Brown Things in Motion .. OR .. Why Gigantic Baboons Don’t Study Physics

Today I was reading an article in Wikipedia about something in physics called 'Brownian Motion'. Albert Einstein used it in 1905 to explain the existence of atoms. It has to do with the random movement of small visible objects being tossed about by collisions with smaller invisible things. Part way down through the article they give an example in terms of something on the scale of human beings. BUT before you read it (if you want to), notice how I highlighted the word 'balloon'? Well, it is much more entertaining if you read the same article and replace the word 'balloon' with the word 'baboon'. How do I know this? Because when I started reading the article, I had my glasses off and I read the word as 'baboon'. What? A 10 meter wide baboon? Imagine my confusion. Then after a few sentences I realized it said 'balloon', not 'baboon'. Then I realized I had accidentally merged the "ll" with the first "o" of balloon to get a second "b". Well, in fairness my eyes are "C/II". In Roman numbers that's 100 divided by 2.

So I decided to do a little experiment on my friend. I copied the paragraph into a text editor, and changed the 7 occurrences of balloon to baboon. Next, I had my scientific friend come read the paragraph.
I wait .....

No giggle.

Just a comment about how that was interesting and he walked away.
"What???? Didn't you find that funny?", I ask
And he came back and started reading it again, asking where the humor was. "You don't think a 10 meter (33 foot wide) baboon is funny?" He had read the 'baboon' as 'balloon' throughout the whole article.

We later came to the conclusion that we both have something very wrong with our brains but in the exact opposite direction. I told him the next time he goes to the zoo, tell your wife, "Look Honey, can I have a balloon?!?!?"

Brownian Motion from Wikipedia.com

(used with permission by the GNU Free Documentation License)

Consider a large balloon of 10 meters in diameter. Imagine this large balloon in a football stadium or any widely crowded area. The balloon is so large that it lies on top of many members of the crowd. Because they are excited, these fans hit the balloon at different times and in different directions with the motions being completely random. In the end, the balloon is pushed in random directions, so it should not move on average. Consider now the force exerted at a certain time. We might have 20 supporters pushing right, and 21 other supporters pushing left, where each supporter is exerting equivalent amounts of force. In this case, the forces exerted from the left side and the right side are imbalanced in favor of the left side; the balloon will move slightly to the left. This type of imbalance exists at all times, and it causes random motion. If we look at this situation from above, so that we cannot see the supporters, we see the large balloon as a small object animated by erratic movement.

My more interesting Brown-ian version:

Consider a large baboon of 10 meters in diameter. Imagine this large baboon in a football stadium or any widely crowded area. The baboon is so large that it lies on top of many members of the crowd. Because they are excited, these fans hit the baboon at different times and in different directions with the motions being completely random. In the end, the baboon is pushed in random directions, so it should not move on average. Consider now the force exerted at a certain time. We might have 20 supporters pushing right, and 21 other supporters pushing left, where each supporter is exerting equivalent amounts of force. In this case, the forces exerted from the left side and the right side are imbalanced in favor of the left side; the baboon will move slightly to the left. This type of imbalance exists at all times, and it causes random motion. If we look at this situation from above, so that we cannot see the supporters, we see the large baboon as a small object animated by erratic movement.

True Mrs. Adventures Explaining The Venture Brothers While Venturing

This is a true story, my thoughts during some of the moments and now as I write and recall (trip was Aug 10th, 2008 and wrote the next day, transferred from MySpace later).

So we are traveling to Amarillo on Sunday and I happen to use the word "minion" in my conversation with my wife and she asks me what that word means. I tell her the best example that I know is "Henchmen" from the animated series "The Venture Brothers". So I start telling her all about The Venture Brothers, some pretty wild outlandish things are tied up in all that animated violent funny for-adults-only series. I don't know if you have seen it or not, but after several minutes deep into my explanation/story, (don't worry, she is driving), I mention that I had forgot to tell her that the arch villain of Dr. Venture is named 'The Monarch', and that he and his henchmen wear butterfly costumes. AND THEN (after several minutes of telling her EXACTLY the total truth) she looks at me and grins "You're making up all this stuff off the top of your head, quit trying to fool me" (My wife just happens to wear a LOT of blouses with butterflies, I just now remember that and make a bit of a connection as to maybe why she thought I was kidding her)

Oh, I just cracked up laughing,

"Oh come on now, you really think I can make up this kinda crap right off the top of my head????"

Yes, was her reply. (I felt truly deeply honored at that moment)

NO HONEY, all this is true, someone really writes all this stuff AND alot more, trust me, it only gets stranger than this, we're only touching the surface of the Venture Brothers here. Oh, and there are actually TWO sets of Venture Brothers to confuse things.

A little while later I tell her I remember that The Monarch's girlfriend is named "Dr. Girlfriend" and she has this very deep voice, which I very poorly imitate. I do a much better 'Willie Nelson', or 'Elmer Fudd', or Elmer Fudd trying to sound like Willie Nelson when he sings. Heh heh heh heh heh heh (staccato)

When I got to Amarillo and told my younger son (a VentBrot watcher) this story, he just died laughing, and reassured his mother that whatever dad had said was all true.

