Alpha Male Stuff

A while ago, I found a wonderful little book by Bobby Mercer called "Man Ventions."  It is all about inventions that "men can't live without."

At one spot in the book, the author lists "the top ten tackiest TV manventions."  How many of them do you remember?

01.  Hair in a Can Spray - a hairstyling product used to cover bald spots, probably used by Rudy Giuliani.

02.  The Clapper - a sound-activated electrical switch.  "Clap on! Clap Off! The Clapper!"

03.  Chia Pets - the first Chia Pets were the ram and the bull in 1981.  Pottery that grows.  "Cha Cha Cha Chia!"

04.  Ginsu Knives - "One of the best known brands  of cheap stainless steel kitchen knives that are actually good."

05.  Popeil Pocket Fisherman - a fishing pole that fits in your pocket.

06. Inside-the-shell egg scrambler - easy way to scramble an egg? Comment: "Much easier to do it the old fashioned way."  Comment:  "Better if you use a sock."

07.  The Flowbee - a vacuum haircut system.. now with "super mini vac" for only $199.95.

08.  Mr. Microphone - cordless microphone that connects to your FM radio. (Just what I needed when I was in Toastmasters)

09.  Shamwow - "Super Absorbent Multi-purpose Cleaning Shammy Towel Cloth."

10.  Battery-operated battery chargers - huh? I can't get my brain to comprehend.

...

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Hope

Every time I get to feeling depressed about young people and worrying about what the world will be like a few years from now, something pops into my life that gives me hope that all will be fine.

Case in point.  My beautiful granddaughter, Cassidy visited yesterday and she filled me in on a recent trip to the Baltimore Zoo to see a dinosaur exhibit.

She told me all about what dinosaurs ate;  

Herbivores - eat plants

Carnivores - eat meat 

Omnivores - eat both plants and meat 

She had this information exactly right and with the correct accent.

(She is at Kindergarten Level at school.  At that age, I was lucky to be able to tie my shoes.)

But I already knew she was smart when, at an earlier time, she taught me that a stalactite drips from the ceiling. 

Binge!

A NETFLIX presentation has my interest and I am continuously (binge?) watching it.  The title is "Better Call Saul."  It's about a well-meaning lawyer who makes a lot of sleazy mistakes.

The show is filled with plots and sub-plots galore - just the way I like it.

Cat Revenge?

SuZee must have taken offence at something we did or said last night.  She knocked Elaine's Sewing Container on the floor, and I found her sitting in the middle of a pile of needles and spools of thread and other sewing stuff.  She looked up at me with a smile on her face as if to say, "Look what I've done!"

She accompanied this latest accomplishment with a massive regurgitation on the rug.

Mini-hurricane?

Sometime soon we will get a deluge of water poured on our house.  Some company is coming to power wash our whole house.

Over the years, acid rain from West Virginis has been coating everything with a thin coating of dirt.  Try as I might, I have been unsuccessful at getting this removed.  I'm hoping the power washers will be able to.

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An Average Days' Worth of Snail Mail

Here is a list of every piece of mail deposited in our snail mailbox today, a typical amount of paper,  addressed to me by some charitable organizations or political individuals.

Friends of the Smithsonian

Jill Biden

The Nature Conservancy

Government Accountability Project

Maryland Food Bank

ACLU

Doctors Without Borders

Charles Schumer

Defenders of wildlife

Russ Feingold

Time

Braille Books for Blind Children

I would honor some of these solicitations and donate if I had the means.  Some I would not.

Having made donations to organizations in the past, I am a ripe candidate for donor address mailing lists.  But, those donor days are gone forever.  I need to make sure I have enough to live on now, from day to day.

If I sent just the minimum donation for each of today's solicitations, it would come to $290!

I've mentioned this before.  At a monthly Toastmasters Meeting, I gave a speech about how I liked to receive junk mail.  (I really did at that time.)  I thought that the speech was well received.

At the next monthly meeting, a presentation was made.  I was presented with a giant trash bag holding lots of junk mail that my fellow Toastmasters had saved for me during the month.

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Tidbits

01.  Litterbirds

The Week magazine:  By using a food-as-reward system, a Swedish town has trained crows to pick up cigarette butts in the streets.

