nevertheless

 Nevertheless.

Not Your Father's UFO

 They don't even call them "UFOs" anymore, they call them "UAPs". 

 What are UAPs, and why do UFOs have a new name? - CBS News 

I ain't saying that I believe in them, but I think that the following statement by Uncle Ken is scientifically irresponsible.  

" Well of course I do know what every rational person on Earth knows those guys are bull goose looney."

I doubt that Uncle Ken is personally acquainted with every rational person on Earth.  Furthermore, the statement is a sweeping generalization, and we all know that all generalizations are invalid.

 

flying saucers

 Envy is a tough one.  I would go with the month of June, as in June brides and thy neighbor's wife.  Like the groom getting ready to kiss the bride when there is a slight disturbance of his neighbor getting in late and pushing into a crowded pew, and the guy looks up and gets one glimpse of his neighbor's wife and he thinks Damn!

I have some jalapenos somewhere among my pots.  Can't see them now because of the raucous tomatoes and morning glories but usually they just keep plugging along in the modest way of peppers and when the other plants start to fade in the fall they appear and I get maybe three or four peppers out of them.  

I had some small bees buzzing my tomatillos a couple weeks ago, but not lately.  What they really liked last year was my sunflowers which I only have two of this year and they started late and they don't even have heads yet.

I have checked in on Mr Beagles and he says: I'm better than I was at my worst, but I'm not as good as I was at my best,

Claims he doesn't know what to say, but that just reminds me of what he says all the time: but that never stopped me before.  So C'mon Beagles, maybe just a comment from time to time.

What is the recent thing with flying saucers.  I remember this guy I knew in grade school who had a thing for them, had several of those old books with the grainy photos that could have been anything really.  At first I thought he was a kook but eventually I realized that he was bull goose looney.  

And now here it is spoken of seriously in the halls of congress.  At first I thought well Trumpies, you know, they have no hold on reality, but I see some of my dems are in it too so I don't know.  Well of course I do know what every rational person on Earth knows those guys are bull goose looney.

A lazy day

So what can we do with the other four deadly sins?

My original list also had August for Sloth and those dog days of summer.  For Wrath I had April because of Tax Day, an occasion to make any reasonable person's temper to flare up.  Envy was the toughest; the best I could come up with is the month of May, thinking that some folks would be jealous of their neighbor's lawn.  Lame, I know.  Please note that Greed was already earmarked for December and all the holiday nonsense, putting Santa Claus on the spot.

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Of course the jalapeno is among the shapeliest of fruits and your home grown is quite attractive.  Could we get a photo of the plant?  And what became of the mango family?

The jalapeno is really getting crowded out by the flowers but if you look closely you can see three little peppers developing.  They grow very quickly when the conditions are right.

The mango family is fine but growing slowly; nothing significant to report.  The mango in my sleeping room is doing better than the others, must be the extra carbon dioxide.

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Strolling through the neighborhood I caught a bumblebee in the act, thought you'd like to see it.

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So, Mr. Beagles...how have you been doing?  Getting to be that time of year to start working on the firewood, isn't it?

Sins and a place to put your flotsam

 According to the standard list, they are pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth, which are contrary to the seven capital virtues. 

So what can we do with the other four deadly sins?  How about wrath for March which is named for the god of war and sloth for the lazy dazy dog month of August?  I took the problems of greed and envy to the shower with me and came out clean, but with no month for greed or envy.  Perhaps something will percolate up during the day.

Of course the jalapeno is among the shapeliest of fruits and your home grown is quite attractive.  Could we get a photo of the plant?  And what became of the mango family?

Here's something that Mr. Beagles may appreciate, Uncle Ken not so much.

What is this?  Is this a swipe at Uncle Ken's man card?  Maybe I am a bit oversensitive, as we men who never married and whose hobby is watercolor tend to be, but I will have you know that I am very familiar with those metal shelving units.

