Let It Go

One of the things that everyone seems to get out of ninth-grade Biology is the old maxim that "You are never closer to death than when you sneeze."  Apparently, you stop breathing, and your heart stops beating, and your duodenum stops doing what it oughta do, during the moments when it's sneezin' season.

I don't know if that's true; I shall ask Dr Deloskey the next time I see him, although I do tend to spend most of my time in the exam room discussing what I want to die from (either rickets or scurvy; I'm not picky. I will be very old when it happens, or at least, as old as I'll ever get.)

But I have to pass this along, and that is what I read about how bad it can be for you to try to stifle a sneeze. 

First off, there is a lot of energy behind your sneezes. Stuff (mucus and air) comes flying out of your nose and mouth at about 100 miles per hour, which exceeds the national Cootie Speed Limit, according to the Cleveland Clinic. And whether or not you hold in a squeeze, that horsepower is generated, and holding it in just creates big problems. 

Dr. Rachel Szekely is an immunologist at Cleveland Clinic, and she says, "Occasionally, people will cause some damage to their eardrums or their sinuses if they stifle a very violent sneeze," in an post on the clinic’s website, a post that urges sneezers to let 'em fly.

It's a long way from Cleveland to Great Britain, so that's why a certain 34-year-old man living in Jolly Olde wound up in the "hospital," as hospitals are called over there.  He tried to stifle a sneeze and wound up tearing some of the soft tissue in his throat. 

He said it actually sounded like "Snap, crackle and pop" and he is trying to tell us all not to pinch our noses while clamping a hand over our mouths when Mean Mr Sneeze comes walking down our lane. 

"This 34-year-old chap said he was always trying to hold his sneeze because he thinks it is very unhygienic to sneeze into the atmosphere or into someone’s face. That means he’s been holding his sneezes for the last 30 years or so, but this time it was different," Wanding Yang, who wrote the report for the British Medical Journal, says.

That chap felt a "popping" sensation in his neck, and then his neck began to swell, causing his voice to change.

This X-ray shows streaks of air
in the neck’s soft tissue,
 caused by a stifled sneeze.
 (British Medical Journal)

So he went to see a doctor, and was asked if he had "eaten anything sharp." No.

So into X-ray with him, and here's the nitty: that pressure, that sneezulated air, has got to exit the body somehow, and if it's not allowed to fly out of your nose and mouth, it will take a detour through the lungs and punch its way out. 

The whole thing about sneezing is, it's your body's way of expelling harmful irritants in the nose, throat or lungs. In other words, it's healthy, even though it happens on the very day you're not exactly feeling aces. 

TIME magazine had a piece on this very thing three years ago, and it said that doctors have seen "patients with a ruptured eardrum or pulled back muscles, and ... cracked ribs..."  

And the Cleveland Clinic points out that if you don't send the irritant cooties flying out, they stay in your body, and you can get a whole new infection from that!

In other words, Doc says you will be Grumpy and not really Happy if you curtail being Sneezy. So don't be Dopey or Bashful about it. 

Plug it in

When it comes to newfangled kitchen appliances, I have found it best to think twice.  

Take that Ronco, or Popeil, whichever, home rotisserie. Owners tout the ease with which you can run to the Food 'N' More, come back with a Perdue fryer, sauce it up and put it on the skewer, and then "Set It and Forget It!"  Just push a button and come back later to claim your cooked bird.  And then eat the chicken and spend the evening cleaning the rotisserie machine and all the inside parts, and putting it away under the cabinet where the cat stores her toys. Cleanup time, at least an hour, plus the time it takes to get the cat to move her stuff.

OR - run to the Food 'N' More, and come back with a nicely done chicken in a plastic tub that makes a great container in which to throw away the bones etc.  Cleanup time, one minute.

Take the bread maker (please.)  The big hits of the early 90s are still around in the lower cabinets by the steamer pot, and used about as often as a dictionary in the Oval Office.  You can run and get flour and yeast and I don't know what-all else and bake yourself a loaf of bread in an hour.

