A Few Random Stories for a Long-Overdue Friday

First things first: my clever ploy to drive up my hit statistics by using "Sex" as the title of yesterday's post didn't quite work out as well as planned. According to Google Analytics, I had only 101 hits yesterday, which is just slightly over my daily average of 95; according to the hit counter on the blog, I had 227 hits, which is just above the daily average of 210 (I can't explain the difference in count between the two). I deduce from this that sex does not sell as well as it used to, perhaps because people are tired of being screwed by both Republicans and Democrats. I need a Plan B to boost readership ... any thoughts?

Well, we've made it to Friday. How about a look at a couple of things that transpired in the last few days ...

According to this article I read yesterday on Yahoo News, a woman named Fausat Ogunbayo has sued the city of West Brighton, NY, for 900 trillion dollars. Her lawsuit alleges that the city improperly put her two children into foster care, claiming that the city and its Administration for Children's Services

"... (caused) plaintiff substantial economic hardship; (caused) plaintiff substantial economic injuries; (deprived) plaintiff and plaintiff children's Civil Right, 42 U.S.C. section 1983; (deprived) plaintiff and plaintiff's children, the right to family integrity; (deprived) plaintiff and plaintiff's children, the right to life, liberty, property and the right guaranteed by statute; (and disregarded) the probability of plaintiff's children, suffering emotional and mental distress."

I guess she told them. I'm not sure which is the more amazing aspect of this story: the incredible level of chutzpah of a person who would file a lawsuit worth more than 64 times the total GNP of the United States, or the astounding ass-clownery of an attorney who would bring such a lawsuit on her behalf.

Do you suppose I could sue all the people who don't read my blog for inflicting intense emotional distress on me?

In another interesting story, a gigantic hotel is scheduled to open - 24 years behind schedule - in the tourist mecca of Pyongyang, North Korea. The hotel, shown in this picture

has been critically needed for many years, as smaller hotels have been swamped by the legions of tourists flocking to North Korea to enjoy its raucous night life and world-renowned cuisine (which features such delicacies as grass, tree bark, and small, slow-moving animals).

The story notes that official plans for the hotel have not been announced by the North Korean government, although a current rumor indicates that "many of the middle floors" will be left empty, while the "lower floors" will be dedicated to hotel rooms and the "upper floors" to restaurants.

Book now. Beat the rush.

And that's how it is for this cold, dreary Friday morning. Tonight there will be dancing, and tomorrow and Sunday the usual combination of errand-running and entertaining our endlessly-imaginative grandchildren. Oh, and in between, we'll be doing the no-snow dance.

I hope it works.

Have a good day. See you tomorrow for Cartoon Saturday ... more thoughts then.

Bilbo

Sex

As I try to build readership in the lead-up to my sixth blogoversary (coming up on March 8^th!), I figured I might as well try using some words that will resonate well with search engines and draw unsuspecting readers to my little corner of cyberspace. Sex seemed like a pretty good choice, since we spend most of our early lives looking for it and most of our later lives trying to remember why we were looking for it and what to do if we actually find it. Don't ask me how I know that.

Here's what some of the famous and not-so-famous have had to say about sex ...

"I blame my mother for my poor sex life. All she told me was 'the man goes on top and the woman underneath.' For three years my husband and I slept in bunk beds." (Joan Rivers)

"I'm a terrible lover. I've actually given a woman an anti-climax." (Scott Roeben)

"Anyone who says that gratuitous sex is no substitute for gratuitous violence obviously hasn't had enough gratuitous sex." (Geoff Spear)

"I love sex. It's free and doesn't require special shoes." (Anonymous)

"Sexual intercourse is kicking death in the ass while singing." (Charles Bukowski)

"Despite a lifetime of service to the cause of sexual liberation, I have never caught venereal disease, which makes me feel rather like an Arctic explorer who has never had frostbite." (Germaine Greer)

"I think sex is better than logic, but I can't prove it." (Anonymous)

