $20 price tags to each work, and return to the studio with an increasingly fragile grasp on the situation.

The show was a bus tour of about a dozen galleries throughout the island. There were four buses on day one and two on day two (who knew there was a day two?). Most of them were very appreciative of Syd's work although I didn't get many chuckles from Syd's statement which stated, accurately, that when she grows up, she wants to be a tourist.

Syd sold out on day one as did her friend and co-artist, Helena. She was eager to get home that night and paint more money...er...gut-wrenching representations of her very soul (i.e. puppies) but in the end we all crashed early. Day two was a little more relaxed with only two buses and all the prep work done. Plus Syd and Helena could lay off the sales pitch and focus more on finding inspiration in various forms of the game, tag.

We bought one piece ourselves and the rest went to various patrons including one elderly lady who I later learned made her fortune the old-fashioned Bahamian way, she laundered it. In the end, Syd came out $80 richer. Beats lemonade stands.

Final note of thanks who, despite my earlier veiled criticism of his website, is an astounding artist and teacher (for what it's worth from an uncultured hillbilly). I admitted to him afterward that I didn't take the event to seriously at first but I came away from it with a greater appreciation of both the art business and Sydney's apparent talent.

But still, fifteen percent studio fees?

So I've caught myself up on Heroes thanks to the magic of BitTorrent. And I have no qualms admitting that while I live in the Bahamas. If the government can look the public in the eye and say Anna Nicole didn't get special treatment, I can claim BitTorrent isn't stealing. I sleep at night because frankly, if I didn't have BitTorrent, I just wouldn't watch it.

Anyway, I'm loving the show even though it stretches the limits of realism, even within the framework its created. At the beginning, there were about five "heroes", all with real, tangible powers: flying, teleportation, regeneration, abilities your average five-year-old could wrap his head around. Except for one woman who has the superhuman power of split personality. (For the rest of this post, I'll just shorten that one to "PMS".) But other than her, the heroes were rare and had nice, meaty powers.

Now, around episode twenty, you can't throw a chunk of Kryptonite without hitting someone with powers. Pretty soon they're going to have their own support group and will be subject to affirmative action. And the abilities now range from someone who can make himself explode (theoretically at least, it's not something you can test out more than once) to a woman with built-in WiFi. There are at least two supercouples on the show, both of which have superkids, and in neither case did either member of the couple know about the others' secret when they got it on. Bad luck for "walking through walls" man for ending up with Sybil but to his credit, she *is* hot.

The Haitian is particularly entertaining. I have no idea how everybody instinctively knows he's Haitian. He just looks like a regular guy to me. But then I've never been good at telling a man's country of origin from his facial features. What amuses me about him though is that the only other Haitian I know is not exactly the type of guy you would associate with superpowers. Although maybe he does have some sort of time manipulation ability which might explain how he's able to move so slowly.

But despite all this and the regular talk of destiny and fate, I never miss it (if you catch my drift). And I'm kind of interested to see what power George Takei is eventually going to sprout.

There'll be an election in the Bahamas this year, and the two main parties are in full swing despite the fact that it hasn't been formally called. The process is not unlike two vultures fighting over a carcass.

The electoral process is similar to that in Canada except the commercials are even less subtle, if that is possible. The two main parties are the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) and the Free National Movement (FNM), both keeping in line with the policy of naming political parties using as vague terms as possible. Given the amount of fiber in my diet lately, Free National Movement probably doesn't mean the same to me as it does to the average Bahamian.

But give credit where it's due. The FNM does have the most entertaining campaign, highlighted by this little ditty. That's right, nothing says "we can lead a democracy of 300,000 people" better than a song with a caribbean lilt called "Voting Them Out".

The local call-in show has been no less amusing. It's hosted by the enormously patient Mike Smith who I'm sure is feeling like a career as a kindergarten teacher would probably involve more mature arguments than the ones he's dealing with these days. Most calls have been thinly-veiled attacks on one party or the other and a good chunk of them get into a pissing contest as to whose rally was bigger. These can be pretty funny when interspersed with phrases from the local vernacular, like "Girl, you don gotta wake up and smell wachu bin SNIFFIN'!" Abbott and Costello could only dream of coming up with one-liners like these people can.

