And innocence, and delightful creativity, and wondering what goes on in a toddler’s mind as he sits in his own world for 90 minutes without going anywhere or acknowledging anyone.
Such was the case yesterday, when the boys came to visit Grammie and Grandpa for the night. The Thriller wanted to build them a sandbox, but instead decided to convert a circular flower garden in the back yard into a glorious sand pit for Jake and Justin. The work paid off…we did not hear a word from Jake for an hour and a half; nor could we coax him in to eat dinner. Small price to pay. It was fun watching him.
~
And now he and his brother & parents are off to Myrtle Beach for a week…what will Grammie do? Ah, I know. SmartBoard training at school. Party, ja?
I’m leafing through a delightful — albeit rather snarky — book, written 15 years ago for the purpose of setting straight those of us who occasionally subscribe to (and unwittingly disseminate) erroneous information. Call it “Conventional Wisdom Takes a Hit.”
In his book, Everything You Know is Wrong (a slightly impertinent title, with the cover photo to match), Paul Kirchner delivers the real goods on dozens of longstanding “truths” in the areas of science, history, entertainment and culture. Behold a partial list:
An airplane’s black box is black. No, it’s orange. Why make such an important piece of evidence so hard to find after a crash?
CIA agents are globe-trotting adventurers. Actually, less than 5% are involved in covert operations. The majority spend their lives analyzing brain-numbing trivia.
The US Constitution refers to a wall of “separation between church and state.” Nope. In fact, that phrase is nowhere to be found in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. It was actually mentioned by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to a committee of church men, during his tenure as President of the US.
Charles Darwin claimed that man evolved from apes. Not quite. Darwin claimed that man and apes evolved from a common ancestor, and the split in species occurred about 5 million years ago.
Henry Ford invented the modern automobile. Actually, that credit goes to Germany’s Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz. Ford didn’t invent the assembly line, either; Ransom Olds did it in 1902. Rather, Ford’s feat was making the automobile affordable for the average citizen.
Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death. Negative. What happens is that after death, soft tissues shrink as they dry out, exposing a bit of extra nail or hair length, which might give the illusion of growth.
Jumping up in a falling elevator might spare you a grisly death. Nice, but the math doesn’t work. After three seconds of free fall, the elevator would reach a downward velocity of 96 feet per second. An ambitious leap might reach 14 feet per second, leaving you plummeting at 82 feet per second. You’d still be just as dead.
(Mama) Cass Elliot choked to death on a ham sandwich.Nope. She died of a heart attack. The coroner found no substance blocking her airway.
Mattress/pillow tags that say “Do not remove under penalty of law.” While these tags definitely exist, their message is not directed at the consumer. Rather, it applies to the retailer, and is intended for the protection of the consumer (although I’m not really sure what that means…).
Olympic gold medals are made of gold.Negative. They’re made of gold-plated silver. The real gold is in the subsequent commercial endorsements. (Actually, I found that gold medals used to be made of gold, but they stopped that practice after 1912.)
The Pennsylvania Dutch came from Holland. No. “Dutch” in this case is a loose translation of “Deutsch,” as in Deutschland. The “Pennsylvania Dutch” emigrated from Germany.
Some of the “corrections” I read were surprising, and there were others I’m not sure I agree with (more research needed). But an interesting diversion nonetheless. I hope your day is replete with interesting diversions.
Fellow crusties will remember typing class in high school, where we used old manual Royals, Olympias, Smith-Coronas or Olivettis to hone our mad skills. f-f-f-space, j-j-j-space. I loved those exercises because they had a definite rhythm. I remember trying to get the “tempo” of my typing as fast and rhythmically correct as possible. I never wanted to miss a “beat.” Is that music-geeky or what? But it served me well; learning to type fast on a manual helped me immensely on the easy keyboards of today, and even on electric typewriters back in the olden days (remember that old Selectric we had in the office years ago, RD?) I learned from the ground up.
Some of my friends and family like to poke fun at my typing style. I’m like Beethoven; keyboards don’t last forever with me. I type the way I play piano: forcefully, and without a single iota of finesse. But I get the letters and papers written, lemmetellya. Love it. (The secret: in both playing piano and typing — never look at your hands. Well, almost never.)
Anyway. I was looking at some old typewriters this morning, and saw a few memories. I typed on a Royal manual, pictured above. The typing classroom was loud, loud, loud, as you might imagine (or remember, if you’re old enough).
Then came the portable manual — made of plastic instead of metal, so they were easy to carry around. But it was the IBM Selectric(pictured at left) that made everybody go positively mad. It had a little golf-ball-lookin’ typing head mechanism that you hooked onto the carriage. You could switch it out when you needed a different font, which of course meant that you had to buy a whole box of them to get the ones you wanted. But it was awesome at the time, heh. Progress.
Our mom had a portable electric — similar to the Selectric, but, again, made of plastic instead of metal. I remember typing a paper or two on it in high school, just to be fancy (back when typing a paper was almost never a requirement, except in typing class). It was all cool and new and impressive.
But get a load-a THIS…
You really got to love the throwback to drop $350+shipping to have one of these crazy thangs. It looks kind of fun, though…
Anyone got a spare iPad on ’em? I’d like to try this.
I like plays on words. And I like contests. So let’s have a little play on words contest, ja?
OK. Your job is to look at the pictures (if you know the site where I got these, please don’t reveal it — I’ll tell everyone tomorrow) and come up with the pithy/punny/silly slogan that goes with it. Here’s a couple of for-instances:
and
Git it? OK, your turn.
One regular-sized, delicious Hershey bar for each correct answer given first. If you’re not in Finkville, I will send it to you. (Ask Suzanne — have I sent chocolate to the Netherlands? The Fink makes good on the candy.)
A couple of my favorites:
Go ahead and give it a shot. Have some pun with it.
On a whim yesterday morning, I decided to remodel a bit. The paint was peeling in places, and the joint just needed some brightening up. The theme is called “Renegade,” so that appealed to me as well.
Some photos on the older posts, for some odd reason, aren’t rendering correctly, and there are some tiny customizations here and there that I haven’t gotten around to yet, but all in all I think I like the new look. Definitely a 180 from the original style. Yay for the change-up.
That would be us.
Well fiends, what do you think?