Final Note

2011

This has been a truly marvelous year! 

We (as a human married couple) have learned several new things and performed a lot of eXperiments. We will see what pans out in the coming year. Exciting.

We (as a human with a dog for a best friend and hopefully vice versa) have had a blast learning to take care of each other. I feel our communication skills are getting better all the time, fascinating.

Me (as an individual) - it has been quite a joy to spend an even larger percentage of my time writing this year, but actually its been even more wonderful to make so many new friends through blogging in just this last year. So that really means I have got so much enjoyment from reading all your blogs and sharing private joys and heartaches as well. I look forward to the coming year(s) of blogging.

The final question of the year that my wife asked me: Did you know that Chuck Norris is in his SEVENTIES?!?!?

According to wikipedia he is 71, birthday on March 10th, 1940

Answer: No, I did not know he was that old.

How perfect of a way to end the year: Watching an hour of Coldplay perform their Austin City Limits show. I am not sure what year/date, let's see ... Searching ... Oh,my,,,,,it appears that COLDPLAY is south of me in TEXAS LIVE playing at this very moment, how cool! What a wonderful surprise!

Update ... even better it now appears to be longer than an hour going past midnight. At 5 minutes after they are now performing my favorite - Paradise

Clocks at 10 after.

Fix You at 15 after.

Every Tear Is A Waterfall at 20 after.

The End ... of the show,

The Beginning ... of a new year.

I Must Go Down To The Sink Again

I am on the couch reading in the living room.

Cooper comes out from the bedroom and complains, standing there in the hallway.

I tell him, "No, Ernie can't snuggle right now, I have to do the dishes."

He makes no more noise (a rarity) and immediately turns around and goes back into the bedroom.

I Am Not of Odd

Odd ?

6 AM

After suffering the incessant early morning rumble of the neighbors car as it warms up for twenty minutes, an investment in an engine block heater (from my funds) for his go-cart is looking, no: *sounding*, yes, sounding like a pretty good deal.

Noon

You know you've had an interesting vivid recurring dream-nightmare when you wake up and try to call your friend and chew him out (jokingly) for not rescuing you. He was s'pposed to be there with the key to open the door! I even woke up and went back to sleep (I think) a couple of times to the same very vivid dream! I thought I woke up screaming. My wife says that I was not screaming.

I wasn't able to reach my friend by telePhone, but I was able to tell him in person at the restaurant today.

6 PM

Here is something truly Odd. Inside the CNN website you can declare a city in order to get local news. I had set up my birthplace in order to stay up with news from South Dakota. But today I noticed something Odd. The name of the city had been changed to "Odd, WV". Yes, there is such a place.

Odd is an unincorporated community in Raleigh County, West Virginia, USA. It is located along Tommy Creek. Zip Code 25902.

I don't know how this got changed. I suspect either children or elves.

8 PM

I am making a batch of soup, Uncle Ern's World Famous Soup, and part of it will be a gift to my friend who didn't rescue me in the dream. It was either bake him a German Chocolate Cake or do the soup, and so I made him soup. Those are the things I am making my friends for the holidays.

11 PM

Ick!!! I just got kissed by Tom Hanks. Nothing quite like having Tom's mouth completely cover my entire 46 in diagonally measured HD teleBision set. At least there was about 7 feet of distance from my face to the surface of my teleBision set. Oooh, I just realized this is a stupid rerun as well. I saw the latter part of this Letterman show episode of Tom Hank's interview last week but somehow missed The Mistletoe Big Ick Kiss. I guess I should mention there was mistletoe involved, that was why Hanks was kissing a teleBision camera. But I understood he was sending the kiss to his son for his birthday. Sounds Odd and it wasn't even happening in West Virginia.

Here is the European "Odd" thing I learned today, also from Tom. Volkswagen makes a van called the "California" but it is not available for sale in the United States of America, therefore not in California. I checked that fact on wikipedia.

At least I know my level of patience. I am looking forward for the year 2013 to get here to show all these idiots that the world isn't going to end in 2012. An interesting twist on the Mayan calendar is that the Mayans are long gone. And 2012 is a LEAP YEAR so I even have to wait an eXtra day for 2013 to get here. I may have moved to Odd by then.

Extra Note to "My Lucy": 

Dear Lucy, if you are reading this I just wanted to let you know I didn't stay downtown to visit with you today because it was not a good day for me to chit chat. Too many sad things all rolled up in too small of a time period. I even got tired of people wishing me to have a happy day as I went about taking care of business at several locations. Yes, I know, we do that all the time in Texas, "Have a nice day!". I didn't feel very Texan-y today, sorry. I will catch you the next time you come to town. We will giggle-fest like always when I see you next time. Love, Ernest

My Water Broke

I am cooking breakfast for the last time. On a massive scale anyway for awhile, my son goes home to Washington state today. So I won't be doing sausage, bacon, eggs, biscuits and sometimes gravy for a very long time. I usually eat lighter, and have soup or a sandwich for breakfast. The dog is now spoiled in another way.

My son asked me why I am so gloomy.

"I'm not gloomy, I'm just focused on cooking all these things, so I don't burn anything"

He gives me a lesson on how to cook his eggs. Next time I'll do better.

My wife walks into the kitchen for the fifth time to see if the bacon is ready, but I am cooking it too slowly for her, but it is finally getting close. She says, "Wow, you have a lot of dirty dishes to do today!"

My singular sneaky solemn reply, "Maybe"

She responds with a curious what do you mean 'maybe' ? with an ever so slightly mean comical voice with eyebrows scrunched forehead wrinkled, her eyes 30 percent closed and head turned slightly.

I told her, "Well, the city water main may break again like it did yesterday - I never thought I would be able to say 

 'My Water Broke!' 

as an eXcuse to get out of doing housework."

So I'm behind on laundry as well. I did get one load done late last night.

But it is s'pposed to be a very gorgeous day today, December 29th in Texas with a high in the 60 F's with no wind. 

I am going walking. 

Watch the last of the blizzard bits burn away. 

Outside!!!

Hmm, I may need to learn how to sabotage water lines on a regular basis.

