Pensitivity101’s newsletter questions last week.
Let’s see what porkies you can come up with for these.
1. Which was the original sport in Ancient Rome?
He was Flatulus Maximus, always trying to get Vestal virgins to take a ride in his V8 chariot, and perhaps park in the dark, down by the Tiber, to watch the trireme races.
2. What’s a group of ravens called?
A Karen…. No, wait! That’s backwards. A group of Karens is called a Raven. SKRAWK! SKRAWK!
3. Which food stuff never goes bad?
THC gummy bears
4. “Your mother is a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries” is a line from which 1975 film?
Star Wars, when Yoda insulted Darth Vader.
5. Which country has the largest population of tigers?
It might be Russia, but they’re mostly paper tigers. When the Ukrainians hand them their asses, they have been folded, stapled, spindled, and mutilated.
6. What kind of phone was invented in 1963?
A special pay-phone, where it cost Superman 25 cents, every time he switched identities
7. The VCR Recorder was introduced by which company?
No lie! Not funny, just archeological truth.
The first successful VCR was invented by Charles Ginsburg and team at the Ampex Corporation in 1956 for professional use. The first iteration, like the computer, was so large it took up a lot of floor space!
It took almost 20 years for them to be able to size the mechanics down for home use.
8. What is a Haboob?
That’s the special costume at a Muslim strip joint.
9. Who is the oldest man to be named as People’s Magazine Sexiest man?
Janet Reno
The British publishing division awarded it to Theresa May.
10. Who recorded “Too young” in 1951?
Roman Polanski – Donald Trump did an updated version in 2024.
Why, you young whipper-snapper…. When I was your age, we didn’t even have electrons, much less electronic communication and entertainment.
I learned to read – and dead-tree reading – from my parents. My Father read the newspaper, but not books. My Mother read books, but never the newspaper. Our home-town newspaper was a little, weekly, 8-page, fly-swatter, full of local gossip. We subscribed to a little, Mon./Sat, 10-page paper from the county-seat of the next county over, twenty-five miles away. Without local softball, hockey and curling, it might have shrunk to eight.
I soon found that the most interesting and educational section of it were the comic strips. This was just after World War II, and just as the Korean War was beginning. We needed all the humor and smiles that we could get. I followed the Katzenjammer Kids, Dagwood and Blondie, Bringing Up Father, Gasoline Alley, Joe Palooka, Mandrake the Magician, Little Orphan Annie, and Major Hoople’s Boarding House. “Mary Worth” was, and 65 years later still is, the print equivalent of later TV soap operas. Will that woman never die??!
The strip that taught me the most about the World, about society, about politics, about culture, and about religion, was Al Capp’s ‘L’il Abner. Capp used satire to point out failings. He mocked the powerful, to the delight of the common people, but he made fun of the common folk through the actions of the hillbillies in his strip.
While much of the action occurred in the unstated metropolis of Dogpatch, Capp sometimes changed things up by having L’il Abner read His favorite comic strip – a big-city, Dick Tracy-like cop named Fearless Fosdick. He also invented an eastern European country where strange things happened that influenced his characters. He called it Inner Slobovia. It, and its residents, were the predecessors of Scott Adams’ Dilbert strip’s Elbonia.
Some of Capp’s ideas and concepts have entered American culture. The most well-known is “Sadie Hawkins Day,” when it is socially acceptable for females to pursue the males. Capp had it as Leap Day – Feb. 29th – once every four years. It has become so popular that some places celebrate it at the end of every February. Some towns and/or high schools even have Sadie Hawkins Month.
Capp conceived a race of bowling-pin like creatures that he named Shmoos. They were friendly, lovable, helpful things like kittens. The wants and needs of Dogpatch residents were fairly simple, but if someone needed something…. Somehow, the shmoos would just provide it. They were also willing – anxious – to be cooked and eaten. They were tasty and filling – the ancestors of Star Trek’s food replicators and holodecks.
Capp had fun playing with words and names. A couple of times, Mammy Yokum had to explain the difference between an apple pie, and her a napple pie. One story arc told of an oily Yankee carpet-bagger-type, who was pursuing one of the virtuous local gals. The strip named him as Poole. She shunned his advances and sent him on his way, telling neighbors that there’s nothing lower than a Poole.
