The Daily Dose/May 3, 2019
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Friends, all your favorite Daily Dose features will return. Promise.
Click here to read today’s edition of The Diary of a Nobody.
Thank you for reading,
Gaylon
The Daily Dose/Monday, May 3, 2019
Posted in 2019
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The Daily Dose/Thursday, May 2, 2019
The Daily Dose/May 2, 2019
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Leading Off
Leading Off will return.
Today At The Site
The Diary of a Nobody: The local taxi company bribes the front desk staff at the hotel, and Sparrow managed not screw up too many lives at the VSO. Today’s Diary.
I don’t know why they are bothering to bribe us: they are the only taxi company in town and we don’t have a whole lot of options when someone comes to the front desk looking for transportation right now because the competition from those ridesharing folks is minimal.
Still tho, it’s good for morale to be bribed…Inside the bags were mini candy bars – Reeces M&Ms, Kit-Kats, and Butterfingers – plus a ballpoint pen with their logo on it, a really cheap flashlight, plus some equally cheap batteries which will probably keep the flashlight running for all of five minutes and it all came in a convenient, zippable, sorta-canvas bag.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life.
Endless drivel: please click on the button to read The Diary of a Nobody. $5.99 includes all entries, past, present, and future.
Criminals, Courtesans, and Constables: Friends, my latest novel is now available, for $3.99 until later this week when the price goes up a couple of bucks. Criminals, Courtesans, and Constables is about a nice guy who runs high-class call girls in and out of 5-star suites and throne rooms, collects ransoms and runs from the constables. Hilarity ensues. Seriously.
Click here to read excerpts and a sample chapter.
On This Date
In 1536 – Anne Boleyn, the Queen of England, is arrested on assorted charges, the worst of which being falling out of favor with her husband King Henry VIII, who now had the hots for one Jane Seymour. Anne was not left to rot in the Tower of London. She was tried and convicted of treason and other charges on May 15 and was beheaded four days later. Though unable to produce a male heir, her only surviving child would reign as Elizabeth I.
1917 – The Cincinnati Reds defeat the Chicago Cubs 1-0 in ten innings, getting the only two hits of the game in the top of the tenth inning. Hippo Vaughn of the Cubs had pitched nine hitless innings before two singles and an error produced the game’s only run and Cincinnati’s Fred Toney pitched a hitless tenth inning for the no-hitter and this remains the only game in major league history that was hitless after nine innings. It was the second extra-inning no-hitter in Toney’s professional career: in 1909 he pitched a 17-inning no-hitter for the Winchester Hustlers of the Class D Blue Grass League.
In 1964 – The Beatles are at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for the fifth and final week with Can’t By Me Love. It was the third of a record 20 #1 songs on the Hot 100 for the group and went to #1 in six other countries, including Great Britain and the Netherlands. Can’t Buy Me Love had replaced She Loves You at #1, which had replaced I Want To Hold Your Hand at the top and the Beatles remain the only act to have three consecutive, self-replacing #1 songs on the Hot 100, spending a then-record 14 consecutive weeks at the top.
Quotebook
Buy the ticket, take the ride.
Hunter S. Thompson
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
Silly Love Songs by Wings was Billboard’s biggest hit of 1976.
Today’s Stumper
How many extra-inning no-hitters have been thrown in the major leagues? – Answer next time!
Posted in 2019, Uncategorized
Tagged fictional diary, funny, Henry VIII, Hunter S Thompson, on this date, the Beatles, Thought for the Day
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The Daily Dose/Wednesday, May 1, 2019
The Daily Dose/May 1, 2019
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Leading Off
One thing that is fun to see as candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination jockey for position is how many ways they are trying to buy votes by offering, bribing, voters with stuff. Things like raises and free college and health care to student loan forgiveness, even a universal basic income. None of these things are the purpose of government. It’s an easy trap to fall into, however.
