Desk 13 and Sponty

Desk 13

When Sister Mary Agatha would leave the room, I would begin. But first, the geography of our setting: The classroom in Parochial School had 25 desks laid out exactingly in a 5 by 5 grid and 24 were occupied. The distance from the desk to the walls and desk to desk perfectly matched occupying the square part of the room. Only the room was a rectangle, after taking a section of the front area for Sister MA's podium and circular trash can on one side and giant globe on the other. The lone desk in the middle of the 25, Desk 13 from the beginning or the end, had recently been suddenly vacated when the occupant had told her father that she wanted to be a nun, too, just like Sister MA when she grew up and the enraged father took his daughter from our midst forever.

0[_]0

x x x x x

x x x x x

x x o x x

x x x x x

x x x x x

Now I return to the word 'begin' near the beginning of my story. I would quietly count 1,2,3 after the door would click shut behind Sister MA. Then in unison all 24 of us would turn to the middle empty chair, together speak in monotone, each one slightly above a whisper but the collective voice was heard just outside by Sister MA in her current sister-sister chat through the ventilation system which made remarkable metallic reverberations as an intercom:

"And then there were nun",

followed by a brief 1200 millisecond pause and then two voices (always mine and Cindy, it was our idea after all), slowly shaking our heads,

" none? ",

and the 22 would chant, turning, breaking into 2 banks of 11 each for myself and Cindy, 22 index fingers in the air slightly blocking the passage of the their breath,

" not one "

Sister MA would open the door and poke her head inside to see us all motionless, turned back around with our heads forward and down dissolved into our books.

"Did someone say something?"

A silence on our part and then Cindy, our spokeswoman, would say,

"Not one person spoke"

Sister MA reflected a pause back, squinted while turning her head 17 degrees to the left in a manner later made famous by John Belushi, and then closed the door.

Sponty

When we were young and would get terribly excited, whoever was the least excited (LE) of the bunch would say,

"Stop, or you'll burst into flames with excitement",

and then whoever was the most excited (ME) would say,

"or what, I'll turn into ashes?"

and the LE would finalize,

"a dash of ash to stash in the trash".

And we would all fall down giggling in great excitement hoping not to catch fire spontaneously, and although we didn't know that spont word just yet, we just felt all sponty inside. And then we would sing our Dash/Ash/Stash/Trash song for the next hour or so and giggle until our faces hurt. Oh, that felt so good.

Hold it. In each of those memories I am a little girl with strawberry blond hair, dimples and freckles. Sorry, those must have been someone else's memories, as I am a 50-year-old brown haired man who has never been inside a parochial school; no dimps, no frecks.

Sudoku Rectangular A-B-B-A B-A-A-B Rule

While playing Sudoku this morning I think I noticed something new (at least for me).

Every Sudoku puzzle is supposed to have a unique solution. It is not supposed to be possible to have a pair of numbers in a 3x3 square that can be switched and then have the corresponding pair in another 3x3 square to the side or above or below then just be switched, what I call an A-B, B-A -> B-A, A-B swap AND have those 4 cells form the corners of a rectangle

(see fig 4).

For instance, this morning in a puzzle I had deduced that the pair of numbers at pair position A-B was 1 and 6, (see fig 1) but didn't know which order. Shortly after that I figured out that B and A' were also 1 and 6, (see fig 2) in the middle column of the puzzle, but again I didn't have enough information at that time to make a final determination of the pair B and A'. Then I tried to figure out the position labeled ? in fig 3. At that point I realized that the cell at B' could not contain a 1 or 6.

Reason: If A & B and B' & A' can be swapped with 1 and 6 or 6 and 1, then there would not be a unique solution to the entire puzzle. The swapping of 1-6 & 6-1 to 6-1 & 1-6 would not break an otherwise completed Sudoku puzzle, as each row, column, and 3x3 grid would still contain 1 through 9

Fig 1

Fig 2

Fig 3

Fig 4 Illegal Combination

If my logic is incorrect, incomplete or unsound, please let me know.

This may prove to be a useful tool when trying to solve a Sudoku puzzle. I don't think I have seen this "trick" explained before.

Update 2009.04.08 - Note: All 4 corners of the rectangle have to be updateable cells for this rule to apply. Sudoku games begin with a certain amount of cells filled in, non-updateable. I noticed several examples in completed puzzles where rectangles do exist, but at least one of the corners was a non-updateable cell, to which this rule does not apply, hence the alternating A-B-B-A B-A-A-B in the title.

Sin Perfume, Chapter Two

One day last week or so I had this for a headline in MySpace:

Ernest just noticed on a product ingredient list : 'sin perfume' and wonders what on earth that could be! (more importantly, why it needs to be on/in his toilet paper)

Well, The Wifey happened to come by and read this on the computer screen. She wondered what it meant. So she got some T-Paper and smelled it. She told me this later in the evening same day. I didn't smell anything she said. Then I explained to her the 'sin perfume' was just Spanish for 'unscented', 'sin' = 'without'. Which I already knew long before I wrote the headline in MySpace, just playing dumb as always, trying to sound ignorant. I didn't have enough space in the box to add what I originally intended. So here is the 'un-cut' version:

Ernest just noticed on a product ingredient list : 'sin perfume' and wonders what on earth that could be! (more importantly, why it needs to be on/in his toilet paper) It's probably nothing to worry about.

