There is no joy in Charm City!

This is a sad day for those Baltimoreans who were expecting to make a long-overdue trip to the Super Bowl this year.  The Ravens lost a tough one to the Patriots.  I'm sure my Massachusetts relatives are dancing in the streets... while my Maryland relatives are crying in their beer.  Such is life.. there's always next year, guys.

Meanwhile, life (and death) go on. 

01. Football Father Figure Fades Away.

Joe Paterno died yesterday.  On the same day that he died, one of the FM stations aired a mini-interview with him.. again about him and Sandusky.  (Did you "out-of'-towners" know that one of Baltimore's TV sportscasters is named Jerry Sandusky.. and of course you can guess that his life has not been the same recently.)

02.  Media Exposure?

A 47 year old Catholic Priest was recently arrested for sitting in a "shop movie theater" (whatever that is), naked from the waist down.  His Bishop, in this instance, did the right thing and removed him from his post in a Baltimore County church. 

... segue to nudist jokes:

a.  At a nude wedding, the best man is not always the best man.

b.  At a nude wedding, where does the best man hide the wedding ring?

(Sorry about that)

03.  The Newt wins big in South Carolina.

Democrats are celebrating!

04.  Romney goes on the attack!

"Mitt" is going after "Newt" at last.  Democrats are worried.

05.  Oprah is crowned Queen!

At a major book event in India, all eyes turned to Oprah Winfrey, our queen.  Crowds cheered her and followed her around, completely ignoring a "real" queen who was also in attendance.   Maybe Oprah will run as Newt's running mate.  However, based on some dumb things that Newt has said in the past, he probably thinks that billionaire Oprah is receiving food stamps.

06.  Don't mess with Maryland women!

(Oprah worked for Channel 13 in Baltimore for several years.) 

A lady in Chestertown, Maryland got mad because a male friend would not admit that he owed her ten dollars... so, she threw drain cleaner in his eyes and blinded him.

07.  Priorities

I just read where the CEO's of our major religious organizations all have the following schedule of allegiance: 

Christian First
American Second

I wonder if any of the upcoming debate questioners would ask a question about that.  How would the candidates answer?  BTW our founding fathers were almost all Deists. 

08.  Jim Hightower sez:

I've written about gadfly Hightower before.  He claims that "Dubya" (as he calls him), when asked what Americans should do at 911 time, said:  "Go out and shop!" 

Jim picks on lots of "airheads" regardless of Political Affiliation.

09.  Immortality

As some people have noticed, first class postage became 45 cents a couple of days ago.  Elaine asked me to get a lot of 44 cents "Forever" stamps before time ran out.  Our Post Office only had commemorative stamps left.   But so what.. they work.  From now on, all first class stamps will be  "Forever".   Isn't that nice to know?   I remember when I could send a first class letter for (hold your breath) THREE CENTS!  And, at the same time, we got 2 (count'em) TWO MAIL DELIVERIES EACH DAY!  (Boy, am I old.)

10.  Father, Are you a Chaplain in the Navy?


That's the question a lady posed to the Priest mentioned above.. when he said "No".. she said: "That's funny because I can see your navel."

(gasp!)

Jiri Hulcr,  PhD, says that the human belly button is filled with lots and lots of strange bacteria. He is connected to the Belly Button Biodiversity Project.

http://www.wildlifeofyourbody.org/

11.  They're still at it!

Those wacko religiosos from the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, have announced plans to picket the funeral of Virginia Tech Police Officer Deriek Croused.  College students have been advised not to talk to them or acknowledge their presence.  The 40 members of that church are all related and must share similar idiocy genes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westboro_Baptist_Church


12.  Co-bed education?

In the fall of 2012, Towson (Maryland) University will be establishing "gender-neutral" housing options open to students in two dormitories (Halls).  Are frat houses and sorority houses now "gender-neutral", other than on weekends? My, how times have changed. In my day, we had to live in "gender-specialized" caves and write our homework in cuneiform characters on flat rocks.

