Sunday, June 1, 2025

Sic transit gloria mundi, memento mori, and other Latin expressions

The following three sentences did not originate with me but they provide a good jumping off place (translation: inspiration) for what I want to say today:

In my 20s, I spent a lot of time wondering what other people thought about me.

In my 40s, I didn't care at all what other people thought about me.

In my 60s, I realized that other people were not thinking about me at all; they were much too busy thinking about themselves.

I want to add a fourth item to that list:

In my 80s, I have realized that most of the people I ever thought about or who might ever have thought about me are dead.

One day I will be dead too.

And so will you.

Everybody dies eventually. The mortality rate is 100%.

I hope this hasn't come as a shock to you.

Actress (or more linguistically preferred nowadays, actor) Loretta Swit (Major Margaret "Hot Lips" Houlihan in M*A*S*H) died this week but Margaret O'Brien is still alive.

If you don't know who Margaret O'Brien is, look it up in your Funk & Wagnalls.

Dick Martin of the comedy team Rowan and Martin used to say "look it up in your Funk & Wagnalls" on Laugh-In. Today he would probably say to google it. If you have never heard of Rowan and Martin or Laugh-In you are probably a member of Gen Z or Gen Y or Gen X or even possibly a Millennial. If so, you should stop reading the blogs of old people and find a more productive way to spend your time, preferably on something that pays well.

P.S. - Fortunately, for Christians there is the hope provided by the resurrection of Christ. Look it up in your Funk & Wagnalls.

Thursday, May 29, 2025

Artificial Intelligence is not perfect quite yet

My desktop computer's screen saver or wallpaper or whatever it is informed me this morning that May 29th is World Otter Day. I don't know why otters would even have a day or why it would fall on May 29th and I'm in no hurry to find out.

Instead, I want to continue a variation of a pet peeve we have discussed in a few previous posts. We talked before about the sometimes laughable, sometimes infuriating inaccuracies that closed captioning produces on one's television screen. Today we will look at a couple of examples that happened on my smart phone when I asked for the lyrics to a song.

From some of the output I received I gather that someone or something (voice-recognition software?) listens to a recording of the requested song and produces a printed copy of what he, she, or it thinks he, she, or it heard.

Here are two sets of lyrics that happen to be gospel songs. One was written by Bill and Gloria Gaither several decades ago as a song for children. The other is a fairly recent song written by their adult daughter Suzanne. I have highlighted the boo-boos (by which I mean obvious errors if one knows the songs) in red:


1. I Am A Promise

[Chorus]
I am a promise, I am a possibility
I am a promise with a capital P
I am a great big bundle of potentiality
And I am learning to hear God's voice
And I am trying to make the right choices
I'm a promise to be anything He wants me to be

[Bridge]
I can go anywhere that He wants me to go
I can be anything that He wants me to be
I can climb the high mountsin
I can cross the White Sea
I am a great big promise you see

and then the Chorus is repeated. There is actually an area on Russia's northwestern coast that is called the White Sea, but it has nothing to do with this song. Instead of 'White Sea' the transcription should have read 'wide sea'.


2. Jesus Is Everywhere

[Verse 1]
In the coldest part of Scotland
The darkest night of the year
I found a church where the lights were dim
And I sat out in the rain
And we sang about a baby
Angel voices filled that place
I could feel the love of Jesus
And the tears ran down my face

[Chorus]
Jesus is in the water
Jesus is in the wine
Jesus is standing next to us
In the noisy Starbucks line
Jesus is in Manhattan
Jesus is in St. Claire
He's waiting around the corner
Jesus is everywhere
Jesus is everywhere
Jesus is everywhere
Jesus is everywhere

[Verse 2]
On a winding street in Venice
On the sunny side of town
Church bells rang out in Saint Loco
So we went in and sat down
We forgot that it was Sunday
The priest was hard to understand
But we heard the word for Jesus
Holding waivers in our hands

[Chorus]

[Bridge] In the darkest hour of nighttime
In the dark night of the soul
In the balmy heat of summer
In the bitter winter cold
In the halls of every mansion
In apartments where you sleep
if You've never gone too far
And you're never in too deep

and then, surprise, the chorus is repeated. Here are the corrections to the red lyrics:

'I sat out in the rain' should be 'I sat down in the rear'.

