Last year this time, Maryland got over 40 inches of snow. We marked the drift height with magic marker on the door to our deck and its still there.. over 6 feet high. This year, we were blessed with near hurricane winds at the same time. Could it be Groundhog Revenge.. for being disturbed during hibernation?
Yesterday, I spent an hour on my stomach, during 60 MPH winds, trying with all kinds of tools to rescue our storm door from flying off into the ether. I'm glad that the temperature was above freezing. I spoke with Massachusetts relatives who were having the same blast of air, but with wind chills of way below zero.
I spoke with one of my aunts who was celebrating her 91st birthday. She has decided to start counting backwards each year. She is in great shape, so she should be around for a long time.. I hope so. I don't want to hear about any more of my relatives passing on. Since December 8th, I have lost four cousins.. and last week I lost my brother-in-law, Moe. Moe has been like a younger brother to me for over 50 years. During his life, Moe was a pilot, a fisherman, a bear hunter, the owner of an oil business, the owner of an oil-burner repair company, a chef, etc. Besides that, he looked like Sean Connery. He was definitely not your everyday commonplace person.
Once, I asked Moe how he hunted bear. He said that he built a "blind" in a tall pine tree in Maine. Then, he put bait around the bottom of the tree every so often, to get bears used to coming to the tree. Next, early on a cold Maine morning, he would climb up into the blind with his rifle and wait for a bear to come by looking for food. Moe then had one shot to kill the bear. If he missed, the bear would quickly climb up to the blind and have Moe for food.
Now for the news:
01. Iraq. According to the Scripps Howard News Service, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi gave "secret information" about Saddam Hussein's biological weapons to the West.. such information is supposed to have been considered in our decision to attack Iraq. Rafid's codename of "Curveball"
was appropriate because he now says that he lied. I wonder how his confession sounds to the survivors of 100,000 dead Iraqis? You just cannot trust anybody these days, can you.
02. Mute? I'm told that this is the fifth year in a row when Justice Clarence Thomas has not said even one word of interrogation during Supreme Court pleadings. One hopes that he will recuse himself from the upcoming Health Care deliberations because of what I have read about his wife's supposed connections with insurance interests.
03. Phobia. I just learned that the word anthophobia is defined as the fear of roses. So, for all guys who forgot to get flowers for Valentines Day, they can tell their girl friends that they just didn't want them to get scared.
04. Another phobia: I also learned that the word pogonophobia is defined as the fear of beards. So, this must have been why I refused to take the Santa Claus job this Winter. I did not want to scare little kids.
I must admit that I am afraid to shave off my beard because there may be lots of wrinkles under there. A lady told me the other day that I certainly did not have many wrinkles for a man of my age.. am I to assume that she has x-ray vision when it comes to beards? If she saw me in my bathing suit, she might change her mind.
05. Swimmers. Speaking of bathing suits.. I wonder if I can make a citizen's arrest of a couple of guys who show up to swim in a pool where we exercise each week. These two guys are in their 50's or 60's and have massive beer bellies that completely hide their "speedo's". A ghastly sight! At least, I wear boxer swim trunks pulled up high over my belly so I don't shock the sensibilities of my fellow swimmers. (There oughta be a law!)
06. Freebie: The following classified ad was published in the Carroll County (Maryland) Times some time ago: Free: "Rooster: 6 month old Bantam, black with beautiful coloring throughout. Must be for pet only. Great for a horse farm. His name is Chase, because that is what is does."
07. Absolution App: Great news. I've heard that there is an IPHONE app that can be used to store your sins until the end of the week, when they can be downloaded to a priest of your choice. This should be a great time-saver.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12391129
When I first began courting my late wife, we frequented a Polish Catholic church for mass. The mass at her French-Canadian neighborhood church sometimes lasted for two hours on a Sunday morning. However, the Polish church mass was on Saturday night and lasted for just a half hour. Another great time saver.. we thought. Her parents didn't seem to care for the idea, but except for the announcements being in Polish instead of French, the Latin was the same.
