Fizz.

You're hot, tired, and thirsty. How about a nice cold beer?

Nah, no drinking beer at work.

Okay, how about a sodie pop to give you some delicious soft-drink refreshment? 

Nah, the sugar is fattening. 

Maybe some fruit juice?

Nah, that's all loaded with sugar too, even if it's natural.

Iced coffee, then, or iced tea?

Caffeine. Insomnia, nervousness, restlessness, nausea, increased heart rate, headache, anxiety, and chest pain.

Well, all right, how about some diet soda? 

Nah, the artificial sweeteners are said to cause gas, bloating, diarrhea, stroke, heart disease, and I'm still thinking about cancer even though that was fifty years ago and pretty much disproved. And death! Maybe death! 

OKAY OKAY! Here! Have some seltzer! It's cold! It's fizzy! It has NOTHING ELSE IN IT! It couldn't possibly harm you! 

That's what you think! 

🦷🦷🦷

Yes, it's true -- according to an Italian report last April in the journal Nutrients ("Damage from Carbonated Soft Drinks on Enamel: A Systematic Review"), "An abuse of carbonated acid substances leads to an increase in the possibility of dental erosion with consequent structural disintegration and reduction of the physical and mechanical properties of the enamel. There is thus greater bacterial adhesion on rougher surfaces, determined by the erosive process, and therefore a greater risk of caries." You read that right -- drinking seltzer water or club soda that contains nothing else at all is bad for you, because the minuscule amount of carbolic acid in fizzy drinks will rot the teeth out of your head. You've heard of meth mouth? Meet soda smile.

But really, how dangerous is it? As the old saying goes, the poison is in the dose. How many carbonated drinks a day is considered abuse? The report does not say. It just scares us with some pictures of damaged teeth and tells us to drink water and eat fruit (which, just sayin', is loaded with sugar).  

Now, of all people, the American Dental Association dropped a flag on this one, God bless 'em. Yes, they say, "any drink with carbonation—including sparkling water—has a higher acid level" than water, but "sparkling water is generally fine for your teeth". Why? "In a study using teeth that were removed as a part of treatment and donated for research, researchers tested to see whether sparkling water would attack tooth enamel more aggressively than regular lab water. The result? The two forms of water were about the same in their effects on tooth enamel. This finding suggests that, even though sparkling water is slightly more acidic than ordinary water, it's all just water to your teeth."

The ADA still maintains that fluoridated water is where it's at for teeth health, but standard oral care ought to prevent any damage from carbolic acid in sugarless drinks (although they do add that sodas with natural citrus flavors will likely have a stronger level of acid). 

So, it's the usual hullabaloo-- small studies question the safety of an innocent pleasure, meta study combines results to set off a panic. Study authors never get money or notoriety for proving that something is harmless, unless they are so deep in the pocket of an industry that they're covered in lint, in which case they may be completely insane ("smoking prevents asthma!"). 

Today's medical journals are part of the campaign to make everyday life miserable. We must have schools that don't teach, jobs that don't pay, appliances that don't work, chemicals that are so safe they do nothing. Go suck water out of the tap, plebe. 

Well, the hell with it. Seltzer is only dangerous if you shoot it in your face, and I'm standing by that opinion. 

Banana peels are a danger to the same segment of the population, by the way. Just a little caution.

Auuuughtumn.

Well, as predicted, Halloween arrived early this year, and arrives earlier every year. I remember complaining to a store chain once about Halloween candy on display in August. This is from the box store on Friday, July 28. 

Because you need a tremendous bag of SpongeBob
Halloween candy in July.

And the grocery store yesterday, July 29. 

Well, that's just candy, right? Not like the whole store has given up on summer and started in with fall. 

Ha:

We are one month and nine days from the start of summer; the end of summer does not arrive for another two solid months. But sure, break out the fall stuff. 

I know, I know, no one goes by the equinoxes and solstices. They go by Memorial Day and when does school start, by Christmas and maybe -- because spring always gets short shrift -- when can I start my tomato plants. 

Rushing the seasons in a retail setting has to be the fault of the consumer, ultimately. If we weren't willing to buy a five-pound sack of fun-size spooky-themed Nestlé bars* in July, they wouldn't sell it. Picture the scene at PlastiCrapCo:

🌞🌅🩳🏄

"Johnson! Get in here!"

"Yes, sir?"

"And none of that! You know what my pronouns are now!"

"Yes, xir!"

"Better. Johnson, pool noodle sales are down 15 percent since three weeks ago. The surge from the start of the season, which began during Easter, is decidedly over."

"Yes, xir, but it's not like pool and barbecue season is over. People will be having fun in the sun for more than a month yet."

"'Fun in the sun.' What would they teach you in marketing class if those words didn't rhyme? If I ever hear you say 'yummy in the tummy,' I will not be responsible for my actions."

"Sorry, xir."

"Nothing is yummy by the time it's in the tummy! There are no tastebuds in the stomach!"

"Of course not, xir."

"So don't fight with me! Now look, Johnson, we need to get that consumer excitement back! Time to ship the, er -- What's on the way? Let's check the container list from our friends in China. Ah! Halloween costumes and decorations!"

"Yes, xir! I'll get right on it."

"See that you do, Johnson."

"And xir? It's Johndaughter now."

"Oh, er, sorry about that, Johns-- daughter. Please don't report me to HR."

