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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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Quote of the Day — Octavia Butler

When vision fails
Direction is lost.

When direction is lost
Purpose may be forgotten.

When purpose is forgotten
Emotion rules alone.

When emotion rules alone,
Destruction… destruction.

~~ Octavia Butler

To see more Quotes for Day, visit this link: Quotes for the Day

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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”

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #1,801

yeah I know you did not ask!

I am here to tell you, that flapping your arms while standing on the bathroom scales does nothing to lower the maldito numbers displaying on the digital dial of aforementioned monstrosity.  Neither does exhaling your breath forcibly, standing on one leg, peeking at the readout from the corner of one eye…

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The Republican Party… as it formerly was

Heather Cox Richardson is an historian and a professor at Boston College.  She also puts out a news letter (more or less daily) that generally relates current events to historical trends – among other things. I will confess to not reading everyone of her newsletters, but I read many.

Today’s topic was the Republican Party.  It has not always been the Tea Party infused lackey of corporations and the excessively wealthy, for much of its history it cared about the common individuals and sought to use government to do social good.  Her April 6, 2021 newsletter starts out:

“I spent much of today thinking about the Republican Party. Its roots lie in the immediate aftermath of the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in spring 1854, when it became clear that elite southern slaveholders had taken control of the federal government and were using their power to spread their system of human enslavement across the continent.

At first, members of the new party knew only what they stood against: an economic system that concentrated wealth upward and made it impossible for ordinary men to prosper. But in 1859, their new spokesman, Illinois lawyer Abraham Lincoln, articulated a new vision of government…”

The whole article can be read here:  Letters from America – April 6, 2021 It is well worth the time it takes to read it. If you like that sort of thing, it is a good newsletter to subscribe to.

Keep well.

 

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Word of the Day – Phratry

  • Noun: Phratry

    1. a kinship group forming a subdivision of a Greek phyle
    2. a tribal subdivision specifically : an exogamous group typically comprising several totemic clans
  • Synonyms:
    1.  sept
    2. lineage
    3. kinfolk
    4. pedigree
    5. blood line
  • Usage:
    1. “You people call yourselves a ‘family’ but the grouping is a phratry.“
  • Encountered:
    1. While reading Robert A. Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy.

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

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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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Mars and Venus — Whatever Country

I was Skyping with my young Mexican tutor who lives in Honduras this morning.   He told me the following joke:

¿En qué se parecen las mujeres y las canciones en inglés?
Yo tampoco lo entiendo, pero me gustan los dos.

Or in English:

How are women and songs in English alike?
I don’t understand either, but I like them both.

Seems like male / female relationships are the same in whatever culture the two genders exist.