from Bruce
Anecdotes
Work
• During the Alaskan gold rush, some people made lots of money serving as goldweighers in cafés and saloons. Miners came into various places of business and paid for their purchases in gold. One goldweigher grew long fingernails so he could secrete some gold dust under his fingernails during each transaction. Another goldweigher wore his hair long and well oiled, and he ran his fingers often through his hair — at the end of the day he would give himself a shampoo and collect the gold dust from the bottom of the basin. For a while, Wilson Mizner worked as a goldweigher. He used to spill some gold dust on the square of carpet under his feet — at the end of the day he would burn the square of carpet and collect the gold dust from the ashes. Mr. Mizner later boasted, “I weighed a million and a half dollars’ worth of gold dust at Swiftwater Bill’s joint, and never made a mistake that wasn’t in favor of the house.”
• An early performance of Peter Ustinov’s Love of Four Colonels ran for four hours, so of course Mr. Ustinov was told to cut 90 minutes from his play. He replied, “Why? Hamlet ran for four hours — and this play’s much funnier.” By the way, anyone who works with other people will have occasional problems. Mr. Ustinov once said that he thought Walt Disney must have been happy while making an animated film: “If one of his characters became difficult, all he had to do was to erase it.” Also by the way, Mr. Ustinov has a boat, about which he says: “It can sleep six people who know each other very well. Or one prude.”
• Microsoft founder Bill Gates knows how to express his opinion. More than one Microsoft computer programmer has received an e-mail from Mr. Gates stating, “This is the stupidest piece of code ever written.” Mr. Gates has the credibility to get away with his bluntness — in addition to being the billionaire owner of Microsoft, he scored a perfect 800 on the math portion of his Scholastic Aptitude Test. Microsoft computer programmers worked long, hard hours, but they did have special amusements provided for them, including a room set aside specially for juggling.
• For a while, Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club, worked 80- and 90-hour weeks as a freelance technical writer. Eventually, she went to a therapist, but she soon quit because he kept falling asleep during their sessions. Especially upsetting her was that the therapist fell asleep only when she talked about good things; whenever she talked about bad things, he was extremely attentive. This, she felt, reinforced her negative feelings and was a second good reason to stop seeing the therapist.
• When Count Basie broke up his big band and started a sextet, everyone was surprised that Freddie “Pepper” Green, an important part of Count Basie’s “All-American Rhythm Section” for 14 years, was not part of the sextet. But Pepper showed up for work anyway, telling Count Basie, “After I gave you the best years of my life, you think you’re going to leave me now?” The six-musician group became a seven-musician group, and Pepper worked for Count Basie another 35 years.
• The Marx Brothers once ordered their writers to show up at 9:30 a.m. for a meeting. The writers pointed out that they were always at work by 9:30, so Groucho responded, “Well, then, come in at 8:30.” The writers did come in at 8:30, but the Marx Brothers didn’t show up until 11:45. The writers complained, “Where were you? We were right here!” Groucho said, “How do you like that? They were right here. We go out of our way to have a meeting and they just sit here!”
• Heinrich Conried, director of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, knew that the clouds in Wagner’s Walküre are important, and once he spent three hours rehearsing the movement of the clouds with the stagehands before a performance. He then told them, “Very good! If you do it as well as that tonight, I shall be much pleased.” One of the stagehands replied, “But Mr. Conried, we shall not be here tonight. Our eight-hour day expires at five o’clock.”
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Presenting
Michael Egan
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "4 Aces"
Album: 5 MILES DOWN THE DIRT ROAD
Artist: Armano
Artist Location: Bamberg, Germany
Info: Armano is a singer and guitarist from Bamberg, Germany.
“The EP was recorded throughout winter 2020/2021 as a result of the isolation that came along with another lockdown due to the pandemic. It´s a soundtrack that makes you wanna jump on your motorcycle and drink till dawn with complete strangers.”
Price: €1 (EURO) for track; €6 (EURO) for six-track album
Genre: Blues-rock.
Links:
5 Miles Down The Dirt Road
Armano on Bandcamp
Armano on YouTube
Other Links:
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: FREE pdfs
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
David Bruce's Blog #2
David Bruce's Blog #3
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Stephen Suggests
All-American Tree
New Venture
Michael Egan
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny, but brisk for these parts.
Using The Power Of Annoyance For Good
Reddit
The internet is, if nothing else, extremely good at annoying the hell out of people. Mostly, this power is used for nefarious purposes but sometimes, just sometimes, it’s harnessed for more constructive means—such as making sure that a company like Kellogg’s isn’t able to easily hire scabs to replace its striking workers.
Vice reports that a subreddit called r/antiwork has been messing with Kellogg’s attempts to find the new employees it needs after it recently fired 1,400 union members for striking. r/antiwork has decided to throw a wrench into the company’s plans by getting its users to spam job application pages with fake resumes and cover letters.
