Footnoting the Joke

On Facebook, I posted this photo with the caption “Hopefully, this $60 worth of kindling will last us the rest of the year.”

I was waiting for someone to say You paid $60 for kindling? which is not the case.

This collection was made from the remnants of two of our front peach trees which cost $30 each a number of years ago. One died the year I pruned it. The other was half-dead, so I cut it down, too. Which leaves us with but two peach trees to not produce peaches this year due to any number of factors which has led them to not produce in the past. And probably more for us to discover if none of the known issues occur.

You know what we grow in the orchards of Nogglestead? Firewood.

Oh, and about that kindling: I had filled the box in the autumn, and we made it through the contents of it already. We’re not using “cheaters” this year as we are not spending dollars a day on Duraflame logs. I’m building the fires from scratch, so I’m using more kindling than some years. When I cut down the peach trees this autumn, I left the kindling-sized limbs and branches aside for later breaking into kindling-sized pieces, and I did that last weekend, spending a couple of hours snapping, lopping, and sawing them down and filling the box again. Given that it’s February and has been pretty warm this winter, it should hold us. And who knows what will die in the orchard next year? I might take down the fallen but growing apple tree.

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About Todd

Last week, a…. friend? Fellow I know? died of cancer. He was 51.

Todd was a year behind me in high school, and he was pretty close with Mike if I recall. To be honest, I knew of him more than I knew him. Was more on the jockly spectrum than I was–he was a cross-country runner and wrestler, and I was National Honor Society and writer’s group. I guess he was pretty smart, too, so they tell me, but, again, I didn’t know him in high school that much.

When I was out of college, he was in a gap year between high school and the Navy, and he was in a couple of local performances, including one with the Goldenrod Showboat in St. Charles. I took my girlfriend at the time to go see the performance and the small nonspeaking part he had. I also rooked him into doing a staged reading of The Courtship of Barbara Holt which meant that a bunch of people read the scripts to each other to a mostly empty coffee house on Sunday afternoons. One of the open mic hosts had an actors group called Stages St. Louis which did this whenever it could shanghai a play and enough actors to do it, and in my younger, energetic days, I gathered a group of my friends (plus Todd plus one Stages St. Louis actress) and even got another couple of people to come see it. Todd was a little disappointed that it was only that, but he was a trouper and made it to three of the four performances.

I didn’t really hear from him for a long time after that. He went into the Navy, got into the SEAL program but did not make it completely through and became a search and rescue swimmer. After the service, he went Hollywood. We became Facebook friends sometime this century; I sent him a copy of The Courtship of Barbara Holt when he was in Hollywood–partly because he was in it and partly because, hey, maybe he would tell his friends about it.

A couple years ago, he moved back to his parents’ house in Missouri, up in Jefferson County, and he asked me to call him. I spoke with him a couple of times over the phone, hoping to become, I dunno, friends, but….

Ultimately, he wanted me to write his biography with his stories about his time in S&R and as a stuntman in Hollywood. He told me “stories” on the phone which were basically just “I met so and so when I was bartending in L.A.” with no details. To be honest, I don’t remember many of them. You can see him, what, jump over a fence as Steven Van Zant’s stunt double in some film (the one where Van Zant climbs over a fence).

So I set up a Google doc and a process where he could start telling/writing his stories about his tae kwon do classes and his military stories and his Hollywood stories. I made a number of sections and a couple of prompts, and I hoped he’d start telling/typing those stories and that I would maybe ask questions based on some of them to flesh them out and then eventually organize them into an autobiography. But he didn’t touch hit, although he started posting on Facebook that the story of his life was being written. I think he wanted me to interview him a couple of times with a steno pad and turn that into a book.

After some time, when he hadn’t even looked at the framework I set up, so I told him that I could put him in touch with a couple of former journalists who might better be what he was looking for via text, and our contact fell off after that.

He was sick the whole time, of course, although he never mentioned it.

He was a nice guy, and I’m sorry we couldn’t find a way to work together on his book. I’m also sorry that I did not get to be a better friend, but he seemed to be looking more for something from me than to be my friend. Unfortunately, I feel that way about a lot of people whom I eventually try to become better friends with.

His death has left me shaken for the whole weekend just because of my remorse–couldn’t I have written his book or at least left him the illusion that I would–and a bit of anger that that’s all the good I was to him. And guilt at making it all about me.

Whatever the lesson is to be learned here, I will continue to not learn it.