👻👺👿💀

Of course, I have in the past failed to get enough Halloween candy and made an emergency trip to the store, and wound up giving the kids Christmas candy, because the Halloween stuff had already been dumped. 

Life moves fast enough! Stop shoving things along! 

* Or Her/She Possibly Trans Candy.

Urbi et orbi.

Suppose my church decided to enforce a twenty-percent tithe on all members. Ten percent is the usual request, based on the old temple requirements -- the word tithe means ten. But poor people would be exempt, and in fact would be given money from the church treasury. Indeed, it soon turned out that so much money was given to them that the church went into serious debt. 

Then the church decided that people could live in the building rent-free, even those who were not members, nor believers, nor even respectful. Food was provided. Some people who came in were in desperate need. Others, however, were not. It was obvious that most were addicts or insane or both. Despite the clear rules, they wouldn't go outside to smoke; they drank alcohol, did drugs, had sex; they ate and left garbage in the sanctuary. They stole the sacramental wine; they even peed in the baptismal font although there was a bathroom available. They got into fights. They ripped up carpet, broke chairs, shredded Bibles and missalettes, stole anything that was not bolted down. People were brought in to watch over them at the church's expense, but they continued these antics. Rules were never enforced; in fact, the watchers brought in were specially instructed not to interfere in any way. 

Meanwhile, the parish elementary school no longer bothered to teach the children math or science or even religion. The claim was made that learning leads to inequality, so there must be no learning. It became nothing more than a filthy, feral daycare center for children up to ten years old. But tuition doubled, then tripled.

Then the church demanded thirty, then forty percent of our income to cover all the new expenses. Still, there was never enough money for basic upkeep. The place looked terrible; parishioners feared it would burn down one night. When they went on Sunday it was a revolting experience. Maybe worst of all, the priest never even talked about God's Word anymore. All he said was what a great place the church was and what a privilege it was for us to be members. If we objected to the people ruining the building and interrupting the church's traditional duties, we were wicked and cruel. Meanwhile, there were rumors that the priest and his pals were raiding what they could from the treasury and having a wonderful time with it. 

My friends among the nonbelievers and non-adherents said I was insane to keep going to this church. And they were 100% right. And yet, when I looked around, I saw that every other parish had become exactly the same: mismanaged, broke, useless, filthy, and dangerous. 

Does this fictional example differ from the way American cities are treating their citizens?

The two things really have a lot in common. 

Let's assume cities and churches both have a duty to help the poor. Both have or ought to have a sense of purpose. But like the church in my illustration, the cities have completely given up on the idea of their proper duty toward the citizens -- safety and streets and sanitation. The citizens are just suckers, paying more and ever more to live in places that are dirtier and more dangerous by the day. 

I have written before that our beloved former pastor wanted to use the old chapel as a warming station in the winter, allowing the minuscule homeless population of the town to stay there in the winter. What happened was similar to the disaster described, as many of us expected, right up to the peeing in the baptismal font. Our pastor, probably somewhat chastened by the experience, had to close the doors to them. Groups that used the chapel for legitimate purposes were asked to check the sanctuary to make sure no bums slipped in while we were there, because for a couple of years after the failed experiment they kept thinking of it as their home -- and bathroom. Our pastor had learned a lesson. But at no time had he ever lost sight of the primary mission of the church -- to bring God's Word to the people. 

Cities aren't like that. Many adherents to the church of Leftism aren't like that, either. They get their stuff stolen, cars taken at gunpoint. Their streets are covered in garbage and feces. The schools are rattraps and kids come out dumber than they went in. Poor neighborhoods are shot up; old properties become a different type of shooting gallery. Expensive civic projects come and go, and the only thing that gets larger is the debt. And yet the Leftists continue to vote for the same kinds of imbeciles, grifters, and creeps who are making their lives miserable. Worse, if they move to some other town out of terror, they start voting for the same kinds of imbeciles, grifters, and creeps that ruined the place from which they came. They seem to cling to their faith more strongly than Catholics do to theirs, and much more than your average Methodist or Presbyterian. A Catholic who gets mugged may forgive his mugger, knowing that if the crook believed as he did, the poor soul would reform. The Leftist who gets mugged knows that the mugger believes the same things about life that he does, so there's nothing to do but accept it, or lash out at inappropriate targets. If it weren't for those rich people, no one would mug anyone! 

When a church fails in its duties, it is held up as an example. When a government does, it is considered par for the course. I do not understand why so very many people can cling so hard to something that fails them over and over again. 

Statements made while watching Antiques Roadshow.

"How can that be an antique? I'm older than it is!"

"This will be a good one. The appraiser specializes in rich people stuff."

"They're not commercials. They're sponsors who donate to PBS out of the goodness of their hearts."

"HOW much? The dog could paint better than that!"

"Why isn't Nick doing this appraisal? Nick is the man for majolica." 

"Look at her face. She thought it would be worth a lot more."

"Oooh, this is gonna be a biggie!" 

"Toys are never worth much."

"Apparently this Picasso print was from his Greenbacks Period."

"He washed off the patina. FOOL."

"Don't we have something like that in the basement?"

"Hey, it's Lark! This will be valuable."
"Unless it's a fake."
"He never gets fakes."

Lark E. Mason, not getting a fake

"The Civil War stuff is fun."
"It wasn't the first time around."

