These are the things that scamper through my lil' brain; catch them and let them make you smile a-while, and then let them go freely on their way a-gain... Ernest S. B. Boston
I am away for a little while working on a few or more episodes for The Adventures of My Space Alien Alter Ego story ... will return (to Earth) soon!
Notice: Blogger has screwed up and lost a bunch of photos out of my blog! They are replaced with a gray silhouette of a human head. I will eventually get them replaced with the correct photo, it may take a while to find and fix everything. So some of my stories don't make much sense without their photos, sorry for the inconvenience.
As I was entering a local burrito shop there was a clear plastic bag of water hanging near the front door.
I placed my order and asked the attendant about the bag.
The owner was standing a few feet away and said that it keeps flies away.
Curious, I asked for a scientific explanation.
He told me that when the flies go by the bag of water their reflection is magnified by the bag of water and how the little flies are scared of the big flies because the big flies eat the little flies.
"Really" was my semi-sarcastic response.
The owner told me that they are used all over the country of Mexico, in people's houses and businesses.
So I asked him for permission to shoot the picture of the bag of water so I could put it on Facebook.
He told me sure, it would be okay.
I told him that I publish stories on the Internet.
He suddenly said "No, not if it is going to be on the Internet! Then someone will steal my idea"
I humorously thought, no, its just a clear plastic bag of water, probably no patent pending and you already told me you got the idea from your grandmother and they are hanging all over Mexico. So I assured him that when people saw my story it would help him become more famous, people would come from all over to see his bag of water and eat at his place. He said it would be okay. Of course I was pretty sure that I could take a picture of a bag of water in a public place and there wasn't going to be much he could do to stop me, but I'm a nice guy and ask permission.
A little later while eating at the restaurant another patron mentions the bag of water. He thinks that the bag of water is used to keep evil spirits away. I lean toward him and say with a very serious, quiet voice, holding back my laughter successfully, that flies are evil spirits.
My nice bright mainly red Cellphone (Samsung Model SGH-A737) has a One-Der-Full feature that allows it to learn new words for re-use with future messages. This learning feature is part of the "T9Eab" typing mode. The system tries to find matches for the numeric keystrokes from its built-in dictionary. It tries to find the best match for you from a list and also allows you to scroll on farther through the list as well for other choices.
I disagree strongly with my use of the word "best" in that previous sentence.
Problem: Unlearning
Learning how to do something can be difficult at times, and the amount of effort involved with UN-learning varies from person to person and from thing to thing. The current thing of interest, my cell phone, appears to have a total lack of unlearning with its dictionary. It seems that the Samsung people (and I am assuming a robot didn't program my phone, but I could be wrong) forgot to add a feature to the system that lets you erase words out of the dictionary!
Help me ghost of Noah Webster! Its been 203 years since you first published your dictionary, so if you could go whisper in the ear of someone in Japan with my edit suggestion. Oh, I forgot you probably don't know Japanese.
For instance, when I type in the numeric keystrokes 3-6-7, going for the common word 'for' - which was already in their dictionary as the most common word for the letters
(def)-(mno)-(pqrs) of the 3-6-7 sequence,
there now magically appears a 'dmp' - which strangely is the first character of each of these keys AND the exact thing I would get IF I had been typing in the simple 'abc' mode.
(By the way, when you are in the 'T9Eab' mode and type in 2-2-2 for the keystrokes, it doesn't give you a choice of 'abc' in the lookup list! So if my phone doesn't even know its ABC's, why should this latest wrinkle crinkle of thinking surprise me?)
So I forget about this problem most of the time (okay, all the time) and I am just typing along and want for the word 'for' and get 'dmp' instead, and without checking first with my eyes, my mind tells my fingers that I am in the wrong write mode and it holds down on the key that is supposed to change the writing mode from 'abc' to 'T9Eab' - only I was already in that mode and now I am in the 'abc' mode so when I type the 3-6-7 again I get 'dmp' and when my finger then clicks the key to go down through the list of choices (and of course there are no choices in the 'abc' mode) my phone then displays 'dmp+' instead of toggling on down to give me a 'for' and I suddenly don't feel like I am in a very "PLUS" MOOD right then as I have just now been typing in the wrong write mode. Luckily it usually only takes me three tries to write a 'for' and not four.
My Non-Choice Nonsense Phone-y Words
'BD' instead of 'be' '2x' instead of 'by' 'dmp' instead of 'for' 'WF' instead of 'we'
So I hear that you have some interesting things in your life.
"Be all you can be"? - I think they really meant they were going to be in charge of the all part of your life .... here are some more "B" words to consider ....
- Bald - hmmmm, I don't think I ever forced you to give up all your hair, "How does it feel? Like a rolling stone?"
