Now Nigerian Prince Peddles Puppies?

Puppies make even scam letters more charming:

From: Bill <noreply@agssl.co.in>
To:

Hello,

My name is Bill Wood, I am a Doctor and work for different prominent hospital, I came across your email address through an email surfing Affiliated with the US chamber of Commerce and My late Grandma was a puppy breeder, She died about 4 months ago and she left 1 Female English Bulldog,1  Male Chihuahua,1 Maltese and 1 Female Yorkshire Terrier before she pass a way one of the Female puppy recently had a litter 3 puppies, They are so adorable,Due to my job as a Oncologist will not allow me to take good care of these babies. I would have love to take care of them myself but due to the nature of my job i do hardly have time for my self, So i want to find them caring & loving parent who will take good care of them and willing to adopt,if you interested in having one of them Please contact me as soon as possible and be specified with the puppy you want English Bulldog, Maltese,Chihuahua and Yorkshire Terrier) and I will email you with the full details on how to go about adopting them.

Looking forward to your prompt e-mail

Bill 

 (This showed up in my office email on Saturday.)

Late July Tweets to be collected here

 I did reinstall X on my cellphone a few months back, then read and wrote some tweets. The place is definitely less fun.
After Musk pledged $45 millions to Trump, I pulled X off the cellphone again. And I added "Not Tesla" to my todo list entry of getting a battery backup for the house.

So today:

2024-07-23: thinking of designing stationary that says

on the envelope (or at the top):

Just a Letter! Not a birthday card! Not a thank you note! Not a bill! Not a check! (sorry).

and somewhere in the margin of the writing space: 

Let's be retro: I've got a new pen!

[which led to:]

2024-07-23: I miss aerograms.

My Book of Poems, by Rachel

"My Book of Poems" is a poem by the poet Rachel. I remembered learning it decades ago in Hebrew College's Prozdor. The Israeli teacher copied it out for us.

From סֵפֶר שִׁירַי / רחל בלובשטיין - פרויקט בן־יהודה (benyehuda.org)

סֵפֶר שִׁירַי

רחל בלובשטיין

צְרִיחוֹת שֶׁצָּרַחְתִּי נוֹאֶשֶׁת, כּוֹאֶבֶת

בִּשְׁעוֹת מְצוּקָה וְאָבְדָן,

הָיוּ לְמַחֲרֹזֶת מִלִּים מְלַבֶּבֶת,

לְסֵפֶר שִׁירַי הַלָּבָן.

נִגְלוּ חֶבְיוֹנוֹת לֹא גִלִּיתִי לְרֵעַ,

נֶחְשַׂף הֶחָתוּם בִּי בְּאֵשׁ,

וְאֶת תּוּגָתוֹ שֶׁל הַלֵּב הַכּוֹרֵעַ

יַד כֹּל בִּמְנוּחָה תְּמַשֵּׁשׁ.

We learned the Hebrew verb תְּמַשֵּׁשׁ as in

 יַד כֹּל בִּמְנוּחָה תְּמַשֵּׁשׁ

I don't think there's a single English word for that. It means that thing you do when you're testing fabric between your thumb and index finger.

So here is my rough translation of the poem.

My book of Poems

Screams that I screamed of pain and despair
In hours of sorrow and loss,
Became phrases to warm the heart
In my book of poems bleached white.

I revealed what I'd never told to a friend,
My heart's secret yearnings, buried, sealed with flame,
It's all now cloth for casual shoppers
To twist between their fingers.

-- Rachel Bluwstein, 1890-1931

À chacun ses goats

Whatever floats your goats

Whatever suits your boots

Whatever weights your plates

Whatever plants your pants

Whatever lands your plans.

Buddy Films

If Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were made today, fans would insist on a love scene between them.

OK, a love scene between Robert Redford and Paul Newman would not be anything I'd object to. (Had it actually taken place. Please don't AI it, that would be icky.)

My point is, we enjoy watching buddy films whether or not the buddies are lovers.

