Category: Rev. Joe Dirt’s Ramblings

The unsolicited, unreasoned, uninformed, unapologetic opinions of Rev. Joe Dirt

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I Think I Am a Little Jealous

Señora has been seeing a new massage therapist for a while now.  I understand her need for massages with all the issues going on in her delightful but fragile body. However, she generally comes home crowing about what a wonderful masseuse this immigrant from Russian or Ukraine is.

Now add to this his back story of being an immigrant working seven days a week to send his child through college.  Sure has my furry, bouncy, big-eyed puppy on a leash beat for touching the heart strings of the fairer sex.

I sometimes feel that if I could make Señora feel ten percent as good in bed as she seems to feel from her time on his table, she would be strutting around the barnyard clucking about Studmeister Redneck to all the world.

I think I am a little jealous.

She recommended this gentleman to a good friend of hers, La Guapa.  Now La Guapa is crowing about the magical touch of the therapist.

It makes me want to go the masseuse school… barring that I am sure Señora would share his contact information.

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #5,081

Sometimes all it takes to be nice, to be kind, to be gracious, to be compassionate, is to maintain your silence.  A small effort in this maelstrom of slings and arrows of outrageousness we call life.

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Gun Death Statistics to Ruminate On

One of the 3.141592 regular readers of my blog, upon reading Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #7,420 that dealt with the Spanish word for mass shootings, tiroteo, commented that the number of gun deaths in the USA roughly corresponds to an Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building every two days.  In that terrorist attack, 168 folks were lost, including 19 children.  Of course, this started me thinking once again about gun death statistics in the USA.

Some Quick Hitting Facts

According to the page on gun deaths on the web site for the National Safety Council: Continue reading “Gun Death Statistics to Ruminate On”

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #7,420

There is one word in Spanish that I should never had had to learn, tiroteo.  The literal translation is shooting, but they seem to use in the sense of mass shootings.

Obviously with the situation with guns here in the United States, with mass shootings seemingly happening every week, sometimes multiple times, if you are discussing the news with someone in another country, the subject of mass shootings is going to come up.

It is one word/concept that I wish I had never heard of… or learned in another language.

And so it should not go.

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Some More on Phubbing

Below is an article from The Guardian on rules for phubbing

Stop phubbing! The 10 rules of smartphone etiquette – from the bathroom to your bed

The article listed 10 main bullet points: Continue reading “Some More on Phubbing”

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Mother Nature is a Bee..aacchh.

Recently I was standing at the kitchen sink, sipping my morning coffee as I stared out the window into the backyard at the new day. I noticed a robin that was acting a bit peculiar. He would hop to my left suddenly, then just as suddenly he would hop back to the right.  He had done this jig two or three times when curiosity overwhelmed me and I put my nose closer to the picture window framing our back yard.

To my left, in the flower garden containing the bird feeding station, on the ground, was a Continue reading “Mother Nature is a Bee..aacchh.”

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Another Opening Sentence

Another opening sentence for a larger story or possibly a story in itself.

Rising from the bed, stretching, he began wading through the archipelago of scattered, hastily discarded clothing on his way to the bathroom, glancing back towards the bed before he closed the door, a wry smile crossed his face as he remembered the activities of the previous night.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know… from time to time these musings pop into the labyrinth that passes for my mind.  I need to do something with them, so here it sets. Don’t worry, I’ve become very adept at dodging rotten tomatoes, thank you very much.

“Blissful smile” was my first choice, but I went with”wry smile” as it puts a completely different spin on the sentence, leaving questions unanswered.

For another article along this same vein: 2 One sentence short stories

And so it goes.

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Why Granddads Take Grandchildren Fishing

I figured out why some grandfathers take their grandchildren fishing.

While I have rods of various types rigged with fishing line of different  strengths, I sometimes like to fish with ultralight equipment.  This is especially true if I am targeting smaller species like sunfish, bream or crappie.  If I happen to entice a larger fish on to my hook, like a bass, this has the added bonus of forcing me to finesse the fish rather than muscle it into the boat.

I was sitting in the middle of a small lake/large pond the other evening in my fishing kayak. I was endeavoring to tie a lure on to six pound test fishing line.  My eyes have gotten so bad I was having trouble seeing the thin, light line. I gave up on using anything less than that strength a long time ago. While I do not have arthritis in my hands very bad, it does make my fingers a little stiff from time to time. With the fineness of the six pound test line, with the difficulty in seeing that line,  I was struggling engineering the line into a good knot.

They do make fishing glasses with powerful magnification, probably exactly for this reason, or maybe for fly fishing fly makers. I could buy a pair of those glasses, soak my hands in WD40, and then go fishing.

Cynical me is betting, though, generations of grandfathers, under the pretext of teaching junior’s offspring the art of fishing, have manipulated their grandchildren into tying lures onto fishing line… just for the reason detailed above. Not really, but it was a passing random thought as the small diameter line was kicking my butt.

And so it goes.

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Rush Boys 1957 – 1967

I was digging through some of my old VCRs and found one I forgot that I had.  It was entitled Rush Boys 1957 – 1967.  It will most likely be of interests only to me and my brothers… and possibly their families.  But what the heck, I can post it for free on YouTube and link to it from here… so why not.

My father had a home movie camera that I really do not remember him pulling it out all that often. To be honest the quality on this video is very poor and the videography leaves a lot to be desired. The really bad videography is a bit surprising as my father was Continue reading “Rush Boys 1957 – 1967”

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Ring Cameras – Redux

About a year ago I posted a blog article: 1984 – Ring Camera

In this article I revisited a novel that has had a reoccurring presence in my life, George Orwell’s 1984.  In the novel cameras and microphones are everywhere, neighbors spy on neighbors, family spy on family, spouses spy on spouses.  In my post I tied these ubiquitous cameras of 1984 to the explosion of cameras in our society, specific door bell cameras such as Amazon’s Ring camera.  My general thesis was that we were bringing 1984 on to ourselves by installing these cameras, ourselves, everywhere.

I recently came across a review of these type of cameras from Wired:  Why We Don’t Recommend Ring Cameras.

I will leave it you dear reader to read the article and evaluate their arguments. But their bottom line can be summarized with their closing paragraph:

“If you’re looking for a home security camera, whether it’s a video doorbell or an outdoor camera, we would like to remind you that there are many, many alternatives. Ring cameras are cheap and ubiquitous, but contributing to a just society is also a factor in keeping your family safe.”

Perhaps I should not worry about such things, but recent events make me frequently think we are not far from sliding down the proverbial slippery slope into a totalitarian society. Little things do add up.

And so it should not go.