As we’re all aware this last year-and-a-half with the pandemic has changed many things, some for the better and some for the worse. Since the onset of the pandemic I’ve noticed a disturbing trend with female drivers in the area and I’m assuming that it’s pretty much the same all across the country. I’ve mentioned in past posts that common courtesy is one of the victims of the pandemic and I need to take that one step further. It seems that many female drivers have taken to “flipping the bird” with a vengeance. I’ve seen teenage girls, old ladies, soccer moms, and just about everyone else getting with the program. Needless to say it sparked my curiosity which then required a little research into my archives about the practices of “throwing the finger” and here’s what I found.
SOME HISTORY OF THE BIRD
Tossing the bird has been a tradition with us men that has been passed down through the ages from grandfathers to fathers and then to their sons. Guys have been throwing the finger for a variety of reasons for as long as I can remember. We owned this gesture until the feminists arrived. Now the ladies have every right to be as obnoxious as we’ve been and believe me their certainly doing it with panache and gusto.
Thrusting up a middle finger or “flipping the bird” is one of the more familiar hand gestures across this country. Its popularity is also worldwide and has been around for a very long time in a number of European countries. No one is sure how it originated but we all know that the Romans used it at the time of Christ.
Just as there are many gestures in the world to convey one’s negative feelings about another, there are also regional differences to show approval. Men around the world have several gestures to imply that a woman is pretty. In the United States, men lift their eyebrows, in the Arab world a man grabs his beard, while in Greece he would stroke his cheek. In Italy, a man sticks his finger into his cheek and rotates it, Frenchmen kiss their fingertips, and Brazilians will pretend to hold up a telescope to their eye.
Obviously, almost any gesture can have meaning, either positive or negative, somewhere in the world. So the next time you travel abroad, be careful how you gesture with your hands. You might unwittingly attract unwanted attention from the natives, especially in the Middle East. They seem to look for any spoken word or gesture by a non-Arab as a reason to throw you into prison for a chat or to just execute you.
In my attempt to be fair I’ve also seen a few men with some unfortunate habits. While I myself would never today do something so crude. In my youth I may have lost control a few thousand times. I deeply regret those times when I “birded” nice old ladies or a few hundred clergymen. It really is nice to see that the female of the species now has the capability and the mindset to throw the bird to damn near anybody for damn near any reason. “I Am Woman” hear me roar.
And thanks to whoever placed that Ryan Gosling GIF on the net. It made my day.
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.
It’s been a long week and I’m a little sick of thinking or talking about politics, younger generations, and the pandemic. I’m on overload with more news about masks and all of the assorted BS that goes along with that. I think it’s time for another installment of Totally Useless Trivia. The following items came into my files over the last few years and I love saving them for these not-so-special occasions. Let’s get started.
As an adult human being you have more than 20 square feet of skin on your body about the same square footage as a blanket for a queen-size bed. How creepy is that?
We Americans eat approximately 100 acres of pizza each day, or 350 slices per second. Yet for some reason we still don’t seem to understand why obesity is running rampant through the country. Are we really that stupid?
An estimated 800,000 senior citizens voluntarily give up their driving privileges each year. The average age at which they surrender the wheel is 85.
All of the clocks in the movie “Pulp Fiction” read 04:20. Rent the movie and check it out.
Americans appear to have the most sex at 132 times a year, with the Russians close behind at 122 times a year. Hard to believe the the French are only at 121. Let it be known that I’m officially volunteering to verify these numbers.
A portion of the water you drink every day has already been drunk by someone else, maybe several times over. This I didn’t really need to know, Ewwwwwwww!
About 1.7 liters of saliva is produced each day in an average person. You can’t have those long sloppy wet kisses without it.
A healthy individual releases 3.5 oz of gas in a single flatulent emission, or about 17 oz in a day. Wonderful, just freaking wonderful.
A kiss stimulates 29 muscles and chemicals causing relaxation. Women seem to like it light and frequent while men like it more strenuous. I think it’s really 30 muscles if you get my drift. LOL
Condoms will last about a month when stored in a wallet; any longer and its more likely to break. Wish I would have known this back in high school. I carried one for three years.
A Georgia company will mix your loved one’s ashes with cement and drop it into the ocean to form an artificial Reef. It must be “Greenie” heaven.
35 billion emails are sent each day throughout the world. Who cares, it’s mostly SPAM anyway.
61,000 people are airborne over the US at any given time. From a former white-knuckle flier, “better them than me.”