Say VentBrot people, do you need a new/another writer?

The Past Tense of the Word ’Island’

So, there are just only so many funny things in the world, but it is a big number, a very big number. Here are two stories, old men stories, that happened to me within minutes of each other yesterday.

As I was leaving the groc store yesterday on the hunt for breakfast, a very ancient man walks into the store wearing a blue Tee shirt with these words in white:
" I am the kid your parents warned you about "

I found breakfast at MCD and had just started munching when two elderly men walked by, one I have seen every once in awhile for 20 some years and the other a stranger. We exchange a Texan 'howdy' between bites and they sit down 2 tables away. The one I barely know is loud and jovial, the other speaks quietly, mainly in questions.

Loud: "After we get finished here, I need to go to Radio Shack"
Quiet: "What are you going to buy there?"
Loud: "I am gonna get some diodes and resistors"
Quiet: "What are you going to do with them"
-Knowing what diodes and resistors are, I naturally think he is going to say something like "Work on my ham radio", but no.....
Loud: "I am going to make some jewelry for my grandchildren"

Wasland
That is my new word of the day. Its what you call an 'island' that has disappeared. It will probably appear on maps in the future;
global warming;
oceans rising,
places disappearing
beneath the waves,
land that was,
no longer is,
now waving

Froggie - The Forbidden Meat in the Garden of E-rnest-den

Not much of anything that is animal in nature lasts too long in my back yard. I have a doggie doomsday killing machine for anything that lurks too long. But my latest canine training technique of 'Froggies Are Our Friends' seems to be finally working. Instead of trying to kill them (but 'play' with them first, of course), Cooper will now just watch them hop across the patio. No paw action, but his ears do perk up. The other evening there was even a brief after dinner snack of wasp killing, exoskeleton crunching and eating two of them before I could snap my photo.

Most everything else is fair game including his favorite squeak toys 'Kiboko' and 'Elefante'. Notice that Elefante lost his ears a long, long time ago ...BUT Kiboko's ears must be made out of Kevlar and connected with superglue. Cooper really works hard at trying to rip them off, but no luck after several months.

(Those are stickers and dirt - so let's head to the pool, K & E)

The name Kiboko comes from the East African Kiswahili language for 'hippo'. Cooper loves his new (3rd) pool. The first two pools have suffered the ravages of UV radiation, soccer ball impacts, snow shovels, and the West Texas weather. The dog has actually been quite kind to his pool. He loves to walk in a circle around the inside perimeter sticking his head under the water while biting at it. I just ask him, "Wanna go get some salmon?" and make growling bear noises and slowly oscillate my head sideways. He just looks at me and then buries his head into the water and imitates my motions.

He NEVERS puts his backside into the water though. So for all the neighbor cats reading this right now, beware, or your ears may look like Elefante (or worse) some time soon.

A.L. G.A.

See my photo album " A.L. G.A. on Rice " over at MySpace

My First 100 MySpace Headlines

Come visit my other blog of cartoons !!!
Tiny Pictures From My Brain



Other Collections of 100:  101-200  201-300  301-400  401-500  501-600  601-700

A Recent Headline (From April 2011) :There is financial software called 'Quicken' to help you do your bookwork, but I think the Federal Government must have bought the wrong brand, perhaps they got "Slowin", "Thicken", "Chicken" and "Quacken", version 1.0

100: Coma Toes - a medical condition I just renamed whereby your foot falls asleep, mainly at the region where the 'These Little Piggies' are.

99: Several days ago I learned that when a fly lands on your computer screen, the moving of the mouse pointer underneath him seems to have no effect. This is because he is watching your keyboard trying to steal your password. Is this how bugs get in software?

98: Ernest is going to make everyone so much happier by NOT writing in the font called 'Captcha' ever. Actually I never started but don't tell anyone that. Its our secret.

97: I was sad this morning. We went outside to play and there were no orangutans in the trees of my backyard! But then after a couple hours I remembered I live in Borger TX USA, affectionately known as the:
'Bellybutton of North America'
... and now I am less sad ;)

96: Today I learned that when a fly lands on your computer screen, the moving of the mouse pointer underneath him seems to have no effect. So he is probably not reading your screen trying to steal your password unless you use a very small font.

95: Ernest is writing, singing acapella and playing virtual guitar, all in the style of Willie Nelson with Elmer Fudd's voice, "Sometwimes Duh Woman Dwinks All Duh Viskey"

94: Ernest is writing and singing acapella an.....d playing virtual guitar, all in the style of Willie Nelson this evening, "Sometimes Your Woman Drinks All Your Coffee"

93: Ernest is.

92: Ernest invented a new word today to combine 'meticulous' carried to the level of 'ridiculous': meritdiculous

91: Ernest is playing w his 11 new Mitsubishi Uni-ball Signo Bit UM-201 Gel Pens - 0.18 mm - in lotza COLORS!!!!

90: Writing minutely on Minute Rice takes more than a minute when done right

89: Eeek eeek eeek! (The Eeek shall inherit the earth, at least the efficiency apartment complexes of a certain north west Texas town named Dumas)

88: Ernest loves his 7 new Mitsubishi Uni-ball Signo DX UM-151 Gel Pens - 0.28 mm - in lotza COLORS!!!!

