Dozen on May 9th 2010

It looks like it will be a beautiful cool and pleasant Mother's Day.

Today, I would like to talk about several things, including eyeballs, monkeys, coyotes, and money. (My goal with these blogs is to make your mind jump.)

01. Eyeballs: (If you don't want to get "grossed out", jump to item #02.) As you may have read here, I have developed macular degeneration (AMD) in my right eye and "see things as though through a glass darkly" with that eye. There are two kinds of AMD, dry and wet. Wet AMD means that new blood vessels are growing in your eye and they are leaking and covering a lot of visual area. I just found out that my AMD has developed into the wet kind and I have to get it treated quickly or my vision will get quite worse in that eye.

Treatment consists of injections of a healing substance (are your ready?) into the eyeball! As you can imagine.. this is not pleasant.. but necessary. So, I am writing this to suggest that, whatever your age, make sure that you visit an opthalmologist (a medical doctor, not just a lens maker guy) at least once each year to make sure you are not developing AMD or glaucoma. These conditions are usually, but not always, conditions for aging people. Also, AMD is hereditary. (Thanks for listening.)

02. Monkey business: Nebraska Zoo personnel were amazed to keep finding that their five orangatangs had escaped from their enclosure. The only way out was through a locked door. After a lot of investigation, they found that the boss orang (Fu Manchu) had secreted a 4" piece of wire around his teeth and was using it to pick the door's lock! And all these years I was congratulating myself for being able to pick locks with a paper clip.

03. Aliens again: The leader of one of the former Soviet Republics says that he was abducted by space aliens and was given a tour of their spaceship. Russian officials are investigating to find out if he gave them any state secrets.

Reminds me of the technician I worked with in Germany who reported that his wife would ask him questions every night when she thought he was asleep, trying to learn all about our secret radar installations.

04. Money talks: I'm amazed that our stock market computer systems are so fragile that they could be messed up by some guy typing "billion" for "million." You know, that somewhere, another guy is working up a plan to do the same thing in order to make himself a fast buck.

05. Coyotes: I've just learned that coyotes suddenly appeared on Cape Cod in the late 1970's. In order to do so, they would have had to swim the Cape Cod Canal or scurry across a long bridge.

06. Chinese English: Chinglish? Wait, Wait reports that some Chinese cities are trying to clean up their English signs that have been mis-translated: one can get an idea about that by reading instruction manuals for China-made items.

Reminds me of two stories:

A New York socialite always wore a Chinese coin around her neck as a necklace. She always wondered what the chinese characters on the coin meant. One day, she asked the Chinese ambassador who was attending one of her soirees. He did not want to reply, but she insisted. The coin read: Admit one to the Hong Kong brothel.

An English-Russian translation program translated the following phrase:

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

It came out: The vodka is pretty good, but the meat is rancid.

07. Modesty: I've heard that the Virginia Attorney General is trying to get the State Seal cleaned up. He wants to put a cover on the bare breast of the Spirit of Virtue. Someone suggested that he might next try to change the State name to Ia.


08. Sarah: New phrase to take the place of "Drill, baby, drill" .. "Spill, baby, spill"

09. Lung cancer: The other day, I counted 15 people in one city block who were smoking as they walked along. The very high price of cigarettes and risk of lung cancer obviously hasn't bothered them. But (t) one doesn't see so many cigarette butts anymore; they must be smoking them way down because of the cost.

Remember the sign that used to be in men's rooms? "Please don't throw cigarette butts in the urinals; it makes them soggy and hard to light."

Remember the phrase? "Many man smoke, but Fu Man Chu."

Remember Charlie Chan? Great movies. Get them on NetFlix.

10. Tight Quarters: Females will now be allowed to serve on submarines. Some of the atomic subs can stay submerged under the North Pole ice for months. Hey, what's the worst that could happen?

11. Schatzgeliebte! The Germans have developed a spray that makes men want to "cuddle". Does it last for four hours?

12. A match made in Heaven? Scientists have now determined that Neandertals (cave men) mated with Homo Sapiens (us guys) at some time in the deep dark past. (Geico could have told them that already.)

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