Even as an 8 or 9-year-old, I knew that there was something wrong with that. Years later I read an article which revealed that Capp had originally named him Sesspoole, but the Comic Strip Governing Board felt that it was too racy, and demanded that it be shortened, ruining the joke.
We’ve already been to the Poole in Slobovia. ‘Mammy’ Yokum’s real name was Pansy. ‘Pappy’ was Lucifer Ornamental Yokum. ‘Fearless’ Fosdick = fuzz-dick = police detective. His nemesis was Evil-Eye Fleagle. The famous flyer/aviator, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker visited the strip as Eddie Ricketyback, and the well-known lawyer, F. Lee Bailey became F Lea Bagg.
I close out this post with the J name, made famous by actor/singer ‘Stubby’ Kaye, in the 1959 movie – the beloved Confederate founder of Dogpatch
JUBILATION T. CORNPONE
Old tattered and torn-pone
Old toot your own horn-pone
He’s shattered and shorn-pone
At least that’s what the office told me when they gave me the disk of pictures. I have no other pictures of my brain with which to compare, and I’ve never seen my brain in person so as to recognize it from these hazy black and white pictures which I’m told came from a big magnet. It remains entirely possible that the pictures on that disk are pictures of somebody else’s brain.
Or that this is a Xerox image of something made entirely of playdough.(sic) I can’t prove that it’s not.
It may not be my brain on the disk, and in fact may not be pictures of anybody’s head at all but may be computer-generated. It’s not impossible. Maybe the people with problems that require a brain-scan are the only ones who have brains.
In modern America VERY few people have even seen the inside of ANY mammal skull so as to see that there is a brain inside, let alone any human heads. The number of medical and scientific personnel who claim to have seen inside a human head is a VAST minority of the total. They except(sic) that we have sent what three or four rovers all the way to Mars and yet they don’t believe in God.
Atheists say that they have never seen God and that I have never seen God and they demand evidence. They believe electrons exist, having never seen one. They believe the wind exists having never seen it. They believe gravity exists having never seen it. They believe in all kinds of things they have never seen. You know why? Because they’re not really skeptics. There are just some things they don’t want to believe, so they pretend that they are skeptics, when in fact, they are just rebellious sinners.
Except…. that the correct word is accept. I would think that you would be familiar with one of the most important words of your faith system, considering the number of things that you are expected to blindly accept. Perhaps you have never seen it in print, and are just taking someone else’s word for it.
Every med student in every medical college in the USA, Canada, and probably around the world, must assist in the dissection of a human cadaver. The skull is sawed open. The brain is removed and examined. The same is true for most veterinary students, with a dog or cat. This alone consists of tens of thousands of people each year. And then there are abattoirs and meat-packing plants….
We can also include pathologists, and coroners and their assistants, and police officers and paramedics, who, too often, get to see human brains that didn’t need MRIs. Until one of them finds a skull with no brain in it, I’m going to assume they all do, with the possible exception of yours. They are a minority – but hardly a VAST one – totalling several million people.
While actually seeing God would be a good start to accepting His existence, not all evidence need be visual. Do Christians have Faith that electrons exist? Atheists accept that they do because they can see the actions they cause; televisions glow, cell phones communicate with each other, and ovens get hot.
Atheists (and everyone else) can feel the wind blow, and see its effects, from tornadoes, to kids’ kites flying, to wind turbines. We don’t need to see the wind to know that it exists. I can see gravity working every time I drop something. It will accelerate toward the center of the Earth (or any other celestial body).
On Earth, its speed of fall will increase by 9.8 meters/second/squared. It has done so each and every observed and measured time. Only when a dropped pen starts drifting upward will I doubt the existence of gravity. You can tell me that God makes my light bulbs shine or that angels hold my feet (and every other object) to the ground. I will rely on reasonable expectations based on a history of testable and repeatable actions.
I will believe the hypotheses of reputable scientists, who have shown their work, rather than the far less coherent and parsimonious claims that Christians make. I will believe in space/time curvature rather than angels. Atheists often say that they have not been presented with sufficiently convincing evidence, but evidence is information which convinces, or tends to convince, regarding any given matter. If it does not convince to some degree, it is not ‘evidence,’ it is just another unverified claim.
