A Different Kind Of Mall Sale

The death spiral for malls in the U.S. continues. Ever since online buying took root it was inevitable that expensive to inhabit, own  and run shopping malls would fall out of fashion. Very few malls are built in the U.S. now, and m any of them are sparsely attended by shoppers, who prefer the click and buy procedure of online purchases. With more retail sellers having trouble making profit  and shuttering their stores across the U.S., some mall property owners and managers are trying to unload weak malls at a faster pace.
Irony of irony! The quickest and easiest way to do that, it turns out, is to sell their malls online.
The Wall Street Journal has reported on this phenomenon and one sale example is typical. In July, Midway Mall in Elyria, Ohio, was sold for $4.5 million by an online auction hosted by online real estate transaction marketplace. A privately owned real estate investment and management firm named Namdar Realty Group purchased the single story, 585,606-square-foot mall for $8 a square foot, according to data from Real Capital Analytics. The mall, built in 1965, was foreclosed on last year. It's a great price for a building of that size. No doubt some corporation will scoop up the mall and use it as a head quarter for their business.

Online auctions for properties like malls have evolved over the past five years. They have become more mainstream. In 2015 a total of 38 malls were closed and sold online. In 2016 it was a total of 68 malls were sold. What happens to the malls when sold? The answer is just about everything. Some become corporate offices, others change shopping areas into something that are based on a specific purpose, food for example. Where previously a mall was for shopping and food was to support customers' ability to stay in the mall longer, by turning that idea on its head, food selling is all those malls do now.

Others change their physical attractiveness, making stores inside face outward to the street with doors. That's supposed to make the former mall more fuzzy and attractive to shoppers in order to attract ore of them. The most radical mall makeover is to tear the down and build a city like environment that includes streets, stores and apartments. The shopping is built around the residents apartments who live there. In the end, the internet is killing another cultural habit, shopping at a mall. For we male anti shoppers, it's not a tragic death.

The Old Age Traansgender Life

I happened upon and watched part of a documentary on TV last night about a transgender beauty pageant in Thailand, I think it was called the Miss International Queen contest. It was interesting to see so many men who transition into beautiful women. Their stories told in the documentary were sometimes heart wrenching and at others hard to figure. But in every case there seemed to be an anxiety and insecurity, well deserved in a world that is mostly hostile to sex changes. To show the world is right the winner was from Thailand.

What I wondered when watching is what would life be like for those transgender contestants when they were old and did not have their beauty as a defense for their uncomfortable position in life as humans who were so uncomfortable as males that they felt the need to become women. As an old man I know life is not so easy when one ages. It must be far more difficult for the transgender person. When physical beauty gone, is the transgender person is disarmed somewhat against an often hostile world of non transgender persons?

I think one problem for old transgenders is that the society in which they life often do not provide the kind of old age programs that straight elderly people have. Too, I wonder if there is an understanding about how their body ages differently than non transgender people. I suspect they face discrimination from providers who are available to help them, making them a second in line person for social services for the aged. Do medical insurance companies and government programs exclude transgender services from their coverage? If so, then the transgender will probably not seek treatments for the common old age afflictions that, left untreated, can lead to an earlier death.

Also, what about the isolation effect? In the documentary many of the transgender contestants had boy friends or husbands who were enamored with them. But later in life when the beauty is gone, will there be more separations and divorces than in the straight old age population? Too, will they have family support? Pretty young transgenders are more equipped to handle adversity than old ones. With many family members turning against the transgender family member, there will undoubtedly be more isolation of the transgender from family than occurs in the old age population at large.

The transgender beauty pageant documentary was interesting, but I wonder if an even more interesting one would be the less sexy one on the fate of old aged transgenders. It's a subject that I have not seen addressed in the media.

From English To Spanlish

I'm having a harder time understanding English these days. I am not sure if it is my own fault, given my advancing age and unwillingness to pay even the slightest attention to what is new trendy or part of the popular culture. I know a language always changes, but isn't it supposed to be a slow and natural change?  When I hear some people speak or read what they write I have "duh" moments. New vocabulary, weird usage and context, slang and more confuse me.

There has always been a youth culture that is crime in changing vocabulary of a language, but now we have establishment types, particularly liberals who change language that doesn't fit their agenda. Also, business and technology have created a kind of language all its own. The mediums also produce rapid changes in language with their blending of technology with established communication mediums. All languages change, but the speed of the change varies greatly due to uniformity of political control. We seem to have little political control today. 

The English language today is changing faster today also because of those cell phones and because of social media. Both give people a chance to communicate away from the rest of society, to ignore the rules and vocabulary of it, and to create their own language on those platforms. I can't keep up with it because old people like me learn some of that new English, the language transforms more and leaves me more in the dark.  Twitter is a bizarre world for me.

Strangest of all is the new "picture" English, those emoticons defined by the smiley face, that so many have decided is better than the spoken or written word. How does one interpret a smiley face without the context of a sentence or the c voice to give contextual cues? Didn't cave men communicate with pictures like that?  Oh well, I supposed it's for the best.  I might retreat to a cave if this new English confounds me more in the future.

Old Things Are Better

I like old things and have many antiques (not counting me) in my home that I have never had a desire to change for modern furnishings. When those young brats snicker about their parents having a house filled with family furnishing that "looks like granny's" I simply smile and comment on their IKEA fashion style and am amused at the thought that their furniture ( IKEA style of cheap plastic and particle broad origin) will be worth little 250 or a hundred years from now, if it even exists then.  There is a reason people treasure old things when they are older. Not only is it that they like the familiarity, but they see from experience it is better quality and more interesting than mass produced furnishings.

I like furnishings that have an aesthetic appeal that is unrelated to time, to what is fashionable today.  Today's mass produced furniture is often like the Nehru jacket or leisure suit of my youth-- laughable. Some people believe that an object’s aesthetic value is a matter of personal taste. They are wrong. It must have universal appeal separate from time. Some pieces of art and furniture have almost universal aesthetic appeal.  You know right away that they have the "it" factor. Just go to a museum an look for awhile and you'll understand that.

Another thing that I like about older things is the rarity factor. If fewer were made (which is likely before machine made mass production made things more affordable, if also more ugly) and fewer still exist, I am likely to be attracted to it. Also, if it is of uncommon style or shape and has not been copied so much that it has been cheapened by imitation, I'll probably like it.

But really, for me it is the craftsmanship that appeals to me. When I see a well formed old furnishing my imagination takes me to that time, to the person I imagine made it and to those who I imagine loved it in their own home. It connects me to the past in this current age in which the past is seen as annoying or irrelevant. It lets me thumb my nose at the IKEA generation and all the crassness that it represents. It assures me that humans are capable of better than cell phones and other electronic time wasting garbage that so many find dear

Brain Writing

The latest proposed improvement in communication seems almost like an episode from a futuristic science fiction film. Face book is exploring a silent speech system with a team of more than 60 scientists that would let people type 100 words per minute with their brain. Yep! They want the brain to type instead of the hands or voice. Good luck to them in getting my brain to even wake up. It's asleep most of the time.

Supposedly, the technology is almost ready and in a  few years could be tested on those who are paralyzed and can not speak or move their hands. This is legit. Face book is working with scientists, engineers and system integrators from UC San Francisco, UC Berkeley, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who specialize in machine learning methods for decoding speech and language.

