Have you ever had a nickname? Is it a nice nickname or was it a name given to you by others that was mean and nasty like Ass-Wipe, Shit-for-Brains, or Dick-Face. For some reason I was never cool enough to have a nice nickname, I was always just plain John or worse. I’ve been called just about everything at one time or another but I never could get that cool nickname like the other kids always seem to have.
I had a friend whose nickname was Chiseled-Chin and he was really proud of that name claiming it to be a complement to his genetic heritage. His whole damn family had chin’s you can hang your hat on. I guess that tells me your nickname is what you make of it. Although, if you’ve got a really nasty one (Doggy Breath, Jeannie Jaws, No-Tits) it’s damn near impossible to turn it into something positive.
Even celebrities have nicknames and we seem to buy into them immediately without question. All Sean Combs needs to do to get a new nickname is to call a press conference and proclaim it to the world, “From this day forward I’m going to be called Puff Daddy”, and then a few months later it’s P-Diddy, and God knows what his next reincarnation will bring.
Really famous Hollywood types change their names to whatever the hell they please because their actual names just doesn’t look good “up in lights”. **AND STARRING TONIGHT **, Cheryl Sarkisian and Paul Rubenfeld. That’s actually Cher and Pee Wee Herman.
Richard Nixon was Tricky-Dicky and Terry Gene Bollette is Hulk Hogan. Would you buy a rap album from someone named Earl Simmons or do you throw your money at some badass guy named DMX. Would you get excited watching Frances Grumm dancing and singing her way down the yellow brick road to meet the wizard? Not likely.
I have to admit I’ve given out my share of nicknames to people, some good and some bad. The good ones can be flattering and I use them for many of the women I’ve dated, loved, and married. Beautiful, Sexy, Slim, or Gorgeous. The bad ones were mainly for people I disliked or those who had already tagged me with some sort of insulting nickname. Fair is fair after all. I’m offering all of you who’ve never had a real nickname to visit this website: namegeneratorfun.com. You enter your name and sex and it will create a list of potential nicknames that you can choose from. My final list of possible nicknames was Square Jaw, Johnski, Spanky, and Johnzy. I think I’ll choose SPANKY because it has such multiple interesting meanings. It’s like the program knows me personally or heard about me from someone else, it’s freaking amazing. (Sarcasm off)
So this is Spanky signing off for today. I hope each of you can find that perfect nickname to make your life complete.
SINCE KEVORKIAN PASSED AWAY, DR. DEATH IS UP FOR GRABS
One of my favorite things is examining the human condition since we’re all filled with dozens of phobias and fears that have been deeply ingrained from childhood. Most human beings have a few things that scare the bejesus out of them but they hesitate to speak of them. Most people are somewhat embarrassed by their fears and don’t understand why they have them at all. Many times they haven’t a clue as to what created the fears in the first place and just don’t want to look for those answers. I’m not about to try and explain the reasons but I would like to look at the fears themselves.
The following is a sample list of ten fears. Most people have a few fears in common but each persons list is specific to that individual. Read the items closely and you can almost picture in your mind what this fictional list maker looks like and how they’d probably act. To me this list brings to mind the person in high school who had no social skills, no close friends, and always dressed in black. A person afraid of everyone and everything.
I guess it’s time for me to put up or shut up. Here are my two lists. One is for my early life and the second from my so-called Golden Years. The differences are blatantly obvious.
So there it is. Baring my soul for all to see with almost no fear of embarrassment. My early list changed dramatically as I aged from fears of how to live, to the later list of fears about death and dying. Is it depressing? For me it is but so what. Every person ever born on this planet has had the same fears as they grew older. They all handled it, sometimes well and sometimes not, and so will I. And so will you.
I always remember this quote from Socrates, “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Spend a few minutes and make your own lists.
As I promised in an earlier post, it’s time for another installment of really weird facts and assorted nonsense. I’m going to try to supply everyone with this kind of thing each week because there’s absolutely no end to the amount of weird and useless facts available out there. It’s my job job to find them and share them with you whether you like or or not. Lets get this ball rolling.
A quarter has 119 grooves on its edge, a dime has one less groove.
A silicon chip a quarter of an inch square has the capacity of the original 1949 ENIAC computer, which occupied a city block.
Snails can have about 25,000 teeth.
About 70% of all living organisms in the world are bacteria.
A ten gallon hat holds 3/4 of a gallon.
A whale’s heart beats only nine times a minute.
Albert Einstein was offered the presidency of Israel in 1952.
Winston Churchill was born in a ladies room during a dance.
Babe Ruth wore a cabbage leaf under his cap to keep him cool. He changed it every two innings.
