Matt Of All Trades

I have bizarre dreams. Last night, Lucille Ball  helped me with hail stones.   I like to tell people, sometimes, how strange my dreams are at night.  Nightmares are rare, but my dreams are definitely not something that can be easily analyzed.  Take last night for example: In the dream, I asked Lucille Ball to use the bongo drums in front of her to mimic how different sized hail stones sound as they crash down. You know, dime sized, quarter sized, golf ball sized, baseball sized. The sounds Lucy created for each sized hailstone sounded exactly like the videos I've seen in real life of videos with the corresponding hail sizes. Finally, in the dream, I got out of control, so I asked Lucy what sound wrecking ball-sized hailstones would sound like.  Lucy said, " I dunno. Go ask Miley Cyrus." Which of course let to some sort of version of the video for the hit Cyrus song "Wrecking Ball." Yeah, maybe I need some serious therapy.  Or a wrecking ball to the bra...

Leave a pile of brush to dry for a year, and then set it on fire, and it really takes off. My back yard burn last month. Looks scary, but all under control.  I know it's not the most environmentally friendly way to get rid of a huge amount of brush, but I do like to make burn piles on my relatively rural Vermont property.  A few weeks ago, I made a nice one! The pile had been sitting there since last winter. Covid restrictions meant I couldn't get a permit for the burn last March and April.  I didn't want to do the burn during the dry weather we had last summer and fall, so I let the pile sit.  The time finally came New Year's weekend. We'd just had some rain and snow, so everything around was either wet or frozen. No chance of starting a nearby forest fire. I was also able to obtain a town permit for the fire this time. With the brush pile having a year to dry out, the fire really took off.  A couple of pieces of paper as kindling, and certainly no accelerates,...

Crazy Marjorie Taylor Greene has inexplicably become a  GOP darling, despite her, um, interesting ideas.  Back on November 8, 2018, some power lines broke and arced in northern California in the middle of a wind storm and severe drought.    The resulting wildfire became a monster and destroyed the town of Paradise, California. The fire killed 75 people, and it was the worse wildfire in California history.  Most people would not want to make the situation worse for the grieving residents of Paradise. Then again, most people are not Marjorie Taylor Greene. She is my nominee as worst U.S congressperson every. And that's saying something  Greene is one of those QAnon conspiracy theorists. Yes, she's delusional, but the mean streak that's part of this pathology really makes her special.  Her conspiracy nonsense seems designed to make everybody feel worse.  Most people want to help, or at least empathize with the fine citizens of Paradise, California....

Motorists stuck in a snowstorm near Grants Pass, Oregon, receive Covid shots in the snow. The shots would have gone to waste if they had not been used on the spot Earlier this month, some motorists got stuck in a snowstorm on a high elevation highway near Grants Pass, Oregon.  Such a situation is usually regarded as bad luck. However, among those stranded in that snowstorm were health workers on their way back from a vaccination clinic at a high school. They were carrying extra Covid vaccines designated for other recipients. Stuck in this ripping snowstorm, the vaccines would expire, meaning nobody would get these badly needed shots.  Except for the fact that other motorists were also stranded. Apparently t hinking waste not, want not, the health workers started knocking on car windows in the snowstorm, seeing if anybody would be interested in accepting the vaccine on the spot.  There were plenty of takers, as you might imagine.   There were only six doses left...

A still from the latest Budweiser ad, which will not appear in the Super Bowl, breaking a 37-year tradition. Instead, the ad is aimed at encouraging Covid vaccinations  A staple of Super Bowl advertising for decades has been Budweiser ads.   We're familiar with the heartwarming Clydesdale horses , and the goofy other commercials that advertise this alleged beer (I'm a beer snob, deal with it). Everything's been turned upside down over the past year, so why not Super Bowl ads. Instead of the Super Bowl, Budweiser is turning its attention to Covid. Why not? Everybody else has been forced to. Of course, the Super Bowl won't be entirely Budweiser free. There will be at least one Bud Light commercial .   Plus, it appears Sam Adams beer has hijacked the Clydesdale horses this year.  In the main Budweiser 90-second ad, Rashida Jones narrates "Bigger Picture" which reviews some of the ways we've learned to cope during the pandemic. Like the Clydesdale ads, thi...

The Holderness Family really helps us understand ADHD! Scrolling aimlessly through YouTube this morning, as my wandering attention leads me to do, I stumbled upon one video that made me stop.   As many of you know, I have ADHD, which often drives me, my husband and everybody else around me absolutely nuts.  The video I found was by the Holderness Family, which has a fun, super active channel on YouTube. They crank out videos faster than I can eat a package of Lorna Doons (i.e., the speed of light). The parody I found was a takeoff of the song " Under The Sea" from "The Little Mermaid" performed as "ADHD" by, I guess Mr. Holderness, with help from his long-suffering wife. (The video can be viewed at the bottom of this post). Apparently, Mr Holderness, like me, has ADHD. The video is beyond silly, like most Holderness Family videos, but gosh, he really nails it.  Mr. Holderness is a big, loud, exuberant kind of guy, one of the hallmarks of ADHD.  The song ...

Paul Davis, who was at the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, has some, um, novel ideas on Donald Trump and who should be running the nation now.   Need a lawyer?   If so, it's probably a bad idea to go with one Paul M. Davis of Texas. Until recently, he was associate counsel for Goosehead Insurance in Texas. That is until January 7. Apparently, Goosehead figures a l awyer who participated in the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capital might not be the best legal presentation for them. Goosehead would be right on this score. As if Goosehead Insurance needed any more assurance they made the right call by firing Davis, Davis himself has filed a lawsuit in an attempt to get rid of Joe Biden as president and, well, it gets pretty convoluted from there.  The whole story on the lawsuit appeared recently in the publication Law and Crime, which gives us all kinds of news about, well, law and crime cases.  If you suspect the Law and Crime article on Pau...

