River Wars (Things Get Messy)

On 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' last night there was a question about a U.S. city named Cairo, asking which river it touched. I wasn't sure, I was torn between the Missouri and Ohio, but my gut instinct leaned towards Ohio, and I got it correct. So this led me to check some location info to see how close the Missouri River was located. Then I noticed something odd.

The beginning line for the Wikipedia article on the Missouri River said it was the longest river in North America. Length 2,341 miles. Hmmm, I thought. I thought that the Mississippi River was the longest(?). So then I checked the Mississippi River article and it has "largest river system of North America", length 2,530.

Excuse me, I thought the number 2,530 was bigger than 2,341 ?!?!? Let me check on my calculator. Yeppa, it is, but let's put them in an Excel spreadsheet as well just to be sure. The winner is of course Mis2sis5sip3pi0.

But I am confused by their nuanced wording, longest and largest, plus the additional word 'system'.

The Missouri is the large river of my childhood, so there was an infantile wish part of me hoping it would be the winner. I didn't pass over the Mississippi until I was in my twenties and that time high in a jet a few times. It would be about another decade in my thirties before I drove over it on a bridge.

But while I was sitting here just now on my couch I realized that the Missouri River is actually getting cheated out of being the longest river. It s'pposedly 'joins' the Mississippi River near the city of St Louis, and contributes to the Mississippi River as a tributary. But hold on a second, at this point in measuring the Missouri as 'finished', it has gone the 2,341 miles, and it is a long ways to the Gulf of Mexico. Why does the river get to be called the Mississippi instead of being named the Missouri?

Let's put it in the perspective of a journey by boat.

If you logically got in a canoe at the headwaters of the Missouri, desired the shortest continuous water path possible on the longest river and followed it downstream to the ocean, not knowing anything about maps or names, just going with the flow, that would be the longest water journey possible (without backtracking), i.e. longest river.

I asked Google how far the distance was from St Louis to the Gulf of Mexico, and got an answer of 1,495 miles. BUT doing a very rough distance calculation with Google Earth gave a much much shorter answer, so I very carefully followed The River using the ruler tool plotting a course around ALL the bends in the river from the St Louis junction point to the Gulf of Mexico. I placed the pointer in the middle of the stream and luckily there were few clouds on the satellite photos. The answer I got was 1,135. So adding 1,135 to 2,341, that gives 3,476 miles as the longest river in North America.

I also decided to give it a new name since I had straightened out this mess. My fourth favorite form of water is soup, so combining them altogether, Mess+Is+Soup+I, our new name for the longest river in North America is drum-roll-please comma-comma Messissoupi. The egotistical part of me likes the 'me' at the beginning as well, AND I managed to make the new name sound and look like a combination of the two words Missouri and Mississippi.

Oh, checking the length of the Nile: nope, the Messissoupi is shorter than the Nile.

A Long Goodbye

My current sadness has found bounds.

I am losing a friend for a long time, a definite time, soon. Just how soon, I don't know, I just know the length. Ten months. The owner of the diner that makes my wonderful grilled chicken sandwiches with bacon and always greets me by name out loudly, in a Cheers teleBision show "Norm!" sort of way, is going away to prison.

From the local Borger newspaper:

Shannon Nicole Washer, 36, Borger, went before U.S. District Judge Mary Lou Robinson on January 24, 2012.

Walker was owner of Shannon's Restaurant in Borger. According to documents, Washer passed $440 in counterfeit currency at Buttons, Bows, and Balloons in Panhandle on August 9, 2011. Then, on August 12, 2011, she passed $180 in counterfeit currency at Allsups in Dumas. Also, she attempted to pass a $100 counterfeit note at the Valero South and Pak-a-Sak in Dumas. On the same day,Aug. 12 ,she attempted to make a $151 purchase at Hobby Lobby in Amarillo using counterfeit notes. The investigation revealed that she had also passed a counterfeit note at a Sonic in Amarillo. When taken into custody, she was carrying extra counterfeit notes and a search of her vehicle revealed more counterfeit notes and some sheets of paper that appeared to have counterfeit notes cut from them. She was also in possession of several $20 bills and two $1 bills. As officers looked at the denomination of the bills, it was determined that the $20s all had the same serial number and the $1 bills had the same serial number. Police reports state, there were 23 counterfeit $100s, 13 counterfeit $20s, and 13 counterfeit $10s all in total at that time. Washer was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison after she plead guilty in October 2011 to one count of dealing in counterfeit currency. The case was investigated by the U.S. Secret Service. Assistant U.S. Attorney Chris L. Drake, of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Amarillo, was in charge of the prosecution.

