O No – O Not

 

Once upon a time, in olden Greece, there lived two little vowels, almost identical twins.

Recently, I was watching videos…. Perhaps on a site I shouldn’t have been at.  😳

Attention!  Your computer has notified us that it has been infected by a very contagious virus.  You have been locked out so that we can contain it.  Please call the toll-free number listed below so that we can erase it and prevent further infection.  Failure to do so can result in a permanent shutdown, and loss of files and data.

Not that I’ve ever received such a notice.  😉

I watched a young man talking about realizing something about these two Greek vowels.  In English, there is only one letter ‘O,’ but it is pronounced in two ways.  There is the long O, like in the word No, and the short O, like in the word Not.

In Greek, there are two Os – Omega, and Omicron.  He had just become conscious of the fact that – the long O, the big O – was O–mega, and the short O, the small O – was O–micron.  It’s so blindingly obvious…. after someone points it out to you.

He looked so familiar.  Who was this young man taking so much delight to explain such a minuscule linguistic detail about a foreign language, with such fervor?  My old eyes aren’t what they used to be, but I’m pretty sure it was me.

My next post, on the rapid increase of initialisms, will all be in English, despite the fact that there really is no such language.  FYI, LOL, LMAO, ROFL, FWIW, IDK, LY, TTYL.

Legal To Drink On Fibbing Friday

I received a parcel via courier the other day.  I thought that it might be the sea monkeys that I had ordered from Amazon, but it was another batch of Fibbing Friday prompts from Pensitivity101.

1. What is a humdinger?

Someone once asked Monica Lewinski if she’d ever taken it into her head to make money.  She replied that Bill Clinton had never paid her.  Most of us know that a Hummer is not only a gas-guzzling penis surrogate.  With a humdinger, the added fillip is digital anal insertion at the moment of truth.  It really adds something – or so I’m told.  No wonder she has a stain on that blue dress.

2. What is Hopscotch?

It’s a little dance I do on my way to the washroom (More of a stagger and stumble, than hop) over all the Legos and stuffed toys in the living room, after I’ve had one or two – or twelve – Glenfiddich, to wind down from another day of COVID mandate lockdowns.

Singer Bobbie Goldsboro had to go to Emergency, and get three stitches in his big toe, after he stumbled into a small pile of dried Rice Krispies, milk, and far too much sugar, that his son had dripped off the coffee table while watching morning cartoons.

3. What is Boeuf Bourguignon?

She is Shia LeBoeuf’s mother.  She has been underwhelmed by his movie portrayals, and is so disappointed and embarrassed that she is going back to her maiden name.

4. What is a Lady In Waiting?

She could be any one of the professional party girls from either of the local universities who attended the drunken orgies St. Patrick’s Day or Homecoming street parties.  I’ve peed on this stick, and I need to know if there’s one blue line, or two!  😯

5. What is a lupin?

Canada has a Francophone Federal opposition party politician named Pierre Poilievre, whose name translates roughly to pea-picker – like Tennessee Ernie Ford used to say,  “Bless your little pea-pickin’ heart.”  Lupins are members of the pea-plant family.  How many peas can a pea-pickin’ politician pick while waiting for his Golden Handshake??!

6. What is brimstone?

For twenty years, the wife and I were deliriously happy.  Then we met.  Brimstone was the one in her engagement ring.  Once I had presented that to her, my life began circling the outer ring of Dante’s Hell, just like the remains of yesterday’s burrito dinner going down the toilet.  I could have married anyone I pleased, but apparently I never pleased anyone.

When we got married, the wife and I agreed that I would handle all the big problems, while she took care of the small stuff.  In over 50 years of marriage, I have never had to make a major decision.  The wife says that I have to go now, because I’m getting too maudlin – and the cat-litter tray needs to be cleaned out.  😉

7. What is a Lady’s Slipper?

It’s the see-through part of Cinderella’s costume that the Prince got to keep.  I’m not sure how.  At the stroke of midnight, the horses turned back into mice, and the coach reverted to being a pumpkin.  Why didn’t the dropped shoe change back into an eggplant??!

8. How long can a snail sleep?

I can’t get mine to sleep.  He keeps racing across the floor and up the walls, harassing the dogs.  I should never have kept one as a pet in my meth lab.

9. Up to 1 trillion germs can be found on which part of the body?

Donald Trump’s tongue.   😛  Did you see how many ‘Good Christian’ asses he had to kiss to get into power??!  And then, when a reporter asked him what his favorite Bible verse was, he couldn’t articulate one, because God shut his tongue down, so that he could not blaspheme.

