Happy New Year! 2011! Gasp!

I'm quite pleased with myself. Elaine and I pigged out on pizza and shrimp while we watched the ball drop at Times Square. In spite of that, I only went 173 calories over my daily allotment.

I'm trying to lose 30 pounds and I am using an online program to monitor what I eat and how much exercise I use. So far, I have found it very easy to use and it has a lot of features that I like. If you are interested, take a look at:

http://www.loseit.com/

Based on my diet program, I will reach my goal on July 11, 2011. Hopefully, I am motivated enough to avoid my version of the famous Allen Curve, which I call the Alden Curve, named after a famous Pilgrim relative of mine.

(This Alden Curve works well to show how Gyms make their money ... because most people never follow through with their gym visits.. it also works especially well with diet plans. For instance, when you start, a daily motivation graph line leans upward from zero for about a month. At the end of the month, when it dawns on you that you don't want to diet quite as much, your daily motivation graph line starts to work its way back down to the zero point. When you finally quit your diet, a median line drawn across the graph creates an A. This is the Alden Curve.)

Now, to talk about other stuff.

01. Arachnid Statistic? Somebody has reported that 20% of people engaging in sexual activity, maintain an open contact with the Web at the same time. (How did they get that statistic?)

02. Car Talk: If you visit the Car Talk website, you can see all of the famous staff names that you have heard mentioned over the lifetime of the radio show. Here are a dozen of those names that I thought were interesting:

Ulanda U. Lucky - Air Traffic Controller

Turner Luce - Animal Control Officer

Dot Matrix - Director of Computer Services

Collette O'Day - Clock Watcher

Phyllis Steen - Art Critic

Dot Snice - Art Critic II

Hugh Jass - Clothing Designer

Ed Amame - Bean Counter

Bud Uronner - Appeals Specialist

Hugo First - Bunji Jumper Instructor

Orson Buggy - Assistant Transportation Coordinator

Eureka Garlic - Breathalyzer Administrator

See them all at http://www.cartalk.com/

03. Litigation. Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me reports that the mayor of Batman, Turkey is suing the makers of the Batman movie because they have not paid royalties for using the town name.

04. Fishy: Connecticut now has a State fish: the shad. (I wonder what ever happened to an SSA worker named Fred Shad?) Is Massachusetts State fish the scrod? (Check out the words to that famous song: Crabs for Christmas.. my favorite song of the season.)

05. Pay Scale: I may have mentioned this before. Mayor Bloomberg of New York City gets a yearly salary of just $1. However, he only gets 93 cents because 7 cents gets deducted for Social Security.

06. Conspiracy Theory: Carroll County Times (Maryland) columnist Tom Zirpoli says that one of the candidates for Governor of Colorado wants to end the city-wide bicycle rental program in Denver because it is a first step in bringing the US under UN control.

07. Necessity: While the Carnival Cruise Line's Splendor was stranded off of Mexico. The U. S. Navy airlifted a supply of Spam so that the strandees could have some protein.

For those of you young folks who have only heard of one kind of spam, check out this site:

http://www.spam.com/

08. Ailurophiles vs. caninophiles: Fellow Mensan, Richard Lederer, writes:

"Cats are smarter than dogs. (This must be true. Tests conducted by the University of Michigan concluded that while a dog's memory lasts no more than five minutes, a cat's can last as long as sixteen hours, exceeding even that of monkeys and orangutans. And you never see eight cats pulling a sled.)"

"Dogs drool; cats rule."

"If you command your dog to 'Come here', he runs right over with a 'Yes, what can I do for you?' The cat's response is, 'Put it in writing, and I'll get back to you later.' This is why dogs have masters, and cats have staff."

09. True adventure: A new biography by Geoffrey Wolff called: The Hard Way Around outlines the life of Joshua Slocum. Joshua was a young ship's captain who had many adventures, such as violent storms and mutinies even before he left Fairhaven, Massachusetts in 1898, and sailed alone around the world for three years. (Fairhaven is across the Acushnet River from New Bedford (my hometown) and there is a little park with a monument to his voyage next to the river and right near a wonderful Bed and Breakfast, which commands a marvelous view of the New Bedford harbor right out of the bedroom windows.)

10. Reward for speeding: A Massachusetts woman was arrested for throwing a bag of dog poop at a speeding car. It went through his open window and hit him in the face. She has been charged with assault.

I may have mentioned this before, but when I was about ten years old, a nasty guy working at cleaning up a yard, flipped dog poop at me as I rode by on my bicycle. This gave him a marvelous laugh. (I wonder if he was still laughing as he surveyed the flat tires on his truck.)

