Saturday, March 16, 2024

This song is pure gold and speaks to me

I'm not from here
I just live here
Grew up somewhere far away
Come here thinking I'd never stay long
I'd be going back soon someday
It's been a few years
Since I got here
Seen 'em come and I've seen 'em go
Crowds assemble, they hang out awhile
Then they melt away like an early snow
Onto some bright future somewhere
Down the road to points unknown
Sending postcards when they get there
Wherever it is they think they're goin'
I'm not from here
I just live here
Can't see that it matters much
I read the papers and I watch the nightly news
Who's to say I'm out of touch
Nobody's from here
Most of us just live here
Locals long since moved away
Sold the played-out farms for parking lots
Went off looking for a better way
Onto some bright future somewhere
Better times on down the road
Wonder if they ever got there
Wherever it was they thought they'd go
Hit my home town
A couple years back
Hard to say just how it felt
But it looked like so many towns I might've been through
On my way to somewhere else
I'm not from here
But people tell me
It's not like it used to be
They say I should have been here
Back about ten years
Before it got ruined by folks like me
We can't help it
We just keep moving
It's been that way since long ago
Since the stone age, chasing the great herds
We mostly go where we have to go
Onto some bright future somewhere
Down the road to points unknown
Sending post cards when we get there
Wherever it is we think we'll go


Sunday, March 10, 2024

There’s always room for Jell-O


Sunday, February 25, 2024

Nerd Haiku / LEET


DNA personal advertisement ISO


Monday, November 27, 2023

Alien thanksgiving


Thursday, November 23, 2023

Turkey or Spaghetti Carbonara?




Subject: Turkey or Spaghetti Carbonara?
 
Calvin Trillin's Campaign to Make Spaghetti Carbonara the National Dish for Thanksgiving
 
... the real story of the first Thanksgiving

[The following has been shamelessly excerpted from "Third Helpings," by Calvin Trillin]:

I have been campaigning to have the national Thanksgiving dish changed from turkey to spaghetti carbonara.

It does not take much historical research to uncover the fact that nobody knows if the Pilgrims really ate turkey at the first Thanksgiving dinner. The only thing we know for sure about what the Pilgrims ate is that it couldn't have tasted very good. Even today, well brought-up English girls are taught by their mothers to boil all veggies for at least a month and a half, just in case one of the dinner guests turns up without his teeth...

It would also not require much digging to discover that Christopher Columbus, the man who may have brought linguine with clam sauce to this continent, was from Genoa, and obviously would have sooner acknowledged that the world was shaped like an isosceles triangle than to have eaten the sort of things that the English Puritans ate. Righting an ancient wrong against Columbus, a great man who certainly did not come all this way only to have a city in Ohio named after him, would be a serious historical contribution. Also, I happen to love spaghetti carbonara.

[In our family]...Thanksgiving has often been celebrated away from home. It was at other people's Thanksgiving tables that I first began to articulate my spaghetti carbonara campaign--although, since we were usually served turkey, I naturally did not mention that the campaign had been inspired partly by my belief that turkey is basically something college dormitories use to punish students for hanging around on Sunday... I reminded everyone how refreshing it would be to hear sports announcers call some annual tussle the Spaghetti Carbonara Day Classic.

I even had a ready answer to the occasional turkey fancier at those meals who insist that spaghetti carbonara was almost certainly not what our forebears ate at the first Thanksgiving dinner. As it happens, one of the things I give thanks for every year is that those people in the Plymouth Colony were not my forebears. Who wants forebears who put people in the stocks for playing the harpsichord on the Sabbath or having an innocent little game of pinch and giggle?

Finally there came a year when nobody invited us to Thanksgiving dinner. Alice's theory was that the word had got around town that I always made a pest out of myself berating the hostess for serving turkey instead of spaghetti carbonara...

However it came about, I was delighted at the opportunity we had been given to practice what I had been preaching--to sit down to a Thanksgiving dinner of spaghetti carbonara.

