3633 Getting to where I'll talk with wrong numbers?

Sunday, October 7, 2012

"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished

unless they kill in large numbers

and to the sound of trumpets."

--  Voltaire  --

------------------------------------------------------------

I've been thinking more about post #3631, about the mortgage rates.  The more I think about it, the more interesting it gets.

If I carry a balance on the credit cards, it's oh, say, 9% or more.  The mortgage would be 2.75%.  The mortgage is obviously a cheaper loan.  If I invest the mortgage money, I'd make say 11-12% on it (I just checked those numbers and am surprised it's so high, given that 1/3 is in bonds that pay very low), and I'd pull from those investments as I need it to pay back the mortgage and pay for purchases that otherwise would have been on credit cards.  PLUS, I get a tax break on the mortgage interest whereas I don't get a break on credit card interest.  Of course, when I pull from investments, I'd have capital gains tax - but there's talk of eliminating capital gains tax, so ....

A difference of like 8-9% on paying out and bringing in?  Damn!

-------------------------------

I'm very socially isolated here.  For the past two years I've talked with almost no one, beyond occasional conversations with Becs and The Man.  Maybe weather and lawn care with neighbor George.  I see Daughter and the Nugget almost every day (except weekends, when they seem to go off somewhere), but I can't really talk with Daughter, and Nugget isn't speaking English yet.  About the only other people I see are store clerks.  None of those contacts involve much in the way of conversation, and certainly never about ideas.  About the only food for thought I get these days is from my reading, either books or internet.  I don't watch much TV and am rarely interested in movies.

Man, I never thought I'd find myself missing coworkers!

Know how you occasionally find little old ladies who leap on any eye contact to engage you in lengthy and desperate-seeming conversation?  Now I know where they come from.  At least I have the internet.

Daughter knows almost everyone on the street, and chit-chats with everyone.  I can't do that.  I don't know how to chit-chat.  Daughter is content with small talk.  I'm not.  Plus I've done the suburban housewife thing a few times in the past, and I just don't want to ever again get caught up in those petty spats and intrigues and social debts and imagined slights.   It leads to more trouble than it's worth.  And it's worse when you're a single woman.

I could have Mensa and various Meetup groups, but although I mark events on the calendar, I don't actually go to anything, mainly because I feel guilty that I'm not making any progress on either house, so it feels wrong to go gallivanting when there's so much that isn't getting done.  That keeps me pretty much nailed in the house (although it doesn't get me up off the chair in front of the laptop).  Besides, the Meetup people are, I don't know, not "deep"?  Again, there's petty spats and intrigues and social debts and competitions.  Some of those people are flat-out crazy.  Some are nasty.  Many are shallow.  I'm not desperate enough I guess to navigate those piranha-infested shoals.

I'm not lonely, though.  Oddly enough, it's not people-contact I'm missing.  If so, I'd get up and go to Mensa, Intertel, or Meetup stuff.  I'm pretty much content alone.  Always have been a bit of a loner.

What I miss is discussing ideas.

------------------------------

Bonus - Nugget 17-month update:

Sudden nap attack.

An installation at Grounds for Sculpture.

Grounds for Sculpture. Everything here except the littlest beer drinker is a statue.

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3632 The crystal jar

Saturday, October 6, 2012

Happiness is not something you find; it's something you make.

--------------------------------------------------

October is Jay's month, partly because of that first-week curse (previous post), partly because he'd died at the end of October, and partly because he loved the autumn.  So even though it's eleven years since he left, October is his month.

At his memorial service (which he specifically didn't want but his sisters insisted upon) the pastor spoke of "keeping memories in a crystal jar".  I liked that idea.  I filled a crystal jar on the living room bookcase with slips of paper, each a special memory of him that I didn't want to lose.

I brought the jar down to the new house in September.  This morning I unpacked it from the box, and I read the slips of paper again for the first time in a few years.

I've listed those slips twice already in this blog, on October 27, 2004, and on February 19, 2006.  Here it is again - for Jay.


• The way he played video games with his tongue and whole body

• When something (a hammer, a pen) wasn’t where he expected to find it, he said "It escaped!", and seemed truly surprised

• He always tried to think honestly about his feelings, never hid anything from himself or me

• He never tried to talk me into skiing, never indicated in the least that he missed it

• Twinkling eyes

• He supported me against his father’s strong disapproval when I found the McDonald’s outside Versailles
 
• He couldn’t spell worth a damn

• He gave me the clouds and the moon

• "Carrot cake is a vegetable, right?"

• He loved Pleiades, volcanoes, and meteor showers

• In many ways, he was like my beloved mice - quiet, made nice warm nests, worked hard, personally very clean, and, like a mouse, he left the remnants of his tasks scattered behind him

• How huge he looked behind the windshields of his tiny cars - one wondered how he would ever unfold to get out

• The way he pronounced "oops"

• The mountain of his shoulders in bed, the angle of his hip

• When he stood at the bar of the Marlboro Inn in his three-piece dark suit, among the hunters and farmers - how tall he seemed, how impressively broad his shoulders

• After his diagnosis, he joked that he didn’t understand all the fuss - after all, his illness was just "all in his head"

• The way he could snatch flies right out of the air - and always released them outside

• He explained that there are things that are very clear and understandable, until you try to explain them - there are some things that just shouldn’t be looked at too carefully

• He was unaware of how big and powerful he was - he was timid about walking the streets of Binghamton after dark

• He never complained. Not once. No matter what

• His delicate tapering hands

• The way he gave off heat when he slept

• How playful he was

• The dangerous toiletries

• When he worked on something, he made a terrible mess of his environs, but the work itself was done neatly, delicately, and perfectly

• He acknowledged male hormonal urges and prohibitions - even better, he was able to describe male attitudes and thought patterns so that a female could actually understand and sympathize with them

• The way he couldn’t resist "improving" everything he bought

• How confident he was of his ability to understand/handle/fix anything

• Everybody says you have to work hard and constantly at a good marriage - it wasn’t work for him, he did what came naturally, and it was good

• The way his uni-eyebrow and beard were all one piece, and his nose hairs blended into his mustache

• The way his tongue helped him concentrate

• How sensitive he was to my moods, and always said and did exactly the right thing

• Joy in little things, like Ninja and Baby plowing a figure 8 in deep snow - "Just what I always wanted - a doggy choo-choo!"

• That silky spot behind and below his left ear

• How soft and liquid his eyes could get

• Lying on the ground looking at stars

• Pizza! Pizza, pizza, pizza!

• He was so clean about his body that it took me ten years to discover that he had a severe problem with seborrhea on his scalp, face, and ears.