The magazine asked for possible names for its waste-disposal system.

Kenneth Burgan - "Rooks in Crannies"

Ivan Kershner - "Garbage? Nevermore!"

Janine Witte - "Caw and Order"

02.  Sex Police?

The Week magazine: "The mayor of Hudson, Ohio resigned after warning that allowing ice-fishing on a local lake could lead to prostitution.

He told the City Council that authorizing "ice shanties" could lead to an 'unintended consequence' - shacks built for sex work.

He said that his concern was 'based on my prior television news-reporting experience.'"

(Would we like to have a religious gestapo like Iran?)

03.  Want a pun in the nose?

Mensa Bulletin:  Various Pun(y) location examples:

"I'm from the Big Apple, but do you know where Minneapolis?"

"Do you really think that a Paris better than a full house?"

"I have a Tapei personality."

"Venice that going to happen? Do you know?

 Gregg Siegel came up with these stupid examples.  Blame him, not me.

04. Some atrocious puns by Bennett Cerf  

"When the great maestro Toscanini first conducted an all Bach concert, he pushed his orchestra so fiercely and relentlessly in rehearsal they dubbed him "the Bach suite driver.'"

Q.:  Do you get fur from a skunk?

A.:  Yes, as fur as possible.

Q.:  How do you make an elephant fly?

A.:  Well, first you take a great big zipper!

Snow White took a whole roll of photos to record the antics of the seven dwarfs, and mailed them off to be developed.

The song she warbled as she waited for delivery was (wait for it!)  

"Someday my prints will come!"

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Enough of this nonsense!

Various

01.  Rosh Hashanah

To my Jewish friends and relatives:  shana tova (l'shana tova tikateyvu)

02.  WORDLE

The New York Times reports that the most requested help last week was from people who wanted information on how to improve their Wordle scores.

But, once again, I think that if you want to keep your mind active as you age, try different opening words at random, regardless of how many common letters or vowels or lack of vowels they might have.

Have yourself some mental fun manipulating the random words to figure out the object word, and when you finally guess that object word, you will feel wonderful. IMHO

03.  Greed

In a New York Times article today, a Washington State non-profit was singled out as a predatory entity.

The company was supposed to give medical treatment to the needy without charge.

However, to cover their costs in market investments and real estate, they decided to start bugging all patients for donations.  They even put out a manual advising all medical personnel on how to con donations from all patients, even if they had no money. (One person donated 25 cents.)

The patients could sign to give later and when nothing came to the company later, a debt collector was assigned to push them for it.

(Hopefully, there is a special place reserved in hell for such people.)

04.  Donations Question

Now that the Justice Department has proof that monies donated to an election fund were used for other purposes, can the donors get their money back?  Would they want that?

05.  Calendar

Ambrose Bierce:  

"Monday (noun) in Christian countries, the day after the baseball game."

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 Fiction Test

Mensa Word Expert Richard Lederer posted a great article in the September 2022 Mensa Bulletin, in which he gave a lot of examples of the first words in a novel that, by themselves indicate who the author was.

I don't think he would mind if I take his idea and work it into a test.

So, in the following 10 fiction opening excerpts see if you can discern the author and the work.

01.  "He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream ..."

02.  "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

03.  "Call me Ishmael."

04.  "All children, except one, grow up."

05.  "Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies ..."

06.  "You don't know about me without you have read a book called 'The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, ... '"

07.  "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, ..."

08.  "It was Wang Lung's wedding day."

09. "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed into a giant insect."

10. "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents."  Grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

 

It's a shame that schoolchildren will no longer get to enjoy these great works of fiction.

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 Odds and Ends

01. Restaurant Review

Hannah Goldfield is a restaurant reviewer for the New Yorker magazine.

She recently maneuvered an entrance into the Osteria La Baia restaurant, run by twin brothers who have had trouble with the law. 

Thed food was priced from $16 to $155, and she felt that the food was undercooked, overcooked, undersalted, too sweet, and definitely not worthy to be considered.

However, one person loved it.  Eric Adams, New York City's mayor, who frequents the place.

Usually Ms. Goldfield has only good things to say in her reviews.

02.  Opera

You know that I love the opera, so you'll understand how excited I am about a new feature from BBC Music Magazine.