Already Face book knows too much about us. I am not sure if many people want them to read our brains and types what we are thinking. Face book is not alone in trying to merge the brain with its technology to do...whatever it is they want.  Just think if we could read what a person is thinking. I propose that all politicians be hooked up to those machines so we can finally know how much they are lying to us. But I am not sure I want Hillary Clinton hooked up. The number of lies coming from her might destroy what little brain matter she  has left. And Donald Trump's brain would confuse any truth verification system because it would change its mind every few minutes.

The bigger and more serious question is why we would want to do this? Is it not better to leave technology out of such things? Is the benefit for most of us less than the cost? I wonder if we are a technologically mad. Has technology become God to some? Sometimes human limitation is better than human excess. Not being able to do something is better than being able to do miraculous things that hurt others. What's next? Maybe a machine that wipes our butts and laughs and smiles for us?

Bath Time

I read  a story (odd one that must have been a slow news day and it was used as a filler) in my newspaper about bathing, more specifically what would happen to a person who did not bathe or shower for one year. In past times bathing was rare, particularly in the west. Most bathing was public and very infrequent. But today were are "enlightened" and cleaner. What if a person today stopped bathing regularly, or even for a solid year?  Dermatologists were consulted about this no baths for a year thing, and they gave a typical scenario for not bathing.  Actually, it's more obvious what would happen to the uncleaned one than the more perplexing question of , "Why would anyone not bathe for a year"? According the the experts, here's what would happen.

First you would smell from both the bacteria and the dead skins that sits on your carcass. After a year you'd have a build-up of that "skin stratum corneum" (that's the dead skin on top of your skin. Next your skin would become oily or dry and become infected with fungus or yeast and then bacteria. The dirt on the skin could then cause warty growths, particularly on your underarms, behind the ears, on the neck and under a woman's breasts. The body's dead skin normally rises to the surface and is flaked off through normal washing, When that stops, the dead skin clumps together with your body's oils. The clumps would grow in patches and take on a brown hue once they collect dirt and other pollutants.

Ugh.... let me be less specific with some of the other non bathing effects, because this is disgusting enough. Next, you'd get infections and become very itchy (like from the dandruff we fight from time to time) and you would get acne and puss bumps on your body. The experts also say your "groin area' would be impacted greatly, getting itchy and red to burning and painful. No Saturday night dates for you! Among the other things that would happen is to develop scum between your toes (toe cheese, personified) and after all this when you would finally be motivated to take a bat, it would take weeks for you to return to normal hygiene.

Wow! It's pretty grim but no psychologically stable person would not bathe for a year.  What about mom saying that if you don't bathe every day you'll turn into pigpen from Peanuts?  The dermatologists say that showering every day is unnecessary. Mom lied to us! Every two, three or even four days is supposedly acceptable as long as you don't stink up the place. Generally, the organisms naturally found on her skin protect us from picking up harmful germs for a couple of days......Unless you are a person with fragile immune systems( newborns, the elderly and people suffering from cancer etc.) you better turn on your bath water tonight.

Favorite Christmas Movies

Christmas is about overkill. Everything tied to the holiday is overdone, but I love it. What a catharsis Christmas can be. We do benefit when we step out of what is normal and pretend a bit. At Christmas there is a great way to escape the humdrum of life. Its the Christmas movie. There are more Christmas movies than one can imagine. Many are sappy, most are formula, but some are enthralling to watch. There is even a TV channel in the U.S. that runs Christmas movies non stop, 24 hours a day every day in November and December.

Forget the bad ones, the too predictable or familiar ones. Today I will give you a few recommendations for best Christmas movies to watch this holiday season. Most of them are older films, made in a more innocent age. Innocent ages produce good innocent films, as in the Christmas genre. One of the best is the showcase of Irving Berlin songs called, Holiday Inn.  It's a classic 1942 film that is not dated. Those who love music will love the songs and elaborate dance numbers of Holiday Inn. On of the greatest Christmas crooners of all time, Bing Crosby is one of the stars of Holiday Inn. Holiday Inn was so good that 12 years later another Christmas movie based on Irving Berlin songs, 'White Christmas,' was made. That one is also a classic Christmas musical.

Who can forget James Stewart's portrayal of George Bailey in 'It's A Wonderful Life'? The movie was a low budget flop at the box office, but its themes of caring, thoughtfulness and sacrifice, along with the George's silly guardian angel, touches the heart and soul of everyone. Most critics consider It's A Wonderful Life the best Christmas movie of all time But 'Miracle on 34th Street' (1947) is another classic, a cute story of a small child who learns that there is a Santa Claus and that the real Santa is far better than the abstraction we hear about every Christmas season.
The Charles Dickens classic Christmas story, Scrooge has been made into a movie countless times, but the best adaptation of Charles Dickens' legendary tale is the black and white 1951 feature about nasty miser Ebenezer Scrooge. Alastair Sim  is the perfect Scrooge who's visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future and learns it's never too late to stop behaving like Hillary Clinton and to stop Bah Humbugging life.

If you hate Christmas and all the traditions with it, especially that fat guy in the Santa suit, there is also a Christmas film for you. It's Billy Bob Thornton's drunken Santa Claus, a thieving department store Santa he is with a crazy elf sidekick.  It's Nasty deviancy into the Yuletide season for Christmas haters and everybody who likes to laugh.

Then there are the animated Christmas cartoons. Try the 1965 'It's a Charlie Brown Christmas', which brings to life the great Charles Schultz 'Peanuts' comic strip characters, the 1965 island of misfit toys in Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer' with Burl Ives singing badly off key but in an enchanting way. But my favorite Christmas animated cartoon is the Boris Karloff narrated (Yes, the Frankenstein guy) animated special 'The Grinch That Stole Christmas'. It's a great adaptation of the Dr. Seuss fable about a cave dwelling sourpuss grinch trying to ruin the holidays for all the Who people who live down the mountain in Whoville.

There are so many more great Christmas films, but I leave you with the campiest and most amusing of all, the 1964 'Santa Claus Captues the Martians'. Here's the premise....Martian children complain about not celebrating Christmas. So their parents do what any self-respecting extraterrestrials would. They kidnap the jolly old elf. This is so bad it's great. I suspect it is the Christmas season's campiest classic. As they say on Mars, Ho Ho Ho to all the Christmas movie favorites..

The Punching Parent

My local newspaper has a story about my nominee for worst dad of the year. One Juan Lopez-Alvarado was booked into where he belongs, a jail cell, with second degree cruelty to a juvenile, after police say he punched his 14-year-old daughter in the face, knocking her unconscious, because she was being disrespectful, according to authorities.

Lopez-Alvarado was arguing with his daughter around 11 p.m. Sunday at home about chores he said he assigned her when he got angry and began punching her in the face. The girl lost consciousness and when deputies arrived, they found her hysterically crying on the sidewalk outside the residence. She was bleeding from both her nose and mouth. Deputies at first suspected the girl's jaw and nose might be broken because she couldn't close her mouth and her nose looked disfigured. Doctors later determined she had a concussion, bruising and cuts to her face but no broken bones. Bully dad admitted hitting his daughter, telling investigators he did so because she would not listen. Wow! I thought it was the job of teens to sometimes not listen to their parents. Isn't that the normal learning curve for kids?