- Beret - hmmmm, I don't think I ever forced you to wear a funny hat at any point in your whole life, especially something French looking, how horrible! Well, there were birthday parties, but I think you spent alot of time wearing a Texas A& M cap over the last several years to make up for any previous indiscretions in the headware department.
- Boring Clothes - hmmmm, I don't think I ever forced you to wear a plain wardrobe, well, maybe your mother did, I am not sure about this one.
- Big Glass Binoculars - hmmmm, I think you got to pick out your own eye wear instead of now being forced to wear Army regulation ugly glasses. As I remember, you picked out some very interesting contact lens over the years.
- Bang - hmmmm, I don't think the deal I made with you to go to college and provide some support for you along the way ever carried any stipulations about needing to shoot people.... hmmm, now I seem to recall I spent a couple decades asking you/reminding you NOT to kill people and to be a nice person, yeah, I think I remember something along those lines, do you?
Please come home soon permanently before it is too late, We kinda miss you a little.
300: Preconfusion Warning: Tomorrow is international "Talk Like a Pirate Day" - so I will switching my Facebook language setting over to 'English (Pirate)' for September 19th. The guy who invented the 'holiday' wanted to do something special for his ex-wife's birthday.
299: Spending too much time in 'hope' wastes your present and your future ....
298: I have devised a plan that would drastically cut down the number of cases of prostate cancer to essentially zero and save a tremendous burden on the national health care system. IDEA: Kill all males over the age of 29. That should keep Obama's Death Panels busy for a few weeks.
297: Someone I know, but I can't see, is going to land in the icy land of Iceland, and at least that's the plan if the plane is fixed and they go zoom, otherwise he is adjusting to just mainly waiting in a waiting room in the state of Maine in a non-zoomy state of being.
296: In my dream just now I got in a fight with a grizzly bear. I got away from the bear by poking a stick in his nose, but I didn't run away but held my ground growling at him. So my advice for hiking through the forest is don't forget to take your megaphone and pool cue.
295: My night was drizzle, dark and damp, and now my morning comes wrapped with a tight coat of bright fog. The same water gets a little decoration, motivation, evaporation and elevation from the sunlight.
294: Poetry is a way of life, a way of thinking & doing,
expression that is caressed, pressed & dressed,
then said.
293: I have entered a simultaneous state of both 'I can't imagine what is going to happen next' amazement and extreme partial sadness wrapped in a mystery that only deepens as time and forensics uncovers the depravity and diabolical greed that can be contained and slowly revealed in a single other human being. (Don't worry, if you can read this directly from Facebook, I'm not talking about you)
292: Ah, Texas !!!
291: Colorado is currently color yellowing and color reddening, winding down for winter.
290: Utah is really just an older New Mexico, except one chose to be our salt and the other our pepper.
289: Today I saw some strange looking wide dilapidated shredded mud flaps on the back of an RV going down the interstate. With them flapping sporadically in the wind, it gave me the impression of a giant tarantula serving as the drivetrain - a 'drivetrainantula'
288: My thought for the day: Does anyone named Fran Sancisco live in San Francisco?
287: Getting to know Idaho in a couple of days or so
286: In some parts of the world they have installed cattle guards to keep livestock off busy thoughfares, such as the Interstate Highway System. In other places where the cows aren't as bright, they just paint one directly on the asphalt.
285: I got a phone call at 3 AM to let me know that 2 had tango'd; the score, who won? Skunk 1, Dog 0 - and the atmosphere negative something.
284: After spending a half hour around my first tribe of Oregonians, I am guessing their favorite herb is not oregano but rather cannabis sativa.
283: Now leaving apple maggot quarantine area
282: We have moved on in the non-list of our unscheduled daily activities to 'Pillow Fight'. Earlier I proposed that we formulate a name for the field of study for when space alien archeologists come to study our planet a million years from now and totally misinterpret the remains of human activity.
281: "Due to the Bumper Shoot Festival, valet parking will be closed" - the strange verbal message my son just received on his phone that we have no idea what it means. Perhaps it was a secret code from a CIA agent delivered to the wrong person.
280: Seattle .... Visual Apple Peeling
279: In several ways I am playing chess with my father for the last time. After this game, I plan to never play him again for the second time in my life.
278: Somebody in Montreal loves me.....
277: Happy 70th Anniversary to The Beginning of World War Two Day
276: I'm pretty sure yesterday was a good day. I played hide-and-go-seek with my dog, or 'BOO!' as the name of the game that my dog knows it as, at least three times. I also conducted an apprroximate census of my tomato plants: >70 green spheres of significant size on my 5 plants. MMMmmm...
275: In these tough economic times if you decide to start a "Lets save money by not shaving policy", be sure to have a notarized signed document with your spouse's buy in - it will help in both the divorce proceedings as well as when he/she tries to have you committed.
