FREE! An Idea Worth $1,000,000

Okay so here's my latest million dollar idea:

Kitchen Floor Air Hockey.

All you have to do is come up with a battery-operated hover-puck.  How hard could it be?!  Some kind of little fan that sits in/on a little disk thing.  So you don't need a special dedicated pneumatic playing surface, just the HoverPuck®. Turn that baby on and -- boom! -- your kitchen or patio becomes an air hockey rink. Bat that sucker around!  Hilarity ensues!

In which I brush the cobwebs off an old poem that has no punctuation

Your Eyes
   written May, 1998
-------------------------------

Our house so seldom empty
Greets me only with the sound of settling
A ticking a whirring
So rarely filled with silence
Are there echoes even now
The clamor laughter angry ardor
I can almost see them
But what I see is what I miss
Your eyes
You there in the house
All the years the love your eyes
All the ways and times
Even you there in the dark
How can I know when your eyes are on me
Dizzies me
How your eyes know mine
I kiss your neck
Your closed eyelids
There have been times your tears have wet my lips
Then what comfort can I give
Solace to settle your nerves
When like as not I am the cause of tears
Downcast I wander past
Your eyes meet me before my eyes meet yours
I know your eyes
Sinking creaking in next to you
Settling down to your lips
My closed eyes blink open to meet
Yours searching
What
My eyebrow curve of temple
My heart
Always looking to me
Even when I am away
Or when you are away
How do I know
I know I feel your love your gaze
Your inward eyes are turned toward me
Me the one who does not know the worth of anything
Doesn't know the value of a dollar
Ah but you
You are the treasure in that field
Yes all that and more
Some day
The dust settling over my dead years
Dead artifacts and personal effects
Among them a photo of your eyes
Perhaps our great-to-the-Nth grandchildren
One can only hope
May be taken by your eyes too
The wonder of such love
So you can see
This is not finished

Diver Dan - Hard Water

Speaking of puppet shows:



Scoff all you want -- I was probably watching this at the tender age of 3 or 4 years old when it first came out in 1961!  There was this thing called "TV", see?  And there were THREE channels.  There would have been four but Dad didn't put up a UHF antenna. 



Anyway, it seems pretty s-l-o-w now.  Wow. 



Baron Barracuda still creeps me out!

The Sinking of the Lusitania

One hundred years ago today, 7 May 1915, German Untersee Boot U-20 torpedoed and sank the ocean liner Lusitania.  [photo]

Wikimedia image from the London Illustrated News

Terrorist attack?

A weak America does seem to invite ill treatment from enemies.

I blame President Woodrow Wilson.  And I'm not the only one.

On 21 June 1915, former president Theodore Roosevelt wrote in a letter to John H. Lorimer of the Union League Club in Philadelphia:  "Personally I do not believe that Wilson was right on the Lusitania matter.  Had he acted with reasonable firmness in the Gulflight business the thousand men, women and children who were murdered on the Lusitania on the high seas would be alive today."

The Gulflight tanker bound for France had been torpedoed by German U-Boat U-30 on 1 May 1915, in spite of America's neutrality.  When Germany announced its sink-all-shipping policy, Wilson did not protest.  When Gulflight was sunk, Wilson did not protest.  In true progressive style, he put his best people on it to gather information.  A week later they were gathering more than information -- they were recovering bodies.
"Had he acted with reasonable firmness..."

"To forgive and forget is to surrender dearly bought experience."
  -- Shopenhauer

Tanka for 7 April 2015

Pounding wind, rain, hail --
April can't make up its mind.
Sparkling in the trees:
After the rain, bright sunlight.
A scent of thyme from the path.

Terry Pratchett dead. And I wonder.

Author Terry (Diskworld) Pratchett is dead.  (28 April 1948 – 12 March 2015.)

Given his strong and persistently outspoken opinion in favor of euthanasia (they call it "right to die") -- did Sir Terry off himself? Whether he did or not -- is the unquestioning silence of the press further evidence of pro-euthanasia bias? 

Pratchett:  atheist, egotist . . .  suicide? Doesn't sound like a very creative end for a guy who would have wanted to be known as creative. May the God in whom he did not believe have mercy on his soul.

My 2014 Year in Books

War and Peace - - Leo Tolstoy (NOT Recommended!!!)

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - - J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - - J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - - J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - - J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - - J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - - J. K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - - J. K. Rowling

The Conquest of Canaan - - Booth Tarkington
Penrod - - Booth Tarkington
Gentleman Takes a Chance - - Sarah Hoyt "Shifter" novel
Witchfinder - - Sarah Hoyt "Magical Empires" novel
Step to the Stars - - Lester del Rey
Dragonhunters - - Sabrina Chase "Guardians Compact" novel
Darkness Ascendant: Book Two of the Catmage Chronicles - - Meryl Yourish
New Treasure Seekers - - Edith Nesbit
The Light Princess - - George MacDonald
Sunk at Sea - - R. M. Ballantyne
Under the Waves: Diving in Deep Waters - - R. M. Ballantyne
Captains Courageous - - Rudyard Kipling
Sea Warfare - - Rudyard Kipling
The Sword of Shannara - - Terry Brooks
Fledgling - - Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
Stardogs - - Dave Freer (NOT recommended!!!)
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) - - Jerome K. Jerome

Spe Salvi ["Saved in Hope"] - - Pope Benedict XVI
Deus Caritas Est ["God is Love"] - - Pope Benedict XVI

My Guide to RPG Storytelling - - Aron Christensen
On Fairy Stories, and Leaf by Niggle - - J. R. R. Tolkien

Born to Run - - Christopher McDougall
The Cruelest Miles [history of the sled dog teams taking diphtheria antitoxin to Nome] - - Gay Salisbury and Laney Salisbury
The Weight of Poor: a Strategy to End Poverty - - Cloward and Piven
No More Wacos - - David B. Kopel and Paul H. Blackman

- - -
And. . . currently part way through The Theory of Moral Sentiments - - Adam Smith