We've all seen the movie scenes where a ship is being tossed around in a violent storm like a kid's toy.
In February, 1997, there was a scene where a ship full of kids' toys was tossed around by a rogue wave in a violent storm, but no cameras were around rolling at the time, but the massive cargo ship known as the Tokio Express lost 62 shipping containers off her deck. One of those containers contained five million Lego pieces.
And ever since, people around Cornwall, England's southwestern peninsula, have been beachcombing for Lego. Ironically enough, the plastic pieces lost in the storm were ocean-themed, so for almost 26 years now, people have come back from the beach with more plastic toys than they came with - octopuses (octopi?), tiny scuba gear, toy whales and anything you can imagine are all there, free for the taking, and of course, they carry the message about plastic pollution of our waters.
The whole awful thing is still known to toymakers and toy lovers as the Great Lego Spill, and its regarded as the worst toy-related environmental disaster of all time.
Also lost to the storm that day were 10,000 disposable lighters, packages of Superglue, and others. The great ship was on the way to New York, sailing out of Rotterdam.
Tracey Williams is a Cornwall resident, environmental activist, and beachcomber. She maintains the Lego Lost At Sea Facebook page and has written a book called "Adrift: The Curious Tale of Lego Lost at Sea."
Over three million of the tiny plastic pieces were light enough to float, and have bobbed their way to all of the 40 beaches in Cornwall. "What we're finding now are the pieces that sank as well as the pieces that floated," Williams tells Live Science. "It's providing us with an insight into what happens to plastic in the ocean, how far it drifts — both on the surface of the ocean but also along the seabed — and what happens to it as it breaks down."
The world's oceans and waterways are remarkably forgiving, considering the way we treat them as dumping grounds.
Sad news from neighboring York County, Pennsylvania, where a family of three died in a murder-suicide pact. Morgan Daub, 26, and her parents, James Daub, 62, and Deborah Daub, 59, said in notes found at their house in York that they had made a “joint decision” to step away from this life together after Morgan told her parents of her plan to commit suicide, said the West Manchester Township Police Department.
Hearing three shots in rapid succession, a next-door neighbor called police early on January 25, and the bodies were found inside. The family dog was found sedated and a note at the scene attested to the fact that the family did not want the dog to come after responding police and EMS personnel. The note contained information to help a veterinarian treat the animal.
Also found at the grisly scene were documents indicating that this all had been planned for at least nine months, since the family, all enthusiastic supporters of the loser in the 2020 presidential election, despaired of having the vote overturned to re-install their man in the White House. In April, 2022, the Daubs decided on the date of their suicides based on a Bible verse in which two parents give their child back to God. “Samuel 1:24-28 Morgan chose the date! I believe I have to be with her!” Deborah wrote.
She also wrote about the "evil" the family faced, but did not go into detail.
I was fascinated by a YouTube video that Morgan posted last November in which she, if you're ready for this, said she was abdicating the throne and refused to be crowned Queen of England.
Watch the video. See the mirthless giggles and the sad faraway look in the woman's eyes. Clearly a victim of mental illness, she apparently got no help from her family. There's no sign that she ever had any sort of job, at age 26. Neighbors said she and her mother were once avid bowlers but gave that up in 2019. Morgan was home-schooled, and neighbors said she did not interact with others, allowing her mother to talk and answer questions for her.
I'm no psychiatrist, and I am sad that these otherwise healthy people chose to depart this life, but I am reminded of what I read about street gangs in rundown hopeless neighborhoods choosing regal names for their crews. "The Kings." "The Lords." "The Young Princes." It would seem that people who have not been allowed, for whatever reason, to establish their own identity, find it comforting or helpful to take on names or titles that confer high rank or nobility.
Sometimes, things seem dark. And that's when someone will always say, "The darkest hour is just before the dawn."
And as someone who habitually rises before dawn, I can attest that it's true. But really, what difference does it make? As Thomas Edison said, "Dark is dark." And then later on, Los Bravos said, "Black Is Black."
And THAT leads us to the stygian darkness in the soul of Aaron Rodgers, erstwhile quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, who can't decide whether to play football this coming season, or where.
So he is going on a "darkness retreat."
