Common tasks

Growing up, I remember well the lessons I was taught at school and at home about certain things.  I don't know why certain things stuck with me so well when others, like math, quickly departed.  But things like English and Spanish and history took root, and the math and science stuff left.  Left brain, right brain, I can't explain it, although Karen calls me Left Brain occasionally which, although I sort of understand, I really don't.

But the lessons to which I'm referring aren't about school subjects, per se.  These are things that we all do in everyday life.  And how we each gets them done differs slightly in some cases and hugely in others.  Yet we all manage to accomplish the same thing.

Take penmanship, for example.  As we've been told, everyone's hand is different, and only skilled forgers can duplicate someone's handwriting sufficiently to pass scrutiny.  But that's not the subject here.  I'm referring to how we all hold pens or pencils.  I was taught that the correct way to hold the writing instrument is to grip it between the thumb and the forefinger.  Yet I see people gripping it between their thumbs and forefingers and index fingers, others between the thumb and the index finger alone.  I've tried to grip the tool like that and I can barely hold it, much less write with it.

Then there's the script that comes out from the writing.  Doctors are notorious for having bad penmanship, but with the advent of the computer, handwriting has deteriorated horribly.  Even mine has, and I try to maintain a certain degree of legibility.  But how women of a certain age write is interesting, because it's as if their handwriting hasn't matured with them.  Men's on the other hand, hasn't gotten any more legible with age.

Then there's eating.  There are various ways of holding the utensils.  Our parents insisted that we do it a certain way and that's how we do it.  I have seen other people use utensils as if they were cavemen. Either way, it gets the job done.  There is no right or wrong way, but whenever I see this, I wonder what our Mother would have done if I'd held the utensils any other way.

There's also how to put a roll of toilet paper on the roller.  In this instance, I'm talking about a horizontal roller:  Does the paper roll over the top or under the bottom?  I used to do it under the bottom, but in my later years I've switched to over the top.  I was wrong; it's better over the top.

How about brushing one's teeth?  For years, I brushed down with the direction of my teeth.  This I was told by a dentist when I was in my teens.  I've had very few dental problems and thought that this was the correct way to brush as a result.  It wasn't until I got into my forties that I was told by another dentist that this was incorrect, and that I should be brushing them horizontally.  I've since changed.  But for over thirty years I brushed my teeth in the same fashion, incorrectly.

There are probably other examples of this that I'm overlooking.  But I find it fascinating the way we all do the same things, differently.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Fashion????

Fashion or style has always eluded me.  I have no concept of what is really good looking and what is only marginally bad looking.  It shows in the way I dress, because I typically dress for comfort.  Being as big as I am has also limited, to some extent, what's available to me.  Elsewhere I've discussed my difficulty in finding clothes to fit me; if I had an unlimited budget I might be able to shop better, but I don't so I wear what I can find.

I state that at the outset to make it clear, unreservedly, that I am in no position to be a fashion critic. Even so, I can have my opinions.  And last night, there was something called the Met Costume Institute Gala in New York City where famous people dressed up.  I'm not quite clear on the concept and I don't really care to be enlightened, but that doesn't really matter.  What matters is what the people wore.

Let's start off with an oldie but a baddie:  Gwenyth Paltrow:

WTF????

But that's comparatively tame compared to some of the other entries:

Nicole Ritchie:

What did she see that scared her so that her hair turned white?

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West:

I understand the woman's pregnant, but did she have to try to look like a couch by taking the leftover fabric as a dress?  As for Kanye West...he always either looks drugged out (as he does here) or angry.

January Jones:

An otherwise attractive woman, didn't she realize the new Star Trek movie was already cast?

Miley Cyrus:

Great dress, but did she see the same thing Nicole Ritchie saw?

Madonna:

Proving that many dominatrices come from parochial schools.

Kristen Stewart:

She's mastered the art of looking like a drug addict without doing drugs.

Elizabeth Banks:

Such a beautiful woman who apparently kept her wardrobe from The Hunger Games.

Ginnifer Goodwin:

The dress wasn't horrible but this???  Was her designer a raccoon?

Cameron Diaz:

I don't even know what to call that.  A throw?  A rug?  A throw-rug?

But the winner and still champion of bad dressing claimed to be styling, Sarah Jessica Parker:

If Kardashian took the couch fabric, Parker took the curtains.  For the life of me, I don't know who died and decreed that this woman was a leader in fashion.  I can't recall the last time I saw her look presentable.  I think Sex and the City went to her head.

