Remembering Big Little Books

 

In my last post ,while doing a  little reminiscing about Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon , I was reintroduced to a long lost friend, BIG LITTLE BOOKS. To quote from the link, " The Whitman BLBs look much like a four-inch block sawed off the end of a two-by-four. Although there were numerous variations in outside dimensions and in number of pages, most were 3 5/8" x 4 1/2" x 1 1/2" in size and 432 pages in length. The outstanding feature of the books was the captioned picture opposite each page of text. The books originally sold for a dime (later 15¢). Many children learned to read and have an appreciation for all books because of their experiences with BLBs. The source material for the books was drawn mostly from radio, comic strips, and motion pictures."

If memory serves me correctly, BLBs were the first books I ever owned. At a dime apiece they were a bargain even in the days of the Great Depression and I was blessed to have parents willing to part with a dime to provide me with a book . As mentioned in the conclusion above, BLBs played an important role in my developing an appreciation for books. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I compare it to a child's experience with computers and the internet today.

I would be remiss if I did not give due credit to public libraries for their role in developing an appreciation for books in my early youth. I still remember story book time on Saturday mornings at the local library.

My biggest regret? I did not save my Big Little Books!  That's what happens when you have enough money to buy big books.

A letter to Barack

Dear President Obama,

I read in this morning’s paper that the Pentagon envisions a military command which will conduct both offensive and defensive computer warfare. It was also reported that you might sometime in the future appoint a cyber czar.

Computer warfare, cyber czars, drone bombers, space stations - it looks like I should get my old Buck Rogers rocket gun out of storage.

Which brings me to the reason for writing this letter. The Pentagon is going to need a Secretary of Computer Warfare and the White House will be in the market for a Cyber Czar. Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon would make excellent candidates. They have considerable experience with space warfare and sophisticated computers. Take a look at the pictures showing them in action.

I have no idea where these gentlemen reside or if they are still alive. I’m sure that Director Panetta will have no difficulty finding them. He might start right in his own backyard.

If the vetting process ever gets started, I hope you will disregard the rumors that Flash got his name because he is a flasher. Neither the CIA nor the FBI will find any records of a conviction. As for Buck, his only drawback is that he has a four letter word for a first name. Originally his name was Willard. I’m sure he would agree to going back to Willard.

By the way when you talk to Leon, have him take another look at Dick Cheney’s background. He bears some resemblance to Emperor Ming ( I've enclosed a picture). Flash was supposed to have vanquished him but I’m not too sure.







Barack, hope you pardon the familiarity , I’ve noticed that lately you’re not smiling as much as you used to. I can understand why, but don’t let the bastards get you down. With Buck and Flash helping you, the job will be a breeze but watch out for Ming!

Got to log off of the computer, someone is trying to hack in. Wish you had that cyber czar!

Tony
( Remember me? The guy who sent you a couple of bucks)

Senior Citizen Day

Senior Citizen Day, May 19th, was a total bust! I didn't realize it had come and gone until this morning. No cards, no flowers, no phone calls. It was a day like all days - one day older.

I had expected some recognition of the day in the paper and the evening news. Nary a word. Of course I didn't look in the obituaries. They may have isolated the  departed seniors in some sort of special spread.

The fact that the day went unnoticed is probably good. Too much attention directed towards old people make the young people wonder why they are still around.

Recognition? The Ohio Department On Aging has a Senior Hall of Fame! Ten seniors were recently admitted for their contributions to society. Two were deceased. I'm sure they are celebrating the recognition that eluded them in life.

The field of seniors eligible for the Hall of Fame is limited. I'm pretty sure that no one who has been on steroids or testosterone therapy is eligible.  There is hardly a senior who doesn't owe being a senior to some   drug. Former baseball players are automatically excluded from the Senior Hall of Fame since it so difficult to determine whether or not they were on steroids.

For the record , I didn't make it into the Hall.

Sez who?

Don’t steal a base when the opposing team is winning by a big score
Don’t hit a batter in the head to retaliate for a team breaking an unwritten rule



I got interested in “unwritten rules” after reading the account of a Indians/Rays game where the Indians pitcher intentionally almost “beaned” a player. Apparently this player in a previous game had the audacity to steal two bases even though the Indians were ahead 9 to zip. This is a no-no. The player was not showing respect for the game. He broke an unwritten rule and deserved to be punished. The Indians pitcher was the executioner and meted out justice with a 96mph fast ball to the batters body. In defense of the pitcher he did not break another unwritten rule which declares that thou shall not hit a batter in the head.

