This post will be rather shorter than my usual efforts due in part to a rather unpleasant afternoon ahead of me. I’m two hours away from my seventh colonoscope (that’s right, I said seven) and my mind is wandering elsewhere (like right around my ass). That being said I’d like to quickly entertain you with some interesting quotes concerning our society’s obsession with TV. I’m addicted myself and have a love/hate relationship with my addiction and all of my TV’s. Here’s what some profession media types think.
Anonymous TV Quote
“The electronic device that intersperses gory slaughter with the brushing of teeth.”
Woody Allen
In California, they don’t throw their garbage away – they make it into TV shows.”
Daid Frost
“TV is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn’t have in your home.”
Samuel Goldwyn
“Why should people go out and pay to see bad films when they can stay at home and see bad television for nothing?”
T.S. Eliot
Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time and yet remain lonesome.”
Lily Tomlin
“If you read a lot of books, your considered well read. But if you watch a lot of TV, you’re not considered well viewed.”
Frank Zappa
I can’t understand why anybody would want to devote their life to a cause like dope. It’s the most boring pastime I can think of. It ranks a close second to television.”
Groucho Marx
“I find television very educating. Every time someone turns on the set I go into the other room and read a book.”
I really have to agree with most of these critics and at the same time I feel I’ve just been royally chastised for enjoying my addiction. Although, I shouldn’t be too surprised. I’ve had a number of addictions over the years and there were always plenty of so-called experts around to offer their opinions. So, to remain consistent I’ll ignore these experts like I’ve ignored all the others. They have their nerve!
TV SUCKS, AND I STILL LOVE IT.
THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW YOU WANTED TO KNOW
SEX
- It is illegal In Arizona for a secretary to be alone with his or her boss.
- In Oklahoma you must be married in order to have sex legally.
- It is illegal to kiss for more than 5 minutes In Iowa.
- In Indiana it is illegal to be in a state of sexual arousal in public.
- Talking dirty during sex is illegal in Oregon.
- In Arizona it is illegal to have more than two dildos in a household.
TRANSPORTATION
- The Lincoln Highway from New York to California was the first coast-to-coast highway in the United States. It opened for travel in 1913.
- The last model T Ford was produced on May 26, 1927.
- The first electric traffic light was installed in Cleveland Ohio in 1914.
- The first parking meter in the United States was installed in 1935.
- The first speed limit law in the United States was established in Connecticut in 1901. The limit for cars in cities was 10 miles per hour.
- The first mountain bikes were made in the United States in 1979 by Charles Kelly and Gary Fisher.
FOOD & DRINK
- Starbucks Coffee Company was named after Starbuck, a character in Moby Dick.
- The hot dog was invented by Charles Feltman in 1874.
- Hershey’s Kisses got their name because the machine that makes them looks like it’s kissing the conveyor belt.
- There are over 5900 Dairy Queens throughout the world.
- There are over 3000 varieties of tea.
- Cotton Candy made its debut in 1904 at the World’s Fair in St. Louis.
I TOLD YOU, YOU’D WANT TO KNOW
I collect many books of odd and interesting information but a few weeks ago I found something in a box that surprised me. Stuck between two other stacks of papers was a small paperback book of only 63 pages. It is titled Womens Wit and Wisdom and was published in 2000. One chapter caught my eye concerning quotations from various women from various years with their thoughts on Life. Here are a few.
- “Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you’re aboard there’s nothing you can do.” Golda Meir 1973
- “The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.” Lucille Ball 1989
- “I was thirty-seven when I went to work writing my column. I was too old for a paper route, too young for Social Security, and too tired for an affair.” Erma Bombeck 1979
- “Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.” Coco Chanel 1956
- “It is better to be looked over than overlooked.” Mae West 1967
- “Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.” Lillian Hellman 1939
- “At the end of your life you will never regret not having passed one more test, winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret the time not spent with a husband, a child, a friend or parent.” Barbara Bush 1990
- “Adolescence is just one big walking pimple.” Carol Burnett 1986
- “Suddenly you find at the age of fifty, that a whole new life has opened before you, as if a fresh sap of ideas and thoughts was rising in you.” Agatha Christie 1977″
- “My friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges and enabled me to walk serene and happy in a shadow cast by my deprivation.” Helen Keller 1903
I’M GLAD I FOUND THIS BOOK
I haven’t posted too many limericks of late and I’m going to correct that immediately. After having two young grandsons visiting, I was once again made aware just how funny fart humor is. I’m not sure why but the young lads love talking about farts and farting. It started when they were around two years old, and it continues apace. With that in mind here are a few fart related limericks to make us all smile a little.
😮😮😮
There was an amazing old wizard
Who got a fierce pain in his gizzard.
So, he drank wind and snow
At some fifty-below,
And farted a forty-day blizzard.
🙃🙃🙃
Said a printer, pretending to wit:
“There are certain rude words we omit.