Tumblr fans insisted that the Good Omens Angel and Demon be romantically in love, instead of grudgingly good buddies after Millenia of being thrown together. Angels don't have sex. My Renaissance Art History professor taught us that. Angels are too beautiful to be gendered. There's nothing under their robes. 

A storyline doesn't need an erotic connection for a buddy to risk his life or venture into Hell to save his friend. Buddies stay together for years through the ups and downs of each other's love affairs.

Buddies banter. Buddies have fun. 

Don't delete them.

Flag Day

Growing up, we always put out the flag for U.S. holidays, so long as it wasn't raining. (Flag etiquette is against leaving a flag in the rain. [Especially when your flag is cotton and its flagpole wood.])

I've continued that custom, with the same U.S. flag from my childhood.

Flag day is special, because it is only about the flag. Nothing else. 

Elegant in its simplicity.

trying to remember 'croutons'

 but my brain keeps presenting 'coupons'

may doggerel

Roses are rose-colored.

Zebras are violet.

These verses won't rhyme -

No, I won't even try it.

YIL

Yesterday I learned that all cars have a built-in alarm to let your neighbors know when you have sat on your keys.

Passover Thoughts, Thursday Afternoon

Beer.

Pizza.

Dunkin' Donuts.

20 years, done & dusted

Does anyone throw a party to celebrate the end of term for a Term Life Insurance Policy? 

Or do we just say, "Congratulations on losing the bet you are most happy to have lost."

I think at least a cake, or a pie, or perhaps a healthy celebratory hike.

Twenty years went by, and I didn't die.

Raise your glass to the sky for the guy who didn't die!

talkin' 'bout my generation

When the William Tell Overture comes on the radio, it must be blasted, especially if there are others in the house who are sleeping too late.

In my brain, the Beatles are the original rock group.

When I was a small child I thought I'd be taking casual trips to the moon when I grew up.

I knew what a googol was long before there was a Google. (Mrs Bloom taught us in elementary school.)

The word "ansible" makes makes me think first of Ursula K LeGuin, and possibly of 'tesseract'. After that I think of ansible software, which must be very cool to be deserving of such a name.

My fear of nuclear catastrophe was replaced by fear of catastrophic global-warming. There may have been a bit of a break in between.

Washington National Airport already had a President's name; why add Reagan's?

When we studied U.S. History in school, we were taught to admire politicians who made compromises.

I used to think Apple was on our side.

I use my index fingers to text.

Software Testing Paradigm Shift!

In today's email:

Software Testing from the End User Perspective – A Paradigm Shift."

What will you learn?

• Redefining Quality: Explore the multifaceted concept beyond traditional metrics.
• End User Adoption: Understand the crucial link between testing success and user satisfaction.
• New Testing Approaches: Learn how a paradigm shift can enhance user experiences.

My thoughts:

• Redefining Quality: Explore the multifaceted concept beyond traditional metrics.   <== how about: "It's good enough." 
• End User Adoption: Understand the crucial link between testing success and user satisfaction. <== If the thing breaks, the user is not happy. 
• New Testing Approaches: Learn how a paradigm shift can enhance user experiences. <== Paradigm shifts enhance everyone's experiences!! 

  Should this have gone on my Tech blog?

Love

The thing about love is: they don't have to do anything. They just have to be.

Of course, you want them to do, lots of stuff. Yet love is not conditional, never conditional. 

That's love.

2023 November

November 1st: The problem is that it's hard to hear Billie Holiday without thinking of David Sedaris.

======================================

November 2nd: crochet scraps

• Yoko Ono blindfolded? as she crochets in a video of John Lennon & Plastic Ono Band performing Instant Karma

• This morning, my spouse sang to me "Voulez vous crochet avec moi, ce soir" and it ran through my head for too long, along with a next verse saying, "If so, there's a group that meets at the library first Monday of the month at 6pm"

======================================

November 14th:  Yes. I can recognize the sound of the Mail Delivery truck when it goes up the street, stops at our mailbox, then shifts to drive up to the next mailbox.

