Happy New Year!
Our New Year’s wish. A world where a loving display of affection like this would bring joy to our hearts, and not fire breathing district attorneys coming out of the woodwork charging sexual abuse. – photo from 4chan.org.
NOTE: This morning my iMac computer was shut off instead of merely sleeping. This happened recently for several days in a row. I have Apple Care for my computer, but it runs out on Jan. 9, 2010. I called Apple Care, and they made an appointment for me to bring in the computer at 3 p.m, Thursday, New Years Eve. Because I am not sure when I will get my computer back I decided to go ahead and post this Saturday’s edition of Little Eddy today, ahead of time. It is not really very complete, but I figure it is better than having nothing posted if Saturday comes and my machine is still in the Apple Store. Cheers! TRLE.
A Cheer for This, a Rant for That!
Well, what do you know? Another entire year bites the dust, as it were. Will someone please tell me where they all go? And exoikain to me why at my age they pass so fast? Well, come to think of it I guess they are doing me a favor passing so fast.
When I was younger the New Year was always filled with frustration. Another year gone by, and still I hadn’t done what I wished to do. Alcohol was the beverage of choice to see us through the night.
Nowadays, that’s all by the boards. We have a more realistic outlook on things. Ambitions are a thing of the past. Our main purpose these days is to stay alive. And while we’re at it, to keep writing our little blog, which is our way of creatively passing the days.
Speaking of creativity, how about that John Lennon? Sure the man was saddled with a conscience the size of the Grand Canyon. But he sure knew the craft of weaving a spell with words, and then setting it to music which was completely unique and distinctive, and yet which you could swear you’d known all of your life.
Christmas was a week ago yesterday. New Year’s Day is today. A good time to print Lennon’s tiny masterpiece of a Christmas song, one which doesn’t forget the New Year, and which most especially, reminds us that “war is over, if we want it. War is over . . . now.”
So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
And so this is Christmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The world is so wrong
And so happy Christmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let's stop all the fight
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
And so this is Christmas
And what have we done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear one
The old and the young
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear
War is over over
If you want it
War is over
Now...
In the early days of the Apple Macintosh computer Steve Jobs had a unique choice of words to describe it: “Insanely great.” Lennon’s lyrics and tunes are like that. The idea of singing “war is over” as a round during the second half of the Christmas song was “insanely great,” or perhaps “devilishly ingenious” would be more inventive. Lennon was right, of course. Wars make absolutely no sense in spite of the stimulus to the economy they might make in their early stages. And primarily because wars must be paid for, and since World War II they haven’t been, they are a disaster in the making, ever lurking behind our faltering economy.
Franklin Roosevelt knew wars must be paid for. And we paid for World War II with War Bond Drives, rationing, doing without, etc. And we staffed the armed forces with a draft system which fairly drew our young men into the services. But he seems to have been the last president to do a Pay-As-You-Go war. Ever since then wars have been fought with volunteers, lifers, putting them out of the hands of the voting public, and each war since has been put on a credit card, to be paid by future generations. LBJ labeled this “guns and butter.” And these days the credit we are conducting the war with is being issued by the Chinese. Scary, isn’t it?
For God’s sake, someone sing Lennon’s Christmas Song to Barack Obama, especially emphasizing the “war is over, if you want it, now” part as a round. And you can encore it with “All we are asking, is give peace a chance.” One of the catchiest phrases ever woven by man or artist. Obama got himself elected on his opposition to our wars, but now like most every politician after he gets elected, Obama seems to have forgotten who sent him to the White House and why he was sent in the first place.§
What Was Big in 2009?
What was your most used products in 2009? The most life altering news event? Among those who left us who will you miss the most?
