Who ... or What ... Do You Want Representing You in Congress?

This is a question of no small importance, as the individual you elect will be receiving a princely salary for doing ... as far as I can tell ... absolutely nothing of consequence except naming post offices and complaining about the shortcomings of the other party. It's a question not applicable in many of the stupendously gerrymandered-to-be-GOP-until-the-sun-goes-nova Congressional districts that will never elect anyone that doesn't make Atilla the Hun look like a flaming liberal, but in the less hidebound parts of the nation, it deserves serious consideration.

For one thing, do you have to elect a person?

In 1997, The Onion published a satirical article titled "Texans Elect Gun," which reported that Texas voters had elected a .44 caliber revolver to the Senate on the strength of its "tremendous stopping power* ... deep nickel plating, the smooth action of its finely machined cylinder, and the crisp, positive pull of its trigger," and that it "took an impressive 71 percent of the women's vote by prominently displaying its elegant pearl grips and well-tooled leather holster throughout the campaign."

And that got me thinking** ... what other things might get elected in other parts of the country?

I can foresee Colorado residents electing a bale of marijuana.

Florida residents might elect a hurricane, figuring that it would hold its own with all the rest of the mighty windbags in Congress ...

Louisianans might decide to send a jazz band to Congress, which would certainly enliven otherwise dull, droning C-SPAN coverage and make filibusters more fun ...

Given that California has already elected a showboating blowhard like Darrell Issa to the House,  perhaps residents of the Golden State might elect a wind turbine to take advantage of Mr Issa's major contribution to the government ...

Vermont might well vote for a bucket of its famous maple syrup ... a good move, given that it would fit right in with all the other saps currently occupying Congressional seats ...

Kentucky could elect a fine thoroughbred horse to the Senate ... they've already got Mitch McConnell, and it's about time they were represented by a whole horse ...

Nevada, famous for the gambling and questionable morals of Las Vegas, could choose a set of loaded dice ... which would help ensure that the House always retains an advantage.

And, thinking again about Texas, perhaps they'd actually be better off with that .44 caliber revolver than with an ignorant and self-important buffoon like Ted Cruz.

Any other suggestions out there for other nontraditional Congressional representation? Leave a comment. You can't do much worse that what we've got already.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

* Tremendous stopping power would be very useful in Congress, where conservatives tend to stop everything from happening, anyhow.

** Always a dangerous thing.

Cartoon Saturday

So long, June, don't let the door hit you in the butt on your way out ...

A blistering heat wave continues to hold much of the West in its grip, with temperatures of 128 degrees (Fahrenheit) expected today in the aptly named town of Furnace Creek in Death Valley; celebrity chef Paula Deen continues to be excoriated over her admission of once using a "racial epiphet;" one-time NFL star Aaron Hernandez has been arrested for murder, and one of the key items of evidence against him is bubble gum; the Supreme Court wrapped up its term with controversial decisions striking down the Defense of Marriage Act and invalidating key provisions of the Voting Rights Act; and a date* has been announced for release of the film version of the schlock mommy porn novel 50 Shades of Grey.

The news isn't going to get any better ... fortunately, funny people keep drawing great cartoons to help you cope.

I just liked the ... uh ... sound of this one ...

The famous Swiss Army Knife provides us with our set of theme cartoons for this week ... there's the French Army version ...

And the Swiss Navy version ...

The Swiss Army is also reported to have other multipurpose equipment ...

Other armies have knives, too ...

And lastly ...

Sometimes, the g-string just isn't right for everyone ...

During my military career, I went through a lot of moves. I think we had this company move us more than once ...

Oh, I could tell you some stories about how funny this one isn't ...

Finally, don't you wish that Congress had a record this enviable?

And with that, we say good bye, sayonara, auf Wiedersehen, do svidaniya, and good riddance to June. I don't know that July will bring much better news, but at least it has a holiday in it.

Have a good day and a great weekend. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* August 1, 2014.

More Great Moments in Editing

It's been two weeks since the last time we used this topic ... time to drag out a few more great moments in editing. And besides, I'm running late, I need something simple to blog, and it'll take me a while to figure out what to say about the recent spate of Supreme Court decisions. Stay tuned on that one while you ponder the weirdness of editing ...

Come in, we're ... uh ... never mind ...

It really is a one-man show ... in base two*.

How about a nice selection of editorial oddities about food? Be very careful when you combine your karate training with your dinner preparation ...

Drop on by! I can always use the help ...

Where "win," "place," and "show" meet "prime," "choice," and "good," ...

