“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.”
I thought I should lighten things up a bit since my last two posts were a wee bit negative. It always helps to clear some of that negativity with humor (especially off-color humor). Enjoy . . .
Q. What do bungee jumping, and prostitutes have in common? A. They both cost two hundred dollars and if the rubber breaks your screwed.
The young man has been dating his girlfriend for over a year, and so they decided to finally get married. His parents, family and friends helped him in every way possible. There was only one thing really bothering him, and that was his fiancée’s younger sister. She was twenty years old, and constantly wore extremely tight miniskirts and low-cut blouses. She would regularly bend down when near him and he had many a pleasant view of her underwear. It had to be deliberate. She never did it when she was near anyone else. One day, little sister called and asked him to come over to check the wedding invitations. She was alone when he got there and she whispered to him quietly that soon he was to be married, but she had feelings and desires for him that she couldn’t overcome. She told him that she wanted to make love to him just once before he got married and committed his life to her sister. He was in total shock and couldn’t say a word. She said, “I’m going upstairs to my bedroom, if you want to go ahead with it just come up and get me.” He was stunned as he watched her go up the stairs. When she reached the top, she pulled down her red panties and threw them down the stairs to him. He stood there for a moment, then turned around and ran for the front door. He opened the door, stepped out of the house. and ran straight towards his car. Without warning his future father-in-law was standing behind a shrub. With tears in his eyes, her father hugged him and said, “We are very happy that you’ve passed our little test. We couldn’t ask for a better man for our daughter. Welcome to the family son.” The moral of the story is:
Always keep your condoms in your car!
Q. What’s the difference between sin and shame? A. It’s a sin to put it in, but it’s a shame to pull it out.
Tarzan and Jane are preparing to make love for the first time, but Tarzan tell Jane that he doesn’t know how to do it. Jane says, “Look, it’s really very easy.” Tarzan tells her, “Tarzan usually does it in tree trunk hole”. Jane advises, “You’ve got it all wrong, you just stick it in this hole,” motioning to her crotch. Tarzan and Jane then get naked and Jane motions for Tarzan to put it in. Tarzan slowly walks over to Jane and kicks her very hard in her crotch. Jane, twitching with terrible pain, asks Tarzan, “What the hell was that for?” Tarzan says, “Tarzan checks for squirrels.“
Q. What has 100 balls and screws old ladies? A. Bingo!
“Never miss a good chance to shut up.” – Will Rogers
Sean Connery once polished coffins for cash.
There are 27 moons orbiting Uranus. (pun intended)
More than 29 years after the Japanese surrendered in World War II, Lt. Onoda Hiro was discovered in the Philippines. He refused to surrender until he was ordered to do so by his commanding officer.
In Sri Lanka, nonverbal signals for agreement are reversed from those in Western countries. Nodding your head means “no” and shaking your head from side-to-side means “yes.”
A person can’t be a sumo wrestler in Japan unless he weighs more than 154 pounds and is taller than five feet seven inches.
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“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” – Winston Churchill
President. James Garfield was shot by an assassin in 1881. Six doctors attempted to treat the wounded president, but several probed the wound with their bare fingers, introducing a fatal infection into his body.
Lloyds of London Paid out $3,019,400 in insurance claims to the families of the victims who perished in the Titanic disaster.
Ermal Fraze invented the pop-top aluminum can in 1963, he received U.S. patent number 3,349,949 for the design.
Approximately 75% of what we think we taste is actually coming from our sense of smell.
Couples married in the first three months of the year tend to have higher divorce rates than those married in the later months.
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“Doing nothing is better than being busy doing nothing.” – Lao Tzu
I think today I’ll keep this post rather short. I’m actually celebrating the fact that after two and half days of having no electric, no Internet, no phone service, and just generally cold and crappy weather, the storm has ended, and things are beginning to normalize. This ice storm destroyed most of southern Maine by damaging trees, adjacent homes, and dangerous conditions for any traveling. We have trees down everywhere and there’s still a few hundred thousand people in Maine with no power. I guess I got lucky that my street was repaired only after we sat in the dark and cold for two days. This is the second such storm in as many months totaling eight solid days of no utilities Internet, power, etc. etc. etc. It just brings home the fact that we rely on technology for damn near everything. Unfortunately, it’s also the first thing to fail.
