Sleepless in Midland

A shot of whiskey makes a perfect end to a busy day.

But oh my, there sure are a lot of good selections available. My current favorite is Devil's River Bourbon, but given the large selection and the fact that I'm a newcomer to the pursuit of fine bourbon, that could change overnight. One I would like to try is Colkegan Single Malt Whiskey made by Santa Fe Spirits, but currently the closest retailer where it's available is a hundred miles from here. And sadly, Texas lawmakers have not seen fit to allow shipping liquor to or within the state -- probably a holdover from the days of prohibition.

Meanwhile, let's indulge in some trivia. Mentalfloss has a beginner's guide to the topic in What’s the Difference Between Scotch, Whiskey and Bourbon?:

The Federal Standards of Identity for Bourbon stipulate what is and what isn’t bourbon. For a whiskey to call itself bourbon, its mash, the mixture of grains from which the product is distilled, must contain at least 51% corn. (The rest of the mash is usually filled out with malted barley and either rye or wheat.) The mash must be distilled at 160 proof or less, put into the barrel at 125 proof or less, and it must not contain any additives. The distillate must be aged in a new charred oak barrel. (Most often these barrels are white oak, but they can be any variety of oak.) ...

The main difference between scotch and whisky is geographic, but also ingredients and spellings. Scotch is whisky made in Scotland, while bourbon is whiskey made in the U.S.A, generally Kentucky. Scotch is made mostly from malted barley, while bourbon is distilled from corn. If you’re in England and ask for a whisky, you’ll get Scotch. But in Ireland, you’ll get Irish whiskey (yep, they spell it differently for a little colour). On this side of the pond, we have our own local color, too. The difference between Tennessee Whiskey, like Jack Daniel’s, for example, and Bourbon is that after the spirit is distilled, Tennessee Whiskey is filtered through sugar-maple charcoal. This filtering, known as the Lincoln County Process, is what distinguishes Tennessee Whiskey from your average Bourbon, like Jim Beam. The name, Bourbon, comes from an area known as Old Bourbon, around what is now Bourbon County, Kentucky.

On top of these types of whiskey, we also have Rye, which can refer either to American rye whiskey, which must be distilled from at least 51 percent rye or Canadian whisky, which may or may not actually include any rye in its production process.

So generally, Scotch is whiskey made in Scotland. Irish Whiskey is made in Ireland. Bourbon was originally identified with whiskey made in Bourbon County, Kentucky, but it can be made anywhere in the U.S. There are even a few bourbon distilleries in Texas.

And there are plenty of customers for it -- look for sales to skyrocket on Monday before the midterm elections. See Poll: Democrats Are Stress-Eating More, Drinking Republicans Under the Table Due to Midterm Election Stress.

Coming up: Artificial whiskey.

------

1:59 PM 11/4/2018

punctuation evolution -- use of period in text message signifies insincerity

Amazing how communication evolves. Those of us who work or worked in a profession in which the ability to communicate in a written instrument was important might never have seen this coming.

Apparently, the technique of omitting a period in a one-sentence text connotes sincerity. Or more specifically, the use of the period connotes insincerity. Go figure

Anyway, the subject was deemed so important that a scholarly paper was written on it. See Texting insincerely: The role of the period in text messaging. Excerpt:

When the exchanges appeared as text messages, the responses that ended with a period were rated as less sincere than those that did not end with a period. No such difference was found for handwritten notes. We conclude that punctuation is one cue used by senders, and understood by receivers, to convey pragmatic and social information.

This comes to us by way of an article in theweek.com, to wit: Why does using a period in a text message make you sound angry?

Who would have thought scholars would get paid for researching something like this? And who would have thought a website writer would get paid for writing about it?

Editor's note: Who would have thought a mere blogger would get paid regurgitating this stuff? -- RoboEd. | They don't -- Sleepless.

------

2:00 PM 1/6/2018

Australian Army couldn't find vehicle after they painted it camouflage

It was bound to happen. Anyone who has ever put down some camo colored object out in the wild and had to hunt for it will sympathize with them.

It probably didn't happen quite this way, though. Military stuff goes missing from time to time, and the camo color was probably just a coincidence, if this even happened at all.

But it's one of those things that was too easily ridiculed for some newspaper editor to pass up.

Via Miss Cellania.

Happy Valentines Day

I hope you all had a happy Valentine's Day!

Your sleepless blogger took a much needed nap.

Meanwhile, here's a nod to those guys who managed to get a golf game in while their wives/girl friends watched a Lifetime movie while snuggling up with that big teddy bear you gave her.

Yes!

A lesson we learned from Star Wars

A rule for fighting:

If they bring a knife, you bring a pillow.

Via Tastefully Offensive.

