A Snowy October Day in 2011

Surprise!  For the fifth time in recorded Maryland history, we are experiencing snow on an October day.  This, for us senior citizens, cancels three functions  that we were planning to attend today.  So, that means that I have time to update this blog for October 2011.

01.  Good News for Inebriates Down Under!

On this morning's Wait, Wait, Dont Tell Me show, a news clip mentioned that rubber sidewalks are being installed somewhere in Australia.  Those great Aussies love to slug down their giant Foster's Beers each night, and this will help them avoid hurting themselves as they careen down the street towards home.

Take a look at some of Foster's great commercials.  Be forewarned..it may take a long time to load, and you may  have to submit proof of your age!  However, if you like beer, you will probably think that it is all worth it.

http://www.fostersbeer.com/

02.  Royal Perqs

Also mentioned on the WWDTM show today was a section about nice things that you can have if you are members of the UK royalty, such as:

Help with Pressing Matters

For instance, the Prince of Wales has a servant who irons his shoelaces.

Help to eliminate Encrouchments

For instance, the Earl of Mountbatten has a servant who lubricates the Earl's tight pants so that he can slip into them easily.

What about the Duke of Windsor?

03.  Seattle's Best

After I sent a nasty email to NETFLIX, they reactivated my ROKU and now, once again, I have access to both mailed-to-me movies and online NETFLIX selections.  To celebrate, I pulled up and watched the first two episodes of the Frasier TV show.  It started in 1993 and I loved to watch it then because it always made me laugh.  It still does.  (La Comedia e Stupenda!) 

Two segments on these early shows knocked me out.

Lupe Velez

Roz told Frasier the story about the supposed suicide of Lupe Velez, the hot-blooded vixen of 1940's movies.  When she was in her forties, she decided to commit suicide and stage it so she would always be remembered.  She put on her finest clothes and had her beautiful bed draped with the finest coverings, and prepared by drinking some of the finest champagne and exquisite food.  She planned to then take poison, drape herself over the bed provocatively,  and await notoriety.   However, she must have eaten too much of that good food, got nauseous and was instead found drowned with her head in her toilet bowl.   She did achieve her notoriety alright, but perhaps not the way she would have wanted.

http://quiterevealing.com/personal/cafeq/fdtextlupe.htm

Punxsatawney Phil?

Frasier comes out of his bedroom in a disheveled manner, wearing a loose bathrobe.  During an argument with Roz, his bathrobe opens by accident.  Roz then delivers the line that I think is the funniest line I have ever heard on a TV sitcom:  "Oh.. I see that we will be having six more weeks of Winter."

04.  Gangsters!

The Brits are upset.  English kids are betting money on the game of marbles!  What next!

The Americans are upset.  American kids are betting money in online poker!  Moral depravity!

Members of the U.S. Congress are upset.  People who play the slots are now being deceived into thinking they are on the verge of winning, because of interactive messages now appearing on the slot devices that say things like: "Wow!  You just missed winning $1,000 by 4 pulls.".. or words to that effect.  A Congressional Hearing was held last Tuesday.  I hope that I can pull up some of this session on CSPAN and learn what to avoid when I go to Nevada.

No.. I don't really gamble.. just like all senior citizens, when I go to a slot machine parlor, I take $20 and when I lose that, I quit.  Besides, the slots are no longer fun.. they have taken away the buckets and the coins that would flow out of the machines when you won.. some have even taken away the metallic sounds.  Damn spoilsports!  I think I'll stick with the Maryland Lottery; at least, with them, I can play by mail and once in a while get a $2 winning check in the mail.

By the way, statistics show that the top three "sports" watched on TV are:

   1: NFL; 2: NASCAR; 3: POKER

05.  Pass me the Bacon, please.

For many years, certain people have maintained that Shakespeare did not have the brains or education to write the plays that list him as the author.  Since he was "just an actor", he did not have the "smarts" to write something like Hamlet or MacBeth.   The real author obviously must have been a nobleman who didn't want anybody to know he wrote them.

In fact, some critics have even gone so far as to ascribe the works to Sir Francis Bacon, (most notably, a lady named Elizabeth Wells Gallup) and state that words in some of the plays are cryptograms.  Sir Francis had developed a "biliteral" alphabet that used multiple type fonts/faces for letters of the alphabet and she had determined, by using this code to lines in Shakespeare's folios, that messages appeared.  For example purposes:  By assigning coded letters to the type faces on one line of Hamlet, the decoded line might then read: I Bacon am the author of this play.  And, yes, that was shown to work out in many cases.

However, a husband and wife team of cryptographic geniuses  (William and Elizabeth Friedman) also showed that the following might also be read by using the same alphabetic scheme:  I Mark Twain wrote this damn play.

