Party On, Garth

A few random thoughts for starters… First (and second, and third…): I watched about an hour of the Terrible Triumvirate’s gab-fest in South Carolina last evening. It was pretty much more of the same, as I expected. The “debate” was on CNN, moderated by Wolf Blitzer, another one of those pundits/anchor people I love to hate actively-dislike. Just this on Blitzer: he sucks as a moderator, as in little-to-no control over the participants.

The situation got out of hand early, with Clinton and Obama cherry-picking negative items from each other’s voting records, past quotes, resumés, yadda, yadda, yadda, and beating the snot out of each other. Interesting, if you like that sort of thing. I don’t, and Obama got what few points were available (from me) last evening when he said “American voters aren’t interested in political sniping” or some such. The Breck Girl was feeling pretty left-out and let the audience know that, to moderate applause. Silky Pony got real old, real fast, proclaiming “eliminating poverty is my life’s mission” with every other breath. Somehow, the spectacle of a multi-millionaire tort lawyer proclaiming he’s on a crusade to eliminate poverty sticks in my craw. But his supporters eat it up, which says a lot about them, eh?

But. (heh) The biggest (heh, yet again) take-away from last night?

Hillary has a BIG ass. BIG.

That’s not a comment about Hillary the candidate, Hillary the Democrat, or Hillary the Anything Else. It’s just an observation. It’s been widely reported (although I can’t find a link) the Clinton campaign has put reporters on notice there are certain “prohibited camera angles” when it comes to photographing Hillary. CNN didn’t get the message, though, because there were several…many, actually…shots of the candidates from behind. Last night was the first time I’ve seen that camera angle, by the way, so I’m inclined to believe the “don’t shoot her from behind” stuff. To say Hill is “broad in the beam” is an understatement of massive proportions (ed: OK, enough, already.)…

Last: Watching the Terrible Trio’s repeated genuflections to MLK’s memory last evening (the debate was co-sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus) made me think of the Law of Unintended Consequences. It’s an unfortunate yet true fact that MLK’s memory these days serves primarily to warn out-of-towners which neighborhoods to avoid when visiting a strange city. As a matter of fact, I’ve never seen an MLK boulevard, avenue, or street in any American city I’d walk alone after nine o’clock in the evening. There ain’t no McMansions on said streets.

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The market is not doing all that bad this morning—much better, actually, than I thought it would. The Fed’s Emergency rate cut seems to be holding off the blood-bath. For the moment. The Dow is down about 140 points as I tap this out, with a couple of hours left in the trading day. As it’s said: “It could have been worse.” A lot worse, judging from the European and Asian markets’ performances these last two days.

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It’s been nearly six months since I put that NeoWORX widget in my side-bar…I’m talking about that “Are We Global Yet?” thingie that shows the number of visits one gets from all the different and various countries. It’s my favorite widget. It took about four months to break the 100-country mark, and the counter held at 95 countries for the looongest time, but we’re up to 110 countries at the moment. Being as how I’m fascinated with geography, the ‘net, and technology in general, I find it simply amazing that someone… anyone… from Djibouti, Estonia, Korea, or Romania would read my scribblings. But, to be real about it, they’re probably only looking for pissing stories. As I’m fond of saying: “Imagine the disappointment…”

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Interesting…

Some 3 billion fortune cookies are made each year, almost all in the United States. But the crisp cookies wrapped around enigmatic sayings have spread around the world. They are served in Chinese restaurants in Britain, Mexico, Italy, France and elsewhere. In India, they taste more like butter cookies. A surprisingly high number of winning tickets in Brazil's national lottery in 2004 were traced to lucky numbers from fortune cookies distributed by a Chinese restaurant chain called Chinatown.

But there is one place where fortune cookies are conspicuously absent: China.

Now a researcher in Japan believes she can explain the disconnect, which has long perplexed American tourists in China. Fortune cookies, Yasuko Nakamachi says, are almost certainly originally from Japan.

Everything you could conceivably want to know about fortune cookies… and then some. I used to save my favorite fortunes and tuck ‘em away inside my wallet. I was gonna quote you some of my faves, but I apparently went through my wallet and threw ‘em out sometime in the past. Probably around the time the fortunes proved demonstrably false, say 1998.

But, Hey! The article is interesting, and I still read my fortune(s). I just don't save 'em any longer.

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Today’s (From the Archives) Pic: The Second Mrs. Pennington will probably put out a contract on me for this, but…

That’s the lady as Rotary High School Exchange Student in Tokyo, circa 1972 or perhaps ‘73. She was a senior at the time and the fact she was required to wear a uniform really grated on her. And don’t she look oh-so-innocent? Heh. You should hear some of her stories about her and Best Bud Junko’s sub rosa exploits in Harajuku, Shinjuku, and other such points in Tokyo. As I said: heh. The girl knew how to party.

(Terrible Trio photo credit: AP)