This really makes a lot of nonsense. You're way behind , don’t try to score by stealing bases , you must do it the hard way - a hit at a time. If its a close game, steal bases to your hearts content. In addition to a designated hitter, in the future teams will be required to carry a designated lawyer on their staff whose sole job will be to interpret unwritten rules.

Unfortunately not all the players are familiar with these unwritten rules. They are not posted in the clubhouse.

If they were posted, they no longer would be unwritten rules. That would create chaos in the world of baseball. Everyone would have to play by the rules and that would make for a dull game.

What is perplexing is that even though the unwritten rules have not been posted in the clubhouse they are written (The Book of Unwritten Baseball Rules). What’s missing are the unwritten rules for dealing with those who break the written - unwritten rules.

By the way, it’s unclear as to who authors an unwritten rule. In reality  unwritten rules are merely hearsay. The only unwritten rule cast in concrete is - "Anything goes if you can get away with it". That’s what we have umpires for . Play ball!





( The Indians beat the Rays last night, 11 to 10, scoring seven runs in the last of the ninth. They played by the unwritten rules - no base stealing. For eight innings they misinterpreted the written rules. They thought they could win by not scoring runs. In the ninth they played by the unwritten rules - don't give up the ship, don't desert a sinking ship, damn the torpedoes - full speed ahead, a walk a day will keep the doctor away! )

Cheney Scares Me

If this were anyplace other than The United States, the debate between President Obama and ex-President Cheney ( not a typo, its now affirmed that he ran the country, not "W") would scare the hell out of me. The  attack on Obama's terrorist policies by Cheney resemble  the rhetoric in a banana republic prior to a coup. Disturbing also is the lack of support being demonstrated by Obama's own party. Obama's pragmatic approach to national security makes sense. It's time for the Democratic leadership in the Congress to support Obama's policies in no uncertain terms. I know I'm overreacting , but now that Cheney has unmasked himself he is really scary!

The Case of The Lost Cliche Draft

Joe The Blogger was in a rut. None of his postings packed a wallop. As a matter of fact his blog had been flagged as being too squeaky clean . His blog being flushed down the toilet by Blogger was eminent.

One night while in his cups, Joe saw the light at the end of the tunnel. It turned out to be an oncoming train. In the nick of time he got his car off the tracks and hit the hay. When he first saw the light of day he decided that the only way to save his blog was to put his nose to the grindstone. It would have been easier to bite the bullet and start writing but the grindstone did wonders for his allergies.

It was no use. Everything he wrote was trite. Trite! Of course, write a post about clichés and the more clichés the merrier! Joe remembered reading somewhere that clichés are spoken or written by someone who is not thinking much about what he is saying or writing. That suited him to a tee. He put the pedal to the metal and started to write his cliché essay masterpiece. It was not only trite but it was banal. Surely the Blogger people would have second thoughts.

After burning the midnight oil, Joe decided to put off publishing his post until morning. At the crack of dawn, Joe rolled out of bed an rushed to his computer.

Joe turned on the computer and signed into blogger. Lets see, edit posts ….. It should be right there in draft form. Heavens to Betsy , the draft was gone!

He was now between a rock and a hard place. Should he try writing his post again? Was there anyone who could help retrieve the missing draft. The choice was easy. This was a case for Inspector Dick Sean Ari, the greatest word sleuth in the country.

Inspector Ari and his sidekick Hoyle took the case. They dived right in. Ari and Hoyle made short work of examining the computer. Joe was right, nowhere on the hard drive could they find a post draft. Inspector Ari became very suspicious. How could a post draft be missing from the hard drive unless it was never there. More to the point, according to Hoyle, until this day the computer had not been used in a week.

Another look around the room and the case was solved. There were at least five empty bourbon bottles scattered around the room. Joe had been stewed to his gills the last few days.

  Inspector Ari pulled some crumpled papers out of the waste paper basket. There it was, a blog post written in the old fashioned way, pencil and paper. Joe did write the blog post, but not on the computer.

Joe had his blog post and was sober enough to get it into the computer. It was all in a day’s work for Inspector Ari.

Don’t bother looking for Joe The Blogger’s blog. Blogger shit canned his blog.

Unbeliveable!

As reported today in GQ -  this link shows the actual graphics of the crusader war porn that Donald Rumsfeld fed to George Bush on a daily basis. American lives continue to be lost daily because of this crap!

Yes We Can! But What's The Hurry

I firmly believe that "Yes We Can" got Barack Obama elected President of The United States. It sure got my vote. In retrospect I must confess that idealism got the best of me. There will be change but not nearly at the pace that Obama implied. The economic mess he inherited certinly put a few potholes in the road to change but something more important happened. Obama the idealistic campaigner morphed into Obama the pragmatic President.

