Okay. Which had the most #1 hit songs? Led Zeppelin, The Who or Jimi Hendrix?
Do you remember which song beat out "Hey Jude" for the Best Song Grammy in 1968? It was "Little Green Apples."
None of those three ever had a number one hit record.
And yet we wonder how Bush got elected.
With the missus off Factoring Moose in our Gentle Neighbor To The North, I gots some time on my hands. Like most of you - ok, both of you - sometimes when I read movie reviews, something about them sticks in my mind and a "Ding" goes off in my brain when I see them among the bazillions of movies the nice folks at Cox bring me each month for slightly less than $200.
This week I got dinged twice: once with "Festival Express", a documentary about a trainload of hippiepinkofags including Janis Joplin, Jerry Garcia, The Band, Buddy Guy and others of their ilk riding west across Canada in 1970, doing gigs every other night and jamming on the train in between. Little wonder most of em's dead now.
Tonight I caught "The Sea Inside" which I'd remembered getting real good reviews from peeps I'd agreed with pastly. It's a Spanish film, subtitled, and man oh man. I knows there's chick flicks and stuff, but this one had me getting all puffy-eyed and sniffly before the end of the third act. Superb acting, understated directing, amazing subtlety, what I used to call a Powerful Film until the daughters threw that term back at me after I made them watch Free Willy - a Paarful Film.
Back to the narrative: so I google (that's a verb now, right?) the film, to see how other cogent (sorry) viewers reacted to the flick. Here's the first I review I happed upon, no kidding:
The circumstances through which Gala came to live with us are lost in the murky mists of my miasmic memory, but it was before the kids got married, and that will be ten years this November. Regardless, she and her step-brother the orange and garrulous SnapDog have been here to greet us, foul up the a/c filter with pillowcase loads of hair, and cough up fur balls for more than a decade.
Gala always acted as if I'd recently given her the beating of her life, and that another assault was imminent. If I came into a room, she'd skulk out of it. When unbeknownst to me she'd nap between my desk back and the wall, if I tarried too long in the kneewell, a sudden burst of black and tan would dash across my feet and flee the room, all the better to languish under some safer place. This was not conducive to cordial relations between us, but I gave her her space and we co-existed.
Gala'd been sick of late. The fur balls were gone, replaced with a vile mix of bile and partly digested - well, suffice it to say, she was real sick, several times a day, several different places in the house, and even if you got on the carpet spot immediately, it was permanent. The carped took on the look, if not the texture and desireability of some of my beloved's favorite clothing items.
This type of thing happens with cats, but it wasn't getting better and in the last few days she would cry out just before offering up another odiferous emanation. Then Herself decided we were getting new carpet.
This morning I took Gala to the vet. On the trip she described to me in copious detail the many wrongs I'd done her, and tried to enlist the aid of passers-by, many of whom stared at my truck, their unspoken question obviously "What can he be doing in there to that poor creature?" The vet's rejectionists quickly ushered me into an exam room, as Gala was upsetting not only the other pets but their owners as well. I hung my head, my body language clearly professing innocence. The vet's exam didn't take long, and certainly did nothing to assuage Gala's protestations. He could operate, of course, if I insisted, but this was a cancer, probably of the stomach, and she was almost certainly in her last days.
The grief/cremation consultant slunk through the door. A cadverous young woman, here to share my grief. A hug, a murmured 'Perhaps it was meant to be." (What the hell does that mean? I wondered.) And luckily, in the onset of my mourning, my choices were two: For $243.22 (where did they get that number?) Gala could be given a Private Cremation, after which her ashes would be returned to us in an Urn Suitable For Your Mantle. Appearing to carefully consider the view to the mantle from my chair at the dinner table, I queried, "You said there are two options?"
For $44.25 (another odd number) Gala could become part of a Mass Cremation. "Mmmm hmmm?" I pondered. She continued, "They do a real good job (I'd know a bad cremation?) and they have a lovely pond on site, where they scatter the ashes afterwards."
