June 16, 2004

• This and That

  In comments, CamelJoe asked (and I have some answers for, plus more questions about):  

  more weird questions

  1) have you ever wanted to be a ninja spirit??

  If this question displays my ignorance of some essential element of pop
  cult, so be it.  WTF is a “ninja spirit”?  In one
  sense I’m a half-assed real live ninja.  I’ve no belt in Ninjutsu, can boast
  of no sensei in the flesh, but I’ve had an interest in Ninjutsu since
  the early 1960s.  I have read about it and had simple instruction
  from some U.S. military men who had studied it.  I learned some
  techniques. 

  I can do the ninja invisibility trick in the woods or in a crowd. 
  I think it’s fun, and it is also something potentially useful and maybe
  even life-saving… but what do spirits have to do with it?

  2) what kind of car do you drive

  “Streak” (named after a favorite fictional character, Dave Robichaux,
  from a series of James Lee Burke novels) is a 1984 silver Subaru Loyale
  wagon.

  3) if food was dropped on the floor would you say ” 5 second rule” then eat it?

  I cannot think of any occasion when I might have cause to utter those
  words, and whether I eat food that drops to the floor depends on what
  kind of food it is, how dirty the floor is, and whether the dog is
  faster than I am in getting to it.

  4) Ever watch Doug, or any other nickelodeon shows.

  I had no TV of my own from 1958 to 1976 or from 1983 to 1998, and I
  have never had cable or satellite TV, except in hotels
  occasionally.  Doug and I watched Nick a few times on our travels,
  and he has a Doug Funny action figure.  When he was 12 and we were
  on the Big Field Trip, he found a lot of things in the animated Doug
  that he could identify with.

  5) are you into the civil war?

  I’m not “into” any one war more than another, they all interest me for
  various reasons.  If you are into the War Between the States, you
  might be interested in my Matthew Brady blog from about a year ago.

  6) lets see if you and me have something we can connect to, like your
  my long lost twin. har har. We have one connection. The like of the
  color yellow.

  HO “har har” HUM.  I’m mildly (only mildly, not at all
  intensely) curious why you seem to need to “connect” that way. 
  Okay.  We knew each other in a past life.  It was a happy
  relationship, cut short by war.  That’s all I really know about it
  at this point, but I have ways of finding out more.  As soon as
  you brought up the Civil War, what popped into my mind was the life
  (during and just after the Civil War) when I was orphaned young and
  ended up riding for the Pony Express.

  
  7) what size shoes do you wear?

  My winter boots are size 11, to leave room for felt innersoles and
  layers of socks.  My summer moccasins and sneakers are about size
  8 +/- half a size due to variations among manufacturers.  Why do
  you ask?

  And that’s enough of that for a while.

  ---

  Factoid: 
  a Google search reveals 44,200 websites having something to do with
  dumpster diving.  That in turn, Greyfox and I have concluded,
  reveals something about the economy.  He says I was “ahead of the
  curve,” having subsisted on food from dumpsters in the 1970s and
  earning money by selling junk I found there at flea markets.

  ---

  Disturbing facts:  Earlier this month, the New York “Times and
  other mainstream media outlets reported that a National Institutes of
  Health (NIH) study showed that Prozac was more effective than
  counseling (or ‘talk therapy’) in helping teens overcome depression.”
  (source:
  HSIBaltimore.com – Health Sciences Institute) 
  The news stories featured that conclusion prominently, in headlines and
  lead paragraphs.  The difference, in terms of relieving
  depression, between the Prozac group and control groups, was a few
  percentage points.  A careful reading of some of those stories
  revealed, farther down and not emphasized, that in the small sample
  studied, the incidence of suicide attempts among those teens in the
  first weeks of the study were five times as great for the Prozac group
  as for the controls.

  The email newsletters I get from HSI are some of my most interesting and informative mail.
  

  • 3:33 pm
  • 5 Comments