"For me, love is very deep, but sex only has to go a few inches." (Stacy Nelkin)

"Housework is like bad sex. Every time I do it I swear I will never do it again. Until the next time company comes." (Marilyn Sokol)

"During sex I fantasize that I'm someone else." (Richard Lewis)

"There is nothing safe about sex. There never will be." (Norman Mailer)

"The only difference between friends and lovers is about four minutes." (Scott Roeben)

"It's hard to be funny when you have to be clean." (Mae West)

"There's nothing inherently dirty about sex, but if you try real hard and use your imagination you can overcome that." (Lewis Grizzard)

"For flavor, instant sex will never supercede the stuff you have to peel and cook." (Quentin Crisp)

"Nothing makes you forget about love like sex." (Staci Beasley)

"I read so many bad things about sex that I had to give up reading." (Anonymous)

"Sex and golf are the two things you can enjoy even if you're not good at them." (Kevin Costner, in the film Tin Cup)

"I'm a great lover, I'll bet." (Emo Philips)

"Just saying 'no' prevents teenage pregnancy the way 'Have a nice day'cures chronic depression." (Faye Wattleton)

"I like my sex the way I play basketball, one on one with as little dribbling as possible." (Leslie Nielsen)

"I have no luck with women. I once went on a date and asked the woman if she'd brought any protection. She pulled a switchblade on me." (Scott Roeben)

"Science is a lot like sex. Sometimes something useful comes of it, but that's not the reason we're doing it." (Richard Feynman)

"Sex is identical to comedy in that it involves timing." (Phyllis Diller)

"One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other." (Jane Austen)

"If sex doesn't scare the cat, you're not doing it right." (Anonymous)

"Sex is good, but not as good as fresh sweet corn." (Garrison Keillor)

"I've tried several varieties of sex. The conventional position makes me claustrophobic and the others give me a stiff neck or lockjaw." (Tallulah Bankhead)

"The position is ridiculous, the pleasure momentary, and the expense damnable." (Lord Chesterfield)

Now to sit back and watch the hit counter. This ought to be interesting.

Have a good day. Practice safe sex ...

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

More Great Moments in Editing

Yesterday morning I had my periodic physical exam. The doctor said I was in excellent shape (round is a shape, right?) for a man of my age, which was good news. The bad news, of course, was that in order to get to that final judgment, I had to get past two booster shots and the dreaded prostate exam.

Today has just got to be better than that.

How about a few more entries from our Great Moments in Editing collection? ...

Well, I guess this helps explain why they would elect someone like Mitch McConnell to the Senate ...

Maybe they could hire the same folks who couldn't figure out why so much cash was disappearing from the DC Metro transit system accounts ...

If you're going to have to sit out a major storm, you need more things than just lunch meat and toilet paper ...

I wonder if these work better than Preparation H ...

How did we catch evildoers before ubiquitous video cameras? ...

I suppose this would be a reasonable approach to the problem of high gas prices ...

Oddly enough, this is why I usually go there ...

And finally for today's collection, I'm not sure I needed this much information on what goes on behind those ivy-covered walls ...

We're expecting a minor winter "storm" here in Disneyland-on-the-Potomac today, with accumulations of perhaps an inch here in Fairfax County. While not much of a storm by current European standards, it will certainly be enough to make everyone around here hysterical, especially during the afternoon rush hour. I can hardly wait.

Have a good day. Stay warm. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Show Me the Money ... But Not Who Gives It

As we wade through the endless swamp of the Republican primary season, I see two very troubling issues: unrestricted corporate funding of campaigns under the guise of free speech, and the ability of individuals and organizations to contribute huge amounts of money - anonymously - to political campaigns. It's said we have the best government money can buy, and we're seeing the proof every day.

If you're one of my Facebook friends, you saw that I posted a link to this Washington Post article on my wall yesterday: Secret Money Is Funding More Election Ads. The introduction to the article sums up the issue ...

