War And Peace
Hello World,
Ah, what is so rare as a day in June, and centuries of poets hit it right on the head when they sang its praises, for those sunny days, soft breezes and the intoxicating perfume of flowers everywhere. It's enough to bring out the gardener in the most horticulturally challenged individual. Speaking of horticultural challenges, last weekend, I was cleaning out a corner of our yard that should have had some Thorndale ivy and a yew, but which had been wildly over-run with poison ivy, garlic mustard, porcelain berry, flowering almond and barberry, among other invasive weeds and pests. The poison ivy got its revenge, because I did not take adequate precautions, and ended up with an ugly rash on the inside of my arms above my gloves, and it was only the miracle of modern topical medications that helped me survive the ordeal with my sanity intact. But I was surprised to find some strange mystery vine in with everything else, with round leaves so that anyone could tell that it wasn't Thorndale, poison ivy or porcelain berry, or any other vine I had ever seen, that apparently came out of nowhere. I have no idea what it is or where it came from, but it was really running amok in that corner, and climbing over everything that was there. Honestly, it's bad enough waging war against all of the rampant mutant alien vines that we already know, without introducing whole new mystery interlopers from who knows where, and tossing them into the fray.
Meanwhile, in the never-ending annals of juvenile delinquent squirrels around here, last week they did not dig my impatiens out of the planter on our front porch, as they had been doing. What they did instead was dump the entire container off the porch, so that it landed upside-down in the flowerbed behind the wisteria, and everything flew out of it in every direction, thanks so very much not. (This is where Bugs Bunny would say, "Of course, you realize this means war!") So there I was after work, crawling on my hands and knees between the wisteria and the rock wall, trying to scoop up the potting soil and poor bedraggled impatiens where they had been tossed like battlefield casualties all over the place. (I thought I could hear the juvenile delinquent squirrels in the trees whistling "Garry Owen," but I'm sure I must have been mistaken.) I picked up all the ones that I could find, and carefully replanted them back in the pot once again, this time wedging it securely between the barbecue grill and two other planters, so that it couldn't be moved. A few days later, they had perked up considerably, and almost looked like their old selves again, so I found that very encouraging. And I'm sure those artillery emplacements and troop movements of the juvenile delinquent squirrels are just routine maneuvers, and my other flowerpots have nothing to worry about. Say, is that Garry Owen I hear?
However, in the war against boredom, that sound you don't hear is the sound of people being interested in the Stanley Cup playoffs, which were finally narrowed down to the Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins, to the apparent disinterest of millions of sports fans the world over. It's true that we didn't watch any of the playoff games after the Rangers had been eliminated in the second round by those self-same Penguins, but I would still have expected the sports section of our newspaper to have reports of the subsequent games and results of the divisional and conference match-ups on the way to the finals. But nary a peep out of them, all the way up to the end, and it was only Bill who saved me from being the last person to know that the playoffs were over, when he mentioned that Detroit had in fact won the Cup, apparently amid deafening silence from the world at large. Alas poor hockey, which is well on its way to becoming the women's bowling of professional sports, and more's the pity, I'm sure.
Just when you think that you're the only person who remembers something obscure and eccentric from your youth, sure enough, you can find it right there on YouTube for all the world to see. I'm apparently not the only person in creation who remembers Tennessee Bird Walk, or Alvin and the Chipmunks doing The Harmonica Song, or even Dog Police, which was probably only shown once on MTV during their Basement Tapes segment. But there they are on YouTube, big as life, where anyone can watch them, even if they don't remember them from a hole in the wall. You can easily find old commercials or music videos, as well as the opening credits and theme songs from just about every TV show that you can imagine, and some that you can't even imagine in your wildest dreams. These include foreign programs that can't help but give you a new appreciation for American television, by comparison. There are comedy skits and bloopers, cartoons and lectures, and musical performances that run the gamut from the truly inspired to the totally disastrous, not to mention, everything in between and way beyond. Bill and I were watching a news show last week where they said that people are uploading video content to YouTube at the rate of 10,000 videos a day, believe that or not. Soon it will be a new game to play "Stump YouTube" and try to search for a video clip that's NOT on YouTube, rather than trying to find one that is. Because believe me, if you can remember it, and I can remember some pretty bizarre stuff, it's probably already on YouTube. You can go right there and check it out for yourself. Tell them Garry Owen sent you.
On the topic of bizarre things, and perhaps I'm the only person who would find this strange, but the latest issue of PC Magazine is featuring their Top 500 Tips for computers, and as Dave Barry always says, "I'm not making this up," because coming in towards the end of the list is this arresting entry:
#442 - USE ONLINE SNAIL MAIL
When you need to send a letter but can't get to the Post Office,
use esnailer.com. Type your envelope and letter online and
click SEND. esnailer sends the letter via U.S. Postal Service,
and you either pay $1.50 per letter or have it sent free by agreeing
to receive advertising in return.
