Hanging With Avery

 

Ink Cartridges Are A Scam

How to Have Abs of Steel in No Time

The Best Magic Trick in the World!

20 All-Time Worst Novels Among Best Sellers

This list comes from Crafty House. I agree with most of it.

• The Twilight Series, Stephanie Meyer
• Fifty Shades of Grey, E.L. James
• The DaVinci Code, Dan Brown
• To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee
• A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
• The Red Tent, Anita Diamant
• Moby Dick, Herman Melville
• Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy
• The Road, Cormac McCarthy
• Into the Wild, John Krakauer
• Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
• For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway
• Cold Mountain, Charles Frasier
• The Secret, Rhonda Byrne
• The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
• Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert
• Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks
• Moon People, Dale Courtney
• The Fault In Our Stars, John Green
• A Reliable Wife, Robert Goolrick

Profanity is Just Another Sign of Devolution.

You've probably noticed that in recent years, the use of profanity in the English language has grown dramatically. At first I thought it was just kids doing it on the interweb. After all, the majority of posts / comments you see on the web (with the possible exception of Facebook) are made by people under the age of 20. Like smoking, it's a way for 12 year olds to show-off for 11 year olds. Now we're seeing it on just about every single TV show and movie too. Lord knows almost all of them seem to be written by children. The stories, hackneyed and all around horrible to begin with, are punctuated by nudity, simulated sex, profanity, mixed race couples, and homosexual characters, not to mention plot holes galore. Now I fully realize that most of these things are there for the sole reason of liberal Hollywood doing their best to offend Christians, but that doesn't account for the horrible stories and plot holes. Stupidity accounts for those. We all know now that human and other animal genes are breaking down and have been doing so for at least the past 35,000 years. The use of profanity is not just an attempt to be cool or to tick-off Christians. It's a sign of an inferior or diseased brain that doesn't have the capabilities to use words that have deeper meaning. The Greeks during Plato's time had a 5-million word vocabulary, something almost no one today has the mental capacities to even aspire to. English, the most sophisticated language in the modern world has only 490,000 words, and very few people know even 10,000 of them. Now we've delved into a world where well-thought-out adjectives and adverbs with good and proper meaning are being replaced by simple-minded profanity that has only a vague meaning at best. There's no greater measure of mankind's intelligence than its collective vocabulary.

Bürstenhaus Redecker Long Bath Brush

Suffice to say I really like this back scrubber. The plastic ones never last long, so I've always preferred wood. This one is made of Beachwood, the same kind of wood used for tool handles like shovels and rakes, so it's very sturdy. Some manufacturers will make the handle and brush separate with a slot in the brush head for the handle to slide into. Those are nice too in case you want to take the handle off and just use the brush to . . . heck, I don't know—scrub your chest and stomach area or maybe your feet, but those always break in that slot area eventually. I think a single piece of wood for the whole thing will likely last longer. This scrubber is nearly 20" long and really feels substantial when you hold it. It's not some cheap, flimsy item. I believe you could actually drive a nail with it. The bristles are made of pig fibers—not too hard, not too soft. I paid $22 for mine. I'm sure Amazon stocks it, but please do the world a favor and buy it from someone other than that smut giant if you can. Hipster Market has it for about the same price.

Philips Norelco 2100—Electric Razor of the Gods

I’ve tried a bunch of different electric razors over the years, and not one of them worked worth a darn. I guess I’ve got a weird beard. Yes, that’s what they called me—Mr. Weird Beard. Electric razors just don’t want to shave my beard for some reason. . .until now.

I can’t get over how nice this thing works. Even if I haven’t washed my face first and it’s still oily, this razor will give me a nice shave every time. And it’s cordless, so it’s great on trips. I only have to charge it once per week. You have to change the blades every six months—not bad at all for the close shave you get. It also has a pop-up sideburn trimmer. Highly recommended.

Glen Campbell's Swan Song

Glen Campbell's Alzheimer's has progressed to the point where he can no longer speak intelligible words, nor understand the words of others. This was the last song he ever recorded in 2014. Seems a fitting swan song:

Glen Campbell - I'm Not Gonna Miss You



Lyrics

I'm still here, but yet I'm gone
I don't play guitar or sing my songs
They never defined who I am
The man that loves you 'til the end

You're the last person I will love
You're the last face I will recall
And best of all, I'm not gonna miss you
Not gonna miss you

I'm never gonna hold you like I did
Or say I love you to the kids
You're never gonna see it in my eyes
It's not gonna hurt me when you cry

I'm never gonna know what you go through
All the things I say or do
All the hurt and all the pain
One thing selfishly remains

I'm not gonna miss you
I'm not gonna miss you

The Problem with Fluorescent Lightbulbs

The Cutest (and bestest) Three Year Old Drummer You Will Ever See

WHIPPING FLAT EARTHERS BACK TO THEIR CAVES

Whipping Flat Earthers Back to Their Caves

by C.W. Seper, January 23, 2017

Sick of seeing all these goofy Flat Earth videos and blogs? Here's a little ammunition in the fight against the unbridled stupidity currently sweeping the idiotnet.

