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.

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.

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.

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.

It’s Star Wars Day

May the fourth be with you.

Not original with me, of course, but I couldn't resist the urge to say it.

Potpourri #17,643

Today I heard a man on television speaking about deportees say "approximately about 576 people"; a couple of minutes later he said "about 1,154 people" and I felt myself turning into my old high-school English teacher, Mr. D. P. Morris. First of all, the phrase "approximately about" is redundant and should never be used. Say one or the other, but not both. In addition, please don't use the qualifiers except with a non-specific, inexact figure. It is okay in the examples I cited to say "approximately 600" and "about 1,150" but neither "approximate" nor "anout" is appropriate with such specific numbers as 576 or 1,154. It's too bad the man on television couldnt't hear me. He might have learned something. I'm just saying.

Speaking properly used to be the mark of an educated person but those days have gone with the wind. Swearing in public used to be the mark of an uncouth lout but nowadays even our elected representatives in suits and ties do it without a second thought. Interesting. Sad, but interesting.

Someone has said that the only difference between men and boys is the price of their toys. I guess the ability to grow a beard and having the urge to, um, procreate are of no consequence.

On another newscast today a woman said, and I quote, "In 2023 California's budget deficit was $32 billion dollars. In 2024 it doubled to $46 billion dollars." I found myself yelling at the television screen that 32 doubled is 64, not 46. Did the printed copy she was reading contain a typo that she read faithfully without thinking about it or was the copy correct and the reader was dyslexic? We'll never know because the reader didn't correct herself and no one else on the set asked a question or made a comment about the discrepancy.

Today is May 1st, which I just learned is the mid-point between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice. There are three other such mid-points during the year: between the summer solstice and the autumnal equinox, between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice, and between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to learn the dates on which these mid-points fall and report the information in a comment.

This post will self-destruct in five seconds.

I'm kidding, but didn't it make you think of Mission Impossible?