This was on the back of a F-150 pickup truck. Its message was reinforced by a sticker on the back windshield that read “Cowboy Up”. 8 seconds is the amount of time a rodeo cowboy must stay on a bull or bucking bronco to qualify for a score. Having known a couple bull riders, they are some crazy mo-fos.
I have not put out a Vanity Plate posting for a while, mainly because I am retired and not spending an hour and half or two hours a day commuting to and from downtown St. Louis. When I did I used the exercise of deciphering vanity plates as a way to help pass the time in rush hour traffic.
Oh… I remember why. I made a comment to someone (DFR), “as Meat Loaf once famously said, ‘two out of three ain’t bad.'” This lead me to look up the song on YouTube: Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad I can’t hardly listen to this song without a tear or two coming to my eyes. But then again I have way too many ghosts of past relationships rattling around my psychic, soul, or however you want to express it.
More Than I Thought
Which made me wonder if Meat Loaf was still with us. No. He died in 2022 at 74, probably of complications of COVID. To show my ignorance, I always thought of Meat Loaf as a one album wonder, Bat Out of Helland a one film wonder, Rocky Horror Picture Show. Nothing could be further from the truth. He had a long career, both as a musician and as an actor of both film and theater. He sold millions and millions of albums world wide. His Bat Out of Hell alone sold 43 million, was certified platinum 14x, and spent almost a record of 522 weeks on the charts.
Paradise By The Dashboard Lights
I have listened to this song an unknowable number of times. It was and is a staple of rock radio. However, I have never seen the video of him singing this classic with Ellen Foley, who is from St. Louis. The video is more than a little sexy without being vulgar. The song by itself is just about a perfect encapsulation of the drama that is the relationship between men and women. What is the conventional wisdom? Women give sex to get love, men give love to get sex. As one my siblings commonly says, “true dat!”
to declare to be untrue or invalid (intransitive verb)
contradict, oppose
gainsayer is the noun
Synonyms:
deny
refute
reject
contradict
disavow
disclaim
negate
repudiate
disallow
disown
disaffirm
disconfirm
disprove
rebut
challenge
Usage:
“The sons of the Achaeans shouted applause at the words of Diomed, and presently Nestor rose to speak. “Son of Tydeus,” said he, “in war your prowess is beyond question, and in council you excel all who are of your own years; no one of the Achaeans can make light of what you say nor gainsay it, but you have not yet come to the end of the whole matter.”
Encountered:
While listening to Samuel Butler’s prose translation of The Iliad
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.
To state the obvious, crazy people are hard to deal with. That is one of the many reasons we call them crazy. Frequently, one of the most difficult things to tolerate is that they suck all the oxygen from a room, they hog all the bandwidth, leaving room for only their drama. Even when they are not there physically.
Our neighborhood is a web of cul-de-sac streets with only one entry into it. Our particular street has one street coming off of it, is about two blocks long and ends in a cul-de-sac. There are five or six houses around this cul-de-sac that are infested with a swarm of rug rats. Most of them are elementary school age, a few younger, with a sprinkling of teenagers. What is cool is that these kids tend to play in the street like we did back in the “good old days.” They are riding bikes, scooters, various new fangled riding contraptions that I am clueless as to their names. Street hockey and soccer are big in this neighborhood. They seem to stay very busy entertaining themselves and each other, all the while running into and out of each other’s houses.
I had forgotten I had taken this picture of Señora in St. Charles a few years ago. Obviously it was Christmas time. We were with a group of folks in the historic downtown district of this city sitting on the Missouri River, visiting the various quaint shops that are nestled in among restaurants, bars and monuments and references to Lewis and Clark.
I was working online with one of my Spanish teachers, a Venezuelan woman who has fled her country with her husband to Buenos Aires. We were reviewing and discussing an article that listed various Christmas traditions from around the Hispanic world.
There is a tradition from the Catalonia region of Spain that we glossed over as neither of us really wanted to discuss it. The tradition struck both of us as a little gross. The traditional there is to place a defecating – pooping if you will – figurine discreetly?? in one corner of the Christmas Nativity scene that folks commonly put out this time of year. Typically, this figurine has always been of a peasant in the traditional dress of the region. And like most of these things it is supposed to bring good luck.
It has since morphed so frequently the figurines are of famous people from around the globe. This has grown into a big international souvenir business, with the majority of the online sales going to the United States.
Fast Forward
Talking about synchronicity… Looking at the news online this morning there was an article from The Guardian: Christmas caganer figurines of CataloniaJust a warning if your are sensitive to such things, there is a bit of a yuk factor associated with the pictures in the article, but on the whole it was an interesting read, at least for me as I had touched on the subject just a couple days before. It was also amusing to see which public figures they chose to depict.
If you are curious, look up the Spanish verb cagar (the noun caganer is derived from the verb) in an online translator. When I was young it was a word that was not used in polite company.
Oh we humans… I wonder how far we really are from the bonobos.
I am a big fan of myself and others using turn indicators, turn signals if you will. At the minimum it is just common courtesy. It is also, many times, a manner of safety. Using and acknowledging turn signals keeps traffic flowing in a safe and sane manner.
However, I am utterly convinced that this device, usually a lever that controls the signalling lights, is missing or broken in many vehicles. I even wonder sometimes if they are still installing them in new vehicles. Perhaps no one has bothered to educate the drivers of these vehicles on how they function. I remember the salesman taking 20 minutes to explain how the touch screen worked on the last new car we bought. For my money they could be throwing in the turn indicator functionality as a public service.
