Happy Berfday FR!!!

Today my little Blue Ford turns TWENTY-ONE years old. The car is clocking in at around 179,000 miles and still runs like a champ.

HAPPY BERFDAY,

LITTLE BLUE CAR!!!

Friday, July 17, 2026

***717***

braggart \ BRAG-ert \ , noun;

• a person who does a lot of bragging. 

adjective:

• bragging; boastful. 

Origin: Braggart entered English in the 1500s. It finds its roots in the French term braguer meaning "to brag."

Bachelor Wash 

• A quick soap-free rinse of a plate, cup, or utensil which had recently been used. This is most useful for low-oil, water based, or dry foods. Wiping with a paper towel will usually remove residual food particles missed by the bachelor wash.

1. Since we were out of coffee cups, I bachelor washed the ones from breakfast and filled them up.

2. After a quick bachelor wash, the drinking glass went back in the cupboard.

3. I didn't want my date to think I was a pig, so I bachelor washed the dishes and tossed them in the cupboard.

History

• Spanish-American War: ended when Spanish troops surrendered to US in Santiago, Cuba (1898)
• House of Windsor: in the wake of anti-German sentiment, British royal family changed its name from Saxe-Coburg Gotha (1917)
• Potsdam Conference: world leaders Truman, Stalin and Churchill begin the final Allied summit of WWII (1945)
• Apollo-Soyuz Test Project: for the first time, an Apollo spaceship docked with a Soyuz spacecraft in orbit; it marked the warming US-USSR relationship (1975)
• Woolworths: the last of the company's five-and-dime stores closed; over 9,000 employees went jobless (1997)

Birthdays

• John Astor 1762
• Luis Munoz-Rivera 1859

  
  
• Erle Stanley Gardner 1889
• Berenice Abbott 1898
• James Cagney 1899
• Christina E. Stead 1902
• William Gargan 1905
• Art Linkletter 1912
• Eleanor Steber 1916
• Lou Boudreau 1917
• Phyllis Diller 1917 - Comedian
• Gordon Gould 1920
• Niccolo Castiglioni 1932
• Mimi Hines 1933
• Pat McCormick 1934
• Donald Sutherland 1934 - Actor
• Diahann Carroll 1935 - Actress, singer
• Peter Schickele 1935 - Musician (P. D. Q. Bach)
• Spencer Davis 1939 - Musician, singer (Spencer Davis Group)
• Connie Hawkins 1942 - Basketball player
• Camilla 1947 - Duchess of Cornwall, wife of Britain's Prince Charles
• Cathy Ferguson 1948
• Mick Tucker 1949 - Musician (Sweet)
• Terence 'Geezer' Butler 1949 - Musician (Black Sabbath)
• Mike Vale 1949 - Musician (Tommy James and the Shondells)
• Lucie Arnaz 1951 - Actress
• Phoebe Snow 1952 - Singer

  
• David Hasselhoff 1952 Actor ("Knight Rider," "Baywatch"), singer, actor, living legend 
• Angela Merkel 1954 - German Chancellor
• Bryan Trottier 1956 - Hockey player
• Nancy Giles 1960
• Regina Belle 1963
• Alex Winter 1965
• Guru (Keith Elam) 1966 - Rapper (Gang Starr)
• Stockley (David "Stokley" Williams) 1967 - Singer (Mint Condition)
• JC (Jarret Cordes, J.C. the Eternal) 1971 - (PM Dawn)
• Kitten Jones 1982

  

 

  

  

 

  

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) 
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