HNY

Hoping your coming year brings songs you want to hear!

The First Great Wall

Archaeologists from Chicago's Field Museum have been mapping out China's first great wall.

“The wow factor here is, of course, that there was a ‘Great Wall’ before the famous ‘Great Wall,’ ” Feinman said of the remnants, which still stand 15-feet tall in some places. “People knew where little segments were, but they didn’t know the full extent.”

The first Great Wall suffered a fall,
so maybe was not great after all.

The second, which came later,
is reckoned greater.

Fitbit Force

I got a "Fitbit Force" as one of my Christmas presents. It functions like a computerized pedometer, really. I don't know how truly accurate it is - I haven't calibrated it yet, but I did some treadmill running today and it seemed to match up with the treadmill mileage pretty well.

Anyway, I've been surprised to see that I'm normally walking about 5 miles a day. I knew that my commute, and my dog walking, etc., had me walking over a mile a day. I would have guessed 2.

But 5 was a surprise.
Could it all be lies?

Reading Fills The Mind

From today's Wall St. Journal:

"Rather than bemoaning the frothy and fleeting nature of new words and phrases, however, we can embrace it."

I fear the mixed metaphor is unfortunate.

Embrace the frothy - feel it pop.
Embrace the fleeting - it won't stop.

From The Villager, one of our neighborhood papers:

"Walking or other activities that alternate movement of one side of the body and then the other help to clear our thoughts and improve our moods."

I want to see a controlled study of the mental health of freestyle swimmers - as opposed to breast-stroke swimmers. I bet either stroke will clear your mind as well as the other.

A lot of times
I find
that I can clear my mind
by making silly rhymes.

Missing a Delivery

So the days-late FedEx package got delivered to my front door, according to FedEx, but no one heard the doorbell ring, and the search outside didn't find a thing.

Was it stolen, or misdelivered? We haven't ever had a problem with theft of things left at the front door, so I'm inclined to think this is a rare case of FedEx messing up, but what I'm going to be able to do about it I just don't know.

I'm letting this color my mood way more than it should.
At the moment some cosmic perspective would do me good.

Heat Wave

They're having a Feliz Navidad heat wave in Argentina - where it's our seasonal equivalent of June 25. And the fish are biting! But not in a good way.

"More than 60 swimmers have been injured in a mass piranha attack."

It was 100 degrees Fahrenheit. And people went in the river to cool off. And those ugly little fish attacked en masse. At least, no one died, and the injuries don't sound too serious - because everybody got out of the water.

In Argentina,
small fish are meana.

Shipping Overload

Delivery delayed:

"An unexpected surge of online orders in the past few weeks appears to have strained the limits of delivery and fulfillment infrastructure at retailers and parcel carriers."

It happened to me, with a gift for my wife. I paid for FedEx standard overnight, and they didn't make it. That's supposed to be a money-back guarantee, so I'll have to see about a refund! Not sure how that works. I paid the retailer, who presumably paid FedEx. So do I need to call the retailer and he has to call FedEx?

The package was in Chicago early in the morning on the 24th. And they kept estimating it would be at my door by 8pm. Until 8pm, when the estimate suddenly changed to "N/A". Hopefully that's computerese for the 26th.

You know, for years I resisted buying stuff online. Online is really convenient, but it doesn't give me the immediate satisfaction of having the goods in my hands.

Absolutely, positively, oops not quite,
overnight.

Visions of Plumbers' Bills Danced In My Head

We have a tree on our front lawn,
a Grinch-like tree that I'd like gone.

Its roots have clogged our sewer line,
and in my view that's far from fine!

Playing Santa

I got to dress up in the Santa outfit and hand out gifts to kids at my sister's office party. But the costume's white gloves were missing. 

How, I complained, can I create art, when my costume is flawed from the very start?

Nonetheless, I gave it a go, and had a merry Ho Ho Ho!

Irony Sunk

A British communications executive, before heading to South Africa, tweeted: “Going to Africa. Hope I don't get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”

She has apologized. She has been fired.

I imagine it was meant to sound ironic. I imagine she meant to imply that it is in fact a legacy of racism that AIDS is more of a problem in the nonwhite African population.

Her company threw her under the bus: ""There is no excuse for the hateful statements that have been made and we condemn them unequivocally. We hope, however, that time and action, and the forgiving human spirit, will not result in the wholesale condemnation of an individual who we have otherwise known to be a decent person at core."