Isn't that so very pfunny? That is a new word I just created, contracting 'pun' with 'funny', combining their meanings equally. As in German, pronounce both the 'p' and the 'f'.

So La Wifey learned a little more Spanish this week. And I created a few new words. And the Dog? He has learned which one of us to pester to take him on a ride in my car. Guess which one? Why of course, the 'parent' who loves him more. Me. And I wanted so desperately to always have a clean car and have worked at it very hard for several months, winning the war against dirt and grime, too! Alas, there is Lassie type detached fur scattered throughout my vehicle.

So the next time someone starts talking about 'sin' around you, just riddle them this:

Where is a 'sin' nothing to worry about?

Answer: In Spain. The sin in Spain is nothin'. Actually if you look really close, you see that S-in is all around Spain, and 80% of everything right about Spain is 'pain', but on the brighter side, the 60% that is left is a 'Spa'. Ah, balance.

Oh, I giggle myself to sleep a-now, as you ponder anew: Spa and Spain, sin and pain.

ZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

Our Big Turtle Problem

No, the turtle isn't big; the problem is, for Mr. Turtle at least. Mr. Turtle, our semi-beloved semi-pet, has gone missing, but in a confined geographic rectangular region, The Garage.

We have been training our dog Cooper to leave Mr. Turtle alone. Trying. "Mr. Turtle is our friend" I know, it sounds dorky, but hey, it's me, the scientist, doing an experiment in animal behavior. Now it sounds cooler? Cooper doesn't seem to try to hurt him, just thinks maybe he is another squeak toy that doesn't work and carries him around like Kiboko and Elefante (our squeak toys have proper names, one from Kiswahili, the other French) You can see pictures of them in the blog "Froggie - The Forbidden Meat in the Garden of E-rnest-den" from a few months ago. "Yes, Froggie is our friend too." Yes, I agree, speaking that phrase to a dog does sound dorky.

It seems that Cooper had "transported" him into the garage and Wifey made him put him down. (I bet you didn't have problems with that last triple "him" sentence, did you?) When Wifey came back outside, the turtle had moved somewhere else. Unseen. The only problem though, the turtle is about "yay" high, and the concrete barrier at the bottom of the human back door is about 2 ½ "yays". I've seen Mr. Turtle in non-action. I don't think he's part Ninja, can pole vault or high jump, or for that matter, vault or jump in any non-Ninja manner, so at the moment he is trapped. Under things. A lot of things. Does this mean that someone is going to have to start moving (i.e. cleaning) the garage just to find & save Mr. Turtle? Okay, "clean" is too strong of a word, lets say, "rearrange".

Wifey asked me, "Is he going to starve?", to which I replied confidently (guessing) that turtles have a low metabolic rate and that they probably eat bugs, so "no". Winter is coming on soon so his only hope is the kindness of semi-strangers. After all he did come with the new house, we didn't ask for him. Judging by the number of scratch marks on his shell from being "transported" by Cooper, he has faired pretty well, knowing Cooper's past ferocity with other critters who are not his "friends".

So maybe Mr. Turtle will get lucky and while he happens to be out in the open in the garage sometime, a designated doggie delivery device will transport him back out into the semi-wild green yonder where he can wander back to his home underneath the utility building, recently renamed The Ninja Nook. And I won't have to "clean" the garage.

Join the MIRT Club Today!

MIRT is a conspiracy theory club I created today. I am not a member. MIRT stands for "Mars Isn't Really There". So if you believe that the planet Mars does not really exist, just leave a blog comment to say you want to join. If you hurry, you can be in the first group of 10,000 members to join. Actually, if you just take your time you can probably be the first person. Cost: $35 initial fee, and annual dues of $55. (But it is based on the supposed Martian year, which is longer than the earth year by 88%, so this is actually a good deal.)

Here is my previous daily thought: You could go outside, sit in your lawn chair and be hit by a 400 lb meteorite and not be killed. What??? How??? Well, to accomplish this feat you may have to wait 1.27 million years and by that time you would already be dead, most likely. And then you would need to arrange for your mummified remains to be carefully guarded and perhaps something a little more substantial than a lawn chair to support you. There is the matter of property taxes. It would be best to plan ahead and segregate that tiny piece of land as a sovereign nation. Or pay taxes ahead of time, whichever is easier. And maintenance fees. Maybe get yourself disguised as a statue. Bronzed. I believe the word for suntan lotion in Italian is "lozioneabbronzante", so that goes along with being bronzed. This sounds more like a project to be done in a country like Italy, all the ancient ruins, you might fit in better, maybe even avoid the whole tax issue. And they do have that little tiny country within a bigger country thing going already.

I had a previous daily thought that is more bizarre than these two combined and then multiplied by 17.34, but I think I should just leave that one alone, safely floating in the mind of Ernest. Okay here's a hint: It involves revenge on identity thieves. And their "suicide". Okay, here's some more: Well, it did start off as a single frame cartoon with the defense attorney explaining the concept to a jury. See I told you it should have stayed in my mind.....

Lets Give Mt Rushmore a Facelift or Four!

