Too Lazy to Write Today Rerun: No Homophones Aloud

Blogger Torkildson

I (knead, need) to tell you that out in Utah, a state in which they (wear, where) those bolo ties without a hint of self-consciousness, a man says he has been fired for writing about homophones in his blog.

Homophones!  Why, the very idea! That may (seem, seam) to be the sort of thing you would discuss in your (cellar, seller) with your closest friends, but using the (phrase, frays) "Modern Homophones" will get your name (tact, tacked) up on the list of Former Employees where this man worked.

I'm sure he feels that everyone is (teeming, teaming) up against him, but he knows what his boss doesn't - that a homophone is a word that has an aural twin, another word that sounds the same, with different spelling and meaning.  For example, when you see someone send a text that says they are sorry for all you've been "threw," that's a sad example to put you through.  To hear Frankie Valli sing the theme song from the 70s musical "Greece" is another one.

After the blogger, Tim Torkildson, was (shone, shown) the door one recent (summery, summary) day, he told the Salt Lake Tribune that he was fired from (some, sum) school called the Nomen Global Language Center.

This is a school that teaches languages!  And the owner fired him, complaining, "now our school is going to be associated with homosexuality."  He said that because he didn't understand the (dual, duel) meanings, I guess.

I'm not going to (mints, mince) words here...

It just makes you (sigh, psi).

As Herbert Hoover said, "I'll be (dammed, damned)."

[Editor's note: last week when my orthopedist was examining my left (humerus, humorous) bone, I (told, tolled) him I didn't find it funny at all.]

Day-off Rerun: Old King Coal

To all my vegetarian friends, may I steer you to another blog just for today? Nothing you will read beyond this sentence will be of interest; I'll stake my reputation as an avowed carnivore on it.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, hero of the D-Day Invasion and two-term US president during my childhood, contributed a lot to our modern society. A great military man who later warned of the consequences of exaggerated balance of power in the nation as he left office, he also contributed a style of cooking steak that only now, decades later, is being recognized for its genius and simplicity. And tastiness!



He cooked steaks directly on hot coals!

When you cook steaks on a grate above the heat source, the space between the hot coals and the grate itself serves an an oxygen source, and there's where you get your flare-ups. This way, no flareups. And no greasy grate to scrub later!

Of course, to cook steaks on a charcoal grill this weekend, first, go find a job that pays you on a par with neurosurgeons and big-league starting pitchers, and you'll be able to afford a couple of nice porterhouses or New York strips.

Then load the old kettle grill with charcoal - the kind made of wood chunks, not briquettes. You can usually find big bags of this charcoal at hardware stores and liquor stores. Let those chunks burn for a good while, getting past red hot (so that's where the expression comes from!) to where they are white hot, and then, just before dropping steaks on them, blow across the top to remove any dust.

Eisenhower, or "Ike," as he liked to be called, also liked three-inch beef strip steaks, covered all over with salt and pepper, then set down directly on white-hot coals. This gives a rare, charry-crusted steak that is said to be out of this world.

All the online sources I checked say this works well for any meat that is cut thick, so you can even try tuna steaks or pork chops. Let me know how it goes for you!

Day Off Rerun: Fishing for Compliments

When you order Chilean Sea Bass at Chez Can You Sea, would you let me know if you would have ordered it if it were on the menu under its original name: Patagonian Toothfish?

Hah?

Monkfish

is another one.  Nice name, makes you think of a frugal, monastic sort of person who would order this especially on Fridays.  Fishmongers started selling this fish heavily a few years ago and promoted it as "poor man's lobster."  Well, this poor man didn't confuse it with lobster, but maybe that's because I remember these guys when they used to be called Goosefish.  And the taste won't make you forget lobster at all.  You know what it really tastes like?  Monkfish!

It's all in the nomenclature.  I love how real estate developers, building new houses in a crime-ridden, sketchy part of town, name the streets "Hobson's Choice Lane" and "Admiral's Helm Way."  Well, I checked with Hobson, and his choice is not to live in a neighborhood where gunfire rings out like downtown Beirut every night.  The Admiral steered himself a good many nautical miles away as well.  And watch for this trick:  say they build some houses in Stankville, but the crime rate in Stankville rivals that of Crackton in The

Simpsons.  Down the road in the valley, a good 10 miles away is the quiet hamlet of Happytown.  The developer will name the new community Happytown Heights, sure as shooting.  If you will.

