Where there's a will, there's a relative

Before we get into today's story, I feel obliged to point out that anyone who wishes to leave me money in their last will and testament should do so freely, and rest easily, knowing that the money will be put to very good use. Just saying.

Because this is the story of Audrey and Charles.

Audrey was a chemist, with a PhD, and a very private lifestyle. She lived alone all her life, which ended at age 56 in 1997 in the one-bedroom apartment she rented in Louisville, Kentucky. She was known for paying her rent early every month, wearing black clothing most of the time, and her hobby of fencing.  And one other word to describe her would be thrifty. She was known to save every nickel she could.

Charles was born Charles Dennis Buchinsky, but you would know him better by the name he took to pursue a career as an actor. As Charles Bronson, he became the top box office attraction in the early 1970s, invariably as a tough guy. You would never confuse him with, say, Lawrence Olivier, but then again, he was never asked to play Hamlet.

Now, these two people never met or corresponded or ever were in the same place, except for the time Audrey spent enamored over Charles's image on TV and movie screens. That was enough for her to leave her entire pile of nickels - $291,975 worth - to Charles Bronson.

One year before she died, Audrey took a sheet from the phone book that was to be used as an emergency phone list and wrote out her final will and testament, to wit:  “Under no circumstances is my mother Helen to inherit anything from me – blood, body parts, financial assets. I bequeath to Charles Bronson (the talented character actor) and what he doesn’t want can pass through to the Louisville Free Public Library.”

Audrey was a regular patron of the library, and their records show she regularly checked out his movies, and books about Bronson. 

At first, Bronson said he was willing to take $160,000 of the loot. The Louisville Free Public Library urged him to pass everything on to them, saying the full amount would allow them to purchase 20,000 books and stock a new branch library.

Enter Audrey's sister Nancy, who, on behalf of the family, disputed the will on the grounds that Knauer was mentally unstable.

“This is a few, really kind of like hysterical lines scratched on top of a phone list. I don’t know what mental state she was in when she wrote that,” Nancy said. But the state of Kentucky allows such nonstandard wills to be executed.

Nancy went on to claim that her sister's infatuation with Bronson was plenty of proof that Nancy was in an impaired mental state.

"She saw the Death Wish [films] where he is avenging his family. She became obsessed with Charles Bronson. She has never met the man. I look at him and I think please, you know, how can you not? I don't understand. You didn't know her. You didn't love her. I did,” Nancy said.

But an expert on such matters (now, there's a great job to have!) ruled that leaving money to Charles Bronson does not necessarily mean one is mentally incompetent. And no one could testify about her emotional state, because she did not seek either medical or psychiatric care during the 20 years she lived in Louisville.

And then, to stir the stew even more, people going through Audrey's personal effects found three more wills, all written in April of 1999, and all leaving all her money to Charles Bronson. One of them detailed her admiration for the beefy actor and said she, a believer in reincarnation, felt sure that Bronson was her father in another lifetime.

In the end, Nancy and Bronson arrived at what lawyers love to call an "undisclosed settlement," and the Louisville library wound up with $10,000.

Again, if anyone wishes to remember me in their will, just have it say, "Hi, Mark!!" 

Strawberry Letter #24

Well, look at that calendar! February 27th again, and you know what that means  - it's National Strawberry Day!

I have to be honest, of all the berries, I rate straw- right down there with boysen- and huckle-. They are pretty to look at, but they taste...I dunno...sandy or something.

But I can find something good about everything, and this is the day I treat myself to lots of listens to both the Shuggie Otis original and the Brothers Johnson versions of the great 70's psychedelic favorite, "Strawberry Letter 23." 

Shuggie is a guitarist, singer, and songwriter, born Johnny Alexander Veliotes, Jr. His father was John "Johnny Otis" Veliotes, who was the guy behind a lot of great tunes in the 1950s, including "Ma (He's Making Eyes at Me)," recorded by Johnny Otis and His Orchestra with Marie Adams and the Three Tons of Joy) and the original "Willie and the Hand Jive." 

Shuggie wrote the song after writing 22 letters to his girlfriend, making the song the 23rd of his "strawberry letters." Strawberry papers were very popular back then. 

