Monday Funday

Per the template, I rolled into the office at 0650 this morning and fired up the laptop, then MS Outlook, the chosen mail program of our corporate dronage. Email from the boss: No Monday morning staff meeting. He was at the compressor station forty miles north of here.

“Hmph!” thinks I. That leaves me with forty-five or more minutes during which I can accomplish actual work, as opposed to listening to the staff. Accordingly I start structuring my day. An hour later I get out of my chair for a lap around the halls to give my joints some relief. I was engaged in a little conversation in the coffee room when my cellphone rang.

It was the boss. He wanted to know if it was possible that I join him up at the station. Since he IS the boss, I naturally complied.

An hour and forty miles later I was at the station discussing what wasn’t an electrical problem in the classic sense. Seems there’s a possibility that static electricity might have ignited some vapors in a holding tank. I was there to check to see that everything was properly grounded and bonded together in a manner that should preclude the build-up of static electricity. I took a lot of pictures and poked around and arrived at a preliminary conclusion for my report.

It appears that good practices and policies were being followed. Of course, that doesn’t explain what happened, but I know it wasn’t electrical.

Today in History – August 31

1535 – Pope Paul II deposed & excommunicated King Henry VIII over a question of annulment and divorce. Henry says “Feh! You want to run a church, run THAT church. I’m starting my own.” And the Church of England comes into being. Another memorable moment in history precipitated by the ongoing pursuit of the Great Bearded Clam.

1803
– Lewis and Clark start their expedition from Pittsburgh at 11 o clock in the morning. In 1803, that was pretty much the end of civilization. Many politicians in Washington still believe that.

1914 – German General von Kluck decides not to attack Paris. Denies Paris a chance to meet future clientele, goes down in history as the German general who DIDN’T go to Paris.

1939 – Nazi Germany mounts a staged attack on Gleiwitz radio station, giving them an excuse to attack Poland the following day, starting World War II in Europe. Never let a crisis go to waste, and if you don’t have a convenient crisis, INVENT one.

1942 – In Ternopil, western Ukraine, at 4.30 am, German SS organize the first deportation of Jews from Ternopil ghetto to death camp in Belzec, about 5,000 Jews were deported to face death in Belzec. When the Germans captured Ternopil, about 18,000 Jews lived in the city. The horror of REAL Nazis is that 1939-1945 has dozens of sad dates like this where they loaded up entire populations and sent them off to death camps. This is what REAL Nazis did.

1954
– Hurricane Carol (1st major named storm) hits New England, 70 die. FEMA slow to react, Bush widely blamed.

1954 – US Census Bureau forms. In 2009, it is taken over by ACORN.

1971 – Dave Scott becomes 1st person to drive a car on Moon. That’d be AMERICAN astronaut Dave Scott…

1997
– Diana, Princess of Wales and her companion Dodi Al-Fayed and driver Henri Paul died as a result of a car crash in Paris. Hey! It’s a big deal to a lot of women…

1998 – North Korea reportedly launches Kwangmyongsong, its first satellite. Widely assumed to be bullsh*t.

Everybody can’t be Suzie Homemaker

The unique Chrissy talks about her lack of kitchen prowess. Meatloaf in a microwave? Yeeeeech! Actually, she does do a better job on some things, but it takes a special set of ideas to walk in from a day’s work and throw together a hot meal.

I admit to making it though many an evening with a bowl of noodles. I have a stock of instant stuff like ramen and various other oriental packages that will put a tasty something in my stomach. I also tend to make a big batch of whatever I cook on weekends and freeze some. That means that while a pot of rice is cooking, some frozen red beans are thawing, or leftover pot roast, or a little tub of gumbo.

Plus, I learned that there ARE a bunch of things you can do that are half an hour from thought to table, things like pasta alla puttanesca or pasta alla carbonara. That, though, comes with attitude that there HAS to be something good to eat somewhere in the house. Besides, I’m cheap. You pay a premium for somebody else’s cooking, and most of them don’t do as good as me…

The Name Game #207

I awoke to a standard summer Sunday morning, a little on the cooler side, since at 0830 it hadn’t yet reached eighty degrees due mainly to a series of thunderstorms that halted yesterday’s climb past ninety. We expect more of the same today. When it’s summer in Louisiana, eighty-nine degrees as an afternoon high is considered a relief, even if it does come at the cost of saturated humidity levels after the rain.

Anyway, I opened the paper this morning and found that the one big walk-in hospital across the river had reported a total of thirty-five births between August 7 and August 25. Twenty of the new babies came in with the parents not married, and seven of the new mommies didn’t see fit to pick a male member of the human race to call the baby’s daddy although obviously they’ve had some contact with a male member along the way.