Well, at least the punching dad didn't shoot her, but then there is still time for that, I suppose. Obviously, the judge in this case needs to have Lopez evaluated for psychological problems and be given an IQ test to determine if either of those factors explains his bizarre behavior. I wonder too what less the girl learned from this. Will she have learned to also use the knockout punch for her own future children? What does this and the many other examples of parenting dysfunction that we see say about the future of society?

A child is spoiled by lack of genuine parental involvement.  Nothing gets spoiled by love.  Lack of consequences for any behavior whatsoever is not love. But violence is not discipline. Good behavior is most often learned from what the parent shows the child through the parent's behavior. Unfortunately, Lopez-Alvarado has already shown his daughter several lessons that tell her he is a bully, is ignorant, and that he is unworthy to be around any child, much less parent one. The punching parent is in jail but I doubt if he will punch anyone there. The inmates are not 14 year old girls.

Black Friday

Friday, November 24th is Black Friday. That's the day after Thanksgiving Day, the day that retailers have historically set to attract consumers to their stores to sell them the junk they think they need themselves, but really hate to buy in order to give to Uncle Claude and Aunt Anettte. Because they would like to keep the purchase themselves instead of giving them as Christmas presents and would like to keep the money they are spending on other people, Black Friday shoppers can be an unpleasant lot. Black Friday is somewhat like the Catholic 'Holy Day of Obligation'. You hate being there but you are afraid of some punishment (as in no more of those trendy presents available to give if you wait until after Black Friday to buy your gifts)  if you get a hold of your reason and stay home on that maniacal shopping spree day.

But alas! To get those great shopping day sales the day after Thanksgiving on Black Friday one need not go any longer to the mall. The consumer can now buy on line, and some Black Friday sales start as much as a week or two before Black Friday itself. Yep! The greed of the sellers for profits and those computers that consumers can use to avoid fist fights with crazed shoppers wrestling over the child toy their kid says he has to have to sustain life, are perhaps denting the Black Friday tradition by making it a more than one day event.

In truth, the sales on Black Friday are attractive for some loss leader sale items. But overall, the days before Christmas that are closer to Christmas than is Black Friday itself have always offered the best sales for buyers. Still, some shoppers love the mall experience of Black Friday. It's a sport for them, one in which they are winners or losers based on how much of their money they spend on presents fro people they often dislike. Too, apparently just thinking you are getting a great deal is actually better for the soul than really waiting to buy Christmas gifts later when prices are lower and conditions for shopping are much more comfortable.

The biggest malls all across the U.S. are digging deep into their pockets to attract customers for Black Friday sale day, rolling out everything from winter castles and Santa sightings to gingerbread making classes and temporary skating rinks to turkey at the food court instead of at grandma's house. But Black Friday is one day for a little more traffic and more interest awakening in those shoppers. It may encourage them to re visit the mall another time. In the end the reality is that most consumers nowadays intend to do at least some portion of their holiday shopping online, many malls will be happy if the Black Friday shoppers  just make a few extra impulse purchases on Black Friday. May all your Black Friday gifts not be ugly Christmas sweaters

Sex Bots Coming Soon

Technology is about to bring to market the usable Sex Bot. Experts say that the Sex Bot, Robots that are mostly female in appearance that are made to react sexually with humans, will be the next common thing in society. As they become more life-like mans best friend may not be a dog or a woman, but rather a sexy compliant robot. Of course there will also be male Robots made for the ladies, but women are the more sensible and emotional of the sexes. That may much farther down the line. Sigh (I am sighing because I am too old and will likely never see the Sex Bot).

Designers are already creating moving robotic sex dolls powered by speech recognition and chat "bot conversations". (Let's hope none will be programmed to see a male to turn off the football game and take Robot for some mall shopping). The biggest doubt is not the morality of sex with dolls. It's whether intimacy with robots, for example, lead to social isolation? It might be that a sexy and life-like Sex Bot who fulfills every male fantasy is preferable to a real live woman who badgers her husband to take out the garbage.

Could a too ideal fantasy Sex Bot make men more attracted to Sex Bots than to real women? And the same eventually could be in the cards as the dilemma for women who might prefer a sexy male Sex Bot to a smelly, beer swilling real live male partner. We  already see how humans of both sexes today are already too often in love with their cell phones. Just imagine a cell phone that looks like a run way model and complies to every wish and demand of the owner of it. We might become a society that is isolated from humans and addicted to robots for even emotional sustenance.

That is a recipe for psychological problems for individuals and the society as a whole. Further, it may be that allowing people to live out their darkest fantasies with sex robots could have a pathological effect on society and societal norms and create more danger for the vulnerable. Would it actually increase the desire to sexually assault live humans or reduce that threat? Who knows. (Maybe Harvey Weinstein might know the answer?)

On a more serious note, Sex Bots might become a kind of sexual therapy for people who are isolated sexually, have emotional problems preventing real  sexual relationships with humans, or physical disabilities that confine them. To be or not to be a Sex Bot user may be become the next question. I'm glad I won't be alive to see it asked.

Is It Christmas Yet?

I now have my Christmas music station playing on my computer. That means it is officially Christmas season for me.  The songs are often sappy, but sometimes we need sap, plenty of it. Humans endure so much reality all year long they have invented a Christmas season way over the top, from over decorated department stores in October to the materialism that seems to define the holiday season. But there is much to like about Christmas. maybe that's why even the atheists and cultures unrelated to Christ share in some form of celebration this time of the year. After all, as the song says, "We need a little Christmas".

Now in my aged years one aspect of the Christmas season I most appreciate is the nostalgia, the memories of past Christmas times, those years when we were young and stupid but happier and more optimistic about the future. The human mind seems to create the memories that are needed for stability. As we age we have many memories of Christmas that come forth. The irony is when those memories were made we never had any idea they would be so important to us in our last years of life. Growing old is easier for those who can remember the exuberance of our youth. It does seem that at Christmas more of our memories are good than bad ones.

It is often said that we are all young, all children at Christmas. I am not sure that is true, but I feel sorry for those of us who won't at least try that prescription. As another song says, "Toy Land, Toy Land....once you have been there you will never want to return again". How many of our Christmas memories are those of our childhood, the toys, the family,  decorations, Santa Claus, all those Christmas traditions we thought would never die but have because time eventually kills everything. We even fondly remember cantankerous old Uncle Claude. Maybe that itself is one of those Christmas miracles.

I suspect that when we lose those memories or at least our desire to retrieve them at Christmas time, that it is a sign we are ready to end out life. When we don't have memories we fail to create any new ones.  Without Christmas memories I think the point of my life would be hard to understand. May all your Christmas memories this year, both old and new ones, be treasures.

Liberal Arts Back In Fashion

Mark Cuban, a billionaire investor recently said something I have thought for some time was true. That is, the future for young students may not be in studying technological courses, but instead, majoring in liberal arts. He said that in the next 10 years  there will be more demand for liberal arts graduates than will be for programming majors and maybe even engineering, because when the data that is everywhere today  is being spit out, options are also being spit out that need a different perspective in order to have a different view of the data. And so having someone who can write and express him or herself beyond Twitter language mode and who is more of a freer thinker is going to be the greatest need.

