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Showing posts with the label Index T

Three Orioles and an Astronaut (and His Family)

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Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions. – Albert Einstein   __________________ Another crazy dream post. I seem to have a lot of them lately, but this one is a real head scratcher, at least where the astronaut is concerned. I get the Orioles part: Jerry (my better half) and I were watching an extra-inning Orioles game that had gone well into the night (12 innings and past midnight), so that three Orioles would somehow work their way into my subconscious is not surprising. But the astronaut? Let the dream speak for itself: I am a newspaper reporter charged with going into space to visit an astronaut and his wife and baby, who are with him on a family space station. My assignment involves interviewing and watching this family as they navigate living in space. To get to the space station, I board a SpaceX “airplane” (which looks suspiciously like an ordinary 767, along with all its typical steerage-class discomforts). My fe

To the Female Driver Who Nearly Killed Me on Friday, the Thirteenth

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What could have been, but (thankfully) wasn't _____________________ “Patience is not simply the ability to wait – it’s how we behave while we’re waiting.” – Joyce Meyer _____________________ On open letter to the female driver who nearly killed me... You, going east on Route 30 in your snazzy blue and white striped Camaro, ran a red light as my husband, westbound, was making a left turn onto North George Street from Route 30 (York, Pennsylvania), almost T-boning the passenger side of our car, missing by inches. Where I was riding. Had my husband not sped up, God knows what might have happened. Serious injury for sure, perhaps my death. It was Friday, the 13th, June 2014 – in my case, a lucky day and a driver (my husband) with excellent reflexes. As my husband carefully navigated around a disabled car stuck in the left-turn lane and nudged into the intersection, the traffic light had just turned yellow, so I know that your light was still red because o

“t of cold” (Patruno Sherling, Spammer Lifting Text From a Writer Who Himself Piggybacked Upon Edgar Allan Poe – Regurgitated Here Yet Again): A Commentary on Modern Poetry

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Remixed Photo – Seedermaster Wikipedia Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance. —Carl Sandburg   ________________________ [Ed. note: This usurped text from an email spam folder has been found to be original text from The Black Cat : A Play in Three Acts (based on a Edgar Allan Poe short story), by John Todhunter, and released into the public domain for any use, including, presumably, for that of notorious email spammers selling dodgy products or setting up malware links for incredibly stupid recipients who click on anything.]  [As found, except for manipulated line breaks, removed character names, some punctuation tweaks, and upper and lower case changes.] [I] mean to live it out. But your husband? You married again, did you not? Yes. Fancy a woman making that mistake twice! But, you see, I was in an equivocal position. I had left my first husband; I don’t want to conceal my misdeeds, Oh, don’t expect paving stones fro

Thoughts on Prince Charles

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Photo by Dan Marsh ____________ I'm fortunate. If I do something incredibly stupid, no one cares. No newspaper, celebrity rag, or website is going splash my misdeeds all over the world. I'm just another anonymous person, living in plain sight, doing regular stupid things and pretty much getting away with them. Hell, I can't even get anyone to read about my teen foibles, given that my memoir sits at the bottom of Amazon's list, and I did a lot of really stupid stuff . Prince Charles doesn't enjoy that anonymity; everything he does is well-documented, from his doomed marriage to Princess Di to his phone conversation (taped) in which he revealed to his paramour Camilla that he wished she were his tampon -- yikes! I have never wished to be someone's tampon, and even if I had, no one would give a gosh-durn. I never thought too much about Prince Charles or the royals in general, but Time's  November 4, 2013, profile of the beleaguered Prince has c

The Tax Man Cometh...

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I'm proud to pay taxes in the United States; the only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money. --Arthur Godfrey U.S. citizens and others who owe taxes to the U.S. government: If you haven't filed your taxes, time is growing short... This year, the deadline is April 17. Happy Tax Time!

The (Non) Dieter’s Prayer

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Tempt us. Lead us into temptation. Embrace all that is good for our bodies, And good for our souls. Eat well, eat healthy, eat for pleasure and love. Eat foods we love. Chocolate, Cherries, Cheese, Pasta, Nuts, and Seeds... Tomatoes. Temptations for our palettes. The secret? Moderation in all good things. Enjoy delicious, high-octane food; But plan for these special occasions: Births, baptisms, weddings, holidays, and more. Moderation in all good things. In our daily lives, We learn sleight of menu: We create healthy pizza, low-fat spaghetti and meat balls, And corn on the cob– Add a dash of spice to the palette– And cut the saturated fat. And don’t forget the skinny ice cream. Lower fat, lower sugar, lower refined carbs Can equal delectable. Never be hungry, Do not go hungry Most of all: Enjoy life, Enjoy all.