Update: 2012.02.05 - I don't know why Shannon isn't in prison yet, but a few days ago she brought my food to the table at the diner. I told her, "It's nice that while Shannon is in prison she has been replaced with an eXact duplicate, but I'm not sure if she is a human or a robot." She just smiled and giggled. Later I indicated that I didn't need more coffee when she came to the table with the pot, because I was fixing to leave. She just ignored me and kept right on filling up my cup. This time she responded with, "I know what you really need."

Guess My Noisy Food

I am in a restaurant eating right this moment. The main course is very noisy. See if you can guess what it is. In 24 hours or so I will post a picture.

Clue: The noise decreases over time.

Second Clue: Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral (?) - its not a vegetable.

Eyes Cubes Melt Very Fast

A Friend Asked This Question: I wonder where your eyeballs look when you're sleeping??

My Response: The ball of your eye, roughly spherical, slowly turns into a cube shape and the eight corners that then make up the cubic structure lock the eye firmly in place. The transformation from sphere to cube occurs slowly over time but when you wake up and begin to blink your eyelids open the atmospheric pressure relaxs the cubic shaped eyes and they almost instantly convert back to spherical configuration. I hope you enjoyed this eXplanation.

My Second Response: The consumption of alcohol speeds up the sphere to cube conversion process causing the points of the cubes to dig deeply into the eye socket. This is a leading cause of hangovers.

My Third Response: Those first two comments [responses] are not true.

Here DARPA DARPA DARPA !

[Early Saturday Morning]

It's one of thoze dayz. Even the ringtone on my phone which actz az my morning alarm clock zeemz to be playing a little bit zlower than normal. And itz even a Zaturday, who could have thought that waz pozzible. I am not zure if that lazt zentence waz a queztion or not zo I left off the queztion mark indicator but you were behind and you know I alwayz turn left at thiz particular interzection zo were cool. No blinker. Now I'm just waiting for the green arrow to illuminate to continue. Waiting.

Author rubs sleep from eyes unsuccessfully

Oh, I just missed something in the ads in Facebooq just as I punched the keyboard and the screen flashed to the new page. I could have swore there was an ad for something like "The Serial Killer Whisperer" and now there is a strange rumble in my brain of what was that?!?!? Oh defective selective detective advertising, what is your objective on this cold dark morning? Never mind, I'm leaving for the other more quiet end of the house, the neighbor has just started his car for the 10 minute rumble warm up outside my window. Time to kill a bowl of cereal and get away from the whimpering. The Cereal Killer Whimperer.

The opening notes to Coldplay's 'Clocks' fires off in my head as I see on this screen its 10 minutes later and the neighbor's auto non-go kart is still rumbling outside.

My right knee doesn't want to cooperate. It thinks it has veto power. That is why my stomach and taste buds overrode its veto and bought it a knee-brace. I'm outta tomato juice. Need tomato juice. Now. Or rather, yesternow. The noisy neighbor leaves for the second time. That is why I am glad my truck has an engine block heater. It fundamentally makes me a nicer neighbor to other ears. And I have a muffler that works.

On my way to the groc store I noticed that someone had dumped an imperfectly good 3 outta 4 leg plastic lawn chair on the side of the road. It was upside down. North side of the street where Union Street and Wilson Street eXchange names for the same piece of asphalt. I wonder if it will confuse the deer who are quite numerous in that part of town. I hope not. I do not like it when deer are confused by used misplaced lawn furniture.

Message from my Facebooq Friend: I like how all the 's' are 'z'. Then on your post with "Facebooq" I thought all the 'k' will be 'q'. I saw 'dark' and knew you didn't do the same. I was a little disappointed since I have come to expect those kind of things from you. ;) I hope you are doing well!