The longest one syllable word in the English language is screeched.
Well there’s your weekly installment of weird facts. I barely scratched the surface of what I have stored away for future posts. I hope you find them as interesting as I do. Enjoy your day.
Good morning readers. I just wanted to let everyone know I’m within two weeks of celebrating my tenth year of blogging which I think requires me to do an honest review of myself. I have to admit it’s been a real learning experience but one I wouldn’t change for anything. I never decided to blog because I thought I had all the answers or that my philosophy of life was of any interest to anyone but me. I blog primarily to keep myself sane. Blogging is a good way for me to vent and lower my blood pressure all at the same time. I especially enjoy reading the feedback even if it’s discourteous, rude, or off-color. It’s called freedom of speech.
I initially blogged about personal stories of my life but found out very quickly that family and friends dislike notoriety. From that point on I made sure to never mention names or to post any family members photographs.
I then moved into politics and voiced my opinions rather loudly and pointedly. It helped me to quickly discover that most blog surfers are of the “sound bite” generations. My goal then became writing a variety of articles that would keep readers reading to the end. It involved a mix of politics, humor, sarcasm, trivia, and whatever else I could find. I’m interested in anyone who really wants to take the time to read every word, think about it for a while, and then comment with a yea or nay. I’m not looking for approval just honest and open discussions and opinions.
After my interest in political blogging waned I decided to return to writing about personal stories from my past. It seemed the best way to go if I wanted to increased traffic. It also seemed that I wasn’t the only person fed up with politics and politicians. I love embracing change and have done so many times over the years. An old quote I heard many years ago still holds true today: “the greatest opportunities are found on the edge of chaos”.
I have a rather loyal following of readers who’ve stayed with me through my cancer diagnosis, surgeries, and a year of little or no blog postings. I’d like to thank them all for their continuing interest and support. It made returning to this blog a much easier transition than I had ever hoped for. Thanks again.
Needless to say we here in New England love the Fall. It’s harvest time for most crops but especially cucumbers which we wait for all year. This is pickle season for those of us who love hot pickles. I don’t mean just spicy hot, I mean hot enough to make your head sweat. My better half and I make pickles every year at this time because the demand for them is high with friends and family. Our time yesterday was spent making 15 pints of hot Bread & Butter pickles and 9 additional pints of smoking hot dill pickles. These pickles are made with our family recipes but we add the additional heat. We add a mixture of sliced jalapenos, serranoes, and my all time favorite, habaneros. Here’s how we get started.
Our preparation actually starts the night before with the slicing of many cucumbers. My better half usually handles that chore because she cuts a much more uniform slice than I do. She also handles slicing the hot peppers because in past years I’ve almost blinded myself by putting my bare hands near my eyes after forgetting to wear gloves.
First we get our lids, rims, and jars sterilized in boiling water. Then we mix a concoction of herbs and spices to make what we call the syrup that will do the actual pickling. We also add three large bottles of jalapeno vinegar which I made earlier this Spring. Just a friendly tip if you’re going to make hot pickles . . . wear thick rubber gloves. Not those flimsy latex gloves because the oils from the hot peppers migrate right through the latex. Once it gets on your bare hands you’re in trouble.
It’s really not a difficult process once you’ve done it a few times. We completed this entire job in 2 hours minus the preparation done the previous day. When you have a good product people want it which is why we have a long list of folks waiting for these pickles. In a normal year we’ll process 35 to 40 pints of a variety of pickles. Then we can get started with our hot pasta sauces, BBQ sauce, salsa, chili, and wing sauces.
It really is a lot of fun and will keep our family and friends well supplied until Spring. You should give it a try.
All those years ago when I started this blog I had difficulty deciding on the proper name for it. After weeks of overthinking and indecision I decided on everyuselessthing. Initially I did a lot of political ranting but that was a wasted effort. Political discussions are to me as boring and useless as discussions of religion and sports. This blog name gave me the freedom to say whatever I wanted about any subject that tweaked my interest. Occasionally I shift gears and blog about unrelated and quirky information I’ve gathered over the years. Trivia is a favorite topic for me and today I’m going to fill your trivia basket with weird and hopefully interesting facts. Here we go . . .
Sean Connery once worked as a coffin polisher.
Johnny Mathis dubbed Miss Piggy’s singing voice in The Muppet Movie.
Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, was allergic to carrots.
The first TV sitcom couple to share a double bed were the Munster’s in 1964.
The blood in the famous shower scene in Psycho was really Hershey’s chocolate syrup.
A pigs orgasm lasts for thirty minutes.
Twelve or more cows are known as a flink.
