The Apple Doesn't Fall Far

A wife takes her father to the doctor several times in the course of a year. The journey is an hour's drive one way. They always take the same route. On that route is a fairly new looking large house on the north side of the Amarillo Loop which appears abandoned. There is never activity of residence there, no vehicles, personal articles that make a house look like a home. Just weeds, Texas sized ones. For years. This bothers her father. 

Every trip the wife complains about the level of annoying things her father says and does. She has to handle a lot of his decisions because of his level of reduced mental capacity and plain ignorance of how the universe works and how normal society functions. 

Every trip he mentions, "I wonder who owns that house? I wonder why no one ever tries to live there? I wonder if its for sale? I wonder how you find out who owns it? ... ..."

After every trip the wife complains about her father to her husband - about his antics to the doctors and nurses, his silliness, the wonder moments.

So a few weeks ago both the wife and her father go to the doctor at the same time for the same test work and so the husband gets to be the chauffeur. They get a few miles from the house of great interest to the elderly man in the back seat. Just then husband is reaching in his pocket to get a cell phone to secretly record the inevitable "wonder wonder wonder" statements, as the wife is thinking along the same lines and make funny motions with her head and mouths silently to her husband that the w-w-w house is coming up shortly. He shows her the phone and turns on the recorder.

They wait.

In motion at 70 mph.

Silence.

Nothing.

The husband watches in the rear view mirror as his father-in-law looks at the house carefully during the approach. The father-in-law stares in a focused panning manner while passing over the bridge with the yonder wonder house just to the right and at a lower level looking down on the brown silent brick house. 

Nothing.

A few miles pass and the recorder is turned off.

The husband and wife are silently mildly disappointed to have not captured his words.

They talk about it later when getting home that evening, wondering why he didn't talk about the wonderful house that fills him full with wonder. Perhaps it was because he was in the back seat instead of the front? Perhaps it was because the husband was in the vehicle?

Yesterday the husband takes his wife to the doctor, same journey. No elderly wonderer wanderer this time.

They get a few miles away from the loop entrance and pass a trailer house that is parked on the left side of the road. It has been there for several weeks or months, take your pick,  the husband hasn't kept track.

The wife says, "I wonder why they put that building right there, .... " she starts to continue on but is interrupted by her husband's hysterical laughter, he is able to mention something about her father, 'like father, like daughter' words, he forgets exactly what was said in the intensity of the hilarity while trying to drive properly, but does remember calling her "[put father-in-law's first name here] Junior", which brings on more smiling red faced mock disgust from his wife. But she gets embarrassed and laughs too, only threatening him, "you had better shut up while you still can!" and pops her husband lightly on the arm. He moans in exaggerated theatrical pain clutching his right shoulder, with very poor acting on purpose.

The husband tells her "those are the exact same words that your father told me a few days ago when he threatened to beat me up while we were driving down the road (she wasn't on that trip) when I had an argument with him concerning his rude behavior of ripping out his own IV tubes at the hospital. At least he didn't hit me."

Forte - Poem - on hearing about a book of poetry being burned

Poem based loosely on D.H. Lawrence's 'Piano', one of my favorites

Occasion: I heard that one of my friends was burning a book of poetry due to a lack of shelf space.

Forte

Softly, in the dusk, a woman is burning me;

Taking me back down to the state of ashes, till I see

Myself sitting on a book store shelf anew,

Waiting for the first human to crack me open and take a view.

In spite of myself, the insidious mystery of rhyme

Betrays me back, till the spine of me weeps to belong

To the old Sunday evenings at home, with April 25th outside

And hymns by the cozy fireplace, the blinkling iPod our guide.

So now it is vain for the book to burst into flames

With the tiny black Apple audio appliance appassionato.

The glamour of editorial days is upon me, my table of contents is cast

Down in the flood of remembrance, I smolder like a charcoal briquette for the past.

POETRY LINK: next poem in my blog ...

Baby Elephants Cubed

(Warning: Fiction)

So I get this wonderful idea for a business venture. I offer to dig a cube shaped hole in my neighbor's front lawns. Seven feet x seven feet x seven feet. Why? To capture baby elephants.

I explain to my neighbors that I will pay them 2 cents a cubic foot per month and then split the proceeds for any baby elephants we capture. The baby elephant market is very lucrative. They tell me that they haven't seen any baby elephants around our part of Texas running loose. I reply that the baby elephant traps that I already have in service must be doing their job, but you never know. Do you want your petunias trampled? Do you want small children scared? What about the poor defenseless kitties and puppies? (The weak minded ones start to come around by then - the smarter ones have already ran me off with a broom)

"Why 7 feet?" - they usually ask. I reply that is the optimal size for catching baby elephants. If they are much bigger than that, they are too hard to handle, and smaller ones, not enough money to pay the postage.

