A '60s flashback to a Ray Stephens classic (non-PC).

Let me tell you 'bout Ahab the Arab
The sheik of the burning sand
He had em'ralds and rubies just a-dripping off of him
And a ring on every finger of his hand
He wore a big old turban wrapped around his head
And a scimitar by his side
And every evening about midnight
He'd jump on his camel named Clyde.

And ride through the night to the Sultan's tent where he would secretly meet up with Fatima of the seven veils, the swingingest number one dancer in the sultan's whole harem, 'cause like, him and her had a thing going. You know, they'd been carrying on for some time now behind the Sultan's back and you could hear him talk to his camel. As he rode out across the dunes, his voice would cut through the still night desert air and he'd say, (@#$^&$&%%&%&$##%%^^) which is Arabic for, "Woa babies". And Clyde would say, ("&^%&^%&^%&^%&^$). Well, he brought his camel to a screeching halt at the rear of Fatima's tent, jumped off Clyde, snook around the corner and into the tent he went. There he saw Fatima lying on a zebra skin rug, wearing rings on her fingers and bells on her toes and a bone in her nose, ho, ho.

There she was, friends and neighbors, lying there in all her radiant beauty, eating on a raisin and a grape and an apricot and a pomegranate and a bowl of chitterlings, two bananas, three hershey bars, and sipping an R-ER-C coke cola, listening to her transistor, watching the Grand Ole Opry and reading Mad Magazine while she sang, "Does your chewing gum lose its flavor?" And Ahab walked up to her and he said, (%*^*&*&^*&%**$##%*&*) which is Arabic for , "Let's twist again like we did last summer, babies." An she said "he he, Crazy baby." 'Round and around and around and around etc. And that's the story of Ahab, the Arab, the sheik of the burning sand.

Shriners Band Bus - Parade

I have enjoyed playing with the Hartford Shriners Band this year. They
are a basic, old-fashioned fun band, and the people are super friendly. We mostly
are too old to want to march, so we have this wonderful Band Bus for parades.

In the old days, only Shriners and Masons were allowed to play in Shriners
bands:


I am just an associate member. I guess as a subtle recruiting tool, and because
band memberships have declined over the years, (maybe losing out to driving
those crazy little cars) they have allowed outsiders to play in the band. I
know little about Masons or Shriners, but one thing that I really respect about
them is that they fanatically avoid direct recruitment of new members, they
want new people to see their good works and deeds, and ask to join on their
own will. I have the impression they want me to join, but unfortunately I don't
think that would ever work out. I can't rule it out, but I have been a non-joiner
and a loner too long to change, I fear.

I generally have a negative attitude to societies, fraternities, and exclusivity
that has been borne out my whole life. Starting with the "Order of the Arrow",
a quasi Boy Scouts fraternity with secret passwords and pseudo indian rituals,
that insulted me as a young scout by "tapping" me in two years after "Howie"
and others in our troup, only because of popularity, even though I was more
qualified, and more involved in scouting.

In college, I think 1964 was the height of the "Must be in a Fraternity to be worthy in the world" stupidity, and I saw good people unfairly treated as if they were scum because they, by the judgment of the already anointed "brothers",they were not good enough to be invited inside the group. My room mate was a very clever, unique, talented fellow, maybe too individualistic for the greeks. He was absolutely crushed by cruel rejection after three rounds of acceptance notes and interviews by a fraternity he thought was great. Luckily,even though rejected by the system myself, I had developed an independence that realized the folly of it all, and rejected one group that I could have joined, and didn't take it so personally. I recognized it for what it was. It was for insecure people to form an artificial way to feel wanted, at the expense of others. I'm not saying that is evil, some people need this; just not my way of doing things.

Well, the Masons and the shriners over the years claim not to be really a secret society, since memberships are public, activities are well publicized, and their outstanding charity, public help and philanthropy are so much a part of their public side as to make them a public group. However, the hazing and memorizing of all those 32 levels of pseudo-Islamic rituals, secret signs and all that put them into the secret society category, it seems to me. I have heard that these rituals are at least partially optional these days, because they were not finding young and new members who wanted to go through all that, but I really don't know. I have been reluctant to even ask about the details, because being an associate member seems the right place to be at the moment.