Check out this background information for the Friedman's.  I think that you will find it interesting.  There are also whole books covering the Bacon Theory and how the Friedman's debunked it.

http://kakopa.com/geo/friedman.htm

Much other work over the years has been done to debunk the Bacon is Shakespeare theory.  For one thing, existing writing by Bacon does not come anywhere near the classiness of Will's work.

Anyway... what I am trying to show is that the theory of another (nobler) author of Shakespeare's works was long ago debunked.  So, why the sudden appearance of the movie Anonymous?

Roland Emmerich, the noted director of a lot of spectacular movies such as Godzilla, has a hit on his hand.. with remarkable photography and acting.  But, one must ask why he has to rationalize this work by coming up with ten reasons to defame the bard?  (Methinks thou may protest too much.)

http://www.traileraddict.com/trailer/anonymous/featurette-roland-emmerichs-10-reasons

I will order the movie from Netflix and probably will enjoy it.. however, I will still consider it a fictional story unless some other evidence comes up to convince me otherwise.

Goodby for now.
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Random Ramblings as the Weather Cools

I'm going to do a lot of jumping around today.

01. Chan. Do you remember the Charlie Chan movies? They were the "B" movies that were shown in double feature shows. I always liked the Charlie Chan movies more than the "A" movies.

Charlie always had a saying to educate his "Number 1 son", and us kids would walk around after the movie, saying those clever aphorisms that we had heard.. usually not understanding them..

A few of these aphorisms:

Politeness golden key that opens many doors.

Long road sometimes shortest way to end of journey.

Action speak louder than French.

Can cut off monkey's tail, but he is still monkey.

Confucius says: A wise man questions himself; a fool others.

Cornered rat usually full of fight.

If befriend donkey, expect to be kicked.

Advice after mistake is like medicine after dead man's funeral.

Confucius says: No man is poor who has worthy son. (Charlie's number one son was usually Key Luke, who sometimes almost solved crimes by himself.)

One that I liked (but I'm sure Charlie never said) was "Confucius says: 'Many man smoke, but Fu Man Chu!'"

Over the years, several actors have portrayed Charlie Chan:

1936 Warner Oland
1946 Sidney Toler
1948 Roland Winters
1957 J. Carol Naish
1971 Ross Martin

Check out this great Chan site:

http://charliechanfamily.tripod.com/

02. Chinese Fortune Cookies: Years ago, fortune cookies displayed Charlie Chan-like aphorisms. Now, they've been updated a bit. Here are the last three that I received when I broke open my cookies:

Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing perfectly.

A lifetime of happiness lies ahead of you.

Anyone can memorize things, but the important thing is to understand it.

You have an important secret.. guard it well.. for at least one month.

It's time you asked that special someone out on a date. (Sorry, I'm spoken for.)

I have personally examined every detail of this garment to make sure it meets our high quality standards. Inspector 41. (Wait a minute! How did this get into a fortune cookie?)

These "fortunes" also contain language lessons now. Examples:

Boss: Lao-ban
Friendly: you-hao
Summer Camp: xia-ling-lying
Medical doctor: Hai-zi

But wait... That's not all.. they also have lucky numbers! Play them and you are sure to win loads of money.

03. Lucky numbers. My grandfather loved to play the numbers. He always played 437 (boxed). He couldn't afford to play much money.. so he usually played ten cents a bet. But when he was "flush", he would play numbers recommended by an out-of-town newspaper.. The Afro American.. out of Baltimore, Maryland. (I'm sure he wasn't quite sure where Baltimore was at the time.) He always told me that those numbers were the best you could get.

He would get his Afros delivered weekly by an ancient African-American, who would walk two miles uphill to get to our house (probably his only customer in the West End of New Bedford, Massachusetts.) Rain or shine, he would struggle up the hill just to deliver the 5 cent newspaper to my Grandfather.. and, perhaps, take a small numbers bet from him.

My grandfather "hit" the numbers quite often. Usually for around $7.00. Not much, but enough to buy 140 five cent beers at the Buttonwood Cafe, where my Grandfather "held court." He was called "Senator Vaughan", and he looked the part.

03. Alphabet soup at Spring training? Some time ago, one of the famous Baltimore Orioles pitchers was stopped at an early morning traffic check in Florida, and was asked to recite the alphabet. He tried vainly to do so, and afterwards told the policeman: "But I'm from Alabama, and they have a different alphabet." He was then arrested and charged with driving under the influence.

04. RIP Jack. Today, as I was "getting organized", an obituary fell out of some papers.

Jack S. Futterman passed away on March 22, 2000. I attended his funeral.