The bugs (bacteria) on your cell phone

Close up photos of bacteria are usually both fascinating and disturbing. And this is no exception. Dailymail.co.uk has a photo spread showing what was growing in Petri dishes a few days after students were asked to press their mobile phones into them. Click to see the photos.

Disclaimer: Sleepless in Midland assumes no responsibility for nausea, hypochondria, paranoia, contract cancellation, unfriending, or any other situation resulting from looking at the photos.

Where all those donated old clothes end up

Every year the Texas Size Garage Sale takes place in Midland, Texas, and it has always been a great place to find good, used, useful stuff.

There are always racks and racks of old clothes for sale. And there was talk of a team who came in and purchased pallets of old clothes and hauled them off in trucks. The speculation was that the clothes were headed for Mexico. But that's probably a thought crime by today's standards.

Here's the answer. Somewhere between the garage sale and their next retail selling point they undergo a name change from "used" to "vintage," and buyers snap them up at high prices. See Urban Outfitters Buys Yard Sale Clothes In Bulk And Resells Them To Hipsters As 'Vintage'.

Hmm. Remember the Occupy movement? I picture those hipsters as a good market for this sort of Occupy chic.

There. From thought crime to thought fun in just a few short paragraphs. Redemption!

Psychics and skeptics

I was rummaging through the file of pending blog topics, some of which have been there a while, and ran across this one. There were several podcasters who were disciples of the famous skeptic, James Randi. And sometimes those podcasts were quite entertaining.

Mr. Randi himself was a guest on one, and he told a funny story that went something like this:

Some years ago I was invited by a TV station to accompany a crew to the house made famous by the Amityville horror movie. They also invited a psychic to go along to help communicate with the ghosts, should there be any. So the cars pulled up to the house, and the psychic wanted to touch the ground to get the vibes or whatever. The psychic got out and almost immediately fell to the ground and began writhing and convulsing.

A police car had pulled up, and the policeman stayed in his car. Presumable he was simply going to watch the filming. But once the psychic started convulsing the police officer got out and walked to them.

The officer asked, “What's going on?” They explained that they were there to make a news spot about the Amityville thing.

“Oh, that house is two blocks over.”

I enjoyed listening to those skeptic podcasts until they abandoned their skepticism and became too preachy about man-made global warming. Say, it wouldn't take much to twist that story a bit and put global warmists in the place of the psychic.

Happiness for some too often requires unhappiness in others

This quote from Bertrand Russell popped up today:

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years.

Doesn't that seem to nail that last Presidential campaign? The winner relied so heavily on a need by so many to make some many others unhappy.

Here's the quote page. And here's the same quote nicely overlaid on a photo of Mr. Russell.

A new use for pennies -- floor covering

Most people who see a penny in the parking lot won't bother benging over to pick it up. But a creative tattoo artist in Garfield, Pennsylvania, had an idea -- use them for floor covering.

There was plenty of bending over for that project, but with a lot of help -- 300 man hours worth -- she covered the 800 square feet of her store floor with around 250,000 pennies.

Watch a video here.

Apparently, it is cheaper to pave the floor with money than to buy tile. Ben Bernanke must be proud.

A ghost in the pants

We hear on occasion how someone spotted an image of a religious icon on a tortilla or something. This is almost as good. It's an image of Charles Laughton's Hunchback of Notre Dame on my pants leg.

The appearance of the religious icons carry a message. Pray harder, quit sinning, do better. Not sure just what Quasimodo is trying to say, though. Stand up straight, maybe.

[Oh come on, that's not happenstance, you shaped that image yourself. Admit it. Robo-ed. No, that's the way the pants fell. If I had shaped the image myself it wouldn't have been Quasimodo. It would have been Barack Obama, Mike Bloomberg, or some of the others who want to put the government in the thick of things. Or better yet, that sexy hurdler who does the shimmy shake before she races. Sleepless.]

Newspaper ad -- Sorry for the innuendo

George Brownridge pleased 15 women for an entire day, and they thanked him with this ad.

George must have been exhausted, too.

However, apparently he had only arranged a shopping trip for those ladies, and they wanted to thank him publicly. But wouldn't you know it, some took it the wrong way. And an apology ad resulted.

From Daily Mail. Via Guy Code via Linkiest.

Presidential diets

Diets definitely change over time, and presidents' diets have kept up with the times. All the presidents menus gives us a glimpse of the foods our presidents have enjoyed and provides not only an historic perspective but a giggle or two.

Here's a very abbreviated list:

George Washington: Sliced tongue and toast for breakfast.

John Adams: Baptist cakes, syllabubs, and copious amounts of cider.

Andrew Jackson: Tenderloin with jezebel sauce, hoppin’ John, and leather britches (that's a bean dish).