The new feature is called Opera Roulette and so far it is free to visit. Just check it out on Google.

When you "spin the wheel" random opera scenes pop up just as you would watch them at the opera house. With all the costumes, acting, and music.

Try it, you might like it.

03.  Wannabe

When CNBC was compiling a list of the top 100 business leaders in 2014, a big shot real estate guy ordered his attorney to pay a tech company to rig the online vote used to winnow down the field.

When the big shot still didn't make the final list, his lawyer told CNBC that it would be sued.

Meanwhile the big shot called several network executives to complain.

Guess who?

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 Short Guy makes the Big Time

(If you don't like classical music, skip this blog entry.)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote some of the most beautiful music ever created, and his operas are marvelous!. IMHO

But he wasn't a tall handsome guy.  Let me quote some observations from the BBC:

"The composer's face was pock-marked and his self-description was 'Mozart magnus, corpore parvus'  (Great Mozart, small in stature.)"

Once, a Mannheim, Germany theater manager would not let him in to conduct his own work, because he thought that Mozart looked like a "member of the very lowest class."

He was remembered as "a remarkable small man, very thin and pale, with a profusion of fine, fair hair, of which he was rather vain."

That vanity led him to sport beautiful clothing, lace and watch-chains, and to appear on stage with his crimson pelisse (fur-lined cloak) and gold-laced cocked hat as he conducted his orchestra.  And he loved his wigs.

Mozart produced an enormous amount of work in a very short lifetime. Over 800 musical works in every genre of that time.

Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgang Theophilus Mozart was born in 1756 and died just 35 years later in 1791.

Some of his most favorite musical creations (actually, my favorites):

Eine Kleine Nachtmusik 

(Sidebar:  When I was staying at a house in Koeln, Germany, every single night a neighbor couple would get into a shouting match.  My friends called it Eine Kleine Nachtmusik -- "A little bedtime lullaby.")

REQUIEM - Will make you want to get more religious before you die.

Clarinet Concerto

Visiting his operas will make you feel wonderful.  Here are a few I like:

The Marriage of Figaro  (my favorite)

The Magic Flute  (fun for all)

Don Giovanni (scary but spectacular)

And don't forget to view the movie "AMADEUS."

A little loose with the facts, but wonderfully staged.

I wish Herr Mozart had lived longer, just think of what other miraculous creations he probably would have made for us.

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Religious Humor

Over three years ago, the beloved pastor at Carroll Lutheran Village was in a very bad accident and was bed-ridden for months.  In an attempt to make him feel a little better, I composed this letter.

Dear Pastor Jimmie:

Here are a few attempts at humor that I hope you will be able to read and enjoy, because a good laugh is much better than a bunch of pain pills.  If laughter is painful for you, I hope you will at least be able to smile a bit at this silliness.

...

One Sunday, a preacher announced that his next sermon would be on the topic of lying.

"To prepare, I'd like you all to read the 30th chapter of the Book of Matthew," he said.

The next Sunday, he asked those who had done the recommended reading to raise their hands.  All hands went up.

"That's a good introduction to my topic," said the preacher.  "You're all liars. There is no 30th chapter of the Book of Matthew."

...

"Knock, Knock, Hello, I'm here to convert you."

"What religion?"

"None, I'm from the telephone company."

...

Did you hear about the student studying to be a minister, who thought that the Epistles were the wives of the Apostles?

... 

Did you hear about the couple who got married so late in life that Medicare paid for the wedding?

...

A.J.Jamal said: "My father was so cheap. For Easter, we'd wear the same clothes, but he'd take us to a different church."

... 

Garrison Keillor said: "Anyone who thinks that sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car."

..

My grandson was visiting one day when he asked: "Grandpa, do you know how you and God are alike?"

Kind of pleased, I said, "No, how are we alike?"

"You're both old," he replied.

...

And when my grandson finally asked me how old I really was, I teasingly replied: "I'm not sure."

"Look in your underwear, Grandpa, " he advised. "Mine says I'm 4 to 6."

...

One day, my grandson was diligently pounding on my word-processor.  He told me he was writing a story.

"What's it about?" I asked.

"I don't know," he replied.  "I can't read yet."

...

