Humor

In Which Ms. Bean Drives In Circles & Contemplates A Personal Slogan

/ Ally Bean / 67 Comments

About 100 years ago this car would have been my preferred set of wheels, especially if it came standard with a dog. Obviously. { photo via Library of Congress }

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OF LATE I’VE HAD MORE OPPORTUNITIES THAN USUAL TO drive to and from the airport.  Considering where we live in Ohio, our closest international airport is in Kentucky, meaning that I have to drive on an interstate highway to cross over the Ohio River to get there.

It’s all about geography.

I can do this by EITHER driving on the outer belt through Ohio, across a bridge into Kentucky.

OR, if there is an accident in my way or construction delays, I can drive in the other direction on the outer belt through Ohio, then through Indiana, across a bridge into Kentucky.

The excitement?  It never ends.

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IT IS WHILE SASHAYING AROUND THE AFOREMENTIONED INTERSTATE OUTER BELT SYSTEM THAT I’ve come to notice, on huge bridge signs, that Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana have new-to-me state slogans*.

  • Ohio, formerly “THE HEART OF IT ALL” is now “SO MUCH TO DISCOVER”
  • Kentucky, formerly “WHERE EDUCATION PAYS” is now “UNBRIDLED SPIRIT”
  • Indiana, formerly “CROSSROADS OF AMERICA” is now “HONEST-TO-GOODNESS INDIANA”

Seeing these state slogans, writ large [literally and figuratively], got me thinking about branding, albeit in a narcissistic way.  That is, what might I use as my personal slogan?

If I had to have one.  Which to my knowledge I do not.  Yet.

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THUS WANTING TO BE PREPARED FOR ANY CONTINGENCY and bored out of my gourd while driving, I compiled the following list** of potential Ally Bean slogans.

Should you be of a mind to help me decide what my personal slogan should be, please indulge me and do the following two things:

  1. Indicate your preferred slogan for moi, by answering the simple poll question below.
  2. If you have a personal slogan, I’d love to know what it is.  Yours might be better than mine and it’s not too late for me to steal it from you I could be inspired by it.

Thank you in advance for your immediate input on this totally irrelevant, but blogworthy, issue that has come to plague me as I drive hither and yon around the interstate outer belt system.

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* I’ve no idea how often these slogans change. All I know is what my addled brain remembers, a faulty system at best– and these state slogans seem different from what I remember them being before.

** Oddly enough, most of these potential slogans are ones that I’ve used in various places online over the years. Or, ideas I wrote down intending to use as topics for blog posts.

9 Links For People Who Like Wordplay

/ Ally Bean / 43 Comments

… because information is FUN dammit.

Dear me, am I seeing a photo of a deer? Aye, it is a deer, my dear. Is the deer near here? No, from what I hear, the deer is not near here, my dear. 😁

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Need a laugh? Enjoy a generic millennial ad here.

But I don’t want to not say this word when I apologize.

Did you know that grok, like Jabberwocky, are examples of nonce words?

Miss Phryne Fisher’s 1920s Australian slang is here to help you increase your vocabulary.

There used to be more to the alphabet.

If you write headlines, how good are they? Find out here. [link revised 9/22]

The Oxford comma has an online dating profile that you can view here.

Looking for some petty phrases to use in your work emails? Click here.

According to this, your craft beer name is your grandfather’s job + a word you don’t fully understand.  My craft beer is: Salesman’s Milieu.

Because All The Cool Kids Are Doing This: Opining About The 69th Primetime Emmy Awards

/ Ally Bean / 76 Comments

I didn’t watch the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards the other night.

I never watch award shows anymore because they get me all riled up.  I either disagree with who/what gets the awards, or I disagree with the lengthy opinions expressed by some recipients.

I want my favorite shows to win because I know what is best.  And I want the award recipients to say “thank you” then mosey off the stage directly.

We get it, you’re great.  Now move on.