"How do you get the baby elephant to get in the hole?"

"A mirror" I reply

"A mirror?" they are puzzled and intrigued

"Yes, you put a small mirror at the bottom of the cube and the baby elephant peers over the edge and see another baby elephant at the bottom of the cube, "a friend!", and jumps in. If the elephant is too big, it won't fit in the cube, and eventually moves on down the street. If its too small, it becomes frightened by the now-much-larger reflection in the mirror at close range and jumps out of the hole."

I even offer that I will be glad to fill their hole back in if they decide they no longer wish to participate at a future date.

So ... (literary pause) a couple months go by. The first person to buy the "hole" story is getting irritated with their 7x7x7=343 cubic foot non-productive baby elephant trap, even though I have paid them $6.86 per month. They call demanding their front yard hole be filled back. I let them know there will be a  $1715 charge (or $5 a cubic foot) to put the dirt back. They are upset. I reply that it is in the contract that they signed. $5 a cubic foot for me to put some dirt back. They demand their dirt back freely and say they will fill it in themselves. I remind them that the next paragraph in the contract shows that they sold me their dirt. They ask how much I will charge to get their dirt back and not fill in the hole. $2 per cubic foot just for the dirt, plus mileage. By this time they are getting livid. They say that they will just get someone else to do it. I remind them of the next paragraph in the contract that states I have a lease on the hole for as long as I pay them $6.86 for the cube. AND if they have someone else fill in the hole there is a $10 per cubic foot penalty, as damages against future earnings for capturing baby elephants.

Then they ask, "I thought you originally told me that you would be GLAD to fill in the hole if I wanted to end the 'hole' thing"

"At $5 a cubic foot, wouldn't you be GLAD too?"

This story is a not-so-far fetched representation of the real ordeal one of my friends went through when dealing with a credit card processing company after they decided not to use the card reader at their business, even though it was never installed.

No neighbors, elephantine or human, were harmed in the making of this story.

Invention Link: The Next Invention in My Blog

My Idea for an Iranian TV Show: "Is Your Cleric Smarter Than A German Shepherd?"

Early this morning I read two and only two news stories. The first one involved a dog who helped save his family's house from fire and the other was an article about an Iranian cleric giving earthquake advice.

The first article tells how a German Shepherd dog, named Buddy, came to the aid of an Alaskan man who accidentally started a fire and then the dog got involved leading the authorities to the site after a GPS unit had failed. The event was recorded on the web cam of the patrol car.

Link to Dog Story

The second article was about an Iranian cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati who gave earthquake advice during a recent Friday sermon. He  told people that giving alms and praying for forgiveness would prevent earthquakes. ("Offering plate tectonics" ?) This comes a week after another Iranian cleric had mentioned that earthquakes were caused by promiscuous women. 

That made me want to know their position on Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, and Alien Crop Circles, as well as do they believe that Elvis Presley still walks among us.

From yahoo news which quoted the Iranian news: "Many women who do not dress modestly ... lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes," Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Sedighi, like Jannati, serves as one of Tehran's acting Friday prayer leaders.

I think that the Iranian people need to learn to do a better job of not allowing ignorant people to become or remain their leaders, either in the positions of government or religion. Besides, it sounds like these two idiot clerics stole their "Sin Equals Earthquakes" idea from the American Pat Robertson who blamed Haitian earthquake troubles on sins committed a long time ago by people who aren't even alive. (I am hoping that the average Iranian citizen is smarter than all this nonsense, please please please, say its so. Prove it by getting these people out of office and into an insane asylum, rest home for the aged or 4th grade science class, as students, where they belong.)

Link to Cleric Story

Clerics, I will keep this next part really simple for you and write these sentences with as few words as possible and use short words as well. Okay? Here we go ....

Earth big. Earth moves. In different places. With different amounts of energy. At random times. Unpredictable. But measurable.

See? ... that wasn't so hard.

Whether or not you believe in the field of plate tectonics, you can set up experiments and measure the distance that the pieces of the earth move, actually and accurately see that a pair of plates move and keeps moving in the same direction.

Iran just happens to sit in a very active earthquake zone.

A few years ago the Iranian city of 97 thousand people with the onomatopoetic name of Bam was devastated by an earth quake that killed approximately one fourth of its people and injured a larger fraction. Had the people sinned? Hmmmm, well, if you call building your houses out of dried mud in an earthquake zone a sin, then you have your own answer.

Iranians would be served by better building codes, not dress codes, and my TV show idea. At least people all over the world have learned to depend on dogs to rescue people trapped in earthquakes. I have never heard of a rescue team of clerics.

