The Daily Dose/July 22, 2020
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy

Leading Off
Notes from around the human experience. 

USA! USA!: The federal government resumed executing prisoners last week, conducting three lethal injections at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. They were the first federal executions since 2003 and executions 4-6 inclusive since such executions were resumed after a 40-year hiatus. 

Get Your Official Daily Dose Policy Right Here: There is no good reason for this. 

Dry, Technical Matter:. Are we any safer because these three men are dead? Of course we’re not. They weren’t in any danger of returning to the streets anymore than we’re in any danger of winning an Olympic sprinting medal. 

More Dry, Technical Matter: Are potential murderers shaking in their boots, committed to never murdering because these three men are dead? No, they’re not. Since the last federal executions in 2003, America’s murder rate has dropped from 5.7 per 100,000 people in 2003 to 5.0 per 100,000 in 2018.  Of course, some states continue to carry out executions, but these numbers have gone down as well from 64 in 2003 to 22 last year.

I’ll Take Dry, Technical Matter for $500, Alex: Fewer executions have equaled fewer murders: despite what some will try to tell you, the death penalty has no deterrant value. 

Please Pass The Dry Technical Matter: One of those executed last week acted alone. The other two, however had accomplices who are not under sentence of death, meaning two people died for their crimes while two others convicted of exactly the same thing were given life without parole. 

The Bottom Line: This nation has executed innocent people and the death penalty should be abolished for that reason alone. Innocence does not appear to have been an issue in these three cases, however we are not any safer because they are dead, their deaths will have no deterrent value and others convicted of the same crime did not receive the same penalty. These, too, are good reasons for abolishing the death penalty. 

Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually. 

The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow has the latest from the gym and the news from his walk.  

I am back to full strength on two exercises in the gym: the cable shoulder press and leg extensions…I am pretty darn close on the z-bar bicep curls and the tricep cable pulldowns, though I still have a ways to go on the bench press. 

I did the short workout so I could get my walk in before dark…I had half a mind to do the Fairgrounds Route, but I wanted to see what was shaking at the new restaurant so I did the standard out-to-the-post-office-and-back route…Turns out they were open for dinner tonight and there were diners both inside and outside and they looked moderately busy and I’m thinking about stopping by for dinner tomorrow, but the old joint was closed on Wednesday and they might be, too. 

Backstairs at the Monte Carlo: The difference between Asian and Central European women.

This reminds of another Asian phenomenon. There are a lot of Asian dealers at Monte Carlo and the women usually sit together in the EDR. There is this one cadre and they all appear to be speaking the same language even though none of them appear to be the same race. Well, two are Chinese, but another is Japanese and another is, I think, Thai. (Oh, baby, this woman is gorgeous. Tall and statuesque. Hubba-hubba.)

Anyway, these women prattle constantly. I wish I could understand because they are always laughing (unlike their Ukrainian and Bulgarian counterparts, who are usually very serious about matters) and I am wondering what language they are using because unless I am missing something there isn’t a common Asian language. 

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On This Date
History’s long march to today.

In 1937 – The United States Senate votes down an attempt by President Franklin Roosevelt to increase the number of Supreme Court justices. The act came about because Roosevelt was peeved the Supreme Court kept declaring aspects of his New Deal unconstitutional and would have allowed him to appoint one justice for every one over the age of 70 years and 6 months. The last time the number of Supreme Court justices was changed had been in 1869 when the number was set at nine. The actual action by the Senate was to send the bill back to committee, which ultimately produced a different bill. 

In 1967 – The Atlanta Braves establish a new major league record for most pitchers used in an inning in a 5-4, 13-inning win over the St Louis Cardinals. The Braves used five pitchers in the ninth inning as the Cardinals got three runs to tie the game. The record is now six, done twice, by the Oakland A’s in 1983 and the Seattle Mariners in 2007, though five remains the National League mark, tied many times. Research into whose record the Braves broke was inconclusive. 

In 1967 – David Houston is at #1 on Billboard’s country chart – then known as the Hot Country Singles chart – for the only week with With One Exception. Houston was a prolific artist, putting 62 songs on the country chart Between 1966 and 1989, including seven #1 songs and 24 Top 10 hits. Houston’s first #1 song, Almost Persuaded in 1966, spent nine weeks at #1, a mark no other song matched until Taylor Swift spent ten weeks at #1 in 2012 with We Are Never, Ever, Getting Back Together. Houston was 57 when he died of a brain aneurysm in 1993. 

Quotebook
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever. 

