"Children are the rainbow of life; Grandchildren the Pot of Gold" -Irish Blessing

Bob Ellis reports that his Eleven year old grandson David, who is in the 5th grade made all A's on his report card!  His lowest grade all year was a 97!

Bob is rightly proud as can be of David!

As a matter if fact, reports of brilliant grandchildren have been flooding into the corporate offices here at the CHS54 complex for several years now...which leads me to a favorite theory of mine about this new generation.

The "WE" generation?

But first, no one knows what to call it, (the new generation) because it doesn't have a name yet.  I don't know who, or how, generations get their names, but Mary Meehan, writing in Forbes Magazine last year suggests the name "WE" Generation, because the kids now coming up are so digitally "connected" to each other...(social media, iPhones, etc...)

Meehan is not sure how the various generation's names finally "stick," but lists them in more or less their official order:

Matures

Matures. Born on or before 1945, Matures lived through (some of ) the Depression and WWII, events that marked all who lived through the 30s and 40 with an outlook of uncertainty.

Baby Boomers

Baby Boomers. Born between 1946 and 1964, the fifties post-war era of Baby Boomers’ youth was a time of massive growth and prosperity. As they grew up, especially in the 60s, this huge age cohort took part in a massive rebellion against all the rules and regulations their parents struggled hard for.

Gen Xers

Gen Xers were born between 1965 and 1977. There were fewer of them than there were Baby Boomers, and while living in the shadow of Boomers, it felt harder to know or understand them. Hence the name that caught on for this group has an X, signifying an unknown.

Millennials were born between 1978 and 1995, as a new millennium was dawning. The world flattened and globalization exploded.

Meehan writes that our youngest generation, those born after 1995, haven't lived long enough to have done anything that has defined them so far.  "However, a number of names have already been suggested:  Digitals, iGen, Selfies, Tweenials, Hashtagers, Homelanders, Evernets, Plurals, Globalists, and 20firsters."

Who knows what they will finally wind up being called.

Now, about that theory of mine:

Baby Boomers

I would never question the wisdom of Mother Nature; but I believe that during the hectic days of WW2 she was having to work so hard and fast, grinding out newborns that the quality of her work suffered a bit.  (Now, don't get me wrong, there were some great ones that came off the assembly line during those years, but there were more than usual factory rejects that slipped through.) I believe we can all agree to that.





Now (and this is my theory)...I'm convinced that Mama Earth is in the process of "making up" for
that oversight by turning out the smartest and finest batch of future Americans in our nation's history; which is exactly what it's going to take to save this country.

-Ed

Ate Up With Dumb

...whatever

 I had to search "Street Slang" to find an expression strong enough to express my anger over the stupidity of our Federal Government. And I think that one comes pretty close.

Linda and I filed our 1014 taxes today. We always like to do it early in case we have have a little bit of money coming back to us (we didn't) and to get all that paperwork the Hell out of the way.

I consider myself a pretty even person, but honestly, tax time is the one time of the year that for at least several days in March, I am certifiably  BAT GUANO CRAZY!

I'm working on my problem. For example I try to think positively by concentrating on of some of the GOOD things the government does with the money it takes from me.

For example:

$171,000 To Study How Monkeys Gamble

$856,000 To Film Mountain Lions Running On Treadmills

$378,000 Synchronized Swimming For Sea Monkeys

 

$50,000 For Swedish Massages For Bunnies

$325,000 For the National Science Foundation

to develop a robotic squirrel to observe how rattlesnakes react

$800,000 SPENT BY NIH 

Well finally, I thought I'd found something that would make me feel better about giving my money to Uncle Sam.  After all, we had (and are still having) that awful Ebola scare, and that takes money to fight. And I'm personally real anxious for the National Institutes of Health to find a cure for it, especially since those infected patients are being brought to the nearby Maryland NIH facility for treatment...

where my next door neighbor, the Doctor, works.

But SURPRISE, SURPRISE!

That particular $800,000 was not spent on Ebola.  Not even on looking for the common cold.

Noooooooo.......it was spent to make a video game about FOOD FIGHTS! 

Vegetable arguments between parents and their children!





SHAZAM!


 Back to the rubber room.

 -Ed

Bye Bye Miss American Pie...Again

Bye, bye Miss American Pie
Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry
And them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye
Singin' this'll be the day that I die
This'll be the day that I die

Don McLean wrote that song, and most people

believe it refers to the day Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper died in a plane crash near Clear Lake, IOWA in 1959.

Some think it refers to Elvis' untimely death.

Whatever, McLean has remained elusive about it, and said around 1971 or so soon after the record was released that he  will reveal the mystery in April of 2015. That's next month!

Whoop De Doo!

Talk about bad timing. Who cares now.

Marvin Gaye's Daughter and wife

Anyone who's been paying attention realizes that the music actually died last Wednesday, March 11, 2015 when a jury of 12 clueless (citizens who are too dumb to get out of jury duty) awarded the late Marvin Gaye's family 7 million dollars for recording a song that they concluded sounded like one of Marvin Gaye's hits.

Duh!

Almost ALL pop songs are related and sound similar to other pop songs. After all, there are only 8 notes in the scale and usually only 4 or 5 chords that are pleasing to Westerners ears, so songwriters are rather limited to beat, tempo and a few other "tricks." A good lawyer would have no trouble finding enough common notes and beats to convince a brain dead jury that plagiarism has been committed. 

Country music writers and musicians have never even bothered much with thinking up tricks. They just shuffle around a few words like, Mamma, Drunk, Jail, Honky Tonk, Wanna, Oh Ohhhhh, Baby,Yeah and Girl, and paste it over the same four chords.

The worst "borrowers" of others songs are (were) the classical composers. They thought nothing of outright thievery of melodies, especially folk songs. If you compare the final bars of 90 percent of those big, showy,  symphonies....you'll notice that they are so similar that they've become cliches....."Da DUM.....DUM...DUMM......DUMM,TA DUMMNNNNNNNNNNN!

But fortunately,  music composers of that day never made enough money to attract the attention of  lawyers.

If the Marvin Gaye verdict is allowed to stand...any musician, writer or performer, who ever writes another song is either insane or stoned out of his mind.

Not with that seven million dollar  judgement hanging over his head. 

Bye Bye again Miss American Pie

I mean it this time. The good old boys and I were drinking whiskey and rye and  I drove my Chevy off the levee.

Tell my baby not to wait for me at the honky tonk because the news today is heavy

The verdict is in, and seven mil it was so I can't write songs no more, even if I wanna...

For music, today was the final nail.

Record another song, and I'll go to jail.

Ohhhh Baby, Ohhhh girl, Ohhhhh Mamma... 

"Da DUM.....DUM...DUMM......DUMM,TA DUMMNNNNNNNNNNN!

Music and Lyrics by 

-Ed