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"You sell hot dogs!"

My apologies. One of the things I like best about these collections of leftover mini-articles and links is finding or creating amusing illustrations. None of that today. This morning I somehow managed to delete my folder full of images, so you get words and nothing but words.

CRANKY
OLD FART

#224

leftovers
& links

 
Friday,
Nov. 4, 2022

Next time, lots of pretty pictures. I promise.

♦ ♦ ♦

Since arriving in Seattle in March, I've been job-hunting, but casually. I'd like a job I'd like, so I'm being picky. If I haven't found a decent job by the new year then I'll settle for shitty work, but right now it's fun watching movies all day.

There's only one application I've filled out that's still pending, and that's to drive for the county bus agency. Odds are stacked against me, I figure, just because of my grandfatherly age, but I've made it to the second round, where everyone fills out a psychological profile questionnaire.

Last time I filled out one of these, it was ten years ago, ten questions, with very obvious right and wrong answers. This one's 100 questions, and for most of them, the answers they want aren't obvious at all. 

Some are straightforward, and you'd have to be a fool to answer wrong, like, 

• Safety rules should be followed
[ ] when they're reasonable.
[ ] always.

And there are several questions intended to weed out assholes, like,

• I prefer criticism that is
[ ] blunt and direct.
[ ] tactful and constructive.

• It's important to arrive at work on time
[ ] always.
[ ] unless you have a good excuse.

As expected in any test like this, a few of the questions are designed to detect introverts, and prevent us from finding employment. There's a lot of prejudice against quiet people, so for those questions I lied and became gregarious and friendly.

• At a social event, I am
[ ] a fly on the wall.
[ ] the life of the party.

• I make friends
[ ] easily.
[ ] with some difficulty.

A whole hell of a lot of Metro's questions were more ambiguous, and who knows what they were looking for, like,

• False rumors about me would be
[ ] frustrating.
[ ] amusing. 

'Amazing' was not an option.

• At work it is important to
[ ] have strong relationships.
[ ] be the best. 

I don't think either of those is important at work. If anything's important it's just doing the work, best you can.

• In making decisions, I tend to
[ ] trust my gut.
[ ] methodically analyze the options. 

Depends on the decision, of course. Depends on my mood. Depends on whether it's an important or insignificant decision. 'Depends' was never an option on any of the questions.

• On tasks with deadlines, I
[ ] complete the work immediately.
[ ] put it off to the last minute. 

Like most of these questions, I'm somewhere in the middle — they gave me a week to fill out the questionnaire, and I did it on the third day.

It's frustrating that so many of their questions seemed irrelevant and too dumb to ask, let alone answer. Answer I did, though, and as honestly as possible, which will almost certainly eliminate me before the swimsuit competition.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

It's rare for me to dream a comedy, but this dream came with a laugh track:

There's a TV sit-com starring Fred MacMurray but it's not quite My Three Sons, and I'm not watching it on TV. I'm sorta in it, not as a character or an actor, though. Maybe I'm a camera; the show is simply happening all around me, like life.

McMurray is driving a forklift at a loading dock, but he's still the folksy senior citizen from My Three Sons, so he wears a suit. Driving the forklift in a suit doesn't pay enough to support his three sons, so he also has a night job at the ball park concession stand, selling hot dogs during baseball games.

The secretary at the loading dock — a young thing, pretty, I think it was Tuesday Weld — goes to a ball game one night, and sees MacMurray working at the concession stand. He's wearing a suit, naturally. She says hello and buys a hot dog.

Next day at the office, she keeps popping out from behind plastic-wrapped shipping flats and pallets of canned peas, whatever, to say to MacMurray, "You sell hot dogs!"

She says it cute and perky, and it's the show's million-dollar catch phrase, like "How you doin'?" or "Missed it by that much" or "Dy-no-mite!" The audience that isn't there explodes with pre-recorded laughter every time she says, "You sell hot dogs!" That's the pilot episode.

Is the line supposed to have sexual connotations? Probably. What doesn't? But she's not saying it dirty. It's all very innocent, and funnier than Ernie Kovacs.

