Baseball Toaster The Griddle
Help
A place where a man can slow down to a walk and live his life full measure, but he has to keep his watch on Pacific Time.
Frozen Toast
Search
Google Search
Web
Toaster
The Griddle
Archives

2009
02  01 

2008
12  11  10  09  08  07 
06  05  04  03  02  01 

2007
12  11  10  09  08  07 
06  05  04  03  02  01 

2006
12  11  10  09  08  07 
06  05  04  03  02  01 

2005
12  10  07 
06  05  04  03 
Suggestions, comments, ring the catcher's interference alarm?

Email me at btimmermann@gmail.com

The stuff I keep track of
Random Game Callbacks

Select a date:

Personal favorites that I wrote
FAQs
So happy together?
2008-07-03 13:06
by Bob Timmermann

Not baseball related, but a survey sponsored by the United States National Science Foundation, rates Denmark as the happiest country in the world.

Zimbabwe, plagued by political turmoil, hyperinflation, and the indiginity of being last in alphabetical order at the United Nations, is the least happy country.

I've been to Denmark. They seemed happy enough.

Comments
2008-07-03 14:04:53
1.   Ken Arneson
I have some more recent information. From my experience, Denmark is not at all a happy place anymore. (If you are queasy, please accept this premise and avoid the details below.)

I was on a plane to Denmark two days ago. I got food poisoning on the flight. My seat did not have a barf bag. I tried to run to the bathroom to throw up, but didn't quite make it. I threw up on myself in the rear galley. I spent the rest of the flight smelling like vomit.

Then when I landed I tried to buy a train ticket to Sweden with my credit card. The stupid Danish machines think all credit cards have PINs associated with them. I couldn't buy a ticket with my PINless credit card.

Finally, I realized I had a (seldom-used) ATM card with a Visa logo on it, and tried that, and thankfully, it worked. Then when we got down to the train platform, the train was waiting at the station, and the conductor looked at me and shook his head and closed the doors right in front of me. Perhaps because I smelled like vomit; I'm not sure. In either case, I had to wait for the next train, an additional excruciating 20 minutes knowing that I could probably throw up again at any moment.

Finally, I got out of Denmark, arrived at my final Swedish destination, where I promptly threw up the remainder of my Danish meal, and then I took a shower.

2008-07-03 14:14:56
2.   Bob Timmermann
I better warn Jon not to read that comment.
2008-07-03 14:40:19
3.   Greg Brock
1 At least you were Eight Miles High while vomiting.
2008-07-03 17:06:48
4.   Eric Enders
So Shakespeare was wrong after all. Nothing's rotten.
2008-07-03 18:22:32
5.   Bob Hendley
My big brother says, and he is an authority on most things, that the Danes are happy because they have low expectations. I am guessing that Ken was expecting something else.
2008-07-03 19:08:56
6.   DXMachina
The Turtles were one happy band.
2008-07-03 23:06:39
7.   Samhain
That Turtles footage has them capering in front of a marvelous piece of forgotten local L.A. history, Bob.

We see them in front of Pandora's Box, the forgotten youth "nightclub" (it didn't have a liquor license) at Crescent Heights & Sunset that eventually was the scene of the "riot"--actually a sit-in that blocked traffic until the cops carted the kids off--that was the event immortalized by the Buffalo Springfield's Steven Stills in "For What It's Worth":
"Something's happening here...what it is aint exactly clear..."
Everybody thinks the song was about the anti-war movement or something important. It was about the L.A. Traffic Department using eminent domain to raze a little club built, oddly, on a traffic island in the middle of the street.

Bob, thanks for posting stuff that often does exactly what great librarians are supposed to do, make the past come alive! :)
BTW, your posts at Dodger Thoughts are my favorite part of that site. Thanks for that, too.

2008-07-04 04:04:20
8.   Ken Arneson
5 I wrote a couple of papers on Hamlet in college. Perhaps I should have written one interpreting the play as a tour guide. Then I would have been fully expecting to be poisoned while in Denmark, and wouldn't have been so unhappy about it.

I suppose if a nation's baseline of expectation is that you could be poisoned at any moment, you'd be pretty happy if it didn't happen.

Comment status: comments have been closed. Baseball Toaster is now out of business.