Category Humor

Intelligently speaking

Michael 13 Comments

Somebody out there please note in the comments section if you have NOT heard ANYTHING about Artificial Intelligence written ANYWHERE ANYTIME since the beginning of this year. Oh My Gigabytes you can’t open a web page, a journal, a newspaper, an e-zine, and OG magazine, an ANYTHING without some reference to AI. AI wrote this, AI didn’t write this, AI picked this song list, AI can go screw itself. Arrggh!

First of all, those old enough to remember “The Jetsons,” isn’t this what we dreamed of? We wake up and a robot picks out our clothes, another makes our breakfast, there’s one offering us the morning AI written newspaper, and then off to our self-flying cars, whisking us to work where we push a button and a robot punches us in, and another prints out the day’s workflow completed by a series of techno bots. All before our morning coffee break.

If you’re concerned the robots are planning an uprising and are after your job, house, spouse, or pet mouse, listen up. They aren’t. But just in case, I say we get in front of the issue and work out a task list they can start with. For instance:

AI mediated email spam filters. Clearly deciphering “***L-A-S-T-C-H-A-N-C-E before we !SUSPEND! your account***” as a suspicious missive is too difficult for the unintelligent spam filters that come with our email providers. I bet if an AI bot can write tomorrow’s weather forecast, it can predict bad things will happen if a human opens that email.

AI mediated traffic signals. The next time you are stopped at a traffic light, look up. Up there where the lights are hanging. Yes, there. You will see a plethora, or a lot even, of doo-dads that read license plates, count cars going by, adjust the light brightness based on the ambient light, and hold pigeons up (crows in rural areas). But they can’t tell that I’m the only car there and within 3 blocks in any direction, idling away, waiting out the full 2 minute cycle before I can proceed. Clearly, we need a more intelligent traffic signal handler. While we’re out there on the road, it also would be nice if those signs on the highways that tell you it’s 2 miles to the next exit with food can tell you if the line at the drive thru is also 2 miles.

AI mediated laundry centers (also know as expensive washers and dryers sold in sets). I have said this before, the only instruction Americans can be counted to follow is “Dry Clean Only” and that’s only if they can decode the hieroglyphs that are taking over printed instructions. It was hard enough finding the tabs and making out handling instructions printed in light gray on white tags when they were written with words. You know: “cold water like colors lay flat to dry do not iron do not bleach do not wear to grandmas house are you sure these don’t make your butt look fat.” Now we have a picture of a highball glass with wavy lines in it and a slash through it. There might very well be a translation guide in the washer instruction book but that’s one of the instructions we don’t read so just give us an AI washer that can figure it out for us.

Okay. Now I think I’ll go fill a highball glass highway with bourbon, top it with more bourbon, and have enough of those until everything looks wavy while my robot vacuum cleaner picks up after me. Have a good day!

We make important choices every day and anyone of them, even the ones that may seem insignificant at the time, can be life changing. In Uplift! at ROAMcare.org we suggest treating them all as if they are. Go on and click it. It’s only a 3 minute read.

C6D09828-72CB-4296-8003-CEA6E02D9D5E

Ad Wars – Holiday edition

Michael 7 Comments

I am so looking forward to tomorrow, it is palpable! Feel it in the air! Capture its essence on the wind! Yes, I’m talking about Holiday Advertisement Armistice! We can all breathe a sigh of relief!! For a day or two.

I know I’m not the only one who can tell the season by the ads on TV and now on line too. Fragrances? If it’s snowing outside we must be coming up on Christmas. If there are birds singing it’s getting close to Mothers Day. Otherwise, you better have a good deodorant if you want to smell good. Televisions, really big televisions and power tools? Fathers Day will soon be here with the tools needed to build a world class man cave and the electronics to fill it. Caribbean resorts flooding the airways? We must getting close to Thanksgiving so we can plan for some warm sunny days on white sand and leave the white snow behind. And jewelry? Clearly Valentine’s Day approaches. Oh there might be some token pieces in May for Moms Day, and Christmas is always good for a nice necklace, but they pale to the brilliance of the gems you find on air during the first two weeks of February.

