Sometimes my role is clear, at other times it’s a bit murky

Having a blog is great fun but it can also be confusing. Sometimes I am the teacher and sometimes I am the student. Sometimes I am the doctor and sometimes I am the patient. Sometimes I am the jailer and sometimes I am the prisoner.

For example, when I wrote a post recently about Jeopardy!, I never finished replying to comments and promised to answer two readers "in my next post", but I never did. I do apologize for my procrastination and want to rectify the matter today.

Graham Edwards wrote:

"The programme 'Jeopardy' means nothing to me. I am totally useless at trivia and quizzes in general. My brain doesn't work that way. In New Zealand The Family was very much into quiz games. They had programmes for them and we all had a buzzer attached to the game box and whoever pressed the buzzer first got to answer. Things to which I knew the answer would come and go and even the simplest of things would allude me in the moment. The kids used to have a field day. Even "classical" music and sixties pop would desert me even though I would normally have no problem in a non-quiz situation. I always came last.

"I think Secretariat won a famous triple so I assume that was in 1973 although I may be miles off and I wouldn't have a clue which races or in which country or how I know that (assuming it's correct). I know ESB won a Grand National because all my family had a wee wager on it because my Uncle's initials were ESB. I was brought up in Liverpool where ESB was a legend anyway. Now that is trivia."

Here's my response: First, Graham, I'm pretty sure you meant 'elude' and not 'allude'. Do not despair. There are far more important things in the world than winning at games of trivia. If, as you say, you would normally have no problem in a non-quiz situation, my advice to you is simply this: Stay away from quiz situations. My fee for dispensing advice is nominal. If you haven't got a penny, a ha'penny will do. If you haven't got a ha'penny, then God bless you.

I never heard of ESB, but then I have never heard of a lot of things. Secretariat's Triple Crown win indeed occurred in 1973 and it occurred in the U.S. He won the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky; the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico in Baltimore,Maryland; and the Belmont Stakes in Nassau County on Long Island, New York, that last one by a remarkable 31 lengths. Your recollection of putting 'a wee wager' on ESB in the Grand National reminded me of the time I invested in a stock called RHB because those are my initials and RHB turned out to be the top-performing stock that year on the New York Stock Exchange.

Snowbrush wrote:

"Jeopardy questions aren't trivial so much as they only require a Cliff Notes level of knowledge regarding serious subjects.

" 'Things to which I knew the answer would come and go and even the simplest of things would allude me in the moment.'

"This is why Jeopardy contestants tend to be on the young side (I would guess that most of them are in their upper thirties). However, when it comes to questions regarding the era when I was young, they often miss answers that are obvious to me."

Snowbrush, I'm pretty sure Graham meant 'elude' and not 'allude'. Saying that 'Jeopardy questions only require a Cliff Notes level of knowledge regarding serious subjects' is probably accurate, though acknowledging that fact is quite a blow to my ego. It forces me to realize that I have no depth. If I were a river, I would be a mile wide and only six inches deep.

As they (whoever they are) say, if the shoe fits, wear it.

It's quite a comeuppance. I may never be the same again.

You are spot on when you say that 'when it comes to questions regarding the era when [we were] young, they often miss answers that are obvious to [us]'. This was borne out just last evening when none of the contestants buzzed in and I was yelling, 'Who is James Garner?' at the television set. (The clue (British, clew) mentioned both 'Maverick' and The Rockford Files' and included a photograph of Mr. Garner.)

I have just enough grey matter left to know that the world many of us knew is passing/has passed away and the world of the young (and the restless?) is in its ascendancy.

I feel old today, especially after yelling, 'Who are the Katzenjammer Kids?' at the television set a few minutes ago.

It's really too depressing to think about.

In other news, Mrs. RWP and I are in the market for the coronavirus vaccine, but none is to be had in these parts. Supposedly CVS and Walgreens (what readers in the U.K. would call 'chemists') may be getting shipments in early February.

How many of you know what this is a picture of?

To bring this post full circle to what I was saying in the first paragraph, sometimes I am the windshield wiper and sometimes I am the bug.

