Is Christmas green?

It sure as hell is red and green, but it sure as hell isn't green.  But let me begin with an "I don't do Xmas" disclaimer.  But oughtn't that be obvious? (and is that the correct usage of the word oughtn't?) (and isn't oughtn't a wordicle?)  Yeah, we're Jewish and we don't even do that.  So we sure as hell don't do Xmas.  And this time of year (say ... mid-October through the New Year) is irritating as hell, because everyone continuously tries to cram the red and green crap down my throat, over and over again, 24 hours a day, in pretty much the same way that we just cannot escape the ridiculous political garbage come every election season (on TV, on the radio, on sight-nauseating billboards along every road ... vote for this person ... no, vote for that person ...).  But anyway ...

So for whatever reason this morning, as I was sitting down doing my daily "business", the thought of whether or not Xmas is green popped into my head.  And I immediately said to myself, "No."

Why?  Isn't it immediately apparent?  Think of what people do during the holiday season every year:

Why don't we care about our pants?

It's raining today.  Raining hard.  We're s'posed to get ... I don't know ... several feet of rain in just a few hours.  OK, a few inches anyway.  So I came to work this morning and had grabbed only my keys, wallet, phone, and umbrella.  Parked the car.  Made sure to stow away my keys and wallet in my pockets, leaving both hands free (unusual, since I usually carry lunch, a book or two, and who-knows-what-else), grabbed my umbrella, got out of the car and locked it.  Began walking toward my building, rain coming down fast and from everywhere (mostly above).  And then a thought came to me that I have thunk (a wordicle!) quite a bit about:

I'm doing my damndest to cover my topside--head, shirt, arms--but evidently, aside from doing my best to dodge puddles, I don't care how wet my pants get from the rain.

Why is that?

Kids are good for your brain

I am just beginning to realize this.  Our kids keep my wife and me mentally hopping.  Our son Li'l D, in particular, asks us tons of questions, being the studious, intuitive and knowledge-seeking-type.  Today?  We were discussing ... oh I don't know what ... and I guess I said something along the lines of something being relative to something else ... who knows.  Li'l D immediately asked:

What does 'relative' mean?

I quickly thrust back with:

It's when you compare something to something else.

Not having enough, Li'l D parried my verbal comeback with:

What does 'compare' mean?

"Holy crap!" I thought to myself.  After a while, meaning a few years of questioning and interrogation like this, you begin to think quite quickly on your proverbial feet.  So, gathering up all of my mental weaponry, and as we were in the car heading to dinner, I looked ahead and said:

See the blue truck and brown van in front of us?  Which one is taller?

Li'l D:

The blue truck.

Dad:

Right.  So you compared the two, and the blue one is tall relative to the brown one.

He seemed relatively satisfied with that explanation, compared with previous sessions.

My words don't do true justice to this, but afterward, during dinner, it really got me to thinking that our kids really do keep us on our mental toes.  Maybe that is the answer to Oldtimers' Disease ... having kids around to keep you constantly thinking.

I saw a good deed the other day

So the wife and I were in New York City for the weekend, and oh what a wonderful weekend it was to travel to NYC.  We enjoyed at least 6 inches of rain per hour, or so it seemed, and the cabs looked like they would have done better as boats in the newly-transformed Manhattan "Canal District".  But on Saturday, for lunch I believe, we headed to the deli next door to our hotel to eat.  We ended up sitting at a small bar along the window, so we had a beautiful view of the back of some smoker's head, the ambiance of seeing New York City scaffolding on the building across the narrow street, and the pleasant smell of disinfectant, since the deli guy had just mopped our area a minute before we sat down.  Mmmm yummy!!! ...

