IF THERE IS ONE THING THAT REALLY TICKS ME OFF about my fellow human beings it is listening to them whine.
When I hear a grown person whining about anything I just want to walk right up to them and slap them silly. That would give them something to really whine about.
I know I can’t do that, but I can dream can’t I?
WHO SAID THAT TERRE HAUTE (THAT’S FRENCH FOR, “THERE’S ROOM FOR DANCING!”) is just another small town? Well…actually it was me once or twice. Truthfully, compared to some other places where I have hung my hat, it is rather small – about 60,000 humans and 12 million raccoons and squirrels.
It may be a “small” town, but it is crawling into the higher ranks one stumbling step at a time.
The latest positive move that is elevating this Metropolis on the Wabash (Not counting the resumption of lethal injections at the Federal Prison Death Row) is the grand opening of Starbucks Store #5. Five Chapels of St. Arbucks in a town of 60,000 people ain’t bad. That comes to one store for every twelve thousand bipedal Hautians. That is pretty good…except when all 12 thousand show up at the same time when I’m trying to find a parking space.
Throwback Thursday from March 2017 – “The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be”
I WAS SCANNING THROUGH THE PAGES OF THE WALL STREET JOURNAL the other day. That’s not something I do all that often. If I want financial information anything in The Journal is at least a week old. That would be like wondering if your tub is overflowing, but waiting a week to check on it. By that time your ceiling may be collapsed and the parakeet drowned in its cage.
What I did see that tickled my interest was an article about how the future was going to be different than today. Really? I didn’t know that Carnak The Magnificent worked for The Journal.
Obviously the article was written by someone right out of college who has been living in a Reality Bubble until last week.
Of course the future will be different than today. Otherwise Time would be one long Today. I suppose that it would eliminate the need for things like the TV Guide and the expiration date on my milk carton.
As yesterday moves into today so will today trickle into tomorrow. Things change as New Ideas coalesce in fertile brains. Technology will continue to make “The way it has always been done” into a memory, and I will throw away that leftover Mac & Cheese that has suddenly turned blue.
When Daimler had coffee with Benz, and Ford and the Duryea brothers made their first automobiles the Buggy Whip makers of the world got nervous. They could see the future
staring them in the face. The Future did them in and someday, maybe tomorrow, it will be the same for the car makers of today. Some bright and curious person will come up with a way to make, “Beam me up, Scotty,” a reality. “And while you’re at it, bring the dog in too.”
It will happen. Of that there is no doubt. It may not be “Beaming.” It might be something simpler, like faster cars unusable by drunks, teen drivers, or pizza delivery guys.
Personally, I’m looking forward to tomorrow and I’m hoping that it is different that today. Today? Been there, done that. Tomorrow offers an unlimited range of opportunities, amazement, and giggles.
I guess that some people might be afraid of tomorrow, any tomorrow. Well, I hate to be the one to break the news to you, but there is no way you can avoid it without permanent repercussions and probably ruining your clothes
It is vital that the Future be different from Today. Without that difference there would be no progress of any kind. Of course, the Future being different doesn’t mean that it will always be an improvement over Today. We hope it will be better, but History has shown that there are no guarantees. You win some, you lose some, and some – you break even. For every “I Love Lucy” there is a “My Mother the Car,” lurking in the shadows.
I guess that the writer for The Wall Street Journal has not yet experienced a sufficient number of tomorrows to notice that the future is always different. He seemed so surprised in his writing, as if no one had ever told him about it before. He’ll learn and I’ll find something else to read.
If the Future wasn’t different then every weekend would be just as unpleasant as Mondays and that is not acceptable.
YOU SEE SOMETHING NEW EVERY DAY. AT LEAST I DO. It may be something that millions of other people see each and every day, but it’s new to me. It is kind of like the first person who was hungry enough to eat a clam. They looked at that clam, heard their stomach growl, and decided that for the first time in human history that a clam could be food. OK, maybe it’s not exactly like that, but it is close enough for my purposes.
Last week I was, where else, slurping up my morning coffee at St. Arbucks when I saw something I had never seen before. I found it appropriate that it took place in the religious environment of St. Arbucks.
SOME THINGS JUST DEFY EXPLANATION. Others don’t merit explanation.
“The Brightest Flash of Light Ever Recorded Now Has An Explanation.”
That’s quite a headline. I would have opted for something shorter like, “Say Cheese! Says Heaven.”
When I saw that long headline this morning I had to read what followed.