PART TWO: The Park 

I went walking as planned and I was surprised that no one was at the park at what was most likely the very warmest time of the entire month of this December. I was walking in my short sleeve shirt, no jacket. Even though winter was only officially 8 days old, I could tell that Spring the Season wanted to come out to play. How do I know this? I discovered a tiny spring on the walkway! And practically all the snow was gone, eXcept for this one strange crazy warm snowball that wouldn't melt. I know it sounds crazy, snow that doesn't melt. Someone had even wrote the word "Loco" on it, the Spanish word for crazy.

Such a nearly perfectly round snowball !

Mitch

I read a news article about a traveler named Mitch Gilbert, of Greenwood Village, Colorado, who found $10,000 cash in envelopes in a cab at the Las Vegas airport. He was able to finally get the money returned to the rightful owner. 

I was able to find Mitch's phone number on the internet because he has a business.  I talked to him a few minutes ago and congratulated him on his honesty. I told him I would have done the same thing. I don't like having things that don't belong to me, things I haven't earned, purchased or been properly gifted. He told me that he has got a lot of negative feedback from people, including an e-mail that cussed him out!

Link to CNN Article

Max-I-Can Food

Ouch. Much. Tummyrumbly. 3 AM. Perhaps the results of Max-I-Can food (?) Actually it was Max-I-Can Tex Mexican food (!) Well, I was compensating for a no lunch munch situation. Perhaps its listening to too much irrational international news while I snooze (?) On a positive note, congratulations to all the happy couples who just got married in a massive ceremony in Peru for only $10. Hope your marriages are as wonderful as ours, as we are just a few days away from 29 years (!)

Hah! I just heard on the teleBision that a woman had called 911 because she had ate too much! When the emergency people showed up, she was arrested for improper use of the emergency service. I promise not to call 911, I will just go ahead and die instead, -boip-, eX-squeeze me. Oh, bother, now the news has switched to the North Korean funeral. I feel I ate enough for their entire country of 24 million people. On a positive note I have checked my smoke detector recently.

Hold it, the smoke detector sentence was just a response to another completely separate news story not tied to my food situation.

I am really confused now - somebody has a new teleBision show called 'Celebrity Wife Swap'. Someone sings, "What are you going to do with your wife?" to an old rock-n-roll twang. Gary Abuse-y is involved?!?!? ... Um, I thinks 'no thanks'.

New news story. Acid reflux.

I think I will attempt to fix this with a cookie and milk.

ANd less teleBision.

I also remembered that I also filled out a survey with the restaurant for a chance to win $1,000. The survey was eXtremely long, I deserve the thousand! My only complaint was the flour tortillas are too small. But now that I think about it they are the size of the tortilla containers that they bring to the table, so getting larger tortillas would require larger containers as well. So there is a very slim possibility that I could win a big cash prize! There is a much slimmer possibility that I am slimmer than 24 hours ago.

Horror Zone Tell Tale

No, no "horror", silly audio-to-text translator. It's a Horizontal Tale for the title, I am just too lazy to get out of bed, and too lazy it appears to aX-chew-ally do my own typing.

I reach up and remove a cc or so of water from my face while reading Facebooq. No, I'm not crying, just my eyes early this morning thinking they need to participate in this bit of a cold in my head by precipitating. A great way to lose weight after eating holiday quantities from festivities. Leaking. Well, not a great way numerically, but its a start. On to the coffee maker, now!

No motion.

This would be the world's greatest invention: Be able to point ANYTHING at your teleBision set that has a volume button (i.e. my phone) and be able to turn down the volume or continue holding the button to turn it off without having to brave the cold to find the remote lost somewhere on the other side of the bedroom. "...  if you call within the next 20 minutes we'll throw in this second set of knives ...", please, no, please, no knife throwing, not even free ones, this early in the morning.

If its any comfort I did make my batch of chocolate cookies in the middle of the night, and I remembered to put in the coconut that my son left out of his batch. They are called Fudgies. I have been making them since childhood. But I haven't made them in at least a year. It took me forever to find the recipe but I finally found the eXtremely faded index card. I very carefully wrote over the ancient letters and numbers with new ink AND more importantly I photographed the recipe card. Now I have it forever!

A Tip for Brazil Nut Farmers

A friend of mine posted a note about Brazil nuts being unusually high in radioactivity. So I investigated the situation and came up with this "solution" to the problem.

It appears that the uptake of the element radium by the root system of the plant results from the need for the element barium as a micronutrient. Radium occurs at a typical concentration of one part per trillion in the soil (one million out of one million) and the radium is concentrated by the root system because there is a lack of barium in the soil.

Radium in the soil is the natural result of the radioactive decay of uranium.

If the farmers of Brazil nuts would introduce barium into the soil in small amounts, most likely through irrigation, the plant would preferentially pick up barium, and the radioactive "problem" would greatly diminish. I am not sure what concentration of barium would be appropriate, but if the barium were at a concentration of one part per million in the soil, it would be on the order of a million times greater than the radium. They would just need to eXperiment with this idea to see if it is practical and actually works. I think that barium compounds are relatively cheap and most are relatively insoluble in water.

I believe this barium increase idea follows the chemical reaction rule called "Le Chatelier's Principle", although there may be a better rule that accurately describes it.

Link to Wikipedia article: Le Chatelier's Principle

Something Wikked I Forgot

I was just now reading about the history of Wikipedia and remembered that I had invented a similar system for our laboratory for documention about the same time in the 90's. I have not been involved with that sort of software in such a long time and had completely forgot about that project for quite some time. Of course I had no knowledge of wikipedia, or wikis, and had no connection to the internet at that time either. It was a "private" corporate department project at our local site so it wasn't something I could profit from or even patent, as far as I knew at the time. All my other patent work had involved chemical inventions, and they were legally owned by the company that employed me.

I also remember getting an "average" rating on my annual review of my job performance for that year just a few months later after bringing the system online and fixing their gigantic paperwork mess, just in time for an ISO 9000 audit. I thought sarcastically, "wow, these people are really appreciative."

Memories.

Alexander The Question Mark

This is a questionaire about Alexander The Great. Have fun!

