Piles

Yes, it's another picutre of that particular corner of the study. No, the piles of stuff to be dealt with haven't been reduced. In fact, I'm adding to the pile.

I have a four-drawer filing cabinet in the corner of the study. I'd like to empty it out, move it to the garage, fill it with junk out there, and do something else with the space in the study. That means sorting through a gigantic pile of paperwork that I've clung to for years, and trying to talk my wife into sorting through a pile of paperwork she's had for even longer.

It's been slow going.

First thing I did was take the more active piles of paper and move them to a different filing cabinet in another spot in the study. It's the most active pile of files, and it's already bulging. As for the rest, I'm going through it a folder at a time to determine what I can shred or toss and what I need to deal with in another way. I've hit a folder that's full of old Christmas cards, letters, kids' art, flyers from graduations and band concerts and the like. I may just have to put it back in the file and move on to the next one, as I have no idea yet what I want to do with that collection of oddities.

Russian Propaganda is for Idiots

Note the title. That's pretty much what the author of this YouTube video says.

And he should know: He lived in Ukraine pre-USSR dissolution, and is now seeing his country at war with its former master.

The video was prompted by people in comments on his other videos getting mad that he was comparing Russia to Nazi Germany. Their argument was that the Nazis were much worse than the Russians, and that anything being reported as "worse" had to be western propaganda.

So he lays into them, saying that Western propaganda has to rely on half-truths, while Russian propaganda relies wholly on lies.

Inserting my own opinion here: We now have a major political party in the United States that has shifted to relying on lies for their propaganda, and the idiots on their side are lapping it up.

Just about everything this political party says triggers what this YouTuber calls the "imbecillamus," viz:

This is also the pinned comment on the video, from its author (warning, a swear in the last paragraph):

That idiotic black/white response he's talking about? It's the same from the idiots of the political party I've mentioned. So they're textbook idiots, based on the defininiton this author shares of idiocy.

Great Bits from "The Rickover Effect"

I'm nearly done reading Theodore Rockwell's "The Rickover Effect," which has already prompted two blog posts here this month.

I'm increasingly struck by how hard he drove his people to become better, well-rounded people who had enough information in their heads thanks to his efforts and their own efforts to learn that they excelled at their jobs, making his work as a manager that much easier.

Part of my interest is selfish -- Michelle recently applied for a job as an administrative assistant at the Naval Reactors Facility. I'm hoping she gets the job, particularly as she spoke about the interview and the questions asked, many which I regard as evidence that the Rickover Effect is still there at NRF. I find that telling.

While I don't know what the outcome of this interview will be, I'm hopeful she gets the job. In that event, I think she should read this book just to get a bit of background, so I'm trying to finish my read of it as soon as possible so I can pass it on to her.

I thought for this post I'd collect some of the interesting things I've marked in this book, beyond what I've already shared. Most of what I share here are quotes from Admiral Rickover.

From page 85 (quote):

One must create the ability in his staff to generate clear, forceful arguments for opposting viewpoints as well as for their own. Open discussions and diagreements must be encouraged, so that all sides of an issue will be fully explored. Further, important issues should be presented in writing. Nothing so sharpens the thought process as writing down one's arguments. Weaknesses overlooked in oral discussion become painfully obvious on the written page.

From page 127 (book text):

The point about the inescapability of responsibility was basic Rickover dogma, and he never missed an opportunity to drive it home. He circulated copies of John Grier Hibben's "Essay on Responsibility" to all the staff and expectd them to read it and learn from it. Circulation of reading material had become an important training technique, and the variety of materials he circulated was bewildering. A government memorandum defining "Completed Staff Work" and another on how to prepare a proper memo to a superior ("FDA: The Facts, Discussion, Action Format" ) were unsprprising in that context, as was the original text of Elbert Hubbard's "Message to Garcia." But other messages where more unexpected, such as a long chapter from a book on life during the Thirty Years' War, ot Dylan Thomas' prose poem A Child's Christmas in Wales.

From page 157 (quote):

As machines relieve us of the brutal, tiring, and time-consuming labor that had been the lot of the majority of men from time immemorial; as they enable us to universalize affluence and leisure, we face a choice: we may take these benefits and life the life of the idle rich of old, pursuing a good time and not bothering about the quality of our own life or the life of the nation. Or, we may decide to emulate those -- and there were many -- who in the past considered wealth and leisure a trust, to be utilized for self-improvement and for improvement of their particular societies. The choice is for each individual to make. Moreover, each individual, under our form of government, has a right to speak out publicly in favor of making better use of science and technology than is possible under present conditions.

