Prove It

July 30, 2016

Another business is asking for tax breaks in return for expanding its headquarters in the area. The business estimates that it will bring hundreds of thousands of dollars and hundreds of jobs to the area in the next few years.

I say, “Prove it.” 

Once you’ve established that your projections were accurate, and that you have in fact been an overall boon for the area, we can talk about tax breaks.

And incidentally, what you’re doing is called “Cost of business.” Pay for it.

Cyber-Paranoia

July 29, 2016

I don't normally look at Facebook's Friend Suggestions, but I was scrolling through and noticed that one of the suggestions was a woman I work with.

I haven't listed my job on my profile, and we have no friends in common. They must be doing some serious data mining!

It creeped me out.

Most Incongruous Event Name

July 26, 2016

In the newsletter from the St. Louis Rescue and Restore Coalition:

Human Trafficking and You Game Night

He’s Just a Thoughtful Guy

June 30, 2016

Missouri Senator Dave Schatz drafted a bill to make gun licensing a one-time process in Missouri—none of those pesky renewals every five years. He says he’s trying to save people time and money.

It was thoughtful of him to try to save his constituents all that time.

What would really be swell is if we didn’t have to renew our driver’s licenses or car registrations every two years.

The High Life

July 17, 2016

Overheard: 

“You know it's a fancy restaurant when they shrink-wrap your doggie-bag carton.”

Workplace Perks

July 14, 2016

I’m lucky enough to work on the first floor of my office building, so that when I want to step out for a breath of fresh air, it’s easy. It really improves my mood.

It would be cool if office buildings came with balconies on the higher floors so that people up there could step out for air, too.

Shallow Is as Shallow Does

July 15, 2016

I keep running across mystery books where an average-looking woman somehow lands a dream guy, who chooses her over the glamorous women he’s met. Her personality/charm/spunk/whatever wins the day. She finds a guy who is not shallow!

What I’m not finding are books where the average-looking or good-looking woman goes for an average-looking guy whose charm/spunk/personality outweighs the fact that he’s not a hunk.

Where are the non-shallow women?

Only Ten Thousand?

July 18, 2016

I don’t know why people make such a big deal about getting 10,000 steps in a day. I can do that just wandering from room to room, trying to remember what I set out to do in the first place.

I Can’t Turn My Back On It For Five Minutes

July 15, 2016

“Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.”  (Ecclesiastes 1:2)

If you substitute “Futility” for “vanity”, it describes my efforts to keep my kitchen floor swept.

The Versatile Stones

May 17, 2016

I never really paid attention to The Rolling Stones when I was growing up. But I’ve found them to be very useful over the past couple of decades. You can do warm-ups and exercises to them: from “Time is On My Side” to “19^th Nervous Breakdown”, they run the gamut of great songs to stretch and work out to.

“Play with Fire” is great for learning to do martial arts punches properly—nice and slow, with a good one-two-three rhythm on the chorus for low, medium and high punches; while “Paint it Black” gives you a good rhythm to punch to once you’ve got the proper form down. I learned a Pyong form to “Heart of Stone”; and “As Tears Go By” has excellent rhythms for my physical therapy.

They’ve got it all.

No matter what age I am, it's a Stones Age.

Who Programmed This Thing, Anyhow?

July 2, 2016

Auto-correct on my phone has some curious omissions: I was texting a reply to a voice message about fettuccine, but I was spelling it wrong. Instead of correcting fettuccine, the auto-correct filled in “Destruction” and, later, “Tetracycline.” I think the programmer may have issues.

And when I texted someone about taking selfies, it didn’t have that word in its dictionary, either. Imagine—a cell phone that’s never heard of selfies!