• He remembered perfectly everything he heard or read

• Music confused him - too much information all at once

• Elfin hairs on the outer curve and lobes of his ears

• His absolute joy in yummies

• LOUD!!! sneezes

• He never got petulant when I consistently beat him at word games like Super Boggle, and he played happily because he knew I enjoyed them

• His delicate artist’s touch

• The wonderful lopsided smile when he saw me coming down the hall at the rehab center

• In the last months, when he was having hallucinations and delusions, he listened to me and believed me, even though everything he "saw" and felt told him differently

• Near the end, he said that one of the things he appreciated most about me was the way I so thoroughly understood him. He didn’t realize that was only because he opened himself so completely to me.

• Incredible force of will - he hung on until I told him it was time to go.

• The cloud formation a few days after he died - his face, with a winking moon eye

• The meteor shower a few days after he died - I got up at 5 am and went out to the deck only because I knew he would want me to, and I counted >50 in the first 2 minutes, then I stopped counting. Later, the newspaper and the astronomy club reported a peak of 30 per hour! I got a private show. I truly believe he arranged it for me.


Is it any wonder I'm still in love with him?
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3631 Mortgage musing

Saturday, October 6, 2012

“With the enormous expansion of social programs in the 1960's and 1970's,

America waged war on poverty - and poverty won.”

-- Ray Wilson, in an Amazon reader review of Nickel and Dimed in America --

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First week of October.  One more day and then the October curse has passed for another year.

Jay and I  had learned to fear the first week of October.

• That's when his back went out, ultimately requiring surgery.  
• That's when he had the head-on collision that totaled the car and ended up with him being sued, lawyers and depositions and the whole shebang (his was the third of four accidents on that curve that evening before the county got around to sanding the curve).  
• That's when he had the first seizure, that led three months later to the brain cancer diagnosis.  
• That's when the first tumor recurrence showed up on an MRI.  
• And then the second.  
• That's when he woke up one morning with someone else's arm attached to him, the beginnings of the loss of the left side of his world.  
• And that's when he began his final decline from a devastated immune system.

For six years at least, every first week of October brought something bad.  For eleven years since, every fall, I hold my breath for a week.  Yeah, it seemed that the demons of October had it in for Jay, not me, but still....

------------------------------

I don't understand interest rates.

I'd heard that it's difficult to get loans these days.  I hadn't been paying a lot of attention, but I did notice that the interest rates on my credit cards had been creeping up.   No, I don't miss payments, and I'm not late, and I almost always pay off the full balance every month, so the interest rates don't affect me that much anyway, but I killed one of my Visa accounts a few months ago when the interest rate suddenly went to 24% for no apparent reason.  That's ridiculous!  I didn't even bother calling them, except to kill the card.  My other cards hover around 7-9%, and when they creep up to 11% I call and complain and they drop it again.

So, I was under the impression that loan interest rates were high.

On the other hand, banks are paying ridiculous rates on savings.  I don't much think about what they're paying because my money isn't there to earn interest, it's just in savings as less accessible backup.  So yesterday I checked.  My savings accounts (four of them in three different banks) are paying .12% at one bank and .15% at another.  WHAT?!  That's less than a fifth of one per cent!  That's ridiculous!  I haven't bothered with CDs in decades, because they rarely pay even 1%.

So I wondered - if loan rates are high, and savings rates are low, why are the banks crying poverty?

Well, I checked on loan rates.

NJ current average mortgage rates:
3.33% - 30 Year Fixed
2.75% - 15 Year Fixed
2.68% - 5/1 ARM

WOW!

I consider that very low!

Of course, my last experience with a mortgage was when I left Ex#2 and bought the house in Highland, NY, in 1983.  I had a 1/3 downpayment on the house, financed the other 2/3, had an excellent credit history, and yet the best I could do was a 30-year adjustable-rate  mortgage at 16%, with 6 points!  Over the next few years the "adjustable" part took it up to a hair over 17% before it started down again.   90+% of my monthly payments went to interest, not principle.  So I have a horror of mortgages, and have avoided a mortgage on my last two houses since.

Sheesh.  At 2.75% it would make sense for me to take out a mortgage on the city house, invest most of the money in mutual funds (mine are paying 7% and up), and use the mortgage cash instead of credit cards - since I'd be paying like 6% less to use it.

It's not simple.  How much am I willing to pay for simplicity?
 .

3630 Oh, THAT debate.

Thursday, October 3, 2012

In the movie "The Third Man", a character observes that thirty years of turmoil in Italy under the Borgias produced Michelangelo, Leonardo DaVinci, and the Renaissance, while five hundred years of peace in Switzerland produced the cuckoo clock.

----------------------------------------------------------------

The previous post outlined my own personal disappointments with the debate.

Of course, as expected, Obama exaggerated a bit in a positive direction on the economy, and Romney exaggerated a bit in a negative direction, except when he was making positive but unsubstantiated forcasts for his own plans.

Ho hum, what else is new.

A lot of claims were made and numbers tossed around, and mostly my eyes crossed because I didn't know much about the numbers, except that each was chosen (and inflated or deflated) to create an impression.

So, if you are as curious as I was, you'll find the facts about the numbers (rather dense) at
http://factcheck.org/2012/10/dubious-denver-debate-declarations/.

If you'd like a score card of the truths, untruths, and half-truths tossed around, go to
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2012/oct/03/fact-checking-denver-presidential-debate/.

What's sad is that very few people will bother to read any analysis.  So as far as most people are concerned, everything that was said is "true" to some degree, so the "winner" is he who can tell the most eggregious lies the most convincingly.

Sigh.
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3629 What debate?

Thursday, October 4, 2012

Money cannot buy love, but it can put you in a good bargaining position.

-------------------------------------------------------

Yeah.  The debate.  I yelled at Obama to talk faster, more forcefully, and please please throw in a few quotable lines among those long dissertations, just one would do for cripes sake!  I yelled at Romney to quit interrupting and stop with the pandering.  I yelled at Lerher to take control, damn it, do your job, stop letting Romney blow right over you!

I didn't learn much.  I'm left with a few questions, like does Romney know the difference between "compete" and "collude" when talking about businesses?  Given his background, I'd wager not.  He might even figure that without regulation and oversight, big business will feel a proper social responsibility to serve their public.  (Unfortunately, big business considers their public to consist only of shareholders.)

And how come nobody anywhere, not Obama last night (I was yelling at him to ask) nor commentators or columnists today, how come nobody has asked how Romney's plan of turning over a lot of federal functions to the states results in lower taxes?  Yeah, maybe it would reduce federal taxes if the federal government isn't paying that bill, but what is the result on state taxes?  How does it help me if my federal income tax drops by 20%, but my state income tax and sales tax double?  Why didn't Obama ask?