Personally, I’m getting sick of finding pictures on diamonds the size of baby heads mounted on rings of the shiniest metals retouching can allow in my Instagram feed. Maybe I’m in the minority but I wouldn’t even consider proposing, or want to be proposed to, on February 14, January 1, December 25, or my intended’s birthday. Show a little originality! Make it a moment that will always be remembered for the special occasion that it is. It should be a special day only those two share. In 40 years when she turns to he and says, “Do you remember when you asked me to marry you?” the answer shouldn’t be, “Duh, yeah…Valentine’s Day. I remember cuz it was right after the Super Bowl. That reminds me. We’re out of beer. [Burp!].”

But then what do I know. I’ll be the one spending Valentine’s Day with my therapist and then going to the neighborhood pub for the Tuesday hamburger lunch special before heading home to check and make sure the ring I bought back then is still in its case, in the back of the sock drawer, just in case someday (but not Valentine’s Day) she changes her mind.

And I’m looking forward to a few days of respite before images of green milkshakes clog up Instagram.

We all owe something to someone for our existence. We explore how we repay them in Uplift! On ROAMcare.org.

C4DA0FC0-0C30-41CA-B3D7-F4BC0AD4A125

Beyond a shadow of a doubt

Michael 8 Comments

He’s on his way. Just four more days until Groundhog Day 2023! This entire blog could be dedicated to Groundhog Day and the other 51 weeks be just filler material. Actually, it could be dedicated to the Groundhog, Phil, the one, the only, Punxsutawney Phil.

Not a year has gone by that I hadn’t written something of Phil and/or his exploits. At least I don’t think so. You can search “Groundhog Day” if you’re really that interested.  And if you haven’t read the 10 or 12 posts that will pop up there, you should. There’s a wealth of information there. Why, two years ago I even wrote a Groundhog Day carol.

Groundhog Day lovers aren’t known for assiduously adhering to the facts when it comes to our favorite rodent. We are known for our unwavering support for the little furry guy. Phil gets all kinds of non-respect. Meteorologists (the science guys and the TV people) don’t like him (just because he’s more accurate than the science guys and more popular than the TV people). People who don’t like winter (because he predicts a longer winter way more often than an early spring (137-20)), don’t like him. People who want an early spring don’t like him (see previous sentence). Southerners don’t like him (apparently some Georgian poser by the unlikely name of Beauregard gets the confederate vote). But that’s okay because the 42 quadrillion of us who do like him love him, and we love him a lot. How could anyone not love Punxsutawney Phil?  A furry woodland creature not known for building dams, outsmarting waskly hunters, or becoming Daniel Boone’s hat, gets more than his 15 minutes of anthropomorphic fame each February 2 with the power to captivate us mere mortals more than any other animal alive.

So what will this year bring? I’ve said it before, I’m not the prodigious prognosticator that Phil is, but … Considering our hollow trees are a mere 90 miles apart, we are working with the same weather, and this year’s weather in Western Pennsylvania has been anything but predictable. The average temperature has been higher than normal and the average precipitation has been lower. But on the day when it’s been cold, it’s been COLD and on the days it’s been wet and snowy, it’s been WE – well, you get the idea. I say we throw all that together with the fact the Lunar New Year heralding the start of the Spring Festival was so early this year, and Phil can look around all he wants, but he won’t see his shadow and we will thus have an early spring. Yay! Or not.

Is the best way to help, support, and encourage yourself to help, support, and encourage others? We answered that question last week on Uplift! on ROAMcare.org. Read all we had to say.

SAMSUNG

 

Did you ever wonder

Michael 7 Comments

Things I’ve sat and wondered about this week.

Winter is the coldest season in the northern hemisphere. It’s also when the earth is closest to the sun.

How many “new year days” are there in a year? If we celebrated the “new year” 23 days ago, what was the “new year” that started yesterday? There are actually 26 different days that begin a new year around the world. Some are solar, some lunar, some lunisolar, some religious, some an arbitrary date. One thing that is constant, there are all cause for celebration and they are all celebrated!

An extra tidbit about the Lunar New Year, even though it is called “lunar,” it is actually lunisolar in that both the position and movement of the sun and the moon determine the beginning of the year. Although it is generally associated with Asian cultures, not all Asian communities will celebrate it on the same day every year. Because of the great physical size of the continent, in some years there is enough distance between major Asian centers that the position of the moon will be in different phases on the same day and result in the new moon observed on different days. Thus there will be a different determination for beginning the new year. Also, not all Asian communities identify their years the same. For example, this year the Chinese are celebrating the Year of the Rabbit while in Vietnam it is recognized as the Year of the Cat.

