nobody asked…

Subtitle: More Riddles for Eric…

Maybe it was a short journey from the git-go. Maybe it was simply a fulfillment of genetic destiny. Maybe it was a last-gasp, blood-curdling scream from deep within the tortured soul of a man who gave up smoking and was forced to eat couscous a couple of times. More likely, I’m just wacko. Whatever the trigger, I am deliriously happy to report that after years of trying, edging ever so close on occasion, I have now achieved a state of complete, blissful insanity. Yabba. Dabba. Doo…

Digging back into the stacks and listening to oldies/goodies that were favorites when they were fresh, there is always the danger of one of them becoming the earworm du jour. For those not familiar with that disgusting term, click on the word to see my earlier explanation.

In preparation for the previous post featuring America’s Horse With No Name, I listened to many renditions and covers, as well as several different versions of some other favorites of mine by America. Those include You Can Do Magic, Ventura Highway, and Tin Man.

The problem? Youse wants to know what the problem is? Well, Mr. and Ms. Wiseguy, I’ll tell you what the problem is. The problem is that I now have not one, not two or three, but FOUR OF THESE MOTHERBUMPING EARWORMS ALL PLAYING AT THE SAME FREAKING TIME. And I can’t seem to shut them off. Or even whittle it down to one. Or change the channel to something different. Old Rugged Cross. Tennessee Waltz. Doesn’t matter. Anything. But after a while, the strange mix becomes mine, all mine. It becomes me. I become one with the stream and doo doo doo dit all the way into nirvana and back. Flowing effortlessly over purple fields of candy. Following the sweet birds of youth, chanting and singing the words of the simpleton out by the pond. Smiling into the sunshine with eyes wide shut.

No, Oz never did give nothing to the tin man because he rode a horse with no name down the Ventura highway watching alligator lizards in the air while she repeats over and over you can do magic at the tropic of sir galahad…

La la la la… la la la la.. la la la la… laaaa…

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America was popular back when I was. This clip from 1973, is of the lads, Dewey, Dan, and Gerry, early in their career, performing their chart-busting Horse With No Name. Putting together this post, I found myself doing what I did when this cut came out on LP — listening to it over and over, trying to decipher the mesmerizing words and sounds. It is at once intriguing, depressing, uplifting, confusing, non-sensical, and contains the answers to the mysteries of life. Even if the writing and performing of the song were not chemically assisted, listening to it you begin to realize the song becomes the drug…

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If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts. — Albert Einstein

Most of us would probably agree that old Al was a fairly bright dude. And I think we know what he meant by this little jewel, especially in his fields of scientific and mathematical pursuits. After all, in addition to being one of the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, he was also known to have a very wry sense of humor. I seriously doubt he had in mind, or would approve of, the rewriting and spinning of facts and history as they unfold, a la Big Brother style.

Big corporations do it, as in Microsoft calling software bugs, features. Big government does it by telling us that the disaster in Iraq is going well and making progress. Politicians do it by saying whatever their people think the audience wants to hear, all sounding alike, and all telling convenient lies. And big media does it by spinning almost everything to their own purposes of advertising dollars, profits and their almighty god, share.

We as a people, as a culture, have such tremendous capability, such enormous opportunity. It is shameful that the zeitgeist of our time is written in lies, rewriting of history, spinning of facts, cheating, greed, and the most powerful nation ever to emerge on the planet being drained and sucked into bankruptcy and oblivion by an unwinnable guerrilla war against an unseen enemy in a godforsaken country halfway around the globe.

Meanwhile, the great beast of China quietly moves in and takes us over, just as we are being infested at a phenomenal rate by a seemingly unstoppable flow of millions of illegal aliens from south of the border. Some of you will object to these words. Check the labels on everything you purchased in the past month. Check the lines at the employment office, driver license station, Medicare/Medicaid office, or any human/family service agency. [Thanks! I needed that. Rant over...]

