Saturday, June 26, 2010

Summer 2010 is here and we're still crazy.

Another dozen:

01. Communication. One young man sitting near me said to his friend: "I was like, well, I mean, you know." His friend nodded, so I guess he knew.

02. Another fatwa: An Iranian Ayatollah has condemned the keeping of dogs as pets, because they are not clean and cause some people to love them more than people in their family. (What about cats, gerbils or hermit crabs?)

03. Eat your veggies! The garden on our deck has now produced:

6 bags of lettuce
lots of dill
2 5" zukes
2 8" zukes
4 red tomatoes

Hey! We're farmers!

04. Another young terrorist. A 7-year old was kicked out of a Rhode Island second grade class for having toy soldiers with guns glued to his hat! (When will those gangsters learn to stop breaking the law!)

05. Das Vaterland. I heard on the radio that Homeland Security was named as a joke that stuck, even though Americans don't refer to the U.S. as their "homeland."

06. Appropriate name: A lady calling a radio talk-show was named Patience Waite.

07. Carry on luggage? Airport workers in Arkansas found a bunch of human heads when they inspected a package. Police reported that they were just being sent to a medical company and that was ok. (Was Bin Laden's head one of them?)

08. Got trolls? I heard that a movie is about to be filmed about those little trolls from the '70's, so if you haven't thrown them out, you might want to keep them as an investment. (What about "my little ponies?")

09. Important information: The fruit (or vegetable) with the most fiber is the avocado. (I didn't know that!) And the name comes from the Aztec word for testicle, "ahuacatl."

10. Can't women let men have anything of their own? Fibanserin is a drug that is being called "the female viagra." (I wonder how the FDA is testing it.)

11. Hayabusa recall. The Japanese have successfully retrieved a geological sample from the Itokawa asteroid! (Think about that for a while!)

12. A new terrorist ploy? Bedbugs have invaded Goldman Sachs offices in Jersey City. (Serves them right!)

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Sunday, June 20, 2010

Old and New, Borrowed and Blue (maybe)

Here's another dozen:

01. Prophetic. I'm trying to solve a crossword puzzle from 1943 and one of the clues states: "Chirping note." The answer, of course, is TWEET. (How did they know?)

02. Self-mutilation. Last year, at a WalMart store near Ocean City, I noticed that almost everyone, old and young, male and female, had tattoos. Last week, at a WalMart store in Westminster, Maryland, I noticed that almost everyone, old and young, male and female, had tattoos. I predict that the most lucrative profession in the year 2030 will be Tattoo Remover.

03. Methuselah? Former Illinois Governor, Rod Blagojevich, faces a total of 415 years in jail.

Do you remember those great lyrics:

Methuselah lived 900 years,
Old Methuselah lived 900 years,
But what use is livin'
When no woman will give in
To no man what's 900 years?

04. Retired? Who said this?

Somebody asked me: "What did you do today?
I said: "Nothing."
"But isn't that what you did yesterday?"
"Yes, but I wasn't finished."

05. Cholesterol: Would you go to the Australian restaurant where you are required to eat everything on your plate or be banished? Chef Ichikawa says he is serious about this.

Is that bad? "I say: Nay Nay!"

06. Somebody is watching you! I just read that General James Clapper (!) has been nominated to become coordinator of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. I hope that Jimmie will be able to get them coordinated enough to find Ben Ladin. (Maybe they already know where he is. If so, why don't they help the guys with hand grenades and samurai swords get to him. )

Question: how did that guy get on a US plane with his sword if I get stopped when my metal collar button sets off the metal detector?

07. Aging: I like this poem by Suzan L. Wiener, that was in Mature Living magazine.

You know you're getting older,
And this is true I guess,
When your life in the fast lane
Is now just the supermarket express.

08. Samuel Clemens: Mark Twain was known all over the West for the Celebrated Jumping Frog story, but when the New York Times published it so the East would know about him, they mis-named him Mark Swain.