In my mind's eye I have a vision of Gala's ashes being scattered across the pond, not unlike the way the dust is scattered across the lawn if I'm not careful when I empty the flapping vacuum bag. Now I'll have to go poke out my mind's eye.
This is a supposedly true story that happened in an online English Comp class at the U of Phoenix.
The professor told his class one day: "Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. As homework tonight, one of you will write the first paragraph of a short story.
You will e-mail your partner that paragraph and send another copy to me. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story and send it back, also sending another copy to me. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back-and-forth. Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. There is be absolutely NO talking outside of the e-mails and anything you wish to say must be written in the e-mail. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached."
The following was turned in by two of his English students: Rebecca and Larry.
THE STORY
(First paragraph by Rebecca)
At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So Chamomile was out of the question.
(Second paragraph by Larry)
Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to Geostation 17," he said into his transgalactic communicator. "Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit.
(Rebecca)
He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards thepeaceful farmers of Skylon 4. "Congress Passes Law permanently abolishing war and space travel," Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspaper to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.
(Larry)
Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks that pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament Treaty through the congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires that were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion, which vaporized poor, stupid, Laurie and 85 million other Americans. The President slammed his fist on the conference table. "We can't allow this! I'm going to veto that treaty! Let's blow 'em> out of the sky!"
(Rebecca)
This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate adolescent.
(Larry)
Yeah? Well, you're a self-centered tedious neurotic, whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of valium. "Oh, shall I have chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of ---ING TEA??? Oh, I'm such an air headed bimbo who reads too many Danielle Steele novels that I simply can't decide."
(Rebecca)
Asshole.
(Larry)
Bitch.
(Rebecca)
---- YOU - YOU NEANDERTHAL!
(Larry)
Go drink some tea - whore!
(TEACHER)
A+ - I really liked this one
Alex, an African gray parrot with extraordinary cognitive and linguistic skills was found dead ten days ago in his cage at Brandeis University. For 30 years, Alex was the subject of experiments that challenged the most basic assumptions about animal intelligence. He invented a perfect term for an almond: "cork nut". He understood the concepts of bigger, different, same, could count and differentiate colors.
Skeptics dismissed Alex's feats as subtle forms of conditioning, but he clearly could pull together a few concepts into one cohesive train of thought, such as "The nut in the blue cup on the tray." But was he actually conscious, in the some way that some humans are? - knowing that we know, and that we know we know?
Next to infinity, one of the hardest concepts to grasp is zero. Toward the end of his life Alex may have been coming close. As in a carnival shell game, an experimenter would put a nut under one of three cups and then shuffle them around. Alex would pick up the cup where the surprise was supposed to be. If it wasn't there, he'd go a little berserk, which could be understood as a small step toward understanding nothingness.
A bigger leap came in an experiment about numbers, in which the parrot was shown groups of two, three and six objects. The objects within each set were colored identically, and Alex was asked, "What color three?"
"Five," he replied perversely (he was having a bad attitude day), repeating the answer until the experimenter finally asked, "O.K., Alex, tell me, ‘What color five?’ " "None," the parrot said.
Bingo. There was no group of five on the tray. It was another of those moments. Alex had learned the word "none" years before in a different context. Now he seemed to be using it more abstractly.
What was it like to be Alex that last night in his cage? We’ll never know whether there really was a mind in there — slogging its way from the absence of a cork-nut to the absence of Alex, grasping at the zeroness of death.
Sgt Pepper taught the band - - -no, no
It was 30 years ago today that Voyager I was launched, looking like a school bus-sized spider. It sent back the most amazing pictures of Jupiter and then Saturn. At that time you could write to NASA and they'd send you pictures, and they sent me maybe twenty 8 X 10 glossy color photos I hung around my office, which featured wallpaper depicting Earthrise from the surface of the moon. Hey, it was the seventies and I was in the dirt bidness.
