A little levity

[JerryBaumchen 1,470]

With all the nastiness here in the Corner right now I thought I would try to lighten things up a little. This is from our local newspaper, the OREGONIAN.

25 things you might not know about John McCain & Barak Obama.

McCain:

1. He has a stuffed dancing hamster on display in his Senate office.
2. Wife Cindy says her obsession with electronic gadgets & technology is one of his pet peeves.
3. He says his pet peeve is politicians who talk too much. (He admits that he’s guilty, too, sometimes).
4. He’s not much of a shopper, but he likes to buy rugs when traveling abroad.
5. His favorite books is “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” by Hemingway.
6. He was addicted to the TV show “24.”
7. He carries a lucky penny in his pocket.
8. He played Scrooge in the POW’s staging of “A Christmas Carol” at the Hanoi Hilton.
9. He movie favorites include “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World,” “Casablanca,” and “Viva Zapata.”
10. He talks to fellow prisoners of war, those with whom he shared a cell in Vietnam, almost daily.
11. He has seven children. He has four grandchildren.
12. His wife was in Bangladesh on a charity mission & brought home baby Bridget without checking first with him.
13. He describes himself as “a person who is mostly normal.”
14. His parents “eloped” and got married at Caesar’s Bar in Tijuana, Mexico; McCain’s grandfather accompanied them.
15. He’s serious about the finer points of barbecuing, and he likes to deep-fry turkeys in peanut oil.
16. At Christmastime, he likes to supervise the lighting of about 1,000 luminaria candles on their property in Sedona.
17. Going on vacation with him is anything but relaxing. His children call it “Camp McCain.”
18. He’s an early bird, not a night owl.
19. He doesn’t e-mail. He doesn’t surf the web. He likes to read the newspaper in print. He’s attached to his cell phone.
20. He wasn’t happy when Hudson, the neighbors’ black Lab, ate the tenderloin he’d been marinating to grill for dinner at their ranch in Sedona.
21. His office windowsill is overrun with stacks of books. He hands them off to friends once he’s read them.
22. He’s into fruit trees. And birds. He keeps binoculars and bird books at the ready in Sedona.
23. Cindy McCain is super-rich. They have a prenuptial agreement.
24. He programmed digital remotes at the family’s homes in Phoenix & Washington so they can call up DVDs in any room.
25. He doesn’t like to be alone.

Obama:

1. His high school basketball nickname was “O’Bomber” & he favored a left-hand, double-pump shot.
2. He has two Grammy awards for recording his best-selling books.
3. His mother’s name was Stanley Ann Dunham – her father, Stanley, wanted a boy.
4. His mother & father met in a Russian Language class at the U of Hawaii.
5. His father, a goat herder as a child, was a member of the Luo tribe.
6. As a child in Indonesia, he was introduced to snake meat & roasted grasshopper.
7. While living in Indonesia, his mother would wake him at 4 AM for three hours of English lessons before he went to school.
8. His maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, was a “Rosie the Riveter” at a Boeing plant in Wichita, KS during World War II.
9. While a student at Harvard Law School, he applied to appear in a black pride pinup calendar. He was rejected by an all-female committee.
10. He met his wife, Michelle, while she was his adviser one summer when he worked at a corporate law firm in Chicago.
11. On their first date, they had ice cream at a Baskin-Robbins. (One of his jobs as a teen was scooping ice cream at a Baskin-Robbins).
12. His favorite movies include “Casablanca,” “Lawrence of Arabia,” and “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”
13. During his community organizing days, some residents in Chicago dubbed him “baby face” because of his youthful looks.
14. He considers his worst habit to be checking his Blackberry.
15. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, but he got a D in 8th-grade French.
16. His prized possession is a photograph of the cliffs of Oahu’s South Shore where his mother’s ashes are scattered.
17. He is a good – but cautious – poker player.
18. His musical favorites include Bob Dylan, Sheryl Crow, Yo-Yo Ma, Bruce Springsteen, Jay-Z and jazz legends Miles Davis, John Coltrane & Charlie Parker.
19. He carries good luck charms, including a gambler’s lucky chit.
20. He announced his campaign for the presidency at the Old State Capitol in Springfield, IL, where Lincoln gave his famous “house divided” speech.
21. His office wall has a framed original program from the 1963 March on Washington.
22. He owns a set of red boxing gloves autographed by Muhammad Ali.
23. He keeps on his desk a carving of a wooden hand holding an egg, a Kenyan symbol of the fragility of life.
24. He has promised his daughters a dog this fall, win or lose.
25. He doesn’t like to shop.

JerryBaumchen

[Skyrad 0]

Quote

McCain
His favorite books is “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” by Hemingway.

But he owns 53 copies of 'Catcher in the rye'

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca