the red bentley



I was out driving one afternoon, doing errands. As I was coming to a stop at a red light I looked over and in the next lane I saw a Bentley. A red Bentley. A red Bentley with a middle aged man driving, alone, in his $200,000+ car. Huh, I thought. Very nice car. But RED? Metallic red? What kind of a color is metallic red for a Bentley? It's like buying a bright red Rolls Royce. WHY? Bentley makes lots of beautiful colors one can choose. They have black, grays, purples, tans, greens, whites, maroons. They even have a Porpoise color (whatever THAT is. Grayish?) A metallic red Bentley? OK, I can see a metallic red color for a Ferrari or some other expensive foreign sports car. Or a Ford Mustang. I can see a metallic red exterior color for a Corvette. OK, red is a cool color - for certain cars. But not for a Bentley. It didn't look right. It didn't look like the exclusive expensive extravagant car that it is. It did not look suave and sophisticated. It looked "cheap". It looked "common". That's just my opinion. Of course, if someone can afford to pay $200,000 or more for a car, they can choose whatever color they want! This is especially true in trendy L.A., the car capital of the world.

When I buy my Bentley (after I win the lottery) I will not choose a red one. Maybe I'll get the porpoise colored one. Then again, depending on how big a lottery jackpot I win, maybe I'll get one in EVERY color! Every color except red.




Bee a butterfly



The caterpillar turns into a butterfly.
So can you.




overweight brain


"People who are overweight show more age-related decline in their brains than lean people do, a new study published in Neurobiology of Aging suggests.

After analyzing imaging from 527 adults, the researchers discovered overweight people—those with a body mass index (BMI) over 25—had lower volumes of white matter in their brains than people with a BMI of under 25 did.

White matter is the tissue that connects different areas of your brain with each other and allows for communication between your neural regions. It helps you with everything from memory to thinking quickly.

In fact, overweight subjects had brains similar to healthy-weight people who were 10 years older."



Huh. Imagine that, being overweight ages your brain by 10 years. Luckily, it doesn't make you any stupider.




dick dick

A neighbor of mine, who is a Baby Boomer, told me that she is adopting a more millennial attitude, the attitude of: "don't know, don't care". Dk, dc. Pronounced dick dick. She said she is now applying dick dick to most things in her life. I see more and more of the dick dick attitude among both men and women today. Why? Possibly because there is TMI (too much information) and we humans can't process it all. News bombards us 24/7 and includes every little thing that happens anywhere and everywhere. TMN (too much news). Add to that everybody using their cell phone to notify each other about every little thing. "Here's a pic of the food I'm going to eat now." Or a text: "I'm in the bathroom (or the shower)." Or sexting photos of their genitals.

We are afflicted with i.o. (information overload). A natural response to this is to shut a lot of stuff out, ignore it, dismiss it, to not know and not care. Dick dick.

Are people today really not knowing and not caring about more and more things in life? Um, dick dick. I don't know and I don't care.



producktive sunday

Today is Sunday. Supposedly the day of rest. On this Sunday I was very pro-duck-tive.

Sunday morning I got up, ate breakfast, edited my blog, did two loads of laundry, went food shopping, did some fashion photography, cleaned the kitchen floor, cleaned the toilet, cleaned the shower doors. I did all these things before noon. WOW! For me, that's being very productive, especially on a Sunday. Then, after doing all that, it was lunch time. I ate lunch. Then took a nap. A well deserved nap.




getting old



Getting old sucks. Old men once had hair, teeth, and a dick that worked. Now they don't. Now they wear a hat, wear dentures, and take viagra.

When they were young, old men used to be strong. Now they can barely walk up the stairs.

Younger guys can eat tasty bad food, drink a lot of booze and party all night. When they get old they can have clogged arteries, a bad liver, and have to go to sleep at 10 o'clock.

It's no fun getting old. But, considering the alternative, being old is better than being dead. Being old may not be fun but being dead is REALLY not fun. The good news about being old is that, when you get old, you acquire wisdom. And peace. And, if you're a guy, you can still look at, and appreciate, pretty women (no, I am not promoting leering or ogling, just looking).

Getting old sucks. Is it worth it? Yes! In spite of the ailments and frailments of getting old - life gets simpler - and often better.




How to win Powerball



Powerball is a lottery game, with big jackpots, played in the U.S. It's played in 44 States, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands. Powerball games are held twice a week. Often, the jackpot exceeds $100 million.

The odds of winning the Powerball lottery jackpot are 292 million to 1.

So if you continue to play Powerball twice a week, and continue to not win the jackpot, all you have to do to win is live to be 2.92 million years old.

Hey, that'll motivate you to live to a ripe old age. Of course, if you're 3 million years old the bad news is that you'll probably be too old to enjoy spending any of your Powerball Jackpot. Not to mention that, if you play two $2 Powerball games a week, and win the jackpot 3 million years later, you will have spent about $600 million in doing so.

That's how you can win Powerball. OR, you can play and get lucky NOW!

Yes, I know the above is not statistically accurate. Statistically, each time you play Powerball you actually have a 1 in 292 million chance of winning the jackpot. That's even worse than having to live for 3 million years to win. I don't care, for $2 I play anyway and hope to get lucky NOW.




Ode to dad


I was lucky. I had a great dad. He took an interest in me, took time to be a good dad and, as a result, I had a wonderful childhood in upstate New York.

When I was a kid my dad took me places. Local places. He took me to the circus, on pony rides, to professional wrestling matches, basketball games, baseball games, swimming, bike riding, fruit and vegetable picking, hayrides, sleigh rides and everything else that was available in my town. I never lacked for interesting things to do with my dad. And, as a result, I developed an active interest in many things, including sports. As a 10-year-old kid I participated in playground basketball, baseball, football, tennis, swimming, fishing, ice skating, bike riding, sleigh riding (we lived on a hill), hiking (we lived near a mountain) and everything else a kid could do outside. It was fun. It was active. It was outdoors, in all four seasons. It was a fundamental and priceless non-school education. These activities allowed me to discover who I was, what my limits were, what I enjoyed and what I didn't enjoy, what I was good at and what I was not good at. As it turned out, except for bike riding, I was better at indoor games.

I was a lucky kid. I had a terrific active idyllic childhood and I am very grateful for it - and very grateful to my father for providing it and encouraging it. My early years were my life's formative experiences and, luckily, they were mostly good experiences, experiences which stood me in good stead throughout my entire lifetime. Thanks, dad, for helping me become me. You did a good job.




get paid for lying

From ABC News
"Telling little fibs leads down a slippery slope to bigger lies — and our brains adapt to escalating dishonesty, which makes deceit easier, a new study shows.

Neuroscientists at the University College London's Affective Brain Lab put 80 people in scenarios where they could repeatedly lie and get paid more based on the magnitude of their lies. They said they were the first to demonstrate empirically that people's lies grow bolder the more they fib."



Really? I could have told them that. People get paid MORE for bigger lies? What do you think they're going to do? Hmm, let's see, the choice is money or truth? Choose one or the other? Gee, what should people do? What WILL they do? Especially if they're not a millionaire. Duh.