"More than a third of the advertising tied to the presidential race has been funded by nonprofit groups that will never have to reveal their donors, suggesting that a significant portion of the 2012 elections will be wrapped in a vast cloak of secrecy."

I've been ranting for a long time about the impact of money on our political system. The Supreme Court's ludicrous Citizens United decision that equated corporations to individuals and money to speech opened the flood gates to a tsunami of money, carefully vetted by armies of lawyers to ensure bare minimum adherence to virtually non-existent legal restrictions. But even more troubling to me than this - were that possible - is the perfectly lawful ability of major campaign donors, both individuals and groups, to pump huge amounts of money into political campaigns via nonprofit organizations without identifying themselves or their hidden agendas.

We like to think that we live in a country where everyone can stand up and be counted. We all know the famous Norman Rockwell painting that depicts the exercise of free speech ...

People may want to stand up and be counted, but many nonprofit groups engaged in political activity would rather sit down and remain untallied. A spokesman for the conservative nonprofit group "American Crossroads" was quoted in the Post article as saying that, “Private organizations don’t have to disclose their donor lists to the government at their beck and call,” and I don't have a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is that I, a private citizen trying to evaluate campaign advertising and competing claims, don't know who is paying for all the signs and ads and air time, and what their agenda might be. Those who would contribute anonymously often insist that, were their identities known, they would be targeted for harassment by the government ... indeed, a spokesman for another conservative nonprofit group, "Americans for Prosperity," was quoted in the article as "cit(ing) concerns that donors could be targeted for harassment by the Obama administration and liberal groups." Clearly, were the situations reversed, a conservative Republican administration would never so target anyone (right, Mr Nixon?).

Why, I ask myself, aren't you willing to own up to your political activity? If you're unwilling to stand up and be counted, why should I pay attention to you? And should I worry about what you may be secretly advocating that will be contrary to my best interests?

And how can I, as a private citizen, have any illusion that my vote will gain me the same level of attention from my elected officials as the vote purchased with enormous amounts of money by anonymous donors?

I don't see much chance of squeezing the political funding toothpaste back into the tube. Congress has too much interest in getting the big money needed to fund campaigns, and big-monied interests of both the left and right have enough power to squash any effective interference with their campaign spending, carried on under the lofty banner of free speech from behind the shield of anonymity.

Yep, we have the best government money can buy, especially if you're one of the "people" with the money to buy it.

The rest of you, follow me around back to the servants' entrance.

Have a good day. Insist on knowing who is buying your government. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Sign Language

No, I'm not talking about ASL.

You may have heard the old joke in which the straight man asks the comic, "What sign were you born under?", to which the comic responds, "Maternity!"

Yes, it's a groaner, but it provides a nice intro to today's discussion of astrological signs...

Agnes is taking an online course in digital scrapbooking and journaling, and her latest homework assignment is to create a two-page spread that describes her, using her astrological sign as a starting point. She's a Taurus, and in looking for information describing Tauruses (Tauri?), found this list of traditional positive Taurus traits:

Patient and reliable
Warmhearted and loving
Persistent and determined
Placid and security loving

Along with this list of "dark side" Taurus traits:

Jealous and possessive
Resentful and inflexible
Self-indulgent and greedy

Naturally, she had to ask me which of these traits applied to her. Unable to take the fifth, I agreed with all the positive traits (which are, in fact, mostly accurate) and disagreed with all the negative ones (which are only accurate to the extent that they apply to any of us).

Now, I don't put much stock in the usefulness or accuracy of astrology, but I figured I could get a good blog post out of what it says about me - a Scorpio. Here's the list of positive Scorpio (Scorpian?) traits:

Determined and forceful
Emotional and intuitive
Powerful and passionate
Exciting and magnetic

And the negative ones:

Jealous and resentful
Compulsive and obsessive
Secretive and obstinate

Well, I guess I should let people who know me well comment on how accurate those are ... I would just say that - in my own mind - I tend not to jealousy or compulsiveness, but can be obsessive, secretive, and obstinate. Passionate, yes. Emotional, yes. Exciting ... um ... ask Agnes.

