A Lovely Day In The Neighborhood

 

Okay, so I’m having breffy with Zelda the other day and we’re talking about her dogs…truth be told we’re always talking about her dogs or her cats or her plants. She’s really into the animal kingdom.

Anyway, she decided to take them for a walk the other night which was naturally a bit of a funny disaster. The big dawg (huggy) got away from her to play with a little chihuahua that her Korean neighbors were walking. Apparently there were a few seconds where little chi-chi was flying like a trout on the leash but that’s another story.  So, while big dawg was doing that Lexy (beagle number 1) was just running – anywhere. I guess she ran til she got tired and Zelda found her panting by the side of the road.

Then there is beagle number 2 – a chubby little tri-color who is really a real life version of Deputy Dog. You gotta love him. But he won’t walk. He is afraid of the outside. Literally – no kidding. So Zelda carried him – all 35 lbs of him. You got the picture? Big dawg flailing and going after little chichi like a piece of bait, first beagle just running and Zelda trotting behind carrying second beagle.

So, solution? Dog trainer? Nope? Walk the dogs separately? Nope? Dog Whisperer? Nope. You ready???? She’s getting beagle number 2 a stroller.

Oh yeah, they make strollers for dogs. I can’t wait to see it and I promise I’ll post a picture as soon as I do. Talk about your gullible boomer. Zelda! What are you thinking? 😉

WC

I Didn’t Meme It…or Did I?

 

I snagged this meme from Interstellar Lass because it looked like fun and I’ve never done one.

Instrutions:
Look at the list of books below.
*Bold the ones you’ve read
*Italicize the ones you want to read
*Leave the ones that you aren’t interested in alone.

If you are reading this, tag your it!

1.The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown) (sorry but YAWN)
2.Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3.To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee) (truly one of the best books ever written)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10.A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11.Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12.Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13.Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16.Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees(Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban(Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger) (forced to read this in high school and never would have finished it if I didn’t have to. Hated every word of it.)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie(Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand) (One of my personal top ten)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True(Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible (parts only)
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt) (beautifully written and yet almost too sad to read)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck) (another book I was forced to read which I hated)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald) (What about Tender is the Night?)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand) (Worth the read if only for the speech given by Roarke at the end in court)
63. War and Peace (Tolsoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving) (to me, the ultimate book about writers – the way the mind works for them and their lot in life – although too over the top which is Irving’s style)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams) (stupid book about rabbits – why did I even read it? I think I kept waiting for it to get good)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth(Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100.Ulysses (James Joyce)

I must say though I would add quite a few to this list:

1. A Movable Feast (Ernest Hemingway)
2. The Shining (Stephen King)
3. Lightning (Dean Koonz)
4. The Foundation (Isaac Asimov)
5. Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein)
6. Up Country (Nelson DeMille)
7. Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
8. Farenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
9. The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway)
10. The Dead Zone (Stephen King)
11. Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain)
12. Letters From Earth (Mark Twain)
13. Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
14. Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury)

And probably many more….what about you?
WC

Dr Phil Says…

Yay! Another useless test that we can do that will tell us what we probably already know about ourselves. But hell, I love to waste time, don’t you? Don’t peek, but begin the test as you scroll down and answer. Okay, I know you’ll peek anyway but you have to sort of play along with these guys, right?

Answers are for who you are now — not who you were in the past. (glad they cleared that up, eh? )Have pen or pencil and paper ready. This is a real test given by the Human Relations Dept. at many of the major corporations today. It helps them get better insight concerning their employees and prospective employees. (Now, I really doubt this because it probably comes under the heading of profiling or discrimination or some such based on all the stupid ass laws we have on the books now, but it sounds good, huh?).

Ready??

