THINGS WE'VE LEARNED. On the subject of cooking.

I know more than a few people who drop their clothes after the end of a business day and wander around their home in the buff.

Slight word of warning, Don't cook things while you're naked.

Bubbling grease and popping eggs could send a speck of grease in a trajectory where it might land on some fairly sensitive parts of your body.

And if you wear contacts, forgo them and wear your glasses.

And the subject of contacts brings to mind a cautionary tale from a friend who had been chopping up hot peppers and then put in his contact lenses. It took a moment or two after insertion to realize that the volatile oils that are in peppers can permeate the soft contact lens.

He had to be held down while someone else removed the lens.

That brought a memory forward of someone else's tale (from New York) about lighting the gas stove and the match head sizzled and cracked sending a bit of hot charcoal into his lens and he had to go to the hospital. Not my story...some other day.

IN THE POSTAL ZONE : GOING POSTAL : Working with Stupid People.

I work with a man who is sports obsessed. I don't deal with him too much since I got on another tour. His name is Alfred. But deep down inside, he's just a Fred. He looks like Larry Fine, only uglier.

When Hurriane Floyd was rambling up the coast and inching into the land, I was watching the single large screen television that was in the lunch room. Along with two dozen others, we were following the path of the hurricane, if it was going to hit Delaware, when and where.

Alfred came in and switched the channel to a Baseball game.

Everyone protested. "Come on, this is baseball, not a weather report!" he said. "This is important!"

I recall that a year previous, I noticed his car was a drop top, and the top was down. I went to inform him that it was going to rain. He started to cuss me out for some imaginary problem he has and wouldn't let me speak. "Okay," I said, "I give up." "Don't talk to me! Don't ever talk to me!" he shouted.

The rain was a cloudburst, and about three inches fell in an hour.

For two weeks after that, people kept asking him , "Has your car dried out yet?"

PET ROCK: the movie




HOLLYWOOD HAS OFFICALLY
RUN OUT OF IDEAS

Interesting things:

Toya Wilcox "Street Creature" from the TV show Three of a Kind BBC 1982 (?)

www.youtube.com:watch%3Fv=FVmEzUOI88c

Sheila Chandra "Banshee" from Roots and Wings

www.youtube.com:watch%3Fv=GgeJsR7iugA.weblocfile

Barnes and Barnes "Party in my Pants" video from god knows where...

www.youtube.com:watch%3Fv=EXA7yklaANo

The dickipedia: learn the truth

www.dickipedia.org:dick.php%3Ftitle=Main_Page.webloc


The last one is a few hours of fun.

"My stars, you look positively extinct."

mysterious crop circles..
Where do they come from? How are they made? Is there something we are missing?

I'M SO OLD

I can recall silent radio.

I can recall Black and White television on slightly rounded tubes. They took a few minutes to heat up before the screen began to show.

I can recall waking up at five AM after a hot restless sweaty night in the summer and turning on the television set and seeing the Indian Head test pattern. The sound that came forth was a stream of white noise.

And if I was to stay awake long enough the station I was watching would play “The Star Spangled Banner” with flags and soldiers and then sign off for the night.

I can recall Elvis Presley was considered dangerous and could only be shown on television from the waist up.

The word “sex” did not exist on television.

“Peanuts” was not in re runs.

The Sunday funnies had full page strips, and were often 12-20 pages.

There were newsreels when you were at the movies,

I can recall a 2 K computer called Altaire. You plugged it into your television set. It added it substracted and multiplied. It became an object of geek worship.

I can recall previous to this the Eniac Computer which weighed several tons and operated with vacuum tubes and relays and was the size of a trailer and frequently needed to cool down before being used.

It was estimated that a really good computer would be the size of the Empire State Building and would have to be cooled off by the equivelant of Niagra Falls.

Programming was done with punch cards.

64 K was considered fantastic.

Monitors were green with white type.

It took a special card to get graphics.

“Pong” was a milestone.
A comic book was a dime.

Candy bars were 5 cents. And were three times the size you can find today.

Movies were a quarter.

Quarters and dimes and half dollars contained silver.

You culd still find silver dollars.

The president was bald.

I can recall watching bad science fiction films on the television, and watching them to the end because you never knew when it would be shown again or if at all.

You tended to really remember some shows because you would only see them once. Sometimes a program would be canceled and you would never see it again.

There were basicly three channels after the Dumont network folded.

School bullies were there to help you get through life.

Teachers played favorites and there wasn’t much you could do about it.

(to be continued...?)

CARRY ON SCREAMING.

It will be a while before the USA tries to do something like this. I'm kind of amused. I like these comedies, broad and dumb, but pleasurable. Ideas for stamps are many, but few are chosen.

The SF community was trying to get SF writers of the 20th century through the post office, but couldn't get through the management, which decided STAR WARS rated over Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, John Campbell, H.P.Lovecraft and a few others. *sigh*.

ON BIO FUELS---I think the use of corn to produce ethanol is a mistake. It's caused some shortages in food, has elevated the price of many food items that might make use of the grain or the oil and is causing a domino effect in the economy.

Why not use what no one has any use for?

I'm speaking of Kudzu, which grows rapidly, covers millions of acres in the deep south, is not liked by man or beast as food and there's been a desire to eliminate it.

Or use hemp. Or honeysuckle. Or use the other parts of corn, the the stem and the cob.