Pragmatism is not bad. In the long run it produces more lasting change. Key words - in the long run. Politics and change make reluctant partners. Congress resembles the committee that designed the camel. The product is not always pretty but eventually it will get the job done. Obama is enough of a pragmatist to realize that he cannot get change as fast as his oratory implied without changing the very institution whose support he needs. A formidable task - change will come slowly!

Case in point, imposing a mandatory limit on climate-altering gases . Save the earth! Yes , but not so fast. Eventually we'll have a system that sets a government ceiling on total emissions and allows polluting industries to buy and sell permits to meet it. Sounds like Congress with Obama's blessing will design another camel. It also looks like the draft system used in the Civil War era. ( From a Theory to a Consensus on Emissions ).

Obama the pragmatist is not an unwelcome change even though it is not the change he promised. As long as he remains a strong and resolute leader who can prod a bulky Congress we will eventually get change. There will be enough time for Obama the idealist to reimerge in 2012.

All Is Well

I put my humming bird feeder out a couple of days ago and today I got my first visitor. The nectar must have been good since his visit was a long one. If someone spots an intoxicated humming bird flying around its my friend - tell him he didn't pay his bar tab. Finch feeders and humming bird feeders - life doesn't get any better.

Have The Boy Scouts Gone Mad?

Filling my computer screen was a bunch of twerps manning automatic rifles. Probably some boy soldier group in a third world country. Wrong! These were red-blooded American boys.

Jennifer Steinhauer had an article in today’s New York Times under the headline Scouts Train to Fight Terrorists, and More. Quoting from the article:

“The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.”

There has to be a better way to train youths to be firefighters and police officers. Putting a gun in their hands, somehow strikes me as overkill. Ensuring that they get an education which prepares them for adulthood should be the first priority. If someone wants to be a police officer or firefighter the time to train them is when they are adults and have made a responsible decision. Dwelling on the following further infuriated me.

“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”

The Boy Scouts of America evidently have come a long way since I first pledged to do a good deed a day. Is it their aim to become The Boy Army of America?

The Slide Rule Ruled

I've caught a bug, not swine flu, but "new computer flu". Its all due to my son who has convinced me that I should avail myself of the latest computer technology. Searching for what is out there in the way computers for an old codger has unleashed memories of the days when slide rules ruled ( those white sticks full of tiny numbers and a glass cursor that spewed out results of simple and complex formulas - Wikipedia has a good history of the slide rule as well as the HP Museum).

The first thing I learned when I arrived on campus was that engineering students were required to have a slip sticks. A slip stick? It sounded obscene! What had gone wrong with my education, I had never heard of one. An upper classman patiently explained that a slip stick was a slide rule which was used to rapidly make all kinds of scientific calculations. As he hit my head with the slip stick , he made it clear that without one I’d never get through the first semester.

Off to the college book store to purchase my slip stick. The slip stick of choice was a twelve inch log-log K&E. Some of the wealthier students opted for the twenty-two inch model. Compared to the twelve inch slide rule , it was like owning an I-Mac laptop. The Dell version would have to do.

Owning a slide rule and making it slip out the correct answer are two different things. After panicking at the thought that I would have to admit that the damn thing was completely foreign to me I settled down. To my relief , freshmen were offered a seminar on how to use a slide rule. The seminar was packed. I wasn’t the only jerk on campus.

Upon reflection, learning to use a slide rule was much easier than mastering Windows and spreadsheets but not nearly the fun.

Picking out an engineering student on campus was easy. Anyone toting a twelve inch long rectangular black case from their belt was an engineer-in-the-making. And tote it we did- it was a badge of honor ( liberal arts students considered it a badge of “nerdism”).

It wasn’t long before I discovered that getting through an  exam was impossible without a slide rule. How well you did on the exam was a direct product of how well you used a slip stick. During an exam you could almost smell wood burning as slip sticks were put through their paces.

Its amazing that there was so much technological progress before the age of the computer. I’m sure the inventors of the transistor ,which laid the foundation for the computer, had a slip stick on their desk as they waded through solid state physics.

I ‘m going to take another loving look of my slide rule, put it back in its black case and then get about the business of selecting another computer. I’ll probably do as I did many years ago when selecting a slide rule and go for the twelve inch model rather than the twenty-two inch model. Wish I could hang it from my belt. My God, I can - an I-Phone with all the bells and whistles would be great! They say Twitter is becoming more popular than blogging. On the other hand, why not a nice lap top in a black bag which I could sling over my shoulder and look hip, cool but definitely not nerdy.