"All painters should be dead for three hundred years."

"This is a game show for old people with tote bags."

"Veneer!" [obligatory Frasier reference]

"Books are never worth much."

"Sorry, I can't focus on the poster. The appraiser's suit is blinding me."

"If it doesn't have the magic T word [Tiffany], it's crap."

"Hey, it's Bruce! This will be worthless."
"Unless it's real."
"He never gets real stuff."

"Guitars are always worth a LOT."

It's autumn!

Once again, Walmart has said, "Still more than a week to go in July. Back to school!"

I understand that some colleges start early, and even in these technological times those students still need basic school supplies. But those of us in the New York area, where school doesn't start before Labor Day, know that this is a sight that, in late July, leads to much wailing and gnashing of teeth among the kids. I could almost hear them gnashing away as I took the picture. 

That was last Friday. I am almost dead certain that the next time I go to a supermarket, probably this upcoming Friday, July 28, Halloween candy will dominate the seasonal aisle. Pool noodles, water guns, folding lounge chairs, all that stuff will shoved aside. 

It has been more than a month since the longest day of the year, and surely autumn is looking to make its move. This shot came from the morning walk with baby dog Izzy. Autumn, lurking. 

I think that the scarecrow is behind the hedge because it's going out with the garbage; that seems to be where the family keeps its trash cans. But maybe not. Maybe it's just there to watch over us, to snicker and say, "You fools, playing in the sun! I was once young and carefree like you. Then the autumn chill stole into my straw, and now my time is waning and almost done. Memento Mori!"

Or maybe their dog peed on it. Either/or. 

We've got a Godzilla for sale.

Thinkin' about Godzilla. 

I don't believe I've ever seen a full Godzilla movie. By the time I came along they had gotten pretty silly. The original 1954 Toho movie was pretty damn dark -- Godzilla's ruin of Tokyo would have revived some horrible memories for audiences who had lived through the real thing, with Allied firebombing less than ten years earlier. The Operation Meetinghouse bombing of March 9 through 10, 1945, "is the single most destructive bombing raid in human history," according to Dr. Wikipedia. And yet people packed the theaters in Tokyo to see Godzilla (or, as he was known then, Gojira) destroy the city all over again. 

I've written before how seeing the destruction of midtown Manhattan in The Avengers in 2012 was hardly entertaining to me, having been in midtown on September 11 while my wife was downtown. I wondered about all the non-player characters in all the buildings who were getting obliterated or crippled for life. Previous superhero movies had been all about preventing horrific damage to innocents; this one felt like it was reveling in it, and less than 11 years after the terrorist attacks. 

But no one else seemed to be bothered, so I guess I'm just a little delicate little lotus flower, too good for this world. I haven't bothered with any other superhero movies since the first Guardians of the Galaxy. Don't even mention the word Transformers to me.  

For high-body-count entertainment, though, Godzilla is king of the destroyers. When the children of the original Japanese audiences got older, Toho found that they loved Godzilla, and so movies got geared to younger viewers and it showed. Sure, cities and irreplaceable landmarks and presumably thousands of people got killed, but it was fun! There was even a promotion to design a robot for 1973's Godzilla vs, Megalon. The winning entry was Jet Jaguar! And you can't blame the kid who won for the name, because Jet Jaguar was the name the studio gave the robot. 

Come on, people now, smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now

I've never even seen the entire Mystery Science Theater episode that covered that picture. 

Some of my friends were big fans of the Godzilla and Godzilla-adjacent movies, which typically ran on ABC's famous 4:30 Movie, films for post-school kids cut in half and run over two days. ABC seemed to program for boys -- it would always be kaiju movies or the Planet of the Apes or low-budget horror films or the 1966 Batman movie or the like. I don't think I had the patience for movies in those days. I could sit through hours of TV, don't get me wrong, but in 30-minute segments, please. 

These days ol' Lizard Eye is back and bigger than ever. (A friend of mine in college always wanted to make a Godzilla movie where the Big G would go up against a bunch of hillbillies who called him "ol' Lizard Eye.") I'm told that in the new films from Legendary Pictures, the good humans want to find a way to coexist with all the giant monsters. Seems like a pretty tall order to me. Every time one of the damn things sneezes, a billion dollars of infrastructure goes up in flames. This is why we can't have nice things! 

I will say this for Godzilla -- he inspired a pretty great song by Blue Öyster Cult. With a riff reminiscent of Godzilla's scream, a thumping drum footstep, and verse hammered out in iambic tetrameter, it's irresistible. 

I just don't find fun in death and destruction. But there will always be those who love the Big G, and good for them. Just don't get stepped on.   

Bananas!

One of the supermarkets nearby charges a little more for everything, but you pay for the convenience. It's an easy-in, easy-out kind of shop, ideal for someone just looking to get the fixings for dinner and not much else. Consequently its self-checkout is very popular. I've been listening to electronic voice of the self-checkout computer for years. 

The other day I swung in to get some items that were not available for whatever reason in the bigger store, and while there I got... BANANAS. Why do I cap? Because when you have to weigh produce, the self-checkout computer voice -- I call her Cloris -- has to walk you through the process. And I could hear her in my mind as I made my way to the self-checkout.

You press the button on the screen for produce and the fun begins. "Select the item from the list." Press the button for bananas. 