If those who agree with this new viewpoint become a majority; in other words, if a consensus is reached through public discussion of the issue, the American people may decide to take action. The action may displease powerful vested interests, but this is how we govern ourselves. The status quo has no absolute sanctity under our form of government. It must constantly justify itself to the people in whom is vested ultimate sovereignty over the nation.

~~

In reading this book, it's clear he worked hard at what he preached. He wasn't born in high station, or with great intelligence. He worked at it. Honed it. And wanted the same work and honing out of the people he trusted.

"Now We're Ready for the Scraping"

It took Bach's 3rd Brandenburg Concerto and half of his Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor to scrape another two square feet of floor in the bathoom, but I'm making progress.

(That's about 20 minutes for those who don't "Ahhh, Bach," all over the place.)

More updates to follow. Hoping to have the floor scraping done today so when it warms up out of the teens during the day, I can lay some tile.

This is what I should be listening to, however:

Old Fart Pet Peeve Incoming

At our house, we're still antiquated fossils in that we have a supply of postage stamps. Yes, we pay many bills online. Yes, we communicate with most folks via the Intnernet. Nevertheless, there are still things that go out through the United States Postal Service, and some of it internationally.

Thus lies the problem: None of the stamps, be they for domestic or international service, carry their value on the face of them anymore. Used to be (gather 'round, kids) stamps displayed their value in US currency right on them. If you needed a stamp for a domestic letter, you looked until you found a 25-cent stamp.

Nowaways, with stamp prices increasing with the regularity of the tides, the postal service just prints "Forever" or whatnot on them, disguising their value.

Every time I need a stamp, I wander into my wife's craft room. Then I have to call her, Keeper of the Stamps, to ask which stamps are for domestic mail, and which are for international mail. I don't want to use an international stamp -- which cost more money at the post office but conceals its true value to all but the purchaser -- on a domestic letter, thus paying more to The Man than necessary.

In short, USPS, can you go back to printing the value of the stamps on them, or at least clearly label them in some way so as to differentiate between domestic and international rates.

Expecting no reply, I remain sincerely yours, or at least until we no longer need your services.

 

The Magic Wheelbarrow

Witness "The Magic Wheelbarrow," one of a good handful of movies my older siblings made at our house on Hitt Road, using a Super 8 hand-held camera, technology now rendered moot by the phone cameras of the day.

Still, this is fun to watch. I have a minor role as the little kid who occasionally pops in wearing the red coat. I'm not in the main feature, but in some of the bonus material included at the end.

In the thumbnail above, that's my oldest brother Albert, preparing to leap off the top of the house.

Looking at the movies makes me sad just a little bit, as the house was recently torn down to make way for a road widening project. The house looks a lot smaller (Dad did some additions to it over the years) and the trees are certainly a lot smaller than I remember them being.

LIGHT!

The shattering of a little glass (I knocked a picture off the wall), a quick whiff of ozone and the new light in the study blazes forth an unparalleled glory.

Casting weird shadows everywhere. I may have to adjust things.

And you can see I got the lighting of the lamp from A Christmas Story scrolling so I could make sure I got the line right.

DON'T TOUCH THE LEGO SET!

While I love the level of detail included in this LEGO set for the Town Hall from "The Nightmare Before Christmas," it's got a property that I've noticed out of late of LEGO sets: It can't pass the structural stability test my younger brother and I devised years ago when we built our own LEGO models: I could not hand this model to my sister and have it stay in one piece for more than a few seconds.

This is not a dis on my sister. She's not clumsy or maladroit or anything. We just figured that if a LEGO thing we built couldn't be handled by someone else for more than a few seconds without breaking, it needed reengineering.

This thing needs reengineering. It's very true to the movie's aesthetic, but structurally is about as fragile as a snowflake.

I really do like the advances in minifig technology, though I think the "children" minifigs should be allowed to sit like their adult counterparts.

I have a few sets that could be classified as older. And while they do break if I accidentally drop them on the floor, they don't shatter and scatter like the new ones do.

