When Will We Say "ENOUGH!!"

Christopher Smith is Sharon's son. Sharon has been Kathy's best friend for more than 50 years. Kathy has been my friend for 40 years, so that is my connection with Christopher, known as Chris.

Chris had his first date with Leslie Reeves about a month ago, the night before Thanksgiving. They were at Chris' house in the wee hours, when Leslie's ex-boyfriend showed up. He beat Chris, then shot him in the head. He shot Leslie in the head.

Somebody got worried that they hadn't heard from Chris, and that person asked the sheriff to check on him. Chris was found unconscious in a pool of blood 12 hours after the shooting. Leslie was dead.

Chris is in a hospital bed, unable to do much more than occasionally open his eyes. 

The shooter is in jail.

Guns. America.

Step Right Up

 Merry Christmas, Everyone!

To help spread joy, I offer this, my new fave, taken just 24 hours ago...

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

When I was a younger man, I marveled at the changes my dad lived through.

I am no longer a younger man, and now I marvel at the changes I have lived through. Here is just one.

This shot is from Schnucks Supermarket, taken a couple weeks ago.

One of my first jobs was stocking shelves at Buscher's Pharmacy in Ferguson, Missouri. It was 2 hours after school on weekdays, and then however long it took me to sweep the parking lot on Saturday mornings. Got a white envelope containing $15 cash every week.

Best part of my job was hanging out with Jerome Cohen, the evening pharmacist. He showed me how to read prescriptions, how to break the cost code on the pharmaceutical containers, and I watched him mix up all manner of concoctions and type labels on the manual typewriter. These days, pharmacists rarely mix anything - they count pills and put them in plastic bottles. There are a few "compounding" pharmacies around if you need that sort of thing.

But prescriptions are not what this is about. What this is about is menstruation.

Mr. Buscher, the proprietor, was a product of his middle-class American society. He decided he had to stock pads (tampons were not around in the late 1950s), but they couldn't be left out on the shelves where just anybody could see them. So part of my job was to put Kotex and Modess boxes in plain brown paper bags, tape the bags closed, and use a grease pencil to write on the box "M  45" or "K  45" as appropriate to differentiate Kotex from Modess. Price was 45 cents either way.

I guess if a new customer didn't know the M and K codes, they would ask the clerk (always a female behind the counter) in whispers, "Do you have any Kotex?"

Incidentally, Buscher's Pharmacy stocked rubbers too. But they were in a drawer in the back, and you had to ask for them. I fantasized that someday I would need to buy some, and I feared having to ask for them.

WB

I recently became aware that Woman Brain (WB) has a different operating system than Man Brain (MB).

A woman I know well, showing her WB, said this,: I don’t know why it would make any difference to men, whether the women playing beach volleyball wear bikinis or shorts.

 

(In case you have been in a cave on the moon for several years, I’ll explain that some feminists have been promoting the idea that women playing beach volleyball should cover up a bit more – that the bikini is too revealing.)

 

Using my MB, I can say without any hesitation, and without any trace of doubt, that male spectator interest is directly related to the skimpiness of the uniform. Cover more, lose more viewers. The survival of the sport is at stake.

 

Bikini.

--------Postscript-------------

Five days after this last posting, it seems appropriate for me to acknowledge that there are times/circumstances/situations/subjects where WB's operating system outperforms the MB's OS. This is just to set the record straight, making it clear that I am not denigrating WB, not claiming MB's superiority.

So take your defamation suit and shove it.

Back Into Hell

Meat Loaf's album Bat Out of Hell sold a billion copies, or less, when it hit in 1977.

His follow-up Bat Out of Hell II (Back Into Hell) took about 16 years to hit, and although it hit #1 on the charts, the total sales were about a third of the original album. 

Third song on the "II" album is Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through. At 5:51 long, it's a bit short by Meat Loaf standards. If you are listening to it during a workout, you might find it to be as great as I have. The beat is perfect for me on the elliptical machine; keeping time to the beat registers 112 steps/minute on the machine's panel, and that gets my heart rate up to ~128.

That's perfect enough, but that isn't all.....the lyrics are upbeat, Meat's voice is (as I have written elsewhere*) glorious, and the saxophone solo halfway through is Clarence Clemons-worthy.