I’ll probably be spending a great deal of time in the next few days trying to clean up the property because in my backyard alone I have three trees down and they have to be removed. I know that sounds bad but compared to most of the neighbors in this area I got off with minor damage. I thought I had all of the contingencies covered with storm preparation by installing a generator to carry the load when the electric goes out. Unfortunately, when the generator was supposed to kick in and turn on the electric it failed to work. Trying to find service people during a storm crisis is ridiculously difficult but I did get lucky. I made one call requiring that I travel 2 miles from my house, stand on my car roof and wave my hands in the air to get a signal in the midst of all this chaos. I guess I have to believe in miracles because within a half an hour of making that call, I returned home to find the electrician, his son, and a truck load of parts in my driveway. They dismantled my generator and immediately corrected the problem. As I write this, I’m still amazed. Things like that almost never happen but I’m certainly glad they did.
After all of that aggravation the power was fully restored this morning and now the cleanup begins. I hope and pray there are no more surprise spring storms showing up. Nothing good comes of these storms except if you own a Home Depot or Lowe’s, then you’re making a damn fortune. More to come in the next day or so and hopefully I can get this blog back to normal by then. Meanwhile . . . .
I hope all of you had an enjoyable Easter holiday. With that in mind I thought I’d offer up a little religious history and trivia. While I’m not all that religious I certainly enjoy anything concerning history whether it be mythological or factual. Enjoy.
The egg has become the symbol for Easter because it began as an ancient symbol of new life and considered a fitting symbol for the Resurrection.
A Bible published in London in 1632 became known as the Wicked Bible. It was called that because the word “not” was missing from the seventh commandment, making it “Thou shalt commit adultery.”
Few people know that one of the most famous structures in Greek mythology was built by a man named Epeius. It was the Trojan horse.
A bird was credited with saving Rome from attack by the Gauls in 390 B.C. The bird was a goose and according to legend its honking alerted the Romans to a night raid by the Gauls.
The political-religious movement, Rastafarianism, is named after former Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie who at his coronation was titled Ras Tafari.
The Vatican’s Sistine Chapel was named after Pope Sixtus IV who had it built as a private papal chapel.
When the American Foundation for the Blind recorded the entire 774,000-word King James version of the Bible in 1944, it took 84 1/2 hours.
The King James version of the Bible was the common source for a number of clichés; “Salt of the earth”, “Feet of clay”, and “Apple of my eye”.
The seven cardinal virtues are prudence, temperance, fortitude, justice, faith, love, and hope.
The seven deadly sins are pride, covetousness, lust, gluttony, anger, envy and sloth.
And here is a bit of bonus trivia concerning Pope John Paul II. His talents extended beyond the realm of his calling. He was also a gifted writer and musician. His 1979 record album, “At the Festival of the Sacro Song” sold over 1 million copies.
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IT’S EASIER TO PREACH TEN SERMONS THAN TO LIVE JUST ONE
I’ve been a baseball lover my whole life. I have a hard time watching baseball games these days because it’s always been more fun to play than to watch. Thank God for highlights provided on the Internet which makes watching much more pleasant. I was born in the Pittsburgh area and was required to be a rabid Pirates fan by my father and grandfathers. Unfortunately, the team has been a serious disappointment for the last twenty or so years. I still follow the team but not too closely anymore. Maybe that would change if the management of the team ever decides to pry open their fat wallets and spend a little extra money for next level players.