It would sully our art
To include the word fart,
And we seldom, if ever say shit.”
😆😆😆
There was a young man named McBride,
Who could fart any time that he tried.
In a contest he blew
Seven thousand and two,
But then shit and was disqualified.
😣😣😣
There was a young woman of Dexter,
Whose husband invariably vexed her,
For, whenever they’d start,
He’d persistently fart
With a blast that damn nearly de-sexed her!
A PERFECTLY SMELLY START TO YOUR WEEK
I’ve been an animal lover my entire life centering mainly on cats. I’ve had just about every animal you can think of from snakes to ferrets, guinea pigs, and many others. Since today is a slow Sunday, it’s rainy and gray, and I have two grandchildren coming to visit in a few hours, I won’t be able to get much accomplished once they arrive. Today’s post will be short and sweet. If you like or love animals here are a collection of odd facts which you might find interesting.
- Besides humans, the only animal it can stand on its head is the elephant.
- A newborn panda is smaller than a mouse.
- The heads of a freak two-headed snake will fight over food despite sharing the same stomach.
- The armadillo is the only animal apart from man that can catch leprosy.
- A giraffe can go without water longer than a camel.
- A pig’s orgasm lasts for 30 minutes.
- A donkey will sink in quicksand, but a mule won’t.
- Polar bears can smell a human being from 20 miles away.
- The world’s biggest frog is bigger than the world’s smallest antelope.
- Deer sleep only 5 minutes a day.
- Kangaroos can’t walk backward.
- It takes a male horse only 14 seconds to copulate.
- The normal temperature of a cat is 101.5°.
- Camel milk does not curdle.
- There are more goats than people in Somalia.
CAT’S RULE!!
And . . . HAPPY BIRTHDAY LOVEY!
In recent months the term “Fake News” has become popular. I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, but “Fake News” has been around for a very long time. The younger generations think that they’ve discovered some outrageous political trick that never existed before they discovered it. As an example, many years ago my son (aged 13) came rushing to me all excited. He told me to sit down and listen to this great song. He told me it was being used on a TV commercial and it was the best song he ever heard. I sat down and he played it for me, and I just started grinning. The song he discovered was at that time already a golden oldie, it was the Righteous Brothers singing Unchained Melody. He was sure it was some group from his generation. “Fake News” is a new term, but it has always meant the same thing: lying, misrepresenting, and double speak. George Orwell has been proven right once again. Here are a few samples of so called “Fake News” from the past.
2003: President George W. Bush for his creative use of language in public statements regarding the reasons the United States needed to pursue war against Iraq.
2002: New York State Board of Regents for its politically correct and silent editing of state tests.
2000: The tobacco industry for its media blitz portraying tobacco companies as the benefactors of children, abused women and disaster victims. That is abusive language in pursuit of their right to sell a deadly drug.
1991: Department of Defense for obfuscation and jargon in euphemisms during the first Gulf War.
1990: President George Bush on wetlands, the Panama invasion, Tiananmen Square and the “No New Taxes” pledge.
1989: The Exxon Corporation for the “Exxon Valdez” oil spill obfuscation.
1985: The CIA for the Psychological Warfare Manual prepared for the Nicaraguan war.
1979: The nuclear power industry for its euphemisms and jargon during the 3-Mile Island accident.
1977: The Pentagon and the Energy Department for language cover-up of the neutron bomb development.
1975: Colonel David Opfer, USAF press officer in Cambodia for saying to reporters, after a raid, “You always write its bombing, bombing, bombing. It’s not bombing! It’s air support!
HERES MY FAKE NEWS ANNOUNCEMENT – “FAKE NEWS IS TRUE”
LOL
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910)
I first became a fan of Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain as a youngster. I was quite the reader at a very young age and was instantly captivated by the story of Tom Sawyer and his adventures along and on the Mississippi river. That’s when I discovered one of my first “Happy Places”, my ability to get totally consumed by a book. That ability has served me well for more than seventy years and it still makes me happy. He lived an adventurous life and is famous for his biting sense of humor. Here’s why.
- “Always do right. This greatly gratifies some people and astonish the rest.”
- “When angry, count to four; when very angry, swear.”
- “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”
- “It takes your enemy and your friend working together to hurt you to the heart: one to slander you and the other to get the news to you.”
- “Man is the only animal that blushes – or needs to.”
- “Familiarity breeds contempt . . . and children.”
- “Confession may be good for my soul, but it sure plays hell with my reputation.”
- “Good breeding exists in concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person.”
- “It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.”
- “I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up.”
And finally, one of my all-time favorite quotes from Mr. Clemens which could apply to so many things.
“Noise prevents nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she had laid an asteroid.”
PICK UP A GOOD BOOK AND LOSE YOURSELF
Since yesterday’s posting was all about people and how and when they lost their virginities, I thought today I would do a short but interesting look at the history of “kissing”. It was always among my favorite things and the older I got the higher up my list of favorite things it went.