274: One of the ways that I plan to cut down on the amount of CO2 green house gas in the atmosphere is to implement a personal policy of never burning diamonds.
273: 'responsibility' just means that you screwed up and didn't properly do 'sponsibility' the first time. And since you have most likely have never heard of the ability to be sponsy, you know what to ask for at the next PTA or school board meeting.
272: I tried to save 8 soles today, but they eluded me.
271: Thanks Marck 'No matter how hard I don't try, there's just only so much that I can't do.' - That sounds like the perfect thing to not write on the very expensive marble tombstone that I never want to have. Save a tree, save a rock, take good care of my dog.
270: If anyone complains about the current state of my backyard, I am just going to blame the abundant rain, and point out that I am just singlehandedly Amazingly trying my best to make up for the failure of millions of Brazilians who are destroying the Amazon rain forest.
269 Translated: (Ernest) is so tired that he didn't even bother to switch his phone to the correct mode before typing this mess but it is easier to click send rather than erase.
268: Oh, I have just recently discovered the Probate Code of the State of Texas online for free! Weeee! Ah, what joy! An interesting read in-deed, and all the new Latin vocabular-y, for the lil' lawyer wanna-be, living inside of me.
267: My dog is an entomologist.
266: I have learned that just because someone is willing to constantly call law enforcement, it doesn't necessarily mean they have any appreciation or understanding of law nor are they willing to live by law.
265: If I had a sister (or a brother) named 'Debra', I would tease them that they are 80 percent the same as a 'Zebra' - and because the letters D and Z rhyme, I would probably just tack on a few extra percent just to confuse them. It is well known that Zebras are easily confused by percentage mathematics.
264: Strangest song title to date: Last night on the David Letterman Show a song was performed called "God is Great, Beer is Good, People Are Crazy". Yes, thats right. I'm not making this up! And if I did just make it up I would not have told you. I know, I know, - Dave and I were stunned as well. There was even a backup gospel-type choir doing the chorus. They had a hard time keeping a straight face while performing.
263: I was driving in wet cold morning heavy downtown traffic and had just pulled out into the flow of vehicles when my ventilation system malfunctioned suddenly fogging up the interior side of the glass and to my amazement it had even created ice which I couldn't easily remove. I thought, 'this is really strange for August in Texas'. Then I woke from my dream a few moments ago.
262: I think I annoyed my dog. He was resting on my lap just fine listening to the same Coldplay song, 'When I Ruled The World' - their live performance from SNL, over and over until I started using my hands as puppets, doing their version of lip sync. Oh well, back to band practice ........ rewind, repeat.
261: I have just now discovered an adequate substitute that I should be able to use to put Dr Pepper out of business: A 50-50 mix of Coca-Cola and A & VV Root Beer
260: I love my mother very much.
259: (Ernest) Is home. Is thankful for all the good people with fine hearts who truly love and care. Is completely tired. Is hurting in his head.
258: (Ernest) is enjoying the wife telling about her dream of me forcing her to leave her home behind to live in a cardboard box. (In my defense, it would have been the nicest, biggest box available.) In the dream she kept yelling out, "I'll work harder!!!"
257: Part of the Freedom of Speech is politeness. Waiting for your turn. Listening.
256: Double LOL - I just saw a book titled 'A Lion Called Christian' and then thought of the historical references wondering if any of his distant relatives devoured any Christians during the Roman 'glad he ate her' days.
255: I think it is ironically interesting to have a president who is so vocally primarily concerned about national health care but then at his individual level continues to smoke cigarettes.
254: A good day. A very good day? Yes, a very good day!
253: I have a new verbal tool in my arsenal of tricks for when the dog is in a whiny mode. I just ask him in a kind voice, "What's the matter, baby need a percutaneous tracheotomy?", and every time he quiets down immediately. He must be paying more attention to the medical dramas on TV than I originally thought.
252: When the former president flies on a plane, is it known as 'Air Force Minus One'?
251: When I saw Santa Claus yesterday at the job fair I got excited about the prospect of working as an elf making cool toys, but he seemed just a bit indifferent towards me. When I asked for directions to his place he just replied, "a ways north of Norway"
250: Even though its not raining outside at this moment and I am not actually singing, there is a mildly wildly syncopated version (of my own composing) of "Singing In The Rain" going through my brain right now, leaking out my lips every once in a while.
249: Nature abhors a vacuum. College dorm rooms naturally abhor a vacuum cleaner. Nature abhors a clean vacuum cleaner. But if you have two vacuum cleaners, you can ea-silly always have one clean vacuum cleaner, or at least a cleaner one of the two.
248: My neighbor's dog ran away from home but didn't get very far. About one foot. He/She broke through a hole in the fence and was still hooked onto the chain. But my dog Cooper came to his/her rescue and notified me that something was going on outside his fence.
