Smile!

A look at our lovely little world from those beautiful fools who choose to view it from the vista of humor, love and hope.  So cozy up in your favorite chair with a piping hot cup of french press (or your favorite adult beverage) and enjoy!  
 
If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you. - Steven Wright
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The Invention of the Jukebox 

On November 23rd in 1889, the first jukebox was unveiled in a saloon in San Francisco . It was invented by Louis Glass, who had earlier worked as a telegraph operator for Western Union and then co-founded the Pacific Phonographic Company. He was fascinated by the phonograph technology and saw a market for charging people to listen to them, since phonographs were still too expensive to buy for your own home. He installed the machine in the Palais Royal saloon simply because he knew the owner and it was close to his house, so he didn’t have to carry the machine very far. 

The word “jukebox” wasn’t invented until the 1920s. Glass called his machine the “nickel-in-the-slot phonograph,” since you had to pay a nickel to hear a song play. In today’s money, a nickel was about $1.27 at the time. The first machine had four different stethoscopes attached to it that functioned as headphones. Each pair of headphones had to be activated by putting in a nickel, and then several people could listen to the same song at once. There were towels left by each listening device so people could wipe them off after using. As part of his agreement with the saloonkeepers, at the end of each song, the machine told the listener to “go over to the bar and buy a drink.” 

His phonograph was a huge hit and, at a conference in Chicago, Glass told his competitors that his first 15 machines brought in over $4,000 in six months. This led to other manufacturers making their own machines. Shortly after, Thomas Edison designed a phonograph people could buy for their homes, which also cut into the market. Glass’s invention eventually made the player piano obsolete, and competitors updated the jukebox with new technologies from record players to CDs. Now there is such a thing as a digital jukebox, but they never really caught on, since they come with the size and expense of a regular jukebox, without any of the charm of flipping through the records and watching the moving parts of the machine.

It's the birthday of adventurer and author Richard Halliburton, (books by this author) born in Brownsville, Tennessee (1900), the son of a civil engineer. He went to a prestigious New Jersey prep school, edited the student newspaper at Princeton, and then set off on the dizzying array of adventures around the world that would make him famous. To fundraise for these adventures, he wrote books about them. Many of his books became best-sellers.

On one of his first major trips, he traveled down the Nile River, headed over to India and Thailand, and climbed Mount Fiji; he wrote about these escapades in The Royal Road to Romance (1925). On one trip he borrowed an elephant from the Paris zoo and rode it across the Alps. On another trip he decided to follow the ancient path of Ulysses around the Mediterranean Sea; he wrote about these wanderings in The Glorious Adventure (1927). His next big adventure was around Central and South America, where he swam across the Panama Canal. Tolls for crossing the Panama Canal are assessed based on weight, and ships routinely pay over a hundred thousand dollars for a single crossing. But since Halliburton swam across, his toll was just 37 cents — a record for the lowest toll ever. He wrote about his Latin American adventures in New Worlds to Conquer (1929).

On Christmas Day 1930, he set out on another one of his epic adventures. It was a trip around the world in an open-cockpit biplane. It would last 18 months and include stops in 34 countries, and it began in Los Angeles. There was a stop in New York, and then the British Isles, France, Gibraltar, Morocco. He and his co-pilot flew across the Sahara, made a stop in Timbuktu, spent time in Algeria, and landed in Persia (now Iran). They made a stop in Iraq, where they gave a joyride to the school-aged Iraqi prince, flying him up over his school's playground.

They headed over to India, where their crimson red plane did aerial stunts over the Taj Mahal. Then they flew to Mount Everest, taking the first aerial photographs of the summit. They flew to the Philippines. Once there, they crated the plane, and rode a ship with it back across the Pacific, landing in San Francisco. From there they flew back to L.A. so that they could complete their journey at its starting place.

Halliburton wrote a book about the aerial expedition called The Flying Carpet (1932), which was also the name of the plane. The book sold phenomenally well even though it was published in the midst of the Great Depression.

Once, when he was young, he had announced to his father — an engineer — that he himself planned at all costs to avoid living an "even-tenored" life. He said: "When impulse and spontaneity fail to make my way uneven then I shall sit up nights inventing means of making my life as conglomerate and vivid as possible. ... And when my time comes to die, I'll be able to die happy, for I will have done and seen and heard and experienced all the joy, pain and thrills — any emotion that any human ever had — and I'll be especially happy if I am spared a stupid, common death in bed."

