Category: Randomness

Joe really oughta keep these to himself, but he what the hay…

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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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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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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #9,786

yeah I know you did not ask!

In 2005 the Country and Western artist Toby Keith had a big hit with the song, As Good as I Once Was.  In case you were off the planet then, here a link to a video of the song: As Good as I Once Was

The story line of the song is that a  gentleman is in a bar and twin girls try to pick him up for a threesome.  He then utters the catch line of his song, “I ain’t as good as I once was, but I’m as good once As I ever was“.

I am aware it is just a song and probably not autobiographical, but… At the time the song came out, Toby Keith would have been around 44.  I saw recently that Toby will be turning 60 this year, by some reckonings, a senior citizen. I imagine that he is still singing the song in concerts, given his senior citizen status, perhaps he should revise his famous line to this: “I ain’t as good as I once was, but I’m as good once As I ever was… SOMETIMES“.

 

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #4,845

yeah I know you did not ask!

After much gnashing of teeth, after much scrutinizing of checking  accounts, after accepting that she would not be 21 again, Señora bit the proverbial bullet and bought herself hearing aids.

This purchased has wrought an unexpected change in my life. In the past when we had a cross transaction I was wont to mutter some reply under my mustache, knowing that it was very unlikely that she would hear my utterance, thus avoiding fueling whatever fire was raging.  If she noticed my lips moving, and asked what I said, I would disingenuously reply, “That I love you.”  That is no longer an option. I know this to be true as I was in my man cave upstairs talking back to a balky computer when from the kitchen downstairs I heard her ask, “What did you say dear?”

Hopefully I am not too old a dog to learn a new trick, and can avoid being taken to the pound.

Let me see, how many cliches did I manage to get into three short paragraphs…

Keep well.

 

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Artifact or Angel

Robin was taking some pictures with her phone.  It has a function which can do a motion capture of 6 or 8 images.  This makes your still photograph act like it should be at Hogwarts.

There is an interesting phenomenon happening in the middle of the picture that we cannot explain.  I am pretty sure that this is some sort of artifact of lighting or camera movement, perhaps the light reflecting off a passing vehicle.

Señora, however,  is convinced it is an alien entering our space-time continuum from a rip in the fabric of the universe.  Or possibly an angel…

Anybody have a possible explanation?  You can appreciate it more  if your go to full screen.

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #9,340

yeah I know you did not ask!

I turned on the TV and watched about 10 minutes of the House “debate” on impeaching Trump for a second time.  This was about 9 more minutes than I could have stomached if I had not been doing other things at the same time.

I came to the conclusion that there are a lot of Republicans that I would like to play poker with.  They have no idea when to fold a losing hand.  I also suspect, given the analytical skills on display, that they would always draw to an inside straight.  Only thing that could be better would be a drunk poker player with lots of cash to bet.

I’m tired of this Irish blessing we are living.

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #4,293

yeah I know you did not ask!

I pulled into a convenience store the other night.  Alright, alright, alright… I pulled in to buy a lottery ticket.  Before I got out of the truck I put on my black pandemic mask.  I had on my usual ball cap. I did not have far to go, but it was very cold outside so I zipped my jacket up as far as it would go. Then as I stepped out of the truck I had the random thought that all I needed at this point was a gun in my pocket.

Surely, I am not the only one.