1. If you could pick four presidents to redo Mt Rushmore, only this time go for the worst, who would you pick?

Cheney, Nixon, Cleveland, & Johnson (he he he, which Johnson? Just morph the two together and make people guess. What, you don't think Cheney was the real President? What, you don't think Cheney was that bad of a president? What, you never heard of Cheney?)

Art work coming soon....


2. What is the most recent thing you have yelled?

OUCH! DON'T WALK ON THE ERNIE! (that's the name my dog knows me by)


3. What is the most recent thing you have killed?

A honey bee that was doing a poor job of imitating a wasp. Wait, it may not be dead yet, that's another blog coming soon....I should re-title the question "What is the most recent living thing you have most certainly trapped eternally?"

4. What is the most recent thing you have rescued?

Mr. Turtle in our backyard from you know who (Mr. Dog, if you didn't)


5. What is the strangest thing your spouse/MoSiOt does with food?

She leaves glasses of milk setting around so that the remnants turn into miniature yogurt factories (unintentionally, of course, don't worry Yoplait, there is no great annual solidified yogurt harvest). And if you include the coffee cups in the same category, the coffee flavored artificial yogurt factories.

6. What is the strangest thing you do with food?

Allow miniature yogurt factories to exist in my domicile

7. From recent conversations with other people, who do you think is the most evil person you have heard about yet you don't remember or never knew their name?

The evil sister of a woman who was telling me about how her sister had her transvestite cross-dressing male chihuahua put to sleep simply because she would not loan her car to the evil sister. (Wow, I just wrote a sentence that begins and ends with the words "The Evil Sister")

8. Which of the three ingredients of a BLT sandwich can you leave off?

The "L" one. Its tough, but I don't have to have the lobster every time.


9. Does your pet have any nicknames?

Bubba, Bubba Bear

10. If you could be magically transported somewhere, arrive naked, and exist there for only 15 seconds, where would it be?

The White House Oval Office during an important meeting the very first day of the new term AND be able to do this every four years. That would really make people think twice about running for president. I hope I wouldn't be confused with appearances of the Virgin Mary. Of course, I don't know if she arrives naked or last longer than 15 seconds. And I would probably want to go with the bullet-proof body option from what I know about The Secret Service. Or better yet, be invisible to the Secret Service Agents, yes, lets go with that option instead, more creative.

My Complete Lyrics: You Waise Me Up (So I Can Hunt Duh Wabbits)

You Waise Me Up (So I Can Hunt Duh Wabbits)©

Lyrics By Ernest S. B. Boston

(To be sung poorly in the voice of Elmer Fudd)

(Music to the tune of 'You Raise Me Up')
(Some syncopation is required; for a guide, just think and sound like Elmer Fudd)

When I yam down, and oh my so so wear-wee

When twumbles come, and my hard bird bwain be,

Den I yam shrill and wade here in the wabbit patch,

Untwill Bugs Bun-ny is in my sights again

You waise ^me UP!, so I can hunt duh wabbits,

You waise ^me up, to hunt in sto-my seasons;
I yam stwong, when I eat my wabbit stew-^ooo,
You waise ^me up, yes, I yam waised by you.

Dare is no wife – no wife wiff-out a hang-over

Each westless wife is so imperfect-wee.

But when it comes to hunt-twin or be mare-weed,

Sometimes I dwink, I dwink excessive-wee.

You wake me up, that why I bodd dis a-lumm qwock.

You wake me up, to hunt wheel er-lie-ee.

I yam stwong, when I eat wabbit jerky;
You wake me up, to hunt down bun-ni-eees.

You waise ^me up, to invent my wabbit sand-wich,

You waise ^me up, to butch-her dem wheel good.

Bah-bah-que knees of bun-nies in buh-uns,

You waise ^me up: (heh heh heh heh) To mow dan I can be.

Warning: For private use only. Federal law provides severe civil and criminal penalties for the unauthorized reproduction, distribution, performance or exhibition of copyrighted material without written permission/consent. Lyrics property of Quinn Studio & Gallery.

Poetry Link: The Next Poem in My Blog

A Rabbit and A Noun

A rabbit and a noun walk into a bar.

They ask the bartender, "I think we are running late, we were supposed to meet our friend, a priest, here several minutes ago. Is he already here?"

The bartender turns to me, Ernest the Humor Writer, and whispers, "I'm confused, am I in the right joke???"

I just tell him to read whats on his cue card.

Reluctantly and slowly, he says, "I think one of you has an extra 't' and one of you has an extra 'o' "

And the rabbit says, "Oh, which one of us?"

And the noun says, "I'm thirsty, I'll take that glass of tea you mentioned"

The bartender turns to me, Ernest the Humor Writer, and grins, "I get it now"

Do I Have Guts? Why, of Course I Do!

1) Do you have the guts to answer these queries and post them as "The Controversial Survey?"
I have guts in my abdominal cavity, so yes (?)

2) Would you do meth if it was legalized?
I like to do math, it was one of my favorite subjects in school. I get paid lotza money for doing math.

3) Abortion: for or against?
Personally, I would never have an abortion, or liposuction, or anything else to my tummy


4) Would our country fall with a woman president?
Actually Fall is the correct term, because the presidential election is in Nov, technically a part of the Fall season. So all presidents elected in the Fall are Fall presidents. And think back to the Chevy Chase days on Saturday Night Live when he portrayed Gerald "Oops" Ford, he was always falling down, even though Gerald Ford didn't become president in the Fall season, but in the summer time on Aug something^TH, 1974

5) Do you support the death penalty?
Support, as in spend money to actually buy the equipment or be on the cheerleading squad? I have killed a few insects, but I usually take spiders and wasps back outside, captured with a saucer and glass. Big game hunting. Poetry. Yes, I wrote a poem about taking a bug outside.