Will someone please let me know at what point this begins to make any sense to anyone? I think I would not only have to be out of my cotton-picking mind, but also have my brain hijacked by space aliens, before I would write a letter online and then pay someone $1.50 to mail it for me. I mean, it's just incomprehensible to me that someone came up with this as a business model and thought it would be a good idea, besides being popular enough to offer it to their advertisers. I realize that the dinosaurs and I are woefully out of touch with the world of today, and that's putting it mildly, but that whole concept just seems to me like a very bad April Fools joke gone horribly wrong. And here all along, I thought we were winning the war on drugs, but apparently not.
Speaking of things going wrong, I love the new bumper sticker that I just received that says -
PLEASEDON'T HIT ME
I'm not 100% sure about my coverage
I thought that was pretty funny for a bumper sticker, all things considered. It came in the mail recently, from my new best friend Tom Broderick, who is apparently my friendly neighborhood State Farm Insurance agent, and it certainly got my attention. In terms of insurance-related bumper stickers, I like it better than the one that says LET'S NOT MEET BY ACCIDENT, at least for the novelty factor. But both of these don't come close to my all-time favorite, if only for the vehicularly challenged among us, which says: IF YOU DON'T LIKE MY DRIVING, STAY OFF THE SIDEWALK. Frankly, I don't see any way to improve upon that, although it's probably funnier for those of us who are an automotive menace, than it would be for the pedestrians in our path, and I can't say that I fancy their chances all that much.
On the technology front, Bill has a snazzy new scale that registers weights in the tiniest increments, and is accurate to within thousandths or probably nano-thousandths of poundage. However, sometimes the most accurate weight is not exactly the results that a person might have hoped for, and this can be a discouraging outcome after implementing a new diet or fitness routine. I said to Bill that he needs what I call the "3-pound spot" on the floor. I have an old beat-up spring scale, and I carry it out into the hallway where the light is stronger, so I can see the numbers better. If I step on the scale and it registers 140, I can step off and move the scale slightly to one side, and when I get back on, now it says 137 instead. This is my kind of scale! Of course, this might only work in houses where the floor is uneven, but personally, I think every floor should have a 3-pound spot on it somewhere, because you never know when you can use a pick-me-up, and I can tell you, it works for me. And when it comes to the war on weight, I'm right there in the trenches and fighting the good fight, right along with the juvenile delinquent squirrels, and ..... say, do you hear what I hear?
Garry Owen
Ah, what is so rare as a day in June, and centuries of poets hit it right on the head when they sang its praises, for those sunny days, soft breezes and the intoxicating perfume of flowers everywhere. It's enough to bring out the gardener in the most horticulturally challenged individual. Speaking of horticultural challenges, last weekend, I was cleaning out a corner of our yard that should have had some Thorndale ivy and a yew, but which had been wildly over-run with poison ivy, garlic mustard, porcelain berry, flowering almond and barberry, among other invasive weeds and pests. The poison ivy got its revenge, because I did not take adequate precautions, and ended up with an ugly rash on the inside of my arms above my gloves, and it was only the miracle of modern topical medications that helped me survive the ordeal with my sanity intact. But I was surprised to find some strange mystery vine in with everything else, with round leaves so that anyone could tell that it wasn't Thorndale, poison ivy or porcelain berry, or any other vine I had ever seen, that apparently came out of nowhere. I have no idea what it is or where it came from, but it was really running amok in that corner, and climbing over everything that was there. Honestly, it's bad enough waging war against all of the rampant mutant alien vines that we already know, without introducing whole new mystery interlopers from who knows where, and tossing them into the fray.
Meanwhile, in the never-ending annals of juvenile delinquent squirrels around here, last week they did not dig my impatiens out of the planter on our front porch, as they had been doing. What they did instead was dump the entire container off the porch, so that it landed upside-down in the flowerbed behind the wisteria, and everything flew out of it in every direction, thanks so very much not. (This is where Bugs Bunny would say, "Of course, you realize this means war!") So there I was after work, crawling on my hands and knees between the wisteria and the rock wall, trying to scoop up the potting soil and poor bedraggled impatiens where they had been tossed like battlefield casualties all over the place. (I thought I could hear the juvenile delinquent squirrels in the trees whistling "Garry Owen," but I'm sure I must have been mistaken.) I picked up all the ones that I could find, and carefully replanted them back in the pot once again, this time wedging it securely between the barbecue grill and two other planters, so that it couldn't be moved. A few days later, they had perked up considerably, and almost looked like their old selves again, so I found that very encouraging. And I'm sure those artillery emplacements and troop movements of the juvenile delinquent squirrels are just routine maneuvers, and my other flowerpots have nothing to worry about. Say, is that Garry Owen I hear?