10. What is a Puffling?

It’s an old, out-of-shape guy like me, whose two life-long hobbies have been to add pounds of weight, (Kilos, for those readers in Metric countries) and years of age. (Years, for those readers in Metric countries)   The only thing I run now, is my tongue.  My idea of exercise is a good, brisk sit.  I get winded just changing my mind.  It’s a good thing that I don’t do it often.  I’m not opinionated – it’s just that I’m always right.

Someone asked me if I was the King of Non-Sequiturs.  I couldn’t answer because I was busy delivering  a completed Fibbing Friday post to Pensitivity101 that was so old that I needed Indiana Jones to help me dig it up.

Dr. Who’s Questions

The Doctor (He doesn’t say, ‘of what.’) claims that he just wants to ask some respectful questions of Atheists – no trick or gotcha ones.  He wants to amass the information, and sift and sort it, to produce a published report.  When asked when he might submit it, and to whom, he was delightfully vague.

He and his wife were Atheists, until each of them had a revelation from the Christian God, and they became Jews For Jesus.  His questions natter on and on – and on, full of presuppositions and leading statements.  Another blogger graciously simplified the list, although I included part of his number six, for context and clarity.  I thought I’d have a go at them.

• Is Your Atheism Based on Study or Experience? …

Yes!, to both.  As young as seven or eight, I regarded stories that started with “In The Beginning” to be no more believable than those that began, “Once Upon A Time.”  I didn’t realize until I became an adult myself, that other children, and adults, took them seriously.  I became curious enough to begin a long-term investigation.  I spent a great deal of time looking at arguments for or against God’s existence, and eventually had to conclude that there just wasn’t any evidence for God that stood up to examination.

• Do You Have Purpose and Destiny? …

Yes.  I have had many ‘Purposes,” and will probably have more before I die, but each of them was created and affixed by me, or those close to me, not by some supernatural entity.  I believe that I have a destiny.  It’s just that I am not enough of a fortune-teller to see far enough into the future to get a clear glimpse of what it might be.

• Does God Exist? …

This might seem a strange question to be asking of Atheists.  In the original long-winded version, he wanted Atheists to provide total, complete, 100% proof, that there was absolutely no chance that God exists.  This is the philosophical equivalent to home invasion.  There are almost no things that can be utterly proved not to exist.  He appeared to want a tiny gap, where he could wedge his definition of God into.  I consider the possibility of God existing, only slightly more likely than the existence of a married bachelor.

• Can Science Explain the Origin of Life? …

Science has explained the origin of life!  There is one major, largely-accepted (by biologists and related scientists) theory, and a couple of minor variations.  They all entail the chemical soup present in early Earth seas, with geothermal energy and solar radiation fueling and mutating the chemical reactions, until self-replicating RNA strands evolved upward to cells and DNA.  All that free energy powered the increasing DNA complexity.

• Have You Questioned Your Atheism? …

Constantly and continuously!  I have never been convinced that I can’t be wrong.  Over the years I have done considerable reading and study.  Now, with YouTube, I can watch debates and lectures.  Atheism is merely the lack of belief in God/gods – the failure by theists to provide sufficiently convincing evidence.  (See above) With all the research and investigation that I have done, I continue not to be convinced that God is guilty of existing.

• Are You Materialistic? …
  Are you completely materialistic in your mindset, meaning, human beings are entirely physical, human consciousness is an illusion, and there is no spiritual realm of any kind?

First, a pedantic language lesson, I think that phrasing should be ‘are you a materialist?’. ‘Materialistic’ refers to someone who prioritizes obtaining money and possessions!  I believe that humans, and all else within our Universe, are material.  I don’t think it makes much sense to say that consciousness is an illusion.  I think a more accurate phrasing of the materialist position on consciousness would be that it’s the product of material things/physical laws.  I continue to see no evidence of a spiritual realm of any kind, except in the hopes and dreams of the gullible.  I do not believe in tarot, Ouija boards, crystals, ghosts, mind-reading, fortune-telling, or a miracle-producing God.

• Would You Be Willing to Follow the God of the Bible?

It depends which part of the Bible you’re talking about when you say ‘God of the Bible’.

From reading the earlier part of the Old Testament, I remember a god laden with petty jealousy, orchestrating hideous mass deaths, with archaic views on rape and slavery and some strange gaps in his scientific knowledge. The existence of this god would be bad news.