How much does our brain do without telling us? You may know a favorite hobby of mine is painting. I add a heart into every piece I paint. It is my way of telling whoever sees it (whom ever?) (whatever!) that they are loved. Often when I finish a painting I will set it aside for a few days, then hang I up and take a good look at the finished piece. And often find several hearts throughout it that I hadn’t realized I had painted.

48F08140-7DF0-475D-80A3-93C79BDCF35F

Can you find the heart?

While I am thinking about painting, did you know that black and white are not colors? To a pure physicist they aren’t. (And if you are a pure physicist and you say they are, just let me have this one please.) Colors are colors because of the amount of reflected light our eyes perceive. The different colors are formed by the different wavelengths light emits as a result of that reflection through whatever the light is passing. White is the presence of all of the possible reflected wavelengths the light may take on, and black is the absence of any reflected light.

Another interesting “color question” is, if there are only 3 primary colors, why are there 7 colors in a rainbow? The three primary colors can be combined to form the 3 secondary colors. In theory, these are the basic “building blocks” of all other colors. If you look at the light as it passes through a prism you can easily identify the primary colors (red, yellow, and blue) and three secondary colors (orange, green, and purple). But they are not perfect divisions of color.  Each color bleeds into its neighbor, the secondary colors between the primary colors. We see seven colors in the rainbow because between primary blue and the ultra violet wavelength where all light is absent resulting in black, blue goes through two stages or hues, cyan and indigo, before turning purple. A rainbow just as easily could be considered 6 colors but what would Roy B. Giv say about that?

A few years ago I considered changing the name of the blog. The Real Reality Show Blog was born on Nov 7, 2011 (990 posts ago) during the hay day of reality TV shows which bore no semblance to reality. I wanted a blog that was reflective of reality, at least my realty, and thus the unwieldy title was chosen. I suppose a number of times I wished I had an easier to remember, to say, or to type blog identifier that still reflected who I am. A while ago I thought I had come across the perfect description. Given that the posts are the ramblings of all that I am, I should title the blog what I am, and thus I thought, what am I? Aha. I am a single white male. And the stories are of a kind that a single white male would encounter. I thought that was a perfectly descriptive blog name. A Single White Male. And then I thought, but what would the email from WordPress to the author of a blog that I chose to follow read? Why it would read, “Dear [Blog owner], Congratulations, A Single White Male is now following you.” Umm, no.

Did you ever notice, when I do one of these brain dump type posts, the entries get longer as we get further along with it?

Have a great week! Next week I’ll try to be more thought provoking.

There are many sources of help but help gets us only so far. Don’t expect others to do for you. Ultimately, you have to do the work. We talked about this last week in Uplift! on ROAMcare.org. Read what we said about it here.

And they’re off!

Michael 8 Comments

Well, 2023 sure came in like a bang! There have already been so many unexpected, unusual, unconventional, unplanned happenings happen, that if the whole year keeps going the way it started, I figure the earth will explode sometime around June.

For example, last week Congress met four days in a row! I tried to find the last time that happened and as near as I can figure, I came up with a week in April 1835.

For instance, just like prescription drug insurance deductibles reset at the first of the year, apparently so do e-mail spam filters. I hadn’t been congratulated for winning a Home Depot gift card, iPhone 14, the inside news for smart good traders, or the last space heater you’ll ever want since last January. Now I’m tagging at least a dozen emails like for exile to the Junk Folder.

For instasample, one day last week I was scrolling my way through the Instagram feed when I paused at one of the random posts they somehow figured I’d be interested in. Actually I was stopped there so I could back scroll to the TSA post I missed. (If you aren’t following the TSA on Instagram you really should be – they are the Number Pun site on the Interwebs, but I digress.) Anyway… the spot that I stopped at was a fitness app of some sort. I’m not sure why it thought I would be interested in that but because I stopped, it is now a certainty that every third post I see should be for a piece of fitness equipment, gym membership, fitness tracker, or athleisureware (or whatever they call call now what we used to call sweat suits back in the day).