Message Back to My Facebooq Friend: I'mmm,,,,,sowwy. (Actually Facebooq is usually the only thing that I give a k->q 'Iraqification' treatment on a regular basis. I have decided on another new word recently: reaLLy) I am doing marvel-ous, but I spend more time in the blog world than Facebooq over the last three months, several new friends from all over the world, but now several of us 'run' together, commenting a bunch. A very interesting friend situation on several continents, mainly Europe, Asia and Australia. Writing a bunch, lotza silliness for the most part.

Facebooq is getting more morose and gross: ad for "Death Wish Coffee Company" - WHAT is going on? Or should I say 'off'?

[Afternoon]

I may seek a DARPA government research request to fund a project with a severe problem in the space time continuum. It seems that it takes twice as long for hot water to initially reach my kitchen versus the bathroom, even though the bathroom is about twice as far away from the hot water heater. My$tery.

[Very Near the End of the Day]

My wife and I were not watching the teleBision show "Alcatraz" when I suddenly realized that while neither one of us has actually been to the island, I have been slightly closer.

[Slightly Past the End of the Day]

Cooper must be having a reaLLy wild dream, most likely chasing a cat-like creature. He is in the other room and his barking during his dreams is usually a high pitched and low volume, but today it is much louder, overpowering the teleBision noise. Hope he doesn't wake Tamie. His ears are hurting him, so he is going to the vet next week.

Small Strange Children Befriend & Befuddle Me

2012.01.19

I go for a walk at my park that is about 442 feet away from me according to Google Earth. That is the nearest point of the ovalesque asphalt track that is one quarter of a mile long in relationship to where I am sitting while typing these words. It is a very new track, with very little debris, mainly because my left foot has whisked away most of the rocks, twigs and human microtrash faster than it can accumulate over the last several weeks.

On yesterday's walk of three miles there were two small children that I did not know who came towards me on my first lap. They were probably ages 6 and 4, girl and boy, most likely sister and brother by the way she most holding him tightly around his shoulder with her right arm, being about a head taller. With her left hand she gave me an elevated wave and said "Hi" simply, and then we took a few more steps closer and she said, "We are just walking so we can get skinnier". I could not contain my laughter one hundred percent but I kept most of it bottled up as these two children were bean poles.  Any skinnier and they would be classified anorexic.

Before I tell you what my question to her was, remember I have no idea who these children are, total strangers. So I ask her, "Do you think I am getting skinnier?" Now bear in mind it has been decades since I would have been classified as skinny, nor do I remember if she has ever seen me before in order to truly make a comparison. 

She quickly answered, "Yes, (micro hesitation, her eyes squint) a little bit skinnier".

Good Answer!

Today I go back to the same park, but it is a little colder and I only want to walk a half mile and I just stop there in my truck on the way home instead of coming from the house on foot. My right knee is a bit sore, probably from yesterday.

Just as I start my walk I hear a strange noise coming from a little girl far away in the park. After a few moments I determine, yes, she is trying to make a chicken noise, or maybe whatever noise they teach city children is The Noise of The Chicken. There was clucking. Little girl clucking. Loudly.

So on the first lap there is a little boy that I notice is sneaking up behind me on the path se-mi-qui-et-ly, but when I turn around, he smiles, yells in fake fright and dashes away! 

I giggle. I no longer notice the cool air.

So then I notice that a little girl is farther down the path, the cluck cluck girl, only quiet with a smile, I think. She is at a distance that it is hard to see her expression. I resume my journey and complete the first lap.

One third of the way around the track the boy and girl are hiding behind trees and doing a poor job of it. They start off being ahead of me, but then slowly cautiously circle back behind me, giggling at their inventiveness, trying to be unseen by me. Every once in a while, though, I turn around suddenly and they see me and scatter, joyfully screaming. At the halfway mark I not only turn around but stand on one foot with the other foot quite a ways off the ground more than normal. They try to imitate but don't have my sense of balance, and almost topple. They don't know I have spent hours of my life standing on one foot. I resume my walk. 

I soon hear giggles behind me that sound different. I turn around to see them behind a trash can. First the boy's head pops out the north side, then a girl over the top, and then suddenly a third girl pops out the right side. Someone new has joined the peek-a-boo party at the park. I wave and they scatter back behind the trash can and one of them runs back to the trees.

