It is Sunday, July 26 and there are only 158 days until Ryan Seacrest once again fails to fill Dick Clark’s shoes on New Year’s Eve.  Today we remember the birthdays of George Bernard Shaw, Pearl Buck and Stanley Kubrick.  On this day in 1775 Benjamin Franklin became the first Postmaster General, in 1848 the first Woman’s Rights Convention was held and in 1947 the Department of Defense was established.  In Sweden it is Bellman Day, honoring Carl Michael Bellman (not the people who take your luggage in a hotel), in Liberia it is Independence Day and in New York it is Ratification Day.

I made the mistake recently of sort of paying attention to commercials.  As a result of this error, I can make several observations.  One, and it is one I have made in the past, is that there are a lot of people getting paid good money to develop some really junky commercials.  Insurance companies are spending huge sums of money to come up with some really lame stuff.  One tells us that we may not be covered when our car is crushed by a huge snowball thrown by the Abominable Snowman.  When the lovely Elaine and I contact our insurance company after we move, I will want to clarify that coverage.

Another insurance company takes a completely unrelated incident and says, “When you fall and rip your pants you get them repaired.  It’s what you do.  When you need auto insurance you go to us.  It’s what you do.”  Huh?  Yet another insurance company continues to annoy us with commercials including Flo.  Doesn’t she ever go on vacation?  Again, I have said this before and it still holds true – I cannot stand Flo!  There are other commercials that when they have finished I am not sure what they are selling.  One example of this is the one with the family riding along in a car and all of a sudden one of the children sings one line of a song.  The next line is sung by another child.  Mom and Dad each get their own line, another child gets a line and it finishes with everyone singing something about Buddy Holly.  I spend so much time trying to figure out how they got from the first line about “homies” to Buddy Holly that I have no idea what they are selling.

There is a series of car commercials that has come out recently where people get so worked up by the cars and the options they are getting that they start to swear and there is a lot of bleeping.  Is this really necessary?  It makes you wonder how good their cars are if they have to resort to that kind of “Bleep” to sell them.  Other companies have spokespeople who are in every commercial.  If you want to sell a product, give me a good deal on a quality product and I will buy it.  I will not buy it simply because you have a girl in a bikini and a talking horse.  One final note to companies – don’t use cartoon figures or talking condiment bottles to try and sell something to me.  I have a hard time relating to that type of thing.

I hope you will forgive my rant on commercials.  They just make me crazy.  For example, who thought two men wrapped in towels in a locker room, chewing gum and talking using arm farts with subtitles was the way to go for that product?  It makes no sense and is not funny.  And yet, there it is on our TV’s , touting a product that is not really related to the scenario that is shown.  Okay, I’m done now.  Thank you for your patience.

The lovely Elaine and I are getting closer to closing on our new home.  We have selected the colors for the various rooms and I think they are good choices.  We spoke to the lawyer’s office the other day and were told that the closing is tentatively set for the 30^th.  Elaine said, “What do you mean tentatively?”  It seems that they are still working on the title search.  I understand that it is a law office and we are not the only clients, but this date has been set since back in May, now a week before the date we are told it is tentative.  Elaine explained that tentative is not an option.  She pointed out that we have several painters and floor people coming in the day after to give us estimates on work we want done.  It might just create a problem if we can’t let them in because we don’t own the house yet.  Stay tuned for more on that issue.

We have a huge motorcycle store near our current residence.  I have not been in there yet, but am interested just to see what they have.  Driving by the other day, I noticed that they were having a big sale on jet skis.  I suggested that we go in and see about buying one.  The lovely Elaine took a moment to question my sanity and then asked what I would do with one.  I pointed out that they had a small pond in the community we were moving into and we could use it there.  I got the look.  She then asked me not to get us thrown out before we even had a chance to move in.  To quote my older grandson, “I’m not making any promises.”

In looking up this week’s fact, I came across two that I thought were interesting.  The first one tells us that Napoleon’s penis was sold to an American urologist for $40,000.  I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why someone would want that.  I also wondered what kind of authentication they had to prove it was his.  Finally I thought surely the doctor could have found something better to do with that money than to buy something that probably looks like a two hundred year-old shriveled up cucumber.

The other fact, listed right after the Napoleon one, tells us that nearly 3% of the ice in the Antarctic glaciers is penguin urine.  Don’t cruise ships brag about taking the ice from glaciers to use in your drinks?  If you are on a cruise to that area, take your drinks straight up.  I think Frank Zappa put it best – “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow.”