Archive for the ‘Just Saying’ Category
Welcome to installment #9. These questions are a little more intense but very interesting answers should be forthcoming. And for those of you who feel these questions are dark and threatening, here’s one for you tamer or lamer folks: How many cute and furry puppies must you save from a fate worse than death to be considered a true pet lover? LOL
Let’s get going!
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- If you were able to wake up tomorrow in the body of someone else, would you do so? Whom would you pick?
- If you are happily married, and then met someone you felt certain would always bring you deeply passionate, intoxicating love, would you leave your spouse? What if you had kids?
- When you do something ridiculous, how much does it bother you to have other people notice it and laugh at you?
- Who is the most important person in your life? What could you do to improve the relationship? Will you ever do it?
- Assuming that complete recovery was instantaneous, would you be willing to accept a year of complete paralysis below the neck to prevent the otherwise certain extinction of the blue whale?
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- Do you believe in capital punishment? Would you be willing to execute a man sentenced to death by the courts if you were selected by lot to do so and he would go free if you refused? Assume you know no details of the trial.
- If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?
- You are at a lake with some friends; the sun is warm, and the water is cold. Going into the water would temporarily chill you but you knew that later on the warm sun would be even more enjoyable and you’d be glad you had gone in. Would you take the plunge?
- Do you believe in any sort of God? If not, do you think you might still pray if you were in a life-threatening situation?
- While out one day, you are surprised to see your mother holding hands with someone who is clearly her lover. She notices you, runs over, and begs you not to say anything to your father. How would you respond? What would you do if your father later told you that he was going crazy because he kept thinking your mother was having an affair yet knew it was just his imagination?
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- If 100 people your age were chosen at random, how many do you think you’d find leading a more satisfying life than yours?
- If you went to a beach and it turned out to be a nude beach, would you stay and go swimming? Would you swim nude?
- Have you had satisfying sex within the last three months?
- Would it disturb you much if, upon your death, your body were simply thrown into the woods and left to rot? Why?
- Which would you prefer: a wild, turbulent life filled with joy, sorrow, passion, and adventure – intoxicating successes and stunning setbacks; or a happy, secure, predictable life surrounded by friends and family without such wide swings of fortune and mood?
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IF THESE QUESTION DON’T PROVOKE DISCUSSION, NOTHING WILL!
It’s painfully obvious to me that the month of February is boring. The craziest solution to liven up February is to assign ridiculous holidays and commemorative days to keep us all from diving off the nearest bridge. The following list is only a portion of the things assigned to February.
February 1, 2023 – National Freedom Day
February 2, 2023 – Groundhog Day
February 9, 2023 – National Pizza Day
February 12, 2023 – Lincoln’s Birthday
February 12, 2023 – Super Bowl 2023 / Super Bowl LVII
February 14, 2023 – St. Valentine’s Day
February 9-20, 2023 – Chicago Auto Show
February 20, 2023 – Washington’s Birthday / Presidents’ Day
February 21, 2023 – Mardi Gras Carnival in New Orleans, LA
February 21, 2023 – Fat Tuesday / Shrove Tuesday, Day before Lent
February 22, 2023 – Ash Wednesday
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That being said, here is a reposting of mine concerning Ground Hog Day and the insanity of living in western Pennsylvania.
This holiday means only one thing in Pennsylvania and that is the appearance of our old friend ‘Punxatawney Phil’ on Gobbler’s Knob. He’s scheduled to show his furry little face on the second of February every year to let us know whether we’ll have six more weeks of winter.
To reminisce a bit, way too many years ago I was a rookie state police trooper in Pennsylvania. To a newbie that means getting stuck with every crappy police detail they can find for you. One of the crappier of those was being sent to Punxatawney to guard “Phil” and for crowd control in and around Gobbler’s Knob. I thought they were kidding but they weren’t.
A few of us rookies were ordered to make the trek to Punxatawney, PA along with a veteran sergeant who must have lost the coin toss. We arrived in our cleanest and well pressed uniforms, met with all of the local politicians, and then were introduced to ‘Phil”’. He was cordial enough for a stupid gopher, but we were well advised to keep our hands away from him. He was a touch cranky and known to nip off a finger or two if provoked.
Believe it or not the crowds were huge. I’ve never understood why every local politician from miles around flocks to that ceremony. I guess they’re just hoping to get some free TV facetime or maybe even an interview with some of the local media. I met some mayors, some councilmen, and a few political hacks which unfortunately weren’t even as interesting as meeting ‘Phil’.
