kbobam

Yep, the tobacco ban was another huge insult to everyone's intelligence. I mean, go ahead and sell or don't sell whatever you want, but don't lie to our faces. They did this because they 'care'? Right. And then have the audacity to back up the first lie with a second. (We're obviously losing money here, so you know we're sincere!) What a load of hooey!

A while back, it was apparently decided by someone in my bank's hierarchy that the people sitting at desks needed to show their friendly side and pleasantly greet people who've walked in and are on their way to the teller counter. It was obvious and contrived and just incredibly bogus, so of course it drove me nuts. One day, one of these people was a little slow in performing her duty. Possibly because she was concentrating on her work, which ought to be what the bank wants in the first place.. So I'm already past the desks and waiting in front of the counter, and out of nowhere there's a "GOOD MORNING! HOW ARE YOU?" It frayed my last nerve. I spun around and said "Oh my God! Will you people stop doing that!" I like to think my 'vote' might have counted, since they actually did stop not long after that. (That's proper 'crotchety', in my opinion.)

I've mentioned my fondness for the Oxblood/Aventurine series at various times. Recently looked at some of them a little more closely and realized that I'd never noticed some of their most striking features. Specifically, there's a lot of clear glass in many of them that isn't immediately apparent in normal lighting conditions. To be honest, I always thought the marble shown below had a nice green color pattern on a bricky base. But the green is from another part of the marble, the pattern is clear glass with some nice blood lines, and if you light it just the right way it looks pretty great. ( :

I really appreciated Ann's response to some of my crotchety comments in the 'PC' and Marble ID topic. It made me want to talk for hours, so I figured the Lounge would be a better place for me to shoot my mouth. Crotchety is such a great word! (It's possible that it might just be my personal interpretation of the definition which makes it seem so.) I think it's a fairly complicated concept, and requires several conditions to be met for a person to be able to fully understand it or 'be' it in its purest form. You have to have once been a younger person, who thought he/she knew 'crotchety' when you saw it. But you were wrong! You didn't make the distinction of understanding that some people are just 'mean', regardless of their age. You may have already literally been a 'genius', but you were still 'young and stupid'. (None of us can avoid that.) You now have to be a somewhat older person of above-average intelligence. This causes you to look around and wonder why so many people seem to be blindly accepting the ever-increasing amount of BS that's constantly being thrown their way in their daily lives. No time to list examples. You know what I mean. If you've seen 'Drunk Uncle' on the Saturday Night Live show, you've seen a perfect example of 'crotchety'. He probably hasn't chosen the best way to deal with the whole situation, but you can't help feeling sympathetic. I had a recent experience which made me decide that I'd finally earned the 'crotchety' title. If you really want to hear it, please remind me later since I'm already talking too much. ( :

Coupe De Ville! One of the 'kings' of the land yachts! And in my humble opinion, 1969 was one of those genuinely 'special' years for American automobiles. (Must pause to wipe tear from eye. Damned allergies.) Seriously, I haven't seen that year being recognized as such, but it should be right up there with 1932 and 1957. Pre-emission era honest horsepower was at its peak, and the cars were built like tanks. I'm going to stick with my opinion on this, although you could also make a case for 1970, when some manufacturers coaxed some extra horsepower from certain engines. But this was done by increasing compression ratio, which would soon become a bit of a problem. Unless you had a buddy with access to the fuel depot at the local airport!

Holy cow. Was just about to compliment Ann on her brilliantly-twisted brain, but now she's not the only one. ( : (Glad to see these terrific answers. The original question was causing me great mental anguish.) Lloyd, that guy looks like the one person who's always in family photos who insists "I am smiling, dammit!"

