respublica

Seeing discrimination in everything

This out of Gaithersburg, Maryland is a good example of how weird we've gotten. "At many pools, there’s a whistle blown every hour or so alerting everyone that it’s time for adult swim! But if that’s happening at the pool where you live, it could be breaking federal law." So no more adult swim for 10 minutes each hour out in Gaithersburg. 

It seems, according to a spokesman for the local homeowners association, one man who lives in the neighborhood and happens to be an attorney, pointed out that adult swim was discriminatory and so they changed the rules.  Supposedly adult swim is a violation of the Fair Housing Act in that it discriminates against families whereby some members of a family can swim and others cannot.

We've lost our minds. If I had to guess, this attorney had a kid who got ticked off that he had to get out of the pool for ten minutes.

A question about Memorial Day

Why is this weekend so big on mattress sales?

Regional accent survey

A recent survey done by a travel agency  just published their official ranking of the 50 sexiest – and least sexy – accents in the USA.  Seriously, there is a survey for everything. However St. Louis came in 9th out of 50 which is some interest (and surprise) to us.  Here is what is said about St. Louis accents and why they ended up on this list.

"St. Louis, Missouri has some unique features of its own that make it different than the rest of the Midlands. Native speakers swap the ”ar” sound for “or” (as in “farty” for “forty” and “carn” for “corn”), so get ready to make the joke ‘I Farty-Far’ a lot."

Ok St. Louis area people I need to know if I'm alone in never ever having heard a St. Louisan say, 'farty' for forty. I asked Dale if he'd ever heard anyone here have that hard 'ar' sound and he said he'd never heard anyone with that accent either. This seems to me an urban myth that pops up now and then but isn't real.

 

What to do when there is nothing to do

This was weekend we learned what it was like to not have television, computer and wireless anything. While planting some flowers early Saturday morning, Dale shoved his shovel into our buried cable line. Everything inside the house stopped.  Well, not everything, the washer was still going, but the things we count on went out.

I went around checking things and hoping this was going to be an outage area wide so that the cable people would send someone out. But finally after an hour I realized it was just us. I knew this by going out to the yard and saw where Dale had been digging. The ground was exactly above where the cable line was buried as it was laid from the back of the house to the pole at the edge of the property. I asked him if he'd noticed an orange cord and he said yes. It never occurred to him that this may have been our cable line. He did admit to moving it as his dug, but didn't think he'd actually cut into it.

But he did.  Calling Charter or probably any cable provider is a pain. You get the automated answer which will require pushing one number or other and answering "yes" or No" to a mechanical voice for any number of questions. I gave up the first time since none of the choices met out situation. I tried again later and again was frustrated. Finally I decided to just press 0 when the voice came on and sure enough I got a real person finally.

She set up a time for a service person to come out Sunday morning. So we had all of Saturday and Saturday night to pretty much sit around and try to find things to talk about in a very quiet house. We both found our cellular data almost used up by the time we headed for bed. We've never been in that position before and we both wondered what it would mean if out cellular allotment ran out before the cable guy got here. Would our phone just shut down and be useless?  We did not find out because we managed to squeak by.

I spent some time during the boring Saturday giving some thought to getting one of the Over the Air antennas. They are pretty inexpensive and at least we'd be able to watch local things that night. So I did it. I went out to Best Buy while Dale was out running other errands and bought an over the air antenna. It sounded so easy.

But like all tech things, easy is in the mind of the beholder and in the tv's they own. Turns out we have a TV without a built in tuner which you must have in order to make the over the air antenna work. Who knew? Lots of tv's are being made without them these days. If your TV has a coaxial cable slot, you're good. If not you have to buy some other part to make it work. I will not buy another part. I may just use this over the air antenna on a different tv one of these days.

Technology! Always wanting you to buy one more thing.

House for sale

Take a minute to look at this house for sale in Texas. Especially click through the room by room pictures and you'll have to wonder how anyone could even relax in this house. And, will it even sell. But the thing is, someone really loved this house and the rooms they decorated.

Worst highway idea?