3,400,000 Americans are considered “Extreme Commuters”. These are people who commute over 90 minutes round trip every day to work. Anyone who’s ever lived in a major metro area can verify this one. Route 128 in Boston was my home for years.
That should curb your craving for stupid and useless information for another week or so. When you start going into withdrawal, drop me an email and I’ll fix you right up.
With all this heat and rain along with the damn pandemic I’ve discovered just how many things there are that annoy me. I won’t complain about wearing masks or being locked in my home like a prisoner because those things are absolutely necessary. As I began to compile my list it just kept growing and growing. Here they are.
People who wait in a long checkout lines and then can’t find their checkbook or credit card.
People who are constantly late (I hate them).
Commercials that are so much louder than the TV shows.
Grocery shopping carts with a bad wheel.
People who chit-chat with a cashier when there’s a long line behind them waiting and waiting.
TV shows and commercial ads with ringing phones, which make you think the sound is coming from your house.
Waiters/waitresses with dirty fingernails.
TV shows where people are speaking to Alexa which in turn has my Alexa bugging me.
The more I think about this list the longer it gets. I’m going to keep on rolling and hopefully I’ll find the end.
Stepping on a wet spot with my socks on.
Drivers who won’t turn right on red.
Being asked for my account number after I already entered it using the keypad on my phone.
Celebrities preaching to me about politics or anything else.
People saying “What’s up?” instead of saying “hi or hello”.
The lame-ass naming of celebrity couples.
Suburban kids who think they’re gangstas.
Rappers who thank God and their mothers at awards ceremonies.
Still going strong but I seem to be feeling a little better by unburdening myself like this.
When someone blows their nose in your presence and then proceeds to look at the results.
Flood pants on men (even stupid hipsters).
People who don’t listen when you are talking to them.
Using the toilet paper down to the last few squares without getting a new roll.
People abbreviating words when they speak (Rachael Ray).
Rude people talking at movies (you know who you are).
Barking dogs.
Having to explain the same thing more than once to the same person.
People who don’t flush the toilet.
When coffee spills out of the top drinking hole of your cup at Dunkin Donuts.
Anyone who can’t speak a complete sentence without using the word “like” five or six times.
People who can’t use any pronoun except the word “dude”.
People who are constantly touching their genitals (men and boys).
People who bring babies to movie theaters.
I’ve got to stop this foolishness. If I add just one more item to this list I’ll start annoying myself and for some reason that just seems wrong. I think it’s time for all of you to make your own list. It’s annoying that you haven’t completed one already.
I’m holding an intervention for myself today concerning my lifelong addiction to all things science fiction. I’m not proud of that obsession because I’m not entirely sure that it hasn’t been a monumental waste of my time.
I was born in 1946 and was eleven years old when Sputnik made it’s famous flight on 10/04/57. My entire young life consisted of satellites, cosmonauts, astronauts, rocket ships, space travel, and the creation of NASA. Up to and including the Mercury and Apollo programs and eventually the moon landings. I was enthralled and spent a great deal of my spare time reading everything I could lay my hands on about science fiction and space travel. Over the years I’ve read hundreds of novels and scientific journals and attempted to stay up to speed with NASA, its failures, deaths, and many successes. Many years later I was finally forced to admit that sci-fi for me breaks down into two parts. Technology on one hand and space exploration on the other to include all of the craziness and misinformation on UFO’s and alien visitations. Technology continues apace and many things I read or thought about as a kid are slowing becoming commonplace. But continuing technological improvements are man-made wonders and unrelated to the science fiction that I’m interested in.
The UFO phenomenon is a sticky subject that’s been bastardized by numerous authors and movie makers. I suspect the vast majority of information contained in them is nothing more than exaggerated fiction aimed at increasing ratings and/or ticket sales. I gave up on live TV years ago and became somewhat taken with Netflix and other streaming services. That’s when I became overwhelmed with an ungodly number of videos and movies concerning UFO’s. I made a point to watch everyone I could find hoping that there might be a shred of evidence that could convince me that UFO’s were real and visitations to this planet were occurring. Sadly I found nothing at all that convinced me of anything.
It seems that a group of well funded and fervent believers reappear in most of the videos repeating their theories and suppositions. Believe me, I would love it if aliens decided to visit. But to believe the outlandish nonsense in these videos does more to convince me that it’s all so much BS and hucksterism. Most of the contributors on Facebook and other social media lead their posts with outlandish headlines to sucker us into reading further. It’s just more nonsense and half truths.
