Wednesday, Simptempter 13, 41 A.B.
Just a few hastily scribbled thoughts today while I'm on break. Whew! Seems the job of going from being an ignorant child to being a senile old man is a never-ending one!!
It's a beautiful day here. The sky is properly above my head again, and the ground seems to be outside somewhere, too. Although I generally try to avoid trusting any landscape until I've known it at least 12 waking hours, this one seems ok. It's attracting geese!!!!!!!!
Ok, now, about those fantastical books I've been accumulating recently the way a dog accumulates, ummm, whatever a dog accumulates a lot of.... It's occurred to me that there's no way I'm ever gonna be able to record them ALL here unless I really try. Rather than do that, I've decided to merely do one a day until I've covered them all. Or until I no longer need to distract myself from the fact that Bobby Knight is now out on the streets instead of "under contract" with a state institution....
Ok, here we go!
"The Great Depression of 1990: Why it's got to happen - How to protect yourself" by Dr. Ravi Batra. (Simon and Shuster, 1987)
Geez, I LOVE this book! And NOT just because it has a foreword by the great MIT economist, Lester Thurow. No no no! I love it ALL, starting with this inner-flap description:
"Startling in its revelations, bold in its predictions, and overwhelmingly convincing in the evidence it offers, The Great Depression of 1990 demonstrates that we are headed toward an economic disaster of unprecedented proportions that will occur in 1990 and continue to plague the world at least until 1996."
Inside are charts! Inside are figures! Inside are words and paragraphs and chapters adding up to the absolute worst economic prediction I've ever seen between two covers!! An excellent companion volume to Hal Lindsey's "The Late, Great Planet Earth."
Ok, now that that's out of the way....
I lived a "Seinfeld" episode on Sunday. When we went to Columbus. And went to my favorite bookstore. And then came out and saw a restaurant on the far side of the parking lot. A restaurant we thought we'd been to before, but have been arguing over the name of. So we drove by it to see the name - and we STILL couldn't tell! The name was written out in script in neon and it just couldn't be read!!!
"So, you want to do lunch on Tuesday?"
"Sure. Where do you want to go?"
"Buffy's."
"You mean Duffy's?"
"No, I think he means Tiffy's."
"NO! Now that I think about it, I mean Snuffy's! Right there at the corner of 5th and 174th St."
"You mean 5th and 119th?"
"STOP! What I REALLY mean is Snotty's at the corner of 7th and 128th!!"
"Tell ya what, how about if I just drive around town next week and if I see you standing outside a restaurant with a name I can't read, we'll eat."
"Forget it. I don't think I'm going to be hungry."
"So let's just skip lunch, go to Bandidos, and sit and talk."
"Deal!"
"Kramer, you want to come, too? Kramer??"
"Just a second, I'm almost done writing my councilman DEMANDING that all restaurants in town be required to clearly put their name above their doors in braille."
"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
"Hunger can drive a man to do things things you'd have thought no man would ever do. Ever seen that movie about the plane crash in the Andes???"Ummm, is any of this entry legible?
No?
Guess I might as well end it all right here then....
(©Now by the utterly unpronounceable Dän Birtchér)