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The Other Letter, Inc. Endorses Kamala Harris for President

Thoughts on our Presidential Options

Believe.

Donald Trump has these defects of character: He is conceited, arrogant, power hungry, and occasionally despicable.  45 entered politics to advance his tax reform agenda for billionaires, and to enjoy the biggest power trip on Earth.

Trump had four years to advance any executive agenda, and he did very little.  His predecessor devised Obamacare, and his succcessor had many policy initiatives.

Trump reminds one of Ronald Reagan, very little interest in the nuts and bolts of governance, only interested in delegating a near-Fascist, Proud Boys-friendly regressive, discriminatory policy.

Like Joe Biden, Trump should step down because of his age, and even, because of a lack of any new ideas.  This is a sad side to Ameican politics, but he also should step down, because he might get shot again, he is very divisive.

Trump is Wonder Bread, Kamala Harris is both African American, and Asian American.  In addition, Trump is very aggressive, mean really, and petty, always picking fights.

May the best woman win.  (I should say, may the best man win?)  7/24/24.

[Anyone can tell that The Other Letter is leftist.  I am not divisive, I am preaching to the choir.  Op-ed articles like all the letters in The Other Letter are never “fair and balanced,” they are meant to concisively change opinion, and to offer “insight found nowhere else.”]

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Kamala Harris for President, Biden is stepping down for health reasons.  Looks as though we’re stuck with another four years of Trump: The end of reproductive services; the end of environmental protections; the end of Medicare; and the end of a kind and gentler America.  Oh m*th*rf*ck*r, no!!

The good thing about politics (or American politics at least), is that there are term limits that prevent leaders from doing permanent damage.  Trump has all the makings of a demogogue, appealing to the electorate’s prejudices, Charlottesville being just one example...

Maybe Harris will win, maybe I am short-changing her from the get-go.  After all, Kamala is currently in the White House.  She must have plenty of ideas from her present work, and from the new generation, especially ones to continue President Biden’s legacy.  Harris is the only one vying for the front office under seventy-eight years of age.  Ms. Harris is an African-American, and Asian-American woman, she covers all the bases to counter intolerance.  7/21/24.

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Biden’s slow start to the debate, left many thinking that President Biden cannot handle a second term, yet he is doing well with his first four years.  The economy is doing well, job numbers are up, inflation has been squelched.

The problem I see with Trump is his lack of honesty during the debate.  The former President was very fast and loose with his facts.

Another disconcerting facet of Trump’s psychological makeup is his aggressiveness.  He will stop at very little to get what he wants: Witness the Capitol rally he assembled on January Sixth, of 2021.  Trump clearly lost the election, but he tried to swing the vote his way by mob rule.

Most disturbing is the fact that the investigations against him have centered on marital infidelity, not this rally, which verges on treason.  7/9/24.

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Who caught the Presidential debate tonight?  Analysts seemed to suggest that Trump won, at least on presentation.  Yet Trump was evasive most of the way through, and focused on his favorite, hatemongering topic, immigration reform.

Biden did a better job with the facts, Trump would not survive any serious fact-checking.  Biden really fumbled through the first seven minutes, as it appeared his age would really work against him.  It was later revealed that he had a cold, not COVID-19 however.

One garnered the impression that at the core of Trump’s plank was tax reduction for the wealthy, although the moderators and Biden couldn’t pin him down exactly on his exact policy, if he actually had one.  Biden was significantly less hesitant to offer details on his initiatives such as his plan to expand tax credits for child care.  Trump said he would consider exiting NATO, of which Biden vigorously disapproved.

Trump criticized Biden on three policy issues: the Afghanistan airlift; border management; and inflation.  Trump claimed that Biden will not fire anyone, whereas the former President would fire anyone, just like on his reality game show, The Apprentice (remember his contestant-ending cry, “you’re fired!”)

Biden criticized Trump — essentially calling him a racist — on his equivocating on Charlottesville, where one side had made a protest, a Klan rally.  Biden also took Trump to task for mishandling the epidemic — the economy had to be jumpstarted with government spending, that is, fiscal policy, which was very inflationary.  Biden challenged Trump to be more honest, and to not be fast and loose with his facts.  6/27/24.

 

T.o.C. & Addendum from the Editor-in-Chief

Here is a Table of Contents for the current Other Letter:

• Best Ever Music (honest)
• Adolf Hitler was Satan incarnate...
• Tenets of Living Spiritually
• These Say it Best
• (To my fifteen, daily readers)  Parental controls...
• Musical Notation
• Trail Mix
• Medical Advice from a Layman
• Just Saying

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This is a blog.  I am its founder, and EiC.  From Boise, Idaho, to Beirut, Lebanon, the New York Times would be hard pressed to find a more dedicated, more involved, press corps.  I have editors covering the political scene, writing columns on world affairs, I have a divinity editor, along with a staff of columnists solely covering Hollywood and famous actresses.

As you would imagine, the production values are phenomenal, as are the costs of producing just one issue.  Yet, the entire squad long ago agreed we would never charge a penny (no heckling, please), so we are deeply in hock.

Just kidding, I am the sole writer, coder, and researcher.  I wear many hats.  If you like this blog (I really hate that word, I’ll tell you), tell a friend.  If you don’t, please do not hire — never mind...

Every facet of religion and politics is covered here.  Just kidding, but I do raise some unusual points.  If you are not an adventurous reader, or you are a Republican, you may want to read something else.

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In my book, The Other Letter is the best value over any website worldwide.  This is not an unsubstantiated claim: I do not accept advertising, I do not represent special interests, unlike the U.S. Congress, and I do not charge any fee to read my ideas.

Call it what you will, but I have been doing this since 2004, and as a retiree, this is my vanity project (although I did have hopes for this to be an author’s platform, as this blog is incorporated).

I get fifteen readers every day.  That’s not many, I know, but if I get one person to think more clearly about the World, and one’s just and righteous place in it, I have succeeded, wouldn’t you agree?

I will say this: I do such a concise job expressing the Progressive viewpoint, dispatching many sacred cows, that many Right wingers are all over me, all day, every day.  To quote Celine Dion: “Regarde-moi.”

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The Other Letter has a new hyphenate, forwarding domain, other-letter.com.

 

Don’t be fooled.  Adolf Hitler was Satan incarnate...

There are still a few crazies out there who think Adolf Hitler was a master leader, especially one righting the sinking ship of the German economy.  Any leader that requires slave labor, ones starved to death, to make an economy work, is obviously an extreme failure.  Hitler was not John Maynard Keynes, the famous British economist who mathematically formed the foundation of fiscal and monetary policies.

Germany did suffer greatly from hyperinflation, from 1922 to 1923.  They blamed the Jewish bankers for this, yeah right, Chase and J.P. Morgan were Hasidim.  Hitler wasn’t an economic hero, he wasn’t any hero at all.  Der Fuhrer was Satan, pure and true.

His Final Solution exterminated millions of Jewish mothers, fathers, sons and daughters.  With a thousand concentration camps, working with German efficiency, Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, et al, were death factories, gassing and cremating Jews by the thousands daily.

(Six million Jews murdered divided by [six years of WWII x 365 days] equals 2,739 murders of Jews daily.  With a thousand extermination camps, six million Jews murdered seems to be a death count greatly underestimated.)

Hitler was an abject failure who catapaulted himself to tremendous power, which he used to ultimately defame his own people.  Just as a for instance, my family, eighty years after Auschwitz was liberated, will never buy a German car.  Hitler got full national support.

[I have seen photos inside the camps, and they are all of men.  Where are the women?  Are women strong enough to do factory work?  Just saying.  One photo has a son asleep in a bloody attic of a camp, beside his dead father.  It was a secret to not cremate the father, as his son’s comfort.  Or worse: The father died the day before liberation, and the son thinks he’s still alive.  Rings a bell with my situation, and the SCPD not letting me see my nonagenarian dad living next door.]

 

Novus Ordo Seclorum to a Modern-day Utopian

• After the the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the end of the Cold War, the defense industry was decimated.  This was a huge industry, especially on Long Island.  What has taken its place?  Security is a very significant market sector, now.

• The universal imperative, sing it: “I gotta have coin, do it or die, I gotta be rich, filthy rich!”

• The Upper Class does not search for value in what they buy.  In fact, they tend to ridicule those who do.  The other classes brag about bargains they have gotten. 
  “My Tesla was $37k, $37k, you heard right.  I paid $37k.” 
  “Was it used?” 
  “Huh?  Used?” 
  “The mileage, did you check the mileage?  Okay, that’s some bargain.” 
  “Used?!  Mileage?!”

• The economic imperative, in my estimation, is the requirement that bank script is needed to buy the necessities (and the luxuries) of life.  In other words, you need wads of official green paper to survive.  Organically, considering our origins in the primordial ooze, or in the Garden of Eden, currency is an abstraction.

• I come here in peace.

• If the Pyramids at Giza were built today, how would we build them?  The same way they were built then.  But how were they built then, and by whom?  I guess they left, or something, or maybe they’re coming back to get stuff...  Speaking of pyramids, who believes these to be an effective means of determining goods distribution, as opposed to democratic methods.  If the spigots were open wide, very loosely constrained, as opposed to being strictly constrained.

  “Put a dollar to the mirror...”  Enough what?  Enough Novus Ordo Seclorum, new world order?  Enough Annuit Coeptus, yearly plan?  Enough E Pluribus Unum, from many one?  Enough In God We Trust?  We trust, or we hope?  On money?  What then?  Just a bit of froth: The Fugitive Slave Clause legalized slavery with the United States Constitution.  Just saying.

• Bananas, write your own ticket, funny money, gray and black trading, creative what?  In a pinch, who’s going to know?  They’re just numbers, that can take down careers, even lives (and nations?) if not adjusted for errors in judgement, “a fix,” by “a fixer,” or possibly, on a macroeconomic scale, because there’s so much at stake.  Preferred players have a safety net, a nice, fat eraser, that others don’t.  The fetid to light, decontaminates.

  Devalue the basis cost, overvalue the selling price, inflate profits.  There isn’t any funny business?  Hollywood always says that greed rules Wall Street, I guess greed isn’t good after all.

  Do the...  Sing the song: Clearing house, oh, clearing house, rubber stamp my dreams...  “Other, learn to write in English, this here is nonsense.  I took finance, where’s the valuation models, hmm?  I don’t see any valuation models, yada, yada, yada...  How else do you make money in a down, bear market?”

  “I got this one.  COVID wiped out Wall Street, many players, yes?  Yes.  Okay, The world economy has risk, we take that risk, and we eliminate it.  How?  That’s a very good question.”

  “Easy, we hedge the risk with offsetting securities.  Since this is major league poker, we have to eliminate risk entirely, so we always come out ahead, capeche?  We forecast sales—”

  “Well, that’s just one valuation model.  We rely on outside players to give us inside, private data.  That, and we keep tight relationships with our clearing house, so trades are settled in a timely, advantageous fashion.  Accounting figures are only numbers.  Our main job as fiduciaries is to not only minimize market risk, but eliminate it outright...”

  “Market makers cannot cook the books, they are accountable to the auditor.  X players, Y dollars, divvy it up, expand Y.”

  “Growth stocks don’t grow since the Fifties.  GM makes X amount of cars, and we expect them to continuously sell more than X, but there is only Y customers, and that’s mostly constant.  They need capital, we call them a dog.  Financing from an auction house, sure.  So what we do is—”

  “Rely on valuation models, even in bear markets...”

• “Don’t our ledgers have to be clean by the time the Alpha-Centauri gravity-centrifigal providers arrive?  Whatever, I want to settle up with them.  You do what you like.  On Judgement Day, I’m set.”

• “But Buffy, we’re on the same team!”

• “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

• If you peruse recent editions of Consumer Reports, they discuss the latest in car technology.  One such technology that has not yet taken off, is auto-piloting...

• Did you know that the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan contained asbestos?  That’s right, and what is done with buildings that contain asbestos?  Right again.

  

• Do you know how to dial for emergency services in Canada?  Saudis knew 9-1-1 is the United States emergency service?  Whatever.  I know someone who died on 9/11/01 who did not actually die.  Under 46, take the day off.  He knew many of the older ones.  No bull.

• After 9/11, world leaders wanted the end of privacy in favor of complete surveillance.  Just pretend light bulbs can do double duty, providing both light, and a transmittable video signal; a Wifi signal easily relayed by any home’s Internet router.  Just saying.  I know, who cares.

 

Tenets of Living Spiritually

Here are a few of Christ’s adages, the teachings of Jesus the Christ.  Love one another, was repeated thirteen times in the New Testament, and was a major teaching.  While he promoted love, love already existed — families, and marriages existed prior to his ministry, as in the Old Testament.

And here are some of mine, competitive with the biggest:

• Live with hope.  Hope being the belief that some issue of importance to you, will turn out your way.

• Beware the ones who ask for your hand in marriage, before you even get to the dance...

• Mustaphah played God’s enforcer in what movie?  What did he use as a weapon?  That’s right, his words.

• Lady Winter-Whistler whistling through the Winter-time had this to say to me: Do right, and ascend; do wrong, and descend.  A life well-spent leads to happiness at least in this realm, and maybe the next as well.

• Appreciate what you have, while it lasts.  Without being a downer, keep in mind that you are blessed in some sense, and you have to be somewhat vigilant to stay in God’s good graces.

• The Creator is a melding of gender.  How do I know this?  Well, out of considerations of equality, God is not one gender, yet God could be Gods, a male and a female God.  Or, for me, a set of energies comprising the Creator, perhaps not one monotheistic, yet multitheistic, or many gods.

• What does God, Gods, or the Creator do?  Hardly anything, we’re all equipped to do Gods work, so that is what we should be doing.  Feed the poor, make the world a better place, if you can (to borrow the lyrics from Diana Ross’ Reach Out and Touch Somebody’s Hand).

• Happier people are more productive.  Heavy people tend to be less productive, becaue they’re less happy.  Those relying on booze and pot as a crutch, are less productive.

• There are those so filled with hate and violence, is anyone sure they deserve to even live on this Earth?

• God does not love everyone.  The Creator blesses those who deserve the love of Creation, not those self-righteous, shameless, pigheaded, or hateful.  Those God does not love now, God may later love.

• For all the cruelty levied upon wildlife, pets, and livestock; there are animals that are treated with respect and dignity.  How sensitive are you to animal rights?  You hunt, and eat beef several times a week?  You draw the line at eating poultry?  You’re so vegan, you debate if you should have scrambled eggs at all?

• Considering all of Creation evolved from dust at the beginning of time, our species, and this Earth, has made tremendous progress.

• Do you ever think that those who hunt with guns are apemen?  That they’re raping the planet, and when all is said and done, do they bother to cook up the venison?  This makes me an enemy of the hunting crowd?  And?

• The moral high ground allows you all kinds of freedom that shady dealings do not.  That you don’t have to lie, or cover your tracks, is one advantage.  This is the nature of good over evil, the good haven’t a need to bargain in deceit.

• Do you ever feel as though no one has it tougher than you do?  Every day you do?  Are you in a war zone, a combat zone?

• Can success ruin people?  Can having everything you, or anyone else, would want, make you jaded?  If you’re raised with little, can you appreciate having more, more readily?

• Do you believe in fate?  If you do, to what extent?  I tend to believe we decide our own fate, based on our upbringing and birthrights.  If you’re from money, you’ll have a much easier time than if you’re from poverty.  If you’re good-looking, life might have been easier, and this may have helped make you more successful.  Nepo-babies might have it better than those who make it on their own mettle.

• Who has a really good blanket condemnation?  I’m feeling mean.  I could eat raw meat.

• Feed the poor.  Food insecurity exists where you might least expect it.

• Is there a hereafter?  I tend to think there is.  After we pass away, we enter the next realm.  If you have a good track record on this planet, you tried to do good, do good deeds, you go up, for all eternity.  Those who messed with people all their lives, go down, down to Hell.  Depending on the severity of their crimes against their fellow humans, they spend eternity in Hell, or they may get an upgrade to join the best in Heaven, but we don’t know yet.  Either way you have chosen, or forced to have chosen, do not live for an afterlife, although most would appreciate it if you are not a major sinner, and feared Hell.  Make the most of every day, and do not hurt others.

• Is here a hierarchy of the ethereal, the heavenly, the heaven-bound?  Say there’s a Mustaphah, the Creator’s enforcer?  Or say someone is designated, fated to become, the wife and companion of Mustaphah.  We can call her Daphne.  Also in this cohort, the Creators themselves, or even the spontaneous generation within the species to have extra strengths in diminishing evil’s power.

• May peace be with you, this day, and every day.  (I know, overly optimistic, dream on.)

• May you one day fulfill your destiny’s promise.

• Blessed be, I have good food to eat.

• A failure of the nation-state is war, killing for resources and boundary rights.  In WWI, on Christmas Day of 1914, there was a one-day respite from trench welfare.  Combat was hardly pressing, and so unnecessary, that they could just call a ceasefire temporarily to celebrate Christmas.  In fact, the troops crossed enemy lines to talk, and exchange food and souvenirs.  Then the carnage, and mustard gas attacks, began again in earnest, just the next day.

• There is restorative strength, power, in accomplishing stuff, getting things done; in work, even if it’s work around the home as a retiree.

• Who doesn’t root for the underdog?  Yankees’ fans.  That was snarky?  (Let’s review: The New York Yankees always are top-five in team salary, forget winning on heart, they are the best team that money can buy.)

• When working on a process, do you seek improvement, or perfection?...  Are you a perfectionist?  Do you engage in life’s possibilities?  Are you often lazy?  How often do you use legal, recreational drugs? Are you a coaster, do you ooast through life?

• Who freed the slaves?  Moses and Abraham Lincoln did, although there may be others.

• What did you think of the Silent Majority supporting the Vietnamese War?  Does this faction still exist today as “my country right or wrong”?

• Ambition.  Ambition.  Ambition.  Productivity.

• I know someone who can suss a dealer’s supply for quality, and wishes there was dealer accountability for mislabeled junk — Ewing!  Meanwhile, I have not smoked a joint since 1982.  No bull.  Drugs are uncool.

• The two dieters’ watchwords: self-discipline, and vigilance.  The two methods: Exercising and eating nutritious food.  Consider how great you’ll look at your goal weight, or with an improved appearance, and the approval you’ll get from the world-at-large.

• There are many who will never fall in love.  Romance requires adoration, and if you cannot believe you are with your better half at least half of the time, then how can you make it as lovers?

• Time for healing misbegotten (racial, xenophobic, or cultural) pride.  Time for a new path, a new road.

• If I had tons of money, say I was fortunate enough to hit Lotto, what would I spend the jackpot on?  Would I build a choi pond in my backyard for goldfish?  Would I buy a Maserati, a Lamborghini, and a Ferrari, all in metallic forest green?  Would I buy a vintage ’55 Chevy, Delivery Nomad, one extant with an automatic?  Would I buy oceanfront real estate in several locations — Hermosa Beach, the Maritimes, the Vineyard?  Then, entertain Hollywood types every weekend?  All this, because, well, I have the money to show off how much money I have to show off?

  There is a problem with buying tons of stuff, tons of stuff needs maintenance, and storage.  Someone has to feed the goldfish, someone has to gas up the exotic cars, and bring them to the garage for repairs; someone has to housesit all those homes when I’m in my primary residence; and lots of friends, may want your lots of money.  So, if I did have loads of cash, I’d be more philanthropic, and buy things I hold off from buying now, like shirts in a larger, buff size, now that I work out very often.  I am excluding stereo A/V equipment, of course.  I’d want the latest, greatest of that...

• Do you ever feel like you’re the only one, anywhere, with a working brain?

• Some people always know how to say the right thing; and others haven’t a clue.

• There is a possibility, however slight, that other life forms are inhabited by people who once tread the sphere.  In other words, in the hereafter, you may be able to become say a butterfly, a beatle, or a wasp, depending on sentiment.  Everything would seem incredibly large, and there wouldn’t be any schedules to keep.  You could also become a Siamese cat, a beagle, or a Rottweiler, whichever way your pleasure tends.  So be careful with that can of insecticide, and be humane to pets...

• Even God has bad days.  How would I know this?  Just guessing.  God has good days as well.  (I like to think of God as being the Creator, but you can think of the Spirit of the Universe, as the Master of the Universe, as the Lord, the Almighty, as Jehovah, as Allah, as God, or the Son of God.  If you are an atheist, God is nothing at all, a non-entity.)