I forget exactly when it was, but a few decades ago a lot of social service programs (including medicaid, foodstamps,  education, and so on) were fully funded and administered by the states.  The result was that the quantity and quality varied enormously.  The secondary result was that people in need and dependent on a program moved to states that had better services - with the result that they overwhelmed the system in that state.  Federal involvement leveled the field.  At least, that's my impression.  Have we not learned from that?

Remember a while back when conservatives were agitating to privatize social security, turn it over to the stock market and other investment?  I was yelling then about nobody remembering why social security was started in the first place.  Hey, remember October of 1929, when folks who had saved all their lives suddenly found it had all disappeared, and they had nothing?  Social security was meant to ensure that nothing like that ever happened again, that no matter what happened on Wall Street, they would at least not starve.  So why on earth would anyone want to hang that safety net back on Wall Street?  Heh heh.  Fate in its wisdom saw fit to teach us again why not.  Notice nobody talks much anymore about privatization.

Romney says he'd halt funding of, among other things, Amtrak.  Yeah, Amtrak has some problems.  (So does the deteriorating highway system.)  Um, we desperately need better mass transit systems.   We don't need to kill off what little we have.  You can travel all over Europe by train.  You don't even need a car at all in England.  What the hell???

I just get so frustrated when people don't learn from history, and keep wanting to try things that we've already found don't work.  Hey, I have an idea - let's not declare war on anyone for a while!  Did you know that the recent wars have cost gazillions of dollars, all of which was BORROWED!  And then Romney's party didn't want to raise the debt ceiling, when it was Bush's personal wars that got it so high?  Does anyone else find it interesting that Romney wants to give the military more than they want?  Is there something he's not telling us?  (Why didn't Obama ask, for me?)  Is THAT his plan to increase employment - start another war and hire all the unemployed as gun-fodder?

Ah.  Stop.  I hope for more from the veep debate.  Biden won't be as polite, and Ryan won't be so cool.
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3628 Lung power

Monday, October 1, 2012

Democracy is the worst system in the world - except for the other ones.

---------------------------------------------------------

Leslie Stahl said on Sunday's "60 Minutes" that it was part of Arnold Schwarzenegger's life plan to "win one bodybuilding competition after the next".  I'm having trouble figuring out the timing on that.  I guess that's planning two ahead?

-------------------------------

There's some kind of contest on YouTube.  Regular sponsored vloggers (bleck!  Yes, they exist) have been asked to get their regular viewers to submit videos of themselves for the "Supernote 2012" competition.  (See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whfw7O3bCYA&feature=youtu.be for Lamarr Wilson's call for entries, this morning.)

Basically, you just sustain a note for as long as you can.


Now, keep in mind that I was born and raised in a home where both parents smoked two packs a day.  I'm now a little old lady who's been smoking for 50 years.  I got dizzy blowing up the Nugget's wading pool this past summer.  Still, I figured I'd try it, just out of curiosity.

I took a few deep breaths, fulled the old airbags, and woo'd a note. I held the note steady, sustained with no wobbles, for 37 seconds on the first try.  I think I could go longer with some practice, but given my age and smoking history I figured I'd still get nowhere near contest-worthy.

So this evening I checked to see what responses Lamarr had.  There's about 50 of them so far, and most are young males.  I am shocked that very few of them managed to get past 22 seconds!

Let me repeat that - only a handful got past 22 seconds!

And these were submissions, so you know it wasn't the first try - it was the BEST try.

Wow.  Either I have more lung capacity than I expected, or I know how to conserve air.
...

So, how long can you go?
.
.

3627 Baths and Showers

Sunday, September 30, 2012

"The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures;

but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot." 

--  Mark Twain --

-------------------------------------------------------

So, how often do YOU bathe or shower?  And does one feel less need to bathe as one gets older?  The question came up on another blogger's post.

The myth is that all Americans bathe every day, but judging from the responses on the referenced post, every other day seems more common.

• Folks on online dating sites always want people who shower at least once or twice a day.  I wonder how many of them actually do.  
• Jay showered every morning.  
• My mother complained that one of my brothers showered three times a day.  
• Ex#2 would bathe only when I told him to.  When we visited his parents, if even if we were there two weeks, he didn't shower or brush his teeth once the entire time we were there.  Not once.  Daughter says he still avoids washing.  When she visits him she has to tell him he stinks and push him into the bathroom.  
• "The Man" showers every day, possibly twice.  I have to assume that just from what I know of him, because when we've been together he showers (or takes a bubble bath if there's a Jacuzzi available) morning and evening.  I have often tried to talk him out of the evening shower - I love his natural scent, I prefer it to his soap, but he seems to cringe at the very thought of going to bed unwashed.  When he's sweaty after bowling, I'm not allowed to snuggle until after he's showered.  He refuses to believe that I love the smell of his sweat.  I DO!  I do do do !  He seems to have a great fear of offending.
• Me, I take a bath or shower whenever I plan to leave the house and be around people - anything beyond like a trip to the post office or the quick-shop.  Going to the grocery store will call for a small bath.  If I don't plan to be around people, I don't bother.  I never go more than three days, though, even if I'm playing hermit. I wash my hair about every four days.

Now, the question asked was after 50, does one bathe less?

Babies don't get adult-style body odor.  When they have a clean diaper on, they smell wonderful, even without powders or soaps.  Kids don't get body odor problems, either, until they start adolescence.  That's when they start needing deodorants.

It's hormones.  Adult sexual hormones change the skin, oils, and sweat so that they produce distinctive odors (pheromones, the sexual signals), and when left on the skin the richer exudates foster the growth of odor-causing organisms. 

Really quite simple.

Just as we start life with a bean-shaped body, we end life with a bean-shaped body.  In our first ten years we gain a lot of abilities, and in our last 30 years we lose those same abilities - in pretty much the same order.  If we live long enough, we even end up bedridden or in a "stroller", wearing a diaper and eating soft foods.

As we age, our sexual hormones weaken.  For men, it happens over time (the reverse of their youth), and for women it happens more suddenly (also the reverse of their youth).  So our body odors also change.  We get like kids again.  If older men and women smell bad, it's usually, uh, diaper scents, due to a bit of a control problem, similar to their babyhood.

So yeah, older folks feel less need to bathe.   We instinctively know we aren't "putting out" as much in the way of interesting scents and organism-buffets as we used to.  Even our sweat is less interesting.

--------------------------------

When I was in high school I lived in an area where houses were heated by wood stoves, water came from a hand pump, to be heated on the wood stove, and the "bathroom" was out back, and had nothing to do with baths.  That was true for most of my classmates.  Baths were once a week, in a galvanized tub in the kitchen in water pumped from the well, carried to the house, and heated on the wood stove.  My classmates considered me rich because we had a bathroom, a furnace, and hot water that came out of a faucet.