Since it's National Strawberry Day, I think we all should sing along with either Shuggie or the Brothers Johnson, so here are the lyrics:

Hello, my love, I heard a kiss from you

Red magic satin playing near, too

All through the morning rain I gaze, the sun doesn't shine

Rainbows and waterfalls run through my mind

In the garden, I see, west purple shower bells and tea

Orange birds and river cousins dressed in green

Pretty music, I hear, so happy and loud

Blue flowers echo from a cherry cloud

Feel sunshine sparkle pink and blue

Playgrounds will laugh

If you tried to ask, "Or is it cool?" (Is it cool?)

If you arrive and don't see me

I'm gonna be with my baby

I'm free, flyin' in her arms

Over the sea

Stained window, yellow candy screen

See speakers of kites

With velvet roses digging freedom flight

A present from you

Strawberry letter twenty-two

The music plays, I sit in for a few

Sunday Rerun (from 2015): "I'm 18, I get confused every day" - Alice Cooper

 Someday, I hope to understand how certain people think, and how, when they go to think about something, they forget what they were like when they were 18.

Now, I love people of all ages, and 18 is a pretty good age.  It was for me. I finished high school (owing in no small part to a reluctance among the faculty to see me looming in their classroom doors again that fall) and I had a union job at the A&P that paid pretty sweet and I had friends to run around and guzzle beer meditate on the meaning of life with and I was a volunteer firefighter and that summer alone, I had three different women ask me to get married.

The fact that they were my mother, my sister and my grandmother takes nothing away from what a happy dude I was at 18.

But I was not responsible enough to get behind the wheel of a big rig semi and roar across the nation's highways, no Siree Bob.  

However, right now, some people in Congress (I won't mention what party they're with, but you can guess) are proposing to change the regulations that so far have kept you and me alive to allow people as young as 18 to roll 18 wheels under 16 tons.

Right now, you have to be 21 to drive a truckload of turnips to the Buy Bye Bye warehouse, but these senators want to allow an unlimited amount of contiguous states that join together in "compacts" to drop the age limit to 18 for interstate trips.  

That means if Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania sign such a deal, that goofy kid down the street could be pushing a big Mack from Portsmouth to Williamsport, from Hershey to Harrisonburg, or from St Mary's PA to St Mary's County, MD.  And probably without stopping or even slowing down very much!

The Senate plan would allow them to start careers careering up and down the roads, and then after four years, the Secretary of Transportation would be required to see whether teens have "an equivalent level of safety" in comparison with older truckers.

In 2013, drivers aged 18-20 were in 66 percent more fatal traffic accidents than drivers 21 and over.  

You want to see an 18-year old driving this?  Like
the kid down the street who races to pick up
his girlfriend at 127 miles an hour?

But there's a shortage of truck drivers, because everyone these days is breaking their neck to enter the burgeoning fields of computer repair, forensic investigation at gooey crime scenes, and running for US president.  So, instead of trying to get mature individuals to stop watching "Judge Mablean" all afternoon and start driving truckloads of velour track suits to WalMarts so people could dress right for the casinos, the trucking industry is choosing to get the Senate to allow callow youths to drive 82 hours a week behind the wheel of a giant tractor-trailer. 

The hope here is that Congress will hear from the public and let teenagers drive their parents crazy in every state, instead of driving trucks along the interstate.

The Saturday Picture Show, February 25, 2023

 

After a lengthy period of rebuilding, the Baltimore Orioles are set to take the field at Oriole Park at Camden Yards for what should be an exciting season with lots of wins. I take a different tack about how I feel when the team wins; I love watching the game played by people who are the best at it, and that's the pleasure for me, the poetry of the game. Wins and losses, I don't take personally, but wins are more fun, certainly.

Baltimore, set against a late winter sky. Very pretty.

I'm certain that many of you are Peeps fans and look forward to your springtime marshmallow treats. You can have any Peeps that come my way, and all the Pepsi, too. I will trade them for your unwanted peanuts and Grapefruit Seltzer. By the way, someone was asleep at the switch at this company, and missed the chance to label this drink "Peepsi."

I never worked in a shoe store, but my sister did. Someone must know, is this a common way of shipping shoes to stores...a ton of right shoes, and then the lefts?

Add to the long list of things I don't get: science fiction. I don't believe there are Martians looking for a place to land so they can take over Earth, and I don't think AI or manmade robots are trying to nudge us out of the way, either.