Here are a few other things I found out about Scorpios:

"Their tenacity and willpower are immense, their depth of character and passionate conviction overwhelming, yet they are deeply sensitive and easily moved by their emotions. Their sensitivity, together with a propensity for extreme likes and dislikes make them easily hurt, quick to detect insult or injury to themselves (often when none is intended) and easily aroused to ferocious anger." (While I have a strong temper, I'm usually not "easily aroused" to anger ... it generally takes some effort for you to get me really angry, although if you're willing to go to enough trouble to do it, I can really make it worth your while)

"...(T)heir strong reasoning powers are tempered with imagination and intuition, and these gifts, together with critical perception and analytical capacity, can enable the Scorpions to penetrate to profundities beyond the average." (Does this reflect why I enjoy churning out pseudo-intellectual thoughts in this blog each day?)

"Rebelliousness against all conventions, political extremism to the point where hatred of the Establishment makes them utterly unscrupulous terrorists. Brooding resentment, aggressive and sadistic brutality, total arrogance, morbid jealousy, extreme volatility of temperament, these are some of their vices." (Um ... let me get back to you on those ...)

"Any profession in which analysis, investigation, research, dealing with practicalities, and the solving of mysteries are relevant, can appeal to them. So police and detective work, espionage and counterespionage, the law, physics or psychology may attract them, and they can become masters of the written and spoken word. They may be most persuasive orators and find fulfillment as diplomats or preachers ..." (Well, physics is utterly out of the question, but I'm interested in all the others. I do love to write and am a pretty good public speaker. Diplomatic ... mostly. But finding fulfillment as a preacher ... fuhgeddaboutit. I'll leave that to John.)

Strangely enough, in researching the characteristics of the Taurus, Agnes learned that it's opposite is the Scorpio.

Go figure. That old chestnut about opposites attracting must be true.

That's enough about signs of the Zodiac for now. At this point in the day, the only sign that is really important to me is this one ...

Have a good day. What's your sign? More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

How Do You Know When It's Bad?

This is an important question, because we need guidelines that help us avoid things that will make us sick. Well, other than Congress, the GOP, and the Democratic and the Tea Parties, because we've pretty much got to swallow them whether they make us sick or not. Here are some guidelines on detecting things that have gone bad (the original list I found on Miss Cellania, as modified by yours truly) ...

General Rule of Thumb #1: Most food cannot be kept for longer than the average human lifespan.

General Rule of Thumb #2: Anything that walks out of the refrigerator under its own power is no longer likely to be edible.

General Rule of Thumb #3: If it didn't have hair on it when you put it away, but it does now, it's probably gone bad.

Eggs: When something starts pecking its way out of the shell, the egg is probably past its prime.

Dairy Products: Milk is spoiled when it starts to look like yoghurt. Yoghurt is spoiled when it starts to look like cottage cheese. Cottage cheese is spoiled when it starts to look like regular cheese. Regular cheese is nothing but spoiled milk anyway.

Mayonnaise: If the year of the use-by date starts with 19, its probably off.

Meat #1: If opening the fridge door causes stray animals from a three mile radius to congregate outside your house, the meat is spoiled.

Meat #2: If buzzards are circling lazily over your back yard as you get ready to put the meat on the grill, you should probably consider just a salad.

Lettuce: Lettuce is spoiled when you find a puddle of brownish goo in the place you thought you left a head of lettuce.

Canned Goods: Any canned goods that have become the size or shape of a basketball should be disposed of … carefully.

Carrots: A carrot that you can tie into a knot like a shoelace is not fresh.

Wine: Should not taste like salad dressing.

Salad Dressing: Should not taste like cheap wine.

Nacho Dip: If you can take it out of its container and bounce it on the floor, it's gone bad.

Rice: If individual grains are wiggling, it's no longer edible.

Don't thank me. It's all part of my plan to keep you all around and reading my blog for a long time.

