I don't know why they call it "alms", but I think that all the major religions teach that we should give alms to the poor. There is a difference, however, between giving a voluntary charitable donation and having the government confiscate your money and redistributing it to anybody they see fit. I don't remember reading anything about that in the Bible. Jesus did say that it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar because that's whose face was on the coinage of the day. That is usually interpreted to mean that being a Christian does not get you out of paying your taxes. I don't think that it means Caesar can turn around and redistribute the money to others, but I suppose it doesn't mean that he can't either. Since no Caesar before Constantine was a Christian, it wouldn't have applied to them anyway.
I remember reading that the original Twelve Apostles held all their wealth in common, not that they had a lot of wealth, they were supposed to mostly live off the charity of others. I don't know how long that practice continued in the early churches. At some point it became customary for Christians to donate a tenth of their income to their church. I'm pretty sure that meant their local church because there was no Church with a capital "C" in those days. That came later when the Romans combined church and state. Even before that, the Romans had some kind of income redistribution, they called it "bread and circuses". In modern times, this became a term of derision that was used by my former Bircher associates to apply to all sorts of government programs.
I did indeed allege that the Democrats seem bent on reducing everyone to the lowest common denominator and maintaining them in poverty, but that hardly makes it my plan.
Old Dog, when you refer to the "Blogger page", do you mean the one that comes up when we log in, or do you mean the page we access by clicking on "View Blog"? That one has a mind of its own and frequently displays text differently than we write it. The default text color is gray, not black, and I believe that Uncle Ken has tried to change it without success. I hardly ever go there but, unfortunately, I think that's the one our visitors see.
Uncle Ken, your draft of 4/27/18 is listed right under your "Asshole" post of the same day. At least that's the way my browser shows it.
Monday, April 30, 2018
maintaining poverty
On that face recognition thing, I read an article a year or two ago about people who had super powers of face recognition, maybe not super but they were really good at it. As Oliver Sachs has written there are some people who can't recognize faces at all. If the wife changes her clothes he thinks he is about to have an affair. Beyond that people have varying abilities at face recognition, and in the article police departments used the people with strong abilities people to um, fight crime. Doesn't seem like there is anything wrong with that.
But there does seem to be something sinister in the way the Chinese government deploys it, but a lot of the sinister in that is the nature of the Chinese government.
I wonder how the facial recognition software works. Does it take a variety of measurements, distance from nostrils to eyes, tilt of the nose, width of the mouth, etc and put them all together, crunch them all together and then come up with a high possibility that this is the guy in the database, or is there some more sophisticated program. Well I guess it is mostly AI which is disheartening because then we will never know how it works.
YouTube food channels? I'm not one to judge my fellow men, let alone fellow men of The Institute, but I really do believe Old Dog should get out more (like to seminars), and gear up that 3d printer and that other thing, the one that works opposite of the printer, taking away rather than adding to, or some other gentleman scientist activity.
I think the idea of income redistribution comes from the bible before the Canadians. In the current American situation if you tried that social credit thing, don't you know the rich would insist that they should get bigger credits because, well because they are richer, and they will get them too. Oh wait they already have in the form of the latest republican tax cut.
Reading about the early church it appears that it was well,socialistic, share and share alike, help out the poor, all men are equal. But by the time it took over the Roman Empire it had changed quite a bit. They still had a thing about giving to the poor, but rather then helping out the poor the emphasis was more on how it would benefit the rich by squeezing that camel through the eye of the needle. There was no thought of helping out the poor so that they could climb out of poverty, they had to stay there so that the rich could be blessed by giving them money. That seems to align with Beagles' plan of maintaining the poor in poverty.
I can't find the draft of my post that got aborted. I wonder if that's because it's my draft. If Beagles could describe where it is I will delete it.
But there does seem to be something sinister in the way the Chinese government deploys it, but a lot of the sinister in that is the nature of the Chinese government.
I wonder how the facial recognition software works. Does it take a variety of measurements, distance from nostrils to eyes, tilt of the nose, width of the mouth, etc and put them all together, crunch them all together and then come up with a high possibility that this is the guy in the database, or is there some more sophisticated program. Well I guess it is mostly AI which is disheartening because then we will never know how it works.
YouTube food channels? I'm not one to judge my fellow men, let alone fellow men of The Institute, but I really do believe Old Dog should get out more (like to seminars), and gear up that 3d printer and that other thing, the one that works opposite of the printer, taking away rather than adding to, or some other gentleman scientist activity.
I think the idea of income redistribution comes from the bible before the Canadians. In the current American situation if you tried that social credit thing, don't you know the rich would insist that they should get bigger credits because, well because they are richer, and they will get them too. Oh wait they already have in the form of the latest republican tax cut.
Reading about the early church it appears that it was well,socialistic, share and share alike, help out the poor, all men are equal. But by the time it took over the Roman Empire it had changed quite a bit. They still had a thing about giving to the poor, but rather then helping out the poor the emphasis was more on how it would benefit the rich by squeezing that camel through the eye of the needle. There was no thought of helping out the poor so that they could climb out of poverty, they had to stay there so that the rich could be blessed by giving them money. That seems to align with Beagles' plan of maintaining the poor in poverty.
I can't find the draft of my post that got aborted. I wonder if that's because it's my draft. If Beagles could describe where it is I will delete it.
Sunday, April 29, 2018
Taking no credit
What's wrong with plain old black?
Absolutely nothing, but I was trying to make the links pop out a little. Sometimes they show up as blue, other times as a slightly lighter shade of dark gray. The text on the Blogger page rarely shows up as a true black, at least on my computer. Maybe some day I'll get it sorted out.
-----
Modern technology is a wonderful thing, until it doesn't work.
And when a product fails, it usually fails completely without warning. Repairing an item has gotten to the point where it's much cheaper to replace it than repair it; labor ain't cheap and it can cost you dearly to find out exactly what part failed and needs replacement. Troubleshooting product failure is a dark art and takes a lot of time; manufacturers go out of their way to make it almost impossible for non-factory facilities to repair their products and in some jurisdictions it is illegal for the user to fix the products they own. The cans of worms keep multiplying.
-----
So, there are two types (so far) of social credit, eh? The original type dealing with income seems to be the most valid but current usage is talking about the systems in China to keep folks on their toes. They should have used a different term like behavior or cultural credit, I think.
In that vein, I have read that the body cameras that cops are supposed to wear may soon include facial recognition. It's technically possible right now but there are some legal hurdles to be overcome. The Constitution may take a beating as it is interpreted in our modern age of heightened surveillance and communication.
-----
YouTube has become my main source of entertainment, the food channels being my favorite. I've found some neat stuff, like making rice pudding from the leftover rice from Chinese take-out, or the trick to getting popcorn that tastes just like the stuff at the movie theater: coconut oil and Flavacol (available on Amazon).
But one of the most interesting things is the use of Transglutaminase, also known as "meat glue." Glued meat is more common than you may think, often seen in deli counters or fast food sandwich places. Some restaurants are allegedly combining cuts of beef to create a "premium" steak; you may not get what you think you ordered. You can tell by the way it looks that there's something off about the appearance but it's still okay to eat. You can combine almost any meat as long as it has the same cooking time, and there are intriguing possibilities. Bacon and steak might be tasty, as would a nicely layered pork chop/rib-eye combination. Science is wonderful.
Absolutely nothing, but I was trying to make the links pop out a little. Sometimes they show up as blue, other times as a slightly lighter shade of dark gray. The text on the Blogger page rarely shows up as a true black, at least on my computer. Maybe some day I'll get it sorted out.
-----
Modern technology is a wonderful thing, until it doesn't work.
And when a product fails, it usually fails completely without warning. Repairing an item has gotten to the point where it's much cheaper to replace it than repair it; labor ain't cheap and it can cost you dearly to find out exactly what part failed and needs replacement. Troubleshooting product failure is a dark art and takes a lot of time; manufacturers go out of their way to make it almost impossible for non-factory facilities to repair their products and in some jurisdictions it is illegal for the user to fix the products they own. The cans of worms keep multiplying.
-----
So, there are two types (so far) of social credit, eh? The original type dealing with income seems to be the most valid but current usage is talking about the systems in China to keep folks on their toes. They should have used a different term like behavior or cultural credit, I think.
In that vein, I have read that the body cameras that cops are supposed to wear may soon include facial recognition. It's technically possible right now but there are some legal hurdles to be overcome. The Constitution may take a beating as it is interpreted in our modern age of heightened surveillance and communication.
-----
YouTube has become my main source of entertainment, the food channels being my favorite. I've found some neat stuff, like making rice pudding from the leftover rice from Chinese take-out, or the trick to getting popcorn that tastes just like the stuff at the movie theater: coconut oil and Flavacol (available on Amazon).
But one of the most interesting things is the use of Transglutaminase, also known as "meat glue." Glued meat is more common than you may think, often seen in deli counters or fast food sandwich places. Some restaurants are allegedly combining cuts of beef to create a "premium" steak; you may not get what you think you ordered. You can tell by the way it looks that there's something off about the appearance but it's still okay to eat. You can combine almost any meat as long as it has the same cooking time, and there are intriguing possibilities. Bacon and steak might be tasty, as would a nicely layered pork chop/rib-eye combination. Science is wonderful.
Friday, April 27, 2018
It's the Same Only Different
The old Canadian social credit theory is indeed a form of income redistribution. While the original proposal never got off the ground, the modern welfare state must have gotten a few ideas from it. What I like about it is the concept that we are all shareholders in the national economy, and should get regular dividends as a matter of right. I don't think there would be a means test either, everybody would get equal shares, the rich and the poor alike. If we are going to have income redistribution, I prefer that concept to the idea of taking from the rich to give the poor just enough to maintain them in poverty. The Democrats seem bent on reducing everybody to the lowest common denominator, probably because poor people tend to vote Democrat.
With our DVD player, we can stop, back up, or fast forward just like with a tape. We can usually skip over the coming attractions by hitting the "menu" key on the remote. None of that works for getting around the FBI warnings, though.
I was kind of a Luddite in my younger days but, the older I got, the more I appreciated things like power tools and computers. Modern technology is a wonderful thing, until it doesn't work. Then we wonder how people got along without it before it was invented but, of course, they did.
Uncle Ken, it looks like the Google Machine saved your work as a draft when you had that glitch in your system. You might want to consider deleting the draft, since you started all over again afterwards.
Uncle Ken, it looks like the Google Machine saved your work as a draft when you had that glitch in your system. You might want to consider deleting the draft, since you started all over again afterwards.
I call it progress, Asshole.
I have a VCR/DVD player and it plays just fine on my flat screen. One thing about the tapes is that you could hit hit the pause or turn the damn thing off if you were so inclined, and come back and resume right where you were, instead of DVD where you have to hit just the right teeny tiny button on a remote of 20 buttons or else you have to go through the scene selection and then back and forth faster and slower like trying to parallel park into a crowded space. And with the VCR you could fast forward through the stupid FBI warning and the coming attractions. I do like the extras though.
That Social Credit Movement sounds a lot like income distribution, or Part II of The Liberal Agenda, or Socialism. Isn't the same thing generated by a more graduated income tax, or raising the minimum wage? Trickle down seems like the most natural thing in the world to the republican party because its first part, give more money to rich people, sounds so good, that nobody is concerned if the second part works (which by the way it doesn't). The first part of trickle up involves taking money away from rich people. so it is dead in the water before the second part can be complicated.
Boy I just had a scare. My fingers were flying across the keyboard when some box popped up about did I want to turn on some kind of typing. I'm not sure what kind because the box blipped out before I could read it, and thereafter when I typed I heard a faint click, but nothing showed up on the screen. My first instinct was to google for a solution, but I didn't know how to phrase my question, and it didn't matter anyway because I couldn't type anything in the google box or anywhere else. It was like accidentally turning your screen black, where do you go from there? Fortunately the high tech solution, turning the computer off and then back on again (and I didn't even have to unplug it) worked just fine.
Oh how quaint the dilemma of that drunk-driving admiral doctor looks today after Trump's outburst of yesterday. CNN graciously replayed the part at the end where the Fox and Friends were pleading with Trump to just shut the fuck up and eventually saying well we're sure you must be a busy man and giving him the bum's rush off their show.
Oh and there was more breaking news than America's Dad heading for the slammer. He called the DA an asshole. And when CNN reported this they used the word, asshole. I notice this morning the Trib and the Sun-Times are primly calling it a-hole, but now apparently we can say both shithole and asshole on the airwaves and if that ain't progress I don't know what is.
That Social Credit Movement sounds a lot like income distribution, or Part II of The Liberal Agenda, or Socialism. Isn't the same thing generated by a more graduated income tax, or raising the minimum wage? Trickle down seems like the most natural thing in the world to the republican party because its first part, give more money to rich people, sounds so good, that nobody is concerned if the second part works (which by the way it doesn't). The first part of trickle up involves taking money away from rich people. so it is dead in the water before the second part can be complicated.
Boy I just had a scare. My fingers were flying across the keyboard when some box popped up about did I want to turn on some kind of typing. I'm not sure what kind because the box blipped out before I could read it, and thereafter when I typed I heard a faint click, but nothing showed up on the screen. My first instinct was to google for a solution, but I didn't know how to phrase my question, and it didn't matter anyway because I couldn't type anything in the google box or anywhere else. It was like accidentally turning your screen black, where do you go from there? Fortunately the high tech solution, turning the computer off and then back on again (and I didn't even have to unplug it) worked just fine.
Oh how quaint the dilemma of that drunk-driving admiral doctor looks today after Trump's outburst of yesterday. CNN graciously replayed the part at the end where the Fox and Friends were pleading with Trump to just shut the fuck up and eventually saying well we're sure you must be a busy man and giving him the bum's rush off their show.
Oh and there was more breaking news than America's Dad heading for the slammer. He called the DA an asshole. And when CNN reported this they used the word, asshole. I notice this morning the Trib and the Sun-Times are primly calling it a-hole, but now apparently we can say both shithole and asshole on the airwaves and if that ain't progress I don't know what is.
Thursday, April 26, 2018
The Other Social Credit
When Old Dog mentioned social credit, I thought he was talking about something else. During the Great Depression, there was something in Canada called "The Social Credit Movement". Their theory was that every citizen is valuable to society, if only as a consumer, because they contribute to the economy. Because of this, they proposed that everybody be paid periodic dividends, based on how well the economy was doing. It was kind of like everybody was a stockholder in the economy at large. They formed their own political party and even got some of their people elected to various offices, but they were never able to get their agenda adopted by the Canadian Parliament. The party eventually split up over ideological differences, and the idea died out along with the Great Depression.