I guess she should be grateful
that after calling her hateful
they put some salve on the sore
and called her decent at core.

'Tis The Season For Etymology

"Holidays" are "holy days",
in their original meanings.

But nowadays the word and phrase
display divergent leanings.

Asleep at the Switch

I fell down on the job yesterday - there was no Rhyme of the Day! Well, more like I lay down. I fell asleep at eight and didn't get up until seven this morning. I must have been tired.

And while I slept,
Duck Dynasty leapt
on the front page
in a burst of rage.

Althouse wrote: "Like Paglia, I remember the broad 1960s era commitment to free speech. There was a special zeal to protect those who said outrageous things. Today, we're back to the kind of repression that in the 60s seemed to belong to the 1950s. What the hell happened?"

I remember that about the 60s too, but there was another current flowing in the New Left, as represented in Marcuse's "critique of pure tolerance."

Marcuse claimed that right wing thoughts are "repression,"
with no excuse or entitlement to expression.

The Road to Riyadh

This surprised me:

"Steak ‘n Shake has signed an exclusive deal with AB Holdings to open 50 of its restaurants in Saudi Arabia in the coming years."

For punning's sake,
please call them Steak 'n Sheik.

Controlling the Agenda

If you can believe the Daily Mail, which is always a good question, a bunch of U.S. Tech CEOs had a meeting with the prez at the White House. They thought the purpose of the meeting was to discuss the NSA's super-snoopery.

But the prez thought the purpose of the meeting was to talk about how much better healthcare.gov is working.

Of course, it was the prez who won.

I was amused by these 2 anonymous quotes:

'We really didn't care for a PR pitch about how the administration is trying to salvage its internal health care tech nightmare.'

'He basically hijacked the meeting,' the executive said. 'We all told the White House that we were only there to talk about what the NSA was up to and how it affects us.'

They gave a lot of money to the guy,
and now they're surprised when he spits in their eye.

Surfing To Learn About Turf

I'm not a huge football fan, but I watch with my father and son-in-law on Monday nights, and I was puzzled tonight by something I saw on TV. The players seemed to be kicking up dust - in an indoor stadium - on artificial turf - but the dust didn't disperse like dust exactly.

I actually wondered if it was some kind of special visual effect - like the yellow "first down" line that they project over the field.

I summoned my Google-fu, successfully.

So, it wasn't electronic trickery, it was physical reality, but of an artificial variety:

"The field is comprised of three basic elements: sand, green plastic fibers that look like grass and crumbled rubber, which resembles tiny rubber BBs. Fans will notice that when a player makes a hard cut or a football bounces hard on the surface, something appearing like dust will briefly arise. It's the rubber pellets."

Players complain that sometimes the tiny rubber BBs get in their mouths when they "hit the dirt."

That happens with real dirt, too,
so I'm not feeling sorry for you.

By Canetti

For book club, we read... well its working title was Kant Catches Fire, its first published title was The Blinding (but in German), its first American title was Tower Of Babel, and its first British title was Auto Da Fe. 

I'm not sure why they couldn't alight on one title that just sounded right.

Fluffy and Cold

Shoveled a fair amount of snow, at my house and my father's.

When it comes to precipitation,
I have more appreciation
for rain.

Because shoveling is a pain!

Publicity Stunts

Is nothing sacred?

"People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals took a small North Carolina community to court Thursday in an attempt to stop them from carrying out their two decade-long New Year’s tradition: lowering a live opossum in a Plexiglas box from a pole. (As the event’s organizers put it:  'If New York can drop a ball and Atlanta can drop a peach, then we can lower a possum.')"

Can the opposition
really be stopping
the noble New Year's tradition
of possum dropping?

Acclimation

Thirty starts to feel warm, after a week where twenty's the norm. 

Signifying Nothing

At Mandela's funeral, the sign language interpreter was reportedly a fake... I mean, he may have been the official signer for all I know, but he wasn't really signing in any language that anyone can figure out so far.

'The South African government is investigating “alleged incorrect use of sign language” after a man stood on stage and pretended to translate speeches by President Obama and several other world leaders at Tuesday’s service in Johannesburg.'

He gave the appearance of full communication, 

but it was all just empty gesticulation.