Roses Are Read – So Are These Books

A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down the pants….

Some books that are good for the mind, some books that are good for the soul, and some books that are good for just passing time.  I read ‘em all last year.

1491
A description of indigenous societies and empires in North and South America before the white man arrived.  Aside from the lack of iron and steel, many of them were as complex and technological as anything in the Old World.

A Harvest of Short Stories
A 1960 Ontario English textbook, complete with notes and questions, and the names of three girls who had owned it.  16 short stories, mostly Canadian and British, including a couple of O. Henry ironies, and Poe’s A Cask of Amontillado.  I didn’t have to download a free PDF.  Two Sherlock Holmes, including The Speckled Band, where I found three errors.  You can’t train a snake.  They do not drink milk, and they are deaf, and will not respond to a whistle.  The notes found one more, where Holmes refers to Watson’s pistol by a company which only ever produced ammunition.

A History of the World In 10 ½ Chapters
Not what it claims to be.  A collection of short stories intended to make fun of blind religion, especially Christianity.

Count Zero
Book number two of a trilogy about surfing the internet, but written 40 years ago, when most of us didn’t know the internet existed.

Dead Moon
A premise that large areas of the moon are used as cemeteries.  Seemed energy-inefficient to me.  Along comes a space rock which re-animates the dead, with no explanation of how, or why.  Still, escapist fun.

Even
Lee Grant’s (Jack Reacher) younger brother writing in the same genre.  Heavy on the thinking and planning, but not averse to a little required violence.
Genellan – First Victory
Again, the second of three sci-fi books about three, then four, then five alien races, including us, who band together to defeat another powerful one, intent on controlling the galaxy.  Think Star Trek Federation versus The Borg.

Gilgamesh
A book written before you were born:  This one was written before almost anyone was born – 5000 years ago.  Book review to follow.

Kingdom of Bones
An excuse to while away some time in retirement.  This one shows a place in darkest Africa where Gaia-energy caused animal life and intelligence to develop.

No Plan B
While ‘Lee Child’ is busy developing the Jack Reacher TV series, (They’re filming the third season in Toronto, where the lead actor, from Minnesota, complains about the cold weather) it falls to his younger brother (see Even above) to keep pumping them out.

One Minute Out
Another Gray Man time-passer.  In the first novel. he got so beat-up and shot-up that I didn’t see how he, or the series, could survive.  This is the ninth, and they both seem to be feeling their age.

Rasputin’s Shadow
Many people are still fascinated by Rasputin.  Even a hundred years later, he’s a good MacGuffin to hang a modern action/suspense novel on.

Relentless
This is number 8 in The Gray Man series.  Same as above – only slightly different.

Run
Same basic plot as Even, above.  An innocent bystander gets screwed over, and works like Hell to get his life back.  Good for a week of casual reading.

Sapiens
A description and illustration of how humans climbed down from the hominid evolution tree.  We – the race  – may have made a great mistake in inventing farming and technology to feed an ever-increasing population.  Hunter/gatherers spend only 18/20 hours a week feeding themselves, with much less stress.

Shatter War
Number two of a trilogy about how areas of Earth are jumbled from different time periods, ranging from ice age, to 200 years in our future.  With a canvas that broad and blank, anything is possible.  From a husband/wife team like the Childs.  He determines the plotline and story arc, and she provides the development prose.

Sierra Six
This is number seven in The Gray Man series.  I’m presenting my titles in alphabetical order, but that inverts the published order.  This book is out of plotline order.  It’s a flashback story to explain how it all started.

Target Acquired
Ghost writers help the ghost of Tom Clancy-past to keep pumping out these Jack Ryan Junior, second-generation novels.

The Kaiser’s Web
If Raymond Khoury can hang a tale on Rasputin, then Steve Berry can hang one on the German Kaiser.  Everything old is new again.

The Kill Clause
A police detective, whose young daughter is raped and murdered, is offered a spot on a vigilante squad to bring justice to those who escape on technicalities.

The Last Orphan
A Jason Bourne-type agent is finally showing some signs of being human.  I am hoping for more books in the new direction.

The Program
The above vigilante policeman, (temporarily) off the force, rescues a rich man’s daughter from a Scientology-type cult.