Consider this: It’s human nature to want to depend on someone. As kids, we depended on our parents. As a husband, Lord knows I depend on my good wife. But that’s where it ends: we cannot depend on our government to take care of us. That’s our responsibility. All we should require of our government is to provide for our liberty, to ensure that the 24-hours we have every day – the only commodity every human is issued in equal measure – our ours to do with as we choose.
None of these things are in the interest of a free people. You want a raise, find a job that pays what you want and put yourself in a position to go and get it. Don’t depend on a minimum wage increase because businesses will merely raise prices, meaning your spending power hasn’t changed at all. Free college? No, a college must be subject to the same free market demands as every other business. If you want to go to college, go and earn it. It’s the same with doctors and health insurers: the government must butt out: we depend on the free market to provide food, clothing, shelter, and video games, we should allow it to provide medical care, too.
If you find yourself chatting with a Democratic presidential hopeful and they start in on how many things they want to give you show them a palm and ask them what they are going to do about stopping our perpetual wars and getting our national spending under control. For added hilarity, mention that you feel these to issues will, if not attended to, will destroy our country, perhaps before this half-century is out and see what they say.
Today At The Site
The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow passes a routine night at the hotel, and The Wife is back from some housesitting and, in what is not the Upset of the Year, the house is a mess. Today’s Diary.
Clothes were everywhere, including the kitchen table, where I’d put my clean clothes for the week because it’s too much work to carry them all the way down the hall to the bedroom…Of course, there were dirty dishes but before I could wash them the clean dishes had to be put away, too.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life.
Endless drivel: please click on the button to read The Diary of a Nobody. $5.99 includes all entries, past, present, and future.
Criminals, Courtesans, and Constables: Friends, my latest novel is now available, for $3.99 until later this week when the price goes up a couple of bucks. Criminals, Courtesans, and Constables is about a nice guy who runs high-class call girls in and out of 5-star suites and throne rooms, collects ransoms and runs from the constables. Hilarity ensues. Seriously.
Click here to read excerpts and a sample chapter.
On This Date
In 1328 – The First Scottish War of Independence ends with the ratification of the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton. The war had begun in 1296 with an English invasion and England was so intent on maintaining Scottish independence they would fight a second war from 1332-57 to make sure the Scottish were still free.
In 1920 – The Brooklyn Robins and the Boston Braves tie 1-1 in 26 innings, establishing a still-standing record for the longest game in major league history. Both starting pitchers, Brooklyn’s Leon Cadore and Boston’s Joe Oeschger pitched complete games, nobody had more than three hits and Boston’s Charlie Pick remains the only person to go 0-for-11 in a major league game. The game took just under four hours to play and broke the old record of 24 innings established 1906 when the Philadelphia Athletics defeated the Boston Americans 4-1.
In 1976 – The Bellamy Brothers are at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for their only week with Let Your Love Flow. It was the first Top 40 hit for the Bellamy Brothers and only a #39 hit in 1979 prevented them from being a one-hit wonder. Let Your Love Flow went to #1 in six other countries including Switzerland and Rhodesia and also peaked at #21 on Billboard’s country chart, where the Bellamy Brothers would go on to have ten #1 songs.
Quotebook
Buy the ticket, take the ride.
Hunter S. Thompson
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
I Heard it Through the Grapevine was Marvin Gaye’s biggest hit on the Billboard Hot 100, spending seven weeks at #1.
Today’s Stumper
What was Billboard’s biggest song of 1976? – Answer next time!
Posted in 2019
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The Daily Dose/Tuesday, April 30, 2019
The Daily Dose/April 30, 2019
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Leading Off
The headline said astronomers have discovered our universe is both expanding faster than we, they, thought and is a bit younger, as well. These two discoveries appear to be shaking the astronomical community up in no small measure, with the smarty-pants concluding that either they are missing some mistakes they’re making or have not completely zeroed in on what the universe is trying to tell us.
Fortunately, it is beyond the scope of this feature to explain the full details of this exciting, new discovery, however, what people a lot smarter than the staff here have discovered is that the universe, first discovered to be expanding in 1929, is actually expanding at a rate 9% faster than originally thought, which means the universe could be up to 1.3 billion years younger than originally thought.