A) Do you think Alexander the Great was "Great"?
B) If you could change the word Great for something else, what would it be?
C) What year did AtG die? (Just guess, see if you can get closer than me, I was off by ten years)
D) What country did AtG rule?
E) Which U.S. president does AtG most closely resemble?
F) If AtG were a modern day ruler would he most likely get a Nobel Prize or be investigated for war crimes/crimes against humanity?
G) If you were to become eXtremely famous and be known by a single name, plus the word 'The', and an adjective, what would you like the third word adjective to be?
H1) If you were forced to be the absolute ruler of a single entire continent, which one would you chose?
H2) Why?
I) As the absolute ruler (Question H) would your put your face on the money, or possibly choose a different body part? (You rarely see a royal nose on a nickel)

Please keep your responses rated "G", especially the 'body parts on money' question. Feel free to answer a subset of the questions if you desire.

Colorado: The Worst Joke Ever

(I wrote this punch line yesterday for someone else and decided to reuse it in another joke on my own blog. Later today I will give you another hopefully better joke, or at least a story about how I tried to write a joke. Its almost finished. That's why the title doesn't match the first joke. Its a two-for-one deal. The first joke actually was inspired by donkeys from New Mexico, not Colorado. I have to go fix something first in the cold and the dark. Wish me luck, there is plumbing and electricity involved. I don't own any donkey's so I am not sure if they really talk in English.)

Three donkeys escaped through the fence.
Free at last.
They were proud of themselves.
The one in the middle said, "we should come up with a name for our herd".
The one in front said, "what did you have in mind?"
The middle donkey said, "tres pasture trespassers".
The last donkey said, "that's really stupid"


More later ...

Update: It is now later, here is the second section finally.

Colorado: The Worst Joke Ever

Date: December 21st, 2012

Son Number One and His Wife (SNOHW) had been trapped in the state of Colorado by the winter weather for a couple of days on a ski vacation, but they had finally made it to our town a few minutes before this story began. They were "now" at our place of business downtown, and I was at home unaware that they had arrived in town.

My Son Number Two had come to my house to play on the internet, and I decided to travel with him back downtown after we found out by a phone call that the SNOHW finally arrived from Colorado. Part of their trip had been miserable, they were glad to be "home".

I constantly think about words and patterns. I constantly see single frame cartoons. I asked Son Number Two if he knew what the word 'Colorado' meant. We had spent 8 years doing spelling bee together, from his first grade through eighth. He said that he didn't know Colorado's name derivation, and gave some nonsensical silly reply that I have now forgot. I love his silly sayings. I think I like his silly's more than he likes mine, judging by his reactions of semi-mock disgust. I don't see it as a competition; to me its purely entertainment. Silliness has been our main mode of conversation for more than twenty years as father and son.

Colorado: I told him that the word Colorado means "the color red". [I didn't tell him that it came from the Spanish explorers as a description of the area, I believe its a reference to the color of some of the soil.]

In motion: the car turns left and heads up a slight incline going west on 3rd Street. There ahead of us just as I was eXplaining Colorado, two blocks away there are red lights just starting to flash. -RED- The railroad crossing guard arms are swinging down to block the traffic as a train is approaching, with 4 to 5 red lights on each arm, two traffic lanes wide. -TRAPPED-

My son complains and continues on to the stopping point at the RR crossing.

Suddenly I make a word-visual connection and tell my son these words: "you know how SNOHW were trapped IN Colorado, well, now we are now trapped by COLORADO, 'color red oh', these red lights while we are on our way to see SNOHW who just escaped from COLORADO!"

Son Number Two replied, "That is the worst joke ever!"

I countered, "No its not! That really cool, how I ..."

Son interrupted, "No, thats a really dumb joke!"

I continued, "... used the 'color red' from both situations, and the being trapped."

We continued to dis-cuss this for the rest of the trip.

But we first had to wait several minutes (5), for the eXtremely long train. It consisted of only four locomotives and no cars! It stopped right in front of us neatly exactly blocking the entire four lanes of traffic.

The train system is eXtremely rude and annoying in our city. They constantly rearrange their loads in the middle of our town, even during rush hour when people are trying to go home.

My son said, "This train is really stupid"

I agreed.

I offered to throw a Molotov Cocktail at the train to get their attention, but he said I probably shouldn't do that. I told him I wasn't going to light it, just throw it. His reply was, what good would that do. I don't remember my answer mainly because it wasn't very cunning or brilliant.

Train: It resumed motion, BUT it went right back in the direction it had come from! This caused my son to groan even louder.

Eventually we made it downtown to our destination to chat with SNOHW. While both sons were in the same room I asked Son Number One about my Colorado joke, and I think I eventually got an overall vote of no confidence, it was a bad joke. He didn't eXpress that it was necessarily the worst joke ever, though. I wasn't sure if he thought it was really a bad joke, or if he was teaming up against me, because he had an interesting quirky smile on his face.

I would have published this story sooner but Son Number Two came in my bedroom complaining about "where is my breakfast?" with eXtremely fake belligerent almost crying. I tried eXplaining to him I was busy trying to get his Colorado story finished but he kept interrupting jokingly about how it wasn't getting him fed NOW and how he owns the rights to this story and he is pretending to attack me with a robotic arm we use for picking things off the floor, like laundry. Children. I even tried eXplaining how this story might make me famous and possibly richer, and then there would be slightly more money for him to inherit, but no, he wanted breakfast, NOW!!! Children.

Once You Go Fret, It's Best To Forget

My friend shared the results of the Facebooq app called:
What is your American Indian Name?

My friend put in his name and got:

Frets about red woman

My Response: So, let's see, a fret is that metal strip on a guitar's neck that changes the musical sound by a half note. And there are several of them, so frets plural would be correct. Red is the color of embarrassment. Oooh, I'm so close to figuring this one out, if I just understood 'woman'.


Of course he used a Facebook app, and so I tested other online apps for generating American Indian names from your current name and came up with the following:

Wahchinksapa Adahy

"Wise one who lives in the woods"


I am thinking, hmmm, completely different results, obviously a different tribe, different language.


I also found his Pilgrim Name: Hester Chilton

It s'pposedly means "A pilgrim is a wanderer with purpose"

He responded by saying his wife is a redhead.

My response about the visual display of the app result: I like how they made it look all authentic, printed out the message on what appears to be naugahyde with edges made by pinking shears.

Further thoughts regarding the Pilgrim name:
A) Isn't a Chilton manual what you get to work on your vehicle?
B) I wonder if the word "womanual" eXists?

