Coffee Klatch

Here’s another cool map-related program I “stumbled upon.” It’s called Visited States and it’s basically a program that allows you to “paint” a map, marking the states that you check. There’s also a Visited Countries, which does the same thing for countries. While it’s aimed at marking the states or countries you’ve visited, you could use it for marking them for any other reason (like elections).

Here’s my Visited States map:

create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

Yes, the developers also have some cool Google Hacks, like doing the translation thing from English to German to French and back to English to see the results (the chorus of “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” becomes “listen announce angels sing. Re-elected with the new-born king”) or Google Talk, where you enter 3 or 4 words and Google attempts to finish your sentence. Or Visual Poetry, which takes your words and does Google Image Searches on them to show you a picture of your words, so to speak. Very interesting. Try some of these hacks out. They’re cool!

Current music: Christmas in the King’s Court (Celtic Harp & Pan Flute)

One of the big headlines in the newspapers and tv/radio news reports this morning is that Marsh Supermarkets has hired Merrill Lynch to look for potential buyers. It appears that Marsh had a $3-4 million loss just during the second quarter this year, and they’re looking to sell.

It’s rather sad, because Marsh Supermarkets have been a visible presence throughout Indiana and much of Ohio for many years. Plus, they give a lot to charities (over $1 million/year just in Indianapolis). They also own the Village Pantry convenience stores.

It will be interesting to see what happens down the road. I’ve heard that the probable situation is an out-of-state company buying them and reducing prices. I wonder if that meant costs…. Marsh was never that expensive of a grocery store. And I anticipate that the charitable giving will go down as well.

And that’s the news….

Okay, how cool is THIS? http://www.patmedia.net/marklevinson/cool/cool_illusion.html

What an awesome illusion! Read the description at the top, so you know what to look for.

You may have seen some of these before, since they come from a variety of sources, but, anyway, here you go. Food for thought.

You cannot make someone love you. All you can do is stalk them and hope they panic and give in.

No matter how hard you try, you can’t baptize cats.

When your Mom is mad at your Dad, don’t let her brush your hair.

If your sister hits you, don’t hit her back. They always catch the second person.

Never ask your 3 year old brother to hold a tomato.

You can’t trust dogs to watch your food.

Don’t sneeze when someone is cutting your hair.

Never hold a Dust Buster and a cat at the same time.

You can’t hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk.

Don’t wear polka dot underwear under white shorts.

The best place to be when you’re sad is Grandma’s lap.

It takes years to build up trust, and it only takes suspicion, not proof, to destroy it.

You shouldn’t compare yourself to others - they are more screwed up than you think.

You can keep puking long after you think you’re finished.

We are responsible for what we do, unless we are celebrities.

Regardless of how hot and steamy a relationship is at first, the passion fades, and there had better be a lot of money to take its place.

No matter how you try to protect your children, they will eventually get arrested and end up in the local paper.

The people you care most about in life are taken from you too soon and all the less important ones just never go away.

Never, under ANY circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.

If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved (and never will achieve) its full potential, that word would be “meetings”.

There is a very fine line between “hobby” and “mental illness.”

You should not confuse your career/job with your life.

No matter what happens, somebody will find a way to take it too seriously.

When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.

Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.

Never lick a steak knife.

Take out the fortune before you eat the cookie.

The most powerful force in the universe is gossip.

You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.

The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above average drivers.

The main accomplishment of almost all organized protests is to annoy people who are not in them.

A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.

So, what beer would you say has the most famous commercials? Which of these quotes seems the most familiar to you?

• It’s Miller time!
• From the Land of Sky-Blue Waters
• Tastes great, less filling
• So tonight, tonight, let it be Lowenbrau
• Give me a light… Bud light!
• The beer that made Milwaukee famous
• Everything you always wanted in a beer… and less.
• Foster’s: Australian for beer
• It doesn’t get any better than this.
• The King of Beers

Want to take a quiz (only 10 questions) to test your beer slogan knowledge? Visit the Beer Slogans quiz at Bella Online.

And here’s a good Database of Beer Slogans.

So anyway, what beer commericials do you even remember? That’s a good sign of which are the most famous. I’d have to say that, in all deference to the others, Budweiser has the most classic and most memorable commericials. Let’s see… we’ve had the Frogs (Bud-Weis-Er), the lizards who reacted to the frogs, the Wazzup series (”True”), Cedric The Entertainer doing his dance thing (and sometimes spraying beer all over his date because of his dance), Leon the egocentric football player, the donkey who wanted to be a Clydesdale, and of course the classic Clydesdales! They’ve played football, thrown snowballs, and done all kinds of crazy things in the name of Budweiser. Plus, you KNOW it’s getting to be close to Christmas when you start seeing the Clydesdales pulling the sleigh through a winter town, with the Christmas lights all lit and the classic Choral Arrangement of “When you say Bud, you’ve said it all” playing in the background! I heard that commercial from the kitchen this weekend and knew that the Clydesdales were back and it was officially Christmastime. (Isn’t it odd how the best Christmas commercials are all for beers?)