We have a few of of the “Honey, the dog at the Scrabble set. I know what to name the baby!” variety:

Marlena H. & Arthur F. present their baby girl, little Quearrah Ann. Imagine you’re a teacher and find this name on your new class roster: “Queer-ah”? “Kwee-air-uh”? Or “Boo”?

Jeff & LeeAnn R. got confused about that whole “first name-last name” thing and gave their daughter a last name for a first name: Morgan Cherie.

Ronald and Unek(!) C. tag their new son with Caelen Jeremiah. Im sure you can find in in the baby name forum with some deep mystical meaning to impart to its recipient, but to the world at large it imparts “stupid parents trying to sound sophisticated.”

Katie M. & El Jerico B. Sr. perpetuate stupidity by naming the baby boy El Jerico Jermiah Jr. Make one up, misspell another. What a boost in life…

Miss Tiffany P. has a new son, little Avant Deshaun. She seems to have forgotten to ask the name of the male progenitor in this transaction.

Miss Diedre M. has a new son, little Austin Raine, demonstrating her ability to remember the names of a Texas city and a weather phenomena. She didn’t remember the name of the baby daddy.

Holly K. & Reagan G. have a new son, little Noah Jurney.

Duke & Amanda B. present their baby boy, little Teigen Lee. Now in German, the “ei” combination is pronounced “eye” and the “ie” combo is pronounced “ee”, so is this “Tee-gan” or “Tie-gan” or “Little Bubba”?

Next we have a few examples of the “Manly Name” group:

George & Candace F. go with the ultimate manly name with their son, Hunter Maxwell.

The same inspiration hits Mindy T. & Christopher B. who name their son Hunter Scott.

Justin & Angie B. present their baby boy, little Coy Fisher. Is that to differentiate him from an “arrogant fisher”?

Two hunters and a fisher, though. Not bad, huh?

There are a few of the, “yeah it COULD be a name if we spelled it different” crowd:

Tabitha R. & David B. present their baby girl, little Makenzie Layne, simultaneously chopping up a good Scottish name and a terrain feature.

Garibreon (!) M. & Daniel P. have a new son, little Kameron Joseph. The “K” keeps him form being confused with a hurricane-ravaged Louisiana town.

And lastly, let’s see what happens when you’re trying to make a really classy and sophisticated name and you run out of letters at the end of the alphabet:

Miss Marla L. has a new baby girl. A couple of apostrophes and extra capital letters make up for the fact that the little darlin’ doesn’t name a baby daddy, the so her daughter will go through life as Ja’Myreah De’Shontae.

Miss Na’Tasha V. saw the stabilizing impact that having punctuation in her name had in her own life, so she gives her little girl the same boost, tagging her with Allasin Da’Laydra.

Kristin S. & Gerald B. present their baby boy, complete with a brand new apostrophe, little Dyontae’ Markelle.

Blake & Christine W. ran out of ideas after the first name of their new daughter, so they pulled out one of the “uhhhhh’s” of modern naming, giving us little Naomi (not bad!) Denee’. The apostrophe makes it look like it was intentional.

Kelsey D. & Sirtelli D. tag their baby girl with Siriah Rye’kel.

And I guess that we end up with a “Name of the Week” this week. That’d be little Ja’Myreah De’Shontae. And we’ll see you next week!

Today in History – August 30

1146 – European leaders outlaw crossbow intending to ending war for all time. Except for longbows, lances, pikes, battle flails, etc., etc., ad infinitum.

1836 – The city of Houston is founded by Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen. “Houston” was a lot snappier-sounding than “mosquito-ridden bayou”.

1862
– in the War of Northern Aggression, the Battle of 2nd Manassas, recorded by the North as the 2nd Battle of Bull Run ends as General Pope is defeated by General Lee.

1918
– Fanny Kaplan shoots and seriously injures Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. This, along with the assassination of Bolshevik senior official Moisei Uritsky days earlier, prompts the decree for Red Terror.

“To overcome of our enemies we must have our own socialist militarism. We must carry along with us 90 million out of the 100 million of Soviet Russia’s population. As for the rest, we have nothing to say to them. They must be annihilated.”

“Do not look in the file of incriminating evidence to see whether or not the accused rose up against the Soviets with arms or words. Ask him instead to which class he belongs, what is his background, his education, his profession. These are the questions that will determine the fate of the accused. That is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror.

And that’s how a handful of radicals gain control of a nation.

1939 – Isoroku Yamamoto appointed supreme commander of Japanese fleet. A couple of years later, he attacks Pearl Harbor.

