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Showing posts from 2010

Highways

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I realize that half of America has to merge into the left lane for about 80 percent of summer because a road crew is patching something, repaving something or replacing something. Call me dense, but when the sign says "merge left" is it really necessary to stay in the right lane up until the last possible instant, hoping somebody will let you in? I don't let them in unless I think it's a traffic hazard. Which it is because the damned closure is at an exit ramp which the morons forgot to close. Highway construction is really not what it used to be. And the repairs take even longer, like ... THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. Merge left.

Old, who me?

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This would be amusing on some other levels, but the report that New Jersey Sen. Frank Lautenberg, 86, plans to continue working despite being diagnosed with stomach lymphoma -- well, I am not really surprised. What I would like to know is ... WHY? What we need in the Senate, according to somebody, is an 86-year-old sick man who will be on pills, treatments and fairly extensive care, all the while apparently still trying to do the work of Congress. Whatever that was, Evan Bayh wondered. Frank, just retire, OK? The interesting part is that all the softballs that were thrown at the docs surrounding this announcement bordered on ... yeah, they were laughable. AP reported: "Independent doctors agree that Lautenberg's type of lymphoma is usually treatable." This blob of hysteria really tripped my trigger: "I wouldn't be too surprised to soon hear how he's once again outpacing younger aides as they walk through U.S. Capitol building," said state Assembly Speake

Some baseball thoughts

If you're old enough to remember Crosley Field or have an Uncle Riley who does, some of these names will make you smile. The rest: W.G.A.F. That's not the objective. Google "slow, dull baseball players" and come up with your own list. The point is: How champions are made, one Aaron Miles at a time. The 1950s were the years when "big," "red" and "machine" were usually associated with Soviets, tanks and old communists waving to the crowd while standing atop Lenin's tomb. Cincy baseball was a second-division team, seldom in the hunt. Hunt for Red October was a movie. By 1960, the whole thing bottomed out. So begins the story. On Dec. 15, 1960 (or so legend has it) the most unpopular three-way trade in history occurred. The Redlegs sent the awesome shortstop Roy McMillan to the Milwaukee Braves for pitchers Juan Pizarro, a lefty, and Joey Jay, a righthander who was the first Little Leaguer ever in the big leagues. So we had that going for

RV madness

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This out of Indianapolis AP RV Industry representatives and lawmakers are urging the U.S. to send thousands of trailers left over from Hurricane Katrina to Haiti even though some could be contaminated with formaldehyde. OK, as far as it goes, that's a nice gesture. Dying of some chemical seems the lesser of many evils for Haitians, who never would have had it so good as to get a real live RV made in Elkhart, Indiana. What's amusing is that this ain't about having a place to live. It's about the RV industry worrying that a government notion that auctioning off the 100,000 trailers would further depress their industry. This stuff was junk in the first place and now the industry is worried it will be put on the regular market. Haitians are pissed off because they say it's an example of the U.S. dumping inferior goods on them. As if a pile of rubble is superior housing. I worry that we won't have enough trailers left over when the next hurricane hits. Is anybody eve

Some photos are just funny

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In or out of context, this couch, on a sidewalk in Philadelphia, just seems ... so ... um ... Philly. I love it.

For the 1.9 trillionth time!

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It's always nice to know that somebody is trying to help us turn macro-government into something we can really call "useful" in our daily lives. The AP is noted for this when it tries to explain just exactly "what is" a zillion or a billion or a trillion. It usually comes in the number of football fields that it would cover. Not that you can envision ... say, 100 football fields all in a group. The latest is exactly "what is" 1.9 trillion dollars. AP uses these comparisons, as if miles and dollars somehow connect to the rampant insecurity that guides the average journalist these days. * A 1.9 trillion-mile trip is about the same as 8 million trips to the moon. Since you and I have often been to the moon, consider making 8 million of them and you come up with ... * 1.9 trillion feet would take you to the top of 29,000-foot Mount Everest 65 million times, or to the bottom of the 36,000-foot Mariana Trench, the deepest point in the Pacific, about 53 mill

Advice and other vital data

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I click on the Yahoo main page on Sunday evenings just to see if I've missed the latest rocket attack on Kabul or any of a dozen other news events. Mixed in there this weekend were: Stories on the Haitian earthquake crisis; The president's battle with Congress over .... fill in the blank .......; What celebs are doing this weekend ... .... and the obligatory list of "ten things" about ... yep, you guesster Chester ... relationships. I have no idea why all lists have to contain "ten" of anything but we are stuck on saying we need at least a few more than a bunch or it's not a list. This latest list is directed at she-mates, who are desperately trying to NOT lure men into their lives because of reasons that just escape me totally ... like, um ... you know. Some of this crap is amusing and all of it is actually pretty sensible. Here's the link: xox Good luck, girls.