Good point. Traditionally I've used something along the lines of 'For The Moto-Heads Only' in the title to reach the 'target audience'. And also, hopefully, to avoid wasting the time of my friends here who don't particularly find things like an Offenhauser manifold with 8 single-barrel Webers exciting. And speaking of my last name, I just now found this link to what looks like a pretty cool car. ( : http://weber-sportcars.com/146/Englisch/HOME.html

Thanks for the additional viewpoints. I admire you guys. I'm hoping to someday get to that same level where I can just be straight-forward and not worry about stupid stuff so much. ( :

Same here! Let us know! ( :

Thanks for describing this sort of situation in a nicer way than I did and adding some explanation. I think I'm in one of my 'overall generally irritated' moods tonight. You know what also bugs me? When people make a post in the 'Introduce Yourself' section and are never heard from again. Especially when they get the timing just right and wind up with a large number of genuinely kind responses. I'm pretty sure this is a flaw in my character which I wish wasn't there. But I can't help it. ( :

People who've recently acquired marbles and are requesting information frequently first mention details about where they came from in a detailed way that would suggest a 'minimum age'. I'm wondering if it wouldn't be a worthwhile thing in a response to first address whether these opening statements hold true or even make any sense whatsoever. It might be doing a good service to both the original poster and those who read the information later. A recent post in the ID section had a question from someone who first mentioned that the marbles involved came from 'a man in his 70's' who 'said that the marbles came from his father'. The people who responded all know a gazillion times more about marbles than I do, and there's no doubt that their responses were correct. But they only mentioned a small number of the large group that was shown. Here's what I really wanted to know. The 'seller' is in his 70's. When you think about it, does that matter at all? And how about his father? Who could be 86 and bought the marbles a week ago.

The Hamon marble is completely insane. So of course I like it. No question that Jess's marble looks great with the backlighting. It's so nice to take a photo that gives you an "I really like this one!" reaction. It doesn't happen that often, at least in my experience. These little suckers that we all like so much can be extremely 'difficult' at times. Very hard to translate what you're 'getting' from a marble into a photograph. ( :

The recent 'Bike Day' topic reminded me that we haven't had any moto-head posts here for a while. One of the tv stations I get has been re-broadcasting the old 'Grace Under Fire' show. The introduction shows her tooling around in a neat-looking car from the good old days, but you only get quick glimpses of it that are fairly close-up. I finally put it together that it's a 1965 four door Bonneville. Man, that's a lotta car! I don't know about hers, but apparently you could have gotten this car with the 421 motor and a six-pack. There has to be a lot more weight than a GTO, but I'll bet it wasn't a slouch. ( :

Nuts. It's a late warm Sunday afternoon, and what I really wanted to do was down a cold beer and maybe take a nap. But I also felt the need to show some more Oxblood/Aventurine Jabo variations. So I made a technical mistake with this shot, and there's too much overall 'reflection'. You can still see them halfway well, so if you'll forgive me, I'll forgive myself. I've always found the O/A series very exciting and interesting. It's hard to put into words. So please consider these last two photos as also being 'theoretically posted' in the "Unsung" topic. ( :

It'll never roll!

Sounds like just the opposite of that artist you posted a while back, whose oil paintings could make you swear you were looking at a photo. ( :

From Jabo's Oxblood/Aventurine series.

Yes! Share the fun! And it's the perfect time of year to 'go for it'! ( :

Oh, great! So much for my booking commission! ( :

I don't know about you, but I'm not very fond of 'heights'. (This is putting it mildly.) So I thought it was pretty funny when a character in one of my favorite animated television shows admitted that he was the same way, and made this comment when he got to the first step of a ladder. ( :

What a great-looking kitty! Who I think is showing great restraint while having fun with this yip-yap dog. Can't help wondering about Fritz with either one of them. My guess is that, as a gentleman, he'd be polite with the dog for a while, but eventually decide that he has no time to waste on idiots and walk away. But I have a suspicion that he and the 'tigrinho' could be buddies. I think they'd have mutual respect and enjoy each other's company. ( :

Haha ( : (Given how ridiculous some of our words are, I'm sure there are many 'English as a second language' students who wouldn't even bat an eye at this.)

Ha! Good point. You have a great 'diagnostic' mind. Seeing it spelled out like that, it's clear that this is the logical first question to be asked. ( :

Just for the record, Andrea, my last time attempting to leave feedback was also a 'What the blank?' experience. So I appreciate both the question and the responses. I don't understand why so many websites (Photobucket particularly comes to mind) seem to have a constant policy of 'change for its own sake'. It's rarely for the better, until such time that they've made so many changes that things get back to how they used to be when everything worked well. If it ain't broke......