The Runaway
A missing,16-year-old, female agent trainee, and the possibility of a relationship with a lady DA and her young son, help scrub a few letters off behind his assumed name –  ADD, ADHD, OCD, PTSD.  He may become part of civilized society, even while he’s still knocking off bad guys.

The Span of Empire
Similar to the Genellan book, again, there are more and more interstellar races, joining together to resist the galactic bully, who would ‘cleanse’ them all out of existence.

There Is A God
Lies!  Damned lies, and more desperate Christian Apologetics lies.

One Flew Over The Ego’s Nest

The most famous Atheist of the 20^th century found God.
(Writer’s note – No he didn’t! – Rebuttal below)
He Wrote a book about it.
I read the book.
Tickets to the Pity-Party are available for a nominal fee, at the box office in the lobby, as you exit the blog-site.

For fifty years, Antony Flew was the world’s best-known, and most vocal Atheist, a legend in his own mind.  He wrote a book titled There Is No God.  But he wasn’t your run-of-the-mill Atheist.  He didn’t merely not believe because he had not been presented with sufficiently convincing evidence.  He wanted to use words and debates and arguments and philosophy to prove that he was too smart to be gullible.

Just before he died, at age 80, he wrote another book.  The cover was identical to his earlier book, with the cutesy twist that, the word No was stroked through, and the word A was added.  The first half was about him.  Atheism was just an excuse to prove his brilliance.

He wrote and published a paper making some unsupported Atheist claim.  A year later, he wrote another paper, supporting the unsupportable.  He debated with a well-known Theist, and of course, won.  He wrote a paper rebutting and debunking another Theist.  He engaged in an ongoing correspondence contest with a Christian Apologist – and trounced him.  I’m surprised he didn’t dislocate his shoulder, patting himself on the back.

When he published the, There Is A God book, the Christian Apologist and Debater Society immediately adopted him.  The book’s blurb says, “The world’s most famous Atheist changed his mind.”  They clasped him to their bosom, and erected a life-sized cardboard cut-out of him, like Iron Man, despite the fact that his book specifically denies the existence of the needy, personal Christian God who knows your every thought, answers prayers, performs miracles, and hands out morality, and penalties for not obeying it.

He didn’t really change his mind; he just refined his reference points, and therefore his conclusion. He very unscientifically decided that there was some sort of underlying order and control to the cosmos.  He had ‘discovered’ Spinoza’s Deistic “God,” or Einstein’s.  He had found a (incorrectly spelled) Copernician, non-personal “God”.  He still had 26 angels, dancing on the head of a pin, but these ones were black-clad Goths, not golden, white-robed, haloed ones.

His statements – claims – were all null, because they had no referents.  The book is full of philosophical and debate buzzwords, open to interpretation.  He made claims based on ungrounded assumptions from unproven methodology.  The most common word in the book is IF!  If there is order in the Universe, GOD must have put it there.  If objective morals exist, then GOD must have commanded them.

The ‘Laws of Nature’ are descriptive, not prescriptive.  They are established by Mankind – scientists – who state observed reality.  Light does not travel at 300,000 Km/sec because God stands out in the cosmos with a crossing-guard paddle and a radar gun, yet Flew wanted to know “Who wrote the Laws of Nature?” with no evidence, no proof, that such a thing was even possible, or if it was, that it was a WHO that did it.

He firmly declared that he could not believe in Abiogenesis and evolution, that life – intelligence – could come merely from matter.  I guess that he was so busy being famous, that he missed the Miller-Urey experiments which proved that it was possible.

Yet another ‘Religious’ book that I was unimpressed, and underwhelmed by.  It seems that the only thing that Philosophy and debate prove, is that Philosophical debaters can be some very uninformed, ivory-tower assholes.

***

Later, I learned that the book was actually written by a Christian Apologist, with a Religious bias, who blamed credited Flew with having actually penned it.  After the cover claims that There Is A God, it shows Antony Flew as author, with Roy Abraham Varghese, as if he was only there to sharpen pencils, make coffee, and look up definitions.  Varghese wrote and published the book without Flew’s knowledge or authorization – Standard Practice!  😦  😳

Blame Someone Else Fibbing Friday

Pensitivity101 had some help last week (From Judy), who wanted to know what the following things might be.


