Tag Archives: YouTube

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Fibbing Friday#280

Another mixed bag from Pensitivity101 last week.

1. What is a saga?

The wife’s boobs, and my gut

2. What is a synopsis?

A list of things that The Church doesn’t want you to do

3. What is a dialect?

An old, rotary telephone

4. What is a goblin?

Me, when I see a French-fry wagon, and the censor spoilsport wife isn’t in the car

5. What is a pinstripe?

San Bruno, USA – October 7, 2022: A burgundy Chevrolet Impala with custom pinstriping, chrome trim, gold wire wheels and whitewall tire at a car show

It was a way to adorn cars, back in the nostalgia days of big-block engines and floor-shifters – when cars had personality, and showed more decoration than just corporate logos.  The closest thing I’ve seen recently is a TRO – Toyota Racing Organization – sedan with decals that make it look like the body panels are laced, or strapped, together, with images of stuffed toys on the rear deck, and a gas filler cover that appears to be made from armor.

6. What is a catapult?

The sound made during the frantic escape of the Poor Cat that the cartoon skunk, Pepe Le Pew is always harassing…

7. What is a mousse?

Isn’t that the plural of “Mouse”??  I’m sure I’ve heard that somewhere, must be French or something…

8. What is meant by bona fide?

What I used to be able to create, in the presence of a naked female

9. What is a sally?

She’s a Religious chick that you sully, silly

10. What is a harem?

A rabbit hole that’s not on YouTube

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’23 A To Z Challenge – V

TECHNOLOGICAL OBSOLESCENCE

It’s a term to describe systems or ways of doing something that have changed significantly within living memory.

For centuries – millennia – change and progress inched forward.  Then, about 150 years ago, knowledge reached a critical mass, and technology soared.  Things like the telephone and the gramophone made it possible to store and conduct sound.  The telephone was electrical, while the gramophone started out as strictly mechanical.

A crank wound up a spring which ran a clockwork motor.  A needle at the end of an arm ran in a rotating, serrated groove.  The first examples were actually cylindrical.  Only later did flat discs become standard.  The sound was conducted up the arm, into a horn and out, to be heard by avid listeners.  Like some YouTube shorts, the sound level varied.  Some ‘records’ had deeper grooves, and the sound level could blast a small room.  Pieces of cloth were sometimes stuffed into the horn as a damper – a mute.  This is where the phrase, “Put a sock in it!” originated.  The best, and the best-known, brand of gramophone was the

VICTROLA

The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American recording company and phonograph manufacturer, incorporated in 1901. The company operated independently until it was purchased by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) in 1929 and subsequently operated as the RCA Victor Division of the Radio Corporation of America.

Sound reproduction has gone from mechanical, to electric, to electronic, to digital.  We have come so far.  I wonder how much, and how soon, the future will change and improve it – neural??  We already have Smart Glasses, which transmit sound from the arms, into the bones near your ears.

Veni, Vidi, Victrola

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Sick Of Fibbing Friday

Pensitivity101 gave us some sickness last week.  I’m returning it here.

  1. What is rubella?
    It’s the “Happy Ending” that lonely guys get, at those special massage parlors.

    2. What is Winter Fever more commonly known as?

The Mother of Spring Fever – not to be confused with The Mothers Of Invention.  A steam train engine is an invention – therefore Necessity is its Mother.

3. What is Scrofula?

It’s another term of endearment that the wife gives me, if I don’t brush my hair immediately upon arising.  People who live in glass houses…. Should buy thick drapes.

4. What is Grippe?

A French guy’s moist handshake.   🙄

5. What is Quinsy?

It was a highly successful TV show about a guy who hung around with dead bodies.  Americans will watch anything!  Where is Magnus Pike when we need him?? Still doing Thomas Dolby videos?   😕

6. What is St Vitus Dance?

It was the 19th century name for what became the 21st century’s rave.

7. What is Dropsy?

It’s a term to describe the result of my age-enhanced essential tremor at the dining table.  When I finish a meal, it looks like I passed the food up through the tablecloth.  😳

8. What is Croup?

It is the shortened, familiar name that Americans have given to the casino employee who rakes away your losings with a window-curtain rod, at a blackjack table.

9. What is Ague?

It’s a spirited discussion about whether or not there should be a letter R in that word.

10. What is Apoplexy?

It is trying to read something through the bottom of a soft-drink bottle.  That’s why very near-sighted people are said to have ‘Coke bottle glasses.’