247: Oh, boy! It's a special day!
246: If you want to minimize police - citizen confrontations that turn into media circuses of "he said, she said", then simply digitally audio record every minute of a police officer's time on the job and have it be totally in control of an independent agency.
245: "You can never almost go home again" - to and for my mother
244: I am surprised to see from reading AP news about the indicted NC group that "military training at home" appears to be a crime in the United States of America.
243: I slowly overtook a painted train traveling parallel to my automobile route. The graffiti covering the bottom portion of most of the railroad cars was 'half vast' - massive, grotesque, uncoordinated and lacked a central unifying theme. Then I was comforted by the thought that at least the paint added a layer of corrosion protection to the rolling railroad caravan canvas.
242: Someone (me) is eating pumpkin bread at Starbucks but first there must be an interesting sculpture simultaneously created and destroyed in the process. [activity] At one brief shining moment there was a miniature rendition of Howard Hughes' mammoth moth known as the 'Spruce Goose' on my porcelain platter. Now there be but crumbs and a black plastic fork.
241: On one leg of my journey I experienced two clearly discernable dry/wet demarcations on the pavement for the edge of the storm. Is this anywhere close to being equivalent to finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow?
240: Small Ville Texas, where the cost of living is low, folks still say "hi", and you can buy a pair of snow cones on credit (its a long story with a sweet happy ending)
239: The day is mathematically, chronologically & statistically progressing in the right direction. We have gone from a 30 percent chance of rain to raining 30 percent of the time.
238: I thought my inner core was cracked. Then I found out it was really molten. Iron. Molten iron. And spinning. And HUGE. And it was creating a magnetic field that caused beautiful glowing lights dancing at my feet and head. Cool. I noticed my glowing feet. Then I realized I had been dreaming that I was the entire earth. Again.
237: Housekeeper: Someone imported you hire to rearraign the stuff of "our" house, and hide important things from and mentally strain-gle your spouse. Also known as a 'spousesweeper'
236: Civics 101: It doesn't really matter who yoU are, or how important yoU think yoU are, you shouldn't ever think that it is a good idea to act stupidly, to yell and to scream at a peace officer any more than perform that same three ring circus for a judge in a courtroom.
235: Warning: Don't mess with my wife or she will 'fire' you as a customer! You don't mess with Texas and you shouldn't 'less' a Texan's income by not showing up for your appointment multiple times.
234: Is there like, another word for 'thesaurus', and where would I find it? [That reminds me about teasing my mother one time when she mentioned that I could use a thesaurus for something. So I asked her with mock seriousness, "whats that?", & she tried to explain repeatedly then realized my trickery and whacked me on the arm]
233: ..........
(Number 233 was silence for the day of my father's passing)
232: It is a very costly thing when people have no fashion sense or common sense or sense of smell. At least when it happens in the elderly, chances are you will out live it.
231: While shopping in WMT just now I heard a young mother use the word 'eXtablished' in a sentence to her child.
230: Ernest is sitting on the edge of shade, so close to the edge that I'm afraid I might fall off. Oops, it moved and I didn't. There, all better, for now.....
229: Wanted: Actively seeking the services of a young trainable mountain gorilla. Must be willing to pick tomato worms. Eating worms would be considered a benefit with pay adjusted accordingly. Willing to share 10% of tomato crop and 15% of the leaves. Microsoft Office Suite skills a plus; Fortran and COBOL programming experience a definite plus. Seasonal work. Online resumes only, please. Must love dogs.
228: Mr. Caveman, I can feel your pain. That stupid theme song from those recent Geico commercials keeps playing on an endless loop in my head.
227: As part of my continuing journey of preparing for the complete societal meltdown and chaos to come, I have gone to the hardware store and purchased 2 each of every kind of nut, bolt, screw, pin, washer, nail, rivet, snap, clasp, latch, hinge, hook, nut, bolt, screw, pin, washer, nail, rivet, snap, clasp, latch, hinge, and hook.
226: Just practicing homelessness and gardenmoreness in a light rain.
225: Checklist: Okay, let's see, I can now grow oregano and I have got started on my rainwater collection system to water my garden. So, as soon as I can grow a coffee tree, baby, I'm ready for any meltdown - polar ice caps, global economic or both. Ooops, I forgot about dog food ... and sugar ...
224: Ah, puppy is back from his ride in the car, the first one in quite awhile; "Neglect!!!" - I am sure that was his collective doggie thoughts boiled down to a single word - at least he got to see prairie dogs today, but no locomotives in action. He likes trains, but he likes prairie dogs more.
223: PuttinG a cOllAr AnD A fleA cOllAr BAck On A DOg while yOu hAve A heADAche cAn be A lOt Of fun! For one of us.