I resume my walk, but they become more daring sneaking down the line of evergreen trees that line the inside west side of the ovalesque path. They are getting closer, but they soon run out of trees. I wave goodbye as I finish lap two. It's off to my truck and on to my home.

UPDATE: 2012.01.20 18:45

My fame has spread. Today there was a 33.33 percent increase in the number of strange children following me at the park, 4 instead of 3.

By Chemical Design: The Walrus Extinction Factor

By chemical design I ask Google this question:

Are walruses extinct

The result was 440,000 hits

Which lead me to ask Goooooooogle the next question:

Is there a wall in Russia that stinks

The result was 11,800,000 hits

So do the math: 11,800,000 divided by 440,000

I'm waiting ...

You aren't going to give me an answer? Fine, I'll do the math myslef: 

1.18 percent of a a a billion divided by the square of

663.324958 is 

11 800 000 / 440 000 = 26.8181818

So it appears there are almost 3 cubed (27) times more people worried about stinky walls in Russia than there are about walruses going eXtinct.

If I was a walrus right now I would be very concerned. 

Very.

Well, a walrus that reaLLy knew about Google and people. Let's ask Google 

"how many walruses there are that are worried about people"

The reslut is 4,350,000

Wow, that iz a little (bit) higher than I imagined it would be. I eXpected the resLut to be 35.

So 4,350,000 divided by 35 is 124,285

So I here by declare that the number 124,285 from this day forward shall be forever known as the  

WALRUS EXTINCTION SURPRISE FACTOR

ErNest takes a sip of coffee. It is surprisiNgly at just the correct temperature aNd sugar conteNt. Amazing. Zing. Ing. G.

So the amount of time that it takes to get a cup of water to reach boiling in a microwave oven and then cool down to just the right temperature after introducing a bundle of coffee in a coffee filter constrained between the tines of a fork is how long it took me to write this blog post minus the amount of time (tik tok) it took to write this final paragraph and make sublime typographical error corrections,   a "righting" process.

PeaCe

Oh, now I remember, this was s'pposed to be about Japan harvesting whales, whales being sentient beings, and the country of Wales going eXtinct. Next time. Maybe. Not walruses. Never mInd.

(Editorial Note: The WYSIWYG editor in Blogger is not so perfect so the colors and fonts in the final displayed product on the blog ARE NOT what I eXpected or desired. *sigh*)

The Day I Became A RAT (Yesterday)

I found out yesterday, January 18, 2012, a day that will live in inflamy, that I became a member of a small elite online group call RATs without applying or even knowing that RATs eXisted. It stands for:

The Radical Abstract Thinkers of cyberspace

The leader of the group is named Robo Z Tobor of Wales. He liked some of my work on figuring out how to remove lifetime paint from human skin, blue paint in particular that was part of his space alien costume.

This is what Robo wrote: (blue text) (I am the person "Mr ESB" in his text)

The Radical Abstract Thinkers of cyberspace

As almost none of you know or wish to know or care about some time ago I started the small elitist cyberspace group called The Radical Abstract Thinkers (RATs). A group who I feel have that slightly quirky way of thinking that leads us to look at the world in a slightly different way. So far there are three of us Myself because it is my gang NA NA NA NA NA NA NA, then Miss Lilly and then Mr H..... I will get some links here when I have a bit more time, right now I am in the middle of Car Mechanics at school and we have just hot wired the headmasters car.

Anyway I have decided to add a new member to the group. He has no choice in the matter once you're in you're in until I say you're not in, then you are out. So our new member is Mr ESB I feel his logic on lifetime paint shows great promise and so there you go Mr ESB but remember we need to see this new logic reflected in your own blogs so no more sensible stuff or else.

Response from lily at Jan 18, 2012 05:33 AM

Aww Rob Z, you put the first smile on my face today. Honoured that I'm still a member of 'RATS,' especiallly along with the wonderful Mr.H.

May I be the first...well second because you've already welcomed him first, therefore rendering the, 'may I be the first,' part of this particular sentence rather redundant, Mr Esbboston to this illustrious group, that no one else knows about.

Right I'm off, got people to do and things to see...I think that's right. :)

My Response at Jan 18, 2012 07:30 AM

Well, I ... Am just ... so hum bled, which is a fractured form of humbled to be included in your group, to be the Fourth. So that is the Ringo Starr of numbers, right?

