Rare, Collectible, & Otherwise

Category: Uncategorized (Page 24 of 45)

Hand Check: For Health.

You don’t even need to snap on the latex gloves to do it… It’s just for the men, a new way to check your health using your fingers. Here is the procedure:

First, you take your index finger and extend it outward.

Hand Check

Health Checking Fingers

Second, extend your ring finger in the same manner.

Third, take a look at them both.

If the index finger is longer than the ring finger, you have a reduced risk of cancer, according to a new study.

The British Journal of Cancer reports that researchers studied the ratio between the 2nd and 4th finger of the right hand in 1,524 prostate-cancer patients and 3,044 healthy people over 15 years. Men with longer index fingers were 33% less likely to develop prostate cancer, and men under 60 had an 87% lower risk.

Of course, if – like me – your index finger is shorter, you may want to invest in one of those Chinese finger-traps and start a health program to extend those digits now. Remember, a long finger means a healthy prostate, so get stretching!

Hark! Sweet Silver Bells.

Carol of the Bells

Ring Ling a Ling. Carol of the Bells.

It isn’t easy to work Hark! into conversations much anymore. Another grand English word assigned to the Cold Cases filebox and stashed in a warehouse. I am vexed by the loss to our collective vocabulary.

‘Tis the season for reviving such things as the Ghost of Christmas Past, Ye Merry Gentlemen, and Angels on High. Hark!

Unfortunately, most of us sing along with lyrics Give a, Give a, Give a, Give a Garmin! foregoing the politically incorrect Merry, Merry, Merry, Merry Christmas! (In fact, Google the phrase ‘Give a Garmin’ to read how many younger Americans do not realize the song was first a Christmas Carol!)

It is hard to read the lyrics of that exquisite song without hearing the underlying chimes:

Carol Of The Bells

Hark! how the bells
Sweet silver bells
All seem to say,
Throw cares away.
Christmas is here
Bringing good cheer
To young and old
Meek and the bold

Ding, dong, ding, dong
That is their song
With joyful ring
All caroling
One seems to hear
Words of good cheer
From ev’rywhere
Filling the air

Oh how they pound,
Raising the sound,
O’er hill and dale,
Telling their tale,
Gaily they ring
While people sing
Songs of good cheer
Christmas is here
Merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas
Merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, all!

Our store will reopen Monday. Harken my word!

Paper or Plastic?

The young man wanted a leather book. One with an old world feel and the quiet scent of a college library. He wanted to cut the pages out.

As he walked in the store, he carried a small box, which he promply opened to display his wife’s Christmas gift, a new Apple iPad. His intention, he explained, was to buy a nice leather book that he could hollow out as a case for his wife to hold while reading.

The iPad

Electronic reading: the iPad

My heart breaks a little with each disfiguring of a book, but I sold him a couple of tooled leather hardbacks of a size that would accomodate the electronic reader. The extra book was to cut on as practice. Ouch.

I have contended that books will survive because a percentage of readers enjoy the feel and texture of the printed page. It never occurred to me that paper and plastic could coexist. A quick internet search revealed a number of leather-book style cases already on the market at under $40.

Even as I reluctantly sold the volumes to the young man, I imagined he would do a good job creating an in-book space for the iPad, and his wife would be pleased – not only with the new-fangled electronic book reader-do-everything-iPad – but with her husband’s creativity as well.

Half paper, half electronic. Sort of like cyborg half-man, half-robot. The science-fiction titles she downloads should be a natural, and how ironic is it that the leather bound volumes to be hollowed are both history books, about the Old West?

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