The only good thing I experienced that day was a rather buxom news reporter from a nearby town who took an immediate liking to my manly stature and my pretty uniform. She was much less furry than ‘Phil’ which was a plus and she also paid for my dinner. She even convinced me that dating her was the right thing to do. So, I did.
It’s sad to say but we all know any relationship built upon a Groundhog Day Ceremony was doomed from the start. She couldn’t understand why I didn’t care to drive to Punxatawney (a three hour round trip) every weekend. I finally explained to her that long distance relationships just never work out no matter what. It wasn’t her it was me. I dragged out all of the old clichés I could remember and disappeared from her life.
FEBRUARY IS NUTS!!
SO ARE PENNSYLVANIANS
This morning has started off strangely. Fifteen seconds after I sat down at the computer the power went out. I’ve lost all power in the house except for a few limited outlets hooked into the generator. It maintains all of the most important functions of the house like heat and water and thankfully this computer. I’ll be writing this in the dark with no way to upload the content until sometime later today (I hope). Maine has been having a rash of storms in recent weeks and the power grid has been damaged in many areas. I have to admit, this shit is getting really old and all of my bitching and complaining won’t help. Let’s move on to something a little more interesting.
I post a lot of limericks of all types. Some of you like them cute and funny, some like the children’s limericks and some others prefer the more bawdy and suggestive ones. Truthfully, I enjoy them all when the circumstances permit. Today I’ll pass along a few of the milder and sillier ones that won’t scare the children or any adults with delicate sensibilities.
😛😛😛
A mouse in her room woke Miss Dowd.
She was frightened and screamed very loud.
Then a happy thought hit her
To scare off the critter,
She sat up in bed and meowed.
😏😏😏
A young man dining out in Peru
Found a rather large mouse in his stew.
Said the waiter, “Don’t shout
And wave it about
Or the rest will be wanting one too!”
😊😊😊
There were three little birds in the wood
Who sang hymns anytime that they could.
What the words were about
They could never make out,
But they felt it was doing them good.
🙃🙃🙃
A glutton who lived on the Rhine
When asked at what time he would dine,
He replied, “At eleven,
Four, six, three and seven,
And eight and a quarter to nine.”
😎😎😎
Well finally some good news. The power has been turned on (for how long I couldn’t guess) and I’ll get this posted as quickly as possible.
BROWNCOATS RULE!!
Installment eight continues this series of posts designed to promote discussion and thought through self-examination. I hope it’ll generate some interesting discussions between you, your friends, and partners. Without interesting people in our lives and a lack of interesting conversations things would become excruciatingly boring.
Also, for those of you who are interested, starting today this blog will no longer be posted daily. I’ve decided to cut back a little to allow for more time for other projects. It’s been more than twelve years of daily postings and I’ll miss that part of my routine. I’m immediately cutting back to three postings a week, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays beginning today. Now let’s get on with Self-Examination #8.
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates
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- Do you usually make a special effort to thank someone who does you a favor? How do you react when you aren’t thanked for going out of your way for someone?
- Would you like to have your rate of physical aging slowed by a factor of thirty so as to give you a life expectancy of approximately 2000 years?
- You are invited to a party that will be attended by many fascinating people you’ve never met. Would you want to go if you had to go by yourself?
- Since adolescence, in what three-year period do you feel you experienced the most personal growth and change?
- If you were having difficulty on an important test and could safely cheat by looking at someone else’s paper, would you do so?
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- If your parents became infirm and the only alternative to bringing them into your house was to put them in a nursing home, would you do so? What about a sister or brother who suffered a permanently crippling injury and had nowhere to go?
- If you were at a friend’s house for Thanksgiving dinner and you found a dead cockroach in your salad, what would you do?
- If you could take a one-month trip to anywhere in the world and money were not a consideration, where would you go and what would you do?
- Would you be willing to reduce your life expectancy by five years to become extremely attractive?
- Given the ability to project yourself into the past but not return, would you do so? Where would you go and what would you try to accomplish if you knew you might change the course of history?
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- How many different sexual partners have you had in your life? Would you prefer to have had more or fewer?
- Have you ever considered suicide? What is so important to you that without it life would not be worth living?
- If your friends and acquaintances were willing to bluntly and honestly tell you what they really thought of you, would you want them to?
- If this country were to suffer an unprovoked nuclear attack and would be totally obliterated in a matter of minutes, would you favor unleashing the US nuclear arsenal upon the attackers?
- Would you accept $10,000 to shave your head and continue your normal activities without hat or wig without explaining the reason for the new haircut?
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ENJOY YOUR DAY
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates
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Welcome to installment number seven. These questions appear a little harder to answer simply. Only a frank discussion will bring the answers, both good and bad. Have fun . . .
