Most readers know I have a self-imposed policy of separating my role as publisher of several community newspapers from my other role as a political consultant, or at the very least, clearly disclaiming my dual roles on those infrequent occasions when the two roles overlap.
Well this is one of those times.
When I wrote my column last week, I said I was not gonna beat up on Mark Sanford, because he was being beaten up enough.
That was before he “kept talking”, and sealed his fate with a second press conference. But I’m still not gonna beat him up.
It is well-known by readers of this column that I am not a political ally of Sanford, having directed the campaign of his 2006 GOP opponent, Dr. Oscar Lovelace.
Moreover, I am a long-time friend and advisor to the Lt. Governor, Andre Bauer, having run each of his previous campaigns. Still, I refrain from using this column to promote the Lt. Governor. This week, however, I will…
In the fallout from what has now become known as the Sanford Scandal, much attention has been given to the order of succession into the Governor’s office. With the increased likelihood that Lt. Governor Bauer might be thrust into the position of Governor, his political competitors have launched an aggressive, behind-the-scenes PR battle to make Bauer appear to be an unattractive alternative.
The detractors have written negative letters-to-the editor of the state’s major newspapers, and have subtly lobbied editors to write editorials slanted against Bauer.
The reason his competitors have begun these behind-the-scene attacks, of course, is to stop Bauer from becoming Governor… because they themselves have aspirations to become the next Governor!!! They recognize that if Bauer becomes Governor for 18 months, he will likely be very successful, as he has been with the Office on Aging, and virtually every other pursuit he has undertaken during his years of public service. They know his hard work and determination is virtually unstoppable, and believe that he will be markedly successful… thus probably quashing their own desires to become Governor. But nowhere in their opposition to Bauer do they have the best interests of our state in mind.
I, for one, happen to believe allowing Andre Bauer to ascend to Governor is a logical step for our state. Those who have watched him grow and mature into a solid public servant know that Bauer is exactly the person we need to pull the state out of this latest crisis.
Who could better help solve South Carolina’s problems during a recession? Andre Bauer has a well-documented history of overcoming major obstacles and plowing ahead to solve problems that would stop most others. What other potential candidate for Governor can match his energy, enthusiasm, and work ethic… the elements needed to lead our state through its roughest period ever? No one else even comes close.
Consider these factors:
1. We’re in the midst of a major recession, and we’re still facing the same challenges we’ve struggled with for decades: near the bottom in education, health care, crime, personal income, etc. But now, we will be trying to solve these problems during the weakest global economy in history.
South Carolina’s next governor MUST be someone who has the energy, the drive and determination and the perseverance to overcome whatever obstacles we may face. No one can overcome tough obstacles better than Andre Bauer!
2. With the 12.5% unemployment – third highest in the nation – the most critical immediate challenge we face is recruiting new industry so we can provide jobs for our people.
Our next governor must be tireless in pursuing industrial prospects. We need a proven hard-worker who will put in the time it takes to attract new jobs to our state. We need a natural-born salesman. We need an enthusiastic advocate for the state. Andre Bauer is already hard at work selling our state to potential prospects.
3. Most of all, South Carolina needs a return to the communication, cooperation, and common sense which has been missing from state government in recent years. We can’t afford to have the legislative and executive branches battling each other. Now more than ever, we need a government that works.
More than any other prospective candidate for Governor, Andre Bauer has a record of open communication, get-it-done cooperation, and good, solid common sense. He understands how to stand up for his principles, but also use his common sense to promote the greater good of our state.
In short, Andre Bauer has the qualities we need to pull South Carolina out of this current crisis, to recruit new industries, and to solve problems during the tough times we are facing.
This is not an endorsement of Andre Bauer’s election. It’s simply the other side of the coin -- which most media outlets aren’t explaining, because they’ve become pawns in the political maneuvering which has taken over our state in the wake of the Sanford Scandal.
Should Sanford be forced to resign or impeached? That’s a question I will leave to the will of the people. But it’s a decision which should be made on its own merit, not based on who might take over.
This I CAN tell you: The Lt. Governor South Carolina elected not once, but twice, to be ready just in case of a vacancy is absolutely ready and able to put our state back on track. We should let him do what we elected him to do.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
The Ideals of America, 2009
Lots of friends and acquaintances have been asking this week what I would be writing about the Mark Sanford affair. They know, as most of my readers do, that I have been a Sanford critic for a number of years, and, in fact, ran the 2006 campaign of Sanford’s Republican primary challenger, Oscar Lovelace. (That’s possibly the reason Sanford called me “creepy” at a press conference last year.) Regular readers of this column are also aware of my unofficial advisory role to Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, as well as having served as campaign manager for Senator Jake Knotts, another key figure in the ongoing Sanford saga.
Suffice it to say that, yes, I could write an interesting and informative column about the Mark Sanford affair. But I’m not going to, because there are approximately 10,000 other newspapers taking care of that business.
Frankly, I’m more interested in this week’s celebration of America’s birthday… Independence Day… the day the Declaration of Independence was signed, which led to a Constitution giving all these newspapers the right to freely comment on the Sanford affair, and all Americans the right to express their individual opinions on the matter.
So, instead of piling on, I’ve decided to reprint my column from July 4th, two years ago, to commemorate the set of ideals – freedom, liberty, and equal justice -- which are obviously still alive and well in America:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
“When in the course of Human Events…”
So begins the Declaration of Independence, to document which declared the creation of the United States of America, the signing of which on July 4th, 1776, is the date we celebrate as our national holiday of patriotism.
It’s no accident, I think, that our national day of celebration commemorates a document, rather than the end or beginning of any battle or war, or any military victory, or any national incident. To be sure, there are many other dates which will, indeed, live in infamy or be cause for perpetual celebration. But the single day we have chosen to celebrate Americanism is the day the ideas on which our nation was created were signed into effect with a single declaration.
We celebrate words -- not battles, not royal bloodlines, not military might -- because words convey ideas... and America is a nation founded on a set of ideas: freedom, liberty, justice, equality, and opportunity. These ideas, represented by written words, created the foundation on which our way of life has been built.
Because our American Way of Life is built on a set of ideas/ideals, and because I’m pretty sure we ALL take these ideals pretty much for granted on a daily basis – and it would probably be a good thing if we reminded ourselves of them from time to time -- I thought I would commemorate this July 4th by offering a bit of a quiz on some of the Words of Patriotism we have come to cherish.
Below, I’ve listed twelve patriotic phrases. Your job is to identify where each phrase comes from. These correct answers are at the end.
Here we go…
Patriotic Phrase #1: “We the people of the United States….”
Patriotic Phrase #2: “The land of the free, and the home of the brave”.
Patriotic Phrase #3: “WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”
Patriotic Phrase #4: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free….”
Patriotic Phrase #5: “One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”.
Patriotic Phrase #6: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”
Patriotic Phrase #7: “Crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea”.
Patriotic Phrase #8: “ … no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances”.
Patriotic Phrase #9: “Stand beside her and guide her through the night with the light from above.”
Patriotic Phrase #10: “We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor”.
Patriotic Phrase #11: “A new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”.
Patriotic Phrase #12: “Secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity”.
How did you do? Here are the answers: 1. Preamble of the Constitution; 2. The National Anthem (The Star Spangled Banner); 3. The Declaration of Independence; 4. Inscription of the Statue of Liberty; 5. The Pledge of Allegiance; 6. Inscription of the Liberty Bell (we would also accept Leviticus 25:10); 7. America, the Beautiful; 8. The First Amendment (or The Bill of Rights); 9. God Bless America; 10. The Declaration of Independence, again! 11. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address; 12. Preamble of the Constitution, again.
Hope you have a safe and happy Independence Day. And as we all celebrate freedom, let’s please keep our fighting men and women in our thoughts and prayers. God Bless America.
Suffice it to say that, yes, I could write an interesting and informative column about the Mark Sanford affair. But I’m not going to, because there are approximately 10,000 other newspapers taking care of that business.
Frankly, I’m more interested in this week’s celebration of America’s birthday… Independence Day… the day the Declaration of Independence was signed, which led to a Constitution giving all these newspapers the right to freely comment on the Sanford affair, and all Americans the right to express their individual opinions on the matter.
So, instead of piling on, I’ve decided to reprint my column from July 4th, two years ago, to commemorate the set of ideals – freedom, liberty, and equal justice -- which are obviously still alive and well in America:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
“When in the course of Human Events…”
So begins the Declaration of Independence, to document which declared the creation of the United States of America, the signing of which on July 4th, 1776, is the date we celebrate as our national holiday of patriotism.
It’s no accident, I think, that our national day of celebration commemorates a document, rather than the end or beginning of any battle or war, or any military victory, or any national incident. To be sure, there are many other dates which will, indeed, live in infamy or be cause for perpetual celebration. But the single day we have chosen to celebrate Americanism is the day the ideas on which our nation was created were signed into effect with a single declaration.
We celebrate words -- not battles, not royal bloodlines, not military might -- because words convey ideas... and America is a nation founded on a set of ideas: freedom, liberty, justice, equality, and opportunity. These ideas, represented by written words, created the foundation on which our way of life has been built.
Because our American Way of Life is built on a set of ideas/ideals, and because I’m pretty sure we ALL take these ideals pretty much for granted on a daily basis – and it would probably be a good thing if we reminded ourselves of them from time to time -- I thought I would commemorate this July 4th by offering a bit of a quiz on some of the Words of Patriotism we have come to cherish.
Below, I’ve listed twelve patriotic phrases. Your job is to identify where each phrase comes from. These correct answers are at the end.
Here we go…
Patriotic Phrase #1: “We the people of the United States….”
Patriotic Phrase #2: “The land of the free, and the home of the brave”.
Patriotic Phrase #3: “WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness”
Patriotic Phrase #4: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free….”
Patriotic Phrase #5: “One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”.
Patriotic Phrase #6: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.”
Patriotic Phrase #7: “Crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea”.
Patriotic Phrase #8: “ … no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances”.
Patriotic Phrase #9: “Stand beside her and guide her through the night with the light from above.”
Patriotic Phrase #10: “We mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor”.
Patriotic Phrase #11: “A new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”.
Patriotic Phrase #12: “Secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity”.
How did you do? Here are the answers: 1. Preamble of the Constitution; 2. The National Anthem (The Star Spangled Banner); 3. The Declaration of Independence; 4. Inscription of the Statue of Liberty; 5. The Pledge of Allegiance; 6. Inscription of the Liberty Bell (we would also accept Leviticus 25:10); 7. America, the Beautiful; 8. The First Amendment (or The Bill of Rights); 9. God Bless America; 10. The Declaration of Independence, again! 11. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address; 12. Preamble of the Constitution, again.