Astronomy Picture of the Day site

The images on this NASA site are spectacular, usually of newly produced images of asteroids with moons or sights from the "Space Ship One", or deep space shots. This one is retro-space, from 1972, when I was driving my Honda 600 Coupe on earth (see post below). The image and description follow:


Apollo 17's Lunar Rover
Credit: Apollo 17, NASA (Image scanned by Kipp Teague)
Explanation: In December of 1972, Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spent about 75 hours exploring the Moon's Taurus-Littrow valley while colleague Ronald Evans orbited overhead. Cernan and Schmitt were the last humans to walk or ride on the Moon - aided in their explorations by a Lunar Roving Vehicle. The skeletal-looking lunar rover was just over 10 feet long, 6 feet wide and easily carried astronauts, equipment, and rock samples in the Moon's low gravity (about 1/6 Earth's). In this picture, Cernan stands at the back of the rover which carried the two astronauts in lawn-chair style seats. An umbrella-shaped high gain antenna and TV camera are mounted in the front. Powered by four 1/4 horsepower electric motors, one for each wheel, this rover was driven a total of about 18 miles across the lunar surface. Its estimated top speed was a blazing 8 miles per hour.

Transit of Venus March, by John Philip Sousa

On Tuesday, June 8, 2004, the first "transit of Venus" since December 6, 1882 will take place. In just over six hours, between 1:13 A.M. EDT and 7:35 A.M. EDT, the disk of Venus will pass in front of the Sun perceived, by those who can see it, as little more than a black dot silhouetted against the Sun's bright glow.

The last time this happened, John Philp Sousa composed a March about the event. Here is the cover as originally published by J. W. Pepper, Philadelphia, 1896.



Quoting directly from a Library of Congress page, here are additional interesting facts:

John Philip Sousa (1854-1932) was very interested in the 1882 transit of Venus, as were millions of people of his day. However, he didn't write the "Transit of Venus March" to commemorate the transit itself, but to honor the great American physicist Prof. Joseph Henry, who had died on May 13, 1878. Henry, a rather obscure figure today, was quite famous in his own time. He had assisted Samuel Morse in the development of the telegraph, discovered several important principles of electricity, made significant progress in the development of electromagnets, and created the first electric motor. As a result of his scientific achievements, Henry was named as the first secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. In 1883, five years after Henry's death, and the year following the transit of Venus, the Smithsonian Institution asked Sousa to compose a processional for the occasion of the unveiling of a bronze statue of Henry in front of the Smithsonian.

Optical Illusion

This blog is usually pretty graphic and visually oriented, but I don't know if this will work for you or not, but I will try. I was in this new hallway in Rockville Hosp., where Martha's Mother had some therapy. Here is a pic of the hallway, and at the time of the optical illusion, I was down at the other end looking this way.


Well, the hospital wing is under construction, and I looked out the window to my right and saw what I thought was a plastic-wrapped pallet of chairs out there, waiting to be used.

But I realized it was a plastic pallet, precicely superimposed by the image of chairs inside to my left behind me in the hall. Maybe you had to be there.

Pink Dino Sighting

This is pretty funny. Sort of a "Diente de Tigre" type situation.

Inside an active volcanic crater on a remote island in New Zealand, Geologists put a remote camera to monitor the crater status. They posted this and several other webcams on this link. According to their site, "the New Zealand GeoNet Project provides real-time monitoring and data collection for rapid response and research into earthquake, volcano, landslide and tsunami hazards".

Out of the blue a pink dino appeared in one of the cameras. Some brave and sassy explorer stuck it there, apparently. They plan to leave it there to be destroyed by the hostile environment.

Honda 600 Coupe 1972

I was not going to dwell in my past in this log, but I came across these old pictures of my Honda 600 Coupe and I couldn't resist revisiting it, since people still don't understand how great the car was. Before the civic, Honda, still a motorcylce company only, imported two 600 models this size. One was a squared off sedan, and this coupe, in green or bright orange.

I paid $1795 plus tax! It had 4 wheel disk anti-lock brakes, (comment corrected me to say it had front disks and rear drums) Michelin tires, 50mpg, hatchback, 600cc, front wheel drive, 5 speed, bucket seats, and pretty spirited. The second picture shows it beside the gargantuan Dodge Polara we had at the time. I drove it all over the state of Virginia, had very few repairs for about three years.


It was designed as a "throw-away car", according to early automotive lore. The idea was that Honda thought America was ready for a car cheap enough to drive a few years, junk it, then get a new one.
But the government spoiled that by requiring safer bumpers, lights, etc. and after adding these improvements, they had to design it bigger, forcing them to abandon these in favor of the Civic models.

Martha and Honda overlooking the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia. Note the spiffy flag. We drove it through the first Lion country safari at Busch Gardens before they put in the monorail and a giraffe took a bite out of that flag. I kid you not.