Strawberries Incorpor-ate-d

Last night I wrote:

I just encountered some strawberries on my countertop that insisted on becoming a part of me. After a proper innerview process they were allowed to join  Ernest Incorpor-ate-d.

My wifey responded this morning: funny! I must of missed the strawberries sure would of enjoyed some to eat myself.

I responded: These particular berries de straw insisted on me, so I couldn't persist to resist their insistence. They kept saying things like, "Resistance is food-tile !!!"

My wifey responded:  whatever! lol

A sister responded: Too funny!

I responded: It was a joint add-venture, limited liability corp-oration. And yes, there was a joy in my alimentary canal and a welcoming speech.

People will look at me in puzzlement today and wonder, "Did he just recently eat 7 strawberries?" and they will have figured out my secret.

(The wifey reads this as she walks in the room just now - "You are weird")

A friend thanked me for the laugh

I responded: You are berry-ly welcome

Special note: The word "innerview" was not a typographical error

Agog

After the long night,

we awoke agog to a fog,

morning wet white light


Poetry LINK: next poem in my blog ...

Twenty Years Ago At This Moment

Today is one of my favorite days.

April 21st

A birthday of sorts.

Twenty years ago at 10:30 AM I became an artist.

It was a Saturday.

Thank you Mickey, Minnie, and Donald for appearing on that children's game piece and inspiring me to want to draw you, and then beginning a long journey of looking at the world in a totally new way. 

Every year on or about this day I try to refocus my artistic path to something new or revisit a favorite; photography, movie making, drawing etc. So I look forward to this day to see what new is going to be.

A re-birthday, of sorts, an expectation of joy and wonder, light and color in the coming year.

Tic Tac? No, Sic Sac

Link to NY Times Article

Disgusted - I just found out that the evil totally worthless tobacco industry has started marketing candy-like smokeless tobacco products in a variety of flavors with an easily concealable form of a nicotine delivery system, not a smoking cessation device. 

So I wrote a poem ...

Poisonous savory ploy

without the smoky whirl

to poison us with flavor

for every boy and girl

A wolf in Camel's clothing.

What is really sad is when you read the nonsense that the tobacco industry spokesperson David Howard says:

David Howard, a Reynolds spokesman, said Camel Orbs were marketed only for adults and come in child-resistant containers. He denied that they look like Tic Tac mints. 

“Those packages don’t at all look alike to me,” Mr. Howard said in an interview Friday. 

This was published on April 18th, 2010 in the NY Times by Duff Wilson

BUT the next article I found at CNN by Denise Mann of Health.com has the same spokesperson sounding more responsible a day later on the 19th

R.J. Reynolds spokesman David Howard says that the packaging of Camel Orbs and the other dissolvable products is "100 percent child-resistant in accordance with Consumer Product Safety Commission standards" and bears a label that says "Keep Out of Reach of Children." Adults, he adds, should ensure that "children do not have access to any tobacco products -- including dissolvable tobacco products."

But if you want to be reminded of the lack of logic floating around inside his skull, here are some more of his words where he tries to use math to support his argument:

Mr. Howard of Reynolds said it was unfair to criticize the flavoring of Camel Orbs because many other products, including the quit-smoking aid Nicogum, come in flavors. Mr. Howard also said many other common products posed risks to infants or children from accidental ingestion. 

“Virtually every household has products that could be hazardous to children, like cleaning supplies, medicines, health and beauty products, and you compare that to 20 to 25 percent of households that use tobacco products,” he said.

Perhaps a solution to the problem of tobacco would be to gather up all the tobacco industry executives AND their evil spokespersons AND evil product designers, THEN burn them at the stake publicly for all their past, present and (future?) health atrocities they have inflicted upon tens of millions of people in the pursuit of a buck. Only let the fires be not from wood like in medieval days, that would too good for them. Why waste a poor tree? Instead, let the flames come from their last harvest of tobacco leaves and let the stench of their product be the last thing they ever smell with a slow glowing agonizing death, to match the ones their customers have experienced, only in concentrated form.

Oh, was that a bit harsh? Need a Tic Tac?

Hujambo, Gumbo!

My okra popped out of the ground today. "Hujambo, Gumbo!" [That's Swahili for 'Hello, Okra!]

(Okra photo from Wikipedia - used under the Wikipedia Creative Commons license)

My cousin mentioned to me that she had a hard time growing okra in her part of the world because of too much humidity.

My reply to my cousin: I started a dozen plants indoors in a egg container. My father told me a long time ago to place an object over the ground to keep it moist to help the germination process. So far I have 11 out of 12, from a single seed in each segment. I remember the tallest okra I think I ever saw was my step father's in Wichita Kansas, so I don't know how Wichita compares to your spot. I actually like frozen okra just fine from the groc store. The blossoms on the okra are pretty but fleeting, only lasting a day or so. I have grown it once a long time ago. Oh, I just remembered, I think your father gave me these okra seeds when I was in Dakota Lower (South Dakota) nearly 3 years ago. What a cool okra paragraph, my father, step-father, your father! The Okra Connection ...

