You’ll never count sheep again

The other night when I couldn't go to sleep I passed the time with a new time-waster of my own invention, which I now pass along to you for using whenever you like, not just during periods of insomnia. It could prove very useful while waiting in a doctor's office, for example, or when sitting for hours in an airport.

What I did was simply go through every pair of letters in the entire alphabet systematically and tried to match each to a real-world entity. Starting with AA, AB, AC and going all the way to ZX, ZY, ZZ you will consider 676 pairs (26 times 26). It is interesting to see how many answers you can come up with, and also how many you can't. I'm sure every person's list will be different. Here's how mine started off:

AA - American Airlines, Alcoholics Anonymous
AB - Alberta (province of Canada)
AC - air conditioning
AD - Anno Domini (Year of our Lord)
AE - initials of the poet A.E. Housman who wrote "When I Was One And Twenty" and "Loveliest Of Trees, The Cherry Now"
AF - Air Force
AG - Attorney General
AH - Anno Hegirae (Year of the Hijrah), the Islamic calendar which commemmorates the beginning of the Prophet Mohammed's journey from Mecca to Medina in 622 AD
AI - artificial intelligence

and so on through AZ (Arizona) and on to BA (Bachelor of Arts), all the way to ZZ. It may take awhile. Several days. Several months. Knowing the periodic table helps (AU is gold, FE is iron, PB is lead).

The only rule is that each answer must come out of your own memory banks spontaneously without referring to anything in a book or on your phone or computer.

It won't put you to sleep, though. Just the opposite, actually. It will keep you awake. To go to sleep, try doing something really useful like praying for your family and friends. It works every time because our old enemy doesn't want us to do that, ever.

This has been another fun suggestion great idea annoying contribution to humanity blogpost from (who else?) moi, the one and only rhymeswithplague.

P.S. - PB is also peanut butter.

A whole lot of nothing sets one to thinking

In the last 24 hours alone, my email inbox received 172 new messages, 171 of which held no interest for me. All but three or four of them were political in nature (enough already, the election was nearly five monhs ago). and the remaining except for one were hoping to interest me in their products or services for an exchange of money from my pockets into theirs. The lone email I considered legitimate and not junk was a receipt for an onlne payment I had recently made.

There were also 17 new messages in my email's "spam" folder. I could detect no discernible reason why these particular incoming missives were singled out for this special treatment. All of the 171 mentioned in the preceding paragraph could have been designated as spam as far as I'm concerned.

i deleted the 171 and the 17 and continued with my day. I think all of the continuing political folderol is generated based on the fear that the old saying "out of sight, out of mind" is true. Someone should remind the senders that there is also truth in two other old sayings, namely "absence makes the heart grow fonder" and "don't wear out your welcome."

How one is to achieve a balance between the conflicting truths in a myriad of old sayings is an ongoing, nay, a never-ending task.

If there are any old sayings you have found to be either true or false in your own life, please tell us what they are so that we may benefit from (or avoid the pitfalls of) your experience.

The birdies that sing 🎶 in the spring, tra la

...may commence as of 5:01 a.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST) today, as that is, or was, this year's moment for the vernal equinox to occur. It is one of two days each year -- the other is the autumnal equinox in September -- when all latitudes have 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of datkness, and an egg set on end will not fall over.

I wonder if people in the Southern Hemisphere call this the vernal equinox too when it is so clearly autumn there. Kylie, please let us know.

When I was a boy we called March 21st the first day of spring. It also is, or was, the birthday of my maternal grandfather, Nathan Silberman (1875-1970) of Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, who would be turning 150 tomorrow.

I wonder if he was one of the 2.8 million people who, according to Elon Musk at the Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE), were shown in the Social Security tecords as being over 120 years old, still alive, and possibly (if not probably) still being paid monthly benefits. Until this week, that is, when their status was changed to deceased.

I hope not.

I do know one thing for certain. His money wasn't coming to me.

Maybe life is not like a box of chocolates

The most stupid thing I've seen in a very long time is a comment someone left on someone else's Facebook page a couple of days ago. It is so stupid that I have put it in a special box composed of asterisks to highlight just how stupid it is:

**************************************************************
* As Forrest Gump said, stupid does as stupid is. *
**************************************************************
Speaking of Forrest Gump, did you know that the actor Tom Hanks is a third cousin, four times removed, of President Abraham Lincoln? Well, he is. Lincoln's mother was Nancy Hanks. Also, singer Pat Boone (remember him?) is a great-great-great-great-grandson of the American pioneer Daniel Boone. I'm not claiming that there is any connection between Tom Hanks and Pat Boone.

That would be stupid.