P.S. - That is not a windshield and those are not bugs.

And now for something completely different

While you are waiting for me to put together my long-overdue replies to Graham Edwards and Snowbrush that I promised to do "in my next post" several posts back, please amuse yourselves, every last one of you, by listening to:

A Scottish granny read 'The Wonky Donkey' to her grandchild (4:16)

You won't be sorry. It gets funnier every time I watch it.

Sometimes it's good to remember what Mama used to say

In 1786, the Scottish poet Bobby Burns (okay, his name was Robert) famously wrote the following near the end of his poem entitled "To A Louse, On Seeing One On A Lady's Bonnet, At Church":

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us.

Twice recently and once about 14 months ago a Power gave me that very giftie, er, gift.

I left a warm congratulatory message in the comments section of someone's blog on the birth of the blogger's first grandchild, and the blogger replied, "You may have a hard exterior but you are soft inside. Thank you, Bob".

Really? I have a hard exterior? I had no idea that I am perceived in that way.

I wonder, though, which is worse, to have a hard exterior and be soft inside or to have a soft exterior and be hard inside?

Another blogger took me to task for saying nothing whatsoever about certain recent events on the American political scene (you can probably guess what they are) and called me "morally reprehensible".

That one stung. He said later that he was "shocked at his tackless (sic) and patronizing response" and apologized, then said he didn't call me morally reprehensible, just a specific behavior on my part. To be accurate, it was not a specific behvior (a supposed sin of commission) he abhorred but a specific absence of behavior (a supposed sin of omission).

Matthew 7:3-4 and Luke 6:41-42 from the New Testament came to mind but I held my tongue, something I'm apparently very good at. You can look those verses up for yourself if you've a mind to.

Also I thought of an old saying, "Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."

The glimpse 14 months ago occurred when someone in my immediate family, while speaking to about 300 people, with me sitting in the audience, referred to me as "one of the nicest controlling perfectionists you'd ever want to meet."

That one has been stinging for, um, let's see, 14 months now.

I'm just grateful that Mrs. RWP didn't jump up and dispute the "one of the nicest" part.

Thank God for small favors.

That's what Mama used to say.

P.S. - I have not rejected these observations (I do not call them criticisms) out of hand but have tried to use them in an instructive way to improve myself, to soften my hard exterior, or harden my soft exterior, to be not so controlling, to abandon any goal of requiring perfection of myself or others.

Because you're never too old to learn.

Fun with numbers? No, it is not.

I do not mean to make light of the pandemic or of the death of one single person, but how one reacts to news depends on how it is presented.

Tonight, on the eve of his inauguration, President-elect and Mrs. Biden and others participated in a brief COVID memorial at the reflecting pool on the National Mall in Washington to recognize and remember the 400,000 Americans whose deaths have been attributed to the disease. It was televised.

Four hundred thousand seems like a very large number -- and compared to the 16,650 automobile fatalities in the U.S. in 2020, it is. (Side note: With 25,000 members of the National Guard in Washington to protect the incoming administration's inauguration activities, there are more than enough of them to have formed a living memorial composed solely of National Guard members to recognize and remember the Americans who perished in automobile accidents in 2020. I'm just saying.)

It's all in how you look at it.

The number of Americans who have died to date due to the COVID pandemic is a very small segment of the overall U.S. population, just 0.12 per cent of our current U.S. population of 330 million. By way of comparison, between 0.48 per cent and 0.81 per cent (between 500,000 and 850,000 out of a U.S. population of 105 million) died during the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919.

Going by the raw numbers, this pandemic could soon be as bad as the earlier one, but looking at the percentage of population it is nowhere near as bad.

Covid, Impeachment, Inauguration, Covid, Impeachment, Inauguration,...

...what to write about?

That's easy -- none of them.

Let's talk about Jeopardy! some more.

In the first "nobody buzzed in" moment of the post-Alex Trebek era on Jeopardy! that I knew the answer to, the answer was "What is a nightingale?"