Hope you have a safe and happy Independence Day. And as we all celebrate freedom, let’s please keep our fighting men and women in our thoughts and prayers. God Bless America.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
I’m an expert at eating food
With BBQ season in full swing – and the biggest barbecue day of the year just ahead – it’s only fitting that we should have a little chat about food in general. And Bar-B-Q in specific. (I especially want to spare you transplanted Yankees of the inevitable bar-b-cue embarrassment you are likely to experience if you try act like you know anything at all about B-B-Que around Good Ole Boys who grew up on Bar-b-cue.)
Barbeque is, of course, the best food ever invented in the whole, entire history of mankind. (It’s also ranks high among “foods which can be spelled a lot of different ways”, which you may have noticed in the preceding paragraphs.)
So here’s what you need to know before diggin’ in on July 4th:
1. There are many different kinds of BBQ.
2. Grilling hamburgers or hotdogs ain’t one of ‘em.
That’s the common mistake made by Yankees. They confuse grilling with barbecuing. I don’t know where they got that notion. Probably from growing up with a lack of actual barbecue, so they’re just trying to make do.
Actual variety in BBQ comes from the various sauces: mustard-based, ketchup-based, vinegar-based, and a whole lot of other bases in exotic, faraway places like Texas.
How do I know these things? Because I am a food expert. I have eaten it almost my entire life, and I try to exercise my skills every day, usually several times a day to keep in practice. I learned about food at an early age, and have been carefully observing it ever since. Hence, I am an expert.
I remember food before there was fast food.
Back then, “eating out” was rarity… a special treat reserved for the occasional Sunday after church.
Soft drinks with meals were also a bit of a treat. Pepsi, Coca-Cola, RC Cola, Nehi, Seven Up came in bottles, not cans, in a cardboard six pack with a handle. But… they were not on the regular shopping list, because, once again, they were for special occasions. (For some reason, small cokes – half the size for the same price – were considered a special delicacy.)
WE opened those bottles, incidentally, with the bottle opener located at the other end of a “church key”. At our house, we could never find the bottle opener… which was okay, because the handles of our kitchen drawers doubled nicely as bottle openers.
With meals at my house, we drank a lot of (a) water, because it was free; (b) iced tea, because we were Southerners; and (c) milk, because it was delivered to our back door several mornings each week by the Golden Glow Dairy.
The meals themselves were a variety pack: some days were practically gourmet home-cooked feasts… and some days were the same cereal we had for breakfast for lunch and supper… if I could get away with it. (I was a kid! What could be better than Fruit Loops three times a day?!)
My other most memorable kid’s meal was the daily lunchtime “mannaze sammich”. I was in high school before I discovered that the Miracle Whip which comprised the entire inside of my sandwich was not mayonnaise at all, but salad dressing.
As I got older -- maybe eight or nine -- the mayo was replace with a Vienna sausage and mustard. Now THAT was good eating!
Here’s some other foods which were mealtime favorites at the Shealy household, circa 1962:
Spam. We liked it. We made sandwiches out of it, or we fried it and ate it like steak!
Hot Dogs. We simply wrapped a slice of white bread around it like a bun, because actual buns were unheard of, except at restaurants.
Collards, turnip greens, and mustard greens. There was a special way we ate them – with ketchup on top – which, to this day, I can’t find anyone else who has ever heard of this gourmet offering.
Salmon. Once upon a time, canned pink salmon was apparently very, very cheap, because we ate it a LOT. There was salmon gravy, salmon stew, salmon and eggs, and salmon patties (which were called croquettes when you saw them on the menu in restaurants.)
Gravy. On everything, the way it was intended. Gravy on grits. Gravy on potatoes. Gravy on rice. Gravy on biscuits. (If for some reason gravy was unavailable, then a big slab of butter was a decent substitute on any of the forgoing dishes… although it wasn’t really butter at our house… it was margarine, but we didn’t know the difference.)
And, of course, being from the South, there were certain automatic items of cuisine at our house: boil’t peanuts, mater sammiches, and wallermelon slices.
I could go on and on.
I could also make a rather lengthy list of foods I had hardly heard of, let alone tasted, until high school or college: pizza; burrito or any other Mexican food; Chinese food, such as Wong Tong Ching Chang Wow; any seafood other than fish. Shrimp, scallops, lobster and such didn’t even exist in my world.
But they do now…. Because I am a food expert. I try to eat every day.
And on July 4th, the food I plan to be eating is BBQ!
Along with an RC Cola, if I can find one.
Barbeque is, of course, the best food ever invented in the whole, entire history of mankind. (It’s also ranks high among “foods which can be spelled a lot of different ways”, which you may have noticed in the preceding paragraphs.)
So here’s what you need to know before diggin’ in on July 4th:
1. There are many different kinds of BBQ.
2. Grilling hamburgers or hotdogs ain’t one of ‘em.
That’s the common mistake made by Yankees. They confuse grilling with barbecuing. I don’t know where they got that notion. Probably from growing up with a lack of actual barbecue, so they’re just trying to make do.
Actual variety in BBQ comes from the various sauces: mustard-based, ketchup-based, vinegar-based, and a whole lot of other bases in exotic, faraway places like Texas.
How do I know these things? Because I am a food expert. I have eaten it almost my entire life, and I try to exercise my skills every day, usually several times a day to keep in practice. I learned about food at an early age, and have been carefully observing it ever since. Hence, I am an expert.
I remember food before there was fast food.
Back then, “eating out” was rarity… a special treat reserved for the occasional Sunday after church.
Soft drinks with meals were also a bit of a treat. Pepsi, Coca-Cola, RC Cola, Nehi, Seven Up came in bottles, not cans, in a cardboard six pack with a handle. But… they were not on the regular shopping list, because, once again, they were for special occasions. (For some reason, small cokes – half the size for the same price – were considered a special delicacy.)
WE opened those bottles, incidentally, with the bottle opener located at the other end of a “church key”. At our house, we could never find the bottle opener… which was okay, because the handles of our kitchen drawers doubled nicely as bottle openers.
With meals at my house, we drank a lot of (a) water, because it was free; (b) iced tea, because we were Southerners; and (c) milk, because it was delivered to our back door several mornings each week by the Golden Glow Dairy.
The meals themselves were a variety pack: some days were practically gourmet home-cooked feasts… and some days were the same cereal we had for breakfast for lunch and supper… if I could get away with it. (I was a kid! What could be better than Fruit Loops three times a day?!)
My other most memorable kid’s meal was the daily lunchtime “mannaze sammich”. I was in high school before I discovered that the Miracle Whip which comprised the entire inside of my sandwich was not mayonnaise at all, but salad dressing.
As I got older -- maybe eight or nine -- the mayo was replace with a Vienna sausage and mustard. Now THAT was good eating!
Here’s some other foods which were mealtime favorites at the Shealy household, circa 1962:
Spam. We liked it. We made sandwiches out of it, or we fried it and ate it like steak!
Hot Dogs. We simply wrapped a slice of white bread around it like a bun, because actual buns were unheard of, except at restaurants.
Collards, turnip greens, and mustard greens. There was a special way we ate them – with ketchup on top – which, to this day, I can’t find anyone else who has ever heard of this gourmet offering.
Salmon. Once upon a time, canned pink salmon was apparently very, very cheap, because we ate it a LOT. There was salmon gravy, salmon stew, salmon and eggs, and salmon patties (which were called croquettes when you saw them on the menu in restaurants.)
Gravy. On everything, the way it was intended. Gravy on grits. Gravy on potatoes. Gravy on rice. Gravy on biscuits. (If for some reason gravy was unavailable, then a big slab of butter was a decent substitute on any of the forgoing dishes… although it wasn’t really butter at our house… it was margarine, but we didn’t know the difference.)
And, of course, being from the South, there were certain automatic items of cuisine at our house: boil’t peanuts, mater sammiches, and wallermelon slices.
I could go on and on.
I could also make a rather lengthy list of foods I had hardly heard of, let alone tasted, until high school or college: pizza; burrito or any other Mexican food; Chinese food, such as Wong Tong Ching Chang Wow; any seafood other than fish. Shrimp, scallops, lobster and such didn’t even exist in my world.
But they do now…. Because I am a food expert. I try to eat every day.
And on July 4th, the food I plan to be eating is BBQ!
Along with an RC Cola, if I can find one.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Nostalgia was better in the old days.
This week, I’m writing yet another in my long line of columns about “nostalgia”... the good ole days!
It’s one of my favorite things to write about because the good ole days were…
well, they were the good ole days!!!!
For instance… Do you remember the old days of analog TV. I certainly hope you can remember, because it was LAST WEEK!
The Big Switch to digital occurred last week, and yet another piece of the old ways fell by the wayside. No more big metal antennas decorating the roof of your house. No more rabbit ears on top of your set.
I remember when you needed two separate antennas: one for picking up VHF (which I knew only as Channel 10); and one for picking up UHF, which were the other two channels – 19 and 25 – that contained the TV shows that some of the other kids in my class talked about, but I had never seen because we only had one antenna.
I guess things just change... and the Big Switch to digital is just one of the latest examples.
Consider for a moment how much changed in the last week:
A week ago, there was analog TV… and there were amusement parks known as Six Flags.
A week ago, millions of kids were high school graduates… and now, a week later, they’re just unemployed.
A month ago, there were Pontiacs, but apparently no more.
A year ago, there was Circuit City and Sharper Image, and banks actually loaned money. A year ago, most people had never heard of Rod Blagojevich or Bernie Madoff. (We thought a Ponzi Scheme was something dreamed up by one of the characters on Happy Days.) And, a year ago, there were still Republicans!
A decade ago, there wasn’t anything called Reality TV. Watching TV was an escape from reality… although I’m not sure why we were escaping, because reality back then, in retrospect, was pretty good.
A decade ago, there were two really tall, side-by-side skyscrapers that defined the skyline of New York City. Like the lyricist said, “Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.”
A decade ago, this little newspaper chain was turning 10 years old… because it was two decades ago this summer that Yours Truly decided to launch our first newspaper – The Lake Murray News – motivated largely by the fact that a close friend who had been the newspaper business told him “it couldn’t be done”.
Now, 20 years later, the current economic climate suggests that he might have been right!
But, as we embark on the celebration of our 20th year in business – which you will most certainly read more about in coming weeks, right here in this little column – we are entrenched in a mission, which is not about profit as much as it is about providing the community a forum to exercise the “freedom of the press” which our forefathers felt strongly enough about to include in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
Twenty years ago, four of the five newspapers we publish each week didn’t exist.
While those WERE the good ole days, we didn’t have any good way to share the details of those days with the rest of the community.
Just as TV has changed from analog to digital, from three channels to 300 channels, from rabbit ears to cable, and from an escape from reality to Reality TV, so will this newspaper change in the years ahead. We’re not sure exactly how, but we’re sure it will change…. because things just change!