Okra on Wikipedia

Update: Now 12 for 12, total success!

sMiles Per Zero Gallons

My phone rings.

It's the wife.

She had just left to go to work.

T - "Oh, no I took off to work and now my gas indicator says I have ZERO miles to empty!"

The vehicle beeped a warning in the background

E - "Where are you?"

T - "On Florida Street. I am going to the Phillips station, the one on 6th street."

E - "Where are you at right now? Why didn't you take my car like I offered BEFORE you left the house and you had even told me you thought yours was close to empty?!?!?"

T - "On Florida right before the - oh, NO! - the light turned red!"

The thirsty vehicle beeped a warning in the background

E - "What light?!?!?" thinking she was talking about her vehicle

T- "The stop light" - at 3rd street - so I know she is at least getting close to the gas station.....

T - "Hurry up!!! (she was talking to the stop light, not me) Stay on the line ... I am going to zoom there so I can coast into the place if I have to ... (she laughs) remember that time I ran out of gas in Amarillo and coasted right to the gas pump?"

The thirstier angry vehicle beeped a warning in the background

E - "Yes, I remember, I was there"

T- "OH NO!!! EVERY SINGLE PUMP has an out of order tag on it!" - we're talking about 12 to 16 pumps at one station!!!

[ Special note of 'thank you' to Allsup's Inconvenience Stores for making this tale more dramatic ]

E - "What are you going to do? There aren't any other close stations"

T - "I am going to drive onto work, so get ready to come rescue me. Oh, I have a slow poke in front of me."

The thirstier angrier hopeless vehicle beeped a dire warning in the background

E - "Which direction are you going from there?" - she responds east. I am thinking its about 6 or 7 blocks to go.

T - "I made it to the police station, at least now I can walk to work if I need to." ... heading north now .....

T - "Now I'm sitting at the intersection across the street from my shop"

..... .... ... .. . Mrs. T and The Empty Gas Tank make it to work.

I'm off to find a gas jug for the now quiet fuming nothing-but-fumes vehicle. I'm not taking a chance of driving the next two and a half blocks to a gas station.

Priceless

My Entry for the 2010 Bulwer Lytton Fiction Contest

Since 1982 the English Department at San Jose State University has sponsored the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a whimsical literary competition that challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.



More information about the BLFC can be found at this link: Contest

My Year 2010 Entry

As he faced the firing squad while sitting in the electric chair in the gas chamber, Wilheim thought to himself, "Even by East German standards this is a bit harsh just for being a little late paying your gas bill, electric bill, and installment payment for the antique WWII pistol"

Link to 2009 Entries

Hank Idiot Johnson Versus The Guam

See the following video:

Okay, I didn't know you could be this STUPID and be a member of congress. But I was wrong.

When I watch this video a small portion of my brain hurts really bad and weeps for the poor embarrassed people of the 4th Congressional District of the fine state of Georgia USA, but then the vast majority of my brain overrules it and says, "Shut up!, let's watch it again!"

I think that Congress should pass a law that when a parent discovers that their child is numerically and scientifically this stupid they should be required, or at least be given the option, to legally rename their child HANK IDIOT JOHNSON so that from that point forward everyone will know what NOT to expect. Boy or girl, it doesn't matter. And anyone who is currently named "Hank Johnson" would be able to get a new less embarrassing name, again for free. And then make an island where all the Hank Idiot Johnsons can move to, but make sure it is a sturdy island, not one made from scary flimsy coral reefs (well, scary to HIJ's)

I think I just remembered something - wasn't 'Johnson' the last name of the people who lived in Rock Ridge in the movie 'Blazing Saddles'? Yes, wikipedia confirmed it for me - everyone's last name was Johnson.

Disclaimer: This is NOT meant to put down everyone who has a name of Johnson. There are many fine Johnsons out there and I am pretty sure I know a few good ones and some pretty fine ones, at that. Its just that this particular congressman has ruined it forever for the two words Hank and Johnson to be right next to each other. There may even be some future down side to being named 'John Hankson' or just even being the son of a John Hank.

It could be that the fine congressman watched the movie Joe Versus the Volcano one time too many, and there is a suddenly sinking island (although volcanic) in that movie and someone named "Hanks" in the starring role, and Meg Ryan playing three parts and mind muddle moments later ... he thought it was a PBS documentary?