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Enough!
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A Man's Castle.. and other Items

A young gentleman in Virginia thought that it was ok to walk around inside his own home in the nude. Apparently, a judge thought differently and convicted him of indecent exposure. Two women spied him through his picture window and had him arrested. I thought that one could do what one wanted to in one's own home.. apparently not in Virginia.

I'm reminded of a case from a few years ago. A woman complained that a man was walking around his yard in the nude. The man told that judge that he had a 10 foot privacy fence around his yard.. so how could she have seen him. When the judge asked her this question.. she said that he was directly in view when she climbed the six foot ladder she had placed next to his fence.

Once, my late wife and I carried a message to a brother of one of her friends, who was a member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. At the time, he was visiting one of the other musicians at a cottage near Clarks Cove in New Bedford, Massachusetts. When we knocked at the door, we were escorted in by a nude person and observed several persons in their birthday suits playing a Mozart symphony. This cottage also had a ten foot high fence for privacy. Being New Englanders, we were, of course, shocked.. but this was a private matter and we never would have thought about reporting to the police...besides, we liked the music.

And here are some quick takes to make you think.

01. Singer Andy Williams, beloved by us old-timers, once dubbed a movie song for Lauren Bacall when he was 14 years old. (He has written a new book that is highly recommended, especially for one part that concerns a trip to Oslo. The title is: Moonriver and Me.)

02. A cross-dresser was recently arrested for stealing a $2,000 Chanel dress.

03. North Koreans are being ordered to keep their hair neat and short. No mullets! (But just look at the leader Kim's hairdo!)

04. A study reports that broccoli sprouts may protect against stomach cancer.

05. A German study says that staring at female breasts increases longevity. Oglers in the study had lower blood pressure.

06. Another study showed that women can remember their first pair of shoes, but maybe not their first kiss.

07. Regardless of the extent to which one zooms in on a Mandelbrot Set there is always additional detail to see. (Check it out on the Internet.)

08. Oral Roberts died last week. He was 91. (No comment, except to say Rest in Peace.)

09. Prince Phillip insulted a blind soldier about his necktie. (Apparently, the Prince often speaks without thinking, or so I've heard.)

10. Australian news says that turtle farts are causing an overflow condition in a tank in a public aquarium.

11. During recent pie-eating championships, the contestants were tested for gravy, cough syrup and doping in general. ( Gravy and cough syrup make the gullet greasy and one can then eat more pie.)

Enough!
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Quick Stuff

I only have a little time to squeeze in some weird blog stuff. Let's see how much I can do in a half hour.

01. If "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend," why is a dog man's best friend? Doesn't sound equal to me.

02. Did I hear this right? A small town installed a traffic camera and took in over one million dollars during just the first month. (If true, there must be some kind of riot going on in that town.)

03. I heard that a 93 year old man died and his son found that he had many many magazine subscriptions that extended all the way to the year 2024. (One of our friends could never say "no" to the young folks who came to her door selling subscriptions.. when she died, she probably had lots of these long subscriptions as well.)

04. I saw mentioned in an article in the Nation magazine: Joseph Schumpeter paraphrased Lincoln: "Even if you cannot fool all of the people all of the time, you can fool enough people long enough to do irreversible damage."

05. Mark Twain said: "Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."

(Burning question: During a nude wedding, where does the "best man" carry the ring? Also, at a nude wedding, is he really the "best man"? Sorry.)

06. A recent British study revealed that eating chocolate makes you smarter.

07. Moe Berg, famous baseball player was a linguist, speaking several languages, including Japanese. He led a very interesting life and when I have enough time, I'll write a blog entry about him.

08. American Profile magazine says that Joanne Brunet is famous for her collection of 4,000 packs of gum that she has saved over the last 68 years. The gum is stored in 112 cases. The oldest piece of gum was from 1932, Wrigley's Doublemint.