08. Pew. Speaking of church, over the years, we became rather remiss in church attendance, in fact, once we lived very close to a Catholic church, but had never been inside. However, upon the birth of our first daughter, my wife's parents took a trip to Maryland to see the baby. Since they would be in Maryland on Sunday, they wanted to go to mass.
Not wanting to tell them the secret of our non-attendance, I lied to them and said that we went to the nearby church for mass. Since my wife had to stay with the baby, I escorted her parents to the church, which was filled with people. I did not see any available pews to sit in. However, there was a flight of stairs off to the side, so I guided my in-laws up the steps. My father-in-law, said: "Are you sure we are supposed to go up here?" I suavely lied: "Of course, we sit up there every Sunday."
As we left the steps, a loud voiced robed man informed us that nobody except the choir was allowed to be in the "choir loft." I was CAUGHT! However, taking into consideration that I wasn't really a catholic, they forgave me, but I'm sure they felt that a hypocritical liar like me would never make it to that "paradise" called Heaven.
09. Paradise: And with apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, I herewith quote some lyrics by a musical group called Rush...
"To seek the sacred river Alph
To walk the caves of ice
To break my fast on honey dew
And drink the milk of Paradise."
10. Found: Another classified ad in the newspaper: "Found: Cat/Kitten, black female, medium hair, very friendly. Arrived at the landfill on the back of a trash truck."
11. Telly belly: I don't know if I read this or saw it on TV. Somebody has developed a mini speaker device that one can swallow and then play through the stomach.. at least for a little while. I wonder if the developer got the idea from the news item of a lady dropping her cell phone into the mouth of a crocodile?
12. Slightly naughty joke: A young couple made love in a cemetery, on a grave slab in the ground. The next day, the girl had a back ache and went to a doctor who examined her and asked: "How old are you?" The girl said: "Why do you ask?" The doctor replied: "Because on you butt it says: 'died in 1933'."
............................................................................................................
Showing posts with label supreme court. Show all posts
Showing posts with label supreme court. Show all posts
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Weekly Dozen News Items for Jan 23, 2010
I can never vouch for the accuracy or truthfulness of the items I mention, but the last amazing item (#13) today seems to be completely true, except for the comment attached.
01. Hammacher-Schlemmer has marketed a bug vacuum stick. A cordless device for sucking up little creatures. I wonder why this hadn't been thought of before?
02. A guy with the kind-of familiar Maryland name of Glen Bell just died. It was interesting to note that he founded the restaurant with the name of Taco Bell. (Old joke: Karnak's Answer-Question: What is the name of the Mexican telephone company?)
By the way: why doesn't some enterprising person start up an 11:30 pm nightly show with videos of old Johnny Carson shows? I'll bet it would get fantastic ratings.. at least with the "over 60" crowd.
03. Attendees at a Weight Watchers meeting in Sweden were surprised when the floor collapsed. Luckily, no one was hurt and they continued with their "weigh-in".
04. Fred Friendly hinted that Senators at first called Harry Truman "the Pendergast Senator" (after the influence of Kansas City Missouri boss, Tom Pendergast). (Now, after the Supreme Court ruling the other day.. we may live to see "The Exxon Senator" or the "WalMart President.)
05. Pat Robertson recently mentioned that Haitian leaders once called upon Satan to help them get rid of the French, and hinted that this is why they had the earthquake. I read that he is right about the leaders invoking Satan.. however, his "it's your own fault" attitude bothers me, as well as his assurance that he can do anything through prayer.
I seem to remember that when a hurricane was about to hit an east-coast town, he prayed long and hard that it would not hit that town.. it swerved at the last minute and the town was saved.. he took credit for saving the town through prayer and saving lives...however, the next town over was hit by the hurricane instead... What about them?
06. Kind of related: Rifles with coded Christian Bible verses on their sights have recently been provided to U.S. Soldiers serving in Arab countries. The Pentagon has now asked the company to stop the practise and provide a means to remove the words on the rifles that have already been received. Supposedly, Moslems learned about the verses and it gave more fuel to the thinking that Christianity is out to destroy them.
07. Watch out! A subway rider in the Queens is taking pictures of people picking their noses and is posting them to the web.
