Shenanigans, Incorporated

An old man I knew long before becoming one myself used to say, "Some people just can't find enough ways to make damned fools of themselves."

And he would know these things; his nickname was "Doc."

For our latest example, I present this stable American, a Utahan who recently took a notion to take an excavator from a construction site in Salt Lake City, drive said excavator a mile to a grocery store, and tear the pavement up in the parking lot.

It was noontime, a couple of Saturdays ago, when police went to check out calls they were getting about a random guy making random passes in the grass strip and sidewalk at Smith's Grocery Store.

The cops took photos and videos of the brand-new mudhole trench in the parking lot to entertain the prosecutors. The suspect, who has been enjoying being in police custody, caused "significant damage" by tearing out a water pipeline and ripping out brand-new fiber optics utility lines. At least he didn't hit the gas line, probably because he didn't know where it is.

The whole stupid thing started when someone left the excavator running at another site. I'm sure from time to time, every one of us has left their excavator  running, I mean, you never even dream that some joker will rip it off, but here you have it, that one-in-a-million shot. The construction crew piled into someone's pickup and chased the heavy machine to the supermarket, a scene that must have reminded stunned passersby of something out of "The Dukes Of Hazzard." 

Witnesses at the grocery put down their bagsful of rotisserie chickens and pound cake long enough to corral the unidentified suspect until the police showed up.

 Why would he (of course it was a "he") do this? Practicing for his final exam in heavy equipment school? A grudge against the supermarket for being stingy with their sandwiches? A lost bet, a won bet, a bad day at the track, a broken romance, a desire to be on the 7 O'Clock news? 

I'll bet you a roast beef sandwich that the USA leads the world in chuckleheaded clowns. 

Gotcha

The sad fact is that a lot of the horrible huge forest fires out in the Western part of the US are the result of the actions of human beings...like 85% of them. Unattended campfires, foolish burning of debris, equipment use and accidents (Cars, heavy machinery), carelessly discarded smoking materials...and of course, arson, the most despicable cause. 

With so many fires gobbling up homes, businesses, cars and woodlands, it's only natural that people are fighting back. Here you go...

In deep Southwest Oregon, there was a man suspected of intentionally setting forest fires way back up in the woods. It goes without saying that in remote sections of the country, the police are not right around the corner. So, three local residents tracked this clown down and tied him to a tree until authorities could arrest him, according to the police who arrested him (and they ought to know)!

This took place in Curry County, Oregon in an area that is only accessible by river or by Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management roads.

A Land Management employee happened to be around the area where several fires had sparked up, and he saw a white male adult walking along the gravel road...and accused him of starting the blazes.

While the county sheriff's office called for firefighters to put out the fires, they were locating the suspected arsonist....with help on both scores from local residents.

“Three local residents of that area located the suspect walking on the roadway near the fires and detained him until law enforcement arrived on scene,” said Curry County Sheriff’s Office in a statement on social media. “It was reported that the suspect became very combative with the three residents and had to be tied to a tree to subdue him.”

When the deputies arrived, the suspect, one Trennon Smith from Veneta, Oregon, was helped off the tree but needed to be taken to the local hospital to be treated for injuries he received during the incident.

The citizens involved in his detention, to a man, stated that "he fell."

“Once he was medically cleared, he was transported by USFS law enforcement to the Curry County Jail and lodged on [two counts of] Arson in the First-Degree … and Reckless Burning,” said the Curry County Sheriff’s Department. “Smith was also lodged on a Detention Warrant out of Lane County for probation violation.”

Sheriff John Ward thanked all concerned for their help in suppressing the fires and holding the alleged arsonist.

I don't know anything about Oregon but I do know a thing or two about people who live in remote areas. They know the cops won't be there real soon, but if you are dumb enough to try to burn their forest up, you will wish for the police to come get you in one great big hurry.

 

I can't believe this

A great many people enjoy tying on the feedbag at Cracker Barrel, either while on the highway (almost all of their 663 Cracker Barrel Old Country Stores are within a softball's toss of an interstate) or, like us, taking a 20-mile drive up some back roads to dine there. The food is above average, the atmosphere is convivial - you can play checkers on the front porch and in the wintertime there's a big fire going in the dining room hearth - and you can shop for gifts for Uncle Leon and Aunt Fritzi when you're finished chowing down. It feels like a second home for a lot of people.

It is a business, though, and like any well-run corporation, they look to offer their customers the best variety of eats. So, recently, they added a new product to their menu with the addition of plant-based sausage.

Notice, I said the addition of plant-based sausage.

Now, I have to be honest with you, as always. This old boy is not about to eat a plant-based sausage. I have plant-based salads all the time, and I like broccoli and string beans and a whole host of green things. 

However, I have been a pork sausage man since I was a barefoot boy with cheek of tan, and I can promise you two things in this world. One of them is that I will not eat plant-based sausage.  If you'd like to know the other thing I promise, send me fifty dollars in cash.

But notice, I said I am not eating the new fake sausage in my "Old Timer’s Breakfast," "Grandpa’s Country Fried Breakfast," and the "Cracker Barrel’s Country Boy Breakfast." And it's not because the new sausage costs an extra twenty cents.  

And I didn't say you shouldn't be able to order it,  if that's what floats in your grits.

Here is what I can't figure out. Cracker Barrel Nation is voicing their opinion loudly about the change. They don't like it, they don't choose it, and they don't want YOU to either.

