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!”