But back then, even for those of us who had all the conveniences, one took a full bath maybe once or twice a week.  Except for people with exceptionally dirty jobs, the daily wash was hands, face, underarms, and crotch, standing at the washbowl.  We'd have thought that anyone who felt it necessary to take a full bath or shower every day had something wrong with them. 

And nobody stank.  Maybe we were used to it.  Or maybe we expected people to smell like people, not like soap.

I don't know where this fear of being natural came from.  I think it was Madison Avenue.  Make us afraid of being too real, too natural.  Buy soap!  Rinse and repeat!  You are not acceptable unless you buy our stuff to cover your disgustingness. 

Wanna know how bad it's gotten?  People now think it's necessary to bathe cats!
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3626 Grammar

Sunday, September 30, 2012

Why is the gift of intelligence so often given to people too stupid to know what to do with it?

-- Lev Grossman, "Time", 3/15/04 --

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This Harvard Business Review article, http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/i_wont_hire_people_who_use_poo.html,  is an essay from a guy who gives a grammar test to prospective employees, and won't hire them if they can't pass it.  He makes some valid points about why, like that if in twenty or more years a person hasn't noticed the difference between "it's" and "its", that's not an impressive learning curve.  He wants people who are aware and detail oriented.

I wish people who hire writers would do the same!

-------------------------------

I found this real comment a few weeks ago on a LockerGnome YouTube video:  "Yore wrong but consistent I luv ur'e house"

That's two interesting and frightening variations on the "your/you're" confusion.

--------------------------------

On "Say Yes to the Dress" last Friday, a woman said that one dress was too plain, it "needs more embezzlement".
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3625 Appalled

Sunday, September 30, 2012

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they suppress.

-- Frederick Douglas --

-----------------------------------------------------

Nescience is not understanding something you have no way of understanding; ignorance is not understanding something you should understand;  stupidity is not having the ability or desire to understand.

------------------------------------

A few posts back I begged folks to read John Scalzi's list of what it means to be poor (http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/).  The following is a comment on John's essay, about one major difference between being poor in the US and being poor in Britain:

harasseddad says:

September 4, 2005 at 2:20 pm

I had no idea. Here in the UK we tend to think all Americans are rich – but
Living in Britain means hospital treatment is free, for everyone.
Living in Britain means ambulances are free, for everyone.
Living in Britain means dental treatment is free, for everyone.
Living in Britain means prescription drugs are free to those on welfare and a maximum of £6.50 for everyone else (that’s under $5)
Living in Britain means a free pint of milk every day for every child in britain until they’re two (till five if their parent(s) are on welfare)
Living in Britain means you might be poor, you might have to go to bed hungry, you might not have a bed – but you will always be able to see a dentist, a doctor, a psychiatrist. And they’ll be the same hospital, the same standard of treatment as everyone else.
I have never been so grateful for the national health service – and more appalled that the richest country on Earth can not achieve such simple goals for its citizens.

Yeah. I am appalled, too.  I don't understand why there's so much opposition.  "Obamacare" is a half-assed attempt to get as close as possible to what is really needed, but it's unweildy because the opposition makes it impossible to go all the way and do it right.

The saddest thing is that I don't think the sheeple even know what they're opposing.

------------------------------

Note for future reference - 9/27 - woke at country house with swollen right index finger.   Firm lump in the middle joint. Jammed?  Spider bite?  As of 10/6, still swollen.  Lump size of large pea.  Finger bends as far as swelling will allow.
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3624 True speaking

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

It's always been and will always be the same in the world:

the horse does the work and the coachman is tipped.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Note - I find the music overlay in this clip enormously annoying.)

Ya gotta admit, the man can speak to the people:

[http://youtu.be/xiLun9GcL0M]

But what's more important is that you KNOW, from the top of your head to the tips of your toes, that unlike a lot of politicians he completely believes in everything he says.  Nothing is just "political expediency".  

Now, whether you agree with his beliefs and goals is something else.  But you've got to grant him honesty and integrity.
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3623 National recognition for volunteers? Yeah, sure.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

The most exciting phrase to hear in science,

the one that heralds new discoveries,

is not "Eureka!', but

"That's funny..."

-- Isaac Asimov --

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Lamarr Wilson (Wilsontech1 on YouTube) made some good points in a recent video blog (now called, Heaven help us, a "vlog") about those nationally televised awards shows, in particular the recent Emmys, but by extension also the Oscars.  He points out that actors are paid, and in most cases overpaid, to act.   So why is there a nationally televised awards show to honor those who simply do their job?  Especially a superficial job, not exactly a great contribution to humanity?

Why not a nationally televised awards show, Lamarr asks, for the best cops?  Or firefighters?  Or teachers?  Or doctors?  Or volunteers? Or my own contribution - why not televise the awarding of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prizes? 

(Lamarr points out that many of the best shows never win awards, but crappy "Two and a Half Men" has won 9 Emmys.  Actually, that's a bit misleading.  Eight of those Emmys were for cinematography, not for a wonderful script, or storyline, or acting.  One went to Jon Cryer for playing Alan, which I can sort of agree with.)

An aside - being nominated for an Emmy is not itself an honor.  Show producers nominate their own shows.  They send in clips for consideration in various categories.  Practically everyone who nominates themselves is "nominated".  Nomination has no meaning whatsoever.  It doesn't matter how wonderful your show is, if you don't send clips or send them in time, then you aren't nominated.  Shrug.  And that's why many of the best most-loved shows never win anything - simply because the producers didn't nominate the show, for whatever reason.  Some producers have been known to hold this over actors' heads.  "Straighten up, or we won't nominate you."

In my opinion, the Oscar and Emmy shows, and the red carpet, and "best and worst dressed", and all the crap surrounding them, are all simply the industry people networking with each other, and the televised parts are nothing more than a multi-hour commercial foisted on us.  Really.  It's just a commercial.  They're selling you their product.

So, are there any nationally televised awards shows for anything that matters?  Anything that contributes to society?  Ok, elections, if you consider public office an award for effective campaigning.  What else?  Hmmmm.  We have beauty pageants.  Talent shows.  Sports shows.

Nope, nothing much that matters.  Bread and circuses.  Ho hum.
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3622 Gas burbles

Monday, September 24, 2012

If there is love, smallpox scars are as pretty as dimples.

-- Japanese proverb --

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I was planning to go upriver this afternoon, so this morning I took Fred The Van to get gas.  His gauge doesn't work any more, so when I get gas I set the trip odometer, and I know he's good for 300 miles.  He's sitting at 287 now, so I knew he'd need filling before the trip.

Nope.  The pump kept cutting out.  It wouldn't even put a few drops in.  The internet lists a slew of possible reasons.  Fred is now at the car hospital getting his throat checked.  Also his hips - he's still leaking transmission fluid.  I'm afraid he may be giving up.  Although he's eleven years old, he has fewer than 65,000 miles on him.