While we can see astronomer’s angst in this shaking of some bedrock beliefs, this is really a matter of no consequence. Like all great explorers, they’ve found what was there to be discovered, which is all we should expect of people who do things like this for a living. If we’re finding some things are different than originally thought well, yay for that because that means we’re evolving and are smarter than we used to be. It merely reinforces we are human, that everything we do know is merely an introduction to what we don’t know.
While humbling, it’s also OK, as much a part of our human experience as breathing. New discoveries like this should not shake us too much, but merely spur us on to finding out what there is to know.
Today At The Site
The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow has some moderate walk-in traffic at the hotel, and can finally scan stuff at the VSO.
Then I went to test the scanner, but IT Adrian, despite last week’s claims to the contrary, had not added a folder for me in the scanner system…Resisting the urge to go down to IT and smack him around, mainly because I have some zero clue where the IT office is, I sent him an email and within a half-hour or so he was at my door saying he had the matter fix, so we went and scanned some hotel tax exempt paperwork I (still) had lying around, he showed me where to find the drive and folder they’d be in and BOOM, I can scan now…He also said he was looking into getting me a signature pad…God bless IT Adrian.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life.
Endless drivel: please click on the button to read The Diary of a Nobody. $5.99 includes all entries, past, present, and future.
Criminals, Courtesans, and Constables: Friends, my latest novel is now available, for $3.99 until later this week when the price goes up a couple of bucks. Criminals, Courtesans, and Constables is about a nice guy who runs high-class call girls in and out of 5-star suites and throne rooms, collects ransoms and runs from the constables. Hilarity ensues. Seriously.
Click here to read excerpts and a sample chapter.
On This Date
In 1945 – Adolf Hitler and his wife of one day Eva Braun commit suicide in Hitler’s bunker in the Reich Chancellory in Berlin. Hitler shot himself while Braun bit into a cyanide capsule and shortly thereafter their bodies were burned. Hitler’s duties were absorbed by Karl Donitz and Joseph Goebbels, Berlin would fall on May 2 and Germany surrendered early in the morning on May 7.
In 1996 – The New York Yankees and Baltimore Orioles establish a new major league record for Longest Nine-Inning Game, the Yankees 13-10 win taking four hours and 21 minutes. In addition to the 23 runs, the game featured 28 hits, 13 walks, four errors and ten pitchers. The record is now four hours and 45 minutes when the Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox 14-11 on August 18, 2006.
In 1977 – Marvin Gaye is at #1 on Billboard’s soul chart – then known as the Hot Soul Singles chart – for the first of three consecutive and five non-consecutive weeks with Got to Give It Up. The song, originally titled Dancing Lady, would later spend a week at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was Gaye’s tenth and final #1 on the soul chart and the third and final #1 on the Hot 100. Gaye was shot to death by his father at the family’s Los Angeles home in 1984.
Quotebook
“What did he do?”
“He made counterfeit dimes.”
“Dimes? Jesus Christ, what kind of ambition is that?”
Charles Bukowski
Ham On Rye
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
Eddie Murray holds the major league record for Most Games Played, First Baseman with 2413.
Today’s Stumper
What was Marvin Gaye’s biggest hit on Billboard’s Hot 100? – Answer next time!
Let’s be friends. Follow me on Facebook.
Posted in 2019
Tagged bukowski, expanding universe, fictional diary, Hitler, Hubble, marvin gaye
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The Daily Dose/Monday, April 29, 2019
The Daily Dose/April 29, 2019
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Leading Off
Yesterday in our popular Sunday Bottom V feature we had a line about a made-up New York City cab driver named Tommy Shines declaring his candidacy for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, and how every registered Democrat in the country was now in the race. It was a funny line, the type regular readers of this crap have come to know and love.