87: Ernest is puzzled as to why someone would name something 'Long Island Iced Tea' and yet include no tea in the recipe and rarely include any dirt from the island itself

86: I'm sorry sir, our Bose[R] 'QuietComfort 3' Acoustic Noise Canceling headphones were not designed to quiet the other voices in your own head

85: Ernest is creating StFR, an organization for preserving the smallest, quietest, most timid, miniature lions: "Save the Faint Roarest"

84: I just bought a piece of luggage that has its own built-in raincoat - now, just how cool is that?

83: Ernest is battling residual sulfur compounds from a battle of chemical warfare between a Canis lupis familiaris and a foulsome fighting Mephitis mephitis (Dog v Skunk)

82: If you don't bother to search for truth in your life, you may as well be entertained by the conflicting lies that swirl about you.

81:The most violent thing about me is my sneeze. Its a good thing I have Benny Drill.

80: Ernest is pretty sure that he rarely accidentally sends fuses for thermonuclear devices to the wrong China (note to George Bush: it was the right one on the map)

79: If your Question of the Day is 'How can somebody possibly be that stupid?', then your Answer of the Day is 'Practice'.

78: Ernest is pretty sure that the people who want me to get in touch with my inner child really just want to know who broke that lamp in the living room 37 years ago.

77: Ancient Organic Chemist's Proverb: People who live in Styrofoam houses shouldn't drink Gasoline.

76. I really enjoy writing fiction but my real life sometimes presents such bizarre and funny episodes that its really just a matter of capturing the moment and momentum of the word heard herd.

75. I came to the realization that 'peanut butter' was invented a very long time ago by someone who just chewed on something way too long. Who knows how many "butter" await us in the future, so chew and churn.

74. There is an old cowboy saying, "If you don't beat your wife every once in awhile, you'll just take it out on your horse. And you wouldn't want to ruin a good horse". I think I'll stick to trying to beat my wife at poker.

73: This reminds me of the time cheese invaded Lithuania and liberated all the women and they danced in the streets and got the right to vote.

72. If you come to one of those "Give a man a fish or Teach him to fish" decision moments, remember there is also the "Buy him a lifetime supply of Long John Silver's coupons" option.

71. Ernest is headed towards Amsterdam. No, I'm not going TO Amsterdam, I am just going in that direction the next time I go to mom's place.

70: This is probably the 7th most important question in the universe: How much toe could a towtruck truck, if a towtruck could truck toe?

69: If you have any wise old sayings that have been handed down from previous generations that involve "pond scum" as the central sagacious character, you might be a redneck.

68: If you overlay a 'plus sign' and a 'heart' with the 'plus sign' off to the left and up a little, it makes kind of a 'Texas' shape. Happy Valentine's Day.

67: After the demolition crew blew up the old candy factory, the factory workers stood around in a pessimistic mood as the mist of PEZ candy peppered the ground.

66: The acid rain in Madrid Spain falls mainly placidly on the window panes.

65: Wanted: Actively seeking corporate sponsors for my jump into the professional circuit of Freecell competition. I just need a few more and I'm set for life, baby.

64: I had a dream that MySpace was going to remove all the periods and commas from all our messages today then put them back tomorrow. I need a better dream writer.

63: "The mother of the younger other odder otter is the daughter of an even odder older uddered otter", uttered all the raccoons and baboons from their view in the zoo.

62: I suddenly started believing in reincarnation simply because I think I know where the "former" Joseph Stalin is hiding right now. Ha ha to all my suddenly worried Baptist friends out there, just teasing, its Friday, I'm silly.

61: If at any point in your short miserable life 'Jello' has been an acceptable reward for anything, please call me and I'll set you free for a small fee so you can flee and something different be.

60: My secret for a proper weight loss program: Plenty of exercise with the puppy in the great outdoors with proper UV radiation protection for both of us. Ah, feel the burn. Hardened muscles. Two smiles. Special Olympics, maybe?

59: Kenya - My deepest sorrow in a long time is that one of my favorite parts of Africa is filled with senseless killing and bloodshed.

58: Life is just that dark, empty, meaningless, lifeless void that exists while waiting for the next episode of NCIS

57: Remember: arrows rarely kill people, but the sharp pointy part of the arrowheads do.

56: Today's Dog Thought: That orchid plant must be REALLY bad. I only get sprayed with that water bottle when I do bad things, but he gets it every day.

55: If you are the kind of person who worries about the stock market, then you are probably the wrong kind of person to be involved with it.

54: I have a private story that I can't tell you, but I can tell you that it inspired me to come up with this bumper sticker:'Honk if you love Jesus so much you would be willing to steal for him'

53: One of my siblings would only eat one fourth of their M&M's. They would give me all their reject 3&3's, E&E's, and W&W's, AND so now I'm the one with the weight problem

52: There were probably several times in history when certain people may have pondered "Why did I go with the Option A of '12 MEN' disciples when I could have had Option B, '3 WOMEN and one really smart dog'???"

