Dream Induced Abdominal Pain

I wake up today (more than once) with severe abdominal pain.

Why?

Because I am having very stupid vivid dreams, recurring ones.

In my dreams I am going to the local used car lot and trying to squeeze between automobiles and objects they are parked very close to, such as a tree.

A tree? Someone would park a car neXt to a tree in a used car lot ... hold it, they don't put alot of trees in car lots.

In my dreams I am known for doing this. The last time I have to get my cell phone out to call to get myself rescued because I am stuck. Yes, stuck between a car and a tree. I wake up with a very sore stomach. In real life I don't even have a cell phone!

I think, "This is the stupidest dream of all time"

I go running into the living room to tell my wife. She is absolutely no comfort, not that I reaLLy eXpected to find any in her.

She laughs, "That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard." She claims she has never had that kind of dream.

I don't know who or what to blame. Perhaps it was the very last news article I heard on teleBision last night about Mitt Romney building a house in San Diego that has an elevator for his cars. Yes, that's a true story. Perhaps it has something to do with shopping for new shorts yesterday, trying to squeeze into the smallest size possible? Perhaps it was pushing my human powered lawn mower. Yes, I was mowing in the dark. That was the very last thing I did before I came to bed, besides playing my brain training straining new video game.

All I know for sure is that I am in pain, and the source is stupidity. The main conclusion I can come to is don't vote for Mitt Romney, my body can't take much more of this.


Update 2012.03.30: I wake up this morning with no remembrance of any dream, stupid or otherwise but more importantly, NO pain!

So I wander into the living room for coffee. I begin to work on my Japanese lessons. After I finish my coffee I get a light blanket and pillow to lay on the couch while I continue my studies. I work on several kanji characters, the last one being the character for "friend" 友

But then I wake up from a dream! At least this one has no pain.

Dream: I have three friends who have no names in this dream, so they will just be persons A, B, and C. I convince my alphabet friends that we need to bother someone, person D, who has been bothering us.

So here is my plan: We go to the house of D and stand on his porch. Then we wait there long enough until he feels our "presence". In my dream I believe that we can make our presence known to other people who are nearby out of sight through the use of psychic energy. So we get to the house of D and there is an enclosed porch, and I have friend A stand directly facing the front door. Friends B & C simply sit by the door to the porch and proceed to go to sleep. 

There is a huge gap at the bottom of the door and you can see reflections and shadows of something or someone moving inside the house. But my plan that person D sensing our presence doesn't appear to be working, so I start making scraping noises, running my shoe across the floor. After several minutes of this shoe noise person D finaLLy senses our presence and the front door bursts open.

Person D of my dream is the actor Jeffrey Jones that played the character Dean of Students Edward Rooney in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Upon seeing the four of us on his porch, he lurchs past friend A and points his finger at my face and yells, "I should have known it was you!" but then he turns around and drags friend A into the house by his jacket collar mumbling something in disgust. I follow them into the house thinking that I will be able to save the day with my wrestling skills. Friends B & C have had time to wake up, and they arrive inside as well. The Alphabet Gang and I just stand there staring at Mr Rooney, who has aged considerably since the Ferris B movie, and we stare at him with eXtremely huge tight forced clown face type grins, complete with teeth showing. Rooney looks at all of us suspiciously, he starts to say something backing away, and then I wake up.

My PC Is Only Half Dumb

I unplugged the audio feed cable from my PC to my teleBision, so that I could play the music from my iPad to the teleBision, to fill the entire house with music.

When I performed this action, the PC video was still there and announced visuaLLy that I had unplugged the audio cable. I thought: that's smart.

But a couple hours later when I reconnected the SAME cable back into the SAME jack, it flashed up a screen wanting to know what I had plugged into. I had to answer questions. Umm, that's not smart.


Sometime soon I plan to get an Apple TV device, then I will be able to send my content from my iPad to the HD teleBision wirelessly.