I want to believe the most true things, and the fewest false things as possible. Despite your desperate attempt at mind-reading and fortune-telling, I am not a rebellious sinner! After 2000 years of asking Christians for evidence, the best they seem to be able to come up with is, ‘You just have to have faith, and you won’t know until you die.’ That is unacceptable to me – no sin involved. 👿
Jesus, Jeremiah, Jumped-Up, Jehoshaphat, Jehovah!! Here it is, time to have a ‘J’ post ready for the A To Z Challenge and, as usual, I don’t have a single black pixel on the virtual white page.
The wife thinks that I am a procrastinating Jackass. The son says that I am a lazy Jerk. The daughter is not as Judgmental. She just sits on the sidelines and Jeers.
I took a short Journey, out to a shopping mall, now that they have re-opened after COVID. It was Just a little Jaunt to the now-legal cannabis Joint, to buy a…. Joint. I met a Jolly old man with a bushy, white beard. He assured me that he was Jovial, but not Jocular. He was dressed in strange, all-red clothes, and was even more rotund than me. He laughed a lot, and his midriff shook like a bowlful of Jelly.
He said that I deserved to get coal at Christmas, but EPA regulations restricted him to giving me a miniature wind turbine. He assured me that I was so mouthy garrulous, that I could charge all my electronic gadgets with it, if I just kept talking at it. I thought that was a bit Juvenile, but probably Justified.
After Jawing with him, I Judged that it was time to get me and my cowboy boots, which do not go Jingle-Jangle-Jingle, over to the men’s cooking class at the supermarket. Today’s food category would be Jell-O salads. The wife doesn’t like them. The only time I get some is at a buffet restaurant. As one of ten children in a GoodCatholic family, she associates them with “Poor Folks” food.
Today’s was a Jewel of a lesson – a gourmet recipe for wiener Jell-O salad. I Jotted down all the preparation instructions, every Jot and tittle of them.
Stop back on Wednesday. After you’ve read my post, I’m throwing a picnic. I hope you like frankfurters. I’m just not grilling them. Y’all come, now. 😉
There are no words in the English language that begin with the letter X. Prove that I’m wrong.
X-ray is not a word. ‘Ray’ is a word, but the prefixing X is just a letter meaning ‘unknown.’ It is not pronounced like the X in taxes or Texas. Much the same is true of the X-Acto craft knife. This is just a commercial label. Like the corporate identifier, NXIVM, it contains letters, and can be pronounced, but is not a true word with a definition.
As I claimed in my There Are No Words To Describe It post, there is no real English language. Almost all words beginning with X came here from ancient Greek. While occasionally used, they often have not been truly “adopted.” They are more like foster children that science and medicine pay us to support.
Xerography, a compound word from Greek, meaning dryprint, for document reproduction, was developed by the Haloid Corporation, which wisely changed its name to Xerox. For years, they held a stranglehold monopoly. Finally though, a dozen, mostly Asian, electronics companies began producing newer, better models.
They found that the printing of what had been scanned did not have to be done immediately. The data could be sent down telephone lines to a remote printer, and a facsimile of the original could be produced. And so, the fax machine was invented.
As computers developed, these data files could be sent from the scanner/printer to the PC, and from the computer to the printer. Humans, being the NSFW idiots that we are, soon found amusing, entertaining uses for the scanners that weren’t mentioned in the users’ manual.
There was – there may still be – a website named Boobscan, which entreated female office workers to place their bare chest on the glass plate, press scan, and send the result off to be ranked and archived with thousands of others.
What could be done on the top, could also be done at the bottom. Not to be left out, (mostly) men sat on the scanners and took pictures of their butts, just to prove what assholes they were. However voluptuous, the weight of a pair of breasts is nowhere near what a fat-ass is. I sometimes wonder how many copy machines are broken during X-rated, alcoholic Christmas parties.
So, X marks the spot of another year’s post, from a rapidly reducing list of options.
The son recently collided with “What If?’
Somebody rear-ended him on his way home from work.