But again, credit where it's due. Mike Smith, it must be said, is masterful at dealing with people on both sides (mostly with a terse, "thanks for the call" before moving on to the next one) and stopping to chat with people who have something useful to say, usually someone under the age of thirty. I particularly loved his response to one caller asking who he was going to vote for: "None of your business, next caller."

As my mind wanders while I wait on hold with Delta Airlines, I feel the urge to pontificate about customer service representatives (CSRs) and how I handle them. I know plenty of people that talk to these people and at the first sign that things aren't going to go their way, they immediately lay into the person at the other end. CSRs have, no doubt, come to expect this and the screamers probably think they're going to get what they want by being beligerent.

That may be true in some cases, maybe even most. But in my own experience, taking the complete opposite tact gets me good results, too. Take my current example where I'm trying to change the return flight for someone and travel has already started. I've been transferred to a couple of different people, all of whom have tried to help me, can't, then transferred me on.

(On a side note, wireless phones with speakerphone and mute buttons built into the handset should be standard issue in all homes.)

I'm now on hold with someone in the Around the World Mileage department (the trip was booked on points). When I explained to her what I wanted to do, her initial response was, "We can't rebook this as an 'Around the World' ticket if it wasn't originally booked as one" whatever that means. My response: Oh gosh, that's a bit of a bummer, isn't it? The other fellow couldn't find a flight and said you might be able to help me.

To which she replied: "Well, let me see what I can do." And she has now on hold with another airline to check availability for one of the legs in the trip.

In short, I feel I get good service when I'm overly nice to people. Plus it keeps me optimistic rather than dealing with the headache I get when I yell at someone. Besides which, when people start bitching at me, that does *not* encourage me to help them out. And I've talked with CSRs who confirm that when people get nasty, they do the bare minimum they need to keep their jobs.

My call with Stephanie at Delta Air Lines is over now. I joked around with her, asked her where she's been in the world, talked a bit about her job. I am now in virtual possession of a rebooked return ticket from Singapore to Nassau for Mrs. Hillbilly. And she was originally going to transfer me to another department.

Yes, the re-booking process could use some streamlining. Yes, there are CSRs who are just plain grouchy. Yes, there are limits to what CSRs are allowed to do. Yes, not everyone is going to try to help you just because you're nice. But why ruin both your days by yelling?

Give it a try sometime. You'd be surprised how much headway you can get just by saying, "Oh gosh, are you sure?" when someone tells you something you don't want to hear.

I have this theory about Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and it goes like this: there was only one dwarf but he had seven personalities. And they manifested themselves because they were trying to keep up with the demands of a girl. That is, they were not unlike a father whose wife had gone on a business trip for a week and a half leaving him to care for their seven-year-old daughter who is learning how to play her dad a lot faster than she's learning math.

The missus has been gone the last four days and will be off gallavanting for the next six. I know she's gallavanting and having all kinds of fun because at the moment, I'm not and it helps me keep a bitter mood if I imagine she's in a better temper than I am. (If Realistic Hillbilly were here, he'd say she's currently in the first hour of helping with a week-long seminar in oil and gas economics so she's probably having a worse time than I am but let's assume for the sake of argument, that she's out partyin'.)

My own temperament has gone through a few dwarves before settling on Grumpy for the evening. The young'un and I tend to chill out a bit too much when left to our own devices. Started on Happy and hit Dopey and Sleepy before I landed on that most surly of little people after she threw a Donald Trump-like fit during a heated real estate deal in a game of Spongebob-opoly. (To be fair to Syd, she did behave much better than Trump and Rosie O'Donnell did during their little spat. But that's not hard. After all, she *is* seven years old already.)

Anyway, it's times like this that I think back to my own childhood. I've often felt I'll never be famous because my childhood was too happy. My parents always seemed to have it together. But then I think of my recent stabs at fatherhood (or as I call it: parenting by Sybil) and take comfort in the fact that they probably just learned to fake it the same way I have.

Earlier, I was taken aback at just how conspiratorial her smile had become when she came bouncing around asking if she could have a Fruit Roll-up for dinner. (My response: "Ya, whatever...and what are you grinning at?").

But other than a recently-renewed vendetta against Nestle's Quik (I swear on the grave of someone I moderately care about, I *will* get that crap to dissolve completely in liquid before I die), I think I'm coping. If only I can get the voices in my head to stop &*%$-ing *whistling* already!