Today is the start of a better day than yesterday. Today I’m assured of at least another year before the cancer might return. A good doctor’s report makes for better days ahead. I can stop obsessing over this whole cancer deal until October when I’m due to be scanned again. So, what better way to pass the time than throwing some bad poetry your way. I wrote this many years ago during what I used to call the I-don’t-give-a-shit days. And believe me, I had plenty of them.
❤❤ It’s near in the mist. ❤❤ It watches and waits, as its urges flicker to life. A stroke of the hand, a kiss in the dark, and a seed is spilled near your wife. Some call it desire, others haven’t a clue, I see it near you!
Today is Thursday but it just feels like a dreary Monday. I was awakened at 4:30 am by my better-half who was preparing to leave at 6:00 am for a drive to Florida. She was accompanied by her daughter and two grandsons both under the age of ten (OMFG). She tried desperately to convince me to ride along but fortunately for me I had other plans today. My other plans consist of some quality time with my least favorite doctor, the oncologist. I’ve always thought that being a proctologist might be the worst job on the planet but after the last three years I’ve changed my mind about that. Being an oncologist has to be the worst. Their job is vitally important but dealing with cancer and death on a regular basis is grueling for both the patients, nurses, and doctors. I’m hoping for good news today as always when dealing with them. So while I sit here preparing myself for that visit I thought I’d post a few things about four truly dumb asses.
DEADHEADS A man in Orange County Municipal Court had been ticketed for driving alone in the carpool lane. He claimed that the four frozen cadavers in the mortuary van he was driving should be counted. The judge ruled that passengers must be alive to qualify.
LICENSE TO STEAL Two Kentucky men tried to pull the front cover from an ATM by running a chain from the machine to the bumper of their pickup truck. Instead of pulling the front panel off the machine, though, they pulled the bumper off the truck. They panicked and fled, leaving the chain still attached to the machine, their bumper still attached to the chain, and their license plate still attached to the bumper.
MADE FOR TV Guns For Hire, an Arizona company specializing in staged gunfights for western movies, got a call from a 47-year-old woman who wanted to have her husband shot. She was later sentenced to four years in jail.
OKAY, SO YOU’RE A MAN A 38-year-old man passed away in Pennsylvania a couple of hours after going to the home of a friend to see his snakes. According to the friend, the man had playfully reached into a cobra’s tank and picked up the snake and was bitten. Refusing a ride to the hospital, the man said, “I’m a man, I can handle it,” and instead went to a bar, where he had three drinks and bragged to patrons that he had just been bitten by a cobra. An hour later, he was dead.
I’m a lover of history, and I’m absolutely crazy about obscure historical trivia facts. I’ve collected quite a few over the years and I’m going to begin today with what I hope will be a number of postings with more of these little tidbits. Enjoy!
“Take this script,” Rudyard Kipling said to the nurse who cared for his firstborn child, “and someday if you are in need of money, you may be able to sell it at a handsome price.” Years later, when the nurse was actually in want, she sold the manuscript of the first Jungle Book and lived in comfort for the rest of her life.
After writing the runaway bestseller Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe was bombarded with hate mail. Out of one package that she received fell the ear of a slave.
The author of the best-known document in the United States, and perhaps in the world, published only one book. Thomas Jefferson’s answers to a set of 23 questions about the American continent, circulated in 1780 by the French emissary François Marbois, appeared as Notes on the State of Virginia.
Walt Whitman was dismissed from his clerical post in the Indian Bureau of the Department of the Interior when the Secretary of the Interior, James Harlan, read a portion of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and deemed it “pernicious poetry”.
Heavyweight boxing champion Gene Tunney lectured on Shakespeare at Yale University.
The electric automobile self-starter, which was perfected in 1911 by Charles F Kettering, made it possible for women to drive without the companion previously needed for cranking the engine.
In the early 1860s, a New York firm offered a prize of $10,000 for a satisfactory substitute for ivory in the manufacture of billiard balls. The prize was won by an American inventor, John Wesley Hyatt, who devised for the purpose what came to be known as celluloid. It was the first synthetic plastic.
Somewhere out there in space, amid all of the junk, is the Hasselblad camera dropped during a spacewalk by the United States astronaut Michael Collins. It will orbit the earth indefinitely.