Last time I went upriver I took Hal The BMW.  I filled him before we left, and then I filled him when we got back, just to check for really really (not what the computer says) what his MPG is. 

I was amazed!  This time the trip was almost exactly 300 miles because of some side trips I took, plus I did the whole trip with the top down, and he took 10.2 gallons on return.  Holy Whatever!  That's like 30 mpg!  (Fred gets about 20-23, depending, believe it or not, on how much crosswind we have.)

That's pretty durn good, considering how hot-blooded Hal is.  And his not wearing his hat had to have screwed with his wind resistance. 

Man, I do love manual (standard) shift.
.

3621 US- amputate, Canada- save, is that our choice?

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Success can be redefined.

-------------------------------------------------------------

People who are against "Obamacare" point to the Canadian healthcare system as something awful, something to avoid at all costs.  And somehow they seem to be able to find some Canadians who don't like it.  But it seems to me that there are a lot more Canadians who like it.  Like this one:

http://highlyirritable.wordpress.com/2009/08/19/at-least-she-can-still-give-me-the-finger/

Oddly enough, those Canadians who don't like it are alive and kicking.  And it seems to me that there are a lot more Americans who are dying from depredations of insurance companies, or are financially devastated by the American health care system.

Really, is it only rich Americans, Congressmen, and rich foreigners who deserve American medical care?

I don't understand.
.

3620 It's the Pitts

Saturday, September 22, 2012

If you want to make an apple pie from scratch,
you must first create the universe.
-- Carl Sagan --

----------------------------------------------------

When I heard that Leonard Pitts, Jr., had a new novel out, I leapt to buy it.  I didn't know he wrote fiction.  [Hmmm.  Spellcheck doesn't like "leapt".  That's a perfectly good word!]  I also bought two other of his books that I hadn't known existed.  [So much for not expanding the book collection....]

I have adored Pitts for decades.  I first read his nationally syndicated column in a Washington newspaper**, and then when I moved to NY was pleased to find it in the local rag, the "(town) Freeman".  The man always managed to speak my thoughts.  When the local paper was acquired by some big conservative conglomerate and Pitts' column was replaced by that of some rabble-rousing Rush Limbaugh wannabe who went off in half-cocked indignation with no research and little respect for facts, I was unhappy.  The internet was fairly new then, so Pitts sort of dropped out of my sight.  I'd almost forgotten him.

In the meantime, he'd been awarded the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, and had written a few books.  Mr. Pitts, I am very pleased to meet you again. 

The new book is Freeman (absolutely no relationship to that local paper!).  I'm about 2/3 of the way through it now.  It is well written and absorbing, pretty much what I expected of Leonard Pitts.  You don't want to put it down - and that's a problem, because it's in no way a romance or fairy tale.  It's brutal.  It's painful.  I'm afraid that by the time I finish this I will hate all southerners, and the entire southern half of the US.  The author has subtlety made me aware that for a large part of that population, the old attitudes haven't changed in the past 150 years, and I hate them for that.  His characters explain why they feel that way, which may be an excuse immediately after the Civil War, when the story takes place, but it's no longer an excuse.  Stupidity is the only remaining excuse.

As I said, it's well written and absorbing.  The speech patterns and verbal reticence of the educated northerners is annoyingly stilted, but if Pitts says that's the way they communicated back then, I'll accept it.

--------------------------------

** Correction.  He didn't start writing his social commentary column until the mid-nineties, so I would not have discovered him in the Washington paper.  I was in New York by then.
.

3619 Getting better

Friday, September 21, 2012

Most people who believe in Hell feel sure it is not their final destination.

Anyone who believes in Hell, I find, also believes in hateful ways of avoiding it.

Fear of Hell tends to make women into victims, men into bullies,

and everyone into line-toeing robots.

-- Gillian Kendall --

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

I mentioned that I had refused another kidney test because I didn't think it was worth the pain and danger.  The battery of tests I'd had since the infection and attack in early 2011 all said the same thing.  The stone isn't growing, there are no anomalies, and the kidneys seem to be functioning. 

But there was more.  For the past few years my hair had been thinning, my fingernails had thick vertical (lengthwise) ridges and would split lengthwise along the ridges, and my blood pressure (historically so low I was ineligible to give blood) was too high (150s over low 80s).  I had assumed that was all due to aging.

Apparently not.

Since we stomped the kidney infection (which I now know I must have had for at least two years) my fingernails have strengthened, they're no longer splitting, and the ridges are slowly disappearing, my hair is thickening enough that I'm thinking of growing it long again, and my blood pressure is lower (120 to 128 over 67 to 73, not as low as it had been, but good enough for an old bat).  Even my toenails are celebrating.  The previously ingrown nail has flattened out.

In short, things look good.

The only bad part is that I've gained weight.  Back to measuring servings again, I guess, and ice cream or a donut only once a week.

--------------------------------


I post links every so often.  I suspect folks rarely follow them.  Please do go to this link.  I'm begging.  This is something politicians need to read.  Please pass it on.  It's short, an easy read, just a list.  Please do go.  Please pass it on.
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/
.

3618 More things that jerk my chain

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Tyranny is defined as that which is legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry.

-- Thomas Jefferson --

----------------------------------------------------------

Hey lady, if I can see the underside of your breast, that V-neck is too low.

-------------------------------

Some guy on the radio was saying that Islamists are trying to make Sharia blasphemy laws international, and that this is a very wrong thing, very bad, because it conflicts with the cultures of other countries.

How can that be bad when using armies to internationalize democracy and our theories on human rights, regardless of the culture of the other countries, is "good"?

Goose/gander?  Pot/kettle?  Is something inherently good and should be forced on others because we like it and think others should like it, too, and is something bad just because we don't like it and don't want it forced on us?  Is that really the criteria?  How are they not the same degree of good/bad?


I don't understand.

--------------------------------

How come whenever I see women's shoe commercials on TV, there's always a good half inch of space between the back of the model's heel and the back of the shoe?  Those shoes don't fit!  They're a least two sizes too big!

Then again, I see a lot of women on the street with their toes hanging over the front of open-toed shoes and sandals.  Those shoes are at least a size or two too small.

I guess at least that goes with the current fashion of wearing clothing a size or two too small.  Hey lady, when you have horizontal wrinkles across the front and back of your skirt, and it creeps up your legs when you walk, that skirt is just plain TOO TIGHT!  It doesn't fit you!

--------------------------------

Get off my lawn!
.

3617 Buttons

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Weak desires produce weak results, just as a small fire produces little heat.