After I woke up to pee and spilled some because I was laughing so much, there was a second episode where Tuesday goes to another ball game, buys another hot dog from Fred MacMurray in a suit, and this time she giggles and says, "You drive a forklift!" And man, it's hilarious, really.

When I woke up I couldn't stop laughing, like someone was tickling me. Laughing and laughing and saying to myself, "You sell hot dogs!" I was still laughing, as I typed this at 2:25 in the morning, knowing it wouldn't be funny come sunrise.

Next morning, though, damn it — "You sell hot dogs!" And I'm laughing again.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

I waited two weeks, because I know that "You sell hot dogs!" is among the dumbest things I've ever typed. Then I read it again this morning, and it still cracks me up, so I'm printing it, damn it.

♦ ♦ ♦

And now, the news you need,
whether you know it or not

Declassified report shows DHS tried to fulfill Trump's Antifa fantasies when handling Portland protests 

Right-wing political propaganda posing as local news circulating across country 

"They defamed her": Uvalde educator falsely accused of leaving school door open seeks answers

Indiana doctor sues AG to block him from obtaining patient abortion records 

Police back Republican candidates in U.S. midterms, even those at Jan. 6 riot 

The ridiculous but important Twitter verification debate, explained 

Elon Musk's Twitter layoffs leave whole teams gutted 

I don't understand Musk's strategy in buying and immediately dismantling Twitter, but I never understood Twitter in the first place. Stories like this will be in the news for months, and I won't link to most of them, since it'll be news you can read everywhere. I'm linking today because this bit at the end cracked me up almost as much as "You sell hot dogs!":

Twitter didn’t have a comment for this story by press time. The company’s communications department is almost entirely gone as of Friday.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

One-word newscast,
because it's the same news every time… 

• Climate change isn't 'coming', it's underway. It'll kill billions, and we're not doing squat about it.   

climate  

climate  

climate  

climate

• All cops are bastards, or they know who the bastard cops are and do nothing about it, which is the same thing.    

cops  

cops  

cops  

cops  

cops  

cops  

cops  

cops  

cops  

cops  

cops 

• Republicans are the enemy of common sense, common decency, simple truth, and democracy.  

Republicans  

Republicans   

Republicans  

Republicans  

Republicans   

Republicans   

Republicans  

Republicans  

Republicans  

Republicans 

Republicans

♦ ♦ ♦

Other links I liked

How much press are you worth? 

Did Vikings find their way to a remote part of Oklahoma? 

Motorized roller skates 

Marrying dead children 

Telephones on wheels, 1960 

RetiredPornStar offers her advice for ladies in the bedroom 

Anal wink 

Black hairy tongue

♦ ♦ ♦ 

Mystery links

click 

click 

click 

♦ ♦ ♦

♫♬  Mix tape of my mind  ♫

• "Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd

• "Four Seasons" by Vivaldi

♦ ♦ ♦

The End

Ahmed Alshaiba 

Beryl Benacerraf 

Hannah Goslar

11/4/2022   

Cranky Old Fart is annoyed and complains and very occasionally offers a kindness, along with anything off the internet that's made me smile or snarl. All opinions fresh from my ass. Top illustration by Jeff Meyer. Click any image to enlarge. Comments & conversations invited.
 
Tip 'o the hat to Linden Arden, ye olde AVA, BoingBoing, Breakfast at Ralf's, Captain Hampockets, CaptCreate's Log, John the Basket, LiarTownUSA, Meme City, National Zero, Ran Prieur, Voenix Rising, and anyone else whose work I've stolen without saying thanks.
 
Extra special thanks to Becky Jo, Name Withheld, Dave S, Wynn Bruce, and always Stephanie...

17 comments:

  1. (okay, then here's a dream sequence i just had, dammit):
    I had an absolutely fabulous dream: in a social scene, a cafe, and lounging amorously with a just-met woman, then as another woman had cuddled up to her i turned to another, sat beside her, and she started to kiss me, tho i was oddly loyal to the first woman, then I went to get this amazing dessert and the counter lady was all over me, and i was on her and it was this blissful dream of women and desserts and i awoke, hmm, maybe couldn't handle all the joy and affection, and once awake i truly wondered why life wasn't like this...

    the next dream i had: i was in a room with all these
    little bears, baby bears, and the mama bear is freaking out,
    she gets up on her hind legs and smashes against the door,
    once, twice and breaks it down...
    then she and another bear or two turn to me fully standing
    and they have guns and bandoliers and are ready for bizness,
    then i wake up

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Pardon my doxxing, but -- Paul, is that you? With the combination of multiple horny women plus dessert, it sounds so sweet you might as well have signed your name. :)

      And did you catch the name of the cafe? Sounds like a place I'd love to try myself...