11. Hard to believe, but true: Google has logged almost 1,000 miles on their self-driving Toyota Priuses in California. Robot cars don't drive drunk, distracted or sleepy. (What happens when a State Trooper tries to pull them over for an equipment violation?)

12. Religious knowledge: According to Tom Harbold in the Carroll County (Maryland) Times.. The Pew Forum on religion and public life conducted a quiz of 32 questions given to a random sampling of over 3,000 people. The persons getting the highest number of questions right were Atheists, Agnostics, Jews and Mormons.

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

Have a great time in 2011!

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

More Foolishness

01. Insight: I know that some people do read blogs like mine.. especially in Japan where some entries are used to facilitate English lessons, or at least that is what I have been told through some emails I have received and from the large number of Japanese comments posted to one of my blogs.This reminds me of a "life lesson" from when I was in the eighth grade:

I had been working hard to build my muscles through weight lifting for a couple of years, but I had overheard some girls saying that guys with large muscles looked ugly. That bothered me for some time, until I visited one of my friends' girl friend's home.. on her bedroom wall, she had posted large pictures of weightlifters and bodybuilders flexing their massive muscles. She and her two girlfriends were "oohing" and "aahing" over the pictures. That is when I gained my insight:

As the song goes: "Some girls don't like boys like me...... ahhh! but some girls do!"

02. Bad taste: Doctors have reported that Pine Nut Syndrome is with us again. This occurs to certain people who eat too many pine nuts. Somehow, their tastebuds are screwed up and they have a tinny taste in their mouths for up to six months. I love to eat pine nuts but have not yet experienced bad taste.. at least not in my mouth.

03. Immigration: Harpers reports that almost 400,000 immigrants have been deported from the US during President Obama's first year in office. (Did you read that, Lou Dobbs?)

04. Super tool: I received an ad for a "pocket saw" that supposedly can cut through any substance known to man. It folds up like a jack knife and can be put into one's pocket, and apparently remain undetected until needed for tasks like decapitation.

05. Itching to know? I read about a site where you can find out about possible infestation in your New York City hotel. http://www.bedbugregistry.com/

06. Cut it out, Imam! In a move that will cause the hairs to rise on the back of your neck, Iran has banned the Mullet haircut. At last Iran has done something I can agree with. http://hubpages.com/hub/Mullet-Haircuts

07. Finally! British researchers have determined that the chicken came before the egg, based on scientific examination of egg shell material! (Now, where the devil did the chicken come from?)

08. Funny phrase: Yesterday I heard a lady tell her friend: "Where have you been? I haven't seen you in a month of Sundays." (Does anyone know where that phrase comes from? I'll bet my brother Joe does.)

09. Wino test: NPR reports that Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is testing a wine buying set up for supermarkets. One accesses a video hookup in a kiosk and a person remotely checks the personal information that you supply (name and date of birth at least) and then, if you are who you say you are, and over 21, you are asked to breathe into a tube and undergo a check to make sure you are not already drunk. Once you pass all these tests, you can open the door and extract wine that is priced from $6 to $22. (Apparently, they are selling 80 bottles a day through the kiosk.)

Just think of the possibilities for the police from this set up. But probably not for homeland security folks, because terrorists may not drink alcohol.

10. Cat burgler. A family has reported that their cat has come home with stolen underwear every night for a while. So far, the feline felon has copped 79 pair of undies.

11. Watchit! Along that line.. I received an ad for "grab and go" underwear. I would be afraid to wear such things. (I guess maybe the above mentioned cat got her thievery idea from this ad.)

12. Button up! Another British study has determined that people with high belly buttons are better at sports because they have a higher center of gravity. (I wonder whose bellies they examined. Did they check out belly-dancers? Pot bellies? Innies or outies? Beer bellies? Pregnant bellies?)

Weekly Dozen

Thanks to The Week magazine, Mensa news, Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, NPR Radio and my experiences, there always seems to be 12 weird things to mention each week:

01. Eureka! At last the lightbulb shown over comic book characters when they have a great idea has been recognized as not just a comic convention. A recent study showed that when an ordinary light bulb is turned on over a person's head, they become more creative. (Flurescent bulbs don't work the same way. Neither do tulip bulbs.)

02. X-Ray Vison. Speaking of comics, the old comic books often had great offers to tempt young kids in order to grab their their ten cent allowances. These offers were usually in the back of the comic book and one of them was an advertisement for X-Ray glasses that could see through clothes.. "just like Superman!" Although tempted, I never gave in and I still wonder how those glasses worked.

Now, 60 or 70 years later, the dreams of adolescent boys have come true. At airports, there is equipment that does look right through clothes. Siegel and Shuster would be amazed that their Superman vision has become reality.

