from Bruce
Anecdotes
Death
• After comedian Lou Costello’s son accidentally drowned in a swimming pool, Mr. Costello ordered a bracelet to be made that bore his son’s name, then he had the bracelet welded to his wrist. When Mr. Costello died, he was buried wearing that bracelet.
Easter
• Joanne Hinch of Woodland Hills, California, had taught her children the traditional Easter greeting “He is risen!” and the traditional reply “He is risen, indeed!” On Easter morning, they wanted to surprise their father with this greeting, but three-year-old Dan forgot the words and greeted his father by saying, “Daddy, God’s back!”
Education
• Wavy Gravy (aka Hugh Romney) is a wonderful human being and a wonderful teacher. At his Camp Winnarainbow, the rule is, “If you got ’em, brush ’em” (teeth, that is). Wavy Gravy himself has only six teeth left—and lots of false teeth that are colored like a rainbow. At camp orientation, Wavy Gravy stands on stage in the darkness, with only a spotlight on his mouth. He then tells the horrific story of how he lost his teeth (mainly through neglect), leaving out no detail. Finally, at the end of his story, he yanks out his false teeth, opening his mouth wide to reveal his few remaining stumps of real teeth. Every year after camp is over, he receives letters like this from parents: “I don’t know what you did to our little Billy but he has been home only a month and he has already worn out three brand-new toothbrushes.”
• Comedian Jay Leno attended Emerson College, where he was a mediocre student at best. However, one semester he surprised his parents by getting straight A’s. This is what happened: For one semester only, Emerson College implemented a “progressive” idea—it let students grade themselves. Mr. Leno recognized an opportunity when he saw it, and he put himself on the dean’s list. The next semester, Emerson College changed back to its old system of grading, and Mr. Leno received his usual D’s and F’s. His father asked, “WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO?”—and Mr. Leno said that his courses were harder this semester than last semester.
• Geneticist Barbara McClintock knew how to concentrate on important things. While attending Cornell University, she took a biology exam for which she was very well prepared. She whizzed through the questions, finished the exam very early, then noticed that she hadn’t written her name on her exam. Unfortunately, she couldn’t remember her name and she was too embarrassed to ask anyone what her name was. After waiting 20 minutes, she remembered her name, wrote it on the exam, and handed the exam in. For this exam, she had concentrated so hard on the important things that she had forgotten a relatively unimportant thing.
• While attending Ohio State University, R.L. Stine, writer of hundreds of comedy and horror books for children, decided to run a not-at-all-serious campaign for the Student Senate presidency even though he was a senior and would be graduating. According to Mr. Stine, students expect the Student Senate to do absolutely nothing anyway, and since he was graduating and would not be around, he was in a better position than anyone else to deliver what the students expected—nothing at all. The campaign failed to get him elected, although he did receive 1,163 write-in votes—Ohio State officials refused to let his name appear on the ballot.
• As a youngster, athlete Jim Thorpe frequently ran away from his boarding school, which taught the ways of white people and ignored Native American culture. However, his father valued education and each time his son ran away, he made him return to the school. Once, after Jim had run away, his father took him back to the school. Jim went in the front door and out the back door. By taking shortcuts home, he managed to reduce the 23-mile journey to 18 miles, and he managed to walk home faster than his father was able to drive his horses and wagon home. When his father reached home, Jim was waiting for him.
• When author Michael Thomas Ford was in high school, one of his teachers tried to teach students how difficult it is to care for an infant by having each student carry around a raw egg for a week. At night, the egg could be refrigerated, but at all other times, it had to be in the care of the student, or the student had to find a “babysitter” for it. This may not have been a good idea. Early in the week, a few students accidentally dropped their eggs, resulting in a failing grade. Because they didn’t want to be the only failing students, they started to deliberately trip other students and commit “eggicide.”
***
© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
The Funniest People in Families, Volume 2 — Free Downloads
The Funniest People in Families, Volume 2 — Smashwords (Free Download)
The Funniest People in Families, Volume 2 — Apple (Free Download)
The Funniest People in Families, Volume 2 — Kobo (Free Download)
The Funniest People in Families, Volume 2 — Barnes and Noble (Free Download)
The Funniest People in Families, Volume 2 — (Read Online Free — Smashwords Online Reader)
MANY FREE PDFs:
davidbrucebooks: FREE PDFs
David Bruce at Smashwords (PDFs and Other Formats)
NEW BLOG - davidbrucebooks: FREE PDFs
Presenting
Michael Egan
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Track: “Sin Retorno” [“No Return”]
Album: TRIPLE AGENT RECORDS Vol. l
Artist: Sys Malakian
Artist Location: Mexico, Missouri
Record Company: Triple Agent Records
Record Company: Mexico City, Mexico
Info:
“Power Speed Surf from CDMX. Reverberant Guitars, Warm Bass and Extraordinary Drums. With 5 years of experience he has performed at the two surf festivals in Mexico (Surfeño and Back To The Surf Music), also managing to be heard around the world and get himself as one of the representatives of the current surfing scene in Mexico. New and fresh sounds upcoming. 3 albums, 5 EPS and lots of singles.”