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’23 A To Z Challenge – D

Don’t be a horse’s ass!  Use some horse sense.  Someone once decried steam locomotive trains, saying that travelling more than 40 MPH would drive people insane.  Sorry!!  They came in that way.

The 20th Century and the 21st have been a period of great, rapid, technological advancement and development.  Some people are able to keep with part, or all of it, better than others.  Bigots sometimes denigrate middle-Easterners, by calling them camel-riders.  That sometimes is a good idea – the camel-riding, not the name-calling.

A scientific expedition to research a geographic anomaly in the Sahara, hired a Bedouin guide who was reputed to know the desert well.  They loaded him in one of their jeeps, and tore off into the sand.  After a day of driving they stopped, and asked him where they were, and where their destination was.  He had no idea!!  He knew the desert by how long it took to get to any part of it, by camel.

Trafficking in stupidity!

There are waaayyyy too many car drivers who should be restricted to horse-drawn carts, pulled by

DOBBIN

a horse, especially a quiet, plodding horse for farm work or family use.

A horse would be smarter than many drivers.  I don’t drive much anymore, but I DO watch some “Idiots in Cars” YouTube videos.  A horse would get out of the way of a lot of these accidents.  I’ve bitched that some people don’t drive past the hood of their car.  The worst of them don’t drive past the end of their nose.  These are the ones who should take a bus, a cab, or an Uber.

Oh, the road lanes separate ahead, and there’s a concrete divider with buttress at the end.
I’ll just keep driving right into it.
I’m going so slow, that someone is making a left-turn in front of me.
I won’t bother to swerve to avert a collision, or put on the brakes.  I’ll just drive slowly right into them.

A small rancher in Wyoming rode his horse several miles into what passed for a small town one evening.  He hitched Lightning outside a roadhouse bar, and went in and got snozzled.  At closing time he managed to clamber back into the saddle, smacked the horse on the rump, ordered Home, and slumped over the saddle-horn.

Lightning was happy to head back home, where there was food, and water, and other horses, so off he trotted.  Just outside town, an ambitious, officious State Trooper pulled the pair over, and charged the rancher with drunk driving.  Sometimes it’s just best to pay the damned fine.  Sometimes it ain’t.

He went to court, and argued to the judge that his horse was not a motor-vehicle as defined by law.  Also, in his condition, he was not in care and control of his autonomous transport.  The judge agreed, and dismissed the charge, saying that he felt the horse was the smartest of the three.

Saddle up and ride back on Friday, to meet Lyin’ Brian, my evil Fibbing Friday twin.  😉

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’22 A To Z Challenge – Z

Our old mix-tapes had sides A and B.  It is only reasonable that their replacements should be CDs.

I used last year’s A To Z – Y post to babble about watching old black and white films on YouTube, an old and already, almost obsolete platform.  I thought I might close this year out by writing about an older system of watching even older moving pictures.  Ladies and gentlemen, Thomas Alva Edison Presents his fabulous

ZOETROPE

[ zoh-ee-trohp ]
a device for giving an illusion of motion, consisting of a slitted drum that, when whirled, shows a succession of images placed opposite the slits within the drum as one moving image.

ORIGIN OF ZOETROPE

1865–70; irregular <Greek zōḗ life + tropḗ turn

Western society has come so far, so fast, perhaps nowhere quite much as in Entertainment.  For centuries – millennia – a flickering candle was the zenith of amusement and attention-holding.  Technology has changed entertainment, particularly the visual arts – films, television, and videos.

A century ago, Lon Chaney – Senior – the great makeup genius and actor, played a Jekyll and Hyde type role in a film.  He walked around a ‘tree’ as Jekyll, altered nothing but the way he held his body and face, and came around the other side as the evil Hyde character.  Some women watching the movie actually fainted.  Play today’s Alien, or Predator, or even The Matrix, and we’d have the entire audience aswoon.

My attempts at entertainment are definitely spinning, and often best viewed through a narrow slit.  I’ve got to get out of this heavy white jacket.  I’ve got the month of April to put into motion.  😉

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’21 A To Z Challenge – Y

As I reach my second childhood, I also reach back more and more to the comforts of my first.  Helping me put back more than a little familiar frivolity, is

YOUTUBE

There was a ‘Zits’ cartoon strip, where a 16-year-old male was asked what he did during summer vacation.  His answer was that he “Watched Netflix” – the whole, entire, complete, 100%, F**king, thing!

