Flip Flop on the Name

A couple of months ago I bought a pair of flip-flops and kept meaning to write a post about them.  Since today is National Flip-Flop Day, I decided I'd better go ahead and do it.

My sisters and I used to wear them all the time when we were on vacation at the lake.  Back then, though, we called them "thongs" which means something entirely different these days.  When did the name change occur?

I'd really rather write about the thongs of today more than the flip-flops of yesterday.  I've never worn the former, but I like looking at them...well, I like seeing women wear them. They sure look uncomfortable, though, but wearing flip-flops is also uncomfortable.

I recently bought a pair out at WalMart;  I'm constantly having to run out to my vehicle for something or taking food out to the stray cats and it's too much trouble to lace up my sneakers just to wear them for two minutes.  I've ruined several pairs of house shoes by stepping in puddles of water in the dark...or in little "surprises" left by the stray cats. Ahem.  I was looking for a new pair of house shoes when I saw the flip-flops on a nearby rack.  They were cheap, around three bucks, so I thought they might be something that I could quickly slip on and off and save my much more expensive house shoes.

Here's the kind I bought, a cool looking camo style:

I brought them home, snipped the little plastic tie holding them together and slid my feet into them.  Ugh. I remembered why I didn't like them as a kid and the reasons hadn't changed. 

First of all, I hate something between my toes and that's the only thing that keeps the flip-flops on your feet. (I also hate anything between my "cheeks" so that's why I suspect I wouldn't like wearing a thong) I haven't worn them enough for it to happen yet, but with any sort of rough use, the rubber toe divider is notorious for popping out of the molded hole.  With some doing, you can pop it back into the hole, but once it happens, it will keep happening until the hole tears and then the footwear is useless.  I remember being on vacation and having that happen and taking a bit of twine and tying it around the part that sticks through the hole to keep it in place.  It really didn't work too well and then it was doubly uncomfortable, the chafing between the toes and a big knot of twine poking up from underneath.

Wearing them for any length of time takes some getting used to.  I remember getting blisters on my toes when wearing them on vacation;  that was painful enough, but get some sand in between your toes and into the blisters and it's agony.

You can't run in the darn things, either.  In fact, that's what usually made the toe piece pop out of the hole when I was a kid.  That probably won't be a problem with my new pair as I haven't run anywhere in years, not even when I'm wearing running shoes.

They're also deceptive in that you get the illusion you have protection for your feet, but it's as easy to stub your toe wearing flip-flops as it is going barefoot.  That's a little ironic - breaking your big toe from wearing flip-flops and then that being the only thing you can wear on your feet because you then can't wear regular shoes with a broken toe.

I doubt my flip-flops will get much use; oh, I'll slip them on when I think about it when I need to step outside for a minute, but just looking at them makes me shudder thinking about how uncomfortable they are.  I would never, EVER wear them in public as do some folks...my toes are just too ugly.  Flip-flops look cute on girls though. 

I think I'll go Google "girls wearing flip-flops and thongs".  That shouldn't be uncomfortable at all.

Costly Kids

Just read this article on Yahoo: Cost of kid-raising hits $234,900 in U.S

Wow.  That's a lot of money, but thinking of the yearly cost of food and clothes, plus college, it sounds about right.  Since that's an average, it makes me think of the privileged kids who are above the average and especially those children who get below the average cost spent on them, sometimes much less.  I know people who probably have spent close to that much on beer in the same amount of time.

Some of the comments on the Yahoo Facebook wall (where I saw the link to the article) were - as usual - getting heated. Some people were saying their children's love was worth much more than that while others said they were never going to have children. Of course - as usual- there were self-righteous types who were replying to the anti-having children posters telling them they shouldn't have children if they were going to have an attitude like that. Good grief, they just SAID they weren't having children; why rake them over the coals for not wanting children?  I have a sneaking suspicion that the critics would never admit they wish they hadn't had children and were jealous of those who weren't.  They're probably the ones who shouldn't have had children.

I had a friend who told his mother he wasn't having children. (and since he was gay, I figured it would've been a safe bet) She told him "But who will take care of you when you're old?"

"I dunno." he replied. "But I ain't havin' nobody stick ME in a nursing home."

Nothing wrong with not having children, but I personally think *some* people who have children shouldn't have them and/or they have too many. It's still a free country - for the time being - so pop those kids out like your womb was a Pez dispenser, I don't give a damn. Just keep them quiet in restaurants, that's all I ask. Oh yeah, and keep 'em off my lawn, too.

Reminds me of an old joke:

A traveling salesman was making calls in the back woods and stopped at a primitive cabin where at least a dozen kids were playing outside in the dirt.  He could tell the family was very poor and it wouldn't be any use in trying to sell them something, but he really needed to use the bathroom so he asked the harried looking woman if he could use their facilities.  Shifting a baby from one arm to the other, she pointed towards an outhouse in the back yard.

The salesman walked toward the privy and opened the door, but as he looked down into the hole, he could see a young child struggling in the muck, the head barely visible.  He ran back to the front, frantically screaming for someone to help the child.  The woman followed him to the outhouse, looked down in the hole at the child and to the salesman's horror, put a leg into the opening and with her foot pushed the child's head below the surface.

"My God!" exclaimed the salesman."Why did you do that?"

Without batting an eye, the woman replied "I reckon it'd be easier to make another one than it would be to clean that one up."

YOLO Redux

YOLO Part I

Holding People's Hand

Cute video, but I've watched it ten times and can't make out what the woman at just past 1:00 says to him. Someone please tell me. If you do, I'll hold your hand.

Du Hast- Rammstein

YOLO

YOLO= "You only live once." I saw this several years ago on a Facebook wall. The subject was the most daring things people had done and one guy said he and his girlfriend had climbed some mountain last summer and someone else said they thought that was crazy and the mountain climber replied "YOLO".

I wasn't familiar with that particular acronym, but it didn't take long to find out what it meant: You Only Live Once - Mainly used to defend doing something ranging from mild to extreme stupidity (That's from the website Urban Dictionary. I'm not linking to it because 90% of the definitions on the site contain some...or a lot...of profanity. I'm thinkin' it's more than fair that I cite the source even if I don't insert a hyperlink)

I don't think climbing a mountain is stupid;  I wouldn't do it, but I can think of a lot more stupid things there are to do.  The way YOLO is being used most of the time is stupid, though.

Since that time I've seen it hundreds of times on the 'net, on Twitter feeds and set as a Facebook status. It's becoming overused, much in the way Hotel California was played way too much on the radio. That song was great the first dozen times I heard it, but when it was played a dozen times a day....

It was like that with YOLO for a long while, then - thankfully - it fell into disuse. It wouldn't go away completely - there were the isolated incidents that would call attention to it again, such as when Zac Efron got a YOLO hand tattoo. It's making a comeback, though, and a search of the 'net will show that I'm not alone in thinking it's being used far too often and in the wrong context.

I was reminded of it again the other day when some doofus posted in a fan group something like "Me 'n a bud drank a fifth of vodka, polished off a case of malt liquor and smoked a whole oz. of some crazy kine. YOLO." Yeah, I thought. You only live once, but you'll also probably only live a short time.

I suppose you only live once, but I prefer to go by the haiku written by James Bond in Ian Fleming's novel You Only Live Twice:

You only live twice:
Once when you are born
And once when you look death in the face

I'm certainly not a spy nor a combat veteran, but I have looked death in the face, both literally and figuratively. That's for another blog post, though.

The following is from the 1967 James Bond thriller You Only Live Twice opening, sung by Nancy Sinatra. (The movie bears little resemblance to the novel, by-the-way) I love the opening bars of the tune.