Regardless, as we sat and ate I saw what I think was a good deed.  It was surprising, and nice.  I saw a mid-late-twenty-something guy walking on the sidewalk just outside the deli in front of us.  We'll call him Guy A.  Guy A was carrying, and using, an umbrella, because it was raining (didn't I just mention that??).  About 20 feet further I saw another guy, Guy B, run to his car which was parked at the curb and try to open the door.  He was umbrellaless (is that a word????  NOW IT IS!!!!).  His car door didn't open.  This resulted in Guy B frowning and smirking, since he was getting more wet by the second, and fumbling in his pockets for his car keys.  Right at this time Guy A, Mr. Umbrella, was passing by him, saw this and walked over to him and held his umbrella over Guy B to help keep him dry.  Guy B looked back, said "Thank you" or something equivalent (I assume --- I couldn't hear what he said, and Guy A remained there, implying to me that Guy B did not, in fact, say "Screw you!!!") and reached into his car for a few seconds.  Guy A remained holding his umbrella over Guy B.  Guy B, several seconds later, got out, closed his car door, put his arm around Guy A and they both walked on, out of my line of vision.

I am not sure that this was a pure act of unwarranted kindness.  It was an act of kindness, as

1. Guy A did try to keep Guy B as dry as he could;
2. Guy A didn't immediately go to Guy B; he saw him, but then did a sort of pump-fake as he took a step further and then changed his mind and went back to Guy B to help --- he conciously thought for a second about what he was about to do, and it was obviously unexpected.

But I don't know if Guy A knew Guy B beforehand or not.  I don't think so.  And it makes this unusual (for me) story all that much nicer to remember.

After that, I kept thinking of the phrase "Pay It Forward" ...

"Panspermia"? Really???

So I found this article a while ago: Professor: We have a 'moral obligation' to seed universe with life.  The idea is that we should send some earth-bound organisms into space in hopes that they will someday reach other planets and populate them with earth-like thingies.  I disagree with this, and I think it's stupid, but that is not the point of this post.  (Of course it isn't ...)

In this article I learnt a new word: "panspermia".  It means "the theory that life exists and is distributed throughout the universe in the form of germs or spores that develop in the right environment".  And this is, of course, a wordicle.

I had never heard of panspermia.  However when I first read the article, and when I first saw the word but before they really expressed the definition, I was under the impression that to spread human life throughout the universe they'd have to ... you know ... do like the word itself sounds and send some ... you know ... mens' wiggly things up into space in some kind of ... you know ... repository which would somehow keep them alive for ... you know ... a very long time until they got to somewhere that they could ... you know ... do their human spreading thing.

But I was wrong.  Doesn't matter though, becase some dumbass (hopefully not our Gubment) is going to spend buzzillions of dollars to rig up an environmentally-proper repository for the organisms, shoot it into outer space and then die happy because their Earth-originated germs will populate the universe.  How ridiculously stupid ...

Books: "The Bourne Identity"

Wow!  Just plain WOW!!!  First, for anyone who's been hiding under a rock for the past few years, or for the past almost 30 years, "The Bourne Identity" is a best-seller and probably has been for quite a while, as well as a pretty good (though very different from the book) movie in 2002 (a fine Matt Damon vehicle).  This story was written in either 1980 or 1984 (or even 2010), depending on whether you want to trust my printed version of the book or Google Books (or Amazon --- I guess there's a new printing just out).
The plot is quite ... complex.  Suffice it to say that Robert Ludlum is a pretty damned good writer, in my opinion.  He begins with a mystery, continues into a conundrum, leads you into an action-packed thriller, all the while leaving you with a constant sense of cliffhangerness (another wordicle!!!) and whodunitivity (again!) and at the end makes it all look like a charade.  Holy crap!

Jason Bourne, a.k.a. D--- well, I won't spoil it --- is a spy's spy.  Expert in everything covert, a "chameleon" who can change his look at will.  Knows all of the ins and outs of international intrigue.

The plot twists and turns, but actually does it very well.  Many books overdo this as they try to keep the reader's attention.  Not so here.  Mr Ludlum does very well at adding a whole lot of unknowns throughout the book, but does a very good job of keeping the complexities entertaining yet to a minimum for the reader.