A proverb is no proverb to you until your life has illustrated it. – John Keats

Answer To The Last Trivia Question
It’s not who you know, but what you know. 

The highest temperature ever recorded at the South Pole is plus-9.9 degree Farenheit on 12/25/2011.

Today’s Stumper
Cheaper than Trivia Night at the bar. 

How many members did the US Supreme Court have when it first convened in 1790? – Answer next time!

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The Daily Dose/July 21, 2020
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy

Leading Off
Notes from around the human experience. 

USA! USA! A friend and I were chatting recently when he posed the following question:

Do you think the November election is going to happen? 

Fly In The Ointment: Not an unreasonable question nowadays. The coronavirus, plus the severe divides and the generally unprecedented, momentous times we are living in right now puts this question on the table.

I mentally shrugged and said yes, I think it will. President Trump is a lot of things, but he is not evil. He’s a man-child whose only real goal is to draw attention to himself and who believes the moon is part of Mars. He as overseen a delayed and utterly incompetent response to the coronavirus that has seen tens of thousands more people die than really should have. His government has blood on its hands. Not that he cares. Trump lives on such a fourth-dimensional plane of unaccustomedness he constantly tells himself he’s doing a good job. 

America Has Been Reduced To This: Then we saw an article this week whose headline announced Trump hasn’t yet decided if he’ll accept November’s election results.

Ladies And Gentlemen Of The Jury: What idiot reporters are asking this? President Trump is not omnipotent. True, he is a billionaire bully accustomed to getting his way and draws commensurate loyalty, but he is not king, he is president.

The choice of whether or not to accept the election’s results does not rest with him!!!

Dry, Technical Matter: And we are taking this. Instead of calling an orange an orange and saying Trump is selfish and ignorant and incompetent, we’re treating it as if it’s normal for a president of the United States to consider whether or not he will accept the results of an election.

The Bottom Line: We are the worse for it. America, once dominant and influential, is reaping the harvest of citizens who stopped paying attention to their government. We are now halfway to oblivion, set to join the Greeks, Romans and Soviets on History’s scrapheap.

Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually. 

The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow has the latest news from the coffee room. Today’s Diary.   

The big news is the sacks of coffee from the new box have notches in them…Recall yesterday we discussed the fact the sacks from the previous did NOT have notches at the top, meaning you had to cut a corner of the sack with scissors in order to open it without spilling ground coffee everywhere.

I don’t know what happened at the home office that an entire case of coffee packets got shipped out without satisfactory notches…It hasn’t happened before, so maybe it was a notch-putter-inner trainee left on his own or something… 

Backstairs at the Monte Carlo: Jeremy and Gaylon share a scary moment. 

Jeremy and I did have a scary moment when we responded to a runaway alarm clock. We knock and get no answer so we make entry and we see a wheelchair and the room has that old person odor and lying in the bed is an elderly lady with white hair.

Crap, we both thought, the alarm is still going off because she’s dead, but I go and check and you can hear her breathing so we both shrugged, turned off the alarm, and left.

$2.99, a steal! Friends, this special won’t last forever, it only seems like it will, so click on the button and get these two American classics for one low price. 

On This Date
History’s long march to today.

In 1983 – The coldest air temperature ever recorded is measured at Vostock Station in Antarctica at minus-128.6 degrees F. It broke the record of minus-126.9 recorded at Amundsen-Scott Station at the South Pole in 1960. Vostock Station is a Russian research facility founded in 1957 about 800 miles east of the South Pole and the temperature remains the coldest directly observed temperature in an inhabited location in human history. 

In 1975 – Joe Torre of the New York Mets ties the major league record for most double plays grounded into in a game in a 6-2 loss to the Houston Astros. Torre grounded into four double plays, all following singles by Felix Mantilla. The record had been established in 1934 by Goose Goslin of the Detroit Tigers and tied in 1939 by Mike Kreevich of the Chicago White Sox. The record still stands. 

In 1984 – Prince is at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for the third of five consecutive weeks with When Doves Cry. It was the fifth of 31 Top 40 hits for Prince, his third of 19 Top 10 hits and his first of five #1 songs. The song was also in its fourth of eight weeks at #1 on Billboard’s soul chart, was Billboard’s biggest song of the year and ranked 123rd on its 60th Anniversary Hot 100. The song also went to #1 in Canada and Belgium and peaked at #4 in Great Britain. 

Quotebook
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever. 

If you are extraordinary, be extraordinary. People only err when they try to be who they are not. – Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao

Answer To The Last Trivia Question
It’s not who you know, but what you know. 