222: Hmmm, I must have done something very bad - I crashed - 'busted' - the entire Google Chrome browser on my XP computer which is supposed to be very 'robust' at the application layer ..... .... ... .. . r0 r0 r0 r0 r0 (nothing) - followed by that empty feeling you get when you lose at a slot machine, only I don't know exactly what that feeling is as I have never played a slot machine.
221: After watching video speeches & reading quotes of Sarah Palin, I thought to myself, "So this is what a female version of George W. Bush would sound like"
220: It looks like I slept on my mustache wrong - one half looks 'normal', the other side is doing a fair job of imitating 'Salvador Dali'. Sorry folks, no flash photography today in the 'amused, see him'.
219: My dog is resting on the floor at my feet. With seismic P-wave hick-ups. (wait) (wait) Ah, fur-th quake is now over.
218: Its important to turn the lights on in your bathroom at night. I just came "this close |<----->|" to stabbing my foot with a steak knife when my belly knocked it off the counter" a) Get a smaller belly b) Put up the steak knife c) Turn on lights before entering room d) Move
217: something something something
216: As much as my dog sheds hair, he doubles as a 'sheep'. I am offically listing him as a Half Huskie/ Half German Sheep-herd from now on. Baaaa-Ark!
215: I almost have a cartoon idea finished that has the words "Eve, its an easy design decision, this room so needs to be a man cave"
214: Silly wise despots despise easily.
213: After 16 pairs of black New Balance MX600AB 11 1/2 4E, it is time to move on. They appear to be gone. Alas, there is nothing quite so sad as beloved extincty shoes. I guess someone forgot how to make them, or I didn't buy enough, or someone hates me - those are the only reasons I can think of at this moment of deep sorrow. A buy gone era.
212: A bumper sticker I created for my sister today: Those who can't sing cartwheel.
211: Tomato worms in my part of the world have been known to soar as high as 25 feet in a single 'hop' completely clearing my house from back to front. Of course they didn't necessarily achieve this through their own means of locomotion, know the proper procedure for landing or book the flight far enough in advance to qualify for the lowest possible fare.
210: It may be July 5th, but I have that December 26th dead tired overworked Santa Claus
Glad~That~Whole~Day~Is~OVER
yet thankful feeling and a smile. Drats - Rudolph's water bowl is empty.
209: Word of Advice to the fine citizens of Gaffney, SC: Most serial killers know how to read. So don't be interviewed by CNN, give you and your wife's name and be quoted: "If he comes to me, face to face, I'm ready, I'm loaded, and I'm aimed for him" & "I'm afraid for my life, it's going to be kind of like a dog fight. I'm telling you: I'm going to win" - especially when your home address is available on the Internet.
208: I noticed that a bottle of imported water in my house came from the Alps. Of Arkansas. Then I looked closer at the "Alpine Spring Water" logo & it doesn't exactly have an "A" in the word "Alpine" - just an inverted V mountain shape with a jagged line to represent the snow. So I am thinking maybe "LPINE" is how they say "Pine" -> "Pine Tree" in Arkansas. Pine tree water. Is that anything like 'maple syrup'?
207: "Root beer float with a root beer chaser, please, waitress"
206: Just judging by the velocity & ferocity that my dog puts into keeping cats off our property, I think the folks at Beggin' Strips have missed out on a flavor opportunity. I am not for the wholesale slaughter of kitties, I am just thinking outside the litter-box. I figure a few of my chemist chums and I could come up with an artificial cat scent. After smelling the place where I used to work - it should be easy!
205: KFC has begun selling grilled chicken which may overtake fried. Soon they may branch off to include pheasant & quail. Then they will be known as Kentucky Grilled Birds or The KGB and then I will stop eating there out of fear.
204: If I fall asleep sitting in my lawn chair, does that count as 'camping'?
203: T - "I didn't say you could dance in my bed!!!" [Jason Mraz music induced dancing]
202: A brand new tiny little leaf !!!! Visible proof that I am not completely killing my latest orchid.
201: Last night Mr. Froggie was waiting patiently on the top step of the stairs at the back door. As soon as I opened the door he immediately jumped inside about a half of a foot, distance. I quickly & carefully (acting in my capacity of 'club bouncer') took the bottom half of my foot and sent him "hopping west" after a brief stay of 1.5 seconds. He is taking what I tell Cooper too seriously, "Mr. Froggie is our friend!"
Do you know what it feels like to be totally crushed beyond belief, relief, grief, and at the mercy of some shameless nameless faceless thief? Well, that isn't me at the moment. But the morning is young.
So hows your day? Is it anything like the "dream-day" I had where you get in a fight with someone who rips your arm off and then they proceed to beat you with it as a weapon, just whippin' the snot out of you with your own arm, and then sudDENly, they get a bright idea.
"See this watch? ,,, Like it?" and they are showing me the watch, my watch, on my detached limb.