I was speaking earlier of my days in ROTC.  Whenever I got demerits because either my brass or my shoes were not shiny enough I had to report to the ROTC office to do some office task to work them off, and on one of those occasions that task was assembling metal shelving.

How cool, you start with just some humdrum pieces of metal and within fifteen minutes to half an hour there is a tall handsome unit that can hold all kinds of flotsam.  In my case that would have been  books.  They didn't have a back, but I put them against the wall.  When I moved to Texas I took them apart and added them to the boxes that I had FedEx ship.  I brought them to Chicago the same way.  

When I started making that big State dough I replaced them with wood, but one still remains in my closet.

Hmm, appears like it needs more flotsam.

And as long as I am taking photos of my stuff and it is the jubilant month of July here is my garden at this point.

Hmm July.  The thin young girl in the pea green gown has become a beautiful and lush young lady and as you hold her in your arms your thought is that you can never let her go.  Never ever let her go.  And that, Gentlemen is greed if I ever saw it.

Knock, knock...

Anybody home?  I guess not, maybe I should come back later.

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So, last month was Pride Month, formerly Gay Pride Month but I guess they shortened it.  Which got me wondering, why is Pride the only one of The Seven Deadly Sins that has its own month?  Seems to me that the other deadly sins are equally worthy and should be recognized as such,  so I have a few suggestions to start with.  Gluttony is easy, should be November (Thanksgiving).  Likewise, December is obvious for Greed (Holiday shopping).  How about February for Lust (Valentines Day)?  You get the idea.

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(going back a bit...)
The next photo shows the greatest hits buried under what appears to be mostly the tools of the gentleman (or mad, potato potahtoe) scientist.  Is that digital printer poop in the lower right?

No, that isn't digital printer poop; it's a painted piece of aerosol foam for a model of a monumental sculptural piece depicting The Purple Turd.  Long story relating to FedEx, maybe for later explanation.

Looking at that picture, the only tools that I can see are a wooden clamp and a small "torpedo" spirit level.  The rest of the stuff is just crap that I like having around to look at, helps my mind wander.  You want to see some tools?  Here are some of my screwdrivers...

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Harvested the first jalapeno from a plant I got going on our little garden patio.  More flowers are showing up so there are more peppers to come.  Made a nice batch of refried beans and there will be guacamole once the other peppers arrive.

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I recall you guys mentioning that there are some things that you just don't have time for and I can't figure that out.  I seem to have more than enough time on my hands; maybe I'm doing something wrong.  I'm still unpacking after two years, finding curious stuff and doing a lot of rearranging.  I embrace the fluid nature of my delusional reality and it's keeping me on my toes.

Here's something that Mr. Beagles may appreciate, Uncle Ken not so much.  I'm a longtime fan of those industrial-type gray shelving units found in many basements, shops, and garages.  The only beef I have with them is that once in place you can't easily move them and this idea popped into my head recently.  A scrap piece of 2x4, some casters and zip ties and you're in business.  Working very well, so far.  Good things can happen when you don't throw anything out...

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I caught this sunset the other day and I thought it timely with the release of Christoper Nolan's new film Oppenheimer.

Quick note

...can't make out what is in the second jar.

 Same jar; it's a pine cone.  Female, as a matter of fact.

 

summer commences

 At first I didn't get Old Dog's joke about washing his carbs because I had no idea what those big metal things among the china were.  I knew that carburetors existed, and had something to do with getting air into the engine, and I must've had one on one of my two cars, the Fairlane, but not the Corvair because it had the engine in back and was what was called air-cooled.  Am I sounding a bit like a gearhead?  Probably not because now I am thinking that what the Corvair didn't have was a radiator, likely it still had a carburetor, or maybe not, what do I know?  Clearly not much.  

Anyway I have to say that those carburetors make bang up bookends, look how tightly they enclose those books, and look sharp?  You betcha.

