Happiness is the old elephant who likes Claude Debussy

Here, then click on the speaker in the lower right of the picture for sound.

Happiness is a Chicago Metallic perforated French bread pan

Chicago Metallic Commercial II Non-Stick Perforated French Bread Pan, currently $14.97 at Amazon.

I've had this one for four years. I seem to use it whenever the weather turns cold for the first time in the fall, and then over the winter get out of the habit again. The bread it makes goes wonderfully with soup for lunch, or with some EVOO all by itself at breakfast. I often make a heartier version of French bread with a half a cup of rye flour added in to the bread flour.

Happiness is The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything, including visiting Boston in the fall

Here.

Happiness is a government worker who mocks his own sloth

Happiness is a beagle with cream cheese

Happiness is that long term statin drug use reduces heart attack and stroke incidence

Reported here:

In 2016, in a major review in the Lancet, they concluded that lowering cholesterol over five years with a cheap daily statin would prevent 1,000 heart attacks, strokes and coronary artery bypasses among 10,000 people who had already had one. It would also prevent 500 in people who were at increased risk, for instance because of high blood pressure or diabetes.

Happiness is the sight of you

Go, gentle gales, and bear my sighs along!
The birds shall cease to tune their evening song,
The winds to breathe, the waving woods to move,
And streams to murmur, ere I cease to love.
Not bubbling fountains to the thirsty swain,
Not balmy sleep to labourers faint with pain,

Not showers to larks, or sunshine to the bee,

Are half so charming as thy sight to me.

-- Alexander Pope, Autumn

Happiness is sometimes wet

Like silver coins the wet leaves gleam,

as rays of sun o'ercome the rain;

But quickly alter back to green,

as showers win the fight again.

So are my happi-nesses mine,

brief victories invading time.

-- Johnny

Happiness is inseparable love

Our two souls therefore, which are one,

   Though I must go, endure not yet

A breach, but an expansion.

   Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so

   As stiff twin compasses are two:

Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show

   To move, but doth, if the other do;

And though it in the center sit,

   Yet when the other far doth roam,

It leans, and hearkens after it,

   And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,

   Like the other foot, obliquely run;

Thy firmness makes my circle just,

   And makes me end where I begun.

-- John Donne

Happiness is frequently old

 

Old truths, old laws, old boots, old books, and old friends are the best.

-- An old Polish proverb, often repeated by Russell Amos Kirk, the sage of Mecosta

Happiness is a Kitty Kegger

Happiness is Lefas Kalamata olive oil from Greece

The 3-liter can is only $19.99 at Russo's in Grand Rapids.

Happiness is the product of just one field

 

 

Give me, ye gods, the product of one field,

That so I neither may be rich nor poor;

And having just enough, not covet more.

-- John Dryden

Happiness is in nothing too little and nothing too much

 

 

Avoid extremes, and shun the faults of such

Who still are pleas'd too little, or too much.

-- Alexander Pope

Happiness is Curly as Field Marshall Herring saying "it's now in the middle of Novonder and we ain't there yet!"

Dictator Heilstone: "Now, that we have captured all of Starvania, we must take Great Mitten!"

Field Marshall Herring: "Yah-Yah!"

Dictator Heilstone: "Yah!"

Minister of Propaganda: "Yah, you were gonna Blitz-Kreeg Great Mitten by the middle of August!"

Field Marshall Herring: "Then you said, Septober, then Octember, it's now in the middle of Novonder, and we ain't there yet!"

Dictator Heilstone: "Well, Novonder, I didn't say what year!"

Minister of Propaganda: "I don't understand it, it's only twenty miles!"

Field Marshall Herring: "Yeah, I could skip it!"

Dictator Heilstone: "Then, skip it!"

-- from The Three Stooges, "I'll Never Heil Again", July 11, 1941

Happiness is June Carter and Johnny Cash singing "Darlin' Companion"

A great performance, here, from 1971. The song's composer, John Sebastian, performs it with Mama Cass, here, in 1969.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Happiness is the cheerleaders from Wildcats (1986): You ain't got no alibi, you ugly

Here.

Happiness is Dave Coverly's Achilles' heels

Happiness is culture, the tradition of enjoyment which knows how to make much out of little

"Culture [is] the tradition of enjoyment which knows how to make much out of little . . . and cannot be had for money. ... [T]heoreticians, poets, and musicians . . . these alone can thrive on no money."

-- Oswald Spengler, The Hour of Decision, 1934

Happiness is Keith Richard stinkin' up his very own library

For the book lover, happiness might be a library cake

I content me,

And from the sting of famine fear no harm,

Nor mind it, fed with better thoughts that feed

Me hung'ring more to do my Father's will.