09. Beam me up! I'm told that William Shattner auctioned off his kidney stone. I wonder how much he got for it.

10. Church stuff: Elaine likes to see the burrowing animals that inhabit the sloping lawns around the local Catholic church. She calls them: Holy Gophers.

Somebody told me that there is a Catholic church somewhere that is called "Lovely Bones".. I haven't checked it out yet.

Church names are interesting: When I went to a Quaker "church".. it was called the Friends Meeting House. What a nice name.. although it was misleading because if any of us young boys started to nod off waiting for the spirit to move someone to speak, we were subjected to a hearty crack on the head by a long pole-wielding unfriendly old-timer.

Later in my childhood, I went to the "First Baptist Church." I don't recall there being a "Second Baptist Church".. I'm sure there was somewhere. I'm also sure there was never a "Last Baptist Church." I could be wrong.

Some folks know that I was ordained in the Church of Modern Apostles in the 1970's. I still can legally perform weddings in the State of Florida. Actually, anybody can perform marriages in most states as long as the parties to the marriage get appropriate licenses.

11. Computers! (Watch it.. this is boring.. so just skip over it.) I have a lot of computers, partly because I never throw anything away. Let me give you an inventory:

A. One of the first laptops.. it weighs about twenty-five pounds. (Carry-on luggage?)

B. A laptop that I backed over in Massachusetts. It still works, except for the screen.

C. A replacement laptop, that has half of its screen messed up.. yes, I dropped it.

D. A desktop that is driving me crazy. I'm ready to throw it out the window. Its main function is as a network base. At least it actually does that ok.

E. A new laptop with VISTA. Every day it has a problem that takes me a long time to fix. But it has a very user-friendly keyboard, and I like it when it is working. Every once in a while it becomes unfixable and I have to restore it to its pristine condition and lose a lot of information.

F. A mini-laptop which was very cheap to buy and is easy to carry around and store. However, my fingers are a little too fat for the keyboard.. and pictures don't show up very well on the small screen.

G. A DROID. I like it, but it also has small keys.. my daughter-in-law gave me some tips about it and that has helped me learn to use it. The battery gets used up fast so I have to charge it up every evening. It takes nice pictures.

H. Three CPU's from earlier computers.. a technician says he can take all of the data from them and put it on a CD that I can then download/upload to one of my newer computers and see what I thought had been lost when I upgraded.

12. Celebration. Please be advised that July is National Baked Bean Month. (I'm sure that Larry the Cable Guy will have something to say.. or do.. about that.)
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Sunday, June 13, 2010

Breakthroughs and Insights

It's amazing what one can learn in just one week's time. From pants to crocs, from Rush to Ozzie, and from Futball to cockroaches.



01. Hope for men everywhere: Ladies, have you noticed that your husband has started to carry a basketball around his waist? Some men (present company excluded of course) develop a little (?) paunch when they reach a certain age. This presents a big problem, because if a man used to have a 30 inch waist, but now, because of good living, measures 46 inches around that same waist, pants no longer fit him and he must either buy suspenders, or give up wearing pants altogether.



Now, there is good news for such men.. as shown in the June 2010 issue of Funny Times magazine, famed cartoonist Mark Parisi has let us see "slant-top pants". What a great idea! The back top of the pants are at what used to be the waist, and the belt area slants down to below the belly area, allowing a "melon carrier" to be fashionable and comfortable once more.

02. Short People again: On Wait Wait Don't Tell Me this week, it was reported that France's Sarkozy has now ordered that all of his bodyguards be shorter than his 5'5" stature. When will this end?

They also mentioned that Napoleon was taller than Monsieur Sarkozy at 5'6" or 5'7". That is a surprize to me.. and probably to all the other people who believed that Nappy was around 5' nothing. Hitler was 5'6". Mussilini was 5'6". Stalin was 5'6". Randy Newman might have been right. (But Charles DeGaulle was 6'5" as was our greatest President: Abraham Lincoln.)