I have some serious questions about all of this UFO nonsense but the answers I’m getting are mostly silly and ridiculous. It seems highly unlikely to me that any aliens from an advanced civilization should certainly be able to fly their ships around this planet without crashing them in virtually every country. Most countries seem to have a Roswell type incident of their own and a crash sight to keep their conspiracy theorists busy. With that many crashes there’s no way any one government could retrieve and hide every single scrap of evidence. Most governments can’t operate anything without screwing it up. Why would this circumstance be any different. Why would we want their technology anyway if they can’t even keep them in the air. More silliness and nonsense.
I’ll be convinced aliens are here when I see a scene as seen in the 1950’s movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still. A giant alien ship landing on the White House lawn looking to chat with the President. Hopefully not Biden. Until then I am a disappointed unbeliever.
Over the years I’ve wasted a great deal of my valuable time and efforts arguing about politics and political strategy. How stupid am I? Don’t answer that. It always feels good at first when your spewing your expert opinions to anyone who will listen. Fifty percent of them listen politely, smile, and later talk about what a bore you’ve become. The other fifty percent listen politely, wait until you’ve stopped talking, and then begin filling the air with their opinions and nonsense. They’ve listened to none of your ideas but waited patiently for you to shut up. You just gotta hate those A Type personalities.
I’ve always enjoyed finding and reading quotations from deceased politicians and a very few politically deceased politicians. Some are inciteful but many are not. The current hoard of elected officials never have quotes that are even a tiny bit interesting. Realizing that has forced me to find some lesser known politicians and journalists with quotes from the past that could actually impart some information that’s worth reading. You may not recognize some of the names but the quotes will speak for themselves.
“A politician must often talk and act before he has thought and read.” Thomas Babbington (1859)
“A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman thinks of the next generation.” James F. Clark (1888)
“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.
Bertrand Russell (1951)
“The press conference is a politician’s way of being informative without saying anything. Should he accidently say something, he has at his side a press officer who immediately explains it away by “clarifying” it.”
Emery Kelen (1960)
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.” Groucho Marx (1977)
“I offer my opponents a bargain: if they will stop telling lies about us, I will stop telling the truth about them.
Adlai Stevenson (1952)
These kinds of quotations were once plentiful but no longer. With newspapers losing readership there’s much less chance of any pearls of wisdom making the headlines. It’s truly a damn shame. Here’s one last and extremely old quote which remains as true today as it did in 1947.
“Politicians . . . rise predominantly from . . . the “lower middle class””; most are self-made men . . .; most depend on their political jobs for a livelihood and most have little time, inclination, of opportunity for adult education; hence the dominating qualities of so many are greed, vulgarity, attention to special interest, avarice, and selfishness.
I haven’t been blogging for a while, just laying back and enjoying my summer. I’ve been avoiding the news and current events as much as possible because so much these days is fake or just plain BS. I see things slowly returning to normal but I remain wary. Many people think the pandemic is over but I’m not a believer just yet. I honestly have difficulty believing anyone these days. I’ve decided that I’ll continue to mask up in crowds and in buildings until more time has passed. Booster shots of the vaccine will probably be in our immediate future and I’ll wait it out with my mask firmly in place.
“HOPE FOR THE BEST AND PREPARE FOR THE WORST”
I can’t resist taking a shot at the anti-vaxers. My suggestion to them is that they be as careful as possible when spreading their propaganda. They could easily end up with a seriously sprained neck. It’s hard to make a believable point with your head shoved so far up your ass. And please don’t waste your time or mine sending me any of your bullshit emails because as I’ve stated many times in the past, I.D.C. ( I Don’t Care) about anything you have to say.
Now I’ll return to my new deck and have a serious alcoholic beverage to celebrate the day.
I’m a huge internet rat and have been for years. I’ve seen ten thousand things I like and unfortunately a hundred thousand things I hate. Facebook has been going downhill in recent years in my humble opinion. I understand their need to continually come up with things to maintain and increase their numbers but come on . . . .
This recent rash of postings with people standing around with an arm load of signs attempting to take up as much of my time as possible to deliver a message to some blindfolded idiot. The individuals standing there being blindfolded and videoed are just sooooooooooo surprised and amazed. FAKE…FAKE…FAKE
Add to that the BS drama of outing a cheating partner or spouse with dozens of stupid flash cards makes me want to scream. It’s obvious to me that the ridiculous sign gimmick is just being used to increase their face time on-line. While some of them are somewhat believable the great majority are just LAME. Add into that all of the cheesy marriage proposals and I immediately feel the need to hurl.