• Live like the aging process has not effected you.  To quote Rod Stewart: “Be forever young.”

• It is very difficult to be nice to anyone who isn’t nice to you.  Want to work customer service?

• I heard Jerry Seinfeld say he will not do Holocaust jokes, that the jokes are not marketable, and are never funny.  Well, how about my own homegrown Holocaust jokes?  What do they serve at the Auschwitz cafeteria?  Nothing.  What are the hours of the Auschwitz cafeteria?  It’s always closed.  Not bad, how’s them apples?  [Should I further clarify that I identify with Judaism?]

• “The day may be nigh where we no longer define ourselves by our handicaps, limitations, or differences, but instead by our commonalities.  We all want in on the American dream, and I want in, too.  I am running for national office on November 5th on an Other party ticket, and I need your vote, so please—” oh, never mind.

• There can be no heroes, without villains.  Conflict can make us stronger.

• Did you eat today?  Thank the farmer, and the trucker; and while you’re at it, add the grocer, and the restaurateur to the list.

• There are Holocaust-deniers, and that’s awfully sick, but there must be very few who actually want to get the chambers filled again.  Hopefully, top-level organizations know who these neo-Nazis are.

• All this Earth’s travails will one day be resolved — conceivably, at least...

• When the reins are handed over to you, will you be ready?  Reins being becoming the matriarch, or patriarch, leading the family, and extended family.  Or reins just being getting a raise, or promotion, at work.

• I try to keep things in perspective.  Everything’s relative.  We tread a largeish rock traveling around the Sun for some eighty years.  Our travails are meaningless in the context of the infinity of time.  When our time is up, we may have an afterlife, a hereafter.

  In the meantime, I try to stay constructive, learn new skills (cooking is a skill), and have some accomplishments, be these paid, at work; or unpaid, such as doing things to enhance my living space (optimiizing and rearranging furniture, or setting up a MP3-digitized, music system, e.g.).

• People have noted that I am a kind of cool customer.  I am not easily rattled.  Why is that?  One of the things in my favor is that I believe one should conduct oneself ethically, and honestly.

  You’re in a much stronger (and comfortable) position when you don’t have to lie, or cheat.  If you keep everything above board, then evil, or even aggression, is warded away.  If you’re not in the wrong, things will go much better.

  There will be times in life, of course, when you’ll need to stand up for yourself, and get others to back off, or back down, but if you can be honest in these situations, it really works in your favor.

• Women are always confiding to me about this: “Why won’t he say, ‘I love you’?  Is it my limited-selection couture near laundry day?”  (The wealthy are saying, “Huh?,” as they never run out of their best clothing.)

  What do I tell these affection-starved women?  I do publish my email address...

  In economics, one learns that relationships are effectively a competitive marketplace.  There is supply and demand curves, and the intersection therein is where deals (or friendships) are made.  In other words, if you have what people want, you get crème de la crème.

  Getting back to the original point, if you don’t tell her that you love her, she can find someone that will.  Again, relationships are effectively a competitive marketplace.  Those thinking differently, entrap people financially, or otherwise, by saying things like: “You won’t make it without me.”

• “At least in Hell, you know why you’re there...”

• This too, shall pass...  So it is written, so it is said...

• If you prejudge someone based on race, without even meeting them, then that is racism.  I have done this unconsciously, not deliberately, and it bothers me later, as I am against any racial arrogance, and skin-color based hatred.  Perhaps an individual being conscious of race reflects the expectations, or prejudices, of society as a whole as to the misjudged limitations of each race.

 

Vernal/Autumnal Equinoxes; Daylight Hours; Hemisphere Info

Doesn’t that sound impressive?  Well, anyhow, here is the days until Spring (the Vernal Equinox), and the percentage of days with daylight hours less than today’s number of daylight hours (for the hemisphere having summer time).

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The summer solstice is fast approaching.  This year it falls on the 20th of June.  This is when the earth has its maximum tilt towards the sun.  The longest day of this year in the Northern Hemisphere is June 20th, in the Southern Hemisphere it’s December 21st.  In the nations of Europe, the summer solstice is known as midsummer, in others such as our own, it is known as the beginning of summer.  6/14/24.

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Earth Day is April 22nd.  Why not celebrate with a non-biodegradable clamshell lunch container, farmed seafood, and a dairy cow burger?  Mother Nature just winked at you, it’s on the house.  Be a litter bug, we dare you...  4/17/24.

Even though Mother Nature has been suffering of late (who hasn’t noticed climate change these days?), we can all do our part to reverse the decline.  Take public transportation, don’t drive a gas-guzzler, drive a low or no pollution car, eat sustainable food, and never litter.

Support political candidates who back the same principles as you, ones that recognize climate change as a real issue that can be remediable by legislative restrictions on pollution.  4/20/24.

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Moving path of totality is determined by Sun, Moon, or Earth.  Well, the Sun doesn’t move, and the moon doesn’t move appreciably over an hour, it revolves around the earth once in twenty-eight days.  The Earth revolves on its axis once every twenty-four hours, so the Earth accounts for the path of totality, the traciing of the shadow...

There were more planes flying overhead than usual, probably because the best place to see the eclipse would be by plane, at least if the skies were overcast, because you would be flying above the clouds.  Fortunately, they were not so overcast on Long Island during the day of the eclipse.  4/8/24.

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Long Island had two mild earthquatkes today.  The most recent, eleven minutes ago, at approximately 6PM and twenty seconds.  God has a schedule to keep?  The first centered in Lebanon, New Jersey, and registered 4.8 on the Richter Scale (did the second originate from Jersey at exactly 6:00PM?)  Someone on the radio remarked about the eeriness of a full solar eclipse preceded by an earthquake.  4/05/24.

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There will be a full solar eclipse of the Sun by the Moon, on Monday, April 8th, 2024.  The path of eclipse totality begins in Dallas at 2:42PM (adjust scroll bar of link for time and path of totality), and continues through Eastern Canada around 3:38PM.

I remember the last solar eclipse, in August of 2017.  The air cooled off temporarily — with the sun’s rays blocked, that can be expected; and birds suddenly flyed around, as if confused.

Please do not view this solar eclipse without glasses specifically manufactured to view solar eclipses (like astronomy company, Celestron, sells — I do not get paid for any Other Letter recommendations).  3/12/24.

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A saros is the periodicity of a solar eclipse (an eclipse cycle), or when a full solar eclipse returns to a single location.  The Sun, Moon, and Earth, return to the same location after one saros.  This duration is eighteen years, and ten, eleven, or twelve days.  3/15/24.

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2024 is a leap year.  This February has 29 days, not the usual 28.  Every four years is a leap year, every hundred years is not a leap year, and every four hundred years is a leap year.  Everyone got that?  Good.

 

The Wholly Unexpected Success of Oh, Carl

Movie Business Case Study: Oh, Carl.

Year of Release: 1992.

Genre: Regional Fare.

Locale: Upstate New York in a town called Whiteness.

Premise: An office secretary named Doris Deuce works at a car dealership, and dreams of getting back at her Jewish bosses for telling her to work the occasional weekend when the African American calls in sick.  The Black woman, who will work weekends, without pay differential, is named Ebony Honey.  Honey is an equal opportunity hire from Western New York.  Staff calls her the “import.”  After Doris meets Carl (he would often just drop into the dealership to chat with staff) they both plot to end all Jewish ownership in Whiteness, and beyond.  Doris becomes Mayor Deuce in a landslide promising the return, and upgrade, of old-fashioned upstate values, such as much greater availability of maple syrup in restaurants, groceries, and package stores.  The film ends with Doris and Carl, Nazi-saluting a stand of maple trees.

Credited Screenwriter: Doris LaDeuce, who was in fact a Nazi, ran for the Governor’s office in Montana, but did not win.

Film Commentary: Oh, Carl was a bit odd in that it showed Nazism in a very favorable light, with the Black character actress getting fired — after a campaign by Deuce — for looking at Doris menacingly; and the entire staff of the car dealership applauding as Ebony left for the last time.

Business Commentary: This movie, whlle never winning any awards, did much more than modest business across the Midwest, where, in limited distribution, it opened to 700 screens in forty markets.  Gate exceeded $50 million.  First Release: July 10th, 1992.  Re-release: November 23rd, 1992.  Cable: HBO carried this in moderate rotation, for eight weeks from January 2nd, 1993 to March 4th, 1993.

 

These Say it Best

These are not dictionary definitions (although I did borrow from Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster), these are just words that are not often heard, and they have unusual connotations.

• Here are three words that you do not hear very often that are mostly synonymous with Heaven: Xanadu; Shangri-la, and Valhalla.  A svengali, a swami, a guru, or a yogi, will supposedly get you there.  I’d stick instead with good workouts.

• Buzz-kill, killjoy, wet blanket, partypooper, and spoil-sport, all denote someone, who out of spite, from the lack of amusement in their life, ruins others’ fun.

• Grating, abrasive, biting, and irritating, denote overly aggressive behavior, causing ill.

• Various subcultures possess their own language, their own phraseology.  These are known as patois, jargon, argot, cant, vernacular, and lingo, as in: “Musicians have their own lingo.”  Generally speaking, they mean a language particular to a group, or class of people.  Another example, the argot of hard-nose Wall Street, includes phrases like the dead cat bounce (aka a sucker rally), or a slight rebound of a moribund company’s stock.

• Here are words to describe a lack of ability to do cognitive tasks: daft; half-wit; moronic; imbecilic; and retarded.

• Hodgepodge, jumble, and chock-a-block all denote arranging things in a crammed, or haphazard fashion.

• Mumbo-jumbo, gobbledygook, and hogwash, denote meaningless talk.

• Shenanigans, high jinks, and monkey business, all describe mischief, or conduct that causes annoyance.

• There’s the “GR” family of words: grisly; gruesome; grim; grief; gravesite; graveyard; gravestone; and gravedigger.  That’s some family.  Never mind.

• A cancer, a tumor, an afflction, a predator, a tick, and a leech, can be used to describe people who prey on the unsuspecting and innocent.

• Disheartening, discouraging, and demoralizing all denote something or someone causing loss of hope, or depriving one of spirit.

• Hubris is roughly synonymous with: audacity, chutzpah, cockiness, pretension, and vanity.

• Brio, zeal, zest, gusto, and verve, denote hearty enjoyment.

• Here’s three words you don’t see so often, yet they say much: cognoscenti, illuminati, and literati.  Literati describes people involved in writing, especially professionally.  Illuminati means those possessing great enlightenment.  Cognescenti describes those with superior understanding of culture, or the arts.  [I apologize for all the disruption caused earlier by the untested, former-latter grammatic structure.  I’m serious — kinda.]

• The townies, the locals, and the provincials, arrived with their pitchforks, torches, and shotguns.  They had one thing on their mind: Maintain the status quo over the one some were calling god, the one with big ideas.

• These are several words, which are more interesting in describing lazy people, than just a word like loafer.  Lollygagger, lazybones, and another word near in meaning to lackadaisical, is lounge about.

• These are adjectives describing people or actions that are cruel: evil, diabolical, and sinister, as well as nasty, vicious, and wicked.  Here are words describing large-scale acts of viciousness: carnage, ambush, bloodshed, war, and massacres.

• Hoity-toity means thoughtless giddy behavior, namby-pamby and mickey mouse denotes lacking substance, pasty-white typically denotes pale skin tone.  Exercise for the reader: Define “namby-pamby, hoity-toity, pasty-white”?

 

Parents, porn is the real problem...

 

...This Webzine Probably Deserves a MPAA PG Rating

If you don’t want your Junior to read this, there are parental control apps to block websites.

Some of the articles in this web log of personal experience are G-rated, some would be R-rated by certain cohorts, but mostly this is PG, without parental guidance, the site may be too adult for teenagers.  There is never any porn, although I have posted pictutes of cleavage in the currently out-of-commission Panthoen of Hollywood Women.  I do not approve of substance abuse, I am a child of the Sixties, I have seen the damage done.

I will say from the outset, Republicans may not like this site at all, because I am a registered Democrat, and I want my party’s candidates to be elected to office.  I have complimented Republicans, but not nearly as often as Repulbicans reading would hope.

Christians may not like this website as well, because I have a literal interpretation of the Bible.  I have discussed this in detail before: The Gospel According to Saint Luke, Chapter 24:39,41, states that Christ is “of flesh and blood,” and asking, “have you here any meat,” post-Crucifixion.  Jesus the Christ is not a spirit.  This does not sit well with many Christians, even though this is straight from the Holy Bible.  In my estimation, Christ is a good philiosopher, but not an immortal.  That’s my belief, you have your belief.

Anyhow, read something else, if this is not your interest.  You can block your teenagers from reading any website with parental controls.  Parents should have parental controls anyhow to block pornography, which is far worse than reading about Trump’s Muslim ban.

Sexy trumps sex here, tawdry sucks.

 

Musical Notation

After you have listened to a substantial amount of music, your opinion of certain popular music acts diminishes considerably.

---

There should be a RIAA, Recording Instustry Association of America, fund to benefit all the musicians that suffered greatly with the introduction of streaming — first, Napster, and then much more legal services such as Spotify, and Pandora.  I would pay my obligation, say a dollar per song, that I shared on Napster.  I’ll chip in my five-dollars, how about you?

---

David Crosby of super-group, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY), was asked who were his favorite singer-songwriters.  He said that the two Pauls, and Joni, were.  That’s Paul Simon, Paul McCartney, and former busker, Joni Mitchell.  Of those three, his favorite is Joni Mitchell.

---

Bill played an instrument to get out of fighting in Viet Nam.  Joan became a musician to leave a life of...

---

“Play some Dead...  Which Dead?  Friend of the Devil...”

---

Led Zeppelin is perhaps the band played most often on radio in America.  Admittedly, Led Zeppelin has a deep catalog, but so does The Who, The Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, and so on and on.  Has payola, pay to play, been eliminated in US radio?

Great Britain never had a payola scandal.  Is this because there, music like cream, rises to the top, without adulteration, without payouts from record execs?  And Britain does have a bigger music scene than America.  Every major act from the Beatles to the aforementioned Zeppelin and The Who, to Traffic and The Kinks, Yes and ELP, U2, the Pretenders, Elton John, and Cream, were founded in the UK, in the British Isles.

To quote Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones: “What can a poor boy do, ’cept to sing in a rock n roll band?”  Not to cast dispersions on the English economy, but America tends to be wealthier, and more into wealth, leaving poor boys like Jagger with little to do, except sing (and write) for the Rolling Stones.

---

Opening credits roll: Two deejays, jauntily-dressed saunter into Beezlebub Radio studios.  They are local legends of headbanging rock radio.  “A and N wants more Hindenberg,” as their secretary offers a small tin.  “Not today as to latter.”  The dynamic duo, the hit-makers take their seats.  “First caller?  No first caller.  Okay.  Hey, what is this, hey, hey...”

---

Rock stars have been known to do some really outrageous things on stage that critics have tried to crack down on.  Elvis Presley, for instance, shook his hips on stage, and this was considered very corrupting of youth.

Jim Morrison of the Doors took off his pants on stage.  To wit, David Crosby of Seventies super-group Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, said along the lines: If you need to do that to maintain audience attention, you don’t have much music to play, your act is more than weak, it’s anemic.

Alice Cooper, early 70s rock star, was said to have eaten a bat on stage.  Shocked concert-goers were later relieved to learn that it was not a bat, but a vole.  Mister Cooper’s biggest hit was School’s out for the Summer.

The song was banned on many school cafeteria PAs, because of the line “school has been blown to pieces.”  While reflecting the sentiments of the entire staff and student body of many lower learning institutions, it was considered to be just too much.  [Editor’s note: Alice Cooper ate a live chicken, Ozzy Osbourne was the one who ate a “live” bat.]

Speaking of music promoting juvenile subversion — and who doesn’t these days — there’s Brownville Station’s Smoking in the Boys’ Room.  And do not forget Led Zeppelin’s Black Dog with this infamous verse:

Ah, ah, child, way you shake that thing
Gonna make you burn, gonna make you sting
Hey, hey, baby, when you walk that way
Watch your honey drip, I can't keep away

Mr. Plant, Zeppelin frontman and lyricist, if you are reading this today (and I know you are not), what did you mean by that second line, let alone the fourth line?  Shaking, then burning and stinging, from what?  And are you referring to a child metaphorically, and not literally, as we hope?  I’m surprised this song was never banned on rock radio, by the FCC.  Just saying.

---

There are a few Billy Joel albums where one senses he is at the end of a recording contract, and just wants the record to be within spec, or acceptable entertainment.  I would say that Nylon Curtain is one that is somewhat lackluster, as is Storm Front, and River of Dreams.  The approach is more mechanical, and lacking genuine truths about the human condition, as well as being less inspired.  Ones that I feel Billy Joel truly shines are: The Stranger, 52nd Street, and The Bridge, in that order of musical excellence.

---

Jerry Garcia, the main creative force behind The Grateful Dead, had this to say about his band’s success: “Not everyone likes licorice, but the people who like licorice, really like licorice.”

While mostly potheads,† the Grateful Dead had the worst reputation in Seventies music, worse than even the Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin.  Mr. Garcia received a death threat, likely in response to his band’s reputation for bacchanalian decadence.

I don’t know, everyone seemed fairly polite to me.  I went three times to see the Dead, but I knew two guys from the third grade, who saw them over eighty times.

†Searching for the Sound, My Life with the Grateful Dead, by Phil Lesh, the bassist of the Grateful Dead.  He eventually settled in Twelve Step for alcoholism.  Near stage, was “the Phil Zone,” near his monitors, where you could really pick out the bass.

(I don’t get any kickback for appreciating this band, or any other band, but did you ever wonder if payola is gone for good, no more Alan Freeds?)

---

My alma mater, Stony Brook University, has a very unusual history as a concert venue.  Before The Who, The Doors, and the Grateful Dead filled arenas, they filled the theater at the Stony Brook Union (a short walk from anywhere on campus).  Yes, that’s right, every major act played The Brook: Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Jefferson Airplane, Yes, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Chicago, Beach Boys, Allman Brothers, as well as Simon and Garfunkel.  Every act played The Brook.  They all did.

Both my mom and I attended Stony Brook.  I kinda missed out on this, I was a decade too late.  My mom was an upwardly-mobile housewife, who also get an SBU degree (in the early 70s), but who was not attending college to go to Dead shows after class...  Just saying.

 

Jesus the Christ was not Crucified

 

Taylor Swift is Interviewed by Satan

“Have a seat.”

“Where?”

“Is the one behind you okay?”

“Taylor, I have issues with you.  First off, we all know you as the b*tch that could.  You’re the darkest cat in all of music.  Mean and hungry.  You’re unflappable, too.”

“Okay, we’re off to a fast start.  Shoot.”

“Your latest album, I cannot even remember the name of it.”

“Tortured Poets Department?”

“What gives?  I don’t get it.  Who’s tortured — poets, why?  Why are poets being tortured, and I don’t know about it?!  Why!!”

“Well, it’s my invention.  That’s why you haven’t heard of it.”

“So you’re tortured?  Be more explicit, please.  You’re throwing everyone off with this title.  Who’s torturing you?  Is it someone I know, or should know?  I do like torturing everyone.  I may start torturing you.  And Department, who’s running the show here, in this department, you or me, Mephistopheles?”

“Well, I thought of the title, and we ran it by a focus group, and they liked it as well.”

“I’m really not interested.  Now, the reviews have been middling, no, awful, may I quote?”

“Okay, go—”

“‘Worst Swift album since your debut, Taylor Sings Lounge Crooner Standards.’”

“I never dropped that album.”

“Hands over your head, Swift!”

“Huh?  I just worked out — too stiff.”

“I said, hands over your head.  I am Satan, I enjoy telling mortals what to do.”

“I am Taylor, I have free will.”

“I am Satan, I bully, interrogate, boss everyone around, bait, ride, taunt, make life extremely difficult.  I confuse.  I obfuscate.  I instigate.  I agitate.  I terrorize.”

“That’s some rap sheet.”

“No, this is where you’re so wrong.  That’s some curriculum vitae.”

“That’s not a C.V., Satan, that’s bad karma, at best.”

“Let me tell you what you’re doing wrong.  Everything.  Let’s start with your catsuit on stage, tramp wear, I call it.”

“This is what dancers wear in the theater.”

“Who do you think you are — a dancer?”

“You’re giving me a major headache.  My manager said this interview would give me a new, market segment.”