Millard Fillmore: Pigeon, and larded sweet breads.

James Buchanan: Confederate pudding and Jeff Davis pie.

James Garfield: Squirrel soup and parsnips.

Dwight D. Eisenhower: Breast of veal and oxtail soup.

Jimmy Carter: Ham with redeye gravy.

George H.W. Bush: Pork rinds and popcorn.

Bill Clinton: Egg McMuffins, and Kool-Aid.

Barack Obama: Chili, burgers, trail mix and Nicorette.

Nicorette?!!!

This was just a taste with lots of omissions. See the whole menu. Nicorette anyone?

A museum for fooling the eye

Few things provide as much vacation fun as a gag photo that stretches the perspective. Picture a tourist about to squeeze the Eiffel Tower between his thumb and forefinger or perhaps a woman kissing George Washington at Mount Rushmore.

There's a museum in Busan, South Korea, dedicated to optical illusions called the Trick Eye Museum. And the beauty is that visitors can have their pictures taken among the displays to create some unbelievable scenes. The photo below is my favorite. Look closely and you can see the corner of those painted walls.

Click to see more photos. Via NedHardy.com.

Mermaids aren't real? Dang. Just when we thought it would be fun to go back in the water.

NOAA makes it official: No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found.

That news release was probably triggered by one of those fact/fiction TV shows that pop up on TV these days. This one on Animal Planet was called Mermaids - The Body Found. From Discovery.com:

Animal Planet’s Mermaids: the Body Found Paints a Wildly Convincing Picture of the Existence of Mermaids, What They May Look Like and Why They’ve Stayed Hidden…Until Now

Two-hour CGI Special Unravels Mysterious Underwater Sound Recordings, Dives Deep into the Aquatic Ape Theory and Questions if Mermaids are Related to People

Mermaids: The Body Found is the Culmination of Animal Planet’s First-Ever Monster Week, Airing May 21-28

There is a fair degree of gullibility in the population. Maybe the school system is to blame. Critical thinking isn't in the course of study -- people have to learn that on their own, but many don't. And if politics gets involved then look out below. Olly Stone and Michael Moore have certainly capitalized on that unfortunate phenomenon.

So the Discovery network took a stab it it. And someone at NOAA felt the need to step in and set the record straight. If only they would do that on global warming.

Napoleon's descendant standing by just in case

Today, July 4th, we are celebrating our great country's independence. So what better occasion than now to poke fun at the French?

Socialist François Hollande became President of France last month and is sure to carry on the type of economic decline his party is known for. Socialism is a parasite that is hard to get rid of once it takes hold. But what happens if the French get fed up? Another French revolution?

Well, just in case they want him, Napoleon’s great-great-great-grandnephew, Jean Christophe, the current head of the Imperial House of Bonaparte, is standing by ready to take charge of the country in case they want to return to the good old days.

Napoleon Bonaparte didn't have any children, so the royal line passed through his brother and on down the line to Christophe.

This comes to us by way of OMG-facts.com which says, "The Imperial House of Bonaparte doesn’t seem to really do anything." But they're ready, just in case.

This might be a good spot to plug a very entertaining but overlooked movie, The Emperor's New Clothes, with Ian Holm playing Napoleon Bonaparte in an alternate history in which Napoleon escapes from his island prison and goes to Paris to rally his followers and regain his rule. I won't give the story away, but it doesn't go as planned as he is faced with the reality of a post war Paris full of widows and orphans and no one surviving who knew him personally. There is one haunting scene in which he takes a short cut through the yard of a mental institution and encounters numerous crazies who are insane with the delusion that each of them is the great Napoleon Bonaparte. What a sober awakening for the real Napoleon.

But hey, you hang in there Jean Christophe. Your day just might come.

Left lane closed. No, your other left.

Left lane closed ahead.

No, your other left.

P.S. A snarky blogger might make a political joke right about now. Something like,

Shutting down the left is a shovel ready job, or

Government - the left hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. No wait, it's the other way around.

But no. Here at Sleepless in Midland we're above that sort of thing.

Need a tornado shelter - Head for a bank vault

This photo you see on the right was reported to be a bank vault that survived the tornado that devastated Joplin, MO, a year ago.

The picture appears at this Washington Post site. But it also appears in a collection of photos of bank vaults that have been converted for other uses. See Paydayloan.co.uk for that display.

Looks like a safe place to ride out a rough storm, provided that is, there's an easy way to get out of it.

Baby names -- never mind the popular ones, let's look at the odd ones

The Social Security Admin issued a news release today announcing the top ten baby names for boys and girls in 2011. Jacob was the top boy's name with Mason coming in second. They speculate that "Mason" shot up to the number two spot because that's Kourtney Kardashian’s son's name. Here's hoping that Kardashian is a good role model. See the rest of the list at your leisure.

