Archive for the ‘Just Saying’ Category
I know it’s been a while but here is installment number eleven to further assist you in the examination of your life. I hope these fifteen questions will prompt some interesting conversations between you and the person you share them with. As the famous Greek scholar Socrates once stated: “An unexamined life is not worth living.”
- If you knew a thermonuclear holocaust would occur in precisely twenty years and no one would survive it, how would you change your present life?
- When did you last cry in front of another person? by yourself?
- If, by getting a 2″ x 2″ tattoo, you could save five lives and prevent a terrorist attack, would you do so? If you were allowed to select the location and design, where would you have it placed and what would the design be?
- Someone you love deeply is brutally murdered and you know the identity of the murderer, who unfortunately is acquitted of the crime. Would you seek revenge?
- Would you be willing to give up all television for the next five years if it would induce someone to provide for 1000 starving children in Indonesia?
*****
- While arguing with a close friend on the telephone, she gets angry and hangs up. Assuming she is at fault and makes no attempt to contact you, how long would you wait to get in touch with her?
- What do you value most in a relationship?
- If you learned you would die in a few days, what regrets would you have? Were you given five extra years of life, could you avoid the same regrets five years hence?
- Do you judge others by higher or lower standards than you use to judge yourself?
- Would you be willing to make a substantial sacrifice to have any of the following: your picture on a postage stamp, your statue in a park, a college named after you, a Nobel prize, a national holiday in your honor?
*****
- On an airplane you are talking pleasantly to a stranger of average appearance. Unexpectedly, the person offers you $10,000 for one night of sex. Knowing that there is no danger and that the payment is certain, would you accept the offer?
- If you had to spend the next two years inside a small but fully provisioned Antarctic shelter with one other person, whom would you like to have with you?
- You notice a self-destructive behavior pattern in a friend who is clearly unaware of it. Would you point it out?
- If you had the choice of one intimate soulmate and no other close friends, or of no such soulmate and many friends and acquaintances, which would you choose?
- You become involved romantically but after six months realize you need to end the relationship. If you were certain the person would commit suicide if you were to leave and were also certain you could not be happy with the person, what would you do?
*****
MORE TO FOLLOW
If you’ve read this blog at all you already know I’m a bit of a hoarder of adages, phrases, idioms, and anything else that interests me. Today I’ll supply you with a list of twenty-five of my favorite sayings. Some are quotes from well-known people, but most are ones that I picked up along the way from whoever was lucky enough to speak them to me. Maybe you’ll find a few that tickle your fancy or your funny bone or both. Enjoy.
- Religious men are fools! Fools should be taken lightly.
- A parent is a little kid pretending to be a big kid so his little kid won’t be afraid.
- Being involved with two women is like playing pool on two tables. You may have enough balls for it but you’ll wear out your stick.
- The ten best years of a woman’s life are between the ages of twenty-nine and thirty.
- When angry, count four; when very angry, swear.
- A yawn is a silent shout.
- The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom respectable.
- They are no premature babies, only delayed weddings.
- There’s always free cheese in a mousetrap.
- Chastity is curable if detected early.
- If Christian nations were nations of Christians, there would be no wars.
- Colleges don’t make fools, they only develop them.
- Common sense could prevent most divorces and all marriages.
- It is not death that alarms me but dying.
- A diplomat is a person who always remembers a women’s birthday, but never her age.
- He who hesitates is last.
- It’s not the men in my life I worry about, it’s the life in my men.
- A pessimist thinks all women are bad. An optimist hopes they are.
- The ultimate rejection is when your hand falls asleep while masturbating.
- Sex is only dirty, if its done right.
- Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
- I prefer an interesting vice to a boring virtue.
- I am not young enough to know everything.
DID YOU FIND ANY YOU LIKED?
When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the coffee. This story has been around a very long time and was told to me for the first time many years ago. As I was recently reviewing a lot of old files in forgotten directories, there it was. It still works for me. I thought I’d share it with all of you.
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A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some interesting items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full, and they agreed that it was. So, the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He vigorously shook the jar and the pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full and once again, they agreed.
The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar and the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with a unanimous “yes.” The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the sand granules. The students laughed and continued to listen. “Now,” said the professor, as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things — your family, your children, your health, your friends, and your favorite passions — things that if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.
“The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house, your car. The sand is everything else — the small stuff.” If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you. “Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness.
Play with your children.
Take time to get medical checkups.
Take your partner out to dinner.
Play another 18 holes.
There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first, the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.”
One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. “I’m glad you asked,” he said “It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a cup of coffee with a friend.”
JUST REALLY GOOD ADVICE
I’m a huge fan of statistics. No matter how you shake them out you can always get them to support your idea. I know because I’ve done it a few times myself and they made me look awfully smart. So, when I see information published and supported by statistics, I can’t wait to see how silly they are and how they might have been manipulated. Here are a few that made me smile.
- You’re unlikely to kill yourself by attempting suicide. Fewer than one in twenty-five suicide attempts are successful unless your a senior citizen. They take it more serious with a success rate of one in four.
