kbobam

I don't know anything about flying an airplane. Whether I know anything about mental health is open to interpretation. Pretty sure I know a lot more or a lot less than most people. Just not sure which. Having spent a good portion of my life trying to figure out just what's wrong with me, the closest analogy I've seen so far is the 'Peanuts' moment when Lucy, as therapist, suggests to Charlie Brown "The fear of everything?" and his immediate response is "THAT'S IT!!!" But for no reason that I can think of, I made a 'dealing with life/flying airplanes' analogy today, and I think it gets a lot closer. Most people are skilled average pilots. Let's use a good-natured cropduster fellow as an example. What he does isn't what you'd call easy, but he's been doing it for quite a few years and is comfortable that his observational skills and natural instincts will serve him well in both normal and the occasional difficult situations. Some particularly lucky people sit down in the pilot's seat, press the auto-pilot button, and promptly fall asleep. When they wake up, everything has worked out perfectly. It always does. I'm the guy who's still in pilot training and always will be. And I'm stuck at that really hard part where they 'black out' the windshield and still expect you to function with no problems. Fifty-some years of 'flying by instrument'! I don't think the mental health people have a proper name for this condition. Haven't lied to you yet and won't start now. It's been a real bitch. But I can still end this with a smiley!

That's a nice one, Ann! I'm not sure how to explain it. It's kind of outrageous and refined at the same time. 'Elegant' would be a good word, I guess. ( :

Great marbles and a particularly nice Easter image which made me happy even though I usually resist that sort of thing. ( :

Ha! That's great that you still have them! I'm not personally that familiar with the pies, but I appreciated the movie-line I mentioned because it was such a great example of someone being willing to come right out and complain about typical modern day 'politically correct' bull hockey. There's so much of it! Jess, I'm with you! My favorite place to get fries was a Chinese establishment which is unfortunately no more, but they had a sauce they mistakenly called 'honey barbecue' which I always got. It was actually more like sweet and sour. Yum. Steph, I think I know what you mean. I frequently like the basic burger too. It's kind of like a ballpark frank. You look at it one way and it's just godawful. Look another way and it's delicious. ( :

For me, ordering fries required precision timing. If you got them immediately after they left the fryer they were great. Otherwise they just weren't worth it. They simply didn't 'age' well. So I'd sometimes come up with various silly reasons to let the person behind me in line go in front of me, hoping he'd order the last of the french fries that had been sitting there for a while. Pie! I was amused recently by a movie character's hypothetical question "When exactly did the world turn to hell?" Neither he nor I were expecting an answer, but his friend immediately and rather precisely responded "The day McDonalds started baking its pies instead of deep frying them." (For those interested, that day was sometime in 1992.) Coincidentally, McDonalds brought back the deep-fried pie in Southern California for the latter 3/4 of 2015. So maybe Sclsu got to experience one of those a little more recently than the rest of us. ( :

Here is an article/list of more McDonald's products than anyone could possibly imagine. And yet, somehow, they did! I came to this page because for no apparent reason the name "McDLT" popped into my head, and I felt compelled to look it up. Oh yeah! Now I remember. That was a decent burger. Too bad about the styro. The more I read, the more fascinated I became with all the different crap they've done. Your mileage may vary considerably, so please don't cuss-out or otherwise harm the messenger! ( : https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_McDonald%27s_products&redirect=no

Just saw a better image of the device I mentioned a while back. Given the overall situation here, it would appear that the 'clicky balls' are meant to be itty bitty bowling balls. Calling them 'marbles' would be dubious. But they definitely got me wondering if anyone had ever made 'bowling ball marbles'. You know what I mean. Marbles that an honest non-bowler ebay seller would describe as having three blow-holes. I think those would be neat. Tried 'searching' for them, but no luck. There're quite a few actual bowling balls that have been 'decorated' with marbles, but no genuine 5/8 Brunswicks. Would any of our skilled marble-makers like to be the first to do this? With the right marketing this could be a million dollar idea!

Thanks for responding to that one. I've never seen or heard of any mention of this 'concept' before. But it's definitely been having a strange and slightly unpleasant effect on me. Clearly, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I also told a buddy of mine about this earlier today. His father died very young, so he came to this situation about fifteen years ago. Although he hadn't thought about it in a long time, he was 'struck' by how my bringing it up made him completely remember this rather unusual feeling. He too knew exactly what I meant. Life can sure be strange. ( :

Thanks! You know, if I make it to midnight, I'll officially be older than my father ever was. What a strange thought....