      Delete
    2. Hey man, I'm really bad now, going here more than one time a day, until i find your latest/ you are addictive like a chocolate malted milkshake...Yes, it's me, Paul...I did a silly thing yesterday, wrote a short piece about it, and wonder if I can post it on your page as a post, it's sort of funny i think...Where'd you get such good grammar? College graduate?

      Delete
    3. Paul here, I emailed you the vignette

      Delete
    4. It took a long while for me to read the word vignette and not see vinaigrette.

      I took a single math course at a community college once, but dropped out of it, same as I'd dropped out of high school.

      Delete
    5. I should think you'd meet a lot of women in a single math course. You might even find your opposite Fibonacci number.

      jtb

      I should mention that that was one more math course than I took in community college.

      Delete
    6. I understand the concept of Fibonacci numbers, but not the point. Two rising numbers that add up to the third. Lather, rinse, repeat.

      My question is the same question I had for lots of math concepts, just "so what and why bother?" I ask my brother the mathematician and he says the joy is in the discovery. Maybe for Fibonacci.

      Big surprise: I didn't even want to take the math class, but there was a girl...

      Delete
    7. You know the answers to your question because the number of years a person engages in formal education is not correlated with intelligence or the ability to embrace abstract concepts. So you're fucking with me, which I don't mind so much because I enjoy our virtual conversations.

      Two tings . . .

      Your brother is, predictably, right and wrong. Yes, there's beauty in symmetry and correlation and even in derivation. Not just how the planets and fake planets orbit the Sun, but how a painting by Edward Hopper (e.g., Nighthawks, Gas, Automat) make me feel. (I was going to say "make us feel" but how should I presume?)

      Purely mathematical discoveries and theories that seemed at first to have no particular application in our world have yielded the WWW, cell phone infrastructure, the Moon landings and microwave ovens. Yesterday, in my continuing visits to our region's leading and trailing hospitals to try to keep my heart beating, I spent some time passing through a Cat Scanner, whose underlying technology was revealed and honed by mathematics. I wouldn't know who the fuck you were without mathematics to connect us, and I enjoy knowing the little I do about who your are. It makes my life more interesting.

      So the two tings: beauty and practical discovery are, at their base, inseparable. Both elevate our paltry intelligence and transform us from multiple amphibians to multiple amphibians with a culture.

      The answer to your question (or implied question) is that the Fibonacci sequence (which was discovered at least a thousand years before Fibonacci lived) describes thousands and tens of thousands of naturally occurring phenomena including the number of petals on blooms of thousands of species of flowers, the number of leaves on stems of thousands of trees and bushes, and a number of physical phenomena in the animal kingdom, including coloring patterns on many insects and even birds.

      The Fibonacci sequence is also used in algorithmic search engines, compression algorithms (which enable telecommunications systems to work), design software for everything from jet engines to building HVAC systems, and yup, art.

      For mathematicians, the fact that consecutive Fibonacci numbers get closer and closer to the golden ratio the larger they get makes them nervous (and perplexed). Even for me, just about as much of a non-mathematician as you'll find, when a sequence in an abstract discipline like math accurately predicts as many real-universe phenomena as the standard Fibonacci sequence does it is both spooky and beautiful.

      John

      Delete
    8. Here's me hoping for a benign diagnosis, man. I want your doctor to say "No worries, eat more cottage cheese and you'll be fine."

      Fibonacci sounds like a fancy ice cream, and I want some.

      The number of petals on blooms? Really? I won't ask you to explain because I'm sure it's too much for me, but you say it beautifully.