OR - mix three cups of self-rising flour, 1/4 cup sugar, and a can of beer into a greased loaf pan, bake it for an hour at 400°, and enjoy the beerbread yeastfeast.

OR - stop in the bakery section of the Shop4Eats and get a loaf of bread.

So I was thinking about the combination air fryer/instant pot/printer/scanner/automatic vacuum cleaner.  Some friends have them and are raving about how great they are for cooking ribs and fries and soups and pot roast.

Some say the fries are dry, the ribs come out 1/2 done, and the soups are no better than Campbell's red and white cans contain.

I can get ribs and fries and soups and roasts from my standard sources, and not have to get rid of the unused breadmaker, because that's the only way we could wedge an instant pot up in here.

Why I can't call my autobiography "Profiles In Courage"

I guess it's still going on, people breaking their necks to run to the bookstore (the store down by the mall where they have to sell coffee just to make ends meet) to buy a copy of "Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House," the tell-all book by Michael Wolff that purports to tell all about the House of Thrills at 1600 Pennsylvania Av in Washington, D.C.

Hip Kindle types downloaded the book in record numbers as well.

I haven't bought it and don't plan to read it (I have a book backlog like you wouldn't believe, and books about Walter Winchell and Jackie "The Jokeman" Martling require my attention more urgently.)

But I love stories in which some guy makes an accidental fortune, like the gas-station attendant named Clark Bentley who wrote a song called "Yesterday All Day Long Today," which you never heard, but which was recorded by Jeannie C. Riley on the 'b' side of "Harper Valley P.T.A." The people who dole out the money in the record business can't be expected to figure out why people bought a billion copies of Harper Valley in 1968, so they shell out royalty money equally between the writer of the hit side and the other side that no one ever listened to. So Clark Bentley made some folding money on that, same as Tom T. Hall, who wrote the song everybody sang that summer.

Randall Hansen made some money the easy way too, because people are so doggone hurried when they click on Amazon to order books and whatnot.

You see, in 2010, Hansen, who is currently the interim Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto, wrote a book called "Fire and Fury: The Allied Bombing of Germany, 1942-1945" which suddenly saw a giant bump in sales of late, and we have to assume that although there may be a couple of dozen people who were into reading about Allied bombing raids on Nazi Germany in World War II, the vast majority of these people were as disappointed when they opened their box from Amazon as they would have been had they thought they were checking "ice cream sundae" on an elective menu, but really checked "braunschweiger sandwich" instead.

Dr Hansen was one of the people who noticed what happened. When he saw that the Trump book had the same title as his own, he looked at the Amazon sales charts, and saw that his tome had "moved from very, very low sales onto three [of Amazon’s] best-seller lists." And Amazon sold every last copy they had.

No one knows if they will print more. Or why they would.

And if your real name is Harry Potter, now would be a great time to publish your memoirs.

Sunday Rerun: Aw, Gee Whiz (from 2012)

Hello, friends.  Are you lonesome?  Do you seek new friends in what seems to be a cold, cold world?  Do you wish that total strangers would approach you in malls, at gas-and-go outlets and in library parking lots with a hearty smile and a welcoming greeting?


Well, sir and/or ma'am...wear some Crimson.  Put on a t-shirt or cap that signifies your support of the unbeaten football team from the University of Alabama, and I guarandamntee you that people you have never met in your long life will walk up to you in various places and say, "Roll TIDE!"

We still don't know how I got to be a 'Bama Booster; it must have been some sort of osmosis.  I woke up one day and found myself being a fan. This thing where people walk up to me hooting and hollering about that school down in Tuscaloosa happens to me all the time, and face it, nothing about my everyday appearance says "Alabama" whatsoever.  But when I'm sporting my 'Bama duds, it's almost as if I were Liberace or something, the way my clothing draws attention. 