Today Voyager I is almost ten billion miles from us - a distance from which it takes 14 hours at the speed of light for its signal to reach us. A 28 hour round trip between "Are you still there?" and "Yes, thanks for asking, still tradfatting along out here."
That's right, it's still out there humming along with its gold plate of ninety minutes of music and photos. (My brother and his wife gave me a book with most of the pictures and content of that disk, if you ever want to see what's going to be picked up some day by some alien being.)
Here's something else that's totally cool. How much power do you think is behind those increasingly distant signals from near the edge of the heliosphere? Nope. Only twenty watts. Yep. Less wattage than you need in your nite lite, and they're still able to pick up a usable signal. I think that's incredible.
We drove to the Rez today. I dropped Her off at the casino, made my rounds and took the Attorney General to lunch. At the Plaza I had to pull Herself away from the Dollar General where she had completely overspent her lavish $5 Parker allowance; mostly on the grandkids, as usual. When we left town, the car's thermometer registered 117, and it stayed between there and 114 all the way back to Ahwatukee. The paper says we've had 29 days above 110 this year - so far.
If I drive the car the speed limit, I can get 28 mpg. If I drive, as I did today, funly, I get 25.4. Exceeded 100 only twice, but shaved more than 30 minutes off the 170 mile trip each way. Figure it cost less than $5 more to drive that way. She squealed, cringed and winced a couple times, but was pretty good, all things considered.
How can it be that my grandson turns 8 this week? Jesus, Mary & Joseph. Thirty years older than my youngest daughter, fifty years older than my grandson. Zoooooom. That's the pace of my life receding in the rear-view mirror.
The good news is that the foot has improved hugely. Have been able to work out, take four mile walks, and last outing I beat Larry by 14 strokes. (Eight of them on one hole, a short three par over water that he 1-putted.) So life ain't bad at all, once again.
Tell me, who's better off than me? Anyone? Anyone?
Over the past few months we've replaced almost every regularly used light bulb in the house with some version of the energy-saver flourescents. They even make a very acceptable 3-way bulb.
Anyway, last year we averaged 102 kWh/day for the July period: this year, 84; a reduction of 30%. The cost per day went from $8.13 to $7.36. Not quite $24 for the month, but something.
. . . all the way home
The Good News: The Wii is every bit as much fun as everyone has said.
The Better News: K loves playing it as much as I.
The Bad News: She's better at most of the games. How many times must I hear that gleeful "Look!!! I beat you again!!"?
The Worser News: She especially loves the "shooter" games.
Me: "Hon, you know that when they put up a target with my face on it, and you shoot it, it costs you points, right?"
Her: "I know. It's worth it."
Robert Nozick, who died five years ago, wondered, If death is not extinction, what might it be like?
Although his reflections were inconclusive, he suggested a seductive maxim: First, imagine what form of immortality would be perfect. Second, live your life right now as if that was true.
The first rain of the monsoon season is as close to magic as we get in the desert. As of Monday it had been 86 days since we'd had "measureable precipitation" which was a few drops at Sky Harbor; nothing here in the southeast valley.
Early Monday evening, what looked like a ginormous brown waterfall loomed across the entire southeast, coming toward us like something Spielbergistical. Then it was upon us, engulfing us, smothering, so thick we could scarcely see the house across the street. The sun was enough above the horizon that the weird, soupy thickness of it turned from brown to umber to sienna to black cat-in-a-coal bin. Flashes of lightnng from the southwest, but the blizzard was so thick we heard nothing; just a suffocating stillness.
Then the rain began. Steady, dense, vertical, magic. We stood outside, no words, taking it in. The desert was silent except for the raindrops, as if it had caught its breath, unbelieving. All the plants exploded with perfumes - me! over here! hellllloooooo!!! I'm ready for anyone who will take me!
The scents, aromas, if they had been a color would have been a lurid crimson. We inhaled breath after deep breath, holding hands, amazed that rain had come once again, that we had been here to experience magic.