1. What is Mascarpone?

It is a type of eye makeup for men, (?) first made famous by Boy George, and becoming more common by the day.

2. What is a Marsupial?
It’s that little drone that the nerds at NASA have flitting all over the surface of the Red Planet, looking for a Starbucks.

3. What is a Giblet?
It’s what Ladies in the Middle Ages –not middle-aged ladies – drank their ale and mead from, while the men swilled theirs from a goblet.

4. What is Good Husbandry?
Yes dear! No dear. You’re absolutely right dear. Whatever you say dear. SWMBO is our Goddess.

5. What is Onomatopoeia?
That’s what your excitable dog with the leaky bladder does when you return to the house from a shopping trip.

6. What is a Glaucus Atlanticus?
Gluteus Maximus is the Latin term to describe the Junk In The Trunk that most women have, and which most men appreciate to some degree. For some women, it’s as Big As All Outdoors. Glaucus Atlanticus is the term reserved for gals like Kim Kardashian, and Nicky Minaj, whose butts are As Huge As An Ocean. 🙄

7. What is a Sunda Colugo?
It is a viral, newly-popular ice-cream treat, developed in Central/South America, made with maple-walnut ice cream, banana slices, and coca leaves. You can fly all the way from Cali to London…. without a plane.

8. What is a Fossa?
It is a collective noun for all the marvelous, magnificent, prehistoric creatures whose remains – their bones – were fortuitously, amazingly, covered with muck and mud, and sand, and sometimes miles of water.
They mineralized, and petrified. Nowadays, when paleontologists dig into the earth, or chip away stone to uncover these proofs of evolution, they call them fossils.

9. What is Halitrephes Jelly?
It’s a contraception concoction for Greek men who are finally tired of sneaking in the back door, but who aren’t yet ready for children.

10. What does it mean to be Aliferous?
It is a tribulation which afflicts many students and workers, causing them to often call in – (Brits call out) sick.

Fibbing Friday On Foot

Pensitivity101 wanted me to put my best fib forward to define/explain these:  Since it’s a constant contest to determine which foot is the least Klutzy and clumsy, it took a while to complete this list.

1. Creps

Those are skinny little pancakes that the French spread with frog-jelly, and claim are gourmet food.

2. Tekkies

Retro Sci-Fi TV fans with a spelling deficiency from modern (lack of) teaching methods.

3. Loubs.

They are the heavy-duty horse-shoes that are put on the Budweiser Clydesdale horses.

4. Red Bottoms

The lower half of the old ‘Union Suit.’ – as opposed to the one-piece version with the trapdoor in the back.  Americans, with constant indoor temperature from gas-heating, have no idea what I’m talking about, but many British remember.  As Pensitivity said to her Russian-heritage husband, when the fireplace burned low, “Peter, the grate!”

5. Wookies

Desperate Christian Apologists, who frantically deny evolution, and loudly declaim that, ‘We didn’t come from monkeys – or chimpanzees!’ – haven’t met my relatives.  My redneck cousin Lemmy was the co-pilot of the Millennium Falcon spaceship in those Star Wars movies.  His son got the role of ‘Cousin Itt,’ in The Addams Family TV series.

6. Mandal

He’s Barbie’s platonic male friend in the new live-action movie.  Not every gay guy says ‘Hello’ – but…. Hello!   🙄

7. Chucks

These are meat cuts, peculiar to the way American butchers disassemble a steer.  But then, there’s a lot of ways that Americans are peculiar.  Chuck steaks – chuck roasts – a meat-cutter named Chuck – what Poirot’s Inspector Japp might call a fag end.  Here in Canada, most of that ends up as ‘hamburger’/ground beef.

8. Beaters

Every car that I’ve ever owned!  😳  In 55 years of marriage, only the most recent vehicle was purchased new.  In seven years, it has struck, or been struck, five times.  Only a week ago, I had someone’s front license-plate mounting screw, impaled in my rear (rubber) bumper.  👿

9. Gutties

Marketers market – not what you want.  Salespeople sell – not what you need.  A new subdivision is a place where they tear out all the trees…. and then name the streets after them.  I have never lived in a house where I had to worry about leaves blocking the eavestrough – a Canadian term, meaning the gutter at the eaves of a building.

