I want to wish you all the very best in the coming year.  I am pretty sure I said something similar last year.  My bad!   But, this year, let us hope I get a batting average back.

Avoid the roads and take care of yourselves this night, ya hear!

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3. Resolved

The easy way was to simplify and end up with 47 x 3 = and few would need to take of their shoes or move their lips to get it right.

Getting older hasn’t help my math.  It is more difficult these days but not a real problem yet.  I still know inside straights chasing isn’t cost effective.  The above is a test question on an eighth grade test.  I don’t remember parenthetical expressions in that grade but we understood the idea and got it shortly confirmed in Algebra the next year.

I came across an article about the stupidity of testing in our schools that seemed interesting.  One of those fat cats that we want to tax more is on a school board and took the test.   You’ll see some impressive credentials but not an impressive score.  I thought maybe this had a point.   There are a lot of things I’ve seldom used or needed since those days.   And, some of the catches in math are subtle and easy to gloss over to one’s detriment.

Did he have a point along with his 10 guesses right in 60 questions?  I can’t fully say but there was another section that had 6 questions that were easy it seemed.  Maybe his questions were a lot harder.   I managed a 100 on those 6 questions without breaking a sweat or considering myself Mensa material.

My school was archaic by any modern standard.  Yet, I’ve muddle through life with enough math retained to cope.  The questions above looked just like one of those mimeographed quizzes (remember fuzzy, purple, mimeographed  stuff?) from my era.  Some things don’t change.  It is the same silly pencils doing weird things; although, I kind of missed those two freight trains coming at each other.

It left me wondering what the fuss was about.   I wasn’t a particularly noteworthy or lauded student.  (understatement alert)  The little quiz still seemed easy as it gets. They weren’t tricky or ones suitable for that “Are you smarter than…” TV show.

ADDENDUM:

Saw another tempting bit about the planet.  I don’t want to start an argument over Darwin V. Creation.  We’re all too sober to want to get going on that.  We can save if for a time when the ice cubes are clinking.  But the article is interesting and has a bit for either side.

No related posts.

I was lazy this year and didn’t do a turkey.  I have strayed on occasion even going with a shrimp curry one year.  But, I’m usually a traditionalist, if you didn’t already garner that from the blog.

Josie and Mojo — ain’t they a cute couple and I think they might be close in age — left well wishes yesterday.  I don’t even have that tripo-whatever snoozing as an excuse for no response.  I do the links to make up for it.  Somebody is wet — the bird is the word.

ADDENDUM:

I’ve been working on two posts — related — that got set aside.  That is usually the kiss of death.  Sorry for the dearth of posts.  Consider it my holiday gift.

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1. Bird Day

In a dictionary, the term bombastic could easily put a picture of  that eastern knight-errant beside the description which Princeton.edu calls “a man given to large talk”.  My new neighbor seems a bit stern when I first saw him.  A friend and I were coming back from lunch at I saw him and his wife for the first time.  I nodded with a smile and got no reaction.

Last night I got a call from a neighbor.  When I moved into the area it was a friendly neighborhood.  She is the last left and a doll.  She has had about 10 years of bad migraines that have been very debilitating.   When she is occasionally outside in the sunlight, I always get a smile and a hug.  She’s a dear women.

Last night, I got a phone call.  The neighbor had been over.  She has several tiny poodles.  She can’t take the light so she lets them out and they occasionally wander over.  He told her he found dog dropping in his yard. Had he stopped there she would have said to call and she’d come over and clean it up.  Instead he told her he had some traps that would take their leg off and was putting them out in his yard.

That went beyond bombast. That’s a felony grade remark. They have yet to move in but his reputation has.  Now I have to contact the animal control — who I saw cruising on our dead-end street two days ago.   I too have a pet and she occasionally get our of my yard.

I really hope this guy is closer to Waffles talk than he is to the neighbor on the east who is admittedly bi-polar.

Just thought I’d put a little record of all this on the net.  She certainly isn’t the type to exaggerate.

No related posts.

When you’re alone
And life is making you lonely,
You can always go downtown

Downtown for me was Hammond, Indiana.  It is famous as Hohman, Indiana in Gene Shepard’s A Christmas Story.  The main drag was Hohman Avenue — surprise — and from the tracks the downtown ran two blocks south.  There was a block or so on State Street too.  But, that was it.  Not a lot to write about but Shepard managed.

Right next to the higher end Parthenon theater was a Walgreen’s with the premier lunch counter.  The BLT came with chips.  The club had that and turkey as an amazing triple-decker.  Throw in a shake and you could leave your dime tip and still get out for under a buck.  Across the street was the Woolworth’s counter.  It wasn’t as good but friend Jack sent me a 1957 menu I thought I’d share.

Beside the Woolworth there was a Kresge and a Newberry.  The Newberry was known foreigners.  It was out of the east someplace and a bit more upscale.  It only had a hot dog stand; but damn.  It had the first rotating hotdog cooker.  The next close one of those had to be in another Newberry.  The buns were eastern and “exotic” to our Midwestern view.  They rolled the naked sides of the bun with butter and grilled them crispy.  The real casing hotdog from that exotic grill and damn,  I might kill for one with mustard and onion right now.  And, if they’re still 15-cents, give me a couple.  Wow!  That dog casing popping and letting out juices; the buttered, crispy sides helping to add a counterpoint to the mustard and onions.  But, only two dogs; I need to save room for the 39-cent super-jumbo banana split a couple of doors away.  Eat your hearts out Food Channel junkies.