Did I mention that is was a SMALL car? The maneuverability saved me one time when I veered out of line to avoid a 4 car queeze-play on a on-ramp to the interstate. I know larger vehicles have a safety advantage in a wreck, but I felt quite safe in this, I remember.

Scamming the scammers?

You know about the "Nigerian Scam" or "419 scam" email stupidity. As hard as it is to believe, it must be something that people fall for, because reportedly people are having bank accounts emptied and are traveling to Nairobi and all that as the result of scams from these idiotic emails.

Well there are some clever people who have been fighting back in a very humorous way, by baiting them, leading them on, posing as willing scam-ees with names like
Klench Mychiques, Shiver Metimbers, and the like, with the goal to at he very least waste their time, and at the best, get their names and details and report them to government agencies. But it looks like making them look like buffoons and stringing them along making them reply with embarrassing photos, phony signs, and spoofs that would be obvious to a child of 5, but not to these third world scammers, has become a real sport.

There are some examples on this site: and many others.
Here is a picture of scammers in Nigeria sending a photo back to the 419 baiter to respond to the "church" of his intended victim.

The Louse that Roared

Speaking at an EU conference, Libyan ruler Moammar Gadhafi turned the tables on the world powers, calling for them to follow in the footsteps of Libya and dismantle all of their weapons of mass destruction.

Doesn't this coronation of Moammar remind you of that old movie "The Mouse That Roared" in some ways? (Everybody to get from street!) Has he figured out a chink in the world and US opinion armor that allows him, sincere or not, to be the hero of the century and an instant red-carpet-rolled-out-spokesman for the elimination of WMD? It is beyond irony, and seems so much like a movie that I can smell the popcorn.

Ink Spots

Meredith sent me some key lines, and not all of them triggered my experience, but the one that certainly did was the Java Jive, Ink Spots. I ended up with that, and a few more of their tunes in the 78rpm collection. I finally got around to transferring a few of those to MP3 a while back, from the only old turntable I have that will play them, but I must confess I found these better, clearer, cleared up versions on the web.

If you want to listen to the classics, here are a few you can enjoy.

1. Java Jive, Ink Spots, 1940 - - - short clip
2. Java Jive, Ink Spots, 1940 - - - 2.8mb
3. If I didn't Care, Ink Spots - - - 2.9mb
4. Till Then, Ink Spots - - - 2.7mb
5. Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall,
Ink Spots and Ella Fitzgerald - - - 1.4mb
. . . . . . .

Home of the TWO FOOT long hotdog

The rumor mill can stop now. Photo evidence has been turned in that Doogie's restaurant in Newington Connecticut actually specializes in 2 foot dogs! Other hand made seafood and fattening specialties are there too, but here is the evidence!

Low-tech solution

I solved a problem that had been annoying, but I just ignored for years. That pesky CAPS LOCK key that is so close to the shift key that I LOOK UP AND FIND . . .oops thats how it happens. My fat finger taps it. I actually am a pretty adept but self-taught keyboard user, but I often look at my fingers especially when typing fast , so when I finally look at the screen, I find the reversed case mess! How many time has that happened! Arrrghhhh. I remember now that I think about it that years ago I had solved it with a utility that made the caps lock beep high and low for a warning. That didn't follow me with new operating systems, etc. I was reading about a utility that disabled the caps key, and I almost downloaded it, but got a better idea! I NEVER EVER need the caps key actually, so why have it? Here was my low tech solution:

Lydia, The Tatooed Lady

This is from a Groucho tape that I got years ago, and it probably doesn't click unless you hear him sing it or know the melody, but I ran across the thing, and just felt compelled to post it since it makes me chuckle:

Lydia, The Tatooed Lady

Lydia oh Lydia, say have you met Lydia,
Lydia, the Tatooed Lady.
She has eyes that folks adore so,
And a torso even more so.
Lydia oh lydia, that encyclopedia,
Oh Lydia the Queen of Tatoo.
On her back is the Battle of Waterloo.
Beside it the wreck of the Hespherous, too.
And proudly above waves the Red, White, and Blue,
You can learn a lot from Lydia.
La la la, la la la, la la la, la la la

When her robe is unfurled, she will show you the world,
If you step up and tell her where.
For a dime you can see Kankakee or Paris,
Or Washington crossing the Delaware.
La la la, la la la, la la la, la la la