My Second Response at Jan 18, 2012 07:38 AM

If its any help in the 'proof' department of strange ideas and logic, I am offering wikipedia service for the English language while wikipedia has decided to turn itself off for 24 hours. I can be global like that. It reminds me of the time as a chemist when I certified all the 80 Octane Fuel for my company which then sold that fuel as a knock engine calibration to all the other companies in the world that did that sort of thing. I believe the time period was about seven years. So my superhero name would be IC8NC7 Man. Or you can call me 'Ringo', as I know how to get by with a little help from my friends.

My Third Response at Jan 18, 2012 07:59 AM

I just realized that you could have palindromes for names if you changed your middle name to an O word giving 'Rob O Tobor' or if you like your Z name and wish to go to four legal names like I have, ESBB, then you could add 'Ot' as a second name which would the produce Rob Ot Z Tobor. As the word 'robot' is from the Czech word for 'work' or 'worker', I would say this works for me. Unless having a backwards robot undoes the work of the forward robot, we could ask Will Smith the actor.

This Is Not About Wyoming

Today is a very good day to pile lotza things on top of you so that certain other things don't escape (as easily), things like heat.

I shall assist this thermodynamic process by doing an activity I call eat.

I like right-ing silly poetry that is so -sweat-.

(Perhaps I am retaining too much heat, that was s'pposed to be 'sweet' not 'sweat')

(If you accidentally pronounced -sweat- in the third line as sweet with a long e sound, you should seek medical help soon, as you are being heavily influenced by rhyming patterns and this could seriously and dangerously affect your life, such as improper use of recipes, driving heavy machinery, or playing with babies.)

I Will Be Your Wikkedpedia For A Day

I noticed this announcement at Wikipedia this morning:

Today, the Wikipedia community announced its decision to black out the English-language Wikipedia for 24 hours, worldwide, beginning at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday, January 18 (you can read the statement from the Wikimedia Foundation here). The blackout is a protest against proposed legislation in the United States — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate — that, if passed, would seriously damage the free and open Internet, including Wikipedia.

My Response: In order to help everyone I have made a backup copy of the EntirE Wikipedia database, so if you need an answer to a question, just send me your question and I will look it up and give you an answer. Just as there is no guarantee that anything in Wikipedia is correct, I would put VeRY little faith in the veRacity of the answer I will give you.

Update:

While saving an article for each letter of the alphabet, I saved "Igloo" for the letter "I". This of course caused me to write a dumb joke. So the dumb joke for today is a riddle:

What do you call a dirty bathroom of an eskimo?

.

.

.

.

Answer: An icky igloo loo

Update: More Details ..... By saving all of wikipedia I mean that for every letter of the alphabet I have saved one article. So I have 26 complete articles, A to Z, saved on my computer. Then if you ask me a question about some subject matter that begins with the letter P, for example Pennsylvania, I will go to my "P" article (which isn't Pennsylvania) and see if I can find a suitable answer from my "P" article. I won't automatically tell you what my P article is, and you can try to guess if you want to. I picked a mixture of some very common things AND some not quite so common things for each of the 26 articles. So if you are interested in playing along just ask me a question in a comment, and I will try to respond. As always, try to keep things G rated! I will try to make my answers amusing.

Update: I just tried wikipedia and its turned off BUT only in the English language version.

BUT interestingly enough there is a language called Simple English that is NOT turned off!!!

So I will give you a link that goes to the English Language article in Wikipedia using Simple English.

THEN if you type a request in the entry box near the top right, it will search in the Simple English database.

Link to Simple English

Update: Time 15:47  - I just now noticed that I forgot to close the window down for my "K" word, so I might be the only person in the entire universe right now that can read about K@ngr**s on Wikipedia in the regular English language version! Oh, wait, here's another open window from Wikipedia as well, this one about physicist St%ph%n H@wk!ng.

New Camera?

My memory card is all filled up.

[*sigh*]

I guess its time to buy a new camera.

I did figure out how to fix my broken Sony camera. There is a window covering the lens that has two pieces that open diagonally. Only in my case about 10 percent of the time it only opens about 30 percent of the way.