Just as a side note: I’m a proud veteran who served for years. I don’t mind seeing the return-home videos but it has become ridiculous. People are posting happy returns from someone who served for 6 months in a training situation. As with everything on Facebook, these fads run their course after a time and become silly.
2d Side Note: Someone should make a universal announcement to the planet that the old and very stupid gimmick of wrapping a present in an endless number of packages became overused in the 1970’s. It’s just like bell bottom pants and platform shoes. SO OVER !!!!!
I expect nothing of importance from Facebook anyway so it’s hard to disappoint me. This crap will continue to clog the internet and drive any normal person mad.
Nothing prompts me to write a post as much as the letter I just received from Joe “Don’t Wake Me” Biden. He was just sending out millions of copies of that letter to advise all of us stimulus check recipients of how hard he worked to make it happen. Since most of the stimulus work was begun under Trump I thought he was being just a bit disingenuous. I wasn’t particularly surprised because he IS the ultimate long term politician. Any politician worth his salt would immediately try to steal the thunder of another. It’s a standard political move and to guys like Biden it’s just reflex. He is a decades long expert.
If you’ve followed this blog at all then you should be aware that I have little or no use for any political party or politician. Actually I really love it when they spend so much of their precious time calling each other names and creating an endless supply of stupid do-nothing committees. The more gridlock we have the better. Gridlock means they aren’t passing more legislation to take money out of my pocket.
Keeping in mind what I’ve just written, I’m proposing a new and exciting political strategy that I’ll be sending to Donald Trump. Since he is so hated by the political left and the endless number of Republicans that want to be Democrats, he just might be receptive. In preparation for the next presidential campaign I’m proposing that Trump resign from the GOP and sign himself up as a viable Democratic voter. He could then spend the next four years driving the Democratic party crazy and creating as much havoc as possible. They hate him so much they would lose their minds and most of their emphasis on the election hoping to get Trump the hell out their party. While that’s going on the GOP could run Mickey Mouse for president and probably win.
In my humble opinion Trump has little or no chance to be reelected but he is a such a epic hell-raiser he could do more damage to the democrats than he was able to do as a Republican president. The effects could last for decades and I want to be around to watch the fun. The worst case scenario would be that he wins the presidency as a Democratic candidate and OMG do I want to be around for that.
If your reading this then my sneaky use of buzz words in the title worked perfectly and welcome to my blog.
As I’ve stated so many time before I love people-watching. In these day of the pandemic people-watching has taken a weird turn. Let me explain a bit.
Back in the day when crowds of people were everywhere people-watching was easy. Go to a Mall, a retail store, or anywhere alcoholic beverages were served, sit down and watch. These days it’s a real chore to people-watch unless your really committed like me. After months of watching thousands of masked people going about their lives I discovered a number of things.
While I was in the hospital and doctors offices everyone was masked as you would expect. I had tests, scans, and hours of conversations with women whose faces I couldn’t see. One in particular was especially eye- catching due to her lovely figure, beautiful hair, and killer eyes. I see now why most Muslim men prefer their women wearing head coverings. So after weeks of becoming friends with her I couldn’t take it any longer and finally asked her to pull down the mask so I could see her face. I now understand what that old saying about “being careful what you ask for” really means. To me she was beautiful because of her wonderful personality not her looks.
Mean or Nice?
During that same time period I made that same request to another young lady who I didn’t consider all that striking but who was such a nice person I really just wanted to be able to recognize her in the future if I saw her again. She dropped her mask and my jaw dropped as well. She was absolutely beautiful. I was speechless and felt a little guilty about making unjustified judgements about her.
Masks make it possible for everyone to hide. Not only can’t our faces be seen neither can most of our facial expressions. I find myself making funny faces, sticking out my tongue, and muttering curse words muffled by my mask. If I’m doing it I’ll just know everyone else is doing it as well.
Here are my conclusions:
Beautiful Women and Handsome Men can’t be recognized just for their good looks anymore and are now forced to rely on their personalities to impress people they’re dealing with.
Everyone else can now show you how beautiful they really are without worrying about their looks and using their personalities as they always have.
We should make wearing masks mandatory for everyone. Imagine political debates with all of the candidates being masked and forced to rely on facts instead of bad puns and fake smiles. A masked JFK might never have been elected if all of the women in the country weren’t going GA-GA over his looks. Who knows?
Here’s my Public Service Announcement . Just so you know I’m not wearing my mask right now so please sanitize your hands and wipe down your computer. You can’t be too careful. The media might announce tomorrow that the virus can be spread through computer use.
everyuselessthing.com 