I’m also big into trivia and as I’m surfing the net or reading books, I constantly look for baseball trivia. Fortunately, or unfortunately some of the greatest stories were from the early years of the game before rule changes that made it impossible for players to show much emotion. The current whinny umpires are a tad too sensitive for my liking and really need their moms to show up and hug them. Those nasty baseball players are just soooooooo mean and they apparently hurt the poor umpires’ feelings. Just step-up guys and grow a pair!!! If it’s too upsetting for you – get the hell out of the business. They are one of the reasons that will eventually cause the league to turn over all umpiring duties to computers.
Here are a few trivia facts for you for a taste of baseball at its best.
One of the most popular baseball players of the 1880’s was a catcher-outfielder named Michael Joseph “King” Kelly, who played for Cincinnati, Chicago, New York and Boston. Kelly was a good hitter and a great baserunner. When he tried to steal a base his fans would shout, “Slide, Kelly, Slide!” This phrase was soon printed in the newspapers and made Kelly famous. Kelly was also an alert ballplayer who was always looking for a way to get an advantage over the other team. One day, when he was sitting on the bench, an opposing batter hit a high foul ball that none of Kelly’s teammates would be able to catch. Kelly leaped off the bench and went after the ball. At the same time, he was shouting to the umpire, “Kelly now catching!” Kelly caught the ball, but the umpire refused to allow the catch. “It’s not against the rules,” Kelly declared. “It says in the book that substitutions can be made any time.” The umpire still wouldn’t call the batter out. But Kelly was right. That winter, a new rule was written into the book. Because of Kelly’s alert play, the new rule said that a player could not enter the game while the ball is in play.
On August 13, 1910, the Pittsburgh Pirates played the Brooklyn Dodgers. After nine innings the game was tied, but darkness stopped play. The nine-inning statistics showed that each team had scored 8 runs on 13 hits and committed 2 errors. Both clubs had sent 38 men to the plate, with both sets of fielders credited with 27 put-outs and 12 assists. There were 5 strikeouts recorded against each team, and each side had given up three walks. It was the evenest game ever played.
One day in a Southern League game a batter for Knoxville smashed a long, high fly to center field. Arnie Moser, the centerfielder for Nashville, ran all the way to the scoreboard. The ball was over Moser’s head, and he leaped for it but missed. The ball hit the scoreboard and came down. Moser also hit the scoreboard but did not come down. His belt had caught on a wooden peg, and he was hanging helplessly on the fence, unable to chase the ball and get it back to the infield. Moser’s teammate left-fielder Oris Hockett came racing over to back-up the play. “I’m stuck! Get me down!” yelled Moser. Hockett looked up at his friend, looked for the ball, and looked at the runner rounding second base. He had to make a choice quickly. “Get me down!” yelled Mosier again. “Wait a minute”! hollered Hockett. He picked up the ball and threw it back to the infield to keep the runner from scoring. Only then did he go back to the fence and help get Arnie Moser off the scoreboard peg.
Here’s a collection of facts concerning some of the history of the battle for women’s rights. Some good ones, some bad ones, but all are certainly interesting.
Epicurus (341-241 BC), to whom good and pleasure were synonymous, was the first important philosopher to accept women as students.
In 17th and 18th century America, women were employed in all of the same occupations that men worked, and men and women earned equal pay. A female blacksmith charged the same as a man to shoe a horse. Women sextons and printers were paid at the same rate as men. Women were also silversmiths, gunsmiths, shipwrights, and undertakers.
The first woman governor in U.S. history was Mrs. Nelly Taylor Ross. She was elected governor of Wyoming in 1925.
$10,000 was offered by Marion Hovey, of Boston, to the Harvard Medical School, to be used to educate women on equal terms with men. A committee approved the proposal, but the Hovey offer was rejected by the board of overseers. The year was 1878.
Though she was a Nobel Prize winner (and soon would become the first person to win two), Marie Curie (1867-1934) was denied membership in the august French Academy simply because she was a woman.