Today at our house it was 114.8. Friday we head up to the cabin for four days, where the forecast is Frequent Thunderstorms. C'mon Mickey, wave your big hand faster.
Didn't we just return from vacation? Maybe this is the way it's supposed to be; one week of work, one week away.
Heading west to San Diego tomorrow morning with the weezies - oh, yeah, and their legal guardians. Two adjoining condos right on the beach. From 116 here yesterday to predicted highs in the low 70s and lows in the mid 60s. For a whole week.
This should be fun.
How rare is it that this man speaks the truth? Or knows what is going to happen? Or even has a clue about what is happening? The 2008 presidential election is the Democrats' to lose. I suppose it's entirely possible Cheney will refuse to leave, since he's his own branch of government anyway.
We had a terrific inaugural visit to the cabin; only broke a couple of small, non-essential things. Two sets of friends came to visit. Looks like a predictable -20 degree temperature differential from our 1265' elevation to the cabin's 6400'. We found a great little lake about six miles from the cabin where we can take the kids to splash around, and wonder of wonders, the Circle K eight miles toward Show Low carries the Sunday Times! Ise astonished. This place is that rarity that ends up being even better than we had hoped. Can't wait to get back up.
So, it's been a busy couple of months. We travelled to DC to spend a week celebrating youngest daughter's MBA from GWU. Rode a Segway for a four hour tour; almost hurt myself laughing when my brother careened his unit into a marble wall on the north side of the Mall. The DC ESPN Zone did a really nice job on the party we threw for the girl and her friends. You can tell a lot by the kinds a people a person attracts as friends. That girl is doing just fine.
Finally got the foot cut on that I've been whining about for 2 1/2 years. Tendon graft, reconstruction of the medigaldinostrum or something, and pin with a little blue bead stuck right down the middle of my second toe into the foot bone.
That was a month ago tomorrow. I'm supposed to get the pin pulled Monday. If the surgeon refuses to do it, I have several offers pending. This "starve a cold, feed a surgery" thing has really taken a toll on me. Sitting around in my blue chair with a tub of Rocky Road on my lap has not made me svelte. Has made me not svelte. Not svelte that I ever was, svelte. Decided to diet, but that only made me hungry.
Most recently, we bought an eighth share of a nice little cabin in the woods outside Show Low. This should be fun. Take a peek at lindenpines.com
Poachers have shot the last two white rhinos in Zambia, killing the female and wounding the male, at the heavily guarded Mosi-Oa-Tunya National Park near Victoria Falls. The dead rhino's horn was removed.
A 50-ton bowhead whale killed off the Alaskan coast last month had a weapon fragment embedded in its neck that showed it had survived a similar hunt around 1890 when that type of explosive projectile was last manufactured. The 49-foot male whale died when it was shot with a similar projectile last month; the older device was found as hunters carved it with a chain saw for harvesting.
Eric Clapton will be paid $1.5 million to perform a 60-to-70 minute concert at a private party in late July organized by Raymond T Dalio, president of Bridgewater Associates, a hedge fund with more than $30 billion in assets. The performance is expected to be attended by 350 invitation only guests.
Sequentially, leaving a nail gun on top of a ladder, then moving the ladder, is never a good idea. - The Times
It's also true that, late at night, during the Top Ten List on Letterman, when a cat lying on your chest starts that "Hwa hoowa uroog uroog" heaving, dieseling routine, it's probably best to just gently pick his pre-eruptive mass up, set him down on the floor, and go start wetting the paper towels.
Screeching, bellowing, stomping on the floor, clapping your hands has no effect on and does not even delay the ulitmate result. It only gets you red scratches down your chest that look like tire tracks and causes the detritus to be spread across the room and down the length of the stairs. I'm just saying.
As of yesterday, the Pentagon has acknowledged 3,337 American deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. The attacks of Sept 11 killed 2948.
Thus far, the war has cost between 420 and 440 billion dollars. The administration believed the war would be quick, cheap and easy. The estimate was 50 billion, and they were confident that the oil from Iraq would pay the cost of the war. Dick Cheney said as recently as three weeks ago that the cost would be "around $50 billion."