There are 450 hairs in an average eyebrow.
The billionth decimal digit of the numerical value pi is nine.
Woman blink twice as often as men.
That completes the first ten items of this post and hopefully the final ten will be even more useless.
The first person to refer to a coward as a “chicken” was William Shakespeare.
The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper.
Mark Twain failed to graduate from elementary school.
President Andrew Jackson’s pet parrot had to be removed from his funeral in 1845 because it was swearing.
Australia is the only continent without an active volcano.
On November 29, 2000, Pope John Paul II was made an honorary Harlem Globetrotter.
The only domestic animal not mentioned in the Bible is the cat.
The colors blue, red, yellow, black, and green were chosen for the Olympic Rings because at least one of them appears on the flag of every nation in the world.
In 1956 the Physical Culture and Sports Commission of communist China recognized the sport of hand-grenade throwing.
Butter was the first food product allowed by law to have artificial coloring. It is totally white in it’s natural state.
That’s it for today. More trivia lists will follow in the future. Now, I’ve got better things to do like cutting grass and then picking ticks off my body. Who doesn’t love Summer.
I love to dream and I’m not sure exactly why. It started when I was kid of about eight laying in the grass in my backyard. It was a sunny day and my eyes were closed and I could almost see through my eyelids. I saw crazy swirls and colors that totally captivated me. A few weeks later I was trying to sketch a tree in the yard and I discovered that trees were really boring. I then decided to try and sketch some of those patterns and swirls I saw. It was exciting for a young kid to make that discovery and I actually completed a sketch of them. I tried on a number of occasions to explain what had happened but it was impossible. My mother, a part-time artist herself, politely listened, then just shook her head, and we never talked about it again. Lets jump ahead ten years.
Now I’m eighteen and enjoying my first year of college. It was a school known for it’s excellent art programs and I was finally in my element. All of my friends and acquaintances were artists of a sort and it was a atmosphere in which we were all beginning to thrive. As with any art program you have a certain amount of freedom but are somewhat restricted to what is acceptable for good grades. The wilder and crazier your creations made it more difficult it to get the grades needed to appease the teaching staff. When I tried to do paintings or drawings of bowls of fruit, I wanted to scream out loud. So effing boring. If I wanted a good representation of a bowl of fruit I’d take a picture. My best pieces where those that came to me during what I called my times of half-sleep. Half-sleep is those minutes between REM sleep cycles and the beginnings of wakefulness. It freed my mind and imagination and supplied me with a steady stream of ideas and offbeat perspectives. From that point on I consistently tried to remember and sketch those ideas as I received them each morning.
Jump ahead 50 years. My half-sleep time has now become an important resource which I still use today. Just before I awoke this morning I was half awake and dreaming about this subject and how to best write about it. I woke up and forgot to jot down my notes (always a mistake) and lost the idea immediately. Fortunately as I was relaxing later in the afternoon I began to recall what I’d been dreaming and here we are.
This has been a rather hectic month for me and mine which hasn’t really happened too often since the Pandemic reared its ugly head so many months ago. With the Delta Variant coming into it’s own it appears that masks will be coming back as a fashion statement once again. It just seems that this virus and it’s many faces refuses to fade away. I guess it’ll be here to stay for much longer than we all anticipated. Fortunately for me there isn’t anything I did before that I can’t do now with a mask on.
This will have to do!
Being a senior citizen makes looking back at my life a little nostalgic at times. I wonder what my sex life might have been all those years ago if I’d been forced to comply with the restrictions that the pandemic requires. I feel really bad for the young and sexually active today. It would be well neigh impossible to maintain a reasonable love life if a six foot separation is mandated as well as the ever so attractive masks. It will take a very inventive person or couple to take the steps necessary to have sex and still comply with all the pandemic safeguards.
My Place or Yours?
Truthfully, I’m being sarcastic and a bit facetious as I hope you realize. There isn’t any pandemic that I could think of that will slow anyone down who has sex on his/her mind. For years we couldn’t get people (men) to regularly wear condoms to prevent pregnancies. Then the HIV/AIDS epidemic struck and condoms immediately became the norm rather than just a circular indentation on the back of a wallet. If AIDS didn’t slow everyone down who cares about silly old Covid-19. Where there’s a will there’s always a way.
Where are all the up and coming entrepreneurs when you need them. How about a one size fits all body condom. Maybe a mask with an adjustable opening allowing for the occasional French kiss. We need to find the next Steve Jobs to help us get the ball rolling on some ingenious new devices to assist our lovemaking efforts during these trying times. He could start his own new company and become a zillionaire overnight selling pandemic related sexual devices. He could call the company, CHERRY, just to give Apple something to worry about.
