It feels weird to be writing....

a morning blog at 4:21 in the afternoon.  And no, I didn't alter the time to avoid making a 420 reference.  It really was 4:21 when I looked at my computer's clock.  But I had to get out the door too early this morning to have time to write this.  Particularly when my requested 6:00 a.m. wakeup call didn't come and I awoke at ten after seven.

So, some things I'm pondering and I promise not to ponder the latest mass-shooting or related topics too much, although my first paragraph or two will add on to last night's quick entry.

A little research and I learned that in 2009, 31,347 people died in the U.S. due to guns.  Of those, 11,493 were homicides.  There are 200,000,000 guns in this nation owned by private citizens.  So in 199,968,653 cases, a gun did not kill someone in 2009.  So less than one-tenth of one percent of the guns in the U.S. were involved in gun deaths.  We do need strict controls over who is allowed to buy a gun, who is allowed to keep a gun (people's mental health status changes from when they buy a gun) and guns need to be registered.  But the overwhelming majority of guns aren't killing people.  Okay, done with that topic for a while.

I'm pondering why anyone would want to re-write Tolkein's "The Hobbit" in order to make what would have been one great film into three less than great films; and be untrue to the story that Tolkein wrote.  To offer an analogy, it would be like a filmmaker choosing to turn Shakespeare's "Coriolanus" into a film and then adding characters from "Antony and Cleopatra" into the film in order to provide more story and turn it from one film into two or a trilogy.  Both plays are set in ancient Rome after all.  Both "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" are set in Middle Earth.  But that doesn't justify making major alterations in the writings of a classic and claiming they are in the "spirit of" the author.

I'm pondering the timing of Hilary Clinton suffering a concussion.  Just before she was to testify about the Benghazi incident.  First General Patraeus gets outed as a philanderer before he was to testify and now Hilary has to postpone because she's ill.  She is quite probably ill for real.  But the timing does make one wonder...

Why is something relating to a navy labelled as "naval" but your belly button is your navel?

Why is it when you go to get something done to your car, it will end up costing two to three times more than you planned, no matter how well you planned?  Or that you will need work you didn't plan on doing.

I used to take part in so-called "death pools", where you pick three people who will die in the upcoming years and you get points based on their age.  Examples from 2012 would include Jenni Rivera, Michael Clarke Duncan and Senator Warren Rudman.  Rivera was 43.  Duncan was 54.  Rudman was 82.  So using 100 as a base, Rivera was worth 57 points.  Duncan, 46 points and Rudman only 18 points.  But since I was ill and nearly died, I just can't bring myself to play this game.  Why is that?

No this date it history today, it will return tomorrow.