But my young granddaughter is the artist in the family.  One day I saw her busily engaged in drawing on a sketch pad with crayons.

I asked her what she was drawing.

She said that she was drawing a picture of God.

I said that I didn't think anyone knew what God looked like.

She said:  "They will when I get through."

...

A vocal and pompous political candidate was trying to drum up voters at a nursing home. He approached a dear little lady in a wheelchair and bent over, took her hand and asked in a loud voice: "Do you know who I am?"

The lady tilted her head to one side, gently patted the man's hand and replied:  "No, but if you stop at that desk over there, they'll tell you."

...

WORDS

If you subscribe to Readers Digest (RD), skip this blog entry.

The large print edition for September 2022 was labeled "The Genius Edition."  It contained lots of contests and articles about words. I found it very interesting.

Here is some RD content, in no exact order:

Word:  cwm. ( A noun pronounced koom.  It describes the steep-sided hollow at the head of a valley.  Good word for Scrabble.)

Word: whoopensocker.  (A Wisconsin word used to describe something extraordinary or large.) 

Word:  yinz (A Pittsburgh slang word for "y'all.")

Word:  Haagen-Dazs (This is "short for nothing."  Reuben Mattus created the ice cream company in 1959.  "As a Jew, he wanted to give his company a Danish-sounding name in tribute to Denmark's reputation for saving Jews during World War II and settled on this nonsense phrase.")

Invention:  America's first chocolate-covered ice cream bar, the Eskimo Pie was patented in 1922.  It was renamed Edy's Pie in 2021 and was a big hit.  250,000 bars sold out within 24 hours.

All Downhill since Then

In 1922, New York City radio station WEAF broadcast the first ever radio commercial. It was 15 minutes long.

Centenarian

Smitty, the office boy from the comic strip that ran for 50 years, turned 100 this month.

Word:  muscle. (From Latin, musculus, little mouse, for the way flexed muscles look running under our skin.

Spanish sleep

When someone is day-dreaming in Spain, they are pensando en la immortalidad del cangrejo (pondering the immortality of the crab.

Telephone Talk

A telephone rang. "Hello! Is this your phone number 444-44-4444?" 

"Yes it is," came the reply.

"Great!  Could you call 911 for me?  I superglued my finger to the phone."

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 Books

A few years ago, my super-intelligent brother Joe sent me a list of books he had retitled.  Here are a few that won't get censored:

Harper Lee book about a drunken bird:

Tequila Mockingbird

Victor Hugo's book about a runaway thief who gets a pardon:

Less Miserable

Hemingway book about hockey:

Of Ice and Men

Dumas book about a member of royalty who gets rich inventing a lard substitute: 

 The Count of Monte Crisco

Tolstoy tome about a guy who fatally scratches himself:  

The Death of I've An Ill Itch.

Hemingway tale about a farmer who makes surev his boy gets up early:  

The Son Also Rises

Dickens book about a guy who can really spit:    

Great Expectorations

TV

My genius son set up a Fire TV on my bedroom wall so that when I start trying to sleep and can't, I can watch something until my mind goes numb.

I think I now have access to 2,567,908 TV channels. I can remember when we had to manipulate pieces of tin foil on rabbit ears antennas in order to see 2 channels.. or at least, their test patterns.  Have we really come a long way, baby?

WORDLE

The other day was a disaster for me.  I had five word iterations to look at and decide which one was the solution.  I picked wrong 4 times and now my score shows 3 errors in 100 tries.  Shame on me.

I still think that one should pick a beginning word at random and not think about whether it has good vowels or common consonants.  Its more fun that way. IMHO

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 Humor!

Famous Mensan, Richard Lederer likes to write humorous articles for the Mensa Bulletin. In 2020 he wrote about "the power of humor," and listed some quotes that I want to mention.

Irish adage: "A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures."

Yiddish Proverb: "What soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul."

 Richard says, "Five-year-olds laugh naturally 250 times a day.  ... Most of us don't laugh 250 times a month!"

"How sad it is that as we grow old, we gain girth, but lose mirth."

"You don't stop laughing because you are getting old.  You are getting old because you stop laughing."

e.e.cummings said, "The most wasted of all days is the one without laughter."