"Place your . . . BANANAS . . . on the scanner."

Bananas placed. Price calculated. 

"Remove your . . . BANANAS . . . to the checkout area."

I'm not sure of the wording, but that pause before and after loudly announcing the fruit or vegetable of choice sticks with me. Cloris makes those pauses pregnant, and you can almost hear the judgment in her voice. I swear, I'm not going to do anything strange with the BANANAS, Cloris! I just want them for my cornflakes. 

Perhaps she doesn't believe me. Bananas are cheap. They don't have a bar code for her to scan, unlike pints of blueberries and some other things you can get from the produce section. Maybe she thinks I'm weighing dragonfruit or some expensive crap like that on the scale and saying it's bananas. She knows my little scam. 

"Remove your . . . SO-CALLED BANANAS . . . to the checkout area."

I wouldn't do that to you, Cloris! Trust is the cornerstone of our relationship! 

Maybe I should just wait on line for the cashier. this whole thing could be driving me nuts. 

"Place your . . . NUTS . . . on the scanner."

Do not tempt fate, Cloris! 

Please be seated.

I had a terrific blog entry planned out for yesterday morning, but then I fell down the stairs. 

Son of a bitch, man -- I don't think I'm technically old yet, but the older get you get, the less falling down the stairs is a joke.  

The scenario: Carrying down two lightweight but bulky containers of recycling to the garage, which accesses through the cellar, to participate in the weekly Recycling Kabuki before it all goes in the landfill. Being a manly masculine type with XY chromosomes, I cannot make two trips when it's the slightest bit possible to make one. Yes, I have socks on, the lightweight kind with little grip (there are shoes in the cellar). But no, I have never in two decades plus fallen down these stairs. 

First time for everything, they say.

Would have been nice to
fall down more scenic stairs.

It was pretty spectacular. Empty cans went flying, and I myself thudded two or three times, once with the back of my head, once on my tailbone. Scared the hell out of the dog. Didn't do me a bit of good either.

Those of you who have been hanging around here (God love you) may recall that at the beginning of 2020 I was in the hospital for a couple of days with spinal issues, and before that I cracked my head on the driveway through the miracle of black ice and was dizzy for weeks. So hitting my butt and my head was sort of a twofer. Which would hospitalize me? 

Fortunately, neither. First, I sat on the steps trying to run diagnostics; then I opened my eyes and looked around and had no sign of dizziness. I was in a good deal of pain in what Dave Barry calls the behindular area, but it was not spinal and excruciating. No breaks. 

Australian video commenter Ozzy Man, in his long-running Destination F series, enjoys pointing out when people have landed hard on the coccyx, because coccyx is both difficult and funny to say. Well, I had landed in Destination F, because I bruised that coccyx quite well, and it hurt like the dickens. 

So, looks like it's OTC pain meds and icing for up to four weeks, according to Mount Sinai. Fortunately I've been able to sleep and to work, both of which can be difficult after an injury however stupid. And I have joined a long line of comic characters injuring the tusheroo -- enough that TV Tropes has a whole page dedicated to the art of injuring the butt. 

What have I learned? Maybe to start paying attention to what I'm doing while I'm actually doing it for once in my life. And, despite the risk to my man card, maybe I should consider making two trips. Not saying I will, but I should consider it. 

Aaaahhh, freak out!

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but I come from a long line of worriers. They had a lot to worry them. Many fled poverty in Europe, working hard in America to be Americans, pushing back the fear of famine and freeze with every push of a mop or swing of a hammer. Fathers died too young, leaving their families in disarray and terror. The national economy tanked. World Wars broke out. Recessions, depressions, lost babies, feuds, failed businesses. Worry, worry, worry.

And people say, stop worrying. It's bad.

Okay! 

Actually, I agree that I should. When people say worrying is your mind pretending to solve a problem without actually doing anything, like expecting to walk to Pittsburgh on a treadmill, I say: Yep! When they say worry is worshipping the problem, I say: Right you are. When they say worry is just fear hiding just out of reach so you can't attack it with courage, I say: You betcha! When they say worry is a tool of the devil, I say: Amen!

And I still don't know how to stop worrying. 

Maybe the problem is that worry does feel like you're doing something. It certainly has one redeeming quality, in that it is motivational. Only an idiot wants to be the grasshopper: 

One fine day in winter some Ants were busy drying their store of corn, which had got rather damp during a long spell of rain. Presently up came a Grasshopper and begged them to spare her a few grains, "For," she said, "I'm simply starving." The Ants stopped work for a moment, though this was against their principles. "May we ask," said they, "what you were doing with yourself all last summer? Why didn't you collect a store of food for the winter?" "The fact is," replied the Grasshopper, "I was so busy singing that I hadn't the time." "If you spent the summer singing," replied the Ants, "you can't do better than spend the winter dancing." And they chuckled and went on with their work.

Aye, aye, Aesop. 

Also: Ants are jerks, but we all know that.

The problem is, worry has no internal stopping mechanism. Once you engage the worry, there's always something it can find to act upon. That's where I run into trouble. Everything may be looking rosy, but there's always some possibility you can dread, and if all else fails there's death and taxes. 

Alcohol used to be a good solution, but it ended up causing even more worries. So now I just have to find a healthier means of dealing with it.

