What is going on? Celebrities are dropping like flies these days (I say flies because they thrive on waste, carry germs, and spit on you while looking for a meal). That’s four celebrities in about one week. Oh well.
In order of expiration: Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, and Billy Mays.
At approximately 33 years, 7 months, 8 days, and 10 hours of age, I became a husband. The matrimonial plunge arrived nearly twelve years after I recorded in my Franklin planner the goal of being engaged by Christmas 1996. Good thing goals are flexible.
So on May 1, 2008, I married the sweetest girl imaginable, Mandi, amidst the sound of heavy betting losses among my former college roommates. Ain’t she pretty? For readers interested in details of the springtime ceremony, it snowed like a sky explosion and my best man forgot to show up.
Those perceptive to doings of the Bickmo (that’s me) may have noticed the till-now lack of Mandi-themed posts. Our courtship, engagement, wedding, and first anniversary have all failed to make the Blogmo. Some may claim I have herein failed in my husbandly duties. I have one word for these people: she forgives.
Mandi loves people and obese felines, and has a thing for cakes (visit her decorating site, www.mandicakes.webs.com). Anyone who knows her will tell you she is a wonderful person and a terrific wife. She is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.
So I love you, Mandi. Thirty-three years was worth the wait. You get four stars.
Sentence I accidentally created after deleting the center of a large block of text: Often a poncho.
You may remember my post on Emiliano Mercado del Toro, supercentenarian and then the world’s oldest person. Today we have a new oldest man, Henry Allingham, age 113, who takes the title after today’s death of Tomoji Tanabe from Japan. (What happened to Emilano? I don’t know, but I think we can all guess.)
Allingham is a special man. Born in 1896, he is one of two surviving World War I veterans in the UK, has a great-great-great grandchild, is adored by his family, and wears dentures made in the Churchill era.
To celebrate his stunning achievement, Allingham said:
“I’m still two years younger than the world’s oldest lady, one Mrs. Gertrude Baines from America. I hate her.”
Wisdom borne of experience. If I live to be eleventy-three, I want a giant flag cake too.
I just finished “Escape” by Carolyn Jessop (with Laura Palmer). I found myself unable to pry away as Jessop laid out the horrors she and other polygamist wives endured at the hands of the Fundamentalist Latter-day Saints, or FLDS (not to be confused with mainstream LDS, or Mormons. Totally different.) Jessop underwent emotional, physical, mental, and sexual abuse of the worst kind, and she was far from alone. Despite heavy odds, she became the first FLDS wife to escape with all of her children. That’s eight children, one of whom had suffered a life-threatening medical condition for years. The book also reveals some of the evil mind of Warren Jeffs, the now-convicted FLDS prophet who drew national attention a while back. I do not use the word evil casually here.
Jessop weaves a story so gripping, so horrible, it pierces through the cloud of (sad to say) poor writing. Choppy, lifeless sentences flow on unending, impeding complete surrender to the text. Other annoyances include the occasional statement contradicting an earlier statement, or a prior explanation of FLDS doctrine. A few episodes tend to confuse on the detail level. She also repeats at times points made clear chapters beforehand. These just serve to knock the reader out of the flow. All that said, those are minor quibbles when thrown against the story’s sheer power to shock the reader.
An absorbing read.
As I research ’stress’ for my upcoming persuasive speech, I came across two competing perspectives on the subject. Some consider stress bad, others, a badge of honor, even a status symbol. Do you believe A)…
Don’t let your mind bully your body into believing it must carry the burden of its worries. ~Astrid Alauda
or B)…?
Stress is an admission of weakness, a cry of defeat to the world. ~Carrie Latet
I fall in the first category. What say you?
Other stress quotes:
There is precious little hope to be got out of whatever keeps us industrious, but there is a chance for us whenever we cease work and become stargazers. ~H.M. Tomlinson
Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time. ~J. Lubbock
Slow down and everything you are chasing will come around and catch you. ~John De Paola
It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. ~Jerome K. Jerome, The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow
Stress is poison. ~Agavé Powers
This is me today: mellow with a touch of melancholy.
Sunset at Russell, Bay of Islands
It took thirty years and eleven films, but Paramount Pictures finally managed to do the impossible: name a Star Trek film “Star Trek”. They also kept William Shatner from overacting by casting someone else.
Scheduled for release on May 9, 2009, “Star Trek: No Colons Here” stars Chris Pine as Baby Kirk, Zachary Quinto as Baby Spock, and other young doppelgangers as the Baby Crew. Because I’m a lazy researcher, I don’t know the plot yet, although the film clearly returns to the franchise’s roots of spaceships firing white hot beams at other spaceships flown by people in their pajamas. I can’t wait.
My middle sister has a blog. It is a good blog. A very good blog. A riveting, engrossing, colorful, spectacular, heavy-lifting blog with few if any sentence fragments. BUT…it contains precious little on yours truly!! After an anonymous tip, she posted this spot-on piece. Read, absorb, enjoy.
Jaimard, I heap laudatory sentiment upon you.
Word of the day: tautology