Recently, as I play solitaire or Mahjong, I get adverts for Gutties, a long, narrow, flexible plastic sieve, or a semi-rigid plastic colander, to be attached over the eavestroughs.  The cost of Gutties in Kitchener may amaze you.  More like ‘appall!’  👿

10. Fuma

This is the break when the illegal-immigrant Chicano restaurant kitchen staff, go out back to smoke weed.

I’m off my diet, and off my meds??! You’re on your own. 😎

’23 A To Z Challenge – E

The Sound of silence…. Music…. Language

Each language has its own sound – its own tempo – its own delivery.  Even if you don’t know what the foreign speaker is saying, you can often tell what language it is, simply by the sound of it.  Italian and Spanish sound like the machinegun chatter of chickadees on meth.  French sounds like the speaker is trying to evade being charged with child luring.  German sounds like someone is training a dog, and Russian seems spoken by a crew of cesspool cleaners.  I often know the area where an English native is from, just by the local accent.

Most languages don’t change much, or very quickly.  Spanish-speakers can read El Cid in the original, while Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written at the same time, requires a translator.  English evolves, and its sound has changed over time.

It’s not just the new words, and the new meanings and usages of old words.  It’s that the world, and therefore the language, has grown larger, and more complex.  We have less time, to say more.  The construction is getting shorter, quicker, tighter, and wider, but not as deep.

A century ago, or two, we had the time – at least the privileged, educated,  upper crust – to converse and orate, using grandiloquent, polysyllabic words, often from Latin or Greek bases.  Those idyllic days are gone.  The grand old days of the unhurried Romance-era are long past.

I recently read a piece from another archaist like me – someone who likes to throw the occasional impressive antique usage in.  He used the word

EFTSOON

Soon after, before 950; Middle English eftsone,Old English eftsōna.See eft², soon

While it was a sweet, caramel-sundae kind of word, we just don’t have the time for it anymore, in our fast-paced, frenetic lives.  The leisurely, imposing sound of it has been replaced by curt, businesslike words like ASAP, or stat.

The Good Old Days were only good for the cream of the social crop, but their relaxed, melodious language usage was pleasing to the ear.  Hurry back ASAP stat soon for another helping of blather.

Ditty Bag Of Fibbing Friday

Pensitivity101 had another very mixed bag last week.  To tell the truth, a Ditty Bag is a small sack in which you can carry I-Pods, Ear-Pods, and your Smart Phone and/or tablet, laden with your play list.

1. What is clematis?

Isn’t that the thing that most women claim that most men can’t find??  O?  No!

2.  What is meant by linear?
That’s what the wife claims happens to any of her whiny complaints helpful comments.  Linear, and out the other.

3. What is a gonk?

It’s evidence for Christian Fundamentalists who don’t believe in evolution.  In a mere 60 years time, a lame, fuzzy, British toy developed into Minions.

4. What is a sirloin?

He was the Scottish knight at Camelot – Sir Loin of Beef – the second most famous, after Sit Gadalot Galapagos Gallivant Galahad.  He and his squire did not ride horses.  They saddled up on Highland bulls.

5. What is pumpernickel?
   

Now that COVID is dying back, instead of Canadian citizens, it is a renewed campaign from Tourism Canada to urge people to travel to Sudbury, in Northern Ontario, to view “The Big Nickel” outside the largest nickel mine in the world.

6. What is canasta?

It’s the contents of a tin of snails.  Oh, let’s give it a fancy French name – Escargot – and pretend that it’s somehow gourmet food.  Do you have to be as arrogant and irritating as a Frenchman to eat these things, or does eating these nasty slugs that ought to be stepped on in the garden, make one arrogant and irritating??  Je ne sais pas!

7. What is a Duchess Cake?
   

It’s one of those blue deodorizer puck things that they put in the urinals, over at Will and Kate’s place.

8. What is density?

That’s what I did the day of the Super Bowl.  I went into the family room and plunked my ass down in my recliner, with a case of beer below one arm, and a Costco-sized bag of Salt and Vinegar crisps by the other, and didn’t stir for four and a half hours – except to hit the WC during half-time.

9. Where will you find Agnes, Margo and Edith?

I recently found them at my front door.  They were three well-mannered Girl Scouts who politely asked me to purchase some of their cookies.  I was so startled that I bought an entire case, because I didn’t know that children that young were allowed to carry firearms.