But of course I do know my fibonacci numbers.  Looks like a small head of a sunflower, whose spiral patterns are generated by fibonacci numbers in the first little glass jar, can't make out what is in the second jar.

One pleasant aspect of the annual trip to Champaign is how much better the train ride has become.  On time (actually minutes early) both there and back, and the same on last year's trip.  Nothing like sailing through the cornfields with the horn blasting knowing there will be no dirty old train of dusty boxcars lumbering on the track ahead of you and putting you back for oh, an hour or two.  King of the Road Jack.

Much better than that bus, which I admit generally got me there on time, but there was always that mob of good for nothings and down on their lucks drifting across the floor because Greyhound was never sure, or wanted to tell us, which bus was leaving at which gate.  And then when you got into the bus, it was kind of dirty and things were broken, but the voice of the driver when he began his spiel, and even tossed in a few jokes, was always cheery, and like I said you got where you were going when you expected to get there.

Now they want to move the bus station out of its current location on the southwest edge of downtown because the property has become too valuable to waste on the good for nothings and down on their lucks.  Maybe they will have to spend hours on desolate suburban parking lots in the heat of the summer, the cold of the winter.  Too bad for them.

Some slick Munich based crowd has bought Greyhound and discovered that the properties of the bus stations are worth a pretty penny and are selling them off to developers, excuse me, job creators and so it goes.

Makes me wish I was a commie again.

Got my biannual haircut Friday, this morning I am taking down my show with all the punkins, clearing my decks for the oncoming of the heft of summer.  So far we have been dodging bullets, well except for that smoke thing, but it is certainly better than living in Austin Texas.

A carb follow-up

So, what do you do after you've washed your carbs?  You make an elegantly designed pair of bookends, of course.  Carry on...

 

Not a Fan

 I was not a fan of Dick Biondi.  I thought he was just stupid, or at least that was his act for the radio.  Then again, I never did listen to the radio much.  Hey, I never said I was cool or anything like that.  Many years later, I asked one of the passengers on the school bus I was driving what exactly does it take to be cool.  He thought about it for a few seconds before answering, "If you have to ask, you probably wouldn't understand it."  He got that right.

Speaking of rain, I understand that you guys have been getting more that your share of it lately.  We've been pretty dry in Beaglesonia all summer, not officially under drought conditions, but almost.  We finally got some this morning, and more is falling as we speak, but they're not predicting anything like you guys have gotten. 

I don't know anything about that crypto stuff, but I do know that they were pretty paranoid about security in Berlin.  We had to be careful what we said on the radio or to the civilians downtown because the Russians were listening in.  Not that we knew anything that the Russians didn't already know, but we were warned that our guys had agents pretending to be civilians that would try to get us to divulge something, and then report us for doing it.

Walkin' in the rain

 I didn't have a newspaper route like those all American boys riding their bikes with their dogs woofing after them.  What I had a wagon full of Goldblatt's circulars.  My route was Central Park to Lawndale, 55th to 57th, every single house.  I still remember the little store in the middle of route in the middle of the summer with the Nehi 16 oz'ers in all the colors of the rainbow, fresh as a trout from the cooler filled with water and ice.  Finished it off in three or four swallows, a big belch, a store-filling sigh, and then taking hold of the wagon's handle and putting my little shoulder to the wheel of commerce.  In the middle of winter in the middle of the route my fingers would freeze around that wagon handle.

But they paid me, real dough, I don't know maybe a couple bucks, but in those days you could take your date to the Ritz with that and order steak dinners for the two of you and have a bucket of ice filled with Nehi bottles of every hue.

And you got like points too, they were kind of like green stamps and when you accumulated enough of them you could get an item of merch.  And the first item I got was a ruby red transistor radio.  All the squares were in their houses watching their stoopid tvs while I was walking the wild bounding mane of 55th to Kedzie to 59th, to Homan and then back again, and I never got bored because I was listening to Dick Biondi.

