May 23: World Turtle Day, Lucky Penny Day, National Taffy Day – Yahoo! News

I have always liked turtles, so I am surprised I did not know about this holiday sooner.  In Florida, for instance, I encountered turtles quite often.  I remember in particular a gopher tortoise that came from the vacant lot across the street, to visit my front yard.  This was at the height of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle craze, and because the TMNTs were named after Italian artists, I named the tortoise Giotto; his personality was two-dimensional, like Giotto’s paintings (LOL).

May 23: World Turtle Day, Lucky Penny Day, National Taffy Day – Yahoo! News.

 

 

(This picture, of a green turtle getting cleaned off by fish near Hawaii, was posted on Bing.com today.)

The Girls On Fox News

I have wondered out loud why liberal politicians continue to do well in so many elections, when people on the right side of the political aisle tend to be better looking.  Especially those of the female persuasion.  There are a few comparative pictures like the one below, to make that point; I posted it on this commentary page.

 

 

Now it turns out that a country musician named Austin Cunningham agrees, because a few months back, he recorded a video called “The Girls On Fox News.”  It hits close enough to the mark that the liberals who have seen the video are debating whether it is a real tribute or a parody.  They’re also saying some nasty things about the girls in question.  Are they just jealous because they have to use hags like Roseanne Arnold and Rosie O’Donnell to express their point of view?  Or is this an example of the statement “I know by their yelling that I have hit them right?”

 

Twelve Things You Will Never Hear A Southerner Say . . .

1.    Duct tape won’t fix that.
2.    Honey, I think we should sell the pickup and buy a family sedan.
3.    We don’t keep firearms in this house.
4.    I thought Graceland was tacky.
5.    We’re vegetarians.
6.    I’ll have grapefruit and grapes instead of biscuits and gravy.
7.    Who cares who won the Civil War?
8.    I just couldn’t find a thing at Wal-Mart today.
9.    Trim the fat off that steak.
10.    Unsweetened tea tastes better.
11.    Does the salad bar have bean sprouts?
12.    I don’t have a favorite college team.

Seven Years Since Leaving Florida

It was on this day in 2006 that my life in Florida ended, and I moved to Kentucky.  It is 10:30 PM as I write this, and at that time I was at the halfway point between Orlando and Lexington, spending the night in a run-down motel in Forsyth, Georgia.  I won’t say I’ve been in Kentucky for seven years, though, because of the job that took me to Connecticut for ten and a half months.

Today it felt a lot like Florida.  With outside (and inside) temperatures in the 80s, it was about as ideal as it could get for Leive and I, inasmuch as that was the kind of heat we were used to in the old country.  In the morning I had a doctor’s appointment.  Don’t worry, it was a routine checkup, and I got a clean bill of health.

But while I was in there, I talked with one of the nurses; I happened to mention that I used to live in Florida, and she said she was there once.  But oh, what an experience she had!  It turns out she went to visit her cousin in Gibsonton, and that is the only part of the state she got a good look at.  For those not familiar with Florida, Gibsonton is a small town southeast of Tampa, a retirement community for circus freaks.  She claimed they treated her well, because she is black and there were no blacks living in Gibsonton; that surprised me, because in the rest of Florida, the population is about 1/5 African-American.  Still, a place full of freaks was too crazy for her.  I told the nurse she should have at least visited Tampa, because the people are more normal there.  A few months ago, I wrote an essay on why Florida appears to be the weirdest state; from that nurse’s perspective, Florida must be even weirder.

On the other hand, Kentucky has its weird moments, too.  The above picture of a “math lab bust” appeared on a local TV station last week.  In other messages on this blog I told how Lexington is an overgrown college town; the University of Kentucky owns a big chunk, maybe a quarter of the city, we are preoccupied with UK sports, and another school of higher learning, Transylvania University, is based here.  Still, a news story about cops arresting people for dabbling with math should confirm the suspicion outsiders have of Kentucky, about how we don’t consider education very important.

Barack Milhous Obama?

Forty years ago, the Congressional investigation of the Watergate scandal began to be broadcast on TV.  I didn’t expect to see that bit of history repeat itself, but it looks like it just did.  Besides the Benghazi fiasco heating up, for the first time since last year’s election, two new scandals emerged:  news that the IRS gave special scrutiny to conservative organizations, and the discovery that the Justice Department had been bugging twenty phone numbers belonging to the Associated Press.