I'm going to leave it to you to look at the image below and decide to which word I'm referring and whether or not you want to look further into its definition. This was a brand new one to me, although its concept has been used in many movies and television situation comedies over the years. ( :

Okay! My naturally high testosterone levels had me temporarily unable to deal with the 'Adorbs' title. But now that I've had a chance to meditate a little and hopefully be a little less neurotic, I have to admit that this is very very funny. Don't want to think what the penalty would be for stealing the quarter behind his ear. ( :

Here's a small section of a list I found while checking out the definition of 'buyer's premium'. Am I interpreting this correctly in that the changing 'threshold' rates could lead to a situation where a potential buyer might feel obligated to outbid himself? CHRISTIE’S BUYER’S PREMIUM SCHEDULE FOR ALL CATEGORIES EXCEPT WINE (except where stated these rates are net of local applicable taxes) Sale Room Rate Threshold (as of 30 September 2013) Threshold (prior to 30 September 2013) New York 25.0% Up to $100,000 Up to $75,000 20.0% $100,001 to $2,000,000 $75,001 to $1,500,000 12.0% $2,000,001 and above $1,500,001 and above King Street/South Kensington 25.0% Up to £50,000 Up to £37,500 20.0% £50,001 to £1,000,000 £37,501 to £750,000 12.0% £1,000,001 and above £750,001 and above Paris 25.0% Up to €30,000 Up to €30,000 20.0% €30,001 to €1,200,000 €30,001 to €1,200,000 12.0% €1,200,001 and above €1,200,001 and above Amsterdam (all inclusive rates) 30.25% Up to €30,000 Up to €30,000 24.20% €30,001 to €1,200,000 €30,001 to €1,200,000 14.52% €1,200,001 and above €1,200,001 and above

3/4" single pontil. If you told me it was a small hand-painted cobalt blue George Williams, I'd believe you. ( :

Ha! New one on me. Good group of groups. For those interested, clicking on the blue box at the end that says 'pointless' will take you back a 'page' to an index of lots of fun stuff.

This is a particularly good example of a moment which I think proves my marble 'theory'. To wit, that marbles are a more significant part of the average person's psyche than one might expect. This scene is from a dream-sequence, and the guy is spouting random nonsense. As such, he could have said anything here. I mean, the possibilities are essentially infinite. And yet, a marble was mentioned. The writers wrote it, the editors approved it, and if all these people are good at their jobs, it could be assumed that it 'worked' for the television audience as well. Did I say that right? Do you see what I mean? ( :

Three or four syllables? ( :

And why on the main page is my topic shown as "New Format Continuing To D..." when there's obviously plenty of room in the second line to show the complete title? The computer programming to show a complete title up to a certain number of characters would be just as easy as cutting it off at some random point and adding a few dots... This is silly beyond comprehension. It's similar to those articles you read that suddenly end, and give you the option to click on the "show more" button in order to read the last two words. Are you bleeping kidding me?

Oh goody! Just had a bright red ''notification" that a couple people had 'quoted' me! Was temporarily excited that someone felt a need to send me a 'private message', since in the past that would be the only reason for this extra 'visual indicator'. But No! It was just telling me something I already knew, since I'd read the messages hours earlier! What brilliant use of internet bandwidth! As long as I'm already 'going off' about 'social-media-style' stupidity, I noticed something ridiculous about my new 'touch-screen' phone recently. When it's done charging, it shows a message along the lines of "Charge Complete. Please Unplug Now To Save Energy" Fair enough. Unplugging it is all that's required. But once again, Noooooooo! There's a little 'Okay' button symbol for you to push. I don't push it because it's entirely unnecessary. It's only there because people today so enjoy communicating with inanimate objects by tapping their touch-screens all day long for no worthwhile purpose whatsoever! I'm so happy that I'm old enough to not have to deal with the upcoming world of robot-morons that many of our brilliant writers were already predicting decades ago. ( :

What's a 'Scrabble word'? Don't they just have to be in 'The Dictionary'? (I haven't played in a real long time.) Here's a catalogue shot from 1914. I'm not sure how to make the 'today's dollars' conversion, but I'm guessing you'd have to be pretty rich to get one of these. ( :

Speaking of which, up until a few years ago I'd spent my entire life completely mistaken about the lyrics to the 'Do-Re-Mi' song. I'd always heard "Ti" as being a drink with "German" bread. Not "jam and". .

On a more serious note, it's certainly a word of many meanings that would be challenging to try to explain to someone trying to learn English. ( :

Tell me about it. I've always been partial to dark-haired pale-skinned women. Are they 'half-fair'? Or is that a non-applicable 'dividing something by zero' concept? And where does Scarborough fit into all this?

The more I think about it, the stranger the idea of 'equality' becomes. I was originally thinking how it's a silly term to use when talking about any concept that involves people. People aren't, and can't be, 'equal'. That's just stupid. 'Equal' implies 'identical'. 'Equivalent', or of the same value, would be a better word. And yet, even in the mathematics from which I base my definition of 'equality', we can look at both sides of an equation and have a very clear 'seeing is believing' realization that '2+2' and '4' are not the same thing! I'm so confused! (And as long as we're here, why don't we drop all the silly 'political correctness' and be brutally honest and admit that we all know a few individuals who aren't even 'equivalent'!) My final amateur-philosopher take on all this is that the only existence of equality is that which exists between an object and itself. ( :

Ha! I missed this one. Like it! ( :

The original concept, the 'directive', the graphics, and the combination of the three are all hilarious!