It seems that in June of 2015 a pair of Israeli Observers (Read two guys who stay up all night really looking for UFOs, but won’t admit it.) were gazing into the night skies when they saw a bright flash of light – and lucky for them, they had their GoPro cameras or iPhones turned on to record the event. Why was I not told about this?
Jumping ahead 18 months or so to this morning the Observers say that they have finally figured out what caused it.
“…the burst was caused by the destruction of a star consumed by a black hole at the center of a distant galaxy,”
Somehow, I have my doubts about their explanation. It all seems too complicated. I think it all might have a much simpler cause.
“What did you do last night?”
“We stayed up all night staring at the sky, like most nights.”
“See anything interesting?”
“No. Just a bright flash of light.”
“Oh, what was that all about?
“I dunno. My guess was that the pizza delivery guy coming up the hill had his bright lights on.”
“That sounds reasonable to me. That was it. Mystery solved.”
“I dunno. My boss thinks it was a star being ripped apart by a black hole in a distant galaxy.”
“Hmm? I’d go for the pizza guy thing.”
“Yeah, me too.”
I make no claims to be a scientist of any sort. I was Liberal Arts major. I’m lucky I can read the label on a can of beans, but if this brightest light ever came from a “distant galaxy” – well, I have doubts that anyone can give a surefire explanation any better than, “The pizza guy had his bright lights on.”
“When a star passes within the tidal radius of a supermassive black hole, it will be torn apart. The rapid spin and high black hole mass can explain the high luminosity of this event.”
Loose translation into English: “I admit we were drinking and before I passed out my head was 
spinning something fierce, and then…I saw this bright light. Funny thing is I could swear I also smelled pepperoni.”
I admit that this is a very loose translation from the original “Astronomerese.”
Explaining what happens out there in the permanent night is, quite literally, a shot in the dark. The “Black Hole” idea about the bright light is as good as any I suppose, and just as valid as anything I could come up with. I like mine better. My explanation allows the guys who spend their nights gazing skyward to have a little fun – and some pizza. If we blindly accept the more scientific sounding explanation it makes me sad. Can life be any duller than spending each night sitting in the dark waiting for something, anything, to happen? It must be like being the Understudy to Life.
IT SEEMS LIKE EVERYDAY THE HEADLINES ARE FILLED with the nefarious exploits of criminal sorts who – how shall I say this – think big? Not content with knocking over a bank they pull off a multibank swindle for hundreds of millions of dollars. Then there are the Bernie Madoff sorts who just feed on the greed of those people who think there are “Something for Nothing” ways to Riches and Rodeo Drive. These are Big City News stories, but I think that there is nothing that can compare with Small Town News. In the Small Town newspapers you are going to find stories that would never make the pages of the New York Times.
Where else are you going to learn about the woman who was arrested for barking at a Police Dog?
I CHECKED TWICE TO MAKE SURE that I was reading it correctly. Unfortunately I was.
“Frenchman to float across the Atlantic – in a barrel.”
Me: “Geezer to get up and to not spill coffee.”
That Frenchman has his challenges. I have mine.
Some people just have more ambition I guess, but some of those people also have more in the way of daily medications.
Today is Throwback Thursday… From December 2015
“Houston, We’re Cool – No Problems Here”
I’M WRITING THIS IN LONGHAND, on lined paper, in cursive, using one of those so-called
“Space Pens.”
The makers of this pen used to advertise all over the place when the pens first came on the market several decades ago. Now you have to do a Google search to find them. At least I did.
They called them “Space Pens” because; on some early NASA space flights they discovered that your basic, every day ball point pens didn’t work very well. Everything was weightless, including the ink inside the pen, and it wouldn’t flow onto the page. Apparently, in those early days of space travel, the Astronauts took a lot of notes. Or maybe they whiled away the long hours in orbit by connecting the dots or doing crossword puzzles.
Faced with this dilemma the brilliant minds set to work hunting for a solution. They found one.
The “Space Pen” is like other pens, with a reservoir of ink, but it is different in that the ink is in a pressurized capsule so that, no matter at what angle you hold the pen, the ink will flow. It even works in the weightlessness of space. Hence, the super-duper nifty advertising idea to call them – “Space Pens.” I’ll bet that name was coined by a graduate of the Wharton School of Business.
I remember having a Space Pen decades ago. I think I got as a gift from some relative. It must have been a gift; because there was no way I was going to spend the money for one. When they first hit store shelves these pens were going for both an arm and a leg. I honestly don’t recall the actual figure, but it would have meant no lunch for a long time. No lunch? Not this boy!
