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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News of the Day August 15, 2009

Yesterday, I read the Baltimore Sun from beginning to end and could not find a pleasant story. The main reason I get that paper now is to see if me or any of my friends are included in the obituaries. I do like the Carroll County Times for their local news and Elaine likes to spend lots of time checking out their classified ads.

For instance: Today, Elaine was intrigued by four ads:

For sale: Nick nacks and Tubberware. (Somehow that makes sense.)

For sale: Building supplies, antquies and toys.

Free: A puggle. 7 months old.

Free: 1986 model toilet, you haul.
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I was intrigued by a few stories in the Sun:

01. Michael Phelps (you know, the swimming ace) was hit by a woman running a red light. His Cadillac Escalade (what else?) was damaged extensively, but Michael and his passengers were unharmed. What bothers me about this story, was that he was treated like a criminal by the policeman, and questioned as though it was a DUI case and he was the perpetrator.

02. Let me quote the Sun on this: "A 52-year old Howard County woman, whose mother was sentenced to six months in jail for abusing cats, must serve a day in jail for each of the 74 cats that died."

Nese Icgoren, a former equestrian champion in Turkey, said that she couldn't get her 81 year old mother to properly care for a small family of cats, then failed to do anything when that family swelled to over 100.

Huh? Can a daughter be penalized for not being able to force her mother to do something? Am I missing something? The judge, in passing sentence said: Those lives matter.. every one of them.

74 cats times 9 is 666 .. so should that have been the number of days served?

03. A prisoner from Jessup, Maryland choked the sheriff that was transporting him and disappeared. Somewhere in Howard County is a 20 year old with leg irons and handcuffs who outran groups of police officers, tracking dogs and helicopters, through a rural area. This sounds like a movie script.

04. An abused kitten is nearly ready to be adopted. Kids began by throwing rocks at the kitten and then poured a liquid on her and set her afire. The kitten was able to extinguish the flames, but the kids then set her on fire a second time. The doctor treating her says in spite of all she has been through, whenever anyone goes by her cage, she stands up and purrs.

I've seen a lot of evil acts in my life, mostly by children. I knew one child who made a point of punching every 4 or 5 year old within arms reach when he was around 11 years old. Of course, he had to have a course adjustment by that famous "bully beater".. namely me (but that is the subject of another blog.)

05. Headline: Defense tries to exclude DNA evidence in Harris murder. (No comment!)

06. Headline: 40 year sentence for shooter in killing of court witness. (Not enough time!)

07. The infamous "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest run by a Sacramento radio station in 2007 is still causing trouble for that station. One woman died and another now has a psychological fear of drinking water. (The ladies were given massive amounts of water to drink, and the one who did not pee in a three hour period won the contest.)

08. Jerry Seinfeld will be Jay Leno's first guest on his new show. One of my elderly friends was lamenting the fact that Conan O'Brien had taken Leno's place; she thinks that Conan's humor is juvenile. When I reminded her that Leno will be back, and at 10 pm instead of 11 pm, so she would be able to get to bed earlier, she seemed relieved. (She did say, as I have said many times, Johnny Carson was the best of the best on the Tonight Show.)

Elaine and I watched Leno when he did "Headlines" and when he interviewed the dumb college students. Other than those two segments, we would rather watch a Netflix movie or a DVR movie or go to bed (except that we are nightowls and like to stay up to 2 am.)

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A Vaughansday Two Hour Adventure

10:00 am My Vaughansday adventure for July 20, 2009, began when I met Ray Hartland at the Westminster Senior Activity where he had art works on display. In my estimation, Ray is a fantastic artist, especially in oils. He has also been the President of the Carroll County (Maryland) Artists Guild for three years. I was a member for a couple of the years but had never met Ray.

SEGUE: I joined the Guild because I had seen a display of cartoons among the oils and prints on display at the Carroll Theater. The cartoons were the work of a guy who had worked for me some years before at Social Security. He had not been very happy working with computers so I arranged with Personnel to offer him a job in my home town's SS District Office. He eagerly accepted the job, I wished him well, and I haven't seen him since.