"I'll sell you this watch right now at half its normal selling price on eBay if you call this fight off (which, by the way, they, of course, had started!), and sign this document promising to never fight with me again, and never tell anybody about what happened to your arm, deal?" - and he holds out my arm to shake to make the deal. At that point I notice that my arm has my watch AND my ring.
This is a letter I sent to my pen-pal who shares my first name initial
Dear E,
Happy E-Day to You!
To assist you in your Easter Egg Hunting, I have created this useful guide of egg shaped letters and symbols complete with explanations, of course.
0 - egg
O - fatter egg
o - fatter but smaller egg
() - egg on a diet
@ - an "a" hatching, the shell is ...just... cracking open!
U - empty shell, too late
Q - something is squirming out of this egg, obviously snaky
6 - starting off curvy in life and headed north by northeast
D - "D" for dented egg
P - dented egg with something Possibly crawling out of it
R - same thing, only twins!
B - a stack of dented eggs (see previous item)
~ - this is the snake that crawled away from the "Q"
! - not a tiny egg, but actually a very large egg at a great distance with an obviously very large "thing" jumping out of it! Good thing we are this far away!!!
* - starfish - not an egg
& - ampersand, maybe it is an egg (?)
G - egg with a door that swings inwardly, how inconvenient.
C - egg with garage type doorway - missing door
% - West and East Egg-ermany, separated by Berlin Wall
9 - starting off curvy in life and headed south by southwest
LU-99999999999-V - a whole bunch of the previous thing on a Southwest Airlines jet, again, headed South by Southwest by Southwest
While in the shower recently I came up with the following song that goes to the tune of 'Loverly' from the musical/movie 'My Fair Lady', only in my case its 'My Fair Laddie', the story of an out of work chemist who longs to go back to his old job or at least his old plant to work. Consider this song incomplete and at rough draft stage, (at best).
Chem-er-stry
All I need is a job somewhere, Preferably back where there’s stinky air, ‘Cause my nose just wouldn’t care, Oh, wouldn’t that, be chem-er-stry? (echo: Chem-er-stry?)
Lotza problems for me to solve, Like, 'why this junk doesn’t wanna dissolve, Or what it could possibly be, Oh, have you shot it on a GC?' (echo: a GC?)
It can be a quite an unruly mess But I can handle it with my GC-MS Lotza peaks, lotza chemical names And don’t forget our labor-ra-dory games, . . Who takes good care of you? An organic chem-er-ist, why, that is who (echo: that is who)
Notice: For private use only. Federal law provides severe civil and criminal penalties for the unauthorized reproduction, distribution, public performance or exhibition of copyrighted material without written permission/consent. Lyrics property of Quinn Studio & Gallery/esbb.
Amarillo TX has had a few recent interesting sports mascots. The Amarillo Dillas (armadillos) for baseball, and when they got ready to rename the hockey franchise, they picked Gorillas! Oh, when I saw that for the first time my heart kinda sank and died just lil bit, but then my internal Mr Giggle thought, well, if they ever have a professional women's sports team, they could call them the 'Amarillo Chinchillas' and I thought with word "chill" embedded in the name, that might have been a better choice for the hockey team. Do you realize how silly an angry gorilla looks with goalie gear on? Just imagine certain Canadians, there you go!
Next thought: What sport would be good for the 'Amarillo Godzillas'?
smoot - a non-standard unit of length = 5 foot 7 inches
During a recent episode of the CBS sitcom "The Big Bang Theory" there was a cameo appearance by physicist George Fitzgerald Smoot III, a Nobel Prize winner in Physics. While reading the wikipedia article about George, I came across this disclaimer:
Although Smoot attended MIT, he was not the same Smoot who was laid end to end to measure the Harvard Bridge between Cambridge and Boston;[4][5] this was his cousin Oliver R. Smoot, an MIT alumnus who served as the chairman of the American National Standards Institute.[5][6]
This led me to read about Oliver, who had a unit of length - his height of 5 ' 7" - designated as a "smoot"
The smoot is a nonstandard unit of length created as part of an MIT fraternity prank. It is named after Oliver R. Smoot (class of 1962), a fraternity pledge to Lambda Chi Alpha, who in October 1958 was used by his fraternity brothers to measure the length of the Harvard Bridge between Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts.
So they could have also used me, a Boston, to measure the distance from Boston to Cambridge across their bridge. (That was a cool construction - see how I did a 'Boston Boston bridge bridge'?) Of course in the year 1958 I was not yet 5 years old, much less 5' 7", and much closer to 5 months old, so they would have had to wait a few years for me to reach my full smootedness.