When they say: If you're gonna worry, why pray? If you're gonna pray, why worry? And I say: 

Well, I say, you're right. But it'll always be like a second language to me, because my people were worrier kings from ancient times. 😨😱👑

Clownbombing.

 

Professional photographers generally agree that 2023 has been
the worst year to date for clownbombing of weddings.

I think it's been going on for some time -- why, in all the groom pictures from my wedding, there's a clown front and center! 

The rules of sarcasm.

A while ago I heard an acquaintance I'll call Dave tell a group that he and his wife have an agreement -- they never use sarcasm on each other. Calling it the anger of cowards, he said it was one of a few little rules that makes their marriage work. 

I thought that was a pretty good idea. I wouldn't ever advise a married couple to come up with a list of a hundred-odd rules they each MUST follow, but a couple of simple ones to keep the peace can certainly help. That didn't seem too onerous. 

I asked a mutual friend about it, a guy who's been married longer than either Dave or I have been, and he assured me that without sarcasm it "would be like everyone had taken a fucking vow of silence" in his house. 

Sarcasm is a kind of irony, a means of saying the opposite of what you're actually saying. That's why it's so mean. The word sarcasm itself is interesting, as Dave also pointed out. For a mode of expression so well known and so long used, its origin is a bit mysterious. Here's what Merriam-Webster has to say:

earlier sarcasmus, borrowed from Middle French or Late Latin; Middle French sarcasme, borrowed from Late Latin sarcasmos "mockery," borrowed from Late Greek sarkasmós, from Greek sarkázein "to jeer at while biting the lips" (in GALEN; perhaps, if the original sense was "to bite or strip off flesh," derivative of sark-, sárx "flesh") + -smos, suffix of verbal action — more at SARCO-

NOTE: The original sense of the Greek verb sarkázein is conjectural, as all instances referring to jeering or mockery come from late or post-classical sources, generally lexica. The sole significant early uses are in Aristophanes' play Peace, where the Megarians, while pulling boulders from the entrance to a cave, are described as performing the action of the verb sarkázein "like mean (?) curs," while perishing from hunger ("hoi Megarês … hélkousin d' hómōs glischrótata sarkázontes hṓsper kynídia"); and in the Hippocratic treatise "On Joints" (Perì Arthrôn), where the verb is used to describe hoofed animals eating grass. In both cases the interpretation of sarkázein is far from transparent.

"To bite or strip off flesh" -- ouch! That certainly shows the cruel edge to the concept. 

My wife and I don't usually get involved in trading sarcastic barbs with each other, and when we do, she is entirely to blame. No, that's not true, but as she was a female teenager at one time, she's a past master at the art form. However, when sarcasm does pop up, regardless of who unleashes it, it doesn't last long -- because a regular fight breaks out quickly. 

Of course, I would never be sarcastic in any way on this blog. I'm always sincere when I compliment someone, and wouldn't dream of using snark to torpedo a target, no matter how worthy. I'm just a regular living saint, am I.

Things with which Google cannot help you.

Sure, Google seems omniscient, and may even think it's omnipotent, but we all know that's not true. 

It acts like it thinks it is.

For example, while you can ask Google what the weather is like in Borneo, who the leader of Prussia was in 1610, or what the most popular TV show in 1981 was, there are many questions with which Google is completely useless. Here are a few to think about. 

💻 Did the ground beef in the back of my fridge go off yet?

💻 Did I leave my keys in the car?

💻 What was that toddler of mine thinking?

💻 What was the name of the kid who called me Pork Face on the beach when I was seven?

💻 If we had continued the Apollo program until now, who would be on the moon today?

💻 How many leaves are on this maple?

💻 What was that dog of mine thinking?

💻 What's the name of that actor in the movie I forget the title of where he plays the guy?

💻 What'd I come into the kitchen for?

💻 What's the name of that squirrel over there?

💻 What are those guys up to across the street?

💻 What was the password on my iMac G3? I want to get something off it.

💻 Is my dry cleaner pressing my gray pants right this second?

💻 What was that wife of mine thinking?

💻 What was the president -- oh, never mind.

💻 💻 💻 

In case you were wondering:

Borneo, as of this writing: Overcast, light rain.

Head of Prussia, most of 1610: John Sigismund

Most popular TV show, 1981: Dallas 

TP thoughts.

It's hard to believe that it's been just over three years since we were ready to play Street Fighter IRL over toilet paper. Harder for me to believe so much time has passed, in a way, because I'm doing the same dumb stuff, working in the same dumb place (home), as three years ago. The main changes have been my age and the new dog.

I'm glad TP isn't such a tissue issue these days. I've never trusted hinder-minding methods preferred by those in other nations, except maybe the six-thousand-dollar Japanese wonder toilets, but I'd have to sell a lot more books before I'd entertain the idea of getting one of those. As I noted on the Great Lileks's comments when the topic came up, for six grand I want to be able to ride it down the highway like a GTO. Can you imagine sitting at the light, revving the toilet, making challenging glares at the other guys, smiles and nods at the ladies?

Burnin' rubber? Well, burnin' something, I guess.

I'll stick to good ol' toilet paper, thanks. It's interesting to note that the inventor of toilet paper, Joseph Gayetty, probably thought he would hit it big in 1857 when indoor plumbing started to take off. But he sold the product in sheets, which was indiscreet, as indeed was the whole business model, if you will. At a time when the nation's streets were covered in horse manure, no one wanted to discuss the necessary mode of removing human manure. 