A woman agreed in 1952 to play in organized baseball, with the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Senators of the Interstate League. However, minor league commissioner George Trautman, with the support of major league baseball commissioner Ford Frick, unilaterally voided Mrs. Eleanor Angles contract.
During the American Revolution, many brides did not wear white wedding gowns; instead, they wore red as a symbol of the rebellion.
She was 87 years old when she became the first woman U.S. Senator, and she served for only one day, November 21, 1922. Rebecca Lattimer Felton, a Democrat and the widow of a Georgia representative who had opposed reactionary machine politics, had long worked for women’s suffrage, which became national law in 1920. She was appointed for a day to the Senate in a token gesture by the governor of Georgia, who had opposed the suffrage movement. “The word ‘sex’ has been obliterated from the Constitution,” Mrs. Felton said on excepting her appointment. There are now no limitations upon the ambitions of women.
There are 15 nations that had given women the right to vote before the U.S. did in 1920. The earliest were New Zealand, in 1893, Australia, in 1902, and Finland, in 1906.
Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John, in 1776: “If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”
How old are you? It’s a valid question that most people ask about a stranger when discussing them with a third-party, “He’s about 20 years old.”. People who are in their 20’s think people in their 30’s are old while people in their 30’s think people in their 50’s are old. It’s all relative and silly but we do it all the time without really thinking about it. In my case I think anyone younger than 60 is just a stupid kid and that should show you how really stupid it is to judge a person by their age. Today’s post is going to list some interesting accomplishments by the age of the person doing them. Using age as way to judge someone is just ridiculous as these examples will show you.
At the Age of 1
Mary, of the House of Stewart, became Queen of Scotland.
Brooke Shields was selected as the Ivory Snow baby.
At the Age of 2
Judy Garland launches her stage career.
Isabella II ascends to the Spanish throne.
At the Age of 3
Albert Einstein speaks for the first time.
Alice Liddell first meets Charles Dodgson (pen name of Lewis Carol) who later used her as inspiration to write Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
At the Age of 4
Malcolm Little (who later changed his name to Malcolm X) watches as his family’s home was burned to the ground by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Bob Hope emigrates from England to the United States
At the Age of 5
Devora Wilson, Mountain climber, scales a 4000-foot peak.
Christopher Robin Milne hears the first “Winnie the Pooh” story, with himself as the main character, made up by his father, A. A.
At the Age of 6
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart gives keyboard concerts across Europe.
Shirley Temple receives an honorary Oscar for her contribution to film.
Ron Howard stars as Opie in TV’s, The Andy Griffith Show.
At the Age of 7
Helen Keller, blind and deaf, master’s a vocabulary of 625 words.
Carol Brown, who travels more than an hour daily to attend a distantschool because as a black she is denied admission to the local all-white school, motivates her father to file a lawsuit, resulting in the landmark Brown V. Board of Education Supreme Court decision which finds public-schoolsegregation to be unconstitutional.
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My Credentials
Age 1 – Flung my full diaper at my mother.
Age 2 – Spoke my first word (Shit!)
Age 3 – Drew my first tree.
Age 4 – Threw up on my sister.
Age 5 – Drank my first drink of alcohol (bottle of perfume)
Age 6 – Ran away from school (police found me later)
I consider myself to be an avid reader, but many friends and family consider me an obsessive reader. I admit to reading a lot, but that obsessive description seems a little much. I’ve been an avid reader of just about everything starting at about age 4 and I’ve never lost my love of reading and books. I thought with the advent of the Kindle and the Nook and other electronic reading devices I’d be in heaven. What I didn’t count on was missing the feel of the books in my hands, their smell, turning the pages, and just how contented those actions made me feel. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Kindle and I read it every day but it’s just not the same. Unfortunately for me I gave away a lot of my most favorite books when I bought the Kindle initially. Now I find myself looking to replace many of those books so I can sit on a quiet deck on a summer day and spend time reading my old friends. Today’s blog will be a few historical facts about books. Enjoy.