I stumbled across this information one evening on Wikipedia and found the concept interesting. I have read a number of times that consumer spending represents 70% of all the economic activity in the US. It would seem, then, that the more money there is in consumers' hands, the better the economy should function, kind of a "trickle up" theory. Maybe the reason the idea never took off in Canada was that they put the word "social" in it. If you think about it, this would be more like capitalism than socialism because we would all be stockholders in all the nation's corporations. I don't know why the corporate people wouldn't go for this, but they never did. I mean, all the money they paid out in dividends would eventually trickle right back up to them. What's not to like?
Of course this has nothing to do with what those goofy Red Chinese are doing. The blame for that goes to Richard Nixon, who embraced the Red Chinese at the expense of our loyal allies in Taiwan. I said at the time that no good would come of that, and it certainly hasn't.
and the other too big.
As far as color,
What's wrong
with plain old black?
I stumbled across this information one evening on Wikipedia and found the concept interesting. I have read a number of times that consumer spending represents 70% of all the economic activity in the US. It would seem, then, that the more money there is in consumers' hands, the better the economy should function, kind of a "trickle up" theory. Maybe the reason the idea never took off in Canada was that they put the word "social" in it. If you think about it, this would be more like capitalism than socialism because we would all be stockholders in all the nation's corporations. I don't know why the corporate people wouldn't go for this, but they never did. I mean, all the money they paid out in dividends would eventually trickle right back up to them. What's not to like?
Of course this has nothing to do with what those goofy Red Chinese are doing. The blame for that goes to Richard Nixon, who embraced the Red Chinese at the expense of our loyal allies in Taiwan. I said at the time that no good would come of that, and it certainly hasn't.
In the early days of the Institute, Uncle Ken and I tried without success to adjust the type size without much luck.
I just checked now, and they offer some different options than they used to.
I don't know if I like these any better than the options they used to offer.
It seems they still offer the old options, one being too smalland the other too big.
As far as color,
What's wrong
with plain old black?
No more pudding pops
Planned obsolescence was a charge leveled at automobile manufacturers.
Right on the nose, Uncle Ken, and it started in the 1920s or thereabouts if Wikipedia can be believed. An interesting article; sometimes the obsolescence is planned, sometimes it isn't, and other times it is purely perceptual, like clothing fashions.
But just because a product is obsolete does not mean it is no longer functional or useful. Those old VCRs, with proper repair and maintenance will work just as well as the day they were new but you will probably need a cathode-ray TV to view the tapes. Same thing with a lot of products, it just costs more money because they fall into the niche of collectors and specialists. Offhand, I can't think of any product that is obsolete to the extent that there are no surviving examples.
I still have about 400 vinyl albums, but I have a couple of turntables, too, and will convert them to MP3 files one of these days, maybe. Not many VHS or Beta tapes, but I have players for those, too, but I don't know if I can connect them to my current flat-screen TV without a lot of connector/converter mumbo-jumbo. There are less than 125 music CDs in my collection, but they have all been converted to MP3 for use on my iPod so they are just sitting in a closet. I don't want to think about thousands (maybe) of floppy disks in the basement storeroom from the various operating systems I've owned. They may be truly useless; I've read that magnetic media degrades after time and the disks may be unreadable without very specialized, and very expensive, equipment. I should hook up those old systems, fire them up and see what's what. But not anytime soon.
-----
A while back I mentioned social credit and didn't get much of a response, but that's okay. But it is gathering steam in China, and it's not impossible that it could happen here, in the land of the free and the home of the brave. This is spooky, and so is this.
-----
As much as I dislike discussion of some current events, today has yielded a motherlode of goofiness. Trump gave a thirty minute interview on Fox and Friends and just about ran off the rails; he got really revved up and yielded a real gem in that Cohen, his lawyer, represented him in the Stormy Daniels mess. Didn't he already say he had nothing to do with her? Oops!
But he may have gotten a little reprieve from the media with the later announcement of Bill Cosby's guilty verdict. Thus falls America's Dad, an 80 year old man facing 30 years in the graybar hotel. If they can convict Bill Cosby I bet Harvey Weinstein is sweating bullets, and well he should.
-----
Okay, I'm going nuts in my attempts to get the text the right color and typestyle. This page has a mind of it's own and I could use some help. Any suggestions?
Right on the nose, Uncle Ken, and it started in the 1920s or thereabouts if Wikipedia can be believed. An interesting article; sometimes the obsolescence is planned, sometimes it isn't, and other times it is purely perceptual, like clothing fashions.
But just because a product is obsolete does not mean it is no longer functional or useful. Those old VCRs, with proper repair and maintenance will work just as well as the day they were new but you will probably need a cathode-ray TV to view the tapes. Same thing with a lot of products, it just costs more money because they fall into the niche of collectors and specialists. Offhand, I can't think of any product that is obsolete to the extent that there are no surviving examples.
I still have about 400 vinyl albums, but I have a couple of turntables, too, and will convert them to MP3 files one of these days, maybe. Not many VHS or Beta tapes, but I have players for those, too, but I don't know if I can connect them to my current flat-screen TV without a lot of connector/converter mumbo-jumbo. There are less than 125 music CDs in my collection, but they have all been converted to MP3 for use on my iPod so they are just sitting in a closet. I don't want to think about thousands (maybe) of floppy disks in the basement storeroom from the various operating systems I've owned. They may be truly useless; I've read that magnetic media degrades after time and the disks may be unreadable without very specialized, and very expensive, equipment. I should hook up those old systems, fire them up and see what's what. But not anytime soon.
-----
A while back I mentioned social credit and didn't get much of a response, but that's okay. But it is gathering steam in China, and it's not impossible that it could happen here, in the land of the free and the home of the brave. This is spooky, and so is this.
-----
As much as I dislike discussion of some current events, today has yielded a motherlode of goofiness. Trump gave a thirty minute interview on Fox and Friends and just about ran off the rails; he got really revved up and yielded a real gem in that Cohen, his lawyer, represented him in the Stormy Daniels mess. Didn't he already say he had nothing to do with her? Oops!
But he may have gotten a little reprieve from the media with the later announcement of Bill Cosby's guilty verdict. Thus falls America's Dad, an 80 year old man facing 30 years in the graybar hotel. If they can convict Bill Cosby I bet Harvey Weinstein is sweating bullets, and well he should.
-----
Okay, I'm going nuts in my attempts to get the text the right color and typestyle. This page has a mind of it's own and I could use some help. Any suggestions?
buttering up the butterball
Planned obsolescence was a charge leveled at automobile manufacturers. I don't know that they deliberately made cars that would break down in a few years, but they kept changing what cars looked like so that people could tell when your car was old and look down on you. It was an exciting time though wondering what the new Chevy was going to look like, would it be a radical change or just some alterations to the previous year? Life magazine would publish some photo (probably leaked) of next year's Mercury, and America would let out a collective gasp. We knew how to have good times back then huh?
Those old cars grab all the attention in old photos and movies. There's the hot new starlet having a wardrobe malfunction in the foreground, but in the background is a 1956 Dodge!
I'm still on CDs, I have maybe a thousand and I just go through them again and again. I feel like I should be listening to new music, but music never really changes. It develops new genres, but within the genres it stays pretty much the same, the new blues is like the old blues.
Before the internet I was intrigued at how there was no new thing in my time. If you brought a person back from fifty years ago things would be newer and shinier but basically the same. Where were the jet packs? I guess it was sitting right on my desk. My first computer had a cassette tape for storage, than the floppy disk, than the two-sided floppy disk, then the hard drive. I had a volunteer job in Austin Texas in 1987 and the boss was kind of a geek and one time he showed me where he could put a cable between two computers and put some info in the one and then it showed up in the other. Oh my, ain't we got fun.
So that was the beginning of the internet I guess, but what seems to be the factor that really drove the current madness was when they put it on the phone and now you could carry the internet with you no matter where you were.
Which brings us to current events. I was really expecting when Trump had his physical from a real doctor and not some toady. that he would be shown to be in bad health. But apparently not that bad the real doctor said, but then he went on to say how great Trump's shape was. It wasn't that great, obese, high blood pressure, something else I think, but the doc just couldn't stop crowing about this magnificent human being.
At the time I thought it was passing strange, but now I realize he was just paying attention to Trump's toadies who all go out of their way to lavish praise, and I guess he was eager to become one of them. And now it turns out that Dr Jekyll is Mr Hyde, though as of this morning Trump is still pushing him.
It seemed that this is what was going on with Putin when he said nice things about Trump, but anymore it is pretty obvious that Putin has something (pee tapes???) on Trump. The Saudis certainly laid it on for Trump, and I think that was what Marcon wad doing with all that palsy walsy stuff.
Those old cars grab all the attention in old photos and movies. There's the hot new starlet having a wardrobe malfunction in the foreground, but in the background is a 1956 Dodge!
I'm still on CDs, I have maybe a thousand and I just go through them again and again. I feel like I should be listening to new music, but music never really changes. It develops new genres, but within the genres it stays pretty much the same, the new blues is like the old blues.
Before the internet I was intrigued at how there was no new thing in my time. If you brought a person back from fifty years ago things would be newer and shinier but basically the same. Where were the jet packs? I guess it was sitting right on my desk. My first computer had a cassette tape for storage, than the floppy disk, than the two-sided floppy disk, then the hard drive. I had a volunteer job in Austin Texas in 1987 and the boss was kind of a geek and one time he showed me where he could put a cable between two computers and put some info in the one and then it showed up in the other. Oh my, ain't we got fun.
So that was the beginning of the internet I guess, but what seems to be the factor that really drove the current madness was when they put it on the phone and now you could carry the internet with you no matter where you were.
Which brings us to current events. I was really expecting when Trump had his physical from a real doctor and not some toady. that he would be shown to be in bad health. But apparently not that bad the real doctor said, but then he went on to say how great Trump's shape was. It wasn't that great, obese, high blood pressure, something else I think, but the doc just couldn't stop crowing about this magnificent human being.
At the time I thought it was passing strange, but now I realize he was just paying attention to Trump's toadies who all go out of their way to lavish praise, and I guess he was eager to become one of them. And now it turns out that Dr Jekyll is Mr Hyde, though as of this morning Trump is still pushing him.
It seemed that this is what was going on with Putin when he said nice things about Trump, but anymore it is pretty obvious that Putin has something (pee tapes???) on Trump. The Saudis certainly laid it on for Trump, and I think that was what Marcon wad doing with all that palsy walsy stuff.
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
Planned Obsolescence
I've got a closet full of vinyl records, cassette tapes, VCR tapes, CDs and DVDs. During each transition, I resisted buying the new stuff until the old stuff became unavailable. As a result, I never got into the eight tracks, the digital audio tapes, or the Beta Max tapes, and I'm kind of proud of that. I'm not sure what Blu Rays are, but I've never gotten into them either, and don't intend to. We've still got our old CRT television from the 1990s. It worked fine until they reformatted their broadcasts to accommodate those new fangled flat screens. Now, if any text appears on the screen, it's chopped off at the sides, which makes it hard to read. Then there's those messages they run across the bottom of the screen. The beginning and the end disappears behind the rounded corners, but many of them are too small to read anyway. I thought the reason they made those flat screens was to get a better picture, but then they go ahead and clutter it up with a bunch of text. What are they trying to prove with that?
Some time ago, when our old VCR died, I bought a combination VCR and DVD player. Some time after that, the VCR part quit working. Those VCRs were prone to breaking down, and you were supposed to have them cleaned once in awhile anyway, but I don't know of anybody around here that still works on them. I couldn't justify buying a new one because the DVD part still works. I may have waited too long because I read somewhere once that the last company that made VCRs had discontinued production of them. I haven't checked around to see if they are still available. I might do that one of these days, right after I get my flu shot and buy a cell phone to keep in my truck, just for emergencies.
Some time ago, when our old VCR died, I bought a combination VCR and DVD player. Some time after that, the VCR part quit working. Those VCRs were prone to breaking down, and you were supposed to have them cleaned once in awhile anyway, but I don't know of anybody around here that still works on them. I couldn't justify buying a new one because the DVD part still works. I may have waited too long because I read somewhere once that the last company that made VCRs had discontinued production of them. I haven't checked around to see if they are still available. I might do that one of these days, right after I get my flu shot and buy a cell phone to keep in my truck, just for emergencies.
the vcr
I almost burnt the building I lived in once, It was a converted hotel on LaSalle by Division full of tiny apartments, and in the dead of winter it just did not put out enough heat, Since gas and electric was included in the rent I turned on the burners of the stove. I was pretty careful about it, I turned them off before I went to bed and before I left the house, except one time I didn't. Well I wasn't sure. I got one block from my building and I thought did I turn off those burners? Oh sure I did, well maybe I didn't, no I did, yeah I remember distinctly now twisting the dial, or was that yesterday? Well even if I'm sure, what I really ought to do is go back and check, but doesn't that lead to OCD? If I give in to that won't I be constantly going back to check every day, maybe twice a day, how will I ever get anything done?
So I pushed on ahead and I never gave it a second's thought until I got home and smelled smoke. Shit. Fourteen stories, maybe twenty apartments on each floor, 280 apartments. all those people homeless now, maybe some dead, maybe I should just keep walking until I got to the airport and start on a new life and a new identity on some tropical island. The closer I got the stronger the smell of smoke, but at some point it became weaker It turns out that there was a gas explosion and resultant fire in the Grand Avenue Little Italy about a mile west of me. It was not my fault at all.
That's a groovy phone Old Dog. I haven't seen the videos of kids with dial phones but I remember years ago one of my buddies was giving a kid a ride in his car, and when the kid learned that he could raise or lower the window just by turning that knob and the kid was like how cool.
I remember sitting around in front of the radio listening to shows before we got the tv, and years later I remember listening to old shows (including Beagles's beloved The Lone Ranger) rebroadcasted and I liked them fine, but it's just that it feels so odd to be listening to something and just staring into space. Now that I am early to bed and to rise, I spend the last couple hours of my day watching trashy tv like the murder channel and NatGeo, maybe I should just tune into some radio show. Strangely enough I bet I could find them on youtube.
The next new invention I am thinking of is kind of an odd one, the VCR. I think it was that guy who first got the answering machine who got one, and tongues wagged. They were pretty expensive at the time and we were all like nonmaterialistic ex-hippies, so who the hell did he think he was?
Then they got cheaper, and then I got a job at the post office making what for me was really big bucks, but it was the night shift and when I got home there was nothing to watch, so I bought one. It was all the rage at the PO, talking about what tv shows we were taping that night as we tossed the package that was supposed to go to Florida into the Montana bag.
There was a whole sort of temporal stability to tv back then, with the sign in in the morning and the signout at night. The regular newscasts with no 24/7 breaking news, the three o'clock movie, the ten o'clock movie. I'd like to think it gave us stability, but looking back we weren't all that stable then.