Yesterday, Rodgers said "The Pat McAfee Show" that he is planning to go on a four-day/four-night "darkness retreat" after the Super Bowl on Sunday.
"I've got a pretty cool opportunity to do a little self-reflection in some isolation," Rodgers said. "And then after that I feel like I'll be a lot closer to a final, final decision."
He's 39, and while most of us who don't have millions of people cheering our work on Sunday afternoons, Rodgers has not even decided IF he will play in 2023, or if he wants to play for the Packers, or wherever else.
He might just go home and be really mellow.
"For sure; it's a real thing, 100 percent," Rodgers said about retirement. "That's why it's going to be important to get through this week and to take my isolation retreat and just to be able to contemplate all things my future and then be able to make a decision that I think is best for me moving forward and in the highest interest of my happiness and then move forward."
Last summer, Rodgers said he was using the plant-based psychedelic known as ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is a brew that can produce hallucinations similar like being on a dimethyltryptamine (DMT) trip. But he won't be using ayahuasca in his darkness retreat.
Rodgers said, "It's just sitting in isolation, meditation, dealing with your thoughts... there can be some hallucinations in there but it's just kind of sitting in silence, which most of us never do. We rarely even turn our phone off or put the blinds down to sleep in darkness. I'm really looking forward to it."
He's going to be in a small house somewhere (he won't say where) where his meals will be delivered but there will be no other contact with the world at large.
Four days of hanging around with Aaron Rodgers in the dark might be four too many for anyone...including Aaron Rodgers.
Someone left a coffee cake too close to the fax machine in an office where I worked. And I want to tell you, the ants that came to gobble the cake over the weekend also checked into the fax machine. By Monday, the fax machine was not working, but the ants were.
We had to replace the machine. You never saw so many ants in one colony. (A group of ants is a colony; a group of aunts is a book club.)
And yes, ants come to pester us around here every spring. One single ant, as far away as Cleveland, can tell when one single grain of sugar falls onto our kitchen counter, and the next thing you know, that ant and his entire family move in, until remedial measures are taken.
But now, here we are in 2023, finding out that ants can do medical research, when they're not busy bedeviling suburban homeowners.
Researchers have now trained ants to detect cancer in urine.
I know, it's a lot to imagine, but with ten million people dying of cancer every year, any tool we can use to diagnose the dreaded disease is for the good.
And scientists have figured that ants can use their tiny antennae to sniff out cancer in urine.
The full story is in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: journal (your copy should be in the mail). Without getting too gross, let's just say that we now know that some types of cancer change the smell of our liquid waste, and the reason for this is that cancer cells emit what science calls VOCs: volatile organic compounds.
And just as dogs can sniff out cancer by identifying body smells, ants, which do not detect smells through their noses as we do, have antennae, as we do not, and scientists have had ants traipsing through puddles of pee and coming back to report they smell cancer VOCs.
And they learned to do this in just three training sessions, which is two fewer than it took a crack team of Baltimore County IT trainers to get me to learn to work Excel spreadsheets!
So, next time, how's about not stepping on that ant you see? Someday, it might just save your life with an early diagnosis.
Last Autumn, we stopped for groceries at the Harris Teeter in Baltimore City, and when we checked out, I remembered that plastic bags are not allowed in the city. We got paper bags, and they worked well, just as they always did. And they are eminently recyclable!
And now citizens are urging the Baltimore County Council to enact a similar ban, on the grounds that plastic bags are harshing the environment, as they foul waterways and fill landfills People who want Baltimore County businesses to be barred from using plastic bags told the County Council Tuesday that the bags are a scourge on the environment by fouling waterways and overfilling landfills.
“(Plastic bags) clog storm drains, they get caught in trees, they’re just everywhere in huge numbers,” said Andrew Miller at a hearing last week. Miller didn't just ride into town on a head of cabbage; he lives here, and is professor of Geography and Environmental Systems at the U of Maryland, Baltimore County. “They harm wildlife and aquatic life, not only in streams and wetlands, but in the Chesapeake Bay and the world’s oceans.”
This is predictable: those speaking in opposition of the bag ban claim it would place an undue burden on shoppers and businesses.
A vote on the measure is scheduled for tonight, but you can expect all sorts of amendments to be attached to the bill, so stand by for results...
