Cop Car's Beat

International Days

It's Liz's fault. She inspired me to do it. She was brazen enough to wish us a happy International Women's Day ...and she even mentioned other days that are celebrated. How dare she! (That's the pointy finger being wagged, below.)

At any rate, Liz inspired me to check into other "International Days". It turns out that there are a bunch. This file (Download International Days) is from a UN website.

The International Days that occur in March are listed as being the following:

1 March

Zero Discrimination Day  [UNAIDS]

3 March

World Wildlife Day  (A/RES/68/205)

8 March

International Women's Day

20 March

International Day of Happiness  (A/RES/66/281)

French Language Day (French)

21 March

International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination  (A/RES/2142 (XXI))

World Poetry Day (UNESCO 30 C/Resolution 29)

International Day of Nowruz  (A/RES/64/253)

World Down Syndrome Day  (A/RES/66/149) 

International Day of Forests  (A/RES/67/200)

22 March

World Water Day  (A/RES/47/193)

23 March

World Meteorological Day  [WMO] (WMO/EC-XII/Res.6)

24 March

World Tuberculosis Day  [WHO]  

International Day for the Right to the Truth concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims  (A/RES/65/196)

25 March

International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade  (A/RES/62/122)

International Day of Solidarity with Detained and Missing Staff Members

 

The answer is....

'The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy' Turns 42 (economist.com) 35

Posted by msmash on Monday March 09, 2020 @05:32PM from the moving-forward dept.

schweini shares a report: Every year the world celebrates the anniversaries of masterworks and maestros. In 2020, a host of events and publications commemorated the lives of Ludwig van Beethoven, Raphael, Charles Dickens, Anne Bronte and William Wordsworth. Such milestones usually come in neat multiples of 50. The 42nd anniversary of anything is rarely observed. Yet on March 8th fans of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" ("HHGTTG") paid tribute to the comedy science-fiction series, which had its radio premiere on that day in 1978 and was subsequently adapted into novels, TV series, video games and a film.

To mark the occasion, Pan Macmillan reprinted the scripts and novels in colourful new editions ("HHGTTG" was the first book published under their "Pan Original" imprint to sell more than 1m copies). The British Library will host a day of "celebrations, conversation and performance." BBC Radio 4 has aired the original episodes; Radio 4 Extra will put on a "five-hour Hitchhiker's spectacular" including archival material and specially commissioned programmes. Such is the enduring interest in Douglas Adams's story that it is due to be adapted into a new television series by Hulu, a streaming service.

Compilations of animations that amused me

 

 

CREDITS:

1. For leading me to the first PES animation that I saw (Fresh Guacamole), please credit Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By.

2. For educating me about PES (AKA Adam Pesapane), please credit Wikipedia.

3. For providing the platform for the videos, please credit YouTube.

4. For compiling several PEZ animations into two videos, please credit Christopher Case.

Basic Rules for Aircraft Pilots

This is one of those mornings when I have no control over myself; thus, I'll post this listing that WichiDude emailed me in January 2005. One of us may well have posted it 'way back then. [I r-e-a-l-l-y need to finish reviewing the files on the backup CDs and get on with my life!]

• Try to stay in the middle of the air. Do not go near the edges of it. The edges of the air can be recognized by the appearance of ground, buildings, sea, trees and interstellar space. It is much more difficult to fly there.
• You know that your landing gear is up and locked when it takes full power to taxi to the terminal.
• The Piper Cub is the safest airplane in the world. It can just barely kill you.
• Blue water Navy truism: There are more planes in the ocean than there are submarines in the sky.
• If the wings are traveling faster than the fuselage, it's probably a helicopter -- and, therefore, unsafe.
• When one engine fails on a twin-engine airplane, you always have enough power left to get you to the scene of the crash.
• Without ammunition, NavAir and USAF would just be expensive flying clubs.
• I remember when sex was safe and flying was dangerous.
• If you're faced with a forced landing, fly the thing as far into the crash as possible.
• You've never been lost until you've been lost at Mach 3.
• Never fly in the same cockpit with someone braver than you.
• Just remember: If you crash because of weather, your funeral will be held on a sunny day.
• When a flight is proceeding incredibly well, something was forgotten.
• The three most common expressions (aka famous last words) in aviation are: "Why is it doing that?", "Where are we?", and "Uh oh."

