Archive for the ‘Education’ Category
I’ve worked closely for a variety of people over the years and I thought I’d heard every stupid question imaginable. Then I began reading about questions asked at National Parks and Tourist Visitor bureaus. Boy was I ever mistaken that I’ve heard it all. You just can’t make this stuff up.
*****
- Which beach is closest to the water?
- Do you have a map of the Iditarod Trail? We’d like to go for a walk now.
- Have we made peace with the Indians?
- What is the best time of the year to watch deer turn into elk?
- Where are Scarlet and Rhett buried and are they buried together?
*****
- If you go into a restaurant in Idaho and you don’t want any kind of potato with your meal, will they ask you to leave?
- I am trying to build a flying saucer. Where do I go for help?
- Where can I find a listing of jazz funerals for the month?
- What is the official language of Alaska?
- Where can we find Amish hookers? We want to buy a quilt.
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- Do you know of any undiscovered ruins?
- So whats in the unexplored part of the cage?
- We had no trouble finding the park entrances, but where are the exits?
- What time does the two o’clock bus leave?
- Did people build this, or did Indians?
HOW DO YOU ANSWER WITHOUT LAUGHING OUT LOUD?
In the past I’ve been criticized for being somewhat unhappy with almost every organized religious group. I calmly sat by quietly accepting quit a number of less than Christian comments. They didn’t make me angry as you might think but in fact they made me smile. They just convinced me and others that I was probably accurate in my opinions. Today I will further defend my position by quoting some fairly well known individuals. They, like everyone else have opinions on damn near everything.
- “Science without religion is lame, religion with science is blind.” Albert Einstein
- “If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be without it?” Benjamin Franklin
- “In all ages, hypocrites, called priests, have put crowns upon the heads of thieves, called kings.” Robert G. Ingersoll
- “An archbishop is a Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by Christ.” H.L. Mencken
- “Religion is induced insanity.” Madalyn Murray O’Hair
- “Unlike Christianity, which preached a peace that it never achieved, Islam unashamedly came with a sword.” Steven Runciman
- “The Catholic faith is confession on Saturday. Absolution on Sunday. At it again on Monday.” H.G. Wells
- “If I had been the Virgin Mary, I’d have said, “No!” Stevie Smith
*****
So many people, so many opinions. As the old saying goes, “Opinions are like assholes, everybody’s got one.” It remains a truth regardless of what religion or lack of religion you believe in.
ENJOY YOUR SUNDAY, YOU SINNERS!
I thought I would supply all of my female readers with a few interesting historical facts from the early days of women’s rights. These women were the steppingstones that your gender walked on to get where it’s at today. Enjoy the history lesson.
- To prove that girls could master such subjects as mathematics and philosophy without detracting from their health or charm, Emma Hart Willard founded the Troy (NY) Female Seminary, in 1821.
- Not until 1932 was a woman elected to the Senate. She was Hatty Caraway, Arkansas Democrat. The first appointed woman senator was Rebecca Felton, a Georgia Democrat, in 1922.
- No woman held a Presidential cabinet position until 1933, when Francis Perkins became Secretary of Labor and she served a dozen years. Before her appointment in Washington, Ms. Perkins was an industrial commissioner for New York State.
- Mercy Otis Warren ( 1728 – 1814), at a time when women rarely played any part in public life, she became a propagandist for the US revolutionary cause, a confidant of John Adams, and an admired ally of most of the Massachusetts rebel leaders. She was a pioneer feminist who argued that women’s alleged weaknesses were due simply to inferior education.
- At a time when the education of girls in most prominent families which concentrated on needlework, music, dancing, and languages, Aaron Burr insisted that his daughter, Theodosia, learn serious subjects rather than ornamental ones “to convince the world what neither sex appears to believe – that women have souls!”
- For founding a birth-control clinic, in 1917, Margaret Sanger was jailed for a month in a workhouse.
ENJOY YOUR WEEKEND
I would hate to even try to come up with the number of words I’ve written in my life. Even talking about it boggles my mind. Language and words are everything. Without them both chaos would ensue. I know, I know, there’s plenty of chaos anyway but without communication chaos becomes something visceral and sometimes dangerous. Today I’ll be talking about words that I will write and you will read. Ta! Da!, communication without chaos.
- Did you know that the word stewardesses is the longest word that is typed with only the left hand.
- William Shakespeare invented more than 1700 words including assassination and bump.
- The only 15 letter word that can be spelled without repeating a letter is uncopyrightable.