08. Susan Boyle was heard shouting obscenities while singing into a mop... or so it was said by a probably unreliable source.
09. During a Google study of 7-year olds using the Internet, they were asked: "What day of the week will the Vice President's next birthday fall on?" Some kids didn't get further than looking at the "squarepants" site.. but some that did use a search engine, quit after seeing the first page of results. It was noted that boys quit their searches earlier than girls.
10. A British math expert has come up with a formula for making parallel parking easy: Items in the formula that must be considered:
a. The radius of the car's turning circle.
b. The car's wheel base.
c. The distance from the front wheel to the back bumper.
d. The width of the car that is on the right.
11. In a Great Britain department store, you can have access to a gift registry for couples that are getting divorced.
12. Remember the burglar who stole a king-size bed? Well, another burglar last week broke into a house, piled up what he wanted, and then, before he left, fried up a mass of chicken, poured some beer and watched TV for a while.
Bonus
13. The item I mentioned at the start:
At a Holiday Inn in England, a notorious place for cold clammy sheets, a staff person will be assigned to come up to your room before you turn in and "warm up your bed" by laying between the sheets and rolling around for a while!
(Someone on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me suggested that being a "giant British bed warmer" might be a good job for an unemployed Conan O'Brien.)
......................................................................
01. Hammacher-Schlemmer has marketed a bug vacuum stick. A cordless device for sucking up little creatures. I wonder why this hadn't been thought of before?
02. A guy with the kind-of familiar Maryland name of Glen Bell just died. It was interesting to note that he founded the restaurant with the name of Taco Bell. (Old joke: Karnak's Answer-Question: What is the name of the Mexican telephone company?)
By the way: why doesn't some enterprising person start up an 11:30 pm nightly show with videos of old Johnny Carson shows? I'll bet it would get fantastic ratings.. at least with the "over 60" crowd.
03. Attendees at a Weight Watchers meeting in Sweden were surprised when the floor collapsed. Luckily, no one was hurt and they continued with their "weigh-in".
04. Fred Friendly hinted that Senators at first called Harry Truman "the Pendergast Senator" (after the influence of Kansas City Missouri boss, Tom Pendergast). (Now, after the Supreme Court ruling the other day.. we may live to see "The Exxon Senator" or the "WalMart President.)
05. Pat Robertson recently mentioned that Haitian leaders once called upon Satan to help them get rid of the French, and hinted that this is why they had the earthquake. I read that he is right about the leaders invoking Satan.. however, his "it's your own fault" attitude bothers me, as well as his assurance that he can do anything through prayer.
I seem to remember that when a hurricane was about to hit an east-coast town, he prayed long and hard that it would not hit that town.. it swerved at the last minute and the town was saved.. he took credit for saving the town through prayer and saving lives...however, the next town over was hit by the hurricane instead... What about them?
06. Kind of related: Rifles with coded Christian Bible verses on their sights have recently been provided to U.S. Soldiers serving in Arab countries. The Pentagon has now asked the company to stop the practise and provide a means to remove the words on the rifles that have already been received. Supposedly, Moslems learned about the verses and it gave more fuel to the thinking that Christianity is out to destroy them.
07. Watch out! A subway rider in the Queens is taking pictures of people picking their noses and is posting them to the web.
08. Susan Boyle was heard shouting obscenities while singing into a mop... or so it was said by a probably unreliable source.
09. During a Google study of 7-year olds using the Internet, they were asked: "What day of the week will the Vice President's next birthday fall on?" Some kids didn't get further than looking at the "squarepants" site.. but some that did use a search engine, quit after seeing the first page of results. It was noted that boys quit their searches earlier than girls.
10. A British math expert has come up with a formula for making parallel parking easy: Items in the formula that must be considered:
a. The radius of the car's turning circle.
b. The car's wheel base.
c. The distance from the front wheel to the back bumper.
d. The width of the car that is on the right.
11. In a Great Britain department store, you can have access to a gift registry for couples that are getting divorced.
12. Remember the burglar who stole a king-size bed? Well, another burglar last week broke into a house, piled up what he wanted, and then, before he left, fried up a mass of chicken, poured some beer and watched TV for a while.
Bonus
13. The item I mentioned at the start:
At a Holiday Inn in England, a notorious place for cold clammy sheets, a staff person will be assigned to come up to your room before you turn in and "warm up your bed" by laying between the sheets and rolling around for a while!
(Someone on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me suggested that being a "giant British bed warmer" might be a good job for an unemployed Conan O'Brien.)
......................................................................
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Has the News gotten Better or Worse?
As is often the case in 2009, the news is particularly depressing. Entertainment icons leaving us; Women being killed protesting in Iran; Governors messing around in South America; Parents of sextuplets divorcing; Swine flu cases increasing.... Was the world always this way? I have a collection of old newspapers and I like to look at them from time to time to see if the world has improved since then. (What do you think?)
The following items were included in the Sunday February 21, 1937 issue of the New York Times. This was the birthdate of the late Elaine Langlois Vaughan.
01. General Motors employees went back to work last week after a six-week sit-down strike.
Senator LaFollette reported that from 1934 to 1936, General motors spent 839 million dollars for detective services. He said that it was spent so the company could keep abreast of the labor situation.
02. President Roosevelt threw his "shock troops" into the campaign to drive through Congress his plan to change the Supreme Court by adding a justice for every present member past 70 who refused to retire.
03. In Great Britain, Neville Chamberlain called upon Europe to choose war or peace. He promised either a one and one-half billion pound rearmament budget for Britain or a move for a mutual assistance pact for the Nations of Western Europe.
04. Hitler ordered the election of a National Synod which would draft a new constitution for the German Evangelical Church. This was a victory for Nazi "German Christians" and creation of a church dictatorship by Hitler's religious advisor, Rev. Ludwig Mueller.
05. In Japan, Yukio Ozaki, a noted liberal, denounced the recent anti-Communist pact with Berlin and expressed amazement that Japan could "shake hands" with a country like Germany.
06. Clothes-horse German General Hermann Goering supposedly changes uniforms several times a day. It is rumored that a thief once stole 37 of his uniforms and he never even missed them.
07. Work progressed on the plan to bring the 200 separate Protestant sects in the United States under a central organization called "The Church of Christ in America."
08. The "handsomest Governor in America" Paul V. McNutt of Indianapolis, pushed by some to become a candidate for President, was appointed High Commissioner to the Philippines by Roosevelt. (To get him out of his way?)
09. Miss Jane M. Hoey of New York became head of the Bureau of Public Assistance.. this was the office charged with administering Federal funds for the aged, blind and dependent children.. some parts of which became the current SSI (assistance for the aged, blind and disabled ineligible for regular Social Security.) Miss Hoey said that her office helps provide assistance for one and one-half million persons and will ultimately cost 200 million dollars per year. (A little bit under estimated of course.)
10. Ten thousand youngsters were asked to give their movie preferences. The order was: 1: G-Men (read FBI or similar); 2: Mysteries (Charlie Chan?) ; 3: Child stars (Shirley Temple); 4: Musicals (New Faces of 1936; Fred and Ginger); 5: Gangsters (Dillinger; Bonnie and Clyde); 6: War. (It doesn't say if the survey was given to boys and girls, but if it had been given to all boys, War would have had a higher order I'm sure.)
11. New York State Senator McNaboe sponsored a bill to compel the display of American flags, three feet by four, in all classrooms; it was defeated.
When I first entered school back in the late 1930's and early 1940's, we saluted the flag that was on a pole in each classroom by giving a kind of Nazi gesture, with the arm pointed upward at an angle as though we were about to say: "Heil Hitler".. as we got into WWII, the arm salute was changed to a palm on the heart gesture.
12. Japan dropped it's minimum height restriction for a soldier from 5 feet 1/2 inch to 4 feet 10 1/2 inches. The American Army's standard is 5 feet 4 inches.. but it can be lowered 1/2 inch in "exceptional cases." Recently, a 6 feet 10 inch recruit showed up and caused supply officers to have to order an extra long bed.