6) Do you wish marijuana would be legalized already?
Marijuana? Isn't that what hippies say when they propose, "Marriage, ya wanna?" So the answer is no, we don't want hippies getting married.

7) Do you think same sex marriage should be legalized?
Having sex at the same time is an important part of marriage, otherwise, isn't that adultery?

8) A 12 year old girl has a baby..should she keep it?
Is it hers? Then "yes". If its not hers, she should give it back. If its like a baby bird, well, she shouldn't injure herself climbing the tree, that's where this subject matter gets difficult, when trees get involved.


9) Should the alcohol age be lowered to 16?
Yes, it should actually be lowered to 3 months instead of 16 months. When beer gets to be more than 3 months old, it isn't fit to drink. Some of the aged liquors actually improve over time, so waiting 16 months is okay. Oh, I forgot, I quit drinking almost two years ago, never mind.

10) Should the war in Iraq be called off?
No, we should keep calling it the "War in Iraq". If we rename it the "Off War" that would only fusecon, I mean, confuse people. See, I just confused you with fusecon. And if we call it the Off War then they might have to change the name of the country Iraq to "Off" and of course that would require changing the name of the country of Iran to "On". Aren't four letter words short enough already for the name of a country? When I think of Iran and Iraq, lots of four letter words come to mind, I just can't repeat them here, my mommy might read this.

11) Assisted suicide is illegal... do you agree?
Yes, I agree that it is illegal. You just told me it was illegal, why would I doubt you?


12) Do you believe in spanking your children?
Not now, they are taller than me and in their mid to early twenties with bigger muscles. I could probably still out wrestle them though, unless they begin to tickle me. Would I be required to spank them at the same time, it does say 'children'?


13) Would you burn an American flag for a million dollars?
Yes, because then I could buy 1,000,000 more flags at a dollar a piece.

AND (do you already see where I'm going with this?) burn a million flags, and get a TRILLION dollars

AND then buy one flag to replace the original flag I burned, and now I have $999,999,999,999

Then I buy the presidency of the United States of America, all the companies that make flags, and make it a law punishable by death to burn a flag, that way no body else can become rich like me with the same deal and buy the presidency of the ….

That was easy math, duh.

14) A mother is declared innocent after murdering her 5 children in a temporary insanity case, Do you agree?
Who was insane, the mother or the children or the jury? Always remember, there is always a difference between 'being declared innocent' and 'being innocent'

15) Are you afraid others will judge you from reading some of your answers?

I never wanted to become a judge, but if it was going to be this easy to become one, wow, and I hear the pay is realllly good, plus you get to wear silly looking black clothes and have a funny looking useless wooden hammer. But you do get to have a bailiff. I have always wanted a bailiff, ever since I was a little boy, and if by "little boy", you mean 45 seconds ago. Because it has been a long time since I ate, so I am now smaller than I was right after I ate supper. Wait! I forgot I took a nap and didn't have supper yet! Instead I am hungry but not Hungarian and typing these words to you right now and you are reading them right now but they are not the same now, isn't that cool? So I have guts, but less in them than I should, so there, I have answered the first question adequately on an empty stomach (and guts).

High Velocity Lead Poisoning

"Friskie" - This is one of my oldest just barely intact pieces of writing. My mother sent this to me today (see photos at bottom). There were two pieces in her letter, the first explaining how she came across this famous letter of protest from my childhood (1969, age ~11) and got it photocopied for me. The letter expresses my feelings concerning the death of my dog Friskie from high velocity lead poisoning at the hands, no, trigger finger of my father. But the photocopy also has something that I had forgot about: My best friend Jody, from across the street, had also wrote a supportive claim. I believe that Jody lives in Las Vegas, NV. So if somebody out there can find him, please have him contact me.

Just in case you can't read the letters in the photos, I have transcribed them for you.

Friskie
One of the best fight
ing dogs a boy
could have.
Killed for no
reason in
1968. Daddy shot him
because he saved me three
times, all from John
Weaver, next door
neibor.
Dr. E. B. Boston <--- he he, children, ("Dr")
1969

And then the supportive piece from Jody Corean, probably about age 13. Notice that he spells my childhood name 'Ernie' wrong, twice. Thats okay, he spelled Friskie wrong too, 3 out of 4 times.

Frisky was the most
playfull dog in the Upper
Valley road. But there
was one thing nobody
could do to frisky, except
Erine, Jody. That was
Wrestling frisky.
If anybody touched
Erine be sides Jody, Friskie
would bit them. No
matter who it was.
Jody Corean
1969 <--- I like the emphatic touch of the double underline
____





Thanks, Mommy!