I do not like myself at my skeptical worst. I do not like the fact that I have let myself become that way. I do not like that I have little choice but to question everything, trust no one. It has always been my nature to accept everyone openly at face value, to trust them implicitly until given reason not to. That has always worked for me, other than with a couple of lowlife bottom feeders that had such a good act that it took me longer than normal to wake up. That trait so deeply colors who I am that I continue to trust individuals until they show different stripes. Having said that, I also admit that I do so through a more critical eye than in the past. It takes less to move me from trust to don’t trust than in the past.

Organizations, whether business, government, non-profit, religious, or other, have collectively lost my trust, at least until they prove trustworthy, and even then it is day-to-day. In the end, it all comes down to individuals. Individual trust is at the core of all relationships.

It would seem that we have come far afield from Einstein’s thought that kicked off this post. Or have we? Perhaps we’ve just come full circle. Some things to think about in the private echo chamber of your mind: Who do you trust? Do you trust more or less than in the past? How accepting are you when introduced to someone new? Do you approach the trusting of individuals differently than you do organizations? Is your overall trust level, especially as it applies to organizations, different than it was years ago? If so, why? If your trust level has shifted, are you at ease with that?

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Back in a little while… Y’all get the skillet greased up and hot…

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You would think I might have learned by now. You would think I know better. I have and I do. It never fails that if I publicly brag about the record or feats or ranking of one of the sports teams I root for, they screw up and make a fool of me. They do this on purpose, just to make me look bad. At one time I was naive enough to believe this was random coincidence, but I now know they do it just to hurt me.

So, I should never have bragged about my Tennessee Volunteers high poll position in the NCAA rankings. Last night, they did it to me again. They lost to a Kentucky team that has been in complete disarray all year. Oh, well, at least we were in the top 5 for a couple of days…

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New NCAA Mens Basketball rankings out today…

See that Big Orange Power T over there on the right. That’s my University of Tennessee Volunteers. The MEN, not the Lady Vols who we perennially expect to be there. As a matter of fact, the UT women continue to maintain the No. 2 spot in this week’s poll. But for the men to be up there in the thin air is astounding. The AP Poll even puts them at No.3! Many of you will readily recognize positions 2 through 4 as the Kansas Jayhawks, Duke Blue Devils, and North Carolina Tarheels. No one has ever actually spotted a jayhawk or tarheel, whatever the hell they are. Or a blue devil, for that matter.

Now, boys and girls, turn your attention to the extreme left end, to the school occupying the No. 1 position for the first time this year, or maybe since the earth cooled. That’s Memphis … the University of Memphis … or as we olde tymers around these parts are still fond of saying, Memphis State.

Tennessee owes its rise from the dregs of the SEC to 3rd year coach Bruce Pearl, while Memphis is guided by John Calipari. These two highly emotional and expressive basketball coaches … well, to say they don’t like each other would be like saying that there are people Hillary would rather invite for dinner than W. These guys reportedly despise each other, and that relationship has been growing for several years. Lucky they are 400 miles apart at opposite ends of the state.

Now mark your calendar for February 23 and listen for rumbling deep within the earth’s crust as the tectonic plates of Pearl in the east and Calipari in the west collide in Memphis. Something’s gotta give…

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So… this morning, following the AFC and NFC Championship Games yesterday, I go to SportsIllustrated.com to see who is saying what about the games. Just below the lead story, this caught my eye:

FREE TOM BRADY JERSEY

Immediately I was taken back to 1970 when young black and sympathetic white Americans were marching in the streets, carrying signs and wearing T-shirts with the message:

FREE ANGELA DAVIS

For those too young to remember, Ms. Davis, now a college professor in the U. of California system, was apprehended and jailed on charges linking her to the murder of Judge Harold Haley during an attempted Black Panther prison break. She was tried and acquitted, but has never relinquished her role as seeker of racial and gender justice and equality. That Angela Davis…

Back to Brady… I know that non-Patriot fans don’t like him. I know he made a couple of mistakes in the game. I know that there are probably plenty of jilted ladies who would love to see him behind bars. But, my god, he has just won 18 games in a row and is on his way to the Super Bowl to try for a perfect season. I can’t stand his type due to the cocky arrogance that seems to be his natural better-than-thou demeanor. But come on people, what has he done to deserve being locked up in the pokey?

