Clipped

It should be borne in mind by everyone who knows what the numbers "33 1/3, 45 and 78" mean that this year's recent high school graduates were born in 2003, which means that they were but 4 years of age when a notorious cultural icon went to an early demise.

2007 was the year we said goodbye to Anna Nicole Smith (who married a rich old man and loved the life right out of him), Ike Turner (who is more of a founder of rock 'n' roll than many people realize), Tammy Faye Bakker (who with her husband Jim perfected ways of separating fools and their money), Jane Wyman (who did her purgatory on earth, having been married to Ronald W. Reagan), Porter Wagoner (colorfully dressed country star), and Hank Bauer (manager of the Baltimore Orioles when they won the World Series for the first time ever, 1966). 

Colorful people, all, and they made their contributions to the world. And there was one more death in 2007: Clippy.

Again, if you are young, you are blessed. You don't know the agony of beginning to work on a Microsoft document, and having this annoying character in the shape of a paper clip start talking to you right on your screen!

He didn't actually talk out loud, but he would pop up in balloon form and say, "It looks like you're getting ready to write a letter! 

Or "It looks like you're getting ready to make a list!"

or "It looks like you don't know what the hell you're doing!"

And then he would make suggestions.

Old Mr Clipsworth was born as part of Windows 97, and lasted until Office 2007. And as if you didn't know, tomorrow (Saturday) is World Emoji Day (I hope you sent out greeting cards!) and so Microsoft is saluting the day by bringing the paperclip emoji back even bigger than before! 

And, never ones to do anything in a small way, MS is planning a "broader refresh" of 1,800 emojis for all Microsoft apps and services later this year.

Claire Anderson, Microsoft's art director, said "When we looked at redesigning the paper clip, we thought, 'How could you not?" Ms Anderson is Microsoft's "emoji-ologist," and she told CNN Business, "It's a way of honoring where we've come from as we also look at a new tech style. .. But like most nostalgic things, we know Clippy can be polarizing."

Polarizing, yes. Have you ever started doing something - on the computer, at the stove, on a drill press, wherever - that you weren't exactly sure about how to proceed with, only to have the office know-it-all suddenly looming over your shoulder with enthusiastic supportive phrases like "Oh THIS oughta be good!" That's Clippy. He's the King Of All Know-It-Alls as he bounces around on your screen.

While the rest of us were just trying to survive the pandemic, Microsoft spent the past year refreshing all the emojis. They're going to be 3D, not 2D anymore, and they're going to be animated for the most part. "We want the design to uplift and make people happy," Anderson said.

Oh, and there will be five new emojis to sum up the thrills and fun of working from home: 

• a "you're on mute" emoji
• an image of someone multitasking with their arms going everywhere 
• a "business on top and pajamas on bottom" emoji 
• a cat in front of the screen emoji
• and a person holding a baby.

How about one that shows someone tossing their desktop out a window because of all these animated annoyances? Nothing.

"We were reflecting on this past year and thinking what it looks like in emojiland -- and those are the ones that stood out to us the most because it's part of how we live now and interactions that happen all of the time," Anderson told CNN.

Oh, and get this: MS pulled a study out of their hat or somewhere else and the survey says "57% of people believe emojis in the workplace are professional and help humanize conversations. Emojis are often used as tools to lighten or intensify tones, express playfulness or enhance expression."

Adobe put out a study saying that "laugh out loud" is the world's favorite emoji, followed by the "thumbs up" and "red heart" emojis.

What happened to "woman in a red dress dancing Flamenco," "clown," and "eye roll"? I seem to get them all the time!

 

Survey says!

I am a total sucker for these surveys! They used to go around the internet before we all got too busy looking at pictures of Morgan Wallen gettin' all rowdy to fill them out. But here's the latest one: 

Been married  👍🏽 it seemed like the thing to do

Been divorced 👎 I wouldn't give her the dissatisfaction 

Fell in love 👍🏽 and stayed there

Skipped school 👍🏾 regularly but the teachers were happier that way

Watched someone give birth 👎 not a human 

Watched someone die 👍🏽 😢😢😢

Been to Canada 👎 the sleeping giant on our doorstep

Ridden in an ambulance 👍 a time or two

Been to Hawaii 👎 I look bad in a Hawaiian shirt

Been to Europe 👎 I look bad in a beret

Been to Las Vegas 👎 but I hear the buffets are nice

Been to Washington D.C 👍🏼 Had to see the Spirit of St Louis

Been to Texas 👎 Most likely to secede

Visited Florida 👍🏽 Grits with every meal

Visited Mexico 👎 Nunca

Seen the Grand Canyon in person 👎 Peggy has

Flown in a helicopter 👍 Briefly

Been on a cruise 👎 Landlubber

Served on a jury 👍 but they soon dismissed me because I knew too much

Dance in the rain 👎 I told them we were dancing, yes

Been to California 👎 Not yet

Been to New York 👍🏼Slept during "Phantom Of The Opera" on Broadway

Played in band/orchestra in School  👎Hot Cross Buns on the recorder

Sang in the school choir 👍🏼 St George in the Hampton School Christmas show

Sang karaoke 👎 You can't mean this seriously

Laughed so much you cried 👍🏽 "My mother in law drove my new car off a cliff"