1) As you travel in any direction on the planet, the stars behind you start to disappear while new ones come into view in front of you. For instance, you can't see a single star in the Southern Cross constellation from Chicago. Nor can you see Polaris or more than a couple of stars from the Little Dipper or Draco from Buenos Aires. The obvious reason is that the Earth itself (being round) is in the way.

2) If the Earth was flat, you would be able to see cities in Europe or China from the USA with a good telescope on a mountaintop. In fact, the Earth's horizon makes it impossible to see more than 50 to 100 miles away. Not only will you not see the Eiffel Tower from Indianapolis, you won’t even see the mountaintops of West Virginia.

3) Flat Earthers claim there is no video of the entire Earth rotating from space. Actually, it's done all the time. You see live time lapse views from weather satellites on the news every day. There is even at least one satellite that sends a live time lapse feed 24 hours per day from the International Space Station that you can watch online: http://www.n2yo.com/space-station

4) Flat Earthers claim that the real distances to the stars and planets are simply made up and that we're being lied to (apparently by every single astronomer in the world). In fact, we know the distances to stars by using the parallax method of calculation. It is not a theory. It is a calculation. One that any grade school kid can do. The distance to the moon is even easier to calculate by simply bouncing radio signals off it. They travel exactly at the speed of light, 186,200 miles per second. It takes 2.56 seconds for a radio wave to hit the moon and come back. Dividing that in half: 1.28 times 186,200 = 238,336 miles. (Truth be told, it’s not exactly 1.28 seconds. The total distance is closer to 239,000 miles.)

5) They claim you can't circumnavigate the globe by going south because the world stops at Antarctica. Actually, ships, subs, and planes circumnavigate the globe going north to south or vise-versa all the time. There's a no fly zone over Antarctica (simply because a rescue mission would be nearly impossible in most situations if you crashed), so they skirt just around the continent. Whalers have records going back centuries of traveling past Antarctica from South America (for instance) and back up past New Zealand and China through the Artic Sea and back down past Greenland to the Atlantic. Further, you can fly a tour around Antarctica any summer on Antarctica Airlines out of Australia. Sorry kids. No end of the world wall. Have none of these flat Earthers ever sailed the seven seas in the Navy?

6) Virgin Galactic will be taking customers into space probably by the end of next year. They already have 700 people signed up to go. If you have enough money, you can take your own video of the spinning globe from space before long.

7) 207 people from 11 countries have not only been to outer space but have performed space walks. Is it rational to think that all the astronauts from all these countries have lied to everyone on Earth since the late 60’s? If so, perhaps flat Earthers should ask Belgium, Denmark, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, and Brazil why they bothered putting billions of dollars into the International Space Station if none of them have really even been to space to begin with.

8) Flat Earthers claim that the Earth doesn’t really spin. In fact, both wind and ocean currents move clockwise in the northern hemisphere and anticlockwise in the southern precisely because of the Earth’s constant rotation.

(Feel free to copy this and pass it on.)

Have You Ever Heard The Term ‘Piss Poor?’

Here is a great article I copied from http://healthanddiytips.com/

We can learn a lot about ourselves by looking to the past. History not only provides us with a nostalgic glimpse at how things used to be — like with these classic childhood toys — but its lessons can still teach us things today. Many of us fondly refer to “the good old days” when times were purer and life was simpler.

They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot. Once a day it was taken and sold to the tannery.

If you had to do this to survive, you were “piss poor.”

But worse than that were the really poor folks who couldn’t even afford to buy a pot. They “didn’t have a pot to piss in” and were considered the lowest of the low.

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June.

However, since they were starting to smell, brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor.

Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water.

The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women, and finally the children. Last of all the babies.

By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water!”

Houses had thatched roofs with thick straw-piled high and no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof.

When it rained, it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying, “It’s raining cats and dogs.”

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed.

Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That’s how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the term, “dirt poor.”

The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on the floor to help keep their footing.

As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way.

Hence, “a thresh hold.”

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day, they lit the fire and added things to the pot.

They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day.

Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme, “Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old.”

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off.

It was a sign of wealth that a man could “bring home the bacon.” They would cut off a little to share with guests, and would all sit around and “chew the fat.”

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death.

This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the “upper crust.”

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days.

Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial.

They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up.

Hence the custom of holding a “wake.”

In old, small villages, local folks started running out of places to bury people.