No wonder it's on sale ...

Meet Phil ...

And meet Rich. He'll be happy to let you know how good he is at what he does ...

Perhaps you need the upgrade for the upgrade ...

There's always a certain percentage of the audience that just doesn't get the message ...

Great moments in editing. Where would we be without them?

Have a good day. See you back here for Cartoon Saturday.

Bilbo

* Time for all you mathematicians to let me know if that's right or not.

Getting a Leg Up on a Serious Issue

There is a great deal of consternation nowadays about the perceived surge in sexual assaults in the US military. Much is being done to try to address this issue, including the mandatory sexual abuse prevention training we all had to attend yesterday.

One thing we are not doing, though, is exploring some of the more ... shall we say ... material solutions.

I draw your attention to this interesting story from CNN: Hairy Leg Stockings.

It seems that there is a company in China that is manufacturing astoundingly hirsute stockings for ladies, designed to make them unattractive to potential attackers. This is how they look:

According to the article, a website called ChinaSMACK that tracks trends in China translated the caption that accompanied the picture as, "Super sexy, summertime anti-pervert full-leg-of-hair stockings, essential for all young girls going out."

Oy ...

I went to college in the late 60's and early 70's, a time when many young women burned their bras and eschewed shaving as a protest against their subjugation to men ("sexist pigs," we were called by the more militant ladies), but I never saw anything quite like this.

Ladies, I leave it up to you as to whether or not this is a useful approach to a serious problem. It could help you if things get ... hairy.

Have a good day. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo

Getting All Keyed Up, As It Were ...

Ah, the things you learn from surfing the web ...

It was on this date, June 23rd, of 1868 that a gentleman named Christopher Sholes was awarded a patent for the first practical manual typewriter. There had been other such machines designed before that time, but Mr Sholes' machine was the first one to combine the features of size and weight that would make it practical for manufacturing and regular use. This is what a later version of Mr Sholes' typewriter looked like ...

The original version had a much different keyboard, designed to resemble the keyboard of a piano - it had two rows of keys, the upper being white (ivory) and the lower black (ebony). It did not contain the numbers 0 and 1, because the inventor figured that space could be saved by using the letters "o" and "l" in their place. An article in Scientific American magazine referred to the typewriter as a "literary piano."

Various versions of the Sholes typewriter used systems of springs or weights to make the keys return to their original positions after being stroked, and a continuing problem with the design was that keys often tended to jam when newly-struck keys collided with those returning to their home positions. This led to the experimentation which resulted in another invention by Mr Sholes - the famous QWERTY keyboard we still use today, in which the keys are arranged to prevent more commonly used letter combinations from jamming each other.

In 1875, Mr Sholes sold the patent for his typewriter to the Remington Arms Company, a noted manufacturer of firearms, for $12,000. Remington sold the typewriter business in 1886 to the Standard Typewriter Manufacturing Company, after deciding that it's marketing slogan - "Typewriters don't kill people, people kill people," was not generating the desired volume of sales.

And there you have it - the story behind the device that, if you are of my age or older, was a mainstay of your college or early business years. Nowadays, instead of having to replace often-messy typewriter ribbons (which came with a black row and a red row for two-color printing, woo-hoo!), we have to replace ink cartridges that come in a bewildering and incompatible range of colors, sizes, shapes, and prices, and are designed to warn you to replace them when the ink level drops below 90%.

Technology marches on.

Have a good day, and enjoy the rest of your weekend. More thoughts on Tuesday.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

June. Oy ...

A nuclear storage site at Hanford, Washington, may be leaking radioactive waste into the ground and a nearby river; move your savings to the First National Bank of Your Mattress - the stock market has fallen for the second straight week; traitorous, self-important ass clown Edward Snowdon has been charged with espionage; professional nonentity Kim Kardashian and alleged musician Kanye West have named their new baby ... North; and the Food Network has dropped celebrity chef Paula Deen like a ... uh ... hot potato after she was accused of using a "racial epiphet" that left a bad taste (sorry) in the mouths of politically correct listeners.

We gave up on May. June sucks, too. Let's hope the cartoons will keep us going until July.

I thought this one was a clever literary takeoff ... if you'll excuse my use of the word "literary" in this context ...

The big, bad wolf finally figures out how to take care of those pesky Three Little Pigs ...

For this week's selection of theme cartoons, we turn to the animal world.  Back in April we ran a group of cartoons looking at penguins ... this week, we turn to somewhat larger aquatic animals - whales ...