Someone with the excellent username “BloominFunions” created a post with the relevant links, writing that “it’s time for r/antiwork to make the news as a formidable fighter for the average worker” and urging the spam applicants to “have fun with it!” while making up stuff to be considered for a role they’ll never actually take if offered.
“Nothing is scarier to a business than organized labor,” the post reads before including more tools for making sure users can easily submit applications that won’t trip Kellogg’s spam filters.
As the Vice article notes, the Kellogg’s strike is aimed at gaining “better wages and working conditions.” It began in September after a union proposal to address “Kellogg’s proposed pay and benefits cuts while forcing workers to work severe overtime as long as 16-hour days for seven days a week” went unmet.
Reddit
Lured ‘With Food’
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando was famously paid a ridiculously huge sum for just 12 days of work on Superman.
The Godfather actor was cast as Jor-El in Richard Donner’s 1978 film, but due to the impressive deal he’d managed to make, he allegedly remained in his trailer for long bouts of time.
It turns out this caused a particular headache for the actor Cary Elwes, who, as a 16-year-old, found work on the film’s set and stepped up when an assistant director became ill.
“Marlon had no incentive to be on time, because his agent had struck the most amazing deal for him,” Elwes said. “Every day that the picture went over, he got another million dollars.
“Once you fed Marlon, he was in a much better mood,” the actor recalled. “So I tried to find delicacies that appealed to him, which were limited at Shepperton at the time. He mainly wanted desserts.”
Marlon Brando
‘And Just Like That’
Peloton
Shares of Peloton, the fitness equipment company, fell 11.3% Thursday — tumbling to a 19-month low — after a key character in HBO Max’s “Sex and the City” revival, “And Just Like That,” was shown dying of a heart attack after a 45-minute workout on one of the company’s exercise bikes.
The stock continued its slide Friday, down more than 5% in midmorning trading. [Update: Peloton shares closed -5.4% for the day, amid slight upticks across major indices.]
According to Peloton, the company had approved the show’s use of the bike as well as the appearance of “Allegra,” a fictional instructor played by real-life Peloton cycling instructor Jess King. However, Peloton did not know that “And Just Like That,” which premiered Dec. 9, would show [SPOILER ALERT] Mr. Big, played by Chris Noth, collapsing and then dying after a Peloton workout. Mr. Big was the on-again-off-again love interest of protagonist Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker). “And just like that — Big died,” Carrie says in the scene.
In response, Peloton pointed to Mr. Big’s unhealthy lifestyle choices as the likely cause of his demise — rather than the fact that his death was precipitated by his use of the company’s exercise bike. Prior to hopping on the Peloton bike, Big is seen puffing on a cigar.
Peloton
Name Change For Colorado Mountain
Mestaa’ehehe Mountain
A federal panel has approved renaming a Colorado peak after a Cheyenne woman who facilitated relations between white settlers and Native American tribes in the early 19th century, part of a broader campaign to replace derogatory place names across the United States.
Mestaa’ehehe Mountain, which is pronounced “mess-taw-HAY,” bears the name of and honors an influential translator also known as Owl Woman who mediated between Native Americans and white traders and soldiers in what is now southern Colorado.
The renaming of what was known as Squaw Mountain, 30 miles (48 kilometers) west of Denver, comes after U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland formally declared “squaw” a derogatory term in November and said she is taking steps to remove it from federal government use and to rename other derogatory place names. Haaland is the nation’s first Native American Cabinet official.
The name change of the 11,486-foot (3,501-meter) peak, located in the Arapahoe and Roosevelt national forests, is the first of several geographic name changes being considered by a state panel.
Mestaa’ehehe Mountain
Signs Off
Brian Williams
Brian Williams ended his MSNBC show The 11th Hour – and his long career at NBC – with a warning of what is happening to democracy, telling viewers in his sendoff, “My biggest worry is for my country.”
“The truth is I am not a liberal or a conservative. I’m an institutionalist,” he said. “I believe in this place and in my love of country I yield to no one. But the darkness on the edge of town has spread to the main roads and highways and neighborhoods. It is now at the local bar and the bowling alley, at the school board and the grocery store. And it must be acknowledged and answered for.”
He added, “Grown men and women, who swore an oath to our Constitution, elected by their constituents, possessing the kind of college degrees I could only dream of, have decided to join the mob and become something they are not, while hoping we somehow forget who they were. They’ve decided to burn it all down with us inside.”
Williams did not say what he would do next but said, “I will probably find it impossible to be silent and stay away from you lights and cameras after I experiment with relaxation and find out what I’ve missed and what’s out there.”
Brian Williams
Publicist Bullied Election Worker
Georgia
Weeks after the 2020 election, a Chicago publicist for hip-hop artist Kanye West traveled to the suburban home of Ruby Freeman, a frightened Georgia election worker who was facing death threats after being falsely accused by former President Donald Trump of manipulating votes. The publicist knocked on the door and offered to help.
