braggart

braggart [brag-ert] noun

1. a person who does a lot of bragging.

adjective

2. bragging; boastful.

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I've been called a braggart before, but I'm not sure why.

Maybe it's because I can boast better than anyone else.

Royally Useless Trivia

The "Today in History" module tells me that this day marks the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II of England in 1953.  Coincidentally, my trivia calendar says all the swans in England are property of the Queen.

I don't trust this trivia calendar because I've researched some of the entries and found they weren't exactly true.  So, I checked and found out on the official site of the British Monarchy that the Crown retains the right to ownership of all unmarked mute swans in open water, but The Queen only exercises her ownership on certain stretches of the Thames and its surrounding tributaries. The article goes on to say swans used to be considered a delicacy.

Not long ago, the Amarillo Globe-News Facebook page linked to a letter from someone complaining the city wasn't doing enough to protect the geese, ducks and swans on the Medi-Park lake, saying that there wasn't nearly as many as there used to be.  Someone said they probably migrated, but I suspect people were catching the ducks and geese and eating them. That reminded me of an old movie: John Goldfarb, Please Come Home! where American oil executives were served peacock tongues at a lavish banquet.

I'm surprised I remembered that esoteric bit of movie trivia; what I most remember about the movie was Shirley MacLaine dressed in a revealing harem outfit.

I'd hate to think someone had eaten those swans; even if they were stolen and cleaned and cooked, they could have bought quite a few steak dinners selling them for a fraction of what they were worth.

I Would've Thought "Empty"

Your Mind is Spontaneous

Your thinking can be a bit scattered and crazy, but it's worth it for the flashes of insight that you get. You're not a linear thinker, and you don't try to fit into any normal mode. You know you need freedom to think well. You thrive in an unstructured environment. Very little of your best thinking is done behind a desk. You don't sweat details or processes. Everything seems to work out in the end if you're open and flexible.

What Kind of Mind Do You Have?

Shot At The Night - The Killers

I like The Killers fairly well, but the reason I searched for this video was because I had just watched a great movie, Beneath Hill 60, a story based upon WWI Australian tunnel diggers and I was floored by the beauty of an actress who played one of the minor characters: Bella Heathcote. She is the young woman in this video.

hokum

hokum [hoh-kuh m] noun

1. out-and-out nonsense; bunkum.

2. elements of low comedy introduced into a play, novel, etc., for the laughs they may bring.

3. sentimental matter of an elementary or stereotyped kind introduced into a play or the like.

4. false or irrelevant material introduced into a speech, essay, etc., in order to arouse interest, excitement, or amusement.

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hokum - you can see a lot of it on C-Span

Especially defined by #'s 1 & 4.

Making Hay

While the sun shines.

This was in my recommended videos when I checked YouTube just a few minutes ago.  I had already seen it, because a few months back I got on a jag of watching all sorts of hay cutting/baling videos.   It's a little odd that they'd recommend it because I got my fill of the videos and hadn't watched one since.  I've also seen there's a new module for videos on my feed, a "watch again?" list.  There's a few videos I've watched a number of times, but the hay baling ones are in the "No thanks, don't care to watch again." group.

I watched a lot of them because it brought back some old memories of when I used to haul hay with my brother-in-law.  It wasn't the hardest work I've done in my life, but it sure was the hardest I'd done up until that point in time.  I didn't do it full time, but came home on weekends during college and put in a couple of days.  If we didn't have to haul the loads too far and everything worked OK and the weather cooperated, we could haul between 800-1000 bales a day, sometimes a little more.  I made two and a half cents/bale for that work, not much more than minimum wage, all things considered.

We didn't haul it like the guys in the video, either;  my BIL's daddy would bale it up and then we'd come along with a flatbed truck and pick it up.  There was only one of us on the back of the truck, too and used a similar loader, but one more upright, called a pop-up loader, much like the one in this video.

I had a coach back in school who was riding us hard on a hot August afternoon and we all were dragging ass, not performing to his expectations.  He told us we'd remember those days, that we might or might not remember the good times, but we'd always remember the bad days.  I thought he was full of crap then, but he was right.

I remember one day hauling hay;  I didn't feel well and was sunburned, dehydrated and probably suffering from minor heat stroke.  We were working down on the Canadian River in a lovely meadow surrounded by beautiful cottonwood trees...but it was 105 in the shade and there were swarms of mosquitoes, gnats and biting flies and the ground was bumpy, making a poorly stacked load apt to fall off.  On top of everything else, one of the first bales I handled coming off the loader had a live rattlesnake baled with twine, caught by the tail, just enough to where it couldn't make the warning sound.  I remembered what the coach said and it hit me that he was right about the bad days.  I remember now what else I thought back then, that if I died and went to Hell, it would probably be an eternity right there in that spot.

Please God, no.