Again, this is really the pot calling the kettle black.  I don't know that I could have done much better myself.  For one, none of these outfits would have fit on me. But even if they had, I probably would have chosen something equally horrid.  Well, Karen wouldn't have let me out of the house in it, but I wouldn't have had any better idea.

It's really not something about which I have any business commenting about.  But an eyesore is still an eyesore, no matter to whom the eye belongs.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Contradictions

Karen oftentimes will call me goofy.  In fact, she uses myriad words to inform me of my goofiness, and there's only one to which I object.  There is no doubt that my demeanor bears a passing resemblance to Dr. Sheldon Cooper, although by no means am I as intelligent as he is.

My quirks aren't as obsure as Dr. Cooper's.  I admit they're not in the mainstream, but I'm not sufficiently intelligent from a scientific or technological standpoint to be that far out of the mainstream. Then again, perhaps because I do need idiot-friendly software I'm that far out of the mainstream.

Either way, here then are my quirks, both little and small:

I eat my dinners in order, from the vegetables and potatoes to the meat.  Meat is always last.

I read when I pump gas.

I don't really care all that much for pro football but love the draft and college football.



I speak Spanish and lived in Spain but went to a French-affiliated law school instead of the Spanish-affiliated law school.

I can't remember jokes or lyrics but I can remember sports statistics.

I dribbled better left-handed than right-handed even though I'm right-handed.

I'd rather use a map than a GPS.

I hate cellphones.

No matter what the weather, I have to sleep with something covering me.

I segregate my books according to type, not alphabetically.  But I alphabetize within each grouping.

I can throw and bat left-handed, but I can't eat, brush my teeth or comb my hair left-handed.

I don't consider style when buying shoes, just comfort.

I prefer watches and clocks with Roman numerals.

I don't like squared cars.

I spell it grey instead of gray.

I don't like wet bread.

I'm not a small man yet my handwriting's like a girl's.

I can't eat cooked eggs but can bake with them.

I love fruit and I love meat, but I don't like them mixed.

I like watermelon, but not cantaloupe or any other melons.

I love chocolate but not hard candy or gum.

My printing is less legible than my handwriting.

I don't mind flying but I'm not keen about rollercoasters.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Spangler in the kitchen

I could never be a chef.  Heck, I can barely cook.  Our Mother used to teach me how to cook because she always wanted me to be able to fend for myself, and I enjoyed it.  Of course, I enjoyed licking the spoon, or the beaters, or whatever else was tasty, and that helped.  But I actually enjoyed cooking and especially baking.

When I was in school, I would make up dishes that suited my palate.  I'd take mashed potatoes, grill some onions, some green peppers and whatever vegetables I had, then some ground turkey or pulled chicken, spice it to taste and have a meal fit for an impoverished grad student.  If I didn't have potatoes I'd do the same thing with rice.  At holiday time, I'd cook two big turkeys for Thanksgiving and Christmas, eat my meals and freeze the rest of the meat to use in these concoctions.  I always enjoyed the meals.

Baking was always enjoyable.  I'd make applesauce loaf, cookies, pies from scratch.  Of course, I ate too much, but it was as much the baking as the eating that I enjoyed.

Nowadays, I don't get to cook as much simply because Karen's palate is far softer than mine.  I can eat spicy with little difficulty, although this is not to suggest I'd be a phenom on the Scoville scale. Karen has very valid reasons for not eating spicy foods, and I adjust.  But when I get a free weekend alone, I enjoy amping up the spice.

One of my favorite meals is Dirty Rice.  I take the Zatarain's brand Dirty Rice mix, cook up some ground turkey, julienne some green or red pepper, then slice and brown some andouille sausage and mix it together.  The andouille gives the added spice so I don't need to add anything.  Karen tells me it smells like ass, but I love it.

I've learned to eat hot dogs with something sold locally called mouffelatta, otherwise known as olive salad and not to be confused with the New Orleans bread by the same name.  I put that in my hot dog bun and lay the hot dog on top of it.  It gives the hot dog a nice heat that needs no other garnishment.
Not surprisingly, Karen's chili and taco mixes are pretty bland for my taste.  It's not that they're bad, they're just not spicy.  One thing I learned to do as a student was to use the packaged taco mix but instead of putting in the water as called for, I used salsa, usually thick and chunky.  This thickens the taco mix so that in the shell, it stays more compact with whatever else is put in with the meat.

I love to experiment when I cook, but I don't get to do it much anymore.