One more fish story - and these are all true examples of modern piscatorial marketing at its best - everyone loves Orange Roughy, right? I mean, it sounds perfect. Orange, so you feel like you're getting some fruit, and Roughy, so you're adding a good bit of roughage.  And the taste is so...so...so-so.  Still, you order it because it sounds good now.  Back in the day, they called these beauties Slimeheads.  Not what you want to order on a first date, unless your date comes from Crackton!

Later, Gator

Where college football is concerned, I'm all Alabama all day, but two stories have come out about people from the University of Florida football team.  

For one, their one-time Heisman trophy winner, Tim Tebow, whose pro football career resembled nothing more than a great dive into an empty pool, now has declared that, twelve years since he last played baseball in high school, he now wants to play professional baseball.  Uh huh.  Like any 29-year-old, he sees 30 through the windshield, and is reaching for one more blaze of glory before settling down into the anonymity that surely lies ahead.  I'd say I wish him well, but I'm too busy making plans to do brain surgery or design a skyscraper.  I can't decide which.

But there is a guy on the current UF roster who did something great, and he deserves all the acclaim we can offer him.  Cristian García, a linebacker, works at a bar in Gainesville called the 101 Cantina.  Last month, one night at closing time, he was taking out the garbage when he witnessed a man and a woman coupled, and it took him about .3 of a second to realize that he was interrupting a rape in progress.

Christopher Lee Shaw was in the act of sexually assaulting a 19-year-old woman when García came along and had the opportunity to take out even more trash.  

García

“I turned around and pulled the guy by the shoulder and said, ‘Get off.’ That pretty much ended the situation then. He was intoxicated and attempted to throw some punches, but he slipped and busted his face on the wall,” García told GatorSports.com.

That's right.  Let the wall take credit!

Of course, Shaw told the police that the woman was coming on to him, a claim belied by surveillance video of the bar property. Gainesville cops got a search warrant and used their findings to state they have reason to believe that Shaw might be responsible for other sex crimes in the area. They also say he had a battery charge two years ago from a time when he hit an officer during a bar fight. 

Fine fellow.

Meanwhile, García is a walk-on to the UF team, a Miami native who earned a spot on the roster by working for it. "I hold strong moral values and I don’t think anyone should be taken advantage of in that kind of way," he told First Coast News.

Gee, it was really too bad that Shaw accidentally ran into a wall. I hope he will feel better by October, 2044.

  

Day-Off Rerun: The Dollar Store

I don't know the first thing about selling real estate and I doubt that I'd be very good at it, because my sales pitch would be along the lines of "Do you like this house?  Well, then, I think you should buy it" and that might not be enough to get me into the Top Sellers' Club.

But these deals I hear about on the radio...a guy who has made a fortune in the real estate business is coming to town, pitching both his tent and his foolproof plan for making your own million.  All you have to do is get a bunch of people who own houses that they are willing to sell you for maybe $200,000.  Then you turn around and flip that dwelling for $250,000, pocketing the 50 grand for yourself and heading for one of your many vacation getaway spots.

I used to work with a guy who had "figured out a surefire way" to make money by betting on horse races.  He was willing to let me in on the scheme if I would just pony up (get it?) half a hundred G's to get the plan off the ground.
Every so often, someone will come along and offer to let you in on their business, which involves them buying soaps and other home products from a large company and selling it to you so you can sell it to your friends, neighbors and co-workers.  The big company makes a mint, the local distributor makes half a mint, and you make space in your cellar for cases of unsold laundry detergent.

And don't forget this one - a man ran an ad in the National Perspirer or whatever they call it.  The ad said "Make $100,000 in direct mail marketing - send $1 to Box XXX Itchy, Indiana for details."  And people sent off their singles and got back a xeroxed sheet that said "Buy an ad that says "Make $100,000 in direct mail marketing.."