51: Sometimes people are so busy smack-dab in the middle of preparing their case that they fail to recognize that they do not even have one

50 What I hope to perpetuate in summation at the end of my days is my laughter & kindness through my heirs rather than the kind of petulant loftiness of some of my ways and errors.

49 My dog is audibly dyslexic: I keeping tell him 'no' when he wants to sit 'on' my lap. At 70 lbs he is no longer an on-your-lap dog. Of course, as with most people, places, pooches and things of life, he prefers 'on' to 'no' in most situations.

48 Every time a writer dies, an angel gets a novel

47 Ultimately there is no such thing as free speech. It always costs someone something, sometimes everything, very dearly.

46 All the truly bad events of life involve some form of plumbing malfunction.

45 I have created my own non-profit organization 'United Weigh' - dedicated to helping overweight conjoined twins

44 All the truly marvelous ways of life have an element of dance to them.

43 It was trying to talk Australian but I have never studied that language so it just sounded like a strange egg laying web footed space alien minus one arm - My most recent cell phone text message

42 The sun is scheduled to burn out in a few billion years so we should be practicing to stay warm by other means such as friction

41 Every year I psychically transmit a message of "Ernest will bring me presents this year instead of Santa Claus" to all the children of the world and this is how I achieve a goal of disappointing 750 million people all on the same day

40 I have written a guide for helping people make it through the winter time blues "Driving on Black Ice, Avoid Yellow Snow, and Learn All the Words to 'White Christmas' "

39 I have written the definitive 'Guide to Cooking Bacon at an Extremely Slow Yet Accelerated Manner' due for an early Spring 2008 release. Beat the crowd and Pre-Order your copy today.

38 I have lived enough long to come to the grand conclusion that men and women are not equal and should not be treated with equality ....Women are vastly superior and must be treated as the master race.

37 I am suffering from a form of auto-self-cannibalism, I keep biting my tongue at around 3 AM and no dreams are involved, and I'm really not that hungry.

36 How is this different from that? Easy: one has Is and one has At

35 You know you have reached the sweet spot in life when you suddenly realize that you really aren't sure what day of the week it is and you really don't care and most of the time it doesn't really matter. Really? Really.

34 If you start off early using a shovel for a puppet, a dog will always be leery of it and bark & dance like a boxer. Just give the shovel a wiggle & a low, mean growl to reciprocate.

33 Currently suffering from bad peach syndrome at $1.99 a pound. That's not a disease from fruit, its a form of PDPD - produce department performance disappointment.

32 I have a banker friend in foreclosures who built his whole career on a typo. 'Carpe Dime' – seize the money

31 Cooper and I know how to split a chocolate chip cookie - I get the chochips, he gets the cookie

30 My wish for the world: To never see the sequence of the 9 letters 'O.J. Simpson' in a national news headline again till the end of time. We don't care. There are more important things and people and places. Those letters are completely wore out.

29 Note to Fox TV: Forget Hi Def, it would have been nice tonight to have had even Low Def instead of your Glow Def

28 If you thought you saw me littering by throwing something over my backyard fence today, it was just a dead tarantula. Something new for the "Killing" section of Cooper's resume.

27 My main problem in life is not spending enough time listening to music. What? I can't hear you .... headphones

26 You know life is a bit interesting when you think its Tuesday, and then you convince yourself that you were wrong and it must be Thursday only to find out that its really Friday.

25. I will be gone for a season, but still be at my house a little less tanner, as I sit still and watch the entire 3rd season of 'House' on disc in marathon manner

24. I came, I saw, I concurred

23. A garden hose is a relatively inexpensive thing to play with, and hooking it up to a faucet and getting one of those spray guns and passing water through it makes it even better, all for a few more kilo pennies.

22.News Flash: A movie star just spontaneously exploded, she became a movie supernova, her name was Ellen Burstyn

21. Identity theft? I can't imagine someone wanting to be me, much less pretend to be me. It would take too much effort on their part to get my accent down just right.

20. Every time someone walks up to me and asks, "How does it feel to be a famous movie star?", I just have to look them in the eye and truthfully reply, "I just don't know" and walk away quietly and stop signing the autographs of other people.

19. What would happen if a dyslectic person wrote on a mirror with a magic marker and then looked at the results through another mirror and tried to read it? It would be the incantation that makes the universe just implode and cease to exist.

18. You must be something, as my dog finds you more interesting than a bowl of milk

17. Some days shaving at my house is like a combination of watching the national championship rounds of the Australian sheep shearing contest in slow motion and the deforestation of the Brazilian rain forest, everything is misty,moist, and fur is flying.

16. I looked like an elk that had been beaten with a bat and had headlights shining in my eyes - quote from someone after 'WINNING' a restaurant eating contest that involved very hot spicy oily food, no utensils and a timer

15. Nothing in life is quite like a surprise that involves pork

14. 'Hairy Potter' is not the right book; that one is about a rather furry marijuana grower

13. 'Got Buffy?' - Let me interpret that for you: My wife asked me if I had any buffalo thawed out so she could make me some lasagna tomorrow.