The category, Words With Weather Words Inside, had included the answers What is Ukrainian? (weather word: rain) and What is barnstorming? (weather word: storm). The clue that drew silence from all three contestants was (not an exact quote) "The song of this bird is usually heard when the sky is dark" and included a sound clip of its song. It had to be nightingale (weather word: gale) and it was!

The next night there were three more:

What is Cunard? (the clue mentioned the Queen Mary)

What is Corvette? (the clue mentioned "sporty car" and Chevy)

Who is Secretariat? (the clue mentioned a horse I had never heard of and that it and this horse in 1973 were the only two to have run the Kentucky Derby in less than two minutes. In my mind I saw the old newsfilm of Secretariat increasing his big lead by several more lengths as he raced down the home stretch and neared the finish line, and the year 1973 seemed reasonable. Actually two of the three contestants did buzz in but gave wrong answers. One said Man o'War, who raced around 1920, and one said Seabiscuit, who raced in the late 1930s. They were obviously guessing but their time frames were completely off.)

I suppose I am addicted to watching Jeopardy! -- Hello, my name is Bob and I'm a trivia, I mean general knowledge addict. I do enjoy watchng it a lot but I will try to talk about it less on the blog. The last thing I want to do is drive you away.

Moving right along...

I have an announcement to make, but first I have an announcement to make.

Announcement #1 Your comments are always welcome here and I look forward to them eagerly. As the creator and editor of this blog, however, I reserve the right to decide not to publish your comment. And if I do publish your comment, I reserve the right to decide not to reply to it. In other words, you leaves your comments and you takes your chances.

Announcement #2: Oops, I see by the clock on the wall that our time has expired. The second announcement will have to wait.

I'm kidding. my second announcement is that our weather forecast is predicting snow for today.

Speaking of general knowledge, did you know that in 1920 The New York Times named Babe Ruth and Man o'War co-athletes of the year?

Note. A real trivia addict would know the name of the jockey riding Man o'War in the photograph. I have no idea who he is, but I do know that he is not Babe Ruth.

Human life explained

The following is not original with me. I found it online and wanted to pass it along to the readers of this blog.

On the first day, God created the dog and said, "Sit all day by the door of your house and bark at anyone who comes in or walks past. For this, I will give you a life span of twenty years."

The dog said, "That's a long time to be barking. How about only ten years and I'll give you back the other ten?"

And God saw it was good.

On the second day, God created the monkey and said, "Entertain people, do tricks, and make them laugh. For this, I will give you a twenty-year life span."

The monkey said, "Monkey tricks for twenty years? That's a pretty long time to perform. How about I give you back ten like the dog did?"

And God again saw it was good.

On the third day, God created the cow and said, "You must go into the field with the farmer all day long and suffer under the sun, have calves and give milk to support the farmer's family. For this, I will give you a life span of sixty years."

The cow said, "That's kind of a tough life you want me to live for sixty years. How about twenty and I'll give back the other forty?"

And God agreed it was good.

On the fourth day, God created humans and said, "Eat, sleep, play, marry and enjoy your life. For this, I'll give you twenty years."

But the human said, "Only twenty years? Could you possibly give me my twenty, the forty the cow gave back, the ten the monkey gave back, and the ten the dog gave back; that makes eighty, okay?"

"Okay," said God, "You asked for it."

So that is why for our first twenty years, we eat, sleep, play and enjoy ourselves.

For the next forty years, we slave in the sun to support our family.

For the next ten years, we do monkey tricks to entertain the grandchildren.

And for the last ten years, we sit on the front porch and bark at everyone.

Life has now been explained to you.

There is no need to thank me for this valuable information.

I'm doing it as a public service.

If you are looking for me, I will be on the front porch.

As you may have noticed, I did not respond to comments on the previous post

...and I hope that meets with your approval, that it is acceptable. It may even be a good thing, and I may be doing more of it in the future.

Or not.

It depends on how the mood strikes me. It is interesting, though, to see the sort of comments one's posts engender without feeling it necessary to respond to each and every one. It would be rude to respond to some but not others. Perhaps you think it is also rude of me not to respond to any of them. I hope not.

