Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

Some religions prohibit saying the sacred Name of God. What if it turned out to be Chip or Baxter? Or Henrietta?

He “never acknowledge[ed] that the general culture is often stupid or evil and would vote out God in favor of the devil if he fed them back their hate and fear in a way that made them feel righteous.” Charles Frazier, Varina.

Irony is dead, or at least it is in certain conservative circles. Some conservatives find the troubled past of Graham Platner disturbing. But they don’t have a similar concern with Ken Paxton’s history. Or that Trump has been adjudicated a sexual abuser. And is a convicted felon. Of course, there are many examples that irony is dead in certain conservative circles. We could make a list.

Many friends and the spouse recommended it. It was in the house. I finally read the first chapter. It was good. I only have 101 more chapters to go in Lonesome Dove.

On a friend’s recommendation I watched Ford v Ferrari. It was good. I recognized many of the race car driver names from that era, but the one that most resonated was Phil Hill. In my memory, he won a sports car race on the roads around Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, that I saw when I was kid. My parents took me to it. I was mostly bored. I saw a tiny fraction of the course with unidentifiable cars whipping past. There was no way to tell who was first or last. But Phil Hill won the race, so I must have seen him. However, after watching the movie, I wondered if my memory was correct. I googled and found that Phil Hill did, indeed, win the race at Elkhart Lake when I was seven. My memory might be correct. I told the spouse about this, applauding myself for having such a memory. She, the neuroscientist, told me that the real issue is short-term memory.

Sports are funny. In the New York Knicks’ incredible comeback win in the fourth game of the finals, their star missed an open shot to go ahead with two seconds left. That won’t be remembered because of the teammate’s game-winning tip-in.

World Cup announcers talk about getting the ball into the back of the net, but isn’t the point to get the ball into the back of the goal which is the front of the net?

When I want to feel special, I tell myself that I am one of the few people who knows that Tarzan lived in Wisconsin.

She was in an Off-Broadway musical. I said that I might go to it if I could find discount tickets. Even though I had just met her, she got offended and said that since she had paid full price for her music degree, I should pay full price to hear her. I never heard her sing.

“If one attitude can be said to characterize America’s regard for immigration over the past two hundred years, it is the belief that while immigration was unquestionably a wise and prescient thing in the case of one’s parents or grandparents, it really ought to stop now.” Bill Bryson, Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States.

Posted on by rjonakait

Snippets

Who knew that Tarzan lived in Wisconsin?

Parking increasingly requires us to go to one of those machines and buy a slip with a time printed on it to put on the car’s dashboard to show how long the car can be parked in that spot. With a parking meter, there was always a chance that time remained on the meter, and we might need fewer coins than we thought or, perhaps, none. It was not a huge joy when that happened, but it always made me feel at least a little bit lucky. But that happy moment is now gone. Or does anyone, when leaving a parking place, give the slip with time remaining on it to someone pulling into a spot on that block?

Will a new generation know what “Rita the Meter Maid” is about?

I had a heart incident a decade ago. In the days right before I landed in the emergency room, the strain of ordinary exertion must have shown, because, for the first time ever and to my dismay, a young woman offered me her seat on the subway. Luckily, she was not that good looking.

At this time of year, I remember the country song lyrics—“There are two things money can’t buy: true love and homegrown tomatoes.”

Why do we say something is “affordable”?  Isn’t anything bought, leased, rented, or bartered “affordable” for the one who got it?  And isn’t almost anything, no matter how “affordable,” not affordable for many?

 I recently met a couple.  He was six feet ten.  She was just shy of five feet.  What questions would you have liked to ask?

The only time I have been in one was in Baltimore while on a tour of baseball stadiums as a guest of a minister friend. He insisted he wanted to go to his first “Hooters.”

All those TV sports shows ought to interview college athletes about their favorite professors and then produce clips of those teachers in the classrooms and interacting with the athletes outside of classes.

I was on a park bench. Off to my left a man was ranting. Police were around the apparently mentally ill person dealing with him patiently. On the next park bench to my right were people who begged in the park and seemed to know the ranter. One of the them looked at the police, saw a blonde woman, and said, “Look at her. She doesn’t look like a cop. Why did she become a cop? She should have been, uh, uh, uh, a chemist, or something.”

I hope it was for a law firm, but it did not say so. The billboard read: “Medical malpractice is all we do.”

It was a remarkable sight, the man wearing sweatpants held up by suspenders.

“No one on earth—none that I had ever seen—is more polite than a person at a gun show: more eager to smile, more accommodating, less likely to step on your toe.” Paul Theroux, Deep South.