12. The answer to your most important question of the day is: "Yes" > I got buffalo lasagna tonight

11. I don't understand why you don't understand me

10. Remember, even idiots don't like to be reminded that they're idiots

9. Don't shake the baby, don't shake the baby!!!!

8. Let the tomato sandwich eating season begin ... now

7. Let the tomato sandwich eating contest begin ... now

6. It's Friday, so that means it's Pie-Day, Mmmm... pie.

5. Maybe, just maybe, the headband on your cap is a little TOO tight

4. Whoa! My garden is doing so good this year I've got tomatoes growing on all different kinds of plants

3. Money doesn't grow on treeeeeees; it takes a cotton plant. Oh, and some flax.

2. 'One if by land, and two if by sea' - that just means that its going to cost twice as much to take a Caribbean Cruise, Sweetie

1. Teach a man to fish, and he'll just be competition at the next fishing tournament

Our Mongolian Language Lesson of the Day

The Magical Powers of Herbalwife

Certain names & numbers that been changed in this story for anonymity, but other than that, it is a true story.

Groc shopping. One of my favorite social activities, wandering through the grocery store. I have a lots of special groups/categories of friends, and one of them are the people who work at the groc store. I know tons of people there by first name. Chatting with my groc friends and the discovery of new stuff to try eating. Eating and chatting, my two favorite things, well, that just depends on what day it is.

I stopped at the free-in-miniature-quantities coffee and defective cookies stand (They were going to throw them away anyway, selection rejection collection confection ejection). One of my favorite Groc-ese is Eilsel, and her sister happens to be working in the bakery section this fine day. We begin chatting near the F-I-M-Q coffee & aforementioned cookie stand. She tells me that Eilsel is working at the groc store today and that she is doing well in her new business venture, outside her normal groc store job. This info is new to me. So later I find Eilsel's checkout line.

I asked Eilsel what her new business is, and she tells me that she has started using and selling "Herbalwife", and I tell her that my wife used to sell Herbalwife too. And then she tells me an amazing story of how she has lost 40 lbs and 75 inches. I am utterly dumbfounded, shocked and amazed. I look straight up in the air and then back down to her, and exclaim, "Wow you think I would have noticed you being that much taller than me before and then losing 75 inches. That's like (pause for quick mental math) 6 ft 3 in!"

By this time she is cracking up laughing, probably another side effect of Herbalwife. So I thought of a logical scientific explanation and told her, "I bet it was like magic or something. Or maybe you secretly put it in the drinking water for the entire city of Borger and now everyone has lost 75 inches (depending on how much you drink BORGER's water – hint: taste) and people come from miles around to see the little tiny teenie people of Borger and we all became scared of the giant people invading Borger and that's why we built the walls around the city to keep the giants out when we could have earned a lot of money from tourism."

Her laughter, which got really bad when I mentioned that thing about the shrinking people and foreigners (non-Borger-ese) being giants, finally subsided and she said, "No, silly, I lost 75 inches of body measurements all together, you knew what I meant." I asked her if I could write this story and blog it, and she said yes, and I even confirmed that she didn't have to proof the story first.

Such a trusting soul. Another bad side effect of Herbalwife.

Which now makes me think, if you measure ENOUGH body parts, I'm sure you could easily lose 75 inches just by dropping a few pounds.

Poor math skills, another bad side effect of Herbalwife.

Karma or Amtrak?

I did not, happily, write these questions
I did, sadly, write these answers.

Do you still own any VHS tapes?

Yes, where are they … yes, there they are in my time capsule waiting for me to close the hatch. Click.

How many jobs have you had?

Lots. Sold eggs door to door, human dishwasher in a restaurant – twice, SD & TX, carpenter's son, well digger's son, (same father!), combine operator (again, same father) - twice, roofer, now, without my father's help: chemist, computer baby sitter, blend chemist, programmer, chemist, computer babysitter (AGAIN!), dog sitter, chemist. I want to retire soon to study the science I am interested in and be an artist and a writer and … but mainly I want to play with my dog. That is 4 years and 365 days away. It's a leap year thing. I won't add my usual XX hours and YY minutes and ZZ seconds.

What's your favorite kind of soup?

Hah! There are just toooo many …..

Do you still have your wisdom teeth?

I have wisdom and teeth. And I have one wisdom tooth left in my head because of the JERK idiot disguised as an oral surgeon who couldn't manage to finish the job. Now I bite the inside of my mouth WAY TOO often. Call me if you want his name and business address to avoid him ….. his brother at the other end of the building has a much better reputation.

Did you ever collect Beanie Babies?

Yes. Here is a picture of Cheeterie and Tigger on my trip to the Grand Canyon. Currently Tigger is propped precariously at the "Northeast" corner of my video monitor at work where he constantly inspects everything I do. You could say he is my "Maine" Beanie Babie at the moment. Cheeterie belongs to someone else, I just rescued him from his neglectful owner and he "accidently" wound up going to Arid-zona, against the wishes of Tigger who can be jealous and has that "I'm The Only One" attitude. 

Other photos in the MySpace album "Arid-zona 2003"

When was the last time you got a haircut?

