Charlie Puth

The song of the day is Attention from the upcoming studio album Voicenotes by singer-songwriter Charlie Puth (Charles Otto Puth Jr.). Pentatonix has covered the song and their their version is here.

No Cheeseburgers For You

According to news reports, a 37 year old man in Oregon asked a McDonald’s restaurant to make him 30 double cheeseburgers. When they refused, the man went nuts and tried to destroy the golden arches.

I have a question. If a customer orders 30 cheeseburgers, then why not make him 30 cheeseburgers? At fast food restaurants, a customer must pay for their order before the order will be processed. If the man offered to pay for the order, then what is the problem? Did he refuse to pay?

A few years ago, a hurricane hit central Virginia and knocked out electric power over much of the area. My electric stove was useless, so I went to a fast food restaurant to order a burger. As luck would have it, the man in front of me ordered 86 burgers. I shrugged, placed my order, and sat down to wait. I had nowhere important to be, so I didn’t mind waiting. It took about 20 minutes for the cook to get to my order.

I didn’t mind. The man who ordered the 86 burgers was in charge of a crew of linemen from out of state working to restore electricity. Lunchtime rolled around and the linemen were hungry, so the man in charge bought a couple of burgers for each man in his crew. It was a minor inconvenience. I’ve waited longer in a busy sit-down restaurant just to be seated.

Everybody needs to calm the hell down. Your world won’t end if you can’t have your way immediately. Even if you’re in the right, there’s no need to be aggressive — that behavior usually ends badly. The man who tried to destroy the golden arches is charged with disorderly conduct, criminal trespass, and criminal mischief and harassment. Now he’s in jail — and he still doesn’t have 30 cheeseburgers.

It Happened Again

We all knew it would happen again soon, and it did. There was a school shooting today in Maryland. Sure, why wouldn’t there be? This is America. So far this year, we’ve averaged one school shooting per week. This time there are two injured — one critically — and one dead (the gunman).

When I was in high school, my biggest concerns were getting good grades, crushing on a girl one grade above me who was so good looking but hopelessly unobtainable, and wondering if our football team was going to win their big game this year. Bringing a gun to school was unheard of, and shooting fellow students and teachers was literally unthinkable. It was something only a crazy person would do. And I mean crazy as in “padded-room insanity”.

Now it’s a regular thing. A hundred thousand Americans are killed or injured by firearms annually. On top of that, now we have mad bombers. That’s what they used to be called. Now I imagine there’s a more politically correct term. Like, disturbed American. Or, explosive personality. Those sound so much nicer than “lunatic” or “psycho”.

What changed? Why are there so many angry people, so many crazy people in this country? Is it the times? Is it the technology? Is it the saturation violence depicted in games, movies, TV shows, and newscasts? Psychologists say those things don’t cause violent crimes. Then what? Are they putting something in girl scout cookies to make us crazy? Is there something in the water? Why are so many teenagers suicidal?

I don’t get it. I’m glad I’m not a teacher. If I were, I think I would look for a safer job. Bomb disposal technician, maybe.

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UPDATE, 22 March 2018: The critically injured high school shooting victim is brain dead and is being removed from life support.

Canine Drivers

There’s a canine driving school in New Zealand. Yup, you read that right. There’s a driving school for dogs in Middle Earth.

The Kiwis say they already have a driving dog. In fact, they have more than one. This smart pup is Porter:

Now meet Monty:

It looks like dogs have broken through a glass ceiling. They can drive a car. Next they’ll probably be driving big rigs on our highways. But can they pass the written test?

The Kiwis say they are doing this to prove how intelligent their rescued dogs are. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that dogs can be very intelligent. Even so, and maybe I’m old-fashioned here, I still don’t want a dog to drive me to the mall. And I doubt we’ll hear any of our wealthy elite say, “Jeeves, have my dog bring the car around.”

Dogs driving cars. What could go wrong?

This Is Justice?

Kathryn Steinle was a 32 year old woman who was shot on July 1, 2015, while out on a stroll with her father on Pier 14 in San Francisco’s Embarcadero district. She died in her father’s arms. The shooter, Jose Ines Garcia Zarate, was a homeless, undocumented Mexican immigrant who had been deported from the U.S. five times and had illegally re-entered the country five times. Garcia Zarate said the shooting was an accident. Prosecutors were unable to prove it was not an accident, so a jury found him not guilty of murder or manslaughter. (The jury was not told that he had seven previous felony convictions.)

The gun had been stolen from a federal Bureau of Land Management ranger a week earlier. Garcia Zarate claimed he found the weapon under a chair on the pier and it went off when he picked it up.

Okay, say he’s telling the truth. Say the woman’s death was an accident.

I have a young cousin who sits in prison now because he killed a woman. He didn’t kill her with a gun, he killed her with a car. He was speeding and driving under the influence when he drove into her car. It was an accident. He clearly didn’t intend to kill anyone by driving into them. But after a trial he received a seven year prison sentence. Actions have consequences. He killed a person and now he suffers the consequences.

But Garcia Zarate killed a person, too, and where are his consequences?