However, in the war against boredom, that sound you don't hear is the sound of people being interested in the Stanley Cup playoffs, which were finally narrowed down to the Detroit Red Wings and Pittsburgh Penguins, to the apparent disinterest of millions of sports fans the world over. It's true that we didn't watch any of the playoff games after the Rangers had been eliminated in the second round by those self-same Penguins, but I would still have expected the sports section of our newspaper to have reports of the subsequent games and results of the divisional and conference match-ups on the way to the finals. But nary a peep out of them, all the way up to the end, and it was only Bill who saved me from being the last person to know that the playoffs were over, when he mentioned that Detroit had in fact won the Cup, apparently amid deafening silence from the world at large. Alas poor hockey, which is well on its way to becoming the women's bowling of professional sports, and more's the pity, I'm sure.
Just when you think that you're the only person who remembers something obscure and eccentric from your youth, sure enough, you can find it right there on YouTube for all the world to see. I'm apparently not the only person in creation who remembers Tennessee Bird Walk, or Alvin and the Chipmunks doing The Harmonica Song, or even Dog Police, which was probably only shown once on MTV during their Basement Tapes segment. But there they are on YouTube, big as life, where anyone can watch them, even if they don't remember them from a hole in the wall. You can easily find old commercials or music videos, as well as the opening credits and theme songs from just about every TV show that you can imagine, and some that you can't even imagine in your wildest dreams. These include foreign programs that can't help but give you a new appreciation for American television, by comparison. There are comedy skits and bloopers, cartoons and lectures, and musical performances that run the gamut from the truly inspired to the totally disastrous, not to mention, everything in between and way beyond. Bill and I were watching a news show last week where they said that people are uploading video content to YouTube at the rate of 10,000 videos a day, believe that or not. Soon it will be a new game to play "Stump YouTube" and try to search for a video clip that's NOT on YouTube, rather than trying to find one that is. Because believe me, if you can remember it, and I can remember some pretty bizarre stuff, it's probably already on YouTube. You can go right there and check it out for yourself. Tell them Garry Owen sent you.
On the topic of bizarre things, and perhaps I'm the only person who would find this strange, but the latest issue of PC Magazine is featuring their Top 500 Tips for computers, and as Dave Barry always says, "I'm not making this up," because coming in towards the end of the list is this arresting entry:
#442 - USE ONLINE SNAIL MAIL
When you need to send a letter but can't get to the Post Office,
use esnailer.com. Type your envelope and letter online and
click SEND. esnailer sends the letter via U.S. Postal Service,
and you either pay $1.50 per letter or have it sent free by agreeing
to receive advertising in return.
Will someone please let me know at what point this begins to make any sense to anyone? I think I would not only have to be out of my cotton-picking mind, but also have my brain hijacked by space aliens, before I would write a letter online and then pay someone $1.50 to mail it for me. I mean, it's just incomprehensible to me that someone came up with this as a business model and thought it would be a good idea, besides being popular enough to offer it to their advertisers. I realize that the dinosaurs and I are woefully out of touch with the world of today, and that's putting it mildly, but that whole concept just seems to me like a very bad April Fools joke gone horribly wrong. And here all along, I thought we were winning the war on drugs, but apparently not.
Speaking of things going wrong, I love the new bumper sticker that I just received that says -
PLEASEDON'T HIT ME
I'm not 100% sure about my coverage
I thought that was pretty funny for a bumper sticker, all things considered. It came in the mail recently, from my new best friend Tom Broderick, who is apparently my friendly neighborhood State Farm Insurance agent, and it certainly got my attention. In terms of insurance-related bumper stickers, I like it better than the one that says LET'S NOT MEET BY ACCIDENT, at least for the novelty factor. But both of these don't come close to my all-time favorite, if only for the vehicularly challenged among us, which says: IF YOU DON'T LIKE MY DRIVING, STAY OFF THE SIDEWALK. Frankly, I don't see any way to improve upon that, although it's probably funnier for those of us who are an automotive menace, than it would be for the pedestrians in our path, and I can't say that I fancy their chances all that much.
On the technology front, Bill has a snazzy new scale that registers weights in the tiniest increments, and is accurate to within thousandths or probably nano-thousandths of poundage. However, sometimes the most accurate weight is not exactly the results that a person might have hoped for, and this can be a discouraging outcome after implementing a new diet or fitness routine. I said to Bill that he needs what I call the "3-pound spot" on the floor. I have an old beat-up spring scale, and I carry it out into the hallway where the light is stronger, so I can see the numbers better. If I step on the scale and it registers 140, I can step off and move the scale slightly to one side, and when I get back on, now it says 137 instead. This is my kind of scale! Of course, this might only work in houses where the floor is uneven, but personally, I think every floor should have a 3-pound spot on it somewhere, because you never know when you can use a pick-me-up, and I can tell you, it works for me. And when it comes to the war on weight, I'm right there in the trenches and fighting the good fight, right along with the juvenile delinquent squirrels, and ..... say, do you hear what I hear?
Garry Owen
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 8:42 PM
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