For one more time, by January 2, TSA officers confiscated the first gun, which was loaded, in the carryon of a passenger attempting to enter the secure zone of the local airport. You would think on January 2 at the local airport would be the first gun confiscated in all the airports. No, no! It was actually the third weapon pulled from carryon baggage across these freedom loving USs. That’s a little below the weekly average of last year’s record confiscations of 6,301 handguns (88% loaded) but not a bad start. So far, 100% of the guns confiscated have been loaded, and 100% the passenger excuses have been “I forgot!”

And for the final ferinstance, why is it that the Christmas decorations I put away don’t fit into the same totes as they came out of! Sheesh!

Happy New Year. At least I really hope so.

This year resolve to focus on making yourself wealthy without spending a dollar and strengthen yourself without lifting a weight. Take 3 minutes and read how you can start a cascade of good acts at Uplift! on ROAMcare.org.

9665EA75-A69C-4667-95ED-ABE0A61D7934

Sincerely yours

Michael 12 Comments

Maybe it’s because of the last few posts I’ve written between the two blogs that had to do with letter writing or maybe because of all the Christmas cards I wrote last week and are receiving and reading this week. Or maybe it’s because I was telling myself to start taking my own advice and in the new year to write real letters to real people. Whatever reason started my musings, I’ve been thinking about the way people sign off on their cards and letters.

Email got the world on the fast track of communication back in a different century. It’s been with us since the early 70s but businesses really took to it as a means of information sharing in the 1990s. Before the calendar turned that really big page onto a new millennium, just about every business in the world was conducting business correspondence by email, and tens of millions of individuals had signed up for personal email addresses.

The earliest email users still followed pretty formal letter writing styles with proper greetings, proper punctuation, full words, and even closings just like, well, just like mail. I know because I was among the earliest email users getting my first exposure to it in 1984. An obvious draw of email was the speed by which ideas could be exchanged. The rapid returns and replies took a toll on some of the niceties. “Yours truly” plus your full name became “Yours” and maybe your initials to just your initials. Today with the ability to pre-format signature blocks, an email is likely to be closed with more information that what might have been on a 1970s business letterhead! But when it comes time for the sender to actually close an email, we’re still struggling with things like “Yours,” or “Best,” or for the higher up corporate officers, “Regards.”

All this has seeped into personal letter writing, such as what still might exist. I look at some of the cards I’ve gotten this week and of the ones that have more than a “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays,” most senders added word or two, usually “Love,” but a couple “Soon” (one with a !), a few “Take care,” and one “Blessings.” (I liked that, and appreciated it too!) But if you told someone they had to use more than 2 words to close a letter, a real letter, not just a card, how would they do it? What would you write? 

If I am going to start writing letters next year I better get on the ball now and figure out how I’m going to close them. What will be my personal sign off? “And you must now consider me, as, dear [sir or madam], your most obliged, and most humble servant,” has a wonderful sound to it but alas, Samual Johnson used it so often it’s become downright trite. But it is certainly better than a curt “Yours truly” or even a “Very truly yours.” But no, I need something somewhere between them.

Some ways I’ve decided I will not end my letters are:

  • Sincerely yours (Of course I’m being sincere! I am writing, aren’t I?)
  • Cordially yours (Of course, I’m being cordial! I am writing, aren’t I?)
  • Affectionately yours (Of course I’m being affectionate. I am writing … oh, never mind.)
  • Respectfully (Really?)
  • Hugs and kisses (Cute, but not for everybody.)

In the running are:

  • Always and forever, profoundly and affectionately, your dear friend
  • With sincere best wishes for your health and happiness
  • Stay well and happy, your dear, loving friend
  • Please forgive my horrible letter writing

I’ll get back to you about what I decide. Until then,

     I remain your humble and faithful servant, yours truly.

If you could do it all over again, would you? Could you? Read why we say you shouldn’t even have to ask if you take time now to review where you are in life and ready a reset for the new year in the latest blog post at ROAMcare.org.

EF087496-CFB3-4FCD-8FF5-878B1B21E9FC

Numberology

Michael 13 Comments

Is it live or is it…you remember that. Everybody who’s anybody can finish that line. But how about, is it a number or a numeral?