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Tales of the Cups

Lileks today talks about his coffee cup of the week and asks his commentors:

My favorite coffee cups have a meaning that might seem odd to someone else; my least-used has the most emotional connection; my most frequently used means nothing at all.

So share your mug stories! Worst, best, faves, etc.

C’mon, man. This is a blog. I’ve gone on about my coffee cup accumulation multiple times:

Out of My Cups (2012), wherein I talk about maybe divesting a couple of the plastic travel mugs I owned (spoiler alert: I got rid of two of the four).

I Am The Coffee Party I Was Waiting For about how many coffee cups I had back then and why I should not get rid of them (spoiler alert: I did not).

A couple of notes since the writing of the last:

  • Every year, I do the library’s Winter Reading Challenge which results in a mug; I’m about halfway through this year’s (as a reminder, although the rules say you only have to read 5 books from the 15 categories, I try to get all 15 before turning the form in). I have quite a collection of mugs from years past:

    I actually use some of them for tea, miso soup, or anything I brew downstairs, so they see some use.
     

  • In 2013, the boys would have been seven and five. I mentioned that I might get rid of some Monopoly themed cups, but I did not. And soon thereafter, my youngest, who had been exposed to the game, was delighted when he discovered them. They became his favorite cups for apple cider and hot chocolate (briefly).
     
  • I’ve only gotten a couple of additional cups since then: A cup for winning a trivia night in 2014, the plain white coffee house-like cup I got for the photo on the cover of Coffee House Memories, and a couple of additional cups that were part of the gift sets, including a camoflauge cup that my brother gave me for Christmas the year before last, come to mind.

However, the number of cups that I use has dropped.

I’ve gotten back into the habit of drinking coffee from the same cup for days on end (which was basically how I did it when I worked outside the home, using the same giant Marquette University plastic mug day after day with but a rinsing in between). Since I’ve been underemployed for a couple of months and cut the K-Cups from daily expenditures when the company I worked for no longer covered them, I have been using the drip maker upstairs and have left the cup up there, generally full, as well. So I don’t finish the last cup I pour on any given day–I start the next day by slamming that (followed by any cold coffee left in the pot). So it’s rare that the cup on the counter is empty to put into the dishwasher. I tend to use a faded Washington Times mug I got when I subscribed twenty years ago or a similar large mug whose source I have forgotten. So I use those two cups and one or two of the Library Winter Reading Challenge mugs for most of my coffee/hot brew needs.

Still, I cannot really cull them because they’re personal relics.

One thing I really do want to cull, though, is the insulated tumblers. We have received a bunch as swag or for various charitable contributions, but since I work from home, I don’t need something like it for a commute (and I use a plastic insulated Green Bay Packers cup I got from my brother some years back to take coffee on the long ride home for those long trips where I want to start out with coffee). They replaced the plastic water bottle swag we got previously for chartiable contributions and in 5K gift bags, and they occupy basically the same cabinet space. But we hardly ever use them. A couple of plastic bottles fit into bicycle water holders, but that’s about it.

Ah, well, we do have the space for them, so I don’t have to make a decision now.

UPDATE: As I was writing this post, it made me want coffee. As I headed upstairs, I told my beautiful wife about the post, and she mentioned she has another insulated metal tumbler in her office that she just received. So maybe we don’t have that much room after all.

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Brian J. Keeps The Traditions Alive

I went to bed last night in the 8 o’clock hour and was up before 2am. As I wandered around Nogglestead awake, I thought I would maybe get back to bed about 4am and get a couple more hours of sleep. As I drew a glass of water from the kitchen sink, I thought that in the olden days, people would get up in the middle of the night for a while before going back to bed.

This very morning, Neo posted a video about the Medieval Two Sleeps:

But, Brian J., did you read any portion of the long books you have selected for the 2025 Winter Reading Challenge? Oh, but no. Mostly I sat in the darkness and worried. Because I did not want to spoil my night vision for when I did want to sneak back to bed.

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Another Notto Winner

Woman thought phone call was a scam before she inherited stranger’s £400,000 estate:

A woman who was told she was set to inherit a distant relative’s estate at first thought she was being sucked into a scam.

Lorraine Gesell, a 60-year-old living in Canada, received a call to say that her mother’s English cousin had died and that she was a beneficiary. In September 2021, Raymond Barry died alone aged 85 with no next of kin. However he left behind a sizeable estate worth more than £400,000. With no will either, there was no one set to inherit it.

I’ve heard this story before.

Big plans?