So I pushed on ahead and I never gave it a second's thought until I got home and smelled smoke. Shit. Fourteen stories, maybe twenty apartments on each floor, 280 apartments. all those people homeless now, maybe some dead, maybe I should just keep walking until I got to the airport and start on a new life and a new identity on some tropical island. The closer I got the stronger the smell of smoke, but at some point it became weaker It turns out that there was a gas explosion and resultant fire in the Grand Avenue Little Italy about a mile west of me. It was not my fault at all.
That's a groovy phone Old Dog. I haven't seen the videos of kids with dial phones but I remember years ago one of my buddies was giving a kid a ride in his car, and when the kid learned that he could raise or lower the window just by turning that knob and the kid was like how cool.
I remember sitting around in front of the radio listening to shows before we got the tv, and years later I remember listening to old shows (including Beagles's beloved The Lone Ranger) rebroadcasted and I liked them fine, but it's just that it feels so odd to be listening to something and just staring into space. Now that I am early to bed and to rise, I spend the last couple hours of my day watching trashy tv like the murder channel and NatGeo, maybe I should just tune into some radio show. Strangely enough I bet I could find them on youtube.
The next new invention I am thinking of is kind of an odd one, the VCR. I think it was that guy who first got the answering machine who got one, and tongues wagged. They were pretty expensive at the time and we were all like nonmaterialistic ex-hippies, so who the hell did he think he was?
Then they got cheaper, and then I got a job at the post office making what for me was really big bucks, but it was the night shift and when I got home there was nothing to watch, so I bought one. It was all the rage at the PO, talking about what tv shows we were taping that night as we tossed the package that was supposed to go to Florida into the Montana bag.
There was a whole sort of temporal stability to tv back then, with the sign in in the morning and the signout at night. The regular newscasts with no 24/7 breaking news, the three o'clock movie, the ten o'clock movie. I'd like to think it gave us stability, but looking back we weren't all that stable then.
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
Remember Radio?
I didn't watch TV at lunchtime, I listened to the farm report with Orion Samuelson on WGN radio. I didn't understand the livestock numbers, but I liked the music and even the commercials in between:
" Steamboat Brand keeps your crops a-growin'. Steamboat Brand, you're wise to fertilize.
Steamboat Brand, you're wise if your a-knowin' 'bout Steamboat Brand ammonium nitrate."
"I'm a real workin' man and, as every worker knows, you do better on the job when you wear the proper clothes. So, for style and rugged wear at a price that's mighty fair, I wear Osh Kosh B'gosh.
Osh Kosh B'gosh, Osh Kosh B'gosh, everywhere a factory whistle blows, or out the farmer's way where they stack the dusty hay, you'll find the real working man's clothes."
Last I heard, Orion Samuelson was still alive and doing farm reports for RFDTV. We had it on one day because the local news and weather had been preempted by stupid sports, when I heard his very distinctive voice that still sounded familiar after all these years. Sure enough, it was old Orion, looking not a day over 90. Actually, that was the first time I actually saw him because, as I said, I used to listen to him on the radio, but he must be pretty old if he was broadcasting when I was in elementary school.
So I never saw Uncle Johnny Coons, but I do remember Two Ton Baker the music maker:
"I've got tears in my ears from lyin' on my back in my bed while I cry over you, and the one thing I fears, while lyin' on my back in my bed when I cry over you, is that someday they might overflow the brim, and I'll be sorry that I never learned to swim. I've got tears in my ears from lyin' on my back in my bed while I cry over you."
Funny that I remember all that like it was yesterday, but I couldn't remember when I established my Gmail account in 2013.
We don't have voice mail, call waiting, caller ID or any of that fancy stuff. Again, it's not that we're opposed to technology, it's just that we hardly use our telephone as it is, so there's no sense in spending money on stuff we'll never use. Our phone service comes through a wire, actually a fiber optic cable. I understand that you can get it cheaper through your computer, but one of the few times we use our phone is to call the electric company when the power goes out. The computer won't work when the power is out, so that's that.
" Steamboat Brand keeps your crops a-growin'. Steamboat Brand, you're wise to fertilize.
Steamboat Brand, you're wise if your a-knowin' 'bout Steamboat Brand ammonium nitrate."
"I'm a real workin' man and, as every worker knows, you do better on the job when you wear the proper clothes. So, for style and rugged wear at a price that's mighty fair, I wear Osh Kosh B'gosh.
Osh Kosh B'gosh, Osh Kosh B'gosh, everywhere a factory whistle blows, or out the farmer's way where they stack the dusty hay, you'll find the real working man's clothes."
Last I heard, Orion Samuelson was still alive and doing farm reports for RFDTV. We had it on one day because the local news and weather had been preempted by stupid sports, when I heard his very distinctive voice that still sounded familiar after all these years. Sure enough, it was old Orion, looking not a day over 90. Actually, that was the first time I actually saw him because, as I said, I used to listen to him on the radio, but he must be pretty old if he was broadcasting when I was in elementary school.
So I never saw Uncle Johnny Coons, but I do remember Two Ton Baker the music maker:
"I've got tears in my ears from lyin' on my back in my bed while I cry over you, and the one thing I fears, while lyin' on my back in my bed when I cry over you, is that someday they might overflow the brim, and I'll be sorry that I never learned to swim. I've got tears in my ears from lyin' on my back in my bed while I cry over you."
Funny that I remember all that like it was yesterday, but I couldn't remember when I established my Gmail account in 2013.
We don't have voice mail, call waiting, caller ID or any of that fancy stuff. Again, it's not that we're opposed to technology, it's just that we hardly use our telephone as it is, so there's no sense in spending money on stuff we'll never use. Our phone service comes through a wire, actually a fiber optic cable. I understand that you can get it cheaper through your computer, but one of the few times we use our phone is to call the electric company when the power goes out. The computer won't work when the power is out, so that's that.
Signal not found
Call me "paranoid", but I think that machine is out to get me. Stupid Google Machine!
That's what you get for calling Google stupid. I haven't had any problems but I'm always saying "Google is your friend." Coincidence?
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Last week I had an interesting experience that could have started an electrical fire. I hate when that happens. My laser printer is tucked away until I need it, and I needed it to print up my tax forms; it may have been six months since I last used it. Anyhow, I hooked it up, using the same USB cable and power cord that I've always used and no problem; took about five minutes to print everything. When I removed the power cord from the printer I noticed it seemed a bit warm but didn't give it much thought until I unplugged the cord from the extension strip. That end of the cord was warm too, which I've never experienced before and then I checked the cord itself. It wasn't warm, it was hot, very hot, almost too hot to touch. Yikes! This is not right, I'm thinking, not after five minutes of printing. Houses burn down due to this kind of wiring failure and I'm glad I caught it, reminding myself not to take power cords for granted in the future. The cord went into the trash after I cut it in half; let's be careful out there.
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Uncle Ken has reached deeply into the memory banks to mention Uncle Johnny Coons. There are a few things I still remember distinctly about his program: he wore a derby, played a lot of Laurel and Hardy shorts, Jewel Foods was his main sponsor, and my favorite, he would raise a glass of milk and say "Here's How!" before drinking it.
But what about Two-Ton Baker, the music maker? Has anyone here seen Bubbles?
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I'm going to have to see if I can hook a real telephone to my computer and use that instead of my cell phone. Besides the lousy sound quality I get poor connectivity and have to move around my apartment to keep a signal; calls keep dropping out. I've still got a dandy push-button donut phone made by Western Electric that is gathering dust. Have you guys seen the videos of modern youngsters trying to cope with their granny's dial phone? Hilarious.
That's what you get for calling Google stupid. I haven't had any problems but I'm always saying "Google is your friend." Coincidence?
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Last week I had an interesting experience that could have started an electrical fire. I hate when that happens. My laser printer is tucked away until I need it, and I needed it to print up my tax forms; it may have been six months since I last used it. Anyhow, I hooked it up, using the same USB cable and power cord that I've always used and no problem; took about five minutes to print everything. When I removed the power cord from the printer I noticed it seemed a bit warm but didn't give it much thought until I unplugged the cord from the extension strip. That end of the cord was warm too, which I've never experienced before and then I checked the cord itself. It wasn't warm, it was hot, very hot, almost too hot to touch. Yikes! This is not right, I'm thinking, not after five minutes of printing. Houses burn down due to this kind of wiring failure and I'm glad I caught it, reminding myself not to take power cords for granted in the future. The cord went into the trash after I cut it in half; let's be careful out there.
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Uncle Ken has reached deeply into the memory banks to mention Uncle Johnny Coons. There are a few things I still remember distinctly about his program: he wore a derby, played a lot of Laurel and Hardy shorts, Jewel Foods was his main sponsor, and my favorite, he would raise a glass of milk and say "Here's How!" before drinking it.
But what about Two-Ton Baker, the music maker? Has anyone here seen Bubbles?
-----
I'm going to have to see if I can hook a real telephone to my computer and use that instead of my cell phone. Besides the lousy sound quality I get poor connectivity and have to move around my apartment to keep a signal; calls keep dropping out. I've still got a dandy push-button donut phone made by Western Electric that is gathering dust. Have you guys seen the videos of modern youngsters trying to cope with their granny's dial phone? Hilarious.
keeping up with the Hinkleberrys
When I was in the third grade suddenly all the kids were talking about Uncle Johnny Coons. So cool. Nowadays all the kids eat in the lunch room, but back in the golden days of my youth almost all the kids ran home for lunch and back to school when it was eaten. Not everybody. There was a room in the basement where kids could eat their lunch. Me and my sisters went there a few times on the rare occasions that Mom was off on some kind of errand. It was dingy and cramped and the chairs wobbled, the kind of place where only disreputable kids who didn't have parents that loved them enough to be home to put some cold cuts between Wonder Bread and heat up Campbell's tomato soup.
Anyway Uncle Johnny Coons was on television, which was the first great wave of technology to wash over me. Wash, it steamrolled, it steamrolled everybody. Family life was never the same. Remember how the railroads brought us standardized time, well television brought time into two dimensions. It was no longer seven PM, now it was seven PM on channel seven.
With the dominance of tv came the first resistors, intellectual types as I recall, who surveyed the array of low brow fare and declared that this crap will rot your mind. And sometime in high school I became a tv resistor. I walked out of the blue-lit living room down the streets of the hood, all the windows seemed to have a blue tinge, i thought of that light illuminating slack-jawed faces as they watched that crap and felt superior.
I kept this up through college, and hanging out days. People would talk about tv shows and I would snicker, never heard of them. I think it was when they started having tvs in bars that I began to weaken. In the middle eighties a friend of mine had a tv he didn't know what to do with so I let him park it at my house. Tentatively I turned it on, well how about this, then that, and it began to rot my mind so that when my friend's situation changed and he took his tv back, I went out right away and bought myself one.
The next new thing to impinge on my life was the answering machine. I remember the shock when I called one of my more progressive friends and instead of getting in touch with them or listening to the echo of the phone ringing endlessly like a train whistle as it wended its way through the lonely prairie, there was Good evening, you have reached the Hinkleberrys who are not at home right now, likely because they are attending some fabulous event that people of your ilk would never be invited to so please leave some pitiful message and we will get back to you, if we don't have anything better to do.
Well I never. The nerve, the gall, who do they think they are? I was taken aback, my words stumbled, I sounded like the kind of person who indeed would be staying at home, probably rotting his mind on tv, while the Hinkleberrys attended their fabulous event.
But then these messages became more common. Eventually I got one, and when I called people and the ring just went on and on like that lonesome train whistle, I thought, what is wrong with these people, why can't they keep up with the times?
Anyway Uncle Johnny Coons was on television, which was the first great wave of technology to wash over me. Wash, it steamrolled, it steamrolled everybody. Family life was never the same. Remember how the railroads brought us standardized time, well television brought time into two dimensions. It was no longer seven PM, now it was seven PM on channel seven.
With the dominance of tv came the first resistors, intellectual types as I recall, who surveyed the array of low brow fare and declared that this crap will rot your mind. And sometime in high school I became a tv resistor. I walked out of the blue-lit living room down the streets of the hood, all the windows seemed to have a blue tinge, i thought of that light illuminating slack-jawed faces as they watched that crap and felt superior.
I kept this up through college, and hanging out days. People would talk about tv shows and I would snicker, never heard of them. I think it was when they started having tvs in bars that I began to weaken. In the middle eighties a friend of mine had a tv he didn't know what to do with so I let him park it at my house. Tentatively I turned it on, well how about this, then that, and it began to rot my mind so that when my friend's situation changed and he took his tv back, I went out right away and bought myself one.
The next new thing to impinge on my life was the answering machine. I remember the shock when I called one of my more progressive friends and instead of getting in touch with them or listening to the echo of the phone ringing endlessly like a train whistle as it wended its way through the lonely prairie, there was Good evening, you have reached the Hinkleberrys who are not at home right now, likely because they are attending some fabulous event that people of your ilk would never be invited to so please leave some pitiful message and we will get back to you, if we don't have anything better to do.
Well I never. The nerve, the gall, who do they think they are? I was taken aback, my words stumbled, I sounded like the kind of person who indeed would be staying at home, probably rotting his mind on tv, while the Hinkleberrys attended their fabulous event.
But then these messages became more common. Eventually I got one, and when I called people and the ring just went on and on like that lonesome train whistle, I thought, what is wrong with these people, why can't they keep up with the times?
Monday, April 23, 2018
A Herd of One
When I was younger, somebody accused me of being a non conformist. I had to think about it for a moment before responding that I didn't think of myself as a non conformist, I preferred to think of myself as an individualist. I don't do what I do because others are doing it, but I don't refrain from doing it because others are doing it either. I just do what I do whether others are doing it or not. When you think about it, though, almost every idea we get comes from other people, but just because you get an idea doesn't mean you have to act on it.
I don't have a cell phone because I have no practical use for one. I bought one once when our regular phone service went out for five days. Just as I was about to use it to call the phone company, their truck drove up to our house. After a brief conversation, the guy drove away to fix the problem. I was outside when he came back and asked me if our phone was working now. Rather than go back into the house to check, I used my new cell pone to call my hypothetical wife on our regular phone to find out that our regular phone was indeed working. That was the only time I ever used that cell phone. I gave it to my grand daughter six months later so she could use up my prepaid minutes before they expired. I think a cell phone would be handy if a person spent a lot of time on the road, which I don't. If I break down between here and Cheboygan, somebody will surely stop and help me before long. If not, I might be able to walk home, but maybe not. I am no spring chicken anymore you know. When my mother was my age, she kept a cell phone in her car for emergencies. I don't think she ever used it, but it made her feel safer having it just in case. Maybe I'll look into getting a cell phone next fall, right after I get my flu shot.