Billboard’s #1 song for 1963 was Sugar Shack by Jimmy Gilmer and the Fireballs, which spent five weeks at #1. 

Today’s Stumper
Cheaper than Trivia Night at the bar. 

What is the highest temperature ever recorded at the South Pole? – Answer next time!

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The Daily Dose/July 20, 2020
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy

Leading Off
Notes from around out human experience. 

“WE COPY YOU DOWN EAGLE…”: Today is the 51st anniversary of Apollo 11 landing on the moon and of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin becoming the first humans to walk on another heavenly body. 

Here We Go Again: Regular readers of this crap know our feelings on this matter: Apollo 11 – indeed, the entire Apollo program – was mankind’s finest hour, one of History’s few lines of demarcation separating all that came before from everything that followed. We mark the occasion every year in this space – either here or in On This Date, sometimes both – because we feel it’s important to look back and say “look what we did, not bad”.

We went to the moon! 

Fly In The Ointment: And we haven’t gone back since. Apollo 17 left the lunar surface in 1972 and not only haven’t we returned to the moon, no American, no human, has left lower Earth orbit since then. Our own opinion is that had we wanted to, America could have put humans on Mars in the 1980s but we didn’t want to. Congress canceled Apollos 18-20 and there never was a push to go to Mars. 

Dry, Technical Matter: Why this does not cause every one of us to go stand in the corner in shame is beyond me. Greatness – and its attendant failure – was there for the taking and America took a pass, ignoring man’s instinct to explore places they’ve never been. 

The Bottom Line: And we’re the lesser for it. For a while now, Americans have been content to be well-fed and well-entertained and we can no longer be bothered to pay attention to our government and we are reaping that harvest right now, with our country now at the midway point between relevance and oblivion.

Today At The Site
Writing worth reading. Usually. 

The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow has big news from the small town. Today’s Diary.  

And the restaurant across from the post office is open!!!…I am not making that up, noticing it on tonight’s walk…At first, there was no reason to think it was open…A couple of blocks away you could still see the “Now Hiring” signs but once you got there you noticed diners on the patio and people milling about inside…There’s isn’t an open sign and the back of the building still faces Main Street, which makes it hard to tell if it’s open or not…I wanted to walk up and see what their hours are but I don’t walk with a mask on so I didn’t. 

Backstairs at the Monte Carlo: Jose and Gaylon find themselves on the hotel’s roof. 

Since we are obliged to go check the roof, we both swear; I opt for a euphemism for excrement, while Jose goes with the F-word. We probably could’ve gotten away without checking the roof, but Jose and I are both past Graveyard Employees of the Month and we didn’t get it for sitting on our asses (well, I did) so even though it’s really cold out we go and check the roof. It was all code four. 

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On This Date
History’s long march to today.

In 1997 – The USS Constitution, then and now the world’s oldest commissioned naval vessel afloat, sails for the first in 100 years in the waters north of Boston. The sailing came on the 200th anniversary of her maiden voyage and crew training for the voyage included spending time on a Coast Guard vessel and using an official US Navy sailing manual from 1819. Constitution has been moored in Boston since 1934 and today is commanded by Commander John Benda, her 76th commanding officer. 

In 1987 – Don Mattingly of the New York Yankees ties the major league record for most putouts by a first baseman in a nine-inning game in a 7-1 victory over the Minnesota Twins. Mattingly had 22 putouts, including all three in the ninth inning, to tie the record established in 1906 by Tom Jones of the St Louis Browns and equaled by Hal Chase (New York Highlanders) later that year and by Ernie Banks (Chicago Cubs) in 1963. The record still stands and was equaled by Alvin Davis of the Seattle Mariners in 1988. 

In 1963 – Jan and Dean are at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for the first of two consecutive weeks with Surf City. It was the fifth of 15 Top 40 hits for the duo, their third of six Top 10 hits and remains their only #1 song. The song also peaked at #26 in Great Britain, at #3 on Billboard’s soul chart and was Billboard’s 22nd biggest song of the year. The song was originally written by Brian Wilson, who lost interest in it for his group the Beach Boys, and Jan Berry later added portions. 

Quotebook
The wisdom of the ages. Whatever. 

We choose to go to the moon in this decade, and do other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills. – John F Kennedy, president of the United States, 9/12/62

Answer To The Last Trivia Question
It’s not who you know, but what you know. 

The 1926 Tour de France is the longest on record at 3,570 miles. 

Today’s Stumper
Cheaper than Trivia Night at the bar. 

What was Billboard’s biggest song of 1963? – Answer next time!

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