- I guess we should start with the Garden of Eden and Adam. Scripture says that God breathed the “spirit of life” into him and it might explain why many religious ceremonies include kissing.
- A Canadian anthropologist demonstrated that 97% of women shut their eyes during a kiss but only 37% of men did.
- As with many things it seems the Romans got involved with kissing early on. A husband returning from work would kiss his wife on the lips to see if she’d been drinking during the day. The Romans had three different types of kisses: abasium, the kiss on the lips; osculum, a friendly kiss on the cheek, anduavium, the full mouth and tongue. Emperor Tiberius once banned the practice of kissing after an epidemic of lip sores.
- Kissing at one point was frowned upon because it had been used as a sign of betrayal by Judas Iscariot. He identified Jesus to his enemies in the garden of Gethsemane by kissing him.
- Kissing under the mistletoe is an English tradition and started with the kissing bough, which had mistletoe at its center. When the Christmas tree replaced the kissing bough, the mistletoe was salvaged.
- How and where you kiss used to be a sign of where you stood in the social pecking order. Equals kissed each other on the cheek. The lower you ranked to another person, the lower you had to kiss him. Thus, a slave would kiss his masters’ feet, and a prisoner not even allowed to do that. They were forced to kiss the ground near the foot.
- Alice Johnson, a 23-year-old American waitress, won a car in Santa Fe, New Mexico, after kissing it for 32 hours and 20 minutes in a 1994 competition. She loosened four teeth in the process.
- An American insurance company discovered that men were less likely to have a car accident on their way to work if they were kissed before they set off.
- In Sicily, members of the Mafia have stopped kissing each other because the way they kiss was a dead giveaway to the police, and mobsters were getting arrested.
- The first film kiss was in, appropriately enough, the 1896 movie The Kiss. The participants were John C. Rice and Mae Erwin.
- My last entry will give all of you a reason to kiss a little more often. Kissing can prevent illnesses. When you absorb other people’s saliva, you also receive their enzymes, which gives you their immunities like a kind of antibiotic. Unfortunately kissing can also pass on diseases too.
“YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS; A KISS IS JUST A KISS.”
Dooley Wilson in Casablanca
What’s a day without a load of trivial and useless information. If you want to know everything about celebrity’s losing their virginities this is the place to be today. In no particular order.
Jimi Hendrix – age 12
Johnny Depp – age 13
Clint Eastwood – age 14
David Duchovny – age 14
Bruce Willis – age 14
Michael Caine age 15
Charlie Sheen age 15
Madonna age 15
Victoria Beckham – age 17
Brad Pitt age 18
Leonardo DiCaprio – age 18
Brooke Shields – age 18
Mira Sorvino – age 20
Mariah Carey – age 23
Lisa Kudrow – age 31
I LOST MINE AT AGE 14 WITH SANDRA
Today is a good a day as any to look back through history to find some strange rules, laws or customs. In the past I’ve shown some seriously strange laws still on the books in this country. Now let’s take a trip back into history look at some of their foibles because in truth some of theirs are way stranger than ours.
- It was once proposed in the Rhode Island legislature in the 1970s that there be enacted a two-dollar tax on every act of sexual intercourse.
- A law was passed in England requiring all corpses to be buried in a wool shroud, thereby extorting support for Britain’s flagging wool trade. The act was repealed 148 years later, in 1814.
- The average age of Elizabethan and Jacobean brides was about 24 and their bridegrooms around 27. The primary reason for delayed marriages was to limit births among poor people. The higher the social status, however, the younger the age at marriage.
- As in Abraham’s time, it was the custom among men in Rome, when swearing to tell the truth, to place one’s right hand on one’s testicles. The English word testimony is related to this custom.
- When a Chinese bystander ashore was killed accidentally by a cannon salvo of greeting from an English ship, during the early days of the China-Western trade, the English were forced to turn over to China the hapless gunner, who was promptly strangled.
- The Tinguian people of the Philippines have their own way of kissing. They put their lives close to each other’s face and quickly inhale.
- In 1853 Illinois passed a law that required any black entering the state and staying more than 10 days to pay a fine of $50. If he could not pay, the black could be sold into slavery for a period commensurate with the fine.
- Over the centuries, playing cards have been put to strange uses. They became the first paper currency of Canada when the French governor, in 1685, use them to pay off some war debts. In 1765, the year of the Stamp Act, when every pack of playing cards was being taxed one shilling, they were also used for class admission at the University of Pennsylvania. Napoleon even used them as a ration cards during the French Revolution.
- The town of High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, England, carries on the multi-century custom called the “Weighing-in Ceremony.” In early May, the town’s mayor, mayoress, deputy town mayor, deputy mayoress, town clerk, and district counselors representing wards in the town’s boundaries are weighed in order to learn if they have grown fat at the public trough.
ISN’T HISTORY ENLIGHTENING?
everyuselessthing.com 