Odds and Ends

We'll be heading to Ocean City on Sunday, and I need to purge myself of some news comments that I have been saving up. You don't need to read this. I won't get mad.



01. Lester Young, "the President of Jazz" would have been 100 years old last week, if he had lived. He blew a very sweet sax. He died at age 49. (The army discharged him for using marijuana.. its just as well, because he refused to fire a gun and kill anyone.)



02. Somebody named "the great Zucchini" performed in DC last Saturday. What he did, I haven't the faintest idea.. but with a name like that it was probably wonderful.



03. Shoppers grocery shops in Maryland will no longer supply paper towels in their rest rooms. They feel this will help the environment. Instead, mechanical air blowers will dry your hands. Hey.. I've got news for you.. if you have ever been in a Men's Room you would know that men who don't see paper towels do not wash their hands. So, what would you rather have? A paperless environment or germ-infested hand shakes?

04. A company in Spain is making laptop holding bags that show front pages of newspapers as disguise. Urban camouflage!

05. An 87-year old is accused of killing a 91-year old fellow resident in a Columbia, Maryland senior citizen residence. The 87-year old beat the other to death with his fists. He was a former boxer.


My grandfather was forced to go into a nursing home when he was 86 years old, for his own protection. His children thought that he would burn his home down when he lit his pipe. The nursing home just happened to be in the house in which he was born.. in fact, his room was the room in which he was born. He liked to control TV in "his" common room in the building and another octogenarian resident didn't always like what he watched. He and my grandfather used to stand there arguing about TV, punching each other, like they used to do, 60 years earlier. Luckily, they were always stopped before they beat each other to death.


06. The Discovery Channel is starting a 5-year series called "Curiosity". Some of the episodes will be called: "Are we alone in the Universe?", "What is a virus?", "What is consciousness?", and other titles designed to bend our minds.


07. Cal Ripken, Jr's Number 8 is back at Camden Yards. Four guys had kidnapped it for a while.


08. Nicolas Sarkozy is getting ready to talk about a proposed carbon tax that would raise the cost of driving a car or heating a home in France. Will the French stand for more taxes? "Let them eat gas!"

09. A proposed tower building as tall as the Empire State Building has been circumcised in New York City. The City Planning Department ruled that 200 feet would have to be lopped off of the top of the building so that it would not upstage the city's long-reigning tallest building.


10. Bose has come out with the QuietComfort 15. It is a noise-cancellation headphone. Supposedly, for $300, you no longer have to hear "the rumble of the subway train, the rattle of the taxis..." as Stephen Williams of the New York Times reports.


11. Lang Lang, a 27-year old Chinese pianist is being called "Bang Bang" for his noisy rendition of one of Chopin's etudes.

12. A Republican candidate for governor of Idaho, Rex Rammell, heard someone talk about tags bought by hunters to allow them to shoot wolves. When that person also mentioned there should be tags for killing the President, Rammell said: "Obama tags? We'd buy some of those." He later told people that this was a joke.. and "besides, Idaho has no jurisdiction to issue tags in DC." Big joke, eh, Rex? What a jerk!

13. Along the same lines, the head of the Carroll County Republican Party has made it known that she is very upset that the name for September 11 was changed through Democratic efforts from Patriot's Day to A Day of Remembrance and Service. Huh?!

I am now an Independent and can look objectively at the utterances of both parties... but utterances like this one and the one before cause me to wonder what the devil is going on with the current members of the Party of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln was a uniter and not a divider.

14. Katharine Q. Seelye wrote about some statements that independents believe and disbelieve about Health Care Reform:

Independents believe these.. says Katharine:

The Federal Government will become directly in involved in making personal health care decisions for the public. (MYTH)

Health care will be rationed. (DEBATABLE)

Taxpayers will be required to pay for abortions. (MYTH)

Independents do not believe these.. says Katharine:

The Government will make the elderly decide how and when to die. (MYTH)

A public option will put private insurance companies out of business. (MYTH)

Illegal immigrants will be covered. (MYTH)

Regardless of the comments made by Rep. Wilson of South Carolina and FOX news, the items labeled MYTH above, remain MYTHS.

15. After all this, I will finish with what is supposed to be a joke.. but is probably a real situation, experienced by many husbands:

One day, a mild-mannered man decides that he is tired of his wife always bossing him around, so he decides to put his foot down and let his wife know, once and for all, who is in charge.

When he comes home from work that night he tells her:

"From now on, I'm the man of this home, and my word is law! When I come home from work, I want my supper on the table. Also, I want you to press a shirt and pants for me to wear tonight, because I am going out drinking with the boys. After that, I want you to draw me a hot bath. And after my bath, guess who is going to dress me and comb my hair?"

His wife replies: "The Undertaker!"

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Think! Or who will think for you?

I just got back from a meeting and the guy next to me made it known that he thinks that Maryland Governor O'Malley "is a jerk". He also said that President Obama "is a jerk". He had no reason for this feeling that he could express. All through the meeting, he kept kibitzing and turning to me for a laugh and approval. I'm afraid that I thought that he was the "jerk".

I recently got a call from a friend wanting me to buy Glen Beck's latest book. I glanced through it at WalMart today and it did not impress me. I have always thought that Beck was a bully. Of course, this is my opinion, and it could be a misconception. But, just listen to how he talks. He does sound to me like a bully. Recent statistics that I have heard about Beck from Ed Schultz indicate that Beck could be losing his sponsors and his audience because of what he says. In fact, Schultz says that his show now has more listeners than Beck's has.