“Wrong again, has-been.”

“I’ve had tough crowds before, but—”

“Mephistopheles has you under his spell.”

“No, you really don’t.”

“Swift, I have you cornered — hmm, you didn’t flinch.”

“I still have home field advantage.”

“Play Eruption.”

“Who plays that?”

“Van Halen.”

“Oh, that one.  I don’t play any Van Halen covers.”

“Okay.  Does not play Vah Halen covers.  And you still call yourself a musician?”

“I do.”

“Calls herself a musician.  Hmm.”

“I’ve been practicing most of my iife.”

“I shall riddle you this, Batgirl.””

“Hmm?  Oh, okay, if you insist, I’m Batgirl.”

“Okay, Batgirl.  My son, Damien, is in the audience.  He starts convulsing, because he’s just playing a joke on you.  Now, you don’t realize it’s a joke.  Do you stop your show, and come to his aid?”

“Yes.”

“No, you didn’t hear me, he’s Damien, he’s the son of Satan.  He wears all black, cornrows, smoking a joint.  Do you come to his aid?”

“Yes, I would.”

“No, you wouldn’t.  You’d spot an usher.  You’d point to Damien with your index finger, and throw your thumb over your shoulder.  Understood?  Again, this is what you would do.  You would not stop the show, and seek medical attention for Damien.”

“No, I would seek medical attention for Damien.”

“BUT HE IS THE F*CKING ANTICHRIST OKAY?  YOU LIKE EVIL THEN, ADMIT IT, YOU LIKE EVIL!!!”

“But he came to see my show.  He is a fan of mine, Satan.”

“You let evil enjoy your show?”

“Well, my music doesn’t cater to evil.”

“Go to hell, Swift, go to hell!!  You’re EVIL!!!”

“That was a loaded, trick question, wasn’t it?  But if someone gets violently ill, I would stop the show for them, your son, or anyone else.  If they were faking needing an ambulance, the crowd would get so P.O.’d the attention-grabber would have to leave early, and forfeit a three-hundred-dollar ticket.  A good time is had by all, Satan.  I’m SRO—standing room only.”

“Okay, the deal is this.  I have a business proposition for you.  Join me on the dark side, and rake in not only money, but power over pop-lovers everywhere.  And I do not have the time for pop nonsense, pop queens, got it?  Change your name to Petunia Mellowstock, because [ring, ring] — get this call — where’s my cell phone?  Oh, holy—yes?  Who the—”

“I am God, you leave Taylor alone, do you hear me?”

“No, I’m deaf.”

“Check the caller ID.”

“The.  Caller.  ID.  Hmm, eh-oh.  My phone says the caller is G.O.D., God.  Is this some kind of wicked joke?  If it is, I want in.  Who the—”

“Go back to your den, Beelzebub, devil in chief — now!”

“No, no way.  What are you going to do about that, God?...  I’m on fire!!  Knife attack!!  Drowning!!  Oh, mother of GOD!!!  AGH!!!!  Swifty, I am outta here.  Better luck next time, with your streaming content.  I’m burning alive!!!  STOP IT, YOU IMPOSTER!!!!  GOD?!!!  NOT HAPPENING—”

“Satan, don’t forget your cape.”

“You’ll hear from my lawyer, and so-called God will, too.  You’re a tough nut, Swift.”

[Door slams!]

“That was a close one.  You’re God?”

“Well, kinda, maybe, sorta.”

“You’re awfully humble for a God.”

“Staying in good form, I guess.  Well, I’ll get going.”

“You can stick around, if you’d like.  I made some chocolate chip cookies.”

“I’d like to, but I have to be somewhere.”

“Upstairs?”

“Upstairs?  Oh, no, I have to run by the grocery, and pick up some stuff.”

“Are you British?”

“I’m a little bit of everything.  How about you?

“I’m Scottish, and English, mostly Scottish.”

“Bagpipes and kilts.”

“No, guitars and cardigans.”

“Sorry.”

“No, you’re good.”

“Well, gotta run along.”

“And save Gotham?”

“Hmm, kinda.”

“Maybe, sorta?”

“Good night.”

“Are you married?”

“No...  You look really good by the way.”

“Thanks for saving me from Satan.”

“You’re very welcome.”

“But that was just some trick, and Satan did some messed-up drug, right?”

“Yes, um, right.  Let me give you a call.”

“Huh?  Okay.”

“Hi, Taylor.  Guess who?”

“Oh LORD, Satan got the same caller ID!!!  Caller ID says GOD!!!  You’re GOD!!!!!!!”

“Have a good one.”

“Cookies?  Chablis?  Pop a cork?  Veuve Clicquot?  Stay—”

“It’s late, maybe we’ll meet again.  I want to take advantage of the traffic going home...”

 

Selling Bitcoin Short (Versus Buying and Holding Long)

[The following is an op-ed.  I write op-eds, letters to the editor, for the Other Letter; and I do have an MBA, a Master of Business Administration.]

Everyone understands the bitcoin market for digital assets?  Sure, a company becomes a bookkeeper, a registrar, for bit (zeros and ones) coin, without the underlying faith and credit of any principality.  Bitcoin is money, or more realistically, a hopefully liquid substitute for money.

Most know by now that a bitcoin marketmaker is not much different than a casino in Monte Carlo, glamorous, yet only about the money.  Bitcoin is speculative “fun,” if gambling is your fun.

If you ask for the opinion on bitcoin of a market maker on the NYSE trading floor, people who live and die capital exchange, I would bet they have a negative view of bitcoin.  Paper currency used to be backed by silver, Silver Certificate issues.  That was abandoned in favor of backing money by your confidence in the full faith and credit of the U.S. Treasury.

I would take silver, but I’ll accept a U.S. government voucher, you won’t see me putting money into bitcoin.  Trump has stayed on the sidelines, even though he goes where the money is (if he could be brutally honest, and he cannot, I bet he would say the entire enterprise is frothy).  Senator Elizabeth Warren said today that laissez faire bitcoin markets need to be regulated just as any other financial market.

The acid test for a currency is, is it a store of value.  Hopefully, bitcoin is exchangeable for green bank script by the market maker specialist, or an investing, bit player.  Well, if I had a million dollars of bitcoin, I still could not buy an ice cream cone with it.  By the same token, if the dollar bill were to fail, we have reached the end times.  Bitcoin buyer beware: Too much paper profits, too much Monopoly money, and not legal tender.  Just saying.

 

An Other View of the Cosmos and Nuclear Power...  “Huh?”

[This is a reprise of an article I wrote several years ago.]  The stars comprising the Winter constellation, Orion’s Belt are Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka.  These stars are 825.7, 1,359.0, and 918.8 light years from Earth, respectively.  A light year is the distance light travels in one year at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second).

In other words, when you see Orion in the night sky, the photons that your retina senses, left the Constellation of Orion in Medieval times, in the years 1,199AD, 665AD, and 1,106AD, respectively.  In a sense, you’re seeing history, cosmic history, before your eyes.

This is not really refutable — the extrapolation is simply based on well-established numerical constants — although almost impossible to believe.  If those three stars were much closer, say 50ly away, then the light photons would have left in 1974, which sounds much more plausible.  As a light source emanates from a point, it spreads wider, eventually dissipating in lumninosity.  Radial light diminishes in intensity (to darkness) over distance traveled, doesn’t it, yes?

The point being, these stars might be much closer than the 4,839,199,200,000,000 miles of the nearest one, when Alnitak distance from Earth is computed to be:

825 light years X 365 days per year X 24 hours per day X 60 minutes per hour X 60 seconds per minute X 186,000 miles per second = 4,839,199,200,000,000 miles

as determined by a light year of 186,000 miles per second.  This makes space travel to distant civilizations much more possible.

Of course, I might be wrong about the stars being closer than thought before, but I don’t see how.  The Inquisition tried to prohibit Copernicus’ conclusion that the Sun did not revolve around the Earth, but vice versa.  I just hope there isn’t an auto-da-fé in my future for judging a conclusion about the Heavens as heresy.

This is a seperate conjecture: How did Einstein arrive at 186,000 miles per second as the speed of light, before there were even refrigerators, let alone sophisticated astronomical equipment.  I turn on the light to a room, and I can sense that the light from the light bulb cannot travel anyhwere near that fast.

I am probably wrong, but his estimate for the speed of light sounds far, far too fast.  If Einstein’s determination of the speed of light is overestimated, and the light year determinations are held constant, than the constellations are much closer than originally perceived to be.

---

Speaking of a new, scientific possibility judged heresy, is nuclear energy even possible?  Can the most fundamental unit of solid matter like uranium be split in two?  Are there vast amounts of energy in small amounts of matter as the mass-energy equivalence maxim would dictate?

Yet only uranium could be used to harness the potential of this property, not potatoes?  Potatoes also have atoms.  At room temperature, you’d think that they possess similar kinetic energy.  A hot potato maybe hotter than uranium, yet I digress.

When Einstein wrote his Generalized Theory of Relativity, WWI, the war of the trenches, was well under way.  The casualties were catastrophic.  If a petrifying, super-weapon existed, there would be no more war.  Annihilation would be certain.  This mass-energy equivalence implied the existence of this horrifying super-weapon.  Otherwise, Hiroshima and Nagasaki amounted to Dresden fire-bombing.

Regardless, if atom-splitting is possible, then Long Island’s Shoreham nuclear power plant should have easily been built.  My theory, is that if you connect a light bulb at the output line of a nuclear plant, it will stay dim.  Nuclear energy projects are boondoggles.  One more point, Russia has the nuclear bomb, what is stopping them from leveling the Ukraine.  All’s fair in war, or are there gradations of war?  But what do I know, I just write a blog that gets ten readers a day...

One more aside, before the men in white coats (or navy blue jackets) arrive, endeavor today is predicated on money, making a buck.  Could Einstein have created wild theories, in part, to publicize his findings, and thus buttress his career in academia?  This may sound so disingenuous, and heartless, but hey, ultimatley, aren’t we all in it for a buck?  Economics is called the dismal science, see why?  Guess what I majored in at the Brook?

 

Madge and Dougie Review Steely Dan’s Aja

Madge and Douglas are sitting in a somewhat spare kitchen in Peg, a suburb of Chicago.  There’s a video camera in front of them.  They’re wearing matching “Madonna, Madonna, Madonna,” t-shirts, his in red, hers in green.

“I’m Madge—”

“And I’m Douglas—”

“And we’re here to discuss the secret meanings behind Steely Dan’s Aja—”

“For all our Youtube friends—”

“Followers—”

“Yes, followers.  You complete my sentences.”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll come right out and say it—”

“We lost our jobs at a big tech company.”

“We tried to unionize.”

“C’mon, Dougie, our last day, we tried to set the employee cafeteria ablaze.”

“After our unionization efforts failed.”

“With our unemployment running out, we have branched into music appreciation Youtubes.”

“That’s right, Madge.  Okay, got my notes.  Let’s begin.  Aja was Steely Dan’s best album.  Can I say that, Madge?”

“You just did.”

“The Dan begins: ‘Up on the hill.’  Which hill is this?  The hill of Damocles?  Edinburgh has seven hills, maybe the Dan means one of those.”

“Dougie, it’s the Sword of Damocles, not the hill.  Sword overhead, peril at every turn?  I keep forgetting, you’re coding, not English lit.”

“Peril at what?  Do you remember we worked on the Milkgate Proposal?  I brought over the spec, but we both had trouble with the nutritional labeling.  Remember that?”

“Yeah, I do.  And what was the gate in Milkgate?  Sure it was a dairy, but it was about linear programming cheese.  That’s the notes I got from you, linear programming cheese.”

“Madge, Mayhock Industries—”

“I remember them, we worked there twenty years—”

“They needed us to maximize Milkgate’s cheese recipe for flavor and profit.”

“That’s right, it was over priced, it was skim milk, and the profits were skimmed by local farmers, mind you.  Not a popular target, local farmers.”

“We opened the floodgates to Milkgate’s Milkgate, Dougie.”

“Wasn’t it like Watergate, kinda, wasn’t it?”

“It was.  It was, Dougie.”

“Too bad, all this we thought was under the table, was legal.”

“The local farmers were all legit.  So we got fired for scandalizing the cheese at Milkgate.”

“Hmm.  [Looks at notes.]  Angular banjoes, do you get this?  You read Ulysses.”

“Angular banjoes, no.  Give me another one.”

“Why do the people on the hill just don’t care, Madge?”

“They are on the hill, they are the chosen ones.  Got anything else?”

“Why Aja, and not the continent?”

“You mean, why not Asia?”

“Yeah.”

“Aja is a woman.”

“Quit while we’re ahead?”

“Yes, I got some food stamps left.  Can dinner be just soup broth?”

“Sure.  Youtube followers, see you next week for—”

“I think we said we’d do Stairway, talk about Stairway to Heaven.”

“Is that Beatles?”

“No, I think that’s Bread, Bread, the group, not the appetizer.”

“Bread is an appetizer?”

“Sure, c’mon, Dougie, before a meal?...”

 

The Royal Cambridges Handling the Sprocketeers

Katherine, Princess of Wales, and William (Bill to his friends), often mingle with the townies far afield from Kensington Palace.  One recent Royal parade, this time to low-tech center Sprocket Shire, brought up a conflict they have faced.

There is a pocket or two of poverty (as there is anywhere else) in the far, far, North of Wales, near the Shire of Mopsweep.  The Royal parades are not always so happily greeted by the locals.  At Sprockets (its nickname, they drop the Shire), a few parade-goers did not embrace the spirit of Windsor greatness, that Kate and Bill evidence.  They pelted the Royal second-in-line to the throne with tomatoes (think Spain’s Tomatino Festival at harvest).

Said the ever so diplomatic Kate: “They did this to us last year, we enjoy Sprockets, but a few Sprocketeers don’t quite enjoy the celebration as much as others.  Before we returned to Sprockets, we set out pamphlets outlining proper appreciation of the Royal motorcade.  At Sprockets, we don’t leave the motorcade, we stay inside the limousine, and wave.”

Said Prince William, always the gentleman: “Most cities, we’re greeted warmly, but I don’t know, the Sprocketeers really don’t like these British pride events.  I’m saddened, we try to bring good will, and commerce, we’re ambassadors, but it’ll be good to get back to home base in London.”

 

Trail Mix

“Most appreciated, Ma’am.”

“You ain’t ’round these parts, are you?”

“I’m up from Mayheco, by Texas way.”

“Is that so?”

“That be right.  What ’bout you?”

“Outta Cheyenne.”

“That’s a time getting here.”

“Sure was.  Injun territory.  Don’t appreciate cattle folk.”

“You don’t look like no wrangler to me...”

“I’m seeing, you is a dead man without a guide.  But this serves.”

“Stay along water.  Keep to the water.”

“I’d ask.”

“Ask what?”

“I travel well. Want to go along?”

“Where?”

“Canada.”

“I heard mighty cold far north. Can you find a town?”

“What year is it?”

“Hardly matters for me these days.  I would hash mark my bedpost.  1840 something.”

“I saw tracks and a coal burner.”

“Coal burner?”

“Moving up the line.  That’s where to be.  The towns by the rails.”

“Sure, the railway.  Where did you say you’re from, you new to railways?”

“Mayheco via Texas way.”

“To Nebraska?”

“Nebraska?”

“You got to Nebraska.  Right chere.”

“I just follow the empty towns.”

“There’s ghost towns all the way?  You got sheriffs through there hunting for bounty.  The only thing preventing them pulling the trigger on an out-of-towner is the specter of baby Jesus condemning them for blood money.  So, get through the Plains?  Think so?”

“See if I can make it.  Need a safe house for more than a night, good eats on the table, too...”

“Whatcha say you did for a living?  Wrastled cattle?”

“Ran the chuck wagon.  Also was a target-shoot carny, when the fair pushed through.  Then, I taught at a school for young women, the farmers’ daughters, in Wichita, although the students came from as far away as Omaha.”

“Like Bible reading?”

“Like that, spreading the word of the Lord, and how to sew, and cook.  Although, it was a finishing school, Wichita Finishing, not a church.  How to marry well, how to marry up, how to stay in his will, keep the farm.  The headmistress liked me, said I had a way with the students in my class.”

“I see why...  Did you have books, for your school?”

“No.”

“I’ve been to Hell, is Heaven possible?”

“Pardon — possible?”

“Is Heaven—”

“Where are you from?  No one gets to this part of the Niobrara Trail, the Missouri even, without a pack, without companion.  Who are you?”

“Just looking for a better life.  Heaven?”

“Huh?”

“Is Heaven possible?”

“Well, yeah, certainly.  I mean, if you live a just life, you spend eternity in Heaven.  Well, do you believe in Heaven?”

“I do.”

“Where is Heaven?”

“Right here, right now...  You know how to be nice to people...  Hmm.  Poker stare.  Much ado?”

“What the heck!  That’s William Shakespierre.  Who are you?!”

“I am your neighbor.  I’m just an Injun, as you say.”

“Oh my god!!  What about, “up from Mayheco”?”

“If I say I am Cherokee, that is trouble.”

“But you know European—”

“I’ve learned your ways, your life.  What am I now to you?  I am a Cherokee.”

“Damn, that changes everything, but changes nothing at all.”

“You smile rarely.”

“I’m happy now...”

 

Contraception and Sugar Hill

Preface: This story has both immolation, and a great Mom as the hero.  If this sounds like something that would offend you, read The New York Times, instead.

---

My Mom had read a Look magazine article from 1957 that showed a Long Island youth on fire, on a hill.  The problem the caption explained, was that “Long Island is suffering from over-population, and this has to be squelched, by any means necessary.”

That hill is where I live today, and is known as Sugar Hill, because there was a festival of fire staged there to reduce over-population.  There were not any contraceptives, rubber plantations were only situated in Viet Nam, we had no rubber to make rubbers.  There wasn’t any contraceptive pill.  To make matters worse, the church was against contraception until around 1970.  What to do?

That Look magazine photo told volumes.  Ignite the kids in a fiery “festival” of fire (institutionalization came in a distant second to combat over-sized families).

Youth from out-of-State, and super-sized families, would be shipped to Sugar Hill.  Typically they were poorly nourished.  The festival organizers would throw sugar so the kids would not stand still, and have a chance of survival.

My earliest memory is looking out the window of our family’s kitchen, and seeing a child escaping from the woods on fire.  My harried mom grabbed the fire extinguisher and saved the kid’s life.  I asked her why he was on fire.  She looked around, then told me: “He ate too much sugar.  When you eat too much sugar, there’s a chance you’ll catch fire.”  I poured sugar from the sugar canister onto a spoon, one after the next.  “What are you doing?,” she shouted.  “I’m seeing if I’ll catch fire.”  My mom took the spoon from me, and rolled her eyes.

Neil Young sings a song called Sugar Mountain, where their contraceptive festival had one balloon in Manitoba, ours on Sugar Hill had dozens, Sugar Hill was such a draw, Mom would tell me, until she stopped the entire apocalyptic nightmare.  The Expressway only went onto Exit 55, now it goes all the way to Riverhead.  Once the contraception festivals ended, it was safe for out-of-State tourists to visit without witnessing the abject horror of the “festivals.”

How did my Mom stop the “festivals of fire”?  My mom waited until property adjoining the festival was on sale, and she and my father bought it.  Then, she filmed Sugar Hill, with my Dad capturing sound.  These were sent to Kennedy’s White House, and got their immediate attention.

When I was five years old, the festival organizers lured me and my neighborhood friends out of our homes, for the final go of the festivals against over-population.  Even though neighborhood youth had a few grudges against one or two others, we would not pour the ceremonial gas cans on each other.  We were good kids (with one or two exceptions, but they were not pyromaniacs, if you don’t count lighting ants on fire).

[Kick the can is a game that actually comes from the “festivals,” and kicking the gas can to get the flames ablazing.]

The reason for the Viet Nam War was to get rubber supplies for contraception, stem over-population, and stop starvation in very large, American families, with fifteen and more siblings.  Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball touched on this in the very topical, Yours, Mine, and Ours, but without the “festivals of fire,” just twenty offspring.

By 1965, the “festivals” were hardly needed, except they kept going further East, by say, Western Moriches.  My mother’s home movies stopped the entire festival trade.  The home movies are buried under a mountain in Zurich, Switzerland, they are that heinous.

 

Medical Advice from a Layman

• “You have cancer.”

  “I have a tumor?”

