Charley Chan

I don't know about you, but I seem to find slim pickings on the tv nowadays. Too many crappy cop shows, comedy shows, amateur hours, etc. One alternative I have discovered is watching Youtube. You tube is also educational in that it teaches one about other cultures.

For example, I now know what life is like as a lesbian in Canada. Thanks to Pillow Talk, I now can watch two women sharing a bed discussing the intimate details of gay women's lives.

I remember the old Charley Chan movies on tv and much to my delight, there are plenty of old Charley Chan movies free for the viewing on YouTube. Here you get an accurate depiction of Asian life and wisdom. I read it is even popular in China.

The movies always start with a mini adventure, sans Chan. There is a murder. Someone always wishes Charley Chan was there. Soon we meet up with Chan, only too happy to get away from his humdrum life and nagging wife. For the next hour we solve the mystery alongside the learned detective.

I do notice there are certain formulas to the movies. Number one (or number two) son wants to help out but is in the way. The chauffeur, played by Eddie Anderson, is always lassoed into going into a cave or a dark basement and is terrified. There is always a beautiful woman. At some point a  man with bandages around his head makes an appearance.

Yes it is wonderful meeting up with the great heroes of childhood. And to be enlightened with an accurate recounting of traditional Chinese philosophy.

Pictures of domestic life

Just saw some swell photographs of motherhood you might enjoy.

The five stages of life

The first stage of life: Infancy and childhood

The second stage of life: Adolescence: This stage begins when you sneak your first cigarette in the woods

The third stage of life: Young Adulthood: This stage begins with your first job and your first apartment. These are  the fun years.

The fourth stage of life: Adulthood: After you sign your divorce papers and start paying child support you are now a mature man

The fifth stage of life: Old age: This begins the first time you walk through the doors of the cardiologist. Above the door is the quotation from Dante's Inferno. "Abandon all hope ye who enter here". "Golly", you laugh,"everybody looks so old". Soon come the EKG, the echo cardiogram, the stress test, the double heart bypass surgery, the triple heart bypass surgery, the stent. Then you are sitting in a nursing home breathing out of an oxygen mask. Then they cart you off to a cemetery. 

The five stages of life. 

That Ebola nurse who likes to ride a bicycle

Aunt Agnes wanted to do another debate as have many of my readers, so here she is debating the omniscient liberal on the topic of Ebola and nurses who like to ride bicycles.

My heart gives out for those people in Africa but we have to take care of ourselves first. Americans have no business going to Africa to solve other people's problems when we have enough problems at home. That nurse, she was working for a group called Doctors without Borders which is nothing but another name for Médecins Sans Frontières. Now that name is French and we all know the French mean no good for Americans. 

Okay she goes over there and then comes back probably full of that darn old 

Ebola and wants to be free as a bird back here. If there is one thing that governor 

of New Jersey did that was smart it was to send here up to Maine so she can 

spread disease up there. 

O.L: But dear Aunt Agnes, all developed nations have a responsibilty to work to 

wipe out that disease in Africa before it spreads to the developing world. 

Aunt Agnes: Well the best way to keep Ebola out of here is to keep our gates 

shut. Ebola, Obama, they even rhyme. We never had Ebola til we had that 

African as president. 

O.L.: And now that she is back in America she should be free to travel as she 

wants as long as she is healthy. 

Aunt Agnes: While she gets on that bicycle spreading the disease through New 

England near and far. 

O.L. : She should be applauded for her heroism.

Aung Agnes: Well a dignified lady keeps away from Africa and bicycles. 

What it must be like to be retired

The other day I had a vacation day. What with the air conditioning man coming and the rain I ended up spending the day doing not much of anything. I was thinking this is what it must be like being retired.

The first thing you notice is the activity of your neighborhood. With all the busy people off at work, the retired people come out and gossip. Then the stay at home parents come out with their toddlers and their dogs. One mother seems to make a lot of noise when she walks by. I wonder if they all are cleaning up after their canines. These are the types of thoughts retired people must have at 10am in the morning.