But in one form or another, it will continue to be a part of the community, since having a forum for the exchange of information within the community is too important to let melt away.
And, in the next few weeks, as we pass the milestone of having published weekly newspapers for the 1,040th week in a row, we’re gonna keep plugging away -- recession or no -- and try to remember that THESE are the good ole days we’ll be writing about 20 years from now in the Summer of 2029.
It’s one of my favorite things to write about because the good ole days were…
well, they were the good ole days!!!!
For instance… Do you remember the old days of analog TV. I certainly hope you can remember, because it was LAST WEEK!
The Big Switch to digital occurred last week, and yet another piece of the old ways fell by the wayside. No more big metal antennas decorating the roof of your house. No more rabbit ears on top of your set.
I remember when you needed two separate antennas: one for picking up VHF (which I knew only as Channel 10); and one for picking up UHF, which were the other two channels – 19 and 25 – that contained the TV shows that some of the other kids in my class talked about, but I had never seen because we only had one antenna.
I guess things just change... and the Big Switch to digital is just one of the latest examples.
Consider for a moment how much changed in the last week:
A week ago, there was analog TV… and there were amusement parks known as Six Flags.
A week ago, millions of kids were high school graduates… and now, a week later, they’re just unemployed.
A month ago, there were Pontiacs, but apparently no more.
A year ago, there was Circuit City and Sharper Image, and banks actually loaned money. A year ago, most people had never heard of Rod Blagojevich or Bernie Madoff. (We thought a Ponzi Scheme was something dreamed up by one of the characters on Happy Days.) And, a year ago, there were still Republicans!
A decade ago, there wasn’t anything called Reality TV. Watching TV was an escape from reality… although I’m not sure why we were escaping, because reality back then, in retrospect, was pretty good.
A decade ago, there were two really tall, side-by-side skyscrapers that defined the skyline of New York City. Like the lyricist said, “Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.”
A decade ago, this little newspaper chain was turning 10 years old… because it was two decades ago this summer that Yours Truly decided to launch our first newspaper – The Lake Murray News – motivated largely by the fact that a close friend who had been the newspaper business told him “it couldn’t be done”.
Now, 20 years later, the current economic climate suggests that he might have been right!
But, as we embark on the celebration of our 20th year in business – which you will most certainly read more about in coming weeks, right here in this little column – we are entrenched in a mission, which is not about profit as much as it is about providing the community a forum to exercise the “freedom of the press” which our forefathers felt strongly enough about to include in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
Twenty years ago, four of the five newspapers we publish each week didn’t exist.
While those WERE the good ole days, we didn’t have any good way to share the details of those days with the rest of the community.
Just as TV has changed from analog to digital, from three channels to 300 channels, from rabbit ears to cable, and from an escape from reality to Reality TV, so will this newspaper change in the years ahead. We’re not sure exactly how, but we’re sure it will change…. because things just change!
But in one form or another, it will continue to be a part of the community, since having a forum for the exchange of information within the community is too important to let melt away.
And, in the next few weeks, as we pass the milestone of having published weekly newspapers for the 1,040th week in a row, we’re gonna keep plugging away -- recession or no -- and try to remember that THESE are the good ole days we’ll be writing about 20 years from now in the Summer of 2029.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
June is busting out all over!
I was all set to write a column this week about our 20th anniversary in the newspaper business, which we will be commemorating this summer, when a press release caught my eye and changed my mind:
The SC Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) issued a press release noting that our Governor has proclaimed the month of June as “Obesity Awareness Month”.
When I read that, I thought to myself, “Huh! He finally got something right!”
Because June is definitely Obesity Awareness Month. That’s because it’s the month when we all put on swimsuits and head to the water. Which definitely makes you aware of obesity. (I took my first swim of the year this weekend, and I became painfully aware of my obesity! Along with the obesity of lots of friends who also should not have been wearing swimsuits.)
But now we have the month officially proclaimed. Thank you, Governor.
I decided to check my files and reference materials to see what else the month of June might have in store for us.
The Big One is the beginning of Hurricane Season, which started on June First. (This season, it should be noted, marks the 20th anniversary of a little storm we might recall as Hurricane Hugo!)
June is also the time for an annual Palmetto State rite of passage known as “First Week at Beach”… which is happening right now along our coast. There are thousands of youngsters who aren’t really even old enough to pick out their own underwear spending their first week of freedom from school with bunches of their equally unprepared friends. Lots of the things school didn’t teach ’em during the last 180 days… they’re learning now during seven days.
I hope they stay safe and have a good time… especially those who just graduated. They need to have a blast before they come back home and find out we’re in a recession and they can’t find a job!
June is National Dairy Month, too. Drink your milk!
Turns out, there are a lot of other food celebrations during the month. June 5th is Donut Day AND National Applesauce Cake Day. June 6th is National Gingerbread Day. And June 12th is World Egg Day. (I’m not sure who makes the proclamation to designate a “World” day.) June 17th is Eat Your Vegetables Day. (But I’m not sure if it’s a World, National, or State day.) After eating your vegetables, if you want dessert, June also has National Fudge Day and Chocolate Pudding Day.
June is a very good month for kids’ characters. No fewer than five were born or invented during the month: Oscar the Grouch on June 1st; Donald Duck on June 9th; Garfield on June 19th; Captain Kangaroo on June 27th (He, incidentally, was actually born, not invented.) And, the biggest of them all: Superman, was born on June 30th!
Kids might also like to know that June 15th is officially designated as “Fly a Kite Day”… so designated to honor Ben Franklin’s famous kite experiment.
And, interestingly, a couple of favorite summertime pastimes were invented in June: The drive-in movie was invented on June 6th; and our national pastime, baseball, was invented on June 12th.
My reference material doesn’t say when the biggest summertime pastime of all – swimming -- was invented. But I’m going out on a limb and guessing it was invented many, many centuries ago in the month of June.
Along with Obesity Awareness!
The SC Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) issued a press release noting that our Governor has proclaimed the month of June as “Obesity Awareness Month”.
When I read that, I thought to myself, “Huh! He finally got something right!”
Because June is definitely Obesity Awareness Month. That’s because it’s the month when we all put on swimsuits and head to the water. Which definitely makes you aware of obesity. (I took my first swim of the year this weekend, and I became painfully aware of my obesity! Along with the obesity of lots of friends who also should not have been wearing swimsuits.)
But now we have the month officially proclaimed. Thank you, Governor.
I decided to check my files and reference materials to see what else the month of June might have in store for us.
The Big One is the beginning of Hurricane Season, which started on June First. (This season, it should be noted, marks the 20th anniversary of a little storm we might recall as Hurricane Hugo!)
June is also the time for an annual Palmetto State rite of passage known as “First Week at Beach”… which is happening right now along our coast. There are thousands of youngsters who aren’t really even old enough to pick out their own underwear spending their first week of freedom from school with bunches of their equally unprepared friends. Lots of the things school didn’t teach ’em during the last 180 days… they’re learning now during seven days.
I hope they stay safe and have a good time… especially those who just graduated. They need to have a blast before they come back home and find out we’re in a recession and they can’t find a job!
June is National Dairy Month, too. Drink your milk!
Turns out, there are a lot of other food celebrations during the month. June 5th is Donut Day AND National Applesauce Cake Day. June 6th is National Gingerbread Day. And June 12th is World Egg Day. (I’m not sure who makes the proclamation to designate a “World” day.) June 17th is Eat Your Vegetables Day. (But I’m not sure if it’s a World, National, or State day.) After eating your vegetables, if you want dessert, June also has National Fudge Day and Chocolate Pudding Day.
June is a very good month for kids’ characters. No fewer than five were born or invented during the month: Oscar the Grouch on June 1st; Donald Duck on June 9th; Garfield on June 19th; Captain Kangaroo on June 27th (He, incidentally, was actually born, not invented.) And, the biggest of them all: Superman, was born on June 30th!
Kids might also like to know that June 15th is officially designated as “Fly a Kite Day”… so designated to honor Ben Franklin’s famous kite experiment.
And, interestingly, a couple of favorite summertime pastimes were invented in June: The drive-in movie was invented on June 6th; and our national pastime, baseball, was invented on June 12th.
My reference material doesn’t say when the biggest summertime pastime of all – swimming -- was invented. But I’m going out on a limb and guessing it was invented many, many centuries ago in the month of June.
Along with Obesity Awareness!
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Sum, sum, summertime!
It’s summertime! Vacation time! Everybody’s favorite time of the year! (Except, of course, for Christmas time, which is everybody’s OTHER favorite time of the year!)
Most all of my best memories from my youth seem to have occurred in the summertime. Smatterofact, I think I’ve repressed most of the other months of my youth -- the school months – because getting up early each morning and being forced to sit still and quiet through the drudgery of classes all day long was not my idea of a good time when I was nine.
But I definitely remember summertime.
Right now, this week, millions of schoolkids are finishing up for the year, and getting ready to spend the next dozen weeks creating their own summertime memories.
It’s sad to say, but there’s not a chance that their computer games and online adventures will match up to our sandlot baseball games, bicycle rides, and afternoon swims in the lake.
Since its summertime, and I’m on vacation, I shouldn’t have any homework… such as writing this column! So instead, I’m just going to sit here and remember some random stuff from the summertimes of years gone by:
-- On Sunday afternoons, we churned ice cream. It was hand-cranked in the early years! I remember making peach, banana, strawberry, vanilla and lemon. The bag of ice required a special trip to the ice-plant – where they would crush a big block of ice for you -- because there wasn’t bagged ice for sale at every corner convenience store. (Come to think of it, there weren’t even any convenience stores.)
-- We didn’t have air conditioning… but we had an attic fan, and it cooled us pretty good at night time. We also had screen doors which let the breeze in. The screen door always had a coiled, metal spring, which made it SLAP closed. You could hear anybody coming into the house. We didn’t lock it, we “latched” it. (Growing up on Main Street in Lexington, SC, I don’t recall the doors to our house or car EVER being locked!)
-- The screen in the screen door was for keeping flies and gnats out… but invariably, a few would slip in. So the fly swatter was always handy. The fly swatter also occasionally doubled as a disciplinary device.
-- I spent a lot of outdoor time at “the spicket”. Many times a day, I would turn it on and cup my hands under it for a quick slurp of water. Or, better yet, I would attach it to the garden hose, and connect the sprinkler to the other end. It’s possible the sprinkler at our house was used for watering the lawn or garden… but if it was, I didn’t know about it. I used it for pure recreation. Turn it on, and spend an hour running through the streams of water shooting into the air.