      CAT scan technology and the internet and my microwave oven are all amazing, and we have smart people to thank for all of it, but I know my strengths and math will never be among them. My bro doesn't talk about math as often as my dad talked about aeronautics, but the passion is the same and always it's over my headache. I can certainly see "why bother" for them, and for society at large, but I'll never see "why bother" with heavy math for me. It's a required class in school, and it shouldn't be.

      I do hope the heavy math comes through for you, Dr John.

      Delete
    9. I appreciate your good wishes. I figure it's not happytime when the people in the hospital outpatient admitting area start calling me by my first name.


      I dropped out of college to attend vocational school. Colleges I could get into didn't teach what was then called Commercial Data Processing and I think is now called computing design and programming but how would I know? Maybe they call it fuckin' and suckin' to attract more people to the program. Where was I?

      Oh, yeah, so no math in college. So no physics; so no astrophysics. But my old man, a savvy gentleman, told me that if I read the right periodicals and books I could gain a conceptual understanding of complicated stuff like fluid dynamics and the physical effects on tires of salting the streets in winter. He said the details of any complex endeavor might escape my grasp, but that if I could understand the concepts, rules, and practices of complicated topic areas that I'd have some idea of how the world worked and how the stuff up above the world worked.

      When I attended high school starting in 1965, he INSISTED on only one subject in my curriculum choices: math? nope; English lit? nope. . . typing. Years before computer keyboards became ubiquitous, he decided that qwerty typing was a skill that would come in handy, whatever I did. For a guy who grew up in the Depression and couldn't even think about going to college, he was a pretty smart guy.

      So I subscribed to Science News and read articles on mathematics that I couldn't quite understand. Still do. I don't pretend to be even a novice at anything complicated, but I understand some of the concepts.

      Math is a closed system, and when a closed system accurately predicts the set of most common flower bloom arrangements (after the flower and its antecedents have been growing and changing for a billion years) then math might have some other useful things to say about the universe we live in.

      That's all I was saying above. Just think of it as fuckin' and suckin' with numbers. Maybe you shouldn't describe it that way to your brother. He might get the wrong idea of who you're hanging around with online. Or the right idea, which would be worse.

      Take care, my brother.

      John

      Delete
    10. It's fun reading anything you write.

      I always knew how to type, far back as I can remember. I hunt and peck, but fast and accurate. I wanted to take a summer school typing class once, because I thought ordinary QWERTY typing would be more efficient, but it never stuck. My own system of typing was part of me by then.

      Fuckin' is both a mystery and a memory, but I know really nothing at all about suckin'. Tried it during cunnilingus twice, but the response was What the hell are you doing? Lick, don't suck. Sucked a fella once, and he enjoyed it but I didn't, so I'd say I'm more into fuckin' and *being* sucked, although at this late date beggars certainly can't choose.

      Delete
  2. Musk is a fool in many ways, and I'm sure it's not his intention, but if he were to inadvertently destroy twitter - I mean so badly that the site was permanently removed from the internet - I would consider him the greatest hero of the 21st Century.

    There is no technology or platform that has done more damage to society - people's minds - political discourse - journalism - 500 years of logical cultural development - than Twitter.

    Fuck Musk, but fuck Twitter too.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't think Musk will get Twitter completely off the internet, but with his talent for having no talent, Twitter could be the next MySpace.

      I don't do social media or even understand it, but I thought the consensus was that Facebook had done the most damage to all that is good, at least pre-Musk.

      Delete
    2. Jeez, I thought this WAS social media. I can't imagine tweeting or facebooking. Facesitting is a different story: but that was long ago, in a land far, far away.

      jtb

      Delete
    3. When social media was all very new, not yet universally recognized as evil by everyone with a positive IQ, I signed up with Facebook, and *possibly* MySpace, just to see what the heck was going on. It might be worthwhile if you're a social person, but that ain't me, probably not you. I wandered away in mere days.

      I would cheerfully sign up for Facesitting, though.

      Delete
  3. You're applying to be a bus driver again? You quit that job a few months ago though...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The job I had in August was driving a bus for disabled folks; an ordinary van, lengthened and otherwise modified into a bus. This next job I've applied for is driving the same public transit buses I ride.

      Delete

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