Laughed so hard you peed 👎I'm always continent, but once I couldn't breathe

Caught a snowflake on your tongue 👍🏼 and swallowed it whole

Have children 👎 

Had a pet(s) 👍🏽 My Eddie, My Deanna

Been sledding on a big hill 👍🏼 at the SHELL Bldg and then the S burned out

Been downhill skiing 👎 gravity is my enemy

Been water skiing 👍🏼 Martin's Cove

Rode on a motorcycle 👍🏾 as a youth

Traveled to all 50 states 👎 I am wanted in several

Jumped out of a plane 👎 after it landed, yeah

Been to a drive-in movie 👍🏾 no comment

Rode an elephant 👎 I avoid elephants at all costs

Rode a Horse 👍🏼 his name was "Glue Factory"

Been on TV 👍 explaining things

Been in the newspaper 👍 in the tiny type

Been on the radio 👍 for ears for years

Stayed in the hospital alone 👍🏾 the nuns hollered at me

Donated blood  👍🏾82 times

Gotten a piercing 👎for what purpose?

Gotten a tattoo👎 if I do, it will say "BORN TOO LOOSE"

Driven a stick shift vehicle 👍🏾It's like riding a bike; you never forget how

Been scuba diving 👎 no thanks

Been snorkeling 👍🏼fun

Lived on your own 👍🏽 I even annoyed myself

Rode in the back of a police car 👍🏼 wave to all your friends!

Got a speeding ticket 👍🏽 but I have an explanation, your honor

Broken a bone👍🏼 if a toe counts

Gotten stitches 👍🏾  Parts of me look like cross-stitch samplers

Traveled alone 👍🏾He who travels fastest travels alone

Driven over 120👍 no names please

Big Wheel

  

Wisconsin has an official domestic animal. Guess what? It's the dairy cow!

Of course, out there in cheese country, where milk is the official state beverage and cheese is the official dairy product, this stands to reason. But there is no official state cheese! That's not American at all! They are Bleu about that. I can't think of any more cheesy puns, and I don't want to look for one online; that would make me a cheddar.

Anyway, they make 3.4 billion pounds of cheese in Wisconsin every year, more than any other state. But none carries that coveted Official State Cheese sash.

Fear not! People in the state legislature are getting on the case. And a bipartisan bill has been introduced to deal with the matter. They don't want to String you along, but they do ask that if you like volone, you tell someone that you are Provolone.

There seems to be a gouda chance that gouda cheese will be the official cheese, but the legislators need to grill each other about the other choices.

Colby was created in the Central Wisconsin town of Colby in 1885. If you're having a Muenster of a time finding it, go to Wausau, then 40 miles west.

And they still make more mozzarella in Wisconsin, and Cheddar is second, and then some Italian type cheeses, but still, 45 million of those pounds shipped from Wisconsin are pounds of colby.

Do you like colby? It's sort of like cheddar, in the way that Ed Sheeran is like a singer, but not as good as some others. It's just a little sweeter than cheddar and the tangy Emmentaler.

But still, similar bills have come before the legislature, only to be shredded. Some said that naming one cheese as the official cheese would hurt sales of the others, as if I am going to stop buying cheddar cheese for my eggs.

In fact, that notion of choosing one above all really grates on Republican Rep. Rick Gundrum. "There is a wide variety of stores and shops in my district that have a wide variety of cheese that they sell. Cheese is very popular in the state of Wisconsin, as is sausage. I can’t get behind it.”

He means he can't get behind the bill, not a sausage.

No matter how you slice it, the legislators who support this bill say they will continue to whey the evidence.

“As Winston Churchill said, ‘Never give up, never give up, never give up.’ So I am not going to give up," said bill co-sponsor Sen. Kathy Bernier. "Wisconsin does cheese better than anybody else and Colby is the Wisconsin original that helped transform our state into America’s Dairyland.”

I don't know about you, but when I hear talk like that, I just melt. I camembert to think of Wisconsin, a state of which I am fondue, without an official cheese. Perhaps the proponents could get rich people like Ricotta Montalbán or Robert Kraft to help out.

Roll Tide

I love to do the laundry! Peggy did it all for the first many years of our marriage, and that's not fair, so I have more or less taken it over so she can concentrate on more pressing issues such as paying the bills, scheduling repairs and doctor visits, and cat maintenance.  

I get a huge thrill from dumping a load of dirty raiment into one steel box and then another, folding the t-shirts with my shirtfolder (left) and pairing the sox so they look like little cotton toys. Seeing catsup stains go away by using blue Dawn dish soap excites me as much as the discovery of electricity did Ben Franklin, and I don't have to go out in the rain to do it!

Side effects of this hobby include looking at other people's clothes and wondering how they launder, or IF they even do. And I'm quick to offer unsolicited tips, such as using Dawn as spot pre-treatment, and getting little laundry bags for sox so that one of them doesn't wind up in the pocket of a bathrobe or something.

But we can all stop wondering how astronauts do their laundry in space, because...they don't.

Much like kids at camp, they keep on their undies and sox and gym stuff until they can't take the stench any longer, then they toss them in the junkpile.

It's no surprise that NASA does not care for this, Throwing away dirty clothes to be burned up in the atmosphere aboard discarded cargo ships is bad from any angle. They are teaming with Procter & Gamble Co.  - proud manufacturers of Tide - to come up with a space laundry system to those clothes can be reused over and over.