I can’t claim to have watched that much, but I’ve watched just about all of it that I want to.  Like social interaction, politics, and religion, I don’t care for the flavor of much of what passes for modern entertainment.  Netflix keeps commissioning tons of movies, but most seem to be made in foreign countries, and sub-titled or dubbed into English with varying degrees of (lack of) success.

I recently discovered that YouTube has a ton of old movies that the copyrights have expired on.  I’m often looking for some light comedy, to get my mind off things like, Trump In ’24, pandemic mandates, gas prices, and spiralling real estate costs.

First I found that they have almost every British ‘Carry On’ farce.  I’ll watch Three Stooges, but only the ones with Shemp Howard.  I’ve viewed some clips of Laurel and Hardy, trying to decide which complete movies I’ll watch.

I remembered The Bowery Boys.  Those films always used to provide some no-brain-needed amusement.  Research showed that they began as The Dead-End Kids, changed to The East-Side Kids, and finally morphed into The Bowery Boys.  YouTube has almost 50 of them on tap.  Most of them star Leo Gorcey, until he drank himself out of a job.  I’m going to look to see if any of the old black-and-white Flash Gordon, or Buck Rogers serials are available.

In between, I can dip into Charlie Chan flicks, and may begin re-watching Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes series.  My complaint about these movies is about the commercials.  I don’t object to commercials.  They’re a cost of doing business.  I used to have to endure commercials when I watched movies on network TV.

My complaint, and the difference between network and YouTube is; on network TV, commercials were inserted by a real, live human, who placed them in natural breaks in the action, or conversation.  YouTube commercials are inserted by a heartless, brainless computer, whenever the Hell its electronic brain feels like, in the middle of a scene, or a line of dialog.  “So tell us Charlie(INSERT ADVERTISMENT FOR ZEHR’S FOOD MARKETS HERE!)Chan, who is the murderer?  I am developing a lightning-fast, gamer’s thumb, clicking on that little button which reads Skip Ads!

Does anyone besides me have any guilty YouTube pleasures they wish to admit to, or any other suggestions for my viewing enjoyment?

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Bad Math

Two plus two

Something Doesn’t Add Up

Trying to argue or debate with Christian Apologists is like trying to spar with fog. They’re never quite ‘there.’ They move the goalposts, or change the definitions. When they argue their positions, they add just enough reality to make it seem real. 2 + 2 doesn’t quite equal 4. They will claim 3.97 or 4.04, hoping that skeptics will concede the tiny difference.

They hold up portions of the Bible which are historically correct, and then claim that it ALL is. See, the Bible mentions Jerusalem, and Jerusalem exists, so the Bible must be true. It’s when you ask them to prove the existence of Sodom and Gomorrah, that the tap-dancing begins.

A very small percentage of archeology remains after three to four thousand years.
A very small percentage of surviving archeology has been discovered.
Of what archeology has been discovered, a very small percentage of it has actually been dug.
Of the archeological digs, only a small percentage of the total area is actually exposed.
Only a tiny fraction of what has been examined and published, has anything to do with the Bible.
Of the unidentified digs, one of them might have been Sodom, or Gomorrah.

Yeah??! And it MIGHT have been Jephthah’s bait shop and sailboard rental. We’re getting down to dancing on the head of that argumental pin.

A YouTuber complained that Atheists are so closed-minded, that even if they observed a miracle, they wouldn’t change their minds. As Proof, he quoted the story of Christ raising Lazarus from the dead. The Jewish leaders plotted to have both Jesus and Lazarus murdered, because all Christ’s miracles were bad for their business. But that was because they believed that the miracles were real. They accepted Christ’s divinity. The circular reasoning is hardly the best example to refute Atheists with.

One Apologist admitted that Christianity had got many things wrong, but defended its existence as a possible font of additional hunches/intuitions/guesses about the universe and reality, which science could then investigate, and either prove or disprove. Contrary to usual dogma, he insisted that Christianity and the Bible should be viewed as allegory, and not taken literally. What did I think about that?

That idea sounds weak and desperate. So far, EVERY one of religions’ wild-ass guesses/intuitions/hunches has proved wrong. I don’t think that any one of them need make any more. If organized logic and science can’t intuit something new, ‘Conspiracy Theory’ is the new growth industry.