If Danger Was My Middle Name, It Would Eventually Split into Dan & Ger

I realized I have been living rather dangerously lately. I have been wandering the house too often without my eyeglasses with corrective lenses. I prefer to read without them. And I have a dog, Cooper, who leaves small sometimes sharp objects everywhere, dangerous for my feet. At his altitude he has no problem seeing The Tiny Sharpies.

My wife has invaded my kitchen and began cooking heavily and is on a strange mission (for her) of finding new recipes. She has also performed most of the groc shopping in the last four weeks or so since the invasion became noticeable (to me).

She has also put Cooper on a diet, saying there is going to be a reduction of cheese in his diet. I am thinking, hmmm, that's what he lives for: Cheese

He could be the mascot for the state of Wisconsin

I told her that I had already been feeding him slightly less. Plus he will be outside more that it is Spring, and chase yard invaders, those arrogant cats, squirrels, and birds who don't know their place in the semi wild kingdom of Cooper D. D. Boston. Yes, my dog has two middle names, and believe it or not, I did not give them to him, the wifey did a long time ago.

The wife had mentioned one day maybe three years ago how our two grown children were jealous that Cooper commanded so much of my attention now that I was in a semi-retired state. She noticed that I was playing with my (then new) Mitsubishi gel pens, practicing writing every ones full name. So she gave Cooper each of their "D" middle names, saying, "Hah! That should [irritate] them reaLLy good!"

Back to the present ... I did have my set of spices in alphabetical order along the left side of the stove, in proper ergonomic position, but now she has flooded the narrow shelf with three times as many spices. Here is my previous blog post: CDO for Spaces & Spices

I know! Who could have seen this coming! Certainly not me.

But I have devised a sneaky plan to at least gain some order to my spice world without having to deal with this flood of refugee flavorings. I have decided to reposition my original subset of spices back into their own region, and then leave the random horde quietly milling around.

Except salt.

Salt? Why salt?

The Salt Wars

For the last two months or so The Wifey has absconded with every salt shaker in the house, all of them eventuaLLy making a pilgrimage, and then held hostage at The Lampstand of The Wife. Yes, and they are always tens steps away when I need it for cooking. I know! I know! Such inconsideration.

The Secret Salt Hideout

I finaLLy realized that MY salt shaker would just need to be hidden, so I chose the cabinet directly above the stove that my wife never uses. I didn't know why, but then I just now noticed that the depth of the stove makes the reach to use the cabinets, which are 12 inches higher than the other kitchen cabinets with handles another six inches higher than the other cabinet doors, and there I think I found my answer in her shortitude. So far MY secret Masada of salt shakers has never gone roamin'. And it is so ergonomicaLLy at just the right sweet spot, which means, "I can find it within one second of time!"

Well, I am going to try to get better about my eyeglasses. Not so much wearing them, but at least keeping track of them. I may start keeping them high in The Secret Salt Sanctuary.

Closing Thought: I just realized that I am on my iPad probably at least an average of FIVE hours per day! So that means during a time period of nearly eighteen months, that is a big number! So looking at an hourly cost, that is probably around 25 cents per hour for the hardware. Even if my guesstimate is off by some huge degree, it is still far less than a dollar per hour. And it ...might... just be the other direction of more hours per day than five, so even cheaper per hour. Apple incorporated is cyborging me.

I leave you with today's incredibly dumb joke, another Apple one. Notice that it has no discernable punchline. If you imagine a psychiatrist asking a patient this question, then I have given you a virtual single frame cartoon.

Question: When you look at iClouds, what anImal shapes do you see?

The D Word

I just saw a teleBision ad for the university I attended many years ago. I felt their latest recruiting slogan is rather poor.

"You Won't Be Disappointed"

Disappointed?

NO! You shouldn't use the word disappointed for a positive slogan, and it should especially NOT be the final word. There are subtle subliminal forces at work here trying to reach that target audience of young people heading off to college, leaving home. There are four words in that slogan, and two of them are negative!