Oh Lydia oh lydia, say have you met Lydia,
Oh Lydia the Tatooed Lady
When her muscles start relaxing,
Up the hill comes Andrew Jackson
Lydia oh Lydia, that encyclopedia,
oh Lydia the queen of them all!
For two bits she will do a mazurka in jazz,
With a view of Niagara that nobody has.
And on a clear day you can see Alcatraz.
You can learn a lot from Lydia.
La la la, la la la, la la la, la la la

Come along and see Buff'lo Bill with his lasso.
Just a little classic by Mendel Picasso.
Here is Captain Spaulding exploring the Amazon.
Here's Godiva but with her pajamas on.
La la la, la la la, la la la, la la la

Here is Grover Whalen unveilin' the Trilon.
Over on the West Coast we have Treaure Island.
Here's Najinsky a-doin' the rhumba.
Here's her social security numba.
{whistles}

Oh Lydia, oh Lydia that encyclopedia,
Oh Lydia the champ of them all.
She once swept an Admiral clear off his feet.
The ships on her hips made his heart skip a beat.
And now the old boy's in command of the fleet,
For he went and married Lydia.
I said Lydia {He said Lydia}
I said Lydia {We said Lydia}
La La!

I know I'm a relic of the boomers, but when I see a otherwise nice looking person with excessive tatoos or piercings, it makes me instinctively wince, then I think of Lydia.

Here is a mp3 of Groucho singing Lydia the Tattooed Lady.

That 8 pound hammer ball bearing.

I heard a while back about development success in repairing dents in musical instruments, particularly larger ones like sousaphones that have to be thinner brass due to the large size. Apparently school systems with a lot of instruments, dented by parades and halftime shows spend thousands annually to have dents removed, or replacement instruments dented beyond economic repair. Traditionally. repair techs have developed special hammers and tools and sand bags and all kinds of methods involving taking horns apart to fix, a very artistic and skill-intensive, time consuming process. Well somebody found using special "Rare Earth" electromagnets and huge dense ball bearings work quickly and smoothly!

Regular magnets won't work. These magnets are STRONG. Way beyond anything normal. Warnings say to keep knives and tools 10 feet away for fear they will fly through the air, not stopping for body parts in the way. (Make a visual image of that!) The ball is selected for best size, and from the inside, rolls along at enormous pressure and simply irons out the dents! Doesn't fatigue the metal much, either, like hammering out would, so a horn can be repaired more times without ruin. The kit costs about $900, so isn't for casual buying, but a few repairs could make up for that in schools, shops or the like.

Temp Art

Talk about temporary art! This artist, Kurt Wenner, paints most of his masterful 3D paintings in chalk on the streets or sidewalks. It is worthy of the term "Awesome". In the picture below, it is hard to grasp that the walkway is flat and the art is drawn on the surface.



You can visit his impressive on-line gallery here. - Awesome..

Kinzua Viaduct

As a boy I was taken on a special trip to Kinzua Viaduct by train. I was either with my Mother or my Grandmother. Through my fuzzy memory, I seem to remember that Grandma arranged for or at least paid for the adventure. The wonderful train tressel is in north eastern Pennsylvania, although it is nowhere near Mercer, Grandma's home town. I don't think all of my family was along, since I know I felt special to have the privilege of being chosen to go. I felt very grown up, though I probably was only 14 or so. I really don't know. I bet older sister Meredith can remember more about this. The tressel was extremely old and vaulted across the sky, like an Erector set, it seemed, part of the early rail system in Pennsylvania. I bet I can narrow in on the time of trip because they certainly stopped traffic over the structure not long after my visit. Anyhow, I can remember I was in my Sunday suit, and had an overcoat on. I can remember moving between cars, the sound of clicking tracks, and pressing to the window to see the valley and remember the scary feeling looking down at the green valley as we went over the Viaduct.

This memory came back because I ran across the following item:

On July 21, 2003 the Kinzua Viaduct, located in Mt. Jewett, Pennsylvania, was struck by an F-1 tornado. This act of nature resulted in the loss of 11 of the 20 towers that have supported the Kinzua Viaduct in its reach across the sky for over 100 years. Internationally recognized as an architectural and engineering marvel, the Kinzua Viaduct was one of Pennsylvania's most visually recognizable landmarks. The Kinzua Bridge Foundation is dedicated to the restoration, renovation, preservation and site interpretation of the Viaduct and Kinzua Bridge State Park.

Seems like last week

March 1989, when Tim Berners-Lee, a computer scientist at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland wrote a paper called Information Management: A Proposal. The proposal suggested a way of managing information that uses a "hypertext" process to link related documents together over a network.

