Loosely Speaking

By Ciel - About Me - E-mail this page - Add to My Favorites - Add to Blog List - See other blogs in Everything Else

Thursday, April 4, 2013

The Tylenol Tampering Case

I didn't hear this first as a news story, but as gossip. My younger daughter, when she was in middle-school in Tumwater, Washington, had a teacher that no one much liked, though that is beside the point. One afternoon, that teacher complained of a headache: she went home and took some tylenol. She wasn't in school the next day, and pretty soon, word had gotten around, she'd been poisoned. Not to death, but she was pretty ill, and her husband, before too long, was arrested for attempted murder,... Sign in to see full entry.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Water Weight and Weight Loss

A little discussion between Wiley and Naut inspired these thoughts. If I fail to take the little daily pill that keeps my body from hoarding water, I weigh in 5 lbs heavier than when I take it as I should. Weight-loss is the weight apart from that, that stays off over time. I am currently 60lbs lighter than when I started to lose weight, and the basic routine has been to eat for health, not for weight-loss. A diagnosis of diabetes, of course, is additional inspiration. On the other hand, 5 lbs... Sign in to see full entry.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

"I'm sorry, I'm new here..."

I heard it again today: I was at a PeiWei restaurant, where I am unfamiliar with the menu. I asked about two things on the menu and the only person there behind the counter, could not give me a coherent answer about either one... saying, "Sorry, I'm new here." She felt terribly awkward, from the looks of things, when I didn't just accept that. Fine. You're new. I'm also new here, and I want to give you some money for some food. Why can you not tell me about the food? I don't blame her, or the... Sign in to see full entry.

Monday, January 21, 2013

here's a thought...

What if people... if I, if you, if we all could seperate our most cherished causes and passions from our pride in this nation of ours? Have your cause, have your opinion, your pride in who you are... But let me have mine, and I will let you have yours... and we will let them over there, have their's... And we will not hurt one another, for our differences. There has never been a more civilized concept in the world: That all in the civic community may have, and believe, and be, and speak... with... Sign in to see full entry.

LINCOLN and Obama

And the Inauguration Day party--despite the hissing and spitting from those who really seem to believe there was a viable choice in either of the past two elections--goes on... Congratulations, President Obama--and now, get busy with the business that you can get done because the threat of losing the next election doesn't hang over you. I went to the movies last night to see LINCOLN. I wasn't sure what to expect, being one who avoids trailers and spoilers as much as possible. Some move-makers... Sign in to see full entry.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

One of the most moving and saddest of Christmas songs

is the Coventry Carol, the story of the Slaughter of the Innocents, which most of us learned in one Bible school or another. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYFDO02Y2aI This is the Kingston Trio's version, my favorite. In fact, this event probably never happened. As horrific as such a thing would be, and as bruited about as it would have been, not a single historian of the period speaks of it. Josephus, the best known scholar/historian of the time, and himself a Jew, never mentions such an event.... Sign in to see full entry.

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

"Yeah, it's been amazing... phones ringing off the hooks...

... Made $5000 in the hour after the shootings, $10,000 more in the next few hours after that." This, we overheard at the local coffee house on Tuesday morning. Not everyone feels grief, apparently, over the killings in Connecticut. Theory: a lot of people see gun control and more stringent gun sales controls coming, in the wake of this outrage, and want to make sure they get theirs, before that happens. Sign in to see full entry.

Friday, December 14, 2012

How bad does it have to get

before common sense outweighs outdated entitlements, before real life, and real death becomes more significant than paranoid ideas of what might happen if... How many tragic days would have not happened, if guns were even just a little harder to get...? When I think of the families who right now have no idea what to do with the Christmas gifts they've lovingly, happily wrapped, for those 20 children... it makes me sick in my gut, with the sadness and futility of it all. Sign in to see full entry.

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Naut's got me going again

with his recent series on booze. Lonely Planet chat-rooms, where I hung out a few years ago, were mostly inhabited by the older adolescent, aka, 'young adult' crowd, and I was saddened to see the pervasive drunk-culture there, where drinking, is about getting drunk and nothing else. Just like sex is about pleasure, with no joy or true intimacy being any part of it. I guess that was when I began to mourn for the next generations. This culture of over-indulgence, arises from a society that... Sign in to see full entry.

Thursday, November 22, 2012

Don't blame it on the fog.

I'm sure someone will, but it is not the fog's fault. It is the driver who refuses to drive a safe distance behind the car ahead, who does not drive with respect for weather and road conditions. Three seconds. Even two. That's a safe distance, a reasonable stopping distance in normal driving. Go slower when there is fog, or wet pavement, or downpour or snow or the possibility of ice. Be attentive, always, under any conditions. It is not just the laws of the road, it's the laws of physics: tons... Sign in to see full entry.

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