For me the most used computer programs in 2009 are in the order of their frequency of use: Pages, Apple’s excellent iWork word processing program. Next to that would be an add on called Copy/Paste, and more specifically its html clip archive (which allows you to insert common html tags with a click of the mouse.) Another necessary add on for the Mac’s OSX operating system is iKey, which allows you to open programs or initiate events with either a keyboard setting, or in a time sequence. For instance Apple allows me to automatically wake my computer up from sleep at the same time my alarm wakes me, at 6 a.m. Then at 6:10, at about the time I’m finishing up doing my morning blood sugar test, iKey automatically opens up the web browser Camino, and then opens the online edition of the Houston Chronicle. So that when I’m sitting at my iMac with my first cup of coffee, I am where I want to be, and I am two clicks away from the Rockets news in Sports. Which is how I like to start my day.
Our most recent life altering news event was the barely failed attempt by a Nigerian would be terrorist to blow up an airliner as it neared Detroit. The young man had a bomb hidden in his underwear, and only succeeded in burning his legs and we presume, his privates, as the bomb failed to explode, catching the young man on fire instead.
Of course, it turned out that there was warning from the young man’s father that he was turning into a radical and had dropped from sight, but this fact didn’t make it far enough up the intelligence chain to deny him a seat on the airplane.
And it certainly ramps up the degree of difficulty in determining who to allow to fly and who to deny. Probably ahead on the road to boarding a plane is a full body scan, plus not only examining a prospective airplane boarders shoes, but in cases where body scans arouse suspicions perhaps a full body search. In cases where it is the safety of the passengers matched against the privacy of the flyer, surely the former will take precedence.
What an ugly age we live in? High School students using automatic weapons on their fellow students and teachers. Individual gun toters mowing down patrons in MacDonalds or other fast food restaurants for no discernible reason.
And now we have religious motivated muslims attempting to bring down commercial airliners, after initially using them as a tool to cause the nonpareil destruction of the Twin Towers in N.Y. City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. Is there no limit to the damage our species can inflict on our fellow man?
The state of the nation as we prepare to enter 2010 is truly frightening. If there is truly a God running all things on our earth, where the hell is he? Why isn’t he minding the store? Unfortunately too many of those minding the store have more than a few screws loose and rattling around inside their craniums. The problem is not Gods? The problem is our problem. We have to stop killing our fellow human beings while fooling ourselves that we are doing God’s work.
Ah, for the good old days of yesteryear, where executions happened on an individual basis, and friend or enemy alike were not focused on bringing down an airliner’s load of people. – Photo from 4chan.org.
As the old year bowed out, the Houston Rockets faced their Texas rival, the Dallas Mavericks. The first time in Dallas the Mavericks whipped Houston solidly,, and they pulled a repeat the second time the teams met in Houston. But Houston won the third game soundly in Dallas. At they prepare to face Dallas the Rockets confound the league. At the beginning of the season TNT pundit Charles Barkley declared Houston the worst team in the West. But the Rockets didn’t listen to Sir Charles, and as a result this team without stars (Yao Ming down for the season with a foot injury, Tracy McGrady coming back from microsurgery on his left knee. Yao Ming will likely stay with the team in the 2010-11 season, but McGrady, who wasn’t able to increase his eight minutes playing time, is seeking a trade.
This is the team that two nights ago whipped the New Orleans Hornets in spite of David West’s 44 points and point guard Chris Paul’s tripple double. Tonight the Rockets face Dallas, and we’ll see who closes out the year with a win.
Unfortunately there was no time to add any memories from Children’s Camps in this weeks post. Depending on when I get my iMac back I will add it to this post during the week. Meantime, as the old year rolls away and the new one looms ahead, I guess this is our last chance to wish you a happy 2010. Bye now.
Add Note: I got a call from the Apple Store. My iMac is full of roach leavings, and they can't work on it until it gets cleaned out. I went to pick it up, and I've got it on the internet now, but I will have to clean it out and return it to them so that they can install the new power supply. And there is a rush on this, for Apple Care runs out on January 10th, and after that no free service. Sorry there's no camp memories this week, and I'm afraid next week's Little Eddy will be another rushed one, unless I can get it back cleaned out on Monday, and they can fix it by Tuesday. So wish me luck on this.
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