-- If I was indoors and I needed a drink, there were two choices for kids: tap water, and for special occasions, Kool-aid! The beverages were most often served in jelly jar glasses – not the ones with screw on lids (we weren’t hillbillies!!!), but the kind with the snap off lids that doubled as drinking glasses when the jelly was all gone. Those jelly glasses were the fine china at our house. To chill our drinks, there were ice cubes, made in aluminum ice trays in the freezer. Each tray made a couple dozen cubes, and the rule of the house required that you refill the tray with tap water after you used it, so the next batch of ice cubes would have time to freeze.
-- Other than the sprinkler, the major form of recreation was apparently “swinging”. Back yards in the 50’s and 60’s seemed to automatically include a swing set (some even had a sliding board)… but those couldn’t compare to the tire swings hanging down from sturdy tree branches… or, occasionally, a Tarzan swing. The best swing of all was the rope swing that swung out over the lake, so you could let go and splash in.
-- Evening recreation and entertainment consisted mainly of chasing fireflies. Except on Wednesday nights, when it was free movie night as the U.S. 1 Drive In movies… and I lived practically across the street… within walking distance!
Ah, summertime: A neighborhood sandlot baseball game every morning. Swimming in the lake every afternoon. And bicycle riding in between… anywhere I wanted to go.
I hope the kids today have a summer half as good as the ones I remember.
Most all of my best memories from my youth seem to have occurred in the summertime. Smatterofact, I think I’ve repressed most of the other months of my youth -- the school months – because getting up early each morning and being forced to sit still and quiet through the drudgery of classes all day long was not my idea of a good time when I was nine.
But I definitely remember summertime.
Right now, this week, millions of schoolkids are finishing up for the year, and getting ready to spend the next dozen weeks creating their own summertime memories.
It’s sad to say, but there’s not a chance that their computer games and online adventures will match up to our sandlot baseball games, bicycle rides, and afternoon swims in the lake.
Since its summertime, and I’m on vacation, I shouldn’t have any homework… such as writing this column! So instead, I’m just going to sit here and remember some random stuff from the summertimes of years gone by:
-- On Sunday afternoons, we churned ice cream. It was hand-cranked in the early years! I remember making peach, banana, strawberry, vanilla and lemon. The bag of ice required a special trip to the ice-plant – where they would crush a big block of ice for you -- because there wasn’t bagged ice for sale at every corner convenience store. (Come to think of it, there weren’t even any convenience stores.)
-- We didn’t have air conditioning… but we had an attic fan, and it cooled us pretty good at night time. We also had screen doors which let the breeze in. The screen door always had a coiled, metal spring, which made it SLAP closed. You could hear anybody coming into the house. We didn’t lock it, we “latched” it. (Growing up on Main Street in Lexington, SC, I don’t recall the doors to our house or car EVER being locked!)
-- The screen in the screen door was for keeping flies and gnats out… but invariably, a few would slip in. So the fly swatter was always handy. The fly swatter also occasionally doubled as a disciplinary device.
-- I spent a lot of outdoor time at “the spicket”. Many times a day, I would turn it on and cup my hands under it for a quick slurp of water. Or, better yet, I would attach it to the garden hose, and connect the sprinkler to the other end. It’s possible the sprinkler at our house was used for watering the lawn or garden… but if it was, I didn’t know about it. I used it for pure recreation. Turn it on, and spend an hour running through the streams of water shooting into the air.
-- If I was indoors and I needed a drink, there were two choices for kids: tap water, and for special occasions, Kool-aid! The beverages were most often served in jelly jar glasses – not the ones with screw on lids (we weren’t hillbillies!!!), but the kind with the snap off lids that doubled as drinking glasses when the jelly was all gone. Those jelly glasses were the fine china at our house. To chill our drinks, there were ice cubes, made in aluminum ice trays in the freezer. Each tray made a couple dozen cubes, and the rule of the house required that you refill the tray with tap water after you used it, so the next batch of ice cubes would have time to freeze.
-- Other than the sprinkler, the major form of recreation was apparently “swinging”. Back yards in the 50’s and 60’s seemed to automatically include a swing set (some even had a sliding board)… but those couldn’t compare to the tire swings hanging down from sturdy tree branches… or, occasionally, a Tarzan swing. The best swing of all was the rope swing that swung out over the lake, so you could let go and splash in.
-- Evening recreation and entertainment consisted mainly of chasing fireflies. Except on Wednesday nights, when it was free movie night as the U.S. 1 Drive In movies… and I lived practically across the street… within walking distance!
Ah, summertime: A neighborhood sandlot baseball game every morning. Swimming in the lake every afternoon. And bicycle riding in between… anywhere I wanted to go.
I hope the kids today have a summer half as good as the ones I remember.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Freedom!!!!
Earlier this week, Americans celebrated Memorial Day, one of a string of patriotic holidays we observe each year along now.
Starting the third Saturday of May with Armed Forces Day – a salute to our men and women in uniform -- we, in rapid succession, pay our respects to those who have given their lives in the service of our nation on the last Monday in May; then commemorate the Stars and Stripes on June 14th; culminating with Independence Day on July 4th, celebrating the birth of our nation.
Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, and Independence Day, all squashed together in a period of six or seven weeks, give us each ample occasion to ponder the freedoms we enjoy as Americans.
But there are two other occurrences during the same time frame that I believe also help us define the concept of freedom.
First is the end of the school year… and the end of the school year, to millions of kids across the land, is the very essence of “freedom”.
When I flash back to my own childhood, I can almost taste the joy and excitement I felt on that final day of school each year. I had endured the authoritarian drudgery of 180 days of being told exactly what to do and exactly when to do it… under penalty of severe punishment, such as sitting in the corner, or a trip to the principal’s office. Could living under a Communist regime possibly have been any worse?!!
But now, I was FREE for three whole, entire months. Free to do as I please without classes, without bells controlling my schedule, without homework!!! I was free to wear cutoffs and old T-shirts, free to go barefoot during the day, free to get on my bicycle first thing in the morning and ride it all day long, pretty much anywhere I wanted to go.
Throughout the USA, the next generation of Americans is getting this annual treat of “freedom”, a concept many of them will decide later in life is worth standing up for, even fighting for!
The other occurrence we here in The Palmetto State witness each year along now is the end of the state’s legislative session. By law, the House and Senate must adjourn “Sine Die” no later than the first Thursday in June. (“Sine Die” is Latin, meaning “we ain’t coming back”.) This year, to save money during the recession, they adjourned a couple of weeks earlier than required.
The adjournment of ANY legislative body – House or Senate, State or Congress, or even local bodies such as city and county councils – is a great day for the cause of FREEDOM.
Because… when they’re not in session, they can’t make any more laws taking our freedom away!!!
While the daily news media has been critical of the recent legislative session, I have a very different view. This year’s state legislative session, in my humble opinion, was the most successful in my memory. They passed virtually no new laws this year… and to freedom-loving citizens, that’s a good thing.
To put it in the proper perspective, you should always remember this little axiom of government, which I learned many years ago:
“Every time a new law is passed, somebody loses a little more of their freedom”.
Laws, you know, are generally designed to tell us what we cannot do, not what we can do. We have a constitution which guarantees us certain freedoms, and we are presumed to be free to pursue any dream we may have…unless our dream has been restricted by the passage of some federal, state, or local law.
Since convening in January, the state legislature was successful in passing one major law – the annual state budget, which is needed, despite the fact that it takes away the freedom of the citizens to spend their some of their own money as they see fit.
Others may chide the General Assembly for their lack of action. I applaud them for it. Our freedoms are safe for another year.
And now, just like the schoolkids across the land, I plan to go out this summer and enjoy as much freedom as I can!
Starting the third Saturday of May with Armed Forces Day – a salute to our men and women in uniform -- we, in rapid succession, pay our respects to those who have given their lives in the service of our nation on the last Monday in May; then commemorate the Stars and Stripes on June 14th; culminating with Independence Day on July 4th, celebrating the birth of our nation.
Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, and Independence Day, all squashed together in a period of six or seven weeks, give us each ample occasion to ponder the freedoms we enjoy as Americans.
But there are two other occurrences during the same time frame that I believe also help us define the concept of freedom.
First is the end of the school year… and the end of the school year, to millions of kids across the land, is the very essence of “freedom”.
When I flash back to my own childhood, I can almost taste the joy and excitement I felt on that final day of school each year. I had endured the authoritarian drudgery of 180 days of being told exactly what to do and exactly when to do it… under penalty of severe punishment, such as sitting in the corner, or a trip to the principal’s office. Could living under a Communist regime possibly have been any worse?!!
But now, I was FREE for three whole, entire months. Free to do as I please without classes, without bells controlling my schedule, without homework!!! I was free to wear cutoffs and old T-shirts, free to go barefoot during the day, free to get on my bicycle first thing in the morning and ride it all day long, pretty much anywhere I wanted to go.
Throughout the USA, the next generation of Americans is getting this annual treat of “freedom”, a concept many of them will decide later in life is worth standing up for, even fighting for!
The other occurrence we here in The Palmetto State witness each year along now is the end of the state’s legislative session. By law, the House and Senate must adjourn “Sine Die” no later than the first Thursday in June. (“Sine Die” is Latin, meaning “we ain’t coming back”.) This year, to save money during the recession, they adjourned a couple of weeks earlier than required.
The adjournment of ANY legislative body – House or Senate, State or Congress, or even local bodies such as city and county councils – is a great day for the cause of FREEDOM.
Because… when they’re not in session, they can’t make any more laws taking our freedom away!!!
While the daily news media has been critical of the recent legislative session, I have a very different view. This year’s state legislative session, in my humble opinion, was the most successful in my memory. They passed virtually no new laws this year… and to freedom-loving citizens, that’s a good thing.
To put it in the proper perspective, you should always remember this little axiom of government, which I learned many years ago:
“Every time a new law is passed, somebody loses a little more of their freedom”.
Laws, you know, are generally designed to tell us what we cannot do, not what we can do. We have a constitution which guarantees us certain freedoms, and we are presumed to be free to pursue any dream we may have…unless our dream has been restricted by the passage of some federal, state, or local law.
Since convening in January, the state legislature was successful in passing one major law – the annual state budget, which is needed, despite the fact that it takes away the freedom of the citizens to spend their some of their own money as they see fit.
Others may chide the General Assembly for their lack of action. I applaud them for it. Our freedoms are safe for another year.
And now, just like the schoolkids across the land, I plan to go out this summer and enjoy as much freedom as I can!
The Name Game – part two
Last week, when I wrote a column entitled “The Name Game”, a lot of people told me they were expecting to see: “Hannah, Hannah, bo-bannah; banana-banna fo fannah; me, my, mo-mannah… Hannah!”
No such luck.