Social media is fairly ablaze with irate sausage lovers saying that this new menu option (OPTION!!!!!) is wrecking their image of their beloved roadside fill-'er-up. 

"YOU CAN TAKE MY PORK SAUSAGE WHEN YOU PRY IT FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS," Facebook user Mark Vige commented. "DON'T TREAD ON MY PORK!"

I always view with great disdain any post made in all caps unless it refers to Alabama winning another national championship, so come on, Mr Vige.

Someone named Joe Wicker, who says he loves the "the double meat breakfast," says that Cracker Barrel's VP of marketing should be fired. He feels the new sausage is "a woke social experiment based on ideology and not business."

Something else for which I harbor great disdain is the insincere use of the term "woke." Go back to sleep, Joe.

So all the Barrel tried to do here was offer an alternative to their customers. Nowhere did it say that you can't have real pork sausage anymore. 

What kind of stupid nation are we becoming? First, we have millions of people paying millions of dollars to a porcine radio host who, most evilly, claims that the dead children of Sandy Hook were not real.

And now we have people saying they don't like others having meat options for breakfast, as they stomp their feet and trudge away.

Stupid.

Thank You for Being A Friend

If you hear "July 30" and you think, "Oh! That's National Golden Girls Day!"* you will probably want to hear about a place where you can have a nice meal and live for a while in the world of Dorothy, Rose, Blanche and Sophia. 

There is a pop-up cafe in Los Angeles, which is where things are always popping up. It came with the blessings of Disney, which owns the rights to the old NBC sitcom which ran seven seasons, beginning in 1985. The theme of the place is, of course, aging, dating, and cheesecake.

It's called The Golden Girls Kitchen, and they're getting people from all over to come dine in the memories. Some of these fans probably attended the GoldenCon convention in Chicago held recently and are hoping that the rumors of a reboot for the show will come true.

Joe Saunders and his family, from Cranston, Rhode Island, were touring Northern California when they heard about the place, and headed south just to see it.

“I was a little hesitant about coming but my kids’ mom really wanted to come,” said Saunders, who was wearing a T-shirt referencing the sitcom’s fictitious Shady Pines retirement home. “It’s been a good time... the lasagna, the strawberry daiquiri and I’m going to have a piece of cake with ice cream, too.”

A.J. Maloney, just 23, said it's been "so heartwarming to see my mom light up. I know that she’s watched the show at least 50 times each season,” so he and his mom, Shellee, 45, came up from San Diego to be there.

 It's all been put together by a firm called Bucket Listers. Derek Berry, their "Director Of Experiences," has done this with food venues saluting other shows, such as “Saved By the Bell,” “Breaking Bad,” and “Beverly Hills 90210." Berry says if a show has “staying power” and "people are constantly quoting it," it would make a good place to eat, so “Golden Girls” was inevitable.

“Every time we announce a pop-up, we look at the comments. People are like ‘I love it, but you should have done this!’ And it’s always ‘Golden Girls,’” said Berry.

Executive chef Royce Burke came up with appropriate menu items and names...such as Sicilian Sophia's lasagna, all the various cheesecakes they mentioned on the show, and the Scandinavian delicacies Rose bubbled over in her stories about her hometown of St. Olaf, Minnesota.

“I like all the St. Olaf items where you never knew if they were real or not,” Berry said. “We threw a couple on there. It’s so fun to see my staff and myself try to pronounce them.”

The plan for now is to stay open in LA through October, and then take the restaurant show on the road to New York, Chicago, San Francisco and, of course, Miami, the most Golden Girlish city in the world.

Of course, none of the Golden Girls is still with us. Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan, and Estelle Getty all passed in the 2000s and the beloved Betty White left us last  last December at 99. But the show lives on, with cable reruns and Hulu streaming, and some people still probably have the DVD Box Set. 

A real-life quartet of Golden Girls - Shirley Lyon and three girlfriends from Palos Verdes, California, came to dine with their own drinkware. They made mugs with their own faces printed instead of those of the characters. 

“People here, I think, all love them,” Lyon said. “I don’t think anybody comes who hasn’t experienced how precious they are. I just love their friendship.”

 *It's also National Cheesecake Day.

Old Bluetooth Is Back

I have time to look things up now, and I'm not limited to the World Book Encyclopedia! (By the way, the rumor has it that Yogi Berra was asked whether he planned to get his young son an encyclopedia, and according to legend, Yogi said, "No! Let him walk to school, like I did.")

World Book aside, I have the world of Google to look things up. I have always wondered what the deal is with Bluetooth. I mean, it connects two things that are not connected, so there must be magic or wizardry or sorcery involved, so that I can get annoying telephone calls right on the dashboard while I'm driving to Aldi. And wireless headphones! Hurray! And it's all done by low-power radio waves on a frequency between 2.400 GHz and 2.483.5.

SO! That's how it works! And what's with the name? It's not from some currently-living inventor named Leon Bluetooth, but rather, for an old European king! 

Harald Gormsson was the king of Denmark from about 958 to about 986. No, I didn't skip the "1" in 1958. He was on the throne a long, long time ago. He was "Gormsson" because he was the son of King Gorm The Old and his missus, Thrya Dannebod. It was Harald, a Viking, who converted to Christianity and founded some of the first churches in Denmark.

Because of a tooth that was probably dead, owing to a paucity of mall dental clinics at the time, he was lovingly called "Bluetooth" by his subjects, as modern people here sometimes called their president "Orangehead" due to imprudent use of tanning beds. 