He was spared a common death in bed. In 1939, he attempted to sail a Chinese junk from Hong Kong to San Francisco. It was 75 feet long, had a dragon painted on it, and was run by a diesel engine. The idea was to land at Treasure Island, in the Bay between San Francisco and Oakland. It was bad from the beginning. He was caught in a typhoon near Midway Island a few weeks after setting out. He sent out a couple messages: "Wish you were here instead of me" and "Southerly gale. Heavy Rain Squalls. High sea ... lee rail under water." He was never heard from again and was presumed dead shortly later, age 39.

While he was gallivanting about, he wrote a lot of letters home to his parents. Afterward, his dad collected and published them as Richard Halliburton: His Story of His Life's Adventure, as Told in Letters to His Mother and Father (1940). His travel writings are also collected in Richard Halliburton's Complete Book of Marvels (1941).

Today is Bloomsday, a day to celebrate James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, whose action takes place on June 16th, 1904 (books by this author). It’s called Bloomsday because the main character in the book is Leopold Bloom, a Jewish ad salesman who lives on the north side of Dublin. Bloom is introduced in the fourth chapter of Ulysses; he eats breakfast and serves his wife breakfast in bed. Joyce wrote: “Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod’s roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine. Kidneys were in his mind as he moved about the kitchen softly, righting [his wife’s] breakfast things on the humpy tray. Gelid light and air were in the kitchen but out of doors gentle summer morning everywhere.”

Bloom doesn’t have much work to do on June 16th, so he spends most of his day wandering around Dublin doing errands. In the morning, he leaves his house on 7 Eccles Street, walks south across the River Liffey, picks up a letter, buys a bar of soap, and goes to the funeral of a man he didn’t know very well. In the afternoon, he eats a cheese sandwich, feeds some gulls in the Liffey, helps a blind man cross the street, and visits a couple of pubs. He thinks about his job, his wife, his daughter, his stillborn son; he muses about life and death and reincarnation. He knows that his wife is planning to cheat on him that afternoon at his house, and he spends a lot of time thinking about the days when his marriage was happier.

Bloom thinks: “Remember when we got home raking up the fire and frying up those pieces of lap of mutton for her supper with the Chutney sauce she liked. And the mulled rum [...] Sitting there after till near two, taking out her hairpins. Milly tucked up in beddyhouse. Happy. Happy.”

In the evening, Bloom wanders around the red-light district of Dublin, and eventually meets up with a young writer named Stephen Dedalus. Stephen is drunk, so Bloom takes him home with him and offers to let him spend the night. They stand outside looking at the stars for a while, and then Stephen goes home and Bloom goes inside and climbs into bed with his wife.

Joyce chose June 16, 1904, as the date for his novel because it was on that day that he went on his first date with the love of his life, Nora Barnacle.

Joyce gave the first printed copy of Ulysses to Nora, but she tried to sell it to a friend visiting from Dublin. She only read 27 pages of the book, including the title page. She once asked Joyce, “Why don’t you write sensible books that people can understand?”

On June 16, 1924, the 20th anniversary of Bloomsday, Joyce wrote in his notebook, “Twenty years after. Will anyone remember this date?” Today, it is a national holiday in Ireland. People will celebrate the book by reading passages aloud, visiting all the places mentioned in the book, and eating the favorite foods of the character Leopold Bloom. It’s one of the only holidays in the world that’s based merely upon a date in a work of fiction.

This in German but it's so dang funny, it doesn't matter!
These guys can't stop 
laughing : )

 

Shelagh was here - an ordinary, magical life...a beautiful, uplifting story; read it HERE!

High School Students Host 'Senior' Prom For Elderly Residents At Nursing Home...check it out HERE!


Formerly Blind And Deaf Toddler Sees And Hears Mom For The First Time...read this amazing story HERE!


50 Dollars is 50 Dollars  (from www.guy-sports.com)

Morris and his wife Esther went to the state fair every year, and every year Morris would say, 'Esther, I'd like to ride in that helicopter. 'Esther always replied, 'I know Morris, but that helicopter ride is 50 dollars and 50 dollars is 50 dollars.'

One year Esther and Morris went to the fair, and Morris said, 'Esther I'm 85 years old. if I don't ride that helicopter, I might never get another chance.' Esther replied, 'Morris that helicopter is 50 dollars and 50 dollars is 50 dollars.' The pilot over heard the couple and said, 'folks I'll make you a deal. I'll take the both of you for a ride; if you can stay quiet for the entire ride and not say a word I won't charge you! but if you say one word, it's 50 dollars.'

Morris and Esther agreed and up they went. the pilot did all kinds of fancy manoeuvres, but not a word was heard. he did his dare devil tricks over and over again, but still not a word. When they landed, the pilot turned to Morris and said, 'by golly, I did everything I could to get you to yell out, but you didn't . I'm impressed!'

Morris replied, 'well I almost said something when Esther fell out, but, you know, 50 dollars is 50 dollars!'