03. The Privileged Class: Prior to Princess Diana's death, she and Fergie were observed poking people in the butt with their umbrellas at the Ascot races. (There is the beginning of a poem there, Brother Joe.)

04. American Pie?: GM recently put out a memo requesting that all employees refrain from calling the Chevrolet "Chevy"... too undignified? There were "Chevy" jars set up.. and whenever anyone said the dreaded word, they had to put a quarter in the jar.

My GM stock is now worth about 3 pennies total. I wonder if it will ever go back up again.

05. Beach buoys? Experts have now concluded that crocodiles surf.

In a related story, reptiles have now been banned from public streets, the beach, the boardwalk, alleys and sidewalks in Ocean City, Maryland.

06. Wedding daze: Rush Limbaugh has hired Elton John to perform at his upcoming wedding. He will be paying him one million dollars.

In a related story, it has been determined that orangutangs in the zoo get a bigger kick out of watching humans than humans get watching them.

07. Spelling: A young lady has won the National Spelling Bee. The word that won her the prize was "stromuhr"... my German analysis says this relates to "stream clock".. now what the hell is that? I guess if you are in the medical profession you would know that a "stromuhr" is "a rheometer designed to measure the amount and speed of blood flow through an artery."

OK, now what is a "rheometer"?

Speaking of "spelling", fortune tellers can now legally deceive their customers in Annapolis, Maryland.

08. Doctor, Doctor: The London Sunday Times has announced that Ozzie Osbourne will now be health advisor for their paper.

When Willie Nelson heard about it, he cut off his pigtails.

09. Where is Pele when we need him? I hear that the North Korean fussball team doesn't want to use the new type ball because it is "cursed".

Speaking of "cursed", I also hear that futball referees have been attending the "World Cup Cursing Class for Referees" so that they will know when to be offended and when to throw the "offenders" out of the game. (Or "East Enders?"

10. Heart Healthy: Somewhere I read that there is a new wine from the Netherlands called "Choco Vine". You can guess what that tastes like. I think that you could make your own recipe.. just take that half-eaten Valentines Day heart, melt it in a pan, and mix it with some cheap Burgundy wine, stick it in a wine glass, and drink it to get all the goodness of red wine combined with chocolate.

11. New Terrorist Tactic: It has been reported that terrorists are about to change their tactics.. since they are probably running out of idiots who want to self-destruct. The new tactic will be to leave empty boxes here and there... to annoy us.

12. Tim Conway story: Famous funny man, Tim Conway, told this story on NPR the other day. At a party, when he went into the rest room, he decided to wrap himself in toilet paper. After amusing the guests with "mummy" schtick, someone took a polaroid picture of him and pasted it onto his drivers license.

Tim stayed in his toilet paper suit to drive home.. he tried to drive a little fast so that he would be stopped. Sure enough, a State Trooper stopped him and asked for his license. Tim showed him the license with the picture pasted on. The trooper looked at the picture and then at Tim and said: "Ok, you can go, but try to drive a little slower."

This story is a lot like my Social Security monkeys story.. elsewhere within my blogs.

.... See ya!

Saturday, June 05, 2010

Number 200. From Mozart to Tipper Gore.

Since this is my 200th blog entry, I may get a little carried away, but not far.

01. Eine kleine Scheissmusik! Sewer workers in Berlin are playing Mozart 's music to keep microbes happy so they continue to do their job by breaking down sludge. Those Germans seem to always be on the forefront of technology.

02. Bird drops: Indian police have arrested a pigeon for supposedly spying for Pakistan. Were they given a tip by a stool pigeon?

03. Oklahoma 1: An Oklahoma artist has presented his work, which contains a representation of the Virgin Mary holding a knife and a hand grenade, and also a nun wielding a machine gun. Even Dali didn't dare to do that.