  “No, I said you have cancer.  Out of an abundance of caution, we will need to begin thrice-weekly chemo.”

• You may say that immortality is impossible, and you may be right, yet Methusaleh of the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament lived 969 years.  Did he eat better than the other ancients?  Did he exercise more?  Were his friends all good people?  On this, the Bible is not explicit, no longevity guidance is given, just that this guy, Methusaleh, lived almost a millenium.

• Try not to lose ground in the Battle of the Bulge.  Be vigilantly calorie-conscious.  Choose fruit over cake; poultry over beef; and seafood is a very healthy choice.

• Exhaustion might very well be the product of depleted neurotranasmitters.  Sleep, intervals of rest, and nutritious food can restore the imbalance.

• Doctors might get guidance on medications from hospitals.  Larger hospitals get plenty of patients, and feedback on their treatments.  If there was communication between hospitals and doctors, the wisdom the front line hospitals accumulates, could be passed along to doctors who might be isolated in private practice from important, vetted, medical best practices.

• There’s looking good; there’s looking good for your age, and then there’s groaning walking by a mirror.  If you fit the latter category, and have trouble fitting into clothes, rethink your diet with healthier choices, and exercise regularly.  Just saying.

• My exericise regimen has reached the point where I can get the blood pumping.  I hestitate to say that because that works for me, and may be dangerous to you.  I am in decent shape, and a reader may be too overweight to exert themselves.

  I was born in the Sixties, and I have an active life.  I have a healthy diet, and I do not drink, or smoke.  I can trust my heart to not fail, assuming I get enough sleep, I’m not tired, stressed-out, or have chest pains (I infrequently have angina).  This is just common sense that we all possess.

  My at-home, mostly daily, exercise routine includes three sets of ten repititions, for three different exercises: Barbell curls, stomach crunches, and leg squats.  I also have a bicycle trainer that I use.  I exercise often enough that I can tell if I’m working at it too hard, or over-exerting, or I’m too tired.  I follow the exercises with a glass or two of water.

  The only equipment I have is seventy pounds of assorted barbells.  I can curl fifty-five pounds after six months.  I do this sitting, because I am afraid of falling.  I am still concerned about dropping the bar onto my legs, and crushing my femurs, but I am careful about how I move my arms.  A small Nautilus set would probably be best, but I doubt I have the room, or the extra exercise ambition to regularly use new equipment.

  If this sounds too ambitious, a twenty-minute workout, see your doctor about shedding the pounds, and incorporating a life-saving physical fitness program into your routine.  Just saying.

• The success rates of the various protocols in medical treatment should be determined, then widely published, if they’re not already known.  The success rate is whether or not the cure has fully ameliorated the condition.

  Success rates would be both completely objective with, say, before and after MRIs, as well as with patient evaluations of treatment success.

  Insurance corporations, and the American consumer, would really like to know.  Lives, and economic health, are in the balance.

• Doctors should share treatment successes.  They compete, and would have a very strong tendency to not share any near (or actual) miracle cures.  Medicine exists to benefit patients, not doctors, and their bank accounts.

• “I am from a family of immortals.  Mom once said that only losers are buried, buried in cemetaries.  And you know what, she’s right.”  And so, a challenge has been set.  Watch your health (especially your weight), keep a happy home, ward off evil, and avoid terminal facilities.

  Why live as though you expect to die?  If immortality is a false hope, what is heaven then?  I look up, I see the sky; you see a city with Saint Peter standing before pearly gates?  John Lennon of the Beatles, saw what I do, “above us, only clouds.”  You don’t trust the Great Creator to keep you whole, alive, and thriving?

  In other words, imagine a much longer time horizon on this earth, but live for today...

• When I was in high school, we played poker, five-card draw, seven-card stud, and a four-card game called “guts,” that I completely forgot how to play.  We smoked dope and drank beer.  I didn’t like the pot so much, I mostly tolerated it.  With beer, pot was more agreeable with my system.  We started young, but a few of my friends started even younger, smoking pot in junior high.  I stopped altogether in my late twenties, in the Eighties.  I wasn’t an addict, an alcoholic, or anything, it just didn’t agree with me so much.

  African Americans seem to enjoy marijuana the most, Whites like it a lot, too, but my drug of choice, at the time, was Molson Golden.  Pot can make you kind of a goofball in my estimation.  I get the impression that some use it, but it effects them adversely.  From what I understand, drinkers are more dangerous on the road, than pot-smokers.  Either way, I’ve reached the age where I think, why bother, why spend the money, endanger relationships (if not now, then down the road), and why compromise your health by introducing something into your body that you weren’t born to ingest.

  Two guys that I knew from high school totaled cars, and one guy wracked up a motorcycle.  All were high.  Drugs — and alcohol is a drug — are risky.  They are a public health issue.

  I have heard pediatricians say that drinking, or smoking, at this age can hinder brain development.  They may be right...

  (The authorities claim, erroneously, that this is a pro-drug piece, that the topic of drugs cannot be raised, it must be shrouded in secrecy, and anyone who has some knowledge or experience with drugs worth sharing, must be stopped.)

• Some eat to alleviate unhappiness, others eat to allay hunger pangs.

• Your heart is a muscle, it has a rhythm, a beat, a heartbeat; and if you strenghten it, and keep it in sync, in rhythm, by working it out enough (graduated-length walks can do), it will reward you with health and longevity.  This is just common sense.

• Bicep curls, leg squats, and stomach crunches, ten repetitions (reps), three sets, daily, at-home.  I add cycling on a bike trainer to the mix.  (Not a paid endorsement, I have a Saris, which is quality.)  At-home workouts are very convenient, and easy to make a habit of doing, although a limited variety of exercise routines compared to a gym.

  A caveat: If you’re overweight, say you weigh over two-hundred pounds, for instance, you may want to first see a doctor or dietician, to get your weight under control, or near goal weight.  You’re effectively bench pressing a boulder every time you sit up from a chair.  Your heart is strained, and may not approve.  It may show its disapproval, by shutting down your body with a coronary.  But it’s your health to do as you see fit.  Just saying.

  Another caveat: Work out, when you have the energy to do so, and when you feel like it.  If you’re too tired, you won’t complete your workout.  A workout requires a bit of strain, too much strain is trouble, regular exercising is the goal instead.  Your body will let you know what it thinks of your workout — while you work out.

• Recently, I was very close to having a full-blown heart attack.  I was paralyzed with lethargy, and chest tightness.

  Why this health fail?  I do not drink or smoke, I eat the right food, low in fat, sugar, and salt (I like salt, yet I stay under 100% of daily value), but I was severely sleep-deprived, and under a great deal of stress (largely from authority’s contradiction and agitation).

  Medical remedies are not as efficacious as expected, or promulgated.  I survived by taking my mind off of my malady, by distraction, and by physical acitivity without any strain, such as light stretching.  I drank a tall glass of cold water when I felt the discomfort.

• With perfect candor, would a physician agree with this statement?  Medicine knows much more about how the body fails, than how to stop it from failing, other than a good diet and exercise, as well as avoiding smoking anything, and drinking alcohol (or “perfecting the high”).

  A doctor’s best weapon against disease, and community medical issues, is to be a health influencer, dispensing the merits of healthy living, to the unconvinced, and dying.

• Having a mental illness, does not mean being mentally retarded.  It does mean having a brain chemistry imbalance that might be remediable with appropriate, judicious use of medication, by a trusted doctor, perhaps connected to a hospital.  Evidence of a mental illness can be easily discernible, and could include inexplicable, irrational, acts or behavior, as well as significant loss of sleep, typically by being “spun up.”

 

Indispensible Other (Got It, Flaunt It)

• My grandfather had five lessons for his son, my father.  These proved to be good advice for both him and me:

  • Buy land, they’re not making any more of it.
  • Learn to box (okay, this was around World War II).
  • Do not lend money to anyone, give it away.  If they need money, they likely won’t be paying it back.
  • Get an education (or learn a trade), at least until you’re twenty-one years of age.
  • Do not drink.

• There isn’t any deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in hair.  Hair is a protein secretion from a hair follicle.  There are not any cells in hair, motile or otherwise.  This means that any crime scene investigation (CSI) using hair as DNA evidence, must be overturned.  DNA evidence is fabricated, when it consists of hair.

  Furthermore, how did the hair get on the victim from the perpetrator?  Did the crime occur at a barber shop?  This is the function of DNA evidence, to put the perpetrator at the scene of the crime, that’s all.

  The exception is when the DNA evidence is blood.  If it is blood, the splatter of the blood must be from the victim to the perpetrator.  In other words, for DNA evidence to be useful, it must be from a crime where there is close contact.  If a gun is the murder weapon, there is no close contact (unless the gun was fired at point blank range), so there can be no DNA evidence to convict the perpetrator.

  The best evidence is either a confession by the perpetrator, or eyewitness accounts from the scene of the crime.  Any other evidence can be fabricated.  In addition, CSI has the same employer as the prosecuting attorney.  They work together, more than they do independently.

• 

  Above is responsible for all life.

  Deoxyribonucleic Acid, or DNA, is collectively the genome, the blueprint for humanity.  This blueprint, the DNA, is a binary encoding of a sequence of two nucleotides, of two pairs of amino acids: adenine/thymine, and cytosine/guanine.

  Somehow, these two pairs of protein create fingers, legs, and most miraculously, our brains, which can think, remember, and reason.  Doesn’t this seem so far-fetched as to be next to impossible?  Yet, the DNA model of double helix laddered nucleotides define all mankind.

  It is just incredible, isn’t it, that the miracle of life is predicated upon a real miracle, binary amino acid encoding.

• False is falsies.  If you don’t buy in, how is it a crime?  25 yo can be As.  Half a million watch, one must plea a Devil’s bargain?  Under five foot, and birth certificates, not a jury of prudes in a secret trial saying: “Gosh, looks seventeen to me.”  Another class of claimants in the class lawsuit against the world’s worst.  Just saying.

 

Just Saying (or Meditational Rallying Points, You Decide)

• If you’re interesed in color, color palettes, decorating, web design, and art, here is an excellent resource from Great Britain, ColourLovers.com.  Search for palette, color combinations, such as Summer, Autumn, and weddings.

• What makes a good cop?  Being honest, strong, kind, brave, and the really tough part I would imagine for most officers, having a practical knowledge of the law, the penal code, that they enforce.  What makes a bad cop?  Not being a listener, cold, racist or intolerant, corrupt, indifferent to others’ suffering, and pigheaded, or unable to change understanding of a situation, with changing information.  I would try to be a good cop, but being a police officer is not the job for me.  First, I would hide my gun in my work locker.  I would hold it like would one a dead mouse.

• A thug makes you fear for your safety; a terrorist makes you fear for your life.

• Give Mother Nature a fighting chance.  Avoid the use of herbicides, and insecticides.  Draw the line at poultry, or even, go vegetarian.

• “Where’s the bong?  Oh, I’m looking at it.”

• “Hey, big brother, this is 1985.  You can’t watch me anymore.”

• “You don’t need to see a lawyer, you need to see a priest.”

• How do you package a war effort, a defense industry booster shot, when all you have so far is: Murder the Communist-siding ox-musher.  The counter-culture — yes, fifty-plus-years ago there was a counter-culture — said we’re not buying in, we’re not going.  61,000 American lives later, the U.S. government gave up.  Long live rock...  (Nixon was very in favor of the war, as was LBJ, JFK was pulling out, by the time he was assassinated.)

• When Goliath picked a fight with David, why did David win?  David won, because Goliath had gods, but David had one God; and he wielded a sling expertly.  This is the official explanation.  Why did David really win?  He had heart, he was brave, and most importantly, he was the underdog.  Underdogs have something to prove, favorites just show up.

• Ba, Hamburg.

• Ewing, an authority of C.A.M.E.R.A. Unit infamy, shot two police officers within the last week, one very seriously.  He is still installed in my home, via C.A.M.E.R.A. Unit.

• “The buffer overrun was much more than expected.  We lost our budget increase for that very reason.”

• “This is not shower, suicide prevention, this is a peep-show.”

• The Microsoft Foundation will not support global, reproductive services.  What else might be considered as philanthropic suicide?  Would you expect General Motors, or IBM, to back the PLO, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, or back the American Lung Association?

• “Great opening act, The Black Tokens Folk Trio.  I would like to close out with the song you picked as the best ever.  See if you can recognize it.  Plink, plonk, plink, plonk, plonk, plonk.  That’s right!  Forget Brita and Leddy!  On your feet, clap your hands, go Bourgeois!!”

• Do you remember the office with the trap door in the floor?  The boss pressed a button, and the unsuspecting were sent straight to Hell?  You didn’t watch any Saturday morning cartoons growing up?  No?  Are you American?  Are you under forty years of age?  Wiley Coyote or Roadrunner?  Elmer Fudd or Bugs Bunny?  Ewing chose the former.  Wilma or Betty?  Mary Anne or Ginger?  Lieutenant Uhuru or Ensign Robin Lefler (Ashley Judd)?  Bewitched or I Dream of Jeanie?  Oscar Madison or Felix Unger?  Mary Tyler Moore or Carol Burnett?  Jan Brady or Marsha Brady?  Carol Brady or Alice (the live-in Brady maid!)?  But what about Ethel?  Lucy Ricardo or Ethel Mertz?  Susan Dey or Shirley Jones?  Sally Struthers or Jean Stapleton?  Gwyneth Paltrow or Blythe Danner (her mom)?  Naomi or Ashley Judd?  Taylor Swift or Karlie Kloss?  Christie Brinkley or Kate Upton?  Farrah Fawcett or Kate Jackson or Jaclyn Smith?  Gwyneth Paltrow or Ashley Judd?  Charlize Theron or Heather Graham?  The Big Four Past Forty (if wrestled away from Bertha), coming soon to a theater near you.

• Catherine Middleton, Princess of Wales, has the nicest tresses, I mean championship quality, and in fact, in her college days, she entered modeling competitions, where she and her locks walked off with the gold.  I say this reluctantly, because I know, I just know, she will want to meet me, and that will be the beginning of the end.  The monarchy will collapse, the London Stock Exchange will close early, summoning in the crash of the British Pound, and global markets intertwined with the FTSE-100 will not reopen for weeks.  Sorry, Kate, we cannot be friends, I fear world calamity would ensue.  I heard that she has finally started to eat breakfast again, after a near thirty year abscence from the breakfast table.

• “Soylent Green is people.”  Sustainable harvest is standard policy?  Forget food insecurity for some, when food depletion for all is possible?

• “You know when you go to the beach, and you get sand between your toes?...  Well, that’s what I do, but I guess I don’t do it enough...”

• “Do you have a tip for belly-button lint?”

• An advanatage of going with a woman who’s not an unapproachable beauty queen, is that she may expect less from you.  Does a woman with beauty queen looks have to distance herself, because of the unusual attention she receives daily?

• Open a pop-top can with two fingers, not one.

• “Television Canada, in an attempt to futher populate latitudes north of sixty degrees, is mandating that all new streamers include pregnant women.  In fact, eight of twelve, brand spanking new, teleseries will be about women dealing with being preggers.  Canuck net execs are scrambling to add birthing plot points, and subplots, to existing series.  American nets like HBO call the new direction, ‘gimmicky,’ and ‘not called for.’  Oh, Canada!  Oh, no, Canada?”  —Variety (US)

• Next debate, blow dope smoke into Trump’s face walking in.

• If you have any complaints about me, take them up with my Complaint Department.  They will handle them.  I do not handle complaints.

• The truth is not slander nor libel, it is free speech protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

• Why do Americans celebrate the spirit of America on the Fourth of July?  Because the Constitution forbids police states, we are not at war, we have enough to eat, assets such as homes cannot be stolen from us, neighbors cannot legally take over our lives, and justice generally prevails in this nation.

• A while ago, I was perusing titles in my local library, when I came across these: **** Redemption; **** Confession; **** Worship; **** Crucifixion; ****, ****, ****!; The House that **** Built; Where’s my *****?; and ***** 2 ***** Grudge Match.  Should I have notified staff?  [Based on a true story — honest!]

• Reggie of The White Boys calls a meeting.  “We’re the Whitest band out there.  We’re decidedly heterosexual.  We call the shots.  Forget N’sync, forget Boyz in the Hood, forget the Backstreet Boys, and BTS.  We got them all beat.  Chad, you were wonderful at drums, and Johnny, those pipes, ahh.  Anyhow, our latest will make solid gold history.  We got it, We’re in It for You.  Wait until the title track drops: Damn, Nicky, Doing Time with the White Boys.  Genius, they’ll say.  Or the deep track: White Tonight?  Forever White.  Then, proof positive we can rock like the best: Who’s White?  We Are.  They won’t be making fun of boys bands after that ditty.  Ahh... ”

• The townies descended on Mecca with pitchforks, torches, and shotguns, demanding attention to their needs.

• I was fortunate to have half of a tasty chicken tonight, the chicken was not so fortunate.

• A prime tool of Satan is righteous indignation, as in: “How could you stare at me for five seconds!  I’m calling the cops!  That’s menacing in the First Degree!”  Another tool is calling 9-1-1 for frivolous reasons, other than wanting to hurt an innocent person with a confrontational, police investigation.  9-1-1 is for emergencies, not petty complaints.

• What do you call someone who sabotages another’s sobriety?  Never an authority, only a rat would be so evil.  You’re thinking Ewing?...

• At best, forgiveness is earned, and never required.  The reason for a hard line on forgivenees is that it lets the trespasser off of the hook, without learning their lesson.  Of course, you’re much more likely to forgive family, or a friend, than an acquaintence.  (Catholic dogma may be different.)

• “Get lost, and stay there!”

• A while back, I had a column here entitled, Dinners even a Bachelor can Cook.  This is like one of those meals: shrimp, fried rice.  Defrost deveined shrimp (or prepare them, the same day you buy them at your fishmonger — kidding, this is not France, ouch!)  Pour two tablespoons of olive oil in a frying pan set for medium-high heat.  Cut shrimp into thirds, then cook for twelve minutes.  Pour over a rice pouch such as available from Seeds of Change.  Add a tablespoon of soy sauce.  Add a half cup of water, then cook five more minutes until water is reduced from frying pan, and rice mixture is soft.  Serves one or two.

• May you one day fulfill your destiny’s promise.

• Who doesn’t root for the underdog?  Yankees’ fans.  That was snarky?  (Let’s review: The New York Yankees always are top-five in team salary, forget winning on heart, they are the best team that money can buy.)

• Blessed be, I have good food to eat.

• Who freed the slaves?  Moses and Abraham Lincoln did, although there may be others.

• I’d like to have so much money that I could have the world’s greatest, vinyl-record collection, and actually play the records on a turntable, without concern for needle damage.  Moreover, if the whole lot was stolen, I wouldn’t sweat it.  I’d just have my buyer replace the missing records.

• In the long run, love will prevail over hate.  Hate requires too much energy, and love is in our DNA.  Everyone knows the contented feeling of love.  Love is even needed in the evolution of humanity for procreation, and parenting, to be possible.

• Back in the day, not your back in the day, but an other’s, there was a town crier.  Typically a he, more than a she, the crier would tell the world what was received on the Morse Code line during the day.  Morse code was viable beginning 1824.

  Before Morse, there was little to report.  Royalty had criers (aka bellmen) prior to 1800, but without a message or postal service, Royal pronouncements would be difficult to disseminate, even with a crier.

  The crier would also put criminals into the stocks, escort the impoverished to poorhouses, administer whippings, and during lynchings, read why the heinous felon would be lynched, then bring them down.

• Not only is this a blog, it is a direct line, a communication portal, to the White House.

• If I had tons of money, say I was fortunate enough to hit Lotto, what would I spend the jackpot on?  Would I build a choi pond in my backyard for goldfish?  Would I buy a Maserati, a Lamborghini, and a Ferrari, all in metallic forest green?  Would I buy a vintage ’55 Chevy, Delivery Nomad, one extant with an automatic?  Would I buy oceanfront real estate in several locations — Hermosa Beach, the Maritimes, the Vineyard?  Then, entertain Hollywood types every weekend?  All this, because, well, I have the money to show off how much money I have to show off?

  There is a problem with buying tons of stuff, tons of stuff needs maintenance, and storage.  Someone has to feed the goldfish, someone has to gas up the exotic cars, and bring them to the garage for repairs; someone has to housesit all those homes when I’m in my primary residence; and lots of friends, may want your lots of money.  So, if I did have loads of cash, I’d be more philanthropic, and buy things I hold off from buying now, like shirts in a larger, buff size, now that I work out very often.  I am excluding stereo A/V equipment, of course.  I’d want the latest, greatest of that...