---------------------------------------------------------

I went to the country house this past weekend, and again was overwhelmed.  I took Hal, the little car, so I couldn't bring back much, mostly kitchen stuff, like my electric wok, a large and a small electric grill, the huge electric griddle, a few dishes.  I also brought back two large jars of buttons:

Yeah, I collect buttons.

I put a regular teacup there to show scale. The larger jar is 11 inches tall and 10 inches in diameter. There are three or four more jars about the size of the smaller one still upriver.

Looking into the larger jar:

My grandmother used to keep me busy when I was a toddler by having me sort her buttons. She had about two shoeboxes worth, in a drawer in her treadle sewing machine (the machine I learned to sew on). She'd dump the buttons out on the kitchen table and have me sort them into bowls by color. Next time, she'd want them sorted by material (wood, metal, plastic, leather, pearl, etc.). Next time by shape (round, square, animal, oval, toggle, etc.).   Next time by number of holes (one, two, four).  When I was all done, she'd pick out one button ("There it is, that's the one I was looking for.  Thank you.") and then dump all the bowls together into the drawer.

I LOVED LOVED LOVED sorting buttons.   I'd be quiet and happy for hours!  Some were so beautiful.  Every time I sorted buttons, she'd let me keep the one I liked best to add to my own collection.  Those buttons were the start of my adult collection, planning toward my own grandchild.

I think my collecting got out of hand because I was disappointed in the button pickings these days.  Gramma's buttons were so diverse.  Many shapes, many materials.  These days, you get a choice of round or round, plastic or plastic.  So I search auctions and yard sales for buttons, and have to buy a bag of fifty plain ones ($3) to get the two duck-shaped ones and the one metal one.  I never throw out old clothing without cutting off the buttons.  One of the things I like about Coldwater Creek is that they use nice buttons, and always include extras - which go straight into the jar.  I've been known to pay a dollar for a tattered vintage dress or jacket at Goodwill just for the nifty buttons on it.

Ok, so maybe I'm a hoarder?  But my collections are in categories!  And they're sorted!  And neatly stored! It's just that there's so darn many....
books
buttons
teapots
haoris
porcelain owls
Staffordshire dogs
stone balls
paperweights
necklaces
saris
... oh dear.
I guess there's a lot of categories, too.
.

3616 Proud

Sunday, September 16, 2012

The eternal pessimist: One who feels bad when he feels good for fear

that he’d feel worse if he felt better.

-- In The Misremembered Man, Christina McKenna --

---------------------------------------------------------------------

I am very proud of myself.

I still have a lingering fear of male anger, left over from my childhood.  It's not a problem when the male expressing anger has no control over me, or if the likelihood of my being beaten is low.  I can then give as good as I get and snarl back.  But as the potential for that male to injure me goes up, so does my fear, and I can turn into a quivering puppy.

I saw my urologist's anger in June of last year, when I questioned the wisdom of "blasting" the kidney stone when I have fragile capillaries.  He was furious.  He obviously doesn't like to be challenged.  I was frightened, because he has a lot of control over what happens to me.

I haven't seen him in six months.  At my last appointment, May 8, 2012, as I was heading out the door he wrote a scrip for another test.  This one involved an xray or scan or whatever with a radioactive contrast, another IV.  I tried to question him about the necessity, what were we looking for, but he was brusque and simply said, "The condition is progressing" and went in to the next patient.   He wanted to see me again in six months.

I didn't want to do that test.  Not after what I went through with the IVP.  I never want to go through that again, especially if it isn't necessary.  I've had a gazillion tests and xrays and CT scans and everything, and they all say the same thing - the stone isn't growing, my 1.5 kidneys are working fine, there are no lumps or cysts in them - what exactly is "progressing"?  And if he's so concerned about "progression", then why schedule my next appointment for six months away?

I decided not to go for that test.

Last Tuesday was that six-month appointment.  My hands were shaking and I couldn't stop them.  He looked through my file and asked why I hadn't got that test.  I told him I chose not to, because it would be extremely difficult and painful for me, that I understand that we do need to keep an eye on things, but that I felt we could do that with blood tests, ordinary xrays, and ultrasounds, and if those showed any indication of something to worry about, then we'd go further.

You have no idea how much courage that required.

(I didn't mention another concern - the second chamber in my left kidney isn't draining, so if we fill it with radioactive juice that won't be flushed out easily, um, isn't that a problem?  I was remembering the nurses telling me that even if Jay had been able to kill his tumor, the treatments would have damaged him so much, he wouldn't live much longer anyway.  I don't want to chance damaging the kidney further with tests.)

The urologist didn't get mad!  In fact, he seemed pleased and amused (as he was scribbling copious notes into my file).  There are a couple of ways to interpret his reaction, but I think I'll just take it and run.  The way I'd like to interpret it is that he worries about malpractice, and I just signaled that I'm unlikely to sue, and have given him a defense if I do.  (The other is that maybe he's relishing a future opportunity to say "I told you so.")  He made no effort to convince me that the test was necessary.

My next appointment with him is in January, and I'm to get a blood test and urinalysis between now and then.  That I can handle.
.

3615 Nails

Saturday, September 15, 2012

The United States is like the guy at the party who gives cocaine to everybody

and still nobody likes him.

-- Jim Samuels --

--------------------------------------------------------

Well, I finished the King book.  Pretty good, actually.  In a postscript at the end, he says he changed some things to make them more convenient to his story.  I wish he had said that in the beginning, because I did notice some discrepancies, and they bothered me.

The Cuban Missile Crisis happened early in my first year of college.  King has people freaking out, committing suicide, the whole bit.  I don't remember it that way.  In fact, the way I remember it, there WERE NO missiles, just half-assed plans, and some empty concrete launch pads.  The US government blew it all out of proportion just to make a point.  Sabre rattling.  Somebody wanted to look big and tough, and redeem themselves after the Bay of Pigs fiasco.  Whether that's what the reality was or not, I'm talking about how the people around me reacted.  My point is that nobody that I knew of was freaked out, and I knew a lot of military people.

The Kennedy assassination happened in my second year of college.   At first I didn't remember it at all.  Shows how out of it I was at the time.  After thinking about it for a while, I remember walking into the Husky Lounge, where resided the only television on campus, and the lounge was packed with students all focused on the TV, most crying and wailing.  I'd asked what happened, and when someone told me, I shrugged and thought "Big deal.  People get shot all the time.  It's not the end of the world."  I thought people were overreacting, that the whole thing was silly.

The context:
That was the semester when my parents were living temporarily about 15 miles from the college, and my father decided I should live "at home" that semester, and get a ride every day with the piece of scum guy who had molested me when I was in elementary school.  I'd get home from classes every day before my father got home from work, and I'd rush to wash and go to the bathroom, and then lock myself in my bedroom until after he'd left for work the next morning.  I'd sit up there shaking and listening to the shouting and swearing and hitting and crying downstairs.  On the weekends I didn't leave the room until I was sure he was out of the house.  Talk about bladder control.  And hunger.