Besides, you could just use the old catalogs and newspapers. 

That changed with the Scott brothers of Philadelphia in 1879. They had the genius idea to put the TP on a roll. That helped it be available but not obtrusive. Their advertising of those early years also appealed to the more refined sensibilities of the purchasers. 

1910 advertisement

Nowadays, Scott could advertise itself as cheap-ass toilet paper for your cheap ass. I mean, it's not the 220-grit butt-sander paper that a lot of company restrooms use, but it's been a bargain brand as long as I can remember. Yet they've always been tasteful, celebrating the economy of Scott tissue and, lately, the fact that they don't put a cardboard tube in the middle anymore. Saving the environment, one roll at a time.

Other advertisers are far from discreet today. Cottonelle has raised some eyebrows with its distasteful ads that make the Charmin bears -- who apparently do indeed defecate in the woods -- look like 1880s French perfume ads. It's probably the worst ad I've ever seen.

What the hell is Kimberly-Clark thinking? Why would a company want to make people think of something that repellant when they think of its brand? I know it's considered better to be shocking than ignored, but is it better to be hated? 

Oh, well. The era gets dumber, so the ads must get coarser. The more PhDs we have, the less we know. Our social leaders want us to eat bugs, walk everywhere, and use appliances that can't clean anything, so it's all of a piece. 

Better tell the horses that we may need them to start pulling wagons again. 

Bad poems.

I know two things that should prevent me from writing this blog entry:

1) I have written plenty of bad poetry -- some unintentionally; and 

2) People are out there, trying to do their best for their loved ones, and shouldn't be ridiculed for it.

But part of my Saturday afternoon was spent on the porch with baby dog Izzy, and the music from a birthday party half a mile away was as loud as if it was on a speaker next to us. During a pause in the entertainment -- the musicians were good, the singer, well, not so much -- a family member got up and read a poem to the birthday person. Thanks to the miracle of modern loudspeakers, everyone within a mile got to hear it. 

Woof. 

"This'll wow 'em!"

I'm not saying people should write poems for birthday parties like Robert Frost. Robert Frost would have written terrible poems for birthday parties. Fights would have broken out. People would have left, angry. What I'm saying is, if you want to say something nice about the guest of honor, just say it. Don't be cute and rhyme it in some approximation of poetic meter, and then read it aloud with the da-da-da enthusiasm of a fourth-grader on mandatory speech day.

The writer always has to mention everyone, lest they offend anyone by leaving them out. What do I mean? I mean they all sound like this:

Arnold, we love ya

Your friends are all here

We’re happy to toast ya

With whiskey and beer

Remember those days

Growing up in the Heights

Block parties and girls

A few switchblade fights

We had so much fun 

In the high school you know

You won your diploma

When you promised to go

One day you met Joanie

Her hair then was red

Your first gal who didn’t have

To put a bag over her head

And soon came the little ones

Jill, Pete, and Joe

Pete’s up for parole now

In six months or so

The family was growing

And you said what the hells

I guess we’ll get hitched

Out rang wedding bells

You worked for the city

The union’s great pride

Doing God only knows

Running bets on the side

You’re old and your fat now

And so you’re retired

You’re leaving for Florida

On account it’s required

So we say happy birthday

And we raise up a toast

To Arnold, our brother

Who we love the utmost

(Drunken cheers)

Actually, that party might be fun. Just leave before the fight breaks out and everything would be fine.

Apples and eyes.

There are some weird ways to express affection. Of course there are all the silly pet names we give each other, like punkin and babycakes and honeybunch and, as one girlfriend liked to call me, turkey (it didn't last long). 

More archaic terms might include the bee's knees and the cat's pajamas, Jazz Age phrases that seem to have, like jazz itself. just come to be out of a love for rhythm and rhyme over sense. Mental Floss couldn't find any known logic to them, anyway. P.G. Wodehouse preferred the lodestar of my existence and variations, which at least makes sense -- a lodestar being a star by which one navigates. Webster notes that the literal sense of a lodestar as a guide to a happy destination didn't outlast the 17th century, but the figurative sense lives on. 

The one I always disliked was the apple of my eye. The idiom comes from the Bible, where it appears in several places. By its use, the apple is a metaphor for the pupil, in that it is something in the center of the eye, and thus the beloved is always in the center of one's vision. 

He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.

(Deuteronomy 32:10)

Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings.

(Psalm 17:8)

There's something weird going on here regarding the word pupil. Apparently there was no English word for the little black spot in the center of the iris until the 15th century, can you believe it? And why is the word for student the same as the word for the aperture of the eyeball? Coincidence? Nope! Here's the story: 

If you look into another person's eye, you can see a small reflection of yourself. That small image made the ancient Romans think of a doll. Thus, they called the part of the eye in which it appears the pupilla. This word literally meant "little doll." The English word for that part of the eye, pupil, can be traced to the Latin pupilla. Pupilla also had another meaning. A little girl who was an orphan and was in the care of a guardian was called a pupilla. A little boy in the same situation was called a pupillus. From these two Latin words we get the other English pupil, meaning "a young student in the care of a tutor or in school."