There is a debate raging in Europe now as the whether old Harald was actually buried in Wiejkowo, an area of northwestern Poland, or in Roskilde, in Denmark. The coin seen below is central to the discussion. It came to the attention of historians in 2014, when an 11-year-old girl presented to a museum this small, soiled coin that had been in her family’s possession for decades. It was shown to date from the 10th century.  The Latin words on it say “Harald Gormsson (Curmsun in Latin) king of Danes, Scania, Jomsborg, town Aldinburg.”

The girl's family obtained it in 1945, after World War II, when the region became part of Poland. It had been found and archived in 1841 when a new chapel replaced the old in Wiejkowo.

The debate about where Harald is buried will probably continue. If you go to Europe anytime soon, you can report back to us using your Bluetooth connection. 

And why did they name the system for Harald? Because, just as Bluetooth technology connects your phone to your earbuds, old Harald connected much of Scandinavia during his lifetime. 

The Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson, inventors of the technology, named their wireless link system to honor the king. And the logo you see everywhere Bluetooth is came from from the Scandinavian runic letters for the king’s initials, HB.

Sunday Rerun (from 2015): The Fleek Is In!

 I like to think I stay up with the English language, both the formal variety that frowns on people saying, "Your looking great" or, "I should of stayed home that night"  and the colloquial, in which people say something is "bad" when they think it's good, or "sick" when it's well, or "near miss" when two airplanes nearly hit, and "the alarm went off" when, in fact, it went on.

I love language and the words it uses.  And I read a lot, from newspapers to magazines to almanacs and biographies, and you know what?  That's a good way to run into a lot of words, and when I come across a word I don't know, I like to look it up.

And so, it has come to my attention that a new term meaning great, good, fantastic, groovy, marvelous, purt-near-perfect is being used.

I like to have a picture with every blog entry, but what picture could I use
to illustrate a word?  Then it hit me...this is a picture of a Taylor Pork Roll
sandwich from Uncle Bill's in Cape May, which is three fleeks right there!

I have to admit, I thought I heard it wrong the first time someone said someone was "on fleek." I thought they were saying they were down on Fleet Street, and I thought, oh man, I have to go down to Fell's Point to pick her up?

But "on fleek", a term that no one can really pinpoint the etymology of, means all of the above terms.  Your hair is on fleek. That song is on fleek. Your shirt, your sox, the sandwich you gobbled at lunch, your roommate's willingness to share the cheese tray her mother sent her, and the likelihood that love will follow a new bride and groom all the days of their lives: all of these things are on fleek.

And just so you know, I checked, and it's not all right to say that rotten fish, running out of gas on the Beltway, losing your all-day MTA pass and catching a cold from the snotty cashier at the Save'N'Run are "off fleek."

The Saturday Picture Show, August 6, 2022

 

Snoopy had the right idea. Music is to be enjoyed!

Nature has a way of looping around good things, such as this bison scratching his head on a bison sign. I don't know that the sign means. Perhaps it's a bison bus stop?

I must have tacos on my mind this week (as usual). Birthday Piñata, anyone?

This is Baltimore's famous Graffiti Alley. Edgar Allan Poe lived his last dissolute days here.

Five of the greatest men in the history of music met in Hamburg in November 1962 when The Beatles appeared on the same bill as Little Richard. The Fab Four did their versions of some of the The Innovator's songs, such as “Long Tall Sally,” “Lucille” and “Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey!”

Taco Two for today: you can always store your sunglasses somewhere else in exchange for making sure you always have lunch ready.

Another idea I pass along to all elementary schools is this one, called The Friend Bench. The idea is that a kid who doesn't have anyone to play with will sit there and some good soul will come along and offer a chance to be friends. I like it.

I will vote for him if Calvin is on the ticket as Vice-President!

People often ask me to "name a movie you have seen dozens of times" and I usually mention "Uncle Buck." I understand that there are people who have never seen it, and I urge them to check it out as soon as possible! That way you will know why Marcie Dahlgren-Frost gets compliments on her hyphen. Sure she would!

My Magic 8 Ball went crazy and kept giving me the answer "Couldn't give you a bigger NO on that, buddy boy!"

Take Me To The Other Side

Noted prankster Vincent Van Gogh left behind a self-portrait that was only discovered when someone decided to look behind another of his masterpiece paintings, said the National Galleries of Scotland.

Van Gogh (1854 - 1890) was not at all successful during his lifetime, which ended when his longtime depression overtook him and led him to commit suicide by pistol. Long before that, he led a dissolute life, suffering from psychotic episodes and failure to maintain standards of physical health, drinking heavily, eating improperly, and hacking off a chunk of his left ear with a razor after arguing with fellow painter Paul Gauguin. 

History shows us that while the two often bickered about how much butter to slather onto a baguette, and whether a three-hour lunch was too long, the final fight came when Gauguin argued that artists should work from their imagination, and Van Gogh claimed that art should only be based on nature. The melee ended with Van Gogh asking Gauguin to imagine how Van G would look with half an ear.

The end came in 1890, but at some point before that, Van Gogh created his painting “Head of a Peasant Woman.” An interesting aspect of his painting was that, in much the same way I will use old envelopes, grocery lists, and subpoenas to leave notes for myself ("Buy envelopes!) ("Buy Groceries!") ("Respond to subpoena!"), old Vincent would save money on canvases by flipping them over and painting on the other side.  