So, somebody I didn't know got killed?  Hey, he knew that was a danger when he took the job.  Just a few days before, my 4-year-old brother had been thrown across the kitchen, striking his head, and he had a huge swelling on his left temple, and I'd had to beg my mother to take him to the hospital.  All you folks crying in the Husky Lounge over some guy you didn't know?  Why don't you cry for my mother and my brothers and sisters. 

So, yeah.  I didn't have any emotion to spare for famous rich people.

-------------------------------


I hadn't noticed that my last post was Tuesday.  I'm slowing down.  Part of it is that I have been reading a lot of political stuff, and it makes me so angry I don't want to make it worse by commenting on it.  I am having great difficulty this very minute resisting ... don't get me started.

-------------------------------

There are some people out there who have been checking this blog daily for a few years.  That was ok back when I was posting daily for years.  But now, checking here three, four, five times a day is, frankly, a waste of your time, especially if this is not the only place you check several times a day.

I strongly suggest that if you are not already getting the feeds, you start.  One way is www.google.com/reader.  It will tell you when there's a new post to any of the sites you follow that put out feeds.  There are other feed aggregaters (-ors?).  Seriously, they save time.

I might go to a blog, forum, or news site multiple times to see if anything interesting happened in the comments on posts I might be interested in.  (I don't subscribe to comments because the alerts come in email, and I don't like my email cluttered with every update.)  But if there's no comments I'm following, and no new posts, I don't have to go there again until Google Reader tells me there's a new post.

Over and out.
.

3614 Down with Derry!

Tuesday, September 12, 2012

Many people assume that you‘re being brutally honest

when you‘re really only being persistently obnoxious. 

-- Evan Morris --

---------------------------------------------------------------------

I'd mentioned that I'm reading King's 11/22/63.  I'm now about 150 pages in (of 849 pages) and I have a bad feeling. 

I've always said that I love the WAY Stephen King writes, but I hate WHAT he writes about.  I was under the impression that this book was a little different, that it didn't involve evil spirits, or aliens, or monsters, or Things.  Just time travel.

Along about page 121, our hero enters the town of Derry, and my stomach turned.

Readers of King's non-Tower books know that just about every book touches on events in earlier books.  Derry is not a good sign.  Derry is full of evil spirits and monsters and dead children, and I really don't want to go there.

If anyone else has read 11/22/63, please assure me that in this book, Derry is just a place, and that King isn't going to go getting all weird and disgusting on me.
.

3613 King of root beer

Monday, September 10, 2012

The admirable qualities so often sought among human beings

actually reside almost exclusively in dogs.

-- Evan Morris --

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Women who extend their eye makeup way past the outer edges of their eyes in an effort, I suppose, to make their eyes look larger, actually end up looking cross-eyed.  Do they really not realize this?

-----------------------------

Stephen King's 11/22/63 has been sitting on the shelf for a few months, so this week I started reading it.  In the first few pages his character rhapsodizes about 1958 root beer.

Yes!  Yes!  Oh my God yes!  I had almost forgotten.  Root beer used to be full and round and dark and smooth and strong and thick and full of body!  It was only lightly carbonated, but formed a head when poured.  It was a meal!  You rolled it around in your mouth for a while before swallowing it.  You could add 8 ounces of vanilla ice cream to 8 ounces of root beer, and the flavor was still strong.  You could smell a glass of root beer three tables away.  In the '50s and '60s root beer was just about my favorite thing in the whole wide world!

Somewhere along the early '70s it changed.  It got thin and blah.  Fizzly.  Watery.  Add ice cream and the taste almost disappears.  Fizzly water that a root beer barrel candy got dissolved in.  Artificially flavored?  Blah.  I stopped drinking it because it was such a disappointment.  That's not root beer.  I haven't had a good root beer in 40 years.

What happened?

(Up in the mountains you could get REAL root beer, locally brewed and mildly alcoholic.  The real stuff.  I wonder if that still exists?  Probably not - them damn revenooers!  Regulate the flavor right out.) 

--------------------------------

"Root beer used to be full and round and dark and smooth and strong and thick and full of body!"  Hmmm.  I notice a pattern here.  That's what I like about The Man.  The old root beer had a good head, too.
.

3612 What to say

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Folks who rejoice that "The system works!"

are usually referring to another's parking ticket, not their own.

----------------------------------------------------

I have a friend whose mother has been declining steadily for the past five years.  His older sister died about two years ago after months in a coma, and they never told the mother that her daughter was even ill because they didn't think she could handle it.  Although she doesn't have Alzheimer's, she's far enough into dementia that they figured she wouldn't notice.

He called me the other day to say he's headed for Florida, because they figure there's not more than a few days left.  She's on morphine, and that has a habit of easing people out.

He'll call me when she's gone.

Of course I've been thinking about what to say when he calls.  That's always so awkward.  When his sister died it wasn't difficult because her death was a relief.  She was basically vegetative after multiple strokes.  The doctors recommended taking her off life support, and everyone agreed except her son, who started legal action to prevent it.  So she lingered for almost a year, until someone "found" her living will and health proxy among her files.  (It was my idea, by the way, that if they looked for it, maybe they'd find it, or "find" it if necessary.  I don't know the details, how they managed it.)  So when he called to say he had pulled the plug, I said good, I'm sure she appreciated it, and that was the right thing to say, and it wasn't difficult because that was his attitude.

This is going to be much harder for him.  He's the only son (several sisters) and was/is very much an Irish Catholic momma's boy. 

I never know what to say to friends and coworkers.  "Sorry for your loss" seems so trite.  Mostly, I'm afraid, I don't say much of anything.  In most cases, I didn't know the deceased person, so it's hard to "share memories" like all the columns suggest.

There are a few times when I went further than the simple sympathetic nod, and I don't know whether it was good or bad.  I have a tendency to miss, or ignore, that sometimes people know things, but are avoiding or hiding it.  Then I go and point it out.  I draw attention to the elephant in the room.  I do that a lot.  It's seldom appreciated.

The Hairless Hunk's wife had a miscarriage.  H.H. told me that she was having a lot of difficulty with it, and he didn't know what to do about it.  I told him that I understood, that I'd had three miscarriages and a stillbirth, and it's a very private anguish because no one else understands.

Now, at the time, I didn't know her at all.  The only time I'd ever seen her was on the road.  She walked a lot.  One day shortly after my talk with H.H., she was turning at the end of the road as I was pulling into the driveway, and she waved for me to stop.  I rolled down the window, and she said that H.H. had said I'd had some miscarriages, and that she should talk to me.  She said she was having a lot of trouble getting past it, and that everyone says she should just get pregnant again as soon as possible, and how that just makes her feel worse, like the baby didn't matter, and she doesn't want another pregnancy.  She asked how I'd got past it. 