10. What is a spatula?

It’s the mutual conversation exercise program that the wife and I indulge in, any given Saturday night when I’ve opened a box of beer, and she’s had 6 or 7 medicinal toddies, and the bon mots flow.  One night, she surprised me when she said, “I love you, and I couldn’t do without you.”  I asked if that was her or the wine talking.  She replied that it was her – talking to the wine.  😳

’22 A To Z Challenge – S

Of all my relations, I still like sex the best.  😉

Two vaguely-related prompts, equal one mediocre post.

I again, recently ran into some archaic words. Smite means to strike, to hit, to afflict or attack.  It’s a present-tense verb.  The past-tense form is smote.  They were both in common usage around 1600 AD, when the King James Bible was composed.
The Israelites did smite the Midianites.
Peter drew his sword and smote the chief priest’s slave.

There was a lot of smiting and smoting going on back then.  We’ve come a long way since then – perhaps too far.  Now we’re not even supposed to raise our voice, or say anything that might offend or distress someone.

The first word that I snaked out of the S-word file was their relation/relative, the word

SMITTEN

The other two words are verbs, portraying actions performed.  Smitten is an adjective that describes the situation that results from these actions.  The slave, whose ear Peter lopped off, was smitten by the sword.

The two verbs toddled off into linguistic obscurity in the Archaic Dictionary about 400 years ago.  Smitten avoided this fate with a little soft-shoe shuffle and a quick two-step.  It is used, even today, because it evolved its meaning from the actual, physical, to the more allegorical, and mental, and tends to be accompanied by the word with.
She was smitten with the bad-boy biker dude.
He was smitten with the sleek, fast, Tesla sport model.
The entire family was smitten with COVID 19.

Relatively speaking, the relation I next noticed, was the up-and-coming verb form of

SANDBAG

I prefer the British term ‘cosh,’ which is a blackjack, or bludgeon.  A sport sock, with the toe filled with damp sand, smartly applied  to someone’s head, just above the ear, generally guarantees a half an hour of unconsciousness. (a raging headache, possible fractured skull, concussion, loss of memory, etc.)

The recent business and social usage of ‘sandbag,’ which is becoming as common and as irksome as ‘woke,’ is to thwart or cause to fail or be rejected, especially surreptitiously or without warning – scam, con, or flim-flam.  (There’s an old term, making a comeback because of sandbag)

English is a constantly-changing, fluid language, but sometimes I get the feeling that we’re just being sold down the river.  In a couple of days, I will plainly state some of the problems of getting old, and demonstrate the difference between ‘Bitching’ and ‘Whining.’  Bitching is clearly saying I hurt, Damnit!  Whining is more, Whaaa.  I’m a little sore and I need to lie down.  I teach that in my Grumpy101 Course, at the local Community College.  You guys got it for free.  😉

Eight Ways To Be Wrong About Atheists

The quickest and surest way, is to not actually engage with Atheists.  Don’t talk to them, debate them, or ask them questions.  Don’t listen to, or accept, their answers and explanations.  Just keep spouting groundless religious claims that you inherited from someone else.  Be like this guy, who had

Eight Reasons Not To Be An Atheist

1. An atheist assigns himself to life with merely finite purposes

His first claim is full of the presupposition of choice and rebellion.  If indeed, God does not exist, then finite purposes are all that there are.  His further claim that even Atheists feel that there is something bigger than them – something outside them – still doesn’t prove that IT is God.  A little concrete evidence of His existence might change that.

2. The atheist must also suppress the demands of logic

Again, we see the presupposition from Something complex must have been designed, to, A design requires a designer, so, The designer must have been God.  None of these three claims are necessarily true, and do not necessarily follow one another.  A large mirror, dropped on a concrete floor, will produce an amazingly complex result, with no designer.  Apologists like this don’t even understand Logic, unless it works in their favor.

3. Yet, ironically, the atheist has to believe in miracles without believing in God

Here, he trots out the old, tired, often-refuted Kalam Cosmological Argument, saying that everything that begins to exist must have a cause.  Since he doesn’t have enough imagination, and scientific understanding, he can’t (and doesn’t want to) think of any alternative, so he plugs in God as the only option.

