§ This travel rule originated with my spouse, but I concur: Any on-the-road restroom where you have to ask for the key will make you regret having asked for the key.
§ I was slicing radishes for our dinner salads when I made a tiny but generously-bleeding cut on the end of my thumb. Acknowledging my inherent lack of skill with knives, I said to my spouse, “If I had lived in the 1850s, I’d be dead by now.” (Hmm, ya think?)
§ How the shame of shame has changed. On August 9, 1974, President Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment for conspiring to cover up a criminal act. Not half a century later, President Trump led a conspiracy to overturn the result of a legitimate election and then has the temerity to insist that his First Amendment rights demanded this of him. Yes, the First Amendment protects your right to be an asshole, Mr. Trump, so you be you.
Interestingly, temerity comes from the Latin tenebrio, “person who operates in darkness.” This must also be the Latin root word for trump.
§ If I may share this once-upon-a-time excerpt from Bill Moyer’s May 1976 PBS interview with then-presidential-hopeful Jimmy Carter:
Q: Governor, when you say, “I will never lie, I will never mislead you,” people have more doubts about your perception of reality than they do about your integrity.
Governor Carter: I understand.
Q: Other people are now saying, “Jimmy Carter is trying to put one over on us. But Jimmy Carter just doesn’t understand the way Washington … works.”
Governor Carter: I understand that. And I have thought about that a lot, because I’ve been in debate a lot, and one of the great surprises to me in the campaign was that when I made that simple statement 18 months ago — not in a fervent way, not even in a way to surprise anybody — that I, as a candidate and as a President, I’m not going to lie to you, that it became so controversial.
Q: Why were you surprised?
Governor Carter: I was surprised … it was a controversy. The first time I ever voted was in 1948. I voted for Truman. He’s still my favorite President. I don’t believe that Truman ever told me a lie or told the American people a lie. He may have, but I don’t believe he did. I think other Presidents since then have. I don’t see any reason for it.
We have traveled light-years beyond Jimmy Carter’s spacetime. Spin is now the currency of the realm. Liars are embraced if they tell us what we want to hear. Truth? How quaint!
Use the dots or arrow keys to advance the frame.
§ There aren’t many six-letter English words with 3 syllables. I was able to come up with these without external help: ALBEIT, BONOBO, CALICO, DIADEM, ELATED, FINALE, GIGOLO, HERNIA, ICONIC, JICAMA, KAOLIN, LIABLE, MUSEUM, NOVENA, OCELOT, POTATO, QUALIA, RESUMÉ, SUGARY, TAMALE, UNABLE, VIABLE, WIRING, YTTRIA, ZINNIA. I could not think of a six-letter X-word. Your submissions welcome.
§ Shopping in Sam’s Club the other day, I was walking down an aisle near the tire center and thought to myself, I sort of like new-tire smell. McGill University says I am not alone: “[T]here are people who love the scent of new tires, some even describing an addiction to the fragrance.” Reddit user gersty asked, “Do they make a new tire smell air freshener?” Travis, on a Yamaha motorcycle forum, exclaimed, “DAMN I love the smell of a new tire!” and posted a photo of a tire he keeps next to his computer desk for its aroma.
Then there are people who like the smell of skunk. (Not me, but certain people I know.) Quora user David Lincoln Brooks rhapsodized thus about roadkill skunk: “Yet on a cold November night, when the assailed skunk is a mile away, then the smell tints the cold still air with a curious mournful longing… the olfactory poignance of a distant train whistle at midnight.” OK, Walt Whitman, but what about tires?
§ A while back, I read maybe half of Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data (and so on) by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz; his topic was how our internet searches reveal ‘the real truth’ about ourselves. The author’s examples and anecdotes might have made for a good essay in The Atlantic, but not a whole book.
I increasingly don’t care whether I finish non-fiction books — I find there is rarely much substance after the first 100 pages. I know a book has been padded when I start skimming the first sentences of paragraphs and don’t feel like I’m missing anything. Just because an author satisfies his publisher’s word count doesn’t mean I have to follow suit.
§ Why is it easier to give up on a bad movie than a bad book? I venture it’s because we take (somewhat) more care selecting books and thus are more invested in our choices, which makes us less willing to abandon books. Do Kindle users agree?
§ Old people are too old to be funny. Consider: Jane Curtin is 75 (I think she has always been 75). Goldie Hawn is 78. Dave Letterman is 78, as is Steve Martin. Michael Palin and Eric Idle are 80. Lily Tomlin is 83. Tom Smothers is 86. Bob Newhart is 93. I am 70, and this wasn’t funny at all, so that clinches it. Old comics: they’re either weird, or dead.
§ I have three questions that need answers:
• How do pacemakers know to speed up during exercise, when we need more oxygen?
• Has any contestant on The Price is Right intentionally interfered with the wheel while it was spinning? You know, to slow it down and try to make it land on $1.00. After 50 years, wouldn’t you be surprised if it hasn’t been tried at least once?
• What does eel taste like? (I bet it tastes like anything with two ee’s would taste like.)
§ Last but not least: Our pit of past despair (i.e., the water feature) is now a corner of zen. All because I broke my toe and couldn’t reasonably work on it, and so we hired someone to finish it off. It’s a big relief. This lesson will last me a long time.