In the later part of the Old Testament, I glimpsed a different and better kind of god; the god of Ezekiel 18 and similar passages, expecting us to take personal responsibility but also willing to see our virtues and our efforts and to judge us fairly. The existence of this god would be good news, and, yes, I would follow and honor him.

In the New Testament, we get the most hideous god of all; the one who condemns all non-Christians to an eternity of torment, who blames the Jews for sticking to the laws that He himself strictly instructed them to keep to forever, who expects us to overlook the ways he acted back in the early books, and who tries to convince us that all these things are really signs of great love and concern on his part. The existence of this god would be terrible news. And, to answer the question, I could never honor such a god, and while I suppose I’d follow him because ‘Or burn in hell’ isn’t really much of an option, it would never be willingly.

Déjà Vu Fibbing Friday

Pensitivity101’s recycled Fibbing Friday

1. What is the most intelligent life form on Earth?

Those are the viewers who come to read my Fibbing Friday output – and they are handsome, good-looking, and quite sexually attractive.  They are intelligent, and not gullible, or easily taken in with false praise.  They often wear rubber boots, and step high as they pass through.  After the last of them have left, I sweep this up, spread it on the garden, and grow gigantic zucchini.

2. Why did we really go to school?

So that our Moms could have a little ‘Adult Time” with their friends, Merlot and Prince Valium.

3. What did teachers do during recess?

Until Marijuana dispensaries became legal, party favors in the teachers’ lounge were provided by a guy named Stoner.  On a rotating basis, therapy sessions were provided by a circuit-rider psychiatrist, but there’s not much they can do in 15 minutes.

4. How did you get to school?

After my Mother firmly insisted that I do so, I carefully placed one foot in front of the other, and repeated, until my nose bumped into the fount of education.

5. What was life like before the Internet?

It was peaceful and quiet, yet, apparently people were unknowingly unhappy.  We didn’t have Influencers, to tell us what food, clothing and performance artists to ‘Like,’ as well as Woke Snowflakes, with boundless supplies of Presentism, to show us how we should be appalled at what our ancestors did in good faith.

6. What is the best thing about social media?

The ability to opt out.  Some beautiful, two-digit IQ said something vapid and inane, and got 273,000 likes??!  Not from me!  Sorry, not sorry – I don’t give a F… damn.  Someone I don’t know ate a meal – or at least took and published photos, before going back to the anorexia clinic??!  I’ve got a real life – with perogies, and a good book.

7. What is your favorite thing to put chocolate sauce on?

I’m not sure yet.  Research is still ongoing.  It’s quicker and easier to compile a short list of where it shouldn’t go.  So far, it shouldn’t go on Caesar salad, or nachos.   😉

8. Doctors were all wrong…humans don’t need water. What do they need?

Many need a slap upside the head.  Find it almost impossible to drink eight glasses of water a day??  But eight beers go down quick and easy.  More??!  You want more??!

9. Dolphins are not mammals. What are they?

They are NFL football players for the Miami team.  Even close visual inspection does not reveal whether they are demons, or space aliens – perhaps both.  One of their cousins – Herschel Walker – was a Cowboy, a Giant, a Viking, and an Eagle, before he became the worst type of animal, a hypocritical, Bible-thumping politician.

Even though he espouses “Family Values,” he has fathered four children with four unwed mothers.  Despite ranting about banning abortion, he paid $700 to prevent the birth of a fifth little bastard.

10. There is a Lost Dutchman’s Mine, but where is it?

Remember the story of the little Dutch boy who stuck his finger in a hole in a dyke dike, to prevent a flood??!  Turns out, he was a lookout and distraction, and the hole was a concealed keyhole that opened a carefully camouflaged door.  The mine does not yield gold or silver, just scads of hydroponically grown tulips, tons of Gouda and Edam cheese that fell off the back of a truck, and wooden shoes, with a few Dutch Uncles as supervisors.

’22 A To Z Challenge – K

 

I went looking for sauerkraut, –I don’t know why.  I should be able to smell it – and found a Cabbage-Head instead.

I am sometimes sooo… happy that I am saddled with the simple name of Smith, when I research the meanings of other people’s.

A reader made me aware of surname.com, but it only concentrates on English, Scottish and Irish names.  Bing has become more reliable, offering results from several sites.  One of them often does the job.  I also rely on Google Translate, though it does have its drawbacks.

