Category: Fun Stuff

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This Is Rich

[With a tip o’ the tam to Ori Pomerantz, via John Lambshead]

Soldier Decapitates ISIS Thug with Spade in Afganistan

This is rich on so many levels. The primary story, sure: prevailing against odds with whatever weapon is to hand: great. But. . .

Calling a spade an “espada,” so to speak, and making it so: really rich.

spade?espada I like the etymology, too: [Gr] spatha? [L] spathan? [Sp] espada, especially since “spade” itself also shares some of those roots (pre-grecian). Using a spade as a [Middle Dutch] “spade” (sword) seems particularly fitting for a British subject, since the House of Hanover has roots in nationalities where “spade” also once meant “sword.”

Then again, root words for “spade” also meant “spoon” or “paddle” at times, in different languages, so “paddling” the ISIS thug to death with a “spoon” also makes me smile.

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Missed It? Here.

Interesting lil tidbit that comes up every “supermoon” (a term I had never read until 2017, strangely enough) is “perigee-syzygy” (a particular alignment of three celestial bodies–a term I had read/heard long ago). It refers to the particular Earth-Moon system condition that results in what is apparently called a “supermoon.” *shrugs* I find “perigee-syzygy” more congenial and felicitous as a term.

BTW, you can try again on the 31st, if that’s a thing for you.

Continue reading “Missed It? Here.”

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Rakin’ in the Goodies

Two fav Xmas gifts that have come my way this year:

In addition to my “rescue kitty,” my Wonder Woman found a 1946 printing of the 1943 edition of The Joy of Cooking for me. *heh* It’s actually in better condition than the well worn 1970s era copy [someone] gave us as a wedding present.

Then, of course, Son&Heir gave me a knife. ALWAYS welcome. I can already tell it will be one of my EDC knives. 🙂

Lovely Daughter and Estimable Son-in-Law are coming to share a meal with us Dec. 26, and I can hardly wait to see how Estimable Son-in-Law likes the gifts designed to fit into his latest “thing.”

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TOO MUCH STUFF!!!

*sigh*

Purging. And not just household items. Data.

Several years after my first computer, I went “big” for a 5MB hard drive on a 486. I ended up, in the long run, “purging” (well, discarding) most of the data I had on 5.25 floppies, tape (even audio cassette tapes *heh*), etc. I may never get around to sorting and purging the boxes (and boxes) of CDRs that are slowly decaying, although I do have quite a bit of original work I saved to 3.5” floppies transferred to other media/stored in several different archives. *shrugs* Useful mainly for review of how my views have changed/remained the same after dealing with new information. Apart from that? Destined for destruction when I’m gone.

The other day, I actually found an external 500GB drive I thought I had scrubbed; it’d been stuck in a (wrong) box during some house changes. Never missed it, since the data was all elsewhere, anyway.

I have way too much stuff, including just junk sitting around on various drives. Some of it is the result of a habit of saving web pages/sites for offline reading or even reference archiving, something I do for things that are more interesting/immediate than would fit in my 1,000s of bookmarks (also need purging, though I do that now and then with an app).

The flood back on the last day of April was good for purging stuff, but we need to go much, much farther, and are doing so. It just seems to go so slowly. . . *sigh*

It’s a daunting task, but must it be done.

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Fav Things

It’s funny, but of all the cutting boards I have, the two I use almost every day (one for meats and another for veggies–that one IS every day) are a couple I made in shop class 53 years ago (or was it 54? *heh*).

One (the solid mahogany board) was a Xmas gift to my paternal grandmother, and family “put it in my pile” when she passed away 37(?) years ago. The other (walnut and maple) was a Xmas gift to my mom, and she left it with me about 28 years ago when she was paring things down for a move.

While I have–and have had over the years–others, these serve almost all my needs quite handily, and have worn very very well over the years.

simple things, but real favs.

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Educating Medical “Professionals”

Annual “permission slip” Dr. visit last week: ears so plugged up with gunk I almost didn’t mind having the same questions asked again. . . and again. . . by two different forms and three different people. #gagamaggot

At least something educational came of the visit, though. Nurse dropped in to ask the SAME QUESTIONS as on the form in her hand that I had just filled out and noted that she didn’t have to ask if I were depressed, because she assumed that anyone whistling a “happy” tune was in fine spirits.

“That’s a fallacious assumption,” I told her. “I’m simply whistling a tune I am listening to ‘between my ears’ in order to drown out the dreck y’all are playing on your sound system. It doesn’t mean I am ‘happy’ but that I’m listening to something better than that stuff that would gag a maggot.”

