Halloween's A Bust

Halloween is kind of a bust where I live. We bought a couple bags of candy and have only had one kid so far. That's one, as in less than two. Ha ha!

There's an official time for trick or treating, meaning they have around a half hour to go.

But we never get very many for some unknown reason. So I end up eating most of the candy myself. I see there's some "Three Musketeers" in the bowl, which aren't my favorites but I will eat them.

I Wrote About Gravy

I also lost somewhere around 5-7 followers at Twitter. Maybe just a coincidence, since they're the ones no one wants anyway, those trying to sell things or whatever. I don't even know which ones they were. Not ones I was following back. Kay surah surah.

Anyway, my theme today was "Gravy." This is at Grandma Slump. The original idea was "Going Beyond The Same Old Grind," which is still a good idea I'll probably do sometime soon. But then I jotted down "from guts to glory to gravy," with this "teaching," that You want the gravy and glory, you need the guts ... No guts, no glory, no gravy.

Not extremely funny but weird sounding when you go on about it all day. So it was an initial post in the morning about gravy, then four bursts of tweets through the day on the theme of "Guts to glory to gravy."

I was a little amused by it myself. And that's what counts. Because no one else is here! I know that. And you'd know it too, if you were here.

80 Years Since Wall St. Crash

It's hard to believe it's only been 80 years since the Wall St. crash, the whole thing at the beginning of the Great Depression.

I'm not 80 years old, of course, but I go back a long time. And I used to hear my grandparents talking about the Depression and how terrible it all was. My grandpa wouldn't vote for a Republican no matter who he was, thanks to the Depression. I honor his memory for lots of things, but that's probably the biggest. He had the right idea. The Republicans are skunks. No offense to actual skunks.

But doesn't it seem like those days, the '20s are an infinity ago, plus one? To me it seems like it. 80 little years is all it's been. The ink's barely dry on the papers.

If you look at papers from 1929, it was a different world in many respects. They did the same things, of course, but we've come a long way since then.

I Hit 100 Followers

On one of my Twitter accounts. I only have one that I put my efforts into, since I have limited efforts.

It's been slow going, but today my thing cracked 100, like 101 at one point I think. I might lose 20 overnight, because, frankly, I have a lot of followers who I'm not going to follow back. They're mostly there, it would appear, for some business thing. Very few of them are what I'd call interested in what I have to say. So it's all vain and worthless, but hey ... you get your strokes where you can!

Ha ha. It is worthless, no doubt about that. I see that with the clearest eyes man can have.

There was one guy who started following me, though, who looks suitably strange enough for my tastes. I mean that as a compliment. His bio says: "Historical evidence suggests the existence of at least one immortal living among us. We're looking for the proof." And he has Rasputin all over his background. He's seeking information about someone named Sam Bailey. And says at his blog, "Those who know me personally recognize the ridiculousness of me interacting with strangers - even on the internet. Whether or not you've guessed from the blog, I'm not much of a socialite."

Joe Lieberman -- Putting Up With Him

It's hard to believe the entire party supported this guy for VP in 2000. After all we've been through with him in the meantime.

It's impossible to forget that this clown appeared at the Republican National Convention last year. And that he supported John McCain for President. That's bad enough, but that also means he supported Sarah Palin for VP. And potentially for president at any given moment, depending on McCain's ticker.

Isn't that something? If Joe Lieberman had his way, Sarah Palin would be that close to the presidency. And the Republicans, who gave us eight years of irresponsibility, would still be in control.

Personally, if I had my way, we would've kicked this lousy turncoat to the curb as soon as the '08 election was over. He could've had a nice time over at his new home, the Republican caucus.

Now, here he comes again. Threatening the health-care reform bill. After all the work they've put into it. After all the hope that we've built up that something decent might finally happen for a change. We've got the insurance companies with a knife to our throat all the time. And what's Joe Lieberman's take on that? He won't lift a finger to help.

I renounce half of my vote in 2000. Al Gore, you should've picked someone better.

I Forgot To Write Something Yesterday

I don't know what happened. I have a goal to write a little something every single day. Only missing a day here or there just to break up the streak if it's giving me fits.

But yesterday wasn't one of those days, either for breaking the streak. I just noticed, nothing happened and I'm trying to think back why.

I had plenty of time. But I guess it must've been when we went to our reading room to read, we were down there close to two hours, probably. I was reading away, with my reading glasses.

Speaking of reading, I see Barnes & Noble has a new electronic reading device, which looks cool. It's called the Nook. We have a Kindle in the family but it's not mine. If I think about it in the next few months -- let's say Christmas isn't too much of a budget killer [it will be] -- I might get one.