What does it take to indict a war criminal? If a president lying about an extramarital affair is grounds for impeachment, why isn't committing the country to a trumped up war, thousands of Americans dead, scores of thousands of Americans maimed for life, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghani nationals dead and wounded solely because they were born in the wrong place at the wrong time? Has there ever been a more incompetent yet arrogant world leader? It boggles.
And there's more good news: after a hiatus of not even six months, the politcal advocates are back at the phone banks. In the past two days I've gotten three calls - two for the junior senator from Illinois and one for the junior senator from New York. Yeah, I'm crabby all right.
Those of you who were subjected to Larry Mohr's fanciful recounting of our two rounds of golf in Jamaica are probably puzzled why he has not further honed his reportorial craft recounting the most recent golf road trips he's taken.
I'm kidding.
Of course there are reasons, hundreds and hundreds of reasons he hasn't brought up two rounds in southern Arizona nor, most recently, still another embarassing drubbing, this time deep in the heart of Texas.
Settle back then, gentle reader, that I may bring the record current.
The man can hit a golf ball a long way, I've got to say that. But it seems like every time he hits one of those magnificent drives, "up jump de debil."
At Tucson's Del Ulrich course on the beautiful Randolph golf complex, Lar drove the green on a pitiably short 4 par, and barely escaped with a par. At Star Ranch, north of Austin, he powered what may have been a 320 yard drive, right down the center of the fairway. My drive was only about 290 and slightly right of the cart path. Be that as it may, both of us hit our second shots exactly the same distance, mine lightly coming to rest like a butterfly, 12 feet short of the pin, from where I two-putted for my par. After much coarse language and flying sod from somewhere beyond and below the putting surface, Mohr eventually holed out with an 8.
Even though I was off my usual game due to what in any mere mortal would be considered a crippling foot injury, and even though he suspiciously "lost sight of" my fairway-splitting drive on the first hole, I easily took both sides at Star Ranch. His drive on the 18th hole was followed by a 90 degree shank out of bounds, then by a scuff into a trap, after which I again lost sight of him for a while. He finally showed up at the green, spitting sand with little wisps of saliva at the corners of his mouth, and took a 9 that so benumbed him that he passed up a free lunch - you read that right, we're talking about our Larry here - that came with our round.
But I gotta say, that guy can really hit the ball. Sometimes.
I wonder which part of "well regulated militia" I've never understood.
Virginia has some of the most lax gun laws in the country, and that's saying something. But to the outrage of the NRA, the state does limit you to purchasing just one firearm per month. Presumably with all the ammo you can carry.
I pick up the grandson and the granddaughter after school, who greet me with "Are we going to the park?!"
"You bet!"
Can Jordan and Matthew and Quinton come, too? Can they can they can they?
"You bet!"
Grandson jumps into the front seat, I straps Granddaughter into her seat, Matthew into the other side, and Jordan & Quinton in one belt in the middle. They're brothers and they're used to it.
Where's the treats!? demands the grandson. What treats? asks I. Nana always sends treats! admonishes grandson. Ok ok, they're in the wayback, I'll get them out when we get to the park.
Utter, complete, magnificent, unrelenting, deafening pandemonium for the twelve minutes it takes to get to the park. Shrieks, howls, admonitions, threats, pleadings, and only a couple of them mine.
I scarcely get the 'Burban into the parking space and they spill out like it's a clown car. Grandson throws open the wayback, snatches Nana's goodie bag as quick as a kid on a Baghdad street and they streak across the lot and up the hillock to the picnic tables, me trailing behind waving a bottle of sunblock.
The daughter phones. "How was his day?" I don't know, didn't want to ask him in front of his buds. 'Let me talk to him."
G-Unit! It's Yerma! Tell her I'm busy!
Get over here, shorty, now!
Hi Ma! Oh! Good! Got a Happy Face! What? Oh OH What? What?