I am also thinking that that "fret equals metal piece around neck" could indicate the kind of jewelry you are s'pposed to get her for a Christmas present. It was frets, so buy at least two, so go ahead and get three if you have been below average on the naughty/nice scale.


His wife responded: I like this man. Listen to him.

Soothe Korea

While listening to the news about North Korea they are talking about the son taking over for the father in leading the country, calling him the 'heir apparent', but in my mind I quickly transform that to 'error of parent', devouring, eating the country, a long sad era of his mad (mentally) parent's errors as well as his parent's parent previous era of errors, grandiose grandfather. Mad, sad, repeat, mad, sad, intensify extensively collective coldness boldness the so very unsavory bad rulers and their minions, oh when will this country's people, Nightmare Korea, her wretched millions, ever have hearts warmed, safe and glad?

The Non Santa Clues

I have gathered strong evidence that Santa Claus may not be real!

How?

I noticed that Santa Claus was on separate teleBision commercials using different brands of cellular telephones, shown within minutes of each other. In one commercial he is using an iPhone, and in another commercial some other brand. I was so shocked that I forgot the second brand's name.

No wait, it gets worse: GPS

The other shocking discovery: Santa was talking about how he uses GPS on his phone to make his deliveries more accurately and faster. What?!?!? Santa Claus just admitted that he's made mistakes, ... No Way! Why would he even need GPS, because GPS is good for getting to a single eXact location, when Santa just needs to go everywhere on the same night. And he's been doing it pretty well for so long, hundreds of years, all long before the GPS systems were put in place, so I don't know what's going on.

Theories:

I s'ppose that the teleBision commercials could just have someone pretending to be Santa Claus, no, that's totally absurd! No one would dare fake being Santa Claus, how blasphemous, how unholy, how ironic, after all the name 'Santa' means 'holy'!

Perhaps Santa was just changing phones? Ah, that makes total sense! I don't know why I didn't think of that sooner. Its the only reasonable eXplanation. Well, never mind, just ignore everything you've read here, as a matter of fact I might as well just erase this blog post. I am so relieved, well, sweet dreams, I am headed off to sleep after being awake for 5 complete days worried sick about this. Santa Claus is real, Santa Claus is real!

Mix One Part Hatred with Two Parts Goofiness, Then Stir Slowly

Don't you just hate it when you ask your dog a question and he just stands there and doesn't answer, no tail wag, no smile, not anything?


Sometimes I live a very dangerous eXistence. I just had to trim my bad fingernail on my right thumb with a steak knife, using my left hand - and I am right handed. Oooh, I know what you're thinking.


Someone wrote: You know the economy is tough when you see two "Hell's Angels" doubled up on a Honda.

My Response: That madE mE rEally laugh hard. I EvEn havE EnlargEd E's from laughing too hard. That doesn't really mean anything, I just write goofy things after 1 AM. It was 1 AM about 34 years ago almost eXactly, and ever since, bam! -goofy-


United States President Barack Obama has asked the Islamic Republic of Iran for the downed RQ-170 Sentinel aircraft that crashed near Kashmar on December 4. (CNN)

I'm sure he will use a legal defense, "we were just hiking and didn't realize we were in Iran". Then the plane will spend a year and a half in an Iranian hangar, a cold dark smelly hangar, before the Sultan of Oman hands over a million dollars for it.


Remember that thing earlier in that paragraph about the fingernail, left hand and steak knife where I said I knew what you were thinking? Well, it turns out that I didn't.


Alcohol-free blog post - no alcohol was consumed during the production of this particular blog post. (Now I'm not sure if that was a good or bad idea.)

Update: What am I singing/humming this morning? George Harrison doing "Here Comes The Sun", perhaps I am just eXcited about some Texans coming home from far away later today! Here comes the son and daughter-in-law and puppy, yea!

Hoo-ray for Gweenie-B !!!

Today is an interesting day. One of the people I follow closely in blog-land got Blogger's Blog of Note award. I have never had that happen before.

Not only is he creative and witty with his original blog posts that are filled with roughly drawn cartoons in which he appears, but the follow up commentary that he receives and gives is quite amazing to read and watch, the dynamic interaction and responses from people. I usually keep his latest blog entry always opened on my computer so that I can simply hit the refresh button and go to the bottom of the page to read the latest interaction. Warning: some adult content

Link to Gweenbrick

E n j o y !

What's Wrong

Hah! I just figured out what's wrong with my life! I have gone waaaaaay tooooooooo long without listening AND watching Maria Bamford. I just spent 'bout an hour getting re-fill-ed with hilarity, and I plan to B sure to take my vitamen B-amford every day for a while until I get side tracked and forget about her again for a while. Vitamen, no, vital woman, Maria B.

Just search her in YouTube, she is typically wonderful, non-boring.

I haven't found the one called "Me, My Mom, and A Monster" stand up routine just yet, it's one of my favorites.

Do you know what else is wrong, well, at least strange, maybe not so much wrong, but strange? My number two country for blog traffic is Russia. I'm thinking like, Russia, why has Russia suddenly in the last couple of months shot past France as my number two country in traffic, when I don't do many Russian oriented pieces, well, I've done a few, but they were a while ago. Do people in Russia really read me, or is it just phony traffic? If you are from Russia and reading me, send me an e-mail, I would like to have some feedback.

What else is wrong? Motion. I have been spending too much time indoors lately so I have started walking when the weather lets me. It is December. But it is Texas. Sometimes our Decembers are really nice in short chunks, at least during the day. I tried using my treadmill, but it is broken. So I compensate by doing laundry and dishes rea///////lllly fast. Sometimes it scares the Cooper, so then I slow down.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, thinking, anything, else? Hmmmm ... YES!!! Insomnia!!! It's 1:45 AM, I need somnia. At least I have two giant pillows. My wife and I used to each have a giant pillow. But now I have two and she has none. You snooze, you lose. Actually she just forgot about it. How do you forget a giant pillow? I'll buy her another one if she really wants one, I promise. It would be nice if they made pills you could take that would help you go to sleep. They could call them sleeping pills. I bet if someone would invent them, people would buy them. I wonder why no one has thought of sleeping pills before? I have this new trick, called everytime I see a punctuation mark, I close my eyes, silently count to three, reopen my eyes, and continue reading. I will try that trick and see if that helps me go to sleep. It will probably just mess up my reading ability. And mess up my counting ability. People will be like, say, why does Ernest fall asleep so easily when he counts four of something?