One memory of our Mother in the kitchen that I cherish is when she tried to figure out the ingredients for the Big Mac, Kentucky Fried chicken and a local favorite known as a Colonial burger.  She came pretty close, all things considered, but it was watching her focus on her tests and then serving them to us that makes me smile the broadest.

She gave me a great gift when she taught me not only how to cook but how not to fear the kitchen. As I've said countless times, there is so much I don't know, and that's reinforced every time I watch Top Chef.  There are things I would still like to experience, like a clambake, cooking a fresh catch out of the river, making a reasonably good paella.  But until I experience those things, I'm just grateful Mom took the time to teach me what she knew.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Abortion and the MSM

Recently I became aware of the Gosnell prosecution.  What's that you say?  You've never heard of it? Well, join the club.  Once again, the MSM is doing a fine job of editorializing by omission.

These are the facts at issue:

It is hard to decide the most appalling images to emerge Thursday at the murder trial of Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell. What happened in his abortion clinic is beyond any morbid Hollywood horror.

Tiny severed feet and hands stored in jars over a sink in the “procedure” room.

Digitalis injected into the stomachs of pregnant women to stop the beating hearts of their unborn babies so that they would be born dead.

Survivor babies whose spinal cords were severed, whose brains were removed with suction, whose tiny bodies were placed in a waste bin for disposal.

Then there is commonwealth exhibit C-147, depicting a large baby balled in the fetal position, bloody, stuffed in a bin. “Big enough to walk me home,” joked Gosnell when he saw the child’s remains, testified Ashly Baldwin, a clinic employee.

Gosnell, 72, is charged with killing seven born-alive babies and causing the death of Karnamaya Mongar, 41, an immigrant from Nepal who had sought an abortion at his West Philadelphia clinic. The clinic was busy, doing brisk cash business, catering not only to local women in West Philadelphia, but also women from the affluent surrounding suburbs of Bucks and Montgomery counties. Gosnell’s reputation for no-wait abortions was so well known, women would fly in from other states. (Taken from a local news outlet not affiliated with Fox News).

The funny thing is, until recently, there was precious little about this on the MSM.  Jodi Arias's trial, in which one man was viciously murdered, has been in and out of the news for months.  Until this case was about to go to trial, there was not one wit of it on the national news or even the major cities' newscasts or in their newspapers.

One has to ask, Why?  Unlike the gun control debate, which is thrown in the public's face at every opportunity, these gory details are kept from the public.  When Sandy Hook is discussed, the twenty-six so cavalierly murdered are often referred to in reverential tones as angels.    And truly, they were innocent souls, angels as it were.

But how are these aborted babies any different?  No, they weren't murdered with a semi-automatic weapon.  But they are dying hideously, cruelly, painfully, every bit as much as the souls lost at Sandy Hook.  Yet because there are those who do not accord humanity to the fetuses, this is equivalent to taking out the trash, worth nothing more than a passing dismissive mention that the lunatic fringe that opposes abortion rights is making a mountain out of a molehill.

But the question must be asked:  If a law-abiding minority can have their rights challenged nightly in the MSM for the action of a lone nutjob, why isn't a man -- a doctor at that -- who allegedly wasn't following the law being tried for the murder of eight people even rating a mention in any of the MSM?

The answer may well be found in the rest of the article quoted above:

I asked one of the court staff why so few are interested.

“If you’re pro-choice, do you really want anybody to know about this,” he said, motioning to the filthy medical equipment set up in the courtroom.

It’s a good point. As saturation coverage of the Sandy Hook elementary school coverage has caused Americans to reconsider the limits of the Second Amendment, saturation coverage of Kermit Gosnell’s clinic would likely cause the same reconsideration of abortion rights.

The details are that horrifying.

Irrespective of whether there should even be a right to an abortion (admittedly, I'm against the pro-death contingent, with very limited exceptions), what about the MSM's selective editorializing on this issue.  If a pro-lifer had caused the deaths of eight people and were being tried for their deaths, there would be wall-to-wall coverage.  But because of the part in bold in the above quote, the MSM has elected to support the pro-death movement because that's where its agenda lies.  That, necessarily, removes its status as journalist and casts it into the role of editor.  If it's not giving comparable stories the same level of treatment, it is no longer practicing journalism.

Perhaps Gosnell is guilty.  I don't know, and I haven't looked into the case enough to say whether, with certainty, he should be convicted.  My inclination is that he should, but those are my biases. The evidence and an unbiased jury must determine that.