Cuban is referencing the so called "soft skills' that today are looked upon with derision by those who think their latest cell phone app or whatever new technology they lust over is the core of humanity. Soft skills like adaptability and communication, will have the advantage in an automated workforce. Cuban said English literature, philosophy, and foreign language majors as just some of the majors that will do well in the future job market. "The nature of jobs is changing," Cuban said. Yes, but will humans who are addicted to time wasting, silly technology change fast enough to meet the coming demands?

So creativity and the ability to communicate clearly (that means none of the idiotic nerd language we are force fed  and rarely are able to understand when we use technology today) will return to style. Thank God for that! Linguistic and cultural literature today is abysmal. The liberal arts curriculum teaches one how to think, not what to think. Is that not what the deepest learning is about? Already, throughout the major U.S. tech hubs, whether Silicon Valley or Seattle, Boston or Austin, Tex., software companies are using more and more liberal art grads to create the ideas that male all that technology seem  usable and desirable.

Gee, now I think I am glad that I am a Luddite in a technological world.

Turkey Times

Given that in the United States November is when the Thanksgiving mandate to eat turkey on the last Thursday of the month is an American law (well, it seems to be so), I thought I would make some more of my typically stupid remarks, this time about about cooking turkeys. Cooked turkeys are a mystery because they are mostly dry but sometimes are a moist tasting meat. Turkeys were first domesticated in Mexico and Central America, and  remain common as a food source here in the U.S.

But not every consumer is convinced that eating turkey is not like chewing on rubber.  The fact that the turkey is ubiquitous and inexpensive keeps the turkey available for meals all year round. We see in our supermarkets ground turkey, turkey legs, turkey sausage, turkey TV dinners (the first TV dinner every sold features sliced turkey as the attraction) and on and on. The problem with turkey as a human food source is it is a dry meat. There is just too little fat on the turkey to make it easy to cook without turning it into rubber.

The traditional roast in an oven approach is often unimpressive. The result is an endless array of cooking methods for cooking turkey. My personal favorite is the time consuming, messy, charcoal smoking of a turkey for 8 hours  But who wants to work that hard for sliced turkey? My native Louisiana Cajuns are the inventors of the deep fried turkey craze that produces a mediocre bird if not done with expertise. I never eat fried turkeys. Forget all the turkey cooking methods! That ideal turkey does not exist, or at least is not approachable without a food stylist, Photo shop, and glossy magazine article that shows a fake turkey that looks delicious.

Cooking a turkey is such an impossible task that entire industries have come into existence to trick the cook into thinking otherwise. Grocery and specialty cooking stores break out shelves of specialty equipment every fall when frozen turkeys hit grocery stores priced so low that we all become one of those "suckers born every minute" and purchase them. Phone numbers that are turkey hot lines for the beleaguered turkey cook are manned throughout the holiday to provide instant help. Cooks ask. Should I brine it? Do I stuff it? Maybe I cook it upside down? Can I use a rub? How often should I baste?  What if we deep fry our turkey? (I can answer that one... you'll be sorry  if you do!)

I have found the solution to the turkey cooking/eating problem. It's quite simple. Don't be a turkey at Thanksgiving time. Forget the turkey this Thanksgiving and instead make your self a bologna sandwich.  Even I couldn't mess that up.

Pop Music Fizzles For Me

I know I am out of touch with pop culture. My age insists it is so, and I am glad. I find most of it not only confusing and uninteresting  but crass, crude and lacking in substance. The worst of it for me is popular music. I left the pop music audience many years ago. If I am assaulted by pop music on the street, in an elevator or anywhere outside my home, since I won't play it there, my reaction is usually "that is awful noise". Gee, I wish they would bring back the Beatles.

A good example of a reason for my flight from modern music is the headline I saw at an online newspaper today. It said "Drake to headline....." The guy must be a singer because he had a microphone in his hand in the accompanying photo and it looked like he was crooning (we oldies call singing crooning because they used to do that in ancient times). Anyway, I am unfamiliar with Drake and a multitude of other pop singers today. The only thing that interests me about Drake is that he seems to have lost or forgotten his last name. Maybe he is one of those one name performers or maybe his mom told him to stop embarrassing her with his singing. "Don't use the family name, Drake"...or something.

There are a lot of one name singers I only know by their name because I don't listen to them sing. Maybe I would like them if I did, but I am uninterested in listening to anyone with less than to word in their name. Some of the one namers I have never heard sing, but know of the media swooning over them and speaking their one name are: Bork, 50 Cent (Huh?),  Beck, Mario, Coolio (maybe his parents were drunk when they name him), Flea (I'd rather scratch than listen to him), Xzbit (how do you pronounce that one?) Nelly, Shakia and on and on.

There are some one names I know because they have been persistent in their careers. Beyonce' is a good example. I don't want to hear her sing after listening to a filth monologue that declared her hate for police, whites and anything not related to the "black experience'. It's odd how she and other black performers express so much hatred for other races and yet are popular with young people who are members of the races they hate. I once saw an interview with Beyonce' and was startled at how inarticulate and uneducated she sounded. yet she is a beacon of modern culture, someone who leads.

Music is supposed to reflect the culture and civilization from which it comes. God help us if that is so. No wonder it is often said that music should be listened to and not analyzed. Anyone my age trying to analyze modern pop music has my best wishes, but when they take rest breaks I recommend they spin a few Beatle records to bring back their sanity.

Molesting Us With Too Much Molestation News

Have you been accused of sexual assault lately? Well, if not don't worry. There's still plenty of time for it to happen. It seems that the entire front page of my daily newspaper is a sex assault reports. Women and some men....and some of those "other sexes' are all coming out of the closet to announce that they were victims, usually at the hands of some Hollywood type or politician. Since we think so little of Hollywood and of politicians it's not entirely painful to see. But when Sulu of the original Star Trek TV show was accused of pulling down the pants of a young male model 25 years ago I was ready to aim a phaser gun at the accuser. Captain Kirk! Please bring some order to this strange new world called earth (but only if you didn't also molest).

It is a tragedy when one person sexually assaults another or when one falsely accuses the same. But I get the idea! Do I have to read of another assault? It's starting to assault me and make me think I am in danger of a Sulu attack myself. I also wonder what constitutes a sexual assault. At the moment the term is quite broadly defined. Some accusers state they were raped or groped, clearly real assault, but others complain that another person "touched me" or said "unkind words to me that had sexual references". I suspect the later is best left off the front page. Also, I prefer not to read of those incidents and instead let the district attorney of the locale where they were alleged to have happened, do the investigation and file charges when appropriate.

When news mediums become infatuated with the latest sexual assault charge they tend to forget more important news, that is news that personally impacts us all. My own standard for what is newsworthy is that which is 1) something I need to know and 2) something that affects me. The feeding frenzy on sexual abuse allegations most often fails that standard. But we are living in the excess information age, the fake news and saturated news platform era. Whatever is shocking is newsworthy now. Thanks, Internet! (note that I sighed at this point).