Captcha Interpretations

Here are some C_apt^ch_a words and my best guess at a hidden English interpretation. Various methods of analysis and computer algorithms running on a bank of supercomputers from Los Alamos NM were employed to decipher them as well as getting help from the NSA

(not really; I just made up some junk).

jpdewgj8g - John's poodle Donna exploded when Gypsy just ate grapes

xeyrugrwb - Xavier exclaimed, "your rug is really wet, bro'"

enwhbxx - "every night we hide behind Xavier." then a pause as the tour group in the very dark Carlsbad Cavern ponders out loud suddenly in unison as to the whereabouts of their spelunking guide: "Xavier?"

dewpaedy - does everyone whisper politely about elderly dudes yawning?

ns3aress - In sunlight, three ants are easily secretly stunned

aajehhju - American Airlines just evicted Howard Hughes Jr unknowingly (of course to be fair to American Airlines, Howard Hughes Jr has absolutely no clue as to who his real father is)

jtezfchep - Japanese - that's easy for chickens who eat pineapples (I know, I know, there are people out there right now screaming at the top of their lungs, 'UNFAIR! UNFAIR!, you used the word 'who' when there needed to be an 'h' word.' Settle down dear children, hush, especially you Albanians. Remember, I make up the rules for this 'game'. The word 'who' has an 'h' sound in English. Lets me say it really slowly for you: 'wwwwhhhhhhhhhooo' - see that, you didn't even hear the 'w' and its just barely visible)

bw3hwxk – But we 3 have worked exceedingly kingly – This what the Three Non-Kings of the Christmas song 'We Three Kings of Orient Are' put on their joint job application to be included in the aforementioned song when they lied about being three kings. I mean, who lets their king just wander off with two other kings and go on some reality program, "Go Find The Baby Messiah"? Most everyone knows that there are trained Baby Messiah Trackers out there, most with at least a junior college degree.

Brand New-bie:
nnysj4tny – Nostalgic New York suggests June for touristing Non-new Yorkers

Coming soon: sc3fa4hd nebxenc a DOUBLE C_apt^ch_a -cino!

Okay, somebody give me a new name that starts with 'X' besides 'Xerxes'. That has a Z sound at the beginning, no can do. We are going for phonetics here, folks.

Just a Minute or Two or Three

My wife sent me to the store for minute steak. On my way there I wrote this really cool sentence in about a minute or two. When I came home I added a few more words in under a minute. So I have invested less than 3 minutes of time actually writing the sentence. But its entertainment value keeps increasing, so now it can be part of your world too. It contains homonyms, synonyms and multiple word combinations of the word 'minute' and its phonetic segments as nouns, verbs and adjectives. But first some definitions and daffynitions:

• Minute – noun - 60 seconds of time – pronounced "min-it"
• Minute - adjective – small – pronounced "my-noot"
• Minute – adjective – a kind of steak with lotza funny looking tiny holes intended for tenderizing
  
• Men – noun – guys like me
• Ate – verb – consumed food
• Mute – adjective – doesn't speak

Knowing these words will let you express a complex scenario like this next one when you observe it happening near you in a restaurant:

"Adorable quiet male midgets consumed tiny steaks with tiny holes in under 60 seconds"

in a more interesting manner:

"Cute mute minute men ate minute minute steaks in under a minute"

Try to see how many times you can say this sentence correctly in a minute.

My Saturday List of Things To Do ..OR.. One Day in the Life of Ernestan Bostinovich

My List of Things To Do Today
Saturday
September 13th
2008

Notes:

These are not necessarily in exact order performed
Were created as the day went by
No order of importance

• Get breakfast for The Wife at McDonalds


• Come back to McDonalds to shoot the goofy looking Spanish version of the Big Mac slogan "Two all beef patties ...."


• Bank Deposit


• Groc store shop


• After talking to friend D@n@ from French TX, begin writing a short story about her rent house disaster where the landlord was supposed to move out to live with his mother and take care of her, but continues to sleep on the couch of her rent house and she winds up getting stuck fixing the place up and now that it looks better, the landlord wants to raise the rent. Yes, thats right, the landlord is still living in the rent house, sleeping on the couch and now wants more money.
  


• Get and mail BD card for friend Brandi H. Found a card where the doctor pulls a rabbit out of a guys knee and says "Are you sure you want to fix a trick knee that is this good?" Found another cool penguin card for my other friend in south Texas.


• Get Lotto ticket


• Avoid getting wetter


• Fix north screen door at the 102 house


• Strategically position toothpaste to bring it to work on Sunday afternoon


• Get bread later today as they are out at the groc store of our favorite


• Bring lab jacket home to wash tomorrow


• Ask niece if you can publish your picture of her daughter as she swings the plastic bat at the pinata but misses and you have captured the moment just milliseconds away from the bat hitting the little brother (its his 2nd BD party) in the face and the mother is bending down to try to get him out of the way. Yes, he did cry. Some. I titled the photograph, "My Brother, The Pinata"
  

• Write a blog story about your wife hiring a kid to pass out fliers for her new business. It is a story about how she creates her own form of advertising after thinking that the newspaper is a waste of money, a story of bettering, lettering, loitering, & littering, using a little boy to annoy the masses as he passes out papers and sticks them on windshields.
  


• Set up an experiment to try to extract the purple dye out of your onions and see if goes preferentially into the water or organic phase. (Experiment is finished Nov 27th, 2008- Answer: Bottom - Water)
  

The purple color may be this particular chemical called a 'flavonoid' - with all the -OH hydroxyl groups, you can see why it would tend to be a water soluble compound.