The same internet search came up with these two answers:

  • “A numeral is a symbol or name that stands for a number. Examples: 3, 49 and twelve are all numerals. So the number is an idea, the numeral is how we write it.”
  • “Number is expressed with digits, while a numeral is a word describing a number. For example: four is an example of a numeral and its digit representation: 4 is a number.”

I’m not going to identify who said what because I’m a nice guy and I don’t want to start an internet war. But come on guys, this is a little basic math, versus arithmetic. If we can’t even figure out what makes a numeral a numeral, or is that a number, how can we hope to understand numerology?

Well, just because I really do have that kind of time, I ran another internet search and turned up this definition of numerology.

Numerology is the study of particular numbers, such as a person’s date of birth, in the belief that they may have special significance in a person’s life.

If that’s the case, that it is “the study of particular numbers” then why isn’t it numberology? Hmm? There are sites on the internet that can give you a daily numerology reading. But I ask you, yes you the numerologists of the world, oh why, yes why, do I need a daily reading if my birthdate never changes? Hmm?

Who remembers dream books? Have a dream, look it up, and see into the future. The biggest draw to the dream books of yore were the dream numbers.  Aha!! Numbers again! Yes, have a dream, look it up, see what number it represents, and find out what number to play in the daily lottery. Of course everybody has different dreams and different dreams mean different numbers, but only one lottery result is announced per day. Just how do you account for that, numerologists of the word? Hmm? Maybe because they should have been playing numerals instead!

To be perfectly honest, I could case less about numerology but something rattled around in my brain a few weeks ago when I saw this on my dashboard.

ABFCA1A1-5418-4F52-94DD-E8500AAE858B

What was really significant about this was it happened right at startup, before I had the car in gear and out in traffic, when I could actually take out my phone and snap a picture of it. And I did! And I got to thinking, all those twos, or actually all those 2s must mean something.

Now as I said, I could case less about numerology but these were numbers. Maybe I was on to something when I brought up numberology. Who case what the numerologists say, what does the number mean? So I did some research and dug this up.

Number 22222 is a reassuring message that wonderful things are on the way if you maintain your emotional stability and keep your attitude positive.

Hmm. “Wonderful things are on the way.”

Let’s add a little context. As I said, this was a few weeks ago, actually a month ago, just about the time the PowerBall was sitting at $2,000,000,000.00. That’s a bunch of zeros but it starts with a 2! And the tickets cost $2. And I was staring at the number 22222 taunting me with “wonderful things.”  Now I ask you, what things are more wonderful than dollar bills when they add up to 2 billion of them?

So, I took 2 dollar bills out of my pocket, and then I reached in a second time and took out 2 more dollar billers, and I bought 2 tickets for 2 chances at 2 billion dollars based on the magic number reassuring me of wonderful things, 22222. And it worked! Yes, oh ye of little faith, it worked! On both of those tickets, those 2 tickets, those 2 chances at 2 billion dollars, were 2 matching numbers to the winning numbers drawn. Sigh. Two. Err, 2.

You know what you get for matching 2 numbers? A receipt for $2.

Twice.

Don’t wait for January to make resolutions. Resolve to do something positive right now, while we still have a whole month to get a running start on a Happy New Year. The goal is to remember there really are good things that happen to us every day, and then to remember them every day! Read more about this in our blog at ROAMcare.org. See you there!

The sort of annual way too talked about Christmas movie controversy and why I’m right again

Michael 12 Comments

It’s the Monday after Thanksgiving and that can mean only one thing. Well it could mean billions and billions of things but if you’re here (and clearly you are) it means it’s time for this year’s My Favorite Christmas Movie post. If it’s my favorite why do we need to rehash this every year? Because, “I say my current favorite because like children there can be no real favorite among Christmas movies. The favorite is the one making you smile today or remember yesterday, the one encouraging a perfect alternative to an imperfect world and providing an escape from the ordinary.” –Me, 12/5/2019. One more thing. It’s the sort of annual because I missed a year here and there. Maybe more than here and there but I’ve done a lot of them!

This year I started watching Christmas movies early and I’ve already seen close to a dozen of them. And only one of them had “Christmas” in the title. And that got me wondering, how many movies have been released as Christmas movies and included the word Christmas in the title? There are plenty of movies and you often know from the title you are going to be in a holiday themed show, but in the grand scheme of things, precious few come right out and mention the word “Christmas” or even “Holiday” and leave no doubt. (Just so there is no doubt, Twentieth Century Fox and John McTierman could have shimmied out on that limb and title the 1988 disaster of a flick “Die Hard on Christmas Eve” and it still wouldn’t be a Christmas movie.)