Above, you see the painting of the peasant woman, and to the right, his selfie. For over a century, the selfie side was covered by layers of glue and cardboard, only to be revealed by a routine x-ray. It's obviously an early work, because, well, because we see his whole left ear.

Senior Curator for the National Galleries of Scotland, Frances Fowle, calls this discovery "thrilling."

“Moments like this are incredibly rare,” she said. “We have discovered an unknown work by Vincent Van Gogh, one of the most important and popular artists in the world.”

While art experts figure out how to get the glue and cardboard off the canvas without wrecking either side of it, the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh will allow patrons to see the X-Ray picture through a lightbox. 

If you stop over at the house some afternoon, I will show you the X-Ray of my knee replacement, which makes my left leg look like something made of Legos.

I'd like to order Shrimp Fried Rice and a metal fork

Let me start this by saying that even before my left hand became bedeviled with the arthritis, I always lacked the manual coordination required to eat with chopsticks. I watched instructional videos, I followed the directions on the chopstick packages, I even had one-on-one tutoring from someone proficient in the art of maneuvering food from plate to mouth with the use of two skinny sticks.

"All to Noah Vale," as I recently saw someone write. They meant, "all to no avail," and that's the deal with me and chopsticks. Pass the fork, please.  And the shrimp fried rice. 

I do understand that people have been using the sticks for over 5,000 years, and that a third of the people in the world have mastered the art for their daily dining. But now I feel a little better about letting restaurants wash the fork I use, because a great many of the world's chopsticks are single-use, and that is leading to a serious environmental problem.

It can't be anything but a problem when you think that 80 billion pairs of sticks per year are tossed into landfills. In China, they figure 100 acres of aspen, birch, and bamboo are deforested every DAY to make more chopsticks. There are always efforts underway to get people to switch to reusables, but since disposable is so easy....you know how it goes.

Chopstick factory

Felix Böck, of Vancouver, is working on the problem and trying to get people not to use single-use sticks. The founder of ChopValue, a company that uses recycled chopsticks to create "stunning, high-performance office furniture, home decor, kitchen accessories and games," Böck says, "In Vancouver alone, we’re throwing out 100,000 chopsticks a day. They’re traveling 6,000 or 7,000 miles from where they’re manufactured in Asia to end up on our lunch table for 30 minutes.”

When you put it that way, it seems foolish.

Böck started his business in 2016, on the grounds that if people won't stop using single-use sticks, there's something better than just dumping them in landfills. His people pick up around 350,000 used chopsticks from over 300 restaurants every week, and turn them into bookshelves, cutting boards, coasters, desks, and custom decorations. Böck says his outfit has kept over 50 million pairs of sticks out of landfills since it began.

“Once you see the volume, you think maybe that little humble chopstick can be the start of something big,” Böck says. “My expertise is in bamboo, so I always looked at chopsticks differently. I used to joke to my friends that I would make something out of chopsticks, since most of the ones we use in North America are made of bamboo.”

Of course, you don't just pick up a barrel of used bamboo from The House of Lo Mein and turn that into a set of shelves. First, the sticks are coated in a water-based resin, then sterilized at 200 degrees for five hours. Then a machine breaks the wood into composite slab of board, which get sanded, polished, painted or whatever.

And then, “This material is then the core piece for everything from desks and table tops to home decor,” Böck says.

In case you want to try your hands at making yourself a desk from your old chopsticks, keep ordering from China Delight until you have 10,854 sticks! That's how many it takes.

And, in a neat circular loop, there is a restaurant chain called Pacific Poke that recycles its chopsticks with ChopValue, and then buys decorations and new tables for its restaurants from them!

“I think change starts small, and change can be a very relatable thing that we all know from daily life,” Böck says. “Right now, we’re focusing on the chopstick because it’s a very powerful story, but I think there are so many other urban resources where we can make this work.”

R you kidding me

Here in seafood country, we have a saying: "Oysters 'R' in season" - to remind us that fresh oysters are plentiful in all months except those without an R in them - May, June, July, and August. 

Come September 1, we'll all be in an oyster stew!

But R is an important letter in many words and it should never be left out. F'rinstance, in New Mexico, which many people think is a foreign place to begin with, there is an enchanting city called Albuquerque.

And as hard as it is to spell now, think of how it used to be! The city's website will tell you,  there used to be another R in there. The website informs us that it was King Philip, the King of Spain, who granted permission in 1706 for some colonists to start a community down on the banks of the old Rio Grande river.

By way of thanks, the governor of the colony, Francisco Cuervo y Valdés, wrote an email to the Duke of Alburquerque in Spain to tell him he had a burgeoning city named in his honor: La Villa de Alburquerque. No one is even sure where they got that tongue-twisting name, but one school of thought says it's from the Latin "alba quercus," meaning "the white oak."

Later on, the first R was dropped because so many fifth graders couldn't get Alburquerque right on tests, and neither could their parents and half of the city officials, so they decided to go with "Albuquerque." 

But not even that simplified spelling was within reach of the highway sign shop, where the New Mexico Dept of Transportation proudly put up a new sign showing drivers the road to "Albuqueque."

The sign was placed on Route 66 and I-40.

Kimberly Gallegos, a department spokesperson said it didn't take long for people to call and email about the error. “I do not recall this happening before,” Gallegos said. “But I honestly think this was just a simple mistake.”

And she said a corrected sign went up already, so all is well in Albuwhatever. 