Quercetin

• Setup a Visa payment for Monday


• Take your medications and vitamins


• Do the dishes - scratch that - do more dishes than you make dirty


• Start a blog about misinterpretations. "Honk my horn at you? Why no, officer, my car horn just happened go off while you were driving in a stupid manner. As far as I know the sound waves radiated in all directions, up and away for the entire universe to enjoy."
  


• Shoot photo of the Christmas tree in this guys front yard over on Wilson street where he never takes the ladder down all year long and add it to the group of photos of goofy things you have found in Borger. (This turned out really cool - you can see the stars in the sky. I could actually pick out the Pleiades from a section of the photo that was cropped - otherwise you would have had to look at the left side mirror of my car. 30 second exposure at f4.5)
  

Perform a gastronomical experiment with two tomatoes. First, a store bought supposedly vine ripened tomato and the second from your wife's aunt's garden in French TX. Cut each tomato into equal pieces (4) and eat them in an alternating manner to extend/fool your mouth into thinking it is getting two garden fresh tomatoes. (Experiment was a success)

Try to come up with another song for the musical you are writing called "Wahoo! Nebraska" which is the story of a man who fails to write a musical about Wahoo, NE, a place he has never been before and doesn't even know where it is on the map, and instead the musical is about how wonderful his life and wife are, and of course, there is the dog Cooper, the central character. So far the songs in rough draft are "Wahoo! Nebraska", and "Chicken and Cheese, Please". I think there is already a third song that I have forgot about; have to go look through my notes later.

Create a new blog as a Tourism Guide to the hot spots of Borger TX that includes the goofy pictures you have collected so far. Later create a map to guide the pilgrimage masses to the exact location where the photos were taken. Try to get longitude and latitude coordinates from a GPS device or Google Earth at a later time.

Wanna Be My New Best Friend?

Organic Chemistry
by Robert Thornton Morrison and Robert Neilson Boyd,
6th Edition, HARDCOVER

If you want to be my new best friend you will send me a brand new copy of this book. Its only around $200, the HARDCOVER edition, NOT the cheap orange colored paper back version printed in black and white on thin paper in a country that rhymes with "Bindia" that somebody in Erie, PA fraudulently sold me on e_b^aY. Otherwise I'll just have to type the whole thing back into my computer.
All 1278 pages.
Draw all the pictures.
The back cover.
The front cover.
Lets not forget the preface, all 4 pages.
But I won't type in the index, that would just be silly and a waste of time.

• Publisher: Prentice Hall; 6 edition (January 17, 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0136400612
• ISBN-13: 978-0136436690

Bush v Gustav (v Holland?)

(This story is older - (Sept 1st, 2008 - when the storm Gustav was approaching land )- than its 2nd publication at blogger )

Headline this morning:

"Bush heads to Texas as Gustav menaces"

I am thinking, with a headline like that, there's gotta be something funny in there somewhere. Maybe something about

"CDMA - Cold Dry Mass of Airhead - runs into a gust of a massive hot moist storm, as men ask, 'Where's FEMA?'"

My question, as always, 'why do people want to live below sea level?' Oh, The Dutch, blame them instead of FEMA, they can be such a bad influence. After all they roamed the oceans for centuries making colonies, enslaving people, stealing the resources of the indigenous natives; I don't think FEMA has been that bad just yet, well maybe. There was that whole trailer house thing. And FEMA did let the people back into N.O. With initials for a place like New Orleans being "NO", that should have been a subtle hint,

"Should we continue to live here like our Dutch friends do, with a menace of waiting warm water just miles away, The Sparkling Ocean Blue, held back by dirt and rocks and a little concrete for glue? Why, NO" Here's something else: I just checked wikipedia, and it was the French, then the Spanish, then the French again, who had New Orleans before us. So at least the Dutch were smart enough to never try to own the place. "No", the Dutch probably told the French emperor Napoleon when he put the place up for sale in 1803, "sell it to the United States, they're young and don't know anything about underwater real estate"

The Dutch As An Influence

by esbb

'Lets live here where the ocean wants to be, lets build a dike or two,

Reclaim this land for man (and money) and see what we can do.

If…

It starts to leak, just pile up some more bags of rock and dirt,

But …

Remember if you live here, water can kill, destroy and hurt.'

Martha S. and I Share Things

Martha S. and I have several things in common, several things not so much in common.

Martha S. and I share a common name which we each obtained from other people long after we were born. I got my "S" name from my mother's family at age 47, while she got the same name from an ex-husband she married at age 19. I believe she had a Polish last name before that.

I think she has around 2 billion dollars. I think I have less than that.

I live in Texas while I believe she lives in Connect-I-Cut.

For a couple of weeks in my life approximately, 28 percent of it ago (1994 and 1995), I went to school in the same town, Milford, where she would go to the gym. Only I found out about this gym-town connection a long time after I briefly attended the Connect-I-Cut school, so I wasn't able to stalk her while I was there.

I was a Martha TV Show fan for a while a very long time ago, the main reason: to be able annoy my wife as I would pretend to be deeply in love with Martha S even though she was older, quite distant and talked funny (Connect-I-Cut Connection?). "Whatever", was my wife's response.

A wikipedia article mentions that she intended to study chemistry in college but did not, while I obtained a B.S. in Chemistry.