1956 – Lake Pontchartrain Causeway opens. Longest bridge in the world. Unfortunately, one end is in New Orleans, making it roughly equivalent to a concrete enema pipe…

1979 – Pres Carter attacked by a rabbit on a canoe trip in Plains Ga. This says a lot about the quality of this man’s presidency…

What do you call

A cow with two legs shorter than the other two?
Lean beef

A Chinese guy with one leg shorter than the other?
Irene

A man in the sea with no arms and legs?
Bob

A guy at the front door with no arms and legs?
Matt

A guy hanging on a wall?
Art

A guy in a heated pool with no arms and legs?
Stew

How about a guy in a pile of leaves?
Rustle…

And the guy stuffed in a mailbox?
Bill…

Or the two guys hanging in a Window?
Curt and Rod.

Four years ago

It was Monday morning. We all got to the office, I before 0700, and got started lining up things for the morning routine.

The top subject of the conversation was Hurricane Katrina. She’d slammed into the Gulf Coast at the connection between Louisiana and Mississippi in the night. We’d gotten only an increase in breeze out of the deal.

Laptops were fired up on various desks as we looked at the news. The original reports were that New Orleans had once again dodged a bullet. Initial new videos showed the citizenry leaving their houses and looking at minor wind damage.

I figured that scene would presage multiple news conferences from our governess, “Crying Kathleen” Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray “Where’s mah mf’in’ buses” Nagin as they ascribed the city’s miraculous survival to their superior planning skillz and the ongoing success of dimmocrat administrations in New Orleans. You cannot convince me that those news conferences would NOT have been held. They might have been ignored, but they would have been held.

Then the first reports came in that there were levee breaches.

The rest, as the saying goes, is history. Twisted, distorted, colored, lied about, but history.

The dimmocrats had been looking long for another hammer with which to beat George Bush, and it had just blown in off the Gulf of Mexico.

It mattered not that New Orleans had ignored its own published emergency plans. It mattered not that federal law prohibited the engagement of the armed forces until a request had come from a state governor and that our governess was circling the drain like a turd in a toilet bowl. It didn’t matter that the majority of the people left in New Orleans wouldn’t move out of the way of an on-coming train without a government check and a free ride.

It was George Bush’s fault.

FEMA? That’s the feddle gummint. You see how well FEMA worked? They tried. Through red tape and their own regulations and using real human beings with the standard set of shortcomings and foibles, FEMA tried. But they’re the federal government. Yeah, the same bunch that Obama and the Left want to run your health care.

If you want some contemporary commentary from MY perspective, then browse my archives over there on the sidebar.

Now you’d think that with the spotlight on New Orleans, the place would have starting toeing the line. You’d be wrong. The city government is STILL a morass of graft and incompetence. The city police department is STILL unable to get a handle on the highest murder rate in the nation. Any work done there is STILL tied up in a bureaucratic nightmare. Well, it’s a nightmare if you’re trying to get work done. for the city government, it’s a paradise of lifetime POSITIONS, a substantial salary and all you can steal.

Hurricane Katrina did break up a big dimmocrat voting bloc as the denizens of the hives of the Ninth Ward and other enclaves were dispersed to the four winds. The Louisiana Dimmocrat Party cried real tears, not over all the lives disrupted by the evacuation, but the fact that no longer would they be able to run schoolbuses into the Ninth Ward to put their pets in office, such luminaries as “Katrina Mary” Landrieu and “Crying Kathleen” Blanco.

Katrina kicked over the rotting log in New Orleans and showed the world what many of us already knew, that every large city has a rotten core that is kept alive on government subsidies, and that the removal of the civilizing influences of a police department will have that population break completely down in 24 hours. We already knew about “gratitude” in those places. The rest of the country got to see that gratitude ended the day after that last government check was cashed.

And now we have that same “Katrina” mentality in the highest offices in the nation.

Today in History – August 29

1793 – Slaves in French colony of Saint Domingue (Haiti) freed. The French Revolution comes to Haiti, decapitates the ruling French, and Haiti goes on to become a green jewel in the paradise of the Caribbean. Right?

1831 – Michael Faraday discovers electromagnetic induction. It’s powerful and mysterious and provides me with a neat career…

1885 – Gottlieb Daimler patents the world’s first motorcycle.

1914Arizonian is first vessel to arrive in SF via Panama Canal instead of that months-long journey down and around the tip of South America.

1949 – Soviet atomic bomb project: The Soviet Union tests its first atomic bomb, known as First Lightning or Joe 1, at Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan. On the same day in 1953, they pop their first hydrogen bomb.

1982
– 38 degrees F – lowest temperature ever recorded in Cleveland in August. Some of that ‘global warming’.