Anybody with half a brain or any familiarity with either Venice or Christianity would know (or could guess) that church bells rang out in San Marco, not Saint Loco (seriously, Saint Loco?) and Suzanne and her companion were holding wafers, not waivers, in their hands.

Apparently AI doesn't have half a brain just yet.

I am feeling so superior to AI at the moment, but it is probably a bit premature of me to do so. I've heard that AI is a fast learner.

A word to the wise: Hold the gloating until a date to be announced later.

Monday, May 26, 2025

Things that make me go Hmmm #17,643

Some people's identities change more often than I change socks. I'm serious. My friend Patty B____ is now Patty P____ M____ on Facebook. How can anyone find her? My friend Terri H____ is now Terri R____ C____. My friend Clara L____ has changed the most and is now Clara A____ S____ M____. One woman at our church, Paula M____ J____, has an adult son whose surname starts with T. As hawkers often say at sporting events, you can't tell the players without a program.

My wife was never given a middle name, so she started using her maiden name as her middle name after we were married. Both my mother and my daughter dropped their given middle names (one was E____ and one was R____) when they married and, like my wife, began using their maiden names as their middle names. This used to be common for married women to do.

Nowadays there are no rules. One of our daughters-in-law still uses the old method, dropping her middle name T____ and using her maiden name P____ as her middle name and initial. Our other daughter-in-law has always gone by her middle name and never used her first name at all. On social media she is known by her middle name and her married name only, with no reference to either her first name or her maiden name. Among our granddaughters-in-law (we have five), three use the 'first name'-'maiden name'-'married name' pattern, one uses the 'first name'-'married name' (no middle name) pattern, and one uses the 'first name'-'middle name'-'married name' (no maiden name) pattern.

When I worked in Florida years ago, my colleague Frank L____ and his wife divorced and Mrs.L____ was awarded custody of the children. Then my colleague Pete Z____ and his wife divorced and Mrs. Z____ was awarded custody of the children. A little while later, Frank L____ married the former Mrs. Z____, and Pete Z____ married the former Mrs. L____. All of the children attended the same elementary school and some were even in the same classrooms. So the report cards for the Z____ children were sent to the L____ home, and the report cards for the L____ children were sent to the Z____ home. Parent-teacher conferences must have proven interesting for the faculty and administrators at the school.

If you are completely confused at this point, join the club.

I hope this post has given my American readers something to ponder besides our fallen military heroes on this Memorial Day. I further hope that it hasn't given any of my readers, American or otherwise, a headache.

Thursday, May 15, 2025

Round and round she goes

Tonight we (Mrs. RWP and I) watched Jeopardy! for the first time in several monhs and the crickets (no buzz-ins from the three contestants but I knew the answers) were out in abundance on the following:

Who is Richard Nixon?
Who is Robert Louis Stevenson?
What is live oak?

The clues were (1) he appointed William Rehnquist to the United States Supreme Court, (2) his poem "Requiem" included the line 'home is the sailor, home from the sea', and (3) a photograph of a tree in a category entitled "L.O."

We also watched an episode of Finding Your Roots, another program we hadn't watched in several months.

Either we have regressed or everything that goes around comes around.

We have two more graduates in the family as of last week. One of our grandsons received his Bachelor's degree and another grandson received his Master's degree. We have no buttons left.

Sunday, May 11, 2025

More memory lane memories

Children can be bullies, and childhood taunts are often cruel and unkind. Here are a few I remember hearing back in the 1950s:

Fatty, Fatty, two by four,
Can't get through the kitchen door.

Here comes the bride
Short, fat, and wide.
Can't get through the church door
She'll have to stay outside.

Happy birthday to you
You live in a zoo
You stink like a monkey
And you look line one too.