• A failure of the nation-state is war, killing for resources and boundary rights.  In WWI, on Christmas Day of 1914, there was a one-day respite from trench welfare.  Combat was hardly pressing, and so unnecessary, that they could just call a ceasefire temporarily to celebrate Christmas.  In fact, the troops crossed enemy lines to talk, and exchange food and souvenirs.  Then the carnage, and mustard gas attacks, began again in earnest, just the next day.

• The Santa Claus Caper stars: Billy Bob Thornton; Jack Nicholson; William H. Macy; Michelle Pfeiffer; Steve Buscemi; Joe Pesci; Frances McDormand; Al Pacino; Robert Duvall; Talia Shire; and Robert Deniro, in the organized crime, North Pole-centric, classic.  Rated NC-17 for grittiness, and Combat Zone sequences.  Pinnacle: the entire cast galavanting through Bensonhurst singing Christmas carols, not so in key (sorry, Jack).

• Do you ever feel like you’re the only one, anywhere, with a working brain?

• You have to fight for your right to...

• Some people always know how to say the right thing; and others haven’t a clue.

• “Did he serve in Nam?”

  “No, Fort Apache.”

• Live long enough to be an “old-timer,” then you’ve really gotten ahead in life.

• There is restorative strength, power, in accomplishing stuff, getting things done; in work, even if it’s work around the home.

• There is a possibility, however slight, that other life forms are inhabited by people who once tread the sphere.  In other words, in the hereafter, you may be able to become say a butterfly, a beatle, or a wasp, depending on sentiment.  Everything would seem incredibly large, and there wouldn’t be any schedules to keep.  You could also become a Siamese cat, a beagle, or a Rottweiler, whichever way your pleasure tends.  So be careful with that can of insecticide, and be humane to pets...

• Baseball is America’s pasttime, and there is more to it than meets the eye.  Baseball can be rather cerebral.

  There’s the pitch count.  A batter is ahead of the count (and the pitcher behind in the count) with three balls and one strike (3 and 1), the batter is closer to getting a walk to first base.  A batter is behind in the count with one ball and two strikes (1 and 2, with the pitcher ahead of the count), he is closer to striking out, and returning to the dugout.

  When the pitcher is ahead of the count, the batter has to protect the plate to avoid striking out looking at a pitch.  Therefore, the pitcher can pitch away from the plate, and the batter may still swing at a ball.

  When the batter is ahead of the count, he can wait for his pitch, that’s where in the strike zone he can hit for power, where he can get swing at for extra bases.

  There are plenty of other intricacies to baseball, and the pitcher’s count is just one example.  George Will was a columnist who wrote much about baseball.

• I enjoy soccer more than football, and I am an American.  You’re asking: How is this possible that America’s sport is not your favorite sport?

  This is how the two sports are very different: Football is too predictable.  Players follow patterns, routes, that are plays from a coach’s playbook.  Soccer players are autonomous, they call the shots; football players are kind of automatons, the coach calls the shots.

  Every scocer player can be quarterback, in football, only one player is quarterback.  Football can be violent, although most injuries are prevented with protective gear.  Soccer has no protective gear, or perhaps just shin guards.

  I played soccer competitively for ten years, and today, I still watch World Cup highlights every week (before my Dad’s passing, we watched it every night).  I watch the Super Bowl as does everyone in America apparently.  I have two teams I follow somewhat: The New York Giants, and the New England Patriots (where my Dad was from originally).

• When working on a process, do you seek improvement, or perfection?...  Working on a what?...  Are you a perfectionist?  Bueller?  Bueller?  Bueller?...

• Even God has bad days.  How would I know this?  Just guessing.  God has good days as well.  (I like to think of God as being the Creator, but you can think of the Spirit of the Universe, as the Master of the Universe, as the Lord, the Almighty, as Jehovah, as Allah, as God, or the Son of God.  If you are an atheist, God is nothing at all, a non-entity.)

• They are all well-vetted, well-trained, sober as judges, yet poorly-compensated, they are...?

• What did you think of the Silent Majority supporting the Vietnamese War?  Does this faction still exist today as “my country right or wrong”?

• Apparently, I am regarded as Larry Flynt was, but instead of anything to do with pornography, this blog is somehow controversial (and even, ban-worthy) in the spiritual enlightenment, as well as political and government pundit, space.  Flynt was often seen as a smut peddler who published the sexually-explicit magazine, Hustler.  He survived an assassination attempt in 1979 that left him paralyzed from the waist down.  Larry Flynt died in 2021.  Essentially, he died for the First Amendment.

• Ambition.  Ambition.  Ambition.  Productivity.

• Given to excess, our hero was beset with peril, yet today better enlightened, that same excess led to triumph.

• I need to lose the gut — that’s the big goal.  I’m part of the way, at least.

• Premise: a high-level authority authorizes the backyard of the Kennedy-acolyte to be used as a latrine, and a watering station, after a hard night of drinking.

• Premise: the ex-neighbor from hell (DC) successfully petitions the authorities to be a home health aide of the Kennedy-acolyte.  This is a sinecure, she doesn’t do any work for her large salary, as large as her 400-pound wasteline.

• My critics come to my front door, and say: “You have a very expansive view of the First Amendment, aren’t there any limitations to free speech?  Pray tell.”  Well, good, you were escorted away from my primary residence.  Lying about someone is not speech protected by the First Amendment, nor is inciting a riot, like yelling “FIRE!!!” in a crowded theater, when there wasn’t any fire, or smoke.  (Or on a vaguely related note — panicked show-goers — the memorial T-shirt: “I walked over you, to see The Who.”)  Parody, satire, and opinion, are protected speech.

• The Supreme Court, led by Clarence Thomas, the lone White Justice of SCOTUS, reversed a Trump-approved ban on bump stocks.  Bump stocks were used twenty-three years ago, in that notorious, domestic attack on Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas (I knew someone who survived that day, told not to go to work).  Thomas ruled that bump stocks still require repeated pressing of the trigger to work, they do not turn semi-automatic firearms into machine guns.  This may be true, but what do they do then, besides turn venison into swiss cheese?  Just saying.

• Here’s a cool trick (or not so cool, if you cherish privacy): Ask Siri, “Where am I?”  This resolves granually to street address.  There may be a switch in settings to enhance the precision of location services, but I cannot find it.  iPhones also have location services for finding your iPhone in the home.  Now, given your iPhone can do that, find your iPhone, can it also, find you...

  Should “Find your iPhone” be shut off?  Will that prevent Apple partners in government from hunting you down like a dog if you’re falsely accused of a heinous crime, by say, an insane neighbor?

• Did you know that there was a cult named The Get Other Letter Hate Society?  Just saying.

• The two dieters’ watchwords: self-discipline, and vigilance.  The two methods: Exercising and eating nutritious food.  Consider how great you’ll look at your goal weight, or with an improved appearance, and the approval you’ll get from the world-at-large.

• “There is little peace, knowing there are those who want my passing, and have the means to put me in my grave...”

• There are many who will never fall in love.  Romance requires adoration, and if you cannot believe you are with your better half at least half of the time, then how can you make it as lovers?

• Opinion and satire are protected speech, telling the truth is also protected from persecution.  The cornerstone of the Bill of Rights is this right: The freedom of speech, the press, and expression.  And the foundation of that is the people’s right to redress grievances, given this First Amendment:

  Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.  [Italics supplied.]

• Premise: In 1971, the father of a Kennedy-acolyte is cold-clocked by an authority, breaking his nose.  A rhinoplasty is necessary that taps out the Ivy League college fund.  The Kennedy-acolyte reports the crime at the local hoosegow.  The authority commits suicide.  Authorities break into the home of the Kennedy-acolyte.  They spackle the garage wall with: “Enough, k*ke” and “Leave or die, n*gg*r”.  Fast forward to the present day, and the son of the suicide launches a vendetta costing over a billion dollars, involving various radio and television broadcasters, as well as a former U.S. president.  Isn’t that a cute story?...  I’m not a fan, either...

• Premise: A hater of a Kennedy-acolyte provides neighbors with a list of passwords of financial accounts, and garage doors.  These were obtained with viewport access of computing hardware, courtesy of the authorities, in conjunction with a post-9/11, technological backdoor.  Big Brother is watching, is he not?

• Premise: A Kennedy-acolyte is despised by the authorities, so they cut off communication to him, his family and friends, as well as his doctor and attorney.  The settlement against the authorities for egregious behavior now looks extremely difficult.  The authorities also want his shrink to end any relationship with him, or face death, while death is looming near for the Kennedy-acolyte.

• Stop the troublemakers.

• Time for healing misbegotten (racial, xenophobic, or cultural) pride.  Time for a new path, a new road.

• What’s going on in this cozy, little burgh?

• Nail pushers to the cross, not junkies.  (Crucifixion was a means of capital execution for criminals in ancient Rome.)

• I know someone who can suss a dealer’s supply for quality, and wishes there was dealer accountability for mislabeled junk — Ewing!  Meanwhile, I have not smoked a joint since 1982.  No bull.  Drugs are uncool.

• Defund the renegade commandoes.  “I could use the tax rebate, but what about our negro problem?!”

• There isn’t any money in science?  That would be a shame were it true, but is it?  Sure, Bill Gates is in the top five of wealthiest humans, but is he one of the lone exceptions?

• I went to a fight, and a hockey game broke out.  (Attribution: BA)

• Live like you haven’t aged a bit.

• It is very difficult to be nice to anyone who isn’t nice to you.  Want to work customer service?

• Know your parts inventory, for cars, yard work, and stereos, I’m saying.

• I heard Jerry Seinfeld say he will not do Holocaust jokes, that the jokes are not marketable, and are never funny.  Well, how about my own homegrown Holocaust jokes?  What do they serve at the Auschwitz cafeteria?  Nothing.  What are the hours of the Auschwitz cafeteria?  It’s always closed.  Not bad, how’s them apples?  [Should I further clarify that I identify with Judaism?]

• “Jerry Seinfeld is not quite a Richard Pryor.  And Richard Pryor is not quite a Jerry Seinfeld...”

  “Okay, sound bite the first sentence.  That’s the preview.  We have to nail Other Letter on something, and that’ll do for the time being.”

• “What do I think is wrong with comedians today?  They’re just not funny.  Well, when I was working the circuit, remember how I told that joke about—” oh, never mind.

• There is a comedian and an actress who are both exceptionally talented, yet I still take exception to them.  They are Jerry Seinfeld, and Meryl Streep.  Mr. Seinfeld, at least during his reign atop the television ratings battle, showed little social conscience.  The closest he came to political relevance, and to cashing in on his immense political capital, was the Soup Nazi episode.

  As for Ms. Streep, she overacts in several of her movies.  I do not know if the director wants to add interest to a dull scene, but she over-gesticulates at times.  Meryl looks as though she’s playing to the bleacher seats in the back of the auditorium, or as though she’s in a silent film.

  First performance off the top of my head is Julia Child in Julia and Julie.  Her acting seems unnatural, and not genuine to the representation of human behavior.  Maybe I’m wrong, maybe she’s just a very physical actress, and in films such as Kramer v. Kramer she does do an exceptional acting job.

  To me, this is exceptional acting, in the French film, Manon of the Spring.

  [I can hear the clamor now: Jerry is our God, damn you, our God, why can’t you recognize divinity?]

• “The day may be nigh where we no longer define ourselves by our handicaps, limitations, or differences, but instead by our commonalities.  We all want in on the American dream, and I want in, too.  I am running for national office on November 5th on an Other party ticket, and I need your vote, so please—” oh, never mind.

• The Other Letter is picking up where that other one left off...

• There can be no heroes, without villains.

• How can the powerless redress grievances?  How can the disenfranchised ever be heard?  Have they considered blogging?

• A key component of any democracy is rederessing grievances with your elected representatives.  Have you ever wanted to send an email to your United States Senator?  Try using this as the email address: senator@SENATORS_LAST_NAME.senate.gov .

• Allow the handicapped to live independently.

• Generally speaking, people have a good side, and a not-so-good side.  For you, and for all concerned, try to stay on your good side, along with staying on the good side of those you know and appreciate.

• Did you eat today?  Thank the farmer, and the trucker; and while you’re at it, add the grocer, and the restaurateur to the list.

• There are Holocaust-deniers, and that’s awfully sick, but there must be very few who actually want to get the chambers filled again.  Hopefully, top-level organizations know who these neo-Nazis are.

• Three strikes or four balls — one umpire says one thing, another says another, but this is baseball, after all, isn’t it?...

• Predators have no right to stay among us, in the ranks of the holy, even in a C.A.M.E.R.A. Unit.

• All this Earth’s travails will one day be resolved — conceivably, at least...

• When the reins are handed over to you, will you be ready?  Reins being becoming the matriarch, or patriarch, leading the family, and extended family.  Or reins just being getting a raise, or promotion, at work.

• I try to keep things in perspective.  Everything’s relative.  We tread a largeish rock traveling around the Sun for some eighty years.  Our travails are meaningless in the context of the infinity of time.  When our time is up, we may have an afterlife, a hereafter.

  In the meantime, I try to stay constructive, learn new skills (cooking is a skill), and have some accomplishments, be these paid, at work; or unpaid, such as doing things to enhance my living space (optimiizing and rearranging furniture, or setting up a MP3-digitized, music system, e.g.).

• People have noted that I am a kind of cool customer.  I am not easily rattled.  Why is that?  One of the things in my favor is that I believe one should conduct oneself ethically, and honestly.

  You’re in a much stronger (and comfortable) position when you don’t have to lie, or cheat.  If you keep everything above board, then evil, or even aggression, is warded away.  If you’re not in the wrong, things will go much better.

  There will be times in life, of course, when you’ll need to stand up for yourself, and get others to back off, or back down, but if you can be honest in these situations, it really works in your favor.

• Women are always confiding to me about this: “Why won’t he say, ‘I love you’?  Is it my limited-selection couture near laundry day?”  (The wealthy are saying, “Huh?,” as they never run out of their best clothing.)

  What do I tell these affection-starved women?  I do publish my email address...

  In economics, one learns that relationships are effectively a competitive marketplace.  There is supply and demand curves, and the intersection therein is where deals (or friendships) are made.  In other words, if you have what people want, you get crème de la crème.

  Getting back to the original point, if you don’t tell her that you love her, she can find someone that will.  Again, relationships are effectively a competitive marketplace.  Those thinking differently, entrap people financially, or otherwise, by saying things like: “You won’t make it without me.”

• In suburbia, what is worth more than life itself?  That’s right, property values, and cabernet sauvignon.  Can’t you take a joke?  You can’t?  Okay, I take that back.  In suburbia, nothing is worth more than life itself.  Good that’s cleared up.  By the way, did you know that there was a new method of philanthropy involving...  Oh, never mind.  R-rated, so I’ll stop.

• Do you have any guilty pleasures?  That is, something you enjoy that also brings you minor feelings of guilt.  Is your guilty pleasure entirely legal?  If it is, why does it still bring you guilt?  If it’s illegal in any sense, have you considered stopping this indulgence?  If it involves another person, is it consensual?  For instance, is your guilty pleasure fattening chocolate (remember carob)?  Expensive vintage cars?

• “Well, that wraps up another caper, in sunny, and near-glorious, Mayberry.”

• “At least in Hell, you know why you’re there...”

• This too, shall pass...  So it is written, so it is said...

• If you prejudge someone based on race, without even meeting them, then that is racism.  I have done this unconsciously, not deliberately, and it bothers me later, as I am against any racial arrogance, and skin-color based hatred.  Perhaps an individual being conscious of race reflects the expectations, or prejudices, of society as a whole as to the misjudged limitations of each race.

• Weren’t you really saddened, when in 2016, Muhammad Ali passed away?  A great movie about him, and his title fight against George Foreman, was entitled, When We Were Kings.  The 1974, championship bout, took place in Zaire, and was billed as the “rumble in the jungle.”  Foreman was significantly bigger and stronger, a brawler, really, but much less of a skilled boxer than Ali, who despite his lesser weight, scored a KO in the fifth round, of the fifteen round contest.

  Ali succumbed to Parkinson’s disease at the age of seventy-four, having his last fight at the age of thirty-eight.  He lost his last two fights.  The reason he did not end his career at say, thirty-two years of age, was because he lost four years in his prime, sidelined as a conscientious objector against the Vietnamese War.  Muhammad was without income for those four years, and was stripped of his titles, because he was a pacifist.

• Nazis are the inferiors of Jews.  Hasidim are more industrious, better educated, and kinder.  The Nazi feeling of inadequacy when compared to the “chosen people,” is the reason why Nazis joined forces with Adolf Hitler in WWII, and why they join Aryan Nation, today.  Their M.O.: If you can’t beat ’em, beat ’em.

• Doctors cure disease, do carters (“sanitation workers” in N.Y.C.) prevent more disease?  To what, do you ascribe the pay differential between these two who both stop disease in its tracks?

• It’s the difference between arriving in America with gold on a cruise ship, and getting here in shackles on a slave ship...

• Is capitalism an organic evolution of goods distribution?  Generally speaking, it is.  Socialism has not fared so well, as it interferes with an individual’s self-interest to advance their station in life.  People are motivated out of self-interest, doing something for themselves has significantly more priority, than doing altruistically for others.  COVID-19 was a limited counter-example wherein all chipped in to keep civilization going.

• There are other measures of success besides the monetary variety.  Those who are good with people, who can improve their spirits, laugh, or smile, are real successes in my book.

• There are types of people whose value to society, while substantial, is undervalued by monetary economics.  Then there are those whose value is grossly overrated by the monster known as avarice.  Jesus the Christ called them the moneychangers of the Temple.

• Where do you find your self-worth?  At a place of employ, or doing housework, yardwork, and such?  Is working out, or doing exercise, enough to give your self-esteem a boost?

• If you walk around Harvard Square, you may notice one or two people who look, and act, like Gwynnie Paltrow.  Wait, you say, two people that look like her?  That’s right, two or more.  They are part of the Harvard Theater Department’s Gwyneth Paltrow Colloquium.  This is a full-semester course, not a seminar, in completely inhabiting the character of Gwyneth Paltrow for theater and film presentation.

  Now, you’re saying, why do we need more than one Gwyneth in film?  Why is that?  Harvard believes, and we concur, that if Ms. Paltrow ever does theater, she will need an understudy.  Hence, the Gwynnie Colloquia.

  The competition to not just play Gwynnie in all facets of her life, but to actually be her, is understandably fierce.  There are no scholarships, Harvard tuition must be paid, on-time, one-hundred cents on the dollar.

  Plus, get this: This master thespian class features the real deal, Gwyneth herself shows up just before finals week, to further shape the super-students perception of this Oscar-winner, as they are about to enter G.P. dissertation, with their faculty thespian.

• I am much more likely to purchase a product from an advertiser that does not stereotype African Americans.  I have seen Blacks in hairdos that are laughable, dreadlocks are so questionable for boardroom meetings.  Then, they wear cheap ghetto garb, while the White in the commercial wears fashion plate accessorized.  The Black is behind the service counter, the customer is White passing judgement.  Blacks are featured in ads for toilet paper, and intoxicatingly-perfumed fabric softener.  At best, these adverts look to be in bad taste, while others are outright, racist depictions of African Americans.

• Faithful Christians are not expected to love everyone.  I understand that the evil are not loved, unless they redeem themselves before their Lord.  Redemption is via penitence, and via service.

• Grace for me: “Blessed be I have this food to eat.”

• You can live in suburbia without a car.  Post COVID-19, many, if not most, can work from home, or are retired.

  There are several grocery, and restaurant, delivery services available.  Exercise in your own home, eat nutritiously, abstain from any drugs, and you could avoid medicine.  Otherwise, to see a doctor, just take a cab, a bus, or even bum a ride from someone you know (everyone has bummed a ride) — or pay a friend, or family member to drive.

  (Hitching is illegal.  In the Seventies, it wasn’t, but the practice ended for very good reason.  And this Seventies bumper sticker is part of the reason why: “Cash, grass, or ass, no one rides for free.”  Dig?  It is so dangerous.)

  Buy anything you need online.  Know of reputable handymen, or learn to be self-sufficient, and you’re all set.  That’s lots of money saved on new cars, maintaining used cars, and purchasing car insurance.