Lorraine hopes to go on a holiday with the money, but says she will probably spend it on home improvements instead.

Probably for the best, as:

In total, Finders International found 47 beneficiaries across New Zealand, Canada, Australia and throughout the UK – each taking a share of the estate.

Quick Internet math indicates that the at current exchange rates, that’s about $487,400. Heirs will give 30% to the heir hunter, and the recovered estate would pay for all legal bills, and each share would cap out at about $7,000 dollars. Hopefully not life-changing money, but helpful.

Ah, but what of your long-lost cousin’s case, Brian J.? I did not sign on, but fourteen different people apparently responded to the heir hunter. It’s in the window of six months for debtors to come forward with two or three months to go.

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We Take Out Livers For You

So the day after Christmas, the heating elements in our oven went out (for the third time since we’ve lived here). In the past, we’ve called an appliance repairman, a local company (not a lead generation company of any sort, although I guess most anyone now is a dispatcher for subcontractors unless the same guy answers the phone that shows up), he has ordered a part, and he’s come back to put it in when it arrived. Apparently, it’s two screws and two electric connectors, so this time, since I’m more seasoned now with washer, dryer, and refrigerator repairs, I thought I would maybe do it myself.

So I ordered a part from a seller on Amazon, not fulfilled by Amazon, and:

To be clear: Apparently, this part shipped from St. Louis, Missouri, two days later (December 28), and:

  • Arrived and left the carrier facility in St. Louis twice.
  • Arrived in Kansas City on January 1, and then left the facility twice.
  • Arrived in Springfield facility January 2, last Thursday, twice.

And there it sits. It is still scheduled to arrive by Wednesday, after I ordered it and twelve days since it shipped from St. Louis. Which is a three hour drive away. For some reason, it was routed through Kansas City for a week.

Criminey, I hope it’s the right part. The males in the house are missing their frozen pizzas.

And you know what else I’ve gotten this year? A couple of returned Christmas cards with this label:

What does that even mean? I would have thought I scrawled the address incorrectly, perhaps put the zip code from the wrong line on an envelope so it didn’t match the street address or the city and state, but…. No, these were the proper addresses, and Internet maps indicate they have not been bulldozed for new roads. So what gives? No clue. Maybe the Post Office’s new AI scanners (I just made that up but now looking at it, I see they are).

Meanwhile, the current Postmaster General responds to criticism like this:

That’s him. In Congress. Responding to criticism. Man, he sure trolled those Republicans, ainna? Benjamin Franklin, he is not.

Hey, I understand that the Post Office has many fiscal challenges. Public pensions, public employees, and diminishing use of the post. But it’s not helping things by adding Sunday delivery to accommodate Amazon (and then lose a bunch of that revenue when builds out its logistical network). Or extending first class mail delivery times to, what, a week now? Combined with the fact that apparently my creditors don’t send their bills until a week before the bills are due, well, even I am not mailing many checks these days.

Jeez, Louise. I hope it’s the right part.

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Thanks For The Nudge, Facebook

Ah, behavioral economics is not just for humans anymore. Now it can just be made real by algorithms.

I’ve been following Scott Walker on Facebook since he was a governor (and should have been a presidential nominee in 2012).

Anti-Scott Walker random posts? I’ve been ‘following’ them since Facebook decided I need to see them as a preface.

And, to be honest, I’m not sure why I’m still seeing Scott Walker prominently in my Facebook feed. Because he posts about the Packers? I have no clue.

But feel free to discuss amongst yourselves or to think amongst yourselves whether it’s predictable or not that the person with the handwritten note has to long-term borrow a vehicle from a parent.

Oh, one presumes so much.

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AI Sees Dead People

For some reason, I get a lot of “Actors Then And Now” recommended posts on Facebook. And occasionally, I get one where the “now” picture is of an actor who has been dead for a number of years.

Anyfulekno Corey Haim died in 2010.

But the AI? Nah, it’s more fool than any human fool.

Weird, ainna, that presumably paying customers can post incorrect info without getting any warning or blocking or whatnot. Because that’s how the money is made.

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How’s The Job Hunt Going?

This sounds good: Life on Britain’s most remote inhabited island as job with £58k salary opens up:

The UK’s most remotely inhabited island is looking for a teacher for a class of just three pupils, for a total salary of 58k per year.

Fair Isle, off Scotland, is located between the Shetland and Orkney archipelagos and holds a school with a miniscule two students attending – with a third younger student due to start in the near future.