After a jury set Garcia Zarate free, the Department of Justice announced it might file charges against him. Somehow this homeless seven-time felon found attorneys and is now suing the federal government for filing ‘vindictive and unfair’ charges against him. This is justice?

I hope somewhere down the line his case encounters common sense.

Arming Teachers — Good Or Bad?

President Trump has advocated arming teachers as an answer to mass shootings at schools. Is that a good idea?

I don’t know. It’s probably too early for anyone to know. But on a related subject, I recently blogged about unintended consequences. One type of unintended consequence is called perverse effect, when a purposeful action has an outcome contrary to what was intended. Here’s an example that was in today’s morning news:

Gun-trained teacher accidentally discharges firearm in Calif. classroom, injuring student

The student’s father said he learned about the incident when his 17-year-old son came home with blood on his shirt and bullet fragments in his neck.

According to the news article, the student will be okay. But I think it’s safe to say that the outcome could have been much worse.

Of note is the fact that the teacher is a reserve police officer trained in firearm use. He had his last gun safety training less than a year ago.

Stephen Hawking Has Left the World

R.I.P. Stephen Hawking. You transformed our view of the universe, and the universe will be a slightly less interesting place without you in it.

Although you were paralyzed by motor neuron disease for most of your adult life, you married twice, fathered three children, wrote two popular books, and were a success in your work. A black hole phenomenon that you discovered was named after you (Hawking radiation).

Surely, you were one of a kind.

Mishaps

My supper tonight consisted of a piece of bread smeared with peanut butter and topped with a dollop of honey. It was tasty but left an empty spot, so I went to the fridge and retrieved a bowl of leftovers: roasted carrots and onions. A couple of days ago, I had cut them into one inch pieces, coated them with olive oil, and roasted them in the oven. I had eaten half and stuck the remainder in the fridge. Now all I needed to do was heat them up in the microwave oven.

I heated the bowl and proceeded to the living room to settle into my chair at my computer table where I could peruse the web as I nibbled. But before I got there, there was a sudden, unexpected miscommunication between my brain and my hands. The bowl of warm, oily leftovers suddenly flew out of my hands. Instantly I stopped and my arms went up into a hands-up position as the bowl of leftovers arced away from me and slammed into the hardwood floor. Carrots and onions — drizzled in olive oil — went everywhere. Most landed in an expanse across the floor, but some landed in my living room chair while others made it to my computer table, landing adjacent to my keyboard.

I surveyed the floor and asked no one in particular, “How did that happen?” I didn’t curse. I didn’t get angry. I had no reaction at all. I am too accustomed to these home mini-calamities. Why get upset? The next item on my agenda suddenly became “clean it up.” So that’s what I did.

I picked up pieces of food and wiped the floor with paper towels. I deployed upholstery cleaner on the chair. When I finished, I poured a shot of vodka and sat down at my computer. Who needs food when alcohol is available? I was all set until the next mini-calamity. It might not occur for months, or it might occur before I went to bed. Mishaps at home seem to be the way of my people. One becomes accustomed to them. I’m all set until the next one strikes out of the blue. With a little luck, I won’t break any bones when it happens. And that’s all I ask.

The Kingston Trio

Ever have a song stuck in your head? It most recently happened to me this week.

In the news a few days ago was a story about the discovery of the wreckage of the U.S.S. Lexington. Lexington was an American aircraft carrier that was lost during the Battle of the Coral Sea in 1942. Although the Battle of Midway is a more famous WW2 naval battle (as perhaps it should be; it turned the tide of the war in the Pacific), it was the Battle of the Coral Sea that halted the Japanese advance in the Pacific.

When I heard that the wreckage of Lexington was located, lyrics from a song I heard long ago popped into my head. The song was Ballad of the Thresher and was about the loss, with all hands, of the nuclear-powered submarine U.S.S. Thresher. Four ballads about Thresher were recorded by various artists, but the best known version was recorded by The Kingston Trio. The lyrics that popped into my head were these:

Oh, the Thresher, yes, now her reactor is still
But very good company she keeps
Men from the Lexington, Hornet and the Wasp
Are down there with her in the deep

It’s strange how the brain works. Mention the aircraft carrier Lexington and of all the knowledge in my head, a song about a submarine named Thresher is the connection my brain makes. And since it’s stuck in my head, the song of the day will be Ballad of the Thresher from the 1963 album Sunny Side! by folk music group The Kingston Trio.

Best Picture?

The 2018 Academy Awards was broadcast this past Sunday. Unfortunately, there were no fun screw-ups like with last year’s show. (I blogged about that fiasco here.)

Last year’s Best Picture went to La La Land. I tried to watch it and managed to sit through the first half of the movie.

This year’s Best Picture went to The Shape of Water. If you haven’t seen it yet, then allow me to spoil it for you. Imagine a high-budget version of 1954’s sci-fi/horror flick Creature from the Black Lagoon.

A mute woman falls in love with a creature that appears to be half man and half trout. I watched just 40 minutes of the film (which was 40 minutes too much) and so I can’t tell you exactly what happened to them, but then who cares? The movie is preposterous. I’m guessing they lived happily ever after at the bottom of the ocean.

If this movie is really the best movie America made in all of 2017 then our movie industry is in big trouble.