Good morning, and welcome to the day before Friday.
We’ve got a little rain, on and off, and we have fog. The fog is moderate, never heavy, and isn’t found below 4,000 feet. The raging wind we’ve been warned about never really seemed to have kicked in, and rocks don’t seem prolific today. Even The Narrows was an easy ride… I observed a rockplow on standby, but the poor guy didn’t have much to do.
Temps are cool, but nowhere near ice conditions, at least in the Crestline area. We have no ice, no snow, no thunder, and no lightning, even as the sky is lightening today. Incidentally, while they say that lightning never strikes twice, yesterday in Beaumont, lightning struck two. Both people were injured but will apparently survive. Youch, though.
Today is National Lucky Penny day. Now, this writer doesn’t believe in luck, and doesn’t believe much in pennies, either. I timed myself rolling pennies a couple of years ago, and found that even if I were to have an endless source of pennies and rolling papers (wait… is that what they are really called? That doesn’t seem right… not Zig-Zags… I’m talking about those paper tube thingies for coins…), an infinite number of those copper-and-zinc cash discs at my disposal, rolling them would mean that I could make about $6/hour, not counting the cost and time involved in hauling them to the bank. Sure, it’d be very exciting and challenging work… but really, $6/hour isn’t that much.
Of course, that was the last time I ever rolled coins of any sort. That particular day, I’d rolled every penny, nickel, dime and quarter that had been saved for the last couple of years. I took ‘em to the bank, where the teller said, “Hmmm… those coins are in rolls. You’ll need to unwrap them all before I can process those.” Turns out, modern banking institutions use machines to do the counting. Sort of like the Coinstar machines at the grocery store, only they don’t keep quite as much of the money. In fact, at my bank, there’s no cost. Just pour a bucket of any mixture of coins into the machine, and it’ll sort ‘em, count ‘em, tally ‘em up, and give you credit for ‘em.
Did you know that when the U.S. mint produces a penny, it costs them more than a penny to produce the damn thing? Talk about less than worthless. I don’t know of anything else on the planet that is being manufactured and is worth LESS than its manufacturing cost. I understand that there have been movements initiated to ban penny production, but we’re still cranking them out. Maybe it just takes a while for the gov’ment to slam on the brakes.
The headline I saw yesterday stunned me with one guy’s lousy luck: “Man Impaled By Tripod Thrown Off Bridge.” First, he’s impaled, and then somebody throws him off of a bridge? Well, it turns out, while good fortune may not have been totally on his side that day, it was the tripod that was thrown off of the bridge… and it impaled Mr. LousyLuck after passing easily through the windshield of the vehicle he was in. On the other hand… he survived, and his injuries were not even terribly severe. Plus, they caught the freakin’ psycho who had STOLEN the tripod from CalTrans only minutes before playing Shaka Zulu out on the freeway. Crazy story… but at least the impaled guy wasn’t thrown off of a bridge.
I still think that the best headline of all time, from our very own San Bernardino Sun a few years ago, was, “DEA deals Blow to Cartel.” So THAT’S where the cartel get their product…
Every office chair I have ever sat in, used, owed, borrowed, or seen has a big design flaw. All of them do… why? There’s a little handle on the back of the chair that releases the seat back to fully recline. Normally, the handle is in a position that keeps the seat back rigid, so that when I’m done with a paragraph, there’s little risk of me doing an X-Games style back somersault like I’m exiting an airplane in style. However, that little lever sort of works its way out… no, let’s use real language here: it freakin’ CREEPS out of place. Thus the first time I lean back… it’s all good. Same with the second and the third. But juuuuuuust about the time I get used to the support being there, the lever has finally crept out of place, and on the 22nd time I lean back, it’s X-Games, without a parachute even. And let me say, too, that even if I don’t go all the way over and hit the ground, the adrenaline jolt given my heart is going to finish me off one of these days. I’m sure of it.
I’ve duct-taped the levers into place, and I’ve used twine. These solutions are effective, but not really aesthetically pleasing… unless you are into the Mad Max style of office décor, in which case it’ll fit right in. Why death-dump chair manufacturers have never addressed this situation is beyond me.
I broke the seat in my Camaro a couple of years ago. I was cruising up Waterman Avenue, and life was pretty good. Hall & Oates was on the radio, butterflies were flitting about, the weather was beaut—DAMNIT THAT GUY JUST PULLLED IN FRONT OF ME STAND ON THE DAMN BRAKES!!!!!!!! When I stood on the brakes, I “stood” so hard that the supporting ribs in the seat broke. The collision was avoided, and the dipsopotamus who pulled in front of me just sort of gave a little wave of, “Oops, sorry…” as he went merrily on his way, in his vehicle with fully not-broken seats.
I realized recently that any movie you watch, or book you read that is, “based on a true story,” well, they’re all part of the same series.
So, a pollster recently polled about 2,600 people. I do not know who was polled, but, whatever the case, these 2,600 were asked, “Should schools in America teach Arabic Numerals as part of their curriculum?” While 15% had no opinion, an astonishing 56% were indeed opposed to teaching Arabic Numerals. And that, my friends, is not a made-up story or statistic. My only hope is that those who are opposed to the use of Arabic Numerals simply try living without them… even just for 1 or 2 days… 3 would surely be enough. I suppose that Roman Numerals are an option, or even some sort of binary code could be used in lieu of Arabic Numerals… but it seems difficult to do.
As for MY opinion, I think we need to eliminate Arabians from horse racing, and obviously, it’s time that the Olympics do away with the Islalomic downhill skiing events.
This is sort of like how outraged people were to learn that dihydrogen monoxide is actually added to many foods sold to unsuspecting Americans. Dihydrogen monoxide is responsible for many thousands of deaths every year… but is still a major component in many of the foods we eat. It’s also known as… hydroxylic acid. Geez… scary, huh? Oh, one more name it goes by: Water.
…and how people are outraged that right here, even in California, many people can walk into a gun store, and buy a fully semi-automatic weapon.
John Walker Lindh has been released from a prison in Indiana today. He’s the “American Taliban” captured a few years ago, fighting with ISIS… against US. He’s a California native, and even served some of his time right here in Victorville. Anyhow, he’s being released early, because that seemed like a good idea to the parole board.
I’ll meet you back again, right here, on Friday.