So they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave.

When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside, and they realized they had been burying people alive.

So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell.

Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (“the graveyard shift”) to listen for the bell.

Thus, someone could be “saved by the bell,” or was considered a “dead ringer.”

Now, whoever said history was boring?

Canon Rebel T5 Video Stills

I thought I'd show some still grabs from video shot with my Canon Rebel T5. This is using the stock 18-55mm lens. This was shot with a tripod and manual focus, but everything else was set to automatic.

(Click on the images below to enlarge.)

A lot of videographers are going to DSLR cameras these days and getting out of traditional camcorders. You can get a DSLR with a very large CMOS chip and large lens for just a few hundred dollars compared to a few thousand for a comparable camcorder. And single CMOS chips have gotten to where they have color that looks every bit as good as as a traditional 3-CCD camcorder setup. The large sensor and lens makes them take great shots in low light, even candlelight. I shot the footage below with just a single 150-watt light bulb. Even at that I managed to blowout the exposure a little.

What I can't get over is how good this cam works in automatic mode. Most of the time I couldn't make the picture look much better if I set everything manually. Everyone says the stock lens isn't very good, but you could have fooled me. Of course one of the great selling points with a DSLR is that you can change lenses with it. To have a camcorder capable of interchangeable lenses costs upward of $5 grand. I can get a decent zoom lens for this Canon for just a little over $100. I only paid around $350 for the camera last Christmas, so even with the zoom lens and extra battery and a large capacity storage card, I'm still under $500.

Many TV shows and movies are being shot on DSLR cams now. Most are capable of 24 frames per second and of course you can fit a pro lens on them just fine. The first one I ever saw was the finale of the medical show—HOUSE. That was shot using a couple of $2,500 Canon 5D Mark II cams. That's still a very reasonable price, and truth be told, the image quality is not much better than my T5 Rebel. It's a changing world. Some things are actually getting better.

BarCharts English Grammar & Punctuation Guide

I own a book formatting company, and one thing I I've learned from it is that people from all walks of life, from physicians to politicians, all forget most of what they learned in school about proper writing by the time they're thirty. Most people don't even remember how to use something as simple as a comma, what the difference is between a comma and a semicolon, and when to use either. I've kept a BarCharts English Grammar & Punctuation Guide by my desk for the past 15 years. It's just a 4-page laminated pamphlet that will quickly tell 95% of us everything we need to know in order to write properly. For less than $7.00 it can't be beat. And being laminated, it will last a lifetime.

Even if all you write is an occasional blog post, this thing is a Godsend. Can't remember when to use an En dash or an Em dash? Don't remember when to place punctuation inside quote marks and parenthesis or outside them? How many dots go in an ellipsis? Do you ever capitalize the first word after a colon? If you place the title of a magazine in italics, then how do you set off the name of an individual article within that magazine? All the answers are just fingertips away.

I got my copy at a local B&N years ago. You can also find them online all over the place. Don't be without a copy. For $7.00 you can't go wrong.

Looking For a Rechargeable Sweeper?

I like these little Shark electric (battery operated) sweepers. My last one lasted for many years. They do a better job on indoor-outdoor carpeting than a big vacuum does, so I use mine every week on the front porch. It's also VERY light, so it's easy to carry down to the basement and do the carpets there too.

This new one isn't as powerful as the old one I had, but it still does a very nice job. For $30, you can't beat it:

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Shark-Rechargeable-Floor-and-Carpet-Sweeper/24069684

They have one that's a little more powerful for $50:

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Shark-Rechargeable-Floor-and-Carpet-Sweeper-with-XL-Motorized-Brush/24069683

"Quirkology" Great Site for Learning Party Tricks

This is just one of MANY great videos they have showing how to do some neat little tricks that are fun to do at parties and such. If you like this, you should check out their YouTube channel for several more.

Where's My Damned Restroom!?

I am a giraffe trammeled in a man's body. I am among the first of many transhumans (or neo-humans if you like) to come in the next generation of genetically engineered humans. I demand to be treated with respect and to have a special restroom made for my needs with grass and dirt on the floor to absorb my plops. I am special. All must bend to my will or I will lie and say you are afraid of me and use my own brand of hate speech with the suffix, phobic, in it to try to belittle you. You are weak and stupid. You will cave to my demands. Jerry Giraffe has spoken.

Wintergatan - Marble Machine (music instrument using 2000 marbles)

Must See To Believe

Do You Know What Socialism Really is?

