Musings of a dad with too much time on his hands and not enough to do. Wait. Reverse that.

Tag: miscellany (Page 3 of 8)

Memory Lane: animatronics edition

A Brief History of Animatronic Restaurants

From the Adafruit blog I learned of this awesome video summarizing the great animatronic restaurants I patronized in my youth. I recall many birthday parties at Showbiz Pizza Place where my friends and I would burn through rolls of quarters in the facility’s arcade but also sit down and enjoy Billy Bob and crew’s performance while scarfing down pizza. Too bad I never took any pictures or videos of those events. What great memories, though!

The future of privacy?

Netflix movie, Anon

The 2018 Netflix movie, Anon, is a dystopian look at one potential future of people’s privacy. In this world, people are fitted with contact lense-type eye implants that record all the individual sees as his “record”. This implant provides many conveniences such as unlocking your front door, initiating video chats with people in your contact list, and even playing back pre-recorded memories from days or even years gone by.

Of course, this convenience also has drawbacks. Police can easily access your “record” in criminal investigations whether you’re guilty or not and, if the government has access to your record, others can obtain access, too. It recalls to my mind the long time battle of security versus convenience. I’m also remind of that famous Benjamin Franklin quote:

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Benjamin Franklin

In the last scene of the movie, the anti-hero hacker asserts her stance on personal privacy:

“It’s not that I have something to hide. I have nothing I want you to see.”

Anon (The Girl)

With regard to privacy and especially government access to one’s personal information, many people often say, “if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” Perhaps we should turn that around and ask ourselves is there anything of our personal affairs we want government to see? Or, maybe even more to the point, what right does government have to our personal affairs to begin with?

Anon is an entertaining movie that is sure to make you think more about your own privacy and conveniences you may even be taking advantage of today that could potentially compromise some of that privacy. However, it is not a family-friendly movie, so adults only, please!

Cursing the old school way

Maybe Mr. Weatherbee should read this post?

I admit that I have what you might call a short fuse and when that powder keg blows, I can let loose with some pretty colorful language. This is certainly not a good example for my family, so I need to do everything I can to change this behavior.

One way I’ve attempted to moderate my vocabulary is to replace some of the more modern expressions of profanity I’m tempted to use with old fashioned phrases–those likely to be more accepted in polite society. So, the next time you might be tempted to shout out something indecent, try using one of these phrases instead:

  • Ain’t that the berries (a phrase my dad still uses)
  • By all the saints
  • Cheese and crackers
  • Crimeny / Crime-a-nitly
  • Cripes
  • Dangnabit / dad-gummit
  • Dash it all / blast it all
  • Drats
  • Fiddlesticks
  • For all that’s holy
  • For crying out loud
  • For Pete’s sake
  • Fudgesicle
  • Gee whillikers
  • Geez / Geez-peez-o / Geez-o-Pete
  • Good golly / good gracious / good grief (commonly used by Charlie Brown) / good heavens / good lord
  • Great day in the mornin’
  • Heaven’s to Betsy / heavens to Murgatroyd (popularized by Snagglepuss)
  • Hogwallered
  • Holy moley / holy cow / holy smoke(s)
  • It went all to whaley
  • I’ll bread and butter you to pickles
  • Jeepers (favorite of the Scooby Doo gang) [Jinkies also works]
  • Jimminy Christmas
  • Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat
  • Kiss my grits (one of Flo’s go-tos)
  • Lord have mercy / mercy sakes / mercy
  • Not on your old lady’s tintype
  • Pickle! (an expression I stole from my uncle)
  • Shazbots (made famous by Mork from Ork)
  • Suffering succotash (thanks, Sylvester!)
  • That burns my pancakes
  • That frosts my cake / That really takes the cake
  • Well don’t that beat all?
  • What in the world? / What in (the) Sam Hill?
  • What the fork (Ok…a more recent phrase from The Good Place)
  • Why the face? (Ok, ok…another modern phrase compliments of Phil Dunphy)
  • You burned the beans
  • You can’t hornswoggle me
  • You’re as batty as bananas
  • You’ve got splinters in the windmill of your mind
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