A Few Miles West

After watching part of the movie In Cold Blood and starting a study of Truman Capote yesterday, I just now discovered that the scene of the Clutter family November 1959 quadruple murder is just a little ways west of a piece of highway 83 that I have drove on many times in my life north and south.

I only watched part of the movie because I fell asleep in the early morning. But now I am veRy confused because I thought I had watched it on Netflix but now it is not there or maybe never was ... hmm ... so maybe I was watching teleBision but it just seems I was watching it on my iPad but in my confusion it could be that I am getting this mixed up with my online studying of the movie, book and Capote while I was watching the movie. But I haven't been able to find the movie playing on any teleBision channels.

I did not know that Truman was childhood friends with author Harper Lee of 'To Kill A Mockingbird', and that she had assisted Truman during his journey to Kansas with the Clutter case. They each appear as a character in a book that the other one wrote about childhood. Truman was Dill in TKaM and Harper Lee was Idabel Thompkins in Capote's 'Other Voices, Other Rooms'.

I wiLL get a photograph of the Clutter home on my neXt trip to South Dakota.

Obama's Cry Me of Passion

At 4:12 AM I am asking my wife, "Would you run to Taco Bell for me?"

She immediately responds, "They are not open!"

I laugh.

She smiles.

Slight pause

She asks me what I am doing.

I reply, "Bothering you."

I laugh.

She smiles and shakes head.

I think she may have wanted coffee but I left the room before she had a chance to formulate her needs, desires, and then eXpress them. But now I have a desire to have cup of coffee but that would require me making two cups of coffee plus getting my left ear cold. But my throat is saying, "I'm dry."

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Crimea plus Sevastopol have a population of around 3 million people. The entire world's population is in eXcess of 7 BILLion people. This means that the current political hot potato that President Obama is spending so much time and energy involving himself half way around the world where he has no legal jurisdiction, no one votes for him, contains less than half of one tenth of one percent of the world's population. I think he has his priorities askew.

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I was going to try to be at work at 11 AM but now I think I wiLL need to adjust for the wind 'still' factor, and to a smaLLer degree the relative humidity, visibility, and just plain ole 'do I have to?'-ness.

Oh Siblings, Are We Irish? Are We Poets?

While studying poet-writer Samuel Beckett, I noticed that he was a Saoi.

Saoi (Irish pronunciation: [sˠiː]) (pl. saoithe; lit. "wise one"; hist. head of poetic school; master) is the highest honour that members of Aosdána, an association of people in Ireland who have achieved distinction in the arts, can bestow upon a fellow member. No more than seven living members can be so honoured at one time.

The title of Saoi is conferred by the President of Ireland (following election from among the membership of Aosdána) and held for life. A torc (a twist/spiral of gold, worn around the neck) is presented to each Saoi by the President and/or Administrator.

I realized that because there can be 7 Saoi at any one time then it is theoretically just possible (but eXremely unlikely) that all 7 of the siblings in my family could be Saoi at the same time. Then we could be known as a Saoi been family instead of a Boston Baked Bean family.

Hahahahahaha

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U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met Friday in Kiev with acting President Oleksandr Turchynov, then told reporters he was "very deeply concerned" by the tensions in parts of Ukraine and between Kiev and Moscow. "These are some of the most traumatic and difficult times in the history of Ukraine," he said.

After I read this I thought, " 'most traumatic ... difficult' (?) Ummm, no, I would just bet World War II was worse."

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I am eXtremely tired and I suddenly remembered that earlier this evening, or maybe today, I caLLed my wife (Breaking Bad reference to Aaron Paul's character) 'Jessica Pinkwoman', but now I have forgot the details for why. I think we might have been in a kitchen but not the one in our house, the other one. (We have an insane number of refrigerators AND clothes washer-dryer combos due to our kind of businesses and locations. Oh, and sinks, I just now realized we have a huge number of sinks.)

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I think that it is sad that Fred Phelps Sr. of the Westboro Baptist Church, Topeka Kansas, the activist who was in charge of picketing military funerals, has died just recently at age 91. I was hoping that he would have died a long time ago ....

Putin On The Blitz Krieg

I saw this paragraph at CNN:

The Pentagon plans to keep an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean longer than planned as a military presence to reassure NATO allies following Russia’s intervention in Crimea, CNN has learned.

I was wondering what good that does to the situation. I have thought of a few things I am going to do myself. First, I am going to move a pillow from my bed to my livingroom couch. Second, I am going to rearrange the knives, forks, and spoons in my kitchen drawer so the sharp edges are facing towards Russia. Third, I am moving my jug of milk from the right to the left side of my refrigerator.

That wiLL teach Putin to mess with Crimea.