Richard says, "Go forth and practice random acts of laughter, and one of those acts should be to laugh at yourself. If you can do that, you'll never cease to be amused!"

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 On the Bottom Line

Some of you may subscribe to Bottom Line Personal and you may have read about the things I am about to relate.  If so, just sign off with my well-wishes.

01.  People Search Sites

While helping to find your long lost Brother-in-Law, they will often add your personal data to their databases and may even sell it to scammers.

Somewhere, hidden among verbiage, are instructions on how to get your own information removed.  Read the fine print.

A few months ago, I used BeenVerified to trace a hacker. I ordered a one-time search.  However, every month since an amount was paid out of my funds to that company.

If I had read the fine print more carefully, I would have not erroneously signed up for a subscription to the service.

My beautiful daughter, Diane, intervened on my account and I did get a refund.

02.  Scammers are targeting your smart TV.

Is nothing sacred?

03. TREKIE Talk

Nichelle Nichols, Walk of Fame-winning American actor (1932 - 2022, said: "Star Trek represented, and still does represent the future we can have ... beyond the petty squabbles we are dealing here on Earth."

04.  Having trouble swallowing?

You may have Zenken's diverticulum, when the esophagus develops a pouch where it joins the pharynx in the back of the throat.  Bits of food get trapped there.

Options: minimally invasive surgery or a diet of pureed foods sipped slowly.

05.  Eggs

a.  Freeze beaten eggs in ice cube trays and store for a year,

b.  Test boiled eggs by sticking a toothpick through the shell into the egg. If it comes out wet, the egg is still runny.

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Baby Stuff

In Navajo culture, there is something called the first laugh ceremony.  Each Navajo baby is kept on a cradle board until he or she laughs for the first time.

Then the tribe throws a celebration in honor of the child's first laugh, which is considered to be his or her birth as a social being.

Someone tweeted:  "Why do baby clothes have pockets? Are people really going up to babies and saying, 'Hey, can you hold this for a second?'"

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Interesting?

01. Tasty?

BBC.COM reports thru Readers Digest:

Marathon runners in China were rewarded with a gift bag after the race.

One of the goodies was a fruit-flavored bar ensconced in its pretty English-language wrapper.

In fact, the Royal Orchard bars were fruit-perfumed soap.

According to the BBC, "Witnesses report many bars of soap, all with one bite missing, dumped on the roadside."

02.  Tasty?

Columnist Maureen Dowd mentions a Twilight Zone classic.

Aliens  professing peace present officials with a book titled: "To Serve Man."  But then it turns out, after they set up a flight to their planet, that "To Serve Man" is actually a cookbook.

03.  Tasty?

The 1973 movie Soylent Green was a shocker.  Not any more.

04.  Tasty?

Ambrose Bierce:

Oyster = "a slimy, gobby shellfish which civilization gives men the hardihood to eat without removing its entrails."

05.  Tasteless?

I saw Ronald McDonald naked and he has sesame seed buns.

06.  More

"Why is Santa so jolly?"

"He knows where all the bad girls live.

07.  Even More

Tourist: "What's the quickest way to get to Taneytown?"

Farmer:  "Are you walking or driving?

Tourist:  "Driving."

Farmer:  "Good. That's the fastest way."

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 Some more thoughts

Inspiration

Inspired by something Les Brown (the Motivator) said, I adopted this phrase to be used for ten years by my group of computer experts:

"Our goal should not be to please our clients, or to serve our clients, but to 'Amaze' them!"

Computer Population

In 1949 There were 2 working computers.

In 1961, there were 2,000 working computers.

In 1968, there were 40,000 working computers.

In 2022, there are (What's your guess?)

Huh?

By the time you become old enough to know all the answers, nobody asks you the questions.

Time is God's way to keep everything from happening at once.

H. L. Mencken said, "For every human problem, there is a neat, plain solution... and its always wrong."

Its not around any moa.

"My bike is busted," Tom spoke out.

The tin can was invented in 1810.  The can opener was invented in 1860.

"That's enough!  Let's go out for Chinese food," said Joe, wantonly.

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Travel

Sharon Wood writes:  "After a visit to Yellowstone's Old Faithful, our family stopped at a gas station outside of the park.  Our daughter leaned over a water fountain, and just as she was about to take a sip, the water shot up and sprayed her face.

