Saturday Overnight Open Thread (2/22/20)

The Class Reunion

A widower and a widow attend their 60th class reunion, and a spark is rekindled. They have a lovely evening as a long ago spark is rekindled.

At the end of the night the widower asks "Dear lady, will you marry me?"

"Yes, yes I will!" she says enthusiastically.

The next morning the widower wakes up troubled. He can't quite remember if she said "Yes!" or "NO!"

Confused, he decides to call her to confirm what happened and he asks "Last night, did you say yes or no to marrying me?"

She replies "Oh I said yes! And I am so glad you called because I couldn't remember who asked me!"

If you are a literal tree hugger. Be careful.

This Tree Is So Toxic, You Can't Even Stand Under It When It Rains
SIGNE DEAN21 FEB 2020
In 1999, radiologist Nicola Strickland went on a holiday to the Caribbean island of Tobago, a tropical paradise complete with idyllic, deserted beaches.

On her first morning there, she went foraging for shells and corals in the white sand, but the holiday quickly took a turn for the worse.

Great news for you beer drinking Morons.

A DAILY tipple nearly doubles a man’s hope of hitting 90, a study says.

Those on half a pint of beer a day are 81 per cent more likely than teetotallers to reach a tenth decade.

Women who drink similar amounts increase by a third their chance of reaching that landmark.

Even blokes who consumed three nips of whisky or two pints daily — double the recommended NHS maximum — are two-thirds more likely to live to that ripe age when compared to abstainers.

The world was saddened recently when Rush's drummer and lyricist, Neil Peart, passed away from brain cancer. What a fantastic and touching tribute. H/T Legally Sufficient

Now that's a boat!!! And quite the Skipper. H/T Hrothgar

Is he guilty of Valu-Rite lunch or Keto Diet?

A former American Airlines pilot says that a popular Keto diet is to blame for his “unfair” termination after he was unable to pass a breathalyzer test.

Andre Riley maintains his innocence, claiming that he “wasn’t drinking” but that a change in diet was responsible for the allegedly false negative. He had been with the airline since 2012 and was fired last year after the test was administered following a Las Vegas-to-Charlotte flight.

“I don’t want to be punished and take consequences for something that I didn’t do. That’s like admitting to a crime or going to jail even though I didn’t do it,” he said in an interview with Fox 13.

He is fighting the Department of Transportation and American Airlines, demanding his job back, but it may take a whole lot of time and effort.

“Once they forward it to the Department of Transportation you’re basically banned from being a flight attendant,” he said.

I guess I wish I would have seen this article before my daughter was married this summer. The importance of dancing like an idiot.

One of the strangest but also most intriguing and redemptive things that humans get up to, in almost any culture one cares to study, is occasionally to gather in large groups, bathe in the rhythmic sounds of drums and flutes, organs and guitars, chants and cries, and move their arms and legs about in complicated and frenzied ways, losing themselves in the bewilderment of a dance. Dancing has a claim to be considered among the most essential and salutary activities we ever partake in. Not for nothing did Nietzsche, a painfully inhibited figure in day to day life, declare ‘I would believe only in a God who could dance’ (a comment that stands beside his equally apodictic pronouncement: ‘Without music, life would be a mistake.’)

But dancing is at the same time an activity that many of us, arguably those of us who might most need to do it, are powerfully inclined to resist and deep down to fear. We stand on the side of the dance floor appalled at the possibility of being called to join in, we attempt to make our excuses the moment the music begins, we take pains that no one will ever, ever see our hips unite with a beat.

MATERIAL WORLD - Why the Restoration Hardware Catalog Won’t Die - The surprising persistence of the mail-order business

When you enter the RH (formerly Restoration Hardware) megastore in New York City’s Meatpacking District, you might think it’s a place to buy furniture. Technically it is, with tens of thousands of square feet filled with dining-room sets and king-size beds and couches, upholstered in shades of gray and beige and beiger, and accessorized with plush rugs and metal-armed lamps. Or maybe you’ll mistake it for a hotel lobby, with its high ceilings, ample seating, and smiling concierge.