Rural points for this? Work-from-home points for this? Sad lonely creature points?

======================================

from Sourcery by Terry Pratchett:

              EVIL WIZARD

     They shall have their chance,
     when hell freezes over.

              DEATH

     No. I am not allowed to 
     enlighten you, even by 
     default, as to the current
     temperatures in the next
     world.

======================================

November 15th: Smoker's cough without the benefit? pleasure? of smoking first.

=======================================

"Let there be light" is two words in Hebrew.

=======================================

November 30th: Facebook? I don't care to open a website to see a jumbled mess--I got that in my house already. 

=======================================

Buying lottery tickets, not in hopes of winning, but as a personal declaration of unhappiness.

=======================================

2023-10-24 OK I broke down and bought a burr grinder

It was on sale.

I couldn't get the Aeropress to impress me. So maybe a burr grinder would elevate my coffee experience. Everyone said it made a big big difference.

I had good Peet's coffee, though it was dark roast, which used to be my favorite but the coffee experts pshaw at dark roast.

I did use a lower temperature for the dark roast, like the coffee experts said to do.

25 October: First day with 1zepresso J Manual Grinder.

I tried using the Aeropress spoon to measure beans but then I added more than would fit in spoon,

Grinding took a long time. Coffee came out too fine. The hot water wouldn't go through filter, even after poured the unhappy mixture into my regular filter that fits over a measuring cup. (OK, it's a standard paper filter that would fit a Mister Coffee, and that fits on top of a frozen-soup container into which I punched many holes long long ago. It did make decent drip coffee.)

I looked at 1zeropress website again. The first step is to find zero. I think I found zero, then moved the grind adjuster 42 clicks at least.

I'll see how it goes next time: but use fewer beans in Aeropress spoon.

On last small small container* of coffee too.

No I'm not going to buy a scale. Not yet. Maybe the one we have will work. It needs a battery.

*(To keep coffee from going bad in the long time it takes me to use it up, I have started to portion the contents of each newly purchased bag into a number of small plastic containers, which I put in the freezer. That way, I'm not opening the same container of frozen coffee numerous times.)

October 2023: foraging in the oranges

 Mason Pearson pocket brushes: 

• $120 - nylon-boar mix
• $140 - all boar

which is better to brush my hair?

2023-09-21: Ogden Nash's missing watch

an Ogden Nash poem I couldn't find on the Internet - not Bing, not Google, not Quack

goes something like:

my shiny new watch 

goes tickety ticket

whenever?/after? I wind it

it sounds like a cricket

...

da da da da da

da da da da da da

...

'til shaken by baby

then pretty watch stops.

The poem was in a book in the bookcase when I was growing up.

2023-09-20: From "Birches" by Bill Morrissey

She thought of heat.

She thought of time.

She called it an even trade.

 

reaching out with genuine enthusiasm

cleaning out inbox, smiling at spam:

Hello,

I trust this message finds you in good health and high spirits. I am reaching out with genuine enthusiasm, recognizing the potential for meaningful collaboration that can emerge from the convergence of our diverse areas of expertise.

 It's fascinating how our diverse fields of expertise can intersect and create opportunities for mutual growth. As a reputable sales representative specializing in both crude and refined Petroleum Products, I've come to appreciate the significance of a robust network in attracting buyers. I'm reaching out to connect with professionals in the oil and gas markets, in hopes of exploring potential collaborations in marketing refined petroleum products. Let's come together for a prosperous future!

In my role as a seasoned sales representative, specializing in both crude and refined Petroleum Products, I have had the privilege of representing major refineries with substantial inventories in the Rotterdam, Belgium, and Europe region. These inventories encompass high-demand commodities like Aviation Fuel, Diesels En590, and crude oil, all readily available for Spot Deals.

 I am more than willing to engage in discussions to address any inquiries or ideas you may have.

Thank you for dedicating your time to this matter, and I eagerly anticipate the prospect of a mutually beneficial collaboration.

Best Regards,

ADS Trading BV
Mr. Cornelis | Sales Director