Author: Rev. Joe Dirt

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #2,367

yeah I know you did not ask!

You should so be blessed – well cursed at times actually – with a mind such as mine, making all these weird connections between my rumored neurons. Just be thankful that I do not share all of my random thoughts.

 

El cascarrabias

Next time you are troubled by one of your fellow travelers in this absurdity we call life,  consider this:  You share 99.9% (sources vary from 99.6 to 99.9%) of your DNA with every other Homo sapiens on this planet. What a big deal, positive and negative, we make of that 0.1%.  That amount of difference is just a little more than a standard size shot glass in a 15.5 gallon keg of beer.  It is one McDonald’s cheeseburger among a pile of 1000 similar sandwiches.

And just in case you are feeling smug… While we are not direct descendants of apes, chimpanzee, and bonobos, we do share a common ancestor with them.  As such we share 98.8% of our DNA with them.  That is a difference of 16 shot glasses in our keg of beer, or 12 cheeseburgers in your pile of  1000 such sandwiches.

So by and by when next you look deeply into my sorrowful, wistful simian eyes… remember that.

And so it goes.

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Word of the Day -Halcyon

  • Adjective: Halcyon
    1. characterized by happiness, great success, and prosperity : golden
      —often used to describe an idyllic time in the past that is remembered as better than today — the halcyon days of youth
    2. calm, peaceful
    3. prosperous, affluent
  • Synonyms:
    1.  bucolic
    2. pastoral
    3. still
    4. balmy
    5. gentle
    6. golden
    7. happy
    8. harmonious
    9. serene
    10. tranquil
    11. untroubled
  • Usage:
    1. “I was living in Jerusalem during those halcyon days of the Oslo peace process and the hope it generated, and as soon as travel from Israel into Jordan was permitted, I decided to go there on my own to see what I could see. “
  • Encountered:
    1.  While reading Can We Talk About Israel? A Guide for the Curious, Confused, and Conflicted by Daniel Sokatch

To see more Words of the Day, visit this link: Words of the Day

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Matrimonial Log – Star Date 5784.347

“Matrimony… the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Casamiento Segundo, its until-death-do-us-part mission… to explore a strange new relationship… to seek out a new life and new adventures… to boldly go where no sane couple has gone before.”

Rodney Dangerfield and me… we just do not get any respect.

Señora and I were lying propped up in bed this morning, drinking coffee, doing our morning routine.  I was reading the news on my phone and she was working New York Times puzzles on hers.  We both had something to do, in different directions, at 0900.

Realizing suddenly that time was indeed flying, I said to her ever so sweetly, “We need to get out of bed, make it, and you need to hop in the shower. ”

“You need to stop barking at me,” came flying back to me from her side of the bed.

I gently reminded her, “I thought you liked it when men were forceful, commanding, taking charge of situations, their testosterone on full display?”

The jet fighter came in for another pass, this time letting loose its rockets, “Oh, blow it out your arse.”

It goes without saying that I made the bed by myself.  I am just grateful she left me some hot water for my shower.

And so it goes.

Recently WordPress and Nextdoor came to some sort of agreement about allowing WordPress bloggers to automatically feed into Nextdoor.

I did it, not sure why.  The only reason I am on Nextdoor is to occasionally sell items I do not want.  On the whole I just find Nextdoor to be a bunch of whiny Millennial/Gen whatever they are, or overly paranoid citizens.

Anyway this post was flagged as unacceptable after someone complained.  Only thing I can figure out is that arse offended someone.  Perhaps ass would have been better.

Tis interesting though, I generally try to keep my post clean, but I get about 10% flagged… even if they are not political.  Perhaps they do not want to degenerate into the swamp that is X former Twitter.

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Allegro’s “Season of the Heart” 2023 Holiday Concert

Señora – aka Robin – is down to singing in only two choirs, the Allegro Choir which is for persons  50 years and older and her hospice choir.  She sang for 22 years with the choir at the Center for Spiritual Living until its director became too old to lead them and they discontinued it. The Allegro choir has grown to over a 100 souls.

This is Allegro’s holiday concert. It includes a mixture of songs from various traditions… and many familiar tunes. Señora is sitting down to the left of the piano in a green blouse. Ain’t she prutteee.

Enjoy.

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Greg Jacobs – Music Videos

From his Bio on his website:

“As part of a group of “red dirt” musicians who migrated to Stillwater in the late 1970’s – a rag-tag outfit that includes Jimmy LaFave, Tom Skinner, Bob Childers and the Red Dirt Rangers – singer/songwriter Greg Jacobs helped set the standard for great Okie songwriting. His latest CD, “Encore” serves as proof this standard is still alive and well.”

Greg, Randy Pease, and Grammy nominated John Fullbright were gracious enough to do a house concert at our abode here in Chesterfield 10 or so years ago.  After they completed their regular set, John started playing Robin’s 100 year old Mason & Hamlin piano and wowed everybody again.

So many of the images he uses in his music videos remind me of being in Checotah, Oklahoma at my grandmother’s house in the 50s and 60s.  Greg is a long time resident of Checotah where he taught history in the high school.  One of his students was Carrie Underwood. It always amazes me how many really talented musicians never make the big show.

A link to Greg’s website is here: Greg Jacobs’ website

Greg’s YouTube channel

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YouTube Curation

YouTube uses an algorithm to feed the user videos that they might like.  Of course the goal is to keep you on YouTube as long as possible to feed you the most advertisements possible.  I started to call this algorithm, curation, but the definition of curated is: “carefully chosen and thoughtfully organized or presented.“  While this may be what YouTube is doing on one level, it is more than a little nefarious on another.

As long time readers will know (ad nauseam) that I am studying Spanish.  As part of this journey I subscribe to various YouTube channels for learning Spanish and others in Spanish for their entertainment value.  So now the YouTube curation algorithm feeds me videos in English and Spanish.

A while back, for reasons unclear to me – perhaps it figured out that I am old and male, it fed me a video from an urologist.  The video captured my attention as the presenter was a very attractive young female who turned out to be a M.D. in the field.  Being a man of a certain age, urological topics have a bit of an interest for me.  Then you add in the mujer linda, and I just had to click. Bad move on my part. Now YouTube is feeding me tons of videos dealing with urological topics.  However, what really floored me was that it was also feeding me urological videos from urologists in Spanish speaking countries… in Spanish.

Everyone is concerned with Big Brother being the government, for my money, Big Brother is  here and he is the personification of these huge technology companies coming after your wallet and your mind.

And yes I know it is possible to erase your YouTube history and start fresh.  Or for that matter simply turn off their algorithm. But then how would I find videos of a pretty young urologist preaching to me about urological measures I should be following?

And so it goes in La Casa de Viejos.

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Word of the Day -Malheureusement

  • Adverb: Malheureusement
    1. to express regret about what you are saying
  • Synonyms:
    1. Unfortunately
    2.  Unhappily
    3. Unluckily
    4. Regrettably
  • Usage:
    1. “If you used this word, malheureusement, in TEXAS. It might get you an ass whooping. “
  • Encountered:
    1.  In an email from my cousin Perry, who grew up in the wild hinterlands of west Texas, riding his horse Rocinante and tilting at working oil wells with his Mexican buddy Sancho Panza.
    2. He encountered this  French derivative word via WordDaily.

To see more Words of the Day, visit this link: Words of the Day