Last night I got to poking around in my Gmail, and I found the original "welcome" message that I got when I first established my account on May 28, 2013. Apparently I never deleted it, maybe because I don't remember receiving it. In those days I was running my Gmail through my Windows Mail, or whatever they were calling the old Outlook Express at the time. I could never make that program work on the computer that I bought in 2016, so I have been just using the Gmail program directly. I was surprised to find that old message, but I'm glad that I did. Next time that smart alecky Google Machine asks me when I established my account, I can tell it. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if it just found another excuse to deny me access. Call me "paranoid", but I think that machine is out to get me. Stupid Google Machine!
I don't have a cell phone because I have no practical use for one. I bought one once when our regular phone service went out for five days. Just as I was about to use it to call the phone company, their truck drove up to our house. After a brief conversation, the guy drove away to fix the problem. I was outside when he came back and asked me if our phone was working now. Rather than go back into the house to check, I used my new cell pone to call my hypothetical wife on our regular phone to find out that our regular phone was indeed working. That was the only time I ever used that cell phone. I gave it to my grand daughter six months later so she could use up my prepaid minutes before they expired. I think a cell phone would be handy if a person spent a lot of time on the road, which I don't. If I break down between here and Cheboygan, somebody will surely stop and help me before long. If not, I might be able to walk home, but maybe not. I am no spring chicken anymore you know. When my mother was my age, she kept a cell phone in her car for emergencies. I don't think she ever used it, but it made her feel safer having it just in case. Maybe I'll look into getting a cell phone next fall, right after I get my flu shot.
Last night I got to poking around in my Gmail, and I found the original "welcome" message that I got when I first established my account on May 28, 2013. Apparently I never deleted it, maybe because I don't remember receiving it. In those days I was running my Gmail through my Windows Mail, or whatever they were calling the old Outlook Express at the time. I could never make that program work on the computer that I bought in 2016, so I have been just using the Gmail program directly. I was surprised to find that old message, but I'm glad that I did. Next time that smart alecky Google Machine asks me when I established my account, I can tell it. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if it just found another excuse to deny me access. Call me "paranoid", but I think that machine is out to get me. Stupid Google Machine!
joining the herd
Try it you'll like it, or maybe you won't, but at least you'll know you don't like it. I have never understood people who never drank a drop or smoked a little dope. Hey there's this whole carnival going on right outside your window, don't you want to see the bearded lady?
I'm not buying Old Dog's explanation. Well maybe the privacy part, but then I've never understood the privacy fetish, but I'm not going there today, because it's a bit like the liberal agenda, a bit of a bore, Anyway I think the real reason Old Dog isn't posting.his plate of shrimp from Snappy's is because everybody else is doing it. There's a certain nerve in the body, some of us have more of it, and some don't have it at all, but when the maddening crowd rushes after the bright new thing, it causes you to stiffen your back and cry out, "Not me."
It's like, I don't know, Game of Thrones. I've never seen a second of it , wouldn't know where to find it, all I know about it is when I saw a parody of it on South Park, and didn't know what they were parodying until there was some mention of it. The first thing I think is, if it's that popular, if that many people like it, how can it possibly be any good?
There is just something very revolting about the mob, the glaze in their eyes, the salver from their lips, the thunder of their hooves, as they rush past you, maybe occasionally one of them bumps into you, grabs your lapels and grunts and points, before hurrying on so as not to get behind in the mob. But there you stand, straight and resolute, and is that pride causing that curl in your lower lip, the sneer of the proud, I am not like them, my eyes do not glaze, my lips are free of slaver and my hooves stay rooted? Well of course it is.
I've never understood why pride was one of the seven deadly sins, it's so, I don't know, noble, but it does feel good, maybe that's why.
Cell phones, you know, I resisted until last year. I looked with scorn at the thundering herd, phones in their ears, worse, in front of their faces, as they plinked and plonked heedless of their surroundings. And then the crowd began murmuring in my ear. They'd ask for my cell and when I didn't have one they would roll their eyes and say, hey this isn't cute anymore, maybe like I am pestering Old Dog to come and see the wonder.
And then one afternoon I was to meet my sister at Pizzeria Due and I sat and sat and she never showed and I ate my pizza alone. It turned out that the engagement was for Pizzeria Uno. Had I had a smart phone I would have been able to check my email and notice that I was in the wrong pizzeria, and more simply we would have been able to call each other and straighten this thing out.
I don't generally carry the damn thing with me when I go out unless I am meeting somebody, but everytime circumstances cause me to pull the damn thing out and consult it I am embarrassed to be seen doing so, as if I, were one of the herd..
I'm not buying Old Dog's explanation. Well maybe the privacy part, but then I've never understood the privacy fetish, but I'm not going there today, because it's a bit like the liberal agenda, a bit of a bore, Anyway I think the real reason Old Dog isn't posting.his plate of shrimp from Snappy's is because everybody else is doing it. There's a certain nerve in the body, some of us have more of it, and some don't have it at all, but when the maddening crowd rushes after the bright new thing, it causes you to stiffen your back and cry out, "Not me."
It's like, I don't know, Game of Thrones. I've never seen a second of it , wouldn't know where to find it, all I know about it is when I saw a parody of it on South Park, and didn't know what they were parodying until there was some mention of it. The first thing I think is, if it's that popular, if that many people like it, how can it possibly be any good?
There is just something very revolting about the mob, the glaze in their eyes, the salver from their lips, the thunder of their hooves, as they rush past you, maybe occasionally one of them bumps into you, grabs your lapels and grunts and points, before hurrying on so as not to get behind in the mob. But there you stand, straight and resolute, and is that pride causing that curl in your lower lip, the sneer of the proud, I am not like them, my eyes do not glaze, my lips are free of slaver and my hooves stay rooted? Well of course it is.
I've never understood why pride was one of the seven deadly sins, it's so, I don't know, noble, but it does feel good, maybe that's why.
Cell phones, you know, I resisted until last year. I looked with scorn at the thundering herd, phones in their ears, worse, in front of their faces, as they plinked and plonked heedless of their surroundings. And then the crowd began murmuring in my ear. They'd ask for my cell and when I didn't have one they would roll their eyes and say, hey this isn't cute anymore, maybe like I am pestering Old Dog to come and see the wonder.
And then one afternoon I was to meet my sister at Pizzeria Due and I sat and sat and she never showed and I ate my pizza alone. It turned out that the engagement was for Pizzeria Uno. Had I had a smart phone I would have been able to check my email and notice that I was in the wrong pizzeria, and more simply we would have been able to call each other and straighten this thing out.
I don't generally carry the damn thing with me when I go out unless I am meeting somebody, but everytime circumstances cause me to pull the damn thing out and consult it I am embarrassed to be seen doing so, as if I, were one of the herd..
Sunday, April 22, 2018
Almost nothing
The plight of Mr.Beagles and his email account continues to baffle me. I can't figure out why it happens so frequently and with such regularity but I will continue to think on it. Since my Gmail account has worked flawlessly I am at a loss or any solution.
I don't understand this aversion to fb. I'll let Old Dog explain himself.
What's to explain? It's more of an indifference than an aversion. Facebook didn't appeal to me when it was released and it's less appealing to me now with all the security lapses and privacy issues being revealed. Mu.
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I don't recall the source, but Barbars Bush made a final request once she arrived at home for her final days: "I want some bourbon." What a dame!
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Liberal agenda? *yawn*
I don't understand this aversion to fb. I'll let Old Dog explain himself.
What's to explain? It's more of an indifference than an aversion. Facebook didn't appeal to me when it was released and it's less appealing to me now with all the security lapses and privacy issues being revealed. Mu.
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I don't recall the source, but Barbars Bush made a final request once she arrived at home for her final days: "I want some bourbon." What a dame!
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Liberal agenda? *yawn*
Friday, April 20, 2018
Stupid Google Machine!
Since the last time I was locked out, I established a recovery email account, just like they told me to. All I got for my trouble was another big run around. After I went through the recovery procedure, I got a message that said my request was denied because I didn't give them enough information. Near as I can tell, the information they wanted was the month and year that I first established my Gmail account. They said that, if I didn't remember, to give it my "best guess", which I did, but my best just wasn't good enough, and my request was denied again. I tried several times and finally gave up to wait it out. Sure enough, I was back in business on the third day, just like all the other times. One good thing was that they sent me a customer satisfaction survey this time, and I told them exactly how satisfied I was with their customer service. I don't suppose it will do any good, but it made me feel better. I don't know what to do about this. It seems a shame to uproot the Institute and relocate it after all these years, since you guys are not having this problem. Maybe I will just resign myself to skipping a couple of days every three weeks or so.
The only snow shoveling I do is right around the doorways, the rest of it is done with the tractor. Our driveway is about a hundred yards long, and then there's the parking and turnaround area. The whole thing usually takes me an hour or two, depending on how much snow we get. This last storm was different because we had three layers of snow, each one with a different consistency. The first layer came down as sleet or something and then froze. Then there was some heavy wet stuff that also froze. Then we got some regular snow to top it all off. Total accumulation was not over a foot, which wouldn't have been a problem if it was all regular snow. Now it's all melting into a big sloppy mess, but we have been able to get in and out with our 4WDs. No point in trying to plow it any further, it would just tear up the gravel. I lose some gravel every year anyway, and I get a five yard load sometime during the summer to replace it.
Shortly after I first established my Face Book account, I was denied access for a year or better. I wasn't crazy about the site anyway, so I didn't try to contact them to find out what the problem was. Then one day I got an email message telling me I had a response to one of my previous posts, and to click on here to view it, which I did, and I was always able to access it after that. I had some blog posts on there at one time, but they were lost during one of their unnecessary upgrades. The main reason I don't like FB, though, is that they refuse to get my user name right. They want you to use your real name, but I promised my hypothetical wife when I first started on the internet that I would never divulge my real name. The way I got around that was I told them that my first name was "Talks", my middle name was "With", and my last name was "Beagles". For some reason, they dropped my middle name and have always called me "Talks Beagles". I tried many times to correct that, but my request was always denied. I haven't tried in a long time, but I don't care anymore. I only go there once a week to see what my family has been up to. In the process, I see some of Uncle Ken's artwork, which is cool.
The only snow shoveling I do is right around the doorways, the rest of it is done with the tractor. Our driveway is about a hundred yards long, and then there's the parking and turnaround area. The whole thing usually takes me an hour or two, depending on how much snow we get. This last storm was different because we had three layers of snow, each one with a different consistency. The first layer came down as sleet or something and then froze. Then there was some heavy wet stuff that also froze. Then we got some regular snow to top it all off. Total accumulation was not over a foot, which wouldn't have been a problem if it was all regular snow. Now it's all melting into a big sloppy mess, but we have been able to get in and out with our 4WDs. No point in trying to plow it any further, it would just tear up the gravel. I lose some gravel every year anyway, and I get a five yard load sometime during the summer to replace it.
Shortly after I first established my Face Book account, I was denied access for a year or better. I wasn't crazy about the site anyway, so I didn't try to contact them to find out what the problem was. Then one day I got an email message telling me I had a response to one of my previous posts, and to click on here to view it, which I did, and I was always able to access it after that. I had some blog posts on there at one time, but they were lost during one of their unnecessary upgrades. The main reason I don't like FB, though, is that they refuse to get my user name right. They want you to use your real name, but I promised my hypothetical wife when I first started on the internet that I would never divulge my real name. The way I got around that was I told them that my first name was "Talks", my middle name was "With", and my last name was "Beagles". For some reason, they dropped my middle name and have always called me "Talks Beagles". I tried many times to correct that, but my request was always denied. I haven't tried in a long time, but I don't care anymore. I only go there once a week to see what my family has been up to. In the process, I see some of Uncle Ken's artwork, which is cool.
charming Rudy
Apparently Beagles is locked out again this morning. Apparently it has become one of those things that happen from time to time and you just go, oh that wascally internet, and go about your business and then the next day you are back in as if nothing in particular had happened.
Oh, search box, I guess that will be useful for researching. Now we can not only research the internet, we can research The Institute. Much wisdom to be gleaned there I am sure.
Maybe because I am not an engineering type, I never noticed what kind of shovel I was using on snow. As I recall it was distinctly called a snow shovel so it was probably the flat kind. I can't remember if I ever used salt. Certainly not in the days when I would go knocking on neighbor's doors and come back with a jingling pocket of change. I don't remember ever using salt, seems kind of, I dunno, effete or something.
Oh those Syria strikes, that is just a formality, like expelling diplomats. Nobody expects it to mean anything and everybody's just happy we are not at war with the Russkies. Even the guys who got gassed are like, well it just means we will get barrel bombed tomorrow.
They pulled that wag the dog thing on Slick Willie when we went into the Balkans. Remember that? At the time it seemed stupid because we had no national interest there, but it was those photos of the guys in the concentration camps, reminded us of WW II, of Munich where Beagles' and my people were thrown under the bus, and nobody wants to be remembered as being like that guy with the umbrella.
I guess it worked out okay. I don't think the US lost a man. I think we still have UN guys walking th uneasy border between the Serbs and the Kosovans, but you rarely hear about anything going on down there, so it seems like a small price to pay.
But Syria, I don't know, not much of a dog there and it's not like we are lacking in distractions.
Yar, I think the Trumpists, probably only Donald himself because it is so stupid, think Giuliani is going to make some kind of deal, but really, what a clown. I can just see him knocking on Mueller's door with flowers and chocolates and given the polite equivalent of the bum's rush. How about that Haley babe though, walked right up to the line of calling Trump a big fucking liar, and so far nada out of his pursed lips.
I don't understand this aversion to fb. I'll let Old Dog explain himself.
And it looks like my own tale of oh, promoting the liberal agenda in a gracious way, has met with a big yawn from the dawgs. Oh that Uncle Ken, thinks he can save the world and he doesn't even know what kind of snow shovel he's holding.
And, here comes the paper.
Oh, search box, I guess that will be useful for researching. Now we can not only research the internet, we can research The Institute. Much wisdom to be gleaned there I am sure.
Maybe because I am not an engineering type, I never noticed what kind of shovel I was using on snow. As I recall it was distinctly called a snow shovel so it was probably the flat kind. I can't remember if I ever used salt. Certainly not in the days when I would go knocking on neighbor's doors and come back with a jingling pocket of change. I don't remember ever using salt, seems kind of, I dunno, effete or something.
Oh those Syria strikes, that is just a formality, like expelling diplomats. Nobody expects it to mean anything and everybody's just happy we are not at war with the Russkies. Even the guys who got gassed are like, well it just means we will get barrel bombed tomorrow.
