Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

Cake bakers bake cakes. Bread bakers bake bread. Cookie bakers bake cookies. Bagel bakers bake bagels (after boiling them first, I hope.) Pretzel bakers bake pretzels, with a twist, of course. A recent email from a right wing “religious” organization, referred to “Christian bakers Aaron and Melissa Klein.” Oh, dear! Do Christian bakers bake….?­­

Born-again Christians. Isn’t it better to get it right the first time?

Ascribed to Billy Sunday in Jess Walter, The Cold Millions: “Goin’ to church don’t make you a Christian any more than goin’ to a garage makes you an automobile.”

Do the Christians who are non-celiac but gluten-free pray sincerely, “Give us this day our daily bread”?

Increasingly actors listing credits in Playbills include preferred pronouns. For example, the actor playing Max in the production I just saw included (he/him/his) and the one playing Sandra had (she/her). And pronouns often appear on the signature lines of emails these days. I wrote about how a new pronoun for the NBP has not come easily to me. Search Results for “pronoun” – AJ’s Dad (ajsdad.blog). But my preferred personal pronouns have remained constant: I, me, and especially mine.

I have not done much traveling since Covid infiltrated, but it is funny what I retain from earlier trips. For example, I went to Morocco shortly before the pandemic. I could not name all the different foods I tried. I cannot remember all the restaurants and hotels. I could not even tell you all the cities I visited. But I do remember that Morocco had many wonderful, varied streetlights.

Like others, I have admired the broad boulevards of Paris that help make the city beautiful. However, A Burglar’s Guide to the City by Geoff Manaugh says that these streets were not designed for their esthetics but to aid the police so that the thoroughfares could not be blockaded as they had been earlier in the Nineteenth Century.

Call me prejudiced. I was surprised at how fit–and attractive–the mixed-doubles Olympic curlers were.

“It seldom pays to be rude. It never pays to be only half rude.” Norman Douglas.

Reality is the only obstacle to happiness.

Are you a Zen master if, when you order a hot dog, you say, “Make me one with everything”?

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

Do you say, “Thirty days has September” or “Thirty days hath September”?

 

She wore a pin that said, “A hard man is good to find.”

 

Do Christian, gluten-free people feel any conflict when they pray, “Give us this day our daily bread”?

 

For tennis and some other televised sports, the graphics indicate the home country of a competitor with a flag. This is of little use to me since I don’t know the difference between Spain’s flag and Portugal’s, Chile’s and Argentina’s, Bulgaria’s and Belarus’s. And come on, how many of you know the colors of Liechtenstein’s standard? If only I could find Sheldon Cooper’s podcasts of “Fun with Flags.”

 

If Trump listed his hobbies, would he include tanning?

 

The Super Bowl was in Atlanta. I was reminded of one of the characters in Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier, who said, “If I had a brother in jail and one in Georgia, I’d try to bust the one out of Georgia first.”

 

Conservatives used to say that a conservative was made when a liberal got mugged. Now we might say that conservatives become liberal when they learn that a conservative has been arrested. Although standard law enforcement techniques have long employed early morning raids with a large show of force, I never heard conservatives complain about such tactics when used on unsuspecting black defendants. Fox News hosts and panelists now lash out at such “unnecessary” tactics. Perhaps this new sensitivity will lead the conservatives to giving money to the ACLU and maybe their outrage will continue when the police make similar arrests in the future of people who have not appeared on Fox News. But I doubt it.

 

“No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.” Michel Eyquem de Montaigne.

 

I could see a half-block away a well-dressed, attractive, thirtyish woman standing next to an expensive, parked SUV. She was waving a piece of paper. As I got closer, I could see that it was the tell-tale orange of a parking ticket. She was talking to a man. I could tell that he had written the ticket. As I strode closer, I expected to hear her agitated tones saying something like, “I was just a minute late.” Instead, I saw him nod and her smile. She moved to stand beside him. With her right hand, she held the ticket between them. With her left, she took a selfie.