 

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Funny… I already had this quote found, thot upon, keyed inta, and ready to post. My WordPress Writing section typically has a few quick and easy items ready to fill the gaps when I get too busy to think or too tired to type. The attribution on this one-liner was my personal prophet, the high priest of whatthefuck, George Carlin. I thought nothing of it as I keyed his name in a few days ago. Until yesterday…

While taking a break from installing and configuring a couple of workstations on a customer’s network, I made a stand-up visit to the necessary room. There, above the mirror, were these very same words:

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. — Author Unknown

This was a church, mind you. Their version had no attribution at all. I chuckled and wondered if they knew the source — the very same mouth that proclaimed the 7 Dirty Words.  Nah… if they had a clue they would not have hung that sign.

Today, with temperatures in the teens and unable to do much else, I got to thinking about it. Then I remembered that on Carlin’s site there are several long postings of things wrongly attributed to him. So I checked it out. This one was not listed there, but several other sites and quotation references show it as unknown. So, I’ll label it as such and hope that George doesn’t get too pissed if it really is his work.

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Thursday, January 17, 2008

Sunrise this morning finds Nashville and most of the Middle Tennessee area beginning the slow and dangerous process of digging out from the worst blizzard in recent memory. The entire region was buried in as much as 1/4 inch of heavy, wet snow. Some outlying area reported accumulations as much as 1/2 inch. Temperatures are not helping the dangerous conditions as thermometers plunged below freezing, dipping as low as 29 degrees in some parts of the area.

This photo from The Tennessean is accompanied by a caption that a Wal-Mart customer gets excited about the snow as he pushes his cart in the parking lot at Wal-Mart in Cool Springs.

Not everyone will be so thrilled, as motorists’ usual morning routines of driving while talking on cell phones, drinking coffee and eating bagels, will be made dangerous by the extremely wet pavement. Backroads and lesser used routes may not be free of snow sludge until late morning when the current 35 reading is expected to top 40.

Many area schools will be closed today to keep the children safe from each other. It is normal practice to include a number of snow days in the school year calendar. This arcane practice has roots in the days before global warming, which, of course, does not exist because Bush said it doesn’t. Regardless, the school superintendents have the flexibility of those built-in snow days to use as they see fit, for inclement weather conditions, failed infrastructure in the schools (heating, A/C, plumbing, internet connections), or because they just need a day off to get away from the little bastards.

Please continue to monitor your source of local weather information for news of the next winter storm that we also did not know was coming. And, be safe out there…

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Some of you have asked about the little captcha thingy I’ve been experimenting with. If you haven’t seen it, then you haven’t tried to leave a Comment. Shame on you, slovenly reader! Anyway, it is nothing more than an attempt to thwart some of the spambots that spew their filth and crud on any blog that will allow it. It is not the only defense I have here at nobody asked… but simply the newest addition to a growing arsenal.

Honestly, I don’t like having to wrestle with these things myself, especially the ones that Blogger uses… you know… the one with random letters in strange fonts you cannot read, and even if you can, it tells you you didn’t enter it correctly, and it takes 14 tries to finally get your comment accepted. I sincerely hope this little plug-in for WordPress does not cause that kind of problem. If you do have problems or comments or objections please leave a comment or drop me an email at winstonrand at bellsouth dot net. If it helps to keep the bots at bay, then perhaps it will be worth the effort. The alternative would be to turn off comments completely and that would destroy one entire side of our little communications loop. I have no intention of doing that unless those sonsofbitches get a helluva lot smarter.

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Some of us seem to be born with the gift of knowing how to use tools, fix things, do things around the house or workplace. I am cursed to be one of those. Others are not so lucky, never really understanding which end of the screwdriver to hit the nail with. My neighbor, Fred, was one of those.

It was about 1968 in Bethel Park, PA, a suburb full of families whose bread winners, almost all daddies in those days, commuted into Pittsburgh to work for companies with household names you probably know … Westinghouse, US Steel, Mellon Bank, Alcoa, PPG, Rockwell, and others. I was an engineer who worked for one of those. My neighbor Fred was in sales with a major insurance company — Travelers or Prudential, somebody like that. Damn nice guy a couple of years older than me, and a fun family. We and a couple of other young couples in the neighborhood grilled out, had bring-a-dish dinners, played bridge, and kept the local beer distributor’s profit margin comfortably in the black.