Although, to be honest, I’m not high on Britain these days. Post this job in Maine, and maybe I’d go for it.

Another except:

The school is led by a shared head teacher from Sandwick Junior High School and the current school staff include, a singular supply teacher, one assistant clerical assistant and one supervisory assistant and instructors.

Dayum, that’s a lot of employees for a school that serves two, and soon three, students.

Maybe I’m too familiar with the lean and mean machines of one-room school houses to think that’s a good idea.

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I’m Not Saying We’re Skint Since I Left My Job

But for Christmas we’re crafting Christmas ornaments made from my cat’s fur.

Singular. Because we have four black cats and Chimera.

That’s him from some years ago. Now he’s a big older cat who’s constantly shedding white fur.

A couple of weeks ago, I brushed him and rolled the resulting fur around in my hands until it made a ball. And then I tossed it, and the cats thought it was a cat toy, so they chased it.

So I decided I would make a Christmas ornament out of similar balls.

A couple of weeks of brushing later, I have.

Oh, how I made light of the book Crafting with Cat Hair eleven years ago when I said:

So it’s not something I’m going to try. So don’t think I’m spoiling Christmas tipping my hand that I looked through this book.

Not Christmas in 2013. But Christmas in 2024? Yes.

Basically, it’s three felted balls of cat fur. I’ve run a wire through them to keep them together (looping the bottom flat and the top rounded for a Christmas tree hook), two toothpicks for arms, and pins cut down to size for the eyes and mouth.

So there’s a good reason why it looks like there’s hair or fur on my drill bit, officer.

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Enumeration

It’s like the twelve days of Christmas, except:

2: Number of lamps my mother-in-law sent over because they weren’t working.
1: Number of lamps more broken than when they were received.
1: Number of electric shocks received (so far).
0: Number of lamps repaired.

They’re old touch lamps, and they were not working (as reported to me). I took one out and put a bulb in it. It was permanently on, apparently. So, no problem. I would just replace the socket with a turn switch socket.

Except! The socket is not easily interchangeable; the base and insulation sleeve of the existing lamp are designed for a lamp which does not have a switch, and the base attached to the threaded tube doesn’t seem to come off easily. When I gripped it with a pliers to turn it to try to loosen it, I broke the base attached to the lamp. Almost enough to fit the turning switch into it, but not quite.

So what to do?

Leave it partially assembled on my work bench for months or years is the way to bet.

By the way, the design above is available for purchase along with many other designs you can see on Nico Sez. They make great Christmas gifts, I hope, as everyone is getting a Nico Sez shirt for Christmas.

UPDATE: Uncharacteristically for me, after walking off a bit of frustration, I went back and determined that the base, broken as it was had to unscrew from the threaded tube somehow. So I gripped it with the pliers, a couple of different pairs, actually, and it broke off until I managed to actually break off the threaded part as well. The base from the replacement socket threaded right on, and within minutes I had the socket wired up and I’d similarly taken apart the other lamp, broken off the other base, and replaced its socket as well.

Sometimes, you have to break something to fix it. Advice I need to remember sometimes along with what would a professional do? (which is often to make additional cuts or holes in the wall to make things easier trusting in their ability to patch drywall or make those fixes in addition to whatever I’m trying vainly to fix without the additional steps).

When I announced my triumph to my beautiful wife, she said her mother would have wanted the touch functionality repaired, as she would have a hard time bending and turning the switch by the bulb. Oh. Well, I guess we have two new lamps for Christmas.

UPDATE 2: Moments later, Facebook weighs in with its assessment of my electrical repair skills:

Thanks, I need that vote of confidence from dubious algorithms.

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Good Media Hunting, Saturday, November 30, 2024: A Thrift Store in Berryville, Arkansas

Late this morning, we ventured down to Berryville, Arkansas, to meet my oldest son’s girlfriend’s family. So of course I wanted to stop by the It’s a Mystery BookStore again (we visited it three and a half years ago). But it was closed for the week as the proprietrix was visiting family. So we had an hour to kill before lunch, so we had a cup of coffee and an appetizer at the Ozark Cafe (which might be the only place in Berryville that takes credit cards).

As the weather was nice, we took a little stroll around the square. We stopped in a gift shop on Springfield Street (strangely enough, it was on the highway that kinda sorta went in Springfield’s direction, so it might have been named for the place it went like Appleton, Fond du Lac, Beloit, and other roads in Wisconsin are named). It was odd: they started calling this “Small Business Saturday,” but very few of the small businesses in Berryville were open.

