One of those "D'oh *Slap Head* Moments"

I've always thought it was a weird coincidence that the price for a gallon of gas have always been close to that of a pack of cigarettes.   Right now, for example, a gallon of gas is approaching $4 per gallon and a pack of cigarettes, I understand, is around $4 a pack.  Back when I started driving, they were both around 70 cents, as I recall.

This morning in Madera Superior Court, the Court Reporter, Bailiff and I were recollecting how low gas prices were back in the early '70s.  The bailiff remembered gas prices as low as 17 cents a gallon.  I pointed out that when I started driving, gas prices had skyrocketed to the unheard of price of 70 cents a gallon. (For our younger readers, this is what old folks talk about when they get together.)  I then pointed out the strange correlation between gas and cigarettes.

Without meeting a beat the bailiff said, "that's because most of the price in cigarettes and gas is in taxes."

*Silence*

*Reflection*

I slapped my head and made a groaning noise.  "D'oh!"

I looked at the Court Reporter and asked, "Did you know that?"

It's like a few weeks ago when I talked to a client who is involved in California water issues.  I pointed out that we must be doing well because the San Luis Obispo Reservoir - a giant Central Valley water reservoir this side of the Coastal Range - is filling up.  He looked at me and said, "You know that the SLO Reservoir is filled up by water pumped into it, not by natural rivers, right?"

Uhmmm...no, not till right then, but it sure made sense after it was pointed out.

It seems that when the SLO Reservoir has been low recently, that has everything to do with Court Orders blocking the pumping of water in order to protect the Delta smelt and nothing to do with California being in a drought.

D'oh!

At least, I know that I'm not the only one who monitors how California's water supply is doing based upon how low the water level at the SLO Reservoir seems to be.

10,000 hours over 10 years

That's all it takes to succeed at anything.

[Via Wanderers]

Give some back

Jonah Goldberg offers this bit of wisdom.

Finally, the answer to the question, who really won the sexual revolution?

Answer: Men.

How the pill made women slutty and men slackers and caused women to become workplace drones with a rates of heart attacks that is actually higher than that of men.

Women have been so totally *pwnned*

Apparently, it's all about the "rational economic choice" that less slutty women make in order to raise their economic value and thereby land a mate. Women without a taste for being sluts have had to increase their perceived economic value by increasing their earnings base so that they can support some drop-out man's slacker lifestyle.

Of course, needless to say, the whole thing flips in the other direction if you are a man who is the antithesis of "tall, dark and handsome."

*Sigh*

Once, in a discussion with a lady friend who was known for "sleeping around," I asked her why she had adopted that lifestyle.

Her answer was that she wanted to show men how if feels like to be treated as mere sex objects, like they had treated women.

I said, "Yea, that'll teach 'em."

Merry Christmas, Part 3.


Christmas Bells

By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!


And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!


Till, ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!


Then from each black accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!


It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!


And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"


Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Apparently, this poem had roots in Longfellow's tragic circumstances, including the recent deaths of his wife and his son, the latter of whom was a casualty of the Civil War.

Here is another blogger's insights into the poem.

Give it a read.

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas, part 2.


While the Widget, the Wadget and Boff are out with the ex, I've got some time to kill.

I'm thinking of seeing Alien v. Predator II because nothing says "Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward Men" like a movie featuring not one, but two (!!!!), psychopathic, genocidal alien species.

And lots of explosions.

Cool.

In other news, this has to be the best of the Christmas season:

Thousands of Iraqi Christians made their way to church through checkpoints and streets lined with blast walls, many drawing hope from a lull in violence to celebrate Christmas Mass in numbers unthinkable a year ago.

God bless our brave soldiers and all Iraqis of goodwill.

Fairytale of New York.



It's an oddball bit of Christmas music as a drunk sleeps a bender off in a New York city drunk tank.

The lyrics start:

It was Christmas Eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, won't see another one
And then he sang a song
The Rare Old Mountain Dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you

Here's some speculation about the song's backstory.

Finally, the singer, Shane McGowen - the singer with really "gnarly" teeth in the video - turns 50 on Christmas Day, and he sounds - and looks - like he has some knowledge whereof he sings.

Sort of News.

Tony Blair converts to Catholicism.

Jodie Foster is gay.

Water is wet.

Leonard Cohen and Salvifici Doloris.

Leonard Cohen describes the reason people like melancholy songs, and, incidentally, offers as good a description of the Christian understanding of the human condition as we are likely to see:

"Everybody has experienced the defeat of their lives. Nobody has a life that worked out the way they wanted it to work out. We all begin as the hero of our own dramas, in centre stage, and inevitably life moves us out of centre stage, defeats the hero, overturns the plot and the strategy and we’re left on the sidelines, wondering why we no longer have a part, or want a part, in the whole damn thing."

[Via The Confessing Evangelical.]