Nighty-night!

The Washington POST reports on a man who once had trouble getting to sleep, so he stayed up all night figuring out how to beat the problem.

The man's name is Luc Beaudoin, and his field is cognitive science and psychology, so he used his own mind to try some experiments, and the result was a system that does consciously what the brain is doing when we start sawing logs.

“If you wake people up as they’re falling asleep, they often report that they’re having these little micro-dreams,” he says, adding that you can treat yourself to your own mini-dreams, and wouldn't you love to?

Beaudoin's manner of thinking puts him in a dreamlike state, and that tricks the brain into thinking it's asleep, so let's fall asleep for real!

This is what he calls a "serial diverse imagining task," or cognitive shuffling, because you take your random thoughts and shuffle them like you were going to play Crazy 8s.

So, next time you find yourself staring at a clock that says 0341, shuffle the deck! Here's how to do the cognitive shuffle:

Take a word, any word, nothing weird, just neutral. Let's say you choose "phone."

Now, think of as many words as you can that start with "p": penny, philosopher, pen, prattle, and so forth.

As you come up with each word, come up with a scenario involving that word as you picture the word for 5 to 15 seconds.

...you found a penny and you remember the things you used to be able to buy with a cent...

...you picture Kant or Hegel or one of the philosophers of the modern era, such as Snoopy. You remember the fun you always had watching Snoopy win the tree decorating contest...

...you marvel at how many types of pens there are, and how you have come to prefer the ones with gel ink and how many colors of them there are...

...you conjure an image of a politician prattling on and on while everyone in the crowd is excited to get to the pie-eating contest. 

Beaudoin says, don't try to find a connection among the words. Just let your mind be awash in images, and that should be enough to put the old noodle to rest.

The trick is, this sort of thinking requires a certain bit of brain power, and that stops the brain from worrying about that noise you heard in the car, or figuring how you're going to pay for your vacation to Packwood, Idaho.

I might add, as a last resort, you could always picture yourself at work. That puts a lot of people into the arms of Morpheus for good every night.

Weathering the times

You can't win. And when I say "you," I mean anyone who is affected by not only the weather, but also the weather forecasts.

Case in point: starting late Saturday, the weather people were saying that yesterday (Monday) was going to be a dicey day, with chances for heavy rain and wind, even possible tornadic activity (formerly known as "tornadoes").

The school systems reacted by planning to close early yesterday, two hours, sometimes three hours. The rationale is that if the storms hit in mid-afternoon, just as the kids are being dismissed, you'd have chaos on the parking lots and roads. Better to let them out early, right?

Well, the late afternoon news was full of parents who had a LOT to say about this.

 "The kids need to be in school all day! It's safer there, and I have work to do, and I can't interrupt my day to get the kids!"

 "They should have closed the schools! How did they know when the storm would come?"

 "It was right to close early, but they closed too early!"

And then, there was this: as of late evening, the only area that really seemed to get hit hard was out in Carroll County, toward Westminster. Farmers there had wind damage to outbuildings, and one guy had his small herd of Texas longhorns running around free after the fence blew down. So naturally, people drop their worrying and pick up their keyboard and start knocking the meteorologists.

 "They don't know nothing! They just guess!"

 "They make a couple hundred thousand dollars to get people all worked up for no reason!"

  And my perennial favorite: "I could do their job and do it a whole lot better than them!"

There was a time when there was absolutely no scientific weather forecasting, unless you counted Uncle Amos's rheumatism acting up when it was "fixin' to rain." Today we have people doing their best to warn us and help prepare for the worst, while we hope for the best. 

There's no way to foretell the weather with 100% accuracy. Even Uncle Amos got it wrong sometimes. 

Just be glad you're not chasing longhorn cattle all over Carroll County, and take it easy!

My tribute

When I was younger, I tended to see things as absolute. Love baseball and football, don't like basketball or soccer. Love pizza and cold-cut subs, won't touch brussels sprouts or okra. Love an ocean beach, don't care for mountains. Like beer, no hard booze.  And I would rather have a Welch's grape juice than the finest wine you can squeeze out.

As I have matured (pause for laughter) I have found some moderation in a moderate amount of things. F'rinstance, at one point in my life, I thought that Jerry Lewis could do no wrong. I thought every thing he did in the movies was a riot, and I centered Labor Day weekends around his Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon, just to marvel at how he introduced a cascade of "mahvelous pehfohmas" from the likes of Sammy Davis, Jr, to some to Vegas comic or "chantoosie" with the same enthusiasm. And of course, he would work his own act into the show, leaving me apoplectic.

He was born a hundred years ago today as Joseph Levitch, son of a half-way famous "niteclub singer" who went by the name Danny Lewis. Danny, instead of encouraging his vastly more talented son, criticized, demeaned, and humiliated young Jerry. One story tells it all: Danny always wanted a Cadillac, so Jerry got him one as a gift, led the old man out to the driveway and presented it to him. Danny said, "What? You couldn't afford a convertible?"

Inside the entertainer who ran amuck on stage and film, acting like a child with no controls or filter, there you found a man who created equipment and techniques still used today, and a man completely in charge of his productions. But when things went wrong, and they will, and people told him to take it in stride and keep going, he had a most interesting reply, "You can say that. You don't have to live with Jerry Lewis."

This most generous of men (his efforts on behalf of the MD charity added up to billions) referred to the inner Jerry as "that miserable bastard." If only he could have been half as happy as he made so many of us feel. 

Jerry once said, "Going unnoticed has never been my strong suit." People such as he need, demand, the attention and love they felt they never received. In return, they will give you the gift of a laugh. It sounds like a fair deal to me. 