 

You know President Obama is in trouble because comedians didn’t want to make too many jokes about him in the past, but he’s fair game for them now.  Besides the above paragraph, I also heard two other zingers from Jay Leno about this.  He pointed out that this is a milestone for Democrats; this is the first time they had to deal with three scandals at the same time, and none of them involved sex!  Leno also predicted that FOX News is going to change its slogan, from “Fair and Balanced” to “See, I Told You So.”

Of course some reporters are so liberal that they are going to cover their ears and deny that anything is wrong.  MSNBC is one network where I would expect folks to react in the manner that the statement below predicts:

So when will we hear one of the scandals called IRS-gate?

Lutheran Airlines

What a great idea!  Now how would the other denominations fly?

One More Reason Not to Convert to Islam

Islamic clerics are a gift that keeps on giving.  Just when you think they have done enough to make their religion look silly, one of them issues a fatwa that discredits them even more.  Some of the examples I have mentioned here in the past include declarations that it is okay for women to breast-feed co-workers, and that mice should not appear in cartoons because they are unclean animals.

Now a Saudi cleric has announced that women who are home alone should not turn on the air conditioning, but it might attract men and lead to immoral acts.  Oh my goodness, are sex drives THAT hard to control in the desert?  Maybe if they allowed women to drive or leave home without being accompanied by a husband, father or brother, they wouldn’t have to worry about women being home alone!  I know for a fact that if I was in that climate and found a building with the air conditioning on, I’d be more interested in getting out of the heat than in who might be inside the building.  This reminds me of situations in 1998 and 2011 when heat waves struck, the air conditioning wasn’t working at home, and I looked forward to going to work, because that was the only place where I could be comfortable!

Saudi Arabia: Women Banned from Switching on ‘Immoral’ Air Condtioning by Islamic Cleric – IBTimes UK.

A Definite Warming Trend

I haven’t had a lot to report over the past few days; this message is to let regular readers know I’m alive and well.  Sunday and Monday were unusually cold, in the morning temperatures reached as low as 38 degrees.  There was a frost warning, but fortunately that didn’t happen.  I think I mentioned a couple years back that here in Kentucky, only farmers pay much attention to when the first freeze comes in the fall, but everyone who plants something in the ground is concerned about a late frost killing their flowers or veggies.  However, today the high was 80 degrees, and there are no more cold snaps in the long-range forecasts, so with it being the middle of May, I think hotter days are here to stay.

Mother’s Day came and went since my last message.  Besides the card, I got Leive some flowers.  Not a dozen roses, but two pots of New Guinea impatiens, one red and one orange.  She has been wanting to plant impatiens in the front yard, so I believe she has enough of them for her project now.

More Rain, and Calabaza in Kentucky

Today was another rainy day, and that put a damper on activities – literally.  Fortunately no water got in the house this time.  Last Wednesday I bought some caulk and sealant to stop up the leak in the basement.  The rain is supposed to stop tomorrow, so maybe then we can apply the materials; we’re supposed to wait until conditions are dry before trying them.

Previously in this blog I wrote about looking for foodstuffs that we enjoyed in Florida but usually aren’t available here in Kentucky:  sesame bagels, muscadine grapes, pummelos, calamondins, and datil pepper products.  Well, there is another we were missing and did not realize it until now:  West Indian calabaza.  This is a sweet winter squash, similar to a pumpkin.  Leive knows a nice casserole recipe where the two main ingredients are calabaza and coconut milk; we had it in Florida but not since moving to Kentucky, because I did not see calabaza anywhere.  However, this week I discovered a new Mexican grocery store on New Circle Rd., and they had calabaza, among other things, so I bought a whole one for Leive.  Leive took a few minutes to inspect it, because this one had a white outer skin, while the calabazas we were used to in Florida were tan, but once she decided it was the same on the inside, she whipped up her casserole recipe, also throwing in kale, potatoes and green beans.  Yummy, we found one more way to make Kentucky resemble Florida!

Legal Shield has done it Again!

A great article from Harry Alford, president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce.  I got to hear him at the LegalShield convention last month.

Legal Shield has done it Again!.