New Happenings And New Resolutions

Tucson Weather Today

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Well . . . dad blame it! I am determined to accomplish two things -- and to begin doing so by the first day of the coming year. I will write better stuff. And I will get rid of ten, fifteen, or twenty pounds of excessive body fat by the end of 2012.

Yeah, yeah . . . I know.

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USA Today Headline

Cheetah the Chimp Dies

Cheetah, Boy, Tarzan, and Jane

Cheetah, who appeared in classic Tarzan movies in the early 1930s, has died of kidney failure at the age of 80.

Read more at USA Today

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Just for fun . . .

The Wizard of OZ has a name. Do you know what it is? According to Frank Baum, the wizard's full name is: Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs.

More real names here. for Barbie (the doll) -- Cap'n Crunch -- Bull (on Night Court) -- The Skipper and The Professor on Gilligan's Island -- and others.

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THE PEW Forum on Religion & Public Life reports:

"A comprehensive demographic study of more than 200 countries finds that there are 2.18 billion Christians of all ages around the world, representing nearly a third of the estimated 2010 global population of 6.9 billion. Christians are also geographically widespread -- so far-flung, in fact, that no single continent or region can indisputably claim to be the center of global Christianity."

Wow!

Who would have believed that so many people on this Earth are poor innocent victims who have been so conditioned, so indoctrinated by schools and church -- so instilled with the irrational fear of eternal hellish punishment after earthly death that they allow themselves to be enslaved for life by purveyors of superstitious nonsense. Or are patently dishonest and greedy hucksters who only pretend to be true Christians so as to gain riches by beguiling (the milling herd?) their willing congregations.

Wow!
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Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.
--Henry Ford

Nit-Picking: Who? Me?

Tucson Weather Today

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As I have mentioned before, at the halfway point of my usual daily walk route to Fry's Supermarket and back, there is a pair of benches upon which one of them I sit for a short time with the other sitters, the store's employees on their cigarette breaks and a random sampling of unemployed drifters, spare-change cadgers, and curiosity seekers (loafers) like me.

At around noon the day before yesterday I was joined on the bench by a pair of strangers, a middle-aged (somewhat grizzled) unemployed truck driver and a 27 year old mentally defective (PTSD) ex-marine. The two engaged me in conversation by asking if I would like to go into the supermarket and buy fifty dollars worth of groceries for half price. They would sell me, on the spot, fifty dollars worth of Food Stamps for $25. Well... I assured them that this is an illegal activity and that I had absolutely no interest in participating in such a transaction.

What followed for the next hour or so was an interesting and informative conversation from which I stored in memory much material for future use in composing fiction stories... Both of the gentlemen assured me that they were devout Christians who had 'found Jesus' after years of living in sin. I am still processing the wealth of information I gained from this encounter.

Oh . . .by the way, a tall skinny black dude acting as middle man made a phone call to a broker who agreed to come and buy the Food Stamps from them for half their face value. The dude charged them the price of a pack of cigarettes for his finder-fee services.

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While watching the PBS News Hour I heard, in one of his speeches, President Obama say, "That's unexcusable." I had never heard the word unexcusable before... not that I can remember anyway. I'd always heard it pronounced inexcusable. Wondering which was correct, I hastily researched the two words online and found in several dictionaries:

inexcusable
adjective
meaning: incapable of being excused or justified.

and in only one dictionary:

unexcusable
adjective
meaning: inexcusable.

Well, that was not completely satisfactory but I felt that searching further would be a waste of time.


Later, while watching a rerun of The Big Bang Theory, I heard something almost impossible to believe, something I never thought I would ever hear; I listened in horror while Sheldon said, "Some of her insights were very unique."

Sheldon would never have made such a mistake, and if he heard someone else do so, he would have objected vociferously and would have instantly launched into a lecture in which he would point out that unique means one of a kind and so is not subject to degree... and that a thing can be either unique or not unique, never partly unique.

If it were not such a bother, I would attempt to inform the show's writers of this glaring error.

But it is . . .

A bother.
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Note:

Nitpicking is the act of removing nits (the eggs of lice, generally head lice) from the host's hair.

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“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.”
--Mark Twain