Gloves VS Mittens

   Somebody once told me that a great test of character is to see if people wear gloves or mittens.  It's a style vs comfort issue.  The dexterity argument is over-rated.  There's not much you can do in gloves that you can't do in mittens, except have cold hands.

   Unless you're talking examination gloves - and that leads to some unpleasant associations, so we'll leave those out of this.
   My mother wanted all her little Hausers in mittens because she wanted us to be warm.  Cool was not an issue for Mom.  For some reason she thought cuteness was a reasonable substitute for cool.

   I won't dwell on that, either.
   Not long ago, I had a discussion with a co-worker about celebrities - whether they were gloves or mitten people - or, as mitten people put it, image-obsessed or genuine characters.

 
















 Our guesses (we didn't google,) weren't too far off, though she insisted that Johnny Depp was a mitten person.

  Finger-less gloves was all I could find for him.  We were also both certain that George Clooney was a glove guy.

   A surprising number of pictures on a google search show that Clooney is neither a glove nor mitten person.  He likes to put his hands in his pockets.
   But let's go to the people we got right.

Gloves

  Kim Kardashian is a committed glove wearer.  She's not so committed to wearing other clothing, but glove?  She's all for it.

   Diane Keaton is also a big glove-lover.  Unfortunately, the gloves only conceal her hands - not her lack of talent.

  We both guessed Susan Sarandon as a glove wearer, and I guess we were right.  But they don't seem to add to her cool factor - what are those, lunch-lady gloves?

   Tom Cruise wears gloves sometimes, but they look weird.  It's not like anything else about Tom is weird.

   And, or course, the easiest guess was O.J.  But there's something about those gloves that just doesn't fit.

Mittens

   I know I've seen Al Roker in gloves, but I figure that was the official Today Show wardrobe.  Al doesn't seem to be obsessed with image.  Not only are these mittens, but they're Canadian.  That's a pretty bold statement.

   Of it would be if Oprah wasn't wearing the same mittens.  Maybe Al gave them to her.  After all, Oprah doesn't have much money.

   Anne Hathaway seems to be a fearless type.  I applaud her choice of hand-ware - especially as it's really hard to make a good clapping noise when you're wearing thick wool on your hands.

   Is there any more genuine celebrity than Santa?  If you can drive a reindeer-powered sleigh faster than the down of a thistle, then why does anyone really need gloves?

AND

   Of course, not all hand-ware consists of mittens or gloves.

   But there's something about this that creeps me out.

John Oliver and his mittens of disapproval for Jack Warner and FIFA.

Just Plain Stupid Year (3) in Review

I know, it’s February, not December. Putting together a year in review post seems out of place.

But not in a Just Plain Stupid world.

My first post for JPS was February 28^th 2013. There are now over 300 posts on this blog, and I, for one, am surprised. I never thought I had so much to say, even if most of it was useless dribble.

This Year’s Failures

The dribble has flowed slower this year, and so I began the immensely unpopular serialization of Dirk Destroyer’s Less Destructive Brother. S.B. and someone I don’t know from Russia faithfully read each post of Dirk, so it hobbles along. If you’re off your meds and wish to start reading this Donald Trump-less political satire set in a world inundated by sheep, here’s a link to the firstinstallment, and better yet, here’s a link to the firstinstallment that has anything to do with the story.

Several posts other than Dirk Destroyer have failed to attract attention this year; many because they didn’t deserve any, but a few I thought were worth reading. Tricycle Baskets Full of Evil falls in that latter category, along with Apply Yourself, and the not-yet-immortal story of Mortimer the Drop of Goo.

This Year’s Successes???

Picture posts – those stolen from FB, or taken from tee shirts or catalogs have always been among my more popular subjects, along with guest posts from other Go Figure Reads writers.

So I should just shut up and plagiarize?

Particularly surprising was the popularity of Will Wright’s rant about his bad cruise on Royal Caribbean, but less surprising was Walter Bego’s lionization of the art of Terry Gilliam.

Unfortunately for my more faithful readers, I remain incapable to taking a hint. I continue to write a few posts with a minimum of plagiarism, and some of them have done well (if sickening large numbers of people can be defined as doing well.)

Gloves vs. Mittens preyed on the public’s fascination with celebrity, and I exploited my brother’s secrets in the post, Horatio.

Clearly, many of my readers would prefer Horatio to be the Hauser that writes this blog.

The top post of this third year, Body Part Insults (written with assistance by Kim Webb,) was based on an ill-advised Facebook post of a Grammy award nominated FB friend who probably wishes now that A) she hadn’t posted her desire to not insult our noble excretory system when addressing jerks, and (especially) B) that she hadn’t clicked ‘accept’ to my friend request.

But even Body Parts can’t hold a candle to the most popular post of the life of this blog, Basketball, BWG, but no Little Debbie Twinkie, which I wrote very early on in the first year.

So much for showing progress.

I’d like to thank you each personally for reading my blog, but I don’t want to risk the ensuing storm of rotten vegetation (or worse.) As we limp into year Four there’s always the hope that somewhere along the line I’ll learn to write good stuff.

Or at least learn to shut up and plagiarize.

So for the video I looked up Best of 2015 on youtube and got this.  These are toys, right?