A manned rocket reaches the moon in less time than it took a stagecoach to travel the length of England.
In 1930, Ellen Church recruited seven other young nurses to work 5000 feet above the Earth. They were the first airline stewardesses, flying on Boeing’s San Francisco to Chicago route, a trip that, in good weather, took 20 hours and made 13 stops.
He was born at Besançon in France, near the border with Switzerland. His father, on the outbreak of the French Revolution, was appointed mayor of Besançon and consequently chief police magistrate. Charles was an influential French author and librarian who introduced a younger generation of Romanticists to the conte fantastique, gothic literature, and vampire tales. His dream related writings influenced many later authors.
This is the perfect day to load you all up with a few more interesting tidbits of totally useless information. It’s been raining here for almost 24 hours, my backyard is flooded with 3 feet of dirty water, and it’s sure as hell not feeling much like Spring. It’s either sit in my warm and cozy man-cave and post this information or blow up an inner tube and go out in the backyard and float around in the lake. So, here’s your latest installment of ?????
You can form the number 12,345,678,987,654,321 by multiplying 111,111,111 by 111,111,111.
Chicago’s O’Hare airport sells more hot dogs than any other airport in the world.
The “WD” in WD-40 stands for Water Displacement. The “40” came about because it took the creators that many attempts to get the formula right.
A United States green card is actually yellow.
A shark jaws are not attached to the rest of its skeleton; that great maw is held in place by muscles and ligaments.
In the early to mid 1800’s, a trip by Conestoga wagon from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh – a distance of about 300 miles – took roughly 3 weeks.
During a 60-year life span, an average tree will produce nearly 2 tons of leaves to be raked.
The working title of the Beatles hit “With a Little Help from My Friends” was originally “Bad Finger Boogie.”
According to Hollywood lore, silent film actress Norma Talmage started the tradition of stars putting their footprints in the cement at Grauman’s Chinese theater when she accidentally stumbled onto the freshly laid sidewalk in front of it in 1927.
The first American president to be photographed was John Quincy Adams.
Most people take about 23,000 breaths a day.
The first paper towel came from defective toilet paper. Someone at the Scott company saw a crumpled, seemingly ruined roll of TP and decided it should be sold as a kind of disposable hand towel.
First speed limit in the United States was set in 1901 in Connecticut at 12 mph.
Samuel Seymour was five years old when he was at Ford’s theater the night Abraham Lincoln was shot. He was the last survivor of that event. He died in 1956.
The former communist leader of Romania, Nikolai Ceausescu – also known as “The Giant of the Carpathians” – banned the game Scrabble because he felt it was too intellectual. He also believed that baseball was subversive.
I think that’s about enough for today. I hope you find these factoids interesting even though they are a bit obscure. These are just things you never realized you needed to know and you’re welcome!
I thought I’d start this post with a look-back to April 8, 1974. Being the baseball fan that I am, I’d like to remember “Hammering Hank”.
Hank Aaron Breaks Babe Ruth’s All-time Home Run Record
On April 8, 1974, Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hits his 715th career home run, breaking Babe Ruth’s legendary record of 714 homers. A crowd of 53,775 people, the largest in the history of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, was with Aaron that night to cheer when he hit a 4th inning pitch off the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Al Downing.
As a follow-up to that story, I like to make a comment about my hometown team. Just to let everyone know (including JB), the Pittsburgh Pirates still suck. They’ve taken sucking to a new level, and it pains me to even watch a game they’re playing. It’s the beginning of another season and I refuse to get my hopes up. Bring back Roberto Clemente, Bill Mazeroski, Dick Groat, Rocky Nelson, Dick Stuart, and Willie Stargell and then play some real baseball. I think I sound a little bitter but that’s all right, because “I am”. It’s time for that organization to start spending some money and getting some quality players or it’ll be another 30 years before we see a World Series appearance.
Approximately 10 years ago I posted a list of 100 things that I hated. At the time I was criticized for being a little too harsh about certain people and certain things. Now that I look back on it that was probably a valid criticism, but times have certainly changed. I found that original list few days ago stored in a directory on my computer that I’d forgotten all about. After reviewing it again I decided to make some changes because after my last two horrible years my attitude has changed quite a bit, mostly for the better. I can honestly say that all those years ago I shouldn’t have used the word Hate. I’ve rereviewed the list and pared it down to just forty things that really annoy and aggravate me. Here it is . . .