Instead of the words to that iconic Silly Song of the Sixties, I wrote instead about the Social Security Administration’s annual list of baby names for 2008… a list headed by “Emma” and “Jacob” as the most popular names for newborn girls and boys, respectively.
(“Respectively”, incidentally, means “in precisely the order given; sequentially”, according to my Internet dictionary. If you’re like me, you’ve read or used that word for years, but never knew exactly what it meant. Today, however, I decided to look it up to make sure of what I was writing… possible through the miracle of the Internet dictionary, right here on my same laptop computer, meaning I didn’t even have to walk across the room to the bookshelf to pick up an actual dictionary. If I had been required to get up from my Lazyboy and walk across the room, I wouldn’t have bothered: I would just have used the word anyway, and crossed my fingers in hopes that I guessed right.)
While I was conducting “research” for my column about names last week, I came across several other interesting lists of names: names of racehorses, pet dog and cat names, and names of boats, to mention a few.
Pet names, it turns out, have morphed primarily into people names in recent decades, or so it seems.
The most popular name for dogs and cats is “Max”, we are told. That can’t be good. It sounds like a plot to force dogs and cats to get along in peace and harmony, which is against nature’s plan, I’m pretty sure.
The next nine most frequent names for dogs are Bailey, Bella, Molly, Lucy, Buddy, Maggie, Daisy, Sophie, and Chloe. Virtually all of them are people names. There are no Fidos, Rovers, Ruffs, or Spots. Not even a Toto or Astro. No dog-names at all… just people names.
Cats are almost as lame. The next nine most common names after “Max” are Chloe, Tigger, Tiger, Lucy, Smokey, Oliver, Bella, Shadow, and Charlie. But still no Puff, Boots, or Felix.
My favorite bit of name research, though, was not cats, dogs, horses, or people. It was boats. And seeing as how we’re now moving into the boating season, I thought I would share some of the names of boats you’re likely to see out on the water this year.
The Top Ten boat names of 2008, according to the folks at Boat U.S. magazine are: Seas the Day, Summer Daze, Second Chance, Aqua-holic, Wind Seeker, Dream Weaver, Black Pearl, Hydrotherapy, The Salt Shaker, and Sea Quest.
While those are the most popular names, the Boat U.S. folks go on to mention their 10 FAVORITE boat names… which are my favorites, too:
1. What College Fund?
2. Stocks-N-Blonds
3. Anchor Management
4. Sweet Em-Ocean
5. Knotty Buoy
6. Reel-e-Fish-ent
7. A-Frayed Knot
8. O-Sea-D
9. A-Loan-Again
10. Really Big Car
Boat-owners, it turns out, still have a little personality when it comes to choosing names… like dog and cat owners used to have. What ever happened to Scooby-Doo?
That’s it for my weeks of “research” into the most popular names for babies, horses, dogs, cats, and boats. Next week, we’ll return to my usual style of column… with no research at all!!!
See you next week… but before I leave…. Let’s do Bella!
Bella, bella, bo-bella; banana-banna fo-fella; me, my, mo-mella… Bella!
No such luck.
Instead of the words to that iconic Silly Song of the Sixties, I wrote instead about the Social Security Administration’s annual list of baby names for 2008… a list headed by “Emma” and “Jacob” as the most popular names for newborn girls and boys, respectively.
(“Respectively”, incidentally, means “in precisely the order given; sequentially”, according to my Internet dictionary. If you’re like me, you’ve read or used that word for years, but never knew exactly what it meant. Today, however, I decided to look it up to make sure of what I was writing… possible through the miracle of the Internet dictionary, right here on my same laptop computer, meaning I didn’t even have to walk across the room to the bookshelf to pick up an actual dictionary. If I had been required to get up from my Lazyboy and walk across the room, I wouldn’t have bothered: I would just have used the word anyway, and crossed my fingers in hopes that I guessed right.)
While I was conducting “research” for my column about names last week, I came across several other interesting lists of names: names of racehorses, pet dog and cat names, and names of boats, to mention a few.
Pet names, it turns out, have morphed primarily into people names in recent decades, or so it seems.
The most popular name for dogs and cats is “Max”, we are told. That can’t be good. It sounds like a plot to force dogs and cats to get along in peace and harmony, which is against nature’s plan, I’m pretty sure.
The next nine most frequent names for dogs are Bailey, Bella, Molly, Lucy, Buddy, Maggie, Daisy, Sophie, and Chloe. Virtually all of them are people names. There are no Fidos, Rovers, Ruffs, or Spots. Not even a Toto or Astro. No dog-names at all… just people names.
Cats are almost as lame. The next nine most common names after “Max” are Chloe, Tigger, Tiger, Lucy, Smokey, Oliver, Bella, Shadow, and Charlie. But still no Puff, Boots, or Felix.
My favorite bit of name research, though, was not cats, dogs, horses, or people. It was boats. And seeing as how we’re now moving into the boating season, I thought I would share some of the names of boats you’re likely to see out on the water this year.
The Top Ten boat names of 2008, according to the folks at Boat U.S. magazine are: Seas the Day, Summer Daze, Second Chance, Aqua-holic, Wind Seeker, Dream Weaver, Black Pearl, Hydrotherapy, The Salt Shaker, and Sea Quest.
While those are the most popular names, the Boat U.S. folks go on to mention their 10 FAVORITE boat names… which are my favorites, too:
1. What College Fund?
2. Stocks-N-Blonds
3. Anchor Management
4. Sweet Em-Ocean
5. Knotty Buoy
6. Reel-e-Fish-ent
7. A-Frayed Knot
8. O-Sea-D
9. A-Loan-Again
10. Really Big Car
Boat-owners, it turns out, still have a little personality when it comes to choosing names… like dog and cat owners used to have. What ever happened to Scooby-Doo?
That’s it for my weeks of “research” into the most popular names for babies, horses, dogs, cats, and boats. Next week, we’ll return to my usual style of column… with no research at all!!!
See you next week… but before I leave…. Let’s do Bella!
Bella, bella, bo-bella; banana-banna fo-fella; me, my, mo-mella… Bella!
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
The Name Game
Most every year in May, I miss the Kentucky Derby.
Some years I miss it altogether, but I usually hear about it on the news after it happens.
Some years I’m aware of it in advance, but am too busy doing other things to watch.
And some years, I actually plan to watch it…. but I’m driving to the Piggly Wiggly to pick up more BBQ sauce when the four-minute race actually happens. Or flipping to the weather channel to see how fast the green blob is moving toward us. Or putting in a load of laundry. (Don’t laugh. I did laundry once.)
With most sports, if you tune in a few minutes late, its no big deal. If it’s NASCAR, you’ll pick ‘em up on lap three. If it’s football, you’re still in the opening possession. If it’s our national pastime, baseball, you’re still in the top of the first inning, and some of the fans in the stand are still awake.
But if you miss the first few minutes of the Derby, it’s over.
Turns out, it really doesn’t matter much, because the only thing I know about horses anyway is their names. Which, I suspect, is the same for many spectators, including some who probably make wagers based solely on that piece of information.
I like the names they come up with for their racehorses. This year, the winner’s name was “Mine That Bird”… not to be confused with “Summer Bird”, who placed sixth. The rest of the field included names like “Chocolate Candy”, “Join the Dance”, “Atomic Rain”, “West Side Bernie”, and “Mr. Hot Stuff”.
I feel bad for the horses. How would you like to go through your whole life knowing the people who feed you also decided to name you “Nowhere To Hide” or “Desert Party”?
Human names are much easier to figure. Apparently, parents-to-be travel in packs, and subscribe to the herd mentality when choosing names for their bundles-of -joy.
Last week, the Social Security Administration released the list of the top names of newborn babies for last year. This list was topped by “Emma”, which replaced “Emily” as the most common name for girls; and “Jacob” as the top name for boys. (“Emily”, by the way, had been the top girls name for the last 12 years; “Jacob” has now been in the top spot for 10 straight years!)
The runner-up names – positions two through nine – were Isabella, Emily, Madison, Ava, Olivia, Sophia, Abigail, Elizabeth, and Chloe for girls; and Michael, Ethan, Joshua, Daniel, Alexander, Anthony, William, Christopher, and Matthew for boys.
The folks at Social Security also let us know which names are on the move, and which ones are falling like a rock. On their website – www.socialsecurity.gov – they share their full list of the 1,000 most common names for the year, along with other juicy tidbits:
This year’s winner for the biggest jump is Khloe, attributed to the popularity of Khloe Kardashian from the show “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.” Khloe with a K increased 469 spots to number 196 in 2008, up from 665 in 2007 and 960 in 2006 (her first year on the list). Also, Chloe with a C is in the Top 10 for the first time ever.
Another fast riser is Miley, moving up 152 spots to number 127 for 2008, a rather impressive increase given this is only her second year on the list. On the downside for fans of Miley Cyrus’ fictional character, the name Hannah fell out of the Top 10 and landed down at number 17.
Jacoby had the biggest increase for the boys, moving up 200 spots to number 423, attributed to the appeal of last year’s star rookie Red Sox centerfielder, Jacoby Ellsbury.
Barack, they tell us, did not make this year’s top 1,000 boy’s list, but it did set what is believed to be a record by skyrocketing more than 10,000 spots in rising from number 12,535 in 2007 to 2,409 in 2008.
And Elvis, they report, is still shakin’ at number 713, but fell on the charts from 673 in 2007.
And, although the Social Security name-watchers did not include this in their annual press release, and as hard as it is to believe, for the umptieth year in a row, the name “Rod-Boy” failed to make the list at all. Apparently, out of the four millions kids born last year, nobody in America had the ingenious foresight to give their newborn that brilliant name: “Rod-Boy”!
(And probably only a handful of horse owners!!!)
Tune in next week, when we’ll take a look to see what Americans are naming their cats, dogs, boats and hurricanes these days.
Some years I miss it altogether, but I usually hear about it on the news after it happens.
Some years I’m aware of it in advance, but am too busy doing other things to watch.
And some years, I actually plan to watch it…. but I’m driving to the Piggly Wiggly to pick up more BBQ sauce when the four-minute race actually happens. Or flipping to the weather channel to see how fast the green blob is moving toward us. Or putting in a load of laundry. (Don’t laugh. I did laundry once.)
With most sports, if you tune in a few minutes late, its no big deal. If it’s NASCAR, you’ll pick ‘em up on lap three. If it’s football, you’re still in the opening possession. If it’s our national pastime, baseball, you’re still in the top of the first inning, and some of the fans in the stand are still awake.
But if you miss the first few minutes of the Derby, it’s over.
Turns out, it really doesn’t matter much, because the only thing I know about horses anyway is their names. Which, I suspect, is the same for many spectators, including some who probably make wagers based solely on that piece of information.