Putt that was yesterday

So, what did you do over the weekend? Maybe you went to a birthday party, maybe you took in a show or a movie, maybe you took naps, maybe you grilled some burgers...

But if you are Cole Hetzel, Chris Hetzel, Tony Centers, or Bob Schoettinger from out of Erlanger, KY, you were part of a foursome setting a new Guinness World Record by playing 2,097 holes of miniature golf in 24 hours.

Hetzel, Hetzel, Centers, and Schoettinger teed off on Sunday morning and sank their last puts yesterday morning, eclipsing the former record set in 2005, when a team from Germany played 1,440 holes.

These fellows from Kentucky are regulars at Putt-Putt Golf of Erlanger.

They even made sure it was official by having scorers on hand to tick off the strokes. Of course, once the evidence will be submitted to Guinness for verification, they will be "in the book."

And this is not just a way for four mini-golf pals to spend a day. As you heard, there were floods in Eastern Kentucky late last week, and tornadoes in both Goshen and Mayfield, and this exhibition was geared to raise money for Matthew:25 Ministries and their relief efforts.

Cole Hetzel is a 2021 high school graduate now attending DePauw University. He enjoys sports and setting unique records with his father, Chris. Their previous endeavors have included 30-hour backyard wiffleball marathons. 

Sounds like a fun family to me!

Horrible pay, but you are off on Sundays

To be quite honest, as I always am, it's not the super piety that annoys me about Chick-fil-A. I mean, their "We're so religious, we're closed on Sunday, but you sinners just go right on over to McDonald's or something" is pretty sad, and their charitable endeavor, the WinShape Foundation, donated millions of dollars to organizations seen by LGBT activists as hostile to LGBT rights.  As a longtime stockholder in the firm of Live & Let Live, this offends me.

And I ate lunch there one day with an old friend who assured me I would love it. In the hour lunch break that we shared, I guess I spent about 10 minutes talking to him. The rest of the time, I had to deal with the hyped-up hostess, who kept bopping over to our table every 37 seconds to see if there was "Any little thing I can do for you all!" 

But I am not so pure of spirit that I would drive past Home Depot if I needed some lag bolts if going all the way over to Lowe's would cost time and gas, even though the Depot supports the reelection campaign of Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.),  who in turn supports the white-supremacist “great replacement” conspiracy theory. 

That reminds me, I might need nuts for those lag bolts.

No, I can overlook a certain amount of corporate politics just because I am not apt to align with any huge profit machine. My objection to CFA is simple: their food disgusts me. Greasy slabs of chicken on a spongy hamburger roll? No thanks. 

So I say, I don't go there, and I don't think they care. But here is another reason to view them with a gimlet eye.

One of their "stores" in North Carolina tried a new way to get their work done. They asked for “volunteers” willing to be paid in crummy chicken sandwiches, rather than money, for working at their drive-through.

“We are looking for volunteers for our new Drive Thru Express!” the outlet in Hendersonville, N.C., put on Facebook the other day (and then they took it down).  “Earn 5 free entrees per shift (1 hr) worked. Message us for details.”

This sort of "volunteer employee" status would appear to conflict with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the federal law that says employers have to pay employees for the work they do.  You really wouldn't think such a law would be necessary, but then again...

The CFA in question says this is not a job, so sireee Bob! This is a “volunteer-based opportunity” intended for people who “think it’s a good fit for them,” so that ain't like no job or nothin'.

“We’ve had multiple people sign up and enjoy doing and have done it multiple times,” the store posted. “People who sign up for this chose it voluntarily.”

A spokesperson for Chick-fil-A corporate, down in their Atlanta headquarters, told The Washington Post that the Hendersonville store had “decided to end this program.”

“Most restaurants are individually owned and operated, and it was a program at an individually owned restaurant,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “This was not endorsed by Chick-fil-A, Inc.”

Meanwhile, the manager at the said he had no comment, and suggested that the medic contact the corporation...the same people who said go ask him. 

Jennifer Haigwood, director of communications for the North Carolina Department of Labor, said the FLSA’s requirements regarding private for-profit employers “are clear that there cannot be an employee who provides ‘volunteer’ work for that for-profit employer.”

“Generally, labeling a worker as a ‘volunteer’ will not remove the employer from its FLSA obligation to pay the required wages if that individual performs work that benefits the for-profit entity,” Haigwood said.

The CFA in question once employed Madison Cawthorn, recently unelected for a second term in the US Congress. Now that he will be out of work soon, perhaps volunteering at his old place will help him land a solid job that he can keep for more than two years!

Back home here, I am compiling a list of dream jobs I would like to volunteer for:

• Orioles first-base coach
• Being the "Big Al" elephant-suited mascot at Alabama football games
• Beef taster at Ruth's Chris
• Grand Ole Opry singer
• Circuit Court judge
• Graffiti installer
• Game show host or booth announcer ("It's a lifetime supply of Turtle Wax!")
• Tattoo parlor spell checker
• Maître d' at a fancy steak restaurant where bigshots vying for a table will palm me folded double-sawbucks
• Fortune cookie writer
• Roller coaster tester
• Google Street View driver
• Professional, paid blogger

And that's when I woke up.

 

Sunday Rerun: ...On the other hand...

 You know the old saying, currently popular in D.C: "the shoe's on the other foot now."  That would really be uncomfortable.  But how about if the pencil's in the other hand?