-- John Milton

Happiness is chicken for 77 cents per pound

On rainy days alone I dine,

Upon a chick and pint of wine:

On rainy days I dine alone,

And pick my chicken to the bone.

-- Jonathan Swift

Happiness is Indian restaurant humor

Happiness is the story of the very first person to buy a Ford Mustang

Read it here.

Happiness is the Perseid meteor shower 2018, courtesy of the Virtual Telescope Project from Castel Santa Maria in Italy

Hosted by astrophysicist Gianluca Masi, here.

Click the images to enlarge.

Happiness is a homemade bean burrito, perhaps the best for you and cheapest meal you can make for yourself

I reckon the most expensive thing is the tortilla itself, while the whole shebang is something just north of 72 cents:

Flour tortilla: 33 cents

1 oz. sharp cheddar cheese: 18 cents

2/3 cup prepared pinto beans (13 cents) and basmati rice (4 cents): 17 cents

0.11 oz. spice mixture I prepare from bulk purchased salt, onion and garlic powders, chili powder, crushed red pepper, oregano leaves and cumin: 4.6 cents.

I can season a one pound batch of beans, which makes nine burritos, however I like for 41 cents doing it this way instead of 79 cents for an unadjustable store purchased packet, a savings of 48%.

The price of the beans shown is for a store purchased one pound bag at $1.19. At Sam's Club you can cut this to 63 cents per pound by buying the 12 lb. bulk bag. Per burrito that's 7 cents instead of 13 cents, bringing the whole enchilada down to 66 cents.

The price of a little canola oil for frying is not included.

Toppings are another matter entirely, which with the salsa are really the salad part of the meal.

Happiness is heart healthy sweet bing cherries, on sale last week for $1.99/lb

This week they're $3.99, alas.

A serving is about one dozen cherries, giving you 12% of your daily dietary fiber and 16% of your vitamin C. You also get vitamins A and K, folate, potassium, calcium, zinc, iron and copper, and some important anti-inflammatory compounds.

The dark red color of cherries comes from anthocyanidins and proanthocyanidins, which are compounds that help decrease inflammation in your body, according to Michael T. Murray, author of "The Condensed Encyclopedia of Healing Foods." A 2006 article published in the "Journal of Nutrition" reports that Bing cherries can reduce inflammation associated with cardiovascular disease and stroke. The study also suggests that eating cherries can lower your cholesterol. The beneficial compounds in cherries can ease the discomfort of arthritis as well, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service.

More at the link.

Happiness is homegrown, if you know when to strike

It is many a man's case to tire himself out with hunting after that abroad, which he carries about him all the while, and may have it better cheap at home.

-- Roger L'Estrange

Happiness is Rosie, the cat with her own pack of Huskies

Here!

Happiness is a Rush Limbaugh sendup

Rush Hudson Limbaugh,

a febrile font of faux pas,

everyday, from his throne,

behind a golden microphone,

grifts millions spoutin' hoo-ha.

-- Johnny

Happiness was the plumber Alan Longmuir, founder of the Scottish supergroup Bay City Rollers

From the obituary here in the UK Guardian:

“Just a plumber from Edinburgh who got lucky” was Alan Longmuir’s dry assessment of his career. ... In their peak year, 1975, they had two UK No 1 singles, including the signature hit Bye Bye Baby; the end of that year saw them top the American chart with the stomping Saturday Night . . .. Alan and his younger brother, Derek – the Rollers’ future drummer – went to Tynecastle high school, which Alan left at 15. After a year of office work he was apprenticed as a plumber, but the job was secondary to his yearning to be a musician. ... He returned to working as a plumber and from 2000 until retirement was a bylaws inspector. ... He viewed the 70s with wry humour, saying in 2008: “I remember sitting at the bar of the Beverly Hills hotel – there was Patrick Magee, Barbra Streisand, David Soul – and Alan Longmuir, the plumber from Edinburgh.”

Omega-3 supplements found to be just as inefficacious as vitamins

Tim Chico, professor of cardiovascular medicine at Sheffield University, said it was unlikely any one element of the diet could alone prevent heart disease. “Previous experience has shown that although some types of diet are linked to lower risk of heart disease, when we try to identify the beneficial element of the diet and give it as a supplement it generally has little or no benefit,” he said. It happened with vitamins and now the Cochrane research had shown the same thing with omega-3.

“Such supplements come with a significant cost,” he said, “so to anyone buying them in the hope that they reduce the risk of heart disease, I’d advise them to spend their money on vegetables instead.”