09. The Carroll Eagle magazine reports that the Hampstead, Maryland highway bypass has now been built. Local residents have waited 40 years for this day. Before the bypass, commuters had a driving nightmare. To satisfy environmentalists, the State Highway Agency had tunnels installed underneath the highway for bog turtles to use to cross, and are using goats to trim the grass, instead of taking a chance on mower blades striking the turtles. The bog turtles are an Endangered Species.

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Miscellaneous Nonsense

Some bloggers are upset that President Obama karate-chopped a fly during a video'd session. Also, some animal-rights organization are sending him some traps so that in the future he can capture flies and put them outside alive. I thought about this as I crushed a mean-looking 2" long spider this morning.

I would rather not kill any living creature, which is one reason why I have never wanted to be a hunter. I was more of a gatherer. (See that new movie: Year One) When I was a teen-ager, I studied Hindu mysticism and was impressed with the fact that some holy men wear mouth masks in order not to breath in any insects and become the cause of their demise.

I've read that our skin is covered with layers of living creatures.. bacteria. Are we not killing them whenever we rub our aching knees or shoulders? Are we not killing ants and other small living creatures as we walk through a meadow? Don't our agents kill crabs, bulls, mackrel, shrimp, etc, etc.

Survival of the fittest. I guess at this point of time on earth, humans are the fittest predators. It certainly wasn't always that way. Although some people don't believe it, humans were not around for the millions of years that dinosaur-like creatures ruled the planet.

And what about the Golden Rule? Would we like to be crushed by a giant spider? I guess we have to maintain a reasonable middle-of-the-road approach to all of this. We should not knowingly kill if it can't be helped. And, yes, I will try to catch an insect in the house and try to let them loose outside.. or at least flush them unkilled down the toilet bowl where they at least have a fighting chance of survival if they can swim.

Segue: I learned today that some baby flaminos in a zoo are scared by pink hand-puppets that their keepers made for them to help them learn how to feed. By the way, baby flamingos are grey.

Another thing that I learned is that a nude soccer game was interrupted in New Zealand by a "streaker". Do you remember "streakers" from decades ago? You guessed it.. this "streaker" was fully clothed.

At this year's spelling bee championships, a young lady won by spelling the word: LAODICEAN.
Holy cow! When I heard this, I searched my memory for this word. I had heard it used in church years ago, I thought.

I looked the word up and found that it means: lukewarm or indifferent in religion or politics.

The word comes from Paul's epistle to the Colossians. He wanted his buddies in the church there to let the Laodiceans know that they should be paying more attention to what he had been teaching about Christ. (Those damnable Laodiceans just were not interested. they would rather be paying more attention to acquiring worldly possessions and doing a lot of sinning.) The word was also used in Revelations. (If you are into Bible lore, you might have some fun tracing the origin of the Laodiceans and where they fit into the scheme of things during Paul's time. When I went to the Baptist summer camp and became a "Royal Ambassador" for two weeks, most of my time was spent inside a cabin studying the "Life of Paul." You might want to think about where Christianity would be today if it wasn't for his salesmanship.)

The newspaper articles that I read about the spelling bee started out: "The Indian-American girl, Kanya Shivashankar won..." Why do we have to use these hyphenated tags in the U.S.? Obama is called the first African-American President. Sotomayor is called a Spanish-American or a Puerto-Rican American.. etc. Aren't we all just-plain "Americans?" Right now, I am trying to find out who my biological father was. For most of my life, I thought that he was an Italian-American (his parents emigrated from Italy years ago.) Since my mother was a Mayflower descendant, should I have been labeled: Joe Vaughan, the Italian-Yankee-American? One of my cousins could be called then a Czech-Yankee-American.

And then, of course, there are Native-Americans. They were immigrants too... since their ancestors reportedly came here over the Bering Straight. We are a nation of "minorities". We are a "melting pot".. and isn't it great to be living in such a diversified country? When we lived in Randallstown, Maryland, our neighbors were of many derivations. Just in our small place called Sonya Court, there were people with Jewish, English, Italian, German, Scottish and Yankee backgrounds. We all got along real well and had fun together. The best part I thought was that we could take part in many of the ethnic celebrations that took place.

Ain't life great!