Don't mess with an old woman

In readiness for recycling a bunch of old, backup CDs, I'm reviewing files on them. Included in those files are copies email correspondence from 2004-2005, during the months following my retirement from The Little Airplane Company. Those emails are to/from 10-20 of the people with whom I had worked.

I can't help sharing one of the sillier ones that I had received.

                                  

An old woman (OW) gets pulled over by a traffic officer for speeding...

OW: Is there a problem, Officer?

Officer: Ma'am, you were speeding.

OW: Oh, I see.

Officer: May I see your license, please?

OW: I'd give it to you but I don't have one.

Officer: You don't have one?

OW: No. I lost it four years ago - for drunk driving.

Officer: I see. May I see your vehicle registration papers, please?

OW: I'm sorry. I can't show them to you.

Officer: Why not?

OW: I stole this car - and I killed and hacked up the owner.

Officer: You what?!

OW: The body parts are in plastic bags in the trunk if you want to see them!

The traffic officer looks at the woman...slowly backs away to his car...calls for back up. Within minutes, five police cars circle the car. A senior officer (SO) slowly approaches the car, clasping his half-drawn gun.

SO: Ma'am, would you step out of your vehicle please?

The woman steps out of her vehicle.

OW: Is there a problem, Sir?

SO: The traffic officer tells me that you said you had stolen this car and murdered the owner.

OW: Me? Murdered the owner?

SO: Yes, Ma'am. Would you please open the trunk of your car?

The woman opens the trunk, revealing nothing but an empty trunk.

SO: Is this your car, Ma'am?

OW: It is.

Reaching into her car's glove compartment, the woman produces registration papers.

OW: Here are the registration papers.

The officer is stunned.

SO: The traffic officer tells me that you have no driver's license.

The woman digs into her handbag, pulls her driver's license out, and hands it to the senior officer. The senior officer examines the license, looking quite puzzled.

SO: Thank you, Ma'am. The traffic officer told me you didn't have a license, that you stole this car, and that you murdered and hacked up the owner. Why would he tell me that?

OW: I don't know. Hmm...I'll bet the liar told you I was speeding, too.

Don't mess with an old woman!

 

Halloween came late to our house and other tales of the week

Having finished the setup and downloading of software for Hunky Husband's new desktop computer (which he keeps under his computer desk), I removed the extraneous software from his old computer and "refreshed" his Windows 10 installation. Voile! HH's old computer is now a perfectly good computer that runs noticeably faster than does this computer. I kicked out all of our CD-playing equipment and replaced it with HH's old computer - to allow me to use it to play exercise videos. One catch: I'm having an issue with getting a compatible pair of speakers for the setup. I bought a cheap set of speakers that work perfectly well with this desktop, but don't work with HH's old computer. Hmmm...I guess I'll need to find a pair of good speakers for that setup. Since I play music through my desktop speakers, I don't want to use the cheap speakers with this computer.

Monday evening, reading a book and absent-mindedly eating a handful of almonds*, I bit down on an almond and dislodged the crown from my upper right-hand tooth. Crap! I washed it off, soaked it in an enzyme solution, and put it in a cup on my bathroom counter to be able to find it the next morning. Our next-door neighbor is my dentist, so I would go see him early in the day. By 8:00am, Tuesday, I was checking in at the front desk.

Fred couldn't see me, at all, that day; but, fortunately, his colleague could work me in at 9:20am. Oh! Did I forget to tell you that, came Tuesday morning the old crown had disappeared? Having searched every conceivable hiding place, I concluded that I had decided to put the crown on a facial tissue to dry...forgotten about having done so...and when I arose in the middle of the night to use the facilities (for which I do not turn on lights), absent-mindedly threw the tissue into the toilet. Thus, it would take the dentist a while to make a new crown.

Since I had over an hour to wait, I told the receptionist that I would walk over to the senior center (a few-minutes' walk, away) and return in time for the dentist's 9:20am opening. I had been on the treadmill at the senior center for but 9 minutes when my phone rang. The dentist would be free within a few minutes.

After a few minutes' x-ray and visual examination, it was determined that I should return on Wednesday when, fortuitously, the dentist would be able to work me in around his other patients. Thus, I spent 8:00am-11:30am Wednesday morning reclining in the dental chair while the dentist took digital measurements, milled the new crown, fitted the new crown, baked/glazed the new crown, and final-adjusted the new crown to the opening - which activities were periodically interrupted for the dentist to see another patient. Yeah! I no longer look like a left-over from Halloween!

