To say the least, the universe is unimaginably large and complex. One of the least consequential of the astronomically large number of its phenomena that I don’t understand is soap scum. What’s the point of soap if we have to clean up after it?
Categories: Stuff and Nonsense Tags: soap scum
One of the many things that I’ve been worrying about recently is, in the off-chance that at some point in what’s left of my life I should somehow manage to find myself to be “sitting pretty,” will I turn ugly again if I stand up? And, in case that is how it works, should I act proactively and buy a wheelchair so I’ll able to get around and remain sitting pretty should I ever find myself in that position?
Categories: Stuff and Nonsense Tags: sitting pretty
Have you ever been sitting somewhere—a coffee shop, waiting room, or any other public space—when some you’ve never seen before in your life asked you if you would mind watching their stuff while they went to the bathroom, up to the counter around the corner to place an order, outside to try to find their friends or family, or wherever?
It’s happened to me. I’ve also seen it happen to other people even though those other people didn’t appear to have any prior contact with the owners of the stuff that apparently needed watching.
Does this strike you as being as bizarre as it strikes me?
Categories: Stuff and Nonsense Tags:
I was walking back from doing some shopping today when I passed a young lady standing on the sidewalk in front of the subway station closest to my home. I’m no good at estimating ages, but I’m guessing she was in her late teens or early twenties. From my old-fart perspective, that puts her well within the young whippersnapper range.
As I passed her, she called out to a man about the same age as her. I assumed she knew him, but I’m not certain of that. Positioned several paces away from the man, she shouted, “Do you have a micro mini USB charger?”
I thought to myself, “Geez. My generation would never openly use that sort of language right out on the street when we were her age!”
Categories: Stuff and Nonsense Tags:
The decades-old, on-again, off-again battles in the tiny, brutally impoverished, sub-Saharan country of Toomaltia flared up again two months ago. They have continued almost unabated ever since. To date, 178 men, women, children and other people—which represents over five percent of the population at the start of the fighting—have died in the current round of fierce skirmishes. There has also been an enormous increase in the number of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), but that may or may not be related.
No one has been able to trace the cause of this recent flare-up, but the dominant theory is that it had something to do with the price of lobster, a crustacean that nobody in this universally emaciated country has ever seen, let alone tasted.
The odds of reaching a peaceful solution lengthened two days ago when a new faction, the Toomaltia Libation Army (TLA), entered the fray, further complicating the situation.
Categories: News (Yeah, Right) Tags: insurgency, insurgents, rebellion, rebels, satire, war
The only reason I’m not fabulously wealthy is I’m incredibly lazy. If I were more diligent in responding to my emails I could be rich beyond my wildest dreams. That’s saying a lot because being incredibly lazy affords me considerable time to dream wildly.
Consider just one email that I recently received, which was only one of a plethora of similar messages that have come my way over years since I first bestowed upon myself the great honor of having an email address.
Before I share that note, I should mention that I feel great sympathy for the sender. He is obviously impoverished, although probably to proud to admit it. I deduced his destitution from the fact that he appears to be unable to afford to fix the caps lock key on his computer, which seems to be stuck as his email to me was typed almost exclusively in capital letters.
Has something slipped into the global food supply that is inducing severe cerebral chemical imbalances in disparate populations in far-flung corners of the globe? (Note to rabid nitpickers: Yes, I know the globe doesn’t have corners. It’s an expression. Get a life and get over it.)
There are riots going on around London, England. Despite being, for the most part, a pacifist, I would condone the use of civil disobedience and force—even the conflagrations of the sort that have occurred during the riots in London—if there weren’t any more peaceful means to achieve the desired ends and their well-reasoned purpose was to combat a particularly monstrous injustice being perpetrated by a brutal dictator. I would include genocide, widespread use of torture, long-term detainment of large numbers of political prisoners held under barbaric conditions, or the cancellation of a wildly popular reality TV show in this category of offences. But that’s not at all the case in London.
Nobody seems to know why the rioters are rioting. And, according to one report I read, that appears to include the rioters.
Categories: Politics Tags: federal debt, federal deficits, London riots
Admittedly, the following vastly oversimplifies the science but, as I understand it, the earth’s landmasses are floating tectonic plates. As those plates rub up against each other, or one slides under another, friction initially holds them in place. Eventually, after sufficient pressure builds up, energy is released as the earth shutters shudders when the plates jolt forward in the direction they are wont to go.
The result is an earthquake, possibly of devastating magnitude such as the ones recently in Japan and in Haiti about a year ago.
Recognizing that this is the way the earth is put together and functions reminds me of a line from a Woody Allen movie, Love and Death. At the end of the film, the Woody Allen character, Boris, gives a monologue, in which he says, “If it turns out that there is a God, I don’t think that He’s evil. I think that the worst you can say about Him is that basically He’s an underachiever.”
Categories: Religion Tags: god, underachiever