Another Use of A Negative ... In NYCNY

There is a mansion for sale in New York City on sale for at least $25 million, but will probably go higher. It is only 25 feet wide, but sits at address 815 Fifth Avenue. It is old, maybe around 140 years or so. Style? Here is a line from the Wall Street Journal:

A landsmark report listed the original style of the building as Italianate and the current style as "none".


Un-disappointment:

How do I know I am a relatively simple person?

Seeing a fresh head of cauliflower on the bar in the kitchen just now gave me more joy than you could possibly imagine.

Perhaps I am just too tired and sore from the week's activities. Mmmm ... Fresh raw cauliflower, and red bell pepper, too. Broccoli? "Yes", she said. And cheese. And purple onion.

Yes, simple joys.

Won Thirty One

My wife up woke.

Oops, I mean, my wife woke up and walked down the hall.

Its a very short hallway.

I did not wake up because I have not been asleep.

I mean, I have not been to sleep in many many hours, not many many years.

She asked me, "Whattimeisit?"

I said, "Its 1:30" Hint: AM

She asks me, "Didyousay1:30?"

I say, "Yes, thats what I said"

She asks me, "Isitreally1:30?"

I say, "Well, it was but now its 1:31" Hint: Its still AM, we don't talk and wait to respond THAT long for it to possibly be PM.

She says, "Ha, ha"

ReaLLy, that is eXactly what she said, she didn't reaLLy laugh, even though I am pretending that she found it to be riotously hilarious, but she chose to supprreess her true feelings and simply gave me a smart-aleck response of ha then ha with a distinct staccato presentation. At this very second I am totaLLy confused on how to spell suppress, so I just put in a few eXtra letters. Just ignore the ones you don't need.


Here is a better story (?)

We are driving near a bank on Saturday.

No, "we" aren't driving, sorry, my son was in complete control of the automobile. I was just a passenger.

I tell my son, "Bads Near Stop"

He looks at me and asks what that means.

I point at the sign and say, "Its the opposite of Wells Fargo"

Its now 1:57 AM, I don't remember his reaction. He was wearing sunglasses so it was hard to tell at the time what his reaction was.

I reaLLy think there is laundry I could be doing. Or a few dirty dishes from suppa'. But no, I wanna type.

I should reaLLy go to sleep now before I accidentaLLy push the orange Publish Post button.


Update: A little while later she tells me, "Ithoughtitwasmorning"

I say, "Technically, it is morning. And, Spring is approximately one day old, too"

I am just a regular old almanac. Emphasis on the all and man.


Update: She asks me, "Whattimeisitnow?"

I think I have become merely a clock, is that all I am good for in life?

I say, "It is 7:32" and I don't round to the nearest 5 minute mark as is my custom.

She says, "Really,itrainedallnight"

I wonder why she suddenly has this 'Really' word response to my time announcements. Why would I be untruthful? I s'ppose I could buy a set of glow in the dark atomic clock syncronized time pieces for every room in the house with giant numbers, then she could always know eXactly what time it was. But I bet it would be difficult for her to break her habit asking me for the time, knowing I live with an iPad glued to my eyeballs and fingertips. I also s'ppose I could respond to her time requests with a standardized answer, "Its not quite twelve".

My Long Lost Bubbly Girl

Saturday March 17th

I met someone at the bookstore over a year ago, an employee who had a wonderful smile and something different about the way she talked. I noticed that she had a very bubbly personality and that she had a bit of a laugh, a tiny laugh, with almost every sentence, usually right at the end.

We chatted several times, but then we got disconnected. For several months she was never at the bookstore at the same time that I was shopping. I just knew her first name, and the other employees told me she still worked there, and so I just left an informal "well, tell her hi for me" message. I eventually stopped asking.

I would drive by the bookstore several times but usually at the wrong time of day because I typically grocery shop very late, or I had frozen food and had to get home.

So I was slightly saddened that this friendship had appeared to have disappeared, lost over time. She seemed to be a good match for a friendship. Hmmm, bummer. I thought, well, that happens sometimes. Move on.

