BOOMERS ANONYMOUS -- Care or Quit?

Start here .   How many of us dozed off in the middle of high school English class whenever we had to read Shakespeare, or Milton, or especially, Dante?   Not me.   I knew that the Adam West Batman accessed the Batcave through Shakespeare. This week I'm focused on a particular line from the play Hamlet , where the protagonist Prince plots to avenge his Father's death at the hands of  Claudius, the terrible uncle who then married Hamlet's mother -- after killing Hamlet's dad!    Jerry Springer must have studied classical literature, ha ha. Interestingly, Hamlet's father's name is also Hamlet, but in the play, whenever he speaks he is called "Ghost."   Here's the full quote in context:  "Out of my weakness and melancholy, as he is very potent with such spirits, abuses me to damn me. I'll have grounds more relative than this. The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King [referring to Claudius]." What the he...

Start here .  I'm not lazy, dammit.  I'm efficient, and to some that looks lazy. Of course it doesn't help to be middle-aged and (slightly) overweight. Some stereotypes are justified. But even if 60 is the new 40, that doesn't affect my work.  I happen to think that stereotypes serve a comedic impulse. Unfortunately, when misused, they exacerbate improper discrimination. Clearly, a person's immutable physical attributes are an awfully unreliable predictor of their attitude. Fellow Boomers, my prevailing attitudes about life were shaped in a crucible of American military tradition.  Have you identified  your crucible? This week's comment (BTW, yours are welcome, too) deals with codes. No, not the millions of lines of mathematical computer codes that people smarter than me write in exotic languages like Python, Perl, Pascal, Forth, Frink, Erlang, Haskell, C, C+, C++ (D), Eiffel, Oberon, Occam, ChucK , or one of many scripting codes such as Beanshell or Mondrian ...

さとり the sea is parting. was Pandemic a real thing? payback coming soon *** ever write a poem? haiku can get you started neat quick and easy *** this Japanese style can sometimes get annoying but writing is fun *** this is what I do Nice Work If You Can Get It time to hit the course *** one more for the road words are cages for your thots I dislike spell check *** subscribe to my blog humor will lighten the load--- dad jokes for the win ***  seventh stanza here don't want to use too much Time another post Done *** fingers help me count the syllables i needed two finish this Peace *** /end fugue state  © 2022 Roy B. Santonil

Start here .  What a difference a dot makes. OK, Boomer, do you remember this MTV hit by the band Crowded House?  That song, "Don't Dream It's Over," used the same words as those in the title of this post. Because we are speaking and writing in English, spacing and punctuation rules are less strict than many other languages. Unless we practice writing in Far Eastern or Cyrillic characters, we don't have to bother much with diacritical marks, where, for example, the French circonflexe  (the little hat) means the difference between jeune (young) and jeûne (fast). More on foreign tongues later. For now, let's just agree there's a place in the world for old and slow . One dot, one period, one space bar, one programmer's keystroke, and POOF!, meaning changes. A glitch occurs in the matrix, and hordes of weasels begin to libel and slander your character. What's worse is they openly criticize your hair color and tan lines. Meaning is interpreted throu...