Recently, an airport employee filed suit to stop the teasing and ridicule he has received since he volunteered to try out the new "see through clothes" machine. Apparently, the machine saw more than he would have liked it to see.. while his co-workers looked on and began to laugh and make fun of parts of his anatomy.

03. Underclothes: Perhaps the airport guy should have been wearing lead-lined panty-hose. All kidding aside, there now is panty-hose for men, and, you guessed it, it's called "manty-hose".

Since women don't seem to want to wear panty-hose anymore, other uses must be developed for the ones that are left over. I found that if you took a pair of your wife's old panty-hose and cut the legs with scissors so that you made circular bands, they were ideal for staking us unruly tomato plants. Since I plan to have unruly tomato plants again this year, I will have to get more panty-hose to cut up. This is a problem for some single men.. There is no way that a non-quiche eating man would purchase ladies' underwear. (I'm assuming that "manty-hose" isn't on the market yet. I could be wrong.)

04. Equal Rights: Even though this blog is getting dangerously close to scatology, I must continue for a bit. Congress, this week, has been debating the "Potty Parity Law".. this law would require future Government structures to have enough Ladie's Rooms so that they would not have to wait in long lines. I don't know if this will apply also to public entertainment places like Baltimore's beautiful Lyric Theater. When I attended the opera at the Lyric, the men got into and out of the men's room in seconds, while the ladies were still waiting in line when the curtain rose for the second act. Bigger ladie's rooms or more ladie's rooms.. one or the other is needed, or both.

05. Lung cancer: I was driving down East Main Street in Westminster, Maryland the other day. It was a beautiful Spring day and many people were walking around the downtown of this very safe city. But I noticed that a large number of these strollers had white tubes in their mouths. I also noticed that fellow automobile drivers were also smoking, and many were talking on their cell phones while they smoked and drove. Didn't they get the message?

In 1974, I saw a message printed on a cigarette package, and even though I smoked a pipe and cigars at the time, it caught my attention. It read: "Smoking causes lung cancer." That light bulb that I mentioned went off over my head and I threw away my pipe, tobacco, and cigars, and haven't smoked again.. that was after smoking since my eleventh birthday. I got the message.

06. Oil Spill: Did a Blowout Preventer not work? BP says yes.

07. Cat's Paw: Scientists have determined that male cats are left-pawed, and female cats are right-pawed.

08. Another use for Panty Hose: I forgot this one. You can keep your onions fresh in panty-hose. (Which might be why Manty-Hose has been developed. ... Sorry.)

09. Playboy: Hugh Heffner says that he is planning to have a 3D version of the Playboy magazine. Will that come out before or after the Braille edition?

10. Oldie but goodie! Betty White at 88 years was a smash on Saturday Night Live. She got them the highest ratings they have ever had. She is a treasure and a natural born comic. Who said that old-timers must be neither seen nor heard?

11. Apocalypse soon? Somebody left me a little comic book that was not very "comic". The gist of it is that the Pope will take over the world and set himself up as the Anti-God, and everyone who is not "saved" will be cast into a lake of fire as the true angry God destroys the world. The cover page shows some chubby devils running away yelling "NO". I would suggest that the people who put out this booklet relax and sit back and stop scaring gullible people.

12. Telephone scripts: Once again, I goofed and thought that I could get something done over the phone. I called my telephone company to ask why my bill was $2 more this month than last month. The call went something like this:

Robot Voice: Good morning. Please listen to our menu, as it has changed. Say or press the number .

Joe Vaughan: Two, billing.

RV: I'm sorry, I did not understand.

JV: Two.

RV: I did not understand. Please press the number.

JV: 2

RV: That is not valid, please press the number you desire.

JV: 2

RV: That is not valid. What is your name?

JV: Joseph Vaughan.

RV: What is your name?

JV: Joseph Vaughan.

RV: Please press the letters on the keypad.

JV: joseph vaughan

RV: I am transferring you.

New Robot Voice: Hello. Please listen to the menu choices, as they have changed.

JV: Five

RV: I'm sorry I did not understand.

JV: 5

RV: That is not a valid choice. I am transferring you.

New Robot Voice: Please speak or type your account number.

JV: (account number)

RV: Please speak or type your account number.

JV: (account number)

RV: That is not a valid number, please type or say the number in the right hand upper corner of your monthly bill.

JV: &%^$!!)&!!

RV: That is not a valid number, please type or say the number in the right hand upper corner of your monthly bill.

JV: To hell with it!

RV: That is not a valid number, please type or say the number in the right hand upper corner of your monthly bill.

JV: Good bye!

RV: Thank you for contacting us. We look forward to continuing our telephone services with you.

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