Then I can read more to my heart's content and forget all about "Boy Leg." Nah, I wouldn't do that.

My big problem with getting one of these electronic reading things is that I have hundreds of books that I haven't read. If I want to read, I could be reading everyday for nothing till I'm 70 years old.

Then my eyes will have fallen out and I won't need one anymore. Except I might, because at least on the Kindle it reads to you. By the time I'm 70 they'll probably have robots to read to me.

From Elvis In Memphis

I got the CD recently out, "Elvis In Memphis."

These are songs I already have, on the '60s box set as well as on the original records. They also put the "Back In Memphis" album together with it, since they're all the recordings Elvis made at American Recordings in Memphis in 1969.

The "Back In Memphis" album was originally together with a live record of Elvis at the International Hotel in Las Vegas.

At the time when these came out, I wasn't buying that many Elvis records, although I've had them now for decades. I was definitely noticing them somehow. I must've seen them in record stores. I was actually confused by it all. "Back in Memphis," "In Memphis," "From Vegas to Memphis," "From Memphis to Vegas," etc. I don't know if there were any other variations.

I couldn't really see the difference it made as to where he was and why they were making such a big deal about it. Just so they don't lose him. Since I never personally ran into him, whether he was in Memphis, Vegas, or Nashville didn't make any difference.

I can see the point now, that he was in a rut, then went back to his hometown to this legendary studio (at the time very successful) and put down some great tracks. Even so, I wasn't tuned in, so I didn't really realize how great the tracks were till a few years ago when I got the '60s box set. Now I love the songs.

And I'm very happy that Elvis had this high point -- some stuff to be really proud of.

This set is nice. The songs are in the order they were released on the LPs, plus there's bonus tracks, to give at least one take of each of the songs he recorded. It seems, though, that something's missing. Like the stereo versions of some of the songs, like "Suspicious Minds," "Kentucky Rain," etc. These are represented only by the mono versions. I'm no expert in these things, but I believe the versions on the '60s box set would be stereo. And I'm also thinking the versions on the "Elvis #1 Singles" box set are also the stereo versions. Don't hold me to that.

The pictures are nice in the "Memphis" CD set (2 CDs), the booklet has some good notes, there's a nice plastic slip case to put the cardboard set in. I like it. It was $13.88 at Walmart.

Dare We Hope?

The health-care debate is getting crazy, with multiple voices claiming various things. The public option's in, it's out, they support it, they don't, Obama supports it, Obama doesn't. Sheesh.

Just wake me up when we get something done. I'm so sick of it.

I think it'd be helpful if we knew 100% that President Obama wanted X, Y, and Z. Then all the competing voices -- all the king's horses and all the king's men -- wouldn't make any difference.

A lot of the craziness I suppose we can chalk up to the Republican mischief makers, the scoundrels, our national cancer. They're no doubt behind the scenes trying to gin up as much mischief as they can.

Yes, the Republican party is a cancer in our country. They're a scourge and it'd pay if we could somehow find the cure.

Commander Cody

Just this morning I started watching the serial "Radar Men from the Moon" (or something like that), introducing the character Commander Cody.

I guess I never knew who Commander Cody was. I just remember the name of the singing group that had Commander Cody in the name.

But he was on old serials, as an adventure character. Anyway, I'm still in the first episode, which features some guys shooting a ray gun at trains, electrical towers, etc.

Commander Cody has a flying suit, which when he gets it all adjusted, he's able to fly and get there just before they blow up another train.

The Commander is an ordinary looking guy, but looks extraordinary with the big bullet helmet.

We'll see how this goes. I've seen several serials, and they tend to be monotonous, a lot of getting the secret thing, then losing it, then getting it, then losing it, etc. I hope this one is better.

Defragging My Computer

I have two computers that I use. And both of them are slow as molasses.

They're old and don't have enough memory, etc., but at times they've worked along fairly well. Nothing like what I've seen lately in decreased performance. Like sludge.

One of them says it doesn't need to be defragged but the other did. So I'm letting it go doing that now. It's taking forever, and the hard drive is a really small one.

I also deleted all the TEMP files, which was a challenge in and of itself, since the disk cleanup function didn't work properly till I looked it up and made a registry change. Crazy crap.

The other computer -- which is very sluggish -- I ran a spyware thing. It came up with 48 minor, really nothing sorts of things. I don't know if any were serious, but I haven't seen anything especially wrong on that front.

Tomorrow I'll see if it's any faster.

I seriously need two brand new computers. The time is practically here, now with the new Windows 7 being released.