The  gas station attendant smiled and said, 'That's why we call it Old Faceful!

Better get to visit Mexico City soon, because it is fast disappearing. This enormous city of over 22 million people was built on top of a lake and the city is sinking back into that lake as time goes by.

Can you imagine a city of 22 million people?  How do all those people survive?

If you want to have fun, and have the time and money, try a trip on Route 66.  This was once a major interstate thoroughfare that came upon bad times when President Eisenhauer pushed for Atomic Bomb Escape Routes.

I read where 80% of the road is still fun to drive on... if you can find it.

Back in the 1950's we followed the Route to California.  I'm told that a ride today will emulate the fun of that era,

"If you ever plan to motor west,

Travel my way, take the highway that is best.

Get your kicks on route sixty-six.

... Now you go through saint looey

Joplin, missouri,

And oklahoma city is mighty pretty.

You see amarillo,

Gallup, new mexico,

Flagstaff, arizona,

Don't forget winona,

Kingman, barstow, san bernadino.

Won't you get hip to this timely tip

When you make that california trip

Get your kicks on route sixty-six."

Source:  Musixmatch

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 More Things to think about

01.  Wordle

I thought that today's puzzle was very tough.  It took me a long time to figure it out. Hope it was easier for you than me.

02. Items from Mental Floss magazine:

a.  OPOSSUM

The average female opossum has 13 nipples.  The nipples are arranged in a circular pattern, with one in the middle.

(Reminds me of a certain Jerry Seinfeld episode.)

b.  WHALE

That rascal, Aristotle Onasis lived for years on his fancy yacht (Christina O), which boasted barstools covered with leather made from whale foreskins.

c.  SNEEZING

Sneezing in different languages:

English: Achoo!

Japanese:  Hakushon!

Hindi:  Chheenk!

Mandarin:  Penti!

Hebrew:  Apchee

Somali:  Hindis!

Malay:  Bersin!

03.  Items from Joe Vaughan's Social Security Brief Case Notes:

Pete Poetker:  "Decisions are always made by the uninvolved."

-

Ed Piszek's new golden rule:  "The guy with the gold makes the rules."

-

The town of Kennesaw, Georgia passed a law making gun ownership mandatory.

"Every head of household residing in the city limits is required to maintain a firearm."

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 Help!~  I'm being inundated with those little sticky-edged notes, the name of which one is banned from mentioning by law. What did we ever do without them?

01.  Infamy (bad times)

We have two main dates to remember when we think about evil in the world:

September 11, 2001

December 7, 1941

Let's hope that such days never recur.

02.  Happiness (good times)

I've been so lucky to have beautiful Elaines in my life:

Elaine Langlois - 43 years

Elaine Lottes - 21 years

What did I do to get so lucky?

03.  Maybe it was my healthy smell?

Carlotta Galeone, PhD in Milan, Italy, states that a  13-year study indicates that onions and garlic may prevent certain types of cancer.  She suggests that one consume a half-cup of onions (any type) and two crushed garlic cloves, several times weekly.

 

04.  Some random thoughts

Clones are people two.

If a man says something in the woods and there are no women there, is he still wrong?

Ever wonder what the speed of lightning would be if it didn't zigzag?

Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

So, what's the speed of dark?

How come abbreviated is such a long word?

I'm not one to brag about my finances, but my credit-card company calls me almost every day to tell me my balance is outstanding.

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 More "Stuff"

01.  Going up!

I haven't heard much lately about the "space elevator."  This was a proposed planet-to-space transportation system.  A cable would be anchored to the surface of Earth and extended into space.

The Japanese feel that such a system could work using current technology, and have built a couple of prototypes.

It is estimated that the elevator trip from Earth to Moon would take 8 days.

02.  Phobias.

Here are some more "fears" that human's have:

Gephyrophobia - Fear of crossing bridges. (Lots of people have this fear.)

Pogonophobia - Fear of beards.

Geniophobia - Fear of Chins.  (How about Changs?)

Sesquipedalophobia - Fear of long words.

My favorite:

Arachibutyrophobia - Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth.