This article is about wonderfully silly things I have been doing in my kitchen now that a certain (dis-)organization doesn't want me to be a chemist for them any more. Well, at least part of the (dis-)organization doesn't seem to want me. You can take the chemist out of the chemical plant, but you can't stop him from inventing with chemicals from other plants: Food 1. MSG: Managing Sour Grapes
The best way to handle sour grapes is to eat them with good grapes alternating between the twoORthree kinds ofgrapes. And verycold almost frozengrapes are sucha delight.
2. Fun with Your Toaster
Caution: Avoid hot surfaces and wear proper protective gear when holding objects near an electric toaster.
Toasters can be a great deal of fun.I obtained some pumpernickel rye bread that was too long for my toaster. So I learned that I could toast one short end of the bread by holding the piece of bread with my hand a safe distance from the heat of the toaster. Then I dropped the uncooked main portion in the toaster to get a fairly even toasting of the whole piece.
Here is where it gets totally fascinating (not really, I just had to say that). Tonight I took a regular sized piece of light colored wheat bread and made it go from uncooked on one side to burned on the other in a gradual manner. I accomplished this feat by slowly and evenly dipping the piece of bread in and out of the toaster.
3. ATF (Avoid Tomatoes Falling)
Tomatoes are not really good at staying inside a sandwich, whether as a sliced entity or even as ketchup.
(They must be affected by gravity more than other foods, I have found. Perhaps it is because the tomato has spent so much of their lives just hanging around and now before they are consumed they just want to touch the ground?)
Here is a trick I have devised to keep the tomato on my sandwich longer. I slice the tomato in a spiral manner creating incredibly long single thin tomato pieces (an entire tomato sans inner and end pieces). So now there is less tomato sandwich slippery-age.
(If you didn't notice on the first pass through, I was trying to make the 3rd item look like a tomato sandwich, red between two pieces of brown)
4. Souper Strings of Onions
The spiral tomato idea gave me another idea to try this with onions that I sautee for my soups. I cut them by the same spiral technique in incredibly long pieces. I try to cut the onion piece so the cutting depth matches the width of individual spiral pieces. So far I have only tried these in a buffalo chili where I sauteed the onions first with jalapeno peppers in some bacon grease. The result was an incredibly strange looking snake-like thing showing up in my soup. I hate to use the word 'worm' because I have never seen worms this long. The next thing I want to try isserving super souper sauteed cebola strings mixed in with spaghetti. I guess I could call this invention "Anaconda Angel Hair Pasta" (Cebola is the Brazilian-Portuguese word for onion and has an 's' sound at the beginning and the Anaconda is a long snake from Brazil) I have only experimented with purple onions so far and will try other varieties soon.
Some ofMyRare&UniqueTalents This is a reprint from my MySpace profile page
Being able to see that being fired can some times be a very good thing, especially when the act of the ax is performed by clueless young punk kids, where at least one of them was a natural blonde and you aren't too sure about the other one.
Being able to lose my wife's $1.50 worth of jello. There may always be room for jello, but it isn't always safe around me.
Being able to pick out an Elton John song at extremely low volume, in a very brief time period, in a crowded noisy restaurant.
Being able to peel citrus fruit to a single piece and then reconstruct the hollow orange orb to fool future unsuspecting failed fruit finders.
Being able to confound and confuse supposedly trained professional psychiatric personnel into thinking that I think that my fiction is reality. Snicker snicker snicker. Hey, are you idiots reading this again?
Being able to make a water faucet dripping noise with my moist lips
sorry, those are the only six I can think of at the moment
This piece is in two parts, a fictional then non-fictional section, in that order.
WWSD - What Would Steven Do?
A semi-prerequisite for reading the fictional part is to understand, and more importantly, enjoy the logic & wisdom of the comedian Steven Wright of Near Boston MA and to read it to yourself using his voice. It helps. I tried to base this piece around the principle of 'WWSWW' -'What Would Steven Wright Write'. I had originally planned to use WWSD but if you are from Western Watertown South Dakota, you might have been confused. I am not talking about you. Besides, I have never been to Western Watertown South Dakota and would hate to have them mad at me.
Begin Fiction
One day I noticed that the there was a tiny little strange man leaving my bedroom. I asked him who he was and he would not tell me his name. So he is still a stranger to me. I asked him what he was doing in my house. And he said that my wife was renting the bottom right drawer of her bedroom dresser to him and that is where he lives. I found this hard to believe, but then realized he was about the right size if you squeezed him in there just right. When I was looking for one of my "lost" Sony objects the other day I noticed that that drawer was empty and I remembered about how large it was. I asked him how much she was charging him to stay in her drawer. He said $20. At first I didn't believe him, but then he showed me that he had $77 and said, "Before I paid my rent I had $97 dollars". That seemed pretty solid evidence to me.
I tried several ways to get him to leave. I drilled a hole in the wall on the north side of the bedroom from the livingroom and then on into the bottom right dresser drawer. Then I purchased a new long round piece of wood to poke him to try to make him leave. But this didn't seem to bother him.