So, on Saturday, with the big game against Louisiana State (the "Bayou Beatdown") looming that evening, I donned my Tide finery while Peggy and I ran errands at Harford Mall (Pearle Vision, the best place in town to see and be seen!) and then to Lowe's, before dining sumptuously at the Bonefish Grill.  I also had to make a stop at that Hollister store in the mall to get something for someone else.  I took my place in line, while my fillings rattled from the sound of the techno-hip-hop-pop that poured out of speakers and almost took my mind off the aroma of the sweet perfumes they (apparently) sell there.  So thick was the attar of their SoCal cologne, it was making it SoHard to breathe.

And then!  A kid - he couldn't have been more than 13! - spotted me.  He was wearing a Redskins hat, so we have nothing in common anyway, but he ankled right over to me and said, "AlaBAMA!  You like Alabama?  They suck, man!"  He told me that he favored LSU in the game that night.  I saw his mom at the register, giving me that "OK - you deal with him now if you can" look and I said, "Well, son, you won't have to worry about asking if you can stay up to watch the whole game, because it'll be all over by halftime!"

(That turned out to be an inaccurate prediction, not my first.  But the record shows that the Tide pulled out a victory in the final 90 seconds, 21-17.)

The youth and I bantered for a while before his mother finished making her purchase and steeled herself for the journey home.  What I really liked about this kid, his choice of football teams notwithstanding, was that he had no qualms about mixing it up with an old duffer almost 5 times his age.  It was fun; I felt like I was back in junior high or something.

I was hoping that he would ask his mom if he and I could hang around the mall and ogle women and eat pretzels and get chased by the rent-a-cops and let me relive being 13 again, but he said he had to go, and all, and see ya later, Mister. 

Then I felt like Holden Caulfield, because that kills me, the way kids always call us old guys "Mister."

Peggy says I need to find better things to do than to argue with adolescents about football.  I'm not so sure that there are any many better things to do than that.

The Saturday Picture Show, January 27, 2018

I was always fascinated as a kid with Uncle Scrooge McDuck. His sole focus seemed to be amassing as much gold as he could. Imagine that!

On the left is a new uniform shoe for a member of the Royal Guardsmen at Buckingham Palace; on the right, the same shoe after a year of service.

If you've always wondered about what a soda machine looks like inside, perhaps we will find one for next week's Picture Show. This is the inner workings of a pool table. 

Every once in a while, you see a tomato on the vine after the season ends, but this was an apple that hung around until December. 

We get the surname "Holloway" from the word for pathways that have been traveled for so many years that they have actually worn a ridge into the trail, like an uncovered tunnel, until it becomes a hollow way. (This is serious and on the level, not one of my bad puns!) Here is a road abandoned by cars, and becoming a part of the woods it once cut through.

America will always be the greatest country in the world, as long as we have the ingenuity to make ersatz corkscrews out of drywall screws and copper wire.

...But we bow to the greatness of Costa Rica, where four presidential candidates met at a Burger King to vie for the Foosball championship.

Imagine how many cheeseburgers you could have bought if you were a billionaire real estate developer, casino entrepreneur, and self-proclaimed genius in 1962.

Free dumb

Harley Barber, pictured at right doing God knows what for what reason, used to be a student at the University of Alabama.  Used to be, until she chose Martin Luther King Day to drop a slurstorm of racial invective on Instagram, using the foulest of terms to display the dark spot where her heart ought to be.

So she was expelled from the University and the Alpha Phi sorority, a group she had yearned to be part of since her high school days in New Jersey. 

University President Stuart R. Bell called the videos "highly offensive and deeply hurtful," and confirmed that Ms Barber, is "no longer enrolled here."

"We hold our students to much higher standards, and we apologize to everyone who has seen the videos and been hurt by this hateful, ignorant and offensive behavior," Bell said.

For her part, once she stopped and took stock of her actions, Barber realized she went way wrong here, telling the New York Post, "I don’t know what to do and I feel horrible. There’s just no excuse for what I did."

