Rant #1,448: How Now, Brown Cow?

Remember that saying?

If you were a child of the 1960s, you knew that saying.

What it meant is another thing, but everyone had heard that saying. (Further investigation is that the phrase originated in the 1920s, and has to do with proper elocution, with its rounded vowel sounds. Why it became a catchphrase in the 1960s is beyond me.)

Well, I am going to put my own 2015 spin on it, and adapt it for my own uses in this Rant today.

Here goes ...

How Now ... Are the Yankees In First Place In the American League East?: The Yankees are an awful team, with enough flaws that if they were a car, they would have been recalled several times already.

The team is awful, lost again last night, and really, as a barely over .500 team, how can they be in first place in their division?

Simple--the rest of the division is awful, too.

However, just a couple of games separate the Yankees and the bottom team in the division, so even with the awfulness, it could be an exciting summer for every team in this division, because in their collective awfulness, they all have a chance to win the division and go into the playoffs ...

Where they will probably get swept.

How Now ... Is It Not Yet Summer?: In my neck of the woods, we have been on a wild ride with the weather for several months. We have gone from the height of despair--a very cold, snowy winter--to the zenith of optimism--near 90 degrees yesterday.

Yet, we are only at the end of May.

The calendar tells us that we are a good three weeks away from when it actually hits summer--June 21 I believe--but we have been teased by having several days this month getting into at least the high 80s.

But we inevitably get real when those high temperatures are followed by lower temperatures in the 70s, and that is what is going to happen again this weekend.

So we aren't yet in summer, but we know it is coming. I just wish Mother Nature would stop teasing us.

How Now ... Can It Be a Year That I Have Had My Car?: I can't believe it, but I have had my car a solid year.

And it has been a solid year, at that.

No more accidents, no more clashing with insurance companies on my claim, no more nothing ... just steady driving.

I enjoy my car, but I do not enjoy the fact that my accident dumped on me a major bill each month that I did not know I was going to have. Now that I have it, I have to pay it, of course, but I could have lived without the fiasco I went through to get this car.

But with only a little more than 9,000 miles on it in its first year, I think I have taken good care of the car, and I hope it lasts me a lifetime.

I like the car, I just don't like the payments.

How Now ... Can We Have a Pope Who Condemns Israel?: Well, what else is new? The Vatican has condemned Israel for generations, so why should this Pope's thinking be any different than what prior Popes thought?

The Catholic Church abandoned Jews during World War II, and up until about 50 years ago, condemned Jews for killing Jesus. Do you think that these things would just go away?

With the current Pope basically giving his blessing to the Palestinians and Hamas, he is condemning Israel once again, but what is scary this time around is that he is continuing a Church prerogative to back terrorists against Israel, and we live in a world where the Vatican isn't the only entity that favors terrorists over democracy in that part of the world.

I don't get it either. But I know that Catholics both in the United States and around the world are smarter then their Pope, and often go against his beliefs in many areas.

I feel that they will do it once again in relation to Israel and its right to exist, no matter what the Pope says or does.

How Now ... Can Some People Find Facebook To Be So Important In Their Lives?: Facebook is simply an electronic meeting place for people to speak to other people, often allowing them to reconnect to those they haven't seen or heard from in years.

Yet some people use Facebook to justify their existence, putting up things that are open to discussion, and I do mean vehement discussion, and then take those to task who disagree with them.

My feeling is that if you put something up on Facebook, and it if rubs people either in a good way or bad way, then you have to expect both the praises and barbs.

Some people take great offense to the barbs, they just simply cannot understand how people can disagree with their viewpoint.

Isn't that why one puts something up, to spur discussion? Sometimes a "like" isn't enough to back your point, and sometimes, since there is no "dislike" button, you have to actually write out why you disagree with the point.

Some people try to prove the worth of their existence with Facebook; me, I use it, and have used it successfully, but you know what? If it goes away, I wouldn't be all that upset.

But for others, it appears to be their life's work to try to gain praise on Facebook.

Sorry, I just do not get it, I guess.

And that is the end of my "How Now" Rant today. Speak to you again on Monday.

Heck, by then, maybe some of this stuff will be cleared up ...

But I doubt it.