She lifts her lamp beside the golden door, but we rarely see this view of Lady Liberty.

This is an exhibit at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore. It seems like it was two weeks, not two decades ago, when the big President's Day blizzard collapsed the roof there, but they are back on track now.

This hellacious, atrocious mess is what was left behind by revelers in New Orleans at a Mardi Gras parade. I wouldn't dream of tossing a used toothpick on the ground, and look at what people are willing to do with the detritus of their fun evening.

It started with those Little Free Libraries, and then we saw the Stick Library near the dog park, and now here is a sled loaner. But where's the snow? Where's the SNOW???

My wonderful wife is into adult coloring books, and our friend Gail introduced her to reverse coloring books in the pages of which are printed amorphous shapes, onto which one draws the edges. It's quite interesting, and so is this new way of doing jigsaw puzzles: taking puzzle pieces to form an approximate image of the original picture. I need the New York TIMES to come up with a reverse Wordle for me.

Free Bird! Free Bird!

There was an escape from captivity in New York City on February 2 that has caught the attention of the 243,098,195 people who squeeze together in that metropolis. 

On the loose is Flaco, a 13-year-old Eurasian eagle-owl whose enclosure at the Central Park Zoo was vandalized, allowing him to soar through the friendly skies of Gotham.

Have you seen me?

For several weeks, zoo staffers were on the hunt, trying to lure him back, and while many supported the effort, many others threw down the penalty flag, alleging that the tricks they were using, including leaving out his favorite food, and  playing audio of the sounds of a female owl, weren't sporting at all. Those people asserted that Flaco (Spanish for "skinny") has the right to fly as he chooses, so "let him go." As with everything these days, there is a social media outcry over his freedom. They're using the hashtag #freeflaco. There is an online petition, which racked up over 1,000 signatures in less than 24 hours.

So, as of last week, the Zoo put out a statement saying that they will stop trying to capture the bird, but will "continue to monitor Flaco and his activities, and be prepared to resume recovery efforts if he shows any sign of difficulty or distress.”

Flaco has been a Zoo resident since 2010. Some people at the Zoo were afraid that over these 13 years, he had lost his innate hunting and survival skills, since he has been caged and fed by humans.  Nothing could be farther from the truth! Crowds thronged to the Park to see his aerial acrobatic displays, soaring branch to branch, tree to tree.

And the day after he was seen having a rat for dinner, New Yorkers figured (sing it with me!) "If he could make it there, he'd make it anywhere," so they are letting nature run it course.

Between 2021's Hurricane Ida, which substantially reduced the rat population of New York by flooding rodent nests in sewers and subways, and hungry hungry Flaco, it's gotten to where vermin hardly have a chance! 

Glub

We must be getting used to people like that Santos from Long Island, people so spectacularly unqualified to do their jobs as to leave jaws agape and arms akimbo.

You can usually spot a newbie by their unsure movements and wide-open eyes. If life were really a comic strip, there would be sweat droplets leaping off their forehead. 

But if you're a lifeguard, a moist forehead is all part of the job.

Dateline: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a city I truly love, where the city says you can apply for a job as a lifeguard at their public pools even if you are unable to...swim.  I know, you think of a lifeguard, you think that swimming comes along with the job, just as being able to bake is part and parcel of being a baker, and being able to write is mandatory for those who would be writers.

Come Memorial Day, kids will want to get in the pools, and it's unthinkable for pools to be unattended by lifeguards.

Looking back...the pools were not open in 2020 because of COVID, and budget cuts resulting from COVID kept some of the pools closed in 2021, and in both that year and last year, the city had problems finding qualified pool attendants.

Here we are in 2023, and the City of Brotherly Love has begun their recruitment efforts already.  And even if you can't swim, you're welcome to fill out an application, and a Speedo.

The city is offering free swimming lessons at Lincoln High School for anyone who doesn't know how to swim and yet is still planning to take the lifeguard test later on.

Listen, it's not a bad job, albeit temporary: starting pay is $16/hour and you'll get 35 hours a week with SPF lotion on your torso and zinc oxide on your nose and maybe one of those cool <<< pith helmets. If you wish to become president of the United States later in your life, they'll even let you wear a Ronald Reagan tank top!