84

Today is my 84th birthday, which Wikipedia tells me is the number following 83 and preceding 85. I go to great lengths to bring you such invaluable information.

I didn't need to go to Wikipedia to know the following facts:

• 84 has 12 divisors (1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 12, 14, 21, 28, 42, and 84)
• George Orwell wrote the novel Nineteen Eighty-four (not 1984) in the year 1948 and just inverted the last two digits of the year in which he wrote it to come up with a date in the not too distant future for his title
• It takes 84 earth years for Uranus to make one trip around the Sun (please, no wisecracks from readers in Yorkshire)

Having been trained as a computer programmer since 1962, I also know that 84 decimal is 1010100 in binary (base 2), 124 in octal (base 8), and 54 in hexadecimal (base 16).

I figure that most of us know that 84 in Roman numerals is LXXXIV or lxxxiv. I have no idea when uppercase or lowercase is appropriate to use, or whether it even matters.

One thing I did learn from my foray into Wikipedia is that 84 in Greek numerals is ΠΔ or πδ (take your pick).

And now you know it too.

Bonus factoid: Greek numerals are also known as Ionic, Ionian, Milesian, or Alexandrian numerals.

You are most welcome.

To be precise, today is the 84th anniversary of the day I was born. Yesterday was the last day of my 84th year on earth so far. Today is actually the first day of my 85th year.

Let the festivities begin!

Put them all together, they spell MOTHER

In alphabetic order, here are the 2-character abbreviations that are recognized by the United States Postal Service (USPS) for the 50 states of the US:

AK AL AR AZ CA CN CO DE FL GA
HI IA ID IL IN KS KY LA MA MD
ME MI MN MS MO MT NC ND NE NH
NJ NM NV NY OH OK OR PA RI SC
SD TN TX UT VA VT WA WI WV WY

I will not identify them all here, but can you name all 50 states from their postal abbreviations only?

Here are six more 2-character codes for one district and five territories that also are part of the United States:

DC AS GU MP PR VI

They are, in order, the District of Columbia (the national capital city of Washington); the three Pacific territories of American Samoa, Guam, and the Northern Marianas Islands; and the two Atlantic territories of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands.

The people of both the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have voted to become states but to date the US Congress has not agreed to let them do so.

Here are the 2-character postal abbreviations for the 10 provinces and three territories of the nation of Canada, which if Donald Trump gets his way (I hope he doesn't) would become the US's 51st state:

AB BC MB NB NL NS NT NU ON PE QC SK YK

They are Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Northwest Territorirs, Nunavut, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Saskatchewan, and Yukon.

I know very little about Mexico, our neighbor to the south. At one time its capital, Mexico City, was called Mexico DF (for Distrito Federales) but I believe that is no longer the case. According to various sources there are 30 or 31 or 32 states in Mexico. I can't begin to name them all but I can tell you a few of them: Baja California, Baja California Sur, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Hidalgo, Jalisco, Nuevo Leon, Oaxaca, Sonora, Veracruz, Yucatan.

You are hereby invited to share with your fellow RRs (rhymeswithplague readers) some equally boring but potentially fascinating details about political subdivisions or postal abbreviations in your vicinity in the comments.

How not to win friends and influence people

I remember watching television in 1968 as anti-Vietnam War protesters yelled, "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill toda?"

In 2025 we watch television as pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas, antisemitic protesters yell on university campuses in New York, "NYPD, KKK, IDF, they're all the same."

Really? The New York Police Department, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Israeli Defense Forces are all the same? I think not. And this ridiculous statement comes from antisemitic cowards who cover their faces with masks to hide their identities. I think it is clear who is most like the Ku Klux Klan in the current scenario.

Here's something else to think about:

In "Song Of Myself" (1892 version), poet Walt Whitman said, "I am large. I contain multitudes". In the New Testament books of both Mark and Luke, a Gadarene man who cut himself and lived among the tombs naked said, "My name is Legion, for we are many". In the former case the world applauded. In the latter case the world shuddered (except for Jesus, of course, who commanded the unclean spirits to come out. The expelled demons entered immediately into a herd of swine which promptly ran violently down a steep place into the sea and were drowned).

On the surface, the two statements are eerily similar, the obvious difference between them being that Walt Whitman was merely expressing his identification with humanity at large and the man from Gadara was possessed by demon spirits (and there are such things) that had taken up residence in his body and were controlling his actions.

It took the presence and power of Jesus Christ to put and end to the Gadarene man's torment and bring calmness to the community. In my humble opinion, that is the only thing that will end the torment in the present-day cities of America.

You may not agree with me, but I do hope you will continue to read my posts.