If Snowbrush wants to call that a cop-out, he is free to do so. It's no skin off my nose (as my mother used to say).

Keep 'em guessing, that's my motto.

It's not really, I just said that.

Do you agree or disagree? Are there hard and fast etiquette rules for bloggers? Must it always be a dialogue? Can it be a monologue sometimes? Am I talking to you or just speaking into the air? Am I talking to myself?

So many questions. I hope you can help me with the answers.

Changing subjects, it was 25°F (-3.9°C) here this morning but the temperature is supposed to reach 48°F (8.9°C) this afternoon. Pneumonia weather, Mrs. RWP calls it. When I took Abby out for her morning constitutional the yard was resplendent. The sun made the frost on the dormant Bermuda grass sparkle like diamonds.

Changing subjects again, four of my direct descendants out of nine have tested positive for COVID-19. If you include spouses and currently significant others our family consists of 17 in all and six have come down with the virus, but so far Mrs. RWP and I, like Old Man River, just keep rollin' along. We are unscathed to date and I hope it stays that way. The only place we go is to doctors' appointments (both of us) and grocery stores (me only). So far, as they say, so good.

Just who are "they" anyway?

As this post seems to be going nowhere, I will stop at this point.

I really do want to hear your opinions in the comments.

All things considered, my response to the events of January 6, 2021

...is (as a moderately successful boy band of an earlier era once told us) this:

Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, life goes on bra

More specifically,...

Desmond has a barrow in the market place
Molly is the singer in a band
Desmond says to Molly, "Girl, I like your face"
And Molly says this as she takes him by the hand

Ob-la-di ob-la-da life goes on bra
La-la how their life goes on
Ob-la-di ob-la-da life goes on bra
La-la how their life goes on

Desmond takes a trolley to the jeweler's stores
Buys a twenty carat golden ring (Golden ring?)
Takes it back to Molly waiting at the door
And as he gives it to her she begins to sing (Sing)

Ob-la-di ob-la-da life goes on bra
La-la how their life goes on
Ob-la-di ob-la-da life goes on bra
La-la how their life goes on, yeah (No)

In a couple of years they have built
A home sweet home
With a couple of kids running in the yard
Of Desmond and Molly Jones
(Ah ha ha ha ha ha)

Happy ever after in the market place
Desmond lets the children lend a hand (Arm! Leg!)
Molly stays at home and does her pretty face
And in the evening she still sings it with the band

Yes, ob-la-di ob-la-da life goes on bra
La-la how their life goes on (Ha ha ha)
Hey, ob-la-di ob-la-da life goes on bra
La-la how their life goes on

In a couple of years they have built
A home sweet home
With a couple of kids running in the yard
Of Desmond and Molly Jones
(Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha)

Yeah, happy ever after in the market place
Molly lets the children lend a hand (Foot!)
Desmond stays at home and does his pretty face
And in the evening she's a singer with the band

Yeah, ob-la-di ob-la-da life goes on bra
La-la how their life goes on
Yeah, ob-la-di ob-la-da life goes on bra
La-la how their life goes on

And if you want some fun
Take ob-la-di ob-la-da

(Thank you, uh, ha ha ha!)

As Paul Harvey used to say on the radio, Page Two.

Since all of us want an orderly transition, here is an orderly transition:

...and to answer the question many of you are undoubtedly asking, yes, I might actually be insane, but there is this: I have never been clinically diagnosed.

Okay, I'll be serious for a second. There is more than enough commentary and analysis to be found on television and social media for me to need to put in my two cents worth. Plus you cannot yet be put in jail for what you think, only for what you do.

May it be ever thus.

Incomprehensible on so many levels

You want incomprehensible? I'll show you incomprehensible.

Right here. Published in The Washington Post, it's the complete transcript of the hour-long telephone conversation President Donald J. Trump had a couple of days ago with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

I urge you to try to read it from start to finish.

Things get curiouser and curiouser.

Daily.

Maybe it will all be over soon.

I certainly hope so.