Die-aged-all-ly

No, I said 'diagonally', oh, my mind is getting all cute-sy, rhyme-y. Ignore it like the rest of me currently is doing.

How did I fix my camera? A slight tap. The window covering will then continue on its way.

I will get out another camera and take a picture of the failure mode and fix mechanics.

Some time soon, hopefully I remember.

It was cool to fix something just by tapping it. It is a temporary fix. It still messes up every once in a while. But the tap works every time. Sometimes two taps are needed.

I know this isn't earth shattering, BUT ITS 1:12 AM and that is all I've got.

Update: 7AM - The Hidden Who What Why

I just noticed my recent blog readers of the last couple hours:

 9 - United States

 1 - Germany

 1 - United Kingdom

 1 - Indonesia

 1 - Russia

 1 - Taiwan

But notice the alphabetical order of the "1" countries: GUIRT

I think I have this fingered out, that Google sorts by a hidden name but displays by my English dialect. How complicated. The Germany name in German is a D word Deutschland, which I think I spelled correctly, and the United Kingdom is E for England. So the behind the scenes alphabetical order is DEIRT.

Update: 11 AM - I Was Halfway Wrong

After gathering more data that included France, I now believe that United Kingdom is really a secret G word Great Britain.

 3 - France

 3 - United Kingdom

 3 - Mexico

 3 - Taiwan

Update: 2012.01.20 12:00

Hmm, it appears that Algeria may have a non-A secret name!

 1 - Bulgaria

 1 - Algeria <- ????

 1 - Hungary

Checking the wikipedia article on Algeria: It appears that there is a D name for Algeria, and its popular too. "Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria" That fits between the B and H of Bulgaria and Hungary. Another official name for Algeria is "People's Democratic Republic of Algeria", but that doesn't fit between B & H.

Child (In The) Hood Memories

I was reading a friend's blog just now about several of her childhood memories and one of them happened at age seven and a half. It wasn't her memory or that particular age that jogged my memory of something, but her use of a fraction, the "half" part in her year. 

I had a blast raising my children and tried to spend a great deal of time with them when they were very young. I would hug them often and tell them that I loved them. As a scientist my children were my greatest experiment! So imagine my surprise when my children claimed, as teenagers, that they have no childhood memories, bizarre. Teenagers.

My younger son was the more comical of the two for most of their lives until recently they have started to become and sound similar, to the point that now in their mid twenties I think I have twins (almost). So to "help" my younger son I made up several totally fictitious memories using the following procedure. I would create these artificial memories for him totally impromptu with a sweet kind nostalgic voice, "remembering" the good old days. I remember doing this about ten years ago during his teenage years.  

(Please forgive me, I realize all this remembering sounds very confusing.)

A + B + C + D + E => Artificial Memory Session

A : Preamble - I would always begin these artificial memories with a random strange compound fraction, such as, "I remember when you were 4 and 3/4 and ..." and of course the number had little bearing on story. Sometimes the later events of a story were impossible for someone who was four years old, for instance, to drive an automobile, hunt elephants or pilot an airplane.

B : Part One - The first part of the memory would be something mundane that a child may or may not have been able to do, such as ski, operate a railroad locomotive or perform open heart surgery. The location would be somewhat exotic, Africa, Bolivia, China, or maybe just Fritch Texas.

C: Part Two - The "really wild part" - the internal punchline - would be some act of crime, heroism, or great physical feat of superhuman capability. There might be episodes where the child had become invisible, all his fingers fell off, or simply made burnt toast.

D : Ending - After finishing the second part of the memory I would have a grand strategic pause, and then say these exact words awash with great paternal pride:

" ... and you were so cute." 

At this point my son would laugh or not laugh and do his part, -adolescent groan exhale- knowing that I was finished building him a memory.

E : Response - My son would vehemently respond that the memory didn't happen and usually ask me to stop. There would sometimes be a rebuttal, like, he claimed he had never been to North Korea, he still had all his original fingers or that he had absolutely no interest in ball room dancing. Sometimes he would beg his mother to ask me to stop. There was laughter. Some laughter. Usually more from me, it would just depend on the content, reaction and rebuttal.