Not a criticism. Just something I've noticed.

Too Much Stuff to Do

Books. So many books. But I can say that the books I want to have in the basement are now officially in the basement, if not yet put away properly.

I was a little worried about the bedroom being bereft of books, but thanks to a baker's dozen plus one of bookends I ordered this week, I moved my "to be read" pile from the basement to the nighstand by the bed, which is where I get to do most of my reading.

As I feared, there's not enough room on the bookcase I intended for my comic books, so I'll have to figure something out.

Then there's the bottom shelf in the closet, still needing to be sorted out. No idea what I'm going to do with all that suff, and I can't toss it, as most of it is not mine.

Therein lies another problem: Three cases of CDs I have to figure out where to put. I still have the custom shelves I built for them, but there's only one wall in the study I could put it on, and right now it's blocked by that filing cabinet in the photo above. But I'm closing in on it.

After things are stowed, they may get unstowed for a bit. I have a home network I want to start wiring, and the network switch is going to go in this room somewhere. It has to have power. Not sure yet how I'm going to do that.

And I have the bathroom next door to remodel. Michelle's been patient, but she's been waiting on that a long time. So the home network may be delayed a bit, though I may sling some cable in the shared wall  as I'm doing bathroom things.

A Week In: How's It Going?

You may recall my whining a week ago about suddenly being surprised with a BYUI teaching contract this semester. How are things going? That is the tale I am about to tell.

It's . . . okay. I'd still rather have the semester off. However, as I mentioned previously the money is welcome. And I do have a refreshing mix of students, most of whom appear to be concurrent enrollment students who are also in high school. They tend to be pretty motivated individuals, which always helps.

Not that my other students aren't motivated. Maybe motivated and surrounded by privilege is the better way to put it. And not in a bad way. They just don't have the struggles that my typical mix of students have.

Trying not to put too much detail in there, I guess . . .

I have spent two long evenings this week with student conferences, something I really did not want to do. But I've put on the stiff upper lip and done it. I have more to do Friday and Saturday, but I can see the end of them now. I also gave myself a break Tuesday and Thursday, so I'm not doing them every day this week. That meant more piled into Monday and Wednesday, but it was worth it.

TOO MANY BOOKS. No Such Thing, of Course . . .

The books continue piling up in this house. I have had to add another shelf in the study, and should probably consider adding a couple more, but for now it's at the limit. Below, shelves in the closet. I still have a mess of things to clean up on the bottom shelf.

Next the shelves above my work computer.
 

Then on the far wall, next to my personal computer.

This is where the new (third) shelf is.

Part of the reason for all of this is that I have books in my closet upstairs I want to move down here. I've been only partly successful with that, and part of it came with sorting through my Peanuts paperbacks and giving duplicates to my son, who also has a physical media hoarding problem, so all I'm really doing there is enabling.

Why am I moving the books out of the closet? Well, because we took our CD shelves down and now I need a place to put the CDs. I wanted to put them in the study, but there's just no room here (particularly now that I've added more bookshelves) so they're going to go in the closet where the recently-removed books were. At least temporarily until I can figure out how to empty and get rid of a filing cabinet in the study so I can put the CD shelves on the wall where it stands. It's all very complicated.

The re-shelving has resulted in some relocation of wall art (mostly collections of BSA patches and other similar items). I'm having to get inventive:

It's not my proudest moment, but the patches must be displayed: They're 50th anniversary patches of the scout camp I went to as a kid and where my family works all summer.

And oh yeah, more books. Part of that shelf is occupied by toner cartridges for a laser printer. They'll be finding a new home soon, to make way for yet more books that are in my closet. Maybe they can go in said closet, just to make a point.

Again with The Hermit of Iapetus

NOTE: Trying this again. A new tack. New ideas coming. That's a good thing, right?

Only Nixon, the old Vulcan proverb goes, could go to China.

Just perhaps, however, he might consider crossing the wide Missouri with me, as I undertake a voyage.

. . .

"There's no chance of rescue," the bursar said. "Nor, of course, even a guarantee we could get you there. Not that it's far. It's just . . . uncommon. There's no one - nothing - there. You'd be alone."

"Yes."

The bursar was silent.