All of these plans rest on the generosity of someone who knows how to turn a dollar bill into a million just like it, and the incredible thing about it all is that they are so willing to share it with you and me, rather than just keeping all the money for themselves and their indolent brothers-in-law!  How very kind.

Sunday Rerun: Cut it into six slices; I don't think I can eat eight

Everyone knows of the great inventors such as Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, and Henry Ford.  Ford had such a nimble mind that he figured out ways to make money out of making money, such as taking the wood scraps from the process of making wheels for the Model T and turning them into charcoal.  Along with a relative named Kingsford, old Henry did for the grilling industry what he also did for the auto industry.

But Tom, Bill and Henry will all bow deeply to Sean Berthiaume, a man of vision and taste, a man whose notion will soon transform the way we all eat, a man employed by Vinnie's Pizzeria, of 148 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn, NY.

We have all yearned for and sought after new toppings for pizza. Pepperoni, sausage, mushroom, Canadian bacon, ham, fried eggs, spinach, artichokes, asparagus, sun-dried tomatoes, baby arugula, mature arugula:  all have been tried, with or without extra cheese.

There's a place near us that offers a cheese steak sub pizza.  They sizzle up the steak 'n' provolone 'n' onions that they normally would put on a roll, but instead, they lovingly slide it atop a cheese pizza, which they then top with another crust and bake until you just can't stand it no more.

But Sean has seen the future of pizza and it is a pizza pizza.  That's right, a pizza topped with cut up pieces of another pizza. Here is what this slice of heaven looks like:

Bill Gates, the man who gave the world the ability to sit down in front of a screen and see pictures of dancing babies and Mitt Romney boxing with Mike Tyson, once said, "Until we're educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do."

Thomas Edison, without whose light bulb we would be watching television in the dark, once said, "When I have fully decided that a result is worth getting, I go ahead of it and make trial after trial until it comes."

Henry Ford, who got the nation out of horse-and-buggy days and into broken-downFord cars, is famous for saying, "Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probable reason so few engage in it."

These great minds and thoughts are all reflected in Sean Berthiaume, who will be remembered for saying, "I see inspiration all around, in the hearts and minds of the customers that frequent Vinnie's everyday (sic). Their eyes seem to say, ‘Pizza, I like it, I would like more of it.' That, and I was bored on my break."

If you can be ready by 9, we could be at Vinnie's for lunch!

The Saturday Picture Show, August 13, 2016

I remember a college Biology professor who rode around in Volvo with a 4"x4" wooden replacement bumper.  Here's the modern version of that: the plywood grille and fender.

Not only is it way too far to have Halloween treats out on sale, it should be against the law for Oreos to be anything but the original Oreos.  I vow to you, never will I taste a chocolate chip, vanilla-with-chocolate-filling, or Dubl-Stuf Oreo.  

They travel in packs of threes...

I can imagine some people making a wallpaper of this.  Big piles of filthy lucre.

This is the cover art for the first Superman comic, which sold for 10 cents back in the day and now could bring in more than the money pictured above.  I like the looks on the people whose lives were just saved by the Man of Steel.

It's almost apple-pickin' time!  Time for apple pie and homemade applesauce!

These people must really, really love Dairy Queen food and ice cream treats, to have one built into their house.

If only the tree grew blue...

"Holidays and salad days, and days of moldy mayonnaise" - Frank Zappa

We're more than 1/2 way through the annual Hades we call summer, with its heat, humidity, mosquitoes, and those cicadas or whatever beating their wings to sound like a scene from "Ramar Of The Jungle."  

If Summer had a Facebook page, I would not "like" it.

But because it's not the time of year when we want a nice hot bowl o' stew or Dixie Pork Chops for supper, it's the time of year when salads can star as the main attraction.  We don't want to heat up the kitchen anyway!

The rest of the year, the salad is something to get down before you hit the beef bar or the sausage station, so that later you can say you ate vegetables.

Salads are great with fresh leafy lettuce - good old iceberg, or Romaine, or what-have-you, and nice Maryland tomatoes and cucumbers, onions, mushrooms, carrots, celery, red cabbage, olives (black or green), anchovies, shredded cheese, beets...the list is as long as the produce department is wide.  

