Tom

Jul

2021

TUESDAY on my mind

If you grow cotton, can you say 'I'm in the farm of big pocket' ?

Bada Bing!

Officer: “Soldier, do you have change for a dollar?”Soldier: “Sure, buddy.”Officer: “That’s no way to address an officer! Now, let’s try it again!”Officer: “Soldier. Do you have change for a dollar?”Soldier: “No, SIR!”

It’s the 1700’s. Two men are standing back to back with their single-shot pistols at the ready.First man, “Why are we doing this?”Second man, “Because you dishonored me. And also because I hate your stupid pun jokes!”First man, “I see. So it’s a duel purpose.”

As a kid, did you ever knock on people’s doors and run away before they could answer? Well, guess what, UPS is hiring.

Rage Against the Machine never specified what type of machine they were furious with but I suspect it was probably a printer.

If any of you non-rich people want to go to space for 10 minutes, I know a good brownie recipe.

I’m good at sleeping. I can do it with my eyes closed.

So, besides Mick Jagger, yesterday was also the birthday, in 1941, of Darlene Love. She sang with The Crystals. Here she is!

Jul

2021

Ugh. Must be MONDAY!!!

Have something to eat

You can't buy bagels with cream cheese. Are you crazy?!

Try some yoga

So….

The owner of a seafood restaurant sends one of his sons undercover to his rival's restaurant.

The dad tells him to get a job as a cook and figure out the recipe for his rival's famous clam chowder.

The first day, the son comes home with a basic list of ingredients that the rival uses. They try making it, but it doesn't turn out the same. The dad sends him back.

The second day, the son comes home having watched the rival chef prepare the chowder. They try again to make it, and it's close, but the consistency is off.

"It's too watery!" said the dad. "It needs to be thicker!"

They try to figure out what they're doing wrong, and the son realizes that he was distracted for a minute while the chef did something.

"He must have added a secret ingredient, one not on the list, while you looked away!" concludes the dad.

He sends his son back for a third day, this time telling him not to take his eyes off the chef for a second. The son comes back the next day excited.

"You'll never believe what I saw!" he says. "He did have a secret ingredient, it's a piece of paper!"

"A piece of paper?"

"Yeah, he keeps a stack of printed paper in the kitchen. It's a bunch of Wikipedia articles he's printed out, of various movies. When he makes the chowder, he tears out the synopsis of a movie from one of the articles and puts it in. It's the strangest thing, but that's the secret ingredient."

"Ah," says the dad, "the plot thickens."

Today is the birthday, in 1943, of Mick Jagger.

Jul

2021

Northern Spy

I recently finished reading Northern Spy, the thriller by Flynn Berry. It’s not my usual genre, but I really enjoyed the book.

Despite the title, the book is not really about apples. Tessa Daly is a divorced mother of a six month old child living in a village in the suburbs of Belfast who works for the BBC producing a news program. It’s been a few years since the Good Friday agreement was signed but tensions are as high as ever and there are still the occasional skirmishes. Tessa is surprised one day watching a news program at work to see her sister, Marion taking part in an IRA robbery.

Tessa assumes at first, and so tells the police, that Marion has been forced to participate by the IRA. Soon, however, she is shocked to discover that Marion has been working with the IRA for seven years. Recently, however, Marion says that she has begun secretly working with MI5 and feeding them information to help set the stage for a peace agreement.

In an attempt to reduce bloodshed, however, Marion has deliberately sabotaged a bomb that was targeted by the IRA at a market and now she is under surveillance by both the IRA and MI5. So she asks Tessa to join her acting as a double agent and funneling information to her MI5 contact. Tessa is accepted by the IRA and asked to do increasingly dangerous tasks as she feels more and more trapped and worried for her family and her son.

If you like your thrillers with lots of car chases and explosions and suave secret agents, this is not for you. It is a page-turner, though as the tension builds and both Tessa and Marion are in increasing danger of getting caught and killed both by the IRA and the police.

Berry is a good writer and the book is an enjoyable read. The story flows nicely as the tension and uncertainty build. I enjoyed it and you should give it a shot.