I’ve been riding in this fundraiser since 1996. For a number of reasons, this is my last year doing it. If you’d like to support me on my swan song, you can click on this link:
Or use this QR code:
This year, I dedicate my ride to my friend Scott, who lost his fight with MS on November 29, 2023. The old saying is that MS doesn’t kill, it just destroys lives. In truth, sometimes it destroys lives then takes them all the same.
This one’s for you, Scott.
A BlogSnax© post
It’s football playoff time. Like a lot of guys, I spend (too) much of my weekends watching overpaid, overhyped, often overweight men pound each other into the artificial turf in pursuit of their big dream: dating Taylor Swift. No, not really. Well, yes, really, but the other dream: a Super Bowl©® championship, which entitles them to wear an immense, cumbersome, ostentatious ring causing their knuckles to drag on the ground for the rest of their lives. But at least they can flash them when making commercials for Subway©®.
One football scene that always amuses me is when there is movement at the line of scrimmage before the ball is hiked. The flags are thrown and action stops while referees confer about whether the offensive line had a false start or the D-line was offsides. Meanwhile, the players on the field blame each other. Seriously, it’s hysterical to watch mountainous men wagging their fingers at each other. “It’s not my fault, Mommy! He made me do it!”
Case in point (pun intended) is this screenshot from the Ravens/Texans game on 1/20/24:
No doubt the refs counted the number of fingers and made their decision based on that. Or maybe they responded as any frustrated parent of juveniles would, yelling, “Kids, stop arguing or we’re going home right this minute!”
By the way, on an only tangentially related note: Football was made for watching on TV.* At the stadium, it’s cold, it’s crazy, and you can’t really see the game. Unless you like to be surrounded by drunks painting their faces and chests and wearing pirate, S&M, animal, or other insane attire like rejects from a junior high costume party, stay home where you can eat anything you want anytime you want and at reasonable prices, see endless replays from every possible vantage point (including that of a slug crawling along the goal line), and you can easily get to the bathroom whenever you want. (Never underestimate the value of an easily accessible bathroom.)
[*On the other hand, baseball was made for viewing live. There’s nothing like sitting in the sun in a non-obstructed view seat, hot dog and favorite beverage in hand, while the greatest sport ever leisurely unfolds before you.]
Some more photos to share from my backlog. These are bicycle related:
Window boxes outside a great bike shop on Martha’s Vineyard:
Seen in the North End of Boston:
For every temporary impediment to cycling…
…there’s a glittering invitation to go farther!
This is my favorite bridge in all of Massachusetts. Straddling Newton and Watertown, the Charles River Greenway Bridge is a beautiful structure spanning a beautiful river along a beautiful bike path. It has me dreaming of spring already.
A BlogSnax© post
In Disney’s delightful 1951 adaptation of “Alice in Wonderland”, the following discussion takes place:
Alice: I’m sorry I interrupted your birthday party…
March Hare: Birthday? Hahaha! My dear child, this is not a birthday party!
Mad Hatter: Of course not! Hehehe! This is an unbirthday party!
Alice: Unbirthday? Why, I’m sorry, but I don’t quite understand.
March Hare: Its very simple. Now, thirty days have sept- no, when… an unbirthday, if you have a birthday then you… haha… she doesn’t know what an unbirthday is!
Mad Hatter: How silly! Ha ha ha ha! Ah-hum… I shall elucidate! Now statistics prove, prove that you’ve one birthday.
March Hare: Imagine, just one birthday every year.
Mad Hatter: Ahhh, but there are 364 unbirthdays!
The same can be said of Thanksgiving. It takes up 1/365th of the year. The rest of the year is spent complaining and griping. Why not make it official and declare every day except the fourth Thursday of November to be “Gripesgiving”?
All this is put forth with tongue firmly embedded in cheek, of course. But we probably do gripe about 365 times more than we give thanks, so this isn’t as far-fetched an idea as you might think. We should either celebrate consistent with our behavior or reverse that ratio. (Try this idea to get things started.)
[Confession: I thought I’d come up with this original thought but it turns out many others have used the same idea. Oh, well. It was new to me. And maybe to you.]
This quick post is to assure you that I will never use AI, artificial intelligence, to generate any post on “Scribbling in the Sand”. I will always use good old GI, genuine ignorance. It hasn’t failed me yet.
That’s a personal money-back guarantee from me.
You can take that to the bank.
For what it’s worth.
A BlogSnax© post
Random thoughts on a random day. One for every single day of the year! So far.