"They" are now trying to put a PR spin on the incident saying that he was talking about the ecosystem and was using a facetious metaphor (ref wikipedia), BUT when you listen and watch very carefully he makes motions with his upper body indicating he fears an actual tipping over of the island, and he has a very serious look of concern on his face, both at this point in the conversation and then later as he rambles on about global warming et al:

Congressman Hank Johnson from Georgia:

"My..my fear is that uh the whole island will uh become so overly populated

that it will tip over and uh and capsize"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Johnson

Oh, I almost forgot something. While I was driving across town earlier today I wrote this joke, which I am simply inserting new names and places into someone else's original art. I think the original people were Aggies and the places were Texas and Oklahoma. So here goes my latest reincarnation of the joke:

Did you hear that when Rep Hank Johnson travels from Georgia to Washington DC, he causes the average IQ in both places to go UP?

(To go along with today's Georgia theme, I used Georgia for my font instead of my latest favorite Trebuchet, which, ironically I learned about while trying to decipher what font was used on a letter that I had received from the state of Georgia last year. For this section I continued on with a peach color background as well, same reason. 

2010.04.04 MUSICAL UPDATE: Later in the day I cracked up laughing again anew as I started working on a fresh set of lyrics for the 'This Is My Handle, This Is My Spout' song, only, tip me over and people fall out.) 

How We Did Und Met

One of my (young) relatives posted a request wanting all his friends to tell the story of when he had first met all his Facebook friends, to see if we remembered. Of course the real story is boring:

a) you were an infant,
b) I don't remember .. and
c) neither do you.

So I gave him the following paragraph instead.

I think we were in East Berlin on that secret mission trying to find out why the Communists had so desperately wanted to get the recipe for "New Coke" and instead we gave them that microfilm that had the recipe for "Pepsi"? Remember? Those were good times, da, fond memories. By all OMB calculations, that one single act secretly brought down the Iron Curtain and we liberated Eastern Europe, just you and me, baby, you and me.

New Moore Island Renamed to Now More Wasland

The island of New Moore in the Bay of Bengal is no longer visible above the ocean level. This piece of now-no-man's-land-sand was claimed by India and Bangladesh. I propose a new name of "Now More Wasland". Wasland is my word for an island that no longer is.

The only reason people really cared about it was because of possible natural resources, oil and natural gas,  that could be potentially extracted. It was really a sand bar. There is current blame of global warming and the rise in ocean level to account for the island's loss. But I think it could easily have disappeared simply through erosion with it being a sand bar. Sand is easily moved  by wave action. The island was also situated at the mouth of a river, which also adds to its dynamic possibilities for both erosion and growth. To blame the island's loss strictly on global warming is a little far fetched. It was discovered recently by an American satellite in 1974 supposedly for the FIRST time. There is no long term historical significance to this island, only a short term hysterical one. The wikipedia article referenced dimensions of an elevation of 2 meters at it highest point, a few acres in size and this information sounded like it was for low tide. So maybe a better new name would be It Never Was Very Much of An Island Sandbar.

If humans were or still are concerned about this island, then they should artificially build it back. That kind of action has been performed for centuries by man, claiming low and below sea level land back from the sea.

It also helps to never give a sand bar a name. Oops! I already just did.

Wikipedia Article for the Island of New Moore

Other Silly Land and Water Pieces:

A Salty Wet Flag in the Dark
Oops! We Need To Rename This Russian City .. Again
Proving That Esfahan Is Not Half The World
The Past Tense of the Word Island

Proof for the Existence of Roaming Baby TV Antenna

At first I thought the tracks in the snow by my driveway were the result of a bird, a road runner Geococcyx californianus. They frequent my neighborhood. The next time I came home from the grocery store there was even one standing on the corner so I could get a good look at his feet - and I became more convinced that it had been him/her or a close cuckoo cousin walking in the snow.

BUT on the next trip from the grocery store the evening sun caught my eye on a TV antenna of a neighbor, so now it looks like the snow traveler just might be a baby TV antenna on the loose, happily hopping. I will keep an eye out for them.

Becoming Extremely Wealthy As A Writer

A while ago I wrote the following Facebook status giving an update as to how much money I had made writing online through the use of Google Adsense (nonsense?) and the "generous" contributions of one of my adoring fans.

349: My career as a writer is really taking off! At the end of 23 months of blogging using AdSense from Google, I had amassed 13 cents. Now 3 months farther down the road I am at 19 AdSense cents AND received a single philanthropic gift of 32 cents from one reader hand delivered all the way across the state of Texas. I am way ahead of my projected plan to become a millionaire by age 91 with a doubling period of 23 months

With it "now" being March 24th, 2010, it is now about 33 months since I started writing in MySpace and then Blogger with my silly little stories, poor poetry and grand goofiness. So I thought I would recalculate my progress towards the million dollar mark, as well as tell you about a NEW source of income: FOOD

Recently one of my adoring fans at the grocery store told his mother about my writing, so she started reading me yesterday, and became a fan. Yes, I have fans, I know it is hard to believe, I doubt it myself. But if Craig Ferguson can have a band of a robot skeleton army, well, I can have a few live humans absolutely adoring me as well, I suppose.