"If it's a question of money -"

"No," he said. "Hardly. Well almost hardly. The orbit surcharge is a pittance when the entire voyage is considered. Mathematicians go cheap these days. And freight, well, almost negligible, considering. Where it's all dead load, and you said - you did say - you'd gather it all up, no matter where it fell. But . . it's the -"

"Isolation, yes," I said. "That's the idea."

"Communication. Intermittent at best. Then we just don't know, as there's no one there. And the debris fields. The radiation."

"The solitude. The room for introspection. The possibility."

"The poisons. It's toxic enough - well, is likely toxic enough-"

"It's fine," I said. "We're used to toxicity."

"We?"

"He said he'd come with me."

"Yes," the bursar said, circling a finger around an ear, catching the planning officer's eye. "You mentioned him. Free on board, I believe we agreed?"

"Yes," I said. "The company is most generous on that point."

Silence, broken only by a sniff from the planning officer.

"And the ship is called," I asked after a moment.

The bursar tapped at the keyboard. "Shenandoah."

"Then the voyage has already begun."

I'm going to take some advice from some writing instructions given to our students this week -- set parts of my writing to different music. This song is for the first part of the book. Other parts will feature Claude Debussy's "Clair de Lune" and "San Antonio Rose" by Patsy Cline.

Doomed. Maybe Doomed.

Christianity, online, is . . . *interesting.*

Or doomed. Maybe doomed is the better way to say it.

Saw this meme on the Facebooks tonight, for example:

So maybe the meme goes a little overboard, blotting out things that don't necessarily have to do with judgment. But reading the comments. Oh, the comments. Context is everything. And it seems like the context people want is context that allows them to be . . . judgy.

So here's the pertinent context:

Judge not, that ye be not judged.

For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

I am an imperfect person. Every time I manage to cast a beam out of the ol' peeper, more settle in or pop to the surface.

Context: Don't judge because you, yourself, are imperfect. Maybe work on your own sins and shortcomings before you dare judge others. Does that mean we don't offer help? No. Does that mean we don't pray for others? No. But it does mean we don't judge. Context or otherwise, "Do not judge" seems to be the kernel of these passages.

But boy are folks bent out of shape. They want context. Context so they can judge, it seems. And maybe I'm wrong; it's hard to see through all these beams.

Read if you dare.

No Longer Flickering

You may recall a month or two ago my shenanigans of trying to fix the flickering LED light fixture we have in our basement. I reattached wiring. I got rid of excess wiring. I replaced switches. Nothing worked.

I can report today a tentative victory: We have replaced the light fixture. And it's twin. So they'll match.

I hope the fix lasts.

Yes, riveting photo of the cardboard boxes that held the new lights. But a photo of the installed lights would be just as exciting. Ignore the broken banister behind the boxes; that's on my list of things to do, possibly this summer. I'm dragging my feet on that because the stairs themselves need replacing or extensive repair -- whoever installed the carpet on them nailed the carpet to the treads, with horseshoe nails -- and I'm not sure I'm up to that yet.

I Got Responses

Remember that little screed I sent to the state legislature (or at least my representatives) earlier this week?

I got responses.

Rep. Horman is a sponsor of the bill. Gracious response.

Rep. Mickelsen is more of a moderate, and clearly is of the same mind I am.

Hire Human Beings. Be A Human Being

Reading in Theodore Rockwell's "The Rickover Effect," a biography of Admiral Hyman Rickover, who was a driving force in developing the Nuclear Navy. It's a pretty fascinating look at the man and his role in developing the nascent military-industrial complex, but with the aim of increased efficiency and lower costs. (The bad of the complex came in afterward, I'm convinced.) Anyway, I thought this bit was an interesting look at how Rickover picked people to work with his program:

"Admiral [a subordinate said], I can't figure you out. You just washed eight guys down the drain with the back of your hand, and now you're going to spend hours on the plane tonight to make a possible small difference in somebody else's career. How come?"

"These are my people, [Rickover said]. That's the difference. Dunford, did you ever really look at the kind of people I've brought in here?"

"Yes, sir, of course. And I've heard people from industry and from research laboratories say that this organization has the highest concentration of bright young engineering talent in the country."

