RM3

More Random Meanderings (or Random Mutterings or Ruminating Madness or Roger's Minutae):

This is my blogger code: B1 d- t- k+ s-- u-- f+ i o x- e- l c--
For a translation, go here.
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Someone showed me what you can do with a Windows keyboard. (Besides throw it out the window.) When you press the Windows key (between Ctrl and Alt) and M, it minimizes all the windows you may have opened! Maybe you knew that already, but it's come in handy for me when I have eight windows open and I can't see what I'm doing anymore.
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I set up another blog to put articles I think are interesting, but that aren't mine. Here's the first post about oil running out, with commentary by my acerbic bud, Daniel W. Van Riper. When the U.S. first went into Iraq, there was a widespread fear that oil may have been a motive. Reading this reminded me of that discussion.
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When I take Lydia for a walk in her carriage, and dog walkers approach, they almost always say that the dog "is friendly" or "doesn't bite". Please allow me the privilege of being a little bit wary anyway.
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My friend Claudia writes: "Guess no more what the film of the summer is. LADIES IN LAVENDER with Dame Judith Dench and Maggie Smith was a visual feast of beautiful England, enchanting story, complete with the mastery of Joshua Bell. We just adored every moment of English country side, the crashing ocean, melding personal stories. In other words it is delicious and enjoy every moment of it." I haven't seen it, but she generally has very good taste.
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John Rodat has a Myth America columm about Buddhist monks and moving that I related to heavily, and you collector types may as well. If it ain't there anymore, it's here.
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I was on the bus home a couple weeks ago when I see a guy get on. He was very striking young man, very fair skin, head shaved, oddly shaped glasses. He was wearing a black T-shirt that read in white letters, "Day of Silence." I might have thought nothing more about this, except that he had pulled out a cell phone almost immediately after he had gotten on the bus. So, my eyes HAD to follow him to the back of the bus, where he sat, silently, playing some sort of electronic game.
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This is one of those a/v pieces that is funny and scary in equal measure. It appears that the Opus Sunday strip a couple weeks ago was inspired by this concept.
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I shaved my beard on July 4. People seeing me the next couple days often commented, "Oh, you look so much younger!" as though that would prompt me to shave more often. Not a chance. Razor is brutal tool to use on face. I did it once because I was hot. However, even when I'm done shaving, I have a 5 o'clock shadow of Nixonian proportions, and impenetrable stubble on the jaw line. Besides, I'm contrarian enough to wonder why it's so hot to look "younger". There's a mindset, epitomized by those inane Clyde Frazier/Keith Hernandez Just for Men hair coloring ads, that gray is bad. Gray is good; "gray matter" represents the brain, after all.