(An essay by GK Chesterton)

"There Was A Socialist"

It has long been obvious that Socialists are interested in everything else except Socialism. There are indeed a few narrow and perfectly genuine Communists who are genuinely interested in Communism. But they have no power even to begin putting it in operation; and the interest attaches to those who have the power, or are supposed to have the power, to apply their principle, and therefore proceed to apply some other principle. We might be duly impressed by the audacity of the cry of Socialism in Our Time, if the Socialists had not been so unwise as to let us know, or guess, what they mean by Socialism. The writer whom I criticised last week, writing under the old heading of a famous Socialist paper, actually explained what he meant by Socialism; whether it was to come in our time or no. It appeared, to my startled gaze, that he actually meant the present social situation in Denmark. Now Distributists differ a great deal about whether Denmark is a sound or model Distributist State. But there is no doubt at all that it is not a Socialist State. In its primary principle or basis it is nearly the opposite of a Socialist State. The land is not nationalised, but owned privately by a multitude of small proprietors; and that is the fundamental fact by which all such definitions are determined. The writer in question seemed to be vaguely impressed by the fact that State assistance was given in various forms, and that many obviously public institutions are owned in the name of the public. It is not Socialism to make the railroads public, any more than to make the roads public. It is not Socialism for the State to endow hospitals, any more than for the State to support reformatories. Socialism is not a condition in which the government can help hard cases or protect and patch up economic evils; it has that power in every healthy Distributist community. Socialism is a condition in which the government never needs to help anybody or patch up anything; because it owns everybody’s property and runs everybody’s enterprise. That is what Socialism meant in the days when it meant anything. But there is nothing very revolutionary in supposing that a modern nation would soon be Socialist as Detroit. As apparently anything can be called Socialism, I suppose that the triumphant Capitalism of Mr. Ford can be called Socialism. If it means anything, it seems to mean Modernism; in the sociological as distinct from the theological sense. In both senses, it is generally a euphemism for muddle-headedness. But though we should need no great revolution in order to be as Socialist as Denmark, we should be uncommonly lucky even to be as Distributist as Denmark.

I mention this matter just now, because it is almost certain that in these days the Socialist government, or the government which was once supposed to be Socialist, will be flattered and complimented by a certain amount of Capitalist abuse. The Budget is bound in any case to be abused; partly because it is bound to be heavy taxation, partly because it is in many ways bad taxation. The Capitalist is often a simple soul and when he wants to abuse anybody, he calls him a Socialist. He therefore pays Mr. Snowden the wildly and grotesquely undeserved compliment of calling him a Socialist. There have been any number of ruinous or unjust taxes in history; and those who hated them called their inventors tyrants; but they did not call them Socialists. The exact truth about Mr. Snowden was playfully expressed by “Beachcomber,” that one bright spirit of the Daily Express, in his simple rhyme for the nursery: “Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, banker’s man.” He is entirely of the modern world, which thinks in financial continents, and moves on the axes of a few colossal cosmopolitan combinations. Of course all the politicians submit to these international influences and interests; but Snowden would probably accept them in theory as well as submitting to them in practice. But even in assisting the advance of cosmopolitan finance he may cross the path of some local and limited forms of Capitalism; and certain rather provincial persons can be trusted to fall into the trap. They innocently shriek out “Socialist!” and Mr. Snowden smiles and makes a note of it. It will be useful; for instance, in debates with the Communists. A few more such innocent shrieks and the Labour Government may recover its backing among equally innocent Socialists. The only people who will remain unimpressed will be the really intellectual Socialists; and especially the old Socialists who remember the dim and distant days when the word actually meant something. The typical example, of course, is Mr. Bernard Shaw. He recently wrote an article in the Weekend Review which aroused extraordinary irritation in The Clarion and other papers supporting the government. I think I know the particular sentence that really produced the irritation. They are not really very much interested in the romance of King Magnus or the farcical costume of the American Ambassador. The precise phrase which hit them where it hurts was that in which G.B.S., ignoring all relative talk about taxation or the Trade, applied the deadly test, and said that the government dare not “nationalise a single industry.”

That is why it is well, amid all the fuss that follows the Budget, to repeat the real though obvious truth, as I have repeated it here. Socialism died before the War. The solid and sincere intentions of many intelligent men, indeed of most intelligent men, to build a simplified and centralised state, in which private property should become public property, reached its height in the days of the Fabian Essays and Blatchford’s Merrie England; and then began to break down; partly even then, perhaps, by the small efforts of the first few Distributists; much more by the titanic terrorism of the Trusts. The mere Labour politician represents these old idealists, just about as much as a corrupt Whig aristocrat, dabbling in the South Sea Bubble, represented the Puritan fanatics who killed a king; or about as much as a snobbish pork-butcher of the Primrose League, celebrating the Diamond Jubilee, resembled a romantic Highland Jacobite dying for a king over the water. Socialism remains as a term of abuse to apply to other people, or a term of flattery to apply to oneself; but its real origin is lost in history, like that of the words Whig and Tory.