More here.

Happiness is how far one can go on nothing more than lubricated imagination

Should but his muse descending drop

A slice of bread and mutton chop,

Or kindly, when his credit's out,

Surprise him with a pint of stout;

Exalted in his mighty mind,

He flies and leaves the stars behind.

-- Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)

Happiness is a gift of coffee: Every cup is a fond reminder of the giver

This drink comforteth the brain and heart, and helpeth digestion.

-- Francis Bacon (1561-1626)

Happiness is being a pork-eating infidel

Ounce for ounce, pork has three times less saturated fat than beef.

Happiness is a chart comparing the nutritional characteristics of cheeses

Seen here.

a

b

Happiness is eradicating plants poisonous to pets

Foxglove is toxic to cats and dogs

 

 

 

 Of simples in these groves that grow,

We'll learn the perfect skill;

The nature of each herb to know,

Which cures, and which can kill.

-- Michael Drayton (1563-1631), The Quest of Cynthia

Happiness over the 4th of July holiday was a six-pack of Edmund Fitzgerald Porter by Ohio's Great Lakes Brewing Company

Available in longnecks at Sam's Club for $7.96, plus deposit.

"Does any one know where the love of God goes

When the waves turn the minutes to hours?"

Happiness is Frankie Ford's 1959 cover of "Sea Cruise"

Here.

Oo-ee! Sort of a cross between the characters Alfred E. Neuman and Gilligan, singing.

Happiness is that you're a little less likely to die sooner if you drink coffee than if you don't

From the story here:

The apparent longevity boost was seen with instant, ground and decaffeinated, results that echo U.S. research. It’s the first large study to suggest a benefit even in people with genetic glitches affecting how their bodies use caffeine.

Overall, coffee drinkers were about 10 percent to 15 percent less likely to die than abstainers during a decade of follow-up. Differences by amount of coffee consumed and genetic variations were minimal.

Happiness is mustard from France

Unlike yours mine came on a plane from France on Air France, in the hands of two French.

Nanny nanny boo boo.

Happiness is new research which may explain why small amounts of alcohol are heart healthy

"Shun the excess in either direction" Republic 10.619a

From the story here:

In tests on mice's hearts researchers interrupted the flow of oxygen and nutrients to the heart for 30 minutes to simulate myocardial infarction – a heart attack. This was less damaging for hearts which had been exposed to alcohol, they found. Some 50 per cent of cells died during the heart attack in the hearts which was not exposed to alcohol. However, in the hearts that had been exposed to the equivalent of two cans of beer or two glasses of wine for an average man, only 30 per cent of cells died. 'Our data suggest moderate exposure to ethanol causes minor stress in heart cells but not enough to kill them,' says Professor Julio Cesar Batista Ferreira. 'Heart cells eventually create a biochemical memory to protect against stress, also known as preconditioning. 'When the cells are submitted to a higher level of stress, they know how to deal with it.'

Happiness is cheap, plentiful canola oil for a happy, healthy heart

Otherwise known as rapeseed oil.

From the story here:

Although care must be taken in handling and processing of canola oil and other vegetable oils, canola oil is a safe and healthy form of fat that will reduce blood LDL cholesterol levels and heart disease risk compared to carbohydrates or saturated fats such as found in beef tallow or butter. Indeed, in a randomized trial that showed one of the most striking reductions in risk of heart disease, canola oil was used as the primary form of fat. Whether using cold pressed canola oil provides some small additional benefit is not clear.

Happiness is how sleep, exercise, and just a little alcohol "clean" the brain, preventing dementia

If you want it prevented, that is.

From the story here:

Researchers at University College London (UCL) have discovered a combination of sleep, exercise and a small amount of alcohol all help stimulate the ‘brain drain’, preventing the dangerous build up of sticky plaques which drive dementia.

Happiness is lycopene from tomatoes in pizza, linked to lower incidence of cancer

From the story here:

Research last year showed tomatoes can slow the growth of stomach cancer, and the World Health Organization recommended in May that other countries follow a diet high in olive oil, fruits and vegetables. ... This is not the first time pizza has been said to help prevent cancer. Research in 2003 discovered people who eat pizza at least twice a week are 59 per cent less likely to develop cancer of the oesophagus, have a 34 per cent lower risk of throat cancer and are 26 per cent less likely to get bowel cancer. Dr Silvano Gallus, of the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmaceutical Research in Milan, said at the time: 'We knew that the tomatoes used in the sauce are considered to be a food that prevents certain tumours. 'However, we did not expect that pizza as a whole offered such high prevention against cancer.'