I hope he's happy up above. I'm not sure he ever was, down here. Happy birthday, Jerry!

Sunday Rerun: Tomb It May Concern

 You know the old joke about the guy who was so important at his job, he had several hundred people under him? 

He cut the grass at the cemetery.

Well, the TODAY show introduced us to Haley Hodge, who is fixing to have her fourth child. She has a husband name of Rivers, and the three kids: Finley (10), Crew (3) and Banks, (16 months.)

So where to come up with that crucial fourth name for the soon-to-be new member of the Hodge fund?

Cemeteries. Read the tombstones in the field of stones!

“I know some people might find it creepy, but my mother was a history buff and when we were growing up, she would take us on field trips to cemeteries,” says Mrs Hodge, a physical therapist. “You can learn so much about cultural aspects of the past."

After all, she points out, her sister Cooper got her name from a tombstone. And does she have a daughter named Alice? I guess not, or they would have said.

Mrs Hodge was in Southport, North Carolina, prowling the Smithville Burying Ground, and she came up with two ideas for her daughter-on-the-way...Galloway, and Salem.

Good luck to the Hodges and the new little one. I used to take my turn mowing the lawn at the little cemetery in Providence, and I don't remember any names being particularly inspiring, except for Jehoshaphat, and I don't see that one making a comeback soon.

The burial plot of Jerry Lee Lewis, (there are three names for you seekers!) who said, "Don't put a headstone on my grave. I want a monument!"

The Saturday Picture Show, March 14, 2026

Oh, I think the men in the crowd will get this one all right: the stairs are for sitting down to put on your socks when you leave the tub!

Squirrels are known to prefer dunking their fries in catsup, but when the chips are down, they will take them without. 

Hanging around with a red-shouldered hawk!

This looks like some sort of impressionist painting, but it's a photo of the Kīlauea volcano erupting in Hawaii. Nature puts on a show.

If you're whompin' up a salad, make mine with Romaine, please. And tomatoes and carrot strips and celery and bleu cheese and black and green olives and a few anchovies swimming on top, if you will.

I didn't mean to alarm you with this fisheye; I only did it for the halibut.

Down here on the ground, we might not realize how big an eagle's talons are. Now you know.

The true song of spring is the irritating cacophony these trucks bring. Can't blame them; they have to let the kids know it's time to grab some money and get ready for Fake Mr Softee!

Meteorologists are always telling us there's a blizzard watch, or a blizzard warning. Not being educated in the field, we need help figuring what each situation means. I think Alena Lee from WBAL TV 11 had a great idea: gathering crabmeat, eggs, cracker crumbs, Worcestershire sauce, Old Bay seasoning and parsley means the ingredients are on hand to form crabcakes, while mixin' all those fixin's means grab a plate. What a great way to tell us the difference!

 Here's a news rack from 1942 with reading material for a world and a nation at war. Notice the headline on the SF Chronicle: ROMMEL DRIVES ON DEEP INTO EGYPT.  That bit of war news about the "Desert Fox" was later turned into a collection of poetry by SF-based writer Richard Brautigan. 

Fox News

Did you know that the average fox in the wilderness can jump higher than a house?

It's true, but to be fair, the average house cannot jump.

But...jump up to New York City, where a red fox that somehow jumped onto a westbound ship was nabbed after he got here. Customs officers took him off to be re-homed, as the current expression for "adoption" has it.

He apparently boarded the ship in Southampton as part of a Titanic deception and is thought to be about two years of age. 

He got here Wednesday, weighed in at 11 lbs, and now awaits more permanent quarters than what he's been given for now at the Bronx Zoo, whose spokesperson said,  "The  Zoo regularly works with officials to help rescue wildlife that is illegally trafficked through nearby ports and airports." 

In Britain, they are called "urban foxes" because urban sprawl squeezed them out of their rural homes, and now they ride double-decker buses and eat fish and chips! There are tens of thousands of them darting through the streets, many of them walking the streets of Soho in the rain.

Oh wait, sorry. That was a wolf.

 

Good afternoon, Mrs Cleaver!

I don't understand human psychology, let alone that of animals. I mean, it's one thing to analyze human behavior (as if behavior happens anymore), because we can gain insights by talking to the other humans.

Question: "Why did you steal your mother's car?"

Answer: "She looked at me funny when I was 7."

Everyone has all the reasons and all the justifications, but you wonder how right they are.

I bring all this up, because the other day, someone asked if anyone else watched, or left on, the Leave It To Beaver channel on Comcast, which plays nothing but old "LITB" episodes 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The show premiered on October 4, 1957, which became a memorable day not only for introducing us to Beaver,  Wally,  June and Ward Cleaver, but also for the launch of the first Russian Sputnik, which kicked off the Space Race. America won the race by putting a man on the moon in 1969. 

You understand, in the days before cable and streaming and DVRs and whatnot, if you wanted to see the Beaver, you had to be there on Saturday night (or Wednesday night or Friday night; they jumped around a lot!) in front of the TV when it was on, or you missed it!

In October, 1957, I had just begun first grade, and when the last new "Beaver" ran in spring of 1963, I was finishing my sixth grade at Hampton Elementary, so that fit nicely.  And six years later, just after I scraped through high school, that's when the Americans got to the moon, in spite of what your loony friends tell you about it all being a Disney fakeout.

So yes, leaving the Streaming' Beave on Channel 4164 all day suits me fine. And we make sure to leave it playing for Eddie Cat when we go out, so she will feel right at home with Gilbert and Larry and Eddie Haskell and Lumpy and all the rest.

It's comfort food for the mind!