Have you seen the ads for the “Golden Bachelor”? They break new ground in hyperbole, hubris, and downright lying. It was proclaimed to “make history”. With such a status, you can understand why they claimed that it was “all anyone can talk about.” Is it all you’re talking about? I’m pretty sure I could watch it (God forbid) and not even think about it, never mind talk about it.
I’m not a fan of the vertical toilet paper holder as shown here. As Cynthia Tobias would say, “What’s the point?” As far as I can tell, it attempts to address only one problem: the controversy over whether the paper should come over the front or the back. Unfortunately, it merely swaps that dilemma for an even more perplexing one: left or right. (Yet another illustration of “Rick’s Law of the Conservation of Woes“.) That answer will likely depend on whether you’re a conservative or liberal. Meanwhile, the solution to the horizontal controversy is irrefutable: the paper should come over the front. End of discussion.
[As I typed the title of this post, it occurred to me that it makes an editorial statement in itself. Both of these household appliances are often filled with crap. Fortunately, the latter is rarely filled to overflowing. The same cannot be said of the former.]
A BlogSnax© post
People watch a lot of Hallmark Christmas romance movies this time of year. I’ve heard that they created 41 “new” ones this year alone. The word “new” is qualified here because none of them are really new. Even the people who watch them (people like me, I confess) will admit that they only have three plots—the undercover royalty, the big city business person who rekindles an old flame in her small hometown while trying to put a local institution out of business, and the person posing as a fiancé[e]/girlfriend/boyfriend to fool the family—with a rotating ensemble of about six actors who do nothing else. (I’m looking at you, Danica McKellar!)
So how come when you read people’s reviews of these dogs on IMDb, they sometimes say “spoiler alert”? News flash, folks: There’s nothing to spoil!! A spoiler alert for one of these holiday train wrecks is as useful as a spoiler alert for Scooby Doo—Hey, it’s not a real monster. It’s a guy dressed up as a monster! Or Gilligan’s island—No, they don’t get off the island. Gilligan screws up again and they remain stranded on their three-hour cruise for which they packed three years worth of clothing and supplies.
Just had to get that off my chest before the new year.
Press Release
For Immediate Release
Cambridge, MA, December 19, 2023 — Biozyme Corporation®, a global provider of innovative pharmaceutical solutions, announced today that it has run out of letter combinations for all future drugs, including those under development. “With the release of our new cutting edge SBS (shy bladder syndrome) medication, Ininossssdzz©®, we have exhausted all reasonable length permutations of the 26 letter English alphabet,” said Bryce Fiasco, Chief Appellation Officer for Biozyme©®℗. “We need to start exploring entirely new character sets.” The CAO adds, “Biozyme©®℗Ø is not facing this dilemma alone. The entire industry has depleted all combinations of characters 12 letters or less.”
Biozyme©®℗Ø֍ was not forthcoming with any details regarding their plans going forward. Rumor has it they will be utilizing numbers, non-English alphabets, heiroglyphics, emojis, animal noises, as well as tones picked up by radio telescopes aimed into deep space.
“At Biozyme©®℗Ø֍♂, our core competency has always been innovation and we’re very excited to move ahead into previously uncharted sobriquet territory. No longer will we be restricted by the arbitrary limitations of an archaic collection of characters.” It is expected that the first drug employing the new naming paradigm will be Biozyme’s©®℗Ø֍♂☺groundbreaking treatment for the relief of side effects of their drug used to lessen negative reactions to its medication to treat hangnails caused by the use of their mRNA dandruff therapy.
“We’re sure that the consumers of our products will be quite comfortable with the new drug names,” said Chief Rationalization Officer Hymie Slamm. “After all, none of our current offerings are pronounceable by humans.”
A BlogSnax© post
Can there be enough turtle pictures? Here’s my contribution:
From the No-Brainer Department, seen on a local road:
Once more reviving my old “Thanx” posts. (See here for a full description of the genre.) Making a Thanksgiving post once a year on the eve of the holiday is wildly inadequate. As a friend recently told me, it should be thanksliving. He’s right. G. K. Chesterton was on target when he said,
I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.
In that spirit, I offer this woefully skimpy inventory, from the sublime to the ridiculous to the ridiculously sublime:
Look, I know the great majority of these are obscure beyond reason, but they’re understood by the bless-ee and the bless-er and that’s all that really counts.
I wish you and yours a happy and grateful Thanksgiving!
Scribbling in the Sand 