If you'd like to turn that green goodness into a hearty meal, add some shrimp, steak slivers, chicken nuggets, tuna, or just about anything, and you're in tall cotton.

HOWEVER, as a founding member of We Love Salads, I must speak out against the mixed-up medleys that some like.  (Two of these people happen to be kin to me, one being my wife, the other, my sister, and I love them both, but still...) A strawberry is an ice cream topping or a cereal accompaniment.  It does not like to be chomped in the same mouthful as a red onion.  Ditto for watermelon and feta cheese.  Just because things taste great on their own does not mean they go together. 

SBC Salad

And this is why I feel the need to draw the line on further salad experimentation.  The Food Lion website offers this recipe for Strawberry Banana Cheesecake Salad.  

I'll probably be seeing this on a plate near me very soon. 

Blame it on Rio

Hello and welcome to "Ask Fake Doctor Mark M.D.", which will appear the second Tuesday of each week from here in this spot. Let's reach into the mailbag!

"Lance A." from Urinetest, Arizona, wants to know why it's so bad that he lied about taking drugs for all those years, and also what is this thing called "cupping," and could he have gotten away with using performance-enhancing drugs if people had been distracted by giant red sores all over his back.


Well, Mr Strongarm, cupping is the big thing going on at the Riolympics and among the happy hipsters everywhere.  I mean, once Gwyneth Paltrow does something, we all must follow like dominoes toppling (or when someone pulls out the bottommost can of peas from the display at Try 'N' Shop) and do what she does.

What it is, is an acupuncture technique in which a flammable liquid is lighted in a glass cup.  When the flame goes out, the drop in temperature creates suction, and the glass cups stick to your body.

And then...all that sucking pulls up the skin and makes the blood flow, which promotes healing, as anyone who has been to physical therapy has heard while being mauled by man and machine.

Hickey, not cuppey

The red spots stay on the skin for three or four days, just like their teenaged cousin, the hickey. 

Gymnasts, runners and swimmers are all over Rio with these cupping marks, and they swear by them, or at least at them. US gymnast Alex Naddour told USA Today that cupping was "better than any money I've spent on anything else".

Alex.  Stop by on your way home and let me tell you a couple of nice ways to drop your loot. 

The British Acupuncture Council (BAcC) says that on "rare occasions" the hot cups can cause mild burns, and recommends that you only go to cuppers who know how to cup right.

Pharmacologist Prof David Colquhoun, from University College London, dismissed cupping as "hocus pocus" and told the BBC: "It's just pulling up a bit of skin, it is not going to affect the muscle to any noticeable extent. And taken to extreme, it can cause harm, it usually doesn't, it's usually just a - what [British physician] Ben Goldacre would call - a voluntary tax on the gullible."

The picture at left is actually from an old medical textbook. There really is nothing new under the sun.

Wooden you just know it

If you read the novella "The Shawshank Redemption" by Stephen King, you remember the part where Red Redding (Morgan Freeman in the movie) follows clues to the location of a certain tree, which was described to him by his old prison sidekick Andy DuFresne (Tim Robbins).  Andy had told Red that the tree was where he had proposed to his wife (and we know how she ended up!) Red finds the tree, digs up a letter and bus money to get to Mexico and things turn out nicely for everyone but the warden.

In the original story, the tree was located in Buxton, Maine, but when they made the movie, they found a tree in Mansfield, Ohio, and I can't tell Maine from Ohio anyway.  It's only 810 miles away! So the tree you see in the movie was in Ohio, and that's the only place you'll see that white oak anymore, beside your imagination, because it's down. Five years ago, a lightning strike weakened it, and last week, high winds finished it off.

Jodie Snavely with the Mansfield & Richland County Convention and Visitors Bureau (a branch office, I suppose...) says, "It's a sad day for Shawshank fans." I was surprised to read that the tree and the field where it sat became an international tourist destination.

People even Tweeted their Twitter (and you should try that soon!) to hope that something good will be made of the wood. 
My suggestion would be to go out on a limb and make a life-size statue of Rita Hayworth.

