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.
..........................................................

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.