So I got an invitation to dinner from my latest fan! Only, I don't know how to include that in my calculation towards the million dollar mark. Do I try to calculate the cost of the meal as if it were purchased in a restaurant, say, the average cost in a diner in Borger, or maybe just the grocery store cost per serving per item plus the cost of the natural gas to cook plus the water to do the dishes minus the cost of gasoline to drive there?

Well, ignoring the free fan meal, my current earnings as a writer after 33 months are 57 cents from Google plus the 32 cents from Kate of Texas is starting to push me very very close to the dollar mark at ... Paul, how 'bout a drum rooooll please? ... tah-dah ... 89 cents.

So calculating a growth rate based on 89 cents doubling every 33 months, that looks like I should make it to a million dollars by about age 107. Now, IF I can just get a meal worth $5.00 then that would drastically cut back the time frame to a more reasonable age 99 and a half, ah!!! - that would make it a nice Christmas present for the year 20-somethingsomething..... and maybe buy my lunch PLUS one dose of Prilosec OTC?

Update 2011.02.27 - My Google AdSense has jumped from 57 to 89 cents

Update 2011.03.11 - Google Math Problem: I noticed yesterday that my earnings from Google Ad-Sense had jumped from 89 to 90 cents for my 44 months of online blogging. BUT when I checked the amount I earned by pressing the "Today" button, it had a zero amount, so I tried the "Yesterday" button, hmmm, still ZERO. So maybe I earned it tomorrow(?), confused ... .. . There is no "Tomorrow" choice.

Update 2011.03.16 - The system reported that I made one cent today, but there was no increase from the previously reported 90 cents on the 11th.

BUT ... Later in the day my earnings jumped to 2 cents for the day for a total of 91 cents total earnings. I did have a slightly higher than normal readership but when I ratioed it out it would have been less than 1 cent, so I don't understand why it is astronomically higher at 2 cents, perhaps I am suddenly more valuable. I certainly felt more valuable today with readers from at least ten countries, that was cool. I felt valuable AND tired, rough week so far. Wife. Broken arm. No sleep. But the weather is pretty. (her arm, not mine. But pizza is coming down the road very very soon! Supreme!)

Update 2011.03.23 - The system reported weekly earnings of FOUR cents, the most I believe I have ever made in a week, with an even stranger TWO cents earnings for one of those days! My all-time earnings is at 94 cents now. Oh, I forgot I already told you about those two cents, sorry, my bad, I see that now in the previous update.

Update 2011.06.05 - This morning the system showed that I had made one cent today for a total of $1.04 from Adsense, BUT later in the day it had my daily earning at 49 cents - in ONE day! So I am not sure what happened, but it was a nice boost. So now my lifetime earnings from Google Adsense are $1.53 after only 47 months blogging in English. I also do some artwork and publish some of my writings in Portuguese and I have not totaled those up in quite awhile. They may add up to 10 cents, they have much lower volumes of traffic.

Update 2011.12.26 - Before this last week I had made about two dollars writing on my blogs. I have about eight blogs with a wide variety of content besides this one that has my writings. I have photography, recipes, abstract art, cartoons, and Kakuro game education. That two dollars is after a period of four and a half years. Totally unimpressive. I know. But then one day about a week ago (most likely) one particular person clicked on a bunch of my Google ads, so I accumulated around $15 in ONE day. But I have heard about Google taking away the entire account of people who appear to have sudden suspicious activity of clicking on ads, and most likely they came from the same IP address, so Google may take away all my "hard earned" $2 because somebody got carried away. Irritating.

Our Magical Buffalo Is Slightly More Expensive

This is not a piece of fiction

I went shopping for buffalo in A City Far Away. Why? They have roast and steaks besides the ground buffalo that my local store carries. But it is the same chain of stores, United Supermarkets (of Texas), AND it is exactly the same outside supplier for the meat. I know.  How? I am 'The Buffalo King'. Self proclaimed, of course. I watch things and promote things, things like buffalo. Bison bison.