I told her that the problem is that to everyone else, the baby was just an idea.  She's the only person who actually knew the baby.  To her, and only to her, the baby was a real person, with preferences, likes and dislikes.  She knew when he was asleep and when he was awake.  She knew his nap/exercise cycle.  She felt his arms and legs moving.  She knew whether he was a runner or a kicker.  She even knew what kind of music he liked, and how he liked to be rocked, and when he had hiccups.  Nobody else knows that.  To them, the baby was just potential, just an idea. To them, starting another baby is just getting on with the idea.

She burst into tears.  "Yes!  Yes!  Exactly!"  She cried so hard it scared me.

I advised her to write up everything she knew about the baby's personality, and then either tell H.H. and her parents, or let them read what she'd written.  Make the baby real, as real to them as he was to her.

H.H. wondered what I'd said to her.  I guess she was a mess after that conversation, cried constantly for days.  I don't know whether she "made the baby real" to others or not, but she was pregnant with twins within a year.

For a long time after, I wonder if I'd helped or just made it worse.  Maybe the elephant would have wandered off on its own.  I can argue either side.

Another time involved a classmate in a law class.  She was an IBM Director in her late 40s, I think, single, no children.  Her mother died unexpectedly.  She and I were sitting on a bench outside during a lunch break one day about a week or two later.  She seemed to be handling it well, so I was surprised when she brought up that she couldn't sleep, felt very depressed, like why bother with anything, nothing matters.  She just didn't want to do anything any more.

I asked if she had any other family, and she said no, that she was an only child, and that her father had died several years ago.  Her father's death hadn't bothered her so much and she couldn't understand why, because she was actually closer to him.

I said maybe it's because now you feel like an orphan?

Her eyes got huge, and she turned slowly to me.  Yes!  Exactly! Orphan!  I'm an orphan!  And the elephant sat on her and she cried.

I don't think consolation, condolences, are supposed to make people cry.  They're supposed to smile wanly and say thank you.

Sympathy.  I'm doing it wrong.
.

3611 Telephone protocol

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Half the American people have never read a newspaper.

Half have never voted for president.

One hopes it is the same half.

-- Gore Vidal --

---------------------------------------------------------------

Daughter has never telephoned someone when I'm around, so I don't know if the following is a general pattern with her, or reserved for me.

My phone:  "Ring ring..."  Phone display says it's her.
Me:  "Hello."
Her:  "Hi Mom."
...silence...
...silence...
...silence...which will continue until...
Me:  "Um, you called me.  You get to pick a topic."
Her:  "Oh, yeah, I'm going to the store.  Need anything?" (or whatever her topic is)

Every single call! 

Is the problem mine?  When she says "Hi, Mom", am I supposed to say hello again, or ask what's up, or "how are you", or something?  Is my understanding of phone protocol wrong?  Isn't the person who made the call supposed to take the lead?
.

3610 Truth and fish stories

Wednesday, September 6, 2012

Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient,

for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.

-- Bertrand Russell --

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

It amused me that in Michelle's speech, the sentence "The truth matters" got a huge cheer.

I can forgive Paul Ryan his misstatement about his marathon time.  We all tend to misremember things that happened many years ago.  We remember the feeling, that it was especially good or especially bad, that we were especially proud or especially angry, so we tend to take whatever the details were and add or subtract numbers, points, inches, minutes, whatever to make it as impressive to others as it was to ourselves.

My daughter's GPA, awards, and birth weight, for example, keep growing while her toddler tantrum count keeps falling.  I feel no need for accuracy or apology.  I just subconsciously want others to be as impressed as I was.

I cannot forgive the flat-out lies in political ads and speeches though.  I read somewhere about a Republican TV ad that everyone, even the Republican party, admits is a wild untruth, but that the party continues to run because "it's effective".

"Effective" is more important than "true"?  We are doomed. 

------------------------------

Glenn Close was on "The View" today.  I adore Glenn Close.  Just sayin'.

------------------------------

Perhaps because of a casual mention somewhere, I decided to Google Jan-Michael Vincent.  A "whatever happened to" kind of thought.  I ended up at a poignant article in "LOST Magazine".  Very sad, but somehow ok.

--------------------------------

Did you know you can get nasty worms (anisakis) from sushi and sashimi? The fish must be frozen before use to kill the worms.  Special fish, "sushi-grade" fish, that's been through a flash-freezing process is used for sushi/sashimi.  It's very dangerous to use supermarket or fish market fish, especially wild sea fish.  How come I'd never heard that before?

I am amused that certain people will eat sushi only in certain restaurants because they insist it's "absolutely fresh" there.  Little do they know.  It better not be....
.

3609 Fairy dancer

Wednesday, September 6, 2012

I have the body of a Corvette. A '66 Corvette.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

From the WSJ Law Blog:

"A federal appeals court on Wednesday blocked a Minnesota campaign finance law that it said overburdened corporations that want to spend money to influence elections."

Think about that a bit, especially the last five words. Full story at the above link.

------------------------

Beautiful!  I swear I can see a spirit dancing inside.

[http://youtu.be/1C_40B9m4tI]

-------------------------------

I dislike people who think fashion is more important than substance, so forgive my commenting on Michelle Obama's clothes, but too often I think her clothing is too tight across the bust, and it hurts me!
 
Photo by: Alex Wong/Getty Images

I get pain in my breasts every time I look at hers.  I feel like I can't breathe.  There's something weird about her bra - it seems to flatten her on the sides.  It looks like it hurts.  It makes it difficult for me to see or hear anything else.

Free the girls, Michelle!  Let them breathe!

-------------------------------

My new Kenmore refrigerator arrived last Thursday.  I like it.  But it arrived with the doors hinged on the right.  I had ordered it hinged on the left, and I'm sure the salesman noted that because he asked me to verify the order before he hit Enter.  The delivery guys said they couldn't change it, it should have been done at the warehouse, so I'd have to call service.

Now, understand that one consideration that went into this purchase was the availability of service.  Sears services everything they sell, as opposed to, say, Sam's Appliance Sales.

It has taken me four days, four phone calls, a trip to the store to talk to the salesman, a threat to return the damn thing because what was delivered was not what I ordered, and two attempts at online chat --- to simply schedule a service call, and they can't come until the 12th.

I am spitting nails.

(I did look at the manual to see if I could do it myself, but the directions mention a certain "set screw" that doesn't seem to exist.  There's nothing but smooth metal where the arrow in the illustration points.  Hercules looked, too.  He couldn't figure it out, either.  I'm beginning to wonder if that's why the warehouse guys didn't do it - they couldn't figure out how.)