My son and I were going out of town for several hours together, but first we were going to have breakfast with his wife. So the three of us were traveling to particular restaurant "A", when suddenly my son the driver switched lanes and pulled into a local diner "B", where I rarely go. He said, "I am making an executive decision, we are going to eat here instead"

I was okay with the decision, knowing that their food was usually pretty good, but I rarely eat breakfast at restaurants in my own town, and I didn't like diner "B"'s French Fries. My son's wife said, "He has been getting better at making executive decisions lately."

So we are seated by the restaurant greeter, but someone else was going to be our waitress.

Suddenly in my peripheral vision is my Bubbly Girl from the bookstore, and she is going to be our waitress and I say, "Its you!" and she cracks up laughing and points at me, and we have a wonderful reunion moment, comparing notes of our disconnection.

She had almost left town to move far away, but had switched jobs and several other positive things were going on in her life, so I am very happy for her. I have lost too many friendships in the last few years for usually unknown or bizarre reasons, and it was nice that this one did not. Now I'll just have to see if diner "B" can make a grilled chicken sandwich!

A Silly Onion

Here is a silly comment that I tormented my friend Friko with this morning:


I once had an uncanny can of onions that weighed only an ounce.

No way, you say. Yes way, I say.

For it originally weighed four but three were eaten by me.

So me plus three equals one onion ounce uneaten by me.

I could go on and on but that might put you off.

Did I mention that my onion I own has ions?

Yes, its true! If you split the miniscule onion molecule in two, its on & ion too!

Okay, I'm finally through.

Onion, I know, I know! (<- if you look reaLLy close you'LL see its a virtual palindrome)


But I then I found someone else to bother when Lee had a blog post about comments, so I left him this comment:

I think the blog posts that generate the most comments are the ones that have comments as their primary topic. They may not be good comments, such as this comment itself I would classify as slightly below average, even though it has eXactly the average number of words found in a comment of a blog, yet it has a slightly greater than average number of total letters. And most blog comments are filled with questionable content such as this one that claims to have accurate information about comment statistics, hah! And don't get me started about which comments generate even more comments!

By Remote Control

(This is a continuation of the news story about the prosecution and conviction of the local drug lord. See my first story at: Two-Day's Short Thoughts, Some Scary )

Friday was a busy day. A wet day, but highly localized moisture inside our building as the hot water heater malfunctioned but we caught it just in time. Drip, drip, drip.

As I was getting a few parts in one of many trips to several stores, including other liquid supplies such as coffee, I noticed a teleBision news cameraman on the sidewalk on our property. He was obviously more interested in something besides my faulty leaky hot water heater, as he had his camera pointing at the carpet & flooring store across the street. The store is owned by the recently convicted drug lord of the city. Well, I should say, was owned. The cameraman told me that in a few minutes at 12:30 PM the ownership of the building was changing and he was there to interview the new owners. I had not heard that particular news just yet about their building being sold. I knew that the drug lord got about 100 months in prison and lost a lot of property, money and several very eXpensive vehicles, a Maserati and a Bentley were just a few of the many.

So several minutes later I was wandering back down the sidewalk for a few more repair parts, as the hardware store is on the same block as our building, same side of the street. The cameraman is still there and I chat with him again. He told me that the people at the carpet store were NOT happy that he was filming their store. He told me that someone at the carpet store had flipped his camera off.

So my little humorous brain heard the words "flipped off" and mixed in the long distance of "across the street", and with a straight face I asked the cameraman in a confused naive Steven Wright voice, "WOW!, that's incredible that they were able to turn your camera off by remote control all the way from across the street".

The confused cameraman looked at me for just a split second, and said, "No, they didn't turn my camera off, they gave me the ..." and he continued on showing me the hand-finger gesture and then I smiled slightly and I told him that I reaLLy knew what he meant the first time, and then he saw my play on the words "flipped off" and cracked up laughing. He told me it was pretty funny. I agreed. I gave him my blog address, and told him that I write all kinds of siLLy things, with special emphasis on my stories about my alter ego of a mentally challenged space alien trapped on earth.