But please, first: learn how to swim! It might come in handy!

Riding My Thumb

One more tidbit from that awful situation in Baltimore County with the guy who shot two police officers and took it on the lam to a shopping center in Harford County...

After he shot the first cop and hid in the woods for a day, he was running around the Warren Road area, looking for a ride out of there. A man told the local news that he spotted the young (24 yoa) hooligan walking along a stretch of road where pedestrian traffic is rare.  "He had his thumb out, like he wanted a ride..." he said.

It's called hitchhiking, or at least, it was in the days before I had a car (and once or twice when my car broke down on me). It was simple - stand along the side of the road and extend your right thumb; that was the universal signal for needing a lift. Young people might be surprised to know almost ALL of us did it, and successfully got where we needed to be. It was such an accepted thing, there was a song or two about it.

Oh sure, there were stories, but nothing verified, kidnappings, stickups, the like. It was a whole different era then. We trusted the people who picked us up, and they in turn trusted us not to hit them over the head with a Spanish textbook and steal their Studebaker.

It must seem like I'm talking about things that took place eons ago. No, just 50 years ago. 

But the world was better then.  Ask anyone who was there.

Lousy break

Because some Canaanite had head lice a few years ago, we know more now about the origins of our alphabet.

Chris Klimek writes in the Smithsonian Magazine about how two archeologists exploring the ancient Canaanite city of Lachish stumbled upon a momentous discovery.

(By the way, a man who was president of the United States until 2021 wrote the other day that something was "mementoes." Yes, we all have our mementoes, and some of them are momentous. Let us pray for the wisdom to tell the difference.)

Anyway, the two scientists, Yosef Garfinkel and Michael Hasel, were combing through an excavation when they found what seemed at first to be a piece of bone.

But then a zooarchaeologist, Edward Maher, figured out that the object was in fact a comb (with many missing teeth), made of ivory. We know it was imported, as there were no elephants running around in Canaan in 1700 BC.

And then! Madeleine Mumcuoglu, an archeologist from Hebrew University discerned 17 faintly inscribed characters on the comb. And Daniel Vainstub, an  Epigraphist (student of inscriptions) at Ben-Gurion University translated the inscription: “May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard.”

The old comb and the slogan it bore now become the bearer of the oldest-known complete sentence in the Canaanite writing system, which was an early improvement over pictorial writing such as Hieroglyphics. From this, we feel our modern Western alphabet is a natural descendant.

 

Hieroglyphics relied on pictures to form letters.

Canaanite used rudimentary letters for the first time.

My cursive signature seems to incorporate both.

It's a Holiday!

The Castles Made of Sand offices are closed today in observance of Presidents Day. 

We'll be back tomorrow at the same crazy time. I like to think about my family connection to the presidency, which is that Warren G. Harding patted my father on the top of his 7-year-old head during a 1920 campaign parade in Baltimore.

There was no space atop Mt Rushmore for Harding, a president (1921-1923) who presided over a lacklustre, scandal-ridden administration. But it is said that on a clear day, at the very mention of the 29th president, Lincoln's head (above) can be seen shaking vigorously.

Sunday Rerun (from 2010) - Slugfest

  They still have the "Nancy" comic strip in a lot of the newspapers and online, but I miss the classic Nancys drawn by Ernie Bushmiller. Such as:  and  because the world of Ernie Bushmiller was quite a world, in the way he expressed it. You had Nancy, a little schoolgirl, who lived with her Aunt Fritzi Ritz, who was a really nice-looking woman (for a cartoon character). Fritzi did not seem to have to work for a living, and it was never explained just how she came to be the legal guardian of her niece. Fritzi used to go with a dude named Wally, but once she hooked up with Phil Fumble, Wally was out with last week's magazines. Fritzi could have done better than Phil:  but she never tried. Plus, they all had to wonder what was going on with Sluggo Smith, Nancy's little chum. He lived alone, even though he was just an elementary school kid. He had his own house, and the walls were cracked with bare plaster showing, the sofa always had a spring sticking out of the pillow, and for electricity he used candles stuck in old wine bottles...tres chic if you're a restaurant, hazardous for a little boy who shouldn't have been playing with wine bottles, matches or candles. But the world of Ernie Bushmiller was so wacked-out that way, that a little child (precursor of Beavis and Butthead) could live alone and no one ran to the authorities...yet anywhere else in the town where all this took place, things were in apple-pie order. As in, the streets were always clean, any pile of rocks alongside a scene contained three rocks - no more, no fewer - and all is perfect. You could tell all you needed to know about a person just by the way they looked in their drawings: rich business guys wore hombergs and carnations in their lapels, hippies wore ponchos and sandals, and everyone at a carnival was dressed as if headed to a job interview. Or, perhaps Bushmiller was an early explorer of astral projection:  I told you he was a vagrant! No visible means of support!