And stay away from those Republicans and Democrats ... even if they don't make you throw up, they'll rot your brain.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Cartoon Saturday

It's the first Saturday in February already. Time flies when you're having fun, doesn't it?

Presidential wannabe Mitt Romney swamped presidential wannabe Newt Gingrich in the Florida primary election, and is steamrolling on to the Nevada caucuses, buoyed by the endorsement of presidential wannabe Donald Trump; the government of Syria is quaking in its boots as the UN Security Council gets ready for Russia and China to veto a draft resolution of you'd-better-cut-that-out-or-I'll-get-mad-and-issue-another-resolution; Roseanne Barr has announced a run for the presidency as a Green Party candidate, making Newt Gingrich look almost presidential; the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation, battered by fierce condemnation from both sides of the argument, has reversed its controversial decision to stop funding the breast cancer screening activities of the Planned Parenthood organization; and Disney employees are rejoicing over a change in company policy that allows employees at the Disney theme parks to grow beards, as long as they are a quarter of an inch or less long. Snow White will never be the same.

Yep. It's definitely time for Cartoon Saturday.

We lead off with this week's Terrible Pun Cartoon ...

The GOP announces its latest health care safety net proposal to prove that Mitt Romney really does care for all those poor people ...

I started my Facebook page back in 2009 when we 1969 graduates of North Allegheny High School were encouraged to start them as a way of preparing ourselves for the shock of seeing each other at our 40th anniversary reunion. Since then, it's provided lots of cartoon opportunities ...

And ...

And ...

And ...

And finally ...

One of my favorite sayings is, "Some days you're the pigeon, some days you're the statue." On the latter days (which seem to be in the majority lately), this cartoon really speaks to me ...

Continuing on that theme, two cartoons to which I can relate more every day ...

And to wrap things up for this week's cartoon collection ...

And now the weekend beckons. Lots to do, not much time to do it in, and ... somewhere in there ... it might be nice to just relax a little. Maybe Mike can advise me on technique.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

The Bill of Rights - Articles IX and X

Note: Friday's post is going up early because I need to go to work early in the morning, and won't have time to write the post when I usually do. It'll confuse Mike, but the rest of you should be okay.

It's been a while, Dear Readers, since we last looked at the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but now it's time to complete our brief foray into history with a discussion of the last two articles of the Bill of Rights - numbers nine and ten (or IX and X, to be numerically Roman about it).

The Ninth Amendment reads,

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

And the Tenth reads,

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Taken together, these two amendments say quite a bit. Unfortunately, they don't say quite enough.

The Founders wrote the Ninth Amendment because they realized they couldn't think of everything. They had, as we have seen, recent experience of living under a monarch with nearly limitless power, and wanted to make sure that - just because they'd forgotten to list a particular right in the Constitution - that fact couldn't be used by some future President (or legislature, or court) to take on more power just because the Constitution didn't say "no."

The Tenth Amendment grew out of similar concerns. The greatest problem faced by the Founders in drafting the Constitution was figuring out the correct balance between the relative powers of the central government and the constituent states. That argument was resolved by the Tenth Amendment in the states' favor - if the Constitution didn't specifically grant a power to the central government or specifically deny it to the states, it would go to the states.

Or to "the people," whatever that means.

According to the Supreme Court in its Citizens United decision (are you tired of me harping about that, yet?), "the people" includes corporations, unions, and similar groups ... not just Average Joes and Janes like you and I. Nowadays, "the people" are the "oil people," the "mining people," the "banking people," the "real estate people," and so on...

You might want to remember that the next time you're in a demonstration and shout some mindless slogan like "power to the people!"

But anyhow, the last two amendments of the Bill of Rights are, in my opinion, two of the most important. They don't guarantee specific rights like the First through the Eighth Amendments, but they reflect a farsightedness on the part of the Founders that we don't see in the weasely ass clowns that have taken their place today. The Founders knew they didn't have all the answers, so they built into the Constitution a mechanism to allow for the document to be amended as conditions changed in an unknowable future (Article V). And, knowing that tensions between the central government and the states would certainly arise, they wrote the Ninth and Tenth Amendments to underline their vision of a union in which the powers of the individual states would be protected. Somehow, I don't think we have anyone in Congress today who could write a document this good.