Also, I despise the red carpet “reporters” with their judgemental chatter/stupid interviews as the stars walk the red carpet.  Didn’t your mothers teach you that if you can’t say something nice, then don’t say anything at all?

Be polite or shut up. That’s the deal in my world view of how the Primetime Emmy Awards, or any award show, should be.

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However, even though I didn’t watch the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards, I got opinions– and I know how to use ’em. 

• First of all, the best comedy show is The Good Place with Kristen Bell and Ted Danson.  It’s smart, quirky, and hilarious.  With cheerful sets and a snappy pace.  And it’s funny, in a non-mocking way.

You’ll notice it wasn’t part of the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards which just goes to show you how wrong the whole Emmy thing was.

• Second of all, This is Us is a wonderful, genuine drama that kept me engaged [difficult to do] and made me, an introvert with a low opinion of people, want to know more about these people [extremely difficult to do].

The show moves seamlessly between past and present while never losing sight of the relationships that form the core of the storyline.  I like the actors. I like the writing. I like the sets. I like the costumes.

So where are the plethora of awards that it deserved?

• Thirdly, The Crown is brilliant. No other word for that TV show.  I read that John Lithgow received an Emmy for his portrayal of Winston Churchill and that’s good because he was spectacular in that role.  But again, how about everyone else in the show?  Where are their awards?

[And don’t try to downplay this show as only a costume drama, because that just makes you look ignorant about how necessary it is for us to understand history– and it gripes my grits when people say that.  So don’t do it.]  

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And on that note I’ll end this post with a short summation of what I’ve written here about the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards.

I’ve given you, my gentle readers, a fast review of three decent, returning this season, TV shows* that you may want to watch in the upcoming months.  You may thank me in the comments below.

And I’ve vented about how stupid I think award shows are– a sentiment that many other people agree with, if Sunday’s low ratings are to be believed.

* I didn’t realize that Veep was a comedy until I read the list of the winners. I might like it and will consider watching it.  Also, Big Little Lies looks promising, but we don’t get HBO, so until these shows hit Netflix or Hulu I won’t be seeing them. 

When A Bee Gets Buzzed, What Does It Mean?

/ Ally Bean / 71 Comments

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MY WEEK THUS FAR HAS BEEN A DOOZY, filled with broken things, unreliable people, and inconveniently rainy weather.  Nothing, despite my best efforts, has gone smoothly.

Exhausted after a trying day, I was sitting on our deck last night.  I had a glass of pinot noir on the table beside me, and was minding me own beeswax, so to speak.

A bee, like the one in the photo above, came out of nowhere and flew directly, seemingly intentionally, into my glass of wine, then proceeded to do the backstroke in the wine in the glass.

As much as this sounds like I’m making up this story, I’m being literal: a large, healthy bee, managed to ruin my glass of red wine, while having himself the best swim ever.

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IT WAS HILARIOUS TO WATCH HIM going around in circles inside the glass, of course.  However, at the same time, it was damned annoying because the wine wasn’t a cheap bottle of plonk– and I had to toss the contents of the glass, bee and all, over the side of the deck onto the grass below.

Zen-Den, gracious human being that he is, brought me another glass of wine from the bottle in the kitchen… and he handed me a paper cocktail napkin to use to cover the top of the glass while I continued to sit on the deck.

But me being me, an English major educated and encouraged to find the meaning in all things, I got lost in my head trying to figure out what it meant that a bee got buzzed, in a most dramatic way, right when I was trying to mellow out.

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THE BEST EXPLANATION I COULD COME UP WITH, based on Occam’s Razor‘s idea of simplicity + obviousness, was that the bee represented me this week, busy doing things, but not in ways that make me happy.

And that following the bee’s lead, I needed to speed up my wine consumption if I was to have as much fun and relaxation as this uninvited bee was having in my wine glass.

So, not being one to argue with Scientific Logic, or the Serendipitous Nature of the Universe, I drank my first glass of wine. Then sipped another one. And suddenly, as if it was all meant to be, everything seemed right within my world.