Some Blog Site

Here is a guest post I wrote for SCL back in the day (2011 in case you’re wondering). I think it wasn’t run because he had something similar. I can’t check though, because the SCL site is broken for anything not on the front page.

I am on the conservative side of things when it comes to swearing. If you’re anything like I am, you refer to the martial arts actor as “Jean-Clause Van Darn” just so there is no possibility of confusion.

My upbringing may have something to do with my stance on language. After all, I’ve heard my father swear only once in my life.

It was at Christmastime, of all things. Dad had just finished setting up the tree and we were about to start decorating it.

However, the tree was not quite level and it started leaning. Dad spent several minutes adjusting and re-adjusting the tree so that it would stand straight. Finally, he had the tree where he wanted it and he stood back to make sure it looked right.

… at which point the tree started falling, which was not what my father wanted to happen As it was crashing, my dad voiced his now-famous exclamation:

“Moses!”

The Ten Commandments state that thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

The Ten Commandments do not state that thou shall not take the names of other Biblical characters in vain. I think that makes them fair game.

SCL has already touched on the point of swearing occasionally, but not the various lengths that people go to in order to sound like they’re swearing but without crossing the line.

And where exactly is that line?

Here are a few places it could be:

Based on the FCC
The infamous list of words that can’t be broadcast in the USA is a good place to start. But what about Christians in other countries? Or those who don’t speak English? The FCC doesn’t apply to them, but I bet most every culture has some taboo or extra-rude words that would be the equivalent. I think the Smurfs were the first to creatively get around the FCC by substituting the word “Smurf” for any stronger language.

Anything other than God’s name
The third commandment is an obvious line in the sand. I’ve known some people who use common epithets that usually involve God’s name, but they replace God’s name with the name of a “deity” from another religion. It’s amusing, but it got me wondering if that people could be considered to be praying to a false god, which would violate the first commandment.

Line? What line?
Some people think lines are legalistic and shun them. But if everyone thought that way, then SCL would have lasted about 3 days. SCL needs lines.

Normally at the end of a blog post, there’s a question to garner comments and responses. The first questions that came to mind for this post were “What are your swearing substitutions?” and “What are some of the crazier phrases you’ve heard?”

But then I started thinking about what kind of comments that would get, and I started to worry. So I’m not asking any official question here. Just write whatever comment you feel like writing, related to the topic of swearing substitutions.

But remember that Jon’s grandmother will be reading your comment.

And that’s the guest post I sent over to Jon Acuff about a decade ago. I hope someone gets that old site working, so we can peruse the treasures within.

I realized our boys never experienced one of the little joys I had growing up – cottage cheese.

Now this is not just any cottage cheese, but enhanced cottage cheese.

I don’t know when it started, but I don’t remember ever eating cottage cheese at home without putting jello on top.

Now this is not just normal jello, but raw jello. Just the powder, straight out of the box.

If you think about it, it’s a perfect match. Jello powder adds everything that cottage cheese is missing – color, flavor, and sugar.

There was usually an open box of jello in the cabinet drawer, if not, then just pick your favorite flavor and open it up. Dump a bit of powder on your cottaqe cheese and you’re good to go.

I thought I would introduce our boys to the delight that is jello powder on cottage cheese. The older boys weren’t at dinner that day, so it was just the younger two.

I prepared them their bowls:

I like to not stir the jello in all the way, because then you get some more intense bursts of flavor. But just for fun, I stirred one all the way through.

I’m sharing this here because when I mentioned the practice of putting jello powder on cottage cheese, my wife was surprised. That was not something she was familiar with. And if she didn’t know it, probably a lot of other people don’t know it either. Thus it falls to me to spread the news, or recipe rather.

In case you’re curious, the boys were not fans of this dish. But their reasoning was the texture of the cottage cheese, not anything with the jello.

Thanks to a comic I saw on Dry Bar Comedy, I was inspired to find my actual skin color. If I remember correctly, he went to the store and got paint sample cards and figured out that he was the color “Chocolate Decadence”.

So of course I went to the store and grabbed some paint sample cards. It was a little awkward holding my arm up in front of the display case, but I grabbed some of the closest shades I saw and now I get to share the results with you.

One of the problems I encountered was that I did that in February, which in Michigan is the season of least melanin as it’s near the end of winter. I decided then to wait on the results until after I could redo this experiment after summer sun exposure.

Another problem I encountered was that my arms have two skin tones – the top side that gets more exposure to sunlight and the under side that stays lighter.