I do hope soon that the molestation news obsession will fade and be replaced by real news. Hey! I have an idea. Just to make the transition smooth, perhaps President Trump can claim that while in Asia for a meeting, that he was patted on the butt by the Chinese premier. Ugh...no pictures are need of that.

What's In A University Name?

Yesterday I read about a college here in Oregon. It's name is Rogue Community College. What? A rogue is defined as a dishonest or unprincipled person. Why would I want to go to school to become a rogue? I could figure out how to do that without paying tuition.  I decided to access the Rogue web site to find out the origin of their name. I did, but there is nothing there telling out that. All I found was that it's a two year community college and it has no course offerings in how to become argue. I wonder why a school has name like that?

This got me to thinking and I did research on line to find the strangest names for colleges and universities in the U.S. There's Rice University (where I guess they cook all day) and Tufts University (Little Miss Muffet must have studied and found her tuffet there). I am not sure I would want to tell people I graduated from Tufts. The mascot of Tufts is an elephant, weird for a country with no elephants galloping around. There is a Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania. It's a long standing, and a well respected teacher preparation school. I find it odd to name a university after a rock that has too much moss on it. My research shows that is got it's name from another school it took over that was named Slippery Rock Normal School. I gave up trying to trace that school's origin because it's too slippery a slope for me.

In Indiana there is a Ball State University. Hmmm Maybe that is a porno school. If not I think it's a bad name for a school and a name change might help that university's image. The good news is that I found out Beaver College recently did change it's name (to Arcadia College). I guess that school is building bridges to a better image. Image is important, but some of the nations best academic schools have weird names. The Ivy League, which has some of the most prestigious Universities in the country, has Dartmouth and Colgate Universities. Dartmouth's name has nothing to do with anyone's mouth and Colgate's name has nothing to do with the toothpaste that brushes the teeth in that mouth. You can look up the name origin yourself if you want to know how the names cam about. I am not going to be the big Dart-mouth  to tell you what it is.

There is a Hamburger University (no fries, please) In Illinois. But the name fits because it is a University that trains McDonald's fast food employees about how to make those greasy burgers taste so bad. The web site for the school says it is devoted to teaching Mc D employees "restaurant operations procedures, service, quality and cleanliness" to the next group of managers at your local McDonald's restaurant. It graduates about 5000 managers each year. If Hamburger University is too greasy for you, you can enroll in the Ohio College of Clowns (I swear that I wasn't educated there), College of the Ozarks (No tuition. It's a work/study school), or Deep Spring's College (where you learn to milk cows).

There are plenty more weird college names ,but all this education is spinning my empty, uneducated, head. I'll leave you instead with some weird mascot names you might not know and surely won't be able to justify. How about the Scottsdale Community College 'Fighting Artichokes'. the Wake Forrest University 'Demon Deacons', the Oglethorpe University 'Stormy Petrels', the Georgetown University 'Hoyas',  the University of Arkansas at Monticello 'Bolweevals', the University of California Irvine 'Anteaters', the Arkansas Tech 'Wonder Boys', the Trinity Christian College 'Trolls', the Washburn University 'Icabods', the St. Louis University 'Billikins', the Concordia University 'Cobbers',  the Evergreen State College 'Geoducks', the Campbell University 'Fighting Camels', the North Carolina School of the Arts 'Fighting Pickles', the California State University-Long Beach 'Dirtbags', the University of California  at Santa Cruz 'Banana Slugs', the University of Louisiana-Lafayette 'Raging Cajuns', the Earlham College 'Hustlin Quakers', the Tulsa University  'Golden Hurricane', the South Dakota School of Mines 'Hard Rockers', the Purdue University 'Boilermakers'...... I would go on but now my empty head hurts too much.

Haircut Havoc

As an old guy I frequently rant about bad parenting being much the cause of a world gone mad. Well, I have a single example of it today. The incident happened in Cleveland, OhioAllstate Barber College in Cleveland. While a barber in training was cutting the 7 year old boy’s hair, the woman became upset with the length of time it was taking. Uh, she reacted by pulling a loaded gun and firing three times at the slow barber. The gun did not fire. A short You Tube segment showing one of the world's worst and most stupid moms is here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHX1uamd8-c&ytbChannel=Associated%20Press

The woman complained several times before a manager came over to talk to the barber and asked if he had something to say to her. She then pulled a gun from her purse and said, “I got two clips. I’ll pop you,” witnesses said. "Clips"? I don't think she was referring to a haircut clipping. After the woman was calmed down, the barber finished the haircut and  the clip woman then left with her gun and two children. Police have tracked her down and arrested her. She has  been charged with attempted murder (and demonstrated stupidity, I hope).

The woman was getting her son's hair cut at a barber school, so you know it was for a deep discount, if not free. So a bit more patience than at a pro shop should be expected. Also, after another barber was able to calm her down, she reportedly left with her TWO children.
Mommy pulling a pistol on a student learning a trade will not go over well in family court when a judge is deciding if she should be allowed to keep custody of said children.
- See more at: http://hiphopwired.com/542693/ohio-woman-pulls-gun-barber-sons-haircut/#sthash.R4w22Ure.dpuf

I'm just glad that I never had to call that creature "mom". The Barber College is a training school that gives haircuts at avery low price. One would think the clip woman would be patient and not expect fast service from a trainee. But this is the age of entitlement, of "me first". Anyway, I hope the judge throws her in jail for a long time. The good news is her two children will probably be removed from her custody by a the judge hearing this case, at least temporarily, and given to a clip-less foster parent.

A Course Only A Left Wing Zealot Would Take

How crazy are U.S. universities these days? Forget the 'Women's Studies' courses that teach hatred if white men, never mind the left wing fascist and anarchists groups that proliferate on every campus in the U.S., with the campus enabling every one of them, don't even consider the 99% liberal rate of professors who promote an odd form of "diversity" that means conformity to leftists views. The newest trend on campus is at Butler University, a private school of some renown in Indiana. At Butler the curricular is no longer just extreme left. Now it's in outer space, teaching hate and practicing propagandizing its students.

Students at Indiana's Butler University will soon learn “strategies for resistance” to oppose President Donald Trump. Yep! It's an "I hate Trump and you better or you will fail" class....at a University. Aren't Universities supposed to be tolerant places that never indoctrinate hateful ideas? Well, they used to be. Students at Butler paying roughly $36,000 in tuition to sign up for a “Special Topics” class titled “Trumpism & U.S. Democracy.” The course, which begins in August and runs until December, explicitly charges the Republican with “perpetuating sexism, white supremacy, xenophobia, nationalism, nativism, and imperialism.”

 Wow! I hope mom and dad, who are paying for this are not Republicans. Butler's web site says that, “This course explores why and how this happened, how Trump’s rhetoric is contrary to the foundation of the U.S. democracy, and what his win means for the future. The course will also discuss, and potentially engage in, strategies for resistance.” Does that sound like a college memo or a memo from Himmler's Nazi Germany thought police?