There are considerations, to be sure. Restaurants and carry-outs are not keen on using paper bags, which tend to tear as soon as a little Moo-Goo Gai Pan spills out. And for health code reasons, they say they can't allow customers to bring in their own tote sacks.
As proposed, the new law would take effect this November 1. It sponsors call it the Bring Your Own Bag Act. As currently proposed, it would allow for a dime charge to be made when customers don't Bring Their Own Bag and want to get a paper or reusable bag at the register.
Bring our own and save both a dime, and a stream! The slogans write themselves.
A friend posted on social media that she faced a choice. She had promised to go out with friends, but that day, a book she had long had wanted to read came in the mail. So, should she "call out sick" and stay home and read, or give up reading the book she was dying to dive into, to keep the date?
By the way, this is not technically a dilemma. A dilemma is a choice between two unpleasant alternatives, such as, "there are only two books left on the shelf, and they're both by John Grisham..."
You can't win there if you decide to jump and plow through the turgid prose of Grisham. And my friend is young and cool and popular, so that means a feeling of social responsibility to friends and what-have-you.
Being unyoung and uncool and unpopular, I have no problem saying, "Hey, I was waiting for this new compendium of Tom Wolfe essays, so I think I'll stay home tonight and read. See you next time!"
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| Tom Wolfe on a bus, 1960s |
The beauty of that is, you don't have to tell a little fib to get out of going, because inevitably, someone will call you back the day after you say you can't go out because you have pellagra, to ask how your pellagra rash is going. You blow the whole caper if you reply, "What pellagra rash? The hell you talkin' about?"
See, when you get to a certain age, a lot of the social constructs and fabricated rules just seem to flake off and go away. I had a friend who used to joke that the coolest thing is to live to be 80, because you can walk around 1/2 nekkid or stand on the corner singing "Mack The Knife" or have lasagna with eggs for breakfast, and what's everyone going to say?
"Well, he's 80, so...you know how they get..."
The reason you can't blow your friends off with total insouciance when you're 30 is that many many decades stretch out ahead of you. At 80 (ten years to go for me!) most of your decades are back over your left shoulder, so read your doggone book!
The word from Holland is that tulip season is right around the corner, which naturally brings up the age-old question about whether Dutch podiatrists have to treat a lot of their wooden-shoe-wearing patients for splinters.
This looked fakey from the very beginning...the setup was that a food delivery man, oblivious to all but his task of delivering chow, walked onto the court during the Loyola Chicago vs. Duquesne basketball game.
He had a McDonald's bag in one hand and a soda in the other and he played his part well enough that he was on all the morning news shows the next morning.
But..."This was a prank, planned in advance, done for internet exposure," said a statement released by Duquesne. "We determined that the individual was wearing a mic while someone filmed him as he walked on to the court during active play. While the incident may have seemed funny at the time, and no harm was done, we are mindful that incidents like this can put players and officials at risk."
The risk, of course, was that this fool might have caught a basketball with his medulla oblongata, and others might have been hurt as well in the resultant chaos.
I happen to be a big believer in pranks and practical jokes, as anyone who attended high school with me and my pal Richard Hertz can attest. But I don't know about this one. People work too hard to get their basketball game just so, and to have a bozo walk onto the court is not all that funny when you realize what happened.
I don't know. What do you think, is this dumb or not?
Not that she would give a sweet sweep, but I am still mad at Marie Kondo, the self-styled "queen of tidy," for saying that no one should have more than thirty books in their home.
I'm sure I have at least 30 books by or about each of these authors: Ring Lardner, Tom Wolfe, Thomas Wolfe, Jack Kerouac, and Joseph Mitchell.
So don't come @ me with getting rid of books, Marie. I mean, really.
And it doesn't change my thoughts on her to have read last week that Ms Kondo now wishes it known that tidiness went out the back door at her house when she brought three children through the front door.
"I have kind of given up on that in a good way for me," said Kondo, the author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, a self-help book that took audiences by storm.
"Now I realize what is important to me is enjoying spending time with my children at home," the Japanese cleaning consultant recently told listeners, according to The Washington Post.
He big thing was always tossing out anything that doesn't "spark joy."