"You still don't get it. Our senior scientist has a master's degree in electrical engineering ahd an Ph.D in physics. But he is also an ordained Orthodox rabbi, and highly devout. He has spent many a twenty-four hour day in an airport because the sun had started to set on a Friday and his religion forbade his traveling. Our senior metallurgist is so highly regarded by the Mormon church that I'm afraid they're going to pull him out of here for a top position in Salt Lake City someday. One of our chemical engineers ia a leader in the Church of the savior, a particularly respected evangelical church here in town. And now I've had a request from one of our people for six weeks off so that he may make the pilgrimage to Mecca required by his faith. These are very spiritual people. They are not just technicians, they are highly developed human beings."

Rickover clearly wanted human beings working for him. He wanted people who showed dedication in every aspect of their lives, not merely exerting dedication in certain areas, like work. He wanted people who were well-rounded, who stood up for what they believed in, even if it didn't apply to the technical work they did for him.

The book mentions earlier that the metallurgist in question is Richard G. Scott, who did indeed answer several calls to serve in Salt Lake City, as a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy from 1977 to 1983, when he was called to serve as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles until his death in 2015.

Rickover knew his people well, and wanted to treat them well because they were willing to giver their all. A good example for me to follow.

Making Democracy Harder

Representatives Mickelsen and Horman,

I want to go on record as a constituent in opposition to House Bill No. 2, which bears the intention of limiting Idaho residents' ability to be involved directly in democratic (with a small d, mind you) participation in state government.

The proposition process has its flaws. Requiring a 60% threshold for propositions to appear on the ballot adds another flaw. Making it harder for Idaho citizens to participate directly in democracy is a bad look for any legislator of any stripe. Supporting this bill isn't going to reduce growing cynicism towards government and the elected agents that run it.

I know the entrenched Republican party felt threatened by the push last year to reopen primaries, and had that effort not been paired with ranked choice voting, I believe the open primary effort would have passed. Voters saw the flaw in the proposition and voted it down, but the proposition system allowed us that opportunity. I'm sure you've felt the same way when bills you viewed as flawed didn't become law, but at least you're in a position to directly affect outcomes. Don't make it harder for Idahoans to do the same.

Sincerely,

A Dissatisfied Customer*

*Not my actual signoff to the legislators, just doing my part to protect my personal information.

My Perfect Sunk Cost Fallacy

For reasons, I found myself in need of a current resume earlier this week.

As many would, I first searched the Indiana Jonesesque pile of paper and electronic files I have amassed to see if I could find a past resume I could start with, but I came up with nothing.

So as many would afterward, I turned to the Internet to find a resume template.

My internet search led me to myperfectresume.com. I looked that site over, and a few others, before I went back to them to build a resume.

They make the job pretty easy, providing templates and even offering artificial intelligence services to write for me (hard pass on that, thankyouverymuch).

I spent probably an hour on the resume. Then I tried to download it.

Should have seen this coming: They wanted me to sign up for a subscription service in order to do so. Hard pass.

Sure, it wasn't all that much money. And I had spent that hour on their website making the resume. The good ol' Sunken Cost Fallacy popped up hard.

So I took screenshots and redid the resume in Microsoft Word and it didn't cost me a penny.

But myperfectresume.com has my email address. So this kind of thing is ongoing:

(Sorry for the blurriness. I wanted to capture their email in one image, so it's been blown up a bit here. Maybe it'll look better when it's published.)

Clearly, putting the hand out is something I should have expected from them. And putting it at the end of the process certainly brings in the sunk cost concept -- I've already invested time in building a resume, and I can see it there it's all done and pretty and I really want to be done with this, so give in and give them money is the end result. Except I didn't.

Unsubscribing now, of course.

And even in the unsubscribing the sunk cost arises: They warn me potential employers won't be able to contact me through their service. As if employers are trolling through myperfectresume.com for potential hires.

Silence is What?

After I watched "Room Service," the last of the Marx Brothers movies I bought over the weekend, I decided to watch one of the shorts included on the DVD, a Daffy Duck cartoon titled "The Daffy Doc."

It's from Daffy's manic period, with lots of woo-hooing going on throughout. In addition to including some Carl Stalling music I recognized from one of my CDs but had never heard in context with a cartoon, it also included Daffy holding up the following sign, after the surgeon he was assisting asked for quiet in the operating theater:

I have no idea what "foo" means, and after some internet searches, I'm pretty sure no one really grasps the concept.

I did find this blog post from a fellow curiosity-seeker.