BeerHistory.com offers us Beer Commercials: A History, which provides a nice history of tv commercials for beers.

And if you want to see a GIGANTIC list of Beer Commercials (with downloads), visit http://home.tiscali.nl/beercollection/movies.htm

Budweiser’s own commercials can be found here: http://www.budweiser.com/wholesale/

Current music: Impressions of the Season, by The Raleigh Ringers

Although it was found two years ago, the Soleto Map has just been proven genuine, and so its finders have gone public. They claim to have found the oldest map in the Western World. It is about the size of a postage stamp, dates from about 500 B.C. and shows the heel of Italy’s “boot.” There are 13 towns on the map, most of which still exist today. While scholars have been aware via literature that the ancient Greeks made maps, this is the first physical evidence of such a map, predating the Romans.

You can read more about this find at the Discovery Channel’s News site.

Current music: Windham Hill Chill: Ambient Acoustic

Actor Pat Morita died yesterday at the age of 73 of natural causes. Born in San Francisco in 1932, he spent much of his early years in the hospital with spinal tuberculosis or in a Japanese-American concentration camp in Arizona during World War 2. He didn’t get into show business full time until he was 30 years old.

His most famous roles are Mr. Miyagi in the Karate Kid (all four of them) and Arnold on Happy Days. But he actually had over 100 roles in tv and film! Given the generation he was a part of while breaking into show business, many of his roles could be considered belittling or demeaning (such as “Oriental #2″ in Thoroughly Modern Millie, “The House Boy” in Colombo: Etude in Black, “The Chink” in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, and even his “Arnold” role in Happy Days).

He also seemed to get many roles as martial arts instructors or experts of various kinds. Rarely was he just a “normal guy.” I guess that’s because his earlier work pegged him as a “Karate Guy” and that stuck with him. Some of his 100 other tv and movie titles (between 1967 and 2005) include: Mulan (voice of the Emperor), Desert Heat, Bloodsport 2 and 3, Reggie’s Prayer, Spy Hard, American Ninja V, Honeymoon in Vegas, Hiroshima: Out of the Ashes, Ohara, Babes in Toyland, Alice in Wonderland, Savannah Smiles, Blansky’s Beauties, Midway, The Shakiest Gun in the West, and even Lamb Chop’s Special Chanukah.

Read his bio and trivia at IMDb.com.

After much thought and consideration, I’ve become convinced that it’s not long before Thanksgiving is dropped as a national holiday.

Well, okay, not exactly. Even though many people don’t celebrate Christmas, it’s still considered a national holiday and pretty much everyone gets the day off of work.

But if Thanksgiving isn’t abolished, it will at least be changed in its nature and in how people talk about it. By nature (meaning how it was originally intended and how it still operates), Thanksgiving Day is a day for people to give thanks. Most of the time, it’s not about being thankful for little things like buying lunch or some small gift; it’s being grateful for the “big things,” like family, home, needs being met, that kind of thing.

For people that don’t believe in God, there is a major cognitive dissonance here. Either atheists/agnostics/others are merely “glad” for the things they have, or they’re truly “grateful,” which indicates at least a subconscious admission of belief in God. It’s like after a major hurricane and someone says, “I’m just grateful that we all survived.” Grateful? To whom? Being grateful necessitates a recipient of the gratitude and acknowledges that the recipient gave you something.

I don’t think this is merely a matter of semantics. It’s evidence of how much a belief in God is truly a part of most people’s psyches. And if people are going to vocally deny that, then the very nature of Thanksgiving Day will change, if not be totally done away with. We’ll have to call it Gladness Day or something, since that’s all that people would really be expressing.

Lest there be any question about the perspective or intentions of our Founding Fathers, here is one of the many quotes from them that acknowledges not only the existence of God, but our dependence on Him as individuals and as a nation. This one was from George Washington in celebration of a Thanksgiving Day 216 years ago.

“It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favors.”

– George Washington (Thanksgiving Proclamation, 3 October 1789)

Here is a little Thanksgiving humor for you. Now announcing the Top 14 Upcoming Thanksgiving-Themed Movies:

14> To Kill A Walking Bird

13> My Best Friend’s Dressing

12> The Texas Coleslaw Massacre

11> Casserolablanca

10> The Fabulous Baster Boys

9> 12 Hungry Men

8> Silence of the Yams

7> For Love of The Game Hen

6> I Know What You Ate Last Winter

5> All the President’s Menu

4> White Meat Can’t Jump

3> When Harry Met Salad

2> The Story of U.S.

and the Number 1 Upcoming Thanksgiving-Themed Movie…

1> The Wing and I