"The fact that Marie Kondo, leader of millennials who were taught (by her) to only keep things that spark joy, has given up on tidying up her house now that she has 3 kids, is really sending me," wrote one person on Twitter.
Nope, having three kids is really going to cut into your time previously spent folding blue jeans and cleaning tile grout with an old toothbrush.
Here's how Marie backs down from her former stance: She now says that keeping the hacienda tidy is only PART of her Shintoism, you see.
"The ultimate goal is to spark joy every day and lead a joyful life," according to Kondo, who describes this philosophy as kurashi, which she says roughly translates to "way of life."
Oh Marie, you are a delightful purveyor of nonsense, which I am reliably informed translates to Japanese as "Nansensu."
But I do agree. I just don't have room in my life or my bookshelf for this hysteria about how many books I can own.
But I do own none of hers. It's a start.
Well, dog my cats if someone hasn't found a way to make more money off a Disney project. You can bet that an investigation is underway at Mouse Headquarters to see how their vaunted money-extraction team missed a way to squeeze more money out of their customers.
Since Disney World’s Splash Mountain shut down a week ago, some people didn't allow puddles to form under their feet before turning the situation into a money-maker.
While the people in Orlando are working as fast as they can to turn Splash Mountain into “Tiana’s Bayou Adventure,” as seen in the beloved 2009 film “Princess and the Frog.” Oh, how we loved that movie.
But here's the scam - people who say they were there when Splash splashed its last rider are claiming that they bottled up the water from the ride, and are offering to sell it to you.
One listing is going for $4.25. It's a plastic bag of water that has “Splash Mountain water 1/22/2023” written on it in magic marker.
But for the discriminating rube customer, someone else is selling the "limited" line of used water @ $199.99 for 6 oz.
There's always something like this going around. Used dirt from your favorite ballpark, water that used to be ice under the skates of your hockey team, Joan Crawford's used wooden hangers...open your wallet and make your choice.
Why I'm not a zillionaire, I can't explain, except that I have scruples.
If you were watching the AFC Championship game the other night, you saw how the game wound up, with Kansas City's quarterback Patrick Mahomes scooting out of bounds after making a first down at the Bengals' 42-yard line.
Had nothing else happened there, they might still be playing, because the 42 is way too far away for a field goal, and there were only 8 seconds left in the game.
But something did happen, and that was Bengals defender Joseph Ossai committing an obvious penalty, pushing Mahomes to the ground, pushing the ball to the 27-yard line after a 15-yard penalty for unnecessary roughness.
And with the ball in easy field goal range, the Chiefs got that three-pointer and won the game.
Fans were quick to take to social media to discuss the play and its aftermath, which featured CBS cameras getting many shots of the disconsolate Ossai burying his face in his helmet in grief. It was a tough lesson for Ossai, and a shame that the season came to one play, one mistake, one shove that he will forever wish he could undo.
No point talking about it anymore; what's done is done. But I was not shocked to see Cincinnati's head coach, Zac Taylor, reach into his Big Bag of Bromides and say, "We're not going to make it about one play."
Actually, you are, because if not for that one play, you might still be in the hunt for a Super Bowl win.
The sad truth is that many lives, even though they are lived over many decades, turn on one decision, one bad play, one error of omission. And the actions of just one person can affect millions of lives.
As the old anonymous proverb said it,
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Surely I can say, Ossai didn't mean to commit that penalty and he should not bear the blame for the entire loss. But it's worth thinking about, how one mistake can define a person in the public eye. No, it's not fair.
It's life.
How many days a week can you stand working?
Or sit, whatever. I bring this up to say that what you've been hearing about is true - there is a groundswell of support for cutting that nasty 5-day work week into a sweet 4-dayer.
There's a group called 4 Day Week Global who recently ran a trial involving some 33 companies and 900 employees. For all of them, the old five-day week turned into four, with no cut in pay.
Surprise, surprise! After a six-month trial, 97% of the employees say they did not want to go back to five, and even more surprising, most employers rated the experiment 9 out of 10.
It would seem that, until the pandemic came along and forced us to try different ways of working, we were just content to go along with the ways of the past, but once we found that changes are not necessarily bad, we became amenable to trying them.
The companies participating were in the fields of administration, IT, and telecom. The researchers mixed it up, with lots of jobs in lots of fields, but it did learn toward tech and white-collar jobs.
