Thursday, June 23, 2016

Rip van Winkle returns

Two weeks without posting is a lifetime in the world of blogging. Social media being "where it's at" today, I may just be considered a troglodyte.

trog-lo-dyte [trog-luh-dahyt] noun. 1. A prehistoric cave dweller. 2. A person of degraded, primitive, or brutal character. 3. A person living in seclusion. 4. A person unacquainted with affairs of the world. 5. An animal living underground. (American dictionary)

troglodyte /trɒɡləˌdaɪt/ noun. 1. A cave dweller, esp one of the prehistoric peoples thought to have lived in caves. 2. (informal) a person who lives alone and appears eccentric. (British dictionary)

I, of course, neither live alone (Mrs. RWP is here with me) nor appear eccentric. And even though eccentricity, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, I am not eccentric, I am not eccentric, I am not eccentric.

Anything I say three times is true.

Be that as it may, forty-seven years ago today, on June 23rd, 1969, the United States government forced IBM to "unbundle" its software from its hardware and market the products separately. A day that will live in infamy the annals of computing industry history, at least among IBM troglodytes like myself.

Today, June 23rd, 2016, another sort of "unbundling" may be in the making. The inhabitants of the British Isles (U.K. to you) are deciding whether to remain in the European Union or to leave, in a national referendum dubbed "BREXIT".

Only time will tell.

Fortunately, Rip van Winkle has plenty of that.

I will now crawl back into my hole, but not before showing you some troglodytes.







Without cheating, can you identify them?

5 comments:

  1. No. I bet they are or were famous for something.

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  2. I would need to cheat to identify those dapper gentlemen. However, as a partial excuse, I have trouble identifying my own family.
    I am wondering which way Brexit will fall.

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  3. They are all EU presidents. Nobody knows who they are. Not even the presidents.

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  4. Without cheating, I admit that I could not identify them but with cheating it was easy to find out who these not-so-handsome fellows were. I will not give the answers as this would spoil the fun for other visitors. By the way, one of our deceased neighbours was nicknamed "Trog" and personally I think the name goes well with Brague. Trog Brague...Trog Brague... sounds like the name of a TV weatherman or a heavy metal band's drummer.

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  5. Being as I am, in this current world, definitely eccentric and content to dwell on my hilltop in relative seclusion, I have no idea who these beings are (were?). If it will change my life, you may tell me. I should mention that I have just celebrated my 57th birthday and realized that I am only 3 years from 60. I believe I shall go and soothe myself with a cup of hot coffee and much chocolate. I don't remember ever being quite this old before.

    ReplyDelete

<b>Always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion</b>

We are bombarded daily by abbreviations in everyday life, abbreviations that are never explained, only assumed to be understood by everyone...