I recently ran into a new, female blogger, who had married a man by the name of Kohlhepp.  This is a rare German name that I had never run into, here in ex-Berlin, Ontario.  I had to look it up.  The biggest problem with Google Translate, is that it does so literally, word by word, rather than idiomatically, with the meaning of the entire phrase or clause.

When I entered Kohlhepp, I got back cabbage–jerk.  Now, does jerk mean a sharp tug, or is he the guy with the big desk in the corner office?  Another rare, local German name is Dreisinger.  I know that it means Three Singers – but which three?  The Magi??  Larry, Shemp and Moe??  A Christian-based name from a church choir??

I may snicker a bit to find that Kohlhepp is a cabbage harvester, but in Germany, that’s an important job.  Somebody gotta make all that sauerkraut.

Here in Canada, we have an up-and-coming Federal politician named Poilievre.  In French, pois are peas, and lievre is a form of ”lever,” which means to lift or raise.  If Tennessee Ernie Ford were still alive, he would Bless his little pea-pickin’ heart.

What If?? What If?? What If??

Oh goody!  We’re going to play a game of What If.  I have not been amused or entertained by one of those for years.

Let’s say you were in a naval battle in the middle of the ocean and your ship was destroyed so you are in very cold water. You know that you need to act now to get on a ship or you will die. Now there are 4 ships that you can swim to. But it looks like all the ships are very badly damaged and unlikely to be seaworthy enough to save you. It’s hard to tell from your position but as best you can tell one ship has a 5% chance but the others have less than a 2% chance of being seaworthy enough to save you. 

What do you do? Do you think well no one has “proven” or “verified” that any of these ships will save me so I might as well die in the water? Or do you start swimming to the ship that gives you a five percent chance (the best shot)? I think that is the obvious choice. You are not in a position to demand “proofs” or “verification.” You just have to make do with the information you have. 

I think this is analogous to the situation we are in when it comes to how we should live. We can’t pause our life until someone can prove how we are supposed to live. We choose to act or not act all the time. And we can’t insist on verification or proof beyond what we have. We just have to take our best shot. 

For me I think following Christ’s teachings is the “best shot.” I may wish I had better evidence or proofs but reality does not bend to my wishes. The rational person bends his beliefs and actions to reality.

People often believe that they are thinking, when all they’re really doing is rearranging their prejudices.  So, you’re going to dream up a scenario that is so outlandish and restrictive, that it makes your already-decided-on choice look good barely acceptable.

I am disturbed that you would advocate a selection with a 95% chance of failure, but, as you inferred, It’s (barely) better than nothing.  Desperation is not considered a good method of choice.  It usually results in wrong decisions.  Even choice is a bad method.  You can attend a Christian church, and repeat all the magic words, but it won’t produce the honest, true-hearted Belief that the unwritten rules call for.

I’d like to ask what mechanism you used to determine what percentage of success your choice, both in real life and in your specious analogy, had.  I see none, other than desperation and gullibility – only an unproven claim.

Unlike your fantasy-novel format, in real life it is both possible and advisable to do some research, so that you don’t end up in these religious shipwreck scenarios.

What if that water isn’t as cold and deep as you believe?  What if you were just told that, by the guy who runs the life-preserver franchise?  What if, no matter which ship you swam to, it sank and drowned you?  What if the ship you chose was an enemy vessel, and the agents of Allah tortured you to death?  What if you stopped panicking, and used your strength and determination to swim toward the big orange rubber raft that the rescue helicopter just dropped, labelled Reason/Reality?  What if you’re not Captain James T. Kirk, and there just is no right answer?

What if you summarily dismiss all of my What Ifs, because you think that they sound almost as silly as your What Ifs??!

Anti-Anti-Gun Post

It felt like a very bad time to be firing a gun.

Not long after the horrific mass shooting in Buffalo, and an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, a local gun store invited the media to drop by on Saturday, June 4^th, to shoot at some targets, as a part of National Range Day.

A newspaper reporter accepted the offer.  After getting a safety talk, he entered the range and fired nine rounds from a 9mm handgun.  His hands were shaky, and his aim was poor.  The manager made it perfectly clear that the gun culture and laws in the United States are completely different in Canada.  He told a personal story to illustrate the point.