Wrong, Wron, Wrong, Wron, Wrong ... some-thing-else, my younger son has been gone toooo long too too far far away but he will be home in a few days for the holidays, so YEA!!! I tell Cooper that he is coming home and show him pictures of my son and his wife, and Cooper gets eXcited, and looks at the front door, hoping it will open. Sometimes he jumps up on the couch and looks out the picture window. Not yet, my furry friend, not quite yet. A few more days, Bubba, a few more days. (That's one of Cooper's nick names, he has a ton of them. Cooper used to be my son's dog a long time ago.)

I May Now Date Movie Stars

I found out today that someone paid seven thousand dollars for a date with Scarlett Johansson. BUT he didn't show up for the date. There was an auction for charity, and he won. But the man who won was married and he would have to fly to the opposite coast for the date, so he didn't go.

Copied from news article:

Bean Baxter from the Kevin and Bean show on KROQ (106.7 FM) paid $7,000 in a charity auction to spend the evening with the bombshell actress at the New York premiere of We Bought A Zoo

Scarlett Johansson stars in one of my favorite movies "Lost In Translation", and I would love to meet her.

SO ... I asked my wife who had just woke up in time to see the story on teleBision, would it be okay for me to go on a date with a movie star, especially Scarlett J, she said YES - SHE SAID YES!!! I couldn't believe she actually said yes, I laughed, but then she said we would not be paying any seven thousand dollars for me to get a date.

SO ... it's just a matter of price. I just need to find a cheap movie star. I imagine she would also have to qualify as "famous" according to my wife's "Qualifications of Famous".

Update 2011.12.14 22:30 - Switching To A Younger/Older Actress

I suddenly realized I am in "love" with a much younger Meryl Streep, the 36 year old Meryl from the 1985 Out Of Africa movie, who is much younger than me (current age) than her actual 62 at the moment which is much older than me.

This is how women really treat me.
Here is my most recent supper.

I just had a grilled chicken sandwich at my favorite spot to get one. The owner asked me if I wanted my usual during the order process, and I said yes, but I also emphasized 'French Fries' as I really have two 'usuals'.

The owner came by while I was eating and asked me how my meal was.

Holding up an onion ring, I said, "These French Fries taste a whole lot like onion rings."

Her reply with a smile, "Ern, sometimes I know what you really need."

Mirror Crime Stories

2011.12.12

Silly

The strange thing I heard today while trying to ignore the teleBision in the room, in a very serious scene in a tropical crime drama, a sad mad guy is complaining that somebody shot his [favorite] beer mirror. I'm sure that I had never heard the words "beer mirror" together in my life, but I instantly knew what he was talking about, by the manner in which one of my former neighbors had decorated his castle. 

I think they used the term "beer mirror" eight times in that one scene. I'm just not sure, I was way too busy laughing to count accurately. I wonder if moments of hilarity ever happen to IRS agents or census takers on the job while they are in the middle of counting things. Not just beer mirror, but his favorite beer mirror. I will spend way too much of my future associating those two words together at inappropriate times and places, smiling.

Serious

The strange thing I saw today: a north bound 18 wheeler truck forced a vehicle, an SUV, off the road where two lanes turn into one on the loop in Amarillo, just north of Amarillo Boulevard where Soncy Road becomes the Loop 335. The truck driver clearly did it on purpose while passing the SUV that went off the road, the drama unfolding in my rear view mirror. I guess Ace Hardware has at least one idiot truck driver. It happened around 4:40 PM based on the time stamp of the restaurant receipt for the meal I had a few blocks south of there at On The Border restaurant. So if the driver of the SUV wants to press a complaint against the Ace Hardware trucker, he has a witness with me. The truck driver never caught up to me, so I could not get his vehicle ID information, but he turned off the loop after a couple miles and headed towards Ranch Road 1061.

Photo from Google Earth shows the location of the vehicular mishap.

Coordinates are 35 deg 11' 44" N  101 deg 56' 15" W where the two lanes become one lane.

- - - - -

No Crime, No Mirror, Just some old fashioned glass silliness .....

One of my close friends mentioned that she realized more and more that it's really a small world

My Response: The earth is s'pposedly 1,097,509,500,000,000,000,000 cubic meters, but its winter time, cold outside, most things shrink, so it really only feels like 1,087,509,500,000,000,000,000 cubic meters. Maybe its just my new glasses, hidden bifocals messing things up.

Yawn - H.B.N.S.

I'm tired of winter already and it hasn't even officially began. I am inventing a process that allows you to sleep for a long time period during the cold season that also helps you avoid people, places and things.

I call it "Hide Brrr Nap Shun"


I may put more stuff here later today but don't be surprised if I don't. My eyelids are getting heavy .... ... .. .

Actually, I just now remembered my leftover soup from last night, I had better eat that first.

I Wonder Why Cain Is Not Able

I wonder why Hermain Cain doesn't think he is Eve-n Able to be president? Does he view himself at present to be too dented to be president, unworthy of Eve-n being in the Rose Garden?

(It might have sounded bad if I tried to also use an 'Adam' pun in that first sentence, so I left him out)

Even before the latest scandal, I thought that Cain combined the qualities that most Americans seemed to want in a President. He was an African-American, which the people seemed to like in Obama. He was a Republican and capable of saying stupid things like George W Bush. He had the apparent womanizing skill set of Bill Clinton. He seemed the "perfect" candidate, just based on the last three successful possessors of the Oval Office.

Maybe he was confused by the "Her" in his own name, or possibly the "main", or the struggles of having a rhyming name.

CDO for Spaces and Spices

My friend has a cat picture with the words

I have CDO

it's like OCD

but all the letters are in alphabetical order

AS THEY SHOULD BE

My Response: All the important spices in my kitchen are segregated to an easily accessible ergonomic point on the left side of the stove,,,,, and of course they are in alpha beti cal order! I just now realized that I can spell 'alphabetical' alpha beti cally simply by adding a couple of spaces. Life doesn't get much better than that, ah. For some strange reason my iPad put a question mark at the end of that previous sentence instead of a period.

