Day: August 14, 2022

Rory’s Roaring Again

Fandango20 Comments

Rory is roaring back on his new blog with some of his patented teasing and tempting questions. So let’s get right to it.

Where and what does the phrase ‘Mad as a box of frogs’ originate from and mean?

I have never heard that expression before. I’ve heard “mad as a hatter” and “mad as a wet hen,” but never “mad as a box of frogs.” But I can imagine that if you put a bunch of frogs that have been stuffed into a box, they’d be pretty damn mad.

At what age do you think you would clearly recognize a ‘much younger version of you’ if you bumped into YOU on the street today?

I’ve had a beard ever since I was thirty, so if I saw a younger me who was not yet thirty, I very well might not recognize him.

How would you react if you woke up one morning next to a headless horse?

I would probably think I’d somehow fallen asleep on the movie set of “The Godfather” and had woken up during the filming of that famous scene, but with the rest of the horse.

What country would you most like to visit if you were a rabbit and why?

If I were a rabbit I don’t think I’d know the concept of a “country.” I think I’d just want to live in an underground warren in a lovely meadow with all of the other rabbits, whatever country it is in.

When did time actually begin and if you are not sure well then make something up!

Some may argue that time either always existed or began at the occurrence of The Big Bang. But to other than human beings, the measurement of time means nothing. No other species besides human beings understand or care about seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, or centuries. Your dog doesn’t know or care how many hours it’s been since his last meal. Only whether he’s hungry or not.

Ancient Egyptian sundial. Credit: Musée du Louvre, Paris, Département des Antiquités égyptiennes

Since the concept of time is a human construct, time, particularly the measurement of time, is a relatively recent phenomenon. It most likely began with the invention of sundials in ancient Egypt sometime between 2000 and 1500 B.C. Initially, the basic unit of time was the period of daylight. The Egyptians broke that period from sunrise to sunset into twelve equal parts, which became the forerunner to the contemporary concept of hours.

How often do you forget what you just said?

I can’t remember.

Who would you rather be Casper the Friendly Ghost or Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost and why?

I’ve never heard of Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost. Just Casper the Friendly Ghost. But since I don’t believe in ghosts of any kind, I’d rather just be dead and rest in peace.

Which came first, the banana or the orange or yellow and orange the colors?

Like time, language is a human construct, so I’m sure bananas and oranges existed before humans came up with the names for those fruits or the names of the colors for them.

Are we actually living our best lives?

I think we each strive to live our best lives, but for many of us, life often gets in the way of living our best life.

Do you think we owe the world our life, the world owes us our life, or we owe it to ourselves to live life? [Interpret as you wish]

I strive to remain debt free. So I owe no one anything and no one owes me anything. Certainly the world doesn’t owe me anything. And what I owe to the world is to be as environmentally conscious as I can and to support and vote for candidates who will be serious about fighting climate change.

Four Day Forecast

Fandango20 Comments
Local forecast

I know it’s hot all around the world. Well, at least in the northern hemisphere. And it’s August, so there’s that, too. But when I compare the four day forecast for where I live now in the East Bay, to the four day forecast for San Francisco, where we used to live before we moved 2 1/2 years ago…

San Francisco forecast

It makes me wonder.

Who Won The Week — 08/14/22

Fandango20 Comments

The idea behind Who Won the Week is to give you the opportunity to select who (or what) you think “won” this past week. Your selection can be anyone or anything — politicians, celebrities, athletes, authors, bloggers, your friends or family members, books, movies, TV shows, businesses, organizations, whatever.

This week’s Who Won the Week winner is Thomas Kennedy. After an FBI raid of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home near Palm Beach, a large group of supporters of the former president rallied outside to protest the FBI search of the home.

Floridian Kennedy, along with a handful of friends, paid $1,800 to commission a plane to pull a sky banner with the message “Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha.” They directed the pilot to fly back and forth over Trump’s home for four hours.

“We thought it would be funny,” Kennedy, a self-professed Trump critic and Democratic activist, said. “From our perspective, Trump is a bully, and we wanted to give him a taste of his own medicine.”

