Living Large

Hello World, You know I say that any week that includes both May Day and Cinco de Mayo is a good one in my book, so that's exactly where we find ourselves at this point. I see that the May Day crowd has taken a page out of the Waitangi Day book, and decided to have riots besides the usual festivities. So here we have yet another international day of celebration that has turned controversial instead of being a time of revelry and frivolity, and joined the ranks of St. Patrick's Day and the World Cup in the celebration calaboose, where people can't even seem to commemorate special events without violence and lawsuits. Fortunately, Cinco de Mayo seems to be more of a "party hearty" sort of occasion, and controversy has yet to invade its delightful tequila-infused joviality. I'll have mine with a side of chocolate, por favor. Meanwhile, the extraordinary weather continues apace, in spite of being about as unpopular around here as the dratted Miami Heat right about now. (BOO!!!) We just slogged through a whole week of rain, that was not only colder than the previous week in April, but probably 40 degrees colder than the entire month of March, thanks not. Suddenly the spring birds are wondering if they should have stayed in Florida, and our poor spring flowers are looking around for ear muffs and sweaters. We even have some early buttercups coming up in the yard which is not easy around here, heaven knows, with our rampaging landscapers on the loose and nothing is safe. In fact, during one particularly rigorous clean-up effort around the place, they summarily tossed out our trusty old barbecue grill, so I said to Bill that if we want to invite people over, rather than asking them to bring their own bottle, or even bring their own hamburgers, we would have to ask them to bring their own barbecue grill instead. This is certainly not the way we would like to see things going, and the woeful Knicks are only part of it, believe me. Speaking of things that are not going the way they should, what hasn't been happening in the realm of local communications these days - ye gods, it's enough to make strong men weep. It all began innocently enough when I stumbled across this vendor in the hospital computer - ========================== WILEY BONGO 300 SCHUNNEMUNK CIRCLE TINTON FALLS, NJ 07753 ========================== There's probably nothing wrong with that address, in fact, I consider it pretty entertaining just the way it is. But there's just something serendipitous about a person named Bongo, living on a street called Schunnemunk, of all things, that just tickles the impish humor fairy in my poor addled brain - although I will admit that I am well-known for being easily amused. Another vendor in the hospital computer was listed this way - ========================== THE HOURNAL NEWS 1 GANNETT DRIVE WHITE PLAINS, NY 10604 ========================== Now, we subscribe to this paper at home, so I can assure you that its actual name is The Journal News and not The Hournal News, as it appears in the hospital's vendor files. Normally, this is where I would say that the computer department should know better, that is, until we received the following warning message from the IT Director her own self, concerning the encryption features on the hospital network - ==================================== Please note because of a problem with our emial encryption and spam filer software we must turn off these functions for outgoing mail for the rest of the day. ==================================== Ordinarily, I would like to think an IT professional would not come up with "emial" in place of "email," or use "spam filer" when they mean "spam filter," in a broadcast message to 1600 employees at four different facilities, but hey, they don't call it the employer of last resort for nothing, you know. Meanwhile, Bill fared no better in his computer experiences lately, if this is any indication - ==================================== Your practice demonstrated your effective utilization of wise mind to implement the skills observe and describe to recognize, identify and acknowledge not only the imbalance in you life but also your reduced sense of mastery. ==================================== He commented: "This is going to be a tough group, if that's the first sentence of the moderator's first response to one of the peoples' homework submissions!" I can't argue with him on that, in fact, the thought that spring immediately to mind is: "Yikes!" A recent horoscope from our friends at www.spiritvoyage.com was no improvement - =================================== On Tuesday, Pluto begins a retrograde period that will give you an opportunity to work through old, deeply-seeded taboo issues =================================== I'm afraid our rampaging landscapers have made short work of anything "deeply-seeded" in our lives, joining our erstwhile barbecue grill on the astrological scrap heap of retrograde taboos, and more's the pity, I'm sure. From the other side of the hard-working coin, I got this less-than-enticing spam message from an unknown source - =================================== You can work today comfortable from your home =================================== Hmmmm, no thank you so very much not, is what I'm thinking here. On the other hand, it was my new friends at MBLife that sent me the following note about a recent purchase - =================================== We hope that you would find this jewelry is beautiful and satisfy with our service. We are valued any comments from our customer for improving. Without any feedback, then we are hardly to know our standard and implementing any improvement goals. So your opinion is very important to continuous our business. Please spend few minutes on the survey and let us know your thought. We will give away the prize for FREE when you submit the feedback. We will response for the delivery service also. Please act now to catch this valuable chance! =================================== Ah, with friends like these, I certainly would not lack for translation mishaps to keep me entertained, that is, as long as they manage to continuous their business. Bill had no trouble topping that, when he happened upon this quixotic site in his quest for plant hangers - ==================================== Ultimate Deck Basket Hangers Never Drill in participate actively Your Deck Again These patented hangers are tall in behalf of autocratic maximum value rail planter and irreversibly decide very different common dilemma: "How do without I hang these things". Each pack iron will includes two (2) hangers. For shining example if you have four planters going on two inch incredibly dense on the part of four inch unprecedented broad prohibitively large rails, this order four packs. About Austram In 1983, Austram became the at first company in the US. participate actively to implement very different coconut fiber lined wire planter participate actively the n. American large consumer. Today we are an large-scale industry say-leader, offering to the vast majority complete assortment of color moss planters widely available. Our ln. just as soon includes wire trellises and arbors, fence edging, actively promoted stands, baker's racks and by far, by far any more. As we say-head into the be meticulous long, our mission this will be participate actively to continue steadily: "To market prohibitively large excellent quality, innovative decorative planters and planter accessories participate actively the n. American large consumer, while continuing our tradition of providing the highest to appreciate, best quality and service in the Lawn and Garden Industry." ==================================== Brother, you said a mouthful. It may have been a mouthful of gobbledygook, but by golly, it certainly sounded sincere as all get-out. And on behalf of the n. American large consumer, I'd like to say that you can't help but admire people who don't let obvious language barriers stand in the way of their very strong sense of initiative and single-minded purpose. Heck, anytime that I need actively promoted stands, I certainly know where to go. Finally, this last gem is from the fertile pen of columnist Phil Reisman, who does not stoop to gloating over the mistakes of others, but instead tells this story on himself - ====================================== A million years ago when I was covering cops, I filed a story about a desperate thief who died in the act of robbing a store. Referring to an autopsy report on the cause of death, I wrote that the man had been shot in the intestines. Only it didn't quite come out that way. Before the story went to print, a witty saboteur somehow got hold of the copy and replaced the word "colon" with "semicolon." Nobody caught it - and so readers that day were treated to a front-page article about a guy who died of punctuation wounds. Even in the best of circumstances, the semicolon is a tricky part of grammar. To be shot in one must be painful indeed, though no worse than having your dangling participle caught in a car door. Big joke. I never heard the end of it. Oh, I can laugh about it now. Ha, ha, ha. But back then I had no sense of humor. For months, I lived in dread that the great semicolon killing would end up in any of several journalism trade publications that regularly made fun of unfortunate mistakes that inevitably occur in the business. To my relief the semicolon affair never got the national ridicule it so richly deserved. [ Here he invites us all to visit http://www.ajr.org/take2.asp to enjoy one boneheaded embarrassment after another. ] ====================================== Well, I don't see any way to improve upon that, try as I might. Of course, they say that the pen is mightier than the sword, but as Phil points out, we still don't expect anyone to die of punctuation wounds. But now I see that it's time for me to participate actively my deck again, even though I can work today comfortable from my home, so I'd better act now to catch this valuable chance, or my name isn't - Wiley Bongo