“Oh. So do you have feelings of depression?”

“Oh, yeh. That ‘music’ y’all arer playing makes me want to end it all.”

“Oh, OK. I’ll see if we can turn it down then.”

“Thank you. Now THAT makes me happy.”

*heh*

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Something Different

I own a little revolver that is. . . different in several ways from the norm.

It’s a lil .32 ACP revolver that uses a round designed for .32 semi-automatics.

It is from a defunct maker of second-tier-quality knock-offs of other maker’s guns.

It’s a top-break revolver (semi-unusual nowadays).

It is one of very few the manufacturer made in this caliber with a six-round cylinder. By far, most of the .32 caliber revolvers made by this maker were 5-round.

Before it came to be in my possession, it had been fired only once, in 1929, by a man who committed suicide after the stock market crash. In the 84 years that intervened between that event and me coming into possession of the gun, no one else put a single round through it, and aside from two small spots of surface corrosion, the gun was in pristine condition, the bluing–apart from those two small spots–still perfect.

It’s a pretty good lil plinker, and ammo for the thing abounds, but I mostly just leave it cleaned, oiled, and in its case. I don’t really have a use for it aside from plinking, though I also have a nice lil IWB holster (that I picked up for ~$29 less than retail–$1–at my local “fell off the back of a truck” store) so I could, if I wanted, carry it concealed. . . if I wanted to, which–.32 ACP?–I do not.

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“Lucy”

Amusing to watch a movie on TV (I’m also reading a book and slipping out to do this during commercial breaks. a close approximation of my typical TV-watching habits for about. . . 6 decades) and watch, during a gunfight scene, one character’s wound move from one side of his body to another. Yeh, continuity shoulda caught that. But then, that was the least of the continuity errors and other flubs and wildly laughable mistakes in the film.

Suspension of disbelief was irrevocably broken in the first five minutes though, so all the errors, laughable mistakes of anatomy, mechanics, procedural “bind-moggling,” etc., were more amusing than distracting, because NOTHING about the film was in any way, shape, fashion, or form believable, even within its own framework, right down to the protagonist’s hair color.

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Small Pleasures

Took my Wonder Woman along with me on a jaunt to my favorite “fell off the back of a truck store,” in part to help me keep my expenditures down. Well, that worked well. *heh* Oh, don’t get me wrong, the butcher’s bill was not that bad, even for a tightwad like me, but. . .

She found a Tramontina combo ( one of Tramontina’s triple-ply stainless, small Dutch ovens and an induction plate) for half what I paid for a 12” Tramontina pan seven years ago. . . on close-out @33% off the regular price. Yeh, that was still more than my tightwad heart had set as a likely outing cost, but at less than 30% of the Amazon price for the set, I am able to at least rationalize the purchase, especially since I know I’ll at least be using the pan for years to come.

Used the combo today to make a fritata–potatoes ion bottom, layered with sauteed onion/garlic, corn, broccoli, red pepper, cheese, and egg/heavy cream. Oh, ver’ yummers.

Cooked another one-pan meal with our lil 3-piece Tramontina induction cooking set. Cheesy chicken-broccoli-rice casserole. Yummers. Liking this lil set. (Induction cooker works with the rest of my pots-n-pans, but since it came with such a nice 3-ply mini Dutch oven, no sense in not using it, right? 😉 )

Still even more pleased that my Wonder Woman found it at less than 30% of the Amazon price.

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Law Enfarcement in America’s Third World County™

Just another *cough* typical *cough* interaction with putative “law enforcement” in America’s Third World County™. . .

[Phone rings]

Me: Hello.
Caller: This is [some redneck] with the [Third World County™] Sheriff’s Department. What can I do for you?
Me: You called _me_. What do you want?
Caller: Dispatch gave me your name and number and told me you requested a call.
Me: What name?
Caller: Junior [Redacted].
Me: Junior [Redacted] lives two miles from me. What number did dispatch give you?
Caller: [recites my landline number]
Me: That’s not Junior [Redacted]’s number.
Caller: Sorry.
Me: *click*

I should have asked if dispatched was referring to Junior [Redacted] or Junior [Redacted] Junior, his son, although they live (lived? Is Junior [Redacted] still among the “quick”?) in “manufactured homes” catty-cornered from each other. . . (and Junior [Redacted] Junior now runs the family business).