He left work at 7:30 AM. Four or five blocks down the 4-lane, cross-town thoroughfare, he realized he’d forgotten his drink thermos at work, and went back to get it. Back on the road again, he was soon humming along in the center lane, in light, 8 AM traffic. Suddenly the car, two vehicles ahead, came to a complete stop, to make a left-turn across two lanes of oncoming traffic. The car behind it slammed on its brakes, and the son managed an abrupt stop. He just had time to look in the rear-view mirror to see a windshield way too close.
THUMP!!
Damn!
Now the What If kicked in. What If I hadn’t gone back? I’d be home, safe, having a snack.
The other driver works in the next city, 15 miles away. He was also coming home after a midnight shift – a little tired, a little distracted, with perception, attention and reflexes a bit slowed. The son lifted the tailgate, and used the big, flat storage surface as a writing desk to exchange information. We both have the same insurance company, just different brokers.
Neither driver called the police, but someone must have. Soon, a sport-brute, Police power-wagon pulled up behind them, and Officer Zygote turned on his flashers and climbed out. The son said, “I felt like John Wayne in True Grit. Hell, I’ve got work-boots older than this kid. Is he really old enough to drive that thing?”
He spoke to the cop first. They were just finishing when a steady drizzle began. He and his co-worker passenger sat comfortable and dry in the back under the improvised awning, while the other two exchanged info in the rain. It’s not the vehicle damage that’s the biggest piss-off. The insurance company will pay to fix that. It’s the lost time, and bureaucracy.
Already 30 minutes behind, the officer told them that they had to go to the Police Accident Reporting Center on the south edge of town. The son dropped off his co-worker, and drove another 20 minutes to get there. With COVID, you don’t just walk in and report. There’s a sign on the door, instructing people to text an extension. You are assigned a number, and wait your turn. Thinking that there would be a delay, the son called home to report, and woke me.
He was immediately called in, and had to tell me that he’d call and explain later. Cute, little, blond, female, Special Reporting Constable took his report, and slapped a Police sticker on the bumper. She was impressed that he had all the necessary information at hand. Car accidents do not bring out the best in people. Many of them stumble in, not sure of their own name, much less the other driver’s, licence plates, insurance policy numbers, etc.
Now the clerical haze began to thicken. First, the son re-called me, and explained. When he arrived home, it was after 9:00 AM, so he called the actual insurance company. Then he called the broker, and talked to the agent. Then he called his passenger to tell him that he was now part of an official accident report, and might get a call from police and/or the insurance company. Next, he chose one of the two authorized repair shops, called them, and drove over for an inspection and repair estimate.
Damn these all-electronic cars!! Two of the three back-up proximity sensors don’t work. The impact is barely visible to the naked eye, but the entire wrap-around bumper may have to be replaced. A June-bug splat may take $2000/$3000 to fix. We might never know the final cost. The insurance company will pay, and the agents can argue it out.
On the way home from the body shop, the son heard a traffic report on the radio. We have a report of a collision in the center, westbound lane, Victoria at Chestnut. Property damage, but no report of injuries. Be careful in that area. The son said, “That was over an hour ago. I’ve been home twice since then. I always wanted to be on the radio, but not this way.”
Since the car would be in the shop for several days, he had to call a car-rental agency to arrange for a replacement. He took a pain reliever and a muscle relaxant. The wife told him to call the Chiropractor, who had an immediate opening, and took him in, but he had to later call the insurance company again, and speak to the Personal Claims clerk to get this, and continuing treatments, covered.
What if? What if?? What If??! Like the story of how a wasp in a car caused an accident and killed three passengers, such a tiny irritation has caused so much chaos and confusion.
***
We lost our handicapped parking permit. We took it from our car, and put it in the rental. When we returned the rental to the body shop, we both forgot to remove it. A week later, some woman in a parking lot got pissy when we pulled into a handicap spot. “Where’s the permit??” The repair shop staff deny ever seeing it. The young man from Enterprise, who retrieved and cleaned the rental, claims it wasn’t there. Today, we begin the arduous bureaucratic, and possibly expensive, task of replacing it.