The lights are much brighter there
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares and go
Downtown, things'll be great when you're
Downtown, no finer place for sure,
Downtown, everything's waiting for you

No related posts.

And didn’t he ramble, ramble,
He rambled all around, in and out of town,
And didn’t he ramble, ramble,
He rambled till the butcher cut him down.

This ramble was with Glenlivet 12 and 15.   It happened in New Orleans.

Riding on the City of New Orleans,
Illinois Central Monday morning rail
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders,
Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail.

OK, before this turn into a Hootenanny , go read about it.

Interesting waste of good hooch.

P.S. I miss Steve Goodman (wrote City of NO) and those time I had at the Earl of Old Town. It was a barn of a place.  The floors were blackened wood with a bit of separation that allowed the edges to round over.  The cracks held the detritus of the decades. Not sure what I was drinking then.  The place was a low class tavern in look.  The acts were way above average.   I could use one more Sunday matinee.  (None of us knew Steve was dieing except Steve — that’s a man!)

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Today, honors the memory of  Douglas Adams who penned The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.  In it he explains that the lowly towel is the hitchiker’s most important accutremont.  But he did it without resorting to foreign words in better constructed sentences and far more humor than you’ve encountered to this point in this blog.  That trend is likely to continue–seems my raison d’être.

Wikipedia has his bio and a picture.  The picture reminds me a lot of a former editor from Memphis who has better Mojo.  Adams fell well short of reaching retirement.

Anyway grab your towel and march around tonight’s dinner table.  If nothing else, you will confirm what you kids already know.

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Well, I have been reading stuff by L.E. Modesitt.   He has been one of my consistent go-toes when his stuff comes out.  It is fantasy but he’s maintained excellence.  That isn’t a common trait with many.   An example of that would be David Drake who went from grand space opera to ponderous political analysis in the Honor Harrington series.

But the book I’d like to recommend is by Al the Toque (Alexis de Tocqueville) called Democracy in America.  He visited in our early period and contrasted what had developed with the Europe he knew.  I’ve never read it completely but it is a great book to bounce around in.  He was a perceptive guy and might be more important now than he was in the past.  It demonstrates we’ve drifted closer to the old world and aren’t the progressive minds we might envision.

You can get a copy for free on Project Gutenberg.  You can download in HTML and others — even a Kindle version.  If you are stuck in an airport or only have a few minutes, this is a great book for paging about in.

Here is a little excerpt:

In certain countries of Europe the natives consider themselves as a kind of settlers, indifferent to the fate of the spot upon which they live. The greatest changes are effected without their concurrence and (unless chance may have apprised them of the event) without their knowledge; nay more, the citizen is unconcerned as to the condition of his village, the police of his street, the repairs of the church or of the parsonage; for he looks upon all these things as unconnected with himself, and as the property of a powerful stranger whom he calls the Government. He has only a life-interest in these possessions, and he entertains no notions of ownership or of improvement. This want of interest in his own affairs goes so far that, if his own safety or that of his children is endangered, instead of trying to avert the peril, he will fold his arms, and wait till the nation comes to his assistance. This same individual, who has so completely sacrificed his own free will, has no natural propensity to obedience; he cowers, it is true, before the pettiest officer; but he braves the law with the spirit of a conquered foe as soon as its superior force is removed: his oscillations between servitude and license are perpetual. When a nation has arrived at this state it must either change its customs and its laws or perish: the source of public virtue is dry, and, though it may contain subjects, the race of citizens is extinct. Such communities are a natural prey to foreign conquests, and if they do not disappear from the scene of life, it is because they are surrounded by other nations similar or inferior to themselves: it is because the instinctive feeling of their country’s claims still exists in their hearts; and because an involuntary pride in the name it bears, or a vague reminiscence of its bygone fame, suffices to give them the impulse of self-preservation.

Well, Al can be even more ponderous than David or I.  But, there are parts in that paragraph that give me a real twinge.  How about you?

ADDENDUM:

If you have an android phone and saw the availability to others of too much info — including where you are and have been — there is a firewall that will halt that and more that is available as a freebie. 

No related posts.

There was a guy bitching about being woke up.   He was doing it on Twitter.  He lives in a town in Pakistan called Abbottabad.  Yes, that Abbottabad; not the New Jersey one. So, he’s bitching about being woke up and doesn’t quite figure out what is going on until after the rest of the world figured it out — well, not quite but his humor is close to mine so I doubt he’ll mind my overstatement.

One of his tweets:  (ROFL)

“Uh oh, now I’m the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it.”

You can check out his tweets and new found popularity.

It is a small world after all.  A small world after all.

No related posts.

I follow slashdot.com (rudundant?) which is a geeky look at the world.  It is best described as eclectic.  Most is geek crap but it does branch out a bit.

So, I ended up getting a link to the Pioneer Press up in Drizzt land — the twin cities.   They are evidently the liberal media voice in what the comments show is a fairly conservative population usually gassed on Captain and Coke.

Tax dollars hard at work

d-bags are where you find them

That it for the links.  I guess I’m lazy and don’t have pictures of casinos to add.  Didn’t realize it but doing this link crap is hard work.

ADDENDUM:

“The Pirate Party of Canada has announced that it will extend a VPN originally set up to allow people in Tunisia to browse freely while internet censorship was imposed there. Canada may soon be added to that list since the ruling Conservative Party has vowed to introduce a bill that would provide unprecedented systematic interception and monitoring of Canadians’ personal communications. So the Pirate Party of Canada has announced it will extend that service to Canadians.”

Does this give any locked out poker players any idea???  They are charging $10/200G to appear to be on a computer outside the U.S.

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