1. When do you feel your best?

a) in the morning

b) during the afternoon and early evening

c) late at night

2. You usually walk…

a) fairly fast, with long steps

b) fairly fast, with little steps

c) less fast head up, looking the world in the face

d) less fast, head down

e) very slowly

3. When talking to people you…

a) stand with your arms folded

b) have your hands clasped

c) have one or both your hands on your hips

d) touch or push the person to whom you are talking

e) play with your ear, touch your chin, or smooth your hair

4. When relaxing, you sit with…

a) your knees bent with your legs neatly side by side

b) your legs crossed

c) you r legs stretched out or straight

d) one leg curled under you

5. When something really amuses you, you react with…

a) big appreciated laugh

b) a laugh, but not a loud one

c) a quiet chuckle

d) a sheepish smile

6. When you go to a party or social gathering you…

a) make a loud entrance so everyone notices you

b) make a quiet entrance, looking around for someone you know

c) make the quietest entrance, trying to stay unnoticed

7. You’re working very hard, concentrating hard, and you’re interrupted…

a) welcome the break

b) feel extremely irritated

c) vary between these two extremes

8. Which of the following colors do you like most?

a) Red or orange

b) black

c) yellow or light blue

d) green

e) dark blue or purple

f) white

g) brown or gray

9. When you are in bed at night, in those last few moments before going to sleep you are…

a) stretched out on your back

b) stretched out face down on your stomach

c) on your side, slightly curled

d) with your head on one arm

e) with your head under the covers

10. You often dream that you are…

a) falling

b) fighting or struggling

c) searching for something or somebody

d) flying or floating

e) you usually have dreamless sleep

f) your dreams are always pleasant

POINTS:

1. (a) 2 (b) 4 (c) 6

2. (a) 6 (b) 4 (c) 7 (d) 2 (e) 1

3. (a) 4 (b) 2 (c) 5 (d) 7 (e) 6

4. (a) 4 (b) 6 (c) 2 (d) 1

5. (a) 6 (b) 4 (c) 3 (d) 5 (e) 2

6. (a) 6 (b) 4 (c) 2

7. (a) 6 (b) 2 (c) 4

8. (a) 6 (b) 7 (c) 5 (d) 4 (e) 3 (f) 2 (g) 1

9. (a) 7 (b) 6 (c) 4 (d) 2 (e) 1

10. (a) 4 (b) 2 (c) 3 (d) 5 (e) 6 (f) 1

Now add up the total number of points.

OVER 60 POINTS: Others see you as someone they should “handle with care.” You’re seen as vain, self-centered, and who is extremely dominant. Others may admire you, wishing they could be more like you, but don’t always trust you, hesitating to become too deeply involved with you.

51 TO 60 POINTS: Others see you as an exciting, highly volatile, rather impulsive personality; a natural leader, who’s quick to make decisions, though not always the right ones. They see you as bold and adventuresome, someone who will try anything once; someone who takes chances and enjoys an adventure. They enjoy being in your company because of the excitement you radiate.

41 TO 50 POINTS: Others see you as fresh, lively, charming, amusing, practical, and always interesting; someone who’s constantly in the center of attention, but sufficiently well balanced not to let it go to their head. They also see you as kind, considerate, and understanding; someone who’ll always cheer them up and help them out.

31 TO 40 POINTS: Others see you as sensible, cautious, careful & practical. They see you as clever, gifted, or talented, but modest. Not a person who makes friends too quickly or easily, but someone who’s extremel y loyal to friends you do make and who expect the same loyalty in return. Those who really get to know you realize it takes a lot to shake your trust in your friends, but equally that it takes you a long time to get over if that trust is ever broken.

21 TO 30 POINTS: Your friends see you as painstaking and fussy. They see you as very cautious, extremely careful, a slow and steady plodder. It would really surprise them if you ever did something impulsively or on the spur of the moment, expecting you to examine everything carefully from every angle and then, usually decide against it. They think this reaction is caused partly by your careful nature.

UNDER 21 POINTS: People think you are shy, nervous, and indecisive, someone who needs looking after, who always wants someone else to make the decisions & who doesn’t want to get involved with anyone or anything! They see you as a worrier who always sees problems that don’t exist. Some people think you’ re boring. Only those who know you well know that you aren’t.