A couple of years later, I went back to my home town and visited the District Office to see how he was making out there. The office manager said: "Who?" "Nobody by that name works here." Apparently, he never showed up and disappeared somewhere in the massive Social Security beaurocracy.

When I saw his display, I decided to join the Guild and get to see him again and learn how his "career" has progressed.. and besides, I thought his cartoons were very well done. In addition, being a kind of caricaturist, I felt that I might fit into the Guild, as he did. However, before I could get to see him, he disappeared again. After joining the Guild and viewing some of their art work, I decided that my work did not rise to their level, so I did not renew my membership.
END OF SEGUE

10:15 am After boring Ray with my stories, I bought a beautiful giclee print of an oil painting of a still-life with red apples and dark tea pot.

SEGUE: Giclee is pronounced GEE'CLAY and is a print of an original prepared in a special printer that holds true to the original and supposedly lasts for 25 years. The print can be put on canvas and it is extremely hard to tell the print from the original.
END OF SEGUE

Elaine and I have been arguing about furniture and art work for the house for three years now, which is why our house is a "work in progress". I hope she will like this print and we can hang it on the wall. (It has the color to match the furniture.) If not, I will take it down to my basement cave and hang it where I can look at it every day. It is good!!

10:30 am I arrived at the Toyota service office in Westminster. On the third of July I received a summons from a Policeman to have a light fixed. The summons told me to have it done.. not for me to replace the light bulb myself. When I had had this situation in the past, the dealerships have soaked me for a service charge, so I expected it now. However, the service manager had a guy come out and stick a bulb in while I waited and only charged me for the bulb ($3)! That's another great thing about living in Westminster.

Also, while I waited for the ten minutes in the new shiny waiting room in the new shiny Toyota dealership, I speed read a Time magazine with an interesting article about Michael Jackson' s life and plastic surgery. Lots of things I had never realized before, if we can trust Time.

10:40 am I walked into the new shiny Toyota new car display area and was immediately accosted by a new shiny saleslady. She seemed disappointed when I was that I just wanted some brochures. But I did ask her about the roominess of a new shiny Toyota Venza. Not as much as I would like to have. I took away brochures for the Highlander, the Avalon, the Sequoia, and the Sienna. My 2002 Camry is still running fairly well, but lots of funny noises and rattles and mysterious dents are telling me that I may need to spend a bunch of money soon. Maybe its time to go in debt for a new car again.. Hmmm.

10:50 am Entrance into one of the local department stores looking for some new clothes. They advertise 30% off just for walking in, 30 to 50 % if you use the mailer coupon, and an additional 30 % off if you use their credit card. Figuring all that in.. if I buy something from the clearance rack, they will have to give me some money.

Unfortunately, they don't carry dress slacks (we call them pants) that fit me unless I want to get the kind that has an expandable waist (made in Pakistan). I have some of those and they keep falling apart. My waist of 46" (gasp!) is too large for any of their lines of clothes. Besides, they don't alter leg lengths, so if I want the pants to fit my short little legs I have to pay an extra $7 a pair to a tailor.

So, I gave up on pants and tried shirts.

Why do dress shirts (made in Thailand) cost so much? Is this inflation? No shirt should cost more than $1.98, just like I paid for my shirts in 1952. You can tell that I haven't bought any shirts for a while. I'll be damned if I'll pay $38 for a shirt! I'll stick to my old stuff, thank you.

11:15 am Time for WalMart. Why is it that you have such a hard time finding a parking spot at this store while hardly anybody is parked at the other department stores. Elaine says their prices are better, but I don't see it that way. Then again, I am a man.

I bought a small stapler. (made in China) I am tired of using staplers that don't completely connect at the back of a document. I also bought a 12" wooden ruler (made in China) to complement my other one, so I don't have to keep track of just one.