It was like when the small electronic digital calculators hit the stores. I remember dropping close to a hundred dollars for one. (I was working by then and thought I could afford the calculator AND lunch. I was ultimately wrong.) Now you can find those calculators being used as give-aways to kids, or if you want to actually spend money for one, you can find a nice selection at your local Dollar Store. You can get one there that has the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on it if so desired.
Those cheap calculators put the slide rule manufacturers out of business. Those gizmos are museum pieces now. When I was in High School we had a Slide Rule Club – a group even Dorkier than the Audio-Visual Club.
There was never a Space Pen Club. When you get right down to it, the Space Pen is — a pen. It can do whatever one can do with a pen and do it at whatever angular orientation you choose. But it is still — a pen.
The odds that I will ever get the opportunity to test out its efficiency under weightless conditions are pretty slim. NASA doesn’t actively recruit Astronauts my age, unless you are a Senator or something equivalent – like a member of a popular, yet aging, Boy Band.
Why did I get this Space Pen in the first place?
Idle curiosity and access to the Internet. What brought it to mind in the first place is beyond me, but I did a search and, Eureka! – They are still on the market. The prices have dropped by about 99.9999%, so I figured, why not?
I am proud to say that I am the owner of three Genuine, blister-packed, patent and copyright protected. honest to Alan Shepard, “Space Pens.” It was four blister-packed pens, but I had to take one out of the pack so I could use it to write this.
Don’t you feel like you just rubbed eyeballs with history? Just a bit, maybe?
Throwback Thursday From November 2015
Boo!
There, now Halloween is officially over – the Pre-Season, if you will. It is time for the professionals to take the field. We are into the Big Time, Serious Holiday Season.
When we move past Halloween and we are down to Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year it becomes time to put away the cutesy costumes and put on the armor.
At least that’s the way a lot of people see it. The time between Halloween and Thanksgiving is Training Camp with “Black Friday” being the kickoff of the game where it is eat or be eaten.
Throwback Thursday from October 2015 –
TODAY IS ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE POSTS about the strange behavior of the human animal. If you have already heard or read about this please feel free to talk amongst yourselves or go get a piece of cake.
The dateline on the news item, and I use the word “News” very loosely, was Yekaterinburg, Kazakhstan. We’re talking Central Asia here, a place where I might think that isolation from – everywhere else – can play practical jokes with your brain. The gist of this story was something that the AAA magazine would never have printed I am sure.
It seems that motorists hurrying on their way to other parts of Kazakhstan saw a guy driving down the road with a live bear sitting in the backseat of his car. Up at the start of this posting is a picture of the bear in question hanging out of the car window, possibly asking for directions to the nearest asylum for the Seriously Wacky. I have to admit that if I was driving along and saw a bear in the car in front of me I would also try to get a picture – just to give to the driver’s family, in case things didn’t end peacefully, and the bear had lawyered up.
To give due credit to the local Kazakhstanian police, they did pull the guy over. One peek into the backseat and I’m sure those cops were wishing that they were going up against terrorists, drug-crazed bank robbers or even Mary Kay Sales Reps instead.
Cut to several steps closer to the chase – the Kazakhstanian CHiPs sent the guy on his way, along with his bear, but without any kind of traffic citation ticket.
It seems, that according to Kazakhstanian Law it is perfectly legal to drive around with a live bear in your car – provided that the bear is wearing a seatbelt – and the bear in the backseat was, indeed, wearing his seatbelt.
This whole thing brings several questions to mind.
How in the heck did the guy get the bear buckled up without being mauled into an early grave?
Since the bear allowed itself to be put in the backseat and properly belted in – I’m guessing that this was not the bear’s maiden voyage in a car. Just by the fact that the bear was in the backseat tells me that the guy wasn’t driving a Mini Cooper.
Was driver training next on the agenda?
Does this sort of thing go on in Kazakhstan often enough to warrant such safety conscious legislation?
Nowhere in the news item did it ever mention if anyone bothered to find out why the guy had the bear in the first place and where were they headed. I can’t imagine that there are too many spots one can go with your bear tagging along. I know that such places would be limited here, so I can imagine there would be fewer in, say, Yekaterinburg, Kazakhstan. At least I hope so.
In more local Terre Haute news (That’s French for “Bears under 100# must be in an approved car seat.”) bears have recently been spotted in northern Indiana. There is no word on whether or not these bears are émigrés from Kazakhstan or simply bears from the Detroit area looking for work.
