While MR is indisposed,

here is an educational quiz to enlighten and entertain.

The first correct answer will receive 10 points.

WHAT ARE RUPERT’S BALLS?

About three weeks ago, I met with the surgeons at the V.A. and was officially set-up for Thyroid surgery on the 24th of March….. Everyday since then, I’ve awoke with knots in the stomach, nervousness, sleeplessness, and headaches just thinking of all the possible outcomes of the surgery, but, there was one scenario that had never entered my mind…..

After a very short and unrestfull night, and after Jek chopped about six inches of my hair off (the VA doesn’t like long hair in the operating room)…..

……I got up this morning, unable to eat or drink, had to swish some very foul tasting germ-killer around in my mouth, and be at the V.A. by 8:00 am to check-in….. We got there, checked in, had my vitals taken, talked with the anesthesiologist, signed all the release forms, got my spiffy double arm bands,….

….and was sitting around to be taken to pre-op to get all the tubes stuck in and knocked-out for surgery….. Then the unthinkable scenario mentioned above kicked-in…. A female doctor entered the room and said the following – Are you ready?…. Any guesses?…. “The surgeon, Dr. Le, called in sick and the surgery is cancelled.”…. So-o-o, I’m basically back to square one and looking at three to four weeks for a reschedule…. Jek and a few others made wasted trips in from far away places and I’m back to the sleeplessness, nervousness, etc., for ANOTHER three weeks or so…. What can I say but that I dislike the V.A, but what can you do?…..

Again, thanks for all the support and I’ll need it again in a few weeks…. I actually am going to try and get the surgery changed to the Seattle V.A., so if it gets cancelled again I can at least have a vacation to untie all of knots.

By the way, here are some alternate titles for this post: Feel free to add to the list.

• “Tagged but not Bagged”….
• “This could only happen to Me”….
• “What if you had surgery and the surgeon didn’t show?”….
• “Ill doctor afraid of making 6 ft. incision with sneeze”…
• “V.A. Today, Thyroid Tomorrow”….

Just ran across this tidbit of info. Me thinks we’re all bozos on this bus. Either that or have entered the Twilight Zone? Anyone believe in fate? Superstitions? Occult? Black Magic?
Abra Cadabra? I Dream of Jeannie? Supernatural? The Holocaust?
Do you believe in Magic? Lovin’ Spoonful? I could go on, but I’ll spare you guys.

1) New York City has 11 letters

2) Afghanistan has 11 letters.

3) Ramsin Yuseb (The terrorist who threatened to destroy the Twin Towers in 1993) has 11 letters.

4) George W Bush has 11 letters.

This could be a mere coincidence, but this gets more interesting:

1) New York is the 11th state.

2) The first plane crashing against the Twin Towers was flight number 11.

3) Flight 11 was carrying 92 passengers. 9 + 2 = 11

4) Flight 77 which also hit Twin Towers, was carrying 65 passengers. 6 + 5 = 11

5) The tragedy was on September 11, or 9/11 as it is now known. 9 + 1 + 1 = 11

6) The date is equal to the US emergency services telephone number 911. 9 + 1 + 1 = 11.

Sheer coincidence..?! Read on and make up your own mind:

1) The total number of victims inside all the hi-jacked planes was 254. 2 + 5 + 4 = 11.

2) September 11 is day number 254 of the calendar year. Again 2 + 5 + 4 = 11.

3) The Madrid bombing took place on 3/11/2004. 3 + 1 + 1 + 2 + 4 = 11.

4) The tragedy of Madrid happened 911 days after the Twin Towers incident.

Now this is where things get totally eerie:

The most recognised symbol for the US, after the Stars & Stripes, is the Eagle. The following verse is taken from the Quran, the Islamic holy book:

“For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle. The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah and lo, while some of the people trembled in despair still more rejoiced: for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah and there was peace.”

That verse is number 9.11 of the Quran.

Still unconvinced about all of this..?! Try this and see how you feel afterwards, it made my hair stand on end:

Open Microsoft Word and do the following:

1. Type in capitals Q33 NY. This is the flight number of the first plane to hit one of the Twin Towers.

2. Highlight the Q33 NY.

3. Change the font size to 48.

4. Change the actual font to the WINGDINGS

What do you think now?!!

As all of you know our esteemed Administrator and Friend Midnight Rambler is scheduled for a Medical procedure this Friday the 24th. I hope all of you join with me in wishing MR a speedy full recovery. I spoke with him this evening and was not feeling well, I hope that they can fix whatever is ailing him, and hope they give him some radical drugs while recouping. Get well soon do.

With the first game starting in about an hour, has everybody filled out their bracket?