I read about time travel. I am intrigued by the paradoxes of time travel. I just LOoove time travel…. except when Daylight Saving Time rolls around. Remember, tonight’s the night. At 2:00 AM, we need to turn all our clocks back one hour, to 1:00 AM. Then we get an extra hour of sleep. (Sure we do. We just party an hour longer.) We’ll probably spend that extra hour trying, and failing, and cursing, to turn all the clocks and watches in the house, back. Thank the mystical gods of silicon, that computers, tablets and the like, are smarter than we are, and do this automatically.
For those who are as chronologically challenged as I am, I have obtained a graphic to aid you with this task.
I hope this helps. I’ll see you tomorrow…. or was that yesterday??! 😳
My belief, which I have occasionally stated, is that I am a loner with few friends, because I don’t reach out to make them. My view of the arc of my working life, especially the final 20 years, spent at the auto-parts plant, is a tapestry of – keep my head down, my mouth shut, do the job, don’t make waves, be quiet, small, and unnoticed. I may have to revisit and re-evaluate that.
Three times, in as many months, I’ve been with the wife in a store, and someone with less seniority, who got laid off before me, someone who hasn’t seen me in over ten years, has recognized and remembered me, and approached, just to pass the time. The last time, a man saw me, and not-quite-jogged across half a Wal-Mart to engage in small talk – no “Remember when you taught me the easy way to do that hard job?” or, “Remember that asshole supervisor?” just….conversation. I had to insist on continuing our errands after 10 minutes.
When we got home, the wife said, “You know, those people really like and respect you. They’re happy to be in your presence, and proud that you take the time just to talk to them. It’s as if you emit a soft, warm glow of benediction.” Who knew you could get friends just by not being an asshole?? Apparently I had ‘likes’ and ‘followers’ even before I had a blog.
Neither she nor I is a Trump, or a Kardashian, but I guess we’re not timid wallflowers either. Our new Osteopath is forever shaking his head and chuckling at our strange humor, our oblique viewpoints, and our widely based social and political opinions. Plus, I take him strange shit to look at – a sword, a legal two-headed coin, an American 2-dollar bill. He says he has no other couple anything like us, especially at our age.
The staff at the nearby Staples store is happy, friendly and helpful to us, willing to kid around, as they professionally solve our problems. Of course, as a service industry, they have to be like that with everyone, but with a PC, a laptop, a 7 in. tablet, a 5 in. tablet, two Kobos, a Kindle and a cell phone, they are exposed to us more than I really want. (As I typed this, the wife’s cordless mouse died.)
We have joked with the female assistant manager for more than ten years. As a good retailer, she knows her customers. The wife’s last laptop fried its graphics card. We had to go in and choose another laptop. We left it with them for formatting and setup – Windows 10 was released that day – and came back later to pick it up.
The wait, both times, at the Electronics Desk, was 10 to 15 minutes. The wife’s arthritis makes just standing quite painful. Our gal quickly slipped back to the office chairs section, grabbed the expensive new OBUSFORME support model, wheeled it up and slid it under the wife. Then she realized that the wife wasn’t using the ironwood cane she normally has, and wanted to know why it had been replaced by a forearm crutch.
The wife told her that it takes more weight off her feet; it reminds her not to overextend her right knee, and permits less stumbling. The manageress swooped her arm up, and said, “At the end of the year, can you throw it in the air, and shout ‘Happy Christmas, and God bless us every one’!”? If the wife hadn’t been sitting down, she’d have been on the floor with me. The gal says, we’re the only couple she knows who would get that joke – in July – think it was funny, and not be offended by it.
The day we went back, she was on break, so I got the good chair for the wife. When she came out, the wife yelled, “Hey, Sandy!” and pretended to throw the crutch. We all howled, except the young tech, who didn’t get the joke. Suddenly she rushed over, solicitously. Since she hadn’t got the office chair, she was afraid the wife was in a wheelchair. “Are you all right? Did you fall?”
I guess, unlike many people, we don’t have flocks of folks we just have to be connected to. We don’t have BFFs. They say a friend will help you move. A good friend will help you move – a body. I should keep that in mind. It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Mister Rogers won’t be in the neighborhood for five to ten years. Would you be my friend? 😉
I recently picked up a library book for the son. When I saw it, I asked the librarian to check that it had not, in fact, been reserved by someone else. It just wasn’t his style. It was about words, and language, and communication. It looked like something I would read. In fact, I had 25 pages read by the time he received it.