We also stopped in at a thrift shop across the street from It’s a Mystery, and it had books and other media. I bought a couple of records, and my beautiful wife bought a couple of books.

I got four videocassettes:

  • The Patriot starring Mel Gibson so I can fully revisit the fin de siècle Mel Gibson movies.
  • Paris Holiday, a Bob Hope comedy. Weird that I’m seeing so many of them in the wild this year (I bought a couple others in June.
  • Grumpier Old Men, which I can watch since I saw the first one almost a year ago exactly. And this one has Sophia Loren.
  • Sink the Bismarck which does not have an exclamation point, unlike the book.

I also got three records:

  • Sea of Dreams by Nelson Riddle. I might have bought it for the cover alone, but it is Nelson Riddle.
  • The Last Dance… for Lovers Only by Jackie Gleason. The last time I was in Berryville, I bought some Jackie Gleason on CD. It might become a personal tradition.
  • Hurðaskellir & Stúfur Staðnir Að Verki by Magnús Ólafsson + Þorgeir Ástvaldsson + Laddi + Bryndís Schram. My first Christmas album in Icelandic. And probably the only, although who knows? I have recently acquired (or actually, I just unboxed) a couple of German language Christmas albums from my mother-in-law. So who can say if I’ll ever come up with another collection of hymns or something.

The thrift store did not take credit cards, but that was okay as the total was like seven dollars, and as it was Berryville, I brought some cash.

Which turned out to be a good thing, as the Italian restaurant where we met the potential future in-laws did not take credit cards, either.

I am absolutely not kidding about carrying cash in Berryville. One of five places we’ve visited have taken credit cards. Maybe two of six, as it did not come up at the gift shop.

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The Winningest Christmas Straggler

I have posted about the Christmas Straggler for over a decade now. It’s generally a single Christmas decoration overlooked when packing up after Christmas which gets overlooked, and it does seem to happen every year. My posts generally occur in January or February. I don’t know how that reflects upon my housekeeping skills in the past, but I’m still mostly doing the housekeeping grind, although the lower level is only getting a full cleaning every two or three weeks–which means that anything I find whilst dusting this year I will report in…. January or February. So whatever the timing of my posts say about our housekeeping, I guess it will say it again.

But, gentle reader, this is the winningest Christmas Straggler ever, so far. Maybe.

We rearrange the living room slightly for Christmas. We turn the sofa so that one edge of it touches the wall and it faces the fireplace and the corner where the tree goes. This is not on the lower level, where we slightly rotate the furniture every decade or so; this is the main level with the record shelves and console stereo. When we first moved in, the sofa was this way all the time, and we had a television in the corner and a toy box behind the sofa (and generally toys all over the floor to better inventory them). When the boys grew older and got access to the lower level, we rotated the sofa so its back was against the wall and the mostly unused 22″ television is off to the side. We only rotate the sofa now for Christmas.

At any rate, I got the trees out this weekend, and moved the end table and little flower arrangement that hides the unused coax port on the wall, and….

That is one of the fake Christmas tree needles which has somehow lurked in the corner of the living room since…. Well, I don’t exactly know when.

Now, when we pack up after the holiday, we vacuum thoroughly where the tree was and where the sofa is going to go against the wall for the next 10.5 months. And we do vacuum the living room regularly–my son does it weekly, and I’ve done it a time or two over the course of the year. I’ve swept and Swiffered the tile in front of the firebox a couple of times over the year. I even cleaned out the firebox once this year (we don’t use that fireplace as its mantel is too close to the firebox and it lacks anything but a portable screen before it).

So where do these needles come from? Are they caught under the baseboards? Up the chimney waiting for a downdraft? In some nook in the sofa until they’re shaken out?

I have no idea, but every once in a while, one of these little plastic needles emerges, whether on the main level or on the lower level where we also have a tree.

Just to mock our housekeeping practices.

Or, I suppose, I could reframe it and think it’s just to give us a little bit of Christmas often in the middle of the year.

But, I suppose that it does our indict our housekeeping in that although I saw that needle on Saturday afternoon, it was just during the composition of the post this morning that I went upstairs to pick it up. Although in my defense, the youngest was supposed to vacuum that room on Sunday but had other pressing matters–playing football with his brother and going to the gym–and I cannot help but note that now that I have assembled the tree, the carpet beneath it has many more fake needles now. Which are undoubtedly crawling to their years-long hiding places even as I am not watching.