"I have had a chance to see the tree and if it's a stump left, I'm sure people will still come see it because hope is a good thing, and a good thing never dies," Snavely says. 

In Maryland, the venerable old white oak tree called the Wye Oak down in Talbot County was really down in Talbot County after a thunderstorm in 2002. It was the largest such tree in America and was 460 years old.  I'm not saying it was old, but Dick Van Dyke was there when they planted it!  

Now it's a desk in the governor's office in Annapolis, where politicians never know when to leave, and can't cedar forest for the trees. I don't have any more tree puns, so I guess I willow you one.

From dust we come...

I don't know everything about everything, which is why I'm not about to run for office (or run anywhere) but as everyone goes on and on about this poor young man who lost his life on a giant waterslide in Kansas over the weekend, maybe we should try to remember that a young man lost his life, his neck broken on a giant waterslide.

They call it the Schlitterbahn Water Park. (Schlitterbahn means "slippery road" in German.) No one knows as of this minute what happened to 10-year-old Caleb Thomas Schwab, the son of Kansas State lawmaker Scott Schwab and his wife Michele, while he was on the ride.  

"The ride" is the Verrückt ride. (Verrückt means "insane" in German).  At 168' 7", it's the world's tallest water slide, taller than the Statue of Liberty from toe to torch. Three people get on a raft and slide to the bottom at speeds around 65 miles per hour.

Of course, there will be questions, and finger pointing, and wondering whether it's reasonable to assume such risks, and why a 10-year old was on the ride that was supposed to be limited to those 14 and up.

Lawyers will file briefs, the funeral will be covered, the way we've seen before and, no doubt, will again.

What caught my attention is what the little guy's family said.  

"Since the day he was born, he brought abundant joy to our family and all those he came in contact with," said the family statement.

Can we hope for anything better than that, no matter what our age when we depart for the Great Beyond, than to have people remember us as having brought "abundant joy" to everyone?

Amusement parks, water slides, games and trips and hot dogs and ice cream and holidays in the sun all precede what awaits every single living being: the sad finale.  As Hank Williams said, "I'll never get out of this world alive."  I take this family's eulogy as a reminder to bring joy whenever and wherever possible.   

Somebody's watching me!

I always think these things I read about are on satire sites, but the way you can tell is, when they have detailed schematic drawings of the robots that will soon control us all  the plans for new technology, and the article is written without a sense of irony or humor, then it's "emmis" - the Yiddish word for truth.

So, believe it or not, you might want to take a change of shoes to troop through the Magic Mouse Kingdom in the Happiest Place On All The Earth.  Disney is developing a system that will take pictures of your shoes when you stroll through the front gate. And then, special Mousecomputers will obtain your name and hometown, and favorite Disney character, food, and ride. 

And then robots will be garnering more info as you parade around the acreage, stuff like how long you wait in line, where you go in the park, and they say they will take this intel and customize your visit by matching it up with your interests.

This is the future: while you are visiting an amusement park, robots know where you are and what you're doing. 

They use facial recognition technology now, you know, and I just have this terrible fear of a guy in a polyester uniform, seated in a dark control room before a giant bank of video monitors, suddenly pausing and zooming in on an image of me giving the stankeye to one of his robots, and then having me rounded up and brought to his Goofy Gulag underneath Tinkerbell's Beef 'n' Beer.

Gone are the days when we could just be anonymous, but I don't like being followed just because of my footwear.

Tracking you every step of the way!

Although, there was a day when I came home from a long day at work and kicked off my kicks in the garage, only to notice that I had worn a left Reebok and a right New Balance.

That'll mix Mickey up!

Sunday Rerun: High School Consequential

High school teachers, please don't think I'm grinding on you here.  I think my concern is more with our culture overall.  

You see, the other day I was talking with a man of about 30; he was a graduate of one of our local private high schools, and I asked him if he knew that the school was located right across the street from the house occupied by Spiro T. Agnew back in the day.

"I've never heard of Spiro Agnew," he pointed out.