04. Oklahoma 2: An Oklahoma prison has issued clown suits to their inmates. That way, if they escape, they will be immediately recognisable, especially by 7 year olds coming home from the circus. Maybe, if a few of the prisoners escape together they can commandeer a small volkswagen getaway car and avoid detection.

Speaking of the circus: e.e. cummings wrote "Damn everything but the circus!...damn everything that is grim, dull, motionless, unrisking, inward turning, ... damn everything that won't get into the circle, that won't enjoy, that won't throw its heart into the tension, surprise, fear and delight of the circus, the round world, the full existence..."

One of these days, I'll write about my experiences as a circus worker.

I have read that some prisons are already giving the prisoners pink "uniforms" to wear. And, of course, some of them like pink, and there is nothing wrong with that.

05. Crossword puzzler is puzzled: Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me reports that an 89 year old crossword puzzler in Britain was surprized when he looked for crossword help on the Internet. He keyed in the definition which read: Wild Asian ass. The answer looked for was: onager. Guess what he got back.

06. Golden Girl Gone: I was saddened to read that Rue McClanahan has passed away. I really enjoyed her many tv rolls, especially her part in the Golden Girls. She was younger than I am!
(I think she was married 36 times. I could be wrong. But she was pretty enough to catch the eye of many men.) Now, only Betty White is left from that great show, which, of course, can be seen every night at 2 am on most local tv stations.

07. Low cost safety: One can now buy a fake flickering tv for around $30. This can be left on when you are sleeping or away on a trip. A burgler, looking to break in, will supposedly see the blinking from the faux tv and go pick on somebody else.

08. Oh, Oh! Subway has announce that they will now begin to "tessellate" the cheese on their sandwiches. Won't that make them heavy and hard on false teeth?

09. Green Side Up! Two million "Shrek" glasses are being recalled because of excess cadmium in the glass. Too much gray pigment? Perhaps they could be dumped into the BP hole.

10. Gimme a call! Tony Robbins, a famous motivational speaker, has offered his telephone number for one million dollars. That will allow the buyer to call him up for advice anytime of the day or night. (You can have my number for a lot less.)

Speaking of telephone numbers: A friend of our family used to call often to speak to my wife and when I answered, she would say: "Hello, big boy!" in a sexy voice. One day, a business person called and left a number at which to be called. I misdialed the number, and a sexy voice said: "Hello, big boy!" and started to say, "Welcome to the ....... sex line." I quickly hung up because I didn't want such a charge to show up on the telephone bill. But.... I swear both sexy voices were from the same person. I had always wondered what our friend did for a living.. now I think I knew. My wife would not let me mention the situation to her friend.

11. God is watching you! The teacher at a religious high school was fired for joining an atheist group on the Internet. She joined at home, using her own computer, so the question is: How did the school administrator know that she had joined?

12. Speaking of the Internet: It was sad to hear that Al and Tipper Gore were going to call it quits after 40 years of marriage. It'll be interesting to hear what Leno and Letterman make out of this. There are so many possibilities to weave keywords in: global warming and ky jelly, the Internet and Tipper (I mean Twitter), etc etc. Its tough to be in public life and have a private life. Good luck to them.

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Wednesday, June 02, 2010

Dear Me!

Early this afternoon, Elaine saw a lone deer come through the tall grass in back of our house and make a kind of cave within the grass. We had never seen a lone deer since we moved here. They always travel in groups of between 5 and 9.

We thought that maybe she got lost or was dying and wanted to be alone.

After watching her for a long time, Elaine noticed that another creature was suddenly sharing her cave. She had given birth to a little baby deer. Although just born, the little guy was able to walk on his wobbly legs and she had a hard time keeping him from wandering off.

She spent a long time washing him off and must have gotten him fairly clean when Elaine noticed another little creature in the grass cave. She had given birth to two baby deer. The second one is not as brave as the first one and seems to be content to lay there and get licked.

Well, there it is.. the wonder of birth! The cycle of life. Ain't it great!

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