It wasn’t too far off the mark, either, as no less than 20 Democrats have tossed their hats in the ring, showing the Democrats are as fractured as the GOP was in 2016 when 16 candidates declared and they are certainly as fractured as the social fabric of our country.
What’s interesting is that despite the diversity of the 20-person field, it is as likely as not the Democrats, just like the Republicans, will produce a white male in his 70’s as their nominee, as former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders are, by quite a bit, the biggest fundraisers so far.
So here we go again, America heading into an election season which will be no different than past elections and where nothing will change after the election. For the next year-and-a-half we will be pandered to and told what people think we want to hear…Candidates will say this and say that but come January 20, 2021 nothing will change…A white, male, septuagenarian will probably have been elected and nothing will be done about our perpetual wars or mindless debt. We will get the same partisan, fractured and bickering government we have now.
Friends, every election we get the government we deserve. It’s common to blame the incumbents or the media or lobbyists for our government but the truth is the culprits looks us in the mirror every morning because no one fills out our ballots for us. Unless you and me – we the people – start demanding better on Election Day nothing will change. As long as we keep re-electing the status quo – defined as any Republican or Democrat – we will keep getting partisan, fractured and bickering government.
Today At The Site
The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow has some drunk cowboys visit the front desk, plus the latest from the scratch paper pile. Today’s Diary.
I started replenishing the scratch paper pile…It wasn’t down too much, but I hadn’t made new scratch paper for a couple of weeks and it was down noticeably…There were some wayward sheets lying around early that were sacrificed and later, when I was preparing registration cards for the day’s arrivals, there were some extended stays that had two pages and all in all over a dozen fresh sheets of scratch paper were produced…I shuffled them around, too, so the ones that had been on the bottom for a couple of months were rotated to the top.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life.
Endless drivel: please click on the button to read The Diary of a Nobody. $5.99 includes all entries, past, present, and future.
Criminals, Courtesans, and Constables: Friends, my latest novel is now available, for $3.99 until later this week when the price goes up a couple of bucks. Criminals, Courtesans, and Constables is about a nice guy who runs high-class call girls in and out of 5-star suites and throne rooms, collects ransoms and runs from the constables. Hilarity ensues. Seriously.
Click here to read excerpts and a sample chapter.
On This Date
In 1992 – Three of the four Los Angeles police officers accused in the videotaped beating of Rodney King are acquitted (the jury deadlocked on a fourth), setting off widespread rioting in Los Angeles. The riots lasted six days and resulted in 63 deaths, more than 2,300 injuries with more than 3,000 businesses damaged. Two of the officers would later be found guilty in a federal civil rights trial and King died in 2012 at the age of 47.
In 1876 – Louisville Grays first baseman John Carbine establishes a major league record for Most Errors in a Game by a First Baseman, committing five miscues in a 6-2 loss to the St Louis Brown Stockings. Depending on when the game started it was either the ninth, tenth or eleventh game in National League history and while the record has been equaled, it has never been broken and remains the oldest record in the major league record book. Carbine couldn’t hit, either, batting .160 in seven games and played his last major league game on June 1.
In 1967 – Something Stupid by Frank and Nancy Sinatra is at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the third of four consecutive weeks. The song went to #1 in seven other countries, including Great Britain and Norway and was Billboard’s seventh biggest hit of 1967. It was Frank’s 13th and final #1 song on a Billboard pop chart and Nancy’s second and final #1 on the Hot 100 and Somethin’ Stupid remains the only #1 song on the Hot 100 by a father/daughter duo.
Quotebook
…our countrymen have all the folly of an ass and all the passiveness of a sheep. They are determined not to be free and can neither be frightened, discouraged nor persuaded to change their resolution.
Alexander Hamilton
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
Legend by Bob Marley and the Wailers – currently at #64, up three from last week – has spent 570 weeks on Billboard’s album chart, the most of any album currently in the survey. It peaked at #5 in September 2014.
Today’s Stumper
Who holds the major league record for most games played by a first baseman? – Answer next time!
Let’s be friends. Follow me on Facebook.
Posted in 2019
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