As for the Alpha Phi sorority, Linda Kahangi, executive director of Alpha Phi, says that the student "is no longer a member of Alpha Phi."

Kahangi told the Associated Press, "Alpha Phi is a diverse, values-based organization and condemns the language and opinions in these videos. They are offensive and hateful to both our own members and to other members of the Greek and campus community."

But a point needs to be made here. When the story hit the social media webs, people were quick to condemn her, but a few who have not read the Constitution all the way through got their backs up and said things like, "Way to take away her right of free speech!"

So once again, let's help these people remember...no one took away her right of free speech. She said these things, remember?

But the right to speak freely does not absolve one from bearing the responsibility of the ramifications of that speech. The University certain has the right to rid itself of people who make such asinine utterances.

Ms Barber, if her seeming penitence turns out to be real, might wind up back in college, and for all I know will have learned her lesson and become a true hero in the fight for equality and justice for all...just like it says in the Constitution.

But nowhere in there does it say that you can say wrong and hateful things and not expect to pay a price for being wrong and hateful.

But Lavender is more purple than blue, anyway...

If you recall hearing Peyton Manning hollering "Omaha!" while calling an audible in a football game, that's old times now. Ben Roethlisberger of the Steelers was heard using "Dilly Dilly!" as the signal to his team to change to another play recently.

Of course, what brings this all to the forefront of public attention (so we can forget about what we ought to pay attention to) is the current series of Game Of Thrones-like commercials for Bud Light beer, with a medieval court hoisting high their bottles of watered-down Budweiser and crooning "Dilly Dilly!"

So the, what does "Dilly Dilly" even mean?  Might as well talk about it, because we are certain to see and hear it again during the Super Bowl between the Eagles and the Jaguars. (Editor's note: make sure those are the teams in the big game! Don't make the same mistake as last year when we did that whole salute to the Falcons' Flight To Victory!)

The redundancy "DD" means nothing special. We used to say something was a "dilly" when it was really special, like when someone drove up in their sleek new Plymouth Fury. "It's a dilly!" someone was sure to call out as they looked for ways to get out of chipping in gas money later.  There are those who say the word derives from "delightful," which was surely applicable to Plymouths back in the day.

You might be familiar with a song that uses the words, too. The old English folk song "Lavender Blue (Dilly Dilly)" dates back to the 17th Century. Burl Ives had a hit with it in 1949 as part of the movie soundtrack to a Walt Disney movie (everything in this world connects back to Disney) called "So Dear To My Heart," which is unknown to my heart, but I know the song well, and you can hear it right here.  Sammy Turner did a rock/soul version in 1959, and of course, Disney dragged it out again for their 217th version of "Cinderella" in 2015.

It might come as a surprise to many who think that people never got busy back in the olden days, but here are the lyrics as included in an 1805 English children's poetry book: 





Lavender blue and Rosemary green,
When I am king you shall be queen;
Call up my maids at four o'clock,
Some to the wheel and some to the rock;
Some to make hay and some to shear corn,
And you and I will keep the bed warm.

  Now, that's a dilly!

High School No-Nos

All the talk around my neighborhood of late has been the fracas that took place at Perry Hall High School last week. Of course, there is video of the roiling crowd, showing some kids slugging other kids around, and a bunch of others pushing and shoving and one kid walking on the perimeter toting what appears to be an assault rifle of some sort.

Someone who was on the parking lot while all this took place pulled out their phone and video'ed it, and it was on the local news within a minute or two.  And soon, everyone in town was weighing in.

You can see the story here as Channel 2 covered it. The student who had the rifle, which turned out to be a air gun that shoots only pellets, was identified as Darren Bennett, Jr. He spent a weekend as a guest of the Baltimore County Detention Center, having recently had the misfortune of turning 18 befall him. 

And when he was released on no bail (but given a 10 PM curfew!) it was because he showed up in court accompanied by his attorney, Landon White, who told the court that young Bennett is a leader on the campus, captain of the football team, and an AP student who has been accepted by many colleges.

White also said that, "Bringing an air pistol to school is a no-no."

Really! He said that, in court, before a judge.  This is the same school of practicing law that says to dress up your clients in pullover sweaters and eyeglasses, to make them seem less threatening, or more childlike.


"It's a no-no."

Once the judge was finished chortling at that, he released the defendant Bennett pending trial on three charges: possession of a dangerous weapon on school property, disturbing school operation, and disturbing the peace.

We see the dichotomy that prevails when we deal with today's troubled adolescents. On one hand, we count the ways in which they are adults - over 18, a fine student, football hero, accepted by colleges, no record.

On the other hand, anyone who defines "leader" knows that a true campus leader is not one who takes part in a schoolyard melee, but, rather, would be taking part in breaking it up and restoring order.

It says here that a person who a) had a facsimile of a deadly weapon in his vehicle at school and b) brandished that weapon during an altercation is a person who demonstrated poor judgement that afternoon, and should finish the rest of his senior year elsewhere.

If he is seen parading around the halls of his erstwhile school after this, all the other students in Perry Hall and other schools around the county will see that as tacit approval of bringing out a fake gun to stir up even more trouble at a school where the administration seems not to have found a way to keep things orderly.

Think of how this looks

When (let's say "if") you ever have to go to court, you certainly don't want to see the other side, be it the prosecutor who is trying you on charges of speeding, or the lawyers for a grocery store you're suing because you slipped on a mess they left in the produce aisle, causing you to fracture your archipelago, shaking hands with the judge before the trial commences, and thanking him for the great time at the Loyal Order of Lawyers Lodge Oyster Roast the other night.

We like to assume that the courts are on the level, and as far as I know, they are.

And even though I hold no truck for the New England Patriots football team, as I find their head coach to be almost Bannonesque in his unsociability and their glamourous quarterback just a bit too, too much, I will not deny that these men are excellent at their work, but I would not choose them as companions for a night of dining and chatting.  Nor would they choose me, so it's even.

And I don't hold with those who say the referees are so awed by the Patriots and their seeming invincibility that they throw the games in their favor. The team plays well in all aspects of the game, damn them. As Michael Strahan said the other night after the game, they seem to have an extra gear they can go to in the 4th quarter of a tight game, a gear they get from experience, and that gear puts them in the winner's circle.

And all that deflated-ball stuff and other stories of the Patriots cheating are all behind us.

Still...I don't think it was wise for the referee of the conference championship game, Clete Blakeman, to go over and pat the Patriot quarterback, identified as a Thomas Brady, on his chest after the game.

Blakeman is a personal injury attorney in Omaha.  You would think that he knows how these things look to the jury, which in this case includes every citizen who doesn't like the Patriots, which as an awful lot of us.

Reading Blakeman's biography, we see he was a backup quarterback in his college days at the U of Nebraska-Lincoln. Perhaps this is his way of basking in reflected glory.

I guess he is one lucky basker, at that.

Maybe it's cold outside

I have this feeling every winter and I guess it's about time to talk it over in public. Like I do with everything that darts across my brainpan.

I'm into something that most people consider odd, or off-putting, or grounds for institutionalization.  There are no support groups for my alternative lifestyle, no Facebook groups, no Wednesday evening meetings in drafty church basements.

I'd probably like the drafty basements.  I like cold weather.

There. I said it. It's out, and now the whole world knows how my heart fairly leaps when they call for windchills in the below zero Fahrenheit range, and the frost is on the pumpkin pie and the wind is howling on a moonlit night.  

If there's one aspect of warm weather that I really dislike the most, it's humidity, which makes me feel like I'm wrapped in Saran Wrap.  When it's cold, you don't have to worry about humidity.

And when it's warm, there is a limit as to how much clothing one can remove in public during a heat wave, as the people in my neighborhood are always reminding me in June, July and August.