Having to tape-loop it to get me through 20 minutes on the elliptical is a small price to pay.

*See June 1, 2020 blog post "Meat Loaf"

Right On Time

Brandi Carlile was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live last week. Never heard of her. Wouldn't know Brandi Carlile from Brandy Alexander.

Turns out she's a songwriter, and she sang one of her creations, something called Right On Time. I liked the sound of it. It was hard for me to understand the lyrics (understanding the lyrics has 2 parts: First, the sound has to be translated to words in my brain (hard part #1), and then the words have to make some sense in my brain (hard part #2, but could be made easier by the songwriter) at the time, but what I did pick up sounded interesting. Later, I found the lyrics online:

Come back now, even if you call me out
You might be angry now, of course you are
I'm scared to, didn't mean to take it out on you
I know I always do, you're the strongest person in the room

Turn back time, help me to rewind and we can
Find ourselves again

It's not too late
Either way, I lose you in these silent days
It wasn't right
But it was right on time

Don't look down, I can feel it when your heart starts pounding
It's beyond your control, you know it is
It's getting to the point where I can't carry on
I never held my breath for quite this long
And I don't take it back, I did what I had to do

It's not too late
Either way, I lose you in these silent days
It wasn't right
But it was right on time

It's not too late
Either way, I lose you in these silent days
It wasn't right
But it was right on time

Brandi, you have to make that shit easier to understand if you want me to understand. Take a cue from Jimmy Buffett. You don't need a secret decoder ring to understand the Margaritaville lyrics. Or the Why Don't We Get Drunk lyrics. Or the You Call It Jogging lyrics. Or Little Miss Magic. Or Volcano. Or Come Monday. Or Coconut Telegraph.

Help me rewind so we can find each other again? It's not too late. But either way I lose you. Right on time. I did what I had to do. It wasn't right. Of course you're angry. But it was right on time.

I got this much:  She did what she had to do, it wasn't right, she made her lover angry.

What the fuck was right on time?

FF

 

In the old days, and not-so-olden days, toothpaste tubes were made out of some kind of metal, probably coated with some kind of plastic. Toothpaste tubes have changed. Now they have a small-print warning: 

This is not your grandfather’s toothpaste, Sweetie.

Now they are made from some kind of plastic that doesn’t stay where you put it. Forget rolling up the tube from the bottom to keep the front part primed and let you use every milliliter of the gunk. The new one just unfolds itself and laughs at you. “Hey, Frugal Freddie, the world has changed. This is not your grandfather’s toothpaste. Go to amazon and buy some more!”

 

L r R?

 If, hypothetically, one were to pull the stopper out of the tequila bottle with his/her left hand, then pour some into a glass using the right hand, then proceed to drink tequila using the left hand, would that hypothetical person be _________.

a. left-handed

b. right-handed

c. ambidextrous

d. gay

I've Tried Them All

 This menu, on the wall at a Discount Smoke Shop in Winchester, MO, shows 312 vape flavors.

But that's not all. Dude behind the counter told me that he could blend any 2 or 3 flavors if I couldn't pick just one.

Only in America.

Next on my list is Pumpkin Pie w/Whipped Cream, mixed with Rocky Road and Root Beer Float. My lungs love sweets.

Births and Deaths

 According to this website: https://ourworldindata.org/births-and-deaths

Worldwide births are at around 140 million per year.

Worldwide deaths are at around 60 million per year.

So it takes very little imagination to imagine that the world population is growing by 80 million per year.

As a side issue, there is this: COVID deaths are running around 3 million per year. Which is a pretty small (about 5%) percentage of overall deaths. Surprisingly small, for me anyway.

Jesus Fucking Christ

This photo appeared in The Atlantic's Photos of the Week. 

The "my god is better than your god" mindset just boggles me.

Medical Costs

 I am going to explain why medical costs are outrageous.

Four stitches in my hand. Went to my orthopedic surgeon's office to have them removed 17 days after carpal tunnel surgery (see my May 21, 2021 blog entry). 