The original official course description stated, "Donald J. Trump won the U.S. Presidency despite perpetuating sexism, white supremacy, xenophobia, nationalism, nativism, and imperialism. This course explores why and how this happened, how Trump's rhetoric is contrary to the foundation of the U.S. democracy, and what his win means for the future. The course will also discuss, and potentially engage in, strategies for resistance." But those crazy leftists know what they promote is garbage. In response to significant backlash by normal people in Indiana against the university for its course, the college quietly changed the course description. It now states, "This course offers a broad historical, political, and critical communication studies approach to understanding the rise of Donald Trump as a political and social phenomenon. The course draws from the widely circulated Trump Syllabi (per the Chronical of Higher Education and Public Books) crowd sourced by some of the nation’s leading scholars in American Political Science and history, demography, cultural studies, sociology, and more.

The course will provide context and depth for student citizens as we look to historical and current texts by renowned authors as well as read excerpts from Trump’s own The Art of the Deal. Students will potentially attend, as participant observers, campus and community events to witness ongoing responses to Trump’s presidency and campaign. To instill disciplinary diversity, the course will invite faculty from across campus to guest lecture.

Those crazies are not only perverted, but they are cowards, abandoning their hate course so quickly because of criticism. A review by The Heartland Institute of the courses available at Butler University has yet to show any course offerings that present the Trump administration in a positive way that could balance out the course taught by Savage. So the modified description is just another lie. I wonder what those leftists would say if the university replaced Trump's name in the course description with Barrack Obama's? There would be a revolution on the campus! After all, leftists love free speech, until you disagree with them.

Colleges in the U.S. used to be institutions designed to teach young minds how to integrate into society with a career  direction , be productive and to encourage a spirited debate in whatever situation is presented  in order to help the student analyze objectively to help achieve the best outcome whether it be in business, government or private life.  Now Butler and practically all U.S. universities are institutions teaching hate, anarchy, PC, transgender studies, feminism, and  an aversion to  free speech when it counters the leftist agenda with facts. Our institutions of higher education are nothing more than indoctrination facilities taken over by far left professors who use their positions to teach their hate for anyone or anything that threatens their small minded world.

Technology Is Making This Obsolete

I read an article about one of my not so favorite things- modern technology. I dislike much of the technology today but I loved the article that listed 20 things most people don't do because technology has made them unnecessary. I wont' go through all of them but picked ten of them, some I like and some  don't. I still contend modern technology has caused more social problems than it has alleviated.  Here are 10 of those rituals that are no longer necessary in high tech households, but in low tech ones like mine may not be a blessing.

Five of those I agree are blessing:

1. There is no need to memorize phone numbers anymore. Storing them is easy and for an idiot like me, who is incapable of memorizing that many numbers in sequence I know have an excuse when someone ask me for a number and i can't give it....even when it's my own number.
2. GPS Technology helps family members and close friends pinpoint each others precise location quickly in case of an emergency. Even I use a GPS device when driving to a new address. it is easier and more reliable than trying to accurately read a paper map.
3. There is no longer a need to make print photo albums. I am not sure about the value of relying only ion digital pictures, but I admit it's easier to store photos that way and, theoretically, they get lost less often and last much longer. Besides, the old days of dropping off rolls of film at a one hour photo shop or waiting days to see if "they all came out" and were usable when developed was not a good thing. Instead of pasting snapshots into an album, most people prefer the ease of photo sharing services. But then it does make for excessive picture taking and display of them, which can be annoying to us all.
4) No need to collect CD's or record albums with digital movie platforms. Even I see the value of that.
5) Travel agents are becoming extinct. Kayak, CheapFlights  and endless more have completely transformed how we book our passage fares and accommodations. I suspect we do it better ourselves and that this has lowered our travel costs.

Five of those technological changes I think don't benefit me:

1. No need to use a phone book- For non Luddites that's great. But I still use phone books to locate numbers when my computer is not turned on. With my not owning or using the worst invention of the century, a cell phone, for me it's either look on line with my computer or use the phone book.
2. Compute math in one's own head- I do most of the math that way because I was taught to do it without the use of devices. Why, I am old enough to remember when there were no hand calculators. Figuring math without the use of an electronic computation device is a great mental exercise, and I am certain those of us who don't rely on electronic devices to compute, do computations better.
3. The death of the analogue clock and near death of watches. Few people with cell phones bother with watches anymore, unless they're fashion statements or fitness trackers. Schools don't teach kids how to read an analogue time piece anymore since they are fading from use. But I love old clocks and still have them in my house. Can you imagine a grandfather clock that was digital? Yuk.
4. No need to watch TV shows live because they are recorded always available on demand. This is irrelevant for me since i rarely watch any TV, live or recorded. There is so much stupidity on the boob tube, why would I want to view it on demand?
5) There is no need to hand write letters anymore. Oh, I think technology is killing our use of correctly using the language because writing electronically is a English teacher's worst nightmare.
 What used to be formal writing, with correct grammar and usage is no a mess of informal slang, written as if a 5 year old was the composer. Society sanctions child-like language usage when it is written electronically. This is killing its proper usage.

Technology does change us in many ways, but technology changes so fast these days it's hard to even recognize we are being changed.

Full Of Bologna

Yesterday, I had a bologna sandwich for lunch. Bologna (baloney) on buttered toasted white bread sounds awful to the food police, but I have loved it since I was a child. I know it is unhealthy and is basically fat. If it clogs my arteries I think my arteries will be grateful to taste that mess. Bologna originally came from Bologna, Italy. Although if you ask for bologna there, no one will know what you are talking about. What you'll end up with is mortadella, the filet mignon of bologna. Mortadella is a thick Italian pork fated meat that is flecked with bits of fat, peppercorns and sometimes pistachios. Mortadella is good too, and it shares the distinction with the politically correct food police as being evil.

Unlike Italian bologna, by law U.S. bologna has to be a meat paste, no pieces of fat can be seen. It's nice of the lawmakers to not allow us to see the fat or our conscience might m not allow us to eat it.  Bologna is a sausage, so it starts as a blend of meat (it used to be pork, but in the U.S. now it is usually more beef or chicken), fat, salt and spices, which are then stuffed into a casing and smoked. Most mortadella and bologna are seasoned with some blend of the following: black pepper, myrtle berries, nutmeg, allspice, celery seed and coriander.

And P.C. food police! Bologna is gluten free. Some people fry bologna and swear it's the best way to eat it. I never eat it that way because I like it the way I had it as a child. Hmmmmmmmmm  When I was a little boy and one year claimed that I didn't want to eat turkey my mother once let me eat bologna for Thanksgiving. Maybe mom was trying to kill me?

Italian mortadella is far superior to American bologna. It's quality meat and seasonings, whereas the American bologna is whatever scraps of mess is hanging around to grind into a paste. Still, I love the taste of that mess. Mortadella  fed the Roman army, as stone tablets contained in Bologna's Museo Civico Archeologico attest. In the Middle Ages, roughly 10,000 people, a quarter of the city's population, were involved in its production. If you make smarmy remarks about mortadella when in Italy you will be in trouble. They won't say you are "full of baloney", the popular slang meaning you are not speaking truthfully. But they may slice you into pieces of mortadella.

Hard Candy

I am sucking on  a piece of hard candy as I write. Therefore, you are going to get a hard candy report. Every year at the beginning of November, a local grocery store sells bulk Christmas hard candy from bins. I love that kind of simple candy and bought a large amount of it the other day. Hard candy has been popular since as far back as the early 19th century. As a result of its popularity I think I should receive absolution for eating so much of it. Some of the earliest types of candies that were considered hard candies included lemon flavored candy drops and peppermint candy drops. But hard candy mixes now come in all kinds of flavors. That's why i pick out the flavors I most like when scooping it from those big bins.

