Category: Rev. Joe Dirt’s Ramblings

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

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #7,667

yeah I know you did not ask!

I have a certain playful streak – well, certain folks say mean streak – that can come out at the oddest times.

Señora had an outpatient surgical procedure this morning. In preparation for this the nurse left us alone in the surgical prep room to remove her street clothing and to put on her the customary paper surgical gown.  It was one size fits most, nearly dragging the floor on Señora, containing sufficient fabric to wrap around her a couple times, being the petite thing she is.  As we all know, they tie in back.  I had the damnedest urge to tie the strings of the gown in quadruple granny knots.  Of course the surgical staff would not have messed with my knots for a nano-second, taking scissors to them without pause, but still…

I did pretend to be a grownup for that nano-second, and I managed to squelch the impulse.

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Just saying… Or to whom it may concern

Anyone with a vague knowledge of computers has heard of binary numbers (base 2) – the famous 1s and 0s.  Those of us who have programmed have used the binary system of numbers in our work.  On a few occasions I have used the octal  numeral system (base 8).  Outside of the ubiquitous decimal system (base 10), count your fingers,  the numeric system I am most familiar with is hexadecimal (base 16),  sometimes referred to as hex.  Before I switched over to Oracle systems, I spent a large portion of my programming career working with mainframes using COBOL, some Assembler, and rarely PL/1 programming languages (there were other languages I used, but I won’t bore you).  Working in these languages on a mainframe platform it is mandatory to have an intimate knowledge of hex and hex math.

In case you are not up on your hexadecimal… the digits in this numeral system are: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 9, a, b, c, d, e, f.

Now scribble in a corner of your mind with disappearing ink that I was born in 1952.

In the year 2000 I started giving my age in hexadecimal, i.e. 30.  I continued  to use hex numbers until 2010.  Somehow or another saying I was 3a left even a more perplexed expression on peoples’ faces than when I was saying I was 30 at the start of the new century.  In 2016 I was able to switch back to hexadecimal and truthfully assert that I was 40, and I can currently,  with a semi-straight face, claim to be 45.

And so it goes.

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Schoolhouse Rock! playlist

When my kidrens were little –this was late 70s, early 80s – we used to watch Saturday morning cartoons together. Interspersed with the cartoons on ABC was an educational segment called Schoolhouse Rock! which covered themes of grammar, science, economics, history, mathematics, and civics. Their forte was creating earwigs such as “conjunction, junction what’s your function” or “I’m just a bill, only a bill”.

Something triggered the memory of the segment this morning, and I decided to create a playlist on my YouTube channel of those I could find .

Enjoy!

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Ernest Hemingway on Buddhism

Not really… but the following quote from Ernest Hemingway’s short story A Clean, Well-Lighted Place made  me wonder.  Nada is Spanish for nothing.  In my mind I was making a connection with the Buddhist concept of no-self or emptiness and of the concept of suffering.   In actuality Hemingway’s character was speaking of the anxiety or the despair of loneliness (suffering?). But it did give me pause.  In any event, I just love the pattern and sentiments of this excerpt.

 “What did he fear? It was not a fear or dread, It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was a nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not in to nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.”

Om mani padme hum

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A Lighter Side of Alzheimer’s???

     Alzheimer’s is a horrible disease.  That one sentence by itself could be a blog article.  Alzheimer’s robs a person of the possibility of living life fully, in many cases joyfully, and frequently with dignity. Alzheimer’s robs the family of the person they knew and loved. It is a horrible way to fade out of this existence. It is a horrible disease to watch a loved one go through.

However, Alzheimer’s can have its lighter side, and perhaps something you might very loosely term a “silver lining”.  In another blog article, Hanging from the back bumper, I accused Saturday Night Live of modeling their character The Church Lady after my mother.  Obviously a bit of hyperbole, Continue reading “A Lighter Side of Alzheimer’s???”

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Rallllllffffff….

More often than I would like to own up to, I revert to being a 13 year old boy.  One of my less than adult behaviors is enunciating the name Ralph while I eructate (burp).  Yes, I know, boys will be boys…

I did so this morning and Señora asked me, “who is Ralph?”

“I don’t know, it is just something I say,” I answered.

She next asked, “Have you ever known any Ralphs?”

“Well”, I said, “Not that I recall, have you?”

“Nope, me neither,” she added.

“It is not a very common name now days,” was my brilliant response.

Señora then proceeded to say Ralph several ways, adding that it was a harsh name when spoken.

Thinking of Ralph Kramden of The Honeymooners I said, “An easy name for your wife to yell at you meanly.”

Not missing a beat Señora replied, “David works pretty good too.”

Related??? – At one point my brother Mark could recite the alphabet while burping… I don’t know if he is still in practice.

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #6,930

yeah I know you did not ask!

There is a unit on vehicles called a flasher; it controls the flashing of the turn signals and emergency lights.  It also is responsible for the clicking sound that you hear when they are engaged.  I became familiar with this device when I drove an ice cream truck a couple summers in Oklahoma City while I was in college.  Since we drove very slowly in neighborhoods and had kids running up to the truck we had the emergency flashers on much of the time.  This resulted in the flasher unit having to be replaced several times a season.

I don’t have this problem in my Tacoma, but in my MX-5 Miata and my wife’s Subaru Outback I have an issue with leaving the turn signal on.  In the Outback if I get everything adjusted just right, I can see the indicator on the dashboard.  I have a harder time in the Miata.  This results in the old man syndrome of driving with my turn signal on for miles and miles and miles.

I went looking on the Internet, and they do make flashers with a louder sound.  One was advertising up to 5 times louder than normal. Why they are not marketing these aggressively to senior citizens I do not know, but if anyone wants to buy me a birthday present next year…

Just as an aside I was driving somewhere with the grandkids and their mother in the Outback.  She advised me that I still had my turn signal on even though I was done changing lanes.  I politely informed her that I was entitled as I was over 60.

And so it goes.

 

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Flags Half Mast

When I was young it seemed to be an extraordinary event when the United States flag was flown at half mast.  It was especially so back then as it did not happen that often.  It is still a big deal to fly the flag at half mast, but it seems to be happening all the time now.  Often it seems to be for victims of yet another mass shooting incident which are  an absolute pandemic in this country.  After the recent FedEx shooting in Indianapolis, there were two more of ONLY 3 or so people, one in Wisconsin and one Texas, this past weekend.

I am going to suggest that it would be easier and saner to leave the flags at half mast all the time until we do something about the availability of guns in this country – especially assault style rifles – and gun laws in general. The fact that we have failed to act on gun legislation, that guns have become so prevalent in our society, that mass shootings are so common, that guns are especially problematic in inner cities (there is nearly a gun death a day in St. Louis), is reason enough to be flying the flag at half mast.  I am not so sure that we should not be flying it upside down as a signal of dire distress.

And so it goes.

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It is official: I am old

By whatever methodology of measure you elect to utilize, I am not a young man.  I have not been so for a while now.  The other day I celebrated my 69th birthday by mowing and fertilizing the lawn.  Brothers being brothers, one of mine reminded me that as of my birthday this year I was beginning my 70th circuit around the sun. Thanks Mike, now pass me the foam encounter bat, you fellow old curmudgeon. My wife, for my birthday this year, bought me a coffee mug with my name on it.  I deduced that she was afraid that with my advancing decrepitude I might not remember who I was… let it alone my name.

However, the real kicker Continue reading “It is official: I am old”