- More than 70% of serious injuries at American colleges and universities are caused by cheerleading.
- You have a better chance of being killed by a donkey than of dying in a plane crash.
- You’re slightly more likely to die from a cave-in than from contact with tap water.
- It’s more likely you will die from your pajamas catching fire than from the bite of a venomous spider.
- Mosquitos are the deadliest animal on earth causing human deaths at 600,000 per year.
- More people are killed each year by freshwater snails than by salt-water crocodiles.
- You’re slightly more likely to drown in a bathtub than to die from electrocution.
- More than 100 billion (give or take a few million) people have died in the history of the world.
- And last a really stupid death. Cynthia was a topless dancer who died while performing her famous act of jumping out of a cake. Unfortunately, the cake was well constructed and apparently airtight. Cynthia suffocated after waiting 90 minutes to surprise the lucky groom.
*****
GOTTA LOVE STATISTICS
Rumor has it that yesterday was opening day for baseball. I absolutely love the game, but it’s been difficult at times to watch because I kept falling asleep and missing the best parts of the alleged action. It’s just so damn boring at times. Hopefully the new rule changes will speed things up a little but I’m always skeptical about new and unproven experiments. A pitch-count may work but I feel they shouldn’t use it during the final inning. We’ll find out soon enough if it is everything we’re being told it is. Along that same line, I look forward someday to the elimination of the home plate umpire entirely and of their questionable calls and all the drama they create. Bring on the new computer-generated home plate umpire.
Here are two pieces of baseball trivia for you.
In 1903 the first World Series was held between the Boston Americans (American League) and the Pittsburgh Pirates (National League) in a best-of-nine game series. Boston won the game and five years later rebranded themselves the Boston Red Sox.
Did you know that the first recorded game of baseball was between The New York Nine and the New York Knickerbockers in 1846. The Nine won the game 23 to 1. By 1857 the New York area clubs were playing baseball under the auspices of the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP), the sports very first governing body.
PLAY BALL!!
Nickola Tesla
Actual geniuses are rare. While most people hold them in awe after their deaths, they’re lives are sometimes difficult and a little strange. They are usually so involved with their projects and inventions, that everything else is no longer something that interests them. Many are anti-social and virtual recluses. There always seems to be a balance of sorts. Super intelligence balanced with a lack of social graces or concerns with others. It’s a terrible price to pay. Here are a few trivia tidbits of some of our better-known geniuses.
- Thomas Edison established an “invention factory” with the hope of producing one new invention every ten days. In one four year period he obtained 300 patents, or one every five days. In all he patented nearly 1300 inventions.
- Alexander Graham Bell was working to improve the telegraph when he invented the telephone.
- Charles Dickens believed that to get a really good night’s sleep the bed must be aligned north to south. In this manner, he thought, the magnetic currents would flow straight through the recumbent body.
- The botanist, George Washington Carver, who is best known for his pioneering work with peanuts, developed 536 dyes when experimenting with plant leaves, fruits, stems, and roots.
Ben Franklin
- Margaret Mead’s first foray into the observation of human behavior occurred before she was a teenager. As a young person of eight or nine years, she recorded the patterns of speech of her younger sisters.
- Ben Franklin was cautious in performing his famous kite experiment in which he charged a Leyden jar with electricity drawn from the clouds. The first two men who tried to duplicate his experiment were electrocuted.
- Lewis Carroll, by his own account, wrote 98,721 letters in the last thirty-seven years of his life.
- There was an intention in 1912 of giving a Nobel Prize jointly to Nickola Tesla and Thomas Edison. Both were deserving of the honor but Tesla refused because of his intense dislike of Edison. The Nobel Prize was instead given to a Swedish inventor of lesser merit.
Thomas Edison
Bill Haley & the Comets
I love Rock and Roll. I mean the old-style Rock & Roll of the 50’s, 60′ and 70’s. The current music trends leave me flat due primarily to the unavoidable bad influences of Rap which is highly overrated and just plain sucks. Only Rhythm and Blues still seem as smooth and sexy as always. Today I’m going to throw out some trivia from the golden age of Rock & Roll for those of you still interested in good music. This trivia is a little obscure but nonetheless interesting.
- Link Wray’s hit instrumental “Rumble” from 1958 sounded so menacing that it prompted a ban by several US radio stations.
- In 1986, Duane Eddy teamed up with The Art of Noise, an electro-pop act, for a revival of his old “Peter Gunn” hit.
- A bobbysoxer teen idol, Ricky Nelson returned in 1972 with a singer-song writer style hit, “Garden Party”.
- Chantilly Lace almost scrapped a top 30 placing in 1972 for legendary rock and roller Jerry Lee Lewis.
- The Drifters returned to the British charts in 1972 with a revival of their mid-60’s single “Come on Over to My Place”.
The Bee Gee’s
- The Father of Rock & Roll, Bill Haley, died in 1981.
