Words mean something

I love a joke Red Skelton told about a spaceship that landed on Earth. Two aliens got out. The first thing they saw was a parking meter. They walked up to it and looked at it admiringly. Then one alien turned to the other and said, "Do you have change for a hern?"

The sheer absurdity of that joke is what strikes me as so funny.

Speaking of absurdity, perhaps the most jaw-dropping moment in a very long time on Jeopardy! occurred on tonght's episode when the clue "A statute mile consists of this many feet" elicited only one guess (What is suxteen hundred?) and blank stares from the other contestants. Even though the reigning three-day champion was an emergency room physician, nobody else buzzed in. The correct answer, which I had assumed every schoolboy knew, is "What is 5,280?" Now that is absurd.

I compiled a list of words that begin with the letters 'para' and in short order I came up with the following:

parabola
parabolic
parachute
parade
paradox
paradoxical
paradigm
paradigmatic
paraffin
paragliding
paralegal
parallel
parallelogram
paramedic
parameter
paranormal
paraplegic
parasailing

The language of my wife's parents, Albanian, includes the word para (it sort of rhymes with our 'huzzah!'). It means money. Often when Mrs. RWP and I are out shopping and encounter a particularly expensive item for our budget, one of us will say to the other, "Shumë para!" to convey a message [Too much money!] without informing the sales clerk. Knowing a second language can come in very handy at times.

If you are wondering about my compiling that list, I must be in my Robert F. Kennedy phase. He famously said, 'Some people see things as they are and ask "Why?". I dream of things that never were and ask, "Why not?" '.

At the end of the day, absurdity is in the eye of the beholder.

You heard it here first.

Another boring post, or maybe not

From April 1945 until Joe Biden's first/only (pick one) term as president ends a few months from now, 80 years will have elapsed. During this period the U.S. has had 14 presidents, seven of them Democrats and seven of them Republicans. Here they are:

Democrats:
1. Harry S. Truman (1945-1953)
2. John F. Kennedy (1961-1963)
3. Lyndon Johnson (1963-1969)
4. Jimmy Carter (1977-1981)
5. Bill Clinton (1993-2001)
6. Barack Obama (2009-2017)
7. Joe Biden (2021-2025)

Republicans:
1. Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961)
2. Richard Nixon (1969-1974)
3. Gerald Ford (1974-1977)
4. Ronald Reagan (1981-1989)
5. George H.W. Bush (1989-1993)
6. George W. Bush (2001-2009)
7. Donald Trump (2017-2021)

A closer look reveals that Democrats have held the presidency for 40 of those years and Republicans have held the presidency for the remaining 40 of those years. So it's been half and half, back and forth, six (well, seven) of one and a half-dozen (well, seven) of the other.

What does it prove? Probably nothing, but possibly that American voters are not paying attention, or possibly (and this is my view) that American voters are more than willing to give the other guys a chance but are also more than willing to throw the bums out if accomplisments do not live up to promises.

Let's change the subject.

All my life, including through the recent covid-19 pandemic, I believed that my wearing a mask prevented me from getting what another person might have. It turns out that I was wrong. My wearing a mask does not prevent me from getting what another person might have, it prevents the other person from getting what I might have. In order for me not to get what another person might have requires that the other person wear a mask.

No, really. My mask protects you, not me, and your mask protects me, not you. It boggles the mind. The logical conclusion is that we have to depend on one another in order to survive. What a concept!

In other news, former Secretary of State, former Senator from New York, former First Lady, and former Democrat candidate for president in 2016, Hillary Clinton said on a podcast a few days ago that what Donald Trump really wants is to kill his opponents and to throw the opposition into prison. I do believe that Mrs. Clinton is projecting onto Mr. Trump the things she actually wants to do, a clear case of the pot calling the kettle black,

I end this post with an old saying that is completely unrelated to anything else in the post because when you're 83 continuity is just a word in the dictionary:

"I complained because I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet."

