I was pretty hard on Jim back on Monday, so I wanted to add that I don’t really blame him; he’s just doing the best with the situation he’s found himself in and responding to the incentives he’s been offered. He doesn’t know what would happen if we went back to a constitutional system, where responsibility starts at the local level and the federal government does as little as possible instead of everything we deem important. Maybe he personally would take it in the shorts. It’s hard to blame him for wanting to keep the system that’s making him comfortable. Read more »
(Yay, two posts in two days!) I thought I’d follow yesterday’s interminable screed with something lighter: I’ve mentioned before that my favorite car is the 1987 Buick GNX, so when a rare picture of one comes across my screen, it catches my attention. This one is made of awesome.
Jim is a regular American guy. He works for a living, has a family and a home, and doesn’t think about government too much. Mostly he leaves it alone and hopes it’ll leave him alone. He prides himself on being moderate enough to vote for both parties, but he mostly votes for incumbents—his life is pretty good, so why rock the boat? So now that we’ve gotten to know Jim a little, let’s spend a day with him, shall we? Read more »
What About Me, by Moving Pictures, an Australian band, is one of those songs I’d catch once in a while on the radio as a kid, but not often enough to get tired of it. I especially liked the saxophone part, since I was playing that at the time. But it took forever to track down who did it, looking it up in those big books they used to have in the music store, and of course stores didn’t often stock one-hit-wonders that were already a few years old. Thank goodness for the Internet and music downloads. Unlike most 80s videos, there’s nothing weird or disturbing about this one, if you don’t count the soft focus and the singer’s earnestness. Enjoy.
I mentioned a couple weeks ago that since getting the hang of CSS and discovering jQuery (a Javascript framework that’s a huge improvement on a language that feels like it was created by government committee) I was starting to enjoy web programming again. Several nights ago, I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to work on something new. In about three hours, I threw together a little game based on something I played once on the Commodore 64, and got it functioning. Read more »
If a whole number is evenly divisible by 9, then adding up its digits will give you a number evenly divisible by 9, and you can repeat that process until you end up with 9 itself. For instance, let’s say you have the number 5747106501. If you add up those digits, you get 36, and if you add up those digits, 3+6 = 9. Divide 5747106501 by 9 to check, and you get 638567389. Works every time.
If you think that kind of thing is cool, you’ll like this video. If you think that’s stupid and pointless, you might like the video anyway.
Tomorrow is the big St. Patrick’s Day corned beef and cabbage (and mashed potatoes) dinner at St. Rose! It’s from 11-7, and it’s $8/person or $35/family. Kids under 12 are $5. We cooked up 500 pounds of meat, which I think is four times what we started with last year, so we shouldn’t run out unless we get twice as many people. Last year we ran out by 1:30 and had to scramble to have some cooked on short notice, and it wasn’t nearly as good. This year we’re much better prepared, and we’re hoping to serve a thousand people.
There will be Irish-flavored music all day, from several different groups. Last year, I thought I’d be insane or deaf by the end of the day, but it was actually pretty nice. The groups change every hour or so, so the music is always fresh. See the link above to see who’s playing when. Bring all your family and friends to enjoy the food and music! There’s also High Mass at 9:30am, instead of the usual 12:10pm Low Mass.
At 7pm, right when our dinner ends, there is also an Irish music concert at St. Boniface Church, featuring a harpist and a soprano singer. I’d be there myself, except I’ll probably be elbow deep in dishes at that point, but it sounds very good. The entrance fee is a free-will offering, with $10 suggested, and the proceeds will be split between Quincy Catholic Charities and Mission of Hope Haiti. It’s a chance to hear some good music and see one of Quincy’s architectural centerpieces.
A song that’s been one of my favorites since I first heard it is Ah Leah, by Donnie Iris. Fortunately, I didn’t get to see music videos back in the 1980s, so I didn’t know the guy singing was a dead ringer for Eugene Levy selling Clark Griswold the Family Truckster. (And he’s even shirtless for a couple terrifying seconds. I can’t imagine why he didn’t have a huge career after that.) I just knew the song was loaded with infectious energy — it screams, as we might have said back then. It’s the perfect driving song, except it’s not possible to stay under the speed limit while it’s cranked up.
Between finishing up end-of-the-month work, teaching Latin class, getting ready for the soup dinner, shoveling snow, and recovering from shoveling snow, I haven’t managed to post anything here for about a week. Today isn’t any better, so I’ll just post this announcement about the soup dinner at St. Rose on Sunday, from 11-2:30. We’re having 5 different kinds of soup, plus cream-turkey sandwiches, desserts, and drinks. Further details at that link.
We’ve also got a pretty excellent raffle going, with a grand prize of a $200 gift certificate from the Butcher Block, and several other prizes of gift cards from local businesses. Tickets will be available at the dinner for $1 each or 6 for $5.