Without diving into the plot itself, which you can get by reading the book (what an idea!) or by reading the many, many spoilers on-line, suffice it to say that if you are a spy-loving intrigue-admiring kind of book lover, then this is absolutely for you.  As soon as I get the chance, I'll begin The Bourne Supremacy.  I've already seen the movie, and it is evidently completely utterly totally different than the book.  Oh well ...

As complex as this book is, I don't fully understand why the movie was made to be so incredibly different.  Perhaps to really do the entire original plot justice they realized that they'd need about 20 hours of movie time, and most people don't want to sit in a theater for that long.  Most people ... and I could be wrong ...

This bookwas, by the way, the subject of another short blog of mine.  Yes, it was a book ...

How should politicians vote?

Marion Barry is one of the most embarrassing people on the face of the planet.  The guy was mayor of Washington, D.C., for I-don't-know-how-long.  OK, the Wikipedia article says 1979-1991.  Then he was busted for cocaine use and possession.  Then he was, believe it or not, re-elected as mayor for another term.  He has pled guilty to tax evasion.  He has been guilty of numerous traffic offenses.  He was, not too long ago, accused of stalking his ex-girlfriend.  The list goes on.  I know, because I have lived in the D.C. area my entire life and I have therefore had to listen to the on-going adventures of this so-called Man of the People as he went from one idiocy to another.

But that is all irrelevant for this posting, as I often do.

Air travel security stupidity

So some jackass tried to blow up a plane during the last hour of flight as it was in-bound to Detroit from Amsterdam on Jesus' birthday.  And what did da Gubment do in response?  What it does best: It overreacted.

This time the TSA has decided that air security will be "unpredictable".  That is, there will be different restrictions in place at different airports.  Several of these "unpredictabilities" (if that is a word? ... another wordicle!) include only allowing each passenger a single carry-on bag (therefore more moola for the airlines in the form of additional checked bags that we get to pay for), not allowing anyone out of their seat during the last hour of flight (i.e. no potty breaks --- Clamp it off!  CLAMP IT OFF!!!!), not allowing any passengers to have anything on their laps during the last hour of flight (oh for those of us with kids --- that'll be fun), and leaving the cabin lights on during take off and landing (uh ... just not sure what sort of sarcasm to inject for this one since it kinda stands on its own in the land of the stupid).

The Left Thumb

I am right-handed.  Therefore I do most things with my right hand, and use my left hand to, sort of, help.  But there are many things for which two hands are necessary.  Like cutting the rest of the onions and chicken for the chicken salad.  I was in the midst of dicing the onion into teenie tiny pieces, being careful as always (uh huh ...) when OUCH!!! I managed to cut into my thumb.  My left thumb.  My "off"-handed thumb, the one I don't use as often as the one I do use.  The one that the pundits say is most likely to be injured because you tend to pay less attention to your "off" hand than you do your "on" hand (if that makes sense).  Details on the blood and gore and band-aids needed (not really that bad) are not important.  What is important is what happens when you lose the use of a thumb, say your "off" thumb.  It makes it very difficult to do small detailed hand-and-finger-intensive things.

Case in point: I had to finish dicing my onion and then move on to cutting up 2 1/4 pounds of chicken (already cooked, luckily) into small pieces.  That is very difficult to do with only nine working unharmed digits and one that is wrapped in a band-aid, the one that is most responsible for holding down the target meat.  Key to this endeavor were:

1) Not putting any pressure on said thumb so as to keep it from rebleeding ("rebleeding": to begin to bleed again ... OK, so I made that one up ... a wordicle!!), and

2) Keeping the injury away from the meat because:
        a. I didn't want food in my blood, and
        b. I didn't want my blood in the food.

Did I mention that this salad was to go to my kids' pot luck Back To School night dinner which was just a few hours away????

All in all, the salad was delicious as always (as evidenced by the fact that it was, very unfortunately, all gone, leaving me none to bring home to eat later on).  And I didn't bother to tell anyone at the dinner about this incident.  So let's just keep this as our little secret, eh?