In my neverending search to find new interesting material to share, my web surfboard washed up on a site called http://hubpages.com/education/Creativity-and-the-Non-dominant-Hand

and this is some fascinating stuff right here.  


This article makes the point, or tries to, that if you are stuck in a mental logjam, or a bucket of strawberry jam, you can get your brain back in gear by...using your other (non-dominant) hand.

Read the article with either hand on the mouse, and see if you think it would work.  

Yessirree Bob! 

Have you ever, for instance, sprained your wrist reaching for a lunch check (laughter) and found yourself unable to use your right hand for mousing purposes for awhile?  I know someone who had shoulder surgery and is currently left-mousing it, and from all indications, it is not easy.  

The article says if you pick up your pen with your other hand and write with just that hand for a week or two, you will:

• soon be writing legibly with the new hand
• have all sorts of new thoughts to write about in your new handwriting
• find that hoodie that you thought you left at the pool but wasn't there when you checked the lost-and-found

And THEN, the article says, if you normally write with your right hand, use that hand to write a question, and write the answer with your newly-trained left hand.

They say it works! To quote from the story: 

 It is allowing that part of your mind, which normally 'switch-boards' through the right-hand side of your brain, access to consciousness via writing. The predominantly 'creative' right hemisphere of the brain, which channels most of our imaginative processes, our sense of rhythm, spatial awareness, our daydreaming, colour and sense of dimension, our 'picturing' and visualization, is thereby made available. The flow is through the right-brain and down through that left hand.

I will leave it to the clinical psychologists among us - and you know who you are - to determine if this is valid.

My plan, since I'm left handed, would be to take that hand and write "What the heck is this consarned reverse-hand foolishness?" and then see what the right hand writes.

It's funny how we always put on the same shoe first, or use the same hand to brush our teeth.  

It works better if you use a toothbrush, you know.

The Saturday Picture Show, July 30, 2022

 

"I know the hot dog and beer guys will be along soon...."

I was telling a friend, one of the most beautiful things to me is to see old steel getting rusty. I love those highway guardrails that are deliberately left untreated so they can rust naturally. It's just a pretty color, for me.

This is either a close-up of some multicolored pasta or an extreme close-up of one of those rubber band balls. Fun either way!

Taco Bell had a dollar-a-taco deal going on one Sunday long ago and one of the guys at 911 volunteered to take a C note over there and come back with a ton of tacos. There were no leftovers.

Oh, the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth the other day when Klondike announced they weren't going to make Choco Tacos anymore, and then everyone realized they hadn't had one since 1997, so go off...

This is tomato time and I hope everyone's crop is flourishing nicely. I love these cherry tomatoes a lot - just drop them in a salad and away you go!

There's no law against going airborne in baseball. Here's Cedric Mullins of the Orioles careering home the other night. After years of lackluster teams, we Baltimore fans have a team worth cheering for now! 

The sunflowers in Austria look great already, and soon the fields around here will wave their brown and gold and we'll all go pose for pictures!

It just wouldn't be New York to just say "No Parking Anytime."

This week's free wallpaper shows why living on a farm offers sights no citydweller can match.

Holey Hell

Here's the kind of story we all like to see: one of those little-man-fighting-the-mighty-corporation tales....

The man here (I have no idea about his size) is one Kent Slaughter. Over the course of ten years, he bought about twelve pairs of socks from Bass Pro Shops.

These were not just any old cheapo socks, you understand. These were RedHead Lifetime Guarantee All-Purpose Wool Socks and up until now, they meant it.

Which is to say, every time Slaughter's socks got threadbare, he would take them back to the  Bass Pro store in Springfield, Mo., and get a free replacement pair, no questions, no hassle.

Until the hassle came along (you knew it would)! Last year, according to the lawsuit Slaughter has filed, they refused, and offered to swap his “lifetime warranty” socks for a pair with a 60-day warranty.

By the way, these are not second-rate socks at all. They sell for $11.99 a pair.

Slaughter's suit says Bass Pro is cheating customers with a “hollow promise” that swaps a lifetime promise for a two-month promise. 

Try that at the altar one day, promising to love, honor and cherish for sixty days.

His class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri asks for a trial by a jury of sock-wearing Wisconsinites...and $5 million in damages.

“This lawsuit is about one simple principle: a corporation’s obligation to tell consumers the truth. Bass Pro Shop made a promise to its customers when it offered its RedHead socks with a lifetime guarantee. Those words should mean something,” says Slaughter's California-based law firm, Singleton Schreiber.

"But it says right there...."

Bass Pro Shops has declined to comment on the allegations, but did point out that they are having a great sale on coolers, fishing rods, and down vests.

In 2018, USA Today said that many retailers have discontinued lifetime guarantees, but Bass Pro continued to trumpet the value of their socks with terms such as "THE LAST SOCK YOU’LL EVER NEED TO BUY," and “backed by our Lifetime Guarantee,” and "customers can return them for a FREE replacement” if they wear out or get holey. 

Well, of course, we're all on Slaughter's side. We need to keep things fair and square. If something says it's guaranteed for two months, so be it, but don't tell me I can get a replacement for the rest of my life and then tell me you didn't think I'd live that long!

 

Judy Judy Judy

I know the current trend when discussing something superannuated is to compare them to Keith Richards, but Keith is not even 80 yet, won't be until next year, and so he can hardly compare in birthday candles to Gorgosaurus, a relative of T. Rex who lived in Montana 76 million years ago.