But the MSM should be taken to task for once again letting down the country.  It's positively shameful what the MSM in the name of journalism.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Sports potential

Years ago, I played basketball and baseball.  I was pretty good in both, although whether I had any talent that would have allowed me to go beyond high school competitively is open to question.  Politics in high school derailed any chance I had of finding out, although in both cases the ultimate decision was mine.  Knowing as I did even back then what my ultimate career would be, I decided to focus on studies and play sports on the side in intramural leagues.  That didn't mean the competitive fire burned any dimmer, just that I didn't put as much energy into competing with intent to advance in the sports.

If I had to be honest, I was no better than Division II material in basketball, probably Division III.  I had no speed to speak of, no jumping ability and little in the way of shooting skill.  I did have, as they say, a high basketball IQ.  I could outthink anyone on the court.  Of that I'm sure.

The case for baseball is less clear.  I ruined my arm as a twelve-year-old curveball specialist.  This was back when the effects of throwing weren't as known as they are today.  We'd never heard of pitch counts, much less the effects of breaking pitches on developing bodies.  After I blew out my arm -- which to this day hangs differently than does my other arm -- I switched to first base and was quite good there.  Despite my size, I was never much of a power hitter, but with the right coaching, I may well have been a decent hitter.  Again, politics cost me my shot.  Despite not playing in high school my last two years, a college wrote me and offered me the opportunity to play at the school. Unfortunately, that offer didn't include a scholarship.  Had I pursued baseball, I might have had a future in it.

These musings came to mind because I was reading today about college football recruits who never realized their potential for one reason or another.  The same has held true in baseball and basketball as well.  These kids are touted as being the next Ted Williams or the next John Elway and then they don't reach the professional leagues, much less the halls of fame.  It has to be a sobering realization sometime in their twenties or thirties to know that what was once said about them will never be.

The ones that are saddest are the ones that threw away the opportunity.  No one can prevent catastrophic injuries.  But if someone were injured and therefore unable to realize the potential he possessed, it would be sad but not as sad as someone who threw his future away because of drugs, sex, gambling, etc.  All too often, stories are heard of athletes who veer from the path toward greatness because of the lure of other temptations and as a result lose what could have been theirs.

I wonder what they must think when they look back in their middle age.  Do they find excuses to blame their own mistakes?  Do they admit that they did it to themselves?  If I'd been in their shoes, I'd beat myself up every day knowing that it was my fault I didn't realize my potential.

The same argument holds true for any profession, I suppose.  But professional sports, like celebrity in music or acting, holds the twin combination of riches and eternal popularity that aren't found as widely in other arenas.  For me, sports were about competition, not wealth or popularity.  For others, they're more about wealth or popularity or both.  Whatever the ultimate goal, it's sad when it isn't realized for any reason, but all the moreso when it's due to carelessness, irresponsiblity, stupidity, greed or whatever vice one chooses to name.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles

Random thoughts, the beat goes on

It's a day for random thoughts:

Just what is a Tilda Swinton?

It's amazing how many times I use Potter Stewart's description of obscenity -- I know it when I see it -- when it comes to other things.

Has Brent Musberger stopped calling Tyrann Mathieu the Honey Badger willingly or did Katherine Webb distract him off of it.  Either way, he's gotten far too creepy.

Hot dogs are fun to eat.  Too bad they're not good for you.

Abraham Lincoln was a complicated man, but hardly of presidential timber when he was practicing law.  We should read more biographies of our presidents to see just how human they really are.

Summer is here this week.  Somehow we've seemed to skip right over Spring.  Would that Autumn did as Summer's done and make an early entrance.

I still can't believe how bad a book Storied Stadiums was.

I'm hooked on Sudoku again.  Blame Lisbeth Sander.

Carolyn Moos, meet Brad Paisley.

It amazes me how people can have such divergent views on books, especially ones that are non-fiction and deal with very narrow topics.

Either Mrs. Tsarnaev is nuts or she's in on it.

There are far too many hokey singing competitions on television.

It's creepy to watch entertainment reporters try to make it seem like they're journalists.  They're really nothing more than glorified stalkers.

I admit it:  I'm a nerd.  I love The Big Bang Theory.

Dinner tonight may be chicken and quesadillas.  Not chicken quesadillas.

I wish teaching paid more.  And writing.

Baseball really belongs in the Olympics.  Trampoline really doesn't.

There is no better board game than chess.

Ansel Adams is my favorite photographer.

I think I really came from a different era.

Women shouldn't have to wear high heels.

What is it with Asian drivers?

I miss Spain.

One of these days I'll read more than seventy-nine books in a year.  That's my record.

I marvel at people who can compose music.

The fascination people still have with Elvis and Michael Jackson just confuses me.

(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles