For The Whole Trailer Park

It is bad enough that I was too busy lately to get by digital convertor box before the signal went dead on my cable TV, but I when I show up at the cable office I am only the third person in line at a company that can be slower than the DMV.

I think, maybe I won't starve to death before I get my boxes. Wrong.

The first person is taking a really long time talking about his TiVo box problems and he finally gets a different remote.

I think, ah, soon.

BUT I discover that the lady in front of me is there to get digital convertors for an ENTIRE trailer park. YES! I kid you not, the ENTIRE trailer park. But she isn't the owner. She becomes agitated because things start to go south for her when another rep suddenly appears and lets her know that the 37 devices are going to be sent to the owner and it appears she has driven from Pampa (30 minutes away) for nothing, not even "her" devices.

She begins to make a claim that she didn't realize she was going to lose her service if she didn't get her boxes. I am thinking, No, I think the cable company has been terribly clear they were going to cut us off on the 29th, and I say so. I think this got me points with the cable teleBision lady behind the counter and I was getting my boxes veRy soon after.

Fargo should be crystal clear tonight.

I Am Off To Slaughter A Wooly Mammoth

Pure happiness is discovering you had a gallon jug of SunnyD Orange Strawberry that you didn't know about. If the 6.75 oz, 11.3 oz and the 16 oz are known as their "Go Sizes", then a gallon must be their "Stop".

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Immediately after waking up and seeing the word 'catastrophically' I just realized that the word catastrophy has "cat as trophy" but then realized that catastrophy is reaLLy speLLed catastrophe. Somedays are just like that and you just have to ask yourself, "Y?".

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I saw that it was the 20th anniversary of Nixon's death, so I read his wikipedia article, quite fascinating. You tend to forget about aLL the wonderful things he gave us like OSHA and the EPA.

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I should invent the clothes dryer that will start itself. "Hmmm, let's see, the human put wet clothes in me, closed the door, AND I detect he/she also started my sudsling Mr Washer just now, so I should just go ahead and 'push' Start for him/her". General Electric? Slave Electric.

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I rarely watch teleBision. It is on as I walk through the livingroom but the sound is muted and closed captioning displays, "Jaws theme intensifies" and of course there is no Jaws movie playing. I told myself, "I rarely see those three words together in that order with nothing else." I wiLL have to bring them up in conversation more often, especiaLLy in response to Brandon's "Terry Bradshaw" monologues. If none of this makes sense then I have succeeded.

The only person I know in Delaware asks me if I am getting Cooper a treat for Easter.

I respond:  I am going to go back in time, slaughter a wooly mammoth, bury it in permafrost, come back to the present (time), and then go dig up the WooMam as a present (gift) to Cooper. I know it sounds like alot of trouble, but I am already here in northern Alaska digging. This is actuaLLy a good thing (as Martha S would say) because Tamie just came home from Wal-Mart without getting him a new chew bone. Tamie asked me just now, "Did you tell him I was getting him one? (a chew bone)" and I said no. She said he was bothering her wanting something, and I spelled out "n-i-n-e" and she realized it was almost cheese time. WeLL, I had better finish digging this mammoth out of the permafrost in order to get to the diner on time, it is Saturday evening and people are expecting me. Oh, I must also find the remote.

A Far Isms

Here are some of my modifications of some common aphorisms.

Beauty is only skin deep.

Beauty is only as deep as the first few layers of skin cells, and they are dead.

Beauty is dead

Or maybe:

Beauty is depth.

Or:

Beauty is dead depth.

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Better the devil you know than the devil you don't.

If you are an atheist and didn't believe that The Devil existed, omitting him would yield concisely:

Better you know than you don't.

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Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

Build a better door and all the mice in the world will be unable to get in. It won't stop them from accumulating on your path, though.

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Cast your bread upon the water, and it will be returned a hundred-fold.

Cast your bread upon the water, and it will be food for a hundred fish, depending on how much bread it was, and how well the fish take turns and share.

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Don't burn the candle at both ends.

AND

Don't burn your bridges behind you.

Install proper lighting on bridges, probably by not using candles.

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Don't speak ill of the dead.

Don't speak of the dead to the ill. Sick people don't need to be reminded that it could get worse for them soon.

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Eat to live, don't live to eat.

AND

Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

So I created:
Don't forget to eat, drink and be merry, to really live it up, for tomorrow we diet.

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Faith will move mountains.

Bulldozers can also move mountains, so bulldozer = faith. I wonder if this means that religious people should buy stock in Caterpillar Inc, symbol CAT on the NYSE and component of the DJIA.

Cat worship?

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Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Even a broken clock is right four times a day if it is facing a mirror and there are just simple common symbols to indicate each hour to yield a symmetrical scheme through an axis of rotation.

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For want of a nail, a kingdom was lost.

This would be reaLLy true if you owned a whole bunch of beauty salons that specialized in manicures and pedicures, and then suddenly everyone decided to stop caring for their nails and you went bankrupt.

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Give him an inch and he'll take a mile.

Now, at first this sounds terrible, but it is not quite as bad as it first appears. You have already made arrangements to give 1 inch but then someone takes (12x5280) 63,360 inches. You thought you were losing 63,360 inches, but it is reaLLy only an eXtra 63,359 inches.

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If wishes were fishes then no man would starve.

AND

If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.

Combined: If wishes were sea horses, then hungry beggars could have neat aquariums.

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Ignoriance of the law is no excuse for breaking it.

You are really ignoriant if you spell ignoriance with two i's.

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It'll all come out in the wash.

This not completely true. My clothes washing machine may remove dirt and grime, but the clothes dryer is the device that collects the lint.

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Lightning never strikes twice in the same place.

This means that lightning will eventuaLLy stop happening once it has struck everywhere.

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Many hands make light work.

An electrician makes lights work.

There is a high probabilty that light bulbs are made by robots, not hands.

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You can't fit a round peg in a square hole.

It doesn't take much imagination to see that this is wrong. The diameter of the peg just has to be equal to or less than the side of the square hole.

I do not know how this applies to Winnipeg, Manitoba,  Canada. I have never been there although I have been within a few hundred miles and farther north in Canada.

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When in Rome, do as the Romans do.

This would be more interesting as:

When in Rome, do as the Romans did.

Because then you could start conquering other countries and forming an empire.

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Revenge is a dish best served cold.

I think it should be a little more visual. I like:

Revenge is a dish best served with ketchup.

(That way it simulates blood - additional scary element - plus most of the time ketchup is served cold)

Heartbleed: Did Obama Know?

Because my wife and I share the same account info for iCloud and probably things I don't understand about iPhones, our phones automagically stay sync'd with notes and directories.

So instead of iPhones we have wePhones.

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Saturday afternoon at 5 PM: Wow, in the 90's right now and it is s'pposed to SNOW on Monday! In TEXAS in APRIL ....mid April ...

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So ... the NSA knew about Heartbleed for two years and used it to their advantage. What bizarre selfish behavior. This is something that needed to be fixed as soon as it was discovered for the better good of all society. I think the NSA has forgotten who they ultimately work for.

Now I am interested in knowing how far up the chain of command that people knew about this at the NSA. Did Obama know?!?!?

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I went to the notes on my iPhone to order my supper meal at the diner, and I noticed that the most recent note said cryptically, "Fix any problem [at the original salon address]" and I was puzzled by what had I wrote, then realized that iOS had auto corrected "ant" to "any", and of course it did it again as I was typing this. It is okay to have computer bugs but obviously not ants. Oh, it now appears that ants is okay BUT ant is not unless you have recently corrected iOS. Okay, enough, I am going to sleep in 10 minutes.

My lawyer friend asked if my orders for meals are really that complex. I told her that it is easy for me just pull up Diner Meal 1, 2 or 3 and just hand my iPhone to the waitress and they take my iMenu back to the kitchen.

They stiLL manage to put butter on my "dry lightly toasted wheat bread" about half the time AND it isn't always wheat but white. But I stiLL adore them greatly.

Three For The Road

For part of today there was a strange brief three minute period on Interstate 40 for three things I had never observed before.

I was driving the speed limit going west in eastern Amarillo but still managed to slowly pass a small demi-dented damaged car in the middle lane. It had no rear glass yet there were several things piled across the flat area behind the headrest where the window would have could have should have been. They looked like possibly groceries, the one closest to me looked like a bag of potato chips defying the laws of physics and aerodynamics.

I thought that might be the wildest thing I saw all day.

Nope.

A little ways farther down the road on the north side was a billboard in a foreign language but not Spanish, and I laughed and thought, "Dang! I must have taken the wrong exit and took the road to Da Nang!" - I am not fluent in Vietnamese but I can pick out a few words on a menu, but not eXpecting to see a Vietnamese billboard. I will have to check how many Vietnamese live in Amarillo. [Answer: 3.1 percent Asian, so roughly 6 thousand would be about the maximum for 2010 census data.]

I thought well that might finally be the wildest thing I saw all day. I will have to get the message of the billboard translated to see what is being advertised on probably relatively expensive ad space. Perhaps it is meant to attract out of town Vietnamese passing through, as I-40 is a busy transnational passage.


Wildest thing of the day ... ?
Nope, not yet.

When I got to the intersection of I-40 and Ross-Osage on the access road there was a cattle truck, 18 wheeler, in front of me, my lane, that appeared to be fixing to make a U-turn under the overpass. I thought, hmm, this going to be interesting, one of those square peg round hole maybe scenarios.

I think semi trailer rigs are about 13 ft 6 inches tall and there should be plenty of room to go under a 14 ft 4 in passageway, BUT, ... in this case it was interesting because right in front of me I saw the left rear tires go up onto the curb that had to have raised the left side at least 6 more inches and stay there as rig started under the bridge. I never heard any thing scrape or pieces go flying but I was cringing a bit hoping no cattle were scared in the cock-eyed cow container, a group form of cow tipping.

The rest of my day has been rather boring since.