My eyes survey the inside of the curved cold glassed meat display. They have two kinds of roast but only one actually on display. The butcher describes them and my taste buds decide on the leaner cut. Then I notice that their price for their fresh ground is 50 cents cheaper than in My Town Far Far Away. So I mention the difference to the butcher that in My Town Far Far Away the ground buffalo is $5.99 and his store sells it for $5.49, so I ask for a pound of ground as well. I also complain that My Store Far Far Away has raised the price from $4.99 to $5.99, or ~20 percent, in a lot less than one year's time period, which seems unreasonable. At least Cooper will be happy - I'm bringing home two kinds of buffalo!

So the butcher weighs, prices and wraps both containers of meat. We have a side conversation about day-old buffalo that his store sells at a deep discount but it is always sold by noon. So I am out of luck today for cheap 'day-elderly' buffalo.

While checking out later in the Express Lane, I noticed that I had been charged the $5.99 per pound instead of the proper $5.49 and realized they overcharged me by 50 cents, just doing the simple math in my head, because it was right at a pound, 0.99 pounds exactly. I explained to the check-out clerk that my conversation with the butcher must have influenced what price he punched into the scales to create the ticket that was attached to the meat package. Then we had to repeat this explanation to the assistant manager who got involved with the refund, reweighing and punching a bunch of buttons.

But the '50 Cents Refund' is not what happened. They gave me 33 Cents. Why? Well, I had already held the Express Line too long and I didn't really want to waste any more time of the other customers just for a few more pennies, so I didn't say anything about the wrong amount. I waited until I was right at the door to examine the receipts. Then I discovered that I was only given credit for buffalo costing $5.93 a pound and charged for the correct price PER pound. So I laughed and drove to My Far Far Far Away Home.

BUT when I got home, told my doubly happy dog about the buffalo and then looked at the receipts, I started laughing so hard that I gave myself a severe headache. The two receipts had different weights for the same buffalo, with the refund receipt even having two different weights for the same exact thing! So, according to the the time stamps of the receipts, I guess the only logical explanation at this point for this event is that in the 2 minutes and 6 second time period between the events of the original purchase and the refund, The Dead Magical Buffalo grew from 0.99 to 1.02 pounds, or gained 3 percent! Then I remembered that the store manager had simply weighed the package again rather than just ring up the price and weight from the butcher's ticket. 

BUT remember there is a headache involved AND I discover later that I have missed something ELSE when I go back to proof read My Story from The Far Far Far Far Away Land. The second receipt reveals that it came from a Magical Cash Register that performs math as:

[   0.99 lb @ -$5.93/ lb  equals -$5.93   ]

... which is an incorrect calculation. If it would have calculated "properly" for the per pound entry, they could have stole another 6 cents from me. Thank you, Magical Cash Register.

I felt there was a need to do one more set of calculations before ending this story. I decided to calculate how long it would take The Dead Magical Buffalo to grow at an exponential rate to the point where there would have been no refund....and then  decided that was too boring. Instead, I decided to calculate how long it would take for The Dead Magical Buffalo to keep growing so that it weighed the same amount as the entire planet earth.

Math Project for Exponential Growth

Start with 0.99 pounds of The Dead Magical Buffalo

Grow to 1.02 pounds in 2.1 minutes

3.030303... percent growth in 2.1 minutes (2 minutes and 6 seconds)

Calculate exponential growth rate constant and confirm with a second series of discrete  step calculations with a spreadsheet.

Reaches 1 million pounds in approximately 16 hours and 13 minutes

Reaches the mass of the earth in approximately 2 days 19 hours and 48 minutes


Update 2010.03.21 20:00

Later when I was telling my tale about the buffalo growing to the mass of the earth it occurred to me that the density of the earth and buffalo should be considerably different. Because buffalo meat is about 5.5 times lighter than the average density of the earth, then a buffalo mass that equals the earth would be 5.5 times the volume of the earth.

So I started examining the sizes of the other planets of our solar system to see where Planet Bison would rank but no other planets are close enough in size to make a difference. I started wondering about other celestial objects and when the word "meteor" passed through, I suddenly thought about Planet Bison being "meatier". That was at 3:45 AM this morning and I believe that was the hardest I have ever laughed at that time of day in my entire life. Meteor, Meatier.

Twinkle Twinkle little meat ball, 

have you stopped growing at a rate ex-po-nen-ti-al? 

Like a math problem in the sky, 

if you keep growing everyone will die.

And fill the universe with magical meat,

what a tragical mathematical voluminous feat.

Twinkle Twinkle little meat ball,

if I take a bite, will that slow you down much at all?

Patrick Allitt Is Wrong - America Is Not A Miserable Place

Professor Patrick N Allitt of Georgia USA recently published an article and was interviewed calling "America the miserable". There are far worse places on the globe than the United States of America in the misery index, even in the midst of everything that has taken place since 9/11. The United States isn't even close to the abject poverty, daily public terrorism, lack of personal freedom and dictatorial rule of law compared to places like North Korea, Afghanistan and a variety of hot spots around the world.