  In addition, you’re helping to save the environment, by not contributing to climate change, and global warming.  At the rate the climate is changing, one day this will not be optional, living all day, every day, at home, will be required.

• Lifelong learners, explain this logic, if you will: Life takes practice.  Practice makes perfect.  Life is not perfect.  (A=B; B=C; A≠C; defies the transitive property that you learned in college, yes?)

• In a long-term relationship, some chores are shared democratically, such as cleaning the pots and pans, while others are somehow the province of male, unjust privilege...

• Most of North America is so blessed to have readily available food, and plentiful, clean and potable, water supplies.  There are regions of this Earth that have neither, yet populations still populate, eke out a living, on increasingly arid, and inhospitable, earth.

• OL PSA: Drugs, including alcohol, can be a coping mechanism, that become a crutch, that become a bad habit, then become an addiction.

  Regardless of one’s age, they weaken the user over time, and tend to empty wallets as well.  Without substance usage, one is in a better position to deal with all thrown their way in the course of years.

  Happy people do not require a drink, a snort, or a smoke, to be happy.  Their minds are clear, their confidence is enhanced knowing they get by just fine without a monkey on their back.

• Broadcasters are given quite a soapbox, that is fairly easy to abuse, and just as easy to take back.

• Which group of people have the best sense of humor, and who has the worst?  I would say the far Right, doesn’t have any sense of humor.  Nazis have contributed next to nothing to the English comedic canon.  They are primed on death; and death in comedy, as in anywhere else, tends to be a real drag.  Nazis cannot take a joke.  I even have a joke about Nazis.  Here goes.  When is the kitchen closed at Auschwitz?  It’s always closed.

• If I were to prioritize, and time apportion, the efforts of police, I would put: traffic patrol first; then street beat cops, and visible police presence; followed by community relations, and gang busting; and infiltrating narcotic distributors (while important, so specialized, the entire force is rarely deployed in that capacity); then emergency response readiness, cops at the ready.  Trivialities like lawn height, would not even make the list.

• Here’s a maxim: In every organization, there are good and bad people in varying proportion.  Your objective, when interfacing with, say, customer service, is to speak to someone knowledgeable, helpful, and who knows their stuff.  In other words, speak to the in-the-knows, to optimize your results with the organization.

• Never get sentimental about evil.  Adolf Hitler asphyxiated millions of people to death, he was not an economics wizard, and more accurately, he was not human.

• Can biological species exist without parents, can they exist spontaneously?  The first life form in all eternity, did not have parents.  Why not, you say?  Well, then, if you go back far enough, those parents were spawned without any other precedent.  Given that the first life did not have a parent, could there be other life forms without parents.

  I regularly hiked in a woods.  I found a frog deep within the woods, without any other frogs seen there, ever.  Could this frog spawn itself spontaneously, in favorable conditions, outside of being the product of two parents mating?  Could this frog be like the first ever species.  Even if you accept Darwin’s evolutionary tree, there has to be a single root protozoan (at minimum) that had asexual reproduction.

  The difference between asexual reproduction and generation without parentage, is that the former has one parent, and the latter hasn’t any parent.

• Avoid pesticides, cup and card those insects in your home.  Take a clear, plastic cup, and a cardboard, mail circular; cover the insect with the cup, then slide the thin cardboard under the cup.  Send the varmint outside as a bird meal.

• “And we’re back.  Leslie, did you notice the flowers on the parkway coming into—”

  “Um, the Gaza Strip was pounded again by—”

  “The daffodils, and the sky was not blue it was green—”

  “Oh, geez—”

  “Trees talk, you know that, trees do talk.  They say, where is that goddamn rain?  I wait for rain, we all wait for rain.  Leslie, have you ever seen rain go in reverse, ground to cloud.  I did, or I thought I did.  Definitely, yeah...”

  “That was Jim Storm with the — don’t take off your clothes, Jim, oh mofo, no!!!!!!!!!  Commercial!!!!!!!”

• Would your higher moral authority approve of your conduct?  Essentially, then, does your god like you, and how much does your god like you?

• “Time to circle the wagons.  Injun attack this way.”

• Language is a means of communication that effects change, expresses sentiment, or otherwise informs.  Words, or phonetic symbols, are arranged in an order that follows both grammatical laws, and a human’s cognitive facility for language.

• How does your local policing agency handle quality-of-life crimes?  You know: public drunkeness; vagrants; dog-owners who won’t curb their dog, who don’t carry pooper-scoopers on dog walks; garbage cans left out for days; or a house that by all appearances, looks like a zombie house.

  Not to forget, zoning violations, homes zoned for one-family residential, and used for business purposes instead (and without zoning exemption certificates).  Lest we not forget, Led Zeppelin played with the window opened, is a quality-of-life crime, too.

• I try to keep life’s travails in perspective.  I have three squares a day, I have a comfortable bed to sleep in, I live in a house with heat, and it has a refrigerator so food won’t perish.  Take the long view.  Historically, I live like royalty, and you do as well.  Be grateful before you’re dead.

• Basic, guy rule: Don’t ogle other women, when you’re with your woman.

• In my estimation, African Americans are more social than Caucasians.  Whites tend to be more reserved, more suspicious at times, than Blacks are.

  Another trait about Blacks, and I hope this does not sound racist, is that they are good dancers, and dressers.  I can dance, but I can dance more for the night club scene.  Blacks got the family BBQ scene going.  Their dancing can get a G rating, where my dance skills tend closer to PG.

• Anything done by consenting adults should be legal.  That would include prostitution, and drug usage.  If someone wants to waste themselves away with drugs, they’ll get to believing in program much quicker on their own, without government intervention, without government telling them what to do.

  Sex work by adults with clients is consensual, so this as well, should be free of persecution by government entities.  It is none of their business.  Legal sex work means STD testing.  It means age of consent enforcement, as in Las Vegas.

  It also means that prostitutes are protected by the law.  When prostitution is illegal, prostitutes are vulnerable, they are only seen as criminals, not worthy of protection from harm.

  I have never had sex with a prostitute, but as a matter of public policy, persecuting consensual activity is harmful.  The prudish should not have the power to decide the fate of the ones not prudish.  Prosecuting consensual activity, considered immoral by some, but not by others, is an immense waste of taxpayer dollars.  Just saying.

• Guys like porn, it’s just a fact of guyness, and/or being hard up at times.  (Women like it, too, but not nearly as much as men do.  Women like receiving flowers.)  Say you’re looking at one of those free, preview sites, how do you decide what is legal, and how does law enforcement decide what is legal?

  There are twenty-five year old women with A-cups that could be confused for kiddie porn.  Then, how to decide which clip to look at?  Law enforcement, I think, looks at cup size, but what makes much more sense is to look at height.  Under five foot is kiddie porn.

  Besides height, how comfortable they look, are they smiling, do they French-kiss, are they able to read their lines convincingly?  I don’t see how the law can get age of consent convictions without birth certificates, but I guess everyone just assumes twenty-five year-old A-cups are twenty-five year prison terms.  Just saying.

• Premise: Halfway through Act II, the audience finds out that Ewing is a gay, sadistic gigolo-hitman, sent by the authorities to cause the heterosexual, Kennedy-acolyte’s suicide, or outright murder.

• The Internet while quite advanced and ingenious is based on some rather simple principles.  First off, is the URL, or Uniform Resource Locator.  This is encoding, a processable text string, that tells a router where to find a text file, an audio file, or a video file.  An example is: HTTPS://otherletter.com/index.html.

  Otherletter.com is the name of this domain.  The TLD, or Top Level Domain, is .COM.  Otherletter.com can be found on a DNS, or Domain Name Server, which points to a web host IP address, or Internet Protocol address.  This web host address consists of eight hexadecimal digits converted from “hex” to decimal as: 256.256.256.256.  The router goes to that IP, that web host computer, to retrieve my html, hypertext markup language, web page.

  HTTPS is the transfer protocol, here it is Hypertext Transfer, of hypertext documents (this very brief explanation is written in hypertext on a text editor).  FTP is a File Transfer Protocol, for uploading this file from my desktop to a hosted, web server.

  There is a network model of the Internet based on different layers such as a presentation layer (font, borders, and such), and network layer.  This network layer sends packets that is requested by the URL example, HTTPS://otherletter.com/index.html, from the web host to the requesting browser, which would be anyone wanting to read this webpage.

  The web browser then assembles the hypertext into a visual display on your computing device.

  [A much more complete explanation, written by the founder of the Internet himself, Tim Berners-Lee, can be found in his book, Weaving the Web.]

• There is a backstory to women who are top-heavy, who may be so envied, or desired.  They need back surgeries, usually several.  They keep a morphine drip in their bedroom to assuage the pain of their overstressed, and misaligned, lumbars.  In high school, they were excused from gym, because, well, never mind.  They’re heavily into the sauce, again, because of back pain.  They all drive vans with handicapped license plates, and permits, because as they get beyond thirty, they spend much of their day in a wheelchair, as their chests are so incredibly weighty.  If you date one, and I have, beware of face plants at fine supper establishments, into the tomato soup, just for instance.

• “I need the money.”  The cry of the indigent doing things no one should have to do.  Examples include: Low-paying, uncaring porn; working in a slaughterhouse; or being a farm worker (remember Cesar Chavez).

• According to Forbes magazine, the three, top paid soccer players in the world are: Lionel Messi (36) of Argentina, who played for Barcelona much of his career; Cristiano Ronaldo (39) of Portugal, played for Real Madrid; and Kylian Mbappé (25), of France, who has played for Paris Saint-Germain all his career.  Of the three, Mbappé’s €180 contract was the second-most lucrative ever, and this contract made him the highest paid under-20 ever.

• When one points a finger at you, they are actually pointing four fingers at themselves.  This is a Twelve-Step catchphrase.

• There are evil pinheads, there are.  They think that they’re on to you, when they need to worry about themselves.

• Loaded, and locked and loaded...  Repeal the Second Amendment, repeal 2A.

• “You done good.  At worst, they can put you down, and you can’t stop them.  But you sure done good, and that’s all that matters.”

• Any unwelcome sexual congress is a rape — and these rapes all require stitches, and leave scars.

• I could never belong to a religion that expects me to not hate someone depraved as was Hitler.  There exists people that are beyond any redemption, or forgiveness.  Forgiving them only gets them off of the hook.  I am not certain about this, but I understand there does exist religions where hate is really not acceptable, however much we hate inside.  That’s just not realistic to have love in one’s heart for monsters.

• Do you think your town is great?  Do you like your town?  Does your town have cultural amenities, parkland, transportation?  Is where you live all you can afford?  Are you homeless?  If so, you wouldn’t be able to read this (which my detractors say is a very good thing).

• In your humble estimation, name the world’s worst band.

• Would you say that your work is important?  Staying alive can be considered work; and important work at that.

• “This is a good day.”

  “It’s raining.”

  “I live in a nice home, with wholesome food available.  These are good days.”

• Practicing proper hygiene with pooper-scoopers is not just being neighborly, it is the law, mofo!

• Would you give up sex for your religion?  Why or why not?  What do you think of religions that do require abstinence from sex?  Would you hazard a guess as to whether or not this requirement is actually met by those of the cloth?  The Other Letter is taking a poll.

• Without solid evidence (not anecdotal) to the contrary, I would think China has a three tier economy: an upper crust, executive strata; a regular worker class; and perhaps equaling in size, a somewhat impoverished labor class.

  China keeps much of their world a secret.  For instance, we have no idea of the average Chinese work week, or any stark income inequalities between classes.  Also, how much pollution do all those manufacturing facilities produce?

  I could be dead wrong about this, maybe China’s Communist system shares the wealth equitably, but with scant evidence to this effect, is China essentially just a dark, factory town?

  If we knew better of Chinese use of labor, we could feel more comfortable shoring up any food shortages they may have, as the world’s most populous nation.

• The Other Letter will be putting out a new line of women’s apparel.  We call it Howare, you’ll call it fashion forward for all social occasions.

  Spring includes floral prints in pastel pink, chartreuse, and yellow.

  Be seen at the pool deck this summer with halter tops in bright yellow, red, and green (green halter tops come with dollar sign patterns).  Cut-off jean shorts complete the Daisy Mae look.

  Fall, or Autumn, we’re going with earth tones, brown, gold, and red, in black and yellow jackets, pullovers, sweaters, and chinos.

  For winter, and hanging out at the hot tub, we have white and blue, snowflake bikinis, with matching towel-blankets.  Other Letter’s² Howare Collection available wherever women’s apparel and accoutrement is purchased.

• Avoid dwelling on the negative; accentuate the positive.  Beware, if people start saying, “What’s the bad news?” to you.

• “At least in Hell, you know the reason you’re there.”

• Have you ever met, or knew, anyone who saw the worst in everyone, or who picked on someone mercilessly?  Are they still alive?  Because that’s no way to live.

• Back in the day, The Other Letter had a column entitled, “Dinners even a Bachelor can cook.”  This is one of those recipes.

  Let me tell you about a great dinner that I can share with my Other Letter epicureans.  It is very simple to prepare.  I call it Scallops with Spaghetti and Marinara, you’ll call it your favorite supper ever (or at least your top ten).

  First, defrost scallops.  This is my method: Place them in the refrigerator for two hours.  Leave them out on the counter top for a half hour with the scallop container filled with water.  Remove any ice remaining.

  For the spaghetti: Pour five cups of water into a large pot.  Set a stove burner to high.  Set to medium and put a quarter-diameter of spaghetti into pot.  Boil for ten minutes.

  Put a tablsspoon of butter in a frying pan large enough to cook the scallops.  Heat until butter is melted.  Cook the scallops for approximately six minutes on one side, and three minutes on the other.  The other side takes less time to brown, because the scallop is already heated.  Cooking times may vary, so cook until both sides are lightly browned.

  Drain spaghetti in a collander.  Put back in pot.  Mix cooked scallops with spaghetti, and four ounces of marinara sauce (approx. a quarter of a jar).  Heat for three minutes at low setting (3).  Serve.  Serves one.

• Original observations score big in romantic relationships.  If you have some novel thing to articulate, or a different viewpoint, of something you have thought about at least a little, why not say it?  Even if it’s something like: “This is good weather for hiking at the park.”

  The caveat here is from Workingman’s Dead: “Please don’t dominate the rap, Jack, if you’ve got nothing new to say.”  Avoid being so dull, or more accurately, having so little going on in your life — and so little to report — that people yawn.

  Know at least a little about current affairs: Noting that there’s something called climate change, doesn’t count.  Noting you wish you had an electric car instead of the gas guzzler, probably wins points.

• At the gate of Auschwitz, was a sign that read: “Arbeit Macht Frei.”  Translated from the German, this means, “Work makes you free.”  Of course, work did not make the concentration camp laborer free, they were only there for their eventual gassing, then cremation.  The sign was nauseatingly deceitful motivation from the Nazis, direct from Hell.  The real intent of the sign was obviously much darker: Work harder, Jew, if you want to survive (not that you will) when your family hasn’t.

• Gangsta rap stars, smut peddlers, and bloggers who dare write about religion and politics, start to realize that people they know start to keep their distance.  All three groups have such poor reps in America, they have to go underground.  Any possible romances are hindered by their reputation, all prospective mates keep their distance.

• Have you ever been in love?  Looked agog, gaga, at the one who makes your heart go pitter-patter?  If you have, then Valentine’s Day is just around the quarter, so why not buy that special someone a five-pound box of chocolate, today.  Never mind.

• One can be immersed into incredibly difficult circumstances, not of their volition.  There are the unfortunates of every stripe.  A sizeable minority do not get what they deserve in life.

• How do you get a witch out of your house?  With her broomstick, of course, how else?

• Love one another.

• Most all that is broken can be fixed with time and patience, including a heart broken in two.

• A bit of 70s humor: If you cannot razzle-dazzle them with science, baffle them with b*llsh*t.  Another one: When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

• The Netanyahu War of Revenge against Hamas who staged an attack because of Israeli Apartheid against Palestinians rages on, and — oh, never mind. 34,789+ Palestinians dead, 1,511 Israelis dead.  Do the math.  (Jews are fine, Zionists are okay, this war hawk, Benjamin Netanyahu, sounds like real trouble.)

• Generally speaking, one does not live their life to satisfy a performance review of someone else.  One is only here to satisfy their own self interests, independent of what others think of them.  I don’t mean jobs, or romances, and raising family, where one needs to often consider what management, or one’s mate, are thinking if one flops, or makes mistakes.

• If I have the time, I like to read for retention, as well as comprehension, so I reread a few key points, in hopes I won’t forget them in the future.

• Feed the Homeless
  Where will my next meal come from?
  I had all I needed, a while back
  How can they stand for that?  They sleep at night?
  He tells me, die soon, or I’m quality of life
  Do I cross the line in the sand?  Mug, break-in, rob a bank?
  I don’t hurt anyone
  Jail lifer gotta be hell, I’ll stay hungry here, right?

• There are probably more than a few actresses, who in a down stretch, are persuaded by their management to do a turkey.  Roughly speaking, they’re yawn-fests that should have never been made.

  The marketers of the film have nothing to say positive about the entire lackluster affair so they couch the ads with phrases such as: “A film you’ll remember throughout the summer;” “Studied performances by the leads;” and “Cinematography that sparkles;” or “A soundtrack better than many FM stations during your commute.”

  With such weak, milquetoast praise, the film completely flops, the stars’ careers are most likely over, and they are featured at ultra-embarrassing Razzie Award festivals.

• If you stop to think about it, calling someone a fag is only offensive if that person is actually a homosexual.  If you’re straight, by definition, you’re not a fag.  Homosexual men would definitely find it demeaning though.  Despite of this definition, it is much, much worse, and damaging, to make threats of violence, or death.

• One’s day-to-day life should never be decided by committee.  When it is, when autonomy and agency are denied, and someone is always told what to do, that is known as torture.

• “I know from hard-won experience: Bi-coastal romances very rarely work.  Stay local.”  Say that at a party, and you’re in like Flynn.

• Today’s Latin (and life) lesson: “Ne nothi tere te”; or “Do not let the bastards grind you down.”

• How is your impulse control?  For instance, when the going gets tough, are you doubling down the deed to your home (or equivalent) at the local casino?  Or when you break up with someone, well-juiced, you break a new land speed record on the local freeway?  Or you just have a habit that you wish you didn’t have, and this might be an inexorable slide to the dark side?

• President Joseph Biden is a widower — Neilia Hunter died in 1972 — who remarried once, to Jill Jacobs, in 1977.  Former President Donald Trump is a divorcée, who remarried twice — Ivana Zelníčková, married from 1977 to 1990, Marla Maples, from 1993 to 1999, and Melania Knauss, married in 2005.

• There is hope for those with the affliction of alcoholism.  Alcoholics Anonymous meetings are available worldwide.

• I do like America.  I can write whatever I need to write, without fearing for federal level assault.  The food is fine, I like Hollywood, and the sports teams.  The climate, and promises of freedom, has attracted talent.

• “Hey, you, over here.  This food is sh*t.  Where’s the bathroom, loser?  You’re not answering.  Are you drunk?  Loser, you’re not answering me!!  I’m a US citizen, I have rights!!!”

• We’re so glad we moved to Montréal.  The French Canadians really make you feel at home.  The food is phenomenal, fresh from the Maritimes.  Public transit is available all over the city, and the suburbs.  This was the smartest decision we have ever made.

  Montréal is seventy-five percent French-speaking, while Québec City is ninety-five percent French.  I have been brushing up on my French for months, in anticipation of the move, but now we made it.  To someone with a very strong Canadian heritage, it feels great to be among my people.  Ô Canada!  Terre de nos aïeux.  O Canada, we stand on guard for thee...

  Reproductive rights are uncontested, North of the border.  Unlike American gun proliferation, massacres very rarely happen in Canada.  Unlike the many rude Americans, Canadians are all polite.  When you step on a Canadian’s toe, they say they’re sorry.  That kinda polite.

  Many claim with authority that Justin Trudeau is the next Kennedy (without a Dealey Plaza possible, because they are not gun-happy).  No Canadian leader has ever been assassinated.  Everyone enjoys making Canada a great nation.  No one even quarrels.

  And about that aforementioned eats, how can you do better than Tim Horton»s for donuts.  Krispy Kreme, and Dunkin Donuts, meet Tim Horton.  My aunt in Canada said a Horton franchise is a license to print money, and was she ever right.  Canadians eat more sugar than almost any other nationality.  Just consider the climate.