This used to drive my wife insane, always having my four favorite spices easily within reach. Roar!!! They weren't up in the cabinet out of sight, was the demand. I countered with, Roar!!! but you are wasting my time by them constantly getting LOST in the mess that is your cabinet! There were heated arguments in the early years where I even calculated (off the top of my head) Roar!!! how many HOURS per YEAR she was wasting of MY life by losing the spices in the black hole that is HER messy cabinet. End of Roaring.

Garlic Powder

Onion Powder

Pepper

Salt

But then Oregano was soon added, and it stayed at a population of five for maybe fifteen years. Plus I learned that it is okay to have multiple containers of pepper scattered throughout the house. Just leave m_ine alone, my one on The Row.

But recently The Wifey has been cooking a few new things and I added chili powder to my meaty cheesie scrambled eggs, so suddenly there are now eight containers on Spice Row.

And here they sit, all the thyme

I just now realized that is more than a silly sentence; it's true, that is all the thyme I have in the house.

OCD = Omniscient Cleaning Device

Thank you General Electric for wasting my time

and water

and laundry detergent

and money

and natural gas

and electricity

I found out I am not smart enough to update my Apple software AND do laundry at the same time.

The GE washing machine kept going without me and drained ALL the hot water & detergent before I got a chance to put any laundry in the machine. I didn't close the lid, and then it started filling up AGAIN with cold water for the RINSE cycle. Its a good thing I already have clean towels. I was really irritated for a few seconds when I thought that maybe it had used up all the hot water, but then realized it was doing a rinse cycle with cold water.

Today is obviously not a multitasking day. I am starting to wonder if its even a decent uni-tasking day.

At least I got the secondary refrigerator cleaned out. My Wifey will be pleased. There were things in there I am certain I could have bottled up and sold on the black market for weapon grade biological warfare chemicals. For a fee I will give you the longitude & latitude coordinates of the dumpster where they are located.

Vocabulary: omniscient - adj. - all knowing (at least I think it means that)

The Outer Realm of Insomnia: A Sweet Liquid Death

I've reached an almost five thirty A.M. no el sleepo

Forgive me, I don't feel like wasting the effort today to include periods on the end of my sentences, so that makes it sound like this will be difficult to read but not really

I have decided to kill myself but not in a typical manner

I'll make it fun

You know me

I have decided to drink a gallon of milk on a continual basis, two percent of course, before it eXpires, so that means, roughly a pint a day from now on

I should be able to do that

To help me out with my death by milk consumption, I am going to eat a few, maybe two, maybe four, but certainly not more, of these little tiny Butterfinger candy bars with my nice cold milk per day

So when I die if people start guessing and proclaiming and surmising how I died you will be in the know and they, the non-readers will be in the no

You will be able to say, "He died from an overdose of milk and candy, Butterfingers, to be eXact"

I have absolutely no idea how long it will take to kill myself

It may be 25 minutes from now or it may be 25 years, at my current age it will most likely be somewhere in between

A boy's gotta have plans and goals

I just checked the size, its about 1.5 oz of candy bars, for both of them

Nine servings per bag

I checked the ingredients, and the Butterfingers have milk in them too

So if you want to really confuse people, tell half of your friends I died from milk and Butterfingers, and the other half say, "It was a cow, an inside job"

[Hah, zoom, Mental Location: rural west and north of White River, South Dakota, I just had pleasant memories unfold of childhood times walking the cow paths in my grandfather's pasture on the west side of the milking barn, the manual milking process and the cream separator in the little building on the north side of the house; now back to our current program let's kill an Ernie with the milk & candy show]

Moo-i-cide

Bull Frog Dog

My friend mentioned that her dog just leaped like a bull frog.

My Response: What noi-ses does he says? Anything close to "rib bit" ? That could possibly mean a frog transformation is in progress. Of course, if he is suddenly speaking Angle-ish part of the time, he could have meant that he "bit a rib" while devouring wild game on the savannah, most likely during a puppy dreamtime... By the way, I believe cow frogs eXist but they rarely leap, they are typically too busy reading and knitting. And everyone knows you aren't s'pposed to run through the house with knitting needles, or leaping with them.

- - - - -

Cooper looks funny wandering through the house slowly with a dog biscuit partially hanging out of his mouth. He could be on the cover of Cigar Aficionado magazine.

Woke up to a cold white morning. Snow is rare here and today not very deep. Probably not enough to build a snow man, maybe enough for a snow midget. I must venture out in it soon to the groc store, for I am outta eggs. I do have my truck engine heater plugged in so it starts with less clanky clankity clank noise. It appears to be a cold enough day for pants. Pants season usually only lasts for the better part of three months for me. I can always seem to get warmed up, but not reliably cooled off, so I own few pants, mainly shorts.

The house across the street has really dark shingles and there is just enough snow filled in the cracks and then wind blown clean of accumulation, so it has the appearance of the new finger nail polish that women are wearing that has the cracked appearance. (I know about things like this because we are '.cracked.' dealers.)

What My Wife Is Up To

‎"I'm the funny one today!" - I didn't say that. Just a little wellness barometer for you on how the main girl in my life is doing.

"It's all uphill from here!", she says smiling.

I tell her that she really wanted the word 'downhill', that she has the saying backwards.

She responds, smiling even bigger, "No, I'm going to be happier!" - making a 'see the corners of my mouth go UP when I smile' face.

Later in the day ...

"I need to write a letter to the makers of Popsicles, let 'em know that their orange Popsicles are terrible".

I tried one. I agree with her, they are pretty worthless.

Well, I s'ppose if a building was on fire and all you had were a whole bunch of orange Popsicles, then they wouldn't be totally worthless. But then when the news media found out about it and turned orange Popsicles into heros, then they would make even more of them, and then there would be even more sadness, first for people who bought the Popsicles to eat, and then for the equally sad unloved Popsicles just sitting there waiting to be bought. Sitting there in the cold, and the dark (inside their container), hoping for another building to catch on fire.

Happy John Dazed Days

Two wonderful elderly people, both named John, have a conversation while I am waiting for a pharmacy order. 