My wife is a cosmetologist and I am a cosmologist, yet our planets don't align often enough and she needs to orbit my orb and bar-bor it rob it of it robe of fur. Okay, I ran out of "R-O-B" type words.

Have you ever been to a bachelor/bachelorette party?

Too many. Mine was rather boring. No alcohol. Just one brother.

Is your next birthday coming up soon?

Yeppa, in just four days! Half a century of wandering, wondering, and one wedding ring.

What's the last board game you played?

The only board game I ever play is 'Sequence'. No more chess. I stopped playing that game about 35 years ago and then about 2 years ago for the second and hopefully last time. It just depends on what the wishes are of the grandkids when they arrive in the far distant future.

Do you actually eat 3 meals a day?

Define meal, eat, act, you, all, do and day. No need to define three.

How many cars have you ever owned?

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,,,,, how many have been in my name? A lot, but other people actually wear them out. My last car I drove for 12 years.

Can you do math in your head well?

It depends on the kind of math and the condition of my head and the atmospheric pressure and current state of nuclear warfare alert "DEFCON" number according to the military supreme hierarchy, say isn't that math too? Wargames.

What's your least favorite chore to do around the house?

I actually love all of my chores as I enjoy being alive and then running out into the mountains of Bavaria and bursting into song because the plains are alive with the sound of .. then a lion cub licks my face and I wake up.

Do you ever read the weather forecast?

1 – that is the shortest way I know for saying 'yes', as in binary logic first invented by ancient folks like Egyptians and Chinese and later refined by Bacon, von Leibniz, and finally George Boole, giving us Boolean logic ushering in the computer science world and digital electronics. Somehow my worlds shortest form of YES just became waaay tooo long, darnsies. Oh, I forgot to tell you that 0 means 'NO', just in case you would like to use this system of 0 and 1. 0?

Who is your favorite Star Wars character?

The tall hairy son of someone named Ford. Harrison Ford.

What radio station do you listen to the most?

I never listen to radio stations… they still exist?

What was the first thing you ever learned how to cook?

Eggs, because my mother "over"-cooked them to please my father's carbonized morning appetite, die if you ate it, diet. Mmmm, a fried egg sandwich with mustard, my specialty. Just like in the movie 'Havana' with Robert Redford and somebody else Scandal-navian who pretended to sound Cuban and fooled only people from Oriental countries, I'm sure.

How old were you when you got your driver's license?

Dezesseis, but I "legally" killed a pheasant with a Pontiac Catalina station wagon with (I think) 455 caliber cubic inch V-8 w a four barreled carb in Kansas while headed south on highway 83 at age 15 with an officially sanctioned SD Learner's Driving Permit. Actually the front grill killed the bird, not the engine. The cargo box on top stopped him. My father skinned him. We later re"grill"ed him. My paternal grandfather handed me a cigarette. Pall Mall. My nervous hands could not find a match. He held one up for me. By the way, the Chinese Ring Necked Pheasant Phasianus colchicus torquatus is the state bird of South Dakota, that's what they get for wandering off to a dangerous place like Kansas where children smoke the same brand of cigarettes that later kills both grandfathers.

Today's main lesson boys and girls: Never go pheasant hunting with a doubled carburetor if a four barrel is available. And don't smoke cigarettes, at least in Kansas, immediately after killing your first pheasant.

…and finally…

Do you believe in karma?

Add a 't', and I probably come closer to believing in the near reverse, "Amtrak". Someday soon I hope to sneak away from a certain amount of my known universe and go to Garden City in Kansas. There I will go to 100 North 7^th Street. Buy a choo choo train ticket. Then get on a choo-choo train. Only now I understand they no longer make that exact noise due to a lack of steam, maybe. Then I will peacefully steal away to somewhere far far far away on two pieces of steel, as my eyes stay full of new country side and my cameras going click click click and zoom zoom as the train goes clickity-clack and zoom on the metal track. I still think choo-choos still make that particular sound 'clickity clack' due to the tracks even if they don't go choo choo as they go, but what do I know? I made it back to Kansas......without a cigarette or a match or a grandfather, with only both of their names now equally hidden in mine.

e s b b

My Salamander, The Demander

My Salamander, The Demander

My salamander on my desktop asked me today, "I wish you would give me something to do"

He is about 4 inches long and made of cloth, and is painted a bunch of strange colors, a gift from someone on a road trip from a long time ago, (I think Jill, while she was in New Mexico). I think he is kind of like a bean bag chair. Just don't let him know that I said that about him.

I said "I'm busy right now, leave me alone"

He said, "Say, I have been sitting here for nearly two months since you got back to work and who do you think keeps throwing things at you when you fall asleep and keeping you from getting fired? Its me! Now give me something to do OR people are going to start hearing you snore!"

So I gave him my Texas Instruments Model TI-1775 Calculator.

He said, "What should I do now?"

I said, "How about solving the global energy crisis?", and I thought that should keep him busy for a while.

Silence.

Pretty soon I fell asleep again at my desk and he didn't throw anything at me and I had some dream that involved Iceland, zebras, and Santa Claus.

"DONE!"

14 minutes.

Wow, that was fast!

