Category: Idle Thoughts

Because Rainbow Toads are AWESOME — and can evade the world for 87 years, an accomplishment I much admire.

We don’t know what happened in that New York hotel room in May and never will. The hotel maid’s credibility has now been shown to be questionable. Strauss-Kahn’s credibility, of course, is likely controlled by his attorneys.

But, it seems to me, the people who have shown by far the least credibility during this are the news media. First he was guilty, now she is guilty.

Often wrong, never in doubt.

So I subscribed to The New Yorker on the iPad for a month. Four issues received so far and I am 2+ issues behind. There was a reason I hadn’t been getting the magazine.

Same with the dead-tree New York Times. I fetch it from the driveway, put it on the kitchen table, and skim it the day after tomorrow.

I believe I have become a creature wholly of the serendipitous web. And it’s not just for short posts and 140-character tweets. I read a lot of longer online articles.

But I very much like creating my own reading list. And I don’t like feeling obligated to read something because I paid for it — even from the very best sources.

I doubt I am unique. I wonder if publishers have considered this as they set up their pay walls and iPad applications. The aggregators have set us free; who’s going back?

As messed up and evil as the world sometimes seems, it occurs to me the Rapture could take the evil souls into heaven and leave the good people behind to suffer.

Or maybe that already happened.

So Elizabeth R has an iPad. What app would you recommend for the Queen?

Who is worse in a work situation, a bully or a spy?

Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi may be evil, but isn’t there some way we could help do the right thing in Libya without killing the man’s Sweeties?

Trying to decide who was more stupid . . .

The woman driving the wrong way around the traffic circle.

Or the idiot who let his new iPad slip out of his full arms onto the garage floor.

(It seems OK. Dented though.)

Who is that Democrat giving the speech and what did he do with Obama?

What’s the difference between a codger and a geezer?

If Southwest had been thinking a little faster, they’d have called it a moon roof and charged extra.

I have long thought that the cherry blossoms are the perfect metaphor for so much of what happens in the nation’s capital. There is a tremendous amount of prediction and talk and hype, often beginning weeks in advance of the actual event. When the blossoms do arrive so do the crowds, driving, cycling or walking around and around, oohing and ahhing.

Much hype, much show, much motion, much talk.

And not one damn cherry.

A 235-year-old candlelit room is a wonderful setting for a tavern. It is however, not all that easy to read a menu in candlelight.

Or at least not for those of us more than one-quarter the age of the building.

Thank you, Tom Edison.

Why does it seem as if the people who work in airports have never been to any other airport? It’s as if they think their way is the way everyone does it.

Hewlett-Packard doesn’t make printers. It makes ink marketing devices.

Old age might best be defined as being unable to carry your first beer from the bar to the pool without spilling some.

Security was cursory getting into the ballpark yesterday, mostly to see if I had contraband food and drinks. I could easily have walked in with a handgun.

And then I thought, “Shit, this is Arizona, it’s assumed I have a handgun.”

The earthquake today sped up the Earth’s rotation by 1.6 microseconds.

Which would mean, I believe, that gravity increased.

And that makes us all a tiny bit heavier. (Also the day a tiny bit shorter.)

Update: An 8.9 earthquake is equal in force to 22 billion metric tons of TNT.

I see on Twitter that #prayforJapan is trending.

They should have prayed for Japan yesterday.

13 days until my next vacation.

I’ll never last.

Sometimes when I’m looking for something to do, I sit in the car and adjust the reclining power seats and play visit to the dentist.

Do Billy Crystal and Muammar el-Qaddafi use the same hair dye?

Why is it that for more than 2,000 years February has had fewer days than the other eleven months? Why is it that in the first part of the year the odd numbered months have 31 days, but then without reason the eighth, tenth and twelfth months do? Why, if Augustus stole a day from February to add to his month (August, previously Sextilis), couldn’t we move it back?