John The Customer, a man that I have known for thirty years greets John The Pharmacist on Dec 2^ND with these words, "Happy Thanksgiving!", but then he immediately starts to correct himself with a Merry Christmas greeting and laughter.

John The Pharmacist cracks up with laughter, and interrupts him with, "You know, that's okay, I get Valentine's Day & Groundhog Day mixed up all the time."

I giggle and then wonder how eXactly you would confuse those two holidays, but then my head begins to hurt after a few minutes, so I stop. I guess I'm not old enough just yet to understand.

UPDATE 2011.12.05 - HAH!!! Sometimes I crack myself up laughing because I have unintentionally created homonyms totally purely by accident. I was reading down through my blog looking for typos, etc when I read the title of this blog post and it came out "Happy Jaundiced Days". I have no idea what a HJD would be, I just remember being very sick a very long time ago, no happy to it what-so-ever. No, that isn't completely true, I remember moving back to my parents place for a week or so, and making some short instrumental piano compositions during the recovery process.

I Have Proof: Escaped Gorillas of Dallas Texas

I walked up to my truck in Dallas. There on the parking lot beside the left front tire was a freshly discarded banana peel.

My first thought was: "Wow, I hope that banana peel doesn't cause a loss of traction and cause a wreck"

Second thought: "Wow, I hope the gorilla that escaped from the zoo is caught before he does more damage (more littering)"

Third thought: "Wow, I can't wait to put this in Facebook"

Fourth thought: "Remember to put the word 'Wow' at the beginning of each thought even though I didn't actually say Wow, there was a Wow feeling"

Fifth thought: "Wow, I had better take a picture of this banana peel or no one will believe me."

How Does It Feel To Be An Abandoned Unloved Banana Peel?

CSI: If you look very close you can see my reflection in the shiny part of the hub cap.

The A-Banned-On of Hungary

Hmm, sorry, I'm busy thinking, what, oh, what is the stupidest thing I have seen today, (?), hmmm, I wonder if it could be the new law in Hungary: 

They banned homelessness. 

Homeless people can be fined up to $600 or be jailed.

Government inaction. Oh, sorry, I forgot to put a space between in and action. No, not really, the government of Hungary probably doesn't want me to put a space there for fear that a homeless person might try to sleep there. 

"Government of some people, by some people, for some people, shall not perish from the earth."
 
Those are not the real final sixteen words of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, I sarcastically replaced some of the the's with some some's, just in case the government of Hungary wants a somewhat different version.

I Fill I

Yea! I managed to get a blog post published every day for November completing the NaBloPoMo goal. Actually I did an eXtra nine. So here is my last post of the month, which I wrote earlier in the day, but got delayed publishing it until just a couple minutes before midnight, AND I came very close to getting stuck at a railroad crossing with an eXtremely long train on a long trip home from Dallas. So, from on the road, a poem piece:

Oh, I have been to Jason's deli
And put some soup deep down in my empty belly,
Just what flavors did then I fill I?
Onion and cheese on Southwestern Chicken Chili !!!

I Am Not Allergic To Animated Bees

I survived the "Bee Movie"

I did notice that some of the bee voices sounded like familiar famous human actors. I wonder how long it took the bees to learn their parts plus imitate the human voices, especially the one that sounded almost like Jerry Seinfeld. That bee sounded really close to Jerry most of the time, but there were a few times, though, you could detect it was a real bee.

Wikipedia Article Link to Bee Movie

I think the main thing wrong with the bee's imitation of Jerry Seinfeld is that he (or she?) made the voice just a little too whiny.

Favorite Scene: The sword fight, the bee stinger versus the bulletin board pin, insect vs human, human loses, the Zorro-esque moment. The "cousin" humor was a neat twist as well.

My Wife's Favorite: either the IV drip from a honey container in the hospital setting for the injured bee, or the prosthetic bee stinger made from a plastic olive spear. (I actually have no idea what its called, it looks like a tiny sword from a cocktail, so, "tail!", hah, how ingenius for a prop.)

Google Check: Yes, they are called cocktail swords, I was just guessing. Remember that, it might come in handy in Jeopardy someday.

The plot was enjoyably very complicated.

Most people probably don't know this, but the voice that sounded like the human Patrick Warburton was really the voice of a wasp. Several bees tried out for that part, but they just couldn't find one with a deep enough voice, even the older bees that had smoke damaged larnyx from living in artificial human hives. When things got desparate there was even talk of bringing in the actual human Patrick Warburton to do himself, but there were just too many union rules, and yadda yadda yadda, so they found just the right wasp. A Yellowjacket wasp, of course; it is a bee movie.

Wikipedia Article for Yellowjacket Wasp

I think I may continue working on imitating the voice of Patrick Warburton, mainly to annoy my wife. When I hear Patrick he reminds me of a younger John Wayne with a head cold and a staccato stutter. I squint my eyes just a little bit, it seems to help get me into character. But I couldn't imagine John Wayne selling foreign cars on teleBision ads.

I Need H.E.L.P.

My Invention for Today: H.E.L.P. - Helium Emergency Lift Pack - a backpack that motorcyclists can wear that detects collisions/accidents and then automagically inflates a large balloon to safely carry them away.

Applicable to other (outdoor) occupations and hobbyists as well.
[Roofer]
[Mountain Climbing]
[Grizzly Bear Census Taker]
[Skyscraper Window Washer]
[Volcano Lava Field Inspector]


My lawyer buddy told me that she would like one just to escape her job.

My Response: For $742.42 you too can have a new blue blew away today!!!
(also available in balloon maroon, rapid red, and go go green)
Version 2.0 software will be able to detect grumpy spouses and screaming children.
But again, you must be outdoors to avoid massive suffocation hazardous e-Vents.
DO NOT ACCEPT cheap imitations! The competitor's jet backpacks are death traps!!!
Available only by air freight delivery.


- - - - -

The place where I am at today has a large computer monitor built into a stone wall with a screen saver that has a video of flames in a fireplace, and it gives off heat just like a real fireplace complete with digital audio. They must have installed an odor dispenser, it smells like a real fireplace, too.

I told this to the two young ladies at the receptionist desk and they were surprised. They must have thought it was a real fireplace. They just giggled.

All Five Vowels

Today's Spanish Lesson: farmaceutico - pharmacist - I found a Spanish word with all five vowels.