Politics And Comedians

Presidents make lousy comedians!  The White House press corps should find other ways to entertain themselves. Politics can be ludricous enough left to its own ways !

Back To Seniors

I now find out that there is still another category of Older Americans. The State Of Ohio also celebrates Young Seniors. True to form that category is reserved for boomers.  In the world of aging Americans we now have:

• Older Americans
• Senior Citizens
• Young Seniors

My choice for some new categories:

• Whining Seniors
• Senior Illegal Aliens
• Older Illegal Aliens
• Decrepit Seniors
• Old People
• Seniors In Denial

What it all boils down to is that thanks to medicine cabinets we have a lot of  old people  who demand and need a lot of attention. So much for the marvels of modern medicine!

Charge-A-Plates Revisited

Defeat! Raise the white flag! Retreat! Now I know how Napoleon must have felt after Waterloo. I foolishly tried to engage the high primal thinker in another bout aimed at getting rid of Department store credit cards or as she calls them “ charge-a-plates”.

What prompted this moment of bravery? A notice from one store that effective with the next billing cycle the interest rate on unpaid balances would be increased to some outrageous amount. The notice was filled with all kinds of mumbo-jumbo, almost threatening. It did include an option to opt out.

Surely the tone of the notice and the implication that their credit card, I mean their charge-a-plate holders, were deadbeats would arouse the Irish in my high primal thinker. Sure enough, after reading the notice she in no uncertain terms told me to cut up the card , I mean the plate, and opt out.

Victory! A charge-a-plate ( I got that right, practice makes perfect ) was about to bite the dust.

Before I had a chance to get out the scissors my high primal thinker suddenly had some questions - she is far from stupid. "Wasn’t it true that we did not carry a balance on the plate? If so what difference did it make that they were raising the interest rate?" The answers were “yes’ and “none”. I was trapped and could see defeat being snatched from the jaws of victory.

One more try! “It’s the principle of the thing, they are treating you like a deadbeat”! The high primal reply, “But if we get rid of the plate, I can’t take advantage of their specials. Remember the bargain I got on that sweater . As long as we pay it off and ----------.”

For the high primal thinker charge-a-plates will always be a necessity. The war was indeed lost. I did salvage some self-respect . I viciously shredded my credit card from the same Department store. Hell , I could always use hers if indeed there was a bargain to be had.

Older Americans Month

Where have I been all these years? I just discovered that since 1977 May is observed nationwide as Older Americans Month. In addition the third Tuesday in May is observed as Senior Citizens Day. Wow! One whole month devoted to people like me. It doesn’t get any better.

Hold up a minute. May is Older Americans Month. The third Tuesday in May is Senior Citizens Day. If I’m not mistaken Older Americans are Senior Citizens, so what’s so special about the third Tuesday? Unless my gray cells have faded away it looks like overkill. On the other hand, is it because Senior Citizens are a subset of Older Americans? I can hardly wait for the third Tuesday to roll around to experience the adulation of my friends and family. My guess is that someone had a senior moment and the third Tuesday will be like all Tuesdays -the day after Monday!

So why do Governor’s go out of their way to proclaim an Older Americans Month? For one thing they need our vote. Aside from that it appears that there is a desire to celebrate the contributions older citizens have made to society. Supposedly it is a chance for communities to give back and recognize the accomplishments of their elders. That being the case, how come it has taken me thirty-two years to find out that May is a special month for old codgers.

I got my answer by reading on about Older Americans Month. Apparently it will encourage seniors to celebrate their uniqueness and redefine what it means to grow old. The idea is to age actively and to live life to the fullest . Ohio's theme for Older Americans Month 2009 is: "Reinvent Yourself, Reinvent Aging."

I’m all for that. Get rid of the walkers and the canes, get a prescription for Viagara, dye your hair, learn to Twitter, buy a convertible. If you don’t dwell on being a senior you could care less about special months and days to remind you that you are older than you think. What’s the old adage , “There is no fool like an old fool”.

One final thought , why May to celebrate seniors? September seems more appropriate. The September Song lyrics make a case for  a realistic assessment of being a senior.

Oh, it's a long, long while
From May to December
But the days grow short,
When you reach September.
When the autumn weather
Turn leaves to flame
One hasn't got time
For the waiting game.
Oh the days dwindle down
To a precious few . . .
September, November . . .
And these few precious days
I'll spend with you.

Songwriters: Anderson, Maxwell; Weill, Kurt