It's appropriate in an upside-down way to think of the image of yourself as a little doll in someone's eye, because the image does register on the retina -- upside down, along with everything around you. 

I just don't dig eyeball-related metaphors, I guess. When I was a kid Keep your eyes peeled grossed me out; I was thinking not of peeling back the eyelid, but of Mom's apple-peeler going to work on the eyeballs. Yeesh! 

So I'll just stick with my favorite terms of endearment and leave the biblical apples of eyes alone. Terms like Hey you and Bozo and What's your name again? They always work.

Headin' fer the last dial-up.

Most likely, somewhere in the world right now exists the last coin-operated telephone. No one knows which one it will be. But it's out there.

Didn't make it

The coin-op telephone was invented in 1889 by William Gray of Connecticut, who was angry about having to beg someone to let him use his telephone to call a doctor for his wife. As recently as the 1980s, a friend of mine who worked in sales in Manhattan would spend time between sales calls in the lobbies of some great hotels, where he could be comfortable, organize his materials, and use the banks of public phones in a quiet atmosphere. The hotels liked having young well-dressed businessmen in the lobbies, making the place look dynamic and prosperous. That of course was long before 9/11 and COVID and institutional commie rot and everything else that has made our lives more miserable and more hollow. The last pay phone on a New York City street came down in 2022.

The miraculous cell phone is finally putting paid (ha!) to the coin-op phone, but it had a great run. Where will the last one be? Not in Germany, which in typical European fashion just decided to take all the coin-ops offline at once last year. No phasing out, as in New York. You will stop using the phones NOW! 

How did German payphones survive the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic, when coins were basically garbage? I was unable to find out in the five minutes I devoted to the research. The article notes that Germany's public phones dated to 1881, eight years before Mr. Gray's amazing invention, so perhaps they maintained some other means of paying for calls besides coins through the 1930s.

Well, I believe there's a phone out there somewhere that will be the last coin-op in use, and whether it will succumb to the miracle of modern technology or the same ol' societal collapse that ruins so many things remains to be seen. Considering how addicted we are to our cellies, I'm not optimistic about it as a societal marker regardless. 

Best song I hadn't heard.

When I was looking up some information for the D.B. Cooper item I posted a couple of weeks ago, I came across the curious note that Cooper's skyjacking case and (apparent) escape had inspired a couple of instant records, quick 45s to cash in on the news of the day. This, kids, is what people used to do before throwing together music videos on YouTube for the same purpose. 

While there have been many songs dedicated to the poor parachutist Cooper in the decades since, and even a band named for the felon, at the time one example of the D.B. Cooper genre that popped up on vinyl was by Judy Sword: "D.B. Cooper, Where Are You?" The B side was "Skyjack '71," which is the only one of the two songs I could find on YouTube.

I don't know what became of Ms. Sword, but I do know that her best remembered song was "Please Don't Squeeze My Jimmy" in a piano-hammering blues rock style. But I think the song that should have really put her on the map, the song with one of the best titles I've ever heard, was the B-side of that single, "Take My Love and Shuv It Up Your Heart."

The label left off the "It"

That song was written by one Danny Vest, who recorded it with the Simmons Family. Ms. Sword knew a classic when she heard it, obviously, and covered that sucker. I cannot find her recording, but here's the original, released in 1967, properly spelled:

This could be the love song that the world needs now, with everyone so angry all the time. What better way to say I Love You But Go Away than "Take My Love and Shuv It Up Your Heart"? None, my friends; there is none. Unlike the peculiar case of a lone hijacker, there is a timeless appeal to this poetic phrase. And I think we're all a little wiser now. 

You're damn straight.

Business in the front, party in the back, patriotism all over. 

How foreigners think we celebrate Independence Day:

Shucks, if only! 

Happy Fourth of July to all my American guests, and please have the same number of fingers, toes, eyes, etc. tomorrow at this time. 'Murica! 

Role-playing maims.

Speaking of America, I guess there's no more American hero than the Western gunfighter. The period of the Wild West was terribly brief in retrospect, and yet no other specific time and place has caught the imagination of people around the world the way the American West has, from the end of the Civil War to the closing of the frontier in 1890 (with some scattered Western adventures before and after). 

In my more concentrated dorkness days I played a lot of Dungeons & Dragons. You younger fellers may not know that the D&D home company, TSR, had role-playing games in other genres, and my own personal Geek Squad tried a lot of them. Gangbusters was a Roaring 20's adventure; Gamma World was a post-apocalyptic adventure. We enjoyed them, although they were not as much fun -- nor did they offer the kind of playground for wild imagining -- as D&D.

And yes, there was a Western role-playing game. Boot Hill operated the same way as the others -- a game master would set the scene, players would create characters, motivation would be provided, and off you went.  

What I remember best was how great my character looked, and how useless he actually was. By the time his dice-rolled characteristics were determined, I had a lean, mean, blazing-fast gunslinger. Unfortunately, he could not hit the broad side of five barns, stacked or aligned. His aim was terrible. His draw was the fastest in the land, faster than any non-player characters we ever encountered, but once that gun was out of its holster it might as well have been a pickleball paddle for all the good it did in combat. Sure, he might get a lucky hit, but mostly he was great for getting the drop on people, outdrawing them and hoping they wouldn't go for the leg iron.