P&G is so into this, they are sending several Tide detergent and stain removal experiments up with the space station later this year to wage an intergalactic battle against soil and stain and ring around the collar.

This is forward thinking, as our nation and others plan to have people living on the moon and Mars in the future. They are not taking suggestions as to who should live up there, though. I checked.

You have to figure, there's not much space on a rocket ship, so if the same T-shirt can be laundered seven times, that saves the space of packing six extra shirts. And astronauts work out a couple of hours every day, because weightlessness is hard on the human bones, and there's no cable out there to watch reruns on. So they need more shirts and shorts than most.

Leland Melvin, former college football player, and astronaut, works out.

First, P&G is going to send up special space detergent so scientists can see how it works out.  After that, they are making stain-removal pens and wipes, and surely will have new SPACE TIDE! on supermarket shelves before you can count down 5-4-3-2-1.

P&G is also working on a washer-dryer that will work on the moon or Mars. There being no drain available on spaceships or distant planets, this machine will use reclaimed water (urine and sweat).

And if that's a challenge to the engineers, think of how the advertising community will sell it to us.

"Hmmm! Smells like last night's iced tea!"

The call the winner Murraya

I have often noticed that every topic we face in life has already been discussed on "The Simpsons."  And now, I am prepared to add another of those six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon things to my list of aphorisms:

Every good thing in life can be traced, directly or indirectly, to Bill Murray.

Here's the latest. You know I would be crazy about 14-year-old Zaila Avant-garde, who last Thursday became the first African American winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee.  She won the prize by correctly spelling the word "murraya." 

<<<<This is murraya. Murraya paniculata is its full Latin name. You can find it as a tree, indoor shrub, or hedge in eastern Asia and Australia. 

Zaila, as all good spellers have always done, spends hours a day reading and learning words. Sometimes, they will employ mnemonic devices to help them remember. She even confirmed to the press that she remembered how to spell "murraya" by associating it with the actor. "I knew murraya because, as I'm sure I kind of implied, I'd always connected it with Bill Murray," she said.

Ms Avant-garde seems to have a bit of the comedian with her; she tossed out a Murray reference before confidently spelling the plant name at Thursday's nationall televised competition, asking, "Does this word contain the English name Murray, which could be the name of a comedian?" 

Later, interviewed by NPR, she said she would "like to say thank you to Bill Murray," explaining she used to listen to the soundtrack to his film Lost in Translation, and "that's how that word was stuck in my head because it was spelled like Bill Murray's name."

Botanist Charles Linnaeus named the plant after one of his Swedish botany students, and since he lived in the 1700s, there's no way he knew anything of the legendary comic actor born William James Murray in 1950.

She must be one of the coolest kids in the world. Besides being a whiz speller, she holds three Guinness world records for basketball dribbling. And she's no purveyor of false modesty. When John Berman of CNN asked her, "Is there anything that you're not good at?" she said "Not really. Just about everything I do, I'm good at." 

She's already being offered full-ride college scholarships, and has four career options in the fire: coaching basketball, working for NASA, or going into either neuroscience or gene editing.

She was given her last name by her father in honor of the late jazz musician John Coltrane.

Oh, and if you want your kids to get ready for next year's Bee, here are some words that Zaila had to spell correctly along the way:  "querimonious," "solidungulate," and "Nepeta." 

 

 

Sunday Rerun from January 2012: You gotta know how to Pony like Bony Maronie

 I'm writing this on Saturday morning, so by the time you are seeing this (and thank you for doing so!) the ballgame between the Ravens and the Patriots will be in the history books.  I really think that for a lot of folks around here, the buildup to big Ravens games is almost as exciting as the game itself.  Everyone is wearing purple in some form, it seems, and jerseys of favorites replace dress shirts for me and dresses for women.  Gorgeous cheerleaders are all over town stirring support, and the Ravens band is playing stirring music.  I heard them on TV playing "Land of 1000 Dances."

Now, you might say, what song is that?  And then I might say, you might know that song as "Na Na Na Na NAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" because the phrase "Land of 1000 Dances" is not mentioned in the lyrics.  And there are but 16 dances mentioned, according to Wikipedia: the Pony, the Chicken, the Mashed Potato, the Alligator, the Watusi, the Twist, the Fly, the Jerk, the Tango, the Yo-Yo, the Sweet Pea, the Hand jive, the Slop, the Bop, the Fish, and the Popeye. 

The dance formerly known as "The Italian Cruise Liner Captain" is now known as "The Jerk."

C & the H's

"Land of 1000 Dances" was first done in 1962 by Chris Kenner, who is also remembered for his other hits "I Like It Like That" and "Something You Got." Kenner wrote it, along with Antoine "Fats" Domino. But when Cannibal And The Headhunters recorded it in 1965, lead singer Frankie "Cannibal" Garcia forgot a couple of lines, substituting "Na na na na naaaaaaa" and vaulting into history in the process.  No one talks about the Chris Kenner version so much, but the Cannibal version and the Wilson "Wicked" Pickett version from '66 were staples at every teen center and swimming pool dance in the 60s.

So the Ravens Marching Band is doing that song and that's why the Ravens won the Battle of the Bands...and more...