As I walk along, I wonder
What went wrong with our love
A love that was so strong

And as I still walk on, I think of
The things we've done together
While our hearts were young

I'ma walkin' in the rain
Tears are fallin' and I feel the pain
Wishin' you were here by me
To end this misery

I wonder
I wo-wo-wo wonder
Why... why-why-why-why-why
She ran away
And I wonder where she will stay
My little runaway
I run-run-run-run runaway

I'ma walkin' in the rain
Tears are fallin' and I feel the pain
Wishin' you were here by me
To end this misery

I wonder
I wo-wo-wo wonder
Why... why-why-why-why-why
She ran away
And I wonder where she will stay
My little runaway
I run-run-run-run runaway

I run-run-run-run runaway
I run-run-run-run runaway

He was a cool guy, a very cool guy.  I was a pretty cool guy myself with my ear to my radio, a pack of Viceroys in my shirt pocket, my collar maybe pulled up, but of course nowhere as cool as Dick Biondi.

Thus went many of the nights of my high school days.  But when I went down to Champaign that was all over.  Shortly after that there were the Beatles and those really cool guys The Rolling Stones on their heels and not to long after that drugs and psychedelic music.  I never looked back.

I had heard a little after I started college, that Dick Biondi had been fired for telling this joke about Dick Biondi baseball:  The boys kiss the girls on the strikes and the girls kiss the boys on the balls.

Never really happened as I think I knew even then, but it sounded like a pretty cool move for a very cool guy.  Good for him I thought as I lit up that joint and put the Doors album on the stereo.

Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Into this house, we're born
Into this world, we're thrown
Like a dog without a bone
An actor out on loan
Riders on the storm

Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm

Dick Biondi, R.I.P.

Reading his obituary in the Sun-Times I fell down one of those deep memory holes, recalling what a time of strange innocence it was in the mid 60s.  WLS was the big dog of Top 40 radio and Biondi ruled the airwaves.  Parents hated him, so you know the kids just had to love him and listened to him religiously.  And then WCFL changed its format and the radio wars began in Chicago, the hip upstarts challenging the old fogies at 'LS.  Good times, good times.  Hanging at the beach, all of the transistor radios tuned to one of the two stations so you didn't need to bring your own.  They both played pretty much the same music, it was only the on-air personalities that differed.  We didn't have California Girls at Foster Beach but the girls from Taft High School came awfully close.

Since you guys are a few years older than me I'm not sure if you have the same memories as I do but that was my reality as I recall it.  Here's a pic from my freshman year in high school that I managed to hang onto, even signed with a fountain pen.  In my mind a very class act.

 

 

Something for everyone

So, Mr. Beagles, I was talking to another resident in my building and it turns out he was drafted in '66 and sent to Germany.  I forgot where he said he was stationed but he said his unit was forbidden to visit Berlin or Munich because of their Crypto security clearances.  Does that sound about right to you?  I remember during the ETS processing that because of my security clearance I had to keep my mouth shut about certain things (never was sure what) for the rest of my life.  Maybe they were pulling my chain but crypto clearances are on a whole different level.

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Then the doctor said I have to watch my carbs; I thought he said wash.

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"Paging Mr. Fibonacci, line 2..."

lag or buff

I don't even know what lag or buff means.  Wait a minute thinking it through I reckon lag means like when the screen freezes a bit, and buff is short for buffering. Not as hip as those kids.  

I didn't know YouTube had closed captions, but Mr Google told me how to set it up.

I thought she was saying something fuck.   Was a little worried that there was something wrong with me.  But then I googled around and discovered many other people thought the same thing.  Doesn't mean that there isn't something wrong with me, but at least I have company.

They began closing off parts of Grant Park about a month ago, and I assume that it will take them at least as long to try to put it back to normal.  I used to think that watching golf on tv was boring, but that was before I watched parts of a couple Nascar races.  I know that the city is hard up for dough, but Nascar got it awfully cheap.  Worst mayoral move since Daley II sold our parking meters.