When you enter the RH (formerly Restoration Hardware) megastore in New York City’s Meatpacking District, you might think it’s a place to buy furniture. Technically it is, with tens of thousands of square feet filled with dining-room sets and king-size beds and couches, upholstered in shades of gray and beige and beiger, and accessorized with plush rugs and metal-armed lamps. Or maybe you’ll mistake it for a hotel lobby, with its high ceilings, ample seating, and smiling concierge.

But on either side of the store’s broad central path, you’ll see its true spiritual, if not practical, purpose: as a temple to the high-end furniture chain’s infamous “source books.” On twin circular tables large enough for an extended family’s Thanksgiving dinner (yours for $7,995 each), eight different editions sit in neat stacks and offer inspiration tailored to ski chalets, beach getaways, or nurseries for rich babies, depending on the tome. Bathed in golden light from enormous $12,000 chandeliers, the gods of direct-mail marketing beckon enticingly from their “carbonized split bamboo” altars.

The biggest of RH’s 2019 catalogs was 730 glossy pages—from a few feet away, you might think it’s the September issue of Vogue. The company would not reveal how much it spends on the lavish compendiums, but in 2012, an industry expert estimated that they would require a multimillion-dollar budget, with each individual book costing as much as $3 to print and ship—a figure that doesn’t include the tab for photography or page design. RH’s catalogs, and its price points, were similar to Pottery Barn’s and Crate & Barrel’s until the late aughts, when the source books and opulently appointed stores began to be introduced. Both are part of what longtime Chairman and CEO Gary Friedman has described as a strategy to project abundance and turn the heads of wealthy customers; apparently, it’s worked. In 2001, the company was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. While there have been bumps along the way, RH’s sales since then have increased dramatically, and in December its stock price hit an all-time high.

Do you like to sing along to music? Don't always know the lyrics? Spotify is about to change that.

Spotify is finally giving you the tools to sing along without embarrassing yourself — or mumbling while you pretend you know the lyrics.

The streaming service is in the process of rolling out a new feature that displays the lyrics of a song as it plays, sort of like karaoke but without the drowned out vocals. There’s one catch, though: it appears that so far the functionality is only available to a limited number of users, according to AndroidPolice.

Midwesterners.................

On this day: 22 Feb 1989
A category for Heavy Metal was included at the Grammy Awards for the first time. Metallica performed on stage, but the award went to Jethro Tull. Many audience members booed. Meanwhile, Bobby McFerrin won Record Of The Year and Song Of The Year for 'Don't Worry, Be Happy', Tracy Chapman is named Best New Artist and Tina Turner won Best Female Rock Vocal Performance for 'Tina Live in Europe'. via thisdayinmusic.com

On this day: 22 Feb 2016
American country music singer and songwriter Sonny James, best known for his 1957 hit, 'Young Love' died in Nashville, Tennessee, at the age of 87. Dubbed the Southern Gentleman, James had 72 country and pop chart hits from 1953 to 1983, including 23 No.1 Country hits. via thisdayincountry

If he thought he was sober I would hate to see him when he's drunk. Our celebrating Genius Award Winner.

FEBRUARY 21--An Arizona man arrested for allegedly stealing a motorcycle from a Kawasaki dealership told police he was “celebrating 4 months of sobriety and decided he wanted” a chopper, according to court records.

Investigators say that Jackson Hanley, 29, was actually intoxicated when he walked into a Mesa dealership earlier this month and “grabbed a Kawasaki motorcycle and began pushing it down the street.”

Hanley, who rode his bicycle to Kelly’s Kawasaki, had his theft bid thwarted when a customer alerted an employee that a crime was in progress. Police were then summoned and Hanley was located about a mile away. “The defendant,” a cop noted, was found “resting on a fence with the bike slightly tipped over but still upright.”

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posted by Misanthropic Humanitarian at 10:00 PM

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