That last one was particularly popular in 4th- and 5th-grade during recess.

Mrs. Rhymeswithplague (the lovely Ellie) remembers choosing team members or "It" during playground games by saying "Ink, skink, sky blue, all out but you." In my part of the world (Texas) we were more crass:

Eeny, meany, miney, moe
Catch a [n-word] by the toe
If he hollers, let him go
Eeny, meany, miney, moe

After my time, the vile n-word was replaced by 'tiger' and God was in His heaven, all was right with the world.

Not.

My theory and observation is that childhood bullies left unconfronted and uncorrected grow up to be adult bullies.

My parents taught me that sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.

With all due respect, I think they were wrong.

Before endinng this post I want to wish all mothers everywhere a Happy Mother's Day even if it is not Mother's Day where you are, and I also want to tell you that tomorrow, May 12th, is the 119th anniversary of my dad's birth in 1906. Unfortunately, he died in 1967.

Friday, May 9, 2025

A trip down memory lane

When I was young there was no internet, no X (formerly known as Twitter), no Instagram no Snapchat, no online shopping, no online banking, no Zelle, no Venmo, no Paypal, no electric cars, no hybrids, no bitcoin, no AI, no Apple watch, no Ring doorbell, no cell phones, no anything almost.

What there was was blood, toil, tears, and sweat. Young folk, Winston Churchill said that.

Things have changed massively in my lifetime, not necessarily for the better, even though many labor-saving (British, labour-saving) devices have been invented.

I'm so old I can remember playing with a slinky, a hula hoop, roller skates, a Viewmaster Stereoscope, and pick up stix (little girls played jacks, hopscotch, skipped rope, and pushed dolls around in small baby carriages (British, perambulators).

I can remember gasoline (petrol) costing 17.9¢ per gallon.

I'm so old I can remember when Rosie O'Donnell and Ellen Degeneres were funny.

I remember Dr. Jonas Salk. I remember Betty Furness, Ish Kabibble, S&H green stamps, Kay Kyser's College Of Musical Knowledge. I remember the bouncing ball on Sing Along With Mitch. I remember Jerry Lewis's annual telethons to raise money to find a cure for muscular dystrophe. I remember Ozzie and Harriet.

I remember Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile barrier. I remember Mark Spitz. I remember Olga Korbut. I remember Torvill and Dean in lavender costumes dancing on ice skates to Ravel's Boléro.

I remember Roy Rogers and Trigger.

This little trip down memory lane has been provided by a person who in less than two weeks will have been married to the same woman for 62 years. They have gone by in a flash.

Life now includes aches and pains, I am old and wrinkled, and a stranger looks out at me from the mirror.

Wednesday, May 7, 2025

How to tell if you have Trump Derangement Syndrome

This is an important public service announcement regarding Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).

In a nutshell, when President Donald Trump is being serious, people with TDS think he is joking; and when he is joking, they think he is serious.

People without TDS know intuitively when President Trump is being serious and when he is joking.

Then there are the people like me who cannot tell but believe that on any particular day and any particular subject President Trump is fully capable of either joking or being serious, and possibly of doing both at the same time. His modue operandi seems to be to run it up a flagpole and see if anybody salutes it.

Here is a self-test to determine your TDS status/susceptibility:

Make Canada the 51st state (joke or serious?)
Buy Greenland (joke or serious?)
Become pope (joke or serious?)
Run for a third term (joke or serious?)
Send U.S. troops into Mexico to destroy drug cartels (joke or serious?)
Take back the Panama Canal (joke or serous?)

If you haven't been paying attention or if you live in another part of the world, these are all topics that have been floated in the first 100 days of what is being called the Trump 2.0 administration. FYI, only 1,361 days remain in the Trump 2.0 administration, including the Leap Day in 2028.

Let the celebrating begin.

<b>Sic transit gloria mundi, memento mori, and other Latin expressions </b>

The following three sentences did not originate with me but they provide a good jumping off place (translation: inspiration) for what I wan...