Medical assistant Kim carefully disinfected the area with iodine(?) and alcohol. Then she took these tools (see photo) out of their sterile packaging and used them for 90 seconds. She said they don't re-use the tools, so she gave them to me.

Does that explain why costs are high?

Switches Down

OK, so you have a 3-way switch to control the ceiling light in your hallway. Coming from your family room, you flip the switch to turn it on. At your bedroom door, you flip another switch to turn the hall light off. Simple.

You don’t care whether you flip either of those switches up or down, you just flip it to the opposite setting you found it in.

Depending on who installed those switches, you could find that both switches down results in the hall light being ON or OFF. That guy probably didn’t care which way it would be, just like you don’t care.

 

I care.

 

I have installed a fair number of such 3-way switches over the years, and I always make sure that if both switches are down, the light is OFF. If one switch is up and the other down, then the light is ON. It’s just a thing for me. Is that OCD or just anal?

Autopsy?

The maple tree that so well shields our deck from sun grows a billion leaves every spring. In the fall, the aged and decrepit leaves lose all their greenness as well as their will to live. That's what is normal.

Now and then I see abnormalities, like this guy:

I can't get him out of my mind. Dropping dead at such a tender age. It's barely June.

What kind of trauma did the guy suffer? These guys have birds shitting on them all day long and do just fine, or maybe thrive. 

In the absence of other data, I'm going to say that Facebook is to blame. Other leaves on the same branch heckled, mocked, criticized, derided, and made fun of him until he just couldn't take it anymore.

Medical School

 I went to med school the other day. In Dr. Collard's office I studied the HAND poster - which came in really handy when Dr. Collard came in and diagnosed carpal tunnel syndrome.

So I am wearing a brace for 2 months and then most likely scheduling surgery on my left hand.

Not to worry, Dr. Collard says, "the surgery takes 10 to 20 minutes" and "nothing can go wrong."

He didn't really say that last part.

Look Carefully

 Examine this April 20 photo carefully and tell me what doesn't belong.

How Good is Your Water?

I posted this (below) to the NextDoor website yesterday. It has generated 44 comments so far, ranging from "Oh God, that's horrible!" to "Hey, doesn't look that bad to me - what were you expecting, crystal clear water?"

Pretty much my whole life people have told me how good the water is around here – the stuff that Missouri American Water is pumping into our homes. And if you ask MoAm how good the water is, they have a mountain of data to show how good it is.

But in 2017 I installed a filter on the water line coming in. The replaceable cartridge was snow-white, and quite brown in October 2018 when I replaced it with another snow-white cartridge. Then last week I replaced it again, but I took a photo of it before replacement, and it was again quite brown after serving my needs for about 2-1/2 years.

 This time I captured the sediment that was left in the bottom of the bowl when I took the filter cartridge out. After the water evaporated, I put the sediment in a teaspoon for another photo.

I gotta give MoAm a D on this one. Maybe an F, if I knew what was in that sediment. If I knew what brown stuff is embedded in the filter cartridge.

 

The Day That Would Never Come

Came.

In broad daylight I walked into a store in Chicago and paid money in exchange for marijuana.

Ooops. Make that cannabis. Apparently marijuana is out of style and cannabis is in.

What's in a name? I don't know. But I know that the weed is powerful.

And legal. Well, in Illinois it is.

In Missouri, it's just powerful.

It's unlikely that I will ever be able to juggle bowling balls after smoking it.

Power To The People!

Just about 45 years ago, some electrician buried the power lines that have supplied electricity to our house, which was then under construction. The underground conduit runs about 150 feet from a terminal box at the southeast corner of our lot, near the street, to the meter mounted on the west side of our house. Unlike overhead power lines, nothing goes wrong with the underground lines.

But then something did go wrong.

 

Three insulated cables are in the conduit. Call them A, B, and Ground. The voltage on A is 115 Volts as measure to the Ground. The voltage on B is 115 Volts. These A and B voltages are out of phase with one another, such that the voltage between A and B is 230 Volts. In the house, there are a bunch of 115 Volt circuits, some of which use A and some of which use B. And then there are a few 230 Volt circuits which connect to both A and B.