But now let's look at some unusual names. Maureen O'Connor at Gawker found them on Mommie blogs, and she added this enlightening note:

... people with cool names are actually cooler than the rest of us. I am certain of this because, as a young female with a lame old lady name, I am human evidence of the inverse of this principle.

Some of the best include Winter, Alarica, Zavy, Lilac, Hill, Inara, Kestrel, Sturm, and Poppyseed.

How about Winter Sturm?

Meanwhile, George Castanza's choice of Seven for a baby name still hasn't caught on.

Sunday Diversion -- Frank Sinatra's letter to Mike Royko

Lettersofnote.com has on display a letter from Frank Sinatra to columnist Mike Royko complaining about something Royko said. The best part is where Sinatra refutes Royko's assertion that Sinatra had a "tough reputation" with a bet and a threat. Quote:

Regarding my "tough reputation" you and no one else can prove that allegation. You and millions of other gullible Americans read that kind of crap written by the same female gossip columnists that you are so gallantly trying to protect; the garbage dealers I call hookers, and there's no doubt that is exactly what they are, which makes you a pimp, because you are using people to make money just as they are.

Lastly, certainly not the least, if you are a gambling man:

a) You prove, without a doubt, that I have ever punched an elderly drunk or elderly anybody, you can pick up $100,000.

b) I will allow you to pull my "hairpiece"; if it moves, I will give you another $100,000; if it does not, I punch you in the mouth. How about it?

Ha ha!  Yeah, he was just a big old pussy cat. Emphasis added.

Via Letters of Note.

Get out your handkerchiefs and watch this great commercial -- hint: Olympics 2012

The music, the cheering crowds, the thrill of victory. It's all here in this short Youtube clip.

Never mind that it's a soap commercial, it's a touching presentation. And it should leave no doubt that today's Mad Men are as good as they've always been.

Via MissCellania.

Send your ashes to the moon

Dust to dust, ashes to space. From last rites to last flights. May we mourn the departed as we give their beloved souls a gentle boast toward the heavens. Not that they would need it, to be sure.

Actually, this is pretty cool. No need to buy a plot and casket or pay a funeral home, except to burn the body.

It's a space service from Celestis.com. Launch your loved one into earth orbit for just $3,000.

They won't know how long the capsule will stay up there until after it completes one full earth orbit, but previous ones are estimated to remain in orbit between 10 and 240 years before they burn up on reentry. The mourners will be able to track the satellite. Hey look, there goes one.

They don't take all the ashes, just one to seven grams of the deceased, depending on the package purchased. But don't worry about dealing with the remainder of the ashes, Celestis will cast them into the sea, if you wish.

Pay a bit more for an orbit around the moon. That would cost $10,000, but kick it up to $12,500 and send the ash into deep space.

But look at this. There's competition in Virginia.

Bang, zoom. One of these days, Alice. To the moon.

Sunday Diversions -- silent messages

Don't bother knocking.

Via Oddee.com.

Squeeze play. (It's a clever zoo ad on the side of a bus.)

Via RegreftulMorning.com.

Adopt a croc

It's hard enough to place an unwanted pet. But this?

Getting it home won't be easy either -- it's in Sweden. See Swedish zoo bankruptcy leaves crocs 'homeless'.

If this place doesn't have ghosts then they don't exist

Sven Fennema took some photos in abandoned crypts in Belgium and came out with some really creepy images. Take a deep breath before clicking here.

If that place isn't haunted no place is.  Happy Halloween.

Dragin' a wagon

Old guy: "Towing is like a getting married."

"Ya just gotta get hitched up right, and even when ya drag bottom, it'll hold together tight."

T-shirt guy: "Screw the philosophy, and just call a damn tow truck."

What was your first clue?

... that the motel had paper thin walls.

He lost his head in the Paleozone

He wasn't the first guy who lost his head over a woman.

Or maybe he was. Maybe he was.

(Photo taken at Alley Oop Park in Iraan.)

Sunday sweetness

Aw, a doe and her little baby fawn. They are sooo cute.

Borrowed from TheoSpark.net. Thanks!

Walk a mile in her shoes

One sure way to stop sexual assaults in their tracks is for potential assailants to see men in high heels.

There must be something very unstimulating about a man in women's shoes. How else to explain the purpose of these Walk a Mile in Her Shoes parades? There's one scheduled in Dallas on 10/1/11, and it's a place where men can put on women's shoes and pay $25 to march in a parade to demonstrate opposition to sexual assaults.

It must be working. Sex crimes have been on a decline at least since 2006.

But here at Sleepless in Midland we ask the important questions, like what would Joe Namath wear? Besides pantyhose.