No. I like it cold. I like wearing wool socks and thermal undies (Yes, I have a Union suit) and flannel shirts and sweaters and Carhartt jackets and gloves and a wool stocking cap.


And that's just for breakfast.

I know it's not the cool (so to speak) thing to like it cool, but I can handle the catcalls and querulous comments all winter long. I understand my ability to withstand cold is cause for a lot of emotions, but the one thing I really go nuts about is when the television news people and meteorologists have to put on the doleful face and act like they're calling for acid rain and pestilence when all they're saying is, it's going to be in the 20s for a few days.
O, the weeping, the wailing, the gnashing of teeth (or is that the chattering of teeth?) when cold weather is on the books! 

And the newscasters are required by the FCC and station policy to blame the meteorologist for "bad" weather and thank him or her for "good weather."  

And I'm busy looking for my woolies!

Sunday Rerun: Office Spaced

You know that you can get all sorts of helpful advice from your government - local, state, federal, moon - about everything from raising delphiniums to filing your own will.  Governments publish all sorts of public publications, usually for free - the local Farm Bureau, for instance, puts out pamphlets on how to enrich your soil, and they are dirt cheap.

Hey, listen, I am listening to The Outlaws Green Grass and High Tides while I type this, so of course, I am trying to keep up with their tempo and falling a bit short.  Good jokes sometimes have to be sacrificed for fast ones.


Anyhow, an official government agency, back in 1944, put out a book about how to operate the organizational aspects of a business, and it might be fun to look at the list below and see how many of them apply to the place where you work:  My unasked-for comments follow in red:

“Insist on doing everything through channels. Never permit short-cuts to be taken to expedite decisions.”  And repeat the magic words "But we've ALWAYS done it this way!" as often as possible
Make speeches. Talk as frequently as possible and at great length. Illustrate your ‘points’ by long anecdotes and accounts of personal experiences.” Because nothing says 'tomorrow' like 'yesterday.'

“When possible, refer all matters to committees, for ‘further study and consideration.’ Attempt to make the committees as large as possible — never less than five.” An elephant is a horse, as designed by a committee.

"Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible.”  Ever notice how a trained paramedic working at the scene of a gory auto accident doesn't concern herself with whether the driver was wearing a seat belt, or who ran the red light, or anything that does not involve the immediate situation?

“Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, and resolutions.”  Yes, for the love of all that's good and holy, make sure the minutes of last month's subcommittee meetings reflect fully the views and opinions of somebody's nephew who only works here because the carwash is closed for winter.

“Refer back to a matter decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.”  Nothing is ever final, finally.

“Advocate ‘caution.’ Be ‘reasonable’ and urge your fellow conferees to be ‘reasonable’ and avoid haste which might result in embarrassments or difficulties later on.” When deciding whether to use blue/black or jet black ink on the logo of the internal company newsletter, take your time deciding! Communicating information can wait!

“Be worried about the propriety of any decision. Raise the question of whether [it] lies within the jurisdiction of the group or whether it might conflict with the policy of some higher echelon.” Argue endlessly about whether the instant matter should be handled by Budget, or Finance, or Budget & Finance.

And now comes the big surprise I didn't tell you about.  If you recognize some of these management practices from your office or carwash or whatever, it is definitely time to revamp the way you all do your business, because these were all taken directly from a book written in 1944.   And it's not so much that they are therefore even older than ballpoint pens.

These are all business techniques published in a document called “Simple Sabotage Field Manual.” The U.S. Office of Strategic Services (predecessor to the CIA) put it out as a fake guide for our European spies to leave lying around, the better to undermine the Axis powers we fought.

It's like leaving a recipe out with instructions to use half a cup of cayenne pepper in your bread pudding.  Someone who didn't know better would follow the directions exactly and cause the top of Aunt Millicent's head to come off at Sunday dinner.

There's a good chance that handing out inane advice helped us win World War II.  So show this to your boss, point out the error of his/her ways, and then go back and get your resume ready.  You'll be sending it out soon!