I do not remember ANY of the eXact details of any one complete fictitious memory, but I remember the grand design, implementation and inventiveness. It was great fun and "we" played this silly memory game-slash-conversation probably three sessions, maybe more, that part I don't remember.

The next time I am with my son it will be interesting to ask him if he remembers any of this ABCDE Build-A-Memory game. Both children very clearly remember the time I tried to make my disastrous horribly tasting version of Heinz 57 Steak Sauce. Bad sauce is most likely stronger than fake formulaic memories. That reminds me that I need to check on my BBQ meat cooking on the stove right now before I forget and burn it!

Another one of our word games, this one from my son's college years: 

The Strange, Change and Rearrange Sentence Game

Sub No Way

I was looking forward to finally getting to go to the brand new Subway restaurant in our town, the only one we have, after the old one had been deactivated, torn down to make way for a gigantic pharmacy. The inactive bowling alley was destroyed too in the long overdue renovation at that very busy intersection of Borger, near the very center of the entire Texas panhandle.

But when I entered the sparkly fresh restaurant anxious for my Bacon Chicken Ranch on Something Random Picked Bread after at least four months without one, I was met with bizarre loud rock music and a line long of humans waiting. Plus that line now went from right to left instead of left to right, so I left the building after just a few seconds, maybe twelve, certainly less than thirty, hungry and irritated. The thought of eating in their environment glassed-in-box-on-display watching cars zoom by at this new vehicular busy location that used to be another glass smaller box ATM suddenly seemed totally bizarre and unnatural. I don't know which of those factors bothered me the most, or if they just quickly summed up as unacceptable, crossing a threshold, a virtual pressure relief valve, or rupture disc. Leave! Now! Go!

It was bad enough that I had just been to McDonald's and they didn't have any more McRibs or that my favorite local diner was closed on that day. No grilled chicken sandwich with bacon misery. There is always that horrible seasonal moment when you discover that McD suddenly rips away your favorite item, no, not just your favorite, your ONLY reason to ever go there, McRibs. Taste bud abuse. I hate you again McD, you evil giant food monster. Isn't that what God s'pposedly used to make woman in the Garden of Eden (?), no that was just a borrowed rib, not a barbequed rib; no bread, sauce, meat, dill pickle and onions. If he would have used a McRib then maybe women would suddenly, and magically, disappear and reappear at totally random times. Interesting thought.

It was a rare moment when I was hungry and I had absolutely no desire to cook anything plus the thought of creating dirty dishes annoyed me even farther. I think I finished the day with a bowl of breakfast cereal or a simple sandwich at home, I don't remember now what I had, just nothing fancy, with a side order of despair, sad taste buds that wanted to file for divorce from the rest of my body, and emptiness.

Violins On The Radio

Elders listening to the news on the radio.
A-"They say a man shot himself in error."
B-"He shot himself in the EAR?"
A-"No, he shot himself - it was his error."
B-"He shot himself in his hair?"
A-"No,no, he shot by ER-ROR"
B-"Arrow? How did he manage to do that?"
A- pauses, thinking, fuming
A-"Yes, that's right, he shot himself in his ear and his hair with an arrow"
B-"That is amazing. That reminds me of an article I read in the paper yesterday 'bout a guy who shot himself in error."

(That was fiction)

This is the real news story:

CNN Headline: Man Shot Self In Error

Man misses crows, but shoots himself

Web Produced by: Jill Drury

SPRINGFIELD TWP., Ohio (WDTN) - A Springfield Township man shot himself Thursday while trying to target crows.

Deputies say the victim pulled the trigger of his rifle, but it didn't discharge until he set it down in his house. A bullet struck him in the chest.

The 31-year-old man was rushed to Miami Valley Hospital by Careflight.

Deputies say he was conscious, but badly wounded.

They tell 2 News he was able to call 911 after the gun went off.

It is legal to shoot animals like crows in the township, but deputies say the victim made a big mistake when he set the gun down with it aimed in his direction.

No word on his condition. 

Link to CNN

86,325

What's really sad are those days when you yawn just right and the day then seems like its only 86,399 seconds long instead of 86,400.

Bummer.

Then you accidentally discover that the government picked that day to be only 86,399 seconds long anyway. So that means the day really only felt like it was 86,398 seconds long.

Bummer.