I guess we could use the money so I am going to leave him alone.
The End (of the Fictional Section)
When I went to pick up my wife later in the day (yesterday) I told her about this story that I wrote about her and the little man and the rent and the poking through the wall. She had a v(e)(a)ried bizarre look on her face but didn't object to me publishing the story. She is kind of used to my stories by now. I used the word 'v(e)(a)ried' instead of 'very' because there were 'varying' amounts of 'very' bizarre on her face as I told her my story. She wished that I would write a story about going out to P___ P___ (part of the former name of my former employer) and picketing against them for stealing our bonus and firing me. And take the dog with me for protection. She told me to make a big giant sign (like homeless people have) to ask all the people who got their bonus for the year 2008 to give us a little piece of theirs that belongs to us. Put on the sign that we are destitute, then she laughed. (Hah! we are pretty far from destitute) Of course I don't know for sure whether I am getting my bonus or not, it is my understanding that it was announced several days ago and is being sent to current employees and I have been told through the grape vine when it is supposed to arrive. BUT I was informed at the meeting when I got fired (on Jan 27th 2009) that in order to receive the bonus for the year 2008 that you had to be an employee on the day in 2009 that it was announced. (Now bear in mind that that does not make any sense to me.) The bonus for 2008 is based on the performance of the company, the employees and their work units toward safety, production and profits during the year 2008. AND I was an employee during that entire year. So we'll just have to wait and see. I told her I could calculate an approximate amount of money each remaining employee could send me knowing what my bonus should have been and then put that on my sign. And I could put up one of those gigantic posters of a thermometer like they use for United Way contributions to show how close they are getting to their goal. If you would like my address, to mail your contribution, I am pretty sure that the Human Resources department still has it. Thanks.
Or just send me the same amount that the little stranger in the drawer pays every month.
Number of Potential Contributors who just want to silence me with their "gift out of the kindness of their hearts if I will just shut up and go away and quit bothering them forever because I have shown them their error and exposed the evil of their ways that they are dirty rotten scoundrels & thieves and it makes you wonder if their mothers knows what they REALLY do for a livin' and they think I might be foolish enough to accept their lousy stinkin' offer": 1
These are pieces that I have generated mainly using computer art tools. Enjoy !
Something New:
I am also in the process of linking my poetry blog entries together. This project is only partially finished. A "Poetry LINK" at the bottom of the blog entry points to the next older piece of poetry.
These are some of my abstract art pieces. They are available as prints, send me a note if you are interested.
Couch Glow
Gold As Smoke
Flowing Wood
Award Time
RATs
What Am I Reading?
Mainly the subject of Microcontrollers, Arduino Devices, DNA, Pharmacology and HVAC from a variety of sources.
Currently reading "Connectome: How The Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are" by Sebastian Seung
The Sometimes Missing Followers
If you don't see yourself in my followers list its because most of the time lately Blogger has not been showing the most recent five people of the list; strange. It is sporadic in its display, sometimes 19, sometimes 24. New twist: sometimes there is only one missing, my niece! One of my longest term readers.
Primary Goal in Life: To be the 3rd nicest person in the Universe. I achieve this goal by constantly redefining the word 'nicest', which is currently 8735 words long in all its nuances and handling special incidents such as road rage and being attacked by wildlife.
I wake up every day looking forward to the next friend that I will make, the piece of art that I will create, and the culinary discovery that makes my taste buds tumble. I not only have favorite pieces of music, I have favorite notes within those pieces.
I placed my order and asked the attendant about the bag.The owner was standing a few feet away and said that it keeps flies away.Curious, I asked for a scientific explanation.He told me that when the flies go by the bag of water their reflection is magnified by the bag of water and how the little flies are scared of the big flies because the big flies eat the little flies."Really" was my semi-sarcastic response.The owner told me that they are used all over the country of Mexico, in people's houses and businesses.So I asked him for permission to shoot the picture of the bag of water so I could put it on Facebook.He told me sure, it would be okay.I told him that I publish stories on the Internet.He suddenly said "No, not if it is going to be on the Internet! Then someone will steal my idea"I humorously thought, no, its just a clear plastic bag of water, probably no patent pending and you already told me you got the idea from your grandmother and they are hanging all over Mexico. So I assured him that when people saw my story it would help him become more famous, people would come from all over to see his bag of water and eat at his place. He said it would be okay. Of course I was pretty sure that I could take a picture of a bag of water in a public place and there wasn't going to be much he could do to stop me, but I'm a nice guy and ask permission.A little later while eating at the restaurant another patron mentions the bag of water. He thinks that the bag of water is used to keep evil spirits away. I lean toward him and say with a very serious, quiet voice, holding back my laughter successfully, that flies are evil spirits.
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