The workers reported less stress, fatigue, insomnia, and burnout, with corresponding improvements in physical and mental health. And here is a key point: they did not have to work more hours for the same pay. Their 40-hour schedules became 32-hour weeks.
And with the realization that they had to continue producing the results they had under the 40-hour week, most reported no problems getting the same amount of work done.
Look at this way: if you have X amount of tasks to get done in Y amount of time, even if you subtract a few hours from that Y, you will still get X done if you're so motivated. And a perk like only having to work four days a week is plenty of motivation, I would think.
We used to think we couldn't function without everyone physically being at the office. We found out otherwise. During the pandemic, if you called your internet service provider with a problem or a request, you were likely to talk to someone working from their home, fulfilling your request.
The only way you knew about was when you heard a baby crying or a dog howling. Same with other jobs. When something can be done in four days, why take five?
I say change the workplace and change the future!
Ask any stranger you might meet in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, or Auckland, New Zealand, or Albuquerque, New Mexico "what is Baltimore famous for?" and after they mention Johns Hopkins Hospital and University and rampant street crime, they will know us for our crabmeat.
You know how you'll see something every day for months and months, and then, one day, it's gone?
And you don't notice that it's gone at first? It finally dawned on me that the bank around the corner from our house has gone. I guess they emptied the vault before they split, but the only way I noticed it (finally) was that I was at the stoplight the other day and did not see the armed guard who was always on duty. So, they're gone, and I guess a nail salon will be moving in next.
And the commercial on TV with the unctuous announcer droning on hypnotically about the product he pitches that will ab-so-lutely guarantee no more leaves, pine cones, and stray tennis balls will find homes in your rain gutter...I haven't seen him since Hector was a pup. There are dozens of those companies, all selling the same type of product, and all claiming to be so vastly superior to the other competing firms that it hardly seems fair for them to try to stay in business.
Gutter Guard. Gutter Guys. Gutter Helmet. Gutters R Us. Mr. Gutter. Harry Helmet. Gutter Brothers. Leaf Guard. Leaf Me Alone.
OK, I made up that last one, but you see the point - so many companies, and so many claims for keeping debris out of the gutters. Some of the ads show the catastrophic damage you might suffer, should you not get one of these "systems" (it's always a "system," not just some sheet metal) up there by this weekend!
Ask you something? If these gutter deals were so important and necessary, don't you think new homebuilders would put them on in the first place?
Years ago, a friend of mine met a girl in one of those revolving doors at the entrance to a department store and they started going around together for a while.
If they had taken a minute to look up, they would have seen the ceiling, where the fans go around to keep us cool in the summer.
But did you know, there are different fan settings for the summer and the winter?
Orange you glad we can ask the friendly folks over at Home Depot for more info?
They tell us that we should have the fan running CLOCKWISE, with the fan running at the lowest speed. Doing this pulls the cool air up toward the ceiling, which shoves the warm that rises and hangs around the ceiling and sends it down to where we sit and stand.
With the warm air being sent below, it flows toward the walls and the door, and makes the room warmer, so you can cut the thermostat back a little! 
In summer, the COUNTERCLOCKWISE rotation will allow the blades to push cooler air down in a cool column. This cools the room and saves on air conditioning!
One of us should try this now that winter is here. You go first and let me know...
There was a time when someone would miss a two-foot putt or a three-point field goal, and they would be labelled "the goat" - the object of those two reactions that have been joined at the hip forever - scorn, and derision.
Then all of a sudden, someone decided that "the goat" should be just the opposite - the object of another long-time couple, veneration, and idolization. People decided that "goat" now stood for "greatest of all time" and slapped that tag on Tom Brady, who is the greatest something of all time, not necessarily the greatest quarterback.
And then Meryl Streep became the goat (of actors) and so did Malala Yousafzai and Simone Biles and Justin Tucker, and, of course, Muhammad Ali put that initialized appellation on himself years ago - and deserved to.
So we say "thanks" to the good people on the faculty of Lake Superior State University in Michigan, a school that publishes an annual list of words we can live without due to "misuse, overuse, and uselessness."