Gumby

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Art Clokey, the creator of the greenish clay figure Gumby, has died at age 88. I don't have much discernible memory of Gumby and his claymation pal Pokey, but I do remember the early days of the art form on television. Clokey and his wife Ruth were innovators, according to the obituary. Life stretches across a framework of time and space, depth, dimension, sound, all part of our imagination. Pleasures of childhood, lost to time. Recaptured only by news of the death of one of the people who gave us reason to grow up. Art Clokey is just a guy you never heard of. Cartoon characters, hand puppets and Howdy Doody on a series of strings ... all seemed so exciting to us in 1954. Now it all seems so silly. I think that if I had to choose a time to be a child, I'd pick 1954 over 2010. Ain't but one Gumby.

Facing the facts

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AP is reporting that the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, which bans students from wearing clothing such as burqas and face veils, as well as ski masks and scarves, is apparently deciding to finally grant a “religious exemption” to Muslims. My hunch is that it only affects the Muslim women who live in Boston, visit the campus, work there or are enrolled as students. Most Muslim men, you see, don’t wear burqas, even in America. My questions are fairly less intelligent, such as, why did they have this policy in the first place? And exactly how many Muslim women are enrolled at the Mass. College of Pharmacy who insist on wearing burqas to class? Are we talking … one, two, or several hundred? I don’t know if regular Americans who wear burqas to class would be exempted or not. It’s a fashion trend whose time has truly come. You see it a lot these days. America’s university mind is a terrible thing to waste. I kind of get it about the ski masks, though.

Be my Bharrat, por favor

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I guess I am never amazed these days at the lack of humor in reporting what seems obviously too damned funny to just ... well, not guffaw about. The AP, in its infinite ability to dredge up news that the rest of us would say "that's dumber'n hell," has informed us that Bharrat Jagdeo isn't looking for Facebook friends. In fact, Bharrat probably doesn't even know you. I am certain he has never met me, though that's my loss. He is the president of Guyana. For the challenged, it's a little sliver of country in the northeastern corner of South America. I can't tell you much more about the place, other than it has "officials" there who are warning us that Bharrat Jagdeo's office is not sending out invitations to join him in friendship on Facebook. So if you see this, it's probably a scam, the AP says. What amuses me is that it's being treated as though millions of people will suddenly get an epiphany moment and say, "I thought

Wock and woll

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Or, as they called it back in 1957, the Devil's Thumbprint. I've had the opportunity lately to go into the iTunes library and find some oldies radio stations. No shortage of them, and while they all play generally the same thing, the scope of "the same thing" varies broadly. You will hear the songs that were popular in the 60s or 70s, a lot of Motown, Beatles, Rolling Stones, the same over-and-over that you hear on mainstream chicken-s**t FM stations. The iTunes portfolio goes considerably deeper. You will hear songs you didn't remember or know existed. Or maybe a cover version of the original. Lots of stuff by the Platters, for example, or Perry Como. But on much closer inspection, several facets emerge that I hadn't originally remembered. 1. Most of the music from the mid-50s on into the early 60s, or generally anything not Elvis or not Beatles, falls into three categories: do-wop, rockabilly and R&B. It can be argued that gospel, jazz, folk and big band

Asteroid preparedness training

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We give lip service to asteroid preparedness training, mainly because the government tells us to do the drill every year and send in the forms saying we've completed it. What? Your company doesn't require it? The interesting notion about space spending is that governments fund their space agencies, who have smart people sitting around deciding how that money can be spent wisely. At times, we watch helplessly as these agencies decide for us what is or isn't smart spending. The Russians are apparently convinced (or at least one of them is) that the asteroid Apophis is a big enough risk in 2032 that a deflection is needed. NASA people, contacted for support on the matter, don't generally agree. The debate rages in the darkened hallways in little caves and tunnels in places where you need golf carts to reach. It's maddening. As it turns out, there are a lot of ways we can be brutalized by the scraps of space matter that come roaring across the horizons every so often. A