As far as local interest goes, I have OU making it to the second round, Washington making it to the round of 16, and Texas beating Kansas in the semi-final game. UConn takes it all (not really out on a limb with that pick). My final 4 has a 1-seed, a 2-seed (BC), and two 4-seeds.

This one’s aimed at HS University….. I heard that they have an outstanding meteorology department there with direct connection to the National Storms lab in Norman, Oklahoma…. I caught a little bit on this on a local TV weather broadcast…. C.A.S.A., which I assume is an abbreviation for something (hence the periods I put in), I missed that part, so I may even have the name wrong…. I do know in Spanish it means “home”, I think?…. Anyway, it’s supposed to be a low-level radar system that improves tornado and severe weather forecasting, as opposed to the radar they are now using , which monitors only high-level formations…. It gives up to a 30-minute reaction time to approaching severe weather and tornadoes, and cuts false warnings down from 75% to around 17% which would improve people’s confidence tremendously…. They are supposed to install 4 of these new experimental systems in Oklahoma for testing…..

Can anyone at HSU (or anybody that has more info than I) give us more insight and details on this?… I hate running from tornadoes, even false ones… Is it real?… Will it work?…. We, the people of “Tornado Alley” would rather be in a bowling alley than under it this spring…..

These people we call “Law-Makers”, i.e., Senators and Representatives, just what do they do with their time and why are they on the tax-payers payroll?….. I mean, the United States has had a constitution for over 200 years now…. Have you ever thought of how many laws you could write in 200 years!?…. I’m surprised we don’t have a law specifying how many flies per cubic foot of air space you can have on your property at any one time (maybe that’s in some Environmental Protection law)….

I think they should be required to stop making new laws and go back and review all the laws that have already been written…. I bet they’d find a bunch of duplicates – you think?…. They may be worded a little different with “ye’s” and “thou’s” in them, but I bet the intent and the bottom line are the same….. Just how many new and different ways are there to be a criminal anyway?….

Take the music business, we pound around on the same basic eight notes that are used in every song ever written, and two of them are the same, just an octave apart…. Yeah, ya got your sharps and flats, and your octaves and time signatures, but it’s still just 7 notes and one duplicate…. But, even after a lot longer than two hundred years we’ve still got classical music and now they’re using it with a rap singer!…. Same stuff, just recycled a bit…. Is that what they’re doing in Congress?…. I don’t know and they ain’t talkin’…. I do know they spend a lot of time passing pay raise legislation – for themselves!…..

This is rather long, but I think everyone should find it interesting, besides I live in downtown MR Central and I like it…

Despite anguish and illness, the legendary musician Neil Young says…
“I Just Keep Going” By Lisa Birnbach – Published: February 19, 2006

Neil Young remembers the morning last March when he was shaving in a New York hotel room and suddenly experienced an excruciating pain. “It felt like a shard of glass dividing my vision into two parts,” he says. “Pretty soon everything on the left started vibrating, and it scared me.” He rushed to a doctor, who found a brain aneurysm. Young needed emergency surgery to implant tiny platinum coils in his brain.

Most people would respond to that devastating diagnosis with rage or tears. But the reedy-voiced singer had a different reaction. He flew down to Nashville and retreated to a hotel room, where he spent the four days before surgery in a creative spasm of songwriting. Young explains it this way: “I kind of just said, ‘OK, now you have a brain hemorrhage, and now you’re different than you were a few minutes ago, but I can still do what I did and just keep going.'”

Young, 60, has indeed kept going through years of illness, tragedy and loss. The legendary musician, known for his stints with the rock bands Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, once titled a song “Only Love Can Break Your Heart.” But he has faced situations that would break anyone’s heart almost every day of his life.

Born in Canada, Young was just 6 years old when he was stricken with polio and had to learn to walk again. His parents, Rassy and Scott, divorced when he was 13. Then, in his 20s, Young began suffering from epileptic seizures. At least one struck when he was onstage, in the midst of a performance. Now the rocker’s easy dismissal of these travails seems almost too tranquil.

“The aneurysm, polio, epilepsy–all those things are just part of the landscape,” he says.

Tragically, his two sons suffer from even more devastating disabilities. Young has been married to wife Pegi for 27 years, and the family lives what should be an idyllic life on a remote and rambling ranch in northern California. But, in a painful twist of fate, his first child, Zeke, 33 (with actress Carrie Snodgress), was born with cerebral palsy, as was his second son, Ben, 27, who is both quadriplegic and mostly nonverbal. Daughter Amber, 21, is a healthy college student.

With a life marked by these setbacks, how does Young manage to stay calm and even-keeled? “Everybody’s life is hard,” he says. “You look at life, and it’s not a cakewalk. Things happen, and you’ve got to be able to bounce back.”

