Weekend with Uncle John

Happy Birthday to me. Happy Birthday to Gerald Ford. Happy Bastille Day. All of these occur on the same fabled date of July 14.

Paris Hilton's dad should have an easier time paying for her next get out of jail party without putting the squeeze on Vegas hotels to subsidize it. Blackstone just purchased Hilton Hotels for 26 billion or such.

The winner ate 66 hot dogs, a new record. The runner up ate a mere 63. I bet they didn't chew as thoroughly as their mothers would have urged.

The most recent batch of terrorists in the UK are all medical doctors or medical professionals. I would have assumed these folk would have been happy campers there, and, if not, would have had the means to migrate back to their father lands.

I always knew farming was a dangerous vocation. Now I realize it is even more dangerous than I had thought. Five on a dairy farm in Virginia died because of inhalation of methane from a manure pit. Apparently it was in an enclosed area and the sump pump wasn't working right.

Dark chocolate lowers blood pressure. That's pretty good news I guess, but why couldn't it have been milk chocolate?

The pin head with the weird strain of TB that flew across the Atlantic and illegally reentered the US from Canada turns out to be a lawyer. I should have known.

The University of Missouri has found that students are less likely to drink heavily on Thursday nights when they have classes scheduled for Friday morning. Duh. I don't know how much money they spent on this research but I assume all the other colleges that have now benefited from this finding will send some remittance or at least some reciprocal gem from their own research.

It was the wettest Wimbledon since who knows when. It was the windiest too. It's another manifestation of global wetting and blowing. I think Wimbledon also set new records for grunting, moaning and shrieking by players hitting the ball and set records for fist pumps by players. The latter used to be reserved for very special shots or very key points. Now it seems almost all points warrant a fist pump. It's global shrieking and fist pumping I tell you. Federer beat Nadal yesterday but unless my eyes are mistaken I believe Nadal may now be the best player. The group of geniuses that seeded Venus Williams 23rd should be excused from any further seeding exercises for the duration of their lives.

Missouri lawmakers passed legislation saying it was alright for universities to require advanced degrees for applicants to teaching positions. There was one exception. The congressmen stipulated that the requirement did not apply if the applicant had served in the Missouri House or Senate. Give me strength.

A local school district administrator ordered all teachers to mark all students present for a prescribed period of days. It seems this bumped the district into a higher "performance" measure and thus a higher monetary incentive from some state kitty. I presumed the teachers ratted out this infraction and was accordingly relieved. Alas, no teacher disclosed the deed; it was revealed by a person who saw the order while visiting one of the schools. The administrator is going down. Seems to me that the teachers should be ashamed as well.

Hillary broke all time fund raising record for 2nd qtr of year before election. It didn't last long. Obama announced an even greater amount.

There are 22 school districts in our fair county. Among these 22, the total valuation of each district's residential properties increased by 10% to 28%. These assessments seem all the more peculiar in light of the fact that property values have generally been static or lower over the past few years. Over all, assessments were up 20%. We are fortunate enough to live in the district that escalated 28%. Now one might think that a journalist would dig into this with great gusto. It seems like there must be a story here. To wit, why are assessments so much higher while sales prices obviously are not? Of course, there was not one word of text delving into this mystery or even acknowledging the incongruity. Nice.

The last challenge word was besotted, meaning stupefied. The last trivia question wasn't answered by anyone. Venus is the only planet that rotates in the reverse of the direction of the orbit. The last lyrics challenge was from "Slip Sliding Away" by Paul Simon.

I think I will dispense with the vocabulary and trivia challenges. I just don't have the time to read through all the replies that pour in. I don't know how you all find the time. The new lyrics challenge is: "Get your motor running,/ Head out on the highway,/ Looking for adventure,/ And whatever comes our way."