"Shititism"

"Shititism": The opposite of favoritism.

Thanks to "Men of a Certain Age" last Monday evening.  That was funny.

Philosophy 101: Respect v. Admiration

No, it's not a court battle ...

Dunno why, but a while back this dichotomy (if it is indeed a dichotomy) came to mind.  I was thinking about various people, and it occurred to me that some I respect, some I admire and some I both (great grammar there ...).  And it occurred to me that there definitely IS a difference between the two feelings.  But what is the difference?  Here comes some stream-of-consciousnesses ... I think I'll begin with their "official" definitions (those I like the best, anyway):

Respect = esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal quality or ability: I have great respect for her judgment.

Admiration = a feeling of wonder, pleasure, or approval

At first glance I thought I had it licked.  But with another look, esteem for vs. a feeling of wonder are not all that far apart from one another.  My impression has been that I would rather have respect for someone than an admiration for them.  To me, respect implies that there is something about that person that you really ... uh ... admire.  Hmmm ... I guess I'll have to be careful or else I'll find myself in one of those circular arguments.  A person I respect is someone that has some quality or qualities that I, sometimes, wished that I possessed myself.  Someone who acts just the right way at just the right time, handles situations correctly, says all of the right things.  Someone who has a great deal of knowledge, experience or insight (or a good combination of those) in various issues that are of interest to me.

Counter to this (or perhaps directly in line with it ... we'll see) is admiration.  Someone whom I look up to, perhaps would like to strive to be like in some ways.  AAHHH!  I think I just figured out the difference!

I can admire someone for something that is not a personal quality.   I can admire someone for their position, their financial situation or perhaps something they own (i.e. a nice house or a sweet Harley).  These are tangibles, material items (mostly).  For these types of things, I can admire someone, but not necessarily respect them.  So that is it.  Very interesting, considering the fact that I have always looked at myself as an incredibly materialistic sumbitch (something with which my wife disagrees about me, or so she says).  And yet, here I am saying that I covet, at least at times, intangibles over tangibles.

Huh ... whodathunkit?

Wordicles

I thought I was being really, really smart and intelligent and, mostly, creative.  I just created the term wordicle.  I even put it in the labels section for my last post on "-philes".  But then I Googled the term wordicle and out popped, first thing, https://wordicle.com/ (interesting that it is a secure site ...).  That sucks!  Someone else stole my creativity before I even had a chance to create it!!  That sucks!  Bastards!!!

I actually stole the idea (or so I thought) from a buddy at work who earlier this year, before a bunch of us ended up moving to other offices all over the friggin' place, revelled in the times when several of us would get together and just brainstorm over whatever the topic du jour was.  He coined (or so I thought) the term "smarticles", for those teenie tiny microscopic invisible particles that would fling themselves imperceptibly around our work area, making us all think real good.  He was very disappointed, as was I, as we all took other jobs and moved offices (another story, for another day), and basically did the smarticles in.  In Googling the word "smarticle", I found that he did NOT, indeed, coin it.

While posting my last, I realized that there really does seem to be an abundance of smarticles in and around my brain still, and the term "wordicle" appeared to me, which would describe anything explaining anything related to anything to do with words.  My last, therefore, was a wordicle.

And I have labelled it as such, so's I can now easily link all future wordicle blog posts to each other.

Inconsistent connotations

From Dictionary.com:

con·no·ta·tion: An idea or meaning suggested by or associated with a word or thing

Evidently a word ending in "-phile" connotes a person who loves the thing described at the beginning of that word:

• A bibliophile is a person who loves books
• An Anglophile is a person who loves everything English
• A cinephile loves movies

These are all good things, right?  So why does the word "pedophile" have such a bad connotation, the opposite of the above?  I'd think that all parents are pedophiles.  But no ... for whatever reason, in this case, "pedophile" doesn't mean someone who just loves children; it means a person having pedophilia, the sexual desire for children.  That is not so good.