The Author – Alena Graedon
The Book – The Word Exchange
The Review
The story is set in the perhaps too-near future, when the printed word is down to its last gasp. Smartphones, PDAs and tablets have all morphed together, into an emotion-reading, electronic device called a Meme. They can call you a cab as you ride down in the elevator, or order you a lunch at the first tummy rumble.
The book-jacket is printed with lines and rows of seemingly random letters, like the data streams in the Matrix movies. Close examination though, shows the occasional word, like local, bash, or asking. Starting near the end of the top line, several lines, with no spacing, of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky are printed. “Brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe all mimsy were the boroves and the momeraths outgrabe.”
The story revolves around a daughter trying to find her boss/father, the editor of the last Dictionary to be printed in North America. This author writes as I might – if I had an iota of inspiration and creativity. The plot is none too deep, or believable, but she sprinkles bright and shiny words everywhere, like bits of crystal.
Within the first chapter, she has used proclivity, risible, perspicacity, sinuous, evanescing and nimbus. One dark word among the others was verbicide – the destruction of language. When people begin experiencing aphasia – loss of words – some passages resemble the Jabberwocky, above. Later, she forms the neologism, Creatorium, for a place where new words and usages are produced. She breaks the book into 26 A to Z chapters.
A for Alice, to whom Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty says, “A word means exactly what I want it to mean, no more, no less.”
B for Bartleby, a scrivener, or public secretary.
C for Communication.
D, I would have thought would be for “Dictionary”, but she made it Diachronic, a term referring to etymology, what words used to mean, why they mean what they do now, and what they are changing into, for the future.
The book comes in three segments, titled Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis. It resembles a “found footage” movie like The Blair Witch Project. It is footnoted, almost like a technical article. The bottoms of pages are littered with thoughts, feelings, and explanations to the reader, almost like Shakespearean stage asides.
The heroine’s name is Ana, except it isn’t. It’s really Anana, which is a palindrome, reading the same backward and forward. Her father told her that the word means gentle, kind or mild in Swahili, face, in Sanskrit, lovely, in Inuit, and harmonize, in Gweno. If you add an S to it, to make more than one of her, she becomes ananas, her father’s favorite French fruit, pineapple.
Menace is provided by The Word Exchange, the titular corporation which is buying out and eating up all print and on-line dictionaries. Their Memes cause people to lose more and more of their language skills, but offer to “remind” you, for two cents a word; cheap now, but what will they charge when they have a monopoly?
A situation was described in the book. I had heard of it, but halfway through the book, I got to experience it. Coming soon, to a telephone near you, the heuristic call. What sounds like a real, live person, is actually a computer, with a voice synthesizer, preprogrammed responses to almost limitless conversational branches, and the ability to understand key words and voice intonation.
A TV anchor’s voice, full of false bonhomie, says, “Hi! My name is Bob. How are you today?” Being polite Canadians, we reply, “Fine thank you.” Bob says, “That’s great! I’d like to sell you a cell phone plan.” Or maybe you say, morosely, “I’m terrible! My Grandmother just died.” Bob says, “Oh, that’s too bad. I’m really sorry, but you’ll want to notify family and friends. I’d like to sell you a new cell phone plan.” No matter where the conversation goes, it always ends at the cell phone package….unless?
The guy in the book says, if you recognize the call, you can have fun with it. “How are you?” “Left-handed.” And listen for the half-second as the computer resets itself. “Can I sell you a cell phone package?” “Carsick yaks, blueberries, nude skydiving, virtual monkey wrenches!” If you supply enough non-sequitur comments, you can fugue the computer, hanging it up until a tech clears and restarts it. Hell, I think I’ll start trying that with real live people.
Like the Synchronic Corporation’s motto in the book says, The Future is Now. It’s time for us to put down all our electronic crutches, throw open the window and yell, “I’m mad as Hell, and….what was the rest of that? Ah, don’t bother. I’ll look it up. Won’t cost much. 😕
Archon's Den 