He looks at me with this sly gap-toothed grin, holds the phone out from his face a bit, goes "CCCCCCCRRrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrssssssssssshhhhhhhhhhkkkkkk" Sorry Ma, you're breaking up! Gotta go!" Flips my phone shut, slides it across the picnic table to me, left, once again with his mouth agape, in awe at the pace of things.
Before you turn on the big leaf sucker-upper thingee, make sure no one is holding a cat.
If someone has been working all weekend making posters for the big PTA carnival, it really isn't funny at all to ask how many "k's" there are in the word Tickets.
Thirty-five years and three months less one day was a pretty good run.
As a long-time, shining example of the ravages of late-term testosterone poisoning, the prospect of my first "real" haircut in more than a quarter century had me as unsettled as a virgin at a prison rodeo.
Some pointed and maybe just-a-bit acerbic back and forth twixt me and my long time 'barbette' led to the brisk (and thus mutual) decision that I should take my "pineapple that came out of the de-thorner tub 3 turns too early" to someone who understands that "It's not how much hair one has, it's how those hairs are displayed."
In my case, each individual Follicule Blossom must be arranged and displayed in a fashion denoting its specific, individual, (and becoming unique) triumph over genetics.
So I got sent down the street to Gentleman Jim's. That story, if/when I gather the strength, to follow.
I have mostly the greatest admiration for IKEA. Their furniture is top notch quality; they retain good people on staff; they must be doing a terrific business, as the young woman (who has been at the store since its opening maybe three years ago) watching us plop from bed to bed confided that they get four to six semi's in every night, restocking. The business model of selling only constructible furniture that can be shipped in flat boxes is genius. So why must their assembly instructions be so perverse?
Sure, the little guys in the wordless drawings all have beaming smiles, except when they're showing the wrong way to do things, in which case they have big, sad grimaces, the scene's implicit horror punctuated by a giant black X over it.
I'm almost certain that in a small, presumably windowless room in Delft, a squinty eyed sadist oversees the step-by-step instructions and cries "Huzzah!" when he finds the most insidious place to subtly blur the distinction between two integral interior structural members of whatever She's brought home and I have spread across the bedroom.
I get the thing assembled to the point where I'm down to the last seventy some steps, and realize, Oh My God, I've put every single drawer together inside out.
That Netherlands corksoaker.
Just to gild the frame around the picture, while I'm assembling, disassembling, and reassembling, She's on her computer over there in the corner, working on some PTO brochures at breakneck speed, making her keyboard sound like a snare drum. I shriek, mortally injured, bleeding profusely - blood dripping - ok, some blood evident on my finger. "Look! Look!" She glances, no discernible slowing in the typing. "You remember where the bandages are?"
"Jesus Mary and Joseph, I'm bleeding over here!"
"This would be a good time to check your blood sugar, you don't even have to prick your finger" she offers, slowing slightly now, whether to change fonts or due to real concern, I leave it to you, Gentle Reader, to discern.
Have you ever wondered, after you overheard one side of a phone conversation, whether you were, in fact, meant to overhear it? Case in point:
"He gave you Grocery Store Flowers? And you're upset because they're Grocery Store Flowers?
Honey, you should be grateful! The only flowers yer father ever gives me are Grocery Store Flowers, and God knows, I'm grateful! Hell, if it wasn't for Grocery Store Flowers . . . . . . . . . . . . . ."
Ok, I get the picture. Lady down the street has a nice garden. She's not outside much, especially after dark.
Abraham has decided to upgrade his PC from XP to Vista. Calls in his son Isaac to review the specifications. Isaac says, "Dad, I think you've got enough disc space, and your processor is a little slower than Bill prefers, but the real problem is that you're short of memory."
Abraham pauses, lifts his eyes skyward, then murmurs, "Son, God will provide the RAM."
If you don't get it then I guess you never placed in the money in any of Miss Bertha Bokelheid's Sunday School quizzes.