A couple of years from now when the Nobel Prize committee is handing out the award in Economics to Ernest's Salamander for his work on solving the global energy crisis, you will know which 'Ernest' they are talking about, and which 'Salamander'. But I am not counting on getting any of the prize money. You know how salamanders are about their money. And now you will know who to thank when the price of gas finally goes down.

The next day.....
When I took my salamander back to work after his photo shoot, I gave him a name and educational title to go with the story. I put them on a sign by the corner of my desk where he now resides slaving away at other deep dark scientific & mathematical problems that plague mankind & sala-mankind-der.....

Ernest's New Assistant:

Dr. Sol M. Andrews, Ph.D

Specialist in Global Economics Involving Crisis of Oil (GEICO)

18 Years Ago Today

April 21st 2008

18 years ago today at 10:30 AM I became an artist. It was a Saturday. It involved Mickey Mouse. Minnie. And D. Duck. The longer version will come later, I have to go to work now....

The Cost of Humor

Being a scientist, mathematician, and an artist all rolled up in one, as someone who studies thermodynamics, I know that essentially nothing is free. $omeone is always paying $omething, $omewhere, $ometime, eventually. Even for comedy.

$ome things may be very cheap; there may be 100 funny things in a Reader's Digest issue. A penny a pun.

My satellite TV monthly bill is pretty high, but divided out into 2.7 people (that includes the dog who is becoming more human all the time. He is probably 70 percent.) and the number of shows we watch, its certainly less than a dollar a show on average. Oh, I forgot to amortize the TV. Okay, two dollar$ a $how.

Other things may come at an extreme price. My "Happy New Year, Its Bumper Stealing Season!" story, several hundreds of dollar & hours of my time to replace my son's stolen bumper. You'll have to wait for that $tory to come out in my book and pay for it, its not "free" in My$pace. $nicker.

$ometimes friendships dissolve for bizarre reasons but it is only much later that the humor of the situation finally arrives. It's pretty hard to put a price on that.

With most people we aren't around them for most of their life, so there are stories from certain bygone eras. You don't find out about the really funny things of someone's life until you go to their funeral. Wow, now that'$ was pretty expen$ive for $omeone.

Bacon Jealousy

(Contents of a letter to a fellow bacon lover)

I just wanted to let you know that if you felt jealous of anyone in the universe just now and didn't know why it was me consuming bacon. Mmmmm.

Here is an Arabic funny: Most Arabic speakers are Muslim, non-pork eaters. So what is the word for meat in Arabic? laHam

he he he, ha ha ha, ham ham ham

I made my sandwich internally very pretty with a geometric swirl of purple onion. I sliced the onion in half. Then I took the pieces apart and arranged them starting on the outside of the burger and going inward, starting with the longest piece first. Then each successively smaller piece was offset spirally clockwise a little bit until the onion covered the burger in an even manner. (Now I wrote all this to give you a recalculation of the phrase 'a picture is worth a 1000 words', in this case its worth 67. What a bargain! Okay, its worth 108 if you include this explanation)

Re-enactment of the purple pieces spiral:

The Apes of Wrath by a Non-Steinbeck

Here is my latest dumb joke.

An old toothless gorilla walks into a bar and suddenly remembers that he left his false teeth at home. The bartender notices, as the gorilla is a regular customer, and forgets his teeth about half the time. Then its very difficult to understand the gorilla when he talks, especially after he's had too many drinks.
So the bartender asks him, "Would you like to have your 'banana' tonight in liquid form as a 'daiquiri'?"
The gorilla replies, "Nah, gnaw banana"

So just as soon as I wrote this joke I called my mother to tell her. She is typically the first "victim" of my humor. So I explained that I wrote it working backwards starting from the word 'banana' as I was making my grocery list. I had just asked my wife if she wanted a banana and that sparked me to try to write a symmetrical sentence with the syllable sounds "nah,nah,bah,nah,nah".

Oh, I just love silly symmetry.

So while I was still on the phone with my mother, I cracked up laughing, telling my wife in the other room, "Oh Honey, you inspired me to write an old toothless gorilla joke", ...

to which my mother warned me, "she's probably going to hit you for saying something like that."

Everybody - Lets Learn to Wiggle Properly!

Wiggle!
(I like how the white part of her eyes and her right toe don't move. I don't have a name for this particular talent just yet, still working on it)

From the "W" section of the Children's English-Portuguese Picture Dictionary

When I Was Eight

When I was eight I asked my mom to decorate my room with Macho Pete cartoon characters, but partial temporary deafness on her part resulted in Machu Picchu decor and an arduous 3 hour journey to the top bunk every night, but the frigid cold was held at bay by alpaca wool and a bedtime story from the Dolly Llama, my big sister in costume. Mother could get things so spectacularly wrong at times. I can still recite my sister's versions of Tibetan folk lore, though people have remarked how much it sounds like Spanish.

When I was eight I would be fascinated at the beginning of every evening dinner meal as my smiling mother would pour very cold water onto very cold ice in my Johnny Quest tumbler and have slush form centimeters away from my nose as I watched with glacial glee. Then suddenly one evening I was reminded of my much earlier childhood days of the Inuit word for slush "nook-ka-noo" only that isn't real Inuit but the Inuit of my dreams when I fell asleep during Mrs. Petersen's 6th grade afternoon fictional reading story time earlier the same day. Yes, go ahead, do the math, be jealous, I was pushed a few grades ahead for brilliance.