Martha and I do share a love of being able to use a tool for something other than its original intended purpose.

Today I sent this note to my friend by text message:

"In an emergency, a steak knife can be used as a thumbtack. A very large effective, some might even say overkill, thumbtack.

Big job?

No problem.

Big thumb,

Big tack,

Steak knife to the rescue!"

(Notice that I put in the carriage returns to space the lines to make the text message more visually appealing, a very good thing)

She responded simply "What" with no question mark.

My answer back:

"I needed to leave a message near the backdoor to not let the dog outside because the lawn guy came by and would not be able to lock every gate from the outside when he left and then if I fell asleep and (my wife's name goes here) came home she might accidentally let Cooper outside w/o realizing the current gate situation. There is a piece of cardboard near the backdoor that serves as the thumbtack receptacle"

My other friend responded:

"Cool! I will add 1 to my duct tape, gorilla glue & zip tie collection!"

The third person I sent the text message to has not yet responded.

I would like to think that Martha would be proud of my improvisational thumbtack as a 'very good thing'.

How To Save Money on Your Grocery Store Bill

Eat Less.



Comment From Niece M:
haha good advice..but i like to eat..i love food! especially if it has suger...so now how do i save on groceries haha

Comment From Uncle E:
Okay, more Uncle-y add-vice:
You walk into a restaurant and ask them, say, I was just needing to know what time it was .. OH LOOK! Free sugar on the table, WA-HOO! Jumpin' pole cats in the winter time this is better than huntin' coons in the bayou with my best dog Pete. Well, thats not true, I actu-ally shot Pete one day, mis-took him for a coon, I gotta start feedin my dogs A-lot better than that, and anyways, now this is his son Re-Pete. Anyhows, (lowering my voice) lets sneak outside and I'll show you how many packets of sugar I got off with, dang, I'a-didn't mean ta get that there ketchup, hate ketchup, don't mind catsup, but hate ketchup. Looky, there, got off with 18 packs of sugga'
Say, isn't that a Tag-go Bell over there?

Comment From Niece M:
haha that is funny! thanks for the....help...yeah thats what it was help! :)

Comment From Uncle E:
What I think is really cool is that the title of this blog is 4.5 times longer than the content of the blog, 9 words to 2. I am sure that is a rarity for blogs to have a word ratio like that. I just thought of a another version of this blog:
Title: "How To Save Money on Your Grocery Store, Bill"

Content: "Bill, build a smaller cheaper store, say, one out of Legos maybe. And then only stock it with non-perishable items such as canned food and paper towels. Tiny paper towels. Tiny cans. And don't hire any off-duty cops to patrol it for shop lifters."

Brown Things in Motion .. OR .. Why Gigantic Baboons Don’t Study Physics

Today I was reading an article in Wikipedia about something in physics called 'Brownian Motion'. Albert Einstein used it in 1905 to explain the existence of atoms. It has to do with the random movement of small visible objects being tossed about by collisions with smaller invisible things. Part way down through the article they give an example in terms of something on the scale of human beings. BUT before you read it (if you want to), notice how I highlighted the word 'balloon'? Well, it is much more entertaining if you read the same article and replace the word 'balloon' with the word 'baboon'. How do I know this? Because when I started reading the article, I had my glasses off and I read the word as 'baboon'. What? A 10 meter wide baboon? Imagine my confusion. Then after a few sentences I realized it said 'balloon', not 'baboon'. Then I realized I had accidentally merged the "ll" with the first "o" of balloon to get a second "b". Well, in fairness my eyes are "C/II". In Roman numbers that's 100 divided by 2.

So I decided to do a little experiment on my friend. I copied the paragraph into a text editor, and changed the 7 occurrences of balloon to baboon. Next, I had my scientific friend come read the paragraph.
I wait .....

No giggle.

Just a comment about how that was interesting and he walked away.
"What???? Didn't you find that funny?", I ask
And he came back and started reading it again, asking where the humor was. "You don't think a 10 meter (33 foot wide) baboon is funny?" He had read the 'baboon' as 'balloon' throughout the whole article.

We later came to the conclusion that we both have something very wrong with our brains but in the exact opposite direction. I told him the next time he goes to the zoo, tell your wife, "Look Honey, can I have a balloon?!?!?"

Brownian Motion from Wikipedia.com

(used with permission by the GNU Free Documentation License)

Consider a large balloon of 10 meters in diameter. Imagine this large balloon in a football stadium or any widely crowded area. The balloon is so large that it lies on top of many members of the crowd. Because they are excited, these fans hit the balloon at different times and in different directions with the motions being completely random. In the end, the balloon is pushed in random directions, so it should not move on average. Consider now the force exerted at a certain time. We might have 20 supporters pushing right, and 21 other supporters pushing left, where each supporter is exerting equivalent amounts of force. In this case, the forces exerted from the left side and the right side are imbalanced in favor of the left side; the balloon will move slightly to the left. This type of imbalance exists at all times, and it causes random motion. If we look at this situation from above, so that we cannot see the supporters, we see the large balloon as a small object animated by erratic movement.