During my last visit to the butcher's, I picked up a bottle of Jalapeno mustard. The little line of print (black on white toward the bottom of the bottle, above) says, "WARNING: This product has been known to make mouths water, eyes light up and hips wiggle!" At the end of the warning appears the graphic, below.

________________________

*    Not my first encounter with a tough almond. Forty or 50 years ago, I broke a tooth on a Jordan almond.

Laughing along with HH

It was 1:00am, following a light lunch, today. I was kicking back in my reading chair, spreading a light quilt over myself to see if I could catch a short nap. Sometimes I manage, sometimes I don't. Before I had quite settled in, Hunky Husband came into my den with a question.

HH: Where's your phone?

CC: In my purse [on my non-computer desk, across the room].

HH: [Retrieving my purse and setting it into my lap.] Would you please call me? I've looked all over the house for my phone and can't find it.

CC: [Hits the speed dial for HH's phone.]

HH's Phone: [Plays the ring tone assigned to calls from me. Sounds close.]

HH: Oh!

The phone was in HH's shirt pocket. It's hard to get to sleep following a raucous belly laugh.

PUNishment: A good pun is it's own reword.

Since I've been otherwise engaged this week, I didn't finish a posting for the week. Instead, I'll pass along a listing from a friend with whom I worked at Cessna. He sent it to me by an email date-stamped 8/27/2002. (Yes, I understand that not all items on the listing are puns!)

Energizer Bunny arrested - charged with battery.

A pessimist's blood type is always B-Negative.

Practice safe eating: Always use condiments.

A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.

Shotgun wedding: A case of wife or death.

I used to work in a blanket factory; but, it folded.

If electricity comes from electrons, does that mean that morality comes from morons?

Marriage is the mourning after the knot before.

A hangover is the wrath of grapes.

Corduroy pillows are making headlines.

Is a book on voyeurism a peeping tome?

Dancing cheek-to-cheek is really a form of floor play.

Sea captains don't like crew cuts.

Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?

A successful diet is the triumph of mind over platter.

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

A gossip is someone with a great sense of rumor.

Without geometry, life is pointless.

When you dream in color, it's a pigment of your imagination.

Reading whilst sunbathing makes you well-red.

When two egotists meet, it's an I for an I.

A little more up-to-date are the following:

 

More absolute trivia - 10/12/2019

Usually, I have two books going at any one time - a habit established back in about 1983 when I lived in Albuquerque. One book is by my reading chair, the other by my bed. Usually, but not always, the one by my bed is lighter - something that I don't have to work at to keep track of (The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn having been one notable exception). Currently, I am nearly finished with The Big Kahuna by Janet Evanovich and Peter Evanovich. Unfortunately, Janet E who is known for writing chick books that are somewhat sexy and boisterously funny, had disappointed me with this book. (Should I blame it on Peter since this is the first book I've read on which he was listed as co-author?) Be that as it may, I read one sentence, this evening, that made it worth reading the other 267 pages that I'd gone through to get to it.

Kate (FBI), her father Jake (retired Navy Seal), and Nick (Kate's FBI partner) have abducted a leading crime figure from his well-guarded home in New Zealand by paragliding, at night, into his compound. After setting explosives off to light fires throughout the bad guy's vineyard as a distraction, they make their way into his house and taze him into submission. They send him, via dumb waiter, down into the commercial kitchen of his home.

Nick retrieved a shopping cart full of groceries and dumped its contents onto the floor. "Come on, Viktor. Time to go." He and Jake heaved the still scramble-brained [Viktor] Neklan into the cart.

I've high-lighted the "worth it" sentence. I'll give you a hint as to why by quoting from a radio program to which I listened as a kid: The Lone Ranger. As we heard horses riding off into the distance, the main characters shouted:

Lone Ranger: Hi-Yo, Silver!

Tonto: Get 'em up, Scout!

Dan (LR's nephew): Come on, Victor!

I'm pretty sure that the allusion was intentional since, in the preceding 15-30 pages several quotations from various sources are given as dialogue by one of the characters while another character identifies the source of each.

Perhaps I should go to bed, now.

Today's Gems on Aging

Although today's The Born Loser strip addresses the thinking of the young (ages 0-30) and the old (ages 60-90), I guess we have to draw our own conclusions about those who are middle-aged (ages 30-60) or ancient (ages 90 and upward). Or...the Sansoms don't really tell us how old is Uncle Ted, do they?

I think that all of us old/ancient (over age 60) people can agree on the philosophy expressed in today's Pickles, below.