The art of printing was born with the first printed book, the Gutenberg Bible, and considered by many as the most beautiful book ever produced. 300 copies were printed, nearly 1300 pages each, 42 lines in Latin to the page. The Gutenberg Bibles remain among the most value books in the world.
Charles Darwin believes that the proposed first printing of this book The Origin of Species would be too large: 1250 copies. But the edition was sold out the very first day of its publication.
In 1814, when George Byron’s poem The Corsair was published, 30,000 copies were sold in a single day.
Kepler’s story Somnium, published after his death in 1630, is the first piece of authentic science fiction, as opposed to fantasy, because it was the first to try to describe the lunar surface as it really was.
The first collection of Aesop’s animal fables was put together 200 years after his death and included many that originated long after the Greek slave from Africa had departed this world.
Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863) – a biblical scholar, professor of Oriental and Greek literature, and compiler of a Greek and Hebrew lexicon – wrote the exquisitely simple and easily remembered “Visit from St. Nicholas”:Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house . . .
“The best moments in reading are when you come across something—a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things—which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours.”
Last’s weeks installments created not only some discussion with my better-half but also with a number of readers. The general feeling was that it was an interesting process but disturbing once everyone started explaining their opinions. That’s a perfect reason to continue with these posts because the questions tend to get even more interesting as we proceed. Here are the next fifteen questions you can share with your spouse or partner. Have fun with it.
If at birth you could select the profession your child would eventually pursue, would you do so?
Would you be willing to become extremely ugly physically if it meant you would live for 1000 years at any physical age you choose?
If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one ability or quality, what would it be?
You have the chance to meet someone with you can have the most satisfying level imaginable – the stuff of dreams. Sadly, you know that in six months the person will die. Knowing the pain that would follow, would you still want to meet the person and fall in love? What if you knew your lover would not die, but instead would betray you?
If you knew of a way to use your estate, following your death, could greatly benefit humanity, would you do it and leave only a minimal amount to your family?
Do you prefer being around men or women? Do your closest friends tend to be men or women?
If you could use a voodoo doll to hurt anyone you choose, would you?
While on a trip to another city, your spouse or lover meets and spend the night with an exciting stranger. Given that they will never meet again, and that you will not otherwise learn of the incident, would you want your partner to tell you about? If roles were reversed, would you reveal what you had done?
Are there people you envy enough to want to trade lives with them? Who are they?
For an all-expense paid, one-week vacation anywhere in the world, would you be willing to kill a beautiful butterfly by pulling off its wings? What about stepping on a cockroach?
Would you be willing to murder an innocent person if it would end hunger in the world?
If God appeared to you in a series of vivid and moving dreams and told you to leave everything behind, travel alone to the Red Sea and become a fisherman, what would you do? What if you were told to sacrifice your child?
What is your most treasured memory?
Have you ever hated anyone? If so, why and for how long?
With you rather be given $10,000 for your own use or $100,000 to give anonymously to strangers. What if you could keep $1 million or giveaway $20 million?
Have you ever heard or read a quotation that really grabs you? Those are the ones I try to search out and keep in my archives. They don’t have to come from some great mind like Einstein or Stephen Hawking because many of their quotes don’t do them justice. The list below are a few quotes that grabbed me the first time I read them. Let’s see if they grab you . . .
“What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be.” Ellen Burstyn
“The superior man is distressed by the limitations of his ability; he is not distressed by the fact that men do not recognize the ability he has. Confucius
“Integrity has no need of rules.” Albert Camus
“Everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself.” Leo Tolstoy
“Misfortunes one can endure – they come from outside; they are accidents. But to suffer for one’s own faults – ah, there is the sting of life.” Oscar Wilde
“He who has imagination without learning has wings but no feet.” Joseph Joubert
“The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross in which to burn.” Laurence J. Peter
“A lot of people mistake a short memory for a clear conscience.” Doug Larson
“The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself he becomes wise.” Alden Nowlan
“The older you get, the greater you were.” Lee Grosscup
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