I discovered this while getting help from a pharmacist today. A bilingual sign was posted on my side of the counter with the a-e-i-o-u word in it. When I told the pharmacist that I had found a Spanish word with all five vowels, she asked me what it was, and I responded, "you". She was instantly puzzled and then I eXplained the sign. She came around to my side of the counter to read the sign, and she said, "Well, if I'm ever on 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' I will have something interesting to say about myself"

[This story should point out very clearly how easily I am amused. Five vowels in one word, it doesn't get much cheaper than that.]

An Almost a Quarter of a Horse, Majestic with Sad Eyes

Yesterday, Black Friday, was totally the wrong day to try to go to a Super WalMart just to try, again emphasis try, to get Cooper some raw hide bones with knots on the ends. After all that distance, in the cold, in the rain, -nothing-. I suddenly remembered a smarter option, a place I rarely shop because the store is not in my town: PETsmart! - and yes, after months and months of frustration, we have a winner.

Plus I got to see a ^sm^all horse at PETsmart, no not really a horse, but it could've should've been. It was a beautiful 2 year old Great Dane, 176 pounds of wonderfulness. So peaceful, calm, the center of everyone's attention within sight of the checkout spot. A small child walked up to it and the dog had to look DOWN at the child, a child shorter than the top side of the dog's back. I am trying to think of his name but it eludes me at the moment, maybe later ... seems like it was something from Greek mythology, something majestic.

Perhaps the dog's sad nervous eyes were caused by twenty pairs of human eyes looking at him, photog-ing, wanting-asking to touch him, the animal unsure of their happiness directed towards him, pacing, turning. The dog's owner, by the look in her eyes and her answers to the questions, seemed to have a long history of dealing with people who were 'pupperazzi'. "Yes, he rides in my car, but he does take up the whole back seat"

The Battle of the Bulge of My Router

I finally convinced my Internet Service Provider (ISP) that something was wrong with my 3G-4G hot spot mobile router. I couldn't get it to reset with the reset button inside the battery compartment or the front panel button to work reliably. At one point the device finally worked after supposedly reaching 66% charged but then an hour later it wouldn't work with a message that it was shutting down due to a discharged battery. AND the device is ALWAYS plugged into a power source.

Today's effort at putting the cover back on the router seemed unusually difficult, so I looked at the battery and it was definitely bulged in the middle. So this may account for the difficulty of the battery trying to maintain contact with the device, or even being sound in the nitty-gritty of its internal mechanical integrity. The ISP is sending a new battery and so I'll be able to do some measurements and see if that was part of the problem. The entire device has always acted a bit unreliable, even brand new.

Today was a return trip to Amarillo. My special-needs sister-in-law had to go back home suddenly because her handlers had not sent enough medicine. I thought it was strange on Wed when they handed me a small paper sack of meds that was stapled with about a dozen staples. Next time I am forcing them to examine the contents of the bag to verify the correct contents. As you might imagine, this isn't the first time they have messed up, and always in a short manner, too. So my sister-in-law didn't even get to spend two complete days with her family over the holiday weekend, and just considering the price of fuel alone, her vacation was pretty eXpensive per hour.  AND she does need time away from her "n0r^maL" environment into a normal environment. Hold it, did I just call OUR home normal? Hah ...

I don't understand how gasoline and diesel could have moved so far apart in price. Aren't people paying attention to supply and demand issues and how you run an oil refinery? Today it was common to see the price difference be 80 cents a gallon, so diesel was way more than 20% higher than gasoline. AND gasoline has been falling in price while diesel has been climbing! I do realize that the feedstock fraction for diesel competes with use as heating oil product, and winter is coming. It will be nice when Libya gets back in full production.

I did get to go driving in my truck today so that was nice, but I was sick with flu type symptoms so that took part of the fun away, and the rain and wind tried to take the other half. It was a rare Not One Single Bad Driver Day, and considering it was Black Friday, tell me, how on earth did that happen for me? Now I don't feel like eating any supper. Lunch was really good at Jason's Deli, eXcept about 10 percent of the meat in my Southwestern Chicken Chili looked burned and hard as a rock. I accidentally got a piece in my mouth and it was horrible and didn't stay too long. Typically Jason's Deli is my Meal Mecca, my taste buds favorite place in the universe (well, Amarillo Texas) for at-noon-food. My sandwich is their Chicken Club Wrappini. I thunk I spilled thut werd currectly.

I rushed around but places were closed today - twice. I had to meet a deadline for returning my s-i-law to her place by lunch time, so I had several things to get squeezed into the morning before leaving town. I needed to get my used motor oil to the city recycling place, but when I got there the place was closed, obviously for a four day holiday weekend, so then I had to store the collection vessel in my garage, and it made a slight oil mess in the pickup bed I had to clean up. I thought I was doing really well on meeting my schedule then suddenly realized that being sick earlier in the week had made me forget the supplies for the hair salon where people rent from me. I was being a bad landlord! So I rushed around and got their critical toilet paper and bleach. BUT when I got to the shop it appeared that no one was working today, and the schedule for at least one of them, the normally busiest lady, was X'd out for the weekend as well. Plus there was no real critical shortage of paper product after all even though I was already a week late with my delivery.

A couple paragraphs later the need for supper suddenly manifestivals itself. So ... location location location ... I am ending my day at my favorite local diner having hopefully the best grilled chicken sandwich in my town. It hasn't quite arrived yet, but I eXpect the "ready bell" to ding shortly. And more importantly I have finally got my personal jug of BBQ sauce returned to the diner. Its absence was interfering with eating here properly! (Yes, here is actually here in the picture, typing away, courtesy of my iPad. Thanks, again Steve J.)

The brand of BBQ sauce is really 'Head Country' - it's my favorite! I just take the bottle home from the diner when it gets close to empty, clean it, and refill it from my gallon jug. The drink is Dr Pepper, of course, and the wait staff always keeps it full. That is about as empty as it ever gets.

Update 2011.12.02 - I got my new battery, so hopefully it works much better. The tiny battery arrived in a huge box filled with inflated cushion. EXCEPT the battery was not secured to the cushion, it was just free inside the box, right up against the outside wall of the box when I opened it. No bulge, it fits nicely in the router.