Many of us know Gorgo from the 1961 film of the same name in which some explorers find a gigantic sea creature and, of course, move him to London (what else would you do with such a beast?) But the monster's mom is enraged to find that her child is being put on exhibit by Dorkin's Circus in Londontowne, so she sets out to bring him home. This Oedipal angle works out well; young Gorgo is pleased that Mommy came to bring him home. Eventually, leaving London and several naval vessels destroyed, the two monsters go home.

Speaking of finding homes...this fossil skeleton of a T. Rex (10  million years older, but who's counting?) is looking for new digs, and if you can pony up 5 to 8 million dollars, he can come home with you.  You'll need a room  to hold a critter 10 feet tall and 22 feet long, so maybe you could clear out that room with the old magazines and VCR tapes.

He's up for grabs, so to speak, at today's Sotheby natural history auction.

He was found in 2018 in the Judith River Formation, which is a place for relics of the Cretaceous Era near Havre, Montana.

All the other Gorgosaurus skeletons live in museums, so if you're interested, today is your lucky day.

I'll be spending my day wondering what people 76,000,000 years from now will think of us when they dig up our skeletons, our cell phones, and the remains of our chicken boxes. Will they know of hot sauce?

 

 

 

 

It's what's for dinner when you don't feel like dinner

In summertime, no one feels like preparing (let alone eating) a big heavy meal with gravy and potatoes and boiled carrots and all that. Toss together a nice green salad and call it dinner.

There's always the standard tossed salad with iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, carrots, radishes, beets, celery, and so forth. Very popular and easy to toss together, although not as much with the grocery store salad bars being closed down 😢😠

We like that kind of salad and we like Caesar salads too, here at the Lazy "C" chuck wagon. You only need romaine lettuce, croutons, anchovies, garlic, Parmesan cheese, and black pepper.

The story is that a restaurant owner named Caesar Cardini was swamped with diners on July 4, 1924, at his restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico. He decided to throw together whatever he could find, and do it tableside in a large wooden bowl, to add a dramatic flair to the dining experience.

I assure you, there will be 37 different versions of that story if you ask 37 different descendants of Caesar Cardini. Does it matter what happened in Mexico? You want dinner tonight. So toss the ingredients above in your large wooden bowl that you got as a gift all those years ago, and add this dressing:

 

INGREDIENTS

2 small garlic cloves, minced and mashed (make a paste by adding little salt)

1 tablespoon anchovy paste

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

1 cup bottled mayonnaise

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan

black pepper

 

 

In a bowl, add the mashed and minced garlic paste. To this garlic paste, add the anchovy paste.

Mix both the pastes well together as their flavors merge.

Pour in the lemon juice and stir with a spoon to mix.

Shower on some pepper and then mix well. 

Pour in the Worcestershire sauce along with the Dijon mustard and drop in the cup of mayo. Last, mix in the cheese.

Stir with a large spoon.  The dressing should be thick! Plop some on the salad just before eating and mix it up real nicely. 

 

As Josh Hawley would say, "You can run, but you can't hide."

I wonder how a person can commit a crime in 1975 and walk around until 2022 without being arrested. How does it feel? Do you look over your left shoulder all the time? Do you panic whenever the phone rings or someone knocks at the door? 

And is it almost a relief when that knock comes from someone with handcuffs on their belt and an arrest warrant in their hand? I have to wonder.

I'm not saying this guy is guilty, y'unnerstand, but Lancaster County Police up in Pennsylvania do, so let's see how the trial comes out.  And to think, it was a coffee cup that might have sealed his fate.

Last Sunday, Lancaster County arrested David Sinopoli, 68, and charged him in the 1975 killing of Lindy Sue Biechler. Mrs Biechler was murdered - stabbed to death - at age 19 in the apartment in Lancaster she shared with her husband.

This was a cold case for years, but only because detectives had run down every lead. Never did they give up on solving it, but advanced DNA and genealogy research made Sinopoli became the prime suspect.

"This case was solved with the use of DNA and specifically DNA genealogy and quite honestly without that, I don't know that we would have ever solved it," Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams said at news conference.

Sinopoli and Biechler

It was December 5, 1975, when Biechler's aunt and uncle stopped by her apartment in the Spring Manor Apartments in Manor Township to exchange Christmas cookie recipes, and found what Ms Adams described as a horrific scene. The victim was stabbed 19 times. There were defensive wounds, and DNA evidence was gathered, although it would be another ten years before DNA testing became a part of crime detection.

An organization called Parabon NanoLabs solved another cold case, so investigators asked if they could use the evidence from the Biechler case.

Interestingly, that DNA led Parabon to look for people with ancestry around the Gasperina section of Italy. Parabon investigator CeCe Moore found 2,300 people with Italian ancestry in Lancaster County in late 1975.

Examining public records, old newspaper archives, and more, Moore winnowed down the list of candidates, leading her to point to Sinopoli as the lead suspect. Sinopoli had never been thought of as a possible suspect before.

Detectives went to work. They found that Sinopoli had lived in the same apartment complex at the time of the murder.

And he was still living in the area. Police needed a DNA sample to clinch their case, and got one while doing surveillance on him. They followed him to the Philadelphia airport and snagged a coffee cup that he tossed away.

As Lennie Briscoe would have said on "Law & Order," he should have switched to decaf...and taken the cup. DNA match. Bonk bonk.