I LOVE TELEVISION. It entertains me. It educates me. It enrages me. It wakes me up. It puts me to sleep. It’s a lot like most people I know.
My personal memory of Television goes back to 1952 or thereabouts. That was when my father came home with our first television set. It was a Philco brand with a 12 inch screen. Everything was in black and white and we had a whopping three channels to pick from.
It didn’t matter which channel you watched they were all pretty much the same – Old movies, Cartoons, News, Kids Shows, and Wrestling. Lots of Wrestling.
JUST WHEN I THINK THINGS CAN’T GET ANY STRANGER…
I have taken our local newspaper to task (several times) for spelling, grammar, and just plain crazy mistakes, but now they have really screwed the pooch.
Last Friday’s edition of the “Tribune-Star,’ the only newspaper in America published by and for illiterates, ran a story about a fund-raising event for a worthwhile charity. The idea was to sell T- Shirts at a couple of local high school football games. They were hoping to raise money to combat pediatric cancer as well as to raise public awareness.
Selling the shirts seemed to be a good idea. Unfortunately, the Tribune-Star, still trying to decide if anyone should actually proofread the paper before sending it out to the world, took that local story and guaranteed that it would go viral.
On Page A – 4 they ran the story, but no one bothered to check the Headline.
I now present an electronic clipping from last Friday’s Tribune-Star newspaper. Uh oh, Oops, and Dang it.
The jokes began to fly thick and fast on the Internet. I won’t repeat them here. I don’t need to. Within five seconds of reading the above headline you had them all sitting on the tip of your tongue.
I am dying to find out how the fundraising effort went. I can just imagine the scene when you drop this kind of snafu in front of a crowd at a high school football game. Thousands of high school age boys are not going to let this go without a wisecrack or two. I couldn’t and I’m a lot older.
What causes such recurring foul-ups at our local fishwrap newspaper? I know that mistakes are inevitable, but – really now! Doesn’t anyone look at the copy before pushing the start button on the presses? I guess not.
The faultline runs through several levels I fear. The person who wrote the initial story obviously thinks 
that Spell-Check is God. Either that or they are trying to see what they can slip past every other pair of eyes at the newspaper.
Somewhere along the line there must be someone who functions as a Proofreader. Given the long history of typos and other gaffes at the Tribune-Star I would think that somebody – anybody – would at least try to purge these errors.
Perhaps the newspaper should be adopted by the local high school newspapers as a class project. Have those kids act as real Editors and take a fine-toothed linguistic comb through the Tribune-Star to make it into something other than a laughing stock.
Do that, or simply admit that their Proofreader is actually Stevie Wonder.
UH, OH, THIS COULD COME TO BLOWS unless a cooler head steps in. I’ll see what I can do until that Sainted person arrives.
Yesterday morning at St. Arbucks the rack that is used to hold the various newspapers for sale disappeared. It didn’t take long to discover why.
I am completely innocent in all of this.
Every morning the early bird customers, AKA either “The Brain Trust” or “The Usual Suspects,” come in for coffee and they plop down in the corner like so many Hutts of Jabba. Several of them also like to pore over the newspapers. The burr under the saddle of the management is that none of them ever buy one of those newspapers. They just read them, occasionally cop a coupon, and then, more or less, refold the papers and put them back on the rack.
They are not always neat. Most mornings the newspapers look like they had spent the day at the bottom of a cockatoo cage.
Throwback Thursday From Feb. 2015 – “Stop The Freakin’ Presses!!”
“THE AMAZINGLY INTACT REMAINS of a meditating monk have been discovered in the Songinokhairkhan province of Mongolia, according to a report in Mongolia’s Morning News.”
I can’t speak for anyone else, but when I want news from Songinokhairkhan province, I turn to the Mongolia’s Morning News.
FOLLOWING UP ON THAT BLOGPOST OF A COUPLE OF DAYS AGO…
I heard an interesting bit of semi-news, semi-advertising this morning. On the morning news it was awkwardly disguised as a Business Report.
The heavily caffeinated executives in Seattle have announced that Starbucks (St. Arbucks to you and me) is going to convert one of its stores in the Great Northwest into a “Cashless Store.” What they mean by that is that all transactions will be handled by credits and debits – no green pieces of paper will change hands –unless they are advertisements or Hold Up Notes.
When I was growing up a “Cashless Store” was one that was going out of business.