- MC5 and Roy Wood attracted boos and worse at the London Rock ‘n’ Roll Show held at Wembley Stadium in 1972. The crowd was upset that they all had long hair.
- The Beach Boys released a song by cult hippy leader Charles Manson on the B-side of their1968 single, “Blue Birds Over the Mountain”. Originally called “Cease to Exist“, the band gave it an even stranger title of “Never Learn Not to Love”.
- The US hard-rock band Aerosmith made an unlikely appearance in The Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band film performing the Beatle’s “Come Together“.
- The Bee Gee’s first number one single hit in the US, “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart”, went nowhere in Britain, which is all the more surprising because it’s since become a standard.
The Beatles
ROCK ON ! ! !
“A unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates
I thought I’d continue with another installment of interesting questions created to assist us in self-evaluation. These installments have made for some lively discussions with my better-half after we discovered some surprisingly different answers. I hope you have a partner or spouse to discuss them with. It can be quite enlightening.
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- If you knew your child would be severely retarded and would die by the age of five, would you decide to have an abortion?
- Do you find it hard to say “no” when you regularly do favors you do not want to do? If so, why?
- If you began to be very attracted to someone of another race, how would your behavior differ from what it would be toward someone of your own race?
- Would you rather spend a month on vacation with your parents or put in overtime at your current job for four weeks without extra compensation?
- Would you like to know the precise day of your death?
- Would you accept a guaranteed, lifetime allowance of $50,000 per year (adjusted annually for inflation) if accepting it meant you could never again earn money from either work or investments.
- What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?
- Do you ever spit or pick your nose in public? What about cleaning your teeth with a toothpick?
- A close friend asks, and genuinely wants your opinion about something, but your opinion is one that he is likely to find quite painful. For example, your friend is an artist and asks your honest estimate of his chances of being successful. You think he is an atrocious artist who hasn’t the slightest chance of success. What would you do?
- Do you have a favorite sexual fantasy? Would you like to have it fulfilled?
*****
HAVE FUN WITH IT
For most of my life I’ve loved the winter and snow and cold weather. That being said this may have been the worse winter ever with continual losses of electric power, telephone coverage, and internet and that doesn’t even include my fractured ankle and finally being exposed to Covid-19. As global warming continues to wreak havoc on the weather patterns, there’s no normal anymore. Maybe it’s time for me to move further north and live above the arctic circle. The snow, ice, and cold remain consistent there.
Here are a few items of weather-related trivia that you might find interesting.
- The Antarctic ice is forced out over the Ross Sea – a large inlet into Antarctica – in a layer hundreds of feet thick. It is called the Ross Ice Shelf (see above) and it’s area is about that of France.
- At the height of various ice ages of the last million years, as much as thirty percent of all the land of the planet was covered with a thick layer of ice.
- The first mention of an iceberg in world literature did not come until 800 A.D. An account of the travels of the Irish monk, St. Brendan in the north Atlantic, three centuries before, appeared around then and mentioned having sighted a “a floating crystal castle”,
- An iceberg larger than Belgium was observed in the South Pacific in 1956. It was 208 miles long and 60 miles wide – the largest ever seen.
- The temperature can become so cold in eastern Siberia that the moisture in a persons breath can freeze in the air and fall to the earth.
- The most recent ice age reached it’s peak in 16,000 B.C., and it wasn’t until 8000 B.C. that the ice began it’s final retreat. In 6000 B.C. the Great Lakes were clear, and for the first time in 25,000 years Canada began to lose its ice cover. It was not until 3000 B.C. that the ice retreated to its present location; by then human beings were establishing cities throughout the Middle East.
After reading all of that, maybe this wasn’t such a bad year after all.
TIME FOR WARM TEMPERATURES AND HOT SAND BEACHES
I’ve been trying for days to post something but these damn storms are screwing up almost everything. Our power and internet returned today after 24 hours of silence and I wanted to post before the next catastrophe arrives.
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It feels good to be back to some semblance of normalcy. My first post-op inspection revealed my poor fractured ankle is on the mend. The doctor assures me that only five more weeks of a walker and wheelchair and I should be good to go. That news eases the pressure a little and makes getting back to this blog a little easier. I’ll be happy to provide a few limericks today to make you smile as little.
❤
A lisping young lady named JoBeth
Was saved from a fate worse than death.
Seven times in a row,
Which unsettled her so
That she quit saying “No” and said “Yeth.”
😂😂😂
Therre was a young fellow named Goody
Who claimed that he wouldn’t, but would he?
If he found himself nude
With a gal in the mood,
The questions not woody, but could he?
😁😁😁
There once was a young lady of Arden,
The tool of whose swain wouldn’t harden.
Said she with a frown,
“I’ve been sadly let down,
By the tool of a fool in a garden.”
😜😜😜
A flatulent nun of Hawaii
One Easter eve supped on papaya,
Then honored the Passover
By turning her ass over
And obliging with Handel’s Messiah.
🤩🤩🤩
LIMERICKS HAVE RETURNED
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