I like most hard candy but hate the French style cream center hard candy. Putting cream inside a hard candy is like putting Melissa McCarty inside of Beyonce's swim suit. Yuk! I also do not like spicy or sour hard candy. My favorites are the sweetest flavors because...well..maybe I am sweet. Basically, hard candy is sugar, almost complete sugar made from a sweet syrup, with food coloring and flavors that are either natural oils or artificial. Before you lecture me on "all that sugar", remember that you probably eat hard candy when you have a cough or sore throat. Many medicines for those conditions are enrobed inside a hard candy. Face it, you would rather have your cough drops inside of sugar flavored hard candy than  instead being inside broccoli!

Did you know that hard candy is technically a glass, so much so that it is sometimes used to make the “bottle” that gets broken over someone's head in a fight scene. I'd rather suck on a hard candy than be hit over the head with one. But you probably want to break a hard candy over my head. I do think hard candy is a memory stimulus of sort at Christmas. Grown people (I do consider myself "grown") still love eating hard candy because it reminds them of their childhood hard candy Christmas times.

I read that although people in the United States consume only 2% of their calories from candy, they buy 600 million pounds of candy every year for Halloween alone. That's six times the weight of the Titanic. Even crazier, more than 30,000 people are employed by the candy industry in America. For such large candy numbers, it's still surprising Americans don't consume more candy. I hope my dentist won't what I wrote here....

Wasting Time

I was thinking the other day about what we call "wasting time". YOu know. When you were little your mom undoubtedly said, "You waste too much time". Mom was right, but kids are supposed to waste time. It's part of growing up that we move slowly as we experience new things or process some of the old into what we finally accept as what that thing is. That kids waste time is as natural as that person you know is always late or always early. That's what they are and you won't change them.

The problem for humans when they are older and allegedly mature is that time wasting is still seen as a sin. It is not. An employer complains about a worker wasting time, a husband says his wife wastes time shopping or the wife says the husband wastes time watching football on TV too much are common traditional examples of that. But time wasting methods change over time. The biggest time wasting of all today, everywhere in the world is using the cell phone constantly. Yet, many adults deny that is a time wasting  episode because the are the biggest transgressors of it. I hate cell phones, but I never claim that anyone is wasting time using them.

If that's the way an individual enjoys life, so be it. Cell phone overuse isn't time wasting, it's just an addiction that can annoy others, but "time wasting", no. In pre technological days we couldn't waste time using our computers because they did not exist. But now, the technological God( or maybe the technological devil) has given us a big time waster  so we a can search for nonsense when we should trim the hedges or mow the lawn.

Centuries ago people probably complained about other people wasting time riding their horses too much. Today they say the same thing about those who love their cars and drive them more than they need to. In other times reading was called time wasting. Today it is watching too much TV. In 1859  a lady who sewed clothing for hours each day was wasting time. Today that woman is said to waste time if she jogs every morning and goes to the gym for an hour or two four times a week. I don't think we should put a negative connotation on activities people like to do frequently. It's better to call them hobbies. When we do what we like it is good for us because ti distracts us from some of the unpleasantness of life.

I sometimes think that those people who complain about us wasting time, do so because they don't have time wasting activity for themselves. Perhaps they haven't found it, or maybe their temperament and personality is not to do something more often than society sees as normal. Maybe they are jealous at those who waste time and seem to be mellow and happy when doing it. We all have met people who are always scheduled, their time never allowing for anything than what is on the schedule. I feel sorry for them. Life is not a schedule to follow, and we are not required to account for what we do every minute of the day. But they won't ever understand that, so don't bother trying to explain it to them.

Oh, I just realized something. It is late and I should prepare dinner. I should stop wasting my time here!

Too Many Light Bulbs

I rarely illuminate you when I rant about one thing or another. But today is a guaranteed illuminating rant. I am going to write about light, that kind of illuminating. It's my contention that today we have too much light in the world. The old Edison light bulbs (the old reliable filament incandescent light bulbs, the bulbs with the little wires inside) were enough for me. It was practical, reliable and not too intrusive. Now we have a multitude of light bulbs, more glaring and light politically correct because they are supposed to be good for the environment. Being cheaper to use it means a proliferation of light everywhere. That is not good for our eyes or our sanity.

Look at Tokyo at night. It's a world of garish un necessary light, lights on every building that scream and irritate with excess. I think in Tokyo that lovers probably have florescent light glaring when they make love. The under control of the light they love and hat consumes them. In old movies police officers used to question the bad guys by shining a light in their eyes continuously. The bad guy couldn't take it and always confessed the crime he committed. That should tell us too much light exposes too much of our thoughts.

Who wants light 24 hours a day. Darkness let's us escape the world in a special way. I can't understand why some people like to sleep with the lights on. Science says it's a bad idea that it causes us to sleep less. Maybe they like to look at those goofy spiral light bulbs that are sold as "energy efficient". Whenever I try one of those spiral bulbs that are supposed to last up to 10 times as long as my old faithful Edison bulb, it turns out to be a lie. They die more quickly and the law says you can't toss them in the garbage when they do because of mercury inside.

I hate having to take those bulbs to a recycling center. Light bulbs can make life more difficult in other ways too. Some of those little LED bulbs that are in light fixtures are so difficult to change one needs to have an electrician do it.  Incandescent bulbs, halogen bulbs, fluorescent bulbs, LEDs, CFLs....it's too much light for me. Cities are lighted 24 hours a day. At night I have to have a blackout shade to keep out the light from outside that will keep me awake.

ll those lights are pain and a distraction. Our minds can't focus because of all the light. I think the old fashioned candlelight may be the best light ever invented. If you want to do deep thinking, turn off all the lights and ignite a candle in the room. But then, nobody today seems to want to think deeply. It might interfere with their cell phone addiction.

Fast Food Still Sprinting

I am noticing a change in so called "fast food". Given I rarely eat it, except for a few favorites, my opinion may not be worth the onions on your next burger. Still, I think that fast food is better tasting but more expensive than ever. In fact, when looking at a fast food burger or chicken menu the high end items that the places push toward customers, seem to be in the range of a high end restaurant's similar offering. And it's indisputable that cooking a meal at home is far more economical than eating out. Yet, many people today are either too lazy or too time limited to cook regularly at home.

Forget nutritional value here. I care nothing about "healthy food" when it tastes bland or dull...and most of it does. My motto is "Health food makes me sick". When we compare taste and economical value of home food (normal home food, not that awful quinoa with bran pudding" kind of mess the food police want to mandate for us) eating out, particularly fast food is expensive now. But the taste issue is better in most fast food places. Meat, for example, is now more often real beef, lamb pork or chicken with nothing added to it (those soy extenders).  The condiments are better, the options range from nutty healthy to greasy tasty and it's still served quickly to the customer.