Unfortunately, what we have in Congress (and in the noisy fringes of the left and right) are a lot of people who talk up a storm about the Constitution and what they think it says, but don't really have much of a clue what it actually means.

In the coming weeks, we'll look some more at the body of the Constitution and at some of the other amendments. In an election year, I think that's a very worthwhile thing to do.

Have a good day. See you in this spot for Cartoon Saturday!

More thoughts then.

Bilbo

Sounds Your Children Have Probably Never Heard

I ran across this interesting article on Mental Floss last year, and tucked it away for future blog use: 11 Sounds That Your Kids Have Probably Never Heard.

This is a fascinating subject that indicates how much things have changed across the relatively short span of my lifetime. The list includes some things that are major background memories of my life growing up in good old Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Things like ...

The sounds of a rotary telephone ... the swish of the turn of the dial and the click-click-click as it returned to the home position has been replaced by the beeps and boops of modern digital technology. And you may remember the sequence from Alfred Hitchcock's classic film Dial M for Murder in which we saw the little mechanical switches in the telephone exchange falling into place one by one as evil husband Ray Milland dialed wife Grace Kelly to set her up for the killer lurking in the shadows ...

The chunk!-chunk!-chunk! sound of a channel-changing dial on a television set ...

A record changer. There are fewer and fewer of us who probably remember the sound of a stack of records falling one by one onto the turntable of a record player. An mp3 file doesn't make that satisfying slap-click-skritch-skritch-skritch sound sequence as it cues up to play on your iPod. This goes along with ...

The click and repetitive sound clips of a broken record. Nowadays, many people don't even know what you mean when you tell them they sound like a broken record. After all, mp3's don't usually break.

The ka-chunk!, ka-ching! of the old-style, 500-pound cash register, which has been replaced by the digital beeps and boops of the laser scanner ...

And the happy ding-ding! that rang out when you drove your car over the signal bell hose at the local gas station. No need for such an outmoded thing now that virtually every gas station in the country is self-service.

Times are changing, and so is the background noise. I miss some of those comforting old sounds, even if life may be a bit easier because the technologies and services they represent have been replaced by ones which are newer and (perhaps) better. Sigh.

What are the sounds that you don't hear any more? Leave a comment.

Have a good day. May your background noises be pleasant ones.

More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

Florida Speaks! Yawn.

The Florida GOP primary election is now history, and we move on to ... the next primary election, which will be held somewhere, sometime relatively soon. The big winner, as we now know, was Mitt Romney, with 46% of the vote; Newt Gingrich came in second with 32%, and Rick Santorum in third with 13%. To the extent that there's any good news in all this, it's that people in Florida seemed to recognize the lesser of two evils. There are a few points to be made about the Florida results:

1. Organization and money trump noise and bluster. Newt Gingrich was steamrolled by a well-organized, well-funded Romney campaign that buried him under a huge, steaming pile of negative advertising.

2. Negativity is in. I have long bewailed the emphasis on negative campaigning, and we saw its power in Florida. If you want me to vote for you, tell me why you're the better candidate and deserve my vote. Don't tell me that the other guy is a scum-sucking pederast who hates America - tell me what you are and what you stand for. Read this interesting analysis from NPR.

3. Money talks. The Romney campaign completely swamped the Gingrich campaign with money, outspending it by an estimated five times. If you needed a good example of the real impact of the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission that opened the fiscal spigot for political campaigns, here it is.

Republicans and Democrats. A plague on both your houses.

My endorsement still stands:

And I am sooooo not looking forward to the next nine months of political misery.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo

P.S. - Great story here about Stephen Colbert's Super PAC, Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, Inc.

B.