- Would you rather play a game with someone more or less talented as you? Would it matter who’s watching?
- Is there something you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?
- While in the government, you discover the President is committing extortion and other serious crimes. By exposing the situation, you might bring about the President’s downfall, but your career would be destroyed because you would be framed, fired, and suffer public humiliation on other matters. Knowing you would be vindicated five years later; would you blow the whistle? What if you knew you would never be vindicated?
- On a busy street you are approached apologetically by a well-dressed stranger who asks for a dollar to catch a bus and make a phone call. He says he has lost his wallet. What would you do? If approached in the same way by a haggard looking stranger claiming to be hungry and unable to find a job, what would you do?
- If by sacrificing your life you could contribute so much to the world that you would be honored in all nations, would you be willing to do so? If so, would you make the same sacrifice knowing that someone you thoroughly disliked would receive the honor while you went unrecognized?
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- Knowing you had a 50% chance of winning and would be paid 10 times the amount of your bet if you won, what fraction of what you now own would you be willing to wager?
- What are your most compulsive habits? Do you regularly struggled to break these habits?
- You know you will die of an incurable disease within three months. Would you allow yourself to be frozen within the week if you knew it would give you a modest chance of being revived in 1000 years and living a greatly extended life?
- You are driving late at night in a safe but deserted neighborhood when a dog suddenly darts in front of your car. Though you slam on the brakes, you hit the animal. Would you stop to see how injured the animal was? If you did so and found that the dog was dead but had a name tag, would you contact the owner?
- What do you most strive for in your life: accomplishment, security, love, power, excitement, knowledge, or something else?
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- An eccentric millionaire offers to donate a large sum to charity if you will step completely naked from a car onto a busy downtown street, walk four blocks, and climb back into the car. Knowing that there would be no danger of physical abuse, would you do it?
- How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people?
- Is the fact that you have never done something before increase or decrease its appeal to you?
- Would you be willing to give up sex for five years if you could have wonderfully sensual and erotic dreams any night you wished?
- At a meal, your friends start belittling a common acquaintance. If you felt their criticisms were unjustified, would you defend the person?
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THE QUESTIONS KEEP GETTING MORE INTERESTING
I thought I’d pander to my readership today since so many of you love information about celebrities and Hollywood and blah, blah, blah. I won’t be writing too much on the current list of celebrities that everyone seems to adore but will step back into the near past for some actual interesting trivia. I don’t care who they’re currently dating, I don’t care what they have to say about anything, and least of all who they might or might not be sleeping with. I find historical trivia when it comes to the Entertainment industry much more interesting. Here we go . . .
- The American chemist Robert Hare discovered that a blow pipe flame acting upon a block of calcium oxide, which is lime, produces a brilliant white light that can be used to illuminate theater stages. We speak of someone who faces the glare of publicity as being in the “limelight”.
- In the mid-1960’s, the motion picture director-producer Stanley Kubrick wanted from Lloyds of London an insurance policy protecting against losses should extraterrestrial intelligences be discovered before completion and release of his far-out motion picture 2001: A Space Odyssey. Lloyds declined.
- By 1929, two years after the introduction of the “talkies”, motion pictures in the United States were attracting 100 million patrons every week.
- Northwestern University once conferred an honorary degree on a dummy of the wooden variety. On ventriloquist Edgar Bergen’s dummy, Charlie McCarthy.
- The English indirectly owe the preservation of Shakespeare’s birthplace to P. T. Barnum. In 1850’s, the Stratford-on-Avon cottage was neglected, and Barnum began to negotiate to acquire the house and have it shipped to his museum. The English were horrified and banded together to buy it and turned it into a national monument.
- In the 1920’s and 1930’s, Charlie Chaplin was probably the most celebrated man in the world. During a visit to his native London, the motion picture comedian received 73,000 letters in just two days.
- Acting was once considered so frivolous an occupation that authorities in Virginia, in 1610, forbade immigration of actors from England. Because of the evils that were thought to be associated with the craft, the cast of the first English play in colonial America in 1665 was arrested in Virginia, but later acquitted.
- The stellar cataclysm in the motion picture 2001: A Space Odyssey was filmed by Stanley Kubrick in an abandoned corset factory in New York City. The cataclysm was a close-up shot of paint dripping in a bucket.
- There are songs in all of Shakespeare’s plays except for Comedy of Errors. That play was the basis for a Broadway musical in 1938 that won the Pulitzer Prize: The Boys from Syracuse, by Richard Rogers and Larry Hart.
- In 1957, Frank Sinatra was quoted as describing “rock-and-roll” as “funny and false and written and played for the most part by cretinous goons”. But when Elvis Presley finished his Army stint three or so years later, Sinatra paid him $125,000 to appear for 6 minutes on a television special.
GOTTA LOVE HOLLYWOOD . . . RIGHT?
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” Socrates
It’s once again time to introduce installment number seven of this series. As I’ve posted them, I’ve found the conversations between myself and my better-half to be quite interesting. Some of my answers have surprised her and some of hers have surprised me. That’s a good thing for any relationship when after twenty or more years together you can still be pleasantly surprised by each other. Let’s get started . . .
- One hot summer afternoon, while walking through a parking lot at a large shopping center, you notice a dog suffering badly from the heat inside a locked car. What would you do?
- Do you feel ill at ease going alone to either dinner or a movie? What about going on a vacation by yourself?
- If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living?
- For $20,000 would you go for three months without washing, brushing your teeth, or using deodorant? Assume you could not explain your reasons to anyone.
- Would you rather die peacefully among friends at age 50, or painfully and alone at age 80? Assume that most of the last 30 years would be good ones.
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- If you were to discover that your closest friend was a heroin dealer, what would you do?
- Is it easy for you to accept help when you need it? Will you ask for help?
- If you were helping to raise money for charity and someone agreed to make a large contribution if you would perform at the upcoming fundraising show, would you? If so, what would you like to perform? Assume the show would have an audience of about 1000 people.
- Would you have one of your fingers surgically removed if it somehow guaranteed immunity from all major diseases?
- Would you like to be famous? In what way?
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- How do you picture your funeral? Is it important for you to have people mourn your death?
- Which of the following restrictions could you best tolerate: leaving the country permanently, or never leaving the state in which you now live?
- You, your closest friend, and your father are on vacation together, hiking in a remote jungle. Your two companions stumble into a nest of poisonous vipers and are bitten repeatedly. You know neither will live without an immediate shot of antivenom, yet there is only a single dose of antivenom and that is in your pocket. What would you do?
- Where would you choose to be if you could place yourself anywhere on a scale from 1 to 10, where one is hardship, struggle, and extraordinary accomplishment and 10 is comfort, peace of mind, and no accomplishment. Why? Where are you now?
- If you could choose the sex and physical appearance of your soon to be born child, would you do it?
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HAVE FUN WITH IT
I’ve considered myself an artist beginning at age five or six. I love creating art but I’m also a student of art history and read any and all information I can find. Here are a few samples of art history covering many decades and artists.
- The world’s largest art gallery is the Winter Palace and the neighboring Hermitage in Leningrad, Russia. One has to walk 15 miles to visit each of the 322 galleries, which house nearly 3,000,000 works of art and archaeological remains.
- The largest painting in the world is The Battle of Gettysburg, painted in 1883 by Paul Philippoteaux and 16 assistants, who worked for 2 1/2 years. It is 410 feet long, 70 feet high, and weighs 11,792 pounds. In 1964, the painting was bought by Joe King of Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
- Henri Matisse’s La Bateau, hung in New York’s Museum of modern Art for 47 days in 1961 before someone noticed it was upside down. About 116,000 people had passed in front of the painting before the error was noted.
- Vincent Van Gogh is known to have sold only one painting.
- In 1930, during the depths of the depression, Andrew Mellon, the American financier, bought 21 paintings from Russia’s Hermitage Museum for $7 million. The Russians needed the cash, and this American millionaire has lots of it, even during the depression.
- As penance for a quarrel with Pope Julius II, Michelangelo, in 1505, began a more than year-long project creating a gigantic bronze portrait of His Holiness. Later, the portrait was melted down for cannon.
- “I am so rich that I just wiped out 100,000 francs,” said Picasso, after making a new picture he didn’t like disappear from his canvas.
- The genre of art known as Cubism derived its name from a belittling remark made by Henri Matisse in reference to a Braque painting. Matisse said that the landscape looked as though it were wholly made up of little cubes.
- In his earliest and poverty-stricken days, Pablo Picasso kept warm by burning his drawings.
- Pablo Picasso, when he died in 1973, left in for repositories in the South of France the following: 1876 paintings, 1355 sculptures, 2,880 ceramic pieces, more than 11,000 drawings and sketches, and some 27,000 etchings, engravings, and lithographs in various stages of completion.