We eventually got our hot water heater replaced, functionally flowing, but I haven't met the new neighbors yet. Luckily we got our flooring job finished for the pedicure room at our business just a few weeks ago, so come on by and get your toes prettied up & painted, especially if you are going on a trip, business, family vacation or maybe headed down south to federal prison.

Don't worry, I don't do nails. I leave that to trained certified professionals.

The Masterd And The Pupild

I started working with two Japanese language apps on my iPad recently. The newer one focuses on phrases. I checked my status, and it gave these eXact spellings:


  You haven't any masterd phrases this week.

  You haven't any masterd phrases today.

  You haven't any masterd phrases.

  You haven't any familiar phrases.

  Total Learning Time:
  0 Hours 26 Minutes


Actually, I have spent far more time than that working with the app, passing some tests, but the app crashes every once in awhile and I think it completely forgets any work in lost sessions. It actually crashes at a higher frequency than the Safari web browser, which I think crashes at least 6 times a day with fairly constant use.

At least I had already mastered the correct spelling of mastered before starting this app.

DOG BONUS: I like other people's dogs almost as much as my own. Here is some reaLLy cool photography of Maddie The Coonhound, some very amazing shots of a quite talented dog & physics.

Bill of Tire-d Sales at the Fork in the Road

I pull up to a stop at the intersection of Bell and 45th. The name of the business across the intersection at 10 o'clock has the big bold name of most likely the business owner of a tire place. The name is Bill Williams.

I think, "Bill? Isn't that short for William?"

My neXt think is the combo "William Williams", who would want to be called that? Who would name their child that?

Then I smile aNd add a middle name, "William William Williams", I wonder if anyone has that name?

My neXt think is the artificial in my head at this moment conversation:

Questioner: "What is your name?"

WiWiWi: "Well, my last name is Williams, and my first and middle are William's, too"

Questioner: "What?!?!? You have two names and they both Williams?"

WiWiWi: "No, it's William William Williams"


The light turns green and I drive east.

My neXt think is a prompted because of the previous duplicate triplicate WiWiWi names causes a Sirhan B Sirhan to pop into my brain, and I have a fleeting RFK-sadness nostalgic moment to my age very young, a remembrance of death. The clouds that appeared wanting to rain all day around me finally let loose their drops after going a few blocks.

I slowly become unsad, focusing on driving in heavier traffic than before, plus the sky's tears lightly, while my windshield wiper gently wipes.

One and a half miles later I see a restaurant sign declaring itself the Mexican Food Embassey underneath its name. Its name in huge letters, the embassey claim in smaller. It is the most luxurious Mexican food restaurant in town, grandfatherly, not the newest, but possibly the grandest, my opinion. I wonder how you become qualified to call yourself an Embassey of something? What roles would you perform as the Mexican Food Ambassador? Would that include settling tequila trade disputes? Then I realize I have been spelling embassy wrong. Then I am minorly mystified why ambassador is an A word and embassy is an E word.

I drive slower than normal in the rush hour traffic and a white, (car is it?), gets behind me very close, too close, no wait, is that a hearse behind me?, a dead person tailgating maybe right behind me possibly in this traffic?

I go around a broad circular shaped section of the street after a semi-nervous minute, only to discover by the mirror with a now better angle view that it is just a pickup truck with a very strange camper top. So probably no dead people have been with me in traffic at the moment, well, hopefully no dead people with me on the go.

The sky clears a mile later and I eventually find the place to guide my wife towards in her vehicle, overcoming terrible cell phone and internet service provider sporadic outages.

Things I Expect To Find In The Parking Lot of a Transmission Repair Shop:
A) Icky exotically colored pools and streaks of most likely poisonous fluids from vehicles
B) Circular ring shaped metal discards from shattered transmissions
C) Absolutely no vegetation in the dirt parking lot due to constant traffic and chemicals

Thing I Didn't Expect To Find In The Parking Lot of a Transmission Repair Shop:
A) A metal kitchen fork

I wondered if the fork would still be there when I returned in the future to get our repaired vehicle.

Answer: Yes, the fork was still in the same spot about a week later, and No, I didn't take a picture of it.