• Let’s all hear it for the status quo!  Hip, hip, hurrah!!  Hip, hip— never mind.

• Premise logline: A very few years from now, oil excavators uncover a vent.  As it turns out, the vent is a breathing hole for an immense grub, one whose shell is the plates of the earth.  When it is finally born, it takes over the earth, as a parasitic moth pupa would, devouring all life.  A Family Robinson-type is the only survivor.  Here’s their story...

• Which great, American comedian is in the hallowed, ground-breaking and courageous, tradition of Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, and George Carlin?  All four broke major class, racial, and social barriers.  Each can be said in the same breath.

• I’m working on my comedy bits for a special I’m doing for HBO.  Most comedians refuse to do Holocaust jokes, let alone open with them, but I have one I’ve developed over five years.  Here goes.  When is the kitchen closed at Auschwitz?  It’s always closed.

  But there’s more: I do this impression of a Southern politician running for reelection, a Dixiecrat named John Spade.  Ready?

  “Did you ever notice how prisons have mostly men in them, but women are much the minority.  This violates the equal justice provision of the U.S. Constitution.  To equal out the prisons, it will now be a felon class violation to be a fat, ugly bitch.  That is right, my friends, fellow rally-goers, a felony, to be a what?  A fat, ugly bitch!  Hands over your heads.  A fat, ugly bitch!

  “Thank you.  God bless America.  Amen.  And arrest that guy in the back with the sign.  What does it say?  ‘Arrest fat, ugly bitches.’  Hey, very good, I love that guy’s style.”

• If someone says that they love you, don’t you feel truly blessed?  Do you return the favor, and reciprocate?  If you do feel that way, that you love them, would you say so?  Would you wait a month to get the courage, or resolve, to say you did as well, or would you tell them immediately?

• I don’t give orders around here, but I will make a suggestion: Buy a dictionary.  It doesn’t even have to be an English one, it can be Latin, French, Spanish, on and on...

• Live in the now, because ultmately, that’s all the agency you have.

• Which is your favorite day of the week?  If you said Monday, you work weekends.

• When working on something or other, do you mostly aim for perfection, or progress?

• “Serve your time.”  Advice many doctors give incoming freshmen and freshwomen to medical school.

• “Celebrating the greatest, anorexic, flat-chested women ever.  Just kidding, the Sunday New York Times (“All the news that fits”) celebrates instead, all those with massive mambos (yet toned), including, but not limited to: Dolly Parton, Christina Hendricks, Salma Hayek, Susan Sarandon, Sarah Jessica Parker, and on and on, the Milky Way Galaxy, sporting the over-the-shoulder boulder-holders, the.......”

• On Judgement Day, when the Great Creator, the Spirit in the Sky, has you on the ropes, interrogating you with questions such as: Did you employ any and all gifts given to you by birthright, did you make the most of your time there, and did you enjoy yourself?  Can you beat the rap, and get into Heaven?

• I am fairly tight with a buck.  I avoid spending money impulsively, I keep a nest egg for rainy days.  I use wish lists, so when I buy an item, I have thought about buying it for awhile.

  I do not gamble, as the house always wins.  This is how casinos stay in business, and gambling is how to throw away money.

• Science, and especially the field of electrical engineering, has long concerned itself with electromagnetic energy, and fields, as well as the spectrum of light energy.  Yet could there be another type of energy, similar as sinosoidal wave forms, but characterized by its origin, homo sapiens, and not capacitors and transistors.  In other words, can humans project energy, and brain waves, across distances, even distances very substantial?  Is this telepathy, or this energy of another dimension, only the province of science fiction, or of a biblical heaven?

• Who knows what the years ahead will bring you, as well as your family, your town, this nation, and our world.

• If worse comes to worse, write, or email, your Senator.  That culvert will not overrun with rainwater anymore.

• If you expect very little, there is very little chance that you’ll be let down.  Just saying.

• There is much to be said for the Mennonite Amish.  They eschew materialism, in favor of appreciation of the Holy, and the spiritual.  Things don’t matter as much as people do.  They also seem to be somewhat socialist: Witness the barn raisings, and that they may have been one of the last to adopt currency in their affairs over barter, or even, outright giving.  I am too 21st-Century to ever go this route, but it is encouraging to note that some still don’t need the trappings of civilization to not only survive, but to thrive.

  
  
  

• Are there any Christians who believe in war, versus, say, Quakers, who abhor all war?

• This would be helpful info, at least for conscientious investors: Require that companies with over one hundred employees report median income by race and gender.  This way, one can see if there are salary biases due to workforce composition.  The Equal Opportunity Commission (EOC) may require this already, but no one ever hears of reports such as these.

• “...Yes, I admire Hitler.  I like to hurt people...  No, I love to hurt people.  What can I do in that capacity?  I mean, as an officer of your corporation.  Let me interject.  Is the employee cafeteria well-stocked?...”

• You may have the great misfortune of having someone in your life who only steals your faith.  Then again, you may be so blessed as to have someone else restoring that faith.

• Who’s winning the battle of the sexes?  Assuming there was ever a battle that anyone could win.  I would tend to think that the Eighties went to the women, and since then, gender inequality has taken hold, with women losing ground.  What do you think?

  Men control the factors of productions, and women generally rear children, and raise families.  Women can, and often do, feel dissatisfied about their role in society, that of cook, maid, babysitter, and unpaid mistress.

  How to remedy a millenia-old problem?  The first step is to realize that a problem exists, isn’t it?  What do you think is a woman’s position in the family and society, in the Twenty-First Century?  What should a woman be satisfied doing in today’s world?  All she is capable of doing?  Just saying.

• Have you had any nemesis, or guardian angel, in your life?

• Will anything be remembered (or forgotten) of today?  Much or nothing, for a week, a year, or a lifetime?  For me, there’s easily upwards of a hundred memories — mostly happy — that have last a lifetime.  I have lived near 20,000 days.

• We used to call it the ultimate favor.  Now, it’s called a supper at a Michelin Three-Star like Le Cirque, or a Mickey Dee happy meal.

• Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., who wrote major novels such as Player Piano, and Slaughterhouse-Five was once quoted as saying: “Pity the reader.”  For my purposes when writing, this means make your point first, then embellish later with New York Times Book Review vocab, and complex sentence structure.

• Opening voiceover: “Forget earthly justice, we all know how easily that can be gamed.  Consider, if you will, interstellar justice, hardly intergalactic justice, that’s a bit rich — enough going on within our Milky Way galaxy.

  “Cause when the ark need be here, some will go home, and some won’t.  What ark, what other solar, planetary system?  Objects in motion remain in motion, accel when jet boosted, yes?  Jet fuel capacity not a constraint.  186,000 miles a second for light a bit overestimated, yes?  Our neighbors say hi from not-so-deep space.

  “No, no, no, the naysayers nay, yet the earthquake 2.0 for 2024 seismically epicentered, Lebanon, New Jersey at exactly 6:00:00pm.  Rolled through this locale 6:00:20pm, I checked time.gov as it did.  Twenty seconds to propagate, yes?  Our Creator has a most accurate timekeeper.  Get aboard the ark, if ye may, yes?  Why wait on Heaven to honor cries for justice?  Mister Welles said, just sayig

• Writing is best concise and compact, with an economy of expression.

• One must have very low self-esteem to rely on skin color, and thus, racism, to boost one’s ego.

• Nearing what could be a bleak situation, think of what you could learn from the experience.  This can help to allay fears.  (At least for me — I approach new situations as learning opportunities.)

• In a Star Trek-like utopia, all laws could be obeyed without law enforcers.  Everyone will be enlightened knowing that laws protect the innocent, and save lives.  Therefore, the entire criminal justice system will be obsolete, the populace will have full respect for the law.  This will bring us to universal altruism.

  Next up in solving the world’s problems, economic inequity will be resolved.  Once these two issues are no longer front burner — social order and the end of poverty — we shall return to the Garden of Eden.  We’d just need to “make it so.”

• How crimes are adjudicated: First, a crime is reported.  Then, victims are identified, as well as witnesses of the crime.  Next, time, and location, where the crime was committed are noted.  The exact codicil of the penal code infraction is established.  With this information, a jury can be convened, a trial held, with relevant witnesses, and a verdict found.  If found guilty by a jury, a jail sentence, or a fine, is handed down by a judge who bore witness to the proceedings.  In America, the guiding policy is: One is innocent, until proven guilty.

• Final score, courtesy Wikipedia: Gaza Palestinians, 33,729+ (66% to 90% civilian, depending upon source); Israeli Zionists, 1.500 (824 civilians, 676 security forces).  Israel won, right?  It’s just a game, isn’t it?  Isn’t it?...  [Obfuscated, such a touchy subject around here about the slaughter, and is reportage fair and balanced.  Let’s keep in perspective the horrors of war.]  4/14/24.

• I have said many times here, “Repeal 2A.”

• Music tends to sound better louder, unfortunately for my hearing.

• A quick, informal poll: Do you feel more or less safe when a police officer is nearby?  Okay, that’s an easy one.  Would you marry a police officer?

• Rated NC-17 for explicit sex (you can’t say I didn’t warn you): A working class couple double-dates with the husbands in the front seat of the car, and the wives in the back.  A middle class couple double-dates with one married couple in the front seat, and the other married couple in the back.  An upper class couple double-dates with one husband in the front, and his wife in the back, and the other husband in the back, with his wife in the front.

• To get better service, be nice to staff.

• If you don’t at least like yourself, you’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who will as well.

• “...It’s all good.”  “No, it’s all bad.”  “Well, then, you have to do something about that — anything?”

• Those in public service speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, such as the elderly and the handicapped, or any other minority righteously protected from the majority.  This is by definition, but does bear repeating: Public service represtatives represent those in the public arena who cannot represent themselves, or at least represent themselves with much effect.

  Politics is all too often, rival-dismissive bloodsport, when at its essence is a representative form of governance, one protecting the minority from the majority, or the good from the unholy.

• God loves almost everyone, but some need to earn God’s love, and there are some who are beyond redemption.

• Donald Trump for Vice President!  Hey, wait, we like Makala.  Trump for the Cabinet.

• How do you remain in god’s good graces?

• We were given the keys to Heaven.  Can we ever unlock the gates?

• “Is this City of Hope, Century City?  Okay, please tell your boss this.  I want him.  And when I want Spielberg, God gets Spielberg.  Check your caller ID—see?  I hope you enjoy your day.  Yeah, you have a nice day.  King of Cinema, check.  Click...  Yes, I’m back, for a movie idea, I had.  Avoid ambiguity, check.  Click.”

• “Other Letter, all must be bland, milquetoast.”  “Hoidy-toidy, mamby-pamby, pasty-white?”  “That’s the spirit!”  “Gotcha!”

• Earthquake.  Eclipse.  Arc arrives.  Arc leaves with a chosen people, to the tune of Babs, Céline, techno, and Floyd...

• Who’s in?  Who’s out?  [Establishing social cohorts.]

• Have a little fun before you keel over and, well...

• Who’s that guy?  Every woman in the place wants him.  What’s he got, that I don’t?

  Jack, I heard he reads The Other Letter.

  Oh, so that’s his secret.  I’ll pick up a copy today at the newsstand.

  Jack, it’s online only.

  Then time to fire up the Amiga.

  Jack, the what?

  I never upgraded my PC, it’s from 1982.  Anyhow, how much does this Other Letter cost?

  It’s free, but I heard the blogger wants to start charging money and limit access, you know, like with porn sites.

  It’s a porn site?

  No, Jack, no porn, just good reading.

  Geez, I hope he doesn’t start charging money.

  I doubt it.  Other Letter is good, but it’s not that good...

• Whatever happened to Tank Man?  This is the Chinese protester who stood in the path of tanks during the 1989, Tiananmen Square massacre.  Was he “reeducated,” was he executed?  Are there any parallels to America today?

• If you cannot be grateful for a little, you won’t be grateful for a lot.

• God is said to not create junk.  Although, I would suggest that some of the Creator’s work needs work.

• Passive prayer is a request to one’s god to accomplish something that cannot be accomplished on one’s own.  I would say this is a last resort, that if you need something done, you need to do it, DIY.  Forces need to be marshalled, perhaps besides yourself, but of this Earth.

  Passive prayer has its place, I would say in desperation, or when things seem unquestionably hopeless.  Otherwise, look around you, not above you, to get you through.  Even channel people you know, which for some is knowing Jesus the Christ.

  For some, passive prayer has a side benefit, it may align you with your god, prepare you for a course of action, so if you do your share of the sought goal, god will do the rest.

  The Creator has imbued Creation, essentially all of humanity, with enough resources at their disposal to remedy most ills.  Especially in this day and age.  Anyhow, just saying.

• My father was one of the best, perhaps the best, electrical engineer, and systems analyst, at Sperry Rand, when the defense industry was the largest industry on Long Island.  I found a paper he wrote for work in 1966, where he derived the equations for satelite navigation (he passed away in 2022).  I need to run this by an intellectual property attorney that the family knows, because my father may have been the father of GPS, the global positioning system.  Not bad, eh?

• A most satisfying experience (no, not that experience): Making a purchase, within budget, and getting much more value than you paid to get.

• I was blessed with the greatest parents ever.  They were always understanding, and generous with their time.  Mom and Dad said to stand up for myself when needed, they wanted me to be tolerant and accepting of all peoples (which I believe I am), and they showed me right from wrong (in a house of Lefties).

• As in the Holocaust, the good are attacked by the evil, because the latter is out-classed by the former.

• Anyone with United States citizenship, is entitled to the rights contained within the U.S. Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, and enhanced by the Americans with Disabilities Act.  The latter guarantees accomodation to the handicapped regardless of its cause.  This includes brain chemistry, stroke, paralysis, and on and on.  If you feel the handicapped should be deprived of basic civil liberties, you belong in China, where rights are not so formalized, or even exist.

• Here’s hoping this election season does not devolve into acrimonious name-calling (the candidates have been already chosen by the way, Donald Trump, the challenger, and Joseph Biden, the incumbent).  Maybe this Presidential election will only be about the issues, and not about insults into one’s health (Biden), or marital infidelity (Trump).  Clean campaigns without cheap shots, say much about a democracy that has been admired (although on and off) for almost two-hundred-and-fifty years.

• How is hate speech defined?  While there is not a universal definition, the Cambridge Dictionary defines it as:

  “public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation.”

  The exact words are not given as examples of hate speech, however.  Animal analogies are common in expressing anger, but this is not hate: Snakes are slithery, and sneaky; pigs overeat, and are slovenly; hyenas are out of control; and vultures are predators.  Of the four animals, the most offensive used in expressing anger should be vulture.

  This is hate, calling someone: A m*th*rf*ck*r, implies an incestuous relationship with one’s own mother, and implies a complete lack of character.  C*cks*ck*r is hate speech, because it suggests that one’s primary business is to give fellatio, and so is completely unmasculine.

  Saying someone is a body part is not hate, everyone has the body part.  Assh*l* is an example, everyone has one.  Used often though, and not remediable (as an elderly shut-in), it may constitute a pattern of abuse, and harassment.  Then, there is obscenity, but not the hate speech, of calling someone the very offensive, but not hate speech term, c*nt.  Calling someone a d*ck is not hate speech.

  The most offensive hate speech belittles one’s sexuality, race, or religion, as inferior to the rest of humanity (usually White people).  Nazis use these terms often, but they’re certainly not limited to genocide-seeking crazies.  African Americans are afflicted with the term n*gg*r, and Caucasians with the term n*gg*r-lover.

  Everyone has heard the Jewish hate, and for the sake of decency, I will not list them here.  Nazis use them all the time in their evil hatemongering, doing Satan’s work in subjugating or exterminating all but Whites.  The problem is singling out by race, or religion, which one is born with, and can do nothing about.

  Using a term to disparage a nation of origin is also hate speech.  Examples include: sp*c for Hispanics; g**k for Asians; and possibly, t*w*l-h**d for Indians.  Use of this language can result in hate crime charges, especially when used repetitively, and outside of any argument, or taunting, where people just fly off the handle.

  Calling someone a f*gg*t disparages either a heterosexual, or a homosexual.  It is hate speech to gays who cannot change their orientation, and to straights who are lumped with gays who they might not understand, and find just their very exisence offensive.

  Sticks and stones may break my bones, but sometimes names can really damage...

• I would work on home projects with varying degrees of accuracy — I would satisfactorily get the work done.  My Dad would do similar work, and the work would be, generally-speaking, perfect.  He had many skills, including raising us kids with kindness, values, and ethics.

• Isn’t tax time taxing?  Couldn’t the U.S. tax code, especially Form 1040, be simplified, and made shorter, without Congress and paid tax preparers going to war?  Tax preparers benefit from byzantine tax code, and Congress probably levies more tax (givng them bigger budgets) when there is more taxing applied.  Just saying.

• Have you, and do you, stand up for what is right?  Or do you just hide the truth under the rug?

• For the record, here is an article I wrote recently, entitled, “Are the police given short shrift?”

• There are two kinds of police officer, an officer of the law, and an officer of the peace.  The former are known as sticklers, real difficult types; while the latter are known better as peace-makers, settling domestic issues, and even, bar fights.  A police department made up entirely of the latter, would suit me fine.

• In 1920, George Herman Ruth, The Babe, was traded from the Boston Red Sox, to the New York Yankees.  For the next eighty-six years, the Red Sox, because of the “curse of the Bambino,” did not win a World Series.  Or that’s how their paucity of championships was always explained.

  In 1986, Red Sox Nation almost emerged victorious with the best-of-seven title, but lost game seven with the “Buckner ball,” an easy grounder up the first base line, muffed by Bill Buckner.

  The curse of the Bambino was finally broken in 2004, as the Red Sox defeated the Saint Louis Cardinals in a four-game sweep.

  Maybe some are thinking, this is New York why not root on the Yankees?  I do like the Mets, but not the Yankees.  To me, and others, they are the best team money can buy.  New York is a major market, and Boston is not.  The Yankess consistently are in the top five of thirty teams in salary, in Major League Baseball.  GO RED SOX NATION!

  [I should probably add that my family is from Boston.  Plus, who doesn’t like an underdog, especially an historic all-time one?]

• Immoral conduct is much more difficult to defend in any argument, than the moral variety.  At the core of most arguments is a call for justice, and immorality does not mix with justice.

• Each religion is most proud of a particular facet of their faith.

  Christians strive to be as kind and good as Jesus the Christ.

  Jews are known amongst themselves as the chosen people, and believe in family, education, and prosperity (probably in that order).

  Muslims are very diligent in maintaining moral conduct, and the devout pray five times daily in the direction of Mecca.

  I mostly believe in a combination of each belief system, although my God is around us, not above us; and I know it as Creation, brought to us by a Creator.  (If you sense any bias, my family was Jewish.)

• Success is relative.  There are people who work their tail off their entire life, yet don’t seem to get very far financially.  Others can coast through life, and have unusual success.  The former can stand proud.  Anyone who diligently improves the lives of others, is a success in most books.

  Unlucky, unfortunates who got a raw deal, and could never ‘prove their stuff,’ are a bit of an exception.  To them, success became much less important than simple survival.

  Many have combinations therein, they have done much by one measure, but not by another.

• Do you feel beaten by life, or the American Dream?  Never give up.  Speak to someone, a counselor, a family member or a relative, a friend, or call 988.  Help is always available.

  Depending, there may be times when one is facing much adversity, and plowing forward is the best course, just keep going ahead, or just keep keeping on.  You can give up on many things in life, but giving up on life itself, must never be one of them.

  This is talking about life in the philosophical abstract, yet I often just stay on track, regardless of simpilicity of purpose: I go about the business of life, even though there are lots of distractions, and even, detractors.

  If you find yourself in a difficult, even an untenable or tumultuous, situation, try to learn something from the experience.  That’s what I do, and I am better for it.  (As they say in 12-Step: Just sharing my strength, hope, and experience.)

  I don’t have the statistics, and if they’re available, they may not even be accurate, but do African Americans have an unusually statistically-significant rate of suicide?

  Because of continual discrimination, racism, and oppression, the urge to take one’s life may be acute, and the abnormal suicide prevalence among Blacks may not be entirely unexpected.

  (Just might be a good idea to raise the topic as sweeping under the rug life’s ills may lead to suicide.)

• I had a nice meal tonight: filling, nutritious, yet not too many calories.  What did I eat, you ask?  Eggs scrambled in a pat of melted butter, polenta pre-packaged then heated, salad with tomatoes, and a half of a bagel with strawberry preserves.