In the parking lot, an old man (almost as old as me!) in a giant SUV was eating and drinking and throwing his wrappings out the window. Being disgusted, but not being as civic-minded or brave as Elaine's daughter who accosted a lady throwing a "used" magazine out of her car window, I gave him a dirty look and moved on as he took a big slug of some kind of alcoholic drink.

11:45 am I deposited two Netflix returns in the drive-by mail box. The two movies were:

Desparaux. About some kind of cartoon mouse with big ears. Elaine loved it.. I escaped to the basement.

Inherit the Wind. A Classic! About the Scopes "Monkey Trial". Gene Kelley was ok as an obnoxious H. L. Mencken, but didn't have the Baltimore Bard's style or wit. Spencer Tracy was excellent as was Frederick March. However, the movie can never show how truly crazy the world was in 1927. (and probably still is)

11:55 am Dell computers called me and said that my laptop has been fixed and will be delivered shortly by Fed-EX. Yay!

So.. this was my two hour adventure for today. I had a lot of fun and look forward to the next time my "keepers" take off my chains and let me roam.

The Third Eye

I'm sure that everyone has now heard about the reconstructed Stonehenge in Georgia. It boggled my mind when I visited the Stonehenge in England. Lots to think about there. There is some tie-in with Rosicrucianism, in some people's minds. I belonged to the Rosicrucians when I was in my late teens and really "got into it" for a while.

I spent a lot of time trying to focus blood flow on my "third eye".. i.e., the pineal gland. I even bought a crystal on a chain to dangle and stare at for long periods of time. (I know.. you might say: "Get a life!" Well I did have a "life" then.. lots of it, but mysticism filled a bit of that time.) I did have some fun with my crystal when I was in the service in Germany.

At one time, at our mountain-top Air Force "retreat", a new guy showed up. A "wise guy" who thought that the world revolved around him and that he knew more about anything than anyone else. In a word.. he was OBNOXIOUS! He had to be taken down a peg.

My buddies and I decided on a plan. In our barracks we slept in double decker bunks. I slept on the bottom of one and the wise guy slept on the top bunk.

I hung my crystal from the springs of the top bunk. Wise guy asked some of the men, "What's that thing that Vaughan hung from my springs?" They told him it was my "gazing crystal".. which I used to increase my hypnotism prowess. WG said: "Ha Ha BS!" But the men told him that it was true.. Joe Vaughan had the power to gaze into that crystal and then hypnotise anyone to do anything he wanted them to do. WG laughed again, but not quite as loudly.

I made a point of gazing into my crystal whenever WG was in the vicinity. Meanwhile, the men told him that one of my powers was to hypnotise people in their sleep. WG was getting quite interested and a little scared by then. In fact, he began to sleep a lot less and became a lot less belligerent, especially when I was nearby. In time, he decided not to be quite as much of a pain and even began to be friendly towards me. When the group decided that he had somewhat reformed, I made a big show of giving up hypnotism and pretended to throw away my crystal.

WG and I did become friends, but I never let him know that the hypnotism bit was a gag.

For a while I did study hypnotism and also sleep learning. I hooked up earphones to my Grundig tape recorder every night and listened to language tapes while I slept. I don't know if it did any good, but I did reach a point where I could think in German and understand French a little better than before. (I did some of this sleep learning later at Boston University and I do think it helped me learn languages, especially spoken Russian.)

Speaking of extra eyes.. have you ever seen the movie: Reflections in a Golden Eye? I think that this is one of the best movies ever made. It's a psychological marvel.. starring Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando. I've seen it several times and each time I see things in it that I hadn't noticed before. Isn't that one of the characteristics of a classic? If you use Netflix, order the movie.. you will be glad you did.

Incidentally, speaking of Netflix.. we have a number of movies set up on Roku.. so we can watch whenever we want to.. and over and over if we want to. One of the movies is another phychological marvel.. a play that has been adapted to the screen and one that won lots of awards for Elizabeth Taylor... Whose Afraid of Virginia Wolfe? I've watched the first ten minutes three times now.. Liz and her co-star, Richard Burton have a fantastic interplay of lines. I may finish watching the whole movie sometime soon.

I love to segue.