Turtle Thursday: JAWS! (2026)

The pocket shark rises...
 

...emerges from the pocket...

 
 

...to strike out at his prey!

 pics by Mrs Bax0jayz taken with an Olympus FE-230

Thursday, July 16, 2026

penultimate \ pi-NUHL-tuh-mit \ , adjective; 

1. next to the last: the penultimate scene of the play . 
2. of or pertaining to a penult. 

noun: 

1. a penult. 

Origin: Penultimate combines a variation on the Latin paene meaning "almost" with ultimus meaning "final." It entered English in the mid-1500s. 

poopular, adjective; 

• Popular on the outside, poopy on the inside.

Everyone likes Ben but he's a real asshole. I guess he's just poopular.

History

• Czar Nicholas II: ruler of Russia was executed, along with his family, by the Bolsheviks, a year after having abdicated (1918)

  
• parking meter: was first installed, in Oklahoma City (1935)
• Trinity test: US exploded the first trial atom bomb in the New Mexico desert, less than a month before bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945)
• Catcher in the Rye: J.D. Salinger's novel about adolescent antihero Holden Caulfield was published; it was controversial at the time but is now a staple of school curricula (1951)
• Apollo 11: the first manned flight to the moon took off from the Kennedy Space Center (1969)
• Saddam Hussein: became president of Iraq (1979)
• JFK, Jr.: died with wife Carolyn and her sister in a plane crash (1999)

Birthdays

• Sir Joshua Reynolds 1723
• Mary Baker Eddy 1821
• Ida Bell Wells 1862
• Roald Amundsen 1872
• Trygve Lie 1896
• Barbara Stanwyck 1907
• Orville Redenbacher 1907
  
• Ginger Rogers 1911
• Barnard Hughes 1915
• Bess Myerson 1924
• Nat Pierce 1925
• Cal Tjader 1925
• Joey Giardello 1930
• William Bell 1939
• Corin Redgrave 1939
• Tony Jackson (Searchers) 1940
• Desmond Dekker 1942
• Margaret Court 1942
• Jimmy Johnson (NFL) 1943
• Ruben Blades 1948
• Pinchas Zukerman 1948
• Stewart Copeland (Police) 1952
• Michael Flatley 1958
• Phoebe Cates 1963
• Will Ferrell 1967
• Barry Sanders 1968
• Ed Kowalczyk (Live) 1971
• Corey Scott Feldman 1971
• Rosa Salazar 1985 - Battle Angel Alita
  

 

  

 

  

Hasselhoff Wednesday: HOFFY BERFDAY!!!

74 this week!

Wednesday, July 15, 2026

hokum \ HOH-kuhm \ , noun; 

1. out-and-out nonsense; bunkum.
2. elements of low comedy introduced into a play, novel, etc., for the laughs they may bring. 
3. sentimental matter of an elementary or stereotyped kind introduced into a play or the like. 
4. false or irrelevant material introduced into a speech, essay, etc., in order to arouse interest, excitement, or amusement. 

Origin: Hokum emerged as theater slang in the US in the early 1900s and is thought to be a blend of hocus-pocus and bunkum. 

Helicopter Girlfriend

• A hovering, slightly neurotic, but well-meaning, girlfriend who gets way too involved in her partner's day to day activities to the point of interfering with their activities and choices.

She is a total helicopter girlfriend who always makes everyone else stop talking to announce her boyfriend is about to say something.

 

wog { /wäg/ (n.) offensive slang. 1925-30, from 'Golliwogg': a 19th century blackface doll; or alternately, an acronym of '(W)orthy (O)riental (G)entleman' } 

British English: 

1. *racist* a black African or dark-skinned South Asian (usually Indian or Pakistani)
2. *Anglocentric* a non-Briton or non-Englishman: "The wogs start at Calais" (across the English Channel in France) -- British proverb

Australian English: 

1. a non-Anglo-Celtic European, esp. from Southern or Eastern Europe (e.g. Greek, Italian, Balkan, Slavic, etc.)
2. an Asian, esp. a West Asian (e.g. Lebanese, Turkish, Armenian, Iranian, etc.), but now also inclusive of South Asians and Pacific Islanders

USAGE: Until 1973 Australia had a white-only immigration policy, so the term used mainly as a racial slur in Britain was applied to ethnic European immigrants of the post-WWII "populate or perish" era. By now it has greatly lost its sting, and many ethnic Australians have reclaimed it as a jocular term, with some cleverly riffing on it (e.g. 'clog wog' for a Dutchman, 'frog wog' for a Frenchman). Since the 70s, the wog label has been extended to include newer immigrants arriving from the Middle East and other parts of Asia, and many have come to identify strongly with it, facing resistance from more assimilated European wogs who harbor racist and anti-Muslim attitudes. The term is almost completely unknown in the United States and Canada, but in Britain it remains extremely offensive, somewhat akin to 'nigger'.