“Triple Agent Records: SURF / GARAGE Indie Record Label from Mexico City.”
Price: Name Your Price (Includes FREE) for 22-track album by various artists.
The track “Sin Retorno” is also on Sys Malakiam’s EP KINGDOM OF MADNESS. Price: $100 (MXN) — approximately $5 (USD) for four-track EP.
Genre: Surf. Garage.
TRIPLE AGENT RECORDS Vol. l
KINGDOM OF MADNESS
Sys Malakian on Bandcamp
Sys Malakian on YouTube
Triple Agent Records on Bandcamp
Other Links:
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: FREE pdfs
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
David Bruce's Blog #2
davidbrucebooks: EDUCATE YOURSELF - Free PDFs
David Bruce's Blog #3
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
New Venture
Michael Egan
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
3-Fer
Political Satire
Comedians talk about pranking former NRA head with 'thoughts and prayers' comment (CNN)
“CNN's Pamela Brown talks to Jason Selvig and Davram Stiefler of ‘The Good Liars’ about political satire and pranks they've played on politicians.”
“The audience actually applauded when Jason finished his ‘thought and prayers’ speech — though the clip CNN showed stopped just before the applause began!” — MountainMan23
Inflation
Andrew Tobias: Inflation and Phone Lint
Today’s inflation sits atop the tremendous rise in energy prices — a component imbedded in everything we buy.
It’s not our fiscal or monetary policies that caused the huge spike in world energy prices — it’s Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Likewise, not our fiscal or monetary policies that caused the spike in world grain prices — it’s Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Other Links:
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
David Bruce's Blog #2
David Bruce's Blog #3
davidbrucebooks: EDUCATE YOURSELF - Free PDFs
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
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
In the mail:
Shares a Public Message
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood has a message following the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last month.
In a post to Instagram over the weekend, the Handmaid's Tale author shared a photo of herself holding a coffee cup.
"Coffee in Nova Scotia with appropriately sloganed coffee cup…," she wrote.
"I Told You So," the cup reads.
Margaret Atwood
The New York Public Library Honors
Lou Reed
Nobody wrote songs about New York quite like Lou Reed – whether taking time in the park, or going uptown to score drugs.
A new exhibit, Lou Reed: Caught Between the Twisted Stars, from the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and curated by Don Fleming and Jason Stern, is the result of 9 years of work by his wife, the musician and multimedia artist Laurie Anderson. It was up to her to figure out what was in the archive, where it should go and, perhaps most importantly, who has access to all of this material.
"I want to have this open to any young kid who's a musician," Anderson tells NPR, "and wants to go and hear a bunch of Lou's rehearsals. And they can go and do that – for free!"
What you won't find in the archives are lots of early drafts of songs, for a reason that might drive other songwriters crazy: "So, he would just wake up and write the song down," Anderson recalls. "It was infuriating. He wouldn't change a single thing."
Lou Reed
BBC Documentary
Sir Mo Farah
Sir Mo Farah has revealed in a BBC documentary that he was brought into the UK illegally under the name of another child.
The four-time Olympic champion said “the truth is I’m not who you think I am”, adding he needs to tell his real story “whatever the cost” in the documentary titled The Real Mo Farah.
“The real story is I was born in Somaliland, north of Somalia, as Hussein Abdi Kahin. Despite what I’ve said in the past, my parents never lived in the UK.
“I was separated from my mother, and I was brought into the UK illegally under the name of another child called Mohamed Farah.”
Farah, who became the first British track and field athlete to win four Olympic gold medals, said his children have motivated him to be truthful about his past.
Sir Mo Farah
Settles Assault Suit Ahead of Trial
Johnny Depp
Johnny Depp has reached a tentative deal to resolve a suit from a City of Lies crewmember who says the actor assaulted him on set.
According to a notice of settlement filed with the court Monday, Depp settled with location manager Greg “Rocky” Brooks in a deal that requires Depp to follow through with unspecified terms of the settlement by the end of August.
“The settlement agreement conditions dismissal of this matter on the satisfactory completion of specified terms that are not to be performed within 45 days of the date of the settlement,” reads the filing. “A request for dismissal will be filed no later than 1/5/2023.”
Brooks sued Depp in 2018 alleging that the actor punched him twice in a drunken tirade. He alleged that Depp screamed at him, punched him twice in the ribs and offered him $100,000 to hit back. Brooks was allegedly fired from the production after he refused to promise that he would not sue over the incident. He also accused Depp of taking drugs on set and reeking of alcohol during the encounter.