First, we look at the whales with a bad rap, and two ways of correcting the unfortunate naming problem* ...

and ...

I was somehow reminded of the famous James Thurber cartoon about a seal barking when I saw this one ...

Whales are thought to be very intelligent animals. Do you suppose they fall for scams, too? ...

Having spent the day yesterday at King's Dominion amusement park with my local grandchildren, and much of that in the wonderful Water Park area, I can relate to this one ...

And finally for our whale-themed cartoon set, this one was an obvious choice ...

History made simple ...

And we wrap up this week's cartoon collection with this gem ... to which I think I could add a lot of other names ...

And there you have it - my attempt to help you get over another week of miserable news. Here in NoVa, we're looking forward to another beautiful summer day before the weather returns to its more normal baking heat and ghastly humidity. I'm going to take full advantage of it by doing the minimum of yard work, followed by sitting on the deck with a gin and tonic to survey my 0.253306-acre realm. You work your way, I'll work mine.

Have a good day and a great weekend. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

* I'm sending these to Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, too.

The Worst Jobs in the World

Who says Facebook isn't educational?

Yesterday one of my friends posted this very interesting chart - the Worst Jobs in the World Throughout History, presented as a matrix which places a number of jobs on a matrix rating them in the range from "treacherous" to "tedious" along the y-axis, and "difficult" to "disgusting along the x-axis. Click it to enlarge, or check out the original at the link above ...

There are days at the office when I think I'm channelling a wool fuller, and at home (particularly around April 15th) when I'm the reincarnation of a leech gatherer.

So, how does your job rate? And what are some present-day jobs that might fit into the matrix? One of the commenters on the matrix suggested that fast food workers are the modern-day equivalents of spit boys. And anyone who's been the parent of a small child can sympathize with the woes of the banquet attendant.

Other modern jobs that are treacherous and difficult include fighting raging wildfires ... 

Washing windows on high-rise office buildings might be considered treacherous and tedious ... 

At the intersection of treacherous and disgusting we might find septic tank pumping ...

And a sadly necessary, yet tedious and disgusting job nowadays is that of crime-scene cleanup ... you'll thank me for not including any of the pictures I found.

These days, it's good to have a job at all. But where that job falls on the matrix of worst jobs might make you think that unemployment ain't all that bad.

No matter how tough your job, remember this quote from Martin Luther King, Jr ...

"If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper that did his job well."

Have a good day. Enjoy sweeping those streets. See you back here for Cartoon Saturday.

Bilbo

At the Intersection of Politics and Mathematics

If you're like me*, you have been frustrated and disgusted by the inability of Congress to actually accomplish anything worthwhile. While the country is beset with seemingly intractable problems, our elected reprehensives spend their time insulting each other's motives and character, scheduling huge numbers of hearings on issues intended only to paint the political opposition in the worst possible light, and taking long recesses**.

Nice work if you can get it.

As a public service, I have spent some time with my newspapers and calculator and have developed this helpful equation which will help you figure out how much time it will actually take Congress to accomplish anything. Click it to big it, as Mike would say ...

Don't thank me. It's all part of the service.

Have a good day. More thoughts later.

Bilbo

* And God help you if you are.

** At least when they're in recess, they're not screwing anything else up.

Fathers' Day, 2013

Today is Fathers' Day, the day we honor the man who contributed half of our chromosomes and many of the life lessons that shaped us into who we are.

Fathers don't always get the same degree of respect that mothers do. We work in design, rather than production, after all, and don't get the credit that mothers do for going through nine months of pregnancy followed by months of sleepless nights and years of worry. And truth be told, many fathers don't earn that respect. For all too many men, fatherhood is an unfortunate side effect of good sex, and a child is an impediment to the enjoyment of life. For many men, fathering a lot of children by a lot of women is the imagined sign of a real stud ... not of the lives he's betrayed by being a thoughtless ass who thinks with his manly hydraulics instead of his brain and heart.

Luckily, though, there are many good men out there trying their best to be good fathers. It's not an easy job, and not everyone does it successfully ... but fortunately, enough do.

I have had occasion to reflect back on the course of my life, and to decide that I've been a much better grandfather than I was a father. This is probably normal. You've seen more of life, and had more experiences - good and bad - to share. If you're the grandfather, you get to be the gentle, wise, let-em-do-what-they-want fellow the children love to see, rather than the grouchy, tired father who has to put bread on the table, crack the whip, and enforce the discipline. You get all the joy of holding and loving the children with none of the negatives ... when the baby needs changing, for instance, there's none of that messy fuss - you just give her back to her mother. What's not to like?