Physicists have posited several theories for the existence of the Universe.  Constant energy infusion into a bubble of the Meta-verse may have caused it to shit spit out our local representation.  Since Time only came into existence with the coalescence of Matter, there was never a Time when the Universe did not exist.  Therefore, it is possible for the Universe to have a finite past – yet to have existed infinitely – no God required.

4. An atheist must also suppress all notions of morality

Why??!  Just because he says so??!  Most Atheists make no claims about morality, because it is a term that has been co-opted by Christians.  Atheists have ethics and empathy.  The Christian God of the Bible – the archetype of their moral values – not only permitted, but encouraged, murder, rape, torture, forced marriage, genocide, racism and slavery.  Good Christians and their morals clog prisons, rehab centers and divorce courts.  I want nothing to do with Christian morals.

5. In fact, the atheist must conclude that evil is an illusion

So, if Atheism is valid, there are no real evils, just violations of human customs or conventions. How hard would it be to think of murderers as merely having bad manners?

“Evil” is indeed, an illusion, one believed in by most Christians.  It does not exist as a distinct entity.  For any given situation, there are different possible series of actions.  Some will be more beneficial to an individual, and the Human race as a whole.  Others will reduce individual and group happiness and well-being.

Drinking battery acid – or Ivermectin – may not be “evil,” but it will not produce the most good.  Neither will murder.  It is far more than mere ‘bad manners.’  I know of no Atheist who would claim it was.  I am appalled that this Christian Apologist would do so.

6. The atheist must also live with the arrogance of his position

His assertion that there is no God requires that he pretend to possess total knowledge.

That is why Apologists get so upset when Atheists insist that they simply don’t believe because they have not been presented with convincing evidence.  For the Christian, it’s like punching a fogbank, so they lie pretend that Atheists say things that most of us don’t.  For many Christians, their religion is their life.  Despite their protestations, they aren’t half as upset that we don’t believe in their God, as they are when they find that we don’t believe in them.

7. The atheist must also deny the validity of historical proof

The extensive manuscript evidence of eyewitnesses to the resurrection is presented in an unbiased, authentic manner.

Yeah, right??!  Pull the other one.  Four Gospels that don’t agree with each other, and one author who wasn’t there, but who claims that 500 people saw the risen Christ – only – that’s all there is, one man’s claim.  There is no list of names, or where/how many places, this occurred.  There are not 500 sworn affidavits, just a vague assertion.  I couldn’t get someone convicted of double-parking with that quality of evidence.

8. Finally, atheists must admit that humans are not importantly different from other animals

And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, that desperate, ego-driven need to feel special.  Humans are like, and different from, other animals in a variety of ways, and to a range of degrees.  Science is finding that species like whales and dolphins and apes and chimpanzees are remarkably human-like in many ways.  I’d like to drop him in the middle of the Serengeti, near a pride of hungry lions, and let him explain to them, just how important he is.

The atheist’s problem with belief in God is not an absence of evidence but suppression of it.
Citation needed!  Many well-known Atheists were priests, preachers, seminarians, and evangelicals.  Reputable polls show that, on average, Atheists know more about the Bible and the Christian faith, than most Christians do.  Their ‘evidence’ is not being suppressed.  It is being dismissed as unproven, and unconvincing.

Mixed Bag Fibbing Friday

Questions for last week were a mixed bag and Pensitivity101 was looking forward to reading what we came up with – finally.

1. What is a bobby pin?

That was the Choke Hold/Body Slam that the Security Patrol Police Officer put on the lout who recently threw eggs at Bonnie King Charlie.

2. What is a Whoopee Cushion?

It’s the device that short, little MS Goldberg uses, to appear to be as tall as the rest of the Valkyrie co-hosts on The View.

3. What is a cock-a-poo?

That’s the cutesy name that the nurses give to the commodes in the men’s sections of the old-folks homes long-term care facilities.

4. Why are some chicken eggs brown and some white?

White eggs are caused by sun-bleaching, by light that enters henhouses while various chickens leave the nest, and root for food during the day.  When some farmers found out how much they could charge for brown eggs, by calling them ‘Organic,’ they boarded up all the windows.

5. How would you describe cardboard?

Foursquare, upstanding and self-contained, are the only words that come to mind.  It’s difficult to think outside the box.

