Sunday!

I can’t think of a single reason why I would wake up this morning thinking about Shirley “Cha Cha” Muldowney, but there you have it. The human brain, which fundamentally is solely tasked with keeping our reproductive organs intact until such time as they have successfully continued the species, has a tendency to use its off time to continue working aimlessly in very much the same way a lawnmower when not actively engaged in cutting grass never would. “Cha Cha” was portrayed onscreen by Bonnie Bedelia who it turns out is the aunt of MacCaulay Culkin of Home Alone fame.

Mohawks and fingerless gloves

Is it only me who thinks that the Tesla Cybertruck looks like a prop built of spray-painted plywood on a Fiat chassis in a really cheesy Italian Road Warrior knock-off movie from about 1983 where all the extras look like they escaped from a Ratt video? I think the Tesla’s designers wanted it to look futuristic but the problem is we’ve already used up the future. Like, an Amazing Stories cover from let’s say 1926 looks way more like The World of Tomorrow than any current technology here in the actual 21st century which we’re nearly a quarter through it.

No Fooling

For a long time it was thought that the apricot originated in ancient Armenia but recent genetic studies seem to indicate that the fruit was first domesticated in China. The pits contain amygdalin which in the digestive system decomposes to produce hydrogen cyanide, a deadly poison. A derivative of amygdalin, laetrile, was promoted as a cancer cure but this was pure quackery. The original Steve McQueen (not to be confused with today’s Steve McQueen, the British film director) underwent a series of treatments that included both laetrile and coffee enemas in an attempt to cure the cancer that killed him.

Save the date

Sometimes scientists postulate the existence of a substance to make their observations conform to their ideas. Like phlogiston was this imaginary stuff that escaped and created heat when you set fire to something. The ether was this all-pervasive invisible fluid through which waves could propagate across space. They’re gone now; subsequent research obviated the need for them. Now new research suggests that there’s no such thing as dark matter. As a consequence of this, the estimated age of the universe gets bumped up from just under 14 billion years to more than 26 billion. So, update your calendars, I guess.

Maybe it was Arabian

Do you remember that one television show? This one guy had this horse that lived in his garage and it could talk. The horse, I mean, but only to the one guy, Wilbur. At least, that was the story; it didn’t really happen. It was a fictional portrayal from the perspective of this poor sick crazy guy Wilbur who had this delusional belief that Ray Walston had flown in from Mars and left a talking horse in his back yard. Anyway, you know what I heard? That horse didn’t really speak English and had to learn all its lines phonetically.

I don't deserve this

Our language has a lot of words that used to mean something other than what they mean now. Words like “hysterical” or “awesome” or “terrific.” So, last night through no fault of my own for work-related reasons I was sort of required to watch the Academy Awards all the way through on an extremely large screen. The main things I learned are that the phrase “transformational journey” now means what “job” used to mean, “brilliant” is the new word for competent, and “magic” can be used in place of “profit.” In addition, the phrase “I love you” means nothing whatsoever.

Our Demands Are Not Negotiable.

1) Declare Election Day a national holiday. Move it to summer. Provide ice cream.
 

2) Eliminate the penny and use all that zinc for batteries for EVs.
 

3) Abolish daylight saving time, which was invented to make us feel powerless and stupid.
 

4) Outlaw the designated hitter rule. Two teams of nine players each: it should be in the constitution.
 

5) Revise the calendar to consist of 13 months of 28 days each, so that each day of the month always falls on the same day of the week, adding up to 364 days. The extra day? duh. Election Day.