 

History

• margarine: Hippolyte Mège Mouriés got a patent for the butter substitute in France (1869)
• Reconstruction: Georgia became the last of the Confederate states to be readmitted to the Union after the American Civil War (1870)
• Second Battle of the Marne: World War I fight began; the Allies' victory halted the German advance toward Paris (1918)
• MSNBC: the 24-hour all-news network debuted on cable TV and the Internet (1996)
• the Mozilla Foundation: was founded to govern development of the open source Mozilla project; it's the creator of the Firefox browser and other web products (2003)

Birthdays

• Rembrandt Van Rijn 1606
• Clement Clarke Moore 1779
• William Winter 1836
• Dorothy Fields 1905
• Richard W. Armour 1906
• Cowboy Copas 1913
• Philip Carey 1925
• Non Clow Martin 1927
• Clive Cussler 1931
• Julian Bream 1933
• Alex Karras 1935
• Ken Kercheval 1935
• Patrick Wayne 1939
• Tommy Dee 1940
• Millie Jackson 1944
• Jan-Michael Vincent 1944
• Peter Lewis 1945 - Musician (Moby Grape)
• Linda Ronstadt 1946
• Peter Banks 1947 - Musician (YES)
• Trevor Horn 1949 - Musician (Buggles, YES)
• Jesse Ventura 1951
• Rick Kehoe 1951
• Terry O'Quinn 1952 - Actor ("Lost")
• Jeff Carlisi 1952 - Musician (.38 Special)
• David Pack 1953 - Musician (Ambrosia)
• Joe Satriani 1956 - Musician
• Marc Bell 1956 - Musician (The Ramones)
• Ian Curtis 1956 - Musician (Joy Division)
• Kim Alexis 1960
• William Aames 1960
  
• Forest Whitaker 1961
• Lolita Davidovich 1961
• Brigitte Nielsen 1963 - Actress
• Phillip Fisher 1967 - Musician (Fishbone)
• Stan Kirsch 1968
• Beth Ostrosky Stern 1972
• Scott Foley 1972
• Brian Austin Green 1973 (former Mr Megan Fox) 
• 
   
  
  
  

   

Review Tuesday: Bohemian Rhapsody 2018

  

 

Bohemian Rhapsody

2018 

The story of Freddy Mercury and the band Queen.

If you listen to rock music at all you have to like Queen. They were a very ve4rsatile band, playing all sorts of styles and types of music. The members were excellent in their roles. While I don't think I have any Queen records, I would never turn a Queen song off on the radio. With that established, when my BFF asked if I would be interested in watching BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY with her, I had to say sure!

 

I won't bother discussing the plot. It's a docudrama about the band QUEEN from the perspective of Freddie Mercury. That is the way it had to be because the flamboyant front-man is the member who captures the imagination of the fans. It starts from the beginning with Freddie joining up with the band and their journey up to Live Aid. The ups and downs.

 

It's extremely well made. Rami Malek nailed the role as Freddie. It's warm, it's sad, it inspires you, and it's pleasing. I enjoyed this movie. Two plus hours of this docudrama moved very quickly and time well-spent.   

 

   

  

Tuesday, July 14, 2026

meliorism \ MEEL-yuh-riz-uhm, MEE-lee-uh- \ , noun; 

• the doctrine that the world tends to become better or may be made better by human effort. 

Origin: Meliorism entered English in the late 1800s. It comes from the Latin word melior meaning "better."

 

Conversational Blue Balls 

• When someone brings up a topic when talking but immediately drops it and refuses to switch back to the dropped topic.

Conversational Blue Balls is when:

"Goodness, did you hear about what happened?" 
"What happened?" 
"Anyways, I'm gonna go." 
"Wait, what happened?" 
"Oh, don't worry about it."

 

Sexting

• The unauthorized, non-maritime use of sextants in our schools.

"My friend Katy said we were going to drive up to Mile Rise, because some older boys wanted to determine its exact position relative to the moon. I didn't want to tell my mom what we were doing, because she doesn't approve of sexting, so I told her I was staying over at Katy's house."

  

 

History

• Sedition Act: Congress passed a law prohibiting publishing false, scandalous or malicious writing against the US government (1798)
• the Matterhorn: the Swiss-Italian Alp was first scaled, by British mountaineer Edward Whymper (1865) 
• Billy the Kid: the 21-year-old outlaw was shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett in New Mexico (1881)
• Sacco and Vanzetti: the two infamous anarchists were convicted of murder and sentenced to death (1921)
• Mariner 4: spacecraft performed the first flyby of another planet and sent back the first pictures of the surface of Mars (1965)
• large denominations of US currency: were officially discontinued by the Federal Reserve System, leaving the $100 bill as the largest unit of circulating currency (1969)

Birthdays

• Andrea del Sarto 1486
• Emmeline Pankhurst 1858
• Florence Bascom 1862
• William Leefe Robinson 1895
• Ken Murray 1903
• Irving Stone 1903
• Gloria Stuart 1910
• William Hanna 1910
• Terry-Thomas 1911
• Woody Guthrie 1912
• Gerald Rudolph Ford (U.S.) 1913 

  
• Douglas Edwards 1917
• Ingmar Bergman 1918
• Arthur Laurents 1918 - Playwright ("West Side Story," "Gypsy")
• Frances Lear 1923
• Dale Robertson 1923
• Harry Dean Stanton 1926 - Actor
• John Chancellor 1927
• Nancy Olson 1928
• Polly Bergen 1930 - Actress, singer
• Del Reeves 1932
• Roosevelt "Rosey" Grier 1932 - Football player
• Karel Gott 1939
  Sid Haig 1939 - Actor
  
• Spencer Davis 1941
• Vincent Pastore 1946 - Actor ("The Sopranos")
• Chris Cross 1952
• Jerry Houser 1952
• Eric Laneuville 1952
• Jane Lynch 1960 - Actress ("Glee")
• Jackie Earle Haley 1961
• Darrelle Revis 1961 - Actor
• Matthew Fox 1966 - Actor ("Lost", "Party of Five")
• Tonya Donelly 1966 - Musician (Belly)
• Missy Gold 1970 - Actress
• Tameka Cottle 1975 - (Xscape)
• Taboo (Jaime Luis Gomez) 1975 - Rapper/singer (Black Eyed Peas)
• Scott Porter 1979 - Actor ("Friday Night Lights")