Category: Curios & Humor

And Then There Were Five!

This man definitely deserves his props for trying to top Chris Bliss!

Jason Garfield’s performance is very impressive! So much so that it raised in my mind the question of which of the two was better, and I thought I’d throw the question open to y’all for debate.

Here are some of the considerations that occurred to me:

1) The addition of more balls or higher energy performing does not automatically make the performance better or more beautiful. Sometimes less is more, as they say.

2) Bliss also deserves credit for the originality of coming up with the idea of using Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End (assuming it was his idea), and Garfield’s performance at times seems to be derivative of Bliss’s (particular in The End).

3) On the other hand, his performance is really impressive and he pulls off some surprising moves that Bliss doesn’t attempt.

It could be that one performance could be judged the better according to one standard and the other the better according to a different standard (e.g, which is the more beautiful, the more original, the more dazzling, the more energetic).

So whadda y’all think? You know what they say: De gustibus disputandum est!

Oh, and once again, we have further proof of the amazing difference between homo sapiens and every other species on earth.

WE’RE #1! . . . WE’RE #1! . . . WE’RE #1!

CHT  to the reader who e-mailed (e-mail being yet another human accomplishment).

And Then There Were Two

Nametag2Recently I did a post about square dance "dangles" and how I had just received my first one.

For those who may not have seen that post, dangles are small items hung from a dancer’s nametag that signify various things, such as offices the person holds or has held, special dances that the person has attended, or just things that the person finds fun. The latter are known as "fun dangles."

Sometimes pins are used for the same purpose, and I recently received a pin (pictured), which now also adorns the vest I wear when I’m dancing.

The occasion on which I received it was a recent International Friendship Dance that was held here in San Diego between local American dancers and a group of dancers from Japan.

Some of the Japanese dancers were giving out pins to commemorate the event, and I was lucky enough to receive one. The pin has two flags on it, one of which says (in Japanese) "Nippon," which is the Japanese word for Japan, and the other of which is the Japanese national flag.

It was a very well attended dance. We had almost fifty squares (a square is eight people) crammed into the auditorium. The room was so packed that squares were jammed right up against each other, and there were even squares dancing in the foyer to relieve a bit of the pressure.

Most of the dancers, of course, were Americans, but at least three squares were visitors from Japan. The local Japanese dancers who live in San Diego (there are several) were also there, and it was nice seeing them serving as a bridge between the two dance communities.

Most of the dancers didn’t speak each others’ languages, but some did, and I got a chance to practice a little of my Japanese (which is very rudimentary), saying "Kon ban wa" ("Good evening") and "Sumimasen" ("Excuse me") and things like that, to the delight of the Japanese folks I was dancing with.

There were three callers at the event, all of them with international reputations: Ken Bower of California, Bob Baier of Texas, and Mac O’Jima of Japan.

Before the dance I was curious to see how well the two groups would be able to dance together. I knew that when Modern Western Square Dancing is done in other countries (and it’s done in quite a number of them!) it’s always called in English, so in theory the two groups should be able to dance together, but one can never be certain.

It turned out that everything worked just fine. The Japanese dancers had no problem following calls from the American callers, and Mr. O’Jima’s English was exceptionally good. He had a little L/R blur in his accent (to be expected since Japanese doesn’t have the distinction, just like English doesn’t distinguish between two P sounds that–say–Hindi does), and I noticed he had a little singular/plural issue since Japanese doesn’t inflect words for this either (thus he’d say "Join all your hand and circle to the left" instead of "Join all your hands and circle to the left"), but his English–including his accent–was really, really good. At times, his accent sounded a bit Scottish to me, and I wondered if his English teacher was from Scotland or somewhere in the British commonwealth.

Mr. O’Jima also complimented my pronunciation of Japanese, FWIW.

All three of three of the callers were outstanding. Ken Bower and Bob Baier related a story about when the two of them had visited Japan for a friendship dance over there, and some confusion had arisen over Ken’s name. At one point (if I have this right), someone said "Kon ban wa" to Bob Baier, who misheard and replied, "Ken Bower? Oh, he’s not here right now." (I got a real kick out of that since I’d been saying kon ban wa to people all evening, and the similarity had never occurred to me.)

BTW, here’s a YouTube with Ken Bower (who is a super nice guy) being interviewed about the dance:

So that’s the story of how I got my second square dance dangle/pin/thingie.

(Incidentally, the hearts you see on the vest were temporary stickers from a recent Valentines Day dance around the same time, where there was a "king of hearts" competition in which the lady dancers awarded them to the male dancers of their choice. I got four. The winner got six, if I’m not mistaken.)

Showmanship!

It’s not the number of balls the juggler uses; it’s the way he uses them.

Just goes to show what you can do with three tennis balls and probably the best music the Beatles ever wrote.

It also goes to show the difference between humans and every other life form on earth. Only we could do anything even remotely like this.

CHT to the reader who e-mailed!

Looks Like The Folks At Chrysler Have It Under Control, Too

MORE.
(CHT to the comboxer who provided the link!)

BTW, folks who can’t see these YouTube videos need the Macromedia Flash 7 plugin.

MORE ON THAT.

AND MORE VIDEO HELP.

Now if only YouTube would begin streaming its videos with properly encabulated transmissive push technology. That would solve everyone’s problems!

The Times They Are A-Changin’

A reader writes:

I swung by the post office the other day with a few of the kids in the car, including one age 12.  While we were pulling in, she bought up an urban legend she’d read, about people getting roach eggs embedded in their tongues from licking postage stamps.

“But, Mom,” she said, “Why on earth would anyone ever lick a stamp???”

Do you feel old?

I first recognized the disconnect between me and "the younger folks" when I was in my mid 20s and was teaching a Bible study for teenagers, and I needed an example of a really, truly, obviously crazy person and cited Charles Manson.

None of them knew who he was.

When did you realize it? (If you have.)

Attack Of The United Nations!

Storm_troopers(DAILY PLANET) — Turmoil has engulfed the United Nations. The taxation of trade routes to outlying countries is in dispute.

Hoping to resolve the matter with a blockade of deadly battleships, the greedy Trade Federation has stopped all shipping to many small countries.

While the General Assembly endlessly debates this alarming chain of events, Secretary General KOFI ANNAN secretly dispatches two Jedi Knights, guardians of peace and justice, to settle the conflict.

They fail, leading to unrest in the General Assembly. Several thousand small countries declare their intention to leave the United Nations.

This separatist movment, under the leadership of the mysterious MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD, has made it difficult for the limited number of Jedi Knights to maintain peace and order in the world.

Secretary of State CONDOLEEZZA RICE is returning to the General Assembly to vote on the critical issue of creating a GRAND ARMY OF THE UNITED NATIONS to assist the overwhelmed Jedi.

However, Kofi Annan, mired in "baseless" allegations, is removed from power following a vote of no-confidence and is replaced by the sinister BAN KI-MOON of South Korea, who is voted emergency powers to address the current crisis.

Promising to renounce his emergency powers as soon as the crisis is resolved, Secretary General Ban immediately deploys a clone army developed by disgraced South Korean scientist HWANG WOO-SUK and dispatches them to points all over the globe.

Secretary Ban promises to stun opposition into submission with shock and awe provided by Industrial Light and Magic.

Meanwhile, CONSPIRACY THEORISTS long suspicious of the United Nations begin making preparations at their hidden rebel bases.

AND THE SAGA CONTINUES . . .