• “I’m survival of the fittest.  I’m Darwinian, that’s me, so Darwinian.  Add Machiavellian to the mix, and I’m gangbusters to get ahead — gangbusters!”

• Given that the IRS reviews every tax return for accuracy, they must have all the documents necessary to compute the return themselves.  A lifelong Democrat would vote for Trump if he simplified the tax code down to the IRS just returning a receipt — of a refund, or an amount owed — half way through January.

• What do police officers have in the trunk of their patrol cars?  That’s right, a picnic basket.  Ever hear the expression: “Go to the trunk”?

• When doing laundry, a full bottle cap is too much detergent.  Launderers should use the marks inside the cap to determine the amount of detergent poured.  This laundry tip brought to you by your eco-friendly blog, The Other Letter.

• I had wondered here if there really was an atom-splitting super weapon.  Well, Russia supposedly has the nuclear bomb, but hasn’t dropped it on the Ukraine.  Why is that?  Maybe Russia doesn’t have the bomb to drop, even a scaled-down atomic bomb.  Maybe, no one does.  Maybe Hiroshima and Nagosaki were more fire bombings as in Dresden...

  If there is no such thing as metals on the Periodic Table of the Elements with strange, explosive properties, then the nuclear arms race is a war deterrent, it is nuclear poker.  Everyone has the same hand, equipped with boondoggle weapons that don’t work, but everyone thinks everyone else has the bomb.

  No nation dare attack any nation suspected of being a nuclear power.  How is there so much energy in a pound of uranium at room temperature, or any temperature?  Hats off to Albert Einstein.  He said there is explosive amounts of energy in basic metal.  I say, Putin, why not light the fuse then.

• Any reference to time that begins a sentence, is followed by a comma.  The same for time references at the end of a sentence.  Today, I am going to my house of worship to pray for Baltic and Gazan people.  I went to the mall, everyday last week.  By Sunday, did this set some kind of record?  You really need a pause between the reference to time, and the rest of the sentence.

• You’ve heard people say, “You’re God!”  Yet, what if that were an elected position, that somehow someone could be chosen as God.  I know, for one, that I do not possess the eternal patience, iron man stamina, and even the perpetual bon homie (good will) to be God.  I just gotta be me.  Cue, Sammy Davis, Junior.

• Guys have a tendency to always look for upgrades to an existing relationship, even if what they have satisfies on many counts.  For instance, there’s a new woman in accounting who looks like Kate Upton or Gwyneth Paltrow (who still looks good these days).  You have a long-term relationship with Betty, but you want Sue now (Kate or Gwyneth).

  I would suggest that unless Betty is getting into drink or smoke, stick with Betty.  I’m gearing up to write an advice column for the New York Times entitled, natch, An Other Advice Column.  Each week, I’ll field questions about romance, dating, and sex.  Pay will be nominal to start, but Times editors claim it could go to high four figures.  We shall see.

• If I may reiterate for new readers here: Have a little fun before you die; and try not to be an a-hole.

• I was leafing through a industrial office supplies catalog I get fairly regularly (not sure why I’m on their mailing list).  Usually, I am better shopping the retail chain for these items, but this time I found some interesting, humorous things I could buy if I was very, very flush with cash.  Labels to put on any object: “OK TO SHIP” (on a window. say); “MON” (Monday); and “LIVE ANIMALS” (on a shoebox, for instance).

  These labels come in rolls of 500 so I will always be ready to use them with my work as a writer (of sorts, I guess), to give them away, or to use discreetly on various paperwork for anyone else.

• Sugar and Honey, together forever, made for one another.  Blessed be their union of souls.  Now, is this more of a physical relationship or an emotional one?  Both?  Then in what proportion?

• A hidden factory is a term in economics (and management theory) describing workers who do nothing constructive, and who do not add to the bottom line of profitability, or who do not otherwise produce anything of utility.  Yet they are kept on, because they erroneously appear to be worthy of further employment.  Their lack of usefulness is hidden.

• I took a temp job in Downtown Manhattan in 1985.  It was a two hour commute each way: a half hour to the train station; an hour to Penn Station; and a half hour on the Number Two train (if I am not mistaken it was the local, not the Number Three, the express).  That’s four hours of commuting.  I made decent money for about a month.

  But that’s not why it wasn’t really working out.  This was trade processing for Citicorp, on Wall Street.  I wrote a ticket for a trade for $32 million that, was it JP Morgan, DK’ed — they didn’t expect it.  The trade was not processed.  Anyhow, I did make decent money for about a month.

  In retrospect, I think they may have been pulling my leg.  In other words, why are you commuting four hours a day?  Remember us with this bogus trade.  Jobs later in my career were much more local, understandably.

  [In case you’re wondering if I attempted to steal $32 million.  A, I don’t steal; and B, $32 million doesn’t just walk away, $32 million doesn’t go unnoticed in the Canyons.  Besides the money, you know what was also good about this little adventure, the Au Bon Pain sandwich shop, and the sushi by Battery Park, which I could easily afford.]

• I understand the “grand mosaic.”  How to determine where someone might live from just income level, and personality.

  Here is an example: A wealthy person speaks highly of their educational background, and they seem citified somehow, that is, very comfortable mixing with others.  I would say they are from the Jewish enclave of Five Towns in Western Nassau County (near the New York City borough of Queens): Woodmere; Inwood; Lawrence; Cedarhurst, and “The Hewletts.”

  Or say someone has more modest beginnings, rather humble but affable, and now in management.  They may be from Levittown.  If someone works in the financial district in Lower Manhattan (as I did many moons ago), they may be very local to Manhattan, say in Western Queens.

  Another dimension besides socioeconomic class is political affiliation.  Some towns on Long Island lean Left, and some lean Right.  Those that seem more hawkish than dovish, or more orthodox probably live in towns where they’re like their neighbors.

  There are plenty of other examples, but I have been able to do this several times, and those who I can say where they’re from, tell me this is uncanny (and I do not use those online database sites).  All this might have implications for forensic research.

• Who is your favorite U.S. President?  Mine is Thomas Jefferson, in spite of the fact that he owned over two-hundred African Americans.  Mister Jefferson was responsible for the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, freedom of expression, speech, and the press.  A people will perish without the ability to redress grievances (hmm, China?)

• Did you ever hear a song that seems so unnaturally self-satisfied, and conceited, that you wonder why it was ever made.  Doris Day sang along the lines of Everyone Loves Me, which would qualify as a conceit song, except she’s so sweet and wholesome, it didn’t come off as a conceit song.

  She also pulled this off because the next clause of that lyric, is everybody loves me, since I met you, you did very well by me.  Ms. Day turned what could be a conceit song, into a beautiful sentiment of love, a love song.

• African Americans tend to be more social than Caucasians, and sociometric studies have shown that Blacks have many more summer barbecues than Whites.  Blacks are also more comfortable working the night shift, and eating food with unpronounceable, anti-caking ingredients, like monophosphate triglycerides, also found in laundry detergent.  Blacks have their own music, and I do not mean Michael Jackson.

• Premise: A full-blood Navajo, Matt Damon, meets Plains woman, Ashley Judd, on the trail West.  They discuss routes, and the Navajo guarantees safe passage to ORegon, if she does just one thing.  That’s right, teach him the English language, as they mostly faux sign language one another.  Drama a plenty, as the Navajo saves Ashley from savage attacks.  Hilarity ensues as Ashley tries to get Matt to say the word, “Mississippi.”  Matt explains to Ashley the thirty words that Navajos have for different types of snow.

• “Today might be a good day.”  There are peoples over the course of human history, that could not say even that.  Because of persecution, war, poverty, or disease, they simply kneew a good day was impossible — and if you’d imagine this grimness was more recent than the Holocaust, you would be correct.

• Improvement is the approach to perfection.  Perfection is the final, ultimate goal.  On a spiritual basis, one improves towards perfection, but never reaches it, because a perfect human, is no longer human, they have crossed an uncrossable threshold, they have become the unthinkable, a god, with all the powers invested therein.

• There’s nothing wrong with Catholics not wanting abortions for themselves, or campaigning to stop the practice for anyone in their Church.  What riles me, and plenty of others, is when the Catholic Right tries to end reproductive rights for those who aren’t even Christians.  Your body is all yours to reproduce, Catholic Right, same goes for anyone else.

  A human embryo, in the first trimester, is the morphological equivalent of a worm.  Embryos are not people.  Granted, an abortion is not a welcome procedure, yet it prevents teen motherhood, unplanned parenthood, family drain on resources, and welfare moms.  Back room abortions will take the place of the safe reproductive care of Roe v. Wade.  Thankfully, the Catholic Left can be, and are in significant numbers, right-to-choose.

  An aside, abortion clinics have been bombed by domestic terrorists, but never anti-abortion clinics.  Why is that?  Abortions save women’s lives, their futures, prevent children unwanted by their biological parents, and has for millenia.  You are free to dislike my op-ed pieces, my “letters to the editor.”  This is America.  Get off my back.  Just read something else; or write your own blog (with Wordpress, Joomla, or Drupla, e.g.).  Otherwise, good riddance.

  (Here’s a little joke: What do you call a Catholic who’s right-to-choose?  A Jew.)

• (I’m trying to make this as PG as possible.)  Premise: A couple back from a Vegas wedding, is enjoying their marital responsibilities when the husband, wanting to try something new, brings out handcuffs, and handcuffs his wife.  She laughs at first, then says, “na, unlock them.”  The husband cannot find the lock.

  At 2AM, they finally find a locksmith to unlock the handcuffs.  The locksmith visits, and cannot unlock the handcuffs, tries to look the other way, charges $100 for after-hours call.

  The in-laws have flown in for lunch from Atlanta to meet the woman for the first time.  The couple knew this.  They try to cancel lunch.  The couple cannot get in touch with the in-laws in time.

  The in-laws drop in.  The husband pulls a sweater over his wife, but cannot fit her arms in the sleeves, because, well, she’s handcuffed still.  The husband said his wife took ill, she doesn’t join the husband for lunch in their dining room.

  The wife is heard calling her husband to help her.  He ignores her pleas, explaining to his in-laws that she has a fever of 105°, and she just has to be kept separated from everyone else...

• To my detractors, and erstwhile editors: This is my blog, not your blog.  If you want your opinion heard, write your own blog, do not expect your opinion to appear on my blog.

• We have it good in America.  We can do whatever the Hell we want — within the law.  The United States is an affluent nation.  We have the resources, and oftentimes, the inclination, to care for the poor.  Laws are in place, and enforced (or enforced upon judicial review), to protect the vulnerable.

• What exactly is worthy of contempt?

• Respect is deserved, as is contempt.

• I’m practicing my Navajo: “Muka du moot fomel, den ut das mud, crub.”  I was going to take my Indian, or my Husqvarna, to the Black Hills for the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally.

  [Canadian Edition of OL.  I feel obligated to mention: Always wear your helmet; obey all speed limits; have burial plans established; or go legally off-road,  My uncle and my cousin rode dirt, motocross bikes competitively, down in Boston.]

• When might you make this remark? “That’s alright — for now.”  For me, it is about reaching my goal weight.

• Where is the Battle of the Bulge won: the kitchen table, or the gym?  We asked several experts at the annual food and fitness convention in Stuttgart, and they had this—oh, never mind.

• This world needs fewer hawks, and more doves; fewer fighters, and more lovers; as well as less marchers, and more dancers.

• [This item has strong material about lynching.]  Billie Holliday was a famous blues singer from the 1930s to 1950s.  One song that was a staple in her repertoire was Strange Fruit.  This is an upbeat, double-time song about what?  You guessed it, lynching.  What is strange fruit?  You guessed this.  An African American hanging from a tree.  They are just tree fruit, kinda strange at that.  The South could not get any more virulently racist than that.  Pass the air sickness bag.

• “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  Yet, sometimes they do know exactly what they’re doing.  What then, what spiritual recourse then?  Well, they live by the wrong god, not one of love, but one of war.

• There’s good, worthwhile science, which produces logical conclusions, and doesn’t obfuscate.  Then, there is very weak science which confuses, and generally exists to fulfill some economic agenda.

• At the 2024 Grammys, Joni Mitchell, who’s eighty-years-of-age, sang “Both Sides Now”.  And you know what?  She reached every note — such a pleasant surprise.  I thought this would be cringe-worthy, but not at all, she had full command of her voice.  The legend from Canada lives on.

• When choosing a significant other, all roads lead back to the one you love the most.

• I heard it said that men make the best choice from a pair of alternatives, while women make the best choice from many alternatives.

• Ever been to a place where everyone is walking around, half-dead?  Did you speak to management about it?

• There are coaches that can trounce yours with his (or hers), as well as trounce his (or hers) with yours.  The Green Bay Packers’ Vince Lombardi in football was one, UCLA’s John Wooden in basketball was another, the New York Giants’ Bill Parcells in football is another, and Bill Belichick formerly of football’s New England Patriots is another all-time winner.

• Have you ever taken the time to review your own mortality, and your time on this Earth?  Did you accomplish all in life that you had hoped?  Have you been taking care of your health?  So you’ll likely have a long life, and you’re somewhat assured that you will?  Are there areas that you may have come up a little short, but you have a good idea why you did?

• Look at the bright side: You showed up, and you tried.  At minimum, you get partial credit.

• People pointing a finger at you, are really pointing four fingers at themselves.  —12 Step

• If you can afford nothing else for your home library, you should at least have a dictionary (not a Latin one) — and you should have a current library card.

• Do you ever get the impression that long-standing facilitators of personal happiness are finally going your way?

• When you were in school, were you there to learn, or were you there for grades, getting good grades?  My generation had the luxury of being there to learn, and I could be wrong, but I’m afraid later generations, because of competitive pressures, are in school solely to “get the grades.”

• “At least in Hell, you know you’re there for a reason.”

• Do you honor the magnificence of Creation with your life, your acts, your good works and good will, as well as your aspirations?  Those that reflect the nobility of all that people are capable of accomplishing, are blessed with good health, and a long life.

• For all of you history buffs: The Nazis occupied France from May 1940 until Paris was liberated by the Allies on August 25th, 1944, and then all of France by December, 1944.  Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army on January 27th, 1945.  WWII ended on September 2nd, 1945.

  (WWII armistice is the day, by no small coincidence, that 59 years later, the Other Letter domain was registered, on September 2nd, 2004.  I celebrate both anniversaries, some celebrate neither.)

• Stenciled onto the door of the private jet of Elvis Presley is this acronym, “TCB,” or taking care of business.  From a dirt-poor upbringing in Mississippi, he made a real, incredible life for himself, one cut short by prescription pills.

• A journey of a thousand miles, begins with a single step.

• As China is not well known (to me, at least) for honoring human rights, what do they do with underperforming factory cogs?

• “I’m going into S & P 500 futures.  That, or corn futures, depending on the Fed’s meeting today.  My thinking: Say I go long index futures, and the economic growth is flat, then spurring the economy, easy money, inflationary pressures, will of course, eat into my return.  I’m out of the money.  But say interest rates rise, benchmark Treasury above five percent, the stock basket is overvalued, but fixed-income bond futures are a better bet.  A sweetener equal to inflation, is added to interest rates to counter tight money.  I could have a hedge strategy for the futures: Go long and go short concurrently, but that’s a bigger outlay, up-front.  More commissions, contracts that aren’t resold, not in the money, or realized at striking, exercise, fixed-price — the price I call the index stocks off the market at expiration into my possession.  This entire gambit depends on the Fed’s acknowledgement of Dutch tulip bulb production.  Does Powell acknowledge the rainy Amsterdam Spring?  Are my Fed tea-reading skills at par?”

• Art is worth the self-sacrifice needed to create greatness.  Just ask Michelangelo painting ceilings.

• Who doesn’t like an underdog story?  Although liking the underdog, loser-like, gets dicey, doesn’t it?  Then the question becomes, how does one define an underdog?  Perpetually behind the eight ball, unfavored and underrated, or loser-like, loser cum winner?  In the history of cinema, perhaps the most popular underdog story is the one about Rocky Balboa, shakedown loanshark cum championship boxer.

• “Now, I know for certain.  There is a God overseeing the show, the game, giving us the power to prevail over evil, yet a Creator sometimes not too pleased, although fails often self-corrected by Creation design.”

• “Repeal 2A.”

• “Global villager, right on, bro’, global villager in a global village.”

• To be a true, officer of the peace, one must be brave, committed to public service, and have a modicum of kindness.

• “You can tell that woman’s got her act together — fit and trim, healthy, and happy.”

• Remember when bumper stickers read, “Question Authority”?  Those years are over, but did you retain that spirit of skepticism, and independent inquiry?

• “What?!  Wait one second!  I can copy, then paste?!”

• This, too, shall inevitably pass.  The Earth shall turn.

• There’s this notion of what is and what is not cool.  Any age deals with what is really an impediment, a filter in place.  People of other nations don’t really deal with this the way that America does.

  I can’t say why that is, but being cool at any age is stifling, anti-intellectual, and U.S.-based.  There are cool things to do or listen to, but I don’t see how it should be a priority in relationships, to sound cool.

  There’s a difference between adroit usage of language, and unauthentic affectation or putting on airs.

• Procrastinators have very high standards, which is commendable, except they’re paralyzed trying to reach these lofty ideals.  Procrastination and perfectionism go hand-in-hand.

• Alcohol addiction can be just as devastating as being addicted to cocaine, as well as heroin, and oxycontin.  Drinking can give you the delirium tremens (the DTs), and give you water on the brain.  Booze does have in its favor, its cost, it is not so expensive to have a six-pack or two, habit a week.

  What is prohibitively expensive is narcotics, they will put you in the poor house indebted to very unsavory types, hocking all to pay for your habit.  Any way you cut it, substance abuse is a major public health issue, one exacerbated simply by the cost of financing your monkey.

• What is the most embarassing thing you’ve ever done, or had happen to you?  Did this involve alcohol, or other drugs?

• “Hmm, I like this stuff.  Where are the marshmallows?  Did anyone see the marshmallows?  Where’s my belt, oh—”

• Porn is not volunteer work.  It is all about the money.  No love lost.

• I was recently conducting a field study in the wilds of Bakyadea, at the bird feeder.  What do birds think of their plumage?  Because birds cannot think, or at least, think deep thoughts, I conluded my study.

  Yet, I did notice that the most distinctive feathers belong to the Cardinal, who was also the most paranoid bird in my study.  Mister Cardinal could hardly eat, he was looking around so much (he was all-red, not brownish-red as the female is).

  The reason for the discomfort dawned on me: Hawks can spot those bright red feathers from dozens of yards away, but not the munching-away, brown-camouflaged wrens and sparrows.

  There is a larger lesson in this for women and men who look much better or worse than average, who stand out in a crowd.  They might get a bit apprehensive wondering if they’ll be approached by, well, aggressive, hawkish types, looking for a meal ticket of one kind of another.

• Can you imagine if everyone on Earth reached their goal weight?  What a wonderful world this would be.  Sing it, please, Satchmo...

• There is a movement under foot regarding extreme disease.  It is called the Medical Aid in Dying Act.  Essentially, if enacted, this would allow for assisted suicide by pill.  I can see getting off all meds before death — say when the cure is worse than the disease — but really jump start the Grim Reaper?  I’ll tell you, if you need to die that bad, we can just get you a rope.  (Both my parents had cancer diagnoses, but apparently, as evidenced by MRI scans I found of theirs, they had no visible cancerous tumors.)

• There are certainly times, when it does indeed feel good to be alive.  Much of the time we’re just running around, trying to get stuff done, or “catching our breath” from such.

 

Who won?

Ginette Reno leads the Canadian National Anthem before a Montreal-New York hockey game.
(Attribution: Sports Net, ©2017.)

Ask Siri, or its equivalent, when was the last time Canada won the Stanley Cup.  You’ll see that it was in 1992.  Canada lives for ice hockey, it is their national sport.  The majority of hockey players in the National Hockey League are from Canada.  They export hockey players by the hundreds, but 1992 is the last time a Canadian hockey team won.

That team, to this day, is also the winningest team in all of the NHL, the Montreal Canadians, aka the Habitants, or Habs.  The owner of Madison Square Garden, Tex Rickard, in 1924, saw the “H” in Montreal’s uniform, and said it meant that they were habitants, or farmers.  Those farmers can sure play hockey, eh?

[I am half Canadian.]