WTF?

Here's screen shot capture just now from the stats page of my sleeper blog El Pollo Real:

What causes such spikes?  Bots?

I went grocery shopping for the holiday and you never guess who I met at the Supermarket?

That's right the Duke!

He was featured in this months issue of American Cowboy. You don't always see many people shopping at the magizine and book section of King Cullen. So it was a pristine copy. It had a bunch of interesting little tibets. Nothing that a real fan like ed or I wouldn't know but it was still worth picking up.

But then I was pretty disheartened. I turned the corner and ran into this guy. How do they let low lifes like this into this joint. Seriously?

Respect.

911 has faded into distant memories for many people. It has become a joke. Something to poke fun of and satirize. Which is par for the course. You see it all over the place. At the recent roast on Comedy Central there were a lot of jokes about a comedian whose father died in the Towers. This commercial. People making Halloween costumes with barbies jumping out of windows.

I was not old enough for Pearl Harbor but when I went there I tried to show some respect. If I ever get a chance to visit the site of the Holocaust I think I might be respectful of what happened there. You don't have to be old enough to experience something to have a modicum of understanding of how it effect other people. I like an outrageous joke as much as the next guy but this commercial was just about as bad as it gets.

If Elected, Would Donald Trump Even Move Into The White House?

Has anyone bothered to ask?

It would certainly be a downgrade in surroundings. The White House's last structural upgrade was during Truman's time. Jackie Kennedy oversaw the last major redecoration. Couldn't Trump better conduct business from Trump Tower while the White House gets a makeover to bring it up to snuff?

The Chemistry Of Storytelling

I was googling something -- maybe whether canned corn stores safely in perpetuity and where it belongs in the food pyramid -- and I ran across this diagram of how to write a dramatic story:

link to original

This immediately suggested to me what is known as a generic reaction coordinate in chemistry:

Both diagrams depict action moving left-to-right. Think of the "reactants" on the left side, lower figure as the "exposition" in the top diagram and the "products" as the "denouement."

In chemistry, the climax is known as the transition state. The transition state is the fleeting state where a reaction can go forward or reverse. I believe these notions are covered by the language in the Freytag Pyramid diagram.

Note also that the chemistry plot ends in a higher energy state. Reaction diagrams that end in a lower energy state are possible as well as those that start and finish at the same level. Is this possible in storytelling? Are there uphill stories as as well as downhill ones?

Portentousness

What was up with the Greek and French athletes giving the Hitler salute? The Brits looked sensibly restrained, exhibiting erectile arm dysfunction.

KLEM TV

A blast from the past!

There was a time when men smelled like seamen...

....but also wore blouses:

Here's to the '70's