Forty years of music success have given Young the resources to face his problems pragmatically. He stood behind Pegi when she started the Bridge School in Hillsborough, Calif., for students with severe physical and speech impairments. Pegi, who often sings backup vocals for her husband, was executive director of the school for six years. The annual fund-raising concerts have included headliners like Dave Matthews Band, Pearl Jam and Paul McCartney.

Adding to Young’s anguish was the death last June of his father, after years of illness. “I loved my dad, and my dad loved me,” Young says. “I got the writing gene from him. He was a sportswriter. He wrote novels, a lot of books.”

His father also gave Young his first instrument, a ukulele, when the boy was just 8. By the time he was 18, Young had performed in coffeehouses around Canada and been part of a band called the Mynah Birds with the late funk singer Rick James. Wanting a wider audience, Young moved to the United States and drove cross-country in, of all things, a hearse. He ended up in Los Angeles and connected with Stephen Stills, who became his longtime bandmate. He also cut a solo album and became famous for his performance at Woodstock. As a quarter of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, he moves in and out of that band–a unique relationship in rock ‘n’ roll.

Young has released dozens of albums in various styles, but perhaps none was completed as quickly as his latest CD, Prairie Wind. Eight of the songs were written and recorded in that week when he faced surgery and feared death. He coped with his fears by making music with friends.

“When I got this medical thing, I thought I’d just go to the studio and be the happiest,” he says. “Pegi was with me, and we talked about what guys we could get together to play.”

Young’s new music is infused, understandably, with reflections on mortality. He tells me that he didn’t plan to use the lyrics to say goodbye to people; the music just came to him in a rush of inspiration. Movie director Jonathan Demme (best known for The Silence of the Lambs) has turned the CD into a concert film called Neil Young: Heart of Gold.

“The songs are about family, love and relationships,” says Young. “We were doing this so our grandchildren would know who we were and what we cared about. All of these songs are just about life.”

The movie features Young performing at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, onetime home of the Grand Ole Opry. Though the scraggly haired Young was once known for his anti-establishment songs, he insists, “I’m not a Johnny-come-lately who wants to play country music for a few days and then go and do something else. That’s not the feeling here. I feel secure in being who I am and paying tribute to the great artists who came before me.”

Modest and refusing to seek sympathy, Young jokes that he didn’t want to promote his CD on an “Aneurysm World Tour.” In fact, leaving the hospital after surgery, he thought of keeping the whole story to himself. But two days later, a complication left him bleeding and unconscious on the street–and his secret was out.

Did that incident, finally, make him pause? “Obviously I have a different perspective on life now,” he says. “Anything could happen.” Knowing that, Young wrote deeply emotional songs in Prairie Wind that remind us time is short, and we should appreciate the life we have. In “Falling Off the Face of the Earth,” he gives simple words of gratitude: “I just want to thank you/For all the things you’ve done/I’m thinking about you/I just want to send my love.”

I hereby propose that we make “April Fool’s Day” a National holiday….. You can celebrate the “Fools” that are in political office, or the “Fools” that put them there….. I know this will cause problems with our current system of placing almost all of our National holidays on Mondays, but we could do away with “4th of July”, lesser known as “Independence Day”, since most of our “Independence” has been turned into dependence on our government to tell us how to walk, talk, think, eat, etc….. For more details, listen to Frank Zappa‘s “I’m The Slime” on the Over-nite Sensation album (also on Strictly Commercial album), and it came out in 1973!…..

So line-up my friends, for the show that never ends….. decide which “Fool” you want to honor (it could be yourself), and let’s start a petition for a new National holiday (I’ll, of course, wait to hear what kind of responses I get from this post before I start a petition with my name of it….. I’m no “Fool”)……

Happy birthday MRC!  It’s been one full year since the first post here at MRambler Central–and a good year at that.  You had a shaky start but have settled in nicely as a spot to see and debate different views and share experiences with fellow members.

Time for the sing-along:

You say it’s your birthday
It’s my birthday too–yeah
They say it’s your birthday
We’re gonna have a good time
I’m glad it’s your birthday
Happy birthday to you.

    -The Beatles

Thanks everyone!  I’m looking forward to another good year of conversation.

The Earth’s human inhabitants are estimated to have reached 6.5 billion people at 7:16pm ET this previous Saturday.  Evidently more than 2 times as many people are born each second than die.  Here are two articles on the milestone : an MSNBC article mentions how populations are growing where growth can least be afforded and a Wired article says that the current percent annual growth is actually down from the peak time between 1965 and 1970.  Might some of you contributed to that explosive growth?

BTW, do you have plans Oct 18, 2012?  How about a big, BIG party to celebrate the 7 billionth person?