More random thoughts

As the saying goes, De gustibus non est disputandum unless you prefer De gustibus non disputandum est. Latin purists do. Do what? you ask. Why, prefer to see the verbs placed at the end of Latin sentences, of course.

The phrase is usually translated into English as "There is no accounting for taste" or sometimes "There is no disputing about taste"; either version is acceptable.

it's true. My dad liked liverwurst, licorice, chicken gizzards, horseradish, Hamm's beer ("from the land of sky blue waters"), and Chesterfield cigarettes. My wife (the lovely Ellie) likes beets, oysters, and pimiento cheese sandwiches. I don't like anything mentioned in this paragraph so far except my dad and my wife.

Enough of that.

From the very early days of commercial television in America back in the late 1940s and early 1950s, certain black-and-white images are stuck in my mind:

• Tuesday nights with Uncle Miltie (comedian Milton Berle) and guys in Texaco service station uniforms singing:
  
  You can trust your car
  To the man who wears the star,
  The big red Texaco star!


• Saturday nights watching Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner, Howard Morris, and Marguerite Piazza on Your Show Of Shows


• Friday evenings watching Mama with Robin Morgan ("my little sister Dagmar"), Dick Van Patten ("my big brother Nels"), Judson Laird ("and of course, Papa"). and the wonderful Peggy Wood ("but most of all when I think back to those days so long ago, most of all, I remember Mama") speaking Norwegian-accented Englsh two whole decades before she was the Mother Abbess in an Austrian convent solving a problem like Maria by tellng her to climb every mountain, ford every stream, and sending her to be the new nanny for the Von Trapp children


• The grandfather of all late-night shows Broadway Open Hpuse with comedian Jerry Lester and a very tall, very curvaceous, very dumb blonde also named Dagmar


• Afternoon children's shows like Howdy Doody starring Buffalo Bob Smith and Clarabell the Clown; Pinkie Lee starring, who else?, Pinkie Lee; and Soupy Sales starring Soupy, his big dogs White Fang and Black Tooth, and an occasional cream pie


• Game shows like The Name's The Same with Robert Q. Lewis and Beat The Clock with Bud Collier, who had been the voice of Superman on the radio.

As you can see, in times like these, by which I mean a week in which America was subjected to several highly coordinated simultaneous protest demonstrations that shut down bridge traffic in several cities by groups claiming to be "pro-Gaza" or "pro-Palestine" but which are actually pro-Hamas, a terrorist organization funded by the Iranians, I try to maintain a modicum of sanity by retreating into good times of long-past decades that have, let's face it, gone with the wind and are never coming back.

I highly recommend that you do the same, either that or put your fingers into your ears and sing "La-La-La-La, La-La-La-La" until the men in white coats come for us.

How’s that again?

I did not make this up. Here is an honest-to-God, actual sentence that someone here in Georgia, in all seriousness, included in a Facebook post this week:

"I think people have forgotten that it is due to others as you would have them, do one to you."

I doubt that the writer had any idea what she was trying to say. The Anerican South has often been called The Bible Belt because of the supposed widespread influence of Christian teachings in that part of the nation, but I have never before encountered such a complete mangling of the Golden Rule.

Short and sweet today. Comments, as always, are not only encouraged but also, in most cases, gratefully accepted. If you deviate from community standards, however, someone may come along and do one to you.

This, that, and the other, #17,643

The story is told of a visitor to New York City who had purchased tickets to a concert. He didn't know his way around the city, so he lowered his car window and called to someone on the sidewalk, "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" and the person on the sidewalk answered, "Practice, man, practice."

It is very good advice even though it didn't help the driver reach his destination.

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Artur Rubenstein, one of the world's greatest pianists, once said that if he missed a day of practicing piano he could tell it, if he missed two days of practicing piano his wife could tell it, and if he missed three days everyone could tell it.

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People often say or write something other than what they meant. For example, while reading a friend's Facebook post yesterday I encountered the following sentence:

"At 13, my mother died of a brain tumor."

Immediately the thought "That is young. How young was she when she gave birth to you?" popped into my mind. I happen to know that my friend's mother was in her mid-thirties when she died.

What my friend meant to say was, "When I was 13, my mother died of a brain tumor."

It's a fairly common error, but I notice such things.

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Astrology has never interested me in the least because, let's face it, it is absurd. It makes no sense to me whatsoever that the date, time of day, or latitude where a person is born has any connection to or influence on one's personality traits, to say nothing of the concept that the constellation in the night sky through which the sun happened to be passing at the time can affect in any way one's existence or destiny. Strangely, though, I do find the "signs of the Zodiac" fascinating. In case you are unaware of them or have forgotten what they are, they are:

Aries (the Ram) -- March 21 through April 19
Taurus (the Bull) -- April 20 through May 20
Gemini (the Twins) -- May 21 through June 20
Cancer (the Crab) -- June 21 through July 22
Leo (the Lion) -- July 23 through August 22
Virgo (the Virgin) -- August 23 through September 22
Libra (the Scales) -- September 23 through October 22
Scorpio (the Scorpion) -- October 23 through November 21
Sagittarius (the Archer) -- November 22 through December 21
Capricorn (the Goat) -- December 21 through January 20
Aquarius (the Water Bearer) -- January 21 through February 18
Pisces (the Fish) -- February 19 through March 20

These 12 are further subcategorized into four groups of three and called fire signs, air signs, earth signs, and water signs. Some of them are deemed to be compatible with one another and some are deemed to be incompatible with one another. Things are further complicated by whether one is born "on the cusp" (the period of a few days each month when the sun is transitioning from one constellation to another). It's all very weird and unscientific, in my opinion, although some people follow it religiously.

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In conclusion, and having been prepared by exposure to the preceding section of this post, we shall now be transported back in time to the year 1969 when actors and actresses portraying Hippies (q.v.) sang and danced and stripped naked in full frontal and backal (is that even a word?) nudity on the Broadway stage for the first time ever in the nightly finales of the run of the musical "Hair", after which the musical group Fifth Dimension won a Grammy in 1970 for doing the same thing minus the nudity:

When the moon is in the seventh house
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars

This is the dawning of the age of aquarius
Age of aquarius
Aquarius!
Aquarius!

Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind's true liberation
Aquarius!
Aquarius!

When the moon is in the seventh house
And Jjupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars

This is the dawning of the age of aquarius
Age of aquarius
Aquarius!
Aquarius!
Aquarius!
Aquarius!

Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in, the sunshine in
Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in, the sunshine in
Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in, the sunshine in

Oh, let it shine, c'mon (let the sun shine in)
Now everybody just sing along (let the sun shine in)
Let the sun shine in (let the sun shine in)
Open up your heart, let it shine on (let the sun shine in)
And when you're alone let the sun shine (let the sun shine in)
Got to open up your heart and let it shine on in (let the sun shine in)
And when you feel like you've been mistreated (let the sun shine in)
And your friends turn away (let the sun shine in)
Just open your heart, and shine it on in (let the sun shine in)
You got to feel it (let the sun shine in)
You got to feel it (let the sun shine in)
Open up your heart and let it shine on you (let the sun shine in)
Let it tell you my friend (let the sun shine in)

Let the sun shine in)
(Let the sun shine in)
(Let the sun shine)
(Let the sun shine in)
(The sun shine in)
You got to feel it (let the sun shine in)
You got to feel it (let the sun shine in)
Got to open up your heart and let it shine on in
(Let the sun shine in)
(Let the sun shine in)

The preceding songs were writtten by Gerome Ragni and James Rado lryics) and Galt MacDermot (music).

If you are an older reader of this blog, perhaps you found yourself singing and dancing around your kitchen and living room in ecstatic waves of nostalgia for the good old days. Your peripatetic editor and roving corresponden does not wish to know whether you also stripped naked.