Then you realize you've just wasted 73 seconds reading somebody's Yawn Plus Atomic Clock Government Conspiracy Theory Nonsense, so that whittles it down to 86,325.

Bummer.

Of course when you are an eternal being like myself none of this really matters at all.

(Thank you Flux Capacitor for the inspirational saying)

Update:

While walking in the park this afternoon I came up with this interesting option: If you could sleep 18 hours a day, be awake for 6, and this would allow you to live for 200 years in relatively good health, would you do it?

Grandson of Champion

As I was in the process of trying and not trying to wake up, I hear a cartoon character on teleBision say, "Oh, you're just saying that because you're my dog".

I think, "I can relate to that."

This boy slowly begins the laundry process without the help of caffeine.

Mistake.

Now correcting mistake before I attempt doing dishes. Its too early, its dark outside and inside.

Ah, a handful of cashews. Breakfast of champions. Or in this case, descendant of Champion.

If you need something bizarre to read, I might suggest the following article from wikipedia:

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

David Icke is proof that they no longer have insane asylums in his country OR the places are all filled up and they have no more room to keep him.

In the process of getting off the couch to attend to the clothes dryer which is now buzzing "Next!!!", I realize my utter failure today: my coffee cup has only been consumed about 25 percent.

It's cold and icky and has that stuff floating on top from the coffee creamer.

What a terrible waste.

Sad.

Update: My day is ending by listening to the band "Blind Pilot" on The David Letterman Show

(Actually I cheated and put the "Update" in at the same time that I published the other stuff that I wrote from much earlier in the day.)

I love going to the back door after hearing Cooper scratch on the door to get in, and asking loudly, "Who's there?", with a hint of IMNOTDIIDKWYA (I Might Not Open The Door If I Don't Know Who You Are) in my voice. Especially when its dark and cold outside. That'll teach the dog to not learn how to open the sliding glass door. Too bad no one hasn't invented a small hole you can put in the door with a weather-tight flap that the animal could pass through on his own desire and time frame.

I have already fixed three strange typographicals errors in this short post, so all bets are off that this is read-able, especially errors allphabetical.

Oh, and I love the new kayak.com teleBision commercial, "I'll Take Twelve Kilos of Rice Flour, Please".

Update: (a real update this time)

Oooh, I just learned something useful: The tongue of a giraffe is prehensile.

How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?
Answer: One, if you're a giraffe.

Thanks But No Thanks!!!

I just found out that my AdSense account for blog advertising has been disabled for suspicious click activity! A couple weeks ago someone clicked a bunch of my ad buttons and generated around fifteen dollars in revenue for my account IN ONE DAY, after my account had only earned a couple dollars in the time frame of more than four years! And then a few days ago there were some more clicks, but no increase in potential payments, and today my account is disabled.

SO a BIG sarcastic thank you to whoever screwed up my account and now it appears that I have lost all of my earnings through NO fault of my own.

Back Again

Someone took one of my best friends away from me four and a half years ago. 

It has been very sad without her. She had been my friend for sixteen years. She was kind of like a daughter to me.

Now she is back in my life, I am very happy! What a way to start a new year ....

&^)

Final Note

2011

This has been a truly marvelous year! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Clocks at 10 after.

Fix You at 15 after.

Every Tear Is A Waterfall at 20 after.

The End ... of the show,

The Beginning ... of a new year.

I Must Go Down To The Sink Again

I am on the couch reading in the living room.

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

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

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

I Am Not of Odd

Odd ?

6 AM

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

Noon

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

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

6 PM

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

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

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

8 PM

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

11 PM

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

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

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

Extra Note to "My Lucy": 

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

My Water Broke

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

My son asked me why I am so gloomy.

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

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

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

My singular sneaky solemn reply, "Maybe"

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

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

 'My Water Broke!' 

as an eXcuse to get out of doing housework."

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

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

I am going walking. 

Watch the last of the blizzard bits burn away. 

Outside!!!

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

PART TWO: The Park 

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

Such a nearly perfectly round snowball !

Mitch

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

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

Link to CNN Article

Max-I-Can Food

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

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

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

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

New news story. Acid reflux.

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

ANd less teleBision.

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

Horror Zone Tell Tale

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

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

No motion.

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

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