1. Stupid People
2. Rosie O’Donnell
3. Dirty Fingernails
4. Criminals
5. Funerals
6. Backward Baseball Caps
7. Large Groups of People
8. Dumb Cashiers
9. Stinky Feet
10. Night Farts
11. Bugs Crawling on Me
12. Terrorists
13. Know-It-Alls
14. Hospitals
15. Oprah Winfrey
16. Will Ferrell
17. Fake Fingernails
18. Smell of Urine
19. Women Missing Teeth
20. Political Correctness
21. Liberals
22. Drug Users
23. Clowns
24. Organic Food
25. Liars
26. Dirty Toilets
27. Roadside Death Shrines
28. Jehovah Witnesses
29. Fake Boobs
30. Ass Kissers
31. Stinky Breath
32. Wet Farts
33. Ugly Feet
34. Jeans with Holes
35. Arrogant People
36. Noisy Radios
37. Texting While Driving
38. Granny Panties
39. Penis Caught in Zipper
40. Ex-Wives
I will admit one thing after doing all of this editing. There are five things on this list that I really do hate but I’m not going to specify which ones. You be the judge. Make up your own list and then find those few things that really make you crazy. Then match it against my list and you should be able figure out my five.
Ralph Kiner, Pittsburgh Pirates Hall of Fame slugger, was the broadcast voice of the Mets in the 60’s. For all of you baseball fans out there, here are a few of his gems.
“Today is Father’s Day, so to all of you fathers out there, we’d just like to say, Happy Birthday!”
“Solo homers usually come with no one on base.”
“Tony Gwynn was named player of the year for April”
If Casey Stengel were alive today, he’d be spinning in his grave.”
As you may have guessed, I’ve been around a while and my memories go back many years. I survived the 60’s and 70’s with only minor damage and tried desperately to forget everything about the 80’s and 90’s. The new millennium was a big letdown, and it still remains just that. This little ditty was written in 1978 or there abouts. I was smoking a lot of Weed in those days so I’m not entirely sure about the exact date. Take a trip back with me.
❤THE GENERATION GAP❤ Your Dis’n me, I’m Dis’n you, It’s all just Greek to me. It’s wicked hot, she’s wicked cool, I’m wicked confused you see.
I thought our slang from years ago was a cool and groovy thing. We’d rap all night about far-out stuff and what the future might bring.
Peace Man! Protest marches, and on into the night. We’d smoke some weed and drink some beer, it’s what made everything alright.
Stop the war! Kent State Revenge, was what we thought was cool. Pass the beer, we can crash over here, so, we’re a little late for school.
To mix and match the old and new really must be done. To help prepare for whatever new and the nonsense that’s sure to come.
I’ve been trying to keep up with the news out of the Ukraine and Russia but as with any conflict news reports change depending on who’s doing the reporting. The bottom line for me is that Putin has been using many of the tools used against the Russian people by Germany in World War II. Everyone recalls Hitler’s move into Poland by flooding the airwaves with propaganda claiming the Poles were acting against the German people’s best interests. Now I hear that Putin has been beating the old Nazi drum, claiming the Ukraine is a Nazi regime and must be stopped. As I’ve said in previous posts, I think Putin is living in a World War II fantasy land. If he’s a student of Russian history like I assume he is, has he forgotten what happened to Germany when they attacked Russian in World War II. All the games of Hitler’s regime accomplished only one thing, they all ended up dead. An intelligent man should learn from the past, not repeat the past. Here are a few quotes from the World War II era to explain it better.
“A modern dictator with the resources of science at his disposal can easily lead the public on from day to day, destroying all persistency of thought and aim, so that memory is blurred by the multiplicity of daily news and judgment baffled by its perversion.” Winston Churchill
“Propaganda has only one object: to conquer the masses. Every means that furthers the same is good, every means that hinders it is bad,” Joseph Goebbels
“By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise.” Adolf Hitler
“The propagandist operates chiefly by means of the printed word; the agitator operates with the living (spoken) word.” Lenin
“In view of the primitive simplicity of their minds, the masses more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one.” Adolf Hitler
THOSE WHO FAIL TO LEARN FROM HISTORY ARE DOOMED TO REPEAT IT?
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