The Saturday Picture Show, July 10, 2021

 

In India, a country ravaged by the COVID, this villager brought corn as his way to thank the doctors for giving him his life-saving vaccine. Here, we offer people money and beer and baseball tickets to come and GET the shots. Perhaps we should offer them corn, as well.

Those of you who never worked with tapes, either reel-to-reel or cassettes, will never know the heartbreak of seeing your music or your dictation or whatever you had on tape reduced to a pile of brown spaghetti.

Those Lacoste polo shirts that everyone used to call "alligator shirts" - that was a misnomer. Alligators are not native to France, which is where René Lacoste became a tennis legend. During a Davis Cup match in Boston in the 1920s, Lacoste and his coach got into an argument over a crocodile suitcase, and he decided to play on his fame, and produce white piqué collared shirts in which to play tennis. The shirts all had wee crocodiles on the left breast, so Americans immediately started calling them "alligator shirts," and what can be done about that?

Instead of chopping down the tree, the Mexicans who constructed this apartment built it around the tree, and let the tree thrive.

I'm all for everyone seeing the 1988 movie "Mystic Pizza," starring (l to r) Annabeth Gish, Lili Taylor, and Julia Roberts, before she decided that all she had to do was open her mouth very wide and guffaw. Great performances all around, and reminders of the lessons we all had to learn.

I won't cross this, the Shahara Bridge in Yemen, when I come to it, because I will never come to it. But if it were a mile from my house, I wouldn't cross it either.

My reminder that fall is not that far away! Right now, the people who do the ordering at your local coffee and latte shop are ordering fake pumpkin spice flavorings for you for the end of August.

If this isn't the coolest RV on the road, I don't know what is. It even has a little front porch!

I know that going Paleo and eating like a cave dweller is all the rage, but you can't top this guy for inventing the raw PB & J.

There are warehouses and boxes and desk drawers full of these old disks. No one wants to throw them away because there might be some file they need someday on them. I hereby authorize you to toss them, and if your boss hollers about it, tell him some guy in Baltimore told you to go ahead.

Cat's in the cradle

A few years ago, it was the Vietnamese pot-bellied pig that caught the fancy of Americans who just weren't going to be happy with a dog or a cat or a parakeet. I guess there are still some of them around, but most people got tired of the jokes they would hear when someone invited them over to dinner and they replied with, "Can I bring my pig?"

So, now the cool, hip non-standard pet is the serval (SER-vul) which is a cat from Africa, the sub-Saharan countries, except the rainforests (cats do not like getting wet). They are bigger than the standard house cat but smaller than the standard lion or tiger. Their skinny frames stand 21–24" at the shoulder; they weigh 20–40 lb They have a small head, big ears, a yellow or tan coat with stripes and spots, and short tail with a black tip.

I mention all these identifying details in case you live in the historic Bookhaven neighborhood in Atlanta, where a serval has been roaming free.

Now, when I read the story, it said that Bookhaven is a historic area, and I guess that must mean "a neighborhood where few, if any, crimes take place" because the other day, a man there named David Frank let his dog out sometime after 6 AM, and left the door open for the pooch to come back in.

Guess who came in the house before the dawg? The neighborhood serval, which proceeded directly to the bedroom of the Frank residence where Mrs Frank, Kristine to be exact, was sound asleep at 6:45 when the serval woke her by jumping onto the bed.

This is what cats do at 6:45 AM, if not before then.

"I felt something jump on my bed, and I opened my eyes and it was a large cat on my bed," Frank told The Neighbor newspaper.

Swiftly jumping into action (you can bet he was still in his p.j.s), Mr Frank cleverly locked the serval in the bedroom and then ran around the back of the house to open the other bedroom door, the one that leads to outside. He reports that the serval hissed at him as he bounded away.

I have 5 dollars that says Mrs Frank made some sort of noises at him too.

The Georgia Department of Natural Resources has been on the lookout for a the serval in that area. "It's difficult in an urban situation like this because there are so many places to hide, but we think it's staying in a relatively small area of the neighborhood," DNR Lt. Wayne Hubbard told WGCL.

It's legal to keep a serval as an exotic pet in Georgia, where it is illegal to give water to someone waiting in 96° heat waiting to vote.

Where?

The Simpsons - the family with Bart, not OJ - live in Springfield. So did the Andersons, from "Father Knows Best." 

But it was years after Homer and family were on TV before we found out just which Springfield they called home.

"Springfield was named after Springfield, Oregon," their creator, Matt Groening told Smithsonian magazine. "The only reason is that when I was a kid, the TV show 'Father Knows Best' took place in the town of Springfield, and I was thrilled because I imagined that it was the town next to Portland, my hometown. When I grew up, I realized it was just a fictitious name. I also figured out that Springfield was one of the most common names for a city in the U.S. In anticipation of the success of the show, I thought, 'This will be cool; everyone will think it's their Springfield.' And they do."

This is great, even though it was sad for me to read that Matt Groening grew up. But there they are, way out in one of the many Springfields that dot our nation like cloves on a baked ham. In fact, the U.S. Geological Survey says there are 33 places named Springfield in 25 U.S. states. Five of them are in Wisconsin, which must make for a lot of confusion at the high school cheesemaking competitions. 

Just here in Baltimore County, Maryland, widely regarded as the best county in the nation, we have Phoenix, Jacksonville, Texas, Providence*, Hawthorne, Verona, Fullerton, Stevenson, among other towns that are also famous elsewhere...and some that I am sure are unique to us: Putty Hill, English Consul, Pot Spring.