Knowing me, you are probably wondering why I didn't take a picture of the fork on either occasion.

Answer: I knew that when I would eventually write up these events that you would have eXpected me to take that picture, but then I decided to surprise you by not taking it. I know, it was a very difficult process to not take the picture, or save the fork, but I managed to do it. It was eXtremely difficult, especially the part about not saving The Lost Fork.

Two Mules for Sister Siri

I have something irritating me concerning a business situation. My wife and I are talking about it before and during the transport. She is my cargo at the moment. While I am taking my wife to work on my mule while her mountain goat is at the vet having an operation, I tell my wife that I am going to the bar (its also a grill) to drown my sorrows in a grilled chicken sandwich, and I leave out the Dr Pepper beverage part on purpose, and of course I never drink alcohol at that time of day, and never at this bar, at least in the last decade or so. I paint that picture for eXactness that there reaLLy is only a sandwich involved plus the unspoken Dr Pepper, implied.

The wife cracks up laughing at the concept of drowning my sorrows in chicken, grilled.

I smile, I wrote that one well, at least above average if she laughed. I just didn't eXpect a good laugh from her.

Sorrow sad sopping wet chicken. Wet with cooking juiced greases. Served with some mayo. Completed sauce from a tomato based BBQ flavor, Mmmmmm.

No fries, I am cutting out those calories.

I wind up having an eXtemely long lunchtime because I didn't see my HVAC mentor, at first. He saw my mule in the parking lot but didn't see me making a phone call before entering, because my mule is so huge. So he sat in a deeper part of the diner with his back to the front door, plus a minor partition obscuring things slightly. And of course I looked for his mule when I first arrived, as always, while still on my mule but before I made my phone call, so his mule was not there to be seen. His mule is almost eXactly the same as mine eXcept his is white and I feed mine oats and his gets grass. My mule is mainly maroon with bigger hooves.

So when I entered the dire den of brazed BBQ bird on a bun, I sat near the front by the owner and consumed the calories, not realizing my mentor, a giant among humans, was just a few feet away.

Another friend female from my previous place of work arrived and said hello, patting my back, and so I joined her table while she waited on her daughter to arrive. That is when I discovered the hidden huge him of HVAC. So we were both perplexed at how we missed seeing each other, but then spent the neXt full hour talking half nonsense. We did have a good time. Half nonsense plus technical wizardry and physics is our domain. I showed him my new iPad app for learning the Japanese language. He thought it was cool. He wrote his own joke in Japanese!

I spent most of the rest of the day buying the wife the promised Apple. And I discovered that a long lost friend misplaced from My MySpace days was going to be my Apple vendor for the day! Hoo-ray for finding lost friends, and then an eXtra "Hoo-ray!" for getting to help them make money!

Money! Friends! Apples! Chicken! Bacon!

Even having too much wind with flying soil wasn't going to spoil this day.

Money! Friends! Apples! Chicken! Bacon!

So here is my dumb joke of the yesterday of yesterday:

I am sitting at the Verizon store after lunch starting the process of getting an Apple iPhone 4S. I am in luck because the freight has just arrived, and there are three, and I just need one for The Wifey.

The thing I am looking forward to on this particular model is the Siri feature. Siri is an artificial intelligence software program that you interact with verbally. And Siri has a soft feminine voice. You speak questions to Siri, and the voice recognition software converts your request into Google requests, and other web searches, to find things like restaurants and businesses. Or more important things like, "how far is it between the earth and the moon?"

So ... Here, FINALLY is my dumb joke, an Apple joke. What do you call Siri when she gets schizophrenic with multiple personalities, each giving different answers? Siri-us

Update: Good News! It appears The Vet has fixed my wife's mountain goat. It is not a mule. It is black with tiny but very able hooves. The fix was only $500 and so far I highly recommend this new vet. The name of his business is Turbo Exchange and he is on Farmer Avenue just east of Washington. Just ask for Buddy.