They pulled that wag the dog thing on Slick Willie when we went into the Balkans. Remember that? At the time it seemed stupid because we had no national interest there, but it was those photos of the guys in the concentration camps, reminded us of WW II, of Munich where Beagles' and my people were thrown under the bus, and nobody wants to be remembered as being like that guy with the umbrella.
I guess it worked out okay. I don't think the US lost a man. I think we still have UN guys walking th uneasy border between the Serbs and the Kosovans, but you rarely hear about anything going on down there, so it seems like a small price to pay.
But Syria, I don't know, not much of a dog there and it's not like we are lacking in distractions.
Yar, I think the Trumpists, probably only Donald himself because it is so stupid, think Giuliani is going to make some kind of deal, but really, what a clown. I can just see him knocking on Mueller's door with flowers and chocolates and given the polite equivalent of the bum's rush. How about that Haley babe though, walked right up to the line of calling Trump a big fucking liar, and so far nada out of his pursed lips.
I don't understand this aversion to fb. I'll let Old Dog explain himself.
And it looks like my own tale of oh, promoting the liberal agenda in a gracious way, has met with a big yawn from the dawgs. Oh that Uncle Ken, thinks he can save the world and he doesn't even know what kind of snow shovel he's holding.
And, here comes the paper.
Thursday, April 19, 2018
More Ado About Nothing
July 18, 2016? Did Old Dog go through all those posts or does he have a short cut.
That link was pretty easy to find, using the search box on the Blogger page (upper left corner). I searched for "marina" and a bunch of posts showed up, and then I used CTRL/F to find "marina" on the page. It didn't take many jumps to find the right post, took less than five minutes in total for the search.
-----
The discussion about shoveling snow made me realize how much snow shovels have improved. When I was a kid there was only one kind of snow shovel, an ungainly rectangular thing made of aluminum that was worthless for anything but the finest powder, forget about the heavy wet stuff. Steel coal shovels were the most common shovels, and then the curved blade shovels showed up, also made of steel. The modern plastic shovels are a big improvement; lighter weight and the snow doesn't stick to them very well. I think you need two or three different types of shovel, depending on the type of snow, to get you through the winter.
I used to have a system where I would salt the sidewalk just as the snowfall started. After three or four inches fell I would go out and shovel, and the sidewalk would be snow-free, but wet. If it kept snowing I would just go out and shovel after another three or four inches fell, repeating as necessary. When the snow quit falling and I was done shoveling, the sidewalk would still be wet so I salted it again. The next day the sidewalk would be bone-dry, not a lick of snow or ice anywhere. It was very satisfying to have the only dry patch of sidewalk on the whole block.
-----
There is a whole circus of fascinating stuff going on in the political arena, but neither dawg seems to have much interest in it.
I have mixed feelings about all the current nonsense; there is certainly plenty to talk about but it's like discussing a movie while you are viewing it. Stories are still unfolding and there is too much speculation and too many distractions for my taste.
Look at the aerial strikes in Syria not long ago; people were going nuts and now, nothing. It turns out those strikes made a lot of noise, blew up some empty buildings but didn't do any shit of consequence. Some of the pundits have mentioned the movie Wag the Dog and I'm thinking they are not far from the truth. What better way to distract the media than some well-aimed missiles? Trump is getting desperate. Today it was announced that Rudy Giuliani has joined his crack legal team, which is interesting because I don't think Giuliani has been in a courtroom in a long time although he did have a working relationship with Mueller about thirty years ago. Maybe he's trying to cut a deal.
-----
You need a Facebook account to view its postings unless the posts are specified for public viewing (I think). Here are the results of the two links Uncle Ken provided:
No tickee no laundry.
That link was pretty easy to find, using the search box on the Blogger page (upper left corner). I searched for "marina" and a bunch of posts showed up, and then I used CTRL/F to find "marina" on the page. It didn't take many jumps to find the right post, took less than five minutes in total for the search.
-----
The discussion about shoveling snow made me realize how much snow shovels have improved. When I was a kid there was only one kind of snow shovel, an ungainly rectangular thing made of aluminum that was worthless for anything but the finest powder, forget about the heavy wet stuff. Steel coal shovels were the most common shovels, and then the curved blade shovels showed up, also made of steel. The modern plastic shovels are a big improvement; lighter weight and the snow doesn't stick to them very well. I think you need two or three different types of shovel, depending on the type of snow, to get you through the winter.
I used to have a system where I would salt the sidewalk just as the snowfall started. After three or four inches fell I would go out and shovel, and the sidewalk would be snow-free, but wet. If it kept snowing I would just go out and shovel after another three or four inches fell, repeating as necessary. When the snow quit falling and I was done shoveling, the sidewalk would still be wet so I salted it again. The next day the sidewalk would be bone-dry, not a lick of snow or ice anywhere. It was very satisfying to have the only dry patch of sidewalk on the whole block.
-----
There is a whole circus of fascinating stuff going on in the political arena, but neither dawg seems to have much interest in it.
I have mixed feelings about all the current nonsense; there is certainly plenty to talk about but it's like discussing a movie while you are viewing it. Stories are still unfolding and there is too much speculation and too many distractions for my taste.
Look at the aerial strikes in Syria not long ago; people were going nuts and now, nothing. It turns out those strikes made a lot of noise, blew up some empty buildings but didn't do any shit of consequence. Some of the pundits have mentioned the movie Wag the Dog and I'm thinking they are not far from the truth. What better way to distract the media than some well-aimed missiles? Trump is getting desperate. Today it was announced that Rudy Giuliani has joined his crack legal team, which is interesting because I don't think Giuliani has been in a courtroom in a long time although he did have a working relationship with Mueller about thirty years ago. Maybe he's trying to cut a deal.
-----
You need a Facebook account to view its postings unless the posts are specified for public viewing (I think). Here are the results of the two links Uncle Ken provided:
No tickee no laundry.
fb shenanigans
"I PLEDGE ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND TO THE REPUBLIC FOR WHICH IT STANDS, ONE NATION UNDER GOD, INDIVISIBLE WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL"
...MY GENERATION GREW UP RECITING THIS EVERY MORNING IN SCHOOL WITH MY HAND ON MY HEART. THEY NO LONGER DO THAT FOR FEAR OF OFFENDING SOMEONE!
LET'S SEE HOW MANY AMERICANS WILL RE-POST AND NOT CARE ABOUT OFFENDING SOMEONE!
My reply:Kenneth J Schadt That's ridiculous. When I was subbing in elementary schools in Chicago a few years back, they all recited that pledge every morning, and I have to say it didn't make them better kids anymore than it made me a better kid when I did it sixty years ago. These GoverNews people are probably Russkies trying to make some of us Americans mad at other people who are also Americans. Be a good American and don't fall for that crap.
https://www.facebook.com/ellen.obyrne.9/posts/1818605894857509?comment_id=1818844991500266¬if_id=1524089364707204¬if_t=feedback_reaction_generic&ref=notif
The GoverNews page: https://www.facebook.com/GoverNews/?hc_ref=ARSbbLf3ICmX7CKCAAiRVTUQimH699pWUtz703fS2qW4rIw2Is7S9cxfVLHWVLi5BNQ&fref=nf
Note the photo of a smiling Trump holding a rifle.
I don't know if Old Dawg ever looks at fb. or if he can (some people who aren't on fb tell me they can't access it, but I expect they don't want to and don't even try), but it's full of stuff like that. That stuff all in caps is typed against some grey patterned background, looks like a jpg, but I wasn't able to get it from the page that way. The current fashion in fb is to put your bumpersticker against some kind of background with maybe some fancy font and this is supposed to make it more believable I think.
Anyway when I went to it to try to lift what I thought was a jpg I saw all these other replies which I am happy to report were similar to ,mine.
First of all the premise is false, secondly note the dare to post, and the assumption that one has to be courageous to post it.
My newspaper has hit my door. Feel free to discuss.
Wednesday, April 18, 2018
boring stuff
I used to like shoveling snow. Back when I was mopping the floors of Herrin Hospital, sometimes on a winter evening the call would go out to us janitors to drop our mops and get our shovels. The other janitors would grumble, but I was happy to get out of doors where it was dark and quiet and before me an unbroken expanse of white and behind me a freshly shoveled walk that little old ladies could traverse without fear of slipping and breaking a hip.
When I lived in Urbana for some reason I had a snow shovel and I was out there at the drop of a flake, I lived in the middle of the block, but I would shovel down to the corner because once I started I couldn't stop. After I went broke in Texas and returned to the family manse my parents couldn't hold me back from getting out there with the shovel.
Of course that was a man with a shovel, a more primal, more satisfying affair than driving some dang internal combustion contraption. I imagine it is not so much fun plowing a path out of the swamp.
Here in towers snow is generally only a problem early in the morning or on Sundays. There is a ramp up from lower Wacker on the other side of the river and it is lined with garbage trucks with snowplows at the first rumor of flakes, No subsequent mayor wants to suffer the fate of Michael Bilandic.
I know about hiding stuff on fb. I guess I've hid some people who posted some really foul racist crapola on my page, but mostly I have hidden people who post like twenty times a day. I'm surprised that Beagles knows so much about fb since I don't think I've ever seen him post anything. Which is fine, just fine. I think he goes through fb on the weekends because on Monday I see where he has liked my Monday painting posting or whatever,
Well snow and fb, I am bored practically to tears. There is a whole circus of fascinating stuff going on in the political arena, but neither dawg seems to have much interest in it. Maybe no tweets today in honor of Barbara Bush. I hate when political figures die because everybody is so solemn and noble and the news is like a smooth white cover of snow on the sidewalk. I can't wait to shovel it.
When I lived in Urbana for some reason I had a snow shovel and I was out there at the drop of a flake, I lived in the middle of the block, but I would shovel down to the corner because once I started I couldn't stop. After I went broke in Texas and returned to the family manse my parents couldn't hold me back from getting out there with the shovel.
Of course that was a man with a shovel, a more primal, more satisfying affair than driving some dang internal combustion contraption. I imagine it is not so much fun plowing a path out of the swamp.
Here in towers snow is generally only a problem early in the morning or on Sundays. There is a ramp up from lower Wacker on the other side of the river and it is lined with garbage trucks with snowplows at the first rumor of flakes, No subsequent mayor wants to suffer the fate of Michael Bilandic.
I know about hiding stuff on fb. I guess I've hid some people who posted some really foul racist crapola on my page, but mostly I have hidden people who post like twenty times a day. I'm surprised that Beagles knows so much about fb since I don't think I've ever seen him post anything. Which is fine, just fine. I think he goes through fb on the weekends because on Monday I see where he has liked my Monday painting posting or whatever,
Well snow and fb, I am bored practically to tears. There is a whole circus of fascinating stuff going on in the political arena, but neither dawg seems to have much interest in it. Maybe no tweets today in honor of Barbara Bush. I hate when political figures die because everybody is so solemn and noble and the news is like a smooth white cover of snow on the sidewalk. I can't wait to shovel it.
Tuesday, April 17, 2018
Digging Out
Uncle Ken might be more interested in the weather if he was wallowing in it at ground level instead of viewing it with detachment from his ivory tower. I saw on the news this evening that Cheboygan has gotten 20 inches of snow so far this month, and the month ain't over yet. This broke our previous record for April by one inch. I don't think this last storm accounted for half of those 20 inches, but it came down wet and froze hard, making it really difficult to plow with my little tractor. I can't get down to the gravel with one pass like I do with the fluffy stuff we usually get, I've got to go over and over it, peeling it off in layers. My hypothetical wife has to get out tomorrow to have some work done on her car, so I have busted out a track for her, which should be sufficient because she has 4WD, but I will be standing by ready to render assistance if necessary. I've got the critical area by the mailbox cleared out. I always do that part first because we are the last house on the road and the mailman has to turn around in our driveway.
Actually, our mailbox is in our driveway instead of on the county road, since the guy has to turn around there anyway. I negotiated this deal when we first moved here, and committed to keeping it plowed out for him. There was no mail delivery yesterday and today, so I suspect some of the county roads are still in bad shape. Our own road is okay because my neighbor has a snow plow on his pick up truck and he plows down to the corner rather than wait for the county to do it. When the county plow shows up a day or two later, it pushes the banks back and also turns around in my driveway. Then I have to clean it out all over again. Today was our garbage pick up day, but the garbage truck didn't make it either. We do put the garbage cans on the edge of the county road, and I keep a spot plowed out for them so the snowplow won't hit them, but that doesn't mean it won't bury them when it finally comes through, so I'll have to check on that tomorrow as well.
I don't know if you guys know this about Face Book, but you don't have to see all the stuff your friends post. If you have a friend who posts stuff that you'd rather not see, you can un-follow him without un-friending him. Just go to his home page, or wall, or whatever they are calling it nowadays, and you will find a box that says "Follow". I think it defaults to that when you accept a new friend, but you can un-check the box and his stuff will no longer show up in your feed. Another thing is that, if you reply or like something, you will get more of that kind of stuff, and it will display higher up on the list. The best way to make similar stuff move farther down is to ignore it. Of course you can block or unfriend people, but that seems kind of mean when all they are doing is cluttering up your feed with boring crap.
Actually, our mailbox is in our driveway instead of on the county road, since the guy has to turn around there anyway. I negotiated this deal when we first moved here, and committed to keeping it plowed out for him. There was no mail delivery yesterday and today, so I suspect some of the county roads are still in bad shape. Our own road is okay because my neighbor has a snow plow on his pick up truck and he plows down to the corner rather than wait for the county to do it. When the county plow shows up a day or two later, it pushes the banks back and also turns around in my driveway. Then I have to clean it out all over again. Today was our garbage pick up day, but the garbage truck didn't make it either. We do put the garbage cans on the edge of the county road, and I keep a spot plowed out for them so the snowplow won't hit them, but that doesn't mean it won't bury them when it finally comes through, so I'll have to check on that tomorrow as well.
I don't know if you guys know this about Face Book, but you don't have to see all the stuff your friends post. If you have a friend who posts stuff that you'd rather not see, you can un-follow him without un-friending him. Just go to his home page, or wall, or whatever they are calling it nowadays, and you will find a box that says "Follow". I think it defaults to that when you accept a new friend, but you can un-check the box and his stuff will no longer show up in your feed. Another thing is that, if you reply or like something, you will get more of that kind of stuff, and it will display higher up on the list. The best way to make similar stuff move farther down is to ignore it. Of course you can block or unfriend people, but that seems kind of mean when all they are doing is cluttering up your feed with boring crap.
the circus within the circus
I remember that Marina City link now. It was in conjunction with a little Marina City exhibition at the Art Institute. Strangely though I don't remember my balcony being highlighted. I don't know why I wouldn't remember that. July 18, 2016? Did Old Dog go through all those posts or does he have a short cut.