But the people at the xkcd.com website have made for us a handy map to show that there are duplicate place names from sea to shining sea. They call it "no, the  other one."

My favorite has to be Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania, a borough in Lycoming County, far from Snooki and The Situation and the rest of that crowd.

I can't wait to vacation in scenic Niagara Falls, Mississippi.

____________________________________________

*my home town!

Yabba Dabba Don't

There is one in every town. No matter what sort of town you live in, whether the people in your neighborhood are rich like Scrooge Mc Duck or poor like Sluggo, whether you live on the East Coast or the West Coast or somewhere in the Great Middle, no matter what, you have one.

Talking about the one house in every town where half the cars that pass by slow down to take a look because it's "that house." It could be the house in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, where the owner imported over a million dollars worth of Italian marble to use as siding  - and the neighbors went pazzo (crazy) because carloads of tourists and locals alike were careering down the street to see the shiny marble house, and then turning around to come back the other way so everyone on the driver's side - Dad, Uncle Tony, and Grandma Pearl - could see the place. 

It could be the house where a spurned lover tossed a homemade Molotov cocktail at the front door, only to find that you actually have to light the fuse to achieve the desired results. 

Or it's the place like we see on the way to vacation, where the front yard looks like a giant version of a claw machine, so full of kitschy doodads is it. Bendovers that look like a lady wearing bloomers while weeding the strawberries, profiles of cowboys leaning against the house, old wheelbarrows tipped over with plants growing out of a pile of topsoil, tiny wishing wells, burros, and two mailboxes: one regular, the other on a twelve-foot pole marked "FOR AIR MAIL ONLY."

You can't get away from them. There are houses like this everywhere you go. And sometimes, it winds up in court, like in Hillsborough, California, where the owner of a house built and decorated it like 1313 Cobblestone Way - the address of Mr and Mrs Fred Flintstone.

Hillsborough is one of those neighborhoods in San Francisco that are described as "posh," so the town responded to the outraged complaints from others who live near the place by trying to make them change the look of the place. The owner is a retired publishing mogul, Florence Fang by name, and she likes the way the place looks, even though nothing else around looks like it. 

The town of Hillsborough called the giant dinosaurs and life-size sculptures all over the lawn “a highly visible eyesore.” They brought a suit against Fang, on the grounds that she violated local codes with the dinosaurs and non-typical paint and the odd landscaping. To them, that constituted a public nuisance.

The attorney for Hillsborough, Mark Hudak, said the town has always been proud to have a rustic, rural atmosphere, and has rules in place “so neighbors don’t have to look at your version of what you would like to have, and you don’t have to look at theirs.”

Hudak also said residents have to get a permit before installing such sculptures, 60's sitcom theme or not.  

Time after time, Hillsborough issued stop-work orders, and ordered Fang to remove the Bedrock features around the multimillion-dollar property. The house is a 2,730-square-foot property, after all, not some lean-to in the middle of nowhere.

Well, Fang counter-sued.  And they reached a settlement. Technically, Fang settled with the town, but the agreement they reached says she gets to keep her tribute to Bedrock's First Family.

The agreement goes on to say that the town will "review and approve" a survey of the landscaping theme Fang installed, Fang will apply for building permits and receive them, the town will pay her $125,000, and she will drop her lawsuit.

So, to sum it up: she did wrong, she irritated the neighbors, she did not follow the rules of the town, and she gets to keep things just the same AND get a nice check from the city. 

Here's my chance to turn our house into an Elvis Theme Park. Thankyouverrrrrrmuch.

 

 

Safe to say

In Chicago, a teenager suffered critical injuries, including the loss of his hand, on Sunday after a fireworks-related injury.

In Slater, Iowa, a woman was killed and three others injured when a car pulled out onto the street and ran over people leaving an Independence Day parade.

The Fourth of July fireworks celebration in Ocean City was canceled after some rockets ignited prematurely while being unloaded from the delivery truck.

On Saturday evening, firefighters in Champaign, Illinois rushed to a massive dwelling fire. The cause of the fire is ongoing, but there is a "high probability" that fireworks caused it, the fire department said.

A Murfreesboro, Tennessee man lost part of his hand when he tried to shoot off a firework mortar from the sunroof of his car., Murfreesboro Police said.  A 20-year-old woman riding with the 21-year-old man was also injured.

Columbus Blue Jackets goalie Matiss Kivlenieks is dead at 24 of chest trauma from an errant fireworks blast. He was at a party, in a hot tub, when someone thought the best way to celebrate our nation's Independence was to fire off a mortar round...and aim it at the hot tub.

Last week, a woman who came to Annapolis to see her son inducted into the Naval Academy was sitting outside chatting with friends at a hotel in Maryland's capital city when she was killed by two stray bullets fired by someone who was shooting at a car across the street.

Listen. This is not the tone I usually take in my blog, but doggone it, we are losing and maiming too many of us with this nonsense, this careless driving, foolishness with fireworks (and mortars!) and guns, so I think it incumbent upon us all to take a look at how we can be a little safer so we can all be around a little bit longer.

Spam spam spam spam

 It's the 5th of July, and it was on this date in 1937 that Spam, the cooked pork product in a can, was first sold by the Hormel Corporation.