I'm Just That "Kind" of Son

Time: Fifteen Minutes Before Midnight

Place: My Couch


The teleBision set is turned down while focusing on my iPad game, when I hear an advertisement for a well known music superstar that is going to be playing in the neighboring state soon, near where my mother lives.

Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr., or you probably know him as Snoop Dogg, is going to be performing at an Indian casino in Oklahoma.

I suddenly get an idea and crack up laughing.

My Wonderful Idea: I am such a good son, so I must immediately tell my mommy that a music superstar is going to be in town (well, close by, I think its just a few miles from her, wouldn't want to miss it, who needs sleep?)

Wikipedia confirms that its very close to my mother.

I call mommy. No answer.

I try a different number just to be sure, nope, I was right the first time.

Suddenly my iPad lights up with an incoming phone call from her.

She gives me a drowsy initial question, "Is anything wrong?", and I respond with an eXcited rapid fire voice announcing the soon arrival of the one, and hopefully ever only, Snoop Dogg playing nearby. I try reaLLy hard not to laugh, and she starts to try to give a reply of "what are you talking about?", while I start to interrupt with a briefer Snoop Dogg eXplanation, when suddenly she catches on and cracks up laughing followed by my equal vocal eruption.

She tells me the story that my step-father liked to tease her about Willie Nelson. When he would see the giant billboard on the interstate highway announcing the arrival of Willie playing at the same casino, my step-father would always tell her, "Your boyfriend is back in town."

The phone call only lasts for a minute and a half, and we spend half of that minute and a half ha-ha-ing. But she needs her sleep and I think (?) she thanks me for calling. Ah, such a nice way to end a Saturday, to end a week. Good night, Momma.

Update: 2012.03.03 14:00

I just checked Willie's schedule and he is currently just south of me in Lubbock TX performing this evening, and then in April will be at the previously mentioned casino near my mother, just in time for Easter! BUT ... there is a price difference. The minimum amount for a ticket in Lubbock today is $45 and the future show near mom is $250, plus fees. You do get lotza eXtra goodies for the $250 package, and I s'ppose if he is your boyfriend it would be okay, but then I thought, if he is reaLLy my mom's boyfriend she should get in free. Perhaps I should call their "Help" telephone number to see if that would be possible. Then maybe if they started dating, Willie could be my new daddie. I checked, and Willie and my mom are pretty close in age, so thats a plus. Wikipedia says he has been married four times and currently married, but that hasn't appeared to prevent him from dating in the past. I am not sure what his current policies are, or how mean his current wife is, which would be a deciding factor. Plus my mother is currently married, I forgot to mention that.

Extras in the Casino Package Deal

Premium Package Includes:
   1 great ticket to the show
   1 exclusive Willie Nelson T-shirt
   1 exclusive Willie Nelson Professional 8x10 Photograph
   1 keepsake VIP laminate
   1 year Willie Nelson Club Luck* fan club membership
   1 digital download of the live show


Update: 2012.03.03 17:00

My mother and I know how to have a good time. I call her on the phone to chat quite often, but not often enough. A long time ago when I only had three real names instead of four, my initials were EBB, but I was a huge Elton John music fan and somehow in my early college years I informally had Elton as a nickname. I knew that even Elton Hercules John was reaLLy Reginald Kenneth Dwight. Some people didn't even know my real first name. One day two of my friends at the science building were arguing over whether Ernie or Elton was my real first name, which of course, its neither, the real first name is Ernest. So in college I would practice writing creatively wonderful bizarre letters home to my mother which were signed:

    Love,
    Elton Ernest [my B middle name] Boston
    The First, The Worst, and Probably The Last

So now you finally know what the word 'blog' stands for:

    Bizarre
    Legends
    Of
    Geeks

I Was Able To Predict The Future for Tom Selleck - Can I Help You?

My psychic abilities are limited.

But I was able to predict what Tom Selleck was going to do much later in yesterday's episode of Blue Bloods. But I am having considerable trouble hitting the T key, instead I am going to the right doing Y too often.