It seems to be a pretty comprehensive exploration of the foo phenomenon, though he conflates foo with "foobar," which is actually FUBAR in the context used on the post, but that's excuseable if you've never seen FUBAR in print. FUBAR is mentioned in the dubious "entymology of foo" document linked in the post, as is FOOBAR. Still, I think there's a mixup. Some of what's discussed in the post is due to an author working to capture a dialect in print, so it may not necessarily have any relationship to the word in Daffy's sign.

This dictionary entry adds a bit to the definition, bringing in Australian slang (they wrote "Foo was Here," rather than "Kilroy was Here."

This artificial intelligence roundup (a good use of AI, I think) of definitions is also helpful:

Just some weird little bit of late '30s slang that had a moment in the sun, then disappeared, I suppose.

WHAT KIND OF FRIEND ARE YOU!

As some of you may know, in addition to my full-time job I teach online English at BYU-Idaho.

Last month, with enrollment looking to be lower than expected, I was offered a Level Three contract for this semester, meaning the chance of getting a contract wasn't likely.

I happened to check my email round about noon and saw I had a "contract update" from the powers that be, changing that Level Three to a Level One, meaning I most certainly have a class.

Semester starts today. Guess who isn't prepared, nor as of yet doesn't even has a class in Canvas to prepare?

And I already have students asking if I can add them to the class.

The inmates are running the asylum.

I have put in a call to Online Scheduling to find out what the poop is.

Further updates will arrive as events warrant.

UPDATE 1: I have been able to email my students to let them know I am aware I have a class but that I can't access it yet. They may not be able to access it yet either, so we're likely in the same boat. Any deadlines for this week will be shifted accordingly.

UPDATE 2: My wife, on learning the news, says with the extra cash I can buy the new desktop computer I've been thinking about. The one I have is Windowsn 10 and can't be updated to Windows 11, and Windows 10 support ends in a few months.

UPDATE 3: I'm in. Class count has continued to increase, from 16 to 22. The cap is 25, which I expect I may have reached since I checked last night.

UPDATE 4: Yup. Hit the cap.

[Pause for Laughter] [And Possible Eye-Rolling]

Meta announced today that they're ditching independent fact-checkers for a more "community-oriented" moderation system much like X, formerly Twitter, adopted a few years ago.

In reading CNN's take on the announcements (and man alive do you have to swim through a lot of politic slop to get to the meat of what Meta is doing) this gem arrived:

Meta also plans to adjust its automated systems that scan for policy violations, which it says have resulted in “too much content being censored that shouldn’t have been.” The systems will now be focused on checking only for illegal and “high-severity” violations such as terrorism, child sexual exploitation, drugs, fraud and scams. Other concerns will have to be reported by users before the company evaluates them.

I have to laugh at this, because the number of outright scams I've encountered -- and reported -- on Facebook is legion, and I can't recall any of the posts being removed. The best I've been able to do is comment on the posts that they're a scam, which leads the post to getting more engagement points and the original poster burying or deleting my comments -- or reporting me for spamming them.

The only rule that makes sense is that mostly what I've reported are paid or sponsored posts, and as I am one of the unwashed idiots on Facebook freeloading, their moderators and bots go where the money is.

Whether or not they follow up with not censoring content "that shouldn't have been [censored]" remains to be seen. I've had some that fell into that category.

Way too Late at the Movies: A Night at the Opera

The second of my thrift store finds, the Marx Brothers' "A Night at the Opera."

This film is home to the much-celebrated "sanity clause," viz:

I don't want to be cranky and say this was pretty much like the first Marx Brothers movie I've seen, but it kinda was. Same kind of plot, same kind of gimmicks. There's a musical bit, a lot of sight gags. The underdogs keep being underdogs until the end and then they triumph over the stiff shirts, which is what people wanted to see in a Marx Brothers movie.

But it was fun. And an education. We like to say that Hollywood is really formulaic today, with a lot of retreads and reboots and such, but it appears like it's been that way all along, and if people like the retreads and reboots, I guess that works.

The shorts included on this DVD were forgettable. I watched them, but don't remember much about them.

One thing I'd either never noticed nor paid much attention to until now: Groucho's famous mustache is mostly grease paint. I mean, I guess I always just assumed it was real, but watching these films it's obvious it's not.