YOU JUST NEED TO BE DEAD TO BE FAMOUS
I’m feeling somewhat sarcastic today. That shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me because I’ve been accused by many of using sarcasm every time I open my mouth. I can’t deny that accusation because it’s mostly true. I use sarcasm as both a weapon and also for defense against ignorance and noitallism. Noitallism is a word I’ve created to describe a common malady among certain people who think they know everything and can’t wait to rub your nose in their vast quantity of knowledge. It’s an ongoing game of verbal chess that I really do enjoy. Those of us who live for sarcasm have an interesting way of thinking as reflected by our sarcastic definitions of common words. Here are a few examples:
- AARP: American Association of Retired Persons. An organization that sends out welcome letters to people over 50 to remind them that they will soon be dead.
- ACADEMY AWARD: Recognition of achievement in the motion picture industry. Given annually to a group of people who are 100 times prettier, richer, and more popular than you will ever be or have any hope of being.
- ABS: A part of the human body that can, apparently in only minutes a day as part of this exclusive TV offer, become rock hard.
- ACNE: Nature’s way of telling you that you are not quite ready to have sex.
- ADULT: What you become when you finally give up drinking, sleeping around, and bouncing from job to job. Also known as the kill-me-now syndrome.
- BANK: A place to enjoy waiting in line when you can’t make it to the post office.
- COFFEE: A laxative that you can buy in the same place that sells croissants.
- EROTIC: Titillating, causing arousal. In other words, all the things you have to picture to look like you’re enjoying it with someone who would never let you do the things you’re picturing.
- FOREPLAY: Two minutes of boring displays of affection that must be endured if you want to get to the good stuff.
- FRIEND: A person you use to pass the time between relationships.
- INTERESTING: A word meaning “I have no idea what the hell I’m supposed to say.”
- LIKE: A word that somewhere in the late 20th century began to be used as the connective tissue in all spoken sentences, despite the fact that the words on either side of it need nothing to connect them in the first place.
- LOVE: A deep and abiding affection that compels you to go to the bitter end with someone you should probably have ditched at the altar.
- SHAME: The realization that nobody else thinks the thing you were caught doing was as wholesome as you thought it was.
There you have it folks, your first introduction to some of the new and improved sarcastic definitions. A special thanks goes out to the VP of sarcasm, James Napoli, and all of us sarcastic SOB’s that seem to piss off just about everyone.
SARCASM RULES!
Being a collector of useless information and all types of odd trivia, I offer for your enjoyment today the following list of really strange occurrences and/or coincidences. I’ve firmly believed for years that there are no such things as coincidences but maybe these will prove me wrong.
- The Surete, the French precursor and modern counterpart of the FBI, was founded in 1812 by a man who was once named Public Enemy Number One. Eugene-Francois Vidocq, a thief and outlaw, evaded the police for years, turned police spy, joined the force as a detective, and used his knowledge of crime to establish a new crime fighting organization, the Surete.
- The carpenter who built the first stocks in Boston in 1634, a man named Palmer, was the first to occupy them. He was charged with over-billing the town elders for the construction, found guilty, and sentenced to spend a half-hour in the stocks he had recently completed.
- To help determine on what floor it should have its offices in one of the two World Trade Center towers, a Japanese company hired a soothsayer to throw dice.
- A Harvard student on his way home to visit his parents fell between two railroad cars in Jersey City, New Jersey, and was rescued by an actor on his way to visit his sister in Philadelphia. The student was Robert Lincoln, heading to the White House to visit his father. The actor was Edwin Booth, the brother of the man who in a few weeks would murder the student’s father.
- The celebrated seventeenth-century pirate William Kidd was a wealthy landowner in New York state.
- Mark Twain was born in 1835 when Halley’s comet appeared. He predicted he would die when Halley’s comet next returned to scare everyone – and he did, in 1910. The comet returned again in 1986.
- U.S. Congressmen expressed surprise on learning in 1977 that it takes fifteen months of instruction at the Pentagon’s School of Music to turn out a bandleader but merely thirteen months to train a jet pilot.
- Eleven days before the statute of limitations was to expire on the three-million-dollar Brink’s bank robbery in Boston in 1950, one of the robbers confessed and betrayed his fellow robbers.
- During the Gold Rush days in California, Charlie Parkhurst was a stagecoach driver, taking passengers and gold shipments along dangerous roads. Charlie smoked cigars, chewed tobacco, played cards, drank and at one time shot dead two highwaymen. On December 31, 1879, Charlie was found dead at his home. As they were dressing the body for burial it was discovered that Charlie Parkhurst was a woman.
- The slave, Henry Brown escaped from Virginia in 1858 by hiding (with a box of biscuits and a bladder of water) in a box that was shipped from Richmond to Philadelphia. There, he popped out into “the free world.” He was forever after known as “Box” Brown.
Here is a message from my new 2023 calendar that specializes in profanity laced sayings.
January 5 – CHASE YOUR BIG F*****G DREAMS