Limerick--There Was Once a Man From Nantucket...

The clean version: There was once a man From Nantucket Who kept all his cash in a bucket; But his daughter named Nan Ran away with a man, And as for the bucket, Nantucket.

The Limerick Project: There was once a poet named Immerick...

I love Limericks--perhaps it's the Irish in me--so when I found an old book filled with Limericks, I bought it: Limerick Lyrics , edited by Stanton Vaughn, published by Sully and Kleinteich, 1906. This little volume contains well over 500 Limericks, all public domain, so, over time, I will post most of them on this site. I haven't felt much like posting regular articles here lately, so these Limericks will fill in the gaps. An opening "double" Limerick from the book: There was once a poet named Immerick, Who worked 40 days on a "Limerick," At the end of which time, He remarked of his rhyme, "There's a limp in the limb of my Limerick." I never could quite see the trick, I never wrote a limerick, I've often tried And gone to bed a-feelin' sick. Also, if I run across any other public domain Limericks, I'll post them here. Ta!

The Pleasure Principle

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Do not bite at the bait of pleasure, till you know there is no hook beneath it. --Thomas Jefferson Sorry to disappoint, but this post has nothing to do with anything racy, unless you consider eating a racy topic. Harvey Rapp, in our interview last week, said something interesting about taste: that for him the first bite of a meal is always extremely enjoyable but then becomes less so with each subsequent bite. The pleasure principle at work. Enjoying our meals makes perfect evolutionary sense; if we suddenly hated eating (like we hate getting shots, even though they are usually good for us), we would avoid eating whenever possible, and our species would die out, for we would happily starve ourselves to death. It seems that naturally thin people have a near-perfect equilibrium with their hunger/satiety cues, and they think nothing about it. Lucky them. For the rest of us, something has gone haywire in the way we interact with food; for some of us, it may be genetic (e

The (Rigged) Bingo Game

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All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire. --Aristotle Last night, I dreamt that I was playing a high-stakes Bingo game. The prize: $1,000,000 But some of the numbers on the Bingo card were wrong; for example, "1" was placed under "I." To win, I needed just one number; unfortunately, that was the "I-1" number. I tried to tell the Bingo caller that my card was faulty. He couldn't (or wouldn't) hear me, so the game played on. In the face of impossibility, I kept rooting for "I-1" to be called. But in my heart, I realized that my winning number would never be called; the game, fixed in favor of someone else, had been stacked against me. I awakened angry and lamenting the unfairness of life. However, I have come to realize that we often play games that offer no chance of winning. Extreme dieting, defined as an eating plan that no normal-weight

Thought for the Day--April 27, 2011: Transitions

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Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome. --Isaac Asimov Yesterday was very hot, about 83 degrees, high humidity, not the day to cook much of anything, let alone an oven meal. But I made baked chicken with gravy, onions, and carrots, baked potatoes on the side, and a steamed vegetable medley. The kitchen was about as hot as it could get and not be considered hell. Well, maybe it was hell. In July, I wouldn't even consider using my oven, but these transitional times between seasons seem to mess with our heads, and we carry over behaviors from the previous season (e.g., wearing shorts in late October when it's 55 degrees). Given that most of April was chilly, yesterday's heat was a huge surprise. Even when hot weather is predicted, our bodies don't quite believe that spring and summer are impending, so we feel awkward switching to summer foods and clothes. Still, my husband liked our dinner (low fat, even the gravy) and complim

Thought for the Day--April 19, 2011: Taking Exercise and Diet Advice

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Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694–1778) Portrait by Nicolas de Largillière (1656-1746) _______________________________ Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity. --Voltaire That Voltaire! Who knew he could offer quips so a propos for 2011? In the above portrait, the humorist looks fit (and cute) enough, but as we all know, portrait painters were (and are) commissioned to emphasize the positive and gloss over the flaws. Ah, vanity is thy middle name! Now on topic: On this very site, I have said that we can learn from naturally slim people by studying their normal eating habits, but now I'm going to turn this notion on its head by advising when we shouldn't follow their advice blindly. Clueless slim people often toss around simplistic dictums, such as Losing weight is simple: stop eating so much! In a literal sense, this is true, but if it were realistically so simple, we would all be slim and no on