Johnny Depp
Hosting Notorious Authoritarian
CPAC
The 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference will play host to Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. The most influential Republican ideas conference lending the podium to Europe’s most notorious nationalist is yet another troubling sign of the right’s embrace of authoritarianism.
Orbán, who recently won reelection for his fourth term as Hungary’s prime minister, has become a darling of the American right by transforming Hungary into an autocratic regime through aggressive nationalist policymaking and the use of executive power to curb criticism and opposition. Orbán’s Hungary is a far-right wet dream, featuring hardline crackdowns on immigration, increased government control of the press, and courts that cater to the powerful.
The CPAC invitation is not entirely unexpected. An international edition of the conference was held in Budapest this May. “Hungary is the laboratory where we have managed to come up with the antidote for progressive dominance,” Orbán said during his keynote address. “The nation comes first: Hungary first, America first.”
The American right has lauded Orbán for his strongman approach to governance. Trump rolled out the red carpet for him at the White House, drawing intense criticism, and sycophantic praise of the prime minister is not uncommon on Fox News. In January of this year, Tucker Carlson released a hack job special lauding Orbán’s antisemtic scapegoating of Hungarian billionaire George Soros.
The conservative idolization of Orbán’s grip on power relies on the acceptance of the Hungarian backslide into autocratic rule, and Orbán’s administration of Hungary has provided a playbook for Republicans trying to fashion the same kind of oppressive, nationalist state out of America. Orbán even unveiled a literal playbook for other nations to emulate his administration during his appearance at the Budapest edition of CPAC. He’ll bring it to America in person this August.
CPAC
Transfer Wealth Out Of Needy Communities
State Lotteries
While the growing expansion of casinos and state-sanctioned sports betting steal the spotlight, state lotteries have nearly doubled in size over the past two decades, driving a multibillion-dollar wealth transfer from low-income U.S. communities to powerful multinational companies.
A nationwide investigation of state lotteries by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland found that lottery retailers are disproportionately clustered in lower-income communities in nearly every state. The investigation’s analysis of cellphone location data shows that the people who patronize those stores come from the same kinds of communities.
Once rare, lotteries now operate in all but five U.S. states. Driven by more than a half-billion dollars in annual ad spending, lottery ticket sales have grown from $47 billion to $82 billion since 2005, according to La Fleur’s 2022 World Lottery Almanac. In 10 states, lotteries generate more revenue than corporate income taxes.
The investigation also found that a key promise of lotteries across the country — that they support education — doesn’t hold up. Instead, lotteries often compound inequities by disproportionately benefiting college students and wealthier school districts far from the neighborhoods where most tickets are sold.
The lottery operations industry is dominated by two private companies, U.K.-based International Game Technology PLC and Canadian-owned Scientific Games Holdings LP.
State Lotteries
Blown Off Carrier Deck
F/A-18 Super Hornet
An F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet fell into the waters of the Mediterranean from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman on Friday, the Navy announced in a statement released Sunday.
The Super Hornet, which was assigned to Carrier Air Wing 1, was blown overboard "due to unexpected heavy weather" as the ship was conducting an at-sea resupply, the statement added. Navy planes have been known to crash into the water during takeoff or landing; losing a plane to rough seas is unusual.
Typically, there is a procedure to tie down aircraft to the deck with chains during heavy weather. And the carrier has a number of aerographer's mates -- sailors trained in analyzing and predicting weather conditions -- stationed aboard the ship.
One of the last known incidents of a plane being blown off a flight deck happened in 1995, but it was not due to rough seas. In April of that year, an F-14 Tomcat fighter aboard the USS Independence blew another Tomcat into the water with its jet engine exhaust.
F/A-18 Super Hornet
Distinctive Art Style
Ancient Egypt
In 1986, the band "The Bangles" sang about "all the old paintings on the tombs" where the figures they depict are "walking like an Egyptian." Though he was neither an art historian nor an Egyptologist, songwriter Liam Sternberg was referring to one of the most striking features of ancient Egyptian visual art — the depiction of people, animals and objects on a flat, two-dimensional plane. Why did the ancient Egyptians do this? And is ancient Egypt the only culture to create art in this style?
Drawing any object in three dimensions requires a specific viewpoint to create the illusion of perspective on a flat surface. Drawing an object in two dimensions (height and breadth) requires the artist to depict just one surface of that object. And highlighting just one surface, it turns out, has its advantages.
"In pictorial representation, the outline carries the most information," John Baines, professor emeritus of Egyptology at the University of Oxford in the U.K. told Live Science. "It's easier to understand something if it is defined by an outline."
When drawing on a flat surface, the outline becomes the most important feature, even though many Egyptian drawings and paintings include details from several sides of the object. "There is also a great focus on clarity and comprehensibility," Baines said.
Ancient Egypt
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