03.  Childhood Logic

Kitt Swanson writes for Readers Digest:

"My son was almost five when we took a trip to the Post Office...  I noticed him staring at the pictures on the wall. 

'Who are the people on the wall?' he asked. 

I explained to him they were bad people that the police were searching for.  

My son looked up at me with the sweetest face and asked, 'Then why didn't they keep them when they took their pictures?'

I was without words.

04.  You had to be around then

Famous humorist, Allan Misch coined this one-liner:

"He's as nervous as an Avon lady about to ring Tammy Faye Bakker's doorbell."

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 I didn't know that!

01.  Hairy Faces?

This Week magazine reports that "a survey of 8,500 heterosexual women found that heavily stubbled men are the most attractive to potential mates, followed by men with full beards, the lightly stubbled and, in last place, clean shaven men."

(Let that be a lesson to you.)

02.  Use your noodle.

Readers Digest gives some clues to the names of some noodles by Italian "shape" words:  

Rigatoni - has grooves.

Italian riga or "line."  

Bucatini - is hollow.

Italian buca or "hole."

Farfalla - bow-tie shaped.

Italian farfalla or "butterfly."

Penne - pointed.

Italian penne or "quill."

Fusilli - spiraled.

Italian fuso or "spindle."

Spaghetti - long, thin.

Italian spago or "string."

03.  Heller's Laws

I found this in my files.  I don't think it is related to Heller v DC, concerning handguns in DC (2008).

I just think that these are tips for politicians.

A.  Never permit the other fellow to finish a sentence, since he might know what he is talking about and thus prove that you do not.

B.  If you miss your chance to interrupt, change the subject.

(and, always remember:  DEFLECTION!)

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Some Stuff to Think About

01.  High IQ

Do you think that you could qualify for membership in ISPE, the oldest 99.9% society in the world?

If so, on receipt of an application, you will be asked to figure out some puzzles like these:

Find the word that doesn't belong in the list.

you kiss will no me

Find the number that doesn't belong.

19   5    4   25   16

I think I solved the word puzzle, but the number puzzle drives me crazy.  I give up!

I wonder what they discuss at their meetings.  

02.  Hiccups Cures (1994)

 a. Drink chicken gizzard tea or dill tea.

b.  Stand on one foot and repeat, "Hick up, stick up, lick up, hick up," three times without taking a breath. 

c.  Plug your ears and drink nine cups of rainwater, administered by someone of the opposite sex.

d.  Have someone rub a rabbit's foot on the back of your neck, unexpectedly.

Take your pick!

03.  Random thoughts.

a.  Are humans bipedal because of high grass?

b.  Lady on a Date: "Of all the men I've dated, I must say, you are the most recent. 

c.  Did Queen Victora really present Mount Kilimanjaro to Kaiser Wilhelm for his birthday?

ENOUGH!

 More Stuff

I believe that a company named Scholastics, Inc delivered educational material to those kids that subscribed.  I didn't have any money to subscribe so I never really got into its subjects.  

However, somewhere in my travels I picked up two copies of "101 Things You Need to Know," published by Scholastics.  I did know 98 of these things.

Here is what I didn't know:

01.  Toothpaste

Toothpaste is made with limestone, a sedimentary rock. 

My Colgate toothpaste container doesn't say anything about limestone.  Here are its ingredients:

Water

Sorbitol

Hydrated Silica

Glycerin

PEG-12

Tetrasodium Pyrophosphate

Flavor

Sodium Lauryl Sulfate

Zinc Phosphate

Cellulose Gum

Sodium Citrate

Microcrystalline Cellulose

Sodium Saccharin

Cocamidopropy Betaine

Xanthan Gum

Citric Acid

Sucralose

Titanium Dioxide

Just think about this when you are brushing your teeth at bedtime.

 

02.  Summer Heat Determination

I think we actually did this exercise in the old days, but I had forgotten.  It's very simple:

Count the cricket chirps in 15 seconds and add 39. The result should be the current Fahrenheit temperature.

But I have an even simpler exercise:

"Alexa, what's the temperature!"

03.  King Wolfgang

Mozart supposedly created an imaginary kingdom called "Back."  He appointed himself king and had a servant make maps of cities and villages.

Well, that may be so, but I can't find anything about it.  If someone knows about this, would you please let me know?

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