- If you mouth the word colorful to someone, it looks like you are saying, “I love you.”
- Dreamt is the only English word that ends in the letters mt.
- The name Jeep came from the abbreviation GP, used in the U.S. Army for general-purpose vehicle.
- The word bigwig takes its name from King Louis IV of France, who used to wear really big wigs.
- No word in the English language rhymes with orange, silver or month.
- The word chunder comes from convict ships bound for Australia: when people were going to vomit, they used to shout, “watch under”.
- The expression rule of thumb derives from the old English law that said you couldn’t beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
IT’S MORE FUN COMMUNICATING WITHOUT CHAOS
I love reading limericks written in a totally different time and place. Today’s selection is from the war years in England. Even with all of the violence and mayhem going on they took time to maintain a sense of humor. Thank god for sex and it’s related activities, it’s all they had.
****
1941
There was a young lady named Nelly
Whose tits could be joggled like jelly.
They could tickle her twat,
Or be tied in a knot,
And they could even swat flies on her belly.
****
1943
There was a young man from Narragansett
Who colored his prick to enhance it.
But the girls were afraid
That ere they get laid
T’would lose all its color in transit
****
1945
A detective named Ellery Queen
Has olfactory powers so keen,
He can tell in a flash
By the scent of a gash
Who its previous tenant had been.
****
1941
19There was a young girl named Regina
Who called in a water diviner,
To play a slick trick
With his prick as a stick,
To help her locate her vagina.
****
KEEPING WAR TIME MORALE AS HIGH AS POSSIBLE
It’s hard these days tell tell if what we’re being told is true. Most companies and politicians have developed lying and fake news to new levels of confusion. We spend more time trying to determine if what we’re being told is a lie while the question we originally asked never gets answered. That’s always the grand plan for prevaricators of all kinds, misdirection and the parsing of words and phrases. It’s become an ugly art form for some people. Today’s post contains “true blue” facts collected from my archives with no manipulations or fake and misleading information. Here we go.
- The telephone has been one of the most profitable inventions in the history of the United States.
- One million threads of fiber optic cable can fit a tube 1/2 inch in diameter.
- In 1956, Johnny Mathis decided to record an album instead of answering an invitation to try out for the US Olympic team as a high jumper. It turned out to be a fortuitous choice.
- One ounce of pure gold can be made into a wire 50 miles long.
- President John Quincy Adams started each summer day with an early morning skinny-dipping in the Potomac River.
- America’s modern interstate highway system was designed in the 1950s during the Eisenhower administration. It’s primary purpose was not to enhance casual driving over long distances but to provide for the efficient movement of military vehicles if and when necessary.
- The human eye blinks an average of 3.7 million times per year.
- Terminal velocity for a human being is approximately 124 mph. To reach this speed, you would have to fall from a height of at least 158 yards or about 1 1/2 football fields.
- The Bible contains 32 references to dogs, none to cats.
- The word “nerd”comes from Dr. Seuss, who first used the term in his 1950 book If I Ran the Zoo.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this information that has not been edited, exaggerated, or just plain covered in BS. Real truths are much more interesting than most of the nonsense we’re being fed by corporate American and the politicians.
Quote for the Day
“IT IS SAD TO GROW OLD BUT NICE TO RIPEN”
Brigitte Bardot
I thought today might be a good time to address the “gouging” that’s been going on with food prices. I thought the oil industry was the champion gouger of all times but once again I was mistaken. I should have known that once it started with gas prices it would eventually spread to damn near everything else. Blame it on inflation or President Biden or on the many business men who seized on an opportunity to put it to the American public once again.
Yesterday I had the misfortune of doing the food shopping for the week. It will be a cold day in hell when I pay $5.50 for a dozen medium sized chicken eggs. I won’t list all of the things that pissed me off but trust me, there were dozens. With that thought in mind I’d like to time travel back to the “good old days” to do some comparison shopping. Welcome to the late 1940’s.
The average salary for a full time employee was $2900.00 and the minimum wage was a whopping $.40 an hour. I’m sure we’d all like to see prices like this again.
Bread (lb) $.14
Bacon (lb) $.77
Butter (lb) $.87
Eggs (1 dozen) $.72
Milk (gal) $.44
Potatoes (10 lb) $.57
Coffee (1 lb) $.51
Sugar (5 lbs) $.47
Gasoline (gal) $.26
Movie Tickets $.36
Postage Stamps $.03
Car $1250.00
Single Family Home $7700.00
Who is to blame? It’s a long list heavily populated by hundreds of politicians and thousands of loyal American businesses and corporations. As always, the regular guy gets stuck paying for their errors in judgement and sheer stupidity. Hooray for love of country and patriotism (sarcasm off).