The day has not yet dawned that I have tasted Spam, and I am happy to tell you why. My father, serving in the US Navy during World War II, was served Spam for breakfast, lunch and dinner more times than he was willing to recount. Also on the bill of fare in the galley of the USS Delta was something that still exists, according to the WWW, but I have never seen: powdered eggs. And he and his fellow bluejackets had to wait in line to be served this gruel.

Because of all this, my father, who was not a bossy person, did lay down several dietary laws in the family home: No Spam. No powdered eggs. And No waiting in line for food. 

Forget the powdered eggs; I can't even imagine them. But Spam is popular, so someone must like it! It is sold in 41 countries on six continents.

If you care to make your own home Spam, just round up some pork and ham (the 90% pig shoulder, 10 percent ham!) and then add salt, water, modified potato starch, sugar, and sodium nitrite. That's a preservative; you don't want your precious fake Spam to go bad on you. Oh, and you will need cans. That's the secret of Spam. They shove all this offal into a can and bake it, which produces a natural gelatin.

Ummm! Natural gelatin! It's almost like you get a free dessert!

And don't even worry about Spam's high amounts of fat, preservatives, and sodium. It's all part of the thrill of eating food whose trade name became the perfect nickname for unwanted email.

But someone, somewhere, likes it, and I'm sure we'll hear from them here:

Happy 4th!

 

Happy 4th of July!  Enjoy the holiday!

The Saturday Picture Show July 3, 2021: Special July 4 Warmup Edition

 

How it began: July 4, 1776. Here's the Second Continental Congress unanimously adopting the Declaration of Independence, announcing the colonies' separation from Great Britain. Great Britain didn't take kindly to it, but oh well.

This is always a great show, live from Washington tomorrow night on PBS.

Nothing is more American than the 4th of July Parade in towns and villages everywhere. Our great local councilman David Marks will be in several of them, for sure. He seems to do 27 things every day anyway, holiday or no.

My old volunteer Fire Company always rides in the parade in Towson.

You have to love a nation with potato salad, for sure.

I love this picture. Even the girl with a broken arm can play the tambourine with her good arm!

Plenty of red, white, and blue this weekend.

Ocean City, Maryland, will have fireworks on the beach as usual.

Happy kids.

So, it started on July 4, 1776. And here's how it's going.

Back To It

I have been "working from home" (retired) since 3:30 PM on March 1, 2012 (but who's counting?), so I understand the Sturm and Drang (storm and stress) that so many people are feeling now that BTO Day is coming.

And by BTO, I do not mean portly Canadian rock group Bachman-Turner Overweight Overdrive, purveyors of such 70s hits as "Let It Ride", "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet", and others too horrible to remember.

The guy second from the right is wearing a prom tuxedo shirt.

No sirreeee, BTO means Back To the Office, and hot-a-mighty, I hear the howling as people are vaccinated and it's safe to return to the salt mines. I know it was easy to get acclimated to working from home, and so much easier to make a grilled cheese on an actual frying pan than in the Xerox machine at work.

When you think about it, companies really are insisting that people come back to work because they are shelling out big bucks for renting these deluxe offices. If they could find a way to keep you home and get rid of that monthly rental, you'd never get out of your pajamas again, but anyway.

I do have one thing to help you out as you bid farewell to the home office and drive back down to the old one, where your calendar still says MARCH 13, 2020 and the Twizzlers in your bottom drawer are somewhat, let's say, chewy.

Just go to https://scoreascore.com/homesick on your office pc and you can create the sounds of home, right in your office! Choose the music that you felt comfortable with as you padded down the hall and sat down to work on the O'Hoolahan files, and the add in what background sounds make you forget you're back in a cubicle...Choose from outside sounds such as Construction, Motorcycles, Birds, Crickets (for night shift!), Suburban Traffic, City Traffic, Leaf Blowers and that all time favorite, Trash Collection.

Then blend in some inside sounds: AC, "Knock at the Door", Coffee Machine, Trapped Fly, What's That Beep?, Dishwasher, and Washing Machine.

Then add pet sounds, neighbor sounds, child sounds, and there you have it...you'll feel at home at work in a jiffy.

Oh - one more Bachman Turner song you might want to play on your way to work - "Taking Care of Business."

Have a great day!

Going Cray-Cray

 

Come with me, gentle reader, to the online pages of Medium.Com, although I am clearly an extra large. They recently posted an article by Simon Spichak, with the intriguing headline Antidepressants in Rivers and Streams Are Making Crayfish Bolder and I think it bears some looking into.

First of all, don't be worried that Crayfish are willfully buying drugs to get over their drab, dull lives. For all we know, they are perfectly happy, just crayfishing it up all day long. But they get drugs in their system two ways:

1 - We take drugs and enjoy their many benefits - euphoria, fearlessness, lowered levels of depression and anxiety - and then, as people will, we void our waste, solid and liquid, if you catch my drift. Poorly managed municipal waste, and recreational fishermen too lazy to walk back to a proper toilet, contaminate crayfish habitats, and put the poor crawdaddy in contact with second-hand selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, what your friendly neighborhood pharmacist calls "just the thing" for treatment of anxiety and depression. Drug companies look for snappy, memorable brand names for their patent medicines, so they call them "Not2Worry" or some such.

