Our Winter weather here in Maryland is getting a bit warmer now. In recent years, Winter here has resembled Winter weather in Spartanburg, South Carolina in the 1980's.. requiring only light jackets, and sometimes none. However, it is never warm enough for the shorts and T-shirts that I see lots of teen-aged WalMart customers wearing in January.
Speaking of WalMart.. I'm not sure if I posted it or not.. one day, at a WalMart near Ocean City, Maryland, Elaine was the only customer who did not sport a tatoo of some kind.. even grammar school kids. However, I can't talk.. I also have a tatoo. (I'll tell you the story someday about how and why I got it, and what it has meant for me over the years.) But it is a little disconcerting to see an eight-year old with a dragon tatoo on an arm.
Poetry Time
Becky Herman sent out two stanzas of a poem that relates to her email experience. It was written by Mark Eckman and Jerold Zar, and the title of the piece is "Candidate for a Pullet Surprise."
I have a spelling checker
It came with my PC
It plane lee marks for my review
Mistakes I cannot sea.
I ran this poem threw it
I'm sure your pleased to no
Its letter perfect in its weigh
My checker told me sew.
Churches..pay up!
According to Lance Pierson of London, England: "Despite its venerability, the King James Version (of the Bible) remains in copyright, which is renewed on the accession of each monarch. The Globe Theater found it had a substantial royalty bill to pay this April when its actors recited the whole text..."
Mr. Pierson has a touring acting company that has been exempted from paying royalties by the Crown copyright agents (Cambridge University Press) because they only use 90 minutes worth of the text.
Party-givers..pay up!
Have you ever wondered why servers at restaurants sing their own versions of Happy Birthday songs? Yes.. that song is copyrighted and if you sing the song, you are required to pay royalties, no matter where you sing it.
AARP Members..pay up!
At the local AARP Chapter meetings, we usually sing a patriotic song and also "Happy Birthday" and "Happy Anniversary." We are law-breakers, because we are not paying royalties!
Once, when I was Chapter President, we received a letter from some copyright agent or other (I wish that I had kept the letter).. offering us a "cut-rate" for a number of years, to cover all of our versions of the "Happy Birthday" tune sung or played at our monthly meetings.
Scofflaws..pay up!
Maryland requires all organizations to file an obscure form each year. Very few organizations have ever heard of the form.. until last year. Some State worker with nothing much to do, collected the names of all of the Maryland organizations that had not filed the form for a while. Under normal circumstances, the State would send out reminder notices, and no penalties would apply, unless the organization neglected to submit the form after being noticed..
However, a lawyer with nothing much to do, heard about this and offered to do it for the State and
relieve the State of the expense of sending the reminders. He was granted permission and sent out the notices and bills to the "miscreants" for $90 to cover his expenses. The way the notice was worded meant that organizations would have to suffer a State penalty if they did not comply. To avoid any trouble, one of the organizations I am connected to decided to pay the $90. I wonder how many others did, and what happened to those organizations that did not contribute to this scam.
(This is my "take" on the situation. I may have it wrong. If you know that situation, let me know, so I can make corrections.)
"Hi! I'm dead, but I hope you are having a nice Day!"
I hear that there is now an "app" that allows you to record a message to be posted on Facebook on the day that you die. Wow! Scary!
This kind of reminds me of the time I went to a wake for a secretary who had worked at the Social Security Administration. While we were sitting around her body at the funeral parlor, she walked in the door!.. We were really confused until we found out that the deceased had an identical twin. Nobody at work knew that.. if only her sister had not decided to wear the identical suit as her sister.....
"What is your question, Miss?"
I heard on the radio that when Texas Governor Perry made a campaign stop at the Squat and Gobble Cafe in South Carolina, he called upon a maniken that he thought was a potential voter.
Where did it go?
I also heard on the radio that Samoa completely lost December 30, 2011, when the International Date Line was shifted!
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Enough foolishness! Auf wiedersehen!
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