Fb is really no trouble. You don't have to post anything if you don't want to. I know some people who never post anything. They just want to be able to see what is going on with people they know. The problem with it is a lot of it is so stoopid, and you can't complain because a lot of the stoopid stuff is put up by good friends of yours who you respect. Of course I never post anything stoopid. Well, I do occasionally post a photo of my cats, but only a stoopid person would think that was stoopid/
The start of the baseball season is indeed impacted by the current weather. The opener was postponed, Saturday's game was so cold and rainy and windy that the Cubs scored nine runs with two outs to overcome a 10 to 4 deficit, but even so our manager complained that the game should never have been played. The last two games have been postponed and likely the next two also.
I din't watch Comey either, those interviews, a lot of dead time in them and you can catch the good parts on the clips later on. In fact you will see them about a hundred times. I admit to being a CNN junky, and I admit that in between Breaking News (which of course might not be breaking at all) they have these endless panels chewing on the same old news over and over, which I don't mind, but the way they replay those clips does get on my nerves.
But sometimes Breaking News is really breaking news. The gym has CNN on 24/7, but from the stationary bike I can't hear it clearly, nor can I quite make out the chyron (that crawl under the screen. I just learned that name, so cool.), but there was Hannity on the screen and there was his name, but what was going on?
I knew that hearing on Cohen's stuff was going on, and I knew Stormy would be showing up for that, but I had gone down to the gym anyway, thinking well I'll see Stormy a hundred times later on. So this must have something to do with that. I quickly pedaled my last quarter mile and was back in my apartment and Hannity was Cohen's third client.
I don't know how much this means to non cable news junkies, but for us it was yuge. Here was a circus (Stormy) turning into a circus (Hannity). And then it turns out that Cohen calls Hannity a client and Hannity denies it, except, well maybe he asked him about stuff once or twice, but it was mostly about real estate. But mostly about real estate means not entirely about real estate though Hannity never mentioned that,
The one thing we know about Trump's other two clients is that he fixed things for them by paying off (ahem) affairs of the heart. So was he paying off for Hannity too? No proof of that, but once I thought that the pee tape was highly unlikely.
I find this all far more interesting than the weather, but hey, that's me.
Fb is really no trouble. You don't have to post anything if you don't want to. I know some people who never post anything. They just want to be able to see what is going on with people they know. The problem with it is a lot of it is so stoopid, and you can't complain because a lot of the stoopid stuff is put up by good friends of yours who you respect. Of course I never post anything stoopid. Well, I do occasionally post a photo of my cats, but only a stoopid person would think that was stoopid/
The start of the baseball season is indeed impacted by the current weather. The opener was postponed, Saturday's game was so cold and rainy and windy that the Cubs scored nine runs with two outs to overcome a 10 to 4 deficit, but even so our manager complained that the game should never have been played. The last two games have been postponed and likely the next two also.
I din't watch Comey either, those interviews, a lot of dead time in them and you can catch the good parts on the clips later on. In fact you will see them about a hundred times. I admit to being a CNN junky, and I admit that in between Breaking News (which of course might not be breaking at all) they have these endless panels chewing on the same old news over and over, which I don't mind, but the way they replay those clips does get on my nerves.
But sometimes Breaking News is really breaking news. The gym has CNN on 24/7, but from the stationary bike I can't hear it clearly, nor can I quite make out the chyron (that crawl under the screen. I just learned that name, so cool.), but there was Hannity on the screen and there was his name, but what was going on?
I knew that hearing on Cohen's stuff was going on, and I knew Stormy would be showing up for that, but I had gone down to the gym anyway, thinking well I'll see Stormy a hundred times later on. So this must have something to do with that. I quickly pedaled my last quarter mile and was back in my apartment and Hannity was Cohen's third client.
I don't know how much this means to non cable news junkies, but for us it was yuge. Here was a circus (Stormy) turning into a circus (Hannity). And then it turns out that Cohen calls Hannity a client and Hannity denies it, except, well maybe he asked him about stuff once or twice, but it was mostly about real estate. But mostly about real estate means not entirely about real estate though Hannity never mentioned that,
The one thing we know about Trump's other two clients is that he fixed things for them by paying off (ahem) affairs of the heart. So was he paying off for Hannity too? No proof of that, but once I thought that the pee tape was highly unlikely.
I find this all far more interesting than the weather, but hey, that's me.
Monday, April 16, 2018
Hard Labor
"Judge said 'Twenty years of hard labor. To the chain gang you gotta go.'" - from an old folk song
I don't think they have chain gangs anymore but, now that I think of it, I have seen in movies where a convicted criminal was sentenced to so many years of "hard labor". Last I heard, the military courts were still doing that, so maybe it's a federal thing like Old Dog said. When I was in the army, they used to send prisoners from the local stockade out on work details. I was assigned to guard those guys a couple of times and, in this case, it certainly wasn't hard labor, and the prisoners were happy to do it because it got them out of the stockade for a few hours. Of course, our local stockade held mostly minor offenders and people in pre-trial confinement, more like the Cheboygan County Jail than a federal prison. I always thought that only "trustees" who weren't considered a flight risk were allowed to do stuff like that, which is where I got the idea that they were all volunteers. I think it's reasonable to expect a certain amount of inside work from prisoners, but I don't know about sending them to outside jobs with private corporations. I suppose it would be all right as long as they weren't abused because it would teach them employment skills that they could use after serving their sentences. Then again, they shouldn't be putting other people out of work in the process.
I don't think that the 13th Amendment was deliberately formulated to promote prison labor. I think they already were using prison labor and the 13th Amendment allowed that to continue. By the way, it was the 13th Amendment that legally ended slavery in the U.S. The Emancipation Proclamation was just a wartime propaganda piece. It only "freed" the slaves in the states that had seceded, not the ones who lived in the few slave holding states that did not secede. Since the seceded states were in a state of rebellion at the time, they certainly did not free all their slaves just because Lincoln told them to. If they were going to do that, they wouldn't have seceded in the first place.
The author of Old Dog's link seems to imply that the past and current use of prison labor specifically targets Black people. Is he saying that White prisoners are not required to work? I find that hard to believe. I have heard that Blacks account for a disproportionate number of the prison population, so maybe that's what he was referring to. That may be because Blacks commit a disproportionate number of crimes, or that they are caught more often than White criminals, or that most White criminals can afford better lawyers, but I doubt that the whole criminal justice system is geared towards perpetuating Black slavery. It might have been in the old chain gang days, but certainly not now.
I think that anybody can be conscripted to fight a wildfire. The reason I say this is that I knew a guy at the paper mill who was helping fight a wildfire in his neighborhood when he told them he had to leave now and go to work his shift at the mill. They told him that he wasn't going anywhere, and that they would explain it to his boss at the mill later. It was kind of like being called to jury duty, but not as random because they needed somebody right now and he was already there.
I believe that Moses was the first one to tell the Israelites not to eat pork and some other stuff. The Muslims recognize Moses as a prophet, so that's probably where they got the idea. Moses may have been partially motivated by health concerns, but he also wanted to set his people apart from the Canaanites they were planning to conquer so they wouldn't assimilate each other.
I don't think they have chain gangs anymore but, now that I think of it, I have seen in movies where a convicted criminal was sentenced to so many years of "hard labor". Last I heard, the military courts were still doing that, so maybe it's a federal thing like Old Dog said. When I was in the army, they used to send prisoners from the local stockade out on work details. I was assigned to guard those guys a couple of times and, in this case, it certainly wasn't hard labor, and the prisoners were happy to do it because it got them out of the stockade for a few hours. Of course, our local stockade held mostly minor offenders and people in pre-trial confinement, more like the Cheboygan County Jail than a federal prison. I always thought that only "trustees" who weren't considered a flight risk were allowed to do stuff like that, which is where I got the idea that they were all volunteers. I think it's reasonable to expect a certain amount of inside work from prisoners, but I don't know about sending them to outside jobs with private corporations. I suppose it would be all right as long as they weren't abused because it would teach them employment skills that they could use after serving their sentences. Then again, they shouldn't be putting other people out of work in the process.
I don't think that the 13th Amendment was deliberately formulated to promote prison labor. I think they already were using prison labor and the 13th Amendment allowed that to continue. By the way, it was the 13th Amendment that legally ended slavery in the U.S. The Emancipation Proclamation was just a wartime propaganda piece. It only "freed" the slaves in the states that had seceded, not the ones who lived in the few slave holding states that did not secede. Since the seceded states were in a state of rebellion at the time, they certainly did not free all their slaves just because Lincoln told them to. If they were going to do that, they wouldn't have seceded in the first place.
The author of Old Dog's link seems to imply that the past and current use of prison labor specifically targets Black people. Is he saying that White prisoners are not required to work? I find that hard to believe. I have heard that Blacks account for a disproportionate number of the prison population, so maybe that's what he was referring to. That may be because Blacks commit a disproportionate number of crimes, or that they are caught more often than White criminals, or that most White criminals can afford better lawyers, but I doubt that the whole criminal justice system is geared towards perpetuating Black slavery. It might have been in the old chain gang days, but certainly not now.
I think that anybody can be conscripted to fight a wildfire. The reason I say this is that I knew a guy at the paper mill who was helping fight a wildfire in his neighborhood when he told them he had to leave now and go to work his shift at the mill. They told him that he wasn't going anywhere, and that they would explain it to his boss at the mill later. It was kind of like being called to jury duty, but not as random because they needed somebody right now and he was already there.
I believe that Moses was the first one to tell the Israelites not to eat pork and some other stuff. The Muslims recognize Moses as a prophet, so that's probably where they got the idea. Moses may have been partially motivated by health concerns, but he also wanted to set his people apart from the Canaanites they were planning to conquer so they wouldn't assimilate each other.
Play ball!
To my knowledge, prison labor is entirely voluntary.
Under Federal law it doesn't have to be. I've read that an able-bodied prisoner that refuses to work is sent to solitary. It is likely that state and local regulations have their own rules There was a situation in California a few years ago when they needed firefighters to help with all the wildfires they were having. Due to prison overcrowding, eligibility for parole was relaxed but hundreds of convicts were denied parole so they could fight the fires; the needs of the state have the highest priority. The prisoners weren't too happy about that. Here's another link that gets into the history of the 13th amendment and its racial underpinnings.
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Uncle Ken mentioned some cutesy names for men's and lady's restrooms and I remembered these that had silhouettes of dogs: setters and pointers. I forgot where I saw them but it was probably in some bar or rustic restaurant in Wisconsin.
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I thought that omitting the video link would inspire Uncle Ken to take up the challenge and find his own damn post, but no dice. Hmmph! He posted the link July 8, 2016, and here it is.
Is FaceBook at the point where it is more trouble than it's worth? It seems that it, Twitter, and other forms of social media have been heavily compromised by bad actors of many persuasions and I'm glad I have a relatively low profile. The trolls may not know I exist.
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Just when I thought that Spring was around the corner it's Winter again in Chicago but none of the crazy snowfall that Mr. Beagles is enjoying. I think it's really screwing up the baseball season. Playing in the snow can be fun, but not for baseball, and the fans won't be buying much cold beer. They should switch to hot cocoa.
I put discussions of the weather under current events, and that's as far as I want to go right now. I didn't watch the Comey interview, and I don't know what to think about a state-run Russian TV channel advising people to pack essentials in preparation for World War Three.
Under Federal law it doesn't have to be. I've read that an able-bodied prisoner that refuses to work is sent to solitary. It is likely that state and local regulations have their own rules There was a situation in California a few years ago when they needed firefighters to help with all the wildfires they were having. Due to prison overcrowding, eligibility for parole was relaxed but hundreds of convicts were denied parole so they could fight the fires; the needs of the state have the highest priority. The prisoners weren't too happy about that. Here's another link that gets into the history of the 13th amendment and its racial underpinnings.
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Uncle Ken mentioned some cutesy names for men's and lady's restrooms and I remembered these that had silhouettes of dogs: setters and pointers. I forgot where I saw them but it was probably in some bar or rustic restaurant in Wisconsin.
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I thought that omitting the video link would inspire Uncle Ken to take up the challenge and find his own damn post, but no dice. Hmmph! He posted the link July 8, 2016, and here it is.
Is FaceBook at the point where it is more trouble than it's worth? It seems that it, Twitter, and other forms of social media have been heavily compromised by bad actors of many persuasions and I'm glad I have a relatively low profile. The trolls may not know I exist.
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Just when I thought that Spring was around the corner it's Winter again in Chicago but none of the crazy snowfall that Mr. Beagles is enjoying. I think it's really screwing up the baseball season. Playing in the snow can be fun, but not for baseball, and the fans won't be buying much cold beer. They should switch to hot cocoa.
I put discussions of the weather under current events, and that's as far as I want to go right now. I didn't watch the Comey interview, and I don't know what to think about a state-run Russian TV channel advising people to pack essentials in preparation for World War Three.
Russkie bots
Thanks for the photo Old Dog, but where is the video that it was taken from?
I reported a fb page yesterday. It came into my feed because a friend of mine had commented on it. It was called News from Weaponry, but it seemed to mostly be anti Muslim. There was some bogus story about a Muslim who wanted the US to ban pork, and then there was a stream of comments all along the line of fuck a bunch of Muslims. So many comments, they ran down page after page, kind of disheartening, but then you realize that this is like a hundred people out of 325 million in the US, and we all know there are people who just seem to spend all their time making nasty comments on the internet.
Also the grammar was bad, not just the comments but on the articles. Russkie bots I immediately thought. Well not bots, those guys in like Chechnya who pump this stuff out, but I think Russkie bots is the term that covers all that nowadays. The articles all appeared to be fake, like some scene from a movie with a whole new story made up about it. I reported it, You can click on something just under the leading photo of the page and then you are led through a series of boxes where you pick options. I picked the hate speech option. I would have liked to type out an explanatory paragraph but I was never given the option.
And then like a good liberal, I had second thoughts. Was I throttling free speech? Well it wasn't much in the way of speech, no ideas where presented, just fuck a bunch of Muslims. Well even so, shouldn't people be allowed to say whatever they think? I don't know, that kind of talk does nothing but make trouble for everybody, I'm glad I did it. Fb will send me a report whenever they get around to doing something or nothing about it.
But why pork? I know it includes shellfish, but I don't like shellfish, but ham, bacon, pork rinds. How did this happen? I tried to avoid it, but in the end I went to wiki, but no help there. I remember hearing a long time ago that pigs carry certain diseases, but then why just the Jews, why not everybody? I think that theory has been debunked, I'm guessing a long time ago some pig farmer pissed off some high ranking priest.
I reported a fb page yesterday. It came into my feed because a friend of mine had commented on it. It was called News from Weaponry, but it seemed to mostly be anti Muslim. There was some bogus story about a Muslim who wanted the US to ban pork, and then there was a stream of comments all along the line of fuck a bunch of Muslims. So many comments, they ran down page after page, kind of disheartening, but then you realize that this is like a hundred people out of 325 million in the US, and we all know there are people who just seem to spend all their time making nasty comments on the internet.
Also the grammar was bad, not just the comments but on the articles. Russkie bots I immediately thought. Well not bots, those guys in like Chechnya who pump this stuff out, but I think Russkie bots is the term that covers all that nowadays. The articles all appeared to be fake, like some scene from a movie with a whole new story made up about it. I reported it, You can click on something just under the leading photo of the page and then you are led through a series of boxes where you pick options. I picked the hate speech option. I would have liked to type out an explanatory paragraph but I was never given the option.
And then like a good liberal, I had second thoughts. Was I throttling free speech? Well it wasn't much in the way of speech, no ideas where presented, just fuck a bunch of Muslims. Well even so, shouldn't people be allowed to say whatever they think? I don't know, that kind of talk does nothing but make trouble for everybody, I'm glad I did it. Fb will send me a report whenever they get around to doing something or nothing about it.
But why pork? I know it includes shellfish, but I don't like shellfish, but ham, bacon, pork rinds. How did this happen? I tried to avoid it, but in the end I went to wiki, but no help there. I remember hearing a long time ago that pigs carry certain diseases, but then why just the Jews, why not everybody? I think that theory has been debunked, I'm guessing a long time ago some pig farmer pissed off some high ranking priest.
Sunday, April 15, 2018
Big Storm
We haven't gotten as much snow as they predicted, but they sure got the "blowing" part right. Of course it ain't over yet, so we still might get a foot or so like we got in the last storm. If we do, we will have gotten almost as much snow in April as we have gotten the whole rest of the winter. Our electricity went out this morning from 12:30 AM until 5:00 AM, but it could have been worse. I understand that there have been numerous outages throughout the state, and some of them are not restored yet. Ah, the joys of rural living!
A legalized pirate who is licensed by a government used to be called a "privateer". The practice was quite common in those days, but privateers were only allowed to prey on ships that flew the flag of an enemy nation. John Paul Jones was a privateer you know. They call him "The Father of the American Navy" because, for awhile there, he was the American Navy. He provided his own ships and crew, and was responsible for making his own payroll.
To my knowledge, prison labor is entirely voluntary. They don't get paid much for working, but they get room and board for free whether they work or not. I didn't know that they were contracted out like that, though. I thought that they just worked inside the prison making license plates and stuff like that. Inmates of the Cheboygan County jail grow a vegetable garden, and I think the produce is given to some local charity. They also wash police cars and do other odd jobs around the jail, but I don't think they are contracted out to private businesses.
A legalized pirate who is licensed by a government used to be called a "privateer". The practice was quite common in those days, but privateers were only allowed to prey on ships that flew the flag of an enemy nation. John Paul Jones was a privateer you know. They call him "The Father of the American Navy" because, for awhile there, he was the American Navy. He provided his own ships and crew, and was responsible for making his own payroll.
To my knowledge, prison labor is entirely voluntary. They don't get paid much for working, but they get room and board for free whether they work or not. I didn't know that they were contracted out like that, though. I thought that they just worked inside the prison making license plates and stuff like that. Inmates of the Cheboygan County jail grow a vegetable garden, and I think the produce is given to some local charity. They also wash police cars and do other odd jobs around the jail, but I don't think they are contracted out to private businesses.
Almost nothin'
Mr. Beagles states that he's got nothin' and I don't have much more, but I did stumble onto a couple of interesting loopholes in the US constitution.
Did you know that you can legally become a pirate? Congress can grant you a letter of marque that allows you to "engage in reprisals against citizens or vessels of another nation." Yarrr, me hearties!
And I didn't know that slavery is still legal in the US for a distinct class of people: convicted criminals. According to the 13th Amendment, "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States." There is a booming business in providing convict labor for private companies and it has quite an effect on local employment in some small towns. Oh, the convicts are being paid, as much as a whopping couple of dollars a day for their work for such companies as Whole Foods and Victoria's Secret. It's an interesting story.
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It only took a couple of minutes but I found the YouTube video that shows Uncle Ken's balcony. It would have looked better in color, but what are you going to do?
Did you know that you can legally become a pirate? Congress can grant you a letter of marque that allows you to "engage in reprisals against citizens or vessels of another nation." Yarrr, me hearties!
And I didn't know that slavery is still legal in the US for a distinct class of people: convicted criminals. According to the 13th Amendment, "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States." There is a booming business in providing convict labor for private companies and it has quite an effect on local employment in some small towns. Oh, the convicts are being paid, as much as a whopping couple of dollars a day for their work for such companies as Whole Foods and Victoria's Secret. It's an interesting story.
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It only took a couple of minutes but I found the YouTube video that shows Uncle Ken's balcony. It would have looked better in color, but what are you going to do?
Friday, April 13, 2018
I Got Nothin'
We went to my daughter's yesterday for a make-up Easter dinner because we were both laid up with the flu at the time the real Easter dinner was scheduled. Anyway, I'm back tonight, and I read the posts from yesterday and today, but I've got nothing to contribute. I'm not mad at anybody, I've just got nothing to say. Maybe something will inspire me over the weekend. Have a good one.
currenter events
How about John? Internet research reveals the word is capitalized, and that the reason it is called that is because of John Harrington, who invented the flush toilet. Here is a quote that may interest one of the dawgs:
There are a few references of the toilet being called “Cousin John”, as well as many references to it being called “Jake”
It seems odd that the device would take on the first rather than the last name of the inventor. It is a shame that the story of Thomas Crapper has been debunked because the term crap precedes him.
Or you could call it the head. That would give you sort of a nautical flair. Of course there are certain behaviors associated with being a navy man, but the last I heard there is nothing wrong with that.
What's wrong with current events? And just as I thought the concerns of yesterday morning have all been superseded by Comey's book. Wow! And the Republicans have actually, and at first I thought that this was a joke of some kind, put up a website Lyin' Comey Note how they have retained Trump's charming and folksy habit of dropping the g in favor of an apostrophe. And remember that salacious tale of using a Moscow hotel room as a, well, John, that even I thought was too incredible to be true? Now it is squarely on the front page.
I agree with Old Dog that the Trump show is like a seedy carnival where the operator of the kiddie rides has a half empty half pint in his hip pocket and the milk bottles are glued together and the guy keeps changing the rules of the game of chance until your wallet is empty.
I hadn't heard the term Trump's Razor, but I like it very much. Early on I read the report of the guy who wrote The Art of the Deal who said he could never sit down with Trump and talk about anything because Trump had no attention span. Ever since reading that I discovered that everything Trump did could be explained by him being an idiot surrounded by yes men. These guys who thought he was playing some kind of three dimensional chess (Trump playing chess, har, Trump playing checkers, har, Trump playing Tic Tac Toe and not cheating, har), or was like cleverly distracting attention by saying something outrageous, how could they be so stupid?
That's the way the world is right now, but the first tweet has not even yet been fired.,
There are a few references of the toilet being called “Cousin John”, as well as many references to it being called “Jake”
It seems odd that the device would take on the first rather than the last name of the inventor. It is a shame that the story of Thomas Crapper has been debunked because the term crap precedes him.
Or you could call it the head. That would give you sort of a nautical flair. Of course there are certain behaviors associated with being a navy man, but the last I heard there is nothing wrong with that.
What's wrong with current events? And just as I thought the concerns of yesterday morning have all been superseded by Comey's book. Wow! And the Republicans have actually, and at first I thought that this was a joke of some kind, put up a website Lyin' Comey Note how they have retained Trump's charming and folksy habit of dropping the g in favor of an apostrophe. And remember that salacious tale of using a Moscow hotel room as a, well, John, that even I thought was too incredible to be true? Now it is squarely on the front page.
I agree with Old Dog that the Trump show is like a seedy carnival where the operator of the kiddie rides has a half empty half pint in his hip pocket and the milk bottles are glued together and the guy keeps changing the rules of the game of chance until your wallet is empty.
I hadn't heard the term Trump's Razor, but I like it very much. Early on I read the report of the guy who wrote The Art of the Deal who said he could never sit down with Trump and talk about anything because Trump had no attention span. Ever since reading that I discovered that everything Trump did could be explained by him being an idiot surrounded by yes men. These guys who thought he was playing some kind of three dimensional chess (Trump playing chess, har, Trump playing checkers, har, Trump playing Tic Tac Toe and not cheating, har), or was like cleverly distracting attention by saying something outrageous, how could they be so stupid?
That's the way the world is right now, but the first tweet has not even yet been fired.,
Thursday, April 12, 2018
Trump's Razor
The term water closet (or w.c.) is as good a term as any, I suppose, but not commonly used in the US. The word toilet seems a bit abrupt and direct and we haven't yet agreed on a suitable euphemism. Restroom maybe, but who's resting? Bathroom can be confusing unless you plan to take a bath. Some British movies have used the word convenience but I think that's a little too precious and hoity-toity. The best compromise I can think of right now is ladys' room and men's room unless you want to hang with the vulgar masses and use the gender non-specific terms of crapper or shitter. Actually, loo isn't bad at all and may become more prevalent as time goes by; it can be spoken without embarassment. But when I hear the word loo, I think of a song from childhood but that was "Skip to my Lou," which is vastly different.
Even the term "w.c." was considered too racy for American television at one time. In 1960, Jack Paar walked off the Tonight Show after NBC cut a four minute joke from his monologue because he had the audacity to use the term w.c. instead of the forbidden word toilet. Or so I've read. Here's the joke.
Fun facts: The first toilet shown on American television was on Leave It To Beaver, although only the tank was shown. The first time a toilet was heard flushing was in the 1970s sitcom All in the Family.
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So does Old Dog live in the midst of Frenchtown?
Not to my knowledge; I don't think there is a Frenchtown in Chicago, but to follow the example of New Orleans it should be called The French Quarter, don't you think?
That school I mentioned is for American kids, to provide them with an education based on the educational standards of France. It's a ritzy operation, with a student/teacher ratio of 6:1 and quite pricey. How does $19,820 per year sound to you? But they have many fine extracurricular activities, the most unique for American schools is probably their Circus Arts program. Only the best students are clowning around.
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I knew it couldn't last. After a more than a week without any mention of current events Uncle Ken finally broke. I didn't think Mr. Beagles would fold and although I was tempted to mention something I decided to wait and see what would happen, hoping that certain topics would no longer be mentioned in the polite discourse of the Institute as they are distasteful as well as pointless. But I don't blame Uncle Ken; denial won't make anything go away. We have to face the reality of the situation, and I never should have compared the current administration as a circus, despite the many clowns. A circus is noble form of entertainment, run professionally and honestly. The White House, however, is like a seedy traveling carnival, with lurid sideshows and rigged games of skill, doing anything necessary to separate the rubes from their honestly earned dollars.
We've talked about Occam's Razor before, and a couple of writers have come up with a new term, Trump's Razor. It goes like this: When seeking an explanation for the behavior of Donald J. Trump, always choose the stupidest possible explanation. Sounds good to me.
Even the term "w.c." was considered too racy for American television at one time. In 1960, Jack Paar walked off the Tonight Show after NBC cut a four minute joke from his monologue because he had the audacity to use the term w.c. instead of the forbidden word toilet. Or so I've read. Here's the joke.
Fun facts: The first toilet shown on American television was on Leave It To Beaver, although only the tank was shown. The first time a toilet was heard flushing was in the 1970s sitcom All in the Family.
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So does Old Dog live in the midst of Frenchtown?
Not to my knowledge; I don't think there is a Frenchtown in Chicago, but to follow the example of New Orleans it should be called The French Quarter, don't you think?
That school I mentioned is for American kids, to provide them with an education based on the educational standards of France. It's a ritzy operation, with a student/teacher ratio of 6:1 and quite pricey. How does $19,820 per year sound to you? But they have many fine extracurricular activities, the most unique for American schools is probably their Circus Arts program. Only the best students are clowning around.
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I knew it couldn't last. After a more than a week without any mention of current events Uncle Ken finally broke. I didn't think Mr. Beagles would fold and although I was tempted to mention something I decided to wait and see what would happen, hoping that certain topics would no longer be mentioned in the polite discourse of the Institute as they are distasteful as well as pointless. But I don't blame Uncle Ken; denial won't make anything go away. We have to face the reality of the situation, and I never should have compared the current administration as a circus, despite the many clowns. A circus is noble form of entertainment, run professionally and honestly. The White House, however, is like a seedy traveling carnival, with lurid sideshows and rigged games of skill, doing anything necessary to separate the rubes from their honestly earned dollars.
We've talked about Occam's Razor before, and a couple of writers have come up with a new term, Trump's Razor. It goes like this: When seeking an explanation for the behavior of Donald J. Trump, always choose the stupidest possible explanation. Sounds good to me.
current events
These Zuckerburg hearings, a big yawn if you ask me. How come nobody complained when our names addresses and phone numbers were all printed in the phone book for any aggressive marketeer to get at? Who cares if I like some mention of beer and then get commercials and sales for beer on my page? I consider it a favor. Congressional hearings, since Watergate, what a bore, preening senators or reps, double bore. And then they ask some question meant to nail the poor sap to the wall, another pelt for the pols trophy room, and say it's a simple question (when it's anything but) and they demand a yes or no, because if you are seeking the truth doesn't it come down to a one or a zero? No. Stupidest assumption in the world, and yet it goes on and on. Like the stupid slippery slope notion, debunked again and again and yet it rises from the dead every time. And the so is your mother argument lives on way past its time, forever a roadblock on the high road to the truth.
It wasn't that long ago that trade wars bestrode the airwaves (can we include the internet in the airwaves? I think we can it's just like air, only in tubes), and then bam Syria, and then bam the FBI is pulling records out of Trump's lawyer's office. The last word on that last night was they were after that famous grab them by the pussy tape, giving the networks a chance to reair it again and again. Ugh.
Syria, I remember when Obama drew the red line and then did nothing while Syria crossed it. I thought drawing the red line was one of the dumbest things Obama did, and doing nothing when the Syrians crossed it was one of the smartest things he did, Trump gave them 24 to 48 hours within which something would happen 3 days ago. Just now I hear that he is going to meet with somebody today or something to make some sort of decision. I fully believe that he thought sending out a nasty threatening tweet was doing something, and I hear all he does lately is watch Fox and steam over the attack on his thug in a suit.