6. What do a pony and monkey have in common?

They do not believe in Creation.  An All-Knowing God would not have been dumb enough to put Mankind in charge of the Earth.  The Great Apes have filed an injunction to have a portion of the family tree lopped off.

7. What is a USB key?

Similar to the Bat Signal, it’s the device I use to summon my creative Muse.  Either it needs a new battery, or Erato is on an extended, drunken orgy with Bacchus – again.  No inspiration this week.  😳

8. What is a golden handshake?

It’s one that you don’t want to get from any of the staff at a food-service business.  That’s the reason that restaurants have signs in their washrooms that insist, “Staff must wash hands before returning to work.”

9. What is an orange pippin?

It’s just an ordinary pippin that wanted to do some sun-bathing, but forgot to slather on lots of SPF Global Warming/End of the World sunscreen.  Note:  may be related to a certain ex-US President.

10. What is Teflon?

I’m still not sure.  I tried to do some online research, but none of the information seemed to stick with me.

37th-Day Adventist Fibbing Friday

This is Pensitivity101’s Pass The Buck version of Fibbing Friday.  Thanks to Jim Adams who supplied the questions this week. You can check out his blog here.

1. Why did all the dinosaurs die?

Fred Flintstone opened an automobile dealership, and sold cars to almost all of them.  T-Rex had trouble steering his, because of his short arms.  Then a Brontosaurus learned how to make fern wine.  Within a couple of years, dinosaur drunken driving accidents had reduced their numbers below the breeding survival limit.  They didn’t want to admit that they were a bunch of saurian sots.  They blamed it on a single meteor, but really, it was Fords, Meteors, Monarchs, and a few Taunuses.

2. Why are there so many stories about the great flood?

What with Global Warming, wildfires and decades-long droughts, it’s just a way for people to fondly remember the good old days when illegal Mexican immigrants needed at least a raft, or an inner tube, to sneak across the Rio Grande into Texas.  Now they can do it with a skateboard.

On the other hand, if Iceland’s glaciers continue to melt, and sea levels rise, London’s East Enders will be living on houseboats, and Paris will be a deep-water port.

3. What happened at Hadrian’s Wall?

A drunken Scotsman (Are there any other kinds?) fell off it, while trying to get over it on his way home from the pub.  He landed on his sporran, spraining it badly, and dropped his takeaway packet of chips and Scottish egg.

4. How long was the hundred years war?

576 miles, 3089 feet, 7 ¾ inches.  Any longer than that, and it would have reached past the Maginot line, into Germany – and we all know how grumpy those folks can get when you interrupt their Oktoberfest parade.

5. Why was it all quiet on the western front?

There was a COVID-caused supply chain problem, and an entire shipment of hearing-aid batteries were not allowed across the border, because the truck driver was a vaccine-denier, who refused to wear a mask.

6. What was the Boxer Rebellion all about?

That was when I firmly put my foot down when the wife tried to get me to change over to bikini briefs.  The very idea! 😳   At my age my underwear has to cover a lot of territory.  I just silently (But very rebelliously) declined to buy any.

7. What caused the Titanic to sink?

Leonardo DiCrapio’s enormous ego.  If he hadn’t been standing up at the bowsprit with his arms spread, doing an impersonation of Amelia Earhart, the ship’s pilot might have been able to see past his swelled head, and avoided that delivery of ice for the ship’s bar.

8. Why do they want us to remember the Main?

Americans would like Brits to remember that it was a battleship named after the State of Maine.  Its sinking in the Havana harbour in 1898 was the putative cause of the Spanish/American War – the first made- for- television newspaper conflict.  Publisher/producer William Randolph Hearst told a photographer who was on the scene, “You get me the photographs.  I’ll get you the war.”  😯

9. What happened to Amelia Earhart?

She was originally Flighty Spice, the 6^th member of The Spice Girls, but she became so embarrassed that she got plastic surgery, changed her name, and came back as Britney Spears – far less demeaning.

10. Who was involved in the Iran Contra scandal?

If you can believe the testimony, – and who would think that anyone, especially respected American politicians, would lie under oath? – Nobody was involved!  It was all just a fig newton of our collective imagination, and never really occurred at all.