Absolutely none of this blog post is true.

The Strange, Change & Rearrange Sentence Game

My son and I play a silly game with sentences. He will text me a goofy sentence and then I rearrange them with a minimal amount of adds or drops of any words. I use a variety of features such as busting words apart down to syllables, combining, reversing, look for homonyms, etc. Make your own set of rules! I am sure we were influenced by the "wise" man in the movie "Mystery Men" who would spout off mysterious sayings that were really just half a sentence followed by a reversed half.

Sentence: Seals rarely eat Bob Hope's children
Response: The children of seals hope to eat food that bobs.

Sentence: The real question is do you love ponies?
Response: Ponies do love real equestrians.

Sentence: Hippos that love pudding don't reenact the bright spots of Howie Mandel's career
Response: He posed at the Louvre putting donuts in the nuclear reactor but now he stops as the deli man appears.

Sentence: Sometimes I look to the ghost of Macaulay Caulkin for advice when needed. He's not dead so thats a roadblock that has to be overcome (by killing him).

Response: Sometimes I see the ghost of Vice President Ford on his knees chasing Macaulay Caulkin. And the voice keeps saying, "Run Forrest, Run!!!", oh sorry, wrong movie. He is not dreadlocked under his hat, so come over and we'll be recycling him.

Sentence: Gastrointestinal disorders affect more than eagles.

Response: Ben Affleck and AFLAC have ordered Castro to stop testing morphine on the knees of all girls.

Just A Few Q That Characterize You

1. Describe your hair when you first saw it this morning in the mirror:

Japanese war lord

2. When you hear the word 'Kodiak', you think of:

(Actually, all of these in one big blurry moment)

a) An Island

b) A Bear

c) The brand name of a shovel in the northwest corner of my garage

d) Film (I realize the last one is wrong, 'Kodak', but I still thought of it)

3. What is your most common typing mistake?

Its not myfault! Thestupidspace bar doesn't workreliably.

4. Are you taller than most people?

Taller than most people of the 13^th century according to the size of the doorways of castles & body armor.

5. If you had a choice of being abducted by aliens, would you choose Mexicans or little green people from far far away?

If I have to base my answer on 'cheese', I'll go with Mexicans. I just love Kraft "Mild Mexican Velveeta" cheese versus the myth of the moon being made out of cheese. Thank you Neil Armstrong for clearing that up!

6. If little green aliens abducted you, would you prefer to go to one of their planets or a moon?

Whichever one has 5 star accomodations. And a heated pool. And Dr. Pepper, maybe?

Order Your New Valentines Day Card Early While Supplies Last

On the front cover of the Valentines Day card is a picture of a wife in the dining room at the table saying in her best Jerry Springer show guest voice "You should be lucky I made you lunch!"

On the inside of the card is a husband in the kitchen replying in his best gangster serial Anthony Hopkins killer voice "You should be lucky I let you live"

Oh, sorry, this isn't a card, its something that happened at my house earlier today in our "The Sound of Music" existence about 10 minutes ago. (Jan 6th, 2008) Oh, silly-silly us.

A Sad Miserable Life?

You lead a sad miserable life if:

Your psychologist retires just to avoid talking to you.

You are dying from falling off a cliff and your life is flashing before your eyes but then you realize that they put in the wrong tape and it's somebody else's life.

Your best dreams are just automobile commercials from television and they aren't even the good ones in high definition.

You went ahead with the shotgun wedding only to find out that there was no gift of a new shotgun as you had expected from your future father-in-law. Only a used one in the far distant future as spelled out in his will.

Other people are in charge of making your New Year's resolutions that have *serious* consequences attached for failure from the other gentlemen on your cell block.

You discover in your college microbiology class that your mother's technique of washing dishes "lets wipe everything off" is a little bit inadequate.

Your children continue to remind you decades after the event of you trying to trick them by making your own version of Heinz 57® Sauce as an utterly expensive nasty tasting failure.

You di$cover that your mother ha$ been paying everyone to be your friend in My$pace and now they have banded together a$ a union a$king for a pay increa$e.

You buy your first house with one of the stated benefits, from the kind elderly couple, being "free water, sewer and trash" only to discover a bill one day in the mailbox for five years worth after living there only two.

After a few scrapes with the law your parents tell you (and everyone else) that you were adopted, even though you weren't.

You have never left North Dakota because your father told you that you couldn't without a visa and every time you ask someone to help you with the application process they tell you that you don't need one and you just know your father wouldn't lie to you. And he lives in a different state. And he won't tell you which one. Oh well, back to the pig farm.

You have bumped your head so many times on the same object that people start making bets on whether you are going "to do it again this time".

The main thing you are known for at work is for wandering around looking for free food.

You are finally rescued after 11 years. You have stood on the beach and waved frantically at thousands of low flying airplanes. Then you are told that you have been on a "desert peninsula", not island, and the airport that services a city of 2 million people is right over there.