The air conditioning man came and put in the part. I guess I'll know if it's working on Memorial Day of next year. Got the see the maintenance man for the complex come by in his tractor.

The phone rang about every half hour. Guess they've been waiting for me to be home on a weekday. No I don't have a bag of clothes for the vets. Sorry I gave my used clothing to Lupus last month. "No I have my own charities" I told the cop on the phone. Hope I don't get a ticket for speeding next week.

Finally I drove off for a nice diner breakfast. Boy, all the construction they don't do during rush hour they do on weekday mornings. The diner was half filled. I ordered breakfast. Luckily they do late late breakfasts. Nice place, all the retired men seem to go there for coffee and transfats to wash down their Lipitor.

Early afternoon I listened to Leonard Lopate. Whenever he has a guest he always lets you know what he (Leonard) knows about the topic. The guest is explaining how Napoleon's family moved to America. Yes, we know Leonard that Napoleon's brother lived in Bordentown with a mistress. Now let the guest talk.

Leonard reminds me of the person who works in a library when she is taking a class in library school. She knows more than the teacher because she is a page in Plainfield.

Finally I turn on WXPN radio. They are playing the 885 greatest records of all time, as voted by the listeners. Right now they are in the 300's. I'm hearing the Allman Brothers, the Moody Blues, the Who, and Ten Years After. Sounds like they are playing the record collection of the the guy up the hall from me at Davidson freshman year. It will be interesting to hear the list in a few years when all us baby boomers are dead or on ventilators.

Well the day is about over or at least is about the time I usually get home from work. Tomorrow I get to enter the working world again. Thank god it will be Friday.

sup

I was watching the new TV show, Selfie. I find it to be a most enlightening television program. It is giving me new insight into the world of the millennial. Last night I saw a man text a woman with the one word term "sup". I thought he was inviting her to sup with him (ie. have supper). Later I googled the word and now I know it is shorthand for "what's up?" You learn so much from TV.

You don't know what you've got til it's gone

Last year I noticed when I started my desktop computer that I got a tapping sound. Sounded like the hard drive. I soldiered on, occasionally having to start the computer from a CD. The computer was bought in 2006 and ran Vista, but I liked it and, like a beloved old car, planned to keep it til it died. 

Well, the hard drive died. Knowing it was time to get a new desktop (I know --- I have a laptop but a home office wouldn't feel like a home office without a desktop) so I bought a new one from Dell.

The new computer runs Windows 8.1. With a few troubles along the way (it was a bear getting Quicken to read my old Microsoft Money files) I have got everything running, more or less. My boss asked me if my scanner worked. I had forgotten about the scanner but low and behold, I did get the scanner to work.

Then a friend asked me if I could read a floppy disk. I took the floppy disk home. Holy moley. I didn't realize it. I no longer have a computer that can read floppies!

My first home computer, an AST 386,  had two floppy drives. A big one and the 3 and a half inch job that I have known and loved. I have so many memories of saving files to my floppies for safe keeping. I can remember many a happy Saturday morning, when I would back up my computer onto thirty floppy discs while listening to Car Talk. I thought for sure my old laptop that I seldom used had a floppy drive. It didn't. For the first time in my life since 1992 my home was floppy-less.

Yes I know there are CD's, flash cards, the cloud, portable hard drives. Even my Apple i pod can hold data. But I no longer own a floppy drive. Life will never be the same. I'll especially miss snapping the metal thing on the floppy back and forth. I won't miss getting the floppy out of the machine with a paper clip when it became stuck. (Although when I did this at work it made me the hero for the day).

At work, my computer has a floppy drive that I was able to read the disk with. The story has a happy ending. Happy though somewhat poignant. 

And so I now must learn to live life without a floppy drive. Floppy drives and Windows 3.1. Those were the days.