“Miracle on 34th Street” could be about any inexplicable event happening in New York City in December but it’s pretty clear we’re talking Santa, and “Elf” could be about cookie bakers living in hollow trees but again Santa clarifies that point. The majority of Christmas movie titles themselves can be addressing almost anything. “Love, Actually” could be a garden variety romcom. “The Polar Express” might be an Agatha Christie mystery gone north. “Home Aline” could be about the plight of inner city latch key kids, “The Apartment” might be a prequel to “Rent,” and “Meet Me in St. Louis” a travelogue. Even my favorite from last year, which is still a favorite in any year, “Remember the Night” might be about the sinking of the Titanic if your memory is just a little faulty.

So I did some research and I tried to dig up all the Christmas movies with Christmas in the title. Naturally I mean theatrical releases, not Hallmark or Lifetime or any other movie mill cable network holiday offerings. It’s not an exhaustive list but a list until I became exhausted by it. (And you won’t find “Black Christmas” and “Christmas Evil” among them because even though they have Christmas in the title, see the Die Hard in Christmas Eve explanation above. And unfortunately you will not find “A Charlie Brown Christmas” among them either because it was released directly to television.)

  • A Christmas Carol (all 20-some versions)
  • A Christmas Story
  • A Christmas Story 2 (really, from 2012)
  • A Christmas to Remember (I didn’t)
  • A Muppet Christmas Carol
  • Christmas in Connecticut
  • Christmas in July
  • Christmas with the Kranks
  • National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
  • The Nightmare Before Christmas
  • White Christmas

Almost all worthy to carry the word Christmas in their titles, there are a couple that stand out for me. “Christmas in Connecticut” stars Barbara Stanwyck and that’s never a bad thing, and “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” made moose head egg nog cups complete with antlers THE gift in the early 1990s. But of them all, my favorite Christmas movie with Christmas in the title has to be “White Christmas.” It has singing, dancing, comedy, romance, a gruff old guy and a gruffer old gal. It’s one of only two movies with Vera-Ellen that I can name off the top of my head (“On the Town” is the other), and it’s just plain fun. How can you not look at the final scene when the wall opens and the first snowfall of the year is blanketing the Vermont countryside and not smile about it.  

What was that I said? “The favorite is the one making you smile today or remember yesterday.” I’d say “White Christmas” does a little of both. 

Merry Christmas Movies everyone!

5DB839A7-E3F0-4C69-8E44-F98C6FE4AF9B

There aren’t any post about Christmas movies but there are lots of articles on refreshing your enthusiasm for life and finding the motivation to push through the day everyday at ROAMcare.org. I’d be honored if you were to visit.

Some things I don’t know that I don’t know why I don’t know them

Michael 4 Comments

You would think if I got to be as old as I got to be, I’d have figured out most of what it is that got me here. Nope. There are still way too many things I don’t know. Some of the are just beyond my grasp and I now take it for granted that I’ll never know how radios work without wires and why yellow and blue make green. But some things shouldn’t be that hard and I still can’t figure them out. For instance:

Why does only one shoelace come undone in the middle of a long walk. Both feet are going the same places and the same paces. Both shoes and both laces are made of the same materials. The temperature and humid at my left foot are pert near identical to those at my right. All things being equal, why are the laces? What makes one slip its knot and not the other?

Why does a cracker spread with peanut butter always fall face down when it slides off the plate to get away from its cracker cousins? In a similar vein, have you ever noticed when you pour a bagful of wrapped candy pieces into a candy jar, they always land with the pretty shining label face down leaving the tacky loose edged wrapper “tails” facing up and daring you to turn each one over?

Why do microwave ovens at work, hospital and garage waiting rooms, and other public venues always smell of popcorn and pizza? I once was involved in the opening of a hospital. Brand new facility.  New paint on new walls, new tile on new floors, new tables and chairs in new break rooms, and a brand new microwave right out of the box. And even that one smelled of popcorn and pizza when it was opened the first time!