But fast food places are creating more and more high priced options. That may sell with the fast food addicted customer, but the lower income customer (a big portion of the fast food industry business) is not going to respond to that. For the lower income person the alternative to junk food is not grass fed beef and greens from a trendy farmers’ market, or any of that overpriced health food mess sold at grocery stores, but anything other than junk food. That would include staples like rice, grains, pasta, beans, fresh vegetables, canned vegetables, frozen vegetables, meat, fish, poultry, dairy products, bread, peanut butter, a thousand other things cooked at home. It's a great alternative, but that crowd is uneducated about it or unwilling to spend time cooking at home.

For many people besides the lower income group, cooking is defined as work, and fast food is both a pleasure and a crutch for them. Most people just shrug and say, "Let me enjoy what I want to eat, and stop telling me what to do. Eating out is something we all can do, rich or poor."

Giving Up The Old For The New

What we do in life changes constantly. In this age of new technology every day we abandon the old and accept the new, sometimes without ever giving it thought, constantly and happily. I remember when I was a kid and board games were the rage for everyone, young and old. People played them to relax, but now board games are gone and computer game have replaced them. Oddly, I loved board games but have never liked or played computer games. But I am the exception in most things, not just in adapting to change. I confess to being a little to slow to give up the familiar and even slower to adapt to the new. However, eventually we all adapt and accept a great number of new things.

In this age we accept the new and throw out the old if the new is more convenient for us. Never mind whether it is better for us. An example of this is how people abandoned reading for TV when TV first became standard. I doubt anyone would claim that watching TV is better for exercising the brain than is reading a book. But it is easier. We dumb down to a lower level because of that. perhaps it is human nature at work. Sometimes quality is improved by the new. Medicine and transportation are two examples. I don't think you can find anyone who would rather ride a horse to a destination than fly by jet. We don't have to evaluate the change from horse to jet because it is obvious that the former is not as good for us as the latter.

When we don't have an obvious advantage between old and new we have a tendency to just accept the new. It is sometimes to our detriment to do so. An example of embracing the new and ousting the old when we lose more than we gain is plastic. How many times do we buy a product made of plastic, formerly made of metal or some other material, and find it breaks soon after purchase. That toddler's plastic tricycle is not nearly as comfortable, durable or as safe for the child as the old, heavy metal tricycles. but manufacturers don't give us a choice between the old metal and the new plastic bike. The older version today is far more costly, if we can even find it to buy. So we accept the plastic tricycle without much thought about it.

As a result, there are a lot of things we used to do and enjoy that we don't do anymore. In my own life here are a few. I no longer... print photos (I miss that and love having a picture in hand rather than on line); write letters by hand, spend a couple of hours reading a newspaper (newspapers are so small and have so little information I now read one if less than 30 minutes); wash my car in my driveway by myself, use an encyclopedia that is not digital, book by visiting a travel agent (It was fun and made the trip seem more personal than booking on line); fix broken things (It's cheaper to buy another one); play a record on a photograph (It sounded better that way); see aTV show that foes not involve vulgar language or crude behavior, or some form of negativity; notice the silence (machines make our lives filled with constant noise); open a door for a lady (It's considered chauvinistic to do it); smile and say hello to strangers (Some will be offended if I do); accept fault and blame (Today we are told it's always someone else's fault); wait three weeks for a package to be delivered; buy anything electric without worrying about my "carbon footprint"; waiting excitedly for the weekly sport event on TV (there are games on live non stop now, ruining all excitement  about a "big game"); conversation that is not peppered with news of trivial celebrity nonsense....

Life is changed by technology, which changes even manners and opinions of the day. It's a lot more complicated to be alive today, and I am not sure that is better for us.

The End Of The Cemetery

When I saw the title of a newspaper article, 'Are Cemeteries Dying Out', I had to read it. Whoever composed that one has a sense of humor, and as we know, having a sense of humor about death is probably the best approach to it. The article posited the idea that cemeteries, once 'the dearest place on earth' to loved ones of the parted, are now becoming as forgotten as the pay telephone. I have a mausoleum space waiting, so this will not impact me. But few people today visit grave sites and people tend to be more mobile today. Families often live far apart, making it difficult to tend to a family grave site.

In addition, a traditional burial and years of maintenance of a grave are costly. When I last visited the family Mausoleum in New Orleans, I remember chatting with a worker there who helped me find the family crypt location. He told me that after more than 40 years working there that he sees fewer visits and fewer resources put into the tombs. Cremation is winning the burial battle today. More than one out of two people in Germany these days opt for cremation and an urn burial.

That's an incredible change in an old world society that just a few years ago had religious bans against cremation emitted from the Catholic Church that stated that cremation was a mortal sin. Now the church approves and assists in cremation. In several European  countries as well as the United States, families can take home the cremated remains of their loved ones. Hmmm Putting ornery Uncle Harold in a vase is kind of appealing. Scattering ashes of the deceased has become so common that some people actually have cremation shattering parties.

What's happening to some cemetery owners is bankruptcy. They can not fill their unused burial grounds anymore, and the economics of the business requires continued new occupancy. Funeral services are much more restrained affairs or are near death in many countries. It does make sense that burials in cemeteries would follow that lead.

When you add in the nutty global warming advocates who claim ecological damage from cemeteries, the fact that tradition has been lost to trendiness in so many aspects of life  (and death), visiting the family tomb might soon be replaced more often with glancing at the cremation urn on the fireplace. Perhaps redoing the cemetery to make it less like a Dracula movie venue and more an interactive place for people to feel joy rather than sadness, could be the survival tactic for cemeteries. But don't bet your life on it!

LGBT M onth

Did you know that October was LGBT month? I didn't either until seeing a commercial about it on my local TV news station. Everything and everybody today has a day, week or month set aside to recognize it. Good for the LGBT crowd they have theirs. What is surprising about it though, is that just a decade or so ago, such a thing was never mentioned in public, much less celebrated as it is today. That there is now a month honoring what the majority of the world thought was deviancy. This shows how fast social mores and folkways change in society. I suspect the internet is a key in that, given it has revolutionized the speed and ease of transferring information.

Since I am not a L, G, B, or even a T (I suspect my letter has more to do with insanity than with a sex role), I was curious enough after hearing about the month that I investigated it. I Googled the subject and immediate found an interesting site about the subject, https://lgbthistorymonth.com/ It seems that is the official LGBT month site. It has a list of what it calls "31 icons of 2017" to celebrate their achievements. I only recognized the names of eight of them. It seemed a bit odd that the site would have to "celebrate" the achievements of LGBT people. Is that not a a way of separating them form others who are straight? Is that not lowering expectations a little?

The site says that "LGBT History Month celebrates the achievements of 31 lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender icons. Each day in October, a new LGBT Icon is featured with a video, bio, bibliography, download able images and other resources." The idea I gleaned from reading more is that the LGBT wants to have its history studied like straight history is. Hmmm I wonder if there is a Hitler or Ghengis Khan in the LGBT past, and if so, would that character be studied objectively too. Anyway, a link at the site shows you how to promote LGBT people and events if you are inclined to do so.

I found quite a few other links to LGBT month, and if you Google the subject you'll find them as well. The history of the celebration is that in 1994, a coalition of education based organizations in the United States designated October as LGBT History Month. In 1995, a resolution passed by the General Assembly of the National Education Association included LGBT History Month within a list of commemorative months.

I wish them well. Every person deserves to choose the identity with which he she or whatever is comfortable. Happy LGBT month.