Of course, Rush Limbaugh's audience is very large. I tried to listen to him a few times, but got disgusted with the way he was talking. Even though I felt that George W. was the worse President that we ever had, I did not want to see him fail. What good would that have done for the country? Our Presidents should be encouraged to succeed. Rush doesn't want Obama to succeed in his Presidency and apparently says that on his radio show, or so it sounds in the radio clips I've heard.

Some of the emails that I am getting are once again filled with inaccuracies. As I have said in earlier blog entries, I will no longer open messages that are "forwarded" to me, because they are usually out and out lies.

What I have written above bothers me.

Abraham Lincoln once said:

"I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts."

And that is the crux of the matter. Once again, the right wing is spreading lies and inuendos about the President, the Democratic Congress, Health Care Reform, and the world situation. Well-meaning people are passing this information on without checking it for accuracy. (If it comes to me over the Internet, it must be true." is what I hear a lot. ) I once again ask everyone who reads those words to check the facts of the information that they receive, and not pass on such information unless you know that it is true.
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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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A Spectacular Day!

It's a little cool after some big thunderstorms passed through. Elaine is watching World War II on TV.. lots of blood and guts being splattered around. The movie is about the Navajo code-talkers who did great work in the war, by communicating in their native language, which I've read is only decipherable by one caucasion. One of my friends in the Air Force was called "chief" and was a code-talker. I saw this man, with a chest full of medals, get busted by a young second lieutenant because he was one minute late arriving at a troop ship in New York. I have lots of stories about Chief, which I will write either as a book or as a blog.

Today, I finished my Income Tax!!!!!!! I probably could have squeezed out a few more deductions, but enough is enough.... ! Now it's time to work on Elaine's tax, which is also very complicated.

Yesterday, I began to see a darkening in my right eye, and Elaine saw a bubble in my left eye. Oh, Man! What the devil is aging doing to our bodies? I immediately thought that I was going blind and pushed to get an eye exam moved up to today. The Opthalmologist said that the bubble is caused by my allergies and the darkening is just macular degeneration increasing. Overall, my eyesight is 20-20... with both eyes open, that is. Nothing to worry about, but he did ask me to see a retinologist (sp?) to make sure that my macular degeneration is "dry" and not "wet".. if it is wet, I would have to have immediate laser surgery to stop the leak from my macular. Like I said... kind of.. the devil is attacking our bodies as we get older, especially those of us who have not lived an exactly pure life.

After the exam, I got to wear sun-glasses and pretend I was a movie star. I wonder if I still have the sun glasses that I won in a black jack game in the service from a Baltimorean who was cheating. I probably told the story before, but here goes again. I was watching this guy (let's call him Willy) winning constantly at blackjack. One day I noticed that some of the cards I held had half moons carved in them... just in the low cards.. 2's and 3's and 4's.

Then I noticed that Willy was making the marks with his long fingernails. Armed with this information, I got into the game and eventually took all of his money. All he had left to play was his pair of designer sun-glasses. I won them too, and I know I've told this before.. but Willy was so mad at me that he discharged his 45 at the crypto van where I worked until he got it all out of his system. Then we became friends again.

I don't want to gross you out, but let me tell you about the evenings when Willy wasn't gambling. Willy had the ability to break wind at will and a local German taxi driver liked that and would ferry Willy the 20 miles to Nuernberg and back whenever Willy wanted him to. At Nuernberg, Willy had some girls and men who would pay him for his services in a different manner. So, Willy really did not need any money to go out on the town, drink and carouse. Quite a character. (Oh, did I tell you that Willy was an Air Policeman?)

Well, the Code-talkers are helping to recapture Saigon from the Japanese and some medals are being handed out, so the movie should be over soon. I don't like to watch WWII movies because what is depicted is not the way it happened, or so I've been told by friends of mine who were in it. Most of the time it was pure boredom.. with periodic total chaos. Just like everyday life.

When will human beings learn to be human beings? Last nite I listened to a presentation about Marylanders in the Civil War. There were Marylanders on both sides and they even fought against each other at Gettysburg. However, there was one time when humanity showed itself. After the fighting, both groups met and helped take care of their wounded.

I'm still reading Carl Sandberg's books about Abraham Lincoln. I still find his writing disjointed, but very interesting. It is strange to me, but not surprising, to find that the politicians then were a lot like the politicians today... backstabbing, lying, stealing.. etc. It's a wonder that our country survives. President Lincoln stands out as a beacon of humanity compared to those around him, like Salmon Chase, who praised Lincoln to his face and then wrote to everybody who would listen about how dumb and bad for the country he was. But, Salmon wanted in the worst way to be President. He did not make it, but he did get some distinction.. by appearing on the $1,000 bill (I think.. I haven't seen many of those babies.)

Well, to top off the day, I cooked up salmon pinwheels... salmon and crab. With baked potato and corn on the cob. It was delicious if I do say so myself. Perhaps I should try for a slot on Iron Chef. Of course, it would not have been as delicious as it was if it wasn't for the India Pale Ale that accompanied it.

Many years ago, the British invented India Pale Ale so that beer would not spoil by the time it reached India from Britain. The taste, in my estimation, is sublime.. and far far far different than the watered-down light beer that brewers think we dumb Americans drink. I see people in liquor stores loading up on light beer and I feel like telling them to try "real beer" instead.


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