Way Too Late at the Movies: A Night in Casablanca

As kind of a last hurrah before the horrors of returning to work after an extended break, I went to Deseret Industries yesterday to donate a pile of VHS tapes. And speaking of defunct media, I came home with three DVDs of various Marx Brothers movies.

Up to this point, I've only seen bits and pieces of their films, so I thought finding these at the thrift store was as good an introduction as any to watching a film in total. So I started with "A Night in Casablanca," kind of a spoof of the film "Casablanca," but not really.

Like many films of the era the plot is secondary, with bits of the brothers' vaudeville and comic bits sneaking into the story at random moments. It felt really cartoony at some points, but good cartoony, with little tricks you might see in Bugs Bunny or Scooby Doo. (There's an entire scene of them sneaking around the bad guy's hotel room, hiding in various closets and trunks and cases as he packs, turning him into a nervous wreck as they continually unpack his packing so they can hide in various spots behind his clothing.)

Speaking of Bugs Bunny, one of his cartoons was included as bonus material. It didn't have anything to do with the film, but it was fun to watch.

The extras also included a short called "So You Think You're A Nervous Wreck," a satire of those ubiquitous self-help reels common in the era. The central character, Joe McDoakes, is played by George O'Hanlon, who later went on to lend his voice to George Jetson.

The episode in question is here:

A Warning to Gospel Weenies

I am open to correction on this, but I also wonder.

I read the following in 2 Nephi 28:14:

They wear stiff necks and high heads; yea, and because of pride, and wickedness, and abominations, and whoredoms, they have all gone astray save it be a few, who are the humble followers of Christ; nevertheless, they are led, that in many instances they do err because they are taught by the precepts of men.

I know this chapter is specifically aimed at the "other" churches established in the last days and the troubles they face. Yet I wonder at the specific warning in this verse, as people being led by overzealous application of gospel aspects into error. That's aided by the reference to 2 Peter 3, and the warning against "steadfastness."

Peter and his contemporaries would have been innately familiar with the Law of Moses, and the strict application to that law that was common among many of the Jews. Too strict an application could lead to trouble, as shown by those who brought the adultress to Christ and demanded Jesus punish her according to the law. Jesus pointed toward a better way that did not ignore the violation of the law, but opened the door to repentance and eventual forgiveness, which is how I hoped that story played out.

I see a lot of "steadfastness" in my own church, and worry about it. It's easy to go beyond the mark in application of gospel tenets and forget that it is a gospel of joy, repentance, and forgiveness. A lot of people forget that judgment is the job of God, not us. Everyone has to be careful that they are led by Christ, not by the precepts of men that use Christian language to justify things that are not in harmony with the gospel.

 

The Stupid Project is Done

It's done. I don't want to think about it any more. I'm tired of seeing it.

But I do think it turned out great. The paint job is temporary because I'm out of the color for the wall, and my wife isn't all that smitten with the color anyway, so we may be painting in the near future. or the far future. All I know is that it's a lot better-looking water shutoff portal than what we started with.

The washer hanging out on the ledge is what opens the little door.

Also, a friend said the setup reminds him of this, which makes me feel a little better:

And Part Three

Now, part three.

Almost done. I need to prime and paint, then install the door. It'll be nice to have this one behind me.

Michelle's not quite smitten with the pop-out look, but it's something I had to do to make it all look more finished. I think it's turned out great.

Fixing the Hole in the Wall, Part 2

Back on Dec. 13,  I made a hole in the wall in an attempt to stop mice from coming into the craft room.

Today, as the pictures show, I began in earnest to fix the hole. It's been a bit more complicated than I hoped, but I think we'll end up with a better-looking water shutoff access (and I'm sure that's the first time that sentence has evern been written on this planet) than what we started with.

Part of the problem is the piping for the water connection is a bit too far from the wall. They put in a 2x6 wall because this was built as an all-electric house, but even then the pipe and its insulation intruded enough into the room that it couldn't be concealed. So I built a little box, using a piece of pine first used in the first ever Troop 1010 Klondike Derby sled, so the pipe and its insulation are behind the wall. It's a popout of about two inches, which isn't perfect, but I think it'll look a lot better in the end.

I have to let this first coat of plaster dry, then I'll sand it, put on another coat, sand again, then texture and paint. I'd like to think I can have it all done by the weekend.