Why does my email spam filter redirect newsletters to which I’ve subscribed to the junk email folder but allows ##HEARING_AID_ADVICE ‼️ and **Prostrate Help is Here**  through to the inbox unmolested?

Who is Pete and why do we keep doing things for his sake?

And the biggest puzzle of all: Why do people go to the grocery store wearing camouflage? I’m not talking about military persons completing a household chore in their way home at the end of their duty day. I mean the guy who closet brush with the army is watching The Dirty Dozen on his favorite football team’s bye week Sunday? Hey fella! Those animals in the meat case are already dead. You don’t have to sneak up on them. Hmm. You know what? On second thought, I don’t want to know the answer to this one.

 

What do you do with a day that’s cloudy and gray? Don’t wait for tomorrow; tomorrow is a long way away. Start a new day today! The sun that will come out tomorrow is already up there. All you have to do is let the light in.

This is really a good one. If you haven’t been there, go to ROAMcare.org and check out our last week’s blog “Today is Only a Day Away.”

1070981C-95F2-42EC-BAFC-F3F02FB349C2

Too odds to be true

Michael 3 Comments

I had intended today’s post to be of a single thought unlike the previous few that meandered through my consciousness. And then fate intervened. Fate does that you know. One thing happened and one thing will that combine might actually make me question my theory of all things are 50/50. If you’re unfamiliar with that, go read it here. We’ll wait. 

These is uniquely an American post although other readers surely will get something out of it. They may learn a lesson or two or they may get a good laugh at thee crazy ‘mericans. 

I am still a firm believer that life is an even odds proposition. Everything either will or won’t, is or isn’t, does or doesn’t. I’ve said that so often I could have made a career out of it. I’ve actually gotten close to doing that, having written various blog posts and resented either in meetings or in podcasts, my theory of everything is 50/50.  

And then the PowerBall happened.  As of Sunday afternoon, the jackpot reached $1.9 billion. Lottery watchers anticipate it will top $2 billion by tonight’s drawing. People are quite literally betting the rent that a 1 in 292,200,000 long shot will come in for them. It’s making my plan to buy a single ticket because it’s odds of winning are just as good as it’s odds of loser are. (For the record, I bought 5 chances.) 

It is easy to be carried away by the thought of winning $2 billion. That’s a number I cannot grasp. Of course, that’s the price if you take the annuity option paid out over 30 years. If you want cash, it would pay out about $600,000 before taxes, maybe a little over $380,000 after state and federal taxes. Now we’re down into territory I can fathom. Still, that’s a lot of money. I said this was an American thing. Not completely. I’m sure there are Canadians, Mexicans, Etceterians willing to cross borders for a chance at $2 billion, US.  But it’s not completely All- American. You can buy a PowerBall ticket in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. That leaves 5 states and a few territories out of the picture. Let’s stick with the states. Hide that do not participate are Alabama, Alaska, Nevada and Utah and presumably residents of those states can drive across the closest state line and plunk down however many $2 offerings they desire, although it only takes one. Oh wait, you say we’re still missing a state. Hmm yes. The fifth state where the PowerBall is only a game to be played in one’s mind is our fiftieth state, Hawaii, and not even just a quick drive across the state line will be enough to get you a chance to lose two bucks.  

Now that second thing going on that defies odds is tomorrow’s elections. It’s Election Day in the US and some of the nastiest, meanest, and dirtiest, politically races should come to an end by the close of polls on Tuesday. Unfortunately, reports are that candidates are already preparing legal challenges to voters, votes, and election certifications, some saying they will not accept the decision of the voters if they are not declared the winner. I’m not kidding about that. One has gone so far as to say when he is governor of his state he can and will decertify any or all voting machines at his discretion, basically insuring his stay as governor as king as he gets over that first hurdle and makes it past the voters this week. It looks like tomorrow will be just the beginning of politician season.

Truly only in American politics can my theory of everything is 50/50, either it is or it isn’t, either it did or it didn’t, be invalid. To listen to those yahoos running, everything either is or else. Now those odds are truly too odd to be true. 

——————

Have you thought how much you could benefit by doing for others with no thought of a reward. It is the beginnings of selflessness and the foundation of character. We do these not because we want something. We do them because we don’t. Read how we find our selflessness at ROAMcare.org