Wasn’t that fun! Don’t you feel like you’re more in touch with your feelings now? Did it give a sense of I’m okay, You’re okay? Hahahahahahahaha.

(I scored 39 points by the way – which apparently means I am only semi-neurotic. – WC)

Fragile

I often marvel at what other people think of me. I mean the image they have. Apparently I am some indestructible, always lands on her feet, warrior of perservance and (occasionally) truth. I think to myself ‘if only they knew.’

In fact, I am not that person. Oh sure, I aspire to be that person. I strive to be strong and gutsy emotionallly – independent and cheerful – all the good stuff. But if I were to be honest then I’d have to say that in many ways I’m fragile.

I break easily if you know just the right way to break me. And shatter into millions of pieces. Though you wouldn’t know it to look at me. Because I do my crying behind closed doors. Most of what stresses me out I make jokes out of or do posts about. I poke fun at them and me. In fact, I am the usual target of my own jokes. And everyone generally laughs with me. They think I’m a riot. Some goofy, eccentric oddball who has a very funny perspective on life.

I suppose that’s true in its own way. But I’m still fragile. I still break when I am crashed into a wall. I still bleed when I am cut. I cry when I am hurt. I am not indestructible. I am not the person who is untouched by any and every thing. And I just wish once in a while somebody acted like they knew that. I just wish that once in a while I could be the one leaning on somebody else. I just wish that once it wasn’t my job to cheer up the whole fricking world.

But it isn’t that way and I accept it.

Perhaps in my next life I will get to be the damsel in distress and see what it feels like to have everyone falling all over themselves to make me feel cared for. I wonder what that is like. I really do.

WC

Boomer Truths

 

I am one of the annointed ones. You may know my demographic as baby boomer. Yep, I’m a boomer. When you say it like that it sounds kind of like a skateboard champion or something, doesn’t it? Or something equally arrogant?

I have to tell you I am sick of us. I am sick of the boomers. I sick of the generation who thinks it rules the universe from now until eternity. The mantra of never getting old, never passing the torch is pretty irritating.

I remember when I was a kid I was barely in the demograhic, just managed to squeak in there. By the time I was a teen, I was pert near in the middle of the range, now I imagine I’m somewhere in the subgenre of silver or maybe bronze baby boomers since the ‘goldens’ are about to retire and single-handedly destroy social security by sucking it dry. (Funny, I thought Congress had done that 20 years ago. They must be boomers too. )

It’s like the generation that will not die. The generation of generations. The one time in human history that super humans were born. I mean think about it. Look what us boomers have actually contributed to society. The Anti-War Industry; Global Warming/Cooling industry; Catalytic Converters; Economy Cars; An entire economy for Japan and subsequently all Asian nations; Anti-Smoking laws; Anti-Honesty (political correctness); Illiteracy among high school graduates; Institutional Anarchy; Mind Control drugs (psychotropics which alter the chemistry in the brain, all in the name of controlling mental illnesses which by and large are invented); the U.N. (which is supposed to stand for United Nations but really stands for Unbelievable Ninkompoops); they helped us lose a war we actually won (Vietnam) and therefore sentenced millions of people to the killing fields(don’t know what I’m talking about, look it up); they killed class and sense; were able to turn a white trash president into the first black president; botox; plastic surgery; liposuction; cloning; stem cell research; abortion on demand and many other things. Feeling proud? I know I sure am.

To be fair there have been other contributions which were good – and I don’t think all baby boomers are bad – but the bad ones are so bad, so arrogant I want to scream and the good ones no one seems to listen to. But the thing that is so funny to me and maybe is a secret that I’m not supposed to tell is this: Their real thing and what really motivates them is that they don’t want to get old. They will do and say anything rather than get old. Their whole lives revolve around looking and acting young. Ponce de Leon has nothing on these folks – cuz they are never, never, never, never, ever going to get old.