I like the names they come up with for their racehorses. This year, the winner’s name was “Mine That Bird”… not to be confused with “Summer Bird”, who placed sixth. The rest of the field included names like “Chocolate Candy”, “Join the Dance”, “Atomic Rain”, “West Side Bernie”, and “Mr. Hot Stuff”.
I feel bad for the horses. How would you like to go through your whole life knowing the people who feed you also decided to name you “Nowhere To Hide” or “Desert Party”?
Human names are much easier to figure. Apparently, parents-to-be travel in packs, and subscribe to the herd mentality when choosing names for their bundles-of -joy.
Last week, the Social Security Administration released the list of the top names of newborn babies for last year. This list was topped by “Emma”, which replaced “Emily” as the most common name for girls; and “Jacob” as the top name for boys. (“Emily”, by the way, had been the top girls name for the last 12 years; “Jacob” has now been in the top spot for 10 straight years!)
The runner-up names – positions two through nine – were Isabella, Emily, Madison, Ava, Olivia, Sophia, Abigail, Elizabeth, and Chloe for girls; and Michael, Ethan, Joshua, Daniel, Alexander, Anthony, William, Christopher, and Matthew for boys.
The folks at Social Security also let us know which names are on the move, and which ones are falling like a rock. On their website – www.socialsecurity.gov – they share their full list of the 1,000 most common names for the year, along with other juicy tidbits:
This year’s winner for the biggest jump is Khloe, attributed to the popularity of Khloe Kardashian from the show “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.” Khloe with a K increased 469 spots to number 196 in 2008, up from 665 in 2007 and 960 in 2006 (her first year on the list). Also, Chloe with a C is in the Top 10 for the first time ever.
Another fast riser is Miley, moving up 152 spots to number 127 for 2008, a rather impressive increase given this is only her second year on the list. On the downside for fans of Miley Cyrus’ fictional character, the name Hannah fell out of the Top 10 and landed down at number 17.
Jacoby had the biggest increase for the boys, moving up 200 spots to number 423, attributed to the appeal of last year’s star rookie Red Sox centerfielder, Jacoby Ellsbury.
Barack, they tell us, did not make this year’s top 1,000 boy’s list, but it did set what is believed to be a record by skyrocketing more than 10,000 spots in rising from number 12,535 in 2007 to 2,409 in 2008.
And Elvis, they report, is still shakin’ at number 713, but fell on the charts from 673 in 2007.
And, although the Social Security name-watchers did not include this in their annual press release, and as hard as it is to believe, for the umptieth year in a row, the name “Rod-Boy” failed to make the list at all. Apparently, out of the four millions kids born last year, nobody in America had the ingenious foresight to give their newborn that brilliant name: “Rod-Boy”!
(And probably only a handful of horse owners!!!)
Tune in next week, when we’ll take a look to see what Americans are naming their cats, dogs, boats and hurricanes these days.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Happy Mom's Day
There is a famous quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln… something along the lines of: "All that I am, I owe to my Mother".
I could say that, too… but right here before Mother's Day, do I really want to put all the blame on her?
There’s a whole bunch of great stories I could recount for you in this column, to note the occasion of Mom’s Day. Some of them are even true!
Like the one year, when I was a pre-teen, and as one of my chores, was supposed to have taken down the bright multi-colored Christmas lights, which had been strung along the top of the house, which happened to be on Main Street. To be sure, I had unplugged the electricity… but January had passed, along with February and March… and I still hadn’t gotten around to actually taking them down. And then, along about Easter, Mom came home from work late one evening – well after dark – and was horrified to discover that somehow, that bright strand of holiday lights had gotten plugged in… and we were the only house in town accidentally displaying bright Easter lights all night long!!!!
Like my five years of piano lessons that she paid for… which turned out to be a huge waste money… just like that day I practiced my piano lesson similarly turned out to be a bit of a waste of time. (Fortunately, the five years of tap dancing lessons were a very wise investment. Have you SEEN me on the dance floor?!!!)
I think back to the late afternoons she would come pick me up after some sort of ball practice or other activity – whenever I called to say it was time. Mind you, this was before the days of cell phones, so she would have already gotten home from a full day’s work. (Did you ever “click” a pay phone? Usually, I didn’t have a dime on me, but had learned that you could dial the number, and just “click” the phone, which was the signal to come pick me up!!!)
I was a picky eater as a child. Still am, in fact. (A picky eater… not a child!) So.. for about 15 years, Mom cooked all of our meals without using onions, tomatoes, and a host of other vegetables that are really very useful in cooking. Once, after Sunday dinner, she and Dad insisted that I eat the English peas that had been prepared, and said I could not leave the table until I did. About three hours later, I left the table, after consuming approximately 50 of the nasty little beans one at a time… popping them like pills, and swallowing half a glass of tea after each one.
Sunday dinner, by the way, is what we called the meal eaten shortly after noon on Sunday, which we ate together every week, after returning from Sunday School and church, which we attended together every week. If it was summertime, incidentally, we sometimes ate that dinner at the lake, and if we didn’t eat there, we generally headed there for the rest of the afternoon.
Sundays weren’t the only family rituals. There were others. Wednesday nights, for instance, were TV nights in the Shealy family den: Green Acres, followed by The Beverly Hillbillies!!!
Needless to say, I had a great childhood, thanks to my Mom and Dad. There were the ordinary scrapes and bruises that all kids get, which needed the appropriate tending-to by Mom… but I also had my share of extra-ordinary “scrapes and bruises”, we will call them symbolically – many of them self-inflicted… and Mom was always there.
Obviously, it’s not easy being my mom… ranging from the anxious tension she undoubtedly feels each time she opens the morning newspaper, to the stressful concern she most assuredly feels each week when she starts to read this column!!!
But she never complains. In fact, she never complains at all… about anything. For that matter, she never says anything bad at all about anybody. For the 55 years I’ve been on this earth, I’ve never heard her say anything bad about anybody… even me!!!
So Mom, I hope you have a Happy Mother’s Day…. cause if anybody deserves one, its you!
And I know the best thing I can do for you on this occasion is to stop writing now… so you can breathe a sigh of relief… at least for another week.
Happy Mothers Day!
I could say that, too… but right here before Mother's Day, do I really want to put all the blame on her?
There’s a whole bunch of great stories I could recount for you in this column, to note the occasion of Mom’s Day. Some of them are even true!
Like the one year, when I was a pre-teen, and as one of my chores, was supposed to have taken down the bright multi-colored Christmas lights, which had been strung along the top of the house, which happened to be on Main Street. To be sure, I had unplugged the electricity… but January had passed, along with February and March… and I still hadn’t gotten around to actually taking them down. And then, along about Easter, Mom came home from work late one evening – well after dark – and was horrified to discover that somehow, that bright strand of holiday lights had gotten plugged in… and we were the only house in town accidentally displaying bright Easter lights all night long!!!!
Like my five years of piano lessons that she paid for… which turned out to be a huge waste money… just like that day I practiced my piano lesson similarly turned out to be a bit of a waste of time. (Fortunately, the five years of tap dancing lessons were a very wise investment. Have you SEEN me on the dance floor?!!!)
I think back to the late afternoons she would come pick me up after some sort of ball practice or other activity – whenever I called to say it was time. Mind you, this was before the days of cell phones, so she would have already gotten home from a full day’s work. (Did you ever “click” a pay phone? Usually, I didn’t have a dime on me, but had learned that you could dial the number, and just “click” the phone, which was the signal to come pick me up!!!)
I was a picky eater as a child. Still am, in fact. (A picky eater… not a child!) So.. for about 15 years, Mom cooked all of our meals without using onions, tomatoes, and a host of other vegetables that are really very useful in cooking. Once, after Sunday dinner, she and Dad insisted that I eat the English peas that had been prepared, and said I could not leave the table until I did. About three hours later, I left the table, after consuming approximately 50 of the nasty little beans one at a time… popping them like pills, and swallowing half a glass of tea after each one.
Sunday dinner, by the way, is what we called the meal eaten shortly after noon on Sunday, which we ate together every week, after returning from Sunday School and church, which we attended together every week. If it was summertime, incidentally, we sometimes ate that dinner at the lake, and if we didn’t eat there, we generally headed there for the rest of the afternoon.
Sundays weren’t the only family rituals. There were others. Wednesday nights, for instance, were TV nights in the Shealy family den: Green Acres, followed by The Beverly Hillbillies!!!
Needless to say, I had a great childhood, thanks to my Mom and Dad. There were the ordinary scrapes and bruises that all kids get, which needed the appropriate tending-to by Mom… but I also had my share of extra-ordinary “scrapes and bruises”, we will call them symbolically – many of them self-inflicted… and Mom was always there.
Obviously, it’s not easy being my mom… ranging from the anxious tension she undoubtedly feels each time she opens the morning newspaper, to the stressful concern she most assuredly feels each week when she starts to read this column!!!
But she never complains. In fact, she never complains at all… about anything. For that matter, she never says anything bad at all about anybody. For the 55 years I’ve been on this earth, I’ve never heard her say anything bad about anybody… even me!!!
So Mom, I hope you have a Happy Mother’s Day…. cause if anybody deserves one, its you!
And I know the best thing I can do for you on this occasion is to stop writing now… so you can breathe a sigh of relief… at least for another week.
Happy Mothers Day!
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Rod-Boy’s Fashion Tips for Summertime
As we head into the final stretch toward sho’nuff summertime in sunny
And, naturally, that means my email box is full of inquiring minds asking me for the inside scoop, seeing as how I have earned somewhat of a reputation as a perennial fashion trendsetter. (Many people depend on my advice to avoid making fashion faux-pas.)
Take clam-diggers, for instance. I’m confident that my all-time favorite summertime article of clothing attire is going to make a comeback. Nevermind the fact that I haven’t actually seen a pair of clam-diggers since I was six years old. This summer, I plan to find a pair somewhere and don them… and I’m pretty sure the trend will spread like wildfire. (I always liked the rope belt, which, when I was six years old, also came in pretty handy for tying up siblings.)
Here are the rest of clothing trends I’ll be setting in the coming months:
Shirts -- There are two basic shirt choices in the summertime: printed tee-shirts or alohas (aka Hawaiian). Which you wear depends largely on your belly size. (Get it? Depends “largely” on your belly size!) If you’re occasionally a big, fat, giant, hippo-pig-whale, as I am, you’ll want to stick with the loose fitting alohas, instead of the sometimes snug-fitting tee-shirts. I personally am a big fan of the alohas… mainly because I’m a BIG fan of the alohas! Printed teeshirts, on the other hand, do offer the extra advantage of advertising your favorite rock band, NASCAR driver, or allergy medication.
Color choices of shirts – and all summerwear, for that matter – depends largely on your choice of BBQ sauce, since BBQ is the meal most likely to be eaten in the summertime. If I’m planning on eating ketchup-based BBQ sauce, I’ll probably go with a red-toned shirt; if it’s mustard-based sauce, then I’ll trend toward a yellow or mustard color. Bottom line: If you go ahead and plan in advance to blend your shirt with your sauce, you’ll save yourself a lot of heartache from the almost-certain “drip and stain” eventuality. (By the way, I have found that a good, flowery, multi-color aloha shirt will hide virtually ANY summertime BBQ drippage you might encounter!)
Footwear -- Two words: Flip Flop! It’s the next best thing to going barefoot, which is really my favorite, but I know a lot of big city folks who read this column – from places like Pelion, Prosperity,
Pants -- While you’re waiting for clam-diggers to once again become all the rage (just because I said so), there are a few other acceptable styles of pants you can wear: Cut off jeans are a safe choice. Swimtrunks always work. And I seem to generate a lot of real nice comments, compliments, and approving smiles from total strangers every time I wear my plaid Bermuda shorts that my aunt gave me back in 1973.
Neckwear – This is the area of clothing which represents the greatest difference between summertime and the other seasons. The recommended neckwear(s) in the summertime generally fall into three categories: 1) Straps, such as sunglasses, guitars, or beverage holders; 2) Hawaiian leis, to match the highly-recommended aloha shirts; and 3) Bibs… very helpful when slurping up the BBQ which should be consumed at least five days a week during the summer months.
Neckwear which is NOT recommended during summertime is: 1) necktie (ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha… as if I even OWN one!); and, 2) jewelry, like gold chains, etc. This ain’t
Accessories – The Stylish Southern Male’s wardrobe can be completed with a few well-thought-out accessories: straw hat, sunglasses, and a white stripe where your wristwatch once was. It’s summertime! Who needs to know what time it is?
To select the appropriate straw hat, you’ll want to factor in the angle you expect your head to lay on your hammock, which is, after all, the most important pastime of a good summer day.
Your shades, on the other hand, say much about your personality… about “who you are” as person. (Mine, for instance, reveal that I am a confirmed cheapo who likes to shop at dollar stores and consignment shops.)
Well, that should cover the fashion basics, and allow you to head out into the summer sunshine stylin’ and profilin’!!!
There is, of course, much, much more I could tell you about fashion, but it will just have to wait until next week, when our fashion topics will be: “Tattoos for Great-Grandparents”; “Piercings After 50”; and “Elastic Waistbands: Not Just for Formal Wear Anymore!”
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
I’m in the white car
If you happen to see me walking around a parking lot this week, seemingly meandering from vehicle to vehicle, don’t worry. It will just be me looking for my car.
This week, it turns out, I’m in a rental vehicle. Last week, a delivery truck smushed the door of my car. (“Smush”, incidentally, is NOT a technical automotive industry term – and actually doesn’t even show up in most English language dictionaries – but it’s the only word which can adequately describe precisely what happened to the door of my car.)
The rental vehicle is white. It has a name – probably something like Ford, Chevy, Dodge, or TamishiakiYomasukiSushhama – but car makes and models go in one ear and out the other with me. All I know is it’s white.
You may know this about me: I am not a car person. I can’t tell them apart. They’re all about the same to me. I can’t tell you what’s under the hood of my car. Actually, I HAVE owned cars that I’m not really sure which end WAS the hood.
What I know about a car is this: I go out in the morning and put the key in the ignition and turn the key and either it starts or it doesn’t. If it starts, I drive it. If it doesn’t, oh well, I guess I just have to find a different car.
As a result of a total lack of knowledge, understanding, and concern about all things automotive, I have amassed a pretty long list of car tales in my lifetime… far too many to recount in this space in a single week. It would take several weeks… and I just might do that.
But these honest-to-goodness, absolutely-true tidbits will give you a clue how I am with cars: I once owned a car which broke down so often, it had a trailer hitch installed on the front bumper for ease in towing! I once lost a car. And I once painted a car myself… with a paintbrush.
Obviously, I am not mechanically inclined. The only tool I have ever found even remotely useful in repairing a car is a hammer.
And now, as automotively-challenged as I am, I face the additional problem of driving a car that looks exactly like half the other cars on the road. It’s a little white car… and that’s really all I know about it.
And, to make things worse, I’m just a tad absent-minded. Sometimes, right in the middle of doing something, I completely forget to
So, when I go into the grocery store, absent-mindedly bumbling along the aisles in search of grocery items I can’t remember at locations I can’t recall, I’m also very likely to forget exactly where I parked my little white rental car.
A few years ago, when I was travelling from Columbia to Charleston in a similarly nondescript borrowed car, I stopped at the rest area near Orangeburg. When I came out of the restroom, to my dismay, I had no clue which of the 50 cars in the rest area I had been driving. Through the miracle of Electronic Cell-phones, however, I was able to contact the owner of the car and establish the color, size and tag number. And, 49 cars later, I found it!!!
Normally, it’s not a big problem for me. Sure, I forget where I parked, but it rarely takes me more than a half-hour to find my car, because it’s usually the only one of it’s kind in the lot. Like my rental, it’s white… BUT it’s old and big and rectangular… with a blue top. My car is usually easy to find, because it’s roughly the size of a WWII battleship, and shaped a lot like a Ramada Hotel. And, just in case there are two, mine is the one with the assortment of brightly-colored bumper stickers plastered on it, ranging back to the “I Like Ike” era.
This week, I’m trying to avoid going to the grocery store, to avoid the embarrassment of losing my car. But one can only go so long without nourishment.
If you see me in the parking lot, peering into the window of every single white car, don’t fret. It’s just me trying to find the one with a hammer on the front seat.
This week, it turns out, I’m in a rental vehicle. Last week, a delivery truck smushed the door of my car. (“Smush”, incidentally, is NOT a technical automotive industry term – and actually doesn’t even show up in most English language dictionaries – but it’s the only word which can adequately describe precisely what happened to the door of my car.)
The rental vehicle is white. It has a name – probably something like Ford, Chevy, Dodge, or TamishiakiYomasukiSushhama – but car makes and models go in one ear and out the other with me. All I know is it’s white.
You may know this about me: I am not a car person. I can’t tell them apart. They’re all about the same to me. I can’t tell you what’s under the hood of my car. Actually, I HAVE owned cars that I’m not really sure which end WAS the hood.
What I know about a car is this: I go out in the morning and put the key in the ignition and turn the key and either it starts or it doesn’t. If it starts, I drive it. If it doesn’t, oh well, I guess I just have to find a different car.
As a result of a total lack of knowledge, understanding, and concern about all things automotive, I have amassed a pretty long list of car tales in my lifetime… far too many to recount in this space in a single week. It would take several weeks… and I just might do that.
But these honest-to-goodness, absolutely-true tidbits will give you a clue how I am with cars: I once owned a car which broke down so often, it had a trailer hitch installed on the front bumper for ease in towing! I once lost a car. And I once painted a car myself… with a paintbrush.
Obviously, I am not mechanically inclined. The only tool I have ever found even remotely useful in repairing a car is a hammer.
And now, as automotively-challenged as I am, I face the additional problem of driving a car that looks exactly like half the other cars on the road. It’s a little white car… and that’s really all I know about it.
And, to make things worse, I’m just a tad absent-minded. Sometimes, right in the middle of doing something, I completely forget to
So, when I go into the grocery store, absent-mindedly bumbling along the aisles in search of grocery items I can’t remember at locations I can’t recall, I’m also very likely to forget exactly where I parked my little white rental car.
A few years ago, when I was travelling from Columbia to Charleston in a similarly nondescript borrowed car, I stopped at the rest area near Orangeburg. When I came out of the restroom, to my dismay, I had no clue which of the 50 cars in the rest area I had been driving. Through the miracle of Electronic Cell-phones, however, I was able to contact the owner of the car and establish the color, size and tag number. And, 49 cars later, I found it!!!
Normally, it’s not a big problem for me. Sure, I forget where I parked, but it rarely takes me more than a half-hour to find my car, because it’s usually the only one of it’s kind in the lot. Like my rental, it’s white… BUT it’s old and big and rectangular… with a blue top. My car is usually easy to find, because it’s roughly the size of a WWII battleship, and shaped a lot like a Ramada Hotel. And, just in case there are two, mine is the one with the assortment of brightly-colored bumper stickers plastered on it, ranging back to the “I Like Ike” era.
This week, I’m trying to avoid going to the grocery store, to avoid the embarrassment of losing my car. But one can only go so long without nourishment.
If you see me in the parking lot, peering into the window of every single white car, don’t fret. It’s just me trying to find the one with a hammer on the front seat.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
The return of the Big, Fat, Giant Hippo-Pig-Whale!!!
It’s baaaaaaa-ck!
The big, fat, giant hippo-pig-whale that believes itself to be my alter-ego is trying desperately to take over my body again.
Actually, the BFGHPW was only gone for a week or so.
Regular readers of this column will recall that, back during the frosty winter days of January, I forthrightly proclaimed on these pages: “I am a Big, Fat, Giant Hippo-Pig-Whale”. My girth had begun to exceed my net-worth. My waistline has become a wasteland. I was regularly cheating on my over-eating. (I was an huge-enormous poet that didn’t know it.)
So, given my gargantuosity (a word I have just made up to describe the condition), I did what I always do to shed a few pounds: I challenged the whole world to a weight-loss competition. And… the whole world sent eleven of its stoutest members to accept my challenge.
For eight weeks, a dozen of us were slaves to our chosen diets in a battle of willpower to see which of us would claim the $100 per person prize (which converts to $1200 American dollars, for the numerically-challenged).
That weight-loss contest came to a conclusion last week, on April 6th, which, it turns out, was the Monday before a major holiday: Easter!!!
Here’s an interesting fact which I never fully realized until last week: As it turns out, Easter is one of the Major Food Holidays, along with Thanksgiving and Christmas. The main event of the holiday, other than going to church, is eating a big Easter meal. Let me repeat: A BIG Easter meal.
I have probably sorta taken those meals for granted in previous years. But not this time. I had just come off of an eight-week self-imposed hunger strike – during which I had officially lost 32.7 pounds – and I apparently unknowingly set about trying to see if I could gain it all back at one sitting!!!! I almost succeeded! Hence, about a half-dozen pounds of the Big, Fat, Giant Hippo-Pig-Whale has returned!!!!
But it was great being down 32.7 pounds while it lasted… which was about an hour and a half.
As it turns out, my 32.7 pounds lost was good enough to put me in second place for the competition… just ahead of three other former weight-loss champs. The reigning weight-loss champ Don Gawrys lost 32 even. Three-time champ Kirk Luther lost 26. And the original contest champ Norman Agnew lost 22.
Turns out most of the other contenders – Bruce Holland, Jimmy Carroll, Denis Vaucher, Doug Adam, Shirley Towne, Jim Miles, and Terry Campbell – were merely window dressing whose only role was making the prize money bigger. They averaged losing about 10 pounds.
But the big winner – and new Almost Annual Fifteen Fat Guys Weight Loss Competition Champion – was Tom Boetger, General Manager of Carrabba’s in Harbison. Tom bested the field with a total weight lost of 46.8 pounds, dropping from 267.8 to 221 in eight weeks.
At the big final weigh-in, Tom let us in on his secret: He went on a diet, and stuck to it!!! Brilliant! No… Genius! What a plan!!! Diabolically clever.
So, our congrats to Tom, the new King of the Formerly Fat Guys.
And I hope Tom enjoyed HIS Easter as much as I enjoyed mine: Six pounds!!!
The big, fat, giant hippo-pig-whale that believes itself to be my alter-ego is trying desperately to take over my body again.
Actually, the BFGHPW was only gone for a week or so.
Regular readers of this column will recall that, back during the frosty winter days of January, I forthrightly proclaimed on these pages: “I am a Big, Fat, Giant Hippo-Pig-Whale”. My girth had begun to exceed my net-worth. My waistline has become a wasteland. I was regularly cheating on my over-eating. (I was an huge-enormous poet that didn’t know it.)
So, given my gargantuosity (a word I have just made up to describe the condition), I did what I always do to shed a few pounds: I challenged the whole world to a weight-loss competition. And… the whole world sent eleven of its stoutest members to accept my challenge.
For eight weeks, a dozen of us were slaves to our chosen diets in a battle of willpower to see which of us would claim the $100 per person prize (which converts to $1200 American dollars, for the numerically-challenged).
That weight-loss contest came to a conclusion last week, on April 6th, which, it turns out, was the Monday before a major holiday: Easter!!!
Here’s an interesting fact which I never fully realized until last week: As it turns out, Easter is one of the Major Food Holidays, along with Thanksgiving and Christmas. The main event of the holiday, other than going to church, is eating a big Easter meal. Let me repeat: A BIG Easter meal.
I have probably sorta taken those meals for granted in previous years. But not this time. I had just come off of an eight-week self-imposed hunger strike – during which I had officially lost 32.7 pounds – and I apparently unknowingly set about trying to see if I could gain it all back at one sitting!!!! I almost succeeded! Hence, about a half-dozen pounds of the Big, Fat, Giant Hippo-Pig-Whale has returned!!!!
But it was great being down 32.7 pounds while it lasted… which was about an hour and a half.
As it turns out, my 32.7 pounds lost was good enough to put me in second place for the competition… just ahead of three other former weight-loss champs. The reigning weight-loss champ Don Gawrys lost 32 even. Three-time champ Kirk Luther lost 26. And the original contest champ Norman Agnew lost 22.
Turns out most of the other contenders – Bruce Holland, Jimmy Carroll, Denis Vaucher, Doug Adam, Shirley Towne, Jim Miles, and Terry Campbell – were merely window dressing whose only role was making the prize money bigger. They averaged losing about 10 pounds.
But the big winner – and new Almost Annual Fifteen Fat Guys Weight Loss Competition Champion – was Tom Boetger, General Manager of Carrabba’s in Harbison. Tom bested the field with a total weight lost of 46.8 pounds, dropping from 267.8 to 221 in eight weeks.
At the big final weigh-in, Tom let us in on his secret: He went on a diet, and stuck to it!!! Brilliant! No… Genius! What a plan!!! Diabolically clever.
So, our congrats to Tom, the new King of the Formerly Fat Guys.
And I hope Tom enjoyed HIS Easter as much as I enjoyed mine: Six pounds!!!
Friday, April 10, 2009
Rod-Boy’s Tax Tips
This week, I want to offer some free advice… and as with ALL the free advice I give out, it’s worth TWICE as much.
However, if I were you, I would think twice about following my advice this week, because this week, I’m leaving my typical areas of expertise – fashion, art, cuisine, physical fitness, home décor and design, Scrabble, and Undercover CIA Operations – and delving into an entirely new field: Rod-Boy’s IRS Tax Deduction Advice.
Now, already, I know the question prolly at the tip of your tongue: “Hey, Rod-Boy! Since you’re giving away all this valuable advice for free, like a donation, will you be able to claim it as a tax deduction?”
The answer is a resounding “NO”. Claiming Free Advice as a tax deduction is a bad idea, a lesson I learned during the IRS Audits of 1982 and 1983.
The next question you’re likely thinking to yourself now is, “Hey, Rod-Boy! If I applied my Schedule C Accrued Depreciation Allowance to the Earned Income Credit or my Adjusted Minimum Tax because of my Net Operating loss from Credit Default Swaps, can I apply the carry-forward to a SEP or HAS?”
My answer to that question is a resounding “Can you say that again slower.. and maybe use some littler words?”
My point is: I do not know everything about Income Taxes. But I do know some stuff. And, today, I want to share some of the stuff I know, or else have just invented out of thin air, one or the other.
With times being what they are – a slow economy, a recession, tight-money, and Reality TV Shows almost every night – things seem pretty bleak. And with tax filing day coming up next week, most Americans will be looking for ways to hold on to every penny possible, which sometimes leads to “playing a little fast and loose” with the ol’ tax deductions.
Here’s my advice: Don’t do it!
I really can’t tell you what deductions you SHOULD claim, but I have compiled a handy little list of deductions you should NOT take. (Feel free to clip this list and pass it around the office to your co-workers.)
Here it is -- Rob-Boy’s List of Bad Tax Deductions. DO NOT try to claim these tax deductions:
-- One of the most common deductions being tried unsuccessfully this year is the Interest on your Mortgage Deduction for the cardboard boxes many Americans are currently living in.
-- Some taxpayers are trying to claim Education Credits & Deductions for going back to school because watching Hulu.com – an evil plot to take over the world – has turned their brains into mush.
-- The IRS has denied a claim for Depreciation Allowance on a ShamWow when it began to lose its absorbency after only 23,257 uses.
-- Several Illinois taxpayers unsuccessfully claimed Charitable Donations to the Governor of Illinois in their attempts to be appointed to the United States Senate.
-- In addition to the Hybrid Vehicle Credit, some are listing a Hybrid TV Credit, arguing that their TV has not yet switched from digital to analog as promised.
-- The Bernie Madoff Medical Expenses Deduction, which allows Bernie Madoff to take large deductions years in advance, because if he ever gets out of prison, he’s probably going to need lots of medical attention.
-- The IRS is also not likely to allow the “Serving Fish to Tourist in T-Shirts” Deduction because you’re broke and have no money so what could it possibly hurt.
-- And this year’s catch-all deduction is the “So Easy A Caveman Could Do It” Deduction Suite, a collection of large, random, miscellaneous deductions, none of which are valid, but if the IRS questions you, you just say: “Oops! Sorry. I had a caveman do my taxes for me.”
That’s my list. None of these deductions will work, so I’m afraid you’re just going to have to suck it up and pay your taxes.
However, while none of these deductions will work, I am exploring another plan to deal with taxes in these dismal times. At the grocery store last week, the lady ahead of me in the checkout line had an envelope full of coupons she had clipped, and she saved about a hundred dollars on her grocery bill.
So do you think the IRS will accept grocery coupons?
However, if I were you, I would think twice about following my advice this week, because this week, I’m leaving my typical areas of expertise – fashion, art, cuisine, physical fitness, home décor and design, Scrabble, and Undercover CIA Operations – and delving into an entirely new field: Rod-Boy’s IRS Tax Deduction Advice.
Now, already, I know the question prolly at the tip of your tongue: “Hey, Rod-Boy! Since you’re giving away all this valuable advice for free, like a donation, will you be able to claim it as a tax deduction?”
The answer is a resounding “NO”. Claiming Free Advice as a tax deduction is a bad idea, a lesson I learned during the IRS Audits of 1982 and 1983.
The next question you’re likely thinking to yourself now is, “Hey, Rod-Boy! If I applied my Schedule C Accrued Depreciation Allowance to the Earned Income Credit or my Adjusted Minimum Tax because of my Net Operating loss from Credit Default Swaps, can I apply the carry-forward to a SEP or HAS?”
My answer to that question is a resounding “Can you say that again slower.. and maybe use some littler words?”
My point is: I do not know everything about Income Taxes. But I do know some stuff. And, today, I want to share some of the stuff I know, or else have just invented out of thin air, one or the other.
With times being what they are – a slow economy, a recession, tight-money, and Reality TV Shows almost every night – things seem pretty bleak. And with tax filing day coming up next week, most Americans will be looking for ways to hold on to every penny possible, which sometimes leads to “playing a little fast and loose” with the ol’ tax deductions.
Here’s my advice: Don’t do it!
I really can’t tell you what deductions you SHOULD claim, but I have compiled a handy little list of deductions you should NOT take. (Feel free to clip this list and pass it around the office to your co-workers.)
Here it is -- Rob-Boy’s List of Bad Tax Deductions. DO NOT try to claim these tax deductions:
-- One of the most common deductions being tried unsuccessfully this year is the Interest on your Mortgage Deduction for the cardboard boxes many Americans are currently living in.
-- Some taxpayers are trying to claim Education Credits & Deductions for going back to school because watching Hulu.com – an evil plot to take over the world – has turned their brains into mush.
-- The IRS has denied a claim for Depreciation Allowance on a ShamWow when it began to lose its absorbency after only 23,257 uses.
-- Several Illinois taxpayers unsuccessfully claimed Charitable Donations to the Governor of Illinois in their attempts to be appointed to the United States Senate.
-- In addition to the Hybrid Vehicle Credit, some are listing a Hybrid TV Credit, arguing that their TV has not yet switched from digital to analog as promised.
-- The Bernie Madoff Medical Expenses Deduction, which allows Bernie Madoff to take large deductions years in advance, because if he ever gets out of prison, he’s probably going to need lots of medical attention.
-- The IRS is also not likely to allow the “Serving Fish to Tourist in T-Shirts” Deduction because you’re broke and have no money so what could it possibly hurt.
-- And this year’s catch-all deduction is the “So Easy A Caveman Could Do It” Deduction Suite, a collection of large, random, miscellaneous deductions, none of which are valid, but if the IRS questions you, you just say: “Oops! Sorry. I had a caveman do my taxes for me.”
That’s my list. None of these deductions will work, so I’m afraid you’re just going to have to suck it up and pay your taxes.
However, while none of these deductions will work, I am exploring another plan to deal with taxes in these dismal times. At the grocery store last week, the lady ahead of me in the checkout line had an envelope full of coupons she had clipped, and she saved about a hundred dollars on her grocery bill.
So do you think the IRS will accept grocery coupons?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