My more interesting Brown-ian version:

Consider a large baboon of 10 meters in diameter. Imagine this large baboon in a football stadium or any widely crowded area. The baboon is so large that it lies on top of many members of the crowd. Because they are excited, these fans hit the baboon at different times and in different directions with the motions being completely random. In the end, the baboon is pushed in random directions, so it should not move on average. Consider now the force exerted at a certain time. We might have 20 supporters pushing right, and 21 other supporters pushing left, where each supporter is exerting equivalent amounts of force. In this case, the forces exerted from the left side and the right side are imbalanced in favor of the left side; the baboon will move slightly to the left. This type of imbalance exists at all times, and it causes random motion. If we look at this situation from above, so that we cannot see the supporters, we see the large baboon as a small object animated by erratic movement.

True Mrs. Adventures Explaining The Venture Brothers While Venturing

This is a true story, my thoughts during some of the moments and now as I write and recall (trip was Aug 10th, 2008 and wrote the next day, transferred from MySpace later).

So we are traveling to Amarillo on Sunday and I happen to use the word "minion" in my conversation with my wife and she asks me what that word means. I tell her the best example that I know is "Henchmen" from the animated series "The Venture Brothers". So I start telling her all about The Venture Brothers, some pretty wild outlandish things are tied up in all that animated violent funny for-adults-only series. I don't know if you have seen it or not, but after several minutes deep into my explanation/story, (don't worry, she is driving), I mention that I had forgot to tell her that the arch villain of Dr. Venture is named 'The Monarch', and that he and his henchmen wear butterfly costumes. AND THEN (after several minutes of telling her EXACTLY the total truth) she looks at me and grins "You're making up all this stuff off the top of your head, quit trying to fool me" (My wife just happens to wear a LOT of blouses with butterflies, I just now remember that and make a bit of a connection as to maybe why she thought I was kidding her)

Oh, I just cracked up laughing,

"Oh come on now, you really think I can make up this kinda crap right off the top of my head????"

Yes, was her reply. (I felt truly deeply honored at that moment)

NO HONEY, all this is true, someone really writes all this stuff AND alot more, trust me, it only gets stranger than this, we're only touching the surface of the Venture Brothers here. Oh, and there are actually TWO sets of Venture Brothers to confuse things.

A little while later I tell her I remember that The Monarch's girlfriend is named "Dr. Girlfriend" and she has this very deep voice, which I very poorly imitate. I do a much better 'Willie Nelson', or 'Elmer Fudd', or Elmer Fudd trying to sound like Willie Nelson when he sings. Heh heh heh heh heh heh (staccato)

When I got to Amarillo and told my younger son (a VentBrot watcher) this story, he just died laughing, and reassured his mother that whatever dad had said was all true.

Say VentBrot people, do you need a new/another writer?

The Past Tense of the Word ’Island’

So, there are just only so many funny things in the world, but it is a big number, a very big number. Here are two stories, old men stories, that happened to me within minutes of each other yesterday.

As I was leaving the groc store yesterday on the hunt for breakfast, a very ancient man walks into the store wearing a blue Tee shirt with these words in white:
" I am the kid your parents warned you about "

I found breakfast at MCD and had just started munching when two elderly men walked by, one I have seen every once in awhile for 20 some years and the other a stranger. We exchange a Texan 'howdy' between bites and they sit down 2 tables away. The one I barely know is loud and jovial, the other speaks quietly, mainly in questions.

Loud: "After we get finished here, I need to go to Radio Shack"
Quiet: "What are you going to buy there?"
Loud: "I am gonna get some diodes and resistors"
Quiet: "What are you going to do with them"
-Knowing what diodes and resistors are, I naturally think he is going to say something like "Work on my ham radio", but no.....
Loud: "I am going to make some jewelry for my grandchildren"

Wasland
That is my new word of the day. Its what you call an 'island' that has disappeared. It will probably appear on maps in the future;
global warming;
oceans rising,
places disappearing
beneath the waves,
land that was,
no longer is,
now waving

Froggie - The Forbidden Meat in the Garden of E-rnest-den

Not much of anything that is animal in nature lasts too long in my back yard. I have a doggie doomsday killing machine for anything that lurks too long. But my latest canine training technique of 'Froggies Are Our Friends' seems to be finally working. Instead of trying to kill them (but 'play' with them first, of course), Cooper will now just watch them hop across the patio. No paw action, but his ears do perk up. The other evening there was even a brief after dinner snack of wasp killing, exoskeleton crunching and eating two of them before I could snap my photo.

Most everything else is fair game including his favorite squeak toys 'Kiboko' and 'Elefante'. Notice that Elefante lost his ears a long, long time ago ...BUT Kiboko's ears must be made out of Kevlar and connected with superglue. Cooper really works hard at trying to rip them off, but no luck after several months.

(Those are stickers and dirt - so let's head to the pool, K & E)

The name Kiboko comes from the East African Kiswahili language for 'hippo'. Cooper loves his new (3rd) pool. The first two pools have suffered the ravages of UV radiation, soccer ball impacts, snow shovels, and the West Texas weather. The dog has actually been quite kind to his pool. He loves to walk in a circle around the inside perimeter sticking his head under the water while biting at it. I just ask him, "Wanna go get some salmon?" and make growling bear noises and slowly oscillate my head sideways. He just looks at me and then buries his head into the water and imitates my motions.

He NEVERS puts his backside into the water though. So for all the neighbor cats reading this right now, beware, or your ears may look like Elefante (or worse) some time soon.