They will build hearing aids into their Ipods, sew Depends into their designer capris, wear their hair extensions to their caskets; laser out their wrinkles; dye what hair they have left; liposuction their fat bellies and asses and drive Corvettes forever. Just so you don’t know how old they really are.

Me? Personally I don’t see anything wrong with wanting to look good or feel good, or have healthy habits – but I am getting older. So what? That is a mantle passed from generation to generation, it is a medal from life that is earned. The joy of getting older is that you find you don’t have nearly as much to prove as you once thought; you have experience; you gain wisdom and can determine really what is important. I find it very freeing and delightful. I wear my wrinkles proudly and the sun damage and the silver (ultra blonde) hairs and all the rest. Maybe if a lot of my fellow boomers would relax and accept who they really are, the world wouldn’t be such a bizarre place. Or maybe it would. Hard to say.

WC

How Was Your Day at Work?

(HT to A-Mum for pic – WC)

To All The Dead Terrorists

HAPPY 72 VIRGIN DAY!

(Oh yeah, he probably never also heard the ‘hell hath no fury’ quote either – because well, he was a stupid-ass terrorist. Now he is a dead stupid-ass terrorist. Like i always say ‘a good terrorist is a dead terrorist.’ )

How Many You’s Are There?

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 73 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

There have been many stories involving dopplegangers. Which to me has always been kind of cool – the idea that there is another ‘you’ out there somewhere – evil or not – has a certain chill factor.

And I’ve often wondered if there were a couple of me’s running around as I’ve run into people who were sure I was really Debbie from Minnesota and Sue from Nevada. I even was flipping through a fashion magazine one day and there was a model who had my face on her tall, skinny model body. Talk about double take. It was strange and exhilerating at once.

I wonder though if I really met my doppleganger face to face what would happen? That is fodder for a possible story I think.

In the meantime, click on the pick above and find out how many you’s there are in the U.S. – you may be surprised.

Oh yeah – funny thing – when I input both my first and middle name I discovered in fact I was the only one. Without the middle name I have 73 other namesakes. I guess that makes me semi-unique? LOL – I dunno.

WC

PS: HT to Court Reporting Chick for the link and I have NO idea why this came out green. 😆

Have You Painted Your Cat Lately?

Apparently, people still are finding ways to waste their money. A new trend appears to be having your cat painted for about 15 grand a pop. And if you want to keep up with the Jones’ you have to do repaints every three months. Can you imagine having nothing better to do with 60 grand a year than to have your housepet painted? Duh!

That being said, they are pretty impressive paint jobs.

(HT to FC for the pics!)

WC

Wrong on Climate Change?

(Here is a compelling article published in the Times Online, that challenges, conventional wisdom on the issue. WC)

February 11, 2007

An experiment that hints we are wrong on climate change

Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist, says the orthodoxy must be challenged

When politicians and journalists declare that the science of global warming is settled, they show a regrettable ignorance about how science works. We were treated to another dose of it recently when the experts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued the Summary for Policymakers that puts the political spin on an unfinished scientific dossier on climate change due for publication in a few months’ time. They declared that most of the rise in temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to man-made greenhouse gases.

The small print explains “very likely” as meaning that the experts who made the judgment felt 90% sure about it. Older readers may recall a press conference at Harwell in 1958 when Sir John Cockcroft, Britain’s top nuclear physicist, said he was 90% certain that his lads had achieved controlled nuclear fusion. It turned out that he was wrong. More positively, a 10% uncertainty in any theory is a wide open breach for any latterday Galileo or Einstein to storm through with a better idea. That is how science really works.

Twenty years ago, climate research became politicised in favour of one particular hypothesis, which redefined the subject as the study of the effect of greenhouse gases. As a result, the rebellious spirits essential for innovative and trustworthy science are greeted with impediments to their research careers. And while the media usually find mavericks at least entertaining, in this case they often imagine that anyone who doubts the hypothesis of man-made global warming must be in the pay of the oil companies. As a result, some key discoveries in climate research go almost unreported.

