Once again, we present Three Unrelated Points. For those of you who aren't aware of what this means, it means these are Three Unrelated Points...
The other day, flipping the dial in search of news on the now-thankfully-contained Griffith Park Fire, I happened to find myself watching a little of Montel, the show hosted by Montel Williams. His guest — and I gather he has her on often — was a lady named Sylvia Browne who seems to make a very fine living as a "psychic," telling people...apparently anything. She can tell what messages your dead relatives have for you. She can tell you how they died. She can tell you how your career is going to go in five years. She can answer any question and she can do it instantly, without pausing to feign concentration or a trance or anything. It takes less time to get a report on the current thoughts of your dead uncle via Sylvia then it would take to phone a living relative and find out what he's doing. I'm a pretty hard skeptic on subjects like communicating with the dead or predicting the future this way...but I do understand how some people can believe. What I don't understand is how even the most fervent believer in psychic powers could be so mind-numbingly stupid as to think Ms. Browne has any.
Years ago, I made the mistake of buying a Pelouze scale that weighs my outgoing letters and packages and tells me to the penny how much postage to put on them. It's great but every time the rates go up, as they will on Monday, I'm supposed to purchase a new chip from the Pelouze people to upgrade my scale. The new chip is $45 plus postage and handling, which I think is more than the scale cost in the first place. In the past, I've shelled out the new fee almost without thinking. But as my use of e-mail increases, my use of paper mail slides in the other direction...and most of what I do mail is in the category of bills that don't require weighing. So I'm going to wise up this time and not order the new chip. If and when I do have an outgoing piece o' mail that might be over the minimum, I'll put it on the scale, note the weight and look the correct postage amount up here. Either that or I'll phone Sylvia Browne and ask her how many stamps to put on it.
Why is it that if you go to Google, type in "search engine" and click "I'm Feeling Lucky," it doesn't take you back to Google?
You've been reading the latest edition of Three Unrelated Points. Tune in some time between now and the end of time for another thrilling installment of Three Unrelated Points.
Back in this posting, I wrote about two felines which are among the menagerie I feed at my back door. We call them (left to right in the above pic) The Stranger Cat and The Stranger Stranger Cat. The Stranger Cat comes up and howls for food and demands to be petted. The Stranger Stranger Cat hides or hangs back, waiting for the food dish to be filled and no humans to be present, then creeps up and partakes...although there was one evening The Stranger Stranger Cat was uncommonly friendly and did come up to me while I was serving and he (she?) even tolerated a little petting. That only happened the one time.
This photo was taken at night, which is the only time both come around together. During daylight, The Stranger Cat is sometimes seen. The Stranger Stranger Cat only shows up after dark. There's also a grey cat that's been turning up lately. The other night, I walked into the kitchen, looked out on the back porch and saw the three pussycats all standing around the supper dish, not eating, just slowly hissing at each other. Finally, The Stranger Cat and The Stranger Stranger Cat outhissed him and the grey one fled. You just don't want to mess with Stranger Cats.
When the Beany & Cecil cartoons debuted on TV in 1962, they brought with them a flood of Beany & Cecil toys from Mattel. I had quite a few of them including the one advertised in this commercial...the Official Beany Copter! Some of them — like the Beany & Cecil game that came with a talking Cecil puppet — were pretty good. But the one advertised in today's video offering, the Official Beany Copter, was good for about five minutes of fun.
It was a cap which, since it was formed out of hard plastic, didn't stay on your head at all unless it was an exact fit, which it usually wasn't. You put one of the propellers on the top, then spun it around to "wind" it. Then when you pulled the string, the copter blade was released and it sailed a good eight feet, whereupon the fun was over. I think I fired mine about three times for myself and once for each of maybe four friends...and that was it. Time to go pull out a different toy.
But take a look at this commercial. Those kids are enjoying themselves a lot more than any real kids ever enjoyed their Beany Copters. It wouldn't surprise me if every child actor in this spot became a successful, honored professional in the craft of acting. They sure showed talent to pretend they liked the thing.
The House Armed Services Committee is now run by Democrats. They took the shears to the administration's billion defense budget of $504 billion and wound up with a defense budget of...$504 billion! Fred Kaplan tells how they managed that.
A happy (I think) correction: Irwin Hasen did not have a pacemaker implanted. He's in the hospital, he's being treated for a stroke and I'm told he's responding well. But without a pacemaker in him.
May 12, 2007
