Charlie

Probably the most unusual RM ad I've ever seen.

He certainly gets around: he says he's located in Frankfurt, one of his hashtags is #Brazilian, he speaks French, and one of his photos is taken in front of Gayfield Square in Edinburgh.

Once a week seems excessive to me. I think it's enough to do it when the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars.

Lucky has asked me to ask here if anyone has ideas about what is going on with his computer. He says that the screen keeps "bouncing to the top" (his words). He said that when he tried to type, the sentences came out as "gibberish." [However, his email to me about this was pretty clear.] Any ideas?

Good guess--but in fact it was a museum official.

If they're still alive, those butts must be sagging now.

Unlike most popular team sports (football, basketball, hockey, etc.), baseball is unusual in that each player stands alone in his own spot on the field most of the time, and the pitcher in particular feels like he is on stage, because much of the focus of the other players and the audience is on him. Burke and Bean were both outfielders, where it was easier to avoid the spotlight and blend into the background. It's also worth noting that Burke was involuntarily outed, and it destroyed his career.

It was cold (low 50sF) and rained all day yesterday in Palm Springs, and today looks like it could be more of the same. I'm glad I bought those flannel pajamas.

The photos are familiar but the name is not. He may have advertised sometime in the (distant) past with a different name.

Miscellaneous bit of irrelevant info: I used to know a guy in NYC who was named Gaylord, and who was gay. When he introduced himself as, "Hi, I'm Gay," people were sometimes startled.

?? The ad says 5'8" which is not very short unless you are very tall.

I was also there in that summer heat wave of '77, when the parks were full of pasty white people sunbathing.

I use 30 seconds at power 3 for my ice cream.

I was also living in London in the winter of '74, so maybe it was '75.

Thanks, but VCRs are too hi-tech for me.😉

They are obviously just mugging for the camera--he has barely inserted the glans.

THANK YOU!!! It worked. Unfortunately, I still can't make the tray move on its own. It's an old machine, and he doesn't do anything to take care of it, so I think it is time to get a new one. At least we got the disc back; it's part of a series from the Great Courses titled (ironically!) "Epic Engineering Failures."🤔

Climate change: I don't remember ever experiencing temperatures below freezing in London.

Anyone have a quick trick to get it to eject a disc? My spouse had been watching one, but at the end it would not open to disgorge the disc. Both the player and the TV are Samsung, but he can't find any of the written materials on them, and since he has Alzheimer's, he doesn't remember how to do anything. I have never used a DVD, and I can't figure out what to do. (The disc is not pornographic.)

I can't believe that no one has mentioned that the act protecting same sex marriage passed last night.

I recently grumbled after losing a board game, "It's time for me to take my marbles and go home," something my father usually said when he was tired of doing something. No one else at the table knew what I meant.

I recently stayed at a hotel in which the design of the toilet seat caused my junk to land in the water when I sat down. I mentioned the problem in my Yelp review, though I didn't go into specific detail.

Before anyone asks, I see a '58 Ford and '47 or '48 Pontiac in the background.

My phone silences calls from anyone who is not in my contacts list, and I can't imagine that there is anyone in my contacts who would call me during the night without a very good reason.

I just finished Vaclav Smil's How the World Really Works, and it is one of the most enlightening books I have ever read, since it succinctly explains exactly what the subtitle says: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going. Smil recognizes a truism of human nature, that most people want a simple answer to how to solve an extremely complex problem, in this case global warming and its consequences, and shows why the simple answers--like persuading everyone to switch to driving electric vehicles--don't work. He points out that there are other simple answers that would actually have much more impact--like banning the production of anything made with plastic, or making raising of meat for food a worldwide criminal offense--that are obviously impossible. The modern world as we know it is totally dependent on the utilization of fossil fuels, and will be until far into the future, since we can't give up electricity, steel, air transportation and fertilizers for growing food, all of which are heavily dependent on the burning of fossil fuels, without radically altering our global economy and lifestyles in ways that few people will put up with. It is not a particularly long book, but every paragraph is packed with facts. It also demands that the reader have a high tolerance for statistical analysis, because the book is loaded with math, with many references to subjects measured in things like terabytes and gigajoules. (For those who need it, there is a whole chapter devoted to explaining the mathematical terminology.) There are also 71 pages of footnotes and references for everything covered in the text. Since I used to teach a course in writing research papers, I am a sucker for footnotes and bibliographies, but even if you skip over them, you will learn a lot.