Jack was the Social Security Administration (SSA) manager responsible for the establishment of the Social Security Alumni Association, the organization which I have been president of, off and on, for 15 years. Jack had the vision of retirees being utilized by SSA for special projects, and also meeting regularly in social settings.

The Alumni Association has always volunteered to do SSA's bidding. A few years ago, they did use some retirees to pass out brochures in a shopping mall, and that worked very well. We are still available, but SSA apparently has enough staff to do all of their work without calling upon us. However, individuals with specialized experience have been rehired temporarily to help SSA when conditions warranted it.

Thanks to Jack, the SS Alumni Association has been a viable organization now for over 30 years.

Jack was quite an artist in his spare time and when he passed away, his son donated several of his father's paintings to the organization. A couple of them are hanging in our office. One is a rendition of a local church; the other is a still life with various artifacts.

05. Useful tip. Use empty toilet paper rolls or paper towel rolls to store appliance cords. It keeps them nice and neat and you can write on the outside what appliances they belong to.

06. Hairspray. (Not the Baltimore movie) During the 1960's one of SSA's famous computer room operators had a marvelous hairdo. Normally tall, with the addition of a foot of hair on top of her head, she was a spectacularly tall lady. Very impressive!

To keep her "do" looking good and appropriately erect, she used lots and lots of hairspray. She spent a great deal of time in the ladies' room spraying.. much to the chagrin of the other ladies, who sometimes came running out coughing and wiping their eyes.

Well.. here is another tip: If flies or bees are bothering you, spray them with hair spray and they will take a quick nosedive.

I'll bet that famous computer room operator never had problems with flies and bees.

07. Bulbs. Another tip. Have you ever had a burned out light bulb break off in your hands. Then you have to shut off the circuit breaker, get out the pliers and wrestle with getting the bottom of the bulb pulled out of the socket.

To avoid this problem: whenever you need to insert a new bulb, rub some vaseline on the threads. Later, when the bulb dies, you can easily remove it. Saves a lot of cussing.

Speaking of bulbs.. when we visited Thomas Edison's home in Florida, we were shown light bulbs that were glowing brightly. We were told that these bulbs had been turned on by Edison himself and were still alive after decades of use. The secret ingredient was not revealed to us, and I'm sure that if we knew it, we all would get those kinds of bulbs and put the bulb manufacturers out of business. (My sister-in-law Linda worked in a bulb manufacturing plant, I wonder if she knew about these bulbs.)

08. Tip for winos. I can't believe this one, and I quote: "Don't throw out all that leftover wine: Freeze into ice cubes for future use in casseroles and sauces."

Does anyone have leftover wine? I'm a very cheap wino.. my doctor says that I should have two glasses of red wine each evening. I try to adhere to his prescription, but not with wine that costs a lot of money.

I have a hard time believing the prices that shops get for wine. Perhaps it was because I spent 4 years in Germany where a good bottle of Riesling cost 25 cents (yes, I know, it was a while ago). Even in Paris, I did not spend a lot for wine. Remember, European water was not usually nice enough to drink.. so people drank a lot of wine and beer. (Americans in Europe mainly drank coca cola at a Cafe Americain.)

My advice.. buy a box of good California wine for about $11 for 5 (count 'em) litres! In my opinion, that wine is just as tasty as any of these highly touted wines that cost over $30 a bottle. Try it, you'll like it.

09. Alka Seltzer. Some more tips that someone sent me via email:

Drop two Alka Seltzer tablets in your toilet. Wait 20 minutes. Brush and flush. Voila.. bright vitreous China toilet bowl!

Drop two Alka Seltzer tablets into a glass of water and immerse jewelry for two minutes. Should polish the jewelry.

Clear a sink drain by dropping three Alka Seltzer tablets down the drain followed by a cup of Heinz White Vinegar. Wait a few minutes, then run the hot water.. and presto! A clear drain.. or so they say.

10. Alka Seltzer. My addiction. I like Alka Seltzer and am probably not going to pour it down any old drain.. I'm going to drop one tablet into a glass of nice cool water, watch it fizz, and then drink it down in one gulp. I've been doing this for years... secretly... until, during a recent doctor's examination, I confessed. Amazingly, he thought it was a good idea.. this is a Cardiologist and he wants me to take an aspirin tablet every evening.. so, since aspirin is in Alka Seltzer, I can substitute.

I mentioned this to my General Practitioner, and he thought it was a good idea too. And I've been having a guilt feeling about this for years. Now I can relax.

One of my Elaines teased me about Alka Seltzer and told everyone that my kids used to stand close to me in the evenings to hear the fizz in my stomach.