Thought for the Day--April 18, 2011: 1040

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The only difference between a taxman and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. --Mark Twain If you are an American citizen or a foreigner who has paid U.S. taxes, there is no number more frightening than "1040" looming before you. It is hoped that, by now, you have finished your taxes, so you can tuck away that dreaded number for another year. I'm done, which means I can back to my regular life and posting about more interesting subjects. Meanwhile, enjoy the above superhero version of the 1040 tax instruction book for 2010. Ta, ta, my cyberfriends.

Thought for the Day--April 16, 2011: Taxes!

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Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that man behind the tree. --The late Sen. Russell B. Long (Democrat, Louisiana) Federal Income taxes are due on Monday, April 18. No one likes paying taxes, a necessary evil, but it seems as though some of us (middle class) pay more proportionately than others (the very poor and the very rich). It seems that too many rich people are getting off far too easily, and yet they seem to whine the loudest, while the rest of us plebes simply pay our taxes and take the hit. Why middle class Republicans support big business lawmakers is beyond me; these lawmakers don't work for us but for the special interest groups that line their campaign coffers... Aw, shucks, there I go, getting all political--the ides of April make me a bit grumpy. As usual, I have procrastinated in doing my taxes, taking advantage of the three extra days because yesterday was a holiday in Washington, D.C. (Emancipation Day). It seems as though the tax code gets more complicated each y

Got 0? The Apple and "Improv"

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Photo by Abhijit Tembhekar from Mumbai, India ________________________ I'm beginning my series of "Got 0?" articles with the versatile apple. If you love apples, then embarking upon a lifestyle change can be easier and certainly much more satisfying with this 0 points food in your arsenal. The Apple must surely be a worldwide favorite, given its great number of varieties. If you hang out in the produce aisle of the grocery store, you will notice more space devoted to the apple than any other fruit or vegetable. Varieties of apples with concise descriptions While the above list seems fairly comprehensive, I did not see a recent discovery that I made. About a month ago, an unusual variety called "Jazz" caught my eye. At $2.49 a pound, I wasn't about to fill a bag full of them, but I was game to try one ($1.54!!!). This variety not only looked different, but it also smelled unlike the other varieties, more like a perfumy honey. Being an avid Jazz fan, I also l

Thought for the Day--April 3, 2011: Tax Obesity?

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NO!!!! Instead, impose a tax on junk food, like we do cigarettes. We don't tax smokers, do we? So we shouldn't tax the obese based on their BMI or any other measure. Imposing a tax on obese people helps no one and may even make the problem worse. Offering incentives may be a better way to help people get fit and lose weight and to lose weight sensibly and slowly.

Thought for the Day--March 31, 2011: Tornadoes in Florida and Conference

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I'm enjoying my conference (St. Petersburg), but the weather outside has been wild, some tornadoes in Tampa and high winds and pounding rain here. It's crazy! I thought I would get away from "Weather" by being in Florida, but, instead, it has followed me here. It's supposed to be nice tomorrow (April Fools' Day), though. I hope so. It's a nine-block walk to my hotel, and I'd rather walk it in nice weather. Tonight, I (the president) met with the new Creative Writing committee; we have agreed that our organization should develop a creative writing journal but that, due to costs, it should be online. We named the journal, but I'll talk about that later, since I have not yet snagged its domain name. Besides, it's not a done deal because the Board must approve it. Jerry (my husband), Larry Rubin (a Southern poet), and I are planning to see Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf at the the American Stage in St. Petersburg. Kind of eerie, what with the r

Thought for the Day--February 3, 2011: Thinking Like a Thin Person

Think like a thin person; then act like a thin person. This does not mean you should hate your chubby self; it just means that you should approach food like thin people do: eat what you need, enjoy good food, and eat only until you are physically satisfied. Let go of your food issues. If you need help with any issue, seek it from a trusted friend or professional. Love yourself, no matter what the scale says. Exult yourself and your accomplishments.

Memoir Madness: Driven to Involuntary Commitment