Randalf asked in a previous post how skiing differed in the German Alps.  Well the main difference I found was with the view. (That first picture is from the top of Jenner in Berchtesgaden.)  The alps are absolutely beautiful and quite more jagged than the Cascades that I’m used to.  It hadn’t snowed in a few of days, so I didn’t sense any obvious snow difference (powdery, wet, dry, etc… honestly I’m not sure I’d be able to tell anyway).  Where we were the ski areas tended to be smaller than the ones around here.  There are several towns in the valley–including ours–and several ski areas of differing difficulty.  Almost all of Jenner’s runs are marked as intermediate, though some felt harder to me, the true intermediate skier.  Oh yeah, the last major difference: You can get awesome beer at any and every ski hut.

Here’s another picture to whet your appetite.  This one was taken on the slopes looking towards the alps.

For all of us who feel only the deepest love and affection for the way computers have enhanced our lives, read on. At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, “If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.” In response to Bill’s comments, General Motors issued a press release stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics (and I just love this part):

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue. For some odd reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive – but would run on only five percent of the roads.

6. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single “This Car Has Performed An Illegal Operation” warning light.

7. The airbag system would ask “Are you sure?” before deploying.

8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio antenna.

9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

10. You’d have to press the “Start” button to turn the engine off.

No, you can’t get Frank Zappa recordings for free in OKC, you can’t find them (almost)…. A friend asked me to do some guitar work on a version of “Montana” he did and I couldn’t find my CD copy of “Over-nite Sensation” anywhere (My Vinyl copy is in storage and would probably take months to dig-out), so, I thought, just a quick trip to any music store, no problem….. Well, five stores later, I found one lonely copy at the second Best Buy store I visited…. FZ recorded around 60 albums in his short career and the most I found at any location was five!…. Target didn’t even have any rock albums that started with “Z”….. Wal-Mart faired better with a “Warren Zavon” album….. CD Warehouse had one copy of “Freak-Out“…. As you might imagine, FZ air-play is zero in the OKC zone…. Pretty Damn sad as I consider him second only to Hendrix in guitar playing and originality…. “I Gotta Get Outta This Place“…..

For your enjoyment, here are two original FZ stick-on passes…. The “Them or Us” is a paper after show guest pass and the “Vets Memorial” is a fabric backstage pass…. In my collection, unused and preserved for us FZ fans…..

This is a reprint of a commentary in the Oklahoma Gazette Feb. 8. 2006 I thought it was Bloody Hilarious!

There’s no history like no history
By William W. Savage Jr.

It’s much ado about nothing, this flap over Senate Bill 982 and whether its passage last year by our state Legislature really means kids don’t have to take OK. History in high school if they plan on going to college
I don’t see that it matters one way or another. The public schools have been offering Oklahoma History for decades, and it’s usually taught by some guy whose first name is “Coach,” and the students learn doodly-squat.
How do I know? I’ve spent 30 years teaching college-level OK. History to students who supposedly took it in high school, and I can safely say they know what Coach taught ’em. Which is to say, nada, zippo, nihnl, nothing.

I’ve listened to the same sad commentary from my students semester after semester. For instance:
“Indian removal was just awful. How come I never heard of it?”
“I was born and raised in Okemah. They never said anything about Woody Guthrie in our school.”
“Dust Bowl? Depression? We didn’t cover that.” “Coach taught Oklahoma History. We watched a lot of game film”
” What we did at my school was memorize all the counties of OK. in alphabetical order. That was it. Took us half a year.”
“Coach taught Okla. history. He talked about Missouri all the time. He said it was because he didn’t know anything about Okla., and besides he was from Missouri.”
And if I had a dollar for every kid from Tulsa who never heard of the 1921 race riot, I could lose a young fortune scratching off lottery tickets. For the benefit of common education, ya know.
Most recently, there was this one: “My high school’s Okla. History book was written for students who read at the third-grade level. It said so, right in the front. Occasionally there were some two-syllable words in there, though.”

Fortunately for graduates of classes like that, “boomer” and “sooner” are two-syllable, and the only ones you need at certain athletic contests. Who cares if shouting “boomer” and “sooner” at somebody in 1889 could have gotten you killed? The past can be so inconvenient–and soooo messy. A “sooner” was a sorry sumbitch in 1889 but nobody needs to know it nowadays, especially in the Sooner State. We are after all, no one. Oops … I meant No. 1. And we sure want to keep it that way.

Maybe our children should learn about our heritage the way God intended: They should become tourists, and with all the other tourists gaze upon the scenic Oklahoma River, visit Heavener and discover Okla. vikings, and stand reverently at the Guthrie grave site of that great and mummified Oklahoman, Elmer McCurdy.

It’d be much better than school because I don’t think old Coach knows about any of that stuff either.

Savage is professor of history at the University of Oklahoma.

I much admit that I don’t know who Elmer McCurdy is either, Maybe he was a coach at Guthrie High. (JJ.)