Naturally, the entire family went over to Rafetto's pasta store on Houston Street to see the spaghetti cut .  I got the cheese at Joe's dairy, on Sullivan, a place that would have made Columbus feel right at home--there are plenty of Genoese on Sullivan, no Pilgrims--and then headed for the pork store on Carmine Street for the bacon and ham. Alice made the spaghetti carbonara. It was perfection. I love spaghetti carbonara. Then I began to tell the children the story of the first Thanksgiving:

In England, along time ago, there were people called Pilgrims who were very strict about making everyone observe the Sabbath and cooked food without any flavor and that sort of thing, and they decided to go to America, where they could enjoy Freedom to Nag. The other people in England said, "Glad to see the back of them."

In America, the Pilgrims tried farming, but they couldn't get much done because they were always putting their best farmers in the stocks for crimes like Suspicion of Cheerfulness. The Indians took pity on the Pilgrims and helped them with their farming, even though the Indians thought that the Pilgrims were about as much fun as teenage circumcision. The Pilgrims were so grateful that at the end of their first year in America they invited the Indians over for a Thanksgiving meal.
 
The Indians, having had some experience with Pilgrim cuisine during the year, took the precaution of taking along one dish of their own. They brought a dish that their ancestors had learned from none other than Christopher Columbus, who was known to the Indians as "the big Italian fellow." The dish was spaghetti carbonara--made with pancetta bacon and fontina and the best imported prosciutto. The Pilgrims hated it. They said it was "heretically tasty" and "the work of the devil" and "the sort of thing foreigners eat."

The Indians were so disgusted that on the way back to their village after dinner one of them made a remark about the Pilgrims that was repeated down through the years and unfortunately caused confusion among historians about the first Thanksgiving meal. He said, "What a bunch of turkeys!"

.

Thursday, October 26, 2023

The more you know


Monday, October 16, 2023

Re: Editorial OCT Advertising on silent3.blogspot.com

Wednesday, September 06, 2023

Sentience Preserve Us

I, for one, welcome our disembodied sentient overlord. 
/s

Wednesday, August 30, 2023

Wait. What?




I'm about to try a snack food called PopCorners. Triangles made of "popped" corn.

 The package touts the ways this snack is good for you: 
No artificial colors or flavors. Never fried. Non-GMO Project Verified Corn.

The Package text also boasts of its "Wholesome taste" and declares it's "Good for you."

I can practically hear "Kum-ba-ya" playing as I open the bag.

The company that makes them is "BFY" (Better For You)

Their address?   
79 INDUSTRIAL PLACE


Thursday, July 20, 2023

synchronicity in web advertising


Sunday, June 11, 2023

Words mean things

He resigned. 
"Attempting?"
They succeeded. 

Tuesday, June 06, 2023

Colorful colonial times

Colorful colonial times

"The soldier's wives are allowed to pass the cent­inels, but the other day a most ludicrous circumstance took place, by the obstinacy of an old man upon guard. He would not permit a woman, who was a true campaigner to go beyond him, great altercation ensued, in which the lady displayed much of the Billingsgate oratory, when the old man was so irritated as to present his firelock; the woman imme­diately ran up, snatched it from him, knocked him down, and striding over the prostrate hero, in the exultation of triumph, profusely besprinkled him, not with Olympian dew, but that which is esteemed as emollient to the complexion - and 'faith, something more natural - nor did she quit her post, till a file of sturdy ragamuffins marched valiantly to his relief, dispossessed the Amazon, and enabled the knight of the grisly caxon to look fierce, and reshoulder his musquet."


[Thomas Anbury, Travels through the Interior Parts of America, in a Series of Letters (London, 1789; Reprinted by Arno Press, Inc., 1969), 2: 81-82, letter dated Cambridge, December 9, 1777. "BILLINGSGATE LANGUAGE. Foul language, or abuse." Francis Grose, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (London, 1796).

Sunday, January 15, 2023

cramps wednesday dance - Google Search

Saturday, January 07, 2023

To Fall Out of Love, Do This | The New Yorker

Wednesday, December 21, 2022

stop me if you’ve heard it

There's a joke - stop me if you've heard it… On the other hand, nah - it's pretty funny, so let me tell it:


Putin announces that it's 'Russia against NATO in a war, yes, now you can call it a War!' in a speech.

