Today, I attended a Standing Room Only funeral for a nice lady who touched our lives as a vibrant, highly intelligent, organ-playing person. The service was 2 hours long, but I don't think anyone fell asleep.
She had been happily married to her husband for 63 years. He seems like a real nice guy. I hope he has hobbies to occupy his mind so that he doesn't succumb to the problem that most long term married men experience... they grieve so much that they die within a very short time. However, based on the vast number of progeny I don't think he will have any trouble keeping busy. Especially with all those beautiful and gifted grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Let's try some more trivial stuff from Prepop's box of tricks:
Snow? Nyet, Comrade.
Back in 2009, The Week Magazine reported that Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov forbade snow for that Winter. He hired Russian Air Force pilots to seed any precipitation filled clouds heading toward his city. He figured that it would be cheaper at 6 million rubles to have clouds sprayed with dry ice, cement particles, and silver oxide, than to spend 10 million rubles, which is the normal cost for snow removal. I wonder if it worked. I haven't seen anything written about it. When cloud seeding was tried in the United States, I don't think it worked at all.
Years ago, I read where snow sweeping jobs were given to matronly Russian women in Moscow during each snow season. At the first flake, these ladies were supposed to take to their brooms and start sweeping. The article said that this approach worked. The Moscow streets were always clear and unemployment was down. So why didn't Yuri continue with that approach? Surely, that wasn't the cause for the 10 million ruble expense.
Scammers On Call
For a while, I have left ten caller-ID numbers in my telephone system for calls I figured were from scammers. Some months ago, I looked up every number for every call that I got. I found that most of my calls were from persons that had been already reported as scammers. I gave it up after a while.. because it took up too much of my time. However, today I decided to check on the ten most recent numbers that I had retained.
Sure enough. Nine of them were shown to be scammers. One was a "no match," and one from "Jerry Gomez" in California was interesting. Jerry had a pleasant sounding lady tell whoever answered my phone that the IRS was preparing a court case against them.. the only way to get out of trouble was to call a special telephone number... that just happens to be one of Jerry's 30 telephone numbers. This guy has a big business going on. He also has had many bad reports made about him, and I added another one. However, Jerry must be making a lot of money with this scam... I just wonder how he is getting away with it.. especially since he uses his name (or his alias) connected to the calls.
Fat Strikes Back
A study by researchers at the University of Colorado has found that the fat siphoned off by liposuction can suddenly reappear at other locations in the body. For instance, siphon off a ten pound lump of fat from your tummy, and probably another ten pound lump of fat might suddenly appear on your triceps! Let that be a lesson to you...as obesity researcher at Columbia University, Rudoph Leibel, says: "You can't fool mother nature."
Rare Coins that you might have in your Pocket.. or Piggy Bank
My Trivia book lists a bunch of rare coins that you might want to search for:
o 1937D Three-legged Buffalo nickel: Number unknown.. could be worth $30,000.
o 1909S VDB Lincoln Cent.. the designer's initials VDB (Victor D. Brenner) are on the back. There still are several around. If you find one in your change, it may be worth $7,500.
o 1804 Silver Dollar.. only 15 are known.. lots of counterfeit ones around.. if valid, it could be worth around four million dollars.
Some little bits from Harry Hershfield
Jimmy Durante was looking for his eye glasses: "Jimmy, it's on your nose. "Be more specific," came Durante's famous grunt.
"I would enjoy reading the dictionary far more, if it didn't change the subject so often."
A kangaroo visited his psychiatrist and said: "I don't understand myself, Doc, I don't feel 'jumpy' lately."
Remember the fat man who reduced and won the "No Belly" prize?
This is the only country in the world where we lock up the jury and let the prisoner go home every night.
OK, OK, I didn't say these bits were going to be good. Harry was much better at long jokes.
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