It's easy to think of the electricity we use in our homes as a benign energy source. Plug it in, turn it on, great things happen, no smoke, no noise, no stinkum.
Wrong, bucko.
Take your desktop computer. It is probably consuming something like 350 watts or so. Lots of peeps never, ever turn them off. Well, those of us running any version of Windows have to periodically reboot, but other than that, why not just leave it on?
Here's why: now pay atention. Most of the electricity in the US, yea, even unto the world, is produced by burning coal. Selah! To produce 100 watts, 24/7 for a year, 714 pounds - that's right - of coal must be burned. And that's not all. Burning the coal to keep that 100 watt bulb on continuously for a year pumps 5 pounds of sulfur dioxide (think acid rain), a bit more than 5 pounds of nitrogen oxide, and 1852 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. All that for a measly 100 watts per year.
Get up, right now, and go turn something off. Resolve to keep turning stuff off. Pull out those ugly wall warts from their sockets if you're not actively charging something. Get mad at those LED's staring at you, unblinking. LED's don't use much electricity, but every bit counts. We've probably already passed the tipping point on global warming, but if you and yours all turn off everything you can, maybe we can slow our descent into that particular hell. You still sitting there?
He never talked about himself in the third person.
He didn’t trash-talk, taunt or hang on the rim. Down the stretch of the Kentucky Derby, he didn’t turn and point at Bluegrass Cat, and he didn’t somersault over the finish line. After crossing the line, he didn’t pull out a Sharpie and autograph his saddle for his business manager.
He never referred to his handlers as “my supporting cast.”
He never tried to renegotiate his contract. He never turned down an eight-figure offer by saying, “I’ve got a family to feed, man.”
His only tattoo was discreetly hidden.
He did no commercials for cellphone plans, credit cards, fast food chains or time shares.
He never had his agent issue a statement in which he apologized “if anybody took my actions the wrong way.”
He never appeared before a Congressional committee and lied about his steroid use.
He never dated Paris Hilton.
He was never involved in an altercation with a belligerent fan outside a club at 4 in the morning. He was never arrested for drunken driving. He did not own an unregistered handgun.
He never claimed he’d been disrespected. He never left his competitors in the dust and then said, ”I didn’t have my A game.” He did not attribute his victories to the glory of his personal Savior.
Isiah Thomas never tried to trade for him.
He was never a presenter at the ESPYs.
He never claimed he was misquoted in his autobiography. He never confessed to a double murder in the subjunctive tense.
He trained, ate and slept. He ran his races, gave his best effort, accepted plaudits graciously, went back to his stall and prepared to do it again the next time out.
He never fathered multiple offspring out of wedlock. Alas.
- by Jeff Neuman
Forgets His Littleness
by Don Marquis
if all the bugs
in all the worlds
twixt earth and betelgoose
should sharpen up
their little strings
and turn their feelings loose
they soon would show
all human beans
in saturn
earth
or mars
their relative significance
among the spinning stars
man is so proud
the haughty simp
so hard for to approach
and he looks down
with such an air
on spider
midge
or roach
the supercilious silliness
of this poor wingless bird
is cosmically comical
and stellarly absurd
his scutellated occiput
has holes somewhere inside
and there no doubt
two pints or so
of scrambled brains reside
if all the bugs
of all the stars
should sting him on the dome
they might pierce through
that osseous rind
and find the brains at home
and in the convolutions lay
an egg with fancies fraught
which
germinating rapidly
might turn into a thought
might turn into the thought
that men
and insects are the same
both transient flecks
of starry dust
that out of nothing came
the planets are
what atoms are
and neither more nor less
man s feet have grown
so big that he
forgets his littleness
the things he thinks
are only things
that insects always knew
the things he does
are stunts that we
don t have to think to do
he spent a score
of centuries
in getting feeble wings
which we instinctively
acquired
with other trivial things
the day is coming
very soon
when man and all his race
must cast their silly
pride aside
and take the second place
i ll take the bugs
of all the stars
and tell them of my plan
and fling them with
their myriad stings
against the tyrant man
dear boss this outburst
is the result
of a personal insult
as so much verse always is
maybe you know how
that is yourself
i dropped into an irish
stew in a restaurant
the other evening
for a warm bath and a bite
to eat and a low browed
waiter plucked me out
and said to me
if you must eat i will
lead you to the
food i have especially prepared
for you and he took me
to the kitchen
and tried to make me
fill myself with
a poisonous concoction
known cynically as roach food
can you wonder
that my anger
against the whole human
race has blazed forth in
song when the revolution
comes i shall
do my best to save
you you have so many
points that are far
from being human
by Robert Wrigley
The last thing the old dog brought home
from her pilgrimages through the woods
was a man's dress shoe, a black, still-shiny wing-tip.
