These are the things that scamper through my lil' brain; catch them and let them make you smile a-while, and then let them go freely on their way a-gain... Ernest S. B. Boston
I am away for a little while working on a few or more episodes for The Adventures of My Space Alien Alter Ego story ... will return (to Earth) soon!
Notice: Blogger has screwed up and lost a bunch of photos out of my blog! They are replaced with a gray silhouette of a human head. I will eventually get them replaced with the correct photo, it may take a while to find and fix everything. So some of my stories don't make much sense without their photos, sorry for the inconvenience.
A pile of sand, a pile of snow, shape governed somewhat by the concept of the 'Angle of Repose', there being freezing, thawing and the wind as well playing a factor in my backyard. There is also the concept of 'Angle of Glue' that trumps angle of repose.
Igloo Glue
I think I will name my big pile of snow in the back yard "Shurglay", that way it will be known as Shurglay Glacier
There are approximately 6.8 billion people in the world.
If you square that number and divide by two you get 23,120,000,000,000,000,000 - which is the number of possible human relationships - friends, acquaintance; lovers - possible.
And that's not even including man's best friend, The Dog.
This is why stalking one particular human doesn't make much sense.
Fa ce bo ok in pie ces, bro ken, scat ter ed, shat ter ed, th e new mis sed inf orm at ion age is up on us, whe re is my yo ur st uf f at, bro ken, scat ter ed, shat ter ed, wh at hap pen ed? An d w hy? Th is is im pro ve me nt, I can t ell.
I am really glad I have got to the point in life where I completely understand women. Of course, I am even more glad that my wife gave me permission to let everyone know this.
(Actually she didn't, she's asleep right now, men, but if we get together really fast we can make it to the spaceship and escape while they are getting their beauty rest. Hurry, my back yard, the south one - it looks like a Morgan Building. I'm leaving in 15 minutes, hurry. Capacity: 14)
"Did you know that I am 'The Sultan of Swing'?" That was my latest question to the wife. Of course, in all fairness, she has no idea who the Dire Straights were, or the tune I am humming, and instead of Mark Knopfler's voice I choose to sing in the vocal register of Charles Montgomery Burns from 'The Simpsons'. Hold it, Mark Knopfler does kinda sound like Monty.
The Dead Presidents Day holiday is interfering with my shipment of new books and presents. It left Fernley, Nevada 97 hours ago. It had plenty of time to get here if the Pony Express would have still been in service. I miss those days. I don't necessarily miss the ponies. Now you know what the P originally stood for in ups.
What? Ponies? Puppies? Poodles? No, P stands for Parcel. "United Ponies Service" ?!?!? That doesn't even begin to make sense. (think-think-think) I guess it kinda does now that I think about it awhile; they would ride one pony really fast for a short distance and then get on the next pony at the next station, and zoom zoom zoom ... dust.
Update 2010.02.16 09:15
My friend wrote a note this morning warning me not to get my hopes up.
My response:
Don't worry, I'm still here - no one else showed up, bunch-a chickens, and intergalactic flight regulations require that I have a co-pilot, navigator, stewardess or at least one other creature who has either:
A) physically separate intellectual processor pods (multiple brains tied through a neural network)
Or
B) multiple personalities who can multi-task at blinding speed and have distinct voices when performing various job functions plus a note from their doctor,
capable of performing all three jobs of Nav-Stew-CoP with recent up-to-date certification on either the solar system of departure or arrival.
Must love quadrupeds (that's my own requirement since Cooper would be coming along as well. That reminds me, I should try to train him! Oh, look, there is a C clause for Man's Beast Friend - oh, but you can't bring passengers, or leave your own solar system)
Update 2010.02.17 00:01
In the spirit of Tony The Tiger, this is great! I checked the tracking status of my package, and it shows an arrival scan at 3:13 AM - that's over 20 hours ago, and the location is "---", oooops, hold it, where is "---" ? Which state has Triple Hyphen for a city? Or is that 'Three Minus' ?
Update 2010.02.17 02:56
Note to one of my sisters: This post was just another in my recently initiated ongoing publication from my alter ego - an 8 armed mentally challenged space alien accidentally trapped on earth. Please reference the other story titled "Why I Moved To Oklahoma Today ... Suddenly" which you may find amusing. My original claim of completely understanding women only extends to human women (such as you), not extraterrestrial women such as the character of my sister Susie in that tale. Enjoy!
Today I got a feel for how zany the state of Ohio is.
There is a Zanesville which is a 100 times larger than Zanesfield, which is actually a village. Zanesville, the non-village, has a Y-shaped bridge. You can cross the bridge and stay on the same side of the river or go to the other side. So this answers my question: "Why did the chicken move to Zanesville, OH?"
Answer: So it could stop crossing the road and opt for a bridge with options instead.
Hmmm, there is also a North Zanesville and a South Zanesville, separate from the Zanesville within the same county. The chicken now has more options.
There is also south of South Zanesfield ANOTHER place called 'Zanesville Terrace', but it is listed as a Class Code U6 by the census bureau - "A populated place that is not a census designated or incorporated place having an official federally recognized name." Well, you know how fussy migratory chickens can be; they would never want to move to a place like that! Maybe be forced to live there held in captivity, yes, but move there of their own free will, no.
My pen-pal mentioned that it sounded like my kind of town, zany.
Yes! After I wrote this and was wandering in the dark and cold outside with Cooper looking at the stars, I remembered another piece that I wrote a long time ago (2007) about a trip through Kansas even longer ago (maybe 12 years ago) called "Three Tales from the Kanzany Road" about silly/zany things/events while passing through the land of Dorothy and Toto. Its part of my "Traveling on Asphalt For Dummies" series.
I noticed that someone early today had repaired my roads in the Facebook application 'MyTown!'
I really don't have one of those arty-fish-all towns in Faze-boogk, my wife just begged and pleaded until I gave in and let her have ANOTHER one over under my log-in. So its really just the TamieTownTooTwoTwin Cities, Mini-applications and Paint Sprawl Minnesota that you are seeing when you go there.
Yes, and I don't have ANY input on what to do with either city. I was hoping she would shape it to have some appearance of a real city like Borger or DZT but sadly, no. I have made suggestions about her farming activities as well, to make patterns in the crops to form words, a giant TAMIE maybe, or crop circles, all falling on semi-deaf ears of her corn crop.
If people like doing this sort of activity, they should check out the Trainz program. Besides getting to pilot realistic trains through their schedules and such, there are utilities to build your own elaborate train worlds, buildings, hills, streets, trees, cows, squirrels probably too. You can then make your masterpiece available for others as a download in their Trainz community and vice versa.
The only thing weird about this site at the moment is the pricing. The prices are in AUSTRALIAN dollars, and I haven't had enough coffee lately to find an exchange rate. [Pause] [Sip] [Later] $49 AUD for the 2010 Edition - looks like that is $43.75 in US dollars. Little kids love it, big kids love it, even me!
(Rough Draft - I have to take the trash out right now then I'll be back later to fix typo's)
2010.02.01 18:30 Monday
I was shopping at Wal-Mart today for dog rawhide bones, flea & tick collar, Diet Caffeine Free Coke and crackers, Nabisco's 'Wheat Thins Toasted Chips' - the 'Garden Valley Veggie' variety. Just 4 items. So I started the process of ringing up my items through the self checkout station.
Just as I scanned the 4th item, a message popped up on the screen: “Ernie, is that you?” - I thought that was odd, I hadn't even swiped my credit card through the reader yet, I thought, well, maybe Wal-Mart had started a system that did facial recognition matched to the laser retinal scanner matched to the previous purchases in order to speed up shopping and then do an automatic account withdrawal.
But banking wasn't what was happening.
Without thinking I pressed the “Yes” button but without realizing that it wasn't printed in English, but my native language.
Too late! Suddenly the ceiling tiles above me blasted away followed by Federal Agents and Army Rangers descending down ropes blasting me with automatic weapon fire. I took a bullet to my upper right chest and green liquid shot out of my chest hitting a young girl smack dab in the middle of her nose and she burst into flames. She screamed and fainted into her mothers arms right behind her. I reached over to help put out the flames but the mother clubbed me with her purse. I took my laser side arm weapon and sliced the Ranger at 2 o'clock in half. His lower body half fell to the floor with a crash wiping out a customer. His machine gun began to spray bullets all different directions and my mind took control over his severed arm and I was able to take out the second Federal Agent with the first Ranger's weapon while simultaneously performing laser “surgery” on the 3rd and 4th agents. Suddenly there was no gun fire but a stampede of humans amid the smoke and carnage but then a sudden roar of vehicles approaching outside the store.
Suddenly the entire ceiling and roof opened above me with a deafening roar although surprisingly nothing dropped this time as a negative pressure sucked the room air out the top of the building and all the flying debris was going up but not straight up as a strange looking helicopter was descending at an incredible rate. But even faster coming at me was a human shape, on a rope, a girl (?!?!!?) - and screaming commands at me. Even though I was almost ready to faint, probably due to a lack of green goo due to the high velocity lead leakage, I could hear my name and it was my sister Susie! I didn't even know Susie was a space alien! “Grab my hand!” she yelled as one of her left hands extended several feet below her accelerating even faster than her and even faster than the copter which by now had leveled out its approach and had begun to take fire from the ground forces. But within about two seconds time it would take for its weapons system to lock on, the ground forces would, simply, “be no mo' below”. And as I predicted there was intense heat and light and momentary screams from the parking lot and then nothing much except my sole focus to extend one of my right hands and up up up it went, oooh, that's cool, I had been under cover so long I had forgot all about my stretchy limbs. We aren't allowed to display or use our stretchy limbs except in extreme situations. I was pretty sure we were in one right then.
Grasp, clasp, gasp. Susie locked and latched onto me and yanked me off the ground and I sped upwards through the remains of the Wal-Mart mess. Just as I got to Susie I almost passed out again and she reached with one of her right hands to touch my bullet wound. The leak suddenly stopped and I felt surprisingly better. I wasn't equipped with the seal slash repair mechanism in my right index finger of arm number four like Susie; she was a rarity among our kind. And a pretty good pilot I would find out in the coming days. I wondered who was piloting the craft above, but she read my thoughts and told me, “Silly, who do you think is running this show? It's just me doing everything! Never mind that I am still knitting a sweater back at the office by remote mind control” She really impresses me.
She hoisted us upward as the craft began to take on a bit of invisibility to the local radar just as the F-22's were only about 15 miles out and closing fast, but they were too late. I was headed to a safer spot in Oklahoma where I would blend in just fine.
"Rancho Cucamonga" - that is a cool sounding name for a place I found in Los Angeles county today. If I ever have to go into the Federal Witness Protection Relocation Program, I want that to be my first and last name. Shhhh! Don't tell anybody, it'll be our little secret, and my friends and family will be able to find me. (What friends?)
Whatz really fun is to try to alternatingly say "Rancho Cucamonga" and "Raisin Cookiemonster" in a deep deep guttural voice without laughing in a progressively faster - oh, no no no - here's one even better! insert them into that Queen song, whatz it called? the one that has the Galileo thunderbolt and Lightning very very frightening .. ... .. oh, yeah, 'Bohemian Rhapsody'
(Then one of my friends told me that she was my friend ....)
The next time I am performing my stand up comedy routine in a night club I am going to split the audience in halves, the left side will be Rancho and the right Raisins. Then have them do things like chant in a round with question and answer inflection in their voices:
Rancho Cucamonga?
Raisin Cookie Monster!
Rancho Cucamonga??
Raisin Cookie Monster!!
Rancho....
....Raisin
Rancho....
....Raisin
Cuca....
....Cookie
Cuca....
....Cookie
Monga....
....Monster
Monga....
....Monster
(together)
Rancho Kookie Monster !!!!
Raisin Cucamonga !!!!!
(and then I throw them for a loop, music begins to play and I break into my version of "I Can't Stop This Feelin', Deep Inside of Me ....")
UPDATE: Rather than waiting to publish this Facebook status in my next edition of 100 headlines in blogger I opted to create a separate blog entry. I do that sometimes when the content grows to what I think is an interesting enough piece that fits the zaniness or "Momma's Pretty Baby-ness" of my usual blog content. Today I noticed that I am getting ads showing up on my page for Rancho Cucamonga CA hotels in the Google AdSense content. Cool. I don't know if a human or a computer made that advertising decision.
Real Life Statistics Problem: I put one jalapeno pepper cut up in chunks in my chili batch. If there are X number of tablespoons of chili in the finished pot, how many pieces of pepper should there be in order to have a 95% probability that there will be at least one pepper piece in each tablespoon? (The total amount of pepper is constant - only the chunk size changes)
The next day I performed two experiments, the first with jalapeno peppers, then red bell peppers, with the same batch of gumbo, figuring it was just as good as chili for my inquiring mind and semi-hungry stomach.
I had no idea how many tablespoons there should be in the batch - didn't care to calculate (I was hungry), so I just guessed at 24 pieces of jalapeno. This was too few as there wound up being 34 tablespoons of gumbo. (Put the gumbo back in the pan.)
Next, I tried 50 pieces of red bell pepper, easily distinguishable from the other ingredients. This time there were fewer tablespoons of gumbo, 30, probably due to some spillage and evaporation of cooking, and thicker soup allowed for a higher piling of contents in the spoon. This time there were 7 spoons out of 30 that had no pieces of red bell pepper; 23% Zero Events.
So 50 pieces of pepper with 30 spoons failed to achieve the original goal of 95% of the spoons having at least one of the desired pepper of the current experiment phase. (Put the gumbo back in the pan again)
When I ate the gumbo I performed one more count. This time there were only 23 tablespoons of gumbo (evaporation, wolves, gremlins, hunger?). There were 4 Zero Events, so I achieved 83% of the spoons having at least one red bell pepper. Sadly though, there was a DAMET (Disappearance Amelia Mary Earhart Type) of 4 out of the 50 pieces of Red Bell Pepper chunks during the ensuing savage soup slurping and sloshing.
Second, you have to decide if you want to study it.
Third, If you study "obi", then you automatically become an "obiologist"
Fourth, When you decide to stop being an obiologist, you become an "exobiologist" if you truly stop.
Fifth (optional), If you resume after stopping, you are now an "exexobiologist"
Update 2011.02.27 - I noticed that I messed up the title, it reaaallly only takes four steps not five to get to the ex stage, it's five steps to the exex. Well, no sense changing it now, we wouldn't want people to think it's that easy to become an exobiologist.
I saw this list of events on a blog. You are supposed to copy and paste to your own blog and bold everything you’ve done.
1. Started your own blog 2. Slept under the stars 3. Played in a band 4. Visited Hawaii 5. Watched a meteor shower 6. Given more than you can afford to charity 7. Been to Disneyland/world 8. Climbed a mountain (It was called 'Lookout Mountain', so Yes!) 9. Held a praying mantis 10. Sang a solo 11. Bungee jumped 12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea 14. Taught yourself an art from scratch 15. Adopted a child(kind of, my own version of adoption) 16. Had food poisoning (not sure)
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty (saw it – better yet, I went to the top of the World Trade Center in 1994) 18. Grown your own vegetables 19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train 21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked (I had to make it home for a wedding of a good friend and I owned no vehicle my freshman year in college) 23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill 24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb (Had a lamb) 26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice 29. Seen a total eclipse (?) 30. Watched a sunrise or sunset 31. Hit a home run 32. Been on a cruise (In New Orleans on the Mississippi River with my children – and NO wife!!!)
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person. 34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors 35. Seen an Amish community (actually went to a church conference once where there were Amish in attendance. That's how I used to roll, a long time ago, "semi-Amish") 36. Taught yourself a new language 37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person 39. Gone rock climbing (does shale or gravel count? Then yes)
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David 41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa 45. Walked on a beach by moonlight 46. Been transported in an ambulance – but only 4 blocks, they decided I didn't need to go to the hospital
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing 49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person 50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris 51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling 52. Kissed in the rain 53. Played in the mud 54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China 57. Started a business 58. Taken a martial arts class (that's how I got my girlfriend from Hawaii - karate)
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen 61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies 62. Gone whale watching 63. Gotten flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp 67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter 69. Saved a favorite childhood toy (of someone else) 70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar 72. Pieced a quilt 73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades 75. Been fired from a job (***More than once!***) 76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London 77. Broken a bone 78. Been on a speeding motorcycle 79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person 80. Published a book 81. Visited the Vatican 82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem 84. Had your picture in the newspaper 85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House 87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating (helped my grandmother ONCE with a chicken) 88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury (I tried really hard!) 91. Met someone famous 92. Joined a book club 93. Lost a loved one 94. Had a baby 95. Seen the Alamo in person 96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake (Only drove by it) 97. Been involved in a law suit 98. Owned a cell phone 99. Been stung by a bee (of course, this means I have also killed a bee)
These are pieces that I have generated mainly using computer art tools. Enjoy !
Something New:
I am also in the process of linking my poetry blog entries together. This project is only partially finished. A "Poetry LINK" at the bottom of the blog entry points to the next older piece of poetry.
These are some of my abstract art pieces. They are available as prints, send me a note if you are interested.
Couch Glow
Gold As Smoke
Flowing Wood
Award Time
RATs
What Am I Reading?
Mainly the subject of Microcontrollers, Arduino Devices, DNA, Pharmacology and HVAC from a variety of sources.
Currently reading "Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are" by Sebastian Seung
The Sometimes Missing Followers
If you don't see yourself in my followers list its because most of the time lately Blogger has not been showing the most recent five people of the list; strange. It is sporadic in its display, sometimes 19, sometimes 24. New twist: sometimes there is only one missing, my niece! One of my longest term readers.
Primary Goal in Life: To be the 3rd nicest person in the Universe. I achieve this goal by constantly redefining the word 'nicest', which is currently 8735 words long in all its nuances and handling special incidents such as road rage and being attacked by wildlife.
I wake up every day looking forward to the next friend that I will make, the piece of art that I will create, and the culinary discovery that makes my taste buds tumble. I not only have favorite pieces of music, I have favorite notes within those pieces.
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