Years ago, when he wasn’t in the gun business, he and some of his clients went to a Florida restaurant with a no-gun rule.  “So, just like your coat-checks up here, they had a gun-check at the restaurant.  My clients opened up their jackets, got their guns out, got their little chit for the gun-check, and the lady said to me, “Sir, you need to check your gun in.”

I said, “I’m not carrying” and she looked at me and said, “Come on sir, you need to check your gun.”  I said, “Honestly, I’m not carrying.”  She looked around and said, “You’re not carrying?”  I opened my jacket and said, “I’m from Canada.  We don’t do this up there”  And she couldn’t believe it!

Friends in Michigan have told him they can’t understand why he doesn’t carry a gun.  I said, ‘Here’s the difference.  Where I come from, we had six homicides last year.  They were all targeted, either gang-related, or domestic.”  They said, “That happened in Detroit yesterday.”  That’s the big difference.

In some states, almost everyone can buy a gun immediately.  This is not the case in Canada.  You’ll have to wait six to eight months.  You must take a 16 hour safety course, provide references, and be vetted by the RCMP.  It involves answering some intrusive and serious questions.  Have you been on medication in the last five years for depression?  Have you had a job loss, or a divorce?

Any red flag means No Gun!  If you do get one, it can only be used for hunting or target shooting.  Automated background checks are run on gun owners once a day.  We have to recognize that we are a different country than the United States.  We have a different gun culture and different processes.

He said, “Mass shootings in the US have nothing to do with Canada.  I refuse to be blamed for the actions of a madman.  It’s that simple.  There is no connection.

The Saturday event celebrated the lawful ownership of guns in Canada.  About 2.3 million Canadians are licensed to own a gun.  At the start of the COVID pandemic, the store was stampeded by people looking for guns.  “They felt like things were going to go bad – lockdowns were going to cause people to go crazy.”

Many were surprised they needed a licence and had to take a safety course, and pass a background check.  They said that they needed a gun immediately.  He told them, “If you are panicking, and the only thing that is driving you to buy a gun is panic – we need to have a longer conversation.  You don’t buy a gun out of panic, and you don’t buy a gun for self-defense.”

Many Canadian gun-control laws miss the mark.  Most guns used in crimes are smuggled across the border.  There is a serious problem at the border that needs to be solved.  Targeting businesses like his and their livelihood, and law-abiding customers, is not going to solve the problem of violent crime.

It was pleasant to see such a well-researched and thought-out article for a change, instead of the typical Chicken Little, The Sky Is Falling, Big Brother Save Us rants.

I Cant Rely On Kindle

I continue to hold my love of dead-tree versions of books, if only because I can get many of them for free, from the Library – and often in LARGE PRINT.  To you, with failing eyes, we throw – something you may more easily read.  I am becoming more habituated and inured to the Kindle book variants, especially since a couple of authors, whose series I follow, publish only electronically.

One of the benefits to Kindle is that, when the writer uses an esoteric or unfamiliar word, I need only poke the screen to get a dictionary meaning.  I had hoped that the meaning of every word used in each book would be available, but the dictionary file is on-board, not accessed on the internet.  That hope was dashed, repeatedly, by a recent book.

I read, I knew by the cant of his head, so I poked CANT in the eye – actually, in the A.  I got back, an expression of enthusiasm for high ideals – a sermon or extended oration.  Neither of those seemed to fill the bill, so I took a taxi over to Dictionary.com, which told me that my ‘cant’ meant, a salient angle – a slanted or tilting position.

On the next page, They had not hung the celebratory bunting.  Kindle only offered me two small, seed-eating birds, one European, one American.  My online dictionary was far more generous.  First it told me that bunting was a baseball play, where a pitched ball is gently returned by a stationary bat, or, it could be a hooded sleeping garment for infants (also, bunting bag).  Finally, it admitted that bunting was patriotic and festive decorations made from coarse cloth, or from paper, usually in the form of draperies, wide streamers, etc., in the colors of the national flag.  That’s the one I needed.  Busy word!

The story said, “Fashion was becoming important.  Lacing emphasized waists, and skirts flared out with gores.”  I poked the word ‘gores,’ and got, Gore, Al, Vice-President of the United States.  It’s a good thing they weren’t playing cards, or I’d have been told that trump was the President.  Their boat-launching site was a couple of klicks past the fort.  I should have known better.  Kindle claimed that klicks meant the same as clicks.  Now see here, Kindle, see also: slang, (mainly) military, diminutive of kilometers.