And don't forget that bottle of Mother's Little Helper that the doctor prescribed for Aunt Deliria that time when things seemed so bleak, and then, she didn't take the pills so they sat in the medicine cabinet next to the Midol, Pepto-Bismol, and Serutan® ("Nature's spelled backwards). Comes the day someone decides to deep-six all that old junk, so they flush it down the Stanley, and the drugs find their way to marine life.

The journal called "Ecosphere" is out with a study showing that added levels of  antidepressant makes crayfish behave bolder.  And a bold crayfish takes chances and finds his life shortened by being on someone's lunch plate down South.

One common antidepressant, citalopram, effects the human brain by adjusting the levels of serotonin. That's the hormone that stabilizes our mood, and tries to keep us feeling happy and well. The study just conducted shows that citalopram in the water will have an impact on the brain pathways of the crayfish, too.   

Studies showed that crayfish so exposed spent more time darting in and out of their underwater shelters, looking for food more than they used to, and socializing with friends and neighbors much less than before.

Now, this is not going to change the course of our world in the same way as the 47th "Fast And Furious" movie will, but one of the authors of the study, Lindsey Reisinger said:

“Crayfish eat algae, dead plants and really anything else at the bottom of streams and ponds. They play an important role in these aquatic environments. If they are getting eaten more often, that can have a ripple effect in those ecosystems.”

And all because we keep flushing our old pills, so please don't. For Baltimore County residents, there is a drop box by the entrance to each police precinct where pills can be tossed without negative environmental impact.

Save the Crayfish!

Unaccustomed as I am...

Today is my birthday, so instead of sharing a story about a guy who grew a turnip that looks just like Mark Zuckerberg, or a new way of frying an egg by using the dish heater setting on the dishwasher, or railing about the complete disregard for pronunciation and grammar displayed by news anchors, baseball announcers, and the people who answer the phone for multinational corporations, or trying to inveigle my dear readers into watching one of my beloved offbeat quirky movies (The Big Hit, They All Laughed, Ghost World), I am going to tell you, in my standard logorrheic style, how happy I am to be here as I reach three score and ten.

For one thing, I am happy to be alive! A lot of people my age are not, and that includes many a guy or girl I went to school with. A lot of my friends are gone. Some died very young, and some have just recently stepped off the stage, but I miss them all. It's almost laughable how, at 17, I thought I was going to live forever, and very soon came to learn that was not the case. The words of Mickey Mantle ring true now: "If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself." 

Sorry to say this, Yankee fans, but Mantle was a reprobate, a pixillated playboy in pinstripes. We who grew up in Baltimore were lucky to see the example of guys like Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson, Johnny Unitas, Cal Ripken Sr. and Jr.  And Art Donovan, whose jersey number takes on a certain significance today!

They were guys who got to be great because they worked for it day after day. To this day, I wonder how Cal Jr can keep from laughing when he hears about some 24-year-old needing "a day off" after playing baseball for several nights in a row. Cal played 2,632 games in a row and did not need "a day off."

That was the good thing about growing up in Baltimore, Towson, to be specific. We always felt we had the best of everything, but we did not strut around saying we were the best of everything. I wouldn't trade my growing up for any other. My Towson was sort of like Mayberry, as I look back - a small town with quirks and heart. The schools were great, and I never drive past Hampton Elementary or Towson High without having the urge to go in and walk those halls one more time. My junior high, Towsontown, is but a memory now, torn down to build Carver Center, where young people can learn everything from culinary arts to cosmetology to acting, singing, and writing. Great schools, all of them. 

And their purpose was to prepare us for life and work. Before I was even employed, I was a proud volunteer firefighter and that remains a huge part of my being. From the days when I was a clerk at the A&P Supermarket - a union man at 17! - to my days in radio, teaching radio, time in police and fire communications for the County and as facilities manager and, later, a public information specialist for the Health Department, I put in time enough to pension out at 60 and here I am, enjoying life as a retiree, cranking out my blog, posting pictures and quotes, and fooling around reading, listening to music, playing with the cats, staying in touch with the people I love all over the world.

Speaking of people I love...I begin my septuagenarian status together for 48 of those years with the most wonderful woman on earth. Peggy and I went on a blind date that has lasted since June 21, 1973, because we simply and frankly fell in love at first sight, and even though we both still wear glasses, that sight has never dimmed. If you've met me, you know that life with me will mean a lot of commotion and a lot of laughing and a ton of talking...and not one time have we ever had to "talk about working on our relationship" or taken a course in effective marital communications. We say what we want, and since what we want is what's best for each other, no problem.

I can say I've been lucky. I never won a Dodge or anything, but I won a set of car ramps at Pep Boys on Joppa Rd once, and a few dollars came my way from football pools. I have been lucky enough to have two legs and two arms and two ears and two eyes and one half-decent brain. I have always had the jobs I wanted, seen the things I wanted to see, read the books I wanted to, heard my music. People have been very good to me and I have tried to reciprocate in kind. 

Some say, "You've missed out by never visiting Europe or owning a mountain resort or tasting the great food and wines of France." Cape May and Ocean City suit us fine. I don't need a house in the hills; I love this house so much. It has all my stuff in it! And with so many great places to eat here (including our own kitchen!) and I am happy with iced tea, seltzer and cold beer.

That's really all I set out to say. 70 years of happiness as of today, and I thank you for being the best part of it!