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ActuaLLy I am returning to work today after being sick & trapped at my house for about five days. Even if I would have wanted to leave the house yesterday and wind was so bad and so much dirt was being moved through the air that I am not even sure I am stiLL in Texas, there was no way I was getting out in that mess. The weather service even issued warnings to seek shelter and against driving in it.

But I am eXcited to get back to the printing business as I have alot of things to produce, and plus I got a brand new broom and mop combination tool for doing my janitorial work. Yes - they are both on the same pad, you flip it over to switch between sweeping and mopping. I tried it briefly before I got sick and it seems to work nicely for my business environment (cosmetology shop). Anything that speeds up the cleaning process is welcome as long as my renters are happy.

Link: Flip Mop

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Please check out the drawings of my fellow blogger Rob Z Tobor at The Drawings of Rob Z Tobor

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I wonder who writes teleBision commercials. I see one for Atlantis resorts where they first say "Atlantis, where its always summer", and then it starts talking about their Spring special that's good through March 17th, but then I realize that means its still Winter time, technicaLLy, and Spring starts about 4 days after their special ends.

Then a few days after I first noticed this they changed their date to March 31st.

Accidentally Mashed Potatoes

I can teLL I have not had enough coffee yet. I was fiLLing out a form online for some information and in the first box for email address I mindlessly wrote, "email", then laughed at myself. There is something seriously wrong upstairs ....

That first paragraph was my Facebook status early Sunday morning.

I went to copy the text of that (Facebook) status in order to copy it over to this blog and noticed that my iPad gave me the choice of either copying it to the clipboard OR speaking the text. So I let a robotic female voice speak my words to me. I think I sound better than that, but I am not sure. If you try this feature and find out the Apple robot sounds better than me, please do not teLL me, it can be your little secret. So just lie to me and say, "Yes, Ernie, you sound better than a female Apple robot."

I took the eXperience one step farther by having the robot speak the second status that I wrote about her speaking. She pronounces "teLL" funny.

I would prefer a robotic voice that sounded like a young Shirley Temple.

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I was reminded today that we have less than 8,000 years before we need to switch to 5 digit years. Y10K programmers get busy ...

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Someone has sinned greatly in our home. There is no worcestershire sauce. My wife blames me.

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Our printing business is suddenly getting much busier, so that is nice, with larger individual orders. That wiLL keep the wife in a happier mood, knowing that I am slaving away. But more importantly it means more money to help pay for medical insurance.

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I walk in the kitchen to a meal that I wasn't scheduled to be part of because I routinely go to the diner on Saturday evenings. I look down at a large bowl and the only thing in the bowl is a stick of margarine. After 30 years of eXperience in this household I immediately knew that my wife was making mashed potatoes.

I look over on the stove and the left rear burner has what appears to be a finished pot of cooked potatoes.

But I look at the kitchen bar where my wife and son are eating and it appears they are finished with their meals and just chatting.

I ask, "Are you making mashed potatoes?"

My wife responds, "Well, I wasn't planning on making mashed potatoes, but I got busy making supper and accidentally started them."

My son and I crack up laughing, thinking, how can you go through the process of accidentally peeling a pot of potatoes, washing them, putting in the water, put them on the stove, get out the mixing bowl, put in the margarine ....

She actually posed for a picture holding up the bowl with just the margarine, but I didn't have a camera.

The potatoes were discarded the neXt day, a tiny piece of Idaho wasted.

My Son Is Singing "something something something"

So on the way home from the vet in Spearman an 18 wheeler starts to go off the road while he is just at that exact distance and time frame where I have no time to react and he begins to OVERcorrect and starts to get in my lane. That was about as close to a head on collision as I have had in quite awhile. I laughed because the first thought that went through my brain was, "that sure would have been a waste of $209.18 for a veterinarian services we just completed a few minutes ago."

AND then as I was getting back to Borger a highway patrolman passes me way above the speed limit right before the circle at Lorene's, and proceeds to drive 55 mph south down Cedar Street in a 40 zone, no lights flashing to indicate any special need. He stops at the light at 10th street where I catch up to him then its more zooming on south out of town switching lanes as he/she passes people doing the speed limit. License tag 04960.

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I get earthquake reports for the state of Oklahoma automaticaLLy. A recent report listed an earthquake 0 miles east of Stillwater. So I laughed and thought, um, "Doesn't that just mean 'Stillwater'?"

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I started watching Mad Men on Feb 23rd. I am in season 4 now. I think season 7 starts in a few weeks. But now I am suddenly bored by it ...

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At a restaurant on the road I mentioned that I reaLLy like the wheat toast at Cracker Barrel. My wife responds, "It's probably the bread."