My Very Short Career As An Agricultural Advisor

One of my friends was looking for a rototiller. This was my advice.

The difference between a 'rototiller' and a 'rottweiler' can typically be $5000, so be careful when you go shopping.

If you accidentally get a 'rottweiler' make sure you get a plow and harness. And then you might want to get a team of rottweilers to accomplish the same thing as a single rototiller for a minimal amount of tillage time.

Of course when your neighbors see you out in the backyard plowing with your team of rottweilers, they may think of you as the tillage idiot, and we wouldn't want that.

So then you have a choice of either plowing at night or installing a tall fence.

If you choose the plowman-at-night option though, you would have the option-option  of changing your name to 'Schwarzenegger', because I think that is German for 'Black Plowman', (i.e. black=night, it's dark).

And then you never have to worry about being asked to run for the office of governor of the fine state of California, as your new name will scare people away.

My friend told me that she would keep me informed. I asked her if she could tell that I had enjoyed the TV show 'Green Acres' as a child. 

Beating Al Gore with Carbon Ba-nano Tubes

Episode 5 

I let the dog outside so that he would not hear the following conversation. I didn't want him to get upset ahead of time over the coming events or be worried about me.

I asked my wife if she would mind me being gone for 3 weeks.

She said 'no' and then asked where I was going never taking her eyes off the video games, virtual farming and being the mayor of pixelville.

Outer Space. I told her that I was going into outer space to try out my new invention of a faster-than-the-speed-of-light instantaneous mechanical telegraph using carbon ba-nano-tube technology and eventually use a version of it to create the Internet in space before Al Gore got a chance to do it. I wanted to build the first test expanse of the invention for the range of say, the distance from Earth to Saturn, approximately 9 astronomical units or roughly a billion miles. I figured that it would take almost 3 weeks to "spin" 3 carbon ba-nano-tubes in parallel a billion miles and then do some testing. Plus install my cute new little atomic hinge device a thousand times once every million miles. Its a good thing I asked for a portable Scanning Electron Microscope for my birthday. But I am getting ahead of myself.

I got the idea when I saw some dust on my mini-blinds in motion and while thinking about my recent banana that got ashed to a crisp by "being in the hot wrong place at the not right time".

The region of the solar system where the planets circle the sun is rather "crowded", so I plan to go straight up, from an earth perspective, into an "emptier" space about 200 million miles to get away from the material junk and a substantial amount of gravitational pull of the planets.

Hyperlink Wikipedia Photo in motion Nanotube

 

(Used with Wikimedia Commons permissions)

I have been stealing diamonds for a very pure source of carbon, and finally have enough for this project. My nano tube generator is capable of producing 3 tubes in parallel out its "spinnerets". I have nicknamed the device トリプル蚕, the Japanese word for "Triple Silkworm". I realized I could have made it entirely from recycled diamonds, but a few weeks ago when I randomly said the words "carbonized banana,,, nano,,, nano-tube,,, carbon ba-nano tube", I just cracked up laughing, and thought, "I am going to have to include some banana carbon as well, just so I can name it that, that is such a cool name, 'carbon ba-nano-tube'"

The essence of the invention is that you can push a carbon nanotube in the friction free world of outerspace quite easily. The result is an instantaneous movement at the other end if you do it right. The three strands of nano-tube run parallel (flat side by side) and every million miles there is a nano scale hinge that connects all three tubes. They swivel about the center tube, so the net effect is that when you push or pull the left tube, the right one does the opposite and the center tube remains motionless. And they can be pushed with incredible ease and at great speed.

So then I just install an amplifier circuit and recording - display - local broadcast junction box out on the end of the triple nano tubes, and then I have a communication line that works faster than the speed of light to transmit information across the vast emptiness of space. And then once I have multiple robotic "factory" craft built, I can bridge the communication gap between this solar system and my home. That way if I can't actually be with my mother on planet Oklahoma, I can use my Skype-in-the-Sky video approach to at least chat with her. "Oklahoma" isn't the real name of my home planet, but I'm not allowed to reveal its name, so I use the place where my "Earth Mother" is located for its code name.

"Are you my mother?" I have waited 20 extra years to hear her voice, and see her face. I hear Elton John sing in my mind '... and I think its gonna be a long long time ...' and I smile and think, well, not much longer, Rocket Man.

My wife said sure, but just make sure to get all the laundry caught up, kitchen cleaned and extra groceries bought before I go. And don't forget to get the oil changed in her SUV. Oh, and finish building that robot that takes out the trash.




Reference: 'Rocket Man' lyrics by Bernie Taupin, from the 1972 Elton John album 'Honky Chateau'

Invention Link: The Next Invention in My Blog