Another problem I encountered was that my skin is not an even tone. There are all sorts of variations and freckles and such, so this is kind of a subjective eyeballing result.

Final problem is that this was not a controlled experiment. For example, the winter paint samples were from Lowes but the summer paint samples were from Home Depot. And the winter photos were taken with an iPhone 5 but the summer photos were taken with an iPhone 7.

First up: winter arm top:

Photos aren’t clear, so it’s hard to read the names. But in this case it looks like the closest to my skin tone is Quaint Peche. Or maybe Mellow Coral.

Next up: winter arm bottom:

I’d say my palm is Indulgent Peach and my forearm is either Coral Perfection or Pink Glamour. I like the sound of Coral Perfection better, but if I had to narrow down the colors to the one best option, it would be Pink Glamour.

Next up: summer arm top:

My vote on this one is Terra Cotta Clay.

Next up: summer arm bottom:

I liked the color of Sunset Drive but it was too bright. I thought Nairobi Dusk had the right feel to it but was too dark. So what I’d like to do is mix 50/50 Nairobi Dusk and Sunset Drive.

I’m not sure how to conclude this blog post, other than maybe since there are so many colors I am, I think I can just pick the one I like best, or make one up, or just say “it depends”.

What color am I? I self-identify as Coral Peach Salmon.

Here are some thoughts I jotted down that aren’t quite sufficient for their own individual blog posts. If you’re the type of person who likes Twitter, pretend each of these is a tweet.

• I imagine that in the future, the phrase “in a crowded theater” won’t make sense to a lot of people.
• An “adverb” is a word that modifies a verb. Why isn’t a word that modifies a noun called an “adnoun”? The “jective” part of adjective makes no sense.
• To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher: being a Christian is like being a lady – if you have to tell someone you are, you aren’t.
• It’s a bad idea to give magazine subscriptions as gifts. Sure, it’s nice at first, but when renewal time comes around it never goes well.
• They should go ahead already and change the official name of Myanmar to Myanmar Formerly Burma. It’s always written as such in any articles these days anyway.

Fun fact: I remember writing a report back in elementary school on a country, and I chose Burma for some reason. Got most of my information out of the World Book Encyclopedia we had.

With a lack of commute and not having to manage any school activities or transportation these last 2 months, along with a 3-day weekend at Lake Huron, I’ve had time to read some books.

The difference this time is that I’m recommending against some of them. So be warned.

I’m going in order of when I read them.

First up: The Candymakers by Wendy Mass

This was a very good book. Good characters, a bit of intrigue, no violence, and maybe just a hint of romance. This book tells the same story multiple times from each of the characters’ perspectives.

It may sound tedious when I type it like that, but it is done well and does actually enhance the story.

Next up: Secret Keepers by Trenton Lee Stewart

This was a good book. Good characters, suspense, no violence, and no romance. Oh, and an interesting plot. Two thumbs up.

Next up: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Phillip K. Dick

This was not a good book. I won’t go so far as to say it’s a bad book, but for me it was meh – not worth spending time on it. I was looking forward to the book, and I had heard good things about the author, so I was disappointed that I never really felt into the story.

There were some parts that never made sense, and some parts (an affair) that I disagreed with, but other books have had those aspects and still managed to engage me.

Adventurers’ Guild by Zack Loran Clark and Nick Eliopulos

This was also not a good book. Well, that requires some clarification. The first book was a very good book, but it ends with a To Be Continued situation, which makes you want to read books 2 and 3 of the trilogy.

However, much like The Matrix, you are much better off stopping with the first one, and ignoring the final 2/3 of the series.

The first book was just about everything I’d want in an adventure/fantasy book for middle schoolers. An interesting world and a variety of characters and a mission, plus an appropriate amount of violence for the genre and no romance.

The second book wasn’t as good as the first book, although good except for one word. One simple word changed the book from “Yeah that’s a good book I’d let my kid read” to “Something fishy is happening”. That word was “romantically”.

That word not only introduce thoughts of romance into the story, but it was, shall we say, non-traditional romance.

Plus the violence in the book started getting a little more gory. Not bad, but another reason to give me pause.

That was when things started gently sloping downhill. But the third book was when that slope turned into a cliff.

One: the romance aspect became a major storyline. Bad because that takes away from the action but also bad because this storyline is promoting inappropriate relationships. Not just telling about it, but having the authority figure tell the youngsters in the story that this kind of love is good.
Two: the violence became more gory yet again. It could be a lot worse, but it was disappointing to see the degradation.