13. The original manuscript of "Old Mother Hubbard" has been discovered in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. It dates from 1804 when it was invented by Sarah Catherine Martin. The names are now also known for the writers of "Mary had a little lamb" and "there was a little girl, who had a little curl..".. but people still want to know who wrote : "Hush-a-bye baby", "Twinkle, twinkle, little star", and "Little drops of water." (This was, of course, long before Google, Yahoo and Wikipedia.)
ok 13 is enough for now.
The following items were included in the Sunday February 21, 1937 issue of the New York Times. This was the birthdate of the late Elaine Langlois Vaughan.
01. General Motors employees went back to work last week after a six-week sit-down strike.
Senator LaFollette reported that from 1934 to 1936, General motors spent 839 million dollars for detective services. He said that it was spent so the company could keep abreast of the labor situation.
02. President Roosevelt threw his "shock troops" into the campaign to drive through Congress his plan to change the Supreme Court by adding a justice for every present member past 70 who refused to retire.
03. In Great Britain, Neville Chamberlain called upon Europe to choose war or peace. He promised either a one and one-half billion pound rearmament budget for Britain or a move for a mutual assistance pact for the Nations of Western Europe.
04. Hitler ordered the election of a National Synod which would draft a new constitution for the German Evangelical Church. This was a victory for Nazi "German Christians" and creation of a church dictatorship by Hitler's religious advisor, Rev. Ludwig Mueller.
05. In Japan, Yukio Ozaki, a noted liberal, denounced the recent anti-Communist pact with Berlin and expressed amazement that Japan could "shake hands" with a country like Germany.
06. Clothes-horse German General Hermann Goering supposedly changes uniforms several times a day. It is rumored that a thief once stole 37 of his uniforms and he never even missed them.
07. Work progressed on the plan to bring the 200 separate Protestant sects in the United States under a central organization called "The Church of Christ in America."
08. The "handsomest Governor in America" Paul V. McNutt of Indianapolis, pushed by some to become a candidate for President, was appointed High Commissioner to the Philippines by Roosevelt. (To get him out of his way?)
09. Miss Jane M. Hoey of New York became head of the Bureau of Public Assistance.. this was the office charged with administering Federal funds for the aged, blind and dependent children.. some parts of which became the current SSI (assistance for the aged, blind and disabled ineligible for regular Social Security.) Miss Hoey said that her office helps provide assistance for one and one-half million persons and will ultimately cost 200 million dollars per year. (A little bit under estimated of course.)
10. Ten thousand youngsters were asked to give their movie preferences. The order was: 1: G-Men (read FBI or similar); 2: Mysteries (Charlie Chan?) ; 3: Child stars (Shirley Temple); 4: Musicals (New Faces of 1936; Fred and Ginger); 5: Gangsters (Dillinger; Bonnie and Clyde); 6: War. (It doesn't say if the survey was given to boys and girls, but if it had been given to all boys, War would have had a higher order I'm sure.)
11. New York State Senator McNaboe sponsored a bill to compel the display of American flags, three feet by four, in all classrooms; it was defeated.
When I first entered school back in the late 1930's and early 1940's, we saluted the flag that was on a pole in each classroom by giving a kind of Nazi gesture, with the arm pointed upward at an angle as though we were about to say: "Heil Hitler".. as we got into WWII, the arm salute was changed to a palm on the heart gesture.
12. Japan dropped it's minimum height restriction for a soldier from 5 feet 1/2 inch to 4 feet 10 1/2 inches. The American Army's standard is 5 feet 4 inches.. but it can be lowered 1/2 inch in "exceptional cases." Recently, a 6 feet 10 inch recruit showed up and caused supply officers to have to order an extra long bed.
13. The original manuscript of "Old Mother Hubbard" has been discovered in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. It dates from 1804 when it was invented by Sarah Catherine Martin. The names are now also known for the writers of "Mary had a little lamb" and "there was a little girl, who had a little curl..".. but people still want to know who wrote : "Hush-a-bye baby", "Twinkle, twinkle, little star", and "Little drops of water." (This was, of course, long before Google, Yahoo and Wikipedia.)
ok 13 is enough for now.
