...and are psychotics

    There's so little going on in my life that I guess I've blogged about everything that's actually happened and considerable numbers of items that didn't happen but were instead just observations. So when I turned right onto a street and a motorist less than a block away (but more than say 100 feet) objected so vociferously as to pass me, stop, and come back and yell at me, I blogged about that. When stop signs started having "Cross traffic does not stop" signs added to them, I blogged about that. And now the intersection where that particular mental case took issue with my driving has had such a sign added to its stop sign. I think I'll write the city and highway department and suggest that in this case, the sign should read: "Cross traffic does not stop, and are psychotics." No doubt nobody will think it's funny but me, but I really, really do.

Your friend John is an idiot

    I noted recently a couple of near misses when I moved into an already occupied right-hand lane, failing to check my blind spot and thus nearly causing accidents. Yesterday at a red light, I studied my mirrors carefully and realized something that everybody else probably learned in their first few weeks of driving: you don't need to see your own head in your rear-view mirror. When I adjusted the (interior) mirror such that I could no longer see any part of my head, suddenly my blind spot shrank to... nothing, really. Face. Palm. Boy, am I an idiot! Then again, 35 years late is still better late than never, I guess, and I certainly anticipate being a much safer driver from here on. Feeling dumb for a while might teach me a little humility. Even more than 35 years late. Maybe.

Didn't expect to miss the goats

    The goats next door have been gone for at least four days now. They were very cute but very needy, or at least very, very vocal. As such, you would think that I would be glad that they are gone, but it makes me sad. If I could somehow convince myself that they had gone away to frolic and gambol on a farm somewhere for the rest of their lives, it would be different but somehow I cannot convince myself of it. The fact that the guy living in the house on the property where they were living had told us at the outset that they wouldn't be there long seemed ominous at the time. I suspect that they wound up on somebody's Memorial Day cookout menu. I'm not all that much more likely to go vegetarian or anything, but I'm certainly a lot less likely to order cabrito any time soon. And I've got to say that it seems less and less like a good idea to eat anybody that can talk, even if you can't understand what they're saying.

Italics

    I'm trying to figure out how to write around italics under circumstances (Facebook especially) where they aren't available. ALL-CAPS are obnoxious at best, but convey emphasis better than any other option I can think of. I know perfectly well that folks use underscores _before_ and _after_ the word to be stressed, but that goes back to the days when nearly all Internet interaction was text only with boldface and italics a distant dream. I'm not sure anyone even remembers that usage these days.
    What I've been trying to do is rearrange my sentences so that the stresses will fall such that the word I want especially emphasized will naturally receive its due stress. It's really tough, maybe impossible, and probably above my pay grade. I don't think I'll _ever_ get it right! But it's fun to try. Also, I finally learned that you don't capitalize the I in "italics." I mean the FIRST one. At least not with regard to the typeface.

Ow!

    Don't read this one! Go away! You don't want to see this, believe me! Oh, you're female? Well maybe you'll get a kick out of it.
    Yesterday, I was driving along the road, minding my own business, when I noticed that the Hummer H3 ahead of me had a most arresting image covering the rear windshield. There was a hockey stick at the top and one at the bottom; in between read in huge letters: COCK HOCKEY. All I could think was Ouch, and driving got a lot more difficult when my knees involuntarily clapped together.
    The sticks looked like field hockey sticks rather than ice hockey ones, so I thought that USC had a field hockey team and that they were uncommonly hard-nosed. (Shoulda known though that not many women voluntarily drive a vehicle called a Hummer, I guess.) Googling "Cock Hockey," which I do not recommend (although if you do it now, you'll see this blog entry; Mom would have been so proud) eventually revealed that what Downtown U. has is a men's ice hockey team, and this is their proud slogan. I swear I am not making this up, no matter how much I might wish I were. Ow!

Navy green

    Hey, it's my birthday; I'm definitely entitled to mail one in. Yesterday, I was putting together a virtual jigsaw puzzle, or virtually putting together a jigsaw puzzle, or how ever you want to put it, and was having difficulty finding dark green pieces to fit with the one I already had. Except that my brain kept supplying me with the phrase "navy green" instead of, say, "forest green." And I'd correct myself and then the next time I looked for dark green my brain tossed up "navy green" again. And again and again. I was fairly tired; maybe that's all it was. But it seems improbable that at just almost 51 years of age, I would have come up with this for the first time. It seems equally unlikely or at least odd that I would have been calling dark green navy green all these years without anyone, least of all myself, noticing. To be honest, I like it a lot as a phrase and would happily use it publicly all the time except that I would most likely confuse people. Of course Army green would work, but my brain declines to identify with anything making that much sense.

Teddy Pendergrass

    Let's stick with music, since I don't want to talk about my birthday. I just wonder why nobody ever plays Teddy Pendergrass records anymore, either solo or with Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. The oldies stations are all over Barry White, to such an extent I often feel like it's 1975 again. On the one hand, Barry's sound is a lot more mellow than Teddy's. And I guess they might think that people don't want to be reminded of paralysis and car accidents. Though there are plenty of people with sadder endings whose records still get played.
    The broader question is why aren't there classic soul stations? Where I live, people listen to something they call beach music. Originally, this was '60s R&B, especially Motown, the music that was played at the beach, primarily Myrtle Beach. Eventually it became an industry, and imitation '60s R&B was all over the radio. The local oldies station with the love affair with Barry White also plays tons of beach music; their non-oldies offerings are almost all country. (It's a pretty odd station.)
    I just think that a station playing only genuine R&B and soul from the '60s and '70s would do great. For one thing, black people had a postwar baby boom, too; there would be an excellent base. But more to the point, a vast array of black music from that time crossed over; hell, that's where this beach music stuff came from in the first place. And maybe I could hear me some Teddy Pendergrass!