YouTube star Julie Nolke has in her repertoire some videos of her future self talking about the pandemic.   It's a look at how a version of herself, now, visiting herself mid-pandemic a few months ago.  It's a fun, but simultaneously sad series. If you haven't seen them, check out I nstallment One from April; Installment Two from June and Installment Three from October.  Her latest installment has a drunk version of Nolke visiting a more sober version back in October. So worth the watch, as is all of her videos.  Spoiler. It makes a hopeful development actually kinda sad. As always, click on the YouTube logo in the video to make it bigger and easier to see.

More than a year before any of heard of  Covid, a fashion designer named, of all things, Kovid Kapoor designed this face-masked outfit for "Project Runway" I guess it's fun when you find something that was unintentionally prescient,  so let's introduce a guy named Kovid Kapoor.   Back in 2019, Kapoor was a contestant on "Project Runway," which pits various designers against each other in a series of fashion challenges.  In one episode, Kapoor participated in a challenge called "Head To Toe" in which contestants had to create a printed design that was featured, as you'd guess, head to toe.  As HuffPost describes it: "Kapoor's design for the challenge eerily evokes a look that would become all too common just a year later. In a red plaid design, Kapoor created a suit with an accompanying face mask." You can't help notice Kapoor's first name in this context.  Kovid, though is really a Sanskrit word meaning intelligent or poe...

Just some of an elaborate Rube Goldberg set up some guy made to swish a basketball. It has 70 steps.  The video in this post was made in May, when pandemic lockdowns had been in force for nearly two months.  All it is is swishing a basketball shot through 70 steps.  Glad the dude had enough room on his property to do this.  It looks like he made most of this contraption out of stuff that had been cluttering up his house and garage.  The video was shot all in one take, which is pretty remarkable.  Proves what lengths people will go to so that they can relieve boredom. Or something.  Here's the video. As always, click on the YouTube logo to make the video bigger and easier to see

That wooden box with the red button was Donald Trump's Emergency Diet Coke Button on his desk in the  Oval Office. Joe Biden got rid of it  When Joe Biden moved into the White House, and in particular the Oval Office last week, he did a little redecorating.   The carpets were changed, displays with busts of historic figures were rearranged, and there was one major change on the Oval Office desk.  The Emergency Diet Coke button disappeared.   Yes, there was an Emergency Diet Coke Button on the Oval Office desk during the Trump administration. Trump would press the red button and instantly, a butler would arrive with a Diet Coke on a silver platter.  Trump reported drinks something like a dozen Diet Cokes a day.  If he drinks them to lose weight, it's plainly not working, but that's another story.  Photos this week show Biden hard at work at this desk, and said desk is now missing the Emergency Diet Coke Button.  One of the photos showed t...

Dolly Parton fixing Bernie's hair  Vermont's own Bernie Sanders was there at the inauguration, in that Burton overcoat, the medical mask and those awesome giant mittens  And arguably the internet's biggest, funniest meme was born. Tons of people had a lot of fun with it. Bernie sitting in mittens was ubiquitous.  Too bad we can't buy the mittens. The Vermont woman who gave Bernie those mittens as a gift no longer makes them.  So we can't really imitate Bernie.  We need to be content that there had to be several thousand of Bernie mitten memes within 24 hours of that famous photo appearing.  Some of my favorites are in this post. Keep scrolling down for some fun. Click on each image to make them bigger and easier to see. Also, tell us what your favorite Bernie meme is. Enjoy!  Bernie as one of the Golden Girls:  Bernie in famous paintings:  Bernie with a fellow Jew: Bernie on a lunch break during skyscraper construction: Bernie at yet another ...

Satan and the year 2020 were a match.com made in (not) heaven  The year 2020 was like a bad relationship. (2021 isn't off to a great start either, but that's another story). But veterans of romances that did not work out still know there's somebody for everyone.   Match.com knows this, too, and in a fantastic recent commercial, proves it.  In the ad, Satan is on his lair in hell when his cellphone buzzes.  It's Match.com announcing "You're a match!" with a prospective dating partner.  Satan goes for it, and decides to meet this person in a rainy park.  The woman turns out to be the year 2020. You can see both are immediately smitten and a conversation, awkward at first, begins 2020: "So ,where are you from" Satan: "Hell.' 2020: "Me too." Proving that Match.com really works Satan and 2020 really hit it off. They generate electricity with each other when they first meet in that park (via scary lightning bolts).The pair enjoy a pi...

One of the more obnoxious viral anti-maskers out there. Unpatriotic, stupid, terroristic, entitled, hateful They all need to be outed and shamed  for who they are. Among the most infuriating things about this pandemic is the self-righteous, unpatriotic butt wipes out there who make videos of themselves refusing to wear masks, violating rules and regulation put in place to try and control the pandemic.  They are the ones who march into stores and restaurants without masks and record themselves making things absolutely horrendous for retail and other customer service workers.  They have no shame, obviously. Mean and dumb is probably the worst combination for humans, and these 'Covidiots" as they're called,  fit the bill to a T. Sure, they're annoying because they get their facts entirely wrong, as stores do not have to honor fake (or even real) medical or religious exemptions to mask requirements.  The worst part is the emotional abuse these Covidiots inflict on i...