The Saturday Picture Show, February 18, 2023

 

Play those plaid bagpipes, lad!

We always say "Well, shut my mouth!" about one sentence too late.

I keep telling everyone: books are magic!

The new official greeting sign for motorists entering Baltimore County.

Multicolored corduroy pants awaken the old preppy within me.

Manhattan Sunrise through hotel window.

Why there will always be an England: In 1940, DURING the Blitz of London, this milkman kept to his appointed rounds. Today, if it rains, I'm lucky to get my newspaper delivered by 9 AM and the US Mail by 9 PM.

In 1984, NASA astronaut Bruce McCandless made the first totally untethered space walk. Most people who saw it on TV just thought it was some sort of MTV promo.

Oh sure, it does look like waves that crashed on the sand, does it not? But it's just that spot where the broken-off drywall meets the floor.

After many years of studies and conversations with fans, soccer officials have finally figured a way to make the game interesting. Ten balls for eleven players, all in action simultaneously, ought to do it.

Clang

You know that unbearable clang clang clang sound that an MRI machine makes?

If you don't know what it sounds like, count yourself as lucky, because that must mean you've never been stuffed into that tube. 

Anyhow. MRI stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging. That machine produces a very powerful magnetic field. Very powerful. The machine sends electrical pulses through metal coils, and that makes the coils vibrate, and that's where your clanging comes from. 

The magnetic field allows the machine to create really detailed pictures of your insides. Fact is, your body is 55-60% water (except on certain Saturday nights) and the water molecules do a little dance under the magnetic spell, and that's where the pictures come from. It's very complicated.

But keep in mind, it's a super magnet in there. There was a TV news team here that got their van a little too close to one a few years back, and it caused the entire van to be a magnet on wheels. Literally. You could just do without a tool box and just put your tools on the van door and they would stay. They had to take the van to a special place to be degaussed.

So. Knowing all that, when you enter the MRI suite to get your picture taken, you are advised to get rid of all metal. Your watch, pocket knife, jewelry, keys, fountain pens, clipboards, you get the point. Nothing metal can be in that room. And that includes guns.

On January 16, a lawyer and pro-gun activist in Brazil, one Leandro Mathias de Novaes, 40, brought his mother to have magnetic resonance imaging done at the  Laboratorio Cura in São Paulo. He was advised not to have anything metallic on him, but he concealed a handgun in his waistband. The magnetic force was strong enough to pull that gun out of his trousers and drop it to the floor, at which point it sent a bullet into his abdomen, causing major injuries that led to his death on February 6.  

CNN Brazil reported that Novaes signed a form agreeing to follow the protocols of the clinic and then still carried the gun with him. They also report that he had 8,000 followers on Tik Tok who saw his many pro-gun posts. My post on this (you're reading it now because I don't Tik my Tok in public) says that no one needs a gun in the room where the MRI machine is located, so why bring it in?

It made him feel stronger, until it didn't.

 

The Bucks Stop Here

It is true, the bravest person in history was the first person to eat a raw oyster. And the smartest in history was the first to realize that people would be glad - would line up in their pajamas! - to spend five bucks for a cup of coffee that they could have made at home. 

But what's the diff? People like their coffee and will pay through the nose for it. But this...this is too much. 

A couple from Oklahoma ordered two cups o' java at a Tulsa Starbucks and wound up being charged $4,456.27.

Jesse O'Dell slid through the drive thru last month, ordered himself a venti caramel frappuccino (he's fancy) and an Iced Americano for his wife ("Iced Americano" is my nickname for Walt Disney). That should have come to about ten dollars, but no, his wife DeeDee O'Dell (great name for radio, by the way) went to use her credit card later on and it was declined, since someone at The Bux had added a slight tip typo, bringing the charge to the astronomical level above.

   

No problem, said Starbucks in the way that customer service people talk these says, we'll fix it by sending you checks to make up the difference.

And the checks bounced!

Jesse said, "We contacted their customer service helpline probably 30 to 40 times that day,” and he went on to point out that they had to cancel a family trip because their card was wiped out.

Whoopsy-daisy, said Starbucks, claiming that the first checks bounced because of a typo, but they sent replacements.

 

And THEN S. Bucks blamed Jesse for the mistake, saying that he himself put in for that giant tip when he placed the order, a claim Jesse disputes, citing as evidence that he was told by a district manager that a "network issue" caused the boo-boo.

“I know how to press buttons. I didn’t press that button,” Jesse said. “If it wasn’t the barista then it’s definitely your network, which is a really big issue.”

The O'Dells filed a complaint with the Tulsa police, but closed the case when S-bux finally came through with the money.

Jesse wants to remind other S'buxites to watch their receipts to look out for similar "network errors."

I want to remind everyone that a Keurig machine and some K-pods will save a ton of aggravation and a wallet full of money.

 

This must be the bottom

I guess this is not something new to any of us, but let me just share just the facts...

A KFC worker was shot in the stomach after telling a customer the restaurant was out of corn, Missouri police say.

The shooting happened in December, at a KFC on the west side of St. Louis.

The story goes into detail. The man was in the drive-thru, and when told he could not have the corn he ordered with his chicken dinner, he started out making threats over the "WelcometoKFCmayItakeyourorderplease" squawk box, and then pulled up to the pick-up window, brandishing a gun.

Against all good advice, but with good intention, a 25-year-old employee went outside to confront the man, only to return swiftly, saying he had been shot once in the abdomen. Removed to a hospital, the employee was listed in critical, but stable condition.

The story hangs there; I can't find a followup, and I hope that means the employee pulled through.

Secondarily, I hope they got the guy, but I doubt it.

I want to ask rhetorically if this is the nation we have become, where we have lost all sense of proportion and dignity, and are willing to unleash potentially murderous gunfire on a fellow human being over a damn cup of second-rate KFC canned corn?

Clearly we are, and that means we are in trouble. This entire nation is losing its collective mind, and everyone but you and I should be sent to bed with no supper and made to think about just what is going on here.

No dessert and no TV, either.

 

What the world needs now

Happy Valentine's Day!

What the world needs now is love, sweet love

It's the only thing that there's just too little of

What the world needs now is love, sweet love

No not just for some, but for everyone

Lord, we don't need another mountain

There are mountains and hillsides enough to climb

There are oceans and rivers enough to cross

Enough to last 'til the end of time

What the world needs now is love, sweet love

It's the only thing that there's just too little of

What the world needs now is love, sweet love

No, not just for some, but for everyone

Lord, we don't need another meadow

There are cornfields and wheatfields enough to grow

There are sunbeams and moonbeams enough to shine

Oh listen, Lord, if you want to know

What the world needs now is love, sweet love

It's the only thing that there's just too little of

What the world needs now is love, sweet love

No, not just for some, oh, but just for every, every, everyone

 - lyrics by Hal David
 

Bizarre twist

The address seemed familiar the other day when Baltimore County Police responded to a call for a person in crisis on Powers Avenue in Cockeysville.

24-year-old David Emory Linthicum shot an officer at that house multiple times Wednesday and then ran off, kicking off a two-day manhunt. On Thursday evening, he shot a county detective in the torso and extremities several times, stole the detective's police car, and led a chase into Fallston, Harford County, where he was eventually arrested at dawn on Friday.

As of this writing, the first officer wounded has been released from hospital care, but the detective is in the Shock-Trauma unit at University of Maryland Hospital downtown, where Dr Thomas Scalea reported him to be in critical condition, facing multiple reconstructive surgeries.

We don't know yet what precipitated this insane rampage. But we know something else even more horrible, if possible, happened at the same house on Powers Avenue in 2008.

That was when Nicholas Browning, at the time a high-school honor student, killed his parents and both of his younger brothers with the father's pistol. He was spending the night at a friend's house, and snuck back home to shoot all four people as they slept. He claimed that his parents were abusive alcoholics, an allegation without fact, and bragged to detectives that he would be in line for a substantial insurance payout and inheritance.

The Browning family

I don't know if any money accrued to him as a result of his wiping out his whole family. He is currently a resident of the Western Correctional Institution in scenic Cumberland, Maryland for this, and his next three lives, so... 

Browning turned 31 the day the detective was shot.

We all know the feeling of driving down a street and someone pointing out a house where some horrible murder or other crime occurred...and you wonder if anyone would buy that house. I can't say for sure, but property records seem to indicate that Linthicum's family bought the house (below) from the Browning inheritors.

There are those among us who would never have done that, believing the house itself to carry a curse. 

There might be something to that. 

 

 

 

Sunday Rerun from March, 2021: He Shall Be Elon

 Ralph Kramden, on The Honeymooners, often invited his wife Alice to go to the moon. That was back in the mid 50s, when interstellar travel was just a dream of science fiction fans.

Here in rocket-fast 2021, a Japanese billionaire is on his way to the moon, and he wants to take eight people with him!

It's not like they will land and play golf and horse around on the moon. They will be orbiting la luna, and you can go!

The rich guy is Yusaku Maezawa. He was chosen to be SpaceX's first private passenger back in 2018, and now he is going public, looking for people who want to fly with him to the moon.

"I’m inviting you to join me on this mission, eight of you from all around the world," Maezawa said in a video he released last week.

If you go, set aside "2023" in your Hallmark datebook. The Starship spacecraft that will carry this bunch of literal lunatics into space is being developed by Elon Musk's "private space-faring firm" SpaceX.

"I will pay for the entire journey," Maezawa said. "Ten to 12 of us will be on board, and I hope that together we can make it a fun trip."

He says that now, and then watch. He won't want to stop at Dairy Queen or anything.

Maezawa says at first he planned to bring world-famous artists with him, but now, "the plan has evolved" which is the new way to say, "No one I asked would go."

"I began to wonder...what do I mean by artists?" he said. "The more I thought about it, the more ambiguous it became. I began to think that maybe every single person who is doing something creative could be called an artist."

Lowering his standards a bit, Maezawa now says the flight is "open to anyone who has the goal of going into space to help other people and greater society in some way."

Maezawa adds that anyone coming along for the ride must be "willing and able to support other crew members who share similar aspirations." In the real world, this comes under the heading "other duties as assigned."

But, "If that sounds like you, please join me," he said.

Don't forget, Maezawa is in league with Elon Musk. 

I understand that Musk is a very wealthy man, a centibillionaire to be precise, and he made that fortune as co-founder of what became PayPal,  CEO, and product architect of Tesla, and he has this SpaceX thing going on now. 

And, he's into a startup company called Neuralink, looking into ways to implant chips into people's brains to create a "brain-computer" interface.

And he wants to colonize Mars, building factories and sandwich shops. He also wants to hit Mars with thermonuclear weapons. This would warm that planet, and  create the equivalent of two suns over the planet's poles.

I wouldn't ride to the mall with him if he were driving, but hey, if you're up for it, enjoy your trip to the moon! 

 

He's so rich, his lost hair found its way home out of sheer respect!

The Saturday Picture Show, February 11, 2023

 

I had no idea that Ranch dressing was so versatile. I still haven't figured out what a ranch is supposed to taste like, but my hands have never been so soft and moisturized. 

Reporting in for the dinner shift. Couldn't find a place to park.

This sounds like a Yankee Candle scent: Iced Bamboo, Kyoto.

This was a popular hobby back in the day...collecting as many of we could of a certain object - in this case, bandanas - was fun. We would use a jug o' loot to hold them down.

Camouflage wear is still popular, and you can find a giraffe in this photo who really knows how to hide his hide.

This is a Turkish person giving mattresses and bedding to his fellow countrypeople, just because sharing what you have is only the right thing to do.

It snowed in Athens. Baltimore gets bupkus. How do you say, "We want snow!" in Greek?

These folks moved into a townhouse with one of those annoying homeowner associations with a "no flag" rule. OK then.

Bondi Beach is a world-famous surfing beach in Australia. Here, several hundred residents pose for a picture illustrating the need for sunscreen. Just keep your eyes to yourself, I guess.

Rocks and stones in a creek.