My recommendation: don’t read any of the books in the series.

Last up: Greenglass House by Kate Milford

This was a good book. A little less action than my usual material, but I guess this would be classified as a mystery so the added suspense makes up for it.

The story turns a little too fantastic (i.e. it moved out of the realm of believability) near the end, but I think that’s a personal preference thing. I suppose most mystery stories have to have some way of tying things up, and it was certainly a memorable way for the author to do so.

That’s all so far. But my son just came home from the library with what looks like the sequel to The Candymakers, so I may have a fall book review post too.

The “food pyramid” lesson of what to eat has been promoted by the US government for quite a while now. I think everyone in America must be familiar with it.

Here it is:

But kids these days might not be familiar with the food pyramid. According to the USDA (food pyramid history here), the MyPlate program replaced the MyPyramid program which replaced the Food Pyramid that we all knew and loved. To give you an idea of the age of some of these concepts, some of the orignal graphics that I got from the government website were in .BMP format.

Back to the topic at hand…

Why did they base it on an ancient Egyptian structure? Of course, if you’re going to pick a recognizable Egyptian structure, a pyramid is the obvious choice. But there are other options.

For example, they could have made a Food Obelisk:

Or, of course, a Food Sphinx:

But none of that makes sense with the MyPlate nonsense they’re pushing now. If you’re going to make a chart out of a circle, at least make it a pie chart. Especially since that is named after a food and would lend itself to some fun puns.

The Buick didn’t quite die, but I pre-emptively sold it to the junkyard. It was a better deal than donating it to charity – if you ever need to get rid of a car, I recommend Wheelzy. I didn’t know it was Wheelzy at first, because it was masquerading as something like Sell Junk Car Lansing dotcom. So many shell sites and phone numbers with any of these junk car places that pretend to be local. But they had the most thorough customer service – between emails and texts there was no way I could not know where I was in the process. But this is supposed to be about the car, not the junkyard.

It was a 2001 Buick Lesabre Custom. I bought it in 2016 with 110,000 miles. It needed a new battery and rear air shocks and front brake pads right away.

The air shocks ended up being bad again in 2020, so I am not a fan of air shocks. If I get a GM car from a similar era, I’ll convert the air shocks to traditional coils rather than fix the air shocks.

Here’s what else needed to go into/onto the Buick to keep it working:
Miles : Item
2016
111k : front engine mount
112k : fuel filter and fuel pressure regulator (cheap, DIY)
113k : fuel pump (not cheap, at shop, before this the engine wouldn’t start if it was warmed up)
116k : new transmission fluid and filter (cheap, DIY, actually made a noticeable difference)
2017
118k : left low beam bulb
120k : right front window regulator ($50, DIY, took a while for this first one)
121k : tie rods, ball joints, and sway bar links (if your wheels make a click when you stop, check your ball joints)
121k : lower intake manifold gasket and valve gasket (emergency repair at shop, $$$)
122k : front struts (dirt roads wear them out)
126k : new thermostat (it was late fall and the engine took forever to get up to temperature, meaning no heat for me)
2018
127k : right low beam bulb
127k : new spark plugs
128k : brake fluid flush (DIY, probably not too thorough but better than nothing)
129k : front rotors
132k : left front window regulator (DIY, about 30 minutes this time
133k : rear brake pads
2019
135k : replace brake tubes (was leaking fluid, all but LF tube were rusted through at some point)
136k : recharge AC
136k : replace alternator (DIY, this is ridiculously easy on this vehicle)
137k : replace one bad ignition coil
137k : replace Ignition Control Module ($40 from junkyard off Ebay, no programming needed)
137k : high beam bulbs (got pulled over and notified one high beam was out, decided to do both at once)
140k : whole new left headlight assembly (necessary because a little old lady misjudged her turning angle in a parking lot)
2020
145k : front brake pads
147k : new wipers
2021
150k : RIP

The steering started getting very loose, it turned out to be a broken rear track bar. But before I replaced that, the right front wheel liner fell off while I was driving. It was caught in something, so I didn’t lose it. When I went to reattach it, I saw the attachment point didn’t exist anymore – it had rusted away.

I had known the bottom of the car was getting rusty, so in the back of my mind I was already starting to weigh the worth of making repairs anymore. Then I couldn’t fix the wheel liner, and when I jacked up the back to look at the track bars something else shifted/broke in the suspension and I knew it was a lost cause.

The car was running fine, it had a lot of good parts. But the body was rusting away so the parts weren’t going to be held together much longer.