Besides, Religion is the bully on the block. No Flat Earther has ever threatened me with eternal torment in Hell, or even worse, stretched me on a rack, burned me at the stake, or protested at my funeral because I had the audacity to serve in the military to defend my country, just because I thought the Earth was round.

No Area 51 fanatic has ever put det-cord around my neck and blown my head off, tossed me off a 10-storey building, or put me in a cage and drowned me, because I didn’t believe that the government performed an autopsy on an alien there in 1947.

I don’t feel that we should give any sanction or acceptance to most religions. It only validates and encourages the worst among them. They, and their desperate, insecure, ego-driven adherents, can be quite retrogressive and dangerous.

If you can’t take religion at face value, why take it at all? Playing ‘Pretend’ is for children.

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Straight Arrow

Stright Arrow

My wife, bless her heart, is a linear thinker. I mean a, A straight line is the shortest distance between two points. linear thinker.

If we’re watching Poirot, or Miss Marple, or reruns of Columbo or Murder She Wrote, while my active and vivid imagination is distracted by red herrings, plot twists, or character development, her Laser mind points directly at the culprit.

It wasn’t the butler. It was the illegitimate son of the maid, from an affair with the Master. And she’s right 90% of the time. However…. She has trouble getting off the paved road. She reads romance novels. Several times I have heard her complain about the dénouement of a book. The story will come to a stop at a particular juncture, and it’s up to the reader to decide whether the hero will come back and marry the girl, or if he will ride off into the sunset. She gets quite upset. Enquiring minds (like hers) need to know!

It’s not that she has no sense of humor. It’s just that she is not friends with puns or word-play. My father used to describe a damp day by saying, “It tried to rain, but it missed (mist).” She occasionally repeats (?) this as, “It tried to rain, but it misted.” Literal! Literal! Literal!

My darling old Mother, who wouldn’t say ‘Shit’ if she had a mouthful, would comment about someone farting, by saying, “(That’s)Better out, than one of your eyes.” Like bread upon the waters, this one comes back as, “It’s better out that way, than out one of your eyes.” 😕 🙄

She has discovered a YouTube file that plays over 2 hours of mostly pop songs, but one of them is the old Meat Loaf song, ‘I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That). “What is it that he won’t do?? He keeps saying that he won’t do That, but he never says what That is. If she’d just shut up and stop obsessing, she’d find out. The song, like a sentence in German with the verb at the end, is constructed. After 4 minutes of him yowling that he won’t do that, his woman cuts in, and starts singing about him being a star, and rich and famous, and how he will use it ‘to go screwing around.’ The song ends with him assuring her, “But I won’t do that.”

She likes the singer, Ed Sheeran, and watches many of his music videos. One of them has her baffled. In the video for a song called Shape of You, Sheeran is in training as a boxer – jab, jab, punch, punch. He is assisted by a curvaceous young female, who even teaches him some dance steps to aid his footwork.

She returns to her locker, finds and reads a note, stuffs some things in her bag, and leaves. Perhaps the wife hoped for some romantic entanglement. From the first time she watched it, every time, she complains, “It doesn’t make sense. Why does she leave?” Doesn’t make sense??! These are music videos – one of them, Radioactive, shows Mexican cockfighting…. with Muppets. They’re not supposed to make sense.

It might be that, in today’s #MeToo society, the song keeps insisting that he’s in love with her body – the Shape of You. No mention of her smile, her intellect, her wit and humor, her kind and supportive nature – just her body.

Always trying to be helpful, I suggested that maybe she had to go home to make supper for her husband…. or perhaps she had to go home to make supper for her wife. Don’t ask – don’t tell. Still, every time, the question was repeated. “It doesn’t make sense. Why does she leave?”

As the video progresses, Sheeran leaves the training room, and enters a fight venue – to be faced with a Sumo wrestler. 😕 He engages the Sumo giant, wearing one of those ridiculous, inflatable Sumo costumes, and gets splatted to the floor. Apparently this all makes sense to the wife, and she unquestioningly accepts it.

To finally put us all out of our misery, the son told her that the note was from Sheeran’s fight manager, telling the eye-candy that she was a distraction to his training, and to keep away…. only, she shows up at the end, and knocks the Sumo guy down with a Kung Fu drop-kick. Out of the wife’s earshot, the son admitted that his explanation was highly unlikely, but it pacified her, and we all lived happily (and quietly) ever after.

Linear thinkers are useful, and quite productive, although they can be a little dismaying. Are you a linear thinker? My own thought processes can be like a tornado aftermath.

Maze