Just a thought or two while I’m sitting here on the deck relaxing. Now it’s time for a Jack and Pepsi to keep my creative juices flowing.
Being the cynical bastard that I am and having less love for our human race than most, makes this topic concern even me. Most of my life and career has been involved with close personal communications (interviews and interrogations) with hosts of diverse individuals. I’ve been able thanks to years of training and experience to read them exceeding well, hence my overall dislike of so many. Granted a majority of people come across in a good way but once pressures and stresses are introduced to the mix, all of the negative reactions become easily recognizable. My educated guess is that the best people are those with a much stronger control of their basic instincts. I can’t blame the negatives on emotion alone because we all deal with them equally.
The Pandemic has brought us all to the emotional edge in a number of ways through intense worry and fear. It’s interesting in the extreme to recognize both the good and the bad effects and who handles them the best. I won’t even try to explain the negative behaviors of people whose lives are completely consumed by politics and the media. They come to this discussion already biased and flawed. Then we have the medical professionals and first responders who as they always do show us the way things should be done. Compassion, caring, and fearlessness are their norm. A few bad apples have been observed through this horrible period but overall we as a people owe them praise and thanks. Fortunately the negative and selfish people with concerns only for their personal agendas are easily and quickly identified. I’m not here to name names but you already know who they are if your paying the least bit of attention.
I fear that the pressure of death, serious financial ruin, job loss, and long periods of isolation have begun to take their toll on all of us. I’ve noticed in recent weeks the edginess of ordinary citizens doing ordinary things and showing a total loss of patience for each other in a mean and nasty way. All that tells me is that the Pandemic is having a much deeper and long-term harmful effect than I first thought. Returning to the new normal still requires a huge change for all of us from the old normal. We humans are not big fans of change, large or small. This intolerance for each other will hopefully wan as time goes on but who knows for sure. We’ve been told for more than a year now to stay the hell away from each other or else. Some of the incidents I’ve observed lately fill me with doubt that there is a short term solution. We must all wait and see and then do what we can to help remedy this confusing situation.
As always I will remain the pragmatic cynic.
That being said its now time for a little humor. Anyone who follows this blog knows of my deep appreciation for really erotic limericks. I’ve delved into my archives and found this little ditty. Enjoy!
There’s a feckless young fellow named Goody
Who insists that he wouldn’t, but would he?
If he finds himself nude,
With girls in the right mood,
The question is not would he, but could he?
Surprise…it wasn’t quite as erotic or lewd as you were expecting. Next time it’ll be a doozy.
I’m now considered by most people that I know to be an older citizen (fart) that should be respected and taken care of. Of all the things I’ve had to adjust to that is the hardest. I understand that kind of pity is accompanied by a lot of love and caring since I went through the same thing when my parents reached their platinum years. That’s right, PLATINUM. The golden years end at 70 and then the platinum years kick in.
I’m not complaining but just stating the obvious. The biggest blessing that I’ve discovered in my platinum years is my continuing education supplied to me by my grandchildren. They see me so much differently than their parents and sometimes it makes me laugh out loud and other time brings tears to my eyes.
During my year of hell with surgeries and chemotherapy I made sure to keep the oldest grandson (age 5 at the time) aware of what was happening. He examined my stitches and staples and was more than a little interested in the chemotherapy and all the tubes and pumps I was required to wear. I didn’t want him to be frightened by all of it and he paid very close attention and asked a million questions. Towards the end of the chemo I was feeling extremely sorry for myself and was bitching and complaining about my horrible life. He brought a shot of reality into the conversation very quickly. He lightly touched my hand and simply stated “All of this is better than dead grampa.” From the mouths of babes.
His younger brother missed out on most of that but has since brought his own way of seeing things to my attention. He is quite the artist which pleases me so much. We have something in common which is a great place to begin a real relationship. I’m sure the fun with him has just begun,
Then comes grandson number three who is all of 1 1/2 years old now. I was worried how I’d be able to connect with him since I only met him for two days when he was a new born. His arrival had me a little apprehensive since he lives in California and is someone I won’t get to see all that often.
I don’t know why I was so worried. He arrived with his parents and stole the show. He isn’t talking much but he gets his message across very quickly. I was a little standoffish at first but he was having none of that. He kept smiling at me every chance our eyes met and he teased me along until I loosened up a little. On his last day here he walked over to my chair and indicated he wanted to come up. I picked him up, he laid down his head, and went to sleep. I held him for two hours and I was in heaven. My education continues….. lucky me.
everyuselessthing.com 