My mother-in-law decided she wanted to try Alka Seltzer and asked me what to do. I told her to open the bottle, take out a tablet and drop it in water, wait for the fizz and drink it right down. Later that night, she poured a glass of water, opened the bottle, took out the top item and placed it in the water. After a long period of non-fizz, she tried to help it along by breaking it up with a spoon. Still no fizz. She called me up. I told her that she had taken the foam topping out of the bottle instead of a tablet. After she got over her embarassment, she was successful and became an Alka Seltzer junkie like me.

11. Venezuelan Cleanliness. Harper's Magazine's Index mentions that Hugo Chavez called upon Venezuelans to limit their morning showers to 3 minutes. (Assumes that everyone in Venezuela takes a shower?)

12. U.S. Obesity Problem. Harper's Index mentions that 40% of all food in the U.S. supply chain is wasted. (Waisted?)

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Real Old News

Just like Melville's Ishmael, when the everyday worries become overwhelming, I long for the sea. However, since the sea is over one hundred miles away from Westminster, Maryland, I must settle for some other diversion. Sometimes it is escape to news from "yesteryear."

I'm looking at a copy of The Literary Digest dated October 31, 1908 (101 years ago!) Some items that were of interest to me:

01. An ad showing a young lady with a bow tie sitting at a vintage Remington typewriter. Model 10 has a column selector, and model 11 has a built-in tabulator. (My grandkids may not know what a typewriter is... they probably don't even need to know what a word-processor is, as long as their agile fingers can "text".)

02. An ad for a two month's summer tour of Europe for $250.

03. An ad for GRAFT.."The game of the hour; the game for Election days. More fascinating than Bridge or Eucre... 50 cents."

04. Ad for 1,000 acres in West Virginia for $9,000.

05. Ad for Miss Hess' French School for Young Ladies.

06. Ad for "The 1909 Fad!" This device projects any sort of "Post Card, Sketch, Photograph, or Clipping in all the brilliant coloring" on the wall as a six-foot reproduction. Cost for this machine in its fully assembled form: $5.

07. News about the William J. Bryan and William H. Taft strategic struggle to gain sufficient electoral votes to win the Presidency. Teddy Roosevelt puts in his two cents. (It all sounds so familiar.)

08. News that the United States Battle-ship fleet sailed around the world and in Sydney Australia the fleet was welcomed by 9,000 school-kids grouped to form the words "Hail Columbia" and to trace the pattern in colors of the American and Australian flags.

And then... get this.. in Yokohama, to quote the New York Post: "Toward the close of the reception, at a collation on the after deck of the battle-ship, Captain Okada drank the health of Ambassador O'Brien. Then followed a demonstration that will be long remembered by the Americans. The Japanese admirals and captains raised Ambassador O'Brien on their shoulders and marched around the deck with him, everybody on board wildly cheering. The same performance was repeated with Rear-Admiral Sperry and each of the other American admirals present."

And then, the New York Tribune said "Japan and America are, and are likely to remain for a long time, the chief, we might say the only important, naval Powers in the Pacific" and indicated that this friendly reception should put to rest any suggestion of friction between these two countries.

09. Lots of news about the Balkans and Austria .. sounds like the problems that led up to WWI.

10. News that unemployment in England has reached "painful proportions." Mr. Stewart Gray, the leader of "Hunger Marchers" clashed with the police at Trafalgar Square. About 150,000 men in London are out of work.

11. Sir Hiram Maxim analyzed a "sure fire system" for beating the bank at Monte Carlo, and found that the player would probably win.. "one dollar in 21,474 years."

12. Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Buchanan, of the British Army in India says: "The best way to put a stop to the plague where it is epidemic is to keep cats."

13. Professor Gaston Bonnier of Paris says that "a beehive is a perfect example of the equalitarian product of state socialism."

14. "A system by which a wireless-telegraphic apparatus may control from a central station the clocks of a whole city is now in use in Vienna."

15. Joseph Ruau, French Minister of Agriculture says that "fraud is common in food manufacture, and reminds us that absolute purity is not practicable or necessary."

16. There is now a simple test for distinguishing between butter and "oleomargarin". (Sounds like a time-consuming process utilizing fresh milk and a "stick.")

17. Mr. Israel Zangwill caused a commotion with his play "The Melting Pot", where he implies that Jews will be best off in America by being "absorbed" through marriage. The Jewish Comment (Baltimore) likes his play and agrees with his thesis.