I thought what you guys did was hilarious. And with the way things are in the world today, we need all the ha, ha, ha’s we can get.

So congratulations Thomas Kennedy and your friends for flying your banner over Trump’s Florida estate and winning Fandango’s coveted Who Won the Week designation.

So, my friends, who (or what) do you think won the week?

If you want to participate, write your own post designating who you think won the week and why you think they deserve your nod. Then link back to this post and tag you post with FWWTW.

The Letter T

Fandango6 Comments

Deb, over at Nope, Not Pam, has this weekly challenge called A Letter a Week where she gives us a place, an emotion, an adjective, a verb, and an animal all starting with the same letter. Then she asks us to write a post using those items and the letter she has given us, which this week is the letter T.

Here are Deb’s T-words:

Place – tropics
Emotion – thrill
Adjective – tactical
Verb – tempt
Animal – toucan

Kelli was thrilled when I asked if her I could tempt her to take a vacation with me in the topics. “Oh goodie,” she squealed. “When can we leave?”

“I still have some tactical arrangements to make,” I answered. “I need to research to make sure to pick a venue where we have access to your favorite tropical bird, the toucan. Somewhere in Central or South America, I think.”

Kelli jumped up and left the room. “Wait, where are you going?” I asked. She returned a minute later carrying her iPad. “What are you doing with that?”

“I’m doing my own research,” she said. “Toucan play at this game, you know.”

“What are you talking about? What can toucans do?”

“Oh, jeez, Alan, you’re so thick,” Kelli said. “Toucan, as in ‘two can,’ as in two can play at this game.”

I rolled my eyes. “That was so punny I forgot to laugh,” I said.

Song Lyric Sunday — Adult Education

Fandango8 Comments

For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday theme, Jim Adams is asking us to find songs about Educate, Learn, School, or Teach. I decided to go with the song “Adult Education” from Daryl Hall and John Oates. This isn’t one of my favorite Hall & Oates songs, but I think it fits nicely with Jim’s theme.

“Adult Education” was released as a single in February 1984 and debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on February 18. Hall did most of the songwriting on this track, but John Oates and Hall’s girlfriend/writing partner Sara Allen are also on the credits. The song is featured on the duo’s second compilation album Rock ‘n Soul Part 1 (1983). It was one of two new tracks that were recorded specifically for the compilation release and hit number eight on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.

Ostensibly, the song is about the plight of a teenage girl in high school. Her girlfriends only “care about what she wears” and the narrator assures her “there’s life after high school.” The lyrics suggest she is wiser than her years and, in fact, is receiving an education in the behavior of adults in high school.

But in a 2015 interview Daryl Hall said, “That song is about something I still believe: That one of the big problems with the world is people never grow up — no matter how old they get. And the song is a reminder that there is life after high school. That there’s another way of looking at the world, and that other world is a false world and a meaningless world. So that’s really what that’s about.”

Here are the lyrics to “Adult Education.@

It's afternoon in the homeroom and they're about to let you go.
And the locker slams on the plan you had tonight.
You've been messing around with a boyfriend maybe better left alone.
There's a wise guy that you know could put you right.

In the lot the boy that's idling by doesn't rev your heart.
Cause it's only lonely spots he shares with you.
And the long halls and the gray walls are gonna split apart.
Believe it or not there's life after high school.

The student body's got a bad reputation.
What they need is adult education.
Back to school it's a bad situation.
But what you want is an adult education.

The teacher don't know about how to deal with the student body.
And the underclassmen are flashing hot and cool.
All your girlfriends care about the watch you wear and they're talkin' about it.
Believe it or not there's life after high school.

They're calling it a preparation.
You're waiting for a separation.
You're nothing but another odd number,
Memories that you won't remember.
So you got a little education.
And a lot of dedication.
But you want a little night school.
Maybe some of it will rub off on you.
The boys are busy in the mirrors.
Trying to imitate their heroes.
You make it with a false surrender.
More memories you won't remember.
The senior with the junior Miss's
I wonder what the junior wishes.
That she could graduate to adult.
That she could graduate to adult kisses.