IF THERE IS ONE THING YOU CAN SAY ABOUT ME it is that I’m pretty open minded when it comes to how people want to live their lives. As long as you don’t scare the horses or foul the footpath I’m not going to complain. I’m not saying that I might not shake my head or chuckle a bit, but that’s what I do six days a week.
I actively disapprove of few things. If you are an adult and have the sense God gave a ham sandwich go ahead and live your life. I won’t try to stop you. I won’t try to stop you from making a fool of yourself either. There is an entertainment factor that I find quite valuable in the wacky behavior of others.
Which brings me to today’s excursion down “You gotta be kiddin’ me Boulevard.”
I WOKE UP EARLY THIS MORNING. I’m still wearing my plastic semi-hockey mask to sleep in for a few more days and it’s not all that comfortable – so I was up at the crack of still dark outside.
The local morning news starts at 5:30 AM and, unless there was a big basketball game in the area, there is not much to talk about at that hour.
Today’s headline lead story was about coyotes.
OVER COFFEE I SCANNED THE CELEBRITY NEWS to see if Ihad been nominated for something – nothing again this year.
Failing to score any Oscar or Golden Globe nominations I shifted my focus over to the “Splitsville” column where I learned that Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas are divorcing. Que Lastima!
In La-La Land this Splitsville stuff is a big money world.
With the Miss Melanie and “Zorro” Banderas rupture the dollar amounts got my attention. It seems that Antonio agreed to a settlement whereby Melanie gets 65K PER MONTH for living expenses.
Throwback Thursday from Oct. 2015
TODAY IS ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE POSTS about the strange behavior of the human animal. If you have already heard or read about this please feel free to talk amongst yourselves or go get a piece of cake.
The dateline on the news item, and I use the word “News” very loosely, was Yekaterinburg, Kazakhstan. We’re talking Central Asia here, a place where I might think that isolation from – everywhere else – can play practical jokes with your brain. The gist of this story was something that the AAA magazine would never have printed I am sure.
It seems that motorists hurrying on their way to other parts of Kazakhstan saw a guy driving down the road with a live bear sitting in the backseat of his car. Up at the start of this posting is a picture of the bear in question hanging out of the car window, possibly asking for directions to the nearest asylum for the Seriously Wacky. I have to admit that if I was driving along and saw a bear in the car in front of me I would also try to get a picture – just to give to the driver’s family, in case things didn’t end peacefully, and the bear had lawyered up.
To give due credit to the local Kazakhstanian police, they did pull the guy over. One peek into the backseat and I’m sure those cops were wishing that they were going up against terrorists, drug-crazed bank robbers or even Mary Kay Sales Reps instead.
Cut to several steps closer to the chase – the Kazakhstanian CHiPs sent the guy on his way, along with his bear, but without any kind of traffic citation ticket.
It seems, that according to Kazakhstanian Law it is perfectly legal to drive around with a live bear in your car – provided that the bear is wearing a seatbelt – and the bear in the backseat was, indeed, wearing his seatbelt.
This whole thing brings several questions to mind.
How in the heck did the guy get the bear buckled up without being mauled into an early grave?
Since the bear allowed itself to be put in the backseat and properly belted in – I’m guessing that this was not the bear’s maiden voyage in a car. Just by the fact that the bear was in the backseat tells me that the guy wasn’t driving a Mini Cooper.
Was driver training next on the agenda?
Does this sort of thing go on in Kazakhstan often enough to warrant such safety conscious legislation?
Nowhere in the news item did it ever mention if anyone bothered to find out why the guy had the bear in the first place and where were they headed. I can’t imagine that there are too many spots one can go with your bear tagging along. I know that such places would be limited here, so I can imagine there would be fewer in, say, Yekaterinburg, Kazakhstan. At least I hope so.
In more local Terre Haute news (That’s French for “Bears under 100# must be in an approved car seat.”) bears have recently been spotted in northern Indiana. There is no word on whether or not these bears are émigrés from Kazakhstan or simply bears from the Detroit area looking for work.
I WAS DRIVING AROUND TOWN YESTERDAY, taking care of errands and chores – the usual stuff. As I drove past the neighborhood Taco Bell I noticed something on their marquee. It read
“Employee of the Month – Heather.”
Nothing really unusual about that except that Heather has been the Employee of the Month for two months in a row there. She must be something special. Perhaps she can make tacos faster than anyone else. I don’t know, and to be honest – I don’t really care. Anyway I offer my Congratulations to Heather. I just hope that her obviously superior skills don’t have a negative impact on the other employees. People can be so petty sometimes.
Down the Hall on Your Left 