Enthusiasm for the global-warming scare also ensures that heatwaves make headlines, while contrary symptoms, such as this winter’s billion-dollar loss of Californian crops to unusual frost, are relegated to the business pages. The early arrival of migrant birds in spring provides colourful evidence for a recent warming of the northern lands. But did anyone tell you that in east Antarctica the Adélie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean.

So one awkward question you can ask, when you’re forking out those extra taxes for climate change, is “Why is east Antarctica getting colder?” It makes no sense at all if carbon dioxide is driving global warming. While you’re at it, you might inquire whether Gordon Brown will give you a refund if it’s confirmed that global warming has stopped. The best measurements of global air temperatures come from American weather satellites, and they show wobbles but no overall change since 1999.

That levelling off is just what is expected by the chief rival hypothesis, which says that the sun drives climate changes more emphatically than greenhouse gases do. After becoming much more active during the 20th century, the sun now stands at a high but roughly level state of activity. Solar physicists warn of possible global cooling, should the sun revert to the lazier mood it was in during the Little Ice Age 300 years ago.

Climate history and related archeology give solid support to the solar hypothesis. The 20th-century episode, or Modern Warming, was just the latest in a long string of similar events produced by a hyperactive sun, of which the last was the Medieval Warming.

The Chinese population doubled then, while in Europe the Vikings and cathedral-builders prospered. Fascinating relics of earlier episodes come from the Swiss Alps, with the rediscovery in 2003 of a long-forgotten pass used intermittently whenever the world was warm.

What does the Intergovernmental Panel do with such emphatic evidence for an alternation of warm and cold periods, linked to solar activity and going on long before human industry was a possible factor? Less than nothing. The 2007 Summary for Policymakers boasts of cutting in half a very small contribution by the sun to climate change conceded in a 2001 report.

Disdain for the sun goes with a failure by the self-appointed greenhouse experts to keep up with inconvenient discoveries about how the solar variations control the climate. The sun’s brightness may change too little to account for the big swings in the climate. But more than 10 years have passed since Henrik Svensmark in Copenhagen first pointed out a much more powerful mechanism.

He saw from compilations of weather satellite data that cloudiness varies according to how many atomic particles are coming in from exploded stars. More cosmic rays, more clouds. The sun’s magnetic field bats away many of the cosmic rays, and its intensification during the 20th century meant fewer cosmic rays, fewer clouds, and a warmer world. On the other hand the Little Ice Age was chilly because the lazy sun let in more cosmic rays, leaving the world cloudier and gloomier.

The only trouble with Svensmark’s idea — apart from its being politically incorrect — was that meteorologists denied that cosmic rays could be involved in cloud formation. After long delays in scraping together the funds for an experiment, Svensmark and his small team at the Danish National Space Center hit the jackpot in the summer of 2005.

In a box of air in the basement, they were able to show that electrons set free by cosmic rays coming through the ceiling stitched together droplets of sulphuric acid and water. These are the building blocks for cloud condensation. But journal after journal declined to publish their report; the discovery finally appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society late last year.

Thanks to having written The Manic Sun, a book about Svensmark’s initial discovery published in 1997, I have been privileged to be on the inside track for reporting his struggles and successes since then. The outcome is a second book, The Chilling Stars, co-authored by the two of us and published next week by Icon books. We are not exaggerating, we believe, when we subtitle it “A new theory of climate change”.

Where does all that leave the impact of greenhouse gases? Their effects are likely to be a good deal less than advertised, but nobody can really say until the implications of the new theory of climate change are more fully worked out.

The reappraisal starts with Antarctica, where those contradictory temperature trends are directly predicted by Svensmark’s scenario, because the snow there is whiter than the cloud-tops. Meanwhile humility in face of Nature’s marvels seems more appropriate than arrogant assertions that we can forecast and even control a climate ruled by the sun and the stars.