ROGER SIMON COLUMN
NOVEMBER 28, 2005
SIMON SAYS:
I've said it before and I'll say it again: The early bird gets the worm, but it's the second mouse that gets the cheese.
Would everybody go out and buy one share of stock right now? I'd really like the Dow to
get past 11,000 by the end of the year so we can all just relax.
Worst new idea I've heard: A special tax on hybrid-car owners because they buy less gasoline and, therefore, contribute less to society in taxes.
True Confessions: I have had impure thoughts about Parker Posey.
I like the idea of college football players getting little stickers on their helmets for especially good plays. I think the same thing should happen in the real world: "Nice number-crunching today, Johnson, here's a sticker for your forehead."
Reply to Perplexed in Portsmouth: If President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert should all resign, Tom DeLay would not become president of the United States. The job would go to Ted Stevens, Republican senator from Alaska, who is president pro tempore of the Senate. Pro tempore is Latin for "nothing to do."
Painting a house is more difficult than it looks. But, then again, what isn't?
Things we learned by reading "Will in the World" by Stephen Greenblatt: In Shakespeare's day, actors were not allowed to wear their costumes outside the theater because by "royal proclamation, silks and satins were officially restricted to the gentry." Playwrights were called "poets." And - - this really surprised me - - "all performances of plays, whether tragic or comic, ended with complex dances." As Greenblatt points out, it is now hard to imagine that at the end of "Hamlet" or "King Lear," the actors, including those who had just died on stage, getting up, dusting themselves off and doing a little dance, but they did. Also, "Elizabethans perceived bears as supremely ugly, embodiments of everything coarse and violent..." If they had seen a panda, they would have changed their minds.
How come leaves are attracted to gutters?
My grocery store now provides "Hygienic Cart Wipes" next to the grocery carts . I have never seen anybody use them. And I am not sure what they are supposed to be cleaning up.
Google Earth (which is a free download) is really a hoot. You can look up virtually any address on earth and see a close-up satellite picture of it. Warning: watching the satellite zoom in from space (though the picture is not live) can make you dizzy enough to fall off the computer chair you have been sitting in for far too long.
I know plenty of people who pretend to like fruitcake, but I don't know anybody who really likes fruitcake.
One cure for boredom: Go to wikipedia.org and keep hitting the "random article" button. Or…just get out of the house!
The National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center out by Dulles International Airport in Virginia is worth the trip. The center has the Space Shuttle Enterprise, the Enola Gay, and, best of all, the SR-71 Blackbird, which is so long, sleek, matte black and "stealthy" looking you would think it was only a few years old. But it was built in 1964 and is still the fastest plane in the world. When it was flown from Los Angeles to Washington to be put on display, it made the trip in an incredible 1 hour, 4 minutes and 20 seconds. That's quicker than it now takes to get through security. If you're really lucky, the docent (a fancy word for guide) who takes you around the center on a free tour will be a former Blackbird pilot. How cool is that?
It troubles me that Good & Plenty now comes in a bag. You can't shake a bag and make "Choo-Choo Charlie" noises.
To-do lists are good only if they induce guilt. If all those uncompleted tasks don't make you feel worthless, you will never get them done.
Paperback Pick of the Month: "Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945" by Max Hastings. Hastings has some startling things to say about the performance of the U.S. military.
There is nothing quite like a Double Dutch tournament.
The New York Times reports that the city is infested with bedbugs and that some New York hotels, even some fancy ones, are crawling with them. The bugs, which are tiny, can hide in your suitcase and travel home to infest your house! Yet another reason to go to Chicago instead.
Some things not worth economizing on: toilet paper, Kleenex, beer, chocolate, fast cars.