U.S.A. ! – U.S.A. ! – U.S.A.!
Living in Maine has given me a great appreciation for monitoring the weather. Our winter here starts in late October and extends itself to the end of April, a full six months of snow, sleet, and cold. If you’re not a lover of miserable weather, I recommend you never move here. Today’s posting contains random weather tidbits you haven’t likely heard before. Enjoy!
- Lightning strikes the earth of hundred times every second, from the 1800 thunderstorms in progress at any given moment.
- Rain contains vitamin B-12.
- Observations of increased rain after US Civil War battles led to abortive experiments with weather control. Cannon volleys were fired into the clouds in order to induce rain.
- Nearly 100 pollution-filled, weather-beaten years in New York have done more damage to Cleopatra’s Needle – a granite obelisk covered with hieroglyphics – than did 3500 arid years in Egypt.
- 17 1/2 inches in circumference and 1.67 pounds in weight: that’s the size of the largest hailstone known to have fallen in the United States. It struck during a severe storm at Coffeyville, Kansas, in September of 1970.
- In 1816, there was no summer in many areas of the world. In parts of New England, snow stayed on the ground all year. Crops there and in Europe were ruined. Volcanic dust from the corruption of Tomboro in Indonesia that blocked the rays of the sun has been blamed.
- In living memory, it was not until February 18, 1979, that snow fell on the Sahara Desert. A half-hour storm in southern Algeria stopped traffic but within a few hours all of the snow had melted away.
- Residents in a small village in Scotland schedule their television viewing according to the tides. At low tide, the nearby mudflats absorbed the broadcast “waves”. Thank God for cable.
- On June 10, 1958, a tornado was crashing through El Dorado, Kansas. The storm pulled a woman out of her house and carried her 60 feet away. She landed, relatively unharmed, next to a phonograph record titled “Stormy Weather”.
- Due to friction with the surface of the planet, the wind retards or accelerates the spin of the Earth very slightly. A peak in the seasonal slowing of the planet is most evident during the northern winter.
C’MON WINTER
Always wishing to keep this blog interesting I decided that a short review of the “toilet” needs to be told. It’s an important part of our everyday lives but very few people care to hear anything about it. I’ll do the best I can with the information I’ve been able to find.
- Before the invention of toilet paper, people use shells or stones, bunches of herbs or, at best, a bit of sponge attached to a stick, which they rinsed with cold water.
- A Victorian plumber, Thomas Crapper, perfected the system we all use today. The siphon flush which by drawing water uphill through a sealed cistern is both effective and hygienic.
- In Victorian times, toilet seats were always made of wood. The well-to-do set on mahogany or walnut, while the poor put up with untreated white pine.
- The idea of separate cubicles for toilets is a relatively modern invention. The Romans, for example, sat down together in large groups.
- The first toilet air freshener was a pomegranate stuffed with cloves.
- American civil servants’ paychecks are recycled to make toilet rolls.
- The most impossible item to flush is a ping-pong ball.
- The movie Psycho was the first Hollywood film that showed a toilet flushing – thereby generating many complaints.
- Julia Roberts was once asked for an autograph while she was on the john. She said, ” I’m the tiniest bit busy.”
- Actor Jack Nicholson has a dead rattlesnake embedded in the clear plastic seat of his toilet.
And one last quote from a member of British royalty. “The biggest waste of water in the country by far. You spend half a pint and flush 2 gallons.”(Prince Philip in a 1965 speech)
NEVER FORGET THE COURTESY FLUSH
With September already over and cold temperatures beginning, it’s time to have some fun before the snow starts flying. With the holidays approaching I thought I’d publish a revised version of the Worker’s Prayer. This is posted for all of those people (my better-half included) that are stuck in thankless retail jobs across the country.
The Worker’s Prayer
“Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I cannot accept and the wisdom to hide the bodies of those people I had to kill today because they pissed me off, and also help me to be careful of the toes I step on today, as they may be connected to the ass I may have to kiss tomorrow.”
And just for the hell of it I decided to author a haiku as requested by a friend. Here it is.
❤️
The sky is so blue
A dot of sunshine yellow.
Forget me never.
T.G.I.F.
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