At last, the literary bad guy, returned to his hant.  When I prodded Kindle, it told me that Han was a Chinese river, or a dynasty from 206 B C to 220 A D.  Interesting, but that’s not even the same word.  Dictionary.com only told me that hant was the Scottish form of the verb – to haunt.  I had to go further afield for this one.

I eventually found that, from that Scottish verb form, came the noun which means, an often light-duty structure, temporarily or intermittently occupied, such as a party tent, duck blind or fishing hut.  This all qualifies as an episode of Things I Learned While Researching Other Things.

I am surprised that I was never asked, Did you mean can’t?  I can’t wait to see what I publish in a couple of days.  Are you as excited as I am?  😉

TILWROT III

In Search Of A Name

I was reading a Science Fiction book that began with a Space Navy shipwreck.  After her husband dies, the group of survivors is led by a broadly knowledgeable and adaptable woman with the Italian-ish name of Buccari.  I mentally pronounced it boo-kar-ee, until the author had one of her compatriots address her as, “Hey, Booch.”  I was reminded that in Italian words/names like bocce and Puccini with double C’s, they are pronounced as CH, so she was boo-char-ee.

Now I was curious.  Beginning with The DaVinci Code, I realized that authors often hide Easter Eggs in the background of their books.  What does the name mean??  Whatever it is, there’s a bunch of them, because the final I indicates a plural.  Translation programs just shrugged and walked away.  Google and Bing and friends, didn’t do any better, although one admitted that it was a surname, but the 286,532^nd most/least common one.

Down at the bottom of the page, the note said, People who ask about Buccari also research Buccari fiasco navale Croazien.  Clicking on that delivered an article, all in Italian.  I fed the first section back into the translation program.

Apparently, just at the end of World War II, a division of the Italian navy decided to shell the Croatian city of Bakar, because it had been used by the Italians as a concentration camp.  Based on the plural of “people from the city of Bakar,” the Italian name for it, and anyone from it, is Buccari.

Bakar, in Croatian, means ‘copper,’ and our heroine’s head is adorned with luxurious, Italian, copper-red tresses.  The author brought the uncommon name completely around in a circle.

***

The great-grandson is approaching his first birthday.  While a little slow starting, he is developing a nice head of Italian-red hair.  He and his parents will be joining us for a belated Easter/birthday celebration this Sunday.  I’ll bet that a photo or two of him will sneak its way into a blog-post before the end of the month.  😀

SPLIT DECISION – PERFECT JOB OR LOTTERY WIN

Which would you choose, my valued readers??  😕

Money can’t buy happiness – but it makes looking for it a whole lot easier and keeps you a lot more comfortable till it arrives.  As a rock star once said, “You can moor your yacht much closer to it.”

I have been poor and happy – at the very least, contented – all my life.  I’m willing to take a chance on being uncomfortable, sitting on a big pile of hard cash.  I don’t think that I would be like some lottery winners, who blow through a $million or two in a year, and wind up homeless.  With the financial training that I received from my parents, I think that I would be far more rational with a big win.  Someone once told me that I needed professional help.  I replied, “Yeah, a cook, a maid, and a gardener should do it.”

WHILE WE’RE TALKING ABOUT IMPOSSIBILITIES

Faint as it is, the chance of winning a big lottery is more likely than finding the perfect job.  I don’t believe that the perfect job exists.  Motivational speakers urge you to, “Follow your heart.  Find a job you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.  Start your own business.”  Doing What!  I doubt that I can find someone who will pay me to solve crossword puzzles and research German verbs.

And you’re still working for someone.  Even self-employed, you work for yourself –and I make a terrible boss.  The only motivation many of these speakers have, is their income, not yours.  One confided to the wife that he was not making enough money so, counter-intuitively, he raised his rates.  Psychology says that someone who asks for more, must be worth more.  He was getting more gigs, at the higher fee.

This blogging thing is the closest I’ve come to the perfect job, and I still have deadlines, production problems, and surly staff.  Much as I would miss my treasured readers, I would sooner be able to afford to read more, and travel much more, seeing the world in fact, and in print.  I might even have to join Facebook, just so that I could publish pictures of me on the Lido Deck, sipping a Mimosa, eating yoghurt, and holding a copy of Portnoy’s Complaint, in Cozumel.

I would love to shed my Protestant work ethic, and be supported in the way that I want to become accustomed to.  What about you??  Could you be happy, being a lounge act, or do you feel the need to be productive?  And what would your perfect job produce?  😕  😀