"What kind of education excludes learning about Nixon/Agnew/Watergate, etc?" I asked myself.  I've long since learned that people don't really appreciate these questions, no matter how valid I find them.

I get into this all the time with Peggy, and her point is that people don't tend to learn about things that occur before their birth.   My rejoinder is that if that were true, no one would know much about the Civil War, the Industrial Revolution and the Monroe Doctrine.

Her rejoinder is that no one really does.

So, teachers, why not?  We've argued about the way schools teach math these days, with less reliance on basic arithmetical principle and more concentration on just how all those digits make up a Facebook status change.  We've been all over English.  I mean that in every sense of the word; I believe that each and every day, our lovely language is dragged down to the town square and beaten to within an inch of its life by television hosts, athletes, and the people who write commercials for television hosts and athletes to read. How a person can sit there and read aloud "A portion of all the donations go to charity in your area" without decrying the lack of subject-verb agreement is beyond me.  How a person can fail to comprehend basic English words is also beyond me.  And how the schools can hand a diploma to someone who cannot write a simple declarative sentence is so far beyond me, it would take extra postage to get me there.  


But history?  Don't we want the children to know about how we got to where we are?"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," said George Santayana, to which I can only add, "How can one remember the past if one's school focused their curriculum on the teaching of tone poems and performance art?"

Just for those unfamiliar, Spiro T. "Spiro" Agnew was a local politician here who took sacks full of money from paving contractors while in several high-ranking offices, was chosen by Richard M. "Dick" Nixon to be his vice-president because "No assassin in his right mind would kill me, because then they'd get Agnew as president" (as Nixon was quoted by felon John Ehrlichman) and then Agnew resigned the office in disgrace when the Feds finally brought him down on tax evasion charges, and later Agnew wrote an autobiography which implied that Alexander Haig told him to "go quietly...or else" when the G-Men showed up with the papers. 

That's a story worthy of repeating, so that today's youth will learn not to repeat it.  Or something.

The Saturday Picture Show, August 6, 2016

At first I thought, this is someone re-using an old microwave as a mailbox. Clever. But then I looked again. There's a power cord running to it!  Could this be the mailbox of the most considerate person on earth - someone who put a microwave out there for the letter carrier so he or she could heat up a Hot Pocket for lunch, and then leave the grocery fliers, PEOPLE magazine and dentist bills behind?
You know Popeye, the sailor man from the comics and future fried chicken magnate?  Well, say hello to Frank Fiegel, the real-life sailor on whom the character was based!  He was strong to the finish, it was said, because he always ate his spinach.

There was some sort of nationwide poll taken among fans of all the major league baseball teams, and guess whose hat is the most popular of them all?  O-R-I-O-L-E-S!

You are here. (spot your place in the world)

Here's one you can use for a wallpaper if you wish...the sun, the clouds, the bay...

Come on over and get lit at the annual Thailand Lantern festival!

While you and I were sleeping, eating breakfast and reading the paper, this random stranger poured ten billion salt crystals on a black surface and rearranged them to look like Alfred Einstein.

Before we go...this is the look of the damage done in Ellicott City, Maryland a week ago by a sudden thunderstorm that tossed over six inches of rain on a flood-prone town. They will rebuild it again.

All the world's a stage

Robert Young was an actor who played lovable wise daddy Jim Anderson on the 1950's sitcomadrama "Father Knows Best," in which he rose to every occasion and straightened out all the problems at home, as soon as he got home from the office and switched from suit jacket to beat up old sports coat with leather patches on the elbows.  The dress shirt and tie, of course, remained on as he figured out how to get Bud back on the football team or help Betty get over coming in second in the election for homecoming queen or sell another box of cookies for Kathy.

What no one knew at the time is that Robert Young had a substance abuse problem, and hid his bottles of alcohol in the closet on the "FKB" set where his sports coat was hanging up. Sober, he couldn't deal with the realities of real life, but on TV, he could handle anything.

And I'm not trying to rag on Robert Young. Being alcoholic was a disease he had to deal with, but I'm trying to say that we often see actors as the people they play, not the people they are.