In a scene in his office as police commissioner Tom hands a notepad to a woman so she can write a private note. Tom doesn't see the note. But the cameras spent too much time on the notepad AND he put the notepad back in his desk drawer.

I turned to my wife and told her, "You see that thing he did with the notepad? A little later in the show Tom is going to do that trick where you rub a pencil sideways over the next sheet of paper on the stack to reveal the message in inverse." So rather than using high tech wizardry, Tom went old school, probably Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys, but I doubt Scooby Doo, in order to save the day. Maybe it was something he picked up from his Magnum P.I. days?

My wife was highly impressed when my prediction came true.

I just wanted to brag about my super-human capabilities, well, not so much brag, as to be helpful. So if you are having trouble predicting the future, just let me know, and I will give you an answer. If you ask me the right kind of question, I can be 100% correct!

How? You ask.

Well, I will just imagine your scenario question-dilemma, and then I will play an episodic answer in my little brain. It will be up to you to read my mind, and then act accordingly on this visual-neural information. Oh, and to make it easier than that I will publish Questions and Answers as well. If the only visual information that I have for you is a cartoonish Blogger icon, then be sure to look in the animated drawings section of my brain. If I have no idea what you look like, then I'll just use The Simpsons by default, just look for your Blogger ID on the opening screen shot. AND if you want something reaLLy special you can specify a particular teleBision show in your request, even do something with live people, like Gilligan's Island or The Munsters.

Instructions: Send me a G-Rated comment with your question about your future, and optionally a teleBision show or actor-actress or even some other famous person, that will appear in my version of your future.

Ooh, I feel special, kinda like a Genie! And by Genie I am referring to the garage door opener.

5 Outta 8 Ain't Bad

Julie gave me a writing eXercise. Use five out of eight of the following words in a poem or story. Here goes.

    blackberry
      mother
       needle
        cloud
        voice
         whir
         cliff
          lick      



Neanderthal Dreams

10,000 BC - sometime in the month of May

While observing the whir of needle shaped clouds with my mother on a cliff, she said, "why don't you hang your body over the side of the cliff, I'll hold your ankles, and you can pick me some fruit of that blackberry plant, like we do every summertime. Be sure not to lick them before they are washed, you don't want to get lick sick." But I thought about how much I had grown in the last year, plus how much weaker my mother was getting since her ax accident, plus her dropping me 350 feet last year, and

" NO!!! "

said my voice, "I don't care if it is Mother's Day and your birthday and the anniversary of the time my sister went "missing" while hunting and gathering."

How To Destroy A Small Texas Town

There is a small town in Texas with a large name. A long time ago it had a high school and kept that school going for several decades until there were just not enough students to keep it going. In Texas the number of students you have equates to how much money you get from the state coffers.

But for some reason when the school system decided to close the high school, they kept the grades K through 6th in operation. This took place around 20 years ago.

But then times changed. A little.

The population of the town didn't really change positive. It fell during the year 1990, 2000 and 2010 census by about 40 percent. There were some new jobs with hog houses, and oil production. But certainly not enough local kids to justify a high school.

But they decided to open a junior high then a little while later a high school again.

They pumped about 5 million dollars into infrastructure, financed by bond issues.

How did they find more kids? Bussing.

They bussed kids in from several miles away. Supposedly they had plans to bring in "above average" students, but soon they dropped this idea. So then suddenly several of the students who lived IN the small town chose to go to a neighboring town to get away from the outsiders who had invaded "their" school.

190

It is my understanding that you need a minimum of 190 students to break even in a school system, and the number of students in this school system is only at about 2/3 that amount. So the state of Texas will probably shut down the entire school system after May of this year. Plus the town has been split in two in an uncivil war of words. Property values have collapsed. You can rent, but it is now difficult to finance a property sale there.

All the details in this blog post are from conversations that I have had with people inside the situation, so any and all of this information should be considered suspect.

What interesting thing did I learn today: From a goverment census website, I learned that Texas is the only state to enter the United States by treaty as opposed to territorial annexation.  This allows the Texas flag to fly at the same height as the US flag.