Well again I'd just as soon do nothing. Gas is terrible, but we're not sure that they did it because what reason would they have to do it since now that the Turks are battling the Kurds they are rolling through the opposition, who are more like ISIS guys than what we think of as freedom fighters? Though they are pretty bad actors so maybe they did. But aren't we enabling, nay, now that Trump has done the sword dance, encouraging the carnage in Yemen, so it's not like our hands are lily white.
I hear the tweets are coming over the transom this morning. It appears that firing Mueller will be today's theme, but it's still early.
It wasn't that long ago that trade wars bestrode the airwaves (can we include the internet in the airwaves? I think we can it's just like air, only in tubes), and then bam Syria, and then bam the FBI is pulling records out of Trump's lawyer's office. The last word on that last night was they were after that famous grab them by the pussy tape, giving the networks a chance to reair it again and again. Ugh.
Syria, I remember when Obama drew the red line and then did nothing while Syria crossed it. I thought drawing the red line was one of the dumbest things Obama did, and doing nothing when the Syrians crossed it was one of the smartest things he did, Trump gave them 24 to 48 hours within which something would happen 3 days ago. Just now I hear that he is going to meet with somebody today or something to make some sort of decision. I fully believe that he thought sending out a nasty threatening tweet was doing something, and I hear all he does lately is watch Fox and steam over the attack on his thug in a suit.
Well again I'd just as soon do nothing. Gas is terrible, but we're not sure that they did it because what reason would they have to do it since now that the Turks are battling the Kurds they are rolling through the opposition, who are more like ISIS guys than what we think of as freedom fighters? Though they are pretty bad actors so maybe they did. But aren't we enabling, nay, now that Trump has done the sword dance, encouraging the carnage in Yemen, so it's not like our hands are lily white.
I hear the tweets are coming over the transom this morning. It appears that firing Mueller will be today's theme, but it's still early.
Wednesday, April 11, 2018
From Paris to Pellston
I seemed to remember that there was a Paris, Michigan and, when I looked it up, I found that we actually have two Parises in Michigan, neither of which seems to have anything to do with French people. One is an unincorporated community in Mecosta county, down by Grand Rapids. It was founded in 1865 by John Parish, who named it after himself. At some point, people started calling it "Paris" instead of "Parish", but Wiki didn't say why. The other one is Paris Township in Huron County, which is in the "Thumb" area. It seems to have been originally settled by Polish people, and I don't know how it came to be called "Paris Township".
Then there's Pellston in nearby Emmet County. Wiki didn't say this, but I remember reading something by one of our local historians that described how Pellston was founded by a guy named Pell or Pells, who named it after himself. He was some kind of real estate developer who persuaded people to invest in his project by billing it as "The Chicago of the North". Current population is 822. Pellston might might have had more people back in the day, but it never approached the size of the original Chicago. Part of the reason was that the anticipated railroad connection didn't materialize, although a different railroad eventually did come through the town.
What Wiki did talk about was Pellston's reputation as being "The Icebox of the Nation". That reputation was founded in 1933 when Pellston reported the coldest temperature ever recorded in Michigan, minus 53 F. It may have been colder than that sometime and somewhere else, but Pellston has been the home of a regional airport for as long as anybody can remember. The nearest airport of comparable size is in Traverse city today, and I doubt that there was a closer one back in 1933. Most official weather reports come from airports, you know. I don't think that Pellston, on average, is substantially colder than other communities in the area, but they have their reputation and are damn proud of it.
Then there's Pellston in nearby Emmet County. Wiki didn't say this, but I remember reading something by one of our local historians that described how Pellston was founded by a guy named Pell or Pells, who named it after himself. He was some kind of real estate developer who persuaded people to invest in his project by billing it as "The Chicago of the North". Current population is 822. Pellston might might have had more people back in the day, but it never approached the size of the original Chicago. Part of the reason was that the anticipated railroad connection didn't materialize, although a different railroad eventually did come through the town.
What Wiki did talk about was Pellston's reputation as being "The Icebox of the Nation". That reputation was founded in 1933 when Pellston reported the coldest temperature ever recorded in Michigan, minus 53 F. It may have been colder than that sometime and somewhere else, but Pellston has been the home of a regional airport for as long as anybody can remember. The nearest airport of comparable size is in Traverse city today, and I doubt that there was a closer one back in 1933. Most official weather reports come from airports, you know. I don't think that Pellston, on average, is substantially colder than other communities in the area, but they have their reputation and are damn proud of it.
cultural norms
They (not to be confused with Them) is indeed the currently correct pronoun. Gender neutrality pronouns are not as simple as when defaulting to he when the sex is not known which was belittling to the fairer sex as was that term also. Anymore we have all kinds of sexual categories, including people who are like 70% one sex and 30% the other, and who are neither, and who change their mind from day to day and people who are offended if you assume anything at all about them. I guess it's a free country and you can be whatever you want to be, but to expect others to navigate an arbitrary and changing mine field of pronouns is too much in my book.
So does Old Dog live in the midst of Frenchtown? Frenchtown doesn't sound right does it? Little Paris sounds like a nicer name. Wiki tells us that Bucharest and Leipzig are both sometimes called Little Paris or the Paris of the east, but I guess that means they are hoity toity rather than they have a lot of Frenchies, and the Chinese are building a residential community to be called Little Paris but I don't think there will be any Frenchies living there either. In the 20s and 30s when they built the Lake Shore Drive bridge and upper and lower Wacker and put up those fancy concrete railings all over both the idea was that Chicago was to become the Paris of the Midwest. You don't hear it called that much anymore. I would like to hear more about this school in Old Dog's hood, is it for French people or people who want to be French?
It's the birdfeeders that could get me fined. It's the droppings you know, though I notice that they wash right away in the rain. I reckon it is aimed at pigeons, but in my twenty-five years I only recall seeing one pigeon. I don't know why.
I don't know how often that swan thing goes on anymore. I think it was once popular in tony establishments, but now that it has become well known, they don't do it anymore. There was a Seinfeld episode with the aluminum swan, but then there was a Seinfeld episode about everything. A friend of mine in Texas was a big Seinfeld fan, and when he died I asked Southwest about the bereavement fare, and then I remembered that was also a Seinfeld thing, and we would have had a laugh about it were he here.
In Texas they sometimes had restrooms for Bubba and Bubbette, Cute I guess, but I don't generally favor getting fancy with the name on the door because sometimes, you know, you gotta pee like a racehorse and you don't want to have to figure the difference between Fillies and Stallions
So does Old Dog live in the midst of Frenchtown? Frenchtown doesn't sound right does it? Little Paris sounds like a nicer name. Wiki tells us that Bucharest and Leipzig are both sometimes called Little Paris or the Paris of the east, but I guess that means they are hoity toity rather than they have a lot of Frenchies, and the Chinese are building a residential community to be called Little Paris but I don't think there will be any Frenchies living there either. In the 20s and 30s when they built the Lake Shore Drive bridge and upper and lower Wacker and put up those fancy concrete railings all over both the idea was that Chicago was to become the Paris of the Midwest. You don't hear it called that much anymore. I would like to hear more about this school in Old Dog's hood, is it for French people or people who want to be French?
It's the birdfeeders that could get me fined. It's the droppings you know, though I notice that they wash right away in the rain. I reckon it is aimed at pigeons, but in my twenty-five years I only recall seeing one pigeon. I don't know why.
I don't know how often that swan thing goes on anymore. I think it was once popular in tony establishments, but now that it has become well known, they don't do it anymore. There was a Seinfeld episode with the aluminum swan, but then there was a Seinfeld episode about everything. A friend of mine in Texas was a big Seinfeld fan, and when he died I asked Southwest about the bereavement fare, and then I remembered that was also a Seinfeld thing, and we would have had a laugh about it were he here.
In Texas they sometimes had restrooms for Bubba and Bubbette, Cute I guess, but I don't generally favor getting fancy with the name on the door because sometimes, you know, you gotta pee like a racehorse and you don't want to have to figure the difference between Fillies and Stallions
Tuesday, April 10, 2018
They Go to the W.C. in Europe
Last I heard, the international name for it was "W.C.", which stands for "water closet". That might not be what the locals call it in verbal speech but, if you see a sign that says "W.C.", that's what it means. In the UK, where the term "W.C." originated, they call it "The Loo", but I don't know why. Come to think of it, I don't remember seeing that sign in Berlin, so it must not be all over Europe. In Berlin there would be two doors side by side. One of them would say "D", which stands for "Damen", which means "Ladies", and the other would say "H", which stands for "Herren", which means "Gentlemen". This was the second most important thing for a newbie to learn, right after "Ein bier, bitte."
I remember people using "they" to refer to individual persons way back in elementary school, and I also remember the teachers constantly correcting them when they did. It had nothing to do with gender neutrality in those days because that hadn't been invented yet. It was just that "they" was the plural form but, for some reason, people got into the habit of using it for the singular as well, and the teachers did not approve. The proper thing to say was either "he" or "she" and, if you didn't know the gender of the subject, you were supposed to default to "he", although few people did. At some point, people started saying "he or she", which made more sense, but that didn't last long. Some time ago, I read somewhere that "they" had become the politically correct choice. It has likely made it into the grammar books by now, causing many an old teacher to turn over in their graves.
Every summer in Cheboygan they have a "Doggie Fashion Show". I am not making this up, that's what they call it in the newspaper. This is the same newspaper that announces all the seats that are "up for grabs" before every election.
I remember people using "they" to refer to individual persons way back in elementary school, and I also remember the teachers constantly correcting them when they did. It had nothing to do with gender neutrality in those days because that hadn't been invented yet. It was just that "they" was the plural form but, for some reason, people got into the habit of using it for the singular as well, and the teachers did not approve. The proper thing to say was either "he" or "she" and, if you didn't know the gender of the subject, you were supposed to default to "he", although few people did. At some point, people started saying "he or she", which made more sense, but that didn't last long. Some time ago, I read somewhere that "they" had become the politically correct choice. It has likely made it into the grammar books by now, causing many an old teacher to turn over in their graves.
Every summer in Cheboygan they have a "Doggie Fashion Show". I am not making this up, that's what they call it in the newspaper. This is the same newspaper that announces all the seats that are "up for grabs" before every election.
There they go again
There was an old joke I remember, where a married couple and their small child were in a restaurant and after the meal the mother asked for a doggie bag. The kid then shouts with glee, "Yay! We're getting a dog!"
I don't get to fine dining restaurants very often but I have no problem asking for a doggie bag or its styrofoam equivalent. After a few pieces of bread, soup, and salad the entree is usually more than I can handle. Folks from Europe are often amazed at the large portions served in the US, and I think they're right. If the main entree was a little smaller, I might even have some room for a nice dessert, something I seldom enjoy in a restaurant; I'm just too full and it would be a little strange to ask for a dessert to go but maybe I should give it a try.
Sometimes in a movie I'll see some people leaving a restaurant not with a doggie bag but their food wrapped up in aluminum foil, usually in the shape of a swan. At first I didn't know what the hell that was, and the diners treated it like a treasure, which I suppose it was. Maybe that's a Hollywood thing, only seen in movies.
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I don't recall the video that Old Dog speaks of. Does he still know where it is?
Not a clue, but I could probably find it if the gods of Google-Fu are smiling.
Technically I could be fined for it but I also keep a couple bird feeders.
Fined for what, exactly, encroaching vegetation? This doesn't sound illegal, so it must be part of the condo covenant.
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Sometimes I want to smack myself because I don't see the forest for the trees. There I was, musing about the lack of Frenchies in American communities while competely forgetting that, a few hundred yards from my apartment, there is the Lycée Français de Chicago, an English/French bilingual elementary and high school. If you didn't notice the signage on the building you'd never think it was a school because it's awfully quiet, with none of the usual noise I associate with school-age children. Besides French the kids are probably taught good manners, too.
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Well, I finally found something I never thought existed, a Finnish stand-up comedian. The guy's name is Ismo Leikola and he has a YouTube channel; I've forgotten how distinctive the Finnish accent is but it brought back memories of my northern Wisconsin kinfolk. He's not knee-slapping funny but he makes some nice observations about America, especially the meaning of the word shit.
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Recently I noticed a slight change in the English language, the usage of the word "they" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun. It first came to my attention in the cable series Billions, where one of the characters is very gender-neutral although a biological female. It was a little baffling at first but I've since become accustomed to it. People can call themselves whatever they want, even if I think they're on the wrong track. Gender neutrality is not a concept that I understand, nor do I want to. There are two genders; pick one and move on.
I don't get to fine dining restaurants very often but I have no problem asking for a doggie bag or its styrofoam equivalent. After a few pieces of bread, soup, and salad the entree is usually more than I can handle. Folks from Europe are often amazed at the large portions served in the US, and I think they're right. If the main entree was a little smaller, I might even have some room for a nice dessert, something I seldom enjoy in a restaurant; I'm just too full and it would be a little strange to ask for a dessert to go but maybe I should give it a try.
Sometimes in a movie I'll see some people leaving a restaurant not with a doggie bag but their food wrapped up in aluminum foil, usually in the shape of a swan. At first I didn't know what the hell that was, and the diners treated it like a treasure, which I suppose it was. Maybe that's a Hollywood thing, only seen in movies.
-----
I don't recall the video that Old Dog speaks of. Does he still know where it is?
Not a clue, but I could probably find it if the gods of Google-Fu are smiling.
Technically I could be fined for it but I also keep a couple bird feeders.
Fined for what, exactly, encroaching vegetation? This doesn't sound illegal, so it must be part of the condo covenant.
-----
Sometimes I want to smack myself because I don't see the forest for the trees. There I was, musing about the lack of Frenchies in American communities while competely forgetting that, a few hundred yards from my apartment, there is the Lycée Français de Chicago, an English/French bilingual elementary and high school. If you didn't notice the signage on the building you'd never think it was a school because it's awfully quiet, with none of the usual noise I associate with school-age children. Besides French the kids are probably taught good manners, too.
-----
Well, I finally found something I never thought existed, a Finnish stand-up comedian. The guy's name is Ismo Leikola and he has a YouTube channel; I've forgotten how distinctive the Finnish accent is but it brought back memories of my northern Wisconsin kinfolk. He's not knee-slapping funny but he makes some nice observations about America, especially the meaning of the word shit.
-----
Recently I noticed a slight change in the English language, the usage of the word "they" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun. It first came to my attention in the cable series Billions, where one of the characters is very gender-neutral although a biological female. It was a little baffling at first but I've since become accustomed to it. People can call themselves whatever they want, even if I think they're on the wrong track. Gender neutrality is not a concept that I understand, nor do I want to. There are two genders; pick one and move on.
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