Yes Virginia there is a Santa Claus!

It's a page of David Beckham hairstyles, and how to get 'em.

What is it?

I picked it up off the the free useless stuff with our logo on it table at my insurance agent's office.

My new sliding glass doors came with 'Owners Manuals"

Am I the only one scared by that?

I have new sunglasses

When I wear them, I see checkerboard patterns in the windows of the other cars.

Oddly, I can also always tell true north.

I realized today that my family is very dysfunctional...

...which is odd since I live alone.

MODOT finally has a good idea!

When MODOT closes I-64/US40 through St. Louis for four years it's going to equip its truck with basketball hoops and send them into the resulting traffic jams -- the premise is to let trapped drivers burn off their angry energy playing b-ball rather than burning down neighboring businesses. It's not a fake photo, here's the site.

Today is the Summer Solstice!

In the Northern Hemisphere, it's the longest day of the year -- the length of time between sunrise and sunset on this day is a maximum for the year.

Today is as far north as the sun goes -- the sun is directly over the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere (red line on map).

Unless you're a Druid, a Mason, or planting potatoes, you probably don't care.

The Winter Solstice used to be on December 25th, which is why Christmas is on that day.

This has exhausted by solstice knowledge.

I hate switching times twice a year!

Why not just split the difference and move the clocks 30 minutes ahead and just leave them that way year 'round?

But Jimbo, you say, that would cause confusion!

Nonsense, lots of places are 1/2 hour off of "standard time" as measured from Greenwich, England. A list of places 30 and 45 minutes off is listed below. In addition, many places use their own "local times" that are not officially recognized.

Newfoundland and parts of Labrador, Canada 30 min
Australia (parts) 30 min
Indian 30 min
Sri Lanka 30 min
Iran 30 min
Afghanistan 30 min
Myanmar (Burma) 30 min
Changbai or Jangbaek Mountains between China and North Korea 30 min
Chatham Islands of New Zealand 45 min
Nepal 45 min

Yikes!

Termites!

Today is Pi Day: 3/14, ironically it is also Albert Einstein's birthday.

The mathematical constant π, approximately equal to 3.14159, is the ratio of a circle's circumference. So if a circle's diameter is 1, its circumference is 3.14 or π.

Many schools celebrate Pi Day by having baked pies or pizza pies for their students.

The exact value of π has an infinite decimal expansion -- at 50 digits it's:
3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510

It is said that everyone's Social Security number appears someplace in the infinite expanse of Pi.

Best of all, it's the day you are free to hit anyone you know in the face with a pie!

send drugs!

Very private person Jim has had to put up with twelve, yes twelve, workman in the house and yard every day this week. Two putting in new sliding doors, five putting in sod and other landscape stuff (everything green died during last summer's drought), four putting stone tiles down on the patio, and one Brink's security guy putting in more alarms. I'm completed wiped out.

On the other hand, Rooty has been in 'love me, scratch my tummy, throw the ball' ecstasy every day!!!!!

This was the very first Wal*Mart 'Super Center'

Now it's just a big empty building. Odd to think of something that big as being obsolete.

The new Wal*Mart is about a mile away. Yes, you can see a truck in the McDonald's drive-thru in my rear view mirror.

The rest of the building is in the photo below.

I want my school taxes back, Part 62

I had a salesman in the house today. Maybe 28, good suit, nice haircut. He asked if I had a calculator that he could use, since his wife must have taken his out of his briefcase.

I was entitled to a 25% discount since he represents a company I have done business with before. I gave him the old calculator that I keep in a kitchen drawer.

"There's no percent sign, how do I do a percent?"

"It's a really old calculator, you'll have to multiply."

"By what?"

"point two five, enter the total and multiply by .25"

"That'll work?"

The only part that I left out of this is that I had to write out ".25" for him on a piece of paper.

Why it's called 'show biz'

Ethel had to stay 7 lbs heavier than Lucy, it was in Vivian Vance's contract.

Paul Anka wrote the theme for The Tonight Show, for which he received a royalty every time it was played. It was only after Johnny died that we learned that Anka had to kick back 1/2 of the royalty payments to Carson.

On Seinfeld, one of the most popular running gags was Kramer's violent bursts through Jerry's apartment door. This was especially popular with the studio audience, which went wild each time Kramer burst through the door. Jerry felt the bit was getting too big a reaction and Michael Richards was required to tone down his entries.

doing taxes, no new posts until Thursday, pay early, pay often

I have not been paying too much attention to all this...

But this is what I know:

Anna Nicole Smith, who was married to Howard K. Smith, who I thought was dead, died shortly after giving birth to a baby girl. She apparently died of being famous.

Their other son, Larry, whose main attribute seems to be a $200-haircut, wants custody of the baby since he probably realizes that Howard K. Smith is, you know, dead.

Meanwhile, Anna Nicole Smith's mother wanted to take Anna Nicole Smith's body to Texas to open something resembling Graceland. Memo to Anna Nicole Smith's mother, trust me, nothing could be as over the top as Graceland, not even in Texas.

Somehow all of these people, Howard K. Smith, his son haircut-boy, and Anna Nicole Smith's mother all ended up in the pilot episode of a Judge Judy spinoff starring some judge in Florida.

All of this is somehow involved with Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband, who is a Polish prince, or a Polish count, or a Polish joke, I don't know which. Perhaps it's because, just like Anna Nicole Smith, no one has ever known exactly why Zsa Zsa Gabor is famous.

Should I stop, or cook a weenie?

Is the stop sign in the wrong place, or are the barbecue pits?

This is just too precious...

The Swiss army invaded neighboring Liechtenstein last week!

The 170 invading Swiss infantry soldiers were carrying assault rifles when they penetrated about a mile into tiny Liechtenstein, which is only about 15 miles wide.

Actually, the Swiss infantry wandered across the border by mistake.

And, they didn't have any ammunition, just the rifles.

And, no one in Liechtenstein, which has no military, noticed.

SOURCE: USA Today

The high school that I attended is now a grade school...

They even took the bar out!

I was thinking today about high school.

In all these years I have never had occasion to need to multiply or divide fractions, but oddly enough I still remember how.

I've never had to translate anything from Latin to English, or English to Latin, although I still think Latin is the most important course that I ever took.

I've never had to climb to the top of a rope. I didn't see any point to it then, and I still don't.