Elon Musk, the electric car guru of Tesla fame, has proposed and idea to alleviate traffic congestion on the DC to Baltimore route. He wants to see two 35 mile tunnels built along that distance. He's calling it a hyperloop. Hyperloop passengers traveling in autonomous Teslas would shoot through vacuum tubes in pods traveling more than 600 miles per hour, according to Musk’s tunneling venture, the Boring Company.

All I can say is, This is crazy talk. Now, I'm not the most creative of thinkers and could be wrong, but wow, just think of all the things which could wrong, not to mention having this loop for electric cars means very few commuters could actually use it. And, what about accidents? How long would people be stuck inside these tubes while waiting for tow trucks or clearing? And, if they opened it up to normal gas fueled cars, wouldn't carbon monoxide be a danger?

He figures about 1000 cars a day would use these tubes initially which really won't help the congestion brought on by the normal 120,000 cars on the Baltimore/Washington parkway.

In the end, it looks like a way Musk hopes to sell more of his cars.

Why is Coke messing with a good thing?

I guess we're easily bored and need something different all the time, but Coke? All of a sudden that company sees a market for Coke flavored with fruit. Beer makers have been doing this for some years now, an addition I've never understood.

Coke advertises a new Flavor Power Couple, the orange vanilla. This will join Georgia Peach and California Raspberry which are sold in the glass bottles in 4 packs. If I had to guess these 4 packs, which are shelved alongside the glass bottles of Mexican Coke (real sugar, no corn syrup), are sweetened similarly. But go to any grocery store where these are sold and the true Cokes in 4 packs are almost always sold out and the fruited ones just sit there. I pay attention to this since I am a true Coke person, just like I pay attention to how often the original Triscuits are sold out at our local Schnucks and the goofy flavored ones just sit there.

Now the corn syrup-ed cokes in cans are getting fruited with all different kinds of fruit. There's cherry, blood orange, Mango, ginger lime, and on and on. Is there really a market for this when there is nothing better, maybe perfect, than the traditional Coke made with real sugar, no corn syrup?

Candy help

Today I learned we've become a nation of people who need help opening a candy bar wrapper. I mainly laughed, but after thinking about it, I wondered just why a candy bar company would believe we'd need directions. I picked up a Kit Kat bar in Schnucks after church and noticed the instructions. When did this happen?

A mattress storm

In the last 36 hours 6 mattresses and one ladder have fallen on local roads. 6 mattresses! Seriously, what is going on with people driving around with mattresses these days, February hardly seems like the time of year for moving to new homes or apartments.

Mattresses 20

Ladders 14

Air travel troubles

This made me laugh hard this morning. A Twitter thread posted by a woman who was flying Air France from Paris to Los Angeles, a long flight. She was seated across the aisle from a man who boarded the plane and then proceeded to take off his pants and sit in his boxers.

I'm quoting Lizzie Thompson now: @Lizzie_Thompson

"The man in the seat across from me has taken HIS PANTS OFF for the flight and is just in his boxers. Flight attendants seem unconcerned. This is going to be a long flight." She took pictures.

"He has also removed his socks."

"He just shouted at a man who boarded with a ukulele (also have questions) to COME SIT WITH ME AND MAKE SOME MUSIC."

Her Tweets included the Air France Twitter account so that company responded to her.

"Update- @AirFranceAF alerted the flight attendant. He offered to move me (which would mean losing my bulkhead legroom) but just shrugged when I suggested he ask the man to put his pants back on."

"Just landed. 2 hours in he stood up and took 4 mini bottles of wine from the cart. Then he fell asleep. Then 6 hours in he got cold so PUT ON HIS PUFFY JACKET

"Finally, his pants went back on. Good news: nothing bonds a group of passengers like a man half naked in your section. Shout out to the flight attendant who slipped me extra wine and did keep checking in to make sure I was good."

"To answer a few q’s I’ve seen: 1. He took pants off in the plane bathroom pre-takeoff. He put them back on pre-landing in aisle right next to me. 2. He was neither American nor French 3. No ukulele was played, sadly."