Features he proposed:
Remote access across networks,
Cross-system platform compatibility
No centralization - allowing nodes anywhere
Access to existing data
Bookmarks (called "Private Links")
All basics of the Web today.

In October 1990, Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau created a working prototype of "WorldWideWeb", with Hyperlinks and HTML, file transfers, and web features galore, but in text.

In February 1993, the Web finally went from text-only when Marc Andreesen with NCSA wrote the Mosaic browser.

March of 1994, Marc Andreesen and some colleagues left NCSA to form "Mosaic Communications Corp." (later renamed Netscape Communications).

In some box somewhere I still have my Mosaic disk I used when I ditched Compuserve and the went on the internet using a free dialup connection, probably 1994. It was kind of techie, I had to write a batch file to set modem baud rate, parity, etc, and a linked text file index for outside viewers and players to be able to see most things, since viewers were not built into the browser.

Oh, by the way, Burners-Lee was a Brit, and one story said that like Mickey Mantle, whose parents put baseballs in his crib, Burner-Lee had intellectual computer nerd parents who played games around the breakfast table like "What is the square root of -4?" So inventing HTML must have been a piece of cake. He is now at MIT, directing the W3 consortium, helping set standards and protocols to keep the internet non-propriatary and open.

Great lyrics

BY THE TIME I GET TO PHOENIX (Jimmy Webb)

By the time I get to Phoenix, she'll be risin',
She'll find the note I left hangin' on her door
And she'll laugh when she reads the part that says I'm leavin',
'Cause I left that girl so many times before.

By the time I make Albuquerque she'll be workin',
She'll probably stop at lunch and give me a call
But she'll just hear that phone keep on ringin',
Off the wall, that's all.

By the time I make Oklahoma, she'll be sleepin',
She'll turn softly and call my name out low
And she'll cry just to think I'd really leave her,
Though time and time I've tried to tell her so
Oh, she didn't know, I would really go,
I would really go...

It is hard to really read it without emotion.

When I saw it was by Jimmy Webb, I did a search because my memory is so bad when it comes to musicians and celebrities, as I read, it got better and better-- wow, what a range this guy has. He wrote songs I recognized in all sorts of styles. He is still performing, too. He has a resume from "left the cake out in the rain" to . . .
well, If you want to read and read about him, here is a link, worth checking out.

Microsoft complaint of the year:

Somebody at MS-land has an agenda that may have been well intentioned to simplify things for for totally ignorant users, but it actually hurts the average user. Bill must want future users look at icons instead of extensions for file types. The power user changes this right off, so is just an irritation. It is a headache on phone support. MS hides extensions to the file name as in .txt for a text file, .doc for a word file, .xls for a spreadsheet. These were essential in DOS and early windows versions for applications and the system to recognize their own associated files, and for the system to open the right application if the file is called on first. These extensions are still used extensively by all the system and programs, and users need to see them to operate beyond toaster level. However, since Windows ME forward, systems come with extensions hidden by default. The icon method? Who knows what those cryptic things are anyhow? They can sometimes be a good visual clue, but should not replace having all the information you need to control your computer.

Go to tools|folder options|view and uncheck Hide extensions for known file types to fix. While you are in there you might want to check the Show hidden files and folders, especially handy if you are trying to find and delete a virus file, but the operating system is slowing you down by hiding it from you.

"Amendment I
clause 1: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
clause 2: prohibiting the free exercise thereof; . . ."

I take that to mean that if Corgress passes a law ordering Podunk High School to put up a Christmas Tree, that would be unconstitutional. (clause 1) But if they passed a law telling Podunk High School to take one down, that would also be unconstitutional. (clause 2)

The trend in America has been to greater tolerance and diversity, and of course that is the proper thing. However the trend to eradicate Christian customs in the process, especially those that have become close to secular like Christmas Trees and carols, is not right. Look at the growth of the other faiths in the country that didn't have a hold years ago. Were they dissuaded, hurt or their faith damaged by the Christian tradition of putting "Merry Christmas" in some classrooms? I tend to say no, but even if so, we should strive to have an equal footing for these other religions and faiths, not stamp out the traditions of Judeo-Christian heritage. That is equally unfair, unconstitutional and unwise. And this is coming from me, who has not been a part of organized religion most of my adult life.

There is some good news, though. I just save a bunch of . . No, No. . Here is a link to The Liberty Legal Institute, which funds lawsuits for those defending religious freedom from attacks of this kind. They have some cases that have gone in the direction of protecting freedoms against this anti-religion trend.