One day Fred showed up at the door asking if he could borrow my electric drill. Every guy on the block knew that I had a workshop full of tools. I retrieved it from my shop in the basement while Fred chit-chatted with my then wife. When handing it over to him I asked what he was doing, and he told me that Carol wanted some shelves in the laundry room. So off he went to fulfill his honey-do obligations.

Half an hour later, Fred was back at the door, drill in hand. I said, “That was a quick job.” He looked at me, head cocked to one side, and sheepishly said, “Is there something that’s supposed to go in here?”, pointing to the business end of the drill. As I looked at him in puzzlement, trying to figure out what he meant, he added, “You know — something to make a hole with.” It was all I could do to choke back my laughter as I replied, “You mean a drill bit?” “Well, I guess so, whatever that thing is called.” He didn’t have a clue on what size bit he needed, so I grabbed the entire rack of about 3 dozen bits, from 1/64″ up to 3/8″. As soon as he saw them, he said, “Yeah, I think that’s what I need, but I don’t know what size.” “You got any cold beer in the fridge?”, I asked. To which he replied something like, “Is the Pope Catholic?” So I said, “Come on. You open the beer and I’ll put up the shelves for you.”

He was relieved to have some help, and Carol was happy to get the shelves up. Of course, Fred had bought the wrong brackets — and anchors — and screws — and shelves. But with several trips back to my basement workshop, and several beers later, everyone was happy. Remembering the whole incident some 40 years later, I still chuckle over the expression on Fred’s face that second trip to my door. This reminds me of an adage often repeated by one of my favorite authors, Jerry Pournelle, who was as good with his techie column in Byte magazine as he is masterful at crafting science fiction stories of worlds far away in time and space. He often advised readers of his monthly Chaos Manor column in Byte:

If you don’t know what you’re doing, you better know someone who does.

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Hillary may want to check this out. It’s amazing that this one album from 1963 is loaded with songs appropriate to her tearful predicament and campaign. Just read the titles below and you’ll see what I mean…

. I borrowed this album from CGHill over at dustbury. He has enough music that maybe he won’t miss it before I slip it back into the stack. The Party’s Over? Really? So soon?

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• My favorite pastime is football, both college and pro. I am so tired of muttering “Maybe next year…” before the seasons have gotten off to a full start…
• If god had intended us to put lettuce on sandwiches, he woulda made it flatter.
• Aging is so kind to us. We become physically unable to do the things we enjoy most, but before we hurt or grieve too much over the loss, our memories of those joys fade.
• It is so unfortunate that we allow an artificial, often arbitrary, man-made pair of boxes we call Democrat and Republican, become such divisive mechanisms that turn us against one another and define who and what we are as individuals and as a people.
• Why do so many people retire and then die within a short time? I think I’ll just keep working till I drop.
• Why would anyone voluntarily jump from a bridge or tower, attached by a long rubber band known as a bungee cord? This insane practice is nothing but suicide practice.

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The government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. — Ronald Reagan

Perhaps it was his training and long career as an actor, or maybe it was just a part of who he was. Ronald Reagan had a tremendous sense of humor that he expertly wielded to entertain all, and at times to simplify explanations of complex concepts. He also used humor to defuse or distract those not politically loyal to him or his party objectives.

Reading an isolated quote, like the one above, without knowing the context, it can be difficult to know if he was being funny or serious, poking criticism or explaining his philosophy. Whether intentional or irresponsible, Reagan’s words became the credo for the Republican party and their administrations to follow. Under Bush II this fiscal policy has reached full fruition as Republicans have become the greedy, irresponsible, spend-happy party in charge of our checkbooks. Their accomplishments far surpass those of the Democrats they critized for similar activities so many years ago.

Some of the current crop of Republican Presidential hopefuls would also have us believe that the Democrats are still the ones responsible for draining the treasury and mounting the debt. Those Republicans must think the American people are terribly naive and stupid. And maybe en masse we are. Look at the fools that American voters have put in Washington the last 8 years. Surely to God we can do better than that!

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