The next big role for Young was "Marcus Welby, M.D." And that was a character who was the wise family doctor who could cure anything with a few comforting words and some Bactine. And, Young always said that any time he was out in public, people walked up to him and asked for medical advice!

And that says a lot about how good an actor he was, and how foolish we are, sitting home with the tube on.

So I had to laugh when people recently got their dithers up because Bradley Cooper, who played the "American Sniper" Chris Kyle in the film version of Kyle's biography, attended the Democratic National Convention!  Oh, how the fools carried on about it! 

Again, let's go over this: people are paid to act in movies, TV shows and theatrical productions.  They don't necessarily portray people who have their physical attributes or attitudes about life and politics and how things ought to be.  The person who plays the funny guy on your favorite show might be a really nasty jerk, and vice versa.  Cooper played a raccoon in "Guardians Of The Galaxy," and there is no evidence that he is really a small mammal that eats garbage and peanuts.

Here, for the information of all, is a list of all the actors whose roles always mirror their true personalities:

1. Pee-Wee Herman
   
   

All the others are just acting.

Take me out

Today's stories are from the world of baseball, but they really don't have as much to do with the sport as they do with the way people act (as opposed to the way they ought to act!)

The Liberty Bell tattoo is not your pass to annoy
everyone from here to Valley Forge

Story The First took place in Philadelphia, the town where Santa Claus was pelted with snowballs during a football game.  As the Phillies were playing the Giants, a leather-lunged fan sitting behind home plate was hollering at umpire Bob Davidson, apparently suggesting that the ump had something in common with an industrial vacuum cleaner. For six innings, the verbal assault continued, loudly enough to be heard all over the ballpark, and Davidson fixed things by calling time out and signalling to security in the stands that it was time to send this "fan" to the shower.

The shame.

Story The Second comes from Cincinnati, where the Cardinals were taking on the hometown Reds.  Reds first baseman Joey Votto went over to the stands to try for a foul popup, only to be blocked by a hometown fan getting in the way.  Before returning to his position, Votto took time to grab the man's Reds shirt to emphasize where his loyalty ought to lie, and then shook his head balefully.

The Phila story wraps up with the (apparently) intoxicated fan being given the gate, waving his arms and displaying a real red neck as he departed to the applause of other fans in the area.

In Cincy, Votto autographed a ball for the pushy fan, inscribing it with "Thanks for being so understanding when I acted out of character."  Then they posed for a selfie and everyone went home happy.

In both of these cases, we see illustrated one of the basic problems of today's society: that "It's all about ME" attitude that makes everyone think they can be involved in everything just because they WANT to be.  Short and clumsy?  Demand a place on the basketball team anyway!  Can't walk without tripping over linoleum?  Get out there and dance your pants off! Not enough grazing land for your cow? Occupy federal land and just take all the acres you need! Can't pronounce "Tanzania"? Run for the highest office in the land anyway!

You wouldn't like it so much if you went to a classical music concert and some joker two rows ahead pulled out a harmonica and began honking away to the Rondo Alla Turca. Out for an evening of fine cuisine, you do not expect someone's cousin from Kankakee to go to the kitchen, elbow the chef aside, and prepare your ricotta and asparagus quiche, nor would you want the dining room to be fouled with the colorful billingsgate of the loading dock.

Simply stated, the people sitting near the contumacious Phillies fan paid their way in and deserve to enjoy a ballgame without his profane word-assault.  And the people watching the Reds game want to see Joey Votto play baseball, not you.  

Just enjoy the game, be it baseball, Parcheesi, or life itself.  

Through the years

In 1995, the first Yahoo! search engine was launched (try Googling it!). The state of Mississippi finally got around to ratifying the Thirteen Amendment, which the rest of the nation had gone for in 1865.  That was the Amendment that abolished slavery.  Also in 1995, Tejana pop singer Selena was fatally shot at a motel in Corpus Christi, Texas by her former employee, Yolanda Saldívar. Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, Americans, killed 168 of their fellow Americans by blowing up a federal building in Oklahoma, eBay was founded, and the appropriately-named Windows 95 came out.

And in Miami, Florida, which was one of the 50 United States at the time, a Walmart store removed a T-shirt from its sales shelf because a customer - one customer - complained about it.

