2007 October » otoh

Observations

Posted by Tim at 23:17 on 2007/10/10

Oct 102007

Life is an eff in lie. [Stay that three times fast.]

I think 24/7 should be 24×7, but I don’t think I’ll get everyone else to change….

I think people who write [or say] 24/7/365 don’t really understand the concept of 24×7 [or 24/7]. Which reminds me of a line from Steven Wright:

One time I woke up in the middle of the night and I was hungry. I went to the convenience store and noticed it was closed. The sign said “Open 24 hours” and there was a guy locking the door. I said “Hey, your sign says you’re open 24 hours.” He said, “Not in a row!”

You’ll think I’m making this up — today I saw someone [other than me] driving a car and not talking on a cell phone at the same time.

And I observed all this with my eyes closed….

Imagine That

Posted by Tim at 16:42 on 2007/10/09

Oct 092007

Today is the anniversary of the birth of John Lennon.

I am older [by a few years now] than he was when he died. That feels a little weird. [It also felt a little weird when I passed the age that my father was when I was born, but that's another story....]

I admire Lennon, but I don’t idolize him. He had flaws. He wasn’t always a good person/husband/father/artist. He was human. But I still bristle at any comparison of Kurt Cobain with Lennon. I just don’t see that at all. But then, I was never in the target demographic for his band….

One day in December of 1980 I was in my apartment typing [yes, TYPING] a final draft of a project for one of my classes. I had the radio on. I was thinking, “Wow, they’re playing a lot of Beatles music today.” And then the DJ explained. John Lennon is dead.

By coincidence, two of my buddies and I had decided to let our beards grow and the last day I shaved was the day Lennon died. But then I shaved it off a few months later, then let it grow back immediately. And I shaved for almost a year while recovering from the Dragon Lady. In all, I’ve worn a beard nearly all of my adult life and even though it has not been continuous, I still date it back to that December day. Which is WAY more than anyone needs to know or cares to know about my face. [Some people say that men with beards are untrustworthy and/or insecure. I am both, but I still don't think that other men should suffer because of me.]

Today I want to give peace a chance. [And I'm not even going for the dirty pun here.] I could use some peace today. Can’t we all?

Celebrating European Aggression

Posted by Tim at 18:13 on 2007/10/08

Oct 082007

Happy Columbus Day!

I’m about half-way through reading The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman. [Get the Book] I may write more when I finish it, but there was something that almost had me stop before I finished the first chapter: Mr. Friedman seems to suffer from a persistent myth in American education [and I find this really irritating in a book that seems to be fairly well researched in so many other areas and which hasn't been corrected in subsequent editions]. Let me be clear, Columbus did not prove that the world is round.

The idea of a spherical earth was deduced at least as early as the sixth century BC and was estimated remarkably accurately at least as early as the third century BC. Educated people and virtually all sailors and navigators at the time of Columbus’ voyages agreed that the earth is a sphere.

This misconception seems to stem from inaccuracies in a Columbus biography by Washington Irving. Damn him. To be honest, I haven’t looked in any current history books to see if this garbage is still being repeated [I hope not!]. (Columbus apparently did drastically underestimate how far he would have to sail westward to reach the east, but that’s another story….)

Another One Bites the Dust

Posted by Tim at 21:55 on 2007/10/01

Oct 012007

If a wedding goes off without a hitch, does that mean they did get married or they didn’t?

It was a lovely wedding. They both went through with it. Nobody ran out crying. Well, someone did but it wasn’t the bride or groom. But that’s a different story….

ring bearer & flower girl

Wait… I know all the jokes about how young we marry in Kentucky, but this is the ring bearer and flower girl.

first married kiss

There’s the happy couple!

I had some time to visit with family. It was the first time in years that we had all my siblings and all my niblings together. And now a couple of my niblings have young’uns too so we had a four-generation photo op.

4 gen family photo