 

On April 8, we woke up to find that some of our lights and outlets were working and some were not. In the breaker box, I used my voltmeter to find that A had its full 115 Volts, but B had zero volts. The circuits fed by B were the dead ones.

 

Ameren Missouri supplies our power, and they have a pretty good system to report outages online. Within an hour, a guy called to say he was on the way but had to finish up some task nearby first. Another half-hour went by and a guy showed up with everything he would need to restore our power. He verified that the B cable was dead at the meter. He took the cover off the terminal box near the street to find that the B cable was very much alive there. Then he got a big coil of cable from his truck and connected one end to the terminal box and the other end to the meter box at the house. He ran the new cable across the driveway, through the grass.

 

Voila! We have power! And a big ugly cable running across the lawn.

 

Ameren will, at some point (couple of weeks from now?), send a crew out with an instrument capable of finding the break in Cable B, showing them where to dig. Dig they will. They will make quite a mess to uncover the bad spot in Cable B a couple or three feet down, make a repair, and then restore the lawn to some semblance of presentability. 

 

Presumably, the cable now stretching across our lawn will go back in their truck for a future use. 

 

Presumably, I will have some work to do to restore the lawn to the standard I have set, which is likely a bit higher than the one Ameren has set.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Postscript: Ameren crew showed up, having given me no prior notification, to repair the buried cable on April 13. I was driving home from Chicago at the time, so I was not able to see what kind of problem they discovered when they dug. When I got home, they had obviously dug a hole about 18 inches square and restored the sod as best they could. The temporary cable was gone. Power was on in the house. All is well.

Taz and Gaga

 Probably several thousand times I have listened to the national anthem. Rarely I have either very positive or very negative impressions of the performance.

 

Several years ago I was blown away by Meat Loaf singing Star Spangled Banner at some sporting event. Just days ago I was blown away by Lady Gaga’s version at Joe Biden’s inauguration.

 

Last night I puked all over Brandon “Taz” Niedenauer’s version just before the kickoff at the AFC Championship game in Kansas City. 

 

Over the years, I have heard some singers jazz it up, adding notes here and there, notes that make me think they are just showing off, stomping on a piece of music that is more or less sacred. There are something like 95 notes in the Lady Gaga version – she didn’t add any of her own. “Taz” probably played something like 3,000 notes, making it barely recognizable as our national anthem.

 

Some people apparently liked it. Detroit Sports Nation – whatever publication that might be – had this headline today:

Guitarist Brandon Niederauer absolutely rocks national anthem prior to AFC title game

 

Add this to the mounting evidence that I am just a grouchy old man telling young people to stay off my lawn.

 

The NFL doesn’t care what people my age like. They want young people to sign up, bow down, buy the jerseys. I get it. But I don’t like it.

 

 

Thanks, Karen

On January 7 I went to the Des Peres Lodge, where I am a member, to do routine exercises. Normally, I leave my hearing aids at home so I can use earbuds connected to my iPhone while I exercise. But on that day I was wearing the hearing aids when I got to the Lodge. I took the hearing aids out and stowed them in the pocket of a jacket hanging on a hook near the track. I thought it was my jacket, but when I reached into my jacket pocket after exercising, the hearing aids were not there. I had put them in the pocket of someone else’s jacket, hanging next to mine and resembling my jacket’s style and color – and that jacket was gone when I went back to search for the missing hearing aids.

I asked the management at the Lodge to be on the lookout for misplaced hearing aids. Perhaps the person whose jacket I put the hearing aids in would discover them. And figure out they got pocketed at the Lodge. And return them to the Lodge. And the Lodge would notify me. All of these things happening made it a really long shot.

On January 15 a woman named Karen reached in her jacket pocket and found hearing aids, which was a total surprise to her. She racked her brain, and concluded that the only place she had left her jacket unattended was at the Lodge. She called the Lodge. The desk there called me, gave me Karen's number. I called Karen, she gave me her Chesterfield address, and 20 minutes later she handed the hearing aids to me. She refused a cash reward, saying she wasn't raised that way.

It is comforting to know that there are Karens in the world.

And yes, I know that some people use "Karen" as a derogatory term. I won't, that's for sure.