And one more quote from Yogi: "If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be."

I think it's as close to perfect as it's ever going to be!

Doggone

I don't know much about dogs, being a cat man myself, but if canines are like felines, they go with what their genes tell them.

Your standard house cat has been bred for centuries to follow the lead of his leonine forebears and sleep twenty hours a day attack the slightest morsel of food sitting around the house to feed the rest of the pride back home.

Here's a case of a dog living up to his name. Out in Spokane, a doggy dogg was ejected from his family's car when it was involved in an accident.

For two long agonizing days, her family walked the floors, wondering where she had bolted. Linda Oswald, her family, and Tilly The Dog were cruising along Idaho State Highway 41 the Sunday before last when their car collided with another.  And the rear window blew out, and that launched Tilly out of the car and onto the world.

Tilly was totally unhurt, but she took off on foot (paw), and what do you know? At least six complete strangers pulled over along the highway to help the Oswalds look for her.  But no luck.

All told, the searchers were out on the hunt for 10 hours that Sunday.

“People just kept going out,” Oswald said. “We were sore and exhausted.”

Then, the family took the 21st Century approach and put the whole deal on a Facebook post that included a picture of Tilly, a 2-year-old border collie and red heeler mix. That post was shared by more than 3,000 people. And three of the people who saw it were Tyler, Travis and Zane Potter.  They had seen the dog in the wanted poster hanging around on their family farm near Rathdrum, Idaho, on Tuesday.

The Oswalds and the Potters figure that the dog was attracted to their farm because they have sheep.

“I think that dog was trying to herd,” Travis Potter said.

So Tilly is home, the Oswalds are happy about it, and shepherd dogs will do what shepherd dogs will do!

Good thing she's not a boxer. They might have found her in a gym sparring with a middleweight.

Louie, Louie

I've said a thousand times that I must have missed the day in school when they explained the Solar System, or maybe I was in the vice-principal's office for some routine questioning. Whatever the reason, while the rest of you know all about the sun and moon and stars and planets, I only know two things for sure when it comes to astronomy:

a) It's different from astrology (as if I know anything about that either)

2) I know more about it that Louie Gohmert.

 Louis Buller (Louie) Gohmert Jr. is a United States Congressman from the first district of the state of Texas. Last summer, when he tested positive for COVID-19, he blamed it on wearing a mask, which he was not wearing when he called his entire staff into a room to tell them he had the virus.

He once said that people who "are a little bit crazy are the people that always do the best on foreign policy.”

He once got into an argument with the Attorney General of the United States, claiming that the United States government could have done more to prevent the Boston Marathon bombings. Goehmert ended the byplay by hollering (he does that a lot), “The attorney general will not cast aspersions on my asparagus!”

So, he's clearly not on the Top Ten list of Washington Brains. But his latest hard-to-explain statement is, well, hard to explain.

In a House subcommittee hearing the other day, Louie said, "I was informed by the immediate past director of NASA that they have found that the moon's orbit is changing slightly and so is the Earth's orbit around the sun."

"We know there's been significant solar flare activity. And so, is there anything that the National Forest Service or BLM (Bureau of Land Management) can do to change the course of the moon's orbit or the Earth's orbit around the sun? Obviously, that would have profound effects on our climate."

 His point is that there is a connection between the moon and Earth's orbit and solar flares and climate change. He was questioning US Forest Service Associate Deputy Chief Jennifer Eberlien, and he asked if the National Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management could change the orbits of the moon and Earth.

Read that again if you need to. Even I know that only Superman can move the planets. And the National Forest Service is too busy sweeping the forests, anyway.

Ms Eberlien's response was that she "would have to follow up with you on that one, Mr. Gohmert."

But how can she?

Sunday Rerun (from 2019): What Else Is On

 It was former FCC Commissioner Newton Minow who described television as a "vast wasteland" in a 1961 speech, and Newt, it ain't gotten much better since.

What brings this to mind is the sad, sad news that hundreds of Americans will soon be parking it in the big old recliner in front of the 48" Sony to watch Season 2 of Celebrity Big Brother.  Get ready for this list of luminaries about to light up living rooms from San Diego to Schenectady:

• Tamar Braxton, whose sister is famous.
• Anthony Scaramucci, who was Trump's mouthpiece for a week.
• Dina Lohan, whose daughter is famous.
• Ryan Lochte, the most obnoxious thing in a pool since that Baby Ruth bar in "Caddyshack"
• Kato Kaelin, who once mooched off O.J. Simpson
• Joey Lawrence, famous for saying, "Whoa!" on "Blossom."
• Ricky Williams, who chose marijuana over continuing to play pro football (so he's famous for saying "Whoa!" on blossoms.)
• Lolo Jones, who's one of the few people ever to compete in both the Winter and Summer Olympics (so maybe she'll be on the regular "Big Brother" too)
• Tom Green, whose movie "Freddy Got Fingered" set new frontiers for lovers of humor that makes you want to throw yourself off the roof

Kato Kaelin, who lived in O.J. Simpson's pool house, is seen here at the
former football legend's trial, trying to remember meeting O.J. Simpson

Julie Chen Moonves, who added her husband Les Moonves's surname to her own right after they hauled his cheating lecherous leering self out of CBS last fall, will join this merry band as master of ceremonies.

Public libraries, bookstores, parks and petting zoos are still open, by the way.