In real life, in actual gunfights, other cowboys might have been similarly impaired. It's one thing to shoot a can off a fencepost, but another to shoot at moving men who are shooting back when the adrenaline is coming out your hat. In the legendary gunfight at the OK Corral, yes, three of the nine men involved were killed, three others were wounded, and two more ran away. Thirty shots were fired, but the whole thing took only 30 seconds, and they weren't all using pistols. Doc Holliday had a shotgun. A lot of missed targets, I reckon. 

The event has invited all sorts of dramatic interpretation, necessary because the story is so famous but the climactic fight so short. The 1993 film Tombstone is more than two hours long, and you can't have a film that long with a fight that lasts just half a minute. In it, the OK Corral battle runs almost five minutes, according to YouTube. Definitely more guys should have been dead if they'd been blazing away that long. Maybe some horses and chickens, too. 

I'm not sure how I got into this narrative hole today. I was just thinking of my Boot Hill character, who probably died in a gunfight -- I don't recall, but Boot Hill did not offer magical healing like Dungeons & Dragons, so characters tended to not last. I think he could he earned a ballad just for his speed, though.

They called him the Rattler

Faster than light

Quickest with iron

In any gunfight

Nobody would challenge

That brave caballero 

Whose gun was as useless

As a vegetable marrow

No matter the target

He aimed like a wimp

Could hit nothing smaller

Than an inflated blimp

One day an old lady

Called him a bum

For using his rocker

As a place for his gum

Of course he outdrew her

And punctured the air

While her old shaky gun hand

Done parted his hair

We buried the Rattler

In dry desert spot

Faster than lightning

But couldn't hit squat

Fastest gun in Boot Hill. I reckon.

Proclaim liberty throughout all the land.

As the old saying goes, there are two kinds of people: Those who divide people into two kinds of people, and those who do not. Well, I'm usually of the latter, but today I'm the former, I guess. 

Here we go: 

There are two kinds of Americans: Those who believe that human rights are God-given, and those who do not. This distinction is at the heart of all our political problems. The old counterargument, that rights are granted by government alone, had been the cry of tyrants, and was renewed by the new tyranny of Communism in the twentieth century. It exploded in our national consciousness right about the time we were able to recognize that the government's duty was to protect these God-given rights for all citizens. 

Until very recently, most Americans would have agreed wholeheartedly with this famous passage from the Declaration of Independence: 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

I suppose there is no more crucial passage in our nation's founding than that. Some modern students think Olde Tyme people were longwinded, but look at these exceptionally important and in fact revolutionary ideas summed up in 54 words:

1) These truths are self-evident: they are postulates in no need of proof;

2) That God has endowed us with rights that are above and beyond politics;

3) That they are just three: we have a right to be alive; we have a right to be free from oppression; we have a right to seek happiness as free men;

4) That the only point of government is to secure (NOT PROVIDE) these God-given rights;

5) And that governments are formed by human beings and exist by the consent of those human beings who are under its jurisdiction. 

We've heard it all a million times, but how many of us realize how important it is? What a shocking statement it makes? The people on top through history had always acted as if the whole point of government was to protect the clan, whether the clan be a tiny tribe or Rome or France, and everyone's main job was to protect the brains of the outfit -- the ruler. The Declaration turned it all on its head. If the king infringes on the rights given to us by God, king had better watch his back. He has lost his legitimacy.

But if we don't believe in God, or don't believe that these simple rights are from the God that created us, what then? "Human rights" are disposable, mere lip service to keep the plebes in line, but there's no reason they cannot be infringed upon as much as desirable. It seems crazy that anyone would willfully dispense with the idea that his own rights come from a power higher than government. But in their effort to dethrone God, the Communists were perfectly happy to give the dispensing of rights back to government -- as long as they had their hands on the whip. 

And this is where we are now. 

We may be near or maybe even just past the tipping point, where fewer than half the people in the United States believe in that statement in the Declaration. Certainly there are those who scoff, saying the so-called "negative" rights are worthless, just the right to starve in the street; we need positive rights, the right to food, clothing, free education, housing, healthcare, and whatever else comes along. 

But those are not the rights we were founded on, because the Founders knew any real right was based in the right to freedom. They would have found it preposterous to go looking for a government-enforced right to someone else's labor. Which is what free food and free medicine and all the rest are. 

The heart of the matter is this: If Americans no longer believe that God (or nature or just human dignity, if you must) has given us the rights mentioned in the Declaration, rights that are few in number but rock-solid inviolable, then we're truly sunk. Those who control us will deny those rights; those who are controlled won't believe they are worth fighting for. 

The ironic thing is that those of us who believe that those rights are from God believe it is true whether we accept it or not, but will be forced to watch our government violate these rights as much as it desires. 

But those petty kings had better beware -- not from the peasants as much as their Creator. They were given a wonderful nation, and they'd better take care of it, or they will have to answer someday to Him. If human rights come from God, God is not going to be pleased with those who destroy these rights among others in their care -- especially in the United States of America, where we have known these things for 247 years. 

Leaf 'em be.

Actual leaf

Things I have thought were a leaf on the lawn, but were not, or vice versa:

Garter snake

Turtle

Sock (not my own)

Pine cone

Knitted cap

Fast-food bag

Dog toy

Banana peel

Hair scrunchie (not my own)

Dog poop

Bear poop

Wallet

Phone

Another actual leaf (even sneakier)