1991
– Supreme Soviet suspends all activities of the Soviet Communist Party. 2008 – Putin says he don’t need no stinkin’ party to be the dictator… Barack Obama says “Why didn’t **I** think of that?”

2005 – Hurricane Katrina devastates much of the U.S. Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle, killing more than 1,836 and causing over $115 billion in damage. What? It hit MORE than those poor people in New Orleans? Where’s mah FEMA check?

Old people…

An elderly gentleman….
Had serious hearing problems for a number of years. He went to the doctor and the doctor was able to have him fitted for a set of hearing aids that allowed the gentleman to hear 100%
The elderly gentleman went back in a month to the doctor and the doctor said, ‘Your hearing is perfect. Your family must be really pleased that you can hear again.’
The gentleman replied, ‘Oh, I haven’t told my family yet.
I just sit around and listen to the conversations. I’ve changed my will three times!’

Two elderly gentlemen from a retirement centre were sitting on a bench under a tree when one turns to the other and says: ‘Slim, I’m 83 years old now and I’m just full of aches and pains. I know you’re about my age. How do you feel?’
Slim says, ‘I feel just like a newborn baby.’
‘Really!? Like a newborn baby!?’
‘Yep. No hair, no teeth, and I think I just wet my pants.’

An elderly couple had dinner at another couple’s house, and after eating, the wives left the table and went into the kitchen.
The two gentlemen were talking, and one said, ‘Last night we went out to a new restaurant and it was really great. I would recommend it very highly.’
The other man said, ‘What is the name of the restaurant?’
The first man thought and thought and finally said, ‘What is the name of that flower you give to someone you love?
You know… The one that’s red and has thorns.’
‘Do you mean a rose?’
‘Yes, that’s the one,’ replied the man. He then turned towards the kitchen and yelled, ‘Rose, what’s the name of that restaurant we went to last night?’

Hospital regulations require a wheel chair for patients being discharged. However, while working as a student nurse, I found one elderly gentleman already dressed and sitting on the bed with a suitcase at his feet, who insisted he didn’t need my help to leave the hospital.
After a chat about rules being rules, he reluctantly let me wheel him to the elevator.
On the way down I asked him if his wife was meeting him.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘She’s still upstairs in the bathroom changing out of her hospital gown.’

A senior citizen said to his eighty-year old buddy:
‘So I hear you’re getting married?’
‘Yep!’
‘Do I know her?’
‘Nope!’
‘This woman, is she good looking?’
‘Not really.’
‘Is she a good cook?’
‘Naw, she can’t cook too well.’
‘Does she have lots of money?’
‘Nope! Poor as a church mouse.’
‘Well, then, is she good in bed?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why in the world do you want to marry her then?’
‘Because she can still drive!’

Three old guys are out walking.
First one says, ‘Windy, isn’t it?’
Second one says, ‘No, it’s Thursday!’
Third one says, ‘So am I. Let’s go get a beer.’

A man was telling his neighbor, ‘I just bought a new hearing aid. It cost me four thousand dollars, but it’s state of the art. It’s perfect.’
‘Really,’ answered the neighbor . ‘What kind is it?’
‘ Twelve thirty.’

Morris, an 82 year-old man, went to the doctor to get a physical.
A few days later, the doctor saw Morris walking down the street with a gorgeous young woman on his arm.
A couple of days later, the doctor spoke to Morris and said, ‘You’re really doing great, aren’t you?’
Morris replied, ‘Just doing what you said, Doc: ‘Get a hot mamma and be cheerful.”
The doctor said, ‘I didn’t say that. I said, ‘You’ve got a heart murmur; be careful.’

A little old man shuffled slowly into an ice cream parlor and pulled himself slowly, painfully, up onto a stool.. After catching his breath, he ordered a banana split.
The waitress asked kindly, ‘Crushed nuts?’
‘No,’ he replied, ‘Arthritis.’

Today in History – August 28

1565 – Oldest city in the US, St Augustine Fla, established. Immediately overrun by snowbirds…

1830 – The Tom Thumb presages the first railway service in the United States.

1837 – Pharmacists John Lea & William Perrins manufactures Worcester Sauce. Life is good!

1962 – 22 inches (55.9 cm) rainfall at Hackberry, Louisiana (state record). Hackberry is about fifteen miles south of me.

1963
– Martin Luther King Jr’s “I have a dream speech” at Lincoln Memorial in front of a crowd of 200,000. Poor, poor deluded man. Who’s gonna believe that “they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” nonsense?

1981
– The National Centers for Disease Control announce a high incidence of Pneumocystis and Kaposi’s sarcoma in gay men. Soon, these will be recognized as symptoms of an immune disorder, which will be called AIDS. At that point the spread can be prevented by sitting on your butt and keeping your mouth shut…