I think that, from the father's perspective, we have our children too early in life. We're still learning how to be adults, and all of a sudden we're fathers, responsible for teaching our children all the lessons of life that we haven't even learned yet. Our children grow up as much in spite of our mistakes as because of our excellence in parenting.

When you're a father, you look at your own father differently. It was Mark Twain who supposedly once said, "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."

It's true.

A good father, as I came in time to understand, is a gift beyond all price. The gold standard for fatherhood is, of course, my own father. He fought the Nazis* in the skies over 1940's Europe, ran his own business, raised four children and buried one, and cared for mom through the long years of misery as Alzheimer's gradually destroyed the mind of the dynamic and witty woman he loved. Today, partially crippled by a stroke and growing more confused by the day, he remains the man to whom I owe whatever shreds of honor, decency, and ... well ... manhood that I can claim.

This was the man who battled for our freedom in 1944 ...

And here he is these many years later, with yours truly, Agnes, and five of his six great-grandchildren (Ava was born since this picture was taken, and he hasn't met her yet) ...

I'd like to think I've made him satisfied, if not proud.

It is politically correct (bordering on mandatory) nowadays to say that a child can grow up just fine in a household with same-sex "parents," but you'll never be able to convince me that it's the same as being raised by a father and a mother who love each other, treat each other with dignity and respect, set a good example, and subordinate their own dreams and desires to the momentous task of raising a brand new human being.

On Fathers' Day, this wonderful song by Dan Fogelberg sums it all up for me ...

Have a good day. Honor your father. And if you're a father, be a good one. Your children ... and, indeed, the future ... are depending on you.

More thoughts later.

Bilbo

* The real ones, the ones that murdered millions of innocent people and destroyed most of Europe, not the imaginary ones stupid people in this country compare their political enemies to.

Cartoon Saturday

Just when you thought things couldn't get any stupider ...

Americans' level of confidence in Congress has hit an all-time low ... even for Congress ... of ten percent (10%), dead last on a list of 16 institutions rated in a Gallup Poll; four people are dead in an apparent murder-suicide in St Louis*; a tornado touched down near Washington, DC, on Thursday, proving that there are other huge and powerful sources of wind besides Congress; Edward Snowdon, the treasonous, narcissistic bastard who shamelessly betrayed his country, remains in hiding in Hong Kong; and firefighters continue to battle wildfires raging out of control in Colorado.

I think we ought to just dump Edward Snowdon on the Colorado fires ... but that's just me.

We need cartoons. Stat!

Since the topic of the hour is the ability of your government (and your business community, and your social networking websites, and your doctor, and your ... well ... pretty much anyone) to use the latest technology to spy on you, why not take a few moments to laugh over this week's theme: the relentless march of high technology?

Isn't it great that you can buy the latest new gadget, and it's obsolescent before you leave the store and obsolete by the time you get it home ... ?

You may have read the story about the Navy finally getting high-tech enough that it can transmit messages that aren't in ALL CAPS. That's good. All caps can lead to all sorts of potential trouble ...

As can the ringtone you decide to use ...

You knew this one had to be coming ...

Some people just aren't cut out to handle high-tech. Or even medium tech ...

Today, this guy would be an investment banker ...

Distracted driving in the good old days? ...

From the world of high-tech, we turn to this week's groaner pun cartoon ...

Agnes goes to the dry cleaners ...

And finally, you probably suspected it, but ...

And that's it for this week's Cartoon Saturday. I am looking forward to a day without adult supervision, as Agnes is driving up to Pennsylvania with one of her sewing acquaintances to take a special class on one of her super-high-tech-it-could-sew-insulating-quilts-for-the-Mars-rover sewing machines**. It looks like it's going to be a nice day here in NoVa, which is not a bad thing, since all the rain we had in the last week has allowed my lawn to grow up to the second floor. I'm thinking of hiring Tarzan as a guide. There's also laundry to be done, the pictures from granddaughter Leya's kindergarten graduation (last night) to be sorted and posted, new batches of herb salt and granola to be made, and housecleaning to be done. I think someone arranged it this way so that I'd stay out of trouble. Sigh.

Have a good day and a great weekend. More thoughts tomorrow, in honor of Fathers' Day.

Bilbo

* The gun had nothing to do with it. Really. According to one of my co-workers, it was manufactured for the sole purpose of shooting at paper targets.

** The instruction manual alone weighs more than she does.