18. Mr. Marc Debrol, French writer, was asked if people in the US are religious in the "real sense of the word".. He replied: "No. The American is too taken up with the practical side of life, too preoccupied with conquests and gain, to be meditative. There is no introspection... in this race for the dollar, the finer sensibilities dry up..." (!) Debrol says that America is a charitable country, but "Charity does not spring from private initiative; it is carefully organised, and in many cases by the churches... The poor must be fed and clothed, not out of pity, but out of prudence; they must not become discontented and revolt, disturbers of the national peace."

19. An ad for the Flexible Flyer, the Sled that Steers. "Send for a free cardboard model showing how it steers."

20. An ad for Whitelaw's Paper Blankets. Sanitary. Healthful. Warm. $3.00 a dozen.

21. An ad for Postum (coffee substitute still sold next to coffees in supermarkets.. I drank it for years. "There are still some well-informed persons who do not know that coffee contains a drug -- caffeine."

22. Ad for Harderfold Hygienic Underwear with the Inter-Air-Space System... "... affording protection against the vicissitudes of our variable climate..."

23. Ad for The Keeley Cure for liquor and drug using.

24. Finally...!! A joke from the Washington Star:

The Crank. "You say there is nearly always something broke about your automobile?"
"Yes," answered Mr. Chuggins, nervously.
"What is it, as a rule?"
"Me."

... so, not much has changed in 101 years.

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Lots of stuff

Wow! Lots of great news today. (Well, maybe not so great.)

01. Manson clan member, Squeaky Fromme, was released from prison. Now, let's see if she moves in with her buddy, Baltimore's own, John Waters.

02. Slovakia has outlawed the speaking of anything but Slovak in Government offices and businesses. Hungarian can be spoken at cultural events, but all jokes must be repeated in Slovak.

03. An Afghan bill just became law and allows a man to starve his wife if she refuses to have sex. In addition, a woman must get a husband's permission to work and fathers and grandfathers are given exclusive custody of children. (sounds like the Taliban is back in power)

04. Somebody asked Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi (72) if it wasn't dangerous for him to be messing around with his 17 year old girlfriend. Silvio supposedly said: "Well, if she dies, she dies." (I know, it's an old joke.)

05. A Spanish study found that women who drink moderate amounts of beer are strengthening their bones because of the plant homones in that drink. (What about men? My bones must be nice and strong.)

06. A Joliet, Illinois spectator gave a boisterous yawn in court and the insulted judge sentenced him to 6 months in jail! (Come on, Judge, a $50 fine maybe... but 6 months? Who elected this judge?)

07. Is a rooster an "alarm cluck?"

08. Chinese astronauts will no longer be allowed to have bad breath.

09. A bank fired an employee for tackling a robber and holding him for police!

10. The Wisconsin State Fair initiated a couple of new treats:

Chocolate covered bacon on a stick.

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches dipped in pancake batter and deep fried.

Ummmm... Yummy!

11. The "birthers" who tried to bash Obama about his birth certificate, showed a picture of what they said was his certificate that showed his birthplace as "Republic of Kenya." As we would have guessed, the Republic of Kenya was not yet in existence when Obama was born. (Some of these "birthers" profess to be "born again" Christians, yet continue to "bear false witness.")

12. A Washington, DC lobbying firm admitted sending forged letters urging oposition to climate change legislation.

13. Elkridge, Maryland police found 28 cats and a guinea pig during a house investigation. They also found two dead cats in the refrigerator freezer.

Now... let's talk about Westminster, Maryland.

Jamison Hensley, writing in the Baltimore Sun, mentioned that football teams, like the Ravens, go to "out-of-the-way" locations, like Westminster, to practice. In fact, he said that the lure of these places is that nothing is happening there to distract them.

Maybe so, but I take this as an insult. There are lots of things going on in Westminster, Maryland. However, most of the activity is not the kind of stuff that would interest so-called sophisticated ball players or sportscasters. For instance:

01. Sixth graders at Northwest Middle School have created a website on the history of Robert Moton High School, a segregated black high school from not so long ago.

02. After a public rebellion a while ago, Senior citizen gamblers could once again play for small stakes money at Carroll County Senior Activity Centers. Jay Leno talked about this a couple of years ago. Obviously, managers of a New York town had their TV sets off when Leno aired this. Last week, they banned daily card games at their Senior Centers because of the money stakes. These poor city fathers will have to learn the hard way, just as they did in Westminster, that the power of the elderly is mighty.

03. Carroll County, Maryland has always been a very safe place to live, in fact, hardly anybody ever locked their car doors, until now. Last week, 15 cars were broken into and items removed. All but one of the car doors were unlocked. The perpetrators will probably be found to be 20-year old males, whose medula oblongatas have not yet matured, and who are heavily into drugs.. that they buy on the street corners of Baltimore City.
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