Rodney S. Hanley, the university's president, remarked, "Our nominators insisted, and our Arts and Letters faculty judges concurred, that to decree the Banished Words List 2023 as the GOAT is tantamount to gaslighting. Does that make sense?"
"Irregardless, moving forward, it is what it is: an absolutely amazing inflection point of purposeless and ineptitude that overtakes so many mouths and fingers," Hanley pointed out, racking up a pretty high score for using the words his faculty abjures and wants used less, if at all.
So here are the ten terms and phrases you shan't hear from me for a long while:
Listen, I know what you're going to say..."But stealing is ALLOWED in baseball!" Yes, that is true. During the game, a runner on first base is allowed to steal second base.
But some random fan can't skulk around the park late at night and steal second base.
In Milwaukee, a Brewer fan (!) passed out in the bushes outside American Family Field after a game, and woke up at some wee small hour of the morning to squeeze himself into the team clubhouse, where he ripped off electronic gear, a credit card, and other stuff including uniforms and memorabilia.
The guy has been caught stealing, and charged with felony burglary, leaving him with an 0-1 record for the year.
The criminal complaint alleges that the dude went to the doubleheader the Brewers had with the Giants last Sept. 8 and consumed 10 beers over the course of the two games, which apparently gave him superhuman strength, enough to yank on a stadium door and force it open.
He proceeded to the clubhouse and found a laptop, iPods, headphones, a passport, and a credit card from a strength coach, and then hit the goldmine when he entered manager Craig Counsell's office, walking off with a jersey, a shaving kit, a game-used hat, an autographed bat, a 45-year anniversary 1982 signed bat, a fake World Series ring, and keys to the team’s Arizona spring training facility.
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| Craig Counsell models some of the wardrobe items left behind. |
From the coaches' locker room, Lightfingered Louie helped himself to two official jerseys, a bag of baseballs, and pitching equipment.
From there, he called an Uber to take him home, where he arrived with a duffel bag full of his ill-gotten swag, according to his roomate.
I'm no attorney (applause) but I can already envision the defense his barrister will mount:
"Your honor, my client found himself in impaired condition early on the morning of September 9 past. Only through his quick thinking was he able to assemble a makeshift gift bag of Brewers apparel, to be donated to the Little Sisters Of The Poor for their annual banquet..."
I get an email from the US Postal Service around 7:30 every morning, showing me a little image of all the envelopes I will be getting that day. Very efficient. Of course, the actual mail doesn't get here until 8 or 9 PM, which makes me wonder if it would be possible for the USPS to open my mail and send me a picture of the letters or bills or whatever is coming. Just a thought.
But not even emails are perfect. Take this fellow Scott Stallings, a pro golfer by trade. He was hanging around his mailbox, looking for his invitation to play in this year's Masters tournament...and he waited, and he waited...
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| Stallings |
And then, along came an email from another guy named Scott Stallings.
"Hi Scott. My name is Scott Stallings as well and I'm from Georgia," it said.
"My wife's name is Jennifer too! I received a FedEx today from the Masters inviting me to play in the Masters Tournament April 6-9, 2023. I'm 100% sure this is NOT for me. I play but wow! Nowhere near your level. It's a very nice package complete with everything needed to attend," he went on to say.
He concluded, "I think we have some confusion because of our names, our wife's names and geographical location."
Then he attached a video showing him dropping the invitation into his mailbox for forwarding to the intended recipient.
For every golfer that I see on Sundays around 6 PM while I wait for the news as these golf tournaments drag on endlessly, there are dozens whom we don't see in the winner's circle, donning the green jacket, shaking hands with a guy in garish pants.
The real golfer Stallings is 37 and is currently ranked as the 54th best golfer in the world, which is respectable for someone who has only won three PGA tournaments, the last of them at the Farmers Insurance Open in 2014.
But here he is, all these years, still teeing it up and going for it, and I have decided that I will root for two things this year:
- - for Scott Stallings to win the Masters tournament
- - and for him to go around the course in record time so that the 6 O'Clock News comes on at 6.
Have you tried one of these meal kit deals? They just popped up in the past few years. From what I read (I've never tried 'em, never will) for something like an average of $8.99 a serving, they send you all you need to whip up a semi-gourmet meal right in the privacy of your own home.
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| A chef's toque |
