The Keyword is "Generally"

Because the Lord, my family and friends know I'm sometimes NOT good natured.  My good nature goes out the window sometimes with spammers, trolls and partisan hacks from either side.

You Are Generally Good-Natured

Like everyone else, you have your ups and downs in life. You try to keep going and remain positive though! You know how easy it is to see the downside of any bad news. You do what you can to lift your spirits when times are tough. You're not just a good-natured person - you're a proactive one. You solve your problems whenever you can. Even in the worst of times, there's something you can do to make things better and less stressful... and you find it. You aren't overly optimistic or pessimistic. You think it's best to take a wait and see approach to most things.   Whenever there's a crisis, your friends and family appreciate your levelheadedness and realism. You keep your cool.

How Optimistic Are You?

Devils Tower

Earlier I had written about Bing and their fantastic, changing daily page (see post just under this one) and was pleased to see Devils Tower as today's theme.

If you're a movie fan, you'll immediately recognize it as the geological feature which is prominently featured throughout Close Encounters of the Third Kind, one of my favorite flicks.

Here's a montage of most of the scenes from the movie with Devils Tower in them...or recreations of same, painted in water color, modeled in dirt and chicken wire, even sculpted in mashed potatoes!



There's not that many places in the world I want to see before I die, but Devils Tower is on my bucket list. I'd love to include it in a tour of that part of the country, also visiting Mount Rushmore, Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument (Custer's Last Stand)and Yellowstone National Park.

Bing Things

I've recently started using Bing more often, not especially for search (because Google pretty much does it the best) but because I enjoy their daily interactive and informative page, and also because they give points for visiting and for clicking on links. Granted, it looks like it would take a LOT of points to get anything worthwhile, but I imagine that after a year of using it the points would add up to some substantial total.

My problem is this: often, when I visit the page, I see I'm not signed in. The good thing is all I have to do is click on the "Microsoft account" and I'm signed in. (I certainly don't want to connect my Facebook account to anything!)

What I don't understand is how I'm not signed in, but it knows my points total. Strange. What's really odd is this next message after signing in:

You HAVE to click "Continue" to continue because if you don't, you're sent to a blank white page.  Yeah, that's great;  if I wanted a blank white page, I could just go to Google and put in "blank white page". -snicker-  I know enough HTML to where I could make my own!

Another reason I started using Bing is that Google is doing away with the iGoogle home page I've used for years.  I really liked it; I had various modules on it for news and local weather and sports headlines along with a Gmail preview.  I don't understand what's up with Google lately;  they did away with file storage a couple of years ago which was annoying but understandable, but their explanation for ending Google Reader didn't make much sense. 

The 'net is great, but it's also frustrating as hell.  It could also be described as fleeting, because as soon as you get used to something, get it the way you like it, it changes or disappears. 

All The Young Girls Love Alice - Elton John

One of my favorite songs off of one of my all-time favorite albums: Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. I wouldn't say it would be the only album I'd take if deserted on an island (honestly, who would want only ONE album to listen to all the time?) but it's definitely in my Top Ten of all time. It helps that it's a double album (twice the tunes!), but there's not a song on it I don't like.

I was thinking of what music video to post and I first thought of Social Disease, but a quick search showed I had posted it not long ago. (glad the Blogger search works better than my memory!)

This song doesn't have any personal meaning to me, other than it was quite controversial for its time and I don't remember it being played on the radio...while at least a half-dozen of the other tunes off the album were. I'm fairly certain I didn't know what a lesbian was and certainly didn't know any. (which, come to find out much later, wasn't true) I like that it tells a story, even if it's a sad one.

If I had a gripe about Elton John's singing, it's that the lyrics are sometimes hard to understand, so here they are, along with interpretations of them.

"With a double barrel name in the back of her brain
And a simple case of Mummy-doesn't-love-me blues"

Two Offical Languages of Israel

The two official languages of Israel are Hebrew and Arabic.

Here's that sentence in Hebrew:

שתי השפות הרשמיות של ישראל הן עברית וערבית

And in Arabic:

اللغتان الرسميتان إسرائيل هي العبرية والعربية

Gerald Ford Trivia

Did you know Gerald Ford, the 38th President of the United States, was originally named Leslie Lynch King, Jr. when he was born? He was also the only President not to be elected by the Electoral College, having been appointed to the Vice Presidency when Spiro Agnew resigned, then becoming President upon the resignation of Richard Nixon.

Ford was also a star football player for Michigan and in 1934, against the University of Chicago, "became the only future U.S. president to tackle a future Heisman Trophy winner when he brought down running back Jay Berwanger, who would win the first Heisman the following year."