This horribly disgusting item of apparel, something so egregiously heinous that it led to weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth on WalMart parking lots, features Margaret from the Dennis the Menace comic strip saying, "Someday a woman will be president."

Again, this was only 21 years ago. A woman named Ann Moliver Ruben heard from a WalMart buyer that they quit selling the shirts because it went against "Walmart's family values."

While we all mull over the stuff that Walmart sold in 1995 - and still sells today - that go against ANY sort of value, remember this. Ruben is actually Dr Ruben; she's a psychologist in Florida, and she designed the shirt to send a positive message to young women.

And a random woman opposed this in 1995.  I wonder how she feels now, with a woman on the ticket on one of the major parties.

And this is 2016, and things have changed.  Danit Marquardt, Director of Corporate Communications at WalMart, says, “Wow, it still pains us that we made this mistake 20 years ago.  We’re proud of the fact that our country – and our company – has made so much progress in advancing women in the workplace, and in society.”

And by the way...Jeannie Russell is the name of the young lady who played the role of Margaret in the Dennis The Menace TV show. Today she is a chiropractor in Los Angeles.  One of her patients is Jay North, who played Dennis, and who still deals with issues resulting from physical abuse he suffered at the hands of his aunt, his "guardian" on the TV soundstage.  She would beat the little boy if she found his acting not quite up to her standards.

I'm glad this is 2016.  We've finally awakened.

Balloon payment

It's easy to say you don't want government regulations and inspections and Big Bro getting all up in your business when you're just trying to run your little business and bring home the bacon for Betty, Sis and Junior.

It's quite another when 15 people  - people who have people who will have to live without them forever  - get up in a hot-air balloon in Texas on a Saturday morning, and the pilot sails the balloon right onto some high-tension wires and you know the rest.

Ask yourself: would you, or anyone else you know and love, have gotten into that ill-fated flying machine, knowing you were going up with a man who had at least four drunken-driving convictions, two prison stays and more than 40 customer complaints on his record?

The man's name was Alfred “Skip” Nichols.  Employed by Heart of Texas Hot Air Balloon Rides, he was the pilot of the balloon that took him and all his passengers to their graves, crashing into a pasture near the central Texas town of Lockhart.  

This is the fertilizer plant that blew up in West, Texas, in
2013, killing 40 people, 10 of them emergency
 Police/Fire/EMS personnel.  The plant had last been inspected
in 1985.  28 years before.  28.

The Washington Post reports that before he showed up in Texas - a state known for lax attention to regulatory policies - Nichols had "extensive criminal and business troubles in the St. Louis, Missouri, area."  Highlights include: 

1990: pleads guilty to DWI in St. Louis County.

1997: Better Business Bureau in St. Louis receives its first complaint against Nichols’s business, Air Balloon Sports.

2000:  Convicted of a drug crime, spends about a year-and-a-half in prison.  Also, the BBB issued a "consumer alert" that year against another of his businesses, Manchester Balloon Voyages, after 11 complaints are received.

2001: Another BBB warning, after more than 36 complaints come in from customers who paid for voyages which Nichols failed to supply or remunerate customers. One of the customers cheated is a Catholic nun who paid $364 for a flight for herself and three friends to commemorate her 50 years of service.

2002: Nichols pleads guilty to two DWI charges.

2008:  A third warning from the BBB comes out, following eight more complaints from cheated customers. The BBB advises that Nichols was on probation in Missouri for distribution, delivery or manufacturing of a controlled substance.

2010: He's back in prison until 2012 after his parole was revoked because of a drunk-driving conviction.

2013: He is sued by, and settles with, a woman who was aboard his balloon when it crashed.  She suffered neck and back injuries. Nichols blames the accident on a "lack of wind" and states that his driver's license was revoked for 10 years in 2010.  

2014: Nichols sets up shop in Texas. 
2016: 

We need inspections and regulations and people to make sure that the right hands are operating equipment that might kill or maim in the wrong hands, the same as you need your annual physical and your car needs maintenance.  People whose privilege to drive a car on the highway has been revoked have no business taking you up in a balloon.