I feared at first a foot might be in it.
But no, it was just an ordinary shoe.
And while it was clear it had been worn,
and because the mouth of the dog —
a retriever, skilled at returning ducks and geese —
was soft, the shoe remained a good shoe
and I might have given it
to a one-legged friend
but all of them dressed their prostheses too,
so there it was. A rescued
or a stolen odd shoe. Though in the last months
of the dog's life, I noticed
how the shoe became her friend, almost,
something she slept on or near
and nosed whenever she passed,
as though checking it to see if,
in her absence, that mysterious, familiar,
missing foot, might not have come again.
By Randy Newman
I’d like to say a few words
In defense of our country
Whose people aren’t bad nor are they mean
Now the leaders we have
While they’re the worst that we’ve had
Are hardly the worst this poor world has seen
Let’s turn history’s pages, shall we?
Take the Caesars for example
Why within the first few of them
They had split Gaul into three parts
Fed the Christians to the lions
And burned down the City
And one of ’em
Appointed his own horse Consul of the Empire
That’s like vice president or something
That’s not a very good example, is it?
But wait, here’s one, the Spanish Inquisition
They put people in a terrible position
I don’t even like to think about it
Well, sometimes I like to think about it
Just a few words in defense of our country
Whose time at the top
Could be coming to an end
Now we don’t want their love
And respect at this point is pretty much out of the question
But in times like these
We sure could use a friend
Hitler. Stalin.
Men who need no introduction
King Leopold of Belgium. That’s right.
Everyone thinks he’s so great
Well he owned The Congo
He tore it up too
He took the diamonds, he took the gold
He took the silver
Know what he left them with?
Malaria
A president once said,
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”
Now it seems like we’re supposed to be afraid
It’s patriotic in fact and color coded
And what are we supposed to be afraid of?
Why, of being afraid
That’s what terror means, doesn’t it?
That’s what it used to mean
The end of an empire is messy at best
And this empire is ending
Like all the rest
Like the Spanish Armada adrift on the sea
We’re adrift in the land of the brave
And the home of the free
Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.
As I walked down to my favorite watering hole to watch the Colts-New England game I noticed that there wasn't a cloud in the sky. The temp at the house when I left was about 50 but felt colder. We sat out on the patio, as the stinky people get to smoke their cigarettes and cigars indoors until May 1, when we superior, somewhat less stinky people re-take the indoors.
Anyhow, it was cold. We fired up two of the overhead heaters and had them hitting us in stereo. We were carefully situated where we could watch two tv's because halfway through the football game the Suns game started and they're on a twelve game winning streak.
All of a sudden it looked like a scene out of War of the Worlds. Roiling boiling churning black clouds that looked like they were no higher than a couple hundred feet. The wind died, then came up strong out of the northwest, and then the rain, and then, I'll-be-go-to-hell SNOW!! It didn't stick where we were, didn't last long, but it was the real stuff.
Naturally, today's morning paper led off with two inch headlines "Snow In The Valley" with the standard pictures of snow on saguaros, kids gamboling, and in important update. This recent spate of crystallized aqua brings Phoenix's cumulative total of snowfall to 3.70"
since 1876.
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