"This has been a never-ending pursuit of justice for Lindy Sue Biechler that has led us to identifying and arresting David Sinopoli," Adams said. "Lindy Sue Biechler was on the minds of many throughout the years. Certainly law enforcement has never forgotten about her. And this arrest marks the first step in obtaining justice for Lindy Sue Biechler and holding her killer responsible."

Sinopoli is being held without bail on one count of criminal homicide.

 

GoFundMe again

I'm kind of surprised that this case from 2017 is still dragging its way through the court system, but here we are in Pandemia, where everything is not like it used to be, and we are all stocked up on paper towels and toilet paper, but we can't find infant formula or peanut butter.

I asked Google why the Skippy shelf is so empty these days, and the answer I got had to do with Jif peanut butter. They had to recall 47 billion jars of Jif because of potential Salmonella contamination. Now, that sparseness of Jif means people are buying other brands, including my Skippy, resulting in a shortage that's causing a ripple effect on the availability of nutter butter everywhere.

Of course, my fear is that long-time Jiffers will suddenly realize "this is what peanut butter is SUPPOSED to taste like" when they try Skippy, and the shortage will not soon abate. And with school lunches right around the corner, well, Katie bar the door! Some states might even make it illegal to travel across state lines to score goober pâté. 

And I'll be writing this blog from federal prison, serving 5-10 on a peanutter rap.

Speaking of criminals, and things for which there is no shortage ever, here's a story we talked about when it happened five years ago, and there is no shortage of evil schemes people will concoct with the simple goal of separating honest citizens from their money in the name of "charity."

Her name is Katelyn McClure. She was not the mastermind of the dirty deal (her now-ex-boyfriend, Mark D'Amico, is the brains behind the scam scheme that raked in $400,000 with a fake story about a homeless man). McClure, 32, will be a guest of the No-Holiday Inn for a year, and will have to make restitution, and serve three years' supervised release down the road. Next month she will be sentenced on state charges and could get more time behind bars.

 

In 2017, McClure and D'Amico came up with a fable about a homeless veteran named Johnny Bobbitt, Jr. (not to be confused with John Wayne Bobbitt, the victim of an involuntary penectomy). The plan was to tell everyone that McClure had run out of gas near a bridge underpass where Bobbitt was staying, and that Bobbitt had spotted her $20 to get some gas.

The real story was that the three of them had met near a Philadelphia casino to concoct their story.

They spread the word through social media and it was picked up for local and national stories.  You can just imagine how it played on the morning news shows, and it worked! First thing you knew, over 14,000 people of good intention donated to a GoFundMe account in the belief that they were helping Bobbitt.

You know the story: three can keep a secret if two of them are dead. Bobbitt soon became enraged that he wasn't getting duked in on his fair share, so he filed a suit to get a bigger slice.

According to the federal criminal complaint, McClure and D'Amico spent the whole bundle by March of 2018, one casino trips to Las Vegas and one to fabulous New Jersey, a recreational vehicle, and a BMW.

D’Amico, known as the brains of this outfit, pled out in April on federal charges and was sentenced to 27 months in prison, plus he will have to pay the money back and be sentenced on separate state charges next month.

Bobbitt got five years’ probation on state charges and will be sentenced on federal charges next month.

And again, the old lesson about cheating and stealing being wrong rings true. What makes people think they can get away with this sort of crime?

Sunday Rerun: Easy Rider

 The other day there was one of those online brouhahas that I have learned not to take part in, because it hurts my head to see people write things like "Your a moron."  The topic was whether the effete Eastern liberal types disdain people who drive around in pickup trucks.

Maybe some of those hi-falutin' wine-sippin' cheese-eatin' book lovers are that way, but I'm here to tell you, I had three pickups in my day, and I would still have one today except for the guy who drove into a Honda that hit another Honda that hit a Toyota that hit my pick-'em-up and totaled it, as I sat still waiting for a light to change.  I loved all my trucks, and when it was time to haul some top soil or a dozen bags of leaves or mulch or help a buddy move, I was right there.  I always had 4-wheel drive so I could get to work in the snow and mud and rain and ice and whatever nature threw at us.  

I can't say enough about how much I love pickups, and I would still have one, except that after the last one got wrecked, I realized I was getting a little old to haul sofas and entertainment centers around for friends who were relocating, so now I limit my participation to standing around helping to sort socks or frying pans.  Let the firm of Two Guys With A Truck handle the rest.

But that friendly argument started when someone pointed out that the top 3 selling vehicles last year in the USA were the Ford pickup, the Chevy pickup, and the Dodge pickup.

Karl Brauer of Kelley Blue Book says two words explain the appeal of pickups: "Functionality and flexibility," he says. "Everything you need in a big, roomy crew cab."

You can fill the extra seating area with kids or relatives or tools or friends or a picnic basket.  But still, a lot of those trucks being sold are the basic model with no back seat.  

I used to see people buying teeny sportscars and wonder how they hauled home a pile of 2 x 4s they took out of a construction dumpster legally purchased at a hardware store.  They usually said, "What's a 2 x 4?"  

Anyway, is your current ride on the top ten sellers?  Here they are:

1. Ford F-Series pickup  595,656

2. Chevrolet Silverado pickup 425,556

3. Ram 1500 pickup 359,226

4. Toyota Camry  297,453

5. Honda Civic 283,783

6. Toyota Corolla  275,818

7. Honda CR-V   263,493

8. Toyota RAV4   260,380

9. Honda Accord   258,619

10. Nissan Altima 242,321

Source: Autodata