The visitor, Trevian Kutti, gave her name but didn’t say she worked for West, a longtime billionaire friend of Trump. She said she was sent by a “high-profile individual,” whom she didn’t identify, to give Freeman an urgent message: confess to Trump’s voter-fraud allegations, or people would come to her home in 48 hours, and she’d go to jail.
Freeman refused. This story of how an associate of a music mogul pressured a 62-year-old temporary election worker at the center of a Trump conspiracy theory is based on previously unreported police recordings and reports, legal filings, and Freeman’s first media interview since she was dragged into Trump’s attempt to reverse his election loss.
When Kutti knocked on Freeman's door on Jan. 4, Freeman called 911. By then, Freeman said, she was wary of strangers.
“They’re saying that I need help,” Freeman told the dispatcher, referring to the people at her door, “that it’s just a matter of time that they are going to come out for me and my family.”
Georgia
$200 Million Montana Ranch
Rupert
Billionaire media honcho Rupert Murdoch (R-Evil Incarnate) and his wife Jerry (R-Texass) have quietly picked up a roughly 345,000-acre working cattle ranch in southwest Montana from the Koch family, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Situated south of the city of Dillon, near Yellowstone National Park, the off-market transaction netted the Koch Industries subsidiary Matador Cattle Co. a jaw-dropping $200 million in what is reportedly the priciest and largest land deal in the state’s history — dwarfing the sale earlier this year of the approximately 80,000-acre Climbing Arrow Ranch near Bozeman, which went under contract for around $136.5 million after a bidding war.
Originally acquired more than 70 years ago by Fred Koch, founder of the crude-oil gathering business that later became Koch Industries, the property houses the Matador Cattle Ranch, a division of Koch Industries, currently led by Fred’s son Charles Koch. About one-third of the land’s acres are deeded, and there are grazing rights on about 226,000 leased acres. The ranch houses nearly 7,000 cow/calf pairs, along with diverse wildlife population, including about 4,000 elk, 800 antelope and 1,500 mule deer. There’s also a 28-mile-long trout pond and 25 homes, mostly for employees.
In 2002, Beaverhead became the first U.S. ranch to receive Wildlife at Work certification from the Wildlife Habitat Council for outstanding natural resource management initiatives.
Murdoch, 90, serves as executive chairman of News Corp. — owner of Fox News Channel, The Wall Street Journal and The Times of London — and has an estimated net worth of $21.6 billion, per Forbes. The couple also maintain a 13-acre, $28.8 million estate and winery known as Moraga Vineyards in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Bel Air, plus a roughly 25,000-acre sheep and cattle farm in Murdoch’s native home of Australia.
As for the Koch family and their related entities: In March, they sold Spring Creek Ranch, a roughly 11,000-acre ranch in Kansas originally listed for around $23.2 million; and they listed their 131,000-acre Matador Ranch in West Texas several months ago for $124.45 million. One of the nation’s richest families, Forbes places the Kochs net worth at around $100 billion.
Rupert
Found In China
Assyrian Armor
The world has never been more connected. The things we buy, use, eat, and are were often made miles away – let’s face it, statistically speaking, there’s a pretty good chance you’re wearing something right now that was made in China.
How long do you think it’s been this way? The answer may surprise you: according to a new study published in the journal Quaternary International, a piece of nearly 3,000-year-old armor found in Yanghai cemetery, Northwest China, may have originally been manufactured in the Neo-Assyrian Empire – a land that covered parts of modern-day Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey and Egypt.
The armor, dated to between 786 and 543 BCE, was originally discovered in 2013, in the tomb of a 30-ish-year-old soldier – but how it got there was something of a mystery. It’s what’s known as “scale armor”: a nearly whole-body outfit originally made of more than 5,500 individual leather scales arranged together horizontally, much like you can still see today in some bullet-proof vests, and to see it in China is … unusual, the study explains.
But that’s not all that makes the find remarkable. It’s extremely rare for armor to survive this long – only one other complete example of leather scale armor is known today, and it’s too fragile to study in its entirety. It’s only thanks to Northwest China’s particularly arid climate that the Yanghai armor hasn’t already rotted away.
Assyrian Armor
Stunning Pattern
‘Pinstripe’
A woman has amused viewers on TikTok by sharing the moment her grandmother realised that the leggings she was wearing were actually emblazoned with curse words rather than pinstripes.
In a video posted to the app this week by a woman named Chelsea, who goes by the username @chels_bb, she can be seen zooming in on her grandmother’s black leggings, which at first glance appear to be designed with white pinstripes.
However, as the TikTok shows, the pants are actually decorated with the words “f*** you” written in a tiny print.
“My nana thought these pants were pinstriped,” Chelsea captioned the clip, in which a woman who is likely the TikToker’s mother can be heard telling the older woman: “Nope, they say ‘f*** you,’ Mom.”
The realisation prompted a stunned reaction from Chelsea’s grandmother, who replied with a drawn-out: “Oh my god” as the camera angle panned up to show her horrified expression.
‘Pinstripe’
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