Beauty

Beauty isn't everything, but it sure isn't nothing!  Of course, female beauty is something that women notice twice as much as men!

I once read a book of Italian folktales, and one of the stories had a villainess called the Ugly Arab Woman.  Yet of the actual Arab women I've seen, a lot of them are really gorgeous, like George Clooney's wife Amal. (She's a human rights lawyer, so I suppose she has inner beauty too.) I have a feeling that in the Middle East they have a deeper understanding of beauty than we do in the West.

Ever see the Disney movie Sleeping Beauty?  There's an evil fairy called Maleficent, and one of the good fairies says about her, "I don't think she's really happy." But there's this big climax where Maleficent turns into a dragon--right at that moment, I'll bet she was happy!

And there's another Disney movie, Beauty and the Beast.  The ending I'd like to see is one where Belle marries Beast and gives birth to mutants!  Friends visit them and say, "What cute little mutants you have!"

Aside from redheads, I find that women look more beautiful in black & white photos than in color...

Bicycles

I haven't ridden a bicycle for years.  Walking is good enough for me.

In Denmark they have this nifty recumbent bike with three wheels and an egg-shaped streamlined cover around it.  I'll be you could mount a mast and sail too!

It's a shame that most Americans associate bicycles with children.  If grownups started using bikes instead of cars, it could revolutionize their way of life!

I once saw this Italian movie The Bicycle Thief, about a man whose livelihood depends on his bicycle being robbed of it, then him and his sone going on a long search for it.  That's a movie I'm never going to see again--too sad for me!

I remember this commercial for Chef Boyardee's Beefaroni where a kid on a bike zooms into an alley, then half a dozen kids on bike come zooming out!

I also remember an episode of the religious puppet show Davey and Goliath where he met a girl and let her ride on his bike's handle bars--though he knew that was dangerous--and they got into an accident.

Snowball fight

I can't think of much to say about snowballs.  I like the moist snow that falls in big flakes that allows you to make snowballs and snowmen.  But it quickly freezes and becomes icy snow, which I don't like.

I remember learning that snowballs with a rock inside are dangerous!  That's something I never tried...

I remember seeing Abel Gance's silent movie Napoleon.  In one early scene, when he was at military school, the cadets had a snowball fight.  Napoleon's group was outnumbered, but thanks to his tactical skills they gave the other side a licking!

In Orwell's Soviet allegory The Animal Farm there's a pig called Snowball who clearly represents Trotsky. (His name must come from the expression "as much chance as a snowball in hell.") And I think the comic strip Steve Canyon had a Chinese guerrilla leader called Princess Snowball.  (On second thought, she was Princess Snowflower!)

Oblivion

The word "oblivion" comes from the Latin word for forgetting.  The other day was the Armistice centenary and was thinking that the Latin for "Lest we forget" is "Ne obliviscemur."

A few years ago I saw an old photograph of some ancestors of mine from about a century ago.  They were wearing silly hats and having fun--somehow that seemed more real to me than your typical posed studio portrait.  But we didn't know their names.  I was wondering, "A century from now, will people be looking at our photos and wondering who we were?" I suppose that's how life is:  even the people who remember you will be dead someday.

About twenty years ago I saw a funny movie Living in Oblivion, about a group of people filming a low-budget art film.  The first part is about the director (Steve Buscemi) having a nightmare, imagining everything that can go wrong in a day of filming.  The second part is about the insecure lead actress (Catherine Keener), who's been having an affair with the leading man--clearly based on Brad Pitt!  In her nightmare their affair becomes common knowledge on the set, causing her great embarrassment.

At the end of the movie they're imagining their futures.  The director sees himself winning an Oscar and using his acceptance speech to settle old scores, while the actress sees herself waiting tables and serving a customer who says, "Didn't I see you in a movie once?"

Eggs

"May all your duck eggs have double yolks!"--Tommy Makem

Does anyone intentionally soft-boil an egg?  Seems to me, that's what happens when you wanted to hard-boil the egg but weren't patient enough to finish the boiling!

I remember when I was a kid the Agriculture Minister Eugene Whalen got into controversy when his marketing board lost about a million eggs.  It's funny what you remember.

I was thinking that I could eat omelet for dinner every day!  But I guess it would get boring after a while...

I remember that when my mother made an omelet there'd sometimes be big pieces of shell in it.  I heard there's some cooking school in Paris where they spend the whole first day teaching you the right way to break an egg!

I've always wondered, How do farmers know when an egg is going to hatch and when it's just a regular egg?  There's this cartoon in The Far Side where a farm wife collects the eggs from the henhouse, only to see a hen leaving the farmhouse with a baby!

Remembering things wrong

When I was young I saw the miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man.  There's one scene in it where this bully forced Nick Nolte into a fight.  My memory told me that Nolte ended up knocking the guy out cold.  But when I saw it in recent years, it turned out that was an exaggeration:  Nolte did lick the guy, but he was still conscious afterward.  Yet I can't help feeling the scene would have been better my way!

Sometimes I think about those simple ways things could have been better.  Like on the TV cartoon Underdog. (What kind of superhero goes by the name Underdog, of all names?) The theme song goes, "Speed of lightning, roar of thunder!  Fighting all who rob or plunder!" It seems to me that the song should have gone "Fighting all who rob and plunder!" I'm a born editor.

My mother was always remembering things wrong. But that was her kooky style. (Do you know people like that?) What bugs me is people drawing the wrong lesson from their wrong memories, like those who still claim that Bernie Sanders didn't support Hillary Clinton in her fight against Donald Trump, which he clearly did!

Lakes, ponds and quarries

When I was growing up in Sackville, N.B., we lived near a quarry pond.  There was a brook that flowed into it and one that flowed out. (On one occasion my brother John dammed up the brook flowing in and for a little while the place became really quiet.  In the winter it froze and we could skate on it.  I still dream about it from time to time.

The place was fairly picturesque.  Sometimes the fine arts students from the nearby university would come there and paint the scene.  We increased the beauty by introducing some lupin flowers from the land near our cottage and they spread over the area.  Some were white, some blue, some red, and hybrids soon appeared.

Do you go down to visit Lake Ontario?  My parents and I used to do that back when we had a car.  We mostly went to the beach at Sunnyside, but a few times we went to the one at Mimico.  One place I've enjoyed visiting is the Leslie Street spit.  I like that it's a work in progress, with new landfill continually expanding it in several places.  I remember one time when we visited in April, and it was so cool that big snowflakes started falling!  Funny what you remember...

The dump

Time for a corny joke!

Q:  Where does the Lone Ranger take his garbage?

A:  To the dump, to the dump, to the dump-dump-dump...

I saw this 60 Minutes report once about the garbage system in Cairo.  Most of the people there are Moslems with high cleanliness standards, so they let the Christian minority handle their garbage.  It's easier to stay clean when there are other people less fussy about it!

Ever see those trash dumpsters near construction sites?  I remember the movie Purple Rain, where Prince had this flamboyant rival (Morris Day, who stole the show). In one scene the rival got accosted by his girlfriend, so he had his assistant throw her into a dumpster!

I also remember this movie Moonlighting, where Jeremy Irons was leading a group of Polish workers in London renovating a communist official's apartment. (He heard that the Solidarity movement had been suppressed, but didn't tell the others because he wanted the job finished first.) In one scene they were filling a dumpster with all the rubble from their work, but their neighbours all took to putting their own garbage in it, so it got overloaded, and when the dumpster got taken away half the rubble got left behind. Some neighbours! (I've just been reading a book about Polish history.)