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I’ve Been Harping On It For…. Five Years?

Jeez, I must bore people telling everyone the same thing over and over again.

Instapundit posts:

SO MANY DRAMATIC WEATHER TERMS THESE DAYS: Expert: ‘Bomb Cyclone’ Pounding The US Will Be Strong And Unpredictable.

We used to just call them winter storms, or blizzards.

Man, I’ve posted:

What, I didn’t harp on it last year? Was the weather really that mild? I dunno. That was all the way last year, and this year has been a long one.

But, unlike weather personalities, maybe I should learn a new schtick.

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Movie Report: Shanghai Noon (2000)

Book coverWhen I watched Shanghai Knights two years ago, I mentioned that I had not watched this film. So when I came across it at a church rummage sale this summer, I picked it up. And as I’ve been working evenings on my part-time contract of late, I haven’t had much chance to watch films. But I thought I’d watch one last weekend, and so I did.

So: The high-level plot of the film is that Chan’s Chon Wang is an imperial guard for the Chinese emperor with his eyes on the princess Pei Pei (Lucy Liu) who does not want to marry the man selected for her. She runs away with her tutor, who leaves behind a ransom note–instead of actually running away, she is being kidnapped–and she is delivered to an exiled former imperial guard running a set of Chinese laborers in slave conditions in Nevada. Three current members of the imperial guard are sent to America with a ransom, and Chon Wang gets sent along with them–the higher ups hope the foreign barbarians will relieve them of Wang.

When he gets to America, Wilson’s Roy O’Bannon leads a band of outlaws to rob a train. The new guy in the gang kills Wang’s uncle, the interpreter for the imperial guards and who let Wang come along. It leads to a train-borne Jackie Chan fight and to a couple of encounters between the characters where each is at an advantage to the other, but they eventually team up after another Jackie Chan barroom brawl. They team up to find the princess (and maybe to get the gold), and then a couple of set pieces involving a native American woman that Wang married by mistake who rescues them from several predicaments, and they get the girls and the gold. finis!

An amusing film. I cannot help but note that in the film, the bad guys are not Westerners trying to steal China’s heritage and treasures (which is so many Chinese-influenced or Chinese-financed East Meets West films of the last, what, forty years?). So that was nice. And it did have Lucy Liu in it.

Continue reading “Movie Report: Shanghai Noon (2000)”

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Who Else Is Listening?

On Monday night, my beautiful wife and I were talking about an upcoming Christmas-themed trivia night, and I was not enthusiastic about it as my Christmas trivia is probably wanting. After all, at the Thanksgiving potluck last Sunday, they offered Thanksgiving-themed trivia, and I/we only got 70% of the questions right (the other couple from the North Side Mindflayers were on their own and did better, but they do carry the team in actual trivia nights).

So Monday night, I said that the best that I could hope for was to be asked in what films now-standard Christmas songs appeared, and I mentioned that “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” appeared in Meet Me In St. Louis (which I watched last year).

And suddenly, Facebook was all like….

Because of course it was. But then St. Louis Magazine was all like….

St. Louis Magazine is listening to me, too?

So I briefly thought maybe it was just a news story that Facebook thought I would be interested in because Facebook reads my blog and knows I just saw the film and is maybe not listening to the keystrokes forming this post even now.

But that’s just what they want me to think.

Coincidence starts with the same letters as COINTELPRO. C’mon, wake up!

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Missed It By A Fraction

At Powerline, the post is entitled The high cost of low-heeled joy.

I know, gentle reader, you get the allusion, but I will quote the post for those who reach this site via Internet search. I need all the Traffic I can get:

Someone may want to rewrite Traffic’s look at the dark side of the music business (I think) in “The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys” to cover Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. Something like “The High Cost of Low-Heeled Joy” might work.

Ah, c’mon, man, are you even a blogger? You could have gone with The High Cost of Round-Heeled Joy to get the Shakespearean-era allusion in there and to cast aspersions on the political candidate’s alleged sordid sexual history. Shakespeare + Traffic in the same blog post? The ticket to mad hits and .000000018 cents in ad revenue, baby!

Ay, me.

You know, I was too young to know Traffic in its heyday, but when I was a bagger…. Oh, I’ve told that story before, the last time someone on the Internet alluded to it (probably).

After 21 years in blogging, gentle reader, I am bound to repeat myself in my dotage. You are very polite to keep coming back and listening politely or perhaps scrolling past grampa telling the same story again.

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