Billy Shakes would be 450

My church was going to be celebrating William Shakespeare’s 450th birthday on the First Friday of this month, but it got cancelled. Still, I have been on the lookout for celebrations of same. Without searching, I came across these:

From JEOPARDY! episode #6804, aired 2014-03-27 SHAKESPEARE REWRITES THE BEATLES

“The lady is enamored of thee. verily, verily, verily”

“Wilt thou still require me, wilt thou still provide sustenance unto me, roughly midway through my 7th decade?”

“Aid me if thou canst, I feel sorrow…& my gratitude is large for thy presence here”

“Assemble forth, all ye jesters, speak thusly… hark! Thou must conceal thy amorousness”

“I believe I shall be melancholy, I believe it shall be anon…the woman who disturbeth my temper is leaving hence”

(Answers below)

Open Source Shakespeare. Very useful.

50 signs of aging

The fine blogger Shooting Parrots, from across the pond, did this quiz: “Do you feel like you’re getting old? Take our 50 signs of ageing test to find out.” They – the quiz writer and SP – are from England, so obviously they can’t spell “aging.”

Feeling stiff
Yes – especially the left knee

Groaning when you bend down
Well, no. Not yet, anyway.

Saying: “It wasn’t like that when I was young.”
Occasionally. Usually it was to suggest that Republicans, such as Jacob Javits, Everett Dirksen and William Scranton were quite all right fellows, unlike most of their recent counterparts.

Saying: “In my day.”
No, because I would sound like my maternal grandmother.

Losing hair
Yes, but I’ve been losing it since I was about 18, so it’s hardly a function of getting old.

Not knowing any songs in the top 10

June Rambling: an atheist's prayers, and stillness of the soul

Useful phrases for the surveillance state.

Long-lost diary of Nazi racial theorist and Hitler confidant recovered.

George Takei remember the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, which included himself.

Why three states dumped major private prison company in one month. I’ve long been suspicious private prisons with them “extracting guarantees of 100 percent occupancy.”

Cereal bigotry

She was loved (Annette), hated (Maggie)

I was feeling as though I wanted to write about a couple recent deaths, but I needed an angle. Then it came to me.

Annette Funicello, who appeared on the Mickey Mouse Club, was my first TV crush, as I have previously noted; I was hardly the only one – e.g., see Ken Levine’s piece. Heck, my wife said she had a little crush on her. Abnd it wasn’t just my generation: Cheri remembers her as well.

I watched Annette in a number of Disney programs, and almost certainly in Make Room for Daddy with Danny Thomas.

March Rambling, about ME – oh, and other things

I may have mentioned (once or twice?) that it was my birthday this month. Thank you for the 70-odd comments (some VERY odd) on Facebook, and a couple tweets, not to mention comments at this blog. Dustbury cited my March 8, day after my birthday, post.

I won second prize in Pret-A-Vivre’s Oscar game. Thanks!

But the person who best got into the “celebrate Roger” spirit has to be

January Rambling: Rapturous Research and Sour Apples

QUESTION OF THE MONTH: Who are the four music artists to have won an Academy Award for an ACTING role and achieving a #1 album in the U.S.? (This excludes people such as Bruce Springsteen and Elton John, who won MUSIC Oscars.)

Arrgh! – the idiots who are the Newtown truthers. Other fools are harassing the guy who took in six children after the Newtown shootings. The Hitler gun control lie. Related: Run, Hide, Fight: Alabama’s video response to mass shootings. Also, Amy’s poem – “If Jesus had had a gun in Gethsamane, would he have taken aim at the guards?”

Gandhi and gambling.

Idle No More 101. What it’s NOT: “An extended Native American Heritage Month, where non-Natives have to act like they’re fascinated by Native culture.”

The power of the Mouse.

Talk about class warfare.

June Ramblin': my Facebook follies

The problem with Facebook: I had passed along some funny item. As it turns out, though, the original cover of Tails had been Photoshopped to remove the comma after the word cooking, this giving the post a whole new meaning. Read about it here.

The wife of a World War II soldier waited for more than 68 years for solid proof that her husband is either dead or alive. Then she learned the stunning truth in Normandy, France. Steve Hartman reports. A sad, maddening, and ultimately, touching story.

Mark Evanier tells the The Ray Bradbury-Julius Schwartz-Al Feldstein Story, at the San Diego Comic Con. Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3 and Part 4.
Also: Ray Bradbury: 1950s comics’ illustrated man.

The British sense of personal privacy is very different from the American one. Asking someone’s name, even implicitly by offering yours, is a premature violation of that privacy until some goodwill has already been established between you.

From Alan David Doane:

Dammit, Dan, I’m a librarian, not a meteorologist!

(Title inspired by We can’t see DeForest for the trees.)

Dan from albanyweblog.com griped:
Okay Roger… How come it’s so damn hot right now?
I want a thorough answer.

Sure.

I went to Google and put in why is it so damn hot. Unfortunately, all that got me is why certain types are hot, e.g., “Why are Canadian girls so damn hot?”

The blogs as squirrel nuts

Shooting Parrots wrote:

Ever since I was I was boy, I’ve collected ‘interesting’ bits of information. I put that in quotes because by interesting, I mean interesting to me. I can’t speak for anyone else.

I collected them like a squirrel gathers nuts, tasty kernels of facts that I then bury away somewhere because I know they’ll come in handy one day.

But like the squirrel, too often I forget where I’ve buried them, or I remember only half the story, which can be worse.

That’s one of the reasons I keep this blog. If I record things somewhere that has its own search facility then I’ve a better than even chance of finding it again when I need it.

Mr. Parrot's & Tom the Mayor's Moral Dilemma Questions

Shooting Parrots, from across the pond, as they say, decides to try to confound me.

Okay, here is one of those moral dilemma questions for you:

Your closest friend wants to talk to you about something, but you have to promise that it is just between the two of you. They then tell you that they ran someone over with their car last night and drove off without stopping to see how they were.

The following day you read that the person died and their body had been hit by several other cars. One of those drivers has been arrested and charged with causing death by dangerous driving. Worse still, it appears that driver may have been drunk.

You don’t know whether it was your friend that killed the person or the cars that came later, but at the very least it was your friend who put the person in a situation where they would be killed.

You try to persuade your friend to turn themselves in, but they flatly refuse. Meanwhile, an ‘innocent’ driver may go to jail because of it and carry the guilt of it for ever.

You have no idea