Saturday, May 02, 2009
Thoughts
I just listened to another edition of NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. I love that radio show. I learn so much from it. For instance, today I learned that Fema has been advertising "911 Coloring Books for Kids" on their website. Pictures of large planes crashing into skyscrapers!
I also learned that Rock music is being used to scare away crickets in Utah.
In addition, I learned that the same parts of men's brains fire up when they see scantily-clad women as when they look at tools in catalogs.
Tinker Bell (a chiuahaua) blew away in a 70 mph wind gust and was found in a tree after the owners consulted a psychic.
Another source of education is of course, The Week magazine, where I learned that Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg was misspelled on some road signs in Massachusetts.
I hear that a Florida man is trying to open a "nude dude" ranch. (Wouldn't that be a bit painful?)
BTW: At a nudist wedding, who is considered the "best man"?
Also, at a nudist wedding, where does the best man keep the ring?
It is sad to hear that CEO's are currently feeling the pinch of the recession ... (and are opting for pay raises.)
Pirate impersonators are having a bad image problem these days because of the Somali guys. They would like to see those guys called something other than "pirates".
In the "Who can you trust?" category: It has been determined that the Four Corners State marker is in the wrong place and that people who stood at one location and thought that they were at the corners of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, were misinformed.
Segue to cetology:
Whale's brains are larger and more convoluted than human's brains.
The tongue of a grown blue whale weighs as much as an African elephant.
Scientists just learned that dolphins can rest one half of their brains at a time. (Wouldn't that be great for some of us? Of course, we all know many folks who rest all of their brains all of the time.)
BTW again: Pete Seeger just turned 90 years old. Does anyone remember the 60's and 70's?
Some thieves stole an ice cream truck but abandoned it when the music drove them crazy. The police found the truck easily because of the music.
The Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 that it is ok to fine TV stations for allowing cussing.
A woman called in to CSPAN yesterday when the discussion was on who should replace the retiring Justice. She suggested that a black woman would be the best pick for "the Supremes."
I think that would be a good idea too.
Did you ever realize that Beetle Bailey has lived through several wars and "police actions" and has never been shot at.
"Think on these things and be enlightened."
I also learned that Rock music is being used to scare away crickets in Utah.
In addition, I learned that the same parts of men's brains fire up when they see scantily-clad women as when they look at tools in catalogs.
Tinker Bell (a chiuahaua) blew away in a 70 mph wind gust and was found in a tree after the owners consulted a psychic.
Another source of education is of course, The Week magazine, where I learned that Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg was misspelled on some road signs in Massachusetts.
I hear that a Florida man is trying to open a "nude dude" ranch. (Wouldn't that be a bit painful?)
BTW: At a nudist wedding, who is considered the "best man"?
Also, at a nudist wedding, where does the best man keep the ring?
It is sad to hear that CEO's are currently feeling the pinch of the recession ... (and are opting for pay raises.)
Pirate impersonators are having a bad image problem these days because of the Somali guys. They would like to see those guys called something other than "pirates".
In the "Who can you trust?" category: It has been determined that the Four Corners State marker is in the wrong place and that people who stood at one location and thought that they were at the corners of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, were misinformed.
Segue to cetology:
Whale's brains are larger and more convoluted than human's brains.
The tongue of a grown blue whale weighs as much as an African elephant.
Scientists just learned that dolphins can rest one half of their brains at a time. (Wouldn't that be great for some of us? Of course, we all know many folks who rest all of their brains all of the time.)
BTW again: Pete Seeger just turned 90 years old. Does anyone remember the 60's and 70's?
Some thieves stole an ice cream truck but abandoned it when the music drove them crazy. The police found the truck easily because of the music.
The Supreme Court voted 5 to 4 that it is ok to fine TV stations for allowing cussing.
A woman called in to CSPAN yesterday when the discussion was on who should replace the retiring Justice. She suggested that a black woman would be the best pick for "the Supremes."
I think that would be a good idea too.
Did you ever realize that Beetle Bailey has lived through several wars and "police actions" and has never been shot at.
"Think on these things and be enlightened."
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