A Russian general's wife is listening, and she asks her husband, "how are we doing in the war?"

The general says, "So far, we've lost 1,600 tanks, 2,000 armored vehicles, 3 ships, 4,500 rocket launchers, and more than 50,000 soldiers."

She's shocked. "And… what about NATO?" She asks.

The general sighs, and says, "Well…. they haven't actually shown up yet…"

Tuesday, December 13, 2022

Are you familiar with these codes?

there is ICD-10 V95.43XA "Spacecraft collision injuring occupant, first encounter" and a follow up should the occupant have the misfortune of being involved in another collision: V95.43XD "Spacecraft collision injuring occupant, subsequent encounter". 

The ICD-10 codes can be a source of humor. Medical coders and physicians who have stumbled upon these odd codes get a laugh out of them. It's not out of disregard for someone who might suffer some odd sort of injury, but that the group that developed the ICD-10 index (evolved from ICD-9) made sure to include these in the Index. 

We always wonder if that resulted in some laughs as the decision was made to include them. 

Another example "V91.07XA: Burn due to water skis on fire: Initial encounter". I'm not kidding - you can look these up.

Tuesday, November 01, 2022

Empty values


Tuesday, September 20, 2022

The New Year, Emma Lazarus

The New Year

Rosh-Hashanah, 5643

Not while the snow-shroud round dead earth is rolled, 
And naked branches point to frozen skies.— 
When orchards burn their lamps of fiery gold, 
The grape glows like a jewel, and the corn 
A sea of beauty and abundance lies, 
Then the new year is born. 

Look where the mother of the months uplifts 
In the green clearness of the unsunned West, 
Her ivory horn of plenty, dropping gifts, 
Cool, harvest-feeding dews, fine-winnowed light; 
Tired labor with fruition, joy and rest 
Profusely to requite. 

Blow, Israel, the sacred cornet! Call 
Back to thy courts whatever faint heart throb 
With thine ancestral blood, thy need craves all. 
The red, dark year is dead, the year just born 
Leads on from anguish wrought by priest and mob, 
To what undreamed-of morn? 

For never yet, since on the holy height, 
The Temple's marble walls of white and green 
Carved like the sea-waves, fell, and the world's light 
Went out in darkness,—never was the year 
Greater with portent and with promise seen, 
Than this eve now and here. 

Even as the Prophet promised, so your tent 
Hath been enlarged unto earth's farthest rim. 
To snow-capped Sierras from vast steppes ye went, 
Through fire and blood and tempest-tossing wave, 
For freedom to proclaim and worship Him, 
Mighty to slay and save. 

High above flood and fire ye held the scroll, 
Out of the depths ye published still the Word. 
No bodily pang had power to swerve your soul: 
Ye, in a cynic age of crumbling faiths, 
Lived to bear witness to the living Lord, 
Or died a thousand deaths. 

In two divided streams the exiles part, 
One rolling homeward to its ancient source, 
One rushing sunward with fresh will, new heart. 
By each the truth is spread, the law unfurled, 
Each separate soul contains the nation's force, 
And both embrace the world. 

Kindle the silver candle's seven rays, 
Offer the first fruits of the clustered bowers, 
The garnered spoil of bees. With prayer and praise 
Rejoice that once more tried, once more we prove 
How strength of supreme suffering still is ours 
For Truth and Law and Love.



Monday, August 29, 2022

The more you know. 42


Saturday, August 13, 2022

In memory of Harry Jackson. Strips and dips


Monday, August 08, 2022

Ha!

Friday, August 05, 2022

Seen at local dairy’s ice cream stand


Friday, July 29, 2022

Literally


On the road lately?


Sunday, July 24, 2022

The more you know


Saturday, July 23, 2022

And the yellow ones don’t taste like banana AT ALL


Sunday, July 17, 2022

No, it’s a box


Saturday, July 16, 2